REBLOG! Bromley Studio To Be Auctioned

The iconic Chapel Street Studio and part-time residence of Melbourne artist David Bromley is going under the hammer this week. This magical space has stood out for well over a decade, as Chapel Street has grown much less glitzy, now filled with glass-covered modernity and prefab showrooms, Mr Bromley’s premises have remained a wonderfilled oddity  :: Read the full article »»»»

OFFICIAL :: Kazakhstan Thanks Borat For First Tourist

Kazakhstan’s foreign minister has thanked Borat, the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy that the Central Asian nation once banned for lampooning its people, for massively boosting its tourism.

“With the release of this film, the number of visas issued by Kazakhstan grew tenfold,” local news agencies quoted foreign minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov as telling a session of parliament :: Read the full article »»»»

SAAB Files For Bankruptcy

The stalwart Swedish car maker Saab has filed for bankruptcy, bringing to an end two years of struggle to rescue the iconic brand. Final desperate efforts to organise help from China were obstructed by General Motors over licences. A statement on the court’s website said three Saab companies had filed for bankruptcy: SAAB Automobile Aktiebolag, Saab Automobile Tools AB and Saab Automobile Powertrain. Saab’s charismatic chief executive Victor Muller had been due to appear before the court on Monday as judges had been scheduled to decide whether to lift or prolong the three-month bankruptcy protection Saab had been placed under while it was attempting to negotiate a deal to rescue the company. The car maker was forced to halt production in April as suppliers stopped deliveries over mountains of unpaid bills. Saab’s some 3,700 employees, whose salaries have been delayed for five months running, have yet to receive their November pay cheques. M★D

A Year to the Day, Twelve Months of Protest: The Arab Spring

A year to the day, Mohamed - Basboosa – Bouazizi’s self-immolation in the sleepy Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid kicked off a year of global revolt, the convulsions have spread further than Basboosa could ever have been imagined. The Arab Spring was born. A simple street seller, Basboosa had his vegetable cart confiscated by local officials and in protest set himself on fire. His actions ignited a string of anti-government demonstrations that have transformed the Arab world. Within days of Basboosa‘s tragic protest, thousands of Tunisians lined the streets with sudden courage to demand an end to the 23-year dictatorship of president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The turmoil started by Basboosa  has spread to each corner of the globe, The Occupy Movement, Chinese Land Dissidents and most recently, civil unrest in Russia’s post election landscape. M★D

CHINA: Beijing Orders Micro-bloggers to Register Real Names

Beijing city authorities on Friday issued new rules requiring microbloggers to register their real names before posting online, as the Chinese government tightens its grip on the internet. The city government now requires users of weibos – the Chinese version of Twitter – to give their real names to website administrators, its official news portal said. The new rules will apply to weibo operators based in Beijing, which include Sina – owner of China’s most popular microblogging service, with more than 200 million users – as well as users living in the Chinese capital. Weibo users reacted angrily to the new rules, saying this was an attempt to muzzle online criticism and debate. M★D

International Research Team Claim New Data Transfer Record

A team of international researchers has set a new data transfer record. A memory to memory data transfer rate of of 186 gigabits a second. The  team cranked up the network at the SuperComputing 2011 conference in Seattle in mid-November. Transferring data in opposite directions over a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks – each with a complete movie and all the extras –  a day. The researchers reached transfer rates of 98 gigabits per second between the University of Victoria Computing Centre located in Victoria, British Columbia, and the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Coupled with a simultaneous data rate of 88 Gbps in the opposite direction the team reached the astounding two-way data rate of 186 Gbps to break their own previous peak-rate record of 119 Gbps set in 2009. M★D READ MORE