Van Jones Returns to Spotlight With Posts at Princeton, Think Tank

Updated February 24, 2010
FOXNews.com
After a nearly six-month hiatus out of the public eye following his resignation from the White House last September, Van Jones has been appointed as a fellow with Princeton University and with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
Van Jones is back.
After a nearly six-month hiatus out of the public eye following his resignation from the White House last September, Jones has been appointed to posts at Princeton University and with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.
The controversial former green jobs adviser is also receiving an award from the NAACP Friday and plans to attend a forum on jobs creation with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., next month in New York City.
The sudden flurry of activity appears to mark the end of Jones' retreat from public life after a short stint as adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He resigned under pressure in early September due to mounting criticism over controversial remarks and positions, including his calling Republicans "assholes," making racially charged statements and signing a petition in 2004 supporting the "9/11 truther" movement, which believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The petition was the breaking point, and his resignation came shortly afterward.
But Jones, in an interview with The Washington Post, defended himself against the withering attacks he endured last year and distanced himself from the "truthers." Jones said he believes Al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, and "nobody else," were behind the Sept. 11 attacks. He said his name showed up on the petition because he expressed verbal support for a group that came up to him six years ago and said they represented "911 families" without realizing what they represented.
"Unfortunately, I didn't know what their agenda was," Jones said. "So then they went and added my name, without my knowledge, to this awful, abhorrent language they had on their Web site."911Truth.org has disputed this explanation. 911Truth.org spokesman Mike Berger said last fall that Jones "did agree with that statement and he did sign on to it."
But Jones told The Washington Post that he made a "big mistake" in not doing his "homework" on the organization before offering "support of any kind."
He said he doesn't have "any bitterness or anger" about his past.
Princeton University announced Wednesday that Jones has been appointed as a visiting fellow at the Center for African American Studies and at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs' program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy. During the one-year appointment, Jones will teach a spring course on "environmental politics."
In a statement put out by Princeton University, Jones said he looks forward to using his term at the Ivy League university to explore "green solutions" to help America's economy.
"We're looking forward to a year of intense engagement with Van," Eddie Glaude, chairman of the Center for African American Studies, said in a statement.
The Center for American Progress announced Wednesday that Jones would be a senior fellow and leader with its Green Opportunity Initiative.
CEO John Podesta called Jones a "pioneer" in the movement to create a clean energy economy.Before Jones ran into the wall of controversy last year, he was considered somewhat of a wunderkind in environmental circles.
In addition to writing "The Green Collar Economy," he has co-founded and worked with several groups dedicated to helping low-income and minority communities -- often through green jobs and better environmental policy. He got his start as a San Francisco-area activist, and in 2009 was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.
But some of his past comments had given critics pause about his fitness for a White House-level office, pointing to his radical activities a decade ago as well as more recent controversial stances.
Jones was a self-described "communist" during the 1990s and previously worked with a group dedicated to Marxist and Leninist philosophies. His comments, even in recent years, were often racially charged. He's blamed "white polluters and white environmentalists" for "steering poison" to minority communities. In 2005, he drew a distinction between white and black youths involved in shooting incidents by referencing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
"You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never," Jones said. "They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them!" he said. "Now, a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school."
Such statements did not draw widespread attention until after a February video surfaced showing him calling Republicans "assholes" during an address in Berkeley, Calif. Jones apologized, but faced down his past again when it was discovered that he signed the 2004 "truther" petition.
Now that he's returning to prominent positions, several high-profile organizations are backing him up.
Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, called Jones an "American treasure" in an online opinion piece. The NAACP plans to honor Jones with an Image Award Friday.
The Sierra Club also issued a statement congratulating Jones on his recent appointments.

Glenn Beck to Republican Party: Repent

By Christi Parsons 2-21-2010 LAtimes
Reporting from Washington - Talk show host Glenn Beck poked and prodded the Republican hierarchy Saturday night in a raucous address to fellow conservatives, comparing the party to an alcoholic who hasn't hit bottom and to golfer Tiger Woods before his public repentance.Calling himself a recovering alcoholic in that context, Beck said he believes in the concept of redemption but that he doesn't think the GOP has taken the first step toward achieving it."I have not yet heard people in the Republican Party admit they have a problem," Beck told a packed ballroom in Washington. "I have not seen a come-to-Jesus meeting. . . . 'Hello, my name is the Republican Party and I've got a problem. I'm addicted to spending and big government.' . . . They need that moment."The irreverent speech drew cheers, laughter and several standing ovations from the majority of the crowd gathered for the keynote address of the Conservative Political Action Conference, which organizers say drew 10,000 people over three days before closing Saturday night.During that time some of the best-known figures of the Republican Party -- members of Congress, governors, presidential hopefuls -- trooped through to rail against the Obama administration and to woo conservatives. The political figures were greeted by the audiences mostly as kindred spirits.Still, when hosts announced the results of the conference's presidential straw poll late Saturday, the audience went wild to hear the name of the winner: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former GOP candidate for the White House and prominent leader of the grass-roots libertarian movement. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney came in second, almost 10 percentage points behind.The poll was by no means scientific and only tested the temperature of about 2,400 of the conference's attendees.As a snapshot of those who traveled from the 50 states to attend the conference, though, organizers think it offers a hint about what's going on at the grass-roots level.More than half of respondents believe Republicans are within striking distance of taking back Congress, pollster Tony Fabrizio said, but participants are not necessarily happy with Republican Party leadership nor thrilled with the bench of presidential candidates.The crowd that came out for the Beck speech was clearly skeptical of the party establishment, exuberantly applauding the radio and Fox television talk show host throughout his address.According to Beck, the main villain is "progressivism," a word he wrote in big letters on a large chalkboard and labeled "a cancer" eating away at American ideals."Progressivism was designed to press past the Constitution," Beck said, charging that Republicans aren't giving Americans much of an alternative."Dick Cheney was here a couple of days ago," he said, "and he says it's going to be a good year for conservative ideas."That may be true, he said, but Republicans should know that it's not good enough to "not suck as much as the other side," Beck said.

Judge upholds expulsion of convicted NY senator

The Associated Press Friday, February 19, 2010; 12:19 PM

NEW YORK -- A federal judge has rejected an attempt to temporarily block the expulsion of a New York state lawmaker.
Colleagues voted to remove Hiram Monserrate (MAHN'-sur-aht) because of a misdemeanor assault conviction.
Judge William Pauley refused Friday to block the Democrat's expulsion.
A civil rights suit filed last week asked Pauley to reverse the lawmaker's removal and stop a March 16 special election to replace him.
He's backed by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Monserrate says the state Senate denied him due process and his constituents their right to representation.
Washington Post

Top Taliban commander captured in Pakistan: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top military commander of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has been captured in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret raid by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence forces, The New York Times reported on Monday.--2-15-2010
Citing U.S. government officials, the Times said Mullah Baradar, described as the most significant Taliban figure captured since the start of the Afghanistan war, had been in Pakistani custody for several days and was being interrogated by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence.
The White House and CIA declined comment on the report and the Pentagon also had no immediate comment.
The Times cited officials as saying the operation to capture Mullah Baradar was conducted by Pakistan's military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which was accompanied by CIA operatives.
The newspaper said U.S. officials described Mullah Baradar as ranking second in influence in the Taliban only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, and that he was a close associate of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks.
The newspaper said it was not clear if he was talking, but it quoted the officials as saying his capture could lead to other senior Taliban officials. The officials voiced hope he would provide the location of Mullah Omar.
U.S. Marines are currently leading ---WORLD

Airborne Laser zaps in-flight missile

by Jonathan Skillings
February 12, 2010 8:48 AM PST
Score one for the Airborne Laser.

In a milestone for the ambitious directed-energy project, now dramatically downsized, the Pentagon's Airborne Laser prototype weapons system destroyed a ballistic missile that was in flight. The shootdown took place February 11 off the central coast of California.
"The Airborne Laser Testbed team has made history with this experiment," said Greg Hyslop, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, in a statement released Friday. Boeing is the prime contractor for the Defense Department project.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency was equally enthusiastic about the results. "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense," the agency said in a statement, "with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies.

Unfortunately for proponents, the achievement is rather bittersweet. Where the Pentagon once had plans to build as many as seven of the one-of-a-kind Airborne Laser aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F, the high cost and technical uncertainties of the program prompted Defense Secretary Robert Gates last spring to cancel plans to build a second plane. The Pentagon kept the existing one around as an R&D platform.
But as a proof of concept, the Airborne Laser most certainly crossed a threshold when it KO'd the missile earlier this month.
On the evening of February 11, an "at-sea mobile launch platform"--the MDA didn't specify whether it was surface ship or submarine--fired a short-range "threat representative" liquid-fueled ballistic missile while the 747 was in the vicinity.

This sequence of infrared images shows a missile breaking up when zapped in flight by the Airborne Laser on February 11.(Credit: U.S. Missile Defense Agency)
Within seconds, the agency says, the aircraft detected the missile as it lifted off and used a low-energy laser (the Track Illuminator) to track it, followed by a second low-energy laser (the Beacon Illuminator) to assess and adjust for atmospheric disturbance. Then it engaged the powerhouse of the system, the megawatt-class High Energy Laser--Boeing calls it "the most powerful mobile laser device in the world"--which fires through a telescope located in the nose of the aircraft.
Within two minutes of the launch, while the missile's rocket motors were still firing, the chemical-derived High Energy Laser had heated a pressurized segment of the missile to "critical structural failure," the MDA said. The Track Illuminator and Beacon Illuminator are kilowatt-class solid-state lasers.
A short while later, a second, solid-fueled short-range missile took off from solid ground on San Nicolas Island, Calif., and the ABL likewise engaged it with the High Energy Laser, though it stopped firing the laser before destroying that missile. The MDA says that the ABL had met all test criteria, and besides, it had destroyed a similar missile in flight a week earlier.
Catching a missile during the boost phase has always been a central tenet of the ABL program--it's those first seconds and minutes, when the missile is moving most slowly and predictably, that make for the most vulnerable target. But that also was a significant argument against the system: How could the U.S. count on having a laser-laden aircraft in the right place at the right time to catch an enemy missile at take-off? Indeed, in canceling the second aircraft, Gates called the program's proposed operational role "highly questionable."
Last fall, the separate Airborne Tactical Laser aircraft, a modified C-130, hit a moving remote-controlled vehicle on the ground.
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon.

Wall Street's Race to the Bottom

By ELIZABETH WARREN 2-9-10
Banking is based on trust. The banks get our paychecks and hold our savings; they know where we spend our money and they keep it private. If we don't trust them, the whole system breaks down. Yet for years, Wall Street CEOs have thrown away customer trust like so much worthless trash.
Banks and brokers have sold deceptive mortgages for more than a decade. Financial wizards made billions by packaging and repackaging those loans into securities. And federal regulators played the role of lookout at a bank robbery, holding back anyone who tried to stop the massive looting from middle-class families. When they weren't selling deceptive mortgages, Wall Street invented new credit card tricks and clever overdraft fees.
In October 2008, when all the risks accumulated and the economy went into a tailspin, Wall Street CEOs squandered what little trust was left when they accepted taxpayer bailouts. As the economy stabilized and it seemed like we would change the rules that got us into this crisis—including the rules that let big banks trick their customers for so many years—it looked like things might come out all right.
Now, a year later, President Obama's proposals for reform are bottled up in the Senate. The same Wall Street CEOs who brought the economy to its knees have spent more than a year and hundreds of millions of dollars furiously lobbying Washington to kill the president's proposal for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).
Within the thousands of pages of print in the "Restoring American Financial Stability Act" now before the Senate, the consumer agency is the only proposal that would help families directly. Even those most concerned about the role of personal responsibility concede that it is hard for families to make smart decisions and to compare products when the paperwork on mortgages, credit cards and even checking accounts has morphed into reams of incomprehensible legalese.
The consumer agency is a watchdog that would root out gimmicks and traps and slim down paperwork, giving families a fighting chance to hang on to some of their money. So far, Wall Street CEOs seem determined to stop any kind of watchdog. They seem to think that they can run their businesses forever without our trust. This is a bad calculation.
It's a bad calculation because shareholders suffer enormously from the long-term cost of the boom-and- bust cycles that accompany a poorly regulated market. J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently explained this brave new world, saying that crises should be expected "every five to seven years."
He is wrong. New laws that came out of the Great Depression ended 150 years of boom-and-bust cycles and gave us 50 years with virtually no financial meltdowns. The stability ended as we dismantled those laws and failed to replace them with new laws that reflected modern business practices.
The reputations of Wall Street's most storied institutions are evaporating as the lack of meaningful consumer rules has set off a race to the bottom to develop new ways to trick customers. Wall Street executives explain privately that they cannot get rid of fine print, deceptive pricing, and buried tricks unilaterally without losing market share.
Citigroup learned this the hard way in 2007, when it decided to clean up its credit card just a little bit by eliminating universal default—the trick that allowed it to raise rates retroactively, even for consumers that did nothing wrong. Citi's reform resulted in lower revenues and no new customers, triggering an embarrassing public reversal.
Citi explained sheepishly that credit cards were now so complicated that customers couldn't tell when a company offered something a little better. So Citi went back to something a little worse. Without a watchdog in place, the big banks just keep slinging out uglier and uglier products.
With their reputations in tatters, the CEOs have decided to go on the offensive in Washington. They might have had some thoughtful suggestions for how to better shape a consumer agency. Instead, they have unleashed lobbyists who are determined to do anything to kill the consumer agency.
The latest lie is that the CFPA is "big government." The CEOs all know that the current regulatory structure, which they support, is big government at its worst: bureaucratic, unaccountable and ineffective. The CFPA will consolidate seven separate bureaucracies, cut down on paperwork, and promote understandable consumer products. In the process, it will stabilize the industry, rebuild confidence in the securitization market, and leave more money in the pockets of families. Complaining about short, readable contracts and efforts to slim down bureaucracy only further diminishes the banks' credibility.
This generation of Wall Street CEOs could be the ones to forfeit America's trust. When the history of the Great Recession is written, they can be singled out as the bonus babies who were so short-sighted that they put the economy at risk and contributed to the destruction of their own companies. Or they can acknowledge how Americans' trust has been lost and take the first steps to earn it back.
Ms. Warren is a law professor at Harvard and is currently the chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel.

Samsung Jumps Back to Profit in 4th Quarter

Published: January 29, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Samsung Electronics Co. returned to profit in the fourth-quarter on strong sales of flat screen televisions and mobile phones as well as higher prices for computer memory chips following a rare loss the year before.
The company, a major global producer of consumer electronics products and components that make them work, earned 3.05 trillion won ($2.64 billion) in the three months ended Dec. 31 on a parent basis, it said in a statement.
Samsung had a net loss of 22 billion won in the same period the year before. That red ink -- Samsung's first since it began reporting results on a quarterly basis in the third quarter of 2000 -- sent shockwaves through the company and came as the global economic slump hit demand.
Samsung said its "strong performance" during the fourth-quarter last year was bolstered by improving prices for memory chips and a seasonal increase in sales of consumer electronics.
Samsung said it sold nearly 11 million flat screen TVs in the quarter and became the first manufacturer to exceed the 10 million mark.
The company sold 69 million mobile phone handsets in the quarter, up 16 percent from the same period the year before. Total 2009 sales reached 227 million.
Looking ahead, the company said it expects "positive growth across its businesses in 2010," citing stronger demand for flat screen TVs, mobile phones and laptop computers resulting from the ongoing economic recovery.
The Suwon, South Korea-based company is the world's largest manufacturer of computer memory chips, flat screen televisions and liquid crystal displays. It ranks No. 2 in cell phones behind Finland's Nokia Corp. (NYSE:NOK)
Samsung said sales in the fourth quarter reached 25.32 trillion won, which was 37 percent higher that the 18.45 trillion won reported a year earlier.
In a separate regulatory filing, the company said that it earned 9.65 trillion won in all of 2009. It reported a net profit of 5.53 trillion won in 2008. Samsung also said sales last year rose 23 percent to 89.77 trillion won from 72.95 trillion won the year before.
Shares in Samsung, which released its earnings results about 30 minutes after the stock market opened, fell 2 percent to 792,000 won in late morning trading. The company's stock price rose 77 percent in 2009.

Haiti Task Force Commander Notes Progress

By Judith SnydermanAmerican Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 2010 – Humanitarian assistance efforts in Haiti are improving every day despite enormous challenges, the commander of Joint Task Force Haiti said.
"Today, we had 180 flights go through the airport with zero delays,” Army Lt. Gen. P.K. “Ken” Keen said yesterday during a “DoDLive” bloggers roundtable. “That's the first day since we started that we did not have a delay." For perspective, Keen noted that the single runway at the Port-au-Prince airport handled just 13 flights per day before the earthquake. U.S. airmen opened the airport less than 24 hours after the earthquake in response to a request for help from Haitian authorities. It then took several days to streamline the system for handling the crush of planes carrying supplies. Landing time slots now are now assigned based on priorities set by Haitian officials, he explained. As of yesterday, U.S. troops had distributed 400,000 bottles of water, 300,000 rations and 12,000 pounds of medical supplies, Keen said, adding that those figures count only U.S. contributions. Numerous nations and international aid groups also are delivering assistance, he said. But while the amount of aid is substantial, Keen said, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the needs of some 3.5 million people who are suffering, so the size of U.S. military force in Haiti -- in an operation now dubbed “Unified Response” -- will continue to grow. "We have about 1,400 military on the ground right now,” he said. “We have another approximately 5,000 that are afloat on various ships supporting us. We will grow that force over the coming weeks to where we will have about 4,000 to 5,000 on Haiti and another 5,000 offshore supporting us." Among the assets moving toward Haiti are the hospital ship USNS Comfort, which can supply up to 1,000 hospital beds. The USS Bataan also has arrivedA arrived, and a Marine landing battalion from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit is expected to go ashore today to one of the hardest-hit regions outside Port-au-Prince that has been beyond the reach of help until now. Keen clarified the boundaries of the role that U.S. troops will play. He stressed that their priority is to distribute aid in partnership with other agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development. "My mission is to provide humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and security in order to execute delivery of that [assistance and relief supplies]," he said. He added that the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti remains primarily in charge of security and that U.N. troops who had been successful in significantly reducing gang activity prior to the earthquake now are at work to contain pockets of violence that have cropped up in the disaster’s chaotic aftermath. Keen said he has not witnessed what some media reports characterize as a rising tide of violence. "All the places that U.S. forces have gone thus far have been very calm,” he said. “In fact, they've been overtly welcoming. People have been very orderly, and they’ve been very appreciative of all the aid that they've been given." Looking ahead, Keen said, he counts water purification units in the next group of priorities. Sixteen units had arrived yesterday, with five more due today. Opening the ports also is a critical need, he said. "We've got to have other means to get cargo in here and take pressure off the airport, " he explained. Assessment teams have determined that both the main port and a fuel pier are inoperable. Keen said he expects to have one of the ports operating with limited capacity by the end of the week, possibly using landing craft. Keen also told bloggers about another sign of progress in organizing the massive international relief effort: a new humanitarian coordination center that has been established using U.N. facilities. The idea, he said, is to have one place to funnel the immense outpouring of donation sto determine whether any given donation is needed and where should it be stacked if it is. Keen, who was in Haiti when the earthquake struck, said the response so far has been tremendous. "I am proud of what our nation and the international community has done," he said. (Judith Snyderman works in the Defense Media Activity’s emerging media directorate.)

Panic, Looting and Triage After Major Haiti Quake

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 13, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- The tiny bodies of children lay in piles next to the ruins of their collapsed school. People with faces covered by white dust and the blood of open wounds roamed the streets. Frantic doctors wrapped heads and stitched up sliced limbs in a hotel parking lot.
The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, still struggling to recover from the relentless strikes of four catastrophic storms in 2008, was a picture of heartbreaking devastation Wednesday after a magnitude-7 earthquake.
Tuesday's quake left a landscape of collapsed buildings -- hospitals, schools, churches, ramshackle homes, even the gleaming national palace -- the rubble sending up a white cloud that shrouded the entire capital.
On Wednesday, ambulances weaved in and out of crowds, swerving to miss the bodies lying in street and the men on foot who lugged stretchers bearing some of the injured.
Shocked survivors wandered about in a daze, some wailing the names of loved ones, praying or calling for help. Others with injuries fast growing into infections sat by the roadside, waiting for doctors who were not sure to come.
Search-and-rescue helicopters buzzed over the bodies of partially clothed victims who lay face-down in mounds of rubble and twisted steel.
Everywhere, there was panic, urgency, pleas for help.
''Thousands of people poured out into the streets, crying, carrying bloody bodies, looking for anyone who could help them,'' Bob Poff, divisional director of disaster services in Haiti for the Salvation Army, said in a posting on the agency's Web site.
Poff wrote that he was driving down the mountain from Petionville, a hillside city bordering the capital, when the earthquake struck.
''Our truck was being tossed to and fro like a toy, and when it stopped, I looked out the windows to see buildings 'pancaking' down,'' he wrote.
Poff said he and others piled bodies into the back of his truck and took them down the hill, hoping to get them medical attention.
There was no reliable count, but officials feared thousands, maybe tens of thousands, had died in the quake. Some Haitian leaders suggested the figure could be higher than 100,000. In the chaos, doctors rushed to tend to the countless injured.
The parking lot of Port-au-Prince's Hotel Villa Creole became a triage center. Under tents fashioned from bloody sheets, dozens lay moaning from the pain of cuts in their heads, broken bones and crushed ribs.
''I can't take it any more. My back hurts too much,'' said Alex Georges, 28, who had lain on the parking lot's sloping blacktop for more than a day waiting for help. Just a few feet away lay the dead body of another man who appeared to be about his age.
When the quake struck just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, Georges he was in a meeting with about 30 other students at a school in the neighborhood of Morne Hercule. The roof fell in, he said, killing 11 of his classmates instantly and critically injuring him and others.
Several thousand Haitian police and international peacekeepers poured into the streets Wednesday to clear debris, direct traffic and maintain security. But there was only so much they could do: Looters prowled through shops, then blended into crowds of desperate refugees lugging salvaged possessions. The main prison in the capital fell, and there were reports of escaped inmates, U.. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva.
Haitians who could still walk were streaming out of the capital by the hundreds, many of them balancing suitcases and other belongings on their heads as they headed down one of the capital's main streets. Police shouted orders to keep traffic moving at congested intersections as ambulances and United Nations trucks raced toward downtown Port-au-Prince.
In Petionville, people used sledgehammers and their bare hands to excavate a collapsed commercial center, scampering across the rubble as they tossed aside mattresses and office supplies. More than a dozen cars and a U.N. truck were buried underneath.
Up the hill, about 200 victims, including many small children, huddled together in a theater parking lot and rigged tarps out of bed sheets to protect themselves from the scorching sun.
''The immediate need is to rescue people trapped in the rubble, then to get people food and water,'' Sophie Perez, Haiti director of the U.S.-based humanitarian organization CARE, told her colleagues in an e-mail.
''Everything is urgent.''

Google’s Nexus One is the future: a lot more stuff on fewer devices

January 4, 2010
Times Online
Nigel Kendall: analysis
Google’s Nexus One mobile phone may or may not prove to be that elusive “next iPhone”, but the timing of tomorrow’s expected announcement is certainly significant.
Just 24 hours later Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, will address the annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The best three years lie ahead, Mr Ballmer told The Times in a recent interview. The idea is that as fields such as television, computing, music, video, telephony, video gaming and photography mature their digital formats, fewer devices will be needed to store and play content.
Portable devices — the MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile phones of the mid-Noughties — have already merged to become today’s smartphones. At this year’s electronics show we can expect digital convergence to invade our living-rooms. Manufacturers are working on internet-capable television sets that can be switched from broadcast to internet catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer as easily as changing channels. By the end of the decade, many experts predict, internet TV viewing will overtake broadcast viewing as the primary means of television consumption.
The jury is out on domestic 3D TV, which requires special glasses as well as special sets. It may be revolutionary — but having just replaced their old TV with a flat-screen, consumers may not be keen to fork out for a 3D set.

Debate Over Full-Body Scans vs. Invasion of Privacy Flares Anew After Incident

By JOHN SCHWARTZ nytimes.com 12/30/us/30privacy
Published: December 29, 2009
The technology exists to reveal objects hidden under clothes at airport checkpoints, and many experts say it would have detected the explosive packet carried aboard the Detroit-bound flight last week. But it has been fought by privacy advocates who say it is too intrusive, leading to a newly intensified debate over the limits of security.
Screening technologies with names like millimeter-wave and backscatter X-ray can show the contours of the body and reveal foreign objects. Such machines, properly used, are a leap ahead of the metal detectors used in most airports, and supporters say they are necessary to keep up with the plans of potential terrorists.
“If they’d been deployed, this would pick up this kind of device,” Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary, said in an interview, referring to the packet of chemicals hidden in the underwear of the Nigerian man who federal officials say tried to blow up the Northwest Airlines flight.
But others say that the technology is no security panacea, and that its use should be carefully controlled because of the risks to privacy, including the potential for its ghostly naked images to show up on the Internet.
“The big question to our country is how to balance the need for personal privacy with the safety and security needs of our country,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who sponsored a successful measure in the House this year to require that the devices be used only as a secondary screening method and to set punishments for government employees who copy or share images. (The bill has not passed in the Senate.)

Critics of H-P Software Soften Their Stance

By Justin Scheck
Two people named Desi and Wanda recently set off an uproar with a YouTube video claiming that Hewlett-Packard computers are racist, based on the performance of the company’s facial-recognition software. After a discussion with the company, they seem to be backing down a bit.
Desi is black and Wanda is white. Their video shows H-P’s software making a Web cam follow Wanda’s face, zooming in and out as she moved near or away from the computer. But when “black Desi gets in there, no face recognition anymore,” Desi says onscreen. Indeed, the camera does appear to stop moving when his face shows up.
In response, H-P issued a statement that “proper foreground lighting is required for the product to effectively track any person and their movements.” A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment on why lighting that was okay for Wanda was apparently insufficient for Desi.
After the uproar, a publication called The Grio tested the device for itself and concluded the software isn’t racist: “When our staff sat in front of the face-tracking camera, it responded effectively to people of all shades and colors.”
Through it all, we didn’t know who Desi or Wanda were. Now, it looks like they’ve come out.
A statement issued by Wanda to the Web site Mashable says that their names are Wanda Zamen and Desi Cryer, and they work in the sales department at Toppers Camping Center in Waller, Tex.
The statement says it was their intention “to provide a good natured chuckle to our fellow man,” and they did not imagine that so many people would watch and react to the video.
“We do not really think that a machine can be racist, or that HP is purposely creating software that excludes people of color,” the statement continues. “We think it is just a glitch.”
Somewhat more mysteriously, the statement adds: “H-P has been in contact with us about this matter, at this time that is all we are at liberty to say.”
How does the company characterize what happened? “We had a friendly conversation,” the H-P spokeswoman said. “We encouraged them to use better lighting.” ------From WSJ Blogs
---http://davidsradiotv2000.blogspot.com

HP Investigates Claims of ‘Racist’ Computers

By Brian X. Chen




December 22, 2009




The YouTube page -- The YouTube page-------- The YouTube page





WATCH THE VIDEO








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--A COMMENT A software problem with light and a missed opportunity for financial gain.

From wired.com GADGET LAB

US appoints Howard Schmidt as cybersecurity chief

The White House has appointed its cyber tsar, following a seven month search.
Howard Schmidt, a former eBay and Microsoft executive who advised President Bush, was appointed after others turned down the job.
Mr Schmidt has been set the task of uniting various disparate agencies and organisations to shore up the country's defence against cyber attack.
In May this year, President Obama pledged to personally appoint someone to the post.
In a letter posted on the White House website, John Brennan, assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism said that protecting the internet was "critical to our national security, public safety and our personal privacy and civil liberties".
"It's also vital to President Obama's efforts to strengthen our country, from the modernisation of our health care system to the high-tech job creation central to our economic recovery."
Mr Schmidt would have "regular access to the President and serve as a key member of his National Security Staff", he said.
The White House's acting cyber-security head, Melissa Hathaway, stood down in August after complaining that the post did not allow her to implement necessary changes. --BBC NEWS

Virgin Extends Government's Free Cell Phone Program

Sascha Segan - PC Magazine Sascha Segan - Pc Magazine – Wed Dec 9, 10:02 am ET

Free, government-funded cell phones may be the target of right-wing rage but they're real, they're out there and they're getting more free minutes.
Virgin Mobile on Wednesday announced Assurance Wireless, a government-funded program to offer Kyocera Jax phones with 200 minutes per month to poor or disabled people in New York, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. That's a big bump up from their major competitor, TracFone's SafeLink Wireless, which only offers around 60 free minutes per month, varying state by state.
Free phones and service are available to low-income families or folks participating in a range of government "welfare" programs, including Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
The free phones aren't a new, Obama-era benefit; they're actually part of a program that started back in 1997 called LifeLine which followed from the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The program was enhanced in 2005 during the Bush administration, and SafeLink started disbursing free phones in 2008. According to LifeLine's Web page, "similar programs have existed since at least 1985."
The program is funded by the Universal Service Fund, which you see as a surcharge on your phone bill. The USF used to subsidize landline service for low-income and disabled people. Now it's allowed to subsidize wireless service as well. That especially helps folks who move frequently, or are living in motels, bunking with family, or are homeless - in many cases, the most struggling folks in America.
Up until now, most cellular LifeLine service was provided through SafeLink, which operates in nineteen states. SafeLink's service provides fewer minutes than Virgin's, but their phones may have better coverage. Virgin, a subsidiary of Sprint, exclusively uses Sprint's network to make calls. Depending on where you live, TracFone may be able to use multiple networks to provide better coverage.
Other major cell phone companies all participate in LifeLine, but they provide discounted, not free service. Verizon Wireless, AT&T Sprint, Cricket and T-Mobile all offer discounted wireless service as part of the LifeLine program.
-From Yahoo News

Many people don"t like their cell service,according to Consumer Reports

December 3, 2009
Can you hear me now? Consumer Reports polled more than 50,000 readers and found that only 54% of its participants said they were completely or very satisfied with their cellphone service. I know you hear me now.
Almost two-thirds of respondents had at least one major complaint. The top gripe? About 1 in 5 readers cited high prices. As a result, relatively cheaper prepaid service contracts are becoming increasingly popular, the study reported.
Verizon received the nod for offering the best cellphone service, it received higher marks for voice connectivity, customer service, messaging and Web/e-mail service than T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T. But it's expensive.
T-Mobile ranked as the second-best overall service carrier. It offers some plans that are less expensive than Verizon's, which pleases many customers, but it received lower basic scores than its competitor.
Sprint and AT&T came in at the bottom. Sprint got a low score for customer service, while AT&T received complaints for its voice connectivity -- or lack thereof.
Ironically, even though AT&T is the Apple iPhone's exclusive service provider, the iPhone won top smart phone honors, with 98% of users saying they'd buy the phone again. Hmmm...a cellphone won top honors even though its voice connectivity is considered among the worst. My oh my, how the cellphone's purpose has changed.
-- Melissa Rohlin -LA Times - Tech

Power-guzzling TVs to be banned

Energy-hungry television sets will soon be banned across California in a landmark move by state legislators to reduce energy consumption.
The state will be the first in the US to impose a mandatory energy curb on TVs, an often-overlooked power drain.
Supporters say the move will help save California residents more than $8bn over 10 years in energy costs.
But some 25% of TVs currently on sale would not meet the minimum standards, an industry group in Virginia said.
The California Energy Commission will require that all new television sets up to 58 inches (147cm) be more energy efficient by 2011, consuming 33% less energy than current sets.
The standards will get even tougher in 2013, when regulators will require sets to be 50% more efficient.
"We have every confidence this industry will be able to meet the rule and then some," energy commissioner Julia Levin said.
"It will save consumers money, it will help protect public health and it will spark innovation."
Television usage currently accounts for 10% of home electricity use in California, according to the state's energy commission.
'Limit choice'
Environmental groups applauded the tougher standards, saying the new rules would help avoid the need for a new 500-megawatt power plant to be built and save nearly $1bn each year.
However, some consumer advocates and industry leaders opposed the move, saying it would limit consumer choice and increase the price of television sets.
"It could drive up costs," said Dave Arland, who represents the plasma television industry.
"The ones that are super energy efficient are the ones that are more pricey."
California has long pioneered environmental change, setting tough standards on everything from refrigerators to washing machines.
As a result, electricity use in the state has stayed level for nearly three decades, whereas it has risen elsewhere in the US. BBC News.bbc.co.uk

Sony Ericsson closes NC, other sites as HQ moves

By EMERY P. DALESIO (AP)
RALEIGH, N.C. — Cell phone handset maker Sony Ericsson will move its North American headquarters from North Carolina to Atlanta and close a half-dozen sites worldwide as it retrenches against what it expects will be a tighter market and cuts about 1,600 jobs globally.
The joint venture between Sweden's LM Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp. will consolidate product development operations by closing sites in Research Triangle Park; Seattle; Miami; San Diego; Kista, Sweden; and Chennai, India, spokeswoman Stacy Doster said.
The site closures are new elements of a plan announced in April to cut worldwide staff of 10,000 by 20 percent at the joint venture between Sweden's LM Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp., Doster said. About 400 jobs have been cut since then and about 1,600 remain to meet that goal by the middle of next year, she said.
The cost-cutting follows the loss of 2,000 jobs last year.
The 8-year-old company has about 425 workers left in Research Triangle Park after shedding hundreds of jobs in the past year. Operations include customer support, customers service, sales, finance and research and development.
Doster said she did not know how many were employed at other locations the company planned to close. She also did not know how many would be added in Atlanta when that site takes over North American headquarters functions.
"There's a project team looking at what makes sense in what areas of the business," Doster said. "We've got to figure all that out across the whole organization."
Atlanta was chosen in part because of its proximity to AT&T Inc., one of the company's largest customers, Doster said. The city also is desirable as a "gateway into Latin America" because of its international connections through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, she said.
Product development would be consolidated in Sony Ericsson operations in Redwood Shores, Calif.; Lund, Sweden; Tokyo; and Beijing, Doster said.
The company announced last month that its losses worsened to euro164 million ($245 million) amid falling sales in the third quarter, up from a euro25 million ($37.25 million) loss in the same period a year ago. Sales during the quarter dropped by more than 40 percent.
Sony Ericsson said its share of the global handset market came to around 5 percent in the third quarter, compared to 38 percent for market leader Nokia Corp.
-http://davidsradiotv2000.blogspot.com

Obama: Gunman in Fort Hood rampage to pay for crimes

Tue Nov 10, 2009 7:24pm EST

Continued from page one
Investigators tried to interview Hasan on Sunday at the military hospital where he was recovering from gunshots that subdued him during the attack but he invoked his right to speak to a lawyer, government officials said.
They declined to speculate about his possible motive.
The shootings took place at Fort Hood's crowded Soldiers Readiness Processing Center, where troops get medical checkups before deploying abroad. Authorities have decided to charge Hasan in a military court, officials said.
(Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by John O'Callaghan
-http://harlemblogosphere.blogspot.com

Know What Google Knows About You with 'Dashboard'

11.05.09
by Brian Heater

That whole "don't be evil" thing is all well and good, but when a company's whole goal is cataloging the world's information, it would--at the very least--be nice to know what Google knows about you.
The company has just launched Dashboard, which aggregates the different information its gathered from 20 different Google products, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, and Latitude.
You'll need to sign in to view your own personal information. Users can also edit account information from the page, such as privacy settings. Of course transparency doesn't mean that you can't still pat yourself on the back.The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we're delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this--and we hope it will become the standard," Google said in a statement.

Originally posted to AppScout.

Google Voice lets users keep phone number

Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:06am EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has introduced a new feature that will allow consumers to use its Google Voice service without switching to a special phone number, potentially broadening the appeal of the nascent, and controversial, service.
Google said late Monday that new users of its service will be able to have the calls that they don't answer forwarded to a special Google Voice electronic mailbox, essentially bypassing the voicemail provided by their phone carriers.
Google Voice offers a variety of voicemail management features, including unlimited storage and text transcription of voicemail messages.
The service also allows consumers to make low-priced international calls by routing portions of the call over Google's infrastructure and the Internet.
Until now, using Google Voice required adopting a special Google phone number. The new feature allows people to retain their existing phone numbers.
Craig Walker, a group product manager for real time communications at Google, said the company will provide users with a special code to enter into their phone which forwards unanswered calls to a Google-maintained voicemailbox.
Walker said the call-forwarding feature did not require striking special deals with the phone carriers.
"Virtually all the carriers already allow this," said Walker.
He noted that cell phone operators generally approve of call-forwarding since the carriers charge airtime minutes even after a call has been forwarded to another phone number.
"It allows them to continue running the meter, they charge per minute while I'm on that diverted call," said Walker.
Google Voice, which was launched in March, is available to a limited number of people who have received invitations from Google or from other Google Voice users.
Walker said the company hopes to make the service open to the general public relatively soon, though he would not specify when. He also declined to say how many people use Google Voice, but said the company has been pleased with the numbers.
The product has earned positive reviews in the technology press as well as some degree of controversy.
Google has said that Apple Inc rejected the Google Voice application for the iPhone, while Apple has maintained that it is still studying the software. The dispute has drawn the attention of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
And earlier this month, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives called on the FCC to investigate reports, cited by AT&T Inc, that Google Voice was blocking costly calls to phone numbers in certain rural areas in order to cut down on expenses.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic Editing by Richard Chang)
-http://davidsradiotv2000.blogospot.com

Verizon's Mystery Droid Takes Aim at Apple's iPhone

New Ad Campaign Targets iPhone With Tagline, 'Whatever iDon't, Droid Does'
By KI MAE HEUSSNEROct. 21, 2009

In an aggressive new ad campaign teasing a mystery phone with the potential to slay Apple's leading smartphone, Verizon Wireless appears to have thrown down the gauntlet.
Its Web and TV ad lists the iPhone's most notorious flaws, such as the lack of a physical keyboard, the inability to run several applications simultaneously and a camera that can't take shots at night, and then ends with the tag line: "Everything iDon't, Droid Does."
Verizon has not said anything about the phone outside of its ads, but some say the new device, which has the backing of Verizon Wireless, cell phone maker Motorola and tech giant Google, could shape up to be the iPhone's biggest threat yet.
The popular blog TechCrunch called it "the first phone that will pose a significant threat to Apple's iPhone" and the tech blog VentureBeat went even further, saying "it will likely have the glitz and power to bury the iPhone." --ABC NEWS Technology & Science

Pepsi apologizes for girl-getting iPhone app

(AFP) – 1 hour ago
SAN FRANCISCO — US soft drink giant PepsiCo has apologized for a free iPhone application crafted to help men seduce women and keep records of conquests but the program remained available on Tuesday.
Pepsi's "AMP Up Before You Score" iPhone application categorizes women into 24 types and then uses the Apple smartphone's Internet capabilities to link users to information about them and what they like.
AMP is an energy drink made by PepsiCo.
"Let's say you meet a girl who is way into being green and you need a vegan restaurant stat; we've got you covered," a voice-over maintained on Tuesday in an online Pepsi video about the AMP at YouTube.
"If you are anticipating a successful night, the Before You Score app gives you up to the minute information, feeds, lines and much more to help you amp up and talk to 24 different types of ladies."
Types of women listed in the application include punk rocker, bookworm, aspiring actress, artist, and sorority girl.
A "Keep a List" feature in the program reportedly prompts users to add women's names and encounter details to a "brag list" if they "get lucky."
People offended by the application shared their ire with PepsiCo, which fired off an apology on popular microblogging service Twitter.
"Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go2 get women," the message read in shorthand typical of 'tweets" which are capped at 140 characters.
"We apologize if it's in bad taste and appreciate ur feedback."
The AMP app remained available at the App Store, according to a check Tuesday by AFP.
Online commentary ranged from amused to outrage.
"It's just Pepsi trying to lighten things up in the world," a person maintained in a chat forum accompanying the AMP video at YouTube.
"Whether this is a joke or not... this is not cool," countered another member of the online exchange.
-http://davidsradiotv2000.blogspot.com

Twitter in Google, Microsoft licensing talks: report

Thu Oct 8, 2009 3:33pm EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microblogging service Twitter is in advanced talks with Google Inc (GOOG.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) about licensing its data feed to the companies' search engines, a Web blog associated with the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Twitter's discussions with Microsoft and Google are being conducted separately and would allow each company to incorporate the 140-character messages, or "tweets," that Twitter is known for into their Internet search results.
The ability to cull through the flood of tweets as they are posted, known as real time search, is gaining popularity as an important new way to search the Internet for up-to-the-minute information on the latest news events and happenings.
The AllThingsDigital blog quoted unidentified sources as saying the companies are discussing several types of deals. Details could include Twitter receiving a payment of several million dollars and various types of revenue-sharing agreements to allow Twitter to benefit from the ad revenue that Microsoft and Google generate from search results.
Twitter has emerged as one of the fastest-growing Internet social media services. But the company has yet to generate any significant revenue from its free service. Twitter has cited advertising and premium features as two potential money-making plans.
Last month, Twitter received $100 million in new funding from investors including T.Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners, based on a $1 billion valuation for Twitter, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Representatives from Twitter were not immediately available for comment. Google and Microsoft declined to comment.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Postponement for the Google books settlement

September 25, 2009 11:18 am
Today a New York judge postponed a scheduled hearing in the Google books settlement because of pending changes to the agreement. Our tech blog reports:
In response to concerns raised by federal antitrust regulators, the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers are likely to make "significant changes to the current settlement agreement," wrote Judge Denny Chin. Holding a hearing on the agreement as currently written, he concluded, would make little sense.
Earlier this week, the publisher and author groups requested a delay in the proceedings so they could address copyright and antitrust issues raised by the Department of Justice in a brief filed last week.
The Google books settlement would create a rights registry for books, much like ASCAP for songs. The registry would administer payments for usage -- downloading and printing -- to the authors of books that are out of print. That Google would keep the fees for those books that have no clear owner -- "orphan works" -- is one of the contested issues of the proposed agreement.
There are other, less book-focused concerns. The Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust issues And industry rivals Yahoo and Microsoft have banded together, organizing some more vested players like the New York Library Assn., to oppose the proposed settlement.
We'll be listening for news on Oct. 7, when the court has said it will discuss how to proceed with the case.
-- Carolyn Kellogg-----From Los Angeles Times -BOOKS

FCC Chairman Calls for Formal Net Neutrality Rules

Grant Gross, IDG News Service
Monday, September 21, 2009 7:30 AM PDT

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will move to create formal net neutrality rules prohibiting Internet providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content and applications, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Monday.
Genachowski announced a notice of proposed rulemaking, a process to formalize a set of broadband policy principles that the FCC has embraced since August 2005. In addition to the four policy principles. Genachowski called for two additional principles to be included in a formal set of net neutrality rules.
"The Internet is an extraordinary platform for innovation, job creation, investment, and opportunity," Genachowski said in a speech before the Brookings Institution. "It has unleashed the potential of entrepreneurs and enabled the launch and growth of small businesses across America. It is vital that we safeguard the free and open Internet."
The notice of proposed rulemaking will look not only into net neutrality rules on traditional wired broadband networks, but also explore whether to impose new rules on broadband networks offered by mobile phone carriers, the FCC said. Genachowski said he wants all six principles to apply to all platforms that access the Internet.
Mobile broadband services offered by carriers such as Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile have not been subject to the FCC's net neutrality principles.
The FCC has enforced the existing broadband policy principles on a case-by-case basis, but it has never made formal net neutrality rules. Broadband provider Comcast filed a lawsuit challenging the FCC's authority to enforce the principles after the agency ruled last August that Comcast had to stop slowing peer-to-peer traffic in the name of network management.
The Comcast lawsuit was filed late last year, and a ruling is pending. Comcast argued that the FCC needs to create a rule or get authority from the U.S. Congress to enforce net neutrality. In addition to Genachowski's new rulemaking, a bill pending in the U.S. Congress would give the FCC that authority.
Several broadband providers have opposed formal net neutrality rules, saying they could hamper provider efforts to roll out new services and manage their networks, and to protect against attacks and bandwidth hogs.
But Genachowski said there have been examples in recent years of broadband providers blocking or slowing applications, including peer-to-peer software and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service. There has been one example of a broadband provider blocking political content, he noted.
"Notwithstanding its unparalleled record of success, today the free and open Internet faces emerging and substantial challenges," he said. "The rise of serious challenges to the free and open Internet puts us at a crossroads. We could see the Internet's doors shut to entrepreneurs, the spirit of innovation stifled, a full and free flow of information compromised. Or we could take steps to preserve Internet openness, helping ensure a future of opportunity, innovation, and a vibrant marketplace of ideas."
A Comcast spokeswoman said the company would comment soon. Representatives of AT&T, Verizon Wireless and CTIA, a trade group representing mobile carriers, weren't immediately available for comment.
There are four existing broadband principles that would be formalized:
-- Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
-- Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
-- Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
-- Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.
In addition, Genachowski proposed two new principles. The first would prevent Internet access providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management. The second principle would ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement.
Genachowski will seek to launch a notice of proposed rulemaking during the FCC's October meeting. The notice will ask the public and interested companies for feedback on the proposed rules and their application, such as how to determine whether network management practices are reasonable, what information broadband providers should disclose about their network management practices and how the rules apply to differing platforms, including mobile Internet access services, the FCC said.
From PC WORLD
-http://harlemblogosphere.blogspot.com

Robotic arm fetches Japanese cargo ship at space station

Unmanned H-II spacecraft delivers supplies for station's Japanese laboratory
By Sharon Gaudin September 18, 2009 01:47 PM ET
Computerworld - An unmanned Japanese cargo spacecraft yesterday was plucked out of space by a robotic arm and attached to the International Space Station.
The cargo spacecraft, dubbed the H-II Transfer Vehicle, was launched a week ago on its maiden voyage from the from the Tanegashima, Japan, Space Center. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spacecraft carried about five tons of supplies for the Japanese Kibo laboratory at the station.
The H-II arrived at the space station late Thursday afternoon, and Flight Engineers Nicole Stott, Robert Thirsk and Frank De Winne, part of the space station crew, teamed up to use the station's robotic arm to grab the craft as it hovered 30-feet from the station. The Canadarm 2 robotic arm pulled the cargo ship in and attached it to the station.
The cargo, which is being transferred onto the space station, includes several pieces of equipment for that will be used in experiments, such as the study of gases in the Earth's ozone layer.
The H-II Transfer Vehicle, which was designed and built in Japan, is about 30 feet long and about 14 feet in diameter.
The Canadarm 2 technology has been heavily used by astronauts on the station in recent months.
For example, the crew of the space shuttle Discovery used the robotic arm earlier this month to move replacement parts and supplies from the shuttle's cargo bay to the space station. They also used the arm to help them remove a spent ammonia tank from the outside of the space station and replace it with a new one.
And in July, three different robots, including Canadarm 2, were used to help the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour install the final pieces of a Japanese laboratory to the station. For the nearly 11 days Endeavour was docked with the space station, at least one, if not two, robots were at work almost every day.
--http://davidsradiotv2000.blogspot.com

Keeping Google out of libraries

The proposed settlement between Google and US publishers must be resisted, argues Bill Thompson.- BBC NEWS TECHNO
Wednesday, 2 September 2009 10:50 UK
Google is in the middle of a massive project to scan and digitise every book it can get its hands on, whether old or new, and if it gets its way then the US courts will soon endorse an agreement between the search engine giant and the US book industry that will allow it to do this without fear of prosecution for copyright infringement.
Authors and publishers will get some money in return, and we will all benefit from the improved access to digitised books that Google will provide.
The deal sounds like a good one, but not everyone is happy with it. The Department of Justice in the US has begun an investigation to see if it is anti-competitive, and last month a number of library associations got together with Amazon, Yahoo! and Microsoft to form the Open Book Alliance which argues that it should not go forward.
The details of the settlement are complex, and it is almost impossible to be sure what would emerge from it because many of the provisions involve setting up things like a Book Rights Registry, and we don't yet know what they will look like.
World's librarian
But whatever the detail there remains a fundamental problem. It is not that the settlement will give Google indemnity from prosecution should it be found to have scanned books that are in copyright without the copyright owner's position, nor even that it gives Google freedom to exploit scanned content commercially.
It is, rather, that the settlement gives only Google these privileges, and places one company in a prime position to become the world's de facto librarian instead of encouraging open access, open standards and a plurality of services and service providers.
Neither Google nor any other company should be entrusted with that responsibility, and nothing in the detail of the agreement or the funds that will be made available to authors as a consequence can change this.
If Google is given a monopoly, either explicitly in the settlement or implicitly because any other scanning project would be forced to negotiate its own multi-million dollar agreement, then the deal must be rejected.

If we let Google have its settlement we will all be the poorer
Bill Thompson
The proposed settlement came about after Google began a project to scan and index millions of books, including many that are still in copyright.
It was sued by groups representing authors and publishers who felt that scanning books, even if the text was only used to create a searchable index which then pointed readers to the relevant text, was an unlicensed use and therefore illegal.
The book trade was also worried that Google might scan the books under the pretext of creating an index and then start offering them online or even selling them, even though it was always absolutely clear that such behaviour would be a breach of copyright.
Instead of fighting the case through the US courts and winning a great victory for those of us who believe that three hundred year-old notions of copyright should not be used arbitrarily to limit new ways of making use of creative works, Google announced in October 2008 that it had reached a settlement with the US Authors' Guild and the Association of American Publishers that would allow it to continue scanning with permission.
At the moment the settlement hangs in the balance, waiting for what is quaintly termed a 'fairness hearing' in US District Court on October 7.
At this hearing of the questions raised since the settlement was announced will be debated, including the question of how the relatively small Authors Guild came to speak for all published writers in the US, living and dead, in negotiating with Google.
One of the arguments being made in favour of Google, most clearly by US industry analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, is that Google deserves to benefit from having taken the risk of digitising books when the project's legal status was uncertain and that Google, unlike Microsoft and Yahoo!, has invested millions of dollars in the project and is committed to pushing forward.
Microsoft did indeed abandon its own book scanning project, Live Search Books, in 2008, largely on cost grounds but also because the legal uncertainties clearly exposed the company to potential liability in what was never a core area of its activity.
Tribal lands
But Lindsay's view seems hard to accept. Pretending that the world's libraries are some unexplored continent to be opened up and claimed by the adventurers from Mountain View may appeal to the frontier mentality of US commentators, but it is not a metaphor likely to have much appeal elsewhere.
For one thing the bookshelves of the worlds are already inhabited, just like the territory of the United States, and those of us who remember the fate of the Native Americans may not be happy to see Google build its railroad tracks over our tribal lands.
Even without the dodgy analogy, the project of digitising the information held in the world's printed books is too important to be dealt with purely as a commercial venture between rights holders and a potential supplier of services.
We are at an inflection point in world history, and the transition we are making from analogue to digital is happening so quickly and offers so many delights that there is a temptation to let the past moulder in archive boxes and concentrate solely on the new and digital.
For those who take that view then letting Google pay to digitise books is an uncontroversial decision, one that can deliver more digital stuff to search through without apparently costing anything.
George Santayana wrote 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it', but it may also be true that those who do not care to digitise their own past will end up paying a high price to regain what they give up so thoughtlessly.
If we let Google have its settlement we will all be the poorer. Not for a while, perhaps, but one day we will need more from this new library of Alexandria than Google is willing to offer, and find that the price it demands is more than we can pay.
Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet
-http://davidsradiotv2000.blogspot.com

What Is Broadband? FCC Wants To Know

The federal agency wants to develop accurate and uniform definitions for broadband to help in its development of a national broadband plan



By W. David Gardner

August 21, 2009 03:31 PM

The FCC has launched a campaign to define exactly what constitutes "broadband" and providers of the high speed service may not like how it is defined and how the FCC views their delivery of broadband.
In a notice Thursday, the FCC said it is seeking "tailored comment" on broadband in connection with developing a National Broadband Plan as it relates to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
"...Advertised throughput rates generally differ from actual rates, are not uniformly measured, and have different constraints over different technologies," the FCC noted in its posting and added that "it is unclear what the end points of the connection are over which throughput is measured or whether the performance of the end point is reflected in the stated throughput."
The FCC wants to develop accurate and uniform definitions for broadband to help in its development of a national broadband plan it expects to submit to Congress in February. The National Broadband Plan Notice of Inquiry has observed that "broadband can be defined in myriad ways."
U.S. broadband rankings have been slipping in recent years to the point that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found the U.S. was in the 19th place in the worldwide rankings with a 9.6 mbps advertised rate. Japan led the 2008 rankings with 92.8 mbps and Korean was second with 80.8 mbps.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has made the upgrade and spread of more robust broadband an important goal of his chairmanship.
From Information week

Google Steals Spotlight With Caffeine Boost

Tony Bradley, PC World Tuesday, August 11, 2009 1:35 PM PDT

Google announced this week a project it has been working on to develop a faster, more accurate, and more comprehensive search engine. The announcement of the project, code-named ‘Caffeine' (a clever play on words implying that the project will boost speed), seems a little out of character for Google which usually makes these sort of search engine tweaks under the radar. One thing that the announcement of Caffeine accomplished though is to divert attention away from Microsoft's Bing search engine and the Microsoft/Yahoo partnership news and put Google search back in the headlines.
I don't believe Google is feeling all that threatened by Microsoft's Bing, or even by the search/advertising coalition formed by the partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo. I think perhaps it should be, but I think that the hoopla around Caffeine has more to do with ego than paranoia. I think Google was tired of seeing headlines about Bing and Microsoft and Yahoo.
I also don't believe that Google launched the Caffeine project in response to Bing. A Google engineer, Matt Cutts, posted on his blog that Caffeine is simply part of the normal process of improvement that Google goes through on a regular basis. He clearly states that Caffeine is not a response to Bing and says "I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we've done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don't think we'll ever stop trying to improve."
Assuming that is true, it again illustrates that the public hoopla around Caffeine is more about getting attention than it is about rolling out any revolutionary change in the Google search engine. Matt claims in his blog that this is all just standard operating procedure at Google and the kind of thing that goes on all the time without generating any headlines.
That said, maybe Google is a little more concerned with Bing and the Microsoft/Yahoo partnership than they let on. Bing has garnered accolades and has been supported by one of Microsoft's more successful marketing campaigns. Experts and users alike concede that Microsoft seems to have gotten things right with Bing, and Bing has been slowly chipping away at web search engine market share. With Yahoo basically surrendering its share of the search engine pie to Microsoft, Bing could jump to 30% or even 40% market share. Google would still be in the lead, but Bing poses a reasonable threat to Google's established dominance.
Google is also spreading itself thin, taking on dominant players in multiple markets simultaneously. Google is now arch-rivals with its previous BFF Apple, and mortal enemies with Microsoft in almost every market the two operate in. The last thing Google needs is to have to defend its home turf of web search at the same time. Only time will tell how these battles will play out, but at least for now Google won the news spotlight back with Caffeine.

Twitter Continues to Battle DDoS Attack

Tony Bradley, PC World Saturday, August 08, 2009 2:39 PM PDT
More than two days after experiencing a complete outage as a result of a distribute denial-0f-service (DDoS) attack, Twitter and other social networking sites such as Facebook are still battling a surge in traffic related to the attack. Twitter has taken some steps to mitigate the spike in traffic and ensure that the site is not knocked offline again, but some of those steps are having an impact on third-party tools that link to Twitter through API's (application programming interface).
Evidence gathered thus far from Twitter and other sites targeted by the DDoS attacks seems to suggest that the attack is actually a politically motivated attack aimed at silencing a Georgian activist. The victim, known by the online handle Cyxymu, uses blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to express views related to the tensions between Russia and Georgia. In a blog post, Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer of Internet security firm F-Secure, said "Launching DDoS attacks against services like Facebook is the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don't like one of the newscasters.
To defend itself against the ongoing DDoS attack, Twitter has implemented various defensive actions, some of which are blocking third-party Twitter applications from being able to connect with Twitter API's. The mitigating steps are also affecting the ability of many users to post to their Twitter accounts via SMS (short message service) text messages.
Twitter is working diligently for a more permanent solution that doesn't impact third-party applications or SMS messaging. In the meantime though, Twitter has stated that as long as the attacks continue they can't guarantee that things will get better or provide any assurances that they won't get worse. The best they can do is to promise to do everything they can as fast as they can to ensure the site remains available.
Other steps that can be taken involve identifying and isolating sources of attack traffic and simply dropping all incoming packets from those sources. That can have some affect, but when an attack leverages a botnet and the attack traffic is literally coming from hundreds of thousands of sources simultaneously it quickly becomes cumbersome and impractical to try and filter the traffic in this way. Another temporary solution could be to filter all traffic intended for the suspected victim, Cyxymu, and block that so that it does not hog the network bandwidth or server processing horsepower.
When the dust settles, Twitter should look at ways they can build scalability and redundancy into their network to better withstand similar attacks in the future. Stuart McClure, VP of Operations and Strategy for McAfee's Risk and Compliance Unit and co-author of Hacking Exposed 6, says "Many of these newly emerging social engineering sites weren't built with security or high performance scalability in mind. They need to look at their current and desired states and make tough decisions that migrate them from homegrown applications to highly available cornerstones of commerce."
Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience.

Emergency alert provider sues Twitter over patents

Aug 5, 2009 5:07 pm
by Juan Carlos Perez IDG News Service
TechRadium, a provider of mass notification and emergency alert systems to school districts, municipal governments, the U.S. military and other organizations, has filed a lawsuit charging Twitter with patent infringement.

Twitter, the red-hot micro-blogging and social networking company, designed its system in a way that violates three TechRadium patents, an attorney for the plaintiff said.
“The problem is the Twitter architecture. The way they have it set up is technology that is squarely within TechRadium’s patents,” said Shawn Staples, an attorney with Mostyn Law, in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Consequently, organizations could use Twitter to do the type of mass notification that TechRadium provides via its IRIS (Immediate Response Information System) technology.
“There have been recently some municipalities and other organizations who have claimed they’ll use Twitter for emergency notification systems, and that’s technology that TechRadium has spent many years and a lot of money developing,” Staples said.
IRIS lets organizations broadcast a single message to multiple recipients who can receive it on a variety of devices like regular phones, cell phones and fax machines. It’s intended to quickly alert people about emergency situations.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, seeks among other things unspecified damages, recovery of attorneys’ fees and a permanent injunction against Twitter.
The patents Twitter is allegedly infringing are patent number 7,130,389, granted in October 2006 for a “digital notification and response system”; patent number 7,496,183, granted in February 2009 for a “method for providing digital notification”; and patent number 7,519,165, granted in April 2009 for a “method for providing digital notification and receiving responses.”
Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment
From Macworld Web Services.

Yahoo Labs chief sees real-time search opportunity

Fri Jul 31, 2009 8:10pm EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc is considering developing new real-time search capabilities, even as it outsources its existing Internet search technology to Microsoft Corp.
Yahoo's Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs, said that the company could potentially "mine" messages from Twitter, the popular microblogging service, to offer Web surfers search results beyond those offered by Microsoft's Bing.
Bing is the Microsoft search engine that is to provide Yahoo's standard search results, under the terms of a long-awaited partnership announced this week.
"I've always held that the interesting thing of Tweets is not necessarily searching them but mining them. So we could real-time mine them, then assemble what we mine into the search engine," said Raghavan in an interview with Reuters on Friday.
By "mining" the data, Yahoo could offer search results far beyond a simple list of comments on Web sites, for instance, but instead could analyze data and group results by criteria ranging from topic to geography.
While Raghavan stressed that he was not "pre-announcing" any product plans, he said his comments were intended to paint a picture of some of the things that Yahoo is considering in its new form.
On Wednesday, Yahoo and Microsoft announced a 10-year partnership in which Yahoo will use Microsoft's search and search advertising technology. The move will allow Yahoo to save some $425 million in operating expenses, the company said.
Raghavan said much of the savings will come from back-end infrastructure technology, now that Yahoo no longer invests in the resources to crawl and index the world's vast number of Web sites.
But he said that Yahoo will continue to develop innovative search and communications products.
"In terms of satisfying user intent, the hard work and in some sense the bigger growth opportunities for differentiation are not the back-end of crawling and indexing, but really surfacing and assembling content the right way to satisfy user intent," he said.
Real Time search is an increasingly popular online activity where Yahoo's approach to search could provide a compelling user experience, Raghavan said.
Unlike traditional Internet search, which allows Web surfers to find Web pages on various topics, real-time search focuses on the flood of constantly updated messages posted by people using social networking services like Twitter.
A number of smaller private companies like Collecta and OneRiot have developed real time search products, as has Twitter itself, which offers its own search engine to cull through its Tweets.

Amazon Apologizes For Kindle Flap

CEO Jeff Bezos said removing copies of e-books from customers' Kindles was "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles
By Deborah Gage Information Week July 24, 2009

In a brief but pointed statement Thursday, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos apologized for removing copies of e-books from customers' Kindles last week, a move that angered consumers and forced Amazon to defend what appeared to be arbitrary and controlling behavior.
Amazon's targets were the books Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell, two novels about the horrors of repressive societies.

The company deleted the books both from customers' Kindles and the Kindle store, where they'd been sold. An Amazon spokesman said the books had been added to the store by a company that didn't have rights to them and were unauthorized copies.
The irony of Amazon remotely deleting novels about repression was not lost on customers. Although they were offered refunds, several were upset just the same. "I liken it to a Barnes & Noble clerk coming to my house when I'm not home, taking a book I bought from them from my bookshelf and leaving cash in its place," one customer wrote on Amazon's Web site. "It's a violation of my property and this is a perfect example of why people (rightly) hate DRM."
On Thursday, as Amazon reported quarterly revenue that missed Wall Street's expectations and suffered a drop in share price of nearly 7%, Bezos was contrite.
"This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle," he wrote on Amazon's site. "Our 'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission."
Bezos' post has received over 250 comments so far.
Some customers also reported losing copies of other e-books on their Kindles, including novels by Ayn Rand and some of the Harry Potter books.
Amazon has promised not to remove books from customers' Kindles again, although it is not clear whether the company will also change how it monitors the Kindle store for unauthorized works.

Gates' Liberal College Town No Stranger to Racial Dust-Ups

Racism Allegations in Recent Past at Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
By PATRIK JONSSON
The arrest of an African-American professor at his home near Harvard University gives a rare view into racial tensions in a seemingly unlikely place: America's ivory tower and its liberal environs.
At least in the popular mind, flare-ups between police and minorities tend to occur in the 'hoods and barrios of poverty-ridden American cities. But the liberal bastion of Cambridge, Mass. (per capita income: $31,156; black population: 12 percent), the home of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has its own complex encounters with racial attitudes.
Five years ago, Harvard's S. Allen Counter, a black professor of neuroscience, was stopped by Harvard campus police in what many saw as a racial-profiling incident.
About three years later, an assistant professor at MIT, James Sherley, raised a ruckus over his failure to get tenure, a decision that he claimed was race-based.
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Those claims were never proved, but MIT has embarked on what it calls the Initiative on Faculty Race and Diversity to address the university's problems in hiring black faculty.
And last week, Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested after one of his neighbors called police saying that two black men were trying to break into Gates' house. The scholar, who had a tense encounter with the police, was charged with disorderly conduct.
To be sure, there's debate about whether Gates engaged in a battle of wills with a Cambridge police officer. But whatever the case, authorities dropped the charges Tuesday.
Gates, for one, is still angry and considering his legal options.
These incidents indicate that for liberal institutions and communities like Cambridge, race can be a complicated and, at times, paradoxical issue.
On the one hand, U.S. universities have created hundreds of departments for African-American studies -- of which Harvard's is arguably the most preeminent. But on the other hand, racial diversity among faculty at U.S. universities -- which columnist Stephanie Ramage calls "bastions of equality and enlightenment" -- is, on the whole, lagging.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/story 7-25-2009

Hacker break-in of Twitter e-mail yields secret docs

Underscores problems broadcasting life's secrets to the world, say experts
By Gregg KeizerJuly 16, 2009 01:16 PM ET
Computerworld - A hacker made off with confidential Twitter documents after breaking into an employee's e-mail account, the company's co-founder confirmed yesterday.
Security experts today said that the breach and theft highlights the problem people have with creating, and then remembering, strong passwords, and the increasing tendency to disclose personal information on services like Twitter and Facebook.
"What it boils down to is that people are lazy and lackadaisical about their personal paranoia," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security. "People should be thinking twice about what they're making public."
The breach occurred about a month ago, said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, when a hacker calling himself Hacker Croll broke into an administrative assistant's e-mail account, then used that to collect information that let him access the employee's Google Apps account. Twitter workers use the corporate version of Google Apps to share documents and other information within the company.
Hacker Croll then forwarded hundreds of pages of internal Twitter documents to Web sites, including TechCrunch, which in turn has published some and referred to others. Among the finds: Financial projections by Twitter that it will have a billion users, $1.54 billion in revenue and $1.1 billion in net earnings by 2013.
The privately held Twitter does not disclose the current number of users or its financials, but some metrics firms estimate the site has six million unique visitors a month. Documents disclosed by TechCrunch said Twitter was projecting 25 million users by the end of this year.
Stone denied reports that a bug in Google Apps was responsible. "This attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps, which we continue to use," he said in a blog entry yesterday. "This is more about Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can become targets. This was not a hack on the Twitter service, it was a personal attack followed by the theft of private company documents."

Exactly, said security experts today, who put the blame on a combination of online password retrieval systems and people's disclosure of their personal life on social networking services.
"This has nothing to do with cloud computing," said Sam Masiello, vice president of information security at Englewood, Colo.-based MX Logic. "It's about weak passwords that are easily guessable, with a huge contribution from people's habit of putting online information that they wouldn't otherwise share with anyone but their closest friends. It's not hard to crack [password resets] with the information you can find freely available on social networking sites."
Like the breach of Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account last fall, security researchers guessed that Hacker Croll gained access to the Twitter employee's account using Google's password rest feature which poses several personal questions to authenticate the user. Hacker Croll likely dug up possible responses by rooting through the Web for details on the assistant, then used those to reset the password to one only he knew.
From Computerworld.com
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