Well it is that time again when I tried to get on a workout routine to lose some weigh and get back into shade. Let’s see if I can keep it up this time. So far this week I’ve been waiting up early and going down to the gym at my apartment complex. So far I’m just riding the bike for 45 minutes and do some pushups and sit ups. I did buy a few things today that I’ll make myself use.

Everlast Multi Function Chinning Bar
Valeo Ab Straps
GoFit Workout Ball

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors have charged three men with copyright infringement for selling modified Xbox consoles that enabled the original video game machine from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to play pirated games.

The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday named ACME Game Store co-owners Jason Jones, 34, and Jonathan Bryant, 44, as well as Pei “Patrick” Cai, 32.

The complaint alleges that Jones and Bryant sold Xbox systems that Cai modified with chips and hard drives that allowed users to copy rented or borrowed games onto the console for future play.

All three men are charged with one felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The charge of conspiracy carries a maximum possible penalty of five years in federal prison.

Lawyers for the men, who will be summoned to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in late January, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Jones and Bryant demonstrated the modified Xbox game consoles in their Melrose Avenue store. They charged from $225 to more than $500 for the modifications, depending on the extent of the modifications and the number of games preloaded onto the hard drive, according to a statement from prosecutors and the complaint affidavit obtained by Reuters.

During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint.

Microsoft released the Xbox 360, the new version of its game console, on November 22 in North America. The premium version of the system sells for $400 and is sold-out at many retail outlets.

The original Xbox was released in late 2001 and now retails for around $150. Games for the system cost up to $50 each.

Reuters

By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 5 minutes ago

NEW YORK – Mob boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the powerful Mafioso who avoided jail for decades by wandering the streets in a ratty bathrobe and slippers, feigning mental illness, died Monday in prison. He was 77.

The head of the Genovese crime family, who had suffered from heart disease, died at the federal prison in Springfield, Mo., said prison spokesman Al Quintero. It was the same place where rival mob boss John Gotti died of cancer in 2002 at age 61.

Gigante’s death also was confirmed by Christine Monaco, a spokeswoman for the FBI, the organization that worked for years to put him behind bars.

Dubbed the “Oddfather” for his bizarre behavior, Gigante had scored a lengthy string of victories over prosecutors, but it ended with a July 1997 racketeering conviction. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

After a quarter-century of public craziness, he finally admitted his insanity ruse at an April 2003 federal hearing in which he calmly pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. That brought him another three-year sentence.

At that hearing, he chatted amiably with his son, shook hands with defense lawyers and said “God bless you” to U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser.

For the man described by The New York Times Magazine as “the last great Mafioso of the century,” his admission was the final act in a 50-year career linking the era of old-time gangsters and the modern-day Mafia of Gotti.

At the height of his power, Gigante’s empire stretched from Little Italy to the docks of Miami. Mob experts called him a traditional boss who settled issues by whatever means — verbal or violent — were required.

Denying he was a gangster, Gigante would wander the streets of the Greenwich Village neighborhood in nightclothes, muttering incoherently. Relatives, including a brother was who a Roman Catholic priest, insisted Gigante suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Authorities charged it was a brazen act to avoid the law — although it wasn’t until 1997 that a jury agreed. The trial was a spectacle, with Gigante in a wheelchair, mumbling silently, seemingly oblivious to the proceedings. His lawyers claimed they could not communicate with him in any “meaningful way.”

None of that swayed jurors, who convicted Gigante of racketeering, extortion and plotting the murder — never carried out — of ex-mob associate Peter Savino.

Born in the Bronx in 1928, one of five sons of Italian immigrant parents, Gigante became a small-time boxer and drifted into the crime family founded in 1931 by legendary gangster Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

In 1957, Gigante was the hitman in a botched attempt to assassinate then-boss Frank Costello. After refusing to name his attacker in court, the shaken Costello retired, making Gigante’s patron, Vito Genovese, kingpin of the family that still bears his name.

Over time, Gigante, a stocky figure with a pugilist’s face and 1940s pompadour, proved better at beating the law than Gotti, the so-called “Teflon Don” who won two acquittals before tapes and turncoats sent him to prison for life.

Before 1997, Gigante had served only a five-year heroin rap in 1959.

From Yahoo

For the “hip and happening” set – it might be “cool” to listen to music on an iPod or MP3 player, with ear buds plugged directly into the ears But Dean Garstecki, a Northwestern University audiologist, warns that these ear buds might increase the risk of hearing loss.

Garstecki says that ear buds associated with modern devices the likes of iPods, MP3 players, etc, boost sound signals by as much as 6 to 9 decibels, and are likely to result in loss of hearing.

According to Garstecki, an increasing number of young people are now experiencing the kind of hearing loss found in aging adults, which can be traced back to their music habits.

Students are found to listen to music at nearly 110 to 120 decibels, capable of causing hearing loss after just about an hour of listening; with ear buds placed directly in the ears, adding to the damage caused.

As solution to the problem, Garstecki recommends use of muff-type ear phones associated with older devices, as against the ear buds preferred by music fans today. He also suggests lowering of volume levels while listening to music. Another option is to use noise-cancelling headphones, which eliminate background noise unlike ear buds.

But Garstecki says that these headphones by virtue of their higher cost and larger size, may not go down very well with fashion-conscious youngsters.

Tech Tree

News on Monday that Microsoft plans to discontinue support and development of its Internet Explorer Web browser on the Macintosh hardly came as a surprise.

The company telegraphed the move nearly two and a half years ago, citing competition from Apple Computer’s Safari browser as the primary reason for the decision.

Mac loyalists aren’t shedding any tears. Why? Many point to what they say is IE’s lack of standards conformity which make development and support more difficult.

From News.com

I saw King Kong last night with a group of friends. I figured it would be a good movie to see in the theatre with the effects and all. Little did I know it was a 3 HOUR movie. That would have been fine if it wasn’t long and dragged out. It could have been a 1 1/2 hour movie. The effects were really cool but even that wasn’t enough to keep me interested throughout the movie. Some things were just way unrealistic…yes I know it was a movie about a giant gorilla but other things can still be realistic. Like when Kong snatched the girl who is tied up, the rope just pops and she looks like a rag doll, that would have totally ripped her arms off. Then right after that, he started shaking her around in his hand for about 10 minutes of the movie…there went her neck but not in this movie. There’s parts where a few people are falling at least 50 feet down and get up like nothing happened. I would suggest waiting for the DVD to come out that way if you fall asleep, you can finish it later if you feel like. The only thing stopping me from going to sleep was that I didn’t want to be snoring in the middle of the theatre. Good thing is that I only paid $5 for the discount tickets.

I got my windows tinted yesterday. I think it looks much better with the dark tint. Click the pic for more pics.

Here is a good little animation of a drunken santa on COPS. Click Here

The service delivers special pages with information on artists, their albums and songs.

By Antone Gonsalves
TechWeb News

Dec 15, 2005 04:09 PM

Google Inc. on Thursday launched a music search feature that delivers special pages with information on artists, their albums and songs.

The service is similar to what Google provides for other search categories, such as movies. Typing in the title of a movie playing in theatres will get a form at the top of results where a person can type in a zip code and get a list of showings and times.

In the music feature, typing in the name of an artist or group in Google’s general search form will deliver at the top of results an image icon that will take the visitor to the special page. The feature was added after Google found on its site a lot of search traffic on music terms like popular artist and albums, David Alpert, search quality product manager said on the company’s blog.

The music-search page does not currently include contextual ads, but the company has put out a call for stores selling music downloads, subscriptions or physical CDs to get in touch with the Mountain View, Calif., company if they want to be listed. Some album descriptions currently contain non-sponsored links to music stores.

For now, the feature works mostly for artists popular in the United States. Google, however, plans to expand its coverage to classical music, worldwide artist and lesser-known performers.

While it expects to increase its list of music stores over time, there’s no indication Google plans to stray from its mission of providing information and making money from sponsored links and other online advertising.

“Music is popular, and people want to find music,” Joe Wilcox, analyst for JupiterResearch said. “Google is first and foremost about information and connecting people to that information. To me, music makes perfect sense. The question is why didn’t Google do this sooner?”

Google is not the first to offer special pages related to general search queries that are music related. Such features are available on Yahoo Inc., Ask Jeeves, which is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN portal.

From Information Week

By Rhys Blakely and Agencies

The BlackBerry service, based on the handheld e-mail device that has become a must-have tool for the business elite, could be shutdown in the United States after a bitter legal battle over a key patent.

This week, NTP, a small firm that holds a crucial patent that allows e-mails to be sent to mobile devices, announced a licence agreement with Visto Corp – an arch-rival of Research In Motion. (RIM), the company that created the BlackBerry. The announcement could put further pressure on RIM to settle a patent claim from NTP which could be worth up to $1 billion (£565 million), or face having its service shut down altogether.

With neither side apparently prepared to concede any ground, the dispute seems set to continue. “It sounds like a little bit of Russian roulette,” Carl Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond, told AP.

Visto has also took out a legal writ against Microsoft, accusing the company of infringing patents. Visto said it is seeking a permanent injunction to stop Microsoft from “misappropriating” technology developed nearly ten years ago by Visto and its co-founder.

To avoid similar litigation, RIM competitors including Nokia and Good Technology have drawn up licence agreements with NTP, which is based in Arlington, Virginia. In addition to signing its deal with Visto, NTP bought a stake in the company, which licences its mobile e-mail technology to Sprint Nextel and Vodafone, the British-based telecoms company.

If a court orders a shutdown of BlackBerry’s service, it is likely to give users just 30 days’ notice to switch to other devices.

In the meantime, RIM’s share price has plunged 21 per cent this year amid growing concerns from users. RIM has 3.65 million BlackBerry subscribers, most of them in the United States. Competitors such as Nokia and Palm are already looking to grab sales from the market leader.

A federal jury in Richmond backed NTP’s patent claim in 2002. Since then, RIM’s appeals have failed and a $450 million settlement has unravelled. RIM is now relying on separate proceedings by the US patent office, which has preliminarily rejected the patents at issue, but is awaiting a court decision.

James Wallace, a lawyer for NTP, says he plans to argue in federal court in Virginia that these deals show there are available options for customers in the event of an injunction against RIM.

Although some industry observers believe NTP has no financial incentives to force a shutdown, lawyers for the company have claimed otherwise.

“I understand that theory, and when BlackBerry was the only game in town, there was a certain logic to it,” Mr Wallace said.

Mark Guibert, vice president of corporate marketing for RIM, said that he thinks most people will see through Visto’s “timing and rhetoric.”

“This is a small player looking for free publicity through a last-minute licence with undisclosed terms for patents that have been rejected by the patent office,” he said.

Meanwhile, customers have complained of being left in the dark over the future of the BlackBerry service.

Officials with Northwest Airlines were worried enough to demand a recent meeting with RIM.

Although the airline said it was satisfied with RIM’s information, it also noted that it had identified alternative suppliers and was continuing to monitor the BlackBerry situation to ensure service would not be interrupted.

In a statement, RIM said it was speaking directly to customers and partners to explain the patent office’s decisions and to “assure them that we have prepared a contingency plan to implement a software workaround should it eventually become necessary.”

From Times Online