Internet Safety – Protecting Children Online

The internet continues to grow and present a vast source of information, and much of the content on this blog is gleaned from other websites.

Our homes may have more than one computer and for a family, protecting our children online is of the upmost priority. But how to go about this?

There are the well-known threats such as spyware and viruses.

Spyware is an example of malicious software being accidentally installed on yoiur computer. There are some Spyware detector programs that are free from reliable providers such as Microsoft, but there are also some providers who are not so reliable. A spyware-detector may be itself spyware for example! Besides, some tools are just too esoteric to be of use. Microsoft’s Windows Defender has a tool for called the Software Exporer which can be used for checking what programs startup when Windows is loaded. Using this requires some knowledge on how Windows works, and what programs are valid and so forth.

Anti-virus software of course is a must-have, and Mcafee have a free virus-checker called FreeScan.

But spyware and anti-virus software is not the whole story.

Internet safety is also about protecting children from accessing potentially harmful sites: not just porn but dangerous ideas, such as gang and knife ‘culture’, gambling, suicide pacts, drugs, even crackpot notions such as AIDS deniers or diet fads.

To keep track on where some has been on the internet, you could trawl through the browser’s history yourself. That could become a chore and important signs may be missed.

A program from a company called Sharp Ideas LLC might be worth a look. Check out their website www.CheckMyPC.org. This program scans your PC and produces a report on questionable sites visited, files downloaded as well as browser. bookmarks. This could be a boon for parents as it can be run quickly on a child’s PC while they are out and the report kept.

An example of this report is shown on the website. The program costs USD29.99 (around 15 pounds), however there is no free trial version.

It works with Firefox as well Internet Explorer.

Inferred Resource of 14 Million Tonnes of Copper in Peru

Rio Tinto has announced that an extensive drilling programme at La Granja, Peru spanning 18 months and some 46,000 metres has led to the estimate, in accordance with the JORC Code, of 2.8 billion tonnes of Inferred Mineral Resources grading 0.51 per cent copper and 0.1 per cent zinc representing a copper equivalent grade of 0.56 per cent at a copper equivalent cut-off of 0.3 per cent.

La Granja is in the district of Querocoto, province of Chota, Peru.

The deposit is an Andean porphyry copper deposit with associated mineralized breccias and skarns. The main intrusives are dacite porphyry, which with the breccias form irregular diatremes in the country rocks. The principal country rocks are impure limestones, siltstones and quartzites with some earlier diorite intrusions.

Full article here.

2 1/4 Billion Tonnes of Iron Ore in Guinea

Rio Tinto has reported 2.25 billion tonnes of iron ore at its Simandou project in the Republic of Guinea, west Africa.

Significant exploration and resource definition work undertaken over a number of years on the Simandou Mining Concession granted to Rio Tinto in March 2006 has led to the discovery and definition of JORC compliant resources. These resources are located within the Pic de Fon and Oueleba deposits which form part of the Simandou range in south eastern Guinea.

The Simandou range consists of a sequence of deformed itabirites, phyllites and quartzites within Proterozoic basement rocks.

Ten Million Tonnes of Copper in Arizona Mine

An Inferred Resource of 1,000,000,000 tonnes of a porphyry resource yielding 1% of copper, has been announce by Rio Tinto at its Resolution Project, 4 miles east of Superior, Arizona.

The Inferred Resource defined at Resolution complies with the JORC Code guidelines. It is a portion of the mineralized body defined within a nominal envelope grading +1 per cent Cu constrained by a minimum thickness of 150m above -750m elevation in order to be amenable to block cave mining. Its western extent is limited by geotechnical constraints in order to protect Apache Leap, a prominent geographical feature above the town of Superior. Furthermore, the Resource is confined to an area of the deposit within which the drill hole spacing is less than 300m. For purposes of this declaration, that portion of the Inferred Resource with drill hole spacing wider than 200m, even where internal to the drill pattern, is generally considered Extrapolated Inferred. As shown in the cross section below, the majority of Extrapolated Inferred Resource is located relatively shallow in the deposit where drilling geometry has made testing difficult, and in other areas where drilling density is low.

Full article here

Sulawesi Nickel Project has 162 million tonnes

Rio Tinto today, 28th May 2008, announced that its nickel mine on Sulawesi, the Indonesian island east of Borneo, has reserves of 162 million tonnes.

Chief executive of Rio Tinto Copper, Bret Clayton said, “Sulawesi Nickel has been confirmed as a tier one opportunity for our Group. Today’s announcement shows a substantial resource and we believe that there is significant potential to find further resources through our exploration efforts. This project will provide an attractive entry for Rio Tinto into a new metal and in ten years’ time, Rio Tinto could rank among the top ten nickel producers globally.”

The laterite deposits are located approximately 40km from the east coast of the island of Sulawesi, straddling the border of Central and South East Sulawesi provinces.

The geology is a typical tropical lateritic nickel deposit containing both limonite and saprolite material types, developed over ultramafic rock units. The area is part of a larger mineralised province containing other lateritic nickel resources such as Soroako (Vale) and Bahodopi (Vale). The area of mapped lateritic nickel profiles within Rio Tinto’s leases is about 84 km2 within two main clusters, approximately 30 km apart.

Drax Signs Biomass Project Contract with Alstom

The 1.5 million tonnes per year biomass co-firing facility to be constructed at the 4,000MW Drax
Power Station in North Yorkshire, is to be built by Alstom in a Engineering, Procurement and
Construction (“EPC”) contract, of some £50 million (€63 million), signed today, 20th May, 2008.

Second Largest Copper Mine in US upgraded to 637 million tonnes

Rio Tinto has further strengthened its global copper resources with the upgrade of mineral resources to 637 million tonnes at 0.48 per cent copper at its wholly owned Kennecott Utah Copper Bingham Canyon Mine. The resource is located beneath the current Bingham Canyon pit, and is currently under study for extraction by open pit mining methods. This represents an increase of 628 million tonnes over the December 2007 resource statement.

As the second largest copper producer in the United States, Kennecott Utah Copper provides about 13 per cent of US copper needs. Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine, located in the Salt Lake City Valley, is the largest man-made excavation in the world. It has been in operation for more than 100 years and has produced more copper ore, 16.4 million tonnes, than any mine in the world. Every year, Kennecott produces approximately 272,000 tonnes of copper, along with 500,000 ounces of gold, 4 million ounces of silver, about 30 million pounds of molybdenum, and about 0.9 million tonnes of sulphuric acid, a by-product of the smelting process.

The resource at Bingham Canyon Mine has been generated to comply with the JORC code guidelines.

Rio’s Hunter Valley Coal output limited by infrastructure

Constraints in the Hunter Valley Coal Chain continued to limit coal production. Total coal produced in the first quarter was one per cent lower than the corresponding quarter in 2007 and three per cent lower than the fourth quarter of 2007.

Coal & Allied production report for the quarter ended 31 March 2008

Coal & Allied’s Hunter Valley operations

Hunter Valley on Wikipedia

Drax switches off CUTLASS

Thursday 3 April, 2008 marked the end of an era for Drax as the
power station turned off its last remaining CUTLASS plant operating
system in favour of the modern APMS (Advanced Plant Management System),
changing the operation of the power station from the touch of a button
to the click of a mouse.

CUTLASS (Computer Users Technical Language and Software System), a 1970s programmable system developed by the nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB).

See this Drax press release

Rio Tinto to use 160 MW cogeneration to reduce CO2 emissions at QLD alumina refinery

Rio Tinto Alcan ’s Yarwun alumina refinery, near Gladstone, Queensland is progressing on budget and is on track for its first shipment of alumina in the second half of 2010. The US$1.8 billion project, announced in July 2007, will more than double annual production of the refinery, taking output from 1.4 million tonnes to 3.4 million tonnes by 2011.

The expansion project includes a gas-based 160 MW cogeneration plant which will reduce CO2 emissions per tonne of alumina by 35 per cent relative to coal.

“In the eight months since the expansion project began, engineering is approaching 25 per cent completion with over US$900 million committed by the end of February 2008,” Project Director Keith Nugent said.

“There have been no lost time injuries on the project, with more than 400,000 hours worked, as at 29 February 2008, with a current workforce of just over 300 on site. We expect to commence our first major concrete pour at the end of March 2008”, he said.

On completion, the expanded refinery, at 3.4 million tonnes per year, will produce about four per cent of the total global alumina demand.

Rio Tinto Alcan Chief Operating Officer – Pacific, Bauxite and Alumina, Alistair Field said the refinery was performing strongly, with recent production the best since the refinery began operating.

“Since implementing a number of process enhancements in October 2007 the plant has delivered record operating performance and further improvements have been identified to exceed nameplate capacity in 2008,” Mr Field said.

“Rio Tinto has a defined pathway to become the largest producer of alumna, and we will pursue this, while retaining our focus on excellence in health, safety and environmental performance.”

With increased production at Yarwun, and expansion of the Gove refinery, Rio Tinto Alcan will double its Australian alumina capacity by 2015.