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Team Ratings For NCAA '13: USC, Oregon Atop The Pac-12

We're still about a month away from the release of NCAA Football '13 -- the popular EA Sports video game for XBOX 360 and PlayStation3. It hits stores on July 10. Today is June 8. So the wait continues and so does the even longer wait until the actual season: Aug. 30.

But for the time being, I'm here to tell you two very important things: 1.) The demo has been released. Cheers! 2.) The ratings are out, as well.

Thus, this being a good ol' Pac-12 blog and all, we decided to break down the conference and base a power rankings off the game's ratings. We figure it's probably better than the BCS computers, anyway. So without any further delay...

Team - Overall - Offense - Defense - Prestige

1. USC 99 - 99 - 91 - 6
2. Oregon 99 - 94 - 95 - 6
3. Utah 95 - 92 - 91 - 4
4. Stanford 93 - 91 - 89 - 5
5. Washington 93 - 92 - 86 - 4
6. UCLA 87 - 88 - 82 - 2
7. California 85 - 89 - 76 - 3
8. Arizona St. 85 - 84 - 80 - 3
9. Arizona 83 - 81- 84-3
10. Colorado 83 - 80 - 82 - 2
11. Oregon St. 79 - 81 - 76 - 2
12. Washington St. 79 - 83 - 74 - 1

(Via Kegs 'N Eggs)

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Outcry over Romney's Mass. affirmative action move

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Mitt Romney scuttled the Massachusetts government's long-standing affirmative action policies with a few strokes of his pen on a sleepy holiday six months after he became governor.

No news conference or news release trumpeted Romney's executive order on Bunker Hill Day, June 17, 2003, in the deserted Statehouse. But when civil rights leaders, black lawmakers and other minority groups learned of Romney's move two months later, it sparked a public furor.

Romney drew criticism for cutting the enforcement teeth out of the law and rolling back more than two decades of affirmative action advances.

Civil rights leaders said his order stripped minorities, women, disabled people and veterans of equal access protections for state government jobs and replaced them with broad guidelines. They complained Romney hadn't consulted them before making the changes, snubbing the very kind of inclusion he professed to support.

"It was done under the radar and there was a big backlash," said Michael Curry, president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It was clear Romney really did not have an appreciation for the affirmative action policies long in place."

Romney responded by creating an advisory panel to recommend changes. But he eventually retreated completely, leaving the state's old policies in place.

His handling of affirmative action may offer insights into how he would deal with civil rights issues if he were to defeat Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, in the fall election. The Republican challenger hasn't talked much about affirmative action during the campaign.

Romney's campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

"This is the canary in the coal mine on how he feels about civil rights issues," said Julie Patino, who was deputy director of the state's affirmative action office from 1995 to 1999. "It was a cloaked and unilateral move that eradicated years and years of civil rights advances and history. It was an astonishing act."

Patino said the state's long, tortured history of race relations, including the violence over school busing that tore apart Boston in the 1970s, made Massachusetts' affirmative action laws especially critical.

The state government for decades has been a patronage haven for well-connected family members and friends of state lawmakers. The informal system of doling out state job spoils was known as "Irish affirmative action" in a nod to the powerful sway Irish-American politicians in particular have enjoyed on Beacon Hill.

Romney has said he supports workplace diversity but opposes quotas in hiring, government contracting, school admissions and the like.

"I believe our nation is at its best when people are evaluated as individuals," he said in a 2008 Washington Post issues survey. "I do support encouraging inclusiveness and diversity, and I encourage the disclosure of the numbers of women and minorities in top positions of companies and government ? not to impose a quota but to shine light on the situation."

Responding to the uproar in 2003, Romney insisted he wasn't trying to undercut the state's affirmative action policies. He stressed his commitment to workforce diversity, saying he had simply wanted to broaden, streamline and update the old policies.

"I'm actually very proud of the progress that we're making in the area of affirmative action," he said in August 2003. "We're making a very aggressive effort to change our culture to be more inclusive."

Romney's executive order eliminated the state's Office of Affirmative Action, which required executive agencies to have civil rights officers in charge of monitoring the hiring of minorities, women and people with disabilities. A state diversity office was created, along with broad goals and guidelines.

Black leaders and civil rights groups said Romney's order lacked enforcement mechanisms and removed penalties for agencies not complying with the state's diversity efforts.

The Boston Globe scolded him in an editorial, saying that he "sent exactly the wrong message in signing an executive order to revamp the state's affirmative action program, consigning to the trash heap 33 years of guarantees that minorities and women would have equal access to state jobs."

To quell such criticism, Romney appointed a special advisory panel that included minority and civil rights leaders to recommend changes.

"The changes the panel wanted became too hot for the administration to deal with," said Leonard Alkins, who was head of the NAACP's Boston branch during the controversy and was a member of Romney's advisory panel. Alkins said many of the panel's recommendations were aimed at bolstering the policies Romney had abolished.

Romney essentially walked away from the fight, ignoring his own advisory panel. Instead, he had state officials effectively follow the old affirmative action policies he had formally revoked with his executive order.

It wasn't until Deval Patrick, a Democrat who was the state's first black governor, took office in 2007 that the old policies formally were reinstated.

Alkins said Romney never seemed to grasp that the aim of the state's affirmative action policies was to protect people who were wrongfully denied equal rights in the workplace.

"I felt that the governor was out of touch," said Alkins. "He was very uncomfortable with the issue of race and how you would address issues such as affirmative action."

The policies Romney erased were started three decades earlier by Republican Gov. Frank Sargent and substantially expanded by Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1983. Three Republican governors who directly preceded Romney had left the policies in place.

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HP Pavilion p7-1225

The HP Pavilion p7-1225 ($589 list at Staples) is one of those desktop systems that's just a bit over the $500 entry-level price point, but also gives you a little more for your money. It has DX11-compatible 3D graphics on its AMD A8-3820 APU (accelerated processing unit, or a CPU with integrated graphics in AMD-speak). It's basic, but capable of playing light to moderate 3D games right out of the box. Ultimately some shortcomings keep it from the top of the heap, but it's worth considering next time you walk the aisles of your local big box store.

Design and Features
The Pavilion p7-1225 follows other p7 series systems like the HP Pavilion p7-1120 and the former midrange Editors' Choice HP Pavilion p7-1167cb. It's a tower with a glossy black front panel, neither too outr? nor too staid in its appearance. That said, its middle of the road appearance is still a bit more unique looking than some of the other plain boxes. The system has a 15-in-1 media card reader on the top, audio and two USB 2.0 ports hidden under a door on the front, and a DVD burner facing you. On the back, there are two more USB 2.0 ports, more audio ports, Ethernet, VGA, and DVI. It's a little too basic, and we'd like to see a couple of next generation ports like HDMI and USB 3.0 on future systems.

Inside the system, there's quite a bit of room for upgrades, including three PCIe x1 card slots, a PCIe x16 graphics card slot, and space for two hard drives and one optical drive. The system's two DIMM slots are filled, but you can replace the existing 4GB memory sticks if you need more than the included 8GB. There are only two free SATA ports on the motherboard, so you can either install two additional hard drives or a hard drive with one optical. The lack of USB 3.0 nor eSATA means that you can't use a quick external drive unless you plug in a PCIe adapter card. You can install an entry-level graphics card in the system's PCIe x16 slot, but enthusiast cards are out of the picture because of the p7-1225's relatively low powered 300W power supply.

There's the usual amount of bloatware and clutter on the desktop. There are about ten extra icons, including Rara music, HP Games, Office 2010, HP Support Agent, HP Magic Canvas, Snapfish, Zya music, eBay, HP Download store, and the recycle bin. The desktop comes with a 60-day trial subscription to Norton Internet Security, which should be longer. It's much more useful to provide 12 to 15 months than only two. While retail systems like the p7-1225 come with this clutter standard on the Windows 7 desktop, we hope that Windows 8 will help alleviate the clutter later this year.

Performance
For an entry-level/midrange system, the p7-1225 returned middling benchmark results. The system's Handbrake (2 hours 29 seconds) and Photoshop CS5 (6:16) results lag behind other systems with Core i5 processors like the Lenovo H420 (7752-1YU) ($699.99 list, 4 stars) (1:40 in Handbrake; 3:50 in CS5) and the Acer Aspire AM3970-UR11P ($599.99 list, 3 stars) (1:20 in Handbrake; 3:26 in CS5). This is likely due to the system's AMD A8-3820 processor. Though the A8-3820 is a quad-core processor, it's a little slower overall than the Intel Core processors when running multimedia apps. The A8 processor's integrated AMD Radeon HD 6550D graphics, however, are much better than Intel's HD Graphics 2000 equivalent. The p7-1225's gaming tests return almost playable 45 fps on Crysis and 24 fps on Lost Planet 2, which is a lot better than the low teens on Crysis on the Editor's Choice Gateway DX4860-UB33P ($599.99 list, 4 stars) (The Gateway couldn't play the DX11 Lost Planet 2 test at all). This means that if you're into playing older 3D games, you may not need to upgrade the p7-1225's graphics at all.

Compared with the current EC, the Gateway DX4860-UB33P, the HP Pavilion p7-1225 puts in a good showing with much better 3D performance, but ultimately the Gateway DX4860 holds on to the crown a bit longer, as it has many more livability upgrades like USB 3.0, HDMI, and the top-mounted tray for your electronic devices. Pricing is similar, so it's essentially a case of more for the money. If you know you won't ever upgrade graphics or anything else internally, the Pavilion p7-1225 is decent out of the box, but ultimately there are better systems.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the HP Pavilion p7-1225 with several other desktops side by side.

More desktop reviews:
??? HP Pavilion p7-1225
??? Origin Genesis (i7-3930k)
??? Dell XPS One 27
??? Cyberpower Gamer Xtreme 4000SE
??? Asus ET2700INKS-B062C
?? more

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SpaceX Dragon leaves space station for trip home

This framegrab image from NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon capsule just after the capsule is released from the Canadarm2 at 5:49 a.m. EDT Thursday morning May 31, 2012. The Dragon capsule is scheduled for splashdown at 11:44 a.m. EDT Thursday in the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/NASA)

This framegrab image from NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon capsule just after the capsule is released from the Canadarm2 at 5:49 a.m. EDT Thursday morning May 31, 2012. The Dragon capsule is scheduled for splashdown at 11:44 a.m. EDT Thursday in the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/NASA)

This framegrab image from NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon capsule just after the capsule is released from the Canadarm2 at 5:49 a.m. EDT Thursday morning May 31, 2012. The Dragon capsule is scheduled for splashdown at 11:44 a.m. EDT Thursday in the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/NASA)

This framegrab image from NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon capsule, center, the U.S. Destiny lab, left and the Japanese Kibo module, right just after the Dragon capsule was dematted from the International Space Station Thursday May 31, 2012. (AP Photo/NASA)

This framegrab image from NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon capsule just after the capsule is backed away from the International Space Station and being repositioned for release later Thursday morning May 31, 2012. The Dragon capsule is scheduled for splashdown at 11:44 a.m. EDT Thursday in the Pacific Ocean. (AP Photo/NASA)

In this image provided by NASA with rays of sunshine and the thin blue atmosphere of Earth serving as a backdrop, the SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft is berthed to the Earth-facing side of the International Space Station's Harmony node Sunday May 27, 2012. Expedition 31 Flight Engineers Don Pettit and Andre Kuipers grappled Dragon at 9:56 a.m. (EDT) with the Canadarm2 robotic arm and used it to berth Dragon to the at 12:02 p.m. May 25, 2012. Dragon became the first commercially developed space vehicle to be launched to the station. Dragon is scheduled to spend about a week docked with the station before returning to Earth on May 31 for retrieval. (AP Photo/NASA)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ? The SpaceX Dragon capsule left the International Space Station on Thursday and aimed for a Pacific splashdown to end its historic flight.

Astronauts set the world's first commercial supply ship loose after a five-day visit, releasing the vessel with the space station's robot arm. The Dragon slowly backed away from the 250-mile-high outpost, on track for a midday return to Earth, six hours later.

The targeted splashdown zone is 560 miles west of Baja California.

"Dragon smoothly undocked, moved out, released and on its way home," Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers reported via Twitter.

NASA's Mission Control quickly radioed praise to the six-man space station crew: "Great work, guys." A brown toy dragon decorated the flight director's desk in Houston. Within minutes, the capsule was outside the NASA-controlled safety zone around the space station and under the complete jurisdiction of the SpaceX team in Hawthorne, Calif.

Last week, SpaceX became the first private company to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station. And Thursday, it was on the verge of becoming the only supplier to return major items.

The unmanned Dragon capsule is returning nearly 1,400 pounds of old space station equipment and some science samples, a little more than it took up. Because it is a test flight, NASA did not want to load it with anything valuable.

The retro bell-shaped capsule was set to parachute down in the style of NASA's old Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. A Dragon has returned from orbit once before, on a solo shakedown mission in December 2010.

Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for carrying crews also parachutes down, but on land, deep inside Kazakhstan. All of the government-provided cargo vessels of Russia, Europe and Japan, meanwhile, burn up on descent.

NASA lost the capability of getting things back when its space shuttles were retired last year. The space agency has turned to American private business to take over cargo runs and, eventually, astronaut ferry flights. Several companies are in the running for the human missions, with SpaceX in the lead given the success of this latest cargo shipment.

SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk of PayPal fame, expects to have astronauts riding his Dragons in three or four years.

Until then, the focus is on filling the space station's larder.

Assuming Thursday's entry goes well, the next Dragon supply mission will be in September. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is already at Cape Canaveral, Fla., awaiting launch.

Rival Orbital Sciences Corp. hopes to have its first test flight off by year's end, launching from Wallops Island in Virginia.

President Barack Obama wants NASA free of orbital deliveries so it can work on getting astronauts to asteroids and Mars.

___

Online:

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/

Associated Press

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Bomb attacks in Baghdad kill 11 people

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