Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. Before Unicode was invented, there were hundreds of different encoding systems for assigning these numbers. No single encoding could contain enough characters: for example, the European Union alone requires several different encodings to cover all its languages. Even for a single language like English no single encoding was adequate for all the letters, punctuation, and technical symbols in common use.

These encoding systems also conflict with one another. That is, two encodings can use the same number for two different characters, or use different numbers for the same character. Any given computer (especially servers) needs to support many different encodings; yet whenever data is passed between different encodings or platforms, that data always runs the risk of corruption.

Unicode is changing all that!

Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. The Unicode Standard has been adopted by such industry leaders as Apple, HP, IBM, JustSystems, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun, Sybase, Unisys and many others. Unicode is required by modern standards such as XML, Java, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP, CORBA 3.0, WML, etc., and is the official way to implement ISO/IEC 10646. It is supported in many operating systems, all modern browsers, and many other products. The emergence of the Unicode Standard, and the availability of tools supporting it, are among the most significant recent global software technology trends.

Incorporating Unicode into client-server or multi-tiered applications and websites offers significant cost savings over the use of legacy character sets. Unicode enables a single software product or a single website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It allows data to be transported through many different systems without corruption.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in modern software products and standards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. The consortium is supported financially solely through membership dues. Membership in the Unicode Consortium is open to organizations and individuals anywhere in the world who support the Unicode Standard and wish to assist in its extension and implementation.

From the moment you enter the World you’ll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you’ve explored a bit, perhaps you’ll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
You’ll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow Residents. Because Residents retain intellectual property rights in their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other Residents.
The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the inworld unit of trade, the Linden™ dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden dollar exchanges.
Welcome to the Second Life world. We look forward to seeing you inworld.

RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

A brief history

But coders beware. The name “RSS” is an umbrella term for a format that spans several different versions of at least two different (but parallel) formats. The original RSS, version 0.90, was designed by Netscape as a format for building portals of headlines to mainstream news sites. It was deemed overly complex for its goals; a simpler version, 0.91, was proposed and subsequently dropped when Netscape lost interest in the portal-making business. But 0.91 was picked up by another vendor, UserLand Software, which intended to use it as the basis of its weblogging products and other web-based writing software.

In the meantime, a third, non-commercial group split off and designed a new format based on what they perceived as the original guiding principles of RSS 0.90 (before it got simplified into 0.91). This format, which is based on RDF, is called RSS 1.0. But UserLand was not involved in designing this new format, and, as an advocate of simplifying 0.90, it was not happy when RSS 1.0 was announced. Instead of accepting RSS 1.0, UserLand continued to evolve the 0.9x branch, through versions 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, and finally 2.0.

What a mess.

So which one do I use?

That’s 7 — count ‘em, 7! — different formats, all called “RSS”. As a coder of RSS-aware programs, you’ll need to be liberal enough to handle all the variations. But as a content producer who wants to make your content available via syndication, which format should you choose?

What does RSS look like?

Imagine you want to write a program that reads RSS feeds, so that you can publish headlines on your site, build your own portal or homegrown news aggregator, or whatever. What does an RSS feed look like? That depends on which version of RSS you’re talking about. Here’s a sample RSS 0.91 feed (adapted from XML.com’s RSS feed):

<rss version=”0.91″>
  <channel>
    <title>XML.com</title>
    <link>http://www.xml.com/</link>
    <description>XML.com features a rich mix of information and services for the XML community.</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <item>
      <title>Normalizing XML, Part 2</title>
      <link>http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/normalizing.html</link>
      <description>In this second and final look at applying relational normalization techniques to W3C XML Schema data modeling, Will Provost discusses when not to normalize, the scope of uniqueness and the fourth and fifth normal forms.</description>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>The .NET Schema Object Model</title>
      <link>http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/som.html</link>
      <description>Priya Lakshminarayanan describes in detail the use of the .NET Schema Object Model for programmatic manipulation of W3C XML Schemas.</description>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>SVG’s Past and Promising Future</title>
      <link>http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/svg.html</link>
      <description>In this month’s SVG column, Antoine Quint looks back at SVG’s journey through 2002 and looks forward to 2003.</description>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Simple, right? A feed comprises a channel, which has a title, link, description, and (optional) language, followed by a series of items, each of which have a title, link, and description.

Now look at the RSS 1.0 version of the same information:

<rdf:RDF
  xmlns:rdf=”http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#”
  xmlns=”http://purl.org/rss/1.0/”
  xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”
>
  <channel rdf:about=”http://www.xml.com/cs/xml/query/q/19″>
    <title>XML.com</title>
    <link>http://www.xml.com/</link>
    <description>XML.com features a rich mix of information and services for the XML community.</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <items>
      <rdf:Seq>
        <rdf:li rdf:resource=”http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/normalizing.html”/>
        <rdf:li rdf:resource=”http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/som.html”/>
        <rdf:li rdf:resource=”http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/svg.html”/>
      </rdf:Seq>
    </items>
  </channel>
  <item rdf:about=”http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/normalizing.html”>
    <title>Normalizing XML, Part 2</title>
    <link>http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/normalizing.html</link>
    <description>In this second and final look at applying relational normalization techniques to W3C XML Schema data modeling, Will Provost discusses when not to normalize, the scope of uniqueness and the fourth and fifth normal forms.</description>
    <dc:creator>Will Provost</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2002-12-04</dc:date>    
  </item>
  <item rdf:about=”http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/som.html”>
    <title>The .NET Schema Object Model</title>
    <link>http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/som.html</link>
    <description>Priya Lakshminarayanan describes in detail the use of the .NET Schema Object Model for programmatic manipulation of W3C XML Schemas.</description>
    <dc:creator>Priya Lakshminarayanan</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2002-12-04</dc:date>    
  </item>
  <item rdf:about=”http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/svg.html”>
    <title>SVG’s Past and Promising Future</title>
    <link>http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/04/svg.html</link>
    <description>In this month’s SVG column, Antoine Quint looks back at SVG’s journey through 2002 and looks forward to 2003.</description>
    <dc:creator>Antoine Quint</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2002-12-04</dc:date>    
  </item>
</rdf:RDF>

Quite a bit more verbose. People familiar with RDF will recognize this as an XML serialization of an RDF document; the rest of the world will at least recognize that we’re syndicating essentially the same information. In fact, we’re including a bit more information: item-level authors and publishing dates, which RSS 0.91 does not support.

What is an IP address?
Every device connected to the public Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. IP addresses consist of four numbers separated by periods (also called a ‘dotted-quad’) and look something like 127.0.0.1.

Since these numbers are usually assigned to internet service providers within region-based blocks, an IP address can often be used to identify the region or country from which a computer is connecting to the Internet. An IP address can sometimes be used to show the user’s general location.

Because the numbers may be tedious to deal with, an IP address may also be assigned to a Host name, which is sometimes easier to remember. Hostnames may be looked up to find IP addresses, and vice-versa. At one time ISPs issued one IP address to each user. These are called static IP addresses. Because there is a limited number of IP addresses and with increased usage of the internet ISPs now issue IP addresses in a dynamic fashion out of a pool of IP addresses (Using DHCP). These are referred to as dynamic IP addresses. This also limits the ability of the user to host websites, mail servers, ftp servers, etc. In addition to users connecting to the internet, with virtual hosting, a single machine can act like multiple machines (with multiple domain names and IP addresses).

The High-Definition Multi-media Interface (HDMI) is an industry-supported, uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface with 5 Gbps of available bandwidth.

HDMI provides an interface between any compatible digital audio/video source, such as a set-top box, DVD player, and A/V receiver and a compatible digital audio and/or video monitor, such as a digital television (DTV).

The benefits of HDMI over traditional analog connections include:

• All-digital rendering of video without the losses associated with analog interfaces and their unnecessary digital-to-analog conversions.
• Lower cost: a single HDMI connection replaces 3 video connections for high definition video and 6 audio connections for high-resolution audio.
• Audio: HDMI supports multiple audio formats, from standard stereo to multi-channel surround-sound.
• Ease-of-use: HDMI combines video and multi-channel audio into a single cable, eliminating the cost, complexity, and confusion of multiple cables currently used in A/V systems.
• Intelligence: HDMI supports two-way communication between the video source (such as a DVD player) and the DTV, enabling new functionality.

HDMI has the capacity to support existing enhanced and high-definition video formats including 480p, 720p, 1080i, and even 1080p as well as standard definition formats such as NTSC or PAL.

The standard Type A HDMI connector has 19 pins and a higher resolution Type B also exists but is not yet in common use. Type B has 29 pins, allowing it to carry an expanded video channel for use with high-resolution displays. Type-B is designed to support resolutions higher than 1080i.

HDMI is backwards-compatible with the single-link Digital Visual Interface (DVI) commonly found on older HD televisions and set top devices through the use of a suitable adapter or cable, but the audio and remote control features of HDMI will not be available.

Additionally, without support for HDCP, the video quality and resolution may be downgraded by the player unit. Type B HDMI is similarly backwards-compatible with dual-link DVI.

In addition to carrying uncompressed video, HDMI is defined to carry 8-channels, of 192kHz, 24-bit uncompressed audio. HDMI can also carry compressed audio formats such as Dolby or DTS.

HDMI cables specifications are designed to use standard copper cable construction with certain levels of required performance and it is expected that HDMI cables can be expected to perform flawlessly in cables up to 15 meters in length.

The HDMI Founders include leading consumer electronics manufacturers Hitachi, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Philips, Sony, Thomson (RCA), Toshiba, and Silicon Image.

Learn more at the HDMI site http://www.hdmi.org/index.asp

Get a spray bottle. There are many types of spray bottles that are easy to find and can be purchased for not very much money at all. It works best to get one that is of a size you would like to store. You can get a four-ounce spray bottle in the travel section. This works just fine, but if you are one who doesn’t want to have to mix up new air freshener every time you get through four ounces, you might want to look for a larger bottle. They can usually be purchased in garden sections, in craft sections of stores, and even in hair care locations. They come in sizes of 10 ounces on up to 32 ounces.

Gather your ingredients. Your best option is to make a spray that kills or absorbs odors and that releases a lovely smell into the room. To do this, you will need a few different products. You can use alcohol (either high proof clear varieties such as Everclear or vodka or rubbing alcohol) to help kill and absorb the cause of odor. However, baking soda or vinegar are two other options that you have. You will want to choose one of these three products…I prefer alcohol. The best thing to add for fragrance is essence oil, but it can be pricey. Other options include extracts (such as those you cook with), herbs and spices, or fragrance oils (synthetics are much cheaper than essence oils). Your other ingredient is water–bottled or distilled water is best because it is cleaner.

Mix it all together. Making your perfect mix is really up to you. You will want about three parts water. Add your fragrance first so you can figure out your scent. If you are using essence oils, add 10 drops and smell it. You can add more as you desire. If you are using fragrance oil, start with 15 drops. Extracts should be used a little more generously than that (such as 20 drops). If you want to use herbs and/or spices, then boil them on the stove in your water and then place your water in the bottle after it has cooled. Finish it off with 1 part alcohol, vinegar or baking soda.

Example (for a 12-ounce bottle):

9 ounces of water

10 drops of essence oil (such as lavender)

3 ounces of alcohol

Using your product. Shake your air freshener/linen spray well before each use. You can spray surfaces, use it to clean countertops, spray the air, and your linens, carpets and upholstery.

This chemical-free option allows you to make the scent that works best for you. You can personalize your new spray and use it for ages to come. This long-lasting spray is very inexpensive as well. You will be able to spray all over your house for much less cost than you would buying chemical versions!
FORM :How To Do Things.com

Tips

• Consult your coach for the best methods of stretching and warming up.
• Do not take steroids. They can cause mental health problems such as severe mood swings and depression.
• Energy bars and protein supplements don’t really help or hurt. Don’t believe the hype.

Warnings

• Avoid becoming dehydrated. Drink water or a sports drink frequently.
• If you start to feel nauseous or fatigued, talk to your coach.