Obama urges Congress to reach consensus on deficit

(AP) ? President Barack Obama is urging Congress to reach consensus on a plan to slash the nation's deficit, saying lawmakers are continuing to stick with "rigid positions" rather than solving the problem.

A committee in charge of cutting the deficit has until Nov. 23 to agree on how to reduce it by at least $1.2 trillion in the next decade.

Any amount less than that would be made up in automatic across-the-board cuts divided evenly between defense and domestic programs.

Obama says at a news conference in Hawaii that he hopes lawmakers will "bite the bullet and do what needs to be done."

He says it appears members of Congress "want to keep jiggering the math" to get a different outcome.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-11-13-Obama-Supercommittee/id-b9cbab8b6c3a458281f7af354cbe7bab

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Android App Review: Adaptxt Beta

Adaptxt Beta

Keyboards are a big deal on Android. Some let you swipe, other peck, but regardless of the method, they all have one thing in common: they're how you say anything on your phone. So imagine my excitement when I'm introduced to a new keyboard, promising more bacon never-before-seen levels of text prediction, all in a nice, shiny, new beta package.

I just had to try it out, and it is, in a word, meh. That's not to say it's terrible, but if you're perfectly content with your keyboard (be it Swype, SwiftKey X, SlideIT, or any of the other myriad of keyboards out there), you probably won't be switching over anytime soon.

First thing you've got to do after you've installed Adaptxt Beta is download a language pack. Not a huge deal, and it's not out of the ordinary. The language packs are called add-ons in Adaptxt, but nothing really prompts you to that. It's fairly self-evident because most of your options are greyed out, so go into the Add-on Manager and pick a language.

From there, there's not much to do. The settings menu is pretty barebones. You can enable or disable error correction, auto correction, and define the auto correction mode (which is set to medium by default). There's also an option for an extended character bubble and the interaction feedback settings.

So what's my beef with Adaptxt Beta? For one, I don't think it looks very good. The keys are smaller than on most of the other popular keyboards, the color scheme is unappealing, and the text prediction didn't blow my mind.

In fact, sometimes it feels like Adaptxt is less accurate at predicting than even the stock Android keyboard. Where other keyboards look like they try to make sense of what you're saying (for example, not tossing out seemingly random combinations of letters), Adaptxt Beta does just that. I get that it's trying to make sense of your current keystrokes. Still, it just muddies up the waters. Qua? Eva? Really?

On the upside, maybe we can chalk it up to the fact that it's in beta. Everyone gave Google a pass on their beta stuff, so I'll give KeyPoint Technologies the benefit of the doubt that they'll iron these little niggles out and continue to improve upon their product. At least it's free, right?

We've got download links and more pictures after the break.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/g87FEfMZ0bA/story01.htm

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Any.DO app hits Android Market with funding from Google Chair Schmidt?s foundation (Appolicious)

A new app hitting Google?s Android Market has backing from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Well, that might be a bit of a stretch ? developer Any.DO, which just released a task management app by the same name, received $1 million in backing from Schmidt?s venture capital firm, Innovation Endeavors.

The Any.DO app gives users the ability to organize their to-do lists through the app, but with an added ability to share those lists with others. Specifically, the app allows you to do things like record voice notes about tasks and organize the things you need to do, and then share them with your friends to allow them to collaborate on them. It also has the ability to sync with Google apps, so you can download your tasks saved in various Google apps to one place in Any.DO.

If Any.DO (the company?s) track record is any indication, it seems the developer knows a thing or two about making to-do apps that users enjoy. The company?s previous app, Taskos, was released a year ago and has garnered some 1.3 million users in the Market so far. Any.DO reports the app manages more than 200,000 tasks per day.

The creation of the new Any.DO app was born out of the success of Taskos, building off that app?s more simple approach to to-do lists. Any.DO?s founder, Omer Perchik, said in a press release from the company that much of the features that went into the new app were the result of user feedback on Taskos, combined with the company?s focus on a simple user experience.

Any.DO?s latest release has already garnered some 61 reviews in the Android Market, with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars. Along with the backing of Innovation Endeavors (among other investment firms), the company seems as though it has quite a bit of good going for it. Any.DO has only been available for a day, and already seems as though it has made a big splash in the Android Market.

Taskos users are being invited to try the new free app, and while it?ll surely take a while to see if Any.DO is as successful as its predecessor, it seems the combination of a strong release and the backing of investors suggests the company could have a bright future ahead of it.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/appolicious_rss/rss_appolicious_tc/http___www_androidapps_com_articles10180_any_do_app_hits_android_market_with_funding_from_google_chair_schmidts_foundation/43569454/SIG=1420ihtug/*http%3A//www.androidapps.com/tech/articles/10180-any-do-app-hits-android-market-with-funding-from-google-chair-schmidts-foundation

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LaCie Rugged Mini (500GB)

The LaCie Rugged Mini (500GB) ($114.99 list) is a fast USB 3.0 drive that can take some abuse. Its rescue orange?colored bumper advertises that it can take a (slight) beating and continue working. It's the drive for tossing into the daily commute bag or for carting around in checked luggage, and as long as you're traveling in the First World the drive should arrive with your data intact. But there are more extreme ruggedized drives out there.

Design and Features
The Rugged Mini is an aluminum-shelled drive with an unmistakable orange shock bumper around its perimeter. There's a pass-through for the USB 3.0 cable and a tiny drive access LED, but otherwise there aren't too many distinguishing features on the drive. The bumper has grid lines molded into its surface, similar to the design on the older version of the Rugged Mini (the one with FireWire and USB), and it's robust enough to let LaCie claim the drive can survive a drop of 1.2 meters (about 4 feet 3 inches). Other drives like the Iomega eGo BlackBelt Mac Edition ($199.99 list, 4 stars) are rated for a seven-foot drop. The Rugged Mini is also rain-proof, but not sealed for immersion.

You get more than just the drive with your purchase. The LaCie Genie backup utility is simple, designed for easy backups of your important data but not full "bare-metal" catastrophic system recovery. With the LA-Private utility you can create a 256-bit AES encrypted partition on your hard drive to protect vital data from prying eyes. The good thing about LA-Private is that it doesn't require you to install a program on your hard drive, so it will work away from your primary PC or Mac. Last but not least is the Wuala online backup: This comprises 10GB of secure online storage using its own utility, so its backups would be separate from those you set with Genie. Contrast this with a program like IDrive, which integrates its online backup with the local utility. Wuala's 10GB of space will cost you $29 per year after the first year, which is kind of pricey (IDrive charges nothing for 5GB of storage and $49.50 for 150GB).

Performance
Because the Rugged Mini uses a 7,200rpm spinning disk and has a USB 3.0 interface, it's pretty darn fast. It took an average of 20 seconds to transfer our 1.2 GB test folder, and it got high scores on the PCMark05 HDD test (6,141) and the PCMark7 HDD test (1,606). To put that into perspective, the Western Digital My Passport Elite (500GB) ($119.99, 3 stars) earned 2,549 on PCMark05 using USB 2.0, and the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra-Portable Drive (500GB) ($99.99 list, 4.5 stars) 4,794 on PCMark05 with USB 3.0. For a spinning drive it's fast, but SSDs like the Apricorn Aegis Padlock Pro SSD (256GB) ($759 list, 4.5 stars) will do 17,460 on PCMark05 on an eSATA connection?a huge difference, though one you'll pay much more for. Our highest scores ever were achieved by the ioSafe Rugged Portable SSD (120GB) ($499 list, 4.5 stars), which scored a blazing 25,101 on PCMark05 and 3,946 on PCMark 7 (both with USB 3.0).

The LaCie Rugged Mini is a fast and durable portable hard drive for people that want a less expensive storage solution than our Editors' Choice?winning ioSafe Rugged Portable SSD. Because the LaCie is a spinning hard drive, it costs only 23 cents per gigabyte rather than the $4.16-per-gigabyte price you'll pay for the ioSafe. Then again, the ioSafe includes lots of other features that make it the superior rugged drive for extreme use. The Seagate GoFlex is a less expensive and more versatile drive, as it can be adapted to use on a FireWire-equipped Mac or powered eSATA laptop. Therefore the LaCie exists somewhere in the middle: It's more durable than the run-of-the-mill external drive, but it's not (literally) bulletproof like the ioSafe. Think of the LaCie as "rugged lite": fine for taking the light beatings it will get on your way to and from work, but not the external drive you want with you on an Antarctic expedition.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 with several other hard drive side by side.

More hard drive reviews:
??? LaCie Rugged Mini (500GB)


??? ioSafe Rugged Portable SSD (120GB)
??? Promise Pegasus R6
??? Rebit 5 (1TB)
??? Seagate GoFlex Slim (320GB)
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/NMJNl8XJOqE/0,2817,2396226,00.asp

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Dear GOP, Where Have All the Good Men Gone? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | The twists and turns in the run-up to the GOP nomination for the 2012 presidential election have been substantial enough to leave a person dizzy. Each new day brings about another development even more incredible than the last. This snowball effect of bad press arguably has only one clear beneficiary -- President Barack Obama.

No sitting president has ever been re-elected with unemployment at 9.0 percent. How then is President Obama's approval rating actually improving?

Perhaps the answer to this question lies somewhere within the roster of GOP candidates.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul is the poster child of the libertarian movement. If the tea party had a grandfather, it would be Paul. Yet, despite winning multiple straw polls, Paul cannot break into the top-tier of candidates. His strict interpretation of Constitutionality would put every social program in America at risk. So far, Americans have been reluctant to embrace Paul's "every man for himself" vision.

Rick Perry, a popular three-term Texas governor, blasted to the top of the polls after hosting a prayer summit. A seemingly endless series of debate fumbles has since dropped his stock considerably. Most recently, at a speech in New Hampshire, Perry appeared so incoherent that reporters were left wondering if he was drunk at the time. With funds and the organization to be competitive nationally, only time will tell if Perry can repair his image enough to remain relevant.

Charismatic businessman Herman Cain is the latest candidate to rise in popularity within the GOP. Cain immediately drew criticism when in an October interview with the Wall Street Journal, he stated: "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!" Since then, Cain has been dogged by repeated accusations of sexual harassment dating to the 1990s. What initially were two anonymous accusers has now swollen into five women who claim Cain acted inappropriately. Cain denies the allegations.

This leaves GOP voters with Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor, and presumed front-runner, has struggled to gain support within his own party. He is the proverbial oak that has withstood the rising and falling fortunes of his fellow nominees. Romney though is plagued with criticisms that his own health care plan was the model for the Affordable Care Act and that he has reversed his opinion on numerous issues. Even so, Romney's success may lie in simply outlasting everyone else and winning nomination by default.

"Winning by default" seems to be the unifying theme of the 2012 elections. With Congress endlessly gridlocked and enjoying a 9 percent approval rating, the president has begun governing with executive orders. At the moment, President Obama is the only person in Washington doing anything productive and this bodes favorably for the incumbent.

In the 2012 Republican primary, GOP voters will be asked to make an impossible choice. They will be asked to choose the lesser of several evils and it should not be so.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111109/pl_ac/10395371_dear_gop_where_have_all_the_good_men_gone

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NVIDIA reports Q3 earnings: $1.07 billion in revenue, $178.3 million in net income

Just yesterday, ASUS announced the first-ever quad-core tablet, packing NVIDIA's Tegra 3 SoC, and now the chipmaker is making an announcement of its own. It may be a slightly less exciting reveal, but NVIDIA's just taken the wraps off of its Q3 earnings, and it appears things are looking up -- revenue is up 4.9 percent over last quarter to $1.07 billion from $1.02 billion and up 26.3 percent from last year. The company also reported an increase in net income, raking in $178.3 million for Q3 2011, up from $151.6 million last quarter and $84.9 million last year. The company's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, unsurprisingly attributed the growth to the mobile market as well as the outfit's GPU business, and continued to boast of future good times, riding the quad-core wave. For more details, check the full PR after the break.

Continue reading NVIDIA reports Q3 earnings: $1.07 billion in revenue, $178.3 million in net income

NVIDIA reports Q3 earnings: $1.07 billion in revenue, $178.3 million in net income originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/10/nvidia-reports-q3-earnings-1-07-billion-in-revenue-178-3-mil/

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Video: Herman Cain references ? Herman Cain

Rare disease may be blowing in the wind

Doctors have struggled for decades to understand why thousands of kids a year, such as Leo Kogan, get Kawasaki disease, a rare condition that can cause serious heart damage, but is often mistaken for an everyday virus. Now, scientists believe the answer may be in the wind.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45230465#45230465

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Video: Conservatives stand against Romney

Penn State reportedly planning Paterno's exit

Penn State administrators are discussing how to manage Joe Paterno's departure as the football coach, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing two unnamed people briefed on talks among the school's top officials.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45215802#45215802

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Dems present offer to cut deficit by $2 trillion (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Democrats on Congress' supercommittee secretly presented Republicans with a revised deficit-cutting proposal earlier this week that calls for a blend of $1 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in higher tax revenue over the next decade, officials in both parties said Wednesday night, adding that compromise talks remain alive though troubled.

The previously undisclosed offer scaled back an earlier Democratic demand for $1.3 trillion in higher taxes, a concession to Republicans. At the same time it jettisoned a plan to slow the growth in future cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits, a provision liberal Democrats oppose.

The one-page proposal was handed to Republicans at a meeting Monday night attended by some but not all members of the supercommittee. At the same session, GOP lawmakers in attendance advanced a revised proposal of their own that signaled for the first time they would be willing to accept higher revenues as part of a plan to cut deficits over the next decade.

Given the unusual secrecy of the meeting and the committee's Nov. 23 deadline to produce at least $1.2 trillion in savings, it appeared that the pace of activity on the panel was accelerating. Less clear was whether there was still time to bridge enormous differences on priorities, or whether each side was laying the groundwork for trying to blame the other in case gridlock triumphs.

The committee, comprising six Republicans and six Democrats, has been working for weeks. Evidence of progress has been scarce, with Republicans demanding large cuts in benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare, while Democrats pressed for additional tax revenue as a condition for agreeing to make deep spending cuts.

Few details are known of the session Monday night, except that Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., outlined a plan on behalf of the four Republicans in attendance, and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., countered with the revisions in an earlier Democratic proposal.

One official said the meeting lasted several hours.

Any progress that may have been made by the panel has largely been overshadowed in the past two days by a Democratic campaign to dismiss the GOP proposal as a prescription for deep tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

In a sign of the political struggle unfolding, Democrats circulated a four-page analysis that relied not on a review of what Toomey outlined, but on what they described as a different, similarly drawn proposal.

Republicans countered that for all the rhetoric, both sides had shown flexibility on the issues that long have been at the root of Congress' inability to compromise on sweeping plans to cut deficits.

"Republicans have put revenues on the table. Democrats have put entitlements on the table," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. "They both need to put more of each on the table."

Alexander said the so-called supercommittee could expect help from a bloc of 45 senators that have signed on to a letter pledging support for a deficit bargain that mixes new revenues with curbs on the growth of government benefits programs.

Democrats sounded far less upbeat.

"I have yet to see a real, credible plan that raises revenue in a significant way to bring us to a fair, balanced proposal," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the co-chair of the 12-member supercommittee.

In something of a dissent, the No. 2 Senate Democratic leader, Richard Durbin of Illinois, said he considered this week's GOP offer "an honest effort" and "a breakthrough that can lead to an agreement. That's what we need."

Asked why he considered it to be a breakthrough, he told reporters, "The word `revenue.' It is a breakthrough."

Durbin said the bipartisan group of 45 senators planned to release a statement later Wednesday urging the supercommittee to keep working toward a target in the $4 trillion range, well above its mandated savings target of $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion.

In response, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner dismissed what Democrats had presented earlier in the week. "Right now, we are waiting for a response to what the second-ranking Democratic Leader in the Senate called `a breakthrough' - and we've seen nothing," said Michael Steel.

The revised Democratic plan totaled $2.3 trillion in savings over the next decade, including projected savings in interest costs the government would realize from lower deficits, higher than the GOP $1.6 trillion blueprint.

Democrats proposed spending on Medicare would be restrained by $350 billion over a decade, and on Medicaid, by $50 billion.

Another $200 billion would come from defense, and an identical amount from a broad swath of government programs ranging from the parks to transportation.

Democrats also called for an overhaul of the tax code that would result in an individual rate of no higher than 35 percent and a scaling back of itemized deductions.

Republicans, too, favor tax reform. In his presentation, Toomey called for a top rate of 28 percent, which appears to require deeper cutbacks in the existing deductions than Democrats favor in order to yield $250 billion in higher revenue.

Aides in both parties requested anonymity to describe the GOP proposal, and they differed on some of the details.

Broadly speaking, however, the GOP plan would raise new revenues of at least $500 billion, both skimmed off the top as Congress completes an overhaul of the tax code and from proposals such as auctioning broadcast spectrum, raising Medicare premiums and increasing aviation security fees.

The plan also would cut spending by about $700 billion, mixing a less generous cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security beneficiaries with further cuts to agency operating budgets and curbs on the booming growth of Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.

Lower interest payments on the national debt would provide the remaining savings.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/democrats/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111110/ap_on_go_co/us_debt_supercommittee

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