Need | quickhotnews.com

Posts tagged "Need"

Josh Hamilton Didn't Need to Make a Public Apology for Drinking Alcohol: A Fan's View

According to a Yahoo! Sports report, Texas Rangers outfielder and recovering drug addict Josh Hamilton said Feb. 3 that he had a relapse that started with “three or four” drinks at a Dallas-area bar this week, apologizing for a “weak moment” and insisting he will try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Josh Hamilton swings at a pitchhttpcommons.wikimedia.orgwikiFileJosh_Hamilton_2008_2.jpg

“To everybody I hurt, everybody, fans, kids, people who have addictions who look up to me, I apologize,” Hamilton said. “When you’re doing this, you don’t mean to hurt anybody. You’re only hurting yourself. But as I know, I hurt a lot of people.”

Hamilton reportedly had three or four adult beverages on Jan. 30 and then called fellow Ranger Ian Kinsler to join him at another establishment in Dallas, Texas. Hamilton said he did not drink in front of Kinsler at the bar. They left and Kinsler drove Hamilton to his car. Kinsler asked Hamilton if he was all right and if he was going home. Hamilton assured Kinsler that he was.

“His words were, ‘I’ll see you later. You’re not going to go back out again, are you?’” Hamilton said. “I said no. Then I did exactly what I told him I wouldn’t do. I went back out to the place we just left, had some more drinks.”

Being that it’s the baseball offseason and dozens of other baseball players were probably out that same night having a few beers, is this something that Hamilton needs to publicly apologize for?

Hamilton needs to only apologize to himself. This is a battle between one man and his additions. People need to understand that he had a few adult beverages and didn’t break any laws- he didn’t drive drunk or go on a crack binge. And he didn’t hurt anyone or commit a crime.

Hamilton said that he never even thought about doing drugs that night. “It doesn’t excuse the fact that I was doing something that doesn’t work for me,” Hamilton said. “It was just wrong and that’s all it comes down to. I needed to be in a different place, I needed to be responsible at that moment, that period, and I was not responsible, so those actions of mine have hurt a lot of people that are very close to me.”

Hamilton, a former No. 1 overall draft pick, missed the entire 2004 and 2005 seasons, but has become one of the best players in baseball on a Rangers team that has won the last two American League pennants. He was the AL MVP in 2010.

I understand that Hamilton is a role model for people battling strong addictions, but he’s a baseball player and not a drug counselor. He shouldn’t have to answer to anyone but himself, as he’s a grown man who is responsible for his own path in life.

Perhaps I’m naive about these kinds of addictions, but shouldn’t people also note that Hamilton was able to have a few drinks at a bar and not even think about doing drugs? I believe that shows some growth in his recovery process, that he was able to control his urges even in a “moment of weakness.”

Hamilton said he will fly to New York in the near future to meet with doctors both for Major League Baseball and the Players Association to see what he can do to have his situation evaluated.

Eric Holden is a lifelong New York Mets fan, but he is pulling for Josh Hamilton to beat his addictions and serve as a positive role model for kids. Follow him on Twitter @ericholden.

Sources

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Al9jK9XHkiuEEnByoTb8mbURvLYF?slug=ap-rangers-hamilton, Stephen Hawkins, AP Sports

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120202&content_id=26559904&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb, T.R. Sullivan, MLB.com

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

View full post on josh hamilton – Yahoo! News Search Results

NTAs: Tulisa in shocking pink feather dress– bad fashion you need to see

Tulisa Contostavlos attends the National Television Awards

NTAs: Tulisa came as a flamingo – like it? Vote below…

The National Television Awards are OFF! But while the TOWIE lot have covered up in full-length frocks, X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos has opted for something a little more, err, SHOCKING.

Advertisement >>

Tulisa’s hot pink feather mini dress is not just a hot pink feather mini dress. Oh no, it’s a hot pink feather mini dress that looks like a feather duster, has a lace-up back and she’s completed the look with a whole lorra tan.

That is a serious amount of tan.

The X Factor judge and singer has wowed with many a great red carpet dress in the past, famously showcasing some winning looks during last year’s X Factor auditions and winning legions of fashionable fans too.

WTFashion!? Feathers are a big trend, dusters? Not so much. Sorry Tulisa

But this? No no no.

Sorry Tulisa, we heart you so, but a pink Big Bird frock, tatt’ and all that taaaan. It’s just tutu much (ahem).

…Sidenote: we love the silver heels though…

View full post on NTAs – Yahoo! News Search Results

MegaUpload shut down by feds: Why do we need SOPA?

File-sharing mecca MegaUpload.com is dead, shut down at the hands of the US federal government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested four people, and charged three others, in the anti-piracy sting. The forced closure of MegaUpload comes just one day after a mass online protest against two pieces of legislation that aim to increase the power of copyright holders to block access to websites that illegally distribute intellectual property, like music and movies.

Those arrested include MegaUpload founder Kim “Dotcom” Schmitz, along with three others related to the site. The group was apprehended in New Zealand, with the help of that country’s authorities. MegaUpload is officially a Hong Kong-based company, though according to the Justice Department, it also has servers in Ashburn, VA, Washington DC, the Netherlands and Canada. Schmidtz is a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand.

The indictment against MegaUpload, which allowed users to upload anything from a text file to a full feature film, then share a link to the file with others, says the site cost copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue by making their intellectual property free to download. It also says that MegaUpload (aka “the conspirators”) earned $175 million in profits from advertising and premium memberships. Schmitz alone earned $42 million in 2010 from the site, the indictment claims.

In a statement posted to MegaUpload, before its takedown, the company asserted that the majority of its content was legitimate, and the claims of lost revenue were “grotesquely overblown.”

“The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch,” the company said.

MegaUpload boasted “more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet,” according to the Justice Department, whose website was also unable to load, at the start of this writing. According to Twitter user AnonymousIRC, a highly-popular account related to the hacktivist group ‘Anonymous,’ the DoJ’s website appeared to have been “besieged by pirates.” It is unclear at this time whether Anonymous had anything to do with the outage, which has since been resolved.

In addition to having been one of the most-widely-used file-sharing sites on the Web, MegaUpload is also unique because of its endorsements from artists like Kanye West, Will.i.am, and Alicia Keys. Kim Kardashian, who is not an artist, also endorsed the site. Renowned rapper, producer, and NYU professor Swizz Beatz is listed as MegaUpload’s CEO. (Not coincidentally, Beatz is also Alicia Keys’ husband.) Judging by his recent tweets, the last of which came five hours ago, Beatz still appears to be free, and apparently just ate some Chinese food.

Federal authorities say that the timing of MegaUpload’s takedown had nothing to do with Wednesday’s blackout protest against the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and the “PROTECT IP Act” (PIPA). And that’s most certainly true; this kind of sting doesn’t just happen overnight. But that doesn’t mean the two will remain unrelated in the mind of the public.

This case clearly proves that our government already has the ability to shutdown a website, whose company is based in Hong Kong, and have its employees arrested by the police of another foreign country. That isn’t exactly a compelling argument for giving copyright holders and the federal government more power to combat piracy from “foreign rogue websites,” which is the primary aim of both SOPA and PIPA.

Of course, it appears as though MegaUpload isn’t actually considered a “foreign” rogue site, even though its base of operations is in China, due to the fact that it had servers housed in the US. SOPA and PIPA gives the power to block access to — but not entirely shut down — websites that operate exclusively outside the US. After this monstrous display of muscle flexing, however, we doubt many people will have sympathy for that distinction.

That said, combating the piracy of websites that operate outside the rule of US law really isn’t a matter of contention in the SOPA/PIPA debate. It’s all the “unintended consequences” and “collateral damage” that educated critics say the bills’ loose wording could lead to — things like the blockage of legitimate free speech, the squashing of online innovation, and the potential damage to the Internet’s infrastructure — that have the masses seething. The takedown of MegaUpload merely shows that our anti-piracy laws aren’t as weak as some would like us to believe.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends