| Browsers find treasures at antiques show
NORMAL -- Becky Ansher loves looking at antiques, and this weekend's Top of the Class Antiques Show & Sale didn't disappoint her.“It's fabulous," said Ansher of Normal. “I love it."She said the show, at the Brown Ballroom at Illinois State University Bone Student Center, offered a lot more variety than similar shows and antique malls. She saw an antique gun muzzle loader and Fostoria glass pieces she hadn't seen before.Gretchen Fagin of Bloomington also was impressed.“It's beautiful; very well done," said Fagin, who recently moved with her husband from Pennsylvania to Bloomington. “But the prices are sticker shock in comparison to the East Coast."Fagin was looking for a small wooden table. She found plenty, but didn't purchase any.Doug Jennings, associate director of the ISU School of Communications and coordinator of the show, said it attracted 30 vendors this year.“We're real happy," he said, despite the fact that the total was down from the previous two years.
Man banned from eBay for alleged shilling
LONDON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- A British man, one of eBay.com's "Titanium PowerSellers," has been permanently removed from the Web site for alleged shill bidding. Shill bidding is when the seller artificially drives up the price of an auction, The Sunday Times of London said. Eftis Paraskevaides, an antiquities dealer from Cambridgeshire, England, allegedly used his ex-wife's eBay account to drive up the prices of at least 400 items, the newspaper reported. Six users were permanently banned from the auction site after after The Sunday Times ran an investigation on shill bidding and passed the evidence on to eBay, the newspaper said. Paraskevaides antique company made around $2.7 million, making him a "Titanium PowerSeller" and one of eBay's top earners. Last month he told an undercover reporter that he was able to have business associates bid on his auctions, The Sunday Times alleged.
Big contracts not enough for some stars
PHILADELPHIA - Big baseball stars pull down the big bucks. Everybody knows that. But, it seems, once you reach that certain lifestyles-of-the rich-and-famous level, it's all about the perks. Take Padres righthander Greg Maddux. He will make $10 million this year. But he also got the team to throw in a membership to the exclusive Del Mar Country Club. The Giants are willing to add $15.8 million to Barry Bonds' bank account as he tries to become baseball's all-time home run leader. But, just to make sure he's happy, they also agreed to give him five games' use of a luxury suite at AT&T Park, five complimentary box seats at all road games and a suite on the road. Bonds isn't the only headliner to get a suite, either. Maddux gets one. So do Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez and Eric Gagne, among others.
Plate Six - Battle Hymns for a New Republic Review
All hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, Plate Six built up a solid fan base by playing around the towns burgeoning hardcore punk scene. BHFANR is the band's first release on the prestigious independent One Little Indian label. Like their labelmates, the now defunct Hot Snakes, Plate Six play a diverse blend of post-hardcore, post-punk and indie-rock and avoiding skirting the inevitable issue further, yes it does sound like Fugazia lot. Hickoxs vocals amazingly manage to sound like both Ian Mackaye (never more evident than on the prog-rock stylings of As The Pinson Turns) and Guy Picciotto (the slower but equally aggressive 'Instant Fence') and even the noisy instrumental tracks Hymn Of The Majuscule and Hymn To Denounce Time demonstrate echoes of the Red Medicine-era. Not that these are bad things you must understand, its just for a music snob like me, replicating a band I really love is a very dangerous path to walk down.
Microsoft: Windows Vista end of an era
REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 26 The Windows Vista operating system, five years in the making, is Microsoft Corp.'s last major software product made the old-fashioned way, the company says. The complex, time-consuming process of crafting computer code line-by-line, which prompted repeated launch delays, is a thing of the past, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said. .
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