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HELSINKI – Reindeer are featured on Christmas cards and in movies worldwide this time of year, galloping across the sky with Santa's sleigh in tow.
But on Europe's northern fringe, the migratory mammals are part of everyday life all year round as they roam the fells of Lapland – the Arctic homeland of the indigenous Sami people of Norway, Sweden, Finland and northwest Russia. Here are some interesting things you may not have known about reindeer:
Of course reindeer can't fly but they can run quickly over long distances.
"Reindeer are fast, but not as fast as horses," says Jonas Vannar, a Sami reindeer herder from Jokkmokk in Swedish Lapland. "They can easily travel [24 to 31 miles] a day if they have to."
The migratory animals can roam 125 miles or more in the spring from their winter grazing grounds in the forests to reach calving grounds high in the mountains.
Reindeer are also uniquely adapted to survive the harsh Lapland winters, explains Mari Heikkila, director of Ranua Wildlife Park in Finland.
"The hair of the reindeer is hollow, so there is air between the hairs and also inside the hair, and their winter coat is really thick," Heikkila said.
That makes them super-insulated, one reason why Samis have always made their winter clothes from reindeer hides. Reindeer also have large hooves compared to moose or deer. When the snow is deep, they spread their hooves and make them even wider to stop themselves from sinking in.
Reindeer eyes change color between summer and winter to adapt to the widely varying levels of light in the high north.
"The reflection from reindeer eyes is yellow-green in summer ... but deep blue in winter," said Karl-Arne Stokkan, a professor at the University of Tromsoe in Norway, part of a scientific team that discovered earlier this year why that is.
Because of the extremely limited light in the far northern winter, reindeer's eyes need to be much more sensitive to light than in summer. The blue color during the darkest months of the year helps scatter more incoming light and results in better vision, Stokkan said.
Reindeer meat is a popular staple across Lapland. In Finland, demand for the gamey, low-fat meat outstrips the supply, so it has to import reindeer meat from Russia.
Reindeer are slaughtered in late autumn or early winter but their meat can be frozen and used throughout the year.
In popular culture, eight flying reindeer pull Santa's sleigh as he delivers presents to children around the world on Christmas Eve. That scenario was first described in the 1820s by American poet Clement Clarke Moore. More than 100 years later, American writer Robert L. May added Rudolph with his red nose leading the way.
Some of the story is rooted in reality, as migrating reindeer herds are usually led by a single animal.
But there's debate on the origins of the flying reindeer, and some have traced it to reindeer eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Ancient Sami shamans, the theory goes, would then drink filtered reindeer urine and get high themselves, then think they were seeing their reindeer "flying."
"Mushrooms have been used to a certain extent in shamanic ceremonies," says Arja Jomppanen, a researcher at Sida, the National Museum of the Finnish Sami in Inari. "But drinking urine has not been mentioned in accounts of Sami traditions."
Hakan Rydving, an expert in Sami religion at Norway's University of Bergen, firmly rejected the theory as a myth.
"There is no such information at all from the Sami world, neither about drinking the urine of reindeer, nor of seeing flying reindeer in their dreams," he said.
Reindeer can't walk too far without answering the call of nature. In fact, they are unable to walk and pee at the same time, so they have to take a bathroom break roughly every 6 miles. In Finnish, this distance is known as "poronkusema" or "reindeer's piss" and was an old-fashioned description of distances in the countryside.
Follow David Mac Dougall at http://twitter.com/davidmacdougall


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Friday, November 2, 2012
My fellow Americans ...
As I sat in my chair watching television the other night, I came to the sudden realization there must be some kind of election going on this year. From what I could decipher, it must be happening fairly soon. I guess I kind of forgot about it because I've just been so busy. Those "America's Funniest Home Video" reruns aren't just going to watch themselves you know.
Flipping through the channels, I was literally told a million times who not to vote for. I don't remember seeing many commercials where the candidates championed any of the good things that they had actually accomplished but mostly gravitated toward mudslinging about their opponent. It kind of gave me that sick in the pit of my stomach kind of feeling. It just pointed out why many of us are disgusted by politics in this once great land of ours.
Because of this, I am hereby announcing my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. I realize that it might be a little bit of an uphill battle and that I might be starting a tad late, but it's apparent to me that America needs me ... and who am I to argue with America.
In launching my campaign, I will probably legally change my name. Not that I don't like the moniker I've been using for the past 46 years, but since I'm starting out at such a late date, I might need something with a little bit more punch and zing to stand out from the crowd. I need something with some previous recognition. Something that people can relate to. After extensive polling, I believe that I have come up with the perfect choice. I'll let you in on it a little later.
After that is taken care of, I will probably need to come up with some actual policies and beliefs in order to form the working structure for my administration. This is where I'll differentiate myself from those other guys.
I'm running on a one-term platform. Who needs that crazy job for eight long years? I shouldn't even need four years to accomplish my goals. I'll probably get most of it done in the first few days.
Congressional gridlock will become a thing of the past because I will nail shut all the doors at the Capitol until all the little Senators and all the little Representatives get all their little jobs done. Just like in elementary school, you don't get recess until you get your work done. And I would feed them nothing but baked beans while Congress was in session. A bunch of politicians who are already filled with hot air, sitting in a confined, nailed-up building, eating nothing but baked beans – trust me, from previous personal experience, that should speed things up.
Instead of a State of the Union Address every year, I will just read off a list of people that made me mad in the past 365 days. That would include any politician, Republican or Democrat, senator, representative, governor, lobbyist, road commissioner, or dog catcher who, in my opinion, lied, cheated, did something wrong or stupid, or just cast a goofy glance in my direction. (And Nancy Grace because she's just so annoying.)
Evidently, from what I can tell from my polling numbers, the economy isn't in the best of shape. We need to figure out the best way to pay off our debt, and I believe that I have found a way. Anyone who makes more money than me will be considered wealthy and have their tax rates doubled. For everybody else, we'll just pass a hat around and see what we come up with. Presidential amnesty will be instituted for myself because how could you, the American people, expect me to do a good job of leading this great nation with a 1040EZ hanging over my head? I intend to implement this economic strategy during my inauguration speech.
In my first 100 days in office, I plan on outlawing all campaign financing of any kind. Since I don't plan on running again, what do I care? I would also outlaw all forms of telemarketing, the phrase "crunching the numbers" and all "Saved By The Bell" reruns. Not necessarily in that order.
As far as my vice president goes, I'll probably pick one of my buddies from high school. They've been known to say some pretty dumb things in the past, and with Joe Biden as a model, it should be a smooth transition. I'll probably be giving the Fritzer a call later tonight to see if he's up to the task.
There is only one person that I would want as my Secretary of State – Clint Eastwood. All of our foreign policy talks with troublesome countries like Iran and North Korea would go a lot differently if Clint were in charge. Can you imagine if Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinewhateverhisnameis walked into the negotiation room and Dirty Harry was sitting across the table. We'd probably be back to $2-a-gallon gas in a heartbeat.
These are just a few of the features of my presidency that will bring America back to it's glory days. I'll figure out the rest after "The Simpsons" is over. So please, remember to write me in next Tuesday.
I'm Honey Boo Boo Kardashian, and I approve this message.
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subset: commoncrawl


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COLUMBUS — Police say someone fired shots at a city bus in Columbus, and a woman passenger was hit in the face.
It happened Tuesday afternoon north of downtown. Columbus police say they think 39-year-old Amy Develvis was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when she was hit in the face with one of several shots fired at the city bus.
She was taken to a hospital and was reported to be in critical condition.
Police are looking for a red Chevrolet Impala that was seen by witnesses leaving the scene.


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Anderson Falls in ITA Regional Final
LSU Sports Interactive
AUBURN, Ala. - LSU men's tennis senior Roger Anderson started quickly but could not finish as he fell in the USTA/ITA Southern Regional consolation singles final Sunday at Auburn's Yarbrough Tennis Center.
Aided by a strong serve, Anderson took the first set, 6-3, against Ole Miss' Johan Backstrom, but he could not maintain the momentum. Backstrom responded by winning the second set, 6-3, and the third-set super tiebreaker, 10-5.
Anderson wrapped up a strong showing at the regional, finishing with a 4-2 singles record and 2-1 doubles mark.
"It was probably Roger's best tournament as a college player," LSU head coach Jeff Brown said. "He put some things together that were good to see, and he served extremely well and hit big forehands. He has steadily improved during his career, and we hope he continues with that trend going into next weekend."
LSU completed play at the regional, and the Tigers will hit the practice courts Monday in preparation for the final fall tournament. LSU will compete at the Texas A&M Invitational Friday through Sunday at the Mitchell Tennis Center.
"We are ready to get the guys back on the practice court, make some adjustments in our game and hopefully show continued improvement like we have seen so far," Brown said.
Log on to www.LSUsports.net/menstennis for all the latest information on the Tigers, and connect with the team via the team's social media sites - www.twitter.com/lsutennis and www.facebook.com/lsutennis.
USTA/ITA Southern Regional Championships
Auburn, Ala. - Yarbrough Tennis Center
October 21
Consolation Singles - Final Round
Johan Backstrom (Ole Miss) def. Roger Anderson (LSU), 3-6, 6-3, 10-5


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News Archives for October 2009
Hardware Roundup: Thursday EditionPosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 04:52AM
Author: Nemo
What an exciting time it is these days in the world of videocards, what with the recent introduction of AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of cards with support of DirectX 11 and its Eyefinity technology. Then LucidLogix announced its Hydra 200 chip designed to unleash the the true power of multi-GPU processing. Where does this leave Nvidia? For right now it's new generation grpahics cards are a few months out but we have a fews articles on what's in store for us when Nvidia does finally release its 'Fermi' GPUs that are being designed from the ground up as a computational engine to take advantage of CUDA technology. Our roundup today also manged to load up on reviews of input devices with three keyboards and the OCZ Behemoth gaming mouse (also see the OCC review here).
Input Devices
Roccat Valo Keyboard @ RBMods
OCZ Behemoth Gaming Mouse @ Neoseeker
VidaBox Premium Wireless Keyboard with Laser Trackball @ TweakTown
OCZ Sabre OLED Gaming Keyboard @ TechSpot
Storage/Hard Drives
CRU DataPort SecureDock @ ThinkComputers
Power Supplies
Seasonic 850WATT S12D PSU @ Bjorn3D
Nvidia GPU Technology Conference The Rise of Fermi @ OCC
NVIDIA Fermi Next Generation GPU Architecture Overview @ PC Perspective
Nvidia's 'Fermi' GPU architecture revealed @ Tech Report
NVIDIA's "Fermi" Architecture White Paper @ [H]ardOCP
NVIDIA Announces CUDA GPU Architecture - Fermi @ Legit Reviews
Lucid HYDRA 200 Details and Interviews with AMD, Lucid & NVIDIA @ Legit Reviews
Gigabyte GV-N285OC-2GI Geforce GTX 285 2GB Videocard @ PCSTATS
MSI Afterburner @ Bjorn3D
AVID6EEK's 4.61GHz Total Loss Watercooling Overclocked PC Experiment @ PCSTATS
Complete Story
Apple to compete with Google by means of a Map Service?Posted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 08:31AM
Author: kingdingeling
There has been a bit of confusion about why Apple would reject Google Latitude as an App, but rather restrict it to a Web-App. Apple's intentions are becoming clearer though, as news resurfaced that Apple has bought PlaceBase, a map service that is a direct competitor to Google Maps. Apple has not been very open about this, but there are a few clues. In July, Fred Lalonde, owner of Openspaces.org, a company that used PlaceBase's software, tweeted a message reading "Apple bought PlaceBase - all hush hush. Pushpin site taken offline. Hyperlocal iPhone?". The next clue came from Jaron Waldman, the CEO and founder of PlaceBase, when he listed PlaceBase as his "past experience" on his LinkedIn page. As his current occupation, he is a member of Apple's "GEO Team". Apple's move to compete with Google in more areas (Map Services and Operating Systems for example) also gives another reason for the resignation of Google CEO Eric Schmidt from Apple's board of directors in August (OCC News).
Complete Story
ICANN Begins New Era of IndependencePosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 09:01AM
Author: Nemo
The governing body that oversses the domain name system (DNS) is embarking on a new chapter in its life as it moves out from under direct controll of the U.S. Department of Commerce for the first time in eleven years.
In an agreement dated yesterday, the DOC gave up some of its control over Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that paves the way for more international participation in the decisions made that affect how the Internet is run. In an agreement dating from 2006 that expireed yesterday, the U.S. becomes a member of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and gives up primary control over ICANN.
That should ease some of the criticism directed toward ICANN and the U.S. claiming the U.S. had a stranghold on the Internet. As a member of the GAC, the U.S. joins over 100 other countries at the table with ICANN no longer reporting to the U.S. government. As the Internet has become more prevalent world wide over the past decade, U.S. control had become a sore point for many, with some countries such as China threatening to build their own version of the Net if some accomodation on the matter could not be reached.
"This reflects the globalization of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the body, called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann. "By America relaxing some control and inviting other countries to have an active hand, that increases the possibility that the global Internet will remain unified," Mr. Beckstrom said in an interview.;
Complete Story
British High Court Serves Injunction via TwitterPosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 01:19PM
Author: jammin
Twitter already provides support to individuals or organisations experiencing problems with impersonation accounts on the service (they break Twitter's ToS agreement). However if you wish to take out a legal writ over the issue but don't know the true identity of the account holder, what do you do? Right-wing blogger Donal Blaney found himself in this position, and through his solicitors firm Griffin Law sought an injunction against Twitter user @blaneysblarney. The UK High Court then decided that the best course of action was to issue the writ to the anonymous Tweeter via the service itself, with UK law allowing injunctions to be served through electronic means should more traditional methods be unavailable. Andre Walker at Griffin Law said "Whoever they are, they will be told to stop posting, to remove previous posts and to identify themselves to the High Court via a web link form." The decision sets a precedent that could give others pursuing litigation a path of action to follow.
Complete Story
ASUS Announces First 'Marine Cool' MotherboardPosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 04:42PM
Author: jammin
Back in March, ASUS showed a new high-performance motherboard concept it had been working on called 'Marine Cool'. That concept utilised things like a ceramic cooling backplate that covered the rear of the board and opted for SO-DIMM slots rather than the more traditional DIMM slots usually found on desktop boards. With the recently announced Sabertooth 55i, ASUS brings some of the ideas from that concept, but thankfully ditches the SO-DIMM slots for four DDR3 DIMM slots instead. ASUS does use some of the ceramic technology in the Sabertooth 55i's heatsinks, which it claims enables heat to be dissipated faster. It also features a frame that allows a 40mm or 50mm fan to be mounted for memory cooling and "military grade" capacitors and VRM MOFSETs, which it claims should provide more resilience to heat. There are no details on pricing or a release date, but you can check the full specs in the official announcement.
Complete Story
Transformers 3 Officially AnnouncedPosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 04:46PM
Author: CheeseMan42
Transformers 3 was officially announced on the blog of Micheal Bay, director of the first 2 movies. Bay was unsure if he was going to sign on for the third installment in the series as he has other projects he would also like to work on, hopefully Bad Boys 3 is one of them. The movie is scheduled for release on July 1, 2011, meaning moviegoers will need to wait nearly 2 years to get more giant robot action. Bay said that he was meeting with Industrial Light and Magic today, and that he was also meeting with lead writer Ehren Kruger. Bay has also stated that there will be a "great story," so this movie is definitely something to look forward too.
Complete Story
Google Wave Invites Show Up On eBayPosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 04:47PM
Author: CheeseMan42
The ultra-exclusive Google Wave beta, only 100,000 invites were given out, is now underway. However, if you are an internet user who may have wanted to use it, odds are that you didn't receive an invite. Just as all other new technology releases, Google Wave invites started to appear on eBay. Some eBay users aren't quite as honest as others, as one tried to sell a phantom Wave invite. The highest bid before being taken down was reportedly $27,000. As with other new Google products, I'll be more than happy to wait until it is available for free.
Complete Story
More Lucid HYDRA Talk, Still no Performance FiguresPosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 05:48PM
Author: jammin
If you pay attention to our daily hardware roundup (and I'm sure you do), then you have probably already read Legit Reviews look at Lucid's HYDRA 200 chip, as well as the discussions they had with AMD and NVIDIA about the technology. Looking at the demo systems Lucid had on display both at IDF and behind closed doors, it is clear that HYDRA works largely as claimed, at least from a basic functionality stand point. Using MSI Big Bang motherboards, it was shown running NVIDIA and AMD cards together without need for bridge connectors. You will need to run Windows 7 to use cards from the different GPU vendors together though, as it is the only OS that allows the necessary drivers to be installed alongside each other. Being able to select the card which outputs to the display from the desktop is handily straight forward however.
When it comes to performance when compared with SLI or Crossfire, Lucid are still being very cagey, stating that they are unwilling to release numbers at this time. The furthest they were prepared to go was to say they expected "competitive performance". The reaction from AMD and NVIDIA is also somewhat predictable, defending their own technologies and generally towing the company line. They did however both say that if HYDRA delivers a substantial improvement for gamers then the industry as a whole would win (high performance and more straight forward multi-GPU gaming would likely lead to increased GPU sales). Take a look at the full article if you haven't already. Unfortunately, it looks like we will have to wait for motherboards featuring HYRDA to be released before we get some real world performance figures.
Complete Story
MSI Launches "Afterburner" Graphics Card Tweaking UtilityPosted: October 1, 2009 @ time: 11:32PM
Author: premiumgfx
MSI has announced the launch of its new "Afterburner" graphics card tweaking utility. Afterburner was co-developed by MSI and Rivatuner to provide an interface for overclocking, tweaking and monitoring of graphics cards. Some features of the Afterburner software include up to an 85% overclocking capability (MSI managed an 85% overclock with the MSI N275GTX), advanced fan speed control, over-voltage technology, real-time hardware monitoring and up to 5 overclocking profiles according to MSI. The Afterburner utility is compatible with both ATI and NVIDIA video cards and is available to download for free from the MSI Afterburner website. Our affiliate, Bjorn3D has evaluated the MSI Afterburner software for those who are thinking of trying out MSI's new utility as detailed in yesterday's Hardware Roundup. I think it's good to see a new overclocking utility with open support for both the red and green factions.
Complete Story
NVIDIA: GT300 Will Launch in 2009; Beats 5870Posted: October 2, 2009 @ time: 02:46AM
Author: premiumgfx
NVIDIA revealed the specifications of its new Fermi architecture a few days ago leaving some people wanting more information, such as when the first Fermi cards will be available and how they stack up with ATI's latest offerings. Today we get partial answers to both of those questions.
An unnamed senior employee at NVIDIA has confirmed that the long-awaited GT300 will ship by the end of this year, according to Fudzilla. This means we have a definite time-limit on when us, the consumer should be able to get our hands on NVIDIA's next-gen cards although there is no information available on an exact launch date.
It has also been confirmed that Drew Henry, the General Manager of the GeForce and Ion product lines has said that the Fermi range will be faster than any video card available including the ATI Radeon 5870. This is not surprising based on the Fermi's specifiations on paper. Aditionally, NVIDIA has stated that it has a Fermi GX2 variant in the works and that the single and dual card TDP should be similar to that of the single-core GTX285 and dual-core GTX295 respectively.
It seems that NVIDIA has the upper hand over its red competitors in light of these new scraps of information and hopefully the red faction is concocting a counter-attack in terms of performance.
Complete Story
Hardware Roundup: Friday EditionPosted: October 2, 2009 @ time: 04:10AM
Author: Nemo
Today's roundup includes a couple of reviews on Sapphire's HD 5850 and HD 5870 graphic cards along with a look at a look at Gigabyte's GTX 260 Super Overclock Series videocard. For those needing more sophisticated network storage there's the Thecus N5500 five-bay NAS server complete with an AJAX-based front end for easy management. Neoseeker brings us a roundup of five different AMD motherboards based on the 785G chipset. Check out all the reviews today by hitting the links below.
Input Devices
Perixx Periboard-708 Wireless Touchpad Keyboard @ ThinkComputers
AMD 785G Motherboard Roundup @ Neoseeker
Operating Systems
KDE 4 Isn't Too Bad, After All @ Techgage
Gameskulls GS-1 Tactical Gaming Helmet Headphones @ Legit Reviews
Storage/Hard Drives
Thecus N5500 Five-Bay NAS Server @ TweakTown
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB Video Card and Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Overclocking Tests @ TweakTown
Gigabyte GV-N26OC-896I @ Bjorn3D
Case In Point: THX on Wheels @ HotHardware
Complete Story
Deleting 1984 From Kindle Costs Amazon $150,000Posted: October 2, 2009 @ time: 02:39PM
Author: CheeseMan42
When Amazon removed the George Orwell books 1984 and Animal Farm from the Kindle on July 16 for Terms of Service violations, it probably didn't foresee such a backlash. Amazon has decided to settle a lawsuit brought against it by a Michigan student for $150,000. The student, Justin Gawronski, will be donating all the proceeds to charity and won't receive any of the settlement himself. The student initially filed the lawsuit when the text of the book went missing, leaving the notes he took useless.
Complete Story
Oak Ridge National Laboratory to Use Fermi For SupercomputerPosted: October 2, 2009 @ time: 02:41PM
Author: CheeseMan42
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be putting the recently announced Fermi GPU architecture by Nvidia to good use, announcing its intent to build a new supercomputer. The new supercomputer is estimated to be 10 times faster than the current fastest supercomputer. The Fermi based machined will be used for research in energy and climate change. Nvidia has been breaking into the scientific computing market with its Tesla based CUDA GPUs, a market previously dominated by CPUs. The computing power that will be available with GPU supercomputers is impressive already, with performance undoubtedly growing in the future.
Complete Story
Radeon HD 5750 Pictures, BenchmarksPosted: October 2, 2009 @ time: 09:01PM
Author: jammin
Apparently, a member of Chinese forum mymypc.com has had the opportunity to take a look at a HD 5750 card, as well as run a few benchmarks. If this all turns out to be correct, the HD 5750 board will be considerably smaller than the recently released 5800 series cards (possibly even a small as some current lower end models), with 1120 stream processors and 56 texture units (TMU). Core and memory clocks come in at 700MHz and 1150MHz respectively. What is nice to see is the same 4 display ouputs that feature on the 5800 series cards. Performance wise, we only have 3DMark 06 and Vantage scores to go by, which put the 5750 in somewhere slightly above GTS250 and 4770, at 12931 for 3DMark 06 (with an E8400) and Vantage GPU score of 6881. Naturally driver versions are going to be pretty early at this stage.
Pricing is expected to be around the $149 mark for the HD 5750, with the HD 5770 around $199. It is also rumored that release dates for the 5700 series may have been brought forward, which would see them possibly appearing as early as October 12th. You can check out all of the pictures on the mymypc.com forums. Credit goes to VR-Zone for digging this up.
Complete Story
NVIDIA Confirms Fermi Card was a Mock-up, but Demos were RealPosted: October 3, 2009 @ time: 03:55PM
Author: jammin
After NVIDIA announced its new "Fermi" architecture this week, with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang holding up an example card during his keynote presentation, some began to wonder about the authenticity of that display model. Charlie Demerjian at SemiAccurate posted an article on Thursday, which used pictures from PC Watch to highlight suspicions that the card show on stage couldn't possibly have been a working Fermi board. A number of things about it just didn't look right, with components that obviously didn't line up with the PCB traces and the PCB itself being apparently cut down. NVIDIA have now confirmed that the card shown on stage was indeed a mock up model, though it also stresses that the demos shown during the conference claimed to be running on Fermi hardware were in fact doing just that. Apparently the real boards weren't in the kind of state that it wanted to be showing off, so we will have to wait for product shots once the designs have been finalised.
The question a number of people have therefore been asking is whether showing a mock up on stage without making it explicitly clear was a deliberately misleading move. We all know that in the GPU market, neither of the big two companies are above taking pots shots at the other to try and gain an advantage (even in purely marketing terms). From one perspective, mock ups of products certainly aren't unusual in presentations and NVIDIA would obviously like to give everyone present something representative of a final product to take a look at. On the other hand, the presentation of the card may have given the impression (intended or not) that development of the product was further along than it actually is. With the latest AMD GPUs already out there in the market, giving consumers a reason to hang on before making a purchase is desirable. I'll let you decide for yourselves on what NIVIDIA's intentions were, but either way, the GPU industry continues to be as exciting (or infuriating, depending on your outlook) as ever.
Complete Story
A-DATA Unveils the First Waterproof & Shock Resistant SSDPosted: October 4, 2009 @ time: 04:33AM
Author: premiumgfx
Taiwan based DRAM memory manufacturer, A-DATA has announced the first waterproof and shock resistant portable SSD, the HDD SH93 designed with consumers such as students and travelers in mind. The SH93 includes a rubber and plastic cushioning material to protect it from the elements previously mentioned: water and force. It can survive being under 1m of water for 30 minutes and has passed the military-grade MIL-STD-810F drop test ensuring that data is protected from the elements. The USB cord can also be be clipped onto the hard drive for convenient data accessibility. The HDD SH93 will be available in 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 640GB variants in a glossy yellow finish. The HDD SH93 includes a three year warranty, the opportunity to download A-DATA's HDDtoGO software (with no registration), and a free 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security 2009 (after registration). There is no word yet on availability or pricing of the HDD SH93.
Complete Story
Hardware Roundup: Weekend EditionPosted: October 4, 2009 @ time: 07:53AM
Author: Nemo
The OCC weekend roundup turned up a pair of notebooks from ASUS and Gateway; with prices on the Gateway coming near the $500 mark, this full-size notebook can offer some serious competition to netbooks if you want better performance at the cost of battery life. There's also a review on the NZXT Sentry 2 touch-screen fan controller (reviewed by OCC here) and more , so check out the links below.
ABS Tigas Super Full Tower Chassis @ Legit Reviews
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller @ ThinkComputers
Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P AMD 790FX Socket AM3 Motherboard @ PCSTATS
Gateway NV5214u Multimedia Notebook @ TweakTown
ASUS G51Vx 15" Gaming Notebook @ Techgage
GPU Technology: NVIDIA Talks Fermi, Unveils Nexus @ HotHardware
Complete Story
Wall Street Thinks Apple Should Dump ExclusivityPosted: October 4, 2009 @ time: 08:04AM
Author: CheeseMan42
Analysts from Morgan Stanley and Bernstein Research believe that Apple could more than double its market share in smartphones by moving to other carriers. There must be plenty of people who didn't want to switch to AT&T just to use the iPhone. Citing a 136% increase when Orange lost exclusivity in France, the analysts seem to be right on this one. Not mentioned in the article is the likely price drop that would accompany the increased competition. Not only would consumers be able to get the iPhone on different carriers, but they would also be able to get the iPhone at a lower price.
Complete Story
XP Mode for Windows 7 Enters RTMPosted: October 4, 2009 @ time: 07:56PM
Author: gebraset
Though Microsoft has claimed pretty much from the beginning that Windows XP applications and many software titles will work within the Windows 7 environment, the company is releasing a Windows XP mode for the new operating system. The current version is at a RTM release, and will be shipping the same day that Windows 7 will hit stores shelves nationwide. The Release Candidate is available now however for those users that are currently running Windows 7. Users for the most part have not had problems with most software titles, though old drivers and very old applications may need the Windows XP compatibility mode for them to work correctly, once it gets released in its final form.
Complete Story
Hardware Roundup: Monday EditionPosted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 03:41AM
Author: Nemo
Motherboards take center stage as we kick off another week of reviews from around the web. The opening act is a Micro ATX board from Asrock based on the AMD 785G chipset. Following are three socket LGA 1156 boards from Asrock, Intel and ASUS. We also have additional coverage on Nvidia from its recent GPU Technology Conference with more thoughts on the news around its Fermi GPU architecture.
Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme Cooler @ Overclocker Cafe
Gogo Inflight Internet Speed Tested and Used @ Legit Reviews
Asrock M3A785GMH/128M Motherboard @ RBMods
ASRock P55 Deluxe Motherboard and Intel DP55KG Extreme Motherboard (YouTube link) @ Motherboards.org
Asus Maximus 3 ROG LGA 1156 Motherboard @ Bjorn3D
Storage/Hard Drives
Transcend Ultra Series 120GB 2.5-inch Solid State Drive @ TweakTown
Trade Shows/Conventions
The State of NVIDIA: For better or for worse @ PC Perspective
Complete Story
Modern Warfare 2 Delayed on PC?Posted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 05:32AM
Author: premiumgfx
Call of Duty fans eager to purchase Modern Warfare 2 on PC may be in for an unexpected surprise. Apparently Electronic Theatre can confirm that the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has suffered a delay and will launch on November 24, two weeks after its console counterparts. There is no official reason for the delay yet, although it is speculated that it is due to insufficient manufacturing output to have enough PC copies ready by November 10 to meet demand or that Infinity Ward wants to implement more stringent copy-protection to combat piracy. Whatever the reason, if this delay is true I think that it's unfair for all us PC gamers have to wait longer to get what I call "the game everybody's waiting for". Although bear in mind that these reports have not been officially confirmed by Infinity Ward yet, so maybe there's nothing to worry about!
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New Windows Mobile Phone Coming to AT&TPosted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 07:55AM
Author: CheeseMan42
A new phone from handset maker HTC will soon be available for AT&T customers. The HTC Pure is a version of the HTC Touch Diamond2, and will feature Windows Mobile 6.5. The phone will retail for $149 and will feature a 3.2 inch touch screen. The 3G enabled phone will also feature Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a GPS. Media capabilities include a 5 megapixel camera, an FM radio, but the phone lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack. The Pure will bring another touch screen competitor to the AT&T lineup, but how will it fare against the iPhone?
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Samsung Designs an Android PhonePosted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 07:56AM
Author: CheeseMan42
T-Mobile has announced the fourth Android phone in its catalog, the Samsung Behold II. The Behold will be the first Android based phone released by Samsung in the United States. The phone will be available later this year, though an official date hasn't been announced. The phone will feature the TouchWiz interface, allowing users to customize the home screen with one of three options. Notable features of the phone include a 3.2 inch touch screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a GPS.
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NVIDIA Releases new GeForce 191.07 WHQL DriversPosted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 08:58AM
Author: redtigerdragon
NVIDIA just released new drivers for their cards (here for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, here for 7/Vista 64-bit, here for 32-bit XP, and here for 64-bit XP), and they come with some improvements listed below. For all of the improvements and bug fixes, see the release notes (here for Windows 7, here for Vista, and here for XP).
Adds support for OpenGL 3.2 for GeForce 8, 9, 100, 200-series and ION GPUs. Adds SLI support for Aion, Darkfall, Dawn of Magic 2: Time of Shadows, Dreamkiller, Fuel, Need for Speed: Shift and more. Includes the following key fix: for graphics cards supporting multiple clock states, 3D clocks correctly return to 2D clocks after exiting a 3D application. Accelerates performance in several games, such as (comparison between 191.07 and 190.62 drivers, results may vary):o Up to 50% performance increase in Call of Juarez: Blood in Bound with SLI enabled
o Up to 34% performance increase in Prototype with antialiasing enabled
o Up to 14% performance increase in Fallout 3 (indoor scenes) with antialiasing enabled
o Up to 12% performance increase in ARMA 2
o Up to 10% performance increase in Far Cry 2 (DX9 version) with antialiasing enabled
o Up to 8% performance increase in Batman: Arkham Asylum with GPU PhysX enabled
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"Free" Upgrade to Windows 7 May Not Be Free After AllPosted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 09:57AM
Author: redtigerdragon
Remember all of the manufacturers and retailers saying that if you buy a computer with Windows Vista loaded on the machine after June 26th, that you can upgrade to Windows 7 after its release for free? Remember the stir it caused? Well, as it turns out, those upgrades may not be free after all. Some manufacturers and retailers/e-tailers may have you pay the shipping and handling charge for your "free" upgrade. Lenovo, HP, and Dell all have listed in their terms and conditions that they may charge for shipping and handling. MousePrint.org contacted the manufacturers and put together a nice little chart to figure out if you have to pay or not:
|$0 for most buyers; others pay $12.99 for first kit
|$0 for US online and retail purchasers
|$0 for most buyers; others pay $12.99 for first kit
|$17.03 all buyers
|$0 for some buyers; $14.99 for others
|$0 for most buyers; $11.25/$12.99 for others
Other notes of interest are that Vista Home Basic doesn't qualify, and neither does XP (sorry netbook users). Also, if you bought the boxed version of Vista, you have to pay Microsoft $9.99 for shipping and handling.
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Thousands of Hotmail Passwords Posted OnlinePosted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 01:56PM
Author: jammin
Though the information has now been removed, it has been confirmed that thousands of passwords for Hotmail accounts were posted online on October 1st by an anonymous user at pastebin.com. The list contained details for over 10,000 accounts beginning with the letters A and B, with the suggestion that there could be additional lists of comprimised accounts. Neowin were the first to report the leak, and claim that most of the accounts appear to be based in Europe and include those with @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com endings. According to BBC news, Microsoft are aware of the problem and requested that the details be removed as soon as it learned of the leak. It has determined that it was not a breach of internal Microsoft data, with the details likely being acquired through a phishing scheme. If you use a Hotmail account (or anything else that requires your Windows Live details, say Messenger), then it is suggested that you change your password (and security question) as soon as possible.
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Facebook Introduces 'Gross National Happiness Index' AppPosted: October 5, 2009 @ time: 06:36PM
Author: jammin
Facebook's recently introduced "Gross National Happiness Index" application aims to represent the happiness levels of the user base in graph form. It currently only charts happiness for users based in the United States, but it does so by looking out for keywords in status updates, giving words such as "happy", "awesome" and "yay" a positive score, while those such as "tragic", "doubt" and "sad" earn a negative score. According to a survey carried out on some users, Facebook also found that those using more positive words in their updates tended to report being more satisfied with their lives.
Now, some of you may be thinking that analysing the status updates of users is going to throw up some privacy issues. According to Facebook the research doesn't even involve staff reading updates, with computers doing the work of counting keywords after any personally identifiable info has been removed. For convenience the app points out important dates when spikes of positivity occur, such as the 4th of July for example. The extremity of the spikes reduces as more users are sampled (which has something of a normalising effect). What should be intriguing to see, is some comparison between geographical regions if Facebook extends the app to cover other countries (I wonder if it would tally with the Happy Planet Index). You can find the United States Gross National Happiness Index application in the prototype app section on Facebook.
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Hardware Roundup: Tuesday EditionPosted: October 6, 2009 @ time: 02:46AM
Author: Nemo
With solid state drives prices beginning to approach more affordable levels, enthusiasts are probably eying their rigs and wondering how best to mount these 2.5" form factor drives in their existing cases. Thermaltake has come up with a solution in the form of the Max4 hard drive rack that can fit a pair of 2.5" drives in a 3.5" drive bay. For a bit more storage capacity you can check out the Promise SmartStor DS4600 four-bay storage unit. Today's roundup features lots more reviews so be sure to take a moment read all the latest using the links below.
Lian Li PC-A70F @ XSReviews
Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Pro @ RBMods
AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Socket AM3 Triple Core Processor @ ThinkComputers
Digital Photography/Video
Canon EOS Rebel T1i DSLR @ HotHardware
Interview with Good Old Games' Lukasz Kukawsk @ TechSpot
ASRock M3A770DE Motherboard - AMD's Discrete Value Chipset @ TweakTown
MSI P55-GD65 Motherboard @ Legit Reviews
G-Cube IB-710P Secure Fit Metallic Ear Buds For Women @ Tweaknews
Storage/Hard Drives
Thermaltake Max4 2.5" SATA HDD Rack @ Bona Fide Reviews
Promise SmartStor DS4600 4-Bay Direct Attached Storage @ TweakTown
XFX Radeon HD 4890 Extreme @ [H]ardOCP
PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 @ Neoseeker
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Super Overclock @ Techgage
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Human Immortality By 2040?Posted: October 6, 2009 @ time: 07:54AM
Author: MrAlex
Possibly in the future, circa 2040 (about 30-40 years time) we could have nanotechnology expand the average life of a human being and lead to immortality. This may all seem far-fetched but the technology seems to be plausible and could in fact become a reality. Microscopic machines could be running around our bodies, repairing damaged cells or organs and possibly even backing-up our memories. Raymond Kurzweil says that nanotechnology and biotechnology could be combined together to get rid of disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes. He also stated that "The full realization of nanobots will basically eliminate biological disease and aging. I think we'll see widespread use in 20 years of [nanotech] devices that perform certain functions for us. In 30 or 40 years, we will overcome disease and aging. The nanobots will scout out organs and cells that need repairs and simply fix them. It will lead to profound extensions of our health and longevity." Nanotechnology has already been used by researchers at MIT to kill ovarian cancer in mice. Kurzweil also stated that by 2024 we could be adding an extra year to our life expectancy by every year that passes by. So in around 40 years we could more or less become immortal. He also says that this is the point of being human – basically – to evolve. "The definition of human is that we are the species that goes beyond our limitations and changes who we are," he said. "If that wasn't the case, you and I wouldn't be around because at one point life expectancy was 23. We've extended ourselves in many ways. This is an extension of who we are. Ever since we picked up a stick to reach a higher branch, we've extended who we are through tools. It's the nature of human beings to change who we are." But be careful, because just as helpful it can be it, it can also be just as harmful.
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Verizon to Partner With Google to Bring Android to the NetworkPosted: October 6, 2009 @ time: 10:10AM
Author: CheeseMan42
You will soon be able to add Verizon to the list of carriers with Android based phones. Verizon will be partnering directly with Google to bring Android based handsets to the Verizon Wireless network. With more than 87 million customers, the potential for expanding the Android user base is tremendous. The two companies have announced that both Motorola and Samsung are likely to provide the phones for this venture. Verizon plans to release two phones by the end of the year. Verizon has also announced that its Android phones will have full support for Google Voice, the app which Apple and AT&T refused to let on its phones. This is honestly the Android announcement I have been waiting for all along. I can't wait to see what comes out of this.
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AVG 9.0 Brings Along Speed ImprovementsPosted: October 6, 2009 @ time: 07:43PM
Author: gebraset
The AVG security suite, both the free version as well as the paid version, is very popular among most PC users. AVG still today remains in the top downloaded programs list for various websites touting security software downloads and trials. There is a new version that is now released however, known as version 9.0, which with it brings many improvements in speed along with performance. This new edition will bring speeds that are up to fifty percent faster the previous models due to smarter memory usage and caching. Boot times have also seen a reduction in time anywhere from ten to fifteen percent, while the installation process has half as many windows as it did before to simplify the overall process. The paid versions are known as AVG Internet Security 9 and AVG Anti-Virus, though the free version has not yet been debuted. Both paid versions will sell for $49.99 and $34.99 respectively, with the free version not being introduced into the market until the middle of October.
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Corsair Unveils TX950W Power Supply UnitPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 02:38AM
Author: premiumgfx
Corsair has announced the launch of its latest power supply, the TX950W. The TX950W designed to provide clean and stable power for high-end consumers such as gamers, PC enthusiasts and designers at an affordable price. Features of the TX950W include Active Power Factor Correction (PFC), a single +12V rail which can provide up to 78A, 105°C solid-state capacitors and Over Current/Voltage/Power Protection, Under Voltage Protection and Short Circuit Protection. The TX950W is guaranteed to run at 100% load with an ambient temperature of 50°C and has passed 80 PLUS Bronze certification meaning at least 85% efficiency under real-world load conditions. It has also been tested for use in NVIDIA SLI and ATI Crossfire configurations. The TX950W PSU measures 150mm(W) x 86mm(H) x 160mm(L) and six 6+2-pin PCIe connectors in conjunction with extra-long cables make the TX950W easy to use in even the largest of set-ups. The Corsair TX950W is available immediately from retailers for approximately US$190 and is backed by a 5 year warranty.
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Amazon Takes Kindle Internation, Drops PricePosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 02:56AM
Author: d3bruts1d
Today Amazon dropped the price of the 6-inch Kindle eReader, while announcing a new international version. The Kindle International will allow you to download get books and other content wirelessly in over 100 countries, and cost $279. Unlike the original Kindle and Kindle DX which use Sprint, the Kindle International is tied to AT&T's 3G wireless network. The Kindle U.S. Wireless, as it is now called, dropped from $299 to $259 and aside from the price cut and name change saw no other modifications. The Kindle International is available for pre-ordering and ships in a couple of weeks. The Kindle DX remains unchanged at $489.
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Hardware Roundup: Wednesday EditionPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 02:58AM
Author: Nemo
A couple of interesting coincidences turned up in today's roundup. First up are are pair of reviews on SilverStone's Raven RV02 full-tower chassis. Next up are a pair of reviews on ATI Radeon HD 4600 series video cards and before you shrug your shoulders and say "So what?", take a minute to notice these are both AGP videocards! For those of you with a little more modern setup there's always Gigabyte's GTX 260 Super Overclock graphics card. You can check out these reviews and more by hitting the links below.
Silverstone Raven RV02 ATX Case @ PC Perspective
SilverStone Raven RV02 Full-Tower @ Techgage
ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 PWM CPU Cooler @ TweakTown
Top PC Games for this Holiday Season and Beyond @ TechSpot
Intel's Core i7 comes to notebooks @ Tech Report
Turtle Beach Ear Force P21 Gaming Headset @ Legit Reviews
Teufel Concept E 300 @ XSReviews
Storage/Hard Drives
ioSafe Solo External Hard Drive w/ Disaster Protection @ TweakTown
OCZ Agility 60GB Solid State Drive @ ThinkComputers
HIS HD 4670 IceQ Native HDMI 1GB DDR3 AGP @ Viperlair
Sapphire HD 4650 AGP @ Bjorn3D
Gigabyte GTX 260 Super Overclock @ Neoseeker
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Western Digital Launches New My Book Elite External Hard DrivesPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 03:06AM
Author: premiumgfx
California-based company Western Digital has launched its new My Book Elite external hard drive series, featuring an innovative e-label. The e-label is based on the technology used in electronic paper to show information such as remaining hard drive capacity, if the drive is secure and a user-customisable label on the spine of the drive, even when the drive is off! The new My Book Elite also includes WD SmartWare software to help the user back-up data easily, quickly and conveniently. Smaller and sleeker, the new My Book Elite features a USB 2.0 interface, 256-bit hardware encryption and WD GreenPower Technology to reduce power consumption. The new My Book Elite drives come in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB capacities and all have a 3-year limited warranty. They will be priced between US$169.99 and US$279.99 depending on capacity and are available immediately from select retailers and Western Digital's online store.
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OCZ Z-Drive Desktop Version AnnouncedPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 07:05AM
Author: MrAlex
A while back, OCZ released their PCI-Express SSDs for enterprise solutions and they showed great performance, along with a massive price tag ranging between $2000 and $15,000 RRP. The new m84 SSDs try to be priced around current released SATA drives but without the limitations of SATA connection. "The OCZ m84 Z-Drive is the newest addition to our line of PCI-E solid state drives and is designed to offer consumers a high performance yet aggressively priced solid state solution." They will be manufactured using multi-level cell (MLC) NAND memory with speeds up to 750MB/s read and 650MB/s write (based on 256GB model). The m84 comes with OCZ's new 3-Year warranty guarantee. Pricing or release date has yet to be announced, but expect these sometime soon. You can view the product page here.
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Core i9 With Four Radeon HD 5870's Break 3DMark Vantage RecordsPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 07:35AM
Author: MrAlex
The old 3DMark Vantage record set by k|ngp|n of P42968 marks has been blown away by overclocker Shammy. The previous record was held with an Intel Xeon W3540 at 5048 MHz with four GTX 285s in SLI. The new record of P52578 was set by a Core i9 at 6189 MHz (6155 MHz for the other records) with HTT on and four Radeon HD 5870s in CrossFire, with core clocks of 1300 MHz and a shader clocks of 1250 MHz. All of the other vantage records were broken, namely the Entry, Performance, High and Extreme presets. The images are in order of preset from Entry to Extreme.
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ARM Partners With GlobalFoundriesPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 08:48AM
Author: CheeseMan42
GlobalFoundries has announced a partnership with ARM to produce the Cortex A9 processor on its 28nm process. This opens the door for ARM to work with current GlobalFoundries customers. A customer of GlobalFoundries may find it easier to use the ARM chips for system-on-a-chip solutions. Intel has done something similar by outsourcing its Atom production to TSMC. In going to GlobalFoundries, ARM opens up the possibilities of working with AMD, GlobalFoundries biggest customer, in the future.
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Microsoft to Comply With EU Browser RequestPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 08:49AM
Author: CheeseMan42
Microsoft has announced that it intends to fully comply with European Union regulators by giving users the option of picking their web browser. If the initial trial program is successful, Microsoft will need to continue the program for five years. This change comes due to the regulators believing that installing Internet Explorer on all Windows PCs is anti-competitive. This will be done through a ballot screen which will inform users that there are different choices when it comes to web browsers. The user will then be able to choose which browser they wish to install. This functionality will come standard with Windows 7, and will be available for XP and Vista through Windows Update.
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Webmail Scam Continues to be a ConcernPosted: October 7, 2009 @ time: 04:13PM
Author: jammin
On Monday it became clear that a list of Hotmail account details had been leaked online, with the probability that the number of compromised accounts could be much larger than the 10,000 or so published. Since then a second list of account names and passwords has been posted, which showed that the scam extended to include other webmail services from Google (Gmail) and Yahoo. Security firm Websense has now reported an increase in spam emails being sent from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail accounts. Compromised accounts have been sending out personalised e-mails to addresses found in user's contacts with links to fake websites.
That the number of accounts has now been highlighted as being relatively substantial has some suggesting that rather than being exclusively a phishing scam (which have quite a low success rate) it is possible that key-logging malware may have been involved. It is recommended that anyone who believes they may have been affected change their email passwords immediately, though it is probably best to conduct a thorough scan using up to date virus software before hand. The scam has also prompted discussion about how users handle managing multiple complex passwords. Many choose more easily memorised and therefore less robust passwords for this reason, or use the same password in a number of locations. Security Advisor Sean Sullivan of F-Secure has even gone as far as to go against conventional wisdom and suggest writing down web based passwords if it means the difference between picking a weak one or a strong one.
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Hardware Roundup: Thursday EditionPosted: October 8, 2009 @ time: 03:12AM
Author: Nemo
When it comes to platforms, Intel's LGA1156 Core i5/i7 has been getting most of the press recently as reviews on P55 chipset boards, such as the ASUS Maximus III Formula, are hitting the web. However, that doesn't mean the Core i7 X58 chipset platform is dead, not by a long shot, as we see with the Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme reviewed in today's roundup. We also turned up a pair of Thermaltake cases, the Element G (reviewed by OCC here) and the Element T (also reviewed by OCC here), along with the In Win Maelstrom full-tower chassis. You can check out all the reviews in our roundup by using the links below.
IN-WIN Maelstrom Full Tower Case @ Legit Reviews
Thermaltake Element G VL10001W2Z Case @ Motherboards.org
Thermaltake Element T VK90001N2Z Mid Tower Chassis @ ThinkComputers
Laptop Lifts @ DarkVision Hardware
Evercool HPK-10025EA Intel Heatsink @ FrostyTech
Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme LGA 1366 i7 Motherboard @ PC Perspective
Asus Maximus III Formula @ Neoseeker
MSI U210 12.1-inch Netbook @ TweakTown
Power Supplies
Thermaltake TR2 1000 Watt Power Supply @ Bjorn3D
CyberPower Gamer Extreme 3000 Core i7 860 System @ HotHardware
Storage/Hard Drives
Thecus N5500 NAS @ Bjorn3D
ASUS EAH4890 Video Graphics Card @ Motherboards.org (YouTube link)
NVIDIA DirectX 11 Questionnaire A Response to AMDs Views @ TeakTown
Complete Story
Steve Ballmer Denies Microsoft E-Reader RumorPosted: October 8, 2009 @ time: 03:56PM
Author: CheeseMan42
Steve Ballmer has announced that Microsoft has no plans to enter the portable e-reader market. Rumors had been swirling around a Microsoft device referred to as "Courier" which would have similar features as that of the Kindle from Amazon. Ballmer stated that Microsoft didn't need to create an e-reader as it already had the most popular e-reader available, the PC. Ballmer did however state the he would like it if Amazon and other companies released their content for the PC. By bringing its service to PCs, Amazon would be able to greatly expand its business, as roughly 90% of all computers run Windows.
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Hardware Roundup: Friday EditionPosted: October 9, 2009 @ time: 03:20AM
Author: Nemo
Keeping track of all your different mobile devices can be a hassle and that's where the Luxa2 H1-Touch (also reviewed by OCC here) and the Flightstrap Universal Media Player Holder come in to play; one's for your desktop while the other is designed for those long trips by car or plane. We also get a look at the NZXT EVO case (reviewed by OCC here) along with a collection of other products, so follow the links below for all the latest from around the web.
NZXT EVO @ Neoseeker
Spire TherMax Pro CPU Cooler @ ThinkComputers
Case in Pont: The Best CPU under $300 @ HotHardware
AMD Athlon II X4 620 - Quad-Core at $99 @ Techgage
Input Devices
I-Rocks Wireless Slim Keyboard and Mouse Combo RF-6572L Nano @ RBMods
GSKILL Rip Jaw 2000MHz Memory @ Bjorn3D
Flightstrap Universal Media Player Holder @ Legit Reviews
LUXA2 H1-Touch iPhone Mobile Phone Holder @ TweakTown
Gigabyte P55M-UD4 @ Bjorn3D
Power Supplies
OCZ Z Series: Z850M 850W Power Supply @ [H]ardOCP
MSI GeForce N275GTX Lightning Video Card @ TweakTown
Complete Story
AMD Announces Thomas Seifert as New CFOPosted: October 9, 2009 @ time: 03:59AM
Author: premiumgfx
California based company AMD, today announced its new Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Thomas Seifert. Mr Seifert has replaced his predecessor Robert Rivert, who was previously promoted to Chief Operations and Administrative Officer. Seifert, aged 46 will be in charge of AMD's global finances and will report directly to AMD's president and CEO Dirk Meyer. Mr Meyer said that "Thomas is a talented industry veteran with a wealth of knowledge and experience managing the operations and finances of companies in the most difficult and competitive sectors of the semiconductor industry" and that "This knowledge and experience will enable him to further strengthen AMD's financial foundation and help accelerate our transformation into a product design and marketing leader." Thomas Seifert previously worked in various leadership roles at Qimonda, Infineon AG, Siemens AG, White Oak Semiconductor and Altis Semiconductorbefore prior to his appointment at AMD.
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One Billion Videos Per Day for YouTubePosted: October 9, 2009 @ time: 02:43PM
Author: CheeseMan42
CEO of YouTube Chad Hurley announced today that the site services more than 1 billion videos per day. The announcement was made on the third anniversary of its acquisition by Google. YouTube has continually upped the ante, by offering longer videos with better quality. However, even the mighty Google has been unable to turn YouTube profitable. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said "YouTube would become profitable at some point." YouTube is a great way to kill some time, and these numbers provide a concrete measure of just how many are killing time.
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A Different Sort of ContestPosted: October 9, 2009 @ time: 04:03PM
Author: jammin
One of the best reasons to visit OCC is the large community of helpful and knowledgeable members that frequent our forums. We realise that the sound advice that is dished out (well, most of the time) means that people are happy to come back time and again, so we like to try and reward those who enjoy sharing all that information from time to time. We believe we have run some great contests in the past, distributing tons of cool hardware in the process, but this time we a trying something a little different. Rather than giving you a formalised entry process, we will be rewarding our active forum members at random. You don't have to do anything special to enter, just being a forum member that likes to make helpful posts is enough (being a good member of the community basically).
This process kicked off last week, so we already have a nice surprise for one of our members.
The first prize of an ATI Radeon HD 4870 courtesy of our friends at XFX goes to tkrow21. Congratulations!
There are no set dates for the giveaways, but we will be looking to do them at least once a month. So good luck to all of our members, and keep up the (helpful) posting!
Complete Story
ATI 5700 Series Prices to be Lower than Expected?Posted: October 9, 2009 @ time: 05:07PM
Author: jammin
If reports by Bright Side of News are correct, ATI's upcoming 5700 series cards could be a little easier on the wallet than has previously been the case for newly released mainstream parts. Rather than going for between $150 and $200 that was previously expected, we may see 5700 series cards starting at just over $100 and topping out at around $160. That should also mean three 5700 series boards, rather than two, with the following models being in the pipeline:
- HD 5750 512MB GDD5 - $109.99 (possibly as low as $99.99 in some cases?)
All of these cards will carry the same range of connectors found on the 5800 series, which means the 2x dual-link DVI, single HDMI and single Displayport configuration. Apparently, the HD 5770 will carry a cooler similar to that found on 5800 series cards as well, essentially giving it the appearance of a reduced size HD 5870. We have seen some pictures and performance numbers for the HD 5750 already (which I believe was the 512MB model). At the prices suggested here it would certainly be a reasonably good deal, and if the HD 5770 can improve on those numbers by a good margin, it should be an attractive proposition too.
Complete Story
Bill and Melinda Gates Want to Give Everyone FiberPosted: October 10, 2009 @ time: 07:17AM
Author: CheeseMan42
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently made an interesting proposal to the FCC. The Foundation's plan is to run fiber to what it refers to as "anchor institutions." Included in this category are 123,000 libraries, hospitals, community colleges, and public schools. In addition, the plan also includes running fiber to every community in order to aid in bringing fiber to the public. The Foundation believes that the entire plan can be completed for $5-$10 billion. The FCC definitely appears to be considering the plan, and has asked the public for its opinion on the matter.
Complete Story
Barnes & Noble Rumored to be Developing Android E-ReaderPosted: October 10, 2009 @ time: 07:18AM
Author: CheeseMan42
Barnes & Noble is already involved in the e-reader game, supplying books to various devices following the ePub standard. Rumors are swirling that Barnes will soon begin selling its own e-reader, and it would be powered by the Android Operating System. Barnes hasn't confirmed the rumor, but is fully behind the goals taken on by the e-readers currently available. If the device was real, and was able to be a success, it would bring welcome competition to a market dominated by the Kindle.
Complete Story
Hardware Roundup: Weekend EditionPosted: October 11, 2009 @ time: 07:55AM
Author: Nemo
Our roundup pulled in a pair of notebook cooler reviews covering the NZXT Cryo S (reviewed by OCC here) and Thermaltake's Massive 23 ST (also reviewed by OCC here). The weekend roundup also features two videocards from the Radeon HD 5800 series with the HIS Radeon HD 5850 and the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 (see the OCC review here). You can find all of the reviews by using the links posted below.
NZXT Cryo S Laptop Cooler @ ThinkComputers
Thermaltake Massive 23 ST Notebook Cooler @ Virtual-Hideout
FIFA 10 Xbox 360 @ TweakTown
Media Players
brite-View CinemaTube 1080p HD Media Player Video @ TweakTown
ASUS G51Vx 15.6" Gaming Notebook @ Legit Reviews
HIS Radeon HD 5850 @ TechSpot
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Tested in 15 Benchmarks @ Madshrimps
Complete Story


text:
On a given day, an estimated 144 billion email messages are sent and received around the world. This doesn't even include spam.
Compare that with an average of 175 million tweets per day, and it's clear most folks and companies still prefer email when it comes to exchanging messages.
As someone who receives more email than I can count, I've had to cook up special strategies for dealing with it.
Experts say up to a quarter of a person's work week is spent dealing with email.
To lighten your load, here are 5 email tricks I use every day. Use these and you'll shave serious time off your inbox management.
Email follows one law you've probably heard before: You get what you give. If you're sending out dozens of messages, you're going to receive that many back and more. If the email you send isn't clear, you'll end up sending more messages to clarify. It all adds up.
Instead, look for other ways to communicate. If a quick text, call or IM can get your message across faster, use that instead. If you're dealing with a co-worker, taking a trip to her office might be easier and more productive.
With the email that you can't avoid sending out, make it clear and concise. Anticipate questions and answer them before they're asked. Try to keep it as short as possible, as well. If a list or short sentence will do, don't stretch things out into paragraphs.
If you're frequently sending the same message to multiple people, save time with a template you can copy and paste. These can be customized as you go so they don't look as much like form letters.
Nearly every email program or service lets you set up some form of automated message filtering. This can be as simple as setting up folders to separate important mail from the clutter. Advanced systems can color code and label email for you based on sender and other rules.
Start by routing messages from important contacts to a folder labeled "Urgent" or something similar. Create a "Read later" folder for routine or subscription messages. You can create as many subfolders and folders as you need, so set up a system that works best for you.
Act on the email you receive, and then either archive or delete the messages. The quicker it is out of your inbox, the better. Remember, your inbox is a delivery system, not a storage system!
If you want even more advanced filtering options, use programs like Outlook or the free Thunderbird. These are a must for anyone with multiple email accounts. They add all sorts of management features that most Webmail can't touch.
I'm sure at some point you've made the mistake of giving out your real email address online. Shortly afterward, a flood of email you don't care about appears in your inbox.
In most cases, you just needed to give it to a site so you can receive a confirmation email proving you are who you say you are. For those situations, it's better to use a temporary email account. Mailinator is a good site for this. Its email addresses only last for an hour or so and then all the email is erased.
Some people create a second email address. That's the one they give out to new or questionable sites. Their main email is reserved for friends, family and reputable sites. You should also keep business and personal email accounts separate.
There are many ways to send email to multiple people. Usually, people simply use "To:" or "CC:" and fill in all the email addresses.
For most mass mailings, however, "BCC:" is a better option.
Using it means recipients only see their own email address. That's a plus when they might not know other people on the list, or your email might be forwarded to strangers. You don't want a spammer getting their hands on a large list of your friends' names and addresses.
Click here to learn even more tips for polite, secure email: www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=13906.
BCC can backfire, though. In an office setting, using BCC on an email makes you the only target for replies. If the email is about a project with a team, include other team members' addresses in a "To:" field to help you carry the weight.
Whenever you include multiple people in an email, office or personal, make sure each knows why they're included. Don't be afraid to explain that in the body of the email.
One of the biggest email annoyances is notifications. These come from Facebook, Twitter and other social sites.
You might get an email every time someone interacts with your profile. If you're an avid social networker, these notifications can take over your inbox.
Go into your settings on each site to turn off notifications. I've got tips to do it for Facebook here: www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=13674.
Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and the rest aren't much different. You can even keep a few types of notifications active if you think they're important.
Kim Komando hosts a talk radio show about consumer electronics, computers and the Internet. Hear it locally at 94.3 WSC News Radio noon-3 p.m. Sundays. Go to www.komando.com.


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It was a close race for the Republican nomination for McHenry County Sheriff, with Bill Prim coming out on top, though his opponent didn't concede late Tuesday.
Less than 100 votes separated Prim from Undersheriff Andrew Zinke after early and absentee votes were counted. Prim garnered 14,516 votes to Zinke's 14,418.
But Zinke, who has been undersheriff since 2010, said he wasn't giving up.
"It's still too close to concede," Zinke said just before midnight Tuesday. "We have to wait for every vote to be counted."
County Clerk Katherine Schultz said there still were 47 outstanding absentee ballots to be counted, not enough to change the outcome. Schultz didn't have a count on the number of provisional ballots, but said there typically are not very many.
About 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, Prim declared victory in front of his supporters gathered at Pinecrest Golf Club in Huntley.
He declined to be interviewed by the Northwest Herald, and instead released a statement through his spokesman:
"I'm extremely pleased at today's results. I'm grateful to all the men and women who have exerted themselves above and beyond the call of duty these past 18 months. The victory is theirs. I know we have more hills to climb. I'm very glad to be at the top of this one."
His election night victory will usher in a new era at the McHenry County Sheriff's Office. He pulled it off without much support from the party establishment.
Zinke had endorsements from nearly every local Republican elected official including mayors and state representatives. He also had support from many in law enforcement, including his boss, retiring Sheriff Keith Nygren.
Prim's campaign was buoyed by support from State's Attorney Lou Bianchi. With Bianchi's backing, Prim promised to repair the bad blood between the sheriff's and state's attorney's offices. Bianchi and Nygren have been well-documented adversaries, whose squabbles have often resulted in taxpayer-funded legal battles.
Before his supporters, Prim thanked Bianchi, saying "I couldn't have done it without you."
Prim also was supported by County Board members Diane Evertsen, Donna Kurtz and Michael Walkup. Evertsen is part of a three-way slate of candidates looking to replace county Republican Party leaders at an April caucus.
The new leadership would also include Charles Wheeler and Sandra Salgado. Salgado, a former County Board member, is the daughter of State's Attorney's Office investigator Ron Salgado, who, like Bianchi, was indicted by the special prosecutors and whose case was likewise dismissed.
The sheriff's race came down to early and absentee ballots that narrowed the lead Prim held as the returns rolled in. Prim maintained a lead throughout the evening by about 400 votes. Early and absentee ballots pushed that difference to 98.
Zinke has said he hadn't considered a recount, but he has options.
Candidates have two options in pursuing a recount. A discovery recount, which can be requested by the candidate and is pretty common, looks at a sampling of precincts to see if there is anything that could potentially lead to a change in results. A full recount would have to be court ordered.
Tuesday marked the end of a long and acrimonious campaign season that began in September 2011, when Zinke announced he was running for the job held by his boss, and Prim followed a year later.
Nygren has been sheriff since 1997.
Prim denounced what he called the Sheriff's Office establishment with his "Right Man, Right Time" campaign. He has said he wants to end what he calls an "era of entitlement" and rid the office of unnecessary administrators.
He weathered an attack from the Zinke campaign that called Prim a "double dipper" looking for a second pension. Prim has pledged not to take a sheriff's pension, and asked voters to hold him to that promise.
"Primaries, unfortunately, seem to be a bloodbath, and once they're over with, people [in the party] have to come back together," Zinke said.
Prim will likely face Woodstock-based attorney Jim Harrison, who has indicated he will run as an independent.


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Understanding MVC in PHPby Joe Stump
This article series (continued in Implementing MVC in PHP: The Controller, Implementing MVC in PHP: The View, and Implementing MVC in PHP: The Model) demonstrates how to build an MVC web framework using PHP 5. This article covers the basics of MVC web frameworks, building the foundation classes for a framework that the other three articles in this series will build.
With the introduction of PHP 5 and its new
OOP features developers can now seriously talk about building solid APIs and more complex
MVC frameworks for the web in PHP. This was possible before, but the new features in PHP 5 make it easier to integrate more advanced features into MVC frameworks, such as SOAP and WSDL.
In this article I assume that you have a solid understanding of object-oriented programming and that you have at least scanned the upcoming changes to the OOP structure of PHP in PHP5.
What is MVC?
MVC is the idea that you have three different pieces that work in unison to form a complex application. A car is a good real-world example of MVC. With a car you have two views: the interior and the exterior. Both take input from the controller: the driver. The brakes, steering wheel and other controls represent the model: they take input from the controller (driver) and hand them off to the views (interior/exterior) for presentation.
MVC on the Web
The ideas behind MVC frameworks are quite simple and extremely flexible. The idea is that you have a single controller (such as index.php) that controls the launch of applications within the framework based on arguments in the request. This usually includes, at a minimum, an argument defining which model to invoke, an event, and the usual
GET arguments. From there the controller validates the request (authentication, valid model, request sanitization, etc.) and runs the requested event.
For instance, a request for
/index.php?module=foo&event=bar might load a class called
foo and run
foo::bar(). The advantages of this method include:
- A single entry point for all applications.
- Removing the headaches involved with maintaining numerous scripts, each with their own relative paths, database connections, authentication, etc.
- Allowing the consolidation and reuse of code.
Why Create My Own MVC Framework?
This article doesn't really advocate "You should write your own MVC web framework!" as is tries to explain "This is how MVC web frameworks work in theory, and why they are so great."
As of this writing, there are very few true MVC frameworks written in PHP. In fact, there is only one that I know of, Solar, that is entirely pure PHP 5 code. Another one out there is Cake, which is trying to be the "Ruby on Rails of PHP." I, personally, have a few problems with both of these frameworks. Both Solar and Cake fail to leverage existing code in PEAR, Smarty, etc. Cake appears a bit disorganized at the moment. Finally, Solar is the work of mostly a single person (not that Paul isn't a great coder or person, but there is only a single gatekeeper at the time of this writing). These may not be issues that concern you, and if they don't concern you, by all means check these two out.
The Old Way
If I could go back in time and look at code I wrote in early 2001, I would find a file called template.txt that looked something like:
require_once('config.php'); // Other requires, DB info, etc.
$APP_DB = 'mydb';
$APP_REQUIRE_LOGIN = false; // Set to true if script requires login
$APP_TEMPLATE_FILE = 'foo.php'; // Smarty template
$APP_TITLE = 'My Application';
if ($APP_REQUIRE_LOGIN == true) {
if (!isset($_SESSION['userID'])) {
header("Location: /path/to/login.php");
$db = DB::connect('mysql://'.$DB_USER.':'.$DB_PASS.'@localhost/'.$APP_DB);
if (!PEAR::isError($db)) {
} else {
// Put your logic here
// Output the template
Oh man, just looking at this code makes me cringe now. The idea with this approach was that every application fit into this set approach and I could just copy template.txt to myapp.php, change some of the variables, and then voila, it would work. However, this top-down approach has some serious flaws.
- What if my boss wanted me to change myapp.php to output a PDF in some cases, HTML in others, and SOAP if the request posted XML directly?
- What if this app required IMAP or LDAP authentication?
- How would I go about handling various modes in the script (including edit, update, and delete)?
- How would I handle multi-level authentication (admin versus non-admin)?
- How would I turn on output caching?
Essential Reading
Building Tag Clouds in Perl and PHP
Tag clouds are everywhere on the web these days. First popularized by the web sites Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us, these amorphous clumps of words now appear on a slew of web sites as visual evidence of their membership in the elite corps of "Web 2.0." This PDF analyzes what is and isn't a tag cloud, offers design tips for using them effectively, and then goes on to show how to collect tags and display them in the tag cloud format. Scripts are provided in Perl and PHP.
Yes, some have said tag clouds are a fad. But as you will see, tag clouds, when used properly, have real merits. More importantly, the skills you learn in making your own tag clouds enable you to make other interesting kinds of interfaces that will outlast the mercurial fads of this year or the next.
Read Online--Safari
Search this book on Safari:


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Dillard's Boots Disabled Iraq War Vet And His Service Dog, Too
Dillard's ejected disabled Army Staff Sergeant J. Alex Gozalez and his service dog Mason for violating the store's no animals policy. The store manager did not believe that Gonzalez is disabled because he is neither blind nor deaf. Gonzalez uses Mason—who wore a vest reading: "SERVICE DOG – DO NOT PET"—to help keep his balance.
When Gonzalez explained that he is disabled and was training Mason to help him, the manager responded that dogs were not allowed in the store and that Gonzalez would be escorted out, Gonzalez said.
The manager was "very firm, and I felt embarrassed and ashamed," Gonzalez said. "I felt like I was disrespected."
Dillard's officials say Gonzalez never identified himself as disabled and only indicated that he was training the dog.
"On a daily basis Dillard's welcomes customers with service dogs into many of its stores across the country," Johnson said.
"If a person wishes to seek to train a dog in a Dillard's department store, the respective store manager needs to be contacted so that the best time can be established for both parties."
After leaving the store, Gonzalez contacted Hurst police. Officers talked with Gonzalez and the manager and determined that the dispute was a civil matter. Police say there was a report of the dog causing a disturbance in the store, which gives the business owner a right to ask the animal to leave.
However, if a business owner is suspected of discriminating against a disabled person with a service animal, the business owner can be ticketed for misdemeanor discrimination, police said.
A Dillard's District Manager called Gonzalez the next day to profusely apologize for his store's insensitive disregard for the Americans With Disabilities Act. Gonzalez was unmoved, and claims that he will never shop at Dillard's again: "I felt embarrassed, low. I'm over here accepting my disability in public, and you are going to mock and harass me?"
Store boots disabled vet and his service dog [Star-Tribune]
(Photo: D.J. Peters/Star-Tribune)
Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.


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Check out these new stills from Olivia Munn's upcoming cameo on the CBS comedy, Accidentally on Purpose.
In the episode "Face Off," Zack (Jon Foster) is upset when Billie (Jenna Elfman) hires Nicole (Olivia Munn) a baby nurse without consulting him. Also pictured below is Nicolas Wright (center).
This special episode of Accidentally on Purpose featuring Olivia airs on Wednesday (April 7) @ 8:30PM ET/PT on CBS.


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Wigan manager Roberto Martinez has called for his side to be more ruthless and turn consistent performances into wins, starting against Newcastle.
The Latics slipped to a 2-0 defeat against defending Barclays Premier League champions Manchester City on Wednesday night despite being the best side for the first hour of the contest. However, they failed to find that vital cutting edge which has often eluded them this season and something which has been a source of great frustration in the Wigan dressing room.
Newcastle are without a win in any competition since October 28 when they beat West Brom 2-1 and Martinez sees the game as a chance for his side to up their intensity, both in attack and defence. And he said: "At home we have been creating a very good number of opportunities and that's always the worry if you're creating chances and not scoring goals."
Copyright (c) PA Sport 2012, All Rights Reserved.
Do YOU want to write for GiveMeSport? Get started today by signing-up and submitting an article HERE: https://www.givemesport.com/writeforgms


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Beatles 'Magical Mystery Tour Revisited' to Screen in U.K. Theaters This October
The British Film Institute has announced that they'll screen the Beatles classic 'Magical Mystery Tour' with a new behind-the-scenes BBC TV 'Arena' series feature titled 'Magical Mystery Tour Revisited.' The Examiner reports that the event comes Oct. 2, a week before the rumored release of a Blu-Ray and restored DVD surrounding the film.
The 'Revisited' film reportedly tells the story behind the Beatles polarizing third feature. A description reveals, "It was seen by a third of the nation, at 8:35 on BBC1 on Boxing Day in black and white and all hell broke loose. 'Magical Mystery Tour' was greeted with outrage and derision by middle England and the establishment media."
While highly critiqued at the time, the largely forgotten film has been restored and it will screen alongside the documentary 45 years after it first appeared on the big screen. General admission tickets go on sale Aug. 21.


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LAKE IN THE HILLS – The Lake in the Hills Sportsmans Club will host its 28th annual ice-fishing derby Feb. 9.
Every year, there is a raffle after the derby to raise funds for the club and improve the community. In the past, the club has sponsored or donated funds to the police department, fire department, Toys for Tots, Fox Valley children and the construction of the Indian Trail Beach pavilion.
The club is seeking sponsors to provide cash prizes, gift certificates or merchandise. Sponsors will be posted on the club's website, www.lithsportsmansclub.com.
A children's derby is part of the festivities. Each child who participates receives a prize, regardless of whether they catch a fish.
– Northwest Herald


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Views: 47
I haven't told my parents but they know for a fact that I don't attend church. nor do I pray. I should clarify that I have gotten snippy once or twice when confronted with a lecture riddled with religious dogma, I just haven't said the words. My brothers have known since I was 14 years old. I don't mask my atheism from anyone else in my life but them, not because i fear their reaction but it's not worth the hassle of them trying to "save" me.
Please return and post a link for the article when it's written.
My family doesn't know but my wife and friends do.
If you'd like to be considered for an interview, please send your e-mail address to me at email@example.com.
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Printed Electronics Executives Discuss Predictions for Massive Development in 2010
Over 200 of the leading companies in the emerging Printed Electronics (PE) industry will gather at the Printed Electronics Summit taking place May 10-11 in San Diego, California. PE Futures, the event organizer, gained the inside track on the latest developments for the printed electronics industry in 2010 when Tim Lovatt interviewed some of the conference's presenters. These experts represent a cross section of some of the most promising verticals for the Printed Electronics market in 2010:
- J. Devin McKenzie (DM), CTO at Add-Vision, discussing OLED technology
- Andreas Meyer (AM), director at Ravensburger, examining PE as an end-user
- Martin Jackson (MJ), VP at Plastic Logic, displaying the latest in e-readers
- Andreas Rueckemann (AR), CEO at Heliatek, predicting the rise of OPV
Printed Electronics Futures: Thank you for joining us today for this discussion of Printed Electronics development in 2010. To start us off, it would be great to gain an understanding on how you and your company are positioning yourself for the next year and what goals you are setting yourself?
DM: Add-Vision is supporting its licensees as they scale up to pilot manufacturing and begin commercialization of printed flexible OLEDs. AVI R&D groups are focused on increasing efficiency of the manufacturing process and refining performance of printed devices towards product specifications.
AM: Ravensburger has already started with the integration of electronic and electronic devices into board games, with success. So one aim would be to strengthen the main categories with additional electronic and technical opportunities, to enhance the fun and the challenge while playing as well as being updated with the convenience of playing games over all
MJ: Plastic Logic launched the QUETM proReader on January 7 at CES. QUE is designed specifically for business professionals who have a need to read and work with documents anytime, anywhere. It utilizes Plastic Logic's shatterproof plastic display to design a thin, lightweight product with a unique form factor. Over the next 12 months, we aim to establish QUE as the product of choice for business reading. Our initial focus is on the U.S. market. Once we establish ourselves in this market, we'll rollout plans for other markets. As a global company, we are of course very interested in the global market and want to achieve global sales as quickly as we can. We have make sure, however, that we have the ecosystem in place to expand properly — this includes content, distribution partners, connectivity and customer support — to meet Plastic Logic's high standards and to delight our customers. We plan to take the time to make sure we get things right.
AR: Heliatek aims to transfer the world-record laboratory values, both of cells and modules, to the first production line, and scale-up OPV production. The first part of this installation will be taking place in 2010, with the aim to have products on the market by the end of 2011.
PE Futures: Where do you see the biggest market potential for Printed and Organic Electronics?
DM: Portable media products: cards, inserts, packaging and advertising for example. I also see possible markets for higher-end portable products that require high efficiency, and thin robust devices: smart phones, wireless, etc.
AM: In general, I think the focus will be in communication issues, including transport and logistics. In the toy industry, it would be the support of ideas, to maximize possibilities in an almost ancient tradition: board games. Printed electronics is one basic idea to shift traditional games into the future.
MJ: Plastic Logic's factory in Dresden is the world's first plastic electronics factory producing displays. Flexible plastic displays are forecast to go strongly over the next few years and this is where we see the immediate potential. In the longer term, other market segments, such as automotive, will be able to take advantage of the flexibility in their products.
AR: High-volume applications are next on the agenda, for which all USPs of the product are well used, such as industrial roof BIPV (off grid). It utilizes the low weight, affordable direct production cost, lower transportation and installation cost benefits of OPV, and a 10% efficiency (latest 2015) would be plenty. For parts of the market, homogeneously semi-transparent materials would also be relevant.
PE Futures: What are the most interesting breakthroughs of the past year?
DM: OLEDs exceeding the efficiency of conventional illumination in a new form factor.
AM: For us at Ravensburger, it's the possibility of "real" start-up ideas after the crisis, and a big comeback of environmental items and issues.
MJ: From Plastic Logic's point of view bringing the factory up to fully operational status has been an enormous amount of work. There is a huge difference between demonstrating plastic electronics in the laboratory and being able to manufacture at high volume. We have learnt a lot and this production experience is essential if plastic electronics is going to break through into the mass market.
AR: Technically, the highest OPV efficiency of cells on areas of or above 1 cm², the highest OPV module efficiency, progress on transparent OPV, the highest reported lifetime, and the combination of lifetime with the most efficient cells. There has also been significant progress in developing and specifying the required production equipment. From a financial point of view, our Series B financial round closed in November netting 27 Million USD, said by the market to be (one of) the most significant Cleantech round of 2009 for companies like us (pre-revenues and pre-production). We also gained another blue chip company (RWE) as further investor, which thus completes our value chain of shareholding, from molecule (BASF) to system (BOSCH) to energy supplier (RWE), supported by world class VCs (Wellington et al).
PE Futures: Who and what do you think will be making headlines in 2010?
DM: For OLED Lighting, headlines will feature the introduction of OLED in the eagerly anticipated Apple tablet, and also the developments in OLED at Samsung.
MJ: There's a new generation of connected mobile devices coming, including e-Readers, our QUE proReader, tablets and more.
AR: I think we'll see some improvements in OPV cell/module performance, along with progress in production preparation.
PE Futures: What are the main challenges still remaining for the industry?
DM: Finding an application outside of OLED that truly needs a printed electronics solution that can't be met with Si (IC or amorphous) cost effectively. Current efforts in TFT for displays and RF have failed to do this. In terms of batteries and voltage, printed electronics require high-voltage and/or don't have great power efficiency. At the same time, the most interesting products are supposed to be thin, flexible and light. Printed batteries are not that good, that flexible, or in useful voltage/power ranges for many products. Printed electronics voltages need to drop and printed thin batteries need to get a lot better to match the application form factors.
AM: That's a difficult question: If there is learning, straight out from the crisis – the industry itself and the governments – should start in an active, pro-active way with solutions (and products), which are sustainable, which eliminate the throw-away and fast buck mentality in a authentic, convincing and creative way.
MJ: Plastic/organic electronics face many challenges:
- Understanding basic performance. There is still much to do to understand the basic performance of transistors, etc. and to be able to provide accurate models. With accurate models we will be able to design products with more certainty. A key difference between silicon and organic electronics is that in silicon there aren't many materials or ways to design a transistor – with organic electronics there is an almost infinite variety of semiconductor materials.
- Being able to analyze organic electronics. Metrology is key to being able to manufacture on a large scale and with its nanometer thick films but very large areas organic electronics poses significant challenges to the measurement equipment suppliers.
- Standardization: One of the reasons that silicon prospered was that key aspects were standardized and the industry worked together (Sematech) to define a roadmap. The plastic/organic electronics industry is at an early stage and has yet to work out what and how to standardize.
AR: The biggest challenge for the industry today is the move from lab to fab for OPV.
PE Futures: Where do you see the printed and organic electronics industry in 5 years?
DM: Getting into biomedical, security products where it might have a unique use: disposability/ ultra low cost, large-area health-related sensor integration, etc.
AM: Hopefully, the first products will be successfully realized in mass production. Transport and logistics will always be safe, and thus will be fully supported by printed electronics. The communication industry will help to fit our e-life-style in a creative way, with even a noticeable relaxation for instance in contact with public authorities. I also think environmental factors will play more of a part. Printed and organic electronics are beginning to contribute substantially to environment and will have begun to noticeably reduce energy consumption.
MJ: I think that we will see displays well established in a range of products and the success in this space will enable plastic/organic electronics to target other applications. As our understanding improves and we make a broader range of devices then CMOS becomes possible and with CMOS comes the ability to integrate displays more tightly. A range of interesting new applications will have emerged which need either the flexibility, low cost of manufacture, large area operation or rapid customisation of organic electronics
AR: There is a great potential, matching roughly $300 billion in 2027, best described in the Strategic Research Agenda that we have just finalized and officially handed over to the European commission. It comprises five areas of organic and printed Electronics: Lighting, OPV, Displays, Electronics and Integrated Systems.
May 10-11 San José, California
Join over 200 printed, organic and flexible electronics professionals at the industry's most relevant, definitive conference, designed to be your roadmap to printed electronics scale-up cutting edge technologies and mass-market integration.
With experts like our four speakers above, high-level presentations from Cambridge Display Technology, E-ink, Harris & Harris, Adidas, Ravensburger, Crayola, SkyShades and many more, the conference offers valuable advice and actionable solutions to your everyday challenges. For a full speaker line-up and agenda, please visit www.pefutures.com
February 2, 2010


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Live updates
- Mike Pearse
MPs from the south are delighted that George Osborne has announced fuel duty will not go up by 3p in August as planned. It is also a victory for Fair Fuel UK, a pressure group led by the redoubtableFolkestone-based campaigner Peter Carroll.
He was the man behind the campaign to get residency rights for former Gurkhas. This time he didn't need to enlist Joanna Lumley to the cause - but he did get a number of Tory MPs from the south to threaten rebellion against the Government over fuel duty. That seemed to do the trick.
The Government is battling a massive deficit, but when it saw its own backbenchers - and Mr Carroll - ranged against it, it knew a fuel duty climbdown was inevitable.


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A rash of burglaries since last October has police in Danville busy.
But on Wednesday, a suspect was arrested, and it's believed he's connected to at least three of those cases.
Rashea Ford is charged with three felony counts of burglary, and one count of theft by unlawful taking.
Police think he's responsible for burglaries at Bates Middle School, Hogsett Elementary School, and a Wendy's restaurant.
But police say Ford may not have been acting alone.
Ford is currently being held in the Boyle County jail.
Some of the other places burglarized include doctors offices and pharmacies.
Police aren't sure if all of them are connected, but they're looking over surveillance video.
Other possible suspects could be named soon.
Police Get Break in String of Burglaries
A rash of burglaries since last October has police in Danville busy.


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INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana legislative committee is expected to consider whether to drop a proposed requirement that all public and charter schools have a gun-carrying employee during school hours.
The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to vote Tuesday on changing the bill that also aims to start a state grant program to help school districts buy safety equipment and hire police officers.
Indiana would become the first state in the country to require armed school employees if the bill becomes law. Supporters of the requirement say it would lessen the vulnerability of schools to violent attacks such as the December elementary school shooting in Connecticut.
Republican Gov. Mike Pence and others have said they think any decisions on arming employees should be left to local schools officials.