buzz-words.info

The term 'change' heads a list of political buzzwords that dominated the recently-concluded US primary season for presidential nominations, a study has found.
www.dnaindia.com | 7/6/08 8:23 AM

CITIZENSHIP. Everywhere you turn these days it seems the word is staring you in the face. It is undoubtedly one of the buzzwords in Scottish education at the moment and unlike
news.scotsman.com | 7/1/08 11:34 PM

By Tariq A. Al-Maeena 
 
President George Bush should be out of office in a matter of months. “The sooner, the better”, mutter those Americans who view his two terms as president of the United States as one laced heavily with wars and aggression overseas, and poverty at home.

While many Americans still believe he only came into office as a result of vote manipulations in Ohio and Florida during the elections, it cannot be denied that his leadership has been bad for America, period!
 
While there are still a diminishing number of diehards who believe in Bush’s message body and soul, an increasing number of Americans have been turned off by what he has turned America into. This is the impression I gathered in the course of my conversations with Americans from all walks of life. America has become a land where dissenters are seized and imprisoned without due process of the law.
There is wiretapping and forced entries into homes on the faintest of suspicion. Thousands who were brave enough to speak out against their president’s policies are detained.
 
It has become a land where a “spook” is believed to be found behind every corner, not much unlike the McCarthy era. Anthrax and the poisoning of water reservoirs were tactics used to shepherd a gullible public along those lines.
 
It is a land where the investigations and the real truth behind the 9-11 disaster still remain shrouded in controversy. The findings of the 9-11 Commission leave a lot of unanswered questions, and the US media’s failure to investigate such claims has destroyed their credibility around the world and among their own people.
 
Bush can also perhaps be linked to the delay in sending relief and federal support to the victims of the Katrina disaster. The support given was inadequate. Money and resources that could have provided immediate relief to the disaster victims were spent on more glamorous adventures abroad.
 
And today, while America bleeds under the onslaught of rising prices and home foreclosures, his tenure was not a loss for all. Those connected to the presidency such as Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld have reportedly done remarkably well, and their personal portfolios have shown positives gains.
 
The trillions of dollars gone to support Bush’s foreign adventures could and should have been spent on the welfare of his people.

The money spent could have averted the current financial crisis many Americans are experiencing. Old age care, improved health coverage and funding for more schools would have been a far more palatable alternative to Americans than dead bodies littering the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
Bush is using the little time left for him in the White House for more warmongering. Iran has become the buzzword of his administration, just as Saddam Hussein’s WMDs were then. He does want to shape the world to his distorted view of democracy and peace, and he does that by waging more wars and creating more mayhem.
 
Most Americans agree today that their quality of life has suffered. And why not? The cost of maintaining Bush’s overseas adventures has taken away critically needed federal funds from domestic use. And with the cost of his war on the rise, very little relief can be forecast, unless dramatic measures are taken as soon as Bush departs. But with his clone in the shape of John McCain waiting in the shadows, is there any hope for Americans?
 
“I made a decision to lead,” he once said, “One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?”
 
The world is certainly no safer than when you took over, Mr. Bush. While he would like to be remembered for doing the right thing, I wonder how many of the homeless and destitutes today would agree with such a rosy picture.

- Tariq A. Al-Maeena is a Saudi socio/political commentator.  He works out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and can be reached at this address. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 6/28/08 5:53 PM

Andrew Dupont has written Practical Prototype and Script.aculo.us and has kindly given us a chapter excerpt to peruse. You can download chapter 4 in PDF format here. The chapter covers "Ajax: Advanced Client/Server Communication": By now, you’re almost certainly familiar with Ajax as a buzzword. Technically, it’s an acronym—Asynchronous JavaScript and XML — and refers specifically to JavaScript’s [...]
ajaxian.com | 6/26/08 12:16 PM

"Community" continues to be the buzzword for businesses looking for a meaningful online presence. Everywhere you look there's another company bragging about its online social network, either to embrace clients or consumers or even to unite employees. As membership in social networks such as Facebook and MySpace continues to grow, brand-sponsored apps that tap into some network somewhere, somehow, have become common. But vibrant, successful communities are difficult to design and implement.

Online communities are not only expensive to build, they're expensive to maintain -- and they're not even always appropriate, warns Maria Giudice of San Francisco design company Hot Studio. Giudice has been involved in Web design since the days of 1.0. She has built a number of community sites for clients, including the Open Architecture Network [OAN] for Architecture for Humanity [AfH], a nonprofit, humanitarian-focused architecture charity. "All clients start out saying they want a community, but who's going to manage it once it's built?" she asks. "You can't just put up a community and expect that it'll magically run itself."

For Giudice, the key to successful community design -- and Web design as a whole -- lies in research. That means the designers take a step back to question clients' expectations and needs. For instance, Hot Studio ended up recasting the Open Architecture Network from its initial brief as an open-source community for architects. "Through research we realized that it wasn't a Web site they needed, it was an ecosystem of sites," says Giudice. "There was a bigger vision that wasn't just about a community, but about accomplishing discrete goals for different people in a holistic way."

A Community Can Wither

In other words, the design and tools of OAN should provide an online hub for involved parties, from designers to administrators to project managers working on the ground at disaster...
www.cio-today.com | 6/25/08 12:13 PM