In the News, August 15th, 2008

Six Down- Two to Go

Michael Phelps collected the sixth gold medal with another world-record triumph after winning the 200-meter individual medley. His time of 1 minute, 54.23 seconds flashed on the board — more than two seconds ahead of the next guy.

"The next two races are pretty important," said Phelps, whose sixth world record in China erased his own mark of 1:54.80 at last month's U.S. trials. "I have to conserve as much physical and emotional energy as I can."

He's already the winningest athlete in Olympic history with 12 golds — he also won two bronze medals in Athens — but his sights are on eight in Beijing.

Mark Spitz won seven golds at the 1972 Munich Games. Phelps has two more events to remove any doubt he's the greatest Olympian ever.
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Pass the Tissues....Donald Trump is saving Ed McMahon

In an attempt to save an aging TV star and possibly make himself appear human, Donald Trump says he plans to buy Ed McMahon's mansion, saving it from foreclosure. Trump says that he is buying it for an undisclosed amount and leasing it to McMahon. Trump doesn't know McMahon personally, but acted out of compassion because helping out "would be an honor."

McMahon has not worked for about 18 months because of a neck injury. He defaulted on $4.8 million in mortgage loans with Countrywide Financial Corp.

"When I was at the Wharton School of Business I'd watch him every night," Trump told the Los Angeles Times. "How could this happen?"

McMahon bought the six-bedroom, five-bathroom, 7,000-square-foot house in January 1990. The home was listed at $4.6 million last weekend -- down from a peak price of $7 million.

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Freeware rights Preserved
It's a win for the fine people who bring us free software. A federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., helps clarify a murky area of the law concerning how much control programmers can exert over their intellectual property once it's been released for free into the so-called "open source" software community.

People are free to use that material in their own products, but they must credit the original authors of the programming code and release their modifications into the wild as well, a cycle that's critical for free software to continue improving.
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And finally, what are the dog days of summer without Big Foot?

A couple of hunters in northern Georgia claim to have found a carcass of the legendary creature.

Left phot

According to their Web site, searchingforbigfoot.com the creature:

• Stands 7-feet-7-inches tall.
• Weighs more than 500 pounds.
• Looks part human and part ape-like.
• Is male.
• Has reddish hair and blackish-gray eyes.
• Has two arms and two legs, and five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.
• Has flat feet that are similar to human feet.
• Has a footprint that is 16.75 inches long and 5.75 inches wide at the heel.
• Has hands that are 11.75 inches long from the palm to the tip of the middle finger and are 6.25 inches wide.
• Walks upright. (Several of them apparently were seen on the day the body was found.)
• Has teeth that are more human-like than ape-like.
• Has been undergoing DNA testing.

Wonder if it was made in China.....................