Hamilton (the Hipster Cat) is a San Francisco-based feline that was born with the markings of a rockin’ white mustache is, according to SFGate, fast becoming the latest viral meme (he’s already getting an Urban Outfitters t-shirt deal). They report that there’s “talk that this new breed (technically part Maine Coon, part Norwegian forest) of viral feline personality could be the next Grumpy Cat or Colonel Meow, both notorious sourpusses.” Hamilton was adopted by Jay Stowe from a Silicon Valley animal shelter who has been posting photos of his special looking cat on Instagram. (Hamilton is in good company with this little guy.)
Hamilton is a rescue kitty that was born on the 4th of July (probably). He has a real mustache that is better than any mustache that has ever walked this planet.
Cell phones are expected to bring the next billion internet users on board by 2015, but not all those new users will come from Africa and Asia. Plenty of them are members of late-adopting ethnic groups within the US.
On the 2011 US Census Bureau survey, which was released this week, respondents were asked about their smartphone use for the first time—specifically, whether or not they use their mobile devices to go online. Unsurprisingly, white and Asian Americans were more likely to have access to an internet connection at home: 72.5% and 78.3%, respectively. Meanwhile, only 53.8% of black census responders said the same, and only 51.2% of Hispanics. But the numbers on smartphone internet usage showed a much smaller disparity, ranging from 45.4% for Hispanics to 51.6% for Asians.
This data resonates with results released by Pew, which showed that smartphone ownership—now at 56% for American adults and rising fast—is actually more common for black and Hispanic Americans than for non-Hispanic whites, and that younger adults are now nearly as likely to own a smartphone at the bottom of the economic spectrum as they are at the top. Smartphones may remain a luxury item for older Americans, but 77% of 18-29 year olds making less than $30,000 own one. So while owning a home computer may still be impractical for many Americans, using the internet via a smartphone is increasingly becoming a fact of life—for everyone.
In disclosing classified details about some of the US government’s most secret surveillance programs, NSA leaker Edward Snowden said his greatest fear “regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change.”
At least some change, however incremental, came today in Washington. A bipartisan group of eight senators said it will introduce a bill aimed at forcing the government to disclose how it interprets laws undergirding the surveillance programs that The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed last week on the basis of Snowden’s leaks.
One of those senators, Ron Wyden, a senior member of the Senate intelligence committee, also issued a sharp statement that stops just short of publicly calling the nation’s top spy, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a liar. The statement refers to a now-infamous exchange during a public Senate hearing in March, when Wyden asked if the NSA collects “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions” of Americans.
“No, sir,” Clapper said.
“It does not,” Wyden responded, seemingly surprised.
“Not wittingly,” Clapper said. “There are cases where they could, inadvertently, perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”
That seems to have been, at the very least, an imaginative description of the facts. Snowden’s leaks included evidence that, under a top secret court order, Verizon Wireless provides data on every single call routed through its networks to the NSA, and has been for perhaps seven years; subsequently, the Wall Street Journal confirmed (paywall) that the same was true at least of AT&T and Sprint, the two other biggest wireless carriers.
In the wake of Snowden’s disclosures, critics on the left and the right have turned angrily on Clapper for his exchange with Wyden. Some have suggested he be prosecuted for lying to Congress, or at the very least, hauled before it again to answer more questions. Wyden, whose statement today says his office originally gave Clapper “a chance to amend his answer” after the Senate hearing, is now calling for public hearings. Americans, Wyden said, “have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives.”
Clapper has tried to defend himself. He told a National Journal reporter a few days ago that he meant that the NSA “does not voyeuristically pore through” Americans’ data. And he told a TV interviewer yesterday that he answered Wyden in the “least untruthful manner” possible (given, presumably, that it was an open hearing), and suggested that the problem came down to a semantic quibble over the meaning of the word “collect.” Needless to say, that has only fueled the scorn of pundits. Clapper’s evasiveness makes “Alberto Gonzales look good,” fulminated the New York Times editorial-page editor, comparing Clapper to the disgraced attorney-general of the George W. Bush years.
Still, any public debates on secrecy will be hamstrung by secrecy itself. Wyden would not comment further on the matter; a staffer at his office would only say that Wyden is frustrated that he can’t say more about the issue, because so much of what he knows—about Clapper’s comments and the surveillance programs—is classified. NSA and DNI officials had no immediate comment either.
Chapter 1: Pinterest for Newbies ///// Chapter 2: How to Use Pinterest Effectively ///// Chapter 3: How to Get More Pinterest Followers ///// Chapter 4: How Business Owners Can Use Pinterest ///// Chapter 5: The Best Pinterest Marketing Tools ///// Chapter 6: How Pinterest Can Help With SEO ///// Chapter 7: Pinterest Case Studies: What’s Working ///// Chapter 8: Can Pinterest Be Monetized? ///// Bonus Chapter: More Pinterest Tips
One of the small, periodic joys of belonging to mass e-mail listservs is the rare occasion when a reply-all function is accidentally turned on, enabling anyone on the list to spam thousands of people at once. NYU had a reply-all fail last year; today, it's Brown's turn. The university's alumni are currently being besieged by hundreds of confused e-mails begging to be "unsubscribed" and "taken off" an e-mail list that has quickly spun out of control.
The trouble started this morning with an errant bulletin from the University Scheduling Office (Subject: "Resource 25 Access Restored") that was mistakenly sent to the entire alumni network. Somehow, someone figured out that, by replying-all, you could e-mail everyone in the group. This created confusion.
On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:33 AM, [redacted] wrote:
Hey: I'm a 20 year alum. Why am I getting this email?
On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:32 AM, [redacted] wrote:
???
Finally, someone stated the obvious:
From: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
It seems you're sending this out to a huge alumni list.
Then chaos broke out:
Not sure why I am getting this email. I would like to be taken off.
??? Why Brown emails????
Quit replying All..All!! I've reported this as spam! Please stop replying all
I am not a "scheduler" either and do not know what resource 25 is.
The authorities stepped in:
From: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
Please don't reply all to these e-mails. If you have questions, reply to the sender only. Thx.
From: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
PEOPLE PLEASE STOP HITTING REPLY ALL!
But it was too late:
From: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
To whom it may concern: please take me off this list, I graduated last month.
From: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
This e-mail is obviously a Phishing attempt/Trojan attachment. Do not click any of the links and please stop replying all to the message. I have notified Brown CIS. I'm sure they will take action soon.
From: [redacted]@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
Unsubscribe ? Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2ok -- yeah
Some alumni seized on the list as an opportunity to lobby for issues close to their hearts:
From: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
i was in Phi Delt we need to take down the pool
And some just abused their privileges:
From: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Resource 25 Access Restored
Does anybody know a nice restaurant in the Virginia area? Driving through with my cat and two birds this evening and like Italian food.
Brown's administration has not yet stepped forward to explain the mistake, nor has anyone given the kind alumnus above a restaurant recommendation.
'The new GLA will include five generals of different backgrounds. "Now we'll probably just offend everybody," he laughed.'
THAT'S THE SPIRIT, LOL #gamerculture
Upcoming free-to-play strategy game Command and Conquer will no longer feature primarily Middle Eastern-looking militant generals, Victory Games' Tim Morten told Polygon today.
While previous installments of the series featured a militant Global Liberation Army designed with Middle Eastern facial features, the upcoming title will offer a more varied group from different ethnic backgrounds, said Morten. This change in design follows complaints the studio experienced from players who argued the use of Middle Eastern militants was "offensive," he went on to say.
"This is actually a pretty big change for the game," he said. "Anyone who knows this series will know the Global Liberation Army. But at the studio we had a bad reaction from people saying it was pretty offensive to have Middle-Eastern characters as militants."
Initially, Command and Conquer's GLA empire was said to span Kazakhstan, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, among other countries, while — according to game lore — support was mainly within the Middle East.
The new GLA will include five generals of different backgrounds. "Now we'll probably just offend everybody," he laughed.
According to Morten, the studio has also made a change to the design of workers in the game. Previously in-game workers would ask for shoes when clicked on, now in the new release they will finally get them.
Command and Conquer was first announced earlier in the year when Victory Game introduced it as a free-to-play title with no single-player campaign. The upcoming title is scheduled to release later this year but currently has no official release date.
I had time to make a comic, so I did! Yay COMICS, I miss 'em.
While other stuff is plodding along, and that's great, I wish I could find a way to keep this comic going regularly. Usually, the longer between updates, the more I freak out in my head about how long it's been, and feel like whatever I post next has to be really long, or "worth the wait." But I should just post. Unfortunately, this being the thing that has neither deadline nor paycheque attached, it is always the one that gets pushed back. But I have to figure something out. I really do.
Tebow is very much the same quarterback I watched in 2005, but with infinite more baggage. ... the reason Brady is a Hall of Fame quarterback is precisely because his greatest skill is Tebow’s greatest weakness. If there’s an open receiver, Brady will find him and put the ball where it needs to be, whereas Tebow far too often is stuck watching his first receiver or “drifting and scanning”: just shuffling and reshuffling while waiting for a receiver to “come open.”
I watched Tim Tebow play before I had any idea who he was. I occasionally feel oddly fortunate for that fact, as very few people can say the same. Since at least the time he was a freshman at Florida, his reputation — really, his mythos — has preceded him: from heavily hyped Florida recruit to Heisman winner to on-campus living legend, and then to shocking first round draft pick to fan (and Skip Bayless favorite) to New York Jets sideshow, it’s become effectively impossible to watch Tebow play without also seeing the incredible amount of hype and baggage that follows him. This talented but flawed quarterback — born to Christian missionary parents in the Philippines, raised in Florida and, for a time, the face of football’s spread offense and read-option revolutions — has come to embody alternatively the dreams and nightmares of so many football fans.
Simpler times
In 2013 one therefore can’t simply “put on tape of Tim Tebow” and evaluate him as a player. Instead, in what may be his one truly great skill, any attempt to evaluate Tim inevitably results in something else: you end up also evaluating yourself, whether you realize it or not. Include me in this, too.
But in 2005, on the recommendation of one of my coaching buddies, I taped a game Tebow played in, without knowing who he was. As high school football has gotten more successful — and commercial — there’s been a rise in featured “matchup” games set up by promoters and marketed to fans as well as TV networks. This game, between Hoover High School of Alabama, and Nease High School in Florida, was a made-for-TV concoction designed to pit the most high profile team in Alabama against the most high profile high school quarterback in Florida — and maybe the country. My friend recommended taping it fundamentally because of the offenses: Hoover, under then coach Rush Probst, was a “client” of now-Cal offensive coordinator Tony Franklin’s “System” and had ridden it to several Alabama state titles in recent years. Nease, meanwhile, had exploded into one of the most explosive teams in the country using a kind of hybrid spread offense which combined zone reads with downfield passing to average close to 50 points a game. (While one might wonder how much you can learn from watching a high school game, remember that this was 2005 and we’re still talking about both of those offensive systems today.)
When I began watching the game two things became clear very quickly: Hoover was the far superior team at essentially every position, but the Tebow kid was basically carrying his team. Nease lost convingly, 50-29, but Tebow racked up over 422 yards of offense, including 398 through the air, and could’ve had 500 yards if his receivers would’ve avoided some costly drops. I don’t much care for recruiting, but Tebow — about whom I knew nothing before I began watching — jumped out at me to the point where I took some scouting notes on him, notes which I recently dug up:
Tebow, QB, Nease (FL): Dual-threat QB. Solid build, but very good feet. Strong enough arm, accurate on sprint-out and movement passes, accurate on quick game. Appears accurate on intermediate throws if feet set. Throwing release could be more compact but looks like it can be improved. Not particularly shifty but falls forward on QB runs. Just OK at reading DE on zone reads but should improve with reps. Doesn’t seem to get the ball out quickly and if first read isn’t there has tendency to drift and scan vs his progression [i.e., "drift and scan" to me means if first read isn't there, doesn't calmly reset feet and look for second receiver and instead tries to slide or float in pocket and just scan field for any open receiver like backyard football]. Should improve on this at next level. Seems competitive; no obvious behavior changes once team down significant margin.
When I found these notes I was actually a bit disheartened: I’d stand by just about every word in there, both the good and the bad, but the bad stuff remains the bad. In other words, Tebow is very much the same quarterback I watched in 2005, but with infinite more baggage. And that’s why the Jets got rid of him and it seemed no NFL team would sniff him this year.
But it’s also why the Patriots took a chance. The thing to note immediately is it’s not necessarily much of one: signing a third-string free agent quarterback on a team that only carried two quarterbacks in 2012 is not exactly an exalted vote of confidence, and there’s absolutely no certainty Tebow will be on the team come week one. And media-induced Tebow fatigue is very real; fan fatigue over the most talked about backup quarterback in recent memory is entirely justified.
The Patriots made what is, potentially, a classic Patriots move: taking a player with usable talent and upside at below market rates, rates set to a large extent because of external factors. The classic examples are players perceived as cancers whose talent nevertheless was obvious, like Randy Moss and Corey Dillon, who quickly assimilated and became integral parts of successful New England teams. There have of course been misses, like Chad Ochocinco, though his primary faults while a Patriot were on the field rather than off.
Moss and Dillon, however, were pro-bowl or all-pro talents who became instant starters; Tebow, by contrast will be competing for a clipboard role, a role that would not appear to justify any media circus. What we do know, however, is that Belichick doesn’t do anything without a football specific reason behind it — Tom Brady’s father likes to say that Belichick will replace his son the moment he finds “a quarterback who is better for a dollar less.”
One potential reason which has already been cited is that Tebow, while primarily a quarterback, will also spend time learning tight-end, giving Belichick the kind of versatility he feels is essential with only a 53 man roster. Indeed, Belichick has had more than a little bit of success using players from other positions at tight-end, with linebacker turned redzone touchdown machine Mike Vrabel being the most obvious example. (And maybe Tebow can get some extra advice on this, as Vrabel is currently an assistant coach at his alma mater Ohio State, where he coaches under Tebow’s old college coach and still lead cheerleader, Urban Meyer.)
This kind of versatility shouldn’t be shortchanged, as if Tebow’s presence allows Belichick to keep one fewer backup tight-end that may let him add an extra linebacker, linemen or defensive back, an roster spot that always has meaning in an NFL where injuries are a reality of life.
While versatility is nice, whether or not the experiment works will come down to whether Tebow can be an NFL quarterback. Whether or not he can is at this point anyone’s guess; all I can say is I am less confident about Tebow’s eventual success now than I was some years ago, as I saw his flaws as things he could improve and yet he hasn’t, and in some ways we’ve actually seen a regression.
But let’s get one (semi) misconception out of the way: The primary issue is not that Tebow “can’t throw.” Although Tim’s throwing motion clearly doesn’t have the geometric precision of Tom Brady, the compact explosiveness of Drew Brees or even the effortless naturalism of Aaron Rodgers, it’s simply not the case that he cannot deliver the ball from point A to point B. When he is in rhythm and his feet are set, he can deliver the ball just fine.
And it’s not just passes over the middle. I’ve seen him make eighteen yard sideline comeback throws, deep crosses, and maybe Tebow’s prettiest passes have always been on streaks down the sideline. Indeed, in terms of pure arm strength, Tebow will likely be ahead of Brady in Patriots camp (though number two quarterback Ryan Mallett is clearly ahead of both).
So the issue is not that Tebow “can’t throw,” though clearly the tightness of his mechanics and his overall accuracy need continuous improvement. But Tebow’s problem has instead been his ability to calmly but efficiently go through his progression. Of course, while Tebow might technically have a stronger arm than Tom Brady, the reason Brady is a Hall of Fame quarterback is precisely because his greatest skill is Tebow’s greatest weakness. If there’s an open receiver, Brady will find him and put the ball where it needs to be, whereas Tebow far too often is stuck watching his first receiver or “drifting and scanning”: just shuffling and reshuffling while waiting for a receiver to “come open.”
This, not his throwing motion, has been Tebow’s biggest problem since coming to the NFL, but it was an issue for him in college, too. He seemed to regress at this as a senior, likely to some extent a result of the amount of pressure his coaches put on him to do everything in the offense and to constantly “create plays” rather than operating within the offense’s structure. Against Tennessee as a senior, whose defensive coordinator was now Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, Tebow had an abysmal game trying to find open receiver, and I diagrammed one particular bad decision, where, frustrated, Tebow delivered the ball directly to a waiting Eric Berry for an interception.
Despite the years that have gone by without much improvement, however, I’m still modestly hopeful. The good news for Tebow, if there is any given his circuitous journey from college hero to first rounder to free agent cast-off, is that he may have finally landed in a place he should have been all along: As a back-up quarterback, playing for excellent coaches behind a future Hall of Fame quarterback, in a place where he can focus solely on improving on his weaknesses and becoming a better player.
If I had the chance to take the raw kid I saw playing for Nease high school in 2005, I still would: his flaws then are still his flaws now, but the talent is still there too, though somewhat obscured. The question is whether, in 2013, it’s too late for Tebow to learn any better. I don’t know. My head tells me it’s too late but my gut tells me Tebow might still prove us all wrong. All Belichick is offering Tebow — and all he’s offering us, too — is a chance for Tim to do just that.
Los Angeles circa 1952. "Actress Betty White at home with her dog." Note what looks like an Emmy Award atop the television set. Photos by Maurice Terrell and Earl Theisen for Look magazine. View full size.
Now that he's exited HP, former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has opened up a bit about his thoughts on how and why webOS failed. In an interview with Fierce Wireless, Rubinstein said that if he had it to do over again, he wouldn't have sold to HP, "Talk about a waste. ... we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company?"
"There's a long list of stuff we did that has been adopted by Microsoft, Apple and Android."
We've already covered the saga of webOS's rise and fall, and Rubinstein's interview confirms a few pertinent details. From the start, Palm was behind the eight ball from the start thanks to Verizon's decision to back out of carrying the Pre, and Rubinstein implies that Sprint was essentially the only option he had, "We almost had deals with Verizon and with Vodafone, and in the last minute both of those guys decided not to go through with the deal, so we had a deal with Sprint."
Rubinstein pointed out that many technologies that originally debuted on webOS have made their way to other platforms — including iOS 7. He cited multitasking, notifications, Synergy, and even over-the-air OS updates as ideas that other platforms have adopted. Rubinstein also pointed out that Palm tried to fight carriers on their requests to install extra software (a fight Palm sometimes lost).
Currently, Rubinstein is sitting on both the Amazon and Qualcomm boards, and he says that isn't a coincidence. "I'm a big believer in mobile and integration of the home, and wearable computing and all that stuff, and having it all tied up in the cloud," Rubinstein told Fierce Wireless, without saying exactly which of those technologies maps to which company.
In 2005, an unopened copy of the self-deleting game surfaced on Ebay where it was promptly bought for $733,000 by a man from Japan named Yamamoto Ryuichi. Ryichi had planned to document his play through of the game on YouTube. The only video Ryuchi posted was of him staring at his computer screen and crying.
"in one maneuver, Wii Fit Trainer performed a yoga stretch lunge, striking an opponent in her path" Overbey: yo, is it
Wii Fit Trainer, the female avatar that shows players of the game how to perform the Wii Fit's exercises, will be a playable character in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, Nintendo announced during a showcase at E3 2013.
The character will utilize "moves that really are quite healthy for her," Project Sora's Masahiro Sakurai said during the showcase before demoing the game live before the audience. He wasn't kidding — in one maneuver, Wii Fit Trainer performed a yoga stretch lunge, striking an opponent in her path.
Wii Fit Trainer joins Mega Man, Animal Crossing's Villager and a slate of returning characters confirmed for the title.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the initial ruling in favor of Marvel Comics over creator Gary Friedrich, and the lawsuit for the rights to Ghost Rider will go back to trial.
"ASCAP and BMI have given preferential treatment to terrestrial stations, so acquiring one gives Pandora access to those same, broader terms. It will broadcast in Rapid City, yes, but it will also theoretically get the same deals that competitors like Clear Channel's iHeartRadio get."
You might think that the biggest threat to Pandora right now is the just-announced iRadio, but Apple's upcoming music service isn't nearly as dangerous to Pandora's bottom line as music companies are. Pandora has been caught in a long and protracted battle to ensure that it can continue to get access to music rights for what it considers a fair price. Unlike Spotify or Rdio, Pandora licenses music under an internet radio licensing structure, but apparently even that isn't working out. So as it fights a legal battle on one front, Pandora is trying a bold flanking maneuver: it's buying a terrestrial FM radio station in order to secure its music licenses.
Pandora is trying a bold flanking maneuver
Pandora alleges that the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is trying to derail its business by letting artists selectively back out from licensing songs. It has tried — and failed — to enact licensing changes in congress. So now Pandora has a pending case against ASCAP and will be filing a motion alleging that "ASCAP has violated the terms of its antitrust consent decree with the Department of Justice."
But while that case is ongoing, Pandora evidently feels that it could run into trouble and so it's buying an FM radio station in Rapid City, SD: KXMZ-FM. As Pandora's general assistant counsel, Christopher Harrison, puts it, ASCAP and BMI have given preferential treatment to terrestrial stations, so acquiring one gives Pandora access to those same, broader terms. It will broadcast in Rapid City, yes, but it will also theoretically get the same deals that competitors like Clear Channel's iHeartRadio get.
The could work for Pandora, but it still faces a big fight from music publishers. the National Association of Music Publishers says that Pandora pays too little. More importantly, these companies have successfully managed to negotiate direct deals with Apple, Spotify, and others and want to do the same with Pandora, presumably leading to higher rates.
I have commented elsewhere on the fact that writers in The Economist are required to write unnatural or even ungrammatical sentences rather than risk the wrath of the semi-educated public by "splitting an infinitive" (putting a preverbal modifier immediately before the verb in a to-infinitival complement clause). The magazine published a sentence containing the phrase publicly to label itself a foreign agent where clarity demanded to publicly label itself a foreign agent.
It wasn't a one-off occurrence. Look at this sentence (issue of June 1, 2013, p. 57):
The main umbrella organisation, the Syrian National Coalition, was supposed to do three things: expand its membership, elect a new leader and decide whether unconditionally to attend the Geneva talks.
What an appalling decision about modifier placement!
They meant "decide whether to unconditionally attend the Geneva talks." The best phrasing in a case like this has the adverb immediately before the verb it modifies.
You just can't prepose manner adverbs to the beginning of to-infinitival clauses introduced by whether. These examples are outright ungrammatical:
*I wondered whether angrily to protest to the magazine's editors.
*The question for the managing editor is whether immediately to change the policy.
*The style guide manager should think about whether voluntarily to retire or resign.
In the 44 milion words of the ever-convenient Wall Street Journal corpus that I keep on my laptop, there is not a single occurrence of an -ly adverb between whether and infinitival to.
The Economist would do slightly better if it changed to using The New York Times Style Guide. I don't approve of the fussy NYT guide at all (I have to observe it when I write for the Lingua Franca at The Chronicle of Higher Education's site), but although it is idiosyncratic, old-fashioned, and occasionally benighted, its guidance is slightly better than the blanket ban that seems to be in force at The Economist right now:
split infinitives are accepted by grammarians but irritate many readers. When a graceful alternative exists, avoid the construction: to show the difference clearly is better than to clearly show the difference. (Do not use the artificial clearly to show the difference.) When the split is unavoidable, accept it: He was obliged to more than double the price.
This explicitly opposes the "artificial" pushing of preverbal adverbs into the position before the to. And it should be noted that that the decision about trying to avoid the construction is openly admitted to be pure political cowardice: there is nothing grammatically wrong, they admit, but hush, it might "irritate" readers to use this familiar possibility in English syntax.
The Economist has a style guide of its own, and that is even more open in its cowardice and the totality of its avoidance policy:
Split infinitives Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an infinitive: the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you should observe it.
A pointless ban on a natural syntactic possibility that has never been authoritatively declared to have anything wrong with it in grammatical terms, but you should observe the ban anyway. Is this a sensible way for a great magazine (my favorite magazine) to make its decisions about how its writers should phrase things in their native language?
Picking up right where The Hobbit left off, this trailer gives a glimpse of the troubles that our band of dwarves and one little Hobbit must face. Lee Pace returns as Thranduil, Orlando Bloom has a few good white-hair-flipping moments as Legolas, and Evangeline Lilly makes her debut as Tauriel. Check it out!
Last week, The New York Times reported that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and others were creating secure portals where they stashed user data for the government to pick up. Google has already denied setting up such portals, further clarifying today that it hands data over to the feds on request. In fact, Google says it hasn't set up virtual lockboxes for the feds to access any data at any point. Instead, the company told Wired that when Google does comply with information requests from the government, it hands over data either by hand, or via secure FTP sites.
"We have been asked to do things in the past and we have declined." Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, told Wired that "the US government does not have the ability to pull that data directly from our servers or network" — something we've heard from the company multiple times since the word NSA spying broke last week after The Wasington Post reported that major tech firms were forking over user data in a long-running FBI and NSA surveillance program called PRISM. The NSA has since acknowledged the program's existence, though there have been denials from every tech firm involved in the spying program that the effort involved direct server access or anything resembling a real-time surveillance system. In The Washington Post's original story of PRISM's existence, its source — presumably Edward Snowden — notably said, "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type." If Google's claims are accurate, though, that's not likely the case.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that PRISM data was collected without the knowledge of the tech companies involved. "We refuse to participate in any program — for national security or other reasons — that requires us to provide governments with access to our systems or to install their equipment on our networks," Gaither told Wired. "We have been asked to do things in the past and we have declined."
If you carry around a multitool in your bag or pocket for quick fixes, repair work, or just in case you need a sharp edge, a screwdriver, or pair of scissors, you're in good company. Many of you do, and this week we wanted to take a look at some of the best available—the ones that pack useful tools, are still portable, and offer great bang for the buck. Here are five of the best, based on your nominations.
This is an actual fucking conversation between Fox News host Jamie Colby and former federal prosecutor Doug Burns that happened on air on the opening day of George Zimmerman's trial:
"I know that George Zimmerman's attorney will prove that he has no criminal background, he's not an aggressive guy," the Fox News host explained. "That he's a gentle kind caring soul who was minding the neighborhood, the police didn't get there quick enough and he had reason to pursue, even though he was told no to. He was just doing his Good Samaritan job."
...[Said Burns, after pointing out someone can die in a fistfight:] "There's certainly a very good argument to be made that the force used was out of proportion to what was going on, and the kid was unarmed. We didn't even discuss that. Totally different case, let's say the kid had a gun."
"Which he didn't know," Colby observed. "All that Trayvon -- we learned later -- was armed with was a bag of Skittles and an iced tea."
"I know everybody keeps sarcastically saying about the Skittles," Burns complained. "You could probably kill somebody with Skittles."
"It's very compelling," Colby opined. "Only a kid who hadn't had dental work could eat Skittles."
"I know, but I find that rhetoric, 'He had iced tea and a Skittles,' it really doesn't matter," Burns replied. "The point is he didn't have a weapon."
"But he didn't take that iced tea and bang Zimmerman over the head with the bottle," the host noted.
"The thing is, yeah, you're spinning a lot of hypotheticals," Burns agreed. "And you could break a bottle of iced tea, right, with the jagged edge, and you could kill somebody with it."
"You could use it as a weapon," Colby concluded.
All of this, by the way, in the course of a discussion where they allowed that Zimmerman shooting Martin dead may have been an overreaction. "STILL! LET US NOTE YOU COULD PROBABLY KILL SOMEBODY WITH SKITTLES! WE'RE JUST SAYING."
VIOLA, NY—After a government whistleblower revealed last week that the U.S. National Security Agency is collecting phone records and other data as part of an authorized domestic surveillance program, area man Michael Landler, 46, told reporters Mond...
Scene of the crime.
Shakesville.