Digitizer makes 3D scanning accessible, but not yet practical

When Bre Pettis unveiled MakerBot's Digitizer, you couldn't wipe the smile off his face. And, upon opening our own unit, it's easy to understand why. When you lift the plastic unit, swaddled in black foam, out of its cardboard box, you feel like you're stepping into the future. 3D scanning isn't exactly new, but the allure hasn't worn off yet. It's the missing ingredient in the Brooklyn-born company's ecosystem. Its printers have improved in leaps and bounds since it first started shipping the Cupcake CNC as a kit back in 2009, it finally has a user-friendly software suite in MakerWare and Thingiverse provides a vast repository of designs for people to download and print. But until now there has been no easy, affordable way for users to turn the objects they already own into printable 3D models. Of course, "affordable" is a relative term. At $1,400 the Digitizer isn't exactly an impulse purchase, but it's certainly cheaper than comparable systems.

And what qualifies as a "comparable" system? Well, we're talking about desktop scanners that capture a full 360 degrees, are largely hands-off and self-contained (i.e., not a DIY kit built around a Kinect or smartphone). That means the Digitizer is actually entering a rather sparsely populated field. The big questions though, are how does it fits into the MakerBot universe and, more importantly, the life of the DIY enthusiast? Does the Digitizer do as advertised and turn your pile of doodads into easily replicateable digital files? You know where to look for answers, after the break.

Digitizer hardware hands-on

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Like we said, even before you power up the Digitizer, it already puts a smile on your face. The simple black plastic body definitely isn't going to win any design awards and it doesn't exactly ooze luxury, but it is playfully futuristic, in a way reminiscent of early '90s children's toys. It's angular, understated and utilitarian, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Oddly there is some assembly required: the four rubber feet used to keep it from slipping about a desktop come packaged in a small zip-top bag. After you pop those little rubber guys in place, you're free to plug the Digitizer into an outlet and your computer's USB port and get going... with the calibration that is.

Just like the replicator before it, the Digitizer needs to be carefully calibrated for effective use. And, while the process is much quicker and less labor intensive (no constant adjusting of knobs here), the scanner actually appears to be much more sensitive and needs more frequent tune ups. MakerBot's instructions call for recalibrating every 20 scans or once a week, but we needed to run the calibration three times in the course of a week and never topped 10 scans before our results started getting funny. But, more on that later.

The calibration process itself involves making sure the filter is placed over the 1.3-megapixel camera at the center of the raised bar on one side, then placing a special calibration tool on the turntable. Over the course of about 10 minutes you'll be asked to place the checkered, three-sided calibration tool in a variety of poses while the MakerWare app takes measurements from the camera and dual lasers that flank it. From there scanning is a relatively straight forward process, so long as you follow MakerBot's words of advice. Those words: avoid anything dark, shiny, transparent, fury or larger than eight inches in any direction. If you do, the results will be decent, if hardly mind blowing. MakerBot's example scan of a gnome figurine is quite a bit clearer than any results we managed to get. Even when we scanned a plain white Munny figure, the model displayed some weird pitting, misshapen ears and webbing between the arms and the body.

Digitizer scans

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The act of scanning an object is about as simple as it gets. Make sure the filter is over the camera (this is /super/ important), place your target in the middle of the turntable and click start scan. The only setting to mess with is adjusting the shade of the object your scanning, between light, medium and dark. Then you've just got to find something to do for about 10-12 minutes and stay out of the way of the scanner. Don't touch it, bump it or even get too close to it. That's not only to avoid screwing up your virtual model, but also to protect your eyes from the laser line generators. Sure, they're listed eye-safe, but they're still pretty unpleasant when they hit your retinas.

Once that's done, you simply crop your model to the proper height and upload your scan to Thingiverse, if you'd like. You can back up your scans privately or share them for others to download, manipulate and print on their own. MakerWare will walk you through sliding the filter off the camera to take a snapshot of your real world target, ask you to log in and upload the scan.

It all seems simple enough, until you hit a snag. Once one thing goes wrong, the whole shebang has a sort of meltdown. When MakerBot says that dark, transparent or shiny objects are not ideally suited to scanning, what they really mean is: don't even bother. (Though, we've been told you can dull the luster on shiny items with cornstarch and achieve better results.) We tried to scan a pair of matte black sunglasses with particularly dark gray lenses, and ended up with something you'd find MoMA. We immediately saw a problem when the scan started updating live on our iMac, so we cancelled it. When we clicked retry the scan simply failed and we had to restart the scanning service to get MakerWare back up and running. This happened almost anytime we had to cancel a scan or put the computer to sleep. Even after we recalibrated the Digitizer the results were still a mess. While we were able to make out the general outline of a pair of glasses, it was buried in a sea of seemingly random shapes. Even some good, usable scans turned up weird anomalies, such as the UFO hovering above Om Nom you see above.

The Digitizer is fun and potentially ground breaking, but it's also occasionally frustrating. The device is as small and unobtrusive as you can reasonably expect and, in the grand scheme of things, not particularly expensive. MakerBot has even succeeded at making the scanner damn-near fool-proof. But, it's hardly perfect. Results are sort of a mixed bag and, if you stray from the suggested ideal conditions, chances are you'll get something completely unusable. It shouldn't come as any surprise that the Digitizer isn't practical for the average user -- it's clearly targeted at tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. But that doesn't mean things will always be that way. Call us optimistic, but we choose to see the Digitizer as the first tentative step towards something revolutionary.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/31/makerbot-digitizer-hands-on/?ncid=rss_truncated
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NSA Caught Siphoning Data from Google, Yahoo Servers

There is "no way" the NSA's newly revealed surveillance activities could have been legal, asserted Fred Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University. "There is obviously a big security issue here," Cate explained. "It puts us in an almost surreal position, especially as there is no way that the NSA could truly differentiate between U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens."

The National Security Agency has tapped fiber-optic cables that connect Google's and Yahoo's overseas servers and accessed vast amounts of data including email and other personal information, according to a Wednesday report in The Washington Post.

Included in the data culled by the NSA is information on hundreds of millions of users, many of whom are American, the Post reported, citing documents obtained by NSA contractor Edward Snowden along with interviews with other officials.

The NSA's acquisition directorate reportedly sent millions of records daily from internal Yahoo and Google networks to a data warehouse at the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.

'Not True'

The NSA balked at the idea that it was looking into the personal information of American citizens.

"NSA has multiple authorities that it uses to accomplish its mission, which is centered on defending the nation," NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines told TechNewsWorld. "The Washington Post's assertion that we use Executive Order 12333 collection to get around the limitations imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and FAA 702 is not true.

"The assertion that we collect vast quantities of U.S. persons' data from this type of collection is also not true," Vines added. "NSA applies Attorney General-approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons, minimizing the likelihood of their information in our targeting, collection, processing, exploitation, retention and dissemination."

NSA is "a foreign intelligence agency," Vines concluded, "and we're focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets only."

'We Are Outraged'

Both Google and Yahoo stressed that they did not participate in the NSA's data collection.

"We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links," said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer. "We do not provide any government, including the U.S. government, with access to our systems.

"We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks," Drummond added. "It underscores the need for urgent reform."

Similarly, "we have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers," Yahoo spokesperson Lauren Armstrong told TechNewsWorld. "We have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency."

'A Gross Violation'

It's unclear exactly how the NSA achieved this tap, but the Post report suggests that "anything flowing between Google's data servers would be vulnerable, which means both metadata and content of millions of emails, among other things," Trevor Timm, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out.

Was the surveillance legal?

"The U.S. government thinks it is," Timm told TechNewsWorld. "We think it's a gross violation of the privacy rights of Americans and those abroad.

"Congress will act to make sure this will never happen again, and tech companies will implement changes to make sure the NSA can't do it again even if they tried," he added.

"There is no way it could have been legal," Fred Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, told TechNewsWorld.

"There is obviously a big security issue here," Cate explained. "It puts us in an almost surreal position, especially as there is no way that the NSA could truly differentiate between U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens, as they claim."

A Fine Line

Of course, these revelations are just the latest in what's becoming a long stream of leaks about government surveillance.

"The truth is, even with all the public leaks and media reporting to date, presumably there's still much we neither know nor have the ability to accurately/fairly understand in full context," Jeffrey Silva, senior policy director for telecommunications, media and technology at Medley Global Advisors, told TechNewsWorld.

"Questions about the legality and appropriateness of certain government surveillance -- especially in the post-9/11 world -- are apt to persist on an ongoing basis with every new revelation," Silva added.

"The government may need to make a stronger case, and repeat it often, that expanded surveillance is a price that must be paid in the post-9/11era if U.S. citizens want to be safe," he concluded. "At the same, there's the question of whether current level of government surveillance, that even if legal, amounts to overkill and an unnecessary intrusion on American privacy."

A Chill Down the Spine

In the bigger picture, the revelations are "like layers of an onion," suggested Tim Erlin, director of IT risk and security strategy at Tripwire. "This period of information security history will do more to spur a renewed interest in verifiable security, including end-to-end encryption and distributed systems for validation, than anything we've seen in a long time."

The fact is, however, "we've tacitly agreed to allow our personal data be aggregated in large organizations like Google, Yahoo and Facebook," Erlin told TechNewsWorld. "These companies have so much intelligence that they have become too attractive as intelligence targets."

Indeed, "the companies involved should be the ones with most concerns," said Cate. "This is not good for their business."

Moreover, "when you look at it with the tapestry of all the programs that we've seen come to light," he added, "that is when the cold chill goes down your spine."

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/79324.html
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Sly Stallone likes Karl's 'natural humility'

In this Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 photo, Sylvester Stallone, left, who played Rocky Balboa in the 1976 film "Rocky," poses with Andy Karl, who will play Rocky Balboa in the upcoming Broadway musical "Rocky," in New York. (Photo by Dan Hallman/Invision/AP)

In this Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 photo, Sylvester Stallone, left, who played Rocky Balboa in the 1976 film "Rocky," poses with Andy Karl, who will play Rocky Balboa in the upcoming Broadway musical "Rocky," in New York. (Photo by Dan Hallman/Invision/AP)

In this Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 photo, Sylvester Stallone, left, who played Rocky Balboa in the 1976 film "Rocky," poses with Margo Seibert, center, who will be playing the role of Adrian, and Andy Karl, who will play Rocky Balboa in the upcoming Broadway musical "Rocky," in New York. (Photo by Dan Hallman/Invision/AP)

In this Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 photo, Sylvester Stallone, left, who played Rocky Balboa in the 1976 film "Rocky," poses with Andy Karl, who will play Rocky Balboa in the upcoming Broadway musical "Rocky," in New York. (Photo by Dan Hallman/Invision/AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Picking the guy who will play Rocky Balboa onstage was no easy task. Just ask Sylvester Stallone, who helped cast Broadway veteran Andy Karl.

"Having gone through literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of prospects, Andy was one of our first choices and he just had it," Stallone said last month during a sit-down with the actor who will be playing his most famous character. 

"He has what it takes — there's no arrogance, there's a natural humility about him, and that's what is important," Stallone said.

"No matter how threatening he may look, you're going to like him, it just comes through. And that's not so easy to find. Tough guys are a dime a dozen; a sensitive tough guy, pretty rare."

The musical "Rocky" will open on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre in March 2014. Based on the Oscar-winning 1976 film by Stallone, the musical features a score by "Ragtime" veterans Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, and a story by Thomas Meehan, who wrote "The Producers" and "Hairspray."

Karl's Broadway credits include "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," ''Jersey Boys," ''9 to 5," ''Legally Blonde," ''The Wedding Singer" and "Saturday Night Fever." Margo Seibert, making her Broadway debut, will star as Adrian, Balboa's love interest.

The musical stays close to the film, which charted the rise and romance of amateur boxer and debt collector Rocky Balboa, who gets his shot against undefeated heavyweight champion Apollo Creed.

The film made famous the image of Balboa running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the quote "Yo, Adrian!" The trumpet-laden funky theme "Gonna Fly Now" and the anthem "Eye of the Tiger" will be in the Broadway version.

The director is Alex Timbers, who directed Broadway's "The Pee-wee Herman Show" and directed and wrote the book for "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson." The boxing choreography is being done by Steven Hoggett, who choreographed "American Idiot," ''Peter and the Starcatcher" and "Once."

___

Online: http://www.rockybroadway.com

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Mick Jagger says he never hit on Katy Perry at 18

FILE - This July 28, 2013 file photo shows singer Katy Perry at the world premiere of "The Smurfs 2" in Los Angeles. Perry says though she’s “older and wiser,” she still plans to have fun on her new album. During an interview with an Australian radio show this week, the pop star said she sang backing vocals for Mick Jagger’s 2004 song, “Old Habits Die Hard.” Perry said she had dinner with the veteran rocker and that “he hit on me when I was 18.” In a statement Thursday, Oct. 31, a representative for Jagger says he “categorically denies that he has ever made a pass at Katy Perry.” (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — In her teenage dream? Mick Jagger says he never hit on Katy Perry when she was 18.

During an interview with an Australian radio show this week, the pop star said she sang backing vocals for Jagger's 2004 song "Old Habits Die Hard." Perry said she had dinner with the veteran rocker and that "he hit on me when I was 18."

In a statement Thursday, a representative for Jagger says he "categorically denies that he has ever made a pass at Katy Perry." The rep adds: "Perhaps she is confusing him with someone else."

Perry was one of the singers to make a guest appearance on the Rolling Stones' tour this year. The 29-year-old singer also said in the interview that the 70-year-old Jagger has been "very kind" to her.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mick-jagger-says-never-hit-katy-perry-18-184315896.html
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Kentucky is No. 1 in preseason poll

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Every time Kentucky coach John Calipari starts to praise his latest crop of talented freshmen, he's just as quick to point out that it is a work in progress.

As the Wildcats take the first step toward coming together, Calipari will also have to remind his players to get through those growing pains quickly, because they are now the team to beat in college basketball.

Kentucky — with a collection of high school All-Americans — is ranked No. 1 in The Associated Press' preseason Top 25, a significant step considering the Wildcats finished 21-12 last season and were upset by Robert Morris in the first round of the NIT.

It's Kentucky's third preseason No. 1 and first since 1995-96 when the Wildcats won the national championship. The other preseason No. 1 was in 1980-81.

Kentucky was ranked for just one week in the final 16 polls of last season but Calipari enters this season with a roster featuring two returnees — Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein — and six freshmen who were selected McDonalds All-Americans last season.

To say that a ninth national championship is this year's goal is an understatement considering Kentucky has social media and blogs suggesting an unbeaten season is possible.

Calipari would just like to get to the Nov. 8 opener against North Carolina-Asheville first. The Wildcats begin the exhibition season Friday.

"It's a nice honor, but it's way too early to figure out who's the best team in the country," Calipari said. "We may be very talented, but I can't imagine us being the best team in the country at this point."

Kentucky beat out Michigan State in a close vote from the 65-member panel.

The Wildcats received 27 first-place votes and 1,546 points in the poll released Thursday. The Spartans, who return four starters from the team that lost to Duke in the NCAA tournament's round of 16, snared 22 first-place votes and 1,543 points.

It won't take long for the schools to settle the issue. Kentucky and Michigan State meet on Nov. 12 at the State Farm Champions Classic in Chicago.

If their rankings hold, it'll set up the earliest meeting between the top two teams. No. 1 Indiana beat No. 2 UCLA 84-64 on Nov. 29, 1975 in St. Louis, Mo.

The polling also enhances what already figured to be a strong showdown between two heavyweights.

"A 1-2 matchup is a win-win deal," Spartans coach Tom Izzo told the AP. "If you win, you understand where you are and what you have as a team. If you lose, you've got time to figure out what you need to do to get better. I'm not sure, though, how kids and fans will react to winning or losing that game."

Of his team's ranking, Izzo added, "it's exciting because it means a group of people think we're good, and we've got a chance to be great."

Defending national champion Louisville received 14 first-place votes and was third while Duke, which received the other two No. 1 votes, was fourth.

Kansas was fifth, followed by Arizona and Michigan. Oklahoma State and Syracuse tied for eighth and Florida rounded out the Top Ten.

Ohio State was 11th and was followed by North Carolina, Memphis, VCU, Gonzaga, Wichita State, Marquette, Connecticut, Oregon and Wisconsin.

The last five ranked teams were Notre Dame, UCLA, New Mexico, Virginia and Baylor.

The last preseason No. 1 not to be ranked in the final poll of the previous season was Indiana in 1979-80.

Indiana was the preseason No. 1 last season and the Hoosiers were fourth in the final poll.

Gonzaga was No. 1 in the final poll last season and 18 teams in that final poll were in the preseason Top 25.

The Atlantic Coast Conference had the most teams in the preseason Top 25 with five and the Big Ten had four. The new American Athletic Conference, the Big 12 and Pac 12 all had three ranked teams.

Though Kentucky's objective is winning its second NCAA title in three seasons, playing like it's the nation's best is also a priority for the Wildcats a year after falling from the poll weeks after starting No. 3.

"It's a blessing to be No. 1, but it means we have a (target) on our backs now and we really have to stay focused," Kentucky 7-footer Dakari Johnson said Thursday. "That's not the main thing we're focused on. We're just trying to be the best team that we can be."

Michigan State senior guard Keith Appling echoed that sentiment, especially since the Spartans came within three votes of being top-ranked.

"That has to be one of the things to drive us to work harder," he said.

The consensus is that Calipari landed his best in a series of No. 1 recruiting classes. The group features Julius Randle, James Young, Johnson, Marcus Lee and identical twin guards Aaron and Andrew Harrison, along with in-state standouts Dominique Hawkins and Derek Willis.

Along with Cauley-Stein, Poythress and senior reserves Jarrod Polson and Jon Hood, Kentucky has a mix of experience somewhat similar to the 2011-12 title team led by Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.

The season will determine whether Kentucky is able to deliver, and Willis said the Wildcats are just focused on being on top at the end.

"There's a lot of talk about 40-0 and all that stuff," Willis said, "but we're just working on ourselves and not worrying about what the media is saying right now."

__

AP Basketball Writer Jim O'Connell In New York, and AP Sports Writer Larry Lage in East Lansing, Mich., contributed to this report.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kentucky-no-1-preseason-poll-170115661--spt.html
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After unity, some Democrats push back on Obama

President Barack Obama gestures while speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, on the initial rollout of the health care overhaul. Obama acknowledged that the widespread problems with his health care law's rollout are unacceptable, as the administration scrambles to fix the cascade of computer issues. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama gestures while speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, on the initial rollout of the health care overhaul. Obama acknowledged that the widespread problems with his health care law's rollout are unacceptable, as the administration scrambles to fix the cascade of computer issues. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just two weeks after President Barack Obama saw his Democratic Party put up an unyielding front against Republicans, his coalition is showing signs of stress.

From health care to spying to pending budget deals, many congressional Democrats are challenging the administration and pushing for measures that the White House has not embraced.

Some Democrats are seeking to extend the enrollment period for new health care exchanges. Others want to place restraints on National Security Administration surveillance capabilities. Still others are standing tough against any budget deal that uses long-term reductions in major benefit programs to offset immediate cuts in defense.

Though focused on disparate issues, the Democrats' anxieties are connected by timing and stand out all the more when contrasted with the remarkable unity the party displayed during the recent showdown over the partial government shutdown and the confrontation over raising the nation's borrowing limit.

"That moment was always going to be fleeting," said Matt Bennett, who worked in the Clinton White House and who regularly consults with Obama aides. "The White House, every White House, understands that these folks, driven either by principle or the demands of the politics of their state, have to put daylight between themselves and the president on occasion."

Obama and the Democrats emerged from the debt and shutdown clash with what they wanted: a reopened government, a higher debt ceiling and a Republican Party reeling in the depths of public opinion polls.

But within days, attention turned to the problem-riddled launch of the 3-year-old health care law's enrollment stage and revelations that the U.S. had been secretly monitoring the communications of as many as 35 allied leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And with new budget talks underway, Democratic Party liberals reiterated demands that Obama not agree to changes that reduce Social Security or Medicare benefits even in the improbable event Republicans agree to increase budget revenues.

The fraying on the Democratic Party edges is hardly unraveling Obama's support and it pales when compared to the upheaval within the Republican Party as it distances itself from the tactics of tea party conservatives. But the pushback from Democrats comes as Obama is trying to draw renewed attention to his agenda, including passage of an immigration overhaul, his jobs initiatives and the benefits of his health care law.

The computer troubles that befell the start of health insurance sign-ups have caused the greatest anxiety. Republicans pounced on the difficulties as evidence of deeper flaws in the law. But Democrats, even as they defended the policy, also demanded answers in the face of questions from their constituents.

"The fact is that the administration really failed these Americans," Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., told Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner at a hearing this week. "So going forward, there can be just no more excuses."

In the Senate, 10 Democrats signed on to a letter seeking an unspecified extension of the enrollment period, which ends March 31. "As you continue to fix problems with the website and the enrollment process, it is critical that the administration be open to modifications that provide greater flexibility for the American people seeking to access health insurance," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., wrote.

Another Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has called for a one-year delay in the requirement that virtually all Americans have health insurance or pay a fine.

On Thursday, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Tavenner and the White House's designated troubleshooter for the health care web site, Jeffrey Zients, were meeting privately with Senate Democrats to offer reassurances.

Democrats who have talked to White House officials in recent days describe them as rattled by the health care blunders. But they say they are confident that the troubled website used for enrollment will be corrected and fully operational by the end of November.

The spying revelations also have created some tensions between the administration and Democrats. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and until now a staunch supporter of the NSA's surveillance, called for a "total review of all intelligence programs" following the Merkel reports.

She said that when it came to the NSA collecting intelligence on the leaders of allies such as France, Spain, Mexico and Germany, "Let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed."

In the House, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, a Democratic member of the House intelligence committee, complained that the intelligence committees had been kept out of the loop about the collection of data on foreign leaders.

"Why did we not know that heads of state were being eavesdropped on, spied on?" she asked Obama administration intelligence officials on Tuesday. "We are the Intelligence Committee. And we did not -- we didn't know that. And now all of us, all of us, are dealing with a problem in our international relations. There will be changes."

With Congress renewing budget talks Wednesday, liberals have been outspoken in their insistence that Democrats vigorously resist efforts to reduce long-term deficits with savings in Social Security or Medicare. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who usually votes with Democrats, has been the most outspoken, saying he fears a budget deal will contain a proposal in Obama's budget to reduce cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and other benefit programs.

Obama, however, has proposed that remedy only if Republicans agree to raise tax revenue, a bargain that GOP lawmakers involved in the discussions made clear they would reject. Moreover, leaders from both parties as well as White House officials have signaled that in budget talks, they are looking for a small budget deal, not the type of "grand bargain" that would embrace such a revenue-for-benefit-cuts deal.

Still, many liberals warn that such cuts aren't palatable even if coupled with additional revenues.

"The idea, the notion that we're going to solve this problem or it's going to be OK if we were able to raise revenue and cut this thing back at the same time, it just isn't going to fly outside of Washington," said Jim Dean, chairman of the liberal advocacy group Democracy for America.

Follow Jim Kuhnhenn at http://twitter.com/jkuhnhenn

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Wanted: Adoring Female Students

Some male professors make you wonder if they're more interested in teaching their subject or appearing cool to young ladies.

Photo by Thinkstock

The intellectual and physical seduction of young female students by older, male professors—usually in the humanities, and in the throes of midlife crises—is so common in movies and books that it’s become a cliché.

But a recent Twitter thread started by a popular feminist blogger examines a dark side of that cliché in real-life academe, one in which professors’ advances—intellectual and otherwise—feed a need for validation and flattery, and at times cross the line into sexual harassment.

“Please share with me all your stories of the male professors you had in college who thrived upon and demanded female admiration to function,” Mallory Ortberg, editor of the website the Toast, tweeted. She soon followed up with a humor piece imagining a conversation between two male professors bemoaning diminishing adulation from the new generation of female pupils.

“Just yesterday, in one of my intro classes, I used the word ‘problematic’ in a sentence—real casual, just to let them know I’m one of the good guys—and not one of them stayed after the lecture to ask me just what I meant by that or to see if they could borrow the conspicuously dog-eared copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed I like to leave on my desk in case any female students want to borrow it,” one imaginary professor says.

He continues, later, after some bottle-passing: “That copy has my phone number in it. You know, the old ‘write your phone number on the front page of a copy you lend to female students only under the “IF LOST PLEASE RETURN TO” bubble’ gag?”

Almost immediately after her original tweet, Ortberg’s Twitter followers began to respond with their experiences with such professors, some humorous and others less so. A sampling:

@hallleloujah: “had one who called everything sexy in a weirdly drawn out, British way. Also started a rumor he was undercover for CIA (he wasn't).”

@kitalita: “one kept conveniently ‘forgetting’ my graded assignments in his office and specifically told me he was divorced (he wasn't).”

@AmyRosary: “Let's talk about the English department chair I got fired for harassing EACH AND EVERY female English major. He liked to insist [continued in a separate tweet] upon meeting girls in his office and serenading them with Bob Dylan covers with the door closed, or ‘accidentally’ putting on porn.”

@kellieherson: “Providing a validation space for those men is the only reason university administrators allow the humanities to continue to exist.”

Another follower cited a proclivity for flirting among her theater professors, one of whom bragged about once trying to meet women with actor Pat Morita. One said her professor had emailed her to tell her that not doing her homework was “not sexy”; yet another fended off a request for her to model for a professor who said he was an amateur photographer.

Jaya Saxena, a web editor for the New-York Historical Society and writer who studied English and political science at Tulane University, said: “Lots of [him] inviting classes to his house for pizza and making sure to corner the girls and talk about his art collection.” That professor also once hit on her in a bar, she posted.

“If your job is to command the attention of a room and instill knowledge into people, then you're probably going to thrive on receiving that attention. That just comes with the work, right?”

In an email, Saxena said she enjoyed close relationships with several of her professors, and that in New Orleans, seeing faculty members out at a bar was not outside the norm. But the “line gets drawn when you're throwing your arms around your students and drunkenly saying they look hot when they dance!”

Saxena said she never took classes from the professor mentioned, and therefore felt less intimidated than awkward following the incident.

That wasn’t the case for Tamara Johnson, who tweeted about an English professor who told her as an undergraduate that “female students were like fishing lures, drawing male instructors into deep waters.”  He also made inappropriate remarks about rape, vaguely in relation to a lecture, soon after, she said—making her feel highly uncomfortable.

Johnson, who has her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from San Diego State, said she saw male professors seeking sexual attention from their female students as the rule, not the exception. Saxena, by contrast, said there were several “attractive” male professors in her department who reacted to the attention from students in different ways. And while male professors did seem to bask more in that attention than did female professors, she said, “I never saw the ‘attention-needing male professor’ as a rule.”

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2013/10/male_professors_female_students_a_tricky_power_dynamic.html
Category: Tomas Hertl   serena williams   beyonce   Vma 2013 Miley Cyrus   Hunter Hayes  

Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher's Divorce Is Nearly Finalized Two Years Later: Report

Demi and Ash are finally, officially, legally ready to move on. Nearly two years after the Hollywood super couple's very bitter split, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are ready to finalize their divorce; according to the New York Post's Page Six, Moore, 51, and Kutcher, 35, have already signed paperwork and are set to file the documents next week.

PHOTOS: Demi and Ash, the way they were

After six years of marriage, Moore and Kutcher announced their separation in November 2011 on the heels of Kutcher's stunning San Diego hotel romp with a young, blonde local, Sara Leal. As Moore unraveled in early 2012 -- briefly entering a rehab facility following a breakdown -- Kutcher rebounded with Mila Kunis, his That '70s Show costar. The pair are closer than ever. Moore has recently been romantically connected to Australian pearl diver Will Hanigan, 30.

PHOTOS: How Demi has changed over the years

Why so long to finalize the split, then? "There had been lengthy negotiations between lawyers for both sides about the financial settlement — in particular, how much he owed her from their marriage," one source is quoted as saying in Page Six. Moore was once one of Hollywood's highest paid actresses, while Kutcher is now the highest-paid actor on television, thanks to his role on Two and a Half Men, and is also a successful tech entrepreneur.

PHOTOS: Ash and Mila's romance

"They have finally come to an agreement that was acceptable to all sides," the Page Six source added.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/demi-moore-ashton-kutchers-divorce-is-nearly-finalized-two-years-later-report-20133110
Related Topics: stenographer   castle   bo pelini   syria   Riley Cooper  

Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud hit by worldwide interruption

October 31, 2013

By Mikael Ricknäs | IDG News Service

Microsoft's Windows Azure suffered from an issue on Wednesday that affected a management feature in the compute section of the public cloud, and remained unresolved Thursday morning.

Microsoft first updated the Windows Azure Service Dashboard at 2:35 AM UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on Wednesday: "We are experiencing an issue with Compute in North Central US, South Central US, North Europe, Southeast Asia, West Europe, East Asia, East US and West US."

[ Also on InfoWorld: 3 tips for Microsoft's next CEO: How to handle Windows Azure. | Which freaking PaaS should you use? InfoWorld helps you decide. | Stay on top of the state of the cloud with the "Cloud Computing Deep Dive" special report. | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]

About 17 hours later the company posted a message saying that manual actions to perform so-called swap deployment operations may fail, and users should therefore delay them. Microsoft was still struggling to solve the issue on Thursday morning. But the company seemed to be on the right track saying that it "was continuing to validate and deploy mitigation for this issue."

The swap deployment operation is related to how services are deployed on Microsoft's cloud. Azure offers two deployment environments for cloud services: a staging environment in which users can test their system, and a production environment. The two are separated only by the VIP (virtual IP) addresses used to access them, and the swap deployment operations are used to switch them and turn the staging environment into the production environment.

The company hasn't elaborated on what caused the issue, but the fact that it affected all regions raises questions about how Microsoft has constructed the management portion of its cloud. The time it has taken Microsoft to fix the issue also puts the company in a less than favorable light. But fortunately for Microsoft and users, the issue hasn't affected the ability to run applications on Azure.

Microsoft has apologized for any inconvenience this has caused its customers.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/microsofts-windows-azure-cloud-hit-worldwide-interruption-229912
Related Topics: Tara Lynn   chris brown   arian foster   Alexian Lien   Erbie Bowser  

NSA taps Yahoo, Google data flows -- SALESFORCE offers DIY app store -- Kids flee FACEBOOK -- SCHILLER: Goldman better than Google for grads

October 31, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC

Not a TechBrief subscriber? Sign up for a free subscription.

>> DRIVING THE DAY: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say, by Barton Gellman, Ashkan Soltani: "The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world... By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot... The NSA's principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency's British counterpart, GCHQ... From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants." WaPo
>>>> How the NSA is infiltrating private networks WaPo
>>>> PRISM already gave the NSA access to tech giants. Here's why it wanted more. WaPo The Switch
>>>> NSA issues non-denial denial of infiltrating Google and Yahoo's networks TechDirt
>>>> What's on tap at the NSA? Google's and Yahoo's private fiber backbones InfoWorld
>>>> No US action, so states move on privacy law NY Times (paywalled)

>> GOING PRIVATE: Salesforce.com to offer private version of its AppExchange app store, by Chris Kanaracus: "Salesforce.com has long had a public AppExchange software marketplace, but now it's going to give customers the ability to create their own private AppExchanges where employees can download applications to use in their jobs. Private AppExchange is generally available as of Friday to customers running Salesforce.com's Enterprise and higher editions." InfoWorld
>>>> Salesforce.com launches private AppExchange -- because the world loves appstores Forbes

>> SPY VS. SPY: Silent Circle, Lavabit unite for 'Dark Mail' encrypted email project: "Silent Circle and Lavabit abruptly halted their encrypted email services in August, saying they could no longer guarantee email would remain private after court actions against Lavabit, reportedly an email provider for NSA leaker Edward Snowden... Dark Mail would shield both the content of an email and its 'metadata,' including 'to' and 'from' data, IP addresses and headers. The email providers hope a version will be ready by next year." InfoWorld
>>>> Announcing the Dark Mail Alliance -- founded by Silent Circle & Lavabit Silent Circle blog
>>>> Lavabit to release code as open source, as it creates Dark Mail Alliance to build even more secure email TechDirt

>> CLOUDUS INTERRUPTUS: Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud hit by worldwide interruption, by Mikael Ricknäs: "Microsoft's Windows Azure suffered from an issue on Wednesday that affected a management feature in the compute section of the public cloud, and remained unresolved Thursday morning. Microsoft first updated the Windows Azure Service Dashboard at 2:35 AM UTC... About 17 hours later the company posted a message saying that manual actions to perform so-called swap deployment operations may fail, and users should therefore delay them. Microsoft was still struggling to solve the issue on Thursday morning." InfoWorld

>> COMING ATTRACTIONS: EU researchers create prototype for a server-free future internet, by David Meyer: "Today's Internet is based on client devices such as PCs or smartphones talking to centralized servers to get their data. If an EU-funded project called Pursuit takes flight, the future could be a whole lot more distributed... The Cambridge University prototype would represent a dramatic revamp of that way of doing things. Part of a wider EU-funded project called Pursuit, the putative protocol operates more like... BitTorrent, in that users share information directly with one another, rather than through a server." GigaOM
>>>> Future Internet aims to sever links with servers Phys.org

>> STAT DU JOUR: Sony slips into loss despite pick up in smartphone sales, by John Ribeiro: "Losses widened in the quarter to ¥19.3 billion (US$196 million) from ¥15.5 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue for the quarter was close to ¥1.8 trillion, a 10.6 percent increase over the same quarter last year. Revenue, however, decreased 9 percent in constant currency, reflecting the volatility of the Yen. Sony reported in the last quarter a modest profit of ¥3.5 billion which it attributed to improved sales of smartphones and the favorable impact of foreign exchange rates, continuing a turnaround that started in the last fiscal year, when it posted its first profit in many years... also revised downwards its revenue and net profit outlook for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, after revising its annual sales forecasts for certain product lines." PCWorld

>> PREMATURELY GRAY: Facebook beats on revenues and EPS but teen users show decline, by Jim Edwards: "It's a big beat on both revenues and EPS, and the stock popped up 15% immediately in after hours trading.... But then it gave up most of those gains when CFO David Ebersman said the company had seen a small reduction in use by teens.... But no one at Facebook has ever admitted before that it may be losing teens. Ebersman said the stats were not significant: 'We did see a decrease in daily users partly among younger teens. ... This is of questionable significance.'... The reason: Investors bet on the future, not what just happened. And if kids are losing interest in Facebook that could create headwinds in terms of future user growth." Business Insider
>>>> Facebook earnings show that desktop ads -- and Google -- may soon become irrelevant VentureBeat
>>>> Facebook may start logging your cursor movements Ars Technica

>> GONE TO PLAID: Sprint taps into its spectrum for fast LTE, with room to grow, by Stephen Lawson: "...demonstrated a high-speed service it calls Sprint Spark, with current peak speeds of 50-60Mbps (bits per second) and the potential to exceed 1Gbps. It also promoted three upcoming handsets that will be able to take advantage of all three of its spectrum bands. Sprint is in catch-up mode against its bigger rivals, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, and is looking to use its huge spectrum holdings as an advantage. The company is deploying LTE in its 800MHz and 1.9GHz bands as well as the 2.5GHz spectrum it acquired with Clearwire, on which the Sprint Spark service runs." PCWorld
>>>> New cable broadband spec says 10 Gbps speeds possible Now if we could just come up with a better name than 'DOCSIS 3.1' Cable Tech Talk

>> MAN BITES DOG: Robert Shiller: Young people with a moral purpose should work for Goldman Sachs, not Google, by Alison Griswold: "In a debate titled 'Goldman Vs. Google: A career on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley?' at The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering, the esteemed economist argued that young graduates with a 'moral purpose' and interest in the financial world should work for Goldman Sachs instead of Google.... 'When you study finance, you are studying how to make things happen, on a big scale, on a lasting scale,' Shiller said. 'That has to matter more than getting into Google and programming some little gimmick.' The way Shiller sees it, finance underscores every worthwhile pursuit. 'Every human activity that matters has to be financed,' he explained. 'You cannot do good things for the world all by yourself.'" Business Insider

>> CRASH: Google DNS departs Brazil ahead of new law, by Doug Madory: "Brazil is pressing ahead with a new law to require Internet companies like Google to store data about Brazilian users inside Brazil, where it will be subject to local privacy laws. The proposed legislation could be signed into law as early as the end of this week... By moving DNS resolution out of Brazil and back to the United States, Google DNS now operates outside of Brazilian jurisdiction. It still works just fine for Latin American users, just much more slowly... if Google leaves Brazil as they did in China, they could opt to make their local infrastructure investments in another country... with privacy laws more to their liking." Renesys

>> END OF LIFE CYCLE: The case against Gmail, by Ed Bott: "Google's flagship service has been showing signs that it's past its prime. In particular, Gmail's losing the ability to play nicely with third-party clients... Despite Google's lofty rhetoric about open standards, the Gmail protocols are undocumented and not available for licensing... in December 2012 Google dropped [Microsoft's] Exchange ActiveSync support for its nonpaying customers--including anyone with a free Gmail account and with a free (grandfathered) Google Apps account... Google wants you to interact with Gmail in a browser window--preferably Chrome--or in one of its iOS or Android apps." ZDNet
>>>> How I switched from Gmail to Outlook.com (and how you can too) ZDNet
>>>> Outlook.com calendar maintenance enters its second week PCWorld

>> GOING VIRAL: Waiting for the next great technology critic, by Pat Buchanan: "For well over a decade, the two most influential voices about consumer technology have been a sixty-six-year-old man who lives just outside of Washington, D.C. and a fifty-year-old man who resides in Westport, Connecticut. The former, Walt Mossberg, defined what it means to be a mainstream gadget reviewer when he started a weekly column, Personal Technology, for the Wall Street Journal, in 1991. The latter, David Pogue, began his column for the New York Times, State of the Art, in 2000. Every week, like a modern-day Prometheus handing down secret knowledge about arcane tools, they have dutifully informed millions of readers about the latest gadgets or services, and whether or not they are worth purchasing. Both of them will be gone soon: it was announced last month that Mossberg would leave the Journal at the end of the year, and Pogue revealed last week that he would be leaving the Times shortly." The New Yorker

>> MICROSOFT MISCHIEF: Microsoft Bing tests 'Hero' ads in Windows 8.1 search results, jousting with Google, by Todd Bishop: "Hero Ads... blend elements of display and search advertising. They are being tested by advertisers including Land Rover, Jaguar, Home Depot, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Radio Shack. During the pilot, the ads will be shown to a subset of people searching for the specific names of the companies or brands on Windows 8.1." GeekWire
>>>> Here come Windows 8.1's 'Hero' ads -- brought to you by stealthy snooping InfoWorld

>> IBM gives up fight to build CIA's $600m secret cloud, hands deal to Amazon The Register

>> Scott McNealy tells Hong Kong to go open, free and global Computerworld HK

>> Google's Glass accessory store is coming online (Wow. Stuff's expensive!) Marketing Land

>> What's it like to design the future of Microsoft? Ask this guy. TechNet

>> SAP confirms 20 customers live on HANA cloud, hundreds in the pipeline Computerworld UK

>> Steam rises to 65 million active users, eclipsing Xbox Live The Verge

>> 10 common tasks for MongoDB InfoWorld

>> Fantastical 2: The calendar Apple should have built… again 9to5Mac

>> Mobile saturation means innovation will slow InfoWorld

>> World's first Bitcoin ATM sees 81 exchanges, $10,000 in transactions during first day GeekWire

>> California woman gets the first ticket for driving with Google Glass Glass Almanac

>> SORRY, WE HAD TO RUN IT: Lenovo taps Ashton Kutcher in long-life battery challenge to Apple Bloomberg

>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "This is the only time the city of Boston has ever punished a Cardinal." @rilaws

FEED ME, SEYMOUR: Comments? Questions? Tips? Shoot mail to Trent or Woody. Follow @gegax or @woodyleonhard.

Pass it on. Tweet us!

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Source: http://www.infoworld.com/t/technology-business/nsa-taps-yahoo-google-data-flows-salesforce-offers-diy-app-store-kids-flee-facebook-schiller-goldman-be?source=rss_infoworld_blogs
Category: tampa bay rays   cnn   survivor   Espn College Football   oprah winfrey  

Chrome Canary now blocks recognized malware downloads

Google's stable Chrome release already has a reset tool in case malware hijacks the browser, but we're sure many would rather avoid that rogue code in the first place. Thankfully, a new build of Chrome Canary automatically blocks hostile apps. Try to download malware that Google recognizes and you'll get a polite warning instead of a rude surprise. The safeguard isn't likely to reach more reliable versions of Chrome for some time, but those willing to experiment in the name of security can grab the Canary browser at the source link.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/31/chrome-canary-now-blocks-malware-downloads/?ncid=rss_truncated
Tags: Doug Martin   st louis cardinals   new york times   Delbert Belton   Outside Lands  

The Virality of Evil

Students who sign up for Duolingo’s language courses will be tasked with translating BuzzFeed articles, one sentence at a time. The translated stories will then appear online.

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by STR/Reuters

The idea that electronic media would bring the world together is not particularly original—remember Marshall McLuhan’s “global village”?—but its proponents have always been hazy on the details. Are we to celebrate the fact that the “Gangnam Style,” a satire of South Korean hipster lifestyle, has garnered roughly 1.8 billion views on YouTube when most viewers probably never got the joke?

Thanks to social media, ideas can now spread at rapid-fire speed. Just look at “Kony2012,” last year’s ill-fated viral campaign to hunt the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. Alas, the speed doesn’t easily translate into action: Instead of deep engagement with an issue by a dozen committed people, we get rather shallow engagement by a few million—and in ways that might undermine efforts to promote global awareness about a problem like guerrilla warfare in Africa. Such viral campaigns might work for highly targeted interventions like fund-raising, but anything beyond that is tricky.

The latest innovation in digital cosmopolitanism comes from BuzzFeed, a site that has rapidly become one of the most visited online properties. In August 2013, BuzzFeed had 85 million visitors, three times more than just a year ago; by next year, it expects to become one of the most popular sites in the world. (For comparison, according to figures from January 2013, BBC News had just 64 million unique visitors per month on two of its properties—bbc.com and bbc.co.uk—combined.)

By and large, BuzzFeed’s stories are written to be shared—the site’s slogan is “The Viral Web in Real-Time”—which explains why, according to one recent study, its stories receive more shares on Facebook than stories by any other site, including those of the New York Times and the Guardian. (A typical BuzzFeed story: 10 quotations, with pictures of Kanye West and Freddie Mercury, presented in a quiz-like format under the headline “Who Said It: Kanye West Or Freddie Mercury?”)

Judging by the spectacular results, BuzzFeed has turned “virality” into a science: Thanks to advanced analytics and tools of Big Data, they know exactly what needs to be said—and how—to get the story shared by most people. Its approach is best described as Taylorism of the viral: Just like Frederick Taylor knew how to design the factory floor to maximize efficiency, BuzzFeed knows how to design its articles to produce most clicks and shares. The content of the article is secondary to its viral performance.

Until now, there was just one barrier to BuzzFeed’s plan for world domination: While many of its stories are highly visual, they still contain a fair amount of text—a barrier to non-English speakers. Well, this barrier is no more: BuzzFeed has struck a deal with Duolingo. Duolingo is a promising startup for studying languages that was founded by Louis von Ahn, the person we have to thank (or blame) for inventing the anti-spam CAPTCHA system that prompts us to type what we see in two pictures to make sure we are not robots on a spamming mission. Initially, the CAPTCHA system relied on random text, but then Von Ahn realized that he could get people to fight spam and help to digitize books at the same time: Why have people enter random text if they can be entering hard-to-read text from scanned books?

Internet guru Clay Shirky sees such logic—which he has dubbed “cognitive surplus”—at work in many other parts of digital culture. In his 2010 book of the same name, Shirky argued that we must find ways to harness this “cognitive surplus” and turn it into social good. Duolingo is Von Ahn’s attempt to build a business by leveraging “the cognitive surplus” that is inherent in language learning. Millions—perhaps billions—of sentences are translated every day by students of foreign languages. All those sentences tend to disappear into the void of language textbooks and student notebooks. This is where BuzzFeed comes in: Students who sign up for Duolingo’s language courses would be tasked with translating BuzzFeed articles, one sentence at a time. The translated stories will then appear online. The model is quite elegant: Students have to translate sentences anyway; Duolingo doesn’t charge students for language learning, but BuzzFeed does pay it for the final translations.

Here is BuzzFeed’s version of “global village”: If its plan works, more and more people around the globe will be reading about U.S. popular culture in their native languages. Note that BuzzFeed does not seem to be interested in finding overlooked stories in the foreign press and bringing them to the masses, in English or in any other language. No, what it is interested in is taking viral stories that have already proven their worth in English and taking them global, conquering even more eyeballs that were previously hard to reach due to language barriers.

Instead of deep engagement with an issue by a dozen committed people, we get rather shallow engagement by a few million.

In the process, it gains even more traffic and enters local advertising markets—BuzzFeed is launching local editions in Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese, too. National news players that produce genuine hard news—the kind that takes money to report and might not receive many likes and shares on social networks, as it focuses on issues that are grim rather than viral—would have a powerful new competitor. There’s no scenario in which BuzzFeed’s “cosmopolitan turn” is good for foreign news sites: They will be pressed to either soften up their own news coverage—to boost social media friendliness—or be faced with the prospect of making even less money off their online advertising.

In some respect, BuzzFeed is putting the toolkits of Big Data and crowdsourcing to logical use—assuming that it doesn’t really see itself as being in the news business. BuzzFeed’s goal, after all, is to get the maximum number of shares and likes on social media—for it’s the shares and likes that determine how much money the site is making. In this, BuzzFeed thinks more like a Silicon Valley startup rather than a traditional journalistic entity, with its outdated civic concerns that go beyond the need to maximize and monetize traffic.

The BuzzFeed-Duolingo partnership reveals the difficulty of operating with apolitical concepts like “cognitive surplus” that are not properly grounded in economics or theories of globalization. On the face of it, Duolingo and BuzzFeed are harnessing plenty of “cognitive surplus,” having found an effective way to tap into the vast market of people who want to learn English to succeed in today’s global economy. But what is here to celebrate?

This particular instance of harnessing of “cognitive surplus”—in the name of building a global village, with BuzzFeed as its most popular international news outlet—might actually undermine the work of news outlets that keep the world informed about news that do not revolve around Kanye West, Hollywood, or cats. 

Will there still be any serious news outlets in the “global village”? Or will it, like most villages, thrive on gossip alone? So far, the latter seems more likely—and for reasons that have everything to do with economics and little to do with technology.

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/10/duolingo_buzzfeed_partnership_the_translation_project_is_terrible_for_foreign.html
Category: mrsa   jennifer lawrence   darren sproles   broncos   How To Close Apps On Ios7  

‘True Blood’ Actor Luke Grimes Cast As Christian Grey’s Brother In ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’

A Little More Eye Candy To Round Out The Cast

Posted by: Shannon on October 26, 2013|

Okay, Fifty Shades Of Grey casting folks. You got me back… sort of. Y’all know I was devastated when Charlie Hunnam dropped out of the lead role as Christian Grey. I mean, devastated. And even though Jamie Dornan– a hottie in his own right– is the new Christian Grey, I was still nursing my Hunnam-related wounds. But now we have more good casting news! Luke Grimes from HBO‘s True Blood is now on board to play Christian Grey‘s brother, Elliot. I have yet to jump on the True Blood bandwagon (though I expect to binge-watch a few years from now on Netflix), so I don’t know much about this guy, but I have seen the pics, and well. Yes. I’m in. Click inside for more!

Entertainment Weekly has the deets:

True Blood star and Brothers & Sisters alum Luke Grimes has joined the cast of Fifty Shades of Grey, EW confirmed Friday.

Variety initially reported that Grimes will be playing the role of Christian Grey’s brother in director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s big-screen adaptation of E L James’ bestseller. Dakota Johnson is playing the lead role of Anastasia Steele, and Wednesday reports surfaced that Irish actor Jamie Dornan was in final talks to play the part of Christian Grey. Focus and Universal have yet to confirm Dornan’s casting, but James did tweet a warm welcome to the actor on Thursday.

And here’s the official confirmation tweet:

 

I’ll need the True Blood fans to fill me in on this guy’s acting prowess. But if the goal is to get people to watch this movie by casting a plethora of really hot guys, then yeah. They’re doing an excellent job, LOL.

Here’s hoping we get more good news about the production, and that I eventually, fully recover from the pain of losing Charlie Hunnam. It’s gonna be difficult, but a few more hotties will probably move the process along. They still have to cast Jose (Anastasia’s photographer friend), so here’s hoping they find some hot, Latin eye candy for that one. I know, it’s superficial but c’mon. It is the Fifty Shades of Grey movie.

[Source]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pinkisthenewblog/~3/Co5hnywSlxM/true-blood-actor-luke-grimes-cast-as-christian-greys-brother-in-fifty-shades-of-grey
Category: Dakota Johnson   Janet Yellen   julio jones   snl   rosh hashanah  

San Francisco Chronicle to stop using 'Redskins' in print

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The San Francisco Chronicle has joined a growing list of publications that will no longer use the term ''Redskins'' when referring to Washington's NFL team.

Managing Editor Audrey Cooper said Wednesday that the newspaper's style committee decided to eliminate the term because of a long-standing policy against using racial slurs.

''Not everyone has to be personally offended by a word to make it a slur,'' Cooper said in a statement titled ''A name unfit for print.''

''Make no mistake,'' she said, '''redskin' is a patently racist term.''

The newspaper's committee decided that though other team names, like the Chiefs and the Warriors, refer to Native Americans, they are not offensive in and of themselves and will continue to be used.

As for ''redskins,'' she said in a telephone interview, ''we are in the process of eliminating the use of the term in agate and stories.''

The debate about whether the term is in fact an epithet has raged for decades, particularly in sports and media. The Chronicle's style council revisited the issue last month at the request of Scott Ostler, one of its sports columnists, who has written advocating that the team change its name.

The Chronicle joins several other publications that have made the same decision over the years, including the Kansas City Star, Slate.com, and the Portland Oregonian, which dropped the term more than two decades ago. Sportscaster Bob Costas has also spoken out against the use of the word.

Cooper said the Chronicle will simply refer to the team as ''Washington'' in most cases. It will use the ''Redskins'' only when not using it would be confusing for readers, such as in a story about the controversy surrounding the term.

''We have a responsibility to set the tone for civil discourse,'' Cooper said. ''That doesn't mean we set the rules, but it does mean we can lead by example.''

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sf-chronicle-stop-using-redskins-013221604--nfl.html
Tags: Tom Clancy   foxnews   liberace   Mayweather   Million Muslim March  

Senate Dems Struggle to Defend Promises

As he stepped off an escalator leading from the Capitol's underground subway system to the U.S. Senate, Ron Johnson opened up a yellow folder, pulled out a copy of the “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act," and handed it to fellow senator Chris Coons.

"I look forward to reading this," said Coons, a Democrat from Delaware.

"It's the president's exact language," replied Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/30/senate_dems_struggle_to_defend_promises_318875.html
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