5 Reasons We Love Flex 2


As the Adobe and Flash communities probably already know, Adobe's Flex platform was released recently. For the unfamiliar, Flex is a development environment that allows developers to build web applications replete with business rules, layout capabilities and other goodies that compile to Flash. The result can be a really compelling, rich end-user experience. We all know that AJAX gets all the buzz these days. We do plenty of AJAX work here at Arc90. But we’re also loving Flex 2. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. No More Browser Compliance Testing! One thing about AJAX, it’s more complicated than plain ol’ XHTML and some CSS. Browser compatibility testing goes from a bad dream to a nightmare. Since Flex apps compile to Flash SWF files, they are identical down to the pixel, no matter which browser or operating system you’re using.
2. E4X. Anyone who’s parsed XML knows the pain of parsers. Flex 2’s version of Actionscript includes Ecmascript for XML or E4X. It makes walking an XML object way easier by treating XML as a primitive. Take a look at these simple examples. Sweet.
3. No More Interface Layout Pain. We’ve all been there. Anyone who’s committed to CSS for layout knows the pain in attempting to properly lay out those DIV tags. It’s painful. With the Flex markup language’s (MXML) container-based, it’s far simpler to lay out both fixed and liquid designs to predictable results.
4. Simple Field Validation. Anyone’s who’s built business or eCommerce applications has dealt with form field validation. Zip codes. Credit card numbers. They’re all built right in and very easy to use.
5. Rich Media Support. The Flash platform has absolutely blind-sided the previously dominant media players on the Web (Real, Windows Media). It is light and works without installing this or that. Flex makes it simple to embed both audio and video content right into your applications.

Source : http://blog.arc90.com

Osmonds - Love me for a Reason

Reasons to love being a californian


1. Your coworker has 8 body piercings and none are visible.

2. You make over $250,000 and still can't afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at 2 people carrying on a
conversation in English

4. Your child's 3rd grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring,
and is named Breeze.

5. You can't remember... is pot illegal?

6. You've been invited to a baby shower that has two mothers
and a sperm donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans
are grown and can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You know which restaurant serves the freshest arugula.

9. You can't remember... is pot illegal?

10. A really great parking space can move you to tears.

11. A low speed pursuit will interrupt ANY TV broadcast.

12. Gas costs 75 cents per gallon more than anywhere else in
the U.S.

13. A man gets on the bus in full leather regalia and
crotchless chaps. You don't even notice.

14. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing
the baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney IS George
Clooney.

15. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

16. Your hairdresser is straight, your plumber is gay, the
woman who delivers your mail is into BDSM and your Mary Kay rep
is a guy in drag.

17. You can't remember... is pot illegal?

18. It's sprinkling and there's a report on every news station about
"STORM WATCH 2000."

19. You have to leave the big company meeting early because Billy
Blanks himself is teaching the 4:00 PM Tae Bo class.

20. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are
all busy with their cell phones or pagers.

21. It's sprinkling outside, so you leave for work an hour
early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

22. Hey! Is Pot Illegal?

23. You AND your dog have therapists.

Source : www.nirvani.net

Why am I Catholic?

20 Reasons Against Implants


1) According to the National Institute of Medicine, 25 to 40 percent of people who get breast implants end up needing another operation to correct something wrong with the first one. (The rate varied in particular studies, depending on things like how long women were monitored, the typical time being five years.)

2) A study by a maker of saline breast implants, Mentor, found that 27 percent of implants put into breast cancer patients had to be taken back out again within three years, due to side effects. Another 13 percent had to have lesser corrective surgeries. The competing manufacturer McGhan has similar numbers. Even for healthy patients, both were forced to admit that "most women experienced at least one complication over the three year period".

3) In general, breast cancer patients have complications with implants far more often than healthy people do. Many of the complications are about three times as likely for mastectomy reconstruction patients as for cosmetic augmentation patients. We regard this as socially the most acceptable and necessary time for implants to be used, but medically it is the most risky and unjustifiable time to use them.

4) Up to 9 percent of saline implants end up deflating within just three years, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA also found that complications become more and more common for each year implants spend in the body.

5) Another FDA study found that even among women who had not complained of any perceived trouble with their implants, MRI scans showed two thirds of them have ruptured implants on at least one side. The rate was actually higher in 10 to 15 year old implants than with 20 year old ones, because the older ones were made with thicker containers. In 21 percent of women in the study, significant volumes of silicone were found to have migrated elsewhere in the body. Doctors removing implants often claim that they ruptured at the time of removal. This study makes me suspect, as some patients long have, that many doctors are lying about this for some reason, perhaps to avoid liability.

6) Though rare, it is not unknown for complications to be so severe that the breast ends up getting amputated. The chest wall can be injured. Your lungs and heart can be affected. You can end up dead.

7) They sometimes find cultures of microorganisms growing inside saline implants when they're removed. This is worrisome given that the newest implants contain vegetable oil... it could spoil. Saline, at least, is not a nutritious meal for bacteria. Even the silicone gel ones sometimes get some kind of mildewy looking stuff growing inside them... and each new fluid they've tried has been friendlier to microorganisms than the last one was.

8) If you're a European patient who has the option of oil-filled implants (these implants have not been approved in the US), British doctor Rahim Karjoo warns that oils leaking into the body will absorb calcium, and the resulting soaplike material, if it enters the bloodstream, can create fat emboli which can kill you without warning. The British government recently withdrew its approval for oil-filled implants and they will no longer be sold there.

9) Surgery in fatty tissues runs a much higher risk of difficult and dangerous infections taking root than surgery in lean tissue does. Infections with implants present are harder to treat than otherwise. In some cases the implant has to be taken out before the infection can be controlled. This problem affects about one breast augmentation patient out of 80.

10) So they replaced silicone implants with saline ones, avoiding the possible immunological problems associated with silicone gel leakage... and then the National Institute of Medicine decided that silicone has been "exonerated" and doesn't cause many of the problems it was accused of causing... So what -- somehow just about as many people have problems with saline implants as had trouble with silicone ones. The container is still silicone rubber, after all, which differs from silicone gel mostly just in the length of its molecules' polymer chains. Eventually, small flakes of silicone rubber come loose, and sometimes the chains break down chemically, yielding fluid silicone compounds, elemental silicon, and silica dust. (The operation often leaves stray talcum powder in the body, too.) The implant container can also release traces of heavy metals like lead and platinum (used as a catalyst in creating the silicone polymers), and carcinogenic solvents like xylene and toluene. A German study (J. Friemann, M. Bauer, et al) of the scar tissue surrounding removed implants found the tissue was commonly impregnated with chemicals from the implant, and also showed evidence of chronic inflammation occurring there.

11) And if the official line is that silicone is now exonerated, then why isn't it okay to inject silicone directly into the body without a container around it, like they used to back in 1960? No doctor would try that now... they could land in jail. Some doctors are of the opinion that no facility that accepts blood or organ donations should take any from women who have silicone in their bodies, whether it's in a container or not.

12) The "exoneration" of silicone and implants is based on a failure to link it to certain autoimmune diseases that some implant patients were diagnosed with: arthritis, lupus, sclerodoma, etc. Interestingly, the same symptoms (sore joints, weak muscles, fatigue, cognitive difficulties) keep leading to different diagnoses, none of which was provable in itself. The obvious conclusion is that the condition is a separate disease that somewhat resembles these others. One theory is that many of these symptoms might be caused by ethylene oxide, which was used to sterilize many implants after they were manufactured, possibly contaminating the material. They also found no link with breast cancer... but overall cancers were another matter. Two recent NIH studies of overall mortality of women with implants, one from the National Cancer Institute (Dr. Louise Brinton) and one from the FDA, found plenty of extra mortality relative to patients of other plastic surgeries. Causes included lung cancer, brain cancer, a few other cancers, other lung diseases, and an increased rate of suicide.

13) One of the fastest growing areas of medical practice is surgeons who specialize in repairing the errors and complications of boob jobs done by other doctors. "If a doctor tells you they don't have complications, they're either not operating or they're lying to you," says Dr. Jack A. Friedland of Scottsdale.

14) A lot of doctors doing boob jobs and other vanity surgery are half-assed quacks without proper qualifications. Most states allow anyone with a medical degree -- even dentists -- to take a weekend course and sell plastic surgery. They do it because it's easy money. Dr. Ervin Moss of New Jersey says, "You can't imagine how many specialist groups are lobbying against [laws requiring proper accreditation] as a threat to the bottom line."

15) Can you imagine your doctor brushing off life-threatening complications and telling you "You look great!" when you ought to be heading for the emergency room? It's been known to happen in the cosmetic surgery biz...

16) You want health insurance coverage for other breast-related illnesses? Goooooooood luck.

17) The first time I had a chance to feel a pair of tits with implants in them, they felt like two blocks of cement covered with a quarter inch of skin. I was told it was an unusually high quality job, too.

18) They claim that the cement tit problem has been solved, and modern operations don't produce that kind of extreme hardening any more. Well, they still end up hardening sometimes. One doctor who trumpets the improvements over past techniques and calls saline implants "absolutely safe" (George Beraka of New York -- he gives plastic surgery advice on women.com and elsewhere) still admits that 5 to 8 percent can end up "as firm as your thigh" due to scar tissue... and that he sees "a lot of bad results" from other doctors. I think he's understating the problem rate... Mentor found that 9 percent of augmentations had serious "capsular contracture" (which causes hardening, and sometimes pain), sometimes bad enough to require reoperation.

19) The more we see blown-up boobs, the more we learn to recognize them instead of being fooled. The more we learn to recognize them, the less attractive they are. The more people are exposed to these bug-eye bosoms, the more often they are going to start seeing them as unattractive instead of as appealing. I've been seeing them that way for years now.

20) If I am not making myself clear, let me spell it out right now: implants are fucking ugly! Implants only look good on the level of first impressions. Expect people in your life to react with an initial charge followed by a gradual accumulation of disgust. Anyone who likes you over the long term will do so in spite of them, not because of them -- the same as they would if you had a glass eye.

Source : www.paulkienitz.net
Asigurari