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Karl Malden, the Academy Award-winning actor whose intelligent characterizations on stage and screen made him a star despite his plain looks, died Wednesday, his family said. He was 97.
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I never knew him, yet my compassion towards the family
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Prose of the Week (June 29th)
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The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site entangled in a court case over pirated music, will be bought by a Swedish software company.
Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) announced the deal Tuesday. The company, which provides digital distribution tools for Internet cafes, will buy The Pirate Bay for cash and shares amounting to $7.76 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed in August.
The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracking site, is involved in a legal battle with major copyright holders, including Warner Brothers, MGM, and Columbia Pictures. In April, the Web site's founders were convicted by a Swedish court of copyright infringement, ordered to pay nearly $4 million, and sentenced to a year in jail. The defendants appealed the decision and were denied a retrial last week.
Hans Pandeya, chief executive of GGF, said in a statement that his company is looking for a business model that will pay copyright holders for content downloaded from The Pirate Bay.
More here.
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Bad news for pirates out there.
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Think about it.
A new system, developed by a collaboration of scientists working with Toyota, allows a person to control a wheelchair using nothing but his brain. Wearing a cap that monitors brain activity, a user can advance and turn the chair.
According to Toyota, the system monitors brain waves every 125 milliseconds. The result is an experience where the user doesn’t experience any lag in response from the system. Similar systems that use voice controls took much longer to respond to commands.
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Toyota? But, car-maker or not, its a great advancement for the handicap.
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(CNN) -- Margaret Delfino donated her 200th pint of blood last week, bringing her total to to more than 25 gallons.
Delfino, a 90-year-old great-grandmother in Bakersfield, California, began giving blood in 1954. She donated regularly until 2001, when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. After five years of treatment, her doctors declared her cancer-free and she then continued donating.
Now she brings several family members with her when she donates at the Houchin Blood Bank in Bakersfield, hoping they'll donate, too. Delfino says only a small percentage of people in her area donate blood.
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Wow... Very kind.
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TAMPA, Fla. – Billy Mays, the burly, bearded television pitchman known for his boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean, has died. He was 50.
Tampa police said Mays was found unresponsive by his wife Sunday morning. A fire rescue crew pronounced him dead at 7:45 a.m.
There were no signs of a break-in, and investigators do not suspect foul play, said Lt. Brian Dugan of the Tampa Police Department, who wouldn't answer any more questions about how Mays' body was found because of the ongoing investigation. The coroner's office expects to have an autopsy done by Monday afternoon.
"Although Billy lived a public life, we don't anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days," said Mays' wife, Deborah. "Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times."
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I wonder if discovery will still do the pitchman show. That show has only been out for two months or so.
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CEBU, Philippines (CNN) -- Amid the tropical heat of a Philippine prison, convicted murderers, rapists and drug dealers on Saturday paid tribute to Michael Jackson with a reprise of their YouTube dance hit, "Thriller."
A rendition of Jackson's 1980s smash hit by prisoners at the Cebu Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the central Philippines garnered more than 24 million views since 2007, when prison supervisor Byron Garcia first uploaded it to the video-sharing Web site.
The prison has since posted other dance videos, including performances to Van Halen's "Jump," Queen's "Radio Ga Ga," and Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder's "Together in Electric Dreams."
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(CNN) -- Three attacks were made on Royal Dutch Shell oil facilities in Nigeria on Sunday, according to a company spokesman who said details were not immediately available.
The attacks were against pipelines in the eastern part of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, said the spokesman, Rainer Winzenried.
"Shell is investigating the impact on facilities, the environment and the production capabilities," he said.
The attacks happened in remote areas, making investigations difficult, he said, adding that the company would not send in investigators until it was certain the area was secure. It was not known whether there were any casualties, he said.
The pipelines are part of a Shell joint venture that provides oil to several companies, Winzenried said. Shell runs the venture, and Nigeria is the operator.
Interested? its right here.
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Archaeologists say they have unearthed the world's oldest musical instruments. They are flutes, made of vulture bone and mammoth tusks. They were found in caves in southwestern Germany and date back to the time when modern human beings — who actually looked like us — were first venturing into Europe.
Scientists have little doubt that music is so basic to human nature that it goes back to our earliest days as a species. It's hard not to make music, when you think about it.
"Clap your hands, tap your foot, dance, sing, whistle. There's endless music you can make just with your body," says Nicholas Conard at Tuebingen University.
 
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Just think of those crazy frat-cave-boy parties...
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Sega, known for its game consoles and Sonic the Hedgehog, has gone down the rather unusual route of creating a battery powered miniature robot girlfriend for lonely adult males. Called EMA (which stands for Eternal Maiden Actualization) Sega hopes this mini-fembot, which it describes as petite, friendly and big-busted, will bring joy to those in need when it is released onto the market in September.
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For all those greasy guys who play WoW way too much...
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