The Great Geek Manual News

While the other elementary school pupils skim through their comics in the break between classes, Marko Calasan takes out his copy of Implementing and Administering Security in a Microsoft Windows Server Network for a light read.

At the age of 8, Marko has become the world’s youngest certified computer system administrator and was deemed the Mozart of Computers by the press after passing exams for IT professionals with the computer giant Microsoft.

In theory, he could now get a job maintaining complex office computer networks, even though he has not yet completed the third grade in his native town Skopje, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

“The Microsoft officials gave me computer games and DVDs with cartoons when I passed the exams because I am a child. That was nice, but I’m not really interested in those things,” young Marko told The Times.

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Source: Times Online

The percentage of adults using social-networking sites has risen dramatically in recent years, reports the Pew Internet and American Life Project. More than 35 percent of the adults the organization surveyed last year report having a profile at one or more social-network sites — up from just eight percent in 2005.

“Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with 75 percent of adults 18-24 using these networks, compared to just seven percent of adults 65 and older,” noted Pew Senior Research Specialist Amanda Lenhart. “At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young.”

Adults — which make up a larger portion of the U.S. population than teens — represent the bulk of users of social-networking Web sites, Lenhart said. On the other hand, social-network users are more likely to be students.

According to Lenhart, 68 percent of full-time students and 71 percent of part-time students have a social-network profile. By contrast, just 28 percent of adults who are not students indicated that they use social networks.

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Source: News Factor

When 32-year-old Yoani Sanchez wants to update her blog about daily life in Cuba, she dresses like a tourist and strides confidently into a Havana hotel, greeting the staff in German.

That is because Cubans like Sanchez are not authorized to use hotel Internet connections, which are reserved for foreigners.

In a recent posting on “Generacion Y” (http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/) Sanchez wrote about the abundance of police patrolling the streets of Havana, checking documents and searching bags for black-market merchandise.

She and a handful of other independent bloggers are opening up a crack in the government’s tight control over media and information to give the rest of the world a glimpse of life in a one-party, Communist state.

“We are taking advantage of an unregulated area. They can’t control cyberspace out there,” she said.

But they face many difficulties.

Once inside the hotel, Sanchez has to write fast. Not because she fears getting caught, but because online access is prohibitively expensive. An hour online costs about $6, the equivalent of two weeks’ pay for the average Cuban.

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Source: Reuters

In a blatant example of downright-lazy journalism, the Wall Street Journal has just discovered the fact that, OH NOES, there is slang coming from the internet! And kids are using it irl (that’s “in real life,” for you WSJ writers).

It’s the exact same story that pathetic local news stations use for scare stories between “Your New Carpet Could Give You AIDS” and “Highway Killings: More Common Than You Think.” But it’s even worse, as it’s in a “respected” newspaper and it’s a good five years beyond when this could even questionably be considered newsworthy.

It goes through the same formula that all these stories do: first, it uses an example of “l33t 5p34k” that is full of numbers, is pretty much unreadable and no one actually would ever use. This is to shock people into feeling like they’re out of the loop. It then interviews a bunch of kids “in the know” about it, who then show that, well, it’s really just a jokey set of misspellings that people say when around fellow dorks. Then, they interview some dude with his panties in a twist about how the English language is going down the tubes because kids are saying lawl to each other.

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Source: Gizmodo

Japan is launching its first study into so-called “Net cafe refugees,” young people who live in all-night lounges and are feared to become a new class of working poor, an official said Wednesday.

Japan’s omnipresent net cafes — equipped with sofas, drinks, computers and comic books — are designed for businessmen who want to slack off for a few hours or for commuters who missed their last trains home.

But Japan has been alarmed by growing reports of young day labourers who are staying in round-the-clock cafes rather than renting and living in apartments.

In the first nationwide study, the government is questioning operators and customers at 3,000 Internet cafes nationwide, said a labour ministry official in charge of employment security.

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Source: Breitbart

Father Reginald Foster, who was appointed the papal Latinist 38 years ago, says Latin is almost extinct.

He says priests are no longer compelled to study it at seminaries and find it impossible to read important theological texts.

Father Foster has also condemned the loss of Latin teaching in schools across most of Europe.

Father Foster has just opened a new Latin academy in Rome near the Pantheon, in his final effort to preserve the official language of the priesthood.

He hopes to attract 130 students a year.

But the chief Latinist, who has translated speeches and letters for four popes, says he can see no future for the language he is teaching and has been forced to acknowledge that Latin is dying out.

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Source: The BBC