This little spherical container may look more like a rejected R2-D2 prototype than a piece of cutting-edge technology, but is in fact the vessel in which the European Space Agency hopes to ship Martian samples back to Earth in.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/yDJolQTDCLY/this-metallic-sphere-will-some-day-carry-martian-sample-1453992197NEW YORK (AP) — Tyler Blackburn says it was bittersweet to leave ABC Family's "Pretty Little Liars" to star in the supernatural spinoff, "Ravenswood," which premiered last week.
"That show has been so wonderful. It's changed my life. I've gotten close with the cast and I've had so much fun doing it, and so bittersweet is the perfect way to describe it," Blackburn said in a recent interview.
"Ravenswood" airs Tuesdays (8 p.m. Eastern). The show premiered after the annual Halloween-themed special episode of "Pretty Little Liars," which returns for its new season next year.
Blackburn plays Caleb Rivers, one of five teens whose lives are intertwined by a deadly curse that's plagued Ravenswood for generations. Caleb arrived in Ravenswood to meet his "PLL" girlfriend, Hanna, who encouraged him to stay and help a new friend.
"There really is no through line other than Caleb and his relationship to Hanna," the 27-year-old actor said of a possible link between the two shows, which are set in the towns of Ravenswood and Rosewood.
"Ravenswood isn't far from Rosewood. It's only a couple hours," he said, "but it's almost like being stuck in time or something. It's very 'Twilight Zone'-esque. It's a town that has a lot of darkness and depth to it. You find out that it's because there's this curse on the town and it affects five families in particular. The whole town is basically built on a cemetery, so that sets the tone for not only the town itself but the show. It's a town that isn't very happy."
Blackburn said "Ravenswood" introduces new characters and mystery, "and because it's a supernatural show, I think that there's a fan base for that. People love that so I think it will attract a new audience as well."
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Alicia Rancilio covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow her online at http://www.twitter.com/aliciar
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Online:
abcfamily.go.com
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-10-29-People-Tyler%20Blackburn/id-7c40c4bfc8f24bebbf5ad6511dd70c48Months after Apple apologized to consumers in China, Korean rival Samsung is doing the same after the country's state media criticized the vendor for failing to fix glitches in several of its phone models.
"We welcome the scrutiny from the media," Samsung posted to its China website on Wednesday. "Due to problems with management that brought inconvenience to our customers, the company expresses its sincerest of apologies."
Earlier this week, the country's state-controlled China Central Television aired a 30-minute segment that put a spotlight on flaws found in Samsung phones. The affected models include handsets which are part of Samsung's Galaxy S3 and Note 2 product line.
According to CCTV's report, a software glitch in the phones can permanently damage a memory chip within the device's motherboard. This can cause the phone to frequently crash, from 20 to 30 times a day, according to one Galaxy S3 owner interviewed in the segment.
Samsung, however, refused to properly acknowledge the problem, CCTV claimed in its report. Instead, the company said the glitch could be fixed with a software update, rather than replacing the phone's hardware.
In response, Samsung issued an apology on Wednesday, and said it would offer free repairs or replace phones with persistent problems. In addition, all affected phone models will receive another year of warranty protection, regardless of whether they showed any glitches.
Samsung is just the latest tech company to be scrutinized by China's state press. In March, Apple faced similar criticism over its warranty policies, which CCTV alleged treated U.S. customers more favorably than those in China.
Apple later apologized in April, and made changes to its policies.
Other foreign companies have also been targets. This past week, Starbucks has been defending itself after CCTV criticized the company for pricing its coffee products higher in China than in the U.S.
China's state press will regularly scrutinize companies, both foreign and domestic, as a way to regulate them, according to analysts. Apple and Samsung are two of the largest smartphone vendors in the country.
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/MAT4WKHLsT4/In this Oct. 24, 2013 photo, Amy Risinger, right, watches her son Mark Risinger, 16, at their home in Glenview, Ill. Mark Risinger is allowed to use his smartphone and laptop in his room, and says he spends about four hours daily on the Internet doing homework, using Facebook and YouTube and watching movies. An influential pediatricians group is recommending strict limits on texting, tweeting and other media use, including banning smart phones, iPods and other Internet access from kids' bedrooms. Mark’s mom said she agrees with restricting kids’ time on social media but that deciding on other media limits should be up to parents. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
In this Oct. 24, 2013 photo, Amy Risinger, right, watches her son Mark Risinger, 16, at their home in Glenview, Ill. Mark Risinger is allowed to use his smartphone and laptop in his room, and says he spends about four hours daily on the Internet doing homework, using Facebook and YouTube and watching movies. An influential pediatricians group is recommending strict limits on texting, tweeting and other media use, including banning smart phones, iPods and other Internet access from kids' bedrooms. Mark’s mom said she agrees with restricting kids’ time on social media but that deciding on other media limits should be up to parents. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
In this Oct. 24, 2013 photo, Mark Risinger, 16, checks his Facebook page on his computer as his mother, Amy Risinger, looks on at their home in Glenview, Ill. The recommendations are bound to prompt eye-rolling and LOLs from many teens but an influential pediatrician's group says unrestricted media use has been linked with violence, cyber-bullying, school woes, obesity, lack of sleep and a host of other problems. Mark’s mom said she agrees with restricting kids’ time on social media but that deciding on other media limits should be up to parents. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
In this Oct. 24, 2013 photo, Mark Risinger, 16, checks his smartphone at home in Glenview, Ill. Risinger is allowed to use his smartphone and laptop in his room, and says he spends about four hours daily on the Internet doing homework, using Facebook and YouTube and watching movies. An influential pediatrician's group is recommending strict limits on texting, tweeting and other media use, including banning smart phones, iPods and other Internet access from kids' bedrooms. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
CHICAGO (AP) — Doctors 2 parents: Limit kids' tweeting, texting & keep smartphones, laptops out of bedrooms. #goodluckwiththat.
The recommendations are bound to prompt eye-rolling and LOLs from many teens but an influential pediatricians group says parents need to know that unrestricted media use can have serious consequences.
It's been linked with violence, cyberbullying, school woes, obesity, lack of sleep and a host of other problems. It's not a major cause of these troubles, but "many parents are clueless" about the profound impact media exposure can have on their children, said Dr. Victor Strasburger, lead author of the new American Academy of Pediatrics policy
"This is the 21st century and they need to get with it," said Strasburger, a University of New Mexico adolescent medicine specialist.
The policy is aimed at all kids, including those who use smartphones, computers and other Internet-connected devices. It expands the academy's longstanding recommendations on banning televisions from children's and teens' bedrooms and limiting entertainment screen time to no more than two hours daily.
Under the new policy, those two hours include using the Internet for entertainment, including Facebook, Twitter, TV and movies; online homework is an exception.
The policy statement cites a 2010 report that found U.S. children aged 8 to 18 spend an average of more than seven hours daily using some kind of entertainment media. Many kids now watch TV online and many send text messages from their bedrooms after "lights out," including sexually explicit images by cellphone or Internet, yet few parents set rules about media use, the policy says.
"I guarantee you that if you have a 14-year-old boy and he has an Internet connection in his bedroom, he is looking at pornography," Strasburger said.
The policy notes that three-quarters of kids aged 12 to 17 own cellphones; nearly all teens send text messages, and many younger kids have phones giving them online access.
"Young people now spend more time with media than they do in school — it is the leading activity for children and teenagers other than sleeping" the policy says.
Mark Risinger, 16, of Glenview, Ill., is allowed to use his smartphone and laptop in his room, and says he spends about four hours daily on the Internet doing homework, using Facebook and YouTube and watching movies.
He said a two-hour Internet time limit "would be catastrophic" and that kids won't follow the advice, "they'll just find a way to get around it."
Strasburger said he realizes many kids will scoff at advice from pediatricians — or any adults.
"After all, they're the experts! We're media-Neanderthals to them," he said. But he said he hopes it will lead to more limits from parents and schools, and more government research on the effects of media.
The policy was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics. It comes two weeks after police arrested two Florida girls accused of bullying a classmate who committed suicide. Police say one of the girls recently boasted online about the bullying and the local sheriff questioned why the suspects' parents hadn't restricted their Internet use.
Mark's mom, Amy Risinger, said she agrees with restricting kids' time on social media but that deciding on other media limits should be up to parents.
"I think some children have a greater maturity level and you don't need to be quite as strict with them," said Risinger, who runs a communications consulting firm.
Her 12-year-old has sneaked a laptop into bed a few times and ended up groggy in the morning, "so that's why the rules are now in place, that that device needs to be in mom and dad's room before he goes to bed."
Sara Gorr, a San Francisco sales director and mother of girls, ages 13 and 15, said she welcomes the academy's recommendations.
Her girls weren't allowed to watch the family's lone TV until a few years ago. The younger one has a tablet, and the older one has a computer and smartphone, and they're told not to use them after 9 p.m.
"There needs to be more awareness," Gorr said. "Kids are getting way too much computer time. It's bad for their socialization, it's overstimulating, it's numbing them."
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Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner at http://www.twitter.com.LindseyTanner
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-10-28-Curbing%20Kids%20Online/id-650fe35d097b4e3cbbb8f7ee548d3108During his remarks during Apple's fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer confirmed that Apple's decision to make OS X Mavericks a free upgrade wasn't a one-time fluke. He said "Mavericks and future versions of OS X" will be free.
OS X Mavericks debuted earlier this month along with the introduction of refreshed MacBook Pro models. The new version of the Mac operating system sports over 200 new features, including new Maps and iBooks applications, tabbed Finder windows, tagging, and many "under the hood" enhancements to performance and battery efficiency.
The giveaway of Mavericks - along with Apple's decision to offer its iWork applications for free - may cost you nothing, but it certainly costs Apple. Oppenheimer noted that Mavericks' giveaway, along with free iWork apps for new Mac and iOS device users alike - will contribute to a $900 million increase in deferred revenue for the December quarter, affecting the company's gross margin expectations. Apple will record those deferrals for the Mac over a four year period.
Did Mavericks' giveaway affect your decision to update? Have you gotten free updates to iWork apps, or new iLife apps? Tell me in the comments.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/thstVdznlqQ/story01.htmUpdate at 8:45 p.m. ET:
Kings Dominion spokesman Gene Petriello says the theme park is dropping the Miner's Revenge maze from its Halloween lineup in the future.
"At the completion of each season, all Halloween attractions are reviewed to allow for new themes," Petriello says. "As part of its regular rotation, Kings Dominion does not intend to operate the Miner's Revenge Halloween attraction next year."
Petriello would not comment further.
Our original story continues:
Less than four years after 29 coal miners died in the Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster, the Kings Dominion theme park in Doswell, Va., featured a scary maze based on a coal mine explosion as part of its seasonal Halloween fun.
"Alone in the darkness ... the only sound is the pulsing of your heart as the searing heat slowly boils you alive," read the Kings Dominion pitch last week on its website. "The miners were left entombed deep underground. ... [T]hey are searching for the men who left them to die ... waiting to enact their revenge."
The "Halloween Haunt" attraction ended Sunday, when the park closed for the winter, but Kings Dominion is still the target of severe criticism for the mine disaster theme. The park is located about 300 miles from the Upper Big Branch coal mine in neighboring West Virginia.
"It's very offensive for someone to try to profit off of our loved one's death and off of our pain, because this is very painful, " Clay Mullins told The Associated Press. Mullins lost his brother, Rex, in the explosion.
Attorney Rachel Moreland, who was an official "miner's representative" during the investigation, says the attraction "commits a heartless act of corporate cruelty and desecrates the memory of UBB miners."
A Kings Dominion spokesman defended the attraction.
"Miner's Revenge is not designed, nor intended, to depict a specific situation," said spokesman Gene Petriello in a statement. "Rather, it is simply a themed Halloween attraction for the 2013 Halloween haunt season at Kings Dominion."
That did not appease Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virgina, whose district includes Upper Big Branch. He condemned Kings Dominion for "an appalling lack of sensitivity."
"Using mine tragedies for profit is an insult to a region built on the backs of miners," Rahall says. "Mine fires, collapses and explosions are not science fiction, or ghost stories, or the fantasies commonly cooked up for innocent Halloween fun. They are the all-too-real nightmares of miners and their families."
Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, called the attraction "an insult to the memories of the thousands of miners who have died in America's mines."
More than 80 miners have died in explosions, mine collapses, fires and lethal gas infusions since 1992, reports Ellen Smith (no relation to Phil Smith), publisher of Mine Safety and Health News.
"I am all for Halloween fun, but this Kings Dominion 'attraction' is absolutely unacceptable," Smith writes in an editorial. "With families and mining employees still trying to recover emotionally and financially from recent disasters, this 'attraction' is outside the limits of integrity and morality."
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virgina told TV station WCHS "it's just beyond my understanding and comprehension that anybody could stoop that low for the all- mighty dollar. It's unbelievable."
In an op-ed in The Washington Post last week, writer Peter Galuszka quoted Kings Dominion spokesman Petriello, who said officials at park owner Cedar Fair "express their deepest sympathy" to the victims and their families of the Upper Big Branch tragedy. Cedar Fair did not respond to NPR's request for comment.
