Element Case Sector 5 iPhone case review

I typically do not use cases with my tech gear, especially Apple products. I prefer using them as the designers intended them, embracing the form-factor and living with the risk of damage. However, with the iPhone 5, I have seen the carnage that a single drop can do – from marring/scratching the black aluminum edging [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2012/12/26/element-case-sector-5-iphone-case-review/

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Apple?s $160K Copyright Fine In China Is A Pittance, But Could It Open The Door For Further Claims?

murong xuecun essays china appChina is not exactly known for having a watertight regime when it comes to piracy and copyright violations, but it’s trying to change that perception, and here’s a case in point: a group of eight authors, calling themselves the China Written Works Copyright Society,?has won a case against Apple in Beijing for hosting apps that were in themselves violating the copyright on their works. Apple has in turn been ordered to pay 1 million yuan ($160,000) in compensation?– pennies to the iPhone giant and?only about 10% of how much the authors were trying to get out of Apple when they originally brought the case against it earlier in the year. The news comes at a interesting time for Apple in China. The region — the world’s biggest smartphone market at the moment — is a significant one for Apple, accounting for 15% of all of its revenues. But it’s also facing huge competition, primarily from low-priced Android device makers. In?Q4, Apple reported sales of $5.7 billion?in Greater China,?which was flat compared to Q3, but up 26% compared to a year ago. Apple has had also to grapple with contrasting (and not always positive) perceptions on?how well its newest handset, the iPhone 5,?has been selling in China since launching this month. It also comes as China is making ever more moves to improve the connection between internet users and real-world identities. However, it’s very much a double-edged sword. A?law passed today requiring real-name identities for online users is one more way for China to track illicit content posters, but it could also be seen as a way for the country to further control how people use the internet to express themselves, sometimes in acts of dissent against the country’s official lines of thought. For their part, the?China Written Works Copyright Society is unhappy with the amount of compensation ordered by the court. “We are disappointed at the judgment. Some of our best-selling authors only got 7,000 yuan. The judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy,” a representative of the group told Reuters. Still, the sum could be seen as?significant winnings in a country where the average monthly wage for a working class person is $190. And it opens the door further for Apple to face yet more such claims from other rights holders in the country. To date, this is the second time that Apple has lost a suit in China

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5yBIZkgxN34/

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Ukraine reminds Santas about tax

KIEV (Reuters) - Cash-strapped Ukraine on Wednesday reminded entertainers making money by posing as Did Moroz - the local version of Santa Claus - and his helpers to pay income tax.

The former Soviet republic's government faces $9 billion in foreign debt repayments next year and its budget deficit almost tripled in January-October this year to more than $4 billion.

By studying internet advertisements, the state tax service found out that a Did Moroz with a traditional female Snihuronka (Snow Maid) helper would earn 250 to 3,500 hryvnias ($30 to $440) per hour in capital Kiev this season.

"Such citizens will need to file forms and pay taxes," the tax service said in a statement.

The service said it was barred from conducting tax checks on small businesses but urged ordinary Ukrainians to report tax-dodging Santas.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-reminds-santas-tax-143823765.html

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DirecTV 'price adjustment' will raise rates about 4.5 percent in February

DirecTV 'price adjustment' will raise prices about 45 percent in February

DirecTV announced today that it will raise its prices effected February 7, 2013, with the average customer's bill going up about 4.5 percent. The card shown above displays the new rates (hit the source link to see them all) which it claims are up less than cable competitor's price hikes, and are pushed by programming costs that have gone up eight percent. The last time we noted an increase in prices, DirecTV had just added a slew of HD channels. This time, it comes after a year that's seen a number of DVR upgrades, more new channels, a lower price for Sunday Ticket, the launch DirecTV Everywhere features and, of course, a battle over programming costs with Viacom. We predicted that last bit would be reflected sooner or later in a pricing adjustment and it appears the time has come. So tell us DirecTV customers, are the new features, and keeping all those channels worth an increase to you, or are you thinking of moving on?

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Source: DirecTV

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/fTRxQN2kszI/

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Celebrity Christmas Photos 2012!

Celebrity Christmas Photos 2012!

Heidi Klum and SantaChristmas 2012 is officially over, but it’s fun to take a peek at how our favorite celebrities celebrated the holidays. Let’s take a look at celebrity Christmas photos! Neil Patrick Harris spent hours on working on a train set for his twins on Christmas, only to have his son Gideon favor a broom. The actor’s ...

Celebrity Christmas Photos 2012! Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2012/12/celebrity-christmas-photos-2012/

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Divorce-Proof Marriage: 10 Reasons I'm Sure We'll Never Split

By Amber Doty for YourTango.com

By now, you've probably heard the widely-touted statistic that the divorce rate in the U.S. is 50 percent. According to the Pew Research Center, though, the rate of divorce is on the decline (along with the rate of marriage). This success is likely due, in large part, to the fact that people are waiting longer than ever to walk down the aisle.

While I agree that stability is certainly important, I don't buy into the idea that age is a deciding factor in whether a marriage ends in divorce. It's not the case at all with my marriage.

My husband and I met and began dating when I was a teenager and were married in our early twenties. More than eight years later, I am as confident as I was on our wedding day that our marriage will last a lifetime. In fact, I would go so far to say our union is divorce-proof. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. We wanted a marriage, not a wedding. Recently, I had coffee with a friend going through a divorce after only two years of marriage. When I asked what happened, she replied without pause, "I wanted a wedding, not a marriage." She went on to explain that, after years of dating, getting married seemed like the next logical step in their relationship and the timing was right for them to fund the wedding of her dreams. From seating arrangements to color schemes and everything in between, there are many decisions to be made while planning a walk down the aisle. It can be easy to lose sight of the ultimate goal: to begin a lifelong relationship with the person you love. But the hard part isn't in saying "I do," it's in choosing to say it again and again for the rest of your life. For my husband and me, the focus was always on the morning after (and every other morning after that) instead of the "big day."

2. We didn't wait until after the wedding to tackle important issues. It can be awkward when you're dating to discuss things like the number and timing of children, personal approaches to finances, where you see yourself living down the road, or what religion your family will practice, but knowing the answers to these questions before you marry can mean the difference between a rocky start and a smooth transition into your new lives together. Everyone has their dealbreakers, but identifying ours before we gathered 100 of our closest friends and family members to pledge our lives together for all eternity cut down on surprises after they had all gone home. I am always shocked by the number of marriages that end in divorce because a couple never bothered to discuss their ideas for the future.

3. We put each other and our marriage first. Our children come second. I?ve written about it before here on YourTango. I love my children, but I am in love with my husband and prioritizing our relationship is good for our family as a whole.

4. When it comes to our relationship, our in-laws are outlawed. Mother-in-laws are at the center of many a sitcom and romantic comedy shenanigan -- and for good reason. They're notorious for causing marital strife both on-screen and off. That's why my husband and I have made it clear that while I can't control his mother's opinion on my cooking and he will never escape my mom's incessant nagging on the upkeep of our yard, their thoughts on our relationship are unwelcome. When we need advice or just to vent, we seek out the listening ear of a friend, not a family member.

5. Our bedroom is a child-free zone. Nothing kills the mood faster than reaching under the sheets mid-romp to dislodge an uncomfortable object that turns out to be a half-empty sippy cup.

6. We use our past to our advantage, not our detriment. My husband and I both come from divorced families, a fact that many studies agree puts couples at greater risk for divorce themselves. But history doesn't have to repeat itself. We talk openly, both together and with therapists, about what went wrong in our parents' marriages and how it affected our lives and our perception of matrimony.

7. We maintain common interests. One of the very first conversations my husband and I shared was a discussion of a book we had both recently read. It's dorky, but we're suckers for a good horror novel. While the differences in our personalities and our day-to-day are vast (he works long hours in law enforcement; I work from home as a freelance writer), we share reading material and talk about it regularly. A book club for two may not be the foundation on which our marriage is built, but it is a reminder of why we got together in the first place beyond the roles we have assumed since our relationship began.

8. We practice emotional self-regulation. In an article highlighting the skills every person should master before getting married, YourTango expert, Dr. Susan Heitler, emphasizes the importance of learning to control your emotions. You can remove nails driven into a board, but you can't undo the holes they create. The same is true for words said in the heat of the moment. Taking time to cool down instead of entering into a shouting match has been the difference between a marital spat and a major blow-up.

9. We give each other space. When I step out for a much needed day away from the house, I am confident my phone will not ring unless there is an emergency. Likewise, when he arrives home from work, I give him time to relax before handing off the childcare responsibilities. A little independence and time to ourselves is as vital to the health of our marriage as fostering a common bond.

10. We split the parenting duties equally. Nothing breeds resentment faster in a marriage than feeling like you are solely responsible for the diaper changing and late-night feedings. Since the day our first child was born my husband and I have adopted a 50/50 approach to parenting. "You get this one. I got the last one," is a frequently uttered phrase in our home. We also share the burden that being a parent can place on a career. There is no expectation that, as the woman, I will shoulder the responsibility of taking a day off when our children are ill. Nothing makes me feel more supported and secure in our relationship than knowing my husband and I are partners in parenthood.

Are you confident your marriage is divorce-proof? How do you maintain a healthy relationship with your spouse?

More Stories On YourTango:

Having So-So Sex? 6 Ways To Make It Mind-Blowing

Old News, New Research: Men Really Do Want To Marry Their Moms

Jessica Biel's Sexy Reason She Loves Life With Justin Timberlake

The Best Love Advice On YourTango

Affection: Does He Care?

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/26/divorce-proof-marriage_n_2281150.html

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Be Your Own Boss, Start A Home Based Business | e4trips.com

Would you believe someone if he or she said you could work from home and be your own boss? It is true that there are pressures all around you trying to get you to work from home. It is possible, but you cannot expect to succeed right away with a strategy that someone claims as fool-proof. You will get tips to get your online business going in this article.

Keep your lines of communication open and give all consumers the chance to reach you if needed. See if you can stay in touch with your customers through a newsletter, ask for feedback from them, and use site analytics to see what products customers are buying the most often. It is possible that your response to their inquiry may have influenced their decision to do business with you.

Make sure that you utilize search engine optimization to enhance your home business, and use it so that you can move up the ranks with search engines. These strategies are of paramount importance when you?re trying to focus Internet traffic towards your site. When you are looking into SEO, look up more than one source, because there are a lot of different options to chose from.

TIP! If you take out a loan, you will raise questions about your business practices and you will have to divulge it to investors. Use the money you have available right now to your advantage.

It is important that you dress for success, regardless of the physical location of where you work. The idea of wearing your pajamas while working may be appealing. You want to still dress like you are going into the office. Dressing appropriately places you in the frame of mind to work productively.

A home business could mean a large amount of time on the phone. The money you invest in phone lines will pay off with increased sales. Being able to turn off the phone ringer when you?re not available for receiving calls is quite important.

A new business you could start could include a meal service, daycare, or any other delivery service. These service industries are a great way to start your own business and with so many people needing help, they are sure to be a success.

TIP! Write a business objective. It needs to be short and concise but should thoroughly describe what your business is going to do.

As you have just learned, there are many people trying to sell you on scams. However, as you?ve learned throughout this article, there are also many common-sense tips and tactics that you can use in order to grow your home business enterprise. If you?re willing to put in the work, you can certainly be successful.

Source: http://e4trips.com/be-your-own-boss-start-a-home-based-business.html

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Green Blog: Capturing Climate Change Digitally

The changing palette of colors in a forest signals more than the arrival of a new season. For those who know how to look, the colors also reveal how much carbon dioxide the trees are absorbing from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, a new study suggests. By analyzing thousands of photographs of a forest canopy less than 40 miles outside London, the researchers were able to estimate carbon uptake over a two-year period based on the leaves? hues.

Forests play a vital role in mitigating the effects of climate change by taking up carbon dioxide and storing it in leaves, stems and roots. In the United States, forests absorb and store some 750 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, or about 10 percent of the country?s carbon dioxide emissions, the Forest Service says.

But as climate change shifts the timing of seasons, buds are bursting sooner, and ecologists are working to understand how this affects forests? ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

?Reliably predicting CO2 flux isn?t easy,? the study?s lead author, Toshie Mizunuma, a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh?s School of GeoSciences, said in a statement. ?It varies a lot due to changes in weather and alterations in forest metabolism caused by pests and diseases.?

To better understand the relationship between carbon uptake and canopy color, Ms. Mizunuma?s team set up a pair of digital cameras in Alice Holt Forest, a former royal hunting ground that now has a 220-acre research plot within a commercial oak forest. The researchers, whose work appears in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Functional Ecology, positioned an outdoor Webcam to view the canopy horizontally.

They set up a second camera with a fisheye lens trained downward on the canopy from atop an instrument tower. Each camera took a photo every 30 minutes during daylight for two years, capturing a total of 38,000 images, and the researchers analyzed the four photos snapped each day around midday.

Studying the timing of when trees sprout their first leaves in the springtime, flower and finally shed their leaves in the autumn, is considered one of the simplest ways to monitor how trees are responding to climate change. But the work, known as phenology, has traditionally required visits to the same tree in the same spot at least once a day, sometimes more, Ms. Mizunuma wrote in an e-mail. These manual observations are ?often impractical,? she said. Accessibility to the target trees may be limited, and ?monitoring may be biased by observers.?

More recently, remote monitoring via satellite has offered a less labor-intensive alternative, but clouds often get in the way and the area captured is so large that woodland images are often muddled with adjacent land, Ms. Mizunuma said. And in a study published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at Colorado State University and Duke University called for correction of the models now used to estimate carbon uptake based on remotely sensed greenness.

Carbon uptake by trees of nearly two dozen species dropped off weeks before leaves began to change color and to fall in the autumn, they found, suggesting that trees may sequester as much as 3 percent less carbon dioxide globally than previously thought.

This latest paper joins a growing body of research comparing direct measurements of carbon exchange in various landscapes with measures of reflected light, said Dennis Baldocchi, a professor of biometeorology at the University of California, Berkeley, who is unaffiliated with Ms. Mizunuma?s team.

?Many of us are interested in providing ground truth? for the estimates of photosynthesis produced by satellites in space, he explained. In recent years, he said, researchers have increasingly used digital cameras or narrow-band spectrometers at instrument towers like the one in Alice Holt Forest. More than 500 such towers now form an international network created in the 1990s to measure carbon fluxes directly over the long term. The idea of using numbers extracted from digital images to detect a vegetation index originated in the laboratory of Andrew Richardson, a physiological ecologist at Harvard, Dr. Baldocchi said.

Ms. Mizunuma suggsted that digital cameras could combine the best of both worlds in that they provide unobstructed images that can be quantitatively analyzed at a far lower cost than previous methods. Her team extracted several parameters from the photos and mapped them against data collected at the site by the instruments on the tower.? ?Of all the expressions of canopy color, hue is the one that seems to have the greatest utility,? the researchers write.

The rise of carbon dioxide uptake in the spring and the decline of uptake in the fall approximately dovetail with the greenness and hue of the leaves. Carbon uptake peaked when the leaves were dark green, suggesting that ?hue can be a useful proxy for photosynthesis,? Ms. Mizunuma said. The authors note, however, that further research is needed at other sites ?to explore whether such a good relationship always exists, as it may be site- and time-specific.?

It?s certainly worth finding out, Dr. Balodocchi said. Exploring hue in this context ?may give us another way to try and upscale carbon fluxes with cheap cameras,? he said. ?This is a good way to produce citizen science and study phenology well, too.?

?We have years of photos at our sites with flux data, he said, ?so it it s a good idea to test.?

Ms. Mizunuma said that experts still do not understand what controls the timing of leaves? sprouting in the spring and falling in the autumn. What is needed, she said, is a cheap and simple way to gather data over the long term, and digital cameras could hold the key.

Indeed, as digital camera technology has improved and prices have dropped, scientists have begun to harness them for a broad range of research projects, sometimes calling on Internet users to help analyze thousands of images.

Researchers with the Zooniverse project led by the University of Oxford and Adler Planetarium, for example, have set up more than 220 camera traps throughout Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Visitors to the Snapshot Serengeti website, launched this month, can help identify the animals.

As Chris Lintott, the Zooniverse project?s director, explained to PRI?s ?The World,? ?The cameras allow us to carpet the whole place.?

Meanwhile, in Greenland, the Himalayas in Nepal, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains, the Extreme Ice Survey has set up 34 cameras at 16 glaciers to track changes in the ice, seeking to give a ?visual voice? to the landscape.

According to Ms. Mizunuma, digital cameras could also be used to visually monitor the spread of tree diseases, and similar setups could be invaluable in monitoring how vegetation responds to environmental change. ?It is a well-known fact that positive response often turns into negative response at a certain point,? she said, noting that leaves sprouting earlier in the year may expand the carbon-uptake period, but then increase the risk of frost damage.

As a result, she said, ?long-term observation is crucial to understand how plants respond to climate change.?

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/capturing-climate-change-digitally/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Video-streaming Xmas cheer restored for Netflix users as AWS outage gets fixed for affected devices

Christmas cheer restored at Netflix,

Did this Christmas' Netflix outage have you and yours "bah humbuging" whilst picking through that collection of physical discs for solace? Fret no more, as the apparent Amazon Web Services outage behind the problem (which brought the service down on many-a-device) is now a officially a mark in Christmas Past. Within the last hour, Netflix announced via its Twitter accounts that its Instant Watch offerings are now "back to normal streaming levels." While it's not exactly a Christmas miracle, we're sure many are delighted to finally be viewing Hollywood's holiday cheer on their newly unwrapped gizmos.

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Source: Netflix (Twitter), Adrian Cockcroft

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Report: Top Syrian general joins opposition

BEIRUT (AP) ? The general who heads Syria's military police has defected and joined the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime, one of the highest walkouts by a serving security chief during the country's 21-month uprising, a pan Arab TV station has reported.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal appeared in a video aired on Al Arabiya TV late Tuesday saying he is joining "the people's revolution."

Al-Shallal's defection comes as military pressure builds on the regime, with government bases falling to rebel assault near the capital Damascus and elsewhere across the country. On Wednesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government shelling in the northeastern province of Raqqa killed at least 20 people, including women and children.

Dozens of generals have defected since Syria's crisis began in March 2011. In July, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass was the first member of Assad's inner circle to break ranks and join the opposition.

Al-Shallal is one of the most senior and held a top post at the time that he left. He said in the video that the "army has derailed from its basic mission of protecting the people and it has become a gang for killing and destruction." He accused the military of "destroying cities and villages and committing massacres against our innocent people who came out to demand freedom."

Thousands of Syrian soldiers have defected over the past 21 months and many of them are now fighting against government forces. Many have cited attacks on civilians as the reason they switched sides.

The Observatory said the shelling in an agricultural area of Raqqa province near the village of Qahtaniyeh killed 20, including eight children, three women and nine others.

An amateur video showed the bodies of a dozen people including children lying in a row inside a room. Some of them had blood on their clothes, while weeping could be heard in the background.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the events depicted.

Also Wednesday, activists said rebels were attacking the Wadi Deif military base in the northern province of Idlib. The base, which is near the strategic town of Maaret al-Numan, has been under siege for weeks.

The Observatory said at least five rebels were killed in the fighting that started after midnight. It added that Syrian army warplanes attacked rebel positions in the areas.

"It is the heaviest fighting in the area in months," said the Observatory, which relies on activists throughout Syria.

In October, rebels captured Maaret al-Numan, a town on on the highway that links the capital Damascus with Aleppo, Syria's largest city and a major battleground in the civil war since July.

The attack on Wadi Deif comes a day after rebels captured the town of Harem near the Turkish border. The rebels have captured wide areas and military posts in northern Syria over the past weeks.

Syria's crisis began with protests demanding reforms but later turned into a civil war. Anti-regime activists estimate more than 40,000 have died in the past 21 months.

In neighboring Lebanon, airport officials in Beirut said Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and Assistant Foreign Minister Ahmad Arnous flew early Wednesday to Moscow.

Their visit to Moscow comes two days after Assad met in Damascus with international envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi. Brahimi, who is scheduled to go to Moscow before the end of the month, said after the talks Monday that the situation was "worrying" and gave no indication of progress toward a negotiated solution for the civil war.

Brahimi is still in Syria and met Tuesday with representatives of the opposition National Coordination Body, state-run news agency SANA said. Head of the group Hassan Abdul-Azim said Brahimi briefed them on the efforts he is exerting to reach an "international consensus, especially between Russia and the United Stated to reach a solution."

Rajaa al-Naser, NCB's spokesman, said his group has put forward proposals adding that there would be no exit but through halting violence and forming a "transitional government with full prerogatives."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/report-top-syrian-general-joins-opposition-101021047.html

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