[unable to retrieve full-text content]Applying to college is stressful at the best of times. But technical flaws in the online Common Application, used by hundreds of colleges, have sparked panic among some high school seniors. With deadlines approaching, some schools are making backup plans — like a return to mail or even faxed applications.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/FnuFPXHnwgs/more-angst-for-college-applicants-a-glitchy-common-app
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Friday, October 18, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
AP source: Obama taps Homeland Security secretary
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is calling back a trusted counterterrorism adviser from his first term by nominating former top Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson as secretary of homeland security.
Obama plans to announce Johnson's nomination Friday. He must be confirmed by the Senate before taking over the post most recently held by Janet Napolitano, who stepped down in August to become president of the University of California system.
As general counsel at the Defense Department during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Johnson was an aggressive advocate on a number of complex and contentious legal issues. He oversaw the escalation of the use of unmanned drone strikes, the revamping of military commissions to try terrorism suspects rather than using civilian courts and the repeal of the military's ban on openly gay service members. He also mapped out the legal defense for the American cross-border raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.
A senior Obama administration official on Thursday confirmed Johnson's selection, first reported by The Daily Beast. The official was not authorized to speak about the nomination on the record and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said Obama chose Johnson because of his experience as a national security leader. The official noted that Johnson oversaw the work of more than 10,000 lawyers and was responsible for reviewing every military operation approved by the president and defense secretary.
Johnson is not as well versed in the immigration and disaster response side of the Homeland Security Department, although the administration official pointed out the Pentagon also coordinates federal relief to respond quickly to disasters.
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta praised Johnson's selection Thursday, saying he has "impeccable judgment, leadership qualities and high ethical standards."
At the Pentagon, Johnson was involved in the decision to move Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning from a military jail in Quantico, Va. to Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Supporters of Manning, the young soldier who leaked thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, said conditions at the military jail in Virginia were too harsh.
Johnson led a widespread crackdown on unauthorized leaks in the Defense Department, including warning former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette that by publishing a book on the SEAL's raid that killed bin Laden he was in "material breach" of two nondisclosure agreements he signed earlier in his career. He was also involved in the investigation of retired Marine Gen. John Allen and Tampa, Fla., socialite Jill Kelley.
Johnson sparked criticism when he said in a speech at Britain's Oxford University last November that the war on terror was not an endless conflict and that the U.S. was approaching a "tipping point" after which the military fight against al-Qaida would be replaced by a law enforcement and intelligence operation.
"War must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs," Johnson said. "In its 12th year, we must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the new normal."
Johnson was part of the team that looked at ways to bring women into combat missions and which assessed legal questions surrounding sexual assaults in the military, including how the chain of command should be involved in investigations and prosecutions. He also helped pave the way for the military's 2010 repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning openly gay service members.
"For those service members who are gay and lesbian, we lifted a real and personal burden from their shoulders," Johnson said last year at an event recognizing the service of gay troops. "They no longer have to live a lie in the military."
Johnson, a former assistant U.S. attorney who also was Air Force general counsel under President Bill Clinton, left the Obama administration in 2012 and returned to private practice.
According to a bio on the website of his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, his civil and criminal clients have included Citigroup, Salomon Smith Barney, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Gillette.
Johnson is a 1979 graduate of Morehouse College and a 1982 graduate of Columbia Law School.
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Associated Press writers Alicia A. Caldwell and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
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Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-source-obama-taps-homeland-security-secretary-205541017--politics.html
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Muse gets unsettlingly close in new concert film
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Muse frontman Matt Bellamy had to be more than just camera-ready for "Muse - Live at Rome Olympic Stadium." The British rock band's new concert film was shot in 4K, which meant a whole new level of detail.
"There's weird things like hair and stuff that you probably would never pay attention to," Bellamy said. "It's so much more noticeably sharper that it's almost unsettling at first."
"Muse - Live at Rome Olympic Stadium," directed by Matt Askem, is the first concert film released in the new ultra high definition format. Also called 4K, UHD has a much better resolution than regular HD and is considered the next technological leap in film and television. Thousands of movies have been shot in 4K, but almost all of them have been shrunk down to HD format before being screened. Exceptions include Sony's 2011 remake of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and Will Smith's sci-fi adventure "After Earth."
Fans will get a first look at the Muse film Nov. 5 when it debuts in 20 cities around the globe, before expanding to 700 theaters worldwide the next day in 2K and 4K.
Bellamy said in a phone interview Wednesday from Costa Rica that the band was inspired by U2's use of then-new technology in the 2008 concert film "U23D," so they decided to kick up the production values and aim for something a little more grand.
A trailer shows video screens stories tall and pyrotechnics backing the band. Spider cameras crawled over rigging above the crowd during the July concert, and a pair of actors contributed abstract theatrical interpretations of some of the songs.
Even so, Bellamy said when he saw the movie, his eyes often drifted away from the action on stage to the vivid details elsewhere. "You see the sort of big panning (shot) across the audience and your eyes are drawn to the details of so many people's heads and what they're wearing," Bellamy said.
The release of the film and the conclusion next month of a long world tour leaves Muse, which also includes bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard, at something of a crossroads with no concrete plans at the end of a six-album record deal.
"Early next year I think we'll probably take a break for a few months and at some point next year we'll start writing new music," Bellamy said. "I think if everyone is up for it, we'll start recording music sometime next year."
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Online:
http://www.film.muse.mu
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Follow AP Music Writer: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/muse-gets-unsettlingly-close-concert-film-150541401.html
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Apple iPhones, iPads get intrusion-detection and prevention from startup
Startup Skycure today makes its debut with what's described as intrusion-detection and prevention package for mobile devices. The IDS/IPS from Skycure initially supports Apple iOS iPhones and iPads, with Android anticipated for a later date.
Skycure says this IDS/IPS for Apple iOS works by installing agent software on the device, which interacts with the Skycure cloud service for security purposes. Yair Amit, co-founder and chief technology officer at Skycure, says the goal is to prevent and mitigate any impact from attackers exploiting configuration profiles on mobile devices.
[ InfoWorld presents the Bossies 2013, the best open source software for security, data centers, clouds, and more. | Keep up with key security issues with InfoWorld's Security Adviser blog and Security Central newsletter. ]
[Worst data breaches of 2013 (part 3!)
First look: NetCitadel threat-management in beta site]
"An attacker, in the wild, can configure the device to route all your traffic to their servers," Amit says. This could mean a compromise of information the user shares with everything from Facebook to bank accounts to e-mail and more.
Amit calls it a "design flaw" in iOS that results in "malicious configurations" that aren't necessarily protected by mobile-device management software. He adds this type of exploit of mobile devices would be most likely to occur when using Wi-Fi networks, particularly in public locations, where man-in-the-middle attacks are fairly common.
Both of Skycure's co-founders were previously with IBM and Watchfire, the vulnerability-assessment firm acquired by IBM in 2007. Adi Sharabani, Skycure's CEO, was in the security strategy and architecture group at IBM Software, and manager of the security and research group at Watchfire. Amit was previously manager of the applications security and research group at IBM and lead researcher at Watchfire. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Skycure has received about $3 million in venture-capital funding from Pitango Venture Capital and angel investors.
Skycure's software combined with its cloud service is intended to dynamically identify any attacks on the mobile devices and take certain steps to mitigate against them. One way is setting up a VPN back to the Skycure cloud to cut off the attacker's route, or to a VPN site designated by the enterprise customer. Skycure is seeking to use behavioral analysis to detect attacks, without causing a device slowdown.
Skycure's service is priced per device at between $5 to $10 per month.
Ellen Messmer is senior editor at Network World, an IDG publication and website, where she covers news and technology trends related to information security. Twitter: MessmerE. E-mail: emessmer@nww.com
Read more about wide area network in Network World's Wide Area Network section.
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'Rocky Horror' And Body Positivity At Midnight
The Sonic Transducers are a Rocky Horror shadow cast located in Washington D.C.
Brendan Passell/Courtesy Leandra Lynn
The Sonic Transducers are a Rocky Horror shadow cast located in Washington D.C.
Brendan Passell/Courtesy Leandra Lynn
The cult following behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been largely underground, but has been no secret. Fans have been going to midnight screenings of the film since 1975 to do The Time Warp again (and again). Presumably, that joke has also been written again (and again).
But something new occurred to me last time I saw Rocky Horror. Dragging some friends who hadn't seen the movie before to a midnight screening (the poor souls), I remembered my own first experience as a college freshman, somewhere between amused and alarmed by the pieces of toast hitting my head. One important difference between the two screenings was that my first was on Halloween, and many more people — nearly everyone — in the theatre had dressed appropriately for the occasion in makeup and fishnets and, in some cases, pretty much just lingerie. But while it wasn't the first time I had gone to a midnight screening, it was the first time I had gone to one with a shadow cast: a group of extra-dedicated fans reenacting the film as it projected behind them.
I knew these shows existed, again, thanks to how Rocky's underground culture has been well-documented in more mainstream culture – as in Perks of Being a Wallflower, where it appears as a sort of safe haven for high school outcasts. As the show went on and actors and actresses of various body types, in contrast to the thin stars on the screen, went through various states of undress, that idea of a safe space seemed more relevant. Everybody seemed very comfortable — even the audience was encouraged to participate in an underwear run, which the majority did. Rocky Horror is a pretty notoriously jarring and sometimes offensive movie, but has the community surrounding it become a forum for body positivity somewhere along the way?
"That can mean different things to different activists. That's generally a term that's used by fat activists, though somewhat scholars as well, to talk about kind of a claiming of one's own body," Amy Farrell, Professor of Women's and Gender studies at Dickinson College and author of the book Fat Shame, explains. "In a fat studies context or a fat activist context, that's really used to talk about the ways that the fat body — so someone with a fat body — is often shamed ... So body positivity is challenging that and claiming one's own body, whatever size it is, so that might be a thin body or that might be a fat body ... to say that my body is fine the way it is."
As a very activist-driven philosophy, body positivity is both social and personal, and communities naturally form around it. "Body positivity is about encouraging people to cultivate positive relationships with their body," explains Cat Pause, an activist on the board of the journal Fat Studies. "For me, as a fat activist, I am more interested in encouraging people to accept a diversity in body sizes as natural."
Rocky Horror shadow casts with plus-size performers reenacting the scantily-clad antics of the film would certainly seem to portray a positive body relationship, and those involved in these communities are nothing but enthusiastic about their experiences.
"I keep doing Rocky because I can go out there and rock it. I am a big girl and I accept that. It doesn't stop me from wearing lingerie and dancing around in my underwear," says Leandra Lynn, who performs in a shadow cast located in Washington, D.C., The Sonic Transducers. "I have gotten cheered and applauded. Audience members have told me that I am gorgeous, and it's because I own my body and refuse to feel like I have to apologize for it."
Lynn has been involved with Rocky for almost nine years, and explains that it is the community itself which has been an integral source of encouragement for her own body positivity.
"I know I couldn't have felt this way without Rocky. Before Rocky, I was so shy and embarrassed about myself. There's just no place for that in Rocky."
Other cast members share similar views, and say that the experience has been the norm within their own circle of the shadow cast community, both for the cast and for the audience.
"Some of our own performers have mentioned gaining extensive confidence in their own bodies and appearance after performing," says Niusha Nawab, who regularly plays the title role of Rocky in the Sonic Transducers. "The underwear run is part of what makes it a 'forum' for body positivity. We take the whole show to show the audience how it's OK to be declothed in public and to appreciate what you have, then we give them an opportunity to explore those feelings themselves, asking them to strip down to their skivvies and run about a movie theatre. It's a challenge for them."
At the same time, Nawab points out the importance of not making people uncomfortable in the wrong way. "Sometimes we get people who are unwilling to participate," he says. "We don't force or pressure them to do anything."
Fat positivity in the Rocky Horror community extends beyond the fan community. In the 2000 Broadway revival of the musical, the roles of Eddie and Dr. Scott were played by Orange Is The New Black actress Lea DeLaria, whose own material as a comedian has notably covered fat stigma.
"I've always thought that Rocky was a very comfortable place for fatties," DeLaria explains. "I'm very comfortable in my own skin, and I think that's a gift that I give fat people, and I certainly am told that on the street by people who are fat. That I'm the first kind of positive image of a fat person that they've ever seen, and it made them feel better about themselves."
Despite the body positive experiences Rocky Horror communities enjoy today, Rocky Horror shadow casts have a history of not always being so accepting.
"When I think about Rocky Horror, and the times I have seen it with a shadow cast ... there is usually only one body type represented," Pause says of her own experiences. "With the exception of Eddie (who is a fat male — and carries male privilege) and possibly Magenta (who can be larger than the other females/women on stage — but still not too large)."
Although such stigma has existed within Rocky Horror's community despite its proudly misfit attitudes, it has been challenged over time. Angel Martine joined a shadow cast when he moved to Austin, Texas in the '80s, and played a part in this shift from the limited body representations into a community more recognizable as the body positive one it has become.
"You had to wear a blonde wig to play Janet if you weren't blonde, gender bending was pretty much confined to special shows, and if you were over a certain size, you were never going to play anything but Magenta, Eddie, Dr. Scott, or the Criminologist. That part I was never happy about," Martine explains. "I changed the rules (unwritten but pretty ironclad for years) when I ended up cast director because I had seen so many people play parts really well and enjoy them on a gender bender night that I knew they wouldn't be cast for on a regular basis. ... Occasionally people in the audience made boorish comments, but that hasn't happened in a long time."
And while Martine has witnessed improvement in the Rocky Horror community itself, society hasn't progressed as quickly.
"I think our society is beginning to become more open-minded and accepting of us, but fat people are one of the few groups people can still bash and mock publicly and not be called on it."
If the Rocky Horror community is not just body positive, but ahead of the curve, then is there some legitimacy to the idea that the Rocky Horror community somehow became a safe space for body positivity?
"The folks who do the Time Warp are this fantastic array of sizes, wearing tails and party hats, happily doing the steps, pelvic thrust and all, and entering an altered reality because of it. I always looked for the fat people in the group. They're there," says Susan Stinson, a novelist whose work focuses on fat and queer characters. "Brad and Janet are allowed to enter this world: beginners welcome."
At the same time, Rocky Horror has never been the easiest film to get into, and its potential as a safe space might carry that weight as well.
"It is a very comfortable space for 'freaks' but it is probably a bit off putting for the 'Brad' and 'Janets' of the world who might be taken aback at the radical expression taking place," says Nat Pyle, who studies gender and sexuality at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "For the freaks that go regularly I have no doubt that the space has therapeutic value for them. It rejuvenates a sense of verve and lust for expression that then many take with them into their daily lives where they might be ostracized for the very thing that in the Rocky community they are celebrated for."
While often connected with fat acceptance and fat activism, body positivity is not a term limited to a person's weight. The idea of encouraging comfort with people's bodies also resonates with the LGBT community, especially for transgender and transsexual persons. When DeLaria played Eddie and Dr. Scott in the 2000 Broadway revival, she became the first woman to play the male roles.
"I personally just think that it brought us a little bit more into the 21st century, you know, challenging gender norms," DeLaria explains. "I think that what we did was we took that transvestite thing maybe just a step further than they'd ever seen it done before."
Challenging gender norms has always been an important element of Rocky, much more so than mainstream culture has as a whole.
"Western Culture has inundated individuals with images of what has been put on a pedestal as an 'ideal body type' which is thin and gender specific," Pyle explains. "In the case of people with gender non-conforming bodies, there is also an alienation that takes place as these individuals don't see themselves as having a place within society."
Before joining a shadow cast in Austin, Martine started attending Rocky Horror screenings in the late 70s in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he experienced such alienation.
"At the time, Corpus Christi was a very conservative, religious city that sort of tended to eat its young, and we Rocky kids were mostly outsiders there, the 'different' ones who were bullied, told we were going to hell, and considered 'weird,'" Martine describes. "It was our safe place ... but not always, since we had to contend with rednecks yelling 'Faggots!' at us and throwing eggs, tomatoes, beer, etc at us during the show."
Despite the varying levels of acceptance seen throughout its history, Rocky Horror seems to have always offered an important sense of community, one willing to progress and better itself.
"Safe spaces for fat bodies, trans bodies, etc., are pretty rare," Pause explains. "I do believe that Rocky Horror is/has become a safe space for many people ... I'm honestly not sure how this has happened."
While others are more hesitant to deem Rocky a "safe space," many believe it does have a unique and supportive quality.
"I have a lot of concern about the idea of 'safe space' ... But I will say that I think Rocky Horror is a reclaimed space. The movie is indeed sometimes jarring and/or uncomfortable, and a concerted effort has been made to take the sting out of the hard parts," says S. Bear Bergman, a transgender contributor to the Fat Studies Reader. "Body positivity boils down to the same things for fat people, trans people, and also all other kinds of people - it means pursuing what will make you feel most well, regardless of conflicting social or cultural imperatives about how your body is 'supposed to' be."
So despite its sometimes "rocky" history, Rocky Horror fans have made a supportive, body-positive community — out of shouting awful things at an awful, but lovably awful, film.
"The whole show is about embracing who we are for what we are and not to be ashamed of ourselves," Pyle says. "To hear someone chastise another about weight or to tell a boy he's too femme or a girl she's too butch would counteract the overarching sentiment of 'Don't dream it, Be it!'"
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Facebook Starts Letting Teens Post Publicly Despite Risks, As It ...
Like a cautious parent, Facebook is giving teen users new freedom despite risks. For the first time, users under 18 can post publicly. The logic is that other sites don’t restrict kids, teens are getting more web savvy, and young celebrities want a voice. This could let minors publicly share things they’ll regret, so they must manually opt in to public sharing and confirm they understand the risks.
Somewhat disingenuously, Facebook frames its blog post about the change as being about adding more protection for teens. It starts off saying that now when people age 13 to 17 sign up, their posts to the News Feed are defaulted to “friends only” instead of “friends of friends (fof)” as they were before. That is important because many people don’t change their default settings, and if you have thousands of friends with thousands of friends, the fof setting would share your posts to more than a million people.
But considering there are 1.15 billion people on Facebook already, and its growth has slowed significantly as it saturates key markets, there are likely well over a hundred million teens grandfathered into the old fof default. The real news is opening up public News Feed posting to minors.
That’s good news for teenage celebrities. They can now turn on the option for their user profile to have followers — people who aren’t their friends but who see their public posts in the News Feed. That means they don’t have to run a separate fan Page to build a public audience. Having significant social media reach can help child actors get jobs or earn teen musicians favor with record labels.
Meanwhile, the young celebs will generate compelling content that appeals to the critical under-18 demographic. Critics say Facebook is losing its cool with this audience. The company has repeatedly claimed on earnings calls that it’s not seeing significant reductions in engagement from teens, but it admits that mobile-first social networks like Snapchat could be grabbing eyeballs Facebook would have gotten otherwise. Giving their famous peers a megaphone could encourage kids to stick around on the nearly decade-old social network.
Another argument supporting the change is that teens are hardcore Internet users that are supposedly becoming quite familiar with how to purport themselves online. If they want to make the conscious choice to switch the audience of the News Feed posts to public, they should have that right.
Facebook claims it’s doing its best to protect them by making them acknowledge the risks by confirming the dialogue window, pictured above, that states: “Did you know that public posts can be seen by anyone, not just people you know? You and any friends you tag could end up getting friend requests and messages from people you don’t know personally.” If a minor confirms and starts posting publicly, down the line Facebook will remind them they’re sharing publicly so they don’t forget, and give them a quick way to limit the visibility of their posts.
The final argument is that many social media sites and blogging platforms like Tumblr let teens post publicly without restriction or heavy-handed warnings. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for teens to post publicly like campaigning for social causes. Why should Facebook be different from the rest of the web?
Well, the counter argument is that Facebook should be different because it’s evolved to be viewed as a friendly place where content is somewhat private. Facebook has had its share of privacy stumbles over the years, and some still think it’s pushing people too hard to be open. For instance, last week it stopped letting people opt out of being searched for and found by name. But the general perception is that Facebook is for sharing with friends.
There will surely be users who breeze through these warnings, post immature status updates or embarrassing photos publicly to Facebook, and their reputations will pay the price. Naive 13-year-olds might wrongly assume that anything inside the site or app’s blue walls can’t be used against them. But should that mean intelligent, responsible 17-year-olds with driver’s licenses should be able to post publicly? It’s a nuanced, subjective thing to judge.
What’s certain, though, is that it’s more important than ever for parents and schools to educate children about safe and respectable use of the Internet. If we teach kids to look both ways before crossing the streets, we should teach them to look at the privacy setting of their Facebook posts before they share.
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Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/16/facebook-teens-can-now-post-publicly/
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Sony now lets you pre-order PS4 games from your PlayStation 3
Sony wants to make it easier for US PlayStation 3 owners to get themselves ready for the launch of its next-gen console next month. Earlier today, the company rolled out an update for the aging console that makes PlayStation 4 games available to pre-order through the PlayStation Store. The first two ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/EaRUxqpyYi0/Related Topics: Nothing Was The Same alexander skarsgard egypt Eydie Gorme Eddie Lacy
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