It hasn't taken Garmin long to announce a successor to its Approach S2
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/74XVa9uK0Ro/garmin-approach-s4-lets-you-keep-tabs-on-email-while-yo-1445604781Darrell Green is not impressed.
The Hall of Famer looks around today's NFL and sees a lack of talent at his old job.
"When it is most needed, in my opinion, the cornerback position is probably producing at its lowest level," Green said. "Guys like myself and Deion Sanders and Mike Haynes — this is the time when we would be saying, 'Yes! This is great! We want you to pass.'"
Seattle's Richard Sherman, Tampa Bay's Darrelle Revis and Denver's Champ Bailey think that way, too, making lock-down cornerbacks must-haves nowadays. With quarterbacks flinging the football around like never before, those back-end guys get more chances to flourish or fail. They define their teams' Ds.
Still, as Green points out, special ones are rare. Check the numbers: Through Week 6, QBs averaged a passer rating of 81 when targeting players covered by cornerbacks, higher than any season since at least 1995, according to STATS.
"This generation, they're behind the 8-ball, because these offenses and quarterbacks are incredible," said Green, who played for the Washington Redskins from 1983-2002. "Better cornerbacks would make defenses better."
Thanks to rules changes and offensive innovation, games are averaging 45.90 points in 2013, which would be the second-most in NFL history (the record is 46.48 in 1948). Games are averaging about 710 total net yards and slightly more than 490 yards passing, both on pace to break marks set in 2012. The 289 touchdown passes are the most through Week 6, an average of 3.14 per game that would be the highest in the Super Bowl era.
"If you keep getting that passing game going more and more, you're going to keep seeing how important it is to have good corners," Bailey said.
"I would say now you've got to have more than one," he said, "and that's the hard part."
Seattle pairs the 6-foot-3 Sherman with 6-foot-4 Brandon Browner.
"If you don't have good corners, it can be a long day," Sherman said, "regardless of what you're doing on offense or how your front seven is playing."
Used to be wideouts got a ton of attention: Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Chad Ochocinco.
Now it's the diva DBs.
Sherman, for one, is "a vociferous guy," as his college teammate at Stanford, Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, put it. Sherman isn't shy about telling the world just how good he is — he engaged Revis in a Twitter spat over who's better — and the entire NFL notices what he says and how well he defends.
"The kid from Seattle's got a big mouth," Jets coach Rex Ryan said in a bit of takes-one-to-know-one commentary from a top defensive mind, "but he can play, you know?"
Ask Sherman to list top corners, and he'll mention Revis, New England's Aqib Talib, Cleveland's Joe Haden, Tennessee's Alterraun Verner, Arizona's Patrick Peterson.
"Elites," Sherman called them.
Ryan used to have Revis; he still has Antonio Cromartie.
"You can be more aggressive. You can play more man coverage — true lock-down, man coverage — if you're fortunate to have one like that. Some of the other ones, you've just got to play zone," Ryan said. "We want to attack you and we want to dictate. We don't want to ... just play zone or play scared."
Revis thinks the same way.
"I think a lot of DBs panic in this league, because the (receivers) get up on them and get on top of them," he said.
"I flip it," Revis explained. "They're the ones who are the prey."
Even if Revis didn't have his best outing against Philadelphia's DeSean Jackson on Sunday, he still helped the Bucs with a fumble recovery. Even if Bailey, in his first game this season after spraining his left foot, was troubled Sunday by Justin Blackmon, he still picked off a pass intended for Blackmon on a 2-point conversion attempt that could have pulled the Jaguars into a surprising halftime tie with the Broncos.
These guys change a game's complexion, and not only with pick-6s: There have been 25 interceptions returned for TDs already, putting the league on pace for 70, one fewer than last season, which had the most since the NFL expanded to 16 games in 1978, STATS said.
Superior cornerbacks give a defense more options.
They force offenses to alter game plans.
Look at the way Talib shadowed Saints tight end Jimmy Graham on Sunday, helping hold him without a catch.
Through Week 6, STATS has Talib ranked second among NFL cornerbacks for lowest opponent QB rating when targeted, behind only Verner. They're tied with an NFL-high four interceptions.
From 1995 (when STATS data begins) through 2012, Sanders ranked No. 1 in opposing QB rating, followed by Patrick Surtain. Among active corners, Revis was fourth, Atlanta's Asante Samuel sixth, Bailey 13th, Talib 17th. Sherman, in his third NFL season, doesn't have enough targets to qualify; his numbers for 2011-12 would put him second.
And Green? He was eighth during that period.
"Cornerbacks (are) born with something. Not a lot of coaches can teach it. Not a lot of players can play it," Green said. "It's definitely one of the toughest positions. I don't want to get too down on them, because I know what they have to face."
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AP Sports Writers Dennis Waszak Jr., Michael Marot, Fred Goodall and Tim Booth, and AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Stapleton contributed to this report.
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Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich
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AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org
Church elder Elwood Cornett preaches at a recent reunion of Old Regular Baptists. Brother Don Pratt is seated behind him in blue shirt and tie.
Church elder Elwood Cornett preaches at a recent reunion of Old Regular Baptists. Brother Don Pratt is seated behind him in blue shirt and tie.
Deep in the hills of Appalachia, there's a mournful, beautiful church music that hasn't changed since the 18th century.
The hymns of the Old Regular Baptist Church are sung in the so-called "lined -out" style brought to America by British colonists. It can be heard in the town of Sassafras, Ky., hidden in a hollow between mountainsides covered with sugar maple and yellow buckeye and shot through with veins of bituminous coal.
On a Saturday morning in September, several hundred men and women — solidly built, with square faces — have gathered in a Depression-era building to worship and sing. They settle into green-cushioned pews in a large, well-lit sanctuary. One of the men sitting behind the pulpit, under the picture of a kneeling Jesus, feels moved to start a song.
"Let milk and honey flow ..."
He sings a line of a hymn. Once the congregation recognizes it, it repeats the line in unison, its voices swelling in a minor mode. This is what's called lined-out hymnody.
"When shall I reach that happy place ..."
Unlike the Southern a capella tradition of sacred harp or shape-note singing, lined-out hymns have no musical notation. People listen, and they sing. The tradition began when churches didn't have songbooks.
The Thornton Old Regular Baptist church in Mayking, Ky. sings "I'm Going Home" in lined-out hymnody. This footage was captured by musicologist Alan Lomax in 1983.
"I've grown up all my life hearing these songs," says Geraldine Ison. She drove here from Blair Branch Old Regular Baptist Church in Letcher County, Ky. "When I was younger I didn't like 'em. I thought they were too sad. But now I love 'em."
She has come to the annual reunion of the Indian Bottom Association — the largest group within the various branches of the Old Regular Baptist Church, and the one that has worked hardest to preserve these old songs.
"My mother I can remember her singing 'Little Bessie,' something real sad, and I begged her not to sing," Ison says with a chuckle.
Church members don't consider this music sorrowful.
"As far as being just mournful, sad singing — and a lot of people look at it that way — it's not really," says Danny Amburgey, a retired state road inspector. "If you know the song, know what we're singing about, we're giving praise to God."
Don Pratt, retired assistant school superintendent and clerk of the Indian Bottom Association, adds: "It's been a part of my life from the beginning and it's a joyful sound. It's a sound that touches your heart."
The Smithsonian Folkways label has released two CDs of songs by Old Regular Baptists. These hymns are considered the oldest English-language religious music passed down orally in America.
At noon after the Saturday morning service, the ladies of the church have laid out a feast: fried chicken, ham slices, field peas, deviled eggs and cornbread. For dessert, there's banana pudding, dirt pudding, cherry pie, apple pie, vanilla cake and dump cake.
This is southeastern Kentucky where the morning mist settles in valleys like milk in bowls; where a quarter of the population lives in poverty; and where isolated communities are bound by food, family and faith. But the tradition in Appalachia is more than sacred song. The music is part of the moral universe in which the Old Regular Baptists dwell: a vivid faith life of baptism in cold-water creeks, repentance and salvation.
"Yes, I want to go to heaven some day ..."
Brother Don Pratt chants in a spontaneous sermon while the rising voices of the congregation wraps him in song. He is one of a succession of pastors, called moderators in the church's tradition, who steps up to the pulpit for spontaneous sermons.
"I want to hear him say when the gates swing wide ..."
The preacher who brings the service to a crescendo is Elwood Cornett, a 76-year-old retired school administrator who is moderator of the entire Indian Bottom Association.
Elwood Cornett is the moderator, the church's term for preacher, of the entire Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists.
Elwood Cornett is the moderator, the church's term for preacher, of the entire Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists.
"Wooooooo, but the key is Jesus," Cornett intones, as a woman in the congregation shrieks in spiritual elation. "Glory, glory, glory, let Mount Zion rejoice!" His arms are wide and his face contorts in piety.
According to attendance records announced at this year's reunion, 1,744 Old Regular Baptists in 41 congregations make up the Indian Bottom Association. But their numbers shrink a little each year. The room is mostly gray heads.
Elwood Cornett worries about continuity. "My grandfather was born 100 years before I was," he says. "My mother said that he sang this very way. And I sing this very way. And I'm committed to doing what I can to keep this sound alive. I want it to be around 100 years from now."
While the Old Regular Baptists wait on the Lord to return, they sing their sacred songs here in the mountains, living, as they say, "in the world, but not of the world."
VMware continues to push its plan to virtualize the whole data center, with the general availability of its network virtualization platform, and desktops too with the acquisition of desktop-as-a service company Desktone.
Less than two months after VMworld in San Francisco, VMware has gathered users and partners in Barcelona for the European version of its user conference. The main theme is once again virtualizing the whole data center, including servers, storage, networking and security.
[ Find out how to get all the advantages of a desktop PC but none of the hassles in InfoWorld's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Deep Dive report. Download the PDF today! | Track the latest trends in virtualization in InfoWorld's Virtualization Report newsletter. ]
"Virtualization has unquestionably been the most powerful tool for IT over the last decade for transformation and cost savings, and we are just getting started," said VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger during his keynote at the event on Tuesday.
A key part of VMware's strategy is the NSX network virtualization platform, which is now generally available. It offers networking and security functionality in software, and in the process the platform decouples management from the networking hardware.
Like server virtualization, VMware's approach to network virtualization lets data center operators treat their physical network as a pool of transport capacity that is used on-demand, the company said. The goal is to make networks more agile while reducing costs, according to VMware.
But VMware isn't just about the data center. The company is increasing its efforts to virtualize desktops too. On Tuesday, VMware announced it is acquiring Desktone, which offers a platform for delivering desktops and apps as a service.
With this acquisition, VMware instantly becomes a provider of desktop-as-a-service with the opportunity to set the course for the entire industry moving forward, said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager at VMware's End-User Computing unit, in a blog post.
Using Desktone's technology, VMware will start beta testing a desktop-as-a-service offering this quarter. It will run on the vCloud Hybrid Service, which is getting a European presence with a new data center location in Slough, England.
To help desktop virtualization take off on a larger scale, VMware also promises to improve performance to the point where it can keep up with applications running on a traditional desktop; simplify management; and cut the costs before the end of the year, according to Poonen.
"We have to boldly solve [these issues], and as an innovative company we are going to do that," Poonen said.
Better management is key to making all this happen, a fact VMware is very much aware of. At VMworld, the company announced a number of tools, including vCloud Automation Center 6.0, vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.8 and vCenter Log Insight 1.5.
Automation Center 6.0 will let IT staff design any custom IT service, including Hadoop-as-a-Service. The new release of Operations Management Suite will come with better performance analytics for applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server, while Log Insight 1.5 has improved scalability, especially for querying log data, as well as Active Directory integration and improved health monitoring, according to VMware.
Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com.
Yahoo just released its earnings report for the third quarter of the year, with revenue of $1.08 billion (minus traffic acquisition costs) and earnings per share of 34 cents. That's in line with analyst estimates on the revenue side ($1.08 billion) and the estimated EPS of 33 cents.FILE - In this Sept. 10, 2013 file photo, Polk County Sheriff personnel investigate the death of 12-year-old girl, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, at an old cement plant in Lakeland, Fla. Two girls have been arrested in her death. Officials say she committed suicide after being bullied online for nearly a year. On Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd will announce charges against the girls, age 12 and 14, in a press conference. (AP Photo/The Lakeland Ledger, Ernst Peters, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 10, 2013 file photo, Polk County Sheriff personnel investigate the death of 12-year-old girl, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, at an old cement plant in Lakeland, Fla. Two girls have been arrested in her death. Officials say she committed suicide after being bullied online for nearly a year. On Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd will announce charges against the girls, age 12 and 14, in a press conference. (AP Photo/The Lakeland Ledger, Ernst Peters, File)
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (AP) — A central Florida man says allegations that his 14-year-old daughter bullied a 12-year-old girl who killed herself are not true.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Tuesday authorities arrested the 14-year-old girl after she admitted online over the weekend that she had harassed Rebecca Sedwick.
A man who answered the phone at the 14-year-old's Lakeland home identified himself as her father. He told The Associated Press that his daughter was "a good girl" and he was "100 percent sure that whatever they're saying about my daughter is not true."
A 12-year-old girl was also arrested in the case. A message left at her Lakeland home was not immediately returned.
Rebecca climbed at tower at an abandoned concrete plant Sept. 9 and hurled herself to her death.
AP generally doesn't identify juveniles charged with crimes.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
Two girls were arrested in a Florida bullying case after one of them admitted online over the weekend that she harassed a 12-year-old girl killed herself last month, a sheriff said Tuesday.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said they arrested a 14-year-old girl because they were worried she would continue cyberbullying other girls. The girl is accused of bullying 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick, who climbed at tower at an abandoned concrete plant Sept. 9 and hurled herself to her death.
Judd said arrested the 14-year-old girl after she posted online Saturday that she bullied Rebecca and she didn't care.
"We decided that we can't leave her out there. Who else is she going to torment, who else is she going to harass?" Judd said.
Police also arrested a 12-year-old girl who is accused of bullying Rebecca. Both have been charged with felony aggravated stalking.
The sheriff's office identified the two girls, but The Associated Press generally does not name juveniles charged with crimes.
Judd said the bullying began after the 14-year-old girl started dating a boy that Rebecca had been seeing.
She "didn't like that and began to harass and ultimately torment Rebecca," Judd said.
The 12-year-old girl was Rebecca's former best friend, but Judd said the 14-year-old girl turned her against Rebecca. Other girls also stopped being friends with her in fear of being bullied, the sheriff said.
Authorities have said Rebecca was "terrorized" by as many as 15 girls who ganged up on her and picked on her for months through online message boards and texts.
Witnesses told investigators the 14-year-old girl told Rebecca "to drink bleach and die" and said she should kill herself.
Judd said neither girl's parents wanted to bring their daughters to the sheriff's office, so detectives went to their homes and arrested them.
Judd said the 14-year-old was "very cold, had no emotion at all upon her arrest."
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-15-US-Girl's-Suicide-Bullying/id-4d47fc80ce4a4a9b8d43ee3d1cc98827I remember hearing the "Fireflies" song by owl city for the first time, for some reason, I thought of Miku too. So long ago, I decided to draw Miku in a field at Midnight, surounded by fireflies! I even think now that her V3 English Voicebank is out that they'll make a cover of her singing that song, they already did with Oliver, Kaito, Sweet Ann, etc. Or maybe if I save up enough money, I'll do it myself! Either way, I hope you like this art.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/OVWqBVQ8Ljw/viewtopic.php
