Latest news about arts and humanities and books and more

If you are planning buy art supplies to quench your thirst for art and has been really getting it hard to find the right place to buy all your art needs. Then you should be resorting to the great medium called Internet for your needs. This is because you will not be able to find all art supplies in one place elsewhere except for finding it online. Ever since the internet revolution started people have switched their shopping preference to online and the same can be applied to when buying art or even kids art supplies. This is also because of the fate or fact that you will not get all the materials you would need on art materials elsewhere.

Although this can be a convenient option of buying any or Kids art supplies online but it would also turn out to be a profitable one too. This is because for example if you are planning to buy easels it would normally cost you around $300-$350 when you plan to buy them at the neighborhood art stores but the same easels would cost only $275 if you buy them online and you would also get it delivered at your home for free.

Computers are changing the way that we all do business. That should be obvious to anyone who’s looked at recent developments in the world of technology. If you are involved in the world of construction, then you should be up-to-date with the latest in takeoff software.

The basics of the program are just amazing. You can just do your designs through the software and it will make a professional blueprint from your information. Then you just have to change the little menus to make it better. You can shift the display to show different rooms or even build up material lists. These are some of the more complex ideas though. Just think about how nice it would be to calculate square feet when you are planning a job. Just type in the number and you’ll be able to have detailed and running estimations of all the little projects.

It’s obvious that you shouldn’t buy the software just to do square feet estimate programs. You can still do those through basic calculator functions. The idea is that they are just a small part of a much bigger program. If you can do these estimates that quickly, then think of all the other things that you can do.

With more than $1 billion in sales and 50 million tracks downloaded between them — on a base of only about 350 songs — the “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” videogame franchises emerged this year as serious moneymakers for the music industry. But are they bringing in enough per track?

During a quarterly earnings call in August, Warner Music Group chairman/CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said he wants more money from music games like Activision’s “Guitar Hero” or he’ll stop licensing music. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick fired back in an interview, suggesting that labels should pay his company for promoting their music.

Next year’s big-money showdown is between “Guitar Hero” and MTV Games and EA’s “Rock Band,” but there’s plenty of action on the undercard. Among the other titles competing for music industry support and gamers’ dollars are Nintendo’s “Wii Music,” Disney’s “Ultimate Band,” Acclaim’s “Rockfree” and XS Games’ “PopStar Guitar.”

The winner of this competition may be labels and artists, who will have opportunities to feature their music more prominently than they would be able to in the big two games. The Plain White T’s scored an exclusive spot on “Ultimate Band,” for example, while 3 Doors Down is a featured act on “PopStar Guitar.”

THE PARTNERSHIP

Amazon teamed up with the makers of the hit game “Grand Theft Auto IV” to let players tag any song on the soundtrack with a virtual mobile phone used by the game’s protagonist. Those who did received an e-mail with more information about the song and artist and accessed a custom playlist on Amazon where they could then purchase the track.

Almost 700,000 players tagged more than 2 million songs, according to “Grand Theft Auto IV” publisher Rockstar Games, although Amazon won’t divulge how many resulted in sales. But it’s the first time a console game has integrated digital music purchases, and it has given other developers plenty of ideas.

THE DARK HORSE

When Sierra Entertainment unveiled details of its “Brutal Legend,” online gamer forums went crazy with excitement. But the reaction among music executives was tepid at best — perhaps because the game isn’t about music simulation but the story of a roadie sent back in time when heavy metal gods ruled the world.

Drawing heavily on Nordic mythology and metal imagery — and featuring voice acting from the likes of actor/musician Jack Black, Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister and heavy metal singer-songwriter Ronnie James Dio — the game has the names and the potential soundtrack to win big among hardcore gamers and metal fans alike. The game remains in limbo, though, as Sierra Entertainment parent company Vivendi Games and Activision complete their merger.

THE BEATLES

They’re not available on iTunes or any other digital music service. But the Fab Four made headlines when MTV announced that it would be making a videogame featuring the group’s music, history, images and characters.

Exactly what the game will look like or do is under wraps until its release in 2009. But it’s expected to be an interactive product similar to “Rock Band.” And the development will lay the groundwork for ways that iconic artists like the Beatles can work with games to introduce their music to new fans and let older ones experience it in a new way.

Window Snyder, the head of security at Mozilla Corp., will resign her position at the end of the year, she said in a blog post Wednesday.

Snyder, who has the kooky job title of “chief security something-or-other,” is in charge of improving security in the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla projects.

She isn’t yet saying publicly what she plans to do next. A source familiar with her plans said she is going to work at a start-up company.

“I am sad to be leaving, but I am excited to go work on something I have always been passionate about,” Snyder wrote in the Mozilla security blog. “I wish I could tell you about it now, but that will have to wait for a while.”

She joined Mozilla in September 2006 from Microsoft, where she was a security strategist and worked on Microsoft’s security-focused Windows XP Service Pack 2 update.

Security has become more important for Mozilla as its Firefox browser has gained more users, making it a more attractive target for malicious hackers. Just last week it was being targeted by a new Trojan that tries to steal online banking passwords, according to security company BitDefender.

“It’s impossible to build a perfectly secure browser,” Snyder told Computerworld in an interview earlier this year. “That’s not the goal. The goal is to build the safest browser we can. It’s an ongoing process. It’s not a goal where we’ll say, ‘OK, we’re done.’”

In her blog post, Snyder said she was leaving Mozilla’s security in capable hands, naming several colleagues who will assume her duties. She did not immediately reply to an e-mail requesting further comment.

Firefox’s worldwide market share passed 20 percent in November, the first time it has stayed that high for an entire month, according to figures from Net Applications. The group also develops the Thunderbird e-mail application.

networking problem made Yahoo’s Web site unreachable for many users on Wednesday.

The problem, first observed at around 11:40 a.m. Pacific Time, appears to have primarily affected users in the eastern United States and Canada who were trying to reach the www.yahoo.com domain.

Network engineers on the NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) discussion list reported that when they tried to reach www.yahoo.com, they were sent on the Internet’s version of a wild goose chase. DNS (Domain Name System) servers redirected traffic to another Yahoo domain, www.wa1.b.yahoo.com, which was not associated with an IP address. In other words, computers trying to find Yahoo’s Web site were sent nowhere.

The problem appeared to have been resolved by about 1 p.m. Pacific Time.

Yahoo did not have much to say about the outage. The company confirmed in a statement that it had “a disruption in service earlier today that affected users in some geographic areas.”

One NANOG poster, apparently a Yahoo employee named Matthew Petach, reported that the problem was triggered by a Juniper T1600 router that “went kablooie.”

“This is primarily affecting traffic coming through Ashburn, Virginia,” Petach wrote at 1:16 p.m. Pacific Time. “We’re aware of the issue and have put workarounds in place; you should be back up and functional for the moment, though not in an optimal state.”

The kind of router failure described by Petach could easily have accounted for the problems reported on NANOG Wednesday, if Yahoo’s DNS nameservers were behind that faulty router, said Cricket Liu, vice president of architecture with DNS appliance vendor Infoblox.

Yahoo appeared to have fixed the problem by moving some of its DNS services to nameservers run by Akamai, a company that helps sites deliver Web content, Liu said.

“It sounds like maybe they changed … to Akamai to save their network bacon,” he said.

A number of people really want to use the latest in technology, but they just feel held back by a lack of understanding toward the programs. One of the best way for them to overcome this problem is to just get Microsoft Office training. Microsoft Office practically runs the world. If they get a good overview of the programs in the suite, then they will know how to build presentations, databases, and write. That should be all the basics that they really need.

This isn’t that easy for everyone though. Some people have rough schedules or face a tough drive to the local training center. They need a good way to train on their own schedule without leaving the home. This is where the Microsoft Office training CD comes into play. This is a way to teach them everything that they need to know while they are using the computer. If they can put the disc in the drive, then they are set. The CD contains lessons, examples, and simulations to walk them through all the little problems that they could face. Once it is all said and done, they should be just fine. If nothing else, it is a really great way to get them past any initial fear of technology.

Blockbuster has officially entered the “battle of the boxes” with the launch of its new set-top box yesterday. The box will serve movies to TVs over the Internet and is going against Netflix’s set-top box solutions (Xbox, Roku, and Tivo). Blockbuster’s MediaPoint box allows users to watch thousands of movies without the need of a monthly subscription.

To get the MediaPoint player, made by 2Wire, Blockbuster subscribers will have to pay a one-off $99 fee, which also includes 25 pre-paid movies. After that, users will have to pay between $1.99 and $3.99 for each DVD rented, without a monthly subscription fee. Netflix’s box also costs $99, besides your chosen monthly subscription. But unlike Blockbuster’s 2,500 “of the best, biggest and most current movies available“, Netflix offers its whole 10,000 DVD collection for rental through its box.

The major difference between the MediaPoint box and Netflix’s is that Blockbuster does “progressive playback” in comparison to Netflix’s streaming, meaning that the video quality is independent of you broadband’s connection speed. By progressively downloading the movie on the box (up to five movies storage capacity), Blockbuster’s solution can offer a much more consistent video quality. In comparison, Netflix’s service which can reduce the movie’s quality if your Internet connection slows down.

Spec-wise, Blockbuster’s MediaPoint can store up to five full length feature films (rented films must be viewed within 24 hours of downloading) and can connect to both SD and HD television sets. For the SD crowd, you can connect the MediaPoint to your TV with Composite A/V cables and if you have an HD TV you can use an HDMI cable. If none of the above matches you television set, you can use the box’s Component Video and Line Audio connections.

In terms of Internet connectivity, the MediaPoint box can use both wireless and an Ethernet cable from your router. For the full specs, check out MediaPoint’s user manual (PDF link).

Want to optimize your looks without radically altering them? An Israeli team of computer scientists may have the answer.

They have developed a computer software model based on the innate preferences that studies show we have for human faces.

“This technology could become a product where for example there’s a web service where people upload their photographs and have them enhanced or beautified by our software,” said Professor Dani Lischinksi of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Studies show that eyes a certain shape and distance apart, nose a certain length, lips a certain curve, increase the probability that we will find one face more attractive than another.

“We were able to fit a mathematical model to this set of data that we’ve gathered, namely the images that we showed to people and their responses in terms of the beauty scores that they chose to give to each image,” said Lischinksi.

The team then applied the model to modify images so as to make them appear more attractive. They are now exploring a variety of potential commercial applications for the software, Lischinski said.

“This is something we’re looking into,” he said. It remains to be seen whether women would simply use the improved image as a guide to more effective makeup application or whether people take it to a plastic surgeon and say: “Make me look like that.”

SUBTLE SHIFTS

The results can be striking. The photographed face of one conventionally pretty woman processed by what some Israeli media dubbed “the beauty machine” became clearly more beautiful.

Crucially, the software did not attempt to correct the very slight crookedness in her nose, so she was unmistakably the same person but subtly enhanced to great effect.

The aim is not a world “where everybody looks the same or everybody looks like a Hollywood star or a supermodel. What our program tries to do is to improve the perceived attractiveness of the face but in a manner that tries to change as little as possible,” said the professor.

The Israeli scientists say they are well aware of the adage that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“I think obviously the original faces have more. They represent the true character of that face and when we modify the image some of that character might go away. This is one possible criticism,” Lischinksi said.

So far, the model simply presents the optimized version of a face which could be used as a photograph — if the owner was prepared to disappoint in any real-life encounter.

Some of those asked did not prefer the “improved” looks of movie stars, for example. “I think a lot of it has to do with familiarity,” Lischinski said.

But if the face is anonymous, the modified version is strongly preferred, the team’s trials have shown.

A random trial among Jerusalem women was inconclusive.

One woman said she would not use the program “because then you see yourself in the perfect light and no one is perfect… It’s impossible and it’s unethical and it will just make you upset.”

The software also demands high-quality photographs taken head-on. Blurred images or tilted chins defeat it. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa loses her enigmatic smile and appears horribly distorted, her lips like those of a cartoon witch.

Infosys co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani feels India can do a lot better with the use of Information Technology as it has a vibrant and growing democracy than its most talked about rival China.”Technology is extremely powerful as a liberal force in its ability to empower citizens and minimise sway of the state. It would strengthen India’s advantage as an open, democratic society and would ensure that information knowledge and services flow unimpeded,” says Nilekani in his book ‘Imagining India, Ideas for the New Century’, which was released on Monday.

Nilekani’s China reference though not direct is evident from his frequent use of the world ‘open society’. He has quoted Tom Friedman, noted ‘The New York Times’ columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author, who says, “I don’t think that this century can belong to a country that censors Google.”

Friedman was replying to a question if he saw China as the emerging superpower of the century.

A Florida teenager committed suicide by drug overdose in front of a webcam streaming live video to the Internet and some viewers may have egged him on, authorities said on Friday.

Abraham Biggs Jr., 19, was found in the bedroom of his home in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Wednesday and an autopsy showed he died of a toxic combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, a drug used to treat anxiety and insomnia, the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office said.

“We have ruled it a suicide. Part of the terminal event was recorded on a website and there was streaming video,” said Dr. Steve Cina, deputy chief medical examiner of Broward County.

A police spokesman said detectives were investigating the case but would not release any details.

Biggs had written blogs about his intentions and some of the viewers who were watching the event live may have goaded him on, Cina said.

“There is some indication of that, yes,” he said.

In a purported suicide note posted by Miami television station WPLG on its website, Biggs said: “I hate myself and I hate living.”

The note said he had “thought about and attempted suicide many times in the past.”

The Miami Herald newspaper said another suicide in Broward County was broadcast live on the Internet a few years ago.

Last year, a 42-year-old man killed himself in front of a webcam in what was believed to be Britain’s first suicide on the Internet. Viewers saw him climb onto a chair, tie a rope around a ceiling joist and hang himself.