Woman kills husband with folding couch - Weird news- msnbc.com

ST PETERSBURG - A Russian woman in St. Petersburg killed her drunk husband with a folding couch, Russian media reported on Wednesday.

St. Petersburg's Channel Five said the man's wife, upset with her husband for being drunk and refusing to get up, kicked a handle after an argument, activating a mechanism that folds the couch up against a wall.

The couch, which doubles as a bed, folds up automatically in order to save space. The man fell between the mattress and the back of the couch, Channel Five quoted emergency workers as saying.

The woman then walked out of the room and returned three hours later to check on what she thought was an unusually quiet sleeping husband.

Police refused to comment.

The St. Petersburg Emergency Services Ministry said a private rescue service removed the man's body.

Video on the television channel's Web site showed emergency workers sawing away the side panels of a couch to remove a man in his underwear lying headfirst between the cushions.

Emergency workers said the man died instantly.

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FOX Sports on MSN - NBA - Brand episode typical for doomed Clippers

You knew it had to be too good to be true.

If anybody in the NBA is burdened with an odious destiny, it has to be the Los Angeles Clippers. It has been going on far too long, and has occurred in such a variety of ways, there is simply an inevitability, regardless of which way the wind is blowing.

Undoubtedly, the Elton Brand Saga was just the latest nightmare.

Just last week, free agent All-Star point guard Baron Davis shocked many people when he opted out of the $17.8 million final year of his contract with the Golden State Warriors, and agreed to a five-year, $65 million with his hometown Clippers. It was more than going home; it was about being closer to his future in the movie industry, and the tacit excitement of Davis and Brand bonding on and off the floor.

All that had to happen was for Brand to accept the five-year offer from the Clippers after opting out of his deal, and they'd be together. With all the excitement in the air, there were even rumblings out of fellow Clippers free agent Corey Maggette's camp that he might consider sticking around. Considering the growth of rookie forward Al Thornton and the drafting of talented young guard Eric Gordon, there were plenty of reasons for optimism to be flowing.

Except we're talking about the Clippers.

Well, Wednesday Brand has signed a five-year, $82 million contract with Philadelphia, Maggette is bound for the Warriors for $50 million over five years, and Davis still hasn't signed his implied agreement. Sure, the Clippers could turn their gaze to the Atlanta Hawks multi-talented young restricted free agent Josh Smith now that the Sixers shocked themselves by signing Brand. Despite his awe-inspiring talent, Smith remains a big gamble considering his attitude problems before last season. Even the Hawks' Keystone Cops ownership isn't likely to let him go without matching the offer.

Yep, only the Clippers could fall this flat under these circumstances.

Too bad for coach Mike Dunleavy, who has done everything humanly possible to stabilize what has been a horrible franchise since Donald Sterling bought the San Diego Clippers in 1981 and three years later moved them to Los Angeles. They got to within one game of the conference finals in 2006, and there seems to be little doubt that will be the highlight of the Dunleavy era with the Clippers, and maybe the furthest any coach ever will take this franchise. Keep in mind at five years and counting, Dunleavy already has a longer tenure than any coach dating back to the founding of the franchise in Buffalo in 1970.

There are those who believe it's simply bad karma from Sterling, who for years was the penny-pinching gazillionaire real estate mogul. In his 27 years as owner, the Clips have been in the playoffs exactly four times, and Dunleavy is the only coach to take them out of the first round. Sterling did alter his ways to attract Dunleavy, and matched big offer sheets thrown at Brand and Maggette the last time around. He even gave Dunleavy a huge extension in 2006. Still, they had their first major blowup last season, and most believe if he didn't owe Dunleavy so much money, Sterling would have dumped him on the spot. Nonetheless, Sterling was willing to spend in this case, and they were looking like a solid playoff team — even without Maggette.

And then they got Falked ... as in David Falk, super agent for Michael Jordan, Kevin Garnett, et al who vanished for a few years and is now back wielding his mighty sword. Sure, the Sixers gave Brand more money and have a bright future of their own with former Clipper Andre Miller, Andre Iguodala and Thaddeus Young coming off a good rookie year in the timid Eastern Conference. Moreover, Brand's within a reasonable drive of his home and family in upstate New York.

But this isn't just any old schlep breaking his word. We're talking Elton Brand here. Brand just happens to be in the select crew of Garnett, Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Duncan as the only active players in the career 20-and-10 club. Plus, he's an A-plus guy in the locker room and the community. That's why it's so shocking that this guy went back on his word after a career as one of the good guys. The difference in money just couldn't have been the issue.

That's why you can smell Falk at the bottom of this, particularly after an impatient Dunleavy reportedly dodged Falk last week and went straight to Brand. Evidently, things broke down from there and Brand bolted for Philly

Agent David Falk may have played a part in Elton Brand's dissing of the Clips. (Garrett Ellwood / Getty Images)

Thus, the whole situation became Clipperized, and Dunleavy will suffer the consequences. He still has a fine young 7-foot center in Chris Kaman, Thornton, Gordon, presumably Davis as his point guard and aging gunner Cuttino Mobley at shooting guard. He's seemingly lost point guard Shaun Livingston, who looked to have a spectacular future during their playoff run only to suffer a horrendous knee injury in February of 2007. He hasn't played since, and at 23, they didn't even make him a qualifying offer.

Aside from bizarre front office dealings, stars suffering career-changing injuries have also hit the Clippers at a disproportionate rate. Consider the team they had put together in 1989-90 with Danny Manning after they virtually stole Ron Harper from Cleveland for the ludicrously overrated Danny Ferry. At the time, Harper was comparable to Clyde Drexler as a dynamic shooting guard just a notch below Jordan. Harper played 28 games for the Clippers before tearing his ACL, never regaining the superior athleticism and having to reinvent his game as a defensive-minded role player (that got him five championship rings). Harper and Manning, who also suffered the dreaded ACL tear, did make it to the playoffs in 1992 and 1993 with Larry Brown as coach, but the die had been cast with both and the franchise.

Before Harper, Norm Nixon, Marques Johnson and Bill Walton also suffered similar fates with career-altering injuries. And don't forget that Brand tore his Achilles last summer and didn't play last season until the final eight games.

So this is where they are today ... again. Just when they seemed primed as never before to get back into the race, the Clippers found themselves hopelessly treading water in the deep end of the pool with no life preserver in sight.

Not even Michael Phelps can save them at this point.

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Ask.com Search Boxes to Pop Up on Photobucket - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

On the heels of a matchup between Getty Images and Yahoo-owned Flickr, Ask.com on Thursday announced that it has signed a multi-year agreement with photo Web site Photobucket.

The Ask.com search box will now be featured throughout Photobucket.com, allowing Photobucket users to do searches within the Web site. Display ads and sponsored listings will also be syndicated on Photobucket.

Photobucket, which was acquired by News Corp. in May 2007, has approximately 44 million monthly unique users worldwide, according to the company.

"Photobucket has one of the largest online audiences, and now Ask.com provides these consumers with the answers to the questions they ask every day," Andrew Moers, senior vice president and general manager for Ask.com's Partner Network, said in a statement.

"Photobucket users view, store and share billions of images each month and Ask.com will serve as a great resource in helping those users find specific content quickly and efficiently," said Alex Welch, president of Photobucket.

Earlier this week, Flickr announced that Getty Images will be trolling the online photo site in order to find shots worthy of a commercial licensing deal. In the next few months, Getty will extend invites to Flickr members, who will then have the opportunity to participate in a collection created by the photo house. Getty will become the exclusive commercial rights manager of the photos.

In May, an unknown security issue on Photobucket prompted the photo Web site to request that all its users change their passwords.

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DailyTech - Hitachi Second Generation 1TB HDD Ships in July

Second generation 1TB drive uses 43% less power than the original

Hitachi was first out of the gates with a 1TB HDD and the other major hard drive makers -- Seagate and Samsung -- had to play catch up. Hitachi announced its second generating 1TB HDD this week that promises to be the most energy efficient 1TB 7,200 RPM hard drive in the world.

The drive is known as the Deskstar 7K1000.B and the main feature is the use of three platters that each store 374GB of data. With the drive only needing three platters, the idle power consumption of the drive is reduced up to 43% over Hitachi’s first generation 1TB HDD. The 7K1000.B also offers users the option of bulk data encryption (BDE) for the entire contents of the drive.

The 7K1000.B makes use of perpendicular magnetic recording and the drive’s BDE option uses AES encryption certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to deliver the strongest commercially available levels of security for data.

Power requirement for the 7K1000.B is 5.2W at idle and the drive uses a 16MB cache. The drive has a maximum media transfer rate of 1388 Mbits/s.  The Hitachi 7K1000.B will ship worldwide in July at an undisclosed price.

For enterprise users needing a high mean time between failure (MTBF), a DeskstarE7K1000 drive is also being introduced that has up to a 32MB buffer and a 1.2 million hour MTBF featuring the same low power requirements and optional encryption technology.

The first generation Hitachi 1TB HDD was released in January 2007.

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Why is YouTube hoarding data? - Los Angeles Times

Viacom's billion-dollar lawsuit against Google's YouTube has enormous implications for the flow of information online. At stake is the degree to which websites will have to monitor and restrict the material that users post for others to peruse -- a community approach to content that's at the heart of social media sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. But last week, a pretrial ruling in the case caused a furor for reasons that had nothing to do with copyrights.

Granting a request from Viacom, District Judge Louis L. Stanton in New York ordered YouTube to turn over all the data it had collected about what its users watched. As it turns out, YouTube has kept extensive records of all its users' viewing histories, including the Internet addresses of the computers they were on at the time. And the data include not just the videos watched on youtube.com but also the YouTube clips embedded on other sites. Although the revelation might have come as a surprise to users, YouTube's privacy policy says the company "may record information about your usage," including the videos watched, the time spent on the site and the clips uploaded. It adds, "If you are logged in, we may associate that information with your account."

Privacy advocates hit the panic button, saying the combination of user names and Internet addresses could provide enough information to identify individual users. Although Stanton imposed strict limits on the data, the disclosure nevertheless raised the specter of Viacom trying to identify and sue those who uploaded clips from its TV programs without permission. To their credit, Viacom and Google have been scrambling to comply with the order without disclosing the identities of any users. Yet the lawsuit illustrates how YouTube threatens its users' privacy simply by collecting and retaining so much data. Just because Viacom isn't interested in users' identities doesn't mean that other copyright holders, law enforcement agencies or aggrieved parties won't be.

Stanton's order is a reminder that websites shouldn't retain personally identifiable data any longer than the law or their services require. Google argues that the data enable it to improve its services, combat fraud and personalize offerings. Its approach, though, reflects an engineer's habit of hoarding information for the sake of as-yet-unimagined features, not the cautious practices of a privacy-conscious company. If YouTube really needs to keep months' worth of data about what users do, the least it can do is remove the links to who's doing it. In the meantime, users should remove the links themselves by following instructions on the site for erasing their viewing histories.

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The Associated Press: Apple iPhone debuts to lines in Japan, elsewhere

TOKYO (AP) — Gadget lovers worldwide are already camped out ahead of Friday's global rollout of the new model of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which is also the first iPhone to go on sale in many countries.

Carrier Softbank Corp., which beat market leader NTT DoCoMo for the right to sell the iPhone in Japan, is planning a countdown ceremony at its flagship downtown store. By late Thursday, a line of nearly 800 iPhone fans snaked around the block, with some sleeping on the streets to ensure they would be among the first customers.

The iPhone goes on sale there five hours earlier than other nationwide outlets, helping to kick off a global rollout in 22 nations. The first model, which launched in the United States a year ago, ended up being sold only in six countries.

Because of time differences, the new iPhones are going on sale first in New Zealand, then Australia, followed by Japan and Hong Kong. In the United States, phones will be available at 8 a.m. in each time zone.

Japan, though, is the tech-mad market that analysts like to watch. It is home to powerful electronics brands such as Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s Panasonic, but its consumers are trend-chasers and have long adored Apple products such as the iPod.

Japan has about 107 million cell phones, or about one for every person. Many of the phones already work on 3G, or third-generation, wireless networks, offering the speedy Internet access that the new iPhone will also deliver. The old iPhone used a relatively slow cellular network combined with the ability to use fast Wi-Fi hotspots.

The iPhone's capabilities are less revolutionary here, where people have for years used the tech-heavy local phones for restaurant searches, e-mail, music downloads, reading digital novels and electronic shopping. They tend to shrug off foreign models, such as those of Nokia Corp.

The latest Japanese cell phones have two key features absent on the iPhone — digital TV broadcast reception and the "electronic wallet" for making payments at stores and vending machines equipped with special electronic readers.

But they don't have the iPhone's nifty touch screen or glamour image.

Another key difference is that the iPhone is designed to browse the Web in the much the same way computers do. The networks promoted by Japanese carriers, such as "i-mode" from NTT DoCoMo, are more closed than the Web. Such systems have allowed carriers to control services and charge fees.

Masayuki Otani, deputy chief of research at Maruwa Securities Co. in Tokyo, said the iPhone faces competition from emerging rivals, who offer mobile Internet devices in Japan, and the iPhone may attract a limited following.

"The iPhone is a fad," he said. "There are lots of people who love it and jump at it, but there are those who are going to be less impressed."

Norikazu Sasaki, a 20-year-old student among those in line for the iPhone in Tokyo, was already won over.

"The iPhone is so user-friendly, more than any other mobile phone. It combines the best features of a PC with the best features of a phone," said Sasaki, who's been taking turns with two friends to save his spot in the line since 1 a.m. Wednesday.

"There isn't anything else like it," Sasaki said.

The iPhone has sparked similar enthusiasm in Australia.

In downtown Sydney, Brett Howell, 36, didn't mind fighting the chill of the Down Under winter for the distinction of being first in a line of about 40 at an Optus store Thursday.

"I wanted to make sure I got one," he said as he huddled on the sidewalk with a small blanket and a book. "It's only 11 hours in total."

Ben Thomas, 27, had his own explanation for iPhone mania.

"It's a chick magnet," he said.

Apple plans to sell its 8-gigabyte iPhone for $199 in the United States and the 16-gigabyte version for $299. The company, based in Cupertino, Calif., says it has sold about 6 million iPhones since last year. It hopes to sell 10 million by the end of 2008.

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Don't Buy an iPhone 3G - Columns by PC Magazine

The media blitz for Apple's iPhone 3G is in full swing. In every other story you read, the iPhone is being spun as the apex of technological sophistication. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today reviews, written by authors handpicked by Steve Jobs to receive early review units, have been predictably glowing and effusive. There are even lines of people waiting outside Apple Stores across the country, shorter than those for the original iPhone, but still far longer than any sane person should wait to buy a phone. (A Nintendo Wii, on the other hand…) Nonetheless, you shouldn't buy one.

Now, don't get me wrong, the iPhone is a great little handheld. The touch screen is a ton of fun to use, the music- and video-playback capabilities are fantastic, and it's easily the best mobile Web-browsing device out there. And if this version fixes some of the original iPhone's flaws, including poor voice quality, lousy data rates, and a dearth of third-party apps, it will likely score a high rating. Only our PC Magazine Labs testing will tell for sure.

For now, I'll give the phone a pass on voice quality since the early reports indicate that it is much-improved. The fact remains, the iPhone 3G simply isn't ideal for most people. I am on record as being a BlackBerry convert, so I'm not without some bias here. Even so, before you spend your hard-earned cash for an iPhone 3G, you should consider each and every one of these facts:

The iPhone 3G is AT&T only. This alone means that two thirds of the country should look elsewhere. Even if you don't like AT&T's service, coverage, or pricing, it's your only option if you have to have an iPhone. There is a persistent belief out there that you'll be able to buy an iPhone 3G and unlock it—after all, you could do it with the original iPhone—but this isn't a realistic solution for most people. Even if you succeed with the unlocking, Apple is determined to brick your phone each time it updates the device's firmware. It simply isn't sustainable. And if you're like me and are tied into a Sprint (or any other non-AT&T contract), you'll have to pay to switch.

The iPhone 3G costs more than $199. That appealing under-$200 price tag is featured prominently in many of Apple's ads, but for most people, it's pleasant fiction. That entry fee is only for new subscribers who sign up for a two-year contract, and even then, there's an additional "upgrade fee"; if you want to get picky, it's really $217. The pricing is fairly complicated, but the bottom line is that a new 16GB model could conceivably cost you as much as $699. See our iPhone pricing story for phone and service specifics. Speaking of more money: This is a high-end smartphone and your monthly bills will reflect that.

The iPhone 3G isn't worth the upgrade. There's no shortage of iPhones already out there. Walk down a New York City street and you'll see them everywhere. I'd go as far as to say that anyone who really wanted an iPhone already has one. The addition of 3G and GPS are great bonuses that come with this iteration, but since existing iPhones can run iPhone 2.0 software and all the new third-party apps too, why upgrade? You'll pay more for an iPhone 3G contract each month, and that original iPhone certainly wasn't cheap.

The iPhone 3G's battery life is going to suck. Unfortunately, I don't know this for sure since Apple didn't give us the head start it gave to David Pogue of The New York Times and author of iPhone: The Missing Manual. Still, this has been a chronic problem for 3G phones of all varieties. And when you add a display that is as large as the iPhone's, power usage will most definitely increase. If you want to use your iPhone as your MP3 player, PDA, e-mail device, and phone, you'll never be able to actually leave the house with it. And, of course, defying all logic and reason, that battery isn't user-replaceable.

The iPhone 3G's storage is limited to 16GB. Right now 8GB and 16GB are your only choices, but I bet we'll see a 32GB version by the end of the year. At 32GB you'll have a device that could truly serve as a full-time iPod replacement, with room to store thousands of MP3s and high-quality video files. Now that might be worth buying—depending on the price.

The iPhone 3G is not a feature leader. The touch screen and interface are impressive achievements, but when it comes to features, the iPhone isn't a leader. What's missing: support for additional flash memory; stereo Bluetooth support; picture messaging; video recording; and the rudimentary ability to cut-and-paste text. Its 2-megapixel camera doesn't even have a flash! In short, there are free phones with better features than the iPhone 3G.

Granted there's more going for the iPhone 3G than just the phone itself. The App Store will make it a genuine smartphone platform, instead of a trumped-up feature phone. And MobileMe could make the device a key part of an increasingly cloud-based computing environment. But right now, despite the incessant buzz, I'm underwhelmed.

The original iPhone was a game changer, and with it Apple permanently altered the mobile-communications landscape. That said, given the drawbacks outlined above, I still can't see why people would rush out to buy an iPhone 3G. If you already own an iPhone, download the upgrade software. Otherwise, ignore the hype, skip the long lines, and enjoy the weekend. That's what I'll be doing.

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