They're all out: 33 miners raised safely in Chile
SAN JOSE MINE, Chile — The longest underground nightmare in history ended safely — and faster than anyone expected.
In a flawless operation that unfolded before a hopeful, transfixed world, 33 miners who were trapped for more than two months deep beneath the Chilean earth were raised one by one Wednesday through a smooth-walled shaft of rock.
The last man out was the one who held the group together when they were feared lost, a shift foreman named Luis Urzua who enforced tight rations of their limited food and supplies before help could arrive.
"We have done what the entire world was waiting for," he said immediately after his rescue. "We had strength, we had spirit, we wanted to fight, we wanted to fight for our families, and that was the greatest thing."
Not even a full 24 hours after the rescue began, Urzua made the 2,041-foot ascent in a rescue capsule called Phoenix and emerged from a manhole-sized opening in the ground to a joyous celebration of confetti, balloons and champagne.
President Sebastian Pinera told him: "You are not the same, and the country is not the same after this. You were an inspiration. Go hug your wife and your daughter." With hardhats held to their hearts, the pair led a joyous crowd in singing the national anthem.
The first rescue worker down was last up — Manuel Gonzalez, a mine rescue expert with Chile's state-owned Codelco copper company, talked the men through the final hours inside the mine. Then, he spent 26 minutes alone down below before he strapped himself into the capsule for the ride up. He reached the surface at 12:32 a.m. Thursday local time to hugs from his comrades and Pinera.
The rescue exceeded expectations every step of the way. Officials first said it might be four months before they could get the men out; it turned out to be 69 days and about 8 hours.
Once the escape tunnel was finished, they estimated it would take 36 to 48 hours to get all the miners to the surface. That got faster as the operation went along, and all the miners were safely above ground in 22 hours, 37 minutes.
The crowd in "Camp Hope," down a hill from the escape shaft, set off confetti, released balloons and sprayed champagne as Urzua's capsule surfaced, joining in a rousing miners' cheer. In the capital of Santiago, hundreds gathered in Plaza Italia, waving flags and chanting victory slogans in the miners' honor.
In nearby Copiapo, about 3,000 people gathered in the town square, where a huge screen broadcast live footage of the rescue. The exuberant crowd waved Chilean flags of all sizes and blew on red vuvuzelas as cars drove around the plaza honking their horns, their drivers yelling, "Long live Chile!"
"The miners are our heroes," said teary-eyed Copiapo resident Maria Guzman, 45.
One by one throughout the day, the men had emerged to the cheers of exuberant Chileans and before the eyes of a transfixed globe. While the operation picked up speed as the day went on, each miner was greeted with the same boisterous applause from rescuers.
"Welcome to life," Pinera told Victor Segovia, the 15th miner out. On a day of superlatives, it seemed no overstatement.
They rejoined a world intensely curious about their ordeal, and certain to offer fame and jobs. Previously unimaginable riches awaited men who had risked their lives going into the unstable gold and copper mine for about $1,600 a month.
The miners made the smooth ascent inside the Phoenix capsule — 13 feet tall, barely wider than their shoulders and painted in the white, blue and red of the Chilean flag. It had a door that stuck occasionally, and some wheels had to be replaced, but it worked exactly as planned.
Beginning at midnight Tuesday, and sometimes as quickly as every 25 minutes, the pod was lowered the nearly half-mile to where 700,000 tons of rock collapsed Aug. 5 and entombed the men.
Then, after a quick pep talk from rescue workers who had descended into the mine, a miner would climb in, make the journey upward and emerge from a manhole into blinding light.
The rescue was planned with extreme care. The miners were monitored by video on the way up for any sign of panic. They had oxygen masks, dark glasses to protect their eyes and sweaters for the jarring transition from subterranean swelter to chilly desert air.
As they neared the surface, a camera attached to the top of the capsule showed a brilliant white piercing the darkness not unlike what accident survivors describe when they have near-death experiences.
The miners emerged looking healthier than many had expected and even clean-shaven. Several thrust their fists upward like prizefighters, and Mario Sepulveda, the second to taste freedom, bounded out and led his rescuers in a rousing cheer. Franklin Lobos, who played for the Chilean national soccer team in the 1980s, briefly bounced a ball on his foot and knee.
"We have prayed to San Lorenzo, the patron saint of miners, and to many other saints so that my brothers Florencio and Renan would come out of the mine all right. It is as if they had been born again," said Priscila Avalos. One of her brothers was the first miner rescued, and the other came out Wednesday evening.
Health Minister Jaime Manalich said some of the miners probably will be able to leave the hospital Thursday — earlier than projected — but many had been unable to sleep, wanted to talk with families and were anxious. One was treated for pneumonia, and two needed dental work.
"They are not ready to have a moment's rest until the last of their colleagues is out," he said.
As it traveled down and up, down and up, the rescue capsule was not rotating as much inside the escape shaft as officials expected, allowing for faster trips.
The first man out was Florencio Avalos, who emerged from the missile-like chamber and hugged his sobbing 7-year-old son, his wife and the Chilean president.
No one in recorded history has survived as long trapped underground. For the first 17 days, no one even knew whether they were alive. In the weeks that followed, the world was captivated by their endurance and unity.
News channels from North America to Europe and the Middle East carried live coverage of the rescue. Pope Benedict XVI said in Spanish that he "continues with hope to entrust to God's goodness" the fate of the men. Iran's state English-language Press TV followed events live for a time. Crews from Russia, Japan and North Korean state TV were at the mine.
The images beamed to the world were extraordinary: Grainy footage from the mine chamber showed each man climbing into the capsule, then disappearing upward through an opening.
Among the first rescued was the youngest miner, Jimmy Sanchez, at 19 the father of a months-old baby. Two hours later came the oldest, Mario Gomez, 63, who suffers from a lung disease common to miners and had been on antibiotics inside the mine. He dropped to his knees after he emerged, bowed his head in prayer and clutched the Chilean flag.
Gomez's wife, Lilianett Ramirez, pulled him up from the ground and embraced him. The couple had talked by video once a week, and she said that he had repeated the promise he made to her in his initial letter from inside the mine: He would marry her properly in a church wedding, followed by the honeymoon they never had.
The lone foreigner among them, Carlos Mamani of Bolivia, was visited at a nearby clinic by Pinera and Bolivian President Evo Morales. The miner could be heard telling the Chilean leader how nice it was to breathe fresh air and see the stars.
Most of the men emerged clean-shaven. More than 300 people at the mine alone had worked on the rescue or to sustain them during their long wait by lowering rocket-shaped tubes dubbed "palomas," Spanish for carrier pigeons. Along with the food and medicine came razors and shaving cream.
Estimates for the rescue operation alone have soared beyond $22 million, though the government has repeatedly insisted that money was not a concern.
The men emerged in good health. But at the hospital in Copiapo, where miner after miner walked from the ambulance to a waiting wheelchair, it became clear that psychological issues would be as important to treat as physical ones.
Dr. Guillermo Swett said Sepulveda told him about an internal "fight with the devil" that he had inside the mine. He said Sanchez appeared to be having a hard time adjusting, and seemed depressed.
"He spoke very little and didn't seem to connect," the doctor said.
The entire rescue operation was meticulously choreographed. No expense was spared in bringing in topflight drillers and equipment — and boring three separate holes into the copper and gold mine. Only one was finished — the one through which the miners exited.
Mining is Chile's lifeblood, providing 40 percent of state earnings, and Pinera put his mining minister and the operations chief of Codelco in charge of the rescue.
It went so well that its managers abandoned a plan to restrict images of the rescue. A huge Chilean flag that was to obscure the hole from view was moved aside so the hundreds of cameras perched on a hill above could capture images that state TV also fed live.
That included the surreal moment when the capsule dropped for the first time into the chamber, where the bare-chested miners, most stripped down to shorts because of the underground heat, mobbed the rescuer who emerged to serve as their guide to freedom.
"This rescue operation has been so marvelous, so clean, so emotional that there was no reason not to allow the eyes of the world — which have been watching this operation so closely — to see it," a beaming Pinera told a news conference after the first miner safely surfaced.
The miners' vital signs were closely monitored throughout the ride. They were given a high-calorie liquid diet donated by NASA, designed to prevent nausea from any rotation of the capsule as it traveled through curves in the 28-inch-diameter escape hole.
Engineers inserted steel piping at the top of the shaft, which was angled 11 degrees off vertical before plunging like a waterfall. Drillers had to curve the shaft to pass through "virgin" rock, narrowly avoiding collapsed areas and underground open spaces in the overexploited mine, which had operated since 1885.
President Barack Obama said the rescue had "inspired the world." The crews included many Americans, including a driller operator from Denver and a team from Center Rock Inc. of Berlin, Pa., that built and managed the piston-driven hammers that pounded the hole through rock laced with quartzite, some of the hardest and most abrasive rock.
Chile has promised that its care of the miners won't end for six months at least — not until they can be sure that each man has readjusted.
Psychiatrists and other experts in surviving extreme situations predict their lives will be anything but normal. Since Aug. 22, when a narrow bore hole broke through to their refuge and the miners stunned the world with a note, scrawled in red ink, disclosing their survival, their families have been exposed in ways they never imagined.
Miners had to describe their physical and mental health in detail with teams of doctors and psychologists. In some cases, when both wives and lovers claimed the same man, everyone involved had to face the consequences.
As trying as their time underground was, the miners face challenges so bewildering that no amount of coaching can fully prepare them. Rejoining a world intensely curious about their ordeal, they have been invited to presidential palaces, to take all-expenses-paid vacations and to appear on countless TV shows. Book and movie deals are pending, along with job offers.
Sepulveda's performance exiting from the shaft appeared to confirm what many Chileans thought when they saw his engaging performances in videos sent up from below — that he could have a future as a TV personality.
But he tried to quash the idea as he spoke to viewers of Chile's state television channel while sitting with his wife and children shortly after his rescue.
"The only thing I'll ask of you is that you don't treat me as an artist or a journalist, but as a miner," he said. "I was born a miner and I'll die a miner."
Associated Press Writers Frank Bajak, Franklin Briceno, Peter Prengaman, Vivian Sequera and Eva Vergara contributed to this report.
source: associatePress
Miners inside the mine for 17 hrs and alive!!
SAN JOSE MINE, Chile — After more than two months trapped deep in a Chilean mine, 33 miners on Sunday were tantalizingly close to rescue within a few days.
The first tests of the three rescue capsules built by Chilean naval engineers will likely begin early Wednesday, with the rescue to begin later that day and last about 48 hours, said Mining Minister Laurence Golborne.A day after drillers broke through to where the miners have been abiding, officials began detailed monitoring of their health and sweating every detail of the half-mile ascent that is expected to last about 20 minutes for each man.
"Today we sent down special equipment to measure their heart rate, their respiration rate and skin temperature," said Jaime Manalich, Chile's health minister.
He said officials were concerned about hypertension because the speed with which the miners will ascend the nearly half mile to the surface.
Another concern is blood clotting.
To counteract it, the miners began taking 100 milligrams each of aspirin on Sunday and will until the rescue, he said. They'll also put on compression socks and will be on a special high-calorie liquid prepared and donated by NASA for the final six hours before being removed, Manalich said.
That's to prevent them from becoming nauseous as the rescue capsule is expected to rotate 350 degrees some 10-12 times through curves in the 28-inch-diameter escape hole on its way up, he added.Officials biggest worry? "Panic attacks," said Manalich.
"This is the first time in many weeks that the miners are going to be completely alone," he added.
A small video camera will be placed in the escape capsule so each miner's face can we watched as he ascends. Each will also have a mask attached to an oxygen tank affixed to their face and two-way voice communication.
Each miner wants to be last one out
A list has been drawn up suggesting the order in which the 33 miners should be rescued, and Manalich said the otherwise cooperative miners were squabbling about it.
"They were fighting with us yesterday because everyone wanted to be at the end of the line, not the beginning," he told reporters, "It's a question of solidarity."
"I think they're more excited than scared or nervous," Brandon Fisher, president of Center Rock Inc., the Pennsylvania company whose hammer-style drill heads created the hole, told The Associated Press. "That first guy up might be a little nervous, though."
The final order will be determined by a Navy special forces paramedic who will be lowered into the mine to prepare the men for their journey.
A video inspection Saturday showed the hole's walls firm and smooth, without any fissures or rupture of walls of the mine.
"If this had been a vertical hole we probably could have done it in half the time," said Fisher.
Only the top few hundred feet of the escape hole needed to be reinforced with a sleeve and workers were welding together about 16 steel pipes for that purpose.
The completion of the escape shaft Saturday morning caused bedlam in the tent city known as "Camp Hope," where the miners' relatives had held vigil for an agonizing 66 days since a cave-in sealed off the gold and copper mine Aug. 5.
The drill that punctured through worked constantly for 28 days with a few breaks when some of its hammers fractured, once on a 6.6-foot roof bolt used to support mine shaft ribs.
When it broke through Saturday, the rescuers chanted, danced and sprayed champagne so excitedly that some of their hardhats tumbled off.
The escape capsules, equipped with spring-loaded wheels that will press against the hole's walls, will be lowered into the hole via a winch and the trapped miners brought up one by one.
Didier Drogba
Place and date of birth:
Abidjan, March 11, 1978
Country: Ivory Coast
Current club: Chelsea
Position: Striker
Height: 91 kg
In three words:
Infallible, powerful, intimidating
Titles:
With Chelsea, three Premier League titles, three FA Cups, two Community Shields and two Carling Cups.
What everyone knows about him:
He is the top scorer in the history of the Ivorian national team. Former South African President Nelson Mandela is his hero.
What few know about him:
As a child he wanted to be a doctor, to help people. He got into football thanks to his uncle Michel Goba, a former Ivorian striker, with whom he first lived upon traveling to France.
Bio Data of Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi
Place and date of birth
Rosario, June 24, 1987
Country: Argentina
Current club: Barcelona
Position: Striker
Height: 1.69
Weight: 67 kg
In three words:
Genius, explosive, winner
Titles: With Barcelona, four La Liga titles, one King’s Cup, two champions Leagues, one FIFA Club World Cup, three Spanish Super cups and one European Supercup; with Argentina, one Under-20 World Cup and the fold medal in the Beijing Olympics.
What everyone knows about him:
He won the Ballon d’Or and the FIFA Player of the Year award in 2009. As a child, he needed treatment due to problems caused by a growth hormone deficiency.
What few know about him : His favourite dish is the Argentine :milanesa de ternera a la napolitana,” a breaded veal steak with cheese, ham and tomato, although he had to adapt to a new diet at the request of Barcelona nutrition specialists, His Grandparents still operate a small corner store in Rosario.
Steve Jobs at D8: Post-PC era is nigh
Speaking for an hour and a half at the D: All Things Digital confab, Jobs said the day is coming when only one out of every few people will need a traditional computer.
"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that's what you needed on the farms." Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.
"PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said. "They are still going to be around." However, he said, only "one out of x people will need them."
Jobs said advances in chips and software will allow tablet devices like the iPad to do tasks that today are really only suited for a traditional computer, things like video editing and graphic arts work.
The move, Jobs said, will make many PC veterans uneasy, "because the PC has taken us a long ways."
"We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it's uncomfortable," he said.
Jobs noted that people still laugh at him when he talks about the iPad as magical, and he tried to put that feeling into more concrete terms. "You have a much more direct and intimate relationship with the Internet and media and apps and your content," Jobs said. "It's like some intermediate thing has been removed and stripped away. Like that Claritin commercial where they strip away the film--it's like that."
Among the other big revelations that came out of the talk was the fact that Apple was actually working on a tablet like the iPad before the iPhone, but put the project on hold when it saw an opportunity to crack the phone market, which is far larger than even the PC business, in terms of units.
When pressed, Jobs also opened up a bit on the story behind Apple's dispute with Gizmodo over the lost iPhone, which Jobs said may well have been stolen.
"There is a debate of whether it was left in a bar or stolen out of his bag," Jobs said.
Jobs allowed that the whole matter does make for a great story. "It's got theft. It's got buying stolen property. It's got extortion," he said, adding that there is probably sex in there somewhere. "Somebody should make a movie out of this."
Jobs also spoke on a range of other topics, including his thoughts on AT&T, Adobe and Flash, and Apple's relationship with Google. And he even shared a bit on what daily life is like for him and the rest of the team at Apple.
On AT&T
Jobs said that though there are problems, AT&T does offer the fastest 3G network. He said he thinks the quality issues are improving but added that he only wishes he could say they were improving rapidly. "I do think they have some issues," he said.
Asked by moderator Walt Mossberg whether there could be an advantage to the iPhone being offered in the U.S. by more than one carrier, Jobs said. "There might be."
Jobs declined to say whether that might happen this year.
On the chilling of Apple's relationship with Google
"They decided to compete with us, and they are," Jobs said, adding that he was referring to the phone business primarily. As for Chrome OS, he said, "Chrome is not really baked yet."
Jobs was asked if he sees himself in a "platform war" with Google. Jobs said that's not how he thinks about the world.
"We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft," he said, adding, "maybe that's why we lost." Instead, he said, Apple just focuses on building the best product.
The competition with Google, he said, was launched by Google, not Apple.
"They decided to compete with us," Jobs said. "We didn't go into the search business."
Asked whether Jobs got a call from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, he said, "no, they started competing with us, and it got more and more serious."
On why he likes the consumer market better than selling to businesses
"(In the consumer market) every person votes for themselves," Jobs said. "If enough of them say yes, we get to come to work in the morning." In the enterprise, he said, not so much. The people that use the products aren't the ones that choose which products are used, and the people that make those decisions, Jobs said, "are sometimes confused."
On why Apple doesn't support Flash
"Apple, Jobs said, is still a company with limited resources and chooses to focus that energy by picking technologies that are in their "springs" as opposed to those on the wane.
"The way we have succeeded is by choosing which horses to ride very carefully," he said.
He noted the company's moves in the past, such as building the iMac without a floppy drive.
"If you choose wisely, you can save yourself an enormous amount of work," he said, noting that that is what allows Apple to make things that are great, as opposed to just OK.
On whether Apple has too much control with the App Store
"We have two platforms we support. One is completely open and uncontrolled, and that is HTML 5. We support HTML 5. We have the best support for HTML 5 of anyone in the world."
"We then support a curated platform, which is the App Store," Jobs said, adding that "we've got a few rules." The app has to function as advertised, Jobs said, adding that it also can't crash or use unsupported APIs. Still, he said, 95 percent of applications are approved within a week.
On how things work at Apple
Apple, he said, has no committees, just people in charge of specific areas.
"What I do all day is meet with teams of people," he said. Asked by Walt Mossberg whether people at Apple ever stand up to him and tell him he is wrong, Jobs said they do. "We have wonderful arguments," Jobs said, adding that he doesn't win them all. "The best ideas have to win, otherwise you don't have good people who stay."
On why he doesn't change
"When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people that said you've got to just let it slide. You shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you." Jobs said he concluded the worst thing would be if he started letting more things slide. "I can't do that. I'd rather quit."
Firefox hack for super speed browsing!
Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for it’s cache feature
1. Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the adress bar in the browser.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer”
3. Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)
Increase the Speed in Which Firefox loads pages
(Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipeliningit will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.)
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10.
Optionally (for even faster web browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New– > Interger or String
“content.notify.backoffcount”: set “5“; (Five)
“plugin.expose_full_path”: set “true”.
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0; (zero)
Reduce RAM usage to 10mb when Firefox is minimized:
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.
Twitter Client for Android Mobiles
Twitter recently announced the availability of its official Twitter Client for Android Mobiles, named as simply Twitter for Android. It is now available for free download in Android Market. If you weren’t satisfied with the other Twitter apps available previously then this app is a must have, it also comes with a home screen widget that lets you quickly access your twitter timeline without having to open the application again and again.
The source code of the Twitter App will be made open to the developers in the near future so that they can utilize it to develop more incredible apps using the Twitter APIs.
Download Twitter for Android
Just scan the following barcode or visit Android Market.
You must have Android 2.1+ OS to use this application.
Sharp Unveils HD 3D Camera Module for Mobiles
Digital cameras already supports the 3D shooting, now its the turn of mobiles to join the 3D bandwagon as Sharp has introduced an industry’s first HD 3D camera module which will be used in Smartphones and digicams in the near future.
Sharp’s 3D Camera Module is capable of capturing videos and images in 3D and that too in 720p per eye. According to the early reports mass production of 3D camera modules will begin by the end of 2010 and you could be seeing 3D camera enabled handsets in as early as Q1 2011.
Pricing details of the 3D modules are unknown as of now.
via Sharp
List of Compatible Cydia Apps for iPad
If you have already jailbroken your iPad, then you must be wondering about which jailbroken apps to install from Cydia’s huge list of apps, fortunately Musclenerd has come with a list of compatible Cydia apps that are safe to install on your iPad, the list is divided into three categories, Cydia apps with GREEN status are safe to install, whereas RED status are not recommended and apps with YELLOW status are the ones that are partially working. List of working Jailbroken apps for iPad after the jump.
List of Cydia Apps Compatible with iPad
- Addexchange
- afc2add
- Applinks
- Backgrounder
- Bossprefs
- BTstack Wii Controls
- CyDelete
- Cydia
- Cyntact
- FakeCarrier
- GPSPhone
- iFile
- iLocalis
- Infinitiboard
- Infinidock
- Installous
- mAdVLock
- MakeitMine
- MemToll
- MetaSpoit
- Multiexchange
- Multiiconmover
- Musiccontrols
- Mx tube
- MyWi
- N64iPhone
- nano
- NES
- Netatalk
- Network cmds
- Poof
- Privacy
- ProTapper
- Quick dismiss
- Quicklock
- Respring
- Rock
- roqyBT GPs
- Rotation Inhibitor
- SBSettings
- SNes4iPhone
- Tapmania
You can view the full list here
Download Steam Client for Mac
Steam gaming client for Mac finally came out of beta and is now available for free download from the Steam website. With this Apple Mac users will be able to enjoy huge number of game titles that will eventually become available to them, and to celebrate the launch of Stem client for Mac, Steam is giving away free download of PORTAL game to anyone downloading their Client on Mac OS X until May 24th.
With Steam released for Mac, gamers can now purchase their games online and can play it either on Windows PC or on Mac with their single Steam ID. At launch there are already 60+ titles ready for download that you can enjoy on your Mac. Steam has also announced that it will be releasing a new set of games compatible with Mac every Wednesday for the next few weeks.
Download Steam Client for Mac OS X
Direct Download Link
Download Link for Free Portal for Mac
Minimum Requirements for Steam for Mac
Intel Based Mac with Mac OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3 or later
1GB Hard disk space and a recommended 2 button mouse.
If you are a Windows User Download Steam Client for Windows
