Comeback has Phelps ‘feeling like a kid’ |
- Comeback has Phelps ‘feeling like a kid’
- Morgan Stanley cuts staff compensation by 50 per cent
- Justin Bieber allegedly celebrates egg pelting in security video
- Artificial intelligence
- Channing Tatum celebrates his birthday (VIDEO)
| Comeback has Phelps ‘feeling like a kid’ Posted: 25 Apr 2014 05:57 PM PDT
"As a whole, I felt pretty good just being able to get back in the water and race again," Phelps said today, after he closed out his appearance in the Mesa Grand Prix with an unfamiliar and experimental 50m sprint "I'm pretty excited," said Phelps, whose 22 Olympic medals include an astonishing 18 gold. "I felt like a kid. I think that was the coolest part about it." Today, fans were treated to an oddity: Phelps in a 50m race. To make things even looser, Phelps opted to swim butterfly in the 50m freestyle heats, making it more of a training run on the heels of his narrow runner-up finish to Ryan Lochte in the 100m butterfly final on Thursday night. His time of 24.06 put him seventh in his heat of rivals swimming the traditional freestyle stroke, and 42nd overall. It was also seven-tenths of a second faster than his 100m fly final split time, even though Phelps said he struggled with the frenetic pace of the one-lap race. The main attraction of the 50m today, Phelps said, was just to get in one more race. At this point in his training, he didn't feel ready to tackle the 200m free scheduled today, and he didn't want to double up in the 100m fly and 100m free Friday. "The schedule today wasn't ideal for what I should swim at this very moment," Phelps said. Phelps has tried to quell expectations that he is on an inexorable path to the 2016 Rio Olympics. He's been coy on just what shape this phase of his career might take, although he seems to be pointing toward shorter races such as the 100m fly. One thing's certain, there won't be another multiple-medal campaign like the one that yielded a stunning eight gold medals in eight events at the 2008 Beijing Games. And Phelps, who dominated the 400m individual medley at the height of his career, said a return to that demanding event is also off the table. "I guarantee that," he said, prompting a quick interjection from coach Bob Bowman. "Is that kind of like 'I will never swim again, ever?'" Bowman said, drawing a laugh. Otherwise, Phelps isn't offering many absolutes. He's entered in the next stop in USA Swimming's Grand Prix series, the Charlotte Ultraswim in May. "He's entered in Charlotte," Bowman said, indicating that if Phelps does swim there it could be "maybe the same kind of thing, maybe just one day". "Beyond that," Bowman added, "some training and we'll see what happens after that." — Afp  |
| Morgan Stanley cuts staff compensation by 50 per cent Posted: 25 Apr 2014 05:48 PM PDT
Since April 1, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management financial advisers have seen their compensation cut by as much as 50 per cent on sales of new issues to clients who use the firm primarily to get allocations of those securities. The severity of the pay cut varies, but some top earners are seeing payouts cut by half. The new system applies when more than 70 per cent of the business from a client comes from those deals. Morgan Stanley is hoping that a drastic cut in this kind of compensation will spur brokers to sell more products, such as mutual funds, loans and financial planning services, to those clients, according to several Morgan Stanley advisers. At the same time, the bank is hoping the move could force clients who want continued access to hot IPOs to put more of their assets with the firm's wealth management business. Morgan Stanley has underwritten the Facebook and Twitter IPOs and is also expected to win the assignment for the forthcoming offering from Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group. Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Christine Jockle confirmed the change in the broker compensation policy. She said it was meant to ensure that new offerings were distributed more broadly across the client base. Archrival Merrill Lynch, a unit of Bank of America Corp, has not made similar changes to its compensation structure, a source familiar with the matter said today. Wall Street recruiters said they think that only Morgan Stanley has made such a move among the bigger brokers. While the change at Morgan Stanley was detailed internally in November in a lengthy document that outlined the wealth unit's 2014 compensation structure, some advisers realised it was happening only after it was implemented and their pay checks dropped in recent weeks according to several advisers. The advisers who spoke with Reuters said many of the bank's roughly 16,426 financial advisers are now unhappy. They said the change could repel clients who use the bank to get access to new issues. Access to hot IPOs and new bond issues can also be make-or-break for building new client relationships and maintaining existing ones. The average retail broker at Morgan Stanley typically gets no more than a few hundred shares per client for popular IPOs that the firm underwrites, said one of the advisers, who requested anonymity because he did not want to be seen criticising his own firm. "I got 100 shares of Twitter for a guy when they went public, and I'm sure he won't be happy if he wants something else and I tell him it's not available," the adviser said. "It's not a good situation." Morgan Stanley uses its retail brokerage in seeking to win stock and bond underwriting assignments, saying the size of its sales force gives it an advantage over Wall Street rivals. The bank was ranked No. 1 for equity underwriting fees in the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. At the same time, the bank is also trying to improve the profit margins in its wealth management unit, which now accounts for about 40 per cent of the company's revenue, looking at both increasing assets under management and selling clients more products. Morgan Stanley has been tweaking its incentive structure for advisers the past few years to align with its business goals. The 2014 compensation policy, for example, also included bonuses for making loans as well as incentives to brokers who could convince clients to tell Morgan Stanley what assets they hold outside the firm as that gives advisers the chance to pitch for them. — Reuters |
| Justin Bieber allegedly celebrates egg pelting in security video Posted: 25 Apr 2014 05:43 PM PDT
Bieber, 20, has not been charged with a crime in the case, but if he were, it could complicate the pop star's other current legal proceedings in Miami and Toronto. Bieber's residence in Calabasas, California, north of Los Angeles was searched by authorities on January 14 in the vandalism case and the affidavit was filed last month to obtain a search warrant for the singer's Instagram photo-sharing account. The affidavit, released yesterday, said Bieber is observed to be "high-fiving" with a group of males and "Bieber and the other males appeared to be laughing and celebrating," the affidavit said. The neighbour alleges that Bieber threw raw eggs at his home. If investigators determine that Bieber might have caused more than US$20,000 (RM65, 360) in damage to the home, he could be charged with a felony. The singer's trial in Miami on driving under the influence, resisting arrest and using an expired license charges is set to begin in July. In February, Bieber was charged with assaulting a limousine driver in Toronto. The Canadian singer has since moved from his home in suburban Los Angeles. Los Angeles Fox television affiliate KTTV-TV first reported the search warrant for Bieber's Instagram account, which investigators are using to try to determine that a man in the grainy surveillance footage is Bieber. Detective Ginni Alvarez said in the affidavit that Bieber is wearing the same white sweatshirt in the surveillance footage and in a photo posted that day on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook Inc. Bieber's attorney, Howard Weitzman, did not respond to a request for comment. — Reuters |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2014 05:43 PM PDT APRIL 26 — It's common knowledge that every few years there will probably be at least two major Hollywood movies that carry the same theme or maybe even be quite strikingly similar to each other. Remember Armageddon and Deep Impact? Or Antz and A Bug's Life? Looks like it's happening again this year with Best Original Screenplay Oscar winner Her and the recently released Johnny Depp flick Transcendence. What many people might not notice, however, is that there's a third movie exploring the same themes as these two: a low-budget British sci-fi film called The Machine. What's even more surprising is the fact that all three movies made it to Malaysian cinemas. Okay, maybe the Johnny Depp movie is not much of a surprise since it's your more typical Hollywood blockbuster film, but for a small Spike Jonze movie and a low-budget British film to even inspire confidence in local distributors is almost a small miracle. So it's a real pleasure to get to experience these movies the proper way — in a large darkened room on a huge screen along with other film fans. But first, a short synopsis of the three films, in case you missed them. Her was the first one to reach Malaysian cinemas this year, obviously capitalising on the film's awards season buzz. In short, it's a story about a lonely man (played by Joaquin Phoenix), separated from his wife and on the brink of divorce, who buys a new female-voiced operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) and slowly falls in love with her. And, it seemed like she's falling in love with him, too. The Machine came next, and again it's about a lonely man, this time a scientist with a sick daughter, who's hired by the military to develop a sort of super soldier, complete with artificial intelligence. He hires a brilliant new female assistant who has come up with the right algorithm to finally realise his dreams of building a "conscious" machine. Unfortunately the assistant dies early, and to pay tribute to her, the prototype for the so-called "machine" was physically modelled to look like her. Of course a lot of moral dilemma ensues. It's very female-centric conclusion is also plenty of food for thought, even if it didn't quite think through the whole concept as well as Her did. And finally came Transcendence, which is quite similar to the premise of The Machine in that Dr Will Caster, the brilliant artificial intelligence scientist played by Johnny Depp, was tragically killed by terrorists who are opposed to the development of artificial intelligence. This left his wife with no choice but to "copy" his mind and upload it onto the programme that he's been developing. If The Machine ponders whether it's possible for a machine to have a conscious mind, Transcendence takes it as a given that it's possible, but ponders further whether that conscious mind is actually Will's or not. Reviews have been universally bad for Transcendence, although I personally think the film is not as bad as it's made out to be. It just seems bad because it's pretty "boring" — there aren't really that many "money shots" that we'd usually expect from a Hollywood blockbuster with a budget of US$100 million (RM327 million), and for all its supposed originality and high concept, it doesn't really explore it that deeply. Her does a way better job at exploring the possibilities of artificial intelligence, it's possible effects on human interaction and even the possibility of not only interacting with, but also falling in love with, a human being, and ultimately where the artificial intelligence might take itself once its consciousness blossoms. Even The Machine does a better job of exploring the same questions, especially how and where the newly "conscious" machines will take themselves and their relationships with human beings.
For all its efforts at selling itself as a movie about artificial intelligence, the "intelligence" in question has always been human to begin with. It wasn't a "created" intelligence. Ultimately, what made Her so special is how relevant it feels to the way we live our lives now alongside all the technological advances that we have so far. We might not be able to have sustained conversations with operating systems on our computers and phones right now, but already we're more engaged with our devices than our actual human friends whenever we're in a large social gathering. Don't believe me? Just look up and see what most people are doing if you're at a large dinner table and chances are they'd be looking at their phones instead of having conversations with each other. And our devices aren't even talking back to us yet! It's that ability to mirror what's happening now while hypothesizing about the future that made Her so approachable, and quite probably everyone's favourite out of the three films, if they've seen all three, that is. And in its surprising refusal to be wary of technology, perhaps even arguing that the technology-assisted loneliness of its hero has helped him grow as a person, we may have even found a new friend and another reason why technology may not be so bad after all. *This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Channing Tatum celebrates his birthday (VIDEO) Posted: 25 Apr 2014 05:34 PM PDT NEW YORK, April 26 — On the 26th of April, Alabama born actor Channing Tatum celebrates his birthday! Tatum will likely celebrate his special day with his wife, actress Jenna Dewan, and their young daughter Everly. — Cover Media
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