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