Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/the-baby-bachelor-returns-will-you-accept-this-dinosaur/
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Steve Jobs? Dream Device Has Arrived
Don Mattrick of Microsoft reveals the Xbox One during a press event in Redmond, Wa. on Tuesday.
Photo by Nick Adams/Reuters
Just before he died, Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson about his dream for revolutionizing television. His fantasy device would control all the many doodads that crowd your living room?DVRs, game consoles, Blu-ray players?and would connect to the vast world of entertainment available online. Best of all, it would be drop-dead simple to control?no more futzing with the Input button to switch between different kinds of content, no more fiddling with different remotes to control your devices. ?It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine,? Jobs said. ?I finally cracked it.?
Today, I saw something very close to Steve Jobs? dream device. Just like he envisioned, this machine turns itself into the hub of your living room. It plays video games, Blu-ray discs, TV shows, and everything you could possibly want from the Internet. It switches between this stuff seamlessly?you can forget about the Input button. And it does indeed have the simplest user interface imaginable, an eerily accurate voice-recognition system that is far more intuitive than a remote control. Want to watch MTV? Want to see what?s on HBO? Want to switch between TV and a Blu-ray? Just tell it what to do, and it will respond instantly.
Before you say anything, though, you?ve got to say its name: Xbox.
That?s right: In a new device it?s calling the Xbox One, Microsoft has done what Apple has long been rumored to do. It has created a near-perfect living room machine, one that has the potential to finally make it simple for you to watch or play anything you want, from anywhere, very quickly. Here?s how it works: Go to your TV and say, ?Xbox on.? Your TV and Xbox turn on immediately, with no pause for booting up or logging in. You?re presented with a menu?it looks very much like the Windows 8 home screen?featuring apps, games, and other stuff you?ve recently interacted with. Now go to town. Say, ?Watch CNN.? Your TV goes to the channel instantly. Say, ?Xbox game,? and the device switches to the game you were playing. Say ?Snap Skype? and the One brings up Skype in a panel to the side of your screen. Now tell it to call your mom. The One can also add its own elements on top of a TV broadcast?for instance, it can show your fantasy football stats as you?re watching an NFL game.
What?s remarkable about this is how quickly the device switches from input to input?going from TV to a Netflix show is as quick as changing the channel on your TV, and it happens with natural language commands.
In addition to letting you watch and play, the One also connects to social networks and lets you browse the Web (which you?d never want to do on your TV, but I suppose it looks cool in a demo). While it?s not very attractive?it?s got a boxy, early-VCR aesthetic?it does solve some of the persistent problems with using a video game system as a set-top box. Unlike its predecessor, the Xbox 360, Microsoft says the One is silent, and it turns itself and your TV on instantly, with a single voice command.
Still, while Microsoft?s launch event was impressively bombastic, it left many questions unanswered. The company showed a flawless live demo onstage?the One never misinterpreted a spoken command?but I didn?t get an up-close look at a working device. (Microsoft promised to reveal more at the E3 video game conference next month.) The company was also cagey about how the One will interact with your crappy cable box. Unlike in Jobs? perfect system, the Xbox One won?t replace your box. It will let you switch channels by voice, and it will be able to layer its own content on top of what?s on TV. But as The Verge?s Nilay Patel points out, the One likely won?t act as a DVR that saves TV shows to its drive, and you will still likely have to interact with your set-top box?s clunky user-interface.
There also a couple of aspects of the Xbox One that gamers won?t like. First, the device won?t play Xbox 360 games, so if you want to go back to those titles, you?ll still have to keep that console around?in which case the One really isn?t the all-in-one system it promises to be. (The company says it couldn?t maintain backward compatibility because the new system has a different processing ?architecture.?) Also, when you put a new game into the One, the game is automatically installed on your hard drive, meaning that you don?t have to keep inserting the disc when you want to play. This sounds nice, but there?s one catch: If you want to install the game on another Xbox One?that is, if you sell your game?you?ll have to pay a fee to do so, as Microsoft told Wired in a statement. (The company didn?t specify the fee, and it didn?t say whether you could play the used game from the disc without ?installing? it to the One?s hard drive.) On the other hand, Microsoft did quash rumors that the One would need a constant connection to the Internet?you can play single-player games without connecting, it says.
More unknowns: the One?s price and release date. Microsoft said the One would come out ?later this year,? though I?m guessing that doesn?t mean tomorrow. It gave no hint on pricing. When it released the Xbox 360 in 2005, that device started at $299, and it now sells for as little as $179.
I suspect the company won?t charge more than $399 for it. Indeed, I think it?d be crazy if it does. That?s because Microsoft?s best chance at making the One a truly perfect living-room device is to sell a whole lot of them very quickly. If it achieves this ubiquity, it could encourage cable and satellite companies to create apps for the Xbox. These apps would essentially turn your cable box into software that lives on your Xbox?you?d be able to get your recorded shows, on-demand content, and maybe even live TV without interacting with a physical device from your cable or satellite provider. (Last year, Comcast created just such an app for the Xbox 360; if the Xbox One gains a huge market share, other cable providers might decide to jump in, too.)
The other reason I?m hoping for a low price is that Microsoft needs to make the most of its head start. The One isn?t perfect, but it might be the closest thing we?ve seen, so far, to the living-room computer of our dreams. Microsoft needs to get it out to as many people as possible before Apple and Google create similar devices. There?s Sony, too, whose upcoming PlayStation 4 is staking out a similar gaming-plus-media-device niche?though Sony?s device looks far less intuitive than Microsoft?s. (Nintendo, meanwhile, looks out of the game at this point; its Wii U has been a flop.) What?s more, the opportunity is huge. Americans watch TV more often than they do nearly anything else, and when they?re not watching TV, they?re often playing games. The Xbox One is the first device I?ve seen to bridge these two activities in a way that isn?t clunky. If Microsoft can own that overall experience, the giant of the American tech scene could reawaken.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=ab45c1178db42911c5064eac4825dc8e
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'Dexter' Star Michael C. Hall's Spanish Colonial in ... - AOL Real Estate
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Zillow
? | Posted May 21st 2013 6:00AM
More on Zillow:
Michael C. Hall's Hal Levitt-Designed Home Hits the Market
Sean Patrick Flanery Sells Modest Home, Gets Ready for 'Dexter'
Ali Landry Lists Spanish-Style Home in Los Feliz
Zillow
? | Posted May 21st 2013 6:00AM
By Catherine Sherman
After living in a home designed by famed Los Angeles architect Hal Levitt, Michael C. Hall's real estate bar must be set high. The actor's latest purchase -- a beautifully restored 1923 Spanish colonial home -- has an upscale kitchen, media room, guest house and green hillside views from almost every window.
Hall has earned a Golden Globe for his role as Dexter Morgan, a forensic analyst and serial killer, on the hit Showtime drama series, which is set to air its eighth and final season this summer. He's also known for playing David Fisher on "Six Feet Under" in the early 2000s.
Now the actor can look forward to a master suite with wood-beamed ceilings, a private sitting room, view of downtown L.A. and luxurious master bath. A large swimming pool in the backyard with white, plush lounge chairs also provides a place to relax and entertain. The home last sold in May 2012 for $2.09 million. Hall closed the deal for less than the asking price of $3.927 million.
More on Zillow:
Michael C. Hall's Hal Levitt-Designed Home Hits the Market
Sean Patrick Flanery Sells Modest Home, Gets Ready for 'Dexter'
Ali Landry Lists Spanish-Style Home in Los Feliz
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Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Wave of attacks kills at least 79 in Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) ? A wave of attacks killed at least 79 people in Shiite and Sunni areas of Iraq on Monday, officials said, pushing the death toll over the past week to more than 200 and extending one of the most sustained bouts of sectarian violence the country has seen in years.
The bloodshed is still far shy of the pace, scale and brutality of the dark days of 2006-2007, when Sunni and Shiite militias carried out retaliatory attacks against each other in a cycle of violence that left the country awash in blood. Still, Monday's attacks, some of which hit markets and crowded bus stops during the morning rush hour, have heightened fears that the country could be turning back down the path toward civil war.
Sectarian tensions have been worsening since Iraq's minority Sunnis began protesting what they say is mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government. The mass demonstrations, which began in December, have largely been peaceful, but the number of attacks rose sharply after a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on April 23.
Iraq's Shiite majority, which was oppressed under the late dictator Saddam Hussein, now holds the levers of power in the country. Wishing to rebuild the nation rather than revert to open warfare, they have largely restrained their militias over the past five years or so as Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida have targeted them with occasional large-scale attacks.
But the renewed violence in both Shiite and Sunni areas since late last month has fueled concerns of a return to sectarian warfare. Since last Wednesday alone, at least 224 people have been killed in attacks, according to an AP count.
The worst of Monday's violence took place in Baghdad, where ten car bombs ripped through open-air markets and other areas of Shiite neighborhoods, killing at least 47 people and wounding more than 150, police officials said. In the bloodiest attack, a parked car bomb blew up in a busy market in the northern Shiite neighborhood of Shaab, killing 14 and wounding 24, police and health officials said.
The surge in bloodshed has exasperated Iraqis, who have lived for years with the fear and uncertainty bred of random violence.
"How long do we have to continue living like this, with all the lies from the government?" asked 23-year-old Baghdad resident Malik Ibrahim. "Whenever they say they have reached a solution, the bombings come back stronger than before."
"We're fed up with them and we can't tolerate this anymore," he added.
The predominantly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq was also hit Monday, with two car bombs there ? one outside a restaurant and another at the city's main bus station ? killing at least 13 and wounded 40, according to provincial police spokesman Col. Abdul-Karim al-Zaidi and the head of city's health directorate, Riadh Abdul-Amir.
In the town of Balad, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded next to a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims, killing six Iranians and one Iraq and wounding nine people, a police officer said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but the fact that they all occurred in Shiite areas raised the suspicion that Sunni militants were involved. Also, Sunni insurgents, particularly al-Qaida in Iraq, are known to employ such large-scale bombings bear.
Monday's violence also struck Sunni areas, hitting the city of Samarra north of Baghdad and the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold and the birthplace of the protest movement.
A parked car bomb in Samarra went off near a gathering of pro-government Sunni militia who were waiting outside a military base to receive salaries, killing three and wounding 13, while in Anbar gunmen ambushed two police patrols near the town of Haditha, killing eight policemen, police and army officials said.
Also in Anbar, authorities found 13 dead bodies in a remote desert area, officials said. The bodies, which included eight policemen who were kidnapped by gunmen on Friday, had been killed with a gunshot to the head.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
___
Associated Press writer Nabil Al-Jurani in Basra contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wave-attacks-kills-least-79-iraq-140828535.html
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Allosaurus fed more like a falcon than a crocodile: Engineering, anatomy work reveals differences in dinosaur feeding styles
May 21, 2013 ? The mighty T. rex may have thrashed its massive head from side to side to dismember prey, but a new study shows that its smaller cousin Allosaurus was a more dexterous hunter and tugged at prey more like a modern-day falcon.
"Apparently one size doesn't fit all when it comes to dinosaur feeding styles," said Ohio University paleontologist Eric Snively, lead author of the new study published today in Palaeontologia Electronica. "Many people think of Allosaurus as a smaller and earlier version of T. rex, but our engineering analyses show that they were very different predators."
Snively led a diverse team of Ohio University researchers, including experts in mechanical engineering, computer visualization and dinosaur anatomy. They started with a high-resolution cast of the five-foot-long skull plus neck of the 150-million-year-old predatory theropod dinosaur Allosaurus, one of the best known dinosaurs. They CT-scanned the bones at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, which produced digital data that the authors could manipulate in a computer.
Snively and mechanical engineer John Cotton applied a specialized engineering analysis borrowed from robotics called multibody dynamics. This allowed the scientists to run sophisticated simulations of the head and neck movements Allosaurus made when attacking prey, stripping flesh from a carcass or even just looking around.
"The engineering approach combines all the biological data?things like where the muscle forces attach and where the joints stop motion?into a single model. We can then simulate the physics and predict what Allosaurus was actually capable of doing," said Cotton, an assistant professor in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology.
To figure out how Allosaurus de-fleshed a Stegosaurus, the team had to "re-flesh" Allosaurus. The anatomical structure of modern-day dinosaur relatives, such as birds and crocodilians, combined with tell-tale clues on the dinosaur bones, allowed Snively and anatomists Lawrence Witmer and Ryan Ridgely to build in neck and jaw muscles, air sinuses, the windpipe and other soft tissues into their Allosaurus 3D computer model.
"Dinosaur bones simply aren't enough," said Witmer, Chang Professor of Paleontology in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and principal investigator on the National Science Foundation's Visible Interactive Dinosaur Project that provided funding for this research. "We need to know about the other tissues that bring the skeleton to life."
A key finding was an unusually placed neck muscle called longissimus capitis superficialis. In most predatory dinosaurs, such as T. rex, which Snively studied previously, this muscle passed from the side of the neck to a bony wing on the outer back corners of the skull.
"This neck muscle acts like a rider pulling on the reins of a horse's bridle," explained Snively. "If the muscle on one side contracts, it would turn the head in that direction, but if the muscles on both sides pull, it pulls the head straight back."
But the analysis of Allosaurus revealed that the longissimus muscle attached much lower on the skull, which, according to the engineering analyses, would have caused "head ventroflexion followed by retraction."
"Allosaurus was uniquely equipped to drive its head down into prey, hold it there, and then pull the head straight up and back with the neck and body, tearing flesh from the carcass ? kind of like how a power shovel or backhoe rips into the ground," Snively said.
In the animal world, this same de-fleshing technique is used by small falcons, such as kestrels. Tyrannosaurs like T. rex, on the other hand, were engineered to use a grab-and-shake technique to tear off hunks of flesh, more like a crocodile.
But the team's engineering analyses revealed a cost to T. rex's feeding style: high rotational inertia. That large bony and toothy skull perched at the end of the neck made it hard for T. rex to speed up or slow down its head or to change its course as it swung its head around.
Allosaurus, however, had a relatively very light head, which the team discovered as they restored the soft tissues and air sinuses.
Having a lot of mass sitting far away from the axis of head turning, as in T. rex, increases rotational inertia, whereas having a lighter head, as in Allosaurus, decreases rotational inertia, the researchers explained. An ice skater spins faster and faster as she tucks her arms and legs into her body, decreasing her rotational inertia as the mass of her limbs moves closer to the axis of spinning.
"Allosaurus, with its lighter head and neck, was like a skater who starts spinning with her arms tucked in," said Snively, "whereas T. rex, with its massive head and neck and heavy teeth out front, was more like the skater with her arms fully extended ? and holding bowling balls in her hands. She and the T. rex need a lot more muscle force to get going."
The end result is that Allosaurus was a much more flexible hunter that could move its head and neck around relatively rapidly and with considerable control. That control, however, came at the cost of brute-force power, requiring a de-fleshing style that, like a falcon, recruited the whole neck and body to strip flesh from the bones.
The Ohio University team will continue to use their engineering approach to explore additional differences in dinosaur feeding styles.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/6NlqA7oOSLo/130521152638.htm
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Militiamen attack gas complex in western Libya
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) ? A Libyan gas company official says militiamen have attacked a natural gas complex in the country's west, injuring two guards and stealing weapons and military vehicles.
The official says the attack took place early Monday and targeted the Mellitah Oil and Gas complex near Zwara, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) from the capital, Tripoli. The complex is a joint venture between Libya's National Oil Corp. and Italy's largest energy company, Eni SpA. The militiamen fled the site briefly after seizing weapons and equipment from the guards.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
A military official told Libya's official news agency that military helicopters are searching for the attackers.
Over a year after toppling Moammar Gadhafi's regime, Libya is plagued by lawlessness.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/militiamen-attack-gas-complex-western-libya-155603523.html
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Help Sarah Pepper Raise Money For The Leukemia and Lymphoma ...
(Photo Credit: Sarah Pepper/ CBS Houston)
Join Sarah Pepper and Luby?s to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! It?s easy!? All you have to do it eat 
Print this flyer and bring it in to any Luby?s location and present it at the counter between 4-8 p.m. and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society will receive 15% of sales.
Few facts:
Every four minutes a person is diagnosed with blood cancer.
Every ten minutes some dies from blood cancer.
(Photo Credit: Provided)
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