'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' Star Jane Russell Dies - The Hollywood Reporter

'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' Star Jane Russell Dies - The Hollywood Reporter: Generally cast in fluff films like 1943’s The Outlaw that showed off her well-endowed beauty, Russell reached the pinnacle of her career with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), starring in the comedy with Marilyn Monroe.

The twisted world of "ex-girlfriend porn"

The twisted world of "ex-girlfriend porn": It used to be that spurned lovers could scrawl an ex-girlfriend's number on a bathroom stall, along with "for a good time" and a couple of choice epithets. Now they can do all that, and much worse, while reaching a vastly larger audience, thanks to the online explosion of "ex-girlfriend porn" or "revenge porn."

2011 Academy Awards: Highlights from the show - Oscar Nominations, Academy Awards 2010 - Salon.com

2011 Academy Awards: Highlights from the show - Oscar Nominations, Academy Awards 2010 - Salon.com: This year's Academy Awards have come and gone. Last night's 3.5-hour broadcast managed to provide plenty of water-cooler fodder -- whether it be in the form of heartwarming victories, cringe-inducing gaffes or that head-scratching "Auto-tune the Oscars" thing. We've collected some of the more memorable videos from the ceremony below:

3-D Photo Booth Uses Kinect to Print You in Plastic

3-D Photo Booth Uses Kinect to Print You in Plastic: "Fabricate Yourself" is like a 3-D photo booth. Using a Microsoft Kinect, anyone can hit a button and have a 3-D model of themselves printed instantly.

Inside Intel's next-gen Core processors | Processors | Macworld

Inside Intel's next-gen Core processors | Processors | Macworld: Intel rang in 2011 with its second-generation Core processors, promising vastly superior performance, better graphics capabilities, and improved energy efficiency. How much of a difference can a new CPU generation really make? The new processors (formerly code-named Sandy Bridge) deliver stronger performance than their predecessors did, and at palatable prices.

Intel's integrated graphics have come a long way, too, with support for 3D Blu-ray and smooth playback of 1080p content. But video game fans shouldn't toss out their discrete graphics cards just yet—the graphics processors built into the new CPUs stumble on many modern titles.

Unity 3.2.0 - High-end game development app.. (Free)

Unity 3.2.0 - High-end game development app.. (Free): Unity delivers a stable and scalable platform for creating captivating content. Content that is efficient to create, and that works on low as well as high-end hardware.
Unity is the only Mac-based high-end game development tool sporting a stylish pro-app GUI, no-friction workflow and top-of-the-line technical features such as extensible graphics, great particle effects, highly optimized scripting, the Ageia physX Engine, skinned character animation and ragdolls, and making standalone games for Mac and Windows (and Dashboard Widgets and web-plugins).

Rob Glaser's SocialEyes: A quirky videophone

Rob Glaser's SocialEyes: A quirky videophone: Glaser's latest venture is a videoconferencing company with an interesting, new social dynamic.

Mac OS X Lion: Drops PowerPC Emulation, Adds QuickTime Pro Features, Much More

Mac OS X Lion: Drops PowerPC Emulation, Adds QuickTime Pro Features, Much More: As developers delve into the early build of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, a large number of smaller features are being revealed.

Oh yes. One of the new 'features', I've found, is that it will no install on the hardware I currently have. And without Rosetta, I lose not only Office, but more importantly Quicken.

FX Gives Greenlight to "Powers" Pilot

FX Gives Greenlight to "Powers" Pilot: The cable network has greenlit the pilot for "Powers," an adaptation of the long-running comic series by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. SPINOFF has the details.

Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas. And Plague | Wired Science | Wired.com

Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas. And Plague | Wired Science | Wired.com: There were only two cases of bubonic plague in humans in the United States last year. They were two people, unidentified except for their ages  — 17 and 42 — who lived in the same household in the high desert country of Lake County, Oregon. In August, they both came down with high fevers and hard, lumpy swellings in their groins. The older one, a woman, was very sick, was hospitalized with low pulse and blood pressure, and went into kidney failure.

Charlie Sheen's first draft of letter to Chuck Lorre - Satire - Salon.com

Charlie Sheen's first draft of letter to Chuck Lorre - Satire - Salon.com: Stop trying to use your mind control on me! You disguise it with fancy words like "rehab" and "psychotic," and not only have I been aware of your plans for 177 episodes now (1+7+2 and a half men = 9 and another 2 and half men rounds out to be about 11, 9/11 truth forever, you HEAR ME OBAMA?!), but I have gracefully ignored both you and the chip you implanted in my molars that tells the government what I'm thinking.

And that's just the beginning. Read on...

Xoom 4G Upgrade Requires 6-Day Mail-In Operation

Xoom 4G Upgrade Requires 6-Day Mail-In Operation: The Xoom tablet has a respectably fast Verizon 3G connection, but Motorola promises a free upgrade to Verizon's faster 4G network within a few months. To do that, however, you'll need to ship your Xoom back to the manufacturer for more than a week.

I'd call that a fatal flaw. A shame, for an otherwise promising product.

Mac OS X Lion Roundup: Recovery Partitions, TRIM Support, Core 2 Duo Minimum, Focus on Security - Mac Rumors

Mac OS X Lion Roundup: Recovery Partitions, TRIM Support, Core 2 Duo Minimum, Focus on Security - Mac Rumors: - Mac OS X Lion requires a minimum of an Intel Core 2 Duo, leaving out compatibility for Apple's earliest Intel-based machines offering Core Solo or Core Duo processors.

Charlie Sheen commits career suicide - Charlie Sheen - Salon.com

Charlie Sheen commits career suicide - Charlie Sheen - Salon.com: But there's no denying that somewhere along the way, the mediocre star of one of television's least entertaining shows has become the most dangerous man in comedy.

"30 Rock" takes on feminist hypocrisy -- and its own - 30 Rock - Salon.com

"30 Rock" takes on feminist hypocrisy -- and its own - 30 Rock - Salon.com: Just a few weeks ago, Fey's upcoming book of essays was excerpted by the New Yorker, one of the magazines currently under scrutiny for its paucity of female bylines. Her roaringly unapologetic feminist piece about the scrutiny, pressure and conflicting responsibilities of working mothers included some deep jabs at Hollywood's relationship to aging women, including her acidic assertion, in reference to a generation of older comedic actresses we never see anymore because they've been labeled crazy, that "the definition of 'crazy' in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore."

Charlie Sheen commits career suicide

Charlie Sheen commits career suicide: It turns out there's only one force in the universe crazier and more reckless than hotel room trashing, porn star partying, cocaine enjoying Charlie Sheen. And that's the newly "cured" Charlie Sheen.

Apple gets back to basics in Mac OS X Lion | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld

Apple gets back to basics in Mac OS X Lion | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld: Another new Lion feature Apple announced, “Resume,” is also an ode to iOS, but it will likely have an even larger impact on the Mac. Just like switching between apps on an iPad or iPhone, or even restarting the device, Resume is Lion’s official support for third-party Mac apps to pick up right where they left off, even after a restart. That’s not merely a good idea in iOS, it’s just a good idea for any reasonably complex computing device—especially one that is designed to multitask and juggle many apps and open windows with ease.

Speaking of recovering your data, a pair of new features will make it easier to continue working with individual documents and recuperating lost data—key requirements of any worker bee who needs more power and flexibility than iOS typically offers. Auto Save will allow apps to automatically save your work as you create it, while Versions brings the continuous backup concepts and interface behind Time Machine down to a per-document basis. You will be able to step back through the history of the current file on-the-fly and easily revert to a previous iteration.

Could Lion bring us closer to a Mac home server? | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld

Could Lion bring us closer to a Mac home server? | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld: Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion. It’s easy to set up your Mac as a server and take advantage of the many services Lion Server has to offer.

Currently, Mac OS X Server costs $499, or is bundled with a Mac Mini server that costs $999. But with Lion, Mac OS X Server will be provided at the same cost as Mac OS X client, most likely around $129 if Apple sticks with its traditional operating system pricing. To install Lion Server, you would simply choose the Customize option when you run the installer. So every Mac user running Lion will be able to run the server software. And that leads to some interesting speculation about what server features Apple may offer to home users.

Apple’s new MacBook Pros benchmarked: The performance increase is amazing

Apple’s new MacBook Pros benchmarked: The performance increase is amazing: The performance of the new MacBook Pros is amazing...

Feb. 25, 1919: Oregon Taxes Gas by the Gallon

Feb. 25, 1919: Oregon Taxes Gas by the Gallon: Oregon passes the nation's first per-gallon tax on gasoline. It's only a penny, and it's only one state, but you know where things go from here.

Why do women have casual sex? - Sex News, Sex Talk - Salon.com

Why do women have casual sex? - Sex News, Sex Talk - Salon.com: Anticipated pleasure motivates both women and men to have casual sex and women would accept more casual sex offers from men, if they believed that they would get good sex out of the encounter.

Apple Releases First Developer Preview of Mac OS X Lion, Announces New Features - Mac Rumors

Apple Releases First Developer Preview of Mac OS X Lion, Announces New Features - Mac Rumors: - Versions, which automatically saves successive versions of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, edit and even revert to previous versions;

- AirDrop, a remarkably simple way to copy files wirelessly from one Mac to another with no setup;

- Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;

- Auto Save, which automatically saves your documents as you work;

GameSalad 0.9.2 - Develop iOS games without programming experience.. (Free)

GameSalad 0.9.2 - Develop iOS games without programming experience.. (Free): GameSalad is the world's most advanced game development tool for non-programmers. From an easy to use logic and physics system, to a visual based interface, and even the means to share your games to the iPhone, iPad, Desktop, and Web - GameSalad provides everything you need to get your game from concept to execution. Simply download the tool to a your Mac, install, and start making games!

Apple celebrates Steve Jobs' birthday with dual- and quad-core MacBook Pros | Tech Gear News - Betanews

Apple celebrates Steve Jobs' birthday with dual- and quad-core MacBook Pros | Tech Gear News - Betanews: Apple CEO Steve Jobs turns 56 today. Happy birthday, Mr. Jobs.

Apple Updates MacBooks With Intel Technology - WSJ.com

Apple Updates MacBooks With Intel Technology - WSJ.com: Apple Inc. unveiled its new line of MacBook Pro notebooks with next-generation Intel Corp. processors and the chip giant's high-speed data-transfer technology.

The updated notebook line follows Apple's pattern of releasing new products annually. Intel's superfast PC connection technology allows users to transfer files at 10 gigabits per second. At that speed, Intel says a user could transfer a typical Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds.

Apple also said its new MacBook Pro line is up to twice as fast as the previous generation, using the latest Intel Core processors that combine graphics and computing on the same piece of silicon. The company pointed out on its website that all models use Intel's "recently refined chipsets."

FaceTime for Mac out of beta | The Digital Home - CNET News

FaceTime for Mac out of beta | The Digital Home - CNET News: Mac owners can now download FaceTime for video chats with friends.
Apple said today that FaceTime for Mac is available in its Mac App Store for 99 cents. With the help of the app, those using Mac OS X Snow Leopard can engage in video chats with people using the FaceTime app on the iPhone 4, the latest iPod Touch, and other Macs.

App Store, here I come. (Oops. It costs 99¢.)

Libya's Leader Blames al-Qaida for Protests | North Africa | English

Libya's Leader Blames al-Qaida for Protests | North Africa | English: In a Thursday speech relayed to state television by telephone, he said al-Qaida forces had given "hallucinogenic" drugs to youth in Libya to get them to incite unrest.  He said people "with any brains" would not take part in the demonstrations. He urged parents to "control" their children and keep them at home.

I see. So, Osama slipped some LSD in the kid's falafels, and that's what this is all about. That is some bad trip.

Apple announces March 2 special event

Apple announces March 2 special event: Apple has announced it will hold a special event on March 2 at 10 a.m. Pacific at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

New book about Sarah Palin confirms what you know about Sarah Palin

New book about Sarah Palin confirms what you know about Sarah Palin:

People who worked with her have once again portrayed Sarah Palin as petty, vindictive, dim, hypersensitive to perceived slights, and obsessed with how the media portray her. Surprise! A book about Palin, written by former Palin aide Frank Bailey with the publisher of the Alaska blog Mudflats, has been leaked to the press, because publishers have not yet expressed interest in it (though I bet a good editor could whip the 450-page manuscript into shape). I'm sure this will help Palin recognize that her paranoia has become destructive and damaging to her reputation.

The fun parts of "In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years" (woof) are, of course, the e-mails from Palin herself, who always comes off as everyone's worst BlackBerry-addicted boss. Here's what she wrote to her staff after an invitation to speak at a fundraising dinner was rescinded because she never confirmed her attendance (she is very bad at showing up to meetings or scheduled appearances on time, or at all):

“Yes, (Newt/GOP) are egotistical, narrow minded machine goons… but all the more reason God protected me from getting up on stage in front of 5000 political and media ‘elites’ to praise him, then it be shown across the nation.” Palin wrote in the e-mail.

“At some point Newt would have shown his true colors anyway and we would have been devastated having known we’d earlier prostituted ourselves up in front of the country introducing him and acting like that good ol’ rich white guy is the savior of the party,” she continued.

[...]

“Plus, I had nothing to wear, and God knew that too. Party machinery sucks. I can’t tell you how much I hate it - nothing ever changes - we went through it before and after the VP campaign,” she wrote. “I’ve gone through it all my career. We just don’t fit into it, and maybe we should thank God for that.”

Sarah Palin also hates seatbelt and helmet laws.

The book accidentally features Palin's current personal e-mail address, which Wonkette used to find her Facebook page. She "likes" herself, and has twelve friends.

How We Know by Freeman Dyson | The New York Review of Books

How We Know by Freeman Dyson | The New York Review of Books: Gleick quotes the computer scientist Jaron Lanier describing the effect of the flood: “It’s as if you kneel to plant the seed of a tree and it grows so fast that it swallows your whole town before you can even rise to your feet.”

Neo-Feudalism Explained - Vladislav L. Inozemtsev - The American Interest Magazine

Neo-Feudalism Explained - Vladislav L. Inozemtsev - The American Interest Magazine: The Russian system cannot exist without economic freedoms, and that is why there will be no second coming of the Soviet Union. But the system deeply fears political freedoms, which are incompatible with its feudal perspective. Thus Russia will not soon look like any country in Western Europe or North America. It will not collapse, and it will not radically evolve. It will simply be. And what hope the future supposedly holds will resemble the wry Stalinist joke that the horizon is a far-off place that continues to recede as you approach it.

Review: <cite>All-Star Superman<cite> Is Most Ambitious Man of Steel Movie Ever

Review: All-Star Superman Is Most Ambitious Man of Steel Movie Ever: With equal parts brain and brawn, the animated adaptation of Grant Morrison's mind-wiping comic delivers the intelligence upgrade so sorely needed by superhero cinema.

All-Star Superman is the smartest Superman movie ever made.

A sizable portion of the credit for the full-length animated film’s cerebral and visual ambition belongs to writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, whose Eisner-winning All-Star Superman comic book miniseries blew critics and readers’ minds with an out-of-continuity recounting of Superman’s last days.

The film remains faithful to Morrison and Quitely’s comics without watering down their fringe science, astronomical action, earnest romance and envelope-pushing comedy.

All-Star Superman remains a loyal, loving cinematic distillation of one of the writer’s most memorable efforts, as well as the most thematically and emotionally ambitious Man of Steel film in existence.

All-Star Superman, the comics and the film, find Superman at his sweetest, his most human, precisely because they ask so much of him rather than saddling him with a couple of easily surmountable challenges, or, worse, recounting his oft-told back story for a new generation.

The future of the book

The future of the book: It occurred to me, that as an industry, we should try to build a list of important concepts, features, and ideas that will help us all work towards building The Book of the Future. So I will start the list here, and invite everyone reading to contribute to the list through the comments below. Pass this post onto your colleagues and start a discussion. Let's change the The Book of the Future before we have to.

Kevin Kelly on how to sell free

Kevin Kelly on how to sell free: In a world where everything is moving to the free, we have to have a different attitude ... the only things that become valuable are the things that cannot be copied. Let me give you one example: immediacy. So, you're not paying for the copy, you're paying for immediacy — you can eventually get anything you want for free if you wait long enough, but if you want it as soon as the creator has created it, the artist has made it, you're willing to pay for the immediacy of it.

Who's the worst president of them all?

Who's the worst president of them all?: In 2006, while the Bush administration smashed its way through two wars, countless constitutional constraints, and a fragile economy constructed on the slippery slope of tax cuts for the wealthy, Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian, pondered in Rolling Stone whether W. would be regarded as America's worst president. Rather coyly, Wilentz never came right out and said that Bush 43 was the worst, but his essay gathered together all the evidence that pointed toward only one verdict: guilty as charged.

Too much Facebook gets nun banished from order

Too much Facebook gets nun banished from order: A Spanish nun who lived for 35 years in a secluded Dominican convent is expelled from the order for spending too much time on Facebook.

What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness by Clark Whelton - City Journal

What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness by Clark Whelton - City Journal:

I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel.

The first applicant was a young man from NYU. During the interview, he spiked his replies so heavily with “like” that I mentioned his frequent use of the word. He seemed confused by my comment and replied, “Well . . . like . . . yeah.” Now, nobody likes a grammar prig. All’s fair in love and language, and the American lingo is in constant motion. “You should,” for example, has been replaced by “you need to.” “No” has faded into “not really.” “I said” is now “I went.” As for “you’re welcome,” that’s long since become “no problem.”

By autumn 1987, the job interviews revealed that “like” was no longer a mere slang usage. It had mutated from hip preposition into the verbal milfoil that still clogs spoken English today. Vagueness was on the march. Double-clutching (“What I said was, I said . . .”) sprang into the arena. Playbacks, in which a speaker re-creates past events by narrating both sides of a conversation (“So I’m like, ‘Want to, like, see a movie?’ And he goes, ‘No way.’ And I go . . .”), made their entrance. I was baffled by what seemed to be a reversion to the idioms of childhood. And yet intern candidates were not hesitant or uncomfortable about speaking elementary school dialects in a college-level job interview. I engaged them in conversation and gradually realized that they saw Vagueness not as slang but as mainstream English. At long last, it dawned on me: Vagueness was not a campus fad or just another generational raid on proper locution. It was a coup. Linguistic rabble had stormed the grammar palace. The principles of effective speech had gone up in flames.

Unexpectedly, Navy’s Superlaser Blasts Away a Record | Danger Room | Wired.com

Unexpectedly, Navy’s Superlaser Blasts Away a Record | Danger Room | Wired.com: The free-electron laser is one of the Navy’s highest priority weapons programs, and it’s not hard to see why. “We’re fast approaching the limits of our ability to hit maneuvering pieces of metal in the sky with other maneuvering pieces of metal,” says Rear Adm. Nevin Carr, the Navy’s chief of research. The next level: “fighting at the speed of light and hypersonics” — that is, the free-electron laser and the Navy’s Mach-8 electromagnetic railgun.

Currently, the free-electron laser project produces the powerful beam in the world, able to cut through 20 feet of steel per second. If it gets up to its ultimate goal, of generating a megawatt’s worth of laser power, it’ll be able to burn through 2000 feet of steel per second. Just add electrons.

The submerged state

The submerged state: The Great Paradox -- that is what future generations will likely call this era, and rightly so. Our children’s children will look back and see that just a few years after the deregulatory agenda of anti-government ideologues resulted in a horrific recession, American politics somehow became even more dominated by anti-government zealotry than ever before.

Apple Buying Up Touch Screens with Over 60% of Global Supply in 2011

Apple Buying Up Touch Screens with Over 60% of Global Supply in 2011: Digitimes reports that Apple has secured nearly 60% of the global touch panel capacity of 2011 in order to fulfill its internal goals of shipping 40 million iPads this year.

Adrianne Palicki Cast as Wonder Woman

Adrianne Palicki Cast as Wonder Woman: Former "Friday Night Lights" star Adrianne Palicki has landed the role of the DC Comics superheroine in David E. Kelley’s "Wonder Woman" revival for NBC. SPINOFF ONLINE has the details.

Giant Solar Blast Headed for Earth

Giant Solar Blast Headed for Earth: The biggest solar blast in four years erupted late Monday, and it's sending jets of charged particles right at Earth. The flare will spark bright auroras when it hits the magnetosphere in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Use value by Barton Swaim - The New Criterion

Use value by Barton Swaim - The New Criterion: "The half-educated passing sentence on the uneducated for failing to obey rules understood by neither."

The third edition of the work of the brilliant and cantankerous Englishman H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, published in 1996, signaled the triumph of the descriptivist view of language—the view; that is, that the lexicographer’s duty is merely to describe the language as it’s used, not to make pronouncements about how it ought to be used. It also signaled the triumph of tedium over enjoyment, and of abstract truth over utility. Edited by the late R. W. Burchfield, The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, as the third edition was titled, addressed all the significant questions about English grammar and usage and explained with sufficient clarity the ways in which those questions have been addressed in the past.

Here, for instance, is the first paragraph of Fowler’s 1926 entry for the phrase if and when:

Any writer who uses this formula lays himself open to entirely reasonable suspicions on the part of his readers. There is the suspicion that he is a mere parrot, who cannot say part of what he has often heard without saying the rest also; there is the suspicion that he likes verbiage for its own sake; there is the suspicion that he is a timid swordsman who thinks he will be safer with a second sword in his left hand; there is the suspicion that he has merely been too lazy to make up his mind between if & when.

Apple unveils subscription service in App Store

Apple unveils subscription service in App Store: Publishers can set the price and length of the subscription term. Payment processing will be handled by Apple, which will get 30 percent of the revenue for new subscribers.

'Magnetricity' Created in Crystals of Spin Ice

'Magnetricity' Created in Crystals of Spin Ice: Electricity has a new little sister: magnetricity. The moving magnetic charges created in the lab, which behave almost exactly like electrical charges flowing through batteries and biological systems, could one day be useful in developing "magnetronic" devices.

Auto-corrected text leads to killing

Auto-corrected text leads to killing: A man sends a text to his friend. Unfortunately, his phone uses predictive texting and changes the spelling of a word. The resulting text so enrages the recipient that a fatal argument ensues.

Can "Glee" be saved? - Glee - Salon.com

Can "Glee" be saved? - Glee - Salon.com: I hope "Glee" gets a grip on itself and returns to some semblance of consistency and sense. Right now it's the network TV show as brilliant cokehead pal -- lively, charming and funny, but also manic, scattered and inept; the sort of friend who would show up during the last 10 minutes of your birthday party looking like he just rolled out of a dumpster, and regift you a present you gave him last year -- with the shrink-wrap still on it.  You look at a friend like that and think, Deep down, he's still the same person he always was -- and even at his worst, he has his moments. But you also wonder if those moments are worth the trouble.

This Modern World

This Modern World: Starring MiddleMan, Egyptian Strongman, and Dungeon Master.

Apple securing $7.8 billion worth of Samsung displays, memory?

Apple securing $7.8 billion worth of Samsung displays, memory?: A report says the two companies are working out a deal to make Apple Samsung's largest components customer. Is this the supplier deal Apple hinted about last month?

And this is why you need a $60B warchest.

iPads storm the enterprise | Tablets | iOS Central | Macworld

iPads storm the enterprise | Tablets | iOS Central | Macworld: Klatt is at the leading edge of a growing wave of enterprise customers who are adopting the iPad for business use. “Enterprise CIOs are adding iPad to their approved device list at an amazing rate,” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said recently. “Today, over 80 percent of the Fortune 100 are already deploying or piloting iPad, up from 65 percent in the September quarter. Some recent examples include JPMorgan Chase, Cardinal Health, Wells Fargo, Archer Daniels Midland, Sears Holdings and DuPont.”

A major reason that iPads are being accepted in the enterprise is that Apple significantly upgraded its iOS operating system last summer to include a number of enterprise-friendly security features.

“These include application-level encryption,” says Andrew Jaquith, CTO at Perimeter E-Security and former lead security analyst at Forrester Research. “This encrypts the content of each application’s data with a unique key, separating out each application’s data on the device.”

Encryption is built into the hardware, making it fast—and also making it easy for enterprises to wipe the device if it’s lost or stolen. “In a tenth of a second,” Jaquith says.

In addition, iOS 4 allows enterprises to impose security policies on their mobile devices. Policies can be imposed on all company-owned iPads and iPhones, or added to personal devices owned by employees.

Dear Single Women of NYC: It's Not Them, It's You. - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice

Dear Single Women of NYC: It's Not Them, It's You. - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice: If you're like me (and I think a lot of us are), you might say you can't stand drama and that all you want is a nice, stable relationship with someone who loves and treats you well, but "nice" and "stable" have hardly the appeal of words like "exciting" or "passionate" or, well, "drama."

Four in 10 people consider marriage obsolete.

Valentine's Day Romance: A First Kiss Is More Memorable Than a First Sexual Encounter - ABC News

Valentine's Day Romance: A First Kiss Is More Memorable Than a First Sexual Encounter - ABC News: In the Middle Ages among the illiterate, legal documents were marked with an X and sealed with a kiss. "I like when he takes charge...but not too aggressive," said Kendra Handy, 21, of Snellville, Ga. "I like to feel engaged -- kissing is about more than just lip." "It may have looked like an accident with the spaghetti," she said. "But Tramp knew exactly what he was doing."

"In romance, the kiss takes us toward emotional intimacy," he said. "We face our beloved, look into their eyes, or close the eyes as we reach deeper into the soul of the experience, crossing the line between our separate selves and our deepest longings to be part of something more."

How to switch to Google Calendar

How to switch to Google Calendar: Do you want to share your calendar with others and sync your calendars across all your Macs and iOS devices—without paying for Apple's MobileMe? You can with Google Calendar. Lex Friedman shows you how to make the switch from iCal.

SPINOFF: Rosenbaum Will Return For "Smallville" Finale After All

SPINOFF: Rosenbaum Will Return For "Smallville" Finale After All: After nearly a year filled with speculation and repeated refusals, Michael Rosenbaum has announced he’ll reprise his role as Lex Luthor in the two-hour series finale of Smallville.

Schwarzenegger says he's returning to acting

Schwarzenegger says he's returning to acting: After seven years in the California governor's mansion, Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to his old day job: acting.

Obama to visit Oregon next week

Obama to visit Oregon next week:

President Barack Obama will travel to Oregon next week to visit Intel Corp in Hillsboro, Ore.

World's Total CPU Power: One Human Brain

World's Total CPU Power: One Human Brain: How much information can the world transmit, process, and store? A pair of researchers have tasked themselves to find out by tracking the changes in 60 different analog and digital technologies, from newsprint to cellular data, for a period of more than 20 years.

Mubarak: A survivor comes undone

Mubarak: A survivor comes undone: He survived assassination attempts and wave after wave of Mideast crises, a solid ally of the West whose stable image reassured many Egyptians. Hosni Mubarak ended his presidency Friday as a symbol of what was wrong with Egypt: the repression, the corruption, the lost hopes of a swelling, impoverished class.

Mac Basics: How to restore a hard drive using Time Machine

Mac Basics: How to restore a hard drive using Time Machine: Time Machine backs up your system settings, documents, and applications, making it easy to not only recover from a failed hard disk, but also to migrate these files to a new computer, or to a hard drive that’s faster or has more capacity. Here’s how to restore your data from Time Machine.

Harvard, Mitre cook up programmable nanoprocessor | Cutting Edge - CNET News

Harvard, Mitre cook up programmable nanoprocessor | Cutting Edge - CNET News: Researchers at Harvard University and Mitre have detailed the architecture for a programmable nanoprocessor built out of ultra-small nanowires.
The nanoprocessor, outlined in a Nature article published this week, is formed of 496 non-volatile field effect transistor (FET) nodes arranged in a 960-micrometer-square area, overlaid with semiconductor materials.

Nokia Turns To Windows Phone 7. Poof! Symbian Is History

Nokia Turns To Windows Phone 7. Poof! Symbian Is History: Microsoft and Nokia have announced a partnership that will pair Microsoft’s less-than-successful OS with Nokia’s flagging handset business. This means that the Finnish company will ditch Symbian, Nokia's flagship OS and not so very long ago the most prevalent mobile operating software by far.

"X-Men: First Class" Trailer Debuts - Comic Book Resources

"X-Men: First Class" Trailer Debuts - Comic Book Resources: As promised yesterday, 20th Century Fox unveiled the first official trailer for "X-Men: First Class" this afternoon. Helmed by director Matthew Vaughn, the Marvel Comics adaptation prequel focuses on the 1960s lives of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr – AKA Professor X and Magneto.

The film stars James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender in the lead roles along with Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, January Jones as Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Havok, Zoe Kravitz as Angel, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, Edi Gathegi as Darwin, Oliver Platt as the Man in Black, and Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee.

Yahoo Doubles Down On the Web With ‘Livestand’ Tablet Platform | Epicenter | Wired.com

Yahoo Doubles Down On the Web With ‘Livestand’ Tablet Platform | Epicenter | Wired.com: To use Livestand, an iPad or Android tablet user visits the Livestand homepage, signs in with their Yahoo, Facebook or Google account. Like Yahoo.com, the default page will include a mix of content from Yahoo, including its popular news, sports, finance and celebrity sites, as well as content from other media companies that decide to also publish on the platform, such as Surfer magazine.

Yahoo says it will personalize the mix based on topics you say you are interested in, and then deeper refinements will come from the personalization technology that watches what you read. Yahoo currently uses to make millions of individualized variations on its Yahoo.com homepage.


Nike Run magazine published in Yahoo's Livestand platform.
Yahoo thinks the platform, based on open HTML5 standards, will be easier, cheaper and more flexible for publishers than using custom app creation tools, such as the ones used by Wired magazine and The Daily to create iPad apps.

Yahoo also thinks the platform could help solve online journalism’s revenue woes.

“We see tablets a catalyst that will allow ad dollars to shift from TV and print to interactive,” Yahoo’s chief product officer Blake Irving told reporters and analysts in a call Thursday. “The tablet is something you can lean back on a couch with, and curl up with. So brands can finally match the intimacy that they had with magazines.”

Without naming names, Irving said Livestand’s deep integration with publication’s backend systems and its interactivity will trump currently hot iPad reading apps such as Flipboard, which create tablet “magazines” by monitoring links in Twitter and RSS feeds.

“RSS-like magazines deliver a shallow experience,” Irving said.

Irv Henderson, Yahoo’s vice president for mobile, described Livestand as “your digital newsstand that is continually programmed by your interests.”

“The more you use it, the better it gets,” he said.

Hulu Desktop 0.9.10 - Stream TV shows to your desktop.. (Free)

Hulu Desktop 0.9.10 - Stream TV shows to your desktop.. (Free): Hulu Desktop is a lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer. It features a sleek new look that's optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center remote controls or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu's entire library with just six buttons. For users without remotes, the application is keyboard and mouse-enabled. Hulu Desktop is a downloadable application and will work on PCs and Macs. It will initially launch as a beta product during which we plan to gather and incorporate user feedback to improve the service.

LOVE IT!!

DirecTV 3D channel launching Sunday

DirecTV 3D channel launching Sunday: The Sony, Discovery, and IMAX-backed channel introduced early last year will finally go live this weekend.

The Church of Scientology's friends in Washington

The Church of Scientology's friends in Washington: Did you read that New Yorker piece on the Church of Scientology? You really have to. I know it's long, but it's worth it. If you're short on time, there are a lot of summaries.

Paul Haggis Vs. the Church of Scientology : The New Yorker

Paul Haggis Vs. the Church of Scientology : The New Yorker:

Scrivener 2.0.3 - Project management, word processing tool for writers.. (Shareware)

Scrivener 2.0.3 - Project management, word processing tool for writers.. (Shareware): Scrivener is a project management and writing tool for writers of all kinds that stays with you from that first unformed idea all the way through to the first - or even final - draft. Outline and structure your ideas; take notes; storyboard your masterpiece using a powerful virtual corkboard; view research while you write; track themes using keywords; dynamically combine multiple scenes into a single text. Scrivener has already been enthusiastically adopted by best-selling novelists and novices alike. Outline... Edit... Storyboard... Write.

Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms - Salem-News.Com

Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms - Salem-News.Com: The Earth's northern magnetic pole was moving towards Russia at a rate of about five miles annually. That progression to the East had been happening for decades.

Suddenly, in the past decade the rate sped up. Now the magnetic pole is shifting East at a rate of 40 miles annually, an increase of 800 percent. And it continues to accelerate.

Recently, as the magnetic field fluctuates, NASA has discovered "cracks" in it. This is worrisome as it significantly affects the ionosphere, troposphere wind patterns, and atmospheric moisture. All three things have an effect on the weather.

What the right won't admit about Reagan - War Room - Salon.com

What the right won't admit about Reagan - War Room - Salon.com: "He's a tax-raiser, an amnesty-giver, a cut-and-runner, and he negotiated with terrorists," Stark continued. "Why is he a hero to conservatives?"

Limbaugh was beside himself. "Where did you get this silly notion that Reagan raised taxes on Social Security? What websites do you read? Where did you pick that up?"

"Look up the Greenspan Commission," Stark advised. "It's not too hard to find. It's a matter of history."

He's right. Reagan increased payroll taxes in 1983. History records that, alarmed by spiraling deficits, he signed tax increases during six of his eight years in office. Even so, his administration tripled the national debt, to almost $3 trillion.

Consistent with the GOP's faith-based War on Arithmetic, his acolyte Dubya then redoubled the debt to $10.4 trillion, leaving a $1.4 trillion yearly deficit.

Note to the Tea Party: Had President Clinton's tax policies remained in place since 2001, the national debt GOP politicians pretend to agonize over would no longer exist.

But Stark never got that far, because Limbaugh hit the mute button, then delivered a lengthy soliloquy about how liberals can't be reasoned with, only defeated. Is there a bigger faker in American life?

A Republican parade of kooks and shills - How the World Works - Salon.com

A Republican parade of kooks and shills - How the World Works - Salon.com: He appears to be best known as an author of "Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe"... "I saw it as my duty to spread the truth about what a horrific tyrant Lincoln was... I think secession is not only possible but necessary if any part of America is every to be considered "the land of the free" in any meaningful sense..."

Needless to say, DiLorenzo is not a fan of the Federal Reserve and "its legalized counterfeiting operations."

Katy Perry's best assets? Two guesses

Katy Perry's best assets? Two guesses:

You know what's the best thing about Katy Perry? I'll give you two guesses. Sure, the va-va-voomy singer certainly knows how to craft a pop hook that will burrow into your psyche and stay there all damn summer, and she exudes all the buoyant exuberance of Miss America crossed with a sack of kittens. But come on -- it's the rack. Well, that and the badonkadonk. Together they have made Perry, in her relatively brief career, as iconic an American institution as baseball and Wall Street bailouts.

HP unveils TouchPad tablet, WebOS headed to PCs

HP unveils TouchPad tablet, WebOS headed to PCs: HP introduces the TouchPad, a WebOS-powered tablet, along with two new WebOS phones--the Veer and a follow-up to the Pre. The company also announced that WebOS would be headed to PCs.

Jeff Beck still rocks — and rolls in his hot rods - Entertainment - Music - TODAYshow.com

Jeff Beck still rocks — and rolls in his hot rods - Entertainment - Music - TODAYshow.com: He is a sonic Magellan, going to places unfathomable by the complacent human. He thinks out of the box, and in this case the box is usually hand wired, with bass, treble and reverb knobs. He has countless imitators, but no one can duplicate his knack for originality.

Les Paul? Exactly right.

Jeff Beck? Right again.

The two men have seats next to each other in the music pantheon, in the room with the killer acoustics. Even though Paul passed away in August 2009 at the age of 94 and Beck is still wired, rough and ready at 66, their legends remain intertwined. They forged reputations as guitarists who wanted to go to places no one else had ever been.

“And that all started when I was offered a gig in ’64 in Richmond (England). It was a big athletic ground. And I just had a real concern about being heard. I figured, if I’m going to get the biggest gig of my life, they’re going to hear me.

“I got some people to contact Vox, who made big amps. I said, ‘Bring every one you got.’ So I had this big row of Super Beatle amps. I plugged into that and it sounded not too bad. It was right for the venue. I suppose I could have been the first person to play through that many amps.

“Then it went stupid. Then Marshall got a hold of the idea and started making higher wattage. So it was all my bloody fault, really.”

Stefan Kanfer's Tough Without a Gun: What made Humphrey Bogart so great? - By Tom Shone - Slate Magazine

Stefan Kanfer's Tough Without a Gun: What made Humphrey Bogart so great? - By Tom Shone - Slate Magazine:

Theory of mind and the belief in God. - By Jesse Bering - Slate Magazine

Theory of mind and the belief in God. - By Jesse Bering - Slate Magazine: Consider, briefly, the implications of seeing God this way, as a sort of scratch on our psychological lenses rather than the enigmatic figure out there in the heavenly world that most people believe Him to be. Subjectively, God would still be present in our lives. (For some people, rather annoyingly so.) He would continue to suffuse our experiences with an elusive meaning and give the sense that the universe is communicating with us in various ways. But this notion of God as an illusion is a radical and, some would say, even dangerous idea because it raises important questions about whether God is an autonomous, independent agent that lives outside human brain cells, or instead a phantom cast out upon the world by our species' own peculiarly evolved theory of mind. Since the human brain, like any physical organ, is a product of evolution, and since natural selection works without recourse to intelligent forethought, this mental apparatus of ours evolved to think about God quite without need of the latter's consultation, let alone His being real.

Cobie Smulders Almost An Avenger - Comic Book Resources

Cobie Smulders Almost An Avenger - Comic Book Resources: The article says that Smulders is "wrapping up a deal" for the movie which apparently begins filming this April for a May 4, 2012 release. This places the actress above other noted contenders for the role including Morena Baccarin, Jessica Lucas and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And while Smulders isn't one of Whedon's regular featured players, she does share TV time each week with former "Buffy" star Allison Hannigan and was noted by Whedon as his top choice to play Wonder Woman when his film pitch on that superheroine fell apart.

CollabraCam offers real-time, multi-camera shooting on iOS

CollabraCam offers real-time, multi-camera shooting on iOS: The new CollabraCam app allows up to four wirelessly-sycned iPhone cinematographers to shoot video under the direction of a fifth crewmember.

The Super Bowl's bloated, chaotic spectacle - Super Bowl - Salon.com

The Super Bowl's bloated, chaotic spectacle - Super Bowl - Salon.com: what really jumped out this year were all the ads that showed how Internet mash-up culture has found its way to Madison Avenue -- and that generally suggested how modern technology has pretty much destroyed our sense of time and space.

Wow. While watching the Super Bowl, I was reading McLuhan's "The Medium is the Massage", where he pretty much says the same thing. Except he says it in 1967. The year of the first Super Bowl. Forty-five year ago.

Many of the ads seemed to be about Super Bowl advertising -- and about the act of consuming media in general, and about living in a universe where consuming media is the same thing as being alive.

Television is sports is advertising is history; pop culture devours itself.

Organized Crime: The World's Largest Social Network

Organized Crime: The World's Largest Social Network: Transnational organized crime spans five continents, cycling drugs, people and counterfeit goods in an estimated $2 trillion industry.

AOL buys Huffington Post for $315 million

AOL buys Huffington Post for $315 million: Arianna Huffington announces she will become head of the newly formed Huffington Post Media Group, which appears set to integrate all HuffPo and AOL content, including Engadget and TechCrunch.

SPINOFF: Do We Prefer Comfort TV To Good TV?

SPINOFF: Do We Prefer Comfort TV To Good TV?: As an episode of "Late Night with Craig Ferguson" shows how good talk shows can be, SPINOFF asks: Why does television so often fail to live up to its potential?

The takeaway language of slang by James Sharpe - TLS

The takeaway language of slang by James Sharpe - TLS: There are, as with Green’s Dictionary, numerous entries which relate to sex: “beard-splitter” for “an enjoyer of women” has a modern ring, while the reader will also come across such terms as “butter’d bun”, meaning “lying with a woman that has been just layn with by another man”. Numerous other entries relate to crime and punishment, and to drink and the milieu of the alehouse.

When Hari Kunzru met Michael Moorcock | Books | The Guardian

When Hari Kunzru met Michael Moorcock | Books | The Guardian: Hari Kunzru was introduced to science fiction aged 10 – and was hooked. After years of fandom, he went to meet master of the genre Michael Moorcock at home in Texas, where they discussed his 15,000 word a day habit, taking acid with his friend JG Ballard and writing a Doctor Who novel

What I learned working in a porn store

What I learned working in a porn store: It starts with the way they open the door. Some press their faces against the outside glass of our large storefront window and pretend to look at the mundane Hollywood films while surreptitiously angling their eyes to the room marked "Adult XXX." Some try to sneak in, shoulders down and head to the side. My station is right next to the entrance and, knowing they've been caught, they reel around and greet me with a laugh not unlike a hyena. Some burst in, yelling their demands before the door has even banged into the opposite wall. A constant trickle of men in their mid- to late 30s, heterosexual, varied ethnic and economic demographics bound by one thing -- pornography. Whatever their way of announcing themselves in this Philadelphia sex shop, two things are certain:

Stephen Colbert takes on Bill O'Reilly's impeccable moon logic

Stephen Colbert takes on Bill O'Reilly's impeccable moon logic: All Bill O'Reilly did was ask an innocent question: How'd the moon get there? And the blogosphere erupted.

We fought a war on lies, and lies won

We fought a war on lies, and lies won: Ronald Reagan gave America so many pretty sayings, but when it comes to social equality, he'll go down in history for his lyrical lie, "The federal government declared a war on poverty, and poverty won." (He said it many times, many ways; that exact quote is from his 1988 State of the Union address.)

Review: Literature and Latte Scrivener 2.0.2

Review: Literature and Latte Scrivener 2.0.2: Scrivener 2 offers an extensive suite of writing aids without ever forcing users to confirm to any set process. Whether you want to jump in and start typing, or prefer to compile meticulous research and outline the whole narrative, Scrivener’s happy to hand you the tools and get out of your way.

NFL teams may replace playbooks with iPads

NFL teams may replace playbooks with iPads: The head of tech for the Dallas Cowboys tells CNET his team and at least a "couple" others are thinking of abandoning paper playbooks and game-day printouts of plays.

Possible UFO in Jerusalem ignites Web controversy

Possible UFO in Jerusalem ignites Web controversy:

A bright light that hovered over an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem before "shooting off, as if disturbed," is causing dissension among UFO experts across the Web.  Skeptics are having a hard time writing this one off as a hoax because, well, there's more than one video account of the event.

SRS Labs introduces iWow 3D

SRS Labs introduces iWow 3D: SRS Labs announced the latest generation of its sound enhancement hardware for Apple portable devices this week. The iWow 3D, designed to work in conjunction with the free iWow iOS app, is a dongle that you connect to your iPhone, iPod, or iPad's 30-pin dock connector, and then plug your headphones or 1/8-inch cable into the iWow's extended line-out jack.

Donald Rumsfeld was right about everything, book by Rumsfeld claims - War Room - Salon.com

Donald Rumsfeld was right about everything, book by Rumsfeld claims - War Room - Salon.com: Reviled two-time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has finally written his memoir. It is titled "Known and Unknown," after a a typically obtuse quote he gave to the press while mismanaging the "global war on terrorism." In his memoir, Rumsfeld is settling various old scores, and, obviously, trying to convince everyone that he is not responsible for the various awful failures and fiascoes that occurred at the Pentagon during his tenure in the Bush administration. Like, for example, the whole "Iraq invasion and occupation" thing. According to Rumsfeld, he totally intended to do it right, but stupid President Bush wouldn't let him:

Bill O'Reilly wonders where the moon came from - War Room - Salon.com

Bill O'Reilly wonders where the moon came from - War Room - Salon.com: The Fox News hosts asks -- and this is paraphrased: How’d the moon get there? How’d it get there? How’d it get there? And why doesn’t Mars have a moon, hmm?? (Mars has two moons.) Why doesn't science have an explanation for the existence of the moon?

Actually, it most definitely does. 

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’' favorite gadget: Apple’s revolutionary iPad

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’  favorite gadget: Apple’s revolutionary iPad: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is doing 'rigorous' speech therapy every day...

Google Art Project Is Street View for Galleries, Museums

Google Art Project Is Street View for Galleries, Museums: Google takes its 360-degree cameras into acclaimed galleries, effectively bringing some of the world's greatest art treasures online. From London's Tate Britain to Italy's Uffizi Gallery, the impressive Google Art Project lets you browse 385 rooms in 17 galleries, zooming in on more than 1,000 works by famous artists.

Invisibility Crystals Make Small Objects Disappear

Invisibility Crystals Make Small Objects Disappear: Using natural crystals, two independent research teams have designed "carpet cloaks" that can abracadabra 3-D objects as big as an ant or a grain of sand seemingly into nothing.

Mac Basics: How to rip a DVD with HandBrake

Mac Basics: How to rip a DVD with HandBrake: Looking to liberate the movies in your DVD collection from the confines of their plastic-and-metal prison so you can enjoy them on your iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Apple TV? Well look no further--all you need is some free software and to follow a few steps.

Art Project, powered by Google

Art Project, powered by Google: Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.