Mike Allen / The Politico:
Attorney general collapses  —  Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed Thursday night while giving a speech to the Federalist Society in Washington, according to three senior administration officials.  —  Details about Mukasey's condition were not immediately available.

With the holiday season fast approaching, there's nothing that warms the heart like giving a gift with no expectation of anything in return. It's with that spirit that we pass along Dylan's incredibly important question:

"I've been nagging myself to get into digital photography and with Christmas coming soon I've decided to get a DSLR so I can dive in. I'm leaning heavily toward the Sony Alpha 350. I've always been a big Sony fan but I can back off of that if someone gives me good reason to try Nikon, Canon, etc. I would like to hang around the price range of the Alpha 350; ultimately, I'm looking for a good camera for a newcomer to the scene but I don't want to have to upgrade soon."

We hear ya Dylan, and our dutiful readers do too. (Right? Right.) After giving this one a response, feel free to send in your own inquiry to ask at engadget dawt com.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Ask Engadget: Best DSLR for a committed amateur? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Teenagers' use of digital media shows that time online teaches children important skills, a new study shows.

Verizon Wireless today admitted that some of its employees had been looking into President-elect Barack Obama’s cell phone billing records. In a release, the company said:

“This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed President-Elect Barack Obama’s personal cell phone account. The account has been inactive for several months. The device on the account was a simple voice flip-phone, not a BlackBerry or other smartphone designed for e-mail or other data services.

“All employees who have accessed the account — whether authorized or not — have been put on immediate leave, with pay. As the circumstances of each individual employee’s access to the account are determined, the company will take appropriate actions. Employees with legitimate business needs for access will be returned to their positions, while employees who have accessed the account improperly and without legitimate business justification will face appropriate disciplinary action.

“We apologize to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day.”

This is a good enough reason for all of us to question the privacy policies of our phone companies, which have time and again shown that they are ready to play lose-and-easy with their customer’s privacy. Of course, they are known to use underhanded tactics to position themselves as the good guys, though they are anything but. In my opinion, this breach — regardless of what your political leanings — is not a good thing. If President-elect Obama’s records are not safe, who is to say a disgruntled employee won’t mess with those of private citizens with whom they have an axe to grind.

What do you think Verizon’s punishment should be?

The Linux kernel uses several special capabilities of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) suite. These capabilities range from giving you shortcuts and simplifications to providing the compiler with hints for optimization. Discover some of these special GCC features and learn how to use them in the Linux kernel.

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/homechare_02.jpg" width="286" height="417" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2"The Home Charemdash;yes, that's chare, not chairmdash;is a combination wheelchair for the disabled and for Jabba the Hutts. This device not only can be adjusted into a bed and standing aid, but also can double as a toilet via a replaceable seatless cushion. We can't see how this toilet design is convenient though, unless, of course, you rode around in this wheelchair pantless or in a pair of asschaps. Since the Home Chare is currently not on the market, we hope this will give them time to fix the restroom-accessibility situation. [a href="http://c-h-design.de/Projects/homec.html"Product Pagea/ via a href="http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/11/20/for-when-disabled-folks-want-to-consolidate/"Yanko/a]br / script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"galleryPost('homecharedesign', 3, ' ');/script/p/a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2c3f67b8b97c110c7f7836f655ec2bcap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2c3f67b8b97c110c7f7836f655ec2bcap=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2c3f67b8b97c110c7f7836f655ec2bca" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=7MEVjC2m"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=fCxBTqis"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=9KFYISO0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=9KFYISO0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=AQbzmwbW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=AQbzmwbW" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/7DcS_V5IljY" height="1" width="1"/

An aide to Barack Obama's transition team says the president-elect is on track to nominate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state by next Thursday.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=lra2n"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=lra2n" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=8ucvN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=8ucvN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=Fzxcn"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=Fzxcn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=z8OIn"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=z8OIn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=wXAFN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=wXAFN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=hWzCN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=hWzCN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~4/460322323" height="1" width="1"/

pscript type="text/javascript"newVideoPlayer("/iphonebugfsit_gizmodo.flv", 320, 260,"");/scriptimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/stills/iphonebugfsit_gizmodo.flv.jpg" style="display: none;" /According to a Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information press release, the a href="http://gizmodo.com/5075154/the-iphone-os-22-rumor-round-up"eagerly expected iPhone 2.2 operating system update/a will arrive tomorrow, November 21. The release is expected to bring new features, but the Institute's note highlights a major security problem that can make your iPhone to place a call when visiting a malicious web site. This date is a href="http://gizmodo.com/5083116/iphone-22-release-just-10-days-away"in line with the previous rumors/a. bUpdate: here's the video of the security exploit that the iPhone 2.2 release will fix, according to the Fraunhoferians./b/p blockquotepThe Fraunhofer Institute SIT alerted the producers of the iPhone about this issue a month ago. To close this hole, new firmware will be released on November 21./p/blockquote pAccording to Collin Mulliner, the exploit only requires three lines of HTML code, which anyone with basic knowledge of this language can add to any web page./p blockquotepThe scenario: The iPhone user receives an e-mail or SMS with an Internet link. Clicking on the link will open a web site. But suddenly, the iPhone will start calling a phone number without any user intervention. The worse thing is that you can't stop the call, as the cellphone will be gray while the number is dialed. (...) Even amateurs could easily develop a criminal exploit./p/blockquote pThe Fraunhofer Institute says that a similar vulnerability was discovered last month and patched, "but obviously was not enough." [a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sit.fraunhofer.de%2Fpressedownloads%2Fpressemitteilungen%2FiPhoneHack.jsphl=enie=UTF-8sl=detl=en"Fraunhofer SIT/a via a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/11/20/iphone_security_posting_suggests_2_2_firmware_tomorrow.html"Apple Insider/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=1e58aae5be7ab5ff42bbabec5492b326amp;p=1"img style="border:0;" src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=1e58aae5be7ab5ff42bbabec5492b326amp;p=1" border="0" //adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=p2EpPhQk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ffmk2GEs"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=0T9WcGtA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=0T9WcGtA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=LwHu9HBb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=LwHu9HBb" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/shqmrzBjjl0" height="1" width="1"/

Obama aide says the president-elect is on track to nominate Hillary Clinton as secretary of state after Thanksgiving
• Gates Appears Likely to Stay as Pentagon Chief
• Obama's Cabinet Picks Heavy on Washington Experience
• Waxman Wins House Showdown
• Obama to Tap Arizona Gov. as Homeland Security Chief
• Guessing Game On About Obama's Possible Tech Czar
• FOX Interactive: Your Picks for Obama's Cabinet

What is up with the almost total lack of after-market coolers for the i7 family of processors? Am I going to be left sitting here with crappi stock cooling for weeks on end? I can't believe that companies who earn their living from selling coolers wouldn't make sure they are available at launch. Amazing.

That said, if any of you see some come up post right in.

China's trade ties with Latin America are on the rise

China's trade ties with Latin America are on the rise

a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cKnTj2cyNQfeature=related"The Outsider/a: a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFtOKSl3zZsfeature=related"The story/a a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OH0WgLgaAMfeature=related"of/a a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfCjWIQtm-Mfeature=related"Harry/a a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZV3zF-JpEcfeature=related"Partch/a. a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNqHH0N5vpwfeature=related"BBC Documentary/a. quot;...a documentary about the composer Harry Partch who invented his own compositional method using a 43-tone scale and many instruments that he built by hand.quot; br /

Hiroshi Nohara, a 41-year-old man from Tokyo is delighting tourists and travelers in Mexico City, simply by calling its international airport his home. He's been living in Mexico City's international airport since Sept. 2.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=Y2pOn"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=Y2pOn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=raJnN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=raJnN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=337Pn"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=337Pn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=uQFcn"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=uQFcn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=AmNUN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=AmNUN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=AOlJN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=AOlJN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~4/460322326" height="1" width="1"/

So I originally bought two Seagate 7200.11 1tb SATA drives to run a RAID 1 array.

One of the ones I recieved was defectived and had what is know as a the "click clock" sound where the head kept reseting and stalling. From what I've read, this ultimately ends in drive death.

Well, I thought I was OK with my RMA in order, but the one remaining one (ie, the one I'm using) I'm using just started doing the clicking. I powered down the system for a few min and rebooted and it seems OK now. I'm going to get online with newegg customer support tomorrow and tell them not to ship another seagate and to just refund me if possible and I'll be sending back the other as well. I hope that works out.

Basically this post is just a warning. Watch out, even the newer Seagate drives with the updated "SD15" firmware are borked. Buyer beware.

Edit: as an aside, does anyone know of any free/cheap drive copy software that allows you to copy a bootable windows install, but also gives you the option of not copying some directories (ie, like my steam folder).

Hi Guys,

My name is Arron, and I've just setup my freelance graphic design site
located at: RFlyGD.com.

I currently offer two services:

iPhone Icon Design

Web Graphics

With a third (Design for Print) on the way. I have quiet a huge portfolio, most of which is offline current due to sheer lack of time to upload. Although I do plan to have the full portfolio up by the new year. Also, I am currently finishing two iPhone icons, and a business logo for two separate clients - which when finished will also be showcased on the site

If your an iPhone developer, drop me a line - razorianfly@gmail.com / arron_161@hotmail.com.

Maybe your not an iPhone developer? Drop me a line anyway. From iPhone icon's, to business logos,
design for Google Ad's and more, and with 7 years graphic design experience under my belt,
I'm now looking to go into this in a big way.

Maybe you know someone who's looking for graphic design?

For more information and the current portfolio,
visit RFlyGD.com.

I promise, you won't regret it. ;)

Cheers,
Arron

a 2.2 firmware is rumored to be released tomorrow, the dev team urges us not to update as the dev team is on the verge of a 3g soft unlock

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

More and more people are watching and upload videos on YouTube. Then after watching videos on YouTube becoming an indispensable part of life, they want to watch YouTube videos on the way of going to work, going home, when they are in airplane and some other places where they can not access the internet. So how to download YouTube videos and convert YouTube videos to iPod/PSP/Zuen etc. become what people care about. This is the time when Aiseesoft YouTube Video Converter Suite works.



This guide aims to show you how to conert YouTube videos to iPod and other portable players and how to convert video to FLV format for uploading to YouTube.

Part 1. How to download YouTube videos (100% Free)
Part 2. How to convert YouTube videos to mp4.
Part 3. How to convert videos to FLV. (YouTube)

Part 1. How to download YouTube videos freely.
Here I recommend you a really nice website that can download YouTube video 100% free.
http://ytde.com
Step 1. Copy your video’s url and paste at (1)
Step 2. Click Download(2)


Part 2. How to convert YouTube video to mp4.
Step 1. Choose FLV Video Converter

Step 2. Load you YouTube video (1)
Click ”Add File” or ”File” to load the video you want to convert.
Step 3. Profile and Settings (2)
Choose your output format at the drop-down profile list and customize your own settings at pop-up window of settings.

Tip:
Before click ”Start” button to start your conversion you can also do the following tips

1. Merge into one file(3)
If you want to merge two or more videos into one please choose ”Merge into on file”.
2. Trim and Crop(4)
If you only want to a part of your video please use ”Trim” to choose the start time and end time
If you want to get rid of the black edges use ”Crop”

Part 3. How to convert videos to FLV format for YouTube
Step 1. Choose Video to Flash Converter

Step 2. Load Video(1)
Add your video that you want to upload to YouTube by clicking ”Add File” or ”File”
Step 3. Profile and Settings(2)
Chosse ”YouTube Video (*. flv)” at the drop-down list of profile
Cutomize your own Encoder, Frame Rate, Resolution and Video Bitrate here in ”Settings” button.
Start conversion by clicking ”Start” when you are ready.

The tips are the same as Part2.

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/emmajane.png alt= pI don't get a lot of fan mail. But I'm pretty sure I just got the world's best intentioned, but poorly thought out, fan letter: /p blockquotep Love yer site, your Drupal work, and omfg, you're even into the Ubuntu doc-team. I think that is the grandest, and I'll likely gawk atcha in DC during DrupalCon where a 3D screensaver / wallpaper, and general graphic homage will be born out due to a slick time lapse photo montage shall ensue, et. al. ;-gt;br / Keep on rockin' in the free world. :-) /p/blockquote pThe identity of this person will forever be known to only two people (me and quot;himquot;), so please don't ask. Although I am a little bit creeped out by this email, this Public Service Announcement isn't about making anyone feel uncomfortable. (I've sent my fair share of weird emails that have been fuelled by inside jokes and caffeine and not at all fuelled by sanity, so I'm hardly one to judge. This person has gotten a quick reply back and knows how I feel about the email.) /p pThis blog post is actually a specific request to please never quot;gawkquot; at me from a distance. Say hello and introduce yourself! I verge on crowd-phobic. I hate having to interact with a room full of pre-clustered people. Delivering a presentation to a few hundred people? No problem. Facilitating huge discussion groups? Love it! But I'd rather have teeth pulled than quot;work a room.quot; So the next time we're both together in the same room, please come up and introduce yourself. I'll be the one sitting in the corner noodling with tech to avoid having to break into a cluster of people and say hi./p

I'm having a terrible time deciding on whether to buy a new 2G or 1G, i just want to use it for music movies and some jailbroken apps (GBA emulator, Winterboard etc.), however if you think that the app store is so godly that i dont need a jailbreak please let me know, cause when it comes to this i really only know a few things. I have complied a few questions that i would like answered by anyone who owns a 2G touch.
1. how much faster is the new 2g?:confused: I mean if its not that big of a difference then i wont bother.

1.5: the ipod touch 1G has a jailbreak, when they jailbreak the 2G do you think that all the apps will transfer, or do you think they will have to be rewritten especially for the 2g.

2. is it really that hard to adjust the volume on a 1g that they had to add a volume rocker?

3. If i dont care about line in (recording i know but i have a computer) support and a speaker (thats cool but i have good headphones i probably would never use this) then should i even bother with the new touch?

Thanks so much.:D

"Yesterday we reported that GT200 to go 55nm silently? Non-ref Card hits early 09, and what we’re even more interested is whether NVIDIA is going to unveil a flagship dual-GPU card after the processing upgrades to 55nm. It’s known that AMD Radeon 4870X2 has become the most powerful ”weapon” in its important meetings such as financial report.

As informer tells, NVIDIA has decided to release GeForce GTX260 GX2 to hit back in January next year. Anyway, we know the emergence of such a product is really the way to go."

http://en.expreview.com/2008/11/19/n...up-jan-09.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc lost more than one-quarter of its market value on growing worries over whether it has enough capital to withstand billions of dollars of potential losses and despite new support from its largest individual investor.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=MDBbO9C1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=9ut2qXYu"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=9ut2qXYu" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=gsJOkZel"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=gsJOkZel" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/Elh-z6bfYWo" height="1" width="1"/