iPhone Alarm Clock Problems 'Fixed By Monday' 

Within hours of the new year beginning, users reported problems on Twitter and other websites.

Many complained that they overslept at the weekend when the alarm did not go off.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison confirmed the problem in a statement to Macworld.

"We're aware of an issue related to non repeating alarms set for January 1 or 2," the site quoted her as saying.

"Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning January 3."

The bug is believed to affect iPhone 4 handsets or older versions of the phone which have been updated with the newer software.

It is not the first time users have complained about the gadget's alarm - a similar issue was reported when the clocks went back in November.

Apple sold 1.7m iPhone 4 handsets by June 2010 and described it as their most-successful product yet. More than 50m iPhones have been sold since 2007.

  

 

 

 

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The difference between 

3G and 4G

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China's 4G technology to go global

A booth promoting 4G services at a telecommunications exhibition in Beijing. China on Friday approved wide-ranging tests of new TD-LTE technology in six major cities. (Photo: China Daily)

 

 

 BEIJING, Jan. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- China's homegrown fourth-generation (4G) telecommunication technology is expected to go global and be widely adopted by 2015, with countries in Africa and Latin America the most likely to use the technology, according to industry experts.

The Time Division-Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) technology is the next-generation telecommunication standard that China Mobile Communications Co is promoting.

Under ideal conditions, TD-LTE can easily reach download speed of more than 150 megabytes per second, much faster than third-generation (3G) TD-SCDMA technology.

"Many international operators have contacted China Mobile and expressed a willingness to adopt TD-LTE networks," Chen Jinqiao, deputy chief engineer at the China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CATR), told China Daily.

He said the most likely partners in building TD-LTE networks may come from Africa and Latin America, as many countries on those continents have a good relationship with China both economically and politically. "They are more likely to accept China's technology, and TD-LTE may even help them make a leap forward directly from the 2G era to the 4G stage," Chen said.

The sound development of TD-LTE is important. The successful use of the technology in China will increase confidence in the product, remove any doubt overseas operators may have, and encourage them to deploy TD-LTE networks, according to Chen.

Along with a number of other European telecom carriers, Poland's mobile operator Aero2 announced in November that it would build the world's first commercial TD-LTE network as early as this year. China Mobile, the world's biggest wireless operator by subscribers, said 15 TD-LTE trial networks have already been deployed in a number of countries.

Another nine test networks, in cooperation with global telecom operators, will be added during 2011, said Wei Bin, chief of the network research department with the China Mobile Research Institute, at a forum.

However, in mature markets, the promotion of TD-LTE technology will be difficult, since competition from other 4G technologies is harsh, said Chen of the CATR.

China Mobile is pinning great hopes on the new technology, as the company intends to use it to snatch market share both at home and overseas.

Its upgraded version, called TD-LTE Advanced, was selected as one of six international 4G standards by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Chongqing municipality in October.

It's predecessor, TD-SCDMA, failed to achieve that goal because it was inferior to rival 3G technologies such as WCDMA in terms of maturity, according to analysts, and its use was limited to within China.

The globalization of TD-LTE technology is proceeding well, and almost all the major international telecom companies have pushed forward its development, said Tina Tian, chief telecom analyst with Gartner's China office.

Foreign telecom giants such as Ericsson and Alcatel Lucent, as well as domestic companies such as Huawei, ZTE and Datang, have participated in technical trials of TD-LTE technology with China Mobile since the end of 2008.

Moreover, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced on Friday that it had approved wide-ranging tests of TD-LTE technology in six major Chinese cities, indicating that the technology is edging towards the commercial-use phase in China. The six cities are Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen. However, a specific timetable for the pilot was not revealed on Friday.

China Mobile said in a statement on Friday that the upcoming large-scale tests are aimed at exploring the commercial potential of the technology, and to provide impetus for international telecom carriers to adopt and deploy the new network.

Gartner's Tian said that China Mobile may also use the chance to enhance its dominant position in the domestic industry.

"Compared with China Unicom's WCDMA and China Telecom's CDMA2000, China Mobile's TD-SCDMA did not gain the upper hand in the 3G market, so the company has quickened the pace of promoting 4G technology in the hope of maintaining technology superiority," Tian said.

(Source: China Daily)

 

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Dubai New Year Celebrations..

2011

 Dubai does it bigger and better. Watch out Times Square, 

there's a new kid on the block. 

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Baby Boomers Start To Turn 65: 16 Statistics About The Coming Retirement Crisis That Will Drop Your Jaw 

Do you hear that rumble in the distance?  That is the Baby Boomers – they are getting ready to retire.  On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turn 65.  Millions upon millions of them are rushing towards retirement age and they have been promised that the rest of us are going to take care of them.  Only there is a huge problem.  We don’t have the money.  It simply isn’t there.  But the millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire are counting on that money to be there.  This all comes at a really bad time for a federal government that is already flat broke and for a national economy that is already teetering on the brink of disaster.

History. The U.S. Census Bureau defines the Baby Boomers as those born between January 1st, 1946 and December 31st, 1964. You see, after U.S. troops returned from World War II, they quickly settled down and everyone started having lots and lots of babies. This gigantic generations has transformed America as they have passed through every stage of life. Now they are getting ready to retire.

If you add 65 years to January 1st, 1946 you get January 1st, 2011.

The moment when the first Baby Boomers reach retirement age has arrived.

The day of reckoning that so many have talked about for so many years is here.

Today, America’s elderly are living longer and the cost of health care is rising dramatically. Those two factors are going to make it incredibly expensive to take care of all of these retiring Baby Boomers.

Meanwhile, the sad truth is that the vast majority of Baby Boomers have not adequately saved for retirement. For many of them, their home equity was destroyed by the recent financial crisis. For others, their 401ks were devastated when the stock market tanked.

Meanwhile, company pension plans across America are woefully underfunded. Many state and local government pension programs are absolute disasters. The federal government has already begun to pay out more in Social Security benefits than they are taking in, and the years ahead look downright apocalyptic for the Social Security program.

If we are not careful all of these Baby Boomers are going to push us into national bankruptcy. We simply cannot afford all of the promises that we have made to them. The following are 16 statistics about the coming retirement crisis that will drop your jaw…..

#1 Beginning January 1st, 2011 every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.

#2 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.

#3 Most Baby Boomers do not have a traditional pension plan because they have been going out of style over the past 30 years. Just consider the following quote from Time Magazine: The traditional pension plan is disappearing. In 1980, some 39 percent of private-sector workers had a pension that guaranteed a steady payout during retirement. Today that number stands closer to 15 percent, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

#4 Over 30 percent of U.S. investors currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k invested in equities. So what happens if the stock market crashes again?

#5 35% of Americans already over the age of 65 rely almost entirely on Social Security payments alone.

#6 According to another recent survey, 24% of U.S. workers admit that they have postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the past year.

#7 Approximately 3 out of 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62. Most are doing this out of necessity. However, by claiming Social Security early they get locked in at a much lower amount than if they would have waited.

#8 Pension consultant Girard Miller recently told California’s Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities. When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in California.

#9 According to a recent report from Stanford University, California’s three biggest pension funds are as much as $500 billion short of meeting future retiree benefit obligations.

#10 It has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.

#11 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from? Most of the states are already completely broke and on the verge of bankruptcy.

#12 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these “Social Security deficits” are scheduled to become absolutely horrific as hordes of Baby Boomers start to retire.

#13 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. In 2010, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 U.S. workers. By 2025, it is projected that there will be approximately two U.S. workers for each retiree. How in the world can the system possibly continue to function properly with numbers like that?

#14 According to a recent U.S. government report, soaring interest costs on the U.S. national debt plus rapidly escalating spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every single dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019. That is before a single dollar is spent on anything else.

#15 After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $202 trillion dollars. A big chunk of that is made up of future obligations to Social Security and Medicare recipients.

#16 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”.

Companies all over America have been dropping their pension plans in anticipation of the time when the Baby Boomers would retire. 401k programs were supposed to be part of the answer, but if the stock market crashes again, it is absolutely going to devastate the Baby Boomers.

State and local governments are scrambling to find ways to pay out all the benefits that they have been promising. Many state and local governments will be forced into some very hard choices by the hordes of Baby Boomers that will now be retiring.

Of course whenever a big financial crisis comes along these days everyone looks to the federal government to fix the problem. But the truth is that after fixing crisis after crisis the federal government is flat broke.

At our current pace, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government public debt will hit 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.

But our politicians just keep spending money. In order to pay the Baby Boomers what they are owed the federal government may indeed go into even more debt and have the Federal Reserve print up a bunch more money.

So in the end, Baby Boomers may get most of what they are owed. Of course it may be with radically devalued dollars. Already we are watching those on fixed incomes being devastated by the rising cost of food, gas, heat and health care.

What is going to happen one day when prices have risen so much that the checks that our seniors are getting are not enough to heat their homes?

What are we going to do when those on fixed incomes are buying dog food because it is all that they can afford?

We are rapidly reaching a tipping point. As the first Baby Boomers retire the system is going to do okay. But as millions start pouring into the system it is going to start breaking down.

No, there is not much that we can do about it now. We should have been planning for all of this all along. Americans should have been saving for retirement and governments should have been setting money aside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Secret talks had been held between China and Middle Eastern states about changing the pricing of oil 

Gold Prices at Record Amid Reports of U.S. Dollar’s Demise

December 31, 2010
• Reports of secret talks over ending the dollar pricing of oil
• Money flows into commodities as fears of inflation grow
Gold prices hit a record high of $1,040 an ounce today , as renewed speculation about the declining power of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency sent investors stampeding into commodities.
Reports that secret talks had been held between China and Middle Eastern states about changing the pricing of oil from dollars to a basket of currencies and gold sent the greenback into a renewed slide on foreign exchange markets, despite denials from the governments involved. By late afternoon the euro was up by 0.7% against the dollar at $1.47.
Share prices also rallied as investors’ hopes that global recovery was gaining ground were boosted by news that the Australian central bank had become the first to increase interest rates since the world recession began.
The FTSE 100 closed up 113 points, at 5138, with mining, oil and gas companies contributing much of the increase. The Dow Jones industrial average of leading shares was up 157 points by lunchtime in New York.
Commodity prices from gold to sugar have jumped in recent weeks as Asia’s rebound has fuelled hopes of global recovery. Investors have begun to fret about resurgent inflation, turning to natural resources as a “safe haven”. Rumours of a shift in the pricing of oil helped feed this feverish mood.
Julian Jessop of research house Capital Economics said gold prices could push even higher, but he expected them to fall back in the longer term. “A mix of unfounded inflation fears, conspiracy theories and speculative demand looks more like the ingredients for a speculative bubble than the grounds for a sustainable increase in prices,” he said.
He added that although gold supplies are finite – a quality that attracts die-hard enthusiasts nostalgic for the days of the Gold Standard – periods of unusually high prices tend to see used gold, such as old jewellery, put up for sale. “You can very, very quickly get a flood of gold back to the market,” he said.
Since the credit crisis, there has been growing debate about the role of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which has helped America to borrow cheaply from the rest of the world for decades.
World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned last week that the US could not take the dollar’s status for granted. “Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options,” he said, and warned that confidence in the dollar would depend on how successfully Washington managed to deal with its deficits, and fix the world’s largest economy without unleashing a bout of inflation.
Steps have already been taken to loosen the dollar’s grip: Iran has begun pricing oil exports in euros; China recently launched the first yuan-denominated bond open to outside investors in a step towards making its currency exchangeable on international markets; and Asian central banks are piling reserves into gold as well as the Treasury bills that have been the favoured investment for the past decade.
China, Russia and other emerging market governments have complained bitterly at international gatherings about the overweening economic power of the US. “Throughout this year, China has questioned the dollar as the medium of exchange, and questioned the dollar as a store of value,” said Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered bank.
China and other developing countries that have earned a vast bounty by exporting cut-price consumer goods to the US over the past decade have been infuriated by the way the collapse of America’s banking system has sent shockwaves throughout the world economy.
However, analysts said it would probably take many years for the dollar to be replaced. “The decline of sterling really goes from the end of the first world war to the Wilson devaluation of 1967 – and the decline of the dollar probably began when Nixon broke the link with gold, so we’ve probably got a couple of decades to go,” said Gabriel Stein, of Lombard Street Research. “Currencies don’t remain dominant forever,” he said.
He added that China and the Middle Eastern oil producers are also still holding huge dollar-denominated reserves, so that they would suffer from a sudden decline in the value of the greenback.
Lyons said the most likely outcome was a continuation of China’s policy of “passive diversification”. Instead of dumping dollar assets, which could depress the currency’s value, it uses surplus cash to buy other assets, including gold and euros.

  

 

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The mystery of the missing opium

It's a mystery that has got British law enforcement officials and others across the planet scratching their heads. Put bluntly, enough heroin to supply the world's demand for years has simply disappeared.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) describes the situation as "a time bomb for public health and global security".

This week's Map of the Week comes courtesy of the UNODC. It shows their latest estimate of opium production in Afghanistan - another bumper year.

 

A crop of 7,700 tons will produce around 1,100 tons of heroin - it basically works on a 7:1 ratio.The mystery is that the global demand for heroin is less than half that. In other words, Afghanistan only needs to produce 3,500 tonnes to satisfy every known heroin user on the planet 

For the past three years, production has been running at almost twice the level of global demand.The numbers just don't add up.

There are two credible theories.

For the past three years, production has been running at almost twice the level of global demand.The numbers just don't add up.

There are two credible theories.

Theory 1: A large and undocumented market has opened up in countries which don't want to admit the problem. Russia has long been in denial over the scale of its heroin problem and the same may be true in emerging drug markets like Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

The Iranians are certainly increasingly anxious about the opium fields on their doorstep. Border guards and police have been involved in deadly shoot-outs with smugglers with experts suggesting that there are now a million heroin users in Iran.

But the over-supply is so great that it is hard to conceive of it all disappearing in to the blood-streams of new addicts in Tehran and Ashgabat.

Theory 2: Vast quantities of heroin and morphine are being stockpiled. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UNODC is convinced that is the only explanation. In a recent bulletin he issues an urgent order: 'Find the missing opium.' "As a priority, intelligence services need to examine who holds this surplus, where it may go, and for what purpose" he says. "We know little about these stockpiles of drugs, besides that they are not in the hands of farmers."

Further credibility is given to the stockpiling theory in that 'farm-gate' prices for opium remain pretty stable at about $70 per kilo.

So where are the thousands of tonnes of drugs that the UNODC describe as a "time bomb"?

Well a clue, perhaps, comes from a senior law enforcement official who told me that British undercover teams in Afghanistan are reporting seizures of "enormous quantities of precursors".

Precursors are the chemicals required to turn base opium into heroin.The intelligence suggests that, rather than export opium to established drug laboratories in, for example, eastern Turkey, smugglers are processing the crop in Afghanistan.

The likelihood is that vast quantities of heroin are being warehoused somewhere close to the fields where the opium grows.

But there is another mystery surrounding the heroin market at the moment. If the international drug cartels are so awash with product that they are prepared to risk hiding billions of dollars worth, why are there shortages on some British streets?

That is the peculiar state of affairs revealed in Drugscope's recent trends survey.

"Some areas are experiencing outright shortages or shortages of good quality heroin. The quality of street heroin had dropped in 12 of the 20 town and cities surveyed, with five areas - Penzance, Cardiff, north London, Luton and Birmingham - noticing a shortage of the drug on the streets" the report says.

The field-work, conducted in July and August, finds shortages had typically been in place for two months - a longer stretch than is usual in a market well known for its peaks and troughs.

The Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) believes the heroin shortage in some parts of the country could have been sparked by a rise in the price of UK wholesale heroin. "Current intelligence suggests that some criminal groups are having difficulty getting hold of what they perceive to be good quality heroin."

One theory is that smugglers are using new routes, increasingly distributing heroin through East Africa.The switch in tactics may have led to a temporary pause in supply which is being felt in the UK.

But very few would claim the shortages are the result of police activity. The Drugscope survey concludes that "street level drug enforcement had little long-term impact on illegal drug markets." At best, operations only disrupt the flow of drugs for a few days or weeks and merely displace drug use and drug dealing for a short time.

One serious anxiety is that the economic downturn will herald a new wave of drug misuse.The recession in the 80s coincided with the British heroin epidemic. In the US it was crack cocaine.

It is not just that people turn to drugs to blot out the misery of a downturn. If the crisis pushes up unemployment, it is likely that, deprived of a legitimate way to make a living, some may turn to an illegitimate source.

Perhaps a global downturn is what the drug cartels, with their huge stockpiles of heroin, have been waiting for.

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