Oscars' new voting system

Filled with the new electoral system of the Oscar for best picture is a bit like watching a David Lynch film: Sometimes you have to nod and pretend to understand.

As Byzantine voting Oscar new format is preferred, there are good reasons to change a choice, a film systems of the past. With 10 nominations, the film may seem to win with a 11% of the total vote.

The new system ensures that will not happen, but Oscar could probably use some of the statistics, when the counting of votes. In short

• Students are asked to rate 10 nominees for best film in order of priority.

• If the film is 51% or more of the votes (or not), the contest is over. Otherwise, the auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers will be divided into 10 movie dick. The film with the fewest votes is eliminated and that the stack of 2 votes go to the movies rest accordingly.

• If the majority does not reach the number 2 vote, the process repeats itself, remove the battery nearest the action was redistributed. This process continues until a film has a majority. Until that moment, a second-choice votes were removed, the Auditor was the # 3, and then, until the elections, when necessary.

While the new system, ensuring consensus, which increases the likelihood that a movie with more than 2 and 3 votes to win the movie with the first votes more.

"With 10 films and this system, we have a real race for once," says Sasha Stone of AwardsDaily.com. "Right now, I would not be surprised by any name they read."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/oscars/2010-03-05-1Aoscar05_VA_N.htm

Bachelor Jake Pavelka is explaining what he meant when he told runner-up Tenley Molzahn that they lacked "physical chemistry" on the March 1 finale. (Tenley, 25, remarked that she was confused by Jake's choice of words.)

"Ok, I'll come clean: Physical and sexual chemistry are the same thing," Jake, 32, said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Thursday.

See how Jake wooed Tenley and Vienna

He said that he used the word "physical" instead of "sexual" because he "was trying to take the high road and be nice. I didn't want to crush her because she is such a wonderful person."

For the most part, he and fiancee Vienna Girardi say viewers are pleased they're together.

"It's nice because we weren't sure if we were going to have supporters or haters, but a lot of people have been supportive," Vienna said.

See Vienna in a bikini - and more

She did have one hater: When she was recently walking down Rodeo Drive, she says a lady yelled 'Boo!' out of her window. "I was like, 'Pop a tire!'" Vienna told Kimmel.

Why does she think some viewers despise her so much?

"People love to hate, and I have a huge personality, and it's even more amplified on the show," she said.

Check out the Bachelor contestants' wild pasts

Even Jake's family wasn't wild about her after initially meeting.

These days, "I talk to his mom, like, twice a day," Vienna said. "We both call each other."

When Kimmel joked that Tenley talks to Jake's mom three times a day, Vienna cracked: "Well then I am going to have to call her one more time then."

Find out where your favorite Bachelor stars are today

She said she is ready to root for her man as he makes his Dancing With the Stars debut March 22.

"I will be his biggest cheerleader!" she said.

Is she nervous about all the time he'll be spending with partner Chelsie Hightower? Nah.

"Chelsea could have him on the dance floor," Vienna said, "but he comes home to me!

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebritynews/news/bachelor-jake-tenley-and-i-didnt-have-sexual-chemistry-197031

Academy Awards voters are about to release their first top-10 list in 66 years.

Academy award - the film guide the academy awards, widely known as the oscars, are awards presented annually by the academy of motion picture arts and sciences.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Academy Awards voters are about to release their first top-10 list in 66 years.

Oscar nominations Tuesday feature 10 best-picture nominees instead of the usual five, the first time since the 1943 awards show that so many films are competing for Hollywood's highest honor.

Academy organizers say they wanted a broader range of titles in the mix, including worthy populist movies that often miss out on best-picture nominations in favor of the smaller dramas Oscar voters typically prefer.

Read more..

You could say the price of an Oscar nod got cut in half this year. Chagrined that box-office and critical favourite The Dark Knight wasn't nominated last year, the academy honchos decided to double the number of nominees for best picture. That means 10 films, not five, will be up for the big kahuna come March.

So here are 10 worthies in advance of Wednesday's official nominations, keeping in mind the academy's goal of recognising the popular without snubbing the good or good for you. This isn't a top 10 list for 2009, or a prediction of results. It's just a suggestion as to how the five extra choices might be used. The real nominations will be announced at 12.30am on Wednesday, Australian time.

And the nominees are:

Avatar

You might have heard of this one. James Cameron's eco-friendly action blockbuster is breaking box-office records and fuelling water-cooler conversation on a weekly basis. It's also a titanic leap ahead in technical know-how, one of the rare movies you leave thinking, "I've never seen anything like that." So Avatar has both the stamp of public approval and a bona fide claim to artistry. It's in.

The Hangover

This one's a little tricky. Like Avatar, it got a Golden Globe, for best musical or comedy. It also enjoyed the rare double whammy of box-office success (it's now the best-selling comedy DVD ever) and generally favourable reviews. But the Oscar folk, who seem averse to comedy in the first place, may find it a little bawdy to give it their official imprimatur. How about showing some love for "Fat Jesus" and the gang and recognising the funny.

Read here

Academy President Sid Ganis announces that the 82nd Academy Awards, which will be presented onMarch 7, 2010, will have 10 feature films vying in the Best Picture category.

Review Apple iPod classic 160 GB Black (7th Generation) NEWEST MODEL

Product Features and Technical Details

Product Features

• 160 GB capacity for 40,000 songs, 25,000 photos, or 200 hours of video
• Up to 36 hours of music playback or 6 hours of video playback when fully charged
• 2.5-inch color LCD with LED backlight and 320 x 240 pixel resolution
• Supports AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV audio formats; H.264 and MPEG-4 video formats; JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only), and PNG image formats
• One-year limited warranty with single incident of complimentary telephone technical support

Technical Details

• Dimensions: 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.41 inches (103.5 x 61.8 x 10.5 mm)
• Weight: 4.9 ounces (140 grams)
• Capacity: 160 GB
• Display: 2.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD with LED backlight
• Display resolution: 320-by-240-pixel resolution at 163 pixels per inch
• Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
• Audio formats supported: AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
• Earphone frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
• Earphone impedance: 32 ohms
• Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
• Languages: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, and Turkish (additional language support for display of song, album, and artist information: Bulgarian, Croatian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese)
• Input: Dock connector
• Output: 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
• Battery: Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery
• Playback time: Music playback time: Up to 36 hours when fully charged; Video playback time: Up to 6 hours when fully charged
• Battery charge time: Fast-charge time: about 2 hours (charges up to 80% of battery capacity); Full-charge time: about 4 hours
• Mac system requirements: Mac computer with USB 2.0 port; Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later; iTunes 9 or later
• Windows system requirements: PC with USB 2.0 port; Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 3 or later; iTunes 9 or later
• Operating temperature: 32 degrees to 95 degrees F (0 degrees to 35 degrees C)
• Nonoperating temperature: -4 degrees to 113 degrees F (-20 degrees to 45 degrees C)
• Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
• Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)

Review

NOTICE: This review is for the NEW 2009 160GB iPod Classic, NOT the 2007 160GB iPod Classic!

The new 160GB iPod Classic is easily Apple Inc.'s best iPod to date, and out of all of the iPods that I own, this is my favorite.

First, the capacity of this iPod is simply unbeatable. I've yet to see another portable media player that can match the iPod Classic in capacity. I have a huge music library, and it's nice to be able to carry every song that I own on my person at all times. What's more, thanks to the iPod Classic's capacity, I also have room to carry a few videos with me, and some of my photos. If you don't like having to pick which songs to load onto your portable media player, the iPod Classic is the way to go.

The second thing that I love about this iPod can be summed up in two words: it works. The 160GB iPod Classic that was introduced in 2007 was extremely buggy, had a non-responsive Clickwheel on many units, crashed frequently, and required a hit-and-miss firmware update to stop the hard drive from spinning even when the device was "off," which often lead to dead batteries. All of these problems left the 2007 160GB iPod Classic warming shelves and earning it the infamous "honor" of being the "worst selling iPod ever," according to Apple. I'm pleased to say that the new 160GB iPod Classic released earlier this month has virtually none of these problems. There's no "spinning hard drive bug," the Clickwheel is incredibly responsive, and the device isn't crash-prone. While it's true that many of these issues were fixed with last year's iPod Classic, there hasn't been a truly functional 160GB model until now. To put it bluntly, this is the iPod that Apple should've released in 2007.

Another thing that I really like about this iPod, and the iPod Classic in general, is it's ability to double as an external hard drive. While I believe that the iPod Nano is also capable of this, the only iPod that really has enough space to function as an external hard drive is the iPod Classic. The hard drive functionality admittedly reduces the number of devices I have to carry on me at any given time. If you regularly work with large files and are considering a new iPod, the iPod Classic is the way to go, plain and simple.

So what are the caveats? Well for starters, as with every other iPod Classic, this is a hard-drive (rather than flash-memory) based device. As a result, it has moving parts which make it unsuitable for running or any physical activity that exerts mechanical shock onto the iPod. Unless you exercise constantly with your iPod though, this really shouldn't be an issue. The only other caveat, which is more of personal taste than an actual flaw, that I can find, is that Apple has not made any cosmetic changes to this device since they introduced it in 2007. Now don't get me wrong, the point of an iPod "Classic," is to retain the "Classic" design, but after seeing how much better a black Clickwheel looks on the silver iPod Nano, I'd have thought that Apple would have given the silver iPod Classic a black Clickwheel as well. However, I admit that this is entirely my personal preference and not a "flaw" per se. I've put a quick list of pros and cons together, which can be seen below:

Pros: Largest iPod Capacity-wise, long battery life, "Genius" feature, excellent value for your money, well-built, doubles as an external hard drive, and improvements to Cover Flow.

Cons: Hard Drive (rather than Flash memory) based storage medium; device is cosmetically identical to the 2007 80GB model. (I still don't understand why Apple hasn't colored the Clickwheel black on the silver model to match the iPod Nano.)

Finally, I would highly recommend this product, which is why it gets five stars from me. I don't like the iPod Nano; it's too small for my hands, and the screen is too small for my eyes. While the iPod Touch may have app store access and Wi-Fi, I find it to be a really gimmicky device, that makes for a poor portable media player, (Apple was wise to position it as a handheld game system,) and is really an "iPhone without a phone." In contrast, the iPod Classic is an excellent portable media player, it has an excellent interface, and it only costs $249 dollars. To put things in perspective, the 2009 160GB iPod Classic costs $70 dollars more than a 16GB iPod Nano, and $150 dollars less than a 64GB iPod Touch. All in all, I highly recommend this product.

More images

Sammi and Ronnie break up on MTV Reality Show “Jersey Shore”

There were many dramatic season-long arcs on Jersey Shore , which wraps up tonight with its season finale and reunion show: Pauly D’s obsession with “the business”; Mike’s failure to land a ten; Snookie’s love of farmers.

Jan 22, (THAINDIAN NEWS) All the fans of the popular MTV reality series “Jersey Shore” eagerly awaited the finale episode of the show which was aired on Thursday night. Like all the previous episodes of the reality series, even the last segment of the first season of the show managed to garb immense attention and as a result received wide viewership.

The last episode was followed by an one hour reunion special which witnessed cast members reminisce about the time they had spent in together in the house all this while during the show. The reunion special was also successful in bringing an entertaining conclusion to the show as it aired some never-before-seen footage of the series. Even the reunion special was not devoid of the drama that is usually associated with the reality series as cast member Sammi Giancola walks out of the sets when it is revealed that a footage was going to be aired in which she is seen having a private conversation with Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino.

However, the footage leaves Ronnie really enraged as it shows Sammi confessing to Mike about how she flirted with a cop at a bar. Supposedly, the footage angers Ronnie so much that he decides to end his relationship with Sammi. However, the couple have reportedly revealed that they have sorted out their differences and are still together.