Former NYSJA president, jeweler Al Mintz dies

May 24, 2012

West Palm Beach, Fla.--Israel ?Al? Mintz, owner of a number of New York jewelry stores and the former president of the New York State Jewelers Association, died May 10 in Florida at the age of 93.

Born in New York City in 1918, Mintz attended St. John?s University and watch-making school prior to World War II. During the war, he served in the U.S. Army, fighting in Germany.

Following the war, he opted to follow in his father?s footsteps and become a jeweler. Mintz owned and operated Boulevard Jewelers in Corona, Queens, Corwood Jewelers in Woodside, Queens, Towne Jewelers in Syosset, N.Y., as well as a store with his brother called Jewelers Three in Flushing, Queens.

Mintz also served as president of the Consolidated Jewelers Association (CJA). After he retired, he moved from the New York area to Lakeworth, Fla.

He is survived by his wife, Claire; one son, Al Mintz, a retired jeweler and former CJA president; one daughter, Barbara Goldstein, a former administrator for CJA; five grandchildren and seven great-grandsons. He was preceded in death by one grandson.

Mintz was buried with military honors for his service in World War II.

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Bountiful bikinis at Rio fashion week

Models parade on the catwalk in creations from the Lenny summer collection at Fashion Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, May 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Models parade on the catwalk in creations from the Lenny summer collection at Fashion Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, May 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

A hair stylist arranges a model's hair as other stylists watch during the preparation backstage for the catwalk presentation of summer collection designs by Lenny at Fashion Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, May 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

A model wears a creation by Triya summer collection during Fashion Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

A model wears a creation by Triya summer collection during Fashion Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

A model wears a creation by Blue Man summer collection during Fashion Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, May 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Rio de Janeiro (AP) ? Just how many variations can you spin off the marvel of simplicity that is the bikini?

Judging by the options on spectacular display at FashionRio, the Marvelous City's five-day-long summer 2013 fashion extravaganza, the options are endless.

Fancy pairing your string bikini top with spandex pants hung with rows of seductively dangling fringe, which provide so much more coverage than the country's traditional "fio dental" or "dental floss" bottoms? Rio's got just the thing for you.

Toying with the idea of kitting out your two-piece with a chain mail sheath emblazoned with a palm tree? Look no further.

Bikinis are Brazilian designers' bread and butter, so while their winter collections tend to fall flat, with half-hearted attempts at outerwear, summer reliably sizzles. And the southern hemisphere summer collections that will hit the beach this coming January were no exception.

Sao Paulo-based label Triya served up the season's most eye-popping options, a psychedelic rainbow that broke the beachwear mold. Beyond the fringed pant bikini, the brand's brainchild, were tiny bottoms paired with long sleeve spandex tops cropped short to show off the models' abs and a zebra-printed bandeau top that sprouted an ankle length skirt in aubergine silk with a bold slit up one side.

Swimsuits more in name than in function, many of Triya's offerings looked like what you might wear to an ultra-chic beachside rave thrown by a billionaire. Putting aside the inevitable inconveniences of wearing a flowing silk ball gown to the beach, the only drawback to the wildly creative offerings were the bizarre tan lines they'd be sure to leave.

Cia. Maritima brought out the big guns - Victoria's Secret angel Izabel Goulart among other Brazilian-born supermodels - to show off its teeny-weeny bikinis. Goulart rocked the catwalk in a leopard print string bikini fitted with a sexy spider's web of thin yellow straps. Aline Weber, a regular on top runways in New York and Paris, worked a one-piece with cute cap sleeves and bold cutouts at the midriff. The pineapple prints gave a mouthwateringly tropical touch to the toothsome collection.

Va-va-voom one-pieces emerged as major winners here, with just about everyone who is anyone in Brazilian swimwear sending out variations on the vampish maillot. Top high-street beachwear label Blue Man sent out white swimsuits decidedly not made for anyone's grandma, with how-low-can-you-go V necks. And a strapless one-piece had hiplines that started at just under the bust, the whole seemingly precarious contraption held, one can only hope, in place by a low-slung belt.

Lenny, Brazil's reigning queen of patrician swimwear, served up racerback tanks that looked like they'd been tagged by a Rio graffiti artist and bikinis whose fuller coverage was undermined by a cat claw of strategically placed slashes. Paired with the bikini tops, the short, flippy skirts would make for the perfect transition from the sands of Ipanema to cocktail hour at the beachfront Hotel Fasano, among Rio's chicest and most expensive.

A raucous, theatrical show by streetwear label Reserva wrapped up FashionRio in style late Saturday.

Models of all ages, from toddlers to septuagenarians, and several ethnicities frolicked, skipped and breakdanced on a catwalk strewn, like a sprawling bourgeois home, with couches and armchairs and an oversized dining room table. The soundtrack pumped as the models sat down for a family lunch and then boogied over the photographers' pit to pull off their best dance moves in front of the snapping flashbulbs.

With its preppy multi-ethnic family vibe, the show had a sort of Abercrombie & Fitch thing going, but at the same time felt more authentically Brazilian than many of the week's other shows, most of which featured just a sprinkling of nonwhite models.

Associated Press

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Happy Mother's Day: A Tribute to Celebrity Moms!

Mother's Day is a wonderful celebration honoring our moms and celebrating motherhood, maternal bonds and the influence of mothers in society in general.

Here at THG, this means a little tribute to some of the celebrity moms we've come to know and love ... and also a bunch who could use some improvement.

On this 13th day of May, take a look at a 13 popular THG celeb moms (and 13 more who also have kids) in the poll below and vote for your favorite (and least favorite):

Who's your favorite celebrity mom?

Who's your least favorite celebrity mom?

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Begun, The Retina Wars Have

As we approach the E3, the electronic gaming show in early June, I suspect that the value of "retina" high-resolution displays will soon become apparent. While the prospect of retina Macbooks is all but inevitable, we have reached a plateau when it comes to general computing and, more important, living room media. The first question is, in short, why do we need a retina Macbook? Presumably it would be a superior experience for video and photo editing and offer designers far more real estate on a large screen, especially when viewing photos at lower resolutions. As evidenced by the iPhone's retina display, gaming will become considerably more compelling. This presupposes a rich and vibrant OS X gaming ecosystem.

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scrambls

Facebook includes an option to limit readership of your posts to specific groups, but you have to remember to use it. Other social media sites may not offer similar protection. A scrambls (free) membership lets you take total control of who can read any post. It isn't military-grade encryption, but it works well for simple privacy, as long as all of your friends install it too.

To start using scrambls, you sign up for a free account and download the appropriate browser plug-in. The service currently offers plug-ins for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Fennec (Firefox's mobile browser for Android). There's no plug-in for Internet Explorer as yet, but the company is working on it.

The company specifically advertises that scrambls works with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Yammer, but it really should work for any social media site. If you discover a site where scrambls doesn't work, the company wants to know about it.

You type your post as usual, but when you send it scrambls replaces the text with a social-media-friendly encrypted version. If you're logged in to scrambls you'll still see the plain-text post. If not, or if you're not authorized to see the post, it looks like gibberish.

Defining Groups
Out of the box, scrambls defines two groups, Everyone and Only Me. A post scrambld for the Everyone group will be visible to any other scrambls user; a post set to Only Me can't be viewed by anyone but you.

You'll probably want to define your own groups to control access. Unfortunately you can't import your friends list from Facebook. The simplest way to define a group is by using a list of email addresses. According to the scrambls site, "We will soon be adding support for other identifiers, such as a Facebook id, as well as the ability to assign multiple identifiers to one account."

Scrambls offers a number of advanced methods for defining a group. You can include entire domains, for example, to keep certain posts accessible only within your company. You can also exclude specific domains or addresses.

One way to avoid entering an endless list of addresses is the shared secret technique. You define a shared secret (basically a passphrase) for the group. Any scrambls user who wants to view posts assigned to this group must enter the passphrase to see the plain text.

Group rules can also determine just when a post can be viewed. You can control the beginning and ending date for viewing of posts to a group, or set posts to become active and expire after a specified time. For business users, there's an option to authenticate users via an external service; setting this up will require help from scrambls tech support.

Your initial choice of group for a post isn't set in stone. At any time you can right-click a scrambld post and choose a different group. Setting a post to the Only Me group effectively hides it from everyone else.

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Happy 26th Birthday, Robert Pattinson!

Try to keep the screams contained, readers, but get excited nonetheless: Robert Pattinson turns 26 today!!!

The actor is preparing for a very busy second half of 2012. He'll soon be seen like never before in the mysterious thriller Cosmopolis; and then there's a small release in November to which many fans are looking forward.

Breaking Dawn Part 2 or something? We think that's the title.

Robert, meanwhile, continues to quietly date Kristen Stewart, often seen out and about with the co-star, but rarely talking about the actress in public.

Yes, he's both a private man and someone seemingly comfortable in the spotlight. The guy is quite the looker, as well! Send in your birthday wishes to Robert Pattinson now and then click through this photo montage in his honor:

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Samsung Focus 2 for AT&T hands-on at CTIA 2012 (update: video)

It's the first night of action at CTIA Wireless 2012, and we're not wasting any time finding the best of what New Orleans has to offer. To start things off properly, we got some time with the Samsung Focus 2, announced by AT&T earlier this morning as the latest addition to the network's healthy Windows Phone lineup. Of course, the phone's no stranger to being in front of the cameras -- this is just the first time it's occurred without any shroud of secrecy surrounding it. So what kind of specs come with the Focus 2? The $50 handset, due out on May 20th, offers a 4-inch Super AMOLED WVGA display, a 1.4GHz CPU with unspecified RAM, 5MP rear-facing camera capable of recording 720p HD video, a VGA cam on the front and LTE connectivity.

The Focus 2, without a doubt, feels completely tiny in our hands when compared to Nokia and HTC's latest Windows Phone entries. And at 4.3 ounces, it's incredibly light as well -- sadly, the device's 11.98mm thickness was a slight disappointment for us. Aside from the inclusion of LTE and a 1,750mAh user-removable battery, we're not quite sure the reasoning behind it. With that said, anything with a display smaller than 4.3 inches these days seems immensely easy to grip, regardless. When handling the phone, we couldn't help but think of the similarly-designed Galaxy Blaze 4G, as the two devices appear to have come from the same mold.

Overall, this isn't a device meant for power users, and it faces some heavy competition against the Nokia Lumia 900 in price point (though the Focus 2 is slightly less expensive than the Lumia's normal subsidized cost). But for anyone who enjoys a Windows Phone with a smaller display and was disappointed in the lack of LTE connectivity on the Focus Flash, this will be the ideal handset for you. If your curiosity is getting the best of you, go below to see the full gallery.

Update: Hit the break for our hands-on video.

Gallery: Samsung Focus 2 hands-on

Myriam Joire contributed to this report.

Continue reading Samsung Focus 2 for AT&T hands-on at CTIA 2012 (update: video)

Samsung Focus 2 for AT&T hands-on at CTIA 2012 (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 May 2012 17:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Teen passengers spell danger for novice drivers (Providence Journal)

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Microsoft Security Essentials 4.0

Many antivirus vendors announce each new version with great fanfare; not Microsoft. Microsoft Security Essentials 4.0 (free) released so quietly that I almost missed it. In truth, Microsoft doesn't refer to the version number at all, just to "the latest version of Microsoft Security Essentials." There isn't a lot that's new here, and my test results were about the same as before, so perhaps downplaying the new version makes sense.

This product is a straight-up antivirus, not a feature-stuffed suite wannabe. Its main window shows current security status, with a button to resolve any problems. Another button launches an on-demand scan. That's it!

Saved by Windows Defender Offline
Microsoft Security Essentials installed successfully on ten of my twelve malware-infested test systems. Ransomware on one test system made launching normal Windows impossible, and Microsoft Security Essentials won't install in Safe Mode. On the advice of Microsoft Tech Support I downloaded the bootable Windows Defender Offline. A full scan with this tool solved the problem and allowed me to complete the installation.

On another test system, Microsoft Security Essentials refused to update or scan because it claimed the system was not running a valid copy of Windows. In truth, the Windows installation was fine, but malware fooled the antivirus into thinking otherwise. Tech support advised reinstalling Windows, an entirely inappropriate course given that Microsoft's own validation tools report a genuine installation.

I ran a full scan using Windows Defender Offline, but it didn't solve the problem. On this particular system the malware bamboozled Microsoft Security Essentials.

Mediocre Malware Cleanup
On the malware-infested systems where Microsoft Security Essentials installed and ran correctly, a full scan took hours. Scanning my standard clean test system took 72 minutes, about twice the average. And despite these lengthy scans, the cleanup wasn't very thorough.

Microsoft Security Essentials detected 63 percent of the threats, lower than any product tested with the current or previous set of malware samples. It left behind executable files for more than half of those it did detect, and several of them were still running after their alleged removal. Its overall score of 4.3 points for malware cleanup is the lowest of any current product.

40 percent detection of rootkit samples is also a new low. However, Microsoft thoroughly cleaned up all the rootkits it did find, scoring 4.0 points. Quite a few products tested with the previous malware collection scored lower, despite higher detection rates. Even so, I wouldn't rely on Microsoft to clean up a malware-infested system.

For an explanation of the testing and scoring process, see How We Test Malware Removal.

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Rihanna Performs Medley of Hits, Wears Short Shorts on Saturday Night Live

Rihanna appeared on Saturday Night Live this weekend, performing "Birthday Cake" sans Chris Brown and "Talk That Talk" in black knee-high boots and high-waisted, very short shorts ... par for the course for the 24-year-old.

She also sang her new hit "Where Have You Been" on what was most likely one of the most elaborate sets a performer has had, an Arabian themed set-up featuring ornate costumes, drummers and at least 10 backup dancers.

Watch both of Rihanna's Saturday Night Live performances here:

Rihanna - Talk That Talk (Live on SNL)

Rihanna - Where Have You Been (Live on SNL)

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Prog Rock, Continued (Powerlineblog)

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