text:
OMG, 1996 called, it wants its story back.
We'll get the next version of Windows a year early!
There was a delay in the release of Vista... and look how buggy it is. Now you want them to release it much earlier? I say, let them take all the time they need!
Oh, come on. It was PERFECT on the original release date; they took those extra years to add all the bugs they could think of! OF COURSE we want the next version early!
Put microsoft's hand in warm water while they're at it. We'll get the next version of Windows a year early!
I think you might be confusing output ports #1 and #2.
Wake on LAN is ancient.
Dual booting is ancient.
Fuck it, I'll reply to myself.
"Microsoft has been pushing Remote Desktop and its communications software for years. But apparently it never occurred to anyone in Redmond that people might want to leave their PCs in sleep mode, then have them turn on for remote access or VoIP calls."
Remote Desktop supports wake on LAN.
When you try to connect, it tries to wake the machine up. If the machine has wake on lan enabled, and you don't have any NAT issues, it'll work.
I don't know, seeing as how the submitter calls himself "Anti-Globalism" (with a link to his website) and he includes some stupid, Slashdot-pandering quip in the summary about how "Windows is asleep", I'd say this person has engineered this story so kdawson would pick it up (thinking it would be perfect for the Slashdot crowd) and promote his own website.
Slashdot, you have been gamed.
One strategy for Microsoft in order to counter this trend is to modify its Windows OS license in a way that specifically prohibits this kind of set-up.
This way, a laptop will have to run a non Windows OS in order to be participant in DELL's "DELL Latitude On" or INTEL's "Intel Remote Wake."
I know this is not illegal.
Well yeah, but I'm sure Dell wouldn't just open wide and swallow that. And a licensing clause like that sounds like a good target for more anti-trust lawsuits, which the EU seems to relish.
I know this is not illegal.
This is the exact type of behavior MS was convicted of a decade ago.
It takes way too many resources. Maybe 3 years down the line, but Microsoft really dropped the ball by ignoring the reality of the fastest growing segment in computer sales.
Because of this, Apple is having great sales on the high/upper-mid-end with it's very nice line notebooks and Linux is getting a start on the lower end.
Without Vista, I don't think it would have been possible for Linux to get a foothold.
The year of Linux on the Desktop is distant, but thanks to Microsoft, the Year of Linux on the notebook looks like it's becoming reality sooner rather than later.
And the way a distro like Ubuntu evolves so quickly from year to year, I think it's a mistake that MS can't afford to do again.
In a few years, we'll see that MS was the one who dropped the ball to allow the competition the elbow room to come in.
It's also making things worse by having so many different versions and while it's debatable that Vista should have been wholly 64bit (definitely by Windows 7), MS doesn't even have the decency to provide 32/64bit on the same disc but is trying to grab every nickel it can from it's customers who chose one or the other (many discs don't qualify from alternative media).
Apple is having decent sales in the overpriced, zealot segment.
"Without Vista, anti-trust law suits and billions of dollars in fines, I don't think it would have been possible for Linux to get a foothold."
--there, fixed it for you.
Really? Linux on the laptop is growing? Just based on non scientific study but i'm in a lot of airports across the United States. I can count on the one hand the laptops I've seen that are running Linux this year, 2. I do see a growing a number of Macs, but I am hearing more and more of the Vista startup sound on Laptops as the year goes on.
If this growth in Linux laptops are growing, I haven't seen them
Sorry call BS with that.
I have a Dell XPS M1330 running Vista Ultimate, and its been flawless and has been for 9 months now.
It has dedicated graphics and 3GB of RAM and it has more then enough resources spare to do all of my work.
At times I have had to host visualised servers on it running exchange and domain controllers while performing server migrations and Vista has performed admirably while balancing resources with the Virtual OS's and running my mail and other programs I usually run.
I do have a lot of
It has dedicated graphics and 3GB of RAM and it has more then enough resources spare to do all of my work.
That *isn't* a normal notebook. That is a high-medium to high performance notebook. For everyone else they are lucky to get 2 GB of RAM and a dual-core CPU. Of course Vista will run on it, but XP or Linux is going to run like 10 times better on the thing.
I dislike echoing one of my own recent comments.
That said:
The Dual Core 4 GB RAM 32 Bit Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com is $850. Acer 16" Aspire 6920-6508 Laptop PC w/ Intel Core 2 Duo Processor [walmart.com]
The 64 Bit Dual Core Vista Premium laptop with 4 GB RAM is $1000.
The 64 Bit Dual Core Vista Premium laptop with Blu-Ray and N
Um I'm been bargain hunting lately for a laptop and 3-4GB dual core laptops are what you get for $400-$800 these days.
Depends what you mean by a normal laptop. For example, I've got a Toshiba Satellite Pro with a Core2Duo 1.66 GHz, 2 GB RAM and a 250 GB HDD. I'm run both Vista Business and Ubuntu 8.04 on this thing and noticed the following:
* Both systems support standby/hibernation properly, but Vista is quicker to resume from either mode. Ubuntu does hibernate quicker though.
* Vista actually lasts longer on battery than Ubuntu. I don't have values, merely observations based on the same kind of work (eg. browsing, email, etc). Probably helps that Vista fully supports multiple power-saving features that either aren't enabled in Ubuntu or aren't up to the same level of maturity as in Windows.
* Ubuntu suffers from a "bug" whereby many hard drives will spin down after several seconds of non-use, which kinda reduces the lifespan Vista doesn't have this issue, although it's hard to determine if that's only because the drive is always flashing every so often.
* Both systems are zippy enough when configured well, although Vista takes absolutely forever to start from a cold boot which is why standby/hibernation is a must with it.
Because I much prefer the software selection and functionality of most Windows software compared to Linux variants, I'm sticking with Vista as my primary on this machine, but Linux is certainly getting better for laptops.
* Ubuntu suffers from a "bug" whereby many hard drives will spin down after several seconds of non-use, which kinda reduces the lifespan Vista doesn't have this issue, although it's hard to determine if that's only because the drive is always flashing every so often.
I just love finding "bugs" in software based on observations of the tiny blinky lights!
Linux is known to be more power-hungry than Windows; I noticed the same on my computers.
Windows XP works about 40min longer than openSuse11 on the same machine, using default settings.
Here is some reading material:
- http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/ [lesswatts.org]
- there was a white paper written by folk from Intel, I don't remember where I found it, but it could be somewhere here: http://oss.intel.com/en-us/casestudies/ [intel.com]
You need to switch to a tickless kernel, and tinker with powertop - that should improve things.
Note that in my case, none of the powertop tricks had any impact - I was surprised to see that no matter what I did, the estimated time would always be 1h45min. This is still an experiment in progress, so don't count this feedback as 100% certain.
Define "normal laptop". My ex bought what I consider to be a mid-price laptop (around £700) which shipped with Vista Home Premium, and it works perfectly. Plenty responsive enough and no issues that either of us has seen.
It's also making things worse by having so many different versions
There are two versions that the vast majority of people will be exposed to, Home Basic and Home Premium. Yes, business users will also have to choose from Ultimate and Business, but if you go out to buy a PC from a shop
Now it's "I just need web and email.".
Next month it'll be "Sound would be nice.".
Then you'll be bitching "Damn we need support for youtube and flickr up in this bitch.".
Then you'll say "Can we get a fucking IM client and some printer support? It's 2010!".
Ultra mobile / webtop / nettop / netbook / whatever is retarded.
Hopefully if this gets popular then more apps will be made Web Based. As many already are You can currently IM over the web and you just need Flash. Nothing to much to ask for by 2010.
If you want all of that in your long-life Windows laptop, then get yourself a $22 SDHC card and install Ubuntu on it with all the extras. I've tried it. Boots in 3 seconds. No moving parts. Snappy fast and low power if you set it up to turn off your HDD - or better yet, pull that out - you won't need it.
> Next month it'll be "Sound would be nice.".
> Then you'll be bitching "Damn we need support for youtube and flickr up in this bitch.".
> Then you'll say "Can we get a fucking IM client and some printer support? It's 2010!".
> Ultra mobile / webtop / nettop / netbook / whatever is retarded.
Helloooo, Mcfly!
This Dell thing is kinda retarded but netbooks aren't. An ASUS EEEPC has sound, it ships with a version of mplayer that looks nice and has pretty broad codec support. Firefox has the flash plug
"This Dell thing" is not kinda retarded. It's really kinda cool. A long life laptop inside your laptop with Instant on. And it runs Linux. The way SDHC cards are running these days you could socket or solder a 16GB flash drive inside the notebook and install and OS on it, or use it for files. That way a lot of the hardware that burns juice can be turned off unless you need it. Brilliant! Why would you need to wait 7 minutes for Vista to get ready when all you want to do is something trivial like play
> A long life laptop inside your laptop with Instant on.
That's kinda retarded, and an indication of just how broken x86 is. But now that market forces are demanding lower power/longer battery life this seperate SoC is a stopgap measure at best.
What is needed is for Intel/AMD/Via to start taking power management serious. Give CPU's the ability to completely shutdown unneeded sections, the second core, the SSE, etc. Take clock reduction to the max. Be able to take a clock from 2GHz down to 200MHz with
I don't know MS can't come up with refinements to make the computer "just work", but most of the time email and web are all I need. If someone can make that work at the push of a button, I'll probably use it a lot and so will my parents and grandparents.
To get my parents and grandparents onboard, the computer would need to do more than "just work".
It would literally need to be stupid simple.
Minimal UI with descriptive text instead of icons.
No assumptions that they understand how the UI works or should work.
No right-clicking the mouse (hello Macintosh)
etc etc etc.
If someone can make that work at the push of a button
I already do. I push the button to turn on my Monitor.
Easy as that!
A long time ago, and by internet standards, I mean in pre-historic times, there was a computer called the Lisp Machine, designed and built at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. We're talking mid-1980s here. That's more than TWO DECADES AGO. Your cell phone would run circles around a LispM.
One of the amazing things about LispMs is that they came up really, really quickly, despite having very large and slow disk drives. They did this by essentially performing a full boot and then saving that precise memory image (including all peripheral state) to a special part of the disk called a band. This is not unlike the modern laptops' suspend-to-disk feature, except that bands were pretty static. The intent was that you set up your machine just so, and then wrote what you felt was the canonical startup state to the band. Then, every time the machine started, the band loaded in from disk, and POOF! was ready to go.
It was a radical departure, and one that, unfortunately, was not learned by the industry. I would *love* to have my laptop use bands. Save-to-disk is nice and all, but since laptop hardware (and Linux support for it) is so f-ing flaky, it's far better to have a feature to boot quickly to a known-good state.
What's the relevance here? LispMs were as fast to boot as you'd expect for a computational appliance. OMFG if I have to boot my current Linux desktop or Windows laptop it takes eons to come up, and that's with hardware that's probably three orders of magnitude faster. Our modern machines should be in a known, operable state in under a second, and the only reason they aren't is poor engineering / pressure from Microsoft.
... and the only reason they aren't is poor engineering / pressure from Microsoft.
If there's anyone from Transmeta here, they can attest to this. One of my former roommates worked there, and had horrible tales about getting their hardware to boot quickly. Funny thing about these stories were they always concluded with either (a) we found a bug in Microsoft's startup code that was making things run K times slower than they should have or (b) Microsoft specifies that this part of the booting sequence can't be made any faster than X seconds.
The second technology enables an Internet-based message to wake a Windows PC from sleep mode.
Intel and Dell declined to discuss a rumored third technology, where by after the second has awakened your PC, an virus is installed.
PC World has a decent summary of Intel Remote Wake Technology.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149863/2008/08/.html [pcworld.com]
Then there's also the actual Intel site
http://www.intel.com/technology/chipset/remotewake.htm [intel.com]
It's not news, it's fark^H^H^H^Hslashdot.com? Oh, and I know, please tell me about all the things RedHat comes with...except:
1)those extras aren't forced, they're easy to remove (unless they're gnome...), and they're all OSS
2)you're missing the point. The point is that the OS shouldn't be expected to provide EVERYTHING. It's not a problem when IBM modifies RedHat to work with their LPARs, and it's not news when someone makes a Windows appliance without Windows. That's supposed to happen, on a regular basis.
Did slashdot report when Netware 2.0 came out in 1985 and provided an easy way to do filesharing in MSDOS?
Yes they did, but I can't find it. For some strange reason I can't retrieve Slashdot articles that are older than 10 years or so.
Isn't Sideshow pretty much exactly what ON was supposed to do except it's attached to the main screen?
Isn't Sideshow pretty much exactly what ON was supposed to do except it's attached to the main screen?
Actually Sideshow is designed to work with a small secondary screen [engadget.com]. As for why it never generated interest for the mobile user/traveler: Imagine having a device that you could use to just browse the web and use email, turned on almost instantly and was very portable! Better still, imagine making calls through it!
I'm wondering when I can dispense with the laptop completely and just use some sort of flexible/unfolding display attached to the mobile phone, along with a travel keyboard and mouse, at least for
Sideshow is designed for small screens, however there is nothing which would prevent you from using a full screen except for increased power consumption for the backlight.
I'm just saying that it's not like Microsoft is ignoring the "Instant On Sub Computer" concept. It's just that Dell is deciding to make their own implementation.
Windows is asleep while Microsoft's own partners give users what they really want.
Bender: black jack... and hookers. In fact - forget the black jack!
And don't get me started on the phrase "do an end run around Windows" when it clearly should be "reach around" - at least that's the only way *I* can enjoy my Microsoft products.
Grab Windows by the Ballmer? I hope that gives you mental imagery that causes you to kill yourself for mentioning reach arounds, enjoyment, and Windows in a single line.
I have an ancient machine that plays CD/DVD in 5 seconds without booting - it's called a DVD player.
Seriously, HP had PCs that can do that 2-3 years ago. Oracle worked on a DB server that can run without booting into Windows OS more than 5 years ago. On new mobile phones you can open up your email within 5 seconds. Stop giving free press to Intel and Dell until they have the real guts to get away from Windows entirely.
My new Asus P5Q Pro has a feature called ExpressGate that lets you boot a thin BIOS OS (Linux?) with Firefox, Email, etc. The installer runs from Windows, and it may or may not use data from the hard disk, but you enable/disable the feature in the BIOS.
Similar technology is already used on mobile phones, they can be remotely reprogrammed to pretend that they're switched off while they're recording and transmitting your conversation.
We don't live in a 1984 world yet, but the usual greedy Megacorps are trying to patent the required technology already...
I'm left asking, "What's the windows processor for, once I have a low power, light Linux system which boots in a flash?" I know I'm not currently the norm, but I think I'm more and more the norm. You don't have to add much to the system they're describing to make it everything I want in a laptop. (Not a desktop replacement laptop, but an ultra-portable take-with-me device.)
One technology involves enabling users to gain instant access to a laptop's e-mail, browser and other basic functionality -- without booting Windows at all.
Uh, my laptop already uses technology that allows this, and it allows more than "basic functionality". This stunning new technology is called "Linux".
Before Latitude ON, there was Dell MediaDirect [dell.com], a Windows XP Embedded [microsoft.com] partition that booted in about 10 seconds.
The only user focused difference between the 2 that I see, is that MediaDirect is/was positioned as a way to access your files - and Latitude ON is positioned as a way to access the Internet.
Technically, the whole "embed an ARM PC into an x86 PC" may be a better idea than the convoluted MBR and partitioning schemes MediaDirect employed [goodells.net] - but it's certainly more expensive as well.
Then, as mentioned, there's Windows Sideshow [wikipedia.org], which even Dell is prototyping [sideshowdevices.com]. SideShow [microsoft.com] is more ambitious than Latitude ON, encompassing everything from sinlge line text displays to show system stats, to ARM based Windows Mobile devices to check email, play media files, etc. So far, it's failed to gain much traction in the marketplace - but, I think that it's still too early to call it dead.
If you take a look at some of the prototype developments [ricavision.com] in the SideShow remote computer spaces, I think you'll agree that all the functionality of Latitude ON is there - it's just a seperate device instead of being housed in the same case as a laptop.
So - it's not like Microsoft isn't aware or working on this market, Dell and Co. just decided to go their own way. Big deal - happens all the time. While MediaDirect used XP Embedded, other manafacturers were using Linux based OS's. Wake me up in 2 or 3+ years when the market has settled down, and we can declare a winner.
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants. -- Adam Walinsky


text:
The earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 was the worst in decades. In addition to the massive loss of life, it will have devastating economic consequences. I estimate the direct cost of the earthquake and tsunami at more than 10 trillion yen, as many offices and factories were destroyed. The indirect cost is likely to be even greater and is estimated at 30 trillion yen. This will manifest itself through higher unemployment and shaken consumer confidence.
It was interesting to see that the US dollar did not profit from the flight to safety as a result of the earthquake. Instead, investors fled into the Swiss Franc, German government bonds and the Japanese yen. Japan's currency rallied strongly as carry trades were unwound. Initially, the gold price retreated as assets such as gold and silver and other commodities were sold in order to meet margin requirements.
However, in common with many other countries, we believe gold demand in Japan is likely to rise significantly in the next few years. But Japan does not have a gold tradition like China and India, and Japanese demand for silver is only about 2,000 tonnes, or 9% of the world total. The largest end user is the industrial sector - comprising activities such as solar cell manufacturing, automotive production, construction and medical uses. Jewelry and silverware is marginal with regard to end-user demand.
In the gold market, Japan's share of global gold fabrication - not taking into account investment demand - is about 6% of the world total, most of it going to the electronics industry. Figures compiled by GFMS show that apart from Q4 2008, Japanese investors have been net sellers of gold bars, though recently the premium on gold bars in Tokyo has risen substantially.
Why then do I expect Japanese gold demand to rise in the next few years? The answer is quantitative easing. In order to finance the re-building of the country, the Bank of Japan will put the pedal to the metal in cranking up the printing presses. It is also likely to tap into its discretionary budget for 2011 and earmark two to three trillion yen for reconstruction. This will further erode the value of the yen and boost Japanese demand for gold as a hedge against this currency debasement.
Japanese investors will likely soon realize that investing the bulk of their money in Japanese government bonds is not only a low-yielding strategy, but actually a dangerous one. Although Japan has been mired in deflation for more than 15 years, inflation may return sooner than most think. I believe gold offers the best protection against the erosion of the value of paper money.
Nico Pantelis is a contributing author for GoldMoney.com and an independent certified investment adviser.
Copyright Gold Money (c) 2011. All rights reserved.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
DENVER — After the annual late-summer harvest on his farm in the eastern reaches of Colorado, Greg Brophy has a few friends over, breaks out the handguns and semi-automatic rifles and mows down some rotten watermelons.
The Republican state senator's melon shoot is a fixture on the political calendar in his rural district near the Nebraska border and a window into the culture of gun ownership in a state that cherishes its frontier heritage.
One of the worst and most high-profile school massacres in American history — the 1999 Columbine shooting that killed 12 students and a teacher — did little to alter that culture. In fact, it is now easier to carry a concealed handgun in the state than it was before Columbine.
Now, six months since a deadly movie theater rampage in suburban Denver, there is a new drive to restrict guns, fueled by the Connecticut school shooting. And Brophy and other gun rights backers worry that the push might bear fruit because of state's demographic changes.
In recent decades, Democrats have done increasingly well as young coastal transplants flocked to Denver and its suburbs. The traditionally red state helped elect Barack Obama president in 2008 and chose him again in November, when the party won back the legislature.
Those suburban voters are ''further removed from their rural roots,'' Brophy said. ''I think [Democrats] will overplay their hands and it will cost them, but over the past few election cycles, they've been right and I've been wrong.''
Meanwhile, gun control activists worry that the momentum they believe they have after the Newtown, Conn., massacre will fade just as it did after the Columbine killings — without enough of the kind of laws they believe have any chance to reduce gun violence.
In Governor John Hickenlooper's state of the state speech on Thursday, he called for universal background checks on all gun sales and a broader discussion about firearms regulations. Referencing the Aurora shooting and Columbine, Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said, ''We have shown in Colorado that we can learn from tragedy and make changes.''
The previous day, Democrats opened the latest legislative session as about 100 worried gun rights activists quietly marched outside to protest the still-unwritten gun control measures.


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This week, NPR's Scott Simon and photographer Mike Mitchell visited the site where Mitchell shot a historic evening 50 years ago. Hear their conversation at the audio link.
Now a humble parking lot, the Washington Coliseum has seen a lot in its days. Malcolm X once spoke there, circus lions jumped through hoops there — and on Feb. 11 1964, The Beatles played their first-ever U.S. concert there.
Photographer Mike Mitchell was photographing that day. He was 18 years old, he recalls in an interview with NPR's Scott Simon, and couldn't afford a flash for his camera. He took concert photos using only the available light.
"I had to take my cues from what the light was doing," Mitchell said. "And the light was very kind."
In the 50 years since that day, a lot has changed. The building fell into disrepair after being sold, and for 10 years was a transfer station for Waste Management.
Still, on any given day, beautiful shafts of light can been seen spilling through the circular windows in the vaulted ceilings onto the abandoned clusters of stadium seating lurking in dark corners along the walls.
Working without flash, like Mitchell, we set out to make long-exposure photographs showing what exists today of the crumbling structure that once played host to history.
This weekend, if you find yourself wandering in the D.C. neighborhood formerly known as Swampoodle, and into this parking lot formerly known as a music venue, you'll find a temporary exhibit of Mitchell's photos, commemorating the 50th anniversary of that night in Beatlemania.
Art, music, culture and hair changed utterly 50 years ago this week when the Beatles first arrived in America. They played their first live concert in the Washington Coliseum in Washington, D.C. and this week we paid a visit to the site where John, Paul, George and Ringo first faced their fans after shaking up America.
CAROLL JAMES: This is Carroll James and now from the Washington, D.C. Coliseum, the world's most exciting group, Capital Recording stars, the Beatles.
SIMON: We're standing on the spot, and I mean the very spot, where the Beatles performed their first concert in America following the Ed Sullivan Show. It's as parking garage now. You hear trains rumbling behind us from Union Station that's not far away. You might hear the drip of water coming through the roof. You can see the gray sky coming in through holes that are in here.
Looks a little bit like an enormous concrete quonset hut that had been eaten by rats. But this is where The Beatles first played America. We're joined by Mike Mitchell. He was 18 when the Beatles came here in 1964 and he photographed their first gig.
Take us back to that night in 1964.
MIKE MITCHELL: It was very, very, very hot in here and you could tell that the kids in the audience were getting kind of impatient as the warm-up acts proceeded. And then bang, all of a sudden the Beatles hit the stage and the place just started screaming. It was like the whole place was screaming for an entire half an hour.
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Oh yeah I'll tell you something I think you'll understand. When I...
SIMON: How does an 18-year-old wind up being what amounts to the house photographer for this event?
MITCHELL: It goes back to a green '55 Chevrolet. When I was driving along and I heard the first song, heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand." It was, as may people say, it was unlike anything you'd ever heard before and it got to you immediately if you have the right receptors I think in your head, which I did. And I said I've got to be there.
SIMON: So what did they look like close up?
MITCHELL: I've said before that they kind of were an alien species to us.
SIMON: I mean, the mop-top hair was...
MITCHELL: All of that.
SIMON: We didn't see it so much in the U.S. then.
MITCHELL: Right. At that point they looked incredibly fresh, you know, like a fresh iteration of the human race.
PAUL MCCARTNEY: Thank you very much everybody and good evening. How do you do? We love you. We'd like you, if you would, to sort of join in and clap your hands, you know, and stamp your feet.
MITCHELL: It's interesting because I found McCartney and Ringo Starr and George Harrison to be the ones who were pulling my camera toward them. Lennon didn't look compelling at that age. He really gained his gravitas later, I think. And most of the pictures of him are you can't really feel the depth that's inside the guy.
SIMON: Do you remember what their first number was?
MITCHELL: It as Chuck Berry, "Roll Over Beethoven."
SIMON: What you were expecting?
MITCHELL: No idea what to expect.
BEATLES: (Singing) Roll over Beethoven gotta hit it again today. Now the temperature's rising, the jukebox blows a fuse. My heart beatin' rhythm, my soul keeps a-singing the blues. Roll over Beethoven, they're rocking it two by two.
MITCHELL: But I said this about the whole set list. There were 12 songs, eight of which were their own compositions and all of their own compositions had such a distinctive quality from the covers. And from what I learned about how they composed music, it was like they were drawing from the gene pool of all the rock 'n' roll that had ever been written. It's fascinating.
SIMON: What was it like when they turned into "I Saw Her Standing There," one of their signature songs?
MITCHELL: That's when you could feel how distinctive their own sound was.
BEATLES: The song's called "I Saw Her Standing There." One, two, three four. (Singing) She was just 17, you know what I mean, and the way she looked was way beyond compare. How could I dance with another, ooh, when I saw her standing there?
MITCHELL: And that stuff, it still rings in my ears from that experience because it just, you know, made your heart stand up and pay attention. You know, the lyrics were the kind of lyrics that teenagers take for granted. They were all about love. Every one of those songs was about falling in love, or holding onto love, you know, the basic fare of the teenage awareness.
BEATLES: (Singing) Well, my heart went boom when I crossed that room and I held her hand in mine. Well, we danced through the night...
MITCHELL: But the music, it just catapulted you out of the life that other people were trying to get you to lead or, you know, the way things had been before they came along.
SIMON: Your photographs are going to be displayed this weekend.
MITCHELL: Yep.
SIMON: They're black and white.
MITCHELL: Yep.
SIMON: You didn't have a flash.
MITCHELL: I couldn't afford a flash.
SIMON: Well, but did it...
MITCHELL: It was fortuitous. If I shot it with a flash, the pictures would be dull and dumb.
SIMON: Yeah.
MITCHELL: I had to take my cues from what the light was doing and the light was very kind.
SIMON: Did you have an idea that you were in the presence of history that night?
MITCHELL: Not so much history, but a mysterious force that you could feel the magnitude of even with your limited teenage senses. The thing that I've often said is it felt bigger than the room. There was a volume to the reaction. I've used different metaphors, but it was kind of like a generational wakeup call.
SIMON: Did you have a favorite song from that night?
MITCHELL: The song that rings most in my ears was apparently their first hit in England called, "Please Please Me."
BEATLES: So we'd like to play for you now a song called "Please Please Me."
MITCHELL: And the opening notes of that song, I can still hear them in this room and how big they were.
BEATLES: (Singing) Last night I said these words to my girl. I know you never even tried girl. Come on...
SIMON: "Please Please Me" and the songs you just heard were recorded that night 50 years ago. You can see Mike Mitchell's photographs of the Beatles at the former Washington Coliseum, now a parking garage, today and tomorrow. But if you miss it, we also have a few on our website at npr.org.
BEATLES: (Singing) Why do I always have to say, love? Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Please please me whoa yeah, like I please you. I don't wanna sound pathetic but you know there's always... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Broward County Governmental Center Room A337
115 S. Andrews Ave.115 S. Andrews Ave. Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
*Location and times are subject to change monthly, so please call 954-357-5385 to confirm the exact location and time. To learn more or to get involved call:
The Broward County Diversity Advisory Council needs your support and involvement.Please call, mail or e-mail us at:Diversity Advisory Council115 S. Andrews Ave.Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301Phone: 954-357-5385Email: email@example.com Diversity Advisory Council Trust Fund account has been established to accept monetary contributions to help support its activities.
January is Diversity and Inclusive Community Month in Broward County.
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Why Government Tech Is So Poor
Fixing Procurement Process Is Key to Preventing Blunders Like Healthcare.gov
Just before Healthcare.gov hobbled online, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, compared the federal health-care exchange to her iPad's new operating system.
If users found a few bugs in their iPads, she argued, most wouldn't consider them a complete disaster. Instead, they would recognize that technology is complicated, that errors are common, and they would wait for an update. Apple Inc., she added, has "a few more resources" than her department, so "hopefully [citizens will] give us the...


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Police are shocked at the high numbers of drivers still dividing their attention between cellphones and the road, three years after calling or texting at the wheel was banned.
"That's appalling, isn't it?" said national road policing manager Superintendent Carey Griffiths, when told how in one hour, the Herald counted 29 people using phones while driving north through Auckland's 80km/h central motorway junction yesterday afternoon.
"The question I ask people is, do you want someone driving towards you at 100km/h who is looking at the screen of their phone rather than the road ahead?"
Of the 29 motorists observed yesterday, 25 appeared to be talking on phones and four were texting. Another man was brushing his teeth.
The newspaper's photographic survey was conducted from the Hopetoun St bridge above State Highways 1 and 16, as police traffic patrols began a week-long national crackdown against a practice blamed for 28 road deaths - including two this year- since early 2007.
Mr Griffiths said the number of tickets issued to cellphone offenders had risen steadily since the ban was imposed.
The total for the 12 months to last Thursday was 12,515, compared with 9512 for the previous year, and 7710 in the first 12 months of the ban, which began on November 1, 2009.
The penalty for cellphone offences is an $80 fine and 20 demerit points.
Automobile Association spokesman Dylan Thomsen said that if too many drivers kept failing to realise how risky cellphone use was, higher penalties should be considered.
Mr Griffiths said the police would this week concentrate on "static observation", by parking where they could stop offending drivers safely.
Offenders caught would also be checked for seatbelt use and drink-driving, and would be given little leeway as there was "not a lot of sympathy from us or the public for people on cellphones".
The most blatant texter yesterday was a truckie punching a message into a phone he was holding above his steering wheel.
But he was possibly out-pointed for road peril by a woman who took both hands off her steering wheel to fix her hair while starting the descent to the motorway tunnel under Victoria Park.
Mr Griffiths agreed that cellphones were far from the only source of distraction.
"Cellphones are a highly visible way of demonstrating driver distraction but they are just one of a number of things people do that they shouldn't - like eating or turning and talking to their passengers.
"Driving a car is a serious business and you need your mind on what you are doing, because the consequences of getting it wrong are terrible."
Phoning while driving: Men 13 Women 12
Texting while driving: Men 2 Women 2


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'American Idol' is racist, lawyer claims: Nine former contestants, including Corey Clark, primed to sue
'Idol' executive producer Nigel Lythgoe called the allegations 'ridiculous.' 'We treat everybody the same ... no matter the race, religion or sex,' he said.
By Corky Siemaszko / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The hit talent show "American Idol" has been waging an off-key campaign to boost ratings by playing the race card, a New York lawyer claims.
The attorney, James Freeman, said the show has been juicing-up the drama by publically revealing that some black contestants have arrest records - and then using that as an excuse to boot them off the show.
Freeman said he has submitted a letter to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asking for permission to sue the show on behalf of nine humiliated African-American contestants - all of them male.
But Freeman declined to release a copy when contacted by The Daily News - and said he could not explain how the celebrity website TMZ.com got the letter.
"I don't know how they got it, but they got it," Freeman said Friday. "I'm not trying to litigate these claims through the press."
Read More>http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...icle-1.1247681
It is time to lynch the word racist.


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How To Play Quake III On iPad 54
SlappingOysters writes "I thought those veteran gamers amongst you might like this one. Quake III Arena by legendary developer id Software isn't available on the App Store, but there is a way that you can get it to work on your iPad all the same. You can also get Open Arena and Quake III Shareware to work on Apple's tablet. The process is reasonably straightforward for anyone who wants to give it a ago, and Grab It Magazine has provided a step-by step guide, with pictures and necessary links, to help the interested through it."


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GOOGLING your own name used to be mocked as a vanity thing.
Or maybe a paranoia thing.
But perhaps after some recent court wins by an Aussie bloke against two search engine giants, self-Googling might become a lot more popular and interesting.
You may have read about it. Milorad (Michael) Trkulja was unlucky enough to have been shot in a Melbourne restaurant in 2004.
The crime was never solved, although Mr Trkulja has been quoted saying he believes he knows who tried to shoot him.
The story of the shooting was reported in the Melbourne Herald Sun, and scans of the newspaper article were posted on a variety of websites devoted to Melbourne crime.
Those scans apparently popped up – complete with Trkulja's name and picture – when people searched Yahoo and Google.
Trkulja, a music promoter described by the Herald Sun as ''a colourful identity'', felt that so many people were seeing his picture online alongside those of various gangland identities that his reputation was suffering.
So he sued both Google and Yahoo for defamation, and won a couple of hundred thousand dollars from each.
The search engines argued that it wasn't their fault. They just found stuff that other people had produced.
But the court put them in the same category as a newsagent, say, that distributed papers and magazines. Such shops could be liable for defamation, so search engines could too.
Up until now, search engines have been able to put responsibility for defamatory content back on the providers of that content.
But cases and judgments are starting to mount up.
Former German first lady Bettina Wulff sued Google because the words "prostitute" and "escort" used to appear as suggestions next to her name on searches.
And a Japanese man won an action against Google because the "autocomplete" feature linked his name to crimes he didn't commit.
After the Trkulja case I imagine people all over the world will be doing online searches on their own names, just in case.
I did one, just to see.
I don't think I can sue Google on the basis that people might think that I am the well-known racing car champ Greg Ray.
Or a comedian of the same name.
But when I do an image search and find a couple of mug-shots of criminals with the same name as me I might be getting warmer.
So, how will all this affect the internet?
Will actual, real crooks be able to scare search engines into deleting search references to them? Would that be a good thing?
I still get emails from people who can read, online, old articles I wrote in this newspaper about legendary cancer con-man Paul Perrett, and many of them tell me those archived articles have made them cautious about dealing with him.
Perrett, twice jailed for fraud and robbery, ripped off scores of people with fake cancer cures and fooled hundreds with fanciful tales of his alleged university qualifications.
He lives outside the Hunter now, but I still get calls from people telling me they've met him and heard the latest versions of his astounding stories and interesting investment ideas.
Could Perrett demand that the stories about him be struck from search results, preventing people from finding out about his murky past and being put on their guard?
And will it go further than defamation?
Newsagencies have been found liable in the past for distributing offensive material such as illegal pornography.
Would search engines be liable if they directed people to websites containing illegal material?
Seems to me that either the law or the internet is going to have to change.


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Posted: Nov 29, 2012 7:04 PM PST Updated: Nov 29, 2012 7:04 PM PST
PHOENIX (AP) - Police are looking for a mother who left Phoenix Children's Hospital with her 11-year-old daughter while the child still had a catheter in her heart.
Police Sgt. Steve Martos says detectives are concerned about the girl's welfare. If the catheter isn't removed medically, it could potentially become infected and the girl could die.
Martos says detectives haven't been able to find the girl and her family. They've checked addresses locally and out of state.
The girl was initially brought to the hospital by her parents - identified only as Luis and Norma - to receive treatment for leukemia. That's when a chest catheter was placed into her heart. She also had to have her arm amputated due to infection.
Police say the mother removed the IV from the catheter, changed her daughter's clothes and walked her out of the hospital Wednesday night.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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You seem less optimistic about the time needed for a cure
Feb 20, 2012
I was reading your last response about a functional cure in which you claimed that it would most likely take more than 10 years to develop a cure. Reading your previous responses on the issue you seemed much more optimistic. Here's an example:
I have been an activist since 1988 and I can tell you that for the first time in a long , long time, the word CURE is showing up in most scientific meetings and research discussions. The pipeline for oral HIV antiretrovirals is drying up and instead more funding is going to functional cure and reservoir "flushing" research. I am very optimistic that we will see something that will change the paradigm in HIV in the next 5-10 years!
You may want to read this report from AMFAR:
CURE research
and this pipeline report (start at page 44):
TAG 2010 pipeline report
Don't despair. There is a lot going on right now that most patients ignore in the research world!
What happened?
Response from Mr. Vergel
I am very optimistic about the potential for a cure in the next 10 years. But we are just in early stages of testing and research. In a meeting organized by activists in Baltimore a year ago, several action items were listed that need to be done before getting to a cure. You can read them in this report: HIV CURE-RELATED CLINICAL RESEARCH WORKSHOP
There was a recent meeting in December that gathered researchers from all over the world in the Virgin Islands. You can read a summary of that meeting here:
Fifth International Workshop on HIV Persistence During Therapy
I am very excited that once again we are about to meet with researchers around the world on March 4 in Seattle to review where we are with cure research. I will write a summary report about that meeting soon after we have it. I certainly hope we hear a lot of good news!!
For more cure related info, go to:
Program for Wellness Restoration- Nelson's non profit org
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KLRU chooses three programs each month for your family to enjoy and view together. In April 2014, we will have some thought provoking family viewing opportunities beginning with NATURE "My Bionic Pet," exploring innovative animal interventions. In the middle of the month is The Address: A Film by Ken Burns seeing history through the eyes of students, and at the end of the month, observe family dynamics in NATURE "Snow Monkeys".
PBS has announced the launch of its new "Think Wednesday" primetime line-up: television's best nature, science and technology programming, including new episodes of acclaimed series NATURE and NOVA in the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. hours respectively, and new specials debuting at 10 p.m. The "Think Wednesday" lineup premieres Wednesday, April 9, with new episodes of NOVA and NATURE and the premiere of YOUR INNER FISH at 10 p.m.
NATURE "My Bionic Pet"
Wednesday, April 9 at 7pm
The animals of the world may increasingly need our help with big issues like preserving habitat or species conservation. But sometimes individual animals need our help as well. Left disabled without fins, flippers, beaks or tails because of disease, accidents or even human cruelty, these unfortunate creatures need what amounts to a miracle if they are to survive. Luckily for them, sometimes miracles do happen. Amazing prosthetics made possible by the latest engineering and technology are able to provide just what they need. And scientists are finding that innovations created in the process are benefitting both animals and humans.
THE ADDRESS: A Film by Ken Burns
Tuesday, April 15 at 8pm
Ken Burns's THE ADDRESS tells the story of a tiny school in Putney, Vermont, the Greenwood School, where each year the students are encouraged to memorize, practice and recite the Gettysburg Address. In its exploration of Greenwood, whose students, boys ages 11-17, all face a range of complex learning differences, the film also unlocks the history, context and importance of President Lincoln's most powerful address.
NATURE "Snow Monkeys"
Wednesday, April 23 at 7pm
In the frigid valleys of Japan's Shiga Highlands, a troop of snow monkeys make their way and raise their families in a complex society of rank and privilege where each knows their place. Their leader is still new to the job and something of a solitary grouch. But one little monkey, innocently unaware of his own lowly social rank, reaches out to this lonely leader, forming a bond with him that manages over time to warm his less than sunny disposition. It is a rare and remarkable gesture that alters both their lives. Changing seasons bring new babies to care for, a profusion of insects and blossoms to eat, family disagreements to squabble over and tragedies to overcome. Mating season brings competition for females as the days grow shorter and colder in a rush toward winter. But with their now confident leader to guide them and their families to shelter and care for them, this troop of snow monkeys is ready to face the world.


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(Registered members may comment here.)
Hello and welcome to yet another singing competition show on TV. This one is seemingly distinguished by several things not the least of which is an obscene five million dollar prize for the winner, the much talked about Paula-Simon reunion and a live arena audience for certain, carefully producer picked, contestants. Do not let all the window dressing fool you. While on the surface it seems X-Factor has everything going for it, the devil is in the details.
So far, after two nights of auditions filled with the usual Idol-esque loser parade, a slew of mediocre filler types and the occasional Idol-Hollywood-round-reject types touted as standouts, the show's equation is basically America's Got Talent divided by The Voice minus American Idol: The Country Edition. The decided lack of country talent and the even more glaring lack of plaid clad, Jesus lovin' coffee-house-karaoke type contestants has the potential to attract a different and probably less fanatical kind of demographic. And, as Martha would say, that, kids, is a very good thing indeed.
I'm not going to delve deep into the guts of these audition rounds mainly because the tedium of recounting four entire hours of formulaic pap is not worth either my time writing about it or yours reading about it but I'll touch on the highs and lows so you will miss nothing except the fat.
The Formula
We've all heard how The X Factor is supposedly nothing like Idol, however, that won't stop anybody from comparing the two and, indeed, I am not above some crude sizing-up when the invitation to do so is blatantly obvious. Here's the breakdown:
- Aerial shots of massive crowds composed of eager but largely delusional people all hoping for a chance to become the next big thing? Check. The size of the LA crowd alone 20,000 no less is already touted by the unnamed, faceless, UK-accented host as the biggest ever in LA's history of auditions. Score one for the X.
- The X Factor is a show that can fit into three eighteen wheelers and we see these beasts traversing the country from city to city in each audition episode.
- Aside from Paula and Simon, the judges are Cheryl Cole, who will be fired by the second audition episode to be replaced by ex-Pussycat Doll Nicole Schertzinger, and famed record executive Antonio LA Reid who is a smarter, sharper, more elegant and more power Randy Jackson in the best way possible.
Done in by too much hair or too little personality.
- Did I mention that $5 million dollar Sony recording contract the winner will get? Yeah. There's also the little detail of the winner being featured in a Superbowl Coca Cola commercial. Can you imagine one of the last four mealymouthed white-guy-with-guitar Idol winners in one of those? Hee.
- One biggie is the lack of a top or bottom age limit and groups are welcome as well. Not that anyone but a young pop leaning girl or guy is going to win this one but the seemingly egalitarian premise is a nice departure from the tired old formula.
- Oops, looks the host does have a name and it's Steve Jones but he seems more like furniture and deliberately non Seacrest-like. Not going to bother with him much.
- After the auditions, each judge will take on a group of contestants to mentor through the live shows kind of like on the The Voice.
- Last, but not least, The X Factor is proud to distinguish itself by holding live arena auditions in front of thousands of people: Humiliation or triumph on a grand scale.
The gang's all new. Ish.
La-La Land highs and lows
It's one thing to try to set yourself apart from the competition with silly window dressing and lofty promises of riches, quite another to actually do something revolutionary. I did have a glimmer of hope that The X Factor would dare to go in a different direction than the tried and true people with sob stories route but only for a minute. Then I remembered that I'm not watching, say, HBO. This is standard singing show fare, people, and when it comes to that, I think we've already seen it all before.
So, in the name of the same old, same old, the first entrant in the game is Rachel Crow, all of 13, precocious in that thoroughly annoying way that makes me want to fast forward already and possessor of a sob story. Of course. Even before getting on stage, she already speaks in that embarrassing me-me-me generation hyperbole: This audition is the most important thing I've ever done in my life, she says. Not only do I have zero sympathy, empathy and even like for this kid at this point, I can clearly see X Factor's pandering being no less unctuous and off-putting than Idol's and I can definitely see myself losing interest in this circus even before the opening salvo.
Rachel hits the stage, 13-going-on-36, with a flower in her hair and a too-old-for-her blazer, and the judges melt over her giggle and disturbingly rehearsed sob-story-cum-comedy routine about the horrible woes of her sub-par first world living conditions that do not allow for Rachel to have her own bathroom. Hope this show doesn't run in India later on... To say I'm embarrassed to be watching this is an understatement but an entire un-self-aware audience howls with laughter. Can she sing? It's almost beside the point as she probably could have hummed the Sesame Street theme song off-key and they would have put her through regardless. As it is, she does a decent cover of Duffy's oft-abused song, Mercy, but it feels put-on, like a bad kiddie pageant act. She gets four yeses and lots of over-the-top praise from all the judges. Simon even tells her she'll probably get her own bathroom now. Welcome to X Factor, folks!
And so it goes forward. As Day 1 auditions in LA continue, other people moving on get less of a pimping and are more interesting as well. Among them cutie Terrel Carter, 36, who sings an R&B cover and is deemed by Cheryl as having the whole package; Ellona, 14, who waltzes by with a rendition of Beautiful delivered in a big and shouty way that is often mistaken for good vocals and blond and wholesome tween girl magnet of the Bieber persuasion, John Lindahl, 14, singing Forget You. He even comes with his own groupies backstage complete with banners and loud shrieks. Ready for television, that he is.
Siameze, 30, is well-muscled and showing it by doing splits and stripping while covering Prince in a very bad way. He also wants to be a megastar with his own drink called Si-Men-Nergy. Simon seems horrified and LA looks like he's regretting leaving his high paying executive job for this crap. Unbelievably he gets a pass even though LA turns him down and Simon says he's delusional. I guess they need their filler like every other show.
A slew of losers follow in quick succession among them an adorable older couple from Vegas, Dan and Venita, whose dreams of making it big on the senior home show circuit may never reach fruition; a psychotic duo of goth girls who seem baffled that their yin-yang act is passed over; an old lady singing I Touch Myself in a non-ironic, somewhat obscene way and a Katy Perry wannabe covering Firework with a very bad voice and an even worse attitude.
Simone Battle, 21, an overconfident Beyonce wannabe, delivers a tepid Pussycat Dolls song with enough attitude to woo the judges. All except LA, that is, whose objections are the cue for X Factor to highlight the new rivalry between Simon and LA which has apparently supplanted the ye olde Simon-Paula shtick. Times, they're a' changing.
The LA auditions conclude with Stacy Francis, 42, mother of two whose tale of woe consists of a lack of confidence and some overcritical people in her life who managed to keep her from reaching for her dreams. Until now, that is. Her shouty, churchy, Hollywood-round-reject performance of Natural Woman is only remarkable because she is 42 and X Factor could use a modified version of SuBo. Simon showers her with praise and declares her audition the best he's ever heard. I have to wonder what's in that Coke cup he's sipping from. Or maybe he's got visions of SuBo's sales from those embarrassing cover songs dancing in front of his eyes.
It's an even flow in Seattle
Can X Factor pop out a pop star in the city where Pearl Jam reigns supreme? Not sure but there are hopefuls here as far as the eye can see. The most notable bit is that we're an hour in and Cheryl Cole and her big Texas pageant hair have been dispatched already and replaced with Nicole Scherzinger of Pussycat Doll fame.
The freak show starts early with Geo Godley, who immediately drops his pants and is allowed to sing an entire song with his man bits hanging out for all to see despite making Paula run to the bathroom to throw up. Will it get worse? I'm barely hanging on, folks.
Can Nicole take on JLo? She tries hard, making Seattle sing Happy Birthday to her and the show tries even harder by making Simon deliver to her a cake (with his own face on it, natch) and a song backstage but does anybody actually care? I predict Nicole will pimp a single and a new video sometime during the course of this show. You heard it here first. Back to the action which I'm going to lovingly deliver all bullet-pointed for your reading pleasure and because I value my sanity.
Some of the people walking away with yeses and good impressions are:
- Marcus Canty, 20, who drops "I wish" by Stevie Wonder and gets compared to Bobby Brown and Usher
- The Answer, a trio of Salt Lake City boy band wannabes who suck up to Nicole with a birthday song and rake up four yeses with a decently entertaining version of the overcooked Rolling In The Deep
- Chris Rene, 28, garbage man and former addict with a kid who wants to make it big with his original song called Young Homie. He is the only standout of the whole night for me and the judges seem awestruck by his raw talent and personality. Simon even calls him a star acknowledging that he needs the show as much as the show needs somebody like him with the caveat that he stays off drugs. Hmm, do I sense a foreshadowing of something to come here? Only time will tell.
Commercial break: Among the many Coke commercials pimping a future Coke commercial for the future winner of X Factor there is one for Majors and Minors, a new series seeking talent among kids on The Hub Network. It's notable because it's yet another talent seeking show that's packed with big names, among them Adam Lambert the shining diamond from Simon's old show. Surreal juxtaposition indeed.
Seattle has it's share of gag-auditions, deluded losers and just plain bad performers such as a chick who thinks she's as good as Mariah; a mother-daughter duo or horror and a musician dude from Vegas with a tone deaf wife who sank $100K into his talents. He sings Like A Virgin with conviction and follows it up with an evil laugh. A misguided girl group with too many members and too little talent and an Imogen Heap song I love the song, not the group - gets no love from the judges.
Miami rhapsody in X
You know how on Idol the judges emerge onto the stage to bask in the glory and adulation of their live audience because, let's face it, they're what the show has become. On X Factor, the judges walk in from the back of the floor and high five the audience on their way to the judge's table. One more notch for X Factor.
Ashley Sansoni is delusional enough for two shows. She is also homeless, possibly insane and talentless. Needless to say her joke of an audition to Piece Of My Heart doesn't go over well. She is followed a few similarly crazy filler including a country group of cowboys that's summarily rejected, a sad duo screaming out Barracuda with a scary tone deaf family. Things are not going too well so a little help from local girl Gloria Estefan can only be a good thing. Right? As long as nobody has the brilliant idea to sing one of her songs, I'm good.
It's so easy to tell when somebody comes along with a full pimping package. Take for example 16 year old high school student Kaitlin Harris, all sunny in yellow with no less than two huge homemade posters and a bevy of supporters flanking her as she's seen entering the competition. Her Firework cover is not spectacular but there's some power in her voice and she's better than some of those 13 years olds they picked up in LA. She is rejected but gets a hug from Paul before crying her way off the stage.
Nick Voss, 21, looks like Vanilla Ice and has a standard issue sob story about quitting his job and his mom and whatnot. He starts bawling right away as he relates his, erm, troubles with regular employment right before launching into Trouble by Elvis Presley. He growls and hip-shakes his way through it to the delight of the audience. The judges put him through even though his voice is thin and his copycat ways. Predictably, he bawls in the post-audition confessional too.
The auditions are growing beyond tedious between the ghost-seeing 14 year old with false eyelashes and a thin voice and a virtual pageant of other pathetic losers. When an older woman in a rubber dress walks in and starts screaming out Summertime and gets four yeses for a terrible performance, I think it's clear that The X Factor has already jumped the shark. A girl group called Too Square makes it through singing a song with a message of empowerment. Empowerment is so early 2011. Talk about chasing the tail end of a trend. Teacher Kendra Williams is belts through a suspiciously country sounding bit while bearded cutie Brendan O'Hara wow the judges with his voice. We are shown brief glimpses of these people who as a matter of rule may become really important in later episodes or will be quickly sacrificed for the sake of the chosen ones.
Yes, I said chosen ones. Don't think there aren't any. My guess is a young-ish girl with a pop persona and a so-so voice. Boy, if they're generous... and not too smart. I will completely hate to be right.
The train is chugging on, as boring and bloated as I expected it to be. Jeremiah Pagan is supposedly a male soprano, allegedly only one of 7 in the world, but he's got jagged transitions and sounds out of breath. Yup. I think desperation has set in in Miami.
[b]Melanie Amarro[b] is only 18 years old and she's wearing an awful outfit of leggins and sequins but she does really well with Beyonce's Listen. Too good, actually, because she sounds like a dead ringer for Beyonce. That can be worked on later unless she wants a career as a Bey impersonator.
Dallas daze
The beaches are better in Miami but Dallas has been known to spawn some talent. It's the last leg of this week's interminable audition stops and I'm ready for the ordeal to be over. The three trucks roll into town greeted by a massive gathering of people as they set up shop in yet another arena. There is a high probability of country entrants from this episode which is scary but the host reassures that this is a search for an international pop star. Whew! That's a relief, I must say.
Johnny Rogers, 17, loves his abundant head of hair and he plans to dance during his audition to his own song. Simon says he looks like Ken but he really want to be Justin Bieber. I guess because of the hair... His original song and his spastic dancing are very mid 80s and the singing is just plain sad. Simon says he is like a Made in China Biebs doll gone horribly wrong. Johnny's hopes of megastardom are crushed but there are only 45 minutes of showtime left so what do I care?
We're overdue for a good two-hankie sob story so along comes Dylan Lawson, 18, from Kentucky who lives out in the boondocks. He sold his truck to be on the show and knows exactly what he wants to do. I can practically hear grannies at home crying softly and planning on voting their fingers off for him. Alas he is just a bad troll who screams and jumps around on the stage for a bit and makes me wish I was watching the Weather Channel instead.
Dallas is sure serving up the weird, the horrific, the talentless and even a dude who sounds like a didgeridoo. Don't ask. And then there's an ex-singer from an obscure band who used to open for Hall and Oates a few decades back. Dexter Haygood is 49 is here to rekindle his former glory and to this end he is singing Sex Machine by James Brown. Predictably, it's a caricature, your basic Vegas impersonation, not unlike so many of the other acts on this show so far. Everyone except maybe the dude with the original rap is like somebody else. When asked to do a brief a cappella, James Brown, erm, Dexter Haygood launches into This Is A Man's World full of loud scream and desperation. He is homeless and down to his last chance. He gets yeses from the audience, LA and Nicole and even Simon but it's Paula who sets the boundaries when she tells him to leave the James Brown tribute act behind and come back as himself. Whether he can do that, remains to be seen but we have the definitive tearjerker moment of the show. I'm not sure how genuine it is given that Dexter is on his cellphone saying it happened moments after making it off the stage.
A bunch of others make it through but we're given only small glimpses of them in shorts confessionals. None of them seem country-ish so that's good. Caitlin Koch is a rugby player and she's the first person to sing a different arrangement of a song, namely Stop In The Name slowed down. It's not spectacular but it makes her stand out and makes people take notice. The judges are blown away as much by her story, her tough Barbie looks as by her audition. Hey, Dallas finally delivers something!
Things are finally winding down in Dallas but not before one more precious specimen by the name of Xander Alexander who is very particular about his influences Mariah, Whitney and Britney before they lost it and most particular about his moniker. None of that Alexander or Xavier business for him, thankyouverymuch. The delusion of grandeur does not stop there but I won't bore you. Needless to say he implodes spectacularly when he decides to get insolent with Simon. He launches into an Edwin McCain chestnut followed by an impromptu bit that actually shows some talent. Simon even says that he might be good given the right production but it's false hope. LA and Paula turn him down giving Simon a chance to tell Alexander that he lost the audition when he lost the audience.
Next week we get two more audition episodes and, let me tell you, I'm not looking forward to them. I'm not sure they're worth writing about so I may just post pics of bunnies or something.


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Athletics-Indians Preview
After a successful start to their longest road trip of the season, the Oakland Athletics will try to keep their momentum going by continuing their recent dominance of the Cleveland Indians.
The A's seek a ninth consecutive victory over the Indians on Monday night, while Ubaldo Jimenez will try to help Cleveland bounce back a day after its lengthy winning streak ended.
After dropping five of its previous six road games, Oakland took two of three from the New York Yankees over the weekend to kick off its 10-game trek. The A's blew a three-run lead in Sunday's series finale, but Josh Donaldson hit a tiebreaking home run in the eighth inning in a 5-4 victory.
"We got contributions across the board today in different ways," manager Bob Melvin told the team's official website. "Sometimes it takes a whole group to win a ballgame, and today, that was the case."
Oakland (18-14) will try to continue rolling against Cleveland (14-14), which had a six-game win streak snapped Sunday with a 4-2 loss to Minnesota. After batting .373 and scoring 53 runs during the streak, the Indians had six hits and struck out 11 times in the series finale.
"We still took two out of three in this series, and if we keep doing that, we're going to be in a pretty good place at the end of the year," infielder Mark Reynolds said. "We've got some momentum, so hopefully we can carry it over (against Oakland)."
Jimenez (1-2, 7.13 ERA) will try to help his team rebound by building on his best outing of the season. After putting up a 10.06 ERA in his first four games, the right-hander pitched seven innings of three-hit ball last Monday at Kansas City in a 9-0 win, his first since Aug. 9.
"You're always looking to be encouraged," manager Terry Francona told the team's official website. "I think we flew past encouraged and got excited."
Jimenez will next try to help Cleveland avoid its longest losing streak against Oakland since dropping 10 in a row from July 31, 1971-Aug. 18, 1972. The Indians have lost five straight at home to the A's, including a four-game sweep Aug. 27-30.
Jimenez is 1-0 with a 3.75 ERA in his two starts against Oakland.
Like Jimenez, Jarrod Parker (1-4, 7.36) will try to build on his first win of the season. The right-hander, though, wasn't nearly as dominant as his Cleveland counterpart, giving up four runs over six innings Tuesday in a 10-6 win over the Los Angeles Angels.
He avoided becoming the first A's pitcher to lose five games in April.
"I felt good," Parker told the team's official website. "I was able to forget about what's done and focus in on each pitch. There's a reason for my success and I didn't want to get away from who I am. I didn't want to fight myself."
Parker has won both of his starts against Cleveland but had vastly different performances. He pitched eight innings in a 7-0 home win Aug. 19 and gave up five runs over five innings in a 12-7 road victory 11 days later.


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why are the doing this now? and why only 48fps?
Follow the slashdot link in the summary, it was discussed extensively there, no need to derail yet another thread with it.
why do you think it last sooooo long
I guess that depends on how you define it. On interlaced broadcast (like all old TV), you get a half-frame every 50 seconds, where half-frame means either the even or the odd lines, alternating. However in true interlaced broadcast (i.e. where the material was already recorded in that format, not transformed into it as when putting a movie to TV) it's not that you get the even and odd lines of the same image, but each half-frame is recoded on its own time. So say you've got 50 half-frames per second, then you'll get e.g. the even lines of the image at 0ms, then the odd lines of the image at 20ms, then the even lines of the image at 40ms, then the odd lines of the image at 60ms, and so on. Only with converted stuff, the even and odd lines will be from the same image.
You can see that quite nicely when capturing a true interlaced-recorded TV program on tjhe computer, where two half-frames are combined into a frame. If there's fast movement in the scene, you'll get striped frames because your "frame" is actually the combination of two images at different times, with the even and odd lines image separated by 20 ms (50Hz) or 16.7 ms (60Hz). Given that those images are recorded at different times, I'd say it makes sense to consider them different frames which are recoded at half the vertical resolution with a displacement of one line every second frame.
But the reason for using fields is so that the effective frame rate perceived is 60 frames per second, just at half the vertical resolution. Each field contains a different image than the field before it. So we're used to relatively fast frame rates. If people find 48 FPS distracting, the reason is probably either a psychological "uncanny valley" thing—because it feels almost like TV but not quite—or perhaps it just happens to be a magic speed that makes people uncomfortable for some reason.
I'm not aware of broadcasts in 50 FPS. AFAIK, they're being evaluated, but basically material is broadcast at 25 or 30 fps, depending on the standard used. These conform to the old PAL/NTSC/SECAM framerates. Interlaced formats, however, can be 50 or 60, but that's because each frame is essentially split into two frames of alternating horizontal lines, "fields".
720p60 is a common broadcast format and a few European broadcasters do 720p50 (presumably to ease upscaling 25 FPS SD content). It seems 1080i50 is more popular over there though (annoyingly, I despise interlacing and would much rather have seen 1080p30 and 1080p25 become the broadcast standards rather than their crappy interlaced counterparts).
As soon as technology allowed me, I produced and projected video animations in 60fps to make pans more fluid. Would I be producing a movie today, I would try to shoot in 60fps for the same reason, much more fluid motion on big screens.
If Jackson had chosen 60fps for The Hobbit, it would have been a much better choice, at least as far as home video is concerned.
With a choice of 48fps as the source, we are going to get stuck with a much lower quality home video release, because there is no current format that allows at least 48fps and 1920x1080 resolution. So, to convert to 24fps, either the original footage will have to be filmed at 24fps, or else some sort of digital interpolation will have to be done. Neither will give the same quality that we have come to expect from current media, as instead of 24 frames per second where scenes with little motion have very sharp frames, pretty much every frame will show some sort of motion.
It's also much more effective to down-convert from 60 FPM to 60i for broadcast than to up-convert from 24 or even 48 FPM to 30i
broadcast TV has been 50 for years
Clarification: That was 50i for PAL and 60i for NSTC. Because of the interlace the FPS was actually 25fps and 30fps respectively.
A lot fo the magic of film was 24fps.
Oh yes, like wagon wheels going backwards. I also pine for the days of scratches, dust spots and pubic hairs on the big screen. And nothing but nothing beats the exhilaration of watching the celluloid melt because the projector stalled.
Where can I see the Hobbit in 48FPS?
Never heard of google? http://www.48fpsmovies.com/48-fps-theater-list/ [48fpsmovies.com]
Sure I have. [lmgtfy.com]
Where can I see the Hobbit in 48FPS?
distracting? Since the film seems to be getting panned a lot, does this maybe have something to do with it?
If you have a modern medium to high end HDTV, turn on frame interpolation [wikipedia.org] processing (by whatever silly trademarked name your TV has for it) and watch an HD movie (especially one with sweeping pans and action, etc). It's hard to quantify exactly why it's distracting, but is sometimes described as a "soap opera" effect.
It bugs me too, but it really is hard to objectively say why. I'd like to think it's about a subconscious feeling of "expansiveness" and uncertainty (since your brain has to interpolate instead of the TV, and maybe your brain interpolating engages you with the content differently, etc) that you want with a more "epic" movie experience.
But there is also a strong argument that it's mostly your brain adjusting to something it has not experienced in this setting, and you will get used to it if exposed enough. Sort of like getting a new pair of glasses with a different shape/refractive index...
Is this the part where I have to pretend that the whole Tom Bombadil segment wasn't the most poorly-written part in the books?
150 pages of Frodo walking with almost nothing else happening in mordor didn't excite you?
Fog On The Barrowdowns is one of the most harrowing parts of the book, and the first major signal that this wasn't merely The Hobbit part 2.
But it yielded Tim Benzedrine [wikipedia.org]. That alone was worth it.
Along those lines, a quote in TFA made me wonder exactly which book Peter Jackson was basing the plot on?
An interminable sequence in Bilbo's hutch culminates in a dorky, dwarven drinking song, performed alongside animated plates and spoons.
Bored of the Rings?
We Boggies are a hairy folk,
Who like to eat until we choke.
Loving all like friend and brother,
We hardly ever eat eat other.
Gorging out from morn till noon,
But don't forget your plate and spoon.
Now, I would pay good money to see that film.
At the same time I love the movies (and just got the extended BR edition), I'm sad that they weren't as 'faithful' as they could have been to the books, and worse is that it was such a huge endeavor that it's not likely to be tried again for at least a very long time, if ever. I more than understand cutting out a part like Tom Bombadil (and changing and cutting various other things) for the sake of brevity, but that's not what they did - they cut it for the sake of stuff that wasn't in the books at all.
for decades i could never figure out why they could do it on TV soap operas and some sit coms but not on movies that cost a lot more money to make
i'll take a blu ray of an older movie over the grainy theater crap quality any day
Blu-Ray of old movies are still 24P, they don't magically add more frames that don't exist, and interpolation generally looks like ass.
Blu-Ray of old movies are still 24P, they don't magically add more frames that don't exist, and interpolation generally looks like ass.
But some people want to see ass, especially when voiced by Eddie Murphy [wikipedia.org]. If DreamWorks Animation wanted to rerender Shrek at twice the frame rate, could they?
old Dr. Who at best
My desire to see The Hobbit just multiplied ten-fold.
not having seen the movie or old enough to remember it if it happened in the golden age of movies..
how does it look different in the theater at 48fps vs normal 24fps movies?
When playing a game, I can easily tell if it's running at 30 fps or 60 fps, and I *much* prefer the higher framerate, for obvious reasons. It'll definitely take a bit of getting used to when it comes to moves, but it is no doubt a good thing.
Everyone tells me I'm crazy when I say that windowed games and videos play really sluggish in Windows 7 compared to XP. The reason is because the new window manager uses 3D hardware to do compositing, and for some reason, updates seems to be locked in at 30 FPS (my guess is 50% of the monitor refresh rate). XP updated at full blast and provided much, much smoother games and video. I've noticed a rather huge loss in overall performance on my new Win7 machine, despite it being massively more powerful than
It only matters very little whether you capture rapid motion with 30fps or 1000fps - the motion still occurs at its natural speed, it's the amount of motion blur per frame that changes. The eye sends a continuous stream of signals to the brain and the brain "sees". Most people have difficulty registering details about an object that moves faster than 36 degrees per second. So for roughly 180 degrees field of view, anything that crosses your sight in under 5 seconds is blurred. That's not much frame rate, right there. I only give this example to demonstrate that high frame-rate is not that important for action.
When you shoot film @ 24 fps, the photographic shutter does not stay open the whole 1/24 sec. time, because that will be too much motion blur and also too much exposure at, say, F2.8 for the film. Normally film is shot at shutter speeds about 1/50 sec. This means that half of the 1/24 sec. motion is NOT CAPTURED AT ALL. Film creates a stroboscopic effect, and when played back through a projector that displays 1/50 sec. worth of action for 1/24 sec., it looks eerie, artsy.
For the soap opera look, cheap TV shows are shot with cheap video cameras which do not have light shutters. Shutter is open for the duration of the frame - 1/60 for interlaced NTSC TV. The whole action is captured with motion blur similar to film (film at 1/60 sec. shutter). The playback is absolutely realistic, cheaply realistic.
So, there you have it: TV @ PAL/50i and film with "normal" shutter speed 1/48 sec. @ 24fps have similar amount of motion blur. Film has a stroboscopic effect, TV does not.
Most of the time you can't even tell the difference between frame rates, except when it emerges as artifacts at 24 fps.
24 fps movies are purposefully shot with more motion blur to hide the jerkiness. But nothing really gets around it when panning.
So 24fps primarily equals artifacts: Blurring, jerky motion, and juddering pans.
How nonsensical is it, and how resistant change do you have to be, to worship these artifacts. They are no more beneficial than ticks/pops were on Vinyl. There is certain nostalgia value to listening to something with ticks/pops sometimes, but it isn't something we put everywhere because we can't do without it.
So these resistant to change, Luddites in love with quite irritating artifacts have taken to calling superior motion video with less blur, less judder and less jerking: "The Soap Opera Effect".
Do a freeze frame on a soap opera and good movie. You can still tell which is which when frozen. Soaps look like crap, because they have crap production values. Poor sets, poor lighting, poor cameras, shot without any flair.
Shoot 48fps (or 60 fps or 120 fps for that matter) with great sets, great lighting, great cameras and great flair and it will be amazing and have nothing in common with soap operas.
To be fair there is more to it than just "24fps has unwanted artefacts". Most people will probably remember when they first saw Saving Private Ryan because the film stock and shutter speed used gave it a very realistic, un-blurry and gritty look. One of the biggest reasons it has taken so long for digital cinema cameras to become popular is that the early ones were unable to replicate the effect of using particular well known film stocks and camera techniques.
Star Wars is another good example to look at. Part of the charm of the original movies is that they were a bit rough around the edges. The film had a fair bit of grain that made the Star Wars universe look a bit grubby and used, rather than sleek and clean like Star Trek. The later trilogy was crisp and clean, and ended up looking more like generic sci-fi than the Star Wars we loved.
48fps is still in its infancy and it will take some time for cinematographers and directors to figure out how to get the effect they want from it. In the end the result will be better than 24fps, but that doesn't automatically mean that the early examples will be particularly good. 3D was the same; everything looked terrible until Avatar finally figured out how to use it and still look like a movie and not give you a brain aneurysm.
Hi there. Technical director here. Just need to step in a clarify the relationship between frame rate and motion blur. I'm seeing a lot of posts that are calling for higher frame rates with more motion blur, as if they are two completely independent things. They're actually closely linked. Let me explain:
Motion blur is the effect of a moving object in the frame while the shutter is open. In photography, the time the shutter is open is called the shutter speed, and is used along with iso and aperture to control the overall exposure. If you know anything about photography, this is pretty basic stuff.
In the film world, the equivalent of shutter speed is what's known as shutter angle. This is because the shutter for film camera is a spinning disk, of which a portion lets light through and a portion blocks it as it spins. The portion, measured in degrees, that lets the light in is the shutter angle. Typically, the shutter angle used in film is 180 degrees, meaning during half that 1/24 of a second frame rate, the film is being exposed. In photographic shutter speed terms, that would be the same as 1/48. Again, not too complicated.
Here's the catch though: because your film stock is rolling by at 24 frames per second, each frame can only be exposed for 1/24 of a second or less. If you use a smaller shutter angle, or faster frame rate, you get less motion blur. What this means is there's no practical (the film industry definition of practical) way of getting more motion blur than your frame rate and shutter angle allows. The faster you go, the crisper the action will be.
So at this point you're probably wondering who cares about the amount of motion blur in a movie? The answer is: the audience. The industry has shot film at 24fps with a 180 degree shutter angle for so long that's what everyone is used to. The last thing you want is to distract your audience away from enjoying the movie because there's know there's something different about the picture quality but they can't figure out what.
Finally, I'd like to point out that this choice of frame rate, like many other subjective decisions that are made during a movie production, are made at the director's discretion. Peter Jackson is going out on a limb by shooting a movie at this frame rate, and doubtless he has his reasons for doing so (mostly due to it being shot in 3d as I recall) but it's still his call. The industry talk I hear views it as an experiment, and everyone's curious as to how it will work (or won't). If audiences do get used to it and like it, expect to see more movies shot like this, and in enough time it will be the new standard.
Informative post but you forgot one _tiny_ detail about The Hobbit.
They are shooting everything DIGITAL.
Classmates.com are a bunch of scammers.
> The 48 fps version of The Hobbit is weird, that's true. It's distracting as hell, yes yes yes.
That said, like 3D, you do get a choice, so no harm, no foul. We will be seeing the film in 2D, 24 FPS, because 3D gives my wife migraines and because of reports in New Zealand of motion sickness - like symptoms amongst viewers there.
Parenthetically, I predict that of the people who love 48 FPS will contain a high percentage of people who can play first person shooters for hours without motion sickness, and conversely, the people who don't like it will be those who can't. Although I don't think anyone is collecting this metric, sadly.
I will see the film at the faster frame rate (and in 3D because I believe that's your only choice at 48 FPS) but I want to see it "normal" first.
I don't feel qualified to judge the technology not having viewed it yet, but the most interesting criticisms that have come out of advanced showings so far is that the sets look more like sets, which disrupts one's ability to suspend disbelief, and that the depth of field tends to be very deep, with everything in focus, which makes things look weird (because the human eye doesn't see that way). Speed Racer did the same thing, intentionally. (Speaking of which, it appears that I'm the only one who liked Speed Racer.)
I've been doing computer animation for 35 years, as long as it has existed. Back in the early 80's, I worked on some early 60 field-per-second animation; and I was a convert to high-frame-rate footage since then. (The opening to the PBS show NOVA was perhaps the first 60fps animation ever done.) When we started doing broadcast graphics (show openings, things like that) for TV, we naturally did them at 60fps, and that looked right as it worked with the rest of video. Finally, though, we moved into advertising, and TV advertising was (and still is) typically 24fps. And it bothered me!
But then, something changed my mind completely. We were doing an ad for Snacky, a Japanese snack food company. There was the required silly animated spokespuppet, and we modeled it and made it perform. Part of doing animation is doing the lip-sync, and the company gave us the dialogue in English to animate to. We did this, although it didn't seem right -- expecting them to give us the Japanese soundtrack eventually.
But no, it got to a couple of days before delivery, and the character was still speaking English, and we asked the customer when he came to review the work. "This is only going to be shown in Japan, right?" "Oh, yes, yes!", "And you're going to dub it into Japanese, right?" "Of course! Yes!" "But the lip sync is to an English sound track, the lips are not going to match the dialogue!" "YES! JUST LIKE ALL GOOD ANIMATION!"
Because in that day, lip-sync that was correct in Japanese meant it was low-quality domestic animation; where if the lip-sync didn't match it was high-quality American animation. Nobody can tell me that wrong lip-sync is in any way superior -- except that there were 150 million people in Japan who would see it that way instinctively and immediately.
So, I became a happy convert to 24 fps animation. I applaud Peter Jackson for his incredibly audacious experiment, and I hope he succeeds, but he has to fight the near-instinctive reaction from a lot of people who see 48 fps as video.
I think that part of the problem with The Hobbit at 48fps is that the screens are so terribly dark that you just can't appreciate the high frame rate. Your eye integrates dark scenes over a long period of time, and at 48 fps with the very very dark 3D screens, I believe that your eye smears the frames together. On Transformers III, I removed all the motion blur from the very dark scenes, because even at 24 fps they got smeary.
And two things I have to say:
1) If you get the least bit motion sick, don't go see it at the high frame frate in 3D. Normally I don't, even when seeing IMAX/OMNIMAX, but this film I did.
2) The 48 frames per second and 3d makes certain parts of the film like watching a live stage production. The problem then becomes with the post production. There were a lot of scenes when you could tell the background was composited and with so much CGI some of it was like going back and watching CGI from 15 years ago.
That was one of things I liked about the LOTR movies and especially by the third movie, the CGI had gotten so good that it was largely seamless. You didn't notice it, it was just part of the story. In this one I noticed it and often found myself cringing.
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