Offices for the Taking

In Siding With Leaders, Freshman Found a Voice

Mrs. Ellmers, 47, a nurse who was elected to Congress in 2010 with zero political experience, had been given the task of helping to sell the bill championed by Speaker John A. Boehner to raise the debt ceiling, a job usually left to the leaders of her party. She took a deep breath and plunged into an explanation of how the task of lawmaking compared to saving a patient near death.

?America is in a code,? she said, urging people to rally behind Mr. Boehner. ?It?s crisis time, and it ain?t pretty.?

In a hospital, she said, ?there were people in the room that you may not have even liked, but you were all working together to save the patient.?

?And in the end you were high-fiving, hugging, crying and laughing,? she said.

Mrs. Ellmers?s willingness to promote Mr. Boehner?s agenda places her in direct contrast to some of her freshman colleagues, who prefer to repair to Fox News to verbally poke the Republican leadership in the eye.

Her loyalty, relentless cheer and folksy locution ? a news conference complement to the laconic, cigarette-tinged pronouncements of Mr. Boehner ? have combined to make her one of the Republican leadership?s greatest freshman allies, and a rising star in the conference she once derided from her perch at Tea Party rallies back home.

There is Mrs. Ellmers giving the Republicans? weekly radio address. There she is on CNN or ?Fox and Friends,? explaining why Mr. Boehner?s plan to deal with the debt ceiling ? one that many of her classmates protested ? was the right path. There she is writing op-ed articles and pushing the message of the leaders, rather than of the elected president of the freshman class.

Her willingness to join the leadership, rather than beat up on it, is something that Tea Party groups in her state have begun to notice. Mrs. Ellmers understands their chagrin because she has been there.

?There is just a lot of mistrust Americans have for ?those people in Washington,? ? she said, adding with a laugh, ?and now I am one of those people in Washington.?

Mrs. Ellmers said that before she arrived here, she believed Mr. Boehner and his cohorts were not standing up to Democrats. ?When I got here I realized that wasn?t the case at all,? she said. ?I was told he wasn?t conservative. He is conservative. And that?s what I tell other people in our discussion.?

For the most part, she has voted for bills supported by the House Republican leadership, parting ways most notably on Libya, where she voted against eliminating money for that operation.

In an e-mail, Mr. Boehner said: ?Renee has made quite an impact in our conference and in her freshman class because she speaks her mind and doesn?t get bogged down in the political games that often grip Washington.  I am proud of the work she has done and know that because of her conservative, common-sense values, she will continue to play a leadership role.?

Mrs. Ellmers?s support for the leadership is even more noteworthy since she was all but abandoned by her party during her 2010 campaign against Bob Etheridge, a seven-term Democratic incumbent. After a recount, she was certified as the winner by 1,484 votes out of almost 190,000 ballots cast.

In her months on Capitol Hill, Mrs. Ellmers has revised her notion that Washington was populated by snakes in suits. ?I think that folks back home see those that are here in Washington as more characters than actual individuals with families and mortgage payments,? she said. ?I wasn?t expecting people to be as down to earth as they are. We?re not disconnected. We really understand what Americans are going through.?

Further, said Mrs. Ellmers, who is married with a son, 16, she has come to respect the actual work. ?I think what they also don?t see is how hard we all work here,? she said.

?It never ends. Myself, I start getting up at 5:30 in the morning, and I am usually not ending the day till 11, 11:30 at night. I do think that?s one of the things that folks back home certainly don?t have the opportunity to see, how hard we work here, especially when it seems like we aren?t getting anything done here.?

During the current recess, Mrs. Ellmers is trying to persuade her constituents in central North Carolina that she has been right to stand with the Republican leadership and that she and her party are right in their fiscal vision for the nation.

For Democrats in North Carolina, who are already seeing their Congressional districts carved up to be more favorable to Republicans, there is a hope that Mrs. Ellmers?s associations with Mr. Boehner and Republican policies will make her vulnerable in the 2012 campaign.

?The Tea Party has been overreaching in this state,? said David Parker, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party. ?A lot of programs that were very popular programs have been slashed. At the end of the day, I think she gets painted with the same brush. I think we are looking at some interesting ebbs and flows, and I believe she?ll be swept back out on the street.?

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fd0c7835a7719e8c4a093711f1b354cf

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Offices for the Taking

Apple offers gift cards for old hardware, even PCs

Apple has updated their Reuse and Recycling Program to accept old iPhones, iPads, Macs and even PCs in exchange for a gift card. Consumers can also discard their old displays or computers for recycling free of charge, even if you don?t plan to replace them with an Apple product.

Under the new program, users can send their unused systems to Apple?s environmental partner PowerOn, who determines if they qualify for reuse. If so, Apple will stamp a market value on the item and issue you a gift card that's redeemable at any Apple retail or online store.

If your device doesn?t qualify, Cupertino will recycle it for you at no charge. Only the items listed above fall under consideration for a gift card.

If you just want to get rid of any unwanted computer or monitor, regardless of brand, Apple can help with this as well. Working with WeRecycle, users can call and get a free shipping label to dispose of qualifying items. Finally, you can bring old Mac batteries to any Apple store for free disposal.

Apple has offered a recycling program since 2003, including an iPod recycling program that launched in 2005 and provides a 10 percent discount toward the purchase of a new iPod.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/45023-apple-offers-gift-cards-for-old-hardware-even-pcs.html

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News360 now uses your personal data to ?matchmake? you with news stories

News360 is one of a number of apps that aim to redefine the way we consume online news. Today marks the launch of an improved version of the app which sees it analyze data from your accounts on a number of other services to offer you an even more tailored experience.

As we noted when we covered the launch of its iPad app earlier this year, News360 uses intelligent linking to automatically give you the background to news stories across a wide range of categories, from world news to tech, crime and sports.

Now, the newly updated version for iPad and Android Honeycomb tablets allows you to hook up your Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and Google Reader accounts to get a better idea of who you are and what you?re interested in.

The service takes into account your ?Likes?, bookmarks, subscriptions, and the items you share to gain a deeper understanding of your interests. Simultaneously, it ?matchmakes? you with suitable news, taking into account the quality of the writing, tone, subject, source, author and more.

This, so the theory goes, should mean you get news that interests you, selected from over 5000 sources, every time you go to the ?My Interests? section.

Analyzing you accounts takes around one minute, after which you get a range of automated categories. For me, for example, it chose things like ?Internet?, ?Software?, ?Gadgets? and ?Media? ? all bang on. The only category it went wrong on was sport ? I?m really not a fan. Beyond categories, it picks out subjects it thinks you?ll like too. So, in the Internet category, it picked subjects like Google, Facebook and Foursquare, for example. All its automated selections can be manually customized too ? I ditched the sport.

Meanwhile, News360 is now available on the Web for the first time, featuring the same interest graph analysis as the tablet versions. It?s a solid reproduction of the app, and synchronizes with your settings from the handheld ones, in a clear play to make this your main source of news, wherever you are.

Whether you make it your go-to news aggregator or not is totally down to personal choice. Others may prefer the clean minimalism of Google News, for example, or the far more socially influenced selections of Flipboard. When we covered News360 last, I said that I got the feeling that it will be a much more enticing proposition in a few months? time ? it seems that prediction has come true.

The updated News360 tablet apps are available today, as is the Web app. The versions for iPhone, Android smartphones, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry are set to be updated to include the new features soon.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/08/10/news360-now-uses-your-personal-data-to-matchmake-you-with-news-stories/

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News360 now uses your personal data to ?matchmake? you with news stories

News360 is one of a number of apps that aim to redefine the way we consume online news. Today marks the launch of an improved version of the app which sees it analyze data from your accounts on a number of other services to offer you an even more tailored experience.

As we noted when we covered the launch of its iPad app earlier this year, News360 uses intelligent linking to automatically give you the background to news stories across a wide range of categories, from world news to tech, crime and sports.

Now, the newly updated version for iPad and Android Honeycomb tablets allows you to hook up your Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and Google Reader accounts to get a better idea of who you are and what you?re interested in.

The service takes into account your ?Likes?, bookmarks, subscriptions, and the items you share to gain a deeper understanding of your interests. Simultaneously, it ?matchmakes? you with suitable news, taking into account the quality of the writing, tone, subject, source, author and more.

This, so the theory goes, should mean you get news that interests you, selected from over 5000 sources, every time you go to the ?My Interests? section.

Analyzing you accounts takes around one minute, after which you get a range of automated categories. For me, for example, it chose things like ?Internet?, ?Software?, ?Gadgets? and ?Media? ? all bang on. The only category it went wrong on was sport ? I?m really not a fan. Beyond categories, it picks out subjects it thinks you?ll like too. So, in the Internet category, it picked subjects like Google, Facebook and Foursquare, for example. All its automated selections can be manually customized too ? I ditched the sport.

Meanwhile, News360 is now available on the Web for the first time, featuring the same interest graph analysis as the tablet versions. It?s a solid reproduction of the app, and synchronizes with your settings from the handheld ones, in a clear play to make this your main source of news, wherever you are.

Whether you make it your go-to news aggregator or not is totally down to personal choice. Others may prefer the clean minimalism of Google News, for example, or the far more socially influenced selections of Flipboard. When we covered News360 last, I said that I got the feeling that it will be a much more enticing proposition in a few months? time ? it seems that prediction has come true.

The updated News360 tablet apps are available today, as is the Web app. The versions for iPhone, Android smartphones, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry are set to be updated to include the new features soon.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/08/10/news360-now-uses-your-personal-data-to-matchmake-you-with-news-stories/

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Acer prepares MacBook Air rival, $769 Aspire 3951

According to some leaked information, Acer plans to launch a new MacBook Air rival that follows Intel's Ultrabook guidelines. Due in October, the Aspire 3951 will feature 13.3-inch (presumably 1366x768) display, a second-generation Intel Core series processor (no specific chips are mentioned), and your choice of a 160GB flash storage or 250GB to 500GB of mechanical storage. There's also word of Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, and a card reader, but no Thunderbolt.

The Aspire 3951 will last for about six hours per charge, have a 30-day standby, and will recover from sleep in as little as 1.7 seconds. We believe the speedy resume time will be limited to SSD-equipped models, but that isn't confirmed. Based on the latest information from Vietnamese tech site Sohoa, the aluminum-clad machine weighs 3.09lbs (1.4kg) and measures 0.51in (13mm) thick. Acer is expected to undercut Apple with pricing spanning from $769 to $961.

By comparison, the 13.3-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,299 with a 1440x900 display, a 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 with HD Graphics 3000 (no discrete graphics), 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, a 128GB SSD, two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card slot, a Thunderbolt port, Bluetooth 4.0, and a "FaceTime" camera. The system fetches up to seven hours of runtime alongside a 30-day standby, weighs 2.96lbs (1.35kg) and measures 0.68in (1.7cm) at its thickest point.

Ultrabooks have earned their share of headlines lately. Last month DigiTimes reported that Intel is paying first-tier notebook vendors to develop Ultrabooks. Two weeks ago, we heard that some partners are struggling to meet the sub-$1,000 target price, including Asus with its upcoming UX21, forcing them to downgrade components. Meanwhile, Acer founder Stand Shih denounced tablets and Ultrabooks as short-term fads -- albeit fads that Acer hopes to make bank on.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/45017-acer-prepares-macbook-air-rival-769-aspire-3951.html

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Gaming 30 ? Randomly Random

Gaming 30 ? Randomly Random

Posted on 31st Jul 2011 at 11:23 by Podcast with 18 comments

Joe is joined by Paul and Clive to muse about whether Battlefield 3 will really be better than Modern Warfare 3. The hype indicates that the former will be the better game, but Joe thinks they will be much of a muchness.

He?s also changed his mind on Rage, after being allowed to play the first three hours of the game and loving every minute. Previously, Rage has not received much praise, but it apparently plays brilliantly. Listen in to find out why.

We then quickly segue to the news that we could soon be playing one of the most highly anticipated games of the year: Deus Ex: Human Revolution is ready to ship. Yay!

We also grapple with the subject matter that was raised in the game's latest trailer (see the link above), and also discuss the confusing matter of the book of the game. The book is a prequel to Human Revolution, which is itself a follow-up prequel to the sequel of the original. Or something like that.


We also discuss whether DLC is necessarily a bad feature, and whether there?s any harm in long-term plans for a game that incorporates DLC, expansion packs or episodic updates. Is DLC evil and lazy, or is it just a bit of extra fun for a small fee?

We also answer a piece of reader-mail ? Mathew Whinney was so impressed with the visuals of Final Fantasy 13 on the PS3 that he asked why we don?t see the same level of graphical awesomeness on the PC. We try our best to answer this without subverting this gaming podcast into a hardware one. To be honest, we're not sure we succeeded.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/Rd81-KJ6BRo/

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Perry Signals Intent to Enter Race, Sending a Jolt to G.O.P. Candidates

Mr. Perry has flirted with the notion of running for months, but his decision comes as the Republican field tries to respond to a downgrade in the nation?s credit rating, a collapse in the financial markets and a sustained period of high unemployment. These troubles have created an opening for his candidacy.

?There is still a thirst for another voice to come in,? said Craig Schoenfeld, an Iowa Republican who is leading a group here called Americans for Perry, which has been signing up supporters for the governor. ?They are looking for the kind of leadership he has shown in Texas, while the country has gone the other direction.?

While Mr. Perry will stop short of making an announcement this weekend, aides said, he is recruiting campaign workers in critical states, securing fund-raising commitments and preparing to be fully engaged in the race by early next month, when Republicans meet for three debates. Advisers said he had moved beyond the trial-balloon stage of gauging support to executing a strategy.

The first test of his impact on the race could come as soon as Saturday, when candidates descend on Ames for the Iowa Straw Poll, a test of organizational strength. His name will not be on the ballot, but Americans for Perry, the independent group financed by several friends and political associates, has been urging supporters to cast a write-in ballot for him. That effort could erode support from his rivals.

In a week when Republican candidates had hoped to introduce themselves to voters through the rituals of the Iowa State Fair, featuring the famed butter cow and old-time speeches on the political soapbox, the spotlight of the race was suddenly yanked south. The rollout of Mr. Perry?s prospective presidential bid threw a volatile new element into the contest.

The intentions of Mr. Perry, which were the subject of considerable political chatter in Iowa and New Hampshire on Monday, were being carefully watched by the rest of the Republican field. The candidates, including Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney, traveled across both early-voting states, delivering forceful critiques of how President Obama has handled the latest stretch of bleak economic news.

Mr. Romney told voters in New Hampshire that the decision by Standard & Poor?s to downgrade the nation?s credit rating was the latest example of a failure of leadership in Washington. He said the president should take ultimate responsibility for the downgrade.

As they assess the Republican field, many voters seem to be more eager to hear about the candidates than listen to attacks on the president. At a town-hall-style meeting on Monday evening, when asked whether he could compete in all regions of the country, Mr. Romney declared, ?I?m going to do pretty darn well in Dixie.?

?You know there was a poll, I guess it was about a month ago, that was a little surprising,? Mr. Romney said, making a veiled reference to Mr. Perry. ?It had me as the only Republican candidate who in Texas could beat President Obama. I think I was ahead by eight points. No one else was ahead of him.?

At the same hour that the president spoke from the White House and tried to reassure Americans about the credit downgrade and the quavering economy, Mr. Perry inched closer to declaring his candidacy and Donald Trump threatened to re-enter the presidential race as an independent during an extended interview on CNN.

The commotion threatened to overshadow the rest of the Republican field.

Mr. Pawlenty, who said the future of his candidacy was dependent on a strong showing at the straw poll, said a culture of entertainment and celebrity had bled into the political arena. Over breakfast with reporters, he conceded that ?we are not ever going to be the cable TV, shooting star of the month.?

?At least for president, at least for the Oval Office,? Mr. Pawlenty said, ?I think the country is still going to put somebody in there who is experienced, seasoned, strong, thoughtful, with a record of results.?

When Mrs. Bachmann?s blue campaign bus rolled into the parking lot of the Cass County Fairgrounds in Atlantic, Iowa, on Monday, a modest crowd was on hand. She is seeking to turn the enthusiasm that has flared in the first two months of her candidacy into an organized force that can pass its first test of strength at the party?s straw poll.

?So much bad news this last week,? Mrs. Bachmann said. ?The problem is, we have not had someone in the White House who has had the backbone to make these tough decisions that have to be made.?

The crises back in Washington, along with the attack on a helicopter in Afghanistan that killed 30 Americans, cast a serious and somber tone over the presidential race. At each campaign stop, Mrs. Bachmann offered a prayer for the fallen and took a moment to identify Jon Tumilson, a member of the Navy Seal team, from Rockford, Iowa.

Michael Shear contributed reporting from Des Moines, and Ashley Parker from Concord, N.H.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c84f512f3ce8d1b672edecb5b904b785

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Over 200,000 BitTorrent users sued for file sharing in the U.S.

The number of copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States against BitTorrent users seems to be accelerating at a phenomenal pace. In January we reported that almost 100,000 users were being targeted using the pay-up-or-else scheme, but a new statistic backed up by a massive spreadsheet detailing the cases suggests that this number has grown to over 200,000 users of which a majority belongs to file sharers using the BitTorrent protocol and a minority of ed2k users.

Two high-profile cases that we've reviewed in the past year include the massive filings against people allegedly pirating movies 'The Expendables' and 'The Hurt Locker', which combined make up for at least 45,000 users.

The way "pay-up-or-else" works is that copyright holders get a court order to force ISP to reveal personal details of the account holders behind the IP addresses allegedly distributing copyrighted material. Then those individuals receive a letter threatening legal action, with the possibility of settling for a fixed amount that usually ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, thus avoiding the risk of paying larger sums in a full trial.

Though always a possibility, lawyers don't actually want to pursue legal action, they're just hoping to scare people into paying the settlement.

With the sheer increase of these lawsuits it's only fair to assume the scheme is paying dividends, at least for now. In what seemed to be a significant change of gears, an U.S. Judge ruled last May that an IP address is not adequate evidence to pin a crime on someone, a key piece of the scheme currently being used by the so-called "copyright trolls".

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/45020-over-200000-bittorrent-users-sued-for-file-sharing-in-the-us.html

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