I am a writer with more than one publication that tens of people have seen and maybe even enjoyed, so perhaps it is important to construct a defense strategy against the onslaught of fame that is sure to be riding a tsunami-sized wave this way. I must brace myself.
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A Miami man won three cash prizes for hunting snakes in Florida’s Python Challenge, then donated his winnings to help a little girl with cancer.
Ruben Ramirez and his veteran Florida Python Hunters team won $1,500 for bagging the most pythons — 18 total — in the permit holder’s division of the contest, along with $1,000 and $750 for longest and second-longest in the same category.
The general competition division was won by Brian Barrows of Fort Myers, who killed 6 of the invasive species in an area outside of Weston. The award for longest went to his teammate Paul Shannon of Lehigh Acres, who shot a massive 14-foot, 3-inch python. (View photos below.)
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By Matthew Green
KARACHI, Pakistan, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Pakistan’s Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) threatened to quit the ruling coalition on Saturday, piling fresh pressure on President Asif Ali Zardari ahead of elections due this spring.
The MQM, which dominates the commercial capital Karachi, said it would leave the coalition to protest against the authorities’ decision to drop charges against a group of murder suspects accused of links to Zardari’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
“The government has given a free hand to criminals,” senior MQM leader Farooq Sattar told a news conference in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city and capital of the southern Sindh Province.
Zardari’s government could survive a walk-out by the MQM since his ruling coalition would still retain a majority in the national assembly in Islamabad.
Nevertheless, the potential loss of one of its key coalition partners would be a blow to the PPP, which is gearing up for a tough election battle after a five-year tenure marred by allegations of corruption, cronyism and incompetence.
Critics say Pakistan’s politicians have been so preoccupied with the intricacies of coalition politics that they have devoted too little attention to tackling issues from militant violence to a chronic power crisis and the soaring cost of living since the last general elections in 2008.
The MQM has a record of repeatedly rescinding previous threats to leave Zardari’s coalition after wringing concessions from his government and it was unclear how quickly law-makers and ministers belonging to the party would implement their latest pledge to quit.
A party spokesman said MQM’s members of the federal and provincial cabinets were in the process of preparing their resignation letters late on Saturday.
In the face of past ruptures, senior PPP leaders have rapidly intervened to convince the MQM to stay with the coalition.
The Sindh provincial government angered the MQM this week by deciding to drop murder and other serious charges against eight suspected criminals who MQM believes form the core of a Karachi militia force allied to the PPP.
Human rights activists say, however, that it is the MQM itself that controls the most formidable armed wing of any political party in the city, where hundreds of people were killed last year in turf wars between rival factions.
Some observers believe the MQM’s main motive for leaving the coalition is to assert its independence from the PPP ahead of the polls, which are expected in May.
The volatility of the pre-election landscape was laid bare in January when cleric Muhammad Tahirul Qadri triggered Pakistan’s latest political crisis by leading tens of thousands of followers on a march on the capital to demand electoral reforms.
The stand-off was resolved after talks with the government, but the episode served as a reminder of the difficulty of predicting what may happen at the polls.
The PPP-led coalition is hoping to become the first civilian-led, elected government to complete a five-year term and hold elections, which would be a milestone in Pakistan’s attempts to bury the legacy of decades of military rule. (Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad; Editing by Rosalind Russell)
A draft of a White House immigration proposal obtained by USA TODAY would allow illegal immigrants to become legal permanent residents within eight years.
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A couple of job listings posted February 15th on Microsoft’s site confirm that there will be a Windows Blue upgrade heading for both PCs and Windows Phone devices. There are jobs posted for both a Software Development Engineer in Test, as well as a Senior Development Lead. Both of the jobs offered hints at some things we can expect from the Windows Blue upgrade.
The job posting for the Software Development Engineer in Test stated that, “The Core Experience features are the centerpiece of the new Windows UI, representing most of what customers touch and see in the OS, including: the start screen; application lifecycle; windowing; and personalization. Windows Blue promises to build and improve upon these aspects of the OS, enhancing ease of use and the overall user experience on devices and PCs worldwide”. It looks like someone jumped the gun when they posted the job listing because the 3rd sentence has recently been rewritten to only say ‘Windows’ instead of ‘Windows Blue’.
The posting for the Senior Development Lead has a segment that says, “As a development lead you will hire and manage a team of top-notch developers, be personally involved in designing and coding features, and work closely with PM and Test counterparts across multiple orgs to help realize the vision of building high quality excel app for Windows Phone Blue.”, hinting at an upcoming Windows Phone Blue update for Windows Phone devices, as well as a revamped Excel app.
Windows Blue will be a refresh for Windows 8, improving upon aesthetics and user experience. It is going to start off a new campaign of affordable, yearly updates for Windows services. The rumored launch date for Windows Blue is sometime in late Q3. It will be available for Windows 8 PCs, Windows Phone 8, Windows Server 2012, as well as a few Windows services such as Hotmail and SkyDrive.
[via ZDNet]
Microsoft job postings confirm more Windows Blue details is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (R-S.C.) endorsed Elizabeth Colbert Busch Saturday in the race for Sen. Tim Scott’s former House seat.
“We know what it’s going to take to win that seat,” Clyburn said at a union meeting in Hanahan, according to a video taken by Patch. “I’m going to be endorsing Elizabeth Colbert Busch today because I think it’s important for us to get a nominee out on the Democratic primary that will have a chance at winning.”
Clyburn emphasized Colbert Busch’s work with unions in his endorsement. Patch reports:
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Though she did not know it at the time, Pamela Anderson was an inadvertent participant in a massive stock scam that duped investors out of more than $30 million.
Federal authorities took action this week, arresting 14 people involved in the stock manipulation plan that resembled a typical “pump-and-dump” scheme, the Los Angeles Times reports.
According to Courthouse News Service, perpetrators of the “two separate, large-scale fraud schemes,” which reportedly victimized more than 20,000 people worldwide, promoted worthless stock and then sold it at a much higher price
As the Season 3 finale of “Downton Abbey” draws closer, we’ve been looking back fondly on the heartbreaking and hilarious episodes that have made this season such a special one.
From Lady Violet’s (Maggie Smith) sarcasm to Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery) exclamations, the perfectly timed lines of “Downton” are just as important as the fancy attire and elegant interiors.
So, “Downton” fans, it’s time to challenge your knowledge of Season 3: Just how well do you know your “Downton” quotes? Take the quiz below to find out!
Kim Dotcom has just announced through Twitter that Mega, his successor to Megaupload, will now be accepting Bitcoin as payment for its cloud storage services. You can purchase your Mega service with Bitcoin through Mega’s newest reseller, Bitvoucher. Bitcoin is a P2P digital currency that allows you to instantly make a payment to anyone, anywhere in the world. It does not operate under a central authority, such as banks or the government, but instead is operated by only the Bitcoin network. This allows everyone to be able to use its services, and it also allows users to make payments that cannot be traced by the government.
You have 6 options to choose from when buying the Mega services through Bitvoucher. There are 3 monthly options, ranging from 500GB for 0.5150 Bitcoin to 4TB for 1.5462 Bitcoin. There are also 3 yearly options, with 500GB for 5.1551 Bitcoin (which comes out to about 0.4296 Bitcoin per month) to 4TB for 15.4663 Bitcoin (about 1.2889 Bitcoin per month).
Dotcom also tweeted that Mega plans on offering secure e-mail, chat & voice, video, and “mobile” services. He talks about how services such as Gmail, iCloud, and Skype are based in the U.S., making them not private enough. The data contained in this services can be viewed by the U.S. government if they demand access to them. His tweet regarding the issue says, “Fact: Gmail, iCloud, Skype, etc. have to provide (by law) secret & untraceable NSA backdoors to all your data. #GetOutNow.”
Dotcom says that Mega is all about privacy and that they are “The Privacy Company”. It wants no roots with the U.S. government and wants to offer users a safe and private place for them to share data. Mega has come a long way, reaching over 3 million users in only 4 weeks. It’s definitely gone a long way in a short amount of time, and it’d be interesting to see where it’s headed next. Are you using the Mega cloud-storage service?
[via Dotcom]
Mega now accepts Bitcoin as payment, also hints at e-mail, chat, voice expansion is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Last May, Incident Tech launched the gTar, a guitar with real strings that connected to a smartphone for some amazing sound processing. In the last few months, the founder, Idan Beck and his team have been busy preparing the 800 guitars he pre-sold on Kickstarter for shipment. Theirs is a story of creativity, cool, and the next generation in music technology. I spoke with Idan briefly about his Disrupt experience and how it felt to go from zero to shipping in less than a year.
TC: So how have things been going since Disrupt?
Idan: Things have been extremely busy and going well! Shortly after disrupt we shifted our primary focus on getting the gTar into mass production out in China. While we had already been going out there for nearly a year at that point, we spent the next 6 months hammering out every issue imaginable in production and learning about how much goes into making a thousand of something.
Now we’re starting to get units out of China in batches and fulfill them out to our amazingly supportive and patient Kickstarter backers. As a result of the last 6 months the product has really improved as well, with the end result and build quality far exceeding our expectations, since as a result of production we had to make certain changes to the design and architecture of the product, allowing us to make some significant improvements to the technology, along with the direct ability to upgrade the product in the future through iPhone delivered updates as well as hardware upgrades that our customers can install themselves.
TC: Tell us about the gTar before and after Disrupt. What did you think would happen before you got on stage?
Idan: Before Disrupt the gTar was still a relatively secret project being worked on in a closet-sized office in the flatland of Santa Clara. Before that I had originally started building the product in my garage in Cupertino and after that we were bouncing around for a while (even working for a month or so on an Icelandic ferry docked in the SF bay), but once we knew we were going to Disrupt everything sort of got official. Driven by the pressure to get things right, our team pulled together a really professional looking video and presentation in a matter of weeks while gearing up for what we felt was going to be a make it or break it point for the product.
TC: Were you scared? Excited? How does it feel to launch on stage?
Idan: It’s definitely exciting and almost foreboding to get up on the stage, especially considering that you have such a short amount of time and it’s not really possible to leave much to chance. You’re somehow stuffing three years of work into such a short little moment, and hope that people understand implicitly what had to go on under the hood to make all of that happen.
It definitely has this sort of epic feel to it and we were definitely nervous as all hell. We spent every waking moment practicing and rehearsing every word and sentence we were going to say. Also, our dependence on our early stage prototype hardware was always something we were worried about. For example, the night before our presentation, Josh had to run out to get a Dremel tool that he somehow managed to find at the only open hardware store in Manhattan, so that I could make some internal tweaks for us to re-route some wires through the prototype to avoid any potential battery issues or audio problems that might pop up on stage.
That prototype is in a case now, and we’re planning to hang it up as a piece of art. It was very much a super early prototype (and the only fully functional gTar in existence at that point) and we easily had disassembled and reassembled it at least 10-20 times over those few days. In fact, we did it so much that we were ruining the screws holding on the pick guard and by the last day we only had 3 left!
TC: How many did you pre-sell that day?
Idan: We launched the project around 2PM or something and we hit our $100K Kickstarter goal in just over 11 hours so by the end of the day we had pre-sold north of 200 gTars. The project ended up raising over $350k with about 850 people pledging to get a gTar.
TC: Why didn’t you play any really smoking hot-reggae jams on stage? Like “Stir It Up?”
To be honest I think we could have chosen a better set of songs for our demos, but we were also playing it a little safe as well since we wanted to choose a song that I could play well enough knowing that I’d probably freeze up on stage. I think you can probably see my leg shaking if you look carefully enough in the video of the first presentation. We actually got a lot of feedback on that demo, so for the second presentation we did change up the songs around, which definitely was a good move.
TC: What’s next for gTar? Another version?
Idan: We’re still working hard to get a gTar into the hands of everyone that backed us on Kickstarter, and are making solid progress and getting some great positive initial feedback. We’re eagerly awaiting another large shipment that’s on its way and on the ocean as we speak. We’ll be putting some serious effort into an Android dock and app, as well as Web browser based compatibility. We have done some light conceptualizations of how other instruments would work within our platform, but are mainly focused on the gTar for the moment.
We’re working hard to continuously make the gTar a better product, and as a result of some the design changes that went into effect during production, the units we are sending out today will also have the capability to benefit from those improvements as we roll them out. This includes continued improvement to our own app, such as a deeper exploration and development of the social aspects of the product.
A few weeks ago we launched an online store that is already generating pre-orders for the spring, and we’re developing retail distribution channels for the summer and holiday seasons. We’re also looking to expand our team over the next year as well!
TC: If Disrupt were an EBay account, what would you write in the review?
Idan: I would think that the comparison is much more likened to a summer fling. It’s a short, intense, and immensely rewarding experience that ends up surprisingly thrilling for everyone involved. At the end you might not end up being number one, but the experience will change you for the better.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
