Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Hey Lance. Get Off Your High Horse. You Are Not Entitled.
By David Baumann | July 20, 2011 4:31 pm
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong accused Justice Department officials of attempting to ruin his legacy and asked a federal judge in Los Angeles to determine who leaked information from the grand jury investigating whether he used performance enhancing drugs.
In a motion unsealed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Armstrong’s attorney, John W. Keker, said he found “repeated and obvious violations of the secrecy rules governing grand juries.”
“Someone in this district with regular access to grand jury information is routinely flouting the law requiring grand jury secrecy,” Keker, the star trial lawyer of Keker & Van Nest, said.
Even if Armstrong is exonerated and never charged, the leaks guarantee that his reputation will be “permanently damaged,” he said.
“The leaks seem more like a public relations campaign to portray Armstrong as having violated cycling rules during European competitions, and an attempt to justify why the government should even pursue a criminal investigation,” “he said.
Armstrong asked the judge to examine the phone records of Justice Department officials and reporters to determine who may have leaked the information. He also raised the possibility of asking the court to order the journalists who wrote stories about the allegations to disclose their sources—a request that is certain to be fought by the news organizations involved.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California declined comment on the allegations. “The government has received the motion filed late last week and the government will file its opposition brief consistent with the briefing schedule that will be set by the District Court,” he said, in an e-mail response. “Therefore, we will not comment on the assertions made in the motion at this time.”
This dramatic development is the latest salvo in Armstrong’s attempt to salvage his reputation amid repeated reports that he cheated throughout his career. For much of his career, Armstrong, a survivor of testicular cancer, was viewed as a hero. While he has announced his retirement as a competitor, he is a high-profile fund raiser for cancer research and established his own foundation to help fight the disease.
But the continued drumbeat of allegations appears to be damaging Armstrong’s commercial value, as well as his reputation. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Armstrong’s commercial value has dropped, according to a marketing poll of 1,000 people that measures an athlete’s overall appeal. Armstrong’s score had declined from 775 in 2005 to 179 as of June 10, the newspaper reported.
Until now, Armstrong’s attorneys have been waging a public relations battle in order to refute the allegations.
The motion, filed last week, takes the battle to a new forum. Keker said that leaks from the grand jury “have rendered what should have been a closed investigation into a field day for reporters with access to the leaks, and an easy forum for whoever seeks to damage Armstrong’s reputation.”
Citing stories from several news organizations, the attorney said the leaked information included identities of witnesses, the alleged substance of the testimony, the strategy of the investigation, potential charges, the timing of a possible indictment and documents relating to the probe.
The leaks began in May 2010, according to the court documents, when the New York Times published a story citing “two people briefed on the investigation.” They continued this year and culminated in a “60 Minutes” segment which featured details of the probe and allegations by Tyler Hamilton, a former Armstrong teammate, who said the bicyclist had failed a drug test in 2001 and that a deal was made to hide the results.
The story also featured details from former teammate George Hincapie, who, according to “60 Minutes,” had testified before the grand jury about Armstrong’s drug use. Hincapie later issued a statement saying that he had never spoken to CBS News.
The leaks, according to Keker, are “eerily reminiscent” of a previous investigation into performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball and that Jeff Novitzky, a Food and Drug Administration investigator, participated in both probes.
Prosecutors in the Central District of California have also come under fire in recent cases. Earlier this year, a federal judge blasted prosecutors in a foreign bribery case against Lindsey Manufacturing for failing to turn over documents. A judge last year criticized prosecutors and dismissed charges relating to stock fraud allegations.
No related posts.
via mainjustice.com
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The Witcher 2 1.3 Patch Softens Initial Difficulty Curve, Adds New Quest, News from GamePro
The Witcher 2 1.3 Patch Softens Initial Difficulty Curve, Adds New Quest
Stunning PC RPG The Witcher 2 has become notorious for its challenging opening -- the new patch aims to make the game a little more newbie-friendly.
- by Pete Davison
- July 20, 2011 08:55 AM PT
In our recent Games of the Year (So Far) feature, I described The Witcher 2 as a game that "isn't afraid to kick you in the balls repeatedly until you learn how to stand up to it." I stand by that statement -- and the fact that I actually enjoyed its particular brand of sadism -- but not everyone felt the same way. The barrier to entry that was the difficulty of combat in the game's prologue was offputting to some players, so developer CD Projekt Red has listened to popular opinion and tweaked the difficulty in the game's latest patch. This has partly been achieved by making an early and very challenging sequence involving a dragon inaccessible until other sequences have been beaten first, thereby somewhat softening the initial difficulty curve.
The new patch also brings support for non 16:9 resolutions, with the game now playable in 4:3, 5:4 and 16:10 aspect ratios. Item storage has been added to inns, and the inventory system has been revamped to include a new "Junk" category. The otherwise-useless Extras menu on the title screen has been adjusted to include the ability to re-watch in-game animated sequences. And a new quest has been added to chapter 2 of the game.
The "A Sackful of Fluff" quest can be started by visiting Elthon, who lives in a hut in the quarry outside Vergen. The quest is apparently most rewarding for those who demonstrate patience.
You can read a full changelog and instructions for installing the patch here.
via gamepro.com
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Maya Station: Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) support for Maya on the Mac
« Viewport 2.0 API White Paper | Main
15/07/2011
Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) support for Maya on the Mac
Important notice for Autodesk® Maya® 2012 software, and prior Maya version, users regarding the latest Apple® Mac OS® X operating system release, version 10.7 “Lion”.
Testing Maya 2012, and prior versions of Maya, on the Mac OS X 10.7 operating system, has identified platform compatibility issues.
The issues:
- Installing Maya on Mac OS X 10.7 may cause the installer to hang.
- Operating Maya on Mac OS X 10.7 may cause stability issues.
- When submitting a crash report while operating Maya on Mac OS X 10.7, may cause the crash error reporting system to hang.
If you upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7, you may encounter these issues. Autodesk recommends that users of Maya 2012, and prior releases of Maya, do not upgrade to the Mac OS X 10.7 until the compatibility issues have been addressed by Autodesk and Apple. Teams from both companies are working closely to resolve these issues and a notification will be issued once the issues have been addressed.
Note: As of this time, Autodesk® Maya® 2012 software has not been certified to run on Mac OS X 10.7. Please consult the certification charts for more information.
Posted by Nelson Cruz on 15/07/2011 at 05:07 PM in installation & configuration | Permalink
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I find it disappointing that Autodesk chooses not to participate in the OS X betas to make sure Apple releases something that works for us. Please consider acting in a manner that is consistent your expect of your own customers. Log bugs DURING the beta cycle, rather than after.
Posted by: Michiel | 16/07/2011 at 02:35 AM
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Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Understanding the Influence Metric: What is a Klout Score?
Klout Score
The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.
True Reach is the size of your engaged audience and is based on those of your followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages. Amplification Score is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100. Network score indicates how influential your engaged audience is and is also on a scale from 1 to 100. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.
We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet, a comment, or a click. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person's Klout Score. The 25+ variables used to generate scores for each of these categories are normalized across the whole data set and run through our analytics engine. After the first pass of analytics, we apply a specific weight to each data point. We then run the factors through our machine-learning analysis and calculate the final Klout Score. The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people.
via corp.klout.com
Can't Get Enough Of This Theme!
Click the download link to see the full resolution of this image. The beauty is in the details. Both MetroTwit's UI and of course the background image from the Windows 7 Architecture Theme.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
I'm An OSX User Who's Using Windows 7!
So I've been persuaded that Windows 7 is finally an operating system I enjoy as much as using OSX. That's almost sacrilege for me to say because of my passion and love for all things Apple but I'm a bit tired of certain things with OSX and am not that impressed with Lion. I've not used Lion but the promoted features are a big SO WHAT! Of course I'll admit that I use a HackPro and my OSX install is giving me fits right now so I have to wait for Lion to hopefully fix them. But as it stands now other than a solid back up tool like TimeMachine there's not much missing for me to enjoy Windows 7. If you know of a back up solution for Windows 7 that's as seamless as TimeMachine for OSX let me know. Now let me ad my caveat's. Windows 7 is robust "when it works"! I've had to re-install the darn thing at least once and that is a giant peeve. I've never had to do that with OSX accept for cases where I've had hardware failures. I guess what I'm most impressed with in Windows 7 is the performance and the niceties. The transparent borders on windows, the animations in the UI and the themes one can choose. The themes are absolutely cool. Apple needs to get off their fascist high horse support UI customization without using external tools. I mean really. Does Steve Jobs ever get sick of the same window and UI widgets in OSX? How freakn boring can something be. Same thing everyday all the time. Additional caveat is that I'm screwed if something breaks with Windows 7. This is a deal killer for me to fully "convert". If something goes wrong I have no freakn' idea how to fix it, unlike OSX. For example, right now my system will not let me update to SP1. Really Microsoft? Could you be anymore lame than to provide this much confusion to my hardware? For me, this issue remains outstanding as a freakn' black hole. Who knows if I'll ever be able to update. I'm afraid of using a downloaded version of the update for fear of breaking the entire OS. So yes, I love Windows 7 but I'm still an OSX user at heart. And for the first time in history, for me, I can say, well done Microsoft. Keep it up, but please don't make me still hate you so much.
I'm An OSX User Who's Using Windows 7!
So I've been persuaded that Windows 7 is finally an operating system I enjoy as much as using OSX. That's almost sacrilege for me to say because of my passion and love for all things Apple but I'm a bit tired of certain things with OSX and am not that impressed with Lion. I've not used Lion but the promoted features are a big SO WHAT! Of course I'll admit that I use a HackPro and my OSX install is giving me fits right now so I have to wait for Lion to hopefully fix them. But as it stands now other than a solid back up tool like TimeMachine there's not much missing for me to enjoy Windows 7. If you know of a back up solution for Windows 7 that's as seamless as TimeMachine for OSX let me know. Now let me ad my caveat's. Windows 7 is robust "when it works"! I've had to re-install the darn thing at least once and that is a giant peeve. I've never had to do that with OSX accept for cases where I've had hardware failures. I guess what I'm most impressed with in Windows 7 is the performance and the niceties. The transparent borders on windows, the animations in the UI and the themes one can choose. The themes are absolutely cool. Apple needs to get off their fascist high horse support UI customization without using external tools. I mean really. Does Steve Jobs ever get sick of the same window and UI widgets in OSX? How freakn boring can something be. Same thing everyday all the time. Additional caveat is that I'm screwed if something breaks with Windows 7. This is a deal killer for me to fully "convert". If something goes wrong I have no freakn' idea how to fix it, unlike OSX. For example, right now my system will not let me update to SP1. Really Microsoft? Could you be anymore lame than to provide this much confusion to my hardware? For me, this issue remains outstanding as a freakn' black hole. Who knows if I'll ever be able to update. I'm afraid of using a downloaded version of the update for fear of breaking the entire OS. So yes, I love Windows 7 but I'm still an OSX user at heart. And for the first time in history, for me, I can say, well done Microsoft. Keep it up, but please don't make me still hate you so much.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
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