WASHINGTON -- Mike Huckabee, one of the most conservative Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, has embraced one of the most radical ideas on the campaign trail: a plan to abolish all federal income and payroll taxes and replace them with a single 23% national sales tax.

The idea -- dubbed the "fair tax" by proponents -- has been a political asset for Huckabee; its well-organized backers have helped catapult him from the back of the presidential pack to its top tier.

Sales tax proponents have tapped into seething voter hostility toward the Internal Revenue Service to become a below-the-radar political force, popping up at campaign events and candidate forums in Iowa and elsewhere.

The efforts on Huckabee's behalf by sales tax advocates helped spur his surprise second-place showing in an August Iowa straw poll -- the breakthrough that marked the beginning of his rise in the state and nationwide.

He is the only major presidential candidate to make the idea central to his campaign. "The first thing I'd love to do as president: Put a 'going out of business' sign on the Internal Revenue Service," he said at one debate.

Some wonder, however, whether his embrace of the plan eventually could turn into a liability.

Read entire article here --> Huckabee's sales tax 23% to voters

Britney Spears has started courting the paparazzi after a string of failed romances. The Toxic pop star reportedly spent intimate time with a British snapper called Adnan after a wild night out in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The couple went back to Spears' new home-away-from-home, the Peninsula hotel, after the pop star literally picked the pap up from the 40-plus snappers following her around town.

Spears reportedly took her paparazzi army on a wild goose chase around Malibu and Hollywood on Saturday night, stopping at four gas stations and making regular roadside stops to take photos of random houses.

One pap tells WENN, "It was bizarre. No one knew what she was doing. At one point, she pulled over on the freeway and invited a paparazzi into her car. She seemed to be having a lot of fun."

Minutes later, Spears got out of her car and stepped into the British snapper's vehicle. The couple then sped off to the Peninsula.

Read entire article here --> Britney Spears dating paprazzo

For Hillary Clinton, it's none too soon to begin contemplating her potential first days in the Oval Office. "I don't think it's presumptuous; I think that it is sensible to say I intend to be elected president, I'm going to run a winning campaign against the Republicans, and here are some of the things I'm going to do on day one, day two, day three," Clinton said in an interview with Monitor editors and reporters Friday.

"I don't think there's enough time between the election and the inauguration to understand what the Bush administration has done to our government. We have to start now."

On her list: Out with the "gag rule," which bars the federal government from giving money to international family-planning groups that provide abortion counseling or help women receive abortions. And out with what Clinton described as President Bush-era damage to environmental regulations.

Read entire article here --> Hillary Clinton's Agenda

On the legislative front, Clinton would immediately ask Congress to send two Bush-vetoed bills to her desk for her signature: one to increase funding for embryonic stem-cell research, the other to expand a children's health insurance program.

According to a new patent filed by Apple, the company is considering applying some software to your iPod that will gradually turn down the volume at which you listen to your iPod for you. Sure it’s for your safety, but when you pay for a product, you don’t want the company’s software coming in and saying you’ve had it on max volume for too long.

I rarely have reason to crank my iPod Touch above about 50% volume provided I am using one of my good sets of headphones, heck, provided I am using headphones at all. I have a few devices that I connect my iPod to via the headphone jack that give me better audio if I crank up the volume on the iPod to 100%, that doesn’t mean I am listening to my iPod at 100% of the volume, what about then?

Sure, you can go deaf from listening to your iPod too loud for too long, and Apple has implemented optional measures for those too dumb to turn it down before they go deaf, but implementing mandatory measures such as these just to keep from getting sued is dumb. Especially if Apple is going to continue supplying crappy ear buds with their players that require you to crank up the volume to get any semblance of sound quality.

Read entire article here --> New Apple patent

Progress is slow. So far, results indicate the linen-wrapped mummy is most likely, but not conclusively, the female pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled for 20 years in the 15th century B.C.

Running its own ancient-DNA lab is a major step forward for Egypt, which for decades has seen foreigners take most of the credit for major discoveries here.

It's time Egyptian scientists took charge, said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief who spearheaded the quest to find Hatshepsut and build the lab. "Egyptology, for the last 200 years, it has been led by foreigners."

But the Hatshepsut discovery also highlights the struggle to back up recent spectacular findings in Egypt, including the unearthing of ancient tombs and mummies, investigations into how King Tut died, and even the discovery in the Siwa oasis of possibly the world's oldest human footprint.

Read entire article @ Is she or isn't she?

µTorrent is an efficient and feature rich BitTorrent client for Windows sporting a very small footprint. µTorrent was designed to use as little cpu, space and memory as possible while offering all the functionalites expected from advanced clients. With BitTorrent, you can download files faster and contribute by sharing files and bandwidth.

Changes in µTorrent Version 1.8 alpha (build 7364), 2007-12-24:
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- Change: When enabling teredo at installation, hide the background netsh process window
- Fix: Speed graph dotted lines on Win9x
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- Fix: Handling of relative paths when moving torrent file to completed folder
- Fix: persist current initial-seed piece in settings


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SHANGHAI, China — China's first fully homegrown commercial aircraft rolled off the production line this month, marking a potential milestone for the country's aviation program.
In a nationally televised ceremony, the Xiangfeng, or "Flying Phoenix," was towed into a hangar at the Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Factory amid flashing laser lights and rousing music.
The rollout ceremony was closed to most media, apart from state-run CCTV and the official Xinhua News Agency.
"Today, China's aviation industry has turned over a new leaf," Lin Zuoming, general manager of China Aviation Industry Corp. I, or AVIC I, said in comments carried on the news channel of China Central Television.
The maiden flight for the ARJ-21 is planned for March. It will carry up to 90 passengers and have a flight range of 2,300 miles, according to Xinhua.
AVIC I plans to begin deliveries to customers in the third quarter of 2009, it said.

Read entire article here Chinas first homegrown aircraft

An Updated Classic Returns: MONOPOLY Purists Rejoice! It's the World's Most Popular Board Game brought to life! Acquire wealth by buying and developing the Monopoly properties you know and love. It's all about money - and making more of it than your opponents. Features Include: -Cleverly Animated Tokens, Bright 3D Graphics, New Music -Enhanced Faster Moving Gameplay -Multiplayer Mode with up to 4 Friends OR Play against up to 3 Computer Opponents with an advanced A.I. -3 Opponent Difficulty Levels: First Time Buyer, Entrepreneur and Tycoon -Limitless Replayability -Fun and Addictive Action for Everyone!

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Experience the web, Apple Style, with Safari - the fastest, easiest to use web browser in the world. With its simple, elegant interface, Safari gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the web - up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer.

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High-Def Digest is reporting that the official Blu-Ray web site was hacked into on Friday afternoon, redirecting visitors to the official HD-DVD web site. The Blu-Ray web site is now apparently back online; there's no word on who is responsible and official comments from the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD organizations have not been released.

Article found here @ Blu-Ray website hacked

The Concord Monitor editorial slammed the GOP presidential candidate for flip-flopping on issues but also criticized him on his central-casting appearance.

With "an athletic build, ramrod posture, Reaganesque hair, a charismatic speaking style and a crisp dark suit" along with "a beautiful wife and family, a wildly successful business career and just enough executive government experience" Romney espouses "some old GOP bromides -- spending cuts and lower taxes -- plus some new positions for 2008: anti-immigrant rhetoric and a focus on faith," the editorial says.

But Romney's record makes him "a disquieting figure who sure looks like the next president and most surely must be stopped," the editorial added. The Monitor's editorial page is considered liberal.

read entire article @ Romney must be stopped article

DALLAS (Reuters) - The Dallas Morning News on Sunday endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination for president and Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee, saying both took a fresh approach.

Huckabee, a folksy former Baptist preacher, has had a meteoric rise in opinion polls in recent weeks, largely because he has connected with the Republican Party's influential evangelical wing.

This puts him in serious contention with less than two weeks before the January 3 nomination battle in Iowa, which starts the state-by-state process to pick the Republican and Democratic candidates for November's presidential election.

"Mr. Huckabee is not an ideal candidate ... His religious conservatism, particularly his past rhetoric on women and gays, can be alarming," the paper said in the first of twin editorials under the headline "We Recommend."

"But religious conservatives aren't easily pigeonholed ... Mr. Huckabee has a stout heart for working families and the poor," it said.

Read entire article here @ Dallas endorses Huckabee & Obama

On YouTube, a video clip of the young and talented Pempengco signing on the popular American show, has garnered top honors, including the 16th Top Rated (This Week) Music video on YouTube.

Pempengco was invited to sing live in The Ellen Degeneres Show after the show's staff saw her on YouTube.

The young Filipina who is featured in the YouTube account under the name, “False Voice” features most of her video clips taken from local and foreign television shows. The YouTube account, which was created July 2006 by another person under the name False Voice, has also reached the fifth most viewed musician status in the popular online video service.

Read entire article here @ 15-year old filipino singer wows

Video can be found here 15 year old singer video

By Andrew Parker in London

Published: December 23 2007 22:01 | Last updated: December 23 2007 22:01

Buyers of Apple’s iPhone have turned out to be voracious users of electronic mail and other data services, giving network operators hope that the much-hyped device will finally unlock billions of dollars in mobile advertising revenue.

After years of false dawns for operators, the use of mobile phones for web surfing is on the verge of becoming widespread in Europe and the US, and iPhone research by O2 shows the device is acting as an important catalyst for such activity.

Matthew Key, who becomes chief executive of O2 Europe next month, told the Financial Times that 60 per cent of the company’s iPhone customers in the UK were sending or receiving more than 25 megabytes of data a month, the equivalent of 7,500 e-mails without attachments or 25 YouTube videos.

By comparison, less than 2 per cent of O2’s other UK customers on monthly payment contracts use more than 25MB a month.

Read entire article here @ iPhone users raise network hopes

A new Web 2.0 iPhone service has been introduced in Germany, which shows what pharmacies are open during Christmas and a map of how to get there.

The new service details Christmas opening times and locations for nearly all of the 21000 pharmacies in Germany. The service is offered by Apotheken.de, one of the biggest German-language pharmacy websites.

Opening the website prompts the user to enter their postcode, which then returns a choice of nearby pharmacies displayed, together with directions, using Google Maps.

Read entire article here @ iPhone service locates open pharmacies

Following a three year lawsuit in which Apple attempted to force Mac fan-site Think Secret to reveal the names of industry sources leaking privileged information, a settlement has been made that will see the site take its tipsters identity to the grave.

“Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret’s publisher, said ‘I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits’”

Read entire article here @ Think Secret to close following Apple lawsuit settlement

In exchange for a one-time fee of 10,000 euros (US$14,350), the nonprofit Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF) will be able to provide Samba with the necessary documentation for implementing all of Microsoft's Workgroup Server Protocols covered by the European Commission's landmark antitrust decision.

Read entire article here @ Samba Gains Access to Microsoft Code

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Texas Rep. Ron Paul refused to rule out a third party bid Sunday if he fails to win the Republican Party presidential nomination.

When Tim Russert of NBC’s 'Meet the Press' asked the Texas congressman if he’d consider an independent bid, he replied: "I have no intention of doing that."

When pressed by Russert to state unequivocally that he would not, Paul demurred. "I deserve one weasel now and then, Tim!"

Paul lost to Phil Gramm in the 1984 Texas Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. Four years later, he ran for president as the Libertarian Party nominee.

The Republican presidential contender — who has an intensely loyal national following — is pulling in record fundraising sums, prompting speculation that he may continue his White House bid even if he does not fare well among Republican primary voters.

Paul is currently averaging single-digit showings in most recent surveys of GOP voters nationally and in early-voting states.

Read entire article here @ Ron Paul: GOP contender will not rule out third-party run