Author: Serkadis

A newly-single Brooke Hogan is “taking on the haters” — by posing in a two-piece for a Life & Style photo spread that will run without image retouching.

Oh Hun, you have no idea the punchlines this will write….

Brooke, 21, tells Entertainment Tonight that this is her way of fighting back at the paparazzi, who the aspiring pop tart accuses of frequently releasing unflattering photos of her.

“I am a little bit nervous,” Brooke says. “It’s to show young girls that these pictures that you’re seeing … everybody has been Photoshopped so much.”

Article Tags: Hans Schreuder, Open Letter/Fax

Royal Society,

This is my fourth attempt to engage in dialogue with one of your scientists, specifically anyone responsible for writing your booklet on climate change –http://ilovemycarbondioxide.com/RS_science.html

May I politely point you to this paper ClimateGate Analysis from which I quote the following pertinent sentences:

This is one of the darkest periods in the history of science. Those who love science, and all it stands for, will be pained by what they read below. However, the crisis is here, and cannot be avoided

Firstly, a scientific discipline can maintain a “closed shop” mentality for a while, but eventually the institutions and funding agencies that provide the lifeblood of their work— the money that pays their wages and funds their research—will begin to question the relevance and usefulness of the discipline, particularly in relation to other disciplines that are competing for the same funds. This will generally be seen by the affected scientists as “political interference”, but it is a reflection of their descent into arrogance and delusions of self-importance for them to believe that only they themselves are worthy of judging their own merits.

Please download PDF file to read FULL letter from Hans Schreuder to the Royal Society

Read in full with comments »

File attachment: Letter To Royal Society.pdf
  

Surprised that the iPad doesn’t have a camera? Yeah, so are we – and if this screenshot of the iPad emulator is any indication, so is someone on Apple’s software development team.

Tucked away within the iPad’s contacts application is an “Add Photo” button, purposed with.. well, adding photos. Everyone likes having photos assigned to their contacts, and there’s more than enough space on this thing to sync photos of all your friends – so nothing too strange there. What is odd, however, is the prompt that pops up: do you want to “Choose Existing Photo”, or do you want to “Take Photo”?

So what’s going on here? Did the iPad once have a camera, and it was pulled on such short notice that they didn’t have time to strip it out of the software? Does Apple planning on stealthily adding a camera to the features list some time in the next 60 days, as some sort of super-late “One more thing..”? Or did Apple just port much of the iPad contacts app from the iPhone version, and forget to lop out a screen?

[Thanks David!]

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Mvix’s Ultio Pro looks suspiciously like a commercial version of an HTPC. Designed with 1080p decoding, network media playback from a NAS or PC, and the option to add a PVR, I might have to get one of these to replace my old Xbox Media Center.

The Ultio Pro supports pretty much every media file format I can think of, including WMA, MKV, and ISO files. In addition to reading your media files off your NAS, the device will support PlayOn (allowing Netflix and Hulu) and UPnP (so if you have another DVR it’ll support that too). The Ultio Pro has an embedded bittorrent client as well, for those completely legal downloads. You can chose to buy a barebones version (that doesn’t have it’s own PVR), or you can buy the 2tb version that does include a PVR, which will allow you to record video from your cable, satellite receiver, or even a camcorder. The Ultio Pro is currently available for pre-order, with the basic (non-pvr) version selling for $169, and the 2tb version priced at $348.

Click here for the press release.

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Hello, gorgeous. Big ups to whoever convinced Mr. Blurrycam to take a leave of absence so the gadget loving world could get a decent spy shot of this unannounced Motorola Android device.

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Strikeforce will air, for free, an MMA fight on the EA Sports MMA Web site this Saturday. It’s Jay Hieron vs. Joe Riggs, which is just one fight that’s part of a much larger card, one headlined by Nick Diaz vs. Marius Žaromskis. Presumably Mr. Diaz has put down his pipe long enough to pass the required tests.

The move is being done, as if I even need to mention this, to promote the upcoming video game, scheduled for release sometime this year.

The show, Strikeforce: Miami, also features former WWE pro wrestler (and current TNA pro wrestler, but he’s barely there anymore) Bobby Lashely. It airs on live on the cable channel Showtime.

Hey, it’s not Apple news, right?

via Wrestling Observer

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New York (CNN) — We were right all along. It’s called the Apple iPad, and it’s a smallish, $499 computer (for the entry-level model, that is) that can best be described as a big iPhone or iPod touch.

It will be available in 60 days. Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs made the announcement today in San Francisco, California, an event that had provoked the usual, but always startling, over-the-top anticipation and speculation.

Years from now, maybe people will be asking, “Where were you on January 27, 2010?” in the same way they ask, “Where were you on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 first kissed the surface of the moon?

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Google might think Chinese censorship of the Internet is unacceptable, but Bill Gates says it’s not that bad. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Good Morning America, Gates called China’s attempts to censor the Internet “very limited,” and said its controls are not much different than other countries’ policies.

Chinese media was glad for the support. On Wednesday, the English-language Global Times, a tabloid published by the People’s Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper, trumpeted, “Bill Gates Bats for China,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Gates was also the front-page topic of the Chinese-language People’s Daily and China Daily, the leading English-language newspaper in the country.

‘Easy’ To Avoid Controls

Gates said it’s “easy to go around” the Chinese government’s system of controls. “And so I think keeping the Internet thriving there is very important,” he said. Other countries also censor the Internet — to ban porn, for example, or the way that Germany censors references to the Nazi Party. “And so you’ve got to decide: Do you want to obey the laws of the countries you’re in, or not?” Gates asked.

Make no mistake, Gates’ comments are directly aimed at Google. He told The New York Times that Google has “done nothing and gotten a lot of credit for it.”

“What point are they making?” he mused. “Now, if Google ever chooses to pull out of the United States, then I’d give them credit.”

Aside from these sorts of media swipes, however, don’t look for Microsoft to take a strong position with regard to China, says Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle. “Google took a rather bold two-step in this situation. Not only did they claim a state-sponsored cyberattack, but also retaliation by bringing Chinese Internet censorship back to the front line. Who wants to get in the middle of…

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A day after Wal-Mart’s Web site was discovered promising the Nexus One as “coming soon,” the world’s biggest retailer said the posting was a mistake and it has no plan to offer Google’s troubled smartphone.

“Due to a technical error, [the Nexus One] was erroneously displayed on our site,” Wal-Mart spokesperson Anna Taylor said in a brief phone interview Wednesday. “We are working with our partner, Let’s Talk, to have it removed as quickly as possible. We have no plans to carry the Nexus One in Wal-Mart stores or online at this time.”

She declined to comment further when asked if a future deal is possible.

Google responded to a request for comment with a statement via e-mail: “We currently have no plans to distribute the Nexus One through any channel other than our Google-hosted web store.”

The telecommunications company Let’s Talk, which manages Wal-Mart’s online wireless sales, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Slow Sales

The page on Wal-Mart’s web site was discovered by a blog that covers the Android operating system, and another blog speculated that the Nexus One could be sold for as little as $99.

The technical data listed with the smartphone, which is manufactured by HTC, indicated that the Nexus One from Wal-Mart would be compatible with the Sprint Nextel, AT&T and Verizon Wireless networks. The current model sold directly by Google for $530 is unlocked, while T-Mobile sells a version for $180 with a two-year plan.

Early sales of the smartphone have been slow, with about 20,000 handsets sold in the first week, compared to smartphone leader Apple’s iPhone 3G, which sold more than a million in the first week. The Nexus One’s touchscreen design is meant to mimic the iPhone, but it has unique features such as dual microphones for noise reduction and a one-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor….

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Altruism is consistently listed as one of the Big Top Three on lists of how to increase happiness (from a survey in USA Today and The New York Times.)

Ask yourself:

What loving act can I do for others I care about? What generous deed can I perform for those in greater need?

When you step outside yourself and think about others, you will happily find that you wind up removing yourself from your dark mood in the process.

Interestingly, “intimacy” and “self-esteem” are the other two contributing factors in the Big Top Three list of good mood energizers.

My belief? When you’re altruistic you’re:

1) increasing your connection with others
2) raising your self esteem

So no wonder you’re feeling happier! When you’re altruistic, you’re cashing in on all three Big Top Three.

So go out there, and do something noble. You’ll literally be happy you did.

For more happiness tips, check out my best selling book HOW TO BE HAPPY DAMMIT by clicking this line right here!

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Filed under: Performance, Crossover, Mini, Rumormill

JCW Countryman? Sounds like a chain clothing store you’d find at your local shopping mall, but to automotive enthusiasts – Mini aficionados especially – it could only mean one thing: a performance-oriented version of Mini’s just-released crossover.

While the thought of the vaunted John Cooper Works badge being applied to a crossover might seem like sacrilege, that’s exactly what Bimmer fans – including those within the company – thought before the debut of the M versions of the X5 and X6 crossovers, and that hasn’t stopped those models from reaching production. In the shadow of the oddball X6 M, suddenly a JCW Countryman doesn’t seem so strange, now does it?

Considering that the base Countryman’s turbo four already churns out 184 horsepower (compared to the 172 hp Cooper S hatch), a Works-prepared Countryman could surpass even the JCW Cooper’s 211-hp output, driving through all four wheels. Rather interestingly, more than that could put the Countryman into Subaru WRX territory, but we’ll likely have to wait a while to see it come to fruition (if it does at all), with sources pegging its potential release in about two years’ time.

[Source: Autocar]

Rumormill: Mini could produce John Cooper Works Countryman originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many in the auto industry, including Fiat S.p.A. CEO Sergio Marchionne have expressed skepticism about the audacious bid by Spyker Cars to buy Saab. Marchionne questioned the profit potential of serving a niche auto market, as Spyker is now in the position to do. “Marginal players will continue to be marginalized. We cannot build on hopes and dreams,” Marchionne said at an industry event in Stockholm on Tuesday. Marchionne made a bid for Saab last year as part of a package offer to buy Opel from Gm, but later retracted the offer.

The skepticism is mainly centered on the fact that neither manufacturer is profitable, and Spyker’s small size; they employ 100 people as opposed to Saab’s 3,400. Also, Spyker’s expertise lies in hand-made supercars, and they only produce about 40 cars a year at that.

Spyker is paying GM $74 million in cash, and $326 million worth of preferred stock, which will come to represent less than 1% of the voting rights in the new company CEO Victor Mueller is fully confident that company had the financing to support a three-year development cycle for Saab models.

Mueller himself noted the irony of the deal and had said that under a normally operating market, Saab would have been buying Spyker. He was optimistic though about the company’s ability to work through whatever needs to be worked through in order to bring the new company to profitability.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

SaaS-delivered IT Service Management (ITSM) is rapidly on the rise, creating complications for its on-premise counterparts. The transition is affecting existing, on-premise players like BMC, which to compete, announced its own on-demand service last week.

Ovum’s Stephen Mann writes that the shift is evident in a number of announcements, including PepsiAmerica’s news that it is now a Service-now.com customer. Service-now.com is one of the leading vendors in the SaaS ITSM market.

Sponsor

“SaaS continues to gain much publicity and vendor backing, and a growing corporate acceptance as an immediate opportunity to quickly and flexibly deliver business-enabling IT services at a lower cost.”

SaaS-based ITSM models serve as a way for IT departments to work more efficiently under tight resource constraints.

Mann writes:

“A major benefit of SaaS for ITSM is that it is aimed directly at the heart of the now commonly overstretched IT function – scarce IT resources can be redirected away from internal IT systems to focus on the delivery of business-critical IT services. However, for many organisations the key benefit of SaaS is its simple, subscription-based pricing model – usually a cost per month (or year) per user that covers everything needed to operate, including support and maintenance. This provides a lower and consistent level of expenditure that is opex rather than a capex investment.”

This sector of the SaaS market is reflective of the overall difference between online and on-premise applications. Like any SaaS environment, the development cycles are far more frequent than on-premise applications. On average, a SaaS application will be upgraded several times a year, compared to on-premise tools that get updated every 12 to 18 months.

So it makes sense that a company like BMC would offer its own SaaS environment to compliment its own on-site offering.

But enterprise clients need to beware of what they are getting with any SaaS service. SaaS can be confusing when vendors make up their own definitions.

Mann says it well:

“A SaaS solution must be architected such that the customer is able to self-customise its ‘application instance’, with these customisations preserved through what should truly be an effortless upgrade process. Without these facilities, the SaaS business case is not so compelling.”

Expect on-premise vendors to push a hybrid approach. That might work for some enterprises but the cost efficiencies of a pure SaaS model will be hard to pass up for organizations working with limited resources.

Discuss

Kristen Stewart — perhaps best known Twilight heroine Bella– was denied entry into a Utah bar last weekend after security staff discovered the starlet was underage. The 19-year-old actress was harshly rebuffed by bouncers after she attempted to get into Ed Hardy Shoes Happy Hour at Park City hotspot Tao — an event exclusively for Grown & Sexy Sophisticates 21 & over.

“As they started walking in, the bouncer stopped them and asked for their IDs. When he informed Kirsten that she couldn’t enter because she was underage, she and her friends seemed pretty surprised,” chuckles an onlooker, who witnessed the Jan. 23 incident.

“Her friends tried to reason with the bouncer and told them that they just wanted to sit down and relax for 30 minutes but the bouncer still declined them. They huddled up for a few minutes, discussing what to do next and eventually left,” the spy squealed.

The actress is currently in Park City for the Sundance Film Festival, where she is promoting her upcoming musical biopic The Runaways.

Kristen is no stranger to controversy; the starlet was famously photographed smoking a marijuana joint and also came under fire after she was accused of underage drinking.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine has a provocative finding: Bigger co-payments for primary-care and specialty doctor visits were tied to more in-patient hospital time for elderly patients.

The implication is that people avoided the doctor’s office to save money, then ended up in the hospital when their problems weren’t detected or treated in their early stages. The apparent effect seemed stronger among people living in low-income areas, and for those with high blood pressure, diabetes or a history of heart attack, among other groups.

The bottom line was that raising co-pays “may be a self-defeating cost-containment strategy and may have adverse health consequences,” says Amal Trivedi, the study’s lead author and a professor at Brown’s Alpert Medical School.

The result is generally consistent with a number of other studies, many focused on patients’ out-of-pocket costs for drugs. They’ve linked higher co-pays to reduced use of medications, and vice versa. Here’s one of those and here’s another. Advocates of so-called value-based benefits design point to them as evidence for why insurers and employers should try to align patients’ financial incentives with the care they most need, particularly preventive treatment for chronic conditions.

But it cuts against the general trend toward larger out-of-pocket charges for consumers, particularly in employer-provided plans. It also seems to point in a different direction than the granddaddy of all studies looking at the issue, the Rand Health Insurance Experiment, which suggested in the early 1980s that consumer cost-sharing tended to bring down doctor visits and hospital stays. Trivedi, who is a recipient of a Pfizer Health Policy Scholars Award, said one reason may be that the new study focused on Medicare participants, while the Rand version excluded the elderly. It’s not clear if his new findings can be generalized to the non-elderly population, he said.

The new study looked at enrollees in privately administered Medicare plans that increased copayments for ambulatory care (to a mean of $14.38 from $7.38 for primary care, and to $22.05 from $12.66 for specialty). It compared them to people with plans that didn’t boost copayments. The total study population included nearly 900,000 beneficiaries enrolled in 36 plans between 2001 and 2006. In the year after the increase, the authors estimated that the plans that increased the charges had 19.8 fewer annual outpatient visits, and 2.2 additional annual hospital admissions and 13.4 more annual inpatient days, per 100 beneficiaries. Limits to the study included that the enrollees weren’t randomized, and that it observed only a relatively short period of time.

Image: iStockphoto

Filed under: Car Buying, Recalls, Safety, GM, Toyota

Honda dealer in Dallas, TX

We’re honestly tired of writing about Toyota and its recall-to-end-all-recalls, but the news keeps coming so our fingers get no rest.

Just like the Honda dealer in Dallas that’s apparently hoping to gain a few extra customers at Toyota’s expense (above), General Motors has announced a new incentive campaign that it hopes will woo customers away from a bruised and battered Toyota still trying to contain the fallout from this latest recall. Effective today through the end of February, GM is offering three deals to any Toyota customer who wants to switch to a Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac or GMC product. The skinny:

• Lease Customers: Waiver of three payments up to $1,000
• Financing Customers: Zero percent financing for 60 months
• Cash Buyers: $1,000 purchase bonus

We’re very interested to see how delicately GM handles promoting these new incentives. Will The General kick its Japanese competitor while it’s down – or just land a love tap on the jaw?

Meanwhile, the recall’s negative impact for Toyota has spread to some of its fleet customers. Both Avis Budget Group and Enterprise Holdings have reportedly announced they will pull thousands of Toyota models each from their fleets. Avis Budget estimates it will pull 20,000 units, while Enterprise Holdings, which manages its Enterprise, National and Alamo brands, didn’t give a number, except to say that about four percent of its fleet would be affected. Both companies reiterated that the action was just a precautionary measure, but that has to be of little solace to Toyota in the midst of a barrage of negative press surrounding its unintended acceleration woes.

[Sources: Fox Business, The Detroit Free Press | Image: Edmunds TwitPic]

New GM incentives aimed at stealing irked Toyota owners, rental firms pulling recalled models originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Kansas high school basketball coach whose blindfolded half-court shot has become an Internet sensation is going to the Final Four after all. Joel Branstrom says he can’t disclose where the tickets are coming from, but he’s been told he and his family will get tickets, lodging and transportation to Indianapolis for the games in April.

Well, this bodes poorly. Ahead of “Apple,” “Steve Jobs” and “Apple’s iPad” on Twitter’s worldwide trending topics rankings sits iTampon. Well done, internet! You’ve just made some marketing executive very sad and/or fired.

There are many sceptics who do not believe the evidence that the HTC HD2 contains the Broadcom  BCM4329 chip, a chip which is capable of both WIFI N and also acting as a FM transmitter (useful for connecting with your car radio).

Meegulthwarp on XDA-Dev has decided to put an end to all the speculation, and has taken pictures of his disassembled HTC HD2.

The outcome is that he has been able to confirm the chip is the BROADCOM BCM4329EKUBG.  There is also a controvesy raging at the moment about the amount of RAM in the HD2, with some saying all HD2’s have 576 MB RAM, and others claiming only the T-Mobile version will have it. Meegulthwarp has found the chip in the European HD2 is the HYNIX H8BES0UU0MCR (46M 941A 8MRQ432), but it is not clear what this means yet.

See the pictures below, and read more in this XDA-Dev thread here.

click for larger versions