| Dream House TV
On a yet-to-be-chosen date, the redone home with an outdated kitchen will be the subject of a seven-minute segment on one of HGTV's most-watched shows.
"It'll be neat -- our seven minutes of fame," Norris said, after more than six hours of taping ended one rainy October afternoon.
The Baltimore homeowners are among a growing number of people mesmerized by house and landscape shows -- enough for HGTV to program extensively (more than 20 hours a day) about frog homes turned into princes, house projects and crafts, home-selling hints and buying tips, design how-tos and more. And that doesn't touch similar programs.
The cable channel is 13 years old this month; the grandpa of these shows, the nuts-and-bolts This Old House, is in its 29th season on PBS.
'Indiana Jones' whips up Cannes premiere
If you're just dying to see "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" before its worldwide premiere, you may need to take a trip to the South of France. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford's long-awaited return to the "Indiana Jones" franchise will have its world premiere on Sunday, May 18 at the Cannes Film Festival. If you don't want to play the money to fly to Cannes -- and, let's face it, you probably couldn't have gotten tickets anyway -- "Indy 4" will open around the world on May 22. While Variety is reporting that the "Indiana Jones" premiere is essentially a done-deal, the trade paper takes great pains to note that nothing will be official until Cannes organizers announce the full festival slate in August. Spielberg is still editing and scoring the film -- which would presumably screen in an out-of-competition capacity -- and has yet to show even a rough cut to anybody.
Show me the money and the perks
Not surprisingly, that shortage is pushing up wages. The latest EMA National Salary and Wage Survey showed that it wasn't just the bosses who got the big pay rises over the year to August. Although managing directors of companies with 50 to 199 staff did very well for themselves with average pay rises of 9.5% for the year, they were eclipsed by shop assistants, who achieved average pay rises of 9.9%. Other jobs which provided pay rises well above the average 4.5%, were registered electricians (9.2%), registered nurses (9.1%), diesel mechanics (8.4%) and general clerks (6.3%). However, that may be just the tip of the iceberg. A survey of pay and conditions by remuneration consultants DSD Consulting showed that companies were having to do much more than just increase pay to attract and retain staff.
Iraq Massacres
But it turns out that not just weapons parts are being used to bait Iraqis, but even cameras. As if no innocent Iraqi would pick up a spare camera. Tuesday, September 25: Allen L Roland: *AHMADINEJAD SHINES WHILE BUSH TRASHES AND DEMONIZES HIM (3 comments) I just watched the heavily edited ten minute video interview of Scott Pelley's CBS interview with Iran's president Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad came across as a skilled intelligent debater who more than held his own with Pelley and his talking points were delivered with the calm conviction of someone who knows who he is, what he believes and what he wants whereas Pelley came across as a boorish flack for the White House line. Don Williams: Bush's War Has Only Begun Once again, America is swallowing a big, fat lie. Monday, September 24: Michael Collins: Ten Things Congress Did Instead of Getting Us The Hell Out of Iraq (2 comments) 4.
First Look: Apple TV, take two
Should Steve Jobs' presentation have blotted the functionality of the “original" Apple TV from your memory, allow me to compare and contrast that original device with the “Take Two" update announced during Jobs' address. Price: Okay, easily done. The 40GB Apple TV sold for $299 and yesterday Apple shaved $70 from the price tag. The 160GB Apple TV, which those of us who preferred to stream our content thought bore more storage than necessary, moved from $399 to $329; another $70 price drop. (People who invested in the early days of the Apple TV will be rewarded not by a $70 rebate but by receiving the new "Take Two" software update as a free download in two weeks.) Content: For the most part, you had to move content to the original Apple TV from your computer (streaming YouTube videos and previews from the iTunes Store being the exception).
Toshiba weighs into Macbook Air with slim Portege
The R500 not only has 3G connectivity, it also has three USB ports to Air's one, and it includes an internal DVD drive, removable battery, a full-size DVI video port, a PC Card slot, Gigabit Ethernet and a Firewire connector. All of the latter are missing from the Macbook Air. Chan said that the R500 weighs just 1kg as well, to the Air's 3lb (1.35kg), and is thinner. The one area where the Air scores is screen size - it has a 13.3-inch TFT, versus the R500's 12-inch. .
Archive for: January, 2008
Ed Burnette's Dev Connection Latest Post | Last 10 Posts | Archives TiVo judgment is fascinating, yet frightening Posted in: General Patents Linux Ok, I know most people would not consider a 37-page legal opinion "fascinating". But as a computer science major and armchair software patent quarterback (not to mention long-time TiVo fan), that's exactly how I'd describe today's written decision by the US Court of Appeals in which they ruled that EchoStar (Dish Network) infringes on TiVo's "time-warp" patent. I mean, how can you not appreciate passages like this one, which delves into one of life's great mysteries: is the word "an" singular or plural? As a general rule, the words “a" or “an" in a patent claim carry the meaning of “one or more." That is particularly true when those words are used in combination with the open-ended antecedent “comprising." However, the question whether “a" or “an" is treated as singular or plural depends heavily on the context of its use.
Homebuyers hit by 'near prime' crunch
On Friday, Cheltenham & Gloucester said it would no longer lend to borrowers who had less than a 10% deposit. It follows Nationwide Building Society, which has raised rates for new borrowers with less than a 25% deposit. Those with just a 10% deposit will now pay 0.20 of a percentage point more on their deal compared with last month. Several other lenders have also pulled mortgage deals that offered more than 100% of a property's value. Meanwhile, the market for sub-prime borrowers has all but disappeared. 'Nationwide has effectively priced itself out of the first-time buyers market,' says Ray Boulger at mortgage broker John Charcol. 'Other lenders will follow. It's bad news for borrowers.' Keith Mullins, 35, and his partner Leigh Genery, 29, moved into a new house in Welling, Kent, in January.
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