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Filed under: Car Buying, Etc., Mercedes-Benz

Since the beginning of autodom, there have always been uptight car owners wincing at every swirl mark and paint chip. Blemishes in the leather upholstery cause heartburn, and spilled milk is definitely grounds for weeping. Couple that tightly-wound protectiveness with high-end conveyances from Mercedes-Benz and you’ve got a bout of steam emanating from owner’s ears.

Mercedes-Benz thinks it has a solution in its new First Class Exterior and Interior insurance. DuPont is providing the rejuvenation service, and it means that you can grit your teeth a little less when ‘lil Johnny scrapes the side of your W212 with his handlebars. BMW is offering the same kind of coverage, and Mercedes expects it to be a popular up-sell, just as extended service contracts are.

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req.]

Mercedes-Benz now offering oopsie insurance against paint, fabric blemishes originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 21 May 2010 17:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hopefully none of you have been waiting in line outside of your local Verizon store for the LG Ally, because you’re in for a long wait.  MobileCrunch has posted an email allegedly received by someone who pre-ordered the Ally that states that the release date for LG’s new device’s availability is slated to be “on or around May 27th.”  There’s no reason given for the delay, so we’re not sure what’s up.  All we know is it’s good that the delay is only a week and not anything longer, otherwise users may start considering jumping ship to Sprint for their new superphone, the EVO 4G.  Have any of you pre-ordered the Ally and received a similar e-mail?  Tell us!

 

Article Tags: Jonathan Drake, Sea Level Gate

Click source to read FULL report from Jonathan Drake, you can also download PDF here and Sea level trends for NOAA tide gauges and satellite data here:

Regards

Jonathan

Source: trevoole.co.uk

Read in full with comments »   

Earlier, we wrote about the ruling against Perfect 10 in its attempt to get a temporary restraining order on Rapidshare. As we mentioned at the time, the only details we had were based on Rapidshare’s press release, that obviously presented it in the best possible light to Rapidshare. Thankfully, Christopher Harbin alerted us in the comments that he’s posted a copy of the ruling and written up his own analysis. First, here’s the ruling:

From the initial statements about the ruling from Rapidshare, saying that it could not be infringing since it was just the host, I had naturally assumed that the court found that Rapidshare was protected by the DMCA’s safe harbors. But that is not the case. In fact, the court basically tosses out Rapidshare’s safe harbor claim, because Rapidshare (bizarrely) has never set up an official DMCA agent — which is necessary to qualify for the safe harbors. I would guess that Rapidshare’s excuse for not doing so is that it’s not based in the US, but if it’s going to deal with lawsuits in the US, it’s crazy not to have set up a DMCA agent (a very simple process).

That said, there are some interesting things (not all good) in the ruling. There were a few things that helped Rapidshare here. First, is that it does do things to takedown content it believes to be infringing. Second (and perhaps most interesting) is the fact that it does not index or promote the content stored on its service by itself. Since most file sharing services include a search engine aspect, the court concludes that this is a key element of suggesting that Rapidshare is not liable for direct infringement. That’s an interesting ruling that could answer the question I’ve asked before about whether or not it actually is possible to create a site that allows for sharing of files that does not run afoul of the Grokster inducement rules.

The other thing that helps Rapidshare is that, despite being involved in a whole bunch of copyright cases, it still appears that Perfect 10 is somewhat incompetent in understanding copyright law and availing itself of tools to deal with infringement. In this case, Perfect 10 didn’t send Rapidshare the specific links where infringing content existed. It just sent the company a bunch of files, but Rapidshare had no way to match those files to ones hosted in users’ lockers. Even then Rapidshare still did try to find as many of the images as possible, even going so far as to do Google searches, and delete them. On top of that, Rapidshare has a tool that lets content owners indicate if certain files are infringing. Perfect 10 chose not to use that.

The one part of the ruling that I found troubling, however, is that the court did say that, even without being alerted to what’s infringing, Rapidshare did have “specific knowledge” of infringing works on the site. This is a key point of dispute in the Viacom/YouTube case, where Google makes the argument that there’s no way for it to know which works are really infringing and which are there on purpose. Yet, in this case, the court says that the service provider does have specific knowledge:

Thus, it appears that specific knowledge of direct infringement may exist even where an operator does
not have information that would allow it to search its contents and distinguish infringing from
non-infringing materials. Here, RapidShare received notice of hundreds of copyrighted Perfect
10 images that were found on its servers. The Court therefore concludes that RapidShare had
actual, specific knowledge of direct infringement.

Basically, it says that because Perfect 10 alerted Rapidshare to infringing content, then Rapidshare has “specific knowledge.” That wasn’t enough to meet the full inducement standard, so isn’t a huge issue here, but that logic seems wrong to me. If that’s all it takes to create “specific knowledge,” then lots of user-generated content sites could be in trouble. So, if you want to cause trouble for any UGC site, you just upload content, and then alert the site that there is infringing content on the site, but don’t tell them where it is or how to find it. I don’t see how that’s “specific knowledge” at all, but the court felt otherwise.

Finally, while I appreciate Christopher’s analysis of the ruling, I have to disagree with his first two points. He doesn’t understand why not having a search engine matters:

Although Rapidshare does not index its files, it basically punts indexing to third-party websites. It’s trivial to find infringing material hosted on Rapidshare and other file-hosting sites and I’m not sure why dicing up storage and indexing into separate entities which obviously have a symbiotic relationship should be able to avoid liability.

I think that’s a slight misread of the ruling. It’s not saying that Rapidshare gets to avoid all liability. It’s just that it takes away Rapidshare’s direct infringement liability, because it is not, in fact, setup to make it easy for people to find that content. The fact that others have made it easier to find that content should not be blamed on Rapidshare.

Second, Christopher notes:

I’m not at all convinced that in all cases plaintiffs should be forced to ferret out all infringement on a defendant’s website. As the law stands right now, copyright holders have to employ an army of people to constantly monitor defendant’s site for infringement.

To which the obvious response is, why should that burden fall on the defendants? If it takes plaintiffs “an army of people,” it would actually take the defendants significantly more than that, complicated by the fact that the defendant has no way of knowing if the content has been uploaded legitimately or is an infringing copy.

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The key to a good peanut butter cookie is to make sure that it has a lot of peanut butter flavor. You can achieve this in a number of ways. One is by simply using a good, flavorful brand of peanut butter (always a good idea, actually). Another is to stuff the cookie with a peanut butter filling, or sandwich two cookies together with a smear of peanut butter. Adding peanuts will add crunch and highlight the nuttiness in the peanut butter, too. Yet another way is to use a peanut butter glaze, which is how I gave these tasty Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies a peanut buttery boost.

The cookies themselves are sweet and chewy, with a good peanut butter flavor to them. The oatmeal mixes very well with the flavor of the peanut butter. You might not know there was oatmeal in the cookies if no one mentioned it, but it does add a subtle oaty flavor that makes the cookies a little more addictive than a plainer cookie. The quick cooking oats keep the cookies tender and chewy.

But as I said before, the icing on the cookie is what takes these from good to great – for fans of peanut butter cookies, anyway! It’s a simple glaze of peanut butter mixed with a little bit of milk to make it drizzle-able. It couldn’t be any easier to make. Once it’s on, it is like doubling the peanut butter flavor in every bite. I used a plastic bag with the corner snipped off to pipe on my peanut butter glaze, but you could also just drizzle it on with the tines of a fork after dipping them in a small bowl of the glaze.

Don’t forget to serve these cookies with a big glass of milk.

(more…)

by Todd Paglia

Boreal forest in Canada—safe from chainsaws for now.Photo: ForestEthicsMy first
job in the social change movement was working for Ralph Nader.  I was a
lawyer, one of Nader’s Raiders.  Not in the ‘70s when it was cool and
people actually knew what that was, but in the ‘90s, when it was decidedly not
cool and my mother was sure I had lost my mind.  I left my high-paying K
Street law firm to make less than half as much, traded my fancy office for a
dingy cubical with walls made from boxes of books and stacks of old newspapers.
 What other evidence of my insanity did my mother, who grew up poor in
upstate New York, need?

Like many Americans, I am not fond of large concentrations of unaccountable
power. And in my work as a young lawyer, I was out to get The Man.  For
me, that meant big companies.  They exert far too much control over our
government, gamble our money (the “free market”), expect our tax dollars to
bail them out (“too big to fail”), deceive us about the effects their products
have on our health (are cell phones the new tobacco?), and mislead us with
greenwash.  I could go on …

All of which makes it more surprising that my work now, while still challenging
big companies, involves an awful lot of collaborations with those same beasts.

This week ForestEthics, Canopy,
Greenpeace Canada, and our
allies, along with some of the biggest logging companies in the boreal forests
of Canada, announced
the largest conservation initiative in history.  The stats are
mind-boggling: nearly 70 million acres of woodland caribou habitat, an area the
size of Colorado, off limits to logging for three years, while 175 million
acres, an area the size of Texas, go into a comprehensive land-use planning
process. That’s a fancy term meaning a process that determines which areas must
be permanently protected, and which areas can be logged in a selective and
sustainable manner.

This matters for a lot more than just caribou.  These forests are so
immense that the clean air and pure water they produce keep millions of people
healthy and provide tens of thousands of jobs.  Beyond that, the 186
billion tons of carbon stored in Canada’s boreal forests is equivalent to 27
years’ worth of global carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
 We need to keep as much of these forests standing as possible—for all
of us.

We have a truce with the logging industry, but neither side of this agreement
makes the final decisions here: that is up to First Nations governments and
provincial governments in Canada.  In other words, our truce is
subservient to the aboriginal and provincial authorities that control the
actual land base.  This is a key underpinning of the accord.

How did we get to this point?  

Many
players have toiled away for many years to research the science, create the
funding, and support seemingly endless negotiations that were often held
together by just a thread.  Our part in creating this historic initiative
has been bringing the power of the U.S. marketplace to the table. And we’ve
done that side-by-side with Canopy and Greenpeace Canada.

With half of Canada’s boreal forests being logged to make paper, and much of
that going to feed the U.S.‘s insatiable demand, pressuring big paper consumers
like Victoria’s Secret, Scholastic, and Kimberly-Clark to steer clear of the
boreal and demand greener options was critical.  In fact, that pressure was one of the primary drivers of
this agreement.

Canopy, for example, has led a quiet revolution in book, magazine, and
newspaper publishing by greening some of the largest-selling publishers and
titles in the world, including the Harry Potter juggernaut. Greenpeace Canada
waged a hard-hitting campaign against Kimberly-Clark for using old growth
boreal trees to make toilet paper—and more importantly, they both forged a
solution to their conflict with a better balance between environmental and
financial matters.  At ForestEthics, we have been working not only to
shift Victoria Secret’s massive paper purchases away from boreal caribou
habitat, but also doing the same with some of the largest buyers of paper in
the world: Staples, Office Depot, FedEx Office, and literally dozens of other
Fortune 500 companies.  

All of this pressure—hundreds of millions of dollars of purchasing power—over  the course of many years was aimed at creating a space for a real
negotiation. And two years ago it started: The leader of the Forest Products
Association of Canada basically asked then ForestEthics Campaign Director
Tzeporah Berman what it would take for the market pressure to go away.
 Our reply:  A lot.  So it began.

And still, even after this deal has been reached, we’re at the beginning, not
the end. The boreal is not “saved,” but there is a framework in place that may
just succeed in protecting some of the most critical areas of this globally
important forest. While outreach began with First Nations and provincial
governments months ago, a lot of work is needed to collaborate on land-use
decisions for this agreement to move forward.

Our work on this issue started in 2001.  Without some of the largest
companies in the world lending their purchasing power toward a greener
direction for the boreal, we would not be here today.  Quite a few of
these companies had to be pressured into moving more quickly—but to their
credit, they were able to move past their conflicts with activist groups toward
real collaboration.   And many more companies wanted to be part of
this change from the beginning, and used their market power to great effect.
 

So here I am, 15 years after signing up as one of Nader’s Raiders, and I am
still swimming in a sea of corporate power.  I have come to better
understand the people at these companies.  It shouldn’t have been a
shocking discovery, but I learned that we share some key core values.  I
didn’t believe that back in 1995.  

I know there will be challenges reaching our goals, and much of this depends
upon decisions that will ultimately be made by aboriginal and provincial
governments. And the pressure from big paper-buying companies wanting green
products that helped get us to this point will be even more essential to
getting this deal done.

Corporate power is still all too often used to benefit the few at the expense
of the rest of us. But it is nice to know that at times it can be applied
toward the greater good.

Related Links:

Underground Green Economy Employing Millions

Canadian forestry firms agree to curb boreal forest logging

Reduce, Recycle, and Replant – Data Highlights on Restoring the World’s Forests

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In a cautiously worded notice to customers this afternoon, AT&T advised that it will be raising its early termination fee (ETF) for wireless service for smartphones and netbooks, evidently including Apple’s iPhone. Beginning June 1, the base rate for ETFs from two-year service agreements will be raised from $175 minus $5 per month of tenure, to $325 minus $10 per month.

“One of the ways we do this is to offer you the industry’s leading wireless handsets below their full retail price when you sign a two-year service agreement,” reads AT&T’s notice. “In the event you wish to cancel service before your two-year agreement expires, you agree to pay a prorated early termination fee (ETF) as an alternative way to complete your agreement.”

To help balance out the revenue stream, the ETF for basic phone and feature phone users will decrease after June 1 by $25, the company said, to $150 minus $4 per month of tenure.

AT&T made its last adjustment to early termination fees on May 25, 2008, when it first adopted the “pro-rated” approach in what was seen at the time as response to pressure from Congress. A bill had been introduced before the floor — the Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007 — that would mandate pro-rating for ETFs, and possibly institute caps as well. The benchmark for ETFs that the bill’s author, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D – Minn.), had set as being too high for most smartphone customers was $175. Soon after AT&T set its newly pro-rated fee to $175 and other carriers followed suit, action on the bill subsided, and it was never passed.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Michael Giberson

The Isolated Plant magazine published “A letter from a New York Correspondent,” in their August 1909 edition:

Mr. Editor:

From the viewpoint of one of the “common people,” the recent issues of your magazine have been striking fire with every telling blow…  The following incident is mentioned as a bit of local history.

Two downtown office buildings adjoining each other on the same side of the street, and carrying the same class of tenants, were not operating under sufficiently even costs.  One of them had its own electric power plant and the other used Edison service.  The man who operated his own plant even had a little power to spare and closed a two years’ contract with the other agent to supply the latter’s building with light at a rate considerably lower than the street service.  A contractor installed a 3 inch loricated conduit carrying three double braid conductors between the generator switchboard through the foundation wall to one side of a three-pole double-throw service switch previously installed.

This switch had been used to supply Edison break down service when the building operated its own plant.  The wiring was installed in full accord with the National Code as adopted by the N. Y. Board of Fire Underwriters, and a certificate of approval was received from the city department.  The contractor received a “violation,” however, from the Fire Underwriters, and any attempt to secure a committed statement from the latter board as to the code rule violated was futile.  The was evidently somewhat peculiar, the contractor had performed his work according to the rules of the board as publicly printed and circulated, yet a certificate of approval was withheld, and he could not receive his payment for the work.  The inspector was called on, he was non-committal … the Chief Inspector was non-commital … [The] Superintendent … quite abrubtly stated that his board would not approve the running of an electric power service through a party line; this ruling being the result of an agreement between his board and the N. Y. Edison Co.

Neither contractor nor agents could understand how any such mutual agreement could affect the fire risk….

The N. Y. Edison Co. also got busy after the contractor and threatened to send him to jail for “interfering with their meters,” which of course was not the case and the contractor was not molested; threat was also made to discontinue the [Edison Co.] service to the elevators, but it also passed over.

Both buildings secured independent insurance, the contractor got his money, and each agent fulfilled their two years’ agreement.

C. J. H.

At a time when cogeneration, smart grids, and decentralized energy resources are creating challenges around the fringe of standard regulated retail power service, it is interesting to see how the battled played out a century ago, when state regulation of monopoly regulated utilities was new and competition between central station power and the isolated plant was ongoing.

The Isolated Plant magazine has been digitized by Google Books.  See also the related post of a week ago, “The central station and the isolated plant.”

After the long week without any news on the WP7 port (mostly due to the stupid comments that is taking up the thread), Da_G has created a new thread to keep you updated. The new tread was created yesterday and has some words that I do not know, and really do not think I should know.

One thing I do know is copy and paste: Thread

HTC WP7 NBH Dump/Rebuild:
NBHImageTool
flash.store.bin Dump/Rebuild (dumped as os.nb in NBHImageTool):
(tool creation pending)
IMGFS Dump:
Combine xidump with the attached cecompr_nt.dll supporting XPH
IMGFS Build:
Combine imgfsfromdump with the attached cecompr_nt.dll supporting XPH
XIP/ULDR Dump:
dumprom works well for this.
XIP/ULDR Build:
(tool creation pending)

Warning Warning… Rant Coming

If you are interested in the porting status, you can follow the thread daily. To many readers, you might not really know what the words are, or what is going on but here is something that is really annoying to me when trying to read the thread. “so…could somebody make a rom for all topaz devices with this and the mondrian rom now” and my favorite“Could someone make a rom for a titan (XV6800) ? heh… Yea, It’s about time I get a new phone…”. Really dude? I mean why would people care about your pursuit of a ROM for your device. The porting game, and ROM making game is not even close. Please for the life of the thread don’t post things like this:

“Thanks guys, I want this one my device… any ETA?”
”Can A ROM be created for my HD2 NOW!!!!!!”
”When will the port come to the Touch Pro2, and Diamond 2? I want it?

Okay I think I speak for everyone to say… we all want this, and you are not special that you need to post and mess up a whole thread just because you don’t want to wait and see what happens. If I worked the way most of those commenter’s worked, that thread would see at least 20 posts from me, but you know what, I know how to control my excitement.

Also to help Da_G, here are some answers to your questions:
”Will this come to my device” Answer: Most likely know, if porting is successful, it seems only the HD2 will get it.
”When is the ETA” Answer: Have you ever tried porting something you know little about? no, well it is not easy, so don’t ask.
”Thank You” Answer: You are very welcome, and so is just about everyone that is reading the thread. So no need to say.

Well from what I have seen those are the three most used responses, and the most annoying because it is killing the thread.

Rant End

I do not hope to offend anyone, just I thought it was best to add that little rant to the article because the newly created thread by Da_G has already seen some worthless post.

Hey, look here—turns out AT&T and following Verizon in the decision to raise early termination fees for smartphone customers. The new fee will be a whopping $352 if you opt to cancel your contract early, although for each month of active service, that will decrease by $10. Technically, AT&T says this change is for customers who select “advanced, higher-end devices, including netbooks and smartphones.” Hold up, so now netbooks are higher end devices? The most ridiculous part of all this is that today the current ETF is “just” $175, so this is a marked and significant increase. If you are instead opting for a basic feature phone, the ETF will actually be less, dropping to $150. Now, if you are a current customer, your contract won’t just flip over, but you can bet your bottom dollar than when you next upgrade your phone, or if you pick up that iPhone Pro next month, you’ll pick up the new terms. A conspiracy theorist might say that this is AT&Ts method of locking customers in, what with the iPhone heavily rumored to be hitting Verizon this fall. Interested in seeing how the company is spinning this one? Click on over to their “open letter to valued customers” that we have linked below.

Tags:
adslice,
att,
att etf,
att etf increase,
early termination fees,
etf,
iphone,
iphone 4,
iphone hd,
iphone pro,
smartphones,

While many will be satisfied with the 426-hp coming from under the hood of a stock 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS, Hennessey Performance engineering is offering upgrades for those who won’t.

Known as the HPE800 Camaro, Hennessey’s upgrade package adds a pair of turbochargers that help pump a total of 847-hp and 801 lb-ft of torque from the 6.2L V8. The modification comes with a complete set of forged innards, customized camshafts, a high-flow oil pump, ported heads, a large throttle body, ported intake manifold and an upgraded fuel-system and injectors.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS.

The HPE800 upgrade for the Camaro SS can be mated to either a 6-speed manual or a 6-speed automatic transmission.

Hennessey Performance Engineering offers the package backed by a one-year/12,000 mile limited warranty. No pricing details have been released.

Click through to see a video of the HPE800 Chevrolet Camaro SS on the dyno.

Hennessey HPE800 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS:

– By: Omar Rana

In the 1st District, Ann Brickley of Wethersfield wins GOP endorsement to run. District. Mark Zydanowicz of West Hartford gained enough delegate votes to force a primary, but has not said what he will do.

In the 2nd District, Daria Novak of Madison, a former Asia specialist for the U.S. Department of State, wins party’s backing after three delegate ballots. Janet Peckinpaugh and Douglas Dubitsky both had enough delegate votes to wage a primary.

In the 3rd District, Jerry Labriola Jr., receives the GOP nomination to run.

In the 4th District, Dan Debicella wins GOP nomination to run.

In the 5th District, Waterbury state Sen. Sam Caligiuri won the endorsement of the state Republican convention Friday, besting Justin Bernier of Plainville, but there will be a primary on August 10.

Read the full story here.

 

With Froyo, Google’s latest dessert-themed update to its Android mobile OS, they added even more features users were clamoring for, like wireless syncing and hotspot support. But what about future updates? We think we’ve got it figured out. More »

Months after the announcement was made, the Federal Trade Commission has approved Google’s purchase of AdMob, and it appears that Apple’s plans worked in their favor.  Who would have thought it?  Clearly referencing the Cupertino company and their upcoming “iAd” service, the FTC stated that the Google/AdMob deal “is unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks.”

The official statement, posted on AdMob’s website:

We are extremely pleased with the FTC’s decision today to clear Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Over the past six months we’ve received a great deal of support from across the mobile industry – and we deeply appreciate it.

We are excited to get to what’s next and to start working with Google to develop new products and services for our advertisers, developers, and publishers. We share a commitment to helping our customers navigate and take advantage of the mobile opportunity. Together, Google and AdMob will be able to bring a whole host of new products and capabilities to mobile advertising.

I have to pause to acknowledge the AdMob team.  It takes a tremendous group to stay focused and remain productive during a process like this review.   The Google deal was announced in November of last year.  Rather than sit idle for six months, we’ve launched 15 new products, updated 11 more, and continued building a phenomenal business that is serving an ever growing base of customers.  I couldn’t be more grateful for all this group has done

We will now work with Google to close the deal. Once that happens, we will finally get to the fun part – connecting our teams and products to find ways to better serve our customers. Stay tuned.

Good news for Google, and I’ll be excited to see what comes out of the combined company in the coming months.

Via FTC, AdMob, Engadget

Next week will mark the end of “American Idol” season nine and the exit of Simon Cowell on American Idol. The Brit judge appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last Thursday. Oprah asked Simon what is his reason for leaving the show, he answered boredom.  “After a while, you start to go on automatic pilot. Too many times I was sitting there [at the judges’ table] bored. The audience deserves more than that … and I can’t hide when I’m bored.”

However Simon also plans to make a US version of “X Factor” talent show which may be similar to Idol but would have several differences. Simon explains “It’s different because there’s no upper age limit. … Singing groups can enter the show. I have no idea whether it’s going to work or not, but I’ll put its success and failure on whether we can find a star.” When asked by Oprah why would he move on to another talent show when she is bored with “Idol”, he replied “I actually like doing it, funny enough,” he said. “I remember Fantasia singing ‘Summertime,’ and for three minutes, I lost myself. I like the buzz it creates. You want to be part of something people are talking about. I love that feeling.”

Simon told Oprah “The final night will be quite emotional. I’ve had a great time. I love working over here [in the U.S.] and never thought I would.”

Related posts:

1. Ellen DeGeneres Could Not Fit into the Shoes of Paula Abdul!
2. Lee DeWyze succeeded with Hallelujah on American Idol 2010, Goodbye Casey James.
3. American Idol 2010: Goodbye Casey James

Fox News’ Maggie Kerkman files dispatches on the latest action from the Texas Board of Education as it nears final approval of social studies textbook guidelines that could affect what winds up in the lessons of students around the country.

UPDATE – 4:50 p.m. local time (5:50 p.m. ET):

Debate on postponing vote on high school guildines until July.

Terri. Don’t see what postponing would do.

Mercer. Sounds rational to wait till July.

Bradley. Been on long enough to remember last ss vote. Vote is gonna go party lines 10-5. Just like last time but other way. We need to finish today

Hardy. I still have concerns about product. How would this impact staff?

Hs subchapter c postponement.

Kright issue is quality of doc.

knight. not behave like spoiled brats bc we don’t get our way

Craig. Generally doc is good. Make 6 experts review it in next two months. Even better. Don’t need to postpone 2011. Might be worth taking a little bit of time.

Allen. Us History not ready to move forward. Overrun with too many expectations.

Agosto. We are rewriting history. If. We do this in July, and we all come together. There’s this side/ vs that side. Feels like two boards.

Vote fails 6-8

4:19 p.m. local time (5:19 p.m. ET):

Not in heating room but doc unit Ayse Weiting says they are splitting curriculum so they can vote only on HS social studies curriculum. Will revisit k to 8  later. Doing final heated arguments now.

Filed under: Etc., Europe, Technology, Humor

There’s no denying that Google StreetView has made our lives easier. There’s always a difference between knowing where something is on a map and seeing the surrounding landmarks with your own virtual eyes, and Google Maps has gone a long way toward bringing the world to our living room. Of course, StreetView has also helped to remind us of just how entertaining the human race can be. Creative souls the world over have staged pranks – both elaborate and otherwise – to have themselves immortalized in the annals of Googledom.

While we’ve seen our fair share of superheroes, unique vehicles and the like, our hats have to go off to the crew in the animated GIF seen after the jump. There is no elaborate set up or costume, just two guys who really wanted to be on Google StreetView. Go ahead – see it for yourself.

[Source: Make Use Of]

Continue reading Best reaction to an oncoming Google Street View car ever

Best reaction to an oncoming Google Street View car ever originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 21 May 2010 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Are Congressional
Republicans moving beyond blanket opposition to the Obama administration? Here’s
an interesting signal: Four GOP House members signed a letter praising
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for putting bikers and walkers on equal footing with autos in transportation
planning.

Reps. Cathy McMorris
Rodgers (WA), Michael McCaul (TX), Jack Kingston (GA), and Steven LaTourette
(OH) joined 24 Democratic colleagues in giving a shout-out to LaHood’s
newsmaking policy shift:

We recognize, and appreciate, that your statement was not
about providing equal amounts of funding to all forms of transportation, or
prioritizing bicycling and walking over other transportation modes such as
trucking, freight or public transit. Instead, your commitment to consider all
modes clarified that to give citizens a choice, rather than forcing them into
their car, we must make sure that bicycling and walking are as safe and
convenient as other modes. [Full text]

We’ve reported on LaHood’s March statement the auto-only era of federal transportation planning
is finished. (“People across America who value bicycling should have a voice
when it comes to transportation planning,” he said.)

He drew a flurry
of comments from ticked-off reps in auto and transport industries, so it’s
encouraging that these GOP lawmakers are taking a more nuanced view.

Oh, and happy Bike to
Work Day, y’all.

(Hat tip to Elena Schor
at
Streetsblog.)

 

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A Wall Street Journal article today draws attention to yet another unexpected way in which Facebook’s privacy practices have not complied with its public statements and have disregarded users’ privacy rights. Just last week, when asked about Facebook’s privacy practices with advertisers, Facebook executive Elliot Schrage wrote:

We don’t share your information with advertisers. Our targeting is anonymous. We don’t identify or share names. Period.

As the Wall Street Journal report shows, this was not true. In fact, Facebook’s architecture at the time allowed advertisers to see detailed personal information about some Facebook users.

The article identified a security flaw concerning referer URLs, a basic part of the web’s architecture. For readers who aren’t web gurus: A “referer” is a piece of information sent whenever you click on a link. It tells the site you’re visiting what URL you’ve just come from. (The term’s strange spelling is one of the web’s many historical in-jokes.) In some instances, the referer URL will also include a “query string” that reveals additional information.

Ordinarily, the query string doesn’t reveal anything sensitive. In fact, it’s a maxim of web engineering that sensitive information (like passwords) should never be placed in the query string, exactly because doing so can cause security and privacy problems.

It’s a maxim that Facebook apparently forgot. A paper published last August by researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic (blogged by EFF here) showed how Facebook’s referers revealed information to advertisers that could be used to personally identify visitors. The problem was made far worse by the changes Facebook made in December and April, which designated radically more user data as “publicly available information” and created new tech tools for mining that data.

Yesterday, facing the pressure of the impending Wall Street Journal article, Facebook fixed the worst aspects of that loophole. They say they’re in the process of fixing the rest.

The fixes come not a moment too soon. The flaws were not only in conflict with Schrage’s public statements, but with Facebook’s own privacy policy, which states that “We don’t share your information with advertisers without your consent.”

Beyond the fixes Facebook has already made, what steps can be taken to prevent this kind of data leakage in the future? There are some steps Facebook could take, like moving users to HTTPS, which can limit transmission of referer URLs. And users can protect themselves by using plugins like Firefox’s RefControl. We also encourage both social networking services and web browsers to adopt emerging standards like ‘noreferrer’, which would allow sites much simpler control over how referers are handled.

Of course, as demonstrated in the AT&T/WPI paper, referer strings are not the only path by which social networks leak personal information to advertisers. That paper found that 11 of the 12 social networking sites it examined leak personal information to advertisers by one method or another. Hopefully, today’s WSJ article is a sign that all of these methods will soon be receiving closer scrutiny.

Durante uma travessia de rio feita por um grupo de jipeiros, um jipe Suzuki que tinha seu motorista e mais um acompanhante a bordo é levado rio abaixo, quase transformando um dia de aventura numa completa tragédia.

Uma das principais providencias para que a tragedia não ocorresse foi a rápida intervenção de membros do grupo, que ao verem a gravidade da situação pediram desesperadamente que os ocupante abrissem a porta do Suzuki, com o intuito de que a água entrasse em seu interior e não fosse levado rio abaixo.

E como podemos ver, a experiencia o grupo foi essencial, pois caso essa medida não fosse tomada o jipe com seus ocupantes iriam descer e afundar no rio, já que cada vez mais o jipe Suzuki era levado para o fundo do rio, que segundo moradores da região possui mais de 4 metros de profundidade. Depois disso, o jipe com seus ocupantes foram salvos pelo homem super-cueca, que mergulhou e conseguiu conectar o veiculo com o cabo e reboca-lo.

Fonte: YouTube