Click here to view this media (h/t Heather at VideoCafe ) You could read this , which makes it sound like there was an actual rational discussion on This Week about repealing DADT (and there was , sort of — but only with some of the participants), or you can take my word for it that the the two far-right nutjobs who came on to plead that allowing people to be openly gay in the military would undermine the nation’s mission (I guess because they’d all be off organizing drag parties or Gay Bingo Nite) are just plain barking insane, and swimming upstream against reality. But the entire argument against repealing DADT was distilled in one statement by director of National Security and Joint Warfare at the Marine Corps War College Tammy Schultz and reinforced by R. Clarke Cooper, an Iraq War Vet and member of the Log Cabin Republicans, who are spearheading the campaign for repeal: SCHULTZ: Nothing will be good enough for the opponents who do not want to repeal “don’t ask/don’t tell.” It’s not about the evidence; it’s about the ideology. They’re saying, oh, you can’t compare the U.S. military to other militaries. We’re bigger, we’re in war, et cetera, et cetera. But then they simultaneously want to say we have the most professional forces in the world, which we do. And that’s true of almost all of conservative obstructionism. Nothing is good enough to knock them out of their world view: no facts, no studies, no other opinions. And no matter what you say, they’ll constantly stay with their unsubstantiated talking points. But at least Christiane Amanpour challenged them. A little.
Continue reading …Uh oh, just as we thought NVIDIA had moved beyond its penchant for rebadging hardware , here comes the vanguard of its 500M mobile GPU series — which happens to be specced nearly identically to what’s already on offer in the 400M family . The GT 540M chip maintains the same 96 CUDA cores and 128-bit memory interface as the GT 435M, but earns its new livery by cranking up graphics and processor clock speeds to 672MHz and 1344MHz, respectively, while also taking the onboard memory to a max speed of 900MHz. Power requirements have been kept unchanged, mind you, and NVIDIA itself admits it’s exploiting the maturation of the production process to just throw out some speedier parts. China gets the GT 540M immediately, courtesy of Acer, while the rest of the world should be able to buy in at some point next month. Jump past the break for the full press release. Continue reading NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M refreshes mobile graphics midrange, starts up 500M series NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M refreshes mobile graphics midrange, starts up 500M series originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 22:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Deja vu all over again ? Not quite — this time it’s Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and and Indiana feeling the pain of no Comcast internet, according to a bevy of tipsters and a series of official ComcastCares tweets. As before, the fix is fairly simple, assuming you know how to manually switch your DNS — just point your computer to a public domain name server (like Google’s at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, but there are plenty of others) and things should re-route themselves in seconds flat. Friends don’t let friends go without a connection, so if you know someone who’s likely affected but won’t find out what’s wrong until it’s too late, why not shoot them a text message or something to share the fix? [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Comcast internet down in the midwest, DNS servers to blame again originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 22:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Giants beat mistake-prone Redskins. Bears edge Lions. Kansas City tops Denver. Brees leads Saints to last-minute victory over the Bengals. Cowboys intercept Peyton Manning four times in overtime win. Jaguars beat Titans. (Dec. 5)
Continue reading …Vulgarian Kathy Griffin on Friday called Bristol Palin fat during her opening monologue of the USO's Divas Salute to the Troops. “She's the only contestant in the history of ["Dancing with the Stars"] to actually gain weight,” said Griffin. “She's like the white Precious” (video follows courtesy MTV.com with commentary): read more
Continue reading …In what will no doubt be held up as an shining example of irony in the months and years to come, it seems the RIAA has succeeded in shutting down LimeWire … but only the legal part. The LimeWire Store, which legitimately sold online music, will reportedly close on December 31st, and the site itself states that it won’t be taking new customers from now on. Where, oh where will folks get their digital tunes instead? Some might go right back to filching them using LimeWire’s peer-to-peer application, which hasn’t actually been squashed by the injunction . Yes, a rogue group released LimeWire Pirate Edition last month, a version of the original Gnutella P2P client with all the bloat stripped out and premium functionality turned on, which is apparently receiving so welcome a reception in the file-sharing community that the Lime Group felt the need to issue a cease-and-desist to those distributing the software. Yo ho, yo ho… LimeWire the online store fades away, LimeWire the file-sharing service soldiers on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 21:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Floods continued to ravage Colombia where 170 people have died during the country’s rainy season. In neighbouring Venezuela, deadly floods and mudslides caused by torrential rains prompted authorities to evacuate hundreds from their homes. (Dec. 5)
Continue reading …Hundreds of protesters, demanding the annulment of Haiti’s elections, have clashed with riot police in the Haitian capital, stoking tensions ahead of results expected on Tuesday. Haitian riot police fired tear gas to disperse more than 1,500 protesters when they tried to break through a barrier blocking access to the area in front of the white presidential palace, which was badly wrecked in the January 12 earthquake. Al Jazeera correspondent
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