Internet Addiction Alters Brains

by Jordan Richardson on January 12, 2012

 It’s not exactly news to suggest that we live in a society saturated with technology. Our dependency on it has, at least in some circles, become problematic and new research suggests that Internet addiction can change the brain in similar ways to alcoholism and drug addiction.
We already know that people can be addicted to their cell phones and smartphones (nomophobia) and we know that marketers are using our attachments to various devices (and our incessant need for more) as a way to get us hooked. It may be sensationalistic to refer to companies like Apple as drug pushers, but there certainly do appear to be some similarities when one considers the amount of frenzy some consumers experience when a “new” model is announced mere months after the “old” one was released.
It stands to reason, then, that the Internet and Internet users without an “off” button will feel effects as well.     
According to research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, Internet addicts “may experience distress and withdrawal symptoms including tremors, obsessive thoughts, and involuntary typing movements of the fingers.” Hooked on a behaviour, any behaviour, can produce effects that can be just as physically damaging as those effects generated through addiction to drugs or alcohol.
Internet addiction is classified as an impulse control disorder and is said to impact an estimated five to 10 percent of users. Young’s Diagnostic Questionnaire for Internet Addiction adapted by Beard and Wolf is as follows:

1. Do you feel preoccupied with the Internet?
2. Do you feel the need to use the Internet with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction?
3. Have you repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back or stop Internet use?
4. Do you feel restless, moody, depressed, or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop Internet use?
5. Do you stay online longer than intended?
6. Have you jeopardized or risked the loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of the Internet?
7. Have you lied to family members, a therapist or others to conceal the extent of involvement with the Internet?
8. Do you use the Internet as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a distressed mood (eg. feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety and depression)?

If participants answered to the affirmative to questions one to five and to the affirmative to at least one more question, they were classed as suffering from Internet Addiction Disorder.
The Chinese study examined the brains of 35 men and women between the ages of 14 and 21, 17 of which were classified as Internet addicts. In the brains of those classified as web addicts, MRI brain scans showed changes in “white matter” and disruption to nerve fibre connections. Similar findings were discovered in video game addicts, said Prof. Gunter Schumann, chair in biological psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College.

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The Technological Wonders of Google X

by Jeff Wiener on November 18, 2011

 In a world where many of our best minds are tasked with how to sell financial deregulation to Capital Hill and other under-handed Wall Street conundrums, it often seems like the futuristic world of flying cars and robot servants depicted in science fiction for the last half century will always remain just that…fiction.
But somewhere hidden in the San Francisco Bay area is a clandestine lab so top secret, so technologically advanced, that one cannot even fathom the futuristic delights hidden inside…or Google is simply inventing a longer lasting light bulb, who knows.
In a report issued by the New York Times, Google is rumoured to have established a highly secretive think tank in or around San Francisco, dubbed Google X, a place so secret that most Google employees didn’t know it existed until the NY Times report. So what’s hidden within the walls of Google’s futuristic laboratory? While the details remain a closely guarded secret, imagine a place where some of the greatest technological minds of our generation are asked to shoot for the stars, to dream big, and to conceptualize our technological future.
Piecing together just some of the rumours we’ve been hearing out of Google over the past few months, and it’s not hard to imagine the sorts of things happening at a site no secret that it’s been, for lack of a better name, dubbed Google X.
It’s a place where an Android powered refrigerator realizes that you’ve removed the last coveted can of Coke to help burn the midnight oil, and quickly orders some more; or where robotic cars shuttle people around from A to B, without worry of traffic jams or accidents; or where Google simply rules the world (it is a place where Google employees think big after all).
Or perhaps Google X is a place where the name Android takes on a more literal embodiment; where Asimov-esque robot butlers lay out your clothes and complete all those menial tasks that you couldn’t be bothered with, or a place where the first Roald Dahl-esque elevator to space is finally created.
While some of this seems far-fetched, the NYT report claims that all of these are among some 100 projects currently being undertaken at the top secret R&D site. In fact, the latter space elevator, which may seem like the most outlandish of all the ideas, is a project close to the heart of Google’s brain trust, developing the world’s first rocket-less cable connection with space, allowing information to be collected and various space related equipment to be transported without the need for conventional space vehicles.
Despite the fact that all of this remains rumours and conjecture, its good to know that there are companies out there interested in advancing the human race, committed to exploring the bounds of human ingenuity and imagination, and dedicated to making the technological future long confined to science fiction a reality for all of us…and then no doubt exploit its control over our lives for financial gain.

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How To Make Easy Money Online

Sure, you can make easy money online. It's possible, and it's not rocket science. I've put this page up to show you the best ways to make easy money online.

The Cheap-Computers-Guide.com web site currently earns about $1000 a month through affiliate programs.
If you're anything like me, you get emails every day telling you that you can make millions online. This page does not contain lies like that. If you want millions for no work then go buy some lottery tickets.
Remember: there's no such thing as Get Rich Quick. But you can make easy money online!
Maybe you've built your new computer, and you'd like to make easy money online with it? You certainly can!
You can make good money online with a web site like this one. For example it's realistic that you could make at least $150 per week per site. This may not seem like a lot but once you've built one site it can make you money while you build another.

Your second site will be much more profitable so it's possible to make some decent extra cash or even a living from informational web sites like the one you're reading now.

This web site was made with Site Build It!. This is a suite of tools that allow you to build web pages without using HTML and get them ranked in Google so you attract heaps of traffic.

I have enjoyed every part of building this web site and the money I make from this site is a bonus. I totally recommend Site Build It!. The reason you are reading this page is because of Site Build It!'s search engine optimization features. I have achieved 24 top 10 rankings in two popular search engines with this software.

Find out more how to make money online here.

Make easy money online with affiliate programs

You can get started making money online right now by building a web site. Many online stores would love to pay you a commission for sending new customers their way.

All you have to do is join an affiliate program and put up special affiliate links from your site to the merchant who sells the products. Then when a visitor clicks from your site to their site and buys something you get a commission (usually between 5% and 10%) of the value of the products they buy.

It's a good idea to link to an online store that sells products that suit the topic of your site. So if your site is all about golf then you should have links to an online store that sells golfing stuff.

People who are reading your site won't mind seeing links and product recommendations because they are genuinely interested in golf and probably buy golf stuff all the time. I built a few sites like this and they work.

If you want to make money online fast then check out this page, I've found a product that truly is the fast track to making money online. Since you're here it's worth your time reading about it.

You need to build a web site that gets visitors to make money this way

Yes, you do need a good web site to get visitors.

A good web site is one that contains interesting information that people want to read, like this site for example :)

You get visitors for free by ranking high in search engines such as Google. Things can get complicated optimizing your site to be found in the search engines but remember - search engines WANT to find informative web sites so if your site has good content then you're most of the way there.

Writing good content is fun

Write a site about things you're interested in, your hobbies etc. If you are into home theatre then it is easy to write a page on which big screen TV you would most like to buy. To make money you simply include links to products that you like and if someone agrees with you and buys you get hundreds of dollars in commission.

Writing about your interests is fun. At least it was for me.

The wrong way to go

Silly marketing people spend lots of time trying to fool the search engines into ranking their crappy sites highly. If you have an informative site you will always win in the long run and get lots of interested visitors to your site. Visitors that actually read your pages, email you with positive comments and browse and buy at your affiliate merchants web site.

Final Thoughts

If you don't know much about the Internet, but want to make easy money online, Site Build It! is perfect for you. You cannot learn everything you need to know about the Internet quickly enough to get things rolling.

I did my first affiliate site with Site Build It! and I found it walked me through everything I needed to know, from domain registration to hosting to search engine optimization and submission.

You don't need to know about this stuff to use Site Build It! but you learn about it on the way.

If you want to read more about setting up an affiliate site check out this web site AssociatePrograms.com. It has lots of good articles that a first time affiliate would find useful.

Site Build It! comes with a 600 page (but easy to read) manual that takes you through building a money making web site step-by-step, and a very popular forum where SBI users gather to give and get tips, advice, etc. along the way.

If you're serious about making money on the Internet then check Site Build It! out.

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Make Sure System Restore is On

System restore allows you to “go back in time” to recover from a change that damages your Windows system. It takes “snapshots” of the Windows system at various time points, and holds them. You can basically “roll Windows back” to a previous time to get rid of any change that caused the problem.
From the Windows desktop, hold down the Windows key and press the Pause/Break key. This will open Windows System Properties. Click the System Restore tab. Uncheck the Disable System Restore box if it is checked.
Note: If you are using Windows Vista, System Restore is turned on by default.

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How to choose a safe password?

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What Is RDF and Why Should I Care?

In a previous article we discussed how the Semantic Web is about making content easier for machines to interpret. This is accomplished in a number of ways including tagging content as structured data and defining content as linked data within the Linked Open Data cloud (LOD). RDF provides us with a framework to do both.
RDF stands for Resource Description Framework. This framework is used to represent data in the LOD cloud as an XML file, and is the basis for RDFa, a format used to mark up content as structured data for the Semantic Web.
This article provides a basic explanation of RDF and RDFa. Subsequent articles will demonstrate how to use RDFa to mark up your content as structured data and how to create static RDF files as a means for adding your content to the LOD cloud.
The following is a very basic explanation of how data is represented using RDF. For more detailed information check out the W3C's RDF primer.
As its name implies, RDF is a way to define resources using a specific framework. That framework is based on the concept of “triples.” Each resource is represented by a number of triples.
A triple consists of a subject, a predicate, and an object that mirrors a simple sentence structure like:

SUBJECT	PREDICATE	OBJECT
Deltina	[has the] Web site	http://www.deltina.com
Deltina	[is] employed at	http://www.plumbwebsolutions.com
Deltina	Knows	John Smith
John Smith	[is] also known as	http://www.DrWho.com

 
RDF triples take on the following forms:

1. The subject is a URI (a type of link) identifying the described resource.
2. The object can be a literal value like a text value, number, or date (“John Smith” in our example); or it can be the URI of another resource that is in some way related to the subject (“http://deltina.com” in our example).
3. Like a basic sentence structure, the predicate indicates what kind of relationship exists between the subject and the object, such as a name or date of birth (in the case of a literal, i.e., not a link) or an employer or someone the person knows (in the case of another resource represented by a link). The predicate is also a URI, but predicate URIs come from established vocabularies—collections of URIs that are used to represent information about a broad topic. For example:
   
   • Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF) is a vocabulary for describing people.
   • Music Ontology provides terms for describing artists, albums and tracks.
   • Review Vocabulary is a vocabulary for representing reviews.
   • GoodRelations is a standardized vocabulary for product, price, and company data.
   
   Using these vocabularies and the RDF standard, XML files are generated to classify Web content in a consistent way. When added to the Linked Open Data cloud, the content then becomes an integrated part of the “cloud” available to link to other content that is classified using the same vocabularies.
   What about RDFa?
   RDFa is RDF in attributes. What this means is that RDF triples can be used directly within XHTML and HTML to mark up content as structured data. Note: Though RDFa attributes can be used within HTML, they do not currently validate.
   As an example, Google has developed its own vocabulary for use with RDFa. Using this vocabulary, you can mark up your HTML content so that Google will recognize it as structured data and display it in their search results as “Rich Snippets.”
   Understanding the concept of triples as described above is paramount to using RDF and RDFa successfully. In upcoming articles we will demonstrate how to use RDF files and RDFa to prepare your content for the Semantic Web.
   Author: Deltina Hay
   

 

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Future of Screen Technology

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Y-cam EyeBall - Three Simple Steps to Securing your Business

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How to erase a hard disk the right way!

If you ask yourself how you can erase a hard disk, in order to start all over again and correctly install the programs back, then there are certain recommendations that we would suggest you keep in mind before proceeding, so that you prevent destroying your hard disk, destroy your data or make it unusable.Before you start to delete data on your hard drive it is important to make sure you have backed up and secured all information existing on your hard drive. There are various ways how to do that, including uploading it to the Internet. Another thing you need to verify before erasing all the data from your hard disk is that you have all the installation CDs and diskettes to make everything functional again. Keep in mind that in case you PC operates with Windows 98 or a version even lower than that you have to have a boot disk to have it format and to reinstall it properly. Although you have the boot disk or the installation CD, sometimes there are cases in which the data can’t be reinstalled properly. Therefore you might want to make sure everything is ok, before you proceed to erase your hard drive. Also, if you are running software that is licensed, make sure you have all the necessary OEM numbers and registration codes necessary so that you are able to register the programs once again, before you completely delete it.

There are various manners in which a hard disk can be erased. You might want to use specialized software for this operation, or you might use the traditional method. There are many new releases on the software market for managing and erasing any hard drive information which can assist the computer users so as to remove any trace of Internet activity on their PCs, to erase history files or cookies as they surf the net. Even when they have surfed anonymously in real time.

Are you wondering why you should use specialized software in order to remove the data from your computer that you either don’t need anymore or you simply don’t want others to have access to? Well, there are really good reason for you not to proceed in the traditional way. You have to be aware that although you have deleted your files and folders by using the delete utility function and by so doing erasing all the relevant information from your hard disk, that it is still be possible for other persons to access sensitive data if they have the right software tools. This is because the delete operation in Windows does only remove the special reference of the file or folder from the file system’s table, not the data itself. Thus, the particular piece of information actually still remains on the disk until another file is saved over it. By carefully studying the magnetic fields on the disk platter surface other people can actually find, recover and use deleted data later, while you may believed that previous data were secure from prying eyes.

In other words if you intend to wipe out the data on the hard disk in order to totally destroy or block access to specific data, then you definitely need the assistance of a software which permanently perform this erasing operation.

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Guide to Current computer hard drives

This page contains a basic yet comprehensive guide to selecting a hard disk drive to build your own cheap computer.The hard disk drive is where you install and store all of your programs and files. When you turn your computer off anything not stored on the hard disk will be lost.

Hard disk sizes are measured in gigabytes and when your hard drive is full no new software can be installed without uninstalling some old software first. This is why getting a a hard drive that suits your needs is important.

I've found some good deals on some big fast drives, check out TigerDirect to browse hard drive prices.

What to Consider When Choosing A Hard Drive

You will need a big drive if you plan on using a large range of software.

Games especially take up a great deal of space. If you plan on installing a few of the latest games then get a hard disk of at least 15 gigabytes.

The speed of your hard disk is also important. A slow hard drive takes a long time to load Windows on start up.

In fact the loading time of every program you use will be slow. You can generally get a good idea of a drives speed by simply looking at two specifications:

1. Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133

This is the transfer speed of your drive. Ultra DMA 33 drives are the slowest and oldest while Ultra DMA 133 drives are newer and faster.

It is important to note that your motherboard must support the Ultra DMA level of your drive in order for you to get the speed boost. However, you can connect an Ultra DMA 133 drive to a Ultra DMA 66 only motherboard but you will only get Ultra DMA 66 speed.

In my opinion this specification is a bit misleading.

Newer drives are faster even if they are run at the same transfer speed. This is the most important rule.

2. RPM 5400/7200/10,000/15,000 (platter rotation speed)

This is the speed at which the metal disks inside the hard drive rotate. Faster rotation speeds make for much faster drives. 5400 RPM is the most common speed at this writing but the numbers of 7200 RPM drives are slowly increasing.

Get a 7200 RPM (or faster) drive if you will be working with big files or if you don't like waiting for things to load. The drive above would be great for heavy duty picture editing, music production or audio and video encoding.

Games will not get any speed boost from a faster drive.

10,000 and 15,000 RPM drives use a different (SCSI) interface and thus require a SCSI controller card to be installed in your computer. These drives are made for heavy duty server work and are expensive. However if you got one of them installed in your home computer it would kick a$$.

Hard drive brands:

I used to think that IBM, Seagate and Western Digital made the best hard disk drives. However IBM has had some embarrassing recalls on a couple of it's 7200 RPM models.

Basically it is pot luck when you select a drive. Makes sure you get one with a good warranty or one that is very cheap.

If you're interested, here are some good deals on some big, fast drives visit TigerDirect to browse hard drive prices.

Selecting a hard drive that is right for you is not rocket science. One piece of advice is to always overestimate the size you will need.

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