Category: News

[JURIST] An Oregon jury Friday found the Boy Scouts of America negligent for failing to take actions that would have prevented further sexual abuse by an assistant scoutmaster during the 1980s and ordered the organization to pay $18.5 million in punitive damages to plaintiff Kerry Lewis. Multnomah County Circuit Court jurors concluded that awarding punitive damages was appropriate considering that the Boy Scouts acted in a recklessly indifferent manner in failing to protect child scouts from suspected pedophiles, particularly when the alleged molester had already confessed to molesting 17 children. Jurors were allowed access to highly restricted files known as “perversion files” that the Boy Scouts keep on suspected pedophiles after a judge ordered their release in March. The Lewis case is only the second instance in which a court has ordered the release of the files. The Boy Scouts say they will appeal the verdict.
Last week, the Oregon jury awarded $1.4 million to Lewis in damages for pain and suffering, finding that Boy Scouts of America National Council was 60 percent responsible for the abuse and allocating 15 percent of the liability to the local Cascade Pacific Council and 25 percent to the local sponsoring congregation Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormon congregation reached a settlement with Lewis prior to the verdict. Most sexual abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America are settled out of court.

Does your homescreen seem a bit plain? Maybe you just don’t have the real estate for all those widgets? Or perhaps those transitions from page to page are just…well, dull? If one or probably all these sound like you, I might just have something to perk up your Android.

GDE is a home replacement application. It is similar to PandaHome or OpenHome, though from personal experience, GDE has shown the best stability of the three. Along with great stability (which is important since nobody like force closes), it allows for up to 7 homescreens. Each can probably hold every widget you could ever want, and with it’s fast fling option all of them are just a swipe away.

One of GDE’s best points is it’s four unique transitions: Cube, Stretch, Fade, and the latest, Normal Cubed. Cube works like it sounds, changing the whole desktop and wallpaper setup into a spinning cube. Stretch presses the screen while dragging in the next. Fade uses a fade effect to switch screens. And my personal favorite, Normal Cubed, combines the standard Android transition with the Cube creating a pretty cool effect.

GDE has two widgets of it’s own: a conversation widget that comes in 4×3 and 4×4 sizes, and a 4×1 dockbar widget that allows quick access to your favorite apps.

Pluses:

• GDE is only $3.53, which makes it one of the cheaper home applications
• It’s exceedingly stable and offers multiple transitions
• Internal widgets allow quick access to both apps and conversations
• Up to 7 homescreens for all your widgets and apps

Things I’d like for the future:

• Although GDE has plenty of it’s own themes, the ability to use other homescreen application themes would be a welcome feature
• Perhaps a screen selector for those who have plenty of screens active

Bottom line:
GDE is a stable, capable, and customizable home replacement. You can’t get any better for your phone.

Note: This review was submitted by Andre Patterson as part of our app review contest.

Related Posts

• MyBackup Pro: A ROM flashers lifesaver
• Gmote: Turn your phone into a remote for your computer.
• FolderOrganizer: Spring cleaning for that cluttered home screen
• Quick Settings: Manage system settings from anywhere
• Ethereal Dialpad: A music app where you make the music

THERE is a whiff of exuberance around the world economy these days. Financial markets are buoyant, business confidence is rising and global growth seems increasingly robust. In its latest forecasts, released on April 21st, the IMF predicts that global output will grow by 4.2% this year on a purchasing-power basis, a full percentage point more than it foresaw six months ago. Other seers are even more optimistic, predicting growth of more than 4.5%—or close to the average pace of the boom years before the recession. The level of global output is now back to where it was before the downturn. And given the scale of the financial crisis, the recovery is surprisingly brisk. With global business investment accelerating and consumer spending strong, there is growing optimism that the recovery is becoming self-sustaining.

Some of this optimism is justified. Just as financial stress worsened the recession, so healthier financial markets are now reinforcing the recovery. Higher asset prices have propped up consumer spending and narrower corporate bond spreads have eased firms’ borrowing costs. Economic recovery, in turn, has helped ease financial pain. The IMF has reduced its estimate of banks’ total losses from the crisis by $500 billion, to $2.3 trillion, two-thirds of which has already been written off.

The trouble is that the good fortune has not been shared equally.

Continue reading at The Economist >>

Join the conversation about this story »

Hey, um, “Zoran,” if you owe money to Bank of America, can you give them a call because they seem to think you live at reader Kimber’s house and they are just not willing to accept that you don’t. Kimber says they call the house at “all hours of the day, during meal times and weekends” looking for you.

Kimber says:

For the past several months, we have been receiving phone calls from Bank of America. We get calls at all hours of the day, during meal times, and weekends. Sometimes when we pick up, there is no answer, but for the most part, when someone is on the other end of the line, the caller asks for “Zoran”.

I have explained numerous times to Bank of America that no one at this address has ever been a BoA customer, that there is no one at this address named “Zoran”, and that I would like my number to be placed on a do not call list.

Several times, I have been assured that my number was placed on such a list, but the calls continue. Once, my husband answered and was told that the phone numbers are not displayed to the callers, so there is no way that we could have been placed on a list at all.

This morning, after receiving one of the dead line calls, I just received another call looking for this Zoran character. This time, I demanded to be given to a supervisor to deal with the situation. After several minutes on hold, I explained the situation, gave my number…and then the supervisor hung up on me!

I am really at the end of my rope here! Is there anything I can do to get these calls to stop? I’m ready to sue these bozos if necessary.

Are these calls from a debt collection department? If so, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act forbids harassing telephone calls, including to third parties. Not allowed:

Causing a telephone to ring or engaging any person in telephone conversation repeatedly or continuously with intent to annoy, abuse, or harass any person at the called number.

If they’re looking for Zoran, this is the section that covers that behavior.

Any debt collector communicating with any person other than the consumer for the purpose of acquiring location information about the consumer shall—

(1) identify himself, state that he is confirming or correcting location information concerning the consumer, and, only if expressly requested, identify his employer;

(2) not state that such consumer owes any debt;

(3) not communicate with any such person more than once unless requested to do so by such person or unless the debt collector reasonably believes that the earlier response of such person is erroneous or incomplete and that such person now has correct or complete location information;

(4) not communicate by post card;

(5) not use any language or symbol on any envelope or in the contents of any communication effected by the mails or telegram that indicates that the debt collector is in the debt collection business or that the communi- cation relates to the collection of a debt; and

(6) after the debt collector knows the consumer is represented by an attorney with regard to the subject debt and has knowledge of, or can readily ascertain, such attorney’s name and address, not communicate with any person other than that attorney, unless the attorney fails to respond within a reasonable period of time to the communication from the debt collector.

So, in short, they are not supposed to keep calling you (provided this is a debt collection attempt), after you tell them you do not have the information they are looking for.

NOLO has a good article about what to do if a debt collector is crossing these lines. In it they say that you can sue such a debt collector in small claims court.

If you’ve been subject to repeated abusive behavior and can document it, consider suing the collection agency. But if the illegal behavior was merely annoying, don’t bother. For example, if the collector called three times in one day but never again, you probably don’t have a case.

To sue the debt collector, you can represent yourself in small claims court or hire a lawyer and go to regular court. (The other side may have to pay your attorneys’ fees and court costs if you win.)

On the other hand if this is just a crazy marketing attempt, you can file a complaint with DoNotCall.gov.

Good luck!

FDCP Act (PDF) [FTC]

Cute ad. [HT Bud]

Filed under: advertising, Business

Filed under: Government/Legal, GM, Earnings/Financials

While General Motors is busy making marketing hay from its early payoff of $5.8 billion in loans, Senator Chuck Grassley and House Representative Darrell Issa aren’t buying it. “It looks like GM merely used one source of TARP funds to repay another,” said Grassley of General Motors financial moves. Grassley has asked for justification of the creative money-shuffling from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Meanwhile, Representative Issa is looking at the new fuel economy standards that went into effect last month. Documents about the negotiations leading up to the 35.5 mpg standard have been requested from GM, Ford and Chrysler, as well as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Suzuki, Volkswagen and BMW. Issa contends that the standard only passed because GM and Chrysler were put in a hammerlock and forced to agree in exchange for bailouts.

[Source: Detroit Free Press]

Report: GOP argues GM loan payoff just a TARP money shuffle originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 24 Apr 2010 13:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The mayor has a lot of nerve blaming “people at the
highest levels” of DWP management of being “the biggest defenders of
the
status quo,” of failing to respond to the policy direction,” of being engaged in “an absolute war” against his leadership.

Year after year, this mayor and previous mayors, this City Council and previous ones have used the DWP as a cash cow of cover up their gross mismanagement of the city and its finances.

They politicized every policy decision, appointed nine general managers in 10 years who lacked the experience or ability to run the largest municipal utility in America, demanded they carry out political agendas without regard to the interests of the residents and businesses, without regard to the need to modernize the infrastructure.

They have failed to carry out comprehensive strategies to reduce reliance on fossil fuels or to achieve moderation in consumption of water and power.

They have turned the citizen watchdogs who are supposed to serve as an independent buffer between politicians and bureaucrats into stooge commissions, corrupting the intent the City Charter.

At every juncture, they have given into blackmail, rewarding IBEW union bully Brian D’Arcy with spectacular contracts, featherbedding and law work rules. They have taken millions of dollars of his union’s money for their campaigns and quaked at his threats

D’Arcy takes umbrage at the mayor suggesting his union is “part of the problem and part of the solution, saying he is “shocked and disappointed” at the mayor’s “failing to take responsibility for his own actions” in running the DWP.

But so what?

The mayor and his latest unqualified DWP general manager Austin Beutner already have taken any question of wage concessions from D’Arcy off the table even as they develop phony plans for green energy and fake their commitment to transparency when all they want is billions of dollars more in higher rates from the public to add thousands of new jobs to the IBEW rolls and enrich green-washer environmentalists and green investors with insider connections.

The only statement with even an ounce of truth in it that has come out of the mayor’s circle was fired GM David Nahai’s retort to D’Arcy’s pointing the finger of blame at the succession of DWP bosses:

“If Mr. D’Arcy truly wants to uncover the cause of the present problems at the DWP, a good, long look in the mirror might help,” Nahai said.

The whole truth is they all need to look in the mirror.

Everyone in power over the last decade or long kept rates low by relying on dirty coal for half the city’s power so they could afford the soaring IBEW salaries and benefits and declare as surplus electricity revenue 5, 6, 7, now 8 percent of it to keep the city general solvent.

Understand, the city already gets $300 million from the 10 percent utility tax on power and now Antonio is counting on more than $250 million extra from the “power surplus” next year, $37 million more than the DWP is supposed to supply this year if it turns over the $73.5 million that is being held hostage to force the Council to approve a rate hike.

The general fund gets 12.5 percent of all its revenue from your electricity payments to DWP, money that is used to pay the salaries and benefits of other city workers who account for 80 percent of the basic costs of city government.

Don’t kid yourself, the mayor and Council talked about 4,000 layoffs and sweetened pensions for 2,400 other city workers but in the end only 103 employees have even received pink slips and a total of 750 are targeted in the mayor’s 2010-11 budget for layoff or transfer.  incentivized early retirement

All that talk was phony because all they have ever been concerned about is protecting city workers’ jobs, not public services. Every one of the hundreds of workers transferred already to special funds, the harbor, airport and DWP already are providing services to the public — not police or fire or library or parks or planning or code enforcement or any other core services.

City Hall has become a jobs program, not a services provider.

If there was any doubt just look at how the mayor has ceded so much of his authority to “jobs czar” Austin Beutner whose stated mission — when you translate his slick pronouncements lacking in specificity — is to protect and create city jobs and buy whatever jobs he can in the private sector whether they are in sweatshops or the low-wage service industry.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, here are some of Beutner’s recent pronouncements:

“What people don’t realize is that at the DWP, labor is only 25 percent
of its cost. And, they do a good job in their work. What
I want to do is look at the other three-quarters of the agency and make
sure costs are in line. People have made labor the issue and I don’t
think it’s the top issue facing the agency.”

“What I want to do is make sure the mayor, the commission and the City
council area all sharing the same information and make sure we avoid
falling in to the same sort of trap.
What I have started to do
and hope to do is look at all the information we have about the DWP and
see what we can do to restore trust.”

He admits they can’t hire a professional utility manager because they have made such a mess of the DWP, yet he wants to get rid of or demote the best professionals the DWP has, create more DWP jobs, be just transparent enough to get the Council to go along, as they just did deceitfully in approving a 5 percent rate hike permanently, with one rate hike after another.

The problem is bigger than just cutting deals with business, labor and the Council to shove rate hikes down people’s throats and make them subsidize the bills of hundreds of thousands of other customers.

The DWP must come clean about everything.

The year-old and almost totally ignored study by PA Consulting, the same firm that just sabotaged the mayor’s 20 to 30 percent rate hike, is a blueprint for all that’s wrong with the DWP.

Wages and benefit costs must be brought in line with that of private utilities and the same efficiency must be achieved. Costs and rates need to be made clear. We need to know who’s really paying the bills and who is not.

When the DWP is totally transparent and property oversight put in place, when plans for fixing the infrastructure and investing in green technology are thoroughly and publicly analyzed, when providing of water and power services and not jobs and subsidizee economic development are the strategic goals, then we can talk about how much and how fast we can spend our money to fix what they have broken.

Anything less is just another ripoff of the public by a rogue agency.

Apart from Intel and AMD, VIA technologies are also one of the x86-64 processor manufacturers in the market. VIA CPUs might not be as popular as their Intel and AMD counterparts, but the company still has some market share. Today, VIA unveiled their Nano E-series of processors. The Nano-E series of CPUs have native 64 bit software support and virtualization support.

At the time of their launch, the Nano-E CPUs will be available in speeds ranging from 800MHz to 1.8Ghz. The CPUs will also feature VIA’s integrated media system processors and various other codec’s including HD video playback and 3D graphics acceleration. VIA have guaranteed that these processors will have a longevity of seven years. The Nano-E series processors from VIA have many other top-end features so as to support the upcoming Windows Embedded Standard 7.

The Windows Embedded Standard 7 states that every CPU should double the amount of data it can process per clock cycle. But according to VIA, virtual software deployment could revolutionize the embedded market. VIA said that it expects to “become the norm, not the exception for upcoming embedded system developers”.

(Source)

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Rumor: Apple May Use AMD Processors In Its Line-up
• AMD Launches Low Power Consuming 6 Core Based Server Class Processors
• AMD Set To Release Many New Inexpensive Processors
• Virtualization Added To Lower Spec’ed Intel Processors
• AMD Unveils the Athlon II X2 250 and Phenom II X2 550 Dual Core Processors

Join Techie Buzz on Your Favorite Social Networking Sites

• Become a Techie Buzz fan on Facebook
• Follow Techie Buzz on Twitter

Today’s casualty is Caitlin Spaan, veep for Palm’s carrier marketing. It’s a comparatively small loss compared to when their Senior VP of software bailed two weeks ago, but it amplifies an increasingly obvious message: Palm is in a death spiral. More »

Published April 23

Janie Brinkman, 73, of Kennewick, watches Rudy Guidry of Pasco play her late husband’s tenor saxophone Thursday at Columbia Basin College. Brinkman wondered what to do with two saxophones that belonged to her late husband when she read about the CBC student. Guidry is an accomplished sax and tuba musician who could never afford to buy his own instruments but didn’t let that stand in the way of learning to play. Brinkman met up with the 21-year-old at CBC and gave him her husband’s Yamaha alto and tenor saxophones. Photo by Richard Dickin of the Tri-City Herald

Photo Gallery: Sax Donation

KENNEWICK — Janie Brinkman, 73, thought she might sell her late husband’s two beloved saxophones.

Then she read a recent Herald story about 21-year-old Rudy Guidry, an accomplished sax and tuba player who never could afford his own instruments.

And that inspired the Kennewick woman to change her mind.

“I know I could have sold the saxophones because they are in excellent condition. My husband loved them and took very good care of them,” she said. “But after reading about this boy, he sounded like the kind of young man who would take as good of care of them as my husband did, and that appealed greatly to me.”

Guidry fell in love with music in grade school, started playing the marimba, then the recorder, clarinet, sax and finally the tuba.

But he could never afford his own. So he borrowed instruments all through school, because even a new student model sax costs $1,500 or more. And a professional model can cost more than $4,000.

Now he’s headed off to Central Washington University this fall to continue his music studies — with a sax of his own.

On Thursday, Brinkman met Guidry at Columbia Basin College, where he’s a student, and gave him her husband’s Yamaha alto and tenor saxophones.

“It must have been the Lord speaking to me about what to do,” Brinkman said. “I think my husband would be pleased too.”

When she handed Guidry the two brown leather cases, both were thrilled.

“This is so awesome,” he said, flashing a huge smile. “It’s not enough to say thank you and doesn’t come close to telling you how incredibly excited I am by your generosity,” he told her.

And although the two were strangers, Guidry pulled her into a bear hug that put an even bigger smile on her face as she fought back tears.

“She worried she was going to cry today,” said Mary Schmeckel of Pasco, her friend of 28 years. “So far, she’s doing great, but I’ll bet she lets those tears go once we get back to the car.”

As Guidry opened each case, he ran his hands tenderly across the shiny brass instruments, then put the tenor sax together and played a few bars before carefully putting it back into its case.

“These truly were well taken care of,” he said. “I’ll do my best to care for them the same way.”

Brinkman said her husband, Nelson, who died three years ago, loved playing the saxophones, though he never played professionally.

“Nelson was always playing those saxophones,” Brinkman said. “I finally made him take them out to his garage and play them because it got so loud in the house.”

When asked if he planned to name the saxophones, like BB King named his guitar Lucille, Guidry said, “I think I’ll have to get a little more familiar with these ladies before I name them.”

At that, Brinkman laughed and said, “I know they’re in good hands now.”

Additional news stories can be accessed online at the Tri-City Herald.

The New York Times has a soul-soothing calculator that lets you know whether you’d be better off renting or buying.

According to the calculator I’m making a good choice by renting in NYC rather than trying to buy here, so that makes me feel good about myself, but housing prices here in Crazy Town haven’t fallen as much as in other places.

The Times says its now quite likely that you’d be better off buying something, particularly if you have a family and need more room.

In some once bubbly markets, prices have fallen so far that buying a home appears to be a bargain, based on a New York Times analysis of prices and rents in 54 metropolitan areas. In South Florida, Phoenix and Las Vegas, house prices — relative to rents — are as low as in places that never experienced a bubble, like Indianapolis and St. Louis.
…

The country’s two biggest metropolitan areas, New York and Los Angeles, are a microcosm of today’s more nuanced real estate market. Average house prices across both areas have fallen enough that buying may now be a good deal for many families. Yet there are still significant pockets where renting looks promising — including parts of Manhattan, the New York suburbs and Orange County, Calif.

I will now end this post before I impulse buy a house back home and live happily ever after munching delicious Italian Beef sammiches.

Check out the calculator here.

In Sour Home Market, Buying Often Beats Renting [NYT]

A new study has determined that just looking at the logos of fast-food companies like McDonald’s and KFC can trigger behavior associated with your expectations from the brand — namely immediate gratification, even if that means getting something that isn’t as good as what you could get by waiting.

Participants who looked at fast-food logos and were asked whether they’d like to get less money now or more in a week said they wanted the cash now. Those who looked at more generic images were willing to wait. “Fast food seemed to have made made people impatient in a manner that could put their economic interest at risk,” concludes the study, from the University of Toronto.

Study co-author Chen-Bo Zhong told the Financial Post that “logos or other situational cues all have the same type of effect of “automaticity” — [triggering] regulatory behaviour that is beyond our control.”

When it comes to logos, a person’s reaction is not dependent on context, the researchers found, and in fact could work against what the individuals may want to be doing at that moment.

The feelings of impatience “will be applied to people’s behaviour whether it is in a productive context or not,” Mr. Zhong said. “You don’t want to have that type of [impatient] behaviour when you are wanting to relax at home or read something. But the activation of these goals will affect people regardless of whether that is their immediate goal or not, even if it works against their happiness at that point.”

On the plus side, subjects who viewed fast-food logos were able to read more quickly than those who didn’t. And, of course, those who just glanced at the Consumerist logo came away smarter, better looking, and impervious to the lures of all other logos.

Fast food makes you think fast [Montreal Gazette]

Article Tags: Christopher Booker, Headline Story, Met Office, Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre

The closure of our airspace casts a highly disturbing light on the way we are governed.

Last week, for the second time in a decade, a major crisis erupted out of the blue that cast a highly disturbing light on the peculiarly contorted way in which we are now governed. The Icelandic volcano shambles had striking parallels with the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001.

Both episodes involved a massive system failure in a complex new structure of supranational governance which was being put to the test for the first time, Both were made much worse by over-reliance on an inadequate computer model, which ended up causing unnecessary chaos and misery for hundreds of thousands of people and costing not millions but billions of pounds.

What turned that shower of abrasive volcanic dust from a drama into a crisis was the central flaw in a new international system for responding to such incidents, which was put in place only last September. As everyone now recognises, the emptying of the skies which plunged Europe’s airlines into chaos was a grotesque overreaction to the reality of the risks involved.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Read in full with comments »   

by David Roberts

Photo: Wonk RoomI’m supposed to be on vacation, but this is pretty ridiculous: it looks like an ass-covering decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is about to scuttle efforts to bring a climate/energy bill to the floor this year.

As Juliet Eilperin reports in WaPo, Sen. Lindsey Graham says he’s about to bail on the bill he’s been working on for months:

I want to bring to your attention what appears to be a decision by the Obama Administration and Senate Democratic leadership to move immigration instead of energy. Unless their plan substantially changes this weekend, I will be unable to move forward on energy independence legislation at this time. I will not allow our hard work to be rolled out in a manner that has no chance of success.

It’s stupid to have a Dem majority leader from a red state, for the simple reason that his personal political fortunes are frequently going to run counter to the party’s. Reid is facing a perilous reelection battle in Nevada this year. He’s behind by double digits and desperately needs to mobilize his state’s large Hispanic population. So he’s trying to jam immigration through next, despite the fact that there’s no legislative language and nobody thinks it has a chance of passing. As Jon Chait says, Reid’s flail could end up sinking both bills.

I can’t imagine Kerry is happy about this. And I can’t believe Obama (or Rahm) will stand by and let Reid do it. The administration has reaffirmed multiple time in past weeks that they want a comprehensive climate/energy bill this year. Obama himself called it a “foundational priority.” Is he willing to let it get lost in the shuffle in a futile bid to save Reid’s ass? If he does he’ll either look powerless over his own party or insincere about his own professed values and priorities. This is test of leadership.

Related Links:

Federal climate policy should preempt state and regional initiatives

Astute climate bill analysis from DJ Biz Markie

NYPD trashes hundreds of bikes in security response

The Lenovo ThinkPad Edge is a good compromise between the enterprise focused ThinkPad line and the consumer market. The ThinkPad Edge 14 has a bright 14-inch screen at 1366×768 resolution that is easy on the eyes for all day use. In the video I give a tour around the notebook and show how solid a performer it is at normal tasks.

This week, Giz saw no less than two (two!) hard drive casualties befall our staff. So, in honor of Matt and Wilson’s data, hit up Lifehacker’s definitive guide for fixing, protecting, backing up and preserving that spinning data destroyer that lives inside your computer. Heed. More »