- San Diego Chargers TE Antonio Gates agrees to five-year c...
Antonio Gates has agreed to a five-year contract extension with the Chargers. The deal, which runs through the 2015 season, is worth $7.235 million per season, with $20.4 million in guarantees, a source told ESPN senior NFL analyst Chris Mortensen.
- Uncle: Body of Lorenzen Wright found in Memphis
Relatives and friends of Lorenzen Wright gathered and grieved for the former NBA player who has been missing for 10 days, as police investigated the discovery of a man's body outside of Memphis.
- Los Angeles Dodgers trade for Kansas City Royals OF Scot...
The Dodgers have agreed to acquire Scott Podsednik from the Royals, a source says.
- Sources: Roy Oswalt-to-Philadelphia Phillies talks have i...
The Phillies and Astros have intensified talks in the last 24 hours about a deal that would send Roy Oswalt to Philadelphia, sources said.
- Source: Troubled QB Jeremiah Masolii to enroll at Ole Miss
Former Oregon QB Jeremiah Masoli is expected to be admitted to one of three graduate programs at the University of Mississippi, which should make him eligible to play as early as this season, a source told ESPN's Joe Schad.
- Tyreke Evans, O.J. Mayo, Gerald Wallace, JaVale McGee cut...
Tyreke Evans, O.J. Mayo, Gerald Wallace and JaVale McGee have been cut by Team USA as the roster was trimmed from 19 to 15.
- Stephen Strasburg: Tightness due to 'kind of hitting the ...
Nationals rookie right-hander Stephen Strasburg says he first felt tightness in his pitching shoulder "a couple days ago" and chalks it up to "kind of hitting the wall a little bit."
- Cleveland Indians crowd taunts fan in LeBron James Heat j...
A fan wearing a Miami Heat jersey of LeBron James drew the ire of the crowd at a Cleveland Indians game and was escorted out of the ballpark.
- Los Angeles Lakers center Andrew Bynum has successful art...
Los Angeles Lakers starting center Andrew Bynum underwent successful arthroscopic surgery to repair a tear of the lateral meniscus in his right knee, the team announced Wednesday.
- Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan wants Albert Hayn...
Albert Haynesworth has made a lot of noise about his displeasure with the Redskins' switch from a 4-3 to a 3-4 defense, but the All-Pro defensive tackle has assured the team he won't be a distraction when camp starts, The Washington Post reported.
- News Analysis: Ruling Against Arizona a Warning for Other... Wednesday’s immigration ruling may halt, at least temporarily, a movement by states to make it a crime to be an immigrant without legal documents.
- As Desert Deaths Soar, a Morgue Grows Crowded An Arizona morgue is running out of space as a growing number of border crossers have been found dead in the deserts around Tucson.
- U.S. Military Scrutinizes Leaks for Risks to Afghans Some of the documents released by WikiLeaks contain the names of Afghans who provided credible information to U.S. and NATO troops.
- Job Subsidies, Often Popular for Public Projects, Also Li... Stimulus money sometimes goes to private companies to hire workers, instead of funding public projects.
- Congress Is Rethinking Its Ban on Internet Gambling Under pressure to find new revenue sources, Congress is reconsidering legalizing, and taxing, Internet gambling.
- Video Technology Added at New Meadowlands Stadium With the New Meadowlands Stadium set to give fans free applications and enhanced video, is the live game no longer enough?
- News Analysis: Paterson and Cuomo Both Avoid the Worst Case By recusing himself from the case, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo avoided accusations of opportunism.
- Exhibition Review: ‘Beyond,’ the Solar System at Air ... An exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum features 148 extraordinary photographs of moons and planets.
- Franklin Roosevelt Letters Go to National Archives A cache of documents related to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency has been donated to the National Archives.
- 2nd Sailor’s Body Found in Afghanistan KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A senior U.S. military official and Afghan officials say the body of a second U.S. sailor who went missing in a dangerous part of eastern Afghanistan has been recovered.
- Arizona Ruling Sparks Political Firestorm A federal judge's decision to block the most controversial elements of Arizona's immigration law offered a fresh hot-button issue for the already heated political season.
- Drugs, Discipline Dog Afghan Army The U.S. strategy for leaving Afghanistan is dependent on building capable Afghan forces that can take over, but U.S. soldiers complain of a trigger-happy attitude, general carelessness and drug use.
- Goldman Bans Swearing in Emails Goldman Sachs is telling employees that they will no longer be able to get away with profanity in emails.
- Exxon Profit Soars 91% Exxon earnings jumped as the oil giant rebounded from the prior year's weak performance on higher commodities prices and improved refining margins.
- Jobless Claims Fall Initial jobless claims declined by 11,000 to 457,000 last week, but that followed a big rise the previous period, signaling little improvement in the job market.
- Tech Firms Lobby EU on Privacy Microsoft, Google and other U.S. tech giants are pushing to streamline Europe's privacy rules in order to offer more remote computing and data-storage services. Some European governments are resisting.
- Wal-Mart's Fashion Identity Crisis Wal-Mart cannot seem to find the right fit when it comes to selling clothing, and by quietly ousting its U.S. division apparel chief, the retailer acknowledged that its clothing strategy has been a dud.
- Banks Get Pitches on Overdraft Protection Bad spending habits like overdrawing a checking account are good for banks, and for technology and marketing companies trying to help them preserve billions of dollars in overdraft fees.
- Beige Book Shows Sluggish Growth U.S. economic activity rose only modestly in June and the first half of July, the Fed said, in another sign that the recovery may be running out of steam.
- PartyGaming, Bwin Merge U.K.-listed gambling company PartyGaming PLC plans to merge with Austrian sports-book operator Bwin Interactive Entertainment, creating the world's largest listed online-gambling business.
- Arizona judge gets it exactly right U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ripped the guts out of SB 1070 on Wednesday, striking down the most egregious and indefensible parts of Arizona's immigration law.
- Controversy over 'lost' Ansel Adams photos turns negative A claim that several dozen glass plates bought for $45 at a garage sale were negatives from Ansel Adams brought an angry response of disbelief from the man who oversees the famed photographer's trust.
- Vietnam restricts online gaming over youth concerns Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications has cut off overnight public Internet access in businesses and banned advertisements of online games pending new regulations amid a public outcry over the games' influence on youth, the state-run news agency reported.
- Priest stabbed to death in Mexico church, police say An 80-year-old Roman Catholic priest was found stabbed to death in his church in the city of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, CNNMexico.com reported Thursday, citing state police.
- Authorities reopen New York bridge Authorities reopened all lanes of a bridge connecting the New York boroughs of Queens and the Bronx Thursday after closing them during morning rush hour when a parked car prompted police to investigate, officials said.
- Spanish judge issues arrest warrants for 3 U.S. soldiers A Spanish judge issued arrest warrants for three U.S. soldiers on Thursday in connection with the death of a Spanish TV cameraman in Iraq in 2003, reopening a long-running legal battle, according to a copy of the court order viewed by CNN.
- Woman charged in France over babies' bodies A woman has been charged over the discovery of the bodies of eight newborn babies at two locations in northern France, the French Interior Ministry said Thursday.
- Second U.S. sailor found dead in Afghanistan A second U.S. sailor who went missing in Afghanistan last week is dead, a Pentagon official said Thursday.
- Athens tense after striking drivers ordered back to work The Greek capital was tense Thursday after the government ordered truck drivers back to work following a three-day strike.
- S. Korean PM offers to resign a second time South Korea's prime minister has offered to resign for a second time, the prime minister's office said Thursday, after failure to win parliamentary approval to stop relocation of government offices out of the capital, Seoul.
- Want to see twitter in real time? Watch this video. Want to see twitter in real time? Watch this video.- Cannot even find the retweet to give credit, moved to fast down the TweetDeck Column...
- Ghost Recon Alpha The live action Ghost Recon Future Soldier short movie was officially announced this weekend at Comic-Con 2010. Titled Ghost Recon Alpha, the movie is to be ...
- CNN Uses Racist Flame Thrower to Weigh in on Race Relations This is a man who called Obama's Nobel Peace Prize" an affirmative action quota". He defended Rush Limbaugh and the racist "Barack the Magic Negro" song. He also defended President Obama being portrayed as the Joker. But here he is on CNN being asked to weigh in on race relations in the United States when he's part of the problem.
- Cleaning Dalian harbor (PICS) The oil spill resulting from a pipeline explosion in the port city of Dalian on July 16th is being cleaned up by a small army of fisherman, locals, and government workers manning over 250 oil-skimming vessels and 8,000 fishing boats - much of the work being done by hand.
- Linda Hogan engaged to 21-year-old boyfriend The 50-year-old has been dating her toy boy for two years now and the unlikely pair are said to be planning to marry next summer on Linda's yacht named Alimoney.
- Ariz. sheriff: I'll jail immigration protesters Arizona sheriffJoe Arpaio says he'll put immigration protesters in jail. The sheriff of the most populous county in Arizona says he's "not going to put up with any civil disobedience" when the state's new immigration law takes effect.
- Underwear recalled from Walmart after Pastor complains “He was concerned about the packaging on some of the men’s underwear being too revealing, in his opinion, to the point that he thought it was pornographic,” he said. “This gentleman voiced his concerns about that.”
- America Is Obsessed With Tigers (PICS) Though only 3,000 tigers survive in the wild, more than 7,000 live in the U.S. A small percentage are in established zoos. The rest prowl celebrity homes, roadside animal parks and tiny apartments. They are even used as enforcers for drug dealers.
- Quick Analysis of the Arizona Immigration Law Fox News breaks down the ruling by District Judge Susan Bolton to explain which parts of the law was struck down, or enjoined, and which parts are still going to take effect on Thursday.
- Extreme Close-Up of the Face on Mars Here's a picture you probably won't see in the tabloid racks while waiting in line at the grocery store. This is the famous "Face on Mars," and is the closest image ever of the this landform, taken by the best Mars camera ever.
- White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of ...
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity — The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
- Here's Everything We Know So Far About Apple's New "iAd F...
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Here's Everything We Know So Far About Apple's New “iAd For Developers” Program — Apple's iAd mobile advertising program continues its rollout: The newest feature, iAd for Developers, will allow iPhone developers to buy iAds to promote their apps within other apps.
- Facebook CEO talks privacy on Hill (Kim Hart/The Politico)
Kim Hart / The Politico:
Facebook CEO talks privacy on Hill — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made his first visit to Washington Wednesday, meeting privately with members of Congress about online privacy and other technology issues. — Zuckerberg, the site's 26-year-old CEO, has received plenty of attention lately …
- Libraries top Netflix, Redbox when it comes to loaning DV... Ben Patterson / Yahoo! News:
Libraries top Netflix, Redbox when it comes to loaning DVDs — Sure, Netflix and Redbox may rule the U.S. DVD rental market, but it turns out that the nation's public libraries are loaning more DVDs each day than Netflix rents to its by-mail subscribers. — So says a new survey …
- "Leaked" data of 100M Facebook users came from public inf...
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
“Leaked” data of 100M Facebook users came from public info — Much has been made of a recent Facebook “leak” which allegedly disclosed information on over 100 million Facebook users. What some reports have failed to highlight, however, is that the information was already public to begin with.
- RIM Buys "BlackPad.com", Presumably As A Home For The Bla...
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
RIM Buys “BlackPad.com”, Presumably As A Home For The BlackBerry Tablet — Unless someone at Research In Motion is taking the time to screw with all of us, it looks like we might have an official name for their long-rumored BlackBerry tablet project: BlackPad.
- Facebook Goes (Very) Public With Questions Product (Liz G...
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Facebook Goes (Very) Public With Questions Product — Facebook is beta-launching its expected Q&A product today. It's a way to ask friends, and friends of friends, for advice and recommendations on any topic. What's surprising about this product is it's entirely public …
- Android wallpaper app that steals your data was downloade...
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Android wallpaper app that steals your data was downloaded by millions — A questionable Android mobile wallpaper app that collects your personal data and sends it to a mysterious site in China, has been downloaded millions of times, according to data unearthed by mobile security firm Lookout.
- What Weeks Of Real Usage Tells About New iPhone (Walter S...
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
What Weeks Of Real Usage Tells About New iPhone — When I reviewed Apple's new iPhone 4 last month, I said that, overall, it was still the best of the super-smartphones. But I warned that, in my tests, its performance in making voice calls on AT&T's network in the U.S. was decidedly mixed.
- Video: Amazon's Kindle boss demos new model (Brier Dudley...
Brier Dudley / The Seattle Times:
Video: Amazon's Kindle boss demos new model — Here's a video of Ian Freed, vice president of Kindle at Amazon.com, demonstrating the new version of the e-reader the company's announcing Thursday. He showed it yesterday at the company's new South Lake Union headquarters.
- ATM Hack Gives Cash On Demand angry tapir writes "Windows CE-based ATMs can easily be made to dole out cash, according to security researcher Barnaby Jack. Exploiting bugs in two different ATM machines at Black Hat, the researcher from IOActive was able to get them to spit out money on demand and record sensitive data from the cards of people who used them. Jack believes a large number of ATMs have remote management tools that can be accessed over a telephone. After experimenting with two machines he purchased, Jack developed a way of bypassing the remote authentication system and installing a homemade rootkit, named Scrooge,"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- FTC Wants Browsers To Block Online Tracking storagedude writes "The FTC wants a do-not-track mechanism that would allow Web users to opt out of online behavioral tracking, similar to the national do-not-call registry. The agency's preferred method for accomplishing this would be a browser-based tool that would give users the option of blocking data collection across the Web. The only problem is that the agency may not have the authority to require this, thanks to concerted lobbying efforts by the advertising industry. The first step may just be voluntary measures, to be released this fall."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Valve Apologizes For 12,000 Erroneous Anti-Cheating Bans Earlier this week, there were reports that large numbers of Modern Warfare 2 players on Steam were getting erroneously banned by Valve's Anti-Cheat software. While such claims are usually best taken with a grain of salt, the quantity and suddenness caused speculation that Valve's software wasn't operating correctly. A few days later, Valve president Gabe Newell sent out an email acknowledging that roughly 12,000 players had been inappropriately banned over the preceding two weeks. "The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game." Valve reversed the bans and gave free copies of Left 4 Dead 2 to everyone who was affected.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Pizza Lovers Suffer Data Breach From Hell netbuzz writes "Some 230,000 New Zealanders have been informed that their personal information has apparently fallen into the hands of hackers who compromised the network of a locally famous food chain, Hell Pizza. The company says it suspects 'a rogue employee,' but one security expert says Hell's ordering portal is 'about 50 steps of fail.' Several New Zealand celebrities are among the victims and at least one is taking the matter in stride, musing: 'My Twitter has been hacked, my Facebook has been hacked and I'm pretty sure half of New Zealand has my phone number already. I have nothing bad to say about Hell.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- AT&T Won't Block Black Hat Eavesdropping Demo snydeq writes "AT&T says it won't interfere with a highly anticipated talk on intercepting cell phone calls at the Black Hat conference this week. Hacker Chris Paget last week said that he plans to demonstrate on Saturday how to set up what's essentially a fake cell tower that allows him listen in on nearby mobile calls. But Tuesday, he wrote on his blog that he had 'heard that AT&T may be considering suing me to stop my talk.' AT&T, however, has insisted it has no plans to interfere with the talk."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Fly Eyes Used For Solar Cells disco_tracy writes "Researchers took corneas from blow flies, fixed them on a glass substrate, added a polymer to protect the shape and then coated nine-eye arrays in nickel within a vacuum chamber. The result was a master template that retained those useful nanoscale features and can be used to make solar cells."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Chevy Volt Not Green Enough For California thecarchik writes "The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers will go head-to-head on warranties and lease prices: $350 a month for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, $349 for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Now the choice shifts to other measures, including electric and overall range, as well as the plug-in perks that states like California offer to early adopters to encourage them to opt for electric cars. This is where it gets interesting. While California loves the Nissan Leaf, current regulations deny Chevy Volt buyers two significant perks: a $5,000 rebate, and permission to drive solo in HOV Lanes."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- ASCAP Refuses To Debate Lessig An anonymous reader writes "Back in June ASCAP oddly declared war on free culture, specifically calling out Creative Commons, EFF and Public Knowledge, making a number of false statements about all three. The war of words continued as the three groups responded politely, pointing out the errors in the statement from ASCAP's Paul Williams. Larry Lessig wrote a blog post where he asked Williams to debate these topics, saying that it might help if they could get away from making false statements. Williams has now publicly declined to debate saying that it's not worth his time, and once again attacking these groups for trying to 'silence' him. It's difficult to see how a request for a public discussion and debate is an attempt to silence, but that's ASCAP's position and they're sticking to it."
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- Oracle's Java Company Change Breaks Eclipse crabel writes "In Java 1.6.0_21, the company field was changed from 'Sun Microsystems, Inc' to 'Oracle.' Apparently not the best idea, because some applications depend on that field to identify the virtual machine. All Eclipse versions since 3.3 (released 2007) until and including the recent Helios release (2010) have been reported to crash with an OutOfMemoryError due to this change. This is particularly funny since the update is deployed through automatic update and suddenly applications cease to work."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.