Category: News

The Obama administration’s longstanding pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay just hit a major obstacle in the House, creating doubts over whether the detention facility can be closed this year — if at all.

Last night the House Armed Services Committee finished this year’s bill authorizing $567 billion worth of defense spending and another $159 billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for the fiscal year beginning in October. Following an administration budget plan announced in February by Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale, the Afghanistan war request contained a vague provision — indeed, not even carrying the words “Guantanamo Bay” — called a “transfer fund” to authorize the purchase of the Thomson Correction Center in Illinois. The administration wants to buy Thomson in order to have a secure facility on U.S. soil to house those Guantanamo detainees it designates for military commissions or indefinite detention without charge. Once the federal government buys Thomson, it can shut down Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay.

Or that was the plan. The actual bill hasn’t been released yet. But buried at the bottom of an extensive summary the committee released last night is an express prohibition on the use of any Defense Department money to buy a new detention facility. According to the bill summary, the bill now requires Defense Secretary Robert Gates to give Congress a report that “adequately justifies any proposal to build or modify such a facility” if it wants to move forward with any post-Guantanamo detention plan.

“The Committee firmly believes that the construction or modification of any facility in the U.S. to detain or imprison individuals currently being held at Guantanamo must be accompanied by a thorough and comprehensive plan that outlines the merits, costs, and risks associated with utilizing such a facility,” the summary text read. “No such plan has been presented to date. The bill prohibits the use of any funds for this purpose.”

That might place insurmountable obstacles to the the so-called “Gitmo North” plan to transfer Guantanamo detainees to Thomson. “They can’t just create Guantanamo North and move everyone up there. That’s clearly barred,” said Chris Anders, a senior lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union who monitored yesterday’s mark-up. “It doesn’t mean that the proposal is dead, but it’s hard to see how it makes a comeback after the House Armed Services Committee says there can’t be money spent on Thomson.”

That’s not all. While the bill doesn’t renew the current Congressional ban on transferring detainees from Guantanamo into the U.S. — set to expire in October — it requires President Obama to submit a “a comprehensive disposition plan and risk assessment” for any future detainee transfer. Congress would then get “120 days to review the disposition plan before it could be carried out.” Additionally, Congress would get a 30-day review period for the proposed transfer of any detainee from Guantanamo to a foreign country in order to check against a detainee inflicting violence against the U.S. or its interests. The summary instructs Gates to tell Congress that any such foreign transfer meets “strict security criteria to thoroughly vet any foreign country to which a detainee may be transferred.”

The bill, which passed the committee on a vote of 59 to 0, will go to the House floor and receive a vote most likely next week. A Senate Armed Services Committee mark-up of the companion bill in the Senate is scheduled for the end of May.

This is a major setback for Obama’s campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. While it’s theoretically possible for an amendment authorizing the Thomson purchase to come back into the bill during floor debate, “this makes it much, much harder for the administration to move forward with the closure of Guantanamo, there’s no doubt about that,” said Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It’s hard to see what reasonable options the president has without jumping through congressional hoops that are unreasonable and unnecessary, and it’s harder to move forward both with prosecuting those who are terrorist suspects and releasing to freedom those who are not.”

But beyond the closure of the detention facility itself, the prohibitions now contained in the bill have policy implications for the dispensation of justice for detainees remaining at Guantanamo, a burning political issue all through this year. Those “abhorrent” prohibitions, Warren said, “essentially prohibit the executive from moving forward with its constitutional and human-rights obligations to try people [and] creates a paradigm where the operative default mechanism will be to detain people without trial.” In April, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to work with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on a new legal architecture for indefinite detention without charge.

Anders took a more optimistic view. If the bill passes, as is likely, the administration “will have to work harder and work faster at what they’ve been doing effectively for the past 16 or 17 months, which is repatriating and resettling detainees one by one who have been cleared and then bring people here for prosecution,” Anders said, even with the new congressional repatriation restrictions. This week, one of those detainees the administration designated for civilian prosecution, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who has been transfered to a Manhattan prison, unsuccessfully urged a federal judge to dismiss his case.

But such an incremental approach would not allow Obama to close the facility until the last detainee either leaves or faces criminal charges, a process likely to take years even without all of the political obstacles that have emerged around terrorism trials and holding terrorism defendants in federal corrections facilities. Additionally, it would require Holder and the Obama administration to abandon a decision that has been much reviled in the civil libertarian community: designating 48 detainees currently held at Guantanamo for continued indefinite detention without charge.

Closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was a bipartisan goal before President Obama took office, with both President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, rhetorically committed to shutting down an international symbol of American lawlessness. But an effective campaign waged by conservatives to portray the closure as negligent with national security — and Obama and the Democrats as weak for seeking it — has raised the political stakes for Democratic members of Congress. Last year, the Senate voted with 90 votes to prohibit the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to the U.S., and this year, the still-unresolved question of whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the 9/11 conspirators ought to be tried in civilian courts or military commissions has become Holder’s defining challenge. With Republicans hostile to the Guantanamo closure plan likely to gain seats in Congress after the November midterm elections, future attempts at closing the facility are likely to face even greater political opposition.

Requests for comment to the White House and the Office of the Secretary of Defense were not immediately returned.

Google, as expected, has unveiled Android 2.2 — aka Froyo — at its I/O developers conference. Froyo brings some awesome new features to the Android platform, not the least of which is Wi-Fi and USB tethering. Android 2.2 phones have mobile hotspot capability baked right into the platform now. The new OS version also includes huge speed increases in the handling of Java code, which is significant as many apps are written using Java.

In conjunction with this announcement, Adobe formally introduced Flash 10.1 for Android. Flash 10.1 brings full Flash handling to Android and the web browser.

You can see both Froyo and the new Flash in action in this video, including the speed improvements. The Nexus One shown is the fastest Android phone I’ve seen yet, due to the new Android 2.2. In the video this speed improvement is shown against the Verizon Droid Incredible, the previous performance champ.

Note: The Flash 10.1 public beta for Android kicks off today, and Android 2.2 is the minimum system requirement. The new version has dependencies only present in Android 2.2 and will not work with earlier versions of Android. The beta will be available for download in the Android Market, but only for phones with Froyo installed. Google has not yet finalized which handsets will be getting an Android 2.2 update.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub. req’d): Google’s Mobile Strategy: Understanding the Nexus One

---

---

---

---

---

It broke through $65, now is trying to make back some of the lost ground, but check out the dive:

(Chart via Finviz)

Join the conversation about this story »

Filed under: SUV, Infiniti, First Drive, Luxury

Ask any braniac elementary school student what happened to the dinosaurs, and they’ll tell you they turned into birds. While the mechanics are a bit more complicated than a momma T-Rex hatching a brood of yellow finches, modern science would seem to agree with the concept. When we were in school, the common perception was that those massive lizards parted ways with terra firma courtesy of a jumbo-sized meteor smack. Our Earth Science books called it a mass extinction, and they accompanied the definition with helpful illustrations that depicted contemplative Brontosaurus and Triceratops herds looking off into the distance as a chunk of orange sky plummeted toward the horizon.

So you can’t really blame us for thinking that the SUV would follow a similar natural path. When fuel prices shot up, many rejoiced at the thought of global body-on-frame extinction. This was the event some had been patiently waiting for since the high-riding people movers first supplanted the minivan as the family cruiser of choice. And while we’ve certainly seen weaker species succumb to the heat of pressure from more efficient breeds, the strong continue to soldier on, slowly adapting to a world grown hostile to anything big and thirsty. If you believe Infiniti, that’s exactly what the 2011 QX56 has done – evolved.

Photos by Zach Bowman / Copyright (C)2009 Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading First Drive: 2011 Infiniti QX56 overcomes the odds

First Drive: 2011 Infiniti QX56 overcomes the odds originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 20 May 2010 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Roll Call reports:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon called for the reinstatement of a ban on the sale of assault weapons in the U.S. while reiterating his opposition to a controversial Arizona immigration law during an address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday.

Calderon, citing his administration’s efforts to address the growing violence on the border related to the drug trade, argued that the spike in violence resulted in part from the end of the assault weapons ban in 2004.

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, have floated the idea of proposing a renewal of the assault weapons ban. But in the face of opposition from the gun lobby — not to mention the conservative Democrats who represent most of the party’s gains in recent elections — that idea has gone precisely nowhere.

Late last week, of course, Google ‘fessed up to the fact that it was accidentally collecting some data being transmitted over open WiFi connections with its Google Street View mapping cars. As we noted at the time, it was bad that Google was doing this and worse that they didn’t realize it. However, it wasn’t nearly as bad as some have made it out to be. First of all, anyone on those networks could have done the exact same thing. As a user on a network, it’s your responsibility to secure your connection. Second, at best, Google was getting a tiny fraction of any data, in that it only got a quick snippet as it drove by. Third, it seemed clear that Google had not done anything with that collected data. So, yes, it was not a good thing that this was done, but the actual harm was somewhat minimal — and, again, anyone else could have easily done the same thing (or much worse).

That said, given the irrational fear over Google collecting any sort of information in some governments, this particular bit of news has quickly snowballed into investigations across Europe and calls for the FTC to get involved in the US. While one hopes that any investigation will quickly realize that this is not as big a deal as it’s being made out to be, my guess is that, at least in Europe, regulators will come down hard on Google.

However, going to an even more ridiculous level, the class action lawyers are jumping into the game. Eric Goldman points us to a hastily filed class action lawsuit filed against Google over this issue. Basically, it looks like the lawyers found two people who kept open WiFi networks, and they’re now suing Google, claiming that its Street View operations “harmed” them. For the life of me, I can’t see how that argument makes any sense at all. Here’s the filing:

Basically, you have two people who could have easily secured their WiFi connection or, barring that, secured their own traffic over their open WiFi network, and chose to do neither. Then, you have a vague claim, with no evidence, that Google somehow got their traffic when its Street View cars photographed the streets where they live. As for what kind of harm it did? Well, there’s nothing there either.

My favorite part, frankly, is that one of the two people involved in bringing the lawsuit, Vicki Van Valin, effectively admits that she failed to secure confidential information as per her own employment requirements. Yes, this is in her own lawsuit filing:

Van Valin works in the high technology field, and works from her home over her internet-connect computer a substantial amount of time. In connection with her work and home life, Van Valin transmits and receives a substantial amount of data from and to her computer over her wireless connection (“wireless data”). A significant amount of the wireless data is also subject to her employer’s non-disclosure and security regulations.

Ok. So your company has non-disclosure and security regulations… and you access that data unencrypted over an unencrypted WiFi connection… and then want to blame someone else for it? How’s that work now? Basically, this woman appears to be admitting that she has violated her own company’s rules in a lawsuit she’s filed on her behalf. Wow.

While there’s nothing illegal about setting up an open WiFi network — and, in fact, it’s often a very sensible thing to do — if you’re using an open WiFi network, it is your responsibility to recognize that it is open and any unencrypted data you send over that network can be seen by anyone else on the same access point.

This is clearly nothing more than a money grab by some people, and hopefully the courts toss it out quickly, though I imagine there will be more lawsuits like this one.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

It’s no secret that I am not fond of the teacher’s unions.  I get into a lot of arguments about this, in which I am accused of being uninterested in any school reforms that don’t involve breaking the power of the teacher’s unions.  Of course, short of the not-very-successful class size reduction schemes, there aren’t many proposed reforms that don’t involve breaking the power of the teachers’ unions. 

Exhibit B is Steven Brill’s new piece on the teacher’s unions in New York, which illustrates just how far the unions are willing to go at the expense of the kids.  (Exhibit A is Brill’s piece on the NYC rubber rooms; he’s clearly assembling the material for a killer book.)  They cost the state a chance at millions because they were 100% completely opposed to things like performance pay, or allowing the district to transfer teachers where they are needed, rather than where they’d like to be.

But in a 403-page appendix to its 348-page application, New
York
included the M.O.U. that actually had been signed by all of its school
districts. It was worded almost exactly as the federal government’s
M.O.U. — except that after reciting everything that would be done to
link student tests to teacher evaluations, and to compensate teachers
and move them up on a career ladder according to those evaluations, the
New York M.O.U. inserted this qualifier: “consistent with any applicable
collective-bargaining requirements.” The same phrase was also inserted
after the promise to “ensure the equitable distribution of effective
teachers” — a reform aimed at allowing school systems to assign their
best teachers to the schools most in need. Then for good measure at the
end of the entire M.O.U. this sentence was added to cover everything:
“Nothing in this M.O.U. shall be construed to override any applicable
state or local collective-bargaining requirements.”

Of course the U.F.T.’s collective-bargaining agreements in New York
City, as well as union contracts in much of the rest of the state,
explicitly prohibit exactly the reforms promised in the application.
Changing that is the point of Duncan’s contest. When I asked Tisch about
this, she pointed to another added sentence, in which each school
system and the union agree to negotiate any necessary contract changes
in “good faith.” That’s the “way we solved that,” she says.

“Right,” Klein says. “That’s like telling a woman you’ll marry her in
the morning.”

Nor is it true, as one often hears, that teachers and principals have
nothing to do with the problems, but are mere hostages of terrible
conditions in their neighborhoods.  Brill points to a charter school
that actually shares all of its resources with a public school in the
same building–even, in some cases, the same families, as some send
different kids to the different schools.

But while the public side spends more, it produces less. P.S. 149
is
rated by the city as doing comparatively well in terms of student
achievement and has improved since Mayor Michael

Bloomberg took over the city’s schools in 2002 and appointed Joel
Klein as chancellor. Nonetheless, its students are performing
significantly behind the charter kids on the other side of the wall. To
take one representative example, 51 percent of the third-grade students
in the public school last year were reading at grade level, 49 percent
were reading below grade level and none were reading above. In the
charter, 72 percent were at grade level, 5 percent were reading below
level and 23 percent were reading above level. In math, the charter
third graders tied for top performing school in the state, surpassing
such high-end public school districts as Scarsdale.

Same building. Same community. Sometimes even the same parents. And the
classrooms have almost exactly the same number of students. In fact, the
charter school averages a student or two more per class. This calculus
challenges the teachers unions’ and Perkins’s “resources” argument —
that hiring more teachers so that classrooms will be smaller makes the
most difference. (That’s also the bedrock of the union refrain that
what’s good for teachers — hiring more of them — is always what’s good
for the children.) Indeed, the core of the reformers’ argument, and the
essence of the Obama approach to the Race to the Top, is that a slew of
research over the last decade has discovered that what makes the most
difference is the quality of the teachers and the principals who
supervise them. Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University

of Washington, reported, “The effect of increases in teacher
quality swamps the impact of any other educational investment, such as
reductions in class size.”

This building on 118th Street could be Exhibit A for that conclusion.

It’s not necessarily that the teachers on one side are worse
teachers–but they operate in a very strict system of limits that, for
example, keeps their workday to exactly 6 hours and 57 minutes, while
the charter school classes run much longer.  Even terrific workers can
underperform in that kind of environment.  It doesn’t strike me that it
is likely to be much of an accident that urban schools have gotten worse
as the teachers’ unions have grown more powerful (though I certainly
wouldn’t argue that it’s the only contributing factor).

The issue with the teachers’ unions is not the unions per
se–agitating for higher pay wouldn’t make much difference, and is
indeed probably a great idea.  The problem is that the structure they
impose makes it almost impossible (though not quite!) to innovate, and
to spread the innovations that work. The cushy job protections and
strict work rules are great for the teachers.  But the schools aren’t
there for the benefit of the teachers.

Craig Venter has taken yet another step towards his goal of creating synthetic life forms. He’s synthesized the genome of a microbe and then implanted that piece of DNA into a DNA-free cell of another species. And that…that thing…can grow and divide. It’s hard to say whether this is “life from scratch,” because the boundary between such a thing and ordinary life (and non-life) is actually blurry. For example, you could say that this is still a nature hybrid, because its DNA is based on the sequence of an existing species of bacteria. If Venter made up a sequence from scratch, maybe we’d have crossed to a new terrain.

Anyway–this news just hit the wires thanks to an embargo break, so I don’t have time to go into more detail. Joe Palca at NPR has posted his article on the subject. For background, please check out these stories I’ve written about this general area of research:

Tinker, Tailor: Can Venter Stitch Together A Genome From Scratch?

The Meaning of Life

The Six Most Important Experiments In The World

Artificial Life? Old News.

The High-Tech Search For A Cleaner Biofuel Alternative

On the Origin of Tomorrow

My Bloggingheads interview with Venter

Update: The scientists are in a live press conference that started a 1 pm.

Senator Bennett, R-Utah, has just announced he will not mount a write-in campaign for the Senate race in Utah. Bennett acknowledged the urging he has received from people around the country and from colleagues in Washington nudging him to run a write-in campaign.

At a press conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, he called the race up until this point “nasty” and the atmosphere “truly toxic.”

The lawmaker then thanked his staff and said his 18-year run is more than most senators get. Bennett has made no decision yet on endorsing any candidate.

The senator’s announcement comes after he failed to place in the top two during Utah’s GOP convention on May 8, thus ejecting him from the primary race.

Bennett came in third behind attorney Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater. Lee and Bridgewater are set to face-off again on June 22 to determine the GOP’s nominee.

Whoever wins the primary will go up against the Democratic candidate, Utah Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission Chair Sam Granato.

While Bennett came up short at the GOP convention, his loss isn’t seen as a threat to Republicans, who are widely favored to win the seat in November.‬‪ No Democrat has won in a Utah Senate race since 1970.

Nationally, Bennett’s loss has been cited as an example of a growing anti-incumbent sentiment across the country in 2010 elections.‬‪

Initially following the May 8 defeat, a spokesperson for Senator Bennett said he had made no decision about whether he might consider a write-in campaign.‬‪‬‪

Independent Wayne Hill and “Constitution Party” candidate Scott Bradley are also vying for the seat.

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) announced this afternoon that he will not be mounting a write-in campaign, his only remaining option to retain the seat he has held since 1993.

“If I were to do it, it would revive all of those passions and divide the party in the state of Utah,” he said during a press conference in front of the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s offices.

Bennett became the first incumbent to lose re-nomination this election cycle when he came in third during the state’s GOP convention May 8 in what he called the “nastiest race for a party nomination in the history of Utah.” Businessman Tim Bridgewater and attorney Mike Lee, who came in first and second respectively, will fight for the GOP nomination in the state primary election June 22. During the convention he had kept the write-in option open — he had missed the state deadline to run as an independent candidate — but did not commit at that time to continue his campaign.

“If I’m eliminated, I’m going to go home and get a good night sleep,” he told The Associated Press. “That’s the only commitment I’ll make.”

Bennett did not endorse Bridgewater or Lee during his press conference, but Politico reported Bennett and Bridgewater will meet later today.

Not that “cool kids” or “nerds” is a judgment in any way (or that one is better than the other), but it seems to be how things are shaping up in 2010.  Apple is the cool kid on the block, playing foosball over in the corner with a leather jacket.  Google, on the other hand, is the nerd, sitting in the corner with the calculator and pocket protector thinking “one day, these people will work for me.”  Who will win the battle?

Cast your vote below for the nerds or the cool kids, but be sure to defend your choice in the comments!

{Widget type=”poll” id=”3231421″ name=””Apple vs. Google: Will the nerds or the cool kids win?”}

The actor Kevin Costner provided to the BP oil centrifuges with technology developed by him and a group of scientists to separate the oil from the water to try to clean the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, informed the press John Houghtaling, Costner’s partner.

Costner is a passionate environmentalist and fisherman in his spare time, he traveled to New Orleans to present the invention in society and propose its use to save the fragile ecosystem and, above all, to avoid another disaster of the magnitude of the spill of 37,000 tonnes of hydrocarbon in March 1989 caused the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

It was this ecological tragedy that prompted the actor, 55, to invest in technology that can mitigate the effects of other similar discharge without knowing that this time would come this year, 21 years later.

For 15 years the actor has overseen the construction of machines that separate oil from water, he invested $ 24 million of his own money on private sector development.

Costner, who traveled to New Orleans with Houghtaling said he was “saddened” by the spill caused by the collapse of the rig Deepwater Horizon, operated by British Petroleum (BP), exactly one month ago, but also hopeful because, he said, “That’s why we have developed” machines.

Doug Suttles said that BP has authorized the use of six of the 32 machines that have Ocean Therapy Solutions for testing. These devices are able to purify 97 percent of contaminated water and John Houghtaling told reporters that the company is working to develop technology to also separate the remaining 3 percent.

The machines, Costner said, “are ready to be used and solve problems and not talk about them” only. The technology was ready for use ten years ago, but nobody was interested in those machines, said Houghtaling.

Related posts:

1. Oil Spill In Gulf Mexico Affects Seafood Industry
2. Mexico Oil Spill : Lives and Money
3. John Travolta’s dogs were killed

Last week’s news that Google’s Street View cars collected the content of messages flowing over open wireless networks while mapping the location of those access points is a privacy wake-up call to the company and wireless users alike.

Google had previously represented that it did not collect or store what it calls “payload data” and what EFF and the law call communications “content” — the actual information that was being transmitted by users over the unprotected networks. But on Friday the company admitted that its audit of the software deployed in the Street View cars revealed that the devices actually had been inadvertently collecting content transmitted over non-password protected Wi-Fi networks. To its credit, Google publicly admitted the error.

There’s no reason to doubt Google’s claim of mistake, but at this point in their growth and sophistication, Google should not be making these kinds of privacy errors. Google programmers wrote the Street View Wi-Fi access mapping code and Google employees used that code to collect about 600 gigabytes of extra data. Someone at the company should also have ensured that the code, both as written and in practice was (1) collecting only the data necessary for the project, (2) collecting only the data that Google represented that it was collecting, and (3) otherwise in compliance with the law.

Google is too mature to be making these kinds of rookie privacy mistakes. When you are in the business of collecting and monetizing other people’s personal data — as Google and so many other internet businesses are — clear standards and comprehensive auditing are essential to protect against improper collection, use or leakage of private information. Google’s failure to make enforceable promises to implement such safeguards is one of the reasons for EFF’s opposition to the Google Books settlement.

Following this unfortunate privacy breach, Google will likely have to face European and U.S. regulators as well as the inevitable lawsuits. Notably, Google’s potential liability under U.S. law is not clear. Penalties for wiretapping electronic communications in the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) only apply to intentional acts of interception, yet Google claims it collected the content by accident. Further, the scope of legal protections for unencrypted wireless communications are uncertain. There is an exception to ECPA’s general prohibition on content interception when the intercepted communications are “readily accessible to the general public.” This exception was not written with Wi-Fi in mind and the courts have not yet directly grappled with the issue, but Google may assert that unencrypted Wi-Fi signals fit that exception.

Open Wi-Fi is a great public service, but users must take the initiative if they care about the confidentiality of information traveling over their open wireless networks. With legal protections unclear, the only privacy safeguards are technological. If you want any security, you need to encrypt your packets.

As for the Street View debacle, the first priority should be to secure the private information that was already improperly collected. Google has set forth a solid plan to accomplish this: it commissioned an independent third party to review the software at issue, confirm that Google segregated the data and made it inaccessible, and to figure out how to prevent these problems in the future.

Google must eventually destroy the data, though it will have to wait for approval from relevant regulators investigating the incident and from courts in which lawsuits are pending. If access to the communications is necessary for civil or criminal investigations or for discovery in a lawsuit, then care must be taken to protect user privacy in the meantime. In particular, calls from some quarters for Google to simply turn over the data to the U.S. or other governments are wrong-headed. To allow a government to investigate a privacy breach by further violating privacy is senseless.

The second priority should be for Google, and everyone else in the data collection business, to closely examine their data collection practices to ensure that they are actually doing what they have promised. In addition, companies should re-evaluate their data retention policies. While not directly related to the Wi-Fi gaffe, Google’s long-term retention of search data creates an unnecessary risk to users that the data will be disclosed, as Jules Polonetsky of the Future of Privacy Forum recently pointed out:

Yahoo has been able to implement a three-month retention period for its search and ad-serving log data without any impact on the quality of search results or ad-serving capabilities. Why can’t other companies follow Yahoo’s lead? The Article 29 Working Group of European regulators have advised that six months is the maximum time period for search data retention in their jurisdiction, and Microsoft has already started deleting full IP addresses from their search logs after six months.

In contrast to Yahoo and Microsoft, Google only partially anonymizes the IP addresses linked to your search queries at nine months, rather than at three or six months, and never completely deletes them. Yet, as the clear market leader when it comes to search, Google should have the best privacy practices in the business. With great success comes great responsibility. Google isn’t a little start-up anymore. Even when it doesn’t make mistakes, it regularly handles personal, intimate information from billions of people around the world. It’s time for Google to lead the way in responsible data collection and retention practices.

When people in America like politicians, we’re generally sane about it. We vote for them, and put signs up in our yards. The more devoted of us will maybe purchase a t-shirt or a button. In general, we’re a rather restrained bunch.

But if there’s one thing that the Internet and Youtube have shown us, it’s that there are exceptions to every rule. Both in this country and around the world, there are people who, for whatever reason, react to politicians they love with less restraint than a fifteen-year-old at a Jonas Brothers concert. And we’ve got the links to prove it.

For a start, there’s…

1. Unwise Political Tattoos

Look, if there’s a politician out there that gives you tingly feelings, then there’s nothing particularly wrong with getting a tattoo of them. Considering the things people get tattooed on themselves these days (foreign phrases they barely know the meaning of, misspelled bible verses, penises, etc) political figures are probably on the more sensible side of the body-art bell curve.

But as a general rule, it’s probably advisable to actually wait until a politician’s term is up, or at least well established, until you permanently etch his face into your flesh. Otherwise, you run the risk being like a Star Wars fan who believed the hype and got an Episode One tattoo before the movie came out. Judging by the ‘polls closed’ label, this guy got the tattoo in November 2008, before Obama had actually served a day in office. He would have really been screwed if Obama had changed course and decided to govern on a platform devoted entirely to the promotion of child pornography and puppy kicking.

Then there’s the ‘DEAR LORD I REALLY HATE THIS PERSON’ tattoos.

Look, tattooed people, we understand that you don’t approve of Bush or Palin. Maybe you find them execrable human beings. But you know, I don’t like the post office at all, and you don’t see me walking around with a clever version of the USPS logo tattooed on my calf for all the world to see. Is permanently marking them on your body really the best way to demonstrate your hatred towards someone? When your wife leaves you, do you get her name tattooed on your arm to remind you how much she pisses you off? In forty years time, when the Bush presidency is no more than a blip in American history, this poor dude will still be explaining to his grandchildren who that weird vampire man is, and how it’s related to why mommy sometimes cries at night.

2. Kim Jong-Il, Storm God

At first glance, devotions to Kim Jong-Il probably don’t belong on this list. After all, North Koreans in general have no choice but to accept weird-ass devotions to their psychotic leader. The country even has a whole Department of Propaganda dedicated to providing this stuff.

But really, even the risk of being arrested and imprisoned without trial in a labor camp doesn’t excuse output like this.

If for whatever reason you can’t watch it, the lyrics go like this:

When General Kim Jong Il was born
the clouds opened up
and he came down from heaven,
and then there was huge snowstorm.

When General Kim Jong Il shouts out loud
storms always happen,
HUGE STORMS ALWAYS HAPPEN!

Let’s just leave aside the image of a pudgy midget-dude with weird glasses descending from the clouds amid glorious sunbeams. Outside of some very excitable meteorologists and tornado cellar salesmen, we’re pretty sure no one in the world actually thinks that huge storms are a good thing. They hurt people, destroy crops and animals, and wreck the fuck out of people’s hairdos. In other words, our boy Kim significantly impairs the local economy whenever he yells really loud.

So there’s only two possible reasons for this being included: 1. North Korea, with its lack of electricity and functioning civilization, is so dull that people look forward to storms, because flying leaves and branches are kind of their version of reality television. 2. The people at the Department of Propaganda, at the risk of imprisonment and death, are putting subversive messages into their films implying that Kim Jong-Il is in fact a destructive force. If this is the case, we applaud their strength, courage and bafflingly rebellious lyrics.

3. Campaign-Fuelled Baby Naming

In October 2008, after he attended a campaign rally, a Tennessee father decided to name his newborn baby daughter ‘Sarah McCain Palin’. He did so without telling his wife, who had picked out another name and was presumably high on drugs while he did so. We’re sure she got a nice surprise when she woke up.

We’re also sure that this kid is going to grow up totally happy and well-adjusted, seeing that she was attached by name to a failed campaign before she was a year old. And there’s also the fact that if she ever runs into the guy with the anti-Sarah Palin tattoo on his calf, he’s going to beat the crap out of her.

Still, at least it’s slightly more reversible than an unwise tattoo. At least the parents can change their daughter’s name. Or they can make up a convincing story to tell her when she gets older about a deceased great aunt called “Sarah McCain” and their devotion to British comedian Michael Palin.

And while we’re on the subject of the vice presidential candidate herself…

4. Country Music Stalk Fest

In late 2008, country artist Pat Geller released ‘Moose Shootin’ Mama’, dedicated to Sarah Palin. The video combines pictures of Palin, moose, and Palin with dead moose, leading us to assume that the songwriter and video maker either really love Palin or really, really hate moose.

She’s a Moose Shootin’ Mama

Sarah is the girl for me

Yes, Sarah is the girl for me

After it was released Pat Garrett’s song was featured on TV and several country stations. Interestingly, Garret claims that the idea was conceived by an Obama-supporting friend of his after he saw this picture, supposedly of Palin:

…and came up with the title on the spot. Mr. Garrett told the media that after his friend gave him the idea, he wrote the song in ten minutes, presumably after spending some time in the bathroom, alone. Surprisingly, the McCain/Palin campaign decided to use the song rather than issue Garrett a restraining order.

The irony here is that the image that inspired the song is in fact a fake. But still, it’s heartening that even in this day and age, the two sides of the political spectrum together can still be brought together by scantily-clad women and some Photoshopping.

5. Putin Devotional Music

Unlike the Palin song, which is basically conceived by a couple of fans, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin can attract professionally-produced videos that find widespread success across Eastern Europe.

The first, “And Vova Rules” by Ukrainian group Dress Code, is about Putin (nicknamed ‘Vova’) being a superhero. The second, by Russian band Singing Together, is about two women wishing that their deadbeat boyfriends were more like Putin.

In the original Russian version, the women long for:

Someone like Putin, full of strength,
Someone like Putin, who doesn’t drink,
Someone like Putin, who doesn’t hurt me,
Someone like Putin, who won’t run away.

This Putin-lust might sound a bit strange, but it makes more sense when you realize that the average Russian male consumes around 50 bottles of vodka a year. Sure, Putin might have cracked down on civil liberties during his term as President, but at least he isn’t too drunk to fight off the bears that attack his household daily. Get it? Because they’re in Russia.

Now, say what you want about Putin, but while Kim Jong-Il’s regime is using bribes and death threats to produce mediocre videos about snow and horseriding, Putin is actually prompting people of their own free will to not only produce music about him, but to voluntarily spend money buying it. He may be a corrupt quasi-dictator, but god damn he does the corrupt quasi-dictator thing well.

6. The Dick Cheney Fan Club: Now With Cake

‘Dick Cheney’ and ‘Fan Club’ are not really words you expect to hear used together. Even among Republicans, Cheney tends to be treated him more with grudging respect than any sort of real admiration. (Plus, that respect is mostly based on the fact that they don’t want the former Vice President to shoot them in the face.) But once again, the Internet proves that this is not always the case. The online Dick Cheney Fan Club, dedicated to ‘the beautiful human being that is Dick Cheney’, features columnists, fun facts, famous Cheney quotes and even a store. There’s also a photo gallery, which includes mind-boggling images such as a Dick Cheney Cake and, uh, this:

But even if this seems disturbing, at least you can rest assured that the site contains no…

7. Political Fanfiction

In the deepest, darkest corridors of the Internet, there exists a genre known as political fanfiction. Behind the safety of privacy-locked posts and anonymity, young women (and some men) write stories about their very favorite politicians, uh, boning each other.

This is confusing, because as any avid watcher of C-SPAN knows, getting elected to office isn’t exactly a beauty contest (Hence the saying “Politics is showbusiness for ugly people”). But hey, power is an aphrodisiac, and this is the Internet after all. We should just be grateful that there’s no one there dressed up in a bunny suit.

These days, a popular coupling in this genre is Barack Obama and his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel. Nobody knows why, but it might have something to do with the fact that both men resemble desiccated corpses slightly less than the average politician. Some of these collections can be found here and here (the second requires membership).

I was going to copy and paste some quotes from the fanfiction, but if I did this the Department of Homeland Security would probably end up investigating me and then sending to Gitmo. And they would probably be doing the right thing. So click at your own risk, and remember that what has been seen can never, ever be unseen.

Where is E. 48th Street in Dunwoody? You know — east side. Right above 47th Street.

I have to admit that I heard about the E. 48th Street Market from colleagues soon after moving to Atlanta, and for the first few years I lived here I, um, assumed the streets were numbered in Dunwoody. I may even have, um, once gone looking for it and stopped and asked in a gas station where 48th Street was.

It has only taken me 13 years to make it to this delightful, straight-from-the-Northeast Italian deli and market on Jett Ferry Road, and I’m so glad I did.

Named for the address of a New York store run by owner Charlie Augello’s uncle, E. 48th St. Market is the kind of cramped, friendly, mildly chaotic food emporium that will remind you of the way markets used to be. A huge assortment of fresh baked breads and pastries, deli meats, prepared foods, dry goods, frozen ingredients and wine manage to pack into a space where you will, happily, bump into other …

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Yesterday, Google announced that, later this year, it will release the Chrome Web Store. The idea isn’t complex and philosophically compliments the app store for Google Docs and even Android Marketplace: Provide a marketplace for third-party apps. The strategy is sensible for Google, given its heavy orientation around the browser and cloud services.

Early last month I explained how Apple and Google are battling for the future of the mobile Web. Both companies are looking to capitalize on the shift from the PC client-server applications stack to the mobile device and cloud service stack. Apple’s approach makes the mobile app primary, pushing up to the cloud, while Google pushes services down from cloud to device, mainly the browser. Already, Apple has built a huge application and developer ecosystem around App Store. Google needs to counter, but leveraging its cloud services strengths.

By the way, about six years ago, I first directly told Microsoft executives that the company should develop an applications store for Windows. The idea: Utilize Windows product activation and update architectures to provide a means for developers to directly sell applications through the operating system. The mechanism would pay developers and combat rampant piracy, particularly for smaller developers. That’s pretty much what Apple did with App Store nearly two years ago. I’m convinced that Microsoft’s position with developers would be stronger had executives followed the advice.

Now for those five reasons:

1. Google is launching a new operating system. Google says the app store will support both Chrome browser and OS. There is a chicken-and-egg scenario that applies to new operating systems, and many have failed because of it: Which comes first? The OS or the applications? Generally, people won’t adopt an operating system unless there are applications, but developers tend not to support an OS unless there are users. By launching a dual-platform app store, Google can woo developers, providing base applications (along with its own many services) to jumpstart adoption.

2. Applications can drive up Chrome browser adoption faster. The dual-platform strategy can work because Google’s browser is rapidly gaining usage share, while Firefox usage has leveled off and Internet Explorer declines. Good applications could give more people more reasons to adopt Chrome. It only takes one killer application to drive massive adoption. By the way, this is exactly the kind of scenario Microsoft tired to prevent during the late-`90s browser wars with Netscape: The Web browser becoming a pseudo operating system around which developers build applications and services.

3. Developers can get paid for their Web work. Right now, the app stores where developers get paid are tied to mobile operating system supporting services, like Android Marketplace or Apple App Store, among others. None of the major computer OS developers offers integrated app stores, nor does any major service provider offer one for browsers (emphasis on major provider). Google is in position to provide developers a place to sell rich Internet applications and supporting services for browsers, which reach would be broader than just mobile phones. Google Checkout, or perhaps a new payment system, would get developers paid for their work. LOL, how strange if Flash developers could get paid by Google. What a stick up Apple’s no-Flash policy that would be.

4. Chrome Web Store can drive search usage and advertising dollars. Surely some developers will offer free apps, around which Google could bundle advertising — something like what it already does and extended to something like Apple plans for its iAd advertising platform for iPhone OS 4. Based on Google’s current behavior, its platform would offer developers more freedom than would Apple’s. Google executives insinuate that applications could work with any browser, and that could arguably be the case for other Webkit-based browsers or applications supporting HTML 5. If so, Chrome Web Store would provide developers even more places to monetize their apps and for Google to drive its advertising and search businesses.

5. Browser users already are accustomed to installing browser plug-ins. End users shouldn’t have to learn new behavior. Based on what little information Google has disclosed, the app store would be about as easy to use as installing a browser plug-in. Assuming Google uses Checkout, people with accounts would need no onerous extra steps to purchase applications.

Do you have reasons to add? Please offer them up in comments.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

It’s Thursday and the crowds have cleared out from yesterday’s testimony about the new social studies curriculum that Texas School Board members are considering. Members worked into the night hearing about 120 members of the public, either “for” or “against” the new standards. With the testimony over, board members are getting down to brass tacks. This is where the real work gets done. The board is taking up member amendments one by one, grade level by grade level. They’re starting out with Kindergarten, on up to grade 12.

The discussion moves forward in inches. Two of the main topics so far have been: deleting historical figures John Smith from Kindergarten; and deleting Nathan Hale from grade 1. What’s wrong with John Smith and Nathan Hale, you ask? Nothing, say the backers of the amendments. But they say they’ve received feedback from teachers who want the names out. For example in Kindergarten, the original working group who developed the standards wanted only two historical studied. The board members added another three. Member Pat Hardy heard from teachers that the number was unwieldy, so she wanted to trim where she could. The motion passed and John Smith is out of Kindergarten.

Hardy was also the author of the amendment to strike Hale from the list of historical figures studied in the First grade. Apparently Hardy received feedback from teachers that their students couldn’t get past the Hale’s hanging. They would draw hangman pictures. Since Hale is studied in the Fifth grade, Hardy argued he was covered. That amendment also passed, but the vote was close.

These are just two small battles, but they’re good examples of how this process is creeping along.

Tweetdeck, a London-based startup that builds software to consume rapidly updating information streams, has raised $3 million in funding in what is an internal round, according to John Borthwick, co-founder of Betaworks, a NY-based startup and investment group. Betaworks is a lead investor in the company started by Iain Dodsworth; other angel investors include Ron Conway of SV Angel, Howard Lindzon and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures.

With this Series B round of funding, the company has raised a total of $3.5 million, including $800,000 via a convertible note last year. TechCrunch reported that the company had raised a total of $5.3 million, but that figure is not correct, Borthwick told us. Like its rival Seesmic, Tweetdeck is desperately trying to move away from its reliance on Twitter, which has decided to compete with client-makers.

Tweetdeck (and Seesmic), which have embraced rapidly updating personal data streams such as Facebook, Google Buzz and Foursquare, are also looking to diversify beyond their desktop applications into mobile apps. Liz, who’s covering the Google I/O in San Francisco, spoke to one of the folks at the Tweetdeck booth there and learned that the company is working on synchronizing data and updates across many different services. It also announced an experimental HTML5 version, though it won’t be coming to a device near you anytime soon.

Related content from GigaOM pro (sub req’d):

How Will We Access the Next-gen Web?

---

---

---

---

---

Terrence Howard secretly married his girlfriend, Michelle Ghent, a 33-year-old commercial production worker.

The actor/musician spilled the beans to CNN’s Anderson Cooper during an interview promoting his upcoming film, Winnie,at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday.

“To come here and be with my wife, it’s the best feeling in the world,” said the the 41-year-old Oscar nominee, who will play civil rights icon Nelson Mandela opposite Jennifer Hudson in the controversial biopic. According to reports, Howard and Ghent tied the knot in a small ceremony in January.

This is the second marriage for Howard, who split from first wife Lori McComma in 2005. The former couple have three children together.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar joined Senator Jay Rockefeller and four others in introducing the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. Here’s a quick explanation taken from the Senate press release…

Chairman Rockefeller’s bill will help put an end to the deceptive online sales tactics uncovered by the Commerce Committee’s landmark E-commerce investigation. The bill is sponsored by Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and George LeMieux (R-Fla.). Chairman Rockefeller’s bill will protect online shoppers by:

• Prohibiting companies like Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty from using misleading post-transaction advertisements by requiring them to clearly disclose the terms of the offers to consumers, and to obtain consumers’ billing information, including full credit or debit card numbers, directly from the consumers.
• Prohibiting Internet retailers and other commercial websites (“initial merchants”) from transferring a consumer’s billing information, including credit and debit card numbers, to post-transaction third party sellers, like Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty.
• Requiring companies that use “negative options” on the Internet to meet certain minimum disclosure and enrollment requirements, so consumers will not end up paying recurring fees for goods and services they did not intend to purchase.

Clearly it’s a nice step forward and it would seem to following that greater confidence in online shopping would boost interest and adoption of online shopping.

On a not-super-related note but tangentially related to Senator Klobuchar and greater use of the web … Senator Klobuchar joined another group of colleagues authoring a bill (Veterans One Source Act of 2010, S. 3355) to develop a modern, one-stop, user-friendly Web site for veterans.