- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Yuppers, everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the world is back and right now, there is no more reliable place to go for a riot or protest than China, where tensions are still sky-high after the seizure of a Chinese fishing boat by Japan last month. The Chinese, not exactly renowned for being the most forgiving nation around, are still livid about the incident, so much so that thousands of protesters took it to the streets over the weekend in three provincial Chinese cities chanting anti-Japanese slogans and, in one town, smashing the windows of a Japanese store. However, these demonstrations were more reactionary in nature than revolutionary, as they came in response to reports that there would be a Japanese protest near the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo. Not to be out-protested, the Chinese came out in force, with the largest demonstration held in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Video footage of the gathering showed thousands of people marching angrily down a wet, rain-soaked pedestrian mall toward the Japanese-owned Ito-Yokado department store. Armed with all the tools of 21st century protesting - cellphone cameras, bullhorns and posters - the dissidents rocked messages like, "Love China, Boycott Japan Products!" on their banners. Upon arriving at the department store, they smashed windows and hung a Chinese flag across the front of the building. When riot police attempted to intervene, the protestors scrapped with them and refused to be dispersed. The entire event was organized by a group that distributed fliers calling for people to "oppose the Japanese invasion of China's Diaoyu Islands." Those would be the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by Japan under the name Senkaku Islands. Why everyone is so possessive about islands none of them want to live on, I don’t know. But the group responsible for the protest claimed that it drew 35,000 people, while the official New China News Agency put the crowd at 2,000. Oddly enough, demonstrations in the capital city of Berlin have lacked the same passion and uproar of the ones held in smaller cities. Sure, the Japanese Embassy in Beijing was surrounded by a group of riot police, but good social dissidents show up to make their voice heard in good times and bad, riot police or no riot police………
- Keep telling yourself that you have a snowball’s chance in hell of competing in the computer or smartphone businesses, Microsoft, just know that the only people who believe those lies are working in your company and I’m guessing that even some of those individuals have their doubts. The company responsible for the world’s worst operating system has a new offering in the smartphone arena: Windows Phone 7, the company’s newest smartphone platform. With its market share shrinking, Microsoft has hung a lot on this week’s release of Windows Phone 7, which is something of a last-ditch effort to reverse its slide. “I’ve been looking forward to this day for some time,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at the company’s New York City launch event Oct. 11 as he tried to put a smiley face on the sack of monkey crap that is his company’s current position in the teach world. “We set out to build a phone that was thoroughly modern.” Ballmer and his sycophants hope that their new system will create a smartphone whose hardware and design principles will make it competitive against Google Android devices, the Apple iPhone, and Research In Motion’s upgraded BlackBerry 6 OS. Microsoft believes its smartphone offering is unique because unlike its top competitors, whose systems offer users grid-like pages of individual apps, its systems consolidates Web content and applications into six über-subject-specific “Hubs” such as “People” and “Games.” Whether that’s enough to up the company’s fading market share, no one knows. “We were ahead of the game, and now we find ourselves No. 5 in the market,” Ballmer whined at the D8 conference in June. Clearly, Bill Gates’ baby has put a lot behind Windows Phone 7, as experts predict the company could spend as much as $400 million on its initial marketing campaign for the platform. One commonality Windows Phone 7 will share with the iPhone, at least initially, is limited availability, network-wise. Just as the iPhone has thus far been limited to AT&T, Windows Phone 7 will only be available on GSM-based networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile, with Verizon availability not expected until 2011. The first phone with Windows Phone 7 will be a Samsung Focus and it will hit the marketplace Nov. 8 on AT&T. All of the nine phones expected to be released as part of the platform’s initial rollout are in the $199 range, so expensive but not completely cost-prohibitive. The stringent requirements Microsoft has placed on all manufacturing partners undoubtedly have played a role in prices, with a demand that all devices feature three mechanical buttons and a “pane of touch-screen glass” form-factor that the company hopes will keep it away from the excessive hardware-and-software fragmentation that plagued the Windows Mobile franchise. If past launches of Microsoft operating systems for computers or smartphones are any indication…..yeah, this is going to be an epic failure……….
- When someone dies, the one thing that can make it even slightly less painful is when that person dies for a worthy cause. Whether it’s fighting for their country or giving their life to save someone else’s, a death for a good cause is still painful but at least understandable on some level. This would not be one of those cases, not unless you count murder in pursuit of a good parking space as a solid reason to die. That ugly scenario unfolded Saturday night in Baltimore, Md., where first-degree murder charges have been filed against a man who Baltimore police suspect killed an off-duty detective by beaning him in the head with a blunt object during a battle over a parking space. The ass hat accused of this senseless crime would be Sian James, who is suspected in the death of Brian Stevenson, an 18-year police veteran. Stevenson was out celebrating his birthday with a friend late Saturday night when he and James faced off over a parking spot outside a restaurant. According to witnesses, James’ negotiating skills weren’t up to par with Stevenson’s and he resorted to picking up a chunk of concrete and hurling it at the off-duty officer, hitting Stevenson in the head. Stevenson was rushed to Johns Hopkins hospital shortly after the 10 p.m. attack, but he died before doctors could save him. James allegedly fled the scene but was apprehended later at a nearby night club. "Dozens of officers, investigators and civilian personnel put their lives on hold and worked throughout the night to identify Mr. James as a suspect and bring him to Justice. I'm very proud and honored to lead such a dedicated group of public safety professionals," said Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, who also remembered Stevenson as a "fantastic" detective. "To lose his life in this manner is senseless," Bealefeld said early Sunday morning. "Detective Stevenson was a good man, a good investigator and a great public servant to the people of Baltimore. His death is an incredible tragedy to not only his family, but to the entire city and to every man and woman who wears the police uniform." Here’s hoping that James finds a special place in his future cell block with some truly violent and conscience-free convicts who administer a little special justice of their own to his sorry a**………
- EVERYTHING MUST GO! PRICES WILL BE SLASHED! MAKE YOUR BEST OFFER, NO REASONABLE OFFER REFUSED! STEP UP AND ACQUIRE THE OAKLAND RAIDER OF YOUR CHOICE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW! That’s right all, everyone’s favorite insane, possibly dead owner, Oakland’s Al Davis, is holding a fire sale and according to league sources, the NFL’s kookiest owner made calls all around the league this week and let it be known that any of his team’s players are available in a trade. That news leaked before today’s Raiders’ stink bomb against Bay Area rival San Francisco, so I can't imagine that a lethargic 17-9 loss to their nearest geographical rival has done anything to sour Crazy Al on the idea of auctioning off his players to the highest bidder. The irony is that for the first time in forever, the Raiders look like they’re headed in a positive direction. After a rocky start to his head coaching career last year, Tom Cable appears to have the firm support of his players and they genuinely seem to enjoying playing for him. Last Sunday, they defeated AFC West rival and nemesis San Diego for the first time in seven years and the consensus around the league was that while they still have plenty of holes, the Raiders are piecing together a competitive team that at least has the potential to keep them out of the AFC West cellar. But with Al Davis, whether he is in fact still alive or his staff is pulling a “Weekend at Bernie’s” with him, there is zero predictability or logic to his maneuvers. Sadly, the one person whose exit from Oakland would do the franchise the most good has no chance of going anywhere else any time soon: Al Davis himself. This is a guy who has been a central figure in the world of professional football for decades, but the game (and sanity) have passed him by and he’s steadily gutted the team, stripped the front office down past the bare bones level and run the franchise right into the ground. So while linebacker Thomas Howard, cornerback Chris Johnson and running back Darren McFadden may draw some interest from potential trade partners in the days ahead, as long as Al is around, this is a time headed nowhere fast………
- Score one for stupid. Stupid in this case would not be former Ass-Hat-in-Chief W., but Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of morons who were the victors at the box office with Jackass 3D, which opened to $50 million to rout the rest of the box office contenders. What has to be encouraging for the studio with this blast-to-the-package fest is that it drew 15 percent more women than Jackass 2, putting it on pace to break the record for highest-grossing October opening of all-time. The previous mark was (inexplicably) held by
Scary Movie 3, which earned $48 million back in 2003. The victory for Jackass was also a victory for youth over age, as the movie edged out Red, Summit Entertainment’s adaptation of Warren Ellis’ graphic novel about a bunch of geezers who used to be spies and are trying to get back into the spy game. The film, Starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and other aged actors, grossed $22.5 million for a second place finish. In third place was The Social Network, which held strong in its third weekend of release and dropped just 29 percent for a take of $11 million and a three-week tally of $63.1 million. That left fourth place for Secretariat, which earned $9.5 million its second weekend of release after declining just 25 percent. That performance raised its total take to $27.5 million. The last spot in the top five went to the utterly awful Katherine Heigl-Josh Duhamel flick Life As We Know It, which earned $9.2 million to up its cumulative total to $29 million. The rest of the top 10 broke down thusly: Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (No. 6 with $4.2 million and a total gross of $46 million), The Town (adding another $4 million to its coffers to put its five-week total at an impressive $80.6 million), Wes Craven’s wretchedly bad My Soul to Take (plummeting 40 percent from its opening weekend for a gross of $3.1 million and a cumulative total of $11.9 million), Easy A (only becoming mote profitable by the day with $2.6 million for a total of $52.3 million and counting on an $8 million budget) and Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (quite possibly the most regrettable sequel of the past decade and then some, making $2.3 million for the weekend for a total of $47.8 million). Overall, box office revenues were down 5 percent from the same weekend last year. See if the arrival of Paranormal Activity 2 and the expanded release of Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter provide a boost at the local cineplex or megaplex next weekend………
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