Thursday, September 5, 2013
Did You Know??
Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people!
Joke of The Day!!
Teacher: And therefore, sperm cells are made up of glucose.
Student: So you're saying that sperm has sugar in it?
Teacher: Technically. Yes.
Student: But it doesn't even taste like that...
Teacher: what?
Student: what?
PS4 vs XBOX ONE!!!
Sony has got a head start over Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) when it comes to the launch of the next generation console. The PS4 will enter the market exactly one week before the Xbox One.
Microsoft have finally announced the launch of the Xbox One on November 22, which is exactly a week after Sony’s PS4 launch. This begs the question, couldn’t they have launched a week before? After all, a one week head start could prove costly to Xbox One sales, just in case the PS4 lives up to its billing and demolishes all previous generation first week console sales records. To make matters worst for Microsoft, the PS4 is also priced a good $100 less than the Xbox One.
The PS4 at E3.
The stakes have never been higher in the multi-billion dollar game console market. While both parties have had massive media coverage over the past year or so, the build up to the launch of the two most anticipated consoles ever has turned ugly. Microsoft have had their share of DRM troubles (as usual) and when they announced the Xbox One prices and features at E3 earlier this year, Sony cashed in on all the negative PR they generated by announcing the restrictions on used games and didn’t mind taking potshots at Microsoft. In fact they went one step better, by pricing the PS4 exactly a $100 less than the Xbox One.
The Xbox One is priced $499 at launch while the PS4 is priced $399 at launch.
The Xbox One supporters continue to justify the higher price by saying that Microsoft’s console comes bundled with the motion sensing camera and Sony’s doesn’t. That is a valid point but the fact remains that gamers are more concerned about games than features such as a motion sensor. Perhaps, the people looking for a complete home entertainment system might be more interested in checking out Microsoft’s motion sensing technology.
The Xbox One.
But let’s not forget the other side of the coin. Microsoft might actually gain from launching the Xbox One, a week later. What happens if the early reviews for the PS4 aren’t as exciting as expected? If Sony blink in the first week, the Xbox One sales might head for the clouds, simply because the word of the mouth is the most powerful medium in this social media age.
Microsoft could have capitalized on the launch of Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Ghosts, which is simply put – the biggest game release of the season. The game releases on November 5, and if the Xbox One was around, it could have definitely cashed in. But all is not lost for Microsoft because the Xbox One will be coming just in time for the holidays.
Nintendo Co., Ltd (ADR) (OTCMKTS:NTDOY) which tried to beat Microsoft and Sony at their own game by launching the Nintendo Wii U, a year earlier than its rival consoles, and have suffered from the lack of third party publisher support for the Wii U, are also looking to launch a number of titles this holiday season. Just last week they resorted to a dramatic price cut strategy for the Wii U and announced the launch of the Nintendo 2DS, a strange looking console for the eight year old gamer.
The Nintendo Wii U has few takers right now.
The Wii U is now priced at $299, which means a $100 less than the Sony console and a cool $200 less than the Microsoft offering. But the fact remains that Nintendo are not competing with either Sony or Microsoft, rather they just want to achieve a reasonable degree of sales before the two console gaming behemoths storm the market.
At the moment Sony seems to have played all its cards right and is best placed among all three to tilt the consumer interest towards itself, to cut the long story short Sony start as favorites.
Read more: http://www.dazeinfo.com/2013/09/04/sony-corporation-console/#ixzz2e33VMYfW
To The PIT! Nothing like Nascar
So we are down to it. It's one race for all the marbles Saturday night at Richmond. Some drivers are going to leave the track late Saturday evening very happy and some not so much. Being a former crew chief, I am biased when I say this, but I can easily see this whole thing being settled on pit road Saturday night.
If that does end up being the case, then in my book, Jeff Gordon is in and Kurt Busch is out. I haven't seen anything that can change my mind in that aspect. The pressure is mounting on the No. 78 team and, unfortunately, every time that happens, his guys are unable to respond. Don't get me wrong, they have some good people on their pit crew but at the same time have some weakness on the right front.
In most cases a driver, and especially one of Kurt's caliber, can overcome a 14-second pit stop. With the tightness of today's competition, no driver can be expected to overcome a 16- or 17-second pit stop. That's where Jeff Gordon's guys are clearly stronger. The points separation between the two teams going into this last regular season race is not great enough for the No. 78 to give up seven or eight positions every time Kurt leaves pit road.
That's what's sad about what Kurt and his team have done up to this point. They are right on the verge of making NASCAR history being the only single car team to ever make the Chase, but they have to win the race off pit road Saturday night. I just have strong doubts they can do it.
It boils down to simply this: who can be perfect for 400 laps at Richmond? Remember this cardinal rule in racing. The driver with the fastest car doesn't always win the race. I know that goes against common sense, but it's so very true. It's usually the driver who gets out front after that last pit stop who has the obvious advantage.
These cars are so equal in so many ways now, that if drivers can get their nose out in front, even on a short track like Richmond, they will have the advantage of being harder to pass when it's already hard to pass. When you can take another driver's line away, it will sometimes force him to knock you out of the way.
So it should be really, really interesting Saturday night in Richmond because we've seen that kind of action before. Look at it another way: With this much at stake and with the possibility of him or you making or not making the Chase, why would you NOT put a bumper to the guy? I'll just say this: I feel sorry for someone who is in front of Kurt Busch Saturday night and is in the position that Kurt needs to make the Chase.
The other key storyline to watch is the Wild Card race. Kasey Kahne has two wins and is all but a lock for the first spot. He just needs to make sure he doesn't get victimized, and by that I mean getting into someone else's fight when Kasey already knows that he is in the Chase.
Martin Truex Jr., Ryan Newman and Joey Logano are all right there together with one win each. Martin currently holds the second Wild Card spot. That's going to be the fight right there. Three drivers - one spot - you do the math. It's going to be BIG Saturday night under the lights at Richmond International Raceway.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2013/09/04/pit-stops-could-loom-large-at-rir/#ixzz2e32mYWBt
UFO? no just NASA testing..... right? :/
Earlier this week a mysterious, glowing teardrop-shaped object was seen high in the sky above Phoenix.
WPTV News Channel 5 asked its readers, “What was that floating (sometimes stationary) bright, glowing object hovering over the Valley Monday evening? Did you see it? Some thought it was a UFO, a weather balloon or even an alien spaceship.”
Eventually the National Weather Service was asked about it, and their response poured cold water on conspiracy theories about top-secret military craft and extraterrestrial visitation. The strange sight has nothing to do with UFOs or aliens. Instead it’s a HASP 643N — a High Altitude Student Platform balloon sent up to research things like wind patterns and air quality.
It’s a project of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which according to its web site, launches large, unmanned, high-altitude research balloons — and recovers the experiments they carry — for NASA and universities around the world.
Though the Columbia balloon facility is located in Palestine, Texas, the former-UFO HASP balloon was launched from Fort Sumner, N.M. — not far from Roswell, site of a famous 1947 crash of either a Cold War spy balloon project or an alien spacecraft — depending on whom you believe.
This is only the latest of many purported UFO reports near or over the city of Phoenix. In late 2011, for example, four bright lights were seen and videotaped during a high school football game in Scottsdale. The strange lights, which were seen by hundreds of people and videotaped by at least two of them, seemed to move slowly in the sky, sometimes blinking randomly.
The entire sighting lasted for about a minute and a half. The video was posted to YouTube, where within days it became one of the top stories on Yahoo News, sparked “a national mystery” and garnered over 50,000 views.
The mystery was soon solved when a local reporter identified the mysterious lights as >four members of a skydiving team, the Arizona Skyhawks, who jumped with bright magnesium flares for a Halloween show.
In 2008, another set of mysterious lights were sighted. Hundreds of Phoenix residents reported four bright red lights in the sky at about 8 p.m. Those turned out to be a hoax created by road flares tied to helium balloons.
Robert Sheaffer, a UFO investigator with “Skeptical Inquirer” magazine and author of the "Bad UFOs” blog
, told Discovery News, “It’s remarkable how so many people, when they see lights in the sky, immediately jump to the conclusion that they might be seeing (an alien spacecraft) … In reality there are many different possible explanations for lights in the sky, all of them more likely than alien visitors.”
, told Discovery News, “It’s remarkable how so many people, when they see lights in the sky, immediately jump to the conclusion that they might be seeing (an alien spacecraft) … In reality there are many different possible explanations for lights in the sky, all of them more likely than alien visitors.”
It’s a good reminder that just because one or more people can’t identify something in the sky doesn’t mean that it’s unknown or unexplainable.
Indeed, there may be more UFO sightings still to come. Another half-dozen HASP balloon launches are slated for this month, and — depending on weather patterns and where you live — may end up in the skies over your hometown.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/09/05/phoenix-ufo-revealed-as-nasa-experiment/#ixzz2e32AGztD
Russia and Us Battle to The Death!!??
As he touched down in St. Petersburg on Thursday morning, President Obama greeted his host Vladimir Putin with a handshake and a smile.
But the cordial greeting belies the tinderbox the two leaders are sitting on, as they posture and deliberate over a potential U.S. strike on Syria -- one of Russia's closest Mideast allies.
Putin escalated concerns about the fallout from any strike when he indicated in an interview published Wednesday that his country could send Syria and its neighbors in the region the components of a missile shield if the U.S. attacks.
U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified this week that the Russians might even replace any military assets the U.S. destroys in a strike.
The warnings raise the possibility of a supposedly "limited" strike on Syria turning into a proxy tit-for-tat between Russia and the U.S.
Rep. George Holding, R-N.C., went further during a hearing on Syria on Wednesday, pressing military officials on what the U.S. would do "if Russia decided to strike at us in that theater."
"We can certainly say that Russia would have options to strike us in that theater in retaliation for us striking their ally," he warned.
Dempsey declined to engage in that discussion, saying only that "Russia has capabilities that range from the asymmetric, including cyber, all the way up through strategic nuclear weapons. And again, it wouldn't be helpful in this setting to speculate about that."
Secretary of State John Kerry, though, said the Russians have made clear they don't intend to go to war over a strike on Syria.
Perhaps more likely is that Putin's government would continue to aid and prop up the Assad regime, undermining any gains made by a U.S. strike.
"Putin will live up to what he says," Fox News military analyst retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters said." If we destroy Syrian military technology, Putin will replace it."
Putin said in a published interview this week that he'd reconsider the status of a suspended S-300 missile defense contract.
"We have a contract for the delivery of the S-300s. We have supplied some of the components, but the delivery hasn't been completed," he said. "We have suspended it for now. But if we see that steps are taken that violate the existing international norms, we shall think how we should act in the future, in particular regarding supplies of such sensitive weapons to certain regions of the world."
The possibility for Russia stepping up its role in the region makes Obama's visit to Russia all the more critical. Though the president has nixed a formal one-on-one sitdown with Putin during the G-20 summit, he is expected to speak with the Russian leader on the sidelines. Though he said Wednesday that U.S.-Russian relations have "hit a wall," he said he'd continue to engage Putin.
"It is not possible for Mr. Assad to regain legitimacy in a country where he's killed tens of thousands of his own people," Obama said. "So far, at least, Mr. Putin has rejected that logic."
Obama added: "I'm always hopeful, and I will continue to engage him."
Obama's challenge to change Putin's mind comes as China warns that any military action against Syria will push up oil prices and hurt the world economy.
Speaking in St. Petersburg Thursday, Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said that "Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on the oil price -- it will cause a hike in the oil price," before citing estimates that a $10 rise in oil prices could push down global growth by 0.25 percent. Guangyao also urged a U.N.-negotiated solution to the chemical weapons standoff. Like Russia, China is a major arms supplier to Syria and holds veto power over any Security Council resolution.
The White House went out of its way to say Obama would not hold bilateral discussions with the Russian leader while in St. Petersburg. Instead, Obama will formally meet on the summit's sidelines with the leaders of France, China and Japan, though a senior administration official said the two presidents will have a chance to speak.
Russia's resistance is a key reason why the U.N. Security Council so far has not gotten on board with U.S. calls for action in response to the alleged chemical weapons strike against Syrian rebels on August 21.
Putin has been among the loudest critics on the international stage of Obama's push for a military strike in Syria. He reportedly blasted the push on Wednesday as an "act of aggression." He has said in recent interviews that a strike would be illegal if the United Nations does not support it.
The president said Wednesday there was far more than his own credibility at stake in responding to the chemical weapons attack.
"I didn't set a red line, the world set a red line," he said. "The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of world population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent." He added that Congress set its own red line when it ratified the treaty.
With Obama in Europe, his top national security aides were to participate Wednesday in public and private hearings at the Capitol to advance their case for limited strikes in retaliation for what the administration says was a deadly sarin gas attack by Assad's forces in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 10-7 with one abstention to authorize the use of force against Syria Wednesday, the first in a series of votes as the president's request makes its way through Senate and House committees before coming before the two chambers for a final vote, probably sometime next week.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/05/obama-to-engage-putin-on-syria-strike-at-g-20-summit/#ixzz2e30AOmn2
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Joke of The Day!!
Q: What did the hurricane say to the coconut palm tree?
A: Hold on to your nuts, this is no ordinary blow job!
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