Cable and satellite TV deliver a lot of shows and movies, very conveniently… and very expensively. If you want features like DVR and high-defi nition cable TV and a few extra channels, your bill could easily hit $100 or more a month. That’s a cool $1,200 a year. If you’re a sports junkie, count on adding another few hundred bucks a year to follow your favorite team, player, or sport. Is it possible to satisfy your TV and movie jones while ditching the cable/satellite bill? Sure it is—the secret lies in that broadband connection you already pay for every month. Let’s look at ways to fulfill our couch-potato cravings for fewer dollars.

NETWORK AND CABLE TV SHOWS
Whether you’re a hardcore fan of a particular TV series or you just like the occasional episode, you can fi nd the current episode of most of your favorite TV shows online. If you know the network or cable channel, you can go directly to those sites and watch recent episodes. Few of these are real-time streaming—in other words, you may have to wait a few hours or days aft er the show airs to catch it online. Aggregator sites, particularly Hulu.com, also off er recent episodes of many series. The base Hulu service is free, but coverage of shows is spotty. It’s also in standard defi nition, and you can only technically watch it on a PC. Hulu Plus, which costs $7.99 a month, is Hulu’s premium service. Hulu Plus adds high-defi nition support, more shows, and compatibility with a variety of different devices, including Apple iOS devices, the PS3, and certain Internet-enabled TVs. But even with Hulu Plus, coverage can be spotty; sometimes this service leaves out a couple of episodes of a given season.
Netflix Watch Instantly, ata minimum cost of $7.99 for the streaming-only service, off ers an increasingly large array of shows, plus access to a huge variety of movies. What we like the most about Watch Instantly, though, is ample access to shows not commonly available on Hulu, such as documentaries and BBC miniseries.

OVER-THE-AIR HDTV
Windows Media Center, built into Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows Ultimate, also contains an Internet TV streaming service. Coverage of shows is inconsistent, however, so you may only see samplers of various TV series with just a few episodes to give you a taste. Our preference—and one of the hidden secrets of HDTV— is to add a high-defi nition, over-the-air TV tuner to our HDTV or our HTPC. This is particularly useful if you live in a metropolitan area with a large media market. Free OTA high-defi nition plus Windows Media Center gives you full DVR capabilityfor local stations, without added cost. You don’t need Media Center, of course. Third-party applications like SageTV (www.sagetv.com) also support HDTV tuner cards and have similar scheduling soft ware built in.

MOVIES
Film buff s have a rich array of online services to choose from when it comes to great content at low cost. We’ve already mentioned Netflix Watch Instantly,at $7.99 a month, which is probably the best deal on the planet right now. Other streaming services, like Amazon.com’s Video on Demand and CinemaNow charge per movie, either for renting or for owning a DRM’d version. That can get pretty pricey pretty fast. If you’re happy with standard defi nition on your PC, Hulu off ers a variety of free movies, although advertisements are present.
A variety of “free” movie aggregator sites exist, but the legality of many of these are questionable. These sites don’t actually host movies, but stream from other sources, including off shore sources and BitTorrent sites. Our guidance here? Approach with caution.
If you really want free and legal, a number of old movies, documentaries, and shows are now in the public domain. Sites like Entertainment Magazine Online (www.emol.org) offer tons of free, legal movie downloads, albeit of older films. EMOL also aggregates links to TV network and studio sites that off er free streaming of their shows.

SPORTS
Watching your favorite teams online is usually not a bargain. You can watch some less-popular sports events at sites like ESPN.com, but major sports, like the NFL, Major League Baseball, and NASCAR can’t be found legally, unless you’re willing to pay substantially. In a pinch, we’ve used aggregator services, but these sites exist in a gray area. For example, www.atdhe.net, one such popular aggregator service, had its domain seized by the U.S. government for copyright infringement during the course of us writing this story.
If you do follow a single sport, then the cost might still undercut cable. An NFL all-season pass, for example, is $14.99 a month. But that’s not exactly cheapskate territory.
The two best deals around are the NBA and MLB. Both off er aff ordable season passes, and both allow you to watch games across diff erent devices—your PC, smartphone, and, in the case of MLB, your PS3.

Some resellers will bundle motherboards, CPU, and memory, or graphics cards and PSUs. These deals can save you some money, but make sure you know the components in the bundle.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Syrian Army has defied growing condemnation and launched a new assault on the most contentious in the country on Sunday, the deployment of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles in the parts of a city is that Syria had always feared provoking activists and residents. Dozens of people died, they said, and thousands have fled the city.

The attack before dawn in the eastern part of the city, in Deir al-Zour came exactly one week after Syrian troops attacked Hama, Syria, in the city center, in turn largely wrested control of the state this summer . As Hama, Deir al-Zour, Syria's oil and gas production, was the scene of mass protests, with hundreds of thousands in the streets. But the military, wary of powerful and well-armed clans advanced cities, had largely stayed out.

Together, the two cities - the fourth and fifth of Syria - were the most suspicious of a survey of five months against four decades of rule by the Assad family. After a week of sharp rebuke by a chorus of international voices, the United Nations for the Pope renewed the attack confirmed what many consider the determination of President Bashar al-Assad to stay in power through violence.

Including some human rights groups, has more than 2,000 people were killed in the attacks so far.

Other signs of pressure on the government were introduced, perhaps above all indications that the business elite in Damascus, he began to prepare for the fall of the government. This elite has long proven one of the most important pillars of the Syrian authorities, especially during the Islamic uprising in 1982.

"The regime is its own worst enemy, and can be saved from itself," said a Damascus-based analyst, who asked to remain anonymous. "It has been the collapse, but the question is what will lead to and when."

Residents of the death toll at Deir al-Zour, 42, and one of them said that a family of six people trying to escape - a couple with four children - was among the dead. The activists said that many residents have left in recent days. A local man who gave his name as Mamun said the truck filled with no fewer than 25 women and children fled to the streets every abandoned.

He said there were shortages of fuel and bread. Other residents said the private hospitals have closed, but that families were reluctant to take their wounded to the government, not to be arrested. At night, another resident said that Syrian forces had come to a roundabout in the center of the city, formerly called Assad and the Plaza of Martyrs name. "

"The city has never known a day like this," said Maamoun telephone, with bursts of gunfire heard in the background.

On weekends, calls for restraint mounted. The Arab League expressed "growing concern" Sunday and asked the authorities to stop attacks against the demonstrators. Pope Benedict XVI called Sunday for Assad to meet the "legitimate aspirations" of the people of Syria and Turkey announced it was sending his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu in Damascus on Tuesday, with a similar message.

In a statement to Al Arabiya television on Monday, called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the violence unacceptable and said he remembers the Saudi ambassador in Damascus.

For weeks, activists had predicted that the Syrian Muslim holy month of Ramadan would bring an escalation of the insurgency, as every night demonstrators gathered in mosques, then organized the demonstrations. Instead, the government decided it was time for a large-scale assault on the cities seemed most determined to shake off the yoke of the security forces everywhere.

From Deir al-Zour and Hama are the targets of repression that involve risks specific to Syria.

In 1982, Hama was the victim of one of the bloodiest moments in the history of the Modern Middle East, where the army crushed an Islamist revolt there and killed at least 10,000 people. The attack last week in which more than 200 people lost their lives, feelings inflamed by Syria.

Deir al-Zour may be no less frustrating for the government, but for different reasons. Armed and fiercely independent, the clans have extensive ties there are tribes in eastern Syria and western Iraq. In recent days, some of its leaders had sworn to give to the peaceful demonstrations and to take up arms if the attacking force, but no reports of injuries on Sunday the government.

The city is also home to the complaints of government neglect, compounded by the feeling that people have not participated in the region's oil and gas wealth. "I can say that the clock will never return," said a leader of a clan, who identified himself as Abu Mohammed Ala'aqidi.

Days, the army forces had been built on the outskirts of Deir al-Zour. Traveler recently there about 150 tanks, 200 armored vehicles and 200 microphones mounted machine guns were posted throughout the city. Local Coordination Committees, a group that has tried to document and organize the protests, said the attack began before dawn, the soldiers captured nine suburbs.

"We're completely surrounded," said the pilot who gave the name of Abu Omar.

Introduction The attack was familiar. Although no weapons were seen Hama visit shortly before the siege, officials claimed the army had come there to fight the armed Islamists, who were terrorizing the city of 800,000

On Saturday, he offered a narrative similar to that of Deir al-Zour, with a population of 500,000. A report by the official Syrian news agency, SANA, the clan elders had called the army to go into "protect citizens and preserve public and private property."

Residents reached by telephone offered a different account.

"Syria needs to now be managed by the officials hard, not politicians," said Ammar, a 26 year old activist in Deir al-Zour. "I fear that the country is entering a dark cave, and everyone is a loser. Loser The first is President Assad and his regime."

Tensions have mounted in Deir al-Zour last month when security forces arrested Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir, a figure bearing the clan. Clan elders and Syrian security officials and military have been negotiating for several days, but Sunday assault seemed to signal the government's intention to take the city by force, activists said.

"The government has been very careful to start a military operation in our region," Ammar said, "because most of the tribesmen are armed with AK-47 rifles and others, and are willing to fight and let the system to do the same thing as he did in Hama, or Dara'a "the city where the rebellion began in March.

"If the government has attacked Deir al-Zour, which all the tribes in the other provinces show against the Assad regime," he added.

There have been periodic reports of defections in the military Deir al-Zour, although still seem to be limited, and does not constitute an immediate threat to Assad, who inherited power in 2000. Coordinating Committees, said that other soldiers have deserted Jour quarter of the city on Sunday.

"He jumped soldiers trying to protect residents of the storm the city," the committee said. There was no immediate confirmation of the report by the inhabitants there.

Deir al-Zour was not only to attack the government. Syrian forces also attacked Houla, near Homs in central Syria, and northwest of Idlib. The committee said 12 people died in Hula, including three children.

The scale and ferocity of the repression gave a facade almost surreal persistent desire to reform government. In the last Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Saturday that the real multiparty elections for Parliament in the first rule of the Assad family, would take place later this year. SANA quoted him as saying that the elections "free and transparent."

The same day, the promise of Mr. Moallem, security forces arrested Walid al-Bunni, a leading opposition figure and former political prisoner, with his two children. Mr Bunni has been a driving force called Damascus Spring, an attempt to organize a movement for democratic reform in 2000, Assad soon crushed.

When a star dies in a violent supernova, some of the planets survive the explosion, but to be thrown out of orbit and sent wandering the galaxy, a new study.

The theory offers an explanation of a handful of free-roaming planets discovered so far, and can mean a number of other worlds as rogue exist throughout the Milky Way.

"Because each star dies, and many of these stars are massive enough to cause warming of ejection, there is ample opportunity throughout the galaxy of stellar death contribute to the floating population," said chief Dimitri Veras study, is an astronomer at Britain's University of Cambridge.

"We do not know yet how these planets are common, but observational evidence suggests that there may be more planets floating between the two stars that orbit them," he said.

The new model also indicates that in very rare cases, some surviving planets can remain linked to supernova remnants, find new ways around neutron stars or black holes left by the explosions. (See images of supernova remnants.)

A wrinkle in the two-body problem

The new theory is based on a complex computer models that take into account anything known in physics as the problem of two bodies.

This formula for classical mechanics, helps to determine the orbits of two bodies interact, the electron around the atomic nucleus of a planet around a star.

As long as astronomers can measure the masses, positions and velocities of the two objects, they can determine their past, present and future tracks using simple mathematical equations.

The new study, except for a ride on the two-body problem, Vera said, because the stars are losing mass, as they go through their agony.

"In this situation, we do not know if a solution exists only simple equations, so in many cases, we must use computers to simulate the trajectories," he said.

Depending on the model, when the stars at least 7 to 10 times the mass of our sun supernova, the swallows of encouragement to all the inner planets that orbit at several times the distance between Earth and sun.

Planets orbiting hundreds of times the Earth-Sun distance will be rather disturbed and their orbits are elongated so that they are finally thrown into interstellar space.

In some cases, disturbing planets be pushed into more distant orbits, but stable at around supernova remnants.

Planets orbiting these stellar remnants can continue as pulsars and black holes themselves far enough they would not be swallowed up by their intense gravitational pull, but the survivors would be charred, dead worlds.

What's more, these worlds can be easily pulled to the limit the system and become a thief whose attraction to draw others close to the stars.

Billions of rogue planets out there?

In May 2011 a different set of observations, astronomers described the tests up to ten planets, which appear to migrate independently through interstellar space.

New ejection mechanism could explain how they escaped from their planets found in stellar systems, Steinn Sigurdsson said an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University is not connected to research. (See the commentary on the book blog Sigurdsson Dynamics of cats.)

But Sigurdsson warns that there might be another way to play is how the planets are thrown out of their star systems.

"Others may be the dominant mechanism is the planet-planet scattering, in which the planets of mass, remove the other planets in their orbits, and a fraction is launched into space than the bound, Rogues," says Sigurdsson.

It is possible, even the two mechanisms work together, Sigurdsson said, with the scattering effect of putting the planets in orbit and out of the supernova and then expelled from the system.

Regardless, he thinks opportunities add up to a large number of floating planets.

"The numbers [with two mechanisms of expulsion] are broadly consistent, and both involve billions of planets in total thugs," he said.

Worlds can accommodate expelled life underground

A big question, which new research is whether life could survive the separation of planets in the clan.

The answer may be yes, if the world had enough internal heat and is already supported the underground life, says John Debes, a planet hunter are not affiliated team Veras.

"The moons like Europa, which is heated by the tides of Jupiter due to constant interaction with other moons, is probably the best of Paris to eject a survivor," said You, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland .

"One Earth could live under certain conditions, if there is a moon to survive the expulsion," from the Moon is tidal heating.

Life could also find a way to respond on planets outside the host stars, in good conditions, Debes said. (See "Earth-size" Lone Wolf "planets can support life.")

There have been studies showing that climatic, geodynamic, and biogeochemical might be able to support life on planets without stars, especially those with underlying ocean hot springs, where the movement of energy can still be sufficient to run a biosphere .

Ejection very hard to detect planets

The main objective of Veras and his team had really taken note of the star giving away the planets, which can be difficult if not impossible.

This is because the current technology, the chances are low to find planets of the dying star about to explode.

Now is the test results of what happens to stars when they die, a large orbiting planets, and the free-floating planets, Veras said.

"All the ingredients are there," he said. "But the time to really observe a planet being ejected in most cases is longer than a human life."

The study is currently projected warming on the website arXiv.org preprint and have been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

source from here

As the first bit of code that’s run when you hit the power button, the PC’s Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is responsible for tickling the other pieces of hardware awake, checking their condition, and then fi nally passing control over to the operating system. It’s also ancient and dates back to the very fi rst PC. But there’s a new sheriff in town, fi nally. Called Unifi ed Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), it’s meant to update one of the oldest legacy technologies in personal computing. As we know, newer is not always better. This month we rank the major factors in both technologies and determine which you should have in your next PC.

New book claims to reveal sensational Jack the Ripper - as Scotland Yard detective who led the hunt for a serial killer.

The Spanish researcher names Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline a man who was brutally murdered at least five women in Victorian London.

José Luis Abad, 84, says in "Jack the Ripper: The murderer the most intelligent of the story of his book, published this week in Spain.

Mr. Abad is an expert in calligraphy and based their claims on a comparison of the editor in chief inspector Abberline with Jack the Ripper diary - a 63-page document that emerged from Liverpool in 1992.

He compared the newspaper writing, quoting the Chief Inspector Abberline 24 times, the police report written by a detective, and his signature at the end of his memoirs.

Mr. Abad, a member of the Spanish Society for Graphology, said: "After comparing the handwriting I have no doubt the inspector Abberline was Jack the Ripper seems incredible, but the fact is that his writing does not lie ..

"His sets are identical."

M. Abad, who studied writing since 1975, began his study Ripper murders seven years ago.

Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park is located in East Java, Indonesia, Malang to the east and south-east of the capital, Surabaya East Java. And 'the only nature reserve in Indonesia, which is a sea of ​​sand, Tengger Sand Sea (Indonesian: Laut Pasir Tengger), which is the caldera, an ancient volcano (Tengger) which was founded four new volcanic cones. This unique feature will cover a total area of ​​5250 hectares at an altitude of about 2,100 m. The plateau is also the highest mountain in Java, Mount Semeru (3,676 m), four lakes and 50 rivers.

The Tengger Sand Sea has been protected since the Bromo Tengger Semeru 1919th The national park was declared a national park in 1982.

Somehow, the portable MP3 player is one of the few gadgets to defy the pending onedevice-to-rule-them-all convergence. Why? Smaller non-phone form factors, jogging, and simplicity, for starters. All we know is that Apple sold a whopping 17 million iPods in the fourth quarter of 2010, that’s 3 million more MP3 players than iPhones.

The terraced vineyards of Lavaux coverage of the lower slopes along the north shore of Lake Geneva. Each fall, the 2,050 hectares of old vines established by the Benedictines and Cistercians in the 11th century and protected as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 2007, attracts hikers who walk and taste your way along the Great Lavaux Crossing 21 miles of Ouchy in Lausanne, Château de Chillon Castle. Yellow arrows mark the main road leading to the vineyards of work (Chasselas is the predominant grape in the region) and its medieval villages, which makes frequent stops for refueling cellars, bars and restaurants. Saturday 15 October Lavaux tourism scenic tasting tire rolls, no clues for the people of Chardonne Chexbres Saphorin Rivaz and Santa. A network of public and private rail network, it is easy to explore the whole region of Lavaux, on foot or by bicycle.

Or, if you're ready to take up the challenge, join the thousands of runners are expected in Lausanne Marathon on October 30, following the Shore Road, Lake Geneva and the row of houses on the slopes.