Brad Burnham Explains Why SOPA Must Be Stopped

The Congressional Judiciary committee is debating a bill today called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which nobody in the Internet industry wants to see passed. Not surprisingly, the bill was written by lobbyists for the music and movie industries, who are frustrated by their inability to go after foreign sites filled with pirated material. The piracy problem is real, but the proposed solutions in the form of this bill and the Senate's corresponding Protect-IP Act (PIPA) will create more problems than they solve. Brad Burnham, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, came into the TCTV studio in New York City to explain why SOPA is misguided and how it threatens to break the internet.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/bsKL9DGPVqY/

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Gingrich Aide Resigns After Referring to Mormonism as a Cult (ContributorNetwork)

Their time together was brief, to be sure. Craig Bergman, the man that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had picked to be his political director in Iowa, stepped down on Tuesday after reports surfaced that he had called Mormonism a "cult." According to Yahoo News' The Ticket, Bergman was speaking in front of a focus group conducted by McClatchy Newspapers and the Iowa Republican Party.

The focus group's discussion was centered around the role of religion in voters' decision-making process regarding each of the Republican presidential candidates. Reportedly, the focus group had found that the fact that fellow candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon is likely to cost him votes in Iowa.

Religion in general has started to move more to the forefront in discussions leading up to the Iowa Caucus in recent weeks, as Romney has appeared to move past his earlier resistance to speaking about his faith. According to The Ticket, Gingrich himself just signed his fourth no-adultery pledge in front of the Iowa-based group The Family Leader on Monday, which entailed his promise to stay faithful to his current wife, Callista, as well as to protect marriage as an institution only between a man and a woman and help keep federal dollars from being used for abortions.

Newt Gingrich

Despite the Des Moines Register's reports of a surge of support among religious conservatives for Bachmann, Gingrich still retains the majority of the vote here. While his messy personal life, including multiple extramarital affairs and divorces, remains a concern to some evangelicals, his plea for forgiveness during his campaign has won over some of the more reluctant voters, who have said in interviews with The Daily Beast and other media outlets that they believe that it's now time to forgive him for his past transgressions.

Mitt Romney

Up until recently, Romney rarely discussed his faith. But concern from Iowa conservatives in focus groups, such as the one Bergman attended this week, that being a Mormon will cost him votes appears to have altered his thinking. At a Republican debate Saturday night, the New York Times reported that Romney openly discussed his time as a missionary and how it affected his view of people's struggles. He appears to be taking a calculated risk in juxtaposing his own history of service and marital fidelity against Gingrich's.

Ron Paul

Paul appears to be making a strong last-minute stand in Iowa, with a survey conducted by the Public Policy Polling group from December 11 to 13 placing him in a close second to Gingrich. The problem is, he's still unlikely to win the nomination, according to the Associated Press. What he may do, however, is help get some Iowa voters to select Romney over Gingrich. Paul in particular draws younger voters, who are less likely to view religion as a hindrance. His support base, should he lose the nomination, could conceivably then swing to Romney.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111214/pl_ac/10678705_gingrich_aide_resigns_after_referring_to_mormonism_as_a_cult

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Come On, Microsoft: Siri Is Making You Look Terrible

annes fanLast week, Microsoft overhauled the Xbox 360. The update brought dozens of new features, but there was one I was particularly excited about: when paired with a Kinect, the new interface was said to pack voice recognition support pretty much everywhere. As I noted in my initial Kinect review well over a year ago, the Kinect's voice system was the one bit I found particularly disappointing. After finally seeing someone do something right with voice with Siri, the idea that the 360 might be getting a wonderful voice interface had me beyond excited. Alas, it still sucks.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/lM2pxMZv-6U/

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Abused children's brains work like soldiers' do

The brains of children from violent homes function like those of soldiers when it comes to detecting threats.

Eamon McCrory at University College London used fMRI to scan the brains of 20 outwardly healthy children who had been maltreated and 23 "controls" from safe environments.

During the scans, the children, aged 12 on average, viewed a mixture of sad, neutral and angry faces. When they saw angry faces, the maltreated children showed extra activity in the amygdala and the anterior insula, known to be involved in threat detection and anticipation of pain. Combat soldiers show similar heightened activity (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.015).

"Our belief is that these changes could reflect neural adaption," says McCrory. "Maltreated kids and active soldiers are adapting to survive in a threatening or dangerous environment." Although this could help children survive their early years, it may predispose them to mental health problems in adulthood, such as depression or anxiety, says McCrory.

A related study, published this week by Hilary Blumberg of Yale University School of Medicine and colleagues, demonstrates that areas of the brain important for emotional processing are deficient in grey matter in adolescents who suffered from maltreatment as children (Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, DOI: 10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.565).

"The studies suggest that childhood maltreatment ?gets into the brain', and becomes biologically embedded," says Avshalom Caspi, who studies mental health at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

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Early Monroe photos sell for over $300K at auction (AP)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. ? Copyrights and images from Marilyn Monroe's first photo shoot sold for $352,000 at an auction that included items from Lady Gaga and John Lennon.

Julien's Auctions spokeswoman Caroline Galloway tells The Associated Press on Sunday that the Monroe photos ? taken in 1946 when she was still Norma Jeane Dougherty ? were the highlight of the Beverly Hills auction known as "Icons & Idols"

The photos come with negatives and the rare right to sell and distribute them. A judge in September ruled they must be auctioned to settle debts of photographer Joseph Jasgur.

A Lady Gaga dress sold for $31,250, and the prop gun used in her video for "Born This Way" went for $7,680.

A 1969 caricature John Lennon drew of himself and Yoko Ono went for $90,000.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111205/ap_en_ce/us_monroe_photos_auction

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[OOC] The War for Forever

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Lady Gaga Doubles Up At Grammy Nominations Special

Gaga opens and closes the show, with an assist from country duo Sugarland.
By James Montgomery


Lady Gaga opens the "Grammy Nominations Concert Live!!"
Photo: Lester Cohen/ WireImage

Anyone who has ever seen Lady Gaga is aware that she knows how to work a look. And on Wednesday's (November 30) "Grammy Nominations Concert Live!!," she worked two of them, both about as different as could be.

As she announced earlier, Gaga served as both the opening and closing act during the telecast, and, of course, those two roles required two totally different sides of the Mother Monster. She started things off with a steampunk-y version of "Marry the Night," opening the song on a stage littered with smoking pipes and scattered bits of scrap metal. Her face done up like a skeleton (or perhaps Zombie Boy?), wearing a black cloak, she solemnly sang the song's opening lines, as a group of gothed-up dancers cavorted around her.

Take a closer look at this year's Grammy nominees through photos!

As the beat kicked in, she shed her cloak (revealing a sport coat, matching underwear set and, of course, thigh-high boots) and hit the harmonies hard, while guitars wailed and those dancers posed and popped. Then the whole thing gave way to a particularly fierce dance segment, which brought the performance to a close and earned a standing ovation from the industry-heavy crowd (David Guetta seemed particularly pumped, it should be noted).

And after the nominations were revealed, Gaga was back to wrap things up, and she did so in true Grammy style, joined onstage by country duo Sugarland for a husky, musky version of "Yoü and I." Seated at the piano, she traded verses (and a whole lot of suggestive glances) with Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles. Gaga changed a couple of the song's lines — "With your high cowboy boots on," "Oh Sugarland, it's been six whole years" — to fit the occasion and pounded on the keys as the song built to a bluesy guitar solo from Sugarland's Kristian Bush.

The whole performance wound down with Gaga and Nettles swapping extended vocal runs, and as the audience gave them another standing O, the three embraced and laughed mid-stage. All in all, it was pretty much the kind of night we've come to expect from Gaga: She worked two seemingly disparate looks, brought together some equally disparate musical genres and, oh yeah, even picked up an Album of the Year nomination for Born This Way. And, as always, she made it look pretty effortless.

What did you think of Gaga's performance? Let us know in the comments!

Related Videos Related Photos Related Artists

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1675196/grammy-nominations-2012-lady-gaga.jhtml

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Toddlers Taking HIV Drugs Have Higher Cholesterol (HealthDay)

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Toddlers who take anti-HIV drugs have higher cholesterol levels than those who do not have HIV, a new study shows.

It's the first such finding in toddlers and the long-term significance is unknown, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health researchers and colleagues.

They reviewed the medical records of 764 children who had been exposed to HIV in the womb. Of the 83 who were infected with HIV, 59 percent were receiving anti-HIV drugs during the time they were in the study.

The highest average cholesterol levels (169 milligrams per deciliter of blood) were found in children taking a anti-HIV drugs called protease inhibitors. Average cholesterol levels were 147 mg/dL for children taking other anti-HIV drugs and 122 mg/dL for children who weren't taking any anti-HIV drugs.

The researchers also found that 10.8 percent of HIV-positive toddlers had cholesterol levels above 200 mg/dL, which is two times higher than among toddlers without HIV. This level is considered borderline high risk for developing heart disease.

It's likely that HIV-infected children will be taking anti-HIV drugs for their entire lives, noted lead author Dr. Rohan Hazra of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Maternal Health Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

"Our findings suggest that it would be a good idea for young children taking protease inhibitors to have their cholesterol monitored periodically to determine whether they face any increased risk of heart disease as they grow older," Hazra said in an NIH news release.

The study appears in the journal AIDS.

Previous studies have found that adults and older children who take protease inhibitors also develop high cholesterol levels.

More information

The New Mexico AIDS Education and Training Center has more about HIV and children.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/diseases/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20111201/hl_hsn/toddlerstakinghivdrugshavehighercholesterol

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Now Facebook updates can be over 60,000 characters

Facebook

By Rosa Golijan

A Facebook status update could be up to 420 characters long in March 2009, 500 characters in July 2011, and 5,000 characters in September 2011.

But now? Now you can post status updates that are over 60,000 characters long, according to?Facebook's?Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik.?In case you're wondering how far over 60,000 you can go: The character limit is set at 63,206.

How'd Facebook come up with this ridiculously large, and unusual, character limit? Bob Baldwin, the software engineer who set the new number, explains:

Facebook

Don't worry if that flies over your head ??geeky calculations tend to require several cups of coffee and a bit of homework for most of us.

Live Poll

Should Facebook updates really be up to 63,206 characters long?

  • 169821

    Yes! I need all that space!

    10%

  • 169822

    63,206 characters? I need more!

    6%

  • 169823

    No! I don't want to see people write that much!

    43%

  • 169824

    Yes, but only if people are signed up for mandatory writing classes and grammar lessons.

    41%

VoteTotal Votes: 323

What you really should know is that this change means that you could theoretically post an entire novel in fewer than nine Facebook updates. (Assuming that the average novel is about 500,000 characters long.)?Alternatively, you could squeeze over 450 tweets, about 395 text messages, or one incredibly long rant into a single new text space.

No guarantees that your friends will read it though.

Related stories:

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/01/9140900-now-facebook-updates-can-be-over-60000-characters

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White House threatens veto of GOP regulatory bills (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The White House is threatening to veto Republican legislation that would place greater limits on how the federal government adopts regulations.

The Republican-controlled House is set to vote on two bills that would require agencies to consider alternative regulations based on their costs and benefits and to limit the costs new regulations would place on small businesses.

A statement issued Tuesday by the Office of Management and Budget says presidential advisers would recommend President Barack Obama veto both bills if they pass Congress.

Reducing regulations on businesses has been a priority of congressional Republicans. The House legislation would face a difficult hurdle in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The budget office said the House bills would hurt the ability of government agencies to protect the public, create needless confusion and invite lawsuits.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111129/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_regulations

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