When Superman and Batman Battle, You Need a Big Weapon

The “Injustice: Gods Among Us” Battle Edition includes the video game, three skins and a fight stick.

Accompanying the release on Tuesday of “Injustice: Gods Among Us,” the new fighting game from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, was a range of supporting products, including comic books, action figures, an album and a mobile app. One of the largest accessories is a fight stick that is included with the Battle Edition of the game.

A fight stick is hardly the agile combat weapon it sounds like; it’s basically a large, boxy game controller used by serious gamers for tournament play. It’s designed to mimic arcade-style game play, complete with a joy stick. It looks like a throwback to a more primitive era of video games, when Pac-Man was chomping ghosts on an Atari 2600 console.

But the “Injustice” fight stick has its advantages. First, it weighs a mere 3.5 pounds, light enough to rest on your lap. And it has a nonskid surface on the bottom, making it coffee table friendly (although it takes up a lot of real estate).

The biggest benefit, however, is the arrangement of the controls on the top. Eight oversize, illuminated buttons are clustered near the joystick, making them easy to reach with one hand.

The Battle Edition does not come with a manual, so thankfully the setup is intuitive. It has only a single 10-foot USB cable that connects directly to the console. I wish it included a wireless connection.

This was my first experience using a fight stick, but it made playing the game so much easier. Even with its ergonomic design, my Xbox controller was giving me tendonitis. With the fight stick on my lap, I could sit back on the couch and really enjoy the Mortal Combat-style battles among the superheroes and villains of the DC universe.

The “Injustice” Battle Edition is available exclusively at GameStop for $150 and is compatible with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Included with the fight stick are the “Injustice” video game and three downloadable skins for Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman. I don’t know how much excitement the fight stick would garner among casual game players, especially at that price, but for serious gamers, bigger is better.

Bush Urges His Brother to Run for President

Former President George W. Bush said in an interview released Friday that he hopes his brother Jeb runs for president in 2016, and that members of his family should not “be afraid of entering the arena” even if some will vote against them simply because of their name.

Just days before he dedicates his new presidential library and museum, Mr. Bush publicly mulled the possibility of a third President Bush. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, has said he will consider a run for the White House as he seeks to help his party find its voice again after two consecutive defeats.

Is the country ready for another Bush? “That’s for Jeb to figure out, you know what I mean?” his older brother told Mark K. Updegrove in Parade magazine. “I would hope that people would judge, if Jeb were to run, on his merits and his track record.” He added, “So I hope he will run.”

Mr. Bush was also asked about his advice for his nephew George P. Bush, Jeb’s son, who is running for state land commissioner in Texas. “Don’t worry about what people say about you, but have an agenda that is positive, forthright and that people can understand,” the former president said. “And if you want to be the land commissioner, have a platform for the Land Commission.”

He acknowledged certain liabilities, as well as advantages, in coming from one of America’s best known political dynasties. “My first advice would be, don’t be afraid of entering the arena, win or lose,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s a great experience. I told him, ‘People are going to automatically not vote for you because of your name. On the other hand, people will listen to you because of your name, so I wouldn’t even worry about that. Just go out there and tell people what’s in your heart.”

The interview, conducted jointly with his wife, Laura, peeled back the curtain a bit on the former president’s post-White House life. Much attention has focused lately on word that Mr. Bush has taken up painting. Mrs. Bush told Mr. Updegrove that her husband picked it up because he quit smoking cigars and was looking for something to do.

“He gave them up when we moved back and he was desperate for a pastime,” she said. Mrs. Bush added that John Lewis Gaddis, the Yale historian, was in Dallas and recommended the former president read Winston Churchill’s book, “Painting as a Pastime.”

Mr. Bush did, and he also started using an iPad sketch application. “And he communicated with me if I was on the road or with Barbara and Jenna with these very funny stick figure drawings of him in bed with Barney: ‘Good night,’” Mrs. Bush said. “Then the active stick figure in the morning: ‘Good morning.’”

She showed them to an artist friend who thought they were creative and recommended an instructor.

“He’s having a really wonderful time painting,” Mrs. Bush said. “George is very determined and he’s very disciplined. He paints for a lot of hours a day, and it transports him. You know, he’ll go up to clean his brushes and then glance at his watch and he’s been up there for two hours.”

App Smart Extra: Say It, and It Will Be Written

Though computer recognition of speech has not yet achieved the levels of sophistication that science fiction writers love to imagine, nowadays it is good enough that your smartphone or tablet can help with the tricky task of converting speech to text. Apps that pull off this trick can help you with your studies or in the office and were the subject of this week’s App Smart column.

One of the chief ways speech recognition and transcription can be useful is in creating reminders or notes. If you’re anything like me, when I have an idea I tend to articulate it best by speaking aloud versus trying to write it down. The advantage of modern smartphones and tablets, usually with the latest operating system upgrade, is that they have basic speech recognition built in, which means you can use a note-taking app like Evernote to record and transcribe your spoken text. The note management features of Evernote, which include the ability to pin an audio file to a note along with images and typed text, could make it a useful tool. It’s free on iOS and Android, and it’s hugely popular. It may be a little too complex for very short notice note-taking needs, however, unless you work to become familiar with the app.

For a far simpler speech-to-notes experience, Voice Dictation for Notes, $1.99 on iOS, is a good option. The app presents you with a graphic that looks like lined note paper, and there’s a prominent microphone button at the top of the left-side icon bar. Pressing this brings up a warning that you are recording at the top of the screen, and then the app transcribes your words. The resulting text can be forwarded to e-mail with the press of a button, or copied so you can paste it into another app.

The app can handle a long list of separate notes, listed on its main page. It shows the first several words of each note to you as a reminder of its content, along with the date the note was created.

It’s a bare bones app and thus may be a great choice if you are working in a busy environment where you simply want to record a note and not fuss with an app interface. At the same time, though, it’s not a sophisticated app and you will find yourself making a lot of manual corrections to the text.

You can also fall back on the built-in “Notes” app in iOS and use Apple’s standard voice-recognition system. But it is not easy to use, and has a few controls that seem too small for fingertips. You may also tire of its fake yellow notepaper look and its limited font selection. Google also has its own note-taking app, Keep, which includes speech-to-text powers.

If you are in the habit of writing a lot of text on your phone or tablet, then it’s definitely worth giving speech recognition apps like these a try. You may even find yourself being more productive than when you type words on a touchscreen keyboard.

Quick Call

The free beta edition of launcher app Everything.me has arrived in the Google Play store for Android. It’s an app that tries to be a clever front-end for your smartphone by adapting the apps it offers to you based on what you are using your phone for at that moment. Compared with the static homepage of fixed apps that Android typically has, you may find this app enhances your experience.

Q&A: Extending (And Ending) Support for Windows XP

Q.

What is “extended support” for Microsoft Windows XP and do I need to worry when it’s supposed to stop next year?

A.

Microsoft has a defined period of time for things like help-line calls, warranty claims and security updates for the hardware and software it sells. This period of time is called the Support Lifecycle Policy and is supposed to give customers a firm idea of how long they can expect Microsoft to provide services for a product before the company considers it obsolete.

Microsoft’s current policy states that its Windows operating systems will each receive a total of 10 years of support. The first five of those years are “mainstream,” in which that version of Windows still has all the telephone support options available (including some free help by phone along with paid technical-support calls), security updates and some development work for requested features and design improvements.

After the first five years, the system moves into the “extended” support phase where security updates are still free, but any technical help by phone costs money; online troubleshooting articles from Microsoft’s Web site are still free and available for at least a year after a product’s extended support phase ends.

A significant amount of PC’s out there are still running Windows XP â€" about 38 percent as of March 2013, according to the research form Net Applications, which uses information from computers connected to the Internet. Still, Microsoft has been very open about the fact that it will be retiring Windows XP on April 8, 2014. The Support Lifecycle page for Windows XP even tells visitors to “Buy Windows 8 now!”

A post on one of its official Windows blogs basically states that while PC’s running XP will still continue to work after April 8, 2014, they could become targets for malicious software looking to take over newly discovered vulnerabilities in Windows XP. This situation could put users at risk since no Microsoft security patches will be available to plug the holes. The same post also says that antivirus-software companies that still support Windows XP will not be able to fully protect computers running the system. For those inclined to heed the company’s persistent warnings, information about upgrading from Windows XP can be found here.

The Early Word: Origins of a Defeat

In Today’s Times:

• The defeat on Wednesday of the gun measure seeking to expand background checks can be traced to factors including a convoluted Senate rule, a failed alliance between two senators from opposite sides of the aisle, and timing, Jennifer Steinhauer writes.

• Supporters of the new Senate proposal to overhaul the immigration system are distancing themselves from comparisons to this week’s failed gun bill, pointing to broad, bipartisan backing that includes powerful business and labor groups among other examples of its strength, Ashley Parker reports.

• Helping prepare for any future threat from Iran, the Defense Department is on the cusp of finalizing a multibillion-dollar weapons deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Thom Shanker reports.

• The director of national intelligence sought to explain to a Senate panel on Thursday why the nation’s intelligence agencies differ in their views on North Korea’s nuclear capability, a difference exposed when a brief assessment was mistakenly declassified, Eric Schmitt reports.

Washington Happenings:

• Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will meet with Taro Aso, deputy prime minister of Japan, at the White House on Friday.

• Secretary of State John Kerry will talk about the release of the Human Rights Report at 2 p.m., then meet with President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador at the State Department.

• Spring meetings continue at the International Monetary Fund on Friday. The Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, will hold a news conference there at 5:15 p.m.

The Early Word: Origins of a Defeat

In Today’s Times:

• The defeat on Wednesday of the gun measure seeking to expand background checks can be traced to factors including a convoluted Senate rule, a failed alliance between two senators from opposite sides of the aisle, and timing, Jennifer Steinhauer writes.

• Supporters of the new Senate proposal to overhaul the immigration system are distancing themselves from comparisons to this week’s failed gun bill, pointing to broad, bipartisan backing that includes powerful business and labor groups among other examples of its strength, Ashley Parker reports.

• Helping prepare for any future threat from Iran, the Defense Department is on the cusp of finalizing a multibillion-dollar weapons deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Thom Shanker reports.

• The director of national intelligence sought to explain to a Senate panel on Thursday why the nation’s intelligence agencies differ in their views on North Korea’s nuclear capability, a difference exposed when a brief assessment was mistakenly declassified, Eric Schmitt reports.

Washington Happenings:

• Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will meet with Taro Aso, deputy prime minister of Japan, at the White House on Friday.

• Secretary of State John Kerry will talk about the release of the Human Rights Report at 2 p.m., then meet with President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador at the State Department.

• Spring meetings continue at the International Monetary Fund on Friday. The Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, will hold a news conference there at 5:15 p.m.