Two Minute Guide to Getting Rid of a Virus on your Computer

If your computer gets a virus, it's best to stop typing in any passwords with it. If you've already typed in passwords into an infected computer, you should change them once the virus has been removed.

Before you try to get rid of the virus, make a backup of your important files. There's a chance you won't be able to remove the virus and will have to restore your computer to its factory state, so make sure you backup all of your files, like documents, photos, music and video, and databases. Make a backup by connecting an external hard drive to your computer and dragging your files onto it.

After backing up your files, download MacAfee AntiVirus Plus and run it on your system to clean it of viruses. You can download a 30-day trial version to see if it works. Other Anti-Virus programs are fine too, but I've found MacAfee to be the best. Plus it's free.

If MacAfee works and the viruses are gone, you should be all set. If MacAfee fails and the virus is still there, find the setup DVDs that came with your computer to restore it to its factory state. Once your computer has been restored, re-install your programs, and then copy your backed-up files back on to it.

To prevent viruses from getting onto your computer, the most important step you can take is to avoid Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Use Firefox instead. Also, be careful with installing programs from the internet. Do not allow a web page to download or install software on your computer unless you're sure it's safe.

It is important to remove viruses. Once one has infected your system, it can record every key stroke you type, including your passwords.

Two Minute Guide to Middle East Peace

Palestine During World Wars 1 and 2
A hundred years ago, the Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine, which was then a large area including present-day Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. After the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War 1 by the Allies, Great Britain was given stewardship of Palestine by the League of Nations. Britain gradually gave the region of Palestine south of the river Jordan more and more autonomy, and it became known as Transjordan. Only the area to the north of the river was now called Palestine.

Between World Wars 1 and 2, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased because of persecution in Europe. At the end of World War 2, 30% of Palestinians were Jews, and 10% of Palestinian land had become owned by Jews.

This increase angered the Palestinian Arabs, who during WW2 had successfully pressured the British government to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine, even from Axis countries. The Jews in turn were pressuring the British to allow more immigration, and Jewish terrorists attacked many government and military institutions, including assassinating the British Governor Lord Moyne in 1948. In 1947, Britain decided it could not control the region, and asked the United Nations to decide what should happen.

The Creation Of Israel
In 1947, a United Nations committee of neutral countries decided that Palestine should be split into a Palestinian and a Jewish state, except for Jerusalem which was to be governed by the UN as an open city. The Jewish community and leaders accepted this, but the Arabs did not. Indeed, Arab representatives refused to discuss plans for Palestine with the UN. The Palestinian Arabs couldn't understand why half their country should be taken away from them to solve a problem that Europeans had created for themselves through their persecution of the Jews.

Once the U.N. committee's decision was public and had successfully passed a vote in the UN General Assembly, the Arab countries tried to appeal to the International Court of Human Rights, but they did not get enough votes for their case to be heard.

The proposed borders gave the Jewish state 55% of Palestinian land - a generous allocation as only 30% of the Palestinian population was Jewish. The UN committee deciding the borders was initially tending towards recommending a unified Palestinian state, but was impressed by how well existing Jews were already using their Palestinian land.

As the British handover neared, clashes between Arabs and Jews in Palestine escalated and hundreds of people died on both sides. All of the countries neighboring Palestine publicly declared that they would resist the creation of an Israeli state, and it became clear that Israel should expect to be attacked as soon as the British completed their withdrawal.

To make their new country easier to defend, Israeli military forces and gangs attacked Israel's Palestinians to scare them out of their new state's borders, and most Palestinians living in Israel fled to the surrounding areas and Jordan. Hundreds were killed in artillery attacks on their homes and 700,000 were forced to flee. As soon as the British officially completed their pullout in May of 1948, all Arabic countries surrounding Israel attacked it.

The 1948 War
Israel won the war, holding off Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. It lost 1% of its 500,000 population as casualties. It grew its UN-determined borders by 20% as a result of the war and also seized Jerusalem. The remainder of Palestine was seized by Egypt (the Gaza Strip) and Jordan (the West Bank).

The Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War
In 1967 and 1973, Israel's Arab neighbors again attacked it in two separate attacks. Israel won both these wars as well. After the Six-Day War it again increased its borders by seizing the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. 

Today
Today the 700,000 Palestinian refugees displaced out of Israel in 1948 have grown to 4 million in number. They still want to return to their land and houses in Israeli territory.

Arab countries have started to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, including Egypt in the 1980s and the PLO in the Oslo accords. Yet this is a controversial act in the Arab world, leading to the assassination of Sadat and dissatisfaction with the PLO.

Current peace efforts are concentrating on the creation of an Arab Palestinian state from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and some of the Israeli territory. Many Arab Palestinians see this as just the first step towards regaining all the land that they use to own.

Israel too wants a separate Palestinian state, because a merged state would lead to the Arab population growing to outnumber the Jewish population over time. But it does not want to give up much of its land that it either won in war or has built settlements on.

The UN's original 1947 plan for division is not acceptable to either side. Both sides want Jerusalem, as well as much more land than the other side is prepared to give.

Two Minute Guide to High Definition Television

HD TV Sets
TV resolution is measured in the number of lines of dots that go down the screen. Old "regular" TVs have 480 lines of dots going down the screen. High Definition TVs have more - either 720 lines, or 1080 lines. Both are called "HD", so you need to look at the TV's specifications to see just how high the definition is. The more lines, the crisper the image. 1080 is best, but costs most.

There are two types of HD TV: Plasma and LCD. Plasma screens use a separate, tiny, light for every dot on the screen. Plasmas looks very lifelike but are more expensive and are hard to make in screens smaller than 42".

LCDs use a tiny colored shutter for each dot, placed in front of a few large backlights. LCDs are similar to computer monitors, with a bluish tint to their picture from the backlight. LCDs have poorer color contrast than plasmas, which means that dark colors, such as strands of dark-colored hair, are harder to differentiate. To lessen this problem, LCDs dim the backlights on areas of the screen with darker colors, and raise the backlight brightness on areas with bright colors, but this introduces halos around bright objects on dark backgrounds.

HD Video Signals
Cable, satellite, and DVD players provide many different kinds of video signals. Vertical resolution can be either 480, 720, or 1080 lines. The old "standard definition" signal you get from broadcast TV and cable has 480 lines from top to bottom. HD broadcast and cable channels give you either 720 or 1080 lines of vertical resolution - again, both are called HD so you have to do a bit or research to figure out just how good the signal is. HD video coming from a DVD player always has a full 1080 lines of vertical resolution.

With HD cable or satellite TV, some channels are broadcast with 720 lines of resolution, and some are broadcast in what is called "1080i". The i stands for interlaced, and it means that each frame of video contains only odd or even lines going down the screen. In other words, each video frame contains only half the image. Cable TV companies do this because they don't have enough bandwidth to transmit a full 1080 lines of signal, so they either send 720 or they send 1080i, which is basically 1080 but with a 50% slower refresh rate. 1080i works out to be better for images that don't move much, whereas images that do, like sports for example, look better on 720.

To distinguish between 1080 and 1080i, 1080 is always called 1080p. The p stands for progressive, and basically just means you're getting all the lines you'd expect.

HD DVD Players
To play a high definition DVD, you'll need to buy a "Blu-Ray" DVD player. They currently sell for around $300. These players can play regular DVDs as well, but their startup time can be as long as a minute and Sony's top model cannot play audio CDs, so you may not want to let your old equipment go just yet.

Video gamers sometimes prefer to buy a Sony Playstation which, apart from its 1080p gaming capabilities, can also play Blu-ray DVDs. The Playstation has a short 10-second startup time when inserting a Blu-Ray DVD.

HD DVD players play discs recorded in a format called Blu-Ray, which was invented by Sony. There used to be two types of high definition DVD: Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. HD-DVD was created by Toshiba, and was not compatible with Blu-Ray. Both formats offered the same excellent 1080 resolution picture quality. At the start of this year it became clear that Blu-Ray was winning in the marketplace, and Toshiba stopped HD-DVD production. Anyone owning an HD-DVD player will now need to buy a Blu-Ray player, as new movies will only be released in the Blu-Ray format. Because "HD-DVD" can refer both to the type of device as well as to the name of Toshiba's specific format, the terminology can be confusing.

HD Cables
The cables that connect HD components to each other are called HDMI cables. They carry both audio and video in one cable so you'll have less cables to worry about. Top quality HDMI cables are sold on Amazon.com for under $10 a cable. However, they are typically sold for $50 at high street stores, so be careful as there's no need to pay that much. Digital signals (like HDMI cables) include error correction and are not susceptible to interference in the same way as analog signals (like speaker wire). A $5 cable from Amazon can be better made than many $49 high street cables.

Suggestions
The best HD TVs are 1080p plasmas. They currently cost about $1500. However, if you're not going to be buying a high definition DVD player (currently about $300) or Playstation, then you'll not be receiving a 1080p signal, so buying a cheaper 720 TV will not make much difference. Also on the smaller (!) 42" plasmas, it's hard to tell the difference between 720 and 1080 lines of resolution.

Panasonic makes the best plasmas. Pioneer's plasmas are also good. Sony makes good LCDs in their XBR series, and many other companies make good LCDs too. I tested these TVs at a local store and even the best Sony XBR LCD TV did not have a picture as good as the cheaper Panasonic 1080p plasma. In addition, LCD TVs look worse than regular old cathode ray TVs when watching non-HD ("standard definition") TV.

So my recommendation is to get a Panasonic Plasma TV. However, LCDs are usually cheaper than plasma screens, and different people will have different opinions about picture quality and on whether one TV's picture looks better than another.