Sony 3D Blu-ray Fullhd Player Review

Sony 3D Blu-ray Fullhd Player Review
Sony 3D Blu-ray Fullhd Player Review
Written by Thomas Spurlin   
For a long time, Sony’s been struggling with a good problem to have regarding their standalone Blu-ray decks.  It doesn’t matter if their quality strong, the reaction time decent, and the supplemental specifics pleasing to the eye, they always have to combat price-wise against the company’s “flagship” player, the Playstation 3. On most occasions, their standalone decks of a comparable quality (such as the BDP-S560, reviewed here) were, on a good day, the same price as their game-playing iteration, a unit that’s become a reference machine for the likes of The Criterion Collection and others.

However, with the whittled-down cost of Blu-ray technology, they’ve finally been able to nail down a wireless, attractive until with their BDP-S570 that’s a good $50 below the PS3’s $300 list price.  With wireless connectivity on-board, a sleek style makeover, snappy loading timeframes and respectable audiovisual performance, including 24p upscaling for DVDs and support for online stream services such as Netflix, Sony might’ve finally concocted a healthy Blu-ray alternative -- one that easily bests their previous 5-series model.  Yes, it’s 3D ready as well for when the technology’s ready, but that’s just part of the puzzle.

Out of the Box

If a pair of eyes will be looking at the S570 that have seen the thickness and width of other Blu-ray decks, they’ll be taken slightly aback at the compressed size of this high-functioning unit.  It barely sits a foot and a half deep at 17 inches, while offering a bit of a slack-jaw inducing height at 1.81 inches tall. Sure, the likes of Samsung’s ultra thin BD-P4600 are more shocking with their size, but the ability to cram this high-function player into a compact, glossy design impresses to a noteworthy extent.  In comparison, this unit sits roughly a full inch shallower from front to back and about a half an inch shorter than JVC’s XV-BP1, an able-bodied and size-conscious unit on its own.    Gone are the flip-open tray and wonky buttons from the S560, replaced by a front panel that’s sturdy, unwavering, and void of any blue coloring.  But it’d be wise to have a polishing cloth ready if lights are in proximity, as the black glossy finish is prone both to dust pick-up and fingerprints.

To the front, attractive minimalist design takes the helm. The short stature calls for a more edgy motif to make it grab the user’s eye, complimented here by a thin silver trim that rides along a small jetting “shelf” at the bottom that holds very, very small buttons for stopping, playing, pausing, powering down and the rest of the standard functions. These buttons feel almost like thinner, hard Tic-Tacs or another small mint, which are pointed but on the stiff side.  A very soft LED timer arrives on the right-hand side, rendered in delicate but readable blue typography that’s adjustable to even darker levels within the menus. For a little extra ambience and, maybe in some lighting, assistance in seeing the buttons, a thin light strip appears directly in the center of the unit that glows an agreeably tame white color – whose brightness can also be toggled along with the time display. A USB 2.0 port also adorns the right of the panel.

On the rear of the S570, there’s very little to get excited about. We’ve got out standard ports for plug-and-play usage, with the HDMI out taking charge as the preferred connection method. Component RGB jacks are available, along with coaxial and optical outputs to match for audio, as well as a LAN cable port for non-wireless Internet usage. The only nice earmark we’ve got on the rear panel is a port for a USB connection, so the user can connect a storage device to the back without cluttering up the front continuously. It’s worth noting, however, the power cable isn’t a standard A/C output port, instead carrying a permanent connection that cannot be unplugged or replaced. That’s a little frustrating for installation folks and those who’d prefer easier plug-and-play experience, or for those that, say, have a power wiring issue and need to switch out cables.

Remote


Though Sony has implemented a new model of remote between the S560 and the S570, jumping from a RMT-B104A to a RMT-B107A, there’s almost no difference between the two devices. Both are flimsy tack-on designs that work, mind you, and are user friendly – just very inexpensively handled.  The B107A, however, has one key feature that the 104A lacked, and that’s an EJECT button. The “Theater” button has been scooped up and moved to a new location, but other than that it’s the same unit; therefore, the comments annotated in the review for the S560’s remote carry over here.  Essentially, it’s a lighter, flimsier version of Sony’s Playstation 3 Bluetooth remote, carrying the same rotary navigation functions, color-coded buttons, and TV control as before

what is expensive food in china

what is expensive food in china
what is expensive food in china
McDonald’s announced it has raised its prices in all 1,000 of its Chinese restaurants due to the high food inflation. The price hike only pertains to mainland China and does not affect any of its other Asian franchise restaurants.

The Chinese Consumer Price Index rose 4.4% in October, the highest monthly rise in more than two years.
The rise in CPI is primarily due to the high cost of raw food commodities and may spurn China to place a cap on commodity prices.
Wen Jiabao, Chinese Premier, said that his cabinet is drafting legislation to curb the excessive price increases.

China may also impose limits and tougher penalties on agricultural futures speculators that drive up the prices of raw materials artificially.
The plans have drawn criticism in China as well as abroad. Some economists have called the measures unnecessary and point out that China has sufficient tools to control rising food prices without having to resort to the drastic measures of capping futures and food prices.
China is expected to raise its benchmark rate this coming Friday by another 25 Bp to battle inflation.
The Consumer Confidence Index in China shows that 76% of the Chinese expect prices to rise over the next year, according to the Chinese statistics bureau.

India’s fast growing economy is not immune to the rise in food prices either. Dairy products alone rose by 21% in 2010 while other non-dairy food prices saw a jump of 14% year-over-year.
While Ben Bernanke may point out that inflationary pressure in the US remains below expectations that may not be the case for much longer. US food producers have hinted on several occasions that a rise in food prices should be expected to pass on the higher production costs to the consumer in order to keep their profit margins healthy.
Inflation seems to rise across the global economy and one local or continental economy cannot consider itself to be immune.
The inflationary wave will move from the East to the West at a rapid pace and unless our monetary policies are adequate we should brace ourselves for the realistic possibility that a Chinese or Indian ripple will become a tsunami when the effect reaches the US.
The US however faces a more crippling effect to battle the food war and that is high unemployment and low spendable income.

One can always opt to eat at McDonald’s in Beijing where a Big Mac meal will only set you back $2.20 versus one in the US where the average price stands at $3.70.

Written by Nick Doms © 2010, all rights reserved

Japan may have hours to prevent nuclear meltdown

Snap analysis: Japan may have hours to prevent nuclear meltdown
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) is racing to cool down the reactor core after a highly unusual "station blackout" -- the total loss of power necessary to keep water circulating through the plant to prevent overheating.
Daiichi Units 1, 2 and 3 reactors shut down automatically at 2:46 p.m. local time due to the earthquake. But about an hour later, the on-site diesel back-up generators also shut, leaving the reactors without alternating current (AC) power.
That caused Tepco to declare an emergency and the government to evacuate thousands of people from near the plant. Such a blackout is "one of the most serious conditions that can affect a nuclear plant," according to experts at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S. based nuclear watchdog group.
"If all AC power is lost, the options to cool the core are limited," the group warned.
TEPCO also said it has lost ability to control pressure at some of the reactors at its Daini plant nearby.
The reactors at Fukushima can operate without AC power because they are steam-driven and therefore do not require electric pumps, but the reactors do require direct current (DC) power from batteries for its valves and controls to function.
If battery power is depleted before AC power is restored, the plant would stop supplying water to the core and the cooling water level in the reactor core could drop.
RADIATION RELEASE
Officials are now considering releasing some radiation to relieve pressure in the containment at the Daiichi plant and are also considering releasing pressure at Daini

signs that difficulties are mounting. Such a release has only occurred once in U.S. history, at Three Mile Island.
"(It's) a sign that the Japanese are pulling out all the stops they can to prevent this accident from developing into a core melt and also prevent it from causing a breach of the containment (system) from the pressure that is building up inside the core because of excess heat," said Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
While the restoration of power through additional generators should allow TEPCO to bring the situation back under control, left unchecked the coolant could boil off within hours. That would cause the core to overheat and damage the fuel, according to nuclear experts familiar with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

It could take hours more for the metal surrounding the ceramic uranium fuel pellets in the fuel rods to melt, which is what happened at Three Mile Island. That accident essentially frozen the nuclear industry for three decades.
Seven years later the industry suffered another blow after the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine exploded due to an uncontrolled power surge that damaged the reactor core, releasing a radioactive cloud that blanketed Europe.
The metal on the fuel rods would not melt until temperatures far exceed 1,000 degrees F. The ceramic uranium pellets would not melt until temperatures reached about 2,000 degrees F, nuclear experts said.
If it occurred, that would ultimately cause a meltdown, with the core becoming a molten mass that would melt through the steel reactor vessel, releasing a large amount of radioactivity into the containment building that surrounds the vessel, the Union of Concerned Scientists said.
The main purpose of the building -- an air tight steel or reinforced concrete structure with walls between four to eight feet thick -- is to keep radioactivity from being released into the environment.
While there has not been any indication of damage that would undermine the building's ability to contain the pressure and allow radioactivity to leak out, there is a danger that if pressure builds too much then the walls could be breached

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/121974/20110312/japanese-massive-earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-meltdown.htm#ixzz1Gg1rFHQl
Snap analysis: Japan may have hours to prevent nuclear meltdown
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) is racing to cool down the reactor core after a highly unusual "station blackout" -- the total loss of power necessary to keep water circulating through the plant to prevent overheating.
Daiichi Units 1, 2 and 3 reactors shut down automatically at 2:46 p.m. local time due to the earthquake. But about an hour later, the on-site diesel back-up generators also shut, leaving the reactors without alternating current (AC) power.
That caused Tepco to declare an emergency and the government to evacuate thousands of people from near the plant. Such a blackout is "one of the most serious conditions that can affect a nuclear plant," according to experts at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S. based nuclear watchdog group.
"If all AC power is lost, the options to cool the core are limited," the group warned.
TEPCO also said it has lost ability to control pressure at some of the reactors at its Daini plant nearby.
The reactors at Fukushima can operate without AC power because they are steam-driven and therefore do not require electric pumps, but the reactors do require direct current (DC) power from batteries for its valves and controls to function.
If battery power is depleted before AC power is restored, the plant would stop supplying water to the core and the cooling water level in the reactor core could drop.
RADIATION RELEASE
Officials are now considering releasing some radiation to relieve pressure in the containment at the Daiichi plant and are also considering releasing pressure at Daini

signs that difficulties are mounting. Such a release has only occurred once in U.S. history, at Three Mile Island.
"(It's) a sign that the Japanese are pulling out all the stops they can to prevent this accident from developing into a core melt and also prevent it from causing a breach of the containment (system) from the pressure that is building up inside the core because of excess heat," said Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
While the restoration of power through additional generators should allow TEPCO to bring the situation back under control, left unchecked the coolant could boil off within hours. That would cause the core to overheat and damage the fuel, according to nuclear experts familiar with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

It could take hours more for the metal surrounding the ceramic uranium fuel pellets in the fuel rods to melt, which is what happened at Three Mile Island. That accident essentially frozen the nuclear industry for three decades.
Seven years later the industry suffered another blow after the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine exploded due to an uncontrolled power surge that damaged the reactor core, releasing a radioactive cloud that blanketed Europe.
The metal on the fuel rods would not melt until temperatures far exceed 1,000 degrees F. The ceramic uranium pellets would not melt until temperatures reached about 2,000 degrees F, nuclear experts said.
If it occurred, that would ultimately cause a meltdown, with the core becoming a molten mass that would melt through the steel reactor vessel, releasing a large amount of radioactivity into the containment building that surrounds the vessel, the Union of Concerned Scientists said.
The main purpose of the building -- an air tight steel or reinforced concrete structure with walls between four to eight feet thick -- is to keep radioactivity from being released into the environment.
While there has not been any indication of damage that would undermine the building's ability to contain the pressure and allow radioactivity to leak out, there is a danger that if pressure builds too much then the walls could be breached

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/121974/20110312/japanese-massive-earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-meltdown.htm#ixzz1Gg1rFHQl

A visual journey into Japan's sex industry

Sex is everywhere in Japan, but most tourists don't see it. They walk past the men handing out tissue packages at train stations, and assume the neon signs in entertainment districts point to karaoke bars. But many indicate hostess clubs, oral-sex parlours, and “soapland” bathhouses. Those tissue packets advertise to men and are also used to recruit female workers.
According to Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs (Harry N. Abrams, $45), Japan's commercial sexual-services industry accounted for nearly US$20 billion in 2001. And although these clubs are a cultural phenomenon, they're strictly off-limits to foreigners.
Pink Box captures their inner sanctums in a photographic collection. It's not a coffee-table book you'd want your mother to see. Photographer Joan Sinclair visited over 90 clubs and returned with images of women working in nude theatres, peeping rooms, “touch pubs”, and “image clubs” with elaborately decorated fantasy theme rooms. Examples include a train replica where men pay to grope women posing as schoolgirls, and a department-store elevator, equipped with a mirrored floor and a uniformed, pantyless attendant. In “fashion clubs”, women provide services in true-to-life costumes—such as chain-restaurant uniforms, nurse outfits, officewear—or even dressed as anime characters.
On the line from San Francisco, Sinclair tells the Straight that she first learned of the clubs 10 years ago when she was working as an English teacher in Japan. She returned three years ago to photograph them. “ Pink Box is about the kitsch, the humour, and the over-the-top–ness of the domestic sex industry in Japan,” Sinclair says. “There is a sense of humour about it that's uniquely Japanese,” she says, adding that manga and Japanese graphic art are partly responsible. “There's something in Japanese society…that makes these archetypes of everyday life the heart of the role-playing fantasy.”
How did Sinclair gain access to these clubs? She speaks Japanese, and got to know the managers, workers, and customers. Once given permission to shoot, she worked with those who volunteered to be photographed for the book. “It's not an underground industry,” she explains. “They advertise, they all have Web sites…they have fan sites for the girls.”
Pink Box doesn't touch on the darker side of the industry: gritty brothels with Southeast Asian sex workers. Sinclair acknowledges that these exist but felt that was a different story to tell. She made the decision to shoot Japanese-style clubs that employ Japanese women. (Prostitution is legally a grey area in Japan, but Sinclair says one criterion they stick to is that they rarely risk employing those under 18.)
The book quotes customers and workers on their motivations. “It would take a year to earn the money for my [Louis Vuitton] purse if I was working in an office,” says a worker.
“All I ask is that viewers not assume that this profession is inherently degrading. It's more complicated than that,” Sinclair writes in the book. “These women are not powerless, they are not on drugs. They have made conscious choices; they have their own dignity.
“The clubs are a reflection of modern Japan, a literate society where the rules are written out, prices are not negotiable, and fantasies are predetermined, prescripted, and prepaid.” Sex and the city indeed.

milk industry still recovering from melamine crisis

milk industry still recovering from melamine crisis

Morinaga Milk Industry,A major Japanese food manufacturer has found traces of an industrial chemical in some of its products that were made in China, as a food safety scare centered on tainted milk continued to spread, health officials said Friday.

The news came as Japan added food products from 12 Asian countries and territories with a record of importing milk products from China to a watch list for special inspections.

Japan’s Marudai Food Co pulled its cream buns, meat buns and creamed corn crepes from supermarkets a week ago as the tainted milk scandal in China began to unfold. Its tests have since found traces of the industrial chemical melamine in several of the recalled products, Health and Welfare Ministry official Mina Kojima said.



Japan's third largest dairy company posted [yen] 431.2bn in sales for its 1999 financial year, ending March 1999, for a net profit of [yen] 2.5bn and a current profit of [yen] 8.7bn, up compared with sales of [yen] 418.2bn in 1998, for a [yen] 2.5bn net profit and a current profit of [yen] 7.5bn. Morinaga Milk's main business is dairy products; it posted [yen] 193bn, it holds a 8% share of market milk and which represented 45% of the sales in dairy product business. Sales of condensed milk, dried milk, cheese and butter, represented 20% of the sales, for [yen] 84.8bn. Morinaga Milk ranks second on the yogurt market with a 19% market share ; its sales came to [yen] 55bn in 1998. It also ranks second on the ice cream market, posting sales of [yen] 51.3bn, up 4%. Morinaga Milk leads the coffee creamer market; it sold 7.350 tonnes of its Creap brand which holds a 34% market share. In 1998, Morinaga Milk sold [yen] 520mn worth of baby food for a 2.5% market share, and it ranks third on the infant milk market, where it holds a 26% market share, for a sales volume of 9,000 tonnes. In addition to dairy products, Morinaga is involved in soft drinks, chilled foods, fertilisers, effluent treatment plants, coffee creamer, infant foods, tofu, dairy engineering, farming, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, cosmetics, and real estate. It exports tofu to 32 countries, and sells tofu with a long shelf life in the United States. Morinaga milk's soft drink sales came to [yen] 33.8bn in 1998, representing 8% of sales. Morinaga milk spent [yen] 10bn biotechnology research laboratory which is to produce drugs for cancer from bifidus bacteria, and to develop other drugs designed to counteract side effects of cancer

Marudai has sold more than 300,000 of the products, most of which are believed to have been consumed, but so far there have been no reports of health problems, she said.

Company executive Masaaki Sugiyama told a news conference that two kinds of cream buns and the crepes had traces of melamine, but the amount was so small that it posed no health threat. He apologized for the company’s failure to prevent the contamination.



The public health department in Takatsuki, a western city where Marudai is headquartered, said its lab tests found one of the cream buns, “Cream Panda,” contained melamine 74 times higher than the tolerable daily intake level set by the European Food Safety Agency.

But public health official Mami Matsumoto said an average adult would need to eat 33 crepes or 17 panda buns every day to risk being sickened.

“Nobody eats so many of them. We believe the risk is negligible,” Matsumoto said.

The ministry said earlier Friday that it had suspended imports of milk and milk products from China, and had singled out products from 12 other countries and territories for close inspection. The move was meant to prevent tainted products from entering the country, ministry official Yoshiya Nishimura said. This study has three main objectives: (i) to quantify the impacts of milk and feed price changes on the primary milk supply in the U.S.;Many of the more than 60,000 dairy farms in the United States have been cutting costs, selling off their cows, or leaving the dairy business altogether as milk prices plummet 35 percent in just the past two months while dairy farm operating costs remain uncomfortably high.



Some farms are losing $200 per head every month.

"We've dealt with 18 percent interest. We've dealt with farm recession. We've dealt with droughts and floods and this is by far the worst economic situation we have ever dealt with in our years of farming," said Kooistra, who has run Kooistra Farms in Woodstock, Illinois, with her husband since 1980.

(ii) to examine the impacts of technological changes on the price responsiveness of supply and specific herd characteristics; and (iii) to generate dynamic long-run forecasts of the milk supply response to price changes and possible future technological advancements. The econometric analysis contained in this study is an update of the model by Chavas and Klemme (1986). We used the residual-based bootstrap to test hypotheses regarding the long-run price-responsiveness of supply, and found that the 10-year elasticity of milk supply to milk price is lower in 2007 than it was in 1980. This result is most surprising. One might expect that with better genetics, improved heifer management and larger farms the industry would be likely to react to prices more quickly than almost thirty years ago, when small and medium-sized dairy operations played a major role. A detailed analysis of the predicted herd structure supports the conjecture that a decrease in priceRight now, the price of milk will barely cover our feed costs and to pay our veterinarian. I'm not even counting all the other expenses that go along with keeping a farm running, the utilities, the fuel costs," she said.

"Given the suddenness and severity of the plunge in farm-level milk prices, a significant number of farmers won't survive the winter," Jerry Kozak, president and chief executive of National Milk Producers Federation, said last month.

Farmers have an opportunity to get paid for culling their herds via the farmer-funded CWT program, which was in the process of securing a line of credit to augment its efforts in 2009, according to NMPF's Kozak.


Industry analysts say the reason for the steep drop in milk prices is simple-- too much milk and not enough demand for it. Restaurant traffic is down in the United States as recession jitters have consumers reeling in their spending. About 40 percent of U.S. milk production is made into cheese and roughly 60 percent of the cheese is used in the restaurant and food-service sectors, according to analysts.

Dairy exports, which helped drive U.S. milk prices to the sky-high levels in 2007 and 2008, are also down sharply.

Meanwhile, New Zealand and Australia, two top global suppliers, are exporting more milk products after severe drought slashed production in the past few years.

milk industry still recovering from melamine crisis

The European Union has reinstated export subsidies on a range of dairy products, essentially pricing U.S. supplies out of the market.


"Even in the good times, you're always looking at ways to manage better and keep the costs down. When these extremes come along, it's pretty hard to find anything else to cut," said dairy farmer Brad Scott, of Scott Brothers Dairy Farm in San Jacinto, California.



"In a factory, when things get bad you can always just turn the key off and wait until things improve. In a dairy there's no key to turn off." responsiveness is a consequence of decades-long excessive focus on yield improvement in genetic selection. The intensive production process could make cows susceptible to health problems, imposing biological constraints on the economic lifetime of a cow. Hence, herd expansion decisions will be harder to implement, as culling rates are not easily reduced, and more replacement heifers are needed just to keep the herd size stable

How You Can Upgrade Your Life

How You Can Upgrade Your Life
By Mohamed Tohami

Most people try to improve their lives in the wrong – and most difficult – ways.
They try to bring in more money and acquire more possessions, but forget about the essence of happiness and the basics of life improvement.
When I look back on my own life and point out those moments where I felt my life had improved in some way, I discover an amazing thing.
I discover the presence of a single factor in every one of those moments, a factor that has made my life better time and again. This single factor is solely responsible for bringing me more happiness, more wealth, and more satisfaction.
And that sole factor is...
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.
That's it!
That is the secret to life improvement. And it is one of the most important principles of success and happiness ever known.
All successful people are committed to the principle of constant improvement. They never stop learning and growing. They learn from the best and expand their minds with new ideas every single day.
The quality of your life is directly proportional to your personal value.
When you strive to be better, your life will be better. The more you know, the more you grow. The more value you add to yourself, the more your life improves.
When you change who you are, your life changes, too.
If you change for the better, your life will become better. If you change for the worse, your life will become worse.
The only surefire way to UPGRADE your life is to UPGRADE yourself.
Strive to become better every day. Learn from the best and expose yourself to new ideas. Allow yourself to grow and expand.
Increase your personal value and your life will become just what you want it to be.
Remember: upgrade yourself, upgrade your life

from - http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/How_You_Can_Upgrade_Your_Life.html