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BEIRUT ? Tens of thousands of defiant Syrian protesters thronged the streets of Homs Tuesday, calling for the execution of President Bashar Assad shortly after his army pulled its tanks back and allowed Arab League monitors in for the first time to the city at the heart of the anti-government uprising.
The pullback was the first sign the regime was complying with the League's plan to end the 9-month-old crackdown on mostly unarmed and peaceful protesters.
Yet amateur video released by activists showed forces firing on protesters even while the monitors were inside the city. One of the observers walked with an elderly man who pointed with his cane to a fresh pool of blood on the street that he said had been shed by his son, killed a day earlier.
The man, wearing a red-and-white checkered headdress, then called for the monitor to walk ahead to "see the blood of my second son" also killed in the onslaught.
"Where is justice? Where are the Arabs?" the old man shouted in pain.
Syrian tanks had been heavily shelling Homs for days, residents and activists said, killing dozens even after Assad signed on early last week to the Arab League plan, which demands the government remove its security forces and heavy weapons from city streets, start talks with opposition leaders and allow human rights workers and journalists into the country.
But a few hours before the arrival of the monitors, who began work Tuesday to ensure Syria complies with the League's plan, the army stopped the bombardment and pulled some of its tanks back.
The British-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that government forces fired on protesters while the monitors were inside Homs and said at two people were killed from the fire.
About 60 monitors arrived in Syria Monday night ? the first foreign observers Syria has allowed in since March, when the uprising against Assad's authoritarian rule began. The League said a team of 12 visited Homs.
After agreeing to the League's pullback plan on Dec. 19, the regime intensified its crackdown on dissent; government troops killed hundreds in the past week and Syria was condemned internationally for flouting the spirit of the agreement.
On Monday alone, security forces killed at least 42 people, most of them in Homs. Activists said security forces killed at least 16 people Tuesday, including six in Homs.
One group put Tuesday's toll at 30, including 13 in Homs province. Different groups often give varying tolls. With foreign journalists and human rights groups barred from the country, they are virtually impossible to verify.
Amateur videos show residents of Homs pleading with the visiting monitors for protection.
"We are unarmed people who are dying," one resident shouts to one observer. Seconds later, shooting is heard from a distance as someone else screams: "We are being slaughtered here."
Given the intensified crackdown over the past week, the opposition has viewed Syria's agreement to the Arab League plan as a farce. Some even accuse the organization of 22 states of complicity in the killings. Activists say the regime is trying to buy time and forestall more international condemnation and sanctions.
"The Syrian government will cooperate symbolically enough in order not to completely alienate the Arab League," said Bilal Saab, a Middle East expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "But make no mistake about it, its survival strategy is to keep kicking the can down the road, until domestic and international circumstances change in its favor."
Opponents of Assad doubt the Arab League can budge the autocratic leader at the head of one of the Middle East's most repressive regimes. Syria's top opposition leader, Burhan Ghalioun, called Sunday for the League to bring the U.N. Security Council into the effort. The U.N. says more than 5,000 people have been killed since March in the political violence.
Shortly after the tanks pulled back and stopped shelling, the videos showed tens of thousands flooding into the streets and marching defiantly in a funeral. They carried the open casket overhead with the exposed face of an 80-year-old man with a white beard.
"Listen Bashar: If you fire bullets, grenades or shells at us, we will not be scared," one person shouted to the crowd through loudspeakers. Many were waving Syria's independence flag, which predates the 1963 ascendancy of Assad's Baath party to power.
"The people want to execute Bashar," chanted a group as they walked side-by-side with monitors through one of Homs' streets. "Long live the Free Syrian Army," they chanted, referring to the force of army defectors fighting Assad's troops.
The amateur video also showed a man picking up the remains of a mortar round and showing it to the observers.
In another exchange, a resident tells a monitor: "You should say what you just told the head of the mission. You said you cannot cross to the other side of the street because of sniper fire."
The monitor points to the head of the team and says: "He will make a statement." The resident then repeats his demand, and the monitor, smoking a cigarette, nods in approval.
The Observatory for Human Rights said as the monitors visited Homs, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in some neighborhoods to "reveal the crimes committed by the regime."
Later, the Observatory said some 70,000 protesters tried to enter the tightly secured Clock Square but were pushed back by security forces that fired tear gas and later live bullets, killing at least two, to prevent them from reaching the city's largest square. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said security forces were shooting at protesters trying to reach the central square.
Homs, Syria's third-largest city, has a population of 800,000 and is at the epicenter of the revolt against Assad. It is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the capital, Damascus. Many Syrians refer to it as the "Capital of the Revolution."
Opposition activist Mohammed Saleh said four days of heavy bombardment in Homs stopped in the morning on Tuesday and tanks were seen pulling out. Another Homs activist said he saw armored vehicles leaving early on a highway leading to the eastern city of Palmyra. He asked that his name not be made public for fear of retribution.
"Today is calm, unlike previous days," Saleh said. "The shelling went on for days, but yesterday was terrible."
The Observatory said some army vehicles pulled out of Homs while other relocated in government compounds "where (they) can deploy again within five minutes."
A local official in Homs told The Associated Press the team of monitors, headed by Sudanese Lt. Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, met with Ghassan Abdul-Aal, the governor of Homs province. After the meeting, the monitors headed to several tense districts including Baba Amr and Inshaat, sites of the most intense crackdowns since Friday.
The official later said that most members of the Arab team headed back to Damascus, while three will spend the night in Homs. The official refused to give details about where the observers will stay for security reasons.
In addition to the deaths reported by activist groups Tuesday, Syrian state-run news agency SANA said two roadside bombs targeted a bus carrying employees of a state company in Idlib, killing six and wounding four.
Also Tuesday, a Lebanese-based al-Qaida-linked group, Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed that two suicide attacks against Damascus security offices that killed at least 66 Friday were the work of the Syrian regime, and not al-Qaida as Syrian authorities said.
And in Lebanon, security officials said Syrian troops opened fire at a car that crossed illegally into northern Lebanon, killing three Lebanese men. Some Syrians have fled to Lebanon to escape the fighting, and Syria has complained that weapons are smuggled across its borders. It was not immediately clear if the shooting was related to the uprising in Syria.
___
Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.
___
Bassem Mroue can be reached on http://twitter.com/bmroue
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A Canadian skydiving instructor, described as "passionate" about the sport by a former employer, is dead after attempting a risky landing in California, the Riverside Sheriff's office said Wednesday.
Mike Ungar, 32, hit the ground hard just after 5 p.m. ET Tuesday in Perris, California, and died at the scene, according to a news release from the sheriff's office.
"He just loved to skydive. He would do anything to skydive. He would get up at 6 o'clock in the morning to go up, hoping there'd be someone there to jump with," said Tim Grech, who employed Ungar during the 2010 and 2011 seasons at Niagara Skydive in Dunnville, Ont., 55 kilometres south of Hamilton.
Ungar was a fun man and a competent, experienced skydiver, said Grech, who met him five years ago.
"That's why I hired him to do tandem (jumps)," Grech said.
Ungar was originally from Aylmer, Ont., about 190 kilometres southwest of Toronto.
He moved to California to teach at Skydive Hollister after Niagara Skydive's 2011 season ended in October, Grech said.
On Tuesday, Ungar landed in a pond on the property of the Perris Valley Skydiving facility, according to the sheriff's office. Friends pulled him out of the pond and medical personnel performed CPR, but he died at the scene.
Ungar's parachute was open and his equipment was all functioning properly, said Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld, manager of Perris Valley Skydiving.
While this is the fifth fatality at Perris Valley Skydiving this year and the sixth in 15 months, Brodsky-Chenfeld said the drop zone is as safe as it possibly can be.
"Obviously, we take it very to heart," Brodsky-Chenfeld said of safety concerns. "The (United States Parachute Association) has their guidelines for safety, and we have theirs plus additional. There's only so much that you can do."
Perris Valley is a busy drop zone, said Jim Crouch, director of safety and training for the United States Parachute Association. Based on the numbers, he said, there are bound to be more deaths at that location.
"I can't think of the last time they've had a year with many fatalities, so it is unusual, but I do know they're working very hard to keep everyone as safe as possible," Crouch said.
At the time of his death, Ungar had been attempting a landing manoeuvre called "swooping," Brodsky-Chenfeld said.
A swooping manoeuvre is executed about 150 to 210 metres above the ground, Crouch said.
A skydiver accelerates by parachuting into a steep turn, moving at a speed of about 97 to 113 kilometres an hour towards the ground, Crouch said. The speed lifts the parachute as it gets closer to the ground, allowing it to fly level with the ground like an airplane when it lands.
"(Ungar) had aspirations to compete in swooping competitions," Grech said. "It is the discipline that seems to be getting the most attention in skydiving right now because it is very spectator-friendly."
But it can be risky if the skydiver misjudges the landing, Crouch said.
"People occasionally make errors with this type of landing and it results in a fatality or an injury," he said. "In the past 13 years, it's ranged anywhere from seven per year to one per year of people who have been killed attempting this type of a landing."
In 2010, 21 people in the United States died while skydiving, according to the United States Parachute Association. Out of the estimated three million jumps in the U.S. that year, there were 1,308 injuries reported.
Skydiving will never be completely safe, Crouch said, but statistically, the number of deaths is low and safety has improved over the years.
hroberts(at)postmedia.com
Twitter.com/hilarytroberts
? Copyright (c) Postmedia News
Source: http://feeds.canada.com/~r/canwest/F75/~3/0UlJlPsDW_c/story.html
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Apple (AAPL) has been a perfect example of innovation. Apple's iPhone changed the way we used to think about the cell phone market. Surely, we had several different models of cell phones, but none of them looked like the iPhone. After this radical innovation, Apple did not stop its search for better phones. Apple re-shaped the industry with new phone models based on the original concept: iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S, iPhone 4G, iPhone 4S?The iPad concept was also a huge success. Apple sold near 9.25 million iPads in the last quarter.
I think this year we will see an updated iPhone 5 which will probably have a faster processor and a larger screen. We might also see an iPad 3, which is rumored to be thinner, lighter, and safer. I also expect that Apple's MacBook series will keep getting updated with upgraded specifications. However, I am expecting radical innovations from Apple for 2012 and beyond. Apple, with minimal competition, has the power of premium-pricing its innovative product lines. Therefore, I expect Apple to come up with products that can re-shape the industry. Namely, I expect the following 4 radical innovations from Apple for 2012 or beyond:
#1 iTV
I am not talking about upgraded Apple TV which is already available in the market for $99. Surely, Apple TV is a great entertainment tool which allows us to stream movies and shows from both iTunes and Netflix (NFLX) over the internet. However, I am talking about a new television set that looks just like a mega-screen iMac computer. Even a large-size iMac will probably be extremely popular among Apple fans. The product will likely be pretty expensive. But, think about how Sony (SNE) used to price its products compared to other manufacturers. Apple has the power to create a new market with premium products. Customers also are willing to pay for this premium.
There are already rumors around iTV that it will be launched in 2012 with a premium price tag. Since 2010, there is a strong expectation on Apple to get into this business. Peter Yared from Venture Beat suggests an Apple-branded TV, "with a lighted Apple logo that comes in sizes ranging from 37? to 60?. It automatically connects to the Internet and streams all of your iTunes video and audio content."
Apple might better hurry to get into the market first since Google's (GOOG) acquisition of Motorola might be a move into this segment by the internet giant. Jean-Louis Gassee from the Monday Note expects, "a next-generation Google TV and, quite likely, a Samsung TV set with an integrated Google TV running Android apps and competing with the putative Apple TV." I know several friends who utilize their 27 inch iMacs as a TV player. So, I think an Apple TV is an ultra-high possibility in 2012.
#2 iRadio
The name iRadio is already taken in the virtual world. But, what I have in my mind is more like something that is offered by SiriusXM (SIRI) satellite radio. So far, Apple has left this area to its software suppliers. The iTunes store offers thousands of podcast applications ranging from BBC Radio Live Player to Last.fm. The problem is the extreme variety and inconvenience in finding the radio station that best fits to your desired style. Apple can charge a nominal monthly fee to offer premium stations that users can listen wherever they travel around the world. (Note that, this iRadio can become a serious threat to SiriusXM in long-term)
Another way Apple can monetize iRadio will be getting involed in revenue sharing agreements with network providers. The additional data services provided by telecommunication companies can be charged to customers bills. Apple can retain a share of these additional charges, boosting, as well as, diversifying its revenue sources. Rumor already has it that Apple is working on its own Radio FM application for iPhone. Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray predicts that, "Apple will furnish a radio in late 2012 or early 2013". The analyst goes on claiming that people are willing to pay more than $1000 for an all-in-one package by Apple instead of putting the parts together. Probably iRadio will be embedded in an all-in-one entertainment center by Apple.
#3 iKindle
Okay. Probably it will not be named as iKindle, but Apple is very likely to come up with its own 7-inch tablet in this year. Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle Fire has been one of the products most compared to Apple's iPad. Kindle, which is priced at $199, obviously has the price advantage. Apple's cheapest iPad 2 is selling for $499, which is more than double what Kindle users pay. If Amazon's Kindle becomes a highly profitable product, Amazon might come up with its own iPad. It is not a tug-of-war between Apple and Amazon yet, but things might get juicy between these companies in 2012.
If Apple does not hit Amazon first, Amazon might be the first mover into Apple's territory. Therefore, I expect Apple to show its superior pricing power, and hit the Amazon's Kindle with a revolutionary product of its own. There are already talks of a mini iPad model to compete with Amazon Kindle. A recent report from Digitimes claims that the supply chain for iKindle is already on the move. While their sources are not very clear, it is claimed that Apple is in the process of ordering 7.85 inch panels from LG Display and AU Optronics.
# iDouble
I know this sounds too imaginary, and it probably is, but you will never know. You might be wondering what is iDouble. It sounds like a double burger from McDonald's (MCD). Right? Well, there is a similarity between iDouble and McDonald's double burger. Just as double-burger is among McDonald's most profitable products, iDouble could be a huge profit booster for Apple.
What I have in my mind is a dual-screen notebook or iPad from Apple. The product will have two active sides, each of which can be used as a screen. I would expect the screens to be flexible, so that they can be folded side-ways or used as such. A revolutionary product as such can easily be priced with a pretty high premium. Given Apple's net profit margin of 24%, the higher prices will result in significantly higher profits.
Toshiba has already revealed a dual-screen tablet PC in 2010, but it did not receive much publicity. But, again that was a Toshiba. If Apple does the same, I think fans will wait for days in front of the stores before the iDouble hits the shelves. There are already several websites that explain how to use the new AirPlay mirroring functionality. Thus, there is a huge interest in dual-screen functionalities. While I do not expect iDouble soon, I think the popularity of these mirroring applications might induce Apple executives to get involved in the dual-screen market niche.
Disclosure: I am long AAPL.
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Escolha dos Leitores 2011 - Top 40-31: Dez jogos j? l? v?o, e agora come?a verdadeiramente a aquecer o nosso to... tinyurl.com/6n6wgun 
eurogamerPT Source: http://twitter.com/eurogamerPT/statuses/151456790582792192
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MOSCOW ? Rescue vessels and a helicopter are searching for five people missing in a fierce storm off Russia's east coast after a Cambodia-flagged ship sank early Sunday.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry said in a statement that it has recovered three bodies from the icy waters of the La Perouse Strait, which lies between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan.
The accident took place in the same waters in which a Russian floating oil rig capsized and sank last Sunday killing 17 people. Thirty-six people are still missing, feared dead.
Officials said five of the Cambodia-flagged ship's crew were Russian, and the others are Indonesian. Two of the dead have been identified as Russian nationals, and one remains unidentified.
The ship, named Ginga, was sailing through the Russian waters from a Japanese port. Russian news agencies reported that it was a fishing boat.
Emergencies Ministry representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Two trawlers, a Russian helicopter, a rescue vessel, two steamboats and a Japanese maritime safety department ship were conducting the search. Efforts were hampered by strong winds and meters-high waves.
Nikolay Sukhanov, a top official from Russia's Sailors Union, told RIA Novosti that he thought that the size of the crew, its flag and route could suggest that the ship was poaching in the waters on the Russian-Japanese maritime border.
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From Doug Ross
Based upon several reliable reports at?RedState, it would appear that Virginia?s GOP establishment changed the rules of ballot access just?last month. Front-runner Newt Gingrich, for one, saw his campaign hurt badly by reports that it bungled the Virginia ballot process which saw he and Rick Perry excluded despite each turning in over 10,000 signatures. But if the new reports are true, the state GOP has a hell of a lot to account for.
Moe Lane provides?the introduction:
?the very short version is that the VA GOP only certified Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for its primary ballot. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich both had too many signatures tossed; Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann didn?t even try. Of the seven candidates, one (Romney) had more than enough signatures (15K) to bypass the verification process entirely. All of this has caused a lot of agitation among Republicans following the primary process, of course; and not just from people who disapprove of what the VA GOP has done?
?There has been a good deal of defending of the outcome; and one argument heavily used in this defense has been that the campaigns all knew the rules and that previous Republican campaigns were able to get on the ballot,?so clearly a competent current Republican campaign should have done so.
One small problem with that:?as Winger argues, the rules were allegedly drastically changed. In November of this year.
So what changed?
?prior to the 2012 elections it was Republican party policy in Virginia to simply deem any candidate that brought in ten thousand raw signatures as having met the primary ballot requirements under Virginian state election law.
Under these rules, of course, both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry would have qualified easily.
And why did the rules change?
?On October 24th independent state delegate candidate Michael Osborne filed suit against the Republican party of Virginia [challenging the signature review process and who performs it] ? according to Winger the VA GOP decided in response to bump up from 10K to 15K the threshold for simply deeming the requirements as being met.
?I think that?John Fund?s general comment is correct: this is going to go to the courts. John was not discussing this specific wrinkle, but his larger point that Virginia?s ballot access policies have systemic problems gets a big boost when it turns out that the state party can effectively increase by fifty percent the practical threshold for ballot access ? in a day, and?in the middle of an existing campaign.
?If it is true that the Republican party of Virginia decided in November of 2011 to increase the threshold for automatic certification from 10K to 15K, then it is reasonable to suggest that this was a change that unfairly rewarded candidates who had previously run for President in Virginia.
Lane asserts that the state GOP has ultimate control of the ballot and could, if pressed, decide to certify Gingrich and Perry.
Either way, the issue is going to the courts.
And, either way, the Virginia GOP looks incompetent? or ill-intentioned against conservative candidates.
Action Alert: I urge you to contact the Virginia GOP and demand that they include Gingrich and Perry on the ballot. Be polite, but firm. There?s no excuse for issuing new rules at the last minute that just happen to exclude the leading candidates. In fact, it?s an outrage.
??Email:?Contact Form
??Phone: 804-780-0111
??Fax: 804-343-1060
??Facebook:?www.facebook.com/VirginiaGOP
??Twitter:?@va_gop
Make contact now. Time is growing short.
Source: http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=111621
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New Year's resolutions are usually nothing more than some hollow promises that we make to ourselves at the beginning of each year.
Then March rolls around and instead of cutting 10 pounds, you've somehow put on seven, all while forgetting how to even get to the gym.
Resolutions are typically fruitless. However, there's one group that's going to need a huge list of them for 2012, and that's the National College Athletic Association.
The NCAA -- most notably big-time college football -- embarrassed itself at seemingly every corner in 2011. Far too often, the NCAA's on-field product was overshadowed by the greed, deceit and downright monstrosities that occurred off of the field.
Real quick, if we were to play word association and I said to you, "NCAA," what would your response be? After 2011, it very well might be "scandal."
Scandals rocked the NCAA at its foundation this year.
There were the questions about Cam Newton, and more importantly, Cecil Newton. Then we found out that in Columbus, you could get some tattoos for free so long as you played football for THE Ohio State University. From there, we went south -- literally and figuratively -- to hear about the hundreds, nay thousands, of illegal benefits that University of Miami football players were showered with over the last decade.?
And of course, nothing was worse than the nauseating details stemming from the allegations placed upon former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. That ongoing scandal has torn down the legacy of a coaching legend in Joe Paterno, and it could very well end up being the beginning of the end for one of the country's most recognizable football programs.
Oh yeah, there's also the BCS. That mess may be worse than ever, as we'll get a pair of two-loss teams meeting in the Sugar Bowl a night before the Orange Bowl will host two three-loss teams. If that's not the best college football has to offer, then I don't know what is. At least no one will be arrested or lose their eligibility because of it -- or so we'd like to hope.
It's unfortunate, too, because at its best, the NCAA should represent the very best amateur athletics in the world really, the IOC be damned. However, Division I college football is so far from that desired standard that it shouldn't even be considered part of the NCAA.?
Of course, big-time college football is about as synonymous with amateurism as the desert is to hockey. College football is a business, and it is a booming business. Money and power dictate conference realignment and the ensuing TV deals. Money and power dictate recruiting. Money and power dictate just about everything in college football. And that is most likely the genesis of all of these problems.
There is so much to be gained from being powerful in college football, and because of it, university presidents, athletic directors, coaches and players will all do whatever they can to make sure they make it to the top of the mountain. We saw and continue to see the depths that power can reach in the midst of the unspeakable horrors being alleged in the Penn State scandal.
Once you reach the top, you can do as you please. Until, of course, you get caught. And as Penn State has also taught us, things get really, really ugly when that train derails.
As is the case more often than not, it's all about fixing the system. College football has a long way to go, but after a year like 2011, any sort of improvement will surely be embraced. The system, and those who benefit the most from it, must start to realize the problems, though. Until that, we can expect more of the same. And if 2011 taught us anything, it starts to get really, really ugly when that train flies off the track.
Are we harping on the negatives here? Sure. But has college football done anything as of late to help shine a positive light on the product? Of course not.
But 2012 is a new year for everyone, including big-time college football. So go right ahead, NCAA. Make those resolutions. Just please, be an inspiration to all of us and see those resolutions through.
Aim to be better, and hopefully you will be. After all, things can't get much worse.
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The VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand PDS-ST415-VP ($100 street) sounds like something that should be on the Hogwarts back-to-school recommended purchase list. But in reality (pun unavoidable), it's a portable scanner?one of the most portable available. If you need to scan on the go, and don't want to be weighted down with hardware, that alone makes it worth considering.
At 1.2 by 10.1 by 1.1 inches (HWD) and 0.4 pounds, you could argue that the PDS-ST415-VP is too big to call a magic wand. It certainly doesn't look as much like one as the PlanOn DocuPen Xtreme X05 ($369.99 direct 3.5 stars). However, both work essentially the same way for scanning. The sensor and rollers in both cases define the bottom. To scan, you start at the top of a page and sweep down, or start on the side and sweep across.
One other feature the two scanners share is that they don't need a computer to scan to. Instead they scan to memory and let you move the files to a computer later. Connect the PDS-ST415-VP by the supplied USB cable, and it will look like a USB drive to your computer so you can copy the files.
Setup and Scanning
There is not much to set up with this scanner. Just put in the two supplied AA batteries and insert a microSD or microSDHC card as memory to scan to. The only potential issue is that the scanner doesn't come with a memory card and there's no internal memory, so be sure you have one handy. According to the company, you can use cards with up to 32GB capacity.
Scanning is easy. The scanner offers one button to set it to color or black and white mode and another to set it to 300 or 600 pixels per inch (ppi). Simply choose your settings, and then scan. Just as important, there isn't much of a learning curve. I got acceptable scans starting with my first try, both for recognizing text, and for scanning photos well enough for, say, scanning an article and winding up with recognizable images in the photos.
Recognizing Text
In addition to setting up the hardware, you can optionally install Abbyy Screenshot Reader, which comes with the scanner and offers a limited ability to translate images of text into editable text. However, it's important to understand that Screenshot Reader is an OCR (optical character recognition) utility rather than a full-fledged OCR program.
The PDS-ST415-VP scans to JPG image file format. An OCR program would be able to recognize the text for at least one full file at a time. Screenshot Reader recognizes text showing on screen, and it can recognize only as much text as can fit on the screen.
Depending on your screen resolution, you may need to recognize a letter-size page of text in two or more pieces. In my tests using a 1,280 by 1024 screen resolution, for example, with the image zoomed in Photoshop to 33 percent and the text just fitting within the screen width, I had to recognize each page in three sections.
At smaller zoom sizes I could recognize more of the page, but the recognition accuracy dropped. At 33 percent zoom, the program read our Arial test page at font sizes as small as 8 points without a mistake and our Times New Roman test page at 12 points. At 12.5 percent, which is the largest zoom size that showed the full page at once, it couldn't read any font size without mistakes.
Other Issues
It's worth mention that although not needing a computer for scanning has the advantage of giving you less to carry with you, it has a disadvantage too. You can't see the scan and confirm that it's good enough to be usable until you connect to a computer, at which point you may no longer have the original handy to rescan. Depending on the situation, you may be better off skipping the scanner and taking a photo instead, so you can check the image quality on your camera or cameraphone's screen.
You can't count this too heavily against the PDS-ST415-VP, because it's pretty much standard today for portable scanners that don't need a computer, including, for example, the IRIScan anywhere 2 ($199, 3 stars) from I.R.I.S. and the Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner/Converter PanScn06 ($149.99, 3 stars). One the few exceptions is the Editors' Choice Visioneer Mobility ($199.99 direct, 4 stars), which lets you scan to a smartphone and see the results on the spot.
Despite this limitation, if you want to use a scanner rather than a camera, and you want one that's portable enough to carry with you virtually all the time, the PDS-ST415-VP is definitely in the running. When you compare prices with the alternatives, keep in mind that you'll need to buy a memory card and may want a more capable OCR program or a document management program as well. Even so, the VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand PDS-ST415-VP is a more than reasonable choice. It has little to no learning curve, it's easy to use, and its scan quality is up to the task.
More Scanner Reviews:
??? VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand PDS-ST415-VP
??? Pandigital Personal Scanner/Converter-5x7 PanScn04
??? IRISphoto 4
??? Kodak i2600
??? Kodak i2400
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/xQiiGP8FN8c/0,2817,2397986,00.asp
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WASHINGTON ? Vice President Joe Biden says GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney favors economic policies that would help some succeed but leave most Americans behind.
Biden made the claims in an op-ed published in Friday's editions of The Des Moines Register. Biden singled out Romney in the state where the first votes will be cast in the GOP caucuses in less than two weeks.
For his part, President Barack Obama has largely refrained from counterattacking Republicans, saying he will wait until voters have settled on a nominee. But Obama's campaign has not, and Biden's column is the latest sign the Obama team believes Romney will emerge from the field.
Biden said Romney's proposals for the economy "would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class."
"Romney also misleadingly suggests that the president and I are creating an `Entitlement Society,' whereby government provides everything for its people without regard to merit, as opposed to what he calls an "Opportunity Society," where everything is merit-based and every man is left to fend for himself," Biden wrote.
Biden's message underscored the major theme of Obama's re-election bid, as spelled out in a speech Obama made in Kansas earlier this month: The middle class is at a make-or-break moment. The president, saddled with high unemployment, has to make the case that his is the better vision for an ongoing economic recovery for all.
Earlier this week, Romney accused Obama of deepening the economic crisis and backing policies that would redistribute wealth instead of creating equal opportunity for people to do well. Romney said his policies would turn the U.S. into an "opportunity society" while Obama's vision for an "entitlement society" would make more people dependent on government welfare.
In his op-ed, Biden responded: "The only entitlement we believe in is an America where if you work hard, you can get ahead."
___
AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller contributed to this report.
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(Reuters) ? EBay Inc said on Thursday it bought BillSafe, a purchase and invoicing technology provider with clients in Germany, and will combine it with its PayPal online payments service, in a move to strengthen its e-commerce capabilities in Northern Europe.
BillSafe's technology lets shoppers buy and receive an item and pay later once they get an invoice. It is the most common form of e-commerce payment in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, eBay said.
EBay took a minority stake in BillSafe last year and now owns the entire company. The company did not disclose terms of the deal but said it would have no material impact on the financial forecast it gave in October.
The deal is eBay's latest this year to build its business abroad. In April it bought a Turkish auction site for $235.3 million.
(Reporting By Phil Wahba; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
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LOS ANGELES - Actor Alec Baldwin said in his weekly New York radio podcast that he no longer has the appetite to run for New York City mayor, criticizing current candidates and expressing doubts the job was powerful enough to cause change.
?I?ve lost my appetite,? Baldwin, 53, said during his interview with?Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close director Stephen Daldry on his WNYC radio podcast, Here?s The Thing.
?The people that are running for mayor, I know this is terrible, I look at them and I don?t see myself in that crowd,? said the actor.
A possible foray into politics by the 30 Rock actor has often been speculated upon in the media, with the actor himself saying he was ?very, very interested? in the politics ?game? in an interview with CNN earlier this year.
On his podcast, Baldwin and Daldry, a Londoner, were discussing the politics of their respective cities with Baldwin casting doubt on a potential political career by saying ?The older I get, the more I feel that all of it has changed.?
The actor added that he didn?t want to give up his ?wonderful life? for the chance to change society when he?s not sure if a New York City mayor could still make an impact.
30 Rock star Baldwin, who recently made headlines after being asked to leave an American Airlines flight for playing a game on his smartphone before takeoff, also joked about the incident in the interview, saying ?Some days, some flights are different than others.?
Source: http://www.winnipegsun.com/2011/12/22/baldwin-not-running-for-mayor
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(Reuters) ? Oracle Corp fell well short of Wall Street's expectations on both hardware and software sales in its fiscal second quarter, wiping more than 8 percent off its shares.
Commentary:
MICHAEL NEMEROFF, ANALYST, MORGAN KEEGAN & CO
"The licensing revenue came in lower than expectations and that really drives most of the profitability at the company. That obviously is a disappointment.
"We need to figure out where the miss occurred geographically, because we suspect Europe might be the culprit, given their large exposure to Europe.
"Oracle has been doing well over the last couple of quarters so clearly this is not a fantastic signal to the markets.
"I would caution people not to make any grand generalizations about the health of the tech sector, because Oracle's quarter ended in November and Europe has been so volatile. The last couple of days in November could have been very weak in Europe, which could have caused a miss.
"Currency is a big negative for Oracle when the euro has gone down as quickly as it has over the last couple of months. That's a huge drag on their earnings and so we need to figure out what the currency impact is."
PETER GOLDMACHER, ANALYST, COWEN & CO
"Oracle has been amazingly consistent with their earnings. When they miss, it means people are re-thinking enterprise spending.
"Tech spending is more under pressure than people thought. IT budgets have been relatively flat, when you have issues like you do in Europe, people naturally pull back.
"Oracle is still the best horse in the glue factory, it's a well-run company, they will weather this better than other companies.
"Tech spending is going to be under pressure for a long time. Oracle is a solid core technology company but they are not in new growth areas such as software as a service, virtualization."
(Reporting by Nicola Leske in New York and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco)
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Every semester colleges require their students to acquire a back-breaking amount of books which is most easily accomplished through the campus bookstore. This is also the most expensive method, but they offer buyback programs as well so students can get some of their money back. In an ideal world, those buyback prices will be pretty reasonable, but there are several ways that buyback price can go down. Here's how the process works, what can go wrong, and how you can avoid getting screwed during textbook buyback season.
Photo by Scott Barkley.
Campus textbook buyback programs are always convenient and offer you a reasonable amount of money when they work. It's when a book goes out of print, a new edition comes out, or the school just decided to go with another textbook that you run into trouble. We talked to the folks over at BookRenter.com and they offered some advice:
If the book is going to be readopted by the school, then the buyback price that you're getting from your school bookstore (at least 50%) is good - and very fair. Getting 50% for a used book is a premium price. So you should definitely go with it and sell your books back to the college bookstore.
If you're not getting half or more, then you should ask the bookstore why. Is the book not being readopted by the school, or is it because there's a new edition? Shop around for other buyback options. Unless there's a new edition coming out, you should be able to get at least 50% by doing your buyback online.
If you're not getting half or more and the bookstore tells you that it's because there's a new edition, then you're in the toughest spot. Your best bet is to sell the book online - as quickly as possible, and start at a low price: 20% of the original price at most. Since there's a new edition coming out, that means that there's almost no demand for your book. There's an immense supply, so the longer you wait, the tougher it will be to sell. Moving fast and starting at the lowest price will give you the best chance to sell your book.
When you're selling your books there are a lot of options. We polled you about the cheapest places to buy used books, which are incidentally good options for selling as well, and Chegg and Amazon were among the favorites. Obviously there are several more sites like BookRenter.com, Textbook Recycling, and many more. You should check as many as you can to see who is offering the best buyback price and always look online for coupons. Finding a coupon can often make a decent difference in the buyback price you get. For example, Textbook Recycling is offering an extra 5% back until December 31st, 2011, when you use coupon code LIFEHACKER when selling your books. That's just one to get you started, but you can generally find coupons for any site during prime buyback times by just searching the web.
Photo by Cox College.
There are a few ways to avoid the problem of getting stuck with a textbook you don't need or want. If you have the foresight to rent your books that's one of the simplest ways to avoid the problem. Obviously the previously mentioned BookRenter.com is an option, as is TextbookStop, Campus Book Rentals, and Valore. Again, be sure to look for coupon codes. BookRenter.com is offering 5% off two rentals with the code LIFEHACKER. Be sure to search the web for others if you have a preference for a particular service. Overall, renting can save a lot of money so long as you take good care of your book and remember to actually return it. If you are concerned about remembering to return the book and don't mind a digital copy instead of a physical one, check out CourseSmart.
Alternatively, local book swaps are a good option. Often times someone will have organized one on your college campus so be sure to look around. Alternatively, try web sites like Paperback Swap and Local Textbook.
Finally, if your campus offers free (or really cheap) photocopies, your school library should have two or more copies of any given textbook your courses require. Photocopy the necessary pages in the library when you've got some free time and you'll have only the necessary pages instead of a whole book you'll only need for a semester.
Got any other textbook buyback tips or tricks? Let us know in the comments.
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SHANGHAI (Reuters) ? China's top online video firm, Youku.com, said on Friday it has initiated legal proceedings against rival Tudou Holdings for allegedly infringing on the copyright of its videos.
Tudou also said late on Thursday that it would take legal action against Youku for allegedly reposting episodes of a popular variety program on Youku's platform.
Cti TV, the legal copyright holder of "Kangxi is Coming," signed an exclusive agreement with Tudou in November to distribute the episodes of the program on its platform, Tudou said in an emailed statement.
Tudou and Cti TV allege that the episodes were then copied by Youku and uploaded onto Youku's platform.
Youku subsequently countered on Friday that Tudou had allegedly pirated more than 60 television serials from Youku and that the firm had initiated court proceedings against Tudou in Shanghai.
Youku said in a statement that legal mediation between the two sides had failed.
The battle for content in China's online video space has heated up this year with costs for programs rising significantly as online video players scramble for eyeballs to lure advertisers.
Advertising revenue in the domestic online video market, which was virtually non-existent five years ago, is now estimated to be worth 1 billion yuan ($156.90 million). This is expected to grow at a double-digit rate.
Many online video players have also signed deals with Hollywood studios to boost viewership.
Shares of Tudou closed 2.51 percent lower on the Nasdaq on Thursday, while Youku fell 3.75 percent on the New York Stock Exchange.
($1 = 6.3735 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Matt Driskill)
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NEW YORK ? It's a holly, jolly Christmas for "Saturday Night Live" chief Lorne Michaels as he marks another holiday edition of the show he created 36 years ago, and as he welcomes back "SNL" alum Jimmy Fallon as guest host for this special yuletide bash.
Boasting singer Michael Buble as its musical guest, the program airs, of course, Saturday on NBC at 11:30 p.m. EST.
But on Thursday night, as Michaels welcomed a reporter to his Rockefeller Center office ? overlooking Studio 8H, from where "SNL" originates ? the clock was ticking: little more than two days until show time.
In the studio, a sketch was being blocked for the cameras: Denver Broncos quarterback (and famously devout Christian) Tim Tebow confronts Jesus in the locker room.
"It's been rewritten since last night when we read it," Michaels said. "We read 40-some-odd sketches yesterday, and narrowed them down to the pieces over there" ? he pointed to a board with a tentative rundown ? "and that's about 15 minutes (too) long. By the time `(Weekend) Update' gets done, the show will be maybe 25 minutes long, which is what we'll go into dress rehearsal with."
Dress rehearsal takes place in front of a live audience on Saturday evening, after which, according to the audience's response, the show is rearranged, cut and otherwise revamped during a crash session to whip it into shape to perform a couple hours later for the world.
For Michaels, dress brings pain every week.
"Things you were certain would work, don't," he sighed. "Things that were really bright flatten and fall apart."
So does this mean that, even after all these years of executive-producing "SNL," Michaels, the old hand at 67, is still caught by surprise at how an audience reacts?
"Every week," he nodded. "I think it's why I'm still here. It's not a thing you ever master."
Or do you?
"Lorne has done this for 36 years, and he knows what will work," Fallon had insisted during an interview earlier in the week. "He's a pro. He's a Beatle."
Fallon was an "SNL" cast member for six seasons before leaving in 2004. Then, in 2009, he was tapped by Michaels, who also executive-produces NBC's "Late Night," to fill its hosting job when Conan O'Brien graduated to "The Tonight Show."
Now, for the first time, Fallon has been invited back by Michaels to his old haunts at "SNL" to serve as host.
"There will be holiday-themed sketches for different religions," said Fallon, who said he arrived with "about 300 ideas" on Monday. "I'm working on some impressions that I haven't done before. I've got some surprises: Some old friends might be coming back for a cameo or two. And then I want to see if can dust off my `Update' suit."
Fallon was asked if any of the special demands of "SNL" had been hard to face again.
"Staying up late," he instantly replied. "I don't do that anymore. I have a 9-to-5 job now with `Late Night.' I got to work on keeping my energy up, so I'm ready to go on Saturday. Which I will be."
Once he steps onstage at the top of the show, "it's going to be an adrenaline rush," he predicted. It will also be an emotional rush to be back, in a proud guest-host role on the show he has loved all his life.
"I just hope I don't break down and cry," he said. "My mom and dad are going to be there. I got to make sure I don't make eye contact with them. I'd be a mess, a blubbering mess."
"I was down in Jimmy's dressing room a half-hour ago," Michaels said Thursday night, relaxing for a moment on a sofa in his office. "We were going over the monologue, and I could see he looked anxious about it. He's putting so much pressure on himself for this to be the greatest show of all time!
"I found myself saying, `You know, it's Thursday. It's NOT Friday. That means there's the rest of tonight and all day tomorrow for that missing piece to be written.'"
It's the step-by-step, day-by-day "SNL" process, a week-long evolution that's hard to keep in mind when you're in the middle of the stampede for Saturday.
"For a returning cast member or past host, the very last memory of having done the show is the party," Michaels said, "and, before that, how the show felt on the air, and the goodnights when it's ending.
"But you don't remember that on Monday there was nothing: `Really?! THOSE are the ideas?!' And then came the writing, and choosing which pieces, and the rewrites. It's rare that you're excited about the show on Tuesday, or even Thursday. But the process is all about it getting better.
"By the time Jimmy leaves here tomorrow night at 1 or 2 in the morning," Michaels said, "we'll know kind of what's looking good."
It's that process that keeps Michaels challenged, and fired up, and still very much in love with the job he said he has no thoughts of ever leaving.
"There's no other way to do it," he declared, and smiled resolutely as Saturday night loomed. "If there was, I would have figured it out. Trust me."
___
Online:
http://www.nbc.com
___
EDITOR'S NOTE ? Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier
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HOLIDAY CHEER: FedEx Corp. said Thursday its net income nearly doubled in its fiscal second-quarter, driven by online holiday sales.
THE NUMBERS: The Memphis, Tenn., company earned $497 million, or $1.57 per share, compared with $283 million, or 89 cents per share a year earlier. Last year's quarter included 27 cents in charges related to a business unit combination and legal reserve. FedEx's revenue rose 10 percent to $10.59 billion in the recent quarter.
IN WITH THE NEW: FedEx Corp. also said Thursday that it signed a deal to buy 27 new Boeing 767-300 aircraft, with the first three set to arrive in 2014. They will replace planes that are as much as 40 years old.
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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) ? The reputation of the Netherlands as the go-to country for a legal joint will begin to vanish like a puff of smoke next year as sales to foreigners of cannabis and hashish in coffee shops are banned.
The Dutch government has been clamping down on the sale of soft drugs since 2007 because of gang-related crime and concern about the risk to health, particularly as stronger forms of cannabis have been introduced.
"The Dutch drugs policy's appeal to foreign users has to be reduced," Dutch Security and Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten said in a letter to parliament.
"Drug use by minors will be strongly discouraged and in particular, vulnerable young people will be protected against drug use," the minister added.
The new rules, which will first take effect in the south and gradually be extended countrywide, limit sales of cannabis to residents of the Netherlands who must enroll as members of a coffee shop, the minister said.
The rules will come into effect from January 1, 2012, but will not be enforced until May 1, starting in the three southern provinces where drug tourism is most common and regarded as a problem by many local residents.
The rest of the country, including Amsterdam, whose drugs scene is a tourist magnet, will enforce the new rules from January 1, 2013.
From that year onwards, a coffee shop can have a maximum of 2,000 members.
The Dutch government, whose push for a stricter drugs policy is led by the Christian Democrats party, will forbid any coffee shops within 350 m (yards) of a school, with effect from 2014.
The government in October launched a plan to ban what it considered to be highly potent forms of cannabis -- known as "skunk" -- placing these in the same category as hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine.
(Reporting by Gilbert Kreijger)
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Young man in a field in eastern Africa
Image: Kimberly Flowers/USAID
SAN FRANCISCO - To get a glimpse of the future, look to East Africa today.
The Horn of Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in 60 years: Crop failures have left up to 10 million at risk of famine; social order has broken down in Somalia, with thousands of refugees streaming into Kenya; British Aid alone is feeding 2.4 million people across the region.
That's a taste of what's to come, say scientists mapping the impact of a warming planet on agriculture and civilization.
"We think we're going to have continued dryness, at least for the next 10 or 15 years, over East Africa," said Chris Funk, a geographer at the U.S. Geological Society and founding member of the Climate Hazard Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Funk and other experts at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco cautioned that East Africa is just one example. Many recent events - discoveries from sediment cores in New York, drought in Australia and the western United States, data from increasingly sophisticated computer models - lead to a conclusion that the weather driving many of the globe's great breadbaskets will become hotter, drier and more unpredictable.
Even the northeastern United States - a region normally omitted from any serious talk about domestic drought - is at risk, said Dorothy Peteet, a senior research scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
A series of sediment cores drilled from New York marshes confirm that mega droughts can grip the region: One spanned from 850 to 1350 A.D., Peteet said. And shorter, more intense droughts have driven sea water far up the Hudson River, past towns such as Poughkeepsie that depend on the river for drinking supplies. ?
"We're just beginning to map the extent, but we know it was pervasive," she said. "There are hints of drought all the way up to Maine."
Of course, climate change can't be blamed for all the food shortages and social unrest, several researchers cautioned. Landscape changes such as deforestation can trigger droughts, while policy choices exacerbate impacts.
Some hard-hit African countries have the highest growth rates on the planet, and gains in agricultural productivity simply have not kept up with those extra mouths. Per capita cereal production, for instance, peaked worldwide in the mid-1980s, Funk said, and is decreasing everywhere. But no place on the globe is decreasing faster than East Africa.
Simple policy decisions can blunt a crisis. Malawi, in southeastern Africa, gave farmers bags of seed and fertilizer and saw food prices fall and the percentage of its population classified as undernourished drop by almost half over a decade, Funk added. Kenya, in contrast, saw its policies stagnate; prices and malnourishment rates both rose.
Meanwhile, researchers probing the climate in pre-Columbian Central America figure that widespread deforestation had a hand in the droughts thought to have toppled the Mayan, Toltec and Aztec civilizations.
More than 1,000 years ago, "significant deforestation" throughout Central America suppressed rainfall upwards of 20 percent and warmed the region 0.5?C, said Benjamin Cook, a NASA climatologist.
The forest - and local moisture - rebounded with the population crash that followed European contact, he added. But today the region is even more denuded than during its pre-Colombian peak.
But with the frequency of droughts expected to triple in the next 100 years, researchers fear the resulting variability and stress to agriculture and civilization could prove destabilizing for many regions.
"We should take it seriously," Peteet said.
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MUNCIE, Indiana (Reuters) ? The Federal Reserve must take immediate action to inject new life into a moribund U.S. recovery or risk letting the nation settle into a permanently lower growth path, a top Fed official said on Monday.
"There is simply too much at stake for us to be excessively complacent while the economy is in such dire shape," Chicago Fed President Charles Evans told the Ball State University Center for Business and Economic Research. "It is imperative to undertake action now."
Evans' renewed call for monetary policy easing came even as the U.S. unemployment rate tumbled to a two-and-a-half-year low, and a variety of economic data suggest that U.S. economic growth may rise sharply this quarter, topping a 3 percent annual rate.
Known for his dovish views on inflation, Evans was the only Fed policy maker to dissent last month on the central bank's decision to leave monetary policy unchanged. Then, as today, he called for further easing to boost the recovery.
Since then, the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen from 9 percent to 8.6 percent, and data from manufacturing to retail sales suggest the pace of U.S. economic growth pace could accelerate from the second quarter's 2-percent annual rate.
Worries over a potential shock from the European debt crisis and likely fiscal tightening next year threaten that outlook, but Evans mentioned neither scenario in his speech.
Instead, he kept his focus on domestic monetary policy.
The U.S. central bank has "clearly" missed on its mandate to foster maximum employment and is in danger of undershooting its 2 percent inflation goal for the foreseeable future, Evans said.
Without new monetary stimulus, Evans warned, the U.S. could become mired in a 1930s-like depression, impairing economic growth permanently as the skills of the unemployed atrophy and businesses defer new investment.
To avoid such a scenario, Evans argued, the Fed should promise to keep interest rates near zero as long as unemployment remains "somewhat above its natural rate," so long as inflation does not threaten to rise above 3 percent.
While 3-percent inflation may sound "shocking," he said, research shows that central banks should fight liquidity traps by allowing inflation to run above target over the medium term.
Since high U.S. unemployment is probably due to the effect of a liquidity trap rather than a structural shift in the economy, Evans said, added monetary stimulus is justified.
And if it turns out, he said, that the real problem was indeed structural and easier monetary policy sparks a rise in inflation, the Fed can simply tighten policy before it threatens to reach the hyperinflationary levels of the 1970s.
"We would also know that we had made our best effort," he said.
Unemployment fell to 8.6 percent in November, and most estimates of the natural rate of unemployment hover around 5 percent to 6 percent.
The audience of several hundred entered the large convention center where Evans spoke under the watchful eyes of half a dozen armed members of the county sheriff's department, who were on site because of a threatened demonstration by Occupy Muncie.
Evans had previously suggested setting the unemployment trigger for monetary policy tightening at 7 percent but did not mention any specific figure in his prepared remarks on Monday.
The Fed's policy-setting panel meets next week to discuss what, if any, action to take to boost the economy. While many Fed officials appear to support some change in Fed communications, only a few have said they would support Evans' proposal.
Next week will be the last time Evans votes on the panel until 2013.
(Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Padraic Cassidy)
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