Sennheiser HD 429s

Despite the relatively large number of headphones Sennheiser has out on the market at any given time, the German audio company manages to maintain an impressive standard of quality. The HD 429s, at $89.95 (direct), can be considered a budget headphone option in Sennheiser's deep lineup. Its volume control-free remote, dearth of accessories, and inability to fold down or collapse for easy storage and packing are not ideal, but it's easy to forget when these lightweight, comfortable headphones are playing your favorite music. Simply put, they sound excellent for this price range. The HD 429s is a pair that can afford to skimp on extras because it sounds so good for the price, bringing rich bass and clear highs to the sub-$100 range.

Design
The HD 429s's?design is reminiscent of the Sennheiser HD 558, with large earcups featuring a small Sennheiser logo in the center?and not much else. The material on the edge of the cups and the headband is matte black plastic, with padding that is comfortable despite not feeling very plush to the touch. There's a bit of flexibility to the angle of the earcups, too, that helps the comfort factor, but the primary reason for the comfort: The HD 429s is an extremely lightweight headphone pair.?

The thin black audio cable descends from the left earcup and ends around the upper chest where it can either be plugged into a player that is clipped onto or sitting in a pocket, or plugged into a longer cable that has a built-in microphone and remote. The compartment housing the remote also has a shirt clip on it, and all the cables terminate in 3.5mm?there's an adapter for Nokia-style headphone jacks.

Other than that, the HD 429s has no included accessories, which is a bit surprising even in the sub-$100 price category. There's no carrying pouch or case, nor do the headphones fold down flat, so stowing them for travel might prove to be a bit of a hassle.?

Call clarity through the inline mic is about what you should expect?your call partner will hear you just fine and understand you, but it will still sound like a low-fidelity cell phone call. The single-button remote controls playback and track navigation (depending on how many taps you give it), but there is, disappointingly, no volume control, which should be a given in this price range. Of course, the lack of volume control ensures compatibility with a wider range of phones, but you could always include multiple cables or options to buy different cables on the same headphone pair?none of which are options here.

Performance
On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the HD 429s delivers serious deep bass without going overboard. At maximum, unwise listening levels, the HD 249s doesn't distort on tracks like this, although the earcups vibrate so much, it feels as though it's teetering on the edge. At normal listening levels, the headphones still produce plenty of low frequency rumble, but they do so without going overboard, and the balance with the highs is ideal.

A better insight to the HD 429s's sound signature is gained when listening to Bill Callahan's "Drover." Often, a headphone pair with deep bass response achieves it by boosting the lows too much, almost across the board, so that the sub-bass frequencies get boosted as much as, say, the low-mids in a male baritone voice. This is rarely a good thing, and the HD 429s avoids it?instead of delivering Callahan's vocals in an bass-heavy manner, with dulled edges, we get the crisp high-mid response that keeps his vocals in the forefront of the mix. There's plenty of depth to his baritone voice, but it doesn't overwhelm the mix, and the drums on this track sound natural, rather than bogged down with too much bass. There's low-end here, but there are crisp high-mids and highs to match it.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop's attack gets the right amount of attention in the high-mids. Nothing is boosted so much that the attack sounds too sharp or harsh, but it has a nice crunch to it that's complimented by the low-end presence of the kick's sustain. The sub-bass synth hits that dance around the drum loop are delivered with a richness that does them justice?bass fiends will find them lacking, and purists may feel they're a bit boosted. For those of us who like a little bit of bass with our crisp highs?without everything turning to a lopsided, muddy mess?the HD 429s delivers.

Classical tracks, like John Adams' "The Chairman Dances," often seem to naturally cede the spotlight to the instruments in the high-mid to high frequency range, like higher register strings and brass, when played through pairs that are not bass-heavy and unbalanced. The HD 429s falls into this category?much of its bass presence serves the sub-bass realm, where many classical tracks have little content aside from some percussion hits and lower strings and brass at their lowest. The lower register instruments in this piece get a bit of added richness, but the focus is squarely on the mids-to-highs here. So, on classical tracks, the HD 429s feels fairly close to a flat response pair, whereas it packs a little more oomph on modern mixes that boost the bass. And that's probably the best way to think of it: These headphones give you the deep bass when it's in the mix, and don't invent it when it's not.

If big bass, a bit beyond what the HD 429s brings, is what you're after, consider the Skullcandy Navigator. For the price, it won't disappoint you and doesn't distort, but you sacrifice overall balance. If you have more room in your budget and like the idea of a balanced pair that can reproduce deep lows when called upon, both the Logitech UE 4000 and the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro are fine options. And if all of these are more expensive than what you're looking for, the Skullcandy Hesh 2 offers decent balance and solid bass response for far less money.

At $90, the Sennheiser HD 429s is a solid deal?it delivers excellent audio performance in a comfortable fit. It's lacking in the extras department, and the remote and un-foldable design aren't the most user-friendly decisions. But if you want a fantastic-sounding headphone pair and couldn't care less about the extras, the HD 429s will not disappoint.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/pwT_vg3BEUk/0,2817,2420570,00.asp

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Zombies gained speed, may now get smart

Movies

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper NBC News

5 hours ago

In Brad Pitt's new movie, "World War Z," a soldier gives Pitt's character the lowdown on their undead opponent: Bullets to the body only slow them down, though head shots kill them. They sometimes ooze a kind of black tarry substance, and they love biting humans "like fat kids love Twix." And as filmgoers watch, they discover that these zombies can hear a Pepsi can drop a mile away, tackle like a Dallas Cowboy in the Super Bowl, are willing to fling themselves off skyscrapers and over giant walls, and are smart enough to use the bodies of their fellow undead as a ladder to clamber toward their human targets.

Uncredited / AP

Zombies generally don't work together, but in "World War Z," they use each other's undead bodies to form a ladder to get over a wall to eat humans.

These are not your grandfather's zombies.

Moviegoers have seen the undead evolve in a thousand gruesome rotting ways since the creatures of 1932's "White Zombie" were docile enough to work in a sugar plantation. George A. Romero took the creature -- which he called a "ghoul," not a "zombie" -- to a whole new level in 1968's classic "Night of the Living Dead," making them totter out of graves to munch on the living. And from then on, Hollywood was off, shambling down a rotting cinematic pathway littered with discarded body parts and ever-evolving zombie lore.

Zombies stayed about as fast as your walker-using Aunt Fannie until the 2002 release of "28 Days Later." Purists will tell you that the infected in that film weren't dead, so are not technically zombies. But no matter, they still introduced the public to the idea of fast movie zombies who no longer staggered after you like a drunk uncle, but match Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward (who played a zombie on AMC's "Walking Dead") for speediness.

"I do think that if you had to be bitten by slow movers to turn, you could avoid them and eventually defeat them," said Cal Miller, author of numerous zombie books and zombie comic strip TedDead. " It would be like fighting an army of senior citizens. The fast ones are just horrifying to me. They?ll run you down."

Jaap Buitendijk / AP

Brad Pitt gets knocked over by a swarm of fast-moving zombies in "World War Z."

The zombie diet has changed along with their speed. In the Romero film trilogy, zombies would munch on any part of a living human, from scalp to sole. But in 1985's "Return of the Living Dead" -- not a Romero film -- it's said that the zombies specifically consume the brains of the living because only that soothes the pain of being dead. That film explanation led to the popularization of the ever-popular "BRAAAAAINS!" quote so many associate with the living dead.

"Most people's knowledge of the zombie genre seems to be a bit limited," Miller said. "You say 'zombies' and they answer 'brainzzzzz,' But that was pretty much just in the 'Return of the Living Dead' movies/books. You try and explain that zombies eat the whole body and, well, unfamiliar people get either intrigued or grossed out."

Miller finds the brain-eating cliche a bit odd. "Human teeth can't bite through a skull," he said. "Zombies really go for the easy spots. Arms, legs, neck, belly."

Jaap Buitendijk / AP

In "World War Z," Brad Pitt arms himself with an axe because any sound, including gunshots, draws the attention of the undead.

Mac Montandon, author of "The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies," thinks zombies are resourceful when it comes to dining. "In my book, I point out that the zombie diet is not that far off from the Inuits, indigenous peoples of the Arctic region," he said. "I think that, paradoxically, when it comes down to it, zombies have a really clever survival mechanism that kicks in -- meaning if they had to eat, say, someone's elbow to go on not living, they would."

Zombies were once human, and movies differ on whether their intelligence or humanity still exists once they're undead. In 2004, "Shaun of the Dead" played a zombie invasion for laughs, and in 2013's "Warm Bodies," a zombie actually falls in love with a human.

"Zombies are not funny," said Montandon. "But 'Shaun of the Dead' was. In terms of ('Warm Bodies') human-zombie romance, that seems like much less of a stretch than a human-Tom Cruise romance."

Even the way to kill a zombie isn't agreed on by all moviemakers. It's generally agreed that a head injury must be involved, specifically something that destroys the undead brain. Some require zombie bodies to be burned, but in "World War Z," the fingers of a zombie that's been burned almost to solid ash are still shown to wiggle.

"The head can live if cut off at the neck," said Miller. "A personal pet peeve of mine, however, is when a disembodied head groans. No diaphragm, no lungs, no airflow, no groan."

As long as zombie movies continue to make money, the creatures will doubtlessly continue to evolve on film.

"I think zombies are ready for their 'Coneheads' moment," said Montandon, referring to the "Saturday Night Live" aliens who claimed to be French. "That is, they already have so many human characteristics, it's not hard to see them passing as humans in a suburb of Chicago, for instance."

Miller's novel, "Het Madden: A Zombie Perspective," is written from the point of view of an intelligent zombie, and he believes smart zombies will be the next wave.

"I feel there have to be smart and dumb zombies, like smart and dumb people," Miller said. "The smart ones lurk and plan. They don't walk into machetes."

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/entertainment/movie-zombies-have-staggered-slow-fast-smart-next-6C10370274

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Turkish police crack down on revival of protests

ISTANBUL (AP) ? Riot police on Sunday sprayed tear gas and water cannons at demonstrators who remained defiant after authorities evicted activists from an Istanbul park, making clear they intend to take a hardline against attempts to rekindle protests that have shaken the country.

Bulldozers cleared all that was left of a two-week sit-in and police sealed off the area to keep demonstrators away from the spot that has become the focus of the strongest challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his 10 years in office.

Protesters set up barricades and plumes of tear gas rose in Istanbul's streets on Sunday after Turkish riot police rousted the group who had vowed to stay in Gezi Park despite Erdogan's warnings to leave.

In Istanbul, police battled protesters in side streets off the park and beyond. In Ankara, the capital, police dispersed hundreds who tried to hold a memorial service for an activist who died of injuries sustained in a nearby police crackdown nearby on June 1.

In Saturday's raid at dusk, hundreds of white-helmeted riot police swept through the park and adjacent Taksim Square, firing canisters of the acrid, stinging gas. Thousands of peaceful protesters, choking on the fumes and stumbling among the tents, put up little physical resistance.

The protests began as an environmental sit-in to prevent a development project at Gezi Park, but have quickly spread to dozens of cities and spiraled into a broader expression of discontent about what many say is Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian decision-making. He vehemently denies the charge, pointing to the strong support base that helped him win third consecutive term with 50 percent of the vote in 2011.

As police cleared the square, many ran into nearby hotels for shelter. A stand-off developed at a luxury hotel on the edge of the park, where police opened up with water cannons against protesters and journalists outside before throwing tear gas at the entrance, filling the lobby with white smoke. At other hotels, plain-clothes policemen turned up outside, demanding the protesters come out.

Some protesters ran off into nearby streets, setting up makeshift barricades and running from water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.

As news of the raid broke, thousands of people from other parts of Istanbul gathered and were attempting to reach Taksim. Television showed footage of riot police firing tear gas on a highway and bridge across the Bosphorus to prevent protesters from heading to the area.

As the tear gas settled, bulldozers moved into the park, scooping up debris and loading it into trucks. Crews of workmen in fluorescent yellow vests and plain-clothes police went through the abandoned belongings, opening bags and searching their contents before tearing down the tents, food centers and library the protesters had set up in what had become a bustling tent city.

In Ankara, at least 3,000 people swarmed into John F. Kennedy street Saturday night, where opposition party legislators sat down at the front of the crowd facing the riot police ? not far from Parliament. In Izmir, thousands converged at a seafront square.

Near Gezi, ambulances ferried the injured to hospitals as police set up cordons and roadblocks around the park, preventing anyone from getting close.

Tayfun Kahraman, a member of Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest movements, said an untold number of people in the park had been injured ? some from rubber bullets.

"Let them keep the park, we don't care anymore. Let it all be theirs. This crackdown has to stop. The people are in a terrible state," he told The Associated Press by phone.

Taksim Solidarity, on its Web site, called the incursion "atrocious" and counted hundreds of injured ? which it called a provisional estimate ? as well as an undetermined number of arrests. Istanbul governor's office said at least 44 people were taken to hospitals for treatment. None of them were in serious condition, it said in a statement.

Huseyin Celik, the spokesman for Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, told NTV that the sit-in had to end.

"They had made their voice heard ... Our government could not have allowed such an occupation to go on until the end," he said.

It was a violent police raid on May 31 against a small sit-in in Gezi Park that sparked the initial outrage and spiraled into a much broader protest. While those in the park have now fled, it was unclear whether they would take their movement to other places, or try to return to the park at a later time.

The protests, which left at least four people dead and more than 5,000 injured, have dented Erdogan's international reputation and infuriated him with a previously unseen defiance to his rule.

Saturday's raid came less than two hours after Erdogan threatened protesters in a boisterous speech in Sincan, an Ankara suburb that is a stronghold of his party.

"I say this very clearly: either Taksim Square is cleared, or if it isn't cleared then the security forces of this country will know how to clear it," he told tens of thousands of supporters at a political rally.

A second pro-government rally is planned in Istanbul on Sunday.

According to the government's redevelopment plan for Taksim Square that caused the sit-in, the park would be replaced with a replica Ottoman-era barracks. Under initial plans, the construction would have housed a shopping mall, though that has since been amended to the possibility of an opera house, a theater and a museum with cafes.

On Friday, Erdogan offered to defer to a court ruling on the legality of the government's contested park redevelopment plan, and floated the possibility of a referendum on it.

___

Fraser reported from Ankara. Jamey Keaten in Ankara contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/turkish-police-crack-down-revival-protests-104830598.html

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Turkish street vendors turn on a dime to make a lira off Taksim protests

Swimming goggles and 'V for Vendetta' masks cropped up in street vendors' hands within days of the first demonstrations in Taksim Square.

By Tom A. Peter,?Correspondent / June 12, 2013

Turkish police firing tear gas battle antigovernment protesters as they try to reestablish police control of Taksim Square after an absence of 10 days in the heart of Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday. Turkish street vendors were out selling swimming goggles and disposable face masks as protection against tear gas.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Enlarge

• A local, slice-of-life story from a monitor correspondent

After almost a decade in the Middle East and Central Asia, I?ve found local street vendors to be among the most responsive businessmen I?ve ever encountered. When I got off the plane in Istanbul today, it started to rain. By the time I took a cab into the city, street vendors were out selling Chinese umbrellas for about $3.20 a piece.

Skip to next paragraph Tom A. Peter

Correspondent

Tom A. Peter is a journalist based in Kabul, Afghanistan where he covers news and features throughout the country. He has also reported for The Monitor from Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, and throughout the United States.

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While most people in Turkey will tell you that they were taken completely off guard by the protests, within days street vendors were out selling swimming goggles and disposable face masks for about $2.67 each as protection against tear gas. They also had masks popularized by the movie "V is for Vendetta" and the "Anonymous" hacker group, which have been adopted by many Turkish demonstrators.

The speed at which they were able to offer these items is astonishing when you think that before the protests, most of these people were probably selling toys and products that generally?had nothing to do with protection from tear gas or revolutionary symbolism. I wouldn?t be surprised to learn that they have boxes of pro-government paraphernalia ready in case the protests are permanently squashed.

Of course, the quality of their wares is always questionable. On my first day covering the protests, I didn?t have a gas mask so I purchased a pair of swimming goggles and a face mask, the sort of thing you?d wear to hang dry wall in your basement. When I hit a cloud of tear gas the goggles provided some protection for my eyes, but immediately fogged, blinding me more than the tear gas. As for the mask? I would have been better off trying to hold my breath.

Coming back to Istanbul after yesterday's fierce clashes, I decided that I needed a real gas mask, and sought out a vendor with a brick and mortar storefront. I found an industrial safety shop where the clerk told me that in the past 10 days he?d sold more gas masks than he normally sells in three months.

Normally, Turkish people couldn't care less about industrial safety and breathing toxic fumes, especially if it means spending money, he told me, but now he has people coming in to buy masks as gifts for their friends. Still, committed to selling quality products, he lacks a street merchant?s adaptability. He told me he worried he would burn through his inventory shortly if the demand continued.

If I?m ever in an end-of-days scenario, I hope there?s a Middle Eastern street vendor around. I?m sure he?ll have something to sell me for $5 or less that will protect me (at least psychologically) from anything ranging from a Biblical plague to a zombie apocalypse. In fact, whatever I?d need to weather either of those scenarios is probably already in a box wherever street vendors store their wares.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/V3A4jrCLnuE/Turkish-street-vendors-turn-on-a-dime-to-make-a-lira-off-Taksim-protests

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How Our Phones Leave a Telltale Trail (WSJ)

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Republican state legislators pitch college affordability plan in Naperville

By Susan Frick Carlman scarlman@stmedianetwork.com June 12, 2013 4:18PM

House Republican Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego), flanked by State Rep. Darlene Senger (R-Naperville), talks about a package of legislation Republican leaders say is designed to make college more affordable during a news conference on Wendesday, June 12, 2013, at North Central College. | Jeff Cagle~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: June 13, 2013 7:09PM

A group of Republican state legislators say they know how to bring a college education within reach for more Illinois residents.

The panel of state House GOP caucus members told those gathered at North Central College in Naperville Wednesday afternoon that the remedy involves a combination of tax deductions and tax credits that was devised by second-term Springfield Rep. Adam Brown.

The annual $1,000 tax credit would be available only to families earning less than $150,000 yearly, Brown said, and the $10,000 deduction would not come with the same limitations and restrictions that are attached to existing 529 prepaid college tuition savings plans such as College Illinois and Bright Start.

Brown said his proposal would enable families to invest the $10,000 with another independent agency, or keep the funds in savings.

?We feel like it will put Illinois on a more competitive page,? said Brown, who reported that the yearly cost of tuition, room and board at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has gone from $19,000 to $26,000 in the past decade.

House Republican Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, said he and his legislative peers continuously hear families lamenting the ever-increasing cost of earning a degree.

?We want to try to find a way that we can ease the burden for them,? Cross said.

It?s discouraging, he and other lawmakers said, to hear people say that their kids headed to Missouri or Iowa to attend school, simply because it was a more affordable option.

?The expense of college is prohibitive, but what?s no good is if Illinois schools aren?t competitive ? and frankly, they should be super competitive with our neighboring states,? said Rep. Ron Sandack, R-Downers Grove, who asserted that the state?s money woes have been ?imposed? on its schools. ?We?re seeing outright migration, and frankly a brain drain of our future work force that?s not going to be developed in our state.?

Rep. Darlene Senger, R-Naperville, has been close to the negotiations aimed at closing the state?s nearly $100 billion public pension shortfall, and pointed out that much discussion in recent months has centered on the proposal to shift more of the burden of retirement plan contributions to schools. For every additional 1 percent schools must pay into pension plans, Senger said, families pay 2 percent more in tuition.

?We?re being sensitive to the word ?cost? and what it costs you,? including both the literal expense and the cost to the state of losing its place among the states that provide the highest-quality education through their public schools, she said.

According to Cross, passage of the long-stalled gaming bill would bring $250 million to $300 million to the table to cover the estimated $85 million expense of Brown?s plan. A pension fix, Cross said, would cover the cost of the college-affordability measures in less than a week by stanching the daily flow of $17 million into the swelling liability sum.

?It?s imperative that we get this pension reform done,? Cross said.

The group?s appearance at North Central kicked off a statewide tour aimed at building support for the proposal, which could come to the floor later this year. Sandack framed the plan as the most logical solution yet put forth.

?I can?t see why anyone would fight this legislation rather than embrace it,? he said.

Source: http://couriernews.suntimes.com/news/20677160-418/republican-state-legislators-pitch-college-affordability-plan-in-naperville.html

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