Author: Serkadis

It’s one thing to speak from a position of ignorance, but admitting it and still then taking a strong position? That’s something special. U2’s Bono kicked off quite a firestorm by insisting that having ISPs monitor everything was a good way to deal with unauthorized file sharing online, citing China’s success with internet censorship (failing to realized that it hasn’t been that successful in reality). This resulted in widespread criticism of Bono and it appears that Nirvana’s bass player, Krist Novoselic, has stepped up to defend Bono (found via Karl Bode). But what’s stunning about Novoselic’s “defense” is that he flat out admits he doesn’t really understand the details and still defends Bono:

I’ll admit that I’m not up to speed on having ISPs regulate copyrighted material, but here’s why I agree with Bono on the idea of compensation for content providers

So he doesn’t understand the issue, but he supports Bono’s position anyway? Yeah, that’s reasonable. And the worst part is the end of that sentence. It implies that some people out there don’t support compensation of content providers. That’s silly. Everyone supports the compensation of content providers — they just don’t support that compensation coming from some sort of involuntary tax put on internet connections. Assuming that being against ISP tracking and payments means that there’s no other way for content providers to get paid is simply wrong.

The rest of his post is interesting, but either pulls out some old canards or is self-contradictory. For example, he confuses “value” with “price” by warning that music can’t be worth nothing. Yet, at the same time, he goes on and on about how great things like YouTube and Twitter are for promoting his music — while also wishing they would pay him for promoting his music. He never seems to put two and two together to realize that by promoting music and bands, a fan base is built up that helps an artist make more money — and YouTube and Twitter are doing this for free. Prior to the internet becoming mainstream, if a musician wanted to communicate with fans, it was an expensive and time consuming direct mail process. Now Twitter has made that free for bands. Before, if a band wanted to get fans to see its videos, it had to hope it could get them on MTV. Even after the internet came about, communicating with fans was still expensive and time consuming, as was posting videos. Twitter and YouTube have made these things much easier, faster and cheaper for bands. And he’s complaining?

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It’s Wednesday, which means that there’s going to be another exciting episode of TUAW TV Live this afternoon!

Not.

Coming back to reality after a few weeks of semi-comatose holiday “time off,” your host set up an appointment with a client right at the same time as the weekly Ustream show. It won’t happen again, since that time is now blocked off in iCal in bright, shiny red. This week’s show, however, is going to happen on Thursday, January 7th, at the regularly scheduled time (5 PM ET).

If you’d like to watch one of the previous episodes, head over to http://ustream.tv/TUAW and you can pull up the fun from either the December 23rd or the December 30th shows.

TUAWThis week’s TUAW TV Live moved to Thursday due to memory error originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As much as BoomTown likes a good computer tablet face-off, sources with knowledge of the situation said that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will not be whipping out the secret “Courier” slate PC that the company has been noodling on in his keynote speech opening the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas tonight. Instead, he will be showing off a new Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) slate that runs Microsoft software.

Last night, the New York Times reported that the software giant would do so in a blog post titled: “Microsoft and H.P. to Reveal Slate PC Ahead of Apple.”

Apple will be launching its much-heralded slate at an event in San Francisco on January 27, as All Things Digital has previously reported.

The Apple (AAPL) device is garnering the expected flood of hype, of course. So, don’t expect Ballmer to pointlessly go against the tide on this particular tsunami, thereby painting its slate efforts as also-ran.

Instead, his speech is more likely to focus on its new Windows 7 operating system, cloud computing, portable and mobile devices and Microsoft’s “software plus services” motto.

While he might talk about a range of products related to Microsoft (MSFT) and there will be multi-form hardware shown, including multi-touch, tablet-type devices, there will be no grand showing of the one called the Courier, which Microsoft is reportedly working on with HP.

Hence the possible confusion over the PC slate.

Now, please go back to gushing over the Apple iSlate ad nauseum!

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Gov. Pat Quinn today announced that Michael J. McCotter, a 37-year law enforcement veteran, has been named to the recently announced position of Chief Public Safety Officer at the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC).

McCotter, whose experience includes a number of high-ranking positions in the Chicago Police Department, will evaluate and oversee implementation of IDOC’s statutorily-sanctioned meritorious good time and electronic home-detention programs.

“Mike McCotter is an experienced law enforcement professional and public safety expert whose responsibilities will include reviewing and improving implementation of the meritorious credit and electronic home-detention programs.

My mandate to the Illinois Department of Corrections is and always has been that the public’s safety comes first and that’s also Mike McCotter’s top priority,” said Gov. Quinn.

In addition, Governor Quinn named Sean Vinck, Chief of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Office of the Governor of Illinois, as a special administrator for IDOC and named Mark S. Prosperi, a former Assistant United States Attorney, as Public Safety Liaison Officer for the Office of the Governor.

These appointments are part of Governor Quinn’s plan to overhaul IDOC’s meritorious credit program, which has been in existence since 1978, and is undergoing a comprehensive evaluation headed by criminal justice expert Judge David A. Erickson.

A review of IDOC’s electronic home-detention program is also underway.

A top-level executive with the Chicago Police Department, McCotter brings nearly four decades of experience to his new position.

At the Chicago Police Department, McCotter served as a Chief of Patrol, Deputy Chief of Detectives, Commander of Special Events and as a District Commander.

He has also participated in professional training sessions with the FBI, United States Secret Service, Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies. (Background Information).

“I am happy to accept Governor Quinn’s appointment and look forward to working at the Illinois Department of Corrections,” said McCotter.

Governor Quinn has designated Sean Vinck to be a special administrator for IDOC, where his primary task will be to assist in the day-to-day management of the agency.

He will report to Gov. Quinn and Jerome Stermer, Quinn’s Chief of Staff.

Vinck will retain his position as Chief of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Office of the Governor. (Background Information).

As Public Safety Liaison Officer for the Office of the Governor, Mark Prosperi will also assist in the oversight, coordination and implementation of the meritorious credit and electronic home-detention programs.

In this recently announced position, Prosperi will work in the Office of Governor’s General Counsel.

A former Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago from 1991 through 2007, Prosperi was also a member of the Chicago Strike Force for the United States Department of Justice.

His former positions include: Chief of the Narcotics and Gangs Section; Deputy Chief of Special Prosecutions Section; Deputy Chief of the Organized Crime Section; and a U.S.A. coordinator for Great Lakes Region, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. (Background Information).

The Illinois Department of Corrections was established in 1970.

When IDOC began, Illinois only operated seven adult facilities. Since that time, stricter laws have resulted in increased sentencing and longer terms.

To address this steady increase in the inmate population, the agency today operates 28 adult correctional centers as well as various work camps, boot camps and eight adult transition centers. IDOC’s recommended budget is $1.28 billion for Fiscal Year 2010.

The agency employs approximately 11,000 employees and is responsible for the management of 45,000 adult inmates.

In Illinois the rate of recidivism, a tendency to relapse into criminal behavior, were 51.3 percent in fiscal year 2009 and 47 percent of DOC inmates serve six months or less.

For more information on IDOC, please visit: idoc.state.il.us.

So AT&T has finished upgrading its 3G footprint to HSPA 7.2, completing the first phase of an effort that will improve connection reliability and at some point later this year or in 2011 raise its maximum 3G data speed to 7.2 Mbps from 3.6 Mbps. Welcome news for long-suffering AT&T subscribers who recently ranked the carrier dead last in Consumer Reports annual survey of wireless customer satisfaction — but only for those in cities where additional backhaul connections have been added to support those higher speeds. And, sadly, for Bay Area and New York City residents, neither of those regions is among them. As AT&T head of operations John Stankey told attendees of Citigroup conference Tuesday, those two cities present particularly challenging density and zoning issues.

“I thought by the time we’d closed 2009 we would be in a better place in New York City than we were,” Stankey said. “But New York City is a little bit of a different animal and it’s a good example of having to scale in this data environment, where not only do we have a lot of capacity issues to deal with but physically there is network equipment and network elements that are needed to be changed out. They just flat-out have hit their capacity levels and we have to replace them with new ones. And as a result of that, those transitions and that work has taken us a little bit longer and it’s been a little dicier than what we had hoped it would be.”

And evidently, the situation is equally dicey in San Francisco.

“Our challenges [in San Francisco] are largely zoning-oriented,” Stankey explained. “It’s a little bit tougher in places in San Francisco to do adjustments to antennas that we need to do in areas like the Financial District, where we had antenna structures that worked really well in a 2G environment. They need to be replaced to support 3G services and it’s just taking time to get the zoning ordinances square to replace those antennas and clean up the portions of the city that we are dealing with.”

Ok. So San Francisco and New York City upgrades are tough going — that’s understandable. They’re both big, tech-savvy markets with high data demands. Still, it’s a travesty that a carrier like AT&T STILL can’t reliably connect calls in either of them when it’s raking in 80 percent more wireless data revenue than it did in 2007 …

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VentureBeat reported last July that Apple would use in-house chips, rather than Intel, ARM or AMD, to power its tablet computer. We were right.

Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar confirmed to TheStreet.com this morning that based on his conversations with Apple’s design manufacturing partners, Intel didn’t make the cut as a parts supplier for the tablet computer Steve Jobs will almost certainly unwrap at a presentation on January 27th.

TheStreet reporter Scott Moritz wrote:

There has been speculation that Intel’s new generation of Atom chips was in the running for the slot, but Apple ultimately chose a processor developed by P A Semi, a chip shop Apple acquired two years ago, according to another analyst familiar with the so-called build plan.

If Apple’s tablet is the revolutionary device for everyman which it has been portrayed as by industry watchers, if it sells 10 million units a year as forecast by analysts, then Apple’s decision cuts Intel out of an important market. The company has locked up the netbook market — in part by defining the devices around Intel Atom processors in the first place — but there’s no doubt that Intel, whose chips power Apple’s desktop and laptop computers, must have lobbied hard to become the supplier for the new product.

With HP and Microsoft reportedly announcing their own tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this evening, during Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s kickoff keynote presentation, there’s still the possibility that Intel chips may power a sizable share of the tablet computer market most pundits seem to agree is about to be born.

[Illustration: Drew Breunig]

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There has been plenty of controversy around which iPhone applications are appropriate for the Apple App Store, including the heated rejection of Google Voice. In this context, it’s almost shocking that Crowded Road’s new Security Cam iPhone app has been accepted to the App Store.

The camera app is pretty questionable on its own. It basically turns your iPhone into a functioning “security and spy camera,” according to its developer. Promoting users to spy on people and take pictures without their knowledge doesn’t seem very socially responsible to me — something that you’d think the Apple guard dogs would have caught onto by now.

Regardless, if you’re looking to get into the security or spy business, the app has some pretty impressive features. Notably, users are able to customize an audio trigger so that the camera will only snap a photo when a certain audio level is reached (perfect for trying to catch Dad sneaking ice cream from the refrigerator at 2 a.m. while you’re asleep upstairs). Other features include a frequency function that lets you set a countdown till a picture is taken, a time and date stamp, as well as a battery conservation option, allowing the iPhone to go into sleep mode until a specific time.

There are other iPhone apps that have similar features, including DSLR Camera Remote. This app lets you use your iPhone to tell your camera when to take a picture from anywhere. The only catch is that the camera has to be connected to a computer to work. DSLR lets users fiddle with preferences, like shutter speed and white balance. You can also look through the camera’s viewfinder remotely and view images after a shot is taken. Whether or not these options will be integrated into Security Cam is unknown.

But until then, kudos to Crowded Road for squeaking this app through Apple’s own tight security. I’m sure app reviewers saw it as a playful tool, though from the picture the company supplied above it seems obvious that it can be used in a work setting when those being photographed have no idea it’s there.

The app will cost just 99 cents for the first 1,000 to download it, and will be bumped up to $2.99 after that. You can purchase it here.

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A small group of high profile startup executives are preparing to launch their next venture – a workspace incubator and angel investment fund called i/o ventures that aims to help new startups get a start with some initial capital and a cool place to work. The company is located in San Francisco.

The four partners include former Aber Whitcomb (former MySpace CTO), Ashwin Navin (former President and Co-founder of BitTorrent and former corporate development exec at Yahoo), Jim Young (cofounder HotOrNot) and Paul Bragiel (cofounder of Lefora and Meetro).

i/o ventures is a 7,000 square foot office building located at 780 Valencia is San Francisco. Most of the space has been fitted for work, with 40+ desks and conference rooms.

Anyone can pay to work there for a day or longer at a rate of $150/month/desk (a bargain). The catch is the desks are shared, which means you may be at a different one each day. You keep your stuff in a locker. Electricity and Internet is included.

But the real point of i/o ventures is to incubate startups. They’re taking applications for the first class of startups in their accelerator program. You get space at their office for 4 months (plus another two months if you need it) and $25,000 in seed money. Each of the five companies in each class gives up “around 8%” of their equity for the investments and space.

i/o ventures also providing mentoring from a long list of entrepreneurs and investors who have promised to stop by frequently. I’m one of those mentors, and I plan to work from their offices for a few days each month (I’m not being compensated in any way for this).

The cherry on top is the i/o ventures cafe, a 2,000 square foot retail cafe open to the public. The cafe opens its doors around February 1.

The first batch of startups take residence on March 1. Apply here. You must move to the bay area to be part of the program, and your living expense are your problem. The partners tell me that founders absolutely, positively cannot crash out at i/o ventures because the space isn’t zoned for residential use. They also noted that there are showers at the location, and suggested that they may turn a blind eye, unofficially you understand, to the odd sleeping bag in the office.

The team sent over a few pictures of what the space looks like today (taken by Mike Czupryn). It’s not much to look at today, but you can get an idea for how it may look when it’s finished. There’s also a conceptual drawing that we added to their CrunchBase profile.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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Katy Perry has announced her engagement to British comedian Russell Brand after four months of dating, a rep for the pop star confirmed to Glamour Magazine on Wednesday. According to Katy’s publicist, Brand popped the question in a tent at the foot of a mountain, while the couple was vacationing in India over the holidays.

In an interview for the mag’s February 2010 issue, a smitten Katy opened up about the man she met and almost instantly fell in love with at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009.

“When I find a partner who is my teammate,” Katy said. “I’m not going to play by any rules, I’m just going to go with my heart. Why wait? I just wrote a song [that goes], ‘They say it’s hard to meet your match, gotta find my other half so we can make a perfect shape.’”

Congrats to Russell and Katy!

Well, with Joe Hewitt famously no longer working on the Facebook iPhone app, it took a little bit longer than some expected, but today a new version finally hit the App Store with a much requested new feature: Push Notifications.

While the 3.0 version of Facebook’s app was great, probably one of the best iPhone apps out there, it, like many other iPhone apps, was only useful when it was actively being used. That is because Apple obviously doesn’t allow third-party apps to run in the background. Sure, the app could be badged with a number when you had new messages, but it didn’t have true notifications.

But with full Push Notification support, the app gets a lot more useful as you can now get notified with a pop-up message or sound when friends do things like comment on your Wall or tag photos of you. This allows you to more passively interact with your Facebook data and jump in to the app only when you want to actively see or respond to something.

A number of other third-party apps actually offered Facebook notification functionality, notably Boxcar (a favorite of mine), but this native support allows for a more tailored experience. For example, you can set notifications for Messages, Wall Posts, Friend Requests, Friend Confirmations, Photo Tags, Events, and Comments with the app.

And Push Notifications aren’t the only new feature of 3.1. There is also a new way to sync your Facebook friends with your iPhone’s address book. This includes replacing contact photos. Pretty nifty.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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If you’re not glued to our live streaming CES coverage, then you’re really missing out. Although the press lounge here is the most inhospitable place on the planet (no water, no coffee, no internet), preventing effective blogging, we’ve been hands-on with LG’s quarter-inch-thick TV and streamed all of Toshiba’s new gear, live and on the spot. Up next we’ll be seeing Sharp around noon (more TVs) and Casio at one o’ clock (hopefully, more high-speed cameras).

You can watch replays like the one above, or just go to CrunchGear and use the main player, which has all the clips we’ve recorded so far. Yes, video quality is low, but this is transmitting live through 3G, guys. Be nice.

Feel free to make suggestions: do you want more of us talking? More close-ups of products? More PR flacks reading press releases? We live to serve, and will cut our CES jib to whatever tailoring you beautiful people think is best.

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AT&T (NYSE: T) surprised us all today at CES by basically announcing a huge overhaul of its smartphone and mid-range phone offerings. The new line-up will position AT&T nicely for moving beyond Apple’s iPhone—which has been one of its only cutting edge smartphone offerings to date.

In the next six months, it will release five new Android devices from Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Dell and HTC and two Palm (NSDQ: PALM) OS. As part of that, AT&T is beefing up its applications offerings by creating new partnerships with Google’s Android Market and Palm’s OS app store, and will be providing carrier billing to Nokia’s Ovi Store. In addition, for its mid-range phones, which it calls “quick messaging,” AT&T will be standardizing on Qualcomm’s Brew platform, which they hope will help start to solve some of the industry’s fragmentation problems. By 2011, it expects 90 percent of those lower-priced phones to be running Brew.

Of course, if AT&T offers more smartphones, it will have to prepare its netwrok for even more mobile broadband data. De la Vega: “AT&T is managing unprecedented mobile broadband growth. We are continuing to invest aggressively and support the long-term growth of apps.”

De la Vega said with the announcements made today, it will be “the only US carrier to offer a line-up of all the major OS’s…We’ll launch all of them in the first half of the year.”

The five Android devices will be coming from Motorola (an exclusive device based on its Blur technology), Dell (which is releasing its first phone on the platform), and HTC (which did not offer any details on what handsets would be launched). HTC’s CEO Peter Chou: “AT&T and HTC has had a close and productive relationship for the past five years, and we are pleased to expand it even further by announcing new Android products to AT&T customers. AT&T has been very focused on innovation, and we have a lead Android development.”

De la Vega said that application growth is soaring. “No country has seen the growth we have seen.” In 2009, apps downloaded in the US increased to 832.7 million apps, a 9x jump in the past two years, and revenues from those downloads have increased 60 percent.

As part of the Brew platform for AT&T’s moderately priced, mid-range phones, it said that it will launch a new app store called AppCenter, and that developers will eventually be able to submit their apps online through a web form. AT&T said it will adopt what has become the revenue-split standard because of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). Developers will keep 70 percent, and AT&T will take 30 percent.

Despite the hopes of the show organizers, President Barack Obama will not be attending the 2010 Detroit Auto Show next week. According to an administration official who spoke with the Free Press today, Obama has no plans on going to Detroit for the show to pose with plug-in hybrids or electric-vehicles.

Why? Well, Obama seems to has his plate full these days with two wars, $900-billion health care reform bill and attempted terrorist attacks. Other than that, his attendance at show would remind the American citizens about his decision to rescue General Motors and Chrysler for little political benefit.

If you’re an automaker and were hoping to get a picture of your latest plug-in hybrid or EV next to Obama, head down to the D.C. Auto Show at the end of this month (about 6 blocks from the White House).

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Free Press

Bravo Drills 12.1g/t Au Over 24.4 Metres, Expanding Homestake Silver Deposit

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA–(Marketwire – 01/06/10) – Bravo Venture Group Inc. (TSX-V:BVG – News)(Frankfurt:B6I – News) reported today that high-grade gold intercepts from two major 100 metre step-out drill holes continue to expand the width and lateral dimensions of the mineralization in the Homestake Silver deposit on its 100 percent owned Homestake Ridge Project, located in NW British Columbia. Homestake Silver is believed to be a separate, second deposit on the Homestake Ridge property, located approximately 700 metres to the southeast of the Main Homestake deposit.
The Company reported multiple high-grade gold intercepts of significant thickness in drill hole HR09-165. Highlights of three of these intercepts, all estimated true thicknesses, include:
– a 24.4 metre interval averaging 12.1g/t gold and 6.8g/t silver, which included a higher-grade 2.4 metre interval averaging 87.0g/t gold and 22.1g/t silver.
– a 14.5 metre interval averaging 4.8g/t gold and 2.1g/t silver, which included a higher-grade 2.5 metre interval averaging 10.4g/t gold and 3.3g/t silver.
– and a 2.7 metre interval averaging 10.0g/t gold and 134.3g/t silver.
The Company also reported that newly received assays have expanded a second mineralized zone in drill hole HR09-164 from a previously reported 0.4 metre interval averaging 7.1g/t gold and 148.0g/t silver to 33.2 metres averaging 1.5g/t gold and 5.1g/t silver, which included a 3.6 metre interval averaging 7.9g/t gold and 37.5g/t silver.
To view Figure 1, please click on the following link: http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=AjqSyroAQUW.bMQyDWeWONqtcq9_;_ylu=X3oDMTE2OWh2ZWsxBHBvcwMxBHNlYwNuZXdzYXJ0Ym9keQRzbGsDaHR0cG1lZGlhM21h/SIG=11lstengp/**http%3A//media3.marketwire.com/docs/BVGfig1106.jpg
Results were also received from drill hole HR09-163 and included a 3.5 metre interval averaging 2.9g/t gold and 155.7g/t silver within a 40.4 metre interval averaging 0.3g/t gold and 49.8g/t silver. Anomalous, but generally lower grade silver values were returned from several holes that tested the southeastern extension of the mineralized zone. All intervals are reported as estimated true thickness.
Thick intervals of high-grade gold mineralization in drill holes HR09-164 and HR09-165 have significantly increased both the thickness and lateral extent of this gold-enriched portion of the Homestake Silver zone. Both holes are significant step outs of at least 100 metres from prior mineralized intercepts and are entirely open along strike to the northwest and at depth. Drilling at the Homestake Silver deposit from 2007 to 2009 has identified high-grade silver and gold mineralization, sometimes in multiple horizons, over +500 metres of strike and 400 metres of dip. Mineralization remains open down-dip along this full strike-length.

Table.

Homestake Ridge Project
Bravo has completed drilling for the season at the Homestake Ridge Project and crews are in the process of demobilization. A total of 48 holes have been cored on the property for 13,436 metres during this year’s program. Assays from 5 drill holes are pending.
Twenty-two holes have been drilled in Homestake Silver deposit (two lost), 22 holes in the Main Homestake deposit (four lost), and six holes tested other targets on the claim group (one lost). An updated long section of the 2009 drill plan and a full compilation of the 2009 assay summaries are available on Bravo’s website at bravoventuregroup.com.
About Bravo Venture Group Inc.
Bravo Venture Group Inc. is focused on exploring its precious and base metal-rich Homestake Ridge project in British Columbia, a gold-rich epithermal/VMS-related system within Eskay Creek/Silbak-Premier stratigraphy. Pursuant to the recently announced “Plan of Arrangement”, Bravada Gold Corp. will focus on exploring Bravo’s extensive Carlin-type gold holdings strategically located within the Battle Mountain/Eureka “Cortez” gold trend in Nevada.
Rob Macdonald (P.Geo.) is the Qualified Person responsible for reviewing the technical results in this release.
On behalf of the Board of Directors
Joseph A. Kizis Jr., Director, President
Bravo Venture Group Inc.
We seek safe harbor.”

Article Tags: Craig Idso

First, they called it “global warming”. Then they noticed there had been no warming for 15 years, and cooling for 9, so they hastily renamed it “climate change”. Then they noticed the climate was changing no more than it ever had, so they tried “energy security”, and even named a Congressional Bill after it. Then they noticed that most Western nations already had bountiful energy security, in the form of vast, untapped domestic supplies of oil, gas, coal, or all three, so they switched to “ocean acidification”.

This is the new phantasmagoric for the tired, old scare whipped up by the NRDC and the environmental extremist movement for their own profit at our expense. The world’s corals, they tell us, will be eaten away by the acidified ocean within not more than ten years hence. Shellfish will be no more, their calcified carapaces and exoskeletons dissolved by the carbonic acid caused by our burning of fossil fuels. The oceans will die. Sound familiar?

Yet, as the indefatigable Craig Idso here demonstrates, the scientific consensus – if science were done by consensus at all, which it is not – is that the rising “ocean acidification” scare is just more piffle.

Source: scienceandpublicpolicy.org (PDF)

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If the rumors are accurate and Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman(notes) has, in fact, received multiple offers in the neighborhood of $21 million, then it’s not difficult to determine how various major league teams arrived at that figure.

The math is straightforward: They give you $1 million simply for being a left-handed human (see "Shouse, Brian"), and anyone with triple-digit velocity can expect to earn roughly $20 million every four years, regardless of the on-field results (see "Farnsworth, Kyle").  

Chapman, of course, is both a lefty and a flamethrower. He’s also the most intriguing MLB free agent currently available, though he’s expected to sign a deal soon, perhaps within the week. We’ve only caught glimpses of his repertoire during international competition, so he’s tricky to project. The stats haven’t been jaw-dropping, but specific moments – like when he hit 100 mph on the radar gun during the ’09 World Baseball Classic – have enhanced his reputation in no small way.

At age 22, Chapman clearly hasn’t reached his ceiling. But there are no reasonable comps, because he’s hit a velocity plateau that lefties rarely visit. Control is the biggest concern, as Chapman has routinely finished among the leaders in walks and wild pitches in the Cuban Serie Nacional. He was also frustrated by Japan’s disciplined lineup in a WBC loss, allowing three runs, three hits and three walks over 2.1 innings. 

And still there’s no shortage of suitors. We consulted an American League scout regarding Chapman, and the recurring theme was inconsistency. Chapman’s fastball will range from the low-90s to 100, his command is unsteady, and his best secondary pitches (slider and curve), while not without promise, aren’t ready for the big stage.

Despite the evident upside, the scout’s take was that Chapman could – and perhaps should – begin in the low minors. There’s clearly work to be done. On the plus side, Chapman is an outstanding athlete and he’s hardly a mess mechanically. There are valid reasons to believe he can eventually become a strike-thrower with a repeatable delivery. But is he there yet? No.

Does he belong in the discussion with Stephen Strasburg(notes), the top overall pick in the 2009 draft? No, not right now. Those two are at different points in the development arc. You’ll note that many of the offers for Chapman – like the reported $15.5 million deal from the Red Sox – are ostensibly similar to the contract signed by Strasburg, a player who was only eligible to negotiate with one team.

Chapman will generate ongoing buzz because his backstory is compelling and his fastball is, at times, almost impossibly fast. But don’t expect a useful major league contribution this season. Fantasy-wise, he’s just a trade chip and/or a decoration for a dynasty roster. 

Update, Jan. 11: Apparently we have a winner in the Chapman bidding. The Reds have reportedly offered $25 million over five years, with an option for a sixth season that could boost the value of the deal to $30 million. Please enjoy Chapman responsibly, Mr. Baker. 

—

Photo via AP Images

About two months ago, we were told that hardcore version of the 599 GTB Fiorano supercar will debut at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. Bringing back the GTO badge, the model will be known as the 599 GTO and will pay homage to the legendary 250 GTO of the 1960s.

In a recent interview with EVO, Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa gave out some more details on the upcoming model from the Prancing Horse’s stable. Felisa said to think of the 599 GT as a road-going version of the track-only Ferrari 599XX with superior dynamics than the current 599 HGTE.

Power will come from the Enzo-derived 6.0L V12 with an increased rev-limit, allowing for a total of 700-hp. That should allow 0-60 mph to come in around 3.2 seconds with a top speed that could hit 217 mph. That could very well make the 599 GTO Ferrari’s fastest road car ever.

Ferrari 599XX:

– By: Kap Shah

Source: EVO

Filed under: Mercedes-Benz, Toys/Games

First it was rumored and now it’s official. The Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG has snagged the cover of Gran Turismo 5.

Just a few weeks after the official demo hit the Playstation Network in both Europe and the U.S., Polyphony Digital has released a slew of new screen shots of the SLS tearing up the virtual track, along with the cover shot you see above and the high-def video after the jump. There’s still no word on an official release date for the full game, but the most recent rumors say GT5 should be hitting the streets in March. Here’s hoping…

Continue reading Gran Turismo 5 cover art finally revealed, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG gets the nod [w/video]

Gran Turismo 5 cover art finally revealed, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG gets the nod [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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