The Olympics already have pole vaulting, so why not pole dancing?

With the Winter Olympics in full swing, a group of pole dance enthusiasts from Miami are pushing to make the seductive art part of the Olympiad.

After all, gyrating up, down and around the pole has as much fierce competition, powerful athleticism and skillful routines as any other Olympic sport, right?

"Pole Dancing does have a lot of fitness associated with it, a lot of athleticism associated with it," said Gwendy Andrade, co-owner of Pole Dance Miami. "But I also know that there's a major taboo against it. And we fight through that every single day."

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Andrade teaches more than forty classes per week in the Magic City. She said pole dancing is not just for fun and hardly recreation.

"Internationally, they've had many years of competitions," Andrade said. "The United States, thank God, last year was our first year."

And we all know South Florida has some of the best in the business when it comes to the pole dance.

So far, pole-dancing organizations across the country have collected about 150,000 signatures to petition the Olympic Committee to make Pole Dancing an Olympic event.

The entertaining art of dance alongside a vertical pole can be challenging. Experts claim it requires serious upper body strength and skill.

"There is a common denominator that if you did have gymnastics somewhere in your background some of the moves will just become easier for you," said Andrade.

With a background in gymnastics, newcomer Courtney Keenan hopes to climb to the top and compete with the best of the best.

"Hopefully after another year or two under my belt, I will be able to advance and go to maybe the National Competition," Keenan said.

Andrade still has Olympic dreams for pole dancing.

"We can make it to the Olympics, it's just gonna be a journey," she said.

If you're sick of heavy-handed anti-piracy measures creeping their way into your games, get ready for a real shock. Beginning next month, PC games from top publisher Ubisoft will require a constant, uninterrupted Internet connection to play -- regardless of whether or not you're using any online functions.

Debuting on upcoming PC releases Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers VII, the new technology doesn't just require an initial online check-in like many current PC games. Without a live Internet link, you won't even be able to start the game, and if your connection drops while you're playing for any reason, you'll be kicked out of the game and potentially lose your progress. Dial-up users, needless to say, need not apply.

PC Gamer's Tom Francis investigated, and wasn't pleased with his findings.

"If you try to launch the game when you're not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers'. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen - all my progress since it last autosaved was lost," he said in a blog posting.

That's not the worst of it, either. If Ubisoft's servers go down or are unreachable, every single player of the game will be dumped out and won't be able to carry on playing until the problem is resolved.

It's not the first time a major publisher has resorted to extreme measures in an attempt to prevent piracy. EA's 2008 release Spore came with anti-copying measures that seemed draconian at the time: it checked in with an EA server every ten days and limited the number of times you could install the game. A huge consumer backlash followed, and EA removed the offending tech -- but Spore still ended up as the year's most pirated game.

Sadly, harsh anti-piracy measures like Ubisoft's inevitably end up hurting legitimate customers rather than the pirates at which they're aimed. Illegally downloaded versions of games generally have copy-protection methods like this removed entirely.

Will you be buying games with Ubisoft's new anti-piracy tech? Let us know in the comments.

It's astounding that until this moment, three years after the iPhone, the biggest software company in the world basically didn't compete in mobile. Windows Phone 7 Series is more than the Microsoft smartphone we've been waiting for. Everything's different now. (Gizmodo.com: http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now)

"If GM had developed technology like microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part, esp 7th point and 10'th point):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would ! run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed an Illegal Operation"
warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying .
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously l ifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off. "

Starting in February Fahey you will be able to run into any 7-Eleven store to pick up a heaping, icy cup of Kratos Fury.

Just make sure you don't suck it down too quickly or you're sure to feel the icy sting of his twin blades in your brain.

Evan Brody, who has the most kick-ass job on the planet (marketing manager, Slurpee & Big Gulp Brands), says the frozen concoction is a mix of "ferocious blackberries and frosty limes" and that it will be available through March.

The drink will come in one of four exclusive God of War III Slurpee cups. The cups will include neato art work and reward codes that can be redeemed at Slurpee.com for God of War III and Slurpee-themed downloadable content. Wait? Does that mean that I may be able to unlock a new super move for Kratos? The Brain Freeze???

Oh Evan Brody, stop already. You had me at "marketing manager, Slurpee & Big Gulp Brands."

The proposed Australian Government clampdown on smut just got a whole lot broader, as news emerged of a ban on small breasts and female ejaculation in adult material.

The end result of this widening of the censor’s net could be the addition of millions of websites to the internet filter now being proposed.

Breasts came under the spotlight a year ago, as Senators Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett commenced a campaign against publicly available porn. Rounding up magazines from corner shops and filling stations, Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia.

The result of this campaign is now visible in the decisions being made by the Australian Classification Board, which is beginning to apply RC (refused classification) categories to such material, as opposed to the previous X-rating. According to Fiona Patten, Convenor of the Australian Sex Party: "We are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup size.

"It may be an unintended consequence of the Senator’s actions but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late."

Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint’s Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications.

At the same time, the Australian Sex Party claims, Federal government censors are directing Customs officials to confiscate depictions of the female orgasm when it is accompanied with an ejaculation, as the Classification Board is also starting to classify films that feature female ejaculation as RC. Films that show both male and female ejaculation have routinely been given an X rating since 1983.

The new ruling follows a boom in the numbers of adult films featuring female ejaculation since the pioneering research of Professor Emeritus Beverly Whipple was published in her book The G Spot.

The films are being banned on one of two grounds:

1) That the depictions are a form of urination which is banned under the label of ‘golden showers’ in the Classification Guidelines or

2) Female ejaculation is an ‘abhorrent’ depiction

However, as Ms Patten points out, one of the objections raised the Board is that film performers have been faking the production of ejaculate: this suggests that they are trying to both have their cake and eat it on this issue, since if the liquid in question is fake, there is no policy requiring the censorship of douching or enemas.

In terms of impact on the net, The Australian Sex Party (ASP) suggests the impact could be enormous, as not only are banned sites to be blocked – but also sites that link to banned sites are also in line for blocking. The ASP argue: "There are over one million sites featuring female ejaculation and for Australia to be banning depictions and discussion of this important issue, takes us back into the Victorian era where they didn’t even believe that women could have orgasms."

Both issues have featured recently in Europe. Back in November 2008, Hustler Europe filed a constitutional complaint against a section of German law that criminalises sales and distribution of content depicting "adult actors who show a youthful appearance".

Meanwhile, the question of female ejaculation continues to be hotly debated in the UK, as film director Anna Span claims that the BBFC have now acknowledged its existence, whilst the BBFC continues to deny they have done any such thing.

And back in Australia, so great was the outrage over the Classification Board's actions that the ASP website went down under the weight of traffic. ®

Face it Se ; Almost every one who applied was completely not worth the position except a couple of people (of whom i am not part of).this forum is filled with lazy noobs (of whom i represent a consederable part). so the fact of the matter is your not gonna find any good looking applications here, espicially because some of the applicants here can "TITS OR GTFO" while they are moderators i.e. not quite the moderating type. so keep it in mind while trying to navigate the shit-pile of applicants that think they have a real shot at actually being mods (but i do know a couple of applicants who are actually good and alot better than others, but these imo are not enough for your needs since you appear to need enough mods for every section). but you will have to choose some of the lower tier applicants. and when you do have to hire people. i would like you to keep in mind to pick the ones who have good judgement, a willing spirit and the ability to be very professional and formal as running websites isnt fun and games (at least for the most part). i have confidence in your judgement to pick the most worthy, capable and promising applicants. Good luck for CPSP

1. Modern Warfare 2
2. League of Legends
3. God of War Collection
4. Brutal Legend
5. Assassins Creed 2
6. Call of Duty: World at War
7. Need for Speed: SHiFT
8. Uncharted 2