asn14

 祝贺费德尔！

这是自去年十月以来，费德勒的第一个桂冠。

他赛后说：“我非常非常高兴自己能一直保持信心，得到了我急需的一场胜利。”

在一小时26分钟内，费德勒以6-4，6-4 战胜纳达尔，这是两人之间11次对阵红土赛事中，瑞士球王的第二个桂冠。

Beijing’s perfect opening （链接）

澳洲《时报》上的一篇报道，不用翻译了，因为报道中估计，全世界有4billion （40亿）的人看过了开幕式，大约占世界总人口的2/3的人亲历了这次的完美，不再需要用语言来描述。

我最崇拜的大导演-斯皮尔伯格，这次有点犯傻，在退出与张艺谋（还有澳洲专家等）对开幕式导演的合作时，忘掉了奥运会精神，不过估计他昨晚也一定仔细地观看了？

BBC新闻网上有一组对比各届奥运会的图片和解说，很有保留价值，链接一下：

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/7548757.stm

昨晚看了郑洁和温网两届女单冠军得主、六号种子小威廉姆斯的半决赛，虽然郑洁称赞小威“几乎找不到缺点”，但估计所有看球的都可以看出，小威只有一个杀手锏 – 就是发球。只是靠凶猛的发球得分，一直不敢与郑洁对弈，只要对打起来，中国小将几乎一定得分，赛后，心有余悸的小威承认：“郑洁在第二盘把我逼到了极限。”

小威这位魁梧彪悍的巾帼，在体力和强度上绝对比得上许多网坛男星，她发球的速度和力量是许多男星也做不到的，因此在看这场决赛时，估计许多观众都会感叹，小巧玲珑的郑洁面对小威的顽强！

BBC等媒体都在夸奖“不屈不挠”的中国金花，比赛结束时，中央球场全体起立的球迷们，报以小郑鼓励的掌声和欢呼声，远远超过了对胜利者的祝贺。

估计郑洁一定有了许多西方扇子，不仅是她的球艺出色，而且她娇小玲珑的身材和酷似好莱坞影星刘玉玲（Lucy Liu）的面容，也是西方人最欣赏的“美丽东方女性”的典型

我们在e时代生活中的小插曲
http://www.tppblog.com/

May 19th, 2007

A couple of blog posts before, I mentioned that I switched over from iiNet to Internode and joined the world of 8 Mbit ADSL. Unfortunately, the story didn’t just end there.

Upon getting the new 8 Mbit connection, it became quite obvious that this connection was not all that stable. In fact, I was dropping out 10 to 20 times a day. After playing around with my modem settings and doing an isolation test, I decided that the problem wasn’t on my end. I ran Internode tech support, didn’t have to wait very long to speak to a real person at all which was a pleasant surprise, and a line fault was put in with Telstra (our phone provider).

Before I go on, it’s probably necessary to explain a bit about the ADSL infrastructure here in Australia. Telstra has a monoply on our telecommunication infrastructure (phone lines, exchanges), and ADSL providers like Internode purchase ADSL services wholesale from Telstra and then sell on to the public. As such, any line faults is Telstra’s responsibility. Because of Telstra’s advantageous position in terms of the infrastructure, the ACCC (our competition watchdog) has tried to level the playing field and allow companies such as Internode some chance to compete. Telstra is not happy about it.

Back to my problem. Internode arranged for a Telstra technician to come over and fix the problem on Tuesday. The technician did arrive, but instead of fixing the problem, my other phone line (not used for ADSL) was cut (but we did not found out until a day later). On Wednesday, Internode called me and said that they had asked Telstra to take a look again because their logs showed that I was still having drop out issues. Telstra determined that there was a foreign battery source on the phone line and that everything would be fixed by Friday. A separate call was made to Telstra to tell them about my cut phone line, and they promised it would be fixed on Thursday. Thursday came and went and the second phone line was still dead, so another call was made and now they promised a technician would come over on Friday.

Friday morning, and the technician did come. The second phone line was fixed (apparently the first technician had cut off the line for some reason), and the external battery source problem was looked at too and promptly fixed. I checked my ADSL connection, and instead of the 4500 kbps ADSL link speed, it was now 7616! Unfortunately, the SNR was at a ridiculously low 5 dB (6 dB is the minimum for maintaining a stable connection, the higher the SNR the better), and now the drop outs were even worse than before – 3 or 4 times an hour! So another call to Internode support, and they put in another request for Telstra to have a look. This was Friday afternoon already, so it looked like I would be stuck with this until Monday.

Saturday 10pm, I get a phone call and it’s from Internode. They said that Telstra have added a stability profile was added to my phone line, and lo and behold, the line SNR had increased to 11 dB. I can now only connect at 6144 kbps as opposed 7616, but what’s the point of a fast connection that drops out every 20 minutes? And 6144 is still 4 times faster than my old 1.5 Mbps connection. While I can’t be 100% certain that the drop out issues have finally gone, but things are looking up.

Internode were great throughout the ordeal. They didn’t really have much control over any of this, since all Internode could do was rely on Telstra to do their job (a big ask). Internode kept me informed all the time with a dozen or so phone calls (it’s refreshing for technical support to be calling you, and not the other way around), and now it’s easy to see why they have been voted as the best ISP by several places. My opinion of Telstra, on the other hand, remains the same.

今天，成千上万的示威者在华盛顿举行反战游行，要求美国从伊拉克撤军。

“在反战示威活动中我已经有34年没有讲话了，但今天无法继续保持沉默。”- 简-芳达，这位曾经因为在1972年越战期间访问河内而引起当时许多美国人愤怒的好莱坞演员，又一次站在了反战的前沿！

她30多年前的无畏和勇敢，为世人所赞叹，现在可能绝大多数美国人看到了那场在越南发生的战争的不义，可悲的是，血腥的历史在伊拉克重演，更可悲的是，居然在今天示威群众的对面，仍有少数反对反战的美国人，像30多年前一样，称这位反战斗士为“叛徒”！

简-芳达说：“我为我们至今还要举行反战示威感到悲痛，为我们没有吸取越战的教训感到悲痛，”

与她一起参加示威活动的还有我最喜欢的两位好莱坞演员：肖恩-潘（Sean Penn）和 蒂姆•罗宾斯（Tim Robbins）

“今天，当我们站在这里的时候，我们的一些美国同胞在伊拉克死去…”- -肖恩.潘

“我们需要的是勇气，代表美国人声音的勇气和信念，去年11月份的一个清楚的声音，这个声音说：‘我们对这场战争几经厌倦！’” – 蒂姆•罗宾斯

巴格达今天依然在流血：

• 在苏尼为主的新巴格达区的市场中，今天的两次自杀性爆炸，至少导致15人死亡和55个人受伤

• 伊拉克警察说8个电脑公司雇员被一群身着警服者，在巴格达市中心绑架

• 美国军方声称在Baquba的一次空袭中，有14名可能的武装分子丧身

• 美国军方宣布，又有几位美国士兵身亡。周六在巴格达北部3名士兵被炸身亡，2名美军周五在Diyala省被路边的炸弹炸死，还有2名美国兵周四在巴格达东部被炸身亡。