Samsung announces the Series 7 all-in-one, its first desktop for the US market
October 1, 2011 No Comment
There must be something in the water: first Toshiba decides to give this all-in-one thing a whirl and a few months later, Samsung’s jumping on the bandwagon, too. The company just added a desktop to its Series 7 lineup, making it Sammy’s first all-in-one for the US market. It’ll be available in two configurations, but either way you’re in for a 23-inch, 250-nit display with 1080p resolution and support for two-finger gestures. Other specs include four USB 2.0 ports built into the base (along with one of the 3.0 persuasion), a 1TB 7,200RPM hard drive, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, Bluetooth 3.0 and dual four-watt speakers. And, depending on which config you choose, you’ll get either a 2.6GHz Core i3-2120T CPU and 6GB of RAM or a 2.7GHz Core i5-2390T processor with 8GB of memory. Sadly, both models cap the graphics off with Intel’s integrated option, which means this may or may not be the right choice for game-loving Samsung fans. Look for them on October 10th for $999 and $1,199, depending on the model. Oddly, the company isn’t issuing a press release until Monday (we’ll update this post when we see it) but for now, skip past the break for one extra pic. Continue reading Samsung announces the Series 7 all-in-one, its first desktop for the US market Filed under: Desktops Samsung announces the Series 7 all-in-one, its first desktop for the US market originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where the elderly woman is being held hostage Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where kidnappers are holding an elderly French woman hostage after snatching her from her beach home. A group of nine armed men attacked the property near Lamu in the middle of the night after arriving by speedboat. Staff and neighbours reported shots being fired and said the gunmen had burst into the house shouting: “Take us to Maman”. It is the second violent abduction of a foreigner in three weeks. In a similar attack on 11 September, gunman attacked a British couple in their 50s on holiday north of Lamu. The publishing executive David Tebbutt, from Bishop’s Stortford, was killed and his wife Judith is being held hostage, possibly in Somalia. The Kenyan tourism minister, Najib Balala, said the army, police and coastguards had located the boat where the French woman was being held and had surrounded it. “Two coastguard vessels have encircled the boat where there are armed men and a woman,” Balala told Reuters. The local police chief, Adoli Aggrey, added: “We have deployed a contingent in the region. The army is already there and a police helicopter is in the air.” Bernard Valero, a foreign affairs spokesman in Paris, said the foreign ministry was in “constant contact” with the Kenyan authorities. “Our ambassador and his team will do all they can to free our citizen who is known to our embassy and very well liked locally,” added Valero. Kenyan police said they were unable to establish whether the kidnappers were Somali pirates, a Shebab Islamic group of a local gang but added the “suspicious” boat they had surrounded was heading for Somalia. The woman, who has not been named, is retired and had lived in Kenya for 15 years, returning only occasionally to France to visit her family. She was well known in the area where she spent half the year at her home on the island of Manda just offshore from the village of Shela, in the Lamu archipelago near the Somali border, where numerous wealthy foreigners have second homes. Locals said she was elderly and used a wheelchair. Jeremiah Kiptoon, who works on Manda, said he was woken by gunfire and shouting. “It was just before three in the morning. We were all sleeping and were woken with a jump because there were shots fired. The dogs were barking and people were shouting,” he said. “I ran to the place where it was all happening, but by the time I arrived the woman was already gone. Her house is close to the beach. Everyone was staying there shocked. The staff told us that nine men arrived in a speedboat and had burst into the house with guns shouting: ‘Take us to Maman’.” Somali pirates have frequently seized crew from merchant ships in the coastal waters off the Horn of Africa, but in recent years have targeted private yachts, snatching westerners and demanding, often successfully, huge ransoms. David Tebbutt, 58, a publishing director at Faber & Faber, and his wife Judith, 57, were staying at the Kiwayu Safari Village, a luxury holiday resort of 18 thatched cottages along a mile of sheltered beach, less than 30 miles from the border between Kenya and Somalia, when they were attacked. It was unclear whether the killing and kidnapping was carried out by Islamic extremists or pirates. A Briton kidnapped in southern Somalia in 2008, the environmental researcher Murray Watson, is still missing and a French secret service agent has also been held in Somalia for more than two years. The British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler were snatched from their yacht in 2010 and held for 13 months. They were released after a ransom was paid. The Lamu archipelago is often included in package holidays to Kenya, together with game-viewing safaris in some of the country’s national parks. Tourism is a key foreign currency earner for Kenya, east Africa’s largest economy. The sector had only recently recovered from the violence that erupted after disputed 2007 polls scared tourists away. Somalia, which lies in the easternmost part of Africa, has been without a central government controlling the entire country since it plunged into civil war in 1991. Kenya Piracy at sea France Africa Europe Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where the elderly woman is being held hostage Kenyan coastguards are said to have surrounded a pirate boat where kidnappers are holding an elderly French woman hostage after snatching her from her beach home. A group of nine armed men attacked the property near Lamu in the middle of the night after arriving by speedboat. Staff and neighbours reported shots being fired and said the gunmen had burst into the house shouting: “Take us to Maman”. It is the second violent abduction of a foreigner in three weeks. In a similar attack on 11 September, gunman attacked a British couple in their 50s on holiday north of Lamu. The publishing executive David Tebbutt, from Bishop’s Stortford, was killed and his wife Judith is being held hostage, possibly in Somalia. The Kenyan tourism minister, Najib Balala, said the army, police and coastguards had located the boat where the French woman was being held and had surrounded it. “Two coastguard vessels have encircled the boat where there are armed men and a woman,” Balala told Reuters. The local police chief, Adoli Aggrey, added: “We have deployed a contingent in the region. The army is already there and a police helicopter is in the air.” Bernard Valero, a foreign affairs spokesman in Paris, said the foreign ministry was in “constant contact” with the Kenyan authorities. “Our ambassador and his team will do all they can to free our citizen who is known to our embassy and very well liked locally,” added Valero. Kenyan police said they were unable to establish whether the kidnappers were Somali pirates, a Shebab Islamic group of a local gang but added the “suspicious” boat they had surrounded was heading for Somalia. The woman, who has not been named, is retired and had lived in Kenya for 15 years, returning only occasionally to France to visit her family. She was well known in the area where she spent half the year at her home on the island of Manda just offshore from the village of Shela, in the Lamu archipelago near the Somali border, where numerous wealthy foreigners have second homes. Locals said she was elderly and used a wheelchair. Jeremiah Kiptoon, who works on Manda, said he was woken by gunfire and shouting. “It was just before three in the morning. We were all sleeping and were woken with a jump because there were shots fired. The dogs were barking and people were shouting,” he said. “I ran to the place where it was all happening, but by the time I arrived the woman was already gone. Her house is close to the beach. Everyone was staying there shocked. The staff told us that nine men arrived in a speedboat and had burst into the house with guns shouting: ‘Take us to Maman’.” Somali pirates have frequently seized crew from merchant ships in the coastal waters off the Horn of Africa, but in recent years have targeted private yachts, snatching westerners and demanding, often successfully, huge ransoms. David Tebbutt, 58, a publishing director at Faber & Faber, and his wife Judith, 57, were staying at the Kiwayu Safari Village, a luxury holiday resort of 18 thatched cottages along a mile of sheltered beach, less than 30 miles from the border between Kenya and Somalia, when they were attacked. It was unclear whether the killing and kidnapping was carried out by Islamic extremists or pirates. A Briton kidnapped in southern Somalia in 2008, the environmental researcher Murray Watson, is still missing and a French secret service agent has also been held in Somalia for more than two years. The British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler were snatched from their yacht in 2010 and held for 13 months. They were released after a ransom was paid. The Lamu archipelago is often included in package holidays to Kenya, together with game-viewing safaris in some of the country’s national parks. Tourism is a key foreign currency earner for Kenya, east Africa’s largest economy. The sector had only recently recovered from the violence that erupted after disputed 2007 polls scared tourists away. Somalia, which lies in the easternmost part of Africa, has been without a central government controlling the entire country since it plunged into civil war in 1991. Kenya Piracy at sea France Africa Europe Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
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A senior Tory MP has criticised plans as ‘piecemeal’, while John Redwood says the chancellor cannot stick to tax promises The Tory party has been hit by a row over its economic strategy on the eve of the Conservative party conference with a senior backbencher attacking George Osborne’s plans as “piecemeal” and in need of “radical improvement”. Andrew Tyrie, the influential chairman of the Treasury select committee, said the government still did not have a “coherent and credible” plan for growth and questioned government initiatives such as David Cameron’s “big society”. “There is much to do, and it is not just a question of gaps in policy,” Tyrie said. “A coherent and credible plan for the long-term economic growth rate of the UK economy is needed,” he told the Times. Osborne also came under fire from John Redwood, the co-chairman of the Conservative party’s police review group in economic competitiveness. Redwood told BBC News that he did not think Osborne would be able to stick to his promise, outlined in the Daily Telegraph, that there would be no tax cuts before the next election. He said Osborne would have to backtrack to ensure the UK retained its “competitiveness”. He added: “I think Andrew Tyrie speaks for a lot of Conservatives when he says that he thinks that some of the spending priorities are not appropriate for current austerity Britain and that we need to make stronger strides to get the deficit down by controlling spending. “I think the £30bn increase in current public spending last year was rather a large increase in the circumstances.” He added that Tyrie’s views on tax would also be shared by party members. “If we’re going to tax the rich more and get more money in from a growing economy we need to set competitive rates.” Tyrie went further in his attack on his party’s policies, branding some of them “irrelevant” and “contradictory”. He said “The big society, localism, the green strategy – whether right or wrong, these and other initiatives have seemed at best irrelevant to the task in hand, if not downright contradictory to it; likewise the huge spending hike on overseas aid and the cost of the Libyan expedition.” Speaking before the release of a report he has written for the Centre for Policy Studies, Tyrie said current policy did not “adequately recognise” the fact that “the age of abundance has been replaced by the age of austerity”. He strongly supported the government’s line on tackling the immediate crisis, it was reported. But he said the government had “a long way to go” to arrive at a coherent strategy for securing better economic performance in the long term. Will Hutton, a leading commentator on the economy who believes the government should invest its way out of the recession, said Tyrie’s criticism of the government’s economic strategy was justified. “You have to do more than tax cuts, you have to lay a whole story out – that the UK is the place [to invest],” he told BBC News. Hutton, who chairs the Big Innovation Centre, a partnership of 10 global companies including Google and GlaxoSmithKline , said the government needed to put more energy and long-term thought into making Britain a home for new sectors, for instance technology. “It is this sense of lack of mobilisation, lack of sense of purpose that is dismaying everyone,” he said. He said the coalition was failing to avail of cheap finance – bond yields were now the lowest since the 1990s enabling Britain to borrow at “unbelievably low rates”. Conservatives George Osborne Economic growth (GDP) Conservative conference 2010 Conservative conference 2011 Economics Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A senior Tory MP has criticised plans as ‘piecemeal’, while John Redwood says the chancellor cannot stick to tax promises The Tory party has been hit by a row over its economic strategy on the eve of the Conservative party conference with a senior backbencher attacking George Osborne’s plans as “piecemeal” and in need of “radical improvement”. Andrew Tyrie, the influential chairman of the Treasury select committee, said the government still did not have a “coherent and credible” plan for growth and questioned government initiatives such as David Cameron’s “big society”. “There is much to do, and it is not just a question of gaps in policy,” Tyrie said. “A coherent and credible plan for the long-term economic growth rate of the UK economy is needed,” he told the Times. Osborne also came under fire from John Redwood, the co-chairman of the Conservative party’s police review group in economic competitiveness. Redwood told BBC News that he did not think Osborne would be able to stick to his promise, outlined in the Daily Telegraph, that there would be no tax cuts before the next election. He said Osborne would have to backtrack to ensure the UK retained its “competitiveness”. He added: “I think Andrew Tyrie speaks for a lot of Conservatives when he says that he thinks that some of the spending priorities are not appropriate for current austerity Britain and that we need to make stronger strides to get the deficit down by controlling spending. “I think the £30bn increase in current public spending last year was rather a large increase in the circumstances.” He added that Tyrie’s views on tax would also be shared by party members. “If we’re going to tax the rich more and get more money in from a growing economy we need to set competitive rates.” Tyrie went further in his attack on his party’s policies, branding some of them “irrelevant” and “contradictory”. He said “The big society, localism, the green strategy – whether right or wrong, these and other initiatives have seemed at best irrelevant to the task in hand, if not downright contradictory to it; likewise the huge spending hike on overseas aid and the cost of the Libyan expedition.” Speaking before the release of a report he has written for the Centre for Policy Studies, Tyrie said current policy did not “adequately recognise” the fact that “the age of abundance has been replaced by the age of austerity”. He strongly supported the government’s line on tackling the immediate crisis, it was reported. But he said the government had “a long way to go” to arrive at a coherent strategy for securing better economic performance in the long term. Will Hutton, a leading commentator on the economy who believes the government should invest its way out of the recession, said Tyrie’s criticism of the government’s economic strategy was justified. “You have to do more than tax cuts, you have to lay a whole story out – that the UK is the place [to invest],” he told BBC News. Hutton, who chairs the Big Innovation Centre, a partnership of 10 global companies including Google and GlaxoSmithKline , said the government needed to put more energy and long-term thought into making Britain a home for new sectors, for instance technology. “It is this sense of lack of mobilisation, lack of sense of purpose that is dismaying everyone,” he said. He said the coalition was failing to avail of cheap finance – bond yields were now the lowest since the 1990s enabling Britain to borrow at “unbelievably low rates”. Conservatives George Osborne Economic growth (GDP) Conservative conference 2010 Conservative conference 2011 Economics Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …AP Touts ‘Enormous Asset’ Mrs. Obama Bringing Women to Tears, Firing Up Feminists
October 1, 2011 No Comment
Nancy Benac of the Associated Press is thoroughly in the tank for Michelle Obama. Her latest article was headlined “First lady a not-so-secret campaign weapon.” She began: “She's mingled barefoot among Aspen's elite, stirred a Vermont utility executive to tears and bucked up disenchanted New Yorkers.” At the same time, the media can tout her for shopping at Target and for mingling with the Aspen elite. Michelle Obama the Target shopper wearing $42,000 diamond bracelets? Benac waited for paragraph 21 to mention that, where that kind of contrary information belongs. Benac picked up the Obama campaign line — she's an “enormous asset” — and ran with it, barely noticing the idea that every re-election campaign counts on the First Lady, and every First Lady is more popular than her husband, and every First Lady can offer a personal portrait to warm people up to her husband's personal side. No, Michlle Obama causes people to tear up, and deeply motivates feminists like Gloria Steinem: Campaign manager Jim Messina says Mrs. Obama is a unique ambassador for her husband because of her front-row seat during his first term and her knowledge of his character. “She was an enormous asset to the president traveling the country in 2008, and we expect that she'll play just as critical a role in 2012,” he said. Mary Powell, a Vermont utility executive, said her 15-year-old daughter used some of the money she inherited after her grandfather's recent death to attend the first lady's luncheon in Burlington last summer, and both mother and daughter came away from the event moved. “I found myself tearing up a couple of times,” Powell said. “She feels like the real deal.” Feminist leader Gloria Steinem, who appeared alongside Mrs. Obama at a New York fundraiser last week, describes the scene there as “a room full of New York women who are activists, who care deeply about the issues, many of whom are feeling that the president could have been stronger as a negotiator, that he's handcuffed by the right wing.” “You can imagine the feeling in a New York room,” Steinem said. “Well, by the end of her speech, people were standing up cheering and ready to go to work. It was a transformation.” Benac reported that since mid-May, Mrs. Obama has headlined more than a dozen fundraisers for the Democratic Party in lots of liberal sites like Berkeley, Aspen, and Burlington, Vermont — AP doesn't call those “liberal” towns. They can be pricey: “On July 26, she hit a $1,000-and-up breakfast in Park City, Utah, and a $1,000-and-up luncheon in Aspen, Colo., where she kicked off her shoes and mingled in a tent on the lawn.” Her name's been on campaign e-mails that “I plan on doing” more than ever before on the campaign trail — but Benac then quickly noted that “She's promised a 'rigorous' schedule — without taking too much time away from the Obamas' 10- and 13-year-old daughters. Inevitably, family obligations mean she's not out there as much as some Democratic partisans would like for one of the party's prime assets .” There are zero critics of the First Lady, and zero critics of President Obama in the AP story. Criticism is just mentioned in a brief burp, and then the tone of praise returns: At the podium the first lady is both poised and cautious. She often speaks from a teleprompter and relies heavily on her stump speech, addressing largely sympathetic audiences at closed fundraisers. “My motto is: Do no harm,” she joked to reporters when asked about her political role. Mrs. Obama surely has not forgotten the flak she caught during the 2008 campaign for her remark that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of the United States. She later issued a clarification saying she had always been proud of her country. Benac assured readers: Mrs. Obama is more at ease as a campaign surrogate now, after years in the spotlight. At the start of each appearance she gives a shout-out to prominent locals, singling out “amazing” politicians and “favorite” people. Trying to humanize her husband, she tells audience after audience about the quiet moments, after their daughters are asleep, when Obama hunches over letters from struggling Americans. “I see the sadness and the worry creasing his face,” she tells her listeners. He's sad and worried — and outside the campaign rhetoric, the economy's still in the dumps. Being sad about it doesn't make you a “prime asset”
Continue reading …AP Touts ‘Enormous Asset’ Mrs. Obama Bringing Women to Tears, Firing Up Feminists
October 1, 2011 No CommentNancy Benac of the Associated Press is thoroughly in the tank for Michelle Obama. Her latest article was headlined “First lady a not-so-secret campaign weapon.” She began: “She's mingled barefoot among Aspen's elite, stirred a Vermont utility executive to tears and bucked up disenchanted New Yorkers.” At the same time, the media can tout her for shopping at Target and for mingling with the Aspen elite. Michelle Obama the Target shopper wearing $42,000 diamond bracelets? Benac waited for paragraph 21 to mention that, where that kind of contrary information belongs. Benac picked up the Obama campaign line — she's an “enormous asset” — and ran with it, barely noticing the idea that every re-election campaign counts on the First Lady, and every First Lady is more popular than her husband, and every First Lady can offer a personal portrait to warm people up to her husband's personal side. No, Michlle Obama causes people to tear up, and deeply motivates feminists like Gloria Steinem: Campaign manager Jim Messina says Mrs. Obama is a unique ambassador for her husband because of her front-row seat during his first term and her knowledge of his character. “She was an enormous asset to the president traveling the country in 2008, and we expect that she'll play just as critical a role in 2012,” he said. Mary Powell, a Vermont utility executive, said her 15-year-old daughter used some of the money she inherited after her grandfather's recent death to attend the first lady's luncheon in Burlington last summer, and both mother and daughter came away from the event moved. “I found myself tearing up a couple of times,” Powell said. “She feels like the real deal.” Feminist leader Gloria Steinem, who appeared alongside Mrs. Obama at a New York fundraiser last week, describes the scene there as “a room full of New York women who are activists, who care deeply about the issues, many of whom are feeling that the president could have been stronger as a negotiator, that he's handcuffed by the right wing.” “You can imagine the feeling in a New York room,” Steinem said. “Well, by the end of her speech, people were standing up cheering and ready to go to work. It was a transformation.” Benac reported that since mid-May, Mrs. Obama has headlined more than a dozen fundraisers for the Democratic Party in lots of liberal sites like Berkeley, Aspen, and Burlington, Vermont — AP doesn't call those “liberal” towns. They can be pricey: “On July 26, she hit a $1,000-and-up breakfast in Park City, Utah, and a $1,000-and-up luncheon in Aspen, Colo., where she kicked off her shoes and mingled in a tent on the lawn.” Her name's been on campaign e-mails that “I plan on doing” more than ever before on the campaign trail — but Benac then quickly noted that “She's promised a 'rigorous' schedule — without taking too much time away from the Obamas' 10- and 13-year-old daughters. Inevitably, family obligations mean she's not out there as much as some Democratic partisans would like for one of the party's prime assets .” There are zero critics of the First Lady, and zero critics of President Obama in the AP story. Criticism is just mentioned in a brief burp, and then the tone of praise returns: At the podium the first lady is both poised and cautious. She often speaks from a teleprompter and relies heavily on her stump speech, addressing largely sympathetic audiences at closed fundraisers. “My motto is: Do no harm,” she joked to reporters when asked about her political role. Mrs. Obama surely has not forgotten the flak she caught during the 2008 campaign for her remark that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of the United States. She later issued a clarification saying she had always been proud of her country. Benac assured readers: Mrs. Obama is more at ease as a campaign surrogate now, after years in the spotlight. At the start of each appearance she gives a shout-out to prominent locals, singling out “amazing” politicians and “favorite” people. Trying to humanize her husband, she tells audience after audience about the quiet moments, after their daughters are asleep, when Obama hunches over letters from struggling Americans. “I see the sadness and the worry creasing his face,” she tells her listeners. He's sad and worried — and outside the campaign rhetoric, the economy's still in the dumps. Being sad about it doesn't make you a “prime asset”
Continue reading …Kodak’s Waterproof Playfull records your pool parties in 720p, lets you relive that belly flop
October 1, 2011 No Comment
Do you like to play rough? Good, then this Kodak’s for you. Up for pre-order on the imaging company’s website, is an update to the Playfull we got eyes-on with at CES earlier this year — except this handheld camera’s waterproof , as well as dustproof and drop-proof (although, only “onto plywood”). The slim 720p shooter weighs in at about 85 grams and sports a 2-inch LCD display, HDMI out, pop-out USB 2.0 and an SD card slot expandable up to 32GB. Kodak’s offering this pocket and pool-friendly portable in mid to late October with a premium $120 price tag set for the black version, and the white at a lesser $100. If your high-end smartphone’s just not cutting the HD-recording mustard, go ahead and hit up that source link below. Kodak’s Waterproof Playfull records your pool parties in 720p, lets you relive that belly flop originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Oct 2011 07:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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thecookiehut says: RT @ bigsteel99 : PSP: Billboard calls for new quarterback – http://t.co/F6RAllfC
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After placing all bets on Windows Phone , Stephen Elop announced that Nokia would slowly phase out its OG operating system, Symbian. Today, it’s officially passed the torch, handing over all Symbian-related duties to Accenture, a consulting and outsourcing firm. 2,300 former Nokia employees will also be repurposed, getting a new name on their paycheck as they tend to the ill-fated OS. The Finnish mainstay says the arrangement will last until at least 2016, and plans to continually roll out updates during this time. Not everyone is hanging on another five years though, as it seems that at least 500 employees have jumped ship or found new gigs within the company since the original announcement predicting 2,800 reassignments. Head past the break to find the full (and very terse) press release. Continue reading Nokia passes off Symbian and 2,300 employees to Accenture Nokia passes off Symbian and 2,300 employees to Accenture originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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