Mind Soup

PC WORLD : Saudi Arabia has ordered the suspension of Research in Motion's BlackBerry service as of Friday, as it does not meet current regulations, according to the country's telecommunications regulator. The suspension will cover all services, including e-mail and instant messaging, said an official from the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), who requested not to be named. He did not specify what were the current local regulations that BlackBerry did not comply with. The CITC has meanwhile instructed three mobile service providers in the kingdom to discontinue the BlackBerry service, the official said. These are Etihad Etisalat, which uses the brand name Mobily, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Zain Saudi Arabia. The operators had been asked over a year ago to ensure that the BlackBerry service complied with local rules, he said. RIM's BlackBerry service has come under scrutiny from regulators in other countries as well. BlackBerry's s...

DAILY RECORD : A blast of violent space weather is due to hit the Earth today following a massive explosion on the Sun. It is likely to spark spectacular displays of the northern lights. Scientists witnessed a huge flare above a giant sunspot the size of our planet, linked to an even larger eruption across the surface of the Sun. By chance, the explosion faced directly towards Earth, sending a solar tsunami racing 93million miles across space. Experts estimate the wave of supercharged gas will reach us today when it will buffet the natural magnetic shield protecting Earth.

SWNS :  Petrol-head Gurcharn Sahota charges a staggering £7,200 for Britain ’s most expensive car wash which he does – from his PARENTS’ GARAGE. Car-nut Gurcharn, 30, has a string of celebrity clients and takes up to 250 HOURS to clean each motor. He has cleaned hundreds of dream machines including a Lamborghini Gallardo (pictured), Bugatti Veyron and an orange McLaren F1 GTR worth £5 million. Since he started the business five years ago he has travelled the world with his hi-tech kit which includes a microscope, 100 cleaning fluids and £8,200 car wax. Gurcharn charges customers up to £7,200 for a wash which includes polishing and buffing every inch of the car inside and out – FIVE times. He even uses a computerised microscope – normally used by forensic scientists – to examine the body work for the minutest scratch not even visible to the naked eye. Gurcharn, who drives an iconic MK1 Volkswagen Golf GTi, started his passion for cleaning by washing his neighbours’ cars...

POPSCI : You may have heard the rumor that swirled briefly last month about an Internet “kill switch” that could power down the Web in the case of a critical cyber attack. Those rumors turned out to be largely overblown, but it turns out there are now seven individuals out there holding keys to the Internet . In the aftermath of a cataclysmic cyber attack, these members of a “chain of trust” will be responsible for rebooting the Web. The Keys to the Internet  Each smart card contains a portions of the DNSSEC root key, which would be necessary to reboot the Internet as we know it if connections were severed to stem a cyber attack. The seven members of this holy order of cyber security hail from around the world and recently received their keys while locked deep in a U.S. bunker. But the team isn’t military in nature. The Internet safety program is overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit watchdog group that has access to a s...

Photo: Mind Soup© I encountered the funniest thing today. While walking alongside the American University Hospital with my friend, I was joking how hospitals don't have valet parking. That didn't last long. A few seconds later, we see a sign for VALET PARKING on the side of the road. Well it might be a good idea for the emergency division where people don't have the time to find a parking, but to think about it clearly, are we really that lazy? Lazy to the extent of having someone park the car at a hospital? And its not cheap either. Personally, I believe that our culture should depend more on one's self. This type of laziness is what is holding us back from actually achieving something. It is enough that we are bringing maids to our homes to cook the meals and raise up the children, but this? How low can we get? Next thing you know, people will start hiring professionals to help them go to the bathroom or shower. What do you guys think?

Population Forecast up to 2050 1- The world currently has 6.9 billion people. It is projected to hit 10 billion people in the year 2050! (right) 2- Parents in Denmark must choose from a list of 7,000 pre-approved names for their babies! 3- The FDA allows an average of 30 insect fragments and one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter. 4- Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy  and that comics of him were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear trousers. 5- In Moscow, weathermen can be fined for inaccurate weather forecasting. 6- You can cure a stomach ache if you lie on your left side for 5 minutes. The stomach is on the left side, the oesophagus enters it on the right and therefore gas bubbles can rise and allow you to burp. 7- A sharon fruit  (Kharma in Arabic) is a persimmon that has been artificially ripened. No, I had no idea what a persimmon was either.

MIND SOUP :  India's Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal unveiled on Thursday a prototype tablet computer which is expected to revolutionize the computer industry. Indian minister holding the device. (Photo Credits: AFP) Five years in development, this prototype was produced by a student project with a bill of material adding up to $47, a price that the minister wants to bring down to $35. This device may have primitive features, but for a price like that, it promises to increase the competition on computer production between the major companies. This prototype promises a Linux -based operating system with an internet browser, PDF reader, wi-fi, 2GB RAM, USB slots, video conferencing, Open Office (the free version of Microsoft 's Office) and multimedia content viewers and interfaces. However, this device does not include a hard disk or a storage system. Files will be stored on removable memory cards, just like mobile phones and digital...

Fairuz MIND SOUP : News of Fairuz, the famous Lebanese legend, being banned from singing in Lebanese territory has emerged to the news scene recently, and it has been discussed on several sites and blogs. As the usual hype surrounding celebrities is filing the place, it seems that many fans of Fairuz are angry and disappointed about such news, and instinctively taking her side. However, what they don't know or don't care about is that Fairuz is violating Lebanese law by signing songs from plays that are copyrighted, without sharing the profits with the rightful owners. The Rahbani sons have launched a lawsuit against Nohad Haddad (Fairuz) because she is unwilling to share the profits of her concerts (that she sings copyrighted songs from plays) with the copyright holders. In a press release issued by the Rahbani sons on Wednesday, they claimed that Fairuz is trying to "delete the Rahbani brothers (Mansour and Assi) from the music scene." The brothers deni...

AFP:  Manchester United 's fans in Malaysia erupted in astonishment and anger on social media Thursday after clerics warned Muslims against wearing the team's famous jersey with its "devil" emblem. Manchester United and the rest of the English Premier League are hugely popular in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where conservative religious leaders said the jersey was un-Islamic and should be banned. Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook were flooded with comments from fans in the Southeast Asian nation. "Maybe the religious leaders are just fans of Liverpool?" quipped one supporter on Twitter. "Why this become an issue after Manchester United has won the title for 11 times? They haven't been watching the matches all this while?" said Sharifah Shahidah, a die-hard Manchester United fan of two-decades standing. "What am I gonna do with all my Man Utd jerseys? And my sons' jerseys?" Sharifah, a Muslim mother of two a...