Category: News

By default, Windows’ 7’s Control Panel broadly groups its options, tucking the nitty-gritty stuff you might be looking for into very general categories. You can, however, create a shortcut that lists all your Control Panel options in one list.

If you’re a tech news follower, you might have seen this listed recently as a “God mode” explorer hack. But that is, as Ed Bott points out, kind of ridiculous. It’s merely a kind of back-alley way of creating a shortcut, using a specialized identifier name, to present a search results list showing everything available in the Control Panel.

At his home away from Lifehacker, the How-To Geek has a handy step-by-step on creating what he dubs the “How-To Geek Mode.” If you’re handy with Windows, all you have to do is right-click on the desktop or in a folder, choose New->Folder, and give the new item something like this name:

How-To Geek.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Feel free, of course, to replace “How-To Geek” with “God mode” or whatever self-aggrandizing shortcut name you’d like.

Update: This tip only works on Windows 7—other versions of Windows may produce unsavory results.

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Filed under: Car Buying, China, Volvo, Geely

Volvo’s pending sale to Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group could lead to big changes (or not) for the Swedish automaker and its thousands of employees, but what about its hundreds of Volvo dealerships here in the States? Could Volvo dealers be granted Geely franchises? Will the Chinese automaker utilize its new sales channels to slowly introduce low-cost Chinese vehicles to the U.S. market? Automotive News asked dealers from around the country if they would be interested in selling Geely models, and the responses were mixed at best.

According to AN, many dealers were “receptive” to selling low-cost Geely models; a seemingly expected answer for any good business type. Mark O’Steen of O’Steen Volvo in Jacksonville, Florida reportedly called the possibility of selling Geely models “appealing,” adding “it is just another niche that we don’t cover, and hopefully they do have some potential in the United States.” Mike DiChristofano, vice president of Volvo of Tucson in Arizona had perhaps the best answer of all, pointing to the inability of General Motors to selll off Saab (at least to this point), adding “until this deal goes down, I’m not even thinking about selling a Geely car.”

Even if Geely does plan to begin selling Chinese vehicles to the U.S. market by using Volvo dealers, the plan will likely take a lot of time to materialize. Geely reportedly has a lot of work to do to improve safety and quality before being ready for the U.S. market. Global Insight analyst Lin Huaibin told AN that Geely is at least five years away from having products ready for American showrooms.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req. | Image: David McNew/Getty]

U.S. Volvo dealers interested in selling Geely models? originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gov. Pat Quinn, along with Illinois State Police (ISP) Director Jonathon E. Monken, today announced that 2009 was the safest year on Illinois roadways in 88 years as traffic fatality numbers dropped below 1,000.

Illinois now joins a small, elite group of states who have experienced less than 1,000 highway fatalities in a calendar year. During 2009, more than 100 fewer people were killed on Illinois highways than in 2008, while safety belt usage exceeded 91 percent.

“With the assistance of the Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois State Police, and local law enforcement, Illinois continues to make great strides in the area of public safety,” said Gov. Quinn.

“This is a proud and historic day for the men and women dedicated to traffic safety who have made travelling in our state safer.”

In 2008, 1,043 fatalities occurred on Illinois roadways, and in 2007, 1,248 highway fatalities were reported. Since 2003, the data compiled represents a historic downward trend in crash-related deaths.

During the same timeframe, safety belt usage has increased each year from 76 percent in 2003 to nearly 92 percent in 2009.

“Throughout the year, the Illinois State Police has partnered with the Illinois Department of Transportation and local law enforcement agencies to implement safety programs that target crashes on our roadways,” said Director Monken.

“There is little doubt the combination of programs designed to address teen driving, impaired driving, and safety belts contributed to successfully reducing Illinois fatalities to their lowest level in 88 years.”

ISP and local law enforcement agencies have aggressively targeted what are known as the “Fatal Five” violations in an effort to reduce traffic fatalities.

These violations are known to be contributing factors in traffic crash fatalities and include speeding, safety belts, improper lane usage, following too closely and driving under the influence.

Governor Quinn has made the reduction of traffic crash fatalities and the improvement of traffic safety a top priority during his administration. Records compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that driver distraction is a significant factor in traffic crashes resulting in injury or death.

The use of a cell phone while driving can increase the chances of becoming involved in a crash by 400 percent.

On Jan. 1, 2010, two new traffic laws take effect in Illinois which:

• Restrict drivers under the age of 19 (with an instruction permit or graduated license) from using a wireless or cellular phone while driving. The law also prohibits the use of wireless telephones for all drivers, regardless of age, while operating a vehicle in a school zone or construction zone.
• Prohibit text messaging, composing, reading or sending electronic messages, or accessing internet sites while driving a motor vehicle.

In addition, Gov. Quinn continues to support initiatives designed to reduce fatalities on Illinois roadways including:

• “Operation Save 100” – a campaign aimed to reduce traffic crash fatalities in Illinois and have at least 100 fewer deaths on its roadways in 2009.
• “Operation Teen Safe Driving” – a program which enlists young people to teach safe driving skills to their peers in an effort to reduce teen road fatalities.

Cuando tenemos cualquier accidente con nuestro vehículo de transporte, ya sea una moto, un choche, un camión, etc. Una vez hemos comprobado que no hay daños personales, la primera pregunta que nos viene a la mente es: ¿Que indemnización va a darme el seguro por mi coche?. Para contestar a esto lo normal es acudir a tu compañía de seguros en donde a veces, nos llevamos sorpresas desagradables.

Para no ir totalmente desprevenidos os intentaremos explicar como podéis calcular, mas o menos, la indemnización que recibiréis en caso de accidente. La forma más habitual de calcular dicha indemnización es revisar nuestra póliza de seguros y buscar que garantías tenemos contratadas además de tener muy en cuenta la antigüedad del coche.

Una vez dicho esto, hay que prestar atención a dos conceptos: el valor de nuevo y el valor venal del coche. Si tenéis asegurado el valor de nuevo, la compañía de seguros debe indemnizarte por el valor que cuesta el coche nuevo, con las misma características e incluidos todos los impuestos, además debe incluir los accesorios no de serie, siempre y cuando aparezcan declarados en la póliza.

Si por el contrario el coche tiene asegurado el valor venal, la compañía indemnizará por el valor que tiene el coche en caso de venderlo en el momento del siniestro, con las mismas características y con su antigüedad, no importan los kilómetros que tenga. También se incluirán los accesorios no de serie que estén declarados en la póliza del seguro.

Fuente | Comunicae

Matt Hazard Blood Bath & Beyond will be available on Xbox LIVE Arcade this Wednesday for 1200 points.

PSA: Until the Lightsaber MP3 Player actually emits a highly contained tube of deadly light, $24 can only buy you a Lightsaber Hilt MP3 Player. [NCSX via anythingbutipod]

Be sure to check out this week’s PlayStation Store update this Thursday Matt Hazard and his bloody parody-clad new adventure are on their way to PSN. That’s right, the star of Eat Lead: The Return of

i have no idea about the sound quality of these earphones, but i am pretty sure that it’s gonna be quite fun to wear! lol. available in various forms including kinoko (mushroom), katana (sword), nyan (cat’s paw). 2,000 yen each. (~750 baht)

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Dodge, Quick Spin

The Dodge Challenger has found plenty of happy homes, and we’ve had the pleasure of driving quite a few examples, ranging from various production models to an array of tuner versions, including the Classic Design Concepts Widebody Challenger and the Hurst Series 4 Challenger. We can now add one more to the list: Mr. Norm’s Super Cuda. Yes, it isn’t a Challenger by name, but few will mistake what vehicle forms the base of this coupe despite its uniquely Plymouth appearance.

With a supercharger fitted atop a Hemi V8 to make a prodigious amount power, Mr. Norm’s Super Cuda has the potential to make muscle car fans swoon and green types have a heart attack. Is this a case of muscle car overdose, or do we have a genuine classic on our hands? Read on to find out…

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2009 Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading Quick Spin: Mr. Norm’s Super Cuda is retro to the extreme

Quick Spin: Mr. Norm’s Super Cuda is retro to the extreme originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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David Beckham missed out on the chance to get animated for The Simpsons after series producers determined the soccer star wasn’t famous enough for U.S. audiences.

Huh?!

The L.A. Galaxy star was in talks to appear as a yellow character on the long-running cartoon but executive producer Al Jean eventually snubbed him after deciding the cameo wouldn’t work.

“I had to phone David Beckham to tell him sorry. I didn’t think he was a big enough star for an American audience. I get a lot of grief about that. Some people got angry about it and told me, ‘I bet you would have put (former professional soccer star) George Best on!’ But I would have turned him down too.”

British celebrities to have guest starred on The Simpsons include Ricky Gervais, Emily Blunt, and Simon Cowell.

If you are thinking about applying to the TechStars Boston 2010 program, take 15 minutes and do it now.  Tomorrow (Tuesday 1/5) is TechStars for a Day in Cambridge, MA.  You’ll only get an invitation if you have applied by today.  You’ll get to spend the day learning about TechStars and hanging out with TechStars mentors like Shawn Broderick, David Cohen, Bill Warner, Bijan Sabet along with some of founders from TechStars Boston 2009 companies, such as AccelGolf, AmpIdea, Localytics, and TempMine.

If you are thinking about starting a company and wonder why you’d bother with TechStars, take a look at the great post that Tom Monaghan, the co-founder of TempMine, wrote today titled Mentorship-driven or Why I applied to TechStars.

And, as a special bonus late breaking news item, Graphic.ly (formerly named Take Comics, one of the TechStars Boulder 2009 companies) announced that it has raised a $1.2m financing led by DFJ Mercury with participation from Starz Media and some well known angels.  My good friend Micah Baldwin has joined as CEO.  Psyched for them.

Come out and play.  Entrepreneurship is fun.

Deep in the heart of a globular cluster orbiting an elliptical galaxy, it looks very much as if a massive black hole is in the process of tearing apart and devouring the remnant of an old star. And how do we know we’re witnessing this violent stellar demise? Black holes are messy eaters.

The discovery comes from the Chandra Observatory, a telescope in space designed to detect X-rays. This high-energy form of light can only be generated by violent events, things like exploding stars, strong magnetic fields, or extremely hot objects. Astronomers (including Jimmy Irwin, an old friend I went to grad school with!) using Chandra detected an unusually bright source of X-rays coming from a globular cluster — a tightly packed collection of stars — belonging to NGC 1399, a galaxy 65 million light years away. In the picture above (a combination of Chandra X-ray images and optical images from the huge Magellan telescopes in Chile), the galaxy is the bright blob on the right, and the new object — called a ULX for Ultra Luminous X-ray source — is marked with the red lines.

We know black holes exist in globular clusters, so that’s nothing new. We also know stars are so jam-packed in globulars that it’s not only possible but relative common (on a cosmic scale) for these stars to interact gravitationally. When a star gets too near a black hole, it can have matter pulled from its surface, which falls into the black hole. As it plummets to its death, it can first pile up just outside The Point of No Return, whipping madly around the hole, and heating up so violently it can emit X-rays.

That sort of thing has been seen before. What’s new here is that first, the type of X-ray emission seen from this event indicates that the star isn’t simply giving up matter slowly to the black hole; it’s actually getting torn apart, physically shredded by the vast gravity of the black hole. Second, what the astronomers have seen is that the emission is rich in the element of oxygen, but oddly missing hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe, and all normal stars are almost entirely made of the stuff (the Sun is, for example). Not seeing it means the star getting eaten up by the black hole is most likely a white dwarf, the dense remnant of a dead star’s core. After a lifetime of fusing hydrogen into helium, there typically isn’t any hydrogen left in a star’s core. Once the star dies, the remaining core becomes a white dwarf, devoid of hydrogen but also commonly rich in oxygen.

So not only is this possibly the first time a black hole has been caught in the act of viciously ripping a star apart, the star itself is a bit of an oddball.

And there’s more, too. Looking at spectra taken of the object reveals how fast the material is moving as it orbits the black hole, and that in turn tells us how massive the black hole is. What astronomers found is that this particular black hole must have a mass of a thousand times that of the Sun! Because of the way black holes form, it’s common to see them have a few times the mass of the Sun, or even as much as 20 or so. We also see truly gigantic ones with millions or billions of times the Sun’s mass. But it’s recently been theorized that intermediate-mass black holes exist as well, with hundreds or thousands of times our Sun’s mass. Observations have been tantalizing about these objects, and this new evidence from Chandra adds to the idea that middle-weight black holes exist.

I think observations like this are very exciting. When a new type of object is suspected, or even found, we usually get incremental supporting evidence for them. But it’s rare to get a twofer: not only does this support the existence of intermediate mass black holes, but we caught one in the act of violently tearing apart its dead neighbor. In a hundred years or so, the last morsels of the white dwarf will fall into the black hole, never to be seen again. Not even crumbs will be left, so it’s pretty cool we were able to see this when we did.

Agribusiness Development Teams (ADTs) from the Indiana, Tennessee and Texas National
Guard returned to the United States during the holidays after year-long deployments
to Afghanistan…

Georgia Air National Guardsmen assigned to the 165th Air Support Operations Squadron
have teamed up with Soldiers from the 48th Infantry Brigade of the Georgia Army
National Guard here in eastern Afghanistan…

It’s been a long deployment for 3,200-plus soldiers of the Wisconsin National
Guard’s 32nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, but it is finally coming to an
end…

Virginia Guardsman Mike Kohn was victorious in four out of five competitions in the
Lake Placid America’s Cup competitions held from Dec. 18-20…

A Nevada National Guardsman received a surprise New Year’s Day gift in the form of a
battlefield promotion here Jan. 1…

England, U.K. | Eccentric Homes

May Savidge raised the bar for all modern windmill tilters when she saved her Medieval house from destruction by dismantling it, ultimately spending the rest of her life rebuilding it by hand out of harm’s way.

After the devastating death of her fiance, May purchased a fixer-upper at Number 1 Monkey Row, Ware in Hertfordshire. The house had been built in 1450 following the ‘hall house’ pattern of the time, in which the living quarters surrounded a two-story, vaulted minstrel’s gallery. Self-taught in woodworking, bricklaying and carpentry, she single-handedly restored the house to its former grandeur.

Her triumph didn’t stand long, for in 1953 the city council informed May that her house was in the way of progress and would be torn down to build a road. The council repeatedly denied her pleas to spare the house for the sake of architectural heritage.

No matter. May had made up her mind; ‘If this little house is really in the way, I would rather move it and re-erect it than see it destroyed.’

For the remainder of her life, May set about climbing scaffolding and systematically dismantling her house in a way that would allow for easy reassembly at her new Norfolk coast property. Beams were numbered and taken to the truck, shingles were cataloged, and over the years all the pieces were carted off to the rebuild site 100 miles away.

Though it was clear that the project seemed an impossible feat for an increasingly elderly lady, May continued her work with the mentality, “I’ve got nothing to do all day, so I might as well do the job myself.”

During the entire process, with only her dog by her side, May called Ward Hall home regardless of whether or not a roof provided shelter from the elements. Only at the age of 80 did she concede to installing a wood stove to heat her partially finished residence, by which point May had admitted that the cement work was getting “a bit heavy.”

After her passing in 1993 at age 81, the shell of a house was left to Savidge’s nephew who wanted nothing to do with the project. His then-wife Christine felt differently, and took up May’s mantle until the Ware Hall was completed. In the process of doing so, Christine’s own marriage fell into ruins, as the house was reborn.

Ware Hall is now a bed and breakfast by the seaside under Christine’s proprietorship, where guests can stay under the very same roof the tenacious women saved with their very own hands.