Free Kareem
ALERT!! A serious injustice was committed. Please take action now! Kareem Amer, an Egyptian blogger who was imprisoned for exercising his right to freedom of speech, is still in prison and needs YOUR help!
Find out more information by visiting FreeKareem.org or by networking with us.
Latest News from freekareem.org- Free Kareem campaign in Berlin, Germany – PICTURES February 27th, 2010
- Video: Free Kareem rally in Washington, DC
- Kareem forbidden visits by his lawyer
- Meklit Hadero sings a song for Kareem
- Kareem’s final appeal rejected
Kareem has been in prison for: 1222 days.
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Interesting Book Facts
Agatha Christie’s fictional character Hercule Poirot is the only fictional character ever to be honored with an obituary on the front page of The New York Times.
Author Dr. Seuss wrote the book “Green Eggs and Ham” because the editor made him a bet that he could not write a book, which contained less than fifty words.
During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville’s timeless classic of the sea, “Moby Dick,” sold only 3,715 copies.
Edinburgh has more booksellers per head of population than any other city in Britain.
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a fifty thousand-word novel, “Gadsby,” without any word containing the letter “e.”
General Lew Wallace’s best seller Ben Hur was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a pope.
George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm” was turned down many times by different publishers. One of them actually said, “it was impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.”
In 1998, Ten Speed Press publishing company published a book, “The Eat A Bug Cookbook” by David George Gordon that contains over 33 bug recipes.
Keeping Warm With an Axe, is the title of a real how-to book.
The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has the world’s largest collection of comic books with over 5,000 titles and 100,000 issues.
The all time best selling electronic book is Stephen King’s “Riding The Bullet.”
The book “Little Red Riding Hood” was banned in 1990 by two school districts in California. They did this because in the book there was a picture of a basket that had a bottle of wine in it.
The smallest book in the world is “Chekhov’s Chameleon,” which measures 0.9 by 0.9 millimeters. The book has 30 pages and three colour illustrations and is not much larger than a grain of salt.
The world’s largest public library is the Chicago Public Library, which has a collection of over 2 million books.
There was a book written fourteen years before the sinking of the Titanic happened titled “Futility” by Morgan Robertson. This book was remarkably similar to the tragedy that happened to the Titanic in 1912.
Kentucky Derby
Kentucky Derby
| Grade 1 Race | ||
|---|---|---|
| Kentucky Derby | ||
 “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” |
||
| Location | Churchill Downs Louisville, Kentucky, USA |
|
| Inaugurated: | 1875 | |
| Race type | Thoroughbred | |
| Website: | 2007 Kentucky Derby | |
| Race information | ||
| Distance | 1¼ miles | |
| Track | Dirt, Left-handed | |
| Qualification | 3-year-old | |
| Weight | Colt/Gelding: 126 lbs (57.2 kg) Filly: 121 lbs. (54.9 kg) |
|
| Purse | US$2 million | |
| Bonuses: | US$ 200 | |
The Kentucky Derby is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old thoroughbred horses, staged annually in Louisville, Kentucky, on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race is over one and a quarter miles (2 km) at Churchill Downs. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57.2 kg) and fillies 121 pounds (54.9 kg).[1] The race is known in the United States as “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” for its approximate duration, and is also called “The Run for the Roses” for the blanket of roses draped over the winner. It is the first leg of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in the US and typically draws around 155,000 fans. It is the single oldest annually held sporting event in the entire South. Read more
Weird Town Names
Wierd Town Names
Bigfoot, Texas, USA
Blow Me Down, Newfoundland, Canada
Bonanza, Colorado, USA
Celebration, FL, USA
Chicken, Alaska, USA
Climax, Michigan, USA
Crackpot, England
Crotch Lake, Ontario, Canada
Cut and Shoot, Texas, USA
Deadhorse, Alaska, USA
Dildo, Newfoundland, Canada
Ding Dong, Texas, USA
Earth, Texas, USA
Egypt, Texas, USA
Fucking, Austria
French Lick, Indiana, USA
Frostproof, Florida, USA
Gun Barrel City, Texas, USA
Half.com, Oregon, USA
Happy, Texas, USA
Hell, Michigan, USA
Holy Moses, Colorado, USA
Hot Coffee, Missouri, USA
Humansville, Missouri, USA
Hygiene, Colorado, USA
Intercourse, Pennsylvania, USA
Jot ‘em Down, Texas, USA
Knockemstiff, Ohio, USA
Last Chance, Colorado, USA
Looneyville, Texas, USA
Mary’s Igloo, Alaska, USA
Monkey’s Eyebrow, Arizona, USA
Nameless, Texas, USA
Needmore, Texas, USA
Ninety-Six, South Carolina, USA
North Pole, Alaska, USA
Nothing, Arizona, USA
Notrees, Texas, USA
Okay, Oklahoma, USA
Santa Claus, Indiana, USA
Shorter, Alabama, USA
Smackover, Arkansas, USA
Sopchoppy, Florida, USA
Study Butte, Texas, USA
Toad Suck, Arkansas, USA
Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, USA
Two Egg, Florida, USA
Valentine, Texas, USA
Vulcan, Alberta, Canada
Waterproof, Louisiana, USA
Why, Arizona, USA
Muhammad
Muhammad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Muhammad” in a new genre of Islamic calligraphy started in the 17th century by Hafiz Osman.[1]
Liviu Librescu
Liviu Librescu
Liviu Librescu (August 18, 1930 – April 16, 2007; Hebrew: ליביו ליברסקו) was a Romanian born and educated Israeli-American scientist and academic whose major research fields were aeroelasticity and aerodynamics. His most recent position was Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Tech.[3] The 76-year-old Holocaust survivor was shot and killed in the Virginia Tech massacre while holding off the gunman at the entrance to his classroom so his students could escape through the windows.[4]
Read more
Halo 3 Release Date Set
Halo 3 is the third game in the Halo Trilogy and will provide the thrilling conclusion to the events begun in Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo 3 will pick up where Halo 2 left off. The Master Chief is returning to Earth to finish the fight. The Covenant occupation of Earth has uncovered a massive and ancient object beneath the African sands – an object whose secrets have yet to be revealed. Earth’s forces are battered and beaten. The Master Chief’s AI companion Cortana is still trapped in the clutches of the Gravemind – a horrifying Flood intelligence, and a civil war is raging in the heart of the Covenant. This is how the world ends… Read more
Bill Maher and Ann Coulter had intimate relationship
Maher and republican media voice Ann Coulter confirmed a short lived relationship on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor, that occurred in 1994 while Maher circuited in California.
Source: Wikipedia
Joost Invitations
If you need an invitation, post a new comment (not a reply) with your email. If you have a Joost invitation token, send it to that email and post a reply to that comment so none are wasted. If you get invited, do the right thing and invite others. Do it for karma and the warm fuzzy feeling inspired by the word: community.
Joost raises $45 million in funding
Joost raises $45 million in funding
BRUCE MEYERSON
Associated Press
NEW YORK – Joost, an Internet-based TV service being launched by the creators of Skype and Kazaa, said Thursday it has raised $45 million from five investors including CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. and an influential Hong Kong telecommunications executive.
Index Ventures, a European venture capital firm, and Sequoia Capital were the lead contributors to the investment. The fifth participant is Li Ka-shing, chairman of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. and Cheung Kong Holdings, who invested in Joost through his charitable foundation, the Li Ka Shing Foundation.
Joost, which recently expanded a trial of its TV service to more users, transmits video with peer-to-peer technology, the signature approach that co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom used to launch the hugely popular Skype calling and Kazaa music-sharing services.
P2P relies on the shared computing power and bandwidth of its users to transmit data, rather than serving it all directly to each user from a central data center. With P2P, the more people using the system, the better quality the transmission will be, making quick adoption especially crucial to Joost.
Skype proved so successful that it was purchased by eBay Inc. for $2.6 billion, but Kazaa drew the legal ire of the music industry as users downloaded music without paying for it. A settlement last year will lead to a redesign of Kazaa, which is no longer owned by Friis and Zennstrom.
No copyright troubles are envisioned with Joost, which has gone the mainstream route by signing deals with major content providers, including its new investors. Viacom, for example, has agreed to let Joost show content from MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount and Comedy Central. Overall, Joost says it now has 150 channels of video.
Now that a sizable number of consumers have high-speed Internet access, online video viewing has taken off, as exemplified by the explosive popularity of YouTube, acquired by Google Inc. in November for $1.76 billion.
Joost
(pronounced ‘juiced’) is a system for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web using peer-to-peer TV technology, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa).
Joost began development in 2006. Working under the code name “The Venice Project,” Zennström and Friis have assembled teams of some 150 software developers in about a half-dozen cities around the world, including New York, London, Leiden and Toulouse. Joost’s CTO is Dirk-Willem van Gulik.[1]
The teams are currently in negotiations with FOX networks. It has signed up with Warner Music, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Productions (Indianapolis 500, IndyCar Series) and production company Endemol for the beta.[2] In February 2007, Viacom entered into a deal with the company to distribute content from its media properties, including MTV Networks, BET and film studio Paramount Pictures.
Company representatives have gone on record as saying the name should be pronounced as “juiced”, unlike the Dutch first name Joost, which is pronounced ‘Yohst.’
Technology
P2PTV overlay network serving three video streams.
P2PTV overlay network serving three video streams.
The program is based on P2PTV technology and is expected to deliver (relaying) near-TV resolution images. It turns a PC into an instant on-demand TV without any need for additional set top box. News updates, discussion forums, show ratings, and multi-user chat sessions (often linked to the active stream/channel) are made possible through the use of semi-transparent widget overlays.
The current version of the software is based on XULRunner and the audio management re-uses the ZAP Media Kit. The peer to peer layer comes from the Joltid company, which also provided the peer to peer layer of Skype. The video playback utilizes the CoreCodec, CoreAVC H.264 video decoder.
[edit] Financing
[edit] Joost development
As co-owners of Skype, Friis and Zennström received part of a $2.6 billion cash payment when eBay acquired Skype in 2005, which easily covered the development and marketing cost of their Joost venture. Just a week after launching the service, the founders announces that they have raised additional $45 million. Sequoia Capital, which backed Yahoo, Google and YouTube; Index Ventures, an early investor in Skype; Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong tycoon; and CBS, the US media group, have all taken “small minority†stakes in the start-up. Viacom is also understood to be among the partners, although the nature of its backing has not been disclosed.
[edit] Content distribution
As opposed to streaming technology in which all clients get the feed from the server, P2P TV technology differs in the sense that the servers serve only a handful of clients; each of the clients in turn propagate the stream to more downstream clients and so on. This moves the distribution costs from the channel owner to the user.
The Joost service will be ad-supported, with advertising analogous to that shown on traditional TV, according to CEO Fredrik de Wahl.[4]
[edit] Availability
Currently, the software is in an open beta stage; an invite is required to become a user. However, a new stage of the beta was announced on May 1st, and all users were given unlimited invitations.[5] Linux is not yet supported.
[edit] Programming Content
Viacom Inc. and Joost entered into a content provider agreement for the Joost platform on February 20, 2007. Under the agreement divisions of Viacom (including MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures) will license their “television and theatrical programing” to Joost.[6] This came shortly after Viacom requested 100,000 potentially infringing videos to be removed from YouTube.com, which showed a preference by Viacom for the Joost platform over YouTube.[7]
Joost also currently has licensing agreements in place with Ministry of Sound TV, Warner Music, the production company Endemol[8], Diversion Media[9], CBS[10] and CenterStaging’s rehearsals.com[11]. On May 1, 2007, Joost signed a deal to distribute NHL content, including full game replays of the Stanley Cup Finals, and vintage games.[12]
[edit] Channels
The Joost applications includes three special channels What’s Popular, Search, and Joost Suggests which offers services, like searching the channel list or gathering statistics about channels, that can be used to find a channel that can be viewed. Apart from that, it also lists a number of channels serving various genres of content.[13]
[edit] History
[edit] Timeline
* 2006, October: The Venice Project announced.
* 2006, December: Invitation-only beta testing began.
* 2007, January 16: Officially announce real name, “Joost”[14]
* 2007, February 17: Macintosh beta testing began
* 2007, February 20: Viacom announces that it will be a “key partner” in television programming for Joost.
* 2007, March 7: CHUM Television announces its partnership with Joost to provide content, the majority of which to come from MuchMusic.
* 2007, April 5: Joost opens the newest beta version 0.9.1 to many new users, however bugs prevail and problems with playback now exist.
* 2007, April 10: Joost releases beta 0.9.2 to remove a hard-coded security certificate. Previous versions no longer run.
* 2007, April 24: Joost releases beta 0.9.4
* 2007, May 1: Joost releases beta 0.10.1 , granting existing beta users the ability to invite up to 999 peers to try Joost.
* 2007, May 9: Joost releases beta 0.10.2
[edit] See also
* Internet television
* Democracy Player
* TVUPlayer
* Babelgum
* Zattoo
