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For the uninitiated masses in the Southeastern Conference footprint, South Carolina coach Frank Martin's persona might inspire admiration among football-crazed zealots.
Oozing intensity, the hulking Martin dresses down officials, jams meaty index fingers into players' chests, and can resemble an action-movie villain underling.
LSU coach Johnny Jones saw it up close in the first round of the 2010 NCAA Tournament as coach at North Texas during a 20-point loss to Kansas State, Martin's former employer.
Keen on knowing Jones' assessment of Martin's players?
"They're going to adopt his personality or they aren't going to be there long," Jones said Monday.
Granted, Martin's tone has been more dulcet in his first year trying to salvage the struggling Gamecocks, who arrive to face LSU at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center — a meeting between two teams hunting for their first Southeastern Conference victory after two tries.
Part of Martin's lower decibel level stems from a team battling a propensity for turnovers and fouls in adjusting to a faster-pace offense and more rugged, risk-taking defense. It's a transition that presents LSU (9-4, 0-2), an opportunity to curb an early tendency for prolonged scoring droughts caused by muddling through stilted half-court sets.
The Gamecocks (10-5, 0-2) turn the ball over 17.6 times per game, which is 10th-worst in the NCAA, allowing opponents to convert them into 17.7 points. Against Auburn on Saturday, Martin's team had 15 turnovers, part of a string of recent performances where the Gamecocks reverted to form after improving ball security near the end of nonconference play.
"We battled that early in the year, and started doing a lot better job with that (in) the later part of December," said Martin, whose team has committed at least 15 turnovers in 12 games this season.
"Then we go into Mississippi State and have 24 of them, and it's hard to win (at) home, (on the) road, or if you're only facing three guys when you do that."
On the defensive end, a system reliant on tough guarding and an emphasis on getting into the passing lanes can lead to fouls when players rotate late on the perimeter, whistles denying post-entry passes, and free throws for contesting shots at the rim.
Opponents get to the free-throw line on roughly 42.1 percent of their field-goal attempts against the Gamecocks, which is No. 291 nationally according to kenpom.com, and score 15.1 points per game at the foul line.
"Fouling is never a good defensive play," Martin said. "Getting guys to understand our defensive system and how we play it, which is a little more aggressive, (means) earlier in the year we tend to foul a little bit more."
Translation: Martin's squad gives up almost of half of its 68.5 points per game chasing down foes or watching helplessly as the flick their wrists for uncontested looks at the free-throw line.
"The way they play creates some foul opportunities," Jones said. "They overplay a lot. Sometimes when you try to get to the rim, because of the rotation, they may get there a little bit late and foul you. You get into the foul count early and get into the one-and-one."
Sounds like a sublime situation, right?
After Auburn and No. 10 Florida stymied LSU with zone defenses, limiting the Tigers to 34.8 percent shooting, any other alternative is preferred.
"We're going to run and gun, and we don't like to be slowed down," LSU sophomore guard Anthony Hickey said. "Teams have been slowing us down more, and that's something we've got to continue to work on. I'm glad that we'll have that chance this game."
And LSU possesses the personnel to force the action into the open floor against the Gamecocks, who have turned the ball over on 25.5 percent of their possessions this season. Hickey is second nationally in steals per game at 3.55, while LSU's average of 10.5 ranks seventh.
Part of South Carolina's issue has been the natural process of adapting to Martin's style. Since 2009, his teams have ranked between No. 278 and No. 333 nationally in opponents' free-throw rate. The past two seasons when he was at Kansas State, the Wildcats turned the ball over on roughly 21 percent of their offensive possessions, ranking 239th last season.
The issue is compounded now by trying to work senior Bruce Ellington back into the mix at point guard after he wrapped up the football season earlier this month.
The Gamecocks' Michael Carrera has also battled a chronic hip injury that has him in and out of a lineup where four starters commit a turnover at least 25 percent of the time when a possession runs through them, according to kenpom.com.
Martin's usually short tolerance is more lenient, though, because of the 14.5 points per game and athletic presence provided in the open floor by Ellington in SEC play and the nearly 16 minutes per game Carrera brings off the bench in a thin seven-man rotation.
Case in point, Ellington's nine turnovers against Mississippi State in a 56-54 road loss in South Carolina's SEC opener.
"Reintroducing them to what we do will take a little time to get them on the same page as everybody else," Martin said. "But they also bring some special qualities we need as a team."
In trying to re-acclimate, Ellington and Carrera might also prove short-term liabilities defensively and set up "a breakdown because a guy's not sure about something; it puts you in a vulnerable situation," Martin said.
It's exactly what Hickey wants to hear.
"We need to attack the rim more as a team more and get our confidence back and get to the free-throw line," Hickey said.


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Compared to last week, a light test of feeder and stocker cattle sold steady to $4 higher. Once again, weather curtailed receipts throughout much of the major trading areas. Snow/ice storms moved across the mid-sections of the country last weekend and early in the week, causing consignors to suspend selling their cattle until more suitable weather arrives.
As good as the market is, sellers don't want to take the chance on letting something as simple as the weather steal their chance on setting personal bests. Many auction markets were forced to close down entirely this past week either due to dangerous road conditions or limited receipts. However, wintry forecasts did not fully come to fruit in many areas but fear of the worst had already affected early-week trading.
Significantly reduced sales were reported in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kentucky where many stocker buyers go to fill their springtime orders. But, unlike school districts across the Midwest, salebarns do not have a lot of sessions to make up since producers in these areas are well ahead of their normal marketing schedule. In fact, many auction markets were more than happy to save on labor expense this week and plan on having only normal headcounts next week.
By midweek weather patterns had turned spring-like across much of the United States and despite already record-high price levels, "grass fever" is bound to be an epidemic for the balance of the month. The best demand, where tested, was for heavier stocker cattle weighing 600-750 lbs which was just right for hard-wintered cattle coming off dry and short wheat pastures in the Southern Plains.
Heavily supplemented feeders coming out of grow yards farther north were not as widely accepted, although still sold handsomely.
Cow/calf producers in the milder climates are still pushing the envelope to secure replacement quality heifers. In Pratt, KS on Thursday, a short load of fancy Red Angus open heifers weighing 923 lbs brought a whopping $200 or $1846 per head. Fed cattle sold $2 lower on a live basis from $148-$150 and dressed sales were steady to $3 lower from $237-$240 in the meat.
CME cattle futures pressured feedlot sales this week now that the board has some April breathing room, after February contracts had to hurry last week to converge with the cash market. This week's reported auction feeder volume included 60 percent over 600 lbs and 42 percent heifers.

subset: commoncrawl


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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 3/5/2013 (1573 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
THE long list of the game's alumni reads like a who's who of Manitoba-born professional football players.
NFLer Israel Idonije, for instance, played in the annual Blue and Gold Classic. And so too did Edmonton Eskimos linemen Eddie Steele, Kyle Koch and Don Oramasionwu.
The list goes on and on for an annual celebration of local youth football that will have its 28th renewal Saturday at East Side Eagles Field. But the point is this: these kids are good, really good.
Take St. Paul's High School running back Alex Taylor, who was named an all-star at last year's Football Canada Cup in London, Ont., and will suit up in this weekend's under-18 game.
With a deep football pedigree -- his cousin is former CFLer and current Winnipeg Blue Bombers assistant coach Markus Howell -- along with all kinds of on-field talent and good grades off of it, the 17-year-old Grade 11 student has all the early makings of the 'Next One' to come out of Manitoba.
Heck, he even looks a little like B.C. Lions star running back -- and native Winnipegger -- Andrew Harris.
"Obviously what Andrew Harris did was pretty spectacular, coming out of Winnipeg as a high school student," Taylor said Wednesday as Football Manitoba held a pre-game news conference at Buck's Sports Lounge.
"And obviously that's something I'd like to do too, being another small Winnipeg guy to make it to the big leagues."
Taylor says he's hopeful the combination of his success on the field and in the classroom will merit a university scholarship down the road, maybe to even a big U.S. school.
Bombers QB Buck Pierce, who will be the honorary coach of one of the two under-16 teams on Saturday, came out of one of those big U.S. colleges, New Mexico State.
While youth football in Manitoba will never be as big as it is in the U.S., Pierce -- who recalled Wednesday playing in front of crowds as big as 13,000 when he was in high school -- says he thinks football has grown in Manitoba in just the four years he's lived here.
"I think it's getting bigger here, I really do," said Pierce. "I think the (Football Manitoba) guys here have done a really good job of showcasing the athletes, giving them a chance to put their skills on a national level. I'm seeing more and more high school kids here saying, 'Hey, football might be a chance for me to go to school and get a better education. Football could be my catalyst to my next phase in life.'
"And that's what football should be all about."
Fourteen-year-old Colby Kyliuk is on the same page with Pierce in that regard.
"This is a really great experience. It's a brand-new experience for me and I really feel fortunate to be able to play in this game," said Kyliuk, a quarterback for the St. Vital Mustangs who will suit up in Saturday's under-16 game.
"I definitely have some aspirations to reach my dreams and go for my goals."
Showcase for youth football
What: The 28th Annual Blue and Gold Classic
When: Saturday
Where: East Side Eagles Field, 723 London St.
Tell Me: Football Manitoba will hold it's annual showcase of youth football in Manitoba with two games on Saturday -- an Under-16 game at 10:30 a.m. and an Under-18 game at 1:30 p.m.. The latter game will also be televised on Shaw TV. Tickets are $5 at the gate.
Fast Facts: This year's honorary coaches are former Bombers linemen Glen Scrivener and Kelly Butler and current Bombers QB Buck Pierce and OL Glenn January.


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No broken bones, ligament damage for Hill
Published: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 at 5:03 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 at 5:03 p.m.
Florida received some good news about the status of point guard Kasey Hill on Tuesday.
X-rays on Hill's sprained left ankle came back negative, showing no broken bones or ligament damage. The McDonald's All-American, 6-foot-1 guard from Umatilla will likely miss a month with a high ankle sprain after rolling his ankle during the second half of UF's game Monday night against Southern.
Hill attended UF's practice Tuesday on crutches. With Hill out, Florida sophomore Michael Frazier II will likely start at point guard Thursday night when the Gators (3-1) face Middle Tennessee State at the O'Connell Center. Returning starting point guard Scottie Wilbekin remains suspended for disciplinary reasons.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.


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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The Jacksonville man who hacked into the emails of Hollywood celebrities could face up to six years in prison for his crimes and pay more thousands of dollars to his victims.
The victims who were hacked include Scarlett Johanson and Christina Aguilera, just to name a few.
His nickname has become The Hollywood Hacker. 35-year-old Christopher Chaney admitted to being sorry for hacking into the online accounts of stars like Christina Aguilera and Scarlett Johanson.
But despite the fact that Chaney has shown remorse for his online crimes, the Jacksonville man may have to pay $150,000 in fines and spend 71 months behind bars.
In court Chaney was asked, "What do you want to tell your family. Do you really think that's right?" After this question, Chaney apologized.
"It's not that we're retreating from this. but we can't wholly embrace it either, because the case is becoming more convoluted and more convoluted," Chaney's lawyer Mark Chestnutt said.
Chaney's lawyers said it was an adrenaline rush that fueled his online criminal behavior. He even sent nude photos of the stars to celebrity websites and other hackers.
Prosecutors want Chaney to compensate his victims.
They said Scarlett Johanson is owed more than $66,000, Christina Aguilera $7,500, Renee Olstead $76,000 and an undisclosed amount to Mila Kunis.
In addition to the hollywood starlets, a search warrant of Chaney's hard drive revealed that it was used to conduct Internet searches for an underage Connecticut woman. She complained to police that Chaney had been chatting with her online since she was 13. She alleged the hacker stole private transmissions as well, but his lawyer claims the opposite.
"He says man, I''ve never heard of her," Chestnutt said. "Listen, this guy's never been on a plane! Never been to Connecticut. Never met this young lady. Hedoesn't know her, doesn't recall talking with her on the Internet."
Chaney is scheduled to be sentenced Monday morning in Los Angeles federal court on his guilty plea to nine felony counts of hacking into the email accounts of several actresses. Prosecutors have recommended 6 years in prison.
Copyright 2012 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Building a low-poly character mesh in Blender
Walk through building a low-polygon human mesh from scratch with Blender 2.37a... using no external resources.
We're going to start building character models, so it's time to:
1. Install blender2crystal. Depending on if you already have Python installed and what platform you'll be running Blender on, you might have to install some additional Python modules or install an isolated version of Python that's Blender-centric.
2.Complete Your First Animation in 30 Minutes in the Introduction to Blender documentation
Building a Character Mesh in Blender
Building an animated, texture-mapped character for use in a 3D engine can be a daunting task. Here we're going to walk through building a low-polygon human mesh from scratch... using no external resources. We'll build the wireframe itself, map it with textures of our own design, animate it to our liking and export it for use in Crystal Space.
Creating Reference Images
Before you actually create a mesh in Blender, you need to create reference images that we can use to judge size and proportion. If you're an artist and have the ability for figure drawing, do a brief sketch of your character. This is where concept art really comes into play; the better initial concept art you have to draw from, the better your resulting image is.
If, as is my case, you can't draw a freakin' cube to save your life, you can instead use reference images. [1] is one repository for human photo references, and if you need detailed modeling for tons of human mesh targets then this is a great one-stop shop (especially for those pesky hands, feet and heads). Of course you could always take the old-fashioned route and take the reference photos yourself; just make sure that the camera is about chest level to the subject and they are wearing either form-fitting clothing or none at all (otherwise we'll be tracing the outfit instead of the actual human form).
Subjects should have their arms out, parallel to the ground. Feet should be a relaxed distance apart, as if they just stopped walking. Head should be looking straight forward, spine should be straightened. A few examples are provided in the following illustration where I grabbed images from some random sources, removed the negative space around them and then created a border around the figure itself in GIMP. Sometimes it helps just to have the border so you can define the bounds of a mesh, sometimes it's helpful to show all the detail of the image so you can define individual features. Experiment with either one and see if you find the additional detail distracting or not.
No matter if you sketch or photograph, you'll need at least one hand, one foot, one front full body view, one side profile full body view, one front head view and one side profile head view.
Building the Torso and Limbs of the Mesh
Now that you have reference images you can start defining your base mesh. Wipe your slate clean of any initial objects Blender may load up so that we're starting with no items. Click on View->Background Image in the drop-down menu list of the 3D Window you are currently using. Load up your forward-facing reference image into Blender so it loads in the background. Units really aren't all that important at this stage in the game, but I usually scale the image down to be two units high and move the Y Offset up so the image's feet are right at the Z axis.
Now that we have a reference image to work off of, we can start adding objects. Our method of building character a mesh will be a lot like how figure drawing is done on paper or canvas; we'll start with some primitive shapes, join them together then individually tweak them to resemble or background image.
Let's start by adding 8-sided cylinders for our torso, arms and legs. Go to top view (Num7) add add a cylinder in Edit mode using Space->Add->Cylinder. Change the vertex value to 8 so Blender will drop in an eight-sided cylinder. Place the center of the cylinder directly at the intersection of the X and Y axis (if it's not there already), and scale it until it is approximately the size of our reference image's torso.
Switch to a front view (Num1) and scale the cylinder again so that it's the same height and width of our subject's torso. Your object should be as wide as the shoulders and reach from the neck to the hips.
Once your torso is set and while still in Edit Mode, add a cylinder for the left arm (we'll worry about the right arm later). Switch to side view (Num3) and add yet another 8 vertex cylinder, this time about the girth of the subject's arm. Switch back to front view, then move the cylinder to the middle of the subjects arm. Scale along the X and Z axis as needed until your cylinder is about the length and width of your image's arm.
Perform the same type of operations to create a cylinder for the left leg as well. Once you have both left limbs created as cylinders alongside the torso, switch to a wireframe view (Drawtype->Wireframe) so you can view the reference image underneath your object primitives.
Now we can start subdividing the mesh and have more vertexes to play with. Use CTRL-R to perform a loop subdivide anywhere on the cylinder and basically cut a line between vertexes in half. Make these cuts whenever your reference image tends to need additional definition such as around the biceps, around joints and after the ribcage.
Before you start tweaking individual vertexes, however, join the shoulders and the hips together at the torso. Find the flat end of the cylinder that is closest to the torso. Select the center vertex of the circle that exists at the end of the arm and leg cylinders, then delete them. This will delete all the surrounding faces and leave you with an open-ended cylinder that has an open end on one side, a closed end on the other.
The next illustration shows how a corresponding entry point into the torso is created: we pick two faces close to our shoulder joint, then delete them in order to open up our mesh. Now we should have two open meshes; one open-ended cylinder for the arm and one matching open-faced polyhedron at the side of the torso. We need to close both of these meshes and leave no empty faces by joining them together.
Scale the vertexes that surround the open end of your cylinder until they overlap the opening in the torso's shoulder joint. While keeping in a strictly front or side view in your 3D window, grab and move individual arm vertexes onto the shoulder so that each point in the arm overlaps with a corresponding vertex on the torso. Don't use freelook when trying to get vertexes to match up – your depth perception can be completely off when you're moving things around in 3D coordinate space. Stick to your front, side or top views only. Once you've subdivided your mesh correctly, you should have exactly eight vertexes on your arm placed right on top of eight vertices on the torso.
Once the vertexes have been perfectly placed on top of each other, border select all 16 of them. Once they have all been selected and are currently highlighted, use the Rem Doubles button in Blender to fuse them together. You may need to experiment with the Limit: parameter that sets the threshold on how close two vertexes must be before they can be joined together; just try Rem Doubles and then use CTRL-Z to undo the action if you removed too many or too few vertexes. You'll know your two meshes have been correctly joined if you see a message saying Removed: and your mesh looks otherwise identical.
Let me forewarn you: you don't want to have any open faces in your mesh... otherwise you can get some very nasty leaks. These problems will become evident later on in the process as you encounter all sorts of rendering and animation bugs, so do your best to avoid them now and ensure all your meshes are joined together. If you leave any open faces or holes in your mesh, you may be headed for disaster down the road.
Once you are confident that your arm has been fused with the torso, perform the same action with the leg. Delete the for four faces on your figure's left side where the torso will meet the leg, then join the two sets of vertexes together. Remember to scale your open vertexes to match up with your torso, then only grab and move vertexes while strictly in front, side or top view modes. Be sure to save your file up to this point; and slap yourself if you forgot to do so yet. Even Blender's undo feature has limits.
Now that we've joined together our limbs, we can start tweaking the individual subdivisions in our mesh. You can change any vertex you like on the left side of your mesh – but don't tweak the X coordinate orientation of your center-most vertexes of the torso. Be sure you don't shift your central "line†of vertexes either left or right; keep them dead center.
To tweak our allowed vertexes, use Blender's border select key (B key) in a wireframe edit mode, grab the rings which subdivides one of our original cylinders and start scaling it to better match the scale of your background image. Also feel free to rotate these rings of subdivision so they better match the creases and curvature of your subject. You should move from a blocky, three-cylinder mesh to something much more akin to a human layout. Bear in mind we're only focusing on the left side of the body right now, and we are skipping the hands and feet for the time being.
Be sure and switch to a side view as well, so your constraints also apply to the subject's profile. In this instance it's very handy to have a side-view reference image, since spine curvatures can sometimes be tough to mimic without your corresponding background image to help you.
Now that we have our basic trunk finished, let's go ahead and delete all the extraneous vertexes on the right side of the mesh. Border select the vertexes that exist solely on the right side of the body, then delete them with the X key.
Building the Hands
Hands, feet and heads are tough subjects, so we'll cover them separately. In fact, we should even create them separately. Switch to Object Mode and change to another layer in your scene. This new layer should be a blank slate with which we can focus entirely on creating a left hand.
Going back to using primitives to describe our more organic meshes, we're going to be using two different types of shapes: a cylinder and a disc. Our disc is, in fact, just a really flat cylinder oriented on a different axis... so we will be sticking to the same methodology we used earlier.
While in Edit Mode, create your disc. It should be a flat, ten sided cylinder that's about one tenth of a unit thick and have a one unit diameter (although it ultimately doesn't matter; we'll scale it later). Next, add an elongated, eight sided cylinder right beside it. The disc should have its flat, broad side facing you, while the elongated cylinder should be running parallel to the X axis. This flat disc will be the palm of our hand, while the cylinder will be a finger joined to it.
Now we have a unique problem: we need weld an eight-sided polygonal face from the end of our cylinder onto a four-sided square face on the edge of our disc. To do that, we'll need to pinch two adjoining vertexes together around the circumference of our cylinder, so we'll have eight edges on one side, four on the other.
First, select two adjacent vertexes on an edge. Next, scale the two vertexes using S key to scale them towards each other. We don't want to grab the vertexes and move them toward each other; otherwise we're likely to go chasing our vertex all over the X, Y and Z planes. Scaling the two vertexes together moves them appropriately across all of our axis.
Once the vertexes are overlapping, use our handy Rem Doubles tool in our editing buttons (F9). This should eliminate one edge and merge our two vertexes into one. Perform this same operation to join all adjacent vertexes together, until we just have four edges to one side of our cylinder.
Once you've squared the adjoining edge of your finger, get rid of the four faces at the end of the finger and the single face at the end of the palm where the two will meet. This will give you a single digit to reuse for each of your five fingers. Use Shift-D to duplicate the finger four times, and place them around the palm.
Now we need to create empty spaces on the palm to join our fingers to. Find five strategic faces on the edge of your palm, then delete those five faces. Scale the remaining four vertexes down to an approximate square, about the size of the open end of your finger meshes. With each of your five fingers, join the two open ends together and delete their duplicate vertexes to make them part of a single mesh.
Once we have all of our cylinders joined together, load up your reference image and match proportions of your mesh to the image. You'll need to do some scaling and tweaking, but eventually you'll have something that resembles a hand ready to go. Don't forget to look at your model from top and from the side; that way you can ensure all your fingers are in line with each other.
Now we can join our hand to the wrist we created on our earlier mesh. Highlight all your hand vertexes in edit mode, then switch into object mode. Select both the layer that our body mesh exists on and the Blender layer that our hand exists on. Switch back into edit mode. Scale and rotate the hand mesh appropriately so it looks in proportion to the fully body reference image we use. You hand is probably still rather flat, so inflate it a bit so it meets the proportion of the wrist and our reference image.
Once you have fleshed out your hand, delete a couple of faces where the hand will meet the wrist. We will join these open vertexes to our arm after preparing our main mesh. Move the vertexes surrounding your deleted faces so that they overlap the vertexes of our wrist. You may need to do some subdivisions between vertexes so they line up; remember, our wrist has eight vertexes, but the opening in your hand mesh may only have for our six vertexes.
The same warning I made earlier concerning how to overlap two sets of vertexes still applies; stick to front, side or top views only. Trying to get vertexes to meet in freelook mode is, at best, frustrating. It may look like your vertexes are right on top of each other, but the moment you switch back to looking down the X, Y or Z axis you may notice that you are completely off.
Once you are happy with the wrist, switch to object mode. Select your main body mesh, then jump back into edit mode. Delete the faces at the end of your wrist, so the arm has a circle of eight empty vertexes at the end. You should now have two open meshes; one on the arm perfectly matched with the hand, one on the hand perfectly matched with the wrist.
Jump back into object mode, then Shift-Click on both hand and body meshes. Join them together as one using Ctrl-J. Switch back into edit mode, and highlight the overlapping vertexes of your wrist and your hand. Merge them together by performing a remove doubles, just as you have when joining two meshes at their vertexes previously.
Building Feet
We're just going to create easy sock feet for our mesh; we aren't going to go into any great detail for the toes. Since we're assuming most of our characters are going to have shoes (or even toes) that largely act as one unit, we'll let our texture mapping take care of any digit detail.
Our foot is going to be a simple 12-sided cylinder. Move to a new layer in Blender, load up our foot reference image, then plop a new cylinder with twelve sides onto our scene in edit mode. Move vertexes to look in proportion to our reference image, then join it to our main body mesh the same way we joined the hand.
Creating the Head
Creating the head can be the most tedious and time-consuming. Facial features are often the most distinguishing characteristic in human meshes and have to be built with care. Faces are also really bumpy and seemingly disproportionate, so building a low-vertex model that can follow the curvatures of a face is tough. Noses can be especially tough.
First, let's start with a cube. Select all the vertexes, then hit W key->Subdivide Smooth->25% to do a 25% smooth subdivision on our cube. This will divide each line on our cube in half, and then smooth out the edges. Load up your front-facing head reference image, and scale your new mesh to be approximately the same size.
The front of our face is going to need additional detail. Select the nine front-facing vertexes of our face, then do yet another subdivision on them.
We're dealing with a bigger grid of vertexes now, and we need to make sure we're not creating any sharp angles along the faces of our mesh. So far we've managed to keep things smooth with our subdivisions, but we'll need to do the same when we're moving vertexes around.
Use the O key to jump into proportional editing mode. This will move adjoining vertexes along with the vertex we're grabbing; much like points a rubber sheet will move when an adjacent point is moved. A smooth falloff works well for some work with the proportional editing tool, but you may need a sharp falloff for more pronounced features such as noses or eyebrows. Experiment and see which one works best for you.
First, let's create a nose. Switch to a side view, and then load our head profile reference image. Using the sharp falloff setting for the proportional editing tool, grab the center most vertex and move it in proportion to the nose of your background image.
Your nose needs a more defined origin. Switch back to a front view in Blender's 3D Window, then grab the two vertexes on either side of the nose vertex. While still using the proportional editing tool, scale the two vertexes along the X axis towards the center nose. This will pinch the side of our nose together.
Continue doing similar operations for the remainder of the face. Whenever possible, do not grab vertexes; instead grab the corresponding vertex on the other side of your mesh and scale them together. This will keep all of your vertexes more uniform and smooth. For example, when creating a chin it is much easier to grab the bottom three vertexes, use the proportional editing tool and scale/move the vertexes together to create more symmetrical features.
Keep using proportional editing, scale whenever possible and tweak your vertexes to match your front and side reference images as much as possible.
To join the mesh to our body we'll use the same method as with the hand and the foot. There's one catch of course: we've only done one side of our body... but we have both sides of our head. Let's chop off the right half of the head, then join the two meshes together. Since we did a subdivision on a cube, we should be able to neatly halve our head mesh before joining it to our body object.
You may also notice that we don't have a neck... you can subdivide a few vertexes above the shoulders and at the bottom of the head to create two or three contact points, then fuse those vertexes together. That should give us something to work with in order to create a small neck.
Finishing The Mesh
Lessee... neck, hands, feet, arms, legs, body... check. Now we have a complete half of our human mesh. We just need to create the other half!
Our human mesh is meant to be symmetric, so we only created one half of the body up to this point. If we did both halves at the same time, we could have very easily made a tweak on one side that wasn't exactly mirrored on the other side. This can lead to big headaches, especially with texture mapping and animation.
Before you continue, be sure you're happy with your mesh up to this point. Double-check with your reference image. Does everything look proportional? Do you follow the same sizes and ratios as your reference image? Does anything look out of place? If so, now is the time to fix it.
In fact, you might want to keep this mesh in a separate file and back it up elsewhere at this point. Making mesh changes to one half of the body is much easier than trying to alter both sides in the exact same way.
Now let's make this guy whole again. Select all of your vertexes in edit mode, hit Shift-D to duplicate them and then drag your duped vertexes off to the side. Hit M key to mirror your newly duplicated vertexes, and mirror them along the global X axis. Move your new half so that the two have overlapping vertexes exactly at the median of our mesh; this should give us two sets of overlapping vertexes. One set will correspond to the left half's open side, the other half will correspond to the right half's open side. Once the open sides overlap, select the vertexes in the middle and do a remove doubles to join them together. Experiment with the limit on the remove doubles button to ensure you join all your vertexes but don't remove adjoining vertexes; for me an acceptable value was 0.025.
Now that you've joined your meshes together, you can double-check to ensure everything looks correct. In my instance, my hips were way to bootylicious and the neck wasn't quite thick enough. Luckily, this can easily be fixed by scaling both sides of vertexes symmetrically.
As an example, let's work on the neck. In the middle of my neck I had two vertexes I chose not to join with my remove doubles command; I de-selected them from all the other vertexes that ran along the median of my mesh. After I joined the two sides of my mesh together, I grabbed these two vertexes and scaled them along the X axis (the S key followed by the X key Scales the vertexes along the X axis). This allowed me to widen them out a bit and create a broader neck.
Same sort of technique applies to my mesh's overly broad hips; I simply selected the midsection, then scaled it along all axis.
Tweak your mesh until you're happy with the results. You should now have something roughly human-like weighing in around only 800-850 polygons. Nice!
During our mesh operations, it is very likely that some of our faces' normals were flipped and are now facing inward. This will cause our mesh to render very strangely; all mesh faces are one-sided, so we need to make sure the appropriate side is showing. If they don't face the right direction, we won't be able to see our mesh.
Switch to solid shading using the Z key. Click the Draw Normals button in the Editing buttons window (F9). The cyan lines will be pointing in the direction of the normals; all of your lines should be facing outwards. Chances are they're not, and instead your left with an inconsistent mix of inward and outward facing polygons.
Luckily this is an easy fix. Hit Ctrl-A to select all of your vertexes in edit mode, then hit Ctrl-N and select Recalculate normals outside to make all of the faces point outward. Double-check your mesh and ensure all of your normals are in fact pointing outside.
To finish up, we just need to make sure all of our transformations are applied. In object mode, hit Ctrl-A, Alt-G, Alt-R and Alt-S to apply and clear your object's location, rotation and scale. This will ensure our object is located at its origin and later exported correctly.


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Ivanka Trump: For your dating consideration
Ivanka Trump the 26-year-old daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump is back on the market. And unlike another certain heiress we know, Ivanka is STD-free and runs her own mortgage empire. (Read: She'll buy you a Wii.) Page Six reports:
We noticed Trump – who had been dating real estate mogul and New York Observer owner Jared Kushner for almost a year – was flying solo at a few recent soirees, and friends of the couple confirmed yesterday to Page Six that the power couple are no longer together.
I don't think many of us common Joes stand a chance. Ivanka's probably looking for a guy that's A.) super loaded. and B.) has testicles made of Faberge eggs. Sadly, mine are only lined with diamonds. God, I suck.
Photos: Getty Images


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Fall '06 NVIDIA GPU Refresh - Part I: GeForce 7900 GSby Derek Wilson on 9/6/2006 9:00 AM EST
- Posted in
- GPUs
29 Comments
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phusg - Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - linkHi Derek,
I'm a little late to the ball but still
> cheaper price tag
really grates me! I know it's pretty endemic but it's still logically incorrect. A price tag can be lower of higher, but not cheaper, unless it's the price tag being sold. It's the product itself that can be cheaper.
Cheers Derek and don't let me catch you making this one again or there'll be hell to pay ;-)
Pete Reply
imaheadcase - Thursday, September 07, 2006 - linkCould you post a link to the bf2 demo you use, so we can compare are systems video cards to new ones? Reply
Stele - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkAt first glance, it seems that ATI has markedly improved their OpenGL implementation, at least for the Doom 3 engine:
...the latest ATI OpenGL enhancements that have drastically improved Doom 3 engine based game performance.
...clench Quake 4 as a benchmark that greatly favors ATI hardware when running at the highest possible quality settings. This is the exact opposite of what we have been saying about Quake 4 performance ever since the game launched....
However, after a moment's thought considering the vast difference in performance from before, and also the following qualifiers:
Of course, not all OpenGL games faired well with the latest round of drivers from ATI, with City of Heros/Villains performing very poorly in spite of its use of OpenGL.
...but it seems ATI has finally solved their OpenGL performance issues -- at least with this particular engine.
one can't help but wonder - just wonder - if there's anything here that smells like the last quake.exe driver optimisation trick ... which, curiously enough, was also pulled by ATi (iirc it was during the Radeon 8500's time?). I wonder! Reply
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkThere's no quackery as far as we know of. The problems with City of Heroes is a shader corruption bug, and a bug related to rendering on a secondary buffer, according to Cryptic(the developers of CoH). Whatever ATI did to speed up OpenGL performance here, they apparently didn't take in to account CoH. Reply
Stele - Thursday, September 07, 2006 - linkExcellent! Am deciding between the X1900GT and 7900GS (when the latter shows up in the channels), and this improvement would help strengthen the case for the X1900 a bit. :) Reply
S3anister - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkfound an XFX version on this card on newegg for 189MIR.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82... Reply
emilyek - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkA worthless sku. x1900gt and x1800xt/gto2 are better and almost $50 cheaper. Reply
sharkdude - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkThe Oblivion percentages are the same in this graph as in the graph on page 4 for all resolutions when in fact only the 800x600 numbers should be the same. On page 5 the numbers should be 4.1%, 10.1%, 6.4%, and 7.3% for 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. Note the text below the chart should also change 15% to 10%. Reply
DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkcorrected -- but your number for 16x12 appears to be wrong as well. :-) Reply
Lifted - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkThanks for including the 6600 and 6800 cards in the benchmarks. Reply
munky - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - link
In spite of the fact that F.E.A.R. is an OpenGL game, the X1900 GT maintains the advantage.
FEAR is a DX9 game, not OpenGL... Reply
DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkI'm looking into this at the moment but having trouble finding documentation on it.
I suppose, as I was recently testing quad sli and saw huge performance increases, I assumed the game must be using the 4 frame afr mode only possible in opengl (dx is limited to rendering 3 frames ahead). I'll keep looking for confirmation on this ... Reply
MemberSince97 - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkJupiter EX is a DX9 rendering engine... Reply
DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkcorrected, thanks ... now I have to figure out why FEAR likes quad sli so much ... Reply
MemberSince97 - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkNice writeup DW, I really like the mouseover performance % graphs... Reply
PrinceGaz - Thursday, September 07, 2006 - linkSo do I, but there is one error
With equivalent stock clock speeds and potential 14% and 20% advantages in vertex and pixel processing respectively...
That should be 14% and 25% advantages
The 7900GS has 20 PS while the 7900GT has 24 PS. That makes the 7900GS 20% slower than the 7900GT, but it makes the 7900GT 25% faster than the 7900GS. It's important to remember which one you're comparing it against when quoting percentages.
Hopefully the percentage performance difference in the graph itself was calculated correctly, or at least consistently. Reply
PrinceGaz - Thursday, September 07, 2006 - linkOoops sorry, please ignore my post. For some reason I thought for a moment the 7900GS had 16 PS and the 7900GT had 20 PS (despite writing the correct values in my comment). The article is correct, I was just getting confused.
PS. an edit function would be nice. Reply
Frackal - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkThere is no way an X1900xt gets 75fps at 1600x1200 4xAA, at that same resolution and AA setting I get well over 120-130fps average with an X1900xtx. Most sites show it hitting at least 100+ Reply
DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkif you use the built in demo features to run a timedemo with dice's own calculations you will get a very wrong (skewed upward) number. Dice themselves say that results over 100 fps aren't reliable.
the problem is that they benchmark the load screen, and generally one card or the other will get better load screen performance -- for instance, the x1900 gt may get 300+fps while the 7900 gt may only get 200fps. (I just picked those numbers, but framerates for the load screen are well over 100 fps in most cases and drastically different between manufacturers).
not only does no one care about this difference on a load screen, but it significantly interferes with benchmark numbers.
the timedemo feature can be used to output a file with frametimes and instantaneous frames per second. we have a script that opens this file, removes the frame data for the load screen, and calculates a more accurate framerate average using only frame data for scenes rendered during the benchmark run.
this will decrease over all scores.
we also benchmark in operation clean sweep which has a lot of fog and water. we use a benchmark with lots of smoke and explosions and we test for some ammount of time in or near most vehicles. Reply
splines - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkOwnage approved. Reply
sirfergy - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkWoot had this card for $139 a few weeks ago. So glad I jumped! Reply
artifex - Thursday, September 07, 2006 - linkI wish I'd bought 3 and sold them on eBay. Instead, I bought 0. :(
http://www.woot.com/blog/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryI...">woot entry
Spoelie - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkI dunno the situation in the US, but Europe is seeing an interesting war. We have 7900GT's costing 230€, right above there is the X1900XT 256mb at 244€ and the X1900XT 512mb at 280€, with the overclocked 7900GT's overlapping in price with the X1900XT's.
Check it on www.alternate.de for example.
At these prices, the X1900XT's are a pretty sweet deal, and warrant the little extra money paid over the 7900GT imho. Reply
Spoelie - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkjust to be clear, those are the minimum prices found, in general you have about price parity between the GT's and XT 256mb, with a few superclocked cards costing as much or more as the XT 512mb...
Incredible value in the 200-300€/$ range imho, with cards that just months ago were in the 300-500€/$ range Reply
Spacecomber - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkThe concluding paragraphs on pages 4 and 5 are identical (i.e., the proper paragraph is missing for the XFX 480M Extreme vs. Stock Performance section). Reply
DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkthanks, fixed Reply
Spoelie - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkthere's also a layout error in the table on page 9 Reply
TheLiberalTruth - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkI don't know if it's just me or what, but I can't get any page from this article after 1 to load. :\ Reply
peldor - Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - linkThe BFG 7600GT is down to $115 after rebate at Newegg. Reply


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(CBS News) TOLEDO, Ohio - Although the message may not have been written on a cue card, the Romney campaign took a page out of the 1992 playbook of George H.W. Bush on Wednesday, launching a new charm offensive meant to appeal directly to those who were turned off by his comments at a private fundraiser about "the 47 percent." The message: I care.
Faced with his own image problems in 1992, the first President Bush made a now-infamous gaffe on the campaign trail when he mistakenly read out loud the stage directions on cue cards given to him. "Message: I care," he declared.
With new polls showing that more Americans view the current Republican nominee less favorably after hearing him call Mr. Obama's supporters people "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims," Romney spent much of his day on Wednesday trying to project an image of empathy for the average American.released a one-minute ad that shows him speaking directly into the camera. He even went so far as to cite the health care law he passed while Governor of Massachusetts as an example of his compassion for those in need.
"Don't forget - I got everybody in my state insured," Romney said in an interview with NBC News. "One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record."
The comment marked a rare public embrace of his signature health care law, which is considered by many to have been a road map for the president's Affordable Care Act. Shortly after making the comments, Romney offered a sharp rebuke of the president's law during remarks at a Toledo rally, saying he would "repeal Obamacare and replace it with real health care reform."
Taking full advantage of the opportunity, the Obama campaign launched an ad with Romney's remarks on Tuesday. In the ad, an announcer says, "When Mitt Romney dismissed 47 percent of Americans for not pulling their weight, he attacked millions of hard working people making 25-, 35-, 45 thousand dollars a year."Picture shows a softer side of Mitt Romney
Complete coverage: Campaign 2012
The Romney campaign responded with an ad of its own Wednesday, talking about Americans who are struggling. "Too many of those who are working are living paycheck to paycheck, trying to make falling incomes meet rising prices for food and gas," a somber Romney says to the camera.
Romney tells the audience that both he and Mr. Obama care about the poor and middle class, but says it is his policies that will make things better for both groups.
"We shouldn't measure compassion by how many people are on welfare," Romney says in the advertisement. "We should measure compassion by how many people are able to get off welfare and get a good paying job."
This message of Romney-the-empathizer carried over into Romney's stump speech on Wednesday. Speaking in Toledo on Wednesday night, the Republican nominee told the crowd that he meets struggling Americans all across the country.
"Most people that you see have some real challenges in their life of one kind of another," he said. "I understand that."
Romney acknowledged that the government can play a useful role in helping those who are in need.
"We have people that are hurting, we have people who are disabled and people who are poor, they need our help and they receive our help," Romney said. "We're a charitable people." But at the same time, Romney said, "We're going to insist that these people have the opportunity for work if they can carry out work, if they're able-bodied. Because we are not going to create a society of dependence on government."
In response to the new offensive, the Obama campaign sent an end-of-day statement titled "Romney's 'empathetic' rhetoric doesn't match up with reality."
"Mitt Romney is working overtime to rehabilitate his image after being caught writing off half of all Americans to a room of high-dollar donors. But his warm and fuzzy rhetoric doesn't match up with his policies, principles, or priorities," Obama for America Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter wrote in a statement on Wednesday night.
"In fact, while Mitt Romney held up the Massachusetts health care law as evidence of his empathy for people, minutes later he promised to repeal Obamacare, which is modeled after his own law," she wrote. "It's not empathetic to deny affordable health coverage to tens of millions of Americans, allow insurance companies to discriminate against Americans with pre- existing conditions or charge women higher premiums than men because of a pregnancy. It's troubling that Mitt Romney thinks it is."


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A party goer was fined for being drunk and disorderly at an illegal rave attended by up to 40 people on Sunday night.
Police were called to Mitcham Common after loud noise from speakers powered by generators blasted out music until the early hours of the morning, disturbing neighbours.
A 30-year-old man from Croydon was arrested by police officers at the scene and taken to a south London police station.
He was later given a fixed penalty notice for being drunk and disorderly.
Police took more than four hours to disperse the crowd, some of whom were dancing and causing trouble until the early hours of Monday morning.
There were also reports of a number of minor disturbances in the area with men kicking bins, a bottle being thrown at police and a bus stop being damaged near the party in the Seven Islands Pond area of the common which began on Sunday, April 6.
Mitcham Common Conservators member, Councillor Martin Whelton said the gathering was totally unacceptable.
Coun Whelton said: "It caused a lot of distress to residents and left a lot of rubbish behind.
"What they did was completely and utterly unacceptable."
Power generators were being used to blast out tunes until at least 3.30am when the gathering was dispersed by police.
Rubbish including empty Courvoisier and Champagne bottles were seen to be left behind, as well as an empty marquee and plastic buckets.
Officers were called at 10.45pm on Sunday.


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THE BATTLE for Blackburn's skies between a 72-year-old model aircraft enthusiast and the borough council was stepped up yesterday when he served legal papers on the town hall.
Michael Parkinson is seeking injunctions against the council and Blackburn and District Model Aircraft Club over their threat to prevent him flying his planes on Pleasington playing field.
Blackburn with Darwen Council's legal department warned the pensioner it will take him to court and have him removed from the fields by police if necessary.
In 2012, the Pendle Drive resident was refused membership of the Blackburn and District Model Aircraft Club, which organises the sport in the borough, and then banned from using the fields by the council in a dispute over its exclusive rights over who flies there.
Despite the warnings, Mr Parkinson remains determined to fly his models at the spot where he first took his remote-controlled plane aged 11.
Now, he has served legal papers on both the council and club, seeking an injunction from Burnley Crown Court forbidding them from 'preventing the claimant from flying powered model aircraft' on the fields.
He has also asked the council to produce the agreement it claims exists giving the club exclusive rights over who flies there and when.
Mr Parkinson, who has seven radio-controlled planes and gliders with wing-spans of up to 12 feet, has also circulated a letter to members of the borough executive board outlining his case.
He said: "The council is here to serve the people of the borough not tell them what to do.
"I am prepared to take this to the High Court if necessary.
"Despite being told I cannot fly on Pleasington fields, I will do so.
"I cannot understand why the council is wasting taxpayers' money on this issue."
Since BDMAC refused him membership, Mr Parkinson has taken both the club and council to court, written dozens of letters and held meetings with officials of both bodies.
Blackburn MP Jack Straw has tried to resolve the row, but Mr Parkinson has declined his offer to meet him at one of his regular constituency surgeries.
A council spokesman said: "We have received legal documentation from Mr Parkinson and will be looking at it in due course."
BDMAC secretary Kevin Watson declined to comment on Mr Parkinson's latest legal move.


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Federal • $26-billion (deficit for 2012-13)
The March, 2012 budget initially projected a deficit of $21.1-billion. That estimate was revised to $26-billion in the November fiscal update.
Return to a balanced budget: 2015-16
It's complicated. The Conservative 2011 election platform promised balanced books by 2014-15. The March, 2012 budget said 2015-16 and the November fiscal update said 2016-17. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has since said the deficit will be erased by 2015-16.
Main challenges:
Low commodity prices, low inflation (which affects nominal GDP) and low growth are all conspiring to give Mr. Flaherty less revenue as he prepares a 2013 budget that is expected in late March.
The International Monetary Fund recently said Ottawa's deficit targets are achievable. "A budgetary balance by 2015 is well within reach," it said in a Feb. 14 report.
- Bill Curry
Follow us on Twitter: @globeandmail


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Asking about pregnancy coercion and intimate-partner violence
Dear Engaged Bystander: When I read a study that says by "asking about pregnancy coercion and intimate-partner violence can reduce their incidence" I have to sit up and take notice. Below is a brief overview of this recently released study.
Study finds asking about pregnancy coercion and intimate-partner violence can reduce their incidence
Jay Silverman and Heather McCauley of the Harvard School of Public Health, Rebecca Levenson of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, Michele R. Decker of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Daniel Tancredi of UC Davis.
There are a growing number of professionals who insist upon an evidence-based approach to any new program innovation. I am so encouraged by this trend, but also discouraged by the relatively few studies that clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of a specific intervention. Without these studies, we are flying blind about what works and what doesn't work.
This pilot study conducted by UC Davis School of Medicine found that when clinicians specifically asked young women during visits to family planning clinics whether their partners had attempted to force them to become pregnant, it dramatically reduced the likelihood that the women would continue to experience such pressures.
The questions were fairly simple and straightforward yet they can have a profound impact on a young women's life. They asked a series of questions (see below) and offered simple educational information.
- "Have you hidden birth control from your partner so he wouldn't get you pregnant?"
- "Has your partner tried to force you to become pregnant when you didn't want to be?"
- "Does your partner mess with your birth control?"
- "Does your partner refuse to use condoms when you ask?"
- "Has your partner ever hurt you physically because you didn't agree to become pregnant?"
"Young women who recently experienced partner violence had a 70 percent reduction in the odds that they would continue to experience pregnancy coercion following the questioning, which is called a brief intervention, the study found. The study participants also were 60 percent more likely to report ending a relationship with a partner because they felt unsafe or the relationship felt unhealthy."
This study shows that a relatively small investment of time, we can have an enormous impact on the lives of women living in violent situations. In this pilot study, the researchers found that by opening up a difficult subject and taking out the shame of domestic violence, by asking simple questions by someone in a position of responsibility, and by supplying simple educational materials, women are able to change their exposure to violence. For bystander programs, this study points to the importance of simply asking questions. When people ask what they can do, this study could validate the importance of just learning to ask questions about what is happening in a non-judgmental way and within a confidential setting.
One of the authors, Rebecca Levenson, of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, eloquently described the potential impact of these findings, "This study is extremely important because it identifies an effective solution that can be implemented relatively easily. We need to build on these results by making this intervention the norm in health-care settings throughout the nation as quickly as possible."
Click here for a link to the press release for the study.
Posted by jtabachnick on 09/26/2010
Filed under


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GATECRASHERS who invaded a York teenager's party ruined carpets, broke treasured items and stole cash, phones, jewellery and an iPod touch.
Rowena Freeman said about a hundred teenagers – many of whom were uninvited and heard about it through BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) – arrived at her house in Minster View, Wigginton, when her 15-year-old daughter, Alicia, organised a Hallowe'en party.
She said she had not given permission and had gone away to a dance competition, thinking Alicia was going to a party elsewhere.
Mrs Freeman, a mobile hairdresser, was alerted by Alicia and returned in the early hours after police, called in by neighbours disturbed by the noise, had dispersed everyone.
She said there were hundreds of bottles lying around and there was mud everywhere. "The carpet on the stairs and landing was thick with mud and I've had to take it up and throw it away," she said.
"A teapot given to me by my late mother and of sentimental value had been broken.
"Someone went in my bedroom and stole about £60 in cash and my two mobile phones – one of which I use for my business as a hairdresser – clothes, and a spare set of car keys, although I found these later in the garden.
Alicia's iPod touch, bracelet and about £20 were also stolen and the lock on the cabin shed in the garden and the front gate were damaged."
She said the partygoers were aged between about 15 and 18, with some having come from as far away as Leeds.
"It has taken a week to clear up and I have felt so poorly my doctor has put me on anti-depressants. I just want parents to be aware what their children have done, and where they have been."
She said it was the second time Alicia had held a party without her consent, and she would now be meeting the bill for the damage and theft from her savings.
Alicia said she was extremely sorry for having held the party without permission, and said she would never do such a thing again.
North Yorkshire Police said the theft and damage had been reported and was being investigated, but the difficulty was in establishing which individuals had been responsible. Anyone with information should phone 101, quoting crime reference 291020120027.


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Note: This item is more than six years old. Please take the publication date into consideration for any date references.
Print – Plain Text – Permalink
News Release
Media Contact: TPWD News, email@example.com, 512-389-8030
April 15, 2011
Sweetwater Angler Pulls Rare Trophy from O.H. Ivie: Toyota ShareLunker 523
ATHENS—Faron McCain of Sweetwater went fishing at O.H. Ivie Reservoir April 14 intending to catch a big largemouth bass on her spawning bed, and he did just that.
What he did not expect was to catch the same fish that was last year's new lake record, when it was caught by Jerry Bales of Hico and became Toyota ShareLunker 503.
When Bales caught the fish last April 30, she weighed 16.08 pounds. When McCain put her on the certified scale at Concho Park Marina, an official Toyota ShareLunker weigh and holding station, she weighed in at 14.94 pounds.
"I didn't know she even weighed 13 pounds and would qualify for the Toyota ShareLunker program, but she was a big fish, and I put her in the livewell and immediately took her to be weighed," McCain said.
Each fish entered into the Toyota ShareLunker program is fitted with an electronic tag that can be read with a scanner, and most fish are returned to the lake after the spawning season. This season two fish have been recaught that were entered into the program last season. The other was from Caddo Lake.
Oddly, both fish are also the current lake record at their heavier weight.
McCain was fishing in 6 to 7 feet of water using an undisclosed lure. The fish was 22.25 inches in girth in 27.5 inches long. When caught last season those measurements were 23.125 inches and 26.5 inches, respectively. Girth measurements can change significantly depending on the stage of egg development.
Anyone legally catching a 13-pound or bigger largemouth bass from Texas waters, public or private, between October 1 and April 30 may submit the fish to the Toyota ShareLunker program by calling program manager David Campbell at (903) 681-0550 or paging him at (888) 784-0600 and leaving a phone number including area code. Fish will be picked up by TPWD personnel within 12 hours.
ShareLunker entries are used in a selective breeding program at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center (TFFC) in Athens. Some of the offspring from these fish are stocked back into the water body from which they were caught. Other ShareLunker offspring are stocked in public waters around the state in an attempt to increase the overall size and growth rate of largemouth bass in Texas.
Anglers entering fish into the Toyota ShareLunker program receive a free replica of their fish, a certificate and ShareLunker clothing and are recognized at a banquet at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens.
The person who catches the season's largest entry will be named Angler of the Year and will receive a prize package from G. Loomis valued at $818. The package includes a G. Loomis NRX854C jig and worm rod, a Shimano ChronarchD1007 casting reel and 150 yards of moss green Power Pro super-braid fishing line. If a Texas angler catches the largest entry of the season, that person also receives a lifetime fishing license.
For complete information and rules of the ShareLunker program, tips on caring for big bass, a list of official Toyota ShareLunker weigh and holding stations and a recap of last year's season, see tpwd.texas.gov/sharelunker. The site also includes a searchable database of all fish entered into the program along with pictures where available.
Information on current catches, including short videos of interviews with anglers when available, is posted on www.facebook.com/sharelunkerprogram.
The Toyota ShareLunker Program is made possible by a grant to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Foundation from Gulf States Toyota. Toyota is a long-time supporter of the Foundation and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, providing major funding for a wide variety of education, fish, parks and wildlife projects.
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(5.4.16 i)


text: NEW YORK ( TheStreet) - Brandon Rees, who helps oversee the AFL-CIO's pension fund investments, is trying to convince Tribune ( TRBAA) to shelve any sale of its eight daily newspapers, which include The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune. Rees' lobbying was prompted by David and Charles Koch, the Tea Party-funding multi-billionaire owners of the oil and chemicals conglomerate Koch Industries, who have said they may bid for the newspapers if Tribune decides to put them up for sale. Tribune, which could owe as much as $225 million in back taxes, needs the cash. Rees, the acting director of the AFL's Office of Investment, is realistic about the situation. If Tribune wants to sell and the Koch brothers want to buy, there are few humans on the planet capable of outbidding them. Each of the Koch brothers has a personal fortune totaling $43 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, while Koch Industries generates $115 billion in annual sales. The brothers are the sixth and seventh wealthiest people in the world. The Kochs have also been among the country's largest funders of groups that seek to undercut public pension fund benefits and curtail collective bargaining by municipal unions. Labor unions, as well as groups urging steps to combat global warming, another Koch foe, are loath to see these dailies become a unit of one of the world's largest fossil fuel providers. Regardless of the overall decline in circulation, the papers remain major institutions in their home regions. They include the largest dailies in Illinois, California, Maryland ( The Baltimore Sun) and Connecticut ( Hartford Courant) as well as two in the politically-charged state of Florida ( Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale), and also the national Spanish-language daily Hoy. Ironically, the sale could be an immediate gain for some of the union federation's members. That's because billions of dollars in members' pension fund monies are managed by L.A.-based Oaktree Capital Management, the world's largest distressed debt investor, which owns a 23% stake in Tribune, making it the media company's largest shareholder. Rees argues that selling now, even at a profit, would shortchange union members. Tribune's newspapers, which exited a messy and debilitating four-year bankruptcy in December, are beginning to show improvement as Oaktree President Bruce Karsh, who doubles as Tribune's chairman, said in a letter last month to national and California labor leaders. Tribune's "publishing assets are performing ahead of plan thus far this year" said Karsh, adding that a sale is only one option the company is considering.


text:
|Related Products
|A DNA sequence encoding the rhesus CD40 (NP_001252791.1) (Met 1-Arg193) was expressed with a polyhistidine tag at the C-terminus.
|Human Cells
|In general, recombinant proteins are provided as lyophilized powder which are shipped at ambient temperature.
Bulk packages of recombinant proteins are provided as frozen liquid. They are shipped out with blue ice unless customers require otherwise.
|> 90 % as determined by SDS-PAGE
|< 1.0 EU per μg of the protein as determined by the LAL method
|Samples are stable for up to twelve months from date of receipt at -70℃
|Glu 21
|The recombinant rhesus CD40 comprises 184 amino acids and has a calculated molecular mass of 20.7 KDa.
|Lyophilized from sterile PBS, pH 7.4
1. Normally 5 % - 8 % trehalose, mannitol and 0.01% Tween80 are added as protectants before lyophilization. Specific concentrations are included in the hardcopy of COA.
2. Please contact us for any concerns or special requirements.
|Store it under sterile conditions at -20℃ to -80℃. It is recommended that the protein be aliquoted for optimal storage. Avoid repeated freeze-thaw cycles.
|A hardcopy of COA with reconstitution instruction is sent along with the products. Please refer to it for detailed information.
CD40, also known as TNFRSF5, is a member of the TNF receptor superfamily which are single transmembrane-spanning glycoproteins. CD40 protein plays an essential role in mediating a broad variety of immune and inflammatory responses including T cell-dependent immunoglobulin class switching, memory B cell development, and germinal center formation. CD40 protein is expressed in B cells, dendritic cells, macrophages, endothelial cells, and several tumor cell lines. Defects in CD40 result in hyper-IgM immunodeficiency type 3 (HIGM3). In addition, CD40/CD40L interaction is found to be necessary for amyloid-beta-induced microglial activation, and thus is thought to be an early event in Alzheimer disease pathogenesis.
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Immune Checkpoint Proteins
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text:
Wrinkles, sun splotches, uneven skin tones — these are just a few things altering skin conditions today and haunting us as we grow older. While there are hundreds, even thousands of treatments, not many boast the same process and effects as the Pearl Laser and Pearl Fractional treatments offered at the North Valley Plastic Surgery Center (NVPSC).
Stacey Bailey-Gitt, a laser technician and anesthesiologist at NVPSC, describes the treatment as an easier way to remove aging signs and skin damage.
"These treatments target skin resurfacing," Bailey-Gitt says. "It isn't a skin tightening procedure like other common surgeries and treatments."
With Pearl Laser Treatment, younger looking skin is just around the corner and is available in two types. The first targets the epidermis and upper layers of the skin. The second targets the deeper skin layers and has a longer recovery time of five to seven days, according to Bailey-Gitt.
At the North Valley Plastic Surgery Center, each Pearl treatment is set up uniquely for the patient. The technician sculpts the treatment based on a patient's pain tolerance, the portion of face being treated and the desired result. As a non-invasive surgery, these skin treatments are ideal for multiple kinds of cases.
"I like to categorize things," Bailey-Gitt says. "We have our prevention cases who want to prevent aging, our corrective cases who want to correct aging that has already occurred, and maintenance cases that maintain previous facial treatments and surgeries."
Many clients have sought facial treatments in preparation for summer, hoping to both rid the skin of aging signs and prevent further skin damage from the sun.
Recovery time spans from three to seven days and requires skin ointment, as well as the application of SPF to achieve the best results. During the recovery process, the skin rids itself of the unwanted wrinkles, spots and blotches, leaving the skin healthier, younger and brighter.
Compared to most skin surgery treatments, Pearl Laser Treatment and Pearl Fractional Laser treatments have a much shorter recovery time and are a great deal less invasive, making the procedure much more appealing to interested clients.


text:
• colonel •
Pronunciation: kêr-nêl • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: The rank in the US military (except the Navy) between lieutenant colonel and brigadier general.
Notes: Attention!The problem, of course, in keeping track of today's Good Word, is remembering how to spell it. Since it is pronounced exactly like kernel (for reasons laid out in Word History), we would not expect to spell it colonel. However, we are talking about English, where the disjuncture between pronunciation and spelling can exceed the bizarre (read The Chaos if you haven't already).
In Play: We do not have much latitude with today's Good Word; it is nothing more than a military rank: "Don't disturb the colonel right now, lieutenant, he's in conference with General Jack Daniels." It can be used as a noun or as a title, as in this sentence: "Rumor has it that Colonel Achruth got his Purple Heart driving through DC traffic at rush hour."
Word History: Today's word originated in Italian as colonello, the leader of a regiment but perhaps originally the leader of a column, colonna in Italian. When the French borrowed this word, it didn't like so many Ls in the word and so by a process called 'dissimilation', replaced the middle L with an R: coronnel. This occurred around the middle of the 16th century, about the time English borrowed it. Notice the pronunciation is very similar to that of kernel at this point, since the middle unaccented O would be overlooked even in normal speech ('LVS'). By the end of the 16th century, scholars realized that the French were spelling this word incorrectly, and changed the spelling back to colonel. Speakers, however, most of whom could not read, did not get the message and continued to pronounce this word cor'nel. (We would like to thank Chuck Lee for suggesting today's little lexical kernel for examination.)


text:
UN Alliance of Civilizations: Statement by Ambassador Hans-Joachim Daerr, Senior Advisor on Sustainable Development, on "Peace as a Path to Sustainable Development"
(as delivered:)
"Your Excellency, High Representative Al-Nasser,
I thank you for organizing this important Group of Friends meeting and the informative briefings of the panelists.
Germany attaches great value to the work of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and supports the Alliance actively. We are grateful for this opportunity to discuss the Post-2015 Agenda in this esteemed forum.
Ms. Mohammed has given us an overview of the ongoing preparations of the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the challenges ahead. Great success has been achieved in reaching the Millenium Development Goals. The proportion of people living in extreme poverty was cut in half even before 2015. But we also see that these heartening results are not true for countries that are ravaged by war or other armed conflicts. It is self-evident that peace is THE prerequisite for sustainable development. Countries that are affected by armed conflicts do not prosper. In addition to the high toll of human suffering, wars and armed conflicts bind resources that could otherwise be used for development. Children, as the most vulnerable group in each society, bear the brunt of any armed conflict. And only a stable environment can give them the education they need to bring their country forward.
The great impact of the Millenium Development Goals clearly shows that we were right to set ourselves ambitious objectives. We should do the same when defining the Post-2015 Agenda. Germany believes that stable and peaceful societies should be a focus area of the new Agenda. Against this background Germany has launched, during the 9th session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, a proposal for a stand-alone goal on peaceful and non-violent societies.
Let me highlight just three areas under such a goal in which we would like to see progress:
First: Reducing the proliferation of small arms and light weapons is paramount for enhancing peace and stability worldwide. Several hundred thousand people – among them many children - are killed by small arms each year, not to mention the many more that are injured or remain disabled for the rest of their lives. But children are not only victims of small arms but are also often forced to use them, as they are abused as child soldiers.
Second: We have to fight organized crime as it is undermining the stability and peace in many countries. We must also address its root causes. This means, among other things to fight trafficking in human beings. Each and every year, thousands of men, women and children become victims of this fundamental violation of human rights – either within their own country or abroad. Be it as country of origin, transit or destination of victims – trafficking concerns almost every country all over the world. It is a shameful disgrace for the international community that this modern form of slavery, this horrible crime, is still common in the 21st century.
Fighting organized crime also means fighting drug trafficking and the illicit trade of goods. Narcotics, poaching and the illegal trade of wildlife products undermine the rule of law and good governance, encourage corruption and have devastating social, economic and environmental effects. The proceeds from these crimes fuel conflicts and destabilize entire countries.
Third: We have to strengthen effective formal and informal mechanisms to manage disputes peacefully. Strong and independent institutions, that people trust, are an important precondition for stability. Therefore, ensuring the rule of law seems absolutely necessary. Fundamental rights and liberties, universal access to fair, efficient, accountable and independent justice, security and police systems, independent media and information and freedom of expression should be guaranteed. Furthermore, it is crucial to encompass due process and access to human rights defense institutions. And last but not least, fighting impunity is also part and parcel of a rule of law environment.
Before I close let me inform you that Germany also aligns herself with the views and remarks expressed here by the EU representative.
I thank you."


text:
A FLOOD funding boost of £500,000 has been allocated for river dredging by Somerset County Council.
It brings the total the council is planning to offer to fight flooding to £1m and follows a mini flood summit held on January 15.
As reported last week, the council has already offered £300,000 for dredging, and £200,000 for local flood prevention schemes.
It is calling for Government and the Environment Agency to find the further £3m needed to enable a comprehensive dredging operation for the Rivers Parrett and Tone.
Cannington Councillor Ian Dyer, whose village has experience some of the most severe flooding, said the extra funding was "a good start".
He told the Mercury: "We have been doing a lot of flood prevention work ourselves and although we haven't cured it, we've made a hell of a difference. Even though the water did get very high, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
"But the River Parrett needs dredging – that's a fact. I'm on the Drainage Board and we commissioned a study that revealed the river can hold around 35% less in capacity than in the 1950s.
"It used to be dredged regularly about 20 years ago, but because it hasn't been maintained, dredging will be a bigger job.
"We need proper maintenance and action now."
SCC held a crisis meeting with Dan Rogerson, Minister for Water and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency.
Council leader John Osman said: "The Minister listened to our case and saw for himself the extent of the flooding.
"He has promised to take up our case and we have agreed to a further meeting in Whitehall to continue to fight for significant investment.
"He agrees that Somerset has had two years of severe flooding, which puts it ahead of any other claims for help and support."
Support the council's 'Fair Funding for Somerset' campaign at www.facebook.com/fairerfundingforsomerset or use the hashtag #fairerfundingforsomerset on Twitter.


text:
Results 1 to 20 of 189
Would you pay extra for an easy PC gaming experience?
I was thinking about how Apple computers have such broad appeal and that got me thinking about the key aspects of the mac experience. Number one on the list of course is stability. People talk about quality a lot but I think for computers this is the more significant reason. You buy your mac, then when you need anything you head to the same place you bought your mac from - the apple store. Everything in there is obviously hand picked so that it works perfectly with macs of all ages. Contrast that with the windows experience you would get from purchasing a no-brand peripheral at a local electronics shop or more likely a large supermarket. I can tell you are instinctively typing "windows driver download for XXXX-XX" on your lap while reading this.
Another thing I noticed keeps mac users happy is how apple goes out of it's way to fill the general needs of their user base. Want to make a video? Here's an app for that. Want to play around with mixing music? Here you go. Want to produce a unique presentation for a pitch or an online video? We got your back.
and the stuff they're offering is really well done, and not token giveaway software that will be replaced later on for more expensive "Pro" apps.
Anyway, this got me thinking: would you pay a little extra for a PC if the PC manufacturer offered a service specifically to improve the experience for PC gamers?
As an example, for the equivalent of a current 24" iMac plus the added support package, you'd get a gaming PC and free subscription to a network that gives you:
-the best settings for a huge library of games catered specifically for your PC model. The settings would be tweaked to give you the best framerates and later on the best balance between quality and performance once your PC model starts showing it's age (3-4 years down the line).
-fixes for a huge library of games, compatibility fixes for games from previous generations
-Articles on new game mods, and pre-configured mods to download - again catered specifically for your system. So you would just download and install, tweaking not necessary.
-an online store for emulation gaming. That would include refurbished PS2,Wii,SNES etc. consoles to legally own BIOS, older titles from PS2,Wii,gamecube and others. An iso rip and emulator configuration come free with each game. Only games which work perfectly are included in the store.
-An online store with hard to find or quirky PC hardware like, say a bluetooth adapter that supports keyboards in BIOS, or a LAN HDMI extender. Or even this remote for example if you're into home theater stuff.
-An overclock profile that you can load directly into your motherboard with a guarantee that it will work perfectly with your PC model
-Discounted upgrade packages for your now ancient machine that have been exhaustively tweaked and tested to match the claim of their specific price level: budget, mid-range, high end.
- insane amounts of support from the kind of people you would know are knowledgeable about this stuff, and not "trained support staff"
In short, all the things that are great about PC's but without the hassle of trial and error, loss of money and wasted time.
So yeah, I'm curious: would you be willing to pay a bit extra for these kinds of features or save up, build your own PCs and take your chances?
No. It's not worth it. I'd probably have to spend over twice as much on my rig to have it prefab, given the current rates. What's more, I'd probably get lazy and wind up clueless about what I'm buying. Leads to being ripped off, and dependency on a third party for support is a terrible situation to be in.Itsbastiat, Dawngate
Bastiat, Planetside 2, Miller NC
ClementAtlee, Planetside 2, Miller VS
Therin Khatta, FFXIV, Cerberus
So prices would go from $750 up to say $1650 for a top end obnoxious system. Wit hall the systems capable of running everything.
More importantly: all the software and drivers and operating system and tweaking and ini configs and mods and hacks... that's all taken care of for you.
If you want a mid-range machine, that's exactly what you would get: a $950 PC that is pre-overclocked to run emulators, and with a nice gpu that can run Crysis at 1080p. Got a bit more cash and want high end? A $1650 PC that can go way above 1080p - think Battlefield 3 on 3 1080p screens. Want to go budget? A $750 PC that can run most games at max settings with the exception of maybe Crysis, and that can run emulaors.
Basically I'm thinking of a manufacturer that would actually care about their customers and know the market needs. So a budget PC would have a core i5 2500k, while a high end would have something like a phase-change cooled 5Ghz uber cpu and tons of stuff, but NO SLI!
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I wouldn't need any of the software side services, and I upgrade so rarely that any upgrade discount scheme wouldn't trigger.
That said, I didn't build my PC the last time and I might not build the next one either. Rather, I specced it exactly part-for-part, paid for the parts, and 50e for the assembly and 1y whole-box warranty. Absolutely worth it when you consider the opportunity cost of the build itself as well as that of a potential hardware problem. And the shop probably did a better job cleaning up the cabling than I would have; they get lots of practice.
What I'm thinking of is this: rather than get the best hardware when going high-end, you'd get the next lowest thing with the extra cash going into a custom cooling or case solution. That way when you need to throw everything out after 5 years, you at least have the custom cooling solution that you can use in future hardware. For high end it's not that inconceivable - the difference in cost between the core i7 3960X and the core i7 3930k was $300 at launch. I of course spent the $300 on water cooling (or rather saved $300 since I already had water cooling), and proceeded to overclock the 3930k over the performance of a stock 3960X. Problem solved!
The only company I know that does this well is Origin with their phase change cooling system - but they charge such a high premium it's kind of ridiculous. Think $3000 over the cost of the base hardware.
Last edited by mashakos; 14-11-2012 at 11:10 AM.
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I think practically it sounds like an ideal situation but would largely depend on the money asked. The thing is that, personally, since I know how to do most of that stuff (or I know I can google around and find a guide somewhere), I would not pay for them. If this had been when I was starting to play games/use a PC maybe, but back then I did not have a job so would not be able to pay for it.
In the end, the problem is more theoretical I guess: would the PC get locked down as a platform? Or are we talking about one company? What would happen if you wanted to dual-boot or change something on Windows or the hardware for example, which would void the warranty?
By the way, all that sounds like a lot of work for one company...
kind of hate some of the arbitrary warranty rules out there so let's say hardware warranty is covered by the hardware vendors, so anything other than actual damage wouldn't void the warranty. This is important since PCs are designed to be upgraded in the future.
Questions about this.
Am I buying a service for my current PC or am I buying a boxed PC, prebuilt for me, like I would buy a Mac?
If I'm buying a box, like a Mac, have all the components been selected for me and is the box sealed up so I can't get into them? Do I get a choice of components? Do I get to pick all them, some of them or none of them? Are all vendors of graphic cards available or am I limited to what this company deems the cream of the crop for price or performance?
What happens if a piece breaks? If my graphics card fries or my psu blows, am I allowed replace it myself with an off the shelf component from a local source or do I have to go through this company?
And finally how much would this cost for me? I'd never buy a Mac brand new because of the price and I don't like buying second hand so I'd never own a Mac. I will agree that they are great pieces of kit and provide one of the best user experiences around and Apple really are second to none when it comes to the experience, but I still think so much of what you pay for with a Mac goes towards getting that logo on the back. If this gaming pc + support service cost me the same price or a similar price of a Mac then no I wouldn't pay for it.
No amount of settings menu automation is worth $150. I already know how to do that stuff, why would I pay for it?
If the option's available, I would opt against tying myself into one retailer/manufacturer, cost permitting. In my current PC, the only two separate components by the same manufacturer are the heatsink and the PSU. Heatsinks are non-mechanical so there's very little concern on my part for their going wrong. I just think it's a bad idea to be completely beholden to one company. It gives them too much power to bump the price up. I helped a mate upgrade his Mac recently. Saved him £150 on the GPU by buying it from a separate retailer. However, he had to spend £40 on an adaptor to change from Apple's proprietary power socket to molex. That's the kind of stuff I actively avoid.Itsbastiat, Dawngate
Bastiat, Planetside 2, Miller NC
ClementAtlee, Planetside 2, Miller VS
Therin Khatta, FFXIV, Cerberus
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For $150 for about five years of support for sure. But I wouldn't pay more. And it'd cost a lot more to do all that.
It's a good idea in theory, but I can do it all myself and you'd never get it cheap enough to make it worth the time savings I'd get from it.
there are obviously two variants: software or driver issues and actual hardware failure RMA. I find the best support system to be the online forum, telephone is useless for this kind of stuff. So you'd first need to pinpoint the problem via the tech support forums. The people in the forums would be the same people who designed the computers, so they can pinpoint whether you need to rma very quickly. You would then get your hardware sent for rma with a detailed description of the issue to avoid delays.
$750 for the lowest end (think core i5 and 660ti)
$950 for mid-range (core i5, gtx680, watercooling, overclocked)
$1650 for the uber-high crazy rig (core i7 overclocked to 5Ghz, phase-change watercooling, gtx690)
So you definitely won't get $300 PCs but no something ridiculous like $1500-$6000 price tags from some of the boutique PC vendors.
Most of the problems I have had with my laptop were with games that, for whatever reason, did not work with my hardware very well. I would really love to be able to play games like Borderlands, Fallout, DX:HR or Oblivion without any issues, but I doubt I would want to pay a premium for it; I'm a cheapskate. In five years time, when I hopefully earn enough money to sustain myself, I'm guessing I would rather pay ~10 or 20% more just to be able to game more hassle-free than I am now.
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So, Windows 8 then.
Also, PC gamers who are also over-clockers, who also care about old games, probably build their own systems and this is anathema to me. I mean them. Us.
So, how about you pay over the odds for your PC by $140-$120 dollars but there's a chance it might be magical and grant you wishes. Okay, that's crazy. Say, one wish. This isn't the Apple model where purchasers assume they're now fairy princesses, this is an actual chance to be granted a wish. Worth the extra?
EDIT: you're conducting this same discussion over at QT3 as well. You need to get a hobby. Try video games.
Last edited by frightlever; 14-11-2012 at 12:18 PM.
The prices you suggest actually seem very reasonable.
How long would support on a PC last? How often would you expect/hope people upgrade and would support be tied into this, ie, you hope people would upgrade every four years, so you give them four years of support with drivers, overclocking profiles, tweaks etc.
If a company like this was around, I'd go for it with prices like that.
How is future software taken care of? For example, I buy a game and it hates my graphics card drivers and doesn't work right. What's the advantage to owning this box pc rather than my own, when most likely I'd just end up trawling forums looking for info on why I need to change part of a .ini file to force dynamic shadows off because my cards drivers don't like it? How would this company handle that so I don't have to do it.
Suppot would be comprised of hardware vendor support (usually lifetime or 3 years), and an online forum which more or less would give you an ongoing dialogue with a group of people intimately familiar with your hardware.
The online services would also be ongoing. Things like mods, game fixes and configuration tweaks would be available for two generations so about 8 years more or less. Ideally this vendor would release a new configuration every four years rather than every two minutes like Dell,HP etc.
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I think however that the googling/research/trying to fix things give you a feel for certain things and maybe even some confidence with PCs and software that can be useful for other areas like your job (of course working in non-IT sectors). This is a by-product of the above, but I have found out it's quite useful and some of those skills are appreciated in other areas.