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**** - *** game is a prime example of why peopl...

This from an ol'dawg baller/coach/ref, and 30+ year observer of the NBA (from a strong fan, slowly changed to just a pesimistic guy watching NBA talent):

The NBA has been "RIGGED" ever since 'marketer/attorney' Comm. David Stern took over the league!!! The primary way he/they can get more ad dollars from TV contracts & more gate money from 'fans' of the home teams IS outright league rigged cheating by the NBA referees! It's most often calls & non-calls in favor of the home teams to help their 'scoreboard' for paying "fans" (with no shortage of idiots in the stands). But it's also rediculous favoritism toward 'STAR' players and 'elite' teams and cities. Many people I've told the truth to about this are not b-ball savy or are just naive, and don't believe me when I estimate the average "referee advantage" is probably at least 12 points for the above mentioned favs. But it is true. ... There are other ways he/they rig the league for more revenue, such as scheduling and allowing home teams to screw with traveling teams locker rooms (original Celtics Guru Red Auerbach was a forefather specialist at that), & etc. It's UGLY! But until the masses of TV & arena ruhtards become savy and demand a clean fair NBA league, by declaring to the home team & media & sponsors that they won't buy game tickets or watch TV games anymore until those changes, you better get used to it and just enjoy watching talent.

RT

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Howard Open To Signing With Celtics

Dwight Howard might be interested in signing with the Celtics this summer.

“Always. Always,” Howard said. “I’d always listen to a team like that.”

Howard said his primary goal is to win a championship.

“My thing is I want to win,” Howard said. “It’s not something like I’m doing this for money. I win. I want to do it my way.

“The first thing is basketball. I want to win a championship, and it takes a certain type of team to win a championship. You know, there’s a lot of teams who are great during the regular season. They play well, but it’s different once you play in those playoffs, you know? It’s gut-check time.

“Like I told the Magic, I just want to win. I don’t want a team that doesn’t know how you have to win in the playoffs. I want a team that’s going to go out every night and forget about stats, forget about who scores the most points or who is the fan favorite. Just go out and play, play for each other and play to win. That’s the only thing.”



Read more: http://basketball.re...s#ixzz1kexfFZRW

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Nowitzki To Miss Four Games To Improve Conditio...

Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki will miss the next four games to improve his conditioning and rest his sore right knee.

"We're going to shut Dirk down for four games, from game activity,'' coach Rick Carlisle said. "At this point, we feel he needs an uninterrupted eight days of work to resolve some physical issues and some conditioning issues. This is the decision of (athletic trainer) Casey Smith and me."

Nowitzki is averaging 17.5 points per game, five below his career average.

"If it were up to Dirk, he would play," Carlisle said. "But right now, we feel the right thing is to take this time, get some things resolved and hopefully by next Sunday, he'll be feeling a lot better and ready to go.''



Read more: http://basketball.re...e#ixzz1kCoKZfqB

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Joe Paterno dies

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-wetzel_joe_paterno_obituary_012212

Truly great leaders are measured by the lives they reached, the people they motivated and the legacy of their lesson that can extend for years to come, like ripples from a skipped stone across an endless lake.

For Joe Paterno, the impact is incalculable, the people he connected with extending far beyond the players he coached for 62 years at Penn State, the last 46 as head football coach. Paterno always tried to be the giant who walked among the everyman both in the school’s greatest moments and, it turns out, in its worst.
Paterno died Sunday at a State College, Pa., hospital, suffering in his final days from lung cancer, broken bones and the fallout of a horrific scandal that not only cost him his job, but also his trademark vigor and a portion of his good name. He was 85 years old.

This is a complicated passing. What was once the most consistent and basic of messages – honor, ethics and education – seemingly lived out as close to its ideal as possible was rocked Nov. 5, 2011, when a grand jury indicted Paterno’s former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, of multiple counts of sexual abuse of children.

Many, including Penn State’s Board of Trustees, believed Paterno could have and should have done more to stop Sandusky, especially after allegations of misconduct arose in 2002. Within days Paterno was fired from the program and school to which he’d become synonymous.

Now, a little more than two months later, he’s gone for good, a bitter, brutal ending for an American original.

He was the winningest college football coach of all time, compiling a 409-136-3 record. He won national titles in 1982 and 1986 and recorded four other undefeated seasons, including consecutively in 1968 and 1969.

He was a bridge from a simpler time to the cutthroat business college football has become, somehow serving as both a progressive force (he believed in players’ rights, a playoff system and welcomed advancements in television) and a stubborn traditionalist (the Penn State uniforms remained basic, he never learned how to send a text message and he still used old-school discipline).

[* Yahoo! Sports Radio: Pat Forde on Joe Paterno’s legacy]

In 2007, when a group of his players got into a fight at a party, Paterno determined it would best if the entire team had to clean Beaver Stadium after home games. “I think that we need to prove to people that we’re not a bunch of hoodlums,” he said at the time.

That was Paterno at his best, this singular figure offering simple lessons. He was the rock. He was the constant. He was the conscience. He was JoePa, his nickname suggesting a fatherly quality to not just his players, not just Penn State students who could still find his number listed in the local phone book and not just Nittany Lions football fans.

He was a larger-than-life figure in the small, bucolic town of State College, and if you wanted to draw something good and decent from college football, well, here’s where you always could. Don’t worry, he’d still be there, as unchanged as ever.

He gave millions of dollars back to the school – the library is named after him and his wife, Sue. He raised millions more at speaking engagements across the country. He encouraged vibrant alumni to take incredible pride in their university, unusual for many state schools in the east. Yet he was still this guy out of Brooklyn, with a thick accent and even thicker glasses. He was humble. He was approachable.

[ Related: Joe Paterno’s coaching timeline ]

It seemed, for anyone who wanted to believe, that he provided perspective amid the circus.

“We’re trying to win football games, don’t misunderstand that,” Paterno told Sports Illustrated’s Dan Jenkins in 1968, when he was just 41. “But I don’t want it to ruin our lives if we lose. I don’t want us ever to become the kind of place where an 8-2 season is a tragedy. Look at that day outside. It’s clear, it’s beautiful, the leaves are turning, the land is pretty and it’s quiet. If losing a game made me miserable, I couldn’t enjoy such a day.

“I tell the kids who come here to play, enjoy yourselves. There’s so much besides football. Art, history, literature, politics.”

That this attitude would come from the guy who would win the most games ever was part of the charm, as if Paterno was running a ruse on everyone chasing him all those crisp autumns. He was playing chess, they were getting check-mated.

No, the full truth never squares with these kinds of narratives. No, he wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t without fault or selfishness or vanity or difficult moods. He was close enough though. Sometimes, having someone to believe in is enough.

“You know what happens when you’re No. 1?” Paterno said more than 40 years ago to Jenkins. “Nobody is happy until you’re No. 1 again and that might never happen again.”

It would happen again and again and again, actually.

[Joe Paterno: ‘I just did what I thought was best’ ]

In his final days, that wide-eyed optimist and aw-shucks success story was gone. The Sandusky scandal had sapped what no opponent ever could. He sat earlier this month at his kitchen table with, not coincidentally, Sally Jenkins, the Washington Post columnist and Dan Jenkins’ daughter, for his last public words.

He’d lost his hair from chemotherapy. His breath was heavy. He sipped on a soda. “His voice sounded like wind blowing across a field of winter stalks, rattling the husks,” Sally Jenkins wrote.

He tried to explain how he hadn’t done more to stop Sandusky, how he hadn’t followed up thoroughly, how he hadn’t pressed university administrators for answers.

“I didn’t exactly know how to handle it … I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”

Some saw no need for him to explain himself again: He’d said much the same thing in a 2011 grand jury appearance. For others, there is no suitable explanation, boys were abused, the mistake too grave for excuses.

This will be forever the battle over Joe Paterno’s legacy. A life of soaring impact, of bedrock values, of generations and generations as a symbol of how to live life to its fullest.

[ Photos: Joe Paterno through the years ]

The Sandusky case cracked that for some. Ended it. Not for all, though.

Paterno reached too many, taught too many, inspired too many. And for years and seasons, for decades and generations to come, those that drew from his wisdom will pass it on and on. That will be his most lasting legacy.

No, his worst day can’t be forgotten. Neither can all the beautiful ones that surrounded it.

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Promoting Posts to Articles

Beginning with IP.Content 2.0, you can now promote forum posts to your articles section in IP.Content.  

The administrator can configure the specifics of this feature in the ACP under My Apps -> IP.Content -> Promote Article Settings.  You can turn the system on and off, control which groups can copy and move posts to the articles section, and specify a few other details for the feature.  A new hook is included with IP.Content which adds a button to each post labeled "Promote to Article".  This button only shows up if you have permission to use the feature based on the ACP configuration.

When clicked, the button will take you to a new form where you can formalize the details of the new article.  You can tweak the text and title, upload an image, and specify other pertinent details.  If you are able to both move and copy posts to the articles section, you will also be asked which type of promotion you wish to use.  Upon submitting the form, IP.Content handles the rest.

This new feature can be used to showcase important content otherwise hidden in your forums by pushing this content to your frontpage.  It is then up to you whether you want a copy made in the articles section (leaving the original post in tact), whether you want to actually move the post to the articles section, and whether you want any cross-linking left in place.  With such powerful options, we are sure you will find many uses for this new promotion tool in IP.Content 2.0.

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What Is A Frontpage?

IP.Content 2.0 uses the term "frontpage" to refer to both the homepage of the Articles module, and the landing page of each individual category.  We have introduced this new navigational structure to better allow you to showcase content, while presenting it in a standardized format that your users will be able to understand and jump into without assistance.

Firstly, you will now be able to define "frontpage" templates in the ACP for the Articles module.  IP.Content 2.0 will ship with 3 defaults:

• 1x2x2 Layout
  This layout will display articles in a traditional "news" style layout.
• Blog format
  This format will display articles in a blog-style format.
• Single column
  This layout will force articles to display in a single column, one per row.

You can use one or more of these frontpage layouts, or you can create your own.  Experiment with displaying articles in different formats on your homepage to determine which layout your users like best.

Articles must be set to "Show on front page" in order for them to display on the homepage frontpage.

In addition to the homepage frontpage, each category has it's own frontpage.  The category frontpage functions identically to the homepage frontpage, except for two important factors:

• Only records from within that category (and it's subcategories) will be displayed
• The "Show on front page" setting is not honored for the category frontpage

You will be able to easily review and manage the articles set to display on the frontpage from a new section of the ACP labeled "Frontpage Manager".  We feel that this new area of the articles section will help showcase important articles and increase user interaction with your articles section.

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Media Management

The media module in the IP.Content 2.0 ACP section allows you to quickly and easily manage multimedia files you may need to use with IP.Content.  While you can certainly upload your files through FTP, or link to offsite files, you may find it easier to upload the files using the media section of the ACP, and then copy the links for use within pages, templates, and blocks.

From within the media module, you can create folders, upload files, move files and folders, rename files and folders, and delete files and folders.  Files can be listed and you can click on a file to view it (or right click on the file to copy the link).

This simple tool can be a timesaver when you simply need to upload an image quickly for use within a page template.  The media folder is defined in the media_path.php file in your forum root directory, giving you the freedom to move and organize your paths as needed.

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Page Management

The page management module interface has been overhauled for IP.Content 2.0 to make it easier to manage your pages in the ACP.

Firstly, the folder navigation utilizes AJAX to load the folder contents inline without requiring you to visit a new page to view the contents of the folder.  We found that folder navigation was a slow process, especially when working with many files and folders, so we wanted to speed up the interaction with the software in this particular area.

We have also updated some common management features to utilize AJAX to help facilitate management of your pages.  Actions like clearing folders and deleting folders, for instance, will now occur without page refreshes, making your managerial activities flow smoother and quicker.

Additionally, the interface as a whole has been updated to provide a nicer, smoother feel for the page management areas.  In practice, we found that many administrators spend the majority of their time setting up and utilizing IP.Content in the page management areas, so we wanted to update the user interface to make this experience as easy and enjoyable as possible.  Minor details like confirmation dialogs have been updated to bring everything together for a more consistent feel.

A new filter bar, utilizing AJAX to retrieve the results without the need for a page refresh, has also been added to the page management area.  You can begin typing in the name of a page and a live-search action will occur in the background, showing you the results of your search as you type.  If you have many pages and many folders (and many pages within those many folders), you will find that using the filter bar to locate your pages can dramatically speed up your navigation of IP.Content within the page management areas of the ACP.

Overall, we've modernized the IP.Content page management area of the ACP, polishing up the little details, in an effort to make your experience all the more pleasant.

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Template Management

In IP.Content 2.0, you will notice that there are 3 separate template sections of the ACP:

• Page Templates
• Database Templates
• Article Templates

In IP.Content 1.x, database and page templates were combined into a single "Templates" section, which worked fine for our original intentions.  However, with the introduction of a separate Articles module, and additional template types related to the articles module, we decided to separate the templates so that each template type is displayed separately.  This should help finding and editing your templates easier in practice, as you will be able to filter the template types and work with fewer at a time.

Within each templates section, you can create containers to group your templates into logical groupings.  For instance, you may wish to create a grouping for each database you create, and then place the database templates appropriately into the container representing the database itself.  Or you may wish to create multiple front page templates, and group them all together in the article templates area.  You can use containers for whatever purposes you may have, or not at all: it's up to you!

Templates can be reordered by dragging and dropping the rows up and down, and they can be moved from one container to another via drag n drop as well.  

Certain meta data about the templates are stored when you create new database or article templates, allowing IP.Content to tailor other areas of the ACP to help you out.  For example, in IP.Content 1.x the software did not "remember" what kind of database template you were creating, so all database templates were presented in each of the dropdowns when creating or editing a database.  Beginning with IP.Content 2.x, the software stores the template type when you create a new template.  This allows us to show only "category listing" templates in the "category listing template" selection dropdowns.  Similarly, the template tag help popup can automatically know which template type you are editing without you having to specify.

Properly making use of templates can help you push out pages on your site in a uniform manner quickly and easily, and without having to "reinvent the wheel" each time a new page is ready to be published.

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Store Comments In Forum

With IP.Content 2.0, articles and custom databases can now mirror a topic to the forums when a new article or database record is submitted.  In doing so, IP.Content can also utilize that automatically-generated topic as the comment "storage" for the article or record.  When a comment is submitted to the article, the comment is actually stored as a reply to the topic.  Similarly, replies made directly to the topic in the forum also show up as comments for the record.

This new functionality can be enabled at a per-database and per-category level.  You can specify separate forums for each category in your article section, for instance, or you can turn off forum commenting for a specific category, while enabling it for all others.

A few additional configuration options, such as allowing you to automatically remove the topic when the record is removed, and specifying a prefix and/or suffix for the topic title so that your users can more easily identify that such topics were stemmed from the articles section help round out the feature, giving you better control over how these automatically posted topics are handled.

These new forum cross-posting capabilities allow the administrator to better tie in articles with the forums, giving you better opportunities to expose your content to a wider audience.  Additionally, forum management of comments provides for easier maintenance and stronger managerial options of the comments, utilizing IP.Board's powerful, proven feature set.

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