G.O.P. Senators Give Obama Dinner Thumbs Up

For Washington-watchers looking for positive signs from President Obama’s unusual dinner with Republican senators on Wednesday night, there was this: Senators John McCain of Arizona and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma each gave waiting reporters a thumbs up as lawmakers exited the private dining room.

Perhaps their gesture merely expressed gratitude that the president had picked up the tab - out of his own pocket - for the gathering he initiated at the tony Jefferson Hotel, just blocks from the White House and across Lafayette Park.

But given the near blackout on information and the security cordon surrounding the hotel, Washington will be digging for days for more substantive reports about what - if anything - the supper might mean for progress on the budget, immigration, gun safety or any other issue central to Mr. Obama’s second-term agenda.

At the outset of his new term, the president seems to have initiated a period of engagement with Senate Republicans to counter the paralyzing antipath toward him in the Republican-controlled House. In recent days, he invited about a dozen senators to dinner. And next week, at his request, he will go to Capitol Hill to separately meet with both parties in both the House and Senate.

The official guest list of those who dined with Mr. Obama was forthcoming from the White House only after everyone had left the roughly two-hour get-together, given the Obama circle’s sensitivity to the fact that identification with the Democratic president carries a political risk for many Republicans back home.

(Proof of that: the influential conservative activist Erick Erickson on Wednesday night circulated on his Twitter account another conservative’s Twitter warning: “Seriously, if you are a senator up for re-election in ’14, the smartest thing you can do right now is BAIL on the Obamadinner.”)

Besides Mr. McCain and Mr. Coburn, the diners were the Republican Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dan Coats of! Indiana, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and - the only woman - Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

“The president greatly enjoyed the dinner and had a good exchange of ideas with the senators,” said a senior White House official who would not be identified.

The meeting follows Mr. Obama’s phone calls to Republicans since Saturday, when across-the-board cuts - known as sequestration - took effect for military and domestic programs because Mr. Obama and Republican leaders could not agree on alternative deficit-reduction measures. The president insists that any alternative package must combine a balance of spending cuts and new revenues, while Republicans generally oppose new taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

In the Senate, however, a number of Republicans are known to support higher tax revenues if Mr. Obama and Democrats agree to significat long-term reductions in future spending for the fast-growing entitlement programs, chiefly Medicare and Medicaid but also Social Security - just the trade-off Mr. Obama supports. Mr. Coburn and Mr. Chambliss, for example, are members of a bipartisan group that has supported a deficit-reduction plan with more additional revenues than the president has proposed.

The thinking in the White House is that with Congress’s Republican leaders - Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican minority leader - refusing to bargain with Mr. Obama on higher revenues, the president’s only route to a so-called grand bargain for deficit reduction is to go around the leaders to build a bipartisan consensus.

If such a bargain can get through the Democratic-controlled Senate with a few Republicans’ help, that will put pressure on the Republican-controlled House to follow suit - even if House Democrats’ votes provide the margin of passage. That is just the dynamic that in! the past! two months has allowed Congress to send to Mr. Obama bills raising taxes on wealthy Americans, providing aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy and reauthorizing a law on violence against women.

Rand Paul Does Not Go Quietly Into the Night

WASHINGTON â€" A small group of Republicans, led by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, stalled the Senate on Wednesday by waging a nine-hours-and-counting, old-school, speak-until-you-can-speak-no-more filibuster over the government’s use of lethal drone strikes â€" forcing the Senate to delay the expected confirmation of John O. Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Paul, who opposes Mr. Brennan’s nomination, followed through on his plan to filibuster the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee after receiving a letter this month from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that refused to rule out the use of drone strikes within the United States in “extraordinary circumstances” like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Wednesday, Mr. Paul did exactly as promised, taking to the Senate floor shortly before noon and holding forth. Now moving toward its 10th hour, Mr. Paul and his comrades on the Senate floor show no signs of wear.

Ostensibly, Mr. Paul is objecting to the Mr. Brennan’s nomination. But in fact, Mr. Paul’s main concerns are those of civil liberties and Constitutional rights he says are under attack by the administration’s potential use of unmanned drone strikes on American citizens on United States soil. (Mr. Brennan, who as the White House counterterrorism adviser was the chief architect of the largely clandestine drone program, served as a good proxy.)

“What will be the standard for how we kill Americans in America” Mr. Paul asked at one point. “Could political dissent be part of the standard for drone strikes”

Referring to Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam during the war there to publicly denounce the United States’ presence in the country, Mr. Paul added: “I’m not a great fan of Jane Fonda. But I’m not so interested in putting her on a drone kill list.! ”

As Mr. Paul’s filibuster dragged on, it began to resemble a Shakespearean drama, complete with cameos from other A-list actors (a group of more than half a dozen senators who periodically joined him on the floor); a title all its own (the “filiblizzard,” a nickname courtesy of Twitter users); and some willing extras (eager Senate pages, purposefully striding across the stage to deliver Mr. Paul fresh glasses of water).

Although Mr. Paul did not yield the floor â€" a move that would effectively end his talkathon â€" he did, with some apparent relief, yield to take questions from his Republican colleagues. (Mr. Paul could not leave the floor to use the bathroom, making his filibuster at a certain point seem less a standoff between Mr. Paul and the administration than a battle between Mr. Paul and his own bladder.)

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, began his question by making the obvious allusion, referring to Mr. Paul as a “modern-day ‘Mr. Smth Goes to Washington,’ ” joking that his effort would “surely be making Jimmy Stewart smile.”

And, perhaps befitting of another public â€" but hopeless â€" stand, Mr. Cruz took the opportunity to remind the chamber that Wednesday was the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, noting with some pride that Mr. Paul “is originally from the great state of Texas.”

Mr. Cruz then proceeded to read from a letter by William Barrett Travis, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army who died at the Alamo, concluding, “Does that glorious letter give you any encouragement and sustenance on this 177th anniversary of the Alamo”

Apparently it did. Mr. Paul soldiered ahead, before again receiving some help, from an unlikely source â€" Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

Mr. Wyden said that while he had voted in favor of Mr. Brennan’s nomination on Tuesday at a Senate Intelligence Committee meeting and planned to vote for him again on the Senate floor, he believed that Mr. Paul! “has m! ade a number of important points” about the administration’s lethal drone program.

“I think Senator Paul and I agree that this nomination also provides a very important opportunity for the United States Senate to consider the government’s rules and policies on the targeted killings of Americans and that, of course, has been a central pillar of our nation’s counterterror strategy,” Mr. Wyden said.

He added, “The executive branch should not be allowed to conduct such a serious and far-reaching program by themselves without any scrutiny, because that’s not how American democracy works.”

Up next was Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, entering stage right, complete with a water joke â€" a reference to his State of the Union response, in which a video of a parched Mr. Rubio chugging water quickly went viral.

“You’ve been here for a while, so let me give you some advice,” Mr. Rubio said. “Keep some water nearby. Trust me.”

Other members who made caeos throughout the day â€" and night â€" included the Republican Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming; Saxby Chambliss of Georgia; John Cornyn of Texas; Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois; Mike Lee of Utah; and Jerry Moran of Kansas.

As the filibuster continued into the evening, Mr. Paul moved from speaking extemporaneously to relying more on two thick black binders of notes, heavily referencing and reading from articles in publications ranging from The Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal to Wired magazine.

At one point, Mr. Paul began eating “dinner” â€" a mystery candy bar â€" and continued his filibuster between mouthfuls of chocolate.

A bit later, Mr. Kirk, who walks with considerable effort after a stroke in 2012, slowly made his way onto the floor with the help of a walker. He placed a green thermos of tea and an apple on the desk of Mr. Paul, gestured to it, and saluted his colleague before talking a seat to watch some of the proceeding.

In the filibuster’s seventh ! hour, it ! looked as if a compromise might be reached. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the No. 2 leader in the Senate, and some of his aides came to the floor, seeming ready to help wrap things up. Mr. Paul said he would agree to stop his nonstop talking if his colleagues would unanimously consent to a nonbinding vote on a resolution saying it is unconstitutional to kill an American on United States soil â€" a move to which Mr. Durbin objected. Mr. Durbin offered instead to hold a hearing on drone strikes, which Mr. Paul brushed aside.

And so, on it went.

Mr. Cruz then made a brief return for a second act of sorts, to read from a list of Twitter messages about Mr. Paul’s stand that he had culled. Though electronic devices are not allowed on the Senate floor, Mr. Cruz informed his friend that Twitter was “blowing up” over the day’s events.

“I was getting kind of tired,” Mr. Paul said, thanking Mr. Cruz for “cheering me up.”

Mr. Paul again said his true goal ws simply to get a response from the administration saying it would not use drone strikes to take out American citizens on United States soil â€" and, perhaps with Twitter still in the forefront of his mind, offered Mr. Holder a variety of ways to respond.

“We’ll take a telegram,” Mr. Paul said. “We’ll take a Tweet.”

At Shooting Site, Giffords Urges Lawmakers to Act on Gun Safety

Samantha Sais/Reuters Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly held a news conference Wednesday in Tucson, at the grocery store parking lot where she was shot in 2011, to advocate universal background checks.

TUCSON - “Fight, fight, fight” were the first words by Gabrielle Giffords during a news conference on Wednesday from the same supermarket parking lot where a gunman opened fire on Jan. 8, 2011, wounding her and 12 others and taking six lives.

Ms. Giffords, a former congresswoman for Arizona, was embracing the role of constituent to her senators, Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake, asing them to support legislation requiring background checks for every gun purchase.

“Be bold. Be courageous,” she urged them from behind a lectern. Onlookers cheered. Her husband, the former astronaut Mark E. Kelly, kept a supportive hand on her shoulder as she spoke. When she was done, he planted a kiss on her cheek.

Several of the shooting’s survivors, as well as friends and relatives of theirs and of those killed in the rampage, which took place as Ms. Giffords hosted a constituents meet-and-greet, attended the news conference. It was timed to pre-empt a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun safety legislation later this week.

Mr. Kelly and others urged voters to nudge Mr. McCain and Mr. Flake to help pass gun legislation, repeatedly citing polls offering broad support for background checks for gun buyers. As it stands, buyers can skip the checks if they get their guns from private sellers at gun shows or on the Internet.

Mr. Kelly said: “This discussion is not ! about the Second Amendment. It’s about public safety. It’s about keeping guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill and criminals.”

He went on to say that the man behind the shooting here, Jared L. Loughner, would most likely have failed a background check if his history of mental illness and drug use had been available. Mr. Loughner pleaded guilty to 19 counts of murder and attempted murder in connection with the shooting, for which he is serving seven consecutive life sentences and 140 years in prison.

Randy Gardner, whom Mr. Loughner shot in the leg, said, “Law-abiding citizens will not be affected by these background checks,” which he described as “a thoughtful walk across level ground,” not “a slippery slope.”

Suzi Heilman, who took 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, the youngest of Mr. Loughner’s victims, to Ms. Giffords’s event the morning of the shooting, said: “It’s time to act. Not go home and shake your head andsay, ‘Isn’t that sad.’ ”

She spoke beside the girl’s mother, Roxanna Green, who held a photo of Christina. Before the news conference, they placed orange and yellow roses by a memorial outside the supermarket, the sole reminder there of the shooting.

Ken Dorushka, who protected his wife with his own body during the shooting, said the talk about rights that swirls around any discussion about gun laws should not exclude the perspective from victims of gun violence.

“When you talk about rights,” Mr. Dorushka said, “the rights of little Christina-Taylor Green to see her 10th birthday supersedes the right of anyone else to have an AK-47.”

Rand Paul Filibusters Brennan Nomination

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, began an old-school, speak-until-you-can-speak-no-more filibuster on Wednesday just before noon, and was still going strong more than an hour later.

Mr. Paul, who opposes the nomination of John O. Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, had previously said he would filibuster President Obama’s nominee after receiving a letter this month from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that refused to rule out the use of drone strikes within the United States in “extraordinary circumstances” like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

And on Wednesday, Mr. Paul did exactly as promised, taking to the Senate floor to filibuster Mr. Brennan’s nomination.

“I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the C.I.A.,” Mr. Paul began. “I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the larm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

Mr. Paul is the first senator to use an actual filibuster after the Senate reached a deal earlier this year to take some basic steps to limit the filibuster.

As of 1:30 p.m., nearly an hour and a half after he first started, as many of his young aides watched from the Senate balcony, Mr. Paul showed no signs of letting up.

Dyson’s Bladeless Fan: a Little Cooler

The Dyson AM05 bladeless fan and heater is much cooler than its predecessor. Its new motor spins 33 percent faster, moving more air, hence: cooler.

The company said it has redesigned the impeller of the combination fan and space heater so that it now moves air more quietly and in greater quantities.

The Dyson AM05 is designed to move air more quietly than the previous model.

The impeller, a variety of propeller, forces air through the unit. Impellers tend to have more blades than a typical fan and work inside an enclosure - like those blades that you see inside a jet engine housing, or a turbine.

What the Dyson engineers di for the AM05 was to reshape the impeller’s blades, which are asymmetrical, to help keep down the noise. That was important because they also increased engine speed to 9000 rpm, 33 percent more than the AM04.

When heating, the sound of AM05 is about that of a loud laptop fan. On the highest fan setting it seems a little louder than that, but not like a 20-inch box fan.

It does have a more refined look than a box fan. The AM05 has a cylindrical base with a sculptural-looking oval that guides flow of air.

It didn’t take long for the heater to achieve a sustained four-degree increase in temperature in a roughly 10- by 10-foot office, maybe 30 minutes. In cooling mode, with the fan on high, the AM05 moved enough air to flutter papers on the desk about four feet away.

The heating elements are carbon ceramic and are set to a temperature that won’t burn dust, said Rob Green, senior design engineer at Dyson, “so you don’t ! get that acrid burning smell when you turn it on for the first time in a long time.”

The AM05 comes with a remote a bit larger than a Bic cigarette lighter that can be used to set the heater’s thermostat, cooling fan strength, and turn the oscillation feature on and off.

The $400 AM05 is made in four colors. Blue and white are available online from Dyson and a metallic nickel color is in Best Buy Stores. A model with a black nickel finish will become available April 1.

For Obama and Senate Republicans, an Opportunity to Dine and Deal

As President Obama ratchets up his outreach effort to Congressional Republicans on Wednesday with a dinner date at the Jefferson Hotel, his guests will include some of his fiercest critics in the Senate, some conciliators and some lawmakers who hardly have made a ripple in the public debate over how to tackle the federal debt.

And for now, the senators on the guest list are taking the White House overture as sincere.

“I’ve always said I’m willing to work with anybody who’s willing to acknowledge the problem to solve it. Maybe that got noticed,” said Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who swept to victory in the Tea Party-fueled wave of 2010 and will have at dinner what he said would be the first substantive conversation of his life with the president. “I’ll certainly give the president the benefit of the doubt.”

Mr. Johnson will be attending the dinner, along with Republican Senators John Hoeven of North Dakota, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, ! John McCain of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Dan Coats of Indiana, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Mke Johanns of Nebraska.

Some, like Senators Johanns, Graham and Coburn, have been looking for a bipartisan deficit-reduction deal for years. Others, like Senators Toomey and Johnson, have been relentless critics of the Obama administration. Some, like Ms. Ayotte, have seemed like logical negotiating partners but have had very little contact with the White House. And some, like Mr. Burr and Mr. Coats, have made little impression on the debate at all.

“My message is, Mr. President, we’ve been dealing with short-term, buy-a-little time stuff for two years now, isn’t it time to reach some kind of big deal that puts this behind us, that sets a course for 10 years and removes this dark cloud of u! ncertaint! y that hangs over the economy,” Mr. Coats said.

Asked if they were worried that the dinner was more about the president showing a willingness to work across party lines than trying to reach an agreement, most of the invited struck a positive tone.

“It’s always good to talk, right” Mr. Hoeven said.

The Roger Ailes Book Wars Begin

The Roger Ailes book wars have begun.

On Wednesday Vanity Fair’s Web site published an excerpt from the first of two â€" or maybe three â€" books about Mr. Ailes and the network he runs, the Fox News Channel.

The excerpt, from the book “Roger Ailes: Off Camera” by Zev Chafets, revealed little about Fox, but included a number of pointed one-liners uttered by Mr. Ailes, whose conservative politics appeal to many Fox viewers but infuriate his critics.

Mr. Chafets’s book will be published on March 19. It precedes another book about Mr. Ailes, tentatively titled “The Loudest Voice in the Room: Fox News and the Making of America,” by Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine.

Of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Ailes is quoted in the excerpt saying: “I have a soft spot for Joe Biden. I like him. But he’s dumb as an ashtray.” Of Newt Gingrich, a former Fox News analyst and Republican residential candidate, Mr. Ailes said, “He’s a sore loser and if he had won he would have been a sore winner.” He proceeded to use an obscenity to describe Mr. Gingrich.

It is Mr. Ailes’s comment about President Obama that may garner the most attention. Mr. Ailes has been sharply critical of Mr. Obama in the past; last month he was quoted as saying “The president likes to divide people into groups. He’s too busy getting the middle class to hate rich people, blacks to hate whites. He is busy trying to get everybody to hate each other.”

In the book excerpt in Vanity Fair, Mr. Ailes is shown reacting to a remark during the presidential campaign by a Democratic strategist, Hilary Rosen, who said that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.” Mr. Ailes responded, “Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public mon! ey. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week How often does he play basketball and golf I wish I had that kind of time.” Mr. Ailes added, “He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that.”

The author of the book, Zev Chafets, said that when Mr. Ailes noticed his arched eyebrows, Mr. Ailes added, “I didn’t come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters.”

This is the type of quote that gets partisans on both sides riled up. Mr. Obama brought up laziness when Ms. Walters asked him in a 2011 interview on ABC, “What’s the trait you most deplore in yourself and the trait you most deplore in others”

When he said laziness, she sounded surprised. He explained, “There is a â€" deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me.” He chalked it up to his boyhood in sunny Hawaii.

He added, “But when I’m mad at myself, it’s because Iâ™m saying to myself, ‘You know what, you could be doing better; push harder.’ And when I â€" nothing frustrates me more than when people aren’t doing their jobs.” Mr. Obama then said, to answer the other half of Ms. Walters’ question, that the trait he most dislikes in other people is cruelty. “I can’t stand cruel people,” he said. “And if I see people doing something mean to somebody else just to make themselves feel important, it really gets me mad.”

Mr. Ailes is also quoted in the excerpt on the subject of MSNBC, which has emerged as a less-highly-rated liberal counterweight to Fox News. Mr. Ailes said he warned NBC in the mid-1990s not to name the channel MSNBC because “M.S. is a damn disease.” At the time Mr. Ailes was the head of America’s Talking, the NBC cable channel that was effectively replaced by MSNBC in 1996. He left NBC to create Fox News.

Sometime after Mr. Sherman began working on his book, Mr. Ailes agreed to cooperate with Mr. Chafets, whose pr! evious bo! oks include a favorable biography of Rush Limbaugh. Within the television industry, Mr. Chafets’s book is widely seen as an attempt to get out ahead of Mr. Sherman’s book. (Perhaps the better word for it is “prebuttal,” a word political operatives sometimes use).

The publisher of Mr. Chafets’s book, Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Group, told Politico earlier this week that Mr. Ailes “decided to grant our author exclusive interviews for his book, and he told his Fox News colleagues and friends that they were free to talk to Chafets. But Mr. Ailes had no control over the editorial process, which was between us and our author.”

Mr. Sherman’s book, meanwhile, has a May release date, but it is believed to have been delayed. Mr. Sherman wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning that he was struck by the way Mr. Ailes and his oss Rupert Murdoch talk about each other in the excerpt from Mr. Chafets’s book.

Mr. Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation, is quoted as saying that he defers to Mr. Ailes: “I have ideas that Roger can accept or not. As long as things are going well. …”

And Mr. Ailes is quoted as saying, “Does Rupert like me I think so, but it doesn’t matter. When I go up to the magic room in the sky every three months, if my numbers are right, I get to live. If not, I’m killed. Our relationship isn’t about love â€" it’s about arithmetic. Survival means hitting your numbers. I’ve met or exceeded mine in 56 straight quarters. The reason is: I treat Rupert’s money like it is mine.”

Mr. Ailes is also said to be working on an autobiography â€" but there’s no release date for it.

Former Defense Officials Urge Using Budget Cuts to Shape Military Strategy

With the across-the-board spending cuts now a reality, a group of five former deputy defense secretaries has written to the new Pentagon chief, Chuck Hagel, urging that he make the best of a bad situation by using the budget cuts as an opportunity to re-examine military strategy, personnel numbers and weapons purchases.

In their letter, the former No. 2 Pentagon officials are urging “a new and comprehensive review of all aspects of Pentagon strategy, capabilities, and budget in order to create a new long term defense posture.”

The group of five â€" John Deutch, John P. White, John J. Hamre, Rudy de Leon and William J. Lynn III â€" suggest as a model the “bottom-up review” carried out during the Pentagon tenure of Les Aspin, who, like Mr. Hagel, was a Capitol Hill veteran who ascended to defense secretary. All five of the deputies were appointed to their position by Democratic presidents.

“The comprehensive review must assess the threats that the nation faces and propose a new defense posture to protect the country and its interests,” the letter states.

“The review should specify force end strength, operational tempo, readiness, and training, and the suite of military equipment and systems required to support the defense posture,” it adds. “Finally, the resources needed to pay for the posture must be determined.” The five also urge that a “range of postures of differing capability and cost should be explored in order to inform the president about the choices he faces.”

While research and development money may shrink, the authors advocate a focus on “disruptive technologies that could revolutionize military capability and doctrine.”

And they actually identify some areas of potential savings: reductions in troop levels, fewer and less lengthy overseas deployments, reduced procurement le! vels “and thus a slower rate of modernization of military equipment and systems.”

The five officials wrote that “in the long run U.S. military superiority relies on technology dominance.” And it cautions that “the growth in costs of military compensation and benefits (especially health care for military personnel and their families) system must be brought under control.”

Q&A: Checking a Web Site’s Security

Q.

What does it mean when a Web site says its security certificate isn’t trusted I get this message from Google Chrome sometimes â€" is my computer in danger

A.

Most sites that transmit personal data (like credit card numbers) between its server and your computer’s Web browser use encryption to keep the information secure. A legitimate e-commerce site presents your Web browser with a digital “security certificate” to verify its identity and distinguish it from a site created by criminals to steal your data.

A third-party company, like DigiCert or GeoTrust â€" one that the browser recognizes as a certificate authority â€" issues the certificate and confirms the Web site’s security credentials. (The system is not infallible, though, as certificate authority companies have been hacked and fraudulent certificates created.)

When Google Chrome gives you a message about a security certificate that it does not trust, it is because the third-party company that issued that site’s certificate is not one that Chrome recognizes as a legitimate authority. This could be because the Web site got its certificate from a lesser-known authority or because the security certificate is fraudulent. If you know the company behind the site in question and are confident of your security, you can proceed, but if you are unsure of the site you are visiting, click the “Back to safety” button to bail out.

Q&A: Checking a Web Site’s Security

Q.

What does it mean when a Web site says its security certificate isn’t trusted I get this message from Google Chrome sometimes â€" is my computer in danger

A.

Most sites that transmit personal data (like credit card numbers) between its server and your computer’s Web browser use encryption to keep the information secure. A legitimate e-commerce site presents your Web browser with a digital “security certificate” to verify its identity and distinguish it from a site created by criminals to steal your data.

A third-party company, like DigiCert or GeoTrust â€" one that the browser recognizes as a certificate authority â€" issues the certificate and confirms the Web site’s security credentials. (The system is not infallible, though, as certificate authority companies have been hacked and fraudulent certificates created.)

When Google Chrome gives you a message about a security certificate that it does not trust, it is because the third-party company that issued that site’s certificate is not one that Chrome recognizes as a legitimate authority. This could be because the Web site got its certificate from a lesser-known authority or because the security certificate is fraudulent. If you know the company behind the site in question and are confident of your security, you can proceed, but if you are unsure of the site you are visiting, click the “Back to safety” button to bail out.

Denon’s New Receiver: Saving Time on Setup

Denon is about to introduce a new series of audiovisual receivers that have a comprehensive set of features, with ease of setup stressed as a selling point.

Generally the more features you have, the more complex setup is, as is the case with the new top-of-the-line Denon AVR-E400. I could not get past the first step without calling tech support.

That is not to criticize this receiver, though. There is just no way that I have seen to add a lot of programmable features and make setup easy.

The AVR-E400 is particularly feature-packed. It has Apple AirPlay, so you can stream music from your Apple computer or portable; it streams from SiriusXM, Pandora or Spotify; it hasa video converter that improves standard definition video for high definition viewing, and it even converts video to the new 4K standard, which has roughly four times the resolution of current HD. It comes with a microphone to adjust the system for your room acoustics. That’s just the beginning of a long feature list.

Denon has taken some common-sense steps to simplify setup, such as color-coding the posts on the back panel and providing matching labels for the cables. (I do the same myself with a label maker.)

But the rest of the setup falls prey to the same features-versus-ease conundrum that faces every product. I must have touched the wrong button when checking the batteries in the E400’s remote, because I could not get the setup instructions to appear on my TV. Once I got it turned to the right setting, it still wasn’t that easy.

I tried something I expected to be simple, adjusting bass and treble. So I went to the tone settings, and found that the bass and treble could n! ot be adjusted until I turned on that function, which was on the same screen. But I wondered, why the extra step Why would I go to that setting if I didn’t want to adjust it

In the end, rather than dismantle my current system, I listened to the sound quality of the E400 using headphones â€" I know, it gives me no idea of how effective the surround sound features are â€" but the idea of hours of setup followed by hours of resetting my current gear was too much to take. Headphone listening did let me hear basic sound quality, which seemed accurate and natural.

The bottom line is, if you want easy setup, don’t buy a feature-filled receiver. If you want a great listening and viewing experience, expect to spend several hours on configuration.

Denon’s New Receiver: Saving Time on Setup

Denon is about to introduce a new series of audiovisual receivers that have a comprehensive set of features, with ease of setup stressed as a selling point.

Generally the more features you have, the more complex setup is, as is the case with the new top-of-the-line Denon AVR-E400. I could not get past the first step without calling tech support.

That is not to criticize this receiver, though. There is just no way that I have seen to add a lot of programmable features and make setup easy.

The AVR-E400 is particularly feature-packed. It has Apple AirPlay, so you can stream music from your Apple computer or portable; it streams from SiriusXM, Pandora or Spotify; it hasa video converter that improves standard definition video for high definition viewing, and it even converts video to the new 4K standard, which has roughly four times the resolution of current HD. It comes with a microphone to adjust the system for your room acoustics. That’s just the beginning of a long feature list.

Denon has taken some common-sense steps to simplify setup, such as color-coding the posts on the back panel and providing matching labels for the cables. (I do the same myself with a label maker.)

But the rest of the setup falls prey to the same features-versus-ease conundrum that faces every product. I must have touched the wrong button when checking the batteries in the E400’s remote, because I could not get the setup instructions to appear on my TV. Once I got it turned to the right setting, it still wasn’t that easy.

I tried something I expected to be simple, adjusting bass and treble. So I went to the tone settings, and found that the bass and treble could n! ot be adjusted until I turned on that function, which was on the same screen. But I wondered, why the extra step Why would I go to that setting if I didn’t want to adjust it

In the end, rather than dismantle my current system, I listened to the sound quality of the E400 using headphones â€" I know, it gives me no idea of how effective the surround sound features are â€" but the idea of hours of setup followed by hours of resetting my current gear was too much to take. Headphone listening did let me hear basic sound quality, which seemed accurate and natural.

The bottom line is, if you want easy setup, don’t buy a feature-filled receiver. If you want a great listening and viewing experience, expect to spend several hours on configuration.

Reactions on Twitter Differ From Public Polls, Pew Analysis Finds

A new analysis from the Pew Research Center shows that what you read on Twitter may not reflect the opinion of the general public.

A yearlong study released on Monday compared the reaction on Twitter to the results of national opinion polls after eight significant news events, and found that public opinion as measured in Pew’s telephone surveys was often inconsistent with the tone of conversations on Twitter.

A public opinion survey after President Obama’s re-election, for example, found that 52 percent of Ameicans were happy with the outcome, but 77 percent of Twitter conversations about the election’s result were deemed positive.

Although Twitter users are younger and tend to be more Democratic than the general public, Twitter reaction does not always tilt more liberal.

After the president’s second inaugural address in January, only 13 percent of Twitter messages were considered positive, while a national poll conducted by Pew found 48 percent of Americans had a positive reaction to Mr. Obama’s speech. And after John Kerry’s nomination as secretary of state, just 6 percent of Twitter reaction was positive, compared with a 39 percent favorable rating for Mr. Kerry in a Pew telephone ! poll.

Pew researchers point to a number of reasons for the differences. Only about one in 10 Americans say they use Twitter or read Twitter messages, according to a Pew survey on news consumption, and they are not representative of the general public. National general opinion surveys are limited to adults 18 and over, but those under 18 can use Twitter to their hearts’ content.

Finally, Pew researchers point out that those who comment on Twitter about news events tend to share their opinions on subjects that interest them the most, whereas national surveys ask questions of a random sample of Americans, regardless of their personal engagement on the issues.

On Twitter, for example, there were nearly 14 million posts relevant to Mr. Obama’s re-election, almost 1.7 million about his 2013 inaugural speech, and just over 70,000 regarding Mr. Kerry’s confirmation as secretary of state. Those who commented about Mr. Kerry being confirmed are not necessarily the same as those who did about te re-election.