The Hills’ Stephanie Pratt has found herself estranged from her older brother Spencer and her surgically-enhanced sister-in-law Heidi Montag.

In a new chat with Fancast.com, Stephanie revealed that she hasn’t been in contact with The Pratts for months, and notes that Heidi & Spencer didn’t even bother forging a reconciliation during the holidays.

“I haven’t talked to Heidi or Spencer since September. I feel so dumb not to know what’s going on with my family. But they’ve decided they don’t want me in their life, so I don’t know what’s going on with them.”

Stephanie — who was collared for DUI last fall and later spent several weeks in rehab — isn’t sure what incident set off the estrangement, but the ditzy blonde calls the separation “sad.”

“I’m kind of mourning the loss of him. But that’s his choice. He cut a lot of his friends out. I don’t know what’s going on with him.”

Yesterday, a U.S. appeals court ruled against the FCC’s net neutrality regulations, which sought to force service providers to treat all Internet traffic the same. Internet freedom advocates consider the ruling a major defeat, while companies including Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are the clear winners. How will the average Web surfer be affected?

Service providers would like to be able to charge data hogs more for usage — or slow down their file transfers, so not to hinder other network traffic. Even though the Internet seems like a magical technology with no limits, there actually are physical constraints and costs that service providers need to worry about. This FCC ruling allows them to better manage their networks accordingly.

But if the Internet goes completely unregulated, then there is a potential for those companies to take advantage of the system. Wired imagines one such scenario:

A broadband company could, for instance, ink a deal with Microsoft to transfer all attempts to reach Google.com to Bing.com. The only recourse a user would have, under the ruling, would be to switch to a different provider — assuming, of course, they had an alternative to switch to.

Far-fetched? Yes. Impossible? No.

So the FCC and Congress should work to ensure that such shenanigans are forbidden. Service providers shouldn’t be allowed to arbitrarily discriminate. For example, Comcast also shouldn’t be able to block any Verizon ads that websites are running. But fairly uncontroversial net neutrality legislation could set reasonable limits. Such new laws could ensure that any discrimination on the part of service providers be grounded in controlling costs so to actually benefit the average Internet user and forbid those based on ends including payoffs, political gain, anti-competitive behavior, etc.

Let’s think about what might and might not pass that sniff test. The Wired example certainly wouldn’t: that consisted of a payoff resulting in the average consumers being worse off with access to fewer websites. But charging data hogging websites more or slowing down their traffic would ultimately benefit the average Web surfer: these sites are imposing a disproportionate cost on the service provider, which is spread over everyone if absolute net neutrality is in place.

Asserting the Internet should remain open and unrestrained isn’t the same as saying service providers shouldn’t have any control over their own networks. They have a business to run, and as long as they don’t arbitrarily or unfairly discriminate among various users or websites, but do so based on the cost the traffic imposes, then such mild limits to net neutrality actually would benefit the average user in the long run.

A survey by the Ithaka group reveals that scholars use libraries less, like e-journals but are not as taken with e-books, and are still attached to some of their old ways.

[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]

Foi anunciado pela Dodge a sua versão final do Viper SRT10 2010 nessa última terça-feira. Serão um total de 50 unidades do modelo, sendo 20 cupês, 18 roadsters e 12 ACRs durante o seu ano de produção.

Assim como o seu nome sugere, a “versão final” comemora o último ano de produção do Viper. Sua saída vai ser em menor quantidade do que as versões final do Viper 2002, que totalizaram cerca de 360 unidades, e nenhuma informação sobre o seu preço foi revelada ainda.

O novo Viper terá um motor V10 de 600 cv, e seu visual como é de costume, não deixa a desejar. Possui a carroceria de cor grafite e uma faixa preta e vermelha no centro, e seu interior é decorado com muita cor preta, fazendo contraste com detalhes em vermelho no painel, onde também haverá uma placa com numeração exclusiva marcando o modelo.

Via | Inside Line

If you haven’t yet heard my Point of Inquiry podcast with Michael Mann–probably the most popular show I have done so far–I encourage you to listen here. In it are refuted numerous false claims about Mann with regard to the so-called “ClimateGate” fiasco. I bring this up because some people never tire of the same old routine, and so there is yet another round of attacks on Mann afoot, courtesy of usual suspects like Fox News, Steven Milloy, etc. Once again, the fact is that Mann’s employer, Penn State University, vindicated him on numerous charges relating to “ClimateGate”–although one aspect of that investigation currently continues. More on the attacks on Mann here. And listen to the POI interview here.

The preparations for the 2010 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) are well underway and there are only a few days left for students to sign up for a project. There are plenty of well-known open source projects to choose from, it’s a veritable ‘who’s who’ list, and one of them is Chromium, the open-source web browser on which Go… (read more)

In February, the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, told a congressional panel that there were certain counterterrorism cases that could involve killing an American citizen. That, he cautioned, required a special process through the National Security Council — for safeguards.

Anwar al-Awlaki is an American citizen, born in New Mexico, and now residing in Yemen, where he repeatedly issues exhortations to murder his fellow Americans. Any court would find him guilty of incitement. He has nebulous connections to al-Qaeda. What a court would say about those connections is uncertain, but courts have tended to give the government the benefit of the doubt in terrorism cases since at least 9/11. But al-Awlaki’s American citizenship entitles him to due process of law should the government seek to deprive him of life, liberty or property. When I asked Karen Greenberg of NYU’s Center on Law and Security whether al-Awlaki could be lawfully assassinated last month, she scoffed, “They can’t do this with al-Awlaki. He is an American citizen, born in New Mexico. They can’t take away his citizenship.”

The Obama administration begs to differ, according to Reuters, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Anonymous administration officials cite secret evidence to say that al-Awlaki’s connections to al-Qaeda affiliates have passed from the incitement phase into the operations phase, and so the CIA has marked him for death. Nowhere in those pieces does the Obama administration explain the legal basis for revoking al-Awlaki’s most basic constitutional right. As I wrote in my piece last month, not even John Yoo made a claim that radical while serving under the Bush administration:

In June 2002, John Yoo, then a lawyer for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, assessed that U.S. citizenship was no obstacle to the government detaining a suspected terrorist and providing him with a trial before a military commission. “[T]he President’s authority to detain an enemy combatant is not diminished by a claim, or even a showing, of American citizenship,” Yoo wrote. But even Yoo did not consider the more radical claim of stripping American citizenship from a suspected terrorist for the purpose of legally killing him; and President Obama formally annulled Yoo’s memorandum in an executive order within days of taking office.

The administration may very well be making the correct evaluation of the threat al-Awlaki poses. But if citizenship means anything, it means that a citizen can’t be killed because the government uses secret evidence to say he or she is an intolerable threat. Al-Awlaki is certainly exploiting his American citizenship. But CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told the Post’s Greg Miller, “This agency conducts its counterterrorism operations in strict accord with the law.” We at least have the right to know the legal basis the Obama administration reached to order the extra-judicial killing of an American citizen, and so I’ll be spending my morning filling out FOIAs.

Charlotte pre foreclosure homes have contributed to the rise in apartment vacancy rate in the metro area, as more foreclosure properties mean lower home prices and more affordable homes for renters.

The housing crisis and current financial difficulties have also pushed young adults to move out of their rental apartments and move back in with their parents to cut costs.

According to Charlotte apartment market analyst Real Data, the apartment vacancy rate in Charlotte has soared to 13.6 percent, the highest level reached in the region. Two other major reasons for the vacancy increase are the surplus of rental apartments and the recession.

Real Data said that a total of 9,400 new apartment units were added to the Charlotte rental market over the two-year period from 2008 to 2009. Within the ten-year period from 2000, there was also a two-year span when almost 13,000 new apartment units entered the market.

Construction of new apartments has declined sharply as projects planned for this year have been stopped. Developers realized Charlotte pre foreclosure homes are still surging and the apartment vacancy rate is still rising.

The pace of foreclosures in Charlotte and in other areas of Mecklenburg County jumped up in February by a staggering 82 percent from the pace of February 2009 and surged by 17 percent from filings in January. People planning to find lists of foreclosures in Charlotte will not be frustrated as the local market is still full of distressed properties.

Nearby counties such as Gaston, Catawba, Cabarrus and Iredell and Rowan also posted increases in foreclosures. Even the economically stronger counties of Wake, Orange, Durham and Johnston because of their research facilities and high technology enterprises posted faster paces of foreclosure activities.

In the South End area, apartments are also suffering from low occupancy rates. The 360-unit apartment complex of Crescent Resources is only 66-percent occupied. The 269-unit owned by Dinerstein Co. is 44-percent occupied and only because the developer was able to forge a contract with corporate housing provider Oakwood.

The vacancy rate in South End has climbed up from 8.6 percent in February last year to 17.7 percent in February this year. The average rent fell slightly from $887 last year to $877 this year.

Despite the high vacancy rates, apartment owners are optimistic the market will recover faster than expected as rents have stopped falling and have started rising. They hope that the impact of Charlotte pre foreclosure homes on the apartment sector will not be as strong as before.

President Obama’s drill-baby-drill (but not quite everywhere) gambit
does not only link him to an environmentally backward policy. It also
will force his Administration to defend one of the most dysfunctional
federal programs in modern history: the Interior Department’s offshore
oil and gas leasing system.

Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) is supposed to collect
royalties from companies drilling in offshore public waters. After new
activity was restricted in the wake of the devastating spill off the
coast of Santa Barbara, California in 1969, the oil industry sought to
make its leases more profitable by pressing for reductions in these
payments.

In the mid-1990s, when energy prices were low, Big Oil got Congress
to expand the “royalty relief” provisions that were already in the Outer
Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953. Royalties were supposed to return
to higher rates when prices rebounded, but things got complicated.
First, it came to light that MMS had failed to write those
provisions into some 1,000 deepwater leases it signed in 1998 and 1999,
putting into question its ability to collect billions of dollars in back
royalties.

While this was being sorted out, one of the drilling companies —
Kerr-McGee (now part of Anadarko Petroleum) — filed suit challenging the
right of MMS to impose the higher royalties on any leases. The
company’s self-serving arguments found a sympathetic ear in federal
court. Last fall the Supreme Court declined to review an appellate ruling in favor of
the company, thus allowing Anadarko to avoid paying more than $350
million in back royalties. For the industry as a whole, the Court
blocked the Interior Department from trying to collect on a bill that
the Government Accountability Office once estimated
could run as high as $53 billion.

Then there’s the small matter of the wild parties and gifts that
industry representatives lavished on MMS employees in charge of the
agency’s royalty-in-kind program. In September 2008 Interior Department
Inspector General Earl Devaney (now in charge of the Recovery
Accountability and Transparency Board) issued three reports describing gross misconduct at MMS,
including cases in which agency employees were literally
in bed with the industry. Devaney concluded that the royalty program was mired in “a
culture of ethical failure.”

Not all MMS employees were bought off. Some agency auditors came
forward and charged that they had been pressured by their
superiors to terminate investigations of royalty underpayments.

Once the Obama Administration took office, Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar took steps to clean up MMS. Last September he announced plans to terminate the royalty-in-kind
program, whose staffers had been at the center of the sex and gifts
scandal.

For a while it was unclear whether Salazar would tighten up the
remaining royalty programs. In fact, he told the editorial board of the Houston
Chronicle last fall that in some cases he thought drilling
companies should pay even lower royalty rates. He changed his tune this
year, and the Administration is seeking modest increases in royalties and fees.

Yet the entire offshore leasing program still amounts to a giant
boondoggle. Thanks to the federal courts, artificially low royalty rates
are now effectively an entitlement for the drilling industry. Research conducted by the Interior Department
itself suggested that the incentives result in little additional oil
production. Not to mention the environmental risks.

And now, thanks to a dubious calculation that making concessions on
offshore drilling will help prospects for a climate bill, the Obama
Administration is bringing about a major expansion of a program that is
disastrous even if there are no spills. Profit, baby, profit.

(Photo of offshore oil drilling
platform from the National
Energy Technology Laboratory.)

The iPad is getting a reputation as being good for many things — media consumption device, mobile messaging tool and game machine — to name a few. It certainly does all of those things but even before getting my hands on one I started thinking about the iPad in the enterprise. Not so much as a laptop replacement for the workforce, but as a specialized tool for certain functions that I believe the iPad would be good at doing.

After using the iPad for a few days I am more convinced than ever that there is a place in big companies to take advantage of the special features of the device. I can see customer support employees using special apps to fill out forms as they deal with customers on the phone. The touch interface could be leveraged to good effect doing this, as many support departments operate with “scripts” written to handle problems over the phone.

The iPad is perfect for this type of repetitive data entry with the proper app running the show. The on-screen keyboard is adequate for the short data entries that don’t fit a scripted mode, while common entries can be programmed to mere button taps. The iPad is perfect for this, with only a light development effort is needed to bring common tasks like this to life as an app.

I really believe that IT support staff can use the iPad to troubleshoot employee computer problems. I have spoken to many who do this for a living and they are already using LogMeIn on the iPhone to fix computer problems remotely. Throw in the larger screen of the iPad and this method is an outstanding way to provide this type of support.

Yesterday I ran some errands and found myself in a Target store picking up some items. I carried the iPad in a little case, along with the MiFi, just in case. I decided to get a coffee in the Starbucks in the Target, and I sat down to enjoy the drink. I hit the button on the MiFi, and pulled out the iPad to kill some time.

I was having fun in the Starbucks, surfing the web on the iPad, when I remembered I forgot to run a system scan for malware on the ThinkPad back in the home office. I started LogMeIn Ignition (as shown in my video) and logged into the ThinkPad on the iPad. I fired up Microsoft Security Essentials and instigated a full system scan on the ThinkPad. Once that started I logged off and continued my web surfing on the iPad. The system scan was running on the ThinkPad in the office while I was sitting in Starbucks enjoying my coffee.

This is just scratching the surface of how the iPad can be leveraged in the enterprise to good effect. I had the pleasure of writing a deeper dive into this for our research arm, GigaOM Pro. If the subject interests you give it a look (subscription required).

I’d love to hear your opinions on the iPad in the workplace. Can you see functions in your company that would be performed well with the iPad? Share it in the comments.

The first trailer has premiered for Twelve, the new big screen drama from Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford. The movie focuses on a young drug dealer — played by Crawford — trapped in the thriving drug market of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The flick features appearances by 50 Cent, Zoe Kravitz, and Emma Roberts.

As Google awaits approval of a controversial settlement with authors and book publishers, the company’s plan to create an immense digital library and bookstore may face yet another hurdle.

On Wednesday, the American Society of Media Photographers and other groups representing visual artists plan to file a class-action lawsuit against Google, asserting that the company’s efforts to digitize millions of books from libraries amount to large-scale infringement of their copyrights.

via Visual Artists to Sue Google Over Library Project – NYTimes.com.

Clove has just been the first to actually offer the HTC HD mini on their shelves, selling the diminutive device for £275 without VAT, and £323.13 with.

This is a relatively low price for only the second Windows Mobile smartphone with a capacitive screen, and is close to £200 cheaper than the launch price of the HTC HD2.

Read more about the smartphone at Clove.co.uk here.

KNOXVILLE — The University of Tennessee’s Department of Military Science-Army ROTC will host the third annual Mountain Man Memorial March on April 17 in Gatlinburg. Preliminary events begin on April 16.

“This small event began as a way for us to honor one of our fallen, UT alumnus 1st Lt. Frank Walkup, who was killed in Iraq on June 16, 2007,” said Cadet Greg Early, the Cadet Battalion Commander of the UT Army ROTC Rocky Top Battalion.

“Lt. Walkup was serving as a platoon leader in Rashaad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his position. The 2005 UT sociology graduate was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division and was an Airborne, Air Assault and Ranger school graduate.

“What started as a remembrance to Lt. Walkup has doubled in size annually and evolved into a tribute which honors all our fallen American heroes, their families and our veterans.”

On April 16, the festivities begin at 7 p.m. with a ceremony honoring East Tennessee Gold Star Mothers. This event will be held at Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies, Traffic Light 5, 88 River Road, Gatlinburg.

The American Gold Star Mothers Inc. is an organization of mothers who have lost a son or daughter in the service of our country. Each mother will be recognized and present a Gold Star Flag to a team marching in honor her son or daughter. The team will carry the flag and will return it to the mother at the completion of the march. This event has become the largest Gold Star Mother recognition ceremony in the southeast and is gaining national recognition. For more information, see http://www.volunteerchapterofgsm.webs.com.

On April 17, opening ceremonies begin at 8:30 a.m. in the Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson and Buell parking lot, 530 Parkway, Gatlinburg. The 26-mile, marathon-length march/run starts at 9 a.m. There will be quarter- (6.25 mi) half- (13.1 mi) and full- (26.2 mi) length routes in three divisions — heavy (wearing military back packs), light (without military back packs) and civilian.

At 8 p.m. the weekend concludes with an award ceremony to recognize winners and supporters. This also takes place in the Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson and Buell parking lot.

“Mountain Man March participants have ranged from active-duty service members, police organizations and out-of-state ROTC units to UT athletic teams, scouts and civilians,” Early said.

To coincide with the march, the Road March for Warriors (RM4W) will hold a pancake breakfast and a motorcycle ride to show their support for the event. The group supports the activities of several veterans groups, including Disabled American Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Veterans, the American Legion, the East Tennessee Veterans Memorial Association and the East Tennessee Military Affairs Council. Road March volunteers also coordinate with motorcycle organizations such as the AMVET Riders, the American Legion Riders, Rolling Thunder and Blue Knights to support veterans and active troops serving from East Tennessee. For more information about RM4W and the group’s planned activities, see http://www.roadmarchforwarriors.com/Details.htm.

Mountain Man Memorial March benefits the Wounded Warrior Project by making a donation in Lt. Walkup’s name. The donation includes 20 percent of all proceeds and 100 percent of all on-site collections, as well as monies collection in some pre-event fund drives.

Sponsors include EOD-Technologies, the City of Gatlinburg, Rothschild Catering, Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies, the Harriman chapter of The Veterans of Foreign Wars, Food City, Smart Bank, American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, PMSI, Road March for Warriors, Kohl’s, Harley Davidson of Gatlinburg, Strommer Caterpillar, Pilot Travel, ORNL Credit Union, United States Automobile Association (USAA) and the Gatlinburg Inn.

For more information about the third annual Mountain Man Memorial March and to register, see http://www.mountainmanmemorialmarch.com.

—

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, [email protected])

Microsoft announced yesterday the availability of the Microsoft Office Add-in for Moodle. This add-in is available for download now and is compatible with Office 2003 and 2007.

via Microsoft Education Labs integrates Office with Moodle | Education IT | ZDNet.com.

Global IP Solutions (GIPS), a provider of voice and video processing in IP communications, has announced their GIPS VideoEngine. This first-to-market tool gives Android developers the ability to integrate video conferencing/video chat into future applications. With each wireless provider offering varying degrees of data speed and reliability, the GIPS VideoEngine handles the heavy lifting and adjusts for packet loss, bandwidth limitations, and more. We can imagine these types of services becoming valuable to developers as handsets like the HTC EVO 4G start arriving. Front-facing cameras and 4G data speeds are just begging for video conferencing and next-gen chat applications.

Source: Press Release

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My best friend isn’t the most punctual person I’ve met. My friends and I have developed a sort of code to determine when he’ll show up somewhere. If he says five minutes, it means 15. If he says 10 it means 30. Fifteen means between 30 and an hour. If he says he’s a half hour away, well, we might be waiting a while. The problem, really, is that there’s no way to hold him accountable for his predictions. He knows how far away he is, but wants to soften the blow. If he had the OnMyWay app from Telenav, though, he wouldn’t be able to exaggerate his arrival time.

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The 2012 Fiat Multipla will mark only the second generation of this model after 14 years on the market, and the new MPV will have a brand new platform. The new platform will not be that of Fiat’s C-Evo, but rather the Chrysler Dodge Journey. The typical design themes and 3+3 interior will also be modified.

The new Fiat Multipla will be available in both five and seven-seat versions with the latter having a 2+3+2 configuration. Chrysler engines will also appear, using fuel-based two-litre and 2.4-litre options, but fitted with MultiAir Fiat technology. A Fiat diesel option of the 2.0-litre MultiJet will be available, with 160 hp.

It’s likely that the future Fiat Multipla will also have a Natural Power gas version, but we could also see a hybrid variant, too. Despite the Chrysler platform, the Fiat Multipla is intended for the Italian market and will most likely keep an Italian style with similar options to the Fiat 500.

Source | Auto Motor und Sport via Autoblog.it

Eggs warmed to room temperature will mix more easily into a rich dough or batter and also help increase volume. Some recipes call for it specifically, but we’ve gotten in the habit of using room temperature eggs in most of our baking. Warming them up is a piece of cake (no pun intended)!

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