plantagenet ocher: October 2013

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Wall St. pushes past record, Google's stock tops $1,000

By Julia Edwards

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday, with the S&P 500 index heading for its best week in more than three months and earnings from Google, Morgan Stanley and others lifting sentiment.

The S&P 500, which rose above Thursday's intraday record of 1732.92 and all-time closing high of 1732.90, was on pace for its third straight day of gains.

In addition to earnings, the market's rise was based on expectations that the Federal Reserve will delay trimming its stimulus measures due to the damage inflicted on the economy by the partial U.S. government shutdown that ended on Thursday.

The market was also relieved that Washington had reached a deal to end the fiscal stalemate.

"Truthfully most of this is the market pricing in the high likelihood that there will be a continuation of monetary policy through the spring," said Jeff Buetow, chief investment officer at Innealta Capital in Austin, Texas, which manages $3 billion in assets.

"With the insanity that took place over the past few weeks, I think the Fed is probably going to put some of the long-term decisions on hold," Buetow said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 26.01 points, or 0.17 percent, at 15,397.66. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 11.26 points, or 0.65 percent, at 1,744.41. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 47.49 points, or 1.23 percent, at 3,910.64.

Google Inc shares were up 13 percent to $1,007.51 a day after the search engine company posted results that beat forecasts. Google, whose stock hit $1,000 for the first time, led the S&P technology sector, up 1.6 percent, to outperform all other sectors.

Health was the only declining sector, down 0.6 percent on predictions from UnitedHealth that the new healthcare law's provision to decrease private Medicare payments could hurt earnings. [ID:nL1N0I70E9] UnitedHealth shares fell 3.2 percent to $69.08.

Morgan Stanley shares rose 2.5 percent to $29.64 after the company reported a 50 percent rise in quarterly revenue as higher income from equities sales and trading offset a drop in its fixed-income business.

General Electric said its third-quarter profit and revenue fell as its finance business shrunk, but Wall Street looked beyond those numbers to GE's improving profit margins and growing order demand. GE shares rose 4.2 percent to $25.71.

Of the 98 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported so far, 62.2 percent have topped Wall Street expectations, just shy of the 63 percent average since 1994 but below the 66 percent beat rate over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data through Friday.

On revenue, 53.1 percent of the S&P 500 components have beaten expectations, short of the 61 percent rate since 2002 but above the 49 percent beat rate over the past four quarters.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards; Editing by Leslie Adler and Kenneth Barry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-climb-rosy-corporate-results-120237914--sector.html
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'The Book of Jezebel': An Honest Look At 'Lady Things'

The website Jezebel takes a unique approach to women's media — focusing on politics, entertainment and advocacy issues typically absent from so-called beauty magazines.

Now the site is making its first foray onto the bookshelves with The Book of Jezebel: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Lady Things.

"I've been calling it an illustrated encyclopedia of the world," Jezebel founder Anna Holmes says. Holmes edited the new book, and warns NPR's Arun Rath that the volume isn't intended to be comprehensive.

"There is plenty of stuff that I forgot to put in there," she says. "So when I say 'encyclopedia of the world,' — it's an abridged encyclopedia."

She discusses her brainchild and some of the site's best projects to date — including a collection of unretouched photographs from popular beauty magazines.

Interview Highlights

On what Jezebel, the website, tries to reflect

"With the website, what we were trying to do, and I think we did, was to provide an alternative to traditional women's media — and by that I mean mostly women's magazines, but also some websites that existed — that I felt and the staffers felt were patronizing to young American women in that they tended to promote an obsession with romance or the acquiring of a man and the keeping of a man and the pleasing of a man, in addition to things like consumerism, buying clothes, makeup, etc.

"And it's not that we have a problem with clothes or makeup — or men — but women are much more diverse in their interests (and multifaceted) than a lot of women's media was giving them credit for."

On Jezebel's unretouched photo series

"That was, I believe, about a month and a half after we launched. We launched in May 2007 and one of the first posts that went up was a call for an unretouched cover photograph of a women's magazine. Now, these are not easy things to just get. I mean, they're kept under lock and key for a reason. I would assume that maybe five people ever see an unretouched cover photograph of, let's say, Cosmo or Glamour.

Anna Holmes founded Jezebel, a blog that offers a feminist take on traditional women's magazine content, in 2007. She resigned as editor in 2010 and is now a columnist for The New York Times Book Review.

Anna Wolf/Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing

"I got a couple of submissions over the following weeks and the best one, meaning the worst one, was a cover of Redbook magazine. It was an image of Faith Hill and comparing it to the cover that was on the news stand, which was out right about that time, it was apparent that they had slimmed her down considerably. They had just done things to her limbs, her skin, her face, her body, her hair that when you compared these two photos side by side it was really quite startling.

"Because in the unretouched photograph, she looked like a regular human being. In the retouched photograph she looked like what we think of human beings who are celebrities look like. Which is to say, somewhat kind of off."

On her favorite entry from the book

"I had wanted to have an entry for the phrase 'crazy cat lady' because I think they get a bum rap. I mean, I'm an animal lover and I have a cat so I wanted someone to do an illustration, a kind of taxonomy of the crazy cat lady that was both honest but loving. So an illustrator named Wendy McNaughton did a full page illustration of the crazy cat lady and within the illustration you see a brunette woman wearing a pink bathrobe. In one of the pockets of the bath robe there is a digital camera for cat pictures.

"There are — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight — nine other cats in the illustration. One of the cats is dressed up in an outfit. I mean, I don't know anyone who actually dresses their cats up in outfits, but...

"Then at the bottom it says, 'note lack of ring,' meaning lack of wedding ring. Now, that's totally unfair, but it was hyperbole. I don't think anyone really thinks that women who love cats don't get married."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/19/237004361/the-book-of-jezebel-an-honest-look-at-lady-things?ft=1&f=1032
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Sponsors help women reach executive ranks

Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: Tuesday, October 15, 2013, 2:01 AM

Mentors can dispense sage wisdom over endless cups of coffee, but it takes a sponsor's relentless advocacy to propel a woman to a seat on a corporate board and a desk in a corner office.

That's the message that will be presented Tuesday when the Forum of Executive Women releases its annual report on women in business leadership.

"Sponsorship goes beyond mentoring," said Nila G. Betof, president of the businesswomen's association. "Sponsorship is where the sponsor puts his or her capital on the table in advocating for a woman."

"Sponsorship is like mentoring on steroids," said Deanna Byrne, a partner in the Philadelphia office of PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P. She credits one of her sponsors for positioning her to land her current assignment providing accounting services for one of the company's Fortune 500 clients.

The forum has been studying the influence of women on the leadership of the region's publicly traded companies since at least 2005.

In that time, there has been progress, but not enough, leaders say.

For example, women held 12 percent of board seats in 2012 (103 out of 829), a 30 percent increase since 2005. There is also a higher percentage of female executives - 12 percent in 2012, up 33 percent from 2005.

Significantly, women also are commanding more money. In 2012, one in 10 of the top earners (50 of 491) were women, up 67 percent from 2005.

But a third of the region's top 100 publicly traded companies have no women on their boards.

One in five companies have no women board members, no women executives, and no women among the company's top earners.

Only six of the 100 chief executives are women, and only eight companies have three or more women on their boards.

"The progress continues to be very, very slow," said Betof, chief operating officer of the Leader's Edge/Leaders by Design, a Bala Cynwyd company that grooms executives to advance their careers.

The issue of female corporate leadership is attracting more attention. Catapulting the topic onto talk shows and radio programs was Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, a book by Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook.

In September, Mayor Nutter signed a law that will require companies doing business with Philadelphia to disclose the number of women in their executive ranks.

"Female employees who work hard and play by the rules are often overlooked when it comes to the 'big' assignments and large promotions," said P. Edward Lovelidge, managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Philadelphia.

"It is relationships with sponsors that can make the difference," he said.

Titled The Power of Sponsorship: A Call to Action, the forum's report lists companies and their female executives (or lack of them), and tells the stories of sponsors and their protégés.

For example, F. William McNabb 3d is the chief executive officer and chairman of the Vanguard Group of Mutual Funds - the top job in one of the nation's top financial companies. Martha G. King is a managing director at Vanguard and head of U.S. financial intermediaries - one of the company's top positions. She heads Vanguard's second biggest line of business.

McNabb and King are related, but not in the family sense. Shortly after King began at Vanguard as a college hire, McNabb recognized her as a potential leader, and took aggressive and substantial measures to sponsor her rise through the company. Their relationship is now 25 years old.

McNabb sponsored King to head institutional sales for the western region, though she wasn't the obvious choice of the selection committee, the report said. He also transferred her back early to the company's headquarters to lead the institutional investment only business. That was a large, integrated business unit, compared with her earlier more-focused responsibilities.

"Someone did it for me, and I have an absolute obligation to do it for others," McNabb said in the forum report.

Helen F. Giles-Gee president of the University of the Sciences, described how she sponsored Emile "Mel" Netzhammer, now chancellor of Washington State University, Vancouver, when Giles-Gee was president of Keene State College in New Hampshire.

She hired him as provost and then assigned him to chair a finance committee. Netzhammer would have preferred a more academic assignment, but ended up with important skills.

Giles-Gee nominated Netzhammer for his current job.

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Source: http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166721&44=227757391&32=3796&7=195342&40=http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20131015_Sponsors_help_women_reach_executive_ranks.html
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ABC and Univision's love child bursts to life

MIAMI (AP) — The long-awaited DNA exchange between ABC and Univision emerges from the test tube this month, aiming to stretch the limits of traditional network programming. The English-language television network, called Fusion, will target millennial Hispanics and their BFFs as it attempts to capitalize on a generation for which cultural fusion is the norm and digital media is king.

The network will provide something of a grab bag: a mix of hard news, commentary, sports and irreverence aimed at 16- to 30-year-olds. Sure, there will be nightly news programs, but also an animated puppet news and entertainment show by David Javerbaum, former head writer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Think Comedy Central, the hipster online magazine Vice.com, ABC and Univision, all in one.

"Not everyone will get it; and that's sort of the point," Univision News President and now Fusion CEO Isaac Lee wrote in a memo to staff earlier this month.

To "get" what Fusion is attempting, it helps to tour its home and meet the players:

THE STARTUP

The green and blue mood-lighting of the warehouse-turned-news hub known as Newsport suggests Miami Beach club over newsroom. Like millennials who can't afford to move out on their own, Fusion shares the cavernous space with Spanish-language parent Univision News. Senior staff members gather for brainstorming sessions in brightly painted and glass-walled rooms overlooking the newsroom.

On a recent afternoon, Lee strode across the floor like the head of a Silicon Valley startup, sketching flow charts of Fusion's evolution. As he talked, one millennial staffer wrestled a ping pong ball from the mouth of Chocolate, Lee's brown Labrador. Others chimed in on the essence of the network that goes live Oct. 28.

As befits a project geared to a generation used to downloading the latest mobile update, Fusion has been beta testing in plain view. In 2011, Lee brought together a group of recent journalism school graduates to work on an English-language Tumblr for Univision. The young journalists created original news, curated stories and produced short documentaries.

Lee learned what worked (humor) and what didn't (direct Univision translations). The approach bought him time to win over holdouts at Univision, a company that built its brand on Spanish-language affinity.

THE PROS

"I hate ties. They are really useless. Why do I have to have a piece of cloth hanging from my neck every day?" fumed Jorge Ramos, the silver-haired veteran Univision anchor with piercing blue eyes, one of a handful of senior journalists to join Fusion.

As Ramos jogged up the stairs, he yanked the offending garment out of his bag and held it up to his neck. "This is my Univision uniform," he said, then dropped his arm and grinned, "and this is Fusion."

Ramos, who co-hosts Univision's popular nightly newscast with Maria Elena Salinas, will pull double duty. He frankly acknowledges his own millennial kids don't watch his Univision newscast, or any other. He is also blunt about the limits of his native language.

"It is very frustrating many times to have a great interview on the Sunday news story, and no one (in Washington) is paying attention simply because it's in Spanish," he said.

Ramos doesn't plan to dumb things down. He does plan to mention Mexico — the country sharing 2,000 miles of the United States' southern border — almost as much as he mentions Syria. One of his first interviews is with Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who earned attention and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation for his aggressive attempts to crack down on illegal immigration.

THE FEMALE FACTOR

Alicia Menendez describes her new Fusion show as a mix of sex, money and politics.

Isn't everything?

"Yes, but most people won't admit it," Menendez shot back. The 30-year-old gained early exposure to politics as the daughter of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. She's anchored programs for HuffPost Live and Sirius XM but says Fusion is the first network to speak to her generation.

Her first show: millennials' lack of monogamy and how self-inflicted singledom affects home purchasing.

Fusion describes itself as "Championing a smart, diverse and inclusive America." But Menendez's show notwithstanding, when it comes to gender, Fusion resembles Silicon Valley startups more than its tagline: it's stocked with talented women on the news floor but has virtually none on its senior creative and executive team.

THE PARTNERSHIP

ABC News President Ben Sherwood compares Fusion to the web of highways California built back in the 1950s.

"No one could understand why you would build a freeway with six lanes. But the visionaries of California knew that if you built these freeways, people would come," he said.

Like California's freeway system, the plan is to scale up, starting with 20 million homes and expanding to 60 million in the next few years.

It was a logical move for the Disney-owned ABC, which has no cable news counterpart and provides Fusion broad distribution through its cable and satellite contracts. It can also share news content with minimal investment. ABC has sent staff to work with Fusion on content and production, and Fusion's vice-president of news Mark Lima came from ABC's "Nightline."

For Univision, Fusion poses a greater risk, but the company has the financial wherewithal to weather initial bumps. Its prime-time broadcasts ruled July sweeps ahead of the other four major networks among coveted 19-49 viewers. In Fusion, it's looking ahead to the second- and third-generation Latinos who get their news in English. Nearly two-thirds of the 52 million Hispanics living in the U.S. are native born.

Still, the experiment hasn't been without awkward moments. As Fusion prepared to go live, top staffers were quoted sniping about the ages of their older counterparts at Univision.

THE COMPETITION

Fusion has competitors. Participant Media launched Pivot TV this summer, promoting social advocacy among millennials. Sean Combs' new music focused Revolt TV debut's this month.

Still, Morley Winograd, a University of Southern California fellow and author of books on media and millennials, says Fusion has the right ingredients for success and a huge potential market for advertisers.

"The two earliest cable channels specifically targeted at millennials were the ABC Family Channel and the Disney Channel," Winograd said. "It's not surprising then that a 'Fusion' of Univision and ABC decided upon Latino millennials as their market. Each side of the partnership knows a great deal about one half of that audience combination."

Lee insists Fusion will take some time to find its footing. MSNBC took years to settle on its left-of-center brand. Fox News Channel wasn't the nation's most popular cable news network out of the gate.

"Nobody's doing what we are doing," he said, "so there's one way to find out what works and what doesn't."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/abc-univisions-love-child-bursts-life-124727046.html
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Rovio to Release Free Angry Birds App

MOSCOW -- Angry Birds is going downhill.

In a first for the Finnish-designed feathered cartoon characters, makers Rovio are launching a mobile telephone app Angry Birds Go!

The free app, available worldwide from Dec. 11, features a high-octane downhill race that includes all the famous avian characters and their arch-enemies the evil pigs from the video game.

The app includes a bizarre range of racing machines that can be upgraded, characters with special powers and range of 3D worlds.

Rovio, which released a gameplay trailer Tuesday to advertise the game ahead of its release, said: "The game will be built from the ground up as a free-to-play title, with a whole host of modes and features included from the get-go."

The company plans to release a "special countdown app" at the end of this month for the game which will be available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10.

Speaking Tuesday afternoon at Brand Licensing Europe 2013 in London during a presentation entitled "Angry Birds: How Rovio Disrupted the Entertainment Industry," Jami Laes, executive vp gaming and Naz Cuevas, senior vp licensing at Rovio said the company would continue to focus on making Angry Birds a long-lasting brand, they said. "We're building an evergreen," Cuevas told the industry crowd.

The executives then unveiled the Angry Birds Go! game trailer in a world premiere.

Laes said Helsinki, Finland-based Rovio created 51 games before striking gold with Angry Birds, meaning the company wasn't the overnight success it is sometimes believed to be.

Laes also touted the planned July 2016 launch of Angry Birds: The Movie.

Georg Szalai in London contributed to this report.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheHollywoodReporter-Technology/~3/Vqo4339xzE4/story01.htm
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Erykah Badu

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Factions

This is the Faction thread. It is here that the different factions and races of Aeos may be delved into with greater detail. Anyone wishing to go into moe detail about a race or faction should say so in the OOC thread. Please note you do not have to use the outline below.

Suggested Outline For Nations:

Code: Select all: Name of the Nation:Races: Culture: Religion: Economy: Diplomatic Relations: History: Military:

Suggested Outline for Races:

Code: Select all: Name:Life Expectancy: Physical Characteristics/Appearance: Magical Ability: Culture: Religion: History:

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Friday, October 18, 2013

Kansas ex-attorney general license suspended over abortion case conduct

By Kevin Murphy

(Reuters) - The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday indefinitely suspended the law license of former state Attorney General Phill Kline for violating 11 rules of professional conduct in connection with his prosecution of abortion providers.

In a 154-page report, the seven-member court unanimously found that Kline failed to recognize the line between "overzealous advocacy" and operating within the limits of the law and his professional obligations.

"The violations we have found are significant and numerous, and Kline's inability or refusal to acknowledge or address their significance is particularly troubling in light of his service as the chief prosecuting attorney for this state and its most populous county," the court wrote.

Kline, 53, will have to wait three years to re-apply for his license.

A Republican, Kline was attorney general from 2003 to 2007. He later worked as a district attorney in Johnson County, Kansas, and is now a law professor at Liberty University in Virginia. He did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

An outspoken foe of abortion, Kline had clashed with abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood for years on whether they were abiding by all abortion laws. He prosecuted cases involving Planned Parenthood and George Tiller, a Wichita-based doctor who provided abortions before being murdered in 2009.

Two years ago, the Kansas Board of Discipline for Attorneys recommended a suspension of Kline's license indefinitely for "ethical misconduct."

In upholding the board's decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Kline committed professional misconduct when he ordered his attorney general office staff to attach sealed documents to a public brief, and when he later directed staff to file a pleading with the court that contained misleading information. The court also found that, as district attorney, Kline gave false court testimony about patient medical records his office obtained in a criminal probe of abortion providers.

In a hearing before the Supreme Court, the state's disciplinary administrator requested that Kline be disbarred, but the Supreme Court said Kline's actions failed to reach the "intent" threshold that would merit disbarment.

"We conclude indefinite suspension is the appropriate discipline," the court stated, specifying three reasons: . "Kline's selfish motive; his pattern of misconduct; and his refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of any of his misconduct."

Kline has insisted he committed no violations. He had already lost his license for not paying an annual registration fee, but he said in an interview after the Board of Discipline ruling that a suspension could hurt his ability to teach or practice law anywhere.

At the time, he said in a news release that his mistake was his willingness to investigate powerful people no matter where the evidence would lead.

Five of the seven Supreme Court justices who made the ruling Friday were appointed to take the place of five members who recused themselves.

(Reporting By Kevin Murphy; Editing by Greg McCune and Gunna Dickson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kansas-ex-attorney-general-license-suspended-over-abortion-172756486--finance.html
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Google stock crosses $1,000 mark after earnings

The Chrome logo is displayed at a Google event, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013 in New York. Google is introducing a $279 laptop that runs its Internet-centric Chrome operating system, borrowing many of the high-end features found in models that cost $1,000 or more. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

NEW YORK (AP) — Google's stock surpassed the $1,000 mark for the first time, helped by strong third-quarter results.

Shortly after the markets opened Friday, Google Inc. shares jumped 14 percent to $1,015.46 and closed a day heavy trading at $1,011.41. The gains marked Google's biggest one-day jump in more than five years.

The stock had never been higher than $928 in regular market trading since Google went public at $85 per share nine years ago.

Late Thursday, Google reported a 36 percent jump in third-quarter net income that beat Wall Street's predictions. The numbers showed that while the company's average ad prices continue to decline, they're being offset by a larger number of people clicking on ads.

Over the years, Google has expanded its reach far beyond the powerful search engine that made it famous. It now includes the video sharing site YouTube, along with the Android operating system that runs on close to 1 billion smartphones and tablets. The company ranks as the No. 1 digital ad company by revenue, leaving rivals such as Yahoo Inc. and Facebook Inc. far behind.

Google's stock has climbed steadily in the last five years, more than doubling in value. But the stock slipped slightly in recent months, while the overall market has risen, amid worries about deteriorating ad prices.

Google's average ad price has fallen from the prior year in each of the last eight quarters, primarily because advertisers aren't paying as much for mobile ads because the screens on smartphones and tablet computers are smaller than those on laptop and desktop computers.

As more people rely on mobile devices to connect to Google's search engine and other services, the trend is driving down the company's average ad price, or "cost per click."

But the number of so-called "paid clicks" on Google's ads helped offset the lower prices in the third quarter. The clicking volume increased 26 percent from last year, an indication that Google's data analysis is doing a good job matching ads with the interests of its services' users.

Friday's stock surge takes Google's market capitalization to about $333 billion, which still pales in comparison to that of technology industry rival Apple Inc. The iPhone and iPad maker ranks No. 1 in the world with a market capitalization of $462 billion.

It's unlikely that Google shares will stay above $1,000 for very long. The Mountain View, Calif., company plans to issue a new class of stock that will likely cut the value of the shares in half, though its market capitalization will be unaffected.

___

AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in san Francisco contributed to this report.

___

Follow Bree Fowler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APBreeFowler

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Shutdown Nightmare's Over, Is Capitol Hill Still Dreaming?

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Sony's Driveclub becomes second PS4 launch title to be delayed in a week

Sony has just announced that Driveclub, one of its original launch titles for the PlayStation 4, is running behind schedule and will miss the big day. The magnitude of this loss will obviously depend on how much your personal PS4 unboxing fantasy involved loading up a team-based, arcade-style ...

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Green Man Gaming, Mind Candy make Future Fifty list | VG247

Thu, Oct 17, 2013 | 23:34 BST

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Why Exercise When You Can Buy a $50 Fake-Muscle T-Shirt?

Fifty bucks might sound expensive for an undershirt, but not when it means you can cancel your gym membership, stop buying gallons of protein powder, and sell all of your home gym equipment. Because not only does the Funkybod t-shirt promise to camouflage manboobs, it also creates the illusion you've got a muscular toned physique, no matter how frail you might be in real life.

Belzer bets 'SVU' retirement isn't end of Munch

Anna Chan
TODAY

11 hours ago

NBC

Munch (Richard Belzer, left) was roasted by the SVU squad, including ex-partner Fin (Ice-T) and Cragen (Dann Florek).

Richard Belzer's beloved Sgt. John Munch got the proper goodbye he deserved on Wednesday's episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." After handing in his papers last week, the sarcastic investigator was roasted by his colleagues at a retirement party.

Though he's bidding farewell to the squad, it may not be the end of the character.

"After 21 years, smart money is on Munch not totally disappearing from the face of the Earth!" Belzer teased to TODAY. "If Sherlock Holmes can survive the Reichenbach Falls, then surely we have not seen the last of Det. Sgt. Munch!"

NBC told TODAY last week that there could be opportunities for Munch to return and work with the "SVU" detectives in the future, though there are no plans in place yet. But Wednesday night, the long-running drama explained just how the show's sole source of humor might return.

At the sergeant's farewell party, Capt. Cragen (Dann Florek) shared the good news: "SVU's loss is the DA's loss." In other words, Munch is headed to the district attorney's office to be a special investigator.

But even if his return to "SVU" isn't set in stone (for now), the conspiracy theorist is a survivor when it comes to television. Belzer's character was first introduced two decades ago on "Homicide: Life on the Street." He's since made appearances on two other shows from the "Law & Order" franchise, as well as on "30 Rock," "Sesame Street," "The X-Files" and more. (Who's to say he won't pop up on another program?)

As for Munch bidding his team adios after more than 14 years together, Belzer said it was "more emotional than I could ever imagine."

The episode kicked off with his party, but ended on a quiet, touching note that paid tribute to Munch's work as a detective: As he was at his desk, the show flashed back to a black-and-white scene of the character as a younger investigator. The phone rang, and back in the present day, Munch answered, "Homicide."

"Warren Leight and Julie Martin wrote a respectful, witty and poignant script that gave Munch a sweetly sad goodbye," Belzer told us of his last episode as a regular. "As an actor, I was so remarkably privileged to work with the incomparable Mariska Hargitay — beyond a sister to me; the great Chris Meloni; best partner in the world, Ice-T; Dann Florek, the total pro; my brother from another mother, Dean 'Mayhem' Winters; the always classy Danny Pino; my favorite Southern belle, Kelli Giddish; the elegant Raul Esparza.

"I am truly blessed to have been in the company of so many great people for such a long time."

As Cragen said, "You had one hell of a run, Sgt. Munch."

"Law & Order: SVU" airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/richard-belzer-bets-munchs-time-wont-end-law-order-svu-8C11401319
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Michael Bay Attacked on 'Transformers 4' Set in Hong Kong (Report)

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Michael Bay

Michael Bay was injured on Thursday in an attack that took place on the set of Transformers 4 in Hong Kong.

Two local men, reportedly brothers, approached the director during the shooting of the film in a busy downtown area of Hong Kong Island. The younger brother demanded $100,000 ($12,900) from Bay, according to a police statement given to Reuters.

PHOTOS: Inside Hollywood's Surprise Trip to 'China's Oscars'

An argument then ensued, and the older brother walked up and struck Bay in the face, according to the report. The man then attempted to fight three police officers who sought to intervene.

Both brothers were arrested on suspicion of blackmail and assault.

Bay is said to have sustained injuries to his face, but nothing serious enough to warrant a hospital visit. He resumed shooting after the incident.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/international/~3/yjQx96CwxdA/story01.htm
Tags: monday night football Sean Sasser

Alone Among The Stars, For Now

Even if we find other life out there, in the depths of space, life here will still be a rare gem that must be worshipped and preserved at all costs.

ESO

Even if we find other life out there, in the depths of space, life here will still be a rare gem that must be worshipped and preserved at all costs.

ESO

Our solar system is almost 5 billion years old (4.6, really) and we haven't yet had any indication that there are other forms of life in the cosmos, especially intelligent ones.

That's the perspective of a new book by science journalist Lee Billings titled Five Billion Years of Solitude, a nod to the Gabriel García Márquez masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. Billings constructs a moving tale of our collective yearning to find companionship in the vastness of space, using interviews with a few of the key players in the search for intelligent life (such as SETI's Frank Drake) and exoplanet hunting (such as MIT's Sara Seager, who just received a MacArthur award) as a means to humanize the story.

If we are alone, or if life is rare, we must be the protectors of life and take charge to preserve it at all costs, possibly spreading it to other planetary platforms. If nothing else, we know our sun will end its existence in under 5 billion years and that it will take Earth and life here with it. Assuming we, or our distant descendants, will still be here then, perhaps more machine than flesh, the only way to preserve our legacy is to go elsewhere. There is thus a firm deadline for leaving, even if it sits on the far horizon.

As I wrote in A Tear at the Edge of Creation, the study of life on Earth implies that we are unique. There are no other humans out there, even if there may be life. The history of life on a planet mirrors the history of the planet. This means that the particulars, the specific cataclysmic events that happened over the eons, the shuffling of the atmospheric composition, the shifting of the magnetic field, the nature of the planet's moons (or moon), all these are key factors on how life would evolve. Life here had to jump over many hoops to get to where it is today, hoops that are far from being trivial either biochemically or biologically.

This means that in spite of our efforts to find life elsewhere (and we will find it only if we look), life here becomes something of a rare gem that must be worshipped and preserved at all costs. Whatever lies out there, we must focus our efforts in preserving what we have here. We live on a magic planet. Even if there may be other magic planets in the vastness of space, for us everything starts with this one. Let us not forget this simple lesson as we look up in search of companionship.

You can keep up with more of what Marcelo is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/10/15/234685657/alone-among-the-stars-for-now?ft=1&f=1026
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This Woz-Approved 4-in-1 Lens Turns iPhones into DSLRs

There's only so much that Instagram filters can do. For everything else, there's the Olloclip 4-in-1 iPhone lens. This slick little clip-on accessory—the next iteration of Steve Wozniak's daily carry—adds four powerful lens effects to your iPhone's camera.

Everybody Probably Has These Dumb Pictures on Their Phone

The best camera is the one you have with you, they say. What they don't tell you is that if that camera is your phone, it also doubles as the worst camera because of all the stupid pictures you have saved and forgot about in your camera roll.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Engadget HD Podcast 371 - 10.15.13

BBC news from across the pond makes its way into the discussion this week and Ben finds out that they play more than just The Killers over there. The Twitter and Comcast deal gets hashed out, Jimmy Fallon's viral "hashtag" vid makes the rounds and we find out that last week's The Walking Dead episode was seen by quite a few people. So head on past the break to catch this week's streaming episode of Engadget's HD Podcast, before Richard disappears down the Pacific Rim rabbit hole.

Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh, Richard Lawler

Producer: Jon Turi

Hear the podcast:

04:19 - Panasonic reportedly ending plasma TV production by end of March 2014
11:20 - WSJ: Netflix could come to US cable boxes soon, Comcast and Suddenlink in talks
19:42 - Netflix recruits creators of 'Damages' to premiere a psychological thriller original series
21:07 - Broadcasters take their case against Aereo to the Supreme Court
23:40 - Aereo pushes back Android TV streaming app launch to October 22nd
24:19 - Three more Android devices now support BBC iPlayer app's offline viewing
26:11 - BBC releases rediscovered Doctor Who episodes as iTunes exclusives
28:00 - BBC Playlister web app launches today as an open beta
29:21 - Sky Movies comes to BT TV, hell braces itself for cold snap
30:34 - Google TV v4 close to release, hacked 'Android TV' ROM is running in the wild
34:34 - Comcast's Xfinity video on-demand, Streampix apps on Android updated with HD video
35:59 - Avegant's head-mounted virtual retinal display offers brilliant definition, we go hands-on
39:59 - Twitter's new Comcast deal could have you watching TV from tweets
44:04 - Google search starts listing TV episodes and air dates in results
45:24 - Must See HDTV (October 14th - 20th)

Get the podcast:

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[RSS - AAC] Enhanced feed, subscribe to this with iTunes.
[RSS - MP3] Add the Engadget HD Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator
[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace

LISTEN (MP3)
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/16/engadget-hd-podcast-371/?ncid=rss_truncated
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Government shutdown, debt limit deal close: But what if it falls through? (cbsnews)

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| Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/334186671?client_source=feed&format=rss
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PepsiCo posts profit as U.S. sodas continue to decline

By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

(Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc reported higher quarterly earnings on Wednesday due to its successful snacks business and large global reach, which helped compensate for sustained declines in the U.S. soda market.

Speaking to analysts on Tuesday, CEO Indra Nooyi said carbonated beverages now make up about 40 percent of Pepsi's North American drinks business, down from more than 50 percent a decade ago, due to a "fundamental shift" in consumer preferences.

The soda category is declining about 3 percent a year overall as consumers are demanding healthier and more natural-seeming options, she said.

"In the last six to nine months, there has been an accelerated decline in diet drinks as people say they don't even want artificial sweeteners. The diet slowdown has been a little more rapid than we expected," Nooyi said.

For PepsiCo to keep a grip on soda, "it's important in the next two to three years we come up with" innovations such as a new, more natural, low-calorie sweetener.

Competitor Coca-Cola said on Monday that its North American sales volume increased 2 percent overall in the last quarter, largely because of its successful non-soda offerings.

PepsiCo has managed to weather bumps in the soda market due to its wide array of snacks and beverages, which include Frito-Lay chips and Tropicana juices.

Pepsi's net income was $1.91 billion, or $1.23 per share, in the third quarter, up less than 1 percent from $1.90 billion, or $1.21 per share a year earlier.

Excluding items, earnings were $1.24 per share. On that basis, analysts were expecting $1.17, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

PepsiCo's shares were up almost 1.6 percent at $81.89 in early trading.

TO SPIN OFF OR NOT

PepsiCo has been under pressure from activist shareholder Nelson Peltz since July, when he said publicly that the company should buy Oreo cookie-maker Mondelez International and split off its soft-drink business from the rest of the company.

In an interview on CNBC on Tuesday morning, investor Warren Buffet, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc is a major Coca-Cola shareholder, defended PepsiCo's business model, saying that the snacks business "is a terrific business, and the other (drinks) is a perfectly good business, and why break them up?"

"I believe in running the company for shareholders that are going to stay, rather than the ones that are going to leave and if you are going to stay as a shareholder I think you like the idea of them having two good businesses," Buffet said.

Overall sales volume rose 3 percent for the food business and 1 percent on the beverage side. Volume tracks the amount of product sold.

Volume in the American food business grew 3 percent. In Latin America and Europe, it also increased 3 percent. In Asia, the Middle East and Europe, snacks gained 4 percent, led by double-digit growth in China, Pakistan and Turkey.

On the drinks side, volume declined 4 percent in the Americas and 1 percent in Europe, and rose 7 percent in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Pepsico's net revenue rose 1.5 percent to $16.91 billion. Johnston told analysts that foreign exchange rates contributed to a 1 percent drag on revenue and the refranchising of its business in Vietnam caused them to lose an additional 0.5 percent in the quarter.

Pepsi repeated its outlook for 2013, which calls for earnings growth of 7 percent, and said it was on track to deliver its planned $900 million in productivity savings during 2013 to reach $3 billion in savings between 2012 and 2014.

(Reporting by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Maureen Bavdek)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pepsico-reports-higher-profit-despite-economic-pressures-113554418--sector.html
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Lavabit briefly allowing users to recover their data

Former users of the Lavabit encrypted email service that was shut down in August are being temporarily allowed to change their passwords and download copies of their data.

Lavabit, an email service founded in 2004, was abruptly shut down following pressure from the U.S. government to hand over user communications and the encryption keys used to secure them.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Meet Lavabit's founder: An American hero hiding in plain sight. | Learn how to protect your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and Security Central newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

As a first step in the newly announced data recovery process, users will be allowed to change their account passwords during a 72-hour period that started Monday at 7 p.m. U.S. Central Time.

Users can change their passwords by accessing https://liberty.lavabit.com, a website that has a new SSL key, Lavabit's founder and owner Ladar Levison said Monday in a statement posted on a Rally.org page used to receive donations for the Lavabit defense fund.

"Following the 72 hour period, Thursday, October 17th, the website will then allow users to access email archives and their personal account data so that it may be preserved by the user," Levison said.

When the Lavabit shutdown was originally announced, Levison was vague about the reasons that prompted his decision, saying only that he was forced to choose between suspending operations or becoming "complicit in crimes against the American people."

He claimed at the time that he couldn't disclose the events that led to the decision because of laws passed by the U.S. Congress that made it illegal to do so.

However, at the beginning of October, after a number of redacted court orders and other documents became public, Levison was able to reveal that his decision came after the federal government, as part of an investigation into several Lavabit user accounts, requested "unfettered access to all user communications and a copy of the Lavabit encryption keys used to secure web, instant message and email traffic."

It's not clear what accounts the government was investigating, but former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked documents revealing the agency's broad electronic surveillance programs, reportedly used a Lavabit email address on at least one occasion.

"I simply couldn't operate Lavabit while my lawyers appealed the demand for our [Lavabit's] encryption keys without the government agreeing to provide the transparency demanded by my conscience," Levison said in October. "The ethical implications ultimately prompted my decision to suspend the [Lavabit] service."

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/lavabit-briefly-allowing-users-recover-their-data-228760?source=rss_applications
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Backup starts to scale out along with storage, data growth

Backup and recovery is starting to get some of the same capabilities as primary storage systems to handle the rising floods of data with less management overhead.

On Tuesday, at Storage Networking World, veteran data protection vendor Sepaton is announcing a backup and recovery platform that's designed to grow easily as an organization accumulates data. Sepaton's introduction of its VirtuoSO appliance and the underlying Optiscale architecture comes just days after tape specialist Spectra Logic announced its BlackPearl appliance to integrate web and cloud data into vast and growing tape libraries.

[ Also on InfoWorld: 5 storage servers battle for business; find out which one prevails in Test Center's NAS shoot-out. | Doing storage virtualization right is not so simple. InfoWorld's expert contributors show you how to get it right in this "Storage Virtualization Deep Dive" PDF guide. ]

While primary storage technology has matured to the point where many systems can automatically grow to accommodate more data, backup and recovery is still mostly built around products that force IT administrators to reconfigure their systems every time they add a new hardware unit, analysts say.

That threatens to become a bottleneck in a world where, according to research company IDC, enterprises are expanding their storage capacity by more than 30 percent every year to keep up with data growth. What's important enough to store is usually considered worth backing up in some form, so data protection challenges are escalating along with storage woes.

VirtuoSO can scale up from one to four nodes, treating all the data within as a single pool with a 1-petabyte capacity. It's the company's first entry into NAS (network-attached storage) data protection and is designed to work with more data types than its earlier products. Most importantly, it supports the widely used CIFS (Common Internet File System) and NFS (Network File System) protocols. Sepaton developed the new platform to back up growing amounts of file-based data stored in NAS systems instead of SANs (storage area networks).

Sepaton's new software and appliances are especially good news for large enterprises that have huge volumes of data, more than they can back up to any one traditional appliance, Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Jason Buffington said.

Coming from a tape storage background, Sepaton so far has made most enterprise backup software treat its systems as virtual tape libraries, Buffington said. With CIFS and NFS, VirtuoSO will be able to take in data more easily from third-party backup applications. Plus, it will give enterprises more granular access to their backed-up files, Buffington said.

What may make VirtuoSO and OptiScale stand out most is hybrid deduplication. Sepaton historically has used post-processing deduplication, finding and eliminating duplicate bits of data after storing the data whole. It's now adding in-line deduplication, which runs while a backup system is ingesting data.

Enterprises can apply either or both of these methods to a given type of data. To do this, they can use automation software from Sepaton or set their own policies, including ones that will bypass deduplication for data types that don't need it. In addition, deduplication is applied to the data on all nodes rather than just what's on a single node, leading to greater storage efficiency, Sepaton says.

Hybrid deduplication gives users more flexibility and in some cases lets them deduplicate twice, making their backups even more compact, ESG's Buffington said.

Sepaton's roadmap for VirtuoSO and Optiscale calls for eventual scaling to as many as 16 nodes, plus support for more storage protocols, replication capabilities and other features.

The VirtuoSO platform, now in limited release and set for general availability in the first quarter of next year, is offered as a full appliance with storage included or as a gateway that can be attached to existing Hitachi Data Systems storage. Prices for the full appliance start at US$344,500.

Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/storage/backup-starts-scale-out-along-storage-data-growth-228754
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Intel delays Broadwell chips to early 2014 due to production yield problems

We hope you weren't dead set on buying devices using Intel's Broadwell processors, as the company has delayed production of the 14-nanometer CPU line to early 2014. Fixes for early manufacturing defects didn't work as well as expected, CEO Brian Krzanich says, limiting Intel's ability to produce ...