Category: News

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) was formed in 1998 to provide an independent source of advanced aeronautical and space concepts that could dramatically impact how NASA develops and conducts its missions. Until the program’s termination in August 2007, NIAC provided an independent open forum, a high-level point of entry to NASA for an external community of innovators, and an external capability for analysis and definition of advanced aeronautics and space concepts to complement the advanced concept activities conducted within NASA. Throughout its 9-year existence, NIAC inspired an atmosphere for innovation that stretched the imagination and encouraged creativity.

As requested by Congress, this volume reviews the effectiveness of NIAC and makes recommendations concerning the importance of such a program to NASA and to the nation as a whole, including the proper role of NASA and the federal government in fostering scientific innovation and creativity and in developing advanced concepts for future systems. Key findings and recommendations include that in order to achieve its mission, NASA must have, and is currently lacking, a mechanism to investigate visionary, far-reaching advanced concepts. Therefore, a NIAC-like entity should be reestablished to fill this gap.

The amount of time phishing websites remain online has dropped 25 percent over the last year, according to a new survey by the Anti-Phishing Work Group (APWG).

The APWG says uptimes are a critical measure of how damaging phishing attacks are and the longer a phishing attack remains active, the more harm it causes consumers. The decrease signals collective progress is being made by the parties that fight phishing, and may be due to improved polices at Internet service providers, brand holders, domain name registrars, and private Internet security providers.

The "Global Phishing Survey: Trends and Domain Name Use in 1H2009" found that phishing website longevity dropped to an average of 39 hours in the first half of 2009, down from an average of 52 hours in the second half of 2008.

"We’re pleased to see that phishing site lifetimes are being positively affected," said Rod Rasmussen, co-author of the study and CTO of Internet Identity.

"In particular, the survey demonstrates how anti-abuse programs at domain registries can have an immediate impact on the problem."

The survey also found that a single criminal syndicate called "Avalanche" was responsible for nearly one quarter of all phishing attacks in the first half of 2009. Indications are that the group is continuing to claim a larger proportion of all detected phishing attacks.

"The results show that on the Internet, action and involvement by responsible parties can really help Internet users," said Greg Aaron, co-author and Director of Domain Security at Afilias.

"When everyone takes responsibility and does their part to make it a safer place, good things happen. We think that is what we are seeing in the results of this study, and we’d all like to see more."

Brian Bond is Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The day after the US Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to begin debate on the possible introduction of new federal regulations governing how Internet service providers may delineate and manage services for their customers, Sen. John McCain (R – Ariz.) announced he will be proposing simple and swift legislation that would forever separate the Internet from the FCC’s purview.

Sen. McCain’s office presented Betanews with the very latest draft of the bill this afternoon, which has yet to be reported to the floor (thus it does not yet have a number), and has within the last few hours been renamed the “Real Stimulus Act of 2009.” Its earlier name, the “Internet Freedom Act,” clashed too strongly with competing pro-net-neutrality legislation introduced earlier this year in the House. As it stands now, it’s only a two-page bill, the principle clause of which reads: “The Federal Communications Commission shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services.” Exceptions would be in cases of national security, to ensure public safety, or to aid in law enforcement activities; and existing regulations to that effect would still be considered in effect.

In a statement yesterday, Sen. McCain attempted to explain the “stimulus” theory of his bill: Although it contains no government subsidies, unlike recent stimulus bills, he feels that keeping wireless services free from government regulation will enable job growth through continued investment in service expansion.

“This government takeover of the Internet will stifle innovation, in turn slowing our economic turnaround and further depressing an already anemic job market. Outside of health care, the technology industry is the nation’s fastest growing job market. Innovation and job growth in this sector of our economy is the key to America’s future prosperity,” reads a statement from his office. To that, the Senator added the remark that his bill “will allow for continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans who are out of work or seeking new employment. Keeping businesses free from oppressive regulations is the best stimulus for the current economy.”

Sen. McCain is already very much on record as believing that the Internet, unlike the public airwaves, is a culmination of collected services that are contributed by private enterprises, and that each of those enterprises has an exclusive stake to its share of the contribution. At the All Things D conference in May 2007, when he was still seeking the Republican nomination for President, McCain told the audience, “When you control the pipe, you should be able to get profit from your investment.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

We’ve seen our share of TV spots from Sony, and I think it’s safe to conclude that the advertising isn’t reaching out to us as much as the actual prod…

In the ongoing health care overhaul drama, the Obama administration and the health insurance industry have gone from uneasy allies to bitter adversaries.

One result is that health insurers stand to lose a privilege their industry has enjoyed for the past 64 years: They, like Major League Baseball, have been exempt from federal antitrust laws. Congressional Democrats are now pushing to strip the health insurance industry of that exemption.

Things turned ugly earlier this month after the health insurance industry rejected the health care makeover it once supported. President Obama dedicated his most recent weekly address almost entirely to blasting those insurers; he accused them of skimming big profits off ever-escalating premiums.

“They’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our antitrust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing,” the president said.

It was Congress, after all, that in 1945 overrode a Supreme Court ruling that the insurance industry was indeed part of interstate commerce and thus subject to federal antitrust laws. Lawmakers that year passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act; the law has ever since shielded insurance firms from federal prosecution for price fixing, bid rigging and carving out protected markets.

This week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy declared the time had come to do away with that protection.

“The antitrust laws exist to protect consumers, but also to promote competition,” he said. “You remove the antitrust laws, you don’t protect consumers, and you don’t promote competition.”

‘Allow competition to have a greater role’

Leahy held a hearing last week on ending the antitrust exemption for health and medical malpractice insurers. Christine Varney, who heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, testified for the Obama administration.

“Repealing the McCarran-Ferguson Act would allow competition to have a greater role in reforming health and medical malpractice insurance markets than would otherwise be the case,” she said.

Varney’s assertion was roundly rejected by University of Arkansas business professor Lawrence Powell, who testified on behalf of the medical malpractice insurance industry.

“The best possible outcome from repealing McCarran is continuation of the status quo,” he said. “However, it is also likely that repealing McCarran would have negative consequences for consumers, by decreasing competition and accuracy in insurance pricing.”

Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out that the professor was relying on outdated information.

“You cite for the proposition that insurance markets are highly competitive an article by Paul Joskow. Do I have the date of that article correct, it’s 1973?” he asked Powell. “I believe so,” came the answer.

Whitehouse noted that in 39 states, two health insurers control at least half the market, while in nine states, one insurer controls at least three-quarters of the market.

Possible backfire?

Still, some health economists question whether breaking up big insurance companies with federal antitrust laws will help consumers.

“What you may find is that it’s the opposite — that you break them up and they can’t bargain down prices and, therefore, while they’re competing at the margin, they’re all competing at a higher level of premium than you had before,” says Austin Frakt of Boston University’s School of Public Health. “That’s certainly possible.”

It’s the states that regulate the insurance industry. Still, almost all the nation’s state attorneys general want to repeal the federal antitrust exemption.

“This gives us another tool in our arsenal to combat higher rates — proposed and accepted by companies that have a stranglehold in the market — in states like Maine, where basically one company controls the market,” says Maine Attorney General Janet Mills.

The push to repeal the antitrust exemption has gained momentum. This week, three Republicans joined Democrats to vote such a bill out of the House Judiciary Committee. A similar measure is planned as an amendment to the Senate’s health care overhaul.

I know everybody is excited to start their weekend but the bell doesn’t dismiss you, I dismiss you. So before you go, I’m gonna tell you about this new 3.5-pound Acer Timeline ultraportable that just came out yesterday.

First, the keyboard is gorgeous. It’s like looking at a pretty girl but not the kind of girl that’s too good for you, but more the girl who shows up at your party, does a keg stand, and then asks “Who wants to play Madden?” Pretty but accessible, is what I’m saying. It looks nice, but perhaps more importantly it’s easy to type on.

Second, it’s a good deal (I bought it on Amazon for $600). You get a 3.5-pound frame, a 1.3GHz Intel SU4100 CPU, 3GB of DDR3 RAM, 320GB SATA hard drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, and a six-cell battery which Acer claims is good for up to 8 hours.

Thirdly, thusly, and finally, please check out the above video for a quick hands on. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to review this computer because it’s a gift for my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday. I’d like to make it clear that I didn’t spend all $600 of my own money on the computer. I don’t want to get any aspiring bloggers’ hopes up about making enough money to throw down $600 on a birthday present for your mother-in-law. You’ll need to split $600 presents multiple ways for your entire life. But you do get to play with toys a lot.

Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810TZ-4925 [Amazon]

A ton of readers here have been submitting various versions of stories claiming that Hulu is getting rid of free content. I’d been ignoring the story, because it’s a non-story at this point. But people keep submitting it, so let’s go through the details. Basically, at a Broadcasting & Cable event, News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey basically said that free content isn’t the best way to monetize and that Hulu “concurs.” Here’s specifically how B&C reported it:

“It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online,” he said. Carey said that while everyone cites the infamous Jeff Zucker quip that “We’e exchanging analogue dollars for digital dimes,” the industry continues to do exactly that. The strategy needs to be more than just fighting piracy and Google, he says.

“I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value,” Carey said. “Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”

AdVerse had a quick chat with Carey too and posed the question, when exactly does Hulu start charging then? Carey, who says he’s only been to one Hulu board meeting since arriving at News Corp., suggests there is still no timeline but supposes it’s at least in 2010. Carey says that while throwing up a pay-wall around all content is not the answer, it doesn’t mean there wont be fees for some specially-created content and TV previews

So… this is really no different than what was said a few months back, when News Corp’s Jon Miller started saying that Hulu should add subscription offerings. It’s the official News Corp. position, ever since Rupert Murdoch suddenly flip flopped and decided free content online is evil. All News Corp. execs have now been making noise about trying to charge for content.

But… Carey is just one board member, not Hulu management, and has only been to one board meeting — this is hardly an official announcement. He even admits that a paywall is not the answer. This isn’t anything official from Hulu. So, before we freak out about how dumb this is, let’s wait and see what Hulu actually does. As we’ve been seeing the ad rates on Hulu can be quite impressive, and the site itself is still somewhat new. So, yes, giving up on free content would be dumb, and would just drive people back to file sharing for TV shows. But until we see what Hulu is actually planning, the claim that Hulu is giving up on free content simply isn’t supported by what’s been said.

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‘Aging in Place’ is the popular rallying cry in the senior community. But living at home is not so easy, either for the frail elderly or younger people with disabilities.

Interestingly enough, the reasons may have more to do with social issues than medical concerns. Today, almost everyone could receive the care they need at home, even if they suffer from multiple chronic illnesses. But the frail elderly still move to assisted living facilities or nursing homes. For many, that transition is driven by a lack of qualified caregivers, an absence of basic services such as transportation, no access to appropriate housing, and loneliness.

Let’s look at these problems one at a time.

Caregivers: Nearly two-thirds of those being cared for at home receive all of their assistance from family members and friends. But these informal caregivers are untrained, and face huge physical, emotional and financial burdens. And they burn out.

In Japan in the 1990s, it was called ‘caregiver hell’ and the backlash drove profound changes in the way that nation financed elder care. We prefer to imagine family caregiving as a gauzy Sunday night movie where families rebuild fractured relationships before mom dies in peace. But, in truth, things rarely turn out that way. Caregiving is hard. 

A new study by The Urban Institute’s Brenda Spillman and Sharon Long finds a major link between caregiver stress and a patient’s move to a nursing home. The biggest cause: physical strain. But financial hardship and an inability to sleep play a big role as well.

Spouses of the frail elderly may suffer the most, since many face their own physical or cognitive limitations. But adult children are hardly immune, especially those who must balance jobs and kids with caring for parents. Long-distance caregivers face particular challenges. And many of the very old may have outlived both spouses and children, and now have no one to care for them.                

Home health aides are a solution for some. But quality care workers are not easy to find. It is no wonder: they earn an average of less than $10-an-hour, rarely receive benefits such as health insurance and are more likely to be injured on the job than coal miners. There are many capable and loving aides out there. But there is far more demand for help than they can fill.

Lack of Services: The most important may be transportation. Something as simple as a reliable ride to the supermarket or the doctor may be the difference between staying at home and having to move. Yet, many communities are scaling back transit programs for the elderly and disabled in the face of budget problems.

Housing: You can’t live at home if you don’t have a house. And finding one is a challenge for the many seniors and disabled with low-incomes. Even if you do have a home, it may need to be renovated to accommodate a wheelchair or a walker, and that can cost more money than many seniors have. And few government programs will help. Medicaid will pay for nursing home care, and will provide limited benefits for home care. But, with rare exceptions, it doesn’t do housing.   

Loneliness: Staying at home can be extremely isolating, especially for a widow or widower. Adult children may provide practical assistance, but they have their own lives and often can’t be there for simple companionship. Old friends may find it difficult to visit as they struggle with their own physical decline. For all their limitations, nursing homes and assisted living facilities at least provide activities and companionship.  

There are solutions. Better training is critical for both family caregivers and paid aides, who also deserve higher pay and better benefits. Respite care, including adult day centers, gives caregivers a desperately needed break. Community-based programs can match up volunteers with those who need rides or friendly visits.

All of this costs money. We can fund some of it through a more flexible Medicaid program. But a better solution is broad-based long-term care insurance that would give families the financial resources they need to provide appropriate care to their loved ones.  

We’ll never keep everyone at home. Assisted living and nursing home care may still be necessary for those with no families or those suffering from severe dementia. But if we work at it, we can postpone the transition for months or even years. It is worth trying.  

Howard Gleckman, a resident fellow at the Urban Institute, is author of “Caring For Our Parents” and a frequent writer and speaker on long-term care issues.

Google is rolling out the biggest set of changes it has ever made to Google Maps since it launched nearly five years ago. The changes come in a variety of manners, like refinements to color, density, typography, and road-styling. These changes are visible in the "map" and "hybrid" views around the world.

"For example, in map view, local and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colours have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things (such as traffic, transit lines and search results) that we overlay onto the map," explains Jonah Jones of the Google Maps User Experience Design team. "Hybrid roads have gained a crisp outline to make them easier to follow, and the overall look is now closer to an augmented satellite view instead of a simple overlay."

Google provides a few visuals as examples of where changes are noticeable. Here are some parts of London in different views.

In the first one, you can see an improvement in readability and density of the roads in the hybrid view. Smaller roads are easier to find. In the second one, you can see finer road widths, cleaner rail lines, and a lighter color scheme. Google shows a few more examples here.

On another Google Maps related note, you may have seen that Google officially announced its Street View Trike last week, even though it’s been around for quite some time. If you go to Google Maps now, there is a link to a "Street View Trike Special Collections Poll," which is now open.

"Tell us where to ride!" Google says. "The Street View trike has already collected some imagery, but now we’re accepting your suggestions for where to send it next in the United States. Send us your most inspired suggestions for the places you really want to see featured in Street View."

There are lots of improvements being made to Google Maps. Earlier this month, Google launched a new dataset for it, which opened up a lot more scenery.

Sony and Guerrilla Games may have refused to comment on the Killzone 3 rumors floating around, but that’s not stopping the rumor mill from gathering…

Seventy-six year old Frank Morrow is not only having his knee replaced at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s also helping to test a Medicare payment system. Under the “bundled” approach, Medicare makes a single reimbursement for all the hospital and doctor care for heart and joint procedures, rather than making separate payments to the facility and physicians.

It’s a win-win-win proposition: The hospital gets guaranteed customers, Medicare saves 4.4% on procedures and Frank Morrow gets $271 as an incentive for going to a hospital that participates in the program.

Producer: Renato Perez

Related Article

Back in 1997, the band Aqua released a song called “Barbie Girl,” that was actually somewhat critical of “Barbie doll” culture. Mattel, famous for its rather aggressive intellectual property stance, wasted little time in suing the band, claiming the song infringed on the company’s rights. In 2002, everyone’s favorite appeals court judge (seriously, the guy never fails to entertain) Alex Kozinski told Mattel too bad, parody songs are a part of what you get for being a cultural icon — and included the classic line: “The parties are advised to chill.”

It took seven years since that decision, but apparently Mattel had decided to heed Judge Kozinski’s suggestion. Reader Sallo alerts us to the news that Mattel has actually licensed the song for a commercial — though, they “adjusted” some of the lyrics to make it a little more pro-Barbie, rather than mocking-Barbie. Still, that’s quite a jump: from suing the band for infringement to actually licensing and using the song in just a few years.

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Oh man, yet another “élite” phone for us to look over and never be able to afford. It’s the Mobiado 350 Pioneer. It looks sort of like an Indiana Jones relic (note: I’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie), and is part of Mobiado’s Grand Line.

If “graphics” is the name of the game, then Ubisoft won’t shy away from the opportunity to shine, especially with what they’ve done with Assassin’s C…

In his latest article for the Chicago Sun Times, Mac-afficianado and supergeek Andy Ihnatko discusses LongBox, an iTunes-like comic book online store and screen reader. If you’re into graphic novels, you’ll likely want to know more about this service, which promises to bring order and unity to the chaotic digital world of comic books. What caught my eye, however, was Ihnatko’s belief that LongBox is deep in discussion with Apple over bringing its app to the iTunes Store and making, in due course, the mythical Tablet the perfect e-reader for their graphical content.

Ihnatko describes how LongBox CEO Rant Hoseley dropped a very juicy hint at a recent convention:

Rantz spoke at the Long Beach Comic-Con last weekend, as part of an industry panel on the future of digital distribution. Referring to a future strategic partnership with an unnamed company, Rantz said “It seems like everything is going to go through as planned.” He identified the company only as one that “all of a sudden leaves us with a multinational launch with literally millions of installed users.”

That sounds a hell of a lot like access to the iTunes Store, either in the form of software in the App Store or readable content in a hypothetical “iTunes Newsstand.”

Ihnatko spoke with Rantz for an hour, relentlessly questioning him and expecting him to “stumble” over common issues that have kept the comic book industry from so far settling on a unified online sales and distribution platform. Apparently, Rantz didn’t stumble, but provided further tantalizing clues that something is afoot with our friends in Cupertino.

I’m pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.

What follows is an explanation of further clues and detective work that convinced Ihnatko LongBox is working with Apple. It’s worth reading in full. However, he’s cautious, and warns against getting too excited too soon.

CEOs say a lot of things during these briefings and when you’re on the other end of the phone, you need to be cautious before passing along any speculation that makes the company look this good. Even on the record, a tissue-thin hint isn’t the same as an open confirmation.

So I’m wishing LongBox well. And I hope that this deal with Apple is, in fact, more than just a busload of wishful thinking from a comic book geek with a tech column. An alliance with Apple would benefit everybody in the comix [sic] industry. It would kickstart digital sales through a single, united storefront the same way that Apple’s alliance with record labels kicked off the digital music industry in 2003.

To be sure, LongBox will want to get its app onto as many platforms as possible. And there is no lack of choice. Amazon’s Kindle is in its second iteration and was recently made available outside America. Barnes & Noble’s brand spanking new Nook is making waves, too. And there are plenty more e-readers on the market, with more on the way.

Amazon's Kindle offers hundreds of thousands of titles, but ultimately, it's a one-trick pony

While devices like the Kindle have established online stores with hundreds of thousands of titles on offer, they remain single-purpose machines. Sure, most e-readers can store photos for viewing on their grayscale e-ink screens, and the Sony Reader even offers MP3 support to boot — but none of the readers on the market today can offer wider multimedia capabilities.

Apple’s fabled tablet is expected to ship with some flavor of the iPhone OS and feature a full color capacitive touch screen. But more importantly, it’s expected to make full use of the iTunes store and all that it makes available to its millions of active users. So add music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, games and apps to the yet-to-be-launched e-book category. That’s content that works across all your computers and your phone, too. None of the other e-readers on the market even come close to competing with that sort of functionality.

For that reason, I barely use my Sony Reader, and have bought only a handful of books for the thing and have resisted the (sometimes rather strong) temptation to buy a Kindle. And believe me, I’ve been tempted; I have long-harbored a quaint desire to sit in my conservatory on a sunny, peaceful weekend morning and enjoy a long, slow coffee while catching up on the news. But I want my reader to do much more that simple news feeds.

I haven’t made a serious effort to read comic books for a long time (years, in fact) but I used to love them. I don’t bother now because I don’t like reading them on my monitor and I don’t like buying the dead-tree editions (it’s a personal preference — I simply don’t like buying literature on pressed wood-pulp any more).

So I’m holding out for next year when the Tablet is released because I know that not only will I be able to fill it up with books, all my other content from iTunes will work on it, too. And when that happens, I might just start buying comic books again.

In Q3, NewNet focus turns to business models and search. Read the, “NewNet Q3 Wrap-up.”

Hey, remember Hulu.com? It was a Web site that sort of came out of nowhere, and offered streaming TV shows from NBC and other networks. It was ad-supported, and free. People liked it. And then, one day, in October, 2009, a completely bonkers TV executive all but killed it with one sentence: “It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online.”

Those are the words of News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey, uttered at some sort of broadcasters pow wow.

The idea that News Corp. (and the other broadcast execs) expects to be paid for something that travels through the air 100 percent freely, and has for decades is, that’s right, ludicrous. And I’m referring only to broadcast content here. Shows like The Office and The Simpsons, and not Curb Your Enthusiasm or Weeds. Ads pay for the broadcast shows, and that anyone expects us to pay for those shows again! Ha!

It’s like this: Hulu already runs ads. I’m not gonna pay for access to the site when there’s already ads on there.

Never mind the fact that people only put up with the ads because the site is a convenience. “Sure, I’ll put up with a few ads so long as I can watch 30 Rock in between CrunchGear posts.” Otherwise, yeah, I’ll head right back to alt.binaries.multimedia and start downloading away. No ads there, and in 720p!

I mean, was I stealing all those Seinfeld reruns or 24 (aka the Jack Bauer Power Hour) when I had an HDTV antenna hooked up to my TV? I don’t recall paying to watch those shows; that’s what the ads were for!

In essence, charging for Hulu is a one-way to Irrelevant Town. I don’t care either way, seeing as thought I really haven’t watched TV for several years now (outside of live sports).