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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

'Smash' Taps 'Gossip Girl's' Josh Safran as New Showrunner


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Top Stories from the last 24 hours


Hi David,

These are the top stories from The Next Web over the last 24 hours.

See you at The Next Web Conference (April 26-27) in Amsterdam? We're taking it to the next level!

The Next Web

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CinemaCon 2012: Pixar Announces New Latin-Themed Project, Disney Plans 'Muppets 2'


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How to Pick the Perfect Laptop

April 24th, 2012Top Story

How to Pick the Perfect Laptop

By Whitson Gordon

How to Pick the Perfect LaptopWhen you buy a desktop computer, you can customize everything to fit your exact needs—from choosing the perfect mouse and keyboard to making the most of your case to selecting even the guts that keep your computer running. Laptop users aren't quite so lucky. Since laptops are rarely upgradable, you need to buy a machine that has everything you need off the bat. If you're in the market for a new laptop, here are all the things you'll want to look for—and stay away from.

We'll be focusing mostly on non-Mac hardware today, since laptop shopping is much more difficult when you're choosing between hundreds of models rather than four. However, if you're looking for a Mac, many of these considerations do still apply—just not all of them. However, even you Windows users should consider a Mac in your buying decisions, since you can easily run Windows on a Mac's killer hardware and get the best of both worlds. If you're looking for a bit more choice, though, you'll need to do a bit more research.

A Two-Pronged Approach

How to Pick the Perfect LaptopAs you shop, you'll want to make sure you do two things: 1) Read plenty user reviews (on sites like Newegg or Amazon) and 2) Try the laptop out for yourself. Lots of people skip one of these steps, and they're both equally important. Trying out the model you're interested in is the only way you're really going to know what it's like to type on its keyboard or use its trackpad, or know how well it's built. Similarly, reading reviews is the only way you can really learn things like how hot it gets, or how long the battery actually lasts. If you do your due diligence with both of these, you should have no problem finding your soulmate of a laptop. Below, we've listed the things you'll want to consider as you search in order of importance. So, the first thing you should think about is form factor, and then narrow down the available models by build quality. Technical specs, battery life, and other things should come later.

Form Factor

Laptops come in all shapes and sizes, but you can usually narrow it down to about four form factors:

  • Large laptops (17" and above): These laptops only really have one thing in common: they're big and usually heavy. They aren't super portable, are easier to carry around than a desktop computer, and they range in price from $500 or $600 to over $2000. The cheaper ones are usually low-powered and useful for people that just want to watch movies on a bigger screen but don't plan on carrying it around. The more expensive ones are more geared toward gamers and professional photo or video editors and come with all the power you'd need to perform more complicated tasks.
  • Midsize laptops (13"-16"): These laptops are your all-around, affordable laptops for the average user. They have a pretty big range in price and power, so you can almost always find what you're looking for. You'll find most of them lie within the $500 to $1400 price range, and they're great for people that want a simple laptop but want a lot of USB ports, a CD drive, and other perks without paying a lot of money. They're more portable than large laptops, but still will carry a noticeable heft in your backpack at around 4-6 pounds.
  • How to Pick the Perfect LaptopUltrabooks (Usually 14" and smaller): If you're willing to spend a bit more money for extra portability, you can get an ultrabook, which is a super slim, super light, moderately powerful machine built for the average user. We've talked about them at length before, but these are great if you're willing to sacrifice a few USB ports and a DVD drive in the name of portability. They weigh about 2-4 pounds, cost closer to $1000, and carry enough power for all your basic activities and maybe a bit of light video editing.
  • Small laptops and netbooks (Usually 12" and below): These are ultra cheap, ultra portable, and ultra low power. They're really only good if you're looking for extreme portability, and are willing to sacrifice quite a bit of power to do so. Don't expect to do more than simple web browsing and email on these machines, and even then, you can expect it to have a bit of lag to it. Still, at about a $300 price point, it'll get the job done without breaking the bank.

Most people right now are making the decision between a midsize laptop and an ultrabook, and it's a tough decision. Midsize laptops are going to offer you a ton of choices, so you may be able to find the perfect laptop there, and for quite a bit cheaper than a comparable ultrabook. That said, we're pretty stoked about ultrabooks around here, as they're virtually weightless and more than powerful enough for most people. If you're willing to plop down the extra cash and ditch the DVD drive (which you could always replace with an external one), they're worth a look.

Build Quality and Durability

How to Pick the Perfect LaptopSome laptops are built very well: they're strong, durable, easy to open and close, and so on. Others are made out of cheap plastic, feel flimsy, and look like they'd shatter from a 6 inch drop. You obviously want the former. Sure you can read reviews, but heading into the store to look at models to find one that fits your standard of build quality is paramount. Don't forget to check out the laptop hinges to see if it opens and closes smoothly, and read reviews to find out how quickly they degrade over time.

Pay special attention to the trackpad and keyboard, since those are the things you'll need to use the most. How does the trackpad feel? Do your fingers glide over it easily, or is the mouse hard to move? Does it have a dedicated scroll bar, or is it multitouch-capable? Is the keyboard big enough to comfortably type on? Are there any keys in non-standard places that would make typing awkward for your (think of the backspace, shift, enter, and control keys here). Again, try it for yourself and read reviews to see how they hold up over time. You want a computer that will last you for years into the future, not one that you'll have to hold together with duct tape as soon as the warranty runs out.

Tech Specs

How to Pick the Perfect LaptopMany of you may be tempted to look at the tech specs first, but at the end of the day, the computer's internal specs are the thing you'll probably notice the least—your keyboard, trackpad, and build quality are going to be a lot more noticeable. Processors don't matter a ton anymore (except in terms of battery life), and most people can easily get by on 4GB of RAM. If you have specialized needs—like a super fast processor for encoding video, or a dedicated video card for gaming, you'll want to keep an eye out for those, but other than that, you don't need to obsess over specs. And, while you can't upgrade much in a laptop, you can usually upgrade RAM, so you can always add more later if you need it. Check out our guide to picking out PC components for all the information you could need about deciding on tech specs.

Whether you have specialized needs or not, though, pay close attention to the hard drive (which, again, should be upgradable in many laptops—read reviews to find out). Make sure you get one big enough to hold all your data, or, if you're gunning for speed, make sure the laptop has a solid state drive. It'll cost you a bit more, but as we've said many times before, it's one of the best speed upgrades you can possibly make to a machine.

Battery Life

How to Pick the Perfect LaptopThe more life you can squeeze out of your battery, the better, but unfortunately, battery life can be a bit hard to measure. The best you can do is look at the manufacturer's battery life estimations and read reviews to see whether their claims match up with real world experience. Some components—like newer generation processors and solid state drives—are particularly friendly to your battery life, too. You can do a little extra work to keep that battery working as long as possible, but the best way to get good battery life is to buy a laptop that already has it. You should also make sure to treat that battery right to keep its lifespan high.

USB and Other Ports

How to Pick the Perfect LaptopWhen it comes to the ports in your laptop, you're going to be much more limited than on a desktop, so it's important you know what you're getting. How many USB ports do you want? Does the model you're looking at have the much-improved USB 3.0? Does it have an SD card slot for your camera's photos? What about Ethernet for when your Wi-Fi goes down, or a VGA, DVI, or HDMI port for connecting an external monitor? This kind of stuff can fluctuate a lot from laptop to laptop, and the smaller your laptop, the fewer ports it's going to have (ultrabooks are particularly low on ports, since they're so thin). You can always get a USB hub if you need more ports at home, or a USB SD card reader for your photos, but just know that the more ports you actually have on the computer, the more convenient it's going to be.

Other Considerations

Here are a few of the other less involved but equally important things you might want to look for:

Screen Quality: Check both the screen's resolution (higher is better) and its quality; it should be easy to see the difference when compared with the screen on a cheap laptop. Colors should be vibrant, and the monitor should have a wide variety of brightness settings that you can tweak from the keyboard.

Heat Production: Laptops can get very hot, especially if you're using them (improperly) on your lap. This is going to be something you can only really read in reviews, but keep an eye out for laptops that overheat even when they're used properly on a desk. Make sure that the laptop has rubber feet on the bottom that gives heat room to escape when set on a flat surface, and that it has good fan placement and airflow to keep everything running at a safe temperature.

A Webcam: If you plan on video chatting with friends and family, make sure your laptop comes with a built-in webcam. Most should, but not all will, and this is an easy component to forget.

A Lock: If you plan on locking your laptop to your desk (say, if you're going to college, where such things are likely to be stolen), check and make sure your laptop has a hole for a desk lock.

Upgradability: Most laptops aren't going to be very upgradable. You can usually replace the RAM and maybe the hard drive, but other than that, don't plan on changing any of the hardware. Double check how upgradable a given computer is, though, and whether you void the warranty by doing so. Also check how easy it is to open for things like cleaning the fan, which can often be a herculean task on laptops.

Warranty: Lastly, check out the manufacturer's warranty. Make sure it's at least a year long (90 days really isn't enough), and know exactly what it covers. If you're particularly accident prone and the extended warranty covers accidental breakage, you might want to get it, but generally, we're not in favor of extended warranties. However, you should still check if the manufacturer has one—the better warranty a product has, the more confident they are in its quality, which is good for you.


That's a lot to think about at once, but even you veterans have probably forgotten one or two of the above considerations when buying a laptop because there's just so much to remember. So, whether you're a laptop expert or you're completely technology challenged, take this list with you on your next shopping trip to make sure you get everything you want. With enough research, you should easily be able to find the perfect laptop for you. Got any other laptop shopping tips? Share them with us in the comments.

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Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer Got Me To Trade My Cynicism for Addiction

April 24th, 2012Top Story

Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer Got Me To Trade My Cynicism for Addiction

By Kate Cox

Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer Got Me To Trade My Cynicism for Addiction

I spend a lot of time with the quarian lately; she's become my favorite. Though if I'm being strictly honest, she's actually the third quarian. The first two long since reached the limits of their potential with me, and are now off fighting some other battles elsewhere in the galaxy.

It's the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer mode that's gotten me hooked. I've been spending hours and half-hours here and there with it many weeknights and nearly every weekend since the game launched, and for me, that's a first. I originally came to Mass Effect because I loved the stories of the people who made up the living, breathing soul of the Milky Way. But those stories, those companions and enemies and larger-than-life heroes, are completely absent from the multiplayer experience that of late I find myself so addicted to. So what gives?

It's not that I've never played an online multiplayer game before; it's that I haven't generally enjoyed one enough to keep coming back to it when I didn't have to. And in all honesty, I didn't expect to enjoy it with Mass Effect 3. I resented (and still resent) the implicit requirement that I go online and work my way through a number of 20-minute bouts mowing down mooks in order to complete Commander Shepard's single-player story to my satisfaction.

When I played through ME3 with my imported Shepard, I played for character and for story. I lingered fondly over the Normandy and the Citadel, seeking out every conversation I could with the NPCs I liked best. I only sought out multiplayer adventures when there was only one mission remaining in my journal, the ultimate point of no return for the game. I worked my way through enough matches to get my Galactic Readiness up to 75%, and then bailed, running back to finish the single-player story before my number could deteriorate.

I was done. Multiplayer was just an inconvenient add-on, not for me. Having finished ME3 twice, I set it aside, assuming I was finished until more DLC inevitably arrived.

Only... I missed it.

I found myself going back. First, by offering to jump into MP matches with friends who hadn't yet finished the single-player game, and who wanted help getting their readiness higher. But there weren't that many of those friends whose schedules meshed with mine. So I went into a few random-matching public lobbies. And then a few more. And then just one more, because it's getting late, but, well, okay, this is a good group, one more round before bed can't really hurt...

Six weeks after starting, I've decided that I really love playing Firebase Hydra, with Firebase Dagger as a close second. Firebase Ghost and Giant aren't bad either, but I groan aloud every time I get thrown into Firebase Reactor. I hate that freaking map. The "key enemy personnel" and "enable / disable four devices" wave types are my favorite, but I cringe whenever the team has to band together and defend a computer that inevitably gets placed in an absolutely terrible defensive position, with little to no cover. Having to stand in the open for three waves out of ten made for one particularly excruciating round.

Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer Got Me To Trade My Cynicism for AddictionBut what I really love is that I'm getting better. I play Infiltrator by preference, and after a few weeks of doing it nightly, I'm really getting quite good. I've mastered the use of Tactical Cloak to run right past Cerberus, geth, or reapers to where I am needed most. I've become excellent at finding defensible sniper positions, and at taking down my enemies with a single, well-placed shot. Invisible, I can dart about the map to reach targets while timers tick down, or move to a fallen comrade while s/he can still be revived.

I don't often play games just for the sake of building a particular player skill. I enjoy games with narrative arcs, games where you gain more weapons and powers as you level up, games where over time you earn a bag of tricks that you can deploy at will. But Mass Effect 3's multiplayer has drawn me in, and has me actively working to get better at it and to take on harder challenges. BioWare's Mass Effect team said outright at PAX East that they hoped continued multiplayer content would keep discs in drives and players engaging with the game, and I have to admit that on me, at least, it's working.

What helped me warm up to it was a sense of safety and comfort. After playing Shepard as an Infiltrator through three single-player games (and playing those games more than once each), I knew how to handle the character type. I knew, from my single-player experience, how Cerberus operated and how reapers were likely to attack. I felt that I had enough knowledge, going in, not to embarrass myself so badly that I couldn't continue. And so I had the confidence to learn more.

Does the multiplayer add significantly to the true core experience of the Mass Effect arc? Not really. While it's clever to get a bit of insight into the "offscreen" battles being waged elsewhere while Shepard takes the starring role, the premise wears thin quickly. The multiplayer maps show up in the single-player game as N7 missions, and there are only so many times that Admiral Hackett can command you to take down four conveniently-appearing high-ranking enemy personnel before the pretense wears off.

But it's got me invested in the universe in a whole new way. It's made me willing to play pretend, to go along with the story I'm being told. It's made me want to take down reapers, to keep that Readiness at 100%, and to be sure that I'm not the weakest link in the chain. It's made me want to join in on weekend bonus missions and to earn the virtual credits that pay for new virtual guns (one of which, someday, must eventually be a better sniper rifle. Please, game?).

And more importantly, it's made me willing to give a fair shake to multiplayer modes on my single-player games going forward. Kotaku boss Stephen Totilo just found tremendous value in the upcoming Max Payne 3's multiplayer mode. Single-player games I love, like Assassin's Creed and Uncharted, have been trying to entice me online for a while now. Perhaps I've finally learned to listen.

I'll get right on that. After just one more round...

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Chuck Colson: Watergate Conspirator and God's Own Ratfucker

April 24th, 2012Top Story

Chuck Colson: Watergate Conspirator and God's Own Ratfucker

By Mobutu Sese Seko

Chuck Colson: Watergate Conspirator and God's Own RatfuckerFormer Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon and Watergate co-conspirator Chuck Colson died this weekend. Besides being a criminal and an intolerant far-right evangelical, he's perhaps most famous for saying, "I would walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Dick Nixon."

The exact wording of the quote has been disputed through the years, but the spirit behind it is unmistakable—one of the most depressing sentiments ever uttered in the English language. Colson didn't say it out of naiveté; he knew exactly what he was getting with Dick. His declaration was like someone pledging to trample an infant into the grave for a York Peppermint Patty, even if one knew ahead of time they were made of ash and roofing nails and tasted like "boiled AIDS." That was Colson, a public thug for forty years, who changed a black burglar's turtleneck for preacher's robes.

That said, there's almost something quaint about Colson in retrospect. His rumpled shirts and blue blazers set him apart from the modern conservative's gray power suit and blue-or-red tie ensemble. If anything, he looked like a northwestern academic, a lived-in thinker type—like George Will, if he were a human being. Even his crimes have started to seem quaint.

There is, of course, Watergate, which has no peer in history, but for which he shouldered little blame compared to E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who planned and executed the burglary. Colson's arranging a break-in to Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to smear the Pentagon Papers' source as dangerously unstable is almost the sort of thing one can slough off today, as we watch the New York Times, Think Progress' Alyssa Rosenberg and Democratic pundit Joy Reid, who have labeled Wikileaks source Bradley Manning as someone with "delusions of grandeur," emotionally disturbed and possibly conflicted about being gay, and a personally troubled anarchist. Unlike Ellsberg, Manning hasn't even allegedly leaked top secret information. But who cares? The world doesn't need Chuck Colson's talents when the liberal commentariat will do his job for him.

As for the plot to firebomb the Brookings Institution, by all means, sir, the key is under the mat.

Then there's the matter of his post-Watergate evangelizing career, which thankfully few people failed to notice as a conversion to the status of God's Own Ratfucker. His anti-gay, anti-liberal rhetoric—and unscientific and ahistorical demonization and smears—never veered from the toxic and odious, but one could hear it lustily reaffirmed by almost every GOP primary candidate this season. His Manhattan Declaration, that devout Christians should reject laws at odds with the Bible, is merely the most prominent articulation of unconstitutional Dominionist hogwash. Further, this kind of personal rejection of the rule of law is overwhelmed by a current GOP climate where it's been translated into a war on birth control for women, while public officials muse unapologetically about secession and nullification.

Even his Prison Fellowship crusade to convert convicts to Christianity in a war against the spread of Islam in prisons now reads like a faint call to arms compared to the actions of Norway's Christian-nationalist terrorist Anders Breivik, who, as author Jeff Sharlet points out, was inspired by the same concerns. Breivik—who was also whipped up into a paranoiac nativist fervor by clowns like Pamela Gellar and Robert Spencer—merely took right-wing rhetoric about the existential threat of Islam and the inability to negotiate with or persuade an unreasoning, murderous cultural army and provided its natural conclusion: When they understand only force and desire only to destroy, exterminate the brutes. Breivik himself neatly predicted how the American right-wing would inevitably have to embrace some of his conclusions which, unsurprisingly, Pat Buchanan obligingly did. Colson left a snowball on a hill, and there were no shortage of people willing to help push it down.

So if the passage of time and the accelerating nastiness of contemporary events have rendered him more of a hateful dirty-tricks curio, try to look on the bright side. Pause, for just a moment, and cherish the legacy Colson offers us. Unlike, say,

  • Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize winner, who illegally negotiated against U.S. interests in Vietnam as a private citizen, who as noted by historian Robert Dallek, knew full well that Vietnam was unwinnable and continued to prosecute it anyway, who bombed Cambodia and engineered Pinochet's Chilean coup, who was called in to advise the Bush administration as late as 2002 and who even today has to be careful what sort of plane he boards lest he touch down some place that might charge him for crimes against humanity;
  • Georgie and Dickie, who violated the Geneva Conventions to indefinitely detain and torture human beings (on the advice of flunkie counsel from Addington, Bybee, Gonzalez and Yoo—the last of whom teaches at fucking Berkeley), who not only propped up the sclerotic autocracy of our Cairene Dracula Hosni Mubarak but shipped B-grade Muslim shitkickers to be tortured in his electrode game room, who fed disinformation to the press to fabricate a casus belli in a war of opportunity and exposed a CIA officer to remove a political inconvenience, and who today spend their time collecting hearts like building up "health" in a side-scrolling video game and pocketing the equivalent of 200 dishwashers' annual earnings to give thirty-minute keynote speeches of unapologetic mendacity;
  • our current White House occupant and resident constitutional scholar, who even at this moment is probably drone-roasting some Yemeni collateral damage alive like a piece of shit-out-of-luck shawarma, who dispatched America's former Public Enemy #1 with a summary dark-room "double tap" to the brain, and who had an American citizen executed without due process;

unlike those ghouls, Chuck Colson committed crimes against the American conscience and in service to what then proved to be the most secretive and imperial presidency in history—and we sent his ass to prison for it.

When he was still presidential special counsel, Colson used to keep a framed picture on his wall, reading, "When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." Well, in a stranger time in this republic, congressmen and federal judges still youthfully smitten by the rule of law took Chuck's balls and were about to nail them to the fucking wall when the weasel pled guilty. Keep the memory alive; the courage of our contemporaries won't remind us of it any time soon.

"Mobutu Sese Seko" is founder of the blog Et tu, Mr. Destructo?

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