Our horror fiends over at Dread Central are hosting a short contest entitled "8 Shorts to Die For," which is in conjunction with After Dark Films' "AFTER DARK HORRORFEST: 8 Films to Die For", which takes place January 9-15, 2009. Dread Central are HUGE fans of the annual Horrorfest, and are hosting the promotion, which you can read all about here. The filmmaker with the best short film will win a 120G Video iPod preloaded with 4 of the 8 Films to Die For from Horrorfest 2007 (specifically Mulberry St, Unearthed, Nightmare Man and Tooth & Nail)! Seven runner-ups will receive an all-access pass (or eight tickets) for Horrorfest® III, which runs this January 9th15th, 2009!

davidmwilliams writes "Microsoft followed their major annual Tech-Ed event in Australia with a week-long programming contest called 'DevSta,' to find 'star developers.' While the quantity and quality of submissions suggest a poor turnout, it certainly caught the attention of at least two hackers who left their mark. Here is the low-down on the contest, what happened, by whom, and screen shots for posterity in case it's been fixed by the time you read this. And unless the volume of submissions increase dramatically within the next few hours, someone may be awarded an Xbox for doing nothing more than rewriting the Windows calculator as a .NET app."pa href="http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/06/2341255amp;from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/10/06/2341255"/a/ppa href="http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/06/2341255amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nLfUSl7rv4TARhsIig1se6We0ro/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nLfUSl7rv4TARhsIig1se6We0ro/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/71n7kCtBZdk" height="1" width="1"/

davidmwilliams writes "Microsoft followed their major annual Tech-Ed event in Australia with a week-long programming contest called 'DevSta,' to find 'star developers.' While the quantity and quality of submissions suggest a poor turnout, it certainly caught the attention of at least two hackers who left their mark. Here is the low-down on the contest, what happened, by whom, and screen shots for posterity in case it's been fixed by the time you read this. And unless the volume of submissions increase dramatically within the next few hours, someone may be awarded an Xbox for doing nothing more than rewriting the Windows calculator as a .NET app."pa href="http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/06/2341255amp;from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/10/06/2341255"/a/ppa href="http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/06/2341255amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nLfUSl7rv4TARhsIig1se6We0ro/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nLfUSl7rv4TARhsIig1se6We0ro/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/71n7kCtBZdk" height="1" width="1"/

Sundays 27th annual recordbreaker Toy Run, organized by the Harley Owners Group, saw 633 bikes participate. There were 1,125 toys donated, $2,813 raised as part of a fundraising effort prior to the event, $937 raised from toy run Tshirt sales, and $457 fr ...

The annual music industry event will kick off later this week.

One of the most popular events of the annual New Yorker Festival is Calvin Trillin's food-oriented walking tour of SoHo, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and Little Italy. According to the New York Times, one of the tour's favorite destinations is Banh Mi Saigon Bakery, also one of my top lunch destinations.

Standing outside, dipping his roll into peanut sauce, he said he liked to eat standing up. "If I couldn't eat in a four-star restaurant again, it would mean nothing to me," he said. "But if someone said I couldn't eat any more cilantro, I would be very upset."

(link)

Top upcoming fly fishing products for 2009 -- including fly rods, reels, fly lines, waders and accessories -- get accolades from fly fishing Web site MidCurrent.com. (PRWeb Oct 7, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/10/prweb1432584.htm

Filed under: Trucks/Pickups, Volkswagen, Rumormill

Of all the wild-ass rumors we hear on a weekly daily hourly basis, this one has that special air of cow manure. According to Automotive News, Volkswagen is considering a pickup truck for the U.S. based off the second generation Beetle, which is due out around the turn of the decade.

The rationale behind this implausible idea stems from VW's goal to boost annual vehicle sales in the U.S. from its current 230,000 units to 1 million vehicle sales per year by 2018. Other derivatives of the new new Beetle could also include a crossover and a wagon.

Although the recently revealed VW Pickup Concept is only bound for markets outside the U.S. and Europe, a compelling case can be made for a light-duty truck for occasional haulers here in the States. But we somehow doubt that the U.S. consumers could warm up to a Beetle-based truck - nostalgia can only go so far.

[Source: Automotive News (sub. req.) via Pickuptrucks.com | Image: CargoFun]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Want to know how we know the holidays are coming? It's not the Christmas decorations already showing up in stores; it's the annual ritual of retailers threatening any website that posts the deals from their "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving) sales circular prior to that day. Last year, Wal-Mart went beyond what others stores had done, in pre-threatening sites. In the past, companies like Target and Best Buy had simply threatened to sue sites after the ads went up. But Wal-Mart took it a step further and threatened to sue before the ads even went up, ignoring, of course that they don't own pricing data. The data on sales prices are not copyrightable and cannot be owned. Wal-Mart simply has no legal leg to stand on in demanding the data from the circular be taken down.

But why let that stop them? An anonymous reader alerts us to the fact that Wal-Mart is already sending the notices out to various sites, threatening legal ramifications if the sites were to post the prices prior to the date Wal-Mart makes them "official."

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Publication Date: 2008 Oct 1 PMID: 18819940br/Authors: Wren, J. D. - Bateman, A.br/Journal: Bioinformaticsbr/br/As biomedical data accumulates, the need to store, share and organize it grows. Consequently, the number of Internet-accessible databases has been rapidly growing on an annual basis. Bioinformatics regularly publishes descriptions of biomedically relevant databases, Nucleic Acids Research has published an annual database issue since 1996 and now a new open-access journal, Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation, will soon be launched by Oxford University Press in 2009 (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/databa/). Since databases can be made publicly available on the Internet without publication, it is worth considering what factors prioritize publication of database descriptions in a peer-reviewed journal. In general, publication of a database description in a journal advertises it as a valuable resource for scientific research. Implicitly, it is assumed that this resource is publicly available (most likely for free) and will be maintained. However, therein lies the problem: Database papers are simply not of the same nature as regular research articles. Over time, some databases simply become inaccessible, some are created but not maintained or updated, and some databases are never used (Galperin, 2006). Thus, for database creators, reviewers and journal editors, there are several additional considerations to judge, prior to publication, how potentially valuable these new databases may be.br/br/post to: a href = http://www.citeulike.org/posturl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26list_uids%3D18819940title=Entrez+PubmedCiteULike/a

Filed under: Motorsports

Click above for high-res gallery of Audi at the 2008 Petit Le Mans

The 10th anniversary of the Petit Le Mans occurred this weekend at Road Atlanta, and the annual endurance event that occurs before the season-ending race of the American Le Mans Series at Laguna Seca did not disappoint. Peugeot arrived ready to take up its diesel-powered feud with Audi in the LMP1 class that recently concluded overseas in the European Le Mans Series with the German brand on top. The LMP2, GT1 and GT2 classes were also hotly contested, and the most drama came from Helio Castroneves, who arrived at the track to drive an LMP2 Porsche for Penske after having been in handcuffs the day before facing tax evasion charges. Follow the jump for a quick rundown of a truly exceptional Petit Le Mans.

Gallery: Audi at the 2008 Petit Le Mans

[Source: AmericanLeMans.com]

Continue reading [SPOILER ALERT] Late night winner at 2008 Petit Le Mans

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Mashable is proud to announce The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards. The Mashable Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in Web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. The first Open Web Awards achieved over 250,000 votes combined between Mashable and our 50 international blog partners. Winners included Facebook, Digg, Google, Meetup, Twitter, Netvibes, woot!, Last.fm and Mahalo.

Call for Blog Partners and Sponsors:

The Open Web Awards is about sharing the process with the Web and blogosphere. Therefore, this year we are aiming to more than double the amount of blog partners involved. The requirements are minimal. If you are a blogger and would like to participate please fill out the Blog Partner Application.

There are 4 sponsorship opportunities available and they will go fast. To lock your sponsorship, contact me.

Online Competition Timeline Outline:

- November 5th, 2008 | Nominations Open
- November 19th, 2008 | Online Voting Round 1
- December 3rd, 2008 | Final Round Voting
- December 16th, 2008 | Winners Announced

The Open Web Awards kicks off in less than a month… Who’s excited?

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards Live Gala:
Home and Introduction
Announcing the Open Web Awards After Party
Launch of MashableTV with the Open Web Awards Tomorrow
Live Now, from the Palace Hotel: The Open Web Awards
Open Web Awards: Hundreds of Photos
Mashable.com Awarded Most Improved Blog

Mashable is proud to announce The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards. The Mashable Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in Web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. The first Open Web Awards achieved over 250,000 votes combined between Mashable and our 50 international blog partners. Winners included Facebook, Digg, Google, Meetup, Twitter, Netvibes, woot!, Last.fm and Mahalo.

Call for Blog Partners and Sponsors:

The Open Web Awards is about sharing the process with the Web and blogosphere. Therefore, this year we are aiming to more than double the amount of blog partners involved. The requirements are minimal. If you are a blogger and would like to participate please fill out the Blog Partner Application.

There are 4 sponsorship opportunities available and they will go fast. To lock your sponsorship, contact me.

Online Competition Timeline Outline:

- November 5th, 2008 | Nominations Open
- November 19th, 2008 | Online Voting Round 1
- December 3rd, 2008 | Final Round Voting
- December 16th, 2008 | Winners Announced

The Open Web Awards kicks off in less than a month… Who’s excited?

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards Live Gala:
Home and Introduction
Announcing the Open Web Awards After Party
Launch of MashableTV with the Open Web Awards Tomorrow
Live Now, from the Palace Hotel: The Open Web Awards
Open Web Awards: Hundreds of Photos
Mashable.com Awarded Most Improved Blog

Microsoft laid out on Monday its road map for SQL Server and a complement of add-ons it hopes will eventually redefine business intelligence and data warehousing.

The next version of the database server, code-named Kilimanjaro, is slated for release in the first half of 2010 with a focus on self-service and reporting capabilities for BI. Microsoft plans to have a "community technology preview" (CTP) available within the next 12 months.

The self-service features are wrapped up in a set of technologies code-named Gemini. Those technologies let users build BI applications that can access data across many sources, aggregate the data, build charts and reports, and share the resulting applications via SharePoint.

Microsoft also plans to integrate the unified communications capabilities of Office Communications Server to aid the sharing of BI results.

Microsoft said much of the Gemini technology will be tied to Excel, allowing users of that desktop program access to the self-service analytics.

Microsoft made the announcements at its annual BI Conference, which is going on in Seattle this week and is expected to draw 2,500 users and partners.

The company's acquisitions in the BI market and its stated intentions to expand BI capabilities on the back of its popular SQL Server have been shaking up the market in the past six months.

Giants like Business Objects/SAP, Cognos/ IBM, and Hyperion/ Oracle are among the BI heavyweights with an eye on Microsoft.

A report by Gartner earlier this year said Microsoft still "lags behind pure-play vendors in terms of metadata management, reporting, and dashboard and ad hoc query capabilities."

Microsoft plans to systematically address those deficiencies.

The immediate goal is to extend its BI tools and software so they are more accessible to users, especially those using Excel and SharePoint.

With Gemini, Microsoft hopes to bring BI to users without sacrificing IT control.

"One important thing about Gemini is managed self-service," says Fausto Ibarra, director of product management for SQL Server. "Managed means IT is in control of the process where today end-users use Excel without control of IT or without control on data."

With Gemini, IT will be able to see how data is being shared, will have control of security on the data, and will make data sources available to users.

Those sources could include ERP data, mainframe applications and independent software vendor programs.

Another key feature of Gemini is in-memory BI, which analyzes large amounts of data in memory in order to speed performance.

At the conference, the company also unveiled plans for a highly scalable database technology code-named Madison that would be available in an appliance. Madison integrates SQL Server with technology the company acquired when it bought DataAllegro earlier this year.

DataAllegro developed large-volume data warehousing appliances, and Microsoft hopes to scale Madison to handle hundreds of terabytes of data. At the conference, Microsoft showed a demo using 1 trillion rows of data.

The company also plans to use data quality technology acquired when it bought Zoomix in July to enhance the quality of available information. Microsoft would only say the technology will come in "future versions" of SQL Server.

CTPs of Madison will roll out in the next 12 months with the appliances available in the first half of 2010. Dell, HP, Unisys, Bull Systems, and EMC have signed on as hardware partners.

div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/microsoft/"Microsoft/a laid out on Monday#160;its road map for a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/080608-sql-server.html"SQL Server/a and a complement of add-ons it hopes will eventually redefine business intelligence and data warehousing./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The next version of the database server, code-named Kilimanjaro, is slated for release in the first half of 2010 with a focus on self-service and reporting capabilities for BI. Microsoft plans to have a quot;community technology previewquot; (CTP) available within the next 12 months./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The self-service features are wrapped up in a set of technologies code-named Gemini. Those technologies let users build BI#160;a href="http://www.networkworld.com/topics/applications.html"applications/a that can access data across many sources, aggregate the data, build charts and reports, and share the resulting applications via SharePoint./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Microsoft also plans to integrate the unified communications capabilities of Office Communications Server to aid the sharing of BI results./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Microsoft said much of the Gemini technology will be tied to Excel, allowing users of that desktop program access to the self-service analytics./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Microsoft made the announcements at its annual BI Conference, which is going on in Seattle this week and is expected to draw 2,500 users and partners./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The company#39;s acquisitions in the BI market and its stated intentions to expand BI capabilities on the back of its popular SQL Server have been shaking up the market in the past six months./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Giants#160;like Business Objects/SAP, Cognos/ a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/ibm.html"IBM/a, and#160;Hyperion/ a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/oracle.html"Oracle/a are among the BI heavyweights with an eye on Microsoft./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"A report by Gartner earlier this year said Microsoft still quot;lags behind pure-play vendors in terms of metadata management, reporting, and dashboard and ad hoc query capabilities.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Microsoft plans to systematically address those deficiencies./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The immediate goal is to extend its BI tools and software so they are more accessible to users, especially those using Excel and SharePoint./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"With Gemini, Microsoft hopes to bring BI to users without sacrificing IT control./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;One important thing about Gemini is managed self-service,quot; says Fausto Ibarra, director of product management for SQL Server. quot;Managed means IT is in control of the process where today end-users use Excel without control of IT or without control on data.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"With Gemini, IT will be able to see how data is being shared, will have control of security on the data, and will make data sources available to users./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Those sources could include ERP data, mainframe applications and independent software vendor programs./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Another key feature of Gemini is in-memory BI, which analyzes large amounts of data in memory in order to speed performance./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"At the conference, the company also unveiled plans for a highly scalable database technology code-named Madison that would be available in an appliance. Madison integrates SQL Server with technology the company acquired when it bought a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/091608-microsoft-to-boost-sql-scale.html"DataAllegro/a earlier this year./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"DataAllegro developed large-volume data warehousing appliances, and Microsoft hopes to scale Madison to handle hundreds of terabytes of data. At the conference, Microsoft showed a demo using 1 trillion rows of data./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"The company also plans to use data quality technology acquired when it bought a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/071408-microsoft-buys-zoomix-to-add.html"Zoomix/a in July to enhance the quality of available information. Microsoft would only say the technology will come in quot;future versionsquot; of SQL Server./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"CTPs of Madison will roll out in the next 12 months with the appliances available in the first half of 2010. Dell, HP, Unisys, Bull Systems, and EMC have signed on as hardware partners./p/div

Click on the picture to enlarge

Entries for Barons’ sale of classic, historic and sports cars at Sandown Park, Surrey (October 20th/21st) close on Monday 13th October. Barons’ penultimate sale of the year promises to be a stylish and sporty affair, headed by a stunning 1933 Cadillac 370C Fisher-bodied V12 Sedan, a 1998 Ferrari 355 F1 GTS with Formula One paddle-style gear change, and a superb 1953 Austin-Healey 100/4.

Great survivor of the Great Depression
Cadillac was the only American automotive manufacturer to make a profit during the Great Depression, and the luxurious machine on offer at Barons was built during the worst year of those financially turbulent times. This particular 370C Fisher-bodied V12 Sedan would have cost just under $4,000 new, at a time when the average annual income in the US was $1,550. It spent six years in a Manchester museum, after being imported by Thornbury Classics, and has more recently been in a private collection. Estimate £45,000-£50,000.

More photos of Barons' sale of Classic, historic and sports cars:


Sporting style
The sports cars on offer include a 1998 355 F1 GTS with Formula One style, paddle shift, semi-automatic transmission, which has covered just 22,250 miles from new. Featuring uprated suspension, steering and brake callipers, and the factory fitted Fiorano handling kit, it carries an estimate of £40,000-£45,000.

Historic British sporting machines are represented by an immaculate 1953 Austin Healey 100/4 which is believed to have been restored by the great marque specialist Denis Welch (£25,000-£30,000), while slightly more contemporary British sports car style can be found in the form of a head-turning supercharged 1990 Morgan Plus 8 (£21,000-£23,000).
Continue reading "Barons sale of Classic Cars at Sandown Park"