Category: News

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked a federal judge in San Francisco to quash a baseless subpoena aimed at outing an anonymous online critic of a Pennsylvania company called USA Technologies. A hearing in the case is set for Friday.

Earlier this year, EFF’s client — Yahoo! user “stokklerk” — posted to the Yahoo! message board dedicated to the company, criticizing USA Technologies and its CEO George Jensen, Jr., for plummeting stock prices, high compensation rates for executives, and consistent lack of profitability. Another anonymous poster had similar complaints. In response, USA Technologies filed suit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that the statements violated federal securities regulations because they were part of a “scheme” for the authors to “enrich themselves through undisclosed manipulative trading tactics.” USA Technologies also alleged that the online posts were defamatory. As part of that lawsuit, USA Technologies issued a subpoena out of the Northern District of California to Yahoo! asking for the critics’ identities.

“The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously so people can express their views without fear of retribution or reprisal,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “USA Technologies might not appreciate the glare of such public criticism, but Internet users like ‘stokklerk’ have a right to post such criticism in a public forum.”

The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously, especially about matters of public concern such as the performance of management of publicly traded companies. In addition, several state legislatures — including California — have passed laws to further protect individuals against lawsuits targeting them for exercising First Amendment rights. In its reply brief filed Friday, EFF underscores the problems with the USA Technologies lawsuit and asks the court to block attempts to enforce the Yahoo! subpoena.

For more information on attending Friday’s hearing, contact [email protected].

For the full brief in support of the motion to quash the subpoena:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/usatechnologies/USAT-motiontoquashrepl…

For more on this case:
http://www.eff.org/cases/usa-technologies-v-stokklerk

Contact:

Matt Zimmerman
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
[email protected]

Big 10 commissioner Jim Delaney has consistently said that conference expansion was a “back-burner issue”. Now it appears that the conference will get more aggressive about finding a 12th member in order to qualify for a conference championship game. A conference official said this week that there is quite a “growing groundswell” of support for the idea now, an idea that has grown since the Big 10 meetings back in May.

Why the sudden push? Naturally, money comes into play, as a Big 10(12) CG could be worth as much a $5 million or more to the conference in additional revenues. Plus, some conference members are starting to feel a little left out, what with all three major conference CGs having been played December 5th. “We’re irrelevant for the last three weeks of the football season because we’re not playing,” said Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez. Back during the meetings in May, Joe Paterno said of a championship game, “Everybody else is playing playoffs on television. You never see a Big Ten team mentioned. So I think that’s a handicap.” But not everyone is for an immediate switch. Northwestern’s coach, Pat Fitzgerald, appears to be a traditionalist and is dead set against it.

So where does Delaney stand? Although he was not interviewed for the above-referenced article, he was on the record in May with this: “I’m agnostic. I could live with two divisions and a championship game, but I think that has a tendency to devalue the season-ending game and have a negative impact (in terms of at-large BCS selection) on your losing team in season-ending games.I don’t want us to tear ourselves apart over the structure of football for the sake of expansion.” Delaney also wants to add an “institution”, not a team. That could mean a school which has a substantial athletic tradition and not a johnny-come-lately.

So who do they grab? That’s not entirely easy to decipher. The logical choice is Notre Dame, but after being rebuffed by the Irish in 1999, the polictics of the matter seem too strong to warrant a revisitation of that scenario. JoPa summed it up quite nicely earlier this year: “There’s some pressure, I would suppose, to maybe go back to Notre Dame and ask again, which I would not be happy with,” Paterno said in May. “I think they’ve had their chance.”

So who else? Other than adding a service academy (which might be the best shot for the Big East) it’s going to involve a poaching from another BCS conference, with the Big East being the most likley target. But not any conference is above being looted. Indiana blog The Crimson Quarry gives a breakdown of teams in the geographic area that may fit the bill.

Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Rutgers
Louisville
Syracuse
West Virginia
Maryland
Kentucky
Iowa State
Nebraska
Missouri

Although it’s hard to imagine Kentucky walking away from SEC gold and Maryland leaving the frying pan for the fire, Iowa State and Nebraska provide interesting choices. Lest you forgot, the Big 12 is sewn together from remnants of the old Southwestern and Big 8 conferences, with the Huskers and the Cyclones being from the latter. With the exception of Nebraska–Oklahoma, there’s not a lot of history there that couldn’t be worth losing. Either team could merge easily into a Big 10(12) schedule, but there’s no doubt that Nebraska would be quite the coup d’etat.

As far as the usual suspects from the Big East, Pitt seems to be the most natural fit and we could finally see them and Penn State pick up their recently hibernated series again. But with yet another possible poaching in the works, the Big East would be wise to strongly consider expansion and attempt to lock in their existing members in an attempt to stave off a pick-pocketing attempt from their western neighbor.

h/t: Regan

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This graph really speaks volumes. From November of ’08 to last month, both import and export prices were continually down. Now, in November, prices have flipped and are now up a few percentage points:

BLS: The price index for U.S. imports advanced 3.7 percent for the year ended in November, the first time the index increased over a 12-month period since a 4.9 percent advance for the October 2007-2008 period. Prices for overall exports rose 0.6 percent over the past year, the first time the index increased over a 12-month period since a 4.0 percent advance for the October 2007-2008 period.

Over the past 12 months, import fuel prices increased 27.0 percent. A 35.5 percent rise in petroleum prices more than offset declining natural gas prices, which fell 31.3 percent despite the advance in November. The index for nonfuel import prices declined 1.0 percent over the past 12 months as decreases from November 2008 to March 2009 more than offset the recent increases.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Chinese Commodity Imports Hit Sudden Stop
• Markets Completely Ignore Brazil’s Sudden Iron Export Slow-Down
• Gartman: Want To "Fix" The Trade Deficit? Bring On A Full-Fledged Depression

It wasn’t long ago that we thought Ben Bernanke and ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet were playing a high-stakes game of chicken.

Who would blink first? Who would raise rates, and send the other’s currency tanking?

The market — obviously — figured Trichet had the upper hand.

Wrong.

With Ireland, Greece, and Spain all the subject of serious sovereign default concerns, and with Austria now nationalizing banks, the idea of a rate-hike seems utterly laughable. Add in the fact that the continent’s manufacturing base was screaming bloody murder over all the jobs moving to the US, and you’ve got a recipe for a long, long period of low itnerest rates.

And that explains why the dollar is on such a tear.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Can Bernanke Quit The Money Pump Before Trichet?
• Germans Complain That All The Good Manufacturing Jobs Are Going To America
• Lemmings And Manufacturers Crushed As Dollar Surge Continues

Filed under: Etc.

Now that the 2000s are officially drawing to a close, it’s time for us to look back at the decade-that-was and reflect on the hits and misses in the automotive industry. Naturally, we expect that some models will hit the target square in the bulls-eye while others will fall just short of becoming a marketplace success. For every few near-misses, though, there seems to be a new model launch that just completely goes down in flames, Hindenburg-style.

We put our heads together to see if we could all agree on at least ten major automotive busts that whiffed on both critical success and in sales volume, and somewhat surprisingly, we managed to come up with a dozen. These may not be the last word in failure – and not every choice was made unanimously – meaning that you may be surprised by some of our inclusions, but we stand by our list. That said, grab some popcorn, a candy bar and a super-sized Coke, then click here to see our list of the Twelve of the Auto Industry’s Biggest Busts of the Last Decade.

[Source Image: MGM]

Dirty Dozen: Twelve of the auto industry’s biggest busts of the last decade originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has covertly released a significant update to the built in Google Maps application on webOS devices. While there has been no public announcement of yet, the new version number is reported as v6.7 and features a number of useful refinements.

Findings so far include: improved map loading, rendering and scrolling speed, more granular map details with sliceable location listings, more street level traffic detail, a new help menu and better support for selected mass transit systems. These new features are baked into your device right now, as the program pulls a majority of its content and interface from the web.

In a rather succinct press release, ZeniMax Media today announced that EA is no longer part of the Rage equation. The id Software title will instead be published by Bethesda Softworks.

Our holiday guests today:

• Salted Pistachio Brittle (Better Than Christmas Cookies!) by Kristin Silverman of The Kitchen Sink

• How To Make Gingerbread Christmas Tree Ornaments by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings

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A loyal reader* suggested we launch a new feature: Ask Henry!

And so we have!

Instead of waiting around for a video-based You Ask, We Answer to come along, you are now hereby invited to bombard me with questions anytime via email. 

Please put “ASK HENRY!” in the subject line (goofy, I know, but much easier to find in the inbox) and send them to:

[email protected]

I’ll do my best to answer as many questions as I can on the site every few days.  I won’t be able to get to all of them, obviously, but I’ll do my best.

Thanks in advance.  Look forward to hearing from you!

Here’s one to begin, from Jason Calacanis:

Henry, Ben Bernanke has presided over the worst financial crisis of our lifetime, and the second worst in our history. Since he has obviously failed epically, what exactly would he have to do in order to be fired in your estimation?

I’m not sure I agree that he “failed epically”–I think it’s fairer to say he ‘made some major mistakes’–but there would be one super-quick route to getting fired: Threaten the re-election campaigns of Congress-people.  He can do this by stating clearly that unemployment is not his concern and that he is only focused on protecting the value of our money.  If he does that, he’ll be fired immediately.

Of course the irony is that unemployment should NOT be his concern.  The Fed has an impossible “dual mandate” right now–protect the value of the currency AND make sure the economy is humming along at full employment.  Sometimes, these two mandates are mutually exclusive.  And because Congress only cares about the latter (inflation is a long-term problem that will only wreck the economy during someone else’s re-election campaign), the Fed inevitably gets pressured into running at a higher level of inflation than it should.

* Jason Calacanis, Founder and CEO of Mahalo.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Amazing Life And Career Of Jamie Dimon (JPM)
• The Biggest Losers Of The Decade
• How To Make The World’s Easiest $1 Billion

In stark contrast to the European money pits traditionally featured, today’s FOTD is a 1991 GMC Syclone. Despite the fact that it’s probably older than your first born child and manufactured by a company not exactly renowned for its longevity (which I expect will be directly refuted by a barrage of GM forum trolls), both the Syclone and the Typhoon have left such an indelible legacy that they are granted a reprieve from my domestic scorn.

As a matter of fact, so enamored am I with arguably one of the best examples of superior engineering to ever leave Michigan, I’m even willing to overlook the ominously rebuilt title. According to the seller (and confirmed by Carfax), the truck was stolen in 2001 and recovered with damage severe enough to warrant a “salvage” branding, which still only resulted in a $2k price decrease. The slightly blurry photos paint a promising picture, though, and as long as you’re adept at maintaining a vehicle constructed almost entirely out of Bondo, this is definitely a piece worth investing in.

Source: eBay Motors

Montréal, Canada | Watery Wonders

When someone mentions surfing, the image that comes to mind is one of hot sun, sandy beaches, and palm trees swaying in the breeze. That’s the archetype, but it’s not the only environment where an adventure junkie can hang ten. What, for example, is a Canadian to do?

The standing wave adjacent to Mosche Safdie’s well-known Habitat ’67 housing complex has sprung up as a new location for urban surfing in recent years. The result of fast-flowing water making its way over and around large underwater boulders, the wave generated allows for a surfer to maintain a endless ride… that is, until the next surfer drops in. There’s no fast-approaching shore, only water. For those unsure of themselves on a surfboard, the wave can also be ridden in a kayak.

Habitat 67, the backdrop to the wave is quite curious in and of itself. Built by Safdie as part of the 1967 Montreal Expo, it was meant to be affordable housing with an distinct eye towards the future. Although originally intended to have 1,000 units, only 354 of the prefabricated concrete apartment modules were completed creating a total of only 158 apartments.

Part of the architectural vision of the future in which housing could be made more affordable by using prefab models, construction costs proved to be prohibitive. As a result of the limited number of units and the architectural uniqueness of the building, units in the ‘affordable’ tenant owned building are today, quite expensive.

The Spike TV Video Game Awards show happened this weekend. I would have watched it, but I frankly have enough women, cars, and Mountain Dew here at my fortress, and if that’s not good enough to get Jack Black over here, then so be it. Either way, a bunch of games got announced, including Green Day: Rock Band, from Harmonix and MTV Games.

Anyway, details about the game are scarce, but design director and notorious lothario Chris Foster of Harmonix posted on his twitter account that the game’s songs will be exportable for use in your other Rock Band games, unlike those found in The Beatles: Rock Band. He also says the game will be fun, and I’m going to agree with him, and totally not because I want a whole bunch of free crap from Harmonix. And, by the way, if you’re from Harmonix, you can ask my editor for my shipping address. I have no dignity and you can set my price.

Tags:
exportable tracks,
green day rock band,
harmonix,
rock band,

Over the last few weeks we’ve published several recipes for hot, frothy, foamy espresso drinks that give you that cheery taste of holiday coffee without the hefty coffee shop bills. Here’s a quick recap!

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Our holiday guests today:

• Merry & Modern Chocolate Peppermint Molten Cakes by Sara Morris of Sprouted Kitchen

• Memories of Christmas Breakfast Strata (and a Recipe) by Anne Zimmerman of Poetic Appetite

Read Full Post

Switching gears this week to the “T” in USPTO, one issue trademark practitioners will be dealing with soon is the filing of affidavits for a registered extension of protection under the Madrid Protocol. The first affidavit will come due between February 1, 2010, and February 1, 2011.  Absent a legislative change to treat these affidavits the same as those for other trademark registrations (more on this below), owners and practitioners will need to take extra special care to adjust their docketing procedures and systems and verify all filing deadlines in these Madrid Protocol cases.

As trademark practitioners know, the requirement of submission of affidavits of use in commerce or excusable nonuse is needed to maintain all trademark registrations and to help clear the register of inactive marks. The requirements for these affidavits, however, differ for registered extensions of protection filed under the Madrid Protocol.

The current statutory scheme neither affords them the same “grace periods” for late filing, nor does it provide the ability to correct deficiencies after the due date for registered extensions of protection under the Madrid Protocol. For all other U.S. trademark registrations, the statute provides a six-month grace period and the ability to correct deficiencies.  For registered extensions of protection, however, the statute provides no grace period for the first affidavit, and a shorter three-month grace period for subsequent affidavits.

The USPTO is well-aware of the challenges facing trademark owners and practitioners in adjustments to docketing procedures and systems, as well as costly adjustments to the USPTO workflow and systems if this disparity is not amended. The USPTO supports legislative changes to rectify these discrepancies and treat registered extensions of protection consistently with other U.S. trademark registrations.

While looking forward to legislative changes, practitioners and trademark owners need to start thinking now about how to effectively manage the registered extensions of protection, and how to avoid inadvertent cancellation while the legislation remains pending. A good starting point would be reviewing registration portfolios and flagging registered extensions of protection issued in 2005. I also strongly encourage filers to confirm the accuracy of all filing deadlines for registered extensions of protection, and to file as early as possible during the statutory period. An early filing minimizes the impact of oversights and errors that may occur in last-minute filings.

I look forward to working together with trademark owners and practitioners to address these important issues.

For oil-free compressed air
Renner GmbH offers a wide range of oil-free compressors in the lower and medium capacity range. The new SCROLL_line SL range is based on a scroll compressor system with absolute oil-free operation. The compression process occurs by means of a fixed and an eccentric rotating spiral, with no mechanical contact. The SCROLL_line SL range offers compressors with power outputs of 1.5 to 16,5 kW (1.890 lit/min – 67cfm) and 8 or 10 bar allowable working pressures. Various types of SCROLL_line compressors are available:
– as an automatic base-plate unit (also for OEM- installation),
– mounted on pressure vessels,
– on pressure vessels with attached refrigeration dryer as well as
– multiple units where 2 or 3 compressors operate independently on a common air-receiver

Heol Design offers now an effective solution against surge protection for its GPS systems.
The Citel surge protectors have been selected to solve surge protection issues when GPS antennas are located outside buildings.
These surge protectors must be mounted directly on antenna cables of GPS clocks / Time servers T100, T101, T103 and T116.

Fabula Nova Crystallis, Crystal Chronicles, Crystal Bearers, Crystal Meth. Totally kidding about that last one, but you get the idea Square Enix loves crystals…possibly more than their other favorite word, “chaos”. At any rate, the crystal-lovin’

Google is always updating its products but it has seen a flurry of activity lately as engineers are working on finishing their work before the holidays. Google Docs is no exception and the team has introduced a couple of new features, the co-editor presence notification for presentations being one of them, and a bunch of holiday-related themes and templates.

“Today, we launched real time presence to Google Docs presentations as well. Now, when editing a presentation with a co-editor, you can see which slides he is editing, and if he is editing the same slide, then you can see which element — text box, shape, image, video, etc. — he is editing,” Roshni Malani, software engineer at Google Docs, wrote.

The new feature is rather self-evident and certainly welcomed as the Docs bills itself as a collaboration suite and touts this as one of its main selling points. The feature had been available for the spreadsheet editor in Docs, where it was crucial to ensure that users didn’t write over each other. Now presentations get the same treatment allowing users to work together remotely without interfering with each other’s work.

“The Google Docs team is celebrating the holiday season with holiday themes in Google forms and holiday templates in the Google Docs template gallery,” Eric Bogs and Bob Rose, software engineer… (read more)