Acer Aspire S7-191-6640

The Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 ($1,199.99) is a road warrior's ultrabook. It has high-end features like a 128GB SSD, 1080p ten-point touch screen, and weighs less than 2.25 pounds without accessories. The ultrabook comes highly recommended as a commuter or jet traveler who must have a full Windows 8 PC with her at all times. Only a few stumbles?like limited ports and anemic standard battery life?keep the system from our highest honors.

Design and Features
The S7-191-6640 looks every bit the little brother of the 13.3-inch Acer Aspire S7-391-9886 ($1,649.99), with a slim, compact profile, measuring only 11.25 by 7.75 by 0.48 inches (HWD). The S7-191-6640 has an aluminum lid with a diagonal brushed pattern, Gorilla Glass 2 covering the 11.6-inch touch screen, and a silver-colored keyboard and keyboard deck. The full sized keyboard is backlit, and is comfortable to use despite a very shallow key travel. Like its big brother, the S7-191-6640 eschews the row of function keys, rather incorporating those keys into the number keys on the top of the keyboard. Other keys do double duty as well: Fn-U increases the keyboard backlit brightness, for example.

The S7-191-6640 weighs a scant 2.24 pounds alone, and a still svelte 2.63 pounds with the included extended battery installed. This makes the system just as portable as systems like the Apple MacBook Air 11-inch (Mid 2012) ($999) and HP EliteBook 2170p ($1,099). These are road warrior systems, where you give up a little (processor power, number of I/O ports, etc.) in return for a system that fits easily in your commute bag and can travel with you everywhere.

The S7-191-6640 comes with a 11.6-inch, 1,920-by-1,080-resolution touch screen, which significantly more packed with pixels than the 1,366 by 768 resolution screen usually seen on smaller displays. This means that you can view all the video in a 1080p HD online video, as well as several full pages of data when viewing a spreadsheet or Word document. You'll find a larger work surface on the S7-191-6640 than on systems like the HP Envy X2 (11-g012nr) ($849), which has an 11.6-inch 1,366 by 768 screen. But 1080p in such a small screen can also mean that text at 100% zoom will be quite small, so you may have to fiddle with the zoom settings a bit if you're eyesight isn't 20/20. Also, some games may not look quite right until you find the right combination of settings. That said, we think many users will welcome the HD video capabilities of the S7-191-6640.

The screen uses IPS technology, so it's visible from many angles. Speaking of angles, the system's screen hinge has a dual friction setup, so it's harder to push the screen past 90 degrees. Acer did this to help curb screen bounce when you use the built-in touch screen. The touch screen is responsive, correctly interpreting our taps with a single finger. This is an improvement over the Acer Iconia W700-6465 tablet ($999.99), which had some trouble by registering a tap on the maximize button when we meant to tap the close button on windows in Desktop mode.

Speaking of video, the S7-191-6640 comes with a micro-HDMI port on the back, which requires an adapter, which isn't included. It's the same for other formats like VGA or DVI. The S7-191-6640 comes with a Bluetooth mouse for precise pointing. The system only has two USB 3.0 ports, so connecting your smartphone and an external hard drive would fill up the ports.

There are a couple of indents built into the chassis to hook up the included extended battery. The system doesn't have a traditional removable battery or a docking port, so the extended battery uses the laptop's charging port to pass power through. This simplistic workaround has a drawback: The extended battery doesn't show up in Windows, so you'll have to interpret the five-lights in the LED indicator on the side of the extended battery to figure out how much charge you've got. Thumbwheel screws hold the battery in place, making the whole exercise feel like a laptop battery setup from the mid 1990s. It's effective, but nevertheless feels like a kludge on what is otherwise an elegant looking system.

Thanks to Microsoft Signature setup, the S7-191-6640 comes with no extra software pre-loaded aside from Microsoft products like Office Trial, Skype, and Windows Defender. This is a vast improvement over systems like the HP Envy X2, which has quite a few programs pre-installed. The S7-191-6640 comes with a 128GB SSD, with about 75GB free when you take it out of the box. The system has a one-year warranty.

Performance
The Intel Core i5-3317U and four GB of memory are pretty standard specs for systems in this price range, The Acer Iconia W700-6465, HP EliteBook 2170p, and the Editor's Choice for high-end ultrabooks, the Asus Zenbook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T ($1199), all come with this setup. Therefore, it's no surprise that these systems all have similar CineBench, Handbrake, and Photoshop CS6 results. The HP lags behind the others in PCMark7, due to its spinning hard drive, but all are closely matched on the 3D tests, since they all have Intel HD Graphics 4000.

The performance stat that really matters is the system's battery rundown score, and on that note the S7-191-6640 is mixed. The sealed internal battery is only good for a short 3 hours 42 minutes. This is far less than the Asus UX31A-BHI5T (6:38) or the MacBook Air (5:19). However, when you add the extended battery, the S7-191-6640 achieves an excellent 6:58. It's like Acer had to follow a mandate to make this system one of the thinnest and lightest, then said wait a minute, we can't ship a laptop that lasts less than four hours. The extended battery feels like an afterthought, one that it easily lost and less sturdy than if they had simply added a couple of millimeters to the system's thickness.

And there's the rub: If the Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 had been a few millimeters thicker with a larger capacity battery and the same 2.63 pound weight, it might have given serious competition to the Editors' Choice Asus Zenbook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T. The Asus UX31A-BHI5T has a larger screen and includes a mini-VGA-to-VGA adapter, so it's better suited to corridor dwellers than road warriors, but otherwise the systems are similar in specs, capabilities, and pricing. The S7-191-6640 is just a touch better for the road warrior, but it's not enough for a clear-cut victory.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 with several other laptops side by side.

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Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (Xbox 360)

Everything old is new again. The entertainment industry has proven that mantra time and time again as film, television, and music continually tap nostalgia for inspiration. The relatively young video game industry recently dipped into that well, with the likes of Capcom's Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10, retro-themed PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 titles designed to mimic the Blue Bomber's 8-bit NES adventures. Several other titles reveled in a similar retro video game aesthetic, but very few tapped the overall retro feel of the decade that spawned video game classics: the 1980s. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is one. It takes 2012's popular Far Cry 3?title and filters it through a '80s vision of the future, complete with neon, dark synth music, and exciting gunplay. It's a smaller game than Far Cry 3, but this downloadable PC, PlayStation 3?, and Xbox 360?title is the better game.

Welcome to the Party, Pal
Blood Dragon isn't a mere standalone Far Cry 3 expansion; it's a celebration of '80s action silliness. Pseudo action star and #1 James Cameron go-to guy Michael Biehn (Aliens, Terminator, The Abyss) lends his gruff voice to Sgt. Rex "Power" Colt, a cybernetic commando who battles the evil Omega Force army in a post-apocalyptic world where mutants and dinosaur-like Blood Dragons roam. Yes, it's '80s cheese, but well-done '80s cheese, highlighted by homages to Predator, Terminator, and other testosterone-filled flicks from the decade of decadence.

At its core, Blood Dragon plays very much like Far Cry 3 with its tight first-person shooter mechanics, ziplines, collectibles, dangerous animals, multitude of side-missions, garrisons (the game's version of outposts), and open world (though on a much smaller scale). But it's the game's playful adherence to old school action movie clich?s that give Blood Dragon its own footing. The "futuristic" year of 2007?as envisioned from a decidedly '80s point of view?recalls elements from our own real-world '80s with its cold war fears, and big, dumb action movies. The latter, naturally, receives the most spotlight.

Got No Time to Bleed
Sgt. Rex "Power" Colt starts his mission armed to the teeth with a shotgun, pistol, grenade stash, and other weapons that let you ventilate enemy troops with well-placed shots. It's a potent arsenal that only gets better as you loot corpses for ammo and cash.

Money lets you purchase add-ons like silencers and laser scopes from designated areas within garrisons. The carnage you unleash over the course of the game earns CP (Cyber Points) that as XP (experience points) which level up Sgt. Colt with increased health, better accuracy, and other traits. Unfortunately, Blood Dragon doesn't let you select abilities; you automatically gain new ones after reaching certain plateaus. Some may not find that a fault, but I would've loved to dictate how my cyber-commando functions.

As you become more powerful, your ability to take down hordes of Omega Force warriors becomes increasingly effective and fun. In fact, Blood Dragon keeps tally of your accuracy, efficiency from cover, stealth kills, chain kills, and more. The game's tutorial, thankfully, gives you a rundown of the basics, though Sgt. Colt?in a bit of meta-commentary on the game playing experience?constantly gripes that he just wants to kill.

You're a Funny Guy, Sully
Environments are fittingly dark, with Tron-like splashes of blue, orange, and green neon. As a result, the world carries a weighty feel that's given levity by a handful of Arnold-worthy one-liners and hilarious cut scenes that recall the limited color schemes and animations of Sega CD and TurboGrafx-16 titles. The jokes, however, sometimes fall flat. For example, there's a button that causes Sgt. Colt to flip the bird when pressed. That felt less '80s cool, and more immature junior high school student. At other times, some of the dialogue seemed nothing but an obvious set up for a Schwarzeneggeresque one-liner.

Still, Blood Dragon redeems itself in other ways. Omega Force's cyber-troops speak with hilarious computerized vocals, and the screen tears with VHS-like tracking effects when explosions or player death occurs. The attention to '80s ridiculousness is obviously handled by a team with sincere love for the era.

Nothing symbolizes the game's grasp on the wacky than the eponymous Blood Dragons, neon-colored dinosaurs that fire lasers from their eyes. They roam the lands between garrisons and prove quite lethal combatants should you rush encounter one without a sound strategy. Their appetites for cybernetic hearts, however, make them tools in combating the enemy. For example, the tickers you collect from fallen enemies can be tossed into a garrison's entry, which attracts nearby Blood Dragons who rush into the base for a meal. Laughter quickly ensued as I sat upon a hilltop and watched Omega Force members defend themselves with laser rifle from a rampaging dinosaur who shot lasers from his eyes.

Gonna Have Me Some Fun!
Ubisoft must be commended for taking the Far Cry series in this radically different direction. In a gaming industry populated by titles that takes themselves far too seriously (for example, the original Far Cry 3), it's good to see that there's still a place for the goofy.

Game developers have a long history of using of using '80s action movies for inspiration?the original NES Contra has not too subtle Stallone- and Schwarzenegger-based characters that fight Xenomorph-like aliens. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, likewise, wears its inspirations on its sleeve. At times the dialogue forced and the bird-flipping comes off as too Duke Nukem-like, but Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon's old school strengths outweigh its few weakness.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/E-C1gLAamkE/0,2817,2418327,00.asp

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Farrah Abraham Pleads Not Guilty to DUI

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/farrah-abraham-pleads-not-guilty-to-dui/

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Lawyer: Former ricin suspect's home is unlivable

OXFORD, Miss. (AP) ? A Mississippi man's house is uninhabitable after investigators searched it but failed to find evidence of the deadly poison ricin, a lawyer said Monday, arguing that the government should repair the home.

Kevin Curtis was once charged in the mailing of poisoned letters to President Barack Obama, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and a Mississippi judge, but the charges were later dropped. The investigation shifted last week to another man who had a falling out with Curtis, and that suspect appeared in court Monday on a charge of making ricin.

Curtis' lawyer, Christi McCoy, has sent a letter to U.S. Attorney Felicia Adams demanding that Curtis be provided temporary housing and the government repair his Corinth, Miss., home and possessions. She also wants the government to pay his legal bills.

"To be specific, Mr. Curtis' home is uninhabitable. I have seen a lot of post search residences but this one is quite disturbing. The agents removed art from the walls, broke the frames and tore the artwork. Mr. Curtis offered his keys but agents chose to break the lock. Mr. Curtis' garbage was scheduled to be picked up Thursday, the day after he was snatched from his life. A week later, the garbage remains in his home, along with millions of insects it attracted," the letter says.

Late Monday, McCoy said that she and Curtis' other attorney had spoken with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office and they were told his property will be repaired or replaced.

"We feel like the letter was well-received and we'll be working with the FBI to get all his property returned and get his property repaired," she said.

Though attorneys for Curtis say their client was framed, McCoy believes whoever sent the letters had a primary goal of targeting the public officials. Curtis has said that he feuded with the man now charged in the case, James Everett Dutschke.

"I think Kevin was just an afterthought or a scapegoat," McCoy said.

Some of the language in the letters was similar to posts on Curtis' Facebook page and they were signed, "I am KC and I approve this message." Curtis often used a similar online signoff.

Had damaging Curtis been the point of the scheme, McCoy said she believes that whoever set up her client could have done a better job of implicating him, such as planting evidence at his home.

McCoy said in an interview Monday that she still believes the FBI acted on the best information available at the time, but it's time to make her client whole. The letter said Curtis' life was "ruined."

Curtis, a 45-year-old Elvis impersonator, was arrested on April 17. The charges were dropped six days later and Curtis was released from jail.

A message left seeking comment about McCoy's letter at the federal prosecutor's office in Oxford wasn't immediately returned.

After Curtis was released, the focus turned to Dutschke. In court Monday, a judge ordered that Dutschke be held without bond until a preliminary and detention hearing on Thursday. More details are likely to emerge at that hearing, when prosecutors have to show they have enough evidence to hold him.

Dutschke made a brief appearance wearing an orange jumpsuit with his hands shackled. The 41-year-old suspect said little during his hearing other than answering affirmatively to the judge's questions about whether he understood the charges against him.

Dutschke (pronounced DUHS'-kee) has denied involvement in the mailing of the letters, saying he's a patriot with no grudges against anyone. He has previously run for political office and was known to frequent political rallies in northern Mississippi.

An attorney from the public defender's office appointed to represent Dutschke declined to comment after Monday's hearing. Another attorney of Dutschke's, Lori Nail Basham, said she will continue to represent him in other matters but not the federal case.

Dutschke's house, business and vehicles in Tupelo, Miss., were searched last week, often by crews in hazardous materials suits, and he had been under surveillance.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted. A news release from federal authorities said Dutschke was charged with "knowingly developing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, acquiring, retaining and possessing a biological agent, toxin and delivery system, for use as a weapon, to wit: ricin."

He already had legal problems. Earlier this month, he pleaded not guilty in state court to two child molestation charges involving three girls younger than 16, at least one of whom was a student at his martial arts studio. He also was appealing a conviction on a different charge of indecent exposure. He told The Associated Press last week that his lawyer told him not to comment on those cases.

Earlier in the week, as investigators searched his primary residence in Tupelo, Dutschke told the AP, "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"I'm a patriotic American. I don't have any grudges against anybody. ... I did not send the letters," Dutschke said.

Dutschke and Curtis were acquainted. Curtis said they had talked about possibly publishing a book on a conspiracy that Curtis says he uncovered about the black-market sale of body parts. But he said they later had a feud.

Curtis's attorney Hal Neilson said the legal team gave authorities a list of people who may have had a reason to hurt Curtis and Dutschke's came up.

The Mississippi judge who received one of the letters, Sadie Holland, is part of a family that has had political skirmishes with Dutschke. Her son, Steve Holland, a Democratic state representative, said his mother encountered Dutschke at a rally in the town of Verona in 2007, when Dutschke ran as a Republican against Steve Holland.

Holland said his mother confronted Dutschke after he made a derogatory speech about the Holland family. She demanded that he apologize, which Holland says he did.

Dutschke's MySpace page has several pictures with him and Wicker, though he's never worked for Wicker's campaign. Republicans in north Mississippi say Dutschke used to frequently show up at GOP events and mingle with people, usually finding a way to get a snapshot of himself with the headliner.

"He would always hand his camera to somebody to get his picture made," longtime Republican Mike Armour of Tupelo said by phone Monday.

A woman described by a neighbor as Dutschke's wife arrived at their home Monday afternoon but covered her face and did not respond to a reporter as she walked from a green minivan into the house.

Rory Key lives just down the street from Dutschke's house. He said Dutschke came to his house while the FBI was searchingthe suspect's home asking for a drink and a snack.

He said the suspect was more upset than nervous. Key said he doesn't believe Dutscke committed the crime. He also said he didn't know him that well because Dustchke kept to himself.

___

Associated Press writer Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson contributed to this report.

___

Follow Mohr at http://twitter.com/holbrookmohr.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawyer-former-ricin-suspects-home-unlivable-205130828.html

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After being hacked on Friday, LivingSocial...

After being hacked on Friday, LivingSocial has changed their hashing algorithm from SHA1 to bcrypt so security will be a little tighter. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/VtBIECjg97U/

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Key Egyptian negotiator with IMF quits

CAIRO (Reuters) - A key Egyptian negotiator with the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday he has resigned as first deputy finance minister, in a potential blow to Cairo's prospects of an early IMF deal.

Hany Kadry Dimian has been the crucial point man in Egypt's protracted and so far fruitless negotiations to obtain a $4.8 billion loan needed to help combat a severe economic crisis.

"The only comment I can make for the time being is that yes, my term ends on April 30 according to my resignation, which I submitted in December," Kadry told Reuters by telephone.

"My next move is not decided."

A senior technocrat appointed in 2007, Kadry survived five finance ministers in office since the 2011 uprising that overthrew former autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.

Kadry gave no explanation for his decision to quit, first reported on the Egyptian dissident Rebel Economy blog, saying he would say more on Tuesday.

A senior European diplomat said his departure was not a good omen for Egypt's hopes of wrapping up a deal on the long delayed IMF loan next month, as the government has said it aims to do.

Kadry was the one expert in the ministry who fully understood the IMF program and was able to deal with the global lender professionally, the diplomat said.

The daily El-Watan said on its website that Kadry had been under increasing pressure from the ruling Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, and in conflict with Abdallah Shehata, the FJP economic adviser to Finance Minister Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy.

Separately, the head of Egypt's bourse, Mohamed Omran, told Prime Minister Hisham Kandil he would like to leave his position at the end of his term on July 1, the state news agency MENA reported, citing an unnamed official stock exchange source.

The report did not give a reason for Omran's request, but said he had told the prime minister in August he wanted to leave the post. Kandil had asked him to stay until the end of his term, MENA said.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/key-egyptian-negotiator-imf-quits-191627035.html

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Boston suspects' father postpones trip to US

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) ? The father of the two Boston bombing suspects said Sunday that he has postponed a trip from Russia to the United States because of poor health.

"I am really sick," Anzor Tsarnaev, 46, told The Associated Press. He said his blood pressure had spiked to dangerous levels.

Tsarnaev said at a news conference Thursday that he planned to leave that day or the next for the U.S. with the hope of seeing his younger son, who is under arrest, and burying his elder son, who was killed. His family, however, indicated later Thursday that the trip could be pushed back because he was not feeling well.

Tsarnaev confirmed on Sunday that he is staying in Chechnya, a province in southern Russia, but did not specify whether he was hospitalized. He is an ethnic Chechen and has relatives in Chechnya, although he and his family spent little time in Chechnya or anywhere else in Russia before moving to the U.S. a decade ago.

He and the suspects' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, returned to Russia last year and settled in Makhachkala, the capital of neighboring Dagestan, where Tsarnaeva's relatives live.

During the past week, they were both questioned extensively by U.S. investigators who had traveled to Makhachkala from Moscow. They also were besieged by journalists who staked out their home.

Tsarnaev's family said last week that he intended to get to the U.S. by flying from Grozny, the Chechen capital, to Moscow. He and Tsarnaeva left Dagestan on Friday, but their whereabouts were unclear.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-suspects-father-postpones-trip-us-124041600.html

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Obama: Flight delay fix a 'Band-Aid'

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama says the congressional fix for widespread flight delays is an irresponsible way to govern, but he's prepared to sign the legislation that lawmakers fast-tracked.

He says the bipartisan bill to end furloughs of air traffic controllers is a "Band-Aid" solution rather than a lasting answer to this year's $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester.

The cuts have affected all federal agencies, and flight delays last week left thousands of travelers frustrated and furious and Congress feeling pressured to respond.

"Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they've decided it was a bad idea all along," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, aired Saturday.

He singled out the GOP even though the bill passed with overwhelming Democratic support in both the House and Senate.

The president scolded lawmakers for helping the Federal Aviation Administration while doing nothing to replace other cuts that he said harm federal employees, unemployed workers and preschoolers in Head Start.

"Maybe because they fly home each weekend, the members of Congress who insisted these cuts take hold finally realized that they actually apply to them, too," Obama said.

Rushed through Congress with remarkable speed, the bill marked a shift for Democrats who had hoped the impact of the cuts would increase pressure on Republicans to reverse the broad cuts.

Republicans have rejected Obama's proposal to replace the spending reductions with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

"There are some in the Obama administration who thought inflicting pain on the public would give the president more leverage to avoid making necessary spending cuts, and to impose more tax hikes on the American people," said Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania in the Republican address.

Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the FAA could have averted the flight delays on its own by cutting costs elsewhere and rejiggering work schedules, but chose not to do so.

The bill signed by Obama would let the FAA use up to $253 million from an airport improvement program and other accounts to halt the furloughs through the Sept. 30 end of the government's fiscal year.

Faced with the prospect that emboldened Republicans will push to selectively undo other painful effects of the cuts, the White House said Friday that a piecemeal approach would be impractical, but wouldn't definitely rule out signing other fixes.

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.youtube.com/HouseConference

___

Follow Josh Lederman at https://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-flight-delay-fix-band-aid-100306095.html

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Feminist author Mary Thom, 68, killed in NY motorcycle crash

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Renowned feminist and former women's magazine editor Mary Thom was killed in a motorcycle crash over the weekend in Yonkers, New York, friends and colleagues said.

Thom, 68, a former editor of Ms. Magazine, crashed her motorcycle on the Saw Mill Parkway on Friday evening, said Eleanor Smeal, publisher of Ms. Magazine and a close friend of Thom.

An accomplished author, editor and journalist, Thom devoted her career to giving voice to women's rights issues in books, magazine columns and through her work within the women's movement, which mourned the loss over the weekend.

"We, who are Mary's friends and family haven't absorbed her loss yet: it's too sudden,'' said actress Jane Fonda and feminist authors Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, three co-founders of the Women's Media Center, in a statement.

"Ms. Magazine, the Women's Media Center, the women's movement and American journalism have suffered an enormous blow."

Thom, an Akron, Ohio, native, spent more than a quarter century at Ms. Magazine and wrote a book about working her way from an entry level research position to executive editor in "Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement," according to Smeal.

Thom also edited a book of letters sent to the magazine during the publication's formative years between 1972-1987.

Smeal said she would sorely miss Thom's virtually constant presence at the heart of the movement over decades.

"She was always there,'' Smeal said on Sunday. "She was always there as a guiding hand to make sure that the spirit of feminism came through in everything we wrote at the Women's Media Center and at Ms. Magazine. She will truly be missed."

Thom was an avid motorcycle enthusiast who never owned a car and had been riding for four decades, her nephew Thom Loubet told the Journal News newspaper in Westchester, New York.

She was a top editor at the Women's Media Center at the time of her death, Smeal said.

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jackie Frank)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/feminist-author-mary-thom-68-killed-ny-motorcycle-163549788.html

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Butler Joins Think Finance | peHUBpeHUB

Marcella Butler has joined Think Finance as Chief Human Resources Officer. Butler joins Think Finance from Google where she worked in a variety of directorate-level roles across corporate development, finance and people operations.

PRESS RELEASE

Think Finance, a company that develops online financial products that bridge the gap between payday loans and credit cards, today announced it has named Marcella Butler as its Chief Human Resources Officer.

Ms. Butler joins Think Finance from Google, where she spent five years in a variety of directorate-level roles across corporate development, finance and people operations. Prior to that, Ms. Butler was the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Compliance Officer for Pershing Square Capital Management and Chief Administration Officer for Sanford Bernstein, LLC. She has also held positions with Egon Zehner International, McKinsey & Company and Morgan Stanley & Co, Inc.
?We?re delighted to welcome Marcella to Think Finance,? said Think Finance Global Chief Executive Officer Ken Rees. ?Her impressive background and expertise will help us navigate the challenges of rapid growth and create a truly great place to work for all our employees.?
?I?m excited to work with the talented individuals at Think Finance,? said Ms. Butler. ?The Think Finance team is vibrant and growing with the business, and together, we will continue to lever the unique aspects of Think Finance?s culture as we build a great place to work and grow.?
Ms. Butler graduated with highest distinction from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead scholar and holds a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University?s Kennedy School of Government.
About Think Finance
Think Finance develops online financial products that bridge the gap between payday loans and credit cards. Using our technology and analytics platform, Think Finance and the lenders we work with have provided over $3.5 billion in credit to 1.5 million consumers in the U.S. and abroad and have saved customers over $1 billion compared to payday loans. Think Finance is privately held and is backed by some of Silicon Valley?s most respected venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures. The company was recently named No. 2 on Forbes? America?s Most Promising Companies list. Learn more at?www.ThinkFinance.com.

Source: http://www.pehub.com/198600/butler-joins-think-finance/

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Swype (for Android)

Most Android users are familiar with Swype's signature input method of dragging a finger over keys instead of tapping them, a feature that has been baked into several phones. The Swype app, now available on Google Play for 99 cents (limited time price), brings this familiar feature to any Android device, but also adds a slew of other clever input methods like dictation and handwriting. It also provides smart suggestions as you write, letting you quickly finish words and sentences.

With cloud-syncing dictionaries, support for more than 60 languages, and the ability to learn from your writing and social media, Swype is a powerful app that totally changes how you type.

Writing With Swype
The main way to interact with Swype is by "Swyping"?where you drag you finger from letter to letter to spell out words. Once you complete a word, it appears in place in the text. When you next begin swiping, the app automatically adds a space between the words (this can be toggled on and off in the settings).

The word the app believes you swiped is displayed on a ribbon above the keyboard on the far left. Other words which the app believes you may have been attempting to swipe or type appear to the right. The list is extensive, and can be explored by dragging the ribbon left and right.

Typing works as you expect. With each tap of a letter, the suggestions across the top change. Let's say I'm typing the word "best." By the time I'm through "be," the word "be" is on the left as the top suggestion. "Best" is the third suggestion, so I could just tap the word and keep typing.

Like SwiftKey, Swype also displays three suggested words above the keyboard before you begin Swyping or typing. For instance, after writing "I am enjoying the hams of my ancestors" several times, Swype suggested "enjoying," "the," and "hams" after I typed "I am." This makes spitting out frequently used phrases even faster. In other words, it's content-aware, so you could simply tap the suggestions to dash through sentences.

Suggested words are a smart feature, but sometimes Swype spits out strange utterances. During my testing, I tapped the middle of the three suggestions repeatedly and the app wrote "Is it possible to have a good time for the holidays [sic]," a question I am sure many of us have asked before. In general, SwiftKey does a better job of identifying the phrases I use a lot and was more consistent with its suggestions.

Moving between all three modes of text input makes for fast, accurate typing and is the best way to use the app. However, it's hard to get used to looking at suggestions instead of the keyboard while writing. Obviously there's a learning curve before you can take full advantage of everything the app has to offer.

Dead-On Dictation
Nuance Communication, the developer behind Swype, is also responsible for Dragon Dictate for Mac and Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 Premium (Windows), desktop speech-to-text software that picked up our Editors' Choice award. It's not surprising that the company chose to include a dictation capability in Swype, which it calls Dragon. To activate this feature, simply tap the small flame-like logo on the bottom left of the Swype keyboard. Speak your sentence and then tap "done" when you're finished, although you can allow the app to end dictations automatically from the settings menu.

I was immediately impressed with Dragon on Swype, which requires no tedious set up or training. Out of the box it did a pretty good job transcribing my utterances, even when another speaker was close by.? It's definitely better suited for composing shorter messages, and I also noticed it took longer than expected to process the speech to text, which requires a data connection. The Google Now search bar on my Nexus 7 transcribed my speech much faster, but a little less accurately.

With dictation more than other aspects of Swype, you'll probably end up having to correct the app a fair amount which is thankfully simple. Just tap a word and Swype's suggestions will appear on the ribbon again.

Handwriting Recognition
I thought handwriting recognition fell out of favor around the time of the Newton, but Swype has a toggle-able option to let you write with your fingertip. As you shape letters?either in upper or lower case?the lines vanish quickly as Swype collects them. You can enter text letter by letter or in entire words.

Because English is my first language, my impulse was to move left to right as I wrote. This works fine, but you'll quickly run out of space for longer words. I found the app worked just as well when I wrote the letters over each other slowly.

Annoyingly, to handwrite numbers, you have to switch between letter and number entry modes. Between that and the time it takes to write letters out, it's obvious why this isn't a central feature of the app. In fact, it's not even enabled by default.

Surprisingly, handwriting input shines for entering long strings of numbers?like a phone number.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/yHDB0fDKGH0/0,2817,2418217,00.asp

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Texas inmate shouts 'Wow' during execution

By Michael Graczyk, The Associated Press

AP

This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Richard Cobb. Cobb is set for lethal injection Thursday evening, April 25, 2013 in Huntsville, Texas for the slaying of 37-year-old Kenneth Vandever.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A Texas inmate was executed Thursday evening for fatally shooting one of three people he and a partner abducted during a convenience store robbery nearly 11 years ago.

Richard Cobb, 29, didn't deny using a 20-gauge shotgun to kill Kenneth Vandever in an East Texas field where two women also were shot and one was raped. He was convicted of capital murder.

"Life is death, death is life. I hope that someday this absurdity that humanity has come to will come to an end," Cobb said when asked if he had any last words. "Life is too short. I hope anyone that has negative energy towards me will resolve that.

"Life is too short to harbor feelings of hatred and anger. That's it, warden."

---

But that wasn't it.

Just before the lethal drug took effect and at the conclusion of his statement, Cobb twisted his head back, raised it off a pillow placed on the gurney and then toward the warden standing behind him.

"Wow!" the inmate exclaimed in a loud voice. "That is great. That is awesome! Thank you, warden! Thank you (expletive) warden!"

His head fell back on the pillow, and his neck twisted at an odd angle, with his mouth and eyes open.

He remained that way for some 15 minutes before a physician entered the death chamber to examine him and pronounce him dead at 6:27 p.m. CDT. Sixteen minutes had passed since the drug had been injected.

The father, stepmother and stepbrother of the man shot and killed by Cobb were among the witnesses. Also in the viewing area was one of the women who was shot and attacked but survived to testify against Cobb.

"I think justice was served but it doesn't change anything to speak of," the slain man's father, Don Vandever, said after watching Cobb die. "I do think the justice system needs to be more of a deterrent.

"All he did was go to sleep. That's it."

Nikki Daniels, 29, who was raped and shot during the 2002 attack but survived to testify against Cobb, said, "I thought he was going to be remorseful, I thought he was going to be apologetic, was hoping that he was going to address me.

"I saw the same evil person I saw 11 years ago. ... He definitely showed his true colors."

The Associated Press generally does not name victims of sexual assault but Daniels agreed to be identified.

Daniels said Cobb's punishment in the end "was far too easy."

About two hours before the lethal injection, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Cobb to be executed, rejecting a last-day appeal. It was Texas' fourth execution this year.

On Sept. 2, 2002, Kenneth Vandever and the two women were abducted from a store in Rusk, about 120 miles southeast of Dallas, and taken to a field about 10 miles away. All three were shot and left for dead. Vandever, 37, died, but the women managed to get help.

Cobb was 18 at the time of the attack, on probation for auto theft and a high school dropout. Cobb and his partner, Beunka Adams, were arrested in Jacksonville, about 25 miles away, the day after the crime. It was the latest in a series of robberies tied to them.

Cobb testified at his trial he began using drugs at age 12 and turned to robbery to pay off a drug debt.

Adams was executed a year ago this week for his participation in the slaying.

Vandever had frequented the store in Rusk and would do things like take out the trash. An auto accident had left him with the mental capacity of a child.

Cobb's trial attorneys unsuccessfully tried to show Adams forced Cobb to shoot Vandever by threatening Cobb. The survivors of the attack said they never heard such threats, but heard Vandever plead that he needed his medication and scream when he was shot.

"Basically, it was an act of compulsion," Cobb said of the abductions and shootings. He described himself to the AP shortly after arriving on death row in 2004 as "young, dumb and made a mistake."

"I'm guilty of the crime," he said.

He told the Jacksonville Daily Progress last month from prison he didn't want to die "but I'm ready for it."

At least 11 other Texas inmates have executions scheduled for the coming months, including three in May.

? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2b3a0a28/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C260C179351130Etexas0Einmate0Eshouts0Ewow0Eduring0Eexecution0Dlite/story01.htm

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Gigabyte P2742G-CF1

Looking for an affordable gaming laptop? The Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 ($1,499.00 list) might fit the bill. In a category where prices regularly register in the thousands, it's nice to see a gaming rig that costs less than a used car. While the performance isn't quite as stunning as you'll find in other gaming laptops, the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 does offer a longer lasting battery than more expensive competitors.

Design
As with most gaming laptops, Gigabyte didn't make this rig with portability in mind. When closed, it measures 1.92 by 16.3 by 10.9 inches (HWD)?roughly the same size as the Asus G75VW-DH72, and too big to fit into a standard laptop bag. The P2742G-CF1 also has a plastic chassis, but it's no lightweight, tipping the scales at just over 7 pounds (7.05), though it is lighter than the Asus G75VW-DH72 (8.7 pounds). Our review unit is all black?what Gigabyte confusingly calls "svelte black," though the laptop is by no means slim?but it's also available with an orange lid.

The full-size keyboard has the expected chiclet keys, with decent separation between individual keys, but no backlight and no real gap between the keyboard proper and the 10-key numeric pad. As a result, inattentive touch typists might find themselves drifting into the numeric pad with no discernible extra space to distinguish the two bodies of keys. The touchpad is decent sized?1.8 by 3.6 inches?but I did find myself wishing that it used separate right and left mouse buttons instead of a combined button bar.

The 17.3-inch display offers 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, with a matte coating to reduce glare. The resolution and color quality of the display is quite nice, and during benchmark tests and game testing I never saw any blurring or smearing. You may want to use two hands when opening and closing the lid, however, because the plastic lid and bezel flex quite a bit and the hinges are a little stiff.

A pair of two-watt speakers positioned above the keyboard provide decent sound, enhanced by THX TruStudio Pro. They won't equal a dedicated sound system, but they offer good volume and clear sound, with moderate bass. When tested with Silent Shout, by The Knife, the speakers offer richer low end than I had expected, but still can't top the integrated subwoofers found in the Asus G75VW-DH72 or the Maingear Nomad 17 Ultimate.

Features
On the right of the system you'll find two USB 3.0 ports, a combination USB 3.0/eSATA port, HDMI output, and a multiformat card reader (SD, MMS, MS Pro/Duo). On the left, a tray-loading Blu-ray drive lets you watch HD movies and burn DVDs, plus you'll find a single USB 2.0 port, and a trio of audio connections (headphone, mic, and S/PDIF). On the back is a VGA monitor connection and an AC power connector. Gigabit Ethernet will probably be your networking connection of choice, but 802.11n Wi-Fi does the trick without the cable, and Bluetooth 4.0 lets you wirelessly connect an array of devices.

For storage that balances speedy performance with affordable capacity, the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is outfitted with both a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) and a 1TB 5,400 rpm hard drive. That combination provides more than enough space for a large library of installed games and locally stored media, while the SSD ensures snappy performance and rapid start up. With three slots for RAM, the system's 8GB of RAM can actually be bumped up to a whopping 24GB, so there is the opportunity for upgrading in the future.

Aside from Windows 8 and a few media utilities (for virtual surround sound, audio enhancement, and volume optimization) Gigabyte doesn't add any software to the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1. What it does add, however, is a two-year warranty covering the laptop against defect and a one-year warranty on the battery and power adapter.

Performance
The P2742G-CF1 is equipped with a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-3630QM processor paired with 8GB of RAM. It's the same processor found in the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition and the Asus G75VW-DH72, but with half the RAM. The resulting performance is on par with other similarly equipped systems, as seen in PCMark 7, where it scored 4,564 points, falling between the Cyberpower Xplorer X6-9120 (4,446 points) and the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition (5,182 points).

The difference in RAM led to significant gaps in Cinebench, where the P2742G-CF1 scored a respectable 4.75 points, but fell well behind both the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition (6.41) and the Asus G75VW-DH72 (6.44), despite the fact that all three utilize the same model of processor. Similar differences were seen in multimedia tests, where the Gigabyte finished Handbrake in 40 seconds and Photoshop CS6 in 4 minutes 56 seconds, as compared to the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition and the Asus G75VW-DH72, which both completed Handbrake in 36 seconds and Photoshop in 3:32.

The Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is outfitted with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M with 2GB of dedicated memory. The single GPU offers playable performance in our gaming tests, offering 50 frames per second (fps) in Alien vs. Predator and 38 fps in Heaven, but only with resolution dropped to 1366 by 768 and detail settings dialed down. Competing systems, however, offer better graphics thanks to higher-powered GPUs?the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition, for example pumped out 35 fps in Aliens vs. Predator and 58 fps in Heaven, but did so at full 1920 by 1080 resolution, with all the eye candy turned up. Bottom line: You'll be able to play all of your games, but the overall performance will take a hit. That's the compromise you'll have to accept for the lower price.

While the performance isn't earth-shattering, the battery life is better than competitors are offering, lasting 4 hours 22 minutes in our rundown test. That's 10 minutes longer than the longest lasting competitor, the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition, over an hour longer than the Asus G75VW-DH72 (3:02), and nearly four times as long as the Maingear Nomad 17 (1:06). Battery life is generally the Achilles heel of gaming laptops, but because the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 backs off on performance, the 77Wh battery stretches farther than most.

Conclusion
Lower prices in gaming laptops are almost always accompanied by reduced performance, and the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is no exception. Aside from the lower performance scores, however, the P2742G-CF1 still offers playable performance at medium graphics settings, and lasts longer than more expensive gaming rigs, making it a good choice for the gamer that prizes affordability and portability over raw performance. While the slightly more expensive Asus G75VW-DH72 remains our Editors' Choice for mid-range gaming laptop due to its better graphics performance, the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is still worth a look.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/8zfPXV82fl4/0,2817,2418124,00.asp

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Researcher studies hormone levels and sexual motivation among young women

Friday, April 26, 2013

Feeling frisky? If so, chances are greater your estrogen level ?? and, perhaps, fertility ?? are hitting their monthly peak. If not, you're more likely experiencing a profusion of desire-deadening progesterone, and the less fertile time in your cycle. Oh, the power of hormones.

Researchers have long suspected a correlation between hormone levels and libido, but now scientists at UC Santa Barbara, led by James Roney, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, have actually demonstrated hormonal predictors for sexual desire. Their findings appear in the current issue of the journal Hormones and Behavior.

"We found two hormonal signals that had opposite effects on sexual motivation," said Roney, the article's lead author. "Estrogen was having a positive effect, but with a two-day lag. Progesterone was having a persistent negative effect, both for current day, day before, and two days earlier." When hormone levels and sexual desire were factored against the menstrual cycles of test subjects ?? in this case, undergraduate students ?? the researchers saw a measurable increase in progesterone levels at the same time the subjects noted decreases in sexual motivation. Progesterone, the researchers say, is mediating this drop in desire from the fertile window to the luteal phase ?? the second half of the menstrual cycle.

"Progesterone acting as a potential stop signal within cycles is a novel finding in humans," noted Roney. "We know in rhesus monkeys there is a strong negative correlation with progesterone and a positive correlation with estrogen. The patterns are actually comparable to what you see in non-human primates, but hadn't been shown in humans."

The researchers' findings have potential implications on the treatment of low sexual desire and how hormone replacement trials are done. "We're not controlling hormones the way they do in the hormone replacement literature, so, in a sense, that literature is more directly applicable in terms of medical applications," said Roney. "But in the long run, it would be good to have a model of the combination of signals that operates in the natural cycle. The way hormone replacement trials are done now, there's no model of the natural signals, so they're sort of random ?? let's give estrogen, let's give testosterone, let's combine them this way or that way."

Roney noted that his findings don't present a full model, and he'd like to replicate his results with women of different age groups. "Undergraduates might be unique for a lot of reasons," he said. "Their hormone levels tend to be a bit different from those of women even just a little bit older. And married women in their 30's are likely to be more consistently sexually active, and that might change the patterns in some ways. They also tend to have higher hormone secretion and more regular cycles than younger women," he said

Eventually, Roney continued, the goal would be to have a better model of the signals in a natural cycle that might then inform medical research.

Another interesting finding, according to Roney, was the impact ?? or lack thereof ?? of testosterone on the women's sexual motivation. "There's a common belief in the medical literature that testosterone is the main regulator of women's libido," he explained. "Doctors tend to believe that, though the evidence isn't that strong in humans. In the natural cycles, we weren't finding effects of testosterone. It wasn't significantly predicting outcomes."

Roney doesn't deny that testosterone does seem to have a positive effect in hormone replacement therapy, but suggests the effects may be pharmacological. "Testosterone has those effects if you inject it externally in women who are menopausal, and there are a lot of reasons that might be the case," he said. "For example, testosterone can be converted to estrogen through a particular enzyme. If you inject menopausal women with testosterone, it might be acting as a device that's delivering estrogen to the target cells. So the fact that it works doesn't necessarily mean it's an important signal in the natural cycle."

###

University of California - Santa Barbara: http://www.ucsb.edu

Thanks to University of California - Santa Barbara for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127964/Researcher_studies_hormone_levels_and_sexual_motivation_among_young_women

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National auto loan rates for - Bankrate.com

• 4.12% (60-month, new car)
• 4.69% (36-month, used car)

Auto loan rates were mixed this week in Bankrate's national survey.

Average rates for 60-month and 48-month new-car loans inched up 1 basis point to 4.12 percent and 4.04 percent, respectively. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1 percentage point.

Rates on used-car loans were flat, with the average rate on a 36-month used-car loan stuck at 4.69 percent.

This week, federal regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced new guidelines for carmakers designed to reduce distracted driving. The guidelines for infotainment systems built into many new vehicles recommend services such as manual texting, Internet browsing and any function that takes a driver's eyes off the road for more than two seconds, be disabled while a car is in motion.

Source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/rate-roundup.aspx

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