New Source for Katie Holmes News

Is that the sort of celebrity you are interested in? Katie Holmes and her husband, Tom Cruise?

If you are looking for celebrity news of this kind then you'll want to go over to this blog, dedicated to bringing you the news on Katie Holmes.

You know, if you want to know more about her marriage, about her committment to Scoentology, or the baby Suri, or, in fact, anything at all that you wanted to know about Katie Holmes, well, that's the place to go.

New Foods

No, I can't say that I dolike the idea ofthis supposednew health food.

Black chicken anyone?

It's a regular chicken, just that the bones and skin are black....as is the flesh. Supposed to be very good for the health but I don't think I'll be tryin it anytime soon really.

Bigging up Malta

Getting these things to scale is just too difficult:

When Malta adopts the euro next year, the tiny Mediterranean island will get an unexpected boost to its international stature.

New euro coins and notes show Malta to be much bigger than it actually is, The Times newspaper reported Monday, because the island is too small for the minting machines to show it on the same scale as other euro zone countries.

As a result Malta, which is only 27 km (17 miles) long, is shown to be as large as Corsica, which is 183 km (114 miles) long.

Malta adopts the euro on January 1, 2008.

One question though, what did they do with The Vatican (yes, they issue euro coins)?

Nice Ringtones Site

"Ringtones are undoubtedly one of the most popular features that somebody can download from the net. While searching for Ringtones I found a very cool site. GoldRingtone.com is the best site to download free ringtones without restrictions. The information mail I received from the site says that the database is enriched with new ringtones every week. I decided to test it and download some ringtones (Rihanna’s Unfaithull is cool) and it works just fine.

I have to notice that the site offers free free MP3 Ringtones, Real Tones, Midi Ringtones. Every carrier is available. Get free Cingular Ringtones and free Sprint Ringtones.

Besides the site has an informative blog for mobile phones and a page dedicated to the famous Mosquito Ringtones. Do you know what a mosquito ringtone is? It is the new, cool weapon that children use in order to receive a call or an sms without being noticeable from the adults. This is due to the fact that the adults can’t hear some high frequency sounds.

Well, I suppose that Goldringtone is the ideal site for someone who wants to download one or more free ringtones, easily.

Hotter, Smaller Sheep

Climate change is changing the size of sheep on a Scottish isle:

While every physics pupil knows that heat can usually be relied on to make objects expand, for the semi-wild sheep of the Outer Hebrides it appears to have the opposite effect.

Observations of Soay sheep on Hirta island have shown that the warmer temperatures associated with global warming allow more smaller animals to survive the winter. And with greater numbers of smaller sheep living through the cold months, the average size of the animals falls.

Research led by Imperial College London, published in the journal Science, is the first to establish a direct link between the genetic changes of an animal population and climate change. It indicates that mankind, on top of the ecological legacy of causing species to become extinct or vastly reduced in number, is leaving an evolutionary legacy by affecting natural selection.

On Hirta, the researchers used a combination of population data and field observations to track the size of individual sheep and how their survival rates influenced their numbers.

It's the mass to surface ratio there, smaller sheep just couldn't control their temperatures in the colder winters. So who says climate change is all bad then?

Wiki in the new OED

It's that time of year again and the new words are being welcomed into the OED. Wiki's made it:

THE OXFORD ENGLISH Dictionary has granted ‘wiki’ access to its hallowed ranks of words deemed acceptable.

‘Wiki wiki’ is actually a Hawaiian phrase that means ‘quick’ but ‘wiki’ earned global renown in a secondary meaning as a communally editable web page.

'Virtualize' is also there although the OED seems to think its recent upturn in usage comes from virtual reality rather than the techie business of making a computer act as many computers.

Members of think-tank Demos - and how much freedom to nip down the pub for a few hours brainstorming does that job suggest? - have thrown in the opinion that what is really needed is a web page that reflects the fast-moving change of today’s language. Yes, that’s really necessary.

What the fools at Demos think is really of no concern to any sentient being.

Skype and Mobile or Cell Phones

Skype is ptiching to be allowed onto the cell phone networks. Ooooh, this'll be a big fight, although as the law stands, it looks like they could win:

Skype Ltd. is looking to a 1968 ruling by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to open up the country's mobile phone industry for "unlocked" devices and third-party applications -- such as Skype.

The eBay Inc. unit, a pioneer in peer-to-peer VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol), petitioned the FCC this week to affirm that the landmark Carterphone decision applies to the cellular world. That ruling, which involved an early type of wireless handset, said carriers couldn't stop consumers from attaching any device to the wired telecommunications network as long as it couldn't do any damage.

Letting any device connect to cellular networks would gradually open the door to a wide range of new choices for consumers, including handsets that use VOIP for voice calls over operators' 3G (third-generation) data networks. Almost all cell phones in use on mobile networks in the U.S. are sold by the operators and locked so they can't be used on another provider's network. But Skype's proposal also would stop carriers from blocking or forbidding applications on 3G networks -- again, as long as those applications can't damage the network.

One European company already seems to understand this. T-Mobile has a number of tariffs that don't care what you do with hte bandwidth, that's all they charge you for.

Viacomm and You Tube

Viacomm is insisting that You Tube remove from their site any copyrighted material:

Viacom Inc. on Friday demanded that Google Inc.'s online video service YouTube remove more than 100,000 video clips after they failed to reach a distribution agreement.

Viacom said it sent a notice to YouTube on Friday morning asking the popular video-sharing site to remove clips from Viacom-owned properties including MTV Networks and BET.

When You Tube was just a goofy site with no business model and no advertising no one cared. Now that it's owned by Google and there's pots of money to be found the lawyers are coming our of the wood work.

 

Technorati tags: google, you tube, viacom

Apple Licensing Fairplay DRM?

According to The REgister:

Apple may be on the verge of announcing it will licence its FairPlay DRM technology, it has been claimed, with the recently announced Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD one of the first non-iPod devices to take advantage of the move.

So claims website Tech.co.uk, without saying how it's come to this conclusion.

I don't know. I thought Apple's basic game was to make sure that everything only worked on their proprietary equipment? Why would the licence it? They don't make any money out of an iTunes downlaod anyway.

 

Technorati tags: Apple, fairplay, iTunes

Water Intoxication

Jesus C. Good God Almighty. There really are some incredibly stupid people out there:

Jennifer Strange, 28, died after drinking more than six and a half litres of bottled water at KDND 107.9 last Friday in a bid to win a Nintendo Wii for her three children.

Sheriff John McGinness said: "It's not as if she was somehow in their custody and they had a role to care for her. Rather, it was an invitation to a contest that was clearly ill-advised. She was exercising her free will."

The District Attorney's office said they had not received the case for review. Spokeswoman Lana Wyant said: "There are times we initiate investigations on our own. I'm not sure this would be one of them." On Tuesday, Radio station bosses in Sacramento fired the 10-strong team responsible for the competition, The Sacramento Bee reports.

The local newspaper has obtained a recording of the now defunct "Morning Rave" show. Excerpts are available here.

Before the contest starts, one of the co-hosts can be heard saying "maybe we should have researched this". Discussing the dangers of water intoxication, another said: "Can't you get water poisoning and, like, die?"

Another staff member responded: "Your body is 98 per cent water. Why can't you take in as much water as you want?"

OK, that contest is stupid enough but:

Later, after dropping out as runner-up with headaches, in a confused conversation with an intern, Strange said: "They keep telling me though that it's the water, that it will tell my head to hurt and then it will make me puke."

She seemed keen to continue, telling staff: "I could probably drink more if you guys could pick me up. Do you want me to? What can I get?"

Even when she was dying she wanted to carry on. An early contender for this year's Darwin Award?

 

Technorati tags: Darwin Award, water intoxication, stupid