Johnny Depp: 'Into the Woods' Musical with Meryl Streep?

Johnny Depp is reportedly in talks to join the highly anticipated movie musical Into the Woods alongside Meryl Streep, according to Variety.
There are currently conflicting reports out there that say he will either play the role of the Baker or the sexy Wolf character. We can’t wait to find out which!
Meryl is in final talks to play the pivotal role of the Witch, who casts a spell on the Baker and his wife, which sends the couple on a journey interrupted by many fairytale characters, in which they must find special objects to break the curse.
There were two Broadway productions of the Stephen Sondheim musical and most recently, Amy Adams starred as the Baker’s wife in the Shakespeare in the Park production last summer.
Pictured inside: Johnny heading into a medical building through the back door on Friday (July 26) in Los Angeles.

SOURCE : http://www.justjared.com/2013/04/27/johnny-depp-into-the-woods-musical-with-meryl-streep/

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World of Darkness development shown at EVE Fanfest 2013

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When the World of Darkness MMO was first announced in November 2006, it was just an idea and we knew that it wouldn't be released any time soon. The chance to play a sandbox game set in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe nevertheless made fans of the series go nuts, but now over six years later we haven't seen much progress on the game. At EVE Fanfest 2013 today, CCP laid the current state of development bare for all to see and showed some plans for the coming year. There are now 70 people on the WoD team, and they've spent the past week working on everything from art tools and server infrastructure to vampire powers and social options.

Development plans for 2013 include working on out-of-game web-based social tools, clothing systems, and PvE game environments. There are also plans to work on item creation, but direct crafting is probably not on the cards. As the presenter put it, "You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt." Though the game is still in the pre-production stage, CCP was keen to show off the tools it's made to speed up the development process. "Some of these videos are a bit dry and technical," joked the presenter, but it came across as more real and honest than another trailer or musings on theoretical gameplay.

CCP showed some interesting tools that it will use to rapidly develop procedural content like buildings and cityscapes. It's not the gameplay fans were eager to see, but it was an honest look at the state of the game and it shows that development really is still ongoing. We saw a building going through the entire development system from basic block shapes to the graphically impressive final results, with plenty of eye candy to go around. As an indie game developer who specialises in shader programming, I can say that the video they showed of shader tech was genuinely impressive. Whenever World of Darkness finally does release, it's going to look amazing.

Developers also showed video footage of their own internal visual targets running in the WoD engine but were adamant that we not film it since it's not actual gameplay footage and may give a false impression of how far along development is. The animations were clearly unfinished and much of the graphical detail was added in post-processing, but the video clearly showed the direction the game is heading and it looks like it'll be worth the wait.

Whether you're a die-hard fan of internet spaceships or just a gawker on the sidelines, EVE Fanfest is the EVE Online event of the year (and the key source of new DUST 514 and World of Darkness scoops!). Follow Massively's Brendan Drain as he reports back on this year's Fanfest starpower, scheming, and spoilers from exotic Reykjavik, Iceland.

 

SOURCE : http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/04/26/world-of-darkness-development-shown-at-eve-fanfest-2013/ 

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Now, transform your Android phone into a personalised shooter location system

The technology takes advantage of the fact that all but the lowest powered firearms produce unique sonic signatures when they are fired.

Researchers have developed a new device which helps users track gunfire with their smartphones, popping a map of the neighbourhood on its screen pointing in the direction the shot came from.
Computer engineers from Vanderbilt University's Institute of Software Integrated Systems has made such a scenario possible by developing an inexpensive hardware module and related software that can transform an Android smartphone into a simple shooter location system.
The technology takes advantage of the fact that all but the lowest powered firearms produce unique sonic signatures when they are fired.
First, there is the muzzle blast an expanding balloon of sound that spreads out from the muzzle each time the rifle is fired. Second, bullets travel at supersonic velocities so they produce distinctive shock waves as they travel.As a result, a system that combines an array of sensitive microphones, a precise clock and an off-the-shelf microprocessor can detect these signatures and use them to pinpoint the location from which a shot is fired with remarkable accuracy.
Like the military version, the smartphone system needs several nodes in order to pinpoint a shooter's location. As a result, it is best suited for security teams or similar groups.
In addition to the smartphone, the system consists of an external sensor module about the size of a deck of cards that contains the microphones and the processing capability required to detect the acoustic signature of gunshots, log their time and send that information to the smartphone by am Bluetooth connection.The smartphones then transmit that information to the other modules, allowing them to obtain the origin of them gunshot by triangulation.
The researchers have developed two versions. One uses a single microphone per module. It uses both the muzzle blast and shockwave to determine the shooter location. It requires six modules to obtain accurate locations. The second version uses a slightly larger module with four microphones and relies solely on the shockwave. It requires only two modules to accurately detect the direction a shot comes from, however, it only provides a rough estimate of the range.
 

 

SOURCE : http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/1827728/report-now-transform-your-android-phone-into-a-personalised-shooter-location-system

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Illegal for minors to open Facebook account: petition

The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked the Union government to explain how it was allowing children below 18 years to open accounts in social networking sites such as Facebook and Google.

A Division Bench of Justices B.D. Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru asked the Centre to respond within 10 days when counsel for the former BJP leader, K.N. Govindacharya, the petitioner in the matter, accused the two sites of not verifying the details of its subscribers. It posted the matter on May 13 for further hearing.

The court has been seized of the petition since June 2012.

The Bench also impleaded Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. as parties to the petition and issued notices to them. Their Indian subsidiaries had responded to the petition.

Earlier, lawyer Virag Gupta, arguing for the petitioner, said the agreements entered into by minors here with the sites were against the Indian Majority Act, the Indian Contract Act and the Information Technology Act. In June 2012, Facebook, in a statement filed before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said that more than eight crore of its registered users had given false identities. This might have further increased, he noted.

The government had framed detailed guidelines for ‘Know Your Customer’ norms for all sectors and more specifically for verification of mobile subscribers by telecom companies. However, these norms were not being followed by the sites, thus posing a grave security risk to the nation, he added.

He also raised the issue of invasion of privacy of users of the sites as their data was being transferred to the U.S. for commercial use.

Cyber law experts say that there may be merit in the petition, as misrepresentation can invite penal action. “Creating a false electronic record is an offence under the Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal Code. Under Section 465, the offence would attract punishment up to two years’ imprisonment and if the account so opened is used for the purpose of cheating, it would be punishable with a maximum of seven years’ imprisonment,” said top cyber law expert Pavan Duggal.

Children “openly lying about their age to create accounts on these websites” were likely to face potential legal exposure” and even parents “who knowingly misrepresent information about their children while opening accounts in their names,” could be prosecuted under the IPC and the IT Act. “Ignorance of law is no excuse,” he said.

The cyber law expert added that the online contract between users and social networking sites is enforceable in India. Therefore, under Indian law, both sides must be competent to contract, which means that they must be adults and of sound mind and the contract must be for lawful purposes. “Therefore, any [online] contract with a minor is null and void under the Indian Contract Act. While the age of majority in India is 18 years, it varies from country to country,” Mr. Duggal said. 

SOURCE : http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/illegal-for-minors-to-open-facebook-account-petition/article4654571.ece

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Country music icon George Jones dies at 81

 

"The King of Broken Hearts" just broke many more.
Country Music Hall of Famer George Jones, a master of sad country ballads whose voice held the bracing power, the sweetness and the burn of an evening's final pull from a bourbon bottle, has died after an illness that hospitalized him since April 18. He was 81, and was often called the greatest male vocalist in country music history.
"He is the spirit of country music, plain and simple," wrote country scholar Nick Tosches.
George Glenn Jones was dubbed "The Possum" because of his marsupial resemblance, and later called "No Show Jones" because of his mid-career propensity for missing stage appointments. Those monikers seem trifling in comparison to "The King of Broken Hearts," which became the title of a Jim Lauderdale-written tribute recorded by George Strait and Lee Ann Womack. Lauderdale was inspired by country-rock forerunner Gram Parsons, who would play Mr. Jones' albums at parties and silence the room with an admonition to listen to the King of Broken Hearts.
"The King of Broken Hearts doesn't know he's the king," wrote Lauderdale. "He's trying to forget other things/ Like some old chilly scenes/ He's walking through alone."

Mr. Jones was well familiar with such scenes. He was bruised by alcohol and drug use, and in later, happier and sober years he wondered at the adulation afforded him, given the recklessness with which he had at times treated his talent.
"I messed up my life way back there, drinking and boozing and all that kind of stuff," he told The Tennessean in 2008. "And you wish you could just erase it all. You can't do that, though. You just have to live it down the best you can."
The best he could was to sing about it, with an unblinking emotional truth that regularly rivaled and sometimes surpassed his own heroes, Hank Williams and Roy Acuff. He could offer a wink and a smile on quirky up-tempo hits "The Race Is On" and "White Lightning," but he built his legacy with the sorrowful stuff. Betrayal, desperation and hopelessness found their most potent conduit in Mr. Jones.
"Definitely, unequivocally, the best there ever was or will be, period," is how the Village Voice's Patrick Carr assessed Mr. Jones' contribution.
Mr. Jones' signature song was the Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman-penned "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which regularly lands atop critics' lists of greatest country recordings. In it, the King of Broken Hearts sang of a man whose death signaled the end of his unrequited love. In the studio, the song was difficult to capture, exacerbated by Mr. Jones' slurring of the spoken-word portion: When inebriated, he sung more clearly than he spoke. When the recording was finally concluded, Mr. Jones told producer Billy Sherrill, "It ain't gonna sell. Nobody'll buy that morbid (expletive)."
But they did. Mr. Jones consistently credited Sherrill with the song's success, but it was the empathy in Mr. Jones' voice that made the song's abject sadness somehow palatable.
"I'd rather sing a sad song than eat," said Mr. Jones, who sometimes lacked for food (he once withered to 105 pounds) but never for sad songs to sing. His treatment of those songs made him a legend, a designation which ultimately afforded him an uncomplicated satisfaction that capped a complicated life.
"That's what you live for in this business, really: to be remembered," Mr. Jones said in 2002, surveying the Country Music Hall of Fame and contemplating his place therein.
If Mr. Jones lived to be remembered, then his life stands as consummate triumph.

SOURCE : 

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Eric Schmidt Is Right, Using Google Glass Is Weird — Here’s My Experience

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has said he finds having to talk to Google Glass out loud to control the interface “the weirdest thing” and that there are going to be “places where Google Glass are inappropriate.” My own experience of trying out the device, even briefly, confirmed to me that this product simply will not become a mass-market device any time soon. Indeed, if it has any future at all it will be either in disappearing inside normal glasses, or solely used by industry. I can’t see it becoming as ubiquitous as the smartphone in any way, and here’s why.
At a conference in Europe this week I briefly tried on a pair lent to me by an individual — who will remain nameless since Google has threatened to take back the Glass if they are used by someone other than the owner.
Suffice to say the experience was quite odd. For starters you are staring straight into clear space, despite feeling like you are wearing glasses. But then there is this small screen hovering slightly above your line of sight and slightly to the right. So you can’t flick your eye up directly, but up and slightly to the right. It’s not a natural movement, which implies Google Glass may need to be personally adjusted to the individual.
A friend – who wears contact lenses – who tried out the Glass for a full 10 minutes complained of an hour-long headache afterwards from having to look up at the screen.
Next up is using your voice to do various commands like “Take a picture.” If you have someone standing in front of you, this is extremely odd. Suddenly they are cut out of the conversation and you’re talking to the Glass. This is very unlike being able to check something on your smartphone while you are chatting casually to someone. The latter feels quite normal, but performing similar operations while wearing Google Glass would seem downright rude in front of someone.
Ultimately this suggests to me that Google Glass will be incapable of being used socially. Okay, people in the tech world may use it socially and wander around with them on at conferences Googling each other. But it’s my belief that ‘normal’ people will not.
In part this was suggested by Andrew Keen onstage at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam. His point is that there is “no permission” given when the person in front of you is brandishing Google Glass. He’s right, and I can see most people asking the person to remove their Glass before conducting a civil conversation. You just don’t see that happening when two people with smartphones start talking.
Where I can see Google Glass working is in activities where you require both hands to be free. Skiing down a mountain filming, using the Glass like you would a GoPro camera, for instance. And in industrial applications – building and manufacturing, yes, I can see this would work very well: “Show House Plans” for instance, would be a great command for a building app. And you can see the police suddenly thinking of a few useful applications.
But not in everyday interactions just walking around.
But the technology itself? Well, if it does disappear inside normal glasses perhaps it has a chance. But once again, interrupting a conversation with someone to interrogate it? We’ll have to rethink thousands of years of human interaction, and that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
So Google Glass for me will be this era’s Segway: hyped as a game changer but ultimately used by warehouse workers and mall cops.

SOURCE : http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/26/eric-schmidt-is-right-using-google-glasses-is-weird-heres-my-experience

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Poland is a nation still poisoned by anti-Semitism

WARSAW, Poland — Simcha Rotem stood at a podium between two black menorahs, from which rose towering gas flames. He was old and stooped, with wisps of white hair.

Behind him a stone frieze showed armed guerillas, their faces locked in determined grimaces. Before him TV cameras recorded his every word as Rotem declared: “We knew we had no chance. Should we start the uprising? Those are the doubts I live with every day.”
Rotem was a featured speaker at a ceremony April 19 recognizing the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943. That’s when thousands of Jews, realizing they were about to be hauled away to the Treblinka death camp, stood up to the Germans with pistols and rifles and fought back. Within a week the Nazis had slaughtered nearly all of them.
Rotem, now 88 years old, managed to escape through the sewers. Now, he’s the last surviving uprising commander.
Unlike previous years, Poland put on an extravaganza for this year’s anniversary because it was also the grand opening of a new museum intended to celebrate the 1,000-year history of Judaism here, part of an effort, sponsored in part by wealthy Polish-American Jews, to help stage a rebirth of Judaism in this state.
Today, this is a nation riven with anti-Semitism. The reasons are varied, but one bitter fact helps explain. Germany built its death camps in Poland, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others. And to this day, many people partly blame Poland for the Holocaust.
Poland is now a thriving, vibrant democracy that, like Germany, managed to escape most of the devastating economic repercussions of the European debt crisis. But it’s still struggling, not so successfully, to cope with its dark past.
Before World War II, 10 percent of Poland’s population was Jewish, more than 3 million people. Now fewer than 10,000 Poles openly identify themselves as members of the faith.
Severyn Ashkenazy was 6 years old when his family fled the Nazis. He eventually wound up in Los Angeles, and as an adult made a fortune in commercial real estate. Now he identifies himself as chairman of “Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland.”
Tad Taube, who lives in Northern California, also barely escaped Poland before the Nazis occupied the state. He donated $16 million for the new museum — determined to promote Poland’s Jewish history as a means to foster its revival.
Taube and Ashkenazy are among the most prominent Americans involved in this endeavor, but others also participate. Here in Poland, Andrzej Folwarczny runs an organization that works toward the same goal, spurred by several distressing personal observations, including an ugly moment during Poland’s first national elections after the communist era.
That’s when right-wingers, as Folwarczny put it, tried to defame a candidate for prime minister by accusing him of being Jewish.
Folwarczny is Catholic, like 90 percent of Poles. But he was stunned when he visited Israel for the first time with some other Europeans. Israelis greeted a “German with some warmth while they treated me with some distance,” he said. “They think Poles are responsible for the Holocaust.”
Last week, leading up to the 70th anniversary celebration, a university in Warsaw surveyed 1,250 high school students and found that 44 percent would be upset to find that a neighbor was Jewish.
Folwarczny’s group does most of its work in small towns that once were largely Jewish, showing evidence of the town’s past to young residents who’d had “not a clue,” as one said.
Ashkenazy blames the Catholic Church. Radio Maria, its Polish station, “spews anti-Semitism,” he said, echoing a claim made by the Council of Europe and other organizations. Folwarczny agreed and concluded: “Our goal is to change attitudes, but we’re still on the way. There’s so much to do.”

SOURCE : http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/26/4204801/poland-is-a-nation-still-poisoned.html

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/26/4204801/poland-is-a-nation-still-poisoned.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/26/4204801/poland-is-a-nation-still-poisoned.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Behind him a stone frieze showed armed guerillas, their faces locked in determined grimaces. Before him TV cameras recorded his every word as Rotem declared: “We knew we had no chance. Should we start the uprising? Those are the doubts I live with every day.”
Rotem was a featured speaker at a ceremony April 19 recognizing the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943. That’s when thousands of Jews, realizing they were about to be hauled away to the Treblinka death camp, stood up to the Germans with pistols and rifles and fought back. Within a week the Nazis had slaughtered nearly all of them.
Rotem, now 88 years old, managed to escape through the sewers. Now, he’s the last surviving uprising commander.
Unlike previous years, Poland put on an extravaganza for this year’s anniversary because it was also the grand opening of a new museum intended to celebrate the 1,000-year history of Judaism here, part of an effort, sponsored in part by wealthy Polish-American Jews, to help stage a rebirth of Judaism in this state.
Today, this is a nation riven with anti-Semitism. The reasons are varied, but one bitter fact helps explain. Germany built its death camps in Poland, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others. And to this day, many people partly blame Poland for the Holocaust.
Poland is now a thriving, vibrant democracy that, like Germany, managed to escape most of the devastating economic repercussions of the European debt crisis. But it’s still struggling, not so successfully, to cope with its dark past.
Before World War II, 10 percent of Poland’s population was Jewish, more than 3 million people. Now fewer than 10,000 Poles openly identify themselves as members of the faith.
Severyn Ashkenazy was 6 years old when his family fled the Nazis. He eventually wound up in Los Angeles, and as an adult made a fortune in commercial real estate. Now he identifies himself as chairman of “Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland.”
Tad Taube, who lives in Northern California, also barely escaped Poland before the Nazis occupied the state. He donated $16 million for the new museum — determined to promote Poland’s Jewish history as a means to foster its revival.
Taube and Ashkenazy are among the most prominent Americans involved in this endeavor, but others also participate. Here in Poland, Andrzej Folwarczny runs an organization that works toward the same goal, spurred by several distressing personal observations, including an ugly moment during Poland’s first national elections after the communist era.
That’s when right-wingers, as Folwarczny put it, tried to defame a candidate for prime minister by accusing him of being Jewish.
Folwarczny is Catholic, like 90 percent of Poles. But he was stunned when he visited Israel for the first time with some other Europeans. Israelis greeted a “German with some warmth while they treated me with some distance,” he said. “They think Poles are responsible for the Holocaust.”
Last week, leading up to the 70th anniversary celebration, a university in Warsaw surveyed 1,250 high school students and found that 44 percent would be upset to find that a neighbor was Jewish.
Folwarczny’s group does most of its work in small towns that once were largely Jewish, showing evidence of the town’s past to young residents who’d had “not a clue,” as one said.
Ashkenazy blames the Catholic Church. Radio Maria, its Polish station, “spews anti-Semitism,” he said, echoing a claim made by the Council of Europe and other organizations. Folwarczny agreed and concluded: “Our goal is to change attitudes, but we’re still on the way. There’s so much to do.”

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/26/4204801/poland-is-a-nation-still-poisoned.html#storylink=cpy

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