- NBA free agency: Ron Artest says he's leaving Houston Roc... Free-agent forward Ron Artest says he's leaving the Houston Rockets to join the Los Angeles Lakers. In a text message to ESPN.com on Thursday night, Artest wrote: "I am happy to say I am goin' to L.A."
- Venus Williams, Serena Williams to meet in Wimbledon wome... Serena Williams saved a match point and overcame Elena Dementieva 6-7 (4), 7-5, 8-6 in 2 hours, 49 minutes. Venus Williams needed only 51 minutes to overwhelm Dinara Safina 6-1, 6-0 and reach her eighth Wimbledon final.
- Boston Celtics send big hitters to woo Rasheed Wallace, a... Rasheed Wallace, the free agent forward who spent the last five-plus seasons in Detroit, got the full-court press from the Boston Celtics on Thursday, according to a report in the Boston Globe.
- Shaquille O'Neal on mission with Cleveland Cavaliers: 'Wi... Shaquille O'Neal has one purpose in Cleveland: bring an NBA title to LeBron James and the Cavaliers.
- NASCAR questions point of Jeremy Mayfield injunction NASCAR officials on Thursday questioned the motive behind Jeremy Mayfield seeking a temporary injunction so he could compete this weekend at Daytona International Speedway.
- Calvin Pace of New York Jets suspended four games for vio... New York Jets linebacker Calvin Pace has been suspended for the first four games of the 2009 NFL regular season for violating the league's performance-enhancing substance policy.
- Trevor Ariza meets with Houston Rockets A person close to the situation tells The Associated Press that the Houston Rockets are meeting with Los Angeles Lakers forward Trevor Ariza.
- Anthony Kim shoots 62, sets course record at Congressiona... Anthony Kim has set the course record at Congressional with an 8-under 62, giving the defending champion a two-shot lead in the AT&T National.
- Donovan rips MLS teammate Beckham in book David Beckham has come under attack from L.A. Galaxy teammate Landon Donovan just as he prepares to return for action with the MLS team.
- Astros swarm Padres after 52-minute bee delay The Houston Astros -- who once had the "Killer B's" -- beat the San Diego Padres 7-2 on Thursday, but only after waiting out a 52-minute delay in the top of the ninth inning caused when a swarm of bees took over part of left field at Petco Park.
- Short on Cash, California Will Start Paying With I.O.U.’s Vendors and taxpayers awaiting refunds will get i.o.u.’s as the governor and state lawmakers continue to wrangle over how to close a $27 billion budget gap.
- U.S. Job Losses Rise and Unemployment Reaches 9.5% The pace of job losses quickened last month with the American economy shedding 467,000 jobs, as unemployment rose to its highest level in 26 years.
- Markets Fall After Jobs Report Wall Street ended the week with a sharp decline, spurred by the June jobless report. The Dow fell by more than 220 points.
- Media Decoder: Washington Post Cancels ‘Salons’ With ... Plans were scrapped to charge lobbyists for access to the paper’s staff and government officials at off-the-record “salons.”
- Green Power Takes Root in the Chinese Desert Using carrots and sticks, Beijing is steering an immense push toward wind and solar power, while the U.S. is just starting.
- U.S. Faces Resentment in Afghan Region A new American military operation in southern Afghanistan may ignite further tensions among a weary population, residents and local officials warn.
- U.S. Marines Try to Retake Afghan Valley Almost 4,000 Marines moved to clear Taliban fighters from the volatile Helmand River valley.
- U.S. Says It Will Preserve C.I.A. Secret Jails for Terror... The government will agree to preserve the secret overseas sites where Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a defendant in a terror case involving the deaths of 224 people, was once held.
- With Agreement Near on Service for Jackson, Custody Battl... Michael Jackson’s family faced a potential custody battle with the mother of two of his children.
- World’s Smallest LCD Screen Created: 0.27 Inches in Dia... The Kopin Corporation, a self-describednanosemiconductor company, has created the minuscule range of LCDdisplays dubbed Cyberdisplay. The newest member of the display rangemeasures in at 0.27 inches along its diagonal with a resolution of 600x 480. It is reported to be the smallest full-color VGA screen in theworld.
- Fashion Loves Scifi, But Scifi Hates Fashion It's no secret that mainstream fashion has welcomed retro scifi with open arms. So why doesn't that love get reciprocated, so we can get some style going in the biggest genre blockbusters?
- Actresses Who Got Their Start as Models [PICS] Check out these sexy photos of actresses who began their careers as models
- Congress's Travel Tab Swells Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001.
- Heavy Metal Tailgating: Then and Now [PICS] Some metalheads just age better than others.
- Scientists Discover New Black Hole 500x Larger Than The Sun Supermassive black holes are thought to be formed from the merger of medium-sized black holes, but no one had ever found one, until this week.
- Top-5 "Hot Dog" Athletes In honor of The Fourth of July, the official wiener holiday, I feel compelled to recognize the athletes that bring showmanship to that upper echelon of arrogance known as hotdoggin� here are your Top-5 in no particular order...
- How to Force Blizzard to Add LAN to StarCraft II (PIC) Make your point in a meaningful way.
- 11 Yearbook Photos That Musicians Wish We'd Never Seen Every once in a while, I write down a piece of advice I'd like to pass on to my kids one day. (In fact, these pieces of advice may soon form an 11Points list.) The addition that sparked this list: Take each yearbook photos as serious as life or death.
- Rhode Island Senate Launches Study on Legalizing Marijuana Weeks after legalizing the sale of marijuana to sick people, lawmakers have voted to explore how much Rhode Island might collect in revenue if it were to make all sales of marijuana legal and impose a “sin tax” of $35 per ounce.
- Attacks, arrests slowing online news from Iran (Doug Gros...
Doug Gross / CNN:
Attacks, arrests slowing online news from Iran — (CNN) — Bloody attacks and midnight arrests, combined with a regime growing more technologically savvy, have begun stemming the flow of online information from dissidents in Iran, activists and human rights officials say.
- Yelp Launches Facebook Connect (Nick O'Neill/All Facebook) Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Yelp Launches Facebook Connect — Today Yelp launched their implementation of Facebook Connect to enable users to share reviews with their friends on Facebook. After you post your review on Yelp, you are prompted to post it to your feed. That's about the extend of the service …
- One More Thing: The New Facebook iPhone App Will Allow Vi...
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
One More Thing: The New Facebook iPhone App Will Allow Video Uploads — Yesterday, we wrote about what Facebook was planning for the next major release of its iPhone app, version 3.0. The big update will contain 15 new features, probably none bigger than the addition of event management to the app, finally.
- FriendFeed real-time search. We have it. It's here. (Jim ... Jim Norris / FriendFeed Blog:
FriendFeed real-time search. We have it. It's here. — One of the coolest things about FriendFeed is how you can see everything that's happening on the site in real-time. Starting today, this is even more true with real-time search. — Just enter a search query as you always have …
- Apple retail stores can now replace broken iPhone screens...
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple retail stores can now replace broken iPhone screens — Apple has expanded the services offered by its retail stores to include fixing damaged iPhone screens. — The Loop has confirmed that if your iPhone has a broken screen and you take it to an Apple retail relocation, they have the capability to fix it on the spot.
- Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the fa...
John D. Sutter / CNN:
Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm — (CNN) — As he rolls across the wheat fields of his Nebraska farm, Steve Tucker often has his hands not on the wheel of his tractor, but on a smartphone. — He sometimes posts a dozen messages per day on Twitter …
- New Blog Search tools: Feeds, Hot Queries and Latest Post...
Akshay Patil / The Official Google Blog:
New Blog Search tools: Feeds, Hot Queries and Latest Posts — Ever since the new Google Blog Search homepage launched, we've been fielding requests for a myriad of different features. Today we're happy to announce the launch of our most requested feature: RSS and Atom feeds.
- Apple patching serious SMS vulnerability on iPhone (Sumne... Sumner Lemon / Computerworld:
Apple patching serious SMS vulnerability on iPhone — The flaw could allow an attacker to remotely install and run unsigned software code — IDG News Service - Apple Inc. is working to fix an iPhone vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely install and run unsigned software code with root access to the phone.
- Google App Engine Broken For 4 Hours And Counting (MG Sie...
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google App Engine Broken For 4 Hours And Counting — A little over two hours ago, a Google employee posted a note in this Google Groups thread indicating that Google App Engine was “seeing elevated Datastore latency and error-rates, as well as elevated serving error-rates.”
- Leaked AT&T memo: Apple iPhone 3GS generated 'best ever s... MacDailyNews:
Leaked AT&T memo: Apple iPhone 3GS generated ‘best ever sales day’ — Multiple sources have provided MacDailyNews with an internal AT&T memo that highlights the company's recent milestones and successes: … [Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers who shall remain nameless for the heads up.]
- Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught "Windows Search Helper" trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- DOJ Confirms Google Antitrust Investigation An anonymous reader points to Digital Daily, writing "Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Enthusiasts Convene To Say No To SQL, Hash Out New DB Breed ericatcw writes "The inaugural NoSQL meet-up in San Francisco during last month's Yahoo! Apache Hadoop Summit had a whiff of revolution about it, like a latter-day techie version of the American Patriots planning the Boston Tea Party. Like the Patriots, who rebelled against Britain's heavy taxes, NoSQLers came to share how they had overthrown the tyranny of burdensome, expensive relational databases in favor of more efficient and cheaper ways of managing data, reports Computerworld."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- First Fully Programmable Gesture-Recognition Glove, Cheap Al writes "The AcceleGlove from AnthroTronix, is the first fully programmable glove that records hand and finger movements. Other gloves — like 5DT's Data Glove, which is used primarily in virtual reality — normally cost $1,000 to $5,000, but the AcceleGlove costs just $499. The AcceleGlove comes with software that lets developers use Java to program it for any application they wish. AnthroTronix initially developed the glove with the US Department of Defense for robotic control but it could also be used in video games, sports training, or physical rehabilitation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Judge Tentatively Dismisses Case Against Lori Drew An anonymous reader writes "According to Wired, 'A federal judge on Thursday overturned guilty verdicts against Lori Drew, and issued a directed acquittal on the three misdemeanor charges.'" A similar story in the L.A. Times notes that "The decision by US District Judge George H. Wu will not become final until his written ruling is filed, probably next week." Update: 07/02 21:15 GMT by T : For those not following, Lori Drew's three convictions sprang from charges of online harassment of Megan Meier, a Missouri teenager whose suicide was linked to Drew's actions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- 200-Year-Old Cipher Finally Cracked Attila Dimedici writes "A code expert just cracked a code used by a friend of Thomas Jefferson in a letter written to Jefferson some 200 years ago. This code is fairly easy to crack using a computer, but extremely difficult without one. I think it would have been much harder if the author had not included an indication as to what code algorithm he used in the letter accompanying the coded message."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- HIV/AIDS Vaccine To Begin Phase I Human Trials An anonymous reader writes "An HIV/AIDS vaccine developed in Ontario has applied for Phase 1 human trials. Safety and immunogenicity studies of the vaccine, dubbed SAV001-H, have already been completed on animals. Phase 1 human trials will check the safety of the vaccine on HIV positive volunteers. Phase 2 will then test immunogenicity."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Browser Vendors Force W3C To Scrap HTML 5 Codecs snydeq writes "Major browser vendors have been unable to agree on an encoding format they will support in their products, forcing the W3C to drop audio and video codecs from HTML 5, the forthcoming W3C spec that has been viewed as a threat to Flash, Silverlight, and similar technologies. 'After an inordinate amount of discussions on the situation, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,' HTML 5 editor Ian Hickson wrote to the whatwg mailing list. Apple, for its part, won't support Ogg Theora in QuickTime, expressing concerns over patents despite the fact that the codec can be used royalty-free. Opera and Mozilla oppose using H.264 due to licensing and distribution issues. Google has similar reservations, despite already using H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome. Microsoft has made no commitment to support <video>."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- The Essentials of RPG Design simoniker writes "As the latest in his Game Design Essentials series for Gamasutra, writer John Harris examines 10 games from the Western computer RPG (CRPG) tradition and 10 from the Japanese console RPG (JRPG) tradition, to figure out what exactly makes them tick. From the entry on Nethack: 'Gaining experience is supposed to carry the risk of harm and failure. Without that risk, gaining power becomes a foregone conclusion. It has reached the point where the mere act of spending time playing [most RPGs] appears to give players the right to have their characters become more powerful. The obstacles that provide experience become simply an arbitrary wall to scale before more power is granted; this, in a nutshell, is the type of play that has brought us grind, where the journey is simple and boring and the destination is something to be raced to. Nethack and many other roguelikes do feature experience gain, but it doesn't feel like grind. It doesn't because much of the time the player is gaining experience, he is in danger of sudden, catastrophic failure. When you're frequently a heartbeat away from death, it's difficult to become bored.' Harris' Game Design series has previously spanned subjects from mysterious games to open world games, unusual control schemes and difficult games."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Japanese Creating "Super Tuna" motherpusbucket writes "The Telegraph reports that Japanese scientists hope to be breeding a so-called 'Super Tuna' within the next decade or so. They have about 60% of the genome mapped and expect to finish it in the next couple months. The new breed will grow faster, taste good, have resistance to disease and will totally kick your ass if you cross them."Read more of this story at Slashdot.