Is iPad The Tablet That Finally Succeeds As A Laptop Killer?

From Walt Mossberg of WSJ: For the past week or so, I have been testing a sleek, light, silver-and-black tablet computer called an iPad. After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.

Here's Walt's video:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304252704575155982711410678.html?mod=djemWMP_h#articleTabs%3Dvideo

Here's a product slideshow:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304252704575155982711410678.html#articleTabs%3Dslideshow

Here are reader comments about iPad product and operating system vs. competitive offerings:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304252704575155982711410678.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments


But first, it will have to prove that it really can replace the laptop or netbook for enough common tasks, enough of the time, to make it a viable alternative. And that may not be easy, because previous tablet computers have failed to catch on in the mass market, and the iPad lacks some of the features—such as a physical keyboard, a Webcam, USB ports and multitasking—that most laptop or netbook users have come to expect. WSJ's Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg reviews Apple's iPad. More than an e-reader and an oversized iPod Touch, he says the tablet computer is a "robust, general-purpose devise" with the potential to change portable computing as we know it. If people see the iPad mainly as an extra device to carry around, it will likely have limited appeal. If, however, they see it as a way to replace heavier, bulkier computers much of the time—for Web surfing, email, social-networking, video- and photo-viewing, gaming, music and even some light content creation—it could be a game changer the way Apple's iPhone has been.

The iPad is much more than an e-book or digital periodical reader, though it does those tasks brilliantly, better in my view than the Amazon Kindle. And it's far more than just a big iPhone, even though it uses the same easy-to-master interface, and Apple says it runs nearly all of the 150,000 apps that work on the iPhone. It's qualitatively different, a whole new type of computer that, through a simple interface, can run more-sophisticated, PC-like software than a phone does, and whose large screen allows much more functionality when compared with a phone's. But, because the iPad is a new type of computer, you have to feel it, to use it, to fully understand it and decide if it is for you, or whether, say, a netbook might do better. So I've been using my test iPad heavily day and night, instead of my trusty laptops most of the time.

As I got deeper into it, I found the iPad a pleasure to use, and had less and less interest in cracking open my heavier ThinkPad or MacBook. I probably used the laptops about 20% as often as normal, reserving them mainly for writing or editing longer documents, or viewing Web videos in Adobe's Flash technology, which the iPad doesn't support, despite its wide popularity online. My verdict is that, while it has compromises and drawbacks, the iPad can indeed replace a laptop for most data communication, content consumption and even limited content creation, a lot of the time. But it all depends on how you use your computer. iPad Apps If you're mainly a Web surfer, note-taker, social-networker and emailer, and a consumer of photos, videos, books, periodicals and music—this could be for you. If you need to create or edit giant spreadsheets or long documents, or you have elaborate systems for organizing email, or need to perform video chats, the iPad isn't going to cut it as your go-to device. The iPad is thinner and lighter than any netbook or laptop I've seen. It weighs just 1.5 pounds, and its aluminum and glass body is a mere half-inch thick. It boasts a big, bright color 9.7-inch screen that occupies most of the front.

As on all Apple portable devices, the battery is sealed in and nonreplaceable. It has a decent speaker, and even a tiny microphone. Memory, also sealed in and nonexpandable, ranges from 16 gigabytes to 64 gigabytes. And you can order one with just a Wi-Fi wireless connection to the Internet, or Wi-Fi plus an AT&T 3G cellular connection. The Wi-Fi models will be available Saturday and the 3G models, which I didn't test, about a month later. Prices start at $499 and go to $829, with the costlier models having more memory and/or 3G. The cellular models don't require a contract or termination fee. You can pay AT&T either $15 a month for 250 megabytes of data use, or $30 a month for unlimited data—a significant reduction from typical prices for laptop cellular connectivity. I was impressed with the iPad's battery life, which I found to be even longer than Apple's ten-hour claim, and far longer than on my laptops or smart phones.

For my battery test, I played movies, TV shows and other videos back-to-back until the iPad died. This stressed the device's most power-hogging feature, its screen. The iPad lasted 11 hours and 28 minutes, about 15% more than Apple claimed. I was able to watch four feature-length movies, four TV episodes and a video of a 90-minute corporate presentation, before the battery died midway through an episode of "The Closer." Walt's mountain-view wallpaper with app icons arranged during his tests. Oh, and all the while during this battery marathon, I kept the Wi-Fi network running and the email downloading constantly in the background.

Your mileage may vary, but with Wi-Fi off and the screen turned down from the fairly bright level I used, you might even do better. Music plays far longer with the screen off. On the other hand, playing games constantly might yield worse battery life. Apple says video playback, Web use and book reading all take about the same amount of juice. When I was doing the latter two tasks for an hour or two at a time, the battery ran down so slowly for me that I stopped thinking about it. I also was impressed with the overall speed of the iPad. Apple's custom processor makes it wicked fast. Screens appear almost instantly, and the Wi-Fi in my home tested as fast as it does on a laptop. I found email easy and productive to use, and had no trouble typing accurately and quickly on the iPad's wide on-screen keyboard. In fact, I found the iPad virtual keyboard more comfortable and accurate to use than the cramped keyboards and touchpads on many netbooks, though some fast touch typists might disagree. Apple's $39 iPad case, which bends to set up a nice angle for typing, helps.

The Web browser also works beautifully, and takes advantage of the big screen to show full pages and cut down on scrolling. It even now has a bookmarks bar at the top. As noted, however, it doesn't support Adobe's Flash technology. I also was able to easily sync the iPad's calendar and contacts apps with Google and Apple's MobileMe. Apple created a touch version of its Pages word processor for the iPad. Watching videos, viewing photos, listening to music, reading books and playing games was satisfying and fun. I used the device heavily for Twitter and Facebook. And I even got some light work done in the optional iPad word processor, called Pages, which is part of a $30 suite that also includes a spreadsheet and presentation program. This is a serious content creation app that should help the iPad compete with laptops and can import Microsoft Office files. However, only the word processor exports to Microsoft's formats, and not always accurately. In one case, the exported Word file had misaligned text. When I then tried exporting the document as a PDF file, it was unreadable.

The iPad can run two types of third-party apps, both available from Apple's app store. It can use nearly all existing iPhone apps. These can either run in a small, iPhone-size window in the middle of the screen, which makes them look tiny, or blown up to double size. The larger size makes them fill the screen, but can make type inside them look blocky. Still, the dozens I tested all worked properly. And it can run a new class of specially designed iPad apps, of which Apple hopes to have 1,000 at launch. I successfully tested the revamped App Store, which features the iPad apps most prominently when you're on an iPad. Based on my very small sample, some app developers may be testing higher prices for iPad apps than the 99 cents or $1.99 typical for paid iPhone apps. The paid iPad apps I saw ranged from $3.99 to $49.99. Others were free.

Apple has rebuilt its own core iPhone apps for the iPad to add sophisticated features that make the programs look and work more like PC or Mac software. For instance, there are "popover" menus that make it easier to make choices without leaving the screen you're on. And, when the iPad is held horizontally, in landscape mode, as I often preferred to use it, many programs now have two panels, making them faster and more useful. For example, in email, a left-hand panel shows your message list, while a larger right-hand panel shows the message itself. The photo app is striking, and much more like the one on the Mac than the one on the iPhone. The device can even be used as a digital picture frame. The iPod app is beautiful, too, as are the calendar and contacts app. Unfortunately, Apple excluded some of the more familiar apps from the iPhone, including Weather, Clock and Stocks.

I tested a small selection of the new third-party iPad apps Apple hopes to have available at launch, and most were also rich and feature-filled, beyond what iPhone apps offer. These included games such as Scrabble and "Touch Hockey," a database app, news services and more. I was able to try a pre-release version of The Wall Street Journal's new iPad app (which I had nothing to do with designing), and found it gorgeous and highly functional—by far the best implementation of the newspaper I have ever seen on a screen.

Unlike the Journal's Web site, or its smart-phone apps, the iPad version blends much more of the look and feel of the print paper into the electronic environment. Other newspapers and magazines have announced plans for their own, dramatically more realistic iPad apps. I also found iBooks, Apple's book reader and store, easy to use, and read a couple of books on it. I consider the larger color screen superior to the Kindle's, and encountered no eye strain.

But the iPad is much heavier than the Kindle and most people will need two hands to use it. The iBooks app also lacks any way to enter notes, and Apple's catalog at launch will only be about 60,000 books versus more than 400,000 for Kindle. I did run into some other annoying limitations. For instance, the email program lacks the ability to create local folders or rules for auto-sorting messages, and it doesn't allow group addressing. The browser lacks tabs. And the Wi-Fi-only version lacks GPS. Also, videophiles may dislike the fact that the iPad's screen lacks wide-screen dimensions, so you either get black bars above or below wide-screen videos, or, if you choose an option to fill the screen, some of the picture may get cut off.

All in all, however, the iPad is an advance in making more-sophisticated computing possible via a simple touch interface on a slender, light device. Only time will tell if it's a real challenger to the laptop and netbook.

—Find Walt Mossberg's columns and videos, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com

Who Put The Funk In MJ's Thriller?

MJ's Thriller was way ahead of it's time, both artistically and technically.

If you listen critically to the title song "Thriller", you'll hear a tightly arranged mix of rhythms and beats.

The driving beats and poly rhythms are result of synth mastery contributed by these artists:

Anthony Marinelli: Synthesizer Programming, Programming
David Paich: Piano, Synthesizer, Rhythm Arrangements, Arranger, Synthesizer Arrangements, Keyboards
Greg Phillinganes: Synthesizer, Programming, Fender Rhodes, Handclapping, Keyboards
Steve Porcaro: Synthesizer Programming, Arranger, Programming, Synthesizer
Greg Smith: Synthesizer, Keyboards
Bruce Swedien: Effects, Sound Effects, Engineer, Mixing
Rod Temperton: Arranger, Synthesizer Arrangements, Vocal Arrangement, Synthesizer, Rhythm.

Many people think that Michael Jackson wrote Thriller, but it was another musical genius who penned the epic song that became the title track of the best selling album of all time, Rod Temperton.

RT was an original member of the Funk / Disco band Heatwave who had hits with: Always And Forever, Boogie Nights, Groove Line and Too Hot To Handle. Born in England in 1947, Rod Temperton worked in a frozen fish factory after leaving school, but had big musical ambitions. He moved to Germany in 1972 and formed a soul covers band called Sundown Carousel. It was here that Temperton met Quincy Jones and began working with him.

In the early 80's Temperton left Germany and moved to California. In 1979, Quincy Jones enlisted the songwriting of Rod Temperton for Michael Jackson's Off The Wall album. He wrote Rock With You, Burn this Disco and the title track, Off The Wall.

In 1982 Temperton wrote the title track of "Thriller" - what would go on to be the best selling album of all time.

How did the team create such haunting rhythms and driving backbeat?

Here's a list of synths used on Michael Jackson "Thriller".

Remember this was the '80's, so his mastery of synth music was indeed extraodinary. The medium was just beginning to evolve musically and technically.

Yamaha CS-80
Roland Jupiter 8 (x3)
NED Synclavier II
DK Synergy
Roland Jupiter 4
Roland MC-4 microcomposer/sequencer
Yamaha GS-1 FM synth
Oberheim Four-Voice
SCI Prophet 5 (x2)
Yamaha CE20 FM preset synth
Yamaha portasound keyboard
Roland VP-330 vocoder/strings
Bode Vocoder
E-mu Emulator I
plus a couple of Minimoogs

http://www.musicnotes.net/teaching_beat_divisions.html

http://pixelives.blogspot.com/2009/06/list-of-synths-used-on-michael-jackson.html

http://hubpages.com/hub/Michael-Jacksons-Thriller---The-Truth-About-The-Music-Genius-Behind-The-Title-Track-Of-The-Best-Selling-Album

http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,107885,00.html

Making CD Mixes That Rock

Here's a list of tips on how to make CD mixes that rock !

01. Open iTunes and create a new playlist.

02. Pick a theme - First of all is the playlist for you or someone else? Are you making a CD of your favorite songs by one band or of your favorite love songs? Or are you simply trying to make a playlist with your current favorite songs? Come up with an imaginative name for your CD that expresses its theme and you'll have an easier time determining if the music selections fit under this "thematic umbrella".

03. Limit the length - A good rule of thumb is to burn a CD that lasts 79 minutes, 30 seconds including all silence between tracks. If you are making a simple CD for someone else, don't go over one disc.

04. Pick your main songs - your "tentpole" songs - that are central to the CD's theme. Add these to the playlist first.

05. Add the other songs by finding songs that fit the theme. Use iTunes' search feature to help you find songs you might have overlooked. Usually a CD can hold about 20 songs.

06. Narrow down your final playlist - Trim your playlist down to whichever length you decided on. Revisit and listen to songs to determine which you want to use.

07. Try to use only use one song per artist or at most twice. Avoid overplaying artists, especially having the same artist back to back. Vary it up and use different artists.

08. Pick your opening and closing songs carefully. These are your anchors. For the opening sequence, select several songs that quickly brings the listener into your theme, the more upbeat the better, to establish pacing and convey energy.

09. A CD's pacing can be thought of as like an arc, a wave, or a story with a definite intro, middle, and finish. Your job is to arrange the songs for greatest dramatic effect, so they build to a peak and then recede. Close with a song that feels like it wraps things up in a way that brings the CD to resolution. For example, if your CD's theme involves hope, spirituality and optimism, an excellent choice for the end song is "From A Distance" by Bette Midler. Try not to open with the "big impact" song, as it can make the remainder of the CD feel like a letdown, like your are going downhill.

10. Flow is important - Don't have a fast heavy song stop abruptly and go into a beautiful acoustic song. Think in terms of "sequences", that is, sets of 4 songs, that have a consistent beat, rhythm, flow or message. Don't have too many similar songs next to each other. If your CD is primarily upbeat songs, having 3 slow songs in a row will create boredom.

11. Listen to transitions - Skip to the end of songs and see how it sounds going into the next song. You can edit the song by right-clicking the song and selecting get info. To improve pacing and flow, use a simple music editing program (Roxio, Nero, Audacity, etc) to view the track's waveform and and delete excess silence after the song ends.

12. Volume normalization allows you to set the volume of all songs to be within the same range, so you don't have to keep adjusting the volume for every song. A free program called MP3Gain analyzes and adjusts mp3 files so that they have the same volume at http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net. CD burning programs like Roxio and Nero have similar optional tools.

13. Burn your CD and for god housekeeping save the song files or playlist in a new folder so you can return to it to make additional changes or burn fresh copies in the future.

14. In a relaxed setting, audition your first CD copy. Listen critically for any errors, such as noise, spaces, uneven volume, and poor pacing. Often you'll hear how rearranging the tracks can improve the overall flow.

15. Make sure your CD doesn't "cut off" the last track, which happens when you exceed the 80 minute limit, by playing the final track entirely.

16. Do you like the way your CD captures your theme? Does the music build and unfold in a dramatic way? Does it convey energy? Do tracks fit together in a harmonic pattern, without any disjointed show stoppers?

Once you're happy with your master CD, go ahead a make copies for your friends!

from http://www.ehow.com/how_4772039_great-mix-cdplaylist.html

Arlington Cemetary - Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

1. How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the tomb of the Unknowns and why?

21 steps: It alludes to the twenty-one gun salute which is the highest honor given any military or foreign dignitary.

2. How long does he hesitate after his about face to begin his return walk and why?

21 seconds for the same reason as answer number 1

3. Why are his gloves wet?

His gloves are moistened to prevent his losing his grip on the rifle

4. Does he carry his rifle on the same shoulder all the time

and, if not, why not?

He carries the rifle on the shoulder away from the tomb. After his march across the path, he executes an about face and moves the rifle to the outside shoulder.

5. How often are the guards changed?

Guards are changed every thirty minutes, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

6. What are the physical traits of the guard limited to?

For a person to apply for guard duty at the tomb, he must be between 5' 10' and 6' 2' tall and his waist size cannot exceed 30. They must commit 2 years of life to guard the tomb, live in a barracks under the tomb, and cannot drink any alcohol on or off duty for the rest of their lives.. They cannot swear in public for the rest of their lives and cannot disgrace the uniform or the tomb in any way.

After two years, the guard is given a wreath pin that is worn on their lapel signifying they served as guard of the tomb. There are only 400 presently worn. The guard must obey these rules for the rest of their lives or give up the wreath pin.

The shoes are specially made with very thick soles to keep the heat and cold from their feet. There are metal heel plates that extend to the top of the shoe in order to make the loud click as they come to a halt. There are no wrinkles, folds or lint on the uniform.. Guards dress for duty in front of a full-length mirror.

The first six months of duty a guard cannot talk to anyone nor watch TV All off duty time is spent studying the 175 notable people laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery . A guard must memorize who they are and where they are interred. Among the notables are: President Taft, Joe Lewis, the boxer, Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of WWII of Hollywood fame.

Every guard spends five hours a day getting his uniforms ready for guard duty.

In 2003 as Hurricane Isabelle was approaching Washington, DC , our US Senate/House took 2 days off with anticipation of the storm. On the ABC evening news, it was reported that because of the dangers from the hurricane, the military members assigned the duty of guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were given permission to suspend the assignment.

They respectfully declined the offer, 'No way, Sir!'

Soaked to the skin, marching in the pelting rain of a tropical storm, they said that guarding the Tomb was not just an assignment, it was the highest honor that can be afforded to a serviceperson.

The tomb has been patrolled continuously,24/7, since 1930.

God Bless and keep them in His care

And where did they decide on the number 21? It is the total of the digits in 1776, the year of our freedom from tyrannical rule.

ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM O LORD AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.

thanks for this BB.

So You Want An iPad?

Over the weekend, The Associated Press reported that customers who buy an iPad at Apple's online store will have to wait until April 12 for shipping. Customers who ordered online before Sunday, though, are expected to get their iPads on Saturday.

Just days before the debut of the iPad, Apple stock hit a new all-time high of $233.87 today before closing at $232.39, up $1.49, or 0.6 percent.

If you want an iPad, and if you want it Saturday, you'll have to try your luck by heading to one of Apple's 221 retail stores — or, in a new development announced today, most Best Buy stores will be selling the new tablet computer. (We won't promise you, though, that there will be enough iPads for everyone who wants one.)

Apple, the Cupertino maker of "I'm A Mac" computers and "i" devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad), today released new details about the iPad launch. The "iPad connects users with their apps and content in a far more intimate and fun way than ever before," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. "We can't wait for users to get their hands and fingers on it this weekend."

Apple's stores will open at 9 a.m.; iPad buyers will be offered free personal setup for their devices. Apple also will host free workshops for customers who want to learn about the iPad.

Models with Wi-Fi only will be available Saturday, starting at $499 for an iPad with 16 gigabytes of memory. Models with both Wi-Fi and 3G wireless connections, starting at $629, will be available in late April, Apple says.

According to AllThingsD, Silicon Alley Insider and many other sites, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty expects Apple to sell 6 million iPads in 2010. Other analysts have forecast a more conservative range of 3 million to 4 million iPads this year.

http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_14779701

How Many iPads Have Been Ordered?

Two attempts that received widespread attention in the tech blogosphere attempted to decode Apple order numbers. Working off the assumption that these numbers were assigned consecutively to orders from the company’s online store, bloggers used a series of orders to attempt to construct a sales rate.

Andrew Erlichson, chief executive of the photo-sharing site Phanfare, based his estimate on just two sales. Erlichson said his own company assigns order numbers consecutively, which has the advantage of simplicity but may reduce the security of the system.

Another effort came from a group with considerably more experience decoding Apple sales. Members of a private message board about the company, led by Apple investors and watchers Daniel Tello and Victor Castroll, have gathered 500 order numbers and used them to estimate sales, in the iPad’s first week, of 190,000. These are based on several assumptions and exclude in-person orders and corporate sales, so may be too low.

However, Tello does have a strong track record, beating several analysts in estimates of Apple earnings and contributing to a successful effort to count iPhone sales in 2008. Having access to a group of Apple investors and customers “is the most valuable tool in my toolbox,” said Tello, a former bank data analyst who now manages his investments full-time. He added, “In a way I think analyzing a company like Apple shouldn’t be too hard. The most important part, in my opinion, is to be able to create your own assessment of the direction things are going, and somehow avoid all the punditry and biased opinions found all over the tech media coverage of this company.”

Castroll primarily follows Apple as an investor because clues are available to create such an assessment. “If you want to know Apple sales, you can look at order numbers or you can see people walking into a store,” he said. Other companies, by contrast, are “a black box.”

Other industry watchers use different techniques to measure sales. Flurry, which helps makers of mobile applications track users, can use its tools to recognize which phones people are using, through unique signatures for each device. Flurry’s technique led it to produce numbers that were disappointingly low for a new Google phone, the Nexus One. “We’re pleased with our sales volumes and with how well the Nexus One has been received by our customers,” a Google spokeswoman said, while declining to comment on specific Nexus One estimates. “The Nexus One is one of a fast-growing number of Android handsets. … Our partners are shipping more than 60,000 Android handsets each day compared with 30,000 just three months ago.”

Peter Farago, vice president of marketing for Flurry, said that users of applications which incorporate his company’s software probably cover 80% of advanced devices. He called it “a number we’re willing to live with.” He said he isn’t sure whether Flurry will estimate iPad sales, once the device starts being used by the market, because Google, Apple and other rivals in the mobile device industry are partners. “I know it would be a pretty strong scoop,” Farago said. “But when we release news, we don’t want to injure ourselves.”

Yet early sales numbers are far from definitive. Studio executives can tell their technology counterparts all about the dangers of paying such figures too much heed. A year ago, “Watchmen” debuted to an impressive opening-weekend box-office take of $55.2 million, according to Hollywood.com. It didn’t make that much in the rest of its domestic run, finishing with a gross of $107.5 million. Eight months later, its studio, Warner Bros., released “The Blind Side” and raked in a more modest opening-weekend total of $34.1 million. That film’s box-office total is $252.7 million and counting — more than twice the total for “Watchmen.”

Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, recalled taking phone calls from investors who considered the iPhone “dead on arrival” soon after its launch when early numbers from AT&T Wireless missed early sales forecasts. Munster pointed out that word of mouth and strong sustained sales rates rewrote that first impression.

Munster’s own forecast was among those that overstated early iPhone sales, predicting 355,000 purchases in the first two days of availability, compared to an announced total of 270,000 from Apple a month after the iPhone launch. “We did our work and our work was wrong,” Munster said. Learning from that experience, he attempted to predict early sales for the iPhone 3G S when it was released last year — and undershot, predicting a half million sales in the first weekend. It took three days for the handset to sell one million units.

Tanker Truck Pushes Car Along Motorway at 60 MPH

This is an amazing video of the car that was pushed sideways at 60 MPH with truck driver not realizing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr6ugVkUam8&annotation_id=annotation_388219&feature=iv

One moment, Rona Williams was driving along the motorway thinking about her forthcoming day at work.

The next, she was being shunted sideways at 60mph, trapped beneath the front bumper of a tanker whose driver did not even notice she was there.

Her terrifying ordeal was captured on film by a passenger in another car on the A1 near Leeds and has been viewed millions of times since it was posted on YouTube last week.

Mrs Williams had just joined the motorway ten minutes away from her surgery in Garforth when her car was apparently clipped by the lorry and ended up under its bumper. 'I just felt a knock and then I was travelling sideways – twisted 90 degrees clockwise,' she said.

Rona Williams: 'I just felt a knock and then I was travelling sideways'

She yanked on her handbrake, sounded her horn and flashed her hazard lights, but to no avail.

'I kept thinking, "Nobody knows I'm here. Nobody has seen me",' she said. 'I tried everything.

I was watching other cars, thinking, "Help me, just help me" – but they didn't seem to be doing very much.'

Terrified the lorry was going to ram her into the crash barrier, Mrs Williams grabbed her mobile phone from her handbag.

'I wasn't on hands-free, but I figured I wasn't really driving the car,' she said. 'I just screamed at the operator, "I'm going to die, I'm going to die! Can you do something?"

'She tried to calm me down but there wasn't really anything she could do at the end of the phone.'

Mercifully, almost a minute after her ordeal had begun, the lorry driver apparently spotted her.

'Suddenly he was all over the road,' she said. 'Finally he managed to maneuver us safely on to the hard shoulder.'

After she came to a stop she immediately phoned her husband Rob, 32 to tell him: 'You're not going to believe what's just happened.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259610/My-nightmare-oblivious-60mph-tanker-driver-shunted-sideways-A1-minute.html#ixzz0jCGNIDKD

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259610/My-nightmare-oblivious-60mph-tanker-driver-shunted-sideways-A1-minute.html#ixzz0jCFxQHjH

Saving Premature Babies' Eyesight

Dr Arnall Patz, an ophthalmologist who discovered and eliminated a major cause of blindness in premature infants -- passed away from heart disease on March 11. He was 89.

In 1954, Patz proved that treating premature babies with pure oxygen could destroy their eyesight. At the time, this was the most common cause of blindness in premature infants.

As was a young physician at Washington DC's Gallinger Municipal Hospital (now known as DC General Hospital), Patz observed that a new incubator, sealed all around to contain an inner climate, was enabling doctors to save premature babies. "But something was wrong," he told the Baltimore Sun in 2004 profile. Patz noticed that the advance coincided with an epidemic of infant blindness, and that most of the victims were "preemies" who lay for weeks in an atmosphere of near-total oxygen.

"In a question that outraged physicians at the time, but later won their admiration, Dr Patz wondered whether there might be a connection: Was it possible that oxygen was robbing babies of their sight?" the profile read. "It had become standard practice to put babies in incubators and crank up the oxygen," Patz told the Sun. "[I] could hardly blame the doctors who did this because it turned struggling babies from blue to pink."

Unable to secure grant money to prove their hypothesis, Patz and his colleague Leroy Hoeck funded their early tests with money borrowed from Patz's brother Louis, later receiving a small grant after promising to turn on the oxygen at the first sign of troubled breathing.

Their hunch was correct: Almost immediately, doctors stopped automatically giving oxygen to premature infants, ending the epidemic of blindness because of retrolental fibroplasias, now known as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). By the time the practice of providing pure oxygen to premature infants was stopped, more than 10,000 of these babies had had their eyesight destroyed.

To prove their theory, the pair of doctors conducted what is widely believed to be the first randomized controlled trial in ophthalmology. In the early 1950s, they divided 120 premature babies at Gallinger into two groups. In the first group, which received concentrated oxygen constantly, 12 infants went blind. In the second group, babies received oxygen only if they were in respiratory distress, and only one became blind.

Elevated oxygen levels, it turned out, destroyed the arteries of the eye. That in turn caused abnormally wild growth of blood vessels, irreversibly damaging the retina. It was discovered that oxygen caused blood vessels in the back of the eye to constrict. In a doomed attempt to compensate, the eye sprouted twisted vessels that would eventually bleed and destroy the retina.

"Never in the history of ophthalmology has a blinding condition become so quickly widespread and equally rapidly been abolished," wrote Scottish ophthalmologist Sir Stewart Duke-Elder in the 1970s.

The results of a subsequent larger trial led by biochemist Everett Kinsey and involving patients at 18 hospitals substantiated the earlier findings at Gallinger. Although the new understanding came too late for thousands of people who were made blind by oxygen -- including the singer Stevie Wonder.

Patz operated a ham radio from his home on behalf of the Maryland Eye Bank. According to The Wall Street Journal, Patz erected an 80 foot tower at his home and became known to amateurs across the country for putting out the word on the airwaves whenever corneas were needed for transplant.

In 2004, President George W. Bush presented Patz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, calling him "the man who has given to uncounted men, women and children the gift of sight."

- from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun for some information

How to Cool Off - Tips About Anger

Most anger-management programs use techniques borrowed from cognitive-behavioral therapy to help people deal with anger.

Here are some strategies to help keep negative emotions in check.

• Reframe the situation. Instead of seeing every inconvenience or frustration as a personal affront, imagine a benign explanation.

• Find a constructive solution to the issue at hand. "Ask yourself: what do I need to be okay right now?," suggests Rich Pfeiffer, a psychologist and board president of the National Anger Management Association, a group of about 300 practitioners. "That shifts the focus from how the other person needs to be punished to how I need to respond in a healthy way."

• Keep an "anger log" to monitor what makes you angry. Learn to identify and avoid your triggers.

• Be aware that anger tends to rise in increments. Learn to evaluate yours from 1 (frustration) to 10 (rage). If you can catch yourself at 3 or 4, you can think more rationally about the situation.

• If you feel a blowup coming on, give yourself a time-out before acting on it. "Wait 15 minutes before you say something, or an hour before you send an email. Keep your options open," says Pauline Wallin, a psychologist in Camp Hill, Pa., and author of "Taming Your Inner Brat." "If it's not going to be important in an hour, then let it go. It's not worth getting angry about."

• Get a health checkup. Medical problems such as diabetes, chronic pain, low testosterone and low estrogen, can make people very irritable. Anger, either repressed or unleashed, can cause medical problems too. Some 30,000 heart attacks each year are triggered by momentary anger, according to a 2004 Harvard study.

• Be aware of how you talk to yourself. "If you keep saying how awful this is and making yourself feel alike a victim, you will get more angry," says Dr. Wallin.

• Don't ruminate on past affronts or injustices.

• Recognize patterns. "So often, people will say, 'I'm just like my father—my father got angry'," says Dr. Pfeiffer. "You don't have to go back into their childhoods and deal with that. You just have to work on how to respond effectively now."

• Calculate what your anger is costing you. Many people with anger problems think anger gives them an edge, and establishes superiority. "Instead, you just look like an idiot," says Leon Ingram, founder of Chicago-based angermgmt.com.

• Don't use alcohol to "calm" yourself. Alcohol lowers your inhibitions so you are more likely to do or say something you'll regret later.

• Get physical, without fists. When your primitive brain senses a threat, it sets off the "fight or flight" cascade of hormones. Opt for flight instead of fight and burn off the extra adrenaline and cortisol with exercise. Even a brisk walk will help calm you down.

• The ultimate lesson: Pay more attention to the important things in life and recognize that most frustrations, inconveniences and indignities are trivial and temporary.

from WSJ.com

Obsolete Department: 8 Track Tapes Honored in New Museum

Last fall, more than 200 people crammed into one of this city's premier contemporary art galleries for a three-day show.

The show? Eight Track Tapes: The Bucks Burnett Collection. "It was packed," says gallery owner Barry Whistler.

Presiding over the affair was James "Bucks" Burnett, a portly fellow with long gray hair and a white beard. He wore a tailored brown suit covered with images from the album cover of Led Zeppelin's 1973 Houses of the Holy. Strangers showed up offering boxes of eight tracks, which Mr. Burnett happily pawed through, plucking out dusty rarities and putting them on display.

The positive response "led me to think maybe I'm not insane," says Mr. Burnett. But it also helped him realize that a brief gallery show simply can't contain his vision for the hard plastic tapes, one of the clunkiest and most short-lived music formats of all time.

He wants to open an eight-track museum. "There are only two choices. A world with an eight-track museum and a world without an eight-track museum," he says. "I choose with."

Shortly after the show, the planners of a music conference in Denton, a music-loving college town about 40 miles north of Dallas, made Mr. Burnett an offer. They would find him a vacant space and pay $4,000 to build a temporary museum for a one-month run beginning Friday.

Mr. Burnett accepted and is readying his collection for another display, this time in a former lingerie factory in Denton. He plans to showcase and play a few hundred tapes, including a baby-blue copy of The Who's "Tommy," a copy of the "Easy Rider" soundtrack with sun-bleached cover art signed by Peter Fonda and a rare copy of Lou Reed's 1975 avant-garde homage to noise called "Metal Machine Music."

This isn't the first time that Mr. Burnett, a long-time record-store owner, decided to venerate something the world was ready to forget. He edited the now-defunct Mr. Ed Fan Club newsletter for a decade. He managed the ukulele playing vibrato singer Tiny Tim and produced his final album.

At 51, he hopes to find a permanent home for his beloved eight-track collection. He has assembled a board of directors and is preparing to incorporate a nonprofit organization. "There are certainly lesser topics that have museums," Mr. Burnett says.

Peaking in popularity in the mid-1970s, eight-track tapes—about five by four inches—were made to be stuck in a back pocket and carelessly flung onto the vinyl seat of an AMC Pacer. They are the music version of cockroaches, hard to destroy. A 40-year-old tape can still sound rich and full.

Eight tracks were also revolutionary. They were the first truly portable music format, able to be played in a car, and therefore the forerunner of the Walkman, the boom box and even the iPod.

William Lear, better known for his eponymous jet, invented them in the early 1960s in part to provide music in the air. The format never quite took off above the clouds, but it did on the ground. In the 1960s, the eight track was a breakthrough in automobile music. It provided a much fuller sound than the sonically limited AM radio signal.

But the eight track's time atop the music-format food chain was brief. Its downfall was the cassette, which was smaller and ran longer, but was initially dogged by poor sound quality.

Companies poured research into cassettes, developing new coatings and tape material. In 1972, the famous "Is it live or is it Memorex?" advertising campaign began the process of convincing the music-buying public to give up their eight tracks.

When a cassette recording of Ella Fitzgerald, in a famous commercial, smashed a wine glass, the slow decline of the eight track had begun, says Jim Anderson, a professor at New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music.

Of course, the cassette was soon overtaken by the compact disc, which had superior sound quality. And today, the CD is giving way to digital downloading. Last year, Americans purchased 301 million compact discs and downloaded 78 million albums. They also downloaded 1.2 billion songs. Vinyl records sold 2.5 million. Only 34,000 albums were sold on cassette, according to Nielsen SoundScan, down from 105 million a decade ago. Nielson doesn't track eight-track sales.

Some brand new eight tracks are still made and sold. From her house in Arlington, Texas, Kathy Gibson, owner of KTS Productions, can crank out 10 an hour by hand, if the splicing machine isn't acting up and friends don't call on the phone to chat.

Last year, Cheap Trick, an American rock band that still performs but had its heyday in the late 1970s, placed a small order for its new album. It was popular enough that they asked for a second—and third—batch, she says. They are currently on back order, says the band's manager.

Eight tracks still show up on eBay and can command a premium. A quadraphonic eight track tribute album to the iconic rock band Led Zeppelin recently fetched $152. Mr. Burnett says finding some tapes—anything by trumpeter Miles Davis for instance—is really tough.

Mr. Burnett, who got his first job at a now-defunct Dallas record store in 1974 after winning an Alice Cooper-look-alike contest, didn't start collecting eight tracks until 1988, when he found an odd looking copy of the Beatles' White Album at a flea market. He decided to build a complete eight-track collection of the Fab Four, an endeavor that took more than two decades.

Along the way, he started selling eight tracks at his record store—by accident. He displayed a tape of the British punk band the Sex Pistols that he had bought for a dime on the wall near the cash register of his store.

"To ward off potential purchases and because I didn't want to sell it," he put a $100 price tag on it. "Then one day this girl came in and pulled a c-note out of her purse and bought it."

He recently sold off a good chunk of his CD collection to raise money to buy a few hard-to-find eight tracks for the gallery show. He hopes the permanent museum, whenever and wherever that might be, will be self supporting. He plans to charge a $5 admission fee.

Until that day, he continues working part-time jobs as a cashier at a local bakery and record store. His love of music—mostly classic rock—is keeping him going while he tries to turn his dream of a museum into a reality.

by WSJ.com

You Know You're Getting Old When...

You throw your back out on the toilet.
You shave your ears.
Your second wife calls your first wife “ma’am.”
You're genuinely excited when your prescriptions arrive in the mail.
You read the obits in the newspaper to check the ages of the dead people.
You read a newspaper.
You're bummed out that the smokin’ hot chick from Body Heat now looks like William Shatner in drag.
You say “bummed out.”
Women your age have real breasts and artificial hips.
Masturbation leaves you winded.
You try to amuse the kid hooking up your Blu-ray player by telling him about Betamax.
You pee in morse code -- dots and dashes -- and have to look down to see when you’re done.
Your car radio is set to “classic rock” so you have something to switch to during NPR pledge drives.
Your doctor says things like, “that’s normal for a man your age” and “consider yourself lucky.”
Beneath your chin is what appears to be a neck skin hammock.
Beneath your penis is what appears to be two ping pong balls hanging from a flesh-colored bolo tie.
You choose your new car because it offers great lumbar support and convenient cup holders.
Watching “The Who” perform at the Superbowl made you inconsolably sad.
You wonder if the orgasm you're about to have will actually end your life.
Your doctor tells you a new medication will reduce the amount of semen in your body and your only response is, “so what.”
Your car radio is set to “classic rock” so you have something to... oh, wait, I already did that one.

http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=280

IPhone Battery Replacement: DIY or Not?

Apple may be known for making easy-to-use products, but when it comes to the iPhone, it doesn’t make products that are easy to repair.

As iPhone owners learn, when their phone’s battery dies, it can be replaced; but unlike with a BlackBerry, it’s not a simple task. Apple will do it for $86 and a three-day turnaround. But there are less-expensive third-party providers as well.

Can devoted tinkerers do the replacement themselves? It depends on whom you ask. While researching Thursday’s article about ways to improve the battery life of portable devices, I got two different answers from two companies I interviewed that sell iPhone replacement parts and services.

According to ifixit.com, a company that provides parts for Mac computers, iPods and iPhones, the answer is yes. For about $32, it will sell you a new battery, plus the tools you need to crack the case and separate the various screws and connectors to get at the dead battery. The battery is guaranteed for six months.

One of the best things about the company is its detailed instructions on how to perform the task. Its Web site has step-by-step clear photographs, and comments on each task from customers who have already done the work, offering tips and pitfalls one could encounter.

While I haven’t tried it, I did use its instructions to replace a keyboard on an old Mac laptop and a battery in an iPod, and in both instances the instructions were perfect and simple to follow.

But iPhone battery replacement is a job you shouldn’t even try, according to Milliamp LTD, a competing iPhone replacement company. While Milliamp does offer tools and instructions for do-it-yourself battery replacement for an iPod, the company says that replacing the battery in an iPhone is simply too difficult to try at home.

It will sell you an iPhone battery for $20 if you want to do it yourself, but it won’t tell you how to do the job. Their solution: send the iPhone back to them at your expense and for $39, they’ll install it and return it to you, postpaid. Or you can pay $49 total, and it will send you a shipping label to send it to the company as well. The battery is guaranteed for 10 years, considerably longer than you’re likely to keep your iPhone.

from New York Times

A "Tablet PC" Pioneer Wins The Pregtigious Turing Award

A Veteran hardware developer at the Xerox Corp.'s PARC and Microsoft, Charles P. Thacker, has won the prestigious Turing Award with a $250,000 prize, given by the Association for Computing Machinery.

If a pioneer can be described as a person with arrows in the back, Charles P. Thacker may qualify, because his contributions to computing, although brilliant, often flopped initially. Many of his accomplishments, however, were later successful.

The technical award is granted by the Association For Computing Machinery. Named after British mathematician and cryptologist Alan Turing, the prize is given annually "to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community."

At different times in his career, Thacker, now 67, seemed to be everywhere. He was the lead hardware developer at the Xerox Corp.'s PARC Palo Alto Research Center where so much of the PC's early innovations were developed including:

- the Alto computer's bit-mapped WYSIWYG test display,
- the mouse pointing device,
- he was the co-founder of Ethernet, still computing's workhorse LAN.

Thacker created and collaborated on what would become the fundamental building blocks of the PC business.

The Alto computer, developed in 1974, incorporated bitmap (TV-like) displays which enable modern graphical user interfaces (GUIs), including What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors. These components have dominated computing during the last two decades.

Thacker was the co-inventor of the Ethernet local area network, introduced in 1973, the “interconnection fabric” that allows multiple digital devices such as workstations, printers, scanners, file servers, and modems to communicate with each other. Today’s Ethernets, which are thousands of times faster than the original version, have become the dominant local area networking technology.

At Digital Equipment Corporation’s System Research Center, Thacker designed the Firefly multiprocessor workstation, an innovation that has new relevance in the current multi-core world. These systems are widely used across many domains for their ability to improve productivity and create performance advantages, with applications for embedded architecture, network systems, digital signal processing, graphics, and special effects.

Thacker went on to Microsoft Research in 1997 to help establish its Microsoft Research Cambridge laboratory, where he also oversaw the design of the first prototypes on which most of today’s tablet PCs are based. Described as the most significant recent advance in the PC hardware platform, they enable faster, more powerful operations and they offer fundamentally new capabilities for direct interaction with users that are fast becoming part of the mainstream of computing. After joining the Tablet PC team to help shepherd the product to market, he returned to Microsoft Research in 2005, and is currently engaged in computer architecture research at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus.

But Thacker always seemed to be ahead of his time, producing early-stage innovations, only to watch his contributions be embodied in later successful products.

The tablet PC that he developed for Microsoft is a case in point. It debuted in 2001 and logged sluggish sales, but many of its concepts have been taking off lately. Apple's iPad tablet, due to ship in a few days, may be the latest example.

Thacker has been collecting awards in recent years. He won the IEEE's John von Neumann award for "a central role in the creation of the personal computer and the development of networked computer systems." He is a technical fellow at Microsoft.

http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2010/turing-award-09

Get Your Sleep

Sleep deprived are more likely to be obese and have medical problems

Millions of Americans only get five to six hours of sleep each night, not knowing that maintaining such sleep patterns can cause them to be dangerously overweight, resulting in many medical and health issues.

If you're sleep deprived, you're more likely to be overweight, and if you're both, you're more likely to be at risk for type 2 diabetes, hypertension, elevated cholesterol and cardiovascular complications.

But it doesn’t end there. “If you sleep less than six hours a night, you are 15 to 20 percent more likely to be overweight or obese,” says Pete Bils, Director of Clinical Research for Select Comfort, who has conducted 15 sleep studies on quality of sleep.

A healthy sleeping pattern means going to bed at the same time each night and waking up at the same time each morning, without an alarm clock, approximately seven to eight hours later.

“If you can lie down in a quiet, cool dark room anytime during daytime and fall asleep, especially within 5-8 minutes, you are sleep deprived,” says Bils.

And if you’re already significantly overweight, you may be at higher risk for sleep deprivation, according to Dr. Carol Ash, medical director of the Sleep for Life Program at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, NJ. “Obese people tend to be too warm [body temperature] and that can interfere with restful sleep.”

Moreover, Ash says people who are continuously tired may tend to eat more to try to stay energized or eat more simply because they are awake more hours of the day, which can lead to weight gain. But there is also a growing area of research to suggest that being sleep deprived affects your weight issues on a hormonal level. “Without sufficient sleep, leptin, a hormone that suppresses appetite is reduced in the body while grehlin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, is increased,” she says. Some studies have found that these hormonal changes may also increase cravings for high carbohydrate sweets and salty foods.

Bils says often times society views people who sleep less and work more as more productive or successful, but that quite the opposite is true. “That’s what I call societal sleep deprivation — sleep deprivation by choice,” he says.

“There’s a state of denial, and people think it’s normal until it gets to the point that it negatively affects your daytime functioning. And if that happens when they are behind the wheel, you don’t know what could happen.”

When the experience of sleep is that only minutes have passed between sleep and waking is healthy. If you’re aware of the sleep process, such as waking often during the night or tossing and turning, you’re not getting totally restorative rest.

Ash says the United States is a “nation in a sleep crisis.” She cites the primary social reasons for sleep deprivation as the advent and technology and increased time at work. “Before electricity was discovered, most people wound down their daily activities when darkness fell because they had no real choice,” she says. “Today we live in a 24/7 society, and TVs, computers and video games are competitors for our time.”

There are also biological reasons for sleep deprivation including sleep disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia, both of which may need medical treatment.

The side effects of sleep deprivation can also translate into other kinds of problems in the bedroom—and we’re not talking about sleep. It can have negative effects on your sex life. “A sleep deprived person does not have the energy to tend to the needs of his or her partner,” says Dr. Joyce Walsleben, head of Behavioral Sleep Medicine at New York University. She says the mental stress that goes along with being sleep deprived should also not be overlooked and can lead to depression and mood changes.

Walsleben says that despite the numerous negative effects of sleep deprivation, it’s something that can be changed with some minor life changes. “Sleep deprivation can be prevented by giving sleep as much importance as food and water,” she says.

“Start adding 15 minutes of sleep each night for a week, then another 15 minutes the following week until you feel better. Small nightly additions help over time without disrupting schedules.”

Tips on how to get a better night’s sleep:

* Gradually dim your atmosphere, mimicking the onset of night in the time before our homes had electricity.
* Create a quiet environment. Abrupt changes in sound will disrupt your sleep.
* Don't try to sleep with the TV on. It’s bright and loud.
* Keep humidity at 65 percent.
* Keep it cool: your body must be “thermally neutral” for optimal sleep, in 65 to 70 degree F temperatures.
* A good air purifier will help.
* Don’t eat before bed. Digestion raises body temperatures, resulting in poor sleep.
* No caffeine for seven hours before bed! (It has a half life of seven hours. Wow.)
* Get a better pillow and mattress. Your spine should be naturally aligned.
* Get a new pillow. A pillow too thick or two thin will give you pain and bad sleep.

from Weight Watchers.

Amendments to Murphy's Law

** Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch & you'll have to pee.

** Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

** Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

** Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal & someone always answers.

** Law of the Alibi - If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

** Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).

** Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

** Law of Close Encounters - The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

** Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

** Law of Biomechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

** Law of the Theater & Hockey Arena - At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet & who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies & stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

** The Coffee Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

** Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

** Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor, are directly correlated to the newness & cost of the carpet or rug.

** Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

** Brown's Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly.

** Oliver's Law of Public Speaking - A closed mouth gathers no feet.

** Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

** Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better.. But don't make an appointment, and you'll stay sick.

...with thanks to Wendi W.

Early Jefferson Airplane Video

...Link (below) is a video from Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Take a look at the early psychedelic graphics...

...quite advanced since it was the '60s.

please click here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1cfTMdjkYM