Enthusiasm Still Strong For DVD

Gmail Gets A Panic Button

First there was 'Gmail goggles,' now 'undo.' From the Official Gmail Blog:
Sometimes I regret sending a message the morning after. Other times I send a message and then immediately notice a mistake. I forget to attach a file or email the birthday girl that I can't make her surprise party. I can rush to close my browser or unplug the Internet — but Gmail almost always wins that race.

An email to the wrong Larry pushed me over the edge. I could undo just about any other action in Gmail — why couldn’t I undo send? Many people agreed, including Yuzo Fujishima, an engineer in the Tokyo office. My theory (which others shared) was that even just five seconds would be enough time to catch most of those regrettable emails.

And now you can do just that. Turn on Undo Send in Gmail Labs under Settings, and you’ll see a new “Undo” link on every sent mail confirmation. Click “Undo,” and we’ll grab the message before it’s sent and take you right back to compose.
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(Reuters) - U.S. researchers have found a gene responsible for turning a plate of pasta into fat, offering new clues about how the body metabolizes carbohydrates and how they contribute to obesity.

The gene, called DNA-PK, appears to regulate the process in the liver that turns carbohydrates into fat, the University of California, Berkeley team reported on Thursday in the journal Cell.

"We hope that this research will one day help people eat bread, pasta and rice and not worry about getting fat," Roger Wong, a graduate student who worked on the study, said in a statement.

When they bred mice with a disabled version of this gene, the mice stayed slim even when fed the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat pasta buffet.

"The DNA-PK disabled mice were leaner and had 40 percent less body fat compared with a control group of normal mice because of their deficiency in turning carbs into fat," Wong said.

He said the mice who lacked this gene did not get fat when they ate high-carb food and they had lower levels of blood cholesterol, which can reduce the risk of heart disease.

Since humans have the same gene, the team thinks it may serve as a potential target for drugs to prevent obesity.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Sandra Maler)

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Ron Silver Dies At 62

Actor and political activist Ron Silver reportedly died this morning, succumbing to a long battle with esophageal cancer.

The 62 year old actor had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years and reportedly died in his sleep with family and friends nearby.

Silver has starred in numerous films, TV shows, and stage plays over the last 30 years in addition to being quite politically active. Notably Silver had recurring roles on The West Wing, Veronica's Closet, and Chicago Hope.

Before getting into acting, Silver taught Spanish for several years in the 1960s at Roosevelt High School, a Jewish boarding school in Connecticut. Because of his knowledge of Chinese, he sought employment with the US Government and traveled to Taiwan in the early 1970s.

Silver was no stranger to politics, he was a known supporter of the Democratic party for many years and helped found the Creative Coalition in 1989. After the 9/11 attacks, Silver surprisingly became a supporter for President Bush's reelection in 2004.

Most recently he hosted a public affairs talk show on Sirius satellite radio.

The super-rare Action Comics number one that was recently put up for auction has sold for $317,200. The 1938 book, graded a 6.0 by CGC, is one of the best condition copies of the 100 left known to exist and was purchased in the early 1950s for 35 cents in a secondhand store.

Sold on ComicConnect.com, the winning bid for the 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1 was submitted Friday evening by John Dolmayan, drummer for the rock band System of a Down, according to website managers.

Dolmayan, who is also a dealer of rare comic books, said he acquired the Superman comic on behalf of a client he declined to identify.

"This is one of the premier books you could collect," he said in a telephone interview. "It's considered the Holy Grail of comic books. I talked to my client, and we made the move."

Dolmayan said the client has "a small collection, but everything he has is incredible."

Stephen Fishler, co-owner of the auction site said "Maybe in a booming economy, it would have done a hundred grand more, but in this economy, I think the price is great."


The (Real) Science Behind 'Lie to Me'

In "Lie to Me", Tim Roth plays Dr. Cal Lightman, a deception consultant & expert based on clinical psychologist Paul Ekman, a leading expert on lie detection. Popular Mechanics catches up with Ekman, and asks how well his life and research translate to the small screen, delving into the science behind Fox's latest drama.

If Fox's Fringe is full of junk science (including people who walk through walls and communicate with the dead), then Lie to Me, the network's newest law enforcement-themed drama, is just the opposite.
At the show's center is Cal Lightman (Tim Roth), a scientist whose expertise is detecting and interpreting "micro" expressions—involuntary facial expressions that last just a moment—a useful skill if you want to want to figure out whether someone's lying, and why. Lightman runs a consulting firm from which he and three supporting characters traverse the Washington, D.C., area solving mysteries for the police, FBI and pretty much any other client who needs a lie detector.

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Financially struggling Sirius XM Radio Inc. is planning to stream its subscription radio service to the iPhone and iPod Touch devices from Apple Inc. beginning this spring.

After narrowly avoiding a filing for bankruptcy protection last month, the nation's only satellite radio provider wants to step up sales directly to consumers. New car purchases - which had been Sirius' best source of customers - are way down.

Sirius XM also said in a call Thursday to discuss its fourth-quarter earnings that it's ramping up efforts to reach buyers of used cars with factory-installed satellite radios.

"We've been testing a number of initiatives to make the Sirius XM content and experience more ubiquitous," said Jim Meyer, president of operations and sales at New York-based Sirius.

Sirius now has 19 million subscribers, up 10 percent from a year earlier.

Apple Unveils New iPod Shuffle

From Macworld:
Apple on Wednesday introduced the next generation iPod shuffle. The shuffle has always been Apple’s smallest iPod, but now it is nearly half the size of the previous model at 1.8 inches tall by 0.3 inches thin.

The new iPod shuffle bumps storage up to 4GB and features VoiceOver, which enables the iPod to speak your song titles, artists, and playlist names. The shuffle can speak 14 languages: including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone Product Marketing, told Macworld that the iPod shuffle will automatically recognize what language it should speak. If you have a preference of which language you would like, it can be changed in iTunes.
According to Apple, the third-generation iPod shuffle holds up to 1,000 songs encoded at 128 Kbps.

Woman Gets Hit With $5000 Netbook Bill

Remember that $99 netbook that hit Radio Shack in December? It's an Acer Aspire 3G netbook that sells for only $99 with a two year $60/month data plan from AT&T.

But what about that fine print in the AT&T contract...Oklahoma resident Billie Parks didn't read it apparently, and signed up for the deal. Her bill for the first month of service? $5,077. You see, there is a little Internet data usage cap of 5GB on that $60/month plan; fairly common with most carriers nowadays. Any usage beyond that 5GB a month results in substantial overage fees.

She has now filed a lawsuit against Rat Shack and AT&T, citing fraud, but AT&T says the details on those additional charges can be easily found. The devil is apparently in those details somewhere too...

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Microsoft's Future Of Computing in 2019

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&showPlaylist=true&from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>
Something tells me a lot of businesses will be behind the curve, still using Windows 7 and Office 2013...

Cinematic Titanic is the new movie riffing show from the creator and original cast of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, live on-stage at the Paramount Theater in Austin!
Like MST3K, the show was created by Joel Hodgson and features the same team that first brought the award winning cult-classic series to life: Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff, and Mary Jo Pehl. Cinematic Titanic continues the tradition of riffing on ‘the unfathomable’, ‘the horribly great’, and the just plain ‘cheesy’ movies from the past.
Tonight the movie being riffed will be The Dynamite Brothers. Fans of MST3K and stuff like Alamo Drafthouse's Weird Wednesday will not want to miss it.
I just checked and you can STILL buy tickets for tonight's show at GetTix.net!
Below is an example of what to expect:


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Final Full Star Trek Trailer

Virgin Stores Closing Nationwide

Video Business:
Virgin Megastores will shutter its entire chain by this summer, confirmed a spokeswoman for the retailer.

As disclosed earlier this year, the chain’s flagship Times Square store is slated to wind down business in April. The San Francisco location is slated also to close in April.

The remaining outlets will shut down in staggered fashion, with Virgin's Union Square, New York, spot closing in late May/early June, and the remaining three Orlando, Denver and Hollywood locations targeted for summer exits.

Unlike the bankrupt Circuit City, it’s understood that many Virgin Megastore outposts were relatively financially stable. For some time, Virgin had been positioning itself as an overall entertainment lifestyle retailer, distancing itself from its history as a pure music seller.

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Action Comics Number 1 For Sale


A rare copy of Action Comics No. 1 is up for auction. This is the comic book where Superman made his first appearance, and is extremely rare.

Current bidding for this bad boy is at $276,200 and has 10 days to go. It originally sold for 10 cents in 1938.

Copies of Action Comics No. 1 in "fine" condition are worth about $126,000, but this one could sell for several times that. Only about 100 copies of the No. 1 edition are known to exist.

The owner, who was not identified, bought the sale magazine for 35 cents in 1950 and held onto it for 58 years. The auction will end on March 13.
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From CinemaBlend:
Judd Apatow's name has been attached the rumors about Ghostbusters 3 since they first began, with all reports saying he would be the producer for the film written by The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Greg Stupnitsky. Now the production has gotten so close to actually happening that Production Weekly is listing it-- and wouldn't you know, Apatow Productions is right there in charge.


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