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By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Adobe today celebrated the global launch of Creative Suite 5 (CS5), the first new version of the company’s suite of digital art, design, and development tools in nearly two years.

Creative Suite 5 includes 15 of Adobe’s products: Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5, Acrobat 9 Pro, Flash Catalyst CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Flash Builder 4, Dreamweaver CS5, Fireworks CS5, Contribute CS5, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, After Effects CS5, Soundbooth CS5, Adobe OnLocation CS5, Adobe Bridge CS5, Adobe Device Central CS5, and Adobe Dynamic Link.

These are grouped into five different editions which attend to different needs: Master Collection ($2,599), Design Premium ($1,899), Design Standard ($1,299), Web Premium ($1,799), and Production Premium ($1,699). Of course, all of Adobe’s CS5 applications can be purchased individually as well.

With such a huge simultaneous release, it’s difficult to cover every new feature included in all of Adobe’s products. Fortunately, Adobe has been slow and deliberate in showing off what’s special about CS5:

-Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects now natively support 64-bit architecture.

-Adobe’s Mercury Playback Engine includes Nvidia GPU acceleration to speed up rendering in Premiere Pro.

-Dreamweaver finally supports PHP-based CMS like Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla!

-Flash Catalyst is a new addition to Creative Suite, though it is already pretty well-known as the tool that lets designers turn their graphics and animations into rich Web content automatically without the need for any coding.

-Photoshop now includes a “content aware fill,” which intelligently fills in the background when you cut out or move an object in the foreground.

-Illustrator includes new stroke and paint capabilities that let you adjust the thickness of any stroke at any point. Painting with vectors now includes bristle brush painting, which promises more realistic-looking results.

The new CS5 software is available for pre-order now and will ship within the next 30 days.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Even the rich who can afford multi-million-dollar homes can pick over the foreclosure carnage left behind by the devastated real estate market. Except they can do it in style — by private jet instead of foreclosure tours by bus, or by boat.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Luxury Homes of Las Vegas and JetSuite Air are co-hosting a free “Luxury Home Foreclosure Private Jet Tour” from Los Angeles to Las Vegas this Saturday, April 17.

According to the press release, three bank-owned luxury estates in Vegas — all more than 10,000 sq ft — will be viewed from the air. The jet leaves LA at 10 am and returns at 6 pm. Only qualified buyers who show “…proof of funds and net worth sufficient to purchase a luxury home…” are welcome on the tour.

The homes:

• The first home (photo above) is located in Summerlin and is listed for $4,650,000. It’s 10,692-square feet, has 1.17 acres, seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms and was listed at $9,200,000 in 2007.
• The second home is in the MacDonald Highlands and is listed for $4,900,000.  It has 12,872 sq ft, sits on a .53-acre lot, has six bedrooms, eight bathrooms and was listed at $6,200,000 in 2008.
• The third home is located in Promontory in The Ridges and is listed for $6,125,000.  It has 3,611-1 sq ft,  has a .74-acre lot, seven bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and was valued at approximately $10,000,000 at market peak.

Other foreclosure tours by air are planned from possible departure locales such as Orange County, San Diego, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City.

> See Las Vegas home values

The National Guard is assisting civilian authorities protecting 46 heads of government and international organizations at the largest domestic summit since the founding of the United Nations…

A Massachusetts Air National Guard member was honored as the 2010 Exceptional Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) for the National Guard Bureau at an award ceremony in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes April 9…

The Air National Guard will unveil an upgrade to the radar system for its F-15 Eagle fighter aircraft today, which will give it greater capabilities while reducing maintenance costs…

Army Maj. Gen. Willliam L. Enyart, the adjutant general of the Illinois National Guard, offered condolences to the Polish people on the loss of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who along with the country’s armed service chiefs, died in a plane crash on April 10…

The NFL may be off season, but Green Bay Packer Mark Tauscher is using some of his time to mentor young men and women interested in joining the Wisconsin Army National Guard…

In an age when Americans are able to vote for a healthcare bill when they are dissatisfied with the current plan, many people around the world, including in Kyrgyzstan, struggle to afford surgery without any health insurance at all…

On April 8, a Tennessee father placed a combat patch on his son’s right shoulder recognizing his son’s service with the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment here in Iraq…

About 5,000 Afghan students at Sanayee High School here are learning not only about math, history and geography, but also agriculture…

A selection of data and projections on past and future climate in Montana:

Pederson et al. (2010) A century of climate and ecosystem change in Western Montana: what do temperature trends portend? Climatic Change 98:133-154. It’s hard to read precisely off the graph, but there have been significant increases in maximum and minimum temperatures, with the greatest increases in the minimums and in winter – exactly what you’d expect from a change in radiative properties. As a result the daily temperature range has shrunk slightly and there are fewer below freezing and below zero days. That last metric is critical, because it’s the severe cold that controls many forest pests. There’s much more on this in a poster.

Not every station shows a trend – the figure above contrasts Bozeman (purple, strong trend) with West Yellowstone (orange, flat). The Bozeman trend is probably not an urban heat island effect – surfacestations.org thinks it’s a good site, and White Sulphur (a nice sleepy town up the road a piece) is about the same. The red line is an ensemble of  simulations (GISS, CCSM & ECHAM5) from climexp.knmi.nl, projected into the future with A1B forcings (i.e., a fairly high emissions trajectory). I interpolated the data to latitude 47.6, longitude -110.9 (roughly my house, near Bozeman). Simulated temperature rises about 4C, while precipitation (green) is almost unmoved. If that came true, Montana’s future climate might be a lot like current central Utah.

The figure above – from John W. Williams, Stephen T. Jackson, and John E. Kutzbach. Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100 AD. PNAS, vol. 104 no. 14 – shows global grid points that have no neighbors within 500km that now have a climate like what the future might bring. In panel C (disappearing climates with the high emissions A2 scenario), there’s a hotspot right over Montana. Presumably that’s loss of today’s high altitude ecosystems. As it warms up, climate zones move uphill, but at the top of mountains there’s nowhere to go. That’s why pikas may be in trouble.

MT Field Guide

Ventura County law enforcement authorities said Monday they have arrested a 21-year-old Ventura man in the stabbing deaths last year of a husband and wife at their Faria Beach home.

Joshua Packer was arrested Sunday evening, detectives said.

The arrest was a breakthrough for a case that languished for nearly a year after Brock Husted and his pregnant wife, Davina, were killed by an intruder wearing a motorcycle helmet who entered their home through an open patio door.

“It was a well-publicized case," said Capt. Eric Dowd of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. "To make an arrest, I am sure they are pretty pleased with it.”

More details will be released at a 3 p.m. news conference in Ventura, Dowd said.

The Husteds, both 42, died of multiple stab wounds. Their two children fled to a neighbor’s house and were unharmed. But their 9-year-old son. who was watching TV at the time, apparently witnessed the murder.

– Ching-Ching Ni

Noah is live at Mighty SF in San Francisco for the Microsoft / Verizon launch.

When many people started complaining that the channels on their TV were automatically flipping, most of them having Samsung set-top boxes supplied by Virgin Media, it took a long time to figure out that this unnatural phenomenon was being caused due to infrared rays being emitted by low energy bulbs which interfere with the sensor. While most of the people who have been having this problem say that it is solved when there aren’t any of these bulbs in the same room, some still complain that even though the bulb is in a different room, the IR rays do interfere. It has been observed that this problem is caused only due to a particular low energy bulb from Philips. A Philips executive maintains that this problem only exists in older CFLs.

If you are wondering why this never happened in a regular light bulb even though they too emit infrared rays, it is because they don’t ‘flicker’ like some of the CFLs.
[dailymail]

Los Angeles: Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery Homicide Division (RHD) detectives are looking for a 28-year-old man suspected of killing four men at a North Hollywood restaurant.

On April 3, 2010, at around 4:30 pm, RHD Detectives say Nerses Arthur
Galstyan was participating in a birthday memorial celebration, with
several others, inside the Hot Spot Mediterranean Restaurant located at
11651 Riverside Drive in North Hollywood.  The celebration was being
held for an acquaintance that had died in an accident a year earlier. 
RHD Detectives believe Galstyan became involved in a dispute with
several men at the celebration, and in anger fired multiple rounds
hitting and killing four of them.  Three of the men in the group died
at the scene.  Another man passed away at a local hospital and two
others were wounded.

Surveillance
video from the restaurant confirms that Nerses Arthur Galstyan was in
the restaurant, and left following the shooting.  Galstyan remains at
large and is considered armed and very dangerous.

The Los Angeles coroner’s office has identified the deceased victims as
25-year old Hayk Yegnanyan; 26-year old Sarkis Karadjian; 28-year old
Harut Baburyan; and 31-year old Vardan Tofalyan.

The
identification of Galstyan as the suspect in the murders comes after a
non-stop exhaustive investigation conducted by RHD detectives, with
assistance from other local law enforcement agencies, The Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF), and the Secret Service.

In a separate investigation, a federal grand jury this morning indicted
Galstyan on weapons violations.  On April 9, 2010, in the United States
District Court For the Central
District of California, a Grand Jury handed down an indictment naming
Nerses Arthur Galstyan as a defendant and charging him with Conspiracy
for engaging in the business of dealing in firearms without a license;
and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, namely
two Spike’s Tactical .223 caliber semi-automatic rifles.  

Anyone with information regarding this murder is urged to call Robbery Homicide detectives
at 213-486-6890.  During non-business hours or on weekends, calls may
be directed to 1-877-LAPD-24-7.  Anyone wishing to remain anonymous may
call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (800-222-8477).  Tipsters may also
contact Crimestoppers by texting to phone number 274637 (C-R-I-M-E-S on
most keypads) using a cell phone.  All text messages should begin with
the letters “LAPD.”  Tipsters can also go to LAPDOnline.org, click on
“web tips” and follow the prompts.

THIS is a snazzy animated manifesto from Britain’s Labour Party:

So much nice stuff the Labour Party plans to do for the country. No mention, however, of how to pay for it all. This might not be a problem if the conservatives weren’t making budget issues a key part of their campaign. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne called the prime minister a man who “will say anything and spend anything to cling on to power”. That dovetails remarkably well with the laundry-list-of-programmes approach in the manifesto.

Of course, people like programmes, and they dislike measures to address the deficit. Sadly, you can’t balance the budget with taxes everyone loves, like those on super-strong alcoholic beverages.

Adobe announced the release of its latest and greatest Adobe Creative Suite 5 today. Adobe CS5 comes with 15 different tools aimed at various design or development tasks, but one of the best known and widely used programs in the suite is Adobe Photoshop. With Photoshop CS5, Adobe is bringing a number of new features and plenty of updates. There are a lot o… (read more)

How much is a billion dollars? A trillion dollar federal budget? Americans don’t know because the numbers have no context. They’re just too big.

This week Fox News aims to shrink those numbers down to size with the Taxpayer Calculator.
It calculates exactly how much government spending costs taxpayers individually. It breaks down government programs in numbers people understand, in the hundreds and thousands, not millions. Finally it puts a price tag on services by allowing taxpayers to ‘vote’ on programs they value.

Here’ s how it works. Take a bill like the $862 billion stimulus.

Type in your income. A pie chart pops up showing what portion of the stimulus your income group or tax bracket paid for.

It also calculates what you paid individually for the program. The median income in America is about $50,000. For thos earning $30 to $50k, the stimulus bill cost about $1,300…make 50 to 100, the amount more than doubles to more than 37-hundred.

At the bottom of the page, you’re asked to *vote*. Do you support or oppose the expenditure of your tax money on this project

“It gives them an opportunity to find out not only what’s in  legislation but how it’s going to impact them on a  day-to-day basis and it’s an excellent tool for all taxpayers and it’s going to open their eyes to amout of waste, fraud and abuse and what the government is actually doing,” says Leslie Paige, Citizens Against Government Waste.

The numbers aren’t exact, because the tax code treats singles and married differently. However it is an accurate representation of the portion of any project or program paid for by those who file a tax return in that income gropup.

Roughly 142 million Americans will file a tax return this year. Here is the IRS data which shows how many taxpayers fell into each bracket, and their share of the total tax.

It shows that the largests group of taxpayers – 37 million – earn the least and have an effective tax rate of less than 2%..

(( insert table form scott hodge ))

“There are really two americas. There is a growing class of americans who pay no income taxes whatsover, and there’s a shrinking group people at the top, who are paying all of the nations tax bills,” says Scott Hodge, director of the Tax Foundation. “Essentially they’re paying their tax bills as well as everyone else’s.”

All this week we’ll be using the taxpayor calculator to put a price tag on different government programs, including new earmarks being proposed in the 2011 budget and on going subsides – iincluding how much the United Nations is costing you.

The hope is better informed taxpayers, make for a more accountable Congress, and ultimately a more responsive government.

Filed under: Motorsports, Truck, Auctions, Work, UK, Racing

Want to start your own Formula One team? There’s space on the grid next season since USF1 failed to make it this year, and we wish you better luck. But it takes more than luck to start a team from scratch. It takes a lot of know-how, a lot of money, and a lot of equipment. That’s where this auction comes in.

About half of the grand prix races on the calendar are based in Europe, so when they’re not flying around the world to far-off destinations, F1 teams spend a lot of time on the road. That’s why the spec out their own trailers, to shuttle their personnel and equipment from track to track across the old continent. When USF1 was gearing up for their ill-fated endeavor, they bought a pair of trailers from the World Champion Brawn GP team (having apparently been used by the Honda team beforehand) before they evidently got new ones through their acquisition by Mercedes-Benz.

The trailers – which were supposed to be repainted in red, white and blue – never made it that far in USF1’s hands. The team ultimately shut down, and this pair of trailers was seized by the courts in the UK. Now the local sheriff’s department has put them up for sale on eBay Motors. They come equipped with all the bells and whistles, including place for three race cars, elevator platforms to unload them engineering offices, generators, on-board metal lathe milling machine…the works. They don’t, however, come with the tractors to pull them, or the cars they’re meant to transport…or a matching Bugatti Veyron for that matter. Reportedly worth some £300,000 (nearly half a million dollars) apiece when new, each is selling without reserve to the highest bidder, with current bid prices at the time of writing standing at £16,100 ($25k) and £12,900 ($20k) respectively. Check ’em out in the auction listing for all the details. Thanks to everyone for the tips!

[Source: eBay Motors (trailer 1, trailer 2) via Autosport]

eBay Find of the Day: Court-siezed Brawn GP/USF1 transport trailers originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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