Jury Finds Blagojevich Guilty of Corruption

Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat who former aides say once envisioned himself as a future presidential contender, was found guilty of most of the 20 federal counts against him: 17 counts of wire fraud, attempted extortion, soliciting bribes, conspiracy to commit extortion and conspiracy to solicit and accept bribes.

As the verdicts were read aloud in court, one ?guilty? following another, Mr. Blagojevich, who has always proclaimed his innocence, turned, his jaw clenched grimly, to look at his wife, Patti, in the front row. By then, she was already slumped back in the arms of a relative, eyes closed, wiping away tears.

The verdict appeared to be the conclusion, at last, to the spectacle of Mr. Blagojevich?s political career, which began its spiraling descent shortly after Mr. Obama was elected president in November 2008. A month after Election Day, Mr. Blagojevich, who was in his second term as governor and under state law was required to name a senator to replace Mr. Obama, was arrested, and federal agents revealed that they had secretly recorded hundreds of hours of damaging phone calls by him and his advisers.

Mr. Blagojevich, a lawyer and former state and federal lawmaker, was accused of trying to secure campaign contributions, a cabinet post or a high-paying job in exchange for his official acts as governor ? whether that was picking a senator, supporting particular legislation or deciding how to spend state money. Mr. Blagojevich was acquitted on one charge of bribery, and the jury deadlocked on two counts of attempted extortion, but convictions came on the bulk of the counts and on those related to the Senate seat ? the claims that had drawn international headlines.

The outcome came as a victory for federal prosecutors, whose earlier trial resulted in a deadlocked jury on most counts and led people to wonder whether Mr. Blagojevich?s behavior would ultimately be deemed crass political deal-making or a lot of wishful, blustery talk, but not rise to the level of crimes.

Issuing their verdicts on the 10th day of deliberations, jurors said the accusations related to selling the Senate seat had been the clearest and easiest to resolve, in part because of the audio recordings of Mr. Blagojevich?s telephone calls. In the end, the jurors ? 11 women and 1 man, all of whom declined to provide their names to reporters ? said they believed they had sent a loud signal to corrupt Illinois politicians, past and future.

?There?s a lot of bargaining that goes on behind the scenes ? we do that in our everyday lives, in business and everything,? said the jury forewoman, a retired church employee from the Chicago suburbs. ?But I think in the instances when it is someone representing the people, it crosses the line. And I think we sent a pretty clear message on that.?

And she had her own conclusion about the unseemly political world she had seen close-up through about six weeks of testimony: ?I told my husband that if he was running for politics, he would probably have to find a new wife.?

For Democrats here, in a state government they almost entirely control, the final chapter could not come soon enough. By turns, Illinois residents had been mortified by the saga, amused by its circuslike antics and, most recently, weary of the whole thing.

Mr. Blagojevich?s impeachment, removal from office and evolution into a punch line on late-night television threatened the Democratic Party?s political hold on the state, created an outcry to overhaul lax state campaign finance and public records laws, and led to added scrutiny of some of this city?s best-known politicians, including Mr. Obama, Rahm Emanuel (the president?s former chief of staff and now Chicago?s mayor) and Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr.

The scandal also reaffirmed an image that Illinois has long wished to shed: Mr. Blagojevich appears likely to be the fourth governor in recent memory to be imprisoned (one for acts committed after leaving office).

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The Champions: A Congressman?s Pet Project; a Railroad?s Boon

With a price tag of $1.2 billion at completion, the rail line is expected to serve just 2,150 commuters a day when it starts operating in three years. It will not link to the Orlando airport or Disney World, among the region?s biggest traffic generators. Florida?s governor is even considering killing the project, worried that local government officials will rebel if they have to cover any shortfalls at the fare box.

But the so-called SunRail project has survived, at least so far, a testament to the ability of one congressman to help push through hundreds of millions of dollars in federal spending, even at a time of deep concern over ballooning federal deficits.

Representative John L. Mica, a Florida Republican and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has spent years badgering federal agencies, bullying state officials, blocking Amtrak naysayers and trying to bypass federal restrictions to build support and squash opposition to the commuter line.

While Congress is often stalled or bitterly divided in dealing with some of the biggest issues facing the nation, its members are often remarkably successful in promoting industries or more parochial concerns. Mr. Mica?s championing of the SunRail project has won praise among many officials and business leaders here, who say it is vital to the future of the traffic-clogged region.

But skeptics question whether Mr. Mica?s real goal is to give a taxpayer-financed gift to CSX, the freight rail giant and a generous Mica campaign donor, which would get $432 million for its tracks and for upgrades to tracks it owns elsewhere in the state. Other Florida businesses close to Mr. Mica also stand to benefit if the project is built.

?His dedication to SunRail is not for mass transit ? it is for helping CSX to get government funds for its private freight lines,? said State Senator Paula Dockery, a Republican and a chief critic of the project.

The congressman is unapologetic about SunRail. ?Everybody has different vested interests,? Mr. Mica said in an interview. ?But you look at what is being proposed on paper, and it just make sense.?

Mr. Mica first proposed the commuter system in 1992 after he won his first race for the House after a career that included stints as a real estate developer, a lobbyist and chief of staff to Senator Paula Hawkins, Republican of Florida. The CSX track, which for decades has also been used by Amtrak, already connects a string of communities north and south of Orlando. Commuter rail, Mr. Mica argued, could carry many more passengers and be far less costly than adding a single lane to an Interstate highway.

?For as long as I have been in Congress, Central Florida has been sending its mass transit money to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and now to other cities ? that is where our gas tax dollars have gone,? he said.

But getting even a small fraction of the 2.3 million people living along the rail corridor to ride trains may be difficult, state officials acknowledge. Separating drivers from their cars would be like forcing Mickey and Minnie Mouse to divorce.

The federal government, wary of financing boondoggle projects, has strict rules on how ridership projections are calculated. Florida?s Department of Transportation, mindful of Mr. Mica?s keen interest, looked for ways to push up the number of projected riders, efforts that federal regulators found dubious.

Florida officials, for example, assumed that large numbers of commuters heading from one point in the suburbs to another would be willing to undertake a bus-to-rail-to-bus trip, a travel pattern that federal officials told them ?cannot be found on any existing commuter rail service in the United States.?

Mr. Mica describes himself as a fiscal conservative, arguing that ?all taxpayer-funded infrastructure projects must be wise investments.? But he has pulled strings in Washington to get special consideration for the project.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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Virtual Reality: This beautiful Japanese girl does not exist

Eguchi Aimi is the latest member of the Japanese pop band AKB 48. The only problem is that she, unlike the other six members, doesn't actually exist. Aimi was first featured in a 15 second advertisement for some new candy by a company called Ezaki Glico.

Fans of the band went crazy to find out who the seventh member of the band was. They were convinced that her features were more the result of good genes than the skillful use of computer graphics, according to ChannelNews Asia.

AKB 48's management even created a fake profile page for Aimi that claimed she was a 16-year-old girl from Saitama. Furthermore, Aimi was featured in a magazine, complete with faked photos and biodata. Here's the commercial that started it all:

Ezaki Glico eventually confirmed that Aimi Eguchi wasn't real. The new group member is a computer-generated composite of the real band members. Her pretty face was made up of the "best features" of six other members: Atsuko Maeda (eyes), Tomomi Itano (nose), Mariko Shinoda (mouth), Yuko Oshima (hair/ body), Minami Takahashi (outline), and Mayu Watanabe (eyebrows).

They called her a virtual idol. Her existence was just composed of 1s and 0s stored as 150GB of data. Here's the making-of video, which goes into a bit more detail:

Some argue that while Eguchi is not a real person, she is exactly what some seek out in a celebrity. Many fans want an artificial persona created from a combination of the traits they love the most.

Forget all the science fiction you know about humans falling in love with robots and the problems that ensue. This is even more mind-boggling as the "person" is just data and doesn't even have a physical body.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44438-virtual-reality-this-beautiful-japanese-girl-does-not-exist.html

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Super Talent's new USB 3.0 drive promises 270MB/s speeds

Let me tell you a little story about this fellow named Joe Enthusiast. When SuperSpeed USB 3.0 was finalized nearly three years ago, Mr. Enthusiast was enamored by the specification's promise of delivering a tenfold speed boost over its predecessor. So seduced by thought of 30-second 1080p movie transfers, he seized his first opportunity to purchase a new desktop platform and chassis to harness the power of USB 3.0.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until after those upgrades that Mr. Enthusiast discovered a harsh truth: few USB flash drives are actually fast enough to matter. Although the market has evolved the last couple of years, most USB 3.0 flash drives aren't exactly blisteringly fast today either. We recently tested three USB 3.0 flash drives and one of them barely operated quicker in USB 3.0 than USB 2.0, while the others hardly astounded us.

We're still waiting for a USB 3.0 flash drive to sweep us off our feet, and while we don't want to jump to any conclusions, it seems like Super Talent may have the winning ticket. The company has been talking up its new USB 3.0 Express RC8 flash drive lately, parading the device at recent technology conferences. Announced late last month, the drive packs a last-gen SandForce SF-1222 processor and an eight-channel architecture.

In other words, it's a pocket-sized SSD. Super Talent cites maximum operating speeds of 270MB/s reads and 240MB/s writes. By comparison, the fastest drive in our recent roundup (the Patriot SuperSonic) had a purported operating speed of up to 100MB/s and 70MB/s. Despite being a fully-fledged SSD, Super Talent's RC8 is only marginally larger than the drives we tested in April, measuring 93.5 x 25 x 8mm (3.68 x 0.98 x 0.31in).

"[The] RC8 blurs the line between flash drives and SSDs. Now SSD reliability, performance and capacities can be had in a portable USB 3.0 flash drive," boasts a Super Talent representative. When the company announced the RC8 last month, it expected to ship the drive on June 15. We're not sure if they met that target, but the device is expected to come in 25GB, 50GB and 100GB capacities with the 50GB unit priced at about $110.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44435-super-talents-new-usb-30-drive-promises-270mb-s-speeds.html

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Facebook May Mobilize on Web Apps

Rumor has it that Facebook is trying to sidestep Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market with a neat technical trick: a Web-based platform for apps.

Facebook has yet to confirm the existence of the effort, allegedly code-named "Project Spartan." But if the rumor is true, the effort could threaten Apple and Google's dominance in mobile software, and give a boost to Web applications over native apps, by appealing to Facebook's huge and captive user base and by leveraging the social connections between users.

Facebook already lets developers build apps to run on top of its platform, and they've created thousands of games, utilities, and even business apps. But these are designed for the desktop, not the mobile or tablet platforms that are growing rapidly in popularity.

Mobile Web apps built on top of Facebook, and that run entirely in the browser, using widely supported technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS, would free developers from the need to create several version of their software for different mobile platforms. Developers could also use Facebook Credits, which the company is hoping to expand into a universal micropayment system accessible across the Web. Facebook takes the same cut from Credits that Apple does from its App Store: 30 percent.

"If the rumors are true, it means that Facebook is planning to use Web technologies to create a whole new app ecosystem for iOS-based and other mobile devices," says Ron Perry, chief technology officer at Worklight, a company that provides tools for building mobile applications.

Facebook could also increase its influence in the mobile market by creating a platform for apps that Apple would never approve, or giving developers more favorable terms than the current 30 percent cut.

All this might make it seem inevitable that Facebook would undertake something like Project Spartan. But to succeed at creating an alternate Web-only app ecosystem and payment platform that spans many devices, it will need to overcome a number of challenges.

For one thing, Apple is now in the position that Microsoft was in 20 years ago: it controls the software on its devices and has little incentive to make the environment more hospitable to competing models of application delivery. Indeed, in March, some developers accused Apple of crippling native apps that use Web content on the iPhone and iPad by saddling them with a JavaScript engine only half as fast as the Nitro engine that runs in mobile Safari, the default browser on Apple's mobile devices. It's debatable whether or not this bug was intentional.

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Rumor: Windows 8 will hit RTM in April 2012

Microsoft is on track to release to manufacturing (RTM) all Windows 8 versions by April 2012. The plan is to RTM Windows 8 for x86, Windows 8 for ARM/SoC (system on a chip), and Windows 8 Server all at the same time, according to ZDNet.

Microsoft's plan is deliver a single Windows 8 beta build (not a pre-beta or preview, according to the rumor) around the time of its upcoming Build conference. Microsoft is hoping to convince Windows, Windows Azure, Windows Phone, and Web developers to attend the event in Anaheim, California between September 13, 2011 and September 16, 2011.

Following the beta, Microsoft will deliver a Release Candidate (RC) build of Windows 8 sometime in January 2012. The final released build will be the RTM. This would mean only two public test builds, which is what we got for Windows 7.

April 2012 seems very early for the RTM. We've previously heard summer 2012 for the RTM target, but that could be what Microsoft is hoping for as a last resort.

If the April 2012 RTM target turns out to be reality, Microsoft and its OEMs will definitely be able to deliver Windows 8 PCs in time for next year's back to school and holiday seasons.

Although a rumor suggests that Windows 8 will arrive on January 7, 2013, we expect that the operating system will ship in time for the 2012 holiday season. In fact, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said Windows 8 is coming in 2012, but Microsoft quickly claimed this was a misstatement.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44431-rumor-windows-8-will-hit-rtm-in-april-2012.html

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A Congressman?s Pet Project; a Railroad?s Boon

With a price tag of $1.2 billion at completion, the rail line is expected to serve just 2,150 commuters a day when it starts operating in three years. It will not link to the Orlando airport or Disney World, among the region?s biggest traffic generators. Florida?s governor is even considering killing the project, worried that local government officials will rebel if they have to cover any shortfalls at the fare box.

But the so-called SunRail project has survived, at least so far, a testament to the ability of one congressman to help push through hundreds of millions of dollars in federal spending, even at a time of deep concern over ballooning federal deficits.

Representative John L. Mica, a Florida Republican and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has spent years badgering federal agencies, bullying state officials, blocking Amtrak naysayers and trying to bypass federal restrictions to build support and squash opposition to the commuter line.

While Congress is often stalled or bitterly divided in dealing with some of the biggest issues facing the nation, its members are often remarkably successful in promoting industries or more parochial concerns. Mr. Mica?s championing of the SunRail project has won praise among many officials and business leaders here, who say it is vital to the future of the traffic-clogged region.

But skeptics question whether Mr. Mica?s real goal is to give a taxpayer-financed gift to CSX, the freight rail giant and a generous Mica campaign donor, which would get $432 million for its tracks and for upgrades to tracks it owns elsewhere in the state. Other Florida businesses close to Mr. Mica also stand to benefit if the project is built.

?His dedication to SunRail is not for mass transit ? it is for helping CSX to get government funds for its private freight lines,? said State Senator Paula Dockery, a Republican and a chief critic of the project.

The congressman is unapologetic about SunRail. ?Everybody has different vested interests,? Mr. Mica said in an interview. ?But you look at what is being proposed on paper, and it just make sense.?

Mr. Mica first proposed the commuter system in 1992 after he won his first race for the House after a career that included stints as a real estate developer, a lobbyist and chief of staff to Senator Paula Hawkins, Republican of Florida. The CSX track, which for decades has also been used by Amtrak, already connects a string of communities north and south of Orlando. Commuter rail, Mr. Mica argued, could carry many more passengers and be far less costly than adding a single lane to an Interstate highway.

?For as long as I have been in Congress, Central Florida has been sending its mass transit money to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and now to other cities ? that is where our gas tax dollars have gone,? he said.

But getting even a small fraction of the 2.3 million people living along the rail corridor to ride trains may be difficult, state officials acknowledge. Separating drivers from their cars would be like forcing Mickey and Minnie Mouse to divorce.

The federal government, wary of financing boondoggle projects, has strict rules on how ridership projections are calculated. Florida?s Department of Transportation, mindful of Mr. Mica?s keen interest, looked for ways to push up the number of projected riders, efforts that federal regulators found dubious.

Florida officials, for example, assumed that large numbers of commuters heading from one point in the suburbs to another would be willing to undertake a bus-to-rail-to-bus trip, a travel pattern that federal officials told them ?cannot be found on any existing commuter rail service in the United States.?

Mr. Mica describes himself as a fiscal conservative, arguing that ?all taxpayer-funded infrastructure projects must be wise investments.? But he has pulled strings in Washington to get special consideration for the project.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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Gaming 27 - The PlayStation Ryvita

Gaming 28 - Revisiting the Village

Gaming 27 - The PlayStation Ryvita