Britney Spears has "mental issues," manager says

Sam Lufti, the manager and companion of troubled pop star Britney Spears, has said the singer suffers from "mental issues" and has seen a psychiatrist, talk show host Barbara Walters revealed on Monday.

On her ABC television show "The View," veteran broadcast journalist Walters said she spoke with Lufti by phone after he reached out to her.

"He said that Britney is suffering from what he describes as mental issues which are treatable," Walters said on "The View." "He said that she has been to a psychiatrist and that she, I assume, is starting some kind of treatment."

Source: reuters.com via pgaliba

Spears' blowup with Lutfi left her sitting barefoot on a curb outside her home, sobbing and holding her little dog London while Lutfi continued to scream at her, according to Spears' paparazzo boyfriend Adnan Ghalib.

Ghalib said he rushed to Spears' home when she tearfully called him for help, pleading, "Baby, can you come pick me up?"

Ghalib said he was denied entrance at the gate to Spears' house, however, and calls to her many cell phones went unanswered. The photog said on the Web site of his employer, photo agency FinalPixx, that "Britney is safe with paparazzi photographer Felipe from Fame at the moment."

Source: abcnews.go.com via pgaliba

Tags: Los Angeles | Adnan Ghalib | barbara walters | Britney Spears | mental issues | People | PSYCHIATRIST | Sam Lufti

Tech & Biz story

function _package_block_category_news_helper($tid, &$used_nids, $count = 5, $orders = 'sticky DESC, changed DESC', $fields = '') {
  $stories = array();
  $result = db_query_range("
    SELECT DISTINCT nid, sticky, title, created $fields
    FROM {node_tag_score}
    WHERE tid IN ('%d')
      AND nid NOT IN (%s)
    ORDER BY $orders", $tid, implode(', ', $used_nids), 0, $count);
  while($story = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    if(!in_array($story->nid, $used_nids) && count($stories) < 5) {
      $stories[] = node_load($story->nid);
      $used_nids[] = $story->nid;
   }
  }
  return $stories;
}

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Some food I made on the weekend

Tags: potato | wine | onion | chicken | food | Health

HD DVDs Fall Like Dominoes

The HD war is over? It looks like as more has turned from HD DVD to Blu-ray. Is this the end of the competition between HD DVD an Blu-ray. Probably not, as a lot of hardware is already out to play HD DVDs even in laptops.

Nothing has been announced, but Variety is reporting that the last two major studios backing HD DVD — NBC Universal and Paramount — are opening the door for a switch to Blu-ray. These studios have commitments to release some discs this year in HD DVD, but both have ended their exclusive commitment to that format, which is backed by a group led by Toshiba.

This comes after Warner Brothers, which had been issuing movies in both formats, decided to go exclusively with Sony’s Blu-ray format. Variety also reports that retailers may also put pressure on Universal and Paramount to back Blu-ray. Last summer, Blockbuster decided to go with Blu-ray only.

So what appeared to be a stalemate may, with one relatively small move by Warner, now turn out to be a quick victory for Sony. The fight between the systems has hurt studios, electronics makers and consumers. And I suspect a winner — any winner — will be welcomed by all sides (except Toshiba and Microsoft, a key partner).

Source: bits.blogs.nytimes.com via pgaliba

Executives in the adult-film industry spoke Wednesday during the opening day of the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo 2008, which briefly overlaps with the more mainstream Consumer Electronics Show ending Thursday.

"It could be a real sign that things will shift," Jeff Thill, director of video operations for the Hustler Video Group, said about the Warner decision. Thill said he sees no advantage of one format over the other, but is "leaning Blu-Ray" after Warner's announcement.

The Blu-ray camp, led by Sony, has been fighting Toshiba and its HD DVD format for years in a battle reminiscent of the VHS versus Betamax battle. In that fight, Betamax maker Sony's refusal to work with the porn industry helped usher in a VHS victory when the adult industry capitalized on the burgeoning popularity of VCRs and video rentals.

Source: pcmag.com via pgaliba

Tags: HUSTLER | paramount | universal | WINNER | blockbuster | blu-ray | Consumer Electronics Show | dvds | Entertainment | hd dvd | Microsoft | porn | sony | Toshiba | variety | warner brothers

Dog Saves Man

Vancouver, BC - "Man's Best friend" has never rung truer. A dog saved a drowning man yesterday, by pulling him to shore at Second Beach.

Tags: rescue | man | Dog | Life

Dog Saves Man

Vancouver, BC - "Man's Best friend" has never rung truer. A dog saved a drowning man yesterday, by pulling him to shore at Second Beach.

Tags: man | rescue | Dog | Life

Majesco building Our House - Wii News at GameSpot

Having conquered the food service industry with Cooking Mama, Majesco is now setting its sights on do-it-yourself home improvement. Today, the publisher announced it would be bringing construction sim Our House exclusively to the Nintendo Wii this holiday season.

Catering to aspiring architects and interior designers, Our House lets players build and decorate their dream homes using the Wii's motion-sensing technology. After laying blueprints and purchasing raw materials, players don their tool belts to custom build their unique homes, one nail, paint swash, and tile at a time. In a bid to keep up with the Joneses, Our House accommodates four-player build-offs for multiplayer gaming, and players will also be able to show off their creations to friends online.

Source: gamespot.com

Tags: gaming | architects | Budcat Creations | Cooking Mama | Interior | Majesco | motion-sensing | multiplayer | Nintendo | players | Technology | wii

Wikia Search Engine Goes Live Today

It has been a long time, since the Wikia project and the company behind the thing has started, but finally we can see some results.

Search Wikia, the widely awaited search engine from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is slated to make its official debut on Monday, with the bet that an open-source, community-driven effort can disrupt and reshape this Google-dominated market.

However, people who give the search engine a test drive on Monday shouldn't expect a Google killer, because they will be looking at a project that is at a very early stage and will need participation from volunteers to grow and be refined, Wales said.

In that sense, Search Wikia is expected to develop in a similar fashion to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written and edited by a community of volunteer collaborators who have expanded it and improved it organically over the years.

Source: pcworld.com via pgaliba

With Wikia Search, Wales is betting on a very different approach: transparency.

He said: "The proof will be in the pudding? I just believe that transparency is an important political issue on the web. One of the things I make an analogy to is openness in a free society, openness in a court system. I love Google, I trust Google but I still think that there's a problem with secrecy in that you never know who you really can trust."

So the way Wikia Search works is to be determined by the community of users, "Wherever there is an editorial decision we want to push that out into the community", said Mr Wales.

The new system will also allow users to rate search results according to their usefulness.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk via pgaliba

Tags: community-driven | Google | Jimmy Wales | open-source | search_engine | Technology | Wikia | Wikipedia

One Laptop Per Child Versus Intel--Who Speaks for India and China?

Money talks?

At the Consumer Electronic Show this week, the One Laptop Per Child foundation was supposed to make two announcements—the number of computers it sold under the Give One, Get One holiday program and a new olpc machine made jointly with Intel. But now Intel has pulled out or been pushed out of the project with olpc, depending on who you believe. It’s a mess and a mess of huge dimensions that encompasses a conversation of profit vs. nonprofit, nationalism vs. colonialism, technology vs. pedagogy, rote vs. experiential learning, Western design vs. Eastern design, good intentions vs. bad intentions. It doesn’t get bigger, or nastier.

Nicholas Negroponte, the ex-head of the MIT Media Lab and founder of the olpc project, frames the current mess in terms of profit vs. non-profit. He says Intel has been sabotaging olpc in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to sell its own low-cost ClassMate laptop to these markets. The olpc laptop uses an AMD chip, is Linux open source and therefor threatens Intel's commercial success in emerging markets, Negroponte argues.

Source: businessweek.com via pgaliba

After several years of publicly attacking the XO, Intel reversed itself over the summer and joined the organization’s board, agreeing to make an $18 million contribution and begin developing an Intel-based version of the computer.
 
Although Intel made an initial $6 million payment to One Laptop, the partnership was troubled from the outset as Intel sales representatives in the field competed actively against the $200 One Laptop machine by trying to sell a rival computer, a more costly Classmate PC.

The Classmate sells for about $350 with an installed version of Microsoft Office, and Intel is selling the machine through an array of sales organizations outside the United States.

Even after Intel joined the One Laptop board, in country after country, the two organizations competed to make government sales, Mr. Negroponte said yesterday in a telephone interview. The relationship first frayed seriously in October, he said, when an Intel salesman gave a Mongolian government official a side-by-side comparison of the Classmate PC and the XO.

Source: nytimes.com via pgaliba

Tags: Africa | America | Asia | China | India | India | AMD | Consumer electronic show | Foundation | intel | Laptop | Linux | Nicholas Negroponte | OLPC | One laptop per child | Technology