Jemblog

He was cool at 16!

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

-Jonh Lennon

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York student won a court order to temporarily freeze the assets of Peter Madoff, the brother of jailed swindler Bernard Madoff, the student’s lawyer said on Wednesday.

Andrew Ross Samuels of Brooklyn Law School said in papers filed in a suburban New York court that he lost nearly $500,000 in inheritance money in Bernard Madoff’s scheme.

Madoff pleaded guilty on March 12 to running the biggest investment fraud in Wall Street’s history, which prosecutors have said involved as much as $65 billion.

Madoff was sent to jail pending sentencing in June. His brother, who was an executive of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, has not been charged with any wrongdoing. (more…)

The world’s largest music store, APPLE’S iTUNES, plans to boost the price of many hit singles and selected classic tracks to $1.29 on APRIL 7th, breaking the psychological barrier of 99 cents in what could be the first big test of how much consumers are willing to pay to download individual songs, reports The Los Angeles Times.

Although the date for higher prices has not been publicly announced, APPLE has been notifying record labels it will go into effect on that date, industry executives said.

The move, part of a new “variable-pricing” strategy that will also lower the price of selected songs, is an attempt by the music industry to wring more revenue from digital downloads in the battle to offset declining CD sales. Label executives contend the new pricing will allow them to offer packaged downloads of songs that might entice consumers to spend more on music. (more…)

Via Gizmodo – By Adam Frucci

There are over a dozen people working at our fair Gizmodo, but as a Windows user, I’m in a definite minority. I still rock XP, and I’m pretty happy with that. Why haven’t I switched to Macs?

Plenty of reasons, not least of which being that I’m just too smart to switch to a Mac. That’s right, I’m too smart for Macs. As Bill Gates’s retirement rapidly approaches I figured now is a good time to lay out why I’m loyal to his OS.

I grew up with Windows. Although my first computer was a Mac Classic (I was like 3 at the time, and I only used it to play that helicopter game where you have to drop the little man into the horse-drawn hay carriage), I’ve been using Windows PCs for nearly my entire life, learning how to fiddle with the command prompt in DOS and dealing with the rudimentary pile of crap that was Windows 3.1. I survived Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME for a short, painful time, Windows 2000 and now, finally, Windows XP. It hasn’t always been pretty (see: Windows ME), but through it all I’ve figured out every little trick there is to know about running Windows. I’m a monster on Windows. (more…)

Via Yahoo – If there’s one thing that gets in the way of you being your healthiest, it’s stress. For anyone who’s found themselves standing in front of the freezer inhaling spoonfuls of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream (not my real name!) to avoid finishing a project, or waking up three times in the wee hours of the night in anticipation of a difficult conversation, here’s some not-so-shocking news: Research shows that anxiety can make you sleep fewer hours, get sick more often, remember less, become more prone to long-term disease and—as if you needed reminding-eat more.

No wonder up to 90 percent of doctor visits are for stress-related complaints, a fact that I suspect too many of you know firsthand (though you experience it as GI distress, back pain, a headache or other physical symptom). (more…)

Baseball player Manny Ramirez has put his Boston apartment on the market, according to Citylife Real Estate, the listing agent. Ramirez’s 37th-floor penthouse apartment at the Ritz Carlton Towers Boston is listed for $8.5 million.
The home is 4,500 square feet and has four bedrooms and an 800-plus-square foot private terrace. The building offers a concierge, doorman and sports club.

Ramirez’s place was extensively renovated with the highest quality finishes and includes three valet garage parking spaces. It has 270-degree panoramic views of the Back Bay, Charles River, Public Garden, Beacon Hill and Boston Harbor.

Via TMZ – Kobe Bryant and his wife Vanessa are being sued by their former housekeeper, who claims Vanessa was incredibly abusive — even demanding that she put her hand in a bag of dog feces to retrieve a tag from her blouse.

Maria Jimenez claims Vanessa called her “lazy, slow, dumb, a f—ing liar, and f—ing sh-t.”

In the lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Orange County, Jimenez claims Vanessa accused her of stealing her (mouth) retainer.

Jimenez says it got so bad — Vanessa allegedly “badgered, harassed and humiliated Maria by yelling and screaming at Maria and criticizing her in front of Kobe, the Bryants’ children, employees and other people in the household” — she threatened to quit but Kobe talked her out of it.

The final straw: When Vanessa went nuclear because Maria put an expensive blouse in the washer. Vanessa demanded that Maria put her hand in a bag of dog feces to retrieve the price tag for the blouse.

Maria says she wanted to quit and Vanessa responded that she “had to work until payday to pay for the $690 blouse, which she did.”

Maria is suing for wrongful discharge, invasion of privacy and emotional distress and unpaid wages.

Tuesday’s presidential press conference shifted episode two of Fox’s “American Idol” from Wednesday to Thursday, which gave Fox a victory in last night’s Nielsen-ratings race. But the whole night seemed to shift as well, to an era when network prime time topped pop culture by counterprogramming with its best dramas, sitcoms, sports and reality TV.

The reality show that redefined the form — “American Idol” — delivered a 7.4/21 rating and share in the ad-centric 18-to-49 demographic. It was followed by another leader in the genre, “Hell’s Kitchen” (4.7/11), and they combined for a first-place 6.1/16 (all ratings based on Nielsen fast-affiliate data).

With an “Idol” lead-in, “Hell’s Kitchen” heated up 20% higher than normal. But “Idol” itself was down 10% from the other nights it has run on Thursday and off 23% from its usual Wednesday elimination-round rating. (more…)

By Billy Johnson Jr.

As a hip-hop fan and journalist I have watched a multitude of unremorseful rappers get incarcerated.

This is not to say that I don’t think that some of the arrests were unjust because I do. But in the endless instances of drug charges, acts of violence and even perjury, I have never seen a hip-hop artist admit to any wrongdoing or accept any responsibility for their actions that ultimately lead to their sentencing.This always concerned me because of the message it sends to the young impressionable fans. A message that says someone else was to blame for rapper’s decision to carrying an illegal drug, assault someone or lie in court.

T.I.originally seemed to be heading down that same path when he pleaded guilty when charged with attempting to buy unregistered machine guns and silencers the day he was scheduled to perform at the 2007 BET Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta. He posted the $3 million bail and was sentenced to house arrest. But he reconsidered maintaining his not guilty plea when he learned that if he lost in court he could face a maximum of 10 years in prison and $250,000 fine for each count. (more…)