Everyone’s heard of the iPad by now, ICD has announced their Gemini tablet, HTC jumps in with their own tablet news, and now Toshiba says they’re getting into the battle. It’s like the Cold War all over again, but this time instead of mutually assured destruction we’ll just have a bunch of broke gadget lovers.
Focusing on media consumption, Toshiba plans on offering tablet versions running Android as well as versions with Windows 7. Along with multiple options for operating systems, they’re also looking at different form factors, including a dual-screen version. No specs as of yet, but it’s got me interested (as I type from my Toshiba laptop).
Now, could somebody please tell me what to do with a dual-screen tablet computer? [Reuters via Electronista]
With Earth Day approaching, now is a good time to reflect on the wonders and pleasures Mother Earth provides us: majestic mountain ranges, beaches and ocean cliffs, and city parks providing a green break in urban life. There truly is “something for everyone” or should we say “somewhere for everyone”. Tell us about your favorite place on earth, or someplace you’d like to experience during your lifetime and why.
Where is your favorite place on earth or someplace you dream of visiting during your lifetime?
Each week we ask a question related to the environment. Please let us know your thoughts as comments. Feel free to respond to earlier comments or post new ideas. Previous questions.
Last week, gold consultancy GFMS Ltd. predicted that the gold price will make a short-term correction down to US$1,050 an ounce. Scotia Capital analyst David Christie agreed that there could be some seasonal weakness prior to a rally in the fall, when "fabrication demand returns and typically so does investment demand."
More broadly, GFMS talked about investment demand being the key driver for gold. Not for the first time, it warned that if investment demand declines, the gold price may have to come down quite a lot before jewellery demand increases enough to pick up the slack.
Mr. Christie agreed that investment demand is the "only portion" of demand that can drive incremental changes in the gold price right now. But despite that risk, he expects investment demand to gain strength in 2010 and 2011, which is positive for gold.
While investors will likely see airport closers across Europe as a one-off event for airlines, Air Canada is still expected to be losing millions of dollars a day while its flights to Europe are grounded.
The International Air Transport Association, which represents 240 of the world’s largest airlines, has said airlines globally stand to lose US$200-million a day due to the cancelled flights across Europe this past week since the volcanic eruption in Iceland.
Air Canada’s flights to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Rome and Tel Aviv have all been affected over the past five days due to ash from the volcano.
“While we expect investors to look past this issue if it is only short-term and one-time in nature, we roughly estimate that [Air Canada] and [AMR Corp, the parent of American Airlines,] may each lose US$10-million [a day] in revenue and US$5-million [a day] in income while the airspace is closed,” said Will Randow, Citigroup Investment Research analyst, in a note to clients.
“We expect further color from management teams this week," he added.
British officials said Monday they expect flights to the U.K. to be disrupted until at least 1 a.m. Tuesday morning.
Last Thursday, Ford issued a press release touting the fact that it sold more vehicles in Europe during the month of March than any other automaker. Pretty impressive if you ask us, especially when you consider the fact that Europe is the home market for the ever-growing Volkswagen brand. Thing is, the Blue Oval’s press release may only be half true. Automotive News reports that Ford did in fact outsell VW in the 27 countries that make up the European Union. Include non-EU countries like Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, though, and The People’s Car Maker reportedly outsold Ford by 482 units. That’s 171,604 (VW) to 171,122 (Ford) for those scoring at home. For what it’s worth, the Association of European Automakers considers all European countries when tallying sales totals.
While Ford may have narrowly missed on an opportunity to outsell VW in Europe, the Dearborn, MI-based automaker cleaned house in the UK, clearing an impressive 72,700 models on the Isles, helped in part by the end of the British scrapping program.
Please excuse the delay in posting this, but better late than never. Last Thursday, 120 World War II soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camps gathered in Washington, D.C. for the Days of Remembrance Ceremony at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where they were honored for their service more than half a century ago. The stories from these camp liberators, now in their 80s and 90s, brought me to tears.
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren spoke at the event, as did Gen. David Petraeus. Stephen Johns Jr., the son of the security guard who died last summer when an anti-Semitic gunman opened fire inside the Holocaust Memorial Museum, also participated in the event. Clips from the ceremony are in the ABC video below, or you can watch the entire ceremony online, courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which organized it.
Ambassador Oren’s full remarks are after the jump:
A theme of this year’s Days of Remembrance ceremony is liberation and while the Holocaust is horribly unique in human history, the liberation of its survivors links them with others freed from captivity. Liberation, we learn, is not merely an isolated event but rather a process in which the liberated and the liberator can be linked by ties of mutual commitment, shared values, and trust.
Several weeks ago, while gathered around the Seder table, we recalled how the Children of Israel were freed from 400 years of slavery and enabled to fulfill their national destiny. But the transformation from slaves to freedmen did not end with the Exodus. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty harrowing years before entering their Promised Land and, even then, endured many hardships.
65 years ago, at the end of World War II in Europe, battle-hardened GI’s marched into concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald. They encountered piles of emaciated corpses, mounds of human hair and human ashes, and the survivors’ lifeless eyes. These images would forever haunt the liberators, among them President Obama’s great uncle as well as one of my own uncles. Then and there they vowed, “Never again.”
For the Jews, four years of Nazi captivity proved more devastating than the 400 years their forbearers endured in antiquity. Six million died and only a scant few witnessed the sublime moment of freedom. Yet, that tattered remnant still had to struggle to return to their Promised Land where their fellow-Jews had already laid the foundations for a modern, democratic state. They had to fight to achieve their independence, facing incalculable odds. Next week, we will celebrate their triumph and the rebirth of Jewish statehood in our homeland, the Land of Israel.
Israel later provided refuge for exoduses from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and East Africa. It became a beacon of freedom in a region unaccustomed to such lights and a wellspring of cutting-edge science and art.
Yet Israel has never known peace. The rights enjoyed by all nations–even the right to exist–is widely denied to Israel, and its citizens threatened with destruction. If true freedom resides in freedom from threat, then the struggle for Israel’s liberation persists.
And so, too, does the commitment to realizing that freedom. Indeed, every liberation can be a promise–a covenant sealed by common values and visions.
“I will bring you out of affliction…into a land flowing with milk and honey,” God promised Moses. For Israel, the covenant made by those intrepid GI’s has been upheld by a succession of American presidents. Harry Truman, who first recognized the reborn Jewish state, swore to ensure “a strong, prosperous, free and independent democratic” Israel. John Fitzgerald Kennedy said that Israel “carried the shield of democracy and honors the sword of freedom.” And President Obama decreed that “the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever.”
The relationship between liberator and liberated can be eternal, evolving and strengthening over time. Continued sacrifice is demanded of both, and unwavering dedication. Much work remains before hatred of all peoples is defeated and generations of conflict resolved.
Let us remember, then, as we gather to mourn the unspeakable losses of the Holocaust, the pledge made by American soldiers and presidents. Let us recall the words of Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, and President Obama. Let us reaffirm the timeless covenant: freedom for individuals and nations alike, peace for Israel. And for the Jewish people everywhere, never again.
It’s been two months since we last heard from the court case engulfing Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania, but the circumstances there keep getting stranger.
Back in February, the family of sophomore Blake Robbins filed suit against the school, charging that administrators had remotely accessed the webcams on Apple laptops loaned out to students to take pictures of students in their homes. Now, after two months of investigation, the family’s lawyers have expanded the case by claiming the school actually took thousands of photos. Some of the images included pictures of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed,” according to a Thursday filing in the case [Wired.com].
School board president David Ebby called the motion “a vehicle to attack the District,” but he also acknowledged “mistakes and misguided actions that have led us to this situation.” Ebby conceded that the school-issued laptops had taken a “substantial number of webcam photos,” and said it had proposed to Judge DuBois that families of students who appear in those photographs be notified and given the chance to view the images [Computer World]. To that end, DuBois on Wednesday ordered people involved in the case to stop any further dissemination of the photos or screen shots until the parents whose children had been photographed are notified. Ebby promised to begin the process shortly.
In the Robbins’ newest motion, their attorney Mark Haltzman took aim in particular at Carol Cafiero, the school district’s technology coordinator, calling her a possible “voyeur” and asking for access to her personal computers to hunt for further evidence. To support the charge, he cited her response to an e-mail from a colleague who said viewing the webcam pictures was like watching “a little LMSD soap opera.” “I know, I love it!” Cafiero allegedly replied [PC World]. Cafiero’s representatives maintain that she turned on the remote access to student laptops only when ordered by school administrators. However, Haltzman says that Cafiero invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to every question in her deposition.
The Lower Merion saga started when school administrators tried to discipline Blake Robbins on accusations of undisclosed bad behavior. That “behavior” turned out to be pill popping. The family said their son was eating Mike and Ike candy [Wired.com]. A few days later the school admitted to activating the webcams 42 times, but only in response to possibly lost or stolen computers. This new motion alleges that the school’s secret surveillance went far beyond that.
Newlywed Kevin Jonas is set to complete on the new NBC game show Minute to Win It. The Jonas Brothers singer will take part in a series of challenges — that look very simple but are anything but — in hopes of winning $1 million for his charity, The Change for the Children Foundation.
“We can’t wait for Kevin to come on the show and take on some of our most nerve-wracking challenges. We’re anxious to see if he can win it in a minute and raise some big money for his charity,” says series executive producer Craig Pletis.
Fusion-io, a maker of specialty solid-state storage gear, has raised $45 million in a third funding round, bringing the total amount it’s raised since launching in 2007 to $111.5 million. Meritech Capital Partners led the round, and was joined by Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. HP, Samsung and Dell have all contributed in previous rounds. The company, which I was excited about when I met with it at DEMO in September 2008, has gone through several executive shuffles, but appears to be succeeding based on the demand for its gear, which speeds up access to stored data.
Fusion-io is one of several companies trying to ease the bottleneck created when users attempt to access gigabytes of information from web pages and expect it to appear instantly, such as with photos on Facebook. When a user clicks on a photo album, he expects to see it load within seconds, even though it involves finding and pulling the files from wherever they’re stored, then serving them up over the user’s broadband connection. To speed this process up startups in the last three years have been tweaking storage gear and focusing on new types of databases. The gear helps send the bits where they need to go quickly, while the database technologies (GigaOM Pro sub req’d), from Cassandra to memcached, attempt to organize information across a variety of servers so the gear finds the right bits faster.
Fusion-io is one of the startups tweaking storage gear by putting Flash memory inside PCI-Express-capable modules that plug into existing servers. Once combined with Fusion-io’s software, it can be used to access data faster than spinning disk hard drives, all while consuming less energy — albeit at a greater cost. HP sells servers with Fusion-io drives inside, and at SXSW this year Serkan Piantino of Facebook noted that the social network is testing Fusion-io drives. Other customers include MySpace. However, as I noted when Fusion-io last raised money in August, the company is not only up against startups like Pliant, which also have a proprietary Flash memory drive, but the big SSD makers like Intel.
Canadian banks trying to grow their wholesale businesses should benefit from the SEC's fraud case against Goldman Sachs, says John Reucassel, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets. But the growing hostility towards the U.S. financials sector may ultimately prove bittersweet.
"On the one hand, this development should continue to distract major competitors as some of the Canadian banks build out their non-Canadian wholesale banking businesses," Mr. Reucassel said in a note to clients.
"On the other hand, we do worry about valuations of wholesale businesses in this environment."
Despite these concerns, the analyst remains confident that short-term bank earnings will remain healthy and that yields are attractive. He reiterated his Market Perform rating for the sector.
[JURIST] The US Supreme Court on Monday granted certiorari in four cases. In Costco v. Omega, the court will decide whether the first-sale doctrine, which provides that the owner of any particular copy “lawfully made under this title” may resell that good without the authority of the copyright holder, applies to imported goods manufactured abroad. Swiss watchmaker Omega manufactures watches in Switzerland and then sells them to authorized distributors overseas. Watches were purchased by third parties and eventually sold to Costco, which sold them to US consumers without authorization from Omega. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the first-sale doctrine does not apply to imported goods.
In Staub v. Proctor Hospital, the court will consider in what circumstances an employer may be held liable based on the unlawful intent of officials who caused or influenced but did not make the ultimate employment decision. Vincent Staub sued his former employer under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) for wrongful termination. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the unlawful intent of the officials who allegedly brought about Staub’s dismissal could not be attributed to the employer.In United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation, the court will decide whether 28 USC § 1500 deprives the Court of Federal Claims (CFC) of jurisdiction over a claim seeking monetary relief for the government’s alleged violation of fiduciary obligations if the plaintiff has another suit pending in federal district court based on substantially the same operative facts, especially when the plaintiff seeks monetary relief or other overlapping relief in the two suits. 28 USC § 1500 provides that the CFC lacks jurisdiction over “any claim for or in respect to which the plaintiff has any suit or process against the United States” or its agents “pending in any other court.” The Tohono O’odham Nation filed a complaint against the US in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, and, one day later, it filed a similar complaint against the US in the CFC. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the CFC’s dismissal of the case, concluding “that the Nation’s complaint in the Court of Federal Claims seeks relief that is different from the relief sought in its earlier-filed district court action.”In Ransom v. MBNA, the court will consider whether, in calculating the debtor’s “projected disposable income” during the plan period, the bankruptcy court may allow an ownership cost deduction for vehicles only if the debtor is actually making payments on the vehicles. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the bankruptcy court may not allow such deductions.
“Controlling the mind is a lot like riding an elephant,” says Dr. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis. “The elephant represents the powerful thoughts and feelings—mostly unconscious—that drive your behavior. Humans, although much weaker, can exert control over the elephant, just as we exert control over negative thoughts and feelings.”
To control your elephant, you must identify behaviors that get it feeling twitchy and thunderous.
Are you kicking your elephant because you’re not recovering fast enough from a challenge?
Are you nagging him with upsetting, pessimistic ruminations—you know, going over and over something in an attempt to make sense of it?
When bad things happen, it’s natural to overanalyze and obsess. But rumination keeps you stuck.
As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
To move forward, you need to switch mental tracks.
“Continually mulling over failure creates chronic stress,” warns psychologist Everett Worthington. “Rumination is the number-one mental health bad boy; it’s associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety and probably hives, too.”
BOUNCE BACK ASSIGNMENT:
Buy a journal. Write on the front: ELEPHANT RETRAINING JOURNAL. Every time you kick your elephant with a negative thought, write it down. After a week, look at your list. Notice anything? Are the same 3 (or 10) thoughts coming up again and again? If so, write down a persuasive rebuttal to dispute those thoughts — and make your elephant a gentler beast.
Com o objetivo de se tornar líder mundial no setor até 2018, a Volkswagen tem como obrigatoriedade oferecer pelo menos uma opção de qualidade em cada segmento. Dessa vez a companhia alemã apresentou o conceito totalmente elétrico e de emissão zero VW Taxi Milano Concept, no evento Hannover Trade Show.
A aposta da Volkswagen para os veículos ecologicamente corretos é uma minivan destinada para o uso urbano e destinada especificamente para os taxistas, oferecendo soluções e comodidade para seus passageiros. Um dos exemplo é a abertura deslizante da porta traseira, que abrem para frente e a disponibilidade de telas touchscreen personalizáveis.
O Volkswagen Taxi Milano Concept possui um motor elétrico que oferece uma potencia máxima com picos de 114 cavalos e continua de 67 cavalos. Quando necessário, a recarga de 80% de sua capacidade é efetuada em apena uma hora. Sua velocidade máxima também não é tao restrita, onde o modelo pode atingir até 120 km/h.
Ele é abastecido por uma bateria de íons de lítio instalada na parte inferior da carroceria do conceito, que oferece uma boa capacidade de armazenamento de 45 quilowatt-hora (kWh). Aliada a uma carroceria de peso reduzido -1.500kg-, o modelo oferece uma autonomia de até 300 quilômetros sem recarregar.
Sua exclusiva pintura predominante nas cores preta e verde, é em homenagem aos táxis da metrópole Milão, que utilizavam essa combinação em suas pinturas. Além da apresentação do conceito Taxi Milano, a Volkswagen adiantou que pretende lançar seu primeiro veiculo elétrico até 2013.
Como el Día del Planeta Tierra se avecina, ahora es un buen momento para reflexionar sobre las maravillas y placeres que la Madre Tierra nos brinda: majestuosas cordilleras de montañas, playas, precipicios a la orilla del mar, y parques en la ciudad que brindan un refugio verde en la vida urbana. Realmente hay “algo para todo el mundo” o se podría decir “un lugar para todo el mundo”. Díganos cuál es su lugar favorito en la tierra o algún lugar que quisiera experimentar durante su vida y por qué.
¿Cuál es su lugar favorito en la tierra o algún lugar del cual ha soñado para visitar durante su vida?
Touche, Sprint. Touche. Chalk it up as (really) creative marketing (I laughed), but Sprint is offering a free Apple iPad case for those that purchase a Sprint Overdrive 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot. Claiming “speeds up to 10x faster than 3G,” the ad appears to be a direct slam on AT&T’s 3G connectivity. If you want the case, head over to Best Buy and purchase an Overdrive.
For more information on the case, click here. It seems to me that the past few years have seen some rather creative advertisements, and the free iPad case offer is no exception. The question remains, however – do these types of advertisements appeal to you?
Just a reminder to those that have been salivating over this device for the last couple months that the Verizon pre-order page for the Droid Incredible is now officially live; just head here and hit the “pre-order online only” button.
The full Verizon page for the phone is of course available now as well so you can check out specs, features, the 360 degree views of the phone and see it with Verizon’s highly relevant size comparisons (seriously they still use a 3rd gen iPod as a size standard?)
The Incredible will be $199 on a 2-year, $269 on a 1-year contract, and $529 if you want the Incredible but would still like the option to see other people. Pre-orders will be delivered on launch day so if you can’t or don’t want to head to your local Verizon storefront on the 29th this is the way to go.
If you want a glimpse into your future here is an unboxing video courtesy of the guys at Mobile Crunch.
A mais nova van elétrica da Toyota está a caminho de entrar no mercado de carros elétricos e ecologicamente corretos. Depois de uma parceria com a Panasonic, a nova Prius está a caminho em 2011, com sete lugares e equipada com baterias de lítio.
Inicialmente, a montadora irá fabricar as baterias de lítio em sua fábrica localizada em Teiho, no Aichi (Japão), e posteriormente produzí-las na Panasonic, como parte da parceria formada entre as empresas.
Uma das vantagens da bateria de lítio é a capacidade de gerar mais eletricidade do que uma bateria de níquel, que permite que um carro rode muito mais com uma única carga. Vamos aguardar maiores novidades.
It’s been two months since we last heard from the court case engulfing Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania, but the circumstances there keep getting stranger.
