We've already said goodbye to actor Cory Monteith, and before too long, we'll be saying goodbye to Glee. Show creator Ryan Murphy has confirmed that Glee will come to an end after Season 6. Now that Monteith is gone, and Finn with him, the final season will end on a very different note.
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/ryan-murphy-confirms-glee-will-end-after-season-6/1-a-550047?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Aryan-murphy-confirms-glee-will-end-after-season-6-550047
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Saturday, October 19, 2013
Ending 'Glee' Next Season Is a Good (but Sad) Decision
NYSE to open up facilities for testing ahead of Twitter IPO
By John McCrank
NEW YORK (Reuters) - NYSE Euronext said on Friday it would offer testing next weekend for trading firms planning to take part in Twitter's market debut, highlighting an industry-wide focus on risk controls after a spate of technology-related snafus in recent years.
The initial public offering of microblogging site Twitter is the most highly anticipated since Facebook's IPO last year, when software problems at Nasdaq OMX Group resulted in a chain of events that market making firms said cost them a combined $500 million (309.2 million pounds).
Before Twitter disclosed on Tuesday it would list on the New York Stock Exchange, analysts had said the Facebook IPO problems would likely weigh against Nasdaq's chances of winning the listing and the prestige that comes with it.
A date for the IPO has not yet been disclosed, but it is expected before the end of November.
NYSE said in the note to traders on Friday that in preparation for Twitter's market debut, firms could test their trading algorithms on October 26, when it would make available all of its production customer gateway connections for order flow.
The Big Board operator said additional details would be provided early next week, including registration details.
The Facebook incident was one of a number of high-profile technology-related problems that have roiled markets and weighed on investor confidence in recent years, placing a bigger focus on operational risk by regulators and market participants.
Nasdaq agreed to pay a $10 million penalty for the Facebook errors, the largest amount ever levied against a stock exchange, and also voluntarily said it would pay up to $62 million to compensate firms harmed in the May 18, 2012, market debut.
TRYING TO BREAK THE SYSTEM
Preventing technology snafus, and how to better deal with glitches that do happen, was a major focus at a market structure conference held by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) on Thursday.
The conference came one day after regulators fined trading firm Knight Capital, now part of KCG Holdings Inc, $12 million to settle charges related to an error last year that sent millions of unintended orders into the market.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that at the time, Knight did not have appropriate risk controls in place to prevent the errors and that the firm failed to conduct adequate reviews of the effectiveness of its controls.
Exchanges and brokers have been re-examining their approaches to testing the robustness of their systems, Eric Noll, head of Nasdaq's transaction business, said at the SIFMA conference.
"Not only conformance testing - does the software do what we designed it to do - but what happens to the software if we try to break it?"
Deliberately putting bad orders or code into the system in a testing environment allows the exchange to then test what would happen to the rest of its systems, helping it make better plans to react to such a situation, he said.
STOPPING THE BLEEDING MORE QUICKLY
Several trading firm executives at the conference said U.S. markets actually function better than ever, and chalked up the drop in investor confidence to the increased media attention surrounding trading glitches.
The data shows that in equities, clearly erroneous trades - a proxy for system coding issues where capacity limits or order routing limits have been exceeded - are down 55 percent from May 2010, said Tom Gira, head of market regulation the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
But the speed that automation has brought to the markets needs to be taken into account, he said at the SIFMA conference.
"What's different about today's market than, say, 10 years ago, is that even if you do have less snafus, they are so much more amplified now than they were before and the challenge is now, how do you stop the bleeding more quickly in such a quick market," he said.
There are thirteen U.S. equity exchanges, 44 alternative trading systems, and a handful of other large non-exchange trading venues competing for order flow that brokers connect to.
The renewed focus on operational risk and having controls in place for when glitches do happen, comes after a software bug in August paralyzed thousands of Nasdaq-listed stocks market-wide for three hours. That happened just days after a technical problem at Goldman Sachs sent a flood of erroneous orders to the U.S. equity options markets. And on August 6, BATS Global Markets faced an outage that lasted nearly an hour.
(Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nyse-open-facilities-testing-ahead-twitter-ipo-193906151--sector.html
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Friday, October 18, 2013
Strava Cycling (for iPhone)
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Pros
Brings a different twist to tracking cycling. Great social, competitive features. Well-designed UI.
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Cons
Rides and routes are public by default. No auto pause. Need to use full website for some features. No music integration.
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Bottom Line
Bringing a totally different twist to bicycle-ride tracking, Strava Cycling takes segments of your ride and pits your best time against others who have ridden the same stretch of road. While exciting, and fiercely competitive, the Strava Cycling lacks some basic features typically included in tracking apps.
Strava Cycling (free for iPhone and Android; iPhone version reviewed here) puts a new spin on bicycling tracking apps by comparing segments of your ride to other Strava users who have ridden the same stretch. Flick on the app, hop on your bike, and Strava will record where you go, how fast you travel, your change in elevation, and a few other metrics. At the end of the ride, you'll see your route divided into defined segments, and, when you select one, you can see where you stand on a leaderboard that pits your time on the segment against other Strava users'. It's highly intriguing, but the app has a few serious flaws that quickly put a damper on the experience.
The main problem is that all your activity is public by default. If you use your real name and start marking segments that you ride regularly, you could be giving away your home address, work address, and other places that you might want to keep private. You can make your profile private so that only users you approve can see where you ride, and there's a feature in the full website that lets you hide certain locations that you mark, such as "home" and "work." I appreciate that these privacy options are available, but I didn't like being hit by the realization that I might need them after having used the app for several days.
Privacy concerns aside, I was captivated to see that my time crossing the Queensboro Bridge left me 44th out of 207 female Strava riders, but that I hit fifth place crossing the John Jay Byrne Bridge (holler!). And the competition is fierce. Looking at some of the record times for a couple of segments in Manhattan, I thought, "The only way I'd hit that speed is in an ambulance." If you're into competition, Strava is the most compelling bicycling app I've founnd.
But when it comes to just tracking rides, Strava seems to do the bare minimum. It gets the job done, but not nearly with the same rigor as Cyclemeter ($4.99), our Editors' Choice for bicycling apps for the iPhone. For example, Strava doesn't have an auto-pause, or a delay start countdown, which many riders like so that they can turn on the app to start recording, but still have a few seconds to then put their phone into place. These are pretty standard features in most bicycling apps, including Cyclemeter and Runtastic Road Bike PRO ($4.99). Strava also can't connect to your music, as Cyclemeter and Runtastic Road Bike PRO can.
Strava Premium
Strava offers a Premium subscription ($59 per year or $6 per month) to enrich its free app. Premium adds goals progress, which is the ability to set time or distance goals, such as bike 75 miles every week, as well as performance goals (ride a certain segment in a set amount of time), and track your progress. Premium users also get some sophisticated heart rate monitoring options, like the ability to set a "suffer score" or custom heart rate zone to quantify "suffering" or levels of intensity. See Strava's website for more premium features.
While I enjoyed seeing how fast other Strava users ride in my area, the app isn't the best for tracking your rides. Cyclemeter not only collects the most data, but also offers the best customization options. You can set up Cyclemeter to display as much or as little information as you want. For serious cyclists, it's by far the most comprehensive app—but it's only available on iPhone. Another app I recommend—and one that's available on Android, too—is Runtastic Road Bike PRO, particularly for riders who aren't necessarily pro racers and therefore don't need every single metric under the sun, but do want to track their rides and make sense of their data.
By Jill Duffy
Analyst, Software
Jill Duffy is a writer and software analyst, specializing in productivity software, iOS, and apps and gadgets for health and fitness. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on how to lead a...
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Season of uncertainty for stores
NEW YORK (AP) — Will Washington be the Grinch who stole Christmas?
After weeks of bickering between Congress and the White House, President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law a plan that ended a partial 16-day government shutdown and suspended the nation's debt limit until early next year.
But the measure, which comes just weeks ahead of the holiday shopping season, only temporarily averts a potential default on U.S. debt that could send the nation into a recession.
Retailers hope that short-term uncertainty won't stop Americans from spending during the busiest shopping period of the year, but they're fearful that it will.
"I am not nervous, but I am mindful," said Jay Stein, chairman of Stein Mart, a 300-store chain that sells home goods and clothing. "The biggest enemy of consumer confidence is uncertainty."
Retailers and industry watchers say Washington gridlock already has caused shoppers to hold back on purchases.
The number of people going into stores nationwide dropped 7.5 percent for the week that ended Oct. 5 and 7.1 percent during the following week compared with a year ago, according to ShopperTrak, which measures foot traffic at 40,000 retail outlets across the country.
Men's clothier Jos. A. Bank Clothiers and furniture chain Ethan Allen said their customers cut back in recent weeks. And auto sales, which had been strong, trailed off last week, with experts blaming Washington lawmakers.
Retailers say the agreement that lawmakers approved, which funds the government until Jan. 15 and gives the Treasury the ability to borrow above its limit until Feb. 7, may not be enough to alleviate shoppers' concerns.
Robert N. Wildrick, chairman of Jos. A. Bank, which has 623 U.S. stores, said retailers can't afford more uncertainty during the holiday shopping season. "The more this nonsense goes on .... the more scared (consumers) become," he said.
Even before the stalemate in Washington, retailers had reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the holiday season, which accounts for up to 40 percent of retailers' annual revenue. While the job and housing markets are improving, that hasn't yet translated into sustained spending increases among shoppers.
But retailers spend money on ads, order additional inventory and add sales staff during the holidays hoping shoppers will spending freely. If they don't, stores have to discount, which eats away profits.
The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail group, had forecast in early October that sales would climb 3.9 percent in November and December to $602.12 billion, higher than last year's 3.5 percent gain. But the forecast didn't account for the prolonged shutdown.
Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the Washington, D.C.-based group, told The Associated Press that he may lower the projection after he sifts through retail sales and jobs data, reports that had been delayed because of the shutdown. The uncertainty could hurt sales.
"It's like having an ongoing fever that you would like to shake but just doesn't go away," Kleinhenz said. "That causes a backup in decision-making from consumers and businesses."
Take Nino Rodriguez, who was already planning to cut back spending on gifts for his four children ages 3 to 21 by about 25 percent to $1,500 as he juggles stagnant wage gains with college tuition costs.
Now, the Chicagoan plans to cut another $500 from the holiday budget because of uncertainty. In particular, he's concerned about having government aid checks suspended for teenage sons who have special needs.
"The doomsday clock is just one second less than what it was before," said Rodriguez, who works in the hospitality business. "All this just heightens our awareness of spending."
This isn't the first time that debt-and-spending stalemates have hurt shoppers' mood during the holidays. Last year, Americans worried about tense negotiations in Washington to resolve the fiscal cliff, a simultaneous increase in tax rates and a decrease in government spending.
Congress and the White House reached a deal on Jan. 1 that prevented income taxes from rising for most households, but many store executives blamed the uncertainty for a slowdown in sales in December. In November 2012, sales were up 4.7 over the year ago period, but rose only 2.4 percent in December.
And in August 2011 when there was market turmoil and political strife over raising the federal debt ceiling, consumer sentiment fell to a 31-year low, according to the Thomas Reuters/University of Michigan survey.
Jeff Landis of Chicago-based Montopoli Custom Clothiers recalls those days when business was quiet and he had to delay ordering fabric and call his wealthy customers. He said he's seeing the same scenario play out now.
"This is a buzz kill," he said.
Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/season-uncertainty-stores-165925877--finance.html
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Teen found with fetus in bag at store, NYPD says
NEW YORK (AP) — The results of an autopsy could determine whether two teenage girls are hit with serious charges after one of them was found carrying a dead fetus in a bag while shopping at a Victoria's Secret store in Manhattan.
Police were called to the store Thursday after a security guard on the lookout of shoplifters searched the 17-year-old girls, discovered a strong odor coming from one of their bags and found the fetus.
The girls were arrested on charges of petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, police said. The teenager thought to have given birth was hospitalized, and the other was questioned by police.
One of the girls told detectives she was carrying the remains because she had delivered a day earlier and didn't know what to do, authorities said. It wasn't clear whether the fetus was alive or dead when delivered, or how far along the girl was in her pregnancy.
The medical examiner's office was performing an autopsy on the remains, and more charges could follow depending on the results.
A person who answered the phone at the home of the girl believed to have given birth had no comment. No phone number was available at the address provided by police for the second teenager.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/teen-found-fetus-bag-store-nypd-says-055748875.html
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Bike Your Way To Adventure With These Sweet City Cycling Guides
Rapha has been a one-stop-shop for all kinds of cool bike accessories since launching its first collection in 2004; in addition to the stylish wearables, they’ve got a small batch of prints and publications dedicated to the joy of road climbs and racing. Now, they're adding leisure travel to the mix with an eight volume collection of City Cycling Guides.
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The Nexus 5 Accidentally Pops Up Early on Google Play for $350
Google's worst kept secret
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6 ways social media can boost your business
October 16, 2013
If your company isn't fully taking advantage of social media, it might be missing out on opportunities to connect with customers, gain market share, and bring needed talent into the organization.
Experts say virtually every type of business can benefit from using social media as a business tool.
"We really are seeing interest and the potential for business value across the board," says Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner. "No one is immune, although it will be easier for some than others."
The most likely to see value, Mann says, are knowledge-based and highly collaborative industries, such as media, education, consulting, and high technology; industries or organizations that aren't hamstrung by regulation; and organizations with younger employees who are accustomed to working with social media.
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Thursday, October 17, 2013
The Alice Game
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"The alice game is an idea by Rozen to find the doll who is worthy enough to become "the perfect girl", Alice. It is said that whoever becomes Alice is loved most by Father and will be able to personally meet him.
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This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, “The Alice Game”. Anything posted here will also show up there.
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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.
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RolePlayGateway is a site built by a couple roleplayers who wanted to give a little something back to the roleplay community. The site has no intention of earning any profit, and is paid for out of their own pockets.
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The custom-built "roleplay" system was designed and implemented by Eric Martindale as of July 2009. All attempts to replicate or otherwise emulate this system and its method of organizing roleplay are strictly prohibited without his express written and contractual permission; violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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Sony’s New Mirrorless Cameras Are the First to Get Full-Frame Sensors
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Al Hirschfeld exhibition opens in NYC
Drawings by Al Hirschfeld are displayed in an exhibit on the artist at the Library for the Performing Arts in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. The exhibit, which opens Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013, showcases work through Hirschfeld's career. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Drawings by Al Hirschfeld are displayed in an exhibit on the artist at the Library for the Performing Arts in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. The exhibit, which opens Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013, showcases work through Hirschfeld's career. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Balinese shadow puppets are displayed in an exhibit on artist Al Hirschfeld at the Library for the Performing Arts in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. Hirschfeld took inspiration from the Balinese culture and landscape. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Pop-up figures drawn by Al Hirschfeld are displayed in an exhibit on artist Al Hirschfeld at the Library for the Performing Arts in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. The exhibit, which opens Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013, showcases work through Hirschfeld's career. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A collage of album covers by Al Hirschfeld are displayed in an exhibit on the artist at the Library for the Performing Arts in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. The exhibit, which opens Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013, showcases work through Hirschfeld's career. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A drawing for the film "Cabin in the Sky" is displayed in an exhibit on artist Al Hirschfeld at the Library for the Performing Arts in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. The exhibit, which opens Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013, showcases work through Hirschfeld's career. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) — A new exhibition on caricaturist Al Hirschfeld begins with a video of Whoopi Goldberg talking about his wicked sense of humor.
Goldberg tells how Hirschfeld embedded the word "NINA" 40 times into a poster of her 1984 one-woman Broadway show after she complained of not being able to find the signature trademark he began inserting into his line drawings after the birth of his daughter Nina in 1945.
"The Line King's Library" opens at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on Thursday. The exhibition, on the 10th anniversary of Hirschfeld's death and 110 years since his birth, was compiled from the library's extensive collection of Hirschfeld material.
Hirschfeld, who died in 2003 at the age of 99, was celebrated for his linear calligraphic caricatures of theater, dance and film personalities. The drawings appeared on album covers, film posters, magazines and in The New York Times for 75 years.
Being "Hirschfelded" was "akin to getting a Tony award," said David Leopold, the show's guest curator and Hirschfeld's archivist for the last 13 years of the artist's life. "It meant you had arrived."
The exhibition includes drafts, sketch books, journals and video of Hirschfeld and some of his most famous subjects talking about each other, including Arthur Miller, Carol Channing, Carol Burnett and Zero Mostel.
His 1970s series on Pulitzer Prize-winning plays and their authors on Broadway, including Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Miller's "Death of a Salesman," is also included.
Another highlight is a print so rare that even Hirschfeld didn't have — an extraordinary lithograph of the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham in motion. Created in 1969, only one print was ever made.
Hirschfeld created some 10,000 drawings during his lifetime. About 70 are in the show in addition to more than 250 other works in slide shows and on iPads.
Choosing what material to include was like "saying we're going to make an exhibition from King Tut's tomb," Leopold said. "You know you're going to find gold in every drawer and every shelf and then you get to decide which gold is the best."
The exhibition also focuses on his influences, including Balinese shadow puppets that he saw while on a 10-month trip to the Indonesian island in 1932. A painter at the time, Hirschfeld noticed how the bright Balinese sun bleached out all the color.
"The shadows and light and dark lines he saw on the landscape were a very important part of his changing from watercolors to just line drawings," said Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, the artist's widow who also is president of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation.
The exhibition is a cross-section of his well-known theater drawings and lesser-known works, such as his early movie and advertising posters, she said, adding: "It's fun to look at the kind of work that you don't always associate with Al Hirschfeld."
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-10-17-Al%20Hirschfeld%20Exhibition/id-0ef41e0939514915beac0b51c701c7afSimilar Articles: twerking iPhone 5S evelyn lozada Amanda Dufner Boston Magazine
Peterson attended son's funeral on Wednesday
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson pauses during introductions before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. One of the star running back's sons, a 2-year-old in South Dakota, died Friday after an alleged attack in a child abuse case. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson pauses during introductions before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. One of the star running back's sons, a 2-year-old in South Dakota, died Friday after an alleged attack in a child abuse case. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson leaves the field during the first half of an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. One of the star running back's sons, a 2-year-old in South Dakota, died Friday after an alleged attack in a child abuse case.(AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) — Adrian Peterson has rejoined the Minnesota Vikings after missing practice to attend the funeral for his 2-year-old son.
Peterson says he went to Sioux Falls, S.D., on Wednesday for the private service. The boy died last week in an alleged case of child abuse. Peterson says he didn't know the child was his until about two months ago and had been working with the boy's mother to support the family financially and meet the boy, whose name was Tyrese Robert Ruffin.
The first time Peterson saw the child was when he was in the hospital last Thursday. The boy died the next day.
Peterson says attending the funeral was extremely difficult. He plans to play on Monday night against the Giants.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-10-17-FBN-Vikings-Peterson/id-7b538aee48de4ed8bf906e1c10df9550Category: Captain Phillips Scott Carpenter gravity castle january jones
High court will review EPA global warming rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether to block key aspects of the Obama administration's plan aimed at cutting power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.
The justices said they will review a unanimous federal appeals court ruling that upheld the government's unprecedented regulation of carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases.
The question in the case is whether the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate automobile emissions of greenhouses gases as air pollutants, which stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, also applies to power plants and factories.
The court's decision essentially puts on trial a small but critical piece of President Barack Obama's toolbox to tackle global warming — a requirement that companies expanding existing industrial facilities or building new ones that would increase overall pollution must evaluate ways to reduce the carbon they release, as well. For many industrial facilities, this is the only way heat-trapping gases will be regulated, until the EPA sets national standards.
That's because the administration's plans hinge on the high court's 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA which said the EPA has the authority, under the Clean Air Act, to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from vehicles. Two years later, Obama's EPA concluded that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases endangered human health and welfare, a finding the administration has used to extend its authority beyond automobiles to develop national standards for large stationary sources.
The administration currently is at work setting first-time national standards for new and existing power plants, and will move on to other large stationary sources. But in the meantime, the only way companies are addressing global warming pollution is through a permitting program that requires them to analyze the best available technologies to reduce carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas.
The president gave the EPA until next summer to propose regulations for existing power plants, the largest unregulated source of global warming pollution.
"From an environmental standpoint, it is bad, but not catastrophic," said Michael Gerrard, a law professor at Columbia University and director of its Center for Climate Change Law. Gerrard said it would have been far worse if the court decided to question the EPA's conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare.
Environmental groups generally breathed a sigh of relief that the court rejected calls to overrule its 2007 decision or review the EPA's conclusion about the health effects of greenhouse gas emissions.
"It's a green light for EPA to go ahead with its carbon pollution standards for power plants because the court has left standing EPA's endangerment finding," said Joanne Spalding, the Sierra Club's senior managing attorney.
But a lawyer for some of the business groups involved in the case said the court issued a more sweeping ruling.
"Read in its broadest sense, it arguably opens the door to whether EPA can regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources at all," said Roger Martella, a partner with the Sidley, Austin law firm in Washington.
The regulations have been in the works since 2011 and stem from the landmark Clean Air Act that was passed by Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970 to control air pollution.
The administration has come under fierce criticism from Republicans for pushing ahead with the regulations after Congress failed to pass climate legislation, and after the administration of President George W. Bush resisted such steps.
In 2012, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded that the EPA was "unambiguously correct" in using existing federal law to address global warming.
The judges on that panel were: Then-Chief Judge David Sentelle, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and David Tatel and Judith Rogers, both appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton.
The case will be argued in early 2014.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/high-court-review-epa-global-warming-rules-134523693--finance.html
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Ivanka Trump Welcomes Son Joseph Frederick
"With love we welcome our son, Joseph Frederick Kushner," she Tweeted.
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Fifty Shades Of Grey To Cuff Leonardo DiCaprio As Lead — In Director Oliver Stone's Fantasy!
Well slap us silly — in the bed, on our booty, with a feather!
As much as we love the model-swooner, we never imagined Leonardo DiCaprio's happy face when we read the erotic pages of best-selling Fifty Shades of Grey.
And ya know what? SHAME ON US!!
If he's got enough stamina to last as long as did in Titanic's freezing Atlantic waters, surely he's got the same thing going on behind closed doors!
Oliver Stone sure as heck thinks so!
The legendary director recently gave his take on the casting (and we're wondering if actual 50 Shades director Sam-Taylor Johnson is hearing), when he revealed:
"I'm so out of the loop on feature films, but [Leo] would make a fortune."
Yeah he would!!
He may not be who the fans had in mind, but something tells us theaters would overflow with eager readers wanting a glimpse of the show if Leo signed that contract! Ha.. contract, get it? :P
Anyways!
Oliver also confirmed he'll be directing the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr biopic, so no whips and chains for him. But we have ultimate faith in 50 Shades' helm — hiring a woman to direct a film where a man dominates was prob the best decision, like… ever.
But we're still in need of that male lead!
Ever since Charlie Hunnam threw in the sticky towel, Alexander Skarsgard and Jamie Dornan have been the frontrunners for rumored producer talks while Ian Somerhalder and Ryan Gosling reign as fan favorites!
Who's UR naughty master? Sound off in the comments (below)!!
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Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Decoding Zack Snyder's Two-Minute History of Superman (Video)
The collaboration between Zack Snyder and Bruce Timm celebrating this year's 75th birthday of Superman has finally made its way online, offering up two minutes filled with Easter Eggs, homages and celebrations of the career of the Last Son of Krypton. In case you couldn't decode everything on show, here's a guide to what you might have missed.
(Spoilers: a working knowledge of DC Comics continuity isn't a must, but will definitely be a plus for those trying to keep track of everything that follows. Also, Tom Welling fans, prepare to be disappointed.)
STORY: Warner Bros., DC Unveil Superman Anniversary Logo, Promise Zack Snyder Short (Exclusive)
0:00: John Williams' classic theme for Superman The Movie, of course.
0:09: The cover for Action Comics Vol. 1, #1 (The series was relaunched along with the rest of DC Comics' superhero line, in September 2011), from 1938, by Joe Shuster -- the first public appearance of the Man of Steel.
0:12: Superman runs through the crowd and traffic before eventually leaping into the air (over the Daily Planet building, of course), mirroring his power upgrade in the early comic books -- remember that, according to the 1940s Superman cartoons, he was "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound," as opposed to actually flying (He didn't actually start flying until 1941). It's barely noticeable, but Superman becomes more simplistic in look as he runs, again in parallel the character's visual evolution as other artists began to assist Shuster on the strip.
0:23: The character (and animation style) now resembles the 1940s cartoons from Max Fleischer's Fleischer Studios (and, latterly, the successor Famous Studios). The first of these cartoons was released in 1941, the same year Superman started to fly -- and the year that the U.S. declared war on Germany. Now you see why he attacks those planes.
0:29: That's Lex Luthor getting hit through a wall on the cover of Action Comics #47 by artist Fred Ray -- the first time that the character appeared on a comic book cover (He made his first appearance in Action Comics #23). Whether intentional or not -- and judging by the rest of this video, let's go with "intentional" -- Superman looks less like the Shuster original and more like Wayne Boring's version of the character when he flies off the page.
0:31: The change to black and white comes as Superman changes into someone that very closely resembles George Reeves, who played the Man of Steel in Adventures of Superman, which ran from 1952 through 1958. The shot of Superman standing atop a rotating globe echoes that show's opening titles.
0:38: Yes, Jimmy Olsen has become "The Giant Turtle Man" on the cover of 1961's Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #53, thanks to artist Curt Swan. We're officially into the Silver Age era of comics by this point -- when this comic was published, Barry Allen had become the Flash, Hal Jordan had taken over as Green Lantern and the Justice League of America had come together. As superhero comics were beginning a renaissance, Superman was still stuck dealing with goofy transformations and unlikely plot contrivances to stop Lois Lane figuring out his secret identity.
0:41: Brainiac and the Bottle City of Kandor make an appearance, in a scene homaging (in a somewhat out of sequence manner) the cover of Action Comics #242 from 1958, again by Curt Swan.
0:44: Brainiac is replaced by Bizarro, the imperfect clone of Superman, who first appeared in Superboy #68 (1958), fighting above the classic Fortress of Solitude, which also appeared in 1958 (This time in Action Comics #241). That square Earth in the background? That's Bizarro Earth, as built by Bizarro. He am so goofy.
0:50: Blink and you'll miss them, but that's Superman's extended Silver Age family right there -- Supergirl, Beppo the Super-Monkey, Streaky the Super-Cat and Krypto, the Super Dog. Missing for some reason is Comet, Supergirl's half-human, half-horse lover. The Silver Age Superman stories are kind of weird, you guys. They're flying over the Kent Farm in Metropolis, for what it's worth.
0:51: Even more blink and you'll miss him, but that's Mister Mxyzptlk for an instant, the fifth-dimensional imp who liked to show up and cause trouble until he was tricked into saying his name backwards and banished back to where he came from. Because, yes, "Kltpzyxm" is even harder to say than "Mxyzptlk" (For the record, it's "mix-yez-pittle-ick").
0:55: See? Comic books are art -- why else would Clark Kent and a brunette that's probably Lois Lane (but could be the depowered Wonder Woman of the late 1960s) be hanging out with Andy Warhol to gaze at panels from Superman comics, all Roy Lichtenstein-like? Worth looking at in particular is the panel all the way on the left -- that's from the infamous "I Am Curious (Black)!" (Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane #106, from 1970), in which Lois Lane temporarily became a black woman to live the black experience for herself. Look, everyone involved meant well, okay…?
0:57: Just in time to wash away the awkward taste in everyone's mouth, it's the Super Friends! This image in particular is based on the Alex Toth-illustrated cover to DC's DC Limited Collectors' Edition presents SUPER FRIENDS from 1976.
0:59: Barely seen as he flies off-screen, but Superman turns into a Neal Adams-illustrated version of himself, just in time for a scene that evokes the 1978 special edition Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, co-written and illustrated by Adams. In a weird moment, though, the style of Superman as he's getting punches is less Adams and more Dick Dillin, the artist who drew the character for more than a decade as part of his run as artist on Justice League of America.
1:03: This is, of course, the Christopher Reeve version of the character from the 1970s/80s Superman movies, as evidenced by…
1:09: …Superman as a computer game! This could be a reference to the various actual video games that started with 1979's Superman, but I'm going to call it as an explicit Superman III movie reference, instead.
1:12: As anyone who read the 1992 "Death of Superman" storyline will recognize, that's Doomsday attacking the Man of Steel right there -- with the nice touch of a smashed Daily Planet globe in the style of Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding, who drew the actual death issue, in the foreground.
1:16: The cover of Superman Vol. 2 #75 (1992, by the aforementioned Jurgens and Breeding) is smashed through by the four "replacement" Supermen of the "Reign of the Superman" storyline that followed the "Death" storyline -- clockwise, starting from the top, that's Superboy (A clone mixing the DNA of Superman and Lex Luthor), the Eradicator (Kryptonian artifact that gained awareness and made itself a body; don't ask), John Henry Irons, AKA Steel (A hero inspired by the original Superman) and Hank Heywood, AKA Cyborg Superman, who eventually became a Green Lantern villain, unexpectedly enough. For those with sensitive ears, you will have noticed that the music has now become part of Hans Zimmer's score to Man of Steel.
1:19: The mullet and the black costume were part of Superman's resurrection. The costume only lasted until the end of the storyline; the hairstyle, sadly, lasted three years (Again, this art style echoes Jurgens/Breeding).
1:20: Superman splits in two, in a reference to the 1998 storyline that saw Superman firstly develop new powers and then find himself split into two different beings -- one who preferred to think his way out of trouble, and the other more action oriented. The visual here is in the style of Ron Frenz, one of the artists who worked on the storyline.
1:22: Back to the classic look, thanks to this return for animator Timm to the Superman: The Animated Series world. Strange but true -- when we see the crowd staring up at Superman in this scene, it's the only definite appearance of Lois Lane in the entire short. Also present: Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Ma and Pa Kent, Maggie Sawyer, Bibbo and Terrible Turpin, amongst many others.
1:27: The Smallville logo appears on the Warner Bros water tower that appeared in Animaniacs for years -- a surprisingly short mention for the longest-running version of the character in live-action -- while Alex Ross's Superman from the much-loved 1996 mini-series Kingdom Come floats past, glaring down at the viewer, a villain in each hand.
1:32: From out of a Boom Tube comes today's comic book Superman, who made his debut in 2011's Justice League Vol. 2 #1. He's being pursued by the contemporary version of Jack Kirby's Darkseid, who was the villain of that first Justice League storyline. The visual style here isn't directly lifted from any one artist who's drawn the new version of the character, but contains elements of Cully Hamner, Rags Morales and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez to my eye.
1:37: By the time Superman hits the safe, he's firmly evoking Henry Cavill's Superman from this summer's Man of Steel. In particular, the first publicity still from the movie from two years ago.
1:40: The new Superman flies into the sky in a scene similar to one in Man of Steel, before landing atop the 75 Years logo and standing in a pose that evokes the George Reeves version of the character.
1:52: The official Superman at 75 logo, which is based on early promotional art for DC's "The New 52" relaunch in 2011 by artist (and DC Comics co-publisher) Jim Lee.
Although the short is packed, it's surprising what didn't show up at any point -- No mention of John Byrne's 1986 reboot of the entire Superman comic book mythos is, perhaps, understandable considering the number of lives pushed into the short running time of the animation. I can even forgive a lack of Legion of Super-Heroes appearance for that same reason. But, come on, people -- no appearance by Jor-El, Lara or any version of Krypton at all? What's that all about? Beppo the Super-Monkey gets screen time but Superman's parents don't?!?
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Wine experts: EU vintners recover from bad harvest
BRUSSELS (AP) — The grape harvest in the European Union has picked up from the extremely bad 2012 season, wine experts said. But key regions in France are still struggling because of bad weather.
Several wine-producing regions had the worst harvest in a half-century last year, so the European vintners want to regain global market share with a more bountiful harvest. Overall EU production is estimated to swell by 15.2 percent compared with last year.
Thierry Coste, an expert with the EU farmers' union, said Wednesday that overall production will still be below the five-year average. France remained well below the 2011 levels, but Italy and Spain have enjoyed sizable increases.
"We are happy that we have broken with the negative spiral," Coste said.
The European harvest is essential to the global wine industry since the 28-nation EU accounts for about two-thirds of global production and 70 percent of exports, according to European Commission figures.
After output slumped to 148 million hectoliters in 2012 from an average of 175 million hectoliters, it's expected to be back up to around 170 million hectoliters. Coste said it will allow them to get back some market share lost to international competitors like South Africa and Chile.
Still, there was some bad news, especially in France.
"There have been some serious concerns due to weather vagaries for Bordeaux, the Loire Valley and Burgundy because the hail was much stronger and intense than usual," he said, referring to freak hailstorms in late spring that ravaged some of the finest French vineyards.
"Great areas have been strongly affected," Coste said. On top of that, he said the Merlot grape, an essential ingredient in Bordeaux reds, was having trouble flowering.
French production, which dropped from 50.2 million hectoliters in 2011 to 41.4 million last year, is expected to recover only to 44.1 million hectoliters.
Not all is bad news for France. The Champagne region, where an unusual growing season was followed by late harvesting, still has the promise of a great year, the local vintners' committee said.
And when it comes to quality, Coste is hopeful.
"This year the wines might have less maturity and less power than other years. But they will fully express the land they are on," Coste said.
The top European wines often do very well abroad. Overall, the EU vintners are specifically looking at the U.S.
"What we are realizing today is that there is this high demand in the United States and Europe can fulfill that demand," Coste said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wine-experts-eu-vintners-recover-bad-harvest-125120483--finance.html
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Right Wing Protesters Bring Confederate Flag to White House, Call on Obama to "Put Down the Koran" (Little green footballs)
The Cloud Washers Will Lose
There are two camps in the cloud world. There are the cloud washers, which are the ones who put a cloud sticker on everything. They say, “Oh, yes, it’s a private cloud for big data.” Then they throw in a few dozen other buzz words for the new look on their legacy technology. The other camp, the cloud services providers, enable customers to innovate in less time than it would take if they had to rely on static, traditional systems.
The cloud washers will lose in this new fast world. Their camp will be abandoned and replaced by a next generation of service providers that offer ways to build apps, host them anywhere and do it all in a fluid fashion. It’s happening now and it’s happening faster than anyone thought it would. Customers want on-demand services, not a reinvention of what they already have.
“They do not want something that is called cloud,” said George Reese, who earlier this year sold his company, Enstratius, to Dell. “They want it on-demand. You can’t make up on-demand self-service.”
On-demand services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) have existed for several years and are designed to collect, process, distribute and analyze the small pieces of data, such as tweets, Facebook updates, and pictures that come with tremendous speed and volume.
But with speed comes another dimension for the way data behaves, Red Monk Analyst Donnie Berkholz told me this week. Customers need new ways to accelerate their production, as app development becomes more industrial in nature. Apps can be built a lot easier than ever before, as increasingly there are discreet services that can be pieced together. It’s a different kind of factory than the hierarchy that comes with a conveyor belt model.
In this new reality, customers will build what Warner Bros. Executive Vice President and CTO Jonathan Murray calls the composable enterprise. Customers now operate static IT environments that exist in silos. They will increasingly have to consider the fluid nature for how apps and data run in this mesh like environment. Data has to be orchestrated and managed with the machines, databases, compute, networking and storage. It means that there have to be underlying systems and services that can keep that data flowing without encumbrance.
Flame On
This combined state of speed and acceleration means diminished returns for companies that have used cloud washing to try and push their legacy technologies as new cloud services. In particular, I am thinking about companies that are calling for more hardware and more virtualization for enterprise environments. It may suitable for purposes of savings and efficiency but traditional IT management technology dressed in a cloud tutu does do not put companies on a trajectory that allows them to innovate and capable of providing their own differentiated services.
“It is this notion of validity,” said Apcera’s Derek Collison.
Collison is a former Google engineer who, after leaving the Googleplex, moved on to VMware and led development for Cloud Foundry, the popular platform-as-a-service (PaaS). He left VMware in 2012 and started Apcera, which he described on Twitter last week as a continuum of trusted autonomous computing. In fact, Apcera now has the trademark rights to the word “Continuum,” and will use it as a foundation for marketing its technology.
Apcera is an autonomous system that understands the notion of who you want to talk to and how it talks to you. This is not meant literally but rather in the sense that, for example, the technology knows the semantics of a database and can associate it with a policy. It knows its physical location, where in the system it is located and is semantically aware of what it is. All of the descriptions are enforced and auditable, bound by a universal policy, which is built into the service. So an app can be deployed but the governance and regulatory requirements go with it and can be edited or changed when needed.
Collison describes the technology as the DNA of building blocks designed to deliver the velocity through the pipeline. In essence, it integrates infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with platform as a service and software as a service (SaaS) into one platform. He said it is configurable, fluid and adaptable. It is designed to perform scheduled jobs that are autonomous and have a semantic understanding of the infrastructure and communications environment. Apcera works as a service that customers access through REST APIs, using an HTTP interface. Customers have become accustomed to using this kind of interface, as it is the primary means for delivering services from complex backend systems.
In Collison’s view, customers should not be thinking that they have to go from 35 percent virtualization to 50 percent. Virtualization will not provide the speed and on-demand self-service that is needed to innovate.
VMware uses software defined networking (SDN) as the framework for its marketing and strategy. The company acquired Nicira for $1.26 billion and has used it as a springboard to launch its networking hypervisor. The intent is for VMware to become the provider of virtualization technology for the entire data center. It has virtualized the compute and now it is seeking to virtualize the storage and the networking, too.
Collison is convinced that SDN is not the answer. He describes the data center as a barnyard. VMware is trying to virtualize the entire barnyard. But that removes the ability for this sophisticated talking platform that Collision is pushing with Apcera and its autonomous continuum that makes everything in the infrastructure an autonomous barnyard.
Docker represents this concept of acceleration and the way that apps are increasingly everywhere. Docker automates the deployment of apps as a lightweight Linux container that can be built and tested on a laptop and synced to run anywhere. It can run on virtual machines, bare-metal servers, OpenStack clusters, public instances or any combination of on-premise and cloud offerings.
Apps Run Everywhere
Docker does not port the virtual machine or the operating system, which makes sense when considering that the infrastructure itself is becoming the operating system. The compute, storage and networking is already in place on a cloud service — the application just goes there to run.
The service avoids the issue that comes with moving virtual machines, which are not designed to move between clouds. So instead of moving the VM, Docker moves the code between the VMs. Most of the security is managed by the Linux kernel. Hykes said in an interview this summer that developers particularly like the ability to continually test and integrate app containers. This makes for simpler and faster methods for building applications that can run anywhere. With Docker, platforms can be built that leverage the services of different providers to create lightweight environments for building and delivering apps.
Docker is a natural accompaniment to CoreOS, the new Linux-based operating system started by Alex Polvi, the founder of Kickstarter, which sold to Rackspace. Docker actually comes packaged with CoreOS so applications can be moved between different services.
With CoreOS, the applications are deployable units that can run anywhere. The OS, based on Google principles, updates automatically, much like the Chrome browser does. This is different than Ubuntu or Red Hat, which may be running on different versions of the OS in different environments. That can make for some work in making the apps compatible.
“You can take the app and run it on AWS or Rackspace without modifications, ” Polvi said. “CoreOS focuses on the apps, not machines.”
The Ultimate Disrupter?
Amazon Web Services took an early lead, embracing on-demand technologies with services that allow for high-velocity startups to serve up pictures, video and updates. They bought tens of thousands of servers and started building a network of data centers around the world.
But much of what they built used technology designed for small clusters of two to four servers. To scale these operations has meant adding a wizard’s mix of software to connect hundreds and often thousands of servers. Apps need to run anywhere, all the time. But for the most part, these servers were designed for another age.
And it’s in this hardware realm where there is the potential for perhaps the most significant disruption and the cloud washers’ most serious threat: Open Compute, the effort to open-source the data center that Facebook initiated in 2011.
Facebook faced a problem when it started designing its Prineville, Ore., data center. The off-the-shelf servers had too much waste, so the company built its own and open-sourced the entire data-center operation. They spearheaded the creation of the Open Compute Foundation, which has emerged as a force in open-sourcing not just the servers but most recently the network, too.
With open-sourced hardware, companies like Digital Ocean can build hardware specifically for their needs. That would be almost impossible with the current hardware vendors.
“We are looking forward to using OpenCompute servers,” said Digital Ocean CEO and Co-Founder Ben Uretsky. “Since we are running Linux only, we can optimize the entire process — it provides a much more seamless experience. We will cut down on hardware. It will provide a better cost efficiency. We are replacing the 30-year-old BIOS with 2013 standards. Open-source BIPS — that is a standard we are trying to push. It would decrease boot time from minutes to seconds.
Look out cloud washers, it’s just going to get worse. This shake up is happening faster than anyone realized.”
Apcera is building the modern enterprise IT platform. Driven by policy, our solution delivers revolutionary technology along a customer’s evolutionary path, unifying IT to go faster, safely. All at enterprise scale.
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CoreOS provides a new server operating system for running thousands of servers themselves. The company is made up of server infrastructure experts who had previously worked at Google, Novell, and Rackspace, and now they’re looking to package up a new Linux distribution that will allow others to build their own massively scalable server infrastructure.
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Before Churches Had Songbooks, There Was 'Lined-Out' Gospel
Church elder Elwood Cornett preaches at a recent reunion of Old Regular Baptists. Brother Don Pratt is seated behind him in a blue shirt and tie.
Cindy Johnston/NPR
Church elder Elwood Cornett preaches at a recent reunion of Old Regular Baptists. Brother Don Pratt is seated behind him in a blue shirt and tie.
Cindy Johnston/NPR
Deep in the hills of Appalachia, there's a mournful, beautiful style of church music that hasn't changed since the 18th century.
The hymns of the Old Regular Baptist Church are sung in the so-called "lined-out" style brought to America by British colonists. It can be heard in the town of Sassafras, Ky., hidden in a hollow between mountainsides covered with sugar maple and yellow buckeye and shot through with veins of bituminous coal.
On a Saturday morning in September, several hundred men and women — many solidly built, with square faces — have gathered in a Depression-era building to worship and sing. They settle into green-cushioned pews in a large, well-lit sanctuary. One of the men sitting behind the pulpit, under the picture of a kneeling Jesus, feels moved to start a song.
"Let milk and honey flow..."
He sings a line of a hymn. Once the congregation recognizes it, it repeats the line in unison, its voices swelling in a minor mode. This is what's called lined-out hymnody.
"When shall I reach that happy place..."
Unlike the Southern a cappella tradition of sacred harp or shape-note singing, lined-out hymns have no musical notation. People listen, and they sing. The tradition began when churches didn't have songbooks.
Association for Cultural Equity/YouTube
The Thornton Old Regular Baptist church in Mayking, Ky., sings "I'm Going Home" in lined-out hymnody. This footage was captured by musicologist Alan Lomax in 1983.
"I've grown up all my life hearing these songs," Geraldine Ison says. She drove here from Blair Branch Old Regular Baptist Church in Letcher County, Ky. "When I was younger, I didn't like 'em. I thought they were too sad. But now I love 'em."
She has come to the annual reunion of the Indian Bottom Association — the largest group within the various branches of the Old Regular Baptist Church, and the one that has worked hardest to preserve these old songs.
"My mother, I can remember her singing 'Little Bessie,' something real sad, and I begged her not to sing," Ison says with a chuckle.
Church members say they don't consider this music sorrowful.
"As far as being just mournful, sad singing — and a lot of people look at it that way — it's not really," says Danny Amburgey, a retired state road inspector. "If you know the song, know what we're singing about, we're giving praise to God."
Don Pratt, retired assistant school superintendent and clerk of the Indian Bottom Association, adds: "It's been a part of my life from the beginning, and it's a joyful sound. It's a sound that touches your heart."
The Smithsonian Folkways label has released two CDs of songs by Old Regular Baptists. These hymns are considered the oldest English-language religious music passed down orally in America.
At noon after the Saturday-morning service, the ladies of the church have laid out a feast: fried chicken, ham slices, field peas, deviled eggs and cornbread. For dessert, there's banana pudding, dirt pudding, cherry pie, apple pie, vanilla cake and dump cake.
This is southeastern Kentucky where the morning mist settles in valleys like milk in bowls; where a quarter of the population lives in poverty; and where isolated communities are bound by food, family and faith. But the tradition in Appalachia is more than sacred song. The music is part of the moral universe in which the Old Regular Baptists dwell: a vivid faith life of baptism in cold-water creeks, repentance and salvation.
"Yes, I want to go to heaven some day..."
Brother Don Pratt chants in a spontaneous sermon while the rising voices of the congregation wrap him in song. He is one of a succession of pastors, called moderators in the church's tradition, who step up to the pulpit for spontaneous sermons.
"I want to hear him say when the gates swing wide..."
The preacher who brings the service to a crescendo is Elwood Cornett, a 76-year-old retired school administrator who is moderator of the entire Indian Bottom Association.
Elwood Cornett is the moderator, the church's term for preacher, of the entire Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists.
Cindy Johnston/NPR
Elwood Cornett is the moderator, the church's term for preacher, of the entire Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists.
Cindy Johnston/NPR
"Wooooooo, but the key is Jesus," Cornett intones, as a woman in the congregation shrieks in spiritual elation. "Glory, glory, glory, let Mount Zion rejoice!" His arms are wide and his face contorts in piety.
According to attendance records announced at this year's reunion, 1,744 Old Regular Baptists in 41 congregations make up the Indian Bottom Association. But their numbers shrink a little each year. The room contains mostly gray heads.
Elwood Cornett worries about continuity. "My grandfather was born 100 years before I was," he says. "My mother said that he sang this very way. And I sing this very way. And I'm committed to doing what I can to keep this sound alive. I want it to be around 100 years from now."
While the Old Regular Baptists wait on the Lord to return, they sing their sacred songs here in the mountains — living, as they say, "in the world, but not of the world."
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