Now you can add “price” alongside “gameplay” to the list of aspects that separates Fable Legends from its forebears. That’s because the game’s launching as a free-to-play title on Windows 10 and gratis with an Xbox Live Gold subscription on Xbox One….
Need more good news after today’s net neutrality ruling? Deadline and Variety report it has been confirmed that Harrison Ford will return to the role of Rick Deckard in the Blade Runner sequel that’s currently in the works. Ridley Scott is producing …
iBall has come out with another mid-range Android 4.4 smartphone namely the Andi 5M Xotic. Running on Android 4.4 KitKat OS (upgradable to Android 5.0 Lollipop), this budget-friendly smartphone is packed with a 5.0-inch 960 x 540 qHD IPS display, a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, a 2GB RAM and a 16GB of expandable internal storage (up to 32GB).
Coming with dual SIM card slots, the handset has a 3.2MP front-facing camera, an 8MP rear-facing camera with dual LED flash and BSI sensor, an FM radio and a 2000mAh battery. In terms of connectivity, the Andi 5M Xotic provides 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth and GPS.
The iBall Andi 5M Xotic is available now for Rs 8,950 (about $145). [Product Page]
I don’t know where this image originates from but it’s around the Internet right now and it shows a picture of a dress that is so very clearly white and gold to me but is black and blue to so many other people. It’s black and blue to Google Image Search. Photoshop’s eyedropper tool says it’s black and blue. But I only see white and gold.
Doxxing, and the death threats and swatting that almost invariably follow, is one of the nastiest tools of internet trolls worldwide. Twitter is on the front lines of the online abuse problem, but thus far they’ve been fighting a fairly pathetic losing battle . The company’s latest update hopes to turn that around.
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES, Feb 26 (Reuters) – A convicted drug dealer pleaded not guilty on Thursday to murdering a Hollywood studio executive whose remains were found buried in the California desert last year, and a defense lawyer said he would prove the case was “mutual combat,” not homicide.
John Lenzie Creech, who is already serving an eight-year prison term for sale of a controlled substance, was ordered back to court on March 26 for further proceedings in the high-profile case surrounding the murder of Gavin Smith.
“Ultimately the defense will show that this was not a murder, that it was mutual combat between two men,” attorney Alex Kessel told reporters outside court following the brief hearing.
“It did not arrive at any type of intent to kill, any premeditation,” Kessel said.
Prosecutors, who have publicly revealed little of their evidence against Creech, 42, declined to respond to Kessel’s assertions following the hearing.
But family members of the murdered man released a statement saying Smith’s death had caused them “incomprehensible” pain, adding: “And have no doubt, the evidence will clearly show this was a cold-blooded, premeditated act of murder.”
Smith, a film distribution executive at 20th Century Fox, was 57 years old when he was last seen on the night of May 1, 2012, driving his black Mercedes away from a friend’s house in suburban Oak Park, north of Los Angeles.
Law-enforcement officials issued a missing person bulletin for Smith, also known for playing on UCLA’s 1975 national championship basketball team. His family posted a $20,000 reward, saying the 6-foot, 6-inch (1.98-meter) ex-athlete with “movie star” looks should be easy to spot.
Detectives got a break in February 2013 when Smith’s car was found in a storage facility in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley, but his disappearance remained unsolved.
In November, police said a skull and other bones found by hikers in a shallow grave in the desert east of Los Angeles had been identified as belonging to the missing studio executive.
Prosecutors have not said how Smith was killed or what they believe could have motivated the crime. Smith had met Creech’s wife, Chandrika Creech, in rehab in 2009, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
How we ended up here: The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal and Free the Net.”
First, congrats to those who helped to get the pendulum to swing back a bit from the anti-customer, ‘we’re the phone company’ position. We’ll see how long it lasts.
The count-down has started and by the end of next week, or once the entire Open Internet (Net Neutrality) rules are put out (we have only an outline as of this writing), you can expect a lawyers’ banquet, a feeding frenzy where they will file and file and file.
There were actually two items that were presented by the FCC:
On the municipality front — A group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, created ‘model legislation” to close down the rights of municipalities and they have led the charge and already got over 20 states to use this legislation. This legislation is penned by (and/or with the assistance of) the ALEC corporate members, which include AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and then given to waiting state politicians, most of whom are funded and groomed by these companies, (or who also received foundation grant money to spend in their districts to make them look good).
And this is not new. I’ve been writing about this since at least 2007.
(As we pointed out, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai congratulated ALEC on its ‘model legislation’ at an event in 2013.)
We expect ‘law-suits-a-plenty’ in all state and federal jurisdictions. Remember, they have massive amounts of lobbying dollars, fake astroturf consumer groups, corporate-funded think-tanks — and a series of skunkworks (hidden) networks to coordinate these attacks, not to mention tens of thousands of anxiously awaiting lawyers, (their own and outside firms), all chomping at the bit for this race to begin.
Oh, and did I mention that you paid for all of this lobbying, lawyering, foundation monies, etc., which is built into your rate increases? (I’ll be discussing this in the next few stories.)
Net Neutrality being solved? As we take our victory lap, I can hear the cheers of joy from the phone and cable companies now. But that is not what they will tell the public.
Verizon writes that the FCC’s decision is harmful and a radical step that is applying antiquated regulations.
But this is all a feign as this antiquated regulatory framework is the basis of Verizon’s entire fiber optic investment and deployment.
I mean — how can they say this when their own official documents state their Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks are Title II under that same ‘utility style regulation’ today? (Note that almost identical language is used in almost every state-based cable franchise agreement we could find.)
This is one of the reasons we filed a Petition for Investigation against Verizon for perjury, as they never once told the FCC about their current deployment’s reliance on Title II. As we outlined, Verizon New York also received multiple rate increases on local phone customers because the network construction is Title II.
But, don’t worry; Verizon, AT&T, et al will be filing and filing and filing to get rid of the ‘Net Neutrality’ rules making the same bogus claims about ‘utility styled regulations.’
The Net Neutrality Underbelly
The reason why Verizon et al are happy is because of the outline of the Open Internet rules posted today, which actually gives the phone companies what they want.
“The Order provides the strongest possible legal foundation for the Open Internet rules by relying on multiple sources of authority including both Title II of the Communications Act and Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. At the same time, the Order refrains – or forbears – from enforcing 27 provisions of Title II and over 700 associated regulations that are not relevant to modern broadband service. Together Title II and Section 706 support clear rules of the road, providing the certainty needed for innovators and investors, and the competitive choices and freedom demanded by consumers, while not burdening broadband providers with anachronistic utility-style regulations such as rate regulation, tariffs or network sharing requirements.”
To put this into English, just take out your current communications bills — There is no competition, so prices continue to rise. This says — we’re not going to regulate rates –even if they are egregious, (rate regulation is supposed to be used when there is no competition to lower prices), and we are not opening the networks (“Network sharing”) so you can’t choose your Internet, broadband or cable TV provider over the wires coming into your home.
While some will say that this decision will swing the pendulum back to the 1990’s and the pre-closing of the networks’ hey day, that’s pure wishful thinking without any clue about the actual history.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed (by a Republican congress), to open the ‘last mile’, i.e., open the wires coming into your home and office to allow competitors to offer you service. This doesn’t do that. This still blocks competition and your cable and phone company can raise your rates as they see fit.
Now you know why the phone and cable companies are still smiling.
But, I can hear the cries of the cable and phone companies– “woe is me” and they will, of course, take the FCC, throw in some states and municipalities, to court as it will cause even more confusion while they sit back knowing that the real use of Title II — to reopen the networks to competition — isn’t even on the table.
And, it could be worse as some of the 27 Title II obligations that are being cut include the requirement to fix your broadband lines after a storm, or even requiring that the company makes sure you can even get service. These requirements will no longer be a burden to those monopoly/duopoly controllers of the wires, though the final order will outline the extent of the damage – or what will be taken to court.
And that underbelly? AT&T and Verizon have already been eroding customers’ rights with another piece of ALEC legislation which has been claiming to ‘free the net’ through the “IP transition”. This is nothing more than a euphemism for ‘get rid of Title II obligations and oversight’. And it fooled most Internet companies along the way as the majority of the US has passed a deregulation bill eliminating some, if not all Title II obligations. (“IP”, Internet Protocol, is classified as ‘Title I’, an ‘information service’, and therefore is not ‘telecommunications’ and not ‘Title II”.)
So, combining the state and federal erasure of laws and regulations — and the law suits that are coming– Fasten your seat-belts, ladies and gentlemen; we’re in for a bumpy ride.
My big laugh, however, is that the FCC will be the agency to deal with complaints. Doesn’t anyone know the history of the FCC’s inability to monitor and enforce basic laws or the complaint process? Why do you think we’re in this situation?
Simply put, there is an ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ complaint process. But unless you have deep pockets, you can’t take formal complaints as they cost $50,000-$100,000; they are legal proceedings and in the past even the ‘rocket docket’ can take years and be cost-prohibitive, especially for small companies. Moreover, ‘informal complaints’ are essentially useless, or at best hit and miss. And since Congress controls the FCC’s budget and the Republican congress is now planning on stripping the FCC of authority about all of this if they get the chance…
And oversight? Your bills are unreadable, there are made up charges, deceptive billing and advertising practices and no oversight about this.
And yet, the FCC is erasing basic “administrative filing requirements or accounting standards”.
But, I’m optimistic. Hell, who would have thought that an obscure telecom wonk phrase like “Title II” would be quoted by the major media or that people are so pissed that you can get over 4 million to do something that doesn’t involve some sports personality or pop diva.
And this is more in the right direction than the carpet bombing of regulations by then-chairman Michael Powell (now head of the NTCA cable association), or the empty suit chairmen, Martin and Genachowski.
But the battle ahead is not about Net Neutrality but re-opening the networks, finally, so that there are competitors who are fighting for your business vs us begging to raise our rates less. It’s also time to expose just how far the pendulum has swung in the wrong direction and finally fix the mess.
Welcome to the Spring Offensive.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Lewis Reynolds didn’t understand what had been done to him when he was 13.
Years later, after getting married, the Lynchburg man discovered he couldn’t father children. The reason: He had been sterilized by the state. Reynolds was among more than 7,000 Virginians involuntarily sterilized between 1924 and 1979 under the Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act.
Advocates for the surviving victims won a three-year fight Thursday when the Virginia General Assembly budgeted $400,000 to compensate them at the rate of $25,000 each.
It’s welcome news, Reynolds said.
“I think they done me wrong,” he said. “I couldn’t have a family like everybody else does. They took my rights away.”
Eugenics is the now-discredited movement that sought to improve the genetic composition of humankind by preventing those considered “defective” from reproducing. Virginia’s Sterilization Act became a model for similar legislation passed around the country and the world, including Nazi Germany. Nationwide, 65,000 Americans were sterilized in 33 states, including more than 20,000 in California alone, said Mark Bold, executive director of the Christian Law Institute, which has been advocating the cause of the Virginia victims since 2013.
Virginia is the second state to approve compensation for victims of the eugenics program. North Carolina approved payments of $50,000 for each victim in 2013.
But the money from the state comes too late for most of those who were sterilized in Virginia, Bold said. There are only 11 known surviving victims, he said. Two have died in the past year, he said. Those who are left greeted the news with tears and hugs, Bold said.
The Virginia sterilizations were performed at six state institutions, including what is now known as Central Virginia Training Center in Lynchburg. When Reynolds was sterilized there, it was called the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble Minded.
Reynolds was presumed to have epilepsy. As it turned out, he was exhibiting temporary symptoms from having been hit in the head with a rock.
Reynolds’ first wife left him after the couple learned they couldn’t have children. He married again, and this time the union lasted. His second wife, Delores, died seven years ago after 47 years of marriage.
There were times, he has said, when he and Delores would cry about their inability to have a family.
Nevertheless, he made the best of the life he had been handed.
He joined the Marine Corps and served in two wars. He was a military policeman and a firearms instructor, at one time teaching FBI agents how to shoot. He manned a 50-caliber machine gun in Korea. He retired from the corps after 30 years and found work as an electrician. At 87, he still takes occasional jobs wiring houses.
The Virginia eugenics law was upheld in the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., writing for the majority, famously declared: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Revulsion over the state’s actions brought together lawmakers from across the political spectrum, united in the belief that it was time to write the final page in a shameful chapter of the state’s history.
The compensation measure was sponsored by Del. Ben Cline, a conservative Republican from Rockbridge County, and Del. Patrick Hope, a liberal Democrat from Arlington County.
“There was a growing consensus that we needed to act while we still had the opportunity to look these people in the eye and acknowledge the wrong that was committed against them so many years ago,” Cline said.
The original legislation called for payments of $50,000 each. Even that amount was inadequate to address the wrong that was done, in Bold’s view.
“But it’s symbolic,” he said. “Now the healing and forgiveness can begin.”
Recently, I have been getting a lot of mail from mortgage borrowers asking about amortization. Most are considering whether to pay down their loan balance more rapidly, and have suddenly realized that they don’t know how best to do that, or even whether it is a good idea because they never fully grasped how mortgage amortization works.
This article explains the essentials of amortization, and why in today’s market it is a good idea for most borrowers to speed up the process — if they can.
Fully-Amortizing Payment: Almost all mortgages today have fully-amortizing payments (FAPs). This is a payment which, if maintained unchanged through the remaining life of the loan at the then-existing interest rate, will pay off the loan over its remaining life.
The FAP has two components: the interest due the lender, and the principal which is deducted from the balance. The interest portion is calculated as the amount due the lender based on the interest rate and the loan balance. The principal portion is what remains.
An Example of the Amortization Process: The loan is for $100,000 at 4% for 30 years. The FAP is $477.42. This number is calculated from a formula that you will find on my web site, or you can use one of many calculators on the web including mine.
To obtain the interest due the lender in month 1, you multiply the balance of $100,000 times the annual interest rate of .04 and divide by 12 to get $333.33. The principal payment is the residual, what remains of the payment after paying the interest. Subtracting $333.33 from $477.42 gives $144.09 as the principal.
Turning to month 2, the new balance is the old balance less the principal payment in month 1, or $99, 855.91. The interest due in month 2 is calculated in the same way as in month 1, but since it uses the new lower balance, it is $.48 lower at $332.85. That makes the principal payment in month 2 $.48 higher at $144.57.
The process repeats each month, with the portion of the FAP allocated to interest gradually declining and the portion allocated to principal gradually rising.
Additions to the Monthly Payment: One simple way to accelerate the payoff process is to add some amount to the FAP. 100% of such extra payments become principal. For example, if the payment in my example was increased by just $10 a month, the loan would pay off 13 months early. If the payment was increased by $100 a month, the loan would pay off 101 months early. I derived these numbers from calculator 2a on my web site.
Such additions to the payment are savings that yield a return equal to the mortgage rate. The mortgage borrower in my example earns 4%. If the $10 extra a month was deposited in a savings deposit, the return today would be 1% or less. That is why paying down the loan balance is a good idea.
Communicating Your Decision to the Lender: My mail from borrowers suggests that some are concerned that lenders will grab a piece of any extra payment as interest. This is nonsense, the interest payment due the lender is contractually defined in the note, and cannot be increased. I tell some borrowers that if it makes them feel better, they can include a note with their payment that the extra amount is to be credited to principal. But that is not necessary.
Occasional Larger Payments: If you hit the jackpot for $10,000 and use it to pay down your loan balance, you are again making an investment that yields the mortgage rate. There are no other investments available in the market that carry a risk-free return as high.
I have found that some borrowers contemplating a large payment to principal worry about when they must deliver the payment to the lender in order to receive credit in the current month, as opposed to the following month. Lender policies differ in that regard, and it is worth a phone call to find out what the policy is.
A larger worry is that the lender won’t give them credit “until the end”, meaning until the loan balance has been paid down to the point where it equals the extra payment. This is nonsense, a lender doing this would be committing larceny, yet it keeps popping up in my mail.
Mortgage Amortization Tools: Readers can develop an actual amortization schedule using one of my calculators. For straight amortization without extra payments, use my calculator Amortization Schedule Including Tax Savings. To see how amortization is impacted by extra payments of any type, Mortgage Payoff Calculator: Extra Monthly Payments.
For more information and unbiased mortgage advice, you can contact the professor at The Mortgage Professor.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans inched closer to embracing a stopgap measure to prevent a Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Thursday, a day before the agency runs out of money.
GOP leaders huddled with their conference behind closed doors to gauge support for a three-week continuing resolution that would keep DHS running, a day after the Senate intensified pressure on the lower chamber by preparing to vote on a “clean” DHS funding bill.
House members leaving the meeting expressed disappointment in Senate Republicans, who on Wednesday reached a deal with Democrats to advance a measure that would fund DHS absent any riders aimed at blocking President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Frustration was especially palpable among House conservatives, who refused to throw in the towel on using the power of the purse to curb Obama actions that would provide deportation relief and work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants.
“I would like to have seen more cloture votes taken and the Democrats who are actually the ones at the helm of forcing this impossible conundrum to be pointed out to the public in a better way,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said of the Senate, adding that he wasn’t sure how he would vote on a short-term continuing resolution.
Several rank-and-file members who talked to reporters after the meeting cast doubt over whether House GOP leaders would have enough votes for their plan, which a leadership aide confirmed was to pass a short-term continuing resolution on Friday, as well as a motion to go to conference with the Senate. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier in the day that she told House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that Democrats were not interested in supporting a continuing resolution.
A House Democratic leadership aide said Democrats will be encouraged to vote against the short-term bill. “If House Republicans want to end up with another manufactured crisis that risks our national security in a matter of days, they can do it with 218 votes of their own,” the aide said.
The House gambit to go to conference isn’t likely to get a warm reception in the Senate, where at least some Democrats would need to agree to it. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said unequivocally earlier in the day that Democrats would not allow a conference, calling it “a waste of time.”
House Republicans said they think that may change.
“Harry Reid isn’t God. We’ll see how he does,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who chairs the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. Carter said he would support a clean full-year bill or the short-term plan.
Part of the equation is a lawsuit against the president’s executive action filed by 26 states, being considered by a federal judge in Texas. The judge issued a preliminary injunction last week that halted Obama’s new executive action programs from moving forward as he considers their constitutionality. The Obama administration is seeking a stay of that decision that would allow the programs to begin, and is appealing.
The three-week continuing resolution may fund DHS until further rulings in the lawsuit, but it’s more likely that the legal process will stretch out for months.
Still, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the sense among House Republicans was that the court was moving in their favor, so they were winning the broader fight against Obama’s executive actions. A short-term continuing resolution and a House-Senate conference, he added, would buy Republicans more time to see how the issue plays out in the courts while putting the onus back on Democrats.
“I think a lot of them would feel pressure,” Cole said. “It’s not an unreasonable request. I think it’d be pretty hard for them once we guaranteed funding to say we don’t want to sit down and talk about it at all.”
Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) told reporters he thought the plan was a good idea, except it wasn’t clear how Republican leaders planned to actually get the Senate to go to conference.
“Without the conference, we’re just punting and passing the baton on to something else,” Labrador said.
Not all Republicans supported the strategy, with some citing how it would look to risk a DHS shutdown amid high-profile terrorist threats, and others not seeing the point in stirring up the same fight in just three weeks.
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) told reporters his message to his colleagues during the meeting was that “bad tactics yield bad outcomes.”
“I think at this point we’ve engaged in an exercise of tactical malpractice, self-delusion and self-destruction,” Dent said. “Some folks have a harder time to face the political reality than others. Some people want to be able to save face and get something from the Senate … and I said we’re not going to get anything.”
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.
