- Lady Gaga often acts like she’s insane, but typically it’s
all an act designed to promote her brand and sell concert tickets and albums. This
time, the Gag-meister may actually be nuts. A copy of a crap-tacular new track
called “Aura” from her forthcoming (and sure to suck) album “ARTPOP” leaked
online Tuesday and fans reacted the way the masses always do when presented
with free music from their favorite artists: They shared and downloaded at a
disturbing rate. The “If it’s free, it’s for me” theory prevailed and with
three months before the full album drops, getting a hold of a piece of the
project was too much for thousands of music fans to pass up. In an attempt to
convince everyone that they didn’t really hear what they just heard, Lady Gaga
took to her website and wrote that the song is only a demo of the finished version.
She then asked fans to avoid listening to it and assist in removing links to it
online. A user asked her about the leak and Lady Gaga replied: "Please
take these [links] down as much as possible." Yes, because people
struggling to stay afloat financially and hungry for any free offering they can
find always turn their backs on free music. Sharers of leaked music haven’t
been Gaga’s only target for verbal bile of late. She recently lashed out at the
Russian government after she was accused of breaching immigration laws and
promoting "gay propaganda" in Russia and took a run at the country’s
communist regime on Twitter. "The Russian government is criminal.
Oppression will be met with revolution. Russian LGBTs you are not alone. We
will fight for your freedom,” she wrote. "Why didn't you arrest me when
you had the chance, Russia? Because you didn't want answer to the world?"
If the Russians had arrested her, maybe her upcoming train wreck of an album
never would have happened………..
- Returns at Wal-Mart are supposed to be much simpler than
this. As long as the purchase was within the past 90 days and one has a receipt
for what they bought and no longer want, the exchange should be both quick and
easy – even if über-long lines at customer service lead to a wait longer than
most doctor’s offices on a weekday afternoon. For Aurora, Ill. resident Kim Michalak,
getting the megamart retailer to take back a product it mistakenly shipped to
her after she placed an online order is proving to be an impossible task. Michalak
recently ordered a few household items from Walmart, including pillows and cat
food. What she received was decidedly different than what she ordered, as more
than 3,000 bullets showed up at her door. She was given 10 boxes of .22 caliber
long rifle ammo and best of all, she wasn’t even required to sign for it. Rather
than be grateful that a massive chain retail outlet had just provided her with
enough ammo to wipe out her netire neighborhood in a bitter dispute over how
tall her hedges along the property line could be, she decided she wasn’t cool
with getting munitions and contacted Walmart to ask for a refund. Walmart being
Walmart, it refused to take the bullets back because Michalak’s invoice lists
the items she was supposed to get, but not the bullets. Exacerbating the
mystery even further, the company said it is investigating how the munitions
got to Michilak because bullets aren't sold online. With stories like this one,
it feels almost like the government isn't doing a damn thing to police guns and
ammunition or control who can gain access to them. Perhaps Walmart is simply
too big to regulate……..
- Current wave of players disgracing Major League Baseball
by injecting or ingesting banned substances and performance-enhancing drugs
into your bodies, listen up. One of the biggest pariahs in MLB history has some
words of wisdom for you. Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hit king and the
recipient of a lifetime ban from the game for betting on it while managing the
Cincinnati Reds, has a message for Alex Rodriguez and everyone else
suspended for their roles in the Biogenesis scandal: come clean. "We have to get these people to
understand that if you make mistakes, people will forgive you if you come
forward," Rose said. "Don't
do like I did. Don't do like [Ryan] Braun did. Don't do like A-Rod did. I wish I had come forward a long time
ago. Some guys came forward, like [Jason] Giambi, like [Andy] Pettitte. And they went on with their lives. They're
playing and they're making good money, and there's no shadow upon them right now." What Rose neglected to
mention was that when he did come forward, it was to sell a book he had written
about his life. Rose and his 4,256 hits have been banned from baseball since
1989 after it was learned he bet on
baseball. The 17-time All-Star said he hopes Rodriguez "has a good ending
of the season” and is confused as to why fans are angry at a man who repeatedly
cheated and lied to everyone who his use of PEDs. "It sounds to me like he
thinks he got a lot more than Ryan Braun, and basically he might have done the
same thing," Rose added. "Baseball and the players association have
rules. If you stay within the rules -- which say that you can play while you're
appealing -- I don't see what anyone would be in arms about." You don’t?
Hey Pete, maybe that’s part of your problem – a big part. You seem to be
oblivious to the fact that cheating and breaking the rules of a sport offends
folks……..
- Microsoft is trying to improve its subpar product line
again. The house that Bill Gates built recently debuted refreshed
Bing apps for Android and iOS and now, users of its mobile operating system are
about to discover a new search experience. The search feature on Windows Phone 8 will
become simpler and (allegedly) deliver smarter, faster results in order to
match Bing apps for Apple iOS and Google Android. The company is pushing an automatic
update for Windows Phone 8 users in the United States that will supposedly
remove steps from the search process, according to a post by Microsoft
spokesman Michael Stroh on the Bing Search Blog. The new search will feature a
reduced assortment of options. "Today when you tap Search and flick left
or right, you see four different search result categories: Web, Local, Media
and Shopping. Once the update rolls out, you’ll see just three: Web, Images and
Videos," Stroh wrote. The Web category will focus on showing what's
most relevant to a search, such as local results, images and videos. Stroh
added that the Bing team "also worked to improve the freshness of the
service's local results" and made local businesses easier to find or call
by surfacing the relevant information. The update will also introduce 10 new
Instant Answers for a total of 30, including current exchange rates,
translations and traffic status. Additionally, the new Bing app will reach
further into popular websites and point users to the most popular parts of that
site. Bing Snapshot is also moving to Windows Phone 8 and bringing with it data
farmed from sources such as Facebook, Klout, LinkedIn and Wikipedia. Using its
search feature will yield larger, auto-size thumbnails. Images have long been a
main selling point for Bing in the battle against search competitors such as
Google and Yahoo and as part of this and other changes, Microsoft claims the
upgrade will also lessen Bing’s drain on data services for smartphones.........
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Take a look at Tunisia getting
after it and rising up to demand their government step its game up. Wednesday
night was an outstanding one for dissidence in the northern African nation as tens of thousands
of Tunisians filled the streets of their capital to protest the government. The
demonstration amped up the general uneasiness in a country with a long-standing
reputation as a model for African nations seeking to make the always-tenuous transition
to democracy. Staging an overnight protest is always tough because most people
forget to bring the snacks they promised they would pick up at the local
mini-mart before arriving and half of those assembled don’t bring the proper
supplies to spend a night on the street, slugging it out with The Man to make
their voice heard. This particular overnight protest took place in front of
Tunisia's legislature and ranked as one of the largest in recent months. It was
an inspiring scene that included entire families, many of whom draped
themselves in the red and white national flag. Tunisian politics have been
moderately lethal of late, with two opposition politicians shot dead in the
last six months — apparently by the same gun. The protestors claimed the ruling
Ennahda Party has failed to protect its people and the party would do well to
listen to their voices, as Tunisians ousted their longtime dictator in January
2011, touching off the Arab Spring uprisings. This is a people clearly not
afraid of getting their hands bloody and bruised in order to make a point to
the powers that be………
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