Desert Safaris in Egypt

Deserts cover about 20% of the Earths land surface, and are often thought of as unforgiving environments where it is difficult to survive even a day or two. While you do need special preparations to stay in the desert, its actually quite possible to do it even fun! Deserts provide the perfect atmosphere for some really interesting activities you wont be able to do anywhere else in the world. Hot deserts are, perhaps, more versatile in the kinds of activities that you can do, and the largest hot desert, the Sahara, has many points where you can take part in these activities.

Desert safari is a term that covers the general excursion you would take into the desert. Of course, as many are inexperienced when it comes to the desert, it is always necessary to be accompanied by a guide who has a great deal of training and experience in desert situations.

When you set off on your desert safari, youll have a chance to experience the true desert, and understand the beauty and appeal of it to the locals.

When in Egypt, its a great idea to go on a desert safari. These alternative style trips are an absolute adventure that you must experience. While hot deserts the world over can offer great experiences, in Egypt you can have these experiences and have a blast while doing it! Often traveling into the desert with Bedouin guides, youll have a chance to see their interaction with the environment, and enjoy it the way locals would with song and dance around a campfire at night! While camping out in the desert, youll experience one of the clearest night skies around as you sit in front of the camp fire and drink traditional Bedouin tea.

 At your Bedouin camp, you might even enjoy a traditional dinner of lamb, slow cooked in the heat under the sand. While in the Egyptian desert, youll probably even be lucky enough to see a fox or two during your stay!

Read more: http://www.touregypt.net/desert-safaris/#ixzz2lhTneiRm

Welcome to Windows 8.1: Ars readers react

This week, Microsoft held its annual BUILD conference for developers at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Ars had Peter Bright on the scene when the company announced the new features that will be added into Windows 8.1. In the comments section beneath Bright's article, What does Windows 8.1 offer to desktop die-hards?, there were some mixed opinions about how meaningful Microsoft's changes will prove for desktop users.

dkazaz thinks the changes don't really solve the problem that Windows 8 really has: that the OS is trying to be all things for all devices. "I don't understand why the use of the two interfaces needs to be intermingled," dkazaz writes. "I'm quite interested in a hybrid desktop/touch OS. I just don't want to use a touch interface with a keyboard/mouse and I don't want (obviously) to have to use desktop elements on a touchscreen... Merging the two forces compromises on both. That doesn't mean that you can't have both in the same OS as long as you have clean switching between them. Is that really so hard for MS to figure out?"

robotic_tourist was a bit more charitable about the design choice: "I think the Start Screen is the new version of the ActiveX desktop. I never saw it used to good effect but it allowed animated widgets connected to the Web to display info on the desktop. What do most people have on their desktop? Application launcher icons. What do you get if you cross application launcher icons with animated widgets sucking down information from the Web? The Start Screen. Yes we laughed when we first saw the ActiveX Desktop, but now may be the time when it finally fulfills its potential!"

g0blue also had some positive things to say about 8.1's changes. "Another welcome addition to 8.1: Invoking the search charm (Win+Q) from the desktop no longer switches to the all-apps start screen. Instead you can search for apps (or files, webpages, etc.) from a sidebar on the desktop. Although the hot-key is slightly different, you can now search-launch apps without losing the view of your desktop or installing any third party utilities."

Not everyone was quite so positive. dagamer34 thought the changes were trivial and hoped there would be more to come. "Hopefully people can stop complaining about the Start Button/Menu and move onto far more important things that should be addressed in Windows 8/8.1."

Video Phone

This week we also heard a rather strange story about a young man in South Carolina who called in a fake bomb threat to get his girlfriend out of school for the day. The man was 20 and his girlfriend was 16, and while the legal age of consent in South Carolina is 16, federal law classifies sex videos with people under 18 as child porn. Unfortunately, the couple recorded just such a video on the phone he used to call in the bomb threat. Now he's serving 18 months in jail and will be marked as a sex offender for life.

One twist in Nate Anderson's story, Legal sex + smartphone video = child pornography, is that the issue was elevated to a federal level because the young man's smartphone was made by HTC. This meant it was classified as a production tool that has been exchanged through interstate and foreign commerce. mdporter was incensed about this.

"Making him a convicted sex offender and putting him on an offender database for life due to a video found on a found is an incredible overreach. The bomb threats were stupid and he deserves jail time for those, but the sex part is just malicious prosecution. And hey Federal assholes, it is not possible to buy a cell phone made in America.

With Hopstop Acquisition, Apple Plans to Beef Up Public Transit Directions

Apple is beefing up its mapping prowess with the purchase of Hopstop, a popular city transit application. 

Apple confirmed the acquisition to ABC News this afternoon. 

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement provided to ABC News. 

Hopstop, which has iPhone, Android and Web applications, provides detailed subway, bus and taxi directions in 600 cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, Moscow and Paris. 

Transit directions have been one of the major missing components from Apple's Maps app, which was released last year to replace Google Maps in iOS 6 and on the iPhone 5. 

Apple's Maps app was immediately recognized as not being as robust as Google's solution. Apple CEO Tim Cook even apologized to consumers for the sub-par experience last September and recommended other apps in the App Store at the time, including Google's option. 

In June, Apple detailed some new features and fixes coming to the maps app in its forthcoming iOS 7 software. However, public transit information was still missing.

It’s a New (Virtual) World with Windows Server 2012 R2

Microsoft recently rolled out Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview. The update for Microsoft’s flagship server OS includes a number of features to improve and enhance managing virtual servers with Windows Server 2012. 

Virtual servers are crucial for small and medium businesses. Most SMBs don’t have an IT department or data center to work with and need tools that simplify management and allow them to operate an entire IT infrastructure from a single box. Virtual servers allow businesses to maximize the value and productivity of their investment in hardware. 

With Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview, Microsoft has streamlined the performance of Hyper-V. Replication between virtual servers is faster, and more frequent, and Microsoft has added more disaster recovery options. The new Hyper-V also allows you to assign QoS (quality of service) to prioritize disk access for virtual machines that need it more, such as a database server. 

Linux VMs

One of the best improvements in Windows Server 2012 R2, though, is the enhanced support for Linux virtual machines. Previous versions of Hyper-V have technically supported Linux, but the capabilities were very limited.Windows Server 2012 R2 adds support for remote replication of Linux virtual machines for disaster recovery purposes and gives SMBs much more flexibility to manage Linux VMs. You can reallocate memory resources, or resize the virtual storage on the fly without requiring a reboot of the virtual machine. Backup software designed to work with Hyper-V can also back up Linux VMs in Windows Server 2012 R2. 

Next-Gen Hyper-V Another significant update in Hyper-V with Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview is the addition of Generation 2 virtual machines. The traditional—Generation 1—virtual machines essentially emulate a Pentium II server architecture, complete with PCI and ISA buses, an IDE controller, and old school BIOS. 

The virtual hardware was chosen to ensure Hyper-V virtual machines could run basically any available operating system, but that architecture is outdated. The new Generation 2 virtual machines sheds the legacy hardware elements in favor of a more modern 64-bit architecture that operates on UEFI rather than BIOS.

Yahoo confirms departure of media chief Mickie Rosen

Mickie Rosen, head of global media at Yahoo, who was responsible for properties including Yahoo News, Sports and Finance, is leaving the company effective Sept. 1, Yahoo revealed Monday in a regulatory filing. 

The change was announced just hours after Yahoo disclosed the resignation of three board members: Daniel Loeb, Harry Wilson and Michael Wolf, effective July 31, bringing the size of the company’s board down to seven. “The remaining directors are committed to revisiting the board’s size and composition,” Yahoo said in a statement. However, the two events are believed to be unrelated. 

The board members’ resignations were disclosed alongside Yahoo’s announcement of its repurchase of 40 million shares of Yahoo common stock owned by hedge fund Third Point, at a purchase price of US$29.11 per share. Loeb is CEO at Third Point; the hedge fund had nominated Wilson and Wolf as Yahoo board members. 

In a separate filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said that Rosen, who had served as senior vice president, global media and commerce since 2011, would receive severance benefits specified in her existing agreement with the company. A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment further on Rosen’s departure or provide information about a replacement.

Yahoo’s media division includes multiple site properties that are critical to the company’s business, such as Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Video, which provides original, premium and third-party content that is distributed across Yahoo’s network. 

Since October, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has attracted more attention for a slew of small mobile acquisitions than for revamping Yahoo’s media offerings. But video in particular is one of four key revenue opportunities the company expects to focus on in the immediate future, Mayer said last week during the company’s second-quarter earnings call. 

During the call, Mayer called video a primary area of investment over the next year, along with new products geared toward improving the company’s display advertising revenue, which fell by 11 percent in the quarter. 

Yahoo faces enormous pressure to reinvent itself and demonstrate its relevance to users who have flocked to rival Internet companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Some industry analysts have characterized the company as a sinking ship, but the departures of board members Loeb, Wolf and Wilson and media chief Rosen are not connected, said Erik Gordon, associate director at the University of Michigan’s Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies. 

“Loeb dumped two-thirds of his stock, and his guys left the board, because he thinks the chances of the stock price going up are too slim to justify the risk of having so much money in the company,” Gordon said. 

But Rosen left for her own reasons, including the fact that Yahoo’s media team “are losing their independence,” he said, adding that Mayer wants more direct control over the media business. 

Yahoo’s stock has risen more than 70 percent over the past year, though Mayer’s tech-celebrity status and the company’s stake in the profitable Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba have been key factors in its ascension, experts have said.

Microsoft takes $900 million hit for unsold Surface RTs in 4Q13 earnings

An otherwise healthy earnings statement from Microsoft was overshadowed by a substantial $900 million charge attributed to "Surface RT inventory adjustments." The ARM-powered tablet, Microsoft's first foray into selling computers, recently had its price cut by $150 to $349 amid long-standing reports of poor sales. With this $900 million charge, those poor sales and price cuts are hitting Microsoft's bottom line.

Revenue for the fourth quarter was $19.896 billion, up 10 percent on the same quarter last year. Operating income was $6.073 billion and earnings per share $0.59, both essentially unchanged from a year ago.

As ever, Microsoft also published non-GAAP numbers. The GAAP numbers defer revenue that was taken for Office 2013 and Windows 8 prior to the availability of the software, not booking the revenue until the software is actually delivered. The non-GAAP numbers book the revenue as soon as it's taken. Under that metric, quarterly revenue was $19.114 billion, up three percent year on year. Operating income was $5.291 billion, down 24 percent year on year, and earnings per share were $0.52, down 29 percent on a year ago.

For the full 2013 financial year, revenue was $77.849 billion, up six percent on 2012. Operating income was $26.764 billion, an increase of 23 percent, and earnings per share were $2.58, a 29 percent improvement. Much of this improvement is due to 2012's $6.193 billion write-down over the aQuantive purchase.

Though Microsoft has announced a significant corporate reorganization, its financial reporting uses the same divisional model and could continue to do so even as the reorganization is implemented. Full details of this will be disclosed in September.

Windows division revenue—which includes Surface RT—saw the fourth quarter grow by six percent to $4.411 billion, with operating income down 54 percent to $1.099 billion. For the full year, the division had revenue of $19.239 billion, up 4.6 percent, and an operating income of $9.504 percent, down 18 percent.

The division continues to suffer from the downturn in the broader PC market. OEM revenue was down 15 percent, driven by the decline of x86 sales. Non-OEM revenue was up 22 percent, with double-digit growth in volume licensing. The company says that close to three-quarters of enterprise desktops are now using Windows 7.

The Server and tools division posted quarterly revenue of $5.502 billion, up nine percent year on year. Operating income was $2.325 billion, up 14 percent. For the full year, revenue was $20.281 billion, up nine percent on 2012, and operating income was up 13 percent at $8.164 billion.

Both product revenue and Enterprise Services showed nine percent growth. System Center showed growth of 14 percent, SQL Server increased revenue by 16 percent. The company reports growing Azure momentum, too, with 25 percent more enterprise customers.

Microsoft Business Division had quarterly revenue of $7.213 billion, up 14 percent, with operating income of $4.873 billion, an increase of 18 percent. Over the full year, revenue was up three percent to $24.724 billion and operating income was up two percent to $16.194 billion.

Business revenue, representing about 85 percent of the division's revenue, was up seven percent. Business subscription revenue was up 10 percent, offsetting a one percent drop in license-only transactional revenue. Consumer revenue was hammered, however, falling by 27 percent due to the weakness of the x86 market. Office 365 is now on track to have annual revenue of $1.5 billion, with more than one million users of the consumer-oriented Office 365 Home Premium version. Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync all experienced double-digit growth.

Online Services division revenue for the quarter was $0.804 billion, up nine percent on the same quarter last year. Operating loss was $0.372 billion. The loss a year ago was $6.672 billion, but most of this was due to the aQuantive write-down. Excluding that, the loss has been reduced by $0.107 billion, or 22 percent. Full year revenue was $3.201 billion, up 12 percent.

Entertainment and Services division had quarterly revenue of $1.915 billion, up eight percent on last year. The division posted an operating loss of $0.110 billion, a 57 percent reduction on last year. Full year revenue was $10.165 billion, up six percent on 2012, with operating income of $0.848 billion, up 123 percent from last year.

Even as it heads toward replacement, Xbox 360 is continuing to sell, with the company shifting a million units last quarter. Xbox LIVE revenue was up by about 20 percent. Windows Phone-related revenue, covering both Windows Phone and patent licensing agreements, was up $0.222 billion.

The company also offered guidance for the first quarter of the 2014 financial year. Windows division will continue to suffer from the poor PC market, with OEM revenue (about 65 percent of what the division turns over) expected to decline by the mid teens. 

Server and Tools revenue is expected to grow by high single digits. Business division enterprise revenue is anticipated to grow by mid-single digits, but consumer revenue will lag the PC market by five percent. The company estimates that Online Services revenue will grow by double digits. Entertainment and Devices revenue will decline by low single digits.

Tunisian actress Dorra

Tunisian actress received a certificate of advanced studies in political science in Tunisia has entered the field of art after joining the troupe Teatro where she participated for the first time in the play crazy for the director Tawfiq al-Jabali., And then represented several roles in Tunisian cinema, also participated in global films, like  "Colosseum", directed by the English director Tillman RIM in 2003, where embodied the role of the lady of the Empire and also the Universal film "Journey to Louisa", directed by French director Patrick Vulsson in 2005 in the role of Aichee It is also involved since 2007 in the Egyptian cinema.