Nikon's finance department has been forced to revise its quarterly revenue forecast in a southerly direction due to the fact that entry-level DSLRs are selling for lower prices than it originally expected. One of the culprits is likely to be the D3200 shown above, which is currently going on Amazon ...
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These aren't just any rechargeable batteries from the best brand of rechargeable batteries, these are the Eneloop XX AA 2500mAh rechargeables- the best of the best. Any more Xs in there and we'd have to card you. Lowest price ever, look like a prop from X-Men, regenerate like Wolverine. [Amazon]
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Ls5grO7Vi0w/the-best-eneloops-get-paid-to-download-apps-20-logit-1456056458Episode 1 of the documentary serial, UFC Primetime: St-Pierre vs. Hendricks, premiered Wednesday night and took fans inside the lives and camps of both welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre and challenger Johny Hendricks as they head into their UFC 167 main event bout next month. Watch the full episode above to see what kinds of training St. Pierre is doing in Montreal and Hendricks has been doing in Dallas.
A couple things stood out to Cagewriter while watching UFC Primetime. First off, St. Pierre seems completely focused on motivated to fight Hendricks.
When you're champ as long as the Canadian has been, there's always the question of if you can stay motivated to keep doing what you've been doing. In St. Pierre's case, there's been indication that he's already thinking of retirement.
In episode 1 of Primetime, however, we see a St. Pierre who is either a really good actor or that he is truly obsessed with Hendricks. Unfortunately, we'd already seen enough commercials and "films" that he's appeared in to know the former isn't the case.
But take two examples from last night's UFC Primetime to let the point sink in. St. Pierre talks about learning recently during a media tour to promote the fight that Hendricks was planning to get to Las Vegas - the site of the bout - three weeks early in order to train in and acclimate himself to the regulation-sized Octagon.
St. Pierre lost his mind thinking that his opponent might have even the smallest advantage there and so says he purchased and and had constructed a full-sized UFC Octagon replica in the Tri-Star gym in Montreal where he trains.
Also, Primetime shows that St. Pierre and his coach Firas Zihabi have brought in Rick Story to train with the champ in preparation for Hendricks and UFC 167. Now, Rick Story is an excellent fighter but he's certainly not red-hot or appearing to be at his all-time sharpest of late.
Story has lost two out of his last three bouts and four out of his last six. However, Story is the only person to have ever beaten Hendricks in an MMA bout, back in 2010. Therein lies his true value to the Hendricks-obsessed St. Pierre.
There's lots of fun intimate, family time and training footage in episode 1 of Primetime, but the main other take away for us was simply this - Johny Hendricks may have been the most adorable little kid in America.
While learning about Hendricks' life growing up in a tough, wrestling family, we're treated to photo after photo of Hendricks being way too cute for anyone's good. As fearsome as he looks now as a grown man and knockout specialist, it is hilarious to see pictures of a chubby-cheeked and wide-smiling little Johny in Primetime.
(Lil' Johny Hendricks. Cutest. Baby. Ever.)
Follow Elias on Twitter @EliasCepeda
This is the first report of a four-part series on adult education.
The national debate around education usually focuses on children in school. But there are 30 million adults in the U.S. who have trouble with basic literacy — they struggle to read a menu, a pay stub or a bus schedule.
It also means it's difficult for them to get and hold onto the most basic jobs.
Tens of thousands of other adult learners are slowly and painstakingly trying to fill in the gaps of their rudimentary schooling. The long shadow of their unfinished education still follows them every day.
Learning Which Route To Take
Shirley Ashley, 55, never learned how to read. With classes, she is finally able to read her own bills.
Shirley Ashley, 55, never learned how to read. With classes, she is finally able to read her own bills.
Shirley Ashley flips through a folder of certificates she's received in her adult education class. She stops at one that says "Top Performer," points to the words and starts reading.
"I know this is 'top' something, that means I'm doing good," she says.
The word "performer" is still a jumble of letters because Ashley, at 55, never learned how to read. In school she was always in classes for students with learning disabilities, but Ashley says she wasn't learning anything.
"I felt as though they just passed me just to get me out of school," she says.
In the seventh grade, after one teacher told her, "Whether you learn to read or not, I still get paid," Ashley decided to drop out.
She learned how to give her mother medicine based on the colors of the bottles. To hide the fact she was illiterate, Ashley memorized Bible verses so no one at her church suspected. And she limited her travel to a familiar route.
"I couldn't read the name of the bus, but I learned that the left-hand side of the street would take me downtown and the right-hand side of the street was going to bring me back home," she says.
Ashley's inability to read has made it hard to find a job. She's also seen those closest to her take advantage of her illiteracy, especially when it came to money.
"I would have to pay them, my family members, to come over my house to do a money order," she says. "Sometimes I give them $25, sometimes I give them $30."
Ashley's attended classes at a nonprofit literacy center on and off for about eight years. She initially tested at the kindergarten level; she's now reading at the second-grade level.
"When my gas bill come to my house I'm learning how to read where it says 'pay by July 17th.' That makes me feel awesome," she says.
Getting To The Next Level
Ashley is at the "low end" of the literacy spectrum. Jason White, another adult learner is a little further along.
Marilyn Block tutors Jason White during a one-on-one session that is part of the Literacy Council of Montgomery County at a local library.
White is 35 and grew up in Louisiana. He dropped out in the 11th grade after years of sitting idle in a special education class. White found ways to cover up his reading struggles, from pretending he's forgotten his reading glasses to relying on computer's "auto-complete" function — even when he was out with friends.
"Say if you're at dinner with five people and you can't make out or read what's on the menu, someone says they're going to have the salmon filet, you say, 'Well I'll have the salmon filet,' " White says.
He works as a construction worker, and in a sense he's lucky. Adults who dropped out of school are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as high school graduates. For those who do get hired, it often means low-end jobs with no hope of advancing. In tough times, they're often the first ones laid off.
For White, not being able to read means his career has stalled. To advance, he needs a contractor's license, and he hopes he'll be able to pass the exam next month.
"I'm very handy, and we do terrific work, but I'm technically not a contractor until I pass that exam," he says. "So it's, it's a little nerve-wracking, you know?"
White has spent the past two years learning to read with a tutor. Now, he can write his own checks and has just finished reading his first novel. He marvels that he can now read street signs.
"If we're driving somewhere, I can't help but read every sign we pass," he says. "It's like a different world."
FILE - In this July 30, 2013, file photo, Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then-Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., after receiving a verdict in his court martial. Manning, who was convicted of sending more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to the secrets-sharing website WikiLeaks, said in a letter posted by the Private Manning Support Network that she will go to court, if necessary, to be allowed to live as a woman and receive hormone replacement therapy. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, a men’s military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
FILE - In this July 30, 2013, file photo, Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then-Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., after receiving a verdict in his court martial. Manning, who was convicted of sending more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to the secrets-sharing website WikiLeaks, said in a letter posted by the Private Manning Support Network that she will go to court, if necessary, to be allowed to live as a woman and receive hormone replacement therapy. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, a men’s military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — Imprisoned documents leaker Chelsea Manning says she'll go to court, if necessary, to get treatment for gender identity disorder, also called gender dysphoria.
The Army private formerly known as Bradley Manning wrote in a letter to the Private Manning Support Network that her court-martial defense attorney, David Coombs, is helping her seek treatment for the disorder at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, a men's military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The support group posted the Oct. 28 letter on its website Wednesday.
Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for sending more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.
Manning, 25, wrote that she wants to at least be allowed to live as a woman and receive hormone replacement therapy. She said Coombs will represent her in those efforts "by assisting me in matters related to exhausting my administrative remedies and, if denied outright, in filing a writ before a court with jurisdiction."
Coombs said Thursday he had nothing to add to Manning's comments. After Manning announced her request in August, Coombs said he hoped the military prison would "do the right thing" so Manning wouldn't have to go to court.
The military has said it does not provide treatment for gender dysphoria. Pentagon policy dictates that transgender soldiers are not allowed to serve, but Manning can't be discharged until she's released from prison and exhausts appeals of her criminal convictions. The Army Medical Command has said prisoners cannot receive hormone treatment at Fort Leavenworth, though Manning is apparently the first to request it. Prison officials have said Manning won't be allowed to dress as a woman.
Manning was diagnosed with gender dysphoria by two Army behavioral health specialists before her trial, but the Army has said prisoners must be re-evaluated.
Fort Leavenworth spokeswoman Kimberly Lewis said the prison cannot release inmate medical information due to privacy laws.
Manning also wrote that Coombs will help her file a petition for a formal name change from Bradley to Chelsea. Prison officials have said name changes are allowed.
The letter was one of four from Manning that the support network published. In another, she apologized for an earlier public statement in which she rejected the "pacifist" label after receiving the 2013 Sean MacBride Peace Award. Manning wrote in her apology that her decision to leak classified information reflected her "dedication to transparency" and a concern for human life and equality.
The Associated Press respects Manning's wish to identify as female.
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Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-31-US-Manning-WikiLeaks/id-1898ad8b72bd4c0982c98a5400fbdfe7FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama walks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel toward a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama walks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel toward a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE This Oct. 29, 2013 file photo shows Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pausing while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)
This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, on Sunday, June 9, 2013, in Hong Kong. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras)
FILE - In this Friday, May 15, 1998 file photo, Jonathan Pollard speaks during an interview in a conference room at the Federal Correction Institution in Butner, N.C. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker, File)
In geopolitics, just as on the playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows.
Revelations that the U.S. has been monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret that even close allies keep things from one another — and work every angle to find out what's being held back.
So it is that the Israelis recruited American naval analyst Jonathan Pollard to pass along U.S. secrets including satellite photos and data on Soviet weaponry in the 1980s. And the British were accused of spying on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the lead-up to the Iraq War. And the French, Germans, Japanese, Israelis and South Koreans have been accused of engaging in economic espionage against the United States.
But now the technology revealed by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden has underscored the incredible new-millennium reach of the U.S. spy agency. And it is raising the question for some allies: Is this still OK?
National Intelligence Director James Clapper, for his part, testified this week that it is a "basic tenet" of the intelligence business to find out whether the public statements of world leaders jibe with what's being said behind closed doors.
What might the Americans have wanted to know from Merkel's private conversations, for example? Ripe topics could well include her thinking on European economic strategy and Germany's plans for talks with world powers about Iran's nuclear program.
There is both motive and opportunity driving the trust-but-verify dynamic in friend-on-friend espionage: Allies often have diverging interests, and the explosion of digital and wireless communication keeps creating new avenues for spying on one another. Further, shifting alliances mean that today's good friends may be on the outs sometime soon.
"It was not all that many years ago when we were bombing German citizens and dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese," says Peter Earnest, a 35-year veteran of the CIA and now executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington.
News that the U.S. has tapped foreign leaders' phones was an eye-opener to many — the White House claims that even President Barack Obama wasn't aware of the extent of the surveillance — and has prompted loud complaints from German, French and Spanish officials, among others.
It's all possible because "an explosion in different kinds of digital information tools makes it possible for intelligence agencies to vacuum up a vast quantity of data," says Charles Kupchan, a former Clinton administration official and now a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. "When you add together the Internet, wireless communications, cellphones, satellites, drones and human intelligence, you have many, many sources of acquiring intelligence."
"The magnitude of the eavesdropping is what shocked us," former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a radio interview. "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop, too. Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous."
Protests aside, diplomats the world around know the gist of the game.
"I am persuaded that everyone knew everything or suspected everything," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said of the reports of U.S. monitoring.
And while prime ministers and lawmakers across Europe and Asia say they are outraged, Clapper told Congress that other countries' own spy agencies helped the NSA collect data on millions of phone calls as part of cooperative counterterror agreements.
Robert Eatinger, the CIA's senior deputy general counsel, told an American Bar Association conference on Thursday that European spy services have stayed quiet throughout the recent controversy because they also spy on the U.S.
"The services have an understanding," Eatinger said. "That's why there wasn't the hue and cry from them."
And another intelligence counsel says the White House can reasonably deny it knows everything about the U.S. spying that's going on.
"We don't reveal to the president or the intelligence committees all of the human sources we are recruiting. ... They understand what the programs are, and the president and chairs of the intelligence committees both knew we were seeking information about leadership intentions," said Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "They both saw reporting indicating what we were getting if not indicating the source."
Still, Claude Moraes, a British Labor Party politician and member of the European Union delegation that traveled to Washington this week for talks about U.S. surveillance, was troubled by the broad net being cast by U.S. intelligence.
"Friend-upon-friend spying is not something that is easily tolerable if it doesn't have a clear purpose," he said. "There needs to be some kind of justification. ... There is also a question of proportionality and scale."
Obama has promised a review of U.S. intelligence efforts in other countries, an idea that has attracted bipartisan support in Congress.
The United States already has a written intelligence-sharing agreement with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand known as "Five Eyes," and France and Germany might be interested in a similar arrangement.
Paul Pillar, a professor at Georgetown University and former CIA official, worries that a backlash "runs the risk of restrictions leaving the United States more blind than it otherwise would have been" to overseas developments.
The effort to strike the right balance between surveillance and privacy is hardly new.
University of Notre Dame political science professor Michael Desch, an expert on international security and American foreign and defense policies, says the ambivalence is epitomized by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson's famous line, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Stimson, who served under President Herbert Hoover, shut down the State Department's cryptanalytic office in 1929.
"Leaks about NSA surveillance of even friendly countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and now France make clear that we no longer share Stimson's reticence on this score," Desch said. "While such revelations are a public relations embarrassment, they also reflect the reality that in this day in age, gentlemen do read each other's mail all of the time, even when they are allies."
In fact, a database maintained by the Defense Personnel Security Research Center covering Americans who committed espionage against the U.S. includes activity on behalf of a wide swath of neutral or allied countries since the late 1940s. U.S. citizens have been arrested for conducting espionage on behalf of South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Israel, the Netherlands, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Ghana, Liberia, South Africa, El Salvador and Ecuador, according to the database.
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Associated Press Writers Deb Riechmann and Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.
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Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-31-Why%20Spy%20on%20Allies/id-a6331f33c99d43f4b2e81f7b7c685ebbForced to pull out of Bellator's inaugural Pay-Per-View event after fracturing his neck last week, Tito Ortiz says he plans on returning to action sooner than some believed possible.
"Ppl I will have 100% recovery & will be back n the gym in 6 weeks," Ortiz posted to Twitter. "I'm a fighter & I love competition. I was doing great n training but accident do happen. Just time to reshuffle the deck & deal another hand. #positiveminded"
Ortiz, of course, was originally slated to face fellow former UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton Jackson in the main event at Bellator 106 on Nov. 2, the promotion's first foray in PPV. With Tito removed, Jackson was shifted to a later card where he'll face former UFC heavyweight Joey Beltran. Bellator 106, no longer a PPV, will now be headlined by the lightweight title rematch between champion Michael Chandler and Eddie Alvarez.
At 38, Ortiz has had a trying past few years. With just a single win in nine tries dating back to 2006, many are left wondering what would be left to prove.
5 MUST-READ STORIES
Machida-Belfort. Lyoto Machida says he wants Vitor Belfort next, but his management doesn't think Belfort's camp want any part of it. "Even if Vitor loses to Dan Henderson, I'd want to fight him in our weight class."
Reebok and Hendricks. Landing a sponsorship deal with Reebok, Johny Hendricks will be the first to sport the brand inside the Octagon.
PPV numbers. Dave Meltzer takes a look at why UFC 165 and UFC 166 may not have reached expectations. "Today it's very clear that big personalities who can fight reasonably well trump even the combination of skill, size and fighting ability at the highest level, and even heaviest level, when it comes to what gets people to spend their money."
20 in 20. Chuck Mindenhall's series reaches 2011, where the year's best action all took place on one night in two different shows.
Chat wrap. Make sure to catch up on the latest MMA buzz during Luke Thomas' weekly live chat.
MEDIA STEW
Pre-fight interviews with Georges St-Pierre and Johny Hendricks.
Free fight: Georges St-Pierre vs. Matt Hughes II.
Eddie Alvarez prepares for Michael Chandler.
Ross Pearson talks the stoppage.
Marina Shafir nails Uriah Hall in the stomach.
Pros pick GSP vs. Hendricks.
Peggy Morgan vs. Sarah Moras.
Amputee and Soldier Joshua Rector wins his MMA debut.
Bonus flying armbar.
TWEETS
So, Twitter decided not to cooperate last night and for some reason refused to let me embed tweets. I'll try to get it sorted ASAP. Sorry for the screen grabs.
Gentle Ben.
Grice doing well.
Eddie in good shape.
Mayhem in the gym.
TUF night (?)
FIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTS
Announced yesterday (Oct. 30 2013)
Quinton Jackson vs. Joey Beltran at Bellator 108
cancelled Johnny Eduardo vs. Lucas Martins at UFC Fight Night 32
Zak Cummings out, Sean Spencer vs. Sergio Moraes at TUF 18 Finale
canceled Alexandra Albu vs. Julie Kedzie at UFC Fight Night 33
Rick Glenn vs. Georgi Karakhanyan at WSOF 7
Peter Graham vs. Cheick Kongo at Bellator 107
FANPOST OF THE DAY
Today's Fanpost of the Day comes via heavyfl0w.
MMA's Scariest Situations: A Halloween Themed Article (Perhaps?)
Halloween is my least favorite holiday, and I don't know what would come in second. This is an odd way to start an article about being scared, true. But I detest it. I think it brings out the worst in people, especially in regards to the whole trick-or-treat culture. You have kids running full speed in the dark and shoving other kids out of the way to get first dibs on the prime candy spots; you have lazy, absentee parents "taking" their kids trick-or-treating (when all they're doing is inching up the street in their cars, making it impossible to drive); worst of all, you have people pretending to be someone else and pretending to scare other people, which is an affront to all those special folks doing those things for real the other 364 days of the year. It's kind of like New Years Eve, where all those non-drinkers have a few whiskey sours and end up passed out in their neighbors flower bed singing "Bennie and the Jets" and vomiting at the same time. Simply put, it's amateur hour.
That being said, I'm trying to get into the spirit, because I have children in my life. You don't want to be an ogre, because that energy rubs off on kids. Since I can't figure out how to transition from opining on Halloween to opining on things about MMA that would scare the shit out of me if I was forced to experience them ... well, here are some things about MMA that would scare the shit out of me if I was forced to experience them.
Getting into a leglock battle with a Japanese guy.
One of the most important adages in life, "never play footsies with a Japanese guy" is right up there with "never play cards with anyone who has the same first name as a city". It's just a bad idea. You're scrambling, you think you have something, and next thing you know, you're tapping rapidly. Actually, I just thought of a better one ...
Check out the rest of the post here.
Found something you'd like to see in the Morning Report? Just hit me up on Twitter @SaintMMA and we'll include it in tomorrow's column.
Courtesy Everett Collection
From left: Wiest, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Allen on the set of 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters."
This story first appeared in the Nov. 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Tom Donahue's documentary Casting By, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2012, uses the careers of casting directors such as Marion Dougherty, Lynn Stalmaster and Juliet Taylor -- between them responsible for the ensembles of such films as Midnight Cowboy, Manhattan, Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate -- to lament that casting is the only "single-card" opening credit that isn't recognized by the Academy Awards. With Casting By opening in New York on Nov. 1 and a week later in Los Angeles, Woody Allen wrote to THR to support the recognition of casting directors by championing his own:
PHOTOS: 'Blue Jasmine' Premiere: Cate Blanchett, Peter Sarsgaard Hit the Red Carpet in L.A.
In my case certainly, the casting director plays a vital part in the making of the movie. My history shows that my films are full of wonderful performances by actors and actresses I had never heard of and were not only introduced to me by my casting director, Juliet Taylor, but, in any number of cases, pushed on me against my own resistance. People like Jeff Daniels, Mary Beth Hurt, Patricia Clarkson and others who are people I was unfamiliar with. A number of discoveries and careers have been launched by the energies and resourcefulness of my casting director. Not only did I use Meryl Streep for a small part in Manhattan when she was a relative unknown, but at the best my casting director helped start the film career of Mariel Hemingway and Dianne Wiest, a stage actress completely unknown to me but known by Juliet Taylor. I’m particularly difficult in the casting area because the whole process bores and embarrasses me. If it were up to me we would use the same half dozen people in all my pictures, whether they fit or not. Despite my recalcitrance, Juliet has forced me to meet and to watch the work of many new people and to hire people on nothing more then her strong recommendation. Because my films are not special effects films and are about human beings, proper casting is absolutely essential. I owe a big part of the success of my films to this scrupulous casting process which I must say if left to my own devices would never have happened. I might add also, anecdotally, that despite my firm conviction that I could never persuade luminaries like Saul Bellow, Marshall McLuhan, Susan Sontag, Mayor Koch and others to work in my films, the confidence and insistence of my casting director proved more accurate and I wound up getting these unlikely notables.
Sincerely,
Woody Allen
Another to add the the list of rumors about what's next for Google has magically surfaced tonight. According to ex-WSJ reporter Amir Efrati, Kit Kat will focus on unifying Android and making the OS run better on low-end hardware.
Specifically, he says it was designed for devices with 512MB of RAM, like the millions of devices in the wild running older versions of the OS. Google using a phone with a Snapdragon 800 and 2GB of RAM — if rumored specifications are to be believed — as a lead device for software designed for devices with old hardware is a bit puzzling though. This would be best done using the Nexus S, which Google surely has access to.
Additionally, Google has provided support for sensors such as a step detector and step counter, and and added what they are calling a geomagnetic rotation vector. This would enable Android to run as a fitness tracker as well as have more accurate and detailed location reporting. Bluetooth HID over GATT and Bluetooth MAP are additional services that would seem to suggest better wearable support.
Finally, It's said that there will be native support for IR controllers, such as the types used for televisions. We've seen these on devices before, though without support at the OS level.
Really, there's nothing here that hasn't been rumored for months. We'll know how much of it all is true, and what is just rampant speculation soon.
Source: Jessica Lessin
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/OVKvqyi4uEM/story01.htm
