So we all learned about Just Cause 2’s basic game mechanics in this earlier video (qjnet/playstation-3/just-cause-2-set-to-explode-in-march.html). Now it’s time to see what Rico Rodriguez can do when he gets

In case you're skeptical about U.S. government employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), here's a reminder -- ADP's private payrolls data has lined up reasonably well with it.

In some cases, ADP's data has recently shown a more positive trend than the governments.

No data set is perfect, thus the more data points that roughly line up, the more one can be confident that the indicated direction is indeed the real underlying trend.

And while the employment situation remains challenging for many Americans, it's pretty rich to argue that the overall unemployment trend hasn't improved. It has, and more than one data set shows this.

Check out ADP's latest employment data vs. the BLS  >>>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• ING: Here's Why The Friday Unemployment Report Was Total Bunk
• Lack Of Seasonal Work Is The Real Reason To Question The Official 10% Unemployment Rate
• Rosenberg: There's Just A 1-In-35 Chance Friday's Employment Number Was Right

2009Dec7: “the last ten years have been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature, maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Similar results are revealed in the independent analyses made by the United States National Climatic Data Center and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies” (Met Office).

Reference: Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091208b.html

Image Description: see case description. Image Location: Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091208b.html Image Permission: This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. However, it is believed that the use of this work to illustrate the subject in question, Where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information, on Interlinked Challenges, hosted on servers in the United States by Michigan State University, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.

With bullion prices at all-time highs and world-class gold discoveries becoming ever more elusive, the investment industry is gambling increasingly sizeable sums of money on major mines-in-the-making. A recent example of this new trend involves Exeter Resource Corporation (TSX.V: XRC) (NYSE-A: XRA). Specifically, a handful of top-tier investment banks snapped up the high-flying mining junior’s CDN $57.5 million equity financing last month in less than 24 hours.

Of Exeter’s war chest, a sizeable amount is being used to develop one of the world’s largest gold discoveries in recent years. The Caspiche gold/copper deposit in Chile is a veritable monster that weighs in at 33.7 million gold ‘equivalent’ ounces. (This ‘equivalent’ metric involves silver and copper by-product metals that are valued using baseline prices of US $12 for silver and US $2.00 per pound for copper, while US $800 is used for the gold valuation). Stated another way, Caspiche boasts an inferred resource estimate of 19.8 million ounces of gold, 40 million ounces of silver and 4.8 billion pounds of copper.

Read the whole story at MineWeb >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• What Bust? Gold Heading Upward With Jaw-Dropping Volume (GLD)
• Gold ETF Fund Flows Quadrupled In November (GLD)
• Barrick Gold: Here’s Why We Eliminated Our Gold Hedges, Just As The Marked Started To Peak (ABX)

The Twelve Lays of Christmas

The French Letter gospel singers preach free love, Fair Trade, and safe sex.

Filed under: Truck, Chrysler, Dodge

The Dodge Dakota — as we know it today — will go away in 2011, but looking at current sales of the mid-size pickup, it may as well be dead already. Chrysler has only sold 10,000 Dakotas this year, with an anemic 663 units cleared in November. But while the Dakota is selling poorly (it’s not helped by being too close in price to the much more capable Ram), it doesn’t necessarily mean that the enigmatic pickup won’t live on in another form.

Coinciding with earlier reports, the Detroit News says Chrysler is contemplating a unibody Dakota to replace the current model. A more fuel efficient car-based platform could yield better efficiency, especially when paired with a turbocharged four cylinder with direct injection. The car-based truck probably wouldn’t be a hauler but it would still have a functional bed similar to the Honda Ridgeline, and AWD would likely be an available option. Fred Diaz, the new head of the Ram brand, told the DN that the Pentastar is looking both at Fiat and from within its own stable of vehicles for any platforms that could help make the unibody Dakota a possibility, adding, “The emphasis is going to be on getting a vehicle that is still true to the Ram brand image and also gets excellent miles per gallon rating and at an attractive price point.” Chrysler was reportedly already working on a unibody Dakota when money troubles forced the idea to the back burner.

While we like the idea of a fuel efficient pickup that can do most of the things that a body on frame truck can do, we’re wondering if the truck-buying public will embrace the idea. The best example of a unibody pickup, the Honda Ridgeline, has been anything but a massive commercial hit and midsize trucks are already a dying breed, with only five percent of the overall vehicle market. But if Chrysler wants to make Ram its own brand, we’re guessing that the Pentastar’s truck company is going to need more than one vehicle.

[Source: Detroit News]

REPORT: Chrysler still considering unibody Dakota replacement originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

“Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services it provides law enforcement agencies has leaked onto the web.” That’s how WIRED’s Threat Level blog put it when describing Yahoo’s recent effort to censor its own law enforcement compliance guide off the Internet using a bogus DMCA takedown demand.

The trouble all started when Yahoo stepped in to block a FOIA request for its law enforcement compliance “price list” (i.e., what it charges to law enforcement and spy agencies when responding to requests for information about Yahoo users). Shortly thereafter, a copy of the document, entitled “Yahoo! Compliance Guide for Law Enforcement,” appeared on Cryptome.org.

Here’s where the bogosity begins in earnest. Yahoo sent a formal DMCA takedown notice to Cryptome.org, demanding the removal of the compliance manual. In the letter, Yahoo’s lawyers allege that posting the manual infringes Yahoo’s copyrights (the only proper basis for a DMCA takedown), as well as claiming that it’s a trade secret (absurd for a marketing document) and that posting it constitutes “business interference” (huh? informing customers about Yahoo’s disclosure practices “interferes” with business?).

This should earn Yahoo a place in the Takedown Hall of Shame (we’ll be updating our list of inductees soon). Posting the compliance manual is a clear fair use. Consider the “four factors” that courts examine in fair use cases: (1) publication is clearly for a transformative purpose (criticism, public debate); (2) publication does not harm the “market” for the original (since Yahoo doesn’t sell copies of the manual); (3) the nature of the publication is factual, not highly creative; and (4) while the whole manual was published, that was necessary for the transformative purpose. And, perhaps most important, a federal court has already ruled in favor of fair use on nearly these same facts, when Diebold Election Systems was sued for trying to censor embarrassing internal documents off the Internet using bogus DMCA takedowns.

This brings up another important point: the DMCA does not require service providers to comply with bogus takedown notices. The DMCA offers a “safe harbor” from money damages for copyright infringement, but you only need a “safe harbor” if the activity in question might be infringing in the first place. Where (as here) the activity is clearly not infringing, a service provider doesn’t need the DMCA for protection, and can just deposit takedown notices in the trash (as YouTube did a few months ago in the face of another obviously bogus takedown notice).

Scratch one game off the PS3 exclusivity list. Tecmo has just made it known through a press release that their upcoming third-person shooter, Quantum Theory, will be heading to the Xbox 360 console as well.

Many patients with health insurance think that when they go to a laboratory their doctor sends them to for blood work or other tests, the lab is surely in-network. After all, the doctor is in-network, right? No. It’s a puzzling maze that the best of us get trapped inside at times.

I’ll give you a personal example. According to one rather crazy insurance rule of my specific plan, I can have blood drawn at my doctor’s office and sent to Lab A that’s not in network and it will be covered 100%. However, if the doctor sends me downstairs to the same Lab A, then it’s out of network since the doctor’s office didn’t draw the blood themselves. I spent nearly an hour on the phone with my insurance this morning to figure that one out.

It gets even worse since most specialist offices are sending patients out to labs (often in the same building) to get blood work. Have you noticed that only general physicians tend have in-office labs these days?

So, before you go to your next doctor’s appointment that may involve lab work, some tips for you:

• Verify which labs are in your network. If your plan has recently changed, verify this again.

• Write down and save the date you called and the name of the person you talk with. Administrators typically save all of this info in their phone logs, but it’s up to you to advocate for yourself.

• Ask about any specific coverage rules that may apply regarding your doctor’s office sending labwork versus you going to a lab.

• If your insurance is about to change, verify when calling about coverage that the person you’re speaking to is looking at the correct plan for your anticipated date of service.

Do you think that last tip is a bit too cautious? It’s not. I’ll give you a short version of my story. My health insurance plan is changing on January 1. I called my insurance in November to ask why two of my lab visits were out of network. I was told that was a mistake and that the lab I was going to was an in-network lab. I asked twice: “Are you sure? I’m going back there for another visit.”

I was assured that the lab I was going to was an in-network lab. Not so. I found out today that it was really out of network after all and I’d have to pay for all the visits. The person I was talking with was looking at my future coverage plan, not the current one. Of course, when I complained that I had been given the wrong info, I was reminded of the telephone disclaimer about benefits being paid at the time of processing, not based on the phone call.

I was told I’d have to appeal in writing, but I insisted on speaking to a supervisor who may or may not take care of me. I’m still waiting on that call.

Do you find it difficult navigate through the swamps of in-network or out-of-network services?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Confusion with Lab Coverage

Filed under: Saab, Earnings/Financials, Rumormill, Geely

Just about every time an automaker decides to sell one of its brands, Chinese automaker Geely comes up as one of the potential suitors. Geely executive Lawrence Ang has reportedly told Automotive News that the reason Geely has been present at a lot of negotiating tables is because it wants to grow in part through acquisitions. And while the Chinese automaker has yet to finalize any big-ticket buys, it appears to be the front-runner for Ford’s Volvo unit.

Earlier in the year, Geely looked into purchasing the Saab brand, but talks reportedly broke down after Koenigsegg presented what appeared to be the winning bid. But now that Koenigsegg has dropped out of the Saab sweepstakes, the door is open again for Geely. Is the Chinese automaker interested? Ang reportedly gave reporters at a shareholder event the ambiguous “who knows?” as an answer, but he also acknowledged that the company is investigating buying opportunities which have presented themselves during the automotive industry downturns in Europe and the States. Geely is also reportedly interested in purchasing parts and engines, which could be possible if General Motors decides to disband Saab if an adequate bid doesn’t present itself by year-end.

While Geely appears to be close to purchasing Volvo and is perhaps in a good position to pick up Saab for a song, the automaker is also looking to increase its presence in its home market. Automotive News is reporting that Geely will increase spending by up to 43% in hopes of increasing sales from 300,000 in 2009 to over 400,000 next year.

[Source: Automotive News – subs req’d | Image: AFP/Getty]

REPORT: Even while pursuing Volvo, Geely again mulling bid for Saab? originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

One of the themes of 2009 was that collection societies around the world went nuts trying to charge for anything they possibly could, while also trying to increase the rates they could charge. Remember how one collection society wanted to charge a woman because she put on music for her horses? Or how about the woman who worked in a grocery store, who was told to stop singing while stock the shelves, or the store would have to pay a performance fee. And, of course, we had ASCAP trying to claim that ringtones were performances, and mobile operators needed to pay up — beyond the license fee that was already paid on the recording.

SOCAN, up in Canada, has been no exception, pushing for drastically increased rates that cover new places as well. But the most ridiculous may be the one sent in by a few people (Jesse was the first) about how SOCAN is trying to get buskers — street musicians — to pay a performance fee if they perform in SkyTrain stations in Vancouver. SOCAN is claiming that TransLink, the transit authority for the trains in Vancouver should be paying up to $40,000 in performance fees for all the buskers singing in stations, and TransLink’s response is to pass those fees on to the buskers.

Of course, many musicians actually got their start as buskers, and built up their performance chops that way, but SOCAN is about to put them out of business by making it pretty damn costly to busk where it often makes the most sense. Nice work, SOCAN, in harming the very musicians you’re supposed to be helping.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

(This guest post originally appeared at the author’s blog)

Few things have been more predictable in recent months than the rallies that occur every time Ben Bernanke opens his mouth.  Like clockwork, the market moves higher every time the Chairman speaks as he gives the market exactly what it wants to hear.  Today’s comments are no different:

What is odd about this is that Bernanke has been so fantastically wrong about everything for so many years.  What warrants this extreme confidence in Bernanke?  Bernanke missed the greatest economic bust in the last 75 years.  Some argue that he helped us avoid the second Great Depression.  Of course, regular readers know I think that is simply preposterous as the Second Great Depression was never on the table.  All Bernanke has done is rehash a monetary policy approach that Alan Greenspan admitted was a failure.  There is little to no evidence in Bernanke’s history that leads me to think he will be correct this time.  The market is nearsighted and I believe this love affair with Bernanke is nothing more than a Tiger Woods like fling.  We can only hope the long-term repercussions aren’t nearly as severe as they will be for Woods….

Read more market commentary at The Pragmatic Capitalist >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Yes, Ben Bernanke’s Beard Has Gotten MUCH Grayer Since The Crisis Started
• Ben Bernanke’s 1938 Parallel
• Nassim Taleb: I Can’t Believe I Live In A World Where Bernanke Could Be Reappointed

Weak November sales are most likely the catalyst for the mass selloff of Zales Corporation (ZLC) stock today.

Same store sales were down 18.6% for November compared with last year. Currently, the stock is down 22% to $3.89 a share.

Reuters: The Dallas-based chain, which is being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the accounting practices that led it to restate its 2008 and 2009 earnings , gave no update on those proceedings. However, it said it did not believe the probe “will have a material effect” on its financial results.

I guess diamond’s aren’t forever after all.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Weak Diamond Market Pushes De Beers To The Brink
• Blue Nile CEO Diane Irvine: People Buying Diamonds Like Crazy Again (NILE)
• Final November Retail Sales Are A Huge Disappointment

 

John Mauldin, President, Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (4 min)

• We’re borrowing ourselves to death
• But government spending doesn’t fix anything–investments must be made in the private sector in order to create jobs
• The U.S. will not reach a $2 trillion deficit–because government will raise taxes and cut spending before that happens.  These moves will kill the economy.
• Another financial crisis will occur if there is no credible plan to get back to manageable debts

Produced By: Kamelia Angelova & William Wei

More Video: TBI Calendar Click HERE >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• John Mauldin: We’re Still Heading For A Double-Dip Recession
• John Mauldin’s Presentation: "Thoughts On The Continuing Economic Crisis"
• The Fed Is Bailing Out Every Bank In The World

I first posted this on the Destination CRM blog, thanks to Josh Weinberger @kitson. Update: The below is a partial view of the industry, do see this larger index of Social CRM vendors.

Surveying the Social CRM Industry
Business partner Ray Wang (focused on enterprise strategy) and myself (customer strategy) of the Altimeter Group is undergoing a major project for a client in the nascent Social CRM arena.  We’re surveying the landscape to learn about a variety of vendors in the space, their capabilities and deployments. A small portion of our survey is to see who’s eating their own dog food, and truly demonstrating they understand the ’social’ aspect of social crm and living it.

Companies Who Sell Social Products Should Demonstrate Credibility By Living It
While critics may be quick to dismiss the mere inclusions of a blog or community to a product landing page, the message goes much deeper. Social CRM isn’t just about bolting on a new plugin to your system like a new air foil on your minivan but instead a new way of doing business. The promise of social crm says that companies are truly listening to their customers wherever they are, responding, anticipating, and making the commitment to improve products and services. Vendors that are assisting brands with this promise to the market need to demonstrate they fully understand the ramifications of social crm –not just a keyword checklist of the buzzword du jour.

Criteria: How We Graded the Social CRM Vendors
There are four major areas of grading, from very tactical ability to 1) Simple sharing of social content from the corporate product page 2) Surfacing a developer or business community, and a look inside of the discussions in each community, with bonus points for integration with product page. 3) Thought leadership with relevant blogs on the subject, and a gauge of their level of interaction and any twitter accounts they may have. 4) A subjective look at the overall page experience in the context of a company that’s offering a ’social experience’.

Findings: Overall, Social CRM Vendors Aren’t Walking the Talk
We’ve decided to make our findings public, at least for this part of our client deliverable to see how different vendors that are in the Social CRM space are walking the talk.

	Sharing Features on Product Page (out of 1 point)	Community and Integration (out of 1 point)	Thought Leadership: Blogs, Twitter (out of 1 point)	Overall Social Experience (out of 1 point)	Final Score (out of 4 points)
Salesforce	0	0	0	.25	.25/4
Microsoft Dynamic	0	0	0	.5	.5/4
SAP CRM	.5	0	0	0	.5/4
Jive (Community Platform)	0	0	.5	.5	1.0/4
Oracle/Siebel Social CRM	0	.5	.5	0	1.0/4
RightNow CRM	1	0	.5	0	1.5/4
Lithium (Community Platform)*	.75	.75	.75	0	2.25/4

To pass, companies need to receive greater than a .5 in each category for a total score of 2.0 plus making Lithium the only vendor to pass.

For details, see the data, and our justifications on this Google Sheet.

Highlights From Study
The product pages are devoid of true social interaction, and none of them actually surface discussions about how the market is even talking about them. Marketing machine Salesforce demonstrated they aren’t engaging in a social experience on their own product pages and SAP and Microsoft’s typical enterprise looking design stayed consistent with ‘boring’ social experiences. Although Oracle’s bland web experience looks like it’s designed for the media-phobes, there is links to community and thought leadership blogs. Despite the overall meager findings, there were a few social hopefuls such as Lithium (Altimeter client*) who integrated social throughout the experience followed by RightNow Technologies who demonstrated thought leadership through executive blogs. Honorable mention to Jive engaging online video that captures the spirit of the Social CRM movement. We know that soon every webpage will be social, even if you don’t choose for it to be, so companies should enable features that allow websites to have conversations. Social CRM vendors that want to demonstrate to the market they are experts at this space should gear up to demonstrate they’ve the ability to do as they preach –as for now, it doesn’t show.

*Altimeter Client. At the Altimeter Group we practice open leadership (also the topic of Charlene’s upcoming book) and disclose our relationships with clients, given their permission. We hope you will trust us more if we do.

Add ING analyst Rob Carnell to the list of folks that just refuses to believe Friday’s shocking unemployment report.

His basic contention, via FT Alphaville, is that the report was too good to be true, ergo it must not be true.

In our view, the only potential fly in the ointment of this labour report is how believable it is. Payrolls has been making very, very slow progress in recent months, and such a dramatic turnaround will raise eyebrows, and may not be taken at face value by many. An improvement in the payrolls series always looked on the cards from last month. But most of the labour market data in the run up to this release had been consistent only with a very small step forward, so we may need to see this backed up again next month before concern about the labour market can really be filed away as ‘last year’s worries’.

Further support for the turnaround in the employment sector came from hours worked – which gained 0.2 hours on the month, helping to push weekly earnings higher. Hourly earnings continued to decline and now stand at only 2.2% YoY. But they lag employment growth by up to two years, so it would be a bit early to expect much improvement here.

In contrast to the weak November non-manufacturing ISM survey’s employment index yesterday, which registered only a small increase from very low levels, the service sector apparently generated 58K jobs in November. Strong gains in temporary help jobs (usually a retail sector phenomenon) were a big factor here, so anecdotal reports of relatively soft retail sales in November may see some of these jobs rapidly removed after the end of the year, once sales have finished (if demand does not improve).

We are also slightly curious about the apparent surge in government jobs, which on revision have risen by more than 50K in the last two months. When state and local finances are in such a deep mess, even the Obama fiscal package is unlikely to have generated this rapid turnaround in the public sector. More believably, goods producing, construction and manufacturing jobs all saw continued large falls.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Rosenberg: There’s Just A 1-In-35 Chance Friday’s Employment Number Was Right
• Jobless Claims Drop 35,000, Hit Best Level Since September 2008
• We’ve Still Got A LONG Way To Go On Jobs

 

 

You know natural gas is getting sexy when Hollywood rolls in. Get ready for Haynesville, a movie about thrills and perils of a natural gas boom town in Louisiana.

Haynesville: As the Haynesville boom erupts, the film focuses on three lives caught in the middle of the find: A single mom takes up the defense of her community’s environmental protections, an African American preacher attempts to use the riches to build a Christian school and a salt-of-the-earth, self-described “country boy” finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his land to an oil company’s offer to make him a millionaire.

Check out the movie's official site here, and definitely see the trailer below. (Tip via The Energy Collective)

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• More Signs Of A Natural Gas Apocalypse (UNG)
• Coal Consumers Switching To Use Natural Gas (UNG)
• Watch Liquid Natural Gas Arbitrage In Action (UNG)

Nintendo’s rolling out a few downloadable classic games for the Wii and DS this week. The original Rayman game’s coming to the DSiWare service alongside another mix of handheld games and apps. The Virtual Console service is

Filed under: Aftermarket, Convertible, Coupe, Performance, BMW, Luxury

Autotechnik + Tuning has done a job on the BMW M3, but if you don’t look closely, you might miss it. Echoing a sentiment we love, they declare “At first glance you cannot estimate the scope of retrofitting.” However, while we appreciate their tuning philosophy, we’re not so sure about their tuning math.

ATT adds a supercharger and remaps the engine software, all of which bumps the M3’s horsey count from 414 to a nice, round 500. To get that bad boy in your engine bay will cost you a tear-shedding €11,749 ($17,455 U.S.). But that’s not all: a new exhaust, KW coilovers, and ATT-TEC Le Mans wheels on 20-inch rubber will add more than €7,000 ($10,399 U.S.) to the line at the bottom of the invoice. Those are the kind of numbers that’ll give you a concussion, especially when we’re talking about an 86-horsepower improvement.

Either way, you can read about it in ATT’s own words in the presser after the jump, or check it out in the gallery of photos below, and if nothing else, at least that’s free.

[Source: Autotechnik + Tuning]

Continue reading Autotechnik + Tuning brings the rain with its Thunderstorm BMW M3

Autotechnik + Tuning brings the rain with its Thunderstorm BMW M3 originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The SPDR Gold Trust ($GLD) is having an amazing day.

Just when it looked like the gold bubble had burst, in came the program traders to save the day with massive buying volume.

30 million shares and counting have exchanged hands as gold tries to erase its $25 drop from earlier today.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Michael Panzner: Commercial Real Estate Is A "Tsunami Unfolding"
• MC Hammer Becomes Equity Partner In Cash4Gold
• Panicked Gold Buying Forces Vietnam To Devalue Currency