Liberty Newspost Mar-14-10

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03/03/10 - 04/03/10

http://www.LibertyNewspost.com

Will presidential weight carry healthcare through?

Tabassum Zakaria (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:24:59 PM

President Barack Obama spoke.

Republicans talked back.

No sign that anyone shifted positions after the president’s remarks today in the East Room at the White House with lots of white hospital coats in the audience.

In fact, it appears that the two sides — Obama and the Republicans — hardened their resolve, setting the stage for a political tug-of-war that’s only going to turn more fierce as the November elections near.

Obama wants it, Republicans oppose it. But it’s the congressional Democrats left trying to push through Congress an issue that has created discord within their own ranks.

Democrats in the Senate differ from their colleagues in the House on what the legislation

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should look like — and not all Democrats support it.

Democrat leaders are preparing to try and push the legislation through with a process called reconciliation that would require a simple majority, involve an umpire, and leave Republicans steaming.

Obama said as much in his speech without actually using the R word: “And now it

using the election scare tactic aimed at Democrats worrying about losing seats in November — “Every election in America this fall will be a referendum on this issue,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Obama’s road trips next week to Philadelphia and St. Louis are aimed at creating momentum after asking Congress to schedule a vote in the next few weeks.

“From now until then, I will do everything in my power to make deserves the same kind of up or the case for reform,” he said. down vote that was cast on Will Obama’s determination be welfare reform, that was cast on enough to succeed where others the Children’s Health Insurance have failed and get healthcare Program, that was used for reform enacted?

COBRA health coverage for the For more Reuters political unemployed, and, by the way, news, click here for both Bush tax cuts — all of Photo credit: Reuters/Larry which had to pass Congress with Downing (Obama speaks about nothing more than a simple h e a l t h c a r e r e f o r m ) , Reuters/Jonathan Ernst majority.”

Republicans responded by ( M c C o n n e l l t a l k i n g a b o u t healthcare in December)

Is Diego Maradona swearing or itching?

(Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:05:18 AM

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March 4, 1877: The Microphone Sounds Much Better Eliot Van Buskirk (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/3/2010 9:00:00 PM

A German-American immigrant invents the carbon-disk microphone that makes the telephone practical.

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What's Best for Kids: Bottled Water or Fountains?

(National Geographic News)

Royte's 2008 book Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. This story is part of a special Transporting the bottles and series that explores the global keeping them cold also burns water crisis. For more clean fossil fuels, which give off w a t e r n e w s , p h o t o s , a n d greenhouse gases. information, visit National Groundwater pumping by Geographic's Freshwater Web bottled-water companies also site. draws heavily on underground As the U.S. taste for bottled aquifers and harms watersheds, water grows, environmentalists according to the environmental have been trying to sell people nonprofit the Sierra Club. And a on good old-fashioned—and 2008 investigation by the free—tap water. nonprofit Environmental But tap water's place in schools Working Group found some is thorny, since some experts bottled water is sullied with say children should actually be untested industrial chemicals, drinking more bottled water to and may not necessarily be head off two stubborn health cleaner than tap water. threats: obesity due to sugary (Related:"Bottled Water Isn't drinks and lead poisoning.

Healthier Than Tap, Report "If children go from sugary Reveals.") beverages to bottled water, you Lead Dangers get a benefit to public health, But switching to tap water b u t n o t s o m u c h t h e could be a bad idea in some e n v i r o n m e n t , " s a i d K e l l y schools where the risk of lead Brownell, director of the Rudd c o n t a m i n a t i o n f r o m o l d Center for Food Policy and pipes—known to affect physical Obesity at Yale University. and mental development—is " I f t h e y g o f r o m s u g a r high, particularly in large urban beverages to [clean] tap water, areas such as Chicago, Los you get a public health home Angeles, and Washington, D.C. run and environmental home For instance in September run."

2009, the Associated Press Bottled water is a drain on the p u b l i s h e d a n a t i o n w i d e environment: The U.S. public investigation showing that the goes through about 50 billion drinking water in schools in 27 water bottles a year, and most of states is contaminated with lead those plastic containers are not and other toxic substances from recycled, according to Elizabeth lead-soldered pipes generally Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:54:28 PM

installed before 1985.

(Related:"Cocaine, Spices, Hormones Found in Drinking Water.")

Schools that rely on their own wells are subject to regular testing by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But the agency does not regulate drinking-water quality for the rest of the nation’s schools, which get their water from local utilities.

Most school districts do not test their water because of the costs associated with lead remediation, said Marc Edwards, a civil engineer at Virginia Tech.

"Even when we offer to do the analysis for free, the majority of schools don't want to know," Edwards said.

But some solutions are much less costly than replacing a whole pipe system, he said.

Those range from putting filters on taps to remove lead, to flushing water fountains after a period of stagnation.

Still, for some school districts, the most cost-effective measure may be providing kids with bottled water.

In 2007, Baltimore City public schools switched their entire system to bottled water after a study of 84 randomly selected water fountains found 10 with lead levels high than the EPA's cutoff of 20 parts per billion.

The school district decided it would be cheaper to provide bottled water than testing and remediation efforts.

Edwards applauds Baltimore's decision.

"I’m a huge proponent of tap water, but if your child going to one of schools where pieces of lead are falling into the tap water on a random basis, that risk pales in comparison to the small cost of bottled water."

Sugar High Margo Wootan, director of nutrition for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest(CSPI), added that environmental groups that have demonized bottled water should refocus their campaigns on all bottled beverages, including soda.

"Environmentalists place a higher burden on people who drink water instead of soda, and that isn’t fair," Wootan said.

School beverages, particularly sugar-laden soda and sports drinks sold in vending machines, have come under increasing fire from nutritionadvocacy groups such as CSPI. Obesity rates among children aged 6 to 11 have more than doubled in the past 20 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 2006 study by Harvard nutritionists found sugar-sweetened beverage

consumption is linked to higher body weight among adolescents.

"Soda in schools has been such a huge problem for the last couple of decades, and getting rid of sugar-sweetened beverages and shifting to bottled water should be a top priority," Wootan said.

The School Nutrition Association is also advocating for the elimination of all sugarsweetened beverages from all schools when Congress takes up the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act in March 2010.

Low-fat milk, 100-percent juices, and bottled water are the new recommended beverages for school meal programs and vending machines.

But other health experts intend to keep fighting for tap water.

"There's more demand for bottled water now in schools, and the beverage industry says they have public health in mind," Yale's Brownell said.

"But we're hoping to do a big campaign to encourage consumption of tap water instead."

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Lord Ashcroft cleared of breaching electoral law with ÂŁ5.1m Tory donations (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

watchdog would also be called before the committee.

The Electoral Commission's 18month investigation was sparked by a complaint from Labour Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:01:31 AM Published: 2:01PM GMT 04 MP John Mann, amid Labour Mar 2010 concerns that the billionaire's An Electoral Commission money was being used to report rejected allegations that boost Conservative candidates' B e a r w o o d - w h i c h i s chances in key marginal seats controlled by Ashcroft - was not in the forthcoming election. carrying on business in the UK But the long-awaited report and was therefore ineligible to found that Bearwood (BCS) met donate money to political t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s o f a parties. permissible donor by being However, the Commission has registered at Companies House, asked to meet Conservative incorporated within the UK or officials to ensure that they are another EU member state, and clear about their responsibilities carrying on business in the UK for complying with the law. at the time the donation is made.

The report came as it was It concluded: "No breach of disclosed that Lord Ashcroft P P E R A ( P o l i t i c a l P a r t i e s , would be called to appear Elections and Referendums before the public administration Act 2000) has been established select committee for a ''special a n d . . . n o l e g a l a c t i o n i n one-off inquiry'' on March 18. relation to the Conservative Lord Ashcroft revealed this Party should be taken. week that he did not pay UK tax "The Commission has, however, on his extensive overseas asked to meet party officials to earnings, apparently at odds ensure that they are clear with Tory assurances when he about their responsibilities for was given a seat in the Lords. complying with the law."

Labour's Gordon Prentice, who Parties receiving donations waged a long-running campaign from companies are required to to have the peer's tax status check that the money is made public, said the Cabinet coming from the firm, rather Office and an appointments than from someone using it as a

front.

The report said there was "no basis to conclude" that the donor was anyone other than Bearwood.

And it said there was "insufficient evidence to conclude, on the balance of probabilities, that the party was uncertain as to the identity of the donor when accepting the donations".

But it revealed that a number of Conservative officers and staff declined to be interviewed on the issue. The Commission has no power to force people to attend interviews.

After studying internal party emails and documents, including from constituency associations which had received Bearwood funding, the Commission formed the view that "there was evidence to suggest that at least since 2006 the party would have reason to question whether the donor was Lord Ashcroft rather than BCS".

Gifts from BCS "were often referred to in internal party communications as 'Ashcroft' donations", noted the report.

To establish a breach of the rules, the Commission had to prove that the party was

uncertain of the money's provenance by ascertaining its "state of mind" in regard to the Bearwood donations.

The party's registered treasurer assured commissioners in writing that he was in "no doubt" as to the identity of the donor, dismissing comments suggesting that the party regarded the money as coming direct from Ashcroft as "loose language".

And the report said: "The Commission asked various officers and staff within the party to attend interviews on a voluntary basis, but these requests were not agreed to."

Mr Prentice wrote on his blog earlier: ''Just back from the Public Administration Select Committee where we agree to do a special one-off inquiry into the Lord Ashcroft affair. It will be on Thursday 18 March. ''The issues fall squarely within the Committee's bailiwick. We keep an eye on the Cabinet Office and the House of Lords Appointments Commission. We shall see what they have to say. ''Oh yes... the Committee will invite Lord Ashcroft to come before it.''

A Conservative spokesman

said: "Following an 18-month investigation, the Electoral Commission has definitively concluded that donations made

by Bearwood, the company in which Lord Ashcroft has an interest, were legal, permissible and correctly reported.

"It has now been put beyond doubt that donations from Bearwood were entirely legitimate. Separately, we also know that Lord Ashcroft is nondomiciled, putting him in exactly the same position as Labour and Lib Dem donors such as Lord Paul.

"This means the Conservative Party's clean bill of health with the Electoral Commission remains fully intact. It is now clear that the continuing attacks on Michael Ashcroft are part of a politically motivated campaign orchestrated by the Labour Party in advance of the general election in order to distract attention from the real issues facing this country.

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Dinosaurs Ten Million Years Older Than Thought (National Geographic News) Submitted at 3/3/2010 12:36:46 PM

A new dinosaur relative found in Tanzania is the oldest known creature of its kind—a discovery that pushes back the origin of dinosaurs by at least ten million years, paleontologists say.

Dubbed Asilisaurus kongwe, the Labrador retriever-size creature was a silesaur, the closest relatives to true dinosaurs. The newfound animal lived 243 million years ago, during the middle Triassic period.

Since silesaurs and true dinosaurs diverged from a common ancestor, the two groups should have existed during the same time frame. But the oldest known true dinosaurs date back to just 230 million years ago.

Finding a silesaur that's ten million years older makes "a big difference," said study co-author Christian Sidor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.

Asilisaurus' s age suggests that some early forms of dinosaurs must have also been plodding around in the middle Triassic.

(See a prehistoric time line.)

"When people think about dinosaurs, we think about the

extreme forms, the ones that have gone off in their ... own weird directions," such as Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex, said Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the research.

"But they all came from a common ancestor, and fellows like Asilisaurus help us understand what that original dino state looked like."

Early Dinosaur Relative an Omnivore?

Parts of at least 12 Asilisaurus skeletons were found in 2007 in southern Tanzania's Ruhuhu Valley. With no intact specimen to study, Sidor and his team had to piece together a composite skeleton.

What emerged looked nothing like what paleontologists had imagined.

Instead of resembling the "typical hatchet-headed, bladetoothed meat-eaters," Asilisaurus was a light, slenderlimbed animal with peg-like teeth and a small beak-like structure on its jaw, the University of Maryland's Holtz said.

The shape of the beak suggests Asilisaurus tore into tissue, which means the animal might have eaten plants—or both

plants and meat, the researchers say.

Mysteriously, the long-tailed animal ran on all fours—even though the vast majority of early dinosaurs were two-legged carnivores, according to the study, to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature.

"It's making the picture a little bit murkier, because we have a possible herbivore and quadruped very close to the dinosaur lineage," said study coauthor Sidor, who received funding for the research from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

Dinosaurs' World in Transition In a way, Asilisaurus' s discovery "is an elegant fulfillment of a prediction," said Christopher Brochu, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Iowa who also wasn't part of the study group.

That's because paleontologists know dinosaurs belong to the archosaurs. Within this group, dinosaur ancestors are divided into two main branches: a line that includes silesaurs and shares skeletal features with modern birds, and a line that has more in common with

crocodilians.

Since a crocodilian dinosaurancestor from the middle Triassic had already been found, unearthing an animal like Asilisaurus was just a matter of time.

But the new research goes beyond that, Brochu said. "It's part of a larger, growing realization that the earliest archosaurs were far more diverse than we ever thought."

(Take a dinosaur quiz.)

In addition to finding Asilisaurus, study leader Sidor and colleagues have already collected several other archosaur species from the Ruhuhu Valley—many more than in other archosaur hot spots.

It's unknown why the lush, wet valleys of prehistoric Tanzania produced so many strains of dinosaur relatives, paleontologists say.

Whatever the reason, "what we're seeing here is a picture of a world in transition," Brochu said. "It's really a fascinating time in the history of life."

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Space Photos This Week: Mars Streaks, Cosmic Web, More (National Geographic News) Submitted at 3/3/2010 12:03:23 PM

Listening for Phoenix Image courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech/University of Arizona As spring embraces northern Mars, surface ice has decreased around the Phoenix Mars lander, as seen in two aerial views taken February 8 (left) and February 25 by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Phoenix, which arrived on Mars in May 2008, worked for five months before the onset of Martian winter left the solarpowered craft with too little sunlight to stay alive.

Starting in January 2010, NASA has been using the orbiter to listen for radio signals from Phoenix, in case the lander rises again and is able to resume even limited operations. So far, no contact has been reported.

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Size matters at Geneva Motor Show (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

cars, fitted with turbochargers to boost power.

Fiat, Opel, Ford, Volkswagen, even Mercedes and BMW were on trend, with six or even four Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:14:53 AM

By Peter Capella, in Geneva for cylinders replacing eight - and AFP two or three replacing four in Published: 2:14PM GMT 04 the smallest cars.

Mar 2010 "The minimum acceptable "My generation grew up with vehicle size is gradually moving huge cars, long Cadillacs, things downward and where it's that looked like aircraft particularly evident is with carriers going down the road," engines," said Lutz. explained Bob Lutz, 78, vice Audi returned to small cars chairman of General Motors. with the sub four-metre A1 by But at the Geneva Motor Show, adding its sporty and upmarket which opens to the public on twist to parts shared with parent Thursday, the values of the Volkswagen, while Nissan t w o c o n t i n e n t s m e e t , a s revamped its small Micra with "downsizing" gained ground in the aim of giving it a global the global motor industry - reach. smaller engines, smaller cars The Japanese company wants to and less fuel. sell one million Micras a year In the Swiss city, Nissan, Mini across 160 countries by 2013. and Dacia presented shrunken Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicle) called the car "a strategic or crossovers that claim to mix investment for Nissan's future offroad style with on road growth. sportiness.

"In the past, Nissan had minimal GM's European affiliate Opel p r e s e n c e i n t h e c o m p a c t showed off its Meriva compact segment because we did not people carrier for the first have a specific platform suited time. for those customers' needs," said Most manufacturers were also Ghosn. fitting smaller and cleaner Unlike the growing range of running engines even in bigger electric or hybrid powered

models touted in Geneva for the coming decade, the downsized option is on sale now, without compromising on cost, range or ease of refuelling in the absence of roadside networks of power sockets, analysts said.

"In the next ten years, the real trend will be downsizing and small cars for big megacities," said Frank Schwope, a motor industry analyst at German bank NordLB. In Asia, space and tax restrictions in densely populated Japan have traditionally favoured compact vehicles while affordable, practical runabouts are in demand in fastgrowing emerging nations.

Colin Couchman, automotive analyst at Global Insight, said official pressure to cut carbon emissions and fuel consumption, with stringent limits looming in Europe or the United States, was also telling.

"Part of it is a hedge by manufacturers. They have to be seen to be doing something," said Couchman.

"Increasingly what they want to try and do is downsize but offer products that work everywhere in the world."

Nissan said its Juke crossover would head to the United States while Mini has similar plans for the Countryman SUV, aiming for largely urban or suburban customers.

For Lutz, while Americans are unlikely to take to the smallest runabouts in big numbers, US habits are clearly shifting towards more compact vehicles and thriftier engines as generations change.

"I would estimate that in another 10 or 15 years there will be very little size difference in the average vehicle in a highly developed wealthy European market like Germany and the United States," added the GM stalwart.

However, one relic of the gas guzzling era might resist, especially in the US heartland, Lutz predicted.

"The American pickup truck is a workhorse and every time someone tries to do a smaller pickup ... they never succeed."

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• Leave your wallet at home.

• Ask yourself: “Do I really need this?”

Full story at Dumb Little Man. More on life.

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How to consume less (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:20:00 AM

Henri Junttila explains how to

consume less and live the life of a minimalist. These are some of his key points: • Pay with cash.

DocStore Opens Up to More Sellers Nadine Heintz (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:16:58 AM

Last week, online document marketplace DocStoc launched a new platform that lets anyone sell professional and business documents on the site.

To start selling in the DocStore, simply sign up for a free account and begin uploading documents onto the site (you also can embed DocStore documents on your website).

DocStoc handles all the financial transactions and sends you a check at the end of each month. Sellers keep 100 percent of all sales for the first 60 days, with no hidden fees. After that, you'll split sales evenly with the store, which will send you a check for your 50 percent of sales in any given month. You can set any price you'd like for your documents, those most on the site sell for between $15 and $30. You also can track sales on a personalized dashboard.

Of course, the store won't let you sell just any document. All documents posted for sale are reviewed by DocStoc. If a document is not approved, you'll receive an email with an explanation for the rejec

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Passengers on Mediterranean cruise ship hit by freak waves describe chaos (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

spectacular," he said as the ship sat docked at Barcelona's port with passengers sunning themselves on deck the day after the accident on Wednesday.

Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:33:44 AM Published: 1:24PM GMT 04 "A lot of water came in. Many Mar 2010 cabins were flooded," said C l a u d e C r e m e x , 7 3 , o f Cremex, who was traveling Marseille, France said he was in with his wife. "Many people his cabin resting because of were very frightened." rough seas when the walls of "Suddenly we saw a wave that water hit the Cypriot-owned went up above our level, and I Louis Majesty, which was said to my husband, 'tonight carrying 1,350 passengers and we will not have to wash the 580 crew members off the w i n d o w s , " ' s a i d C l a u d i n e coast of northeastern Spain. Armand of France, who was in The ship's owner and operator, her cabin at that point.

Louis Cruise Lines, said the "Right then we heard we heard a vessel was struck by three loud noise, and it was the wave "abnormally high" waves more that hit us. When we came out than 33 feet (10 meters) high of the room we saw the wave that broke glass windshields in had flooded everything." the forward section.

Pierre Languillon, also of Two people died and 14 were F r a n c e , s a i d d a m a g e w a s slightly hurt, the company said. extensive and he saw many Large waves are common in the people with superficial injuries.

Mediterranean but ones that size "They called for doctors, as occur only once or twice a many doctors as there were. year, said Marta de Alfonso, an Luckily nothing happened to oceanographer with the Spanish us, but I think we averted a government. catastrophe."

Cremex said he did not see the Louis Cruise Lines spokesman waves himself but later viewed Michael Maratheftis said 14 the damage. "It w a s passengers who suffered only

minor injuries were taken to hospital as a precaution.

Arrangements have been made to fly all 1,350 passengers back home Thursday and the ship will carry on with its normal cruise schedule later this month after repairs are completed, he said.

Maratheftis said the two dead passengers suffered fatal injuries from the glass shards and ripped-out window frames and furniture.

"It was three waves, one after the other. The damage was done by the second and the third waves. We are talking about waves that exceeded 10 meters in height. This was unforeseen and unpredicted because the weather was not really that bad," Maratheftis said.

De Alfonso said there was a big storm in the area at the time and the waves might have been stirred up by fierce winds.

Waves often come in threes, she said.

A Louis Cruise Lines statement said the waves smashed windows in a public area on deck 5 on the forward part of the vessel. It said the passengers

killed were German and Italian.

The ship was on a 12-day cruise from the ports of Genoa and Marseilles in the western Mediterranean, calling at Tangiers, Casablanca, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Cadiz, Cartagena, Barcelona and had been due to return to Genoa on Thursday.

"Louis Cruises extends its sincere condolences to the families of the two victims and its full support to the injured passengers while expressing its deep sorrow for the incident," the statement said.

Maratheftis said many passengers have already left the ship to return home.

Louis Cruise Lines' website says the ship is 680 feet (207 meters) long, and features 10 passenger decks and 732 staterooms along with various bars, pools, restaurants and shops.

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New Small Business Server from Lenovo Nadine Heintz (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/3/2010 12:47:56 PM

Lenovo recently unveiled the ThinkServer Ts200V, a new server designed for small businesses. The single processor server comes loaded with Intel Active Management Technology that makes remote management easier for companies without a dedicated IT staff. It also has an EasyStartup feature for quick server set-up. The servers, which come in either tower or rack models, start at under $500.

You'll also get a 90-day free trial of Lenovo's ThinkPlus Priority Support, which gives you 24/7 phone access to techni

Awesome caption #fail (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/3/2010 10:22:00 PM

Hint: The caption says, “Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.”

Who is who?

Head over to The NYTPicker to see the full image and caption.

More on journalism.

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Glowing Animals: Pictures of Beasts Shining for Science (National Geographic News) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:37:31 PM

Bacteria Photograph courtesy UC San Diego via AP How does it glow?

Multiple colors of fluorescent protein, introduced into its DNA (2008) What can we learn?

One of the team of scientists that won a 2008 Nobel Prize for green fluorescent protein-Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien-couldn't resist showing off their creation a bit. From Tsien's lab comes this artful plate with selectively swabbed fluorescent bacteria.

The discovery of green fluorescent protein by

Shimomura in 1956 was the result of crushing countless jellyfish.

After publishing his findings in 1962, Shimomura studied GFP in detail and realized that no extra fuel was needed to make it glow--other glowing substances need chemical additives to shine. GFP, by contrast, just needed to be exposed to ultraviolet light.

Chalfie, the third of the GFP Nobel winners, realized the maintenance-free protein could be used to literally watch how creatures work. He proved with the intestinal bacterium E. coli that GFP alone--with no fuel-glowed, and promptly started putting it into roundworms.

Roger Tsien kicked it up a notch by reengineering GFP to

be cyan, blue, and yellow. Yet more colors were found in fluorescent coral. He remixed these materials into glowing proteins such as "mPlum," "mStrawberry," and "mOrange."

Though their inventions may have revolutionized the fields of medicine, biology, and chemistry, the fluorescent proteins also have creative applications, as shown above.

Fluorescent proteins have also been used in the name of art to make sculptures out of glowing beakers and live glowing rabbits.

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Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:00:44

The Indelible Brilliance of Jack Donaghy, the World's Greatest Executive AM

Hulu, as part of their relentless Attack on My Productivity, has put together a bunch of clips featuring Jack Donaghy, the GE executive played by Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock, at his (FOXNews.com) was twice hit with tranquilizer before crossing a busy street. managerial best. Whether you darts, but still got away by Officials didn't say how the need to know when to wear a Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:46:18 AM ducking behind a drug store and monkey got loose. They say it tuxedo (after 6, every day) or ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. A a church. isn't considered a threat to how to win at marbles (you hide monkey that has eluded capture Wildlife rehabilitator Vernon humans. them), Jack Donaghy is the man in the Tampa Bay area for more Yates says the tranquilizers Five Filters featured article: to ask. Warning: the following than a year has again escaped don't appear to affect the animal, Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: post contains (mostly consists from Florida wildlife officials. though officials have increased PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, of, really) Hulu clips, which Authorities were called to a the dosage each time they've Term Extraction. means those outside the US are neighborhood in St. Petersburg used the drug on the monkey. out of luck. Sorry! on Wednesday when the rhesus Yates says the monkey is smart, From The Book of Jack (not a macaque monkey was spotted. It even stopping to check traffic

Fla. Monkey Eludes Capture for More Than 1 Year

real book): Office romances are, in the minds of HR shrews and other naysayers, to be avoided for legal and morale reasons. But being a man in power means some leggy underlings will want to throw themselves at you--this is the reward for being such a fantastic manager. See Fig. A for details/instructions.

Fig. A: Other examples of the wisdom of Jack Donaghy: And one last one: Check out Hulu's blog post for a few more annotated examples.

You'll be a better manager for it. [ Hulu]

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Website Uptime Means Happy Customers Howard Greenstein (Inc.com)

Amazing Holi pictures

Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:38:10 PM

(Holy Kaw!)

Last week's piece about keeping customers was more a discussion of customer service.

This week, I'm profiling a company that ensures your customers can be kept - by making sure your website, store or service is up all the time. This is very important for keeping customers happy, especially if the web is the primary method by which customers reach you or buy your products or services.

Web service uptime is critical for Jay Gave, CTO for edo Interactive, a company that has a technology that puts coupons directly onto customer's debit cards. edo has 27 employees and works with large companies like Coca-Cola for an under-the-cap loyalty program, as well as the financial institutions that issue debit cards.

Jay told me "In the modern age of service-oriented architecture, if we're hosting a web service for a customer, unless we can prove it is up, they're going to think it is down. We use AlertSite DejaClick to track our web site and web services for

Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:26:00 AM

our clients. AlertSite monitors East Coast, Central and West Coast for us. We give customers a report with the AlertSite logo that shows we had 99.97 percent or greater uptime. When you're dealing with larger companies as a startup organization, this reporting helps your reputation.

You have to be prepared for an extra level of scrutiny, but if you want to be a successful startup you have to be prepared for that scrutiny anyway."

Ken Godskind, Chief Strategy Officer of AlertSite opined "In Small and Medium businesses, they don't want to be monitoring experts. They know their store, blog, or website. With our Deja Click product, you don't have to be highly trained, you just have to know how to click through an application. It is designed so a normal user can accomplish it."

The demo I saw allowed a user to hit a 'record button' and capture their path through the site. If there were user names or fields to fill out, the product captured those. They can be

edited or conditional logic can be added. It even worked on a flash site I was shown. Setting up the monitoring was not rocket science - most site owners could do it with little help or coaching. AlertSite then tests your site, using your script, from data centers around the country. They then report back how long it takes for your site to load, and ensure that the service can successfully complete the scripted transactions.

Godskind describes their product set as services that help customers make sure that whatever the important thing they're doing on line, it is working well for end users. In Retail, that may mean, "Can shoppers go to home page, search for products, view products from a catalog, add to a shopping cart and check out?"

Gave said "They can spit out monthly reports, let us know when we were up, and since they're a 3rd party, they're immediately more trustworthy than if we reported to the client.

We also share reports internally with entire company so everyone knows our uptime and our reliability."

How big does your company have to be to consider monitoring services? "If you're a web based business," Godskind told me "and you're putting a lot of effort into sharing a brand feeling - and keeping customers - you want to make sure your site is available, functions reliably, and you want to know how your load time changes during the day. There's a very inexpensive, availability monitoring service for $10/month, but if you have multi-step store transactions to test, you can expect to pay more like $100/month and up."

If your business lives and dies by its website, $1,200 a year to have peace of mind that your site is up seems a pretty small price to pay. Do you track your online uptime and make sure your customers can buy or contact you at any time? How do you do it? The comments are

Google admits its SEO could use a little work Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:36:00 PM

Google comes up a bit short v e r s i o n o f t h e r e p o r t f o r after looking at its own search Webmasters to use on their own engine optimization. As a result, sites. it's made available a public Originally posted at Web

Crawler

Holi is the festival of colors.

People in India and other countries with large Hindu populations celebrate it as victory of good over evil.

Boston.com, as only Boston.com can do, provides thirty-seven amazing pictures of Holi in The Big Picture.

I just found this FAQ with the creator of these photojournalism stories: Alan Taylor.

Apparently, it’s his personal vision. The Big Picture shows why curation is a valuable skill.

See all the Holi pictures at Boston.com.

More on India.

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Live blog Thursday: YouTube press conference Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/3/2010 3:00:00 PM

YouTube is holding a press conference at 10 a.m. PST Thursday to discuss, well, something. We'll be there live for details on, well, whatever it is.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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U.S. Cyber Security Czar Comes Out of the Shadows to Reveal Defense Plans Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/4/2010 8:45:12 AM

The U.S.'s cyber security czar Howard Schmidt has obviously been doing something apart from tidying his desk in the three months since being appointed: He's been coming up with a cyber defense plan, which he's just revealed to the World.

Schmidt was speaking at the RSA event in San Francisco, and it's the first real showing he's made since starting his job in December 2009. What he was talking about were the aspects of the freshly-upgraded Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative that have been declassified for public consumption. And while you may suspect that Schmidt could only reveal the tiniest of details about such in important plan, he actually spilled quite a few beans in an attempt to get academics and private companies to buy into the government's plans.

The CNCI is a twelve-part initiative that covers several key aspects of digital security,

including the cloak-and-dagger counterintelligence stuff. Its overall intent, revealed for the first time since its inception in 2008, is to be the first line of defense against immediate cyber attacks, to defend against every possible kind of attack, and to work to improve future cybersecurity.

Schmidt's speech suggests that he'll be a figure appearing a lot in the media, with the goal of

educating the public as much as working behind the scenes--he noted that the authorities have to "continue to seek out innovative new partnerships--not only within government, but also among industry, government [sic] and the American public."

And that's precisely why the decision has been made to declassify parts of the CNCI. His point is well made, coming close on the heels of the

widespread cyber attacks that targeted Google, other companies and U.S. official bodies at the end of 2009. These were internationally-sourced complex, penetrating attacks that could've wreaked untold damage, and the actual events are still being combed through, but cyberattacks at a more personal level have also recently been in the news with a huge phising scam affecting Twitter.

Google tries again in search personalization Stephen Shankland (Webware.com)

People were skittish about elevating or deleting search results using Google's

SearchWiki. Instead, they can now personalize results with stars.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Also speaking at the RSA conference, Microsoft's VP for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney suggested that one way to raise the serious money to fund national-level defenses against cyber attacks is to levy a tax on Net usage. The plan would obviously pay for some of Schmidt's work, and presumably MS would be hoping that it (along with its competitors) would see some of the cash, and use it to improve their own defenses and code in public and governmental use.

But whereas Schmidt's speech may have been considered a breath of fresh air coming from a government figure, Charney's presentation was not well received...and given MS's shocking reputation for security loopholes in its OS and other software, as well as the company's billions of dollars of business, this really isn't a surprise.

[Via BBCNews, SeattlePI]

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Penguin Demonstrates iPad-Bound Books: Amazing, but Are These Really "Books"?

Dan Nosowitz (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:25:08 AM

If publishers (and, more importantly, the public) really embrace the iPad, we're going to be seeing more than just blacktext-on-white books--if you wanted that, you'd buy a Kindle, not a giant iPhone with Wi-Fi, a huge LCD, and a top-of-its-class mobile processor. But then, are these crazy game/video/audio hybrids really "books"? If Penguin's amazing examples are a sign of things to come, we may be asking that question quite often.

Said Penguin's CEO, John Makinson, at an event this week: We will be embedding audio, video, and gaming into everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about. So for the time being, at least, we'll be creating a lot of our digital content as applications, to be sold on app

stores, in HTML. He wasn't kidding. Check out this video.

That clip shows how dedicated Penguin is to truly taking advantage of the iPad's capabilities. That children's book that opens the clip is really more a game than a book (kids, of course, will likely see that as a positive). The "coloring book" section is very clever, even if the idea of instantly coloring a

section with a tap is likely far less fun for kids than frantic scribbling--but the point is, frantic scribblng is possible too.

Vampire Academy, too, despite its eye-rolling trend-hopping premise, is more of a game or community than a book, but again, imagine the possibilities.

Extend the idea a little farther, and you've got workshopping capabilities for budding writers, or collaborative blogs and

those examples are books. Lest you think I'm being a snob, clutching onto my glue-bound tomes of pulverized tree pulp after their expiry date, Penguin doesn't even think these things are books. I know that because Penguin intends to sell this digital content in the app store, as individual apps, not in the iBooks bookstore. There's nothing wrong with that--these apps look great, and the prospect of enriching the definition of "book" is exciting-but as companies take advantage of the iPad, the publishing industry is going to have to expand in ways we don't quite understand yet.

Eventually, ebooks may have forums. specific criteria, like an ebook Moving onto the more adult has to consist of only text, or fare, the travel book looks like a any content that needs to be far more comprehensive guide updated regularly is classified as than say, a similar iPhone app, an app. But those days are to really taking advantage of the come. We'll see once the iPad big screen. Starfinder is actually and its ilk actually see release. an old idea; Google Sky Maps is [ PaidContent via Gizmodo] a free download for Android (version 2.0 or later) and does the exact same thing, with more accuracy.

But here's the thing. None of

Unleash your inner food critic on Yelp for Android Jessica Dolcourt (Webware.com)

A small but significant update lets you bookmark businesses and draft a review for later

publishing.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

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11

Voice-Recognition Software Somewhat Sexist, Only Listens to Women Addy Dugdale (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/4/2010 7:04:18 AM

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Stanford have discovered that voicerecognition technology doesn't work as well on men as it does on women. The report, which recorded phone conversations in an attempt to understand why those infuriating automated booking lines don't work quite the way they should, discovered

that it's all in the pitch. And, um, the weird linguistic, err, tics that apparently afflict, umm men more than the, err, fairer sex, have got a lot to do with it.

As have (...) pauses. I can't decide whether this news is good for women, meaning that we are--hah!--better than the opposite sex, or whether it just reinforces the stereotype that men are in greater need of a secretary* than ever.

The findings are very reminiscent of the problems

British, Indian and Australian accents. Google's ambitious plans to create a translator phone will, no doubt, overcome this problem. *My tongue is firmly in my cheek here.

[Via BBC News and News.com.au. Image Carin Baer, AMCtv.com] encountered with Google Voice in territories other than the United States. For example, Australian users of the iPhone found that the word "Good day"

got them searches relating to PA. Google has fixed this--its voice recognition programs for Android now come with separate versions for American,

Pier 1 Issues Healthy Fourth-Quarter RSA 2010: Taking on Forecast cyberthreats Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:00:00 AM

Filed under: Before the Bell, Forecasts Retailer Pier 1 Imports ( PIR) issued fiscal fourth-quarter earnings forecast Thursday morning, saying it expect earnings to come in at at least 29 cents per share. A year ago, PIR lost 33 cents per share in the fourth quarter. Moreover, the consensus estimate for the retailer's quarterly earnings checks in at 25 cents per share.

This wasn't the only news from PIR, as the company forecast fourth-quarter merchandise margins of 55.7%, which is better than last year's 44.3% and the Street's expectations. PIR's same-store sales also increased by 6.5%. A true bevy of good news, but we could see the jubilation tempered by the fact

that PIR predicts its fourthquarter revenue will total $396 million while expectations call for $406.02 million.

Continue reading Pier 1 Issues Healthy Fourth-Quarter Forecast Pier 1 Issues Healthy FourthQuarter Forecast originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

(CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:00:00 AM

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Select type of offense: Offensive: Sexually explicit or offensive language

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Big Lots Living Large in Q4

Crude Awakening: Oil Pushes Through $80

'Google' Hackers Had Ability to Alter Source Code

Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks)

Joseph Lazzaro (BloggingStocks)

Kim Zetter (Wired Top Stories)

Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:20:00 AM

Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:40:00 AM

Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:13:00 AM

Filed under: Earnings Reports, Wal-Mart (WMT), Target Corp.

(TGT) Big Lots ( BIG) surely satisfied its investors yesterday when it reported double-digit earnings growth. On an adjusted basis, net income from continuing operations jumped over 30% to $1.31 per share during the fourth quarter. Analysts couldn't keep up, because they were looking for $1.28 per share, according to Earnings.com.

Total sales went up 7%, but same-store revenue, the more vital metric, was higher by 5.1%. Cash flow from operating activities for both the quarter and the full fiscal year

Filed under: Forecasts, Oil Oil inventories are high, U.S. unemployment has taken millions of drivers off the road, but the price oil is ignoring both to trend higher: oil closed Wednesday up $1.20 to $80.88 per barrel.

Further, Haag Sherman, chief investment officer for Salient Partners, told Bloomberg News he sees oil moving above $90.

"You are going to see it breaching $90 a barrel, up to $100 barrel; $147, $150 is out of the question in the near

Hackers who targeted Google and other companies in January targeted source code management systems, security firm McAfee asserts, manipulating a little-known trove of security flaws that would allow easy unauthorized access to the intellectual property it is meant to protect.

experienced significant increases. Gross margin expanded over both of those periods as well.

Continue reading Big Lots Living Large in Q4 Big Lots Living Large in Q4 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

term," Sherman said.

Continue reading Crude Awakening: Oil Pushes Through $80 Crude Awakening: Oil Pushes Through $80 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

Man Arrested in Connection With Deadly Ill. Home Invasion (FOXNews.com)

According to the Lee County Sheriff, Jacob Nodarse, 23, was taken into custody in Lehigh A man sought in the killings of Acres by a U.S. Marshals task a couple and their son in Darien, force.

Ill., was arrested in Florida Nodarse is expected to be Wednesday afternoon, officials charged with obstruction of s a i d , a c c o r d i n g t o justice.

MyFoxChicago.com.

Police in Darien had been Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:34:20 AM

looking for Nodarse, who was described as a suspect in the slayings. He apparently has relatives in Jasper, Fla., and in the Miami area – near where he was arrested – according to Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Alex Annunziato.

Jeffrey R. Kramer, 50, and Lori

Research Casts Doubt on Forensic DNA Technique Brandon Keim (Wired Top Stories)

Mitochondrial DNA can vary between cells, which could spell

trouble for its use in forensics.

L. Kramer, 48, and their 20-year -old son Michael J. Kramer were shot to death around 3 a.m.

Tuesday inside their home in the Tara Hill subdivision.

Another grown son and a daughter, along with Michael Kramer’s 17-year-old girlfriend, were in the house but weren’t

harmed.

Click here for more from MyFoxChicago.com.

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No is no: More men file sexual harassment claims (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

percent of all cases a decade ago, but the percentage has continued to rise even as the WASHINGTON – John overall number of sexual Pilkington's boss wouldn't take harassment complaints has no for an answer. declined. And last year, the During more than two years as percentage of lawsuits the a food runner at an upscale EEOC filed on behalf of male steakhouse in Scottsdale, Ariz., victims hit an all-time high, P i l k i n g t o n s a y s h i s m a l e making up 14 percent of all supervisor groped, fondled and cases. otherwise sexually harassed him "It's certainly possible that more than a dozen times. there's more sexual harassment "It was very embarrassing," of men going on, but it could Pilkington said. "I felt like I had just be that more men are to do something because the c o m i n g f o r w a r d a n d situation was just so bad." complaining about it," said Now Pilkington, a married Ernest Haffner, an attorney in father of two, is the star witness the EEOC's Office of Legal in a federal lawsuit against Counsel.

Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & While some cases allege Wine Bar and one of a growing h a r a s s m e n t b y f e m a l e number of men claiming they supervisors or co-workers, most are victims of sexual harassment charges involve men harassing in the workplace. other men. Sometimes it's F r o m 1 9 9 0 t o 2 0 0 9 , t h e unwelcome romantic advances. percentage of sexual harassment Other times, men are picked on claims filed by men has doubled because they are gay, perceived from 8 percent to 16 percent of as being gay or not considered all claims, according to the masculine enough for the work Equal Employment Opportunity setting.

Commission.

In the past, some employers W o m e n s t i l l f i l e t h e might have shrugged off such overwhelming majority of antics as "boys will be boys" sexual harassment claims with horseplay or fraternity-type the EEOC and state and local behavior. But the EEOC has agencies. But lawyers at the been filing more lawsuits commission say they've noticed involving male victims, saying it the increase in complaints by wants to send a message that men — more than 2,000 were such behavior is unacceptable filed in 2009 out of about and unlawful.

12,700 cases.

In November, for example, the Male claims made up about 12 Cheesecake Factory restaurant Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:28:03 AM

chain agreed to pay $345,000 to six male employees who claimed they were repeatedly sexually assaulted by a group of male kitchen staffers at a Phoenix-area restaurant.

The EEOC said the abusers would drag some victims kicking and screaming into a walk-in refrigerator, touching and grinding against the victims' genitals and take turns simulating rape. The company denied the allegations but agreed to make a financial settlement and educate its employees and managers about sexual harassment.

Susan Strauss, a consultant who advises companies about how to avoid sexual harassment in the workplace, said she's seeing more cases in which men are subject to a sexualized form of hazing.

"If you don't fit the masculine stereotype or are viewed as effeminate, you get picked on in a sexual way to demean you," Strauss said.

Cases involving women making unwanted advances toward men may also be rising as women make up a growing part of the work force. Last year, the Regal Entertainment Group, which operates a national chain of movie theaters, agreed to pay $175,000 to settle a lawsuit by a male employee who claimed a female co-worker repeatedly grabbed his crotch at work.

When the employee

complained to his supervisor and the theater's then-general manager, he claims, she failed to stop the harassment and instead retaliated against the victim with unfair discipline and lower performance evaluations.

The number of cases filed by men has grown steadily since a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1998 held that same-sex harassment is a valid claim under federal antidiscrimination laws. That ruling involved an offshore oil rig worker who said he was subject to humiliating sex-related treatment by other workers, including being sodomized in the shower with a bar of soap.

In Pilkington's case, he claims the restaurant's chef would grope and pinch his genitals or grab his backside when Pilkington walked to the kitchen or stock room. Despite his complaints to the restaurant's operating partner, he says the conduct didn't stop.

After one incident, Pilkington lost his composure and yelled at the chef, making a scene. Days later, he was fired — an action he claims was retaliation for his complaints. An EEOC lawsuit on behalf of Pilkington and three other current and former employees is pending.

"I think maybe it's just harder for males to come out and file a complaint because of how embarrassing it is," Pilkington said. "When I talk about it I get

this nauseous feeling in my stomach."

The restaurant has denied the charges. In a statement, the company that owns Fleming's said the restaurant "has always been committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace free of harassment for all of its associates."

Many victims are hesitant to come forward because they are afraid of being considered unmanly or being derided by coworkers, said Mary Jo O'Neill, a regional attorney in the EEOC's Phoenix District office.

"All sexual harassment victims feel humiliated, lacking control and power," O'Neill said. "This has a different twist because everyone expects that they would be able to handle it and take care of it themselves."

Pilkington has since moved on to another job. While he is embarrassed by the publicity his case has received, he says it was the right thing to do. The EEOC lawsuit seeks damages for him and other workers alleging harassment, along with back pay and compensatory and punitive damages.

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Controller complacency could jeopardize air safety (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

nonessential conversation during landing approaches.

"The hair is beginning to stand WASHINGTON – For the third up on the back of our necks a time in seven months, the little bit," said Jack Casey, an judgment of those who operate aviation safety consultant and the nation's air traffic control former airline pilot. "When you system has been called into get complacency, you run a question and concerns raised h i g h e r r i s k o f h a v i n g a n that complacency may be accident." causing controllers and their Other recent incidents: supervisors to bend rules. _In October, controllers in While major air crashes have M i n n e a p o l i s h a n d e d o f f declined sharply over the last responsibility for a Northwest d e c a d e , t h a n k s l a r g e l y t o Airlines jet without alerting the improved technology, aviation next controller that they had safety experts say they are been unable to make radio seeing signs that vigilance may c o n t a c t w i t h t h e p l a n e . have eroded.

Supervisors also failed to follow The latest incident was reported p r o c e d u r e s f o r a l e r t i n g a this week: A controller twice n a t i o n a l security brought a child to work at the communications network to the c o n t r o l t o w e r a t J o h n F . problem. As a result, the Airbus Kennedy International Airport A320 carrying 144 passengers in New York, one of the nation's was out of radio contact for 69 busiest airports, and allowed the minutes before the security child to radio instructions to network was alerted. Rules put pilots. The Federal Aviation in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, Administration said Wednesday terrorist attacks are supposed to the controller and his supervisor trigger an alert when a plane have been suspended pending an can't be raised by radio for 10 investigation of the incident last minutes. month.

The larger issue at play in this The problem extends to airline incident, however, was the pilots as well. In several conduct of the cockpit crew on accidents in recent years — the t h e N o r t h w e s t p l a n e . A n crash of a regional airliner in investigation by the National upstate New York a year ago Transportation Safety Board that killed 50 people is one into the missed landing ensued, example — pilots broke a a n d t h e F e d e r a l A v i a t i o n cardinal safety rule prohibiting Administration revoked the Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:23:12 AM

flying licenses of two pilots, who are now appealing to have them reinstated. _Last August, an air traffic controller at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey who handed off a private plane to controllers at a neighboring airport failed to correct the plane's pilot when he read back the wrong radio frequency. Controllers at both airports later tried unsuccessfully to reach the pilot.

The plane collided moments later with a tour helicopter over the Hudson River. Three people in the plane and six in the helicopter were killed. The Teterboro controller was chitchatting on the phone with a female friend until seconds before the collision. The controller's supervisor had left the airport to run a personal errand.

The incidents suggest a casualness about rules that undermines safety, said Carol Carmody, a former National Transportation Safety Board member and former FAA official.

"If they don't follow fairly rigid procedures, they're going to make mistakes," Carmody said.

"If you are in the safety business, you make a big deal out of anything like this because random events cause accidents."

Even more serious is that the controllers in the Teterboro and

Kennedy incidents appear to have felt free to break rules, which suggests supervisors tolerated such lapses, said Michael Barr, who teaches aviation safety at the University of Southern California.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the incidents were "isolated occurrences" and not indicative of a broader safety problem.

"The unfortunate behavior of a few individuals doesn't reflect the true caliber of our work force," she said.

The FAA is implementing a new program that encourages air traffic controllers to report safety problems, including their own mistakes, so that the agency can spot trends and act to prevent future problems, Brown said. To encourage reporting, controllers aren't punished for errors they identify.

The agency has had a similar program for pilots for nearly a decade.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, in speeches and congressional testimony, has called on pilots and air traffic controllers to create a professional atmosphere in cockpits and radar facilities and not to tolerate rule-breaking by colleagues.

The NTSB is concerned enough about the situation that it has

scheduled a forum this spring on pilot and air traffic controller professionalism.

In a statement responding to the Kennedy incident, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association— the union that represents controllers — said it doesn't "condone this type of behavior in any way."

But Mary Schiavo, a former Transportation Department inspector general who has filed a lawsuit against the FAA on behalf of the families of five Italian tourists killed in the Hudson River collision, said there needs to be a strong message sent from the top. She suggested Babbitt and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood call "an all-hands-ondeck meeting and make sure air traffic controllers know it's every rule every time." ___ On the Net: Federal Aviation A d m i n i s t r a t i o n : http://www.faa.gov National Air Traffic Controllers A s s o c i a t i o n : http://www.natca.org Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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AP source: Black leaders to meet on Paterson fate (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

severe reports, his ability to govern effectively is called into question," said a second ALBANY, N.Y. – The Rev. Al prominent black leader in New Sharpton is convening a group Y o r k C i t y w h o a t t e n d e d of black Democratic leaders Saturday's meeting and is who could urge Gov. David invited to Thursday's meeting.

Paterson, who is embroiled in "I got the impression that the two misconduct scandals, to seriousness of the charges resign, a party adviser told The against him has grown since the Associated Press on Thursday. group met Saturday, and this The meeting is set for Thursday presented an opportunity to ren i g h t a t a r e s t a u r a n t i n evaluate or determine what is M a n h a t t a n ' s H a r l e m necessary to stake out another neighborhood and follows a position if necessary," the leader flurry of calls overnight in said. which many of the leaders The Democrat, who also spoke reconsidered their support for on condition of anonymity Paterson. Those calls were also because of the sensitivity of the voiced in a similar summit issue, said there is increased Saturday in Harlem, although pressure on Paterson to either the group overall supported tell his side of the story, which Paterson's plan to continue to the governor has said will s e r v e . H e h a d e n d e d h i s exonerate him, or step aside. campaign for a full term the day The news about the Manhattan before. meeting contrasted with a The adviser spoke on the statement Thursday by an condition of anonymity because organization of black police of the sensitivity of the issue. officers who stepped up to show The adviser said Sharpton is support for Paterson. The group, expected to say he's rethinking 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement his support for New York's first Who Care, urged an end to what black governor. it called a "rush to judgment."

"I still believe the he's entitled to Still, the damage was mounting the presumption of innocence, in the wake of the scandal but as each day brings more plaguing Paterson over contact Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:22:11 AM

he and others in his administration had with a woman who had accused a top aide of domestic violence. At issue is whether Paterson or others urged the woman to drop her complaint.

Paterson was also accused Wednesday of breaking ethics laws when he sought and obtained free Yankees tickets for the 2009 World Series and then may have lied about his intention to pay for them, according to a state report.

He faces penalties of nearly $100,000, and the case was referred to the Albany County prosecutor's office and the state attorney general for possible criminal investigation into whether Paterson or anyone else gave false answers to questions by the Public Integrity Commission or backdated a check to pay for the tickets.

"The drum beat is awfully loud right now and not getting quieter," Lee Miringoff of the Marist College poll said Wednesday. He noted that the Yankees tickets case is clearer, and therefore potentially more of a threat to Paterson's job.

The ethics charge isn't directly related to the scandal over the

Crafting Awesome Vibe of 'Alice in Wonderland' Annaliza Savage (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/3/2010 5:00:00 PM

Tim Burton's spin on the classic tale gives familiar characters an oddball twist. Burton, actor Johnny Depp and costume

designer Colleen Atwood talk about bringing the dazzling 3-D vision to the big screen. A Wired.com video gallery.

aide. But the panel said the aide, David Johnson, was one of Paterson's four guests, along with Paterson's son and a son's friend, getting tickets for the Oct. 28 World Series game provided by the Yankees.

Four days later, also in the Bronx, Johnson was accused of domestic violence by his thengirlfriend, a case that now threatens Paterson's job and administration.

But the ticket scandal may ultimately be more damaging to the governor, especially given the timing.

"I, at all times, upheld the oath of my office and never at any point attempted to influence or coerce anyone to do anything they didn't want to do," Paterson told reporters Wednesday, saying he intends to fight the ethics charge.

Paterson told investigators that he always intended to pay the $850 for tickets for his son and the son's friend. They were paid for with a postdated check, and the governor paid for them only when confronted by a reporter for The New York Post, the report said.

In the other case, the office of state Attorney General Andrew

Cuomo is investigating whether Paterson or anyone from his staff or security detail influenced the woman's decision not to press charges after she told police that Johnson roughed her up.

"My side of the story will not be unsourced, it will not be in inaccurate, it will be the truth," Paterson said Wednesday, taking a swipe at some media reports.

The governor's chief of staff, Lawrence Schwartz, said Paterson was meeting with legislative leaders and staff Wednesday and that the fiscal crisis is Paterson's top priority.

Paterson has no public events scheduled for Thursday.

"The governor is the governor," Schwartz said. "He's in charge." ___ Associated Press writers Colleen Long in New York and Valerie Bauman in Albany contributed to this report.

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Congress slowly loosens its grip on Washington, DC (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/4/2010 12:24:26 AM

WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton didn't flinch when comedian Stephen Colbert congratulated her on D.C. becoming a state.

"Not quite," she replied during a segment on his show not long after President Barack Obama's election.

Colbert may have been joking, but with Democrats in control, Congress seems increasingly willing to loosen its grip on Norton's city and allow it to function more like a state. That's no laughing matter for some 600,000 city residents.

Congress still must OK the D.C. budget and it can veto laws the City Council passes, though that's rare. And despite some optimism early in Obama's administration, Norton still can't vote on the House floor, though she can introduce bills and vote in committees.

But cracks in congressional control have started to appear.

For the first time in recent memory, Congress didn't attach any restrictions, called "riders," when it approved the city's budget in December. That lifted bans preventing the city from

using tax money to help poor women pay for abortions and implementing a decade-old measure legalizing medical marijuana.

And though Congress could have killed a gay marriage bill passed by the D.C. Council, federal lawmakers allowed it to become law without weighing in. Same-sex couples started applying for marriage licenses Wednesday, though a three-day waiting period means they can't actually get married till next week.

Now, Congress is considering bills that would give the city even more freedom. Norton, who was elected in 1990 and represents more people than live in Wyoming packed in a city 1/17th the size of Rhode Island, calls it a "moment of opportunity."

Three-quarters of Washington's registered voters are Democrats.

And now that Democrats hold the House, Senate and presidency for the first time since 1992, there's support for letting go of some federal control.

Norton has introduced two bills to give the city more control over its affairs. The first would eliminate the requirement that Congress approve the city's

budget. The second would allow city laws to go into effect immediately, instead of waiting for 30 or 60 days for a congressional all-clear, as in the case of the same-sex marriage law.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty testified that the budget process often causes delays in services to residents. Most of the hundreds of laws he signs every year, from adoption to zoning, "are of no interest to Congress whatsoever," he said.

Longtime residents are used to Congress having the ultimate say. Gary Thompson, a lawyer who has lived in the district since 1992, said it seems like every couple of years some momentum to change that takes hold, then stalls.

"I'm a little bit hardened and a little bit cynical at this point," said Thompson, who heads a neighborhood group and says he will advocate for civil disobedience, like blocking entrances to government buildings, if things don't change soon.

The U.S. Constitution makes it clear the city is under congressional control. City residents didn't get the right to vote in presidential elections until 1961. In the 1970s,

residents got the delegate spot in Congress and the right to elect their own mayor and City Council.

Change is slow, however.

Norton predicted on Colbert's show a year ago that she would soon be a full voting member; Colbert called her a "fake congresswoman." But momentum to give her voting powers stalled when an amendment was added in the Senate that would repeal a strict city gun registration requirement, something Democrats did not want.

Norton says she believes she may now have found a way around the amendment and will get the bill passed early this year.

Lifelong resident Jenica Degree, who works at a store that sells political memorabilia, isn't convinced that having a voting congresswoman would change much. Not having one "really doesn't bother me," she said.

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Sign up for 300 sites at once (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:33:56 AM

As you get into social media, you should check for the availability of your personal and your organization’s name on as many sites as possible. I found a service called Knowem that does this for 350 sites in one fell swoop.

The company also offers four levels of paid service ranging from $99 to $599. For $99 Knowem will signup your name at 150 sites. For $599 it will signup and provide your profile info (photo, bio, URL, and description) for 300 sites.

More social media tips.

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US lifts lid on cyberwarfare plan (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

The Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) was introduced in 2008 by thenSubmitted at 3/3/2010 2:53:09 PM President George W Bush.

T h e W h i t e H o u s e h a s Going public declassified parts of a top secret There are 12 parts to the CNCI, plan outlining how government i n c l u d i n g c y b e r will protect the nation's counterintelligence and computer networks from cyber d e t e r r e n c e s t r a t e g i e s . warfare.

For the first time the T h e a n n o u n c e m e n t b y government has published a cybersecurity tsar Howard general description of what they Schmidt was made at the are on its website. world's biggest security event. The aim of the programme is T h e m o v e i s a i m e d a t threefold: e n c o u r a g i n g g r e a t e r c o - • to establish a front line of operation between academia, d e f e n c e a g a i n s t t o d a y ' s government and the private i m m e d i a t e t h r e a t s sector.

• to defend against the full "We have to fully recognise the spectrum of threats importance cybersecurity has in • to strengthen the future our lives," Mr Schmidt said. cybersecurity environment "We must continue to seek out innovative new partnerships - The CNCI funds a number of not only within government, but sensitive projects including the also among industry, government's Einstein government and the American technology, which focuses on public," he told delegates at the securing the vast computer event, hosted by the security network that operates under the company RSA in San Francisco. dot.gov domain, as well as It was his first major speech to detecting attempts to access industry peers since being those systems. a p p o i n t e d t o t h e j o b i n The document acknowledges December 2009. that traditional security

approaches have fallen short, but says the federal government is moving forward in outlining "grand challenges" for the research community to help solve.

Mr Schmidt said the declassification would show that the government has a workable strategy for protecting the nation's computer systems in the event of a cyber attack.

Parts of the initiative that deal with the nation's offensive plans for cyberwarfare have not been made public.

'Common sense' Reaction to the announcement ranged from caution to praise.

One supporter is Michael Markulec, chief operating officer for Lumeta, a company that provides large organisations and government agencies with secure network solutions.

"This move brings more people to the table - organisations like mine that play in the cybersecurity space, experts here at the RSA who are currently not involved in discussions because they have been at a classified level inside the government.

"So this allows more people to play and given that 85% of the critical infrastructure is not in government hands, it certainly makes sense to include the rest of the expertise," Mr Markulec told BBC News.

Hilton Collins of Government Technology Magazine agrees.

"The private sector has so much knowledge, power and money that for them to help the government innovate more technology security solutions is the right way to go."

The Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic), which had demanded the full text of the CNCI, said it was pleased about the declassification.

However the group said it still wanted to see the full document and what privacy safeguards are in place when assessing cyber threats.

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Spidey Gets Axed for 'Shopping (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/3/2010 5:12:31 PM

Peter Parker, aka Spiderman, has been fired from his job as a photographer because he photoshopped some pictures.

Spiderman, the story goes, knows newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson, now mayor, is innocent of something heinous (it’s always something heinous, isn’t it?), but the only way he can persuade people of that is to digitally manipulate photos.

He does and loses his job, so Spiderman becomes a victim of the recession, although in these days of widespread layoffs at newspapers prompted by economic forces, the superhero is hardly a typical victim.

I say Jameson was right to fire Parker, even though the photographer was trying to help his boss.

New HourTime Podcast for you and yours John Biggs (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:41:10 AM

Don’t forget: We’re going to be trying something brand new on

Friday – a 30 minute show called the HourTime Help Desk.

But we need your help. On Friday at 6:30 PM Eastern/3:30 PM Pacific we’re going to run a

call-in talk show we’re calling Help Desk. We’ll still do our regular show, but this second show will probably run once every two weeks, if you guys

like it, and we’ll talk about your watch questions and discuss your collections, your watch choices, and your favorite brands.

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Richard Mille Diver Outland 3H Download MP3 Subscribe in iTunes

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Obama urges vote on health reform (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 3/3/2010 5:22:57 PM

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Mr Obama said he looked forward to signing health reform into law US President Barack Obama has urged Congress to vote by simple majority on healthcare reform, as he makes a final push to have his proposals adopted.

He said Congress should "finish its work" and vote on the legislation in the next few weeks.

Healthcare has been a priority for Mr Obama but the legislation has been blocked by the Republican minority.

Last week, a televised summit hosted by Mr Obama in Washington failed to break the deadlock between parties.

'Implacably opposed' The president wants Congress to back the latest version of his $950bn (ÂŁ621bn) plan to cover uninsured Americans and lower premiums.

"I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on healthcare

reform," Mr Obama said in a speech at the White House.

He said the proposed reforms had incorporated the best ideas from the Democrats and the Republicans.

"I ask Congress to finish its work, and I look forward to signing this reform into law," Mr Obama said.

"At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem," he added.

Mr Obama said he opposed Republican calls to reject comprehensive bills passed by the House of Representatives and Senate last year and begin again with a more step-by-step approach.

"For us to start over now could simply lead to delay that could last for another decade or even more," he said.

Health care legislation is currently stalled in Congress as the Senate Democrats no longer

the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, the Children's Health Insurance Program, Cobra health coverage for the unemployed, and both Bush tax cuts", Mr Obama said, referring to other measures passed using reconciliation.

But the BBC's Paul Adams, in Washington, says the fact remains that the Republicans are implacably opposed to the sort of overhaul the president wants.

If the Democrats decide to force the issue to a vote on a simple majority, they are still going to have to fight every step of the way, our correspondent adds.

Senate Republican leader Mitch have the 60-seat majority McConnell reaffirmed his required to defeat blocking opposition to the president's plan. tactics by Republicans.

Both chambers need to pass a "Americans don't want us to unified version of the legislation tack a few good ideas onto a bill for the president to sign it into that reshapes one-sixth of the economy, vastly expands the law. role of government and which 'Government expansion' The Democrats can make use of raises taxes and cuts Medicare a legislative technique called to pay for it all." "reconciliation" to force the bill Print Sponsor through Congress, though Mr Five Filters featured article: Obama avoided using the term. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: The healthcare bill "deserves PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Yes, This Is An iPhone Case. Of Course It Is. [Iphone Cases] Kat Hannaford (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/4/2010 7:34:44 AM

Unveiled as part of Hong Kong

retailer JOYCE's line of fashion designer-created iPhone cases...blah blah blahdy blah. the feeling of a mugger beating IT'S A ROCK. I hope you enjoy

you over the head with your "camouflaged" iPhone. [ HighSnobiety]

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Brazil rebuffs US Iran pressure (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

which enjoys good ties with Iran, to support its push for a fourth round of UN sanctions Submitted at 3/3/2010 3:50:23 PM against Tehran over its refusal to Brazil will not bow to pressure stop enriching uranium - a from the US to support further possible step to building atomic sanctions against Iran over its weapons. nuclear work, the country's Tehran says the uranium is foreign minister has said. being enriched to provide fuel C e l s o A m o r i m t o l d U S for nuclear power reactors it Secretary of State Hillary envisages building.

Clinton that Brazil wanted to see Brazil is currently a member of further negotiations on the issue the UN Security Council. b e f o r e i t w o u l d s u p p o r t "I think it's only after we pass sanctions. sanctions in the Security Mrs Clinton said that sanctions Council that Iran will negotiate had to be passed first in order to in good faith," Mrs Clinton said. persuade Iran to "negotiate in " T h e d o o r i s o p e n f o r good faith". negotiations. We never slammed The US fears Iran is developing it shut," she said. "But we don't nuclear weapons, a charge see anybody, even in the far-off Tehran denies. distance, walking toward it."

At a news conference with Mrs Even before talks with Mrs Clinton in the Brazilian capital, C l i n t o n b e g a n , B r a z i l i a n Brasilia, Mr Amorim said: "We President Luiz Inacio Lula da will not simply bow down to an Silva repeated his stance that evolving consensus if we do not isolating Iran's leaders is counter agree.

-productive.

"We have to think by ourselves "It is not prudent to push Iran a n d w i t h o u r v a l u e s a n d against a wall. The prudent principles," he said. thing is to establish 'Door open' negotiations," he said.

Washington wants Brazil, "I want for Iran the same thing

as I wish for Brazil: To use the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. If Iran is in agreement with that, Iran will have Brazil's support."

President Lula said he did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons and would raise the issue in a visit to Tehran in May. Mrs Clinton is visiting South America at a time when there is a sense in the region that President Barack Obama's administration, distracted by so many other issues, has not lived up to expectations, says the BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo.

The US state department has said if Brazil uses its relationship with Iran to press the country to fulfil its international obligations then that would be an important step, but if it did not do that, Washington would be "disappointed".

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RealNetworks Agrees To Pay $4.5 Million In Legal Fees To Hollywood Over RealDVD; Gives Up Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 3/4/2010 1:02:12 AM

We still can't quite understand Hollywood's crusade against RealNetworks over its RealDVD offering. The software presented a way for DVD owners to backup their DVDs. It didn't allow for distribution -- unlike pretty much every other ripping software. In fact, Real basically put a new DRM around each backup copy. Personally, this seemed to make the product less useful, but the MPAA still sued RealNetworks for daring to let people backup their movies, and amazingly won nearly every aspect of the lawsuit. The judge (the same one who shut down Napster, by the way) had already banned the sale of RealDVD, and now she's agreed to a settlement that basically involves RealNetworks conceding every point, and paying $4.5 million to

Joan Jett Will Have the Nachos [Open Caption] Richard Lawson (Gawker) Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:31:05 AM

[ Adam Lambert at gay Mardi Gras in Sydney, AU; image via Splash]

Hollywood to cover legal fees.

It's a full capitulation.

So what did Hollywood accomplish here? It shut down a software product that allows people to backup the DVDs they legally own -- not to distribute them. In the meantime, of course, there are a bunch of DVD ripping programs out there that have no such restrictions.

In other words, Hollywood's brilliant legal strategists just pushed anyone who wants to back up their movies to use solutions that make it easier for them to share those movies with others. It just made sure that such products will always be underground, rather than where the industry can actually work together with them. Congrats, guys, for killing yet another tech product you didn't like, just because it made your products more valuable.

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Mexico City gay marriage law in force (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

for the whole of society in Mexico City," added Ms Castaneda.

Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:58:13 AM 'Symbolic closet' A law allowing gay and lesbian With this law - and previous couples to marry comes into legalisation on abortion and effect on Thursday in Mexico some form of euthanasia - the City.

Mexican capital has become a The law, which was passed by liberal and progressive island in the city's local assembly in w h a t r e m a i n s a m o s t l y December, gives gay people full conservative nation, says the marital rights, including the BBC's Julian Miglierini in right to adopt.

Mexico City.

Several gay couples are now But local gay activists say expected to register to get homophobic attacks are still married as early as next week. frequent across the country, Mexico City is one of the first where people continue to face capitals in Latin America to discrimination in the workplace fully recognise gay marriages. for being gay or are attacked Judith Vazquez and partner Lol when displaying public affection -kin Castaneda hope to become to a person of the same sex, our one of the first couples to marry correspondent adds. under the new law.

Both the Catholic Church and "It's the end of our fight and the conservative groups oppose the beginning of life in freedom in legislation, and the centre-right Mexico City," Ms Vazquez told government even tried to get a the BBC. ruling by the Supreme Court to "This is a great, historic moment block Mexico City from issuing

Durant held to 19 as Nuggets stomp Thunder Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:34:29 PM

Top Performers Oklahoma City: S. Ibaka 15 Pts, 13 Reb, 1 Ast, 1 Stl, 1 Blk

Denver: C. Anthony 30 Pts, 8 Reb, 5 Ast, 2 Stl, 1 Blk Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

gay marriage licences; they have so far been unsuccessful.

Despite the move in the capital, a gay marriage law at a federal level in Mexico remains unlikely.

Judith Vazquez says: "Our real battle is with our people in Mexico... Now we will have to leave our symbolic closet because we will be [considered] citizens and we have to go out to live in freedom."

In Latin America, only Uruguay has legalised civil unions nationwide and allowed same-sex couples to adopt children.

A handful of cities - in Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia - allow gay unions.

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Interview with Zen Bound creators on iPad and iPhone games Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/4/2010 7:00:00 AM

Filed under: Gaming, Apple, Developer, iPad AppAdvice has an interview up with Secret Exit, the folks who made one of the best iPhone games of last year, Zen Bound. They spoke not only about that game and how the iPhone turned out to be the perfect platform for them to start out on, but also about the iPad and what they're planning to do with it in the future.

Secret Exit echoes a lot of other developers in saying that it plans to make completely different apps for the iPad, not just upscaled or updated versions of iPhone apps. The hardware and the market, says Secret Exit, both call for completely separate releases.

They also say, however, that they're worried about iPad pricing. A bigger screen and more complicated layouts mean that the investment for apps will be bigger, and if only the most recognized brands can hold down a $9.99 price point, Secret Exit says that they may not be able to build out their games to the point that they'd like.

Interesting points all. Of course, much of the iPad thinking so far

is speculation -- it's certainly possible that the $9.99 price point could become the default for new iPad apps, which would give developers a little more money to play with. But as with everything else iPad, we'll have to see. At least the wait's not that long.

TUAW Interview with Zen Bound creators on iPad and iPhone games originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The future of the Internet on display at Singularity University (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:00:00 AM

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California --The Internet of the future is an intelligent network capable of proactively acting on our needs, following us wherever we go, helping provide focused health care and possibly ushering in a new energy paradigm.

That's the vision James Canton, the CEO of the San Franciscobased think tank, the Institute for Global Futures, shared with the students in the executive program of Singularity University Wednesday. A broad -reaching, theoretical talk that touched on many of the same elements of an all-encompassing network more or less overlaid on people's consciousnesses as science fiction by the likes of Vernor Vinge, Canton's vision nonetheless seemed plausible, particularly in light of the curriculum of so-called exponential technologies being taught here.

Canton's vision of this future Internet begins with four key drivers: Telepresence, mobility, artificial intelligence and specific vertical market segments such as health care.

In a straw poll of the 40-odd students in the SU program, the majority felt that mobility was the most important of those drivers, and Canton said that made sense given that the world currently has 5 billion people on

the Internet and that that number could skyrocket in the next few years. The idea, then, would be for the Internet of the future to comprise large numbers of networks talking to nodes that are independently communicating with each other, "having their own conversation," he said.

Indeed, Canton predicted a future in which the Internet is embedded just about everywhere: in every imaginable kind of devices, from TVs to phones to walls in rooms and that every kind of product or device--or even people--one can think of has an IP address. He added that while such a picture might seem distant, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already approved a chip that could be embedded in people's bodies. In Miami, he said, the latest craze is women wearing clothes with chips embedded that can be scanned to verify their identities so that they don't have to carry purses.

Similarly, he said that government workers in Mexico City can't get into buildings without having some sort of wearable identification chip.

It will be a key component, then, of the future of the Internet, Canton predicted, that everything will have an IP address and that, therefore, we will be living in what he called a "blended reality," where information is constantly

streaming at and around us across physical and digital artifacts.

Proactive search Today, Canton said, in order to find information online, we have to turn on our computers and go look for it. "But what if you didn't have to do that," he asked the executive students. "What if it found you?"

The idea, he said, is a worldwide system of intuitive networks that pay attention to us, and know our likes and desires, and proactively feed us the information we need to act on them.

"We're on the cusp of that," he said, the Internet "intuitively sensing who you are, and what your needs are and paying attention to your behavior and to what you think is important."

And such systems wouldn't just be with you at home, but would travel with you everywhere, he suggested. The kinds of devices we see as discrete today, our phones, our computers, TVs and cars, will "at the end of the day, all...get mashed up," he said.

That means, he said, that each of us will have our own "personal Internet layer...that lives in your own personal Internet cloud [and] deciphers what's next" for us.

It's not clear when such a system will be functional, he admitted, given that it would require a great deal of artificial intelligence that has not yet

made its way into consumer technology, but it's not that far off, he suggested. In fact, he said that as much as 30 percent of the technology necessary for such things to be part of our every day lives has already been built. And what's in the lab today, he pointed out, is in the marketplace tomorrow.

And, he said, the model for such AI-based systems will be one that already dominates the planet: biology. The networks of the future will mimic living ecosystems, he said.

At Singularity University, the students are getting high-level, intense lectures on fields of study like nanotechnology, biotech, AI, robotics, bioinformatics and the like, all of which fall under the rubric of exponentially-growing technology, and the Internet of the future Canton was illustrating is essentially a mashup of these technologies, he said.

As a result, the Internet will be smart in a way we can barely imagine today and could finally help us solve systemic crises like health care and poverty while also helping create thousands, or even millions of new companies in the process, or even entirely new markets that never existed before.

Megacities As the Earth's population expands, it will result in the blossoming of dozens of new

megacities, Canton said, but current data infrastructures are incapable of handling the needs of those new metropolises.

"There is not enough storage or bandwidth to deal with this reality," he said. "We have to get better...at how we enable that future to emerge."

Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the next 100 megacities will require next-generation Web infrastructure, he predicted, and society will have to find ways to "migrate to that infrastructure."

Ultimately, the "one key bucket of technology" that may drive the future of the Internet is quantum mechanics, Canton said, and that will create new dynamics like humans being able to "design space and time" and the possibility that the contents of the entire U.S. Library of Congress could fit on something no bigger than a thumbnail.

In the process, we may be able to access and process in real time so much medical data that we will have the wherewithal to eliminate huge numbers of deaths or illnesses.

Internet 3, 4 and 5 Some may feel that it's too early to be defining these things, but Canton clearly isn't one of them. He said that we are currently living in the "middle ages" when it comes to computing networks, and that FUTURE page 25

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Feds weigh expansion of Internet monitoring (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:00:00 AM

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who said that Einstein 3 could only be discussed in a classified setting, speaks at the RSA conference on Wednesday.(Credit: James Martin/CNET) SAN FRANCISCO--Homeland Security and the National Security Agency may be taking a closer look at Internet communications in the future.

The Department of Homeland Security's top cybersecurity official told CNET on Wednesday that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector.

The technology was created for federal networks.

Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said in an interview that the department is evaluating whether Einstein "makes sense for expansion to critical infrastructure spaces" over time.

Not much is known about how Einstein works, and the House Intelligence Committee once charged that descriptions were overly "vague" because of "excessive classification." The White House did confirm this week that the latest version, called Einstein 3, involves

attempting to thwart in-progress cyberattacks by sharing information with the National Security Agency.

Greater federal involvement in privately operated networks may spark privacy or surveillance concerns, not least because of the NSA's central involvement in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping scandal.

Earlier reports have said that Einstein 3 has the ability to read the content of emails and other messages, and that AT&T has been asked to test the system.

(The Obama administration says the "contents" of communications are not shared with the NSA.) "I don't think you have to be Big Brother in order to provide a

level of protection either for federal government systems or otherwise," Schaffer said. "As a practical matter, you're looking at data that's relevant to malicious activity, and that's the data that you're focused on. It's not necessary to go into a space where someone will say you're acting like Big Brother. It can be done without crossing over into

a space that's problematic from a privacy perspective."

If Einstein 3 does perform as well as Homeland Security hopes, it could help lessprepared companies fend off cyberattacks, including worms sent through e-mail, phishing attempts, and even denial of FEDS page 25

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Thumbplay launches music service for BlackBerry (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:00:00 AM

Thumbplay is set to launch on Thursday the mobile version of its subscription-based music service for BlackBerry devices, with Android and iPhone versions to follow shortly.

Thumbplay is best known for selling ringtones, but as that market dried up, the company shifted strategies and decided to enter the subscription music space, where it will compete against longtime players like Rhapsody, as well as a growing number of new entrants such as MOG and Spotify. So how does it stack up?

Thumbplay Music's desktop application. Can you find the "shuffle" command?(Credit: Screenshot) The company gave me a 30-day invitation to its beta and loaned me a BlackBerry Bold 9000 to test it on, and after a few days, my impressions are mostly positive, with a few big problems. I'll start with the positives. The starting price is only $9.99 a month, and that includes access from your computer using a desktop application (it's based on Adobe's AIR platform and works on Mac or PC), as well as from any supported mobile device. That's quite a bit cheaper than Rhapsody To Go ($14.99) or Spotify Premium (9.99 pounds in the U.K.), its main

competitors for mobile subscription music services.

Sound quality was very good, and I didn't notice any audible differences when testing it over AT&T's 3G service versus my home Wi-Fi network, although

there were a few performance lags over 3G when I tried to switch out of a playlist or find a new song. Finding music to play is quite easy--the search engine is adequate as long as you restrict searches to artist names,

and you can import songs from a memory card. If you have iTunes on your computer, you can also import playlists from iTunes to Thumbplay, but it won't import auto-generated playlists, such as "recently

added," and it will only import 200 songs on any given playlist.

Also, if Thumbplay doesn't have certain songs in its service, like nearly all tracks from The THUMBPLAY page 27

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Dear Aunt TUAW: Does size matter (when it comes to iPads)?

Erica Sadun (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/4/2010 8:00:00 AM

Filed under: Apple, iPad Dear Aunt TUAW, I am planning on getting an iPad WiFi+3G when they become available, but I am still undecided on which (storage) size I should get. I currently have a 16GB iPhone 3GS which comfortably, for now, holds all my media needs. While I have a lot of music and photos and some video I don't feel the need to have it all on my phone at one time.

Looking at what I store on my iPhone I think an iPad 32GB would more than fit my needs -but will my media files be larger on the iPad with the larger format of the device? I don't expect that my iTunes songs will take up anymore than they do on the iPhone, but will the format of pictures and video take up more storage space?

With AT&T increasing the download size limit over 3G it got me wondering if 32GB on the iPad will be more like a 16GB iPhone.

At this point I would be

deciding between the 32GB and 64GB. Just wondering if the $100 price difference would be better spent buying the 32GB and putting the $100 toward a year's worth of 3G connectivity?

Love, kissies & hugs, Your nephew, RJ Dearest RJ, 16GB data? Buy the 32GB model, unless you can easily swing the 64 GB one. Then go for that.

Auntie has a pretty firm policy on this kind of thing: always buy the most storage you can afford unless the storage on offer is insufficient, whether truly insufficient or plausibly insufficient. Here's how it works. Let's say you have about 30GB of data. There's a 32GB item for sale and a 64GB item for sale. Which should you buy?

Auntie's advice is to always buy the 64GB item. There's plenty of room there for you to grow over time, and overbuying your storage ensures that your device will remain useful as your data demands grow.

Now let's say, we're in the same situation but with 16GB and 32GB units instead. Here's where Auntie goes mental.

In that scenario, my advice is to buy low, just getting the 16GB model. "OMG, Auntie," you're saying to yourself. "How can you give such poor advice? The 30 GB of data I currently use as of today will fit comfortably on that 32GB unit! What the...um...heck?"

Here's the reasoning behind that advice: Buying any iPhone/iPod/iPad unit with just 2GB to spare is asking to pay extra for not-enough-room misery. You're going to ebayand-upgrade within six months anyway, right? So why not just save the money and wait until something decent actually

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comes out? That's why I stayed to 4GB and 8GB iPhones until my beloved 32GB 3GS finally debuted. The money I saved helped underwrite the equipment I actually wanted. Of course, I'm now thisclose from running out of room on my newish 64GB iPod touch. And my 3GS? Sadly, overburdened already. (Although, to be fair, it's had a really great year -- and I've loved the storage space that it added to my life.)

It's the same way with the iPad. Top of the line 64GB simply isn't going to cut it for me under any plausible near term usage scenarios. With movies and books and lots of other iPadready great digital resources that go way beyond normal iPhone use, my storage requirements are constantly moving upwards, not downwards. I'm buying the 16GB model until at least a 128GB (and, preferably a 256GB) model shows up.

Is this biting off my nose to spite my face? (And, by the way, that's physically harder than you might imagine unless you have a very flexible nose and jaw, but I digress.) No, it's keeping my eyes on what I

really want instead of settling for not-quite-good-enough. Over time, prices drop. Storage increases. So long as I have an entry-level iPad to get started with, I'll be fine -- at least until my dreamPad finally debuts.

If you do have the spare cash on-hand and don't have to count pennies, well, buy the best unit available. With that kind of cash flow, you don't have to worry about asking Auntie T. questions about which unit offers the best value. But if you're like me, a tech addict on a tight budget and unwilling to compromise on quality, you may consider buying down instead of up until the right model comes along.

Love & hugs, Auntie T. TUAW Dear Aunt TUAW: Does size matter (when it comes to iPads)? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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continued from page 22

service attacks.

On the other hand, civil libertarians are sure to raise questions about privacy, access, and how Einstein could be used in the future. If it can perform deep packet inspection to prevent botnets from accessing certain Web pages, for instance, could it also be used to prevent a human from accessing illegal pornography, copyrightinfringing music, or offshore gambling sites?

"It's one thing for the government to monitor its own systems for malicious code and intrusions," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

"It's quite another for the government to monitor private networks for those intrusions.

We'd be concerned about any notion that a governmental monitoring system like Einstein would be extended to private networks."

AT&T did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Cooperation, or a loss of control?

At the RSA Conference here on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

continued from page 21

stressed the need for more cooperation between the government and the private sector on cybersecurity, saying that "we need to have a system that works together."

During a House appropriations hearing on February 26, Napolitano refused to discuss Einstein 3 unless the hearing were closed to the public. "I don't want to comment publicly on Einstein 3, per se, here in an unclassified setting," she said.

"What I would suggest, perhaps, is a classified briefing for members of the subcommittee who are interested."

Some privacy concerns about Einstein have popped up before.

An American Bar Association panel said this about Einstein 3 in a September 2009 report: "Because government communications are commingled with the private communications of nongovernmental actors who use the same system, great caution will be necessary to insure that privacy and civil liberties concerns are adequately considered."

Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher and programmer for the Tor anonymity project, said

that expanding Einstein 3 to the private sector would amount to a partial outsourcing of security.

"It's clearly a win for people without the security know-how to protect their own networks," Appelbaum said. "It's also a clear loss of control. And anyone with access to that monitoring system, legitimate or otherwise, would be able to monitor amazing amounts of traffic."

Einstein grew out of a stillclassified executive order, called National Security Presidential Directive 54, that President Bush signed in 2008.

While little information is available, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff once likened it to a new "Manhattan Project," and the Washington Post reported that the accompanying cybersecurity initiative represented the "single largest request for funds" in last year's classified intelligence budget.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a lawsuit (PDF) to obtain the text of the order.

Homeland Security has published (PDF) a privacy impact assessment for a less

capable system called Einstein 2 --which aimed to do intrusion detection and not prevention-but has not done so for Einstein 3.

The department did, however, prepare a general set of guidelines (PDF) for privacy and civil liberties in June 2009.

In addition, the Bush Justice Department wrote a memo (PDF) saying Einstein 2 "complies with" the U.S. Constitution and federal wiretap laws.

That justification for Einstein 2 "turned on the consent of employees in the government that are being communicated with, and on the notion that a person who communicates with the government can't then complain that the government read the communication," said CDT's Nojeim. "How does that legal justification work should Einstein be extended to the private sector?"

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we are surrounded by dumb devices and machines that cannot think for themselves.

But he said an "Internet 3" will be a "collaborative Web" that will have at its root a cooperation between people and our machines.

His vision of an "Internet 4" will include evolutionary networking that has a major self -organizing principle and which has human reproduction as an inspiration. And "Internet 5" will mimic living ecosystems and feature smart and aware physical spaces, embedded intelligence and systems that can do things like transfer energy amongst themselves as they need them.

"It's not that far out," Canton said. "I believe it's already started."

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mail us your photo and you could appear in ELLE.com's Street Chic Daily.

Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Street Chic: Paris Fashion Week ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:00:00 AM

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edge to a preppy-chic ensemble.

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Vlingo 2 adds more voice power to iPhone Michael Rose (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/4/2010 12:15:00 AM

Filed under: iPhone, App Review In the burgeoning market for iPhone voice recognition apps, the free Dragon Dictate clearly holds the top spot. In fact, this paragraph was dictated using DragonDictate (with some minor edits after the fact).

However, the application doesn't always shine when it comes to getting your text quickly and easily into different places where you might want to use it.

You can send an e-mail or a text message if you want to, but you can't update your Facebook status or send a Twitter message without copying and pasting.

Performing a search requires an entirely separate app.

To make your dictation process easier -- at least when it comes to getting your text to go where you want, when you want -there's the latest update to the Vlingo app, which we first reviewed last June. Vlingo 2.0 is trying to up the ante for text recognition by putting all the 'next step' options in one convenient place.

You can search (Google, Yahoo, or Bing), find map

items, dial your contacts (with optional contact name upload to Vlingo's servers to improve recognition) and update your Facebook or Twitter status. For email or SMS, you have two inapp purchase options to extend the free app's capabilities; it's $6.99 for either SMS or email action, $9.99 for both.

Vlingo has gotten a thorough UI overhaul in this new version, and it's quite a bit easier to use than it was. The dictation button can be used in hold-down or tap -to-talk mode, and the app can be set to recognize speech on launch for maximum speed. You can specify what action you want by speaking it: "Email Joey, Subject how about some coffee, Message Got time to meet me at Starbucks? You're buying!" will create and address an outgoing email for you, all in one step.

In the burgeoning market for iPhone voice recognition apps, the free Dragon Dictate clearly holds the top spot. In fact, this paragraph was dictated using DragonDictate (with some minor edits after the fact).

However, the application doesn't always shine when it comes to getting your text quickly and easily into different places where you might want to use it.

You can send an e-mail or a text message if you want to, but you can't update your Facebook status or send a Twitter message without copying and pasting.

Performing a search requires an entirely separate app.

To make your dictation process easier -- at least when it comes to getting your text to go where you want, when you want --

there's the latest update to the Vlingo app, which we first reviewed last June. Vlingo 2.0 is trying to up the ante for text recognition by putting all the 'next step' options in one convenient place.

You can search (Google, Yahoo, or Bing), find map items, dial your contacts (with optional contact name upload to

Vlingo's servers to improve recognition) and update your Facebook or Twitter status. For email or SMS, you have two inapp purchase options to extend the free app's capabilities; it's $6.99 for either SMS or email action, $9.99 for both.

Vlingo has gotten a thorough UI overhaul in this new version, and it's quite a bit easier to use than it was. The dictation button can be used in hold-down or tap -to-talk mode, and the app can be set to recognize speech on launch for maximum speed. You can specify what action you want by speaking it: "Email Joey, Subject how about some coffee, Message Got time to meet me at Starbucks? You're buying!" will create and address an outgoing email for you, all in one step.

TUAW Vlingo 2 adds more voice power to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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THUMBPLAY continued from page 23

Beatles, you won't be able to get them from iTunes to the Thumbplay service. (That's because you're not actually importing physical tracks from iTunes, you're importing metadata.)

But the whole point of a subscription service is to get away from the songs you own and explore other music. That's where the excellent autoplaylist feature comes in--select any currently playing song, and it will create a 15-song playlist based on that song. It's like having Pandora or Slacker mixed in with your personal music collection and on-demand searches. (This feature is provided by Thumbplay partner The Echo Nest.) If you absolutely have to own a song you've been playing, Thumbplay will let you download a permanent MP3 and charge you standard download rates (between $0.79 and $1.29).

I was also impressed with the speed of sync between the

desktop and BlackBerry versions of the app. Whenever I created or updated a playlist in one place, it was almost immediately updated in the other. This is one of the greatest benefits of using a cloud-based music service, and it's nice to see it working so well here.

There's also a nifty "save offline" feature, which lets you cache playlists on the phone so you can play them when you're away from a wireless connection--great for subway commutes or plane trips.

Unfortunately, there are also a few areas that don't seem finished. The search engine is sketchy--querying "I'm New Here," the name of Gil ScottHeron's new album, returned no results, even though it's in Thumbplay's catalog and is currently featured among new releases. You can't delete playlists from the BlackBerry app, and if you delete them using the desktop application, they still appear on the

BlackBerry app (and reappear in the desktop app the next time you open it). You can't scroll through a currently playing song on the Blackberry app. In the desktop app, there's no shuffle command. Some of these missing features will be added in future releases, the company confirmed.

The catalog also has some holes --all the usual big names are available, but when I tried to create a playlist to prepare me for Coachella 2010, some acts like She and Him and The Temper Trap were missing or very sparse; both had more songs available on Rhapsody.

That's not completely surprising, as Thumbplay claims 8 million tracks versus Rhapsody's 9 million. But Rhapsody's been around much longer, and Thumbplay has deals with all the major labels and a lot of indies, so hopefully these gaps will be filled soon.

Finally, I have to mention that as I was writing this post, after

testing it for a couple of days, the BlackBerry Thumbplay app froze completely and stopped working. I had to remove and reinsert the phone's battery before I could get Thumbplay to work again. The company blamed this problem on lastminute updates to the service before it emerges from beta.

To sum up, if you've got a BlackBerry and aren't satisfied with your musical options on the device today, Thumbplay is definitely worth trying, but bang on it a lot to make sure you're satisfied before subscribing. The free trial lasts for three days and does not require a credit card to get started.

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Android 2.1 Update Available For Motorola Droid and Droid Eris Via Leaked ROM [Android] Kat Hannaford (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/4/2010 7:12:55 AM

Droid owners have been waiting and waiting for 2.1 to materialize, but fortunately a firmware update has leaked for both handsets. Motorola and Verizon have both promised OTA updates, but it's anyone's guess as to when they'll be out—so this may just be the fastest way to get the latest Android flavor on your pocketfriend. [ XDA-Developers via Droid Life via Android and Me]

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook in No Rush to Go Public Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:31:00 AM

Everyone is still trying to figure out just how big a business social networks are, how much is Facebook worth, and how much money it’ll be making in a couple of years. Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg, however, doesn’t seem worried at all.

Asked about Facebook’s plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO), he said the company will do it eventually, but it’s “definitely in no rush.”

The reason for the leisurely Zuckerberg, is the simple fact approach, according to

that Facebook doesn’t need money.

“If you don’t need that capital, then all the pressures are different, and the motivations (to go public) are not there in the same way,” he said.

While estimates about Facebook’s future earnings vary

wildly, Facebook recently turned cash flow positive, which is a big deal for a company many once thought was pure vaporware. As long as Facebook keeps it that way, it can calculate and delay the IPO for as long as it deems necessary.

Tags: facebook, ipo, wall street

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How UK Chiropractors' Attempt To Silence One Critic Created The Backlash That May Change Chiropractics In The UK Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

bloggers then teamed up to do the investigative work that no full-time journalist was doing Last year, we wrote about a (and who says bloggers can't do really troubling incident in the investigative journalism?) to U K , w h e r e t h e B r i t i s h debunk the BCA's claims.

Chiropractic Association had While the lawsuit continues, the sued Dr. Simon Singh for noting loosely organized group of folks that there was little scientific who had been fighting back evidence to back up some of the against the BCA have continued marketing claims used by the to work their magic. Brandon B C A c o n c e r n i n g w h a t writes in to let us know that c h i r o p r a c t o r s c o u l d t r e a t . they've been going one-by-one Rather than responding with through every chiropractor evidence, the BCA responded who's a member of the BCA and with a lawsuit. As we noted at examining their web sites for the time, the backlash against f a l s e m a r k e t i n g c l a i m s - the BCA was pretty impressive, leading to a situation where a with it calling a lot more stunning one out of every four attention to the questionable chiropractors in the UK is under medical claims, as well as investigation for misleading tremendous anger towards the marketing or advertising. This BCA and chiropractors for the isn't just the Streisand Effect, actions against Singh. It was a this is the Streisand Effect on classic Streisand Effect in steroids. In trying to hush up action.

What was also one critic, the BCA has interesting was how a group of unleashed a large group of Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:23:32 AM

concerned folks who are organized (perhaps loosely, but quite effectively) to bring about massive change concerning the BCA and chiropractor marketing practices in general.

The article linked above also goes through more details of how this group has helped dismantle the BCA's weak attempt at showing scientific evidence for some of those marketing claims: The statement, supported by just 29 citations, was ripped apart by bloggers within 24 hours of publication, before being subjected to a further shredding in the British Medical Journal. It emerged that 10 of the papers cited had nothing to do with chiropractic treatment, and several weren't even studies.

The remainder consisted of a small collection of poor-quality trials.

More seriously, the BCA

misled the public with a misrepresentation of one paper, a Cochrane review looking at the effectiveness of various treatments for bed-wetting, claiming that the authors had simply concluded that, "there was weak evidence to support the use of [chiropractic]. One day someone will write a big case study (or perhaps a book) about what happened here. An attempt to silence a critic may end up resulting in massive changes to not just the British Chiropractic Association (the article notes that many chiropractors are horrified and want to leave the organization), but also how people view chiropractors and how chiropractic services are marketed.

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Woot! Casio Exilim EXS5PE for $70 Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:40:18 AM

This $70 Casio Exilim is purple but it’s priced at over $100 just about everywhere else, so let’s just go with it. It looks more pink to me, but Woot says it’s purple and who am I to question Woot? Speaking of Woot, that’s where you can get this deal (today only).

Features!

• Casio Exilim EX-S5PE digital camera • 10 megapixels • 2.7-inch LCD • 3x optical zoom • Less than 3/4 of an inch thick • Takes video at 848×480 and 640×480 • Uses SD cards So it’s portable and purple.

That’d be the main takeaway there.

Casio Exilim 10MP Digital Camera[Woot.com]

Tech/ Economy/

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Is The Commerce Department Really Ready To Regulate The Internet?

Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

Freedom of Expression, Cybersecurity, Copyright and Internet Governance.

Larry Strickling, the head of the Obviously, I'm not convinced National Telecommunications that things like copyright really and Information Agency (a need much more government division of the Department of intervention (there's been plenty, Commerce), gave a speech last thank you very much), but some week where he outlined, in of the other ones are interesting broad strokes, a vision for issues where you could see a "Internet Policy 3.0", which government role. suggested a much more hands- The problem, of course, is what on approach to regulating the happens when you actually open internet. This got some t h e s e u p t o r e g u l a t o r y attention online, with some interference. Suddenly, they c l a i m i n g t h a t t h e U S become political footballs. was"rescinding" its "leave We've seen this with copyright, internet alone policy." That may where it's become a case of be a stretch from what was regulatory capture -- laws are actually said, but a lot of people pushed to protect entrenched are wondering what this really interests, rather than to support means. What Strickling was what copyright is supposed to r e a l l y t a l k i n g a b o u t w a s do (promoting the progress). rethinking the general policy Rather than adopting some of towards some of the bigger the more hysterical responses to internet challenges. this speech, the CDT put out a In his mind, "Internet Policy well-thought-out response, that 3.0" would be about ensuring s u g g e s t s t h a t S t r i c k l a n d users of the Internet are able to hopefully misspoke, or really trust others that they deal with. meant to say something slightly This is certainly an issue to be different, along the lines of dealt with. And he then lists out admitting that there are real five areas where such concerns policy issues impacting the s h o u l d t a k e p r e c e d e n c e : internet, and the government has Privacy, Child Protection and always needed to deal with Submitted at 3/3/2010 10:30:00 PM

those challenges. But, in doing so, it may need to rethink how it approaches some of those issues.

Indeed, in reading the speech, it doesn't sound like he's really pushing for a change towards suddenly massively regulating the internet. Instead, I read it as him realizing that these issues -which, for the most part, the government is already active in regulating -- now present some different challenges due to the nature of what's happening on line. Given that, the US needs to think carefully through its policies and how they impact the internet. At least, I hope that's what he meant.

While there are certainly problems online, opening them up directly to regulatory control risks turning them into tools of special interests, rather than letting things develop in the most efficient manner. There are risks and dangers online, but if there needs to be any policy towards online activities, it should use a very light touch.

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USTR Responds To Sen. Wyden About ACTA; Admits It Hopes ACTA Will Cover Patents Too Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

some of its problems. The USTR claims that it is making sure there is "flexibility" in the Y o u m a y r e c a l l , a t t h e agreement to allow for that -beginning of the year, Senator but the leaked documents show Ron Wyden complained about no such flexibility. the secrecy surrounding ACTA Furthermore, the response and sent a series of questions to confirms what became clear in the USTR about the negotiations the most recent leak, that the US behind ACTA. While the sees ACTA as covering not just USTR apparently replied in late copyrights and trademarks -- but January, both sides have only patents as well (though, some of just revealed the contents of the the other participants are against response(pdf). It's about what including patents). you would expect. The answers Finally, the USTR repeats the leave plenty of wiggle room, bogus claims that it is being and a few seem to be blatant transparent about ACTA, noting falsehoods. For example, that it put up a dedicated web W y d e n i s c o n c e r n e d page. Well, doesn't that just (accurately) not just over solve everything? whether or not ACTA will Permalink| Comments| Email change US copyright law, but if This Story it will limit Congress's ability to change copyright law to fix Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:27:34 AM

US jobless claims fall back (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:18:51 AM

The number of US workers claiming jobless fell more than expected last week, offering a small sign of hope for the stricken labour market.

Initial jobless claims declined by 29,000 to 469,000, labour

department figures showed on Thursday. That was better than economists had projected and brought the less volatile fourweek average down by 3,500 to 470,750.

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Microsoft’s First App for Android is Called Tag

Google: Desktops Will Be Irrelevant in Three Years’ Time

Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:24:55 AM

Admit it: seeing Microsoft release an application for Google’s operating system seems a little weird, doesn’t it?

Still, it’s true; Microsoft has launched its first Android app, called Tag. We wrote about Tag a couple of weeks ago; simply put, it’s an app that lets you link physical objects with content on the Internet. You point your smartphone’s camera at a specially designed barcode, and your smartphone opens a link to any sort of online content: video, image, or text.

At launch, Microsoft supported most mobile operating systems – Symbian, iPhone OS, BlackBerry – with Android also being on the list, but clicking on that link actually revealed a “coming soon” message. Now,

Shakira Bestowed with Honor from UN (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:34:00 AM

The United Nations presented popstar Shakira with a medal to Speaking at the Digital acknowledge her philanthropic Landscapes conference at UCD, work for issues concerning European Director of Google’s children and youth. online sales John Herlihy said Shakira founded the Barefoot that Google is mostly oriented Foundation in her native country towards mobile devices, of Colombia. The organization Android users can try out the claiming they’ll become more their domain — the cloud. provides proper nutrition and an And if your data moves to the education to upwards of 6,000 app too, but its significance lies important than desktop PCs. in the fact that Microsoft has “In three years time, desktops cloud, and most of your daily children. It also extends its created an application for will be irrelevant. In Japan, most online activities are done on outreach to the kids' parents and Google’s Android. It’s not that research is done today on smart devices such as the Nexus One community. and the iPad, where simple, At the ceremony in Geneva, big of a deal, since the same app phones, not PCs,” he said. exists for the iPhone OS, True, with Android and Nexus widget-style applications cater Shakira made a call for others to a n o t h e r c o m p e t i t o r t o O n e G o o g l e h a s s h o w n a to your precise needs, then yes, offer service: "It's not too late to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile commitment to extend its desktop PCs as we know them k e e p o u r p r o m i s e t o o u r and the upcoming Windows dominance from the online now will become a lot less children, but we must act now.

Phone 7 mobile operating world to the mobile world. But important. On the other hand, T o g e t h e r , w e c a n m a k e systems. Still, in the epic battle will desktop PCs really become not many users are ready to education and decent work for of Microsoft vs. Google, this is irrelevant? Depends on how you ditch the desktop just yet; we’ll all a reality." another small victory for the look at it. Google isn’t really see if it all pans out according to online giant from Mountain interested in how we edit our Google’s plans.

View. photos; it’s interested in where Tags: desktop, Google, Mobile Tags: android, microsoft, we store them, and increasingly, 2.0, pc, trending Mobile 2.0, Tag we do that at a place is a part of Submitted at 3/4/2010 1:06:56 AM

Made-to-Order Headphones Show Your Favorite Music in 3D [Concept] Jesus Diaz (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/4/2010 8:31:33 AM

Brian Garret Schuur is a clever guy, and that's why rapid

manufacturer Freedom of Creation has taken his design for the Street Headphones. These made-to-order headphones feature the names of your

favorite bands and singers all

around them, in 3D. They don't seem very comfortable, but I would be glad if people used this way to show their musical taste—as opposed

to blasting the volume up. [ Freedom of Creation]

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The most awesome iPhone stand ever Jake Pavelka Reveals made out of cutlery When He Fell Head Over Heals for Vienna Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:00:00 AM

Filed under: Accessories, Humor, iPhone, iPod touch That headline is probably a bit of an overstatement, since this is probably the only iPhone stand made out of cutlery.

ForkedUpArt of North Salt Lake, Utah, is actually selling two different stands. ForkHead, who you see standing at attention at your right, and SpoonHead, ForkHead's smarter brother.

Sold through our favorite iPhone accessory store, Etsy.com, the ForkedUpArt

iPhone stands can be customized if you want, and according to the artist, "I'm making these guys as fast as I can."

How much will one of these unique items put you back?

About US$20, plus shipping.

That's less expensive than some of the fancy-schmancy stands you can buy through more traditional sources, and let's face it -- these stands are really cool. [via iPhone Savior] TUAW The most awesome iPhone stand ever made out of cutlery originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:08:00 AM

"The Bachelor"'s latest success story, Jake Pavelka and Vienna Girardi, cozy up on the couch on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

Ellen asked when Jake knew that Vienna was "the one" and stood out from the rest of the beautiful bachelorettes vying for his attention. He said that Vienna made her impression on his heart when "she described what she thought of love" during a joint date with Gia.

Funny Or Die Presidential Reunion Unites SNL Stars for Web Hit [VIDEO] Adam Ostrow (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/3/2010 10:44:26 PM

Comedy site Funny Or Die has brought together current and former stars of Saturday Night Live (plus Jim Carrey) to create a skit called “Presidential Reunion” that has racked up more than one million views in less than 24 hours.

The skit features Fred Armisen, who currently plays Barack Obama on SNL, Will Ferrell bringing back his George W. Bush, Darrell Hammond (Bill Clinton), Dana Carvey (Bush Sr.), Jim Carrey (Ronald Reagan), Dan Akroyd (Jimmy Carter), and Chevy Chase The video itself pokes fun of (Gerald Ford). Maya Rudolph each president’s idiosyncrasies plays Michelle Obama.

and stereotypes, offering current President Obama advice on how to fix Washington. The ending features an ad for Main Street Brigade, an organization calling for financial reform. Check it out below: Tags: barack obama, funny or die, politics, saturday night live, snl, viral video

The bride-to-be revealed that she and her fiancé "have been sneaking around" for the past three months until their engagement was publicly revealed Monday night on "The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love" season finale. During their time under the radar, "We have watched almost every episode together," said Vienna.

"We haven't watched the finale yet because we haven't had a chance to. We lived it, we know what happened."

Round Two John B. Judis (The New Republic - All Feed) Submitted at 3/3/2010 12:37:11 PM

In his speech today in the White House East Room, President Obama clearly indicated that he is going to press for a comprehensive, and not a piecemeal or “skinny,” health care reform bill. He also made it abundantly clear that he will accept, if necessary, a party-line simple majority vote in the House and the Senate in order to get the bill through.

ROUND page 32

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ROUND continued from page 31

Reconciliation here we come.

Obama’s speech represents a major departure from the politics of his presidential campaign and of his first year in office. In his campaign, Obama pledged to defy partisan gridlock and to “change the way Washington works.” During the campaign, some liberal commentators believed that he was merely employing a clever tactic to highlight the rigid partisanship of his opponents.

“If we understand Obama's approach as a means, and not the limit of what he understands about American politics, it has great promise as a theory of change,” Mark Schmitt wrote in The American Prospect.

But it is now evident that Obama’s approach was what he understood about American politics—it was the guiding light gleaned from his years as an Illinois state senator—and he planned to apply it to Congress. And it was, of course, nonsense. Republicans were able to use Obama’s naiveté about their motives to undermine his initiatives. As Noam Scheiber explains in his profile of Rahm Emanuel, the principal obstacle to getting health care reform through Congress last year was Obama’s dogged insistence last summer that Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus continue to plug away at nailing down a bipartisan agreement. What

Obama got was not an amicable agreement but a summer of discontent, highlighted by Senator Charles Grassley’s denunciation of Democratic “death panels” and by the emergence of the Tea Party movement.

But it’s not an easy job being president. It took Bill Clinton most of his first term to figure out how to do domestic and foreign policy. Like Clinton, Obama has stumbled, but his slip-ups have been more dramatic because, with the economy cratering and two wars raging, the stakes have been higher from the first.

However, in Obama’s speech today, and in his artful performance at the health care summit last week, he showed that he has learned something from his first year in office.

Obama is now using the rhetoric of bipartisanship as Schmitt and other liberals thought he was doing in 2008: He is using it to paint Republicans as intransigent. He clearly no longer believes that a bipartisan agreement on health care is possible.

Moreover, he is now drawing clear lines between the politics of Democrats and the politics of Republicans. "Republicans," he said, "believe the answer is to loosen regulations on the insurance industry--whether it's state consumer protections or minimum standards for the kind

of insurance they can sell. I disagree with that approach. I'm concerned that this would only give the insurance industry even freer rein to raise premiums and deny care.” And in summing up, Obama said that that if Republicans “truly believe that less regulation would lead to higher quality, more affordable health insurance, then they should vote against the proposal I’ve put forward.”

Those are strong words. They make clear that Democrats and Republicans don’t share the same politics. Obama portrayed Democrats as the patrons of a “middle class that gets squeezed” by higher insurance costs. Republicans, on the other hand, were tarred as friends of the insurance industry who are willing to let the WellPoints of the world run amok.

Where the speech still rang somewhat hollow was in Obama’s presentation of his own policy. Here’s how he put it: I don’t believe we should give g o v e r n m e n t bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America. I believe it’s time to give the American people more control over their own health insurance. I don’t believe we can afford to leave life-anddeath decisions about health care to the discretion of insurance company executives

alone. I believe that doctors and nurses like the ones in this room should be free to decide what’s best for their patients. The proposal I’ve put forward gives Americans more control over their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable.

Well, yes, I suppose, we don’t want a government bureaucrat—one of those evil fellows with a green eyeshade sitting behind a desk piled high with unread complaints from angry citizens—to have control over our health care. But this kind of formulation concedes too much to the anti-statist rhetoric of the Tea Parties.

Let’s be clear about what national health care reform does.

It narrows peoples’ choices, and limits their control over their health care, in one very important way: It requires them to buy health insurance. That is how social insurance works.

You couldn’t have Social Security or Medicare if everyone eligible didn’t have to sign up. But by virtue of this requirement, the government—bureaucrats and all—improves, and in some cases, vastly improves, the choices Americans have in obtaining health insurance.

Health care reform doesn’t bypass government; it enlists it on the people’s behalf.

Obama has now adopted a strategy that will allow him to

get his programs through Congress, but he doesn’t yet have the vocabulary that will allow him to convince wide swaths of Americans that these programs are essential. And that’s not an uncommon failing.

It’s not as if he lacks a vocabulary that other liberals or Democrats (like the writers on these pages or his fellow politicians) possess. How to frame government initiatives in a way that acknowledges but also overcomes American antistatism has been, and remains, a major political challenge for Democrats. But in beginning to draw clear distinctions between the Democratic and Republican approaches, Obama has taken the first important step toward meeting that challenge.

And let me say one other thing.

I hate political predictions, and I have certainly heard my fill of them lately. The recent Conservative Political Action Conference echoed with predictions that the Republicans would obliterate the Democrats in November 2010. And the esteemed Charlie Cook has recently pronounced the Democrats to be toast in 2010.

But—and there are some “ifs” coming— if Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can get the health care bill through Congress and on to Obama’s desk, and if Obama has truly learned his ROUND page 36

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Is a Voting Machine Merger Too Big to Stand?

(Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:16:21 PM

The largest voting machine company in the country bought its biggest competitor six months ago without advance fanfare. Now the Justice Department is investigating whether to unwind the merger that put a privately held Nebraska company in control of the voting machines in nearly 70 percent of the nation's precincts.

With midterm elections looming and a battle for control of Congress under way, a coalition of election officials from several states and voter advocate groups is pressing the Justice Department to unscramble the combination of two companies. Critics say the merger could cause foul-ups at the polls on Election Day, and some even characterize it as a national security risk.

The emergence of one megaplayer in the electronic voting machine industry may be an unintended consequence of reforms enacted after the presidential election debacle in Florida a decade ago. Few companies can afford to get into the business due to the expense of developing the electronic voting safeguards that reformers insisted on.

Senate Rules Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., has raised concerns about the purchase, in which Election

Systems & Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb., bought the voting machine subsidiary of Diebold Inc. of North Canton, Ohio.

The Justice Department's antitrust division is doing a postmerger review that could result in the government's trying to persuade ES&S to sell off some of its assets or face a court suit to force a sell-off. An announcement could come soon.

ES&S said it has been cooperating with the division's review. "We are committed to exploring potential resolutions that will address any concerns about this transaction, while ensuring that the election services needs of the jurisdictions we serve will be met," a company statement said.

Separate from Justice's review, competing voting machine firm Hart InterCivic Inc. has sued ES&S, alleging that the company will now supply voting machines in 68.2 percent of the nation's voting precincts.

The New York State Board of Elections urged the Justice Department and the New York attorney general to intervene in the lawsuit challenging the acquisition.

Another competitor is in court alleging violation of procurement laws in the award of a $50 million contract to ES&S in recent weeks by New York City's elections board.

And elections board commissioners are cooperating

with a probe of that contract by the U.S. attorney's office, the board's spokeswoman, Valerie Vazquez, said this week.

As a privately held company, ES&S issues no financial reports. It didn't tell the Justice Department about the Diebold deal because the transaction wasn't big enough to trigger the federal law that requires the government to be informed of big mergers before they are completed.

But the government can always come in after a merger to try to alter any deal it thinks harm competition.

"If you end up with 70 percent of the voting machines and the people rely on them, and if entry into the market is difficult or impossible, it would certainly seem to be a legitimate target for antitrust enforcement," said Charles "Rick" Rule, a longtime Washington attorney who ran the Justice Department's antitrust division from 1986-89 during the merger-friendly Reagan administration.

On Capitol Hill, Schumer's committee has collected information from opponents and a few proponents of the merger and commissioned an analysis by the Congressional Research Service. CRS's conclusion: The merger means ES&S has a presence in 90 percent of the states, is the sole source for at least 20 and has a market share three or more times that of its

closest competitor.

"In the voting systems industry, perhaps more than any other, the failure of the market can affect the public interest in a way that goes to the heart of our democracy," Schumer said in a letter urging Attorney General Eric Holder to take a close look at ES&S. In an industry plagued by equipment malfunctions, wrongly recorded votes and a lack of transparency, the need for increased quality competition — not less competition — is essential, John Bonifaz, legal director of the voter advocacy group Voter Action, wrote Schumer.

Election failure on a large scale has the potential to destabilize the nation, so ES&S must divest some of its assets, reduce the scope of election jurisdictions subject to its software and take other steps to offset the increased threat to national security, a coalition of 19 election experts and groups including Common Cause said in a Feb. 12 letter to Justice's antitrust division.

ES&S voting machines counted approximately 50 percent of the votes in the last four major U.S. elections, says the company's Web site, and ES&S boasts "one -stop-shop full-service election coordination from start to finish."

On Wednesday, ES&S defended its performance,

saying that since the acquisition last September, the company has supported successful elections in many jurisdictions that previously were customers of the Diebold subsidiary.

Changes enacted by Congress after the Bush v. Gore vote in Florida in 2000 require a certification process for voting machine companies that is so time-consuming and costly it discourages companies from plunging into the business to compete with ES&S, some state and local election officials say.

"I'm surprised and strongly believe the elections community is lucky to still have as many voting equipment vendors in existence as we do today," Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro, a Democrat, said in a letter to Schumer.

The secretaries of state in California and Connecticut expressed concern about the merger, as did some local election officials in Florida, California and New Mexico.

—— On the Net: Election Systems & Software Inc.: http://www.essvote.com/ © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Anti-Government Voters Factor in Texas Race (Newsmax - Politics)

That analysis was backed up Wednesday by tea party activists who weighed in on the Debra Medina was hardly the race, which now shifts to the fall ideal candidate in Tuesday's general election. Perry will run Republican primary: She didn't a g a i n s t t h e D e m o c r a t i c raise much money and came nominee, ex-Houston Mayor under fire for suggesting the B i l l W h i t e , w h o h a n d i l y U.S. might have been involved disposed of six opponents in his in the Sept. 11 attacks. Still, she primary. won nearly one out of every five "A lot of people wanted to votes, harnessing some support a t t r i b u t e D e b r a M e d i n a ' s i n t h e n a s c e n t t e a p a r t y campaign to the tea party. On movement. balance, I think most of them The growing influence of the were leaning toward Perry. I movement could be seen in the think it's significant that he GOP primary, but Medina, who avoided the runoff," said Greg got 18.5 percent of the overall Holloway, a board member with vote, wasn't the biggest winner. Austin Tea Party Patriots.

That was Texas Gov. Rick He acknowledged that Medina Perry, who avoided a runoff — a gun-toting, libertarianwith U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey leaning businesswoman from Hutchison, winning 51 percent W h a r t o n — a p p e a l e d t o of the vote, in part because of discontented Texans. Medina his own push for tea party fought her way into the two sympathizers. televised debates with the better "There's a growing movement -known Perry and Hutchison afoot, but it's really more of an and held her own, boosting her attitude at this point than it is an statewide following. organized effort," Perry pollster "People really liked her view Mike Baselice said Wednesday that government in general had of tea party voters. become too big and wasn't Baselice, who tracked GOP responsive to the people," voters in the four weeks leading Holloway said. up to the primary, found that 61 Phillip Dennis, founder of percent of those who said they Dallas Tea Party, said even with share all the views of the tea her third-place finish Medina party movement voted for Perry, "did a pretty remarkable job not Medina. Medina took 24 without a name and no money percent of those votes, and running against two well-known Hutchison had 15 percent. opponents." Dennis, who would Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:47:19 PM

not reveal who he voted for because his group does not endorse candidates, said Medina's position as a government outsider and her fiscal conservative stance helped attract conservative voters.

"It didn't drive enough, did it?" he said. "I know the Glenn Beck episode cost her. It cost her with some tea party members."

That "episode" was an interview with radio talk show host Beck on Feb. 11 in which she said there were "some very good arguments" that the United States was involved in the Sept.

11 terrorist attacks. She later tried to back away from the statement.

Baselice, the Perry pollster, found that as more Republican voters heard or read her remarks about 9-11, the more her support tapered off or dropped.

Holloway, the Austin-based tea party activist, said those statements "hurt her a lot."

Meanwhile, other factors came into play.

The Republicans' intense competition spurred voter participation, including some traditional Democrats who said they crossed over party lines to get in on the high-profile GOP election. The GOP saw a primary turnout of 1.48 million voters, a record for all Texas Republican primaries dating back to 1970, the earliest year

for which state records are available.

Perry hammered away at an anti-Washington theme aimed at veteran senator Hutchison.

And Hutchison created some problems of her own. She never left the Senate to campaign full time in Texas, even though she said she would. She also failed to gain much traction on issues she was trying to use against Perry, such as Texas' high school dropout rate.

Hutchison, who has still not said when she will leave the Senate, won only 30 percent of the vote. She has said she will leave after the health care debate is over.

Tea party voters were influential in other Texas races as well. A Republican ally of Texas House Speaker Joe Straus in East Texas, Rep. Tommy Merritt, lost to a conservative tea party activist. Another committee chairman under Straus' Republican leadership is heading into a runoff with a GOP tea party candidate.

Describing herself as "David against two political Goliaths," Medina framed her campaign as opposition to big government and in favor of individual liberties. She advocated elimination of property tax, protection of gun rights and nullification of "federal mandates in agriculture, energy,

education, health care, industry, and any other areas D.C. is not granted authority by the Constitution."

She said she wouldn't rule out seceding from the United States; Perry also flirted with the idea of secession after a tea party rally.

Longtime Texas Republican consultant Reggie Bashur said Perry identified the antiWashington sentiment just as the tea party movement was taking off in early 2009. He said the governor sensed a strong anti-Washington feeling among voters.

Perry summed up that theme in a television ad he used heavily in the final days of the campaign. In the ad, Perry talks of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which speaks to the powers of the states. Perry says it "is supposed to keep Washington from messin' with Texas."

(This version CORRECTS spelling of `Hutchison' throughout.) © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Muscle Shoals E.J. Dionne Jr. (The New Republic - All Feed)

Republican ideas to their proposals. Obama said he was open to four more that came up Submitted at 3/3/2010 12:19:22 PM during the health care summit.

WASHINGTON -- For those What he's unwilling to do, and who feared that Barack Obama rightly, is to give the minority did not have any Lyndon veto power over a bill that has Johnson in him, the president's deliberately and painfully determination to press ahead worked its way through the and get health care reform done regular legislative process. in the face of Republican Republicans, however, don't i n t r a n s i g e n c e c a m e a s want to talk much about the s o m e t h i n g o f a r e l i e f . substance of health care. They Obama's critics have regularly want to discuss process, turn accused him of not being as "reconciliation" into a four-letter tough or wily or forceful as LBJ w o r d , a n d m a i n t a i n t h a t was in pushing through civil Democrats are just "ramming rights and the social programs of through" a health bill. his Great Society. Obama It is all, I am sorry to say, one seemed willing to let Congress big lie -- or, if you're sensitive, go its own way and was so an astonishing exercise in anxious to look bipartisan that hypocrisy. he wouldn't even take his own All of the Republican claims s i d e i n a r g u m e n t s w i t h were helpfully gathered in one Republicans. place by Sen. Orrin Hatch, RThose days are over. On Utah, in an op-ed in Tuesday's Wednesday, the president made Washington Post. Right off, the clear what he wants in a health piece was wrong on a core fact. care bill, and he urged Congress Hatch accused the Democrats of t o p a s s i t b y t h e m o s t trying to, yes, "ram through the expeditious means available. Senate a multitrillion-dollar He was also clear on what health-care bill." bipartisanship should mean -- No. The health care bill passed a n d w h a t i t c a n ' t m e a n . the Senate last December with Democrats, who happen to be in 60 votes under the normal the majority, have already added process. The only thing that

VOTING continued from page 33

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would pass under a simple majority vote would be a series of amendments that fit comfortably under the "reconciliation" rules established to deal with money issues. Near the very end of his article, Hatch concedes that reconciliation would be used for "only parts" of the bill. But then why didn't he say that in the first place?

Hatch grandly cites "America's Founders" as wanting the Senate to be about "deliberation." But the Founders said nothing in the Constitution about the filibuster, let alone "reconciliation."

Judging from what they put in the actual document, the Founders would be appalled at the idea that every major bill should need the votes of threefifths of the Senate to pass.

Hatch quotes Sens. Robert Byrd and Kent Conrad, both Democrats, as opposing the use of reconciliation on health care.

What he doesn't say is that Byrd's comment from a year ago was about passing the entire bill under reconciliation, which no one is proposing to do. As for Conrad, he made clear to The Washington Post's Ezra Klein this week that it's perfectly

appropriate to use reconciliation "to improve or perfect the package," which is exactly what Obama is suggesting.

Hatch said that reconciliation should not be used for "substantive legislation" unless the legislation has "significant bipartisan support." But surely the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which were passed under reconciliation and increased the deficit by $1.7 trillion during his presidency, were "substantive legislation." The 2003 dividends tax cut could muster only 50 votes. Vice President Dick Cheney had to break the tie.

Talk about "ramming through."

The underlying "principle" here seems to be that it's fine to pass tax cuts for the wealthy on narrow votes but an outrage to use reconciliation to help middle -income and poor people get health insurance.

I'm disappointed in Hatch, cosponsor of two of my favorite bills in recent years. One created the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The other, signed last year by Obama, broadly expanded service opportunities. Hatch worked on both with his dear friend, the late Edward M. Kennedy, after

whom the service bill was named.

It was Kennedy, you'll recall, who insisted that health care was "a fundamental right and not a privilege." That's why it's not just legitimate to use reconciliation to complete the work on health reform. It would be immoral to do otherwise and thereby let a phony argument about process get in the way of health coverage for 30 million Americans.

E.J. Dionne's e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. (c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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ROUND

All In Jonathan Cohn (The New Republic - All Feed) Submitted at 3/3/2010 9:30:23 PM

President Obama began his remarks in the East Room on Wednesday with a reminiscence. Almost exactly one year before, he noted, he had stood in the very same spot, formally launching his initiative to reform America’s health care system.

I happened to be there that day and I remember it well.

Representatives of every interest group were there, as were congressional leaders of both parties. In breakout groups and then a question-and-answer session that followed Obama’s speech, there was much talk of consensus--of a determination to work together in good faith.

“The status quo is the one option that’s not on the table,” Obama had told his audience.

They seemed to agree.

Now that all seems very naive.

And Obama seems to know it, as my colleague John Judis observes. The insurers have gone to war. The Republicans are united in opposition. An effort that was supposed to take a few months has stretched into a year, with weeks more still to go. It threatens to destroy the Democrats’ congressional majority and, just maybe, the Obama presidency too.

“Everything there is to say about health care has been said--and

continued from page 32

just about everybody has said it,” Obama said to laughter.

Still, if Obama on Wednesday was implicitly giving up on his hopes for constructive, bipartisan governing, he wasn't giving up on his hopes for what governing would achieve. He ran for president on a promise to tackle the nation's most challenging problems--and, since winning election, he’s gleefully defied those who warned him he was trying to do too much. On Wednesday, he made clear that he hasn't changed his mind about that: At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem. The American people want to know if it’s still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future.

They are waiting for us to act.

They are waiting for us to lead.

And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right.

That's not just bluster. At any point in the last few months but particularly in the wake of the Massachusetts election, it would have been easy to back away from comprehensive reform--to cut a deal, be done with it, and move on.

Instead, Obama on Wednesday committed himself more fully to comprehensive reform than he has at any time since this effort

started--rejecting incremental reforms explicitly, refusing Republican calls to start over, and demanding an up-or-down vote on his proposal.

This has been a long and wrenching debate. It has stoked great passions among the American people and their representatives. And that's because health care is a difficult issue. It is a complicated issue.

If it was easy, it would have been solved long ago. As all of you know from experience, health care can literally be an issue of life or death. And as a result, it easily lends itself to demagoguery and political gamesmanship, and misrepresentation and misunderstanding.

But that’s not an excuse for those of us who were sent here to lead. That's not an excuse for us to walk away. We can’t just give up because the politics are hard.

Will it work? Who knows. The next few weeks will be excruciating, as Obama works with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to build the 216-vote majority necessary to pass the Senate bill through the House.

It'd be foolish to bet against the two of them. (Pelosi has been, if anything, even more determined than Obama.) Wavering members have every reason to hold out for maximum leverage, which means most won't commit until absolutely

necessary.

Public support would obviously help--a lot. And Obama made a specific plea for it on Wednesday: I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform. And I urge every American who wants this reform to make their voice heard as well--every family, every business, every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every physician’s assistant. Make your voice heard.

Of course, the public seems pretty ambivalent about reform these days. But perhaps that will change, even just a little.

Americans always say they want politicians who lead rather than follow--who do what they think is right rather than what they think is popular. And liberals, in particular, say they want politicians who will think big and pursue far-reaching reforms, rather than triangulate their way with incremental measures.

Say what you will about Obama and his plan. Both, surely, are flawed. But, particularly with this latest statement, he's living up to those ideals.

Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor of The New Republic.

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lesson and begins to draw a sharp distinction between the Democrats’ approach and the Republican approach, and if he begins to propose initiatives that highlight this distinction, the Democrats will retain the House and Senate in November. They will probably lose seats, but they won’t get obliterated.

John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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Ill. Dems Seek Post-Scandal Lt. Gov. Applications (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:39:29 PM

Illinois' Democratic voters picked a pawnbroker as their candidate for lieutenant governor, and that didn't exactly end well. So perhaps they won't mind if the next candidate doesn't have a job. Or is still in ILL. page 38

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Congress Slowly Loosens Its Grip On Washington, DC (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:44:02 PM

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton didn't flinch when comedian Stephen Colbert congratulated her on D.C. becoming a state.

"Not quite," she replied during a segment on his show not long after President Barack Obama's election.

Colbert may have been joking, but with Democrats in control, Congress seems increasingly willing to loosen its grip on Norton's city and allow it to function more like a state. That's no laughing matter for some 600,000 city residents.

Congress still must OK the D.C. budget and it can veto laws the City Council passes, though that's rare. And despite some optimism early in Obama's administration, Norton still can't vote on the House floor, though she can introduce bills and vote in committees.

But cracks in congressional control have started to appear.

For the first time in recent memory, Congress didn't attach any restrictions, called "riders," when it approved the city's budget in December. That lifted bans preventing the city from using tax money to help poor women pay for abortions and

implementing a decade-old measure legalizing medical marijuana.

And though Congress could have killed a gay marriage bill passed by the D.C. Council, federal lawmakers allowed it to become law without weighing in. Same-sex couples started applying for marriage licenses Wednesday, though a three-day waiting period means they can't actually get married till next week.

Now, Congress is considering bills that would give the city even more freedom. Norton, who was elected in 1990 and represents more people than live in Wyoming packed in a city 1/17th the size of Rhode Island, calls it a "moment of opportunity."

Three-quarters of Washington's registered voters are Democrats.

And now that Democrats hold the House, Senate and presidency for the first time since 1992, there's support for letting go of some federal control.

Norton has introduced two bills to give the city more control over its affairs. The first would eliminate the requirement that Congress approve the city's budget. The second would allow city laws to go into effect immediately, instead of waiting

for 30 or 60 days for a congressional all-clear, as in the case of the same-sex marriage law.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty testified that the budget process often causes delays in services to residents. Most of the hundreds of laws he signs every year, from adoption to zoning, "are of no interest to Congress whatsoever," he said.

Longtime residents are used to Congress having the ultimate say. Gary Thompson, a lawyer who has lived in the district since 1992, said it seems like every couple of years some momentum to change that takes hold, then stalls.

"I'm a little bit hardened and a little bit cynical at this point," said Thompson, who heads a neighborhood group and says he will advocate for civil disobedience, like blocking entrances to government buildings, if things don't change soon.

The U.S. Constitution makes it clear the city is under congressional control. City residents didn't get the right to vote in presidential elections until 1961. In the 1970s, residents got the delegate spot in Congress and the right to elect their own mayor and City Council.

Change is slow, however.

Norton predicted on Colbert's show a year ago that she would soon be a full voting member; Colbert called her a "fake congresswoman." But momentum to give her voting powers stalled when an amendment was added in the Senate that would repeal a strict city gun registration requirement, something Democrats did not want.

Norton says she believes she may now have found a way around the amendment and will get the bill passed early this year.

Lifelong resident Jenica Degree, who works at a store that sells political memorabilia, isn't convinced that having a voting congresswoman would change much. Not having one "really doesn't bother me," she said. Š Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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LG's First Windows Phone 7 Handset Will Be Called Panther?

[Windows Phone 7 Series] Kat Hannaford (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/4/2010 7:57:17 AM

LG's first Windows Phone 7 handset, which got shown off recently in the sweaty palm of a Microsoft director at the Engadget Show, will be called the LG Panther. Apparently. We know LG likes silly names, but Panther?

Of course, there's a more famous Panther in our world—2003's OS X 10.3, from Apple. The rumored names comes via the UK site Best Mobile Contracts, which we've never heard of so can't vouch for how solid this rumor is—but after Cookie, Viewty, and whatever else they've managed to slip past their marketing team, Panther is hardly the leastflattering if indeed that's what LG names it. [ Best Mobile Contracts via WMPowerUser via TechRadar]

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school. Or isn't actually a Democrat.

At least that's what some applicants for the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket seem to hope. The Democratic Party of Illinois has received more than 70 applications since it began accepting them on its Web site this week. Applicants included a former senior adviser to disgraced ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and an out-of-work technician who answered the question "Why are you a Democrat?" with "Who said I was?"

Democrats are looking for a replacement for Chicago pawnbroker Scott Lee Cohen, who left the race less than a week after winning the primary election amid accusations he abused his ex-wife and held a knife to the throat of an exgirlfriend who was later arrested for prostitution. Cohen has denied the allegations, and charges stemming from his arrest were dropped when the ex -girlfriend didn't show up in court.

Cohen's exit left Gov. Pat Quinn without a running mate and gave members of the state central committee a unique opportunity to pick a candidate.

Party officials haven't set a

schedule for the selection process, said Steve Brown, a spokesman for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who is chairman of the state Democratic party.

Brown said the committee hopes everyone interested in the position will apply online, including the five Democrats who lost to Cohen in the primary. None of them had applied as of Wednesday night, creating a field dominated by political newcomers.

A handful of hopefuls identify themselves as Republicans or independents on the fivequestion application form, and several say they are currently unemployed. Many are educators, lawyers and people younger than 30. Almost all are from the Chicago area.

Given their lacking political experience, applicants have been creative in describing what they would add to the Democratic ticket. One suburban Chicago man listed his "Jamaican wife and three kids" among his strengths, while a self -professed independent listed his "ability to create an organization of farmers, hunters and wizards that will zoom with innovative solutions."

Wizards?

Two Chicagoans listed just one strength apiece: "I did not vote for Rod Blagojevich in 2006," and "Transparency; all bimbo eruptions & financial catastrophes have been posted on the worldwide web long ago."

Many made clear that little political backing and few connections should be seen as a benefit, and one young man listed among his endorsements "My wife and my upstairs neighbor." He later withdrew his application, as did a marketing operations executive.

Cohen also was a political novice, as is the Republican candidate, Jason Plummer, a 27year-old southern Illinois businessman.

It was Cohen's fiery departure that helped thrust the typically low-profile race into the spotlight. Lieutenant governors have few statutory responsibilities, and Quinn was the first lieutenant governor in more than 30 years to ascend to the governor's office. One former lieutenant governor got so bored with the job that he resigned. Madigan, the state House speaker, has even pressed for the position to be abolished altogether.

Of those who had applied as of

Wednesday, the few noteworthy exceptions with political experience included the former mayors of several Chicago suburbs and Bob Arya, a longtime journalist who left the industry to work for Blagojevich in 2006 — only to leave in 2008 because of what he described as the now-ousted governor's ineptitude.

Blagojevich is currently awaiting trial on federal corruption charges that include allegations he tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat for personal or political gain.

—— On the Net: Democratic Party of Illinois: http://www.ildems.com/ © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Robert DeNiro and Bradley Cooper Team Up for 'The Dark Fields' (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:03:00 AM

Robert DeNiro will be joining one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors, Bradley Cooper, in 'The Dark Fields.'

According to Variety, the suspense thriller follows Cooper, a writer, who comes across a magical drug that brings him new levels of intelligence and success.

DeNiro, whose character is a brilliant financial mogul, is in pursuit of Cooper.

Based on an Alan Glynn novel, 'The Dark Fields' begins filming in May in Philadelphia, reports Variety.

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A Blue Dog Dream Neera Tanden (The New Republic - All Feed) Submitted at 3/3/2010 1:00:17 PM

So, rather inevitably, the fate of health care reform now rests largely with a group of Blue Dog Democrats in the House.

More specifically, the question is: Can Nancy Pelosi convince a small fraction of her caucus to endorse the Senate version of the bill, even though they initially rejected the House’s iteration? She’ll need to flip these members to her side because the abortion provisions in the Senate bill will necessarily cost her some votes.

The media chatter is all about these members' political calculus: How unpopular is health care reform in their districts? Would they be risking their careers with such a vote?

But there’s another component of their decision that merits discussion—you know, the actual policy. The Senate bill, while sharing the same basic structure as the House bill, contains some pretty important differences. Would these members now have a substantive reason to switch into the affirmative column?

In fact, the Senate bill, even after the president’s proposed

modifications, addresses almost all of the major concerns that the Blue Dogs have raised. As a matter of policy, the Senate bill is a moderate Democrat's dream. House moderates have to ask themselves, apart from political considerations, how can they now vote against a bill that senators Lincoln, Lieberman, Landrieu and Bayh have all voted for?

Let’s go issue by issue. The Blue Dogs opposed the public plan that featured so prominently in the House bill.

Well, the Senate scrapped that a long time ago. Blue Dogs wanted more cost-containment policies. Well, the Senate bill is not just stronger, but substantially so. It features a robust Independent Payment Advisory Board with authority to lower Medicare payment rates. The House bill doesn’t even have such a commission.

The Senate bill also has stronger provisions to push payment reform through a new “innovation center” that will reward quality of care, rather than the volume of care that doctors provide. These are important moves away from the fee-for-service system.

Some House moderates criticized the House bill for

taxing the rich. Lucky for them, that’s barely in the Senate bill. While the House bill used the millionaire’s tax to raise $460 billion in revenues, the Senate bill has a Medicare tax that raises only $87 billion from high-income folks.

What about deficit reduction? Both the House and Senate bills would reduce the deficit by upwards of $100 billion over the next decade, but the Congressional Budget Office gives the Senate bill better marks over the next decade on longer-term savings. The CBO says the Senate bill “would reduce federal budget deficits over the decade after 2019 relative to those projected under current law—with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between onequarter percent and one-half percent of GDP.” Furthermore, they should be suffering from significantly less sticker shock.

The Senate bill costs nearly $200 billion less over ten years.

Not a trivial difference.

In short, as a moderate House Democrat said to me in December after she voted against the House bill, “I like where the Senate bill is going and I would vote for that.” Of course, that was before

Massachusetts. But the Senate bill did not change. And neither should her intentions.

Now, most of these provisions that should appeal to Blue Dogs are a source of agitation for liberals. But liberals seem to have made the following calculation: In order to get a bill that covers 30 million Americans, with insurance reforms that protect consumers, they will swallow hard and accept several provisions that anger them. It’s called compromise—and, in some quarters, it’s also known as governing. Liberals shouldn’t be the only ones who bear the responsibility to govern. That falls to the whole Democratic Party—its right, left, and center.

Neera Tanden is the Chief Operating Officer of the Center for American Progress. She served in the Obama and Clinton administrations.

For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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Binge Drinking PSAs Make College Kids Binge Drink More [Reverse Psychology] Maureen O'Connor (Gawker) Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:28:06 AM

A new study throws every single PSA that relies on shame into jeopardy, because when youth see images of humiliated people covered in their own vomit, they don't see warnings.

They see inspiration. [ AdAge] On the bright side, now alcohol companies know which strategy to use when MADD browbeats them into making PSAs: Ones that shame, sexily. Do not watch this video if you are under the age of 21.

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LGF: Crazy But Clever Conflator (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/3/2010 1:08:47 PM

The right wing blogosphere is getting weirder and weirder: Crazytown Watch: Charles Johnson Conflates Some Fringe Group With Rick Perry.

Once again, I’m accused of being “crazy” because I find groups like Repent Amarillo disturbing. But not just “crazy” — I’m also sneaky and evil because I’m “conflating” Repent Amarillo with Rick Perry.

Because I hate small government, or I hate Texas, or something like that. So I’m both crazy and nefariously clever.

“Now why would he do that?” wonders Melissa Clouthier, hinting at dark ulterior motives.

It’s a head-scratcher, all right.

In a post about a religious fanatic group in Texas, why in the world did I bring up the

governor of Texas — who just happens to have a history of appointing religious fanatics to influential positions in the Texas government?

Clouthier continues: Newsflash haters: Texans are doing well because they’ve clung to rugged individualism, their guns, their God, their independence, their fiscal responsibility, etc. I know it’s galling when secular humanistic states like California are going down the crap-hole. It’s tough to see small government being such a big win while big government harms the very people it’s supposed to help.

But that’s just the way things roll, guys. Good luck finding evidence that big social programs are ever a cultural, fiscal or social win. They NEVER are a win because they strip the individual of his ability

to choose his own life. It is axiomatic.

And by the way, Jerry Brown has actual radical ties. Will that disqualify him to run for Governor in California? Why no! No, it won’t.

This might set a record for reading the most into an LGF post. Secular humanism, small government, big social programs, rugged individualism; these are all interesting concepts, but if they have something to do with what I wrote, I must be missing it.

And meanwhile, notice that Clouthier never gets around to saying anything at all about the “fringe group” that was the whole point of my post.

P.S. I don’t hate Texas or Texans, just for the record.

Creationist Dentist Gets the Boot (Little Green Footballs)

Originally elected to the board in 1998, McLeroy was persistently determined to Texas Governor Rick Perry undermine the treatment of may have won the Republican evolution in Texas’s public primary yesterday, but one of schools. During the debate over his main operatives, creationist biology textbook adoption in dentist Don McLeroy, got 2003, he was one of the four thrown out. members of the board who In the March 2, 2010, primary misused the state science election, avowed young-earth standards to oppose adopting the creationist Don McLeroy e l e v e n t e x t b o o k s u n d e r narrowly lost his bid to be the consideration. His attacks on Republican candidate for the science education — including District 9 seat on the Texas state his endorsement of a book that board of education. As the described parents who want Dallas Morning News (March 3, their children to learn about 2010) reported, “The fiercely evolution as “monsters” — were contested race pitted McLeroy, a in part responsible for the state dentist from College Station and senate’s refusal to confirm him member of the board’s social as chair of the board in May conservative bloc, against 2009, as NCSE previously [Thomas] Ratliff, a legislative reported. consultant and son of former Lt. This is a victory in the battle Gov. Bill Ratliff,” who is against the forces who are intent viewed as likely to side with the o n i n s t i l l i n g D a r k A g e s moderates on the board. There is i g n o r a n c e i n T e x a s no Democratic candidate for the schoolchildren, but the war isn’t seat, so Ratliff is expected to be over. They’ll be back. elected in November 2010.

Submitted at 3/3/2010 6:06:42 PM

Pads' Gonzalez Brushes Off Trade Talk FanHouse TV (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:28:00 PM

Filed under: Padres, MLB Video, Spring Training PEORIA, Ariz. -- The biggest

story in Padres camp continues to be the Adrian Gonzalez saga.

Will the slugging first baseman be traded before his contract expires at the end of next season, or will he be locked up long-term?

Reports have him potentially

going to the Red Sox for a package including Clay Buchholz or to the White Sox for stud prospect Gordon Beckham, and the list of rumors goes on.

Tom Krasovic decided to ask

the man himself how he thinks his future will play out, and FanHouse TV's cameras were there.

Politics/ Tech News/ Fashion/

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41

Confidential RNC Document Outlines Strategy of Fear Mongering (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/3/2010 3:12:58 PM

Good. Grief.

Exclusive: RNC document mocks donors, plays on ‘fear’.

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

The presentation was delivered

by RNC Finance Director Rob

Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.

In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the oftencynical terms of political

marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.

The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.

“What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate…?” it asks. The answer: “Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”

Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC – Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms – but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms.

One page, headed “The Evil Empire,” pictures Obama as the Joker from Batman, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively.

Loeffler Randall Cutout Booties ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/3/2010 3:10:26 PM

Johanna Cox, Contributing Editor, in Loeffler Rand all cutout booties “These remind me of one of my favorite Cushnie et Ochs dresses.”

Photo: Kelly Stuart Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Gesture Search Finds Everything on Android with Scribbles [Downloads] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

phone data using your fingerpoint chicken scratch.

Draw in a letter, and Gesture A n d r o i d 2 . 0 : D o y o u Search instantly narrows down d e s p e r a t e l y m i s s t h e the field of choices, letter by handwriting recognition of letter. A nice feature, though, is Palms and Newtons gone by? that in the case of letters that are Google's created a Gesture somewhat ambiguous—like my Search app that pulls up apps, terrible cursive "a" that might be contacts, bookmarks, and other a rounded, trailing "o"—Gesture Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:30:00 AM

Search keeps both possibilities in the results, letting you draw

in another letter to narrow the options down. There's a "pad" at the bottom showing your letters, and you swipe it to knock down individual letters (right to left) or restart entirely (left to right).

It's a stand-alone app that begs for integration into contact search or browser bookmarks, but it's also a "Labs" release that

Google wants to test more.

Gesture Search is a free download for Android handsets running 2.0 and later. Gesture Search[Google via Google Mobile Blog]

42

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Is XBRL The Key To Escaping Small Cap Hell?

Bernard Lunn (ReadWriteWeb)

do.

• Hire a strong investors relations team and send out lots Small cap hell is where you end of press releases, be accessible up in about six months after to the press, go on road shows your IPO, when all the high and speak at conferences for fives and champagne have investors. Your IR team can receded into a distant memory. take care of the mechanics, but Unless your company is big this is also a big time-suck for enough. How big is big enough? the CEO and CFO. (And you According to Investopedia, cannot say, "Sorry we missed small cap refers to companies our numbers we were too busy with "a market capitalization of schmoozing folks like you.") between $300 million and $2 The result is a lot of work and billion." you have to do it - but the That's right, to escape small cap payoff is small. Every other hell you need to have a market small cap is doing the same cap over $2 billion. thing.

Sponsor • Buy back your own shares.

To put that in perspective, that T h a t t e l l s e v e n t h e m o s t describes one out of 14 publicly dimwitted investor that you t r a d e d S a a S c o m p a n i e s think the stock is undervalued, (Salesforce.com). So 13 out of and as you run the company you 1 4 a r e i n s m a l l c a p h e l l . probably know. This is fine if Actually, two out of the 14 are you personally are vastly micro cap, i.e. below $300 wealthy or you have massive million in market cap. This amounts of cash laying idle on matters to all of us. A healthy the company balance sheet. In public market for Web tech other words it is not an option ventures ripples all the way for most companies down to seed level investing and drives the innovation economy. Social Media IR Rides To The What Does It Feel Like To Be Rescue?

In Small Cap Hell?

Agoracom is a modern IR firm.

Lonely. Nobody cares about They use online methods to tell your little venture. To the team your story. That may not sound that endured blood, sweat, toil like a big deal, but IR is a pretty and tears to get to $50 million in conservative business, so just revenues, and then go through using a few tools like Twitter all the SEC gyrations to become intelligently is a big step a public company, that is tough forward. to accept. Here is what you can Agoracom's pitch is that they Submitted at 3/3/2010 5:00:00 PM

can "tell your story". For a while there will be an opportunity to use modern methods while your competitors are stuck with their buggy whips. But that advantage will erode really fast. So this is where the new Finance 2.0 sites like Seeking Alpha, Stocktwits, Kaching and Covestor may have the key.

I decided to test this on the 14 publicly traded SaaS companies.

Finance 2.0 For Small Cap: It is Too Early To Tell Select a classic small cap stock in the SaaS Index. For example: RightNow Technologies (RNOW). At time of writing, they have a market cap of $525 million. It is a cool company that is growing fast and delivering good results for customers. So how much coverage do they get on these new sites? In my test I looked at RNOW for the period Jan. 1 to March 1.

StockTwits: There were nine tweets about RNOW, and many of them mentioned RNOW among a list of other stocks.

Some are not very helpful, such as: "Does anyone know the future of $rnow ?"

SeekingAlpha: This has two posts that were specific to RNOW and they seemed high quality. That is better than nine tweets that don't say much.

Covestor: This is interesting to play around in. You can see the last 10 trades done by Covestor members in RNOW. But you cannot drill from that to any rationale into RNOW. The system is set up to do that, but there is just nothing there yet.

Kaching: This gave good news aggregation on RNOW. It looked better than YahooFinance (still the starting point for lots of investors) but seemed to lack depth. Nor did it have any fundamental new information.

So, from the limited perspective of one small cap, these sites are at this time not the answer.

What about "ye olde stock forum" on Yahoo Finance?

Their message board for RNOW for the same period of time has 28 posts, not including the threaded replies. That puts them way ahead of the newcomers.What about quality you ask? What is the use of a lot of noise from anonymous posters pushing the stocks they own (or panning the ones they short)? That seems to be the problem with all these sources.

Wanted: Patient, Long-Term Investors

Found: Momentum-chasing day traders.

You want investors who will buy into the quality of your technology, understand your value proposition, like the market you are in and think you are doing a reasonable job managing the business. In other words, you want Warren Buffett.

That is not what these new sites are delivering. They do not seem to be the key to escape from small cap hell. Let Your Story Surface The evolution seems to be: 1.0 Tell Your Story. This is standard investor relations. The updated version of IR is to be present where investors hang out, which today means online.

But it is still the old broadcast model.

2.0 Let The Crowd Tell Your Story. This is classic social media - and it suffers from classic social media problems.

You might trust a usergenerated review on Yelp before going to a diner, but you are likely to be a bit more nervous before investing your kid's college fund in a company.

What we need is something that reverses the flow, that lets investors discover you, that lets your story surface. This is where XBRL may help. (For a basic intro to XBRL read our earlier coverage.) The Current XBRL XBRL page 47

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43

Never Mind the Valley: Here's SXSW 2010 Jolie O'Dell (ReadWriteWeb)

capital." With Michael Samson and Ross Kimbarovsky of CrowdSPRING. A ReadWriteWeb Guide How Geeks Grabbed For all of our startup friends Philadelphia by the Balls from coast to coast and around "Ready to skip town because the world, we look forward to you think it's played out? s e e i n g y o u a t S X S W Techies aren't techie enough?

Interactive!

Creatives aren't creative More and more, we're seeing enough? We'll talk about how g o o d f o l k s c r e a t i n g g r e a t Philadelphia turned around in products outside the SF Bay just 2 years by embracing its Area, and we love highlighting strengths and local flavor, and showcasing vibrant startup helping to build new leaders, communities in unexpected and inspiring an intense city areas. As it turns out, we're not pride. It's not as tough as you the only ones who have a think: blending socialization penchant for non-Valley with education, this new startups! While you're in Austin, generation of Philadelphians check out these ten panels, share their recipes for you to parties and events focusing on take back and make your city entrepreneurialism outside the next big thing." With Alex Silicon Valley.

Hillman of IndyHall and Geoff Sponsor DiMasi of P'unk Avenue.

This is part of a series of The Silicon Prairie Party ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW "Join the speakers, organizers Interactive 2010. If this guide and attendees of Big Omaha to isn't your cup of tea, be sure to party with the up-and-coming c h e c k b a c k f o r m o r e entrepreneurs and innovators information soon! based on the Silicon Prairie.

"It is difficult to establish a There are big things happening startup no matter where you are on the Prairie and here's the in the world, but there are great opportunity to connect with companies and events that those making an impact!" began life outside of Silicon Hosted by Big Omaha.

Valley. Threadless, 37Signals, Crowdfunding: How The F e e d B u r n e r , B I G O m a h a SAfrican Community Financed conference, and SXSW itself are Online Businesses proof that technology life exists "The story of how otherwise away from the coasts. These less unconncted South African - t h a n - o b v i o u s l o c a l e s a r e citizens pooled together their becoming hotbeds of innovation money and resources, and thus a n d a t t r a c t i n g t a l e n t a n d helped seed over a dozen online Submitted at 3/3/2010 5:00:57 PM

Australians are Virtual World Innovators "Australia has suffered the 'tyranny of distance' since colonization. Now, for the first time, those barriers are dissolving as the land downunder shifts timezones to be in a virtual playing field.

When you login as a virtual avatar there are no international calling codes, no day or night businesses in South Africa - and only the funny accent when no other realistic options remains distinctive. Hear how o f f i n a n c e e x i s t e d . T h e panelists Keren Flavell, Bruce presentation will cover lessons Joy and Santosh Kulkarni spend learned, and tips for replicating t h e i r t i m e m e e t i n g w i t h the model in other regions." colleagues and prospective With Eve Dmochowska of Idea clients in the USA and Europe B a n k , B r e t t H a g g a r d o f by teleporting to meetings in Hypertext Media, Gareth Knight seconds, right from their desks of Technovated, Heather Ford of in Melbourne, Australia. This GeekRetreat and Justin Spratt of discussion will demonstrate how Internet Solutions. the world is becoming flatter by Don't Move! Build a Startup the day through technology Community Where You Live creating a single place for "As eyes are focused on places interaction and enterprise." With well-known for startups and Santosh Kulkarni of NICTA, innovation, hear three up-and- Phil Tripp of IMMEDIA, Keren coming cities discuss how Flavell of Treet TV and Bruce they're building and fostering Joy of VastPark. t h e i r e n t r e p r e n e u r i a l Tech Scene Smackdown: LA communities. From Portland, vs. SF vs. NYC vs. Boston vs.

Boulder, Omaha, and beyond, Austin exciting things are happening in "Presently the online social places you don't expect." With media space consists of hyperErin Kotecki Vest of the Queen localized of Spain blog and BlogHer, bifurcated tech communities: Jeremy Tanner, Rick Turoczy of what is problematic is that many S i l i c o n F l o r i s t a n d J e f f of the more successful cool kids Slobotski of Silicon Prairie are guilty of being at every News. single party and using the scene T i m e T r a v e l e r s : W h y as a way to fameball, i.e.

gaming it to advance their own popularity instead using it as a platform to advance ideas and exert influence. With great power comes great responsibility - and in line with your vision this panel would b r i n g t o g e t h e r figureheads/influencers from each of the 5 nationally prominent tech communities as well as bring up possible conflicts and misconceptions relating to each; that L.A. is full of "un-employeds, that New Yorkers are shills for traditional media, that people from S.F. are just Spocks with no social skills or perspective. Rather than just pit influencers against each other, our moderation would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each and hopefully faciliate a forum for dialogue and cooperation between all members of what is positioned to be global phenomenon in the way people mobilize online and off." With Erin Broadley and Alwxia Tsotsis of Village Voice Media.

How Austin Got Socially Experienced "While known as the live music capital of the world, Austin is making serious inroads as the most social media savvy city.

With major tech companies as city residents, Austin tech leaders will provide attendees social media best practices and NEVER page 45

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From the Tips Box: iPhone Videos, Hard Drive Sleeves, and Alarm Clocks [From The Tips Box] Whitson Gordon (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/3/2010 5:00:00 PM

Readers offer their best tips for playing just the audio of video files on the iPhone, cushioned sleeves for external hard drives, and making sure your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning.

Don't like the gallery layout?

Click here to view everything on one page.

About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, share it here, or email it to tips at lifehacker.com.

Play Just the Audio of iPhone Video Files Photo by Dan Taylor.

Rick Betita shows us how to stop the video from playing and draining battery on iPhones: One of the most annoying things about the iPhone is that you can't listen to the audio of a video file unless the video is playing. Let's say I'm watching a

TEDTalk video podcast where the visuals don't add much to the content: if I lock my phone or press the home button, playback will stop (rather than continue underneath like an audio file).

To get around it, I lock my phone while I'm watching the video (stopping the playback) and double-tap the home button to bring up playback controls on the locked screen. From there, I

can press play and lock the phone again, allowing me to listen to my video file with the screen locked.

If I want to do something else on my iPhone while the audio of the video plays in the background, I press the home button during video playback and lock the screen immediately afterwards. Then I double-tap the home screen as before, hit

play, and unlock the phone. It brings me to my home screen while the audio continues to play.

Use Drink Insulators as Hard Drive Sleeves kamosaurus gives us a nice clever use for our portable external hard drives: I have found that the collapsible koozies are perfect cheap sleeves for portable external

hard drives. They fit snug and they give you a little "bump" protection without you having to go buy an expensive portable hard drive case. I've never had a case where the hard drive got too hot from being in the koozie but it's more about the transport anyways.

The best part of all is that they are cheap and customizable!

Move Alarm Clocks Around to Ensure Waking in the Morning Photo by Bernt Rostad. virtourist shares his tips for waking up in the morning: The problem with my alarm clock is that I've gotten so used to the 'off' button that I can turn off the first alarm and cancel the second in my sleep. I have a roommate, so I can't do something ridiculous like put the alarm clock on the other side of the room.

My solution: Wrap the alarm clock in a t shirt and always place the clock in a different orientation/location on the nightstand. That way, I have to be awake and coherent enough to do some searching for the off button without just using muscle memory. grewal12 adds his solution to the mix: I have the same thing going on...kind of. I have two alarm FROM page 46

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Google Index to Go Real Time Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb)

participate in a program much like that.

Sponsor Submitted at 3/3/2010 5:07:20 PM How The System Might Work Google is developing a system PuSH is a syndication system that will enable web publishers based on the ATOM format of any size to automatically where a publisher tells the world submit new content to Google about a Hub that it will notify for indexing within seconds of every time new content is that content being published. published. Subscribers then tell Search industry analyst Danny the Hub "when this Publisher Sullivan told us today that this posts new content, please could be "the next chapter" for deliver it to me right away." So Google. instead of the Subscriber Last Fall we were told by c h e c k i n g b a c k w i t h t h e Google's Brett Slatkin, lead Publisher all the time to see if developer on t h e there's new content, they just sit PubSubHubbub(PuSH) real time and wait to be told that there is syndication protocol, that he by the Hub. The Publisher hoped Google would some day publishes something, then tells use PuSH for indexing the web the Hub that it's available, then instead of the crawling of links the Hub goes and delivers it to that has been the way search all the Subscribers. This can engines have indexed the web take as little as a few seconds. for years.

Google senior If Google can implement an product manager Dylan Casey Indexing by PuSH program, it said yesterday at Sullivan's would ask every website to Search Marketing Expo in Santa implement the technology and Clara, California that the declare which Hub they push to company plans to soon publish a at the top of each document, just standard way for site owners to like they declare where the RSS

impact of such a move for small publishers. Right now many small sites get visited by Google maybe once a week. With a PuSH system in place, they feeds they publish can be found. would be able to get their Then Google would subscribe to content to Google automatically those PuSH feeds to discover right away. new content when it's published. A richer, faster, more efficient PuSH wouldn't likely replace internet would be good for crawling, in fact a crawl would everyone, but the benefits in be needed to discover PuSH search wouldn't be limited to The feeds to subscribe to, but the G o o g l e , e i t h e r . real-time format would be used PubSubHubbub is an open to augment Google's existing protocol and the feeds would be as visible to Yahoo and Bing as index.

As Danny Sullivan told us they would be to Google. today, Google would have to " I a m b e i n g t o l d b y m y implement some sort of spam engineering bosses to openly control and not just let content promote this open aproach even be pushed live to the index to our competitors," Slatkin unvetted. That was what says. That's a very good sign. happened in the earliest days of We expect this will be a very search and it was a real mess, he big deal and we'll be covering it told us. The Advantages of a more extensively in the coming days, as well as whenever Real Time Google Index P u S H i s m u c h m o r e Google has something to computationally efficient for a n n o u n c e m o r e f o r m a l l y .

Google but Slatkin says that D i s c u s s even more important is the

45

US consumers show readiness to spend (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:41:15 AM

US chain stores saw more evidence of a cautious readiness

by US consumers to spend during February, with department stores and luxury retailers reporting sales gains despite severe winter weather.

Gap, the largest US clothing store chain, continued its sales recovery, reporting a 3 per cent gain in comparable sales across it business. Sales at its low cost Old Navy stores in the US were up 5 per cent, while Banana Republic was up 6 per cent. Its North American Gap brand stores reported flat sales, as did its international business.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

NEVER continued from page 43

insights during this interactive panel." With Nigel Dessau of AMD. Innovation Overseas - The European Startup Environment "U.S. companies often know little about the European startup environment and the opportunities to be found there.

Panelists will share both the highs and lows of their startup lives and will answer questions regarding funding opportunities, cultural idiosyncrasies, legislation and differences between Europe and America."

With Marten Mickos of Benchmark Capital, Peter

Robinett of Bubble Foundry, Felix Petersen of Plazes and Reshma Sohoni of Seedcamp.

Coconut Valley - Building a Tech Community on the Beach "Starting from a mere handful of people and growing into the thousands, come learn how we grew our tech community out of

the sand in South Florida. Learn tips and tricks for growing your own tech community even in the most unfriendly/untechy areas of the world." With Brian Breslin of infinimedia and Davide Di Cillo of Thirtynine.

Those are our SXSW Interaction recommendations for

non-Valley startups of all stripes. If you've got suggestions or feedback, let us know in the comments! See you in Austin, folks! Discuss

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China's Top 3 Social Network Sites Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/4/2010 2:10:48 AM

The leading social networking site in China, renren.com, started out as a blatant Facebook clone - but it now has tens of millions of users. Despite obvious similarities to Facebook, there is one significant difference from the U.S. in how Renren and other Chinese SNS are used. The bread and butter of these sites is social games using virtual items.

Indeed, Farmville originated in China!

In this first post of a series, we outline the most popular social network sites in China. In follow-up posts, we'll look at Twitter clones, online video, and censorship. This series is based on a discussion I had with Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based expert on China's Internet.

Sponsor Kaiser Kuo is a ChineseAmerican who lives in Beijing.

He currently works for one of

China's leading online video services, Youku.com, as a consultant on International Business. Previously he was Group Director, Digital Strategy at Ogilvy & Mather China.

There are 3 social networking sites that are clearly in the lead in China, according to Kaiser Kuo. Renren.com is the leading social network. It began as a Facebook clone called Xiaonei.com - which means 'on campus' in Chinese. In August 2009 it changed its name to Renren, which means 'everybody.' Renren had 70 million registered users at that point. The site is owned by Oak Pacific Interactive and has had over $400M pumped into it by investors Softbank.

The site was founded in December 2005, shortly after Facebook began to ramp up. Its founder Wang Xing later founded Fanfou, a popular Twitter clone (see our next post in this series).

Xiaonei.com was literally a

typically come from a "first tier city."

Kaiser noted that Kaixin001.com is extremely popular among people who work for multinational companies, ad agencies and other white collar companies.

Accordingly, the site is valuable because of its relatively wealthy user base.

The third social network that is Facebook clone when it started, very popular in China is 51.com, sporting the same shade of blue which Kaiser said is mostly used a n d t h e s a m e l a y o u t . by people who live in "lower ReadWriteWeb guest writer tier cities" and even rural areas.

Gang Lu wrote on this blog in He noted that it has a "lower June 2008 that Xiaonei.com brow offering." "was like a simplified version of Each of these three hugely Facebook in Chinese when it popular social networks in was first launched." He noted China has its own niche; from that it had "the same layout, the mainstream Renren, to the same color scheme and even a more prestigious Kaixin001, to very similar logo," which he the populist 51.com. said "made people wonder if In our next post in this series, there was an official connection we check out China's Twitter with Facebook." clones. Discuss Kaixin001.com is another very popular social network. Kaiser said that its users are mostly "white collar middle class" and

turn it off. Because if I don't, it goes off while I'm in the shower and wakes everyone else up.

Take Bathroom Breaks on Different Floors to Get Heart Rate Up Photo by Russell J. Smith. fisher.seth lets us know how he keeps from feeling lethargic at

work: To get my heart rate up multiple times during my otherwise very sedentary working day, I only take restroom breaks on the ground floor of a five-story building (of which I'm located on the 5th floor). I take five flights of stairs

FROM continued from page 44

clocks. One is the regular kind, right next to my night stand. The other one is my phone which is on the other side of the room.

They both go off at the same time. BUT, I have another alarm on my phone that goes off 15 minutes later. So I have to go through the menus and stuff to

down, use the restroom, then back up the stairs, two-at-atime, as quick as possible. After a quick stop at the top to catch my breath, I'm back at my desk within 3 minutes.

First screens of Platinum's Vanquish aren't doing it for us Justin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:10:00 AM

It's not that the first screens from Shinji MIkami and Platinum Games' Vanquish look bad necessarily -- far from it. It's just that ... well, they look a little common, don't they?

We've flipped through that gallery below a few times but couldn't find an image that got us even a little more excited for the futuristic shooter than we were yesterday.

It wouldn't be so bad if that first trailer for the game hadn't seemed like such a breath of fresh air. Oh well, these are just a few still images. Let's withhold judgment until we see it in action, hmm?

Gallery: Vanquish (360, PS3) First screens of Platinum's Vanquish aren't doing it for us originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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XBRL continued from page 42

Disconnect For Small Cap Is Temporary XBRL was not any help when I was compiling the data for the 14 companies in the SaaS Index for the Saas Insights Report (a paid report for investors a v a i l a b l e f r o m CapitalMarkets.com.

Disclosure: The guest author wrote this report). The reason is simple. Only one out of 14 reported to the SEC in XBRL format. That company is Salesforce.com (CRM). The reason for that is also simple: The SEC currently mandates that companies with a market cap higher than $ billion report using XBRL. That is what creates the disconnect: 1. XBRL will enable the good investments from small cap companies to surface, but, 2. Only big cap companies report using XBRL (and they have no trouble reaching investors).

The good news is that disconnect is temporary. The second wave of new XBRL filers in 2010 is estimated to include 1,500 - 2,000 reporting companies, and the final wave in 2011 is for about 10,000 additional companies. Imagine the Information Discovery Tools When I go to my local wine store, the owner asks me what I want and we have fun with my standard reply that I want something "incredibly delicious and ridiculously cheap".

Investors want the same. Warren Buffett got to be one of the richest men in the world by finding a few of those.

When all companies file in XBRL (and some geeks have created some neat tools to help sip more effectively from that firehose), ordinary investors will be able to create really powerful filters to find those "incredibly valuable and ridiculously cheap" companies.

They won't find them among the big cap companies. They will find them among the thousands of small cap, micro cap (and yes, even nano cap) companies. When the value surfaces, they can reach out to IR who can them tell their story.

Of course, when all this pans out, the opportunity to find the bargains will disappear. That is the price of an efficient market.

But the value to all the companies trapped in small cap hell will be immense. They can focus on building value knowing that the value they create will surface.

And that will have a great impact on the innovation economy.

Photo credit: Chris Whiteside Discuss

Traders optimistic Greek crisis can be contained (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/3/2010 10:55:54 PM

21:15 GMT: Growing optimism that the fallout from the Greek debt crisis can be contained helped calm forex markets and

encourage broader risk appetite on Wednesday.

The FTSE World equity index rose 0.8 per cent, the euro and Greek sovereign debt firmed, and commodities gained as traders absorbed details from Athens on the austerity package

deemed necessary to secure support from its eurozone partners.

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HP EliteBook 8740w specs begin to take shape, ATI FirePro M7820 revealed Vladislav Savov (Engadget)

your lap has ever seen. This is aided by the low-voltage, but highly potent Core i7-720QM You've been wondering, we CPU and four DDR3 slots for know, why the newly unveiled up to 16GB of RAM on the 2540p and 2740p EliteBooks 8740w. You have until the end from HP weren't accompanied of the month to figure out what by their heavyweight compadre, to do with all that power, which the 8740w, but as it turns out the is when the rumormongers latter might be taking a bit expect this machine to be longer to launch due to its announced. inclusion of ATI's as yet [Thanks, Reznov] unannounced FirePro M7820 HP EliteBook 8740w specs GPU. Joining up with the earlier begin to take shape, ATI FirePro leaked M5800, this is likely to M7820 revealed originally form the backbone of ATI's pro appeared on Engadget on Thu, graphics refresh, with its innards 04 Mar 2010 08:26:00 EST. based on the successful HD Please see our terms for use of 5870, meaning it offers DirectX feeds. Permalink| HP Fansite 1 1 f u n c t i o n a l i t y , 1 G B o f (1),(2)| Email this| Comments GDDR5 memory, and probably the most graphical horsepower Submitted at 3/4/2010 8:26:00 AM

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Make Scrambled Eggs and Bacon in the Oven [Recipes] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:30:00 AM

Scrambled eggs and bacon are a hearty, heart-warming way to start a day, but they require a bit too much stove-top work and dish dirtying for a typical morning. Not so if you follow this oven technique, which keeps your eggs fluffy.

The TipNut blog's recipe calls for 12 eggs, but that's a number you can easily break down into smaller portions. Add a good bit of milk and a bit of butter, add the mixture to a greased pan, place in an oven warmed to 350 degrees, and then: When eggs begin to set (after cooking for about 10 minutes), take a spatula and push the eggs from side to side to scramble them (you'll notice the edges are where the eggs first start cooking), make sure to scrape

the bottom and sides well.

Continue cooking for approximately another 15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so to scramble as the eggs really start setting up.

The full post describes a method for also cooking bacon alongside the eggs. The advantage of the oven is not

having to work about the direct heat drying out the bottom of your eggs, and cooking bacon in the oven certainly condenses the clean-up.

If you've got a simplified morning breakfast recipe, we'll certainly take your tips in the comments. Fluffy Scrambled Eggs In The Oven[TipNut.com]

Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:55:28 AM

Greece saw strong demand for its make-or-break bond deal on Thursday as Athens took an

important step towards resolving its debt crisis.

Athens will borrow â‚Ź5bn in 10year bonds, calming investor fears that the country would not be able to tap the international capital markets because of its

Tim Stevens (Engadget)

temperature, etc.) as well as GPS navigation and, presumably, on the go games of Electric motorcycles are getting Tux Racer. It's a one-off built by more and more common, and Green School Motorcycles and while we don't think they'll ever Akershus University College, quite capture the rush of an a n d t h e r e ' s p l e n t y m o r e internal-combustion engine information about it in a video threatening to fly into bits as it at the source link below -- if you screams toward red-line, they speak Norwegian. deteriorating public finances.

Five Filters featured article: are starting to offer their own... [Thanks, dsbilling] Electric Green School Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: unique charms. This model is a PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Norwegian prototype, based on motorcycle shows its rebel a Honda chassis that had its tail n a t u r e b y r u n n i n g L i n u x Term Extraction. chopped and motor stripped, originally appeared on Engadget replaced by stacks of Nickel- on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:21:00 Metal batteries, then wrapped in EST. Please see our terms for some custom bodywork. The use of feeds. Permalink| digi.no| bike sports a touchscreen dash Email this| Comments powered by Ubuntu that offers both stats about the bike (speed,

Strong demand for 10-year Greek bond (Financial Times - US homepage)

Electric Green School motorcycle shows its rebel nature by running Linux Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:21:00 AM

Tech News/ Gadgets/

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49

Remains of the Day: 90 Million Copies of Windows 7 Edition [For What It's Worth] Adam Pash (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/3/2010 4:00:00 PM

Windows 7 sells more than 90 million copies, Verizon users suffer data outages, and Ubuntu changes its default color palette (pictured).

• Microsoft to Double Down on HTML5 With Internet Explorer 9 Right now Internet Explorer is at the back of the HTML5 pack, but expect "broad support for HTML5" in the coming-soon beta builds of IE9.

[Webmonkey] • Windows 7: More than 90 Million Copies Sold! Windows

7 continues making leaps and bounds on desktops, having sold over 90 million licenses. [The Windows Blog] • Ubuntu dumps the brown, introduces new theme and

branding The familiar brown of the default Ubuntu theme is retired, to be replaced by dark gray, orange, and purple. [Ars Technica] • Verizon suffering 'nationwide'

data outage (update: fixed) Verizon users, if you experienced problems with your data connection this morning, you weren't alone. [Engadget] • Ballmer: Google leads because 'they did it right first' Microsoft's Steve Ballmer New Potato's FLPR IR discusses his goals for Bing and why Google dominates search. dongle gives your iPhone home automation [The Microsoft Blog] • 5 tips for using Google Buzz capabilities on your phone A few tips from Darren Murph (Engadget) Google for all those Buzz-ers out there. [Google Mobile Blog] Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:00:00 AM NEW page 50

Google dude: “Desktops dead in three years” John Biggs (CrunchGear)

will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” Herlihy told a A charming young buck by the baffled audience, echoing name of John Herlihy of Google comments by Google CEO Eric Europe believes, like most Schmidt at the recent GSM people in the Western World Association Mobile World that desktop PCs will be dead in Congress 2010 that everything the next few years. However, he the company will do going b e l i e v e s t h e y ’ l l b e c o m e forward will be via a mobile irrelevant by the year 2013, lens, centring on the cloud, which may put a damper on computing and connectivity. s o m e P C m a k e r s ’ s a l e s Now I’m of two minds here. forecasts.

Yes, I agree the desktop is going desktops these days and a nice Smiling John, shown here, said: the way of the dodo. Laptops are docking system can go a long “In three years time, desktops strong enough to stand in for way to let the average Joe Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:58:38 AM

become desktop independent.

However, I have a constellation of devices connected to my always-on PC that I wouldn’t have connected to my iPad. Even simple backup hardware is hard to connect over the cloud.

Granted, he did say “research” and not “fragging zombies and rendering DVD menus for your own rip of What About Bob,” so there’s a good chance he meant that the general populace will use mobile devices for most Google-related activity and desktops for the things at which

desktops excel.

Desktops still have a place, but its shrinking. I could see a thin client sitting on an office desk sooner than later, with email, storage, and office apps in a cloud. But for uber-nerds heavy iron is what we crave and what we’ll buy. You can’t stick two water cooled graphics cards into a laptop and still call it a laptop.

What think you? Will PCs die out? via SiliconRepublic

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NEW continued from page 49

It's hard to say why we've seen a glut of these adapters hit all within the same week, but hey, the more the merrier! North Carolina's own New Potato Technologies (yes, we're serious) has followed up on ThinkFlood and Power A's efforts by introducing an Infrared iPhone / iPod touch dongle of its own. The difference? This one connects to the dock connector, and when used with the accompanying app, it can control lights, stereo systems, home cinemas and pretty much anything that allows dictation via IR. The best part just might be said app, as it allows users to search a database of over 14,000 device codes and just add the products they already own, which means that you'll probably only be stuck

programming that LaserDisc player you refuse to give up. It'll start shipping today from the company's own website for $79.99, or you can consult the middleman (read: Best Buy) on starting on March 28th.

Continue reading New Potato's FLPR IR dongle gives your iPhone home automation capabilities New Potato's FLPR IR dongle gives your iPhone home automation capabilities originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| | Email this| Comments

Codes here! Get your Blur multiplayer beta codes here!

James Ransom-Wiley (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:43:00 AM

Our Blur multiplayer beta activation code* giveaway needs no introduction -- it just needs a link: Get to it >> What's up? You didn't click the link yet? Here's what you need to know: The beta is free. It's only on Xbox Live. And our codes are limited! Get. To. It. *Codes are not redeemable those boxes in mint condition!) through Xbox Live. Use your What's next for Real remains to code to register for the beta at be seen, as the company just Blurgame.com. The online beta spun off Rhapsody to be its own begins Monday, March 8. Xbox thing, but surely whatever it Live Gold membership required. comes up with will not involve Codes here! Get your Blur the copying of copyrighted multiplayer beta codes here! things onto other things. originally appeared on Joystiq RealNetworks to stop selling on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:43:00 RealDVD, your copyrights are EST. Please see our terms for safe -- for now originally use of feeds. appeared on Engadget on Thu, Read| Permalink| Email this| 04 Mar 2010 07:59:00 EST. Comments Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink PhysOrg.com| RealNetworks| Email this| Comments

RealNetworks to stop selling RealDVD, your copyrights are safe -- for now Tim Stevens (Engadget) Submitted at 3/4/2010 7:59:00 AM

Remember when RealNetworks said it wasn't giving up on RealDVD, that it would fight the good fight and appeal the August ruling finding its DVD copying application wasn't quite legal. Well, a lot of things can change in five months and now it seems Real is caving in to the inevitable crush of the movie industry, setting the lawsuit filed by the MPAA for $4.5 million and instantly turning existing copies of RealDVD into collectors items. (Hope you kept

Gadgets/ Economy/

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QOTD: HealthCare Debate Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:15:41 AM

Entry level Sony VAIO M netbook coming Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:20:07 AM

When Sony’s VAIO W was announced, its $500 price tag seemed a bit steep for a 10-inch netbook. You did get some nice extras, though, like a 1366×768 resolution and built-in Bluetooth. It seems that Sony’s gunning for the lower-end

netbook market with the recently-discovered VAIO M—a 10.1-inch affair with an Atom N450 CPU and 1024×600 screen.

Bluetooth will again be a standard feature, which is nice, and you’ll get a 250GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, Windows 7 Starter, 1.66GHz CPU, and b/g/n Wi-Fi, all at 2.86 pounds.

SonyInsider.com suspects it’ll replace the VAIO W, which almost seems like a step backwards given the W’s better screen. No US pricing or availability info yet, but if this new one’s priced anywhere near $500 it’s going to sell like coldcakes.

A UK-based store has it priced at £299, which is equivalent to

about $450 but that doesn’t mean it’ll cost $450 here. I’d guess it might be priced at $399 or so—still a bit expensive.

New Sony netbook VPCM11M1E[NotebookReview.co m via Sony Insider]

I totally empathize with this comment from MacroMan: “Speaking of painful ordeals, health care is now a banned topic, except as it impacts financial market pricing. There is really no point having (or in my case, hosting) a debate in which a significant portion of the participants essentially stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, and shout “ the government are morons so there’s no point even trying to change anything!!!”

They are of course welcome to that opinion, and should they wish to express that view, they should feel free to visit the appropriate venue to vent. But after another day of being told “ ooh, you Europeans just don’t understand anything” by people whose idea of exotic travel is a visit to Bob’s Country Bunker, I’ve had enough.

Off topic health care posts now incur the risk of deletion.”

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How-To: Use Time Machine Over a Where is the money in Network local blogging?

Andrew Flocchini (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:40:08 AM

I love Time Machine for its simplicity and the fact that it’s free. Apple did the right thing in creating a backup utility that was integrated into the OS and was actually useful. Anyone who has fought with Windows Backup can tell you, this has been needed for a long time. Apple created a beautiful backup utility and then made money on hardware that seamlessly works with it. For the home user, nothing could be more simple.

In the office environment however, users tend to backup to server shares and not local external drives. So, let’s take a look at how to use Time Machine over a network. Setting it Up It’s easy to do this in Leopard Xserve by sharing a backup folder. Under Server Admin, you can check the box “Enable as Time Machine backup destination.”

This worked great in Leopard but in Snow Leopard, Time Machine no longer saw this as an available destination.

Luckily, changing a property for

System Preferences solves this.

Enter this command in Terminal: sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetwork Volumes 1 This tells Time Machine to treat network shares as possible backup locations. Now, when I go to select a disk in the Time Machine preferences, I see my mounted AFP share listed.

Restoring So that’s how you get the Time Machine backup working, but what about restoring. Most people don’t test the restore functionality but it’s the most important thing you can do. To restore a Time Machine backup over an AFP connection, first boot off the Snow Leopard install DVD. Then, Launch Terminal by clicking on the

Utilities menu. In the terminal window, type the following commands. mkdir /Volumes/TimeMachine m o u n t - t a f p afp://user:password@afpserver.l o c a l / S h a r e N a m e /Volumes/TimeMachine This will mount your AFP share and make it available to restore from. Quit Terminal and then run “Restore from Backup” from the Utilities menu. You will see your backup listed and you should now be able to restore from it.

Time Machine is a very nice utility and if you aren’t using it, you should be. I even have other Xserves backing themselves up to this share using Time Machine. Sure, there are thirdparty applications out there can do so much more, but I’m for just getting the job done.

Integration with the OS is also important to me. It’s the main reasons I use Safari as my main browser. As with all backup solutions though, you need to test the restore functionality once in a while. If anything, you might sleep better at night knowing your data is not only safe but recoverable.

(Scripting News) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:42:48 PM

I'm sitting in a class at NYU listening to a discussion about local blogging and the NY Times. Rather than speak up to the room, I thought I'd just write a blog post that explains where I think the money is in local.

First, where I don't think it is -getting ad dollars from the local pizza parlor or stationery store.

There may be nickels and dimes there, but the mega-dollars come from slicing the pie differently from the geographic way people are slicing local news up now.

Instead, pick the businesses that generate billions of dollars in the local economy that are information-based, where the information currently being supplied is inadequate. That's not restaurants and entertainment.

When I started looking for an apartment in Manhattan, one of my requirements was FIOS. I naively assumed I'd be able to get it because my mother had it in Queens. Manhattan is a bigger, more lucrative market than Queens, so of course Verizon has it covered. Turns out, for a variety of reasons, it's not true. There's almost no FIOS in Manhattan. But if you went to

the Verizon site you'd never find that out unless you punched in every address in Manhattan and found out that very few return positive.

Time-Warner Internet is not bad, in some parts of the city, and awful in others. If you want great Internet service, where should you be looking? The only way to find out is word-ofmouth.

Business on the Internet is driven by finding places where dollars are spent, where people need lots of good information to make a decision they're going to spend a lot of money on.

Become the place where people go for that information and then sell space on your site to businesses that sell products and services in that space.

This is local. But it's local on a wide scale. This is where I think the money is.

E-reader News Edition

Apple/ Economy/

Virgin America Kills Flash as a Result of Apple/Adobe Conflict

Weather influenced initial claims data about in line

Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:00:31 AM

It’s probably not the first site to eschew Flash in favor of greater compatibility with Apple’s portable devices, but it’s one that’s definitely big enough to make waves. Virgin America has launched a new, Flash-free website with the stated intent of reaching more customers on Apple’s devices, where Adobe’s rich web content application is not welcome.

Honestly, I think this is only the beginning of a new tide that will see corporations retreating away from either Adobe’s or Microsoft’s proprietary solutions for displaying animations and other advanced media elements in their websites. When the goal is to reach as many customers as possible, it only makes sense to take into account the limitations of some platforms. Flash may run on many portable non-Apple devices, but that doesn’t mean it does it well.

As reported by the Register, the decision to go with only HTML is about inclusion, even though

the move by Apple that preceded it is all about exclusion: Virgin picked HTML to give users of iPhones and other mobiles the option in the future of checking in through their phone. The battle between Adobe and Apple has seen Flash deliberately excluded from the Jesus Phone.

Virgin’s new site is designed to let users check-in using their

to HTML5 once it’s cleared by the W3C. Virgin America’s Chief Information Officer Ravi Simhambhatia added, in defense of the decision, that “[t]his year is going to be the year of the mobile [for Virgin].” The sentiment echoes Steve Jobs’ recent declaration that Apple is now a mobile device company first and foremost. There’s just no denying that if companies want to be taken seriously on the mobile scene, they need to take into account, if not focus on Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch, and the upcoming iPad. The message is clear: Apple can succeed at stonewalling Adobe. The iPhone has been a massive success despite a lack mobiles, using a system that of Flash support, and the iPad is issues electronic boarding poised to do the same when it passes you’ll be able to show to l a u n c h e s l a t e t h i s m o n t h . airport security staff. The plan is Magazine companies aren’t awaiting approval by the U.S. happy about having to choose, T r a n s p o r t a t i o n S e c u r i t y but let’s be honest, print A u t h o r i t y . T h e s i t e i s publications and their online responsible for 70 percent of components hardly hold the Virgin’s $100 million quarterly industry sway that they did 10 r e v e n u e . R i g h t n o w i t ’ s years ago. The death of Flash is advanced enough to suit the coming, and Virgin is only the company’s needs, but Virgin first harbinger of said death. does anticipate making the jump

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Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:15:14 AM

Initial Jobless Claims totaled 469k which is about in line with expectations and down from last week’s spike to 498k. Because of the bad snow storms and disruption that resulted in the data, its best to average these weeks in order to get a better handle on the trend. The 4 week average is now 471k vs 474k last week but above 470k for a 2nd straight week for only the first time since late Nov/early Dec. Continuing Claims fell by 134k and were 100k below expectations but Extended Benefits rose by a net 197k.

Thus, there is still very little evidence in this weekly, timely data, of any big pickup in hiring outside of some modest improvement. Tomorrow’s Feb Payroll figure will also be impacted by the weather.

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Debra Messing Will Be All 'Wright vs. Wrong' Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:29:00 AM

'The New Adventures of Old Christine' - 'Sweet Charity' Recap Jason Hughes (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/4/2010 4:24:00 AM

(S05E15) As much as I don't want to compare Julia LouisDreyfus' new show to her old one, I can't help but notice some similarities with this week's installment. Much of what made'Seinfeld' work was in the way people outside of that core four reacted to just how deplorable those people really were. When we were in that inner circle with them, it all sort of worked and we didn't really realize how bad they were.

Now, Christine Cambpell is far more obviously a terrible person than Elaine Benes, but as with

'Seinfeld,' we often don't realize just how horrible she is. Even moreso, when put in the context of Christine, Richard and Matthew, Barb often comes across as the only sane and rational one. And yet, when you put these people out and on display in front of so-called normal people, they simply look awful.

Continue reading'The New Adventures of Old Christine' 'Sweet Charity' Recap Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Grace is ready to try again.

Actress Debra Messing has signed for a new television show called 'Wright vs. Wrong,' a sitcom for ABC, and if you think this is going to be anything like'Will & Grace,' think again. (Although if they're smart, it better be just as funny!)

The premise of the pilot for 'Wright vs. Wrong' is that Debra plays Evelyn Wright, a strongminded, ambitious political personality who espouses the conservative, right-wing agenda.

However, while she has this tough, conservative personality for the public, behind the scenes she's consumed by her foibles and flaws.

So she's half-Grace Adler, the flawed, foibled part. Grace's politics, at least what she tried to

Morning Radio: Bloomberg Surveillance Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:15:14 AM

> If you are anywhere near a radio this mornings, I will be the morning guest on “ Bloomberg Surveillance,” with hosts Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt from 7:35 – 8:30 am– 10:00 am.

UPDATE Tom Keene went articulate in her goofy way, was home ill — I am guest hosting of the liberal lefty variety. the full show.

C o n t i n u e r e a d i n g D e b r a You can catch it live, or via Messing Will Be All 'Wright vs. podcast at either Bloomberg or Wrong' at iTunes.

Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Its always a fascinating time Casting, Reality-Free with these two pros . . .

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'The Middle' - 'The Bee' Recap Jason Hughes (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/4/2010 2:30:00 AM

(S01E16) The Hecks went on their first road trip, as we found out something that Brick is really good at, and something that happens more often than families would like to admit.

I've had my birthday forgotten more than once by my busy family, and it made me feel about as small as Sue did.

However, I was never given the level of power Frankie gave her Jason Hughes (TV Squad) the first one to choke out a over the family trip to Chicago. genuine emotional response Guilt is certainly a powerful Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:01:00 AM f r o m m e . P h i l ' s c l o s i n g agent in making potentially poor (S01E16) What are you afraid monologue was touching, and decisions. of? That was the question facing touched on another fear that all As for Brick, it shouldn't come the three families that make up parents face: the fear of your as a real surprise that he's a this exceptional comedy series. children growing up too fast. great speller. With his nose Whether it's a fear of roller That, and the fear that they're constantly in books his parents coasters, tight places, passing going to kill someone in your probably couldn't even read, your driver's test, getting asked car. to dance, or that your daughter Continue reading'Modern isn't connecting to you, it's how Family' - 'Fears' Recap we deal with our fears that Filed under: OpEd, Episode defines us as people.

Reviews, Reality-Free, Modern ' M o d e r n F a m i l y ' a c t u a l l y Family surpassed itself in one regard Permalink| Email this| | this week. In 16 episodes, most C o m m e n t s of which were fantastic, this was

'Modern Family' 'Fears' Recap

how could he not be?

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Apolo Ohno: Pam Anderson's Breasts Are Too Big for Dancing With the Stars [Gossip Roundup] Maureen O'Connor (Gawker) Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:50:16 AM

He thought he could call her "heavy" if he said "top," first.

Ke$ha makes fun of Britney.

Kendra Wilkinson's baby weight gave her postpartum depression. " Jessica Simpson weighs in on fat jokes." Thursday's gossip roundup was teased as a child.

• He of the gold-tipped glove and more medals than any other American Winter Olympian, Apolo Ohno, stepped in it on Leno last night. Apolo won Dancing with the Stars in 2007, so he evaluated this year's contenders: "Between, what is it, Pam Anderson and Evan Lysacek? Pam Anderson, she's a little top-heavy. I think Evan is going to do very well. Plus, he's an Olympic medalist!" Seeing Pam's and Evan's names next to each other like that, I suddenly realize that Heatherette designer Richie Rich is totally going to make a cameo this year. Pam is his muse and Evan is a friend.

(Richie used to be a competitive skater.) Sidenote: Does anyone else get a gay vibe from Apolo?

It could just be a side effect of growing up with a single dad who styles hair for a living. [ TVWatch] • • Speaking of Apolo, he says he can leg press a ton. Literally. [

TMZ] • • Keha made fun of Britney Spears for lip syncing: "I think that's bullshit. ... I would never do that to my fans. ... It's treating people as if they are too stupid to realize you are not actually singing. ... My whole record is super honest. I am really honest." How badly do you want Keha to have a lip sync scandal right now? Keha, Ke@ha, Ke:-(ha! [ ShowBizSpy] • • Brangelina and their brood continue to consume Italian ice cream in Venice, for it is a timehonored tradition that all American families vacationing in Italy must gorge themselves silly on gelato. Luckily, the superior genome of the collective Jolie-Pitts means nobody will get fat. [ DailyMail] • • All you need to know is the headline: "Jessica Simpson Weighs in on Fat Jokes." [ P6] • • The investigation into the near -stun-gunning of Blanket Jackson continues, and it's all miserly Katherine Jackson's fault. Last year Jermaine Jackson's ex-wife Alejandra accused Jackson matriarch Katherine of trying to pay child support with gift cards to

Ralph's supermarket. Nary twelve months later, Jermaine spawn Jaafar would make like his granny and purchase a "credit card" from Ralph's (

TMZ] [ TMZ] [ TMZ] • • Rihanna's baseball boyfriend Matt Kemp threw her a surprise party for her 22nd birthday, featuring a heavily tattooed 4-ft. stripper and dirty dancing. [ DailyMail] • • Purple magazine is all Lindsay Lohan all the time.

With a Jesus-inspired cover under her belt, LiLo now embarks on revealing her butt [ fig.1] and boobs [ fig.2] in a photo shoot with Terry Richardson. [ HuffPo] • • Marie Osmond's 18-year-old son Brian Blosil, who committed suicide last week, had struggled with substance abuse and emotional issues throughout his teen years. With his mother struggling alongside him, Blosil went to rehab as a high school junior. This story is tragic in part because it is so common. [ People] • • NBC honcho Lorne Michaels' new spin on the Conan fiasco: "creative freedom." He explained "You can't imagine Conan being able to say what he said [on NBC] at Fox or Disney loophole!) which he would use or wherever." He continued, to buy a stun gun online. "And that chaos and that look of Further: 13-year-old Jaafar has a brother named Jermajesty, and APOLO page 57 is super adorable. Case closed. [

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Labor Strife Abroad For NYT [Protests] Hamilton Nolan (Gawker) Submitted at 3/4/2010 9:31:00 AM

A tipster sends this dramatic action photo of International Herald Tribune staffers protesting against their penurious overlord NYT Co. for "laying off people and forcing them to go to Hong Kong or quit." Solidaridad! Full internal protest email below!

This email went out this morning to the IHT rabblerousing socialists: Date: Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 7:53 PM Hello.

As you may or may not know, management is planning to kill 6 jobs in Paris and is offering the occupants of four of those jobs the same position in Hong Kong. The only newsroom position affected is Sports Editor. Their argument is that the jobs could be done better or as well from there, and that it would save money. Those who do not choose to go to Hong Kong would be fired.

During several Comite d'Entreprise meetings, representatives of the various employee groups disagreed with those conclusions, except for the economic grounds, and proposed alternatives. Finally,

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disorganization comes from a better place, in my opinion. It's not a button-down-enough culture to shut things down."

He's also pro-Betty White. [ P6] • • With his incarceration delayed due to a courthouse fire, Lil Wayne celebrated his final nights of freedom by attending a Jay-Z show at Madison Square Garden and going to the Empire Hotel, where he "threw a tantrum" after getting bounced.

Part of me wishes he got arrested, because the layers of criminality would have been kind of thrilling. [ Gatecrasher] [ P6] • • An unfortunate coda to yesterday's item about DMX's l a s t T u e s d a y , t h e y a s k e d members is that this could set a and join the demonstration. gospel rap charity concert: Once management to come up with precedent allowing management Another demonstration is t h e h o s t r e a l i z e d X w a s alternatives. There were no to pick and choose who they planned for Friday morning, involved, they canceled the substantial changes offered at a fire.

9:15. whole thing. [ TMZ] Comite meeting today.

As a result, a demonstration is No one thinks we can stop • While only one newsroom planned in front of the IHT management from doing what • Kendra Wilkinson says she position is affected, we are building at 2:30 p.m., March 4. they plan to do. But no one had postpartum depression: opposed to the way it is being We plan to meet in the lunch expects it to stop at this one "After giving birth, I never done and the consequences to room first before reassembling 'reorganization' plan. The hope brushed my hair, my teeth, or the employee involved. By outside. Bring something to is to send a message that this is took a shower. I looked in the picking just one position to make noise with. Signs will be not being taken lightly and that mirror one day and was really t r a n s f e r t o H o n g K o n g , provided. There is a brown bag our opposition will mount if depressed. I thought, Look at management has essentially lunch planned for 1:30 p.m. and their proposals become more me! I had this glamorous life in targeted one individual to w e a r e h o p i n g t h a t t h e severe.

LA and now [in Indianapolis] I transfer or fire if he refuses to journalists attending will leave Please join us. didn't... a couple times, I even go. The feeling among Comite that event if it is still ongoing said, 'I just have nothing to live for.'" A valuable mental hygiene lesson: When shallow people suffer from mental health APOLO page 58

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'Survivor''s Jeff Probst: 'Heroes' Are Becoming 'Villains' (ETonline - Breaking News)

most notorious people playing at the same time. The last time we did this was the All-Stars and "Survivor" premiered its 20th that was six years ago. A lot has season in February with an all- changed since then. On top of s t a r c a s t f o r " H e r o e s v s . this being another All-Stars, we Villains," which stars some of have added another layer: you the series' favorite players and a r e e i t h e r a " H e r o " o r a some of the most reviled. But "Villain," or you are not here. I the "Hero" and "Villain" labels think that was a pretty big may turn out to be a misnomer difference right off the bat. I a s r e t u r n i n g p l a y e r s a r e think what you are seeing this r e v e a l i n g s i d e s t o t h e i r season is how much "Survivor" personalities heretofore not has evolved. In a way, this is a seen. ET checks in with series bit of a retrospective. You have host Jeff Probst to get his take people like Colby Donaldson on just what is happening on back from season two, Tom "Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains." Westman from season 10, and ET: Can you talk in general then you have Russell Hantz about how you see this season from season 19. You can really and how it is differs from other see how fast the game has seasons? become compared [to the Jeff Probst: I think the biggest b e g i n n i n g ] . difference is we have 20 of our

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problems, the manifestation may also be shallow. You must listen to them on their own level, for even the shallowest people may lose themselves in the depths of depression, sometimes. [ AnythingHollywood]

Figures 1. & 2.

Bob Harig (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:18:16 PM

Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:02:00 AM

Baylor's Griner Ejected After Punching Opponent FanHouse Newswire (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/3/2010 4:00:00 PM

Filed under: Women's Basketball LUBBOCK, Texas(AP) -Baylor's super freshman Brittney Griner was ejected from a game against Texas Tech after she punched an opposing player in the face.

Texas Tech's Jordan Barncastle fouled Griner with No. 14 Baylor up 55-39 with 9:01 remaining in the game Wednesday night. As the Tech player was moving away from Griner, the Lady Bears' standout swung and landed a punch on Barncastle's face.

The game was stopped for

Jack Nicklaus believes Tiger Woods will play in the Masters

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'); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write('• '); document.write(' '); function showShareUI(){ H = about 10 minutes as officials v a r {APIKey:"2_B48MVBl19K9C reviewed tape. A technical foul was called on Griner and she Qj72UVrAqLh7VSAyZDfMkcl was ejected for a flagrant foul kt8foSSRaAbdWu36H_N3Ky_ and another technical was called ERWhDG", enabledProviders: on another Baylor player, " f a c e b o o k , t w i t t e r " , cid:"ESPN.Story"}; var I = Morgan Medlock. n e w The Texas Tech bench also got a technical for going out onto gigya.services.socialize.UserAct var containerID = the court after the punch was ion(); "gigyacontainer"; var thrown. var A = {}; Copyright 2009 The Associated D="Test "; if P r e s s . T h e i n f o r m a t i o n I.setUserMessage(""); (jQuery(":header:first").length > contained in the AP news report 0 ) { may not be published, b r o a d c a s t , r e w r i t t e n o r I.setTitle(jQuery(".article").find( } else otherwise distributed without ":header:first").text()); { the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active I.setTitle(decodeURIComponent hyperlinks have been inserted ("Nicklaus%20believes%20Tige r%20will%20play%20in%20the

by AOL. %20Masters")); } I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp n.go.com/golf/news/story?id=49 63113"); if (jQuery("#videoInfo").length > JACK page 59

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Peyton Manning of Indianapolis Colts has procedure on pinched nerve in neck, team says Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/3/2010 6:04:01 PM

• Email • Print • Comments '); document.write(''); } else if ( show_gigya ) { document.write('• '); document.write(' '); function showShareUI(){ v a r H = {APIKey:"2_B48MVBl19K9C Qj72UVrAqLh7VSAyZDfMkcl kt8foSSRaAbdWu36H_N3Ky_ ERWhDG", enabledProviders: "facebook,twitter", cid:"ESPN.Story"}; var I = n e w gigya.services.socialize.UserAct ion(); var containerID = "gigyacontainer"; var D="Test "; var A = {}; I.setUserMessage(""); if (jQuery(":header:first").length > 0 ) { I.setTitle(jQuery(".article").find( ":header:first").text()); } else { I.setTitle(decodeURIComponent ("Colts:%20Manning%20has%2 0procedure%20for%20pinched %20nerve")); } I.setLinkBack("http://sports.esp n.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=496

2557"); if (jQuery("#videoInfo").length > 0 ) { I.setDescription(jQuery(".article p:not(div.beta-opt p):first").text()); } else { I.setDescription(jQuery("p:first" ).text()); } if (jQuery(".article .image, .headshot").length > 0) { var theimage = (jQuery(".article . i m a g e , .headshot").find("img").attr("src ")); I.addMediaItem( { type: 'image', src: theimage }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } Associated Press INDIANAPOLIS -- Peyton Manning has spent 12 seasons being a pain in the neck of NFL opponents. Now the four-time league MVP is trying to alleviate the pain in his own neck.

The Indianapolis Colts announced Wednesday that Manning had surgery in Chicago to fix a pinched nerve, a procedure that is not expected to interrupt Manning's offseason workouts or his availability for next season.

Manning "This condition has existed intermittently for the past four years, but at no time did it

interfere with his training, practice or playing regimen," the Colts said. "While it never has affected Peyton's activity on or off the field, the Colts' medical staff, after post-playoff examination, thought it best to resolve the situation now."

The Colts said Manning spent Tuesday night in the hospital and was released Wednesday.

"All medical personnel involved believe the issue has been resolved," the team said.

"Peyton fully expects to participate in the Colts' offseason program this spring."

Manning has been a model of stability throughout his NFL career.

His streak of 210 consecutive starts, including the playoffs, is second all-time among NFL quarterbacks behind only Brett Favre. With Manning in charge, the Colts have made a leaguehigh eight straight playoff appearances, reached the Super Bowl twice, winning it all in 2006, and set an NFL record with seven straight 12-win seasons.

Indy also set league records for most consecutive wins (23) and most wins in a decade (115) last season.

But it is the second time in three years Manning has needed

offseason surgery.

In July 2008, Manning had surgery twice on his left knee because of an infected bursa sac.

The injury caused Manning to miss all of training camp. He later acknowledged losing 10 pounds during his recuperation and that he struggled with his balance and stepping into throws until midseason that year.

Manning's contract expires after the 2010 season and Colts owner Jim Irsay wants to extend the deal, calling it his top offseason priority. Irsay has said he is prepared to make Manning the highest-paid quarterback in the league, but negotiations are not expected to kick into high gear until after the free-agent market opens Friday.

Manning won his record fourth MVP in 2009 but his late interception, returned for a touchdown by Saints' cornerback Tracy Porter, sealed the Colts' Super Bowl loss last month.

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0 ) { I.setDescription(jQuery(".article p:not(div.beta-opt p):first").text()); } else { I.setDescription(jQuery("p:first" ).text()); } if (jQuery(".article .image, .headshot").length > 0) { var theimage = (jQuery(".article . i m a g e , .headshot").find("img").attr("src ")); I.addMediaItem( { type: 'image', src: theimage }); } A.userAction = I; gigya.services.socialize.showSh areUI(H,A); return false; } } By Bob Harig ESPN.com Archive PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- Jack Nicklaus has no idea when Tiger Woods will return to golf, but the Golden Bear expects to see the game's No. 1 player at the Masters.

"It would surprise me if he didn't [play]," Nicklaus said Wednesday. "Oh yeah, I can't imagine in a hundred years he is going to miss Augusta." “ I suspect he'll play something before Augusta. Your guess is as good as mine. I would be very surprised if he didn't play something before Augusta.”-Jack Nicklaus Nicklaus, 70, was playing in the Honda Classic pro-am at PGA National and addressed a variety of subjects afterward and a few JACK page 60

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The Count: How Did Canada Win Medal Count? Follow the Money (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:11:04 PM

Which nation won the Olympic medal race? Canada won the most golds, the U.S. the most medals, and other nations can make other sorts of claims, as I wrote several days ago. My point was to show that such a question doesn’t mean much, since there are so many ways to slice and dice the numbers.

Since writing that post, I’ve come across still more ways to rank medal hauls, adding evidence to the case that combining results from different sports doesn’t make much sense.

Getty Images Olympic medals may be priceless, but their metal value is the basis for one medalcount ranking.

On Yahoo during the Games, Chris Chase suggested cutting out any medals from judged sports, such as figure skating. At the time, that subtracted nine medals from the U.S.’s totals, and just two from Canada’s. At the end of the Olympics, Chase outlined a different system, one that awards 25 points for gold medals, 10 for silver medals and

JACK continued from page 59

related to Woods, who has been on an indefinite leave from the game. Woods reportedly Canada also wins according to returned home Saturday after a the metrics of Cyril Morong, an week of family counseling and economist at San Antonio has started practicing again.

College. He takes a purely "I've been very non-committal economic approach, weighting about everything because it's each medal by its actual market none of my business," Nicklaus value, should the medalists said. "My guess is as a golfer choose to melt them down. he's going to want to try and five for bronze (emphasizing (Morong counted a medal in a play Augusta if he has his other golds more than the 5-3-1 and 3- pairs or team event just once, things in order."

Woods, 34, is a four-time 2-1 weighting systems I tried). even though each winning Chase also doubled those point athlete gets a medal.) Using Masters champion. He has totals for what he called the estimates of the medals’ metal- played the tournament every Olympics’ marquee sports: m a r k e t v a l u e , M o r o n g year since in 1995, when he was figure skating, Alpine skiing, calculated that Canada won the an amateur. His last victory at speedskating and men’s hockey. equivalent of $9,635 (American Augusta National came in 2005.

By this scheme, the U.S. edged dollars), barely edging Team But Woods has not played in a Canada, 620 to 570.

USA’s $9,377. If the U.S. men’s tournament since winning the Canada wins by the reckoning hockey team had prevailed in Australian Masters on Nov. 15. of David Roher, of the Harvard overtime of the gold-medal Woods gave no hint as to when Sports Analysis Collective. game, the U.S. would have won he would play again last week in his first public comments since R o h e r u s e s a g o l d - h e a v y this monetary ranking. weighting system similar to That OT win was also crucial to the Nov. 27 SUV accident Chase’s — 4-2-1. He also Ton Tango, the sports numbers outside his home led to a counts each sport equally, no guru, whose count may seem scandal and admissions of matter how many actual medals askew but would make sense to infidelity. it hands out. So a medal in many Canadians. “There were "I suspect he'll play something hockey, for instance, counts for 85 gold medals handed out in before Augusta," Nicklaus said. more than one in speedskating, the non-men-hockey division, "Your guess is as good as mine. w h i c h h a s s o m a n y m o r e and one in the hockey division,” I would be very surprised if he m e d a l s . B y t h i s m e a s u r e , Tango wrote. “That one is worth didn't play something before Augusta."

Canada had 46 total medals, 86 gold medals to me.”

If so, the best guess is the with the U.S. second with a total Arnold Palmer Invitational, of 38. where Woods has won six times, including the past two years. It is three weeks away from, and two weeks prior to,

the Masters.

Woods, who has won 14 major championships, is four behind Nicklaus' record. Earlier this year, Nicklaus had said, "If Tiger is going to pass my record, I think this is a big year for him in that regard. If he doesn't play this year, obviously the chore is going to be a little tougher."

Nicklaus then referenced the fact that Woods has won seven of his 14 majors on this year's major venues: four at Augusta National, one at Pebble Beach (U.S. Open) and two at St. Andrews (British Open).

"He obviously loves Augusta, Pebble Beach and St. Andrews," Nicklaus said. "He basically owns all three of those places."

Nicklaus, who won the Masters six times, last played the tournament in 2005. This year, for the first time, he will serve as an honorary starter at the tournament along with four-time Masters champion Arnold Palmer.

Bob Harig is the golf writer for ESPN.com.

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In Beating Duke, Maryland Proves a Point David Steele (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/3/2010 6:15:00 PM

Filed under: Duke, Maryland COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Gary Williams couldn't resist, and he shouldn't have had to. A little over a year ago, when it seemed that his team couldn't do anything right, couldn't reach the end of the season without sweating out an NCAA tournament bid, didn't seem like it belonged on the court with programs like Duke, he took it all personally and imbued his players with the same sense of resolve.

So on Wednesday night, after his team held off the fourthranked team in the country, avenged an earlier thorough defeat on the road, tied archrival Duke for the ACC championship and waded through the throng of students who had rushed the Comcast Center floor, Williams praised the trio of seniors who spearheaded the 79-72 victory and offered the back of his hand to his longtime critics at the same time.

"Those three guys are special, because they've all come

Purdue, IU Suffer in Different Ways Greg Couch (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/3/2010 4:40:00 PM

Filed under: Indiana, Purdue WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - -The natural order here is that Indiana basketball has a God complex and Purdue has an inferiority complex. That's the through some things,'' Williams 12-3 in the ACC), ranked 22nd teams were trading the lead back starting point when these said afterward of guards Greivis and winners of five straight, was and forth throughout the final 10 schools play each other, as they Vasquez and Eric Hayes and given a good chance to beat minutes, managed to go out true did Wednesday night. forward Landon Milbourne. Duke (25-5, 12-3), even though to himself and his outsized Purdue crushed Indiana, as "They've heard, especially last the Blue Devils had won eight personality. He tossed in a three everyone does. This one was 74year, that they weren't good straight, including a 21-point -pointer with five minutes left to 55, but winning and losing enough. It's nice to see that they win at Cameron Indoor Stadium give Maryland a lead, launched wasn't as neat and orderly as it are good enough to come last month. This time, though, a twisting runner on the right sounds. Indiana is a shambles of through four years and win. the Terps' seniors, honored baseline with 3:49 left to put a program, and Purdue has had "We kind of stuck it to some before their final home game, them ahead again -- and, finally, everything lined up perfectly to people who didn't have some scored the first 12 points of the heaved up something again from f i n a l l y w i n t h e n a t i o n a l very nice things to say,'' he game as Maryland jumped the right baseline that barely championship, including the added. ahead 7-0, 10-2 and 15-5. qualified as a "shot'' with 38 Final Four in its home state.

The irony of it all, of course, They also were money in the seconds left, got it to bounce in, This has been the perfect year was that by the time this game bank at the end, particularly the and gave Maryland a 73-69 for this Charlie Brown of a arrived, Maryland(now 22-7 and volatile Vasquez, who when the cushion. program. And then, someone pulled the football away again.

Robbie Hummel, the team's best player, heart and soul, glue, you name it -- blew out his knee a few days ago. He tore his ACL PURDUE, page 62

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and is out for the year. Last year, he cracked his vertebrae when Purdue was looking good.

Now, Purdue is not going to get a No. 1 seed, not going to reach the Final Four. Deep down, everyone here knows it, though they say things like senior tough guy Chris Kramer said

Wednesday night about why he chose to come to Purdue out of high school when the team was awful.

"I could see the light at the end," he said.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light to be an 'original digital experience' Ludwig Kietzmann (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/4/2010 7:51:00 AM

Crystal Dynamics has announced its first new game since the completion and launch of 2008's Tomb Raider: Underworld. Set to debut in 2010, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light will see the roadworthy leading lady come to undisclosed platforms -- via download.

It wouldn't be the first time the posh pot-smasher and exotic animal extinguisher stars in a downloadable format, as Tomb Raider: Anniversary was digitally distributed in the form

of Tomb Raider: Legend DLC on Xbox 360 before getting a regular retail spot. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, however, is a standalone title that Crystal Dynamics GM Darrell Gallagher hopes will

defy expectations.

"This is a really exciting project for Crystal Dynamics, we have created something completely new and very different to what people might be expecting," he said. "Lara Croft is such an

glimpse of the game at next week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, along with an indication on what else Crystal Dynamics has in store. Since the studio is staffed for two projects, we can't imagine this being the only Tomb Raider game in the works. The other might even have "Tomb Raider" in the title.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of iconic character in videogames, Light to be an 'original digital w i t h L a r a C r o f t a n d t h e experience' originally appeared Guardian of Light we have on Joystiq on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 created what we believe is a 07:51:00 EST. Please see our t r u l y o r i g i n a l d i g i t a l terms for use of feeds. experience."

Read| Permalink| Email this| We expect to catch our first Comments

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Paris Fashion Week Fall 2010: Dries Van Noten’s Covetable Day-to-Night Collection ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 3/3/2010 4:35:15 PM

NPD: Online gaming up 10 percent in US Richard Mitchell (Joystiq)

with 85 percent of PC owners playing online. Among gaming consoles, the Xbox takes the According to Gamasutra, a online cake, with 43 percent recently released report from the playing it online. The PS3 and NPD Group claims online Wii both tie at 30 percent, gaming increased by 10 percent though it's worth noting that in 2009. Furthermore, the PS3 online use is up 10 percent number of games purchased via over the previous year. digital distribution increased by The question has to be asked: 20 percent in the same period, What are all those Wii owners marking a 19 percent increase playing? There can't be that o v e r t h e p r e v i o u s y e a r . many copies of Mario Kart Wii Meanwhile, the number of out there. Oh, wait... g a m e r s t h a t p l a y o n l i n e NPD: Online gaming up 10 decreased by 2 percent. The p e r c e n t i n U S o r i g i n a l l y overall increase in online appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 04 gaming was the result of gamers Mar 2010 03:00:00 EST. Please playing online longer -- an see our terms for use of feeds. average of eight hours per week, Read| Permalink| Email this| up from 7.3 the previous year.

Comments Breaking it down by platform, the PC sees the most use overall Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:00:00 AM

With temperatures still hovering in the 30s, the fall 2010 looks hitting the runway today in Paris make me want to start shopping now (I can’t possibly wait 6 more months).

Dries Van Noten’s collection, especially, feels just right for a day like today: office, market appointments, and evening jeggings). event. Here, the look I’d like to —Violet Moon Gayn or be wearing right now, instead of Photo: Imaxtree my white button-down and Follow ELLE on Twitter. jeggings (note to self: get hands Become our Facebook fan! on giant oversized clutch immediately and stop saying

Fashion, Film, and Music Luminaries Join the MASSIVEGOOD Movement Last night’s lyrically-inclined FASHION, page 64Blog) ELLE.com (ELLE News launch of MASSIVEGOOD, a

Peanuts! Beer here! Greek debt here!

Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/4/2010 5:51:08 AM

On the heels of yesterday’s Greek deficit plan and with Germany implicitly joining the list of rich uncle rescuers that include the US government (aka, the US taxpayer), Abu Dhabi, the IMF, and all other countries that helped their banking system, Greece will try sell up to 5b euros of 10 yr notes

at a spread of about 300 bps to the mid swap rate, down from the 350 spread priced in the sale of 5 yr notes they sold last month. The issue is well oversubscribed. They need to refinance up to 23b euros of maturing debt coming in the Apr/May time frame. Greek stocks are rising to a one month high in response but the euro is lower as a sell on the news. The BoE and ECB kept policy on cruise control. ECB Pres Trichet

will elaborate more at 8:30 on how he plans to maneuver thru wanting to exit some of their policies at the same time he deals with Greece, etc… and a very fragile economic situation.

Feb US retail comps look good so far.

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continued from page 63

Bill Clinton-backed charity which raises money for global health causes, brought out the fashionable set (Becka Diamond wearing a Thakoon dress and Jen Kao spring 2010 runway shoes: “I’m lucky that I’m a sample size”) as well as music heavy-hitter Will.i.am. The Black Eyed Peas front-man was on hand to record a song that will serve as an anthem for the global movement, while a short film by Spike Lee (starring Mary J. Blige and Susan Sarandon among others) was played. Starting tomorrow, sites

continued from page 64

like Travelocity will give travelers, at the point of sale, the option of giving just $2 towards fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Click here to join the MASSIVEGOOD movement, and here to watch the Spike Lee-directed short film.

—Violet Moon Gayn or Becka and her shoes Photo: Kelly Stuart Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Greece's fiscal crisis: Now comes the pain (The Economist: News analysis) Submitted at 3/3/2010 9:30:22 PM

Greece's fiscal crisis Greece’s new austerity measures may prove to be enough—if they are fully implemented Mar 4th 2010 | ATHENS | From The Economist print edition G E O R G E PAPACONSTANTINOU, the overworked Greek finance minister, likens the effort to steer Greece away from economic disaster to “changing the course of the Titanic.” Until this week it looked as if the country was headed for an

iceberg labelled default. Two austerity packages had failed to convince Greece’s European partners—or the financial markets—that measures to cut the budget deficit this year from 12.7% of GDP to 8.7% would work.

Critics in Brussels said that Greece’s Socialist government was relying too heavily on pledges to cut tax evasion and soak the rich, rather than slash spending, especially on publicsector pay and pensions. The markets pushed spreads on Greek bonds over their German equivalents to record highs.

GREECE'S page 64

Greece’s ten-year bonds were offering mouth-watering yields of some 6%, twice the German level.

On March 3rd, however, the mood changed. George Papandreou, the prime minister, at last threw his full weight behind austerity. His government announced some severe measures: a rise in the top rate of value-added tax, from 19% to 21%, more increases in excise tax on fuel, tobacco and alcohol, a freeze on pensions and an unprecedented 30% cut in civil servants’ Christmas, Easter and summer bonuses. This last is equivalent to a cut of one month’s pay for Greece’s 700,000-strong publict o t h e “ W h e r e c a n I v i e w sector workforce. historical referrer data past 28 Mr Papandreou had shrugged days?” FAQ for the full poop. If off earlier warnings from you’ve questions, please head Brussels (and Berlin) that more over to our Help Forum. had to be done. He changed tack Introducing the Stats API after blunt remarks by Olli The bigger news is that we’ve R e h n , t h e n e w E u r o p e a n integrated Stats nubby bits into economics commissioner who the Flickr API. Please check out visited Athens this week, that Paul’s post on code.flickr for extra measures were needed to more information. So, now’s the meet this year’s deficit target. t i m e f o r a l l y o u g r o o v y Mr Papandreou claimed that developers to code something Greece had now taken enough wonderful. “painful but necessary Photo from café•moka. measures” to qualify for support Five Filters featured article: from its European partners, but Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: without specifying what form PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, that might take.

Term Extraction.

Greece desperately needs €20 billion ($27 billion) in the next

Historical referrer data — you has it!

Heather Champ (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:01:38 PM

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, we implemented changes to the historical referrer data available to our Pro members. Part of that change included the removal of your historical referrer data. We promised then that we’d make that info available to you “soon”. Today, you’ll see a new link near the footer of your stats that links to a new page where you can download monthly files that will be available until June 1st, noon PDT. Please refer (no pun intended)

GREECE'S page 65

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Europe.view: Struggles, suffering and Skype (The Economist: Daily columns)

create such itineraries the messages they reinforce are strong but wrong. Visitors to Submitted at 3/3/2010 10:29:02 PM eastern Europe expect beautiful Europe.view Eastern Europeans old buildings (Hanseatic, Art should strive to present a more Nouveau, Baroque, Ottoman or modern face to visitors Levantine) and miserable Feb 3rd 2010 | From The history, plus fiery drinks, Economist online unhealthy food, peasant I M A G I N E t h a t y o u a r e handicrafts and folk-dancing. attending a conference (call it All the more reason, therefore, Agenda 2010) in the capital city to offer them something that (call it Klow) of a generic ex- s h a k e s t h e i r s t e r e o t y p e s , communist country (call it e m p h a s i s i n g m o d e r n i t y , Ruritania). The discussion will innovation, creativity, optimism be mostly about the present and and other notions not normally the future. After a night-owl a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e e x session on “the impact of the c o m m u n i s t w o r l d . economic crisis on regional Estonia seems to have got this security”, you will stagger to a message. Those attending last red-eye breakfast on “Engaging year’s Lennart Meri security Russia: how, when and where?” s h i n d i g ( d i s c l o s u r e : y o u r But the cultural programme in columnist is a regular and the afternoon is resolutely appreciative participant) had backward-looking. An excursion two options. One was a tour of to admire the beautiful historic Tallinn’s medieval Old Town buildings includes a chance to led by the former prime minister goggle at the horrible Stalinist Mart Laar (who is an expert on ones. A mandatory stop is its ghosts, as well as on flat something on the lines of “The taxes). But the other was a visit Museum of Ruritanian Struggles to NATO’s cyber-warfare centre and Suffering”, which shows the outside Tallinn. This year the country’s heroic and horrible treat will be a trip to the past from the dawn of recorded research headquarters of Skype, history to NATO membership, the (Estonian-invented) internet via occupation, obliteration and t e l e p h o n y c o m p a n y . S u c h a lot of historical myths. junkets highlight Estonia’s ultraWhen conference organisers modern aspects, rather than its

precarious present or unhappy past.

But elsewhere missed opportunities are legion. How many people attending conferences in Warsaw, for example, get to visit the spectacular university library (pictured, above)? It is one of the most impressive bits of modern architecture between the Baltic and the Black Sea, providing the visitor with a powerful impression of Poland’s intellectual and creative clout.

Varsovians are justly proud of it—but most visitors to the Polish capital never see it; they are too busy going around the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising.

The contrast with other parts of Europe is sharp. The Basque region of Spain has a history of tragic struggles and exotic ethnography to rival any excommunist country. But visitors head for the Guggenheim before Guernica. In Catalonia it is the throbbing cultural and social life of Barcelona that draws the crowds, not the historical agonies. In France, the Bastille and the Paris Commune are not forgotten, but it is the Pompidou Centre and I.M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramid that leave deeper marks in the visitor’s mind. Berlin’s

Love Parade attracted young people from all over the world, eclipsing memories of the city’s role in the Nazi era.

Communist-imposed modernity defaced and debased cityscapes, language, manners and much more in the last century.

Resisting it was a matter of national survival. But that era ended 20 years ago. Modern visitors find interesting, beautiful new things more attractive than sad, beautiful old ones.

The ex-communist region has some strong cards to play in contemporary culture: festivals such as Karlovy Vary (film) and Prague Spring (music) draw big international crowds. But such events are not enough to dislodge the dead hand of history. Cash-strapped governments find it easy to cut spending on cultural events, or spectacular new public buildings. But when successful, they put a country on the world map far more effectively than any number of conference sessions.

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two months to roll over expiring debt. If it can get it, more than half this year’s borrowing requirement of €53 billion will have been covered and the markets’ pressure will ease, say bankers. One way forward might be to persuade other euroarea countries to buy Greek bonds, perhaps by providing guarantees for euro-area investors. “We want to be able to borrow at the same rates as other euro-zone countries,” Mr Papandreou said, perhaps optimistically given Greece’s record of huge budget deficits and deceitful accounting. On the other hand, as he has also pointed out, Greece cannot afford to go on borrowing indefinitely at 350 basis points over Germany. The gains from austerity measures could be swallowed up by such a high debt premium.

Imminent visits by Mr Papandreou to Berlin, Paris and Washington, DC, could help to resolve Greece’s debt problem.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has considered the possibility of Germany providing bilateral help to Greece, though she insists she is not yet ready to talk about aid with Mr Papandreou. Germans still fret about moral hazard: a bail-out would mean that Greece gets away with years of irresponsible fiscal policy and GREECE'S page 66

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American health-care reform: The die is cast (The Economist: News analysis)

manoeuvres are necessary to pass his health bill. And finally, he declared that he wanted to Submitted at 3/3/2010 9:52:53 PM see “an up-or-down vote” in the American health-care reform “next few weeks”.

Barack Obama unveils his final Grand ambition aside, Mr strategy for pushing health Obama’s decision remains a reform in America huge gamble. The opposition Mar 4th 2010 | remains unbowed.

WASHINGTON, DC | From Representative Ron Kind, a The Economist print edition Democrat, says his party is “EVERYTHING there is to say willing to incorporate those about health care has been said Republican proposals into any and just about everyone has said final reform package—but that it…now is the time to make a prospect has not won over a decision.” So declared President single vote. John Boehner, the Barack Obama on March 3rd to Republican leader in the House, an audience of doctors and still wants to scrap Mr Obama’s nurses gathered at the White plan in favour of “step-by-step” House. After a year of dithering, r e f o r m . B u t S e n a t o r R o n he is now leaping into action.

Wyden, a bipartisan-minded His speech contained no policy Democrat, says incrementalism surprises, but is worth noting for cannot work. The pieces of t h r e e r e a s o n s . F i r s t , h e health reform are so interlinked i n s t r u c t e d c o n g r e s s i o n a l that any such scheme simply Democrats to embrace several “does less but costs more”.

Republican proposals—for Passing reform without example, modest measures to R e p u b l i c a n s u p p o r t w i l l reform malpractice laws and p r o b a b l y i n v o l v e H o u s e fight insurance fraud—that were Democrats passing an exact put forward during last week’s version of the health bill passed bipartisan summit on reform. by the Senate before Christmas.

Second, he made it clear that he Both houses must also pass a now wants Democrats to forge “sidecar ” or “corrections” bill ahead with whatever procedural to capture any other provisions.

This latter effort relies on a loophole, used by both parties in the past, that allows budgetrelated provisions to pass through the Senate with just 51 votes rather than a filibusterproof 60 (a margin the Democrats no longer enjoy).

There are several potential snags in the House. One is that the Democrats simply may not have the votes. The Senate bill contains no provision for a government-run insurer, which angers leftists; some want to revive this controversial notion.

Abortion could also scupper things, as the Senate bill’s provisions on the matter do not please some conservative House Democrats. And since the House bill passed three Democrats have died or retired, while only one Republican has.

The Senate may also prove problematic. In theory only financial provisions can be passed using the reconciliation approach; abortion, for example, cannot. So all eyes are on the upper chamber’s parliamentarian (its official adviser on procedure, currently Alan Frumin), whose rulings carry great weight. It must be

noted, however, that Republicans fired the previous Senate parliamentarian when they found his rulings inconvenient.

Despite these obstacles, Democrats now seem eager to push a package through. One reason, Mr Obama argued, is to prove to a cynical public that the federal government works: “At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem.”

A bigger reason, argues Mark McClellan, a former Bush administration official now at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, is the fact that Democrats are going to get attacked anyway for their past votes in favour of reform. “Why not pass it,” he asks, “since doing so now is clearly better for Democrats than failure?”

Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

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could set a bad precedent for other euro delinquents. The German constitutional court ruled two decades ago that the Maastricht treaty was acceptable only if its no bail-out provisions were respected—so any bail-out would have to be disguised to avoid legal challenges. Yet German banks are on the hook for so much Greek (and other Mediterranean) debt that some kind of taxpayer support may be unavoidable.

France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, seems readier to help—though Greece may come under pressure to buy more expensive French frigates for its navy. This is not a deal that Mr Papandreou likes, since Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, has just proposed that the two formerly hostile neighbours should make a joint agreement to cut defence spending.

To strengthen his hand with the rest of the euro zone, Mr Papandreou is threatening to turn to the IMF for a standby loan. The conditions are unlikely to be much harsher than the latest austerity measures, say Greek officials. But this could also be too optimistic. The IMF would probably tell Greece to sack thousands of public-sector workers and cut pensions sharply. Even so, as one Greek official notes, “at least with the GREECE'S page 67

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fund you can stop worrying about where to get the money to finance the debt.”

Greek trade unions are predictably furious over the bonus cuts, which come on top of a 4% pay cut they have already swallowed. Strikes will spread. Some strikers are unpopular, for example the taxidrivers who have been protesting over being obliged to give passengers receipts. There is more sympathy for pensioners, who face a double blow from a freeze in pensions and the impact of tax rises.

Militant pensioners unexpectedly broke through a

police cordon blocking the road to Mr Papandreou’s office as he was announcing the new measures. They will soon be on the march again, says their union. “You cannot make ends meet on 400 euros a month,” declared one retired plumber. So Mr Papandreou’s approval ratings have held up, with more than 60% of Greeks accepting that tougher measures are needed.

Fears loom over the timetable set in Brussels for implementing the new plans. Greece will shortly complete an overhaul of its tax legislation and come up with proposals to reform state

pensions, which now eat up over 11% of GDP. A shortage of competent bureaucrats makes it harder to ensure that any new targets are met. If Greece is to stay on course, Mr Papaconstantinou and his team will have to keep putting in long hours. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

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FYI: Why Do Ducks Have Orange Feet?

Bjorn Carey (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/3/2010 1:11:51 PM

Actually, many species of ducks have feet-and legs!-tinted a bluish green or gray. But for the ducks that do have orange feet, well, it's all about attracting the ladies. Chicks dig orange.

Kevin Omland is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, and he knows as much about mallardduck coloring patterns as anyone; it was his graduate thesis. "I looked at male

mallards and thought, gosh, they exhibit so many wonderful colors, I wonder which ones females care about," he says. Do lady ducks lust after the males' green head plumage? Or maybe it's the blue patches on the males' wings? Then again, what female duck can resist a nicely proportioned set of white "neck tie" feathers? After four years of documenting mallard courtships, Omland found that none of those mattered. All they cared about was the brightness of the guy's yellow-orange bill.

Bright orange coloring suggests that a male duck, also known as

antioxidants that can be beneficial to the immune system. "This indicates that his behaviors and genes are good enough for him to recognize and eat the right food, or that his immune system is strong enough to produce bright orange legs," Omland says. "The female sees this as a very attractive trait to pass on to her offspring."

Omland's work only looked at drakes' bills, but he thinks a drake, is getting all his there's enough circumstantial v i t a m i n s , p a r t i c u l a r l y evidence to say that ducks check carotenoids, such as beta- out each other's feet, too. "Bluec a r o t e n e a n d v i t a m i n A , footed boobies have, obviously,

very blue feet, and it's very well documented that they use their feet in courtship and that females do care about the coloration of males' feet," Omland says. "Perhaps mallards, like the boobies, have a foot fetish."

Think you can stump us? Send your questions to fyi@popsci.com.

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In February, U.S. Job Creation Best in South, Worst in West (All Gallup Headlines) Submitted at 3/3/2010 7:00:00 PM

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's Job Creation Index -- based on 15,884 U.S. employees' selfreports of hiring and firing activity at their workplaces -shows that perceptions of current job market conditions nationwide improved slightly in February compared to January.

Conditions continue to be best in the South and weakest in the West, are improving in the Midwest, and deteriorating slightly in the East.

Twenty-five percent of employees nationwide in February told Gallup their companies are hiring, an increase from 23% in January; 23% said their companies are letting people go (vs. 24% in January). As is now well recognized, firing is down considerably from the level seen during much of 2009. On the other hand, hiring remains in the same tight range it has exhibited over the past year.

South: Remains the Best Job Market Hiring in the South, at 27%, is highest of any region -- and essentially the same as January's 26%, while the 22% "firing" is tied for lowest with the Midwest. The South has generally had a stronger job market than other regions over the past two years, and higher year-over-year oil prices have

helped the keep the job situation in the South so positioned.

East: Continued Deterioration Job market conditions in the East continued to worsen in February, with 24% of employers hiring -- down slightly from 25% in January and 26% in December.

Simultaneously, 23% of employers are letting people go

-- up slightly from 22% in January and 21% in December.

The end of the financial crisis and the sharp gains on Wall Street had led to a substantially improved job market in this part of the country, but in recent months, some of those gains seem to have dissipated.

Midwest: Continued Improvement

Midwestern job market conditions improved again in February. The source of the improvement is an increase in hiring to 25% from 22% in January; firing was unchanged at 22%. Midwest job market conditions continue to benefit from the improvement in the manufacturing sector during recent months.

West: Worst of the Regions but Showing Modest Improvement Conditions in the West improved modestly, with 22% hiring in February -- up from 20% the prior month -- and 27% letting employees go (improved from 29%).

While manufacturing and exports are FEBRUARY, page 69

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helping job market conditions in the West, this region continues to suffer from some particularly weak housing markets.

Commentary Gallup's Job Creation Index shows a slight improvement in job market conditions in February, and this is consistent with Gallup's findings that underemployment remained flat and the unemployment rate improved slightly last month.

Wednesday's ADP report showed private-sector companies letting go of an estimated 20,000 employees in February -- the fewest in two years. In addition, the Challenger, Gray, and Christmas report showed planned layoffs decreasing to 42,090 last month.

Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report for February is expected to show an increase, possibly in part owing to the weather, which forced some businesses to close temporarily and made it difficult for employees to get to their jobs. Seasonal adjustments will

also influence the government's unemployment rate, while Gallup's employment measures are not adjusted in this way -not to mention that they are based on a significantly different survey methodology.

Regardless of what numbers the government reports on Friday, Gallup data show that hiring remains about as weak as it has been over the past year, and that about one in five Americans are underemployed. It is little surprise, then, that many Americans continue to see the economy, including unemployment, as the nation's most important problem.

Survey Methods For Gallup Daily tracking, Gallup interviews approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, each day. The Gallup consumer spending results are based on random half-samples of approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, each day. The Gallup Job Creation Index results are based on a

random sample of approximately 500 current fulland part-time employees each day.

Regional results for February are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews totaling more than 3,000 in each region.

For each total regional sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is Âą3 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones and cellular phones.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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Teleconferencing MeBot Conveys Your Non-Verbal Cues Over the Phone Clay Dillow (Popular Science New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)

glance, reproducing them via the robot sitting on the other party's desk.

If you lean toward the speaker Submitted at 3/4/2010 6:41:52 AM There's something cold and in an interested fashion, the impersonal about the telephone - robot leans in as well. It mirrors - like the inability to get in a hand gestures so you can pat coworker's face and tell him coworkers on the back, point an exactly how little you think of accusatory finger or simply him. But MIT's MeBot ensures throw your hands up in disgust. your icy-cold stares, interested And since MeBot is mobile, the nods and quizzical glances will u s e r c a n r o l l a r o u n d a never fall on deaf ears again. conference table or desk Using a Web cam and a engaging more than one person specialized software package, in a conversation at a time while MeBot conveys all your controlling interpersonal nonverbal signals via a tiny distance. Which means if needs desktop robot. The idea is to be, you can get in someone's i n c r e a s e t h e l e v e l o f face without flying halfway communication between parties across the country to do it. by relating all those nonverbal [ Hizook via CrunchGear] cues; MeBot can capture nods and shakes of the head or changes in the direction of your

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Artificial Intelligence Brings Musicians Back From the Dead, Allowing All-Stars of All Time to Jam Clay Dillow (Popular Science New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)

we all know, referred to Fats Domino as the real King of Rock and Roll. And so on.

New software, developed by Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:08:44 PM Want to know what a jam North Carolina-based Zenph session between Jack White and Sound Innovations, is something Stevie Ray Vaughan might have like a Pandora for live musical sounded like, or how Billie style; sophisticated software Holliday would interpret the analyzes musicians based on latest dreck from Avril Lavigne? how they sound on old, archaic A d v a n c e s i n a r t i f i c i a l recordings. The software can intelligence are resurrecting then reconstruct songs as they musical legends of the past, would have sounded if those tapping into old recordings to musicians had recorded in a establish a musician's style and modern studio and on superior personality, then applying those media. attributes to newer recordings of But it doesn't end there. Zenph old songs, or even to songs the is working on a means to not musician never played before. only recreate old performances, Every generation has its but to dissect a style to the point musical heyday. Then, just as that it can manifest an artist's one era is about to give way to personal touch into pieces he or the next, the older generation she never performed in life. declares that music is dead, Meaning the software could claiming the greats of one small potentially lift Jimmy Page out epoch in musical history will of Black Dog and replace him never be topped. This is why with, say, Jimi Hendrix, just so Kurt Cobain was never as good see how it sounds. as Jimmy Page who couldn't Zenph has already created three touch Lennon and McCartney "ghost" pianos that play the who could never compare to likes of Rachmaninoff to the Buddy Holly who owed a exact stylistic specifications -creative debt to Elvis who, as supposedly -- of Sergei himself.

The company plans to explore all kinds of markets with the technology, like licensing clearer versions of old recordings to films and creating software that will let you Clapton-ize your own guitar riffs. It's also working up virtual versions of more instruments,

meaning it's possible that in the future, the company could put together phantom all-star bands melding musicians across decades, or recreate the Beatles with virtual stand-ins for John and George.

Wired's Eliot van Buskirk points out that Zenph seems to

be opening up a can of copyright worms that may be more trouble than its worth -the estate of Kurt Cobain, for instance, probably wouldn't be thrilled to find out his musical style has been ripped by a piece of AI software and is currently touring the Midwest without permission. And previous efforts at creating music via AI haven't necessarily received a warm welcome from some audiences either, with critics claiming that computers can't put the heart into creative works like humans can, and that comes through in the sound.

Then there's the issue of nostalgia; a musician's sound reflects his or her time and place in history, so do we really want to know what Fats Domino would've sounded like had he recorded in a modern studio, with some actual bass and a sound more indicative of his natural talent? Actually, on second thought, that sounds pretty amazing. [ Epicenter]

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LED Shortage This Year Could Keep TV, Device Prices High Clay Dillow (Popular Science New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)

An Inconvenient Truth: Biofuels Have a Carbon Footprint info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines) Submitted at 3/4/2010 3:58:02 AM

Submitted at 3/3/2010 11:59:22 AM

The cool thing about economies of scale, and especially about cutting-edge gadgetry, is that generally the price goes down over time (remember the $500 iPhone?). But that may not be the case for ever-more-popular LED-backlit LCD TVs this year, or for LED light bulbs for that matter. Accompanying the surge of LED use in electronics, a shortage of light emitting diodes could put upward pressure on prices as device makers cut deals to get their hands on the essential little components.

The problem is a simple one of demand outstripping supply, but it's not such a simple problem to resolve. Global industrial capacity sits at about 75 billion units according to market research firm iSuppli. In 2009, technophiles swallowed up 63 billion units, but next year demand is supposed to hit 80 billion, creating a 5 billion unit gap that can only be met if production speeds are increased.

But that's not the only problem; demand is supposed to jump by

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another 20 billion units to top 100 billion in 2011, so even if manufacturers manage to ramp up production to meet demand this year, they face another double digit increase in production next year.

Though lots of our daily tech relies on LEDs, it's LED-backlit LCD displays in televisions and laptops that are really driving demand up; their superior picture quality and low power needs make them an obvious step forward over cold-cathode

fluorescent lamps used previously. LEDs are also popping up in car headlamps (Ferrari's latest makes them a key design element), and as the technology comes along, we'll see more light bulbs for the home.

While the shortage may not drive the cost of new devices stratospherically higher, we'll probably lose the incremental decreases in cost that we're used to seeing in our technology. So the price of an LED television

One of the biggest controversies within the biofuels industry is whether firstgeneration biofuels have a more substantial carbon footprint than petroleum.

On the surface, this seems to be a no-brainer. According to the Department of Energy, a gallon of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel emits between 18.4-21.1 pounds of C02 upon burning.

Transportation sources accounted for 29% of total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2006 and are the now might remain the same fastest-growing source of GHGs throughout the year and into in the U.S., accounting for 47% next. Which is annoying, sure, of the net increase in total U.S. but over the next couple of years emissions since 1990. These the market will likely find its estimates of transportation way back to equilibrium. And GHGs do not include emissions since that TV you've been from additional life-cycle eyeing won't be coming down in processes, such as the extraction price for awhile, we strongly and refining of fuel, transporting encourage you to pass the time the petroleum to and from the refinery, the manufacture of by reading a magazine. vehicles, and a whole slew of [ CNET via Treehugger] other variables that make petroleum production and consumption an environmental catastrophe.

Yet, creating biofuels like corn ethanol is an energy-intensive process. The steps involved INCONVENIENT page 72

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with growing a feedstock like corn on an agro-industrial scale -- think farm equipment, fertilizer, harvesting, transporting the feedstock to the biorefinery, converting the feedstock into ethanol/biodiesel, and further transporting the biofuel to a petroleum refinery or service station -- require a tremendous amount of energy, especially when more than 10 billion gallons of biofuel are being produced in any given year in the United States (see Ethanol and the Looming Blend Wall). Similar to the need to view the carbon contained in the adjacent processes that facilitate petroleum production and distribution (and not just combustion), any authentic carbon audit of biofuels needs to examine the carbon contained in the materials and components embedded within the up-front fixed and operating costs.

While this might seem straightforward, simplistic models can break down as one attempts to determine the source of energy used in the process (i.e., coal vs. renewable), the distance between the field and the processing facility, the way that the feedstock and biofuel are transported (truck vs. barge vs. railroad), etc.

While the variables involved in

calculating the true carbon footprint of biofuels are indeed complicated, the complexity is raised to an exponential power when the simultaneously abstract and tangible concept of "Indirect Land Use (ILUC)" is factored in.

The basic idea of ILUC is that as biofuels from crop plants proliferate, there is less cropland available to grow food for human and animal consumption.

As a consequence, land, such as forests, becomes converted into crops. For example, the U.S. is the largest grower and exporter of corn in the world; it used 86.5 million acres to grow 13.2 billion bushels of corn in 2009.

Approximately 30% of this crop is diverted to produce ethanol (note that some of this is then returned to the animal feed market in the form of distillers dried grains). The question is whether the carbon footprint associated with rainforests being cleared in Brazil (see Brazilian Ethanol Takes a Hit) and Southeast Asia to "replace" corn and oilseeds like soybeans that are no longer exported by the U.S. (due to ethanol and biodiesel production) ought to be counted when considering the GHGs of biofuels. If so, what methodology does one

use?

In Europe, the controversy over ILUC was reignited this week when a British government report was leaked to the Times of London claiming that although the European Commission requires each liter of biofuel to reduce emissions by 35% compared to petroleum, biodiesel via palm oil actually increases emissions by 31% due to forests being converted into plantations.

Why are forests so significant?

Forests can be thought of as the lungs of the earth, serving a two -fold function in mitigating carbon. As deforestation occurs, sequestered carbon contained in the tree is released into the atmosphere; concurrently, those cut-down trees are no longer able to reabsorb C02 from the air.

More than one acre of forest is cleared every second on earth.

This translates to 100,000 acres per day and more than 34 million acres per year -- a landmass the size of Greece.

While this is partially mitigated by new growth, the net loss is equal to 18 million acres.

Indonesia and Brazil are the third and fourth largest contributors to global warming.

These two countries account for 60% of all deforestation in the

world. Deforestation and land use changes are estimated to account for 12%-15% of global C02 emissions.

As such, when organizations like the pro-ethanol lobby group Renewable Fuels Association and Growth Energy publicly cast doubt on the existence of Indirect Land Use Changes and attempt to mobilize their friends in Congress to strip the EPA's authority (see COP15: EPA's Lisa Jackson Sings the Biofuel Blues) to include ILUC in the process of evaluating the carbon footprint of biofuels, it is clear that such groups are more interested in self-serving politics than environmental stewardship.

These groups' categorical dismissal of ILUC is reminiscent of the Gore-Bush debate in 2000, when Gore repeatedly cited economic data attacking the deficit consequences of Bush's prospective trillion dollar tax cut -- to which Bush responded again and again with charges of "fuzzy math."

Yes, calculating ILUC is messy. The California Air Resource Board (CARB) and EPA (see EPA Issues Renewable Fuel Standards) have vastly different conclusions about corn ethanol's carbon footprint when they factor in

ILUC. And while it is easy to attack any environmental model -- because by nature, models are based on a series of assumptions, variables, and projections -- something as serious as climate change and creating policy that seeks to mitigate it should not be left to special-interest groups that are allowed to define science according to their own agenda.

If science suggests that firstgeneration biofuels that come from feedstocks like corn, soybeans, palm oil, and rapeseed are found to have a higher per-unit carbon footprint than petroleum, we need to have the courage to be authentic about it and examine whether the billions of dollars of subsidies that we provide to these industries could better be deployed to those advanced biofuels -- such as algae -- that do not need scarce cropland or promote deforestation.

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Google Opens PowerMeter As Console Wars Heat Up info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines) Submitted at 3/3/2010 2:09:57 PM

Now any smart thermostat can link into PowerMeter.

Google has opened up the application program interface (API) to its household power management tool, a move that will make it much easier for home networking vendors to build links into their products that connect back to PowerMeter. AlertMe from the U.K. and The Energy Detective both make PowerMeterenergized products, and Google has been seeking more partners - but PowerMeter is hardly a household word yet.

Putting out the APIs is the equivalent of putting PowerMeter on autopilot. The terms are public and straightforward; vendors then choose whether or not to adopt them. And vendors generally adopt the popular APIs. It helps reach a broader audience and the software vendors ultimately often start doling out market development dollars.

Google, Microsoft, Intel and others have all launched efforts to control how consumers and businesses monitor and analyze their energy consumption. Why the rush? Neither Google nor Microsoft will charge consumers for PowerMeter or Hohm. However, advertisers will likely pay both companies for the opportunity to hawk energy efficiency services and other energy-related products to consumers who use their respective consoles. Both companies will also mine the data (after it has been scrubbed to protect privacy) to utilities.

Don't worry about a loss of dignity or privacy: you'll get a coupon for ten percent off on a new set of storm windows.

Intel, meanwhile, wants to sell chips into thermostats. Last year, Intel began to gripe about how homes were largely analog, often a prelude to a product push. Then at CES, CEO Paul Otellini showed off a prototype management console. Intel has already licensed it for free to an Asian contract manufacturer.

But will it work? Intel's strategy

makes a lot of sense. These devices will need processors and Intel can pop out chips at a regular pace at low prices. But thermostats and washing machines won't need extremely high levels of programmability.

So Intel will have to compete against ARM and others.

Google and Microsoft, however, have created business plans that require at least some level of customer interest and engagement. Can energy efficiency and home management engage the interests of consumers over a sustained period. Put it another way: when was the last time you reset your programmable thermostat? Maybe the companies like Tendril, EcoFactor and Silver Spring Networks that are more focused on systems that will let consumers forget about home management have a better idea.

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