Mirror Magazine
12th August 2001
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Too much glitter for Mariah

Mariah Carey who is learning to adjust from being a big star is now resting in hospital and making a very good recovery according to reports. Her brother Morgan Carey meanwhile has denied rumours that his sister attempted suicide. The rumours spread after reports leaked from the undisclosed hospital said Mariah had injuries on her body. And when it comes to high profile personalities the media loves to go to town, with Mariah Carey being the latest bite.

Morgan suggests his sister said some unusual things completely disjointed while losing her temper. She then lashed out at things and smashed up the toilet room. It was then that the singer cut her arm.

Mariah Carey's exhaustion has been put down to overwork stemming from promoting her new album, two movies "Glitter" and "Wise Girls" and the recording of the soundtrack "Glitter". Her break up with Luis has been cited as another reason.

Chart watchers who were expecting a change in the top position on the UK singles chart may be disappointed that the song widely expected to take hold of the key spot failed to impress. Ex-Spice Girl, Geri Halliwell was tipped to take the singles crown with her new release 'Scream If You Wanna Go Faster'. The market was expected to give Geri an edge but it only managed to check into the chart at No:8. With all the promotion, could it be that the market has grown tired of Geri Halliwell? Perhaps her fans have by now got hold of a copy of her album 'Schizophonic'. The album has now seen five singles released. The four earlier releases all ended up at the No:1 position, the last being 'It's Raining Men' back in May this year. That song was also featured on the soundtrack of the movie "The Bridget Jones Diary".

For a second week Atomic Kitten's rendition of 'Eternal Flame' holds the fort. Their previous single 'Whole Again' established a hold at the No:1 spot for four weeks. 'Eternal Flame' is unlikely to repeat that success.

Two better known names in the music scene made entries into the Top 20 this week. At No:11, Janet Jackson continued to extend her long run of hits with another track called 'Someone To Call My Lover'. The single follows the previous hit 'All For You', which continues to get airplay. The other old group Depeche Mode lodged their new single 'I Fell Loved' at No:12.

Emma Bunton or "Baby Spice" revealed she had a cancer scare. Emma told a newspaper on Monday 6th that she had an operation to remove cancer cells last year. She had been for a routine smear test which women are expected to do once in three years. The test showed the singer had pre-cancerous cells which needed removal.

Limp Bizkit have recorded the old Frankie Goes To Hollywood hit 'Relax'. The cover version is to be featured in the Ben Stiller film "Zoolander". The original Frankie... release was banned from radio as the track was full of sexual innuendo. Limp Bizkit are likely to give 'Relax' a new lease of life to a much more tolerant society when it is released.



A letter from Stagefright&Panic

We like Shakespeare!!! 

To the nice person who prints The Sunday Times newspaper,

We read the article published in your esteemed newspaper and wish to clear certain facts which we believe are misleading to the general public. We do admit that we have been practising the play "The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shakspr" and that the play indeed will cover all of William Shakespeare's works in just 2 hours. We believe that this is groundbreaking work and our attempt is to bring to audiences in Colombo a whole new way of looking at and enjoying the works of Shakespeare. Our motive in doing this play is NOT to bombard the bard but to show everyone how much we LIKE the Bard!

There have been vicious rumours floating about the three of us, which we feel compelled to explain:

Rumour 1: The three members of Stagefright&Panic have been seen roaming the streets of Colombo muttering blank verse in a suspicious and bizarre manner.

Explanation: We do admit to occasional mutterings of blank verse and our active lives do call for us to be in many places in the city of Colombo during the day. We feel that blank verse is cool. In fact, if more people muttered blank verse in Colombo there would be a lot less problems in the city.

Rumour 2: Two innocent bystanders were taken to hospital and treated for shock after an encounter with the actors of Stagefright&Panic.

Explanation: The bystanders completely deserved it. They were completely averse to our attempts to teach them the subtlety and beauty of Shakespeare's works. Anuruddha (who at the time was suffering from the worst hangover in recorded human history) went berserk and overran them with policy, strategy and his (rather large) midriff! We have paid compensation for this mindless act of violence and wish for it to be forgotten completely.

Rumour 3: Stagefright&Panic have duped several leading organizations into joining them in this mad venture.

Explanation: Not true. All organizations have been told the complete truth about the production at all times. Dialog GSM (we all have Dialog phones) is our main sponsor. We love YES FM and we never fail to read The Sunday Times (our favourite radio station and newspaper respectively). Sonali White of the Haddai label is Feroze's favourite costume designer and all of the above mentioned people and organizations are avid supporters of English theatre for which we are very thankful to them.

Further, we wish to inform the public that our play will be on the boards of the Lionel Wendt theatre from September 13 to 16, 2001 and that box plan and tickets are on sale at the Wendt.

Before we sign off, an appeal to the public, please please do come and see this play. It's very funny and quite cool and we promise you that you will have the time of your life!!! (That means a really great time!)

Signed
Feroze, Anuruddha & Ifaz
Stagefright&Panic


Techno Page

By Harendra Alwis
  • Store as never before
  • Anonymous FTP
  • Those Super Cookies
  • Store as never before

    1.44-megabyte floppy disk drives using 3.5-inch diskettes have been around for about 15 years. At the time of their introduction they seemed like a miracle — they were smaller than the standard 5.25-inch disks but they held more data! Two important things about the floppy were the low number of tracks on the disk and the fixed number of sectors per track. Neither one of these techniques made very good use of the surface of the disk. 

    It has been quite a while since the advent of iomega(r) first introduced the zip drive, which almost made the floppy redundant with diskettes that could hold up to 250 MB of space. The newest additions to this has been the Pocketzip drives that offer up to 40 Mb of storage and the Peerless(r) that can eat up 20 GB at a time!

    The main thing that separates a Zip disk from a floppy disk is the magnetic coating used on the disk. On a Zip disk the coating is much higher quality. The higher quality coating means that a Zip disk read/write head can be significantly smaller than a floppy disk's (by a factor of 10 or so). The smaller head (and a head positioning mechanism similar to that used in a hard disk) means that a Zip drive can pack thousands of tracks per inch on the track surface. Zip drives also use a variable number of sectors per track to make the best use of disk space. All of these things combine to create a floppy disk that holds a huge amount of data.

    Peerless(tm), the groundbreaking removable storage solution from Iomega(r), provides premier, fast, high-capacity storage that is absolutely critical to the new generation of media users.

    This new, sleekly designed magnetic storage drive is super-fast, with transfer rates up to 15 MB/sec (with FireWire interface). And this is the first true high-capacity removable storage medium with cartridges available in 10 or 20-gigabyte configurations. That's right. Gigabytes.

    The drive supports modular connectivity, so you can link it to FireWire and USB computer interfaces. And in the near future, additional interfaces may also be available for you to link the Peerless(tm) to your satellite TV, your home entertainment center, and even your car.

    The Peerless(tm) system allows you to back up your entire computer on one disk! It can store up to 20 hours of streaming video, your entire CD collection, thousands of MP3s, and complete libraries of interactive video games or graphic images. It's powerful enough to store all your files, fast enough to run applications straight from the drive, and versatile enough to go anywhere with you.


    Anonymous FTP

    Most public FTP servers allow anyone to log into the system as user anonymous. By convention, the user's email address is used as the password. 

    CGI 

    Common Gateway Interface. A computer program or script residing on a web server, following the standards of HTTP, that serves as an interface between the server and the web browser. 

    Client 

    User-end software or computer designed to access and interact with a server. 

    Daemon 

    Server software that is running in the background on a computer and is ready to accept incoming connections. 

    Default Gateway 

    The router assigned by the terminal server. 

    DNS 

    Domain Name Service. A DNS database cross-references a domain name, and its associated hosts, with their IP addresses. A host's IP address, not necessarily the host and domain name, is needed to connect to a remote server. 


    Those Super Cookies

    Cookies, by nature, are common text files sent to your hard drive by a website. These cookies contain a code number for you, which can then be used to track your activities at that one site. However, this is not enough for the big boys like Microsoft and AOL. They want to know where and how you spend your money across hundreds of sites. Microsoft has implemented this practice through their Passport services, which is critical to their new Hailstorm web services.

    Microsoft has over 200 companies which are a part of this service, including RadioShack, Office Depot, Victoria's Secret, Starbucks, 1-800-Flowers.com, etc. So, when you go to one of these sites and shop, your information is going into Microsoft's database. They promote it like they are doing you a favor saving you from having to put your credit card number into each website but they are getting your interests from your spending habits. These are valuable pieces of information especially when it contains the preferences of tens or hundreds of millions of people. It shouldn't be a big jump to program their code to offer each user individualized products depending on what you have bought across the member sites.

    AOL, with their 33 million subscribers, is also trying to compete with Microsoft insofar as getting your credit card number(s) and how you spend your money. They have just invested 100 million dollars into Amazon.com in order to get their superior e-commerce software and tracking features. 

    They have already tried to compete with Microsoft in other arenas of Web technology. For example, earlier they teamed with Netscape to compete on the browser level and later with RealNetworks to compete in the digital media field.

    Personally, I think that this practice of collecting millions of computers users information from hundreds of websites so that it can be amalgamated in order to create a profile of each user is a potentially powerful and dangerous practice.

    Priyanga T. Kumarasiri
    Source:Zdnet.com


    CLOTHES LINE

  • I'd rather be single
  • Someone tell me why


  • I'd rather be single

    Heck, life isn't easy, is it? I don't know why my parents want to get rid of me. Yeah, get me off their hands and get me married off to some poor bloke. It does hurt. I am 20, and they think it is time I got myself a man and produced a couple of kids, which I have no intention of doing right now - even if I find a perfect guy.

    So when I refuse there is dire warning, how I'll end up married to an old old man who wouldn't even have a decent job. Because all the guys will be taken, and all of them want young brides... etc., etc. 

    Well, if that is so, I'd rather be a bachelor.

    SKY


    Someone tell me why

    To My " ",

    I hope everything's fine at your end. And yes, I'm surviving. "Naturally", you'd think.... but there are a few things I want to know before I take a bow - for good. I thought I was the 'tough' type men would love to hate. I didn't care since falling in love was the last thing I'd do. Nevertheless I've got to admit that I have suffered and betrayal was no new experience to me, which was why I'd built a fortress around myself so that no one could break through. Then fate brought me you, you were everything I thought I'd never see - honesty, simplicity, sensitivity.... all rolled up into one. Or did you just play God to make me open the doors of my heart? Were you merely an illusion? Just another man? 

    Please don't tell me that I loved you in vain. 

    Did you know that I love you more than my own flesh and blood? Of course you did - I had nothing to hide but did I give my all just to be forlorn and deceived - ultimately? I know I was the grasshopper, obsessed with you - the fire - burning inside me, keeping me alive. Never doubted but trusted you to keep me from getting hurt all my life, for you were - actually the forbidden fruit I wasn't supposed to pick. Did you know I was playing with fire that would certainly wound me deep, yet decided to play along?

    Had I been the first victim of just another foolish game? Why did you walk in just to strand me with a heap of memories? Was it us - (my happiness) or was it just of yourself you were really thinking about when you left?

    Squirrel

    P.S. Please stay the same, for you were the best part of my life - of which I was deprived ....I love you - as always.

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