- Hasn’t Egypt suffered enough? Constant political turmoil,
oppressive rulers, riots and religious conflicts have plagued the northern
African nation for the past two years, leaving a country full of people who
just want some peace and a few conflict-free months. The three kooks who were trying to
cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean this week and deprive
Egyptians of high-speed Internet access. This trio of ass hats were caught on a
speeding fishing boat just off the port city of Alexandria after going out as scuba
divers, although Egypt’s military did not provide details on who they were or
why they would have wanted to cut a cable. There were already issues with
Egypt’s Internet access over the past week, with telecommunications executives blaming
a weeklong Internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship. Col.
Ahmed Mohammed Ali said in a statement that the three divers were arrested
while "cutting the undersea cable" of the country's main
communications company, Telecom Egypt, and that all three were believed to be
Egyptian. Along with the statement detailing their arrest, the military also
released a photo of them staring up at a camera in what looks like an
inflatable launch. Issues surrounding the country’s Internet services have
persisted since March 22 and Telecom Egypt executive manager Mohammed el-Nawawi
explained that CBC that the damage was caused by a ship. He also insisted there
would be a full recovery from the slowdown by the end of the week……..
- Wednesday night was not a good one for the Miami Heat. First,
the undermanned Chicago Bulls beat the living sh*t out of them and ended tehir
run at history with a 101-97 loss that brought the Heat’s 27-game winning
streak to an end. With their chance to eclipse the NBA record for longest
winning streak over and the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers’ 33-game streak safe, it
took precious little time for Heat star LeBron James to whine about several
hard fouls administered to his person by various Bulls players in the game.
James decried the fouls as “not basketball plays” and suggested the officials
should have helped him out by assessing flagrant fouls to his defenders. That
whining didn’t go over well with Bulls forward Taj Gibson, who delivered one of
the hard fouls, or Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny
Ainge. Ainge’s Celtics are bitter rivals of the Heat and Ainge used the
occasion of James’ whining to fire an unprovoked shot at the presumed MVP for a
season that isn’t yet over. "I think the referees got the calls right. I
don't think it was a hard foul," Ainge said then. "I think the one
involving LeBron against [Carlos] Boozer, that was flagrant. I think the
officials got it right. "I think that it's almost embarrassing that LeBron
would complain about officiating." His words were quickly relayed to Miami
Heat president Pat Riley, who wasted no time in going nuclear on Ainge. “Danny
Ainge needs to shut the f--- up and manage his own team," Riley said in a
statement. "He was the biggest whiner going when he was playing and I know
that because I coached against him." Ainge actually conceded that Riley
had a point, even if he wasn’t willing to fully fall on his sword. "I
would say we're both right," Ainge replied. "LeBron should quit
complaining; I complained as a player and I should manage my own team. We're
both right." Riley and Ainge were also rivals when Riley was the head
coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, who battled Ainge and the Celtics in the 1984,
1985 and 1987 NBA Finals. For his part, James insisted that he could not care
less about any criticism of
his comments after Wednesday night’s game. "I actually didn't know
anything about people's responses," James said. "I don't care what
other people's responses are." A potential playoff matchup between these
two teams is starting to sound even more interesting than normal……..
- There is NO reason either Ford or ad agency WPP should be
apologizing. Both sides may appear to have egg on their respective faces after
(allegedly) offensive artwork depicting women tied up in the back of a Ford
Figo, a car available in India, surfaced this week. While the artwork never
appeared in an ad, somehow it leaked and that left the two parties feeling like
they needed to apologize for an image depicting Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian
prime minister and a candidate in the country’s current campaign, driving a
Ford Figo with three tied-up women in the back. The three women are in what
amounts to cartoon versions of different slutty outfits a female college stuent
might wear to an off-campus Halloween party. Oh, and there was a second image
showing Paris Hilton driving a Figo with what's meant to be the three
Kardashian sisters tied up in the back and a third one showing three male racecar
drivers tied up in the back. However, Ford and WPP want everyone to know
that the
drawings were never part of a paid campaign but were part of "a creative
exercise by a team that was submitting for an ad competition," according
to Chris Preuss, Ford spokesman for WPP. "They were actually posters
uploaded to a website, which is where it all took off from." That
sounds…..like a pathetic excuse. Was the exercise to come up with the single
most offensive ad campaign possible, one that would never see the light of day?
If so, count this one as a win. "We deeply regret this incident and agree
with our agency partners that it should have never happened," Ford said in
a statement. "The posters are contrary to the standards of professionalism
and decency within Ford and our agency partners." That these images
pertain to a car sold solely in India is a bit of a black eye, sure, given that
the country is particularly sensitive to the topic of violence against women on
account of several high-profile gang rapes that have occurred there in recent
months, but that doesn’t mean anyone needs to apologize……….
- Since when have India’s musical standards been so low? When
a country’s top choice for its premier sporting event is Jennifer
Lopez and its second option is über-crappy rapper extraordinaire Pitbull, it’s time to ask what is going wrong in a nation. Both of these
icons of terrible music were on the short list to perform for the
opening ceremonies of India’s Premier League cricket tournament, but Lopez
diva-ed her way out of the chance to perform for a viewing audience of 60
million people with a laundry list of demands that included all of her
furniture being white, all of the food in her dressing room also being white
and a sh*t-load of luxury hotel rooms for herself and her entourage of
managers, stylists and lackeys. Oh, and she demanded that a private plane be
dispatched to transport her to India, so there’s that as well. Lopez may not be
the first famous person to make ridiculous demands and try to take advantage of
people just because she can, but maybe it’s time for her to look in the mirror
and remember that these days, she’s little more than a judge for a crappy
reality karaoke show who occasionally acts in a D+ movie or records another
album of garbage-worthy pop drivel. Once Lopez priced her way out of the
running, tournament organizers needed someone else to fill to void and lip-sync
to a few of their terrible songs so the masses could be entertained before the
tournament began. Next on the list was Pitbull, who had an opening in between
filming ear-assaultingly awful beer and soda commercials and was happy to
accept the invitation and the large payday. One would have to imagine that
plenty of space in which to fist-pump and a new pair of the designer shades he
seems committed to wearing in even the darkest of rooms were the two top
entries on his list of demands for the show……
- Not everyone wants the smallest, lightest and most mobile
computer they can afford. Super-smart researchers and dorks at prestigious
colleges and universities across the United States and around the world need
computing power and not necessarily speed or portability. That includes
researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who now have one of the
most powerful supercomputers in the world at their disposal. The Blue Waters
supercomputer is the most powerful supercomputer on a university campus and now
that it is up and running, it will operate around the clock and facilitate research
that would be otherwise impossible. This titan of computing power is capable of
performing quadrillions of calculations every second and working with
quadrillions of bytes of data and it never needs a break. It is made out of Cray
hardware and operates at a sustained performance of more than 1 quadrillion
calculations per second, with a jaw-dropping peak performance of 11.61
quadrillion calculations per second. In other words, the average college
student would be stunned at how quickly this beast can download porn or
computer equations for the algebra homework they procrastinated on for the
better part of a week and which is due first thing tomorrow morning. Although the
Blue Waters supercomputer is located in Illinois, its round-the-clock
number-crunching will help scientists and engineers across the country tackle a
wide variety of science and engineering challenges…….
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