Cramer's 'Mad Money Lightning Round': Hallelujah for Hewlett-Packard

The minerals and mining sector is in a long-term bull market that's en fuego. The way to play it is with Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) , Jim Cramer told viewers of his "Mad Money" TV show Wednesday. Cramer considers mining stocks among the best to hold because of the huge global demand for raw materials. In addition, he said investors can benefit from the great deal of consolidation occurring in the sector. "Where there are takeovers, there are stocks that usually go much, much higher," Cramer said. His favorite play in the industry is Freeport-McMoRan, which he owns for his charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS. This company is just "fabulous," Cramer said, and it has nothing to do with the U.S. economy. He said the demand for copper seems to be increasing while supply is decreasing, and Freeport-McMoRan should profit as a leading copper mining company. He also said it has "an unbelievably great" buyback going. Where consolidation is concerned, Cramer said he doesn't want to see a takeover here, because he believes Freeport-McMoRan has so much upside on its own. It is a stock people should consider, he said.

Going With Hudson City Bancorp

If his thesis is right and the Federal Reserve starts slicing and dicing rates, people should consider owning a bank, Cramer said. However, because every bank will profit if the Fed cuts, he said he's more concerned with recommending the bank with the least downside risk in case there isn't a rate cut. That bank, Cramer said, is Hudson City Bancorp (HCBK) . This is the one he feels safe about recommending. The company's CEO is concerned with only two things: depositors and shareholders, Cramer said. Hudson City Bancorp "has an amazing model," he said. "It takes deposits; it lends to good, hard-working people who then pay the loans back." It stays away from subprime, Cramer said. In fact, the bank holds fewer nonperforming loans than the rest of the banks -- even Wells Fargo (WFC) . They do a thorough job of lending to people that they're sure will be able to pay their loans back, he said. Plus, it doesn't nickel-and-dime its customers by charging them exorbitant fees for things like overdrafts. They're more concerned with the bigger picture, Cramer said. If the Fed cuts next week by half a point, the banks should go up, but if it doesn't cut Hudson City has the least to lose, he said. It's the bank people should consider owning.

A Well-Positioned REIT

Federal Realty Investment Trust's (FRT) Donald Wood joined Cramer on the show, and the chief executive discussed the investment strategy behind his company's portfolios. It's easy to say consumer spending is going to be bad for the shopping center real estate market, but this is not the case for certain strong areas in the country, Wood said. The company, said Wood, made the decision a long time ago to select areas where there is money to spend and there are a lot of people. "We leave other parts of the country alone," he said. "There is no hedge, in my view, in real estate like great locations." The trust's business model, Wood continued, is about consistent sustainable growth in good times and bad. Cramer said he's sticking with FRT and suggested others do the same.

Am I Diversified?

During the "Am I Diversified?" segment, Cramer's first player called out these five names: Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (MDRX) , Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) , General Maritime (GMR) , Corning (GLW) and EMC (EMC) , the latter two of which Cramer owns for his charitable trust. "Yes, you are diversified and I am digging your portfolio, other than MDRX," Cramer told the viewer. The second caller asked if he was diversified with these five holdings: Hasbro (HAS) , VMware (VMW) , Citigroup (C) , Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and McDonald's (MCD) , the latter three of which Cramer owns for Action Alerts PLUS. Cramer suggested the caller swap out of VMware and get into a defense contractor like Raytheon (RTN) , another stock he owns. The next caller said he owns these five stocks: Raytheon, CVRD (RIO) , Unilver (UN) , Hewlett-Packard and Schlumberger (SLB) . Cramer blessed the portfolio as diversified. The final player called out the following five plays: BankUnited (BKUNA) , Ford (F) , Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI) , Circuit City (CC) and Micron Technology (MU) . Cramer said that although the caller is diversified, he doesn't think the portfolio is that great.

Sudden Death

During the "Sudden Death" round, Cramer was bullish on Wolverine World Wide (WWW) , Nike (NKE) , Vimpel-Communications (VIP) , Freeport-McMoran and Shaw Group (SGR) .

Lightning Round

Cramer was bullish on CVS Caremark (CVS) , Hewlett-Packard, Monster Worldwide (MNST) , St. Jude Medical (STJ) , Freeport-McMoran (FCX) , Transocean (RIG) , Schlumberger (SLB) and Raytheon. Cramer was bearish on Sysco (SYY) , Boston Scientific (BSX) , Titanium Metals (TIE) and Taser (TASR) .


SOURCE: thestreet.com

The World's Greatest Get-Rich Formula

You should be highly skeptical of any and all get-rich schemes ... except for the super-simple formula I'm going to show you below. Because this one really works.

It works so well that it's been used by the world's billionaires -- from moguls of yesteryear such as Rockefeller and Ford to today's tycoons Carlos Slim and Warren Buffett.

But enough already. Let's get to the formula.

The formula
It is, simply:

FV = PV * (1+r) ^ n

Where:

FV = future value
PV = present value
r = rate of return
n = time (or number of years)

Compounding 101
Now, some astute finance brains will know that equation not as some mystical secret but as the "future value of money" (FVM) equation taught in college.

The FVM formula simply states that your future wealth (FV) is a function of three variables: the amount of money invested today (PV), the rate of return generated (r), and the length of time in which that money is put to work (n). So maximizing future riches requires three steps.

Step 1: Increase PV
It takes money to make money. But by actively and consistently slivering off a portion of your earnings every month to save and invest, you'll have more and more of that money working for you.

All things equal, the greater amount you invest today (PV), the greater wealth you'll build for tomorrow (FV).

Step 2: Increase r
Next, you'll need a way to grow that capital. Historically, the stock market has been the most effective wealth-building vehicle of all. Plowing your money into a low-cost index fund wouldn't be a bad idea.

But if you really want to maximize r, you'll need to allocate a portion of your portfolio to the best segment of the market over the past 50 years: small-cap value stocks. The reason is simple. Unlike behemoths such as $371 billion General Electric (NYSE: GE) and $164 billion Altria (NYSE: MO) -- whose spectacular growth days are behind them -- reasonably priced small caps have tons of room to rocket. Take a look at Fama and French data, which tracked stocks from 1956 to 2005:

	Value	Growth
Large caps	13.3%	9.7%
Small caps	17.3%	8.7%
Total stock market	10.5%

Not adjusted for inflation.

All things equal, the greater your rate of return (r), the greater wealth you'll build for tomorrow (FV).

Step 3: Increase n
The last ingredient in our super-simple wealth-building recipe: maximum time in the market.

Look back at the equation. You'll see that n is an exponential function -- meaning that for every year you're not invested, you give up the awesome (almost magical) benefits of compounding.

All things equal, the longer you're invested (n), the greater wealth you'll build for tomorrow (FV).

Plug and chug
To get a feel for the three-step process in action, let's go back in time to see what kind of wealth would have been generated had someone:

1. Invested $40,000 in the stock market
2. Started 10 years ago
3. Divided the money among five stocks having: market caps less than $2 billion (to screen for small size), sales growth greater than 15% (to screen for above-average opportunities), and price-to-sales ratios of less than 1.5 (to screen for a good price).

Here's what it would look like:

Company	Amount invested 10 years ago	Average compounded return over last 10 years	Total value of investment today
Middleby (Nasdaq: MIDD)	$8,000	31%	$119,070
JAKKS Pacific (Nasdaq: JAKK)	$8,000	16%	$35,291
Oceaneering International (NYSE: OII)	$8,000	21%	$53,820
Forward Air (Nasdaq: FWRD)	$8,000	24%	$68,755
VSE (Nasdaq: VSEC)	$8,000	27%	$87,323
	Total amount invested (PV)	Avg. annual return of portfolio (r)	Total value of portfolio today (FV)
	$40,000	24.72%	$364,259

By having bought into five high-quality, reasonably priced companies while they were still babies, that $40,000 stake would be worth more than $350,000 today.

Of course, you can always fiddle with the numbers to generate different levels of FV, but our objective should remain the same:

1. Maximize PV by sticking to an investment plan.
2. Maximize r by devoting a chunk of your portfolio to superior small caps at attractive prices.
3. Maximize n by investing as soon as possible and for as long as possible.
   
   
   

SOURCE: fool.com

New Sony DVDirect VRD-MC5 Review

With analog technologies moving to digital, you're probably cringing at the prospect of your entire VHS collection crumbling over time. Buying and installing a capture card— as well as figuring out how to use your PC to convert these tapes to digital format, is way complicated—but there's a superb alternative.




The Sony DVDirect VRD-MC5 ($229 direct) is the easiest way to convert your entire VHS collection (as well as video from your camcorder and photos from your digital camera) into DVD format, with one click of a button. All of this is done without the use of a PC, and you can see what's being recorded on its 2.5-inch LCD screen. It's worthy of an Editors' Choice, just like its predecessor, the VRD-MC1, though this new model is unique in the market.

Those seeing the DVDirect for the first time might not guess what it does, because it doesn't look like any conventional external optical drive. It sits flat like a standalone DVD player. In fact, one might think it was a portable DVD player with its 2.5-inch LCD screen situated in the center. Sony has actually made the VRD-MC5's screen half an inch bigger than the VRD-MC1's, making it similar in size to the electronic viewfinders found in the back of point-and-shoot digital cameras—except the quality of the DVDirect's screen is much better. (It won't be too long before Sony puts in a screen twice as a large, given the way LCD prices have dropped.) The buttons are pretty straightforward. The big red button lets you record photos or videos with just one touch. The arrow keys help navigate the menu, which you can get to by pressing the Return button. The Stop button is self-explanatory.

Although the VRD-MC5 is a great tool for capturing video from a camcorder, its main draw lies in converting old VHS tapes into DVD's. You'll need an A/V cable—either a red, white, and yellow or S-Video cable—to connect the DVDirect to your VCR. (Sorry, this cable doesn't come with the VRD-MC5—you have to buy it separately). When you hit the Play button on your VCR, the VRD-MC5 will automatically stream video onto its own LCD screen. You can record or stop recording at any point during the feed. You can also set up an automatic timer in the menu screen. The process is similar with a camcorder, though you will need to buy an additional cable (FireWire or USB) for data transfer. The VRD-MC5 also supports high-definition camcorders like the Sony HDR-HC3 HDV 1080i Handycam, which uses Sony's proprietary AVC HD format. It doesn't support other HD camcorder formats, though.

The selection menu has grown since the previous version, so there are several things you can do to enhance the DVD experience. First, make sure you pick the right quality mode. You can choose from five quality recording modes (HP, HSP, SP, LP, SLP) that range in recording time from 1 hour in the HP (high-quality play) mode to 6 hours in SLP (super long play) mode. For maximizing DVD space without compromising video quality, I suggest using the SP mode (2 hours). Bear in mind, these times are for 4.7GB single-layer DVDs; the amount of content you can load doubles with 8.4GB dual-layer DVDs. Sony adds four basic title menus with different colors and styles that you can choose from, although you can't add transitions, special effects, or anything fancy. This is on-the-fly recording—you'll have to use professional video-editing tools on a PC for sophisticated tasks. Speaking of PCs, Sony removed the DVDirect's capability to connect to a PC and a USB printer, which it used in previous versions, so it's now a standalone device. That also means you can't use it as an external USB DVD burner for your PC. The lone USB port is for connecting USB camcorders only. As with previous versions, you can't connect this device to your TV because it lacks video output ports, and you can't play a DVD from, say, Blockbuster or Netflix on the LCD screen—not that you'd want to, anyway.

The VRD-MC5 has three multimedia card slots that support Memory Stick Duo, MS, SD, xD, and CompactFlash formats. You can view your photos as thumbnails on the LCD screen, with up to six thumbnails per screen, or one at a time if you want larger images. You can then pick and choose which ones to burn onto a DVD, or just burn everything from the flash card. Creating a slide show that works with a DVD player and incorporates an MP3 musical track is as easy as clicking the selection on the menu. After the burn is done, you can preview the finished product on the LCD screen. One pet peeve of mine is that the VRD-MC5 doesn't burn CD formats, so you'll have to use DVD media even if you want to burn only several photos.

Sony doesn't provide any specifications for the DVD drive used in the VRD-MC5 because you can't connect it to a PC anyway, so it's really only one speed—which burns at a good clip. I was able to dub 2 hours' worth of camcorder footage, with a number of 10-minute chapters and a title menu, in 25 minutes. Burning 120 photos from my SD card, with slide show and music, took roughly 10 minutes. As stated earlier, it doesn't come with any cables as the previous versions did, and it doesn't bundle burning software like Nero 7.0 (which is a moot point since, as I've said, you can't connect this to a PC).

The Sony DVDirect VRD-MC5 is the easiest way to transfer video from a VCR or a camcorder, or photos from a camera, to a DVD, taking only a matter of minutes to do it. It lacks some functions the previous versions had, such as a USB port that connects to a PC or printer. Also, the accessories aren't as impressive without the data cables and software bundle that the previous iteration had. But that's how Sony was able to bring the price down to $229, from the VRD-MC1's list price of $299, and it's a tremendous bargain considering what you can do with it. If you have camcorder tapes piling up or you're worried about your old VHS collection turning to dust, the DVDirect VRD-MC5 can easily make your memories digital.




SOURCE: pcmag.com

GE Microwave recall

Do you own One GE Microwave at your home or Office ? This may catch your attention . I hope .....

For additional information on GE /Profile units, contact General Electric toll-free at (888) 240-2745 from 8 am to 8 pm, Monday through Friday.

Washington, DC -- General Electric is recalling about 92,000 built-in combination wall and microwave ovens.

According to CNN Money, The US Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with General Electric announced the recall about 4:30am Wednesday.

Consumers should stop using recall products immediately.

According to GE Consumer & Industry, the door switch in the microwave oven can overheat and ignite plastic components in the control area. It poses a fire hazard to operators. The lower thermal oven does not pose a hazard.

GE is aware of 35 incidents of minor property damage and no reports of injuries.

Here's what the description of the recalled microwaves:

-The recall includes GE combination microwave and conventional built-in wall ovens sold under the following brand names: GE, GE Profile™ and Kenmore. The ovens were sold in white, black, bisque and stainless steel. The brand name is printed on the lower left corner on the front of the microwave door. The following model and serial numbers can be found inside the microwave oven on the left interior wall.

-Recalled Models Serial number begins with: GE / Profile

-Recalled Models:

JTP85BA2BB, JTP85BA3BB, JTP85BA4BB, JTP85BA5BB, JTP85BD1BB, JTP85WA2WW, JTP85WA3WW, JTP85WA4WW, JTP85WA5WW, JTP85WD1WW, JTP86BF1BB, JTP86CF1CC, JTP86SF1SS, JTP86WF1WW, JTP95BA2BB, JTP95BA3BB, JTP95BA4BB, JTP95BA5BB, JTP95BD1BB, JTP95WA2WW, JTP95WA3WW, JTP95WA4WW, JTP95WA5WW, JTP95WD1WW, JKP85BA3BB, JKP85BD1BB, JKP85WA3WW, JKP85WD1WW, JKP86BF1BB, JKP86CF1CC, JKP86SF1SS, JKP86WF1WW, JT965BF1BB, JT965CF1CC, JT965SF1SS, JT965WF1WW

-Serial Number Begins With:

AZ, DZ, FZ, GZ, HZ, LZ, MZ, RZ, SZ, TZ, VZ, ZZ, AA, DA, FA, GA, HA,LA, MA, RA, SA, TA, VA, ZA, AD, DD, FD, GD, HD, LD, MD, RD, SD, TD, VD, ZD, AF, DF, FF, GF, HF, LF, MF, RF, SF, TF, VF, ZF

-Kenmore (All model numbers start with 911)

-Recalled Models:

41485991, 41485992, 41485993, 41485994, 41489991, 41489992, 41489993, 41489994, 49485992, 49489992, 47692100, 47699100

47862100, 47869100, 47812200, 47813200, 47814200, 47819200, 47792200, 47793200, 47794200, 47799200

-Serial Numbers Begin With: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4

-Sold at: Department and appliance stores from January 2000 to December 2003 for between $1,500 and $2,000.

-Manufactured in: United States

Consumers should stop using the microwave oven immediately. Consumers should contact GE regarding their GE/Profile micro-oven combo or Sears for their Kenmore unit.

GE is offering a free repair or rebate on a new product, a $300 rebate toward the purchase of a new GE brand unit, or a $600 rebate toward the purchase of a new GE Profile brand unit.

Sears is offering a free repair or $300 rebate toward the purchase of a new Kenmore brand unit.

Consumers can continue using the lower thermal oven.

For additional information on GE /Profile units, contact General Electric toll-free at (888)-240-2745 from 8 am to 8 pm, Monday through Friday. For additional information on Kenmore units, contact Sears toll-free at (888) 679-0282 from 8 am to 10 pm, Monday through Saturday.

Source: CNN

The Thin Line Between Civilian and Military Nuclear Programs

For years, American intelligence agencies contended that Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons program. But even as Tehran continues to enrich uranium, which could fuel a bomb, the agencies have reversed themselves, saying the Iranians halted their weapons program in 2003.

All of this raises the question: When is a nuclear program a nuclear weapons program?

The open secret of the nuclear age is that the line between civilian and military programs is extraordinarily thin. That is why the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has teams of inspectors constantly sweeping through nuclear centers around the globe, looking for cheaters.

But thin as it may be, there is a line.

One threshold is enriched uranium. Enriched to low levels, uranium can fuel a reactor that produces electrical power — which is what Tehran says it wants to do. But if uranium is purified in spinning centrifuges long enough, and becomes highly enriched, it can fuel an atom bomb.

Another boundary between civilian and military programs is weapons design. Designing a nuclear weapon involves sophisticated mathematical and engineering work to figure out how to squeeze the bomb fuel in a way that creates the nuclear blast.

The new intelligence assessment released Monday, which is known as a National Intelligence Estimate, drew a distinction between Iran’s “declared civil work” on uranium enrichment and “nuclear weapon design and weaponization work.” The document states “with high confidence” that Iran is now hewing to the civilian side of the line.

The history of the atomic age, however, suggests that for a country with an advanced civil nuclear program, crossing the line into bomb work is relatively easy.

After the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain became the first three countries with atom bombs, all the rest hid their military programs to one extent or another behind the mask of peaceful nuclear power. That includes France, China, Israel, India, South Africa and Pakistan.

Indeed, the most difficult part of building a bomb is not doing the secret military design work but rather the part of the process that is also crucial to civilian nuclear power — producing the fuel.

History illustrates the point. During World War II, scientists working secretly at Los Alamos in the mountains of New Mexico were so sure of the reliability of their simple design that they gave it no explosive test before the bomb was made and dropped on Hiroshima. It worked to devastating effect.

But making the bomb’s highly enriched fuel required a vast industrial effort clouded by great uncertainty. In a race, three huge factories were built in the Tennessee wilds, each pursuing a different way of enriching uranium. One had literally millions of miles of pipes.

In the end, no technique worked well enough to be relied upon exclusively. So engineers blended the outputs. “All three methods contributed to Hiroshima,” said Robert S. Norris, author of “Racing for the Bomb” (Steerforth, 2002), a biography of the project’s military chief.

That history cast light on the question of whether Iran’s enrichment work today could represent a future military threat.

The new American intelligence assessment says Iran is “continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons,” including “its civilian uranium enrichment program.”

And the enrichment effort, the assessment says, could give Iran enough fuel for a weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015 — a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates.

The report also disclosed that American agencies have accumulated a “growing amount of intelligence” showing that Iran engaged in covert uranium enrichment, adding that it “probably” was halted after 2003 and “probably” has remained frozen through the middle of this year.

For some, that uncertainty undercuts the assessment’s “high confidence” that Iran ended its weapons program in 2003 and will continue to stay on the peaceful side of the line.

“The danger,” President Bush said at the White House on Tuesday, “is that they can enrich, play like they got a civilian program — or have a civilian program, or claim it’s a civilian program — and pass the knowledge to a covert military program.”

A senior federal specialist with long experience in nuclear proliferation said it was quite possible that Iran made so much progress in 18 years of secret work that the halt in 2003 might have little practical effect in restricting it from getting a weapon. That is, if Tehran wants one, and if it can keep working openly to produce fuel.

But the intelligence agencies steered clear of assessing Tehran’s intentions, saying, “We do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”

SOURCE: nytimes.com

The Book Of Cheating

The Book Of Cheating - Interestingly, the book became popular when the Bonnie & Clyde of ID fraud were arrested in Philadelphia last Friday and a copy of
“The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims” was found in their ritzy apartment.

Police found the book The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims (Paperback) (2007, from Basic Books) by Jessica Dorfman Jones, in the Bonnie & Clyde duo’s fancy condo.

The book of cheating itself, if you look it up on Amazon, is more about telling practical white lies and not about becoming a master criminal.

Here’s an excerpt from the book of cheating:

Even though you’re cheating a little bit every day, chances are you could be doing it better. Why settle for a minor promotion when you could have the corner office? Why bother taking the loose change out of your friend’s couch when you could be making the big bucks forging checks? If your answer is that you just don’t know how, look no further. This is the book for you.In the pages of this little tome, you’ll find a guide to grifting, a sourcebook of sophistry, and a bible of bunco. Everything the modern mountebank needs to know to pull off the most essential cheats can be found in these pages. Every cheat has been numbered for your easy reference and reading pleasure. You will, however, notice that they are in no easily discernible order.

This is much like life, as the ways in which we cheat and the reasons we decide to do so don’t follow any particular patterns either. As you leaf through this book, let the myriad ways in which you can get one over on the other guy surprise and entertain you as you stumble on them, just as you will stumble on opportunities to exercise your new shady talents after reading this book.

You’ll also find that the information in each chapter has been neatly laid out in an easy step-by-step format so you can be up and running in no time with your new and improved life of chicanery.

Feel free to mix and match your cheats at will. A life without artful cheating isn’t a life worth living.

The book “The Art of Cheating” makes for very interesting reading indeed...

Will Clinton's Obama Attacks Backfire?

It started in earnest a couple of weeks ago when Hillary Clinton questioned how much Barack Obama's time spent living in Indonesia as a child could actually help him make foreign policy decisions as a commander-in-chief. "Voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face," Clinton said November 20 in Shenandoah, Iowa. "I think we need a President with more experience than that."

Then Clinton announced in an interview with CBS that she was sick of being a punching bag for Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and that she intended to fight back. "After you have been attacked as often as I have from several of my opponents, you cannot just absorb it. You have to respond," she said.

Since that declaration Clinton has done just that, attacking Obama's plans for health care, Social Security reform and diplomacy with Iran. She even went so far as to dig up a kindergarten essay of Obama's entitled "I Want to Be President" to accuse him of lying about not having a lifelong lust for the Oval Office. "So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on day one ... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate," Clinton said in Iowa Monday. But at a time when two new Iowa polls show Obama actually pulling into the lead and Clinton losing support among women, some political observers are wondering if Clinton will come to regret her newly assertive strategy. She already has the highest negative ratings in the race, and the shift in tactics comes only a month before the Iowa caucus — where voters are famous for their distaste of negative campaigning. Launching the attacks herself, rather than with via surrogates, only makes the move even riskier.

"The attack will backfire in two ways: it will reinforce the negative stereotype of Mrs. Clinton as a cold and calculating person who will do whatever it takes to win," said Stephen J. Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University and author of The Road to the White House. "And two, it will make Mr. Obama seem to be the less shrill and more emotionally mature candidate."

John Norris, who ran Senator John Kerry's Iowa campaign in 2004 and now serves as an adviser to Obama's campaign, said that's what they were banking on. "Barack positioned himself as drawing distinctions with Hillary," Norris said in an interview. "You don't want to get too negative — he's come close to the line but I don't think he's gone over it with Iowa voters." Clinton is "the one who made it personal by calling him na�ve — that was the first personal attack in the campaign," Norris said. "It's not a good position to be in — being forced to go negative in the last month."

The Obama campaign has started a website which almost gleefully tracks all of Clinton's attacks. And in an e-mail sent to supporters Monday asking for donations, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe cited the Des Moines Register poll that also showed Clinton with the highest negatives of any candidate. "And sure enough, less than 12 hours after the poll results were released, the Clinton campaign launched multiple frantic, baseless attacks against Barack Obama," Plouffe wrote, calling for 10,000 people to donate over the next 48 hours in response. "The emerging pattern is disturbing: as Senator Clinton's poll numbers slide, the campaign of 'inevitability' becomes more desperate and negative by the day. Barack will always respond swiftly and forcefully with the truth when attacked."

Negative campaigning has not had a history of success in Iowa. In 2004 Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean committed what some described as "murder-suicide" with their attacks on each other, opening the door for Kerry. In 1988 John Glenn's attacks on Walter Mondale helped to hand Gary Hart a surprise victory in the caucuses. The person who could stand to gain the most this time from the negative attacks is John Edwards. His campaign, which hasn't been shy about attacking Clinton in recent months, has remained remarkably silent in recent days. "Edwards has been a pretty harsh critic of the Clinton campaign himself, so one could argue that when everybody goes negative no one gains from it," said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist who is remaining neutral this cycle.

Clinton has insisted that her attacks against Obama are substantive, not personal. "There's a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we're willing to fight for," Clinton told reporters traveling this past weekend with her in Iowa aboard the first press plane of Clinton's campaign. That difference, she said, is "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk." Asked directly whether she intended to raise questions about Obama's character, she replied: "It's beginning to look a lot like that. You know, it really is." (When asked if former President Bill Clinton would also be stepping up the heat on Obama or Edwards, Clinton spokesman Mo Eilleithee would say only, "I think you'll see him out there talking about his knowledge of her, because no one knows her better.")

Clinton's harsh new rhetoric has not won much support, either from pundits or other Democrats. "I could see the desire to raise the salience of personal traits — because her strengths are experience and strength of character," said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at MIT and author of the book Going Negative. "But her choice surprised me — she might be emphasizing the wrong thing. Given how close this is in the polls, especially a month out, this might be a very risky strategy for her."

"This series of slurs doesn't serve HRC well," said Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, in a blog post. "It will turn off voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country. If she's worried her polls are dropping, this is not the way to build them back up."

Perhaps the biggest downside to Clinton's negative attacks is that the press seems to be focusing on nothing else, at least for the moment. "What's tough about the stories from this weekend is that they're telegraphing — they're more about going negative than the substance of the attacks," Simmons said. "It underlines the case that Edwards and Obama have been making that she's practicing politics as usual." And for Clinton, that kind of an association could be the costliest negative of all.

SOURCE: time.com

Rapper Pimp C Found Dead in Hollywood Hotel

Pimp C, real name Chad Butler -- and one half of the rap duo UGK, was found dead in a hotel room this morning. He was 33.

L.A. County Fire responded to a 911 call at the Mondrian Hotel, located on trendy Sunset Strip in Hollywood. They arrived to his sixth floor hotel room to find him dead in bed.

UGK is best known for appearing on the Jay-Z track "Big Pimpin'" in 2000, and more recently with Outkast on the song "International Player's Anthem (I Choose You)." Pimp C had just performed with fellow rapper Too Short at the "House of Blues" in L.A. on Saturday night. Jive Records has issued the following statement regarding Pimp C's death:

"It is with great sadness that Jive Records announces the passing of Chad "Pimp C" Butler, a member of the celebrated rap duo UGK (Underground Kingz). Jive Records' President and CEO Barry Weiss states: "We mourn the unexpected loss of Chad. He was truly a thoughtful and kind-hearted person. He will be remembered for his talent and profound influence as a pioneer in bringing southern rap to the forefront. He will be missed and our prayers remain with his family and Bun B. I've known Chad since he was 18, and we loved him dearly and he was a cherished member of the Jive family."

Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Butler's father was a trumpet player who played professionally with Solomon Burke. Outside of his father, the 33-year old rapper's influences varied, ranging from Bobby Bland, Jimmy McGriff, the 1960's Motown artists to Run DMC. Butler met his inseparable partner Bernard "Bun B" Freeman in high school where they formed UGK. In 1992, the duo signed to Jive Records and went on release a total of eight albums for the label. They earned their highest achievement earlier this year when their most recent album, UGK (Underground Kingz), debuted in the number one position on the album pop chart. According to the New York Times, UGK "helped inspire a generation of Southern hip-hop stars, from OutKast to Lil Wayne."

Source: TMZ

Sean Taylor Funeral and Tribute Video

MIAMI, Dec. 3 -- Washington Redskins players, coaches and officials joined thousands of other mourners to pay their final respects to slain teammate Sean Taylor in a massive funeral service Monday at Florida International University's Pharmed Arena.

As the players filed into the 5,000-seat arena along with Taylor's friends, relatives and NFL players and dignitaries, two large screens showed highlights from the Pro Bowl free safety's football career, starting with clips from high school and scenes from his playing days at the University of Miami, where he helped lead the Hurricanes to a national championship in 2001.

At a vigil Sunday night at his alma mater, Taylor's girlfriend, Jackie Garcia, said he had been "planning to come back and attend school in January; it was his dream to graduate." Taylor was a first-round draft pick of the Redskins in 2004 and quickly earned a reputation as one of the hardest-hitting defensive backs in the NFL.

Among those attending Taylor's funeral were NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and Coach Joe Gibbs. They were scheduled to offer tributes, along with Redskins tailback Clinton Portis, a University of Miami teammate of Taylor's; former Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington; and Taylor's agent, Drew Rosenhaus.

The group of current and former Redskins was joined by a large contingent from the Florida City, Fla., police department. Taylor's father, Pedro Taylor, is chief of police there.

Also attending was O.J. Simpson, the Hall of Fame running back who faces trial in Las Vegas on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping after a September incident involving two sports memorabilia dealers. Simpson told other attendees that he had encouraged his own alma mater, the University of Southern California, to recruit Taylor.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson accompanied Pedro Taylor into the arena. Garcia's uncle, actor Andy Garcia, was in a late-arriving group of family members who made their way into the arena as a choir sang gospel music.

Taylor, 24, died at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital on Nov. 27, a day after being shot in the upper thigh at his Palmetto Bay home during an apparent burglary attempt. The bullet struck his femoral artery, and he bled profusely before paramedics arrived on the scene. With him in his house at the time of the break-in were Garcia and their 18-month-old daughter. They were unharmed.

Police last week arrested four young men and charged them with unpremeditated murder in the case. Authorities said the men did not know that Taylor was home when they broke into the house and that one of them shot Taylor when he surprised them.

The funeral was held a day after another in a series of tough losses by the Redskins, this one a 17-16 defeat at the hands of the Buffalo Bills on a last-minute field goal. The team is scheduled to play again on Thursday against the Chicago Bears.

Thousands of fans paid tribute to Taylor at Sunday's game, many of them sporting jerseys or towels with his No. 21 on them. All stadiums around the league observed a moment of silence to honor Taylor, and players wore stickers with his number on their helmets.

Source: Washington Post

Get A Life!! But Make it a Second Life

Most of us have an alter-ego waiting to burst out, and now it can - on the internet, in virtual worlds that are springing up to suit every need and desire. Ian Douglas explores a universe of online possibilities




I couldn't wrap my nephew's birthday present last year. There was no box or batteries to be included because what I'd bought him was the ability to go online, pretend to be a penguin and talk to his friends.

A year's membership to Club Penguin, the icy virtual world for children aged six to 14, is less and less of an unusual gift. There are more than 700,000 members, all of whom pay from $60 (£29) a year.

For their money they get games, clubs, the possibility of earning "coins" through competitions and work, which can be traded in for objects in the game or in the real world. They can build their own igloo and fill it with objects they've collected, assemble a wardrobe of penguin clothes and go sledging.

Chat is heavily moderated. Parents can choose whether their little penguins can pick a phrase from a pre-approved list or type their messages. Typed chat is scanned phonetically to stop any chance of profanity or sexual language sneaking through, and thoroughly vetted moderators monitor conversations.

What stops Club Penguin from being just a game and elevates it to the level of being a virtual world is that members can live parallel online lives, constructing an identity that lives inside the network and interacts with other people, forming relationships.

Sometimes there are games to play and rules to follow, but primarily the waddling citizens are there just to exist in this new kind of place, of which there are many. Club Penguin is the biggest for young children, but teenagers and young adults have no shortage of choice.

Social networking, the web phenomenon that has given rise to MySpace and Facebook has two faces. There is the web version, based on profiles and messaging, and the 3D version, which gives its participants a visual representation of social spaces in which they can chat and interact in the manner of a computer game but not necessarily engaging in rule-based game behaviour.

The most popular still have some kind of game element. World of Warcraft, a Tolkienesque place where more than 8?million paying subscribers become orcs, elves and wizards and rampage through a countryside filled with boars, is the most popular in Europe and America, while Japan, China and Korea are filled with teenage boys playing Westward Journey, based on Chinese classical literature. There are 56 million registered players of the game.

An earlier game, Everquest, was one of the first to see people treating online game space in some respects as though it were real. Surprised adventurers would rush into a clearing in a forest ready for battle only to find groups of friends dawdling, chatting and selling things to other players. No matter how exciting a game may be, sharing a joke with friends will always be more fun, so Everquest moved from being a game with an online element to being a youth club with swords.

"Massively multiplayer online role-playing games", then, apart from having one of the most unwieldy acronyms around (Mmorpgs, pronounced muh-morpugs) are big business, but of little interest to anyone but established computer-game fans. There are, however, other creative online spaces for older people away from the video-gamers. Some are based around existing communities in the offline world, and some are entirely new. The biggest of these is Second Life. There are more than 10 million user accounts registered with Linden Lab, the company behind the project. Originally based on Neal Stephenson's rather poor 1992 novel Snow Crash, Second Life has no game elements built-in, no roaming artificial characters and no pre-existing landscape. Everything you see, touch, buy and move through has been created by your fellow inhabitants.

The currency of Second Life, the Linden Dollar, is freely exchangeable for real money (at a rate of about L$250 to US$1), which has given rise to a thriving economy based mostly on property development, small-scale manufacturing and craft, gambling and prostitution. Yes that's right, prostitution, right here in Linden City. The lonelier members of Second Life are fond of animating their avatars (the name for your in-world presence) to look like they're having sex, which is either a sad indictment of a base society or an admirably ingenious use of a new technology to satisfy the deep human need for affection. The choice is up to you.

Apart from pretend sex, there is a lot to do in Second Life. There are classes and lectures to attend at universities, including Yale and Harvard, news coverage and discussion from Reuters, design and architecture experiments, films (both showing and shooting), art galleries and a shape-matching game called Tringo that was developed specifically for virtual world play. Big-name companies are using the space to promote products. Toyota, Adidas, General Motors and Sony BMG all preview their latest offerings there, and IBM has commandeered a huge space - largely cut off from the outside world - for internal communication.

More than any other virtual world, Second Life feels like a digital version of reality, albeit one in which everyone is thin, tall and beautiful, can fly and is able to teleport wherever they choose.

There.com and Entropia Universe also cater for people who want a free-roaming style but don't like Second Life, and the idea of a 3D environment is catching on for other applications, such as Sony PlayStation Home, an online shop that deals in content for the PlayStation 3.

Talk of a future internet that uses a spatial metaphor in place of the current web's document-driven interface is gaining ground and the line between video games and everyday computer functions is blurring. Your online life looks set to take on a new dimension.

Top 5 virtual worlds
Second Life (www.secondlife.com)
Club Penguin (www.clubpenguin.com)
There.com (www.there.com)
Habbo Hotel (www.habbo.co.uk)
Entropia Universe (www.entropiauniverse.com)

SOURCE: telegraph.co.uk

Ohio State to play LSU for BCS title

Ohio State will take on LSU in the Bowl Championship Series title game on January 7 in New Orleans.

The Buckeyes finished atop the BCS regular season standings and will play for the national championship for a second straight year after losing to Florida, 41-14, in Glendale, Arizona last January.

LSU (11-2) beat Tennessee, 21-14, Saturday in the SEC championship game, the same day Tigers coach Les Miles announced he's not going to take the Michigan coaching job, but instead will remain in Baton Rouge.

The Buckeyes seemed shoo-ins to make it to the title game following losses by Missouri and West Virginia on Saturday. The Tigers were No. 1 in the BCS, but lost to Oklahoma, 38-17, in the Big 12 championship game, and the Mountaineers were second, but were shocked 13-9 at home by Pittsburgh.

"Very fortunate, and we enjoy where we're at," Miles said.

Ohio State's lone loss came at Illinois, 28-21, on November 10, the week before the Buckeyes went to Michigan to win the Big Ten. Before that loss to the Fighting Illini, Ohio State had won every game by at least 16 points, with the exception of a 24-17 home win over Michigan State on October 20.

The Buckeyes will be able to play for their eighth national championship, last winning the title in the 2002 season, beating the Miami Hurricanes at the Fiesta Bowl.

An advantage the Tigers had was that their two losses both came in triple- overtime, 43-37 at Kentucky on October 13 and 50-48 at home against Arkansas on November 23. LSU was one of the best offensive teams and also strong on defense in the early part of the campaign. LSU's 475 points this season tied the school record. More importantly they went 6-1 against teams from the top 25.

LSU will play for its third national championship in football, last winning the title in 2003 from the coaches with a Sugar Bowl victory over Oklahoma.

The BCS system uses a pair of human polls -- the Harris Interactive and the USA Today -- as well as six computer rankings. Each poll counts one-third toward the overall score, while the average of the computers completes the formula.

Ohio State and LSU were 1-2, respectively, in the Associated Press and the Coaches' polls on Sunday. The Buckeyes were third in the BCS last week, while LSU was seventh. The latest poll had Ohio State with a BCS average of .9588, just ahead of the Tigers (.9394), while Virginia Tech was a distant third (.8703).

Oklahoma and Georgia were next in the standings, followed by Missouri, which was left out of a BCS game. Southern California was seventh, followed by Kansas, West Virginia and Hawaii to round out the top 10.

While the BCS title game will be played on January 7, the other top bowl games -- Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta -- will still play their traditional games on New Year's Day or soon after. The BCS title game rotates among the four traditional sites -- Pasadena, Miami, New Orleans and Arizona. The other BCS games were also set up Sunday.

Hawaii (12-0) the only unbeaten team in the nation was chosen to play Georgia (10-2) in the Sugar Bowl, at the Superdome on New Year's night.

The Rose Bowl will pit Pac-10 champion Southern California (10-2) against Illinois (9-3) on January 1. The other contests pit ACC winner Virginia Tech (11-2) against Kansas (11-1) in the Orange Bowl on January 3, and Oklahoma (11-2) versus Big East champion West Virginia (10-2) in the Fiesta Bowl on January 2.

Georgia didn't win the SEC East, being edged in a tiebreaker after losing at Tennessee, 35-14, on October 6. For the first time since the 1983 season, Georgia will face an undefeated team in its bowl game. That season, seventh- ranked Georgia upset second-ranked Texas 10-9 in the 1984 Cotton Bowl. The Warriors were last in a postseason game on the mainland in 1992, beating Illinois at the Holiday Bowl in San Diego. Hawaii has won its last three bowl games, all in Honolulu.

The Trojans won their final four games of the season after a 24-17 loss at Oregon on October 27. However, the sore spot for Pete Carroll's team was a shocking a 24-23 home loss to lowly Stanford, which came into that October 6 game as a 41-point underdog.

This will be the first time USC will meet Illinois at the Rose Bowl. USC, which won its sixth consecutive Pac-10 title by beating crosstown foe UCLA on Saturday, will be making its 32nd trip to the Rose Bowl.

The Fighting Illini will play in their first bowl game since New Year's day 2002 when they lost to LSU at the Sugar Bowl. Illinois will be making its first Rose Bowl appearance since the 1983 season when it was blown out by UCLA. Illinois' last Rose Bowl win came in the 1963 season against Washington.

Oklahoma's two losses came 27-24 on September 29 at Colorado on a last-second field goal. The Sooners blew a 24-7 second-half lead in that game. Their only other loss was 34-27 at Texas Tech on November 17 when starting quarterback Sam Bradford suffered a concussion.

This will mark OU's ninth consecutive bowl game -- a Sooner record. Last year, Oklahoma suffered a 43-42 overtime loss to Boise State at the Fiesta Bowl.

West Virginia is making its first trip to the Fiesta Bowl since playing Notre Dame for the national championship in 1989. The Mountaineers are making their second BCS bowl trip in three years, having defeated Georgia, 38-35, in the 2005 Sugar Bowl.

The Orange Bowl matchup will pit the nation's second-ranked scoring defense in Virginia Tech against the nation's No. 2 passing offense in Kansas.

The Hokies gained the Orange Bowl berth with their victory over Boston College in the ACC title game on Saturday, avenging a loss to the Eagles on October 25. However, Virginia Tech's other loss proved to be their downfall for not being selected to play in the title game. The Hokies were rocked, 48-7, at LSU on September 8.

The Jayhawks were riding high going into a November 24 meeting against Missouri, but were knocked from their unbeaten perch with a 36-28 loss,

Instead of playing in a BCS game, Missouri will take on Arkansas at the Cotton Bowl on New Year's day in Dallas.

Source: SportsNetwork.com

Coming clean on 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians'

KIM KARDASHIAN began the first season of the E! reality series "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" wanting to set the record straight. Her sex tape with her former boyfriend, the R&B singer Ray J, had leaked, and Kim and her momager, Kris, felt the logical way to address it was to appear on Tyra Banks' talk show.

Dressed in a high-necked, ruffled, wine-colored blouse that smacked positively Victorian, Kim pleaded her case: "I have little sisters who I had to explain myself to. I need to try and teach them what not to do."

To which Banks deadpanned, "Not to have sex and tape it?"

Or maybe not to go on TV and talk about it. Or not feature yourself in a reality show when your very loose fame derives largely from starring in a widely discussed sex tape.

In tonight's season finale (at 10:30), which follows a marathon of the first season, Kim hasn't progressed far. Instead, she's on the morning radio show of Ryan Seacrest (an executive producer of this series) to set the record straight about her love life.

Really, with so much misinformation out in the world, shouldn't there be a premium on good ol' information?

Maybe not. After all, Kim Kardashian is made of the stuff of legend, of image, of collective fantasy. "The great face, the hair, the booty" -- so sayeth no less an expert on image-making than Hugh Hefner, in the episode in which Kim sticks to her values and doesn't strip down for her Playboy cover pictorial -- "People are gonna say, 'Oh, all she's good for is taking her clothes off. Can she do anything else?' " -- and then, you know, gives in.

And Kim is much more an icon for our times than her longtime frenemy Paris Hilton, notable by her complete absence from this series, even as no fewer than five stars of other reality programs about Southern California's young and beautiful -- Brittny Gastineau ("Gastineau Girls"), Brody Jenner ("The Princes of Malibu," "The Hills" and Kim's stepbrother), Frankie Delgado ("Twentyfourseven," "The Hills"), and Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson ("The Girls Next Door") -- make cameos. Paris comes from money and lineage; by comparison, Kim is a bootstrapper. Twenty-four months ago, she hardly registered a blip on the social radar; now, she is ubiquitous. And though the circumstances of her rise to notoriety are perhaps not the most desirable, or the most forgiving, she seems determined to turn them to her advantage, blowback be damned.

That pluck animates "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," even if it does not quite redeem it. Kim isn't famous enough to have truly glorious adventures, and her family squabbles are, considering how often they're at the nexus of sex and commerce, relatively benign. (Sometimes they're gruesome, though, as when Kim's sister Khloe takes in a homeless man and gets him new clothes and new dentures: "He looks stunning," she says.)

Central to Kim's drama is Kris, notable for craving her lost youth and for questionably managing Kim's career, and sisters Khloe and Kourtney. All are striking. Kris' husband, former champion Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner, is portrayed as hapless and daffy, aware of his irrelevance but gamely fighting it. (Kris was formerly married to the late Robert Kardashian, one of O.J. Simpson's defense attorneys; together they had Kim, Khloe and Kourtney.)

But this is a family with severe boundary issues -- it is Kris who encourages Kim to pose for Playboy and who cheerily does crisis management about Kim's sex tape. She seems more interested in the cameras than Kim is.

Dishonesty is also a recurring motif -- Kris and the kids routinely try to keep difficult information out of Bruce's ears, whether it's the three sisters' participation in a swimwear shoot or the family getting a new puppy. Truth is, he'd probably be less judgmental if he were treated a little more respectfully. And when Kris thinks Kourtney's boyfriend cheated on her, she hems and haws about telling her. Perhaps all the deception is made for TV, but the payoff in drama doesn't seem worth the accreted mistrust.

Besides, there's more than one way to transmit information, as seen in the behavior of the family's youngest children, Kendall Jenner, 11, and Kylie Jenner, 9, (the only children of Bruce and Kris). Watching them gives uncomfortable new meaning to the show's title -- neither is a teenager, but they're both well versed in the ways of the clan. In one episode, they're shown mock bartending. When Kris and Kourtney come home a little tipsy, one declares, "I'm gonna go take care of 'em." In another, one of them works the stripper pole Kim bought for Kris and Bruce and drops references to "Girls Gone Wild." (She is simultaneously being videotaped by a family friend, who jokes about putting the footage on YouTube.)

But when Kendall asks her mother why the FBI visits their house in tonight's season finale, Kris prevaricates, telling her she can know when she's older. Or maybe when she watches the show, which was recently picked up for a second season -- Kardashians, heal thyselves.

Source: Calendarlive.com

One Laptop Per Child Orders Surge As Negroponte Claims Momentum Growing

The One
Laptop
Per Child





Foundation has just secured an order for 260,000 of the low cost machines from the government of Peru. Despite a lower than expected take up from foreign governments, Nicholas Negroponte claims that this latest success could mean the momentum will now build.

Negroponte is the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) professor who set up the foundation in 2005 to provide affordable laptops to schoolchildren around the world. In an interview on Friday, he revealed news of the Peru order, as well as saying that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim had purchased 50,000 of the machines for distribution in his country.
The not for profit organisation wants to eventually offer laptops for $100 or less, with the current price $188. The idea behind the whole project is to convince governments of developing countries to buy the machines, and distribute them to poor schoolchildren to enable them to have access to technology normally unavailable due to costs.

Just last week, the education minister of Nigeria, Dr Igwe Aja-Nwachuku claimed that the project was senseless until the basic facilities such as seats and uniforms were put in place.
There has also been intense competition to the idea of an affordable for all laptop from the commercial sector in the form of Microsoft and Intel.

Due to the lack of uptake of the original plan, OLPC introduced the Give One, Get One program, with participants buying two of the laptops for $400: one for themselves; and one for a child in the developing country.

According to The Boston Globe, Robert Fadel, the OLPC Foundation’s director of finance and operations, claims that since the Give One Get One program began on November 12th, the foundation has received about $2 million in orders every day. That equated to 190,000 laptops in total, with at least 95,000 of those going to kids in developing countries.

I hope the OLPC’s mission succeeds, as there’s no doubt it’s a great aim to enable children in less well off countries to be able to have access to this technology that we all take for granted.

Source: tech.blorge.com