Benefits of quitting smoking

When you quit smoking, the body begins to recover within twenty minutes.• After twenty minutes:
Your blood pressure drops and pulse rate drops to normal.
• After eight hours:
Carbon monoxide level in the blood drops to normal. Oxygen level in the blood increases to normal.
• After twenty-four hours:
Chance of a heart attack decreases.
• After forty-eight hours:
Ability to smell and taste is enhanced.
• Between two weeks to three weeks:
Blood circulation improved. You can walk more easily. Lung functions increase up to thirty per cent.
• Between one to nine months:
Cough, congestion of the nose, fatigue and breathlessness decrease. Hair-like projections in the lungs grow and therefore dust, bacteria, etc., are removed more efficiently.
• After one year:
Excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker.
• After five years:
Lung cancer death rate decreases by almost half. Stroke rate is reduced to that of a non smoker five to fifteen years after quitting. Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and food-pipe reduces to half of smoker’s risk.
• After ten years:
Lung cancer death rate is similar to that of a non-smoker. Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, food-pipe, bladder and kidneys decreases.
• After fifteen years:
Risk of heart disease is that of a non-smoker.

Source: Centre for Disease Control and American Cancer Society

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Tips to stop smoking

Here are some simple tips to help you on the road to stop smoking:
1. Pay attention to other’s opinion and concerns about your smoking.
2. Accept that your smoking can harm you and those around you.
3. Don’t be very certain of your ability to give up whenever you want to quit smoking. You may have tried giving it up several times before.
4. Seek help from friends, family or health professionals.
5. Decide to quit and set affirm date for quitting.
6. Until the due date of quitting:
• Keep a record of the number of times you smoke.
• Reduce the number of puffs every time you smoke.
• Leave a large stub.
• Try not to inhale when you smoke.
• Change to a brand other than your favorite.
7. After you quit smoking, avoid mixing with smokers, accepting free cigarettes and the temptation of even one smoke.
8. To sustain your efforts, renew your resolve to give up smoking everyday. Recognize that some symptoms such as lack of concentration, headache, and irritability may trouble you for some time. Learn to deal with stress, tension, etc., with methods other than smoking or drinking.
9. Use chewing gum, toffee, peppermints or drink a glass of your favorite non-alcoholic drink if you are tempted to smoke.
10. If you fail in your effort to give up smoking, try again... and again ... and again ... till you succeed. Take advice from those who have quit smoking successfully.

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Indonesia Targets media piracy

The music Industry in Indonesia, nowadays get into the bad condition because of the copyright piracy. Indonesia music industry began in 1954, when Suyoso Karsono formed the first recording company “Irama”. He established his garage for recording several band albums. He would never realized that this music industry will grow up rapidly include many problems as followed.Suyoso commonly called Mas Yos would very surprised if he knows about the high percentage of music piracy in Indonesia now almost 90% than the original products. This bad situation causes many recording companies bankrupt, and only rested several recording companies which united under the Sound Industry Association of Indonesia (ASIRI).
As an industry, which makes, performs, promotes, protects and maintains the Indonesia music culture and also has given big income for the country as well as has given many employments, it should be saved from destruction. Therefore, the government takes actions in order to minimize and to stop the piracy. The government targets media piracy with a new copyright law that proposed since 2002.
State of the recorded music industry
As we know that many recording companies in Indonesia become extinct. This bad condition was caused by weak copyright as a major problem. Most of recording companies in Indonesia, including the five international majors, are losing money otherwise in danger of bankruptcy. It is impossible to tell at this point how much of this problem reflects competitions from illegal copying and how much may be attributed to the situation. However, pirated copies of Indonesian music appear to be more prevalent than those of foreign music. It is largely because of strong Indonesian preference for domestic music types.
There is a rather small price premium for legitimate music recordings over pirated versions in big cities, perhaps ranging from a multiple of 2 to 4 or 5. Many Indonesian music producers feel it necessary to bring their prices down to competitive range in relation to pirated copies in order to gain an acceptable market share.
The music industry business would expand considerably in the presence of more transparent and effective enforcement. If so, it would help Indonesian musicians considerably. Moreover, considerable scope exists for finding new artists in the countryside and extending income to them through royalties and copyright licenses as the sector expands.
Internet use is very small in Indonesia. There is not a serious problem in terms of downloading electronics files, mainly because there are so few PC’s in Indonesia, nearly all of which are in the workplaces, not homes. Besides, bandwidth is inadequate for purpose and Indonesian music producers tend not to place their files on the internet. This latter decision reflects both technical difficulties and concern over copying. Use of MP3 technologies for file sharing is raising and concern for music producers.
And what about music piracy in Indonesia? In all four types of recording media presented; cassettes, CDs, VCDs and DVDs, the estimated piracy rate for domestic’s product is not at least as high as for foreign products. Firms perceive domestics copying as the major source of piracy. Relatively few are concerned about imports of unauthorized copies, for such products do not have a sizeable market in Indonesia. Furthermore, downloading from internet is not particularly threatening at this time, given the small penetration of PCs into Indonesian use. Piracy is considered a problem by firms of all sizes. An important channel through which these firms must compete with copies is prices. They claim that they must “significantly reduce” their prices in order to compete.
Copyright Law
The common view of copyright problems is that weak enforcement encourages uncompensated copying (piracy) of recorded music and films as well as of computer programs, with the copies distributed widely at low cost. It is important to Indonesia to adopt and enforce stronger copyright law in order to encourage creative activity by local artists and firms, and also to support the transformation of that activity into products that reach the domestic and exports markets. If successful, it would give income for them. The new rights expected to raise the prices of copyrighted goods by reducing the supply of pirated versions. Copyright strengthening also expected to cut sales of imitation products overtime. Copyright protection is central to promoting recorded entertainment industries.
In addition to the improvements proposed in previous reports to the law of Republic of Indonesia, Number 19 year 202 Regarding Copyright (Copyright Law), draft “Right Management Information” (RMI) regulations were apparently finalized but were not issued in 2005, but implementing regulations regarding Technological Protection Measures (TPM) (as covered in article 27 of the Copyright Law) are still badly needed.
Enforcement
Legislation has been improved in the last couple of years, e.g. through the enactment of design protection, the Copyright Law amendments in 2003 and the implementation of the Optical Disc Regulations in April 2005. The Anti Corruption Committee established in 2004 was also identified as a positive point. Moreover, public statements have also been made to emphasize the need to take action against piracy. However, in practice, the level of infringement remains exceptionally high. There are very few prosecutions (none in 2004), the courts are extremely slow and inefficient, and there are frequent complaints about corruption. Indonesia has adequate IP law but very poor enforcement.
As might be expected, the capacity to undertake effective enforcement actions against copyright infringers is limited. There are a number of difficulties to mention.
1. The basic source of the problem is extensive piracy, largely of recorded movies and music. The incentives to copy and distribute such goods are enormous and this has become a significant industry. Even a well-funded enforcement agency would find difficult to make much of a dent in its scope.
2. Funding for the police is extremely low. The police therefore accept payments from complainants (e.g. music recording companies) to defray their costs. This system limits incentive of legitimate companies to complain and, in itself, is a questionable practice from the standpoint of hones and efficient enforcement.
3. There is a considerable scarcity of customs authorities and police personnel.
4. Centralized authorities in Jakarta and Bandung find it impossible to undertake enforcement activities in Indonesia’s widely flung urban and rural areas and coastlines.
5. Under prior law, a complainant had to come to court in Indonesia to make claim of infringement. Foreign companies (and certainly individual artists) often find it not worth the time and effort. The new law is supposed to permit outside copyright owners to retain Indonesian legal representation in such causes.
What need to be done?
1. Ensure effective implementation of civil, administrative and criminal procedures and remedies, including deterrent penalties, as well as reduced cost and length of proceedings.
2. Ensure equal treatment in practice between nationals and foreigners notably in terms of cost of proceedings.
3. Strengthen customs awareness of customs controls at the border.
4. Increase awareness among law enforcement organizations and training for officials.
5. Ensure transparency in administrative, provisional and customs measures procedures and effective action by the newly-established Anti Corruption Committee.
Based on the explanation we can get many inferences.
Enforcement suffers from considerable structural difficulties, including weak capacity, chronic under funding, limited access to enforcement procedures, and non transparency. This situation is unlikely to change for some time.
The recorded music industry may suffer the largest damages from local copying. It is difficult to think their problems closely with such issues as poverty of musicians in rural areas. Nonetheless, the evidence points to remarkably small number of musicians gaining revenue from the current system.
The copyright sectors stand to gain income and activity from stronger copyrights and this process is likely to intensify overtime. Nevertheless, it needs to be understood that stronger copyrights would generate some hardship over the short term for firms and workers engaged in unauthorized copying and distributing. While it is impossible to measure with confidence, it seems probable that employment in copying and selling pirated versions of music is significant in the larger cities. Accordingly, there will be an adjustment problem if stricter enforcement tends to reduce this activity.

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Should smoking be banned in public places?

The issue of whether smoking in public places should be banned has been raging for the past year in Indonesia since the government proposed the plan of smoking regulation. There are the pros and cons argument about the regulation. Each of them has their own reason.As a non-smoker I couldn’t agree more with this regulation. I agree with the opinion that the smoke should be far removed from communal area as possible. Yes, I don’t smoke as well as allergic to smoke. Smoking should be banned period everywhere. It is a disgusting habit. It makes you stink, have yellow teeth plus cigarettes cost too much. Not only do you stink, have yellow teeth, and your health is affected but you also offend others that do not smoke. Some of us have asthma and have a hard time breathing this wonderful valley air. Then you add cigarette smoke on top of it. I will probably die first from second hand smoke.
In my view, smokers usually don’t care about the other. They will be very insensitive. Smokers don’t want to put their cigarette out when someone asking for them. They said that they have a freedom to smoke; however, they didn’t realize that every people have a rights to breath in no pollution air too. You can imagine some kind of public transportation which is already full by the passengers, is going to be seemed like more fully because of cigarette smoke. People have different condition of their lung. Asthmatic people as well as a baby are easier to be poisoned by the nicotine, besides they are going to suffer. The other reason is smoke makes the environment dirty. Smokers usually don’t throw cigarette butts into the right place. As a result, we can find so many cigarette cases also many rests of cigarettes on the road, on the yard and other communal areas. Some people said that ban of smoking in public places threatened the employees of the cigarette industries. In my opinion, the worker should not worry about that as the regulation won’t reduce the number of selling products of cigarette industries. It might be decrease just a low percentage. As a result, they won’t lose their works.
On the other hand, smokers say that ban of smoking in public places break the human freedom. They have an opinion, the protesters who are trying to enforce a ban smoking in public forgetting the concept of freedom of choice. For example, people have their own way to relax, such as go to the pub or café. Furthermore, relaxation is achieved by having a few drinks, having a chat with the other and for some people this includes the activity of smoking. From a business point of view enforcing a ban on smoking in public areas such as pubs, restaurants or bars would decrease many customers. Smokers feel that the ban is very cruel. They should go out onto the yard to smoke a cigarette during a meal out with friends or family. It isn’t a nice experience.
Smokers say its their freedom to smoke while its non smokers freedom not too as well but there are non smokers who are dying because of the smokers a thing call secondhand smoke that is even worst than just smoking. A non smoker is not taking away from your freedom but trying to have their as well as your because they chose not to smoke so they don't die of smoke related diseases but with you smoking in the same area they are in public area where everyone pays you are taking away years of their lives. Smokers say that non smokers are being selfish but in fact it’s the smoker who doesn't care if others don't smoke and smoke in front of the non smoker and laughter when the non smoke leaves. Everyone has the right to do what they want but if everyone did then there would be more crimes so there are laws passed to keep people from making a dangerous decision that will hurt another person. This goes for smoking because it does hurt others as much or more than the actually smoker. So every time a smoker smoke around someone else just remember you are killing that person standing next to you as well as yourself just let you know. I have a lot of friends that are smokers and they will not smoke around me to show that they respect me and my chose on not smoking.
Well, smokers are addicted to nicotine and they need it regularly. We can’t change them wanting to smoke and although they should be considerate about smoking around others we should also forces ourselves to tolerate to a certain level of their habit. It’s time for people to realize and to know the dangers of smoke and also passive smoking. Consequently, smoke in public areas should be banned….!!!!

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