Mereja
By Erik Sassmediapost.com
An average 74 million people visited a newspaper Web site each month in the third quarter of 2009, equaling just under 40% of all active U.S. Internet users, according to the Newspaper Association of America, citing research performed by Nielsen Online.
This is the most unique visitors recorded since the NAA and Nielsen began tracking newspaper Web site audiences in 2004; the previous record was 73.3 million in the first quarter of 2009.
Although year-over-year comparisons are difficult because of a big increase in Nielsen’s panel size in June, the active-reach figure appears to be remaining stable, as newspaper Web sites have hovered around 40% for the last two years.
Meanwhile, the actual number of unique visitors in the third quarter of 2009 represents an increase of about 8.5% over the third quarter of 2008, when they came in at around 68.2 million.
This growth is good news for newspapers, especially since it comes in an “off” news year — one without Olympics or closely contested elections. Last year, some analysts expressed concern that newspaper Web site numbers would remain depressed after reaching record highs in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. But these fears have proven unfounded, as newspaper Web site audiences continue to grow. . . READ FULL STORY
Aviary Inc., a Long Island-based provider a software application suite in the cloud, has raised $7 million in Series B funding. Spark Capital led the round, and was joined by return backers like Bezos Expedition.
PRESS RELEASE
Aviary, Inc., a pioneer of a creative application suite in the cloud, today announced that it has received $7 million in Series B financing led by Spark Capital, with participation from existing investors, including Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment company of Jeff Bezos. With a suite of digital creation and editing software available as an online service, Aviary offers a simple and cost-effective solution for creators of all genres – from graphic design to audio editing – to express their creative talents and participate in the burgeoning market for digital goods. In conjunction with the investment, Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital will be joining Aviary’s board of directors.
“Aviary’s robust suite of online creative tools is fundamentally democratizing digital creation. Whereas the market for digital goods was once reserved exclusively for creators using proprietary desktop software, Aviary is delivering creative applications that allow anyone with a browser to participate,” said Koyfman. “And by doing so in the cloud, Aviary allows for seamless online creation, collaboration, distribution and ultimately monetization previously not possible. The Aviary model has the potential to exponentially increase the number of creators and collaborators contributing to the digital economy.”
Until now, the digital creation market has been largely dominated by desktop software solutions which are often cost prohibitive and involve complicated interfaces. By contrast, Aviary offers a powerful creative toolset in the cloud that enables professional and amateur creators alike to easily create their own digital works. The basic Aviary suite is available for free to users and includes an image editor, vector editor, audio editor and more. Users can also upgrade to the pro suite to gain commercial features such as unlimited private storage, as well as collaboration and community enhancements. For more information, visit http://aviary.com/.
“We are disrupting the status quo by eliminating the long-held barriers to digital creation and giving creators the tools they need to create, market and monetize their vision,” said Avi Muchnick, founder & CEO of Aviary, Inc. “We are extremely excited to have Spark Capital on board. Their broad-ranging internet, software and consumer experience will be a tremendous asset to us in furthering our mission to make creation accessible to creators of all genres.”
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Hello Kitty is 35 years old now, and she still continues to be the dream cartoon cat of millions of teenage girls. If you’re one of these people and have a penchant for gadgets on top of that, this new and strictly limited music player might be the right thing for you. The so-called Hello Kitty Music Player Crystal [JP] is the result of a cooperation between iriver Japan, Hello Kitty company Sanrio and luxury brand Swarovski Crystal.
The player is sized at 47.2×18.0×37.5mm, weighs 19g and comes with 300 of Swarovski crystals that just boost the cuteness a little more. It features 2GB of storage, which is enough for around 480 songs and can play MP3 and WMA files. It supports Windows PC only (via USB 2.0).
The player is Japan-only and will cost $150 when it goes on sale (exclusively online) on October 30. I suggest you contact the Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya in case you live outside Japan and you’re interested in getting one.
(Reuters) – Billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz will be elected to Legg Mason Inc’s (LM.N) board, the U.S. asset manager said on Monday, in a move that would avoid a proxy fight for the next two years.
Peltz’s Trian Fund Management and Legg Mason agreed to a pact where the fund will not accumulate more than 9.9 percent of Legg stock for the next two years, Legg Mason spokeswoman Mary Athridge said by phone.
Trian holds about 6.94 million shares, or 4.3 percent, in the asset manager, Legg Mason said in a statement.
“We welcome Nelson, whose firm is a significant investor in Legg Mason,” Chief Executive Mark Fetting said in the statement. “We look forward to benefiting from his insights and experience.”
Legg Mason said Peltz’s appointment reflects an agreement between the asset manager and Trian.
In June, shares of Legg Mason rose more than 10 percent on a single day after a British newspaper reported the Baltimore-based asset manager, home of famed fund manager Bill Miller, could face a shareholder challenge from Peltz. [ID:nN24222737]
Peltz is known for his bruising battles with corporate management, including his 2007 fight with Cadbury Schweppes that resulted in it spinning off a beverage division.
Legg spokeswoman Athrdige confirmed to Reuters a Wall Street Journal report that said Trian has also agreed to vote in favour of Legg Mason’s board nominees over the next two years.
Trian agreed not to do “things that could initiate a proxy fight,” Athridge said.
By Ajay Kamalakaran (Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Today’s headlines focus on details of the Democrats’ health overhaul legislation, including the latest on the public insurance option.
Tulsa Hospital Gives Medicare Patients Cash Back For Surgery This story highlights a surgery done at the 691-bed Hillcrest Medical Center. It is part of an experiment testing a new “bundled” payment system. Medicare makes a single reimbursement for all the hospital and doctor care for heart and joint procedures, rather than making separate payments to the facility and physicians (Kaiser Health News and USA Today).
Fight Erupts Over Health Insurance Rates For Businesses With More Women The Pennsylvania home health care company Linda Bettinazzi runs is charged about $6,800 per worker for health insurance – $2,000 more than the national average for single coverage. One reason: nearly every one of her 175 employees is a woman (Kaiser Health News).
Obama Needs Win, Could Settle On Bill Costs and the political calendar are catching up with health care reform. Having bet the farm, President Barack Obama needs a win and is willing to settle for a cheaper bill and a weaker public insurance option. Democrats in Congress, increasingly worried about the 2010 elections, want stronger medicine for fear the reforms will prove to be a house of cards if working-class voters can’t afford the coverage promised (Politico).
Insurers Poised To Reap Benefits From Healthcare Overhaul As President Obama’s push for a healthcare overhaul moves toward its final act, the oft-vilified health insurance industry is on the verge of seeing a plan enacted that largely protects its financial interests (Los Angeles Times).
Lieberman: Health Bill Concern Not Based On State’s Insurers Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of a handful of Senate wild cards in this fall’s healthcare reform debate, says his concern about the Senate bill is based on the national deficit — not the insurers that dominate his state (The Hill).
If You Build A Coverage Mandate, Will They Come? People are more likely to buckle their seat belt than follow the speed limit, even though the penalties for speeding are higher. They are more likely to go along with hotel efforts to reduce linen laundry if told that other guests are doing the same (The Washington Post).
AP Sources: Health Bill May Cut Employer Mandate Businesses would not be required to provide health insurance under legislation being readied for Senate debate, but large firms would owe significant penalties if any worker needed government subsidies to buy coverage on their own, according to Democratic officials familiar with talks on the bill (The Associated Press).
Democrats Are Optimistic That Public Option Will Be Approved Several Democratic senators voiced optimism on Sunday that Congress would pass a health care bill containing at least the germ of a government-run insurance program. Their expectations were grudgingly seconded by Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008 (The New York Times).
Senate On Verge Of Health Bill Top Senate Democrats are close to finalizing their health bill and could unveil a measure as soon as early this week that would include stiffer penalties on employers who fail to provide health coverage (The Wall Street Journal).
Next Phase In Health-Care Debate: The Art Of The Deal With a growing sense that Democrats may have the votes to pass health-care reform, many participants are now attempting to shape the components of landmark legislation rather than to defeat it (The Washington Post).
Clock Ticking On Democrats’ Health Care Reform Time growing short, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate still face key decisions if they are to achieve President Barack Obama’s goal of passing legislation to remake the nation’s health care system by year’s end (The Associated Press).
Dems Push For Benefits To Start By 2010 Democrats are pushing Senate leaders and the White House to speed up key benefits in the health reform bill to 2010, eager to give the party something to show taxpayers for their $900 billion investment in an election year (Politico).
Who Might, Or Might Not, Be Covered Under The Healthcare Bills Low-income people could get federal assistance, but even a ‘public option’ may leave out some individuals (Los Angeles Times).
Politics Aside, Annual Medicare Fix Is Same Old Story Congress is at an impasse over how to fix a perennial problem in Medicare. Just about every year a formula glitch threatens to cut payments to doctors who treat seniors and the disabled. And just about every year Congress cancels the cut. This year lawmakers are complaining about the bill because it’s not paid for. But, despite what both Republicans and Democrats are claiming, that’s nothing new (NPR).
Kaiser Health News also provides weekend news summaries. Check out Saturday’s developments with the public option and Medicare’s doughnut hole as well as headlines regarding the public option on the Sunday talk shows and Democratic infighting on abortion and health reform.
Sign up to receive this list of First Edition headlines via email. Check out all of Kaiser Health News’ email options including First Edition and Breaking News alerts on our Subscriptions page.
So, remember last week when we wrote about how anti-net neutrality lobbyists from AT&T had crafted astroturf letters for various “special interest groups” to sign — but someone forgot to remove the boilerplate “XYZ Organization” in the first paragraph? We also noted that there was little evidence that the group — the Arkansas Retired Seniors — actually existed. However, Matt Cutts did a bit of digging and found that the name of the guy who signed the letter — Bob Sells — appears to have worked in PR for Southwestern Bell for 28 years (there appears to be only one Bob Sells or Robert Sells in Little Rock). Southwestern Bell, of course, became better known as SBC. SBC, of course, became AT&T after it bought the old AT&T and took on its name. So, if you’re an AT&T lobbyist and you want to convince the FCC that “seniors” are against net neutrality — and you don’t want it to appear to come from AT&T employees — who better to go to than an ex-employee? Still, next time you get a former employee to shill for you, remember to replace the bogus XYZ Organization you left for him in the text of the letter you sent him.
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We just got an an email from one of our connects and we’ve got some great new for all you iPhone-lovers. We’ve been told in just a couple hours, Canada’s TELUS will officially announce that its nation-wide HSPA network will go live on November 5th. Not only that, but on that very date, TELUS will start selling the Apple iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The iPhone pricing structure for TELUS will be the same as it is for Rogers (and Bell, for that matter) with the 3G going for $99.99/$599.99 and the 16 and 32GB 3GS going for $199.99/$699.99 and $299.99/$799.99. Beyond that, TELUS doesn’t appear to be in any rush to come forward with specifics on its plan pricing and other handsets. All the presses hints at is “TELUS will offer a number of exciting new devices from HTC, Huawei, LG, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, and Sierra Wireless in time for the holidays, including some on an exclusive basis.” That’s more or less in line with the line-up we’ve already told you.
Not all big brands are using social media tools to the potential they could be. For this reason, it really sticks out when they do. There are plenty of small businesses you can learn a lot about ways to use social media from, but it is the big brands that have the truly wide reach. These are the ones that are easier to find, just because they’re brands that you know.
Take Pizza Hut for example. The company seems to appear in the social media news circles fairly often. One time it was for posting a job opening for a Twittering position. Another time it was for using Twitter as a tool to drive its efforts to help feed the hungry.
Look at Ford. They utilize all kinds of different social media channels. They go where the people are, and they interact with them in different ways. They keep it at a human level. They look for trends and try to determine what people want. They use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, Delicious, etc.
You probably interact in some capacity with big brands on a daily basis, whether that is something as simple as getting a Coke out of the vending machine or running around the neighborhood in your Nikes. Find products you use. Find products you like and are interested in. Then see how they are using social media (if they are). This way you are placing yourself directly in the role of the customer, and you can evaluate exactly what you are getting out of their social media experience.
Since you can look at this from the customer’s perspective, you can use that to determine strategies that you feel work, and those that you feel don’t. It’s not a bad way to find concepts you can apply to your own business or at least some that you can test.
Photo- Adana Tufanbeyli plant site- all greenfield
Dear Energy Professional, Dear Colleagues,
Your writer has received press releases from various resources for a new thermal power plant in Adana Tufanbeyli, in Turkey. The new 450 MWe coal fired thermal power plant investment in Adana Tufanbeyli is delayed for 3 years due to prevailing economic crisis. The project will be started in the second half of 2010 which was planned in year 2007 earlier.
The field related hydro geological studies were continuing in the field at Tufanbeyli. Plant is expected to consume 7.2 million tons of nearby local lignite per year, and will generate 3 billion kilowatt – hour of electric energy.
Investor Company officials advised that Negotiation work is in progress with companies of South Korea, Japan, for the key plant equipment supply and the construction. Plant operation will be in compliance with the latest EU environmental rules and regulations.
Local Holding company started planning to construct thermal power plant in 2006 in Adana Tufanbeyli with an investment budget of 480 million dollars. 100 hectares of land expropriation is already completed. Investment will be in build-operate model.
Coal mine has 214 million tons of proven lignite reserves in the region as reported in Turkish Coal Board reports. Available lignite coal has 1350 kcal per kg lower heating value with 44 percent humidity, 26 percent ash, 2.2 percent sulphur in average. Overburden / coal ratio is 8. Coal price is estimated to be 10.53 US Dollars per ton.
Available local coal is too difficult to fire in the steam boiler therefore special care in basic design is necessary. CFB and IGCC designs are recommended in lieu of conventional pulverized coal firing. Coal should be tested upfront.
This basic design activity cannot be left at the mercy of the foreign designers. There is no luxury to leave the design control to the vendor. Investor Company has to have basic design programs and local engineering capability to monitor completely all phases of the project execution from their home offices.
It is reported that investment will create employment for approximately 400 people in the region. Your writer is always happy to get such news on new energy investments in the local energy market, provided that
They are found/ registered/ accepted as environmentally friendly by the Ministry, They have completed all obligations for Environmental Impact Assessment Reports, They have received their license from the Local Regulatory Board, They are designed by local engineering companies, They are fabricated in the local fabrication plants, They are installed by our local contractors, They are commissioned and supervised by our local engineering power, They are operated by our own staff, and regularly checked by our own labor force in programmed maintenance.
We understand that project financing is secured by the investor partners, but loan allocation will be delayed to year 2010. Project financing is difficult in Turkey, especially at this time of global financial turmoil. Public institutions have limited or almost no capability.
The good side of that is Turkey will need more local private financing, and local contracting, local engineering. Your writer sincerely feels that our local private investors deserve all our support to complete those new power plant investments.
Above article is to be presumed a sort of executive summary for an important local thermal power plant investment free-of- charge, which would otherwise cost thousands of US dollars if that job would be given to an international engineering consultancy firm.
We will be too pleased to receive your comments.
Haluk Direskeneli, Ankara based Energy Analysthttp://www.turkishweekly.net/columnist/3210/some-thoughts-on-adana-tufanbeyli-thermal-power-plant.html
(NaturalNews) Kava is a well-known herb that originated in the Pacific. Also scientifically known as Piper Methysticum, the roots and stem hold the key ingredient that has been used for medicinal purposes both in traditional and modern times.
Traditionally chewed or crushed to form a liquid, Kava can now be commonly found in capsules, teas and liquids aimed at reducing a variety of stress and anxiety related conditions and illnesses.
Scientific research has pinpointed its effectiveness whereby in terms of neurotransmission, feel good vibes are sent to the brain which then aids muscle relaxation, increases concentration, decreases insomnia, lowers inhibitions and can also be suitable for pain such as back aches or hyperactivity in children. Although there is no absolute evidence, it has been suggested that Kava may affect serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitters.
Extracts of the Kava root have been processed to provide the population with immediate access to the various associated health benefits. Other health benefits of this herbal remedy include help for asthma, urinary tract infections, depression and menopausal symptoms. Due to its calming and muscle relaxing qualities, it has provided a health improvement to many that would have otherwise still have been suffering.
In recent times, sports persons and business people, to significantly improve performance by reducing daily stresses, have used Kava. It is also interesting to note that the use of Kava has been employed by the military, in some parts of the world, to reduce anxiety and improve the focus of its soldiers.
Concerns have been raised as to the safety of regularly consuming Kava. One of these main concerns involves the liver, where liver toxicity and failure occurred in some patients that were found to be taking a supplement containing the Kava extract – although, this could not be clarified as the patients had also consumed alcohol and other medications.
The effects of prolonged use of this natural substance are yet to be substantiated; however, there have been suggestions that ingesting high doses of Kava can lead to headaches and skin rashes. A single dose of this herbal remedy has found little to no side effects.
Scientists have advised that Kava is not to be used in conjunction with other medicines, alcohol or by pregnant women. As with anything new, it is still recommended to consult a health care provider as your first point of call.
Some federal departments have sought to ban the use of Kava among the general population; however, they have since retracted their statements, due to the growing evidence of Kava related health benefits provided by scientists and researchers.
Sources: http://www.healthnews.com/natural-health/kava-kava-a-natural-anxiety-reducer-3673.html http://www.anxiety-and-depression-solutions.com/articles/complementary_alternative_medicine/herbs_supplements/kava_kava.php http://health.learninginfo.org/benefits-kava.htmAbout the authorHenri Junttila is passionate about topics such as home water filters, natural skin care, omega 3 fish oil and natural supplements. His website Colon Health, provides information on topics such as candida cleanse, hemorrhoid cure, relieving constipation, colon detox, colon cleaning, the best colon cleanse and colon cleanse products reviewed by his visitors.
(NaturalNews) It’s not unusual to hear about herbicides having suspected toxic effects or prescription drugs producing side effects. But a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has found another negative and surprising way common herbicides and fibrate drugs (which are used to lower elevated blood lipids) impact the human body: they block a nutrient-sensing taste receptor on the tongue called T1R3.
So what’s the big deal about this? It turns out there’s emerging evidence these taste receptors are also found in hormone-producing cells in the intestine and pancreas. When working properly, these internal taste receptors in the gut trigger the release of hormones involved in the regulation of normal homeostasis (the ability of the body to maintain internal physiological stability) of glucose as well as energy metabolism. Simply put, screwing up the ability of T1R3 to sense certain nutrients could possibly wreak havoc on the human body in a variety of ways — from playing a role in unhealthy blood sugar levels to causing people to gain weight .
“Compounds that either activate or block T1R3 receptors could have significant metabolic effects, potentially influencing diseases such as obesity, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” said Monell geneticist and study leader Bedrich Mosinger, MD, PhD, in a statement to the media.
For their study, Dr. Mosinger and his research team tested the ability of two classes of chemical compounds to block the T1R3 taste receptor. These compounds were selected because they have strong structural similarities to lactisole, a sweet taste inhibitor that is known to block T1R3. Specifically, the researchers investigated fibrates (a class of drugs often used to lower blood cholesterol, especially triglycerides), and phenoxy herbicides.
Fibrate drugs are sold in the U.S. under several names including gemibrozil (brand name Lopid) and fenobribrate (brand name Tricor). Phenoxy herbicides are chemicals widely used in agricultural fields, on golf courses, rights-of-way and lawns to control broad-leaf weeds. The best known, called 2,4-D, is one of the most extensively used herbicides in the world. According to the Oregon State University Extension Service web site, popular brands of phenoxy herbicides include MCPA, Crossbow, Banvel, Garlon, Weed-B-Gone, and Brush Killer. They are also incorporated into a host of “weed and feed” and brush control products for use on grass.
In laboratory experiments, the researchers found that both classes of compounds were very potent in blocking activation of the human sweet taste receptors. Additional tests showed that this ability of both fibrates and phenoxy herbicides to block T1R3 is specific to humans.
“The metabolic consequences of short and long-term exposures of humans to phenoxy herbicides are unknown. This is because most safety tests were done using animals, which have T1R3 receptors that are insensitive to these compounds,” Dr. Mosinger said in the press statement. “Given the number of compounds used in agriculture, medicine and the food industry that may affect human T1R3 and related receptors, more work is needed to identify the health-related effects of exposure to these compounds.”
For more information: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jm900823s http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/t1r3 http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/em/em8737-e/
(NaturalNews) President Obama’s declaration of a national pandemic emergency is “no cause for alarm,” reported the mainstream media throughout the weekend. The declaration is nothing more than a “precaution,” they say. “It’s really more a continuation of our preparedness steps,” said Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in a USA Today story.
In other words, there’s not really any emergency at all. So why declare a national emergency in the first place? The media reports this was done to allow hospitals to bypass federal regulations concerning the setting up of large-scale triage sites — emergency medical camps quickly constructed to deal with large numbers of sick people.
But at the same time, H1N1 isn’t causing large-scale sickness. As USA Today reported, an expert on infectious disease, P.J. Brennan (the chief medical officer for the Penn Health System at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia) said, “The public ought to take some solace, some relief in this. It’s not a suggestion that things have deteriorated in any way. In no way is the virus more severe or more difficult to manage.”
So let me get this straight. The H1N1 virus remains mild. The CDC reports that swine flu infections already peaked out in mid-October. There have been no new developments in swine flu that would be cause for alarm and no reason to suspect huge numbers of sick people flooding into the hospitals. And yet, for some reason, the Obama administration has declared a national pandemic emergency specifically for the purpose of speeding the ability of hospitals to process large masses of sick people through emergency medical triage tents?
What are these people not telling us?
Something doesn’t add up here. Why would the U.S. government need to declare a national emergency to enable hospitals to handle a flood of sick people when there is no flood of sick people (and the pandemic seems to be fizzling out)?
This is more like the kind of preparation you might expect in advance of a biological terrorism attack, not for a flu that appears no more dangerous than the seasonal sniffles.
The National Emergencies Act and FEMAMeanwhile, the media ignores the rest of the story about what dangerous powers a declaration of a national emergency puts into play. As reported here on NaturalNews, this declaration effectively ends many civil liberties in America and, at least on paper, puts the U.S. government in the position of having the legal authority to force vaccinations on the entire population at gunpoint (if they wanted to).
The National Emergencies Act passed in 1976 has some peculiar realities attached to it. In particular, as Wikipedia reports:
A federal emergency declaration allows the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to exercise its power to deal with emergency situations … Typically, a state of emergency empowers the executive to name coordinating officials to deal with the emergency and to override normal administrative processes regarding the passage of administrative rules.
Got that yet? By declaring a national emergency, Obama invokes a set of laws that not only override important sections of the U.S. Constitution, but that also activate FEMA to take charge of “responding” to the emergency.
Now we know why they need all those emergency medical tent camps near the hospitals. FEMA’s in charge! And if FEMA handles the swine flu pandemic in the same way the agency handled the Hurricane Katrina disaster, we may indeed need all those emergency triage tents after all.
Those of you who have been following the ongoing march to destroy the freedoms of the American People already know about FEMA camps. These aren’t Boy Scout field trip camps; they’re detention centers designed to hold large numbers of people for “emergency” purposes. Many theories abound on what these FEMA camps might be used for (www.campFEMA.com) (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7763).
They could conceivably be used to quarantine people who are infected with a dangerous pandemic virus. On the other hand, they might also be used to isolated and detain people who refuse to be vaccinated against any declared pandemic. Under the National Emergencies Act and related U.S. law, FEMA would have two years of near-total control over the civilian population, during which people could be subjected to forced vaccinations, mandatory searches of their homes, gunpoint detainment and “involuntary transportation” to a FEMA detainment facility, and so on.
I’m not saying they’re going to do all this, but they could if they wanted to!
And that’s not freedom. Real freedom means you have the guaranteed right to be safe from being detained, or arrested without cause, or injected with a government-mandated chemical. Under a declaration of a national emergency, your “freedom” is at the whim of those who maintain police state powers over you. You’re only “free” if they decide to refrain from exercising the power they have over you. It’s the same kind of freedom you might get as a peasant in some Medieval kingdom where the king says, “You’re free to go.”
Now, some of these freedom-restricting actions might conceivably be justifiable if a truly dangerous pandemic virus were sweeping through the population killing millions, causing huge disruptions in the national infrastructure and threatening the nation with a partial or total shutdown of essential services. But that is not happening here. H1N1 is a mild virus that rates astonishingly low on the severity scale. If H1N1 were a hurricane, it would be little more than a “tropical depression.” It is not a category five hurricane, nor a phase six pandemic. Virtually everyone who is exposed to H1N1 generates their own antibodies and cures themselves naturally. According to hospital reports, those who have died from the H1N1 virus are almost exclusively people who were already suffering from preexisting conditions that compromised their health such as asthma or extreme obesity.
By any measure, H1N1 as currently configured appears to present no extraordinary threat to the health of the population. So once again, we must ask: Why declare a national emergency and initiate a FEMA response to something that’s not really an emergency?
Why I’m concernedFor the first time in this whole pandemic situation, I’m concerned. Not due to the virus itself, because that’s a mild virus that presents no real threat to the population at large. I’m concerned about what we don’t know might be going on behind the scenes here.
These preparations for large-scale medical triage tents and the emergency activation of FEMA have me worried that the American people aren’t being told the whole story. Perhaps a terrorist organization is planning on releasing a wildly dangerous mutation of H1N1 in some major U.S. city. Or perhaps some vaccine maker is, in fact, that terrorist organization. (The best way to sell more vaccines would be to release a mutated form of H1N1 into the population and scare up some more sales…)
Or maybe, as some creative thinkers have suggested, the vaccine itself IS a bioweapon, and the U.S. government is preparation for large-scale fatalities it expects to see soon.
Or maybe these are just fleeting, dark visions from crazy people, and the U.S. government is a benevolent organization with all our best interests in mind, and they’re jumping through these bureaucratic hoops to make sure there are plenty of hospital beds to go ’round just in case more people get really sick.
But even that explanation doesn’t hold water. A “national emergency declaration” isn’t necessary to waive hospital tent rules. Obama could have easily accomplished the same thing with an Executive Order, without having to invoke the National Emergencies Act or put FEMA in charge at all.
He chose the emergency declaration for a specific reason. I guess we’ll all have to wait and see what that real reason turns out to be.
It appears that reports of 360 exclusivity for Netflix have been greatly exaggerated. You could always hack it onto your console, but this is a little more official. The streaming-video service will arrive on PS3s next month, and current Netflix subscribers will be able to watch to their heart’s content at no extra charge. However, in a rather absurd turn, streaming will only be enabled when you have a special Netflix disc in your PS3. What the hell is that about?
Initially, watching movies instantly streamed from Netflix via the PS3 system will be enabled by a free, instant streaming Blu-ray disc that is being made available to all Netflix members. The free instant streaming disc leverages Blu-ray’s BD-Live™ technology to access the Internet and activate the Netflix user interface on the PS3 system, which must be online via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.
I don’t even want to speculate, it’s too weird. The content is hosted online, streamed over the internet, and the application and interface can’t take up more than a few megabytes. Yet they feel the need to next-day-air you a freaking Blu-ray disc that’s apparently the only way to access it. That’s a bit like having somebody climb the stairs in order to get to an escalator, isn’t it?
Maybe this is just a temporary thing, but maybe it really is as dumb as it sounds. We’ll know next month. At any rate, it’s a pretty awesome score for Sony. Maybe Microsoft only signed up for a two-month-long exclusive?
That didn’t take too long to confirm. A mere day after word got out of the possibility that Netflix will indeed be coming to either the PS3 or the Wii…
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you… we’ve just rolled out a brand new redesign of BGR! There are so many amazing things we’re proud of and it just felt time that we freshened up the site. We’ve dramatically improved comments and you can vote them up or down (lowest voted comment will be hidden with an option to view them) and we’ve streamlined how posts are displayed. But that’s not it. Check out our color-coded badges for important categories like breaking news or featured posts to help you keep track of them, an improved and redesigned gallery is coming ASAP, plus we’re also introducing a brand new feature called BGR Whispers. Think of this as Twitter for BGR. You won’t find us telling you anything personal, but what it will enable us to do is post information we’re hearing that’s not confirmed. Basically its place is between something we’d tweet and something we’d post — not confirmed enough to warrant a real post, but definitely intriguing enough to share. Expect a whole heap of those.
We’re also taking this opportunity to re-brand the site as BGR. That’s how we’re referred to 99% of the time, will enable us to expand on our content while always kicking ass in the mobile/gadget space, and hey, it’s just easier to say.
Special thanks to our guys at Out:think web design and development. They put up with our crazy requests, took abuse daily, and did an awesome job.
Feedback is of course welcome in the comments. Enjoy!
Verizon Storm users have reason to celebrate tonight because they’re part of a very special user base — the first BlackBerry users to recieve BlackBerry OS 5.0. We’ve already gone over the benefits of OS 5.0 a whole bunch, so all there is left for us to do is tell you how to get the goods. Either fire up BlackBerry Desktop Manager for PC or Mac and accept the prompt to update your handheld, or visit www.verizonwireless.com/storm. We’re just in the process of updating our 9530, but in the meantime, what does everyone that has it loaded up think? Has OS 5.0 made the first-gen Storm the phone it should have been one year ago, or is it just polishing a turd since the BlackBerry 9550 is just around the corner?
Anant Agarwal, co-founder and CTO of Tilera, is tackling the Mount Everest of chips. His goal for decades has been to figure out how to build a general-purpose chip that offers better performance and power efficiency. Those are goals that many startups have shot for and missed, or aimed for and settled for two out of three. But like Everest’s awesome heights, the new generation of cloud computing and demand for ever more resources to power social networks, online video and devices, have created challenges for data center operators that may allow Tilera to succeed. Today, the 5-year-old startup is expected to launch a 100-core version of its chip aimed at web-scale computing.
Tilera scoffs at quad core machines. The company’s chips already are used by 75 customers, and come with 36, 64, and now 100 cores. Agarwal says, “The core is the new transistor.” By cramming so many cores onto its chips connected by a mesh network of interconnect that allows the cores to communicate without bottlenecks, Bob Doud, director of marketing, says that Tilera can sell its chips to folks wanting faster memcached servers or better performance at web-scale computing. The chips, which provide 1.25 GHz of performance, are no match for Intel’s workhorse Nehalem processor that can top out at 3.3GHz. But Tilera’s chips only burn 33-50 watts instead of 130 watts that top-of-the-line Nehalem silicon can.
Giving folks better performance per watt has an essential place in the world of web-scale computing (GigaOM Pro subscription required), as Microsoft tests Intel’s low-end Atom chips in its servers; Dell touts servers using the low-power VIA chip; and SeaMicro creates an 80-core Atom-based box. Doud sees this opportunity and hopes that Tilera’s unique architecture can outperform efforts by other startups (and even big chip vendors) and get inside boxes made by large OEMs such as Dell and HP or smaller vendors using x86 chips in their cloud appliances.
But it’s this architecture issue that’s Tilera’s biggest weak point. The difficulty for most startups in the chip space when trying to build computers that deliver the most performance for the least power is the fact that they’re competing against Intel, and huge chunks of code aimed at enterprise and personal computing are written for Intel’s x86 architecture. So even as established chip providers (such as Nivida, which has had some luck getting its graphics processors into the mainstream) try to get people to write programs for their GPUs, Tilera has to offer tools to help programmers write for its chips without learning a new programming language.
Doud says he thinks 10 percent of web-scale computing jobs don’t need to keep the old style of coding for x86 chips, and if Tilera can break in there, that would be enough for now. Tilera already sells its chips to telecommunications equipment companies and for those trying to do rapid video and voice transcoding, which Doud says helps the company diversify in a manner that other specialty chip vendors, such as the shuttered SiCortex, have not done.
As Agarwal takes Tilera up the chip industry’s version of Everest, he is betting that the huge shift that’s come about as a result of web-scale and cloud computing is a good time to challenge the need to keep writing for x86 chips. The startup has made it to base camp, with an expected $25 million funding round from computer manufacturer Quanta and undisclosed investors closing later this month (bringing its total funding to about $65 million), and a plan to become profitable without any new investment, but it’s still going to be a hard, uphill slog.
On Friday, I was waxing eloquent about Netflix and its streaming video service, which has become part of my media consumption. And like me, many Netflix fans were accessing the new but fast-growing video streaming service via their DVD players, televisions, Rokus and Xboxes. Well, add Sony’s PlayStation 3 to this list. Netflix just announced that it is going to be supporting the gaming platform that’s already bundled with a Blu-ray DVD player.
Netflix will begin streaming via the PS3 system next month at no additional cost to Netflix members in the United States who have a PS3 system. For only $8.99 a month, Netflix members can instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed to their TVs and computers via Netflix-ready devices. By the way, I will be chatting with Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, at our upcoming NewTeeVee Live conference on Nov. 12. You won’t want to miss it; get your tickets today!
Recommended reading: “The DVR vs. Internet Video” by Mark Cuban.
Congress is at an impasse over how to fix a perennial problem in Medicare.
Weekend Edition Sunday
Just about every year a formula glitch threatens to cut payments to doctors who treat seniors and the disabled. And just about every year Congress cancels the cut. This year lawmakers are complaining about the bill because it’s not paid for. But, despite what both Republicans and Democrats are claiming, that’s nothing new.
Permanent Fix Falls Short Rather than do another one or two year patch for the Medicare doctor pay cut problem, Senate Democrats had wanted to fix the problem permanently. But their bill couldn’t even make it to the Senate floor — it fell short on its first procedural test last Wednesday by 13 votes. The reason cited by virtually every opponent was that the bill’s $250 billion, ten-year cost wasn’t paid for with other spending cuts or increased taxes.
New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg is among the opponents of the bill. “We’ve only done yearly fixes in this area, the doctor fix, because it’s a pretty difficult number to always pay for, but we have always paid for it,” he said on CNN last Sunday.
Except that Congress hasn’t always paid for it. In fact, when Republicans were in charge, they did cancel the Medicare cuts to doctors, but rarely paid for them. Just before turning control of Congress back to the Democrats at the end of 2006, Republicans actually tucked legislation to cancel the next year’s doctor pay cut into a catch-all tax bill that wasn’t paid for either. And then-Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg was one of the people who complained the loudest.
“You just have to ask yourself how we, as a party, got to this point, where we have a leadership which is going to ram down the throats of our party the biggest budget buster in the history of the Congress under Republican leadership,” said Gregg back in 2006.
Bipartisan Memory Loss But Republicans don’t have a lock on short-term memory problems. Here’s how White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded when he was asked about the issue last Thursday: “The cut in payments to doctors is something that is to be implemented every year; and gets fixed every year for the past six years. The president included in his budget fixing for and paying for that fix,” said Gibbs.
Except Gibbs was only half-right. President Obama’s budget does propose to fix the payment problem in that it would cancel next year’s Medicare cut for doctors and cuts into the future. But it doesn’t propose to pay for the added costs.
In fact, back in March, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag testified before a House Committee that the proposed fix could cause the federal deficit to be as much as $400 billion higher over the next decade.
Top White House advisor Christina Romer said that health reform would help to ease the deficit at a speech today. Reuters reports: “While some critics say Democrats’ efforts to regulate the insurance sector should wait until the deficit is under control, they should instead see it ‘as the most significant act we could take to tackle the deficit,’ Romer said in speech to the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think-tank” (Heavey, 10/26).
The Wall Street Journal Blog reports that Romer, who heads the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, spoke about the fiscal benefits of the White House’s health care agenda and said: “‘It is fiscally irresponsible not to do health-care reform. … To bury our head in the sand for even one more year and pretend that the problem of rising government health-care expenditures will go away is simply untenable.’”
“Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department reported the fiscal year 2009 deficit was $1.4 trillion, or about 10% of Gross Domestic Product. That’s the U.S.’ biggest budget deficit since World War II. Meanwhile, in August, the Obama administration estimated that a cumulative deficit over the 10-year budget window from 2010 to 2019 would reach $9 trillion. … With deficits potentially becoming a key 2010 campaign issue, the gloomy fiscal outlook could complicate Democrats’ legislative efforts, including hopes to overhaul health care. Still, Romer on Monday defended the Obama administration’s $787 billion fiscal stimulus program and the federal government’s financial-bailout program. She pinned most of the blame for the latest projected deficit on policy actions taken during the Bush administration” (Randall, 10/26).
Meanwhile, ABC News reports that Romer touted the “Cadillac Tax” as a critical part of reform: “President Obama’s chief economic forecaster went to bat on Monday for a tax on high-priced insurance plans, the so-called ‘Cadillac tax,’ calling it ‘probably the number one item that health economists across the ideological spectrum believe is likely to stem the explosion of health-care costs.’” Romer said such a tax would encourage employers and employees to be more vigilant health care consumers. “Romer’s full-throated endorsement of the ‘Cadillac tax’ keeps the Obama administration at odds on this issue with some of its closest allies. Organized labor has made killing the ‘Cadillac tax’ a top priority and more than half of House Democrats have signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her not to include a ‘Cadillac tax’ in health-care legislation.”
Romer talked about how the tax should be designed, noting that “a handful of ideas were under consideration by Congress including: (1) making special provisions for high-risk occupations such as firefighters; (2) taking regional differences in health-care costs into account “for a period of time”; and (3) making special provisions for firms with older, more costly workers. … Among the multiple ideas touted as cost savers during her speech, Romer touted the capacity of a public insurance option” (Davis, 10/26).
