He says, “Stage6 began as an experiment, and we always knew there was a chance that it might not succeed.”

Upload functionality has been disabled, and videos will only be available until Thursday.

Companies hosting their videos on Stage6 are being helped to migrate their videos to other pages, DivX says.

Users are quickly attempting to mirror videos from Stage6 to other video services.

Veoh currently allows uploads from a URL and because of this users are able use Stage6′s bandwidth when moving the videos.

So if other video services are still around why is Stage 6 shutting the service down?

Tom says, “The short answer is that Stage6 is very expensive and requires an enormous amount of attention and resources.There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it appears to be as simple as that.”

However, Stage6 has been known for users uploading full copies of movies that are still in theaters, many in HD quality.

They have complied with all take down requests when copyright infringement is in question, but this has not saved them from costly lawsuits.

In our article “Divx’s Stage6 Walks Closer To Piracy Plank” we looked at Universal Music Group’s lawsuit accusing Divx of digital piracy.

Legal battles such as this could surely cause a company to close its doors.

Stag6 was launched in 2006 by Divx with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience.

Like Youtube & other video services, users are able to upload videos and share them with others.

It’s to bad that one of the only HD streaming video site is closing its doors.

Please take a moment to read over the official announcement here and if your looking for some discussion head here.

Link: Stage6, Quicksilverscreen

A H-2A rocket carrying the satellite was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center at 17:55 (0855 GMT) on February 24th, 2008 with no reported glitches.

The communications satellite separated from the rocket approximately 35 minutes after the launch and was maneuvered into orbit.

The $342 million dollar satellite will allow super high speed data communications of up to 1.2 Gbps, which would make it the fastest in the world.

That rate would be about 150 times that of the average high-speed ADSL connection rate of about 8 Mbps, or 12 times the speed of a fiber optic communication delivery to a person’s home.

The launch was delayed by one week after the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said it had discovered a problem with the gas jet thruster for its launch rocket.

The “Kizuna,” which translates to “bond” in Japanese, is expected to begin transmitting and receiving data with terrestrial infrastructures in July after completing preparations and confirming the satellite’s safety.

With a small antenna you can receive data at up to 155Mbps and transmit data at up to 6 Mbps.

With a larger antenna mainly for organizations and companies super high speed data communications of up to 1.2 Gbps will be available.

Aiming for a society where anybody can get information anytime, anywhere the KIZUNA will serve 4 major functions over its life of five years.

Even when a ground-based network is severed by a disaster in Japan or in other Asian countries, broadband network communications can still be secured by the KIZUNA using an additional small antenna. By installing a small antenna high-resolution images can be securely sent to a disaster countermeasures office via the KIZUNA. Therefore, the satellite is expected to function as a reliable pipeline between a disaster stricken area and a countermeasures office.

The Internet’s infrastructure is well-established in urban areas in Japan. However, a similar Internet environment is not available in many mountainous regions and remote islands in Japan and in other Asian countries. The KIZUNA can provide a broadband Internet environment and super-high speed communications that are at a level with those in city areas to regions where such communication methods are currently out of reach.

The satellite-based Internet is also expected to become a useful tool in the educational field. Using conventional satellite communications, a small time lag often exists between conversations because communications are conveyed via relay stations. With the KIZUNA, conversation will be smoothly exchanged, thus, when terminals in various schools in Japan or even in Asian countries are directly connected, students can communicate as if they are all in the same classroom.

By connecting with urban areas via the KIZUNA, residents who live in mountainous regions and remote islands where no major hospital is available can receive the same level of medical treatment and physical checkups as those who live in cities. The KIZUNA will enable remote diagnosis, as the conditions of a patient can be transmitted by high-definition images to a specialist in an urban hospital, who can then diagnose the problem and advise a local doctor in a rural area to provide appropriate treatment.

Sources: JAXA (English KIZUNA Launch Site)

The auction was held at the 7 star Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

This record sale surpassed the $6.8 million paid for a license plate with the number 5 on it.

25 year old Saeed Abdul Ghafour Khour, a member of a wealthy Abu Dabi family, bought the vanity license plate saying, “I bought it because I want to be the best in the world.”

The Khouri family made their fortune in real estate and its unknown exactly how many automobiles they own or which will use the single digit plate.

According to Bloomberg.com:

Khouri won the auction in Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace hotel amid chaotic scenes in the auditorium, which was packed with more than 700 people. The Abu Dhabi businessman had to push through photographers, cameramen and spectators to the front of the room to be seen by the auctioneer before thrusting his number into the air for the final time, his mobile phone at his ear throughout the bidding.

The sum of money was “normal” for his family, Hamdan Khouri said after the auction. “I was prepared to spend as much as 100 million dirhams.”

100 million dirhams is about $27 million dollars.

The oil rich cities of the Persian Gulf are driven by car culture, with relatively few pedestrian areas or public transport options.

Vanity plates are considered a matter of personal pride.

Persian Gulf license plates and most vanity plates include both Arabic and western numerals and script. The special vanity license plates auctioned off only contain a western numeral with no letters.

The actual value of a license plate depends on a mix of math and emotional appeal.

“From 1 to 10, these are the most expensive numbers,” said Abdulla al Mannaie, managing director of Emirates Auctions. “Ten to 99 are the second category. On the other side, you look to numbers which is like 11, 22, 33 they are expensive because it carry repeating digits.

A total of 90 license plates, including numbers 100, 1111, 2001 and 31313, were auctioned off raising a total of 89 million dirhams ($24 million dollars) for a rehabilitation center for victims of traffic accidents.

Links: KATU, CNN, ABCNews, Bloomberg

Visitors to Stage6′s main page were redirected to multiple “shock” sites, like the famous goatse and 2girls1cup.

A pop up was added stating that the site had been hacked by Ebaumsworld. It’s unknown if they had any involvement with the hacking.

Several threads on Ebaumsworld and various forums have been deleted regarding the attack. Posts like “Why did you do this?”, “What did they do to you?”, but also threads with verbal insults against the site.

This incident lasted about two and a half hours before a site maintenance notice was put up by the Stage6 admin team.

The main site of Stage6 was replaced with a message stating “We’re unable to service your request.”.

UPDATE: Stage6 has announced they will permanently shut down February 28th 2008.

UPDATE: Stage6 is back up! If you haven’t tried this site before go check out the top rated videos >> Here << you will enjoy the quality video over Youtube.

UPDATE:  New information about Stage6′s piracy lawsuit, check out “Divx’s Stage6 Walks Closer to Piracy Plank”

Wikipedia reports that “A partial list of email addresses and passwords for several thousand Stage6 users was released by hackers shortly after the attack began, in the form of a plain text file posted to 4chan’s random board. The file has since been removed from the site.”

Users that had registered a new account at Stage 6 between December 11th, 2007 and February 9th, 2008 were mainly those who were affected. There is talk, however, that the hacker(s) may have had access to the entire Stage6 user database.

Not much more is known at this time, but discussion is currently going on Quicksilverscreen >> Here << and at Stage6 forums >> Here <<

Stag6 was launched in 2006 by Divx and is currently in beta form. Many sites utilize Stage6 for streaming video.

Like Youtube & other video services, users are able to upload videos and share them with others.

Stage6 is known for users uploading full copies of movies that are still in theaters, many in HD quality. They do comply with all take down requests when copyright infringement is in question.

Many users utilize temporary e-mails to create multiple accounts to stay in ahead of bannings.

Link: Stage 6

“We have an ongoing epidemic among needle users in Stockholm. They have been infected by a virus strain that originated in Finland. It possibly began spreading in 2006, but the increase only became evident in 2007,” SMI said in a statement reported by Google.com.

The increase in infections gives indications that people are less worried about contracting HIV than they were in the past. This is possibly due to early thoughts that AIDS would quickly spread in the 80s. New medicines are decreasing the chance to contract AIDS. However, risky sexual behavior and casual sex without a condom have greatly increased over the years.

On a positive note medical researcher Claes Herlitz, who has been tracking Swedish attitudes towards HIV since the late 80s  said,  “people with HIV are less stigmatized today and most people are no longer afraid of having contact with them.”

Hopefully people will take this as a reminder that HIV is on the rise all over the planet.

Sources: Google.com, Kaisernetwork.org, Medicalnewstoday.com, News.Yahoo.com

Ron Paul received more campaign contributions from Montana in 2007 than any other Presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat.

Montana contributions received by Ron Paul in 2007 were $88,883, double that the nearest Republican Mitt Romney who received just $41,495. John McCain came in 3rd at $29,094 followed by Mike Huckabee coming in 4th at $8,816.

Montana Ron Paul State Coordinator David Hart said, “Paul’s success in fundraising stands in stark contrast to who the media says are our ‘top tier’ candidates.” The most amazing fact about Paul’s campaign is that the money isn’t being given by corporate financing, but by small individual donors through grassroots efforts.

Nationwide, the overwhelming number of Paul’s donations were under $200, and Paul ended the 4th quarter with more cash on hand than any other remaining Republican candidate.

Ron Paul not only out-raised every other Republican in the 4th quarter, but he is also the choice of the United States military once again. A search of the FEC database by employer reveals that Dr. Paul has received 1160 donations from military donors, nearly triple that of John McCain, and more than McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee combined. Hart pointed out that Paul, an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam era, has fought hard for veterans and veterans care.

Any thoughts about this? Let us know comment below.

Medha Patkar, a prominent Indian social activist, recently began a march from Nandigram to Mumbai to highlight, she said, “the drawbacks” of the government’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

The government sees its SEZ policy as using private sector funding to further India’s economic development.

But many in rural India see the policy as snatching their land and others fear it will fuel an influx of migrant workers.

Bibek Debroy, an economist and professor at a New Delhi-based think-tank, in an interview said the government was going about its development policy the wrong way.

“First, I should say, I don’t believe in SEZs. We did experiment with them 15 or 20 years ago, but they didn’t work,” he said.

For Debroy, the SEZs mask the real issue “urbanisation”, a sensitive subject in India, where more than half of the country is arable land.

“Fundamentally it’s about the conversion of agricultural land to land for manufacturing purposes. That transfer … is needed for economic growth, but obviously you have to have adequate compensation first.

“There is also a lack of transparency. The entire decision-making process has been non-transparent and that has fueled some of the objections.”

Those who object have been highly vocal about it.

In a 2006 report on India’s economic development, the IMF questioned the government’s policy and said of SEZs overall: “International experience with tax incentives, which exist in virtually all SEZs worldwide, are mixed.”

With India’s economic growth predicted at close to nine per cent in 2008, the government will have to tackle the issue.

According to management consultancy Frost & Sullivan, which has a strong presence in India, the problem lies with those who would take advantage of a relatively sound policy.

Its research showed that SEZs started well, with many people investing, but that some elements wanted to take undue advantage.

“Land is at a huge premium,” the firm said from Mumbai, adding that some developers “are buying the land up at a throwaway price from the government, and that’s really the issue”.

“Going forward things have to take a different route.”

Source: Aljazeera

The giant structures are displayed to the public as a team of judges decide which exhibits sports the best meal, best use of labels, structural ingenuity and the Juror’s favorite. There is also a people’s choice award as well as honorable mention.

At the end of the completion the structures are taken down and all the food is donated to local food banks for distribution to emergency feeding programs that include pantries and soup kitchens.

Since CANstruction’s debut in 1992, ten million pounds of food have been donated to aid in the fight against hunger. The competition has over one hundred individual competitions scheduled for 2007 – 2008.

To see if there is a competition near you please click here.

The rules of the competition are simple. The structure must be self-supporting, labels may not be covered and the structure must fit in a 10 ft x 10 ft x 8 ft space. Sounds simple right?

Check out Canstruction.org for some amazing photos from previous CANstruction exhibits. You almost can’t believe that these are made out of food.

For the last three years Alpha Community Development has participated in this unique competition. We have built a wave, a boot, and a rubix cube.

The completion this year in Portland, Oregon takes place on April 22nd, 2008 and we plan to build something “secret” from the movie Ratatouille as our exhibit.  The secret design including pictures will be released closer to the competition date.We need your help to fund the food for the build this year. Our goal as a company is to raise between $10,000 and $15,000 for the Oregon food bank.

If you are interested in donating please use the donation button below. All donations will be used to buy food for this years competition.

Our goal as a company is to raise between $10,000 and $15,000 for the Oregon food bank. Anything that you could give would greatly help and 100% of donations collected here will be given as food.

After allowing McCain/Romney speak for damn near an hour, bickering over technicalities about who said what and when, CNN finally allowed Ron Paul to actually provide a lengthy answer to a question. McCain laughs at Dr. Paul’s thoughts about the War in Iraq & our failing economy while sitting right next to him.

~Another one bites the dust~
Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters’ sympathies, The Associated Press has learned.

The two-time White House candidate notified a close circle of senior advisers that he planned to make the announcement at a 1 p.m. EST event in New Orleans that had been billed as a speech on poverty, according to two aides. The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests so far to rivals who stole the spotlight from the beginning—Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The former North Carolina senator will not immediately endorse either candidate in what is now a two-person race for the Democratic nomination, said one adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the announcement. Both candidates would welcome Edwards’ backing and the support of the 56 delegates he had collected.

Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better- funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of his wife’s recurring cancer diagnosis. In a dramatic news conference last March, the couple announced that the breast cancer that she thought she had beaten had returned, but they would continue the campaign.

Their decision sparked a debate about family duty and public service. But Elizabeth Edwards remained a forceful advocate for her husband, and she was often surrounded at campaign events by well-wishers and emotional survivors cheering her on.

read more | digg story

Mint.com forum member Memphis75 offers up a proposed change to the Cash vs. Debt display on mint. He gives the mint team not only a demo picture but, also the needed html code to implement the new look.

Stop by and please vote to make Mint.com a better place.

If you would like to make feedback to Mint via the forums without registering, please use the following for a login:
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On Monday President Bush in his State of the Union address called on Congress to institute a ban on human cloning and increase funding for “ethical” stem cell research that does not involve the destruction of human embryos. Bush is asking for an unspecified but, almost assuredly huge amount of funding for research that uses human adult skin cells to create embryonic-like stem cells.

Bush commented on recent reports that researchers have reprogrammed mature adult human skin cells to produce embryonic-like stem cells by saying, “This breakthrough has the potential to move us beyond the divisive debates of the past by extending the frontiers of medicine without the destruction of human life.”He added, “So we are expanding funding for this type of ethical medical research”
Bush twice has vetoed bills that would have allowed federal funding for research using stem cells derived from human embryos originally created for fertility treatments and willingly donated by patients.Currently Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is allowed only for research using embryonic stem cell lines created on or before Aug. 9, 2001, under a policy announced by Bush on that date.

Please check out the C-SPAN video coverage of the complete State of the Union address is available online.

Auction power house Ebay.com has announced they will cut sellers fees by up to as much as 50% in an attempt to boost listings. This action seems to follow our current President’s mindset of stimulating the economy by giving their users more money to list.

However Ebay appears to be playing the old switch’er roo. While cutting the fees charged to sellers, they are also planning to increase its commission on items that do sell. This method is said to help sellers because it lowers their risk if items do not sell.

Sellers of smaller items, goods selling for less then $25, will be the people most impacted as the fee for those transactions will rise 67 percent, to 8.75 percent of the final sale price.

The new fee structure was announced to a gathering of 200 of eBay’s top North American sellers in Washington and goes into effect Feb. 20.

Along with changes to the fee structure, eBay said it will change how sellers show up on customer searches. Those with high rates of customer dissatisfaction will get lower exposure in a search, the company said.

Source: AP
Link: Ebay

The above screenshot is from a Fox News coverage of the Nevada results. For some reason, they failed to mention the #2 candidate Dr. Ron Paul.

For unknown reasons, Fox News and many other News channels continue to disregard the fact, that Ron Paul is one of the GOP presidential candidates and he didn’t ignore Ne-va-da.

The America media appears to be behind the steering wheel of the election campaign bus. Dr. Ron Paul continues to be left out in the cold for news coverage and no one has done anything to create a level playing field.I think this perfectly shows that our election process is just a way to make powerful men more powerful to complete self agendas.

Information posted at Ronpaulforums.com shows that Fox has yet again played the game of truth maker. This time Fox news listed Dr.Paul at the lowest ranking of 2% in South Carolina follow the form link to hear where he really should have been.

Don’t forget to take a moment to take a peek at Ronpaul2008.com and the current donation level and show support if you so wish.

What do you think about Dr.Ron Paul? Speak out leave a comment.
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As of Friday, AOL officially will end its support for Netscape, the fabled browser that helped transform the internet from a military and college science project into a community of consumers who could point and click their way through news and entertainment.

10 years ago, just before the AOL acquisition of Netscape James Barksdale, Eric Hahn, Mike Homer and Marc Andreessen decided to make the Netscape browser’s source code, the working core of the program, publicly available to be tweaked and improved.

And crazy part this born-again browser, is today called Firefox and has now captured about 16 percent of the U.S. browser market, stealing back its share from Microsoft’s once-impregnable Internet Explorer.

Source: Sfgate.com

Are you using Firefox or a different browser then IE? Let us know by leaving a comment.