Category: News

More evidence has emerged showing that the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) vaccine Pandemrix, which was widely administered throughout Europe during the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza “pandemic,” was responsible for causing serious and permanent side effects in many of the children…

As unbelievable as it sounds, the nation’s premier domestic law enforcement agency is treating terrorism as a job-justification program, creating one phony “threat” after another to create cases out of thin air. The latest case of what is nothing less than federal…

A recent study concluded that eating three or more servings of strawberries and/or blueberries per week protects against cardiovascular disease and heart attacks on women. Only women? This study was for dietary influences that increase heart and cardiovascular health…

By the time he died in 1994, Linus Pauling had long been branded a “quack” by mainstream medicine and much of the mainstream media. Why? Because he advocated the use of vitamin C to treat many diseases, including the common cold. He claimed the medical establishment…

(Satire) Carnival Cruise Lines needs to learn a lesson in public relations from the White House. First of all, never admit to any wrongdoing, even if the people you represent are knee-deep in s#!t. Cruise line customers, much like voters, are simply not qualified to…

Air travelers in the United States know that producing a photo ID when passing through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint is pretty standard fare. What most did not know; however, is that there is no requirement to do so in the TSA operating regulations…

It seems the lesson today’s American college students most need to learn is one not taught at its universities and colleges — that there is a difference between believing you can accomplish anything and taking action to accomplish something. A recent analysis of…

One of the most widely misunderstood food groups today, oils and fats can be both crucial and detrimental to your health, depending on what type they are and how they are processed. But with so many inconsistencies and mistruths emerging from health authorities and the…

A recent Bonn University study suggests we may all be living in a virtual simulation. If a pixel-lattice that forms the background of this universe is presenting us with an all-encompassing “television picture” of reality, then the whole space-time continuum could be…

One of the most common myths associated with diabetes is that too much intake of sugary foods triggers it. It should be noted; however, that while a low-sugar diet can help reduce the chances of dealing with diabetes, the excessive consumption of sugar is not the sole…

Some hormonal birth control methods may increase the risk of diabetes in overweight but otherwise healthy women, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California and published in the journal Contraception. The researchers divided…

(NaturalNews)By now, most of us are aware of the fact that MSG has two purposes: to give a food that has absolutely no flavor, flavor and to increase the shelf life of a useless product that ultimately will increase the profits of the highly reputable company using it. Actually,…

When you think of TV series production studios, you don’t normally think “Netflix.” But the company has just produced and released a full season of a new political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and called “House of Cards.” Let me cut to the chase: House of Cards…

People who stay connected to their offices after work by means of phones, computers and tablets have more trouble recovering from workday stress, reducing their mental and physical health and placing more strain on their relationships, according to a series of studies…

The FCC’s third and most recent broadband quality report has determined that some types of broadband is still better than others, with fiber to the home and satellite generally offering more than the promised upload and download speeds at times of peak usage.

But of course, that’s not the only stat users might care about, which is why the FCC measures 13 different variables as part of its data collection efforts here. The data comes from Sam Knows and special routers sitting inside roughly 10,000 homes (I have one!). Those routers report on upload and download speeds, latency and the customers’ service tiers to create a nationwide picture of broadband quality.

And in general people should be pretty happy. As the chart above shows, people are mostly getting what they pay for, with customers of AT&T most likely to feel short-changed. What’s most surprising about this data is that satellite has moved from being pretty spotty to achieving high throughputs even at peak times, thanks to new satellites launched in the last two years. Sure, the service maxes out at 12 Mbps, but customers are getting those 12 Mbps and then some.

What else should the FCC monitor?

With most customers getting within 90 percent of the advertised speeds, the FCC should turn to gathering other data as well. Last summer it asked for comments on how other factors such as data caps might affect broadband quality. For example, would a service with a cap that delivers high speeds most of the time be as good as a service that has slightly lower consistency but no cap? Those comments were due last month, but there’s no mention of data caps in the report so far. Maybe we’ll see it in the next go round of this data. The FCC plans also to take a look at even faster speed tiers (maybe a gigabit) in later reports.

And in general it looks like customers are moving up to higher speeds, especially if they are starting out on the slow side, as the chart below indicates. This is great. Getting more people online, and subscribed to real broadband will be important in both closing a digital divide but also making it easier to design sites and services for more of the population. At those 1 Mbps and below speeds news stories featuring animated GIFs are a nightmare.

As a reporter, I’m glad the agency is collecting and reporting this data. Even though firms like Google and Netflix have options for measuring how your broadband or U.S. ISPs stack up, getting something objective from the FCC has a bit more cachet. Of course, the hope at the FCC is that the release of this data will help keep what is a relatively uncompetitive market for last mile broadband access a bit more honest.

But as a subscriber whose ISP isn’t quite delivering at the 100 percent mark — Time Warner Cable is pretty much the worst cable provider there is in terms of delivering on advertised speeds according to the chart below — this information doesn’t help. My only other option is the even-lower-performing AT&T. Add in the $10 rate hike I just got from TWC after I moved, and I’m left knowing that I have less-than-spectacular service but that I can’t do anything to make it better.

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Final Book Now Available

The Consumer Expenditure (CE) surveys are the only source of information on the complete range of consumers’ expenditures and incomes in the United States, as well as the characteristics of those consumers. The CE consists of two separate surveys: (1) a national sample of households interviewed five times at three-month intervals; and (2) a separate national sample of households that complete two consecutive one-week expenditure diaries. For more than 40 years, these surveys, the responsibility of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), have been the principal source of knowledge about changing patterns of consumer spending in the U.S. population.

In February 2009, BLS initiated the Gemini Project, the aim of which is to redesign the CE surveys to improve data quality through a verifiable reduction in measurement error with a particular focus on underreporting. The Gemini Project initiated a series of information-gathering meetings, conference sessions, forums, and workshops to identify appropriate strategies for improving CE data quality. As part of this effort, BLS requested the National Research Council’s Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) to convene an expert panel to build on the Gemini Project by conducting further investigations and proposing redesign options for the CE surveys.

The charge to the Panel on Redesigning the BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys includes reviewing the output of a Gemini-convened data user needs forum and methods workshop and convening its own household survey producers workshop to obtain further input. In addition, the panel was tasked to commission options from contractors for consideration in recommending possible redesigns. The panel was further asked by BLS to create potential redesigns that would put a greater emphasis on proactive data collection to improve the measurement of consumer expenditures. Measuring What We Spend summarizes the deliberations and activities of the panel, discusses the conclusions about the uses of the CE surveys and why a redesign is needed, as well as recommendations for the future.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Industry and Labor | Behavioral and Social Sciences

Earlier this evening, President Obama sat down with Americans from across the country to discuss his State of the Union address and his plan to create jobs and strengthen the middle class.

During the virtual conversation, the President answered questions about a range of topics, from steps to reduce gun violence to his plan to reward hard work by raising the minimum wage. The President also addressed some more personal questions from participants on recommended reading, Valentine’s Day plans and baby names.

Check out the full video of the President’s Hangout below. And if you have thoughts about the State of the Union, you can share your Citizen Response with the White House using a new online tool.

read more

Dropbox, a major player in online document storage and sharing for consumers, has met with bankers ahead of a possible initial public offering later this year, according to a report Thursday from Quartz. If the timing is right — the IPO could come in the second half of 2013, Quartz reported — Dropbox would beat out Box, another growing online storage vendor, in the race to go public.

While consumers have steadily flocked to Dropbox, the enterprise cloud storage space remains up for grabs. Box has long wanted to be the Dropbox of the enterprise space, as my colleague Barb Darrow reported last year. Box clients include Netflix, Dow Chemical and Procter & Gamble.

Dropbox introduced new features for enterprise IT administrators on Tuesday, including reports on employees’ storage use and the ability to give or take away access to documents for certain users and devices. But IBM and other enterprises have forbidden employees from using Dropbox, showing that hurdles to adoption persist. (A Dropbox blog post challenges that notion, stating that “people at over two million businesses and 95% of Fortune 500 companies are using Dropbox,” but does not tell whether all those companies pay for the service.)

This is also a crowded space, with other enterprise cloud storage providers such as Google Drive, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Accellion’s kitedrive, Egnyte, GroupLogic’s activEcho, SurDoc and ownCloud aiming for a piece of the market.

Given that Dropbox has not emerged as the enterprise storage leader, it could be early for Dropbox to go in for an IPO, even as it has a $4 billion valuation and has raised $257.2 million from Sequoia Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs and others. Perhaps it would be smarter to bolt down enterprise cloud storage revenue first.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Cheryl Ann Quigley.

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In a major development in the bitter court fight over the founding of the Huffington Post, a New York judge has for the second time refused the request of media moguls Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer to dismiss the case. The new ruling also expands the scope of the case to include claims of fraud and unjust enrichment.

Thursday’s ruling comes as part of a case that begin in early 2011 when two Democratic political operatives, Peter Daou and James Boyce, filed a lawsuit stating that they had presented the idea for HuffPo in 2004. The pair claim that Huffington and Lerer then cut them out of the process, launching the site in 2005 and claiming the idea as their own.

In October 2011, New York Supreme Court Judge Charles Ramos threw out seven of eight claims in the case but allowed one claim — based on the state claim of idea misappropriation — to go forward. Since then, the parties have been wrangling over procedural issues and Daou and Boyce filed an amended complaint.

In addressing the amended complaint, Ramos allowed the idea theft claim to go forward as well as those for fraud and unjust enrichment; he tossed a fourth claim for breach of implied contract.

“Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that defendants took the information that plaintiffs provided, secretly shared it with another person, camouflaged the origin to make it appear as it came from that other person and, in effect, stole the idea and developed it with that other person,” Ramos wrote in letting Daou and Boyce go forward with the fraud claim.

In the same ruling, Ramos rejected Daou and Boyce’s request to subpoena the CEO of AOL, Tim Armstrong, rejecting arguments that Armstrong had essential knowledge about the founding of the Huffington Post. AOL bought the Huffington Post for $315 million in the spring of 2011.

Today’s ruling does not mean that Daou and Boyce have won the case. Instead, it means they have cleared a crucial procedural hearing and, thanks to the added claims, can proceed to a trial with a stronger hand.

“The court has made a preliminary decision based solely on the un-contradicted allegations of the complaint and without any consideration of the facts,” a Huffington Post spokeswoman said. “As we have said from day 1, there is no merit to these allegations. They are make believe. Finally we will now be able to move for summary judgment and lay out what the real facts are. We look forward to the opportunity to present the full record to the court.”

Here’s the ruling:

Order upholding HuffPo complaint.pdf by

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The TED staff got up to dance this afternoon to celebrate V-Day. This global movement, founded by TED speaker Eve Ensler, turns 15 today and is celebrating with the One Billion Rising campaign — inviting us to stop, dance and rise against violence.

One Billion Rising is dedicated to the 1 in 3 of the world’s 3 million women who have been the victims of violence at some point in their lives. Ensler is calling for a global strike against this staggering statistic. So what does dance have to do with it? Ensler explains in the talk below, given at TEDxWomen 2012. “Dance,” Ensler says, “is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, contagious. It breaks the rules.”

Our office danced to the V-Day anthem “Break the Chain,” as did men and women in communities around the world today. Watch some of the risings now at onebillionrising.org, and check out our moves below.