Internet News Record

Internet News Record

21/09/09 - 22/09/09

LibertyNewsprint.com U.S. Edition

An honest assessment of Afghan mistakes, but what is next? By Simon Denyer (Front Row Washington)

understanding of Afghan society, employing tactics which have alienated ordinary Afghans Submitted at 9/21/2009 12:10:34 PM - and the failure of aid efforts It is encouraging that the U.S. which “too often enrich power administration finally seems to be brokers, corrupt officials or getting a handle on what went international contractors and serve wrong in Afghanistan these past only limited segments of the eight years. population”. What is less encouraging is the I was in Afghanistan as Reuters fact there seems little political bureau chief in from early 2002 appetite around the globe to fix until 2004, and what is depressing the mess. is that many of those mistakes Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s were starkly apparent right from report is a stark and honest the outset. assessment of the war in Airstrikes which killed innocent Afghanistan. civilians are now being A failure to send more troops a c k n o w l e d g e d a s within the next year and regain counterproductive, and there has the initiative “will likely result in been a lot of attention of the failure,” he said. failure of the country’s central Everyone knows that time is government. running out to get Afganistan But there has perhaps been too right, with political support little attention on the failure of the eroding fast in the West but the aid effort, which Ashraf Ghani Taliban dug in for the long haul lambasted as “dysfunctional and and getting stronger all the time. lacking accountability” when I McChrystal is also right in met him on my last visit to Kabul saying that more troops and more in March. resources are not enough in Ghani, an unconvincing themselves, and pointing out presidential candidate but a many of the errors of the past globally recognised expert on eight years. rebuilding failed states, argued Among them: that the amount of money NATO - corruption and abuse of power spends every month, more than by the Afghan government $20 billion, could educate five - Western troops, who lack an generations of Afghans.

What has been spent has far too often been wasted. There has also been too much attention paid to the central government in Kabul — presidential elections were never going to solve anything — and far too little paid to improving local governance outside the capital and even bringing democracy down to the villages. But how to fix things now? It is not going to be easy because fixing Afghanistan will be a lot harder now than it would have been in 2002, when Western

get ahead of the curve. In Afghanistan, the danger is the West is permanently behind the curve. Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy announced in March might have been enough in 2002 but looked and sounded inadequate to many people in 2009. As McChrystal himself said: “inadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced”. So the question is this. Will more troops come in time to make a difference? Will they be accompanied by a massive surge in developmental resources to intervention and troops were Afghanistan, a radical reform of largely welcomed in the country. the way aid is administered and Perhaps the only way to turn delivered, by a serious effort to things around is to change improve security and local perceptions about who is likely to governance outside Kabul and a convincing public commitment to be the winning side. There may be a parallel with the stay the course? Because if they aren’t, the West way the global economy seems to have been pulled away from the will always look like it is chasing brink of depression by massive the game. For more Reuters political news, government intervention, which helped to restore confidence click here. Photo credit: Reuters/Goran among ordinary people. In a sense, the only way to Tomasevic (Man looks toward change perceptions was to throw Kabul from old cemetery) the kitchen sink at the problem, to

2

Politics/

Internet News Record

McChrystal report hits Obama with tough choices in Afghanistan By David Alexander (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 9/21/2009 11:34:56 AM

The general picked by Barack Obama to finish up the war in Afghanistan has presented the U.S. president with some hard choices. The toughest one: Send more troops to implement a radically different strategy within the next year or risk losing the conflict. “The campaign in Afghanistan has been historically under-

resourced and remains so today,” General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said in a 66-page report to the defense secretary. “ISAF is operating in a culture of poverty. Consequently ISAF requires more forces,” McChrystal said in a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post and posted on the Internet. McChrystal said if the international forces do not reverse

“insurgent momentum” soon, they risk finding themselves in a position where “defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” Another decision: Whether to adopt McChrystal’s proposed new strategy or find an alternative. The general, an expert in counterinsurgency warfare, says the new strategy must focus on the population. He calls for faster training of Afghan forces, an effort to improve the performance of Afghan government, a military

initiative to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and a focus on putting resources in critical areas where people are threatened. The Pentagon had no comment on the document. Spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Post had approached the Pentagon about whether any sections of the document might pose a threat to U.S. troops if published. The Post agreed to redact several sections of the report before posting the document on the Internet and publishing its

story, Morrell said. The report comes at a difficult time for Obama. His push for healthcare reform has slowed in Congress amid rising concern over the cost, following on the heels of a massive spending bill to lift the economy out of recession. Seeking more troops in Afghanistan could cost him political capital he needs to get his top domestic priority through MCCHRYSTAL page 3

Internet News Record

The First Draft: Bill Clinton on race and the healthcare debate

Politics/ Top News/

3

MCCHRYSTAL continued from page 2

Congress, especially with many Americans skeptical about reports of government corruption and recent election irregularities in By David Morgan (Front Row want the government, one more Afghanistan. Washington) time, to take care of people who The Democratic-controlled are left out or left behind. They Congress may resist additional Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:15:32 AM are philosophically or emotionally spending on an unpopular war and Bill Clinton has tons of respect — or whatever — opposed to it,” a military buildup heading into for Jimmy Carter. But he doesn’t Clinton added. congressional elections next year. agree that racism is a driving Clinton said he hopes the And Obama himself is reluctant factor behind angry opposition to current debate will move the to send more troops. He described President Barack Obama’s United States closer to universal himself in an ABC interview aired healthcare reform agenda. coverage. He would specifically Sunday as “a skeptical audience Like Carter, Clinton is a former l i k e t o s e e g r e a t e r u s e o f … somebody who is always Democratic governor of a electronic medical records, better asking hard questions about Southern state who has spent management of chronic diseases deploying troops.” years battling entrenched racism that account for the bulk of The White House downplayed against blacks. healthcare costs and a system that t h e l e a k i n g o f t h e r e p o r t . “I sympathize with where encourages care over costly Spokesman Robert Gibbs said the President Carter’s coming from. If medical procedures. president was working with his you’re a white southerner and As for his own foray into national security team, going you’ve fought these battles a long healthcare reform, the former “through some of the strategic time, you’re super-sensitive to president said it all came down to assessments that the president any kind of discrimination based the strength of the Republican thinks need to be evaluated.” on race,” Clinton, a former opposition led by former Senator He said the administration had Arkansas governor, said in an Bob Dole of Kansas. not yet received a request for interview with ABC’s “Good “Senator Dole decided that he resources from McChrystal and Morning America.” demonstrated animosity toward oppose him on healthcare also are wanted to kill all forms of doesn’t “anticipate it will come Carter, a former Georgia President Barack Obama is based racially prejudiced,” said Clinton, healthcare and he had 45 votes, so for a little bit because there’s an governor, raised the issue of race on the fact that he is a black who lost his own bid to overhaul he could lose four and still have a assessment ongoing of where we after U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of man,” Carter told NBC News. the U.S. healthcare system during filibuster. That’s what really are right now.” South Carolina shouted “You lie” killed healthcare reform,” Clinton Obama, the first black U.S. his first term as president. What do you think? Should at Obama during the president’s president, later said he believed “But I believe that if he (Obama) said. Obama commit more troops, healthcare speech to Congress this some opposition had to do with were not an African-American, all For more Reuters political news, bring U.S. forces home or pursue m o n t h . T h o u s a n d s o f race. But he denied Carter’s the people who are aga inst him click here. some other alternative? conservatives also rallied in charge that racism was a leading on healthcare would still be Photo credits: Jim For more Reuters political news, opposition to the president at factor. Young/Reuters (Clinton and click here. against him,” he said. demonstrations in Washington. Clinton sounded a similar note. “What’s driving them is: they Obama); David Mercado/Reuters Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin “I think an overwhelming “Some of the extreme Right who don’t want healthcare. They don’t (Carter) Lamarque (Obama speaks portion of the intensely Monday in Troy, New York); Reuters/Nacho Doce (McChrystal NY court: Paterson can appoint lieutenant governor Fla. man charged with murders of wife, 5 children at NATO defense ministers (AP) (AP) meeting in Portugal Sept. 18) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) spotlight (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Gulf of Mexico (Reuters) 28 seconds ago 2009-09- Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:51:07 AM 7 seconds ago 2009-09Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:57:04 AM 22T08:20:51-07:00 22T08:19:24-07:00 PETER buzzed up: UN climate ultranorthern484 buzzed up: summit puts China, India in U.S. scientists net giant squid in

4

Politics/

Internet News Record

That was awkward… By Patricia Zengerle (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 9/21/2009 2:32:04 PM

When President Barack Obama landed in Albany, New York, on Monday, the leader of his welcoming party was a man whose name has been linked with his in some news reports lately — New York Governor David Paterson. Or perhaps he should be referred to as “Governor-fornow.” According to recent news reports, the Obama administration is so worried that his fellow Democrat Paterson’s unpopularity

will drag down New York’s Democratic members of Congress and the Democrat-controlled state legislature in the November 2010 election that the president asked him to withdraw from the race. According to The New York Times, Obama’s request that Paterson step aside was put forward by his political advisers, but approved by the president. Paterson said Sunday he was still running for office. Paterson was standing at the bottom of the stairs to greet Obama when Air Force One reached Albany. The jet engines were so loud that no one could

hear their exchange, but they shook hands and had a brief exchange that looked cordial. “Obama did a kind of halfembrace with his back to the press corps, and said something to Paterson, who listened for a moment and then said something back,” a White House press pool report said. Paterson sat in the front row during Obama’s speech at a local community college. The president shook hands with him again on entering, and put his left hand on Paterson’s shoulder briefly. At the beginning of his speech, Obama said, “A wonderful man, the

governor of the great state of New York, David Paterson, is in the house.” The reports about Obama’s recommendation had raised some charges that Obama, the first black U.S. president, was guilty of racism against Paterson, currently one of only two black governors of U.S. states. Michael Steele, the first African-American to become chairman of the Republican National Committee, raised the issue Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” television program. “I found that to be stunning, that the White House would send word to one of only two black

governors in the country not to run for re-election,” he said. He said it struck him as strange that Obama did not raise the same question about New Jersey Governor John Corzine, who is white and also trailing in opinion polls. “It will be very interesting to see what the response from black leadership around the country will be about the president calling the governor to step down or not run for election,” Steele said. Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Obama shakes hands THAT page 5

Politics/ Finance/ Tech News/

Internet News Record

Was Afghan report leaker listening to NPR this weekend? By Adam Pasick (Front Row Washington) Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:18:31 AM

Legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the former analyst who released the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, offered some well-timed advice Sunday when he appeared on NPR’s On the Media. In an interview with host Brooke Gladstone, he urged government insiders to leak information about a potential build-up of U.S. troops in Afghanistan: “There are a lot of people looking at estimates that are being withheld from the public … They should ask themselves, did my oath to uphold and support the Constitution really permit me to keep quiet when I see the public

being lied to? “I’m sure there are many people in the Pentagon and the CIA and the White House who are in my shoes right now. My advice to them is, don’t do what I did, don’t reveal it six years from now, don’t wait till the escalation has

Submitted at 9/21/2009 8:03:47 PM

President Barack Obama has sought to distance himself from Jimmy Carter’s recent comment that some of the anger directed at him over the summer is because he is a black man. But he couldn’t avoid the issue when he appeared on the “Late Show with David Letterman” on Monday. His host put it to him straight, but with a healthy dose of good humor.

“Was Jimmy Carter onto something … was this unease or poor decorum rooted in racism, or is that just something to talk about?” Letterman asked. “It’s important to realize that I

Terminal Man Meets the Seatmate From Hell By Brendan Ross (Wired Top Stories)

Our frequent flier has a surreal experience at 35,000 feet, and we discover he grew up in the

THAT continued from page 4 with Paterson at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy.)

should set him straight.” Less than 24 hours later, Ellsberg’s contemporary Bob Woodward had this scoop: The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by Sprint Nextel offers unlimited free calling to The Washington Post. occurred. Instead, they should do More troops or Afghan war lost: any mobile phone in the what I wish I had done in 1965, U.S. commander which is to the tell the public what Full audio of Ellsberg’s On the U.S. I believed right then: That my Media segment: By Brian White president was making a terrible (BloggingStocks) mistake, that Congress should Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:50:00 AM hold hearings, Congress should demand the truth and Congress Filed under: Competitive strategy, Sprint Nextel Corp (S) Sprint Nextel Corp.(NYSE: S) sent a letter to its Everything Data – Pause for laughter from the customers recently informing audience – them that they could now call any “So the American people, I mobile phone number in the U.S. think, gave me this extraordinary -- at any time -- for free. honor. That tells you a lot, I think, Sprint's new Any Mobile, a lot about where the country is Anytime calling plan gives those at,” Obama continued, before the c u s t o m e r s w i t h a t l e a s t a interview moved on to serious $ 7 0 / m o n t h b i l l t h i s n e w i s s u e s : h e a l t h c a r e a n d capability. Afghanistan. Continue reading Sprint Nextel was actually black before the Reuters photo by Kevin offers unlimited free calling to election,” Obama answered. Lamarque. any mobile phone in the U.S. “Really?” said Letterman. “This Sprint Nextel offers unlimited is true,” Obama said. free calling to any mobile phone “How long have you been a in the U.S. originally appeared on black man?,” Letterman asked. BloggingStocks on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Falkland Islands. Permalink| Email this| Comments

Letterman to Obama: “How long have you been a black man?” By JoAnne Allen (Front Row Washington)

5

6

Top News/

Internet News Record

Stadiums, hotels warned to watch for terrorists (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:45:41 AM

WASHINGTON – Counterterrorism officials have issued security bulletins to police around the nation about terrorist interest in attacking stadiums, entertainment complexes and hotels the latest in a flurry of such internal warnings as investigators chase a possible bomb plot in Denver and New York. In the two bulletins sent to police departments Monday and obtained by The Associated Press officials said they know of no specific plots against such sites, but urged law enforcement and private companies to be vigilant. These two bulletins followed on the heels of a similar warning about the vulnerabilities of mass transit systems. The bulletin on stadiums notes that an al-Qaida training manual specifically lists "blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin... and attacking vital economic centers" as desired targets of the organization. "While DHS and FBI have no information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack, we believe it is prudent to remind transit authorities to remain vigilant," Homeland Security spokesman Sean Smith said Monday night. Separately, law enforcement officials said a Colorado man may have been planning with others to detonate backpack bombs on New York City trains in a terrorism plot similar to past attacks on London's and Madrid's mass-

transit systems. The investigation and the earlier warning about mass transit system have already prompted officials around the nation to step up patrols. Two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation told The Associated Press late Monday that more than a half-dozen individuals were being scrutinized in the alleged plot. In a statement, the FBI says that "several individuals in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere" are being investigated. Investigators say Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghanistanborn immigrant who is a shuttle van driver at the Denver airport, played a direct role in the terror plot that unraveled after an overnight 1,600-mile trip from Denver to New York City around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He made his first court appearance Monday and remains behind bars. Zazi and two other defendants have not been charged with any terrorism counts, only the relatively minor offense of lying to the government. But the case could grow to include more serious charges as the investigation proceeds. Backpacks and cell phones were seized last week from apartments in Queens, where Zazi visited. Zazi has publicly denied being involved in a terror plot, and defense lawyer Arthur Folsom dismissed as "rumor" any notion that his client played a crucial role.

Publicly, law enforcement officials have repeatedly said they are unaware of a specific time or target for any attacks. Privately, officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case said investigators have worried most about the possible use of backpack bombs on New York City trains, similar to attacks carried out in London in 2005 and Madrid in 2004. Backpack bombs ripped apart four commuter trains and killed 191 people in Madrid on March 11, 2004. On July 7 the next year, bombing attacks in London killed 52 subway and bus commuters. In a bulletin issued Friday, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warned that improvised explosive devices are the most common tactic to blow up railroads and other mass transit systems overseas. And they noted incidents in which bombs were made with peroxide. In the bulletin, obtained by The AP, officials recommended that transit systems conduct random sweeps at terminals and stations and that law enforcement make random patrols and board some trains and buses. The effects of the warning were not immediately clear Monday. New York's transit agency said it was in touch with an FBI-NYPD task force but wouldn't comment further. The task force feared Zazi may have been involved in a potential plot involving hydrogen peroxidebased explosives, according to two law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not

authorized to discuss the investigation. Investigators said they found notes on bomb-making instructions that appear to match Zazi's handwriting, and discovered his fingerprints on materials batteries and a scale that could be used to make explosives. He also made a trip to Pakistan last year in which he received al-Qaida explosives and weapons training, the government said. Zazi, a legal resident of the U.S. who immigrated in 1999, told the FBI that he must have unintentionally downloaded the notes on bomb-making as part of a religious book and that he deleted the book "after realizing that its contents discussed jihad." A strange sequence of events began to unfold nearly two weeks ago when Zazi already under surveillance by federal agents rented a car in Colorado and made the 1,600-mile trek across the heartland to New York. He told reporters that he went to New York to resolve an issue with a coffee cart he owned. He was briefly stopped entering the city as part of what was believed to be a routine drug check, and proceeded to his friend's place in Queens. Once there, his car was towed and authorities confiscated his computer. He was told by an NYPD informant that detectives were asking about him, and decided to cut the trip short and fly back to Colorado, authorities said. Their surveillance blown and their main suspect flying back to Colorado, officials speeded up the

investigation and launched raids on several Queens apartments in a search for evidence of explosives. Zazi and his 53-year-old father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, were arrested Saturday in Denver. Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, was arrested in New York, where he is an imam at a mosque in Queens. The three are accused of making false statements to the government. If convicted, they face eight years in prison. Afzali was ordered held without bail after prosecutors said they believed he might flee if released. He smiled and blew kisses to his wife and other relatives before deputy marshals led him out of the courtroom. His attorney, Ron Kuby, accused authorities of trying to make Afzali a scapegoat for a botched investigation. Kuby told reporters outside court that before Afzali's arrest, authorities had begged him to help them in the Zazi investigation. He said his client knew he was being recorded, and never tried to mislead the FBI. "They blew their own investigation and now they're trying to blame my client," he said. Zazi's father is accused of lying when he told authorities he didn't know anyone by the name of Afzali. The FBI said it recorded a conversation between Mohammed Zazi and Afzali. ___ Associated Press Writers Ivan Moreno, P. Solomon Banda, and Catherine Tsai in Denver, and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.

Top News/

Internet News Record

7

Will Net Neutrality Lead To Usage-Based Internet Fees? Atlantic Online (Most Popular - Google News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:03:42 AM

Yesterday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke about his desire to keep the internet free and open. Most of his talk centers on the idea of "net neutrality." The principle broadly states that internet access should be unencumbered. To most consumers, this probably sounds wonderful. To most internet providers, it probably doesn't. They'd rather have control over the data. This is a complicated issue, with lots of moving parts, but I'd like to focus on the principles of net neutrality that Genachowski explains, especially a new one. Towards the second half of his speech, he turns to what he considers to be the six principles of net neutrality. The first four were more well-known: Network operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching nonharmful devices to the network. I think those are at least relatively uncontroversial, despite the fact that they aren't always followed. For example, Genachowski says: Notwithstanding its unparalleled record of success, today the free and open Internet faces emerging and substantial challenges. We've already seen some clear examples of deviations from the Internet's

historic openness. We have witnessed certain broadband providers unilaterally block access to VoIP applications (phone calls delivered over data networks) and implement technical measures that degrade the performance of peer-to-peer software distributing lawful content. We have even seen at least one service provider deny users access to political content. And as many members of the Internet community and key Congressional leaders have noted, there are compelling reasons to be concerned about the future of openness. It sounds to me like he's not-sosubtly talking about Apple's decision not to allow Google Voice on its iPhones. A while back I noted one angry column reacting to this decision by Andy Kessler. He noted that, eventually, there won't be voice, text, music or TV, just data. I think that's right. What AT&T, Apple and others need to do is price their plans in this manner. Instead of, say, $40 per month for voice and $30 for data, plans will eventually just be all inclusive of whatever kind of data for $70. The question, of course, is whether that data plan is priced to be unlimited or based on usage. The second complaint in that quotation -- when internet providers deny access to political content -- is completely unacceptable. Censorship has no place on the internet. Then, Genachowski introduced the last two principles: The fifth

principle is one of nondiscrimination -- stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications. This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers' homes. Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed. The sixth principle is a transparency principle -- stating that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices. Why does the FCC need to adopt this principle? The Internet evolved through open standards. It was conceived as a tool whose user manual would be free and available to all. But new network management practices and technologies challenge this original understanding. Today, broadband providers have the technical ability to change how the Internet works for millions of users -- with profound consequences for those users and content, application, and service providers around the world. The sixth is also pretty uncontroversial. I see no reason why internet providers shouldn't be transparent about their policies, particularly if they are all required by law to adhere to essentially the

same rules anyway. The fifth, however, is a little tricky. In modern American culture, discrimination has a terribly negative connotation. When you think of discrimination, you think of racism, sexism, ageism, and lost of other -isms that sophisticated people just shouldn't tolerate. The only thing that the tolerant can't tolerate is intolerance. In reality, however, individuals and businesses discriminate every day -- just in more socially acceptable ways. When you choose to have a turkey wrap for lunch instead of a Burger King cheeseburger, you might be discriminating against unhealthy food. When a business hires a Wharton finance major over a University of Iowa English major, it might be discriminating against liberal arts and a lesser-ranked school. Neither of these decisions generally involves scorn from sophisticated individuals. Businesses also discriminate to earn the highest profit. An airline may cancel a route where there are not enough travelers, because running the route just isn't profitable enough. Genachowski's fifth principle would prevent such discrimination for internet providers. For example, imagine if there were certain types of file sharing programs used by college students to share music files that drained an extraordinary amount of bandwidth. Since the internet provider, say Verizon, charges based on a flat fee, instead of

usage, it's highly unprofitable to allow that application to operate through its servers. But Verizon has no choice if the FCC upholds the fifth principle. This presents an interesting sort of disparity between how internet providers behave compared to most other businesses. Usually, companies want consumers to use as much of their product or service as possible. Then they'll buy more and those companies will profit more. But the more bandwidth consumers use, the more it costs internet providers, without a corresponding increase in revenue; thus, more usage lowers their profits and provides less money to invest on new infrastructure. That's why I worry that the allyou-can-surf model for internet access is not sustainable. It's akin to all restaurants being all-youcan-eat. Clearly, for light eaters it's not a very good deal. But for heavy eaters, it's great. Now imagine if those restaurants had no choice about whether or not they serve caviar and foie gras. Then it would be an even worse deal for light eaters who don't have expensive tastes. In order to accommodate the FCC's desire that internet providers not discriminate among content or applications, before long usagebased fees will probably be necessary.

8

Top News/ Finance/

Internet News Record

Dolphins dominate clock but Manning, Colts get win FOXSports.com (Most Popular - Google News)

only 4:47 of the second half when the Colts began their gamewinning drive. With 3:44 left to F i r s t , N e w Y o r k G i a n t s play the Colts took possession at quarterback Eli Manning helped their 20 trailing by three points. ruin Sunday's ballyhooed regular- Completions to wide receiver season unveiling of the new Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark Dallas Cowboys Stadium. One who set the franchise receiving night later, his older brother record for a tight end with 183 spoiled the fun at the most star- yards put Indianapolis at the studded home opener in Miami Miami 48. Dolphins history. Manning then did the real Indianapolis quarterback Peyton damage on second and 10. Having Manning left J.Lo feeling low, T- noticed Miami increasing its Pain writhing in agony and Jimmy fourth-quarter blitzing, Manning Buffett gagging on his margarita. audibled to a wide-receiver Manning's 48-yard touchdown screen. He quickly turned to his pass to Pierre Garcon with 3:18 right and whipped a pass to remaining gave the Colts a 27-23 Garcon as the Dolphins rushed six road victory. defenders. With multiple blockers Proclaiming this victory clearing the way, the West Palm improbable is being kind. Miami B e a c h n a t i v e c r u s h e d h i s w a s i n v o l v e d i n t h e m o s t hometown team by zipping into notorious choke since Dolphins the end zone. minority owner Serena Williams The entire drive took about 30 threatened to shove a tennis ball seconds off the clock. down the throat of a U.S. Open "With a quarterback like line judge. No team has lost while (Manning), you can't let them enjoying such a lopsided edge in hang around or give them second time of possession 45:07 to 14:53 chances," Dolphins linebacker since the NFL began tracking the Reggie Torbor said. "All he needs statistic in the mid-1970s. A is one mistake. We made it." poorly executed two-minute drill Manning knows it, too. in the waning moments sealed "We caught 'em," he said. Miami's fate. Throwing for 303 yards and two "I've never seen anything like t o u c h d o w n s o n j u s t 1 4 that," Dolphins quarterback Chad completions, Manning said he Pennington lamented. drew inspiration from watching Manning was on the field for Eli lead the game-winning drive Submitted at 9/22/2009 12:44:42 AM

in New York's 33-31 win over Dallas. As for the Dolphins, squandering such a golden opportunity to topple Indianapolis (2-0) especially amid such an electric atmosphere is as devastating as falling to 0-2. This was the first Dolphins regular-season game since Stephen Ross purchased control of the team from former owner H. Wayne Huizenga in January for $1 billion. Ross quickly plotted to rebuild Miami's fan base while making the Dolphins his own personal vanity project. He wooed minority owners from the sports and entertainment world including Jennifer Lopez, Gloria Estefan, and Venus and Serena Williams and never missed a PR opportunity to be photographed with them. Hip-hop artist T-Pain was recruited to record an updated version of the Dolphins fight song. Buffett, who played a pregame tailgate concert Monday, shamelessly tweaked the lyrics to his hit "Fins" and struck a stadium -naming rights deal with Ross for his beer company. Those luminaries, along with Dolphins legends like Dan Marino, walked an "orange" carpet into Land Shark Stadium on Monday night as paparazzi snapped away. The most important football guy in the organization Bill Parcells didn't

take that stroll. What the "Tuna" thinks about all the celebrity waves surrounding his Dolphins is unknown. Parcells will speak publicly only to his media pals and for stories guaranteed to cast him in a favorable light. Parcells, though, can quit his executive role at any time and collect on the final two years of his contract. That is a possibility should Ross meddle in football affairs or the team's Hollywood trappings become insufferable. Parcells already walked away from Dallas three years ago after tiring of his working relationship with handson Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Incidentally, the Cowboys opened their new facility Monday night with far more hoopla than Ross' attempt at a gala event. The two venues aren't in the same ballpark. Everything in Texas is bigger, from seating capacity to a scoreboard that makes Miami's massive end-zone screen look like a 13-inch television. Land Shark Stadium also still has a dirt infield because of a shared-use agreement with the Florida Marlins. But the Dolphins don't need the self-proclaimed "Taj Mahal" of NFL stadiums to make Ross' investment a success. For one night, the Dolphins created the buzz of a major event that usually

lures South Florida's fickle, frontrunning sports fans. The crowd of 66,227 responded with the deafening noise that harkened to the days when Miami faced the Baltimore Colts in heated AFC East matchups at the Orange Bowl. The Dolphins even played like those grind-it-out squads from the 1970s. Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams formed a modern-day version of Csonka and Kiick against an undersized Colts defense sorely missing injured strong safety Bob Sanders (knee). Brown effectively executed the wildcat offense while rushing for 136 yards and two touchdowns. Williams pitched in 69 more yards on 19 carries. Miami ran 84 plays overall; Indianapolis had only 35. But even that wasn't enough to keep Manning from notching the 119th victory of his 11-year NFL career. That broke the franchise record set by late Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas. "I'm very proud to wear the same uniform as him," said Manning, who befriended Unitas before his 2002 death. "He was very nice to me the times I was around him. Johnny Unitas was a winner." And much to the chagrin of the Dolphins and Cowboys, so are the Mannings.

Justice said he believed Google had not committed a trademark infringement by allowing advertisers to select keywords corresponding to trademarks. Mr

Maduro noted, in particular, that in the selection process itself, no product or service was being sold to the general public.

EU court advocate backs Google over trademarks (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:49:56 AM

Google edged closer to an

important victory in its legal battle over its “Adwords” service with brand-owners after a preliminary opinion in Europe’s top court found that its activity

did not amount to trademark infringement. On Tuesday, Advocate-General Poiares Maduro, a senior legal adviser at the European Court of

Top News/ Finance/ Tech News/

Internet News Record

Southeast floods block highways; toll rises to 8 (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:24:50 AM

AUSTELL, Ga. – Washed-out roads and flooded interstate highways around Atlanta added to the misery Tuesday after days of torrential rain in the Southeast that claimed at least eight lives, including a 15-year-old boy whose body was found in the Chattooga River. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency also reported a new death in Douglas County west of Atlanta, bringing the toll in that county to four people. No more details were immediately available. The victims included a toddler swept away from his family when a swollen creek ripped apart their trailer home in west Georgia on Monday. Many others were drivers whose vehicles were pushed off roads by rapidly rising waters. One man in Chattanooga, Tenn., was missing two days after betting onlookers he could swim across a flooded ditch next to his house. Authorities urged people who don't need to drive to stay home, a day after Gov. Sonny Purdue declared a state of emergency in 17 counties. "It's going to be a long morning. We're asking people to be patient," DOT spokeswoman Crystal Paulk-Buchanan said. The good news was that the rain was tapering off in many areas.

The National Weather Service said there was more rain to come, but the likelihood and severity will decline in the coming days. Days of downpours and thunderstorms saturated the ground from Alabama through Georgia into eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, just months after an epic two-year drought in the region ended after winter rains. As Tuesday rush-hour began in the Atlanta area, Interstate 20 west of the city was closed in two spots by water spilling over the major artery for commuter traffic from the sprawling western suburbs. Portions of at least two other interstates in the metro area were also closed, as was I-75 in Houston County in central Georgia. Hundreds of roads and bridges were under water or washed out in the Atlanta area and other parts of the state, including 17 bridges on state and interstate highways. Dozens of roads remained closed in western North Carolina and several small landslides were reported. Officials said the flooding there was the worst since remnants of hurricanes Frances and Ivan came through in 2004. As much as a foot of rain fell over parts of the Atlanta area Monday. The town of Dallas northwest of Atlanta had 16 inches in a 48-hour period, the Georgia Emergency Management Agency said.

Aerial shots showed schools, football fields, used car lots and even entire neighborhoods submerged by the deluge, sending some unlucky residents scurrying for higher ground. "It's a mess all over," said Lisa Janak of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. As the storm front rumbled through west Georgia, it turned a normally sleepy creek into a surging headwater that tore apart 2-year-old Preston Slade Crawford's mobile home around 2 a.m. Monday. The body of the drowned boy nicknamed "Scooter" wasn't found until hours later. His parents had been rescued from the raging waters as another son, Cooper, age 1, clung to his mother's arms in Carroll County, west of Atlanta. Pat Crawford, the boy's grandmother, watched helplessly as the family's mobile home was whisked away. "Y'all gotta help us! Y'all gotta save us!" Crawford remembers Bridgett Lawrence and Craig Crawford shouting above the roaring water. She said she was on higher ground, but couldn't get to them because the current was so bad. About 12,000 Georgia Power customers were without power late Monday. Crews in the tiny Georgia town of Trion worked to shore up a levee breached by the Chattooga River and in danger of failing.

Sept. 22, 1792: Day 1 of Revolutionary Calendar By Randy Alfred (Wired Top Stories)

It's the dawn of a new era: The French Republic is born, and with

it a new way of timekeeping. Neither lasted very long.

The town evacuated more than 1,500 residents, and Red Cross workers set up an emergency shelter. Emergency officials were often forced to improvise to rescue dozens of people stranded in their homes and cars. "We're using everything we can get our hands on," Douglas County spokesman Wes Tallon said. "Everything from boats to Jet Skis to ropes to ladders." Other southeastern states were hit less severely. In Kentucky, rescue crews went on more than a dozen runs to help stranded people after 4 inches of rain fell on parts of Louisville on Sunday, said city fire department spokesman Sgt. Salvador Melendez. Water rose as high as windowlevel on some houses in North Carolina's Polk County, forcing emergency officials to evacuate homes along a seven-mile stretch of road. Flooding in more than 20 counties in western North Carolina closed roads, delayed school and forced evacuations. ___ Associated Press writers Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., Johnny C. Clark and Errin Haines in Atlanta and Randall Dickerson in Nashville contributed to this report.

9

ETFs for water woes By Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 9/22/2009 11:10:00 AM

Filed under: International markets, Newsletters, ETF Investing, Commodities, Stocks to Buy "While global climate change may be over-politicized, there's no disputing that the issue is real," says Larry Edelson. In his Real Wealth, he looks at two favorite exchange-traded funds that invest in the water sector. He explains, "Food shortages and the lack of fresh drinking water are likely the most acute and immediate problems. For example, Northwestern India is running out of water, China is raising water prices to curb use and Mexico recently restricted the water supply amid a shortage. "Domestically, unbridled use of groundwater in Arizona is a potential disaster. The problem is pipelines and canals don't extend far enough to deliver water to everyone. And unrestrained drilling in outlying areas is draining the supply. Continue reading ETFs for water woes ETFs for water woes originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

10

Top News/ Finance/

Internet News Record

Torturing 'does not get truth' (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 9/22/2009 2:45:32 AM

Torture techniques used on suspected terrorists by the Bush administration may have failed to get to the truth, researchers say. Professor Shane O'Mara of Trinity College, Dublin, said the interrogation techniques had a detrimental effect on brain functions related to memory. He listed 10 methods of what he called torture used by the US, including stress positions and waterboarding. His review is published in the journal, Trends in Cognitive Science. 'Lack of control' Professor O'Mara said US Department of Justice memos released in April showed that the Americans believed that prolonged periods of shock, anxiety, disorientation and lack of control were more effective than standard interrogation in extracting the truth. He said: "This is based on the assumption that subjects will be motivated to reveal truthful information to end interrogation, and that extreme stress, shock and anxiety do not impact on memory. "However this model of the impact of extreme stress on

memory and the brain is utterly unsupported by scientific evidence." He said studies of extreme stress with special forces soldiers had found that their recall of previously learned information was impaired afterwards. "Waterboarding in particular is an extreme stressor and has the potential to elicit widespread stress-induced changes in the brain." Professor O'Mara said contemporary neuroscientific models of human memory showed that the hippocampus and prefrontal cortices of the brain were very important. The stress hormone, cortisol, binds to receptors in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex increasing neuronal excitability which compromises the normal functioning of the brain if it is sustained. And other stress hormones called catecholamines could lead to an increase in blood pressure and heart rate which could cause long-term damage to the brain and body if they were maintained at a high level for a long time. Conditioning Professor O'Mara said a common argument in favour of torture was that it would reliably elicit truthful information from

the captive's long-term memory. But psychological studies had suggested that during extreme stress and anxiety, the captive would be conditioned to associate speaking with periods of safety. And because torture was stressful for the torturers the fact that the captive was speaking also provided a safety signal to the captor. "Making the captive talk may become the end - not the truth of what the captive is revealing. "These techniques cause severe, repeated and prolonged stress, which compromises brain tissue supporting memory and executive function. "The fact that the detrimental effects of these techniques on the brain are not visible to the naked eye makes them no less real." Memory disruption Dr David Harper, a clinical psychologist from the University of East London, said the study appeared to be consistent with previous research on memory and trauma and with evidence of previous torture survivors and those in the intelligence community critical of psychological torture techniques. "Believers in coercive interrogation tend to believe that people will 'tell the truth' as a result but much evidence suggests

that people will, in fact, tell those conducting the torture what they think will make the torture stop. "This has been noted as a danger by commentators from the Spanish Inquisition, through the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s to the present day." Dr Stuart Turner of the Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law said: "There is now very strong evidence that torture and harsh interrogation techniques may disrupt normal memory processes. "With this in mind, it is also unreasonable to expect torture survivors to be able to give consistent and complete accounts of their experiences. "This is highly relevant, for example, to the process of decision making for asylum seekers, arriving in the UK seeking refuge and for whom credibility is often a central issue. "It appears that O'Mara's review paper supports the contention that to expect consistent memories in asylum applicants is unreasonable and therefore that inconsistencies should certainly not automatically be interpreted as evidence of fabrication." Print Sponsor

Airline industry plans 50% cut in emissions (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 9/22/2009 3:24:29 AM

The global aviation industry has agreed to cut its net carbon emissions to half 2005 levels by 2050 under a plan to be set out on Tuesday by British Airways chief, Willie Walsh. Mr Walsh, who will outline the initiative at Tuesday’s United Nations forum on climate change in New York, said it was the “best option for the planet” and should be taken up at the December Copenhagen summit, where world leaders are due to come up with a new accord on limiting greenhouse gas emissions to replace the 1997 Kyoto agreement.

ADVERTISEMENT: (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 9/22/2009 11:10:00 AM

Ford gets $5.9 billion loan from Department of Energy By Brian White (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:10:00 AM

Filed under: Products and services, Ford Motor (F) Ford Motor Co.(NYSE: F) will be receiving a $5.9 billion loan from

the U.S. Department of Energy to make sure some of its most strategic production facilities will

be equipped to continue Continue reading Ford gets $5.9 manufacturing the most fuel- billion loan from Department of efficient vehicles Ford can make. Energy

Ford gets $5.9 billion loan from Department of Energy originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Top News/ Finance/

Internet News Record

Men take the floor during `Dancing' premiere The Associated Press (Most Popular - Google News)

"Parts were magic, parts were tragic," head judge Len Goodman said. By SANDY COHEN (AP) – 1 DeLay even wowed his hour ago professional partner, Cheryl LOS ANGELES — So much Burke. for ladies first. Eight celebrity "I just busted out laughing male contestants took the floor because I was, like, I can't believe Monday on the premiere of the this old man is here on his one ninth season of ABC's "Dancing knee playing the guitar and doing With the Stars." The women make exactly what I told him to do, no their debuts Tuesday. questions asked," she said after " I ' m a l i t t l e i n t i m i d a t e d the show. actually," said pop star Mya after "I have to say I nailed it," said watching the men perform. "I'm DeLay, wearing orthopedic shoes glad that we sat this one out, but to help alleviate the bruising and it's very informative how the near stress-fractures on his feet process works. ... The judges are after weeks of rehearsals. "I felt very hard." good. My hips were working. Aaron Carter came out on top, Cheryl held me up and I really, I earning 32 points out of 40 for his did it. I nailed it." two dances. The 21-year-old DeLay finished with 20 points. singer credited his professional Ashley Hamilton (son of partner, Karina Smirnoff, with George Hamilton), who tied NFL keeping him calm before their star Michael Irvin for the night's opening performance. lowest score of 19, said focusing "She took the pressure off of me on Irvin's nerves distracted him completely for this," he said. "She from his own. was holding it all in and keeping "I had to talk him off the ledge," it from me." Hamilton said. "He was more "I was freaking out," Smirnoff scared than I was, and he helped said later. me not be so nervous." Former House Republican Whip The football star said preparing Tom DeLay surprised the crowd. to dance in front of a national T h e 6 2 - y e a r - o l d p o l i t i c i a n audience was "a million times performed a cha-cha to the 1960s worse" than taking the field for hit "Wild Thing." the Super Bowl. Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:51:08 AM

"I've always said I would never sing and dance in front of anybody, so overcoming those fears and coming out here, I consider that to be a successful night," Irvin said. Donny Osmond, who finished in second place with 30 points, earned rousing applause, but Goodman criticized the entertainer for being "too theatrical." Osmond's professional partner, Kym Johnson, said she's tried to tone down the fun during rehearsals by wielding a cane. "I have duct tape, as well," she said. "It's like I'm getting lessons from Tony Soprano," Osmond quipped. Mixed martial artist Chuck Liddell impressed the judges — and the audience — with his dance moves. He made his way through the fox trot, keeping a (sometimes forced) smile on his face. "I'm known for not getting nervous, but I haven't had that much adrenaline running through me for something in a long, long time. I don't have that much adrenaline before I go fight," he said. He acknowledged that ballroom dancing is "something I'm not real comfortable doing," but said he

GIC makes $1.6bn from Citi stake sale (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:22:08 AM

Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund has pocketed a $1.6bn profit after selling half of the 9 per cent

stake in Citigroup it acquired during this year’s US-government led refinancing of the troubled bank. In an unexpected announcement on Tuesday, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation

said that the sale followed the conversion, on September 11, of its $6.8bn of convertible preferred stock for Citigroup common stock at $3.25 a share.

wanted to prove that "just 'cause we're fighters, we're not Neanderthals." "I have a college degree. I have a family. I'm a normal person and we do normal things," he said, adding, "hopefully we can get more fans for our sport." Liddell finished with 22 points. "Iron Chef America" host Marc Dacascos earned 29 points. Professional snowboarder Louie Vito, who did a flip as part of his cha-cha, finished with 27. Next, it's the ladies' turn, and the pressure's on. "When you hear the crowd and there's an orchestra behind you and you just want to be fabulous and you only have one take, so I'm nervous," said actress Debi Mazar. "It's a natural feeling to have. I'm first up." Two contestants — one male, one female — will be eliminated during Wednesday's episode. ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. • http://abc.go.com/shows/dancingwith-the-stars/ Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

11

Lowe's issues a cautious earnings outlook By Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:50:00 AM

Filed under: Lowe's Cos (LOW), Stocks to Buy On Tuesday morning, Lowe's(NYSE: LOW) issued a cautious earnings outlook for the coming year. On a more positive not, the homeimprovement giant actually expects same-store sales to increase, bringing an end to several years of same store sales declines. LOW's announcement was accompanied by a reiteration of its expectations for the fiscal year. It expects to open 66 stores this fiscal year, and as many as 45 in the next fiscal year (which starts on January 30). For the coming year, LOW believes it will earn $1.24 to $1.34 per share with revenue growth of 3% to 4% and a same-store sales rise of roughly 1%. The current estimates from the Street call for earnings of $1.34 per share and a 3% revenue increase. Continue reading Lowe's issues a cautious earnings outlook Lowe's issues a cautious earnings outlook originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

12

Top News/ Gadgets/

Internet News Record

China vows climate change action (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

technology, China still gets 70% of its energy from coal - and as its economy increases, this means yet Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:10:04 AM more growth in greenhouse gases, Please turn on JavaScript. Media our correspondent says. requires JavaScript to play. Pressure on US China's climate change pledge There is also concern about the China will increase efforts to world's other big polluter, the improve energy efficiency and cut United States. CO2 emissions, President Hu President Obama has recognised Jintao has told a UN climate climate change as a pressing change summit in New York. issue, unlike the previous Mr Hu said CO2 emissions administration, our UN would be cut by a "notable correspondent says. margin" by 2020, but gave no He has already announced a overall figure. target of returning to 1990 levels About 100 leaders are attending of greenhouse emissions by 2020, the talks, ahead of the but critics say Washington is Copenhagen summit which is due moving too slowly on legislation to approve a new treaty. which does not go far enough. UN Secretary General Ban KiPresident Obama is currently moon said failure to agree a treaty dogged by domestic issues such in December would be "morally as the economy and healthcare inexcusable". reforms, but his speech to the UN Negotiators for the Copenhagen meeting will still be watched for summit are trying to agree on a global issues such as the financial were historically responsible for then we will achieve our common signs he is willing to fulfil his crisis and climate change. the problem. purpose: a world that is safer, replacement for the Kyoto "Your decisions will have "Developed countries should cleaner, and healthier than the one pledge to take the lead in reaching Protocol to limit carbon momentous consequences," he fulfill the task of emission we found; and a future that is a global carbon deal. emissions. A demonstration of political told the assembled leaders. reduction set in the Kyoto worthy of our children," he said. 'Momentous consequences' will by both China and the US "The fate of future generations, Protocol, continue to undertake According to the BBC's UN Mr Ban called the meeting an will be important in breaking the and the hopes and livelihoods of substantial mid-term quantified correspondent, Barbara Plett, attempt to inject momentum into billions today, rest, literally, with emission reduction targets and discussions have stalled because d e a d l o c k i n n e g o t i a t i o n s , the deadlocked climate talks. support developing countries in rich nations are not pledging to c o r r e s p o n d e n t s s a y . The country's rapid economic you," he added. China and the US each account The Chinese president said his countering climate change," he cut enough carbon to take the growth has created demand for for about 20% of the world's country's cuts would be measured said. world out of danger, while poorer more energy and fuel. There is a United States President Barack countries are refusing to commit greenhouse gas pollution from growing need for Beijing to by unit of Gross Domestic Product. O b a m a s a i d A m e r i c a n s to binding caps, saying this would coal, natural gas and oil. provide clear answers on what is The European Union is He also pledged to "vigorously understood the gravity of the prevent them from developing being done to deal with the responsible for 14%, followed by develop" renewable and nuclear c l i m a t e t h r e a t a n d w e r e their economies. problem. Russia and India with 5% each. energy. determined to act, but there was China's role is crucial, because Image-conscious Chinese Print Sponsor He restated China's position that much more work to be done. it is both an emerging economy officials want to be seen as co"If we are flexible and a n d a b i g p o l l u t e r , o u r operative internationally and developed nations needed to do accept that China must become more than developing nations to pragmatic; if we can resolve to c o r r e s p o n d e n t s a y s . Despite all its advances in green part of the solution to major fight climate change because they work tirelessly in common effort,

Backwards Painted Truck Doubles as Pants Crapper 3000 [Image Cache] By Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:20:00 AM

I can't imagine the momentary terror of a semi coming straight at me on the open road, nor can this

trucker imagine the keying

coming his way the first time someone crashes as result of his prank. [ imgur via jalopnik]

Top News/ Finance/

Internet News Record

4 slain in Va. college town bludgeoned to death (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:27:44 AM

FARMVILLE, Va. – Four people found slain in a small Virginia college town were bludgeoned to death, authorities said Tuesday, and the aspiring rapper suspected of killing them befriended two of the victims through a subculture of violent, macabre music. Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III, 20, is already charged in the killing of Mark Niederbrock, a pastor at a Presbyterian church in central Virginia. He's expected to face more charges in the future, after investigators sift through hundreds of pieces of forensic evidence. At a news conference Tuesday, the other victims were identified as Longwood University professor Debra Kelley, 53; Emma Niederbrock, 16, the daughter of Kelley and Mark Niederbrock; and Melanie Wells, 18, of Inwood, W.Va. The bodies were discovered over the weekend at Kelley's home in Farmville, about 50 miles west of Richmond. Debra Kelley

and Mark Niederbrock had been separated for about a year. Prince Edward County Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Ennis would not reveal what kind of weapon was used, if the victims suffered other injuries or a possible motive. He confirmed that McCroskey was staying in Kelley's home during a visit to Virginia and called the investigation "unparalleled." "We are going coast to coast on this investigation," Ennis said. McCroskey has not cooperated with police since his arrest on Saturday. Ennis said there was no indication anyone else was involved and would not say when the victims died. The girls had last logged in to their MySpace pages on Sept. 14. Mark Niederbrock was last heard from on Thursday, when he told the church treasurer he was going to Richmond for a meeting. Sarah McCroskey has said her brother who rapped about killing, maiming and mutilating people under the moniker "Syko Sam" was a meek and kind person who never fought back when picked on and wouldn't do anything unless

provoked. "He was extremely passive, so just hearing that my brother is the main suspect just really blows my mind," she said. That low-key demeanor was described by police who had two run-ins with him in the days before his arrest Saturday. Authorities said he was calm, never acting in a strange or suspicious manner. A day before the bodies were found, Richard McCroskey answered the door at the home and calmly told police looking for Wells that she was at the movies with a friend. Her mother had called city police asking them to check on her daughter. When the worried mother called police again Friday, they went to the house and discovered the bodies. Niederbrock and Kelley had taken their daughter and Wells to a concert in Michigan on Sept. 12, and the girls hung out with Richard McCroskey before and after the show, according to a friend. In another encounter with police about 12 hours before the bodies were found, he had been stopped

and was ticketed for driving Niederbrock's car without a license. The car hadn't been reported stolen, and police said they didn't realize until later that day they had let a suspected killer go free. On Monday, a judge appointed an experienced capital murder defender, Cary Bowen of Richmond, to work with McCroskey during a brief videoconference. Bowen said later he had not yet spoken to McCroskey. The judge set a preliminary hearing for Jan. 11, and Ennis said prosecutors needed the extra time to look over the evidence. Police also are examining online postings from McCroskey, Emma Niederbrock and Wells. In some of the messages, Emma Niederbrock professed her love to McCroskey. As deputies escorted McCroskey to the police station Saturday after his arrest at the Richmond airport, McCroskey was asked by a reporter why he did it. He said, "Jesus told me to do it," WRIC television reported.

13

US-EU rift clouds climate summit (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 9/21/2009 2:08:52 PM

A growing rift between the US and Europe is overshadowing Tuesday’s United Nations climate change summit in New York, further damping hopes for a breakthrough at the Copenhagen talks in December. Connie Hedegaard, the Danish environment minister, lowered expectations, saying: “Things are looking difficult and too slow, that is the fact.”

Commodities give Wall Street a boost (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:33:27 AM

US stocks crept higher on Tuesday after the dollar hit a 1year low against the euro, driving up commodity prices. But investors were cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve’s two-day monetary policy meeting, due to start on Tuesday. A decision on interest rates is due on Wednesday but Wall Street will also be waiting for updates on financial stimulus measures.

Oil analyst Verleger predicts a 44% plunge in crude oil prices By Connie Madon (BloggingStocks)

• Stockpiles in the U.S. are 14% higher than a year ago. • OPEC is pumping 600,000 Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:30:00 AM barrels a day more than the world Filed under: Analyst reports, needs. Forecasts, Options, Oil • Stockpiles of distilate fuels are Why is Verleger predicting a at 167.8 million barrels, the sharp drop in oil prices? Let's find highest since 1983. out. Look at these numbers and • Gasoline supplies are 2.2% see if he makes sense: higher than in May, at 207.7

million barrels. • In Europe, gasoil stockpiles

reached 23 million barrels on September 10, according to PJK International. • More than 60 million barrels of fuel is stored on tankers offshore, according to IEA. Continue reading Oil analyst Verleger predicts a 44% plunge in crude oil prices Oil analyst Verleger predicts a

44% plunge in crude oil prices originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

14

Top News/ Economy/ Gadgets/

Internet News Record

Honduras police break up protests (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:13:57 AM

Honduran security forces have broken up protests outside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa in support of deposed President Manuel Zelaya, reports say. Police have surrounded the embassy, where Mr Zelaya is staying, and the scene is now said to be calm. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged Mr Zelaya not to provoke a confrontation, AP news agency reports. Mr Zelaya made a surprise return on Monday after months of exile. Interim authorities say he must face trial. But the US and other governments have joined Mr Zelaya in calling for a negotiated settlement to the crisis, which began when Mr Zelaya was forced out of the country at gunpoint on 28 June. 'Asphyxiation' Security forces surrounded the embassy and used tear gas to disperse thousands of Mr Zelaya's supporters in an operation that

began in the early morning local time on Tuesday. The ambassador is back in Brazil, there is only a charge d'affaires and a very small team, with not much security. Lights, water and telephones were cut off yesterday and the only contact is by mobile phone. However, President Lula has expressed his complete support for Mr Zelaya and the ministry of foreign affairs here says he will not be asked to leave nor will he be handed over to the Honduran authorities. The clear message from Brazil is that there has to be a negotiated solution to this crisis. A protest leader, Juan Barahona, alleged that police had used live rounds, but this was denied by the interim deputy foreign minister, Martha Lorena Alvarado. The demonstrators had defied a curfew imposed after Mr Zelaya made his dramatic appearance in the Brazilian embassy on Monday. The Brazilian president said he spoke to Mr Zelaya, telling him not to provide a pretext for interim authorities to invade his

country's embassy, AP reported. Mr Lula reiterated his support for a negotiated end to the standoff, reports said. But inside the embassy, Mr Zelaya told Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur that interim authorities were cutting off all supplies to the embassy. "I think they are going to employ a strategy of asphyxiating the embassy by surrounding it, cutting off the food supply, asphyxiating the people inside in order to demonstrate their force and power, and to try and humiliate the people in here who are really trying to find a solution, for dialogue at a national level," he said. In an interview with BBC Mundo Ms Alvarado, the interim deputy foreign minister, said the government expected "that in the next few hours Brazil would either hand him [Zelaya] over or grant him political asylum". Despite the international condemnation of the circumstances of Mr Zelaya's removal from office, she said, "that does not permit any embassy to use its diplomatic territory... to

urge a civil uprising". "It is fine that they support Zelaya's return but by force is not the way to proceed," she said. "When Mr Zelaya was sent into exile, it was precisely to avoid what you are seeing now, disturbances directed by him," Ms Alvarado told BBC Mundo. In addition to the curfew, airports have been shut and roadblocks set up on highways leading into Tegucigalpa. Calls for calm Earlier, Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim warned that any threat to Mr Zelaya or the Brazilian embassy would be a grave breach of international law. The European Union also called for calm following Mr Zelaya's dramatic return to the country. In a statement, it called on Mr Zelaya and the interim government to negotiate an end to the three-month crisis. It added its voice to that of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Mr Zelaya's return must not lead to violence. Print Sponsor

MaruBot Football League Is Next-Gen Foosball Without Wrist Fractures [Arcade] By Jesus Diaz (Gizmodo) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:40:00 AM

The purist will probably hate this. Well, bad luck purists, because I don't care. This MaruBot robotic foosball table is the next thing I want to play. The MaruBot Football League table can use up to four players, each controlling one of the four robots. I don't really know how much fun is this to play, but I would just do it to see the cute robot's faces. [ IR Robot via ChipChick]

How to Replenish the FDIC's Coffers (Financial Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha)

and this solution gives them a bit more of a financial interest in each others’ health. Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:46:05 AM That said, the main reasons for Why shouldn’t the FDIC borrow t h i s h a p p e n i n g a r e a b i t funds to replenish its reserves depressing: The banks don’t want from healthy banks, rather than any more money from Treasury, from Treasury? After all, the in any form, since they hate the banks will end up repaying the extra oversight which tends to money, with their insurance come with it. And Sheila Bair, premiums, in one form or another, personally, “would take bamboo

shoots under her nails before going to Tim Geithner and the Treasury for help,” according to the president of the Independent Community Bankers. Which hardly speaks to a smooth-running regulatory infrastructure. There’s one more problem with the proposal, under which, according to the NYT, “the lending banks would receive

bonds from the government at an interest rate that would be set by the Treasury secretary and ultimately would be paid by the rest of the industry.” If the bonds are coming from the government, that’s likely to mean they’ll be treated as government debt, and it certainly means that there’s an implicit government guarantee there. Once again, the FDIC is

using government guarantees, rather than real cash, and pretending that doing so doesn’t cost the government anything. We’ve done that too many times already — including in the Bear, BofA ( BAC), and Citi ( C) bailouts — and we should be putting an end to such shenanigans.

Top News/

Internet News Record

Terror Probe Puts US Mass Transit Systems on Alert - Washington Post (Most Popular - Google News)

federal agents that he had received weapons and explosives training in a conflict-laden region Meanwhile, authorities in of Pakistan with ties to al-Qaeda. Washington and elsewhere were Zazi was pulled over earlier this stepping up safety patrols on mass month while driving on the transit systems in response to an George Washington Bridge in advisory issued in connection New York, where FBI agents say with the probe. they uncovered a handwritten Officials with the Department of recipe for making and handling Homeland Security and the FBI explosives in a file stored on his sent a bulletin to transit agencies laptop computer. Friday repeating past warnings to Law enforcement officials be on guard for attacks on mass described the investigation as transit systems, and identifying fluid, with critical questions h y d r o g e n p e r o x i d e - b a s e d unanswered. Among them: Who explosives as a specific risk. else may have known about the Federal officials called the notice alleged plot, the identities of "precautionary", and said it others who may have been included p o s s i b l e involved, and if there was a plot, countermeasures such as random how close Zazi and his alleged checks of stations, trains and confederates had come to carrying buses. out an attack. Two legal sources Local officials in Washington labeled as false a news report that said the bulletin specifically seven other men in the New York mentioned Grand Central Station a r e a h a d b e e n a r r e s t e d i n in New York City, but said they connection with the probe. But have nevertheless increased the investigators continue to conduct n u m b e r o f r a n d o m p a t r o l s . interviews in New York and Because there was no specific Colorado. threat for this region, Metro To date, three men -- Zazi and spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, police have not implemented both of whom live in suburban random bag searches. Denver, and Queens imam In Denver, a federal judge Ahmad Wais Afzali -- have been followed the recommendation of charged with criminal offenses. Justice Department prosecutors B u t t h e c h a r g e , l y i n g t o Monday and refused to release investigators in a terrorism probe, Najibullah Zazi, a permanent U.S. is a placeholder likely to be resident, who allegedly told supplemented in the days or Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:47:31 AM

weeks ahead, the law enforcement sources said on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry continues. Last week in searches executed in Queens and Denver, federal agents found a black scale and AA batteries that bore Zazi's fingerprints, according to court papers. They also found cellphones and more than a dozen backpacks and interviewed the operator of a New York area UHaul shop, who said he turned away men who tried to rent a truck there. Denver Magistrate Judge Craig B. Shaffer ordered Najibullah Zazi to appear in court again Thursday for a formal detention hearing. The judge released Mohammed Zazi on a $50,000 unsecured bond. He will be confined to his home and subjected to electronic monitoring. A representative for Arthur Folsom, Najibullah Zazi's attorney, did not return phone calls. FBI agents said Afzali, a longtime source for the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, improperly tipped off Zazi that law enforcement was on his trail in a phone call recorded by authorities. Afzali later misled them about the conversations, the agents said.

15

Obama gets personal on the 'Late Show with David Letterman' - Los Angeles Times (Most Popular - Google News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:43:09 AM

Reporting from New York After breezing through a battery of TV interviews Sunday with hardly a revealing moment, President Obama finally let out some fresh information Monday night on the "Late Show with David Letterman." He let slip a few personal details about his daughters, an off-limits topic elsewhere. He disclosed the name of a movie he saw recently with his wife. And he managed to talk a little about healthcare and Afghanistan too. The information wasn't exactly breaking news, but the president has been busy hammering home an old message about the overhaul of the healthcare system. And, in fact, Letterman let him talk about his favorite topic for a good stretch of the show. Letterman was content to listen as Obama talked about the plight of the uninsured and about his ideas for making things better. In a more personal moment, Obama talked about how tough the homework load is at Sidwell Friends School, the Quaker school his daughters, Sasha and Malia, attend in Washington. "We decided there weren't going to be any fancy camps during the summer," Obama said. "They basically just goofed off during the summer . . . which I couldn't do." "Others have," Letterman said, a possible reference to the previous administration, drawing only a laugh from the president.

Obama also offered some insight into date nights with the first lady when shown a picture of the two of them wearing 3D glasses. They were watching the movie "Up" at the time, he said. He also divulged that the Obama girls have slumber parties at the White House and go to sleepovers at their friends' houses, which requires that parents get "frisked" by the Secret Service. In a serious moment, the president showed a hint of agreement with some points in a new report from the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who believes that the mission in Afghanistan could fail without more troops and a different strategy for tamping down the insurgency, according to a document that was revealed in the Washington Post on Monday. Over the last seven years, Obama said, "our strategy drifted. . . . We didn't have a clear sense of what it was we were trying to accomplish." Obama also weighed in with a brief, but sharp, point about race, another subject he typically avoids. Is all the vitriol about his domestic agenda really about race? Letterman asked the first black president. "It's important to realize that I was actually black before the election," Obama pointed out. "That tells you a lot, I think, about where the country is at." [email protected]

16

Top News/ Gadgets/ Entertainment

Internet News Record

Microsoft increases search share (BBC News | Americas | World Edition) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:24:26 AM

Microsoft's Bing search engine is making inroads into Google's dominance of the search market according to data from US net measurement firm ComScore. Its latest figures show Microsoft's share of the search market has grown from 8.9% in July to 9.3% in August. The news saw Microsoft's shares rise while Google's dipped slightly. Microsoft's modest 9.3% share of the US search market is small but is a significant increase for a new entrant, say analysts. The Bing search engine was launched by Microsoft in June 2009 and was followed in July by a search tie-up with rival Yahoo.

Google is still far and away the search leader, with 65% of the US market. Tiny ripple Microsoft's modest 9.3% share of the US search market is small but is a significant increase for a new entrant say analysts. The fact Google is losing any market share to Microsoft could indicate that it is no longer the immediate choice for everyone, thinks search expert John Batelle. "I think the service is starting to gain footholds with users who see it as a regular alternative to Google," he wrote in his blog. He is a fan of Bing's newlyreleased visual search interface. "I think it augurs some serious new - and useful - approaches to sifting through massive amounts of related data," he said. In the UK, Bing has also made

small inroads into Google's market share. In August the number of searches on Bing increased by 5%, while Google searches were down 1.7%, according to UK online measurement firm Nielsen. "It is a very tiny ripple but reflects that Microsoft has done a lot of marketing around it and that people are curious about anything new that is launched," said Alex Burmaster, communications director at Nielsen. Google is already working on an update to its current search engine. Nicknamed "Caffeine" the new version is still in the testing phase and will replace the current engine once tests are complete. Print Sponsor

Layar Enhances Augmented Reality Browser Platform With 3D Capabilities By Robin Wauters (CrunchGear) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:44:35 AM

Layar, one of the first companies to start popularizing the concept of augmented reality browsing using modern day's mobile phone cameras, is today announcing the addition of 3D capabilities to its AR browser platform for Android and will be demoing the experience starting tomorrow at the Picnic Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. With 3D, third-party developers

can now tag real-life objects with three-dimensional text, place 3D objects on top of real-world space and create multi-sensory experiences.

Deadly floods hit south-east US (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has declared a state of emergency in 17 counties after Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:11:55 AM nearly 600mm (2ft) of rain fell in Please turn on JavaScript. Media the past two days. requires JavaScript to play. Flooding has also affected Floodwaters left cars completely Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky submerged and many houses and North Carolina. swamped Forecasters are warning of more Floods set off by torrential rain heavy rain and possible flash are now known to have left at floods. least eight people dead in the Among the worst-hit areas was south-eastern US, including seven Douglas County in Georgia where in Georgia. four people died in separate Rescuers found the body of a 15 incidents. A woman died in -year-old boy early on Tuesday, Gwinnett County when she was several hours after he was swept swept away. away by floodwaters. In Carroll County, heavy rain

turned a small stream into raging waters that ripped apart a mobile home where a two-year-old boy lived. His father clung on to him but

the boy was pulled away, his body being found hours later, officials said. On Tuesday morning, the body of a teenager was recovered from

Fashion's Biggest Tops & Flops: The Best & Worst of the 2009 Emmy Awards! (ETonline - Breaking News)

Now that the "61st Primetime Emmy Awards" are over -- it's

time to rate all the sizzlin' and fizzlin' red-carpet styles! Did your

fave TV star's Emmy-style sink, or swim? You decide!

the Chattooga River, several hours after being carried away. The boy and a friend were swept up away by fast-moving water as they tried to reach someone trapped in a vehicle, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The second boy was quickly rescued. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, a man was presumed drowned in an overflowing creek, officials said, while an Alabama man drowned when a pond bank gave way, the Associated Press reported. Print Sponsor

World/

Internet News Record

17

UN climate summit – live By Matthew Weaver, Daniel Nasaw (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:07:01 AM

Follow live updates and a guide through the Guardian's coverage of the UN general assembly meeting and the climate summit 4.05pm: The Chinese president failed to deliver a challenge to major carbon emitting countries, writes Damian Carrington. Chinese president Hu Jintao today broke new ground in his nation's action on climate change, but failed to deliver measures that would galvanise the stagnant negotiations towards a global treaty to fight global warming. 3.57pm: French president Nicholas Sarkozy has started his speech. "We are the last generation that can take action," he says. "We have a choice of catastrophe or a solution. Rarely has a choice been so crucial for the future of mankind. Today we are on a path to failure," he adds. Europe has shown that sustainable growth is possible, Sarkozy claims. He also pays tribute to the commitments of China and the new Japanese government, but says we need to go further. 3.54pm: Here's AP's take on what Hu said: Chinese President Hu Jintao said his nation will continue to take "determined" action. He laid out new plans for extending China's energy-saving programs and targets for reducing "by a notable margin" the "intensity" of its carbon pollution carbon

dioxide emission increases as related to economic growth. He said China would greatly boost its forest cover, "climatefriendly technologies" and use 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Reuters reported: China would reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses produced for each dollar of national economic output by a "notable margin" by 2020 from 2005 levels, Hu said. 3.50pm: " I thought Hu Jintao was going to announce voluntary carbon markets this morning...any ideas why he didn't?", asks climate activist tcktcktck on Twitter. 3.32pm: There's a picture of Hu Jintao historic appearance at the summit here. But Michael Levi, from the Council on Foreign Relations, is disappointed. " Doesn't seem that he made the much-anticipated significant announcement that people were hoping for," he tweeted. The Guardian's environment website has launched a gallery of 20 pictures on climate week in New York. Another Guardian gallery features the arrival of various world leaders in New York. 3.13pm: Hu says the international community should pay close attention to the difficulties faced by developing countries in tackling climate change. "Out of a sense of responsibility to the world and its people" China has tackled the problem and will continue to do so, he says. He confirms a commitment to CO2 emissions per unit of the GDP by a "notable margin" by 2020 from 2005 levels. He pledges to

develop a green economy and I think he talked about increasing carbon capture (but I may have got that wrong). Hu's brief speech is politely applauded and Ban thanks Hu for his "important commitment". The environment blog Treehugger caught a bit more of what Hu had to say. 3.11pm: This is a big moment: Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, has begun to speak about climate change at the UN. 3.05pm: Reuters has got sight of a copy of Hu's speech. He is due to pledge to cut CO2 emissions per unit of the GDP by a "notable margin" by 2020 from 2005 levels. 3.00pm: Obama finished his speech to warm applause. Damian Carrington adds: I think he was speaking just as much to the US audience as he was world leaders. Home is where his problem is, specifically in the Senate which is opposed to his laws to cut US emissions. He said he looked forward to "engaging" with the Senate as things move forward - I bet he does. 2.50pm: Damian Carrington picks out three points from Obama's speech: •First Obama's comments on phasing out fossil fuels subsidies. I have not heard that before and it's a big deal - a UN official told me last month that the subsidies, for example to India for diesel, are huge and therefore a big problem. •Second Obama neatly summed up the hopes for the Copenhagen

deal when he said: "What we are seeking, after all, is not simply an agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We seek an agreement that will allow all nations to grow and raise living standards without endangering the planet." •Third and more worryingly the wording on money is vague, and its kind of scary when he says at the end "let us begin." We have 12 weeks to save the world and we're just starting. Eek. 2.46pm: Obama has started his speech. Here's the text: Good morning. I want to thank the Secretary-General for organizing this summit, and all the leaders who are participating. That so many of us are here today is a recognition that the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. Our generation's response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it – boldly, swiftly, and together – we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe. No nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change. Rising sea levels threaten every coastline. More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive. On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees. The security and stability of each nation and all peoples – our prosperity, our health, our safety – are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out. And yet, we can reverse it. John

F. Kennedy once observed that "Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man." It is true that for too many years, mankind has been slow to respond to or even recognize the magnitude of the climate threat. It is true of my own country as well. We recognize that. But this is a new day. It is a new era. And I am proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history. We're making our government's largest ever investment in renewable energy – an investment aimed at doubling the generating capacity from wind and other renewable resources in three years. Across America, entrepreneurs are constructing wind turbines and solar panels and batteries for hybrid cars with the help of loan guarantees and tax credits – projects that are creating new jobs and new industries. We're investing billions to cut energy waste in our homes, buildings, and appliances – helping American families save money on energy bills in the process. We've proposed the very first national policy aimed at both increasing fuel economy and reducing greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks – a standard that will also save consumers money and our nation oil. We're moving forward with our nation's first offshore wind energy projects. We're investing billions to capture carbon pollution so that we can clean up our coal plants. Just this week, we announced that for the first time CLIMATE page 18

18

Internet News Record

CLIMATE continued from page 17 ever, we'll begin tracking how much greenhouse gas pollution is being emitted throughout the country. Later this week, I will work with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge. And already, we know that the recent drop in overall U.S. emissions is due in part to steps that promote greater efficiency and greater use of renewable energy. Most importantly, the House of Representatives passed an energy and climate bill in June that would finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy for American businesses and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One committee has already acted on this bill in the Senate and I look forward to engaging with others as we move forward. Because no one nation can meet this challenge alone, the United States has also engaged more allies and partners in finding a solution than ever before. In April, we convened the first of what have now been six meetings of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate here in the United States. In Trinidad, I proposed an Energy and Climate Partnership for the Americas. We've worked through the World Bank to promote renewable energy projects and technologies in the developing world. And we have put climate at the top of our diplomatic agenda when it comes to our relationships with countries from China to Brazil; India to Mexico; Africa to Europe. Taken together, these steps represent an historic recognition on behalf of the American people and their government. We

understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations. But though many of our nations have taken bold actions and share in this determination, we did not come here today to celebrate progress. We came because there is so much more progress to be made. We came because there is so much more work to be done. It is work that will not be easy. As we head towards Copenhagen, there should be no illusions that the hardest part of our journey is in front of us. We seek sweeping but necessary change in the midst of a global recession, where every nation's most immediate priority is reviving their economy and putting their people back to work. And so all of us will face doubts and difficulties in our own capitals as we try to reach a lasting solution to the climate challenge. But difficulty is no excuse for complacency. Unease is no excuse for inaction. And we must not allow the perfect to become the enemy of progress. Each of us must do what we can when we can to grow our economies without endangering our planet – and we must all do it together. We must seize the opportunity to make Copenhagen a significant step forward in the global fight against climate change. We also cannot allow the old divisions that have characterized the climate debate for so many years to block our progress. Yes, the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our climate over the last century still have a responsibility to lead. And we will continue to do so – by investing in renewable energy,

promoting greater efficiency, and slashing our emissions to reach the targets we set for 2020 and our long-term goal for 2050. But those rapidly-growing developing nations that will produce nearly all the growth in global carbon emissions in the decades ahead must do their part as well. Some of these nations have already made great strides with the development and deployment of clean energy. Still, they will need to commit to strong measures at home and agree to stand behind those commitments just as the developed nations must stand behind their own. We cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution act together. There is no other way. We must also energize our efforts to put other developing nations – especially the poorest and most vulnerable – on a path to sustainable growth. These nations do not have the same resources to combat climate change as countries like the United States or China do, but they have the most immediate stake in a solution. For these are the nations that are already living with the unfolding effects of a warming planet – famine and drought; disappearing coastal villages and the conflict that arises from scarce resources. Their future is no longer a choice between a growing economy and a cleaner planet, because their survival depends on both. It will do little good to alleviate poverty if you can no longer harvest your crops or find drinkable water. That is why we have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon

development. What we are seeking, after all, is not simply an agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We seek an agreement that will allow all nations to grow and raise living standards without endangering the planet. By developing and disseminating clean technology and sharing our know-how, we can help developing nations leap-frog dirty energy technologies and reduce dangerous emissions. As we meet here today, the good news is that after too many years of inaction and denial, there is finally widespread recognition of the urgency of the challenge before us. We know what needs to be done. We know that our planet's future depends on a global commitment to permanently reduce greenhouse gas pollution. We know that if we put the right rules and incentives in place, we will unleash the creative power of our best scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to build a better world. And so many nations have already taken the first steps on the journey towards that goal. But the journey is long. The journey is hard. And we don't have much time left to make it. It is a journey that will require each of us to persevere through setback, and fight for every inch of progress, even when it comes in fits and starts. So let us begin. For if we are flexible and pragmatic; if we can resolve to work tirelessly in common effort, then we will achieve our common purpose: a world that is safer, cleaner, and healthier than the one we found; and a future that is worthy of our children. Thank you. 2.42pm:

Ban has finished his speech. He set out key aspects of the Copenhagen deal: big emissions cuts for rich countries, curbing of emissions for developing countries and money from rich to poor to pay it. He also called for more cash for poor countries to adapt to the impact of global warming. Not reaching a deal would be "morally inexcusable". Suzanne Goldenberg comments: Ban appeared to be trying to channel Obama on the "fierce urgency of now" "Now is your moment, your excellencies," he said. 2.33pm: Here's a Wordle version of that embargoed Obama speech. 2.19pm: Obama's office has released an embargoed copy of his speech. "Lovely rhetoric as ever" says Carrington. Obama is due to speak in a few minutes. 2.17pm: Tony Blair's people have been in touch to say the former prime minister is due to announce an investment conference for Sierra Leone later this afternoon. Blair is to announce details of the November conference after meeting with Ernest Bai Koroma, the Sierra Leonean president. Sierra Leone has little to do with Blair's official duties as a Middle East envoy - but the British military intervention there in 2000 was one of his most conspicuous foreign policy successes. 2.09pm: Ban has opened the summit (slightly late). 2.03pm: Ban has taken his seat. His is going to be the first of 12 brief CLIMATE page 23

World/ Gadgets/

Internet News Record

19

General calls for more Afghan troops By Chris McGreal, Richard Norton-Taylor (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

themselves with the authorities for fear that the Taliban might ultimately win. McChrystal does not propose a specific number of additional troops nor say whether Submitted at 9/22/2009 3:19:22 AM he expects them principally to • Leaked report reveals Nato come from the US or other Nato commander's grave fears countries. But he pressures the • British soldier killed in a d m i n i s t r a t i o n f o r a s w i f t Helmand explosion commitment by warning that if • Datablog: find out which the Taliban is not driven back by countries contribute troops, and coalition forces within a year then how many there are the war will be unwinnable. President Obama is resisting The leak came as a British p r e s s u r e f r o m t h e N a t o soldier from 2nd Battalion The commander in Afghanistan, Mercian Regiment was killed General Stanley McChrystal, for a yesterday in an explosion during a rapid troop increase and shift patrol in Helmand province, away from judging success in the bringing the number of British war by the numbers of Taliban military personnel killed in killed, following the leak of a Afghanistan to 217. Italy also held confidential 66-page report from a state funeral for six soldiers McChrystal to the Pentagon. killed last week in a bomb attack The report says "success in Kabul, with relatives, officials demands a comprehensive counter and thousands of Italians saluting -insurgency campaign" that shifts their flag-draped coffins. The the emphasis to protecting and government called a national day winning support from ordinary of mourning, with flags at halfAfghans so as not to be seen as an mast and a minute's silence at occupying army. But the general public offices. warns that Nato forces must be "Failure to gain the initiative and prepared for an escalating rate of reverse insurgent momentum in casualties as they take greater the near-term (next 12 months) – risks to win over civilians. while Afghan security capacity In a grim assessment of the matures – risks an outcome where situation in the report, leaked to defeating the insurgency is no the Washington Post, the general longer possible," McChrystal says that task is being made more wrote in his report. "Failure to difficult by rampant Afghan provide adequate resources also government corruption and a risks a longer conflict, greater hesitation by civilians to ally casualties, higher overall costs

and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure." Echoing divisions in Washington between the politicians and the military, British commanders believe between 1,000 and 2,000 more UK troops should be deployed in southern Afghanistan, and want a government decision on reinforcements soon, according to military sources. They argue that more troops now will help the counterinsurgency operation by providing more enduring security for Afghans. There are about 9,000 British troops in Helmand province. However, military chiefs say this number is still insufficient if they are to hold ground captured from the Taliban, and that more troops are needed to consolidate their position in populated areas recently taken from the enemy. Obama has already approved an additional 21,000 US troops this year, raising the total to 68,000 alongside 38,000 other Nato soldiers. But with public and political support for the war eroding in the US, and increasingly drawn parallels with America's long war in Vietnam likely to be strengthened by McChrystal's talk of boosting the numbers of troops and winning hearts and minds, Obama has said that he is in no hurry to increase

the size of the coalition force. White House officials say the president stands by the comments he made at the weekend when he told talk shows that he is hesitant to escalate the numbers of troops in Afghanistan but agrees that a new strategy is required to combat the Taliban and al-Qaida. "Until I'm satisfied that we've got the right strategy, I'm not going to be sending some young man or woman over there beyond what we already have," he said. The president said that if a new counter-insurgency strategy can be shown to be effective "then we'll move forward. "But, if it doesn't, then I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or sending a message that America is here for the duration," he said. Political support for the war has weakened amid a creeping concern that the war may be unwinnable as US casualties rise sharply. A recent Washington Post poll showed that 51% of Americans thought the war "not worth fighting". The chairman of the Senate's armed services committee, Carl Levin, has said that the administration should train more Afghan soldiers before sending additional US troops. McChrystal proposes tripling the size of the Afghan army to 240,000 troops. The doubts have been

NYC intern needed By John Biggs (CrunchGear) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:11:28 AM

Are you a student or shut-in? Are you a fan of electronic

devices? Have you ever spent time in a Turkish prison? If you answered yes to all or two of these questions, have we got an offer for you. CrunchGear needs a

attend swanky press events, and make coffee and prepare the editor's shots of HGH. Fall intern to help out on the site,

reinforced by evident fraud in President Hamid Karzai's reelection and will be strengthened further by warnings from McChrystal that government corruption is as much a threat to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) fight as the insurgency. "The weakness of state institutions, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," he writes. McChrystal warns of the need to win the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians by protecting them better rather than focusing on controlling territory and counting the number of Taliban dead. • Afghanistan • Nato • Barack Obama • Obama administration • United States • US foreign policy • Taliban Chris McGreal Richard NortonTaylor guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

20

World/ Economy/

Internet News Record

Manuel Zelaya returns to Honduras By Rory Carroll (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

Micheletti, said Brazil would be held responsible for any violence. "A call to the government of Brazil: respect the judicial order Submitted at 9/22/2009 3:27:55 AM against Mr Zelaya and turn him Manuel Zelaya vows from into Honduran authorities. The sanctuary of Brazilian embassy eyes of the world are on Brazil that he will retake power and Honduras." Honduran authorities have Military helicopters hovered mobilised riot police, declared a overhead and riot police lined up curfew and shut airports after the near the embassy. dramatic return of Manuel Zelaya, Brazil's foreign minister, Celso the president ousted in a coup Amorim, warned that any action three months ago. against the president or the The interim government diplomatic compound would scrambled to keep control after violate international law. being caught off guard by Zelaya has promised to use Zelaya's appearance yesterday at peaceful means, but with the the Brazilian embassy in the country deeply polarised violence capital Tegucigalpa, where he could flare. Sporadic clashes since drew throngs of supporters. the June 28 coup between security The deposed leader sneaked forces and the exiled leader's back into the central American supporters left dozens injured and country - apparently travelling in at least two dead. a car boot and a tractor, among Zelaya's return opened a new, other means - and vowed from the volatile phase in a crisis that has sanctuary of the embassy to retake d i v i d e d H o n d u r a n s a n d power. confronted central America with "I want to tell you I am its gravest diplomatic dispute committed to the Honduran s i n c e t h e c o l d w a r . T h e people and I am not going to rest homecoming is a gamble to regain one day, one minute, until the the initiative - and spotlight - on dictatorship is toppled," he told the eve of this week's UN general hundreds of cheering, chanting assembly meeting in New York. supporters. The US secretary of state, The interim authorities, who Hillary Clinton, urged both sides initially denied Zelaya was back, to talk. "It's imperative that ordered a nationwide lockdown dialogue begin... [that] there be a and told Brazil to hand over its c h a n n e l o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n guest to stand trial for treason and between President Zelaya and the corruption, charges levelled de facto regime." against him after he was forced The interim rulers have been into exile. isolated internationally but until In a televised address the now had firm control of the i n t e r i m p r e s i d e n t , R o b e r t o impoverished coffee-exporting

country. Zelaya's return has galvanised his supporters. A powerful teachers union called a strike to demand his reinstatement. In addition to the 4pm to 7am curfew "to preserve calm" the authorities have shut airports and apparently cut power to several districts in Tegucigalpa. Since ousting Zelaya - soldiers roused him in his pyjamas at gunpoint and hustled him onto a plane - the interim regime has ruled out power-sharing with a man it deems a radical leftist. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, celebrated his ally's return. "It was a well-planned operation and it worked. Zelaya deceived the coup mongers and went in the trunk of a car and even in a tractor." In a televised phone call from Zelaya, Chavez added: "The coup mongers should surrender power peacefully! I congratulate you for your heroic act and the Latin American people admire you!" Zelaya, giving back-to-back media interviews, told al-Jazeera television he dodged numerous obstacles during his journey. "I had to avoid military checkpoints crossing very close to the mountains and sometimes through the valleys." He said he was committed to peaceful means and said elements of the army could put pressure on the interim government to negotiate a deal. The coup, a joint operation by the army, congress and the supreme court, sparked furious

protests by Zelaya's mostly poor supporters. Halfway through his term the rancher-turned-president, elected on a centrist platform, veered left and embraced Venezuela's socialist leader. The decision was popular with many in the slums but alarmed traditional elites, the middle class and conservative institutions. The crisis flared when he tried to hold a non-binding public consultation to ask people whether they supported moves to change the constitution. Opponents claimed it was a step towards extending Zelaya's rule and ousted him. The Obama administration, which has no love for the Chávez ally, joined condemnation of the coup, but held back from strong economic sanctions. Crisis talks in Costa Rica, hosted by President Oscar Arias, broke down without either side reaching an agreement. The strategy of the interim government was to ride out the diplomatic storm until elections in November installed a new leader. • Honduras • Hugo Chávez • Venezuela Rory Carroll guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Dodd's Push for Regulatory Reform Has Unintended Consequences (Financial Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:48:04 AM

I doubt any Senator is more aligned with the financial industry than Christopher Dodd. So it is a testament to his 'country first' mentality that in spite of the limitless pool of campaign contributions that could spring forth from the industry lobby -and that Dodd would find most helpful in what is shaping up to be a difficult re-election fight -- he is among the most aggressive in pushing financial reform. Dodd is pushing forward efforts for a wholesale restructuring of Wall Street regulators, to combine the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into one agency. Chuck Schumer, another Senator with a strong constituency in the financial sector, is reported to be a supporter of this approach. I am shocked to read that this bold step might actually have the unexpected effect of forestalling any meaningful regulation. This from Bloomberg: Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd’s plan for a single bank regulator may set up a fight with House colleague Barney Frank and the Obama administration and might slow the overhaul of financial rules. It is incredible how something can backfire in such an unexpected way.

World/ Gadgets/

Internet News Record

21

French police descend on 'jungle' camp By Haroon Siddique, Angelique Chrisafis (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

ticket to England," he said. Police officers also clashed with protesters from the No Border movement, some of whom had come from England to Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:00:37 AM demonstrate at the camp entrance Police drag away 278 camp against its destruction. dwellers, nearly half of them Last night, migrants were minors, who had been sleeping bracing for the police eviction, rough hoping to stow away on displaying banners demanding lorries to Britain asylum rights. Adam Khan, 25, a Scores of French riot police former chauffeur from southern descended early this morning on Afghanistan, said all he wanted to the "jungle" camp in Calais, do was reach the UK. bulldozing makeshift tents and "I've been here one month and I rounding up hundreds of illegal am trying and trying to go to migrants hoping to stow away on England," he said. "The situation lorries to Britain. is bad in Afghanistan but I have A total of 278 people, nearly relatives in England." half of them minors, were The fate of the detained detained as police moved into the migrants remains unclear. France camp shortly after dawn, dragging is unlikely to return them forcibly away camp dwellers and putting to Afghanistan, and the most them into waiting buses. Those likely outcome is that they will be under 18 were to be transported to quickly released. Charities who shelters in the east of France and provided food for the homeless adults to detention centres far migrants warned that the men from Calais. were scared and distrustful, The French immigration having witnessed brutality in minister, Eric Besson, shrugged police raids, and warned that o f f c r i t i c i s m o f t h e r o u g h many would end up sleeping treatment of the migrants, most of rough again. whom are young Afghans in At its peak, the jungle was home bureaucratic limbo, saying the to about 800 migrants, mostly jungle was a base for people- Afghans, sleeping rough under traffickers. "There are traffickers scraps of sheeting. It had come to who make these poor people pay symbolise the failure of British an extremely high price for a and French authorities to deal

with migrants desperate to reach the Kent coast but stuck in a no man's land. Since the vast Red Cross centre at Sangatte was closed in 2002, under pressure from Britain, migrants have continued to gather along the coast desperate to reach the UK. Sylvie Copyans, of the aid group Salam, said some of the migrants had been in the jungle camp for up to eight months. "It's exactly like when they closed Sangatte," she said. "They are saying no immigrants in Calais, they can't stay here. But if they are made to leave they will just go to another squat. It's more and more difficult every day." Activist group Refugee Action condemned the way the migrants had been treated. "They should never have been allowed to rot there like this. It's appalling neglect and has allowed false expectation to be built up," said Sandy Buchan, the group's chief executive. But the home secretary, Alan Johnson, said he was delighted about the impending closure of the camp. Britain has ruled out taking in the migrants. Johnson said genuine refugees should apply for asylum in the country where they entered the EU, while those

escaping persecution should return home. Speaking after talks in Brussels with Besson yesterday, he said reports that Britain could be forced to take illegal immigrants were wrong. "The measures that we have put in place are not only there to prevent illegal immigration but also to stop people-trafficking," Johnson said. "We are working with the French, not only to strengthen our shared border but that of Europe as a whole." Besson promised that more squats in the area would be gradually cleared. Migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and other countries have been living in squatted buildings and shacks all along the Nord-Pas -de-Calais coast, hoping to stow away on trucks heading to Britain. • Immigration and asylum • France Haroon Siddique Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Apple Approved Amost 1400 iPhone Apps Last Friday...Fourteen Freaking Hundred [IPhone] By Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:00:00 AM

The popularity of the App Store simply cannot be overstated. Last Friday, Apple approved their most ever apps in one day. 1394 of em. Over 300 were games. That's like if the entire Blackberry App World catalog were published in just one day. 1400 is more than double the number of games currently on the PS3 ( 557) and just a tad short of the number of titles in the PS2's library (somewhere around 1,900). In short, it's a lot of freaking software in terms of pretty much any platform...and it all came to the iPhone in just one day. Now if only 1393 of the 1394 apps weren't tip calculators and digital whoopee cushions, we'd really be on to something. [ App Shopper via MacRumors]

Nintendo introduces some color to European DSi options By Vladislav Savov (Engadget) Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:50:00 AM

Hey Europe, Nintendo has stopped neglecting you! After Japan had color options before anyone else even had the DSi, the USA got in on the fun with extra pink and white, and Europe was

left wearing the black and white dunce cap. That monochromatic dystopia is about to be vanquished on October 23, however, when Nintendo is set to offer the handsome red, blue and turquoise options you see above all over the good lands of the Old World. come preloaded, as well as the Facebook photo uploading will Flipnote Studio app for creating

multimedia missives. You can see a couple more shots after the break. Continue reading Nintendo introduces some color to European DSi options Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds Nintendo introduces some color

to European DSi options originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

22

World/ Tech Blog

Internet News Record

Lesbian footballer killer gets life By David Smith (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk)

a stream and dumped. "Eudy Simelane suffered a brutal, undignified death," Judge Ratha Mokgoathleng told the Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:35:43 AM court, where the victim's parents • South African jailed for part in sat with heads bowed. "She was international player's murder stripped naked, stabbed, assaulted, • Gay rights activists hail raped. What more indignity can a judgment person endure?" A man was jailed for life today He continued: "The accused has for the murder and gang rape of a shown no remorse whatsoever. He l e s b i a n S o u t h A f r i c a n steadfastly maintains he was not i n t e r n a t i o n a l f o o t b a l l e r . to blame for the death of the Themba Mvubu, 24, from deceased. That is his right. It's Kwathema, was found guilty of painful to send a young person to murdering, robbing and being an jail, but if the young person accessory to the rape of 31-year- behaves like an adult with old Eudy Simelane. criminal conduct, he cannot Activists at the magistrates e x p e c t t o h i d e b e h i n d h i s court in Delmas, Mpumalanga y o u t h f u l n e s s . " province, hailed the judgment as Mvubu, wearing a hooped "extremely important" in drawing brown and cream sweater, sat attention to cases of murder and looking at the floor with hands so-called "corrective rape" against behind his back for much of the lesbians in South Africa. hearing. Questioned by reporters, Simelane was one of the first he muttered "I'm not sorry" as he women to live openly as a lesbian was led from the dock to jeers in Kwa Thema township, near from the public gallery. Johannesburg. A keen footballer He was the second man since childhood, she played for convicted of the crime. Earlier the South African women's team this year Thato Mphithi pleaded and worked as a coach and guilty to murder, robbery and referee. She hoped to serve as a being an accomplice to the line official in the 2010 men's attempt to commit rape. He was World Cup in South Africa. imprisoned for a total of 32 years. But in April last year she was Two more men, Khumbulani accosted while leaving a pub and Magagula, 22, and 18-year-old robbed of a mobile phone, trainers J o h a n n e s M a h l a n g u w e r e and cash. She died from wounds acquitted today of their alleged to the abdomen after being gang- part in the attack. "God will be raped and stabbed 12 times. Her t h e i r j u d g e , " s a i d J u d g e naked body was dragged towards M o k g o a t h l e n g .

The most likely motive for the attack was that Simelane and her killers were known to each other, the judge added. "I'm told she was a famous athlete," he said. "It was an attempt to obliterate the evidence." At an early stage the court ruled out Simelane's sexual orientation as a motive in her killing. But lesbian political activists have regularly attended the hearings and welcomed the way it has raised awareness of their cause. Phumi Mtetwa, executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, said today: "This judgment is extremely important. It doesn't state that she was killed as a lesbian but because she was known. "How did people know her in the township? She was a soccer player who was 'butch' and was known. People are killed because of who they are." Simelane's mother, Mally, 65, said: "I'm happy. I'm released. My life will come right again." • Gay rights • Gender • Human rights • South Africa David Smith guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

TopTwits tracks your Twitter linkage (Scripting News) Submitted at 9/21/2009 7:41:11 AM

When tr.im announced that it was going open source, I said I would also release the code of the

app that does my Top 40 page and that of Jay Rosen, Kevin Tofel and Zach Seward. TopTwits is that app. It runs as an OPML Editor tool. This means you must have the OPML Editor

installed on your machine, and then install topTwits.root in the OPML Editor.

EU fails to agree ban on bluefin tuna fishing (World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:28:01 AM

Mediterranean countries block move for temporary ban so tuna stocks can recover A sharply divided European Union failed today to protect the bluefin tuna, as Mediterranean countries refused to back even a temporary ban on catching the fish, which is prized by sushi aficionados. The European commission wanted a temporary ban on commercial fishing until stocks recovered, but Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France and Italy – which have strong fishing lobbies – blocked the move. Environmentalists said the failure to bring in a ban was a further step toward the bluefin tuna's commercial extinction. "They are pushing tuna to the point of no return," Xavier Pastor, of the Oceana protection group, said. "It is deplorable that the EU member states who are mostly responsible for the depletion of bluefin tuna stocks refused to agree to a measure that would have helped to reverse the situation." The commission had hoped the EU would present a united stand at the next meeting of the intergovernmental International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna(ICCAT), which manages the conservation of tuna. It now seems unlikely that a ban

on fishing bluefin tuna will be pushed through when the group meets in Brazil in November. "ICCAT members have to realise that the very future of this iconic stock depends on it," said the EU fisheries commissioner, Joe Borg. Stocks of bluefin tuna, which has been hunted since Roman times in the Mediterranean, have dwindled for years, with Japan taking about 80% of bluefin exports. .Large fish are now a rarity. Fishermen often catch small tuna before they have reproduced and fatten them in cages until they are big enough for sale. The quota for catches was lowered from 28,500 tonnes to 22,000 this year but scientists say that is still 7,000 tonnes too much.. Groups such as Oceana say illegal fishing doubles the amount of tuna caught. After the 2007 quota was set at 29,500 tonnes, Oceana estimated that real catches stood at 60,000 tonnes. It estimates that 45,000 tonnes of bluefin could be fished sustainably each year if stocks were allowed to recover. • Fishing • European Union • Marine life • Conservation guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Gadgets/

Internet News Record

CLIMATE continued from page 18 speeches. The full programme is here. 1.58pm: Ban Ki-moon is lining up for pre-summit photographs with Hu Jintao and other world leaders. In the hall itself there's some high level chitchat going on, and lots of hand shaking. Some of the delegates are photographing each other. 1.53pm: Damian Carrington, the Guardian's head of environment, explains what's on the agenda for the climate summit and translates some of the jargon. 1.40pm: You should be able to follow a webcast of the climate summit from 2pm, on the UN's site. More than 500 global companies have signed up to a call for action on climate change ahead of the summit. 1.30pm It could be one of the most important UN general assembly meetings for years. Climate change, the Middle East crisis and the global economy are all high on the agenda and many of the key players will be attending including Barack Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hu Jintao, the first Chinese president to attend the meeting for 40 years. Ban Ki-moon is due to open the

UN's climate change summit in New York today, with a speech at 2.15pm (9.15am local time), closely followed by Obama and the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. That's just for starters. As Suzanne Goldenberg writes, Obama's schedule today"stacks up as a whirlwind tour of the most urgent global issues". At 3.30pm, he is due to meet Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and then the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas. He then goes on to lunch with African leaders and, at some point, is due to meet Jintao. Later, there's a press conference on climate change; a speech that Obama will give to the Clinton Global Initiative; and a climate change dinner hosted by Ban Kimoon. Tomorrow the general assembly debate opens, then on Thursday's there's a special session of the security council to talk about nuclear disarmament. This year's meeting will see the first of the appearance of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. That other international bad boy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also on his way, and is expected to be in a defiant mood about Iran's nuclear programme. This is an impossibly broad range of subjects to cover in a

single blog, so we won't try. Instead we will highlight the main developments of the next three days and guide you through the Guardian's UN coverage and interesting reports and blogposts elsewhere. Julian Borger's new Global Security blog will be carrying regular updates on the meeting. Suzanne Goldenberg, our US environment correspondent is in New York, to follow the climate change summit. Our Washington bureau chief, Ewen MacAskill, will be following Obama's every move and Middle East editor Ian Black will analyse the implications for the peace process. • United Nations • Climate change • Copenhagen climate change summit 2009 • Middle East • Obama administration Matthew Weaver Daniel Nasaw guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Man to put entire collection of 700 Nintendo games up for auction By John Biggs (CrunchGear) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:47:25 AM

Dan Hentschel is a video game collector. He has 2000 video games for multiple systems and now he’s selling is entire Nintendo collection, including a thumb drive containing a full catalog of his collection. That is, friends, 700 different games, consoles, and controllers for on low, low price of whatever the madmen out there bid this up to. Sadly the auction isn’t live yet but Dan has set up an informational page to tease us all a little bit about his collection. He’s included a friendly video and full photo album and he’s giving 50% to charity, which is noble. Here are his reasons to bid: Likely one of the most complete NES auctions you will ever see. All the games have been alphabetized and cataloged. As part of the auction, you will receive a thumb drive containing pictures of every game, box, and manual. Also on the thumb drive will be videos of the collection, useful for insurance purposes, and an Excel spreadsheet containing a game checklist. Every single game has been surface cleaned so that you can

Microsoft handing out Windows 7 Launch Party host confirmations By Paul Miller (Engadget) Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:53:00 AM

"Congratulations." [Thanks to everyone who sent

this in] Microsoft handing out Windows 7 Launch Party host confirmations originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:53:00

of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments EST. Please see our terms for use

23

examine your collection without getting your hands dirty. This collection has been stored in a smoke-free home. I.e. it doesn’t smell. Each game has had the contacts meticulously cleaned, and each game has been tested in the toploading NES included in the auction. Included in the auction are nine extremely rugged Rubbermaid storage containers that are the ideal size and shape to hold NES games. They almost seem like they were designed specifically for that purpose. I have a very good E-Bay profile with a solid feedback rating and selling history that goes back more than 10 years. I will be donating 50% of the sale price on this auction to Victory. Some of you may not care too much about this one, but even if you are not a Christian, you may appreciate knowing that your money is going towards a charitable organization that is very active in helping the community. And here’s mine: You, too, can appear as crazed about video games as Dan. Pass the torch of obsession!

24

Economy/ Gadgets/

Internet News Record

Has a s MERShole Opened Up? (Financial Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:56:59 AM

Ellen Brown penned an article over at HuffPo that sounds much more definitive than it really is, yet outlines a potential major problem for the securitized loan industry: In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. Well, kinda. The entire decision is found here and isn't quite as represented in that article. Nonetheless, it is significant. A bit of background is in order. A mortgage is a combination of a promissory note (that is, a promise to pay) and a security instrument. That is, there's a deed of trust and a debt (the promissory note.) State law governs foreclosure and most states require as a matter of statute that these two items remain intact. Further, most states require as a matter of statute (that is, law) that to foreclose you must present proof that you actually have an enforceable interest. In many cases this requires what is known as a "wet signature" - that is, the actual original signed document from the debtor confirming agreement to be bound to the terms. In addition you must establish ownership of that document - that is, you must show an unbroken chain of assignments from the originating bank to your hand. This is where the problem comes in - the originating lender has no standing to foreclose once he sells off the mortgage. He was

paid in full and thus has no standing to appear in court. MERS' web page says this: MERS is an innovative process that simplifies the way mortgage ownership and servicing rights are originated, sold and tracked. Created by the real estate finance industry, MERS eliminates the need to prepare and record assignments when trading residential and commercial mortgage loans. They may as well have said "we have decided that we can abrogate state law with impunity." Oh wait - they did, didn't they? Sorry folks, life doesn't work that way. If state law requires an unbroken chain of recorded assignments in order to document ownership of a mortgage and thus standing to foreclose, MERS cannot override this state law by fiat. Many judges, including some in Florida, have held repeatedly that despite the lack of an actual chain of assignments and often despite a lack of actual "wet signatures" on an original promissory note they will evict people from their homes regardless. You have to wonder how many of those judges have been bought, bribed or cajoled by banking interests, given that the purpose of a Judge is to do just that - judge- not write law. If the legislature says you need an unbroken chain of assignments and an original document for it to be enforceable, then it does. But in other states banks have run into a problem - judges, rather tired of the "fast and loose" way banks have played with the law for the last decade, have put their foot down and actually done their job - that is, they have judged the

facts and enforced the law as written. In those locales MERS has run into trouble. The underlying issue is that many of these so-called "securities" (MBS, CDOs, etc) were issued "light" of the required legal mandates to keep the chain of assignments and actual consent signatures required for enforcement. Many people charge that the reason behind this was simple volume. I disagree. I believe that a large part of the root cause of these "lost" documents is to cover up blatant and in many cases outrageous fraud. It is difficult to prove that a bank or other lender knew and ignored stated-income fraud (or allegedly "investigated" and "underwrote" a file when it did not) when the original file has been turned into ticker-tape confetti courtesy of the closest paper shredder! MERS has thus given cover to a tremendous amount of fraudulent conduct - the very conduct that predatory lending statutes, "wet signature" and "chain of title" laws are supposed to prevent. The real bottom line here is that securitized bondholders may in fact be holding worthless pieces of paper. My hollering about this began in April of 2007, right when The Ticker began publication, and continued all through 2007. The shocker to me is that the bondholders have sat still for this as long as they have. The "delay, extend and pretend" game is all fine and well but all making coupon payments by playing "hot potato" does is hold off on the inevitable. It doesn't change a thing in terms of the final

outcome, because the cash flow to maturity on these notes doesn't exist! There's liability in silent consent to getting screwed by so-called "technical" legal defects; you can find yourself on the wrong end of a legal principle called "estoppel." Sucks to be you if that happens, and the "you" in many of these cases are pension funds and others who have a fiduciary responsibility to the final alleged beneficiaries of these "investments." In point of fact all of these fraudulently-securitized instruments - where the inducement to enter into the transaction included representations about credit quality flowing from the alleged original borrowers and security structure are now known to be false - can be "put back" on the originators and securitizers. That bomb winds up coming to rest square on the balance sheet of the big banks as either principals or the "funding and bundling" sources for the gazillions of small "boutique" mortgage shops that have closed over the last two years. How long will it be before an enterprising attorney or firm decides to put together a class action with all of the bondholders who are certain to get hosed down the road? Good question. It is in fact one of the mysteries of the present mess that we haven't seen a significant push in this direction as of yet. I still expect that we will, as the potential recovery (and thus the potential legal fees) are literally in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Samsung InstinctQ for Sprint passes by the FCC and turns a few heads By Laura June (Engadget) Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:29:00 AM

It's been a little piece of time since we saw that photo of the G1 -esque Samsung InstinctQ emerge, and we were starting to wonder what had become of our newest QWERTY cutie. Well -the M900, as it's also known -has just ducked through the old FCC, and though we didn't really learn anything we didn't already know, it was just nice to see its face again. The Sprint-bound, CMDA / EV-DO-loving Android slider will pack Bluetooth and Wi -Fi, and we have to say that it's looking pretty fly to our eyes. We're not sure when this bad boy's going to hit reality, but the FCC appearance makes us think it won't be too long now. [via Unwired View, thanks Ryan] Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds Samsung InstinctQ for Sprint passes by the FCC and turns a few heads originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Economy/ Gadgets/ TV

Internet News Record

25

America and Afghanistan: Still necessary? (The Economist: News analysis)

Washington Post on Monday, pulls no punches. He says bluntly that success cannot be taken for Submitted at 9/21/2009 11:35:53 PM granted, that the overall situation America and Afghanistan is deteriorating in the face of a S e p 2 2 n d 2 0 0 9 | resilient and growing insurgency, WASHINGTON, DC and that America and NATO are From Economist.com Is in urgent need of a completely reAmerica’s commitment to the war e n g i n e e r e d a n d “ p r o p e r l y in Afghanistan waning? resourced” counter-insurgency WHEN he was campaigning to campaign. He does not specify be president, Barack Obama said how many additional forces he over again that Afghanistan was will need. Indeed, he is careful to the necessary war, the one that say that resources alone will not was justified by al-Qaeda’s win the war. But he does say that terrorist attacks of September 11th “under-resourcing could lose it”. 2001 but which had been starved And although he thinks it would of resources because of the be ideal if Afghan security forces unnecessary war in Iraq. Since could lead the fight, he concludes taking office he has generally that they will not be strong been as good as his word. He enough soon enough, so coalition deployed an additional 17,000 forces will have to bridge the gap. troops, declaring in March that if Once the coalition has adopted its the Afghan government fell to the new strategy, the general adds, Taliban, the country would “again “we must signal unwavering be a base for terrorists who want commitment to see it through to to kill as many of our people as success.” they possibly can.” In May he As it happens, Mr Obama had a fired General David McKiernan perfect opportunity to send just and sent a new man, General such a signal on September 20th, Stanley McChrystal, to command when he appeared on several of the American and coalition forces. America’s Sunday talk shows in Now, however, the new man is an effort to boost support for a s k i n g f o r s t i l l m o r e health reform. He has had the soldiers—and it is not clear general’s report for several weeks whether Mr Obama will let him and the White House confirms have them. that he has read it. But no General McChrystal’s indication of unwavering assessment of the job he faces in commitment was forthcoming—if A f g h a n i s t a n , l e a k e d t o t h e anything, the opposite. “Until I'm

satisfied that we've got the right strategy I'm not gonna be sending some young man or woman over there—beyond what we already have,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press”. “I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or, in some way—you know, sending a message that America is here for the duration.” This was not a case of a president being caught on the hop. Robert Gibbs, his press secretary, told reporters on Monday that an overall assessment of strategy in Afghanistan was continuing inside the administration and would not be completed for several more weeks. No decision would be made about sending more troops until it was. And this assessment, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said last week, was starting from “first principles”. Could Mr Obama’s commitment to fight the “good” war in Afghanistan be fading? Two recent developments are bound to influence his thinking. First, support for the war is declining. A national CNN/Opinion Research poll in mid-September found 39% in favour of the war in Afghanistan compared with 58% against. Embarrassingly for a Democratic president whose concessions on health reform have already annoyed many on the left

of his own party, most of the support comes from Republicans. A second factor weighing heavily on the administration is the blatant ballot-stuffing that occurred during last month’s fraud-ridden presidential election in Afghanistan. Although General McChrystal calls for additional resources, the chief conclusion of his leaked report is that victory will depend not on killing more Taliban fighters but on winning the confidence of the people, many of whom have been alienated by widespread corruption under President Hamid Karzai and have “little reason to support their government”. This crisis of confidence, the general argues, has created fertile ground for the insurgency, which will not be defeated until Afghanistan has a capable government of its own. “A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency,” he says. Mr Obama, it seems, may not be willing to send out a bigger one until he is persuaded that Afghanistan has a government that he too can believe in. Back to top ^^ Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

Happy 25th anniversary, Cosby Show By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)

Here's the famous scene from the episode where Cliff explains to son Theo about the realities of This week marks the 25th living on your own and not going anniversary of the premiere to college. This was an instant episode of The Cosby Show. classic, because Cliff's reaction to Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:29:00 AM

Theo's speech about being a Filed under: Other Comedy "regular person" wasn't expected, Shows, Video, Reality-Free especially by an audience that had Permalink| Email this| | just clapped at what Theo had Comments said. [via Pop Candy]

Motorola Entice W766 Feature Phone Hits Verizon Today [Cellphones] By Danny Allen (Gizmodo) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:01:43 AM

An inexpensive flip-phone, the Entice replaces Motorola's W755 in Verizon's line-up. You get onetouch access to its music player, 2 -megapixel camera, IM-style texting, Bluetooth and speaker phone, plus microSD card expansion (up to 8GB) and Verizon 3G data access. The Entice can also run the usual Verizon Wireless Services: VZ Navigator, V Cast, Family Locator, Dashboard, etc. Other key specs: a 2.2-inch (176 by 220pixel) color display, and a 2.5mm headphone jack. But for feature phones, it's all about how low they can go. With a $50 rebate (and two-year contract), it can be picked up for 40 bucks online from today, but will also show up in Verizon stores later this month for the same price. [ Verizon]

26

Economy/ Tech/

Internet News Record

Iran: Still angry (The Economist: News analysis) Submitted at 9/21/2009 2:19:57 AM

Iran Sep 21st 2009 From Economist.com Iran's anti -government protesters take to the streets again JERUSALEM Day, a traditional time for fellow Muslims to show solidarity with the Palestinians, provided the opportunity for the Iranian opposition’s first big march for several weeks. People sneaked green ribbons into their pockets, anxious to demonstrate their support for Iran’s Green Wave opposition movement but equally keen to avoid a beating from government militia. But as the crowds swelled, people became bolder and antigovernment chants rang out. Hardliners in the government did their best to intimidate their opponents in the days before the demonstrations on Friday September 18th. Rumours circulated that opposition leaders such as Mir Hossein Mousavi, who says he won the disputed presidential election in June, and Mehdi Karroubi would be arrested. The Revolutionary Guards made threats against “rioters” who might abuse the day with their protests. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader,

gave warning that Jerusalem Day belonged to that city alone and that no other slogans were to be used. But this year, the day was coopted by the opposition. The rallies did not draw the hundreds of thousands who poured onto the streets after June's elections, but the crowds were different from the usual small groups of progovernment supporters who fill the streets to protest against Israel and the West. On Friday cries of “Death to Russia” and “Death to China” replaced the usual chants against Israel and America, in response to warming attitudes by those countries to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime. Shouts of “not Gaza, not Lebanon, I'll only give my life for Iran” showed that the Iranian government's hope that the day only celebrated solidarity with the Palestinians was in vain. Mr Ahmadinejad did his best to deflect attention from the political unrest still rumbling in Iran. His speech on Friday revived his favoured vitriol against Israel and questioning of the Holocaust. This kind of posturing plays well with many of his supporters but, during an outdoor interview broadcast on Iranian state television after his speech, shouts of “Ahmadi, Ahmadi resign!” directed at the president could be heard clearly.

Meanwhile, in his address for Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, Mr Khamenei seemed anxious to shore up his own position, shaky since his overt support for Mr Ahmadinejad after the disputed presidential election. He proclaimed defensively that the West had failed in its attempts to undermine Iran’s government with opposition rallies on Friday. As Mr Ahmadinejad prepares to go to New York for the United Nations’ General Assembly, he leaves behind him a country still seething with frustration and opposition to his government. Iran’s nuclear programme will be at the forefront of discussions. As relations between Russia and America are appearing to thaw after Barack Obama’s calls to scrap a missile-defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Iran will be watching carefully to see if Russia is any more willing to join America in criticising its nuclear and missile programmes. At the same time Iran continues to downplay the threat it poses. In an interview last week with NBC, an American television network, Mr Ahmadinejad avoided direct questions about Iran’s nuclear programme, saying that Iran saw no need for any such weapons. And on Sunday Mr Khamenei

blasted America’s missile-defence plan, describing the West’s fears over potential Iranian nuclear weapons as “pure fabrication” on the part of America. Mr Ahmadinejad’s trip to New York may affect his image at home. There seems little doubt that his speech to the UN General Assembly will contain the customary fiery bombast that has proved popular among Iranians in the past. Though many Iranians thoroughly dislike their belligerent president and are embarrassed by his posturing, playing up to Iranian national pride and the country’s desire to stand up to meddling foreign powers has served him well in the past. So too have his calls for Iran’s rights to nuclear weapons. He will hope to take advantage of this again at the UN this week. But as the protests against his government show no signs of dying away and as many of his opponents remain locked up, people in Iran will be less worried about their rights to nuclear weapons and more concerned about their political rights at home. Back to top ^^ Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

Googling Juror Leads To Verdict Being Overturned By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)

we hear of a jury verdict that was overturned due to a Googling juror. The case is actually from a We were just writing about few years ago, and is only courts requiring jurors to sign popping up now, because a higher statements saying they would not court has said that the decision to Google details of cases they were overturn the jury verdict was hearing, and just like clockwork, reasonable. There was one other Submitted at 9/22/2009 12:04:28 AM

oddity in the case as well: the reason the juror Googled the information was because he was told ahead of time the names of parties involved in cases he might hear. Why? I have no clue... I would think that any court that does that would likely have a

situation where almost everyone on the jury did at least a little searching and poking around. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Nissan To Add Futuristic Sound Effects To Its Electric Car To Keep It From Hitting Unaware Pedestrians By Michael Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:55:00 AM

Ever wonder why futuristic vehicles in science fiction movies have loud whirring/buzzing noises? Perhaps it's because of people worried about pedestrians getting hit by silent vehicles. You may recall that there has been some effort underway to push the makers of hybrid or electric vehicles to add engine noises to their cars, because the electric engines are "too quiet" and unsuspecting pedestrians who fail to look both ways are getting hit. Or so we're told. I've yet to see much actual evidence of the rash of pedestrians-hit-by-Priuses, but the story has gained some legs. In fact, some politicians are even pushing for government mandates to require such cars to be noisier. In an effort to live up to any such requirements, while still making its all electric vehicle still feel futuristic, apparently Nissan is looking to add those Blade Runner-style vehicle noises to the upcoming Nissan Leaf. There's no functional reason for it, other than that they want to make the car noisier, and fake engine noises didn't seem as fun (or, one would imagine, marketable). Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Economy/ Gadgets/ Tech/

Internet News Record

French politics: Behind the scenes (The Economist: News analysis) Submitted at 9/21/2009 4:21:52 AM

French politics Sep 21st 2009 | PARIS From Economist.com A trial in Paris will illuminate the murky workings of French politics THE courtroom doors opened on Monday September 21st for the start of a judicial drama that is set to expose the murky dealings at the heart of French political power. On paper, the “Clearstream trial”, as the court case is known, concerns five suspects accused of involvement in a smear campaign, and some 40 civil plaintiffs, whose names were linked to fake bank accounts supposedly holding the proceeds of kickbacks on an arms deal. Politically, however, the trial is a duel between two ambitious politicians, once rivals for power: one, Nicolas Sarkozy, is now president, and the other, Dominique de Villepin, is a former prime minister who was once his chief challenger for the job. The case dates back to a judicial investigation, launched in 2001, into kickbacks linked to the sale of French frigates to Taiwan in

the early 1990s. In 2004, investigating judges received anonymously a list of foreign bank accounts, subsequently found to be fake, that fingered various French personalities. They include Mr Sarkozy, then interior minister under President Jacques Chirac, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then a Socialist Party notable and now head of the IMF in Washington. Others from across the political spectrum included such people as Jean-Pierre Chevènement, another leftwinger, Alain Madelin, a liberal former finance minister, and Brice Hortefeux, the current interior minister. When the judge ruled the list bogus, a fresh investigation began into the false accusations. Investigative judges have spent years raiding premises, confiscating documents, decrypting computer files and interrogating witnesses, including two top French former spymasters. Besides Mr de Villepin, the judges have also put in the dock Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former executive at the European Aeronautic Defence and Space company (EADS), and Imad Lahoud, an EADS computer whiz and sometime intelligence

operative himself. For Mr Sarkozy, the affair is proof of a plot at the highest level to discredit him and thwart his chances of becoming president in 2007. It is easy to forget that, at the time, the two men were seen to be part of an evenly matched contest. Mr de Villepin, who became Mr Sarkozy’s boss when named prime minister in 2005, was Mr Chirac’s right-hand man for years. Elegant, aristocratic, lyrical, having made his name as the poster boy for those opposed to the Iraq war, he was Mr Chirac’s preferred heir. As his former chief-of-staff at the Elysée palace, Mr de Villepin also honed the more opaque arts of political kingmaking. He is accused of “complicity in false accusation, complicity in the use of forgeries, receipt of stolen goods, and breach of trust”. Appearing in court on Monday for the first day of the trial, in the courtroom where MarieAntoinette was sent to the guillotine in 1793, Mr de Villepin declared: “I am here because of the doggedness of one man, Nicolas Sarkozy.” He insisted that he would emerge “free and cleared” at the end. Mr de Villepin has repeatedly

complained of political manipulation of the judicial process, and of a personal “lynching” by the media. He admits having asked a top intelligence boss to look into the list of names but, he claims, let the matter drop once he learned that the list was bogus. During the next four weeks, evidence that has leaked out into the press over the years from France’s sieve-like investigation process will finally be put firmly in the public domain. It will cast light on the inner workings of not just French political power, but also the intelligence services and the defence industry. Mr Sarkozy himself will not be asked to testify, as he enjoys judicial immunity while in office. Mr de Villepin could, in theory, face up to five years in prison. In any event, the trial will determine whether he has a political future. And it will supply an extraordinary glimpse into the backroom manoeuvrings of the French establishment. Back to top ^^ Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

27

Intelligence Analyst Charged With Hacking For Logging Into An Account Sent To Him Via Email By Michael Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:23:00 AM

Wired has the odd story of a government intelligence analyst who has been charged with unauthorized access to a protected gov't computer involved in an investigation he was not authorized to access. But the problem is that the whole reason he logged in was because he had the login information emailed to him -- and he claims it went to a bunch of other intelligence analysts as well. Given that the login info was widely emailed around, due to what appears to be a breach in security protocol, it seems rather silly to then charge him with any kind of unauthorized access, and have him facing criminal charges. The real question should be why the guy was emailed the login info in the first place. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Mac Portable gets a 20th anniversary vivisection By Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:57:00 AM

In September 1989, Apple made its first stab at a portable Macintosh computer. The name? "Macintosh Portable." Kind of has a ring to it, huh? This 16 pound behemoth packs a 10-inch (640 x 400) monochrome display, 16

MHZ Motorola CPU, 1MB RAM, 40MB HDD, 3.5-inch floppy drive, and a 2400 baud modem into a handsome clamshell design that features (and this is our favorite part) a modular design that allowed the user to position the trackball on either end of the keyboard. Lefties of the world when adjusted for inflation), but unite! Originally yours for $6,500 we're guessing you can find - $7,300 (that's $11,288 - $12,677

someone on eBay (or at Goodwill) to cut you a deal on one at this late date. Hit the read link to celebrate this momentous anniversary in the manner of a true gadget-head: by watching someone gut the thing and take pictures of it. You'll be glad you did. Filed under: Laptops Mac Portable gets a 20th

anniversary vivisection originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

28

Economy/ Gadgets/ Fashion

Internet News Record

Green.view: Fewer feet, smaller footprint (The Economist: Daily columns) Submitted at 9/21/2009 4:10:44 AM

Green.view Sep 21st 2009 From Economist.com A world with fewer people would emit less greenhouse gases FAMILY planning is five times cheaper than conventional green technologies in combating climate change. That is the claim made by Thomas Wire, a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, and highlighted by British medics writing in the Lancet on September 19th. Ever since Thomas Malthus, an English economist, published his essay on the principle of population in 1798, people have been concerned about population growth. Sir Julian Huxley, the first director general of the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation when it was established in 1945, remarked that death control made birth control a moral imperative. Sir Julian went on to play a role in establishing what was then the World Wildlife Fund, a nature conservation agency, linking population growth to environmental degradation. According to Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, the

world’s population is 6.8 billion and is expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Some 95% of this growth is occurring in developing countries. In a paper published on September 21st in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, he points out that fewer people would produce less climate-changing greenhouse gas. A companion study published in the same issue by Malcolm Potts of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons that there are 80m unintended pregnancies every year. The vast majority of these result in babies. If women who wanted contraception were provided with it, 72% of these unintended pregancies would have been prevented, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund called “ Adding it Up: the Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare”. The study by Mr Wire was commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust, a British environmental charity. It examined the cost-effectiveness of providing global access to family planning between 2010 and 2050. Mr Wire totted up the cost of supplying contraception to women who wished either to

delay their childbearing years or to end them artificially but who were not using contraception. He examined projections of population growth and of carbondioxide emissions made by the United Nations and concluded that reducing carbon emissions by one tonne would cost just $7 spent on family planning, as opposed to at least $32 spent on green technologies. Mr Wire points out that if all women who wanted contraception were provided with it, it would prevent the release of 34 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2050. Given the myriad of other reasons to limit human fertility (Dr Potts notes, for example, that slowing population growth is essential if poverty is to be eradicated), your correspondent cannot help but commend the report to mandarins meeting in Bangkok on September 28th to discuss the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Back to top ^^ Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views.

Check Out This Week's Video Star! By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 9/21/2009 3:27:50 PM

If you ever wanted to steal Katy Perry’s perfectly lined eyes and

bold pucker, now’s your chance! Thanks to ELLE's newest Video Star Rose Funk, the look is now easier to master than ever. View

Funk's Perry-inspired tutorial here and for more celebrity beauty how -tos visit ellevideostar.com. —Emily Hebert Photo: Courtesy of Rose Funk Follow ELLE on Twitter.

EcoModo - The Best of TreeHugger [Roundups] By Jaymi Heimbuch (Gizmodo)

small wind turbine for the petals. It looks hacked-yet-still-futuristic enough that it just might be This week, Google maps out the something you want to install in world's carbon cycle, Sweden your back yard. turns nuclear bunkers into data We like plants near our centers, nano tech might save computers but what about in our solar power, and the strangest computers? Might you offset your thing will clean up nuclear waste. carbon emissions with this Google Earth has a new desktop planter? application that shows carbon Android phone users, you're dioxide in different layers of the about to become scientists! Check earth's atmosphere. Not only can out this awesome new app that you navigate through space, but puts research labs on your cell also through time! phone. Indiana Jones wants to keep the Nanotech looks to be the holy tropical jungles where he has his g r a i l h e r e i s m a k i n g m o r e adventures. In other words, efficient solar panels to reduce the Harrison Ford along with some cost of solar power. Here's how heavy hitting companies have that would work... launched a new social networking Nuclear bunker...for a data s i t e d e d i c a t e d t o s t o p p i n g center? Turns out it's a perfect deforestation. location for greening up IT Ask Pablo: What is the most operations. Check out this bat efficient use of solar power? cave of a data center in Sweden. Check out the top 3 ways tech Speaking of nuclear...guess helps us utilize the sun most what cleans it up! Here's a hint: efficiently. It's a bacteria we try to avoid just Electric cars, anyone? Here are as much as nuclear waste itself. 9 that made the biggest splash at TreeHugger's EcoModo column the Frankfurt Motor Show. appears every Tuesday on Art Energy Design has created a G i z m o d o . sculpture, of a 12-foot flower with solar cells in the leaves and a Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:39:45 AM

Economy/ Gadgets/ Entertainment

Internet News Record

29

FactSet Exceeds Earnings Expectations (Financial Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha)

The company exited the quarter with 37,300 users, an increase of 200 users during the quarter. Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:20:57 AM Client count was 2,045 at quarterFactSet Research( FDS- Analyst end, a net increase of 12 clients. Report) reported revenue for the Annual client retention rate was quarter of $155.5 million. This greater than 95.0% of ASV and exceeded the Zacks Consensus 87.0% of clients. Portfolio Estimate of $154.0 million. On a Analytics (PA) 2.0 was deployed fully diluted basis, EPS for the by 647 clients and 5,640 users at quarter was 74 cents, inline with quarter-end. Clients using PA the Zacks Consensus Estimate of increased by 40 sequentially 73 cents. Revenue for the quarter during the quarter, while the increased 1.0% to $155.5 million number of PA clients remained from $153.7 million in the year- flat. ago quarter. Operating margin was 34.9% in Geographically, revenues from the quarter, an increase of 220 the U.S. were $106.0 million, flat basis points year-over-year. This compared to the year-ago quarter. increase in operating margin can Non-U.S. revenues increased be attributed to the decline in 3.0% to $49.6 million. operating expense and successful Annual Subscription Value cost saving. Operating loss from (ASV) increased $4.0 million FactSet Fundamentals decreased sequentially to $619.0 million in 58.0% to $0.7 million compared the fourth quarter. Of this, 82.0% to $1.6 million in the last quarter. of ASV was from buy-side clients Net income for the quarter came and the remainder from sell-side in at $36.3 million, an increase of firms performing M&A advisory 8.0% from $33.6 million reported work and equity research. ASV in the year-ago period. The from FactSet's U.S. operations growth in net income for the w a s $ 4 1 9 . 0 m i l l i o n , w h i l e quarter was partially offset by i n t e r n a t i o n a l o p e r a t i o n s other income, which declined supporting ASV amounted to 85.0% to $95,000. On a fully $200.0 million. diluted basis, the quarterly EPS of

74 cents marked an increase of 10.0% from 67 cents in the yearago quarter. Included in the results is a 1-cent dilution in EPS from investment in FactSet Fundamentals. Adjusting for the dilution from FactSet Fundamentals, EPS on a pro forma basis was 75 cents. FactSet exited the quarter with $216.3 million in cash and shortterm investments, compared to $191.0 million in the previous quarter. The company has no long -term debt. During the quarter, the company repurchased 594,600 shares of common stock and $102.0 remains authorized for repurchase. This apart, the company incurred a capital expenditure of $5.1 million during the quarter. For the first quarter of fiscal 2010, FactSet expects revenue in the range of $152.0 million to $157.0 million. Diluted EPS for the first quarter is expected to be in the 73 to 75 cents range. For full fiscal year 2010, FactSet expects capital expenditures, net of landlord contributions, to be between $20.0 million to $26.0 million.

Stars Premiere 'Invention of Lying' in L.A. (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:00:00 AM

Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe and Ricky Gervais stepped out in Hollywood on Monday night to premiere their new film, ‘The Invention of Lying.’ Jen opened up on the red carpet

about life with hubby Ben Affleck and their two young daughters, Violet and Seraphina, saying that Ben was in Boston and was taking care of the girls, but that she planned to fly out to join him later that night. The gorgeous gal also joked about having to put layers and layers of make-up on to get

red carpet ready. ET also caught up with Rob and Ricky, only one night after both men appeared onstage at the Emmy Awards, and they both weighed in on the Emmys.

Music is forever changed: Sony Ericsson’s MH907 headphones sense when they’re in use By Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear)

automatically when the headphones are inserted into your ear. You know what I mean. Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:30:10 AM Since the headphones use a We (well, I) completely forgot proprietary connector, called the about the BIG Sony Ericsson Fast Port, they will only work on announcement that went down select S-E phones. I’m guessing yesterday. It may have to do with this is a Europe thing, because the the fact that nobody e-mailed us last time I saw a S-E phone in (well, me) about it, and that the America Pierce Brosnan was FCC announced its Net Neutrality using it as James Bond. deal. Be that as it may, we now Are you thoroughly excited by know, definitively, what Sony this news? Is SensMe a fun Ericsson was on about last week: g i m m i c k ? S u r e , y e a h ; w h o yes, it’s a pair of headphones that wouldn’t want their music to play sense when they’re in use. People as soon as you put in your are dancing in the streets already. headphones, then stop playing The headphones, the MH907, when you take ‘em out? Is it OH use what S-E calls “SensMe” MY GOD HUGE NEWS? I don’t technology. As a result of this think so, especially when we have magic, the headphones will play no price nor release date. automatically when placed inside your ear. Um, the music will play

30

Economy/ Tech/ Entertainment

Internet News Record

FactSet Exceeds Revenue Expectations

Tiny Cortera swings for Dun & Bradstreet

(Financial Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha)

By Rafe Needleman (Webware.com)

Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:21:19 AM

FactSet Research( FDS) reported revenue for the quarter of $155.5 million. This exceeded the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $154.0 million. On a fully diluted basis, EPS for the quarter was 74 cents, in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 73 cents. Revenue for the quarter increased 1.0% to $155.5 million from $153.7 million in the year-ago quarter. Geographically, revenues from the U.S. were $106.0 million, flat compared to the year-ago quarter. Non-U.S. revenues increased 3.0% to $49.6 million. Annual Subscription Value (ASV) increased $4.0 million sequentially to $619.0 million in the fourth quarter. Of this, 82.0% of ASV was from buy-side clients and the remainder from sell-side firms performing M&A advisory work and equity research. ASV from FactSet's U.S. operations was $419.0 million, while international operations supporting ASV amounted to $200.0 million. The company exited the quarter

with 37,300 users, an increase of 200 users during the quarter. Client count was 2,045 at quarterend, a net increase of 12 clients. Annual client retention rate was greater than 95.0% of ASV and 87.0% of clients. Portfolio Analytics (PA) 2.0 was deployed by 647 clients and 5,640 users at quarter-end. Clients using PA increased by 40 sequentially during the quarter, while the number of PA clients remained flat. Operating margin was 34.9% in the quarter, an increase of 220 basis points year-over-year. This increase in operating margin can be attributed to the decline in operating expense and successful cost saving. Operating loss from FactSet Fundamentals decreased 58.0% to $0.7 million compared to $1.6 million in the last quarter. Net income for the quarter came in at $36.3 million, an increase of 8.0% from $33.6 million reported in the year-ago period. The growth in net income for the quarter was partially offset by other income, which declined 85.0% to $95,000. On a fully diluted basis, the quarterly EPS of 74 cents marked an increase of

10.0% from 67 cents in the yearago quarter. Included in the results is a 1-cent dilution in EPS from investment in FactSet Fundamentals. Adjusting for the dilution from FactSet Fundamentals, EPS on a pro forma basis was 75 cents. FactSet exited the quarter with $216.3 million in cash and shortterm investments, compared to $191.0 million in the previous quarter. The company has no long -term debt. During the quarter, the company repurchased 594,600 shares of common stock and $102.0 remains authorized for repurchase. This apart, the company incurred a capital expenditure of $5.1 million during the quarter. For the first quarter of fiscal 2010, FactSet expects revenue in the range of $152.0 million to $157.0 million. Diluted EPS for the first quarter is expected to be in the 73 to 75 cents range. For full fiscal year 2010, FactSet expects capital expenditures, net of landlord contributions, to be between $20.0 million to $26.0 million.

I think I just found the dullest company at Demo 09 to write about. But you know how these things go: Often it's the block-and -tacklers that find huge success while the science-fiction dreamers end up manning ski lifts. Cortera is taking on the old, stodgy Dun & Bradstreet credit rating company and launching its new crowdsourced competitor to it. Through an earlier and expensive ($10 million plus) acquisition of eCredit, the company gets the "trade tapes" of payments made on credit terms to many major companies. This is largely the same data D&B uses to establish its ratings. But Cortera's strategy is to focus on small businesses that can neither afford D&B services, nor that submit data to credit rating companies for analysis. Jim Swift, Cortera's ambitious CEO(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET) Cortera will ask small businesses to rate their business customers on how quickly and consistently they pay their invoices; it will also at some point be able to take in data plays a 40-something woman automatically from accounting trying to get on with her life applications. This data will then following an ugly divorce. In the be leavened with Yelp-style first episode, her character Jules reviews of companies as business hooks up with a guy not much partners. The goal is to make older than her 17-year-old son. available to small businesses the kind of intelligence that large

Courteney Cox Is on the Prowl in 'Cougar Town' (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 12:42:00 AM

Courteney Cox is back on TV in a brand-new comedy-- and ET talks to the former "Friends" star about playing a cougar in the new ABC series, "Cougar Town"!

"A cougar is a lady in her 40s who is going out with younger men," Courteney tells ET. "It is not the negative [a woman who has had too much] plastic surgery in her 50s. It is really a woman with confidence that does that." In " Cougar Town," Courteney

Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:01:00 AM

companies have had about each other for years, to help even small businesses work with companies in their supply chain more deliberately and effectively. The company will charge $3 for a full report (some data will be available for free), or, for heavy users, $49 a month for a subscription. D&B reports range from $39.99 to $179 each. It sounds like a simple business but it's expensive to do well. Without extensive and reliable data you won't get repeat customers. But data about money and credit has always been valuable. Cortera has raised $19 million for this venture and CEO Jim Swift believes he can take D&B head-on -- though not initially. He hopes to get small businesses hooked on his service first and then work up the food chain, eventually undercutting D&B's prices so much he puts them out of business. Swift doesn't believe D&B can compete on price without murdering its own stock price. Swift says the company's site has already attracted a million visitors thanks to its search engine optimization efforts. The biggest market so far for the eCredit data, he says: companies in the construction business. Originally posted at Rafe's Radar

Gadgets/

Internet News Record

31

EB improves reference MID, adds new UI and haptics support By Darren Murph (Engadget) Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:16:00 AM

We still get the impression that MIDs are struggling to find a market that cares about them, but with Intel refusing to give up hope just yet, a raft of manufacturers are on hand at IDF to showcase new reference designs. Take EB for example, which teased us briefly with its MID Reference at Computex. Now, the outfit is using the spotlight in San Francisco to announce a few key improvements on the device, which was produced in collaboration with Intel (surprise, surprise) and Ericsson. The highlights are an improved user interface and application framework -- which work together to improve multitasking -- and the inclusion of haptics, which enables the display to vibrate in response to a touch. The reference MID is primed and ready to be snapped up by some other manufacturer and introduced as their own, but the question remains: do we have any takers? Gallery: EB improves reference MID, adds new UI and haptics support Show full PR text EB I N T R O D U C E S GROUNDBREAKING ADVANCEMENTS TO ITS MOBILE INTERNET DEVICE (MID) REFERENCE DESIGN Sophisticated New Features Address Consumer Demands, Resulting in a Captivating Multimedia Experience powered by Intel winning technologies SAN FRANCISCO (Intel Developer Forum 2009), September 22, 2009 - Building upon its next-generation EB MID

Reference Device that was showcased earlier this year at COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2009, EB, Elektrobit Corporation (OMX: EBC1V), a leading developer of cutting-edge embedded technology solutions for automotive and wireless industries, is applying its creative expertise to unveil today, at INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM 2009, optimized features to its MID reference design. Working with Intel and Ericsson, the upgraded design transforms the device with stylish, multimedia

improvements that are necessary in providing a fulfilling end-user experience. According to projections from ABI Research, worldwide MID shipments are expected to exceed 90 million units by 2012. With the global demand for flexible interfaces and multimedia functionality on the rise, EB has continued to spearhead the efforts of meeting customer needs by growing its pipeline of innovation, delivering new reference devices that customers and end-users require.

Responding to the demand set by business professionals and young adults seeking flexible devices offering a pocket-able, media-centric experience that incorporates the power of a desktop computer for on-the-go portability, EB has further enhanced its MID reference design to answer the demands of the market, including: · An improved user interface (UI) and application framework This enables users to multi-task and personalize the device through cutting-edge desktop

features. The result takes selfexpression to a heightened level of sophistication, providing an intuitive way for end-users to interact with phones and network services that operate as powerfully as the sense of touch itself. · Leveraging latest UI technologies, such as 3D, plasma desktop and haptics - EB has designed an experience that offers vivid, sophisticated appearances. Leveraging haptics makes it IMPROVES page 33

32

Gadgets/ Tech Tips/ Entertainment

Internet News Record

Vodafone to launch HTC Tattoo in October By Joseph L. Flatley (Engadget)

Celebs Debut Best Moves on 'Dancing with the Stars'

Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:24:00 AM

(ETonline - Breaking News)

This next item is sure to please HTC fanboys and Anglophiles alike: according to some wellcrafted PR, Vodafone has confirmed that it will be launching the HTC Tattoo sometime next month. Indeed, if Android, resistive touchscreen, and FM Radio aren't enough to blow your mind, wait'll you hear this next bit of news: this one is available in black -- a UK exclusive! Maybe not worth moving overseas for, but possibly worth pre-registering for? If you think so, hit the read link and get started. Show full PR text VODAFONE UK ANNOUNCES EXCLUSIVE HTC TATTOO Following last week's announcement of the Nokia E72, LG GM750 and Sony Ericsson XPERIA[TM] X2, Vodafone UK will be ranging another innovative smartphone exclusive. The new Android-powered HTC Tattoo is a smartphone which will keep you entertained and up to date wherever you are. The HTC Tattoo, available exclusively in black on Vodafone UK, lets you customise your own mobile experience using the latest HTC Sense technology. It delivers

Submitted at 9/22/2009 12:44:00 AM

lots of the features of the enormously successful HTC Magic at an affordable price, for example, you can create shortcuts to your favourite internet sites, social networks, games, widgets and applications - and there's an amazing opportunity to personalise your phone further with thousands more applications and widgets available for download in the simple to use Android Market. Android also gives you quick and easy access to popular Google services such as Google Maps, Google Mail and Google Search as well as

favourites like YouTube. Take your favourite snaps with the 3.2 megapixel camera with sharp focus, and view them on the HTC Tattoo's high resolution screen or upload them to your social network via the handset's superfast internet connection. And you are able to alter the look of your phone further with the unique covers that you can design yourself and purchase, or simply choose one from popular cover designs available. Key features of the exclusive black HTC Tattoo include: • 3.2MP Camera

Season nine of "Dancing with the Stars" premiered Monday night, with a whole new crop of celebs and dancers showing off their best moves. The men took to the dance floor in part one of the three night season premiere, and for the first time, each celeb was required to perform both a Latin and a ballroom dance. In the audience were Marie Osmond, who interviewed the celebs backstage for ET, last season's winner and runner-up Shawn Johnson and Gilles Marini, respectively, and even Jermaine Jackson. • Android technology Pop star Aaron Carter and his • FM Radio and MP3 player pro partner Karina Smirnoff were • 2.8" Touchscreen up first, taking the dance floor • Unique personalised covers Available in October, customers with their cha cha. All of the can pre-register for the Vodafone judges agreed that Aaron has a lot exclusive HTC Tattoo here: of potential, but they also agreed http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/ that he needs some work, and awarded the pair a score of 22. mobile-phone/htc-tattoo Filed under: Cellphones Vodafone to launch HTC Tattoo in October originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Bit.ly Short-Links and Shares Files, No Hosting Needed [File Sharing] By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:30:00 AM

Bit.ly, the web's most popular link shortening service (thanks in big part to Twitter's semi-official endorsement), has added the ability to quickly short-link

pictures and other files through a partnership with media-sharing site yfrog. In other words, if you've got a picture, video, or Flash file on your system you want to quickly share with the web or friends, but you don't want to take the time to

grab the URL, then shorten it, a direct upload to bit.ly might be the fastest way to get there. To do so, head to the bit.ly web site and click the "Link to a file" link below the main URL entry bar. It's more useful if you've got separately upload it to a service, bit.ly set up as a quick bookmark,

and you have to be okay with the link being potentially accessible to everyone. Either way, using one service to do two things is a nice little time saver, and bit.ly is free to use for this service. bit.ly[via Digital Inspiration]

Gadgets/ Tech Reviews

Internet News Record

IMPROVES continued from page 31 possible for end-users to touch and manipulate objects effortlessly, which is vital to exceeding user expectations of what a device should deliver. "As consumers continue to seek out new devices that offer unique value and sophisticated applications in a pocket-able form factor, the rapid development of the MID market is something to pay close attention to," said Kevin Burden, Practice Director, Mobile Devices, ABI Research. "In an effort to keep up with consumer demands craving innovative products, partnering with a design shop that has particular expertise with MIDs, can add competitive advantages for vendors in the battle for consumer electronics market share." A complete EB MID Reference Device can be tailored to a customers' brand and target

market requirements with a wide range of cellular connectivity options. By licensing EB's sophisticated MID reference design technology coupled with device customization services, customers - including wireless, CE and PC original device and equipment manufacturers, wireless operators, among others gain the framework to quickly and cost-effectively bring to market innovative MID solutions that aim to increase competitiveness and revenue-potential. "Since 2007, we have collaborated with both Intel and Ericsson on the world's first MID reference devices, we've leveraged our expertise and understanding of MIDs to transform basic concepts into cutting-edge designs that would enhance the end-user experience," said Vesa Kiviranta, vice

president, EB Wireless Solutions. "The intuitiveness brought forth by advanced technological features in our reference design further adds to our credibility and extensive knowledge of the MID market." EB MID Reference Device was recently named a runner-up in the Best of 4G Awards for Best Mobile Internet Device, which was presented at the 4G World conference and expo. 4G World is an annual event that explores the entire ecosystem for next generation networks. Filed under: Handhelds EB improves reference MID, adds new UI and haptics support originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

33

Intel debuts concept notebook with four displays (CNET News.com)

bloggers here. We got Intel rep Renuka Awasthi to demonstrate the touted seamless interaction SAN FRANCISCO--Talk about between the main screen and extreme multitasking. If two auxiliary displays. displays on a notebook, like Intel's Mobile Product Line Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds' Side marketing manager for Greater Panel, don't do the trick for you, Americas showed some music Intel's about to up the ante with files being dragged and dropped four. Yes, that's four--one primary between the OLED panels using a LCD screen and three auxiliary finger, as well as flipped video O L E D s c r e e n s a b o v e t h e files being moved up to the main keyboard. The aim here is to LCD display from the auxilliary a l l o w t h e u s e r t o o r g a n i z e panels with ease. One could also information the way he or she contract, zoom, scroll, and pan prefers it. content from one screen to Touted as the world's first another. multitouch, multiscreen concept After the jump, blogger solution, the prototype (code- Nicholas Khoo has more photos n a m e d T a n g e n t B a y ) w a s and videos for Crave. unveiled at the Mobility Meetup, (Source: Crave Asia) an Intel Insiders event for Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:45:00 AM

VIA Mini-ITX board features dual HDMI, on-board 1080p graphics chip By Doug Aamoth (CrunchGear) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:00:00 AM

VIA’s got a new Mini-ITX setup that ought to appeal to HTPC builders, as it features a dedicated GPU capable of handling 1080p video, four distinct video outputs (two HDMI, DVI, and VGA), RCA audio output, and a quiet, cool 1.6GHz VIA Nano processor. The platform is collectively called the VIA VB8003 and, according to VIA, “is the world’s first Mini-ITC board to feature discrete on-board graphics,

delivering 1080p HD content through a range of multi-display configurations.” Here’s more from the press release: “The VIA VB8003 takes advantage of the ‘VIA Trinity’ platform, the codename for a unique combination of 64-bit VIA Nano processor, VIA VX800 media system processor and a dedicated S3 Graphics processor; producing a perfect blend of HiDef video playback, DX10.1 graphics and multiple display connectivity, all within a ruthlessly low, industry-leading thermal envelope…

…The VIA VB8003 Mini-ITX board is powered by a 1.6GHz VIA Nano processor coupled with the VIA VX800 media system processor and the S3 Graphics

dedicated GDDR3 graphics memory. On-board I/O includes dual HDMI, a DVI port, VGA port and two RCA jacks, dual Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, serial and PS2 ports. Storage includes two S-ATA ports, a 40-pin IDE and a type 2 Compact Flash slot.” No word on pricing or availability for regular consumers but since it’s part of VIA’s 435 ULP graphics processor. “embedded” line, we may see it Supporting up to 4GB of DDR2 directly integrated into complete s y s t e m m e m o r y , t h e V I A systems offered by various VB8003’s dedicated GPU can resellers. take advantage of 256MB of VIA VB8003[VIA Embedded]

34

Gadgets/ Fashion

Internet News Record

PlayStation 3 Motion Controller Slated for March, Dreamcast Titles Inbound? [Unconfirmed]

My Chicest Week

By Mark Wilson (Gizmodo)

Last week, thanks to the higherups at ELLE, I had the opportunity to spend Fashion Week backstage with some of my favorite designers, where I asked them to articulate the concepts behind their SS10 collections, as well as share some insider information on the silhouettes, fabric selections, and color palettes we’re likely to see next spring. Enjoy! —Johanna Cox, Junior Editor Video expertly created by Sebastian Moreira and Kevin Keiser See more from 2010 spring Fashion Week

Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:07:37 AM

According to a legit-looking leaked document leaked from Sega, Sony is planning on launching their PS3 motion controller this March in Japan with the US release coming sometime in spring. From the document: Motion Controller Spring 2010 launch (March in JP) No bundle/pricing details yet, should come Sept 1 Plan on selling 4-5MM units WW SCEA agreed to provide a list of Sega IP that would work well with the motion controller, Virtua Tennis was an example

Motion Controller support allows easy way to differentiate PS3 SKU Other differentiation opportunities include PSP/PS3 interoperability – think of features that would make users want to

buy both PS3 and PSP SKUs. PS3 and PSP interoperability? I could imagine a bundle with the motion controller and a PSP to replace the Dual Shock 3...if only it had all the necessary buttons. The other potentially big piece

of news here refers to Dreamcast titles coming to PSN (PS2 games are technically mentioned as well). Apparently Sony is courting Sega for their old games. DC Digital Titles If we provide a list of DC titles SCEA will let us know which ones they're interested in having exclusively. If we give them a long period of exclusivity they'll give us more marketing support. Note that the "long period of exclusivity" is not permanent exclusivity, meaning that a slew of Dreamcast titles may be on their way to other platforms as well. [ Objectif Sega via NeoGAF via Kotaku]

By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 9/21/2009 2:32:43 PM

In yo’ face, Apple: Microsoft poaching Apple retail store talent with higher pay By Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear)

Microsoft retail store on Neptune if the company offered to pay my moving expenses! Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:00:06 AM The idea behind all of this, I Man, things are hotting up in the guess, is to take some of the Microsoft vs. Apple feud. The Apple stores’ top talent, pay a latest news is that, yeah, not only little more, than have then work is Microsoft planning on, well, just as hard to make Microsoft’s ripping off Apple’s retail store stores a success as Apple’s were. model wholesale, but it also plans Once hired, the newly minted to hire Apple store employees. managers have been instructed to Microsoft has offered Apple store bring along their top sales people managers “significant raises,” and from the Apple side of things, and offered to cover any and all turn them into Microsofties. moving expenses. For the record, Seeing as though I don’t own I’d be willing to work in the s t o c k i n e i t h e r A p p l e o r

Microsoft, it doesn’t affect me in the least what the two of them two to compete with one another. In a sense, this talent drain is a lot like what WCW did in the mid-1990s

to WWE/ECW: it has the backing of a giant corporation (Time Warner), so why not offer guys like Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero top dollar to head to

Atlanta? The Almighty Dollar! And who among us wouldn’t at least stop by a Microsoft store just to check it out? Considering the amount of money Redmond has to burn—how much money has the Xbox lost in total. and yet it’s still a central pillar of the company?—, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these retail stores do reasonably well for themselves, by hook or by crook, as they say.

Tech/

Internet News Record

Aussie drivers: Buy a cradle, or no iPhone GPS for you By Chris Rawson (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

ban on talking and texting while driving (especially texting - I can't fathom why anyone would think it's okay to text and drive at the Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:00:00 AM same time). I can't speak for Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Australia's roads, but the roads in Odds and ends, iPhone Live in New Zealand definitely require Australia? Have an iPhone? Do one's full attention. The iPhone in you use the iPhone's built-in Maps particular requires a lot of visual app, Navigon, or TomTom[iTunes focus in order to use it as a phone links] to navigate? If you unless you have a handsfree setup, answered yes to all three of those and that kind of distraction from questions, then I have some bad the task of driving could news for you: under the potentially lead to a fatal crash on Australian Road Rule 8th our narrow, winding roads. Amendment, all use of the iPhone your iPhone for said purpose, Of course there's a question of in your car is soon to be banned you'd better go buy a cradle for it, just how enforceable these laws unless you buy a cradle for it, because the fine for getting caught will be in either country. Unless including using it as a GPS using your iPhone in the car you're holding the phone up to the w i t h o u t o n e i s h e i n o u s l y side of your head or using it at navigator. An article from the Sydney e x p e n s i v e : A U $ 2 3 4 ! E v e n night, it's unlikely that a passing Morning Herald initially makes it TomTom's iPhone cradle doesn't police car is going to see that your sound as though you won't be able cost that much. eyes are focused on what's in your So far the new rule is only hand rather than what's on the to use such apps at all, especially after reading this quote from a confirmed to be rolling out in road. That's where common sense spokesperson for VicRoads, the Victoria, and not until November has to step in: is that phone call traffic authority for the Australian 9. But don't be surprised if other from your boss important enough state of Victoria: "A phone will states and territories follow suit to risk flying off the road? only be allowed to be used for its afterward. Probably not. New Zealand has a similar primary purpose. If it's a phone, Thanks to reader Brian Rayner it's a phone." But once you read c e l l p h o n e b a n c o m i n g o n for sending this one in. farther down the article states, November 1, but the NZ proposal TUAW Aussie drivers: Buy a "Drivers will only be able to use i s l e s s d r a c o n i a n t h a n t h e cradle, or no iPhone GPS for you mobile phones if they are placed Australian version: the fine is originally appeared on The in purpose-made cradles and only NZ$80, and the language in U n o f f i c i a l A p p l e W e b l o g operation is entirely hands-free." the proposal focuses on use of (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 The language of the amendment mobile phones for talking and 10:00:00 EST. Please see our i t s e l f a l s o s u p p o r t s t h a t texting, without making any terms for use of feeds. mention of GPS or other uses. interpretation. Read| Permalink| Email this| The Australian law seems a bit Comments So it's not the end of the road for iPhone nav apps in Australia, of an overreach, but I fully but if you want to continue using support New Zealand's upcoming

35

Permuto launches with new ad tools for retailers By Don Reisinger (Webware.com) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:44:29 AM

A company that promises the kind of success that advertisers usually see only via search launched its service Tuesday at the Shop.org conference in Las Vegas. Permuto focuses on connecting online retailers with productcomparison sites, media outlets, and other "highly profitable" segments of the Web to help them try to sell their products more effectively. CEO and founder Shaukat Shamim asserts that the new platform will deliver the kind of return on client advertising investment that is found today only through search ads. Permuto's flagship product is called ShopperConnect. The service tracks consumer activity on partner sites and determines their "ActiveShopper" score. According to Shamim, that score will help Permuto find the right placement for clients' ads. "Online display advertising is a fantastic way for merchants and brands to reach their target audience, but it is plagued by poor measurability, analytics, and performance, and is traditionally low in return compared to search engine marketing," Shamim said. "The reach of online display

advertising is three to four times the size of search-engine marketing, so ShopperConnect represents a huge opportunity to create significant value for our partners." According to Shamim, the key to his company's technology rests with the ActiveShopper feature. He said it analyzes and targets online buyers with an "intent to purchase" in order to make advertising initiatives more profitable for retailers. The information is so in-depth, Shamim asserts, that his company can determine the likelihood of someone buying an individual product "down to the SKU level." On the client side, Shamim told me that merchants that want to advertise through his company's network will have full control over the design and style of their advertising campaigns. A portal will mimic the "self-service search marketing" that has made companies like Google and Yahoo so successful. Once a design is completed, Permuto takes over and places those ads strategically across its network to target people searching for a particular product. Clients can change the ads whenever they want.

36

Tech/

Internet News Record

Hand Eye wants your smartphone to Remote Mac support watch TV with you made even easier with Mac HelpMate 3.0 By Rafe Needleman (Webware.com)

disrupt a viewing experience for anyone else watching the main show on the big screen. Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:02:00 AM Kessler said the technology Jonathan Kessler, CEO of Hand could be generalized to work with Eye Interactive(Credit: Rafe any content on TV, but that the Needleman/CNET) business model is to sell the I'll be paying special attention to platform to TV studios so they Hand Eye Technologies when the can embed it in individual company gives its pitch at Demo smartphone apps they build for at about 10:40 a.m. PDT Tuesday. shows or networks. A shopping This company, as I said in " What channel app is the most obvious to Watch," is trying to close the example (Kessler is in talks with loop between television and the one of the networks) since it Internet, by using smartphones as would enable commerce, but apps secondary, interactive screens for for other networks or even people when they're watching individual shows could work. For your TV to overlay, briefly, some example, a Discovery Channel typical broadcast shows. As CEO Jonathan Kessler colored squares on the display app could use HIT technology to explained to me Monday night, that your phone's camera picks kick off games or educational the first step to making this work up. It can then tell what you were content (or DVD sales) on the is to enable your smartphone to pointing your phone at and take smartphone. know what you're watching. First, you to the next step in your The business also requires that you need special technology in interaction with the content. set-top boxes (and network Hand Eye Technologies requires D V R s ) g e t t h e c o r e H I T your TV or set-top box. It knows what the screen is displaying and an app on the smartphone as well technology embedded in them. whether it's live or playing off a as on a box connected to the Technically, this is simple. From DVR or DVD. Then your phone T V . ( C r e d i t : H a n d E y e a business perspective, I can only needs to know what you're T e c h n o l o g i e s ) wish Kessler the best of luck. He What's interesting about this is will probably need it. interested in that's showing on that Hand Eye Interactive your TV. For HIT to succeed several One way to do this is to have Technology (HIT) takes the different elements have to line up. the smartphone actually watch the interaction off the main TV But that high level of difficulty is TV with you. When you see display and pulls it onto the also a barrier to entry, something something you like--something personal, mobile, and much that many Web-only businesses you want to buy, learn more smarter display on users' phones. don't have. about, share with friends, etc.-- The TV isn't forced to become an Originally posted at Rafe's you press a button on the phone interactive terminal, and the Radar that communicates with the set- interaction a user has with content top, which causes the screen on on his or her personal phone won't

By Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:15:00 AM

Filed under: Enterprise, OS, Software, Odds and ends, Snow Leopard A little over a year ago, I was searching for a way to expand my reach as a Mac consultant. I had heard quite a bit from other Apple Consultants Network members about Mac HelpMate, but really didn't know much about it. After a free test drive, I ended up purchasing Mac HelpMate and its companion software for standalone Macs, Auto HelpMate. Since then, supporting users anywhere within or outside of the Denver area without having to hop into my car and drive to a client's house has become a reality. Mac HelpMate works by creating a secure, user-initiated connection between a support professional and the user through a gateway server run by the brains behind the application, Apple Certified System Administrator Dean Shavit, who invented the Mac HelpMate service three and a half years ago. The application is easy for my clients to set up, since there's a ZIRO (zero-interaction roll out) tool that I have on my company web site. One click, and my clients are sharing their screens with me, without having to install software or enter a password or

code. The standalone application is used both by the support client and the support professional, and it runs on any Mac OS between 10.3 (Panther) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I celebrated my first year of Mac HelpMate usage by resubscribing to the service ($600 annually with a $100 discount to members of the Apple Consultants Network) and by upgrading to the new Mac HelpMate 3.0. The new version provides full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, as well as a number of powerful new features. Continue reading Remote Mac support made even easier with Mac HelpMate 3.0 TUAW Remote Mac support made even easier with Mac HelpMate 3.0 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Tech/ Entertainment

Internet News Record

Venture Capital: A Part Of The Ecosystem, But Not The Ecosystem By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)

startups and innovation, and I'm among the first to bash VCs when it's warranted (and, yes, there are This happens every so often, but plenty of times when it's very, in the last week or so, there's been very warranted), but I think a spate of "VCs are bad" types of Wadhwa's piece goes too far. He's discussions happening on various right that it's a little silly that the blogs. It kicked off with a blog the National Venture Capital p o s t f r o m J a s o n F r i e d a t Association (NVCA) seems to be 37Signals, blaming VCs for taking credit for all of the revenue pushing Mint.com to sell to Intuit. and jobs created from any startup VC Fred Wilson did a nice job that has ever taken any venture responding to that charge by money, but that doesn't mean that pointing out the usual calculus in venture capital is meaningless in f i g u r i n g o u t w h e n t o s e l l . innovation. Amusingly, very few people seem While I'm actually a huge fan of to notice what Fred was basically building companies without s a y i n g i n h i s p o s t . T h e venture capital(and am doing that undercurrent was that Mint.com myself), I think what people need likely wasn't doing nearly as well to realize is that venture money is as its cheerleaders have assumed - quite useful in enabling certain - and thus, selling out made a lot types of businesses. The problem o f s e n s e , n o t f r o m a V C is when people (very often Silicon p e r s p e c t i v e , b u t f r o m t h e Valley people) get into the founders' perspective. mindset that raising venture Still, it's pretty popular in capital is an end goal in itself, Silicon Valley to knock VCs, and rather than looking at the overall TechCrunch has a post from business and seeing if it even Vivek Wadhwa pouring on the needs venture money. During the VC bashing, complaining about dot com bubble, there was a time VCs taking way too much credit when people looked at venture for innovation. Now, I'm a big fan capital like revenue -- the more of Wadhwa and his research on you raised, the better you were Submitted at 9/21/2009 10:17:00 PM

Chaz Bono's Memoir to be Released (ETonline - Breaking News)

Cher opened up to People magazine in June regarding Chaz's decision, saying, "Chaz is ET has learned that Cher and embarking on a difficult journey, Sonny Bono's child, Chaz Bono, but one that I will support. I will have his memoir released, respect the courage it takes to go chronicling his decision to through this transition in the glare transition from a female to a male. of public scrutiny, and although I The memoir -- currently titled may not understand, I will strive Coming Clean-- is said to hit to be understanding." bookstores in Spring, 2011. Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:36:00 AM

doing, rather than recognizing that it really meant you just had a bigger hole to dig yourself out of. However, in some cases, where a company really does need investment capital to take a business to the next level, smart venture money can be a great help. The nice thing today is that more and more businesses can be started, built and can scale without that need. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with venture capital. In fact, it's better if it's easier to build businesses. But that also doesn't mean that VC is somehow bad or isn't really a key part in accelerating certain innovative businesses. Venture capital is a part of the ecosystem, and that's a good thing. There are times when people give it too much credit, and there are other times when it doesn't get enough credit, but the real trick is just in understanding where and when it makes sense. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

37

First Look: Minimalist time tracking on Mac using Minco By Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 9/21/2009 4:00:00 PM

Filed under: Software, First Look, Snow Leopard Mauritius is a minimalist island nation in the Indian Ocean, and from that tiny set of spots on the map comes a new Mac time-tracking application for anyone who needs to keep track of how much time they spend on tasks. Minco, now in public beta from Celmaro, is a minuscule Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard app that works with any application that supports iCal. When Minco is launched, all you'll see is a tiny clock icon in the menu bar. Clicking the icon opens a glossy transparent black display that shows either the time you've spent on a project or the revenue you've gained from doing billable work on that project. Clicking on the time or revenue counter starts the counter, which then disappears from view. When you stop the timer, a new calendar item is placed into iCal so that you can keep track of how your day was spent. The iCal integration works the other way as well. Creating a ToDo item in iCal adds it to your Minco timer so that you can start tracking time. When you start up the timer, the iCal item shows up

in your calendar with the phrase "...working" attached. Publishing that calendar could be used to show co-workers or clients what you're currently working on. If you want to keep a log of what you do during your work days, Minco also writes your time log to a standard .csv file that you can import into Numbers or Excel for analysis. The company is considering writing other export adapters, although the existing adapter is amazingly flexible. Celmaro provides a 14-day free trial download, and the software is available for US$9.95. I found it very unusual for a company to be charging for beta software, but then again, Minco is much more stable and usable than a lot of beta software I've used. TUAW First Look: Minimalist time tracking on Mac using Minco originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

38

Tech/ Sports

Internet News Record

Bad Ideas: Trying To Build Patent Marketplaces By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)

patent is worth should hasten the flow of ideas into the economy, accelerating the pace of The NY Times has what feels innovation, policy experts say. like a warmed over press release That's wrong. Flat out, bizarrely, talking up the rise of patent backwards and wrong. Ideas don't auctions and makes some very need a market. You want a market one-sided and weakly supported for scarce goods. You don't need a assertions that this is somehow market for goods that are not good for the market of innovation. scarce. This is fundamental stuff It's not. In any way. There have and has been obvious for ages. been a bunch of companies trying Hell, Thomas Jefferson famously to "trade" in patents or patent noted that very issue ages ago: If auctions, and all they've done is nature has made any one thing help make innovation harder by less susceptible than all others of separating the idea from the exclusive property, it is the action implementation, and encouraging of the thinking power called an more lawsuits or extortionary idea, which an individual may techniques. Patents are no longer exclusively possess as long as he being used for innovation or to keeps it to himself; but the distribute knowledge. They're moment it is divulged, it forces used to create a tax on anyone itself into the possession of every who actually innovates, and one, and the receiver cannot comes up with the same concept dispossess himself of it. Its that others have come up with. peculiar character, too, is that no Amazingly, the NY Times notes one possesses the less, because none of this. Instead, it makes the every other possesses the whole following statement: And patents, of it. He who receives an idea after all, are ideas. Any market from me, receives instruction mechanisms that speed up the himself without lessening mine; process of figuring out what a as he who lights his taper at mine, Submitted at 9/22/2009 2:11:00 AM

receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." Markets are for property exchange and the more efficient allocation of property. Ideas are not property, and making a market for them and holding them back doesn't accelerate the pace of innovation, it retards it. Greatly. And, more and more studies have been showing this. Permalink| Comments| Email This Story

Tim Tebow, NFL Safety? By Michael David Smith (FanHouse) Submitted at 9/21/2009 10:19:00 PM

by Michael David Smith Filed under: NFL Draft As I watched Florida quarterback Tim Tebow in Saturday's win over Tennessee, I became more convinced than ever that he won't be an NFL quarterback. Tebow is a great quarterback in Florida's

offense, but Tennessee defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin exposed real limitations, including an

inability to feel pressure and a slow delivery, that just won't work in the NFL. Tim Tebow, NFL Safety? originally appeared on Fanhouse NFL Blog on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:19:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs| Comments

Netflix Million Dollar Prize Ends in Photo Finish By Barb Dybwad (Mashable!) Submitted at 9/21/2009 7:52:47 PM

We’ve been following the Netflix Prize as it’s unfolded, with over 40,000 teams from 186 countries competing to improve the video rental and streaming service’s recommendations engine by 10% or more. Back in July when the contest officially ended, the race was still too close to call, with two qualifying lead teams submitting their results in the very last 20 minutes of the competition. The results are finally in, reports the New York Times, with the BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos team netting itself a $1 million prize purse. With both teams turning in algorithms that had them in a dead mathematical tie, the race essentially came down to a photo finish. Because BellKor’s team had posted their findings about 20 minutes ahead of the rival Ensemble team, they took home the prize thanks to the contest rules about time to post breaking any potential ties. Netflix considers the competition so successful that they’re immediately launching a new contest, this time with a

larger data set to work from that includes demographic and behavioral data from Netflix users. Unlike the original contest no specific accuracy target is required, with a $500,000 prize going to the leading team in six months’ time and another $500,000 to the team at the head of the pack in 18 months. Hopefully the winning technology will be used to further improve Netflix’s recommendation system that helps you find new movies and TV shows you might like based on what you’re already rented, watched, and rated. Do you use Netflix and if so, do you make use of its recommendation engine? How accurate is it at predicting other items you might like? Tags: Film, netflix, netflix prize, O N L I N E V I D E O , recommendation systems, tv, video, video rental

Tech/ TV

Internet News Record

Yahoo Revamps Search Results (And Prepares Them for Bing)

How We Tweet: In a Car, From a Toilet

By Ben Parr (Mashable!)

By Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

twist when you search for people. It links you to that person’s Facebook, Twitter, and other Fresh off of its homepage social networks. redesign(and the Microsoft search - Design: The new search feels deal), Yahoo has launched a full like an extension of the new revamp of its search results page. Yahoo homepage. That’s a good The new search page, which is thing. now active for all users, adds a The new search does two things new discovery bar just under the in the end. First, it positions search box, adds a left-hand - Left hand navigation: The new Yahoo for its eventual Bing navigation column (not unlike Yahoo search page is focused on s w i t c h o v e r . T h e l e f t - h a n d Bing), and aligns more with the creating a relevant experience. If navigation bar is just like Bing. functionality and color scheme of you search “Mashable,” the left- These changes should help the new widget-based Yahoo hand navigation comes up with smooth the transition. homepage. More importantly though, it similar search terms and related So what’s the change look like? i n f o r m a t i o n . I f y o u s e a r c h improves the search experience a Perhaps the best way to assess the “puppies,” you’ll get a list of great deal. It provides some useful differences is to do a before and searches of different dog breeds, features and more continuity in after comparison. First, here is the American Kennel Club, Iams, the search experience. It’s nice to what Yahoo Search looked like and Flickr (so you can share those see that Yahoo isn’t just going to before the upgrade: abandon the search experience puppy pictures). Study it. Notice the right hand - Explore related concepts: This and that they will innovate until sidebar, the old color scheme, and is a dropdown right under the Bing replaces Yahoo’s search the search bar in the far left hand search bar. Clicking on it adds a l g o r i t h m . R e v i e w s : B i n g , corner. even more related searches that Facebook, Flickr, Mashable, Now, take a look at the you can explore. Twitter redesign: Tags: Yahoo - People Search: Following in H e r e a r e s o m e o f o u r the footsteps of Bing, Yahoo observations: Search’s related concepts takes a Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:01:06 AM

39

Submitted at 9/22/2009 1:06:58 AM

A survey conducted by Crowd Science gives us some insight into the habits of Twitter users, compared to users of other social media sites. While far from unexpected, some of the results of the survey are quite scary. For example, 11% of Twitter users admitted they’re accessing social media while driving, compared to 5% of other social media users. 29% of Twitter users claim they had accessed social media from a car at least once before. Now, we know this is all common sense, folks, but it’s dangerous to text or tweet while driving; don’t do it. However cool the scenery is, however bored you are on that long drive, sending a tweet is not worth risking a crash. Other interesting numbers from the survey indicate that most Twitter users are newcomers; not surprising due to Twitter’s tremendous growth. Also, around 40% of Twitter users access it on their mobile (which goes hand in hand with the in-car usage statistic); 46% check Twitter daily, but 24% of users have

either stopped tweeting, or never tweeted to begin with! Pictured on the infographic above is another interesting stat: a very large proportion of Twitter users access the service from a third party application, which is good news for rising third party clients and apps such as TweetDeck or Twitterific. We’ll top it off with an interesting nugget of information for all you hardcore addicts; as it turns out, in the past 30 days, 17% of Twitter users (vs. 12% of nonTwitter social media users) have accessed social media from a washroom or toilet. Just make sure you wash your hands afterwards, folks. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, GeorgeDolgikh Reviews: TweetDeck, Twitter, iStockphoto Tags: social media, twitter

Kristin Chenoweth's Emmy night, the good and bad By Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:00:00 AM

The good news is the Kristen Chenoweth won an Emmy Sunday night. But the bad news is the she was so ill backstage she

needed to be checked out by paramedics. Here's what happened. Early during the Primetime Emmys, when Kristin's name was announced for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy, out a whoop! She won for I don't know about you, but I let

Pushing Daisies, a show - as she pointed out in her tear-filled speech - was no longer on the air. At least one of the fine actors on that wonderful, fanciful show was recognized! Continue reading Kristin Chenoweth's Emmy night, the

good and bad Filed under: OpEd, Cancellations, Emmys, RealityFree, Glee Permalink| Email this| | Comments

40

Tech/ Media

Internet News Record

TUAW Follow Up: CoPilot Live missing features By Mel Martin (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 9/21/2009 5:00:00 PM

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App Review Our Saturday review of CoPilot Live[iTunes Link] raised some interesting questions among users of the US$34.99 app. TUAW reader Jeremy sent us an email this morning wondering why the Live Local Search feature of the app is now a paid feature, when it was free on the first version that was released. This clever feature used an internet connection to find nearby points of interest, even though the maps and bulk of the POI database are on the app itself. It was a great way to keep the app up to date, using a blend of static maps and info with an internet supplement. With the latest update to the app (version 8.0.0.096) that feature is now part of a US$19.99 annual update that also adds real time traffic updates and gas price searches. At first blush, it seems like features should not be taken away in an update. I contacted ALK, the app developer, and received a

response from spokesperson Mary Kelly: "Local Search was included in the first release of the App as a taster of this premium feature. We did not advertise it as being an included feature in our original App or at any time promote it as being included. In fact it was listed on the App description as a premium service 'coming soon'. We may offer similar trials for a

MediaDailyNews: Framepool Distributes AFP News Clips Online (MediaPost | Media News)

Framepool.com for further licensing and use. AFP has 2,900 employees and freelancers located F r a m e p o o l , t h e f o o t a g e in 165 countries, one of the collection run by filmmakers, has l a r g e s t n e t w o r k s o f signed a deal with Agence France correspondents in the world. -Presse, the global news agency, News is delivered in video, text, which produced a wide range of photographs, multimedia and reports in several languages. Its graphics. clips are now available via Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:04:10 AM

limited period for other services in the future. The Live Services which we promote as 'included as standard' remain so, namely: LiveLink location sharing and Live Weather." The company apologizes for any confusion. CoPilot Live still remains a pretty good deal for a low-end navigation service. I found quite a few map errors and omissions, but the company has set up a mechanism for people to report any problems with the accuracy of the maps. I can understand users being upset at losing the feature, and ALK should have made it more clear that Live Local Search was just a temporary sampler of a future paid service. TUAW TUAW Follow Up: CoPilot Live missing features originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Three new iPhone ads make their debut on prime-time television By Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 9/22/2009 11:00:00 AM

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Video, Odds and ends, Found Footage Were you watching the two-hour season premiere of House last night on Fox? Maybe you were watching one of the other prime-time shows, but if you had your eyes on the screen during some of the commercial breaks, you probably saw at least one of the three new iPhone ads that hit the airwaves last night. Each of the new ads highlights a total of six apps, up from the three that were formerly the focus of the older ads. The first ad I saw last night, " Dine," looks at Zagat to Go, QuickOffice, TripCase, New York Subway 09, Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List, and Gap Style Mixer. [Note: all app links will open the iTunes App Store] The next ad I viewed was " Nature," featuring iXpenseIt, Daily Finance, Guitar Toolkit, Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook, iBird Explorer Plus, and the ever-popular Pizza Hut app. I didn't get a chance to see the third advertisement, " Pass,"

until I visited the Apple website this morning. It's a 30-second quick look at Fandango, G-Park, VocabWiz College Vocabulary, 365 Crosswords, Classics, and ABC Animals. I'm happy to see that Apple is maintaining focus on the number and variety of apps in the App Store, instead of resorting to the narcissistic, touchy-feely, celebrity-filled tripe that TMobile has been using for their Android-based MyTouch 3G ads. TUAW Three new iPhone ads make their debut on prime-time television originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Tech/ TV

Internet News Record

Piryx raises money for your cause By Rafe Needleman (Webware.com) Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:01:00 AM

Piryx makes creating and tracking fund-raising campaigns simple.(Credit: Piryx) The Piryx pitch I head in advance of DemoFall 09 may be over-reaching--the founder sees it as a competitor to PayPal--but the service itself appears solid and useful. Piryx is a payment processing system designed primarily for causes and campaigns. If you're collecting money for a political candidate, for your school's band instrument fund, or something along those lines, Piryx lets you easily set up a page to collect money from people who want to contribute and track the messages you're sending out to people via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. It's a simple and attractive system, and in that it makes collecting money easier than putting up a PayPal link, it is a functional competitor. But Piryx is not a completely new payment system. Unlike Paypal, which can withdraw funds directly from bank accounts, Piryx just charges credit cards. Then, like a typical credit card processing system, it deposits funds in its users'

41

Web Browser Faceoff: Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome By Barb Dybwad (Mashable!) Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:31:55 PM

merchant accounts. It takes a significant percentage of funds collected: 4.5 percent on the high end, down to 4 percent as the money increases. (PayPal charges less.) Piryx is ambitious in its architecture. The platform is open to new applications, and users pick these apps depending on their needs. For example, there's a compliance app that makes sure you're collecting funds in accordance with campaign contribution laws, if that's

important to your program. Piryx could work as a generalpurpose storefront for selling an item or two, and it's good for that since it tracks which sites and blogs are generating the most traffic and income. But it was designed originally to help political campaigns raise funds and it's strongest when used for that purpose. Originally posted at Rafe's Radar

We’ve had some pretty close races lately in our Lunchtime Poll feature, which got us thinking of the obvious question: which one of these contestants would win in a fantasy fight? So we decided to pit some of these services and software headto-head in a knock-down, dragout cage match. There may even be jello involved. We’re asking you, dear readers, to cast your vote for the ultimate winner in this 1 v. 1 battle each week, for as long as we can keep the worthy contestants coming. Read on to vote in this week’s match! No poll was closer than the Favorite Web Browser question earlier this month. The two victors far out ahead of the long tail were incumbent favorite Mozilla Firefox and relatively new challenger Google Chrome. This week’s Faceoff pits these two browsers against each other for ultimate fame and glory. Firefox is armed with an

unmatched extension architecture for power users to tweak and modify to their heart’s content. But all those add-ons tend to slow things down — will Chrome’s relative speed give it the edge? Or is the lack of an official Chrome for Mac going to hold that browser back in the 10th round? Cast your vote below until noon EST on Friday September 25th, and be sure to let us know your reasoning in the comments. We’ll recap the results later this week and start a new Faceoff next week. Who would win in a fight: Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome?( poll) Reviews: Chrome, Firefox, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox Tags: chrome, Firefox, Google, mozilla, web browsers, web faceoff

Heroes: Jump, Push, Fall By Jason Hughes (TV Squad)

Samuel Sullivan and the Sullivan Brothers Carnival are right at the heart of the mystery right now. (S04E02) Things are definitely There's another mystery getting interesting again. I'm glad brewing at Claire's college. Or Heroes went with a two-hour maybe there isn't. Could her premiere, because it wasn't until roommate Annie's death be the the end of this hour that we had suicide it looked to be? But now enough to really grab our that's the least of Claire's attention again. As expected, problems, due to her little Submitted at 9/22/2009 2:45:00 AM

impromptu experiment. This episode focused primarily

on four main storylines, and it Continue reading Heroes: Jump, progressed very smoothly for it. It Push, Fall wasn't too confusing, and I came Filed under: OpEd, Heroes, out if it with a sense of confidence Episode Reviews, Reality-Free that there's a plan for the season. Permalink| Email this| | I'm still not sure if it's accessible Comments enough for new viewers, but you never know. Maybe people are smarter than I give them credit for.

42

Tech/ Tech Reviews Fashion

Sony catalog comes to Amie Street--with fine print

Internet News Record

Create Your Own Forum With Zoho Discussions By Stan Schroeder (Mashable!) Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:18:41 AM

By Caroline McCarthy (Webware.com)

Of all the companies in the web startup world, Zoho is perhaps the most persistent. Their office suite Sony Music Entertainment's experiment with dynamic pricing competes with the biggest player catalog is coming to indie music at their discretion," Boltuch in the market, Google, but they retail site Amie Street, in the New added. "Clearly we would love to tirelessly innovate, presenting York-based start-up's first major do that with them." new products and features on a label deal. This isn't the first time that an monthly basis. But here's the catch: Sony's indie music retailer has had to That said, lately they’ve been catalog will not be participating in compromise to ink a major-label focused on integrating and the "dynamic pricing" model deal. Sony was also the first major improving their existing services, t h a t ' s b e e n A m i e S t r e e t ' s label to bring its catalog-- well, its and they haven’t launched a new trademark--unpopular songs are " c l a s s i c " b a c k c a t a l o g - - t o product in about a year. This the cheapest, and the price rises as subscription site eMusic. But the c h a n g e d t o d a y w i t h Z o h o a song is downloaded more. deal resulted in eMusic raising Discussions, a service that further Instead, Sony songs will be some of its prices in tandem. expands the Zoho Suite and lets available for a flat 69 cents, 99 Amie Street, which pitches itself anyone create an online forum c e n t s , o r $ 1 . 2 9 b a s e d o n as a way to discover as well as community. popularity. The best way to experience purchase new music, made major "It wasn't a hard decision for us," headlines last year when it was Zoho Discussions is to visit Amie Street co-founder Josh the only place on the Web to buy Zoho’s own forums, which use Boltuch told CNET News. "This s o n g s r e c o r d e d b y A s h l e y the same technology. isn't affecting all the other Alexandra Dupre, the call-girlKey features include advanced dynamically priced music on the slash-aspiring-pop-star at the and easy user management, user site." He noted that RED, the center of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. labels (which indicate special indie music distribution company Originally posted at News - u s e r s , s u c h a s c o m p a n y owned by Sony, already offers its Digital Media employees), feeds and songs on Amie Street through the notifications, privacy controls and dynamic-pricing model. "Sony topic moderation, and integration Music obviously has the option to Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:00:00 AM

with other Zoho services such as Zoho contacts. Zoho Discussions can’t compete with advanced forum solutions such as Invision Power Board or phpBB, but for a company’s internal forum or a bug suggestion board it has all the features you’d want. Most importantly, with Zoho’s wide area of products and services, which are all tightly integrated into one another, Zoho is slowly becoming what the upcoming Google Wave aspires to be: a fully integrated communication/document creation/sharing platform for companies and individuals alike. Reviews: Google Wave, zoho Tags: forum, Zoho Discussions

Street Chic: London Fashion Week By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:00:00 AM

Shorts transition into autumn with tights and a one-sleeve top. Photo: Stylesight Think you are Street Chic? Email us your photo and you could appear in ELLE.com's Street Chic Daily. Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Mobile payment service Zong expands to subscriptions (CNET News.com) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:00:00 AM

Mobile payment start-up Zong is extending its product to include subscription-based services, the company announced Tuesday. Gaming site OMGPOP and News Corp.-owned photo-sharing site Photobucket have signed on

as launch partners. So here's what this means: instead of entering credit card billing information, subscribers to OMGPOP and Photobucket can bill their subscriptions directly to their phone bills by entering their cell phone numbers and then responding to a confirmation code. Previously, the Zong service

could only be used for one-at-atime micropayments rather than subscription-based services. With Zong's new development, which is currently available only on U.S. carriers (and ideally international ones soon, the company said), it can process monthly subscription payments of up to $9.99. Bigger transactions

are tougher because of the company's complicated relationships with cell phone carriers. Opening up its mobile payments to subscription services may give Zong an advantage in its close rivalry with Boku, another startup offering a very similar pay-bymobile-number service. The two

have taken slightly different approaches to carrier relations, which gave Boku a bigger global reach at its launch-- and it's continued to grow fast. Zong, meanwhile, says that more than 10 million unique users have used the service to process payments so far.

Tech/ Entertainment

Internet News Record

Mobile payment service Zong expands to subscriptions

43

Julianna Margulies Stands by Her Man in 'The Good Wife' (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 12:20:00 AM

It's a series whose theme is ripped from the headlines when Julianna Margulies stars as a Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:00:00 AM woman who is publicly humiliated when her philandering Mobile payment start-up Zong is husband's very public sex and extending its product to include subscription-based services, the monthly subscription payments of political corruption scandal lands up to $9.99. Bigger transactions him in jail. In "The Good Wife," company announced Tuesday. Gaming site OMGPOP and are tougher because of the though, we see the story through News Corp.-owned photo-sharing c o m p a n y ' s c o m p l i c a t e d the wife's eyes. By Dave Caolo (The Unofficial check the identifying icon but site Photobucket have signed on relationships with cell phone "I think this subject matter -- the carriers. Apple Weblog (TUAW)) ancient eyes like mine aren't as launch partners. cheating husband and the Opening up its mobile payments humiliated wife -- has probably meant for such strain. So here's what this means: Submitted at 9/21/2009 6:00:00 PM Snow Leopard has come to the instead of entering credit card to subscription services may give been going on for centuries," Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, rescue. Now you can minimize billing information, subscribers to Zong an advantage in its close Julianna tells ET. "I think [today] OS, Snow Leopard The more we windows "behind" their parent OMGPOP and Photobucket can rivalry with Boku, another start- the press is more myopic and it is use Snow Leopard the more app's icon. Here's how. First. bill their subscriptions directly to up offering a very similar pay-by- just easier for all of us to witness niceties we uncover. This week I launch System Preferences and their phone bills by entering their mobile-number service. The two it. Sadly, I think our culture has found a simple little check box c l i c k " D o c k . " T h e n , s e l e c t cell phone numbers and then have taken slightly different become obsessed with public that has made my life infinitely " M i n i m i z e w i n d o w s i n t o responding to a confirmation approaches to carrier relations, humiliation. It is a timely subject more awesome. Yes, my entire a p p l i c a t i o n i c o n . " A s J e f f code. Previously, the Zong service which gave Boku a bigger global matter, a sad subject matter, but it life. Goldblum said, "There's no step could only be used for one-at-a- reach at its launch-- and it's gives you a chance to see the First, a bit of background. When three." Now, minimized windows time micropayments rather than continued to grow fast. other side of it." Zong, meanwhile, says that Mac OS 10.0 was released in scoot behind your Dock icons and subscription-based services. In "The Good Wife," the September of 2001, we all went there's no more crowding. With Zong's new development, more than 10 million unique users husband's (played by Chris Noth) crazy with the genie effect, *OK, jaggy, halting smoothness. which is currently available only have used the service to process incarceration results in the sale of watching windows slip in and out Still, it was cool. Mostly. the couple's home and other on U.S. carriers (and ideally payments so far. Originally posted at The Social of the newly-introduced Dock TUAW Snow Leopard tip: international ones soon, the objects of value, so she is forced with silky smoothness.* Window Minimize to icon originally company said), it can process to return to work as an attorney -after window slid into place. appeared on The Unofficial Apple a career she quit 13 years earlier T h e p r o b l e m w a s t h i s : Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 21 Sep to raise her children -- but m i n i m i z e d w i n d o w s m o v e d 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see reminders of the scandal follow neighboring icons aside, making our terms for use of feeds. her everywhere. everything a bit smaller and Read| Permalink| Email this| harder to identify. Eventually the Comments whole mess became unusable. Sure, you could mouse over or

By Caroline McCarthy (Webware.com)

Snow Leopard tip: Minimize to icon

44

Tech/ Tech News/

Internet News Record

Kentucky's Attempt To Seize Gambling Domain Names Goes To State Supreme Court By Michael Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:12:01 AM

A year ago, we were surprised to hear that Kentucky's governor was trying to seize the domain names of a long list of over 100 sites that had something to do with gambling. The governor was basing this on a Kentucky law that let the government seize "devices" used for gambling, even though none of the sites in question were based in Kentucky. The governor -- who many say did this to protect local Kentucky gambling operations -- compared these website to "a virtual home invasion." While a judge originally was going to allow the seizure, the state appeals court overturned the ruling, saying that it was clear that a domain name is

RETAIL WAR: Microsoft Cherry Picking Apple Store Employees By Jennifer Van Grove (Mashable!)

Robert Gates: Overhaul the Pentagon

Submitted at 9/21/2009 11:09:39 PM

Microsoft retail stores are coming this fall, and the company has publicly stated that they’re not a gambling device. Rather than back down, the going to build their stores right governor pushed ahead and is next to the competition — Apple using taxpayer money to appeal stores. It makes perfect sense then the ruling. Ragaboo alerts us to that Microsoft would also go after the news that the Kentucky A p p l e s t o r e s t a f f e r s . A n d Supreme Court is getting set to according to The Loop, that’s hear the case. It's difficult to see exactly what’s happening. The blog is reporting that how the governor has much of a leg to stand on here. He's trying to a n o n y m o u s s o u r c e s h a v e seize the domain names of confirmed that Microsoft is businesses operated entirely reaching out to Apple retail store outside the state. Allowing such a managers and offering them seizure of domain names would “ s i g n i f i c a n t r a i s e s , ” a n d set a horrendous precedent and sometimes even moving expenses. But it doesn’t stop there. create all sorts of problems. Hopefully the Kentucky Supreme According to the sources, the Court sees this, and Governor cherry-picked Apple employees, Steven Beshear realizes it's best to once hired, are “then contacting some of the top sales people in the give up this dangerous crusade. Permalink| Comments| Email Apple retail organization offering them positions at Microsoft This Story

retail.” If rumors are to be believed, now everything from the store design to the Guru Bars, and the actual staffers is being plucked by Microsoft in an effort to compete in the retail space. The question remains if these aggressive tactics will pay off. We tend think that consumers will buy the better products, and so far, Apple’s unique approach to retail has been successful. Can Microsoft follow suit? Tags: Apple Store, microsoft

By Noah Shachtman (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 9/21/2009 5:00:00 PM

From his earliest days as secretary of defense, Robert Gates kept a little countdown clock in his briefcase. It ticked off the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until January 20, 2009, when President George W. Bush would leave office and Gates could retire to his secluded home in the Pacific Northwest, 43 years after entering public life. He'd be punting some tough issues to the next guy. But that wasn't his problem.

The Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 9/21/2009 5:00:00 PM

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, gamechanging propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to

empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there's secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe. 1. John Arquilla Go on the Cyberoffensive

2. Thorkil Sonne Recruit Autistics

3. Gregg Easterbrook Embrace Human Cloning 4. Ralph Keeney Cheat Death 5. Dambisa Moyo Cut Off Aid to Africa 6. Nils Christie Empty the Prisons 7. Stewart Brand Save the Slums 8. Stefan Szymanski and Stephen Ross

Bust Up Big League Sports 9. Ludwig Minelli Legalize Assisted Suicide 10. Jamie Heywood Forget Medical Privacy 11. William Gurstelle Take Smart Risks 12. Robert Gates Overhaul the Pentagon Illustration: Tucker & Bennett

Internet News Record

45

ROBERT continued from page 44 Until it was. Barack Obama prevailed on him to stay—in the midst of economic turmoil and two ongoing wars, the new president needed a low-key, nosurprises steward at the Pentagon. That's not what the president got. More than five months after his countdown clock hit zero, Gates has turned out to be neither a caretaker nor merely the guy tasked with cleaning up the mess Donald Rumsfeld made of the Department of Defense. Instead, Robert Gates has emerged as the most radical secdef in generations, upending the politics of national security, scrapping the traditional ways gear gets to troops, and defying the militaryindustrial complex. Gates denies all that. Mostly. As he leans over a small desk crammed into a cabin on board a modified 757, he comes across as just another Washington big shot. His starched white shirt has two pens in the breast pocket. His blue jeans are hiked up a bit too high on his waist, like he's been wearing suits too long to remember where dungarees belong. He waves off talk of massive change, of revolutions in military affairs. Rather, he offers what sounds like common sense: The military needs to fight today's battles, not tomorrow's. Generals are always fighting the last war, the old saying goes, but in reality the Department of Defense has the opposite problem. While a relative handful of troops fight and die "downrange" in war zones, a massive bureaucracy develops strategies, spends money, and—most especially—builds weapons, all in the name of theoretical, decadeshence showdowns. It's a $500

billion perpetual motion machine. Every secdef talks about changing the Pentagon, then almost immediately gets stymied by bureaucratic resistance. Only this time, Gates' talk is turning into action—a Gates Doctrine, if you will. Its core tenets: Base policy on the wars that are most likely to happen and the technology that's most likely to work. Stop trying to buy the future when you can't afford the present. With a White House veteran's feel for Washington, a love of policy, a penchant for secrecy, and an old man's sense of the ticking clock, the silver-haired administrator has become the most dangerous person in the military-industrial complex. "I've referred to myself as the secretary of war, because we're at war," he says in a nasal Kansas twang, raising his voice over the roar of the plane's engines. "This is a department that principally plans for war. It's not organized to wage war. And that's what I'm trying to fix." On the Sunday before the midterm elections in 2006, while guests mingled in the main house at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the first lady's 60th birthday party, Bush took Gates into his private study and asked him to take over the Defense Department. Gates was a national security pro, having served in the White House and at the CIA for six presidents. He was a trusted protégé of Bush Senior and had continued to sit on several important advisory panels even after leaving DC in 1993. As Bob Woodward told it in his 2008 book The War Within, Gates and the president talked about increasing the size of the Army, halting unneeded weapons

programs, the unfinished fight in Afghanistan. But Gates knew only one topic really mattered: Iraq. The country Bush had set out to liberate was turning into The Road Warrior, with more bombs. Donald Rumsfeld's approach—"go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want"—had helped fuel the chaos. All the American power and prestige Gates had fought for decades to preserve was disappearing. He took the job. When Gates arrived at the Pentagon in December 2006, without aides or entourage, he learned that few people in the building shared his sense of urgency about Iraq. Part of this was institutional: The GoldwaterNichols Act of 1986 essentially splits the military in two—relatively small, regional commands do the fighting, and everyone else does the conceptualizing, training, and gear-buying. But the bigger hurdle was attitude. Iraq was important, the Pentagon's prevailing wisdom went, but so were a whole range of other conflicts just over the horizon. "There wasn't any kind of dedicated place in the institution where people were coming to work every day saying, 'What can I do to help the people downrange today?'" Gates says. "And that got me—" His lips tighten. His eyes narrow. He takes a breath. "It made me very impatient." Click to enlarge infographic. Source: Department of Defense Just two months into Gates' tenure, The Washington Post revealed that Walter Reed Army Medical Center was keeping wounded soldiers in moldy, mouse- and cockroach-infested squalor. Gates fired the general in

charge. Then he fired the secretary of the Army and forced out the Army's surgeon general. On Rumsfeld's watch, no one got fired for incompetence—not even after the Abu Ghraib prison debacle. Gates was clearly different. "I can't tell you how cathartic, how refreshing that was," says Ryan Henry, a top aide to both secretaries. But replacing bureaucrats is easier than diverting whole bureaucracies. Gates found that out as soon as he began acting on his promise to focus on waging war, not planning for it. He knew that soldiers were driving thousands of Humvees with substandard armor and that improvised explosive devices, which easily pierced the vehicles' thin skins, had caused 70 percent of US casualties in Iraq. The Army's answer to the pressing need for hardened vehicles was to keep pouring billions of dollars into Future Combat Systems, a program that was supposed to yield a next-generation networked, lightly armored infantry vehicle by, oh, 2016 or so. Meanwhile, in one part of Iraq, hard-shelled trucks called MRAPs (mine-resistant, ambushprotected) had withstood hundreds of attacks without a single US fatality. But in May 2007, just 64 were delivered into the field—they were considered too big to use anywhere but Iraq, and the Army already had Future Combat Systems going. Gates learned about MRAPs not from his generals but from an April 2007 article in USA Today. "Nobody wanted the things, because they were afraid they'd wind up with thousands of them in a big car park at the end of the

war," Gates says. "My attitude was: If you're in a war, it's all in. I don't care what we have left over at the end." So Gates ordered a task force to figure out how to deliver 1,000 MRAPs a month by 2008. This was, to put it gently, crazy talk. Typically, defense contractors crank out just a few hundred armored vehicles a year. But task force chief John Young set up a plan to buy 17,000 specialized tires per month (Michelin, the sole supplier, was producing less than 1,000) and 21,000 tons per month of high-strength ballistic steel. It would eventually cost $25 billion—a lot of money, even at the Pentagon. Gates put Young's plan into practice. He asked Congress for permission to expand manufacturing lines with $1.2 billion from other programs, and he activated a rarely used Cold War law to force steel makers to prioritize sales to the Pentagon's MRAP manufacturers. Monthly MRAP deliveries climbed to 1,189 by the end of the year. Today, there are 13,000 MRAPs deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. IED attacks have gone up, but in the 325 bombings involving MRAPs in Afghanistan so far this year, only five servicemembers have died. The Gates Doctrine was emerging: Spare nothing to win today's war. Don't let the future distract you from the present day. As a veteran of the national security and intelligence communities, Gates is both a defense outsider and a Washington insider. The son of a Wichita, Kansas, auto parts dealer, he was an Eagle Scout ROBERT page 46

46

Internet News Record

ROBERT continued from page 45 who dreamed of becoming a doctor—dissecting rats and cats in his parents' basement to get ready. He ended up majoring in history at William & Mary and then landed in the master's program at Indiana University. In his memoir, Gates claimed he met with the CIA recruiter there on a lark. "I thought I could get a free trip to Washington," he wrote. Gates spent eight years as a junior analyst and an Air Force intelligence officer, then joined Nixon's National Security Council staff in 1974. Administrations changed, and political parties swapped control of the White House, but Gates remained. On the old boys' network, he had become a central node. He advised Carter on the Iranian hostage crisis, sized up Gorbachev for Reagan, and wrote George H. W. Bush's war aims for Operation Desert Storm. All the while, Gates was learning how to bend a bureaucracy to his will. As a deputy national security adviser to the first President Bush, Gates took charge of the Deputies Committee, an interagency group responsible for the nuts and bolts of national security policy. The committee was a mess: rambling, inconclusive, a haven for backchannelers and leakers. Gates reined it in, ensuring no meeting lasted longer than an hour and that every one ended with a decision. Even the scuttling of his 1987 nomination to head the CIA didn't stop him. (Opponents alleged Gates, then the CIA's number two, hadn't done enough to stop the Iran-Contra scheme.) When Bush nominated him again four years later, Gates defused his critics with self-effacing humor and humility and was confirmed

easily. He left government in 1993; about a decade later he became head of Texas A&M and, once again, cleaned house. He replaced underperforming administrators with more- scholarly-minded deans, sending a message to an insular bureaucracy to focus on academics. A&M became one of the top public- service universities in the country and created hundreds of new academic positions. Such a record should have told the current Pentagon establishment what to expect from their new boss. But to them, he turned out to be inscrutable. In some meetings, Gates would rarely speak; in others, he told stories from his Cold War glory days or cracked jokes about Washington's stuffed shirts. Rumsfeld was famous for intimidating people and bruising egos; Gates never interrupts. He can be stiff and reserved, until emotion comes gushing out. During one speech, recalling the death of a marine, he nearly broke down in tears, surprising even longtime friends. Gates doesn't travel much on the Beltway's social circuit, instead spending off -hours with his wife and a small cadre of aides. He smokes cigars, drinks Belvedere martinis with a twist (the first President Bush weaned him from gin to vodka), and watches trashy movies— Transformers and Wolverine were recent favorites. Gates is also unforgivingly tough on failure. In August 2007, an Air Force unit mistakenly flew six nuclear warheads across the US on a B-52—a cardinal sin to an old Cold Warrior like Gates. Later, when Air Force chief of staff Mike Moseley briefed Gates

on the incident, Gates asked him how many generals were going to get fired over the mishap. Moseley was taken aback; he said he wanted to spend time factfinding first. More than 90 officers and airmen were eventually relieved or reassigned. But there was a bigger problem with the Air Force. The service saw itself as the high tech deterrent against an apocalyptic encounter with another superpower. Current conflicts—and weapons for those conflicts—got short shrift. Unmanned aircraft like the Predator are cheap (compared to planes with pilots on board) and flexible, and they provide fast, useful intelligence to troops. But despite having been at war for nearly six years, the Air Force had fewer than a dozen Predator air patrols, or orbits, over Iraq and Afghanistan. US commanders were getting increasingly frustrated with the shortage. In April 2008, a second task force—headed by Brad Berkson, a former partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company—investigated drone operations headquarters at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Berkson found a host of inefficiencies limiting drone time in the air. They were flying for only 20 hours a day, and some of the Nevada ground control stations used for practice in the daytime were simply shut down at night, instead of being used to control drones over the battlefield. The Air Force brass thought the idea of the head of the entire freakin' military sending staff to spend this much time down in the weeds was, in the words of one former senior Air Force officer, "just amateurish." Gates found

their recalcitrance equally frustrating. "I had to go outside the bureaucracy to get any kind of urgent action," Gates says. In late April, he gave a talk at the Air War College, one of the service's intellectual hubs, and told the assembled fliers that reform was going too slowly: "Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth." Gates knew that what he said was impolitic; after the speech he reached Moseley at his father-in-law's home in Texas to assure him that he hadn't meant to single out the general or the Air Force. Moseley got the message anyway. The Air Force increased the number of drones over war zones; today there are 37 orbits over Afghanistan and Iraq. But drones weren't at the heart of the Air Force's strategy. What the service really wanted was the F22 Raptor. At $250 million a pop, this next-gen superjet is unquestionably a champion dogfighter, all but invisible to radar and able to fly at least Mach 1.5. It's decades ahead of anything out of Moscow or Beijing. Against insurgents and terrorists, however, F-22s are of little use compared to drones. So Gates wanted to cap F-22 production at 187, a level set by Rumsfeld, and emphasize drone use. Yet Moseley and Michael Wynne, secretary of the Air Force, kept lobbying for more. Raptors, they said, were essential replacements for the aging US aircraft fleet. A couple of weeks after his speech at the Air War College, Gates met with the Joint Chiefs and a few other officials to talk about a strategy document. It included a line about the US

accepting some risk in fights with superpowers in order to win asymmetric, unconventional conflicts. Moseley, a former fighter pilot, said that such a risk was unacceptable, that he needed those Raptors. Representatives from the Army, Navy, and Marines all registered similar discontent. They wanted their future war gear, too. "They kept making the case over and over. You would've thought someone's children we're being held hostage, how they carried on," a former senior defense official says. Gates sat through it silently for about an hour. Finally, he told them he wouldn't ask Congress for any more Raptors. "It was like a cold shower. Like, 'Wow, what just happened here?'" another former official says. Wynne and Moseley took one more crack at Gates at yet another meeting. The secdef wouldn't budge. "You know, Buzz," Wynne told Moseley afterward, "I think that just sealed our fate." An internal DOD investigation into how the Air Force had accidentally shipped to Taiwan four fuses used in nuclear missiles didn't help. Gates read it and asked for Wynne's and Moseley's immediate resignations, but the fuses may have been just an excuse. "It was so spylike, to claim it was about the nuclear incident," a former Air Force official familiar with the situation says. "It was an opportunity. It had all the right labels." By 2009, changes to the status quo, combined with a successful counterinsurgency push in Iraq, resulted in adjusted attitudes at the Pentagon. The new Air Force chiefs were talking about how ROBERT page 48

Tech News/

Internet News Record

47

Trading Scarcity: Is This the Killer App for the Real-Time Web? By Bernard Lunn (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:59:48 AM

Most platforms gain traction through a killer app. In the second generation of real time, that killer app was market data for financial traders. What will it be in the third generation? Today, the real-time Web is associated with social networking status updates via services such as Twitter and Facebook. But whether this will be the killer app for this generation is not clear. As we enter a period of "social update exhaustion" (as in, "I really do not care what you had for breakfast"), the real-time Web may evolve into things that we really need to make a living or to get essential stuff done. The killer app matters, because the winner at the platform layer will be the company that hosts it. Sponsor Other Killer App Contenders We think the killer app is something we call "trading scarcity." Let's first look at three other contenders: • Data portability Because the real-time Web has grown out of social media status updates, the typical killer app that people have been working on is data portability: automated connections between different social networking sites. This is certainly how Gnip has positioned itself. Question: is this interesting to people other than the social media experts who write about it? Or is the mass market happy to choose one site and stick with it? Will we simply see bilateral

negotiations between sites emerge, along with basic best practices? • News delivery Question: is this interesting to people other than journalists and bloggers? News is a fairly big business, but in the big picture, it is only one niche. How many journalists are there? If all of them used Twitter all day long, would it be a big business? • Customer service The ability to react to problems in real time, to nip problems in the bud, is important to companies of any size. This is big. Question: how practical will implementation be? The ability to respond quickly is only one aspect of good customer service; the other aspects (hiring, training, motivation, corporate policy) are both more critical and more complex. The Law of Supply and Demand Has Not Been Repealed The free, abundant digital domain is mirrored by an expensive, scarce physical domain. Online, we tend to focus on the free, abundant digital domain. The debate on Freeconomics rages today, but the basics are simple. The Internet is an enormous, almost-free copying machine for anything digital, so price will tend towards $0. Air is the most precious commodity in the world (try going without it for a few minutes), but it is free (notwithstanding negative externalities). But all that free stuff must be paid for by something that people would pay for. That is where the expensive, scarce physical domain comes in. People pay more for

In this world, the status update tends to go from a socially driven message ("I just did this. Are you interested?") to a more commercially driven message ("This is what I have available things when the demand is high right now at this price. Are you and supply is low. So to make interested?" or "This is what I money, you need to sell products need right now. Do you have and services that are scarce... and it?"). in demand. Like fresh fish? Are you willing Or you could make money by to pay more for fresh, healthy, and connecting supply and demand delicious than stinky, old, and using the real-time Web. sickening? Then go here. Trading But it has to be real time. That is Attention and Endorsement the whole point of scarcity. A For those of us who were hotel room may be available for steeped in the early days of social $75 right now, but 10 minutes media, this all sounds a bit too later it could be $125 (or $50). commercial. Surely we are not Acme's services are available just economic animals, are we? right now for $150 per hour, but N o , w e a r e n o t . M a s l o w ' s 10 minutes later it is charging hierarchy of needs stated that $200 because it is more booked clearly. up. You see a hand-knit cashmere But even if you take money out sweater available right now for of the equation, we are still $350; it's the only one, you want trading in scarcity - in this case, it, and it might be gone in a few the scarcity of our attention. minutes. Premium ad space is You have only 24 hours in a day available right now for a CPM of and 365 days in a year, and the $15... no, make that $17. average life span is around 80 I could go on and on. This years. You are a limited resource. affects almost every market in the Sorry if that is news to you. :-) world. Plenty of untapped You are getting pinged from all o p p o r t u n i t y l i e s h e r e f o r around, forced to constantly make enterprises, startups, Main Street decisions about where to allocate small businesses, and individual one of your finite resources: time. free agents. Your other limited resource is E n t r e p r e n e u r s h a v e b i g credibility. Social networks want technical challenges to work on. you to endorse (that is, sell) their Message delivery (which we services to your friends. They explored in our last post on the may pay you in cash or 'Attaboys, subject) is challenging enough but but whichever you take, you are very minor compared to the devil- dipping into a limited pot of i n - t h e - d e t a i l s i s s u e s a t t h e credibility. Shill too much, and application layer. These will have your friends will abandon you. to be solved in domain-specific Ask any Amway or multi-level ways. marketing sales agent, and they

will tell you how that works. Eliminating the Curse of "May You Have Much Inventory" Inventory is the curse of any business in the expensive, scarce physical domain. Think of what Dell did in the PC business: it used real-time supply chains to eliminate inventory, building each PC to order. This is as close to magic as you can get in the expensive, scarce physical domain. You turn negative cash flow (working capital that you need to expand) into positive working capital cash flow: you get an order, get paid, and then you pay the supplier. Perhaps on the real-time Web this all happens close to simultaneously, so the very concept of working capital begins to disappear. Explaining the business value of trading scarcity using the realtime Web is not difficult, then. Ask any company, "Do you want to eliminate inventory?" You will get its full attention. This is not technology looking for a problem to solve. This is the biggest problem that most business people in the expensive, scarce physical domain (i.e. the real world) face every day. What This Means for Real-Time Web Players Envision a future where this has played out. Most of the world's transactional opportunities flow through the real-time Web. You can tap into that flow to buy and sell. And you can be an intermediary, which is fundamentally the role of aggregating demand. What systems would you use in that TRADING page 49

48

Internet News Record

ROBERT continued from page 46 awesome drones were. Pentagon staffers were talking about asymmetric war. Anyone discussing showdowns with China or Russia tended to use the same theoretical tone one might employ in considering war with Alpha Centauri. Still, these changes were marginal compared to the $500 billion-a-year spending machine. Now, $300 billion of that was sacrosanct, going to troops, operations, and maintenance. But the rest went to the Pentagon's deeply odd process of developing and acquiring new weapons. Among the ongoing projects when Gates came aboard: a constellation of five "transformational" communications satellites that talk to one another using a technology that hasn't been shown to work, a laser-equipped 747 designed to zap incoming missiles (which had its first test fire last summer after 13 years in development), a presidential helicopter with a kitchen that can heat up meals after a nuclear war, and Future Combat Systems—the Army's $160 billion, grand modernization project, due to actually get high tech gear to troops by 2011. "You ever read Superman comic books?" asks Eric Edelman, the former Pentagon policy chief. "Well, acquisitions is like the Bizarro universe. Everything is reversed; the world is square, not round." Every secdef from McNamara to Rumsfeld tried to cut overbudget, long-delayed weapons programs. Usually, though, their efforts leaked to the press and

Congress, who hit them with a tsunami of tears over lost jobs and weakened national potency. Starting in 1989, then-secdef Dick Cheney (before he became a supervillain) tried four times to ax the Osprey, an aircraft that takes off like a helicopter and cruises like a plane. It took $26 billion, 30 dead crewmembers, and 25 years of development, but the Osprey eventually flew. Even Cheney couldn't stop it. Gates thought his circumstances gave him a better shot. Even amid two wars and a collapsing economy, he had already lived through one scandal, and he was the only cabinet secretary to serve both Bush and Obama. "I decided to take full advantage of the opportunity," Gates says. He told his aides to forget about the economy, about generals and defense contractors and all the other extraneous political bullshit. "Let me worry about the politics," he said. Then he made his deliberations covert. "I don't want this leaking out in pieces," he told his staff. "We'll get eaten alive." For the first time, everyone involved in the process had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Gates' team set up an exclusive reading room for the budget documents. Only top-ranking generals—four stars—were allowed inside, and they were not permitted to take the briefings out. Starting on January 6, Gates and a handful of advisers began meeting regularly. "Everything is on the table," Gates told them. The group would get a white paper on a given issue—missile

defense, fighter aircraft, ground forces—and Gates would review the options on what to keep or kill. Gates wouldn't say outright what he wanted to do with a given program; that way, no one would have details to leak. But everyone knew cuts were coming. Under the Bush administration, Pentagon spending had gone up 75 percent in eight years. "You need a cut to force the institution to make changes to the system," says Berkson, who coordinated the budget deliberations. "You need that pressure." In the end, Gates cut the satellites, the nuke-proof helicopter, the laser-firing jumbo jet prototype, the Future Combat Systems trucks, and, most symbolic, the F-22. Each one of these strike-throughs meant billions of dollars and thousands of jobs lost in dozens of congressional districts. Taken together, they represented the biggest reorg of the Pentagon in a generation. After the April budget announcement, Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma said that Gates was "gutting our military." One congressional committee after another voted to keep building F22s and other Bizarro projects. Gates and the Pentagon "need to learn who's in charge, and the Congress is," said Democratic representative Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii. Not even Obama's threats to veto any budget with F22s had an effect. The jet had become a symbol of resistance to the Gates Doctrine. By one tally, the Raptor had 45 supporters in

the Senate. Gates had only 23 backers. In mid-July, the weekend before the crucial vote, the White House and Gates' team started lobbying. Gates assured senator John Kerry that the Massachusetts Air National Guard wouldn't be severely impacted, and he reportedly warned the CEO of Raptor-maker Lockheed Martin that if his company lobbied in favor of the F-22, Gates would cut other Lockheed contracts. The new Air Force secretary told Wyoming senator Mike Enzi he didn't want any more Raptors anyway. The following Tuesday, the Senate voted 58-40 to stop production of the Raptors. Gates had won. Aboard his plane, however, the secretary tries to downplay the importance of the budget votes. This is a onetime, temporary win over the square planet, not some wholesale rewriting of the rules, he insists. "Given the nature of the Pentagon, if you're in the middle of a war, you're going to have to have a lot of direction from the top, to break down bureaucratic barriers and get people to move out with a sense of urgency," he says. Now the secretary of war is working on phase two of his plan, speeding up a once-every-fouryears grand strategy review and working on even bigger changes in next year's budget. For decades, the Pentagon prepped itself for a straightforward set of superpower wars because ... well, those were the battles the US knew how to prepare for. It bought exquisite high tech weapon systems

because they had the coolest capabilities, not because they necessarily countered any threats. At long last, a changing world may be changing the Pentagon. Gates says he's trying to build an organization prepared for threats that defy present-day categorization—terror groups with bigger and better weapons and organization, and superpowers like China and Russia adopting the tactics of guerrillas. "Conflict in the future will slide up and down the spectrum," Gates says. "You're not only going to have irregular warfare over here and highintensity conventional war over here." But every case will still require a pragmatic approach to strategy and equipment, even if that seems to clash with Gates' "all in" approach to war. Stanley McChrystal, the man Gates named in May to be top general in Afghanistan, has asked for more troops. Gates is "deeply skeptical"—his understanding of the Soviet experience there tells him more grunts may not be the way to defeat the Taliban. After three years under Gates, the Defense Department is finally learning the right lesson: You wage war with the enemies you have, not the ones you wish you had. Contributing editor Noah S h a c h t m a n ( wired.com/dangerroom) wrote about ionospheric research in issue 17.08.

Tech News/

Internet News Record

Sponsor Post: The Limits of Tweet-Based Web Search By RWW Sponsor (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:00:01 AM

Editor's note: we offer our longterm sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products. Many of the recent real-time search engines are based on Twitter. They use the URLs enclosed in tweets to discover and rank new and popular pages. In this post, we'll take a look at the quantitative structure of the underlying foundation, to determine the feasibility and limits of this approach. We'll also look at how to overcome these limitations by using the implicit Web. Sponsor You may have seen recently the interesting visualization of Twitter statistics. It essentially proves that, as with other social services, only a small fraction of users actively contribute. But it also shows another fact: that those people who contribute publish an even smaller fraction of the information they know. Both of these factors account for the huge difference in efficiency between implicit and explicit voting. Explicit voting, as the name implies, requires users to actively express interest in a page; for example, by tweeting a link.

Implicit voting requires no deliberate action on the part of the user; a simple visit to a Web page would count as a vote. A Quick Calculation Twitter now has 44.5 million users and delivers about 20,000 tweets per minute. If every second tweet contained a URL, that would be 10,000 URLs shared per minute. According to Nielsen, the number of visited Web pages per person per month is 1,591. Twitter's 44.5 million users visit 1.6 million Web pages per minute and explicitly vote for only 10,000 per minute. That is to say, implicit voting and discovery generates 160 times more attention-getting data than explicit voting. This means that 280,000 implicit votes could provide as much information as 44.5 million explicit votes. Put another way, as many Web pages are implicitly discovered during one day as there are Web pages explicitly discovered during half a year. This dramatically shows the limits of Web searches based solely on explicit votes and mentions, searches whose potential could be leveraged by using the implicit Web. Beyond the Mainstream This becomes even more important if we look beyond mainstream topics and the English language. Then it becomes simply impossible to achieve the critical mass of explicit votes needed to have statistically significant attention-based ranking or popularity-based discovery. Time

and Votes Are Precious Time is also a crucial factor, especially with real-time search. We want to be able to discover new pages as soon as possible. And we want to assess almost instantly how popular those new pages are. If we fail to reliably rank a page quickly, it will get buried in the noise. But the goals of speed and votes conflict with the fact that the number of votes a page gets is inversely proportional to the time it took to be viewed. Again a much higher frequency of implicit votes would help. Relevance vs. Equality We could also improve on explicit votes. But we should not treat them as being equal because they are not. We trust some of them more than others, and our interests overlap with some more than others, for the very same reason that we follow some people and not others. This helps us get more value and meaning out of that very first vote. FAROO is moving in this direction by combining real-time search with a peer-to-peer infrastructure. A Holistic Approach Discovering topical, fresh, and novel information has always been an important aspect of search. But the perception of what "recent" is has changed dramatically with the popularity of services such as Twitter, and it has led to the emergence of realtime search engines. Real-time search shouldn't be a

silo, but rather should be part of a unified and distributed approach to Web search. The era of purely documentcentered search is over. The equally important roles of user and conversation, both as targets of search and as contributors to discovery and ranking, should be reflected in the infrastructure. A Distributed Infrastructure As long as both source and recipient of information are distributed, then the natural design of search is distributed, too. P2P offers an efficient alternative to the ubiquitous concentration and centralization of search we find today. A peer-to-peer client allows every visited Web page to be implicitly discovered and ranked according to attention received. This is important, because the majority of pages in a real-time search are in the long tail. They appear once or not at all in the Twitter stream and can't be discovered or ranked through explicit votes. With real-time search, the amount of indexed data is limited, because only recent documents (those that have gained a lot of attention and a high reputation) are accounted for in the index. This allows for a centralized infrastructure at a moderate cost. But as soon as search moves beyond the short head of real-time search and aims to fully index the long tail of the entire Web, then a distributed peer-to-peer architecture provides a huge cost advantage. Discuss

49

TRADING continued from page 47 future? Those systems are the ones that the winners of the real-time Web have to build. It won't be simple. Meeting the challenge in one domain is complex enough. Building the platforms that accommodate multiple domains will take a lot of work, and we are at a very early stage. Discuss

Woopra Aims to Monetize Real-Time Analytics From Outside Silicon Valley By Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:10:25 PM

Is the real-time web just Silicon Valley buzz built up by hypemasters aiming to cash out? Good evidence otherwise comes from Woopra, an upstart real-time website analytics company that today announced that it's taking off its Beta label. WOOPRA page 50

50

Tech News/

Gregg Easterbrook: Embrace Human Cloning

Internet News Record

WOOPRA continued from page 49

Founded in Lebanon and now international, Woopra said today that the service will lift previous account size limits, will offer paid By Gregg Easterbrook (Wired shaping unpredictability as any This does not necessarily make user accounts and will limit free Top Stories) kid. human cloning desirable; there are accounts to by invitation only. The eminent University of complicated issues to consider. CEO John Pozadzides recorded an Submitted at 9/21/2009 5:00:00 PM Chicago ethicist Leon Kass has I n i t i a l m a m m a l i a n c l o n i n g awesome video that's both humble Human clones, it is widely argued that human cloning would experiments, with sheep and other and inspiring. We learned about assumed, would be monstrous be offensive in part because the species, have produced many the announcement from the blog perversions of nature. Yet chances clone would "not be fully a sickly offspring that die quickly. ArabCrunch, and that blog's are, you already know one. surprise to the world." True, but Could it ever be ethical to conduct coverage is today's Real-Time Indeed, you may know several what child is? Almost all share research that produces sick babies Web Article of the Day. and even have dated a clone. They physical traits and mannerisms in the hope of figuring out how to Sponsor walk among us in the form of with their parents. By having make healthy clones? And clones We're highlighting one article identical twins: people who share different experiences than their might be treated as inferiors, off-site each day that we think is exact sets of DNA. Such twins p a r e n t s ( e r , p a r e n t ) a n d rendering them unhappy. the most important discussion of almost always look alike and d e v e l o p i n g t h e i r o w n Still, human cloning should not the real-time web, leading up to often have similar quirks. But personalities, clones would be out of the question. In vitro the October 15th ReadWrite Realtheir minds, experiences, and become distinct individuals with fertilization was once seen as Time Web Summit. personalities are different, and no the same originality and dignity as depraved God-playing and is now ArabCrunch editor Gaith Saqer one supposes they are less than identical twins—or anyone else. embraced, even by many of the explains the importance of fully human. And if identical Others argue that cloning is devoutly religious. Cloning could Woopra's announcement today in twins are fully human, wouldn't "unnatural." But nature wants us be a blessing for the infertile, who his coverage. cloned people be as well? to pass on our genes; if cloning otherwise could not experience • Seeing a Lebanon-founded Suppose scientists could create assists in that effort, nature would biological parenthood. And, of company taking this step in the a clone from an adult human: It not be offended. Moreover, course, it would be a blessing for red-hot real-time web market is a would probably be more distinct cloning itself isn't new; there have the clone itself. Suppose a clone is g r e a t d a t a p o i n t a b o u t t h e from its predecessor than most b e e n m a n y s p e c i e s t h a t later asked, "Are you glad you international nature of the realidentical twins are from each reproduced clonally and a few e x i s t e v e n t h o u g h y o u a r e time web movement. Woopra's other. A clone from a grown-up that still do. And there's nothing p h y s i c a l l y q u i t e s i m i l a r t o CEO is now in Dallas, Texas. would have the same DNA but intrinsically unnatural about someone else, or do you wish you • The product is priced higher would come into the world as a human inventions that improve had never existed?" We all know than some ostensible competitors, gurgling baby, not an instant reproductive odds—does anyone what the answer would be. but its availability as a desktop adult, as in sci-fi. The clone think nature is offended by client for Windows, Mac and would go through childhood and hospital delivery made safe by Linux computers is very adolescence with the same life- banks of machines? appealing for some users. • Monetization of consumerlevel real-time web products, outside of advertising, is itself newsworthy. Look at how charming that video is! The CEO identifies himself only as "John P., one of the team members at Woopra."

It's a really frank explanation of how the company is just looking to become cashflow neutral. Imagine, someone humbly asking a relatively small community of software users to pay so that the company's staff can simply sustain itself. What a radical departure from the typical startup CEO pitch you hear from companies on the bleeding edge of web trends! Woopra clearly prioritizes authentic communication with its users. The company hired wellknown WordPress consultant Lorelle VanFossen to be the company blog's Editor in Chief. Woopra watchers can't be surprised by the announcement, the way it was made or the seemingly very positive reaction from the Woopra community. As Mohamed Marwen Meddah explained on StartupArabia today, "All this of course is a natural step forward for Woopra, that was in the plans from the beginning, in order to start generating revenue, cover the costs of their infrastructure, and make the company and service sustainable." This kind of attitude is more than welcome at the forthcoming ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit. There will be plenty of real-time rock stars there but riding the wave of change that the pushbutton web will bring and building sustainable businesses are both valid ways to engage as well. Discuss

Tech News/ TV

Internet News Record

51

Could Wowd Be the Skype of RealTime Search? Private Beta Invites

Yahoo's $100 Million Ad Campaign: It's You!

By Jolie O'Dell (ReadWriteWeb)

By Dana Oshiro (ReadWriteWeb)

machine-powered search engine. Wowd is funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), KPG Submitted at 9/21/2009 10:30:48 PM Ventures, and the Stanford Trying to explain Wowd, a to acheive a monumental feat core University Engineering Venture Silicon Valley-based search to their value proposition: Real- Fund. Their team includes startup v e n t u r e , i s a b u z z w o r d time indexing of the entire web, vets with a total of four successful extravaganza. not just a handful of sites and not exits and experience working on Using cloud architecture and just pages linked to from real-time projects such as the Intel P6 crowdsourced data on web pages, social sites. Essentially, it's the processor and technology for this real-time discovery and same kind of P2P network surface operations on Mars. recommendation engine ranks technology that makes Skype or Check out this interview with pages based on whether users SETI@home possible; all the Wowd CEO Mark Drummond, actually visited them and returns nodes in the network share conducted by Tim Reha: results from all over the web, not bandwidth-intensive tasks, such as In terms of data privacy, just a handful of indexed pages. indexing the entire Internet in real Wowd's system doesn't look at Read on for the details on Wowd's time. local files, Wowd searches, IP technology, a video interview Here's how the indexing and addresses, personal behavior, w i t h t h e i r C E O , a n d y e s , ranking work: Each time a user secure pages or pages that require invitations to join the private beta. who has downloaded and installed a login, or any sites "blacklisted" Sponsor Wowd visits a website, without in a user's settings. And of course, It's a downloaded app, but it his taking any further action, that Wowd's default setting blocks runs in a browser. Personal page is "voted up" on Wowd. their gathering data on any adultinformation isn't stored on a Conceptually, it's a little bit like content pages; that is to say, all c e n t r a l i z e d s e r v e r , a n d n o Digg or Hacker News in that the your pr0n will still belong to you. registration is required; yet number of users rather than The first 300 ReadWriteWeb browsing history is saved to k e y w o r d s , b a c k l i n k s , o r readers to click here will also be recommend more personally timeliness, determine ranking. able to join Wowd's private beta relevant and interesting content. At scale, this could mean that and experience firsthand the The cloud arichitecture - that is, Wowd would be a more workable m a g i c o f h u m a n - p o w e r e d the distribution of processing version of the human-powered r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s . D i s c u s s power and bandwidth needed to search engine, which their team power real-time indexing across believes will always generate all user desktops - allows Wowd more interesting results than a

Submitted at 9/21/2009 6:25:00 PM

Early this morning Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz rang the NASDAQ opening bell in honor of her efforts at New York's Advertising week. Said Bartz, "Yahoo is where half a billion people come every month. They come to be entertained, they come to be informed, they come to talk to their friends and their business associates. In other words, Yahoo is the center of people's lives. That is what we are." Bartz's words are significant as the company is expected to unveil a $100 million dollar "It's You!" campaign tomorrow morning. Sponsor According to the Wallstreet Journal the campaign focuses on "personalization and how Yahoo can help people navigate all their services and information online". Judging by the fact that the article goes on to describe the campaign's font consistencies, it appears very little beyond the

campaign aesthetic has been leaked to eager New Yorkers. Last month ReadWriteWeb covered a number of Yahoo updates to Mail, Search and Messenger. The most notable items appear to be the ability to monitor friends and status updates from a single dashboard. Being the singular entry-point for multiple services including Flickr, Mail and Messenger is likely to be a major facet of the Yahoo campaign. Nevertheless, while the company remains a leading advertising and email player, critics argue that these recent life streaming features do not offer the same ease of use as sites like Facebook and Friendfeed. It will be interesting to see if the new campaign can convince users to stay within the Yahoo ecosystem for all of their communications and business needs. Photo Credit: Franco Follini Discuss

Seven shows that need funny commentators more than American Idol By Danny Gallagher (TV Squad) Submitted at 9/22/2009 11:05:00 AM

American Idol's choice of Ellen DeGeneres as a judge replacement threw everyone for a loop, even schlubs like me who don't watch the show.

It's not that she's not talented, successful or funny. It's just an odd choice, putting a comedian on the show that takes its goal of crushing losers' dreams on live television so seriously. It would evoke the same reaction from me if they picked Andrew "Dice" Diceman was talented, successful Clay as the new judge, if the or funny.

And besides, why do they need humor and comedy on such an otherwise serious show? There are lots of humorless, vapid and downright boring shows that are crying out for comedic interjection. Continue reading Seven shows that need funny commentators

more than American Idol Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Reality Shows, Late Night, American Idol, Celebrities, Game Show, TV Squad Lists Permalink| Email this| | Comments

52

Tech News/ Game

Internet News Record

Stefan Szymanski and Stephen Ross: Google Earth Tracks Bust Up Big League Sports Marine Exploration By Drake Bennett (Wired Top Stories)

league doesn't stand a chance. How to spark owners with the same competitive fire they Submitted at 9/21/2009 5:00:00 PM demand of their players? Stefan Major league athletes are Szymanski and Stephen Ross rewarded for talent, toughness, have a plan: Make teams compete and single-minded dedication. for a spot in the majors. Major league team owners, on the Szymanski, an economics other hand, are rewarded for professor at City University mediocrity. Having bought their L o n d o n , a n d R o s s , a l a w way into a league, lackadaisical professor at Penn State, borrowed owners can extort hundreds of their model from European millions of dollars from their soccer. In that system, no team is h o m e t o w n s ( a n d c h a r g e assured of a place in the top exorbitant ticket prices) under national league. Instead, each threat of decamping for another league has multiple levels: city. They can allow wretched E n g l a n d ' s P r e m i e r L e a g u e , teams to languish year after year Spain's La Liga, and Italy's Serie and pocket the league's revenue- A are all the top rungs of their sharing money rather than invest respective ladders. At the end of it in talent, knowing that when each season, the bottom few they're ready to sell, a scrum of teams at each level are relegated m i l l i o n a i r e s u i t o r s w i l l to the rung below and are replaced materialize. That's because big by that level's winners. league teams in the US—and the Applied to American pro sports, leagues themselves—are, in the European system would effect, monopolies. Major League eliminate the artificial scarcity Baseball even has an explicit that owners exploit. Anyone with antitrust exemption. Without the resources could simply start name recognition, fan loyalty, and their own team and play their way access to top talent, an upstart up into the top tier. As a result,

owners looking to boost their take by threatening to skip town would find they had no leverage, since other cities big enough to support a serious contender for the top tier would already have one. And there would be no such thing as a perennial cellar dweller; teams that performed poorly would be demoted. Demotion would cut their value, driving even the most complacent owner to do what it takes to get competitive. "You're sharpening the incentives," Szymanski says. Of course, team owners wouldn't like it, but they could be convinced. Szymanski holds out hope that a bit of moral suasion from high places would suffice. "It's possible for courts and the legislature to decide the public has had enough of this monopoly system. The government can tell the leagues that if they don't sort themselves out in a sensible structure, government will do it for them," Szymanski says. "It would be very Barack Obama, I think."

By Dana Oshiro (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 9/21/2009 8:25:02 PM

Whether you're a lifelong fan of Jacques Cousteau or you're intrigued by The Life Aquatic's mythical jaguar shark, Google has a new tool for you. The company announced updating the Ocean Expeditions layer of Google Earth with blog posts and comments from recent excursions. Groups like the Census of Antarctic Marine Life and National Geographic's Ocean Now Pristine Seas Expedition have been mapped and tagged for audience exploration. Sponsor From the decks of frigid icebreakers like that of the US Coast Guard Healy arctic expedition to Roz Savage's solo row across the Pacific, Google Earth offers viewers a chance to get in on the seafaring action without getting seasick. In February ReadWriteWeb covered Google Earth's new touring features and underwater ocean maps. With the product's layers, users have always been able to add videos and still images; however, this latest effort to document ocean journeys has a

number of cool uses including tracking marine biologists, sailing regattas and offshore fishing expeditions. Google Earth 5 also offers touring with voice recording so teachers can actually walk students through a voyage's route prior to viewing the expedition layer. To check out this tool download the KML file and open it in Google Earth. For the latest news on National Geographic's Ocean Now Expedition to Cocos Island and the Gemelas Seamounts, you can also check out the Google blog guest post by Sylvia Earle. Photo Credit: Arctic Ocean Exploration Cruise Discuss

Dude replaces Half-Life 2 sound effects with own voice By Justin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 9/22/2009 12:30:00 AM

Behind the scenes at Joystiq, we have a lot of news we want to get to every day, and some stories just don't make the cut. We just want to take a moment to apologize to

whatever story gets bumped so we can write about this particular item. If you're in anyway newsworthy at all it must come as quite a shock. But trust us, it's not you ... it's us. So, after the break, you'll find a video of a guy who made a mod

that replaces the sound effects of

Half-Life 2 with ones he made with his own voice. It's completely unimportant and utterly magical. [Via Giant Bomb] Continue reading Dude replaces Half-Life 2 sound effects with own voice

Dude replaces Half-Life 2 sound effects with own voice originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

Tech Tips/

Internet News Record

53

Reduce Your Inboxes to Streamline Your Workflow and Reduce Stress [Inboxes] By Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker)

• How many email inboxes do you have? What are they for? Make sure to include lesser used Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:30:00 AM email account and single use D e s p i t e t h e p r o m i s e o f accounts. technology to provide a life of • How many voicemail boxes do luxury, many of us find ourselves you have? What are they for? spending a rather large amount of • How many places at home are time tending to physical and areas where things are left for digital inboxes. Reduce the stress you? These are your home load with this handy guide. inboxes. Photo by Esparta. • How many places at work are If you were a worker at any time areas where things are left for prior to say the 1980s, you had a you? Theses are your work very tiny pool of inboxes to inboxes. manage. If you were important • What other points of collection enough in the chain of command do you have? Consider things like you might have a physical inbox the notes feature on your phone, a at work and receive telephone note pad you keep in your pocket, m e s s a g e s f r o m t h e o f f i c e etc. these things are temporary secretary. At home you would inboxes that you have to sort and receive mail from the postman purge at some point in your day. and another set of phone You may at this point consider messages recorded by someone rewriting the list to group things who was at home while you were together by physical location or away—or not recorded at all if no purpose. A series of headers one was home to answer the across the top of your list might p h o n e . T h a t w a s i t . F o u r be Work, Home, and any other "inboxes" if you were a busy s i g n i f i c a n t a r e a o f i n b o x person and half that if you accumulation for you like a weren't. serious hobby or organization you The modern worker on the other belong to. hand has a radically bigger pool 2. Determine if any inboxes are of inboxes. Most people have redundant or unnecessary. Your physical inboxes, mailboxes, immediate response might be to email, voicemail, the inboxes for protest that none of your inboxes a variety of social networks and are redundant or you wouldn't online services, and all of them in have them. Looking at your list multiples. critically however might yield a The following checklist will different response. What if you help you take stock of your have voicemail on your cellphone inboxes and hopefully reduce and voicemail on your landline at them in number. home? You have two independent 1. Assess the number of inboxes voicemail boxes, it's up to you to you actually have. You'll want to decide if it's worth the hassle of have a pen and paper or open a tending to both of them. Points of TXT document to keep track: consideration:

• Can the people who use a given inbox, be transitioned to using a new inbox? • Does the inbox serve its intended purpose or original use? If not, can it be retired? • Does the amount of time spent checking this inbox and tending to it, yield any reward? Again, ask yourself if it can be retired. 3. When possible merge inboxes together. Technology, thought it has given us more to be busy with, has also given us a myriad of ways to merge tools and tasks together and reduce our workload. In the previous step you considered whether or not you could transition the people who use one of your inboxes to use another one. Another tact is to do the merging on the back end and let the computers handle the heavy lifting. • Can you forward your email to a single address or use that single address to check multiple accounts? Earlier this year we

showed you how to use Gmail to manage multiple email accounts. • Consider transitioning your voicemail, when possible to Google Voice. We've put together a detailed guide on how to make that transition smooth and take advantage of having a unified voicemail box. • When you can't merge an inbox with another inbox or reduce it all together, take steps to make it more effective. If you hate checking voicemail for instance you might consider adding instructions to your voicemail message such as "I check this voicemail box once per day. If this is an emergency please call the main office line at 555-5551212." 4. Set up a schedule for emptying your inboxes and stick to it. This is a tricky point. People check their inboxes in one of two ways. They either love checking them, think of the intermitent reinforcement of checking a

personal email address to see if anything fun has come in or logging into Facebook to see if a friend has sent any communication to you, or hate checking them, think boring corporate voicemail. The solution from both a productivity standpoint and a sanity standpoint is to create a schedule for managing your inboxes and stick to it. • Consider what time of day is the most efficient and most important time to check each inbox. Group them according to this time. • Consider where is the most practical time to check the inbox. It might be the most punctual to check your physical mailbox at 10:30 when the postman comes, but if you're at work 30 miles away it's hardly practical. • Create a schedule of inbox maintenance. A potential schedule might be: checking your work inboxes at 10AM and again at 4PM before getting ready to go home for the day and checking your personal inboxes once a day at 7PM. Your personal schedule will vary but it's important to create one so that tending inboxes doesn't become primary job. It isn't always possible to flat out ditch an inbox—no matter how badly you wish to do so!—but by taking the time to assess the inboxes you have, looking for ones that can be trimmed or merged into other boxes, and maintaining a schedule for tending to those inboxes so that you're not stuck in a perpetual REDUCE page 54

54

Tech Tips/

Internet News Record

Unplug Your Laptop Regularly (When In Doubt) [Batteries] By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:00:00 AM

A friend replaced her laptop's battery after only two years because it wouldn't hold a charge. I suggested she shouldn't keep her laptop always plugged in, but I wondered—was this outdated geek lore, rendered obsolete by modern batteries? Photo by candescent. Yes and no. It depends, of course, on what kind of battery you have. Battery technology has come a long way over the years, and surely in 2009 you don't have to worry about how long your laptop's been plugged in. However, one major notebook manufacturer (which ships Lithium-ion batteries) thinks you should, and suggests adding a reminder to your calendar to deplete and recharge your battery once a month. To quote: " Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.." My friend, however, has a twoyear-old Dell. Cursory Googling for her model didn't turn up the equivalent of Apple's definitive statement, only lots of opinions which ranged from "it's a nonissue" to "yes, it kills batteries!" Dell.com's battery recommendations page doesn't say anything about not keeping your notebook plugged in. HP's

John's Background Switcher Provides Serious Wallpaper Control [Downloads] By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

battery tips page doesn't answer the question, either. I pored through my wife's ASUS Eee PC user guide and didn't find any warning about continuous charging. A non-mention might make you think it's a nonproblem, but if this is an issue for Apple notebook batteries, it is for PC notebooks with lithium-based batteries too. When I asked, my Twitter followers returned mixed replies, but many notebook users (both Mac and PC) DID report anecdotal battery problems when the machine was plugged in constantly. Other folks more educated about the differences in battery types than I am dropped

REDUCE continued from page 53 loop of trying to keep up with new inputs, you can reduce the stress of having too many inboxes.

search results, background transitions on Vista and Windows 7, and a unified settings dialog for Windows: If you like to mix up setting up and authorizing your your Windows wallpaper, the image pools and preferences. knowledge about which ones are l a t e s t v e r s i o n o f J o h n ' s There's also new "cork board" problematic and which aren't. Background Switcher lets you do and "postcard" views for creating Learn from all the respondents' it from almost any web source, desktop collages of multiple suggestions, research, and hard- and in any specific way you want photos. Best of all for those learned lessons at the full post. to match your monitors. concerned about resources, JBS Unplug Your Laptop Regularly We've thrown a little love to this can be set to change a desktop (When In Doubt)[Smarterware] clever little freeware app once or picture on every Windows bootSmarterware is Lifehacker twice before, and version 4 of up, then disappear if you don't editor emeritus Gina Trapani's John's Background Switcher plan to change more than once per new home away from 'hacker. To (JBS) gives us even more to love. session. g e t a l l o f t h e l a t e s t f r o m If you've got one monitor and like John's Background Switcher is a Smarterware, be sure to subscribe your pictures scaled a certain way, free download for Windows to the Smarterware RSS feed. For JBS can do that, but if you've got s y s t e m s o n l y , r e q u i r e s t h e more, check out Gina's weekly a batch of photos and some need Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 or Smarterware feature here on scaling, one needs a zoomed-in higher to run. Thanks y0himba! Lifehacker. view, and others should be J o h n ' s Background centered, the app can do that Switcher[John's Adventures] too.There's new support for Google, Yahoo, and Bing image Submitted at 9/22/2009 4:30:00 AM

If you have your own tips, tricks, or inbox horror stories to share, let's hear about them in the comments.

Tech Tips/ Sports

Internet News Record

Music Applet Controls Tunes from the Linux System Tray [Downloads] By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

others, but can be set to control a "preferred" player if you've got more than one open. Linux: There are lots of music Granted, some players, like and media managers for Linux Banshee, already offer control and desktops, and the Music Applet notification options for the Linux controls almost all of them. It system tray (also known as the places helpful notifications, "notification area"), but Music button controls, track time, and Applet is far more configurable rating data in a convenient corner and multi-purpose. The app's for your listening pleasure. maker has already started work on Many distributions carry Music a newer version of Music Applet, Applet in their repositories, so Panflute, to target the next release installing should be a simple of GNOME desktops, but for matter of searching out music now, Music Applet is a pretty applet in your software installer of good music managing solution. choice. Once installed, right-click Music Applet is a free download on your GNOME panel, hit "Add for Linux systems (running to Panel," and select the Music GNOME desktops) only. Music Applet. The applet recognizes and Applet[Paul Kuliniewicz via controls VLC, Banshee, Amarok, Super User] Rhythmbox, Exaile, XMMS, and Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:00:00 AM

55

Starting Five: Minnesota Moves On, Up By Andrew Johnson (FanHouse) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:00:00 AM

Getting More Sleep Almost Certainly Staves Off Colds [Health] By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

Archives of Internal Medicine, scientists followed 153 men and women for two weeks, keeping Game addictions, all-night track of their quality and duration crams, and television catch-up of sleep. Then, during a five-day marathons will probably cost you period, they quarantined the in Kleenex. That's according to a subjects and exposed them to cold recent (and cruel) study that viruses. Those who slept an exposed both under-slept and average of fewer than seven hours fully-rested people to cold viruses a night, it turned out, were three and measured if and when they times as likely to get sick as those fell ill. who averaged at least eight hours. Photo by sunshinecity. Already got the bug, regardless Your mother, and many mothers of sleep patterns? Try our readers' before her, probably told you that remedies from their grandparents, a good night's sleep was important and eating the right foods to win for keeping your defenses up, but the battle against the sniffles. it's always good to double check Lack of Sleep Increases the Risk folksy wisdom against fairly cold, o f C a t c h i n g a hard proof. Researchers have C o l d [ N Y T i m e s . c o m ] recently done just that: In a recent study for The Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:00:00 AM

by Andrew Johnson Filed under: Cubs, Red Sox, Royals, Tigers, Twins, Starting Five Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action with a quick nod to what is ahead. You Oughta Know ... That the Twins are still surging. Minnesota shook off a loss to the Tigers Sunday that pushed it three games back in the AL Central and routed the White Sox 7-0 to cut Detroit's edge in the division to 2 1/2 games. Twins starter Nick Blackburn pitched one of his best games of the season, tossing seven shutout innings and striking out six to pick up his first road win since the end of May. More Coverage: Scoreboard| Standings| Statistics Starting Five: Minnesota Moves On, Up originally appeared on Fanhouse MLB Blog on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs| Comments

56

Tech Reviews

Internet News Record

How Intel's supercomputer almost used HP chips (CNET News.com)

profile machine that ultimately used more than 9,000 processors. It wasn't the only hurdle the Dell enterprise CTO Paul Intel group overcame in the Prince(Credit: Dell) design and construction of ASCI SAN FRANCISCO--More than R e d , w h i c h u s e d o r d i n a r y a decade ago, Intel ran into an processors but plenty of one-off issue trying to deliver what was to t e c h n o l o g y i n c l u d i n g a b e t h e w o r l d ' s t o p - r a n k e d customized operating system and supercomputer: it looked possible Intel's own router chips to send t h a t i t s n e w P e n t i u m P r o data from through the system. processors at the heart of the Sandia National Laboratories system might not arrive in time. Vice President Rick Stulen and As a result, the chipmaker made Intel designer Stephen Wheat look an unusual move by paying A S C I R e d ' s i n n a r d s a t t h e Hewlett-Packard $100,000 to system's decommissioning in evaluate building the system using 2 0 0 6 a f t e r n i n e y e a r s o f its PA-RISC processors in the use.(Credit: Sandia National machine, said Paul Prince, now Laboratories) Dell's chief technology officer for The first version of the router enterprise products but then Intel's chip had a data integrity problem, s y s t e m a r c h i t e c t f o r t h e and Intel didn't have time to fully supercomputer. Called ASCI Red validate a fixed version even and housed at Sandia National though the engineers knew what Laboratories, it was designed to caused the problem, Prince said. be the first supercomputer to cross However, in a presentation titled the threshold of a trillion math "Statistics for the Common Man," calculations per second. Prince convinced Intel Intel ultimately met that 1- management that a variety of teraflops performance deadline worst-case scenario tests could using the Intel chips, HP dropped reduce the validation time from its PA-RISC line in favor of more than a dozen weeks to about Intel's Itanium processor line, and four to six weeks. He prevailed. the Pentium Pro paved the way "It worked, and they didn't fire for Intel's present powerhouse me," Prince said. ASCI Red, status in the server market. But d e v e l o p e d f o r t h e E n e r g y the supercomputing division D e p a r t m e n t ' s A c c e l e r a t e d within Intel was phased out, and Strategic Computing Initiative to ASCI Red was its last job, Prince simulate nuclear weapons physics said in an interview here on the in a computer rather than with real eve of the Intel Developer Forum. -world tests, led the Top500 list of The division had enough supercomputers from June 1997 independence that it could have until November 2000, when used another company's chips, but IBM's ASCI White took the top doubtless eyebrows would have spot. been raised had a rival processor Meanwhile, in today's world design showed up in such a highNaturally Prince now is focused Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:09:49 AM

Dell had expected Microsoft and various Linux players to challenge virtualization expert and EMC subsidiary VMware, but it's withstood the competition so far, he said. Dell itself has about 6,000 VMware-hosted virtual machines running on about 620 real machines in its own computing infrastructure, but that's only a small fraction of the 12,000 physical servers total the company has. Some physical machines house as many as 20 virtual machines, but for business-critical tasks, Dell puts 10 virtual machines on a physical server, Prince said. In Dell's analysis, using virtual on the best directions for getting machines saved $60 million in D e l l s e r v e r s , s t o r a g e , a n d capital equipment expenses, he networking gear into customers' said. But virtualization poses h a n d s . A n d t h o u g h h e ' s problems, too--the virtual comfortable with nitty-gritty chip equivalent of server sprawl, in details, he said customers these which new servers are added to a days are gravitating toward higher company's infrastructure faster than administrators can keep up. -level discussions. "You can deploy new servers in "At this point nobody's keeping up with the gigahertz rating of hours in stead of weeks. The chips," he said, no doubt to the downside is you crank 'em out, so delight of Intel and AMD, who you have this proliferation of ran into physical limits on clock resources," Prince said, and speed and focused their attention virtual machines don't come with on multiple processing cores and handy tracking technology. "The getting more work done in each reason it's hard to get rid of them is it's hard to track them. There's tick of a chip's clock. Instead, he said, customers are n o a s s e t t a g . T h e r e ' s n o asking, "How does this fit into my depreciation on a virtual server." Hardware still matters virtual environment? What's my Though sales have moved to a management look like?" Thus, Dell is leading a lot of marketing higher level, hardware details still with virtualization, which lets a matter, Prince said. One he's most single physical computer house excited about is solid-state drives, many independent operating which use flash memory rather systems called virtual machines. than the spinning platters of conventional hard drives.

Many SSDs today directly replace hard drives, using the same size and SATA or SAS communication protocols to connect to a machine in a way that makes them interchangeable with conventional hard drives. But Prince is more interested in a technology that bypasses that older hard drive technology in favor of a more direct connection over a computer's PCI Express subsystem. Companies including Fusion-io and Texas Memory Systems supply the technology, and Prince is among those in the server realm who like the idea. "You can get a massive performance upgrade in terms of IOPS," or input-output operations per second. He's also a believer in a technology called wear leveling, which moves data around the physical storage device so no elements don't get overused and therefore effectively worn out. "The life has to be better than enterprise-class drives," he said. Prince also predicted the eventual triumph of Ethernet over more special-purpose high-speed network fabrics, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand. Fibre Channel will reach 16 gigabits per second, probably won't move beyond 40 gigabits per second, but Ethernet is headed for 40 and 100 gigabits per second today with 400 gigabits and even 1 terabit per second on the horizon, he said. "Everybody is converging on Ethernet as the high-performance fabric of the future," Prince said.

Tech Reviews Apple Sports

Internet News Record

57

Permuto launches with new ad tools Matt Schaub, Texans Working on Trust for retailers (CNET News.com)

their "ActiveShopper" score. According to Shamim, that score Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:44:29 AM will help Permuto find the right A company that promises the placement for clients' ads. kind of success that advertisers "Online display advertising is a usually see only via search fantastic way for merchants and launched its service Tuesday at brands to reach their target the Shop.org conference in Las audience, but it is plagued by poor Vegas. measurability, analytics, and Permuto focuses on connecting performance, and is traditionally online retailers with product- low in return compared to search comparison sites, media outlets, engine marketing," Shamim said. and other "highly profitable" "The reach of online display segments of the Web to help them advertising is three to four times try to sell their products more t h e s i z e o f s e a r c h - e n g i n e effectively. CEO and founder marketing, so ShopperConnect Shaukat Shamim asserts that the represents a huge opportunity to new platform will deliver the kind create significant value for our of return on client advertising partners." investment that is found today According to Shamim, the key only through search ads. to his company's technology rests Permuto's flagship product is with the ActiveShopper feature. called ShopperConnect. The He said it analyzes and targets service tracks consumer activity online buyers with an "intent to on partner sites and determines purchase" in order to make

advertising initiatives more profitable for retailers. The information is so in-depth, Shamim asserts, that his company can determine the likelihood of someone buying an individual product "down to the SKU level." On the client side, Shamim told me that merchants that want to advertise through his company's network will have full control over the design and style of their advertising campaigns. A portal will mimic the "self-service search marketing" that has made companies like Google and Yahoo so successful. Once a design is completed, Permuto takes over and places those ads strategically across its network to target people searching for a particular product. Clients can change the ads whenever they want.

By Thomas George (FanHouse)

Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:45:00 PM

by Thomas George Filed under: Broncos, Jets, Ravens, Texans, NFL Notebook NASHVILLE -- Matt Schaub displayed something for one of his teammates Sunday that he has been seeking throughout his time with the Houston Texans. It's not something that comes easily in the NFL, but Schaub concluded he would give it in order to receive it -- trust. After Texans safety Eugene Wilson picked off Kerry Collins and returned the ball 13 yards to the Tennessee 29, Schaub threw a pass deep left to third-year receiver Jacoby Jones. Jones, wide open, dropped it. It was early in the second quarter. Houston trailed 21-14. "Jacoby is a guy who's got

swagger, and you want him to keep that, because he plays his best with it,'' Schaub explained. "He had that look after he dropped it; he was getting down on himself. You can't shy away from a player you believe in. I went right back to him.'' Matt Schaub, Texans Working on Trust originally appeared on Fanhouse NFL Blog on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:45:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs| Comments

Apple Investigating Poor Battery Life With iPhone OS 3.1 By Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog)

iPhone charges in far less time than it normally would, and then only lasts about 12 hours on Submitted at 9/21/2009 10:12:47 AM standby with my average daily At first I thought I was alone, usage of around three hours and that my iPhone 3GS was t a l k / b r o w s i n g / g a m i n g t i m e . defective, but now it looks like That’s probably a full 12 hours of battery complaints relating to standby off of what it used to be iPhone OS 3.1 are far from able to handle post-updating. isolated incidents. Apple is The behavior seems to indicate officially investigating the matter, that the iPhone isn’t recognizing according to The iPhone Blog, or using the full capacity of the which is something the company battery anymore. I’ve tried generally only does if enough resetting the phone, but I haven’t all my data and settings. Also, people crow loud and long done a full restore, since I’d rather support forum posters indicate enough. wait and see what kind of fix that doesn’t correct the problem. My own experience is that the Apple comes up with before I lose Other problems include a sticky

battery indicator, which sometimes also won’t go below 100 percent after a full charge, and a huge additional drain when using Push features. My temporary fixes include turning off Push altogether, and charging the phone whenever I’m near an accessible power outlet, since the battery indicator can no longer be trusted. Hopefully, Apple can solve this quickly with a x.x.1 release, but until then, drop by the support forums and answer the questions Apple is asking about the problems to help expedite the

process. You might even be able to get one of the “Battery Life Logging” profiles Apple is distributing to gauge the extent of the problems. If you’re experiencing similar issues, please share in the comments with specific details. Read our latest analysis piece, " Why Startups Aren’t Changing the World." Only on GigaOM Pro.

58

Tech Reviews Tech Blog

Internet News Record

Toshiba brings out business-card-size solid-state drives (CNET News.com) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:34:00 AM

Toshiba has unveiled solid-state drives based on the new mini-Sata interface standard, which lets manufacturers create very small drives for use in Netbooks and other portable or embedded devices. The Japanese hardware maker introduced on Monday the two 32 -nanometer-process SG2 SSD modules, each of which comes in two capacities. In a separate announcement the same day, the Sata-IO consortium said it is developing mini-Sata (mSata). Toshiba's new solid-state drives(Credit: Toshiba) The new interface specification will provide a "high-performance, cost-effective storage solution for smaller devices like notebooks and Netbooks," said the Sata-IO consortium, which includes Toshiba. One of Toshiba's SG2 modules uses an mSata interface, while the other uses a standard Sata II connector in a "Half-Slim" caseless format. The modules, which come in capacities of 30GB and 62GB, are each smaller than a business card, according to the manufacturer. The mSata module measures 30mm x 4.75mm x 50.95mm, while the Sata II module measures 54mm x 4mm x 39mm.

The SUL as a tool to control news? (Scripting News)

list. And TechCrunch was one of them until something happened in July as is evident in this SUL is Twitter's Suggested T w i t t e r C o u n t e r g r a p h . Users List. Compare this to the graph for It's a group of approximately Mashable, over the same period. 500 Twitter users who are And plotted on the same graph. statement. "suggested" to new users when It's pretty clear something T h e S G 2 m o d u l e s h a v e they create an account. The stated happened in July. interface speeds of up to 3Gbps, a purpose is to provide people to We know this much -maximum sequential read speed watch when you're starting out. TechCrunch was dropped from of 180MBps, and a maximum But are there other purposes? the Suggested User List, right s e q u e n t i a l w r i t e s p e e d o f Could it be used to reward around the time their follower 70MBps. The modules will go positive coverage and punish count started heading down. As to i n t o v o l u m e p r o d u c t i o n i n negative coverage? I think we why, we can only speculate that it October, Toshiba said. now have some data on that. was because they ran a piece that Other manufacturers working on There's no doubt that Twitter Twitter didn't like. the mSata specification include has received a lot of help from the 7/16/09: Twitter's Internal Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, press, and much of it is genuine Strategy Laid Bare: To Be "The Samsung, SanDisk, and STEC. enthusiasm for a communication Pulse Of The Planet." David Meyer of ZDNet UK tool that at least hints at the future People have always questioned reported from London. of news. whether there was a connection Many of the suggested users are between being on the list and not news organizations, reporters, being too critical of Twitter. At columnists, marketers, and as a this point, there isn't much doubt result, most have over a million that the connection is there. followers. Almost all of the top tech news organizations are on the Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:29:43 AM

The company said that the 62GB version of the module is one-seventh the volume and oneeighth the weight of the standard 2.5-inch SSDs currently used in Netbooks. "Our latest 32nm mSata and Half -Slim caseless modules enable hardware designers to add the performance and reliability advantages of a solid-state drive in a smaller, footprint for notebooks, portable electronics and other embedded storage applications," Toshiba memory chief Scott Nelson said in a

Apple

Internet News Record

59

Nine iPhone Apps for Cricket Lovers By Peter Venero (TheAppleBlog)

current and some recent matches. Clicking through on an individual match opens the match details on Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:56:04 AM the Cricinfo website — which is This round-up of Cricket apps is not easily viewable on the iPhone dedicated to all of the Cricket screen. lovers around the world. With the Overall, the application doesn’t I C C C h a m p i o n s T r o p h y provide much more than what a beginning today, I thought it’d be visit to the Cricinfo website a great opportunity to cover and would provide and may make review the Cricket apps that are some people wonder if paying for available on the App store. the application is justified, D e s p i t e t h e w o r l d w i d e especially seeing that there are popularity of cricket, the market free applications that offer similar for cricket applications on the functionality. iPhone is nowhere near the Cricket Live (iCricket)(99 saturation point of some of the cents) other popular sports. While this is A relatively new cricket most likely due to cricket’s a p p l i c a t i o n f o r t h e i P h o n e limited appeal to the American (released in February 2009), it’s market, there is still a fair amount primary feature is a simple, yet of competition abroad — and functional news aggregator and some interesting innovations viewer which pulls articles from being put forward by iPhone several major news sources. The developers. titles of stories, along with the As more and more people get first few lines of the text as well their hands on these devices, as the date and time, are listed on cricket fans from around the the main application screen. world have a choice between nine Clicking on a story launches a applications, most of which can new screen with a summary and be downloaded for less than US$1 an ability to open the full story on for both the iPhone and iPod the relevant website (similar to touch. Cricket, reviewed above). The Cricket(99 cents) settings screen provides end users Now in version 1.2, when the with some control over which application is loaded, the news news sources are polled. screen displays a list of headlines While the application is elegant f r o m a r t i c l e s p u b l i s h e d o n in its simplicity, the same E S P N ’ s C r i c i n f o w e b s i t e . functionality is also offered in Clicking on a headline opens a other free cricket applications. new screen which shows a Alternatively, spending a couple summary of the article and a link of dollars on a good quality, to open the full story on the commercial RSS reader would Cricinfo’s website. The same provide the ability to keep up to news stories can be filtered on a date with more than just cricket p e r - c o u n t r y b a s i s v i a t h e news and provide additional Countries screen, which arguably control over the display of the makes the default news screen news. redundant. The Live screen shows Cricket Live-007(99 cents) at-a-glace summaries of all Another application recently

developed (launched in February 2009), provides ICC rankings in addition to the live scores and news. Live scores and recent scores are both accessible via different main menu options, which can make it awkward to find details on a particular match if it finishes earlier than expected. However, a full scorecard for each match is provided within the application, which is commendable despite the tadunpolished design. The ICC rankings section shows the current standings of teams and players in tabular format — however, no additional player or team statistics are available. Still yet, this is a nice addition that isn’t provided by other applications, but as with the scores section, the design is somewhat mediocre. Overall, the application has a comprehensive set of features for the small price. Although it was developed by a company that develops a range of other iPhone applications, one would have thought that more effort would have gone into the interface design. Apple’s products in general are renowned for having intuitive user interfaces, however, this application contradicts that, resulting in a less than impressive interface that detracts from the usability. Cricket Trivia(99 cents) Released in April 2009, the Cricket Trivia quiz is a relatively simple application with a few added features to tailor it more towards today’s gamers. After launching the application, the user selects the number of random questions that will be included in the test. Each question is then

answered, one by one with the final score presented at the end. Navigation through each question is a bit rigid, with the user unable to skip a question or go back to it. Upon the completion of each test, the score is then added to a table that allows you to keep track of your performance. While this provides an element of game play to the applications, there’s no ability to enter your name next to a score or to compare scores online, although both features are available in many similar games offered today. This applications seems to be more suitable to an iPod than to iPhone since quitting the application (e.g. to answer a phone call) results in the quiz being interrupted. The application would benefit from a free-flow mode where the user is able to answer, skip or revisit questions as they are asked. There is also room for the interface design features to be improved. Unlike other trivia quizzes where answers remain relatively unchanged, the cricket statistics are in constant flux and one presumes that the app would need to be regularly updated to keep up with these changes. CricketRSS(99 cents) While its name is more accurate in regards to what to expect when you come across it, CricketRSS is functionally similar to the Cricket Live (iCricket) application reviewed above. The main screen shows a list of news headlines and truncated descriptions, conveniently grouped by date. Clicking on any one of the news items opens up the details page which shows the full description and the ability to open the full source website.

The features of the application are relatively basic and, apart from some minor design inconsistencies between different screens, is reasonably functional. Though not feature-rich, there are no flaws in the application, though for a dedicated news application, it would have been better if it had a wider range of news sources, apart from the usual suspects. ECB Cricket(Free) The official application of the English & Wales Cricket Board was released in time for the 2009 English summer. The application opens on the main scores screen and lists the current England international and English County Cricket (ECC) matches. Clicking on a match displays the score summary. Rotating the device horizontally displays the full scorecard for the match, with each innings on a separate screen — a novel approach which maximizes the amount of data that can be shown on a single screen. The interface of the main news screen is reminiscent of the album selection screens on iPods and displays headlines, photos and the truncated descriptions for each news item. Clicking on an item reveals the full article inside the application itself with the photo section working in a similar way. The ECBtv section is a list of video podcasts from YouTube streaming the external YouTube player. The major, though understandable, limitation of the app is that it only shows the scores for the ECC and the England international matches. As such, the market is somewhat NINE page 60

60

TV Apple

Internet News Record

NINE continued from page 59 limited to the UK and international ECC fans only. The other notable absence is the running commentary for the matches or the ability to see the past match scores or team standings. Overall, the application is extremely well polished, even though some of the elements may appear a bit gimmicky at times. iCricket(Free) When this application was first released in October 2008, it started out as just a free RSS reader for Cricinfo’s news feeds. Since then it has grown to also include links to match scores. The main screen lists various categories of news and scores in a standard scrollable view, though there’s no grouping of sections, which often makes it confusing to determine where to go to access the information you’re after. This is particularly awkward in relation to the match scores and commentary — links to scorecards on the Cricinfo website appears in one section of the application while the running commentary (for selected matches only) appears in a completely different section. The news part of the application is relatively standard, broken down into percountry categories. Clicking on a

category takes the user to the list of headlines with truncated descriptions. Clicking on the article opens the Cricinfo website for the full article, skipping the news detail page common to the other applications. The application is functional, though it generally takes a lot of clicking around to find the information you want to access. The logic behind the layout of the sections leaves a lot to be desired. However, for a free app and an amateur fan effort, it is cute and a better effort than some of the commercial cricket applications reviewed. MobiCast(Free) This anticipated app was released in October 2008. The opening screen of the application lists the current, upcoming and recent matches. Clicking on a match displays Cricinfo’s famous ball-by-ball commentary and gives access to the full scorecard for the match. Clicking on a news item displays the full story on the iPhone itself, without opening the external website. The photos section shows photos that do not appear to be linked to any current matches nor do they behave like standard iPhone photos — they cannot be zoomed or scrolled

through using the standard gestures. The podcast section is a useful bookmark of the podcasts by Cricinfo’s commentators. There’s no question that the q u a l i t y a n d t h e comprehensiveness of Cricinfo’s data is top rate, however the resulting application is both confusing and extremely frustrating to use. For example, throughout the match detail screens, notification icons for “4,” “6” etc popping constantly, regardless if matches being played or not. Even more confusingly, the “Matches” tab shows the same type of information as the main screen — only presented in a different format. One certainly expects more from professional developers backed by ESPN and it is hard not to dismiss this as a token effort in the also-ran category of the App Store. Virtual Cricket($1.99) While the final application, Virtual Cricket, was only recently released, it’s clear that the developer has addressed the shortcomings that have been identified with the other applications. The matches screen displays a list of current, upcoming and recently completed matches, with single-line match

status and the time of the last update. Clicking on a match shows the match summary with current score and the most recent commentary highlights (4s, 6s, wickets, etc). The news section follows the familiar pattern of listing headlines and truncated descriptions. Clicking through shows a summary of the news item, with a link to open the full article. The main difference here is that the headlines are aggregated from around 20 different news sources, grouped by source and country and catering to each user’s local preferences. The feeds also include leading cricket blogs as an alternative to the traditional news sources, as well as several video channels. Clearly, this seems to be the most comprehensive application currently available. It takes many of the best features of every other application reviewed and presents these features in a professionally polished package. In a quest for features, it doesn’t forget the details and implements niceties. Read our latest analysis piece, " Why Startups Aren’t Changing the World." Only on GigaOM Pro.

Here Are More Apps for That: Three New iPhone Commercials From Apple By Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:51:11 AM

It’s fall premiere season, and that means new shows. But it also means sparkly new ads to fill all those commercial breaks. New Apple ads for the iPhone provided pleasant relief for me yesterday from the tedium of the two-hour Heroes premiere. On a side note, the Castle premiere was pretty good. But back to those commercials. All three highlight popular and unique iPhone apps, some of which have already been featured in previous commercials. Let’s take a look at the apps featured in

Estelle Getty's Emmy up for sale on eBay By Brad Trechak (TV Squad) Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:33:00 AM

Estelle Getty, the matriarch of The Golden Girls and general wise-ass of the bunch passed away last year. Now, her family has put the Emmy she won for her role of Sophia Petrillo in that

show up for sale on eBay. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences have strict rules about such things. If the family no longer wants the award, they are supposed to return it to the Academy. Ms. Getty's family would hardly be the first to try and raid the

treasures of a dead celebrity relative for some cash. It does

seem in somewhat bad taste to sell such an honor. On the other hand, the item hasn't even received any bids yet according to the Variety article (although that may have changed given the increase in publicity). Is it a bigger insult to sell an Emmy or that the Emmy in question

hasn't received any interest from the buying public? Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Awards, Emmys, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

TV Game

Internet News Record

61

HERE continued from page 60 each commercial. Dine The first ad is called Dine and features a smattering of apps covering a range of different topics, including travel, dining, working and shopping. Here’s a breakdown of the apps featured. TripCase(Free) — Flight tracking, info and travel itinerary management app. Quite a few not so great reviews on this one, but it is free. New York Subway 09($4.99) — Navigate the labyrinth of the New York City subway system with painstakingly hand drawn maps. Also not very favorably reviewed. Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List(Free) — Access Epicurious.com’s database of great recipes. I actually use and love this app, since it lets me indulge the amateur chef in me. Zagat To Go ‘09($9.99) — You like restaurants? Zagat ratings will help you know what you’re getting in to. Is it worth $10? It may depend on how much you value your meals out. Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite($9.99) — Check out my

thoughts and impressions here. Gap StyleMixer(Free) — Coordinate Gap clothes. Could be useful if you want to outfit yourself entirely in Gap. Nature Money, learning, nature and pizza predilections are at the core of this ad. I’m starting to see the pattern here. Weird pairs tied together by linguistic or thematic similarity. iXpenseIt($4.99) — Watch what you spend by tracking expenses and preparing a monthly budget. There’s also a free Lite version available. DailyFinance(Free) — AOL helps stock market junkies stay up to date with quotes, portfolio tracking and business news. GuitarToolkit($9.99) — Before I traded my acoustic guitar for a 12-inch PowerBook G4, this was one of my staples. Now it’s a cool $10 home screen icon. Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook($9.99) — A globetrotter’s best friend. Or maybe just if you order a lot of Mandarin food. i Bird Explorer Plus($19.99) —

I’m not a particularly avid birder, but I’ve still been tempted to pick this up. Just think of how many birds you could randomly identify. Now that’s an app. Pizza Hut(Free) — Order pizza without using your vocal chords or a computer! Truly, the future is upon us. Pass Use your iPhone to help you find things, pass things(that sounds bad), read things and learn how to read to begin with. They don’t mention it here, but it can also teach you math and science. Kids, don’t worry about going to school anymore. Fandango(Free) — The online ticketing service has created this app to help you find info about movies and buy tickets to see them. G-Park($0.99) — Find your car in that ridiculous infinite field of concrete outside the local Costco. Those colored, numbered pillars do nothing. VocabWiz College Vocabulary($4.99) — Use this app to show up snooty college guys in bars, just like Matt

More Andre Braugher! By Nick Zaino (TV Squad)

father, and how House suddenly had keys to every room in the hospital when he needed a quiet I missed House. Plain and place for a booty call). I know s i m p l e , n o o t h e r s h o w o n how those things fit into the plot, television makes keeps me and I'll let the contrivance slide a guessing what will happen next, bit. and gives a more satisfying The other thing I thought payoff, whether I've guessed the watching "Broken" was that I also twist or not. That was the first missed Andre Braugher. His thing I thought watching last character, Dr. Darryl Nolan, was night's season six premiere the toughest, smartest I've seen episode, "Broken." I'll even him play since Homicide. (Note - suggestions on something to seek forgive the suddenness of a I haven't seen everything he's out, I'll take a look). It's not easy couple of plot twists (Dr. Nolan's done since, so if you have any to hold your own onscreen with Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:00:00 AM

Damon. 365 Crosswords($4.99) — Fight off boredom with word games. That’s what I do. Or else Sudoku, which is like this but with less hard brain thinking. Classics($2.99) — Public domain books made to look very, very pretty on the iPhone. One reviewer faulted it for not including Twilight. That’s the primary reason to buy, in my opinion. ABC Animals($1.99) — Amuse and educate the kids, or help eliminate the secret shame of your illiteracy. Not that you’d be reading this if you were illiterate, I suppose. Oh, and in case you weren’t aware, Apple makes sure to mention in each of these adds that there are now over 75,000 apps available in the App Store. Nothing like sheer volume to outshine the competition without mentioning them directly. Read our latest analysis piece, " Why Startups Aren’t Changing the World." Only on GigaOM Pro.

Xbox 360 Elite for $249 (with rebate) until Oct. 5 By Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq) Submitted at 9/22/2009 10:34:00 AM

Microsoft is offering a $50 mailin rebate on all Xbox 360 Elite purchases starting today (September 22) and ending October 5, making the previously$400 console SKU a mere $249. The offer is valid only in the US, but purchasers can certainly use that cash-back toward component cables, a Wi-Fi adapter, HD transfer cord, HDMI cable or ... any one of the many missing peripherals that brings " flexibility to consumers." Link to rebate form(not currently available, but should be later today.) Hugh Laurie's House. It has been [Via Major Nelson] said lot, but it's worth repeating, Xbox 360 Elite for $249 (with Laurie is great in the role, and the rebate) until Oct. 5 originally role itself is one of the best on appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 television (good enough that they Sep 2009 10:34:00 EST. Please named the show after him). see our terms for use of feeds. Continue reading More Andre Read| Permalink| Email this| Braugher! Comments Filed under: OpEd, House, Pickups and Renewals, Casting, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

62

Apple Tech Blog

Internet News Record

SlingPlayer for iPhone Now Available in Europe, Wi-Fi Only By Darrell Etherington (TheAppleBlog)

version of the SlingPlayer Mobile application for iPhone and iPod customers outside the U.S. Submitted at 9/21/2009 7:50:27 AM However, we are very excited to You no longer have to gaze launch the Wi-Fi version — it wistfully across the Atlantic, gives our European customers E u r o p e a n r e a d e r s , b e c a u s e access to the full spectrum of SlingPlayer today officially viewing choices on their iPhone released its mobile app(iTunes or iPod touch when connected to a l i n k ) f o r i P h o n e a c r o s s 1 6 Wi-Fi network — the ability to countries in your continent. You watch and control both their live may, however, bemoan the lack of TV from home — local channels, 3G streaming in the version that local sports, video-on-demand and was released. pay-per-view — as well as their It’s been four months since the home digital video recorder original SlingPlayer app was (DVR). released in the initial launch If a 3G version is approved, it’s countries of the U.S., the UK, and likely it’ll happen outside of the Canada in May. Thus far, none of U . S . f i r s t , s i n c e A T & T i s the apps released have support for notoriously protective of its streaming over 3G, a limitation somewhat fragile and overtaxed which some users are jailbreaking network, and a boatload of their phones to get around. SlingBox owners streaming Sling Media’s president and content over said network could g e n e r a l m a n a g e r s p o k e t o exacerbate existing problems Macworld UK about the European significantly. launch of the Wi-Fi version of the The jailbreak option to allow 3G app, and the continued inability to streaming is appealing to many get Apple to approve the 3G SlingPlayer Mobile users, as version of the same: evidenced by the top review when We are disappointed that Apple I checked up on the U.S. version has not yet approved the 3G of the app today. User “giliswhet”

recommends jailbreaking and installing a utility called 3G Unrestrictor, which allows you to do anything you can do over WiFi over 3G (including Skype calls, presumably). He describes the quality over 3G as comparable to that over Wi-Fi. Despite the lack of 3G streaming, and a vocal minority making complaints about said limitation, SlingPlayer Mobile is rated three and a half stars in the App Store, with a high percentage of five-star ratings. The app itself costs $29.99 in the U.S., and requires a Slingbox installed on your home theater system to function. The new countries where it is now available include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Read our latest analysis piece, " Mobile Sites Show Little Improvement." Only on GigaOM Pro.

What became of Radio's POST button? (Scripting News) Submitted at 9/21/2009 7:34:58 PM

An interesting story of evolving software. In 2002, my company shipped a product called Radio UserLand. It was a very popular blogging tool, but it was also the most popular RSS reading tool of the day. And because it was both things, we could do integration that no other product had ever done before, or since. Adjacent to every item in the aggregator was a button that said POST. When you click it, you flip to the blog post entry screen with the text of the item in the big box. You could add your own words, shorten it, whatever you like. When you were done, hit Submit and you'd have a post that pointed to the original article with your comments. As an aside, this is where the RSS element came from. We'd

embed that, invisibly, in your post so tools could find their way back to the original. This was in response to an outcry from bloggers that we were helping people steal content. Seems like a foreign idea today, doesn't it? Anyway... Fast-forward to 2009, and I'm back at work in AggregatorLand, and like it or not, Twitter is where we push links to these days. So now instead of a POST button look what's there in its place. Now, it is very much more clever than the POST button was back in 2002. Just how much clever -- you'll have to wait to find out, because I'm still working. But when you see my links to test.teamrss.com on Twitter you'll know that I'm testing the new stuff. Murphywilling it should be released to River2 users tomorrow.

Apple Sports Game

Internet News Record

AT&T Begins Public Trial of 3G MicroCell By Charles Jade (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:11:44 AM

For iPhone users like myself chained to the shoddy service of AT&T by Apple’s seemingly interminable exclusivity contract with the carrier, hope for better reception springs eternal, at least if you live in North Carolina. The AT&T 3G MicroCell that looks more like a video game console is actually a tiny cellular base station, or femtocell. For those with more bars in more places, except where they live, the 3G MicroCell will access AT&T’s network via broadband, DSL or cable. Initially, it appears AT&T is only taking orders for parts of Charlotte, NC, the service agreement stating the “device may not function except in specific counties in the Raleigh, NC, Charlotte, NC, Columbia, SC, and Atlanta, GA metropolitan areas in a phased network roll-out.” In other words, it’s not ready for those languishing in areas that could really use a 3G MicroCell, like San Francisco or New York. No doubt, the 3G MicroCell will get there eventually, but if you

service and Verizon requires only a purchase of the device, AT&T users can look forward to paying as much as $20 a month to make up for the carrier’s poor coverage. That’s the price if you only have AT&T wireless. If you have AT&T wireless and DSL, it’s $10 a month. Those who have a landline, too, can use the service for free, but what’s the point if you have a landline? Finally, you will be burning cell plan minutes using an 3G MicroCell that may not even be piggybacking on AT&T’s broadband, though there may also be unlimited call plans in want one now you need to live in association with the service. If this sounds like a lousy deal to the southern U.S. If you do, and you have a 3G y o u , i t d o e s t o m e t o o . phone — original iPhone users U n f o r t u n a t e l y , u n t i l t h e n e e d n o t a p p l y — t h e 3 G exclusivity contract between MicroCell will support up to four Apple and AT&T ends — if it u s e r s s i m u l t a n e o u s l y i n a ends — options aside from coverage area of up to 5,000 jailbreaking are limited. AT&T: More Bars in More square feet. Of course, you need Places — for a price. Join our first to be an AT&T wireless customer, a n d y o u ’ l l n e e d t o p a y live online event, “Analyzing outrageously, but if you’re an Google’s Mobile Strategy: A AT&T customer you already G i g a O M P r o R e s e a r c h Roundtable” on Thursday, Aug. know that. While Sprint charges as little as 27, at 10 a.m. (PST). Sign up for $4.99 per month for its competing our free webinar.

63

The Count: Where to Root, Root, Root for a Winning Team for Less (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 9/21/2009 1:36:48 PM

A premium ticket to a game at Angels Stadium costs $62.06, according to the Team Marketing Report. A 12-ounce beer costs $4.50, a hot dog is $3, parking goes for $8 and a program will set you back $3. Watching the Angels win? It’s not priceless, but it happens often enough to make a ticket to an Angels home game perhaps the best deal in baseball. Getty Images Angels Stadium is a relatively cheap place to watch the home team win. The Angels own the fourth-best record in baseball — just a halfgame behind the second-best Red Sox and Dodgers — but have the fourth-lowest Fan Cost Index. The other four teams in the bottom five in cost all have losing records. Overall the Angels have won 59.7% of their games, and at home they’ve won 61.9% of the time. That makes an Angels ticket an excellent value. On the flip side, the Mets have the fourthhighest cost index in baseball but a putrid 65-85 record (though they have won one more game at home

than they’ve lost, so there’s that). Justin Merry of the blog Basement Dwellers last month compared the Fan Cost Index for all 30 teams with their actual winning percentage and another measure that approximates a team’s overall quality in a post at Beyond the Boxscore. He also wrote an item for the Wall Street Journal comparing ballpark beer prices to teams’ records. For this post, I’ve used updated winning percentages as well as data supplied by Merry. It’s depicted using software from data visualization company Tableau Software. Click through the graphic below to find bargains and bad deals for the last two weeks of the baseball season. created with tableau public

Alienware threatens to 'shake gaming world to its foundation' By Justin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 9/22/2009 11:02:00 AM

PC manufacturer Alienware has be teasing a reveal at TGS that it says will "shake the gaming world to its foundation." As you can tell

from the video after the jump and the company's Facebook page, there's not much more information than that to go on. Though Alienware's keeping mum, we've got a theory: What if the big reveal ... is an extremely powerful computer? We know, it

seems out there, but think about it. Connect the dots. Continue reading Alienware threatens to 'shake gaming world to its foundation' Alienware threatens to 'shake gaming world to its foundation'

originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

64

Apple Sports

Internet News Record

Google and Apple Debate the Meaning of “Rejected” By Charles Jade (TheAppleBlog)

innovative way to seamlessly deliver core functionality of the iPhone.” Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:00:04 AM Google Voice does change that Apple rejected Google Voice for experience in fundamental ways. the iPhone. That’s not what It effectively shuts down Visual Google says, exactly, except by Voicemail by routing calls posting the unredacted response to through Google Voice, replaces the FCC on the issue there Apple’s text messaging, and remains little room for moves contacts to Google’s interpretation. servers. But is that what’s really According to Google, none bothering Apple? Om Malik other than Apple Senior VP Phil offered another opinion way back Schiller told Google Senior VP when people were blaming AT&T Alan Eustace “that Apple was for the not-rejection of Google rejecting the Google Voice Voice. application.” The main reason for This battle between Google and rejection was “because Apple Apple is going to get very ugly — believed the application as it should. Both companies have duplicated the core dialing application. We continue to p i n n e d t h e i r f u t u r e s o n functionality of the iPhone.” discuss it with Google.” smartphones. That “not rejected” assertion Google claims that the letter ( This is a war Apple has fought PDF) is being released because of refers to the limbo-like status before. The Mac lost the desktop requests through the Freedom of Google Voice has been in for wars to Windows because Apple Information Act, and because months. That status was also did not defend its “experience” Apple released the full contents of referenced in Apple’s response to sufficiently. Protestations about the FCC. In that nuanced letter, the user interface aside, Apple is its own response to the FCC. Apple representative Steve Apple voiced concern over the not about to make the same Dowling immediately fired back, application because it appeared mistake with the future of mobile stating that Apple “did not agree “to alter the iPhone’s distinctive computing. Read our latest with all of the statements made by user experience,” arguing that analysis piece, " Mobile Sites Google in its letter. Apple has not “Apple spent a lot of time and Show Little Improvement." Only r e j e c t e d t h e G o o g l e V o i c e effort developing this distinct and on GigaOM Pro.

Big 12 Notebook: Texas' Tre Newton Earns Starting Job on the Run By Terrance Harris (FanHouse) Submitted at 9/21/2009 8:20:00 PM

by Terrance Harris Filed under: Baylor, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Texas, Texas Tech, Big 12 It was of little surprise Monday when Texas coach Mack Brown named redshirt freshman running back Tre' Newton as the starter for Saturday's UTEP game. Newton gave the second-ranked Longhorns everything they had been looking for in a tailback for the last two seasons during Saturday's win over Texas Tech, picking up difficult yards and moving the chains. Filling in for injured starter Vondrell McGee in the second half, Newton rushed for 88 yards and one touchdown on 20 carries. His 18 carries for 81 yards in the second half proved pivotal in keeping Texas Tech's explosive

offense off the field as the Longhorns escaped with a 34-24 win. It was the inability of the Longhorns backs to pick up critical yards late that paved the way for their upset loss to Tech last season. Big 12 Notebook: Texas' Tre Newton Earns Starting Job on the Run originally appeared on Fanhouse NCAA Football Blog on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:20:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs| Comments

Gaborik Stars, Survives in Rangers Debut By Christopher Botta (FanHouse) Submitted at 9/21/2009 10:40:00 PM

by Christopher Botta Filed under: Rangers NEW YORK -- With one play in the first period Monday night, Marian Gaborik showed New York the magnificence he's capable of when healthy.

Making his Rangers debut in a 4 -2 win over Detroit at Madison Square Garden, Gaborik dazzled with a virtuoso piece of playmaking that led to a power play goal nine minutes into the game. Protecting the puck from Detroit defenseman Brad Stuart over two trips in one sequence behind the Red Wings goal, he backhanded a cross-ice pass to a

wide-open Enver Lisin to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead.

Perhaps more important than the highlight-reel assist was Gaborik getting bounced around in his very first shift in his Rangers debut -- and surviving it. "He got knocked on his butt," said coach John Tortorella. "It woke me up," said Gaborik, who admitted to being nervous before the game. Gaborik Stars, Survives in Rangers Debut originally

appeared on Fanhouse NHL Blog on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:40:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs| Comments

Sports

Internet News Record

65

Nice Scoreboard — Too Bad About the Score (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)

sour note in search of answers last December.” There were a host of terrific The Dallas Cowboys set an NFL games in the NFL Sunday — single-game attendance record in some of which Garey and I even Sunday night’s home opener predicted correctly— and heroes against the New York Giants. both expected and unexpected. That isn’t surprising, given the six The New York Jets backed up a -figure capacity of the team’s just- week’s worth of tough talk by opened stadium. In a report on the beating the New England Patriots, Cowboys’ ultra-gaudy $1.15 16-9, Gary Myers writes in the billion new home, the Journal’s N e w Y o r k D a i l y N e w s . I n Ben Casselman reveals that the Baltimore’s hard-fought 31-26 Cowboys are seeking to get the win over San Diego, Ray Lewis 600-ton monitor that hangs over read San Diego’s final play midfield certified as the world’s perfectly and made a game-saving l a r g e s t H D v i d e o s c r e e n . tackle. Yahoo’s Michael Silver (Casselman also reveals that gives that quintessentially Lewis‘Boys owner Jerry Jones got the ian play a thorough going-over. In idea for said screen from a Celine the Chicago Tribune, David Dion concert he attended in Las Haugh introduces readers to Vegas.) None of those things are Johnny Knox, a rookie receiver terribly important, really, but out of Abilene Christian who they’re surely more pleasant for became the unexpected hero of Cowboys fans to think about than the Chicago Bears’ 17-14 win their team’s 33-31 loss to the over the Pittsburgh Steelers.* * * Giants. Reuters A Dallas fan The University of Florida had c o u n t s t h e n u m b e r o f gained an average of 643.5 yards interceptions he was able to watch per game in a pair of wins against T o n y R o m o t h r o w o n t h e quasi-cupcakes, but delivered a Cowboys’ humungous, crystal- m o r e m o r t a l p e r f o r m a n c e clear video board. Saturday in a 23-13 win over the “Glitz, celebrity and fireworks University of Tennessee. The were not in short supply,” Sports nation’s top team was never at Illustrated’s Don Banks writes. risk of actually losing — and that “But if you were looking for a despite the fact that many Gators dominant display of football from were playing through swine flu. the home team, well, better luck Still, many observers, including next time.” Cowboys quarterback the Miami Herald’s Joseph T o n y R o m o t o s s e d t h r e e Goodman, think Florida has a few i n t e r c e p t i o n s a n d t o o k issues to work out and may not be responsibility for the loss, but the quite as unbeatable as they first team’s problems were bigger than seemed. Another post-game that, Tim Cowlishaw writes in the plotline was stranger: It was about Dallas Morning News. “The t h e r e l a t i v e b r i l l i a n c e o f NFL’s newest and biggest is Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin’s officially open,” Cowlishaw “say really strange things about writes. “And yet the 1-1 Cowboys Florida for several months” looked a lot like the talented but s t r a t e g y . A s k e t c h o f t h i s flawed team that left Irving on a argument: Kiffin’s clowning took Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:22:30 AM

the pressure off his team and put it on Florida (which was favored to win by 30 points), which led the Gators to play tight and helped keep his Vols in the game. There are several obvious issues with that argument. But the sheer oddness of Kiffin’s gambit — which began with Kiffin guaranteeing a victory at Florida and accusing Florida coach Urban Meyer of recruiting violations in his first press conference, which Meyer flatly denied — explains how a game that featured the 2008 Heisman Trophy winner (Florida’s Tim Tebow) and 2008 SEC Defensive Player of the Year (Tennessee safety Eric Berry) wound up being a coaching clash. “This past week, the nonsense took on greater silliness because Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin set the bar high,” USA Today’s Kelly Whiteside writes. “‘I have never seen anything like it,’ Meyer said of the focus on Meyer vs. Kiffin as if it were Mayweather vs. Marquez.” Despite Tennessee’s loss, the fact that the team exceeded expectations — that is, didn’t get blown out — tilted the postgame narrative in the Vols’ favor. “Tennessee defeated Florida 1323,” Dennis Dodd writes at CBS Sports. “In the court of public opinion or perception poll, maybe, but that’s all that counts for the down-and-counted-out Vols. Tennessee didn’t fail to massage

the result, actually in Florida’s favor, into the program’s best loss in years.” The Tennesseean’s David Climer, for his part, reminds Vols fans that their team did, in fact, still lose the game. “Since when is defeat accepted and even celebrated?” Climer asks. “That tells you how far UT football had sunk.” It’s Climer’s job as a sportswriter to type stuff like that, but it makes you wonder what he would’ve written had he been covering USC’s upset loss at Washington. The Trojans were unimpressive in dropping a 16-13 decison to the Huskies and absorbed their annual Disappointing Pac-10 Loss against a team that went 0-12 last season. (USC’s national ranking fell to 12th after the game; Washington’s rose to 24.) In the San Francisco Chronicle, Vittorio Tafur wonders if the Trojans are overconfident. With USC’s uncharacteristic offensive struggles continuing for a second straight game, Chris Dufresne argues in the Los Angeles Times that “the program seems out of philosophical sorts.” The same cannot be said for Washington, exults the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Art Thiel. “Just two games beyond an 0-12 nightmare season and seemingly still three plane changes away from getting where they wanted to be, the University of Washington football program in one afternoon returned so fast to the national consciousness that the Huskies appeared to wrinkle time,” Thiel cheers.* * * Considering that he is so unrelentingly brash, it’s easy to forget that Floyd Mayweather Jr. is actually something of a clinical

fighter. Mayweather didn’t seem notably challenged in picking apart the notably smaller Juan Manuel Marquez on Saturday night — at least not until Shane Mosley stormed the ring after the fight, WWE-style, to demand that Mayweather fight him next. That bit of theatrics was needed after a fight that Tim Starks of the boxing blog Queensberry Rules termed “completely devoid of excitement.” “Mayweather defeating a smaller opponent is just giving him more advantages than he needs,” Starks writes. “What if he had a fair fight with most anybody in the world? He’d win it. But he can’t bring himself to take risks, either in his choice of opponent or inside the ring.” The fight boxing fans want to see, of course, is between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. But it’s far from certain when, or if, we’ll get to see that fight. At Yahoo, Martin Rogers writes that Mayweather’s brilliance notwithstanding, his fights can be, well, boring. “Mayweather is the finest in the business, but his comeback will only electrify the sport if he takes the fights the fans want,” Rogers writes. “No one felt that special vibe here, as this night had curiosity but no real sparkle.”* * * Milton Bradley is a talented baseball player with a reputation for behavior that can kindly be called difficult. When the Cubs — Bradley’s seventh big league employer in 10 seasons — suspended him for the rest of the year Sunday, it marked a new low for the outfielder. The Chicago NICE page 67

66

Sports

Internet News Record

Dolphins Dominate All Stats but Final Score (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:52:47 AM

Winning the time-of-possession battle in a football game can be about as valuable as the $10 you collect for winning second prize in a beauty contest in Monopoly. It doesn’t hurt, but as the Miami Dolphins can attest today, it doesn’t necessarily help much, either. Getty Images Peyton Manning takes time from his busy schedule filming commercials to steer the Colts to victory. The Dolphins controlled the ball for over 45 minutes out of 60 yet lost 27-23 to Indianapolis on Monday, thanks to Peyton Manning’s quick-strike capabilities. The Colts quarterback threw a TD pass on the game’s opening play and another late in the fourth quarter to beat Miami. Those drives required all of 44 seconds combined. The Dolphins also rushed for an impressive 239 yards on 49 carries, another stat that won’t make them feel any better about dropping to 0-2. “The point is that the view from two losses in the first two games of any NFL season isn’t a pretty one,” Greg Stoda writes in the Palm Beach Post. “Jacksonville, Tennessee, Cleveland, Kansas City and the Dolphins are working from that AFC perspective at the moment; Carolina, Tampa Bay, Detroit and St. Louis are the NFC counterparts. How’s that for a miserable bunch of teams? If there’s a championship contender

among those groups — or, for that matter, a playoff participant — it’s pretty well-disguised.” “Despite what the clock might lead you to believe, Manning was the more efficient quarterback on Monday night,” Vinnie Iyer writes for the Sporting News. “You can’t ‘fault’ him for [Dallas] Clark and [Pierre] Garcon making great moves to score in a blink. That’s just the nature of having explosive playmakers.” The Indianapolis Star’s Bob Kravitz imagines Johnny Unitas in football heaven celebrating Manning’s efficiency and his 119th victory, breaking the legendary quarterback’s franchise record. “Seriously, did you see my boy, 18? Is that kid a leader, or what?” Kravitz writes, channeling Unitas. “He spent more time on the sideline talking to Tiger Woods than he did on the field. Seemed like he needed 10 plays to score 27 points. That, my friends, is more than quarterback; that’s a leader.” While the Dolphins are winless, division rival New York is 2-0. But don’t celebrate too early, Jets fans, Jeff Pearlman warns at Sports Illustrated. In Washington, the Redskins needed an ugly 9-7 win over St. Louis on Sunday to get to 1-1 before displeased fans. Afterwards, a tweet from linebacker Robert Henson led to a torrent of criticism of the rookie Monday, Dan Steinberg writes in the Washington Post. It’s never a good thing to refer to your own

spectacularly,” Justice fumes. “Had Dave Clark, who managed six years in the minor leagues and is held in high esteem in the clubhouse, gotten a chance earlier, a cloud of doubt and negative emotions would have been lifted.” Sports Illustrated’s Ted Keith thinks the Astros will be hardpressed to contend next year even fans as “dim-wits.”* * * The community-owned Packers with the managerial change. “The thrive in Green Bay, the NFL’s Astros are old and it shows,” smallest market. But it’s a Keith writes. “They have only two different story in Jacksonville, position players younger than 29, where the Jaguars likely will not and when veterans like Miguel sell out any games this season. Tejada and Lance Berkman For Sunday’s home opener, a 31- stopped producing as they did in 17 loss to Arizona, the Jags their prime, their offense was announced attendance of 46,520 rendered largely punchless.”* * * Most baseball teams run but the crowd appeared much smaller. High unemployment and academies in the Dominican foreclosure rates and little Republic, injecting over $100 corporate support are major m i l l i o n a n n u a l l y i n t o t h e reasons Dan Wetzel of Yahoo economy, because of the wealth Sports labels this small-market of talent they reap from that NFL experiment a failure.* * * investment — the most of any The Houston Astros surprised foreign country. But the game in no one by firing manager Cecil the D.R. is rife with steroids, Cooper on Monday. Afterwards, fraud and kickbacks, Kevin Cooper’s replacement, third-base Baxter writes in the Los Angeles coach Dave Clark, watched the Times.* * * Canada and the U.S. usually Astros fall to their eighth straight have an amicable relationship. defeat, 7-3 to St. Louis. Poor signings and a weak minor The two countries share the -league system contributed to the world’s longest undefended Astros’ early elimination from the border and are each other’s largest playoffs, the Houston Chronicle’s trading partners. But things aren’t Richard Justice writes. But they hunky-dory as Canada prepares aren’t the biggest reason for for the Winter Olympics in Houston’s failures, at least February. Hoping to sit atop the according to Justice. “Cooper was medal standings and win its first a huge part of the problem. In gold medal as host, Canada is almost every way a manager can l i m i t i n g t r a i n i n g a c c e s s t o b e m e a s u r e d , h e f a i l e d American and other foreign athletes, John Branch writes in the

New York Times. A country stereotypically known for its polite citizenry is suddenly fighting accusations of poor sportsmanship.* * * Some message Formula One sent Monday. The sport’s governing body gave Renault a two-year suspended sentence for its role in Nelson Piquet Jr.’s deliberate crash at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix. While team boss Flavio Briatore was banned for life and engineer Pat Symonds was banned for five years, Renault didn’t even get a hefty fine. “The governing body of motor sport has failed in its duty sufficiently to penalize Renault and its Formula One team for one of the worst acts of cheating in sporting history and allowed commercial considerations to cloud its judgment,” Edward Gorman wonders in the Times of London. In the New York Times, Rob Hughes writes that Briatore’s suspension poses a problem for British soccer, too. – Tip of the Fix cap to reader Don Hartline. Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself — write to us at [email protected] and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email Garey at [email protected].

Internet News Record

Houston Astros fire Cecil Cooper with just 13 games left to go

Sports

67

NICE continued from page 65

press, which baited Bradley from the jump — check out the tone in this blog post by Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago SunBy Associated Press Melvin on May 7, Colorado complicated process. It's not easy pitch again in 2009. His ERA is a Times — jeered, predictably. At (ESPN.com) replaced Clint Hurdle on May 29 to say the manager, the coaches or career high and his win total a ESPN, Nick Friedell argues that and Washington fired Manny the players or management [can career low. Submitted at 9/21/2009 9:37:43 PM while Bradley didn’t do much to Acta on July 13. be blamed]. It all weaves Berkman is hitting .270 with 22 help himself, he was also walking Astros Fire Manager Cecil Wade said Clark would be t o e g t h e r . " home runs and 73 RBIs, but he into an impossible situation at Cooper Astros Fire Manager Cecil considered a candidate during the Cooper's initial contract ran came into the season with a career Wrigley. Cooper search for a new manager. Cooper through the 2009 season and the average of .302 and had reached Found a good column from the HOUSTON -- The Houston did not answer calls to his cell Astros picked up his option for 100 RBIs the past three seasons. world of sports? Don’t keep it to Astros fired manager Cecil phone and his voicemail was full. 2010. Houston won 86 games in The Astros hoped Russ Ortiz y o u r s e l f — w r i t e t o u s a t Cooper on Monday with 13 Wade, owner Drayton McLane 2008, a 13-game turnaround from and Mike Hampton would bolster [email protected] and we’ll g a m e s l e f t i n a n o t h e r a n d p r e s i d e n t o f b a s e b a l l 2007. But this season, the Astros the pitching staff, but Ortiz was consider your find for inclusion in disappointing season. operations Tal Smith met with are almost guaranteed their r e l e a s e d o n J u l y 3 0 a n d the Daily Fix. You can email Third-base coach Dave Clark Cooper in his office on Monday second losing record in three Hampton's season was cut short David at [email protected]. was named interim manager and afternoon to give him the news. seasons and only the third since by more injuries. things didn't change much While Cooper took the blame, 1991. Houston is 311-323 since Monday night as the Astros lost he could not be blamed for all the Wade said the extension was the winning the NL in 2005, and their eighth straight, 7-3 to the St. Astros' shortcomings in 2009. right decision at the time, but Berkman feels the franchise has Louis Cardinals, to drop to 70-80. A number of offseason moves "things changed" as the season been heading in the wrong New York Jets coach General manager Ed Wade said fizzled and All-Star first baseman unraveled. direction. the change couldn't wait until the Lance Berkman and pitching ace "You don't have control over a "We haven't been to the playoffs Rex Ryan says San end of the season. He added that Roy Oswalt have had subpar lot of things that changed," Wade in four years and it seems like Francisco 49ers' more changes could be coming seasons. said. "We felt, at the time, that w e ' v e b e e n o n a g r a d u a l tampering claims over for a franchise just four years "It stinks when you know that exercising the option sent the downward spiral," he said. "You removed from its only World your performance, that you're right message to our club, and to can't just point to one thing, I Michael Crabtree untrue Series appearance. responsible for somebody else's Coop about how we viewed our think there are several factors By ESPN.com news services "We're tasked with evaluating all job security," Berkman said. "Say overall situation at that particular involved in that. But, if there was (ESPN.com) aspects of our situation," Wade what you want, we didn't get it time." an environment for sweeping Submitted at 9/21/2009 4:01:41 PM said. "At the end of the day, we're done on the field. The players Cooper was a first-time major change or reform, this would be going to try to address those off- h a v e t o t a k e t h e f u l l league manager and the first black it." Jets Back Up Talk With Win field issues that exist. We're not responsibility. Coop never threw a manager in Astros history. He Clark became a major league Against Pats Jets Back Up Talk walking away from it. The issue pitch or batted with runners in p l a y e d 1 1 s e a s o n s f o r t h e manager for the first time. He With Win Against Pats VIDEO we had to address here, in the scoring position." Milwaukee Brewers and his hiring managed the Astros' Triple-A PLAYLIST short term, was the managerial McLane pointed out that the as Houston's manager got the affiliate in Round Rock in 2008 • Jets Back Up Talk With Win issue and that's why we moved Astros' payroll -- almost $103 p e r s o n a l b l e s s i n g o f and was in his first season as Against Pats Jets Back Up Talk forward today." million -- is among the highest in commissioner Bud Selig, who Houston's third-base coach. With Win Against Pats The 59-year-old Cooper was baseball and that he thought the owned the Brewers from 1977-87. "The main thing is to finish the • Report: 49ers File Charges hired on Aug. 27, 2007, to replace assembled roster was capable of Houston scored only 15 runs season on a strong note, bring out Against Jets Report: 49ers File Phil Garner. Houston went 171- having a better season. during their latest losing streak. the best in these players and get Charges Against Jets 170 under Cooper, who was the "We felt, at the time, and with The Astros are 28-46 away from b a c k t o t h a t w i n n i n g - t y p e SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The b e n c h c o a c h u n d e r G a r n e r the investment we made, that Minute Maid Park this season and a t t i t u d e , " C l a r k s a i d . 49ers have filed tampering between 2005-07. there was the potential to have a t h e p r o b l e m s w e n t b e y o n d Copyright 2009 by The charges against the New York Jets Cooper became the fourth winning team here," McLane said. C o o p e r . Associated Press regarding top San Francisco draft manager to get fired this season, "We'd love to have had different Oswalt (8-6, 4.12 ERA) has pick Michael Crabtree, Jets coach all of them in the National things occur with the players we been hampered by back and hip Rex Ryan confirmed Monday. League. Arizona dismissed Bob s e l e c t e d . I t ' s j u s t a v e r y pain most of the season and won't "My understanding is they filed NEW page 68

68

Game Sports

Internet News Record

NEW continued from page 67 charges with the league," Ryan said. "I'm saying my response is it's not true. I mean, it's not accurate. It's not true, but, hey, we'll let the league figure this out." When asked Monday if his team filed charges, 49ers coach Mike Singletary said it's a situation "the league is going to handle internally." Mike and Mike in the Morning New York Jets coach Rex Ryan talks about the Jets' big win over the Patriots and the play of rookie QB Mark Sanchez. Plus, he comments on the tampering allegations made by the 49ers against the Jets. More Podcasts » "I'm not going to get into that. We'll let that play out, the process," Singletary said. "I'm not even going to go there. We'll let the league handle that and go from there." The 22-year-old Crabtree, selected No. 10 overall by the Niners in April's draft, is the last draft pick not signed. The wide receiver is seeking money comparable to higher picks and hasn't accepted the 49ers' offer for approximately five years and $20 million, with a reported $16 million guaranteed. The tampering charges were first reported by the New York Daily News.

What helped draw the 49ers' attention to the issue was when Deion Sanders said he knew two teams that were willing to pay Crabtree what he wanted. The 49ers organization grew alarmed at the comments, investigated and decided to report its concerns to the league. Among the organization's biggest concerns would be that, if indeed another team had told Crabtree it would meet his asking price, it would greatly impede the 49ers' chances of signing their first-round pick. San Francisco was alarmed that another team -perhaps the Jets -- had inflated Crabtree's expectations and compromised its chances of signing him. It is why San Francisco filed the tampering charges. The newspaper reported the Jets continue to covet a big-name receiver after failing to land Percy Harvin in this year's draft. Harvin was picked 22nd by the Minnesota Vikings. Earlier, Ryan commented during "Mike & Mike in the Morning" on ESPN Radio that he wished the Jets played the 49ers this season. "Yes, and I'll stand by that comment," he told reporters later in the day. "That means we're in the Super Bowl, so I'll definitely take that. "

NFC West blog ESPN.com's Mike Sando writes about all things NFC West in his division blog. • Blog network: NFL Nation NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said in an e-mail to The Associated Press the league doesn't comment on alleged tampering, but would announce any disciplinary action taken against a team found in violation of the NFL's tampering policy. The 49ers have until Nov. 17 to sign Crabtree -- the 10th overall pick -- in order for him to play this season. After Aug. 14, the Niners no longer were permitted to trade Crabtree's rights. The next point he can be traded is at the start of the 2010 trading period on March 5. If Crabtree is not signed and he is not traded, he would go back into the April draft. While Crabtree falls further behind with each passing day -former 49ers great Jerry Rice questioned Sunday what kind of impact Crabtree would have if he did finally show up -- Singletary isn't ready to say he's better off without the Texas Tech star in San Francisco's run-oriented offense. AFC East blog ESPN.com's Tim Graham writes about all things AFC East in his

division blog. • Blog network: NFL Nation "I would never say that. ... We need every football player that can help us win that's supposed to be here, here," Singletary said. "I think he's a talented guy. Hopefully it works out that he gets here. If he doesn't, I feel comfortable with what we have." The 49ers were caught tampering two years ago. They forfeited their fifth-round pick in the 2008 draft and switched thirdround picks with the Bears after commissioner Roger Goodell said they tampered with Chicago linebacker Lance Briggs. Goodell said the 49ers violated the NFL's anti-tampering policy by contacting Briggs' agent, Drew Rosenhaus, about his client during the 2007 season. Niners general manager Scot McCloughan said at the time the team believed it acted "within the NFL guidelines." Crabtree caught 97 passes for 1,165 yards and 19 touchdowns last year during his sophomore season at Texas Tech. He finished his college career with 231 receptions for 3,127 yards and 41 TDs. Information from The Associated Press and ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter was used in this report.

Florida Gators chose to match play-it-safe Tennessee Volunteers By ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:02:23 AM

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin said he put his Volunteers in the best position they could be in to beat Florida. Then he took one more shot at Gators coach Urban Meyer. Meyer said Sunday that he kept his game plan conservative in No. 1 Florida's 23-13 win because he didn't believe Tennessee appeared to be playing for a win. He also said several of his players had been hit by the flu. On Monday, Kiffin said he didn't want to respond to Meyer's comment. But asked whether he was worried about the flu also hitting Tennessee, he said: "I don't know. I guess we'll wait and after we're not excited about a performance, we'll tell you everybody was sick." “ I guess we'll wait and after we're not excited about a performance, we'll tell you everybody was sick.”-- Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin Tennessee (1-2, 0-1 Southeastern Conference) was

No More Heroes 2 is last installment on Wii, next game on new Nintendo platform By Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq) Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:15:00 AM

Clarifying an earlier statement that No More Heroes 2 would be the franchises' last installment on

the Wii, creator Suda 51 told 1UP that the upcoming sequel is "the last iteration for this current platform." Suda believes there will be a "Wii 2," and he'd like to do another "game in the series on the next Nintendo platform."

It appears we're now just

waiting on Nintendo to unveil the Wii HD(or Wii 2). Then we can ask Mr. 51 about when we can expect an HD-ified No More Heroes. No More Heroes 2 is last installment on Wii, next game on

new Nintendo platform originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Sports Fashion

Internet News Record

69

Ron Artests says he's to blame if Los Angeles Lakers By Associated Press (ESPN.com)

appearance for the Lakers. He wore an all-black Kobe Bryant jersey as a tribute to his new Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:00:31 AM teammate. SAN DIEGO -- Pardon Ron "It makes me more excited, Artest if he's a bit geographically gives me a better understanding of challenged and had no idea that what jersey I'm actually putting San Diego has a big league on," Artest said. "So today I baseball team, even though he decided to wear the black Kobe was wearing a Padres cap. Bryant jersey, because he is the This much he's sure of -- If his 'Black Mamba,' and I'm really Los Angeles Lakers don't repeat happy to be a part of this team and as NBA champions, fans can I'm really excited just to be an point their fingers at him. addition, an asset, to the guy, to "They should. That's exactly t h e [ D e r e k ] F i s h e r s a n d what should happen if we don't the[Andrew] Bynum s and all the repeat," the star forward said rest of the players." during a visit to promote the During a wide-ranging news Lakers' exhibition game against conference at the San Diego the Denver Nuggets at the San Chargers' media trailer, Artest Diego Sports Arena on Oct. 23. drew some laughs with a few slip"They won last year, and I'm the ups. new addition. The fans expect to "I didn't realize how far L.A.'s repeat. Everybody in L.A. expects tentacles, or whatever you want to a second ring. And if we don't call them, extend, all the way to then yeah, they should point it San Diego. I thought I was going right at me, throwing tomatoes to be getting some Golden State and everything." Warrior fans, because I didn't Artest joined the Lakers as a know where I was at. Most of the free agent on July 8, signing a five fans are Lakers fans, so that's -year deal worth about $33 great. million. He is the team's only "And I'm also here to say that addition, essentially switching next year I'll be trying out for the places with Trevor Ariza, who left San Diego Chargers, so I look the Lakers to take Artest's spot forward to that. Hopefully I can with the Rockets. play some baseball. Is there a Artest said he was proud to be baseball team here?" making his first promotional You're wearing the hat, he was

told. "I know I'm wearing the hat. I just love the SD. The logo looks great. I didn't realize there was a baseball team in San Diego." A tough, physical defender, Artest had some spirited moments against Bryant when the Rockets pushed the Lakers to seven games in the second round of the playoffs. "That was friendship what you saw out there with me and Kobe," Artest said. "That's like hard-core friendship, you know, like back in the days -- fight against your best friend when you were younger and go out and get some ice cream later? That's what that was. It was just so competitive. "I just knew that my team was going to win. Of course we lost Yao [Ming], which hurt the Rockets. And Kobe wanted to win, and he knew his team was going to win. It was like, 'OK, I know you but I don't care nothing about you, maybe I have to step on your toes and give you a couple of elbows and get you ejected twice, whatever it takes to win, that's what I'm going to do.'" Artest was ejected from Games 2 and 3 against the Lakers. In Game 2, he received a technical and was ejected after pointing and making a gesture near his throat after complaining that Bryant had

elbowed him in the throat under the basket. Artest was ejected from Game 3 after a flagrant foul on Pau Gasol. It's all good now that they're all teammates. "That's what I love about Kobe. He's so tough," Artest said. "He was great when he was younger, but he's much more competitive now. I didn't envision myself playing with him. I always wanted to play against him. I always wanted to beat Kobe Bryant. But I'm more than happy to be playing with Kobe." A native New Yorker, Artest said he's turning into a West Coast kind of guy. "I'm learning a lot of different ways of California. Is this Southern California?" he said, apparently not realizing San Diego is as southern as it gets. "It never rains in Southern California, huh? I'm turning into a Southern California guy. I'm happy to be a Southern Californian, or whatever you want to call it." The Lakers open training camp Sept. 29 at their headquarters in El Segundo. Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press

Horns aplenty By blogeditor1 (Material Interest on Men.style.com) Submitted at 9/22/2009 7:52:14 AM

We're not sure when he finds time to do it—what with a men's line, a women's line, a fur line, and two diffusion lines—but somehow Rick Owens also designs furniture. And as a new London gallery show of his interior work makes clear, he's got plenty to fall back on if he ever decides this fashion thing's for the birds. Owens' pieces range from chairs and sofas to lamps and tables, using some of the same materials he's worked with in clothing (leather, suede, shearling, and fur) as well as plywood, marble, and a few natural products. More antlers? Well, we might've been a little weary of those in the past, but if anyone's capable of breathing new life into an overused design detail, our money's on this guy. Through September at Sebastian+Barquet London, 19 Bruton Pl., London, 011-44-207 4 9 5 - 8 9 8 8 , sebastianandbarquetlondon.com [via WWD] MATTHEW SCHNEIER Photo: Courtesy of Sebastian+Barquet

70

Sports Fashion

Internet News Record

Plaxico Burress sentenced to two years in prison on firearms charge By ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 9/22/2009 8:10:54 AM

Plaxico Behind Bars Plaxico Behind Bars VIDEO PLAYLIST • Plaxico Behind Bars Plaxico Behind Bars • E:60: Plaxico Burress Extended Interview E:60: Plaxico Burress Extended Interview NEW YORK -- One-time Super Bowl hero Plaxico Burress was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for violating New York's stringent gun laws and was immediately taken into custody following his hearing. Burress agreed to the plea deal last month and pleaded guilty to a lesser firearms charge. The charges stemmed from an incident late last fall, in which Burress accidentally shot himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub. He is expected to serve about 20 months with credit for good behavior, followed by two years of probation. Burress arrived at the courthouse with his wife and son Elijah, whom he carried in his arms, at 9:41 a.m. Before the sentencing began, Burress asked for and was granted permission by the judge to say one last goodbye to his wife and family, seated in

the fifth row of the courthouse. The hearing was brief, as the prosecution and defense told the judge they had previously agreed to the guilty plea and two-year sentence. A soft-spoken Burress then apologized to his family and fans and thanked them for their support. "We will all get through this," he said. He was then taken into custody. Burress will be taken to the Rikers Island jail in New York, and then transferred to the Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill before being sent to one of New York State's 29 medium-security prisons to serve out his sentence. Afterwards, his defense attorney, Benjamin Brafman, called the case "terribly said and very tragic." "This has been a very emotional experience for him," Brafman said. "He's sad about what he's done to his life, his career, and more importantly to his family. He's a fundamentally good man who has used bad judgment and is going to pay a very, very severe penalty." The case went to a grand jury after months of negotiations between prosecutors and Burress' defense attorney broke down,

apparently because Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau insisted that the former New York Giants wide receiver serve at least two years in prison for violating the city's strict gun laws. On July 29, Burress took the rare and risky step of testifying before the grand jury, hoping to convince the panel that the gun was not used in the commission of a crime and that he was the lone victim. But days later, Burress was indicted on two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of reckless endangerment. He faced a minimum sentence of 3½ years if convicted at trial. On Aug. 20, the day he was to be arraigned, Burress agreed to a plea deal and pleaded guilty to attempted weapons possession in the second degree. Hours after Burress pleaded guilty, the NFL announced that commissioner Roger Goodell had suspended the receiver and said Burress is ineligible to sign with any team until he completes his prison term. After that, Burress may sign with an NFL team without further review. Burress, a nine-year veteran with the Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers, became a Super Bowl

hero when he caught the winning touchdown pass in the last minute of the Giants' 17-14 upset win over the previously unbeaten New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. Burress and former teammate Antonio Pierce were at the Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan in late November 2008 when a gun tucked into Burress' waistband slipped down his leg and fired, shooting him in the right thigh. The bullet narrowly missed a nightclub security guard who was standing inches away, prosecutors said. It lodged in the floor and was recovered by a bartender. The gun was not licensed in New York or in New Jersey, where Burress lived. His license to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Florida had expired in May 2008. Prosecutors said Pierce drove Burress to a hospital, then took the gun to his own home in New Jersey. It was later delivered to Burress' home. Pierce, who also testified before the grand jury, was not charged. ESPN reporter Sal Paolantonio and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

TOMS, fit to be tied

in the mail—and how much more excited I was when I actually opened and saw what lay inside. Gatecrashers beware, you have your work cut out for you with this one, because impossible is the only word I would have for you.

—Rebecca Suhrawardi Austin Follow ELLE on Twitter.

By blogeditor1 (Material Interest on Men.style.com) Submitted at 9/21/2009 12:08:27 PM

It's been a while since we last checked in with the guys at TOMS, and as it happens, a lot has changed since we did. A bold new design statement has taken over the line's standard shape for fall, one so shocking we can hardly print it. It's… laces. We kid—shoes that tie have been around for a while, but TOMS' new Cordones style is the brand's first to feature loops and bows. Now you don't need to be confined to slip-ons for your dogooding footwear. (As with all the company's offerings, a purchase for yourself will also send a pair to a needy kid.) That's a big change, but feel free to ease into it—the Cordones can be worn with laces or without. Sound familiar? Yeah, to us, too. Guess somebody over there's been keeping up with the trends. $69 to $79, available at tomsshoes.com [via Uncrate] MATTHEW SCHNEIER Photo: TOMS

Burberry Makes My Day By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog) Submitted at 9/21/2009 2:30:00 PM

It's the show that is rumored to be the cause of the international onslaught of editors to London

Fashion Week. Yes, it's the 25th anniversary and yes, there are a lot of other designers bringing themselves back to the London catwalks, but everyone is talking about Burberry. You might be able to imagine my glee when I

came home last night from the Mulberry party to find the invite

Sports

Internet News Record

FLORIDA continued from page 68 tagged as a 30-point underdog, thanks in part to some of Kiffin's offseason comments about Florida. The Vols' first-year coach pledged to sing "Rocky Top" after beating the Gators at the Swamp, and had accused Meyer of committing an NCAA violation in trying to hang on to a recruit who eventually joined Kiffin at Tennessee. In looking back at the game, Meyer said Sunday he probably should have opened up the defending national champs' offense. But he said there was no reason to because of the Vols' conservative approach to their own offense. "When I saw them start handing the ball off, I didn't feel like they were going after the win," Meyer said. "The way we lose a game there is throw an interception. Why put yourself in that position? Let's find a way to win the game. We're not trying to impress the pollsters. We're trying to win the game. A lot of it had to do with the way they were playing. It made our life a little easier." SEC commissioner Mike Slive already has reprimanded Kiffin for accusing Meyer of the NCAA violation, and warned all coaches about taking shots at one another. SEC blog ESPN.com's Chris Low writes

about all things SEC in his conference blog. • Blog network: College Football Nation "This offseason the commissioner made a big deal of renewing vows in terms of what we say about other teams, other coaches and other players," Kiffin said. "Obviously Urban feels he doesn't need to follow that. We won't say anything else." Tennessee didn't play its role in what was supposed to be a Florida blowout. With 11:37 left in the game and Florida (3-0, 1-0) holding a 23-6 lead, the Vols recovered a fumble by Tim Tebow at their own 2. Kiffin turned to running backs Montario Hardesty and Bryce Brown to pound out runs and catch short passes. That's where Meyer felt Kiffin wasn't concerned about winning. "They wanted to shorten the game. I remember looking out there and there's 10 minutes left in the game and there's no nohuddle, they are down, I think it was 23-6 and [there's no] urgency," he said. Kiffin said he preferred to turn to his tailbacks, who had little trouble moving the chains against the Gators' defense, rather than the Vols' struggling passing game. It worked. Hardesty scored on a 17-yard run with 8:11 left to cut the margin to 23-13.

"That was the best thing to put us in position to win, and we moved the ball doing that," he said. "That was how we needed to play at that time." With about 2 minutes left in the game and a chance to score, Kiffin gave Jonathan Crompton-who had already thrown one interception -- a chance to throw down field to Denarius Moore. The pass was picked off by Ahmad Black for Crompton's seventh interception of the season. "People should know the truth. We came out to play," Moore said. "They said it themselves. They didn't expect us to come out and play like that. We just played our hardest, and so did they." Kiffin said the Vols got beat by Florida QB Tim Tebow, who made some key scrambling plays in third-and-long situations. He'd also like another shot at the senior quarterback who he calls "Superman." "I wish it was like basketball where we got another chance to play them, where we play them two times in a year," he said. "Unfortunately we won't get to play him again, and they'll have to play without [Tebow] next time." Information from ESPN.com's Chris Low and The Associated Press was used in this report.

71

NHL 10 Cover Boy Patrick Kane Happy for Chance to Move On By Bruce Ciskie (FanHouse) Submitted at 9/22/2009 11:15:00 AM

by Bruce Ciskie Filed under: Blackhawks, Western, Team USA, FanHouse Exclusive The renaissance of the Chicago Blackhawks is wellchronicled. After not making the Western Conference Finals once since 1995, Chicago got to the NHL's final four in 2008. A fivegame series loss to Detroit ended their magical run, but the pieces are in place for the Blackhawks to again be a perennial contender in the NHL. One of those key pieces is forward Patrick Kane. After posting over 140 points in his first two NHL seasons, the dynamic youngster graces the cover of EA Sports' NHL 10. Kane spoke with FanHouse about the game, the Blackhawks, and what was a tumultuous summer.

NHL 10 Cover Boy Patrick Kane Happy for Chance to Move On originally appeared on Fanhouse NHL Blog on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:15:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Linking Blogs| Comments

72

Game

Internet News Record

XBLA Summer of Arcade sales grow 200% By Xav de Matos (Joystiq)

doubt boosted by a cloudy economy that kept folks indoors and looking for inexpensive Microsoft had a good summer, e n t e r t a i n m e n t . M i c r o s o f t according to the company's capitalized, too, by raising the summary of Xbox Live events. 1 average price of its Summer of vs. 100 reached nearly 3 million Arcade titles. gamers during its beta season by During last year's promotion, Microsoft's estimates, and the three of the five Summer of Summer of Arcade Xbox Live Arcade games were priced at $10, Arcade promotion enjoyed a but this year, only two of the five reported 200 percent growth in were $10 -- the other three costing revenue over last year's sales. $15 apiece. (It's unclear if While Microsoft has already Microsoft counts Battlefield relished in Metroidvania success, 1943's sales toward revenue a press release claims that Trials growth; the $15 title was not HD and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 technically part of Summer of also performed well in first-week Arcade this year.) sales; and both titles join Shadow Microsoft also saw success in its C o m p l e x i n t h e t o p f i v e bold, new free entertainment bestselling week-one XBLA department. 1 vs. 100 averaged games of all time. Sales were no more than half a million users Submitted at 9/22/2009 9:58:00 AM

during each of the game show's live sessions. According to Microsoft, the game's near "threemillion" downloads within its 13week availability places 1 vs. 100 within the top ten downloads in Xbox Live history. If we've learned anything on this gloomy fall morning, it's that people like summer gaming and Microsoft has way too many "top" lists cluttering up its offices. XBLA Summer of Arcade sales grow 200% originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Rumor: Leaked minutes from Sega/Sony meeting reveal PS2 and Dreamcast on PSN, much more By Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 9/22/2009 11:20:00 AM

Okay, buckle up -- there's a whole lot to take in here. Sega's public relations FTP site recently got a titillating addition: The alleged minutes from an August 5 meeting between the Hedgehogcentric developer and Sony Computer Entertainment America. (The document is reproduced in its entirety after the break) The big, potential news from this document, however, deals more with SCEA's plans for the future. One excerpt from the minutes lists a Spring 2010 launch window for the PlayStation Motion Controller-- specifically March for Japan. Another noteworthy section mentions a "PS2 emulator for PS3," which claims that "SCEA wants to sell all PS2 titles on PSN." Later in the document, the possibility of

Dreamcast titles on PSN is also mentioned, in addition to a "Japanese Import" section. This leak has an air of credibility due to its appearance on Sega's public FTP resource center -- however, it's entirely possible that it could have been uploaded to said FTP site by a hack-savvy Dreamcast enthusiast. Maintain your skepticism as you browse the full document. [Via NeoGAF] Continue reading Rumor: Leaked minutes from Sega/Sony meeting reveal PS2 and Dreamcast on PSN, much more Rumor: Leaked minutes from Sega/Sony meeting reveal PS2 and Dreamcast on PSN, much more originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Fashion

Internet News Record

73

Slim Pickings: Emmy Red Carpet By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

world: I’m an actress, not a Traina, now move along. Submitted at 9/21/2009 2:19:25 PM Last night, however, there were Thanks to The Rachel Zoe far fewer in the first two groups Project, we now have a better than usual, leaving those of us appreciation for the weeks and who endured three hours of s o m e t i m e s m o n t h s o f Giuliana Rancic proffering p r e m e d i t a t i o n , l a s t - m i n u t e questions like, What is your alterations, and FedEx dramz that favorite/least favorite body go into selecting and styling the part?(for the record, Julia Louis right dress for the right client for Dreyfus’ answers were: her “big an event like last night’s Emmys. nose” and “cashew shaped” pinky Somewhere between the toes), to wonder why so few Independent Spirit Awards and January Joneses in lady futuristica the Academy Awards in its red Atelier Versace, and so many carpet entertainment value, the dang off-the-rack satin column Emmys is usually a healthy mix gowns? of successful chance takers, their Despite the slim pickings, I did less successful counterparts, the manage to find four dresses that cocktail dress crowd, the off-the- blew me away. Do you agree or shoulder older women contingent, disagree? and those whose tired, floorLovely & Amazing: January length, strapless gowns clearly Jones (Atelier Versace), Ginnifer (and perhaps rightfully) tell the Goodwin (YSL), Mila Kunis

(Monique Lhuillier), and Kristen Wiig (Andrew Gn) And let’s not overlook the men, who, this year, rivaled the women for sartorial kudos more than they have in…well, ever. From Simon’s slick, Batarang-like bowtie to Jon’s ladyblazersoaking* classic movie star look to Gabriel’s undone nattiness to Alec’s charming two-tone lavender, it was almost more a pleasure to do fashion business with the actors this year than the actresses. Finely Suited: Simon Baker, Jon Hamm, Gabriel Byrne, and Alec Baldwin, all in really nice tuxes and suits by really talented designers *cred: Tina Fey By blogeditor1 (Material Photos: courtesy of Getty Interest on Men.style.com) Images Submitted at 9/21/2009 1:02:26 PM

A new set of earbuds wants to stay in touch So maybe Sony Ericsson's new MH907 headset doesn't, as

One to Watch: Saloni Lodha By ELLE.com (ELLE News Blog)

by all the late-running shows before it, and after the explosion of celebs and Naomi at the show, Submitted at 9/21/2009 12:00:00 PM backstage was a packed party She dresses the crème de la replete with bartenders serving crème of the British social set, cocktails, paparazzi and socialites just came back from presenting galore. I was personally battered her collection in New York, and is at this point from running from a genuine beauty and lovable show-to-show and being weighed character to boot. Womenswear down like a pack mule with bags designer Saloni Ladha has all the of fashion show goodies when I makings of a fashion star from her ran into Saloni. Thankfully, we savvy business sense to her true are rather friendly and she just talent, this one is not going to laughed and teased me a bit about disappear anytime soon. my state of discombobulation. I found her being her darling Once chatting, I had to know self backstage after the Issa show, about the jacket she was wearing, which as you can imagine, was a w h i c h w a s f r o m h e r n e w mob-scene. Issa was the last show collection. Saloni was inspired by of the day, pushed to run behind the16th-century Persian tale "The

a modern-day warrior," she described, "And it's the perfect balance of masculine and feminine." How did she keep herself looking so perfect despite the chaos around us? She flashed me that cheshire cat smile once more and responded with, "I have slept most of the day because I am jetlagged since I just came from New York." "But I always start the day with a smile and end the day with a smile." —Rebecca Suhrawardi Austin Photo: Saloni Lodha backstage Adventures of Hamza," which led at Issa her down the path of creating See more Issa fashion here warrior-like shapes and styles. Follow ELLE on Twitter. "Our whole collection is based on

From Unis to your house By blogeditor1 (Material Interest on Men.style.com) Submitted at 9/21/2009 8:01:07 AM

Good news for cult designer fans who live in Alaska: Eunice Lee (who, in addition to heading up the line Unis, was one of our 2009 Women of Fashion) has added eFROM page 74

74

Media

Internet News Record

NEW continued from page 73 promised, change the way we listen to music forever. What the earbuds actually do, though, is impressive and intuitive enough: Put them in your ears, and your music starts playing; take them out, and the music stops. Got a phone call? Insert a bud in your ear to automatically answer the call, and just take it out to hang up. The downside: At least for now, they're only compatible with Sony Ericsson phones with Fast

FROM continued from page 73 commerce to her Web site, offering a range of shirting, pants, and outerwear to those who can't make it to her Manhattan shop (or its new Brooklyn annex). That's especially welcome now that the temperatures are starting to drop. Outerwear has always been one of the collection's strongest suits, and we're partial to Lee's expertly cut military peacoats, a nearobsession around these parts.

Port inputs, which means this particular party trick is the purview of SE users only. The upside: SE users, consider yourselves the life of the (techobsessive) party. About $55, available worldwide later this week; sonyericsson.com [via Engadget] COREY SEYMOUR Photo: Sony Ericsson

Media Magazine: Fast Forward: The Future Of Media (Redux) (MediaPost | Media News)

I think the changes taking place in our media ecology are a lot like that. They have been happening It always feels a bit silly to me to fast enough to affect the way we write columns addressing the live, but not so fast that our brains future of anything, but I can tell can register how we should deal you that as I write this one - about with it - whether to fight, or give the future of media, from a flight. Mostly, people have been vantage point deep in a global fleeing. They've been running economic recession - the feeling from an old, analog model that that comes to mind is more like prized economies of scale to one futility. That's because I believe that is digital, diffused, freethat something far bigger than an flowing, and open source. They're available this season in economic down cycle is taking People no longer wait for classic wool and a new version in place, and I also believe that information to come to them. waxed cotton. media is causing it. That's what has made search and Oscar peacoat in wool, $910, The truth is, I'm no better than discovery so important in our new and waxed cotton, $895, available anyone else at predicting the information economy. We may a t s h o p . u n i s n e w y o r k . c o m future, but I am convinced that not be able to view its entirety, MATTHEW SCHNEIER Photo: when we look back from a not-too but like the deforestation of a Unis -distant time, we will realize what large land mass, or the loss of an utterly epic transformation has some Antarctic ice shelf, we see just taken place, as well as what happens when there is a recognize the hand media had in pronounced shift in the way we shaping it. I can't tell you exactly use media. First the recorded when it will cycle through. I can m u s i c i n d u s t r y . T h e n t h e only tell you that I believe we will n e w s p a p e r i n d u s t r y . W h a t be a fundamentally different happens when broadcast tv and society when it does. Heck, we all radio lose their relevance as the know it. We're already different. centralized repositories of video We've changed so much in just and audio content? What happens the past few years, and the w h e n a n y o n e c a n r e c e i v e process is only accelerating. I just anything, anywhere and at any don't think we have the cognitive time in the kind of 4G wireless ability to grasp its full effect while world that Josh Lovison talks we are living through it. It's kind about later in this issue? What of like a theory some scientists happens when the business have about human apathy toward models that have supported global warming: Our brains professional journalism erode or simply are not wired to grasp that go away? What happens when we kind of long-term global threat. begin accessing our most relevant Neurologically, they say, we're content not from big, centralized still fending off saber-toothed media institutions, but from each tigers. other? We have gone full circle Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:11:59 AM

from a planet of cultural tribes to one McLuhan termed a "global village," and now back again to a new form of electronic tribalism where cultures are defined not by geographic borders, but by the instantaneous connectivity of relevant shared content. As I've indicated, I'm better at asking those kinds of questions than I am at providing the answers. But I can tell you we've assembled the views of some fairly cogent minds - people like Chris Anderson (both of them), Philip K. Dick (posthumously), and rocker Grace Slick - to at least try to get at them. This issue is special for two reasons: One is that it is the second annual issue focused exclusively on the future of media. Two, it is the second one to feature a guest editor, this time, Alex Bogusky. Interestingly, when I asked Bogusky to guest edit this issue, I originally envisioned him doing an issue themed around "creative's take on media," but he was actually more interested in discussing the future of media, a subject I thought we'd thoroughly examined, and exhausted, when Bob Guccione Jr. took it on as Media's first guest editor last year. Apparently not. Bogusky brought a similar, but different kind of passion to the subject, and we could all feel how it is energizing one of Madison Avenue's top creative thinkers. I think you'll feel it, too. So take a read, and let us know.

Culture

Internet News Record

75

A GQ.com Interview with Nick Cave By stylemens (GQ: The Editors) Submitted at 9/21/2009 7:10:57 AM

In the annals of superfluous creative cross-overs—writers who rock, rappers who act, Ethan Hawke—Nick Cave is gloriously immuned. Whatever it is he’s working on–a screenplay, an opera, a new Bad Seeds record, or a movie score–it isn’t merely an indulgent lark or an attempt to prove he can hold his own in another genre. It’s just another means to express his wise, salacious self. This month, twenty years after his first novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, he released his second, The Death of Bunny Munro, which recounts the last days of a comically lascivious, vagina-obsessed salesman. The 52 -year old Cave says the book was influenced enormously by two great works of literature: The Gospel According to Mark, and Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto. We’ll let him explain.— mark healy Bunny Munro is a prisoner of his own libido. Have you come across any real characters who are so beholden to their desires? By their desires? Yeah, I have. First of all, most of the men that I’ve spoken to that have read this book see within their character certain elements of Bunny Munro. And I’m not as sexually motivated as him, but I’m an artist and I think that in some kind of way we are similar in that we pursue something to the detriment of those around us. I think that the artistic processes are hugely selfish and egocentric. Really? You think your various creative pursuits have come at the detriment of yourself and others?

I don’t think that they’ve come at the detriment of myself, but yeah. I’ve tried and made every effort, I have to say, and I’ve pretty much tried to keep writing as a 9 to 5 job, but it’s very difficult to turn off. One of the skills I guess I’ve learned over the years is the ability to put things away. But it wasn’t always that way. Do you always work a regular day? Well, it depends what I’m working on. But I get up in the morning and I put on a suit and I go down to the basement, which I have to walk outside the house to get to, so it does feel like there is a physical distance between my personal life and my work life, my imaginative life. It’s just a few stairs, but I do have to actually go outside. That seems to be kind of important to me in some way, because the work I’m largely engaged in—well at least when I’m songwriting—is a kind of woman’s work, basically trying to give birth. It feels to me like I’m trying to squeeze a watermelon out of a tiny aperture. And there’s all the attendants screaming and cursing and blood. The writing of a novel, on the other hand, was much easier, and much more fun, and much more enjoyable. In fact I did that on the tour bus. I did that in hotels late at night, backstage and on the bus when I was on a tour around Europe and in America, as well. Do you just keep writing or do you have to wait for inspiration? Oh, I can’t afford to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is overrated. I can’t be worried about whether I’m having a good you’re gonna go down and build a day or a bad day. I look at the brick wall, you need to go down whole thing as kind of labor. If and build a brick wall. It’ll never

get built if you wait for the day that you actually feel like getting out the bricks and the mortar. So I

just go down to the office every morning. I try not to judge any of it. If I go down there and stay there all day the work has been done whether I’ve done anything or not, if you know what I mean. There aren’t many rock stars who can write novels. I don’t know…I can see why musicians don’t write books because I think to a lot of musicians it would be way more enjoyable to make a record. It’s something that you kind of do with your mates and if you’re successful you make a whole lotta money out of it and it’s good fun and you get to smoke and drink and take drugs and have sex with women and all the rest. Why sit down and become an author? Where you have to sit alone at a desk and actually put in the hours. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. I personally approach rock-androll music in a writerly sort of way. So it’s not so difficult, the transition, for me. Last year you recorded a song called “And We Call Upon the Author to Explain,” where you praise John Berryman and sort of diss Charles Bukowski. I kind of think Bukowski sucks myself… At last! We can all come forward. You can never separate Bukowski the man from his writing. If you took Bukowski the man away from his writing there’s very little there but kind of selfreferential…shit. But even though Berryman had a very colorful life, he was largely in our imaginations. When you think of Berryman you think of his poems and you think of his character Henry and all of that stuff. When you think of Bukowski you just GQ.COM page 76

76

Media

Internet News Record

GQ.COM continued from page 75 think of Bukowski. I think the point that I was trying to make is that Berryman is brilliant. He’s had more impact on what I do than anybody else, so… You recently did the score to the movie version of The Road. What did you think of that as a book? Initially I found it to be quite difficult but by the end of it I was weeping real tears. That language I found quite difficult. I thought it felt kind of self-conscious. I’m a big fan of Cormac McCarthy’s writing, but this particular book felt a little like that for me. I was sort of slowly pulled into the whole thing. I thought the whole device of the apocalypse—it was so brutal. If he’d put it in some other context—the final conversation between the father and son would have almost sounded mawkish…but because the landscape was so unforgiving and merciless it worked beautifully. I was turning the pages in tears. I think that’s a fine achievement for a novel. You’ve got a similar father-son scenario in Bunny Munro. Were you wary of making it overly sentimental? I mean, the only way it could have worked is if we can maintain some sympathy with Bunny Munro and that was, I guess, the most difficult juggling act. In Britain there is a particular kind of character that has that sort of

sensibility and humor that Bunny Munro has, and the Brits love him. He’s laddish, sex-obsessed, thinks that breasts are kind of funny, and, you know, that whole Benny Hill kind of misogynistic sensibility toward women. I hoped that I could keep the reader to maintain a certain sympathy for that character even though by the end of it, he is a monster. But what I really wanted to show is where that humor and that kind of mentality can lead to. So as a writer, I’m not necessarily on the side of that character, but he did need to have some sympathy with him for the relationship with his son to work. If Bunny was such a complete asshole, then you don’t care whether the son likes him or not. So the idea of a 9-year-old—I have two 9-year-olds myself—that your father can do no wrong, was interesting to me. That I could create a monster, that no matter how fucked up this man became, the son just loved him even more. And do you have that with your 9-year-olds? Absolutely. I’m Superman. But I know that it doesn’t last, because I have two 18-year-olds as well, and I know that in a few years time the Superman gets kind of dismantled and you become a human being with all of your flaws and faults and inadequacies. Is there a morality tale here?

I think on one level. I don’t think that I’m trying to say “repent.” I believe that what goes on in Bunny Munro’s character is in all men. It is innate within us—a kind of predatory sexualness—just as violence is kind of innate within us. We’re born with it. I think certain other things we must learn in order to negotiate ourselves through life, and those things are the better a s p e c t s o f o u r character—empathy and intimacy and those sorts of things. So I was determined not to write a book about a monster who sees the error of his ways and kind of repents which is the normal way in which a lot of these novels go. I don’t go for the facing up to our faults and the admission of our sins and all the sort of stuff as necessarily a redemptive thing. Can you recommend the Bible as a good read? Well you know, I wouldn’t go through the whole thing. I would be selective about it. For me, the basic structure of the screenplay—and actually of the book itself—is based for me on the gospel of Mark, in that this is one of the four gospels of the story of Jesus Christ. And the story of the gospel of Mark absolutely concerns [itself] from the word go with Christ’s death. It’s this kind of garbled story that just wants to get to the punch line,

which is the death of the protagonist. And so it is with the story that I’ve written—it’s called The Death of Bunny Munro. And the gospel of Mark is episodic in the same way. It’s a road trip…So that had a huge influence over the structure of the book. The other book that had a huge influence over this is Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto. Have you ever read that? I haven’t. Man, you gotta read it. It’s just some of the most beautiful, angriest vitriol you’ve ever read against maleness. And in the first couple of pages of that she does a beautiful job of describing what she sees as the male condition. It’s super-pissed off. And the way she describes the male is very much that he is kind of half dead and incapable of relating to anything other than his own physical sensation. And incapable of any mental passion or interaction, or sensitivities, just an unresponsive blob. I mean, it’s very, very beautiful the way she talks about that. And something that I kind of, on some level, recognize and agree with. And so, to me, that was what Bunny Munro was based on in some kind of way. So it’s kind of the Gospel of Mark pulped together with the SCUM Manifesto.

Research Brief: Periodic Agency Evaluation Promotes Integrated Marketing Strategies (MediaPost | Media News) Submitted at 9/22/2009 6:15:22 AM

According to a survey conducted by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), 82% of marketers report that their companies regularly conduct formal agency performance evaluations. The establishment of a formal evaluation program is near-universal among firms with annual revenues of $5 billion or more (92% versus only 74% of smaller firms). As a corollary, formal evaluation programs are more common among firms with marketing/advertising budgets of $50 million or more, than among those with smaller budgets (96% versus 71%). The top benefits derived from a formal agency evaluation process, says the report, are identifying and improving under-performing agency relationships (92%) and identifying and recognizing highperforming agency relationships (85%),. Qualitative performance criteria carry much more weight in agency performance evaluations than do quantitative communications criteria (e.g., media cost savings, media buying goals) or business metrics (e.g., sales, share). Some of the specific qualitative performance criteria commonly used in agency evaluations include: • Innovation (85%) • Strategy (82%) • Implementation/follow through (82%) RESEARCH page 77

Media

Internet News Record

RESEARCH continued from page 76 • Fiscal stewardship (81%) • Ideas (77%) • Teamwork (77%) • Meeting project objectives (77%) 59% of firms conduct two-way, or 360-degree, evaluations in which the agency also evaluates the client. Additionally, 13% of marketers identified a new practice in which the evaluation processes allows for their respective agencies to evaluate one another. 58% of marketers rate agency performance evaluation as "extremely" or "very effective" in maintaining the client-agency relationship, and 38% rate their agencies "somewhat effective." Only 3% rated their programs as "not too effective" or "not at all effective." Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the ANA, says "Having a

formal agency evaluation process is... more imperative at a time of heightened focus on marketing accountability... this will productively support collaborative integrated marketing and brand building strategies in the long run." Best practices that were identified from the survey include: • All marketers (even those with smaller budgets) should conduct formal agency performance evaluations on a regular basis • Assign a trusted, neutral point person to keep focused on objectives and metrics vs. personalities • Consider having a more informal "mid-term review" to avoid surprises at the end of the year • Use a consistent format for all agencies, in person, with clear

corrective action plans with due dates and owners 76% of marketers report that their firms have a formal evaluative process in place for their traditional creative ad agencies. Other agencies most likely to be subject to an evaluation are: • Traditional media agencies (68%) • Digital agencies (47%) • Direct marketing agencies, public relations agencies and multicultural agencies (25%) In general, formal evaluations are conducted annually by about two-thirds of the firms while about one-third evaluate their agencies more frequently than annually. For more about the ANA and this study, please visit here.

77

MediaDailyNews: Nielsen Finds Slight Improvement In Button-Pushing Compliance, Addressing Multi-Viewer Problem With 'Urgency' (MediaPost | Media News)

in Nielsen's TV ratings panel to find out if they are pushing their buttons correctly, something some Nielsen Monday updated clients researchers feel could influence on its ongoing efforts to measure their behavior, and the outcome of the button-pushing compliance of the ratings research. But Nielsen people in its people meter-based said it is fielding these studies TV ratings system. The update, p e r i o d i c a l l y w i t h t h e f u l l which was based on an "in-panel" knowledge and cooperation of its study conducted in April, was clients and "industry groups." implemented before Nielsen Like past studies, the April i n i t i a t e d a " C o m p l i a n c e research indicates relatively high Improvement Program" last " a g r e e m e n t r a t e s " b e t w e e n summer, which is intended to Nielsen's people meter ratings boost compliance rates higher, but panels and the behavior reported t h e f i n d i n g s i n d i c a t e n o in the validation studies, which deterioration and even a slight contact people by phone and ask improvement in the overall them what they are watching on compliance among Nielsen's TV. The April study, the fourth people meter panelists. conducted so far, yielded an The in-panel study is somewhat overall agreement rate of 90.31% controversial, in that it contacts people who are active participants Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:30:38 AM

MediaDailyNews: Nielsen Trades Pocket Pieces For Facebook, Will Conduct Research Via Online Social Network (MediaPost | Media News)

partners this week and will be rolled out to all Facebook advertisers in the coming months, Nielsen and Facebook this the companies said in a statement morning announced a multi-year released early this morning. deal that will enable the media They said the research utilizes and marketing research firm to tap "opt-in" polls on Facebook's the "consumer reach" of the homepage to measure consumer online social network. The first attitudes and purchase intent from product from the collaboration, display advertising that has not surprisingly, measures the appeared on the site. effectiveness of advertising on Nielsen said the research will Facebook. measure "aided awareness, ad Dubbed BrandLift, it will recall, message association, brand launch in the U.S. with select test f a v o r a b i l i t y a n d p u r c h a s e Submitted at 9/22/2009 5:30:38 AM

consideration" via a set of short, specially designed one or two question surveys. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, nor the cost associated with Nielsen or Facebook clients participating in the program, but Nielsen said it would conduct "hundreds" of Nielsen BrandLift tests over the coming months. "The frequency of the surveys will be carefully controlled to limit any one user from being asked to participate too often. No personally identifiable

information will be collected as part of this program," Nielsen said. This is not the first time Nielsen has experimented with social media to conduct media research online. A couple of years ago, Nielsen mounted its own quasi social network, dubbed "Hey! Nielsen" and amassed a considerable user group base that supplied Nielsen with their views on a wide range of media, entertainment, advertising and personality subjects. After

conducting the research as part of an open forum, Nielsen mysteriously pulled the plug on the social media platform, and never disclosed to its users what became of that research. Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, are scheduled to discuss the new alliance via a live webcast at 11 a.m. (EST) today at www.facebook.com/marketing.

78

Internet News Record

MEDIADAILYNEWS continued from page 77 vs. an average of 88.97% for all four waves. As in previous studies, certain households, especially those with Hispanic and African American members, or those in which there are multiple viewers to a single set, tend to have lower overall compliance rates. The multiple viewer phenomenon has proved especially vexing for Nielsen researchers, because the more people present in front of a set,

the lower the compliance rate. "While we see some improvement in April 2009, there continues to be less compliance in situations where there are multiple viewers to a single set, confirming previous findings," Nielsen said in a notice sent to clients on Monday. "This is being addressed with urgency in our remediation program."