By Matthew Mosk
Sen. John McCain will hold what is expected to be the biggest single fundraiser of his political career in New York City tonight, an event that organizers now predict will raise $7 million for his White House bid.
The fundraiser is the first event at which the senator will couple his own fundraising efforts with those of the Republican National Committee and with several of McCain's state committees, meaning he is able to legally raise a total of $70,000 from each guest. One organizer said those attending the event include New York investment banker Lew Eisenberg, New York Yankees President Randy Levine, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, and "all the biggest hedge fund people you can imagine."
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Wednesday, 7 May 2008
McCain's 7 Million Dollar Night
EXCLUSIVE: See Mariah & Nick's Wedding Photo!
Yep, they did it! If there was any doubt Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon's wedding was the real deal, they answer the question once and for all in this week's issue of PEOPLE, speaking for the first time about their surprise nuptials – and showing off exclusive photos from their April 30 ceremony.
"We really do feel we are soulmates," Carey tells PEOPLE, following their sunset ceremony at the pop star's Bahamian estate. "I never felt a love like this was in the cards for me."
Cannon adds: "She is beautiful on the outside and 10 times as beautiful on the inside."
For more on Mariah & Nick's whirlwind romance – including photos of their new tattoos, details on Nick's candy-themed proposal, and their plans for kids (!) – pick up the latest PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday
By Liz McNeil
Originally posted Wednesday May 07, 2008 10:00 AM EDT
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American Idol: Top 3 & Jason Castro
First off, anyone who cries should be disqualified immediately. This is American Idol not Old Yeller! Syesha broke down this week. I forget why. Maybe it was when Paula was blowing sunshine up her skirt, telling her what a great star she is. Of course she also said that to Vonzell Solomon, Anthony Federov, Carmen Rasmussen, and Trenyce.
But I will give her this -- Syesha had the line of the night. Talking about why she chose to sing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Going to Come" she equated the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s to her journey on American Idol. Get real, Syesha! You had it so much harder.
I hate this week and next. There's no suspense. We know who's going to win. David Archuleta clinched that Tuesday night. The fun geezer mentors have all moved on to more drastic plastic surgery or their ninth comeback tours, we're past the actual "theme" shows (can anything beat last year's "Latin Night", which did more harm to U.S./Latin relations than the Spanish-American War), your favorite has been booted off, and the Fox celebrities in the audience have been reduced to the bald guy on Prison Break.
Tonight's theme was the "Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame Museum". (The producers must be getting a buck for every admission ticket sold this week.) This is such a narrow theme that "Baba O'Reilly" and "Love Me Tender" both qualified.
(Next year for the Top 4 why not make the theme the "4 Tops"? I'm just sayin'.)
David Archuleta's dad chose two very good songs for him. "Stand By Me" the 1962 Ben E. King hit that David just "happened" to sing all the time in his room, thus making him the only 17 year old in America who knows of that song. (Dad picked it, who we fooling?) And then "Love Me Tender" from the Rock n' Roll Museum's schmaltzy wing.
But not only did he sing both great, he out-sang David Cook -- and this was rock n' roll night. David Cook's milieu. It's like if there were "monosyllabic grunt night" you'd expect Jason Castro to do well. Or at least passable.
David Cook's two songs were "Hungry Like the Wolf", which was "Boring Like the Drying Paint" and "Baba O'Reilly" - better but hardly "kick ass". More like "accidentally brushing against ass".
Syesha's first tune was "Proud Mary". She thought she was doing Tina Turner, but she was really doing the road tour of "Ain't Misbehavin'". Her second song was "A Change is Going to Come". Sam Cooke originally sang it with a certain ease. Syesha almost brought her liver up through her throat.
And then there was Jason Castro. If American Idol were The Godfather Jason would be Fredo. This guy is an absolute disgrace. This week he massacred "I Shot the Sheriff" (adding the nice touch of having a guitar but never playing it) and then on "Mr. Tambourine Man" he not only killed it but then had sex with its empty skull. What does it say when he forgot some of the lyrics and that was the best part of his performance? Jason Castro has to go.
Next week I imagine is the tedious visits to the finalists' hometowns. The banners. The proclamations. The parades down Main Street and through the trailer parks.
Just announce that David Archuleta is the winner and let us get on with our sad pathetic lives already.
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This Coca-Cola Commercial is Simply Amazing! [Video]
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Free Blogger Templates Resources
To have a better look for your blog or to have 3-column blog templates you need good template resource from where you can download the template and use it free for your blog.
So here I am mentioning free blogger templates resources which you can use. Personally I like 3-column blog templates because we can add more page elements including more google adsense ad units. I have selected these resources based on following criteria
1) They are suitable for different blog topics. Their look is good and professional.
2) There are 2-column blog templates and 3-column blog templates.
3) Some of the templates are SEO friendly.
4) Some templates has facility to add google adsense code into post body.
This templates are for blogger/blogspot users. I will add resources for wordpress users later.
http://freshbloggertemplates.blogspot.com/
http://www.finalsense.com/services/blog_templates/index.htm
http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/
http://webtalks.blogspot.com/2007/04/downlaod-three-column-new-
blogger.html
http://freeskins.blogspot.com/
http://www.eblogtemplates.com/templates/blogger-templates/
I will keep updating this list. If you know any good resource for blog templates please leave a comment here .
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How to add google adsense in post body
This widget/code is for blogger/blogspot users ,who want to add a 200x 200 google adsense unit in their post ,either on left side or right side.
After login , go to dashboard , then go to layout , then go to edit html ,then click on expand widget template , then within html code search for
After this code add
After this code , please paste google adsense code given below ,or your generated google adsense code with the options suggested.The code needs to be parsed i.e. check image which follows code.You can parse your code here http://www.blogcrowds.com/resources/parse_html.php
Check this image for parsed code as it can not be typed here.
Instructions:
1. pub-xxxxxxxxxxx is google publisher code ,which you need replace with your publisher code i.e. replace xxxxxxxxxx with your google publisher code.
2.The line 'float:left' is for placing ad on left hand side of post ,if you make it right, ad will appear on right side of post. Right side is recommended.
3. Parse code as shown in image , it is necessary. Click on image to enlarge
4. After adding parsed code you need to add div code as shown in picture.
5. Please save your original template before making any changes.
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Your College Life Ambition [PIC]
(Comedy)
I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry. The Nobel Prize sounds pretty nice, but... Pepperoni pizza is awesome, too!
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Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Make a Date With ‘Iron Man 2’ in April 2010 - New York Magazine
Courtesy of Marvel and Paramount
Bruckheimer and Bay, Cowboys: It's by no means official or even close to happening, but we still want to point out the amazing possibility that Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay might team up on a project called Cocaine Cowboys. Good joke, reality. Our work here is done. [Variety]
Three Hunt Peacock: Bill Pullman, Susan Sarandon, and Josh Lucas have joined Mandate's psychological thriller Peacock, the story of a mystery woman who appears in a small Nebraska town when a train crashes into someone's backyard. Location, location, location. [HR]
Common Will Be Back: Rapper Common will co-star in Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, along with Christian Bale and Sam Worthington. The fourth installment apparently discards the premise of time-traveling robots and focuses on the parts we used to skip: adult John Conner leading the resistance. Even more troubling is that the film will be rated PG-13. [Variety]
Universal Grabs Knights: Universal has picked up The Knights Templar, a period action spec from Adam Torchia and Justin Stanley, about a fictional last stand when knights of the Crusades fend off a vampire army seeking to destroy the Holy Grail. At last, the perfect movie. [HR]Found this article useful? Mention us in your post, subscribe to our feed, link to us, or bookmark this site. Thanks for your support
Monday, 5 May 2008
Naruto 422
Read it online here [Hit F11 to view in Full Screen]][Fast if Page Loaded]
Online viewer
Online Viewer[Left / Right key Supported]
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Sunday, 4 May 2008
Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo
Microsoft said Saturday that it was abandoning its blockbuster bid to acquire Yahoo after it raised its offer by $5 billion but Yahoo rejected it as still too low.
The about-face followed a meeting on Saturday morning in Seattle between Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, and Yahoo’s chief and co-founder, Jerry Yang, according to a person familiar with the talks.
At the meeting, which also included Yahoo’s other founder, David Filo, and a Microsoft president who oversees its online unit, Kevin Johnson, Mr. Ballmer increased Microsoft’s offer to $33 a share, or a total of about $47.5 billion, from $29.40 a share. Mr. Yang told Mr. Ballmer that Yahoo would not accept an offer below $37 a share, this person said.
“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer,” Mr. Ballmer said in a statement. “After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal.”
A person close to Yahoo said the price was not the only stumbling block. The person said Yahoo was also concerned that the deal could be blocked by regulators and wanted a higher offer, in part, as a hedge against that risk.
Microsoft’s decision to walk away casts a cloud of uncertainty over Yahoo and its shareholders. The breakdown in the talks is likely to send Yahoo’s shares plunging, and Mr. Yang and his team will have to decide how to placate investors.
The company has been exploring alternatives to a marriage with Microsoft, including a partnership in search advertising with its arch rival, Google, which could lift Yahoo’s profit and perhaps its stock price. Yahoo has also discussed possible mergers with the AOL unit of Time Warner and the MySpace unit of the News Corporation. The MySpace talks have not been active of late.
But both remaining options pose challenges. A Google partnership would be likely to attract scrutiny from regulators because of Google’s dominance over online search and advertising, while AOL and Yahoo have many overlapping businesses and technologies, making a merger difficult.
In a statement issued late Saturday, Mr. Yang said, “With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history.”
Reactions inside Yahoo are likely to be mixed. Several senior executives favored selling to Microsoft and said in recent days that they were hoping to see a deal happen. Yet other executives were high-fiving each other for defeating Microsoft’s bid, people close to the company said.
While its stock may fall on Monday, Yahoo’s management was encouraged by discussions with its largest investors in which they urged management to not accept $33 a share, these people said. For Mr. Yang, Microsoft’s withdrawal is considered a “personal victory,” according to one person who spoke with him.
Microsoft has spent years and billions of dollars trying to build an online business. Yet it has steadily lost ground to Google in the search business and has failed to gain significant momentum with advertisers.
Microsoft’s decision to abandon its pursuit of Yahoo is not necessarily the last chapter in the three-month-old saga. If Yahoo’s shares fall significantly, the company will be under intense pressure to act, and may choose to resume negotiations.
Earlier this year, under intense shareholder pressure, BEA Systems did just that, agreeing to a takeover by Oracle soon after Oracle dropped an unsolicited offer it had made for BEA.
“This seems like a very strong but serious negotiating tactic,” said Jonathan Miller, the former chairman and chief executive of AOL. “It will be up to Yahoo to come back to the negotiating table.”
Microsoft had threatened to pursue a hostile takeover if it could not come to an agreement with Yahoo’s management. That could have involved an appeal directly to Yahoo’s shareholders and an effort to remove members of Yahoo’s board of directors.
In a letter to Mr. Yang sent on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Ballmer wrote: “It is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest.”
He added: “Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.” Mr. Ballmer took particular aim at Yahoo’s discussions of a partnership with Google, noting that it would “make an acquisition of Yahoo undesirable to us for a number of reasons.”
Microsoft’s decision to abandon its bid is likely to raise questions among investors about the judgment of both Microsoft and Yahoo.
When Microsoft made its initial bid, it said Yahoo was an important part of its strategy to take on Google. Its choice to withdraw, after threatening to force a shareholder vote, may prompt its shareholders to doubt its resolve. At the same time, many Microsoft shareholders who did not want the company to bid for Yahoo may be relieved and send shares of Microsoft higher on Monday.
MPAA Silently Drops Case Against BitTorrent Site
In 2005, DVDr-core was the first BitTorrent site that was targeted by the MPAA outside the US. A classic story: Man runs site, man gets sued over site, nothing more is ever heard. Whilst in most cases, this means that the defendant bowed to pressure, paid an out of court settlement, and promised not to do it again, that is not the case here.
For those that don’t remember, lets recap. It was a little over three years ago that Hollywood took their first blast against a BitTorrent site in Europe with a lawsuit against DVDr-core. The notification (see end), served at the home address of the domain owner one Saturday morning in March 2005, led to more than a few anxious nights for fellow torrent site admins and users, wondering who would be next to get a knock at the door.
The site, which closed in December 04, after Hanff and the site’s administrators heard about raids in Holland, was not administered by Hanff, but by some online friends of his. Shortly after this dawn raid by a process server, Hanff -who had just started a new job- appeared on an episode of the BBC show “NewsNight”. The day after it aired, he was fired, for having views on copyright that the company felt were incompatible with its own, and for not disclosing the case.
That was the situation at the end of 2005 anyway. And now, more than two years have passed and he has heard nothing new. Despite the claims in the letters he has received, Hanff doesn’t think the case went any further, and was quietly dropped. “The last thing I had was a letter from the MPAA lawyers with a copy of a motion for a default [judgment]”, he told TorrentFreak. “That was November 2005 – had that motion been granted I should have heard from the courts.” The hearing in question would have been around the middle of December 2005. “I haven’t even received anything from the court about that hearing – which I should have done – so I am sceptical as to whether or not it actually went ahead”
Perhaps the MPAA felt they didn’t need to proceed any more, after all, thanks to the case, Mr Hanff lost his job, and they didn’t have to run the risk of an adverse judgment in court. As has been discussed in the past, the anti-filesharing litigation campaigns seems to be less about compensating the artists, and more about harassment, and manufacturing cases to boost lobbying efforts. It would appear that this is just more of the same – mudslinging in lieu of any actual case. The document received by Mr. Hanff is certainly full of accusations, threats, and exaggerations – something that recently cost a French Lawyer her ability to practice law.
It does bring into some doubt the ability or the desire for the MPAA to litigate outside the cozy confines of the US. It also seems to indicate the way the oink case will go, as it just had it’s bail date extended again, although it is a criminal case, whilst dvdr-core is a civil case. Nevertheless, the extension of the case with no action except the initial accusation does draw the similarities closer.
In the meantime, Mr Hanff has been spending his energies tacking Phorm, the illegal and widespread invasion of browsing privacy to target adverts via deep packet inspection in association with UK ISPs. His dissertation on the subject can be read here.
Written by Ben Jones on May 03, 2008
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IRON MAN - FANS REVIEW
This is a video response to IRON MAN SPEAKS
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Smosh - Beef 'n Go
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Saturday, 3 May 2008
Thousands turn out for Kentucky Derby breakfast
FRANKFORT, Ky. - Thousands have turned out for a free Kentucky Derby breakfast of eggs, ham, sausage, biscuits and cheese grits at the Capitol.
Officials threw the traditional breakfast Saturday morning, even as other state-sponsored events surrounding the Derby are being scaled back because of budget cuts.
Gov. Steve Beshear says the state is being more efficient and not spending as much money as in past years. Even so, Beshear says there's as much fun this year as in previous years.
Kentucky is facing a $900 million revenue shortfall over the next two fiscal years. The legislature last month approved a two-year $19 billion spending plan that includes funding cuts to numerous government agencies and programs.
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Giant Stingrays Found Near Thai City [PICS]
IMAGE — news.nationalgeographic.com
The raised spiracles, or breathing holes, that allow giant freshwater stingrays to breathe while hiding under riverbed mud are clearly visible on a newborn on March 31, 2008, in Thailand.
The baby was born in the busy Bang Pakong River, where populations of the massive fish appear surprisingly healthy. Yet the rays are still listed as "vulnerable" on the World Conservation Union's 2007 Red List of Threatened Species.
"We know almost nothing about its abundance and habitat needs," biologist Zeb Hogan said.
"That makes it extremely difficult to manage the species."
—Photograph by Stefan Lovgren
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Warez Leader Is Chairman Of San Diego Republican Party
This week, a 30 year old man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his involvement in the so-called pirate ‘warez scene’. In what appears to be some sort of bizarre parallel universe, it’s been revealed that another notorious pirate has an interesting job - he’s chairman of the San Diego Republican Party.
Reading about the case of David M. Fish, this week almost seemed like an action reply of other similar cases of busts in the ‘warez scene‘. Operating between 2003 and 2005, Fish was found guilty of various copyright infringement offenses and was jailed for 30 months with a further three years on probation, which is pretty standard fare in these type of cases.
So image if you will, the amazing contrast between Mr Fish’s predicament and that of Tony Krvaric, chairman of the San Diego Republican Party. At first glance, they seem very different - but look closer.
To better appreciate the gap, here is some background on Tony Krvaric, courtesy of a Raw Story report and the Republican Party website:
Born and raised in Sweden, Tony Krvaric was inspired by President Ronald Reagan to come to America. Though only a youth, he vowed to one day become an American and pursue his American Dream. The first step was to start his own business, and in 1992 when the opportunity presented itself, he moved to San Diego.
After becoming a naturalized citizen in June of 2003, he decided to become politically involved. Having seen, first hand, the devastating effects of socialism in Sweden and the rest of Europe, he was determined to stand up for the traditional, conservative values that helped make America great.
So what does a politician have to do with warez? Well, the strange truth is that Tony Krvaric is none other than a co-founder of notorious warez group, Fairlight. Krvaric -who started his cracking career at the “West Coast Crackers”- was in fact one of the most well-known individuals in the Warez scene at the time. Fairlight remained active after Krvaric left in 1993, and several members of the group were eventually arrested by the FBI in 2004.
During Fairlight’s earlier days and their involvement in the Commodore 64 cracking and demo scene, although cautious, the members couldn’t have imagined the punishments that are given out today. Although Krvaric isn’t shy in letting the world know some of his history and present-day situation on the C-64 Scene Database;
Presently works as a full-service financial consultant for individuals and families who share his values - helping them grow, preserve and distribute their wealth. He lives in San Diego with his wife and four children. Is a member of the Republican Party.
The excellent article goes on to list other alleged infringements by Krvaric over the years, and although he appeared to leave Fairlight in 1992, there are suggestions that he was still in charge of the group as late as 2004. It’s not possible to say if this is true or not, but according to sources, the group appeared to be operational in late 2007.
Apparently, Krvaric has now sent an email out to fellow Republicans, trying to calm the waters:
Apparently there’s a hit piece floating around on me, “exposing” my wild high school, teenage years where I was in a computer club where we swapped Commodore 64 games (similar to how kids swap mp3 music files these days). This was in the 80’s, on a computer that’s long since defunct!
[In] 1990 I graduated high school, grew up and started my own business, and then in 1992 I came to this country, continuing the same business (selling computer and video game chips and accessories as well as some nonperishable foodstuffs, taking over my father’s business for a while after he died in 1994) until I left that field when the profit margins became too thin to make any money – around 1997 or so. That’s when I became a financial consultant, which I remain to this day.
I’m sure glad they didn’t look in to my elementary school years, as there’s some really embarrassing stuff that I did in 4th grade. BTW, I also heard a rumor that another fellow committee member (who shall remain unnamed) once made a tape copy of his friend’s favorite vinyl record.
I don’t know who is spreading this but just wanted to let you know what’s going on out there. Likely it’s someone who wants us to take our eye off the ball in 2008, be it the democrats, labor or someone else. Either way, we’re not going to let them get away with it. Thanks for your leadership.
I wonder which way the newly-convicted copyright infringer David Fish would vote - if he was allowed to? Speaking of voting, Krvaric - running for reelection in 2008 - registered his email address with the Registrar of Voters. No-one can accuse him of trying to hide anything, that’s for sure:
tkrvaric@fairlight.com
Written by enigmax on May 02, 2008Found this article useful? Mention us in your post, subscribe to our feed, link to us, or bookmark this site. Thanks for your support
Obama: Don’t Judge Me from Wright’s Comments
Getty
Says at North Carolina J-J dinner Friday night that the campaign shouldn’t be focused on his former pastor.
“As we’ve done well in this election, as we’ve been successful, increasingly my opponents have spent their time talking, not about the issues, but about me.”
NY Times: “…the cavernous room exploded with energy when Mr. Obama walked onto the stage after Mrs. Clinton, who received a rousing, yet far more tepid, reception.”
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My Dog Max Sings the Blues!
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Friends React to Mariah & Nick's Marriage
Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon's recent wedding not only surprised fans, but their friends and close associates, too.
"I'm shell shocked," a source in Carey's camp tells PEOPLE. "As far as I know, they are happy together."
Music mogul Russell Simmons said he didn't know about the nuptials ahead of time, but sees why the pairing works. "Whatever makes them happy," he said Friday. "They have a lot in common and should have a lot of fun together."
Even Cannon's family was surprised by the move. "It's crazy right! We're definitely happy. Well wishes!" Cannon's brother, Gabriel, tells PEOPLE. "I'm trying to be like him and I love him very much."
Another insider says the newlyweds didn't know each other before Carey's video shoot for her song "Bye, Bye" in the Caribbean on March 26. "Nick was cast as the romantic lead and was flown to Antigua where they met so basically their [romance] started during the shoot," the insider says, adding, "She's very into religion and Nick is very into religion. That's something they bonded on."
Whatever their connection, Jacob Arabo, who created the diamond sparkler that the actor gave the singer as an engagement ring, tells PEOPLE that his friend is in love with Carey.
Still, others seem more dubious of the whirlwind romance.
"This is what Nick does; Nick is such a sucker for love," said a source close to Cannon. "He falls in love so quick."
Adds another Cannon insider: "We all thought it was a joke, but he's been impulsive before. He's a mini mogul but still young and maybe this was a crush that went too far.
"Well see. He takes awhile to come down from the cloud."
• Reporting by MARY MARGARET, JESSICA HERNDON, and JEFFREY SLONIM
Originally posted Saturday May 03, 2008 09:00 AM EDT
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How to properly hug a baby!
How to properly hug a baby
 | If you think you've spotted a baby, verify by employing classic sniffing techniques. Baby powder is a dead giveaway. |
 | Flatten the baby before actually beginning the hugging process. |
 | Simply slide paws around baby and prepare for possible close-up. |
 | If a camera is present, you will need to execute the difficult and patented hug, smile, and lean in order to achieve the best photo quality. |
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Hillary Clinton, Fairy Princess - Can we please stop pretending she has a plausible chance to win the nomination? [politics] (slate.com)
Can we please stop pretending she has a plausible chance to win the nomination?
"Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."
—former President Bill Clinton, Jan. 11, 2008. Clinton was criticizing Sen. Barack Obama's claim to have opposed the Iraq war more consistently than Hillary Clinton. This claim was, Clinton said, "the central argument for his campaign. 'It doesn't matter that I started running for president less than a year after I got to the Senate from the Illinois state senate. I am a great speaker, a charismatic figure, and I'm the only one who had the judgment to oppose this war from the beginning, always, always, always.' " (Click here for the video.)
Here's a rule I would like every political reporter, campaign official, TV talking head, and politician in the United States to follow. Go ahead and say, if you like, that Hillary Clinton retains a serious chance of winning the Democratic nomination. If you say this, however, you must describe a set of circumstances whereby this could happen. Try not to make it sound like a fairy tale.
Yes, Obama has dropped a few points in national polls, and Clinton has picked up a few points, putting her in the lead. The Gallup Tracking Poll had it 49-45 for Clinton on April 30, compared to 50-42 for Obama on April 15. That isn't surprising in a week when Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, elaborated on his most controversial statements at the National Press Club (click here for the video), prompting Obama to distance himself more emphatically ("I will talk to him perhaps some day in the future. … Inexcusable. … I do not see that relationship being the same after this") than he had earlier in a stirring speech on race.
The only number that matters, however, is 2,025, which is how many delegates a candidate will need to secure the nomination. Obama has 1,488 primary delegates to Clinton's 1,334, according to the Associated Press delegate tracker. Add in superdelegates and Obama has 1,736 to Clinton's 1,602. Obama needs 289 more delegates to win the nomination. Hillary needs 423. There are three ways to win these additional delegates:
- In the nine Democratic primaries and caucuses that remain, in which about 400 delegates are at stake
- By winning over still-undecided superdelegates, of whom about 290 remain
- By persuading the necessary number of superdelegates and/or primary delegates among the 1,736 pledged to Obama to change their allegiances. The former will be difficult to achieve, and the latter, though permitted, will be extremely difficult to achieve
It's numerically impossible for Hillary to get to 2,025 through the remaining primaries and caucuses. In theory, Obama could get to 2,025 that way, but to do so he'd need to capture, on average, 71 percent of the vote in every remaining contest, according to Slate's "Delegate Calculator." That obviously isn't going to happen. Hence the relentless press focus on the superdelegates. They will almost certainly choose the nominee.
A great debate has taken place on how superdelegates ought to choose the nominee. Should they vote their conscience, or should they follow the popular will? We could debate that one all day. The more relevant question is: How do superdelegates choose the nominee? Answer: They tend to follow the popular will. That's why superdelegates gravitated to Clinton when polls showed she looked like a sure thing, and then to Obama when he started outpolling her. That's why more than one-third of the superdelegates remain uncommitted now. Believe me, it isn't because they haven't been paying attention, and (except for a few head cases) it isn't because, after 23 Democratic debates, they still don't know which candidate tickles their fancy. It's because they're reluctant to be out of step with the popular will as expressed through all the primaries and caucuses. The longer any given superdelegate waits to make his or her endorsement, the likelier he or she is to choose whoever ends up with a plurality of delegates. Why else wait?
The 291 undecideds have now waited a very long time.
This is an important point, so I'm going to repeat it. The longer a superdelegate waits to choose, the likelier he'll choose whoever the primaries and caucuses chose.
That means whoever ends the primary season with a plurality of delegates is all but certain to win the nomination, unless the plurality is so paper-thin as to be meaningless. According to Slate's delegate calculator, Clinton needs to win, on average, 70 percent of the vote in every remaining contest in order to surpass Obama on pledged delegates. Remember when I said there was no way Obama would capture 71 percent? There's no way Clinton's going to capture 70 percent, either.
OK, let's see how Hillary can get close enough to call it a tie. If she gets within about 30, that's pretty close, right? To do that, she needs to win, on average, 65 percent of the vote in every remaining contest. That's still in the realm of extreme improbability. How about 60 percent? Which is to say: What if she wins every remaining contest, on average, by the 10-point spread she achieved in Pennsylvania? (It was really 9 points, but everybody thinks it was 10, so let's say 10.) That's a difference of 74 delegates, which is starting to sound like too many to justify throwing up your hands and declaring, "Close enough for government work." And, anyway, that's still too improbable to take very seriously. Do I hear a five-point average spread? OK, that's possible. Difficult to achieve, but possible. But that puts Obama 115 delegates ahead of Clinton. That is definitely too large a plurality to shrug off as a virtual tie.
But what if the superdelegates decide the will of the people resides in the popular vote? I doubt they will, because the popular vote seriously undercounts Obama's support in the caucus states. Even if they ignore that shortcoming, though, Hendrik Hertzberg has demonstrated that Obama right now has a plurality of 611,520 votes. That's not likely to change, because all the big-population states have already voted. Even if you toss in the delegates from Florida's unsanctioned primary, Obama maintains a plurality of 316,748. Add in Michigan and Clinton acquires a plurality of 121,783. But it's insane to count Michigan, because Obama wasn't even on the ballot there. (It is merely unfair to count Florida, because Obama was on the ballot there; in Florida, the problem is that neither candidate campaigned there.)
Hertzberg posited that a mental compromise might be reached in counting Michigan's popular vote by giving Obama all the "uncommitted votes." Clinton has on occasion tried to argue that the Michigan primary wasn't a Soviet-style election because most of the uncommitteds should be considered Obama supporters. OK, then, Hertzberg reasoned; let's include Florida and Michigan in the tally but count the Michigan uncommitteds for Obama. That leaves Obama with a margin of 188,439. If Clinton were to win every remaining contest by 10 points on average—which, as noted above, is too improbable to take seriously—Hertzberg calculated that she still would lose the popular vote by 161,520 votes.
That is, assuming Florida and Michigan went uncounted. Toss in Florida, and Clinton gains a popular-vote plurality of 133,252. But this scenario depends on three highly improbable contingencies: The superdelegates decide it's fair to equate the popular vote in primaries and caucuses with the popular will (which it isn't); Clinton wins by 10 percent everywhere from now on (which she won't); and the superdelegates decide it's fair to consider the popular vote in Florida (which seems doubtful).
That leaves Option 3, which is for Clinton to convince the already-pledged primary delegates and/or superdelegates that they must change their minds. This has happened in the distant past; Charles Peters cites in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly the Republican convention nominating the last-minute entrant Wendell Willkie in 1940. But that was in a different era, when much less than a third of all convention delegates were chosen by primary; everyone else was, in effect, a superdelegate. Ted Kennedy tried and failed to turn Carter's primary delegates (there were no superdelegates) at the 1980 convention. Mondale turned a few of Hart's primary delegates in 1984, but he already had a delegate plurality, which made his job a lot easier; he just needed to turn that plurality into a majority. At the 2008 convention, Clinton's position would be comparable to Kennedy's in 1980, not to Mondale's in 1984.
What would it take for Clinton to start a stampede? A massive, catastrophic drop in the polls for Obama. But the only way for that to happen is for Clinton to tear into Obama so viciously, Lee Atwater-style, that she destroys her own reputation, causing her to lose the general election and very likely her Senate seat, too. Not going to happen. Clinton is determined, but she isn't insane.
That exhausts the possibilities. Not one of them is plausible. So, please, let's stop pretending there's much suspense about who the nominee will be. As an arithmecrat, I will not consider anyone the winner until a candidate achieves 2,025 delegates. But neither am I obliged to believe Hillary Clinton has a plausible shot. She doesn't.
Posted Friday, May 2, 2008, at 7:21 PM ET
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Conan O'Brien Shows "Toned Down" GTA IV
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US fighter pilots navigating crowded airspace in Iraq
ABOARD THE USS HARRY S. TRUMAN - U.S. pilots flying missions over Iraq come to the region expecting a host of challenges, including swirling sandstorms and urban battlefields filled with a mix of enemies and civilians.
But Naval aviators flying off the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman said one of the newest difficulties has been the least expected: navigating increasingly crowded airspace in a region that has experienced the world's fastest airline growth in recent years.
The mix of U.S. combat aircraft and civilian planes from booming Gulf airlines illustrates the growing divide in the Middle East between countries like Iraq and Lebanon, which are mired in political and sectarian conflict, and oil-rich nations such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar enjoying a windfall revenue and surging investment.
Cmdr. Bill Sigler, head of an F/A-18 fighter jet squadron on the USS Truman, estimated that planes flying off the carrier headed north over the Persian Gulf to Iraq were confined to one-fifth of the airspace available the last time he was in the region in 2002 because of increased airline traffic.
"You have to carve a strip out of the middle of the Gulf and that's frequently below 15,000 feet, which for us is like confining your car to the sidewalk," said Sigler. "It does not give us much to work with."
The Truman's battle group ended its Gulf deployment this week and is returning to Norfolk, Va. It was replaced by the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
Civilian air traffic controllers work with U.S. pilots flying to Iraq to keep them on their designated routes, a process that has become more complicated as the number of flights has ballooned.
"Now it is a spider web of networks that crisscross the Gulf," said Sigler.
Civilian air traffic in the Mideast doubled between 2002 and 2007, according to the International Air Transport Association. Mideast airline traffic is still relatively light compared with North America and Europe, but the region's growth rate galloped at more than 18 percent last year — far faster than any place in the West.
The boom in Gulf air traffic — particularly with carriers such as Emirates and Qatar Airways — has been driven by oil-funded airline investments and the region's strategic location as a hub between Asia and the U.S. and Europe, said John Strickland, a London-based airline analyst.
"Between their geographic location and the ultra-long range aircraft that are becoming available, they can pretty much fly nonstop anywhere in the world," said Strickland. "They have really introduced services that wouldn't have been possible 5-10 years ago, and the demand has really come through."
Capt. Fredrick Pawlowski, commander of the entire air wing on the USS Truman, said the increased air traffic has made flying missions into Iraq from the Gulf more difficult but also reflected stability and growth in the region.
"In the last five years since I was here previously, we have been constricted in our airspace, in the routes we can fly in and out of the country because of good things," said Pawlowski. "That is, access is there because we can guarantee it."
But Sigler said the airline growth has brought with it an increased risk of mid-air collisions with military aircraft headed toward Iraq.
Two F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Truman crashed after they collided in January over the Gulf. The three aviators involved were plucked safely the Gulf. Sigler said the incident involved pilot error, but the accident occurred in the same block of airspace where airlines fly in and out of Kuwait.
"Ironically, we thought that if we had a mid-air (collision), it would be with somebody else, not in-house," said Sigler.
Pilots say the problem of crowded airspace gets even more difficult once they enter Iraq because of the layers of manned and unmanned military aircraft, known as UAVs, and civilian planes flying in and out of the major cities — making it among the most crowded skies in military history.
"There are little UAVs, there are helicopters, there are bigger UAVs, there are airplanes, there are bigger airplanes, there are really big UAVs, there are really big airplanes, and there's commercial air traffic over there," said Rear Adm. William Gortney, commander of the USS Truman carrier group and a fighter pilot himself. "It's a real challenge."
Most of the civilian air traffic in the Gulf bypass Iraqi airspace, but several airlines conduct daily flights to cities including Baghdad, Basra, Irbil and Suleimaniyah.
"Our training ranges in the United States have something like that going on, but they don't bring (civilian) airplanes into land right in the middle of your bombing run," said Pawlowski.
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Writer 51 minutes agoFound this article useful? Mention us in your post, subscribe to our feed, link to us, or bookmark this site. Thanks for your support
Friday, 2 May 2008
Make The Most Of Your Tax Rebate
Those federal tax rebates you've been hearing about? The IRS is due to send the first checks on May 9. Payments will continue for months. But don't get too excited. If you have a decent income, you may get little or nothing.
Still, your children might get rebates. Ditto for your parents, if they're retired.
So here are a few ideas for using the rebates. Discuss them around the family dinner table.
Not all of these ideas will stimulate the economy, as Washington intended. But hey, it's your family's money.
The basic rebate amount equals the income tax owed for 2007 with limits. There's a cap of $600 for single taxpayers. For married couples filing jointly, the cap is $1,200.
There's a $300 rebate for every child who was under 17 at the end of last year.
Say a hypothetical John and Mary Smith file a joint return. They have three young children. They might expect a $2,100 rebate: their $1,200 plus $900 for their three children.
But they might not get it. To get a full rebate, their adjusted gross income (AGI) must be no more than $150,000.
Over that threshold, there's a 5% phaseout.
Suppose the Smiths report AGI of $170,000 in 2007. That's $20,000 over the limit.
Five percent of $20,000 is $1,000. Their rebate would be reduced by that $1,000. Instead of $2,100, the Smiths would get $1,100.
The size of the rollback increases as a taxpayer's AGI rises. So if the Smiths' AGI is $192,000 or higher, they would get no rebate.
The calculation is the same for single taxpayers. The phaseout starts at $75,000 of AGI.
A childless single taxpayer would get no rebate with AGI over $87,000. If any taxpayer has children, the top end of the parent's phaseout range is extended by $6,000 for each child.
If your AGI tops the phaseout ceilings, you won't get a rebate. But your children might.
To get a rebate, they can't be claimed as dependents on your tax return. They must file a 2007 return. They must have paid tax or had at least $3,000 of earned income.
What To Do?
If your kids ask for advice about handling that money, what should you tell them?
"Tell them to pay down credit card debt," said Jamshed Gandi, a CPA in San Francisco who is a spokesman for the California Society of CPAs.
Interest rates on credit card balances may be as high as 20%, Gandi says. Paying down such a debt is the same as earning 20% per year on an investment, after-tax, with no risk.
If your children don't have credit card debt, they may want to pay down other debts such as student loans. That will depend on the interest rate being charged.
Say your children have no high-interest loans to pay down. The next alternative may be boosting 401(k) contributions.
If their employers are matching 401(k) contributions, your children should contribute at least enough to get the maximum employer match.
Say your daughter earns $40,000 a year. Her employer offers to match 401(k) contributions 50 cents on the dollar, up to 6% of pay.
So her maximum match would be $1,200: 50% of $2,400. If your daughter contributes less to her 401(k), she should adjust her periodic contributions so an amount equal to all or part of her rebate goes into the plan, up to the level where she'd get the maximum match.
Contributing more to a 401(k) might not make sense. Your daughter, in a low tax bracket, wouldn't get much benefit from the upfront tax deferral.
Instead, the next choice on the list might be contributing to a Roth IRA. In 2008, the top contribution for people under 50 is $5,000.
Roth IRA contributions deliver no initial tax advantages. But investment income is untaxed, inside the account.
And all withdrawals are tax-free, after five years. You also must be older than 591/2.
Say your daughter is 28. She puts $600 into her Roth IRA. Her money earns an average of 9% a year.
By the time she's 60 that $600 -- excluding any other contributions she makes over time -- will have grown to around $9,500. Your daughter could withdraw it all, tax-free, or let it keep growing in her Roth IRA.
Advice For Your Parents
So your children have several ways to profit from tax rebates. What if the money goes to your parents, who have relatively low income in retirement?
If they're concerned about running short of money, they can invest it, says Tom Ochsenschlager, vice president of taxation at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
He suggests an exchange-traded fund. Many are low-cost and tax efficient.
"If your parents are comfortable with what they've saved, they might consider a contribution to a 529 plan for their grandchildren," Ochsenschlager said. These plans offer tax-free investment buildup and tax-free withdrawals if the money is spent on higher education.
Investor's Business Daily
Friday May 2, 6:25 pm ET
Donald Jay Korn
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Iron Man is the Best-Reviewed Movie of 2008!
The Marvel adventure could be the best-reviewed superhero movie of all time.
by Jen Yamato | May 01, 2008
Sure to be the first bona fide blockbuster of 2008, Iron Man already has its first crown to claim. The Marvel icon's inaugural foray onto the big screen is not only Certified Fresh and Rotten Tomatoes' best-reviewed film of the year so far -- it's also potentially one of the highest-rated superhero movies of all time.
Paramount's Iron Man will kickstart the summer season when it opens nationwide this Friday, and tent poles don't get much bigger or better than this; as of today, Iron Man sits at 95 percent on the Tomatometer with 107 reviews counted. This puts the Jon Favreau pic in the number one spot among wide releases of 2008, with the concert documentary U2 3D (92 percent) and the Judd Apatow-produced comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall (85 percent) in the two and three positions.
Jon Favreau's directing history
Made (2001), 67 percent
Elf (2003), 83 percent
Zathura (2005), 76 percent
In particular, critics credit Robert Downey Jr.'s acerbic and witty turn as the conflicted weapons manufacturer Tony Stark, who uses a gift for mechanics and a newly sparked moral outrage to create the iconic Mark 2 suit -- a body of high-tech armor that allows him to fly, crash, and bang his way through throngs of bad guys. Favreau takes on his biggest directing job to date -- and acquits himself well, balancing special effects and character development with the excitement of a comics-crazed kid.
Click to watch RT's interview
with Robert Downey, Jr.
Not only does Iron Man currently sit atop the critical heap of all of the films released so far this year, it may also end up being one of the best-reviewed superhero movies ever made. Sam Raimi is the current king of the superhero flick; Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man(2002) are two of the best-reviewed comic book movies ever. And there's also Bryan Singer, whose Superman and X-Men movies have also been extremely well-received.
See how Iron Man lines up among the best superhero films of all time.
Best-Reviewed Superhero Movies
Spider-Man 2 (2004) -- 93 percent
Superman: The Movie (1978) -- 93 percent
Spider-Man (2002) -- 90 percent
X2: X-Men United (2003) -- 87 percent
Superman II (1980) -- 87 percent
Batman Begins (2005) -- 84 percent
X-Men (2000) -- 80 percent
Hellboy (2004) -- 79 percent
Superman Returns (2006) -- 77 percent
Tom Cruise aims to repair image
by JOE NEUMAIER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, May 2nd 2008, 6:25 PM
Tom Cruise went on Oprah in hopes of rebuilding his public image.
Tom Cruise's sit-down with Oprah Winfrey Friday was sparked by the 25th anniversary of the release of "Ricky Business," the 1983 hit that launched him to fame. Yet if the phrase "career retrospective" was on anyone's mind, it was quickly replaced by "career corrective."
In the quarter-decade since his breakthrough, Cruise has attained a place in American culture few have gotten to: A star whose very appearance in anything — paparazzi shot, celebrity magazine, certainly movie — brings up immediate gut reactions in the public. Since 2005, when he notoriously (and disastrously) bounded around on Winfrey's talk-show couch proclaiming his love for then-girlfriend, now-wife Katie Holmes, his stock has plummeted, at least domestically (internationally, his reputation still mostly revolves around his movies, though Germany has had loud issues with Scientology).
What most people forget is that Cruise was on that couch originally to promote his summer 2005 movie, Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds." (His subsequent disputes with Brooke Shields regarding postpartum depression and Matt Lauer about drugs and psychiatry also arose from the movie's promotion.)
Friday, Cruise wasn't promoting anything except himself. But that, of course, is what a movie star ultimately is always selling. When the public stops buying, alarm bells should go off.
They seem to have gone off for Cruise, and thus his return engagement with Oprah. Though "War of the Worlds" opened to a $65 million weekend and eventually grossed $230 million, his reputation took an irreparable hit. The following year's "Mission: Impossible III" had only a $47 million opening and less-than-super $135 million total (Paramount Pictures allegedly drew a line from his public behavior to those numbers and severed its ties. The rift is now reportedly repaired).
Last fall's quiet political drama, "Lions for Lambs," in which he costarred with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford and which Cruise and partner Paula Wagner executive produced, generated no buzz, eking out only $20 million total, paltry even for a movie of its modest size and budget.
In other words, this is the most crucial moment for Cruise since he slid across that floor in his underwear 25 years ago. When even people who know nothing about the film industry are aware that his next project, the WWII adventure "Valkyrie," had its release date bumped twice (it's now due February 2009), those alarm bells must sound like they're coming from Notre Dame.
His "performance" — and it was that — on Friday's Oprah may not stanch the flow of bad buzz pouring into the Cruise career ship. But it did show that the guy is aware that years of hits ("Top Gun," Cocktail," "A Few Good Men," "The Firm," "Mission: Impossible"), one Best Picture winner ("Rain Man") and some genuinely excellent performances ("The Color of Money," "Born on the Fourth of July," "Jerry Maguire," "Magnolia," "Minority Report," "Collateral") do not inoculate him from public scorn.
The problem is that Cruise didn't seem to be addressing that scorn as much as acknowledging it (though, for her part, Oprah wasn't exactly holding his feet to the fire). He said he now understands how the couch-jumping looked, and that when he went off on Lauer about psychiatry, he was concerned about the unnecessary overmedication of kids and "it came out wrong.... I shot the messenger."
He gave a rote defense of Scientology, conceding that it's a "minority religion" and that "people are curious about it" (that's a nice way to say it). He talked about his family, his daughter, Suri, and the intrusions of fame.
Basically, it was a boilerplate TV interview straight from the Barbara Walters playbook. What was notable was how the star, showing off his gorgeous Telluride home and its spectacular views (and even, briefly, his 29-year-old wife), nonetheless looked a bit tired, as if he was irked he had to deal with this at all. He looked away or down when Winfrey lobbed her softball questions, not even bothering to give a show of acting concerned or apologetic.
Maybe that was the right tack. If Cruise had appeared too eager to dispel people's preconceptions about him, his family and Scientology, it would have just been another "weird Tom Cruise moment" (Oprah did bring up the "Citizen Kane" of those, however, when she asked about the black-turtleneck Scientology video that was leaked earlier this year). By appearing a bit peeved, maybe he actually seemed more human.
And that, career-wise, could only be a good thing. One truth Cruise himself must know is that, as a box-office entity, expectations are so high for everything he does that even decent successes aren't enough. If his profile becomes more mortal, maybe Hollywood won't be so surprised when he doesn't draw in huge audiences.
The issue is, is there any audience now for someone whose personal goings-on not only impact his movies, but overshadow them? If "weird Tom Cruise moments" are all anyone knows about him, they can get those for free — no reason to see him fight aliens or spies or Nazis.
He gave none of those weird moments on Friday's "Oprah." Cruise was as subdued and down-to-Earth as he probably ever could be. But did anyone notice?
Oprah Winfrey's interview with Tom Cruise concludes Monday at 4 p.m. on Channel 7 (WABC).
The World's First Digital Camera
IMAGE — kodak.com
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Flash Music Player and Music Playlist
In our earlier article, Add Music to Blogspot Blog, we talked about how music can be played in the background of the blog or through a hyperlink or music console player. Readers had requested for an option to play more than one song via a playlist. We have been looking at cross-browser music players that allow us to display a music playlist of selected musical pieces for Blog readers to listen to. Here, we shall discuss what we believe is a good music player that can be played in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. The following are the instructions on how to embed the music player into the Blogger blog.
Overview
On the internet, there are several sites that offer music player widgets and gadgets (including Google Gadgets) that can be added to your blogs. Most of them have easy-to-navigate user interface, and sites like Sonific even offer free licensed music tracks that can be inserted into the widget. These are commercial sites and needless to say, in order to sustain their operations, there will be advertisements and sales promotions. Furthermore, the available songs that they have may not be the latest hits or to your liking.
If you would like more control over the choice of songs for your blog, follow the steps in this tutorial to upload the songs that you like and add a music player code into the Blogger blog. The music player plays MP3 songs which have smaller file size than .wav files.
XML Shareable Playlist Format
You may have come across file extensions .m3u and .asx. These are playlist files and clicking them will play the music or video files stored in the playlists. The new XML Shareable Playlist Format (XSPF) (pronounced 'spiff') is another playlist format for digital media. Although it is still in the early stages of being recognized as an Internet standard, many browsers are able to execute such file formats.
XSPF MP3 Music Player
The site that explains quite fully how a music player application using this XSPF playlist format works is Sourceforge.net. In that article by Fabricio Zuardi, you can find different player styles i.e., a Slim version that displays the basic controls and current music track; an Extended version that shows the controls, list of songs, album cover and music track; and a Button version that is simply a start and stop button. There is also an option for inclusion of the player into the Mozilla Firefox sidebar. What this does is to give readers an option to go to their Firefox Bookmarks and click “My Music Player” link to open the music player in their browser sidebar and listen to the songs while surfing other sites.
Extended Music Player
We shall focus on this extended music player version (demo at the bottom of this blog) which essentially displays a scrollable list of songs, have album pictures, and enable user control over the volume and play mode. First, click this link to download the music player files. Unzip the folder and save it. The files are free from virus and spam ware but you can of course scan them before downloading.
Next, upload all the player application files contained within the unzipped folder onto a web server. For our illustration, we have uploaded our files onto the free server at Google Page Creator. You can also refer to our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space for a list of other free file hosting services. Choose one that allows uploading of all types of files as well as hotlinking to those files. To test whether they allow hotlinking, upload a music file and if you type that music file url into an internet browser, you should be listening to that music instead of being brought to a page with other contents. If you have uploaded the application onto Google Pages, the player file will be located at http://yourname.googlepages.com/xspf_player.swf [Do note that Google Pages has a limit of 100MB in storage space.]
Upload Music Files
The aim is to allow readers to listen to your music pieces. Of course, we have to assume you already have the music files either in a music CD or computer. Convert them to MP3 formats. If you need a free music converter, look for one at Download.com. Upload these MP3 files onto the free server.
Create XSPF Music Playlist
After you have uploaded the songs, it is time to create the Playlist file. Open the application Microsoft Notepad. For most Windows users, the link should be at the Start Programs -> Accessories folder. Copy and paste the following into the Notepad.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <playlist version="0" xmlns = "http://xspf.org/ns/0/"> <!-- Insert the information into the colored portions. If there is none, just leave the field blank. Refer to http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/ for updates to the code. --> <title>Title to be displayed at top of player</title> <trackList> <track> <location>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song1.mp3</location> <image>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song1.jpg</image> <annotation>Song1 display text</annotation> </track> <track> <location>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song2.mp3</location> <image>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song2.jpg</image> <annotation>Song2 display text</annotation> </track> <track> <location>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song3.mp3</location> <image>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song3.jpg</image> <annotation>Song3 display text</annotation> </track> <track> <location>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song4.mp3</location> <image>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song4.jpg</image> <annotation>Song4 display text</annotation> </track> <track> <location>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song5.mp3</location> <image>http://yourname.googlepages.com/song5.jpg</image> <annotation>Song5 display text</annotation> </track> </trackList> </playlist> |
|---|
Insert into the colored portions the music URLs and the corresponding titles or text that you want to display. If there are no album covers or images that you want to upload, leave the fields blank. You can add more songs to the list. Copy and repeat the block of code (in italics).
After you have inserted all the information in Microsoft Notepad, click “Save As”. Under the drop down option “Save as type”, choose “All Files”. Assign a file name and end it with .xspf extension. For instance, if you decide to call it myplaylist, then enter the “File name” as “myplaylist.xspf”. Save the file and similarly, upload this file onto the free server. The playlist file will have a URL like this:- http://yourname.googlepages.com/myplaylist.xspf
Insert Music Player into Blog
The final step is to embed the music player onto the Blogger blog. Decide where you want to place the music player console. Then go to Template -> Page Elements -> Add a Page Element and select “HTML/JavaScript”. If you want the music console in your post, when you are at the Post Editor, change to the “HTML” mode rather than “Compose” mode.
Copy and paste the following code:-
<!-- Change the colored values. Refer to http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/ for updates to the code. --> <object codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="160" standby="Player is loading ..." width="400" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"> <param name="_cx" value="10583"> <param name="_cy" value="4445"> <param name="FlashVars" value=""> <param name="Movie" value="http://yourname.googlepages.com/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://yourname.googlepages.com/myplaylist.xspf"> <param name="Src" value="http://yourname.googlepages.com/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://yourname.googlepages.com/myplaylist.xspf"> <param name="WMode" value="Window"> <param name="Play" value="0"> <param name="Loop" value="-1"> <param name="Quality" value="High"> <param name="SAlign" value="LT"> <param name="Menu" value="-1"> <param name="Base" value=""> <param name="AllowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain"> <param name="Scale" value="NoScale"> <param name="DeviceFont" value="0"> <param name="EmbedMovie" value="0"> <param name="BGColor" value="E2E2E2"> <param name="SWRemote" value=""> <param name="MovieData" value=""> <param name="SeamlessTabbing" value="1"> <param name="Profile" value="0"> <param name="ProfileAddress" value=""> <param name="ProfilePort" value="0"> <param name="AllowNetworking" value="all"> <param name="AllowFullScreen" value="false"> <embed src="http://yourname.googlepages.com/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://yourname.googlepages.com/myplaylist.xspf" quality="high" bgcolor="#E2E2E2" name="xspf_player" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" align="center" height="160" width="400"> </embed> </object> |
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The variables that you should remember to change are:-
1. The domain or location where the player application was uploaded (shown in purple).
2. The location of the music playlist file (shown in red).
3. The background color code of the music player (shown in blue). You have limited choices here because the gray panel colors are fixed. For a list of color codes, refer to our Hexadecimal Color Code Chart.
4. The width and height of the music player interface (shown in green).
Once you are done, save the widget and refresh the Blog. You should now see a MP3 Music Player that has a music playlist of your favorite songs for readers to view, select and listen to.
Have fun toying with the new music player widget!
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Next-gen iPhone spotted in the wild?
Update: Some commenters have pointed out that the size and shape of this phone bares a striking resemblance to LG's Vu. As we said up above, we're not ruling out some handy editing work here.
by Paul Miller, posted May 2nd 2008 at 7:46AM
[Thanks, Janvier]
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Shoujo-Ai/Yuri Anime List
Shoujo-Ai means "girl love",Yuri means "lily" and these words were adapted to denote lesbian relationship,in anime and manga.
It is my summary list of anime titles(which I watched or I'm watching now) with shoujo-ai/yuri vibes.
If you are a shoujo-ai/yuri fan please post. Legend:
* - shoujo-ai/yuri in this anime is clear visible
> - shoujo-ai/yuri is less visible,mostly in side plot
< - this anime is overall about girls friendship it might have shoujo-ai/yuri hints or not
In the end final shoujo-ai/yuri rating depends on your personal viewing taste title - I watched this anime
2X2 Shinobuden *
Agent Aika >
Air Master >
Alien Nine <
Akahori Gedou Hour - Love Game <
Angelic Layer <
ARIA Animation <
ARIA Natural <
ARIA Origination <
Avenger <
Ayane's High Kick *
Azumanga Daoih <
Bakuretsu Tenshi *
Battle Athletes Victory *
Bleach >
Blue Drop *
Brother Dear Brother *
Bubblegum Crisis <
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 <
Candy Boy *
Cardcaptor Sakura >
Claymore <
Code Gass <
Cosplay Complex >
Cutey Honey <
Cyberteam In Akihabara <
Devilman Lady *
Dragonaut <
El Cazador *
El-Hazard:The Wanderers <
Excell Saga >
Figure 17 >
Galaxy Fraulein Yuna *
Gatekeepers 21 <
Gauken Alice <
Ghost In the Shell SAC >
Girl's High <
Girls Bravo >
Girls Bravo 2 >
Gokujou Seitokai <
Gunbuster 2 >
Full Metal Panic! TSR >
Haibane Renmei <
Hack SIGN *
Hayate No Gotoku >
He Is My Master *
Hidamari Sketch >
Higurashi Kai <
His And Her Circumstances <
Hitohira >
ICE OVA *
Idol M@ster Xenoglossia >
Ikkitousen >
Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny *
Jinki Extended >
Jubei-Chan 2 >
Kannaduki na Miko *
Kagihime Monogatari Eikyuu Alice Rondo >
Kaleido Star >
Kashimashi ~Girl meets Girl~ *
Keroro Gunsou >
Key The Metal Idol >
Kiddy Grade *
Knights Of Ramune <
Koi Koi Seven >
Kokoro Library >
Kurau Phantom Memory *
Kyoushiro To Towa No Sora >
Last Exile <
Love Hina <
Loveless >
Lucky Star >
Mai-Hime *
Mai-Otome >
Mai-Otome Zwei OVA >
Madlax *
Mahoraba >
Mahou Sensei Negima >
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha *
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's *
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Strikers *
Manabi Straight <
Maria-sama ga Miteru *
Maria-sama Ga Miteru 2 Spring *
Maria-sama Ga Miteru 3 OVA *
Maze >
Mezzo DSA <
Miyuki-chan In Wonderland *
Moyashimon >
Murder Princess *
Najica Blitz Tactics >
Nana <
Negima?! >
Noir *
Pita-Ten >
Plastic Little <
Pretty Cure >
Project A-Ko *
Puni Puni Poemy *
Re:Cutey Honey >
Read Or Die *
Read Or Dream *
Rizelmine <
Rose Of Versailies >
Sailor Moon *
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei >
Sensei no Ojikan >
Seraphim Call >
Serial Experiments Lain <
Seto No Hanayome >
Shigofumi >
Simoun *
Soko No Strain >
Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko >
Steel Angel Kurumi >
Steel Angel Kurumi 2 *
Stellvia >
Strange Love *
Stratos 04 >
Strawberry Panic *
Sukeban Deka >
Tenchi Muyo <
The Third >
They Are My Noble Masters <
To-Heart 2 >
Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho >
Touka Gettan >
Tsukikage Ran <
Tsukuyomi ~ Moon Phase <
Uta-Kata >
Utena *
Vandread >
Venus Versus Virus <
Xenosaga The Animation <
Yami To Boushi To Hon No Tabibito *
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou <
Zero No Tsukaima 2 <
Zombie-Loan >
Please post more shoujo-ai/yuri anime titles so I could add them to the list !!! Found this article useful? Mention us in your post, subscribe to our feed, link to us, or bookmark this site. Thanks for your support
Mai-Otome Info Update[Ep 26] + 'Zwei' OVA Info[Ep 04] + s.ifl OVA[Ep 01]
Taken from anidb.info:
According to reports on Moon Phase, a 2nd season of My-Hime, "My-Hime Next Stage," is currently in the works. The heroine of this season is Arika, a character that showed up at the end of the first season. No details on release time frame was given yet. Thanks to taneyldp for this info.
Title: Mai-HiME - 2nd Stage
http://rapidshare.de/files/4165046/m..._500k.wmv.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/4165084/m..._500k.wmv.html
Screenshots from episode 1:
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Analysis: Momentum, Obama's distractions give Clinton hope - Yahoo! News
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer Fri May 2, 7:50 AM ET
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Hillary Rodham Clinton has an unmistakable bounce in her step these days — a sense of energy and optimism that somehow belies the daunting challenge she faces in wresting the Democratic presidential nomination from Barack Obama.
"I feel good. We're making progress every day," she told supporters Thursday in Kentucky, which holds its primary May 20. "Wish I could be here for the Derby. ... I hope everyone's going to place a little money on the filly," a reference perhaps to horse Eight Belles and herself.
Buoyed by her convincing win in Pennsylvania's primary April 22, Clinton has been campaigning intensively before Indiana and North Carolina's contests next week. She's greeted by large crowds who respond enthusiastically to her plans for improving the faltering economy, and several polls out this week suggest she would be the stronger candidate to face Republican John McCain this fall, both nationally and in important swing states.
Obama, meanwhile, is still contending with the fallout from the controversy surrounding his former pastor and polls showing a tight contest in Indiana, where he once led.
While Obama has won several superdelegate endorsements this week, including that of former DNC chairman and one-time Clinton backer Joe Andrew, the former first lady has secured a few of her own after weeks of superdelegate drought. On Tuesday, she got a boost in North Carolina with the endorsement of Democratic Gov. Mike Easley, another superdelegate.
All of which has given her advisers at least a glimmer of hope that, after a long period of being thought a sure loser, Clinton has regained enough momentum to persuade uncommitted superdelegates to give her candidacy another look. While it may still be a long shot, advisers believe she is in a stronger position to make that argument now than she has been for much of the primary season.
"There is a settled view among Democrats and in the general electorate that Senator Clinton is the better candidate to have knowledge and leadership to turn the economy around," Clinton strategist Geoff Garin said, noting what he called the former first lady's "continued success and Senator Obama's continued difficulty connecting with blue-collar and middle-income voters, both men and women."
Indeed, Clinton advisers say conversations with uncommitted superdelegates suggest they are concerned about Obama's persistent weakness among some key demographic groups, particularly Catholic and Hispanic voters. In nominating contests so far this year, Clinton has bested Obama among both groups by a margin of 60 percent to 36 percent.
Then there's the Illinois senator's well-publicized tangle with his pastor of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama broke with his spiritual mentor earlier this week after Wright made a number of controversial statements to reporters in Washington, including suggestions that the U.S. government had invited the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community.
The uproar over Wright has thrown Obama badly off message in a week he hoped to regain footing among working-class whites in Indiana and elsewhere. Clinton advisers believe the controversy has further demonstrated their belief that Obama may be too unknown and untested to stand up as the party's nominee.
"In my district, Senator Clinton got 67 percent and I think a large part of that was Jeremiah Wright and those issues. It looks like she's got the momentum," said Jason Altmire, an undecided superdelegate from Pennsylvania.
Clinton strategists also contend that Obama's message of hope and political reconciliation has worn thin in recent months as the tanking economy has become voters' dominant concern. Clinton's emphasis on policy proposals such as her plan to ease home foreclosures has more salience with voters than Obama's theme of mending a broken system in Washington, her advisers believe.
Clinton has tried to cast herself as the champion of the middle class even as she casts Obama as out of touch with the concerns of those voters. For example, she's advocating a summer gas tax holiday — an idea Obama opposes and one that has been widely panned by a range of influential economists.
Still, Clinton strategists acknowledge the odds still don't favor her.
Obama is ahead in the popular vote, pledged delegates and contests won. She would have to win about 80 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to pull nearly even with Obama — an almost insurmountable hurdle. And her campaign's efforts to restore the results of Michigan and Florida's disputed primaries have failed.
Her strategists also acknowledge an all-but-certain outcry among black voters — the Democratic Party's most reliable constituency — if superdelegates were to back Clinton over Obama if he finishes the primary season ahead in the popular vote and delegate count. But they argue that women could have a similar reaction if Clinton is perceived to be treated unfairly by the process.
Clinton also has real electability problems of her own — years of baggage from her time as first lady that have led to persistent questions about her honesty and integrity. And little is known about Bill Clinton's post-presidential speaking engagements and business deals that have helped the couple earn more than $109 million since 2001.
In the short term, the New York senator is pressing for a win in Indiana and a narrower-than-expected loss in North Carolina, which has a large population of black and liberal voters. Many observers believe her candidacy could be doomed without a win in Indiana.
The remaining contests through June 3 could include terrain favorable to Clinton, including West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Her campaign is holding out hope that she could bring her popular vote total to within striking distance of Obama while continuing to press for some resolution of the Florida and Michigan contests.
"She's still in the wilderness and in the forest, but the glimmer of sunshine has gotten slightly brighter," Democratic strategist Jenny Backus said. "Her way to the nomination is a way that is dangerous to the Democratic Party because it could open up divisions and separations that would take us generations to rebuild. The people she has to convince to get there are the activists who care about the future of the party more than anyone in the country."
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — Beth Fouhy covers presidential politics for The Associated Press.
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Did Paula tarnish 'Idol'? - New York Daily News
Did Paula Abdul tarnish 'American Idol'?
Friday, May 2nd 2008, 4:00 AM
Agostini/AP Is 'American Idol' fixed? After Paula Abdul's big-time goof this week, some angry fans are speculating yes.
Paula Abdul's colossal screwup on "American Idol" this week has gotten fans hollering that the judging isn't fair - and has some questioning her role on the show.
Since Abdul commented on a performance by Jason Castro that hadn't been seen by viewers of Tuesday's show, fans and conspiracy theorists alike have been attacking the show's credibility with blistering online messages.
The disgust only grew a day later after Abdul and host Ryan Seacrest blamed the mixup on last-second switches in the production and the fact that Abdul had seen some of Castro's dress rehearsal performance.
"The 'hit' on credibility is much bigger than Paula," wrote a poster named Chickensoup. "Sure, Paula's ridiculous ramblings; critiquing a song Jason had not sung yet, is the big cat out of the bag. It's that her ineptness finally exposed the manipulations of all the executives, producers, Ryan and judges; to the undeniable clarity of how badly this show is fixed.
"If 'A.I.' still had an ounce of credibility, well, it's all gone now."
Neither Fox officials nor "Idol" producers were available for comment yesterday.
Based on the message boards, what pulled at the nails of viewers was the notion that what Abdul or the judges might have been told what to say, or that any of their reactions were scripted.
A poster going by the name PookiAdams wrote on Fox's "Idol" page that the producers want viewers to think everything "is on the up-and-up, when it's clearly not. Of course, they want you to think you're contributing to the show, but you're not in reality - or at least not as much as you're led to believe.... I have watched since season one and this is my last. There is nothing they can do to win me back."
Former "Idol" contestant Jon Peter Lewis isn't buying into the notion the show is fixed.
"I think the idea of the judges being scripted is totally false," Lewis wrote at EW.com. "I've spoken with way too many of Idol's influential people who have expressed genuine surprise at the outcome of a judge's remark or a result ... to think otherwise."
Abdul's giant flub was followed by the least-watched regular Wednesday night telecast this cycle, and the third least-watched "Idol" telecast this season, with 22.8 million people tuning in, according to Nielsen Media Research.
While any network head would kill for 22.8 million viewers, Wednesday's audience is the latest indication that the mighty "Idol" franchise has some issues.
"This show would not be losing viewers if it was a real talent competition," wrote a viewer with the online name Hazardgrl. "It's the blatant manipulations that turn so many people off...I'm out. You just lost a loyal viewer Idol. If you had just let things play out as they would, this season wouldn't have been so awful."
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'American Idol': How the Top 5 Picked Their Songs
The contestants live and die by what tunes they choose to sing. But who gets what? And what happens when the vocal coaches don't like what they hear? We sat in on rehearsals for Neil Diamond Week to find out
The one thing we've learned from American Idol this season is that the show isn't about singing as much as it's about songs. As in, choosing the one that's edgy without being alienating, popular without being tired, inspirational without being cheesy. A mediocre contestant like Kristy Lee Cook scored with a syrupy ballad like ''God Bless the U.S.A.'' because it galvanized the patriotic vote. Early front-runner Carly Smithson was booted after singing a strong rendition of ''Jesus Christ Superstar,'' perhaps because the song offended some Christian voters.
''We talk about song choice because we're trying to hammer into their heads that a good song tells the audience who you are,'' says judge Simon Cowell, who has harped on song selection this season more than ever before (and that's saying something). So then, who are finalists David Archuleta, Jason Castro, Syesha Mercado, and David Cook? EW spent two days of rehearsals with the top four (as well as now-eliminated Brooke White) at the Idol production offices in West Hollywood, and got a unique view of how and why they chose the songs they did for Neil Diamond Week. Since season 5, contestants have not been allowed to perform the same song on the same night, so the selection competition is fierce. And what happens when two people want the same tune? If one person does not voluntarily bow out, they are forced into an Idol tiebreaker of pulling the desired song title out of a hat — both scenarios that played out during Neil Diamond Week. ''I've had people going into fetal positions over song choice,'' says vocal coach Debra Byrd. ''The judges say song choice, song choice, song choice constantly, so they're in agony all week over it.'' Sure enough, some contestants angsted. Others ignored suggestions. Some made calculated moves based on what Simon might like. Others procrastinated learning the lyrics. And one paid the ultimate price with her ouster.
By Jessica Shaw
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN UELAND
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American Idol Elimination: Who Are the Final Four?
Just three more weeks till this year's American Idol is crowned! Which of the five smiling singers pictured above couldn't make it past the rigors of Neil Diamond week and was sent home on Wednesday? To find out, just read more.
Aw, Brooke! At one point, I had her pegged as the last woman standing — and maybe even making a run at the finals. But it's no secret that she's been declining for the past few weeks. I don't know if she just lost confidence or faith in herself or what, but it had been a while since we saw the same singer who turned "Love is a Battlefield" into a dark, heartbreaking ballad. She's one of the few contestants from this year whom I'm legitimately curious about, though; I think she could have an interesting career, and no Idol alum has really broken into the singer-songwriter sphere yet. If she gets a contract (which I bet she will), I'd definitely check out her album. I'm also proud of her for pulling herself together enough to sing — I honestly didn't think she could do it.
Syesha dodged a bullet again, ending up in the bottom two but staying safe. As for Jason Castro, he was the first guy sent to the Safety Couch. Um, he can't actually be the winner . . . right? I'm a little worried that if he could be safe after Tuesday, there's nothing that will get him voted off.
Some other thoughts on Wednesday's show:
- At 9:26 p.m., we knew Brooke and Syesha were the bottom two, and Ryan had them both out on stage together. I got momentarily hopeful that the show was actually only half an hour. Yeah, no.
- The only comment about PaulaGate came from Seacrest: "The rumors? They're not true. She's part of our family, and we love her." What, by the way, were the specific rumors? That Paula was drugged/crazy/fired?
- Maybe I'm wrong, but David Archuleta seemed to be genuinely surprised that he was safe. Either that, or he's just learned to fake it better
- Who is this old flame of Simon's from when he was 9 years old, and how did she get the number to call American Idol? That was actually funny, though I admit I'm perversely intrigued by both Simon's personal life and his childhood, so it was kind of the perfect storm. Also: "For all the kids watching, 9 years old is too young to kiss."
- Neil Diamond looks like a sweet old man when he's not wearing a glitter-laden sparkly shirt.
- I was thinking the group sing really seemed to be missing something, and then I realized what it was: Carly! Without her, there's just nobody else with a big enough voice to carry the songs forward.
- It is ridiculous how excited I am for So You Think You Can Dance — except that it looked like Sex is back again at this year's auditions. Seriously, the show really needs to move past him.
Your thoughts? Was it Brooke's time to go? How long can Syesha squeak by? And does a Young David vs. Older David finale seem inevitable at this point?
Photos courtesy of Fox ~ Thu, 05/01/2008 - 6:30am by BuzzSugar
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Adobe Opens the FLV and SWF Formats
Open Screen Project
The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich Web and video experiences, live and on-demand across a variety of devices.
The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ -- that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.
Specifically, this work will include:
- Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
- Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
- Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
- Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
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People Can't Tell Diff b/t Blu-Ray and DVD, Sales Plummeting
Hot on the heels of last week’s report from ABI Research noting that many consumers may not see the picture quality difference between Blu-ray and standard DVDs comes the latest Blu-ray sales figures from NPD Group. And they’re not pretty.
According to NPD, sales of Blu-ray standalone players plummeted 40 percent from January to February, then rose a scant 2 percent from February to March. The general consensus was that once Toshiba dropped its support for the HD DVD format early this year, sales would increase.
In fact, sales of Blu-ray standalone players remain so low that NPD has not yet released actual numbers, for fear that it would be easy to identify individual retailers. The research group will start to give actual figures later this year, said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD.
The end of the format wars clearly did little to boost Blu-ray’s prospects. Like others, Mr. Rubin said the much cheaper upconverting standard DVD players are winning consumers’ hearts and wallets.
The price of upconverting players is hovering around $70. And this week, Amazon is giving them away for free when consumers purchase certain Samsung TVs. The result: a 5 percent uptick in upconverting DVD player sales in the first quarter of 2008, compared to same quarter a year ago, and a 39 percent decline in players that don’t have that feature.
With Blu-ray players still costing more than $300 — and a number of players on the market still lacking some Blu-ray features like Internet connectivity — NPD now figures that Blu-ray’s future won’t be clear until this Christmas, when prices should drop to the $200 range.
ABI Research is even less optimistic. In a report released yesterday, the research firm figures it could take until October 2009 until Blu-ray gains a foothold in the market.
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Vista's 11 Pillars of Failure
From poor marketing to missing components, here are my reasons why Vista will forever fail.
| on Yahoo! |
While the public's attention seems to be swinging toward Windows 7 (the next iteration of the OS)—a topic I'll address in the weeks ahead—the fact of the matter is that Vista remains. And it seems that the OS now has two distinct groups of users. One group happily uses Vista, with few concerns or complaints. In fact, many of them are baffled by all the grumbling. The other group is the fist-shaking Vista bashers who condemn each and every flaw the OS exhibits.
The latter group is by far the most vocal and easily drowns out the former group. Its complaints stem from the anti-Microsoft backlash, which reflects dissatisfaction with the company's history, business practices, tactics, and bogus announcements. Much of the disgruntlement, however, can be attributed Vista itself—and the poor marketing job done by Microsoft.
I mention the bogus announcements above because, at some point, you do get a little tired of Microsoft making exaggerated promises and then never coming close to delivering the goods. In the case of Vista, it has to do with the three "pillars" that were announced early on. The OS really delivered on only one of the pillars, and that pillar was nothing but Windows dressing: Aero, the resource hog and performance sapper.
With the "pillars" in mind, I decided to take a look at the 11 reasons why Vista remains on shaky ground:
1) Market confusion. From the beginning, everyone moaned about the fact that there were simply too many versions of the OS for sale. Who needs all the variations? It's stupid—plain and simple. What you want is the one best version, not a slew of namby-pamby ones. This happened because the folks at Microsoft know only how to merchandise and, seemingly, not how to market.
2) Code size. I've got two words for you: TOO BIG. Enough said.
3) Missing components. Yes, WinFS, the promised file system and a core pillar of Vista, isn't there. The promises regarding the development of this file system go back to 1991. And Microsoft cannot make it a reality? Why?
4) Laptop battery-life drain. This was supposed to be fixed with special code and hybrid hard disks (HHD). Still, users have to resort to expensive silicon drives.
5) HHD fiasco. I'm still irked about being told by the HD industry that the benefits of the new generation of hard drives will "make people flock to Vista." That was over two years ago, and suddenly there's silence about the whole thing. One of these days, someone will tell me what really happened. My guess: It never worked correctly, and no one could make it work.
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Dell's new Vostro, crippled by monumental keyboard screw up
Looks normal, right? Look at your own keyboard... notice anything different? Okay, maybe you don't. But try actually typing on this and it all becomes far too apparent. The whole of the bottom row of letters (Z, X, C...) is one too far to the right. The Z should be below and between A and S, not S and D.
You're looking at a brand new Dell Vostro 1310, ordered the day after its released, and delivered on 30th April 2008 in the UK.
They keys are all there. Shift, \|, Z, X... its just that the left shift is too big, forcing everything over too far. The Z has to be between the A and S... look on ANY other keyboard and that's where it sits. This is not a US/UK layout issue, just a general monumental flaw.
UPDATE 1st May 2008 5pm: I phoned Dell for 20 minutes and they have confirmed that this affects all new Vostro 1310s in the UK. Oh dear!! They're hoping they can just replace the keyboards, though the guy on the phone said it was a 'motherboard' problem... I can't imagine that though.
['Ottovelo' commented I should just buy a Mac. I have removed his stupid Apple fanboy remark. Seriously... why not say but an Acer, Asus, Lenovo,, Samsung... and whilst we're on that, where's the delete key on a Mac? And why are " and @ in the wrong places on UK mac keyboards? Not as bad a design flaw as this, but utterly frustrating none the less.]
[
DEAR murilo A, dgua, korobeiniki, jorgepinto, cliph, mentor972, ramobjesus, raphy, zolinovat and every other MAC FANBOY out there,
Thank you sooooo much for your kind advice in telling me to 'get a mac'. Its so awfully sweet of you to be so kind and helpful.
Yes, I have considered buying a mac before. My wife has a mac which I bought her, my dad also has a mac which I bought him.
I hate my wife's mac. It has a backspace button but no delete button. It has one mouse button and forces me to press a key with the button rather than having a right mouse button. The @ and " are in the wrong places for UK users. You can't make windows fullscreen. Its slow. It crashes when playing DVDs. We have to cover it up at night as its glow 'throbs' and doesn't let me get any sleep.
Also, this laptop cost me £650. A similarly spec'd mac would have cost £949 (and that's still not as good spec as this).
Lots of love,
Jake
PS: I've deleted a lot of your helpful 'buy a mac' comments from this page. If you want to advertise, go do it in your own space, not mine
PPS: If you fancy trying to convert me you can of course send me a Mac for free. Just don't be surprised if a video of me smashing it to bits appears on the Internet soon after.
]
Video of the motorized R2-D2 projector in action (omg)
We knew that there was a motorized, fully-articulated
Thursday, 1 May 2008
45 Scientists Wonder Why They Are on the List of 500 Who Deny Global Warming [science] (environmentalgraffiti.com)
Something phenomenal has happened in the last 24 hours. Our friends over at DeSmogBlog took it upon themselves to see what the scientists who are on the famed list of “500 scientists who don’t believe in global warming” actually think and as it turns out, many of them didn’t know they were on it.
Now, in the past, there’s already been plenty of fun to have with lists of global warming deniers–Sen. James Inhofe took a list of 400 to the Senate floor, not realizing that when he was fact-checked it would come out that he had enlisted 44 TV weathermen. However, this takes the cake. Why? Because the already-incredible result that DeSmogBlog has produced is only 24 hours old. This is only going to get worse for The Heartland Institute, who assembled the list, and now has to deal with quotes like these:
I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite.”
Dr. David Sugden. Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh
I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there.”
Dr. Gregory Cutter, Professor, Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University
I don’t believe any of my work can be used to support any of the statements listed in the article.”
Dr. Robert Whittaker, Professor of Biogeography, University of Oxford
Yeah. Game, set and match, to people that don’t think that global warming is a cover for the world socialist conspiracy. Stay tuned.
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BREAKING NEWS: All West Coast cargo traffic halted by port worker war protests (msnbc.msn.com)
Thousands of workers no-show, truckers idled from San Diego to Seattle
LOS ANGELES - Terminal operators say West Coast cargo traffic has come to a halt as port workers stage daylong anti-war protests.
Pacific Maritime Association spokesman Steve Getzug says thousands of dockworkers did not show up to work Thursday morning, leaving ships and truck drivers idle at ports from Long Beach to Seattle.
The West Coast ports are the nation’s principal gateway for cargo container traffic from the Far East.
A spokesman for the National Retail Federation says shippers and exporters planned for the slowdown that coincides with May Day and expected no significant long-term disruptions.
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CEOs Rake It In, While Their Companies Tank
Some Say 'Game Is Rigged' in Favor of CEOs Who Profit When Their Companies Founder
Being a CEO these days, according to the people at Forbes magazine, is like playing on a kiddie soccer team: everyone gets a prize ... often a very expensive prize.
"Supposedly, you get paid for performing in corporate America — but you don't," Forbes senior editor Neil Weinberg said. "It's like a fourth grade soccer league where everyone gets a trophy."
Forbes ranked the worst performing CEOs in America by comparing executive pay to stock performance.
The magazine's list of "Worst Performing Bosses" includes James Tobin, CEO of Boston Scientific, who made an average of $8.2 million while his company stock inched up by an average of 1 percent. It also included Kevin Sharer of the Biotech company Amgen, who made an average of $12.3 million a year while his company's stock dropped, on average, 4 percent a year. Another CEO on the list, Michael Perry of Indymac Bancorp, raked in $6.8 million while his company's stock plummeted 23 percent.
But the best paid, worst performing CEO, according to Forbes, is Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide, the nation's largest home lender. He raked in an average of $66 million a year while his company nearly collapsed, the stock falling an average of 9 percent a year. That's not including the hundreds of millions he got cashing in his own company stock.
"The fact that he has been making so much money, $102 million a year over the last year, is what people find egregious," Weinberg said. "They can't understand why this company is melting down, why it's having to be rescued from virtual bankruptcy. yet this man, who's been talking up the company, has been selling stock, is not really paying the price for it."
CEOs have advantages that the average American worker does not, that might allow them to get paid for failure. Critics say that all too often, boards of directors, which set CEO pay, are filled with the CEO's cronies.
"It's a very incestuous business," Weinberg said. "People are on each other's boards, they are hired by the chief executive, they are thankful to be a part of the club.
Overall, CEOs were paid 15 percent less last year, but they still make more than 10 times the amount they did two decades ago. In 1980, the average CEO once made 40 times what the average worker makes. Now it's 433 times, and many CEOs get paid handsomely, even if they fail.
When Gary Forsee, the CEO of Sprint, was fired, he got $40 million, an $84,000-a-month pension for life, and help finding a new job as a university president.
Weinberg said it's all evidence that, in the business world, "the game is rigged" in favor of CEOs. But some say there have been major reforms in recent years and that most CEOs are fairly compensated.
John Castellani, president of the Business Round Table, said that evaluating CEO performance is more complex than Forbes makes it out to be.
"The outliers are just that — outliers. You have to look at the preponderance of CEOs and how they're performing and how their pay matched performance."
But Weinberg says the examples in his article show there need to be serious changes before CEOs are no longer paid for failure. Most notably, he says, shareholders should be able to vote on who sits on corporate boards, something the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed, but corporate leaders fought tooth and nail to defeat.
"It's called shareholder democracy right, and that's what we need in this country," Weinberg said. "We have something more akin to [President Vladimir] Putin in Russia right now than we do to a representative democracy."
Only when there's democracy in corporate America, he says, will the playing field truly be level.
McCain Endorser Pastor Hagee: God Curses and Dooms America
| Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 02:21:26 PM EST |  print story | |
 If McCain did not know of Hagee's belief that God is against America, he should have: Hagee's pronouncement of God's "curse" and "doom" on our nation was not a passing comment. It was a major theme of Hagee's book, Day of Deception (1997). In fact, Hagee devotes a whole chapter to it. Here's the curse and doom quote in context: In "America Under a Curse," a seventeen page chapter in Day of Deception, John Hagee wrote, "As a nation, America is under the curse of God, even now. Look at the scriptures and see for yourself. The stand we have taken on abortion, the stand we have taken against God in our classrooms, just may have sealed or doom." |
Although Senator McCain recently told George Stephanopoulos in an interview that his seeking of Hagee's endorsement was "probably" a mistake, he then doubled back to affirm his approval of Hagee's endorsement, stating, "I'm glad to have it."| topic: John McCain |
According to Hagee, in the case of curses humans speak against each other, "[if} you are not protected by the blood of Christ that curse will stick. It can follow you and your family for generations." The implication is that Christianity alone confers special protection against curses, which slide off Christians but stick to people of all other faiths and beliefs. In a later book, Hagee has described a terrible, permanent divine curse upon Jews for worshipping idols. To work and to sweat, explains Hagee, are the curses of men while menstruation and childbearing are curses of women.
There are many curses that afflict individuals, some of them unsurprising - incest and thievery incur divine penalty, but other curses Hagee describes seem better placed in the Medieval Era than the post-Enlightenment age. The poor may be cursed simply because they're poor; divine curses can extend for four generations so that Americans can be cursed for the deeds of their great-great grandparents and disobedient children can be cursed for rebelliousness.
America is also collectively cursed for specific reasons, such as legalized abortion and a Supreme Court decision against sectarian Bible classes in public schools but also, more generally, for rebelling against God. As a consequence of America's disobedience and rebellion, according to McCain-endorser John Hagee, God's has cursed America and that curse has caused American military defeats, in Korea and Vietnam, plagues such as AIDS and social blights like violent crime. God's curse on America has also led "hundreds of thousands" to secretly sacrifice children to the devil.
Pastor Hagee bears in on Hollywood, with special intensity, as an almost uniquely pernicious curse on the nation - "Hollywood continues to show its hatred towards God, because Hollywood hates Christianity. It is... a cancer that eats at the soul of the country."
The belief in divinely mandated collective and generational punishments is one Pastor John Hagee has carried from the 90's into the current decade. In a September 18, 2006 interview on the WHYY radio show Fresh Air, with Terry Gross, Hagee stated that God nearly obliterated the whole city of New Orleans, via Hurricane Katrina, due to a gay pride event which had been planned prior to the disaster. In his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown" and in "Jerusalem Countdown" Hagee wrote that God may curse the East and West coasts of the United States, for insufficient support of the type of US foreign policy approach towards Israel Hagee advocates, punishing them with a Russian nuclear first strike that immolates America's coastal regions. In the same book, Hagee describes how Jews are cursed collectively because the ancient Hebrews once worshipped idols. Thus God, expressing "boundless love for the Jewish people", sent Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust. Hagee does not mention whether Americans who are 1/2 or 1/4 Jewish carry 1/2 or 1/4 of that specific curse.
If America and most Americans are cursed, there's one person who, according to John Hagee, isn't at all cursed, doomed or damned: John Hagee. In a 2002 BBC interview Hagee declared he knows the future with absolute certainty and the good pastor has repeatedly stated his certainty of going to Heaven.
[THE END]
Below: videos and Talk To Action stories on McCain/Hagee
3:40 1:40 3:38 "McCainflopping" MORE OM MCCAIN and HAGEE
McCain-backer Hagee's 'Thrilling' Worldview: Rapture, Then "Holocaust" (Bruce Wilson)
McCain-Backer John Hagee lies, to Jewish Bloggers, On His Motives For Supporting Israel (Bruce Wilson, with video)
McCain Courted Hagee for at Least a Year (Frederick Clarkson)
What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ? (Bruce Wilson) McCain Reneges on Pledge To Never Seek anti-Catholic Support (Bruce Wilson)
Hagee Acknowledges McCain Sought His Endorsement (Bruce Wilson)
McCain Backer Hagee Showcases 'Islamic Terrorist' Implicated as Possible Fraud (Bruce Wilson)
McCain Backer Hagee Envisioned "Worse Than Auschwitz" For Israeli Jews (Bruce Wilson)
McCain Was After Hagee Like a Dog In Heat (Bruce Wilson)
AIPAC Event Helps Mainstream Allegations Of "Satanic Liberal Jewish Conspiracy" (Bruce Wilson - story details full extent of Hagee's ideological extremity)
Boldly Backwards To The 16th Century: McCain For President (Bruce Wilson)
Senior McCain Advisor: Religious Right is a "Serious Problem" (Frederick Clarkson)
On Bennett Show, McCain Waffles Over Hagee Hate Speech (Bruce Wilson)
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Wash. Post and NY Times Double-Standards
Wash. Post and NY Times published more than 12 times as many articles mentioning Obama and Wright as they did mentioning McCain and Hagee
Summary: A Media Matters for America review found that since February 27, the date that televangelist John Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain for president, The New York Times and The Washington Post combined have published more than 12 times as many articles mentioning Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and Sen. Barack Obama as they have mentioning Hagee and McCain.
A Media Matters for America Nexis search* found that since February 27, the date that televangelist John Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain for president, The New York Times and The Washington Post combined have published more than 12 times as many articles mentioning Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and Sen. Barack Obama as they have mentioning Hagee and McCain. The Post published 53 articles during that period that mentioned Wright and Obama, compared with three articles mentioning Hagee and McCain. The Times published 46 articles since February 27 mentioning Wright and Obama, compared with five articles mentioning Hagee and McCain.
Additionally, during the same period, the Post published 40 editorials or opinion pieces that included Wright and Obama while publishing two editorials or opinion pieces that mentioned McCain and Hagee. The Times published 22 editorials or opinion pieces that included Wright and Obama, compared with two editorials or opinion pieces that mentioned McCain and Hagee.
Media Matters has documented (here, here, here, here, and here) other examples of the disparity between the media's extensive coverage of controversial comments made by Wright and other supporters of Obama and their coverage of controversial comments made by Hagee and other supporters of McCain.
Washington Post Wright coverage
Headline
Date
News or editorial
2/28/2008
N
3/1/2008
E
3/3/2008
N
3/15/2008
N
3/15/2008
N
3/17/2008
N
3/18/2008
E
3/18/2008
N
3/18/2008
E
3/18/2008
N
3/18/2008
N
3/19/2008
E
Invited to Wrestle in a Racial Mud Pit, Obama Soars Above It
3/19/2008
E
3/19/2008
E
3/19/2008
E
3/19/2008
N
3/19/2008
N
3/19/2008
N
Tackling a Sensitive Topic at a Sensitive Moment, for Disparate Audiences
3/19/2008
N
3/20/2008
N
3/20/2008
N
3/21/2008
E
3/21/2008
E
3/21/2008
N
3/22/2008
E
3/22/2008
E
3/22/2008
N
3/22/2008
N
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
N
3/23/2008
N
8 Questions That Will Shape Where the Race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination Goes From Here
3/23/2008
N
3/24/2008
N
3/24/2008
N
3/24/2008
N
3/25/2008
E
3/26/2008
N
3/28/2008
E
3/29/2008
N
3/29/2008
N
3/30/2008
E
3/31/2008
N
4/1/2008
N
4/4/2008
E
4/4/2008
N
4/8/2008
E
4/8/2008
E
4/9/2008
N
4/12/2008
N
4/13/2008
N
4/13/2008
N
4/13/2008
E
4/14/2008
N
4/14/2008
N
4/15/2008
E
4/16/2008
N
4/17/2008
E
4/17/2008
N
4/18/2008
E
4/18/2008
N
4/18/2008
N
4/18/2008
N
4/20/2008
E
4/20/2008
E
4/20/2008
N
4/21/2008
N
4/22/2008
N
4/22/2008
N
4/23/2008
N
4/23/2008
N
4/24/2008
E
4/24/2008
N
4/25/2008
E
4/25/2008
E
4/26/2008
E
4/26/2008
N
4/28/2008
N
4/29/2008
E
4/29/2008
E
4/29/2008
E
4/29/2008
E
4/29/2008
E
4/29/2008
N
4/29/2008
N
4/29/2008
N
4/30/2008
E
4/30/2008
E
4/30/2008
N
Washington Post Hagee coverage
Headline
Date
News or editorial
2/28/2008
N
2/29/2008
N
3/7/2008
N
3/11/2008
E
3/28/2008
E
New York Times Wright coverage
Headline
Date
News or editorial
3/1/2008
N
3/14/2008
N
3/15/2008
N
With Race Likely to Continue After Pennsylvania, Democrats Court Other States
3/16/2008
N
3/17/2008
N
3/17/2008
E
3/18/2008
N
3/19/2008
N
3/19/2008
N
3/19/2008
N
3/19/2008
E
3/20/2008
E
3/20/2008
E
3/20/2008
N
3/20/2008
N
Groups Respond to Obama's Call for National Discussion About Race
3/20/2008
N
3/21/2008
N
First a Tense Talk With Clinton, Then Richardson Backs Obama
3/22/2008
N
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
N
3/23/2008
E
3/23/2008
N
3/23/2008
N
3/24/2008
N
3/24/2008
N
3/25/2008
E
3/25/2008
E
3/26/2008
N
3/26/2008
N
3/29/2008
N
3/30/2008
E
3/30/2008
E
3/31/2008
N
Like the Candidates, TV's Political Pundits Show Signs of Diversity
4/2/2008
N
4/4/2008
E
Obama's Support Softens in Poll, Suggesting a Peak Has Passed
4/4/2008
N
4/6/2008
N
4/7/2008
N
4/7/2008
N
4/8/2008
E
4/10/2008
N
4/11/2008
N
4/14/2008
N
4/14/2008
N
4/14/2008
E
4/14/2008
N
4/16/2008
E
4/17/2008
E
4/17/2008
N
Former Friends Weigh Into Debate, and the Former Amity Drains Out
4/17/2008
N
4/18/2008
E
4/19/2008
N
4/20/2008
E
4/23/2008
N
4/24/2008
N
4/24/2008
N
4/26/2008
E
4/26/2008
N
4/26/2008
E
4/27/2008
E
4/28/2008
N
4/28/2008
N
Not Speaking for Obama, Pastor Speaks for Himself, at Length
4/29/2008
N
4/29/2008
N
4/29/2008
E
4/30/2008
N
4/30/2008
N
4/30/2008
E
New York Times Hagee coverage
Headline
Date
News or editorial
3/1/2008
N
McCain Grows Testy on Question About '04 and Kerry Partnership
3/8/2008
N
3/9/2008
E
3/23/2008
N
4/8/2008
N
McCain Goes Where Few Republicans Dare, Deep in Democrats' Territory
4/26/2008
N
4/30/2008
E
—M.M.B., A.I., B.J.L., & A.J.W.
Gotcha! Olbermann Rips Apart Bush Economy Speech
Last night on "Countdown," Keith Olbermann ripped apart President Bush's speech on the economy, fact-checking each claim and dismantling Bush's case point-by-point. It was reminiscent of this clip from February, where Keith presented a detailed timeline of the Bush administration's political exploitation of the terror threat.
Watch:
BREAKING: Woman believed to be 'D.C. madam' kills herself
TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) - A woman police believe to be convicted Washington escort service operator Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide, officials said Thursday. Police said the body was found in a shed near Palfrey's mother's home Thursday morning. There was a suicide note, but police did not disclose its contents or how she killed herself. Police did not immediately have additional comment when reached by telephone. Palfrey's attorney, Preston Burton, did not return a telephone call and e-mail message. Palfrey was convicted April 15 by a federal jury of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite, including Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. She had denied her escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge. She was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering. Palfrey faced a maximum of 55 years in prison and was free pending her sentencing July 24. Prosecutors said Palfrey operated the prostitution service for 13 years. Her trial concluded without revealing many new details about the service or its clients. Vitter was among possible witnesses, but did not take the stand. Vitter, a first-term senator who is married and has four children, has acknowledged being involved with Palfrey's escort service and has apologized for what he called a "very serious sin." But he avoided commenting further. One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial. Last year, Palfrey said she, too, was humiliated by her prostitution charges, but said: "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of."
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Dang Obama is Popular
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Horizontal Menu and Navigation Bar
Many web designs use horizontal menu bar and navigation lists which allow users to easily access the pertinent information in their website. While Blogger makes it simple for you to create a link list through their “Add a Page Element” function, the list is displayed vertically. We shall discuss how you can change that into a horizontal link list, and more specifically, use that as a navigation bar in your Header. We have also included some examples of how you can make the links dynamic by changing the colors, hover and background effects and customizing them to suit your Blog layout.
Before we proceed, it might be helpful for you to understand something about Numbered List and Bulleted List and the various attributes that can apply to the code.
Horizontal Link Lists
1. Apply to all link lists and label lists
If you want all the link lists and label lists in your sidebar to be displayed horizontally, go to Template -> Edit HTML and scroll to where you see this and insert the code (shown in red):-
.sidebar ul { display:inline; } .sidebar li{ display:inline; } |
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In some templates, you may insert the code here:-
.sidebar ul li { display:inline; } |
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Preview the template. This is what you would see.
2. Apply to one specific list
Instead of having a style that applies to all the lists, you may want to have only one of the link lists appear horizontally. First, you need to create that list by going to Template -> Page Elements -> Add a Page Element. Choose “Link List”, add your items and save.
Now is the tricky part. You would have to locate that particular segment of the code where this list appears and find out the widget ID for that list.
For discussion purposes, let us assume that we want the link list titled “My Blogs” in our left sidebar to be displayed horizontally. We go to Template -> Edit HTML, and check the box that says “Expand Widget Templates.”
Next, we searched (Ctrl-F) for “My Blogs” and found this section:-
<b:widget id='LinkList2' locked='false' title='My Blogs' type='LinkList'> |
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From here, we know that this link list has been assigned an ID LinkList2. To define a style, we went to the /* Sidebar Content */ portion of our template and included this code (Note: the code can be inserted into any part of the <head> section but for ease of reference we have inserted it here):-
/* Sidebar Content */ #LinkList2 li{ display:inline; } |
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This is what we got:-
Only this list is displayed horizontally. The other lists are not affected. If you want this style for the labels, do the same. Locate the widget ID which is likely to be id='Label1' or id='Label2' and then insert the code:-
/* Sidebar Content */ #Label1 li{ display:inline; } |
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Text Link Menu Navigation Bars
With this basic understanding of how the “display:inline” code works, let us now combine this with hover and link effects to customize our very own horizontal navigation bar. Again, if you are truly keen to do something unique for your Blog, peruse the discussion in Links Hover and Rollover Effects to understand the different styles that can be used to make the links more dynamic.
1. Simple Navigation Bar
We want a row of text links pointing users to certain important parts of the Blog. The links blend into the Header and will look like this:-
In Template ->Edit HTML, insert this style definition under /* Header */:-
/* Header */ #newnavbar ul li{ font-size:100%; list-style-type: none; display:inline; padding:0px; margin:10px; border:0px solid; } |
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Other than the display:inline style, the other variables can be changed. You can have a larger or smaller font. The margin and padding set the space in between the words and can be changed. If you want a border around the word, set the border value to at least 1px.
Scroll further down the template and check if you see this:-
<div id='header-wrapper'> <b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='3' showaddelement='yes'> |
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If the number of maxwidgets is set to “1”, change it to “3”. If the showaddelement is “no”, change it to “yes”.
Save the template. We shall now create the list. Go to Template -> Page Elements -> Add a Page Element and choose to add HTML/JavaScript in your Header. The link list code you can add is as follows:-
<div id='newnavbar'> <ul> <li><a href="URL of Home page">Home</a></li> <li><a href="URL of Music page">Music</a></li> <li><a href="URL of Books page">Books</a></li> <li><a href="URL of Links page">Hot Links</a></li> <li><a href="URL of Profile page">About Me</a></li> <li><a href="mailto:EMAIL ADDRESS">Contact</a></li> </ul></div> |
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Insert the relevant words and URL links into the above example. If you want to link to a label, click the label in your sidebar to obtain the URL for insertion into the code (shown in blue). The URL should look like this:-
<li><a href="http://i3software.blogspot.com/search/label/Blog%20Guide%20II">Three Column Templates</a></li> |
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This link widget can be moved about. Try placing it below the Header and then above the Blog posts to see the difference in the layout. Preview the template and save it if you like the new horizontal navigation bar position.
2. Adding Link and Hover Effects
We have now a simple horizontal navigation list. Let us make it visually attractive and distinguish these links from the other links in your Blog. This is done by introducing the hover and rollover effects. For example, in addition to the above code we added into the template, we can have these as well:-
/* Header */ #newnavbar ul li{ font-size:100%; list-style-type: none; display:inline; padding:0px; margin:10px; border:0px solid; } #newnavbar li a{ color:#dfffed; } #newnavbar li a:visited { color: #57E964; } #newnavbar li a:hover { color: #F88017; background: #ffff66; } |
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In this example, the links are light green in color, visited links turn into bright green and when you hover your mouse over the link, the text is orange with a yellow background. Try changing to different set of color combination by inserting the appropriate color codes.
The resulting navigation bar will be this:-
3. Menu Bar below Header
As mentioned, the horizontal Navbar can be in the Header or aligned just above the Blog Posts. There is yet another position where you can place it, i.e., below the Header and above the Blog posts and sidebars. In the new Blogger templates, you should see this:-
<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'> <b:section class='crosscol' id='crosscol' showaddelement='yes'/> </div> |
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Change the showaddelement from “no” to “yes”. In Template -> Page Elements, you should be able to see an additional slot between the Header and the Blog posts where you can insert Page Elements.
Image Link Menu Navigation Bars
1. Simple Navigation Bar
If text links are still too unexciting for you, try having image links instead. Do up some small little images to represent the different parts of your Blog that visitors can go to. You can search the net for free downloadable images, create new ones, or edit and resize current ones with image editors like Picasa. Once you have these images, host them on a free image server and take note of the image URLs.
The modification to the template is similar to that of text links. In Template ->Edit HTML, insert this style definition:-
/* Header */ #newnavbar ul li{ list-style-type: none; display:inline; margin:0px; padding:30px; border:0px solid; } |
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The space in between the pictures (padding) may be changed depending on the number of images and the size of each image.
To add the horizontal row of navigation image links, go to Template -> Page Elements -> Add a Page Element and choose to add HTML/JavaScript in your Header. The image link list code you can add is as follows:-
<div id='newnavbar'> <ul> <li><a href="URL of Home page"><img src="URL of Home image"></a></li> <li><a href="URL of Music page"><img src="URL of Music image"></a></li> <li><a href="URL of Books page"><img src="URL of Books image"></a></li> <li><a href="URL of Links page"><img src="URL of Links image"></a></li> <li><a href="URL of Profile page"><img src="URL of Profile image"></a></li> <li><a href="mailto:EMAIL ADDRESS"><img src="URL of Email image"></a></li> </ul></div> |
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The portions of the code in blue are the addresses where you want the users to be directed to. The parts in red are where your images are hosted on an image server.
This is how the neat horizontal picture navigation bar can look:-
2. Adding Link and Hover Effects
We can throw in some effects into the picture links. Just to give you an example, we added this hover links code in addition to the above:-
/* Header */ #newnavbar ul li{ list-style-type: none; display:inline; margin:0px; padding:30px; border:0px solid; } #newnavbar li a img{ height:30px; width:30px; } #newnavbar li a:hover img{ height:40px; width:40px; background: #ffff66; } #newnavbar li a:visited img{ height:40px; width:40px; background: #6D7B8D; } |
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What we had done was to fix the navigation bar image link size at 30px by 30px. There is no border around the image. When the mouse cursor hovers over the image link, the image is enlarged to 40px by 40px with a yellow background. Any visited links will have a grey background behind the image.
While this looks interesting to have, do note that any change in image size also affects the surrounding text alignment. You can reverse it. Change the hover and image sizes to smaller values so that the images 'shrink' when the mouse hovers over them.
Update:
Navigation Bar within Header Image
A number of us have uploaded background images into the Blogger Header. After adding a Text Link or Image Link menu bar, you may notice that it is positioned either on top or below the Header image. You may have designed the image with a space reserved for the Navbar, either at the top, bottom or to the side. To adjust the position of the Navigation Bar and have it within the Header Image, refer to our article Add Navigation Bar in Header Image.
There are numerous dynamic styles that you can try. If you have followed our guides, you would at the least have an idea how you can tailor-make yours. This is an introductory article. We may follow up with another one on multi-level tabs.
In designing your layout, avoid having too many gimmicks. Stick to one or two nice hover effects and if you'd like, change the color scheme every few months so as not to bore your regular readers. Go ahead, try it and have fun creating your own Navigation bar!
Underneath It All (must see pic)
Underneath It All
Flip Image
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All content copyright 2006 Eric Poulton
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Lose A Finger? Put Some Powder On It
The man who grew a finger
| By Matthew Price BBC News, Ohio |
The man who grew a finger
In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping.
Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall's hobby shop.
That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be.
"I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."
 |  I think that within ten years that we will have strategies that will re-grow the bones, and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones  Dr Dr Stephen Badylak University of Pittsburgh |
It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch.
"We don't know where the piece went."
The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he'd lost it for good.
Today though, you wouldn't know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it's all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.
'Pixie dust'
How? Well that's the truly remarkable part. It wasn't a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.
Mr Speivak's brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.
For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.
"The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.
"It took about four weeks before it was sealed."
Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement."
The "pixie dust" comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix.
Pig's bladder
The process he has been pioneering over the last few years involves scraping the cells from the lining of a pig's bladder.
The remaining tissue is then placed into acid, "cleaned" of all cells, and dried out.
It can be turned into sheets, or a powder.
How it works in detail
It looks like a simple process, but of course the science is complex.
"There are all sorts of signals in the body," explains Dr Badylak.
"We have got signals that are good for forming scar, and others that are good for regenerating tissues.
"One way to think about these matrices is that we have taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals that were always there anyway for constructive remodelling."
In other words when the extra cellular matrix is put on a wound, scientists believe it stimulates cells in the tissue to grow rather than scar.
If they can perfect the technique, it might mean one day they could repair not just a severed finger, but severely burnt skin, or even damaged organs.
Clinical trial
They hope soon to start a clinical trial in Buenos Aires on a woman who has cancer of the oesophagus.
The normal procedure in such cases is often deadly. Doctors remove the cancerous portion and try to stretch the stomach lining up to meet the shortened oesophagus.
In the trial they will place the extra cellular matrix inside the body from where the portion of oesophagus has been removed, and hope to stimulate the cells around it to re-grow the missing portion.
So could limbs be re-grown? Dr Badylak is cautious, but believes the technology is potentially revolutionary.
"I think that within ten years that we will have strategies that will re-grow the bones, and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones. And that is a major step towards eventually doing the entire limb."
That kind of talk has got the US military interested.
They are just about to start trials to re-grow parts of the fingers of injured soldiers.
Skin burns
They also hope the matrix might help veterans like Robert Henline re-grow burnt skin.
He was almost killed in an explosion while serving in Iraq. His four colleagues travelling with him in the army Humvee were all killed.
He suffered 35% burns to his head and upper body. His ears are almost totally gone, the skin on his head has been burnt to the bone, his face is a swollen raw mess.
So far he has undergone surgery 25 times. He reckons he has got another 30 to go.
Anything that could be done in terms of regeneration would be great he says.
"Life changing! I think I'm more scared of hospitals than I am of going back to Iraq again."
Like any developing technology there are many unknowns. There are worries about encouraging cancerous growths by using the matrix.
Doctors though believe that within the so called pixie dust lies an amazing medical discovery.
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Floyd inflatable pig is recovered
Woman describes finding the inflatable pig in tatters on her driveway
A giant inflatable pig which floated away during a Roger Waters concert at the weekend has been recovered in tatters in California.
The pig, which measured the width of two buses, was found by two families on their driveways in La Quinta.
They will split the $10,000 (£5,090) reward offered by the Coachella music festival, from where the pig was lost.
The inflatable pig bore the image of a ticked ballot box for US presidential hopeful Barack Obama on its underbelly.
Prototype pig
The animal's flanks carried the slogans "fear builds walls" and "don't be led to the slaughter", with a cartoon of Uncle Sam holding two meat cleavers.
Former Pink Floyd star Waters said "that's my pig" as it drifted away during Sunday's gig.
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Coachella spokeswoman Marcee Rondan said: "It wasn't really supposed to happen that way."
The pig was tethered to the ground with ropes and floated away as Waters was playing Pink Floyd song Pigs on the Wing.
Pink Floyd had used inflatable pigs during their concerts in the past, and the lost animal was the same prototype as all the others, according to Ms Rondan.
The two families who found what was left of the inflatable have also decided to share four life tickets to the Coachella festival that were offered as part of the reward.