Recent studies show that 89 percent of married-with-children households own multiple cellphones and 66 percent have high-speed Internet connections, well above the national average of 52 percent for all households.Forty-two percent (42 percent) of parents contact their children every day via cellphone, making cellphones the most popular communication tool between parents and children; 52 percent of married-with-children households go online together at least a few times a week, and another 34 percent of those families have "shared screen moments" at least occasionally. Seventy percent (70 percent) of couples in which both partners own a mobile phone contact each other daily to say hello or chat, while 54 percent of couples who have only one or no cell phones do; 64% of couples in which both partners own a cellphone contact each other daily to coordinate their schedules and 47 percent of couples who have one or no cell phones do.
This appears to be wonderful on the surface until you listen to the tragic story of the wife narrating her ordeal with the Internet. A desperate wife writes: "My husband & I were only 21 when we got married. We've been married for 13 years and are facing a problem because of his internet sex addiction. I discovered he was visiting x-rated sites and masturbating. I confronted him about it. I was devastated! We talked and talked about it. He was sincerely sorry about it, made a promise not to visit such sites again. About a year ago I again discovered his internet infidelity and confronted him about it. I was so hurt, even more then the indoor Tracking! Over and over again he has said he's sorry, there is no excuse. So divorce is definite this time. But I love him! He is great husband and the best father there is. What can I do?"
This story is a classic demonstration of the deep spiritual crisis we live in today. We are not threatened by terrorism but by something a lot more devastating: the spread of technology and the Internet. Internet access is common everywhere and is being introduced to younger children. The argument is that we are now raising a generation of children and young people who are spiritually dull and live according to logic only.Inadvertently, we are raising children capable of any and every atrocity without raising an eyebrow because of their spiritual depravity. Tragically, technology is our Achilles heel that in the end will be worse than any weapon of mass destruction. It will destroy us from within. This frightening trend can only be reversed if more and more citizens listen to their consciences and say enough is enough.
Technology puts the "I" in the centre and ignores the fact that life is only worth living if "I" depend on my neighbour. We are infatuated with the ability the Internet gives us. To be able to obtain everything that is available at the click of the mouse gives us power and makes us feel invincible. We also feel that the Internet is the solution to all of our emotional and spiritual problems because for every emotional disorder, there is a self-help website or a group blog.Finding love in the Internet age usually requires at least a toe-dip into the pool of online dating site. A teenager took his life after he fell victim to Internet daters perpetuating extortion scams through dating site chat rooms. In this scam, unsuspecting victims begin a chat conversation with a potential match. After establishing trust, the scammer will begin to initiate more sexual conversation. Once many messages have been swapped, the scammer then posted the sexual conversations, along with his name and a picture, on a website saying that they were a cheater. They offered to take down the incriminating information after he had paid them hundreds of dollars. Once the money exchanged hands, the information remains on the site. Around the world, many divorced women over the age of 40, particularly in countries where Internet is a major way of life, have fallen victim to this scourge.
Families are breaking up because of sexual conversations online. This risk is that you really don't know to whom you are speaking and the possibility of extortion is very real, as is the chance of your reputation being ruined. But there is a good rule of thumb for online conversation: If you wouldn't be embarrassed to show it to your parents or Hands free access, then it's appropriate. The teenager who took his life could not consider what he was doing to his mum and dad or how much their lives would be drastically changed by his death. But how many other people suffered in this event?
The Internet becomes a sick and highly destructive device when it is used by crazy people like a 21-year old Great Neck, New York man who was charged in a criminal complaint in the Eastern District of Michigan, USA with Internet extortion and cyber stalking. According to the affidavit, from May 2012 through February 2013, Adam Paul Savader sent anonymous text messages using Google Voice numbers to 15 women stating that he had nude photographs of the women and threatening to distribute the nude photographs to the women's friends and family members, unless the women sent him more nude photographs of themselves. Savader sent some of the victims links to a photo-sharing website where nude pictures of the victims had been posted. If convicted on these charges, Savader faces a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.
The Internet is a great invention that was created to feed and continues to feed on a global economic system called capitalism. This system, according to Karl Marx, makes workers slaves to their passions and to those who own the means of production. It's about making money at any cost and those living under this system are lured into practicing religion so that they can forget about their economic exploitation. Karl Marx saw faith in religion under the capitalist system as a drug, and so he argued, in 1843, that "religion is the opium (drug) of the people". They will not rebel against the system because they are under a hallucinating drug. Under capitalism today, the drug of religion is represented by the Internet. The Internet is the drug that is supposed to cure all psychological and mental ills of today.
It is regrettable that we are quick to forget the old saying that "not everything that glitters is gold". The Internet has become our god, our idol, which we now worship instead of the true God. Yet we have never been lonelier or more isolated from other human beings. What use is it to have all the possessions the world offers right in my living room if it separates me from other people? The essence of community is being systematically destroyed. If in any culture the minds and hearts of the children and youth have been captured, the war is already won. We are succumbing to the same temptation that Satan put before Jesus: Worship me, and the whole world and its glory will be yours. It is this temptation that Jesus rejected by pointing Satan to the Scriptures. The greatest challenge of education, the greatest challenge to parents and teachers, is not to teach our children reading, writing and arithmetic, which are important, but to see that they do not become spiritually dull.
As we struggle to build modern families, we seem to be succeeding in creating separate worlds under the same roof via the Internet. There are two main reasons why the Internet does not bring people closer together. First, it eliminates interaction.Second, it dehumanises communication. By searching on the Internet for places to shop, they eliminate conversations that used to be held between friends and family.Then, when there are conversations on the Internet, because of the lack of face time, there is so little substance that no lasting connection is made. Also, these conversations tend not to be genuine because people will say things online without thinking, which, as social creatures, is not the way we were set up to interact.The Internet makes people more isolated and jaded towards their fellow human beings. Most people I know would rather stay at home and talk to strangers or play computer games rather than socialise with family, spend time with kids, play games, fish, camp or any other such social activity. Some of the evil products made by the Internet make millions rich by destroying real human love and lifelong marital bonds. Businessmen seek to divide and conquer by destroying God's gift to mankind in the form of human sexuality. Their agenda is to disrupt the family unit, ultimately rendering man and woman isolated. When the family is destroyed, mankind is powerless to resist their subjugation.
They have a multi-pronged strategy to achieve this goal. By polluting the culture with sex-based media propaganda, they create demand for instant carnal gratification devoid of responsibility or moral obligation. By sexualizing the youth, businessmen remotely control the next generation. When young boys and girls grow up believing that viewing online dirty material, engaging in "hook-ups," and "being hot" is the societal expectation, they abandon aspirations of seeking a soul-mate that will love and protect them for life. When men can be chained to their online lovers and cable-box companions, they lose respect for their partners and a chasm develops in their intimate relations.The fact of the matter is that true happiness can only be experienced with those that you love in the flesh, and who share your spiritual values. We must defeat the capitalist Satanist's agenda. The Bible says "there is a way that seems right to men but the end is destruction" and "see to it that no one takes you captive to hallow and deceptive philosophy which depend on human traditions than the teachings of Christ".
The world is plagued by false philosophy about sex. But pornography is a virus; a worm eating through the apple.Pornography is a destroyer of marriage, the home, self-dignity, society, chastity, moral value, careers and relationships. On the other hand, God is love; He'll forgive our sins if you repent. God hates all forms of immorality and defines it pretty well in His book. The Internet can be a scourge on the earth. Like Satan, it seeks whom it can devour and destroy, reaching into homes of innocent families. But families can get a screening service to monitor their home computers which should be kept in a public room of the house and not in the children's bedrooms parents cannot control what is being watched. Most of children do it because they are lazy and the computer keeps them busy and away from the parent. This is neglect and in even child abuse. When parents do not monitor what the child is accessing on the Internet, horrible things can happen. I think there should be laws against children having computers in their room for that reason.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年9月2日星期一
2013年8月28日星期三
Crowd gets tougher on leaders
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has thrown the lever to populism, calling for tighter restrictions on the sale of Australian land to foreign individuals and state-owned enterprises and admitting he feels ''anxious'' about foreign ownership.
The shift came as Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott faced off at the third and final leaders debate of the 2013 campaign. Both leaders were noticeably tired but managed to present a more civil atmosphere than at previous encounters, even if the questioning from voters took on a harsher edge.
An exit poll of the hand-picked audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott on 38. Nineteen remained undecided.Other questions dealt with Mr Abbott's gold-plated Paid Parental Leave scheme with Mr Rudd hammering the super-generous provisions as Hands free access, and at least one questioner agreeing.
Small businessman Ian, told Mr Abbott: ''I just think, that a fork-lift driver from Mount Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the North Shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid,'' he said. Mr Abbott countered by saying that big business funded the scheme, via a levy, not taxpayers.
Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing access foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff.'' He said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to access foreign capital to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.Mr Abbott said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold to ensure the Foreign Investment Review Board examined acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' - down from more than $220 million currently.
Mr Rudd's shift appeared to come without prior consultation. It came as the trailing Mr Rudd was also forced to defend his sustained internal campaign against Julia Gillard through this year. He claimed he did ''absolutely the right thing'' by replacing her.''I can say that through all of that I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country,'' he replied to the questioner, Amanda.
Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. The definitive guarantee appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.''
Police Chief Bill Blair has for quite some time been on the record as urging broader deployment of Tasers as an option less harmful than guns. Yet in an interview with the Star last week, the chief was careful to qualify his support of Tasers for front-line cops.
“It’s not risk-free. When they first brought them out, they made it sound like it was as safe as Tylenol. There’s a risk associated to its use. It’s what we call a less-lethal-force option. That’s a good thing — if you can do it. But you should always try to resolve these things using the least amount of force possible.’’
It’s all after-the-fact speculation, of course. Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack has claimed Forcillo called for a Taser to be brought before he fired his weapon nine times. Why he didn’t wait will no doubt be a matter explored at trial.
What is clear, from the numerous studies conducted, is that a Taser — like any other weapon — is dangerous in the wrong hands, no less when those are an officer’s hands. Many civil rights groups deplore the thing. These are the same people often most vocal in their condemnation of police shootings, particularly when the victims suffer from mental illness.
Amnesty International, for one, claims there have been more than 500 deaths due to Tasers since 2001. One of them was Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, zapped five times by RCMP officers in the Vancouver airport in 2007. That disturbing event triggered an exhaustive inquiry that delivered a slew of recommendations about when conductive energy weapons should be deployed — most crucially, only when there’s a danger the suspect will cause bodily harm, which still leaves it hopelessly discretionary. The Vancouver Tasering, also captured on video that the RCMP originally claimed didn’t exist, was deemed a homicide, with the officers acting too quickly.
The weapons gadgetry available to law enforcement is only as good as the decision-making, the judgment, of those invested with the authority to use it. And that judgment will not necessarily be sufficiently honed by a few days of training on stun guns. Indeed, there’s ample evidence showing that officers reach for the Taser more frequently, too frequently, than they would reach for a sidearm, in circumstances that don’t warrant use of force.
They defuse with a fuse because they’ve got this handy new toy that emits an electrical current via wires and barbs which disrupts voluntary control of muscles — electro-muscular disruption technology, as described by the manufacturer, Taser International. Around the world, some 17,000 law enforcement and military agencies in more than 100 countries use Tasers now. In some jurisdictions, corrections officers use them to subdue prisoners as well. Little wonder Taser stock surged more than 30 percent in the last two weeks alone, though the spike is also attributable to police demand for the company’s merchandizing of wearable video cameras, tucked into a patrol cop’s vest, for the purpose of documenting incidents with the public.
It’s unclear where Toronto Police Services will get the money to pay for equipping all front-line officers with Tasers — which could cost up to $10 million. One suggestion is that cops pay for it out-of-pocket, which is unreasonable.
The Ontario government maintains its shift on Tasers was not influenced by Sammy Yatin’s death and certainly appears to have been in the works before that shooting. More likely, the Ministry was reacting to an inquest earlier this year in Midhurst — the first where use of a Taser was a “contributing factor’’ in the death, officially caused by cardiac arrhythmia due to a state of excited delirium. In that 2010 case, OPP responding to an assault complaint came upon Aron Firman, a 27-year-old schizophrenic who was Tased when he made a movement toward one of the officers. The SIU cleared the officer of any wrongdoing. But the inquest jury heard immensely contradictory evidence about what happened.
Specific cases can be used to buttress both the pro- and anti-Taser constituencies. Earlier this month, a suicidal woman holding a knife near the railroad tracks in Burlington was subdued by a Taser and taken to hospital under provisions of the Mental Health Act. A life may have been saved.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
The shift came as Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott faced off at the third and final leaders debate of the 2013 campaign. Both leaders were noticeably tired but managed to present a more civil atmosphere than at previous encounters, even if the questioning from voters took on a harsher edge.
An exit poll of the hand-picked audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott on 38. Nineteen remained undecided.Other questions dealt with Mr Abbott's gold-plated Paid Parental Leave scheme with Mr Rudd hammering the super-generous provisions as Hands free access, and at least one questioner agreeing.
Small businessman Ian, told Mr Abbott: ''I just think, that a fork-lift driver from Mount Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the North Shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid,'' he said. Mr Abbott countered by saying that big business funded the scheme, via a levy, not taxpayers.
Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing access foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff.'' He said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to access foreign capital to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.Mr Abbott said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold to ensure the Foreign Investment Review Board examined acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' - down from more than $220 million currently.
Mr Rudd's shift appeared to come without prior consultation. It came as the trailing Mr Rudd was also forced to defend his sustained internal campaign against Julia Gillard through this year. He claimed he did ''absolutely the right thing'' by replacing her.''I can say that through all of that I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country,'' he replied to the questioner, Amanda.
Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. The definitive guarantee appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.''
Police Chief Bill Blair has for quite some time been on the record as urging broader deployment of Tasers as an option less harmful than guns. Yet in an interview with the Star last week, the chief was careful to qualify his support of Tasers for front-line cops.
“It’s not risk-free. When they first brought them out, they made it sound like it was as safe as Tylenol. There’s a risk associated to its use. It’s what we call a less-lethal-force option. That’s a good thing — if you can do it. But you should always try to resolve these things using the least amount of force possible.’’
It’s all after-the-fact speculation, of course. Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack has claimed Forcillo called for a Taser to be brought before he fired his weapon nine times. Why he didn’t wait will no doubt be a matter explored at trial.
What is clear, from the numerous studies conducted, is that a Taser — like any other weapon — is dangerous in the wrong hands, no less when those are an officer’s hands. Many civil rights groups deplore the thing. These are the same people often most vocal in their condemnation of police shootings, particularly when the victims suffer from mental illness.
Amnesty International, for one, claims there have been more than 500 deaths due to Tasers since 2001. One of them was Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, zapped five times by RCMP officers in the Vancouver airport in 2007. That disturbing event triggered an exhaustive inquiry that delivered a slew of recommendations about when conductive energy weapons should be deployed — most crucially, only when there’s a danger the suspect will cause bodily harm, which still leaves it hopelessly discretionary. The Vancouver Tasering, also captured on video that the RCMP originally claimed didn’t exist, was deemed a homicide, with the officers acting too quickly.
The weapons gadgetry available to law enforcement is only as good as the decision-making, the judgment, of those invested with the authority to use it. And that judgment will not necessarily be sufficiently honed by a few days of training on stun guns. Indeed, there’s ample evidence showing that officers reach for the Taser more frequently, too frequently, than they would reach for a sidearm, in circumstances that don’t warrant use of force.
They defuse with a fuse because they’ve got this handy new toy that emits an electrical current via wires and barbs which disrupts voluntary control of muscles — electro-muscular disruption technology, as described by the manufacturer, Taser International. Around the world, some 17,000 law enforcement and military agencies in more than 100 countries use Tasers now. In some jurisdictions, corrections officers use them to subdue prisoners as well. Little wonder Taser stock surged more than 30 percent in the last two weeks alone, though the spike is also attributable to police demand for the company’s merchandizing of wearable video cameras, tucked into a patrol cop’s vest, for the purpose of documenting incidents with the public.
It’s unclear where Toronto Police Services will get the money to pay for equipping all front-line officers with Tasers — which could cost up to $10 million. One suggestion is that cops pay for it out-of-pocket, which is unreasonable.
The Ontario government maintains its shift on Tasers was not influenced by Sammy Yatin’s death and certainly appears to have been in the works before that shooting. More likely, the Ministry was reacting to an inquest earlier this year in Midhurst — the first where use of a Taser was a “contributing factor’’ in the death, officially caused by cardiac arrhythmia due to a state of excited delirium. In that 2010 case, OPP responding to an assault complaint came upon Aron Firman, a 27-year-old schizophrenic who was Tased when he made a movement toward one of the officers. The SIU cleared the officer of any wrongdoing. But the inquest jury heard immensely contradictory evidence about what happened.
Specific cases can be used to buttress both the pro- and anti-Taser constituencies. Earlier this month, a suicidal woman holding a knife near the railroad tracks in Burlington was subdued by a Taser and taken to hospital under provisions of the Mental Health Act. A life may have been saved.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月19日星期一
Tech-savvy pastor with Illinois ties
Standing in a security line at O'Hare International Airport seven years ago, the Rev. Bobby Gruenewald wished he had a Bible in his pocket to pass the time. Then the tech-savvy pastor raised in central Illinois had a thought: Wouldn't it be grand if anyone could have their favorite version of the Bible within reach anywhere at any time?
"Could we be at one of these moments in history where technology, if we leverage it correctly, could transform how we engage in the Bible?" Gruenewald, 37, recalls thinking that day. "Drawing from the story of the real time Location system, for centuries, that really changed our access to the Bible. It's probably something today we easily take for granted, but it came through invention."
Represented by the simple icon of a Bible with a bookmark, the app offers audio versions for listeners, navigation tools to look up passages, social media capability to share verses on Facebook and Twitter, and private or public platforms to store or share notes. The app is free and generates no revenue for the church. It simply aims to fulfill the Christian mission of spreading God's word, Gruenewald said.
But Gruenewald's idea required more than technical expertise. It has taken nearly $20 million from donors, 30 paid staff and 500 volunteers worldwide to get off the ground.
It also needed cooperation from publishers to grant access to the hundreds of translations of the Christian Bible available on YouVersion's menu, including ones popular with evangelical Christians, Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Messianic Jews, who blend evangelical Christian theology with Jewish rituals.
Tyndale House Publishers was one of the first companies to grant access. It took 90 scholars commissioned by the Carol Stream company seven years to develop the New Living Translation, which is now the world's third-most popular biblical translation. Company officials said they weren't eager to give away their work.
But when Gruenewald shared his vision of making the Bible more accessible to people on the go, the west suburban publishing house reconsidered. It signed a two-year trial agreement in 2008 to license the translation for free. It has since renewed that agreement twice after discovering that popularity has soared.
"We found that when people read the New Living Translation they are able to experience it personally and it speaks to their heart," said Jeffrey Smith, the New Living Translation brand director for Tyndale House. "We know that, for many, they'll adopt it as their translation of choice, then follow through and purchase other resources from us. … When something is so successful like this, it's the hand of God."
But when Gruenewald shared his vision of making the Bible more accessible to people on the go, the west suburban publishing house reconsidered. It signed a two-year trial agreement in 2008 to license the translation for free. It has since renewed that agreement twice after discovering that popularity has soared.
"We found that when people read the New Living Translation they are able to experience it personally and it speaks to their heart," said Jeffrey Smith, the New Living Translation brand director for rtls. "We know that, for many, they'll adopt it as their translation of choice, then follow through and purchase other resources from us. … When something is so successful like this, it's the hand of God."
Gruenewald was an unlikely dot.com entrepreneur. Growing up in Decatur, dubbed the "Soybean Capital of the World" because of the presence of agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, he followed his high school sweetheart (now wife) to Oklahoma's Southern Nazarene University to study finance in 1994.
When an outside company offered to build a website for the car dealership where he worked on the side, Gruenewald proposed doing it for a fraction of the price. He studied the HTML codes during his winter break in Decatur and designed the site in his dorm room.
Gruenewald created a site that helped the dealer peddle auto parts. Sales eventually grew to $100,000 a month and the dealer offered to invest in Gruenewald's talents. In 2001, after a series of successful Web ventures, Gruenewald and his wife joined what would later become LifeChurch.tv, in Edmond, Okla., where "the best technology was air conditioning" and where "my passion for the church eclipsed my passion for business," he said.
YouVersion didn't see instant success, he said. Its full potential didn't emerge until mobile devices began to catch on. In fact, the church was on the brink of shutting down the endeavor when Apple introduced its App Store for the iPhone in 2008. YouVersion became one of the first 200 apps available, enabling Gruenewald's concept to take off and help other churches grow as well.
One of those churches, the six-campus Park Community Church in Chicago, encourages worshippers to download YouVersion Bible plans so they can access the scripture passages at the core of Sunday services and refer to the pastors' notes as they follow a sermon.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
"Could we be at one of these moments in history where technology, if we leverage it correctly, could transform how we engage in the Bible?" Gruenewald, 37, recalls thinking that day. "Drawing from the story of the real time Location system, for centuries, that really changed our access to the Bible. It's probably something today we easily take for granted, but it came through invention."
Represented by the simple icon of a Bible with a bookmark, the app offers audio versions for listeners, navigation tools to look up passages, social media capability to share verses on Facebook and Twitter, and private or public platforms to store or share notes. The app is free and generates no revenue for the church. It simply aims to fulfill the Christian mission of spreading God's word, Gruenewald said.
But Gruenewald's idea required more than technical expertise. It has taken nearly $20 million from donors, 30 paid staff and 500 volunteers worldwide to get off the ground.
It also needed cooperation from publishers to grant access to the hundreds of translations of the Christian Bible available on YouVersion's menu, including ones popular with evangelical Christians, Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Messianic Jews, who blend evangelical Christian theology with Jewish rituals.
Tyndale House Publishers was one of the first companies to grant access. It took 90 scholars commissioned by the Carol Stream company seven years to develop the New Living Translation, which is now the world's third-most popular biblical translation. Company officials said they weren't eager to give away their work.
But when Gruenewald shared his vision of making the Bible more accessible to people on the go, the west suburban publishing house reconsidered. It signed a two-year trial agreement in 2008 to license the translation for free. It has since renewed that agreement twice after discovering that popularity has soared.
"We found that when people read the New Living Translation they are able to experience it personally and it speaks to their heart," said Jeffrey Smith, the New Living Translation brand director for Tyndale House. "We know that, for many, they'll adopt it as their translation of choice, then follow through and purchase other resources from us. … When something is so successful like this, it's the hand of God."
But when Gruenewald shared his vision of making the Bible more accessible to people on the go, the west suburban publishing house reconsidered. It signed a two-year trial agreement in 2008 to license the translation for free. It has since renewed that agreement twice after discovering that popularity has soared.
"We found that when people read the New Living Translation they are able to experience it personally and it speaks to their heart," said Jeffrey Smith, the New Living Translation brand director for rtls. "We know that, for many, they'll adopt it as their translation of choice, then follow through and purchase other resources from us. … When something is so successful like this, it's the hand of God."
Gruenewald was an unlikely dot.com entrepreneur. Growing up in Decatur, dubbed the "Soybean Capital of the World" because of the presence of agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, he followed his high school sweetheart (now wife) to Oklahoma's Southern Nazarene University to study finance in 1994.
When an outside company offered to build a website for the car dealership where he worked on the side, Gruenewald proposed doing it for a fraction of the price. He studied the HTML codes during his winter break in Decatur and designed the site in his dorm room.
Gruenewald created a site that helped the dealer peddle auto parts. Sales eventually grew to $100,000 a month and the dealer offered to invest in Gruenewald's talents. In 2001, after a series of successful Web ventures, Gruenewald and his wife joined what would later become LifeChurch.tv, in Edmond, Okla., where "the best technology was air conditioning" and where "my passion for the church eclipsed my passion for business," he said.
YouVersion didn't see instant success, he said. Its full potential didn't emerge until mobile devices began to catch on. In fact, the church was on the brink of shutting down the endeavor when Apple introduced its App Store for the iPhone in 2008. YouVersion became one of the first 200 apps available, enabling Gruenewald's concept to take off and help other churches grow as well.
One of those churches, the six-campus Park Community Church in Chicago, encourages worshippers to download YouVersion Bible plans so they can access the scripture passages at the core of Sunday services and refer to the pastors' notes as they follow a sermon.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月12日星期一
Hidden iPad features that could improve your life
Some features on the iPad are straight forward – a touch screen is, after all, designed to be easy to use.More adventurous users have, however, discovered some hidden features that are perhaps not so obvious and have shared them.
Here we provide give you a quick tour of the best hidden features of the iPad and show just what it can do.Buried under general settings is an innocuous little switch that turns on multitasking gestures. This allows you to use several fingers at once to control the iPad.Pinching four or five fingers across the screen will return you to the Home Screen of the iPad from any App.Swiping four or five figures upwards will reveal the multitasking bar, showing which Apps are currently running. Swiping down again will hide it.
Swipe those digits to the left or right will allow you to change Apps at flicking speed. This feature sits in the accessibility folder under general settings. when turned on, double tap on the screen with three fingers to zoom into a spot.To navigate around while indoor Tracking, drag three fingers around the screen.And if things still are not magnified enough, then double tap again while zoomed in with three fingers before dragging them up or down. This will zoom you right in and out of the action.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO I walked into a bookshop in a shopping mall in central Istanbul. As I browsed the shelves I was unaware that the day marked the 110th anniversary of the birth of George Orwell. Though Orwell is one of my favorite English authors, my mind was occupied by quite a different fact — namely, that since buying a tablet computer in December last year, the amount of money I have spent on printed books has decreased dramatically. With this decrease followed a decrease in the pleasure I took from purchasing them. In the good, old, and expensive days of literary shopping I would choose books from the shelves, walk to the counter, pay in cash, and head to a coffee shop with my purchases — the favorite ritual of my teenage years. I would open the first book’s cover, accompanied by a cigarette and a cup of strong Turkish coffee. These would always be very physical experiences: I remember the crinkling pages, the waft of the smoke, the oils of the coffee. Afterward my hands smelled of nicotine; my mind hungered for more books.
Lately, however, this ritual has all but disappeared from my life. My reading materials have been thoroughly digitized. I have lost touch with both the printed book and the banknote. In the long chronicle of my reading habits I am currently living through the age of the .EPUB file and the plastic card. It is a chilly period, I must admit, a dark age, and at times it makes me yearn for the good old days of my undergraduate life. In those not-so-distant days I didn’t need to calculate or economize. I didn’t have to pay the rent; as for my insurance premiums, they were taken care of by my parents. Thanks to them I could spend all my money on books and cigarettes, giving little thought to the price I paid for them.
Next month, Manitoba's courts will initiate a formal policy regarding courtroom use of electronic devices. Tweeting and blogging from all levels of Manitoba courts by official media and lawyers will be expressly permitted as of Sept. 1. The general public, however, must either turn off, or disable transmission from, smartphones and tablet computers in court.
Who can transmit what from the courtroom in the age of social media is a vexed issue. The new policy tries to strike a balance between the public's right to know and ensuring witnesses and parties in hearings and trials are treated fairly.
The policy doesn't completely foreclose members of the public from tweeting or blogging. Anyone can request permission from the judge to use an electronic device. Overall, the policy is commendably flexible. It also gives the judge the discretion to allow, or prohibit, use of an electronic device by anyone - media, lawyers or public - where he or she thinks it appropriate.
Twitter works well as a bulletin service. In the hands of accredited journalists, it provides play-by-play of rtls. However, tweets from members of the public often stray from unfiltered coverage of proceedings.
Particularly pernicious are tweets that comment on a witness's or accused's physical appearance or clothing. Equally prejudicial are tweets that veer into speculation about a witness's veracity, based on his or her demeanour on the stand. But most problematic of all are tweets that venture into opinion. Saying something apt and perceptive about a trial can rarely be done in Twitter's maximum 140-characters format. Saying something stupid or wrong, however, takes few words.
An inaccurate or unfair tweet can do a lot of damage. Once launched into cyberspace, it's out there for good. Corrections, or even counter-tweets, can be posted, but by then often the harm's been done and the message can be re-posted in blogs, Internet chat rooms and other social media.
Witnesses can view these prejudicial postings, and it can influence their testimony in court. Worse yet, jurors with smartphones or tablet computers are liable to access inadmissible evidence or irrelevant reports. Cases are supposed to be decided on the basis of evidence heard within the four walls of the courtroom, not missives from cyberspace.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Here we provide give you a quick tour of the best hidden features of the iPad and show just what it can do.Buried under general settings is an innocuous little switch that turns on multitasking gestures. This allows you to use several fingers at once to control the iPad.Pinching four or five fingers across the screen will return you to the Home Screen of the iPad from any App.Swiping four or five figures upwards will reveal the multitasking bar, showing which Apps are currently running. Swiping down again will hide it.
Swipe those digits to the left or right will allow you to change Apps at flicking speed. This feature sits in the accessibility folder under general settings. when turned on, double tap on the screen with three fingers to zoom into a spot.To navigate around while indoor Tracking, drag three fingers around the screen.And if things still are not magnified enough, then double tap again while zoomed in with three fingers before dragging them up or down. This will zoom you right in and out of the action.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO I walked into a bookshop in a shopping mall in central Istanbul. As I browsed the shelves I was unaware that the day marked the 110th anniversary of the birth of George Orwell. Though Orwell is one of my favorite English authors, my mind was occupied by quite a different fact — namely, that since buying a tablet computer in December last year, the amount of money I have spent on printed books has decreased dramatically. With this decrease followed a decrease in the pleasure I took from purchasing them. In the good, old, and expensive days of literary shopping I would choose books from the shelves, walk to the counter, pay in cash, and head to a coffee shop with my purchases — the favorite ritual of my teenage years. I would open the first book’s cover, accompanied by a cigarette and a cup of strong Turkish coffee. These would always be very physical experiences: I remember the crinkling pages, the waft of the smoke, the oils of the coffee. Afterward my hands smelled of nicotine; my mind hungered for more books.
Lately, however, this ritual has all but disappeared from my life. My reading materials have been thoroughly digitized. I have lost touch with both the printed book and the banknote. In the long chronicle of my reading habits I am currently living through the age of the .EPUB file and the plastic card. It is a chilly period, I must admit, a dark age, and at times it makes me yearn for the good old days of my undergraduate life. In those not-so-distant days I didn’t need to calculate or economize. I didn’t have to pay the rent; as for my insurance premiums, they were taken care of by my parents. Thanks to them I could spend all my money on books and cigarettes, giving little thought to the price I paid for them.
Next month, Manitoba's courts will initiate a formal policy regarding courtroom use of electronic devices. Tweeting and blogging from all levels of Manitoba courts by official media and lawyers will be expressly permitted as of Sept. 1. The general public, however, must either turn off, or disable transmission from, smartphones and tablet computers in court.
Who can transmit what from the courtroom in the age of social media is a vexed issue. The new policy tries to strike a balance between the public's right to know and ensuring witnesses and parties in hearings and trials are treated fairly.
The policy doesn't completely foreclose members of the public from tweeting or blogging. Anyone can request permission from the judge to use an electronic device. Overall, the policy is commendably flexible. It also gives the judge the discretion to allow, or prohibit, use of an electronic device by anyone - media, lawyers or public - where he or she thinks it appropriate.
Twitter works well as a bulletin service. In the hands of accredited journalists, it provides play-by-play of rtls. However, tweets from members of the public often stray from unfiltered coverage of proceedings.
Particularly pernicious are tweets that comment on a witness's or accused's physical appearance or clothing. Equally prejudicial are tweets that veer into speculation about a witness's veracity, based on his or her demeanour on the stand. But most problematic of all are tweets that venture into opinion. Saying something apt and perceptive about a trial can rarely be done in Twitter's maximum 140-characters format. Saying something stupid or wrong, however, takes few words.
An inaccurate or unfair tweet can do a lot of damage. Once launched into cyberspace, it's out there for good. Corrections, or even counter-tweets, can be posted, but by then often the harm's been done and the message can be re-posted in blogs, Internet chat rooms and other social media.
Witnesses can view these prejudicial postings, and it can influence their testimony in court. Worse yet, jurors with smartphones or tablet computers are liable to access inadmissible evidence or irrelevant reports. Cases are supposed to be decided on the basis of evidence heard within the four walls of the courtroom, not missives from cyberspace.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
DIY biohackers play with bacteria
You don't need a professional-grade lab or a science degree to mess around with microorganisms. A small group of New York-based biotechnology enthusiasts have created their own community biology lab called Genspace, and it's a place where anyone who's even remotely interested in life sciences can go and get their feet wet with biotechnology.
DIY biologists mainly work from home on their own little cultured experiments. For the most part, this underground biohacking scene regularly communicates through the Web on the DIYbio forums to ask for advice and equipment, as well as to set up in-person meetups. But a growing number of biohacking spaces, such as Genspace and Biocurious in the San Francisco Bay Area, give biohackers proper laboratories to work on their projects.
Genspace, located on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, is the first and only community biolab in New York City. The lab is on the 7th floor of an old bank building: Once you step off the Hands free access, turn left, and you’ll stumble into a scene that looks like your middle school's science department, except it’s all grown up.
The main work room is a little grungy, between the mess of works-in-progress spread all over the table, the painted brick walls, and the exposed pipes hanging overhead. Beyond this room, however, is a small lab that’s a completely different scene.
Step into the lab, and the whole place seems brighter and cleaner—and more sterile. Boxes of gloves are scattered about. A lab coat hangs on a stool. Test tubes and other pieces of lab equipment litter the stainless steel countertops. A stack of petri dishes fester with microscopic life that comes in every color of the rainbow from violet to red.
Meanwhile, the scent of chicken broth hangs in the air—it's just about the closest I can come to describing the smell and appearance of warm bacteria-culturing medium. The whole place just screams, "hey, I'm a lab."
The organization's official mission is to promote citizen science and to make biotechnology more readily accessible to the masses. Since it first opened in 2010, Genspace has invited science enthusiasts from all sorts of different professions to play in its biotech wonderland.
Some of Genspace's members and supporters are biologists as you might expect, while others are writers, artists, roboticists, and computer programmers. Regardless of the background they hail from, contributors of all stripes are welcome here.
“Now we have artists [as members] too who are asking, what can we do with [biotech]? What can we design with it? How can we use this as a new palate?" Genspace Co-founder and Vice President Daniel Grushkin told TechHive. "[This is] in addition to people who are trying to innovate with it in terms of coming up with new medicine and coming up with new devices that will test water to make sure it’s pure. Then you have other people who want to make a painting out of it.”
What drives someone to biohack? Curiosity. Many of those I met at Genspace just heard about the place, and on a free night decided to stop by to see what DIY biology is all about. For some, it’s just one night of rtls, but for others, it sticks with them—sort of like a virus—and snowballs into a full-on hobby.
Andres Bastian, a 3D printer mechanics expert at MakerBot, says he was “interested in biological engineering for a long time," and that the relative maturity of biohacking was a big draw for him.
"The biological toolset has been something that’s been optimized and honed for a long time. It’s one of the most efficient toolsets, [and it] seems like it can be applied to anything from energy medicine for treating diseases,” Bastian said.
“I was like, I want to bioengineer a living organism into something cool and novel," Grushkin recalled. "I was watching these undergrads and literally they have [only] a summer to figure out their project and finish it, and they’re basically building an entire bug. If a group of undergrads can do it why can't I? So the reason I got involved is because I wanted to know how to do that.”
Smitten, Grushkin took to the online biohacking forums and met others interested in the topic. Soon after, he met with a group from the DIYbio forums at his Park Slope home.
The group started with small experiments like extracting DNA from strawberries, and moved on to more advanced projects from there. Eventually, it graduated to creating its first genetic transformation by injecting a membrane with green fluorescent protein (GFP) into E. coli to make it glow in the dark.
“[It] was kind of cool and actually controversial because it was the first time someone had done genetic engineering outside of your standard lab,” said Grushkin. The group officially incorporated as Genspace in 2009, and held its initial meetings at NYC Resistor. Genspace officially opened its own space in December 2010.
DIY biologists mainly work from home on their own little cultured experiments. For the most part, this underground biohacking scene regularly communicates through the Web on the DIYbio forums to ask for advice and equipment, as well as to set up in-person meetups. But a growing number of biohacking spaces, such as Genspace and Biocurious in the San Francisco Bay Area, give biohackers proper laboratories to work on their projects.
Genspace, located on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, is the first and only community biolab in New York City. The lab is on the 7th floor of an old bank building: Once you step off the Hands free access, turn left, and you’ll stumble into a scene that looks like your middle school's science department, except it’s all grown up.
The main work room is a little grungy, between the mess of works-in-progress spread all over the table, the painted brick walls, and the exposed pipes hanging overhead. Beyond this room, however, is a small lab that’s a completely different scene.
Step into the lab, and the whole place seems brighter and cleaner—and more sterile. Boxes of gloves are scattered about. A lab coat hangs on a stool. Test tubes and other pieces of lab equipment litter the stainless steel countertops. A stack of petri dishes fester with microscopic life that comes in every color of the rainbow from violet to red.
Meanwhile, the scent of chicken broth hangs in the air—it's just about the closest I can come to describing the smell and appearance of warm bacteria-culturing medium. The whole place just screams, "hey, I'm a lab."
The organization's official mission is to promote citizen science and to make biotechnology more readily accessible to the masses. Since it first opened in 2010, Genspace has invited science enthusiasts from all sorts of different professions to play in its biotech wonderland.
Some of Genspace's members and supporters are biologists as you might expect, while others are writers, artists, roboticists, and computer programmers. Regardless of the background they hail from, contributors of all stripes are welcome here.
“Now we have artists [as members] too who are asking, what can we do with [biotech]? What can we design with it? How can we use this as a new palate?" Genspace Co-founder and Vice President Daniel Grushkin told TechHive. "[This is] in addition to people who are trying to innovate with it in terms of coming up with new medicine and coming up with new devices that will test water to make sure it’s pure. Then you have other people who want to make a painting out of it.”
What drives someone to biohack? Curiosity. Many of those I met at Genspace just heard about the place, and on a free night decided to stop by to see what DIY biology is all about. For some, it’s just one night of rtls, but for others, it sticks with them—sort of like a virus—and snowballs into a full-on hobby.
Andres Bastian, a 3D printer mechanics expert at MakerBot, says he was “interested in biological engineering for a long time," and that the relative maturity of biohacking was a big draw for him.
"The biological toolset has been something that’s been optimized and honed for a long time. It’s one of the most efficient toolsets, [and it] seems like it can be applied to anything from energy medicine for treating diseases,” Bastian said.
“I was like, I want to bioengineer a living organism into something cool and novel," Grushkin recalled. "I was watching these undergrads and literally they have [only] a summer to figure out their project and finish it, and they’re basically building an entire bug. If a group of undergrads can do it why can't I? So the reason I got involved is because I wanted to know how to do that.”
Smitten, Grushkin took to the online biohacking forums and met others interested in the topic. Soon after, he met with a group from the DIYbio forums at his Park Slope home.
The group started with small experiments like extracting DNA from strawberries, and moved on to more advanced projects from there. Eventually, it graduated to creating its first genetic transformation by injecting a membrane with green fluorescent protein (GFP) into E. coli to make it glow in the dark.
“[It] was kind of cool and actually controversial because it was the first time someone had done genetic engineering outside of your standard lab,” said Grushkin. The group officially incorporated as Genspace in 2009, and held its initial meetings at NYC Resistor. Genspace officially opened its own space in December 2010.
2013年8月7日星期三
Google Chrome ‘hack’ is an open invitation
If you have three minutes alone with a Google Chrome user’s computer, you can access all their passwords—Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, whatever—then quickly cover your tracks.
It’s not a hack, per se. It’s a little-known feature designed to help users remember passwords and avoid the hassle of constantly hitting those “forgot your password?” buttons.In just four clicks, you can find yourself face-to-face with a list of each password they’ve let Chrome save. Jot them down and close a window, and you’ll be gone in 60 seconds with the user’s keys. I won’t provide explicit instructions, but if you’re curious, you won’t have any trouble finding them.
Any intruder can then spy on a target’s accounts in secret or hijack them from the comfort of their own rtls, changing the target’s passwords and doing damage of all sorts until the target contacts security departments, proves their identity and wrests back control.
You can’t disable the function, but you can delete all saved passwords and instruct Chrome not to save passwords in the future. This will mean entering your passwords every time you log into a site, so even users who know how to do this won’t likely bother. The whole thing is being described by security experts and by the tech press as a major security flaw, but the engineers at Google say they’re just keeping it real.
“We don’t want to provide users with a false sense of security,” wrote Chrome developer head Justin Schuh on Hacker News. His point is that if you allow someone access to your machine, they can get their hands on anything. Obscuring saved passwords behind some “master password” would do little to stop a malicious guest. If you have social media accounts open, they could mess directly with settings. They could install malware or spyware, recording your keystrokes. They could type “password” into your Spotlight search bar and see what comes up in old Word documents. Google doesn’t want to close your window with cardboard when your front door may be wide open. Google wants you to be vigilant!
It’s a strange ideological stand. The truth is, most of us don’t worry that malicious hackers with malware on USB keys will get hold of our computers. The hackers we really need to worry about are our parents, kids, spouses and friends. As with many crimes, the privacy invasions that happen most and hurt the most are perpetrated by people we know and trust.
I’m not saying Russian fraudsters and NSA spooks don’t matter. Outside threats to our privacy are destructive in minor and major ways, creating everything from pesky banking hassles to existential threats to free societies. But let’s pause to recognize the vast damage done, largely unreported, by our loved ones.
You might not call it “hacking,” but every time a suspicious dude glances at an incoming text on his GF’s phone, every time a mom can’t resist a peek at her daughter’s open Facebook page, every time surfing histories are checked for porn sites, or old emails are searched for an ex’s name, life-changing consequences are possible. Our GPS whereabouts or smartphone metadata might not mean much or matter much to the government bots that are probably tracking them. But those who know us best know what our data means. A stop at a certain street corner might mean a donut we weren’t supposed to eat or a rendezvous we weren’t supposed to have.
Google makes tools, and tools should serve the interest of their users. I lock my bike, not because I think bike locks are infallible, but because an unlocked bike is an invitation to steal. By placing our passwords four clicks away, Google is inviting us to hack each other.
Over the past decade, our ever-evolving Web site has allowed us to add more and unique content for our readers (and the ability to reach more of them), while becoming a daily source of information related to “what’s happening at the Jersey shore.” Today, there’s no “Whoot! Route” section, but there is “South Jersey Nightlife,” which lists all of the nightlife options in the Atlantic City area in print and indoor Tracking. Today, we have a blog (“Atlantic City Central”), timely videos, digital photo galleries and new sections in the paper to keep up with the chameleon-like ways the region has changed — while not forgetting that the simple things, such as the beach, Boardwalk and Atlantic Ocean, are still three of the biggest reasons visitors come to the resort.?
Forty years of producing a newspaper (and now a Web site) with comprehensive entertainment listings, celebrity interviews, compelling local history articles and an ever-changing dining guide — as well as photos, movie reviews, the latest concert updates, etc. — is something to be proud of, especially in this age of the disappearing print product. But ever since Philadelphia-based Review Publishing purchased the Whoot! and changed its name to Atlantic City Weekly back in 2000, there has been little to make an argument that the good old AC Weekly (which some still call the Whoot!) was outdated. Sure, our readers now include hundreds of thousands of visitors to our Web site, Facebook page and other social media and digital outlets, but the need for a go-to resource for entertainment in an entertainment town — which you can hold in your hands and flip through at your leisure — will always be needed in a tourism-driven destination like ours.?
In celebration of our 40th anniversary, over the next several months you will be reading about and hearing about special plans for the occasion. In this week’s cover story, we offer 40 things we love about the Atlantic City region. Some of them date back to the Whoot! days; some of them precede the first publication of the paper on June 19, 1974; and others are new and exciting changes in entertainment offerings over the past couple decades or so. ?
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
It’s not a hack, per se. It’s a little-known feature designed to help users remember passwords and avoid the hassle of constantly hitting those “forgot your password?” buttons.In just four clicks, you can find yourself face-to-face with a list of each password they’ve let Chrome save. Jot them down and close a window, and you’ll be gone in 60 seconds with the user’s keys. I won’t provide explicit instructions, but if you’re curious, you won’t have any trouble finding them.
Any intruder can then spy on a target’s accounts in secret or hijack them from the comfort of their own rtls, changing the target’s passwords and doing damage of all sorts until the target contacts security departments, proves their identity and wrests back control.
You can’t disable the function, but you can delete all saved passwords and instruct Chrome not to save passwords in the future. This will mean entering your passwords every time you log into a site, so even users who know how to do this won’t likely bother. The whole thing is being described by security experts and by the tech press as a major security flaw, but the engineers at Google say they’re just keeping it real.
“We don’t want to provide users with a false sense of security,” wrote Chrome developer head Justin Schuh on Hacker News. His point is that if you allow someone access to your machine, they can get their hands on anything. Obscuring saved passwords behind some “master password” would do little to stop a malicious guest. If you have social media accounts open, they could mess directly with settings. They could install malware or spyware, recording your keystrokes. They could type “password” into your Spotlight search bar and see what comes up in old Word documents. Google doesn’t want to close your window with cardboard when your front door may be wide open. Google wants you to be vigilant!
It’s a strange ideological stand. The truth is, most of us don’t worry that malicious hackers with malware on USB keys will get hold of our computers. The hackers we really need to worry about are our parents, kids, spouses and friends. As with many crimes, the privacy invasions that happen most and hurt the most are perpetrated by people we know and trust.
I’m not saying Russian fraudsters and NSA spooks don’t matter. Outside threats to our privacy are destructive in minor and major ways, creating everything from pesky banking hassles to existential threats to free societies. But let’s pause to recognize the vast damage done, largely unreported, by our loved ones.
You might not call it “hacking,” but every time a suspicious dude glances at an incoming text on his GF’s phone, every time a mom can’t resist a peek at her daughter’s open Facebook page, every time surfing histories are checked for porn sites, or old emails are searched for an ex’s name, life-changing consequences are possible. Our GPS whereabouts or smartphone metadata might not mean much or matter much to the government bots that are probably tracking them. But those who know us best know what our data means. A stop at a certain street corner might mean a donut we weren’t supposed to eat or a rendezvous we weren’t supposed to have.
Google makes tools, and tools should serve the interest of their users. I lock my bike, not because I think bike locks are infallible, but because an unlocked bike is an invitation to steal. By placing our passwords four clicks away, Google is inviting us to hack each other.
Over the past decade, our ever-evolving Web site has allowed us to add more and unique content for our readers (and the ability to reach more of them), while becoming a daily source of information related to “what’s happening at the Jersey shore.” Today, there’s no “Whoot! Route” section, but there is “South Jersey Nightlife,” which lists all of the nightlife options in the Atlantic City area in print and indoor Tracking. Today, we have a blog (“Atlantic City Central”), timely videos, digital photo galleries and new sections in the paper to keep up with the chameleon-like ways the region has changed — while not forgetting that the simple things, such as the beach, Boardwalk and Atlantic Ocean, are still three of the biggest reasons visitors come to the resort.?
Forty years of producing a newspaper (and now a Web site) with comprehensive entertainment listings, celebrity interviews, compelling local history articles and an ever-changing dining guide — as well as photos, movie reviews, the latest concert updates, etc. — is something to be proud of, especially in this age of the disappearing print product. But ever since Philadelphia-based Review Publishing purchased the Whoot! and changed its name to Atlantic City Weekly back in 2000, there has been little to make an argument that the good old AC Weekly (which some still call the Whoot!) was outdated. Sure, our readers now include hundreds of thousands of visitors to our Web site, Facebook page and other social media and digital outlets, but the need for a go-to resource for entertainment in an entertainment town — which you can hold in your hands and flip through at your leisure — will always be needed in a tourism-driven destination like ours.?
In celebration of our 40th anniversary, over the next several months you will be reading about and hearing about special plans for the occasion. In this week’s cover story, we offer 40 things we love about the Atlantic City region. Some of them date back to the Whoot! days; some of them precede the first publication of the paper on June 19, 1974; and others are new and exciting changes in entertainment offerings over the past couple decades or so. ?
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年8月5日星期一
As low-wage sector goes
You might have missed this, if you didn't happen to hit the right fast-food drive-through on the right day in July, but your neighborhood burger-flippers and assorted labor activists staged one-day strikes in cities across the country.
They called for the right to unionize and for a raise in the minimum wage — to $15 an hour.That's right: They want to double the federal minimum wage. Hey, why not swing for the fences?But before you sputter at the chutzpah of this demand, consider the point made by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a provocative op-ed for Bloomberg:
"If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour — three times what it is now."Hanauer, who also supports a $15 wage floor, is clearly mixed up. We in America are not supposed to look at this issue from the point of view of the rtls. We're consumers first and foremost, right?
What's supposed to matter is how much doubling the wage would add to the price of your Big Mac or Whopper.Yes, prices would rise, but by how much is currently something of an Internet parlor game.The Huffington Post touted and subsequently disowned an estimate that McDonald's would have to hike prices by 17 percent to maintain current levels of profitability.
An editor for the Columbia Journalism Review picked this apart and instead surmised the price hikes would have to be more in the range of 25 percent, while an industry think tank pegged them at up to 35 percent.So maybe you don't care if the Dollar Menu becomes the Dollar-Thirty-Five Menu. Have you paused to consider that by raising the wage, you would throw thousands of fry cooks out of work? That McDonald's and its franchisees would close stores or introduce more automation to bolster profits. This could raise the unemployment rate.
Could it?Because if you consult actual research, there's no clear consensus on what raising the minimum wage does to employment. Some economists argue that the effect is usually positive, while others say it has no effect or a slightly negative one.There is good reason to believe that raising the minimum wage during a period of Indoor Positioning System, like our own, would stimulate the economy. And that is exactly what we need now.
Moreover, raising the pay of low-wage earners will get them off of the public assistance rolls. Restaurant servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the general population and are at three times the poverty rate of the general population.America's real job creators are its consumers and their wealth was decimated when the real estate bubble collapsed.
Middle-class jobs are increasingly being replaced by low-wage ones.Putting more cash into average workers' hands allows them to spend more, which puts others back to work.As the low-wage sector goes, so goes the nation. That's the message every middle-class American should be getting.A major challenge for this country in the coming decades — perhaps the central challenge — will be ensuring that the vast majority of its residents have access to work that affords a decent standard of living.
Fifteen bucks an hour too pie-in-the-sky for you? OK, try $11.Economists consider that hourly wage the cutoff for poverty level for a family of four.So you get why people are protesting.And you get why the fast-food industry has an incredibly high turnover rate, 75 percent rate annually. The pay stinks. You can't live a decent life on it. The national median pay for cashiers, cooks and the crew in the industry is $8.94.
The people bagging the burritos and taking those frozen patties from the walk-in are not out of line to insist on higher pay. This is one of the fastest growing sectors of employment.And increasingly, its workers are adults, many with families.The Colonel and Ronald McDonald are not the only villains in this piece, not even the major ones.
For three decades, economic policy in this country has consistently undercut the interest of wage-earning Americans in favor of corporate managers and Wall Street. As this worthy class off-shored jobs, raided pension funds and reserved profits for themselves alone, the courts, Congress, state legislators and the mainstream press could be counted on to endorse their actions as the natural workings of the free market.
Labor unions, meanwhile, were variously dismissed as misguided or outmoded or downright pernicious enemies of the market.Well, now the middle class finds itself in the crosshairs, too. Many who once thought their college degrees and white-collar resumes were a meal ticket for life are discovering what life is like for the economically precarious.
Is $15 an hour absurd?Would raising the wage floor to that level do more good than harm to the low-wage half of our nation? I can't say with any certainty, and I don't know that anybody can.All I know for sure is that working people need a raise, and there's damn little chance they'll get it without a fight.
They called for the right to unionize and for a raise in the minimum wage — to $15 an hour.That's right: They want to double the federal minimum wage. Hey, why not swing for the fences?But before you sputter at the chutzpah of this demand, consider the point made by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a provocative op-ed for Bloomberg:
"If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour — three times what it is now."Hanauer, who also supports a $15 wage floor, is clearly mixed up. We in America are not supposed to look at this issue from the point of view of the rtls. We're consumers first and foremost, right?
What's supposed to matter is how much doubling the wage would add to the price of your Big Mac or Whopper.Yes, prices would rise, but by how much is currently something of an Internet parlor game.The Huffington Post touted and subsequently disowned an estimate that McDonald's would have to hike prices by 17 percent to maintain current levels of profitability.
An editor for the Columbia Journalism Review picked this apart and instead surmised the price hikes would have to be more in the range of 25 percent, while an industry think tank pegged them at up to 35 percent.So maybe you don't care if the Dollar Menu becomes the Dollar-Thirty-Five Menu. Have you paused to consider that by raising the wage, you would throw thousands of fry cooks out of work? That McDonald's and its franchisees would close stores or introduce more automation to bolster profits. This could raise the unemployment rate.
Could it?Because if you consult actual research, there's no clear consensus on what raising the minimum wage does to employment. Some economists argue that the effect is usually positive, while others say it has no effect or a slightly negative one.There is good reason to believe that raising the minimum wage during a period of Indoor Positioning System, like our own, would stimulate the economy. And that is exactly what we need now.
Moreover, raising the pay of low-wage earners will get them off of the public assistance rolls. Restaurant servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the general population and are at three times the poverty rate of the general population.America's real job creators are its consumers and their wealth was decimated when the real estate bubble collapsed.
Middle-class jobs are increasingly being replaced by low-wage ones.Putting more cash into average workers' hands allows them to spend more, which puts others back to work.As the low-wage sector goes, so goes the nation. That's the message every middle-class American should be getting.A major challenge for this country in the coming decades — perhaps the central challenge — will be ensuring that the vast majority of its residents have access to work that affords a decent standard of living.
Fifteen bucks an hour too pie-in-the-sky for you? OK, try $11.Economists consider that hourly wage the cutoff for poverty level for a family of four.So you get why people are protesting.And you get why the fast-food industry has an incredibly high turnover rate, 75 percent rate annually. The pay stinks. You can't live a decent life on it. The national median pay for cashiers, cooks and the crew in the industry is $8.94.
The people bagging the burritos and taking those frozen patties from the walk-in are not out of line to insist on higher pay. This is one of the fastest growing sectors of employment.And increasingly, its workers are adults, many with families.The Colonel and Ronald McDonald are not the only villains in this piece, not even the major ones.
For three decades, economic policy in this country has consistently undercut the interest of wage-earning Americans in favor of corporate managers and Wall Street. As this worthy class off-shored jobs, raided pension funds and reserved profits for themselves alone, the courts, Congress, state legislators and the mainstream press could be counted on to endorse their actions as the natural workings of the free market.
Labor unions, meanwhile, were variously dismissed as misguided or outmoded or downright pernicious enemies of the market.Well, now the middle class finds itself in the crosshairs, too. Many who once thought their college degrees and white-collar resumes were a meal ticket for life are discovering what life is like for the economically precarious.
Is $15 an hour absurd?Would raising the wage floor to that level do more good than harm to the low-wage half of our nation? I can't say with any certainty, and I don't know that anybody can.All I know for sure is that working people need a raise, and there's damn little chance they'll get it without a fight.
New Pandora Ads Brain-Wash Listeners
A long-time user of Pandora’s personalized music service, I entered some sort of Pandora Twilight Zone this weekend when my music stream was twice interrupted by disingenuous – and disturbing – corporate-sponsored ads.
Just like the tobacco industry execs testified to Congress in 1994 that they didn’t believe nicotine was addictive, today the natural gas industry and health insurance companies are the wolves in sheep’s clothing. One Pandora-aired ad praised the safety of fracking, suggesting that its opponents were ill-educated, while another ad pretended that children will suffer as a result of Obamacare.
The first ad snuck up on me while I was relaxing in the bath on Saturday afternoon. A woman and mother living in Colorado shares how her education at the hands of natural gas drillers led her to know for certain that fracking chemicals are safe – “safe for the land, the water, and the indoor Tracking.” So she had no hesitation about ceding her land to drilling. How convenient for Shell Oil, which is featured in the ad that was paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.
Among its many fallacies and unanswered questions, the ad’s most obvious oversight is that the wildfire-prone American West is not a good area to be depleting of the millions of gallons of water needed for one frack job.
Thus, Western communities, firefighters, and farmers that already face water restrictions and shortages due to drought are now expected to compete against fracking companies for the world’s most precious resource. Hey, did anyone pay attention to the raging Arizona wildfire that took down 19 firefighters? The West will literally go up in smoke if it is depleted of its water, while continually baking under rising So after spending Saturday thinking this “smart people love fracking” ad was a Pandora anomaly, last night I heard from someone posing as a doctor who told an almost storybook fantasy about Obamacare.
She said Obamacare means the government will knock down her exam room door and insert itself in the medical decisions regarding the young child on her table. She imagines that she’ll have to close her office doors under the threat of Obamacare, which will leave sad little “Bobby,” or whatever his name was, with no one to cure his illness.
Back up. Interfering with private medical decisions…and causing practices to close? While that doesn’t sound like Obamacare, it does sound a lot like what’s happening on the anti-abortion front, with its mandatory vaginal probes and closing of clinics in places like North Carolina.
The commercial is a laughably thin veil for the motives of insurance companies, which aren’t happy with health care regulations that require them to offer “Bobby” and his family free preventative health services, and his mom free birth control – or a free breastpump if she chooses to have another child. If someone in his family has diabetes, they’ll get free blood sugar testing equipment as well.
Not to mention Bobby and his family can’t be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition – or because a catastrophic illness or injury causes them to reach an annual or real time Location system. (It wasn’t too long ago that an insurance company could say: “Sorry, that’s too expensive, while there might be something to save you, we have decided it’s time for you to die.”temperatures.
Fracking also releases gases that contribute to climate change. Not to mention the more than 2,000 leaks and spills that happened at fracking operations in just Colorado in only five years. Perhaps none of this speaks to the dangers of drilling rock for gas more than knowing that doctors are required to sign a “confidentiality pledge” called “Form 35” in Colorado before they can access information about fracking chemicals that could be responsible for their patients’ health conditions.
In the vein of hidden dangers, drilling companies have had court records sealed in cases where they settled with people who fell ill as a result of fracking chemical exposure.Not that the tech industry hasn’t tried. Indeed, since at least the release of WebTV some 17 years ago, the tech industry has attempted to revolutionize television.
Yet, despite the efforts of heavyweights like Microsoft, Google, Apple and Netflix — as well as numerous startups and smaller companies such as TiVo and Sling — the vast majority of TV viewing is still done the same way it was 15 or 20 years ago — by tuning in to a traditional channel on a pay-television service and watching a broadcast in real time.“It’s not obvious that most consumers want the main job of the TV set to be changed,” said Dan Cryan, research director for digital media at the research firm IHS. “The TV experience isn’t really that broken.”
Silicon Valley isn’t giving up. Google’s new $35 device, the Chromecast, promises to allow consumers to easily and cheaply view on their big-screen TVs some of the videos they watch on their smartphones and tablets.
Meanwhile, Intel is developing a box that could replace consumers’ pay-TV services and Internet-connected living-room devices by offering access to both live broadcasts and Internet content. And Apple reportedly has been working for years on a device that the late Steve Jobs himself promised would radically change the way we watch television.
For its part, Google may have a hit on its hands. On Thursday, just one day after announcing the Chromecast, the company canceled a promotional offer that included three months of free access to Netflix’s streaming service, citing “overwhelming demand.”
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Just like the tobacco industry execs testified to Congress in 1994 that they didn’t believe nicotine was addictive, today the natural gas industry and health insurance companies are the wolves in sheep’s clothing. One Pandora-aired ad praised the safety of fracking, suggesting that its opponents were ill-educated, while another ad pretended that children will suffer as a result of Obamacare.
The first ad snuck up on me while I was relaxing in the bath on Saturday afternoon. A woman and mother living in Colorado shares how her education at the hands of natural gas drillers led her to know for certain that fracking chemicals are safe – “safe for the land, the water, and the indoor Tracking.” So she had no hesitation about ceding her land to drilling. How convenient for Shell Oil, which is featured in the ad that was paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.
Among its many fallacies and unanswered questions, the ad’s most obvious oversight is that the wildfire-prone American West is not a good area to be depleting of the millions of gallons of water needed for one frack job.
Thus, Western communities, firefighters, and farmers that already face water restrictions and shortages due to drought are now expected to compete against fracking companies for the world’s most precious resource. Hey, did anyone pay attention to the raging Arizona wildfire that took down 19 firefighters? The West will literally go up in smoke if it is depleted of its water, while continually baking under rising So after spending Saturday thinking this “smart people love fracking” ad was a Pandora anomaly, last night I heard from someone posing as a doctor who told an almost storybook fantasy about Obamacare.
She said Obamacare means the government will knock down her exam room door and insert itself in the medical decisions regarding the young child on her table. She imagines that she’ll have to close her office doors under the threat of Obamacare, which will leave sad little “Bobby,” or whatever his name was, with no one to cure his illness.
Back up. Interfering with private medical decisions…and causing practices to close? While that doesn’t sound like Obamacare, it does sound a lot like what’s happening on the anti-abortion front, with its mandatory vaginal probes and closing of clinics in places like North Carolina.
The commercial is a laughably thin veil for the motives of insurance companies, which aren’t happy with health care regulations that require them to offer “Bobby” and his family free preventative health services, and his mom free birth control – or a free breastpump if she chooses to have another child. If someone in his family has diabetes, they’ll get free blood sugar testing equipment as well.
Not to mention Bobby and his family can’t be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition – or because a catastrophic illness or injury causes them to reach an annual or real time Location system. (It wasn’t too long ago that an insurance company could say: “Sorry, that’s too expensive, while there might be something to save you, we have decided it’s time for you to die.”temperatures.
Fracking also releases gases that contribute to climate change. Not to mention the more than 2,000 leaks and spills that happened at fracking operations in just Colorado in only five years. Perhaps none of this speaks to the dangers of drilling rock for gas more than knowing that doctors are required to sign a “confidentiality pledge” called “Form 35” in Colorado before they can access information about fracking chemicals that could be responsible for their patients’ health conditions.
In the vein of hidden dangers, drilling companies have had court records sealed in cases where they settled with people who fell ill as a result of fracking chemical exposure.Not that the tech industry hasn’t tried. Indeed, since at least the release of WebTV some 17 years ago, the tech industry has attempted to revolutionize television.
Yet, despite the efforts of heavyweights like Microsoft, Google, Apple and Netflix — as well as numerous startups and smaller companies such as TiVo and Sling — the vast majority of TV viewing is still done the same way it was 15 or 20 years ago — by tuning in to a traditional channel on a pay-television service and watching a broadcast in real time.“It’s not obvious that most consumers want the main job of the TV set to be changed,” said Dan Cryan, research director for digital media at the research firm IHS. “The TV experience isn’t really that broken.”
Silicon Valley isn’t giving up. Google’s new $35 device, the Chromecast, promises to allow consumers to easily and cheaply view on their big-screen TVs some of the videos they watch on their smartphones and tablets.
Meanwhile, Intel is developing a box that could replace consumers’ pay-TV services and Internet-connected living-room devices by offering access to both live broadcasts and Internet content. And Apple reportedly has been working for years on a device that the late Steve Jobs himself promised would radically change the way we watch television.
For its part, Google may have a hit on its hands. On Thursday, just one day after announcing the Chromecast, the company canceled a promotional offer that included three months of free access to Netflix’s streaming service, citing “overwhelming demand.”
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月31日星期三
Mood diary app personalises
The Phobic Trust mood diary mobile app, just launched into the Apple App Store, enables users to record anxiety and stress levels, mood triggers, sleep and exercise patterns, as well as set clinical appointment and medication alerts.
The app is free to download and was developed by the Phobic Trust in partnership with mobile health experts VADR, facilitated in part by a grant from the government’s Social Media Innovations Fund, which is part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project, and funding from First Sovereign Trust Limited.One in five New Zealanders will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime and will therefore need support to manage it, says The Phobic Trust of New Zealand Deputy CEO Vivienne Euini.
“The mood diary empowers users in a discreet way to easily record triggers, mood peaks and troughs, and gives them quick access to key phone numbers in an emergency, clinical appointments and the ability to set reminders for scheduled medication, cognitive behavioral exercises or physical exercise,” she says.“Exercise reminders are a key component of the Indoor Positioning System, as evidence suggests a strong link between increased mental wellbeing for people who exercise.”
Vivienne says that by recording valuable information daily, people give the health professionals involved in their care access to the most accurate, collated statistics about their mental state. “Professionals get the best possible overview of a client’s wellbeing and can use it to tailor specific treatment to meet the changing phases of their mental health recovery.”
She adds that quick access by phone within the app to a 24-hour support line relieves the burden of stress for people already experiencing extreme levels of anxiety.The Social Media Innovations Fund supports the development of projects that use social media technology to improve youth mental health. VADR and The Phobic Trust were grateful recipients of the fund in February this year as part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project.
The app offers an innovative Kiwi approach because it stimulates self-discovery and intimately engages users with their own treatment process and recovery, says Vivienne.“The mood diary app provides a quick, easy way for Kiwis to monitor and manage their mental health on a daily basis. Users gain an intimate knowledge of their own mood patterns over time and can record levels of exercise and sleep, all of which paints a clear picture for them and the people in their treatment team,” she says.
“The easy sign-in through Facebook makes the app extremely relevant and familiar to youth, who are the focus of the Social Media Innovations Fund”. The app is built upon VADR’s mHealth 360 platform which also powers the hugely popular Asthma NZ iPhone app.Vivienne says the mood diary app is a fresh and cost effective approach to tackling the daily issues of anxiety, depression and stress. She adds that in an increasingly paperless world, paper mood charts that don’t have the added value needed today, such as collating data, will slowly become a thing of the past.
Edward Snowden may be amoldering in the transit lounge of a Moscow airport, but the spy scandal he unleashed goes marching on across Europe's political and diplomatic landscape.
As a US military court on Tuesday convicted that other American security leaker — the WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning — on espionage, computer fraud and multiple other charges, it's unclear when the fallout from Snowden's revelations about America's electronic eavesdropping will end.
It's already casting a shadow over Europe's most powerful leader — German Chancellor Angela Merkel — as well as jeopardizing trans-Atlantic agreements that Washington views as vital to the fight against terrorism, and threatening the future of the world's biggest internet companies.
Anger over the PRISM system — under which the US National Security Agency claimed "direct access" to data stored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other tech giants — has boosted the positions of those seeking tough new data-protection rules that would make it harder for the US authorities to get their hands on the private details of European citizens.
"I hope that PRISM has been a wake-up call," Viviane Reding, the European Union's justice commissioner, said recently. "There is no area which lies outside the law in Europe, even when issues of security are involved."
Draft EU data privacy rules drawn up by Reding's office in 2011 were watered down by politicians who argued they would harm security and indoor Tracking. But the brouhaha over Snowden has prompted a turnaround, with powerful voices now demanding more protection.
Merkel has lent her highly influential voice to the demands for tougher rules. She's publicly called for "very strict" European privacy laws that would force companies such as Google and Facebook to keep European authorities informed of whom they share data with.
A change of heart in the European Parliament now seems certain to ensure that strict limits on how internet companies share European citizens' data with foreign governments will be re-inserted into the proposed EU data-privacy legislation.
Lawmakers fearful of upsetting EU-US relations had opposed the so-called anti-FISA clause — named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the US government to monitor international phone and email conversations. Snowden has changed their minds.
The inclusion of the clause in the final EU law could have profound implications for American tech firms. They could find themselves obliged by American legislation to share information about foreigners with government agencies at home, but facing massive EU fines for passing on such data.
The clause was removed from the bill originally drafted by Reding's office in 2011 after a bout of intense lobbying by the Obama administration. The US authorities and American internet giants are continuing to mount a major lobbying campaign to dilute the legislation.
"I've never seen anything like it, such a powerful lobbying operation," Reding told Spain's El Pais newspaper last week. "The lobbies have 10 times more people than my team, there are hundreds of lawyers' offices active on this and representatives paid by the big companies."
The Snowden scandal has pushed American lobbyists onto the back foot as European politicians call not just for tough new legislation, but also a rollback of existing rules that allow the sharing of information such as airline passenger data or bank account details.
The app is free to download and was developed by the Phobic Trust in partnership with mobile health experts VADR, facilitated in part by a grant from the government’s Social Media Innovations Fund, which is part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project, and funding from First Sovereign Trust Limited.One in five New Zealanders will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime and will therefore need support to manage it, says The Phobic Trust of New Zealand Deputy CEO Vivienne Euini.
“The mood diary empowers users in a discreet way to easily record triggers, mood peaks and troughs, and gives them quick access to key phone numbers in an emergency, clinical appointments and the ability to set reminders for scheduled medication, cognitive behavioral exercises or physical exercise,” she says.“Exercise reminders are a key component of the Indoor Positioning System, as evidence suggests a strong link between increased mental wellbeing for people who exercise.”
Vivienne says that by recording valuable information daily, people give the health professionals involved in their care access to the most accurate, collated statistics about their mental state. “Professionals get the best possible overview of a client’s wellbeing and can use it to tailor specific treatment to meet the changing phases of their mental health recovery.”
She adds that quick access by phone within the app to a 24-hour support line relieves the burden of stress for people already experiencing extreme levels of anxiety.The Social Media Innovations Fund supports the development of projects that use social media technology to improve youth mental health. VADR and The Phobic Trust were grateful recipients of the fund in February this year as part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project.
The app offers an innovative Kiwi approach because it stimulates self-discovery and intimately engages users with their own treatment process and recovery, says Vivienne.“The mood diary app provides a quick, easy way for Kiwis to monitor and manage their mental health on a daily basis. Users gain an intimate knowledge of their own mood patterns over time and can record levels of exercise and sleep, all of which paints a clear picture for them and the people in their treatment team,” she says.
“The easy sign-in through Facebook makes the app extremely relevant and familiar to youth, who are the focus of the Social Media Innovations Fund”. The app is built upon VADR’s mHealth 360 platform which also powers the hugely popular Asthma NZ iPhone app.Vivienne says the mood diary app is a fresh and cost effective approach to tackling the daily issues of anxiety, depression and stress. She adds that in an increasingly paperless world, paper mood charts that don’t have the added value needed today, such as collating data, will slowly become a thing of the past.
Edward Snowden may be amoldering in the transit lounge of a Moscow airport, but the spy scandal he unleashed goes marching on across Europe's political and diplomatic landscape.
As a US military court on Tuesday convicted that other American security leaker — the WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning — on espionage, computer fraud and multiple other charges, it's unclear when the fallout from Snowden's revelations about America's electronic eavesdropping will end.
It's already casting a shadow over Europe's most powerful leader — German Chancellor Angela Merkel — as well as jeopardizing trans-Atlantic agreements that Washington views as vital to the fight against terrorism, and threatening the future of the world's biggest internet companies.
Anger over the PRISM system — under which the US National Security Agency claimed "direct access" to data stored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other tech giants — has boosted the positions of those seeking tough new data-protection rules that would make it harder for the US authorities to get their hands on the private details of European citizens.
"I hope that PRISM has been a wake-up call," Viviane Reding, the European Union's justice commissioner, said recently. "There is no area which lies outside the law in Europe, even when issues of security are involved."
Draft EU data privacy rules drawn up by Reding's office in 2011 were watered down by politicians who argued they would harm security and indoor Tracking. But the brouhaha over Snowden has prompted a turnaround, with powerful voices now demanding more protection.
Merkel has lent her highly influential voice to the demands for tougher rules. She's publicly called for "very strict" European privacy laws that would force companies such as Google and Facebook to keep European authorities informed of whom they share data with.
A change of heart in the European Parliament now seems certain to ensure that strict limits on how internet companies share European citizens' data with foreign governments will be re-inserted into the proposed EU data-privacy legislation.
Lawmakers fearful of upsetting EU-US relations had opposed the so-called anti-FISA clause — named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the US government to monitor international phone and email conversations. Snowden has changed their minds.
The inclusion of the clause in the final EU law could have profound implications for American tech firms. They could find themselves obliged by American legislation to share information about foreigners with government agencies at home, but facing massive EU fines for passing on such data.
The clause was removed from the bill originally drafted by Reding's office in 2011 after a bout of intense lobbying by the Obama administration. The US authorities and American internet giants are continuing to mount a major lobbying campaign to dilute the legislation.
"I've never seen anything like it, such a powerful lobbying operation," Reding told Spain's El Pais newspaper last week. "The lobbies have 10 times more people than my team, there are hundreds of lawyers' offices active on this and representatives paid by the big companies."
The Snowden scandal has pushed American lobbyists onto the back foot as European politicians call not just for tough new legislation, but also a rollback of existing rules that allow the sharing of information such as airline passenger data or bank account details.
2013年7月22日星期一
Democrats say Cuccinelli questions
Democrats have been flipping through Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli’s book "The Last Line of Defense" in a bid to paint him as conservative extremist.The latest citation from the 2013 book comes from the Democratic Party of Virginia, which is airing a TV ad with Peggy Borgard, a Henrico County senior citizen, criticizing Cuccinelli’s views on entitlement programs.
"In his book, Cuccinelli questions whether Medicare and Social Security should exist and said people are dependent on government," Borgard says.It seemed remarkable that any candidate would start an election year by writing a book questioning propriety of popular entitlement programs for senior citizens. That goes double for a gubernatorial candidate who, if elected, would have no influence over how the federal government runs Medicare and Social Security. So we looked into the Democrat’s claim.
On screen, the ad cites as its source page 62 of the book. At the bottom of that page is a passage that has been a lightning rod for Democrats."Sometimes bad politicians set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence," Cuccinelli wrote. This phenomenon doesn’t just happen in Washington; it happens at all levels of government. The amazing thing is that they often grow government without protest from citizens, and sometimes they even get buy-in from citizens -- at least from the ones getting the Hands free access."
"One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run or costly to the rest of society."That’s certainly not a ringing endorsement of the entitlement programs, which the Republican said are a tool leveraged by politicians to hold on to power.
But does that mean Cuccinelli questions whether those entitlements should exist at all?Cuccinelli answered that question on pages 237 and 238, as first noted by our colleagues at FactCheck.org. Cuccinelli wrote that government spends little on investments that result in economic growth, noting that Social Security, Medicare and defense spending amounted to more than half of the federal budget in 2011.
"There is no monetary return on these investments in any traditional business sense (that is, one invests money with a goal of getting a return in the form of interest, income or appreciation in value), although there are obviously other reasons America spends money on these programs," Cuccinelli wrote. "I’m not questioning here the existence of these programs nor the wisdom of how much money is spent on them. What I’m trying to illustrate is that most dollars that government spends do not create economic growth, but instead take money out of the hands of the people who do create economic growth." "On page 62 in the book he describes Social Security and Medicare as created by ‘bad politicians’ who ‘set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence,’" Coy wrote in an e-mail. "That statement clearly questions the foundations of those programs - why would he say they’re a big government ploy by bad politicians without questioning their existence?"
Coy also defended the statement by pointing to a Cuccinelli interview with Politichicks.tv at a 2012 Tea Party rally. Cuccinelli said, "We have had one answer in federal government to every challenge in health care for 47 years, and that’s more government. It goes back to the beginning of Medicaid, Medicare and as Dr. Phil would say ‘How’s that working out for ya?’ We need to go the other way. We need to move back toward the free market."The Fact Checker at The Washington Post recently gave the ad three out of four possible Pinocchios, saying "while it is fair to say that Cuccinelli is skeptical of government-run social programs" and that he prefers free market solutions as part of any overhaul of those entitlements, that doesn’t mean he thinks that the programs should not exist.
Cuccinelli gave the Democrats a tiny opening in writing that "bad politicians" have "tried to increase their power by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security" that make people "dependent on government."But ad goes overboard because it suggests Cuccinelli is questioning whether the entitlements should exist today and in the future. Cuccinelli specifically wrote in his book, "I am not questioning the existence of these programs, nor how much is spent on them."
Leap Motion launched its groundbreaking motion detection module on Monday, allowing anyone to connect a little box to their Mac or Windows computer that can detect gestures more precisely than Microsoft Kinect can, for a mere $80. Eventually, Leap Motion technology will be integrated into computers, so you won’t even need to buy a separate box in order to wave your hands in the air to select, control, create, and interact with music.
Minutes ago, the Leap Motion AirSpace Store appeared on the web; those with a Leap Motion Controller can access it from their computers, too. Developers are encouraged to submit their apps and ideas, and they appear to be excited about the possibilities of this promising new app platform, which threatens to free music apps from smartphones and computers, at least partially.
“We are thrilled to be among the first developers releasing apps for Leap Motion, and I believe strongly that, in the future, gesture may dominate human-computer interaction,” emailed Snibbe Studios founder and CEO Scott Snibbe. “It’’s what people are calling ‘‘Natural User Interface,’’ because we’’re now communicating with the computer the same way that we communicate with other human beings.”
Because of the special needs of photos, the placeholder for this type of file is a bit different. “When you flip through photos, [Windows] downloads large thumbnail images instead of the actual files. And [Windows] pre-fetches thumbnails to enable fast scrolling. It’s only when you want to edit a photo that [Windows] downloads the full file to the local disk.”
I noted previously that you could right-click on SkyDrive-based files and folders from File Explorer and choose “Make available offline” from the pop-up menu that appears. But this works from the SkyDrive app too, so tablet users and others that wish to avoid the desktop never need to leave Metro to access this functionality.
Also, Windows “always marks files for offline access if you’ve opened or edited them on this device before. [Windows does] that because most people tend to open the same files they recently opened, but the files they open often vary across different devices – so [it] remembers those files and makes this unique to the device you’re using.” You can also choose to have your entire SkyDrive available for offline access, of course.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
"In his book, Cuccinelli questions whether Medicare and Social Security should exist and said people are dependent on government," Borgard says.It seemed remarkable that any candidate would start an election year by writing a book questioning propriety of popular entitlement programs for senior citizens. That goes double for a gubernatorial candidate who, if elected, would have no influence over how the federal government runs Medicare and Social Security. So we looked into the Democrat’s claim.
On screen, the ad cites as its source page 62 of the book. At the bottom of that page is a passage that has been a lightning rod for Democrats."Sometimes bad politicians set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence," Cuccinelli wrote. This phenomenon doesn’t just happen in Washington; it happens at all levels of government. The amazing thing is that they often grow government without protest from citizens, and sometimes they even get buy-in from citizens -- at least from the ones getting the Hands free access."
"One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run or costly to the rest of society."That’s certainly not a ringing endorsement of the entitlement programs, which the Republican said are a tool leveraged by politicians to hold on to power.
But does that mean Cuccinelli questions whether those entitlements should exist at all?Cuccinelli answered that question on pages 237 and 238, as first noted by our colleagues at FactCheck.org. Cuccinelli wrote that government spends little on investments that result in economic growth, noting that Social Security, Medicare and defense spending amounted to more than half of the federal budget in 2011.
"There is no monetary return on these investments in any traditional business sense (that is, one invests money with a goal of getting a return in the form of interest, income or appreciation in value), although there are obviously other reasons America spends money on these programs," Cuccinelli wrote. "I’m not questioning here the existence of these programs nor the wisdom of how much money is spent on them. What I’m trying to illustrate is that most dollars that government spends do not create economic growth, but instead take money out of the hands of the people who do create economic growth." "On page 62 in the book he describes Social Security and Medicare as created by ‘bad politicians’ who ‘set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence,’" Coy wrote in an e-mail. "That statement clearly questions the foundations of those programs - why would he say they’re a big government ploy by bad politicians without questioning their existence?"
Coy also defended the statement by pointing to a Cuccinelli interview with Politichicks.tv at a 2012 Tea Party rally. Cuccinelli said, "We have had one answer in federal government to every challenge in health care for 47 years, and that’s more government. It goes back to the beginning of Medicaid, Medicare and as Dr. Phil would say ‘How’s that working out for ya?’ We need to go the other way. We need to move back toward the free market."The Fact Checker at The Washington Post recently gave the ad three out of four possible Pinocchios, saying "while it is fair to say that Cuccinelli is skeptical of government-run social programs" and that he prefers free market solutions as part of any overhaul of those entitlements, that doesn’t mean he thinks that the programs should not exist.
Cuccinelli gave the Democrats a tiny opening in writing that "bad politicians" have "tried to increase their power by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security" that make people "dependent on government."But ad goes overboard because it suggests Cuccinelli is questioning whether the entitlements should exist today and in the future. Cuccinelli specifically wrote in his book, "I am not questioning the existence of these programs, nor how much is spent on them."
Leap Motion launched its groundbreaking motion detection module on Monday, allowing anyone to connect a little box to their Mac or Windows computer that can detect gestures more precisely than Microsoft Kinect can, for a mere $80. Eventually, Leap Motion technology will be integrated into computers, so you won’t even need to buy a separate box in order to wave your hands in the air to select, control, create, and interact with music.
Minutes ago, the Leap Motion AirSpace Store appeared on the web; those with a Leap Motion Controller can access it from their computers, too. Developers are encouraged to submit their apps and ideas, and they appear to be excited about the possibilities of this promising new app platform, which threatens to free music apps from smartphones and computers, at least partially.
“We are thrilled to be among the first developers releasing apps for Leap Motion, and I believe strongly that, in the future, gesture may dominate human-computer interaction,” emailed Snibbe Studios founder and CEO Scott Snibbe. “It’’s what people are calling ‘‘Natural User Interface,’’ because we’’re now communicating with the computer the same way that we communicate with other human beings.”
Because of the special needs of photos, the placeholder for this type of file is a bit different. “When you flip through photos, [Windows] downloads large thumbnail images instead of the actual files. And [Windows] pre-fetches thumbnails to enable fast scrolling. It’s only when you want to edit a photo that [Windows] downloads the full file to the local disk.”
I noted previously that you could right-click on SkyDrive-based files and folders from File Explorer and choose “Make available offline” from the pop-up menu that appears. But this works from the SkyDrive app too, so tablet users and others that wish to avoid the desktop never need to leave Metro to access this functionality.
Also, Windows “always marks files for offline access if you’ve opened or edited them on this device before. [Windows does] that because most people tend to open the same files they recently opened, but the files they open often vary across different devices – so [it] remembers those files and makes this unique to the device you’re using.” You can also choose to have your entire SkyDrive available for offline access, of course.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月18日星期四
Pushing the Right Buttons
Now, as Apple tries to reimagine television, it is taking the partnership route again, collaborating with distributors like Time Warner Cable and programmers like the Walt Disney Company on apps that might eliminate the unpleasant parts of TV watching, like bothersome set-top boxes or clunky remote controls.
Apple’s broader strategy — what its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, recently called its “grand vision” for television — remains shrouded in secrecy, as everything Apple-related tends to be. Some analysts continue to predict, as they have for years, that the company will someday come out with a full-blown television set.
Whether or not an iTV ever materializes, the company’s more modest steps, like improving the $100 Apple TV box that 13 million households now have and adding access to cable channels through the box, suggest that its strategy stands in stark contrast to Google’s, which is contemplating an Internet cable service that would compete directly with distributors like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
Reports emerged earlier this week that Google has held talks with several channel owners about licensing channels for such a service, but no content deals are within reach.Apple weighed something similar years ago, but its executives concluded that it should work with the industry’s powerful incumbents, rather than against them.
“Apple’s probably going to have greater access to content by deciding to cooperate,” said Natalie Clayton, who oversees digital video research for Frank N. Magid Associates.Case in point, Apple last month turned on HBO and ESPN apps for Apple TV owners, much to the delight of all involved. But those work only for people who have an existing cable or indoor positioning system.
Coming next is an app from Time Warner Cable, allowing some of the company’s 12 million subscribers to watch live and on-demand shows without a separate set-top box. The app will effectively add an Apple layer on top of the TV screen, providing what its proponents say is a programming guide that is far superior to anything offered by Time Warner.
Apple has talked in-depth with other big distributors about similar apps, according to people involved in the talks. Its intent is to collect a fee from distributors in exchange for enhancing their television service and in that way, theoretically, make subscribers more likely to keep paying for cable.“They’re trying to apply their software expertise, their user interface expertise,” one of the people said. (The people, both at distributors and programmers, insisted on anonymity because they said public comments would interfere with the private talks with Apple.)
Apple has sought support from programmers as well. It has proposed, for instance, an ad-skipping technology that would compensate networks for the skipped ads by charging users. While the idea is far-fetched, it intrigued some of the channel owners who were briefed about it and excited Apple followers when it was first reported by the technology writer Jessica Lessin earlier this week.
For Apple, further moves into television could neutralize some of the skepticism about the company’s future since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011. Investor concerns that the company might not have another iPhone- or iPad-level innovation on the way have dragged down its stock price, which topped $700 for the first time last September, but has recently hovered closer to $400.
For the time being, Apple TV is a small part of its business — something best suited to “hobbyists,” as Mr. Cook put it at the D: All Things Digital conference in May. At that time, he hinted at the opportunity Apple saw in the living room, calling traditional TV watching “not an experience that I think many people love” and “too much like 10 or 20 years ago.”
It is easy to see how Apple could help. Products like Apple TV and Roku, which connect TVs to the Internet’s wealth of streaming content, have proliferated because the set-top boxes that cable companies supply have not kept up with shifts in consumer behavior. But the streaming boxes remain a somewhat niche technology.Apple could choose to market its box more heavily, especially as competition heats up from Amazon and other companies. Or it could eliminate the need for any box at all by building its own TV set. Reports this week that Apple may acquire PrimeSense, a maker of motion-sensing technology that could be used to control a TV without a physical remote, prompted a new round of guessing about that.
In Apple’s partnership approach, some see the company placing a multitude of bets, recognizing that television could evolve in any number of ways.Through Apple TV, it is simultaneously supporting established distributors and programmers as well as a parallel universe of streaming TV, as represented by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.
Last month, in a little-noticed move, the company approved an app for Sky News, the British-based cable news channel. Sky could already be streamed live free on the Web, but by creating an app for Apple TV, the channel gained access to the television sets in 13 million homes without the need for complex negotiations with cable companies.
The Sky News app is free, but the software that powers it, from a company called 1 Mainstream, also allows for à la carte subscriptions.Asked about the implications of the app, Rajeev Raman, the chief executive of 1 Mainstream, said: “It’s a learning year for Apple. And it’s a learning year for all of us, to say, O.K., what really does work?”
In effect the app is a more direct route to consumers for Sky News. Bloomberg TV, already available on cable, tried something similar earlier this year by cutting a carriage deal with Aereo, the streaming service backed by Barry Diller. But Aereo is antagonistic toward networks and existing distributors; Apple, at least for now, is positioning itself as a friend.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Apple’s broader strategy — what its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, recently called its “grand vision” for television — remains shrouded in secrecy, as everything Apple-related tends to be. Some analysts continue to predict, as they have for years, that the company will someday come out with a full-blown television set.
Whether or not an iTV ever materializes, the company’s more modest steps, like improving the $100 Apple TV box that 13 million households now have and adding access to cable channels through the box, suggest that its strategy stands in stark contrast to Google’s, which is contemplating an Internet cable service that would compete directly with distributors like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
Reports emerged earlier this week that Google has held talks with several channel owners about licensing channels for such a service, but no content deals are within reach.Apple weighed something similar years ago, but its executives concluded that it should work with the industry’s powerful incumbents, rather than against them.
“Apple’s probably going to have greater access to content by deciding to cooperate,” said Natalie Clayton, who oversees digital video research for Frank N. Magid Associates.Case in point, Apple last month turned on HBO and ESPN apps for Apple TV owners, much to the delight of all involved. But those work only for people who have an existing cable or indoor positioning system.
Coming next is an app from Time Warner Cable, allowing some of the company’s 12 million subscribers to watch live and on-demand shows without a separate set-top box. The app will effectively add an Apple layer on top of the TV screen, providing what its proponents say is a programming guide that is far superior to anything offered by Time Warner.
Apple has talked in-depth with other big distributors about similar apps, according to people involved in the talks. Its intent is to collect a fee from distributors in exchange for enhancing their television service and in that way, theoretically, make subscribers more likely to keep paying for cable.“They’re trying to apply their software expertise, their user interface expertise,” one of the people said. (The people, both at distributors and programmers, insisted on anonymity because they said public comments would interfere with the private talks with Apple.)
Apple has sought support from programmers as well. It has proposed, for instance, an ad-skipping technology that would compensate networks for the skipped ads by charging users. While the idea is far-fetched, it intrigued some of the channel owners who were briefed about it and excited Apple followers when it was first reported by the technology writer Jessica Lessin earlier this week.
For Apple, further moves into television could neutralize some of the skepticism about the company’s future since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011. Investor concerns that the company might not have another iPhone- or iPad-level innovation on the way have dragged down its stock price, which topped $700 for the first time last September, but has recently hovered closer to $400.
For the time being, Apple TV is a small part of its business — something best suited to “hobbyists,” as Mr. Cook put it at the D: All Things Digital conference in May. At that time, he hinted at the opportunity Apple saw in the living room, calling traditional TV watching “not an experience that I think many people love” and “too much like 10 or 20 years ago.”
It is easy to see how Apple could help. Products like Apple TV and Roku, which connect TVs to the Internet’s wealth of streaming content, have proliferated because the set-top boxes that cable companies supply have not kept up with shifts in consumer behavior. But the streaming boxes remain a somewhat niche technology.Apple could choose to market its box more heavily, especially as competition heats up from Amazon and other companies. Or it could eliminate the need for any box at all by building its own TV set. Reports this week that Apple may acquire PrimeSense, a maker of motion-sensing technology that could be used to control a TV without a physical remote, prompted a new round of guessing about that.
In Apple’s partnership approach, some see the company placing a multitude of bets, recognizing that television could evolve in any number of ways.Through Apple TV, it is simultaneously supporting established distributors and programmers as well as a parallel universe of streaming TV, as represented by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.
Last month, in a little-noticed move, the company approved an app for Sky News, the British-based cable news channel. Sky could already be streamed live free on the Web, but by creating an app for Apple TV, the channel gained access to the television sets in 13 million homes without the need for complex negotiations with cable companies.
The Sky News app is free, but the software that powers it, from a company called 1 Mainstream, also allows for à la carte subscriptions.Asked about the implications of the app, Rajeev Raman, the chief executive of 1 Mainstream, said: “It’s a learning year for Apple. And it’s a learning year for all of us, to say, O.K., what really does work?”
In effect the app is a more direct route to consumers for Sky News. Bloomberg TV, already available on cable, tried something similar earlier this year by cutting a carriage deal with Aereo, the streaming service backed by Barry Diller. But Aereo is antagonistic toward networks and existing distributors; Apple, at least for now, is positioning itself as a friend.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
When a drone won’t do, you’ll hire a ‘gargoyle’
The dirigibles were easy enough to avoid. Simply stepping out of the way of their ponderous arcs was enough. Clancy had no problem with that.The drones, on the other hand, were trickier. They made noise at least, their eight little rotors whirring and buzzing as they zipped in for close looks here and there. Every now and then one would circle Clancy for a bit.
It didn’t bother him really — they were usually just curious and then got back to their task. Every now and then a drone would get piloted by some obnoxious script kiddie and try to get in his way, and that was annoying.But Clancy had an insanely high personal rep score. As a gargoyle, a contractor paid to gather data on location in the real time Location system, having a high personal rep score brought a number of privileges.
For example, he was coded for free entry to nearly all properties on the market. And not just during open hours; he had access during all empty hours.Empty hours, when the normal occupants were away, was ideal time for gargoyles. Clancy’s sensors were acute, his microcell connection was direct line, and his server farm was robust. Merely passing through a room at normal walking speed was enough to gather all of the normal data a person might want.
Empty hours were also the times when the drones were released. Often in two flavors. The preprogrammed blimp variety lumbered on a preset path up near the ceiling. The drones were “piloted” remotely and could go most anywhere. Software boundaries kept them from colliding with things.
Clancy found the steps down to the infrastructure NID in the basement. His client was overseas. Most of his clients were. Even if they were Americans they were overseas working on something that required in-person meetings. And they often had very specific interests in the technical capabilities of a property before they would make an offer.
His clients had very specific needs so the blimp runs really wouldn’t give them anything they really needed. They also had limited access to technology, or limited time, so bumping around with a drone wasn’t a good use of their time. Finally, they usually lacked specific skills to identify the technology in place anyway.Clancy had skipped college. From his perspective, college was either a great four-year vacation for people who had too much money or — as several of his friends found out — an on-ramp to a contemporary form of indentured servitude.
Instead, he worked with his hands on tech hardware, did some building and printing of his own, and learned what he needed in the digital commons. Along the way he learned to read Korean, the intricacies of hardware interface theory, a great deal of math, and a few things about human nature that you don’t learn at a college keg party.He was, as his grandfather liked to jokingly say, a cyberpunk. But that was an old-world term. The modern name for what he did — watching, moving, collecting data for hire — was gargoyle.
It was a living, and he enjoyed it. Sure as hell beat paying student loans for an outdated degree in software engineering.Once inside the NID, Clancy began making the readings. He’d need to do some of this manually. His client, a finance consultant, was currently in Antwerp, and had limited electronics access. The client did, however, know quite a bit about network interfaces if the data he was seeking was any indicator.
The drone buzzed around his shoulder. Some desk jockey was trying to figure out what Clancy was up to.The annoyance was something he didn’t have to put up with — his high rep score gave him the ability to “shun” a drone, which is basically to set a perimeter of 10 meters between him and all drones.
But Clancy wasn’t going to bother with it. It would be an unnecessary jerk move. Why ding the drone pilot’s rep score because of curiosity? That’s all Clancy had when he started tinkering. He used his 3-D pen to mark out a spot where the drone could hover and see what was going on without getting in his way. The drone locked into it.
Data gathered, Clancy started for the steps and signaled a car. He made another pass through the kitchen to collect secondary assessment data. His client didn’t request it but he knew the guy was married and he figured a little bit of information about the human aspects of the house couldn’t hurt — appliance repair and usage history; agent-based simulations on two people working the kitchen simultaneously; food volume per time unit for big parties — that sort of thing.
The dossier for his client was already zapped across his microcell by the time Clancy crossed the lawn to the waiting car. Air conditioning steamed out of the seating pod into the hot night air.As he traveled back to his studio he began to think about some of the business offers he’d had over the years. Every now and then someone would try to recruit him to do exclusive work. Sometimes they’d even offer reasonable money.
But they never seemed to understand that what made him good at what he did was his freedom to tinker, to learn new things. If he’d signed up to only work real estate, for example, then he never would have learned the things this client had wanted.The day-jobbers were always short on vision as well, it seemed. Along with their exclusive focus they didn’t recognize any external value in what they were doing. They’d want to hire him and then essentially give away his services. It was as if they’d lived an entire life on checklists and scripts.
They wanted his rep score but they didn’t want to do what it took to get that rep score. You couldn’t buy that sort of thing anymore. You couldn’t have done it for the past few years. These guys were dinosaurs.For every gargoyle gig Clancy did, he had a minimum of two customers. The people who wanted to “bring him in on the ground floor” were never putting revenue chains like that together. Tonight’s run, for example, had the Antwerp client to initiate the project. But there were three other data services bidding for access to the night’s work.
Clancy already knew which one would win. In fact, he’d had a suspicion that the bidding process was just a ploy for the winning firm to test the resolve of their competitors.When his contact at the data service had confirmed that the bidding process itself was as valuable to her as the data Clancy gathered he almost fell in love. But she’d gone to college and didn’t come out with debt. And mixing in that world was more complicated than he needed.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
It didn’t bother him really — they were usually just curious and then got back to their task. Every now and then a drone would get piloted by some obnoxious script kiddie and try to get in his way, and that was annoying.But Clancy had an insanely high personal rep score. As a gargoyle, a contractor paid to gather data on location in the real time Location system, having a high personal rep score brought a number of privileges.
For example, he was coded for free entry to nearly all properties on the market. And not just during open hours; he had access during all empty hours.Empty hours, when the normal occupants were away, was ideal time for gargoyles. Clancy’s sensors were acute, his microcell connection was direct line, and his server farm was robust. Merely passing through a room at normal walking speed was enough to gather all of the normal data a person might want.
Empty hours were also the times when the drones were released. Often in two flavors. The preprogrammed blimp variety lumbered on a preset path up near the ceiling. The drones were “piloted” remotely and could go most anywhere. Software boundaries kept them from colliding with things.
Clancy found the steps down to the infrastructure NID in the basement. His client was overseas. Most of his clients were. Even if they were Americans they were overseas working on something that required in-person meetings. And they often had very specific interests in the technical capabilities of a property before they would make an offer.
His clients had very specific needs so the blimp runs really wouldn’t give them anything they really needed. They also had limited access to technology, or limited time, so bumping around with a drone wasn’t a good use of their time. Finally, they usually lacked specific skills to identify the technology in place anyway.Clancy had skipped college. From his perspective, college was either a great four-year vacation for people who had too much money or — as several of his friends found out — an on-ramp to a contemporary form of indentured servitude.
Instead, he worked with his hands on tech hardware, did some building and printing of his own, and learned what he needed in the digital commons. Along the way he learned to read Korean, the intricacies of hardware interface theory, a great deal of math, and a few things about human nature that you don’t learn at a college keg party.He was, as his grandfather liked to jokingly say, a cyberpunk. But that was an old-world term. The modern name for what he did — watching, moving, collecting data for hire — was gargoyle.
It was a living, and he enjoyed it. Sure as hell beat paying student loans for an outdated degree in software engineering.Once inside the NID, Clancy began making the readings. He’d need to do some of this manually. His client, a finance consultant, was currently in Antwerp, and had limited electronics access. The client did, however, know quite a bit about network interfaces if the data he was seeking was any indicator.
The drone buzzed around his shoulder. Some desk jockey was trying to figure out what Clancy was up to.The annoyance was something he didn’t have to put up with — his high rep score gave him the ability to “shun” a drone, which is basically to set a perimeter of 10 meters between him and all drones.
But Clancy wasn’t going to bother with it. It would be an unnecessary jerk move. Why ding the drone pilot’s rep score because of curiosity? That’s all Clancy had when he started tinkering. He used his 3-D pen to mark out a spot where the drone could hover and see what was going on without getting in his way. The drone locked into it.
Data gathered, Clancy started for the steps and signaled a car. He made another pass through the kitchen to collect secondary assessment data. His client didn’t request it but he knew the guy was married and he figured a little bit of information about the human aspects of the house couldn’t hurt — appliance repair and usage history; agent-based simulations on two people working the kitchen simultaneously; food volume per time unit for big parties — that sort of thing.
The dossier for his client was already zapped across his microcell by the time Clancy crossed the lawn to the waiting car. Air conditioning steamed out of the seating pod into the hot night air.As he traveled back to his studio he began to think about some of the business offers he’d had over the years. Every now and then someone would try to recruit him to do exclusive work. Sometimes they’d even offer reasonable money.
But they never seemed to understand that what made him good at what he did was his freedom to tinker, to learn new things. If he’d signed up to only work real estate, for example, then he never would have learned the things this client had wanted.The day-jobbers were always short on vision as well, it seemed. Along with their exclusive focus they didn’t recognize any external value in what they were doing. They’d want to hire him and then essentially give away his services. It was as if they’d lived an entire life on checklists and scripts.
They wanted his rep score but they didn’t want to do what it took to get that rep score. You couldn’t buy that sort of thing anymore. You couldn’t have done it for the past few years. These guys were dinosaurs.For every gargoyle gig Clancy did, he had a minimum of two customers. The people who wanted to “bring him in on the ground floor” were never putting revenue chains like that together. Tonight’s run, for example, had the Antwerp client to initiate the project. But there were three other data services bidding for access to the night’s work.
Clancy already knew which one would win. In fact, he’d had a suspicion that the bidding process was just a ploy for the winning firm to test the resolve of their competitors.When his contact at the data service had confirmed that the bidding process itself was as valuable to her as the data Clancy gathered he almost fell in love. But she’d gone to college and didn’t come out with debt. And mixing in that world was more complicated than he needed.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年7月16日星期二
It's Not About the Money
In announcing its final rule concerning the Affordable Care Act's guarantee of free access to birth control for all American women -- including the Catholics and non-Catholics who work in religiously sponsored schools, hospitals and social service agencies -- the Obama administration bent over backwards to accommodate the Church's concerns. The goal was to spare the Church fathers from the anguish of getting their pristine hands dirty by, as the Bishops charged, being forced to sell, buy or broker birth control coverage for women, including students. The final rule allows that either the insurance company used by the institution will have to pay for birth control -- or if the institution is self-insured, the plan administrator will have to provide or arrange payment -- with reimbursement coming through a series of convoluted steps.
In a repeat of the Church battle over the Affordable Care Act, Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, last week publicly approved the administration's final rule, issuing an explanation for the Association's members about how to implement it. Not so, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The week before, its head, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, released his statement expressing dissatisfaction with the compromise, saying that the bishops are subjecting it to further "analysis," feel their "religious freedom" is still under threat, and plan to continue "defending our rights in Congress and in the real time Location system." Count on the 60-plus law suits by Catholic diocese and universities around the country, joined, with the bishops' blessing, by secular employers who also don't like birth control and want to exclude it from their insurance policies, proceeding apace.
It is maddening that the administration had to go to such extremes to placate the Church fathers, who dare to put "moral" and "money" as it applies to this deeply compromised institution in the same sentence. How pure, really, were the hands of the Church fathers who began decades ago to secretly spend millions of dollars in hush money to silence child victims of clergy rape and sodomy, and rid themselves of the evidence of their paternal crimes? Hush money that came from the faithful in the pews, who paid for all those ever-escalating insurance premiums, and from selling the churches and schools out from under those same working-class Catholics? The victims merited all the compensation they got and more, but the Church fathers literally stole that money from the Catholics they served and lied about it.
When the conniving churchmen realized how much money they had to lose by even these secret settlements, hiding the goods from the victims became the next best strategy. So how pure, really, are the hands of Cardinal Dolan, the leading voice claiming the moral high ground in the battle to keep any of the church coffers from supporting birth control for women? Files just released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee turned up a letter showing that when Dolan served as the Archbishop of that diocese, he secretly and successfully, and even as the Archdiocese was preparing to file for bankruptcy, petitioned the Vatican to bury nearly $57 million in a cemetery trust fund in order to protect those assets "from legal claim and liability," aka, child abuse victim compensation. And this was on top of his paying off some priest child sex abusers $20,000 a piece to leave the priesthood, reportedly defended by Dolan in one case as "an act of charity," so that, irony of ironies, the priest "could pay for health insurance."
And how pure, really, are the hands of the Church fathers regarding money when we look at the shenanigans at the Vatican bank? Still laughably named the "Institute for the Works of Religion," the Vatican Bank is literally drowning in mounting accusations of money laundering and mobster connections. Most recently, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, an accountant for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the Vatican's property and investments (and a Vatican account-holder himself), was arrested and charged with conspiring to transfer some $26 million from Switzerland to Italy to dole out to his rich friends.
Given this sad financial state of affairs, how does paying for a health-saving service like birth control for women become such a threat to Church fathers that they've made a major campaign out of it?
The bishops claim this mandate violates church teaching that artificial birth control is "intrinsically evil," despite the fact that nearly 100 percent of Catholics don't believe there is anything "intrinsically evil" about birth control and use it. They claim birth control is the same as abortion; it isn't. They claim to be protecting the institution's "conscience," thereby stepping all over Catholic Church teaching that defines conscience as "the most secret core and sanctuary" of a person, not an institution, and the Church not as the "men of God" but as "the people of God," which would seem to include women. They claim the money at issue is "their" money, when most employees contribute to their health insurance premiums so this is at base a labor issue. And their claim that birth control is not a "health" service, in the face of current scientific knowledge and medical opinion, is tantamount to insisting that the sun revolves around the Earth.
In other words, a woman should not have access to methods of artificial birth control, should be at the mercy of her husband and her biology, because then her husband is more likely to remain committed to her and to God and faithful to the Church's "moral law." Keeping her at constant risk of pregnancy -- and the health jeopardy that is attendant on such risk -- is a small price to pay for maintaining the Church's moral order.
That position -- blindness to women's rights and needs -- has a familiar ring. It is the same refusal to see that underlies the all-male hierarchy's ban on female priests. It is the same refusal that forbids priests to marry. Indeed, at the heart of the contraception debate and so many debates around gender in the Catholic Church is a terror that if women have rights -- over their own reproductive lives, to be priests, to marry priests, to have real voice and power in the Church -- then the Church men will change. And if the Church men change, then the Church will change. And if the Church changes, the future that the all-male hierarchy lives in terror of -- Pope Francis's nightmare of rampaging feminists, waging a "vindictive battle," steamrolling men with their "chauvinism with skirts" -- will, at last, be here.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
In a repeat of the Church battle over the Affordable Care Act, Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, last week publicly approved the administration's final rule, issuing an explanation for the Association's members about how to implement it. Not so, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The week before, its head, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, released his statement expressing dissatisfaction with the compromise, saying that the bishops are subjecting it to further "analysis," feel their "religious freedom" is still under threat, and plan to continue "defending our rights in Congress and in the real time Location system." Count on the 60-plus law suits by Catholic diocese and universities around the country, joined, with the bishops' blessing, by secular employers who also don't like birth control and want to exclude it from their insurance policies, proceeding apace.
It is maddening that the administration had to go to such extremes to placate the Church fathers, who dare to put "moral" and "money" as it applies to this deeply compromised institution in the same sentence. How pure, really, were the hands of the Church fathers who began decades ago to secretly spend millions of dollars in hush money to silence child victims of clergy rape and sodomy, and rid themselves of the evidence of their paternal crimes? Hush money that came from the faithful in the pews, who paid for all those ever-escalating insurance premiums, and from selling the churches and schools out from under those same working-class Catholics? The victims merited all the compensation they got and more, but the Church fathers literally stole that money from the Catholics they served and lied about it.
When the conniving churchmen realized how much money they had to lose by even these secret settlements, hiding the goods from the victims became the next best strategy. So how pure, really, are the hands of Cardinal Dolan, the leading voice claiming the moral high ground in the battle to keep any of the church coffers from supporting birth control for women? Files just released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee turned up a letter showing that when Dolan served as the Archbishop of that diocese, he secretly and successfully, and even as the Archdiocese was preparing to file for bankruptcy, petitioned the Vatican to bury nearly $57 million in a cemetery trust fund in order to protect those assets "from legal claim and liability," aka, child abuse victim compensation. And this was on top of his paying off some priest child sex abusers $20,000 a piece to leave the priesthood, reportedly defended by Dolan in one case as "an act of charity," so that, irony of ironies, the priest "could pay for health insurance."
And how pure, really, are the hands of the Church fathers regarding money when we look at the shenanigans at the Vatican bank? Still laughably named the "Institute for the Works of Religion," the Vatican Bank is literally drowning in mounting accusations of money laundering and mobster connections. Most recently, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, an accountant for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the Vatican's property and investments (and a Vatican account-holder himself), was arrested and charged with conspiring to transfer some $26 million from Switzerland to Italy to dole out to his rich friends.
Given this sad financial state of affairs, how does paying for a health-saving service like birth control for women become such a threat to Church fathers that they've made a major campaign out of it?
The bishops claim this mandate violates church teaching that artificial birth control is "intrinsically evil," despite the fact that nearly 100 percent of Catholics don't believe there is anything "intrinsically evil" about birth control and use it. They claim birth control is the same as abortion; it isn't. They claim to be protecting the institution's "conscience," thereby stepping all over Catholic Church teaching that defines conscience as "the most secret core and sanctuary" of a person, not an institution, and the Church not as the "men of God" but as "the people of God," which would seem to include women. They claim the money at issue is "their" money, when most employees contribute to their health insurance premiums so this is at base a labor issue. And their claim that birth control is not a "health" service, in the face of current scientific knowledge and medical opinion, is tantamount to insisting that the sun revolves around the Earth.
In other words, a woman should not have access to methods of artificial birth control, should be at the mercy of her husband and her biology, because then her husband is more likely to remain committed to her and to God and faithful to the Church's "moral law." Keeping her at constant risk of pregnancy -- and the health jeopardy that is attendant on such risk -- is a small price to pay for maintaining the Church's moral order.
That position -- blindness to women's rights and needs -- has a familiar ring. It is the same refusal to see that underlies the all-male hierarchy's ban on female priests. It is the same refusal that forbids priests to marry. Indeed, at the heart of the contraception debate and so many debates around gender in the Catholic Church is a terror that if women have rights -- over their own reproductive lives, to be priests, to marry priests, to have real voice and power in the Church -- then the Church men will change. And if the Church men change, then the Church will change. And if the Church changes, the future that the all-male hierarchy lives in terror of -- Pope Francis's nightmare of rampaging feminists, waging a "vindictive battle," steamrolling men with their "chauvinism with skirts" -- will, at last, be here.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月14日星期日
Oneida Nation magazine abandoning print
A weekly magazine that is a leading source of Native American news is abandoning print in favor of an online-only presence, in a cost-cutting move that worries some readers who fear they may lose access because of the switch.
This Week From Indian Country Today, a New York City-based publication owned by the Oneida Nation, will become an online newsletter starting with its July 17 issue."In the age we live in, technology is really advanced to a point that we're trying to make sure we're serving what our audience really needs," said Indian Country Today publisher Ray Halbritter. Converting to an online newsletter that is emailed to subscribers will eliminate some of the lag time between when news happens and when it appears in writing, he said.
The magazine, which was started in 1981, provides a mixture of straight news stories and commentary by tribal members, and it is often a way for politicians to get their messages out to Native American communities. President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner have all done interviews or written opinion pieces.
For Native Americans on isolated reservations, access to broadband Internet is anything but guaranteed and print media is a staple of life. According to the Federal Communications Commission, just 43 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives have access to broadband Internet at home, compared to 65 percent of the U.S. population as a whole. Access on reservation and tribal lands is even scarcer, at less than 10 percent, although there are government efforts to expand such access.
Suzanne Sobel, the managing director of Indian Country Today Media Network, said she's not worried about the real time Location system."The reservations that don't have broadband Internet, quite frankly they were also having a hard time getting the magazine too," she said. Sobel said most tribal members on such reservations use their smartphones to get information. She noted that the website had 550,000 unique visitors in June and continues to grow.
Sobel, a former executive with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and creative director Christopher Napolitano, former editor at large for Playboy magazine, are leading Indian Country Today's transition to digital-only. The evolution has been in the works for some time, Sobel said. Halbritter said the change will allow the company to expand its international coverage of indigenous issues and work with more contributors.
He spent most of his career in Motorola's wireless-network equipment division, which was sold to competitor Nokia Siemens Networks in 2010, shortly after he joined the public-safety radio business.Motorola Solutions' main business is supplying a range of public-safety products, from two-way radios for police officers to connected patrol vehicles with video surveillance systems.
That side of the business accounts for roughly two-thirds of the company's revenue, while the rest comes from products for enterprise customers, such as bar code readers or smart tags using radio-frequency identification technology.In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Steinberg talked about trends and competition in the public safety communications industry, as well as Motorola's transformation over the past few years.
Having spent over 20 years at Motorola, I had mixed emotions seeing the company change, though it didn't affect my job much. There were some people who didn't want it to happen. They felt like they were leaving a family because they would no longer be part of Motorola. But nothing is forever. The world changes.
When Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility separated, both companies kept the brand Motorola, and both retained the cross license for all the intellectual property. Other than that, Motorola Mobility is now purely and simply a part of Google.
We spend a lot of time on customer research. We have ethnographers—anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists—who ride in firetrucks, police cars and live a day in the life of a customer. We don't expect a fireman or policeman to tell us what they need, but if you watch them the right way they will show you what they need. We gain a lot of insight from our ethnographers and I think that's why our customers trust us. They know we understand them.
Economies go up and down but typically public-safety communications are prioritized. Even when governments step into the period of austerity, they have to take care of the population. I wouldn't say it's recession-proof, but generally speaking we are relatively strong even during an economic downturn.
Those who hope that arming the opposition will help stem the regime’s current resurgence and compel it to negotiate are making a dangerous assumption. Whatever firepower may be provided to the rebels will be more than matched by the regime’s allies.
SAM missiles may affect the regime’s freedom in the skies, but it has sufficient alternative firepower in terms of its massed artillery and armoured forces to maintain its edge.
Anti-tank weapons are of limited use in what is essentially an urban war. Unless there is truly massive external military intervention (which seems unlikely), the net result of seeking to manipulate the current balance of power will be to prolong rather than curtail the war.
The history of the region shows that almost any outside interference (even on the part of neighbours) tends to end in tears. And the West, despite its long experience in the Middle East, remains profoundly alien to the region’s most deep-rooted forces of religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe and clan, and seemingly incapable of grasping their complexity.
The killing of the FSA commander and a series of other similar recent clashes point to yet another layer of conflict that is only likely to be exacerbated as the war goes on. Arming one side of the opposition will lead to a struggle over access to these weapons and thus a weakening of the anti-Al Assad front, rather than the opposite.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
This Week From Indian Country Today, a New York City-based publication owned by the Oneida Nation, will become an online newsletter starting with its July 17 issue."In the age we live in, technology is really advanced to a point that we're trying to make sure we're serving what our audience really needs," said Indian Country Today publisher Ray Halbritter. Converting to an online newsletter that is emailed to subscribers will eliminate some of the lag time between when news happens and when it appears in writing, he said.
The magazine, which was started in 1981, provides a mixture of straight news stories and commentary by tribal members, and it is often a way for politicians to get their messages out to Native American communities. President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner have all done interviews or written opinion pieces.
For Native Americans on isolated reservations, access to broadband Internet is anything but guaranteed and print media is a staple of life. According to the Federal Communications Commission, just 43 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives have access to broadband Internet at home, compared to 65 percent of the U.S. population as a whole. Access on reservation and tribal lands is even scarcer, at less than 10 percent, although there are government efforts to expand such access.
Suzanne Sobel, the managing director of Indian Country Today Media Network, said she's not worried about the real time Location system."The reservations that don't have broadband Internet, quite frankly they were also having a hard time getting the magazine too," she said. Sobel said most tribal members on such reservations use their smartphones to get information. She noted that the website had 550,000 unique visitors in June and continues to grow.
Sobel, a former executive with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and creative director Christopher Napolitano, former editor at large for Playboy magazine, are leading Indian Country Today's transition to digital-only. The evolution has been in the works for some time, Sobel said. Halbritter said the change will allow the company to expand its international coverage of indigenous issues and work with more contributors.
He spent most of his career in Motorola's wireless-network equipment division, which was sold to competitor Nokia Siemens Networks in 2010, shortly after he joined the public-safety radio business.Motorola Solutions' main business is supplying a range of public-safety products, from two-way radios for police officers to connected patrol vehicles with video surveillance systems.
That side of the business accounts for roughly two-thirds of the company's revenue, while the rest comes from products for enterprise customers, such as bar code readers or smart tags using radio-frequency identification technology.In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Steinberg talked about trends and competition in the public safety communications industry, as well as Motorola's transformation over the past few years.
Having spent over 20 years at Motorola, I had mixed emotions seeing the company change, though it didn't affect my job much. There were some people who didn't want it to happen. They felt like they were leaving a family because they would no longer be part of Motorola. But nothing is forever. The world changes.
When Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility separated, both companies kept the brand Motorola, and both retained the cross license for all the intellectual property. Other than that, Motorola Mobility is now purely and simply a part of Google.
We spend a lot of time on customer research. We have ethnographers—anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists—who ride in firetrucks, police cars and live a day in the life of a customer. We don't expect a fireman or policeman to tell us what they need, but if you watch them the right way they will show you what they need. We gain a lot of insight from our ethnographers and I think that's why our customers trust us. They know we understand them.
Economies go up and down but typically public-safety communications are prioritized. Even when governments step into the period of austerity, they have to take care of the population. I wouldn't say it's recession-proof, but generally speaking we are relatively strong even during an economic downturn.
Those who hope that arming the opposition will help stem the regime’s current resurgence and compel it to negotiate are making a dangerous assumption. Whatever firepower may be provided to the rebels will be more than matched by the regime’s allies.
SAM missiles may affect the regime’s freedom in the skies, but it has sufficient alternative firepower in terms of its massed artillery and armoured forces to maintain its edge.
Anti-tank weapons are of limited use in what is essentially an urban war. Unless there is truly massive external military intervention (which seems unlikely), the net result of seeking to manipulate the current balance of power will be to prolong rather than curtail the war.
The history of the region shows that almost any outside interference (even on the part of neighbours) tends to end in tears. And the West, despite its long experience in the Middle East, remains profoundly alien to the region’s most deep-rooted forces of religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe and clan, and seemingly incapable of grasping their complexity.
The killing of the FSA commander and a series of other similar recent clashes point to yet another layer of conflict that is only likely to be exacerbated as the war goes on. Arming one side of the opposition will lead to a struggle over access to these weapons and thus a weakening of the anti-Al Assad front, rather than the opposite.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月11日星期四
One isn't just for gamers
The Xbox One is perfect for small business owners and an "entirely justifiable" business expense, Marques Lyons, Microsoft Xbox MVP and the director of Consumer Camp has claimed."What is being positioned as an excellent entertainment device can be just as enticing for you and your small business," claims Lyons in a new blog.
"The Xbox One, priced at $499, is an affordable option for small business owners, as there are many features built into the console that could help it rival even the most modest of video conferencing and networking platforms. "These features include Skype, SkyDrive, Wi-Fi Direct and Internet Explorer.
"One will allow people to not only use Skype on the console, but it will allow for multi-person chatting. Combine this with the wide-angle lens and 1080p view of the included Kinect and you have the means for collaborative meetings and presentations," explains Lyons.
He added: "Currently, on the Xbox 360, you have access to SkyDrive via the Internet Explorer web browser and the dedicated SkyDrive app. SkyDrive has become one of the leading cloud services for storing documents and having them available anywhere you need them. For the real time Location system, SkyDrive, snapped with Skype (for example) can make accessing documents for presentation and discussion easy.
"The SkyDrive app can let you easily access both photos and videos for viewing. If you're hosting a meeting at your office, don't worry about attaching a PC to the TV or using a projector. Store your videos in SkyDrive and then use the app to open that video. Do you have photos from recent travels or images showing details and diagrams? Open them with SkyDrive, navigate them with Kinect voice or hand gestures, be free from tethering that PC around.
"With SkyDrive via Internet Explorer, you can use it with the Office Web Apps to open that Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint. Use the Kinect voice and hand gestures to navigate to websites. Now you're free of clickers and light pens to use your hands to for more expressive gestures."
But it's Wi-Fi Direct, a new wireless technology that allows devices to connect to one another without the need for a wireless access point, which really gets Lyons excited."I'm currently in awe of Wi-Fi Direct and it's possibilities," says Lyons. "For consumers, I put forth the idea, that Wi-Fi Direct, plus SmartGlass, would mean being able to beam live TV to any SmartGlass enabled device. For you -- as the small business owner -- you could imagine having a SmartGlass enabled device and beaming in the other direction: Send your presentation to the TV, use Smartglass to navigate through the PowerPoint presentation, use your tablet to control Internet Explorer. "
With access to the Office Web Apps via Internet Explorer, Lyons says small business men could use the Xbox One as a PC replacement."Because Internet Explorer has access to the Office Web Apps, pair that with a Wi-Fi keyboard and mouse and you have the means to edit documents, when necessary, even if you aren't near your PC.," he explained.
For many years, TV was the leaky life raft for movie stars and directors to avail themselves of when the bloated Titanic of their film careers collided with the iceberg of audience indifference. These days, it's looking more like an escape in the best sense as the film industry, high on the pricey steroids of superhero blockbusters, has grown inhospitable to everything from character actors to character-based dramas. The latest casualty of Hollywood's comic-book obsession? Comic books themselves. This week it was announced that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's literate adventure series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — featuring the exploits of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Mina "Dracula's chewtoy" Harker, Dr. Jekyll, and the Invisible Man in a steampunk vision of Victorian London — was being developed by Fox as a put pilot. This is promising news for two reasons.
One, The League deserved better than the tepid Sean Connery movie that sent its star into early retirement back in 2003; when placed in the right hands, the material is rich enough to support an ongoing series. And two, Fox's move is a welcome and overdue sign that a thinkier tier of comic properties, gobbled up in the wake of Spider-Man's success, might finally fall out of the hands of uninterested, rights-hoarding film studios and into the more creative arms of television networks where they belong.
Grant Morrison's brain, even while sleeping, could power the Hadron Collider. His comic books, whether original creations like Seaguy and The Invisibles or franchise work on X-Men and Batman, are so packed with ideas it's a wonder there's any room for thought balloons. This makes an adaptation particularly tricky — unlike most comic writers, he's not auditioning for movies in his scripts, he's trying to make movies look small in comparison. But I think there's potential in this overlooked three-issue collaboration with ace artist Philip Bond. It's the story of Ali, a mild-mannered Pakistani twentysomething living in a tidy corner of the U.K. where he helps his father run a chain of corner stores. But all naraka breaks loose when, on the day Ali is to meet his arranged bride, a strange crate of Turkish delights opens a portal to a Day-Glo multiverse and all the deities and wonders of Islamic and Hindu myth come pouring out.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com.
"The Xbox One, priced at $499, is an affordable option for small business owners, as there are many features built into the console that could help it rival even the most modest of video conferencing and networking platforms. "These features include Skype, SkyDrive, Wi-Fi Direct and Internet Explorer.
"One will allow people to not only use Skype on the console, but it will allow for multi-person chatting. Combine this with the wide-angle lens and 1080p view of the included Kinect and you have the means for collaborative meetings and presentations," explains Lyons.
He added: "Currently, on the Xbox 360, you have access to SkyDrive via the Internet Explorer web browser and the dedicated SkyDrive app. SkyDrive has become one of the leading cloud services for storing documents and having them available anywhere you need them. For the real time Location system, SkyDrive, snapped with Skype (for example) can make accessing documents for presentation and discussion easy.
"The SkyDrive app can let you easily access both photos and videos for viewing. If you're hosting a meeting at your office, don't worry about attaching a PC to the TV or using a projector. Store your videos in SkyDrive and then use the app to open that video. Do you have photos from recent travels or images showing details and diagrams? Open them with SkyDrive, navigate them with Kinect voice or hand gestures, be free from tethering that PC around.
"With SkyDrive via Internet Explorer, you can use it with the Office Web Apps to open that Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint. Use the Kinect voice and hand gestures to navigate to websites. Now you're free of clickers and light pens to use your hands to for more expressive gestures."
But it's Wi-Fi Direct, a new wireless technology that allows devices to connect to one another without the need for a wireless access point, which really gets Lyons excited."I'm currently in awe of Wi-Fi Direct and it's possibilities," says Lyons. "For consumers, I put forth the idea, that Wi-Fi Direct, plus SmartGlass, would mean being able to beam live TV to any SmartGlass enabled device. For you -- as the small business owner -- you could imagine having a SmartGlass enabled device and beaming in the other direction: Send your presentation to the TV, use Smartglass to navigate through the PowerPoint presentation, use your tablet to control Internet Explorer. "
With access to the Office Web Apps via Internet Explorer, Lyons says small business men could use the Xbox One as a PC replacement."Because Internet Explorer has access to the Office Web Apps, pair that with a Wi-Fi keyboard and mouse and you have the means to edit documents, when necessary, even if you aren't near your PC.," he explained.
For many years, TV was the leaky life raft for movie stars and directors to avail themselves of when the bloated Titanic of their film careers collided with the iceberg of audience indifference. These days, it's looking more like an escape in the best sense as the film industry, high on the pricey steroids of superhero blockbusters, has grown inhospitable to everything from character actors to character-based dramas. The latest casualty of Hollywood's comic-book obsession? Comic books themselves. This week it was announced that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's literate adventure series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — featuring the exploits of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Mina "Dracula's chewtoy" Harker, Dr. Jekyll, and the Invisible Man in a steampunk vision of Victorian London — was being developed by Fox as a put pilot. This is promising news for two reasons.
One, The League deserved better than the tepid Sean Connery movie that sent its star into early retirement back in 2003; when placed in the right hands, the material is rich enough to support an ongoing series. And two, Fox's move is a welcome and overdue sign that a thinkier tier of comic properties, gobbled up in the wake of Spider-Man's success, might finally fall out of the hands of uninterested, rights-hoarding film studios and into the more creative arms of television networks where they belong.
Grant Morrison's brain, even while sleeping, could power the Hadron Collider. His comic books, whether original creations like Seaguy and The Invisibles or franchise work on X-Men and Batman, are so packed with ideas it's a wonder there's any room for thought balloons. This makes an adaptation particularly tricky — unlike most comic writers, he's not auditioning for movies in his scripts, he's trying to make movies look small in comparison. But I think there's potential in this overlooked three-issue collaboration with ace artist Philip Bond. It's the story of Ali, a mild-mannered Pakistani twentysomething living in a tidy corner of the U.K. where he helps his father run a chain of corner stores. But all naraka breaks loose when, on the day Ali is to meet his arranged bride, a strange crate of Turkish delights opens a portal to a Day-Glo multiverse and all the deities and wonders of Islamic and Hindu myth come pouring out.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com.
2013年7月9日星期二
A comprehensive comparison of Dota 2
MOBA games have been around for a long time, but Dota 2 and League of Legends are the first to regularly pull numbers like the 329,977 concurrent users on Dota 2 and the “over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West” League of Legends server.
You’d think that with the sheer popularity of MOBA games, they’d be easy to break into, but that’s usually not the case. Fortunately, this guide is here to help! This article should help you understand the basic concepts that are common to both games as well as the real time Location system.
If you’ve ever played any sort of RTS, then the basic layout of LoL and Dota should be at least somewhat familiar. These are top-down games where you control your champion or hero alongside four other players in five-on-five fantasy action.
Last hitting—delivering the killing blow to a minion—is likely the most fundamental skill you’ll have to learn to play either game. Last-hitting minions is your primary means of accruing gold. Wait until the minion gets low enough for you to kill it with a single attack before you hit it. You’ll still earn a slow trickle of gold over time, but killing a few extra minions can be the difference between buying the item that you need or missing out on XP for nothing.
LoL and Dota 2 do differ in how they reward players for killing players. In both games, killing an enemy player grants gold to everyone who participated in the kill. In League of Legends, the amount of gold a player is worth depends on how many times they’ve died without getting a kill and whether or not they’re on a killing spree. Dota 2 adds to this by punishing the dead player by throwing away some of the unreliable gold that they’ve earned. Reliable gold is awarded for kills while unreliable gold is gained over time and for killing minions.
The distinction between the two types of gold is reason enough to declare that Dota 2 is a far more punishing game. At the same time, getting kills is quite a bit more rewarding than it is in League of Legends because you gain reliable gold while causing an enemy to lose gold. Not only is it easier to make mistakes in Dota 2, but it’s also harder to come back from them.
Every single match of Dota 2 or League begins with the laning phase. This generally lasts from the time that minions spawn to anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes into the game. During this time, carry characters spend their time trying to last hit as well as possible. The goal of laning phase is to earn as much gold as possible while harassing your opponent.
Battles are more frequent and abrupt in Dota 2. Once a team commits to a fight, enemies will be stunned and spells will be unleashed. It usually only takes a second or two for the first casualty in a fight. During a game, it’s not uncommon to see first blood claimed only a few minutes in. Fights in Dota 2 are quite a bit like food fights—you look around to make sure no one’s watching, then let loose a few cups of pudding or an Arcane Bolt or two.
League of Legends is a little less chaotic. The first kill might take place 10 minutes into a match, but that isn’t to say that the game is any slower paced. You’ll be casting your spells far more often than you do in Dota 2 because of LoL’s emphasis on skillshots and low mana costs. Laning is usually a matter of last hitting while throwing out a spell or two to try and push your opponent out of lane.
The later section of both games is reserved for team fighting and coordinated pushes to try and reach the enemy base. As the end of the game approaches, teams usually start to stick together to knock down towers and eventually the base structures—the melee and ranged barracks in Dota 2 and the inhibitors in LoL which strengthens creep waves. Destroying the nexus or ancient is the only way to end the game without forcing a surrender vote.
Champions in League of Legends are more likely to have skillshots and spells that can be spammed. As a result, LoL focuses not only on traditional, attack damage (AD) carries, but also on ability power (AP) carries. Unlike in Dota 2, you can buy items that increase the damage output of your abilities in LoL. The laning phase in League games usually involve quite a bit more ability-based harass. Poking your opponent with a skillshot or target spell is reasonable because of the low mana costs that accompany most spells. Every single champion in this game has four main, character-specific spells along with room for two summoner spells; Flash is one spell that you’ll see all the time because it lets you jump a short distance in the direction of your cursor.
The comparatively lesser emphasis on skillshots doesn’t mean that Dota 2 isn’t a skill-driven game. It makes up for it by having a diverse pool of heroes that are able to build items to satisfy different roles. Dota heroes have much more explosive power with the ability to execute combos that usually leads to battles that last only a few seconds. These powerful spells come at a cost—the mana required to cast these spells is usually high—which prevents them from being used constantly. Another distinguishing factor of Dota 2′s hero pool is the Invoker—playable proof of the wide variety of heroes available in the game. With a total of 14 abilities at his disposal, the Invoker is considered by many to be the most complex character in any MOBA game. Mixing and matching reagents to invoke new spells demonstrates just how versatile and varied Dota 2 heroes can be.
However, those ads will be running alongside a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign orchestrated by the Koch brothers. According to the Think Progress Blog, the conservative group Americans for Prosperity is spending a fortune on television ads aimed at turning Americans against the new healthcare law. The group's first ad is called "Questions," and it features a mother of two who tells viewers that she "has some questions about Obamacare." Her so-called questions imply that under the Affordable Healthcare Act, she will be paying higher premiums and won't be able to select her family's doctor. The ad perpetuates myths that have been clearly debunked. As Think Progress points out, there is nothing in Obamacare that stops patients from choosing their own doctors, and people who get their insurance through their employer likely won't see any changes at all.
And, while the Americans For Prosperity ad refers to higher healthcare premiums, we've seen insurance rates go down in states implementing the law – like California – and millions of Americans will qualify for subsidies to purchase healthcare through insurance exchanges. In fact, it's Republican policies – like refusing to implement the law's Medicaid expansion – not Obamacare – that will leave some people uninsured. The constant misinformation from the Right is exactly why states like Oregon and New Jersey are working so hard to inform the public about the law's new benefits with their new television ads. However, thanks to the Koch brothers, Americans will have a difficult time sorting through the lies, and figuring out the real ways Obamacare will improve their lives.
Read the full story at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
You’d think that with the sheer popularity of MOBA games, they’d be easy to break into, but that’s usually not the case. Fortunately, this guide is here to help! This article should help you understand the basic concepts that are common to both games as well as the real time Location system.
If you’ve ever played any sort of RTS, then the basic layout of LoL and Dota should be at least somewhat familiar. These are top-down games where you control your champion or hero alongside four other players in five-on-five fantasy action.
Last hitting—delivering the killing blow to a minion—is likely the most fundamental skill you’ll have to learn to play either game. Last-hitting minions is your primary means of accruing gold. Wait until the minion gets low enough for you to kill it with a single attack before you hit it. You’ll still earn a slow trickle of gold over time, but killing a few extra minions can be the difference between buying the item that you need or missing out on XP for nothing.
LoL and Dota 2 do differ in how they reward players for killing players. In both games, killing an enemy player grants gold to everyone who participated in the kill. In League of Legends, the amount of gold a player is worth depends on how many times they’ve died without getting a kill and whether or not they’re on a killing spree. Dota 2 adds to this by punishing the dead player by throwing away some of the unreliable gold that they’ve earned. Reliable gold is awarded for kills while unreliable gold is gained over time and for killing minions.
The distinction between the two types of gold is reason enough to declare that Dota 2 is a far more punishing game. At the same time, getting kills is quite a bit more rewarding than it is in League of Legends because you gain reliable gold while causing an enemy to lose gold. Not only is it easier to make mistakes in Dota 2, but it’s also harder to come back from them.
Every single match of Dota 2 or League begins with the laning phase. This generally lasts from the time that minions spawn to anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes into the game. During this time, carry characters spend their time trying to last hit as well as possible. The goal of laning phase is to earn as much gold as possible while harassing your opponent.
Battles are more frequent and abrupt in Dota 2. Once a team commits to a fight, enemies will be stunned and spells will be unleashed. It usually only takes a second or two for the first casualty in a fight. During a game, it’s not uncommon to see first blood claimed only a few minutes in. Fights in Dota 2 are quite a bit like food fights—you look around to make sure no one’s watching, then let loose a few cups of pudding or an Arcane Bolt or two.
League of Legends is a little less chaotic. The first kill might take place 10 minutes into a match, but that isn’t to say that the game is any slower paced. You’ll be casting your spells far more often than you do in Dota 2 because of LoL’s emphasis on skillshots and low mana costs. Laning is usually a matter of last hitting while throwing out a spell or two to try and push your opponent out of lane.
The later section of both games is reserved for team fighting and coordinated pushes to try and reach the enemy base. As the end of the game approaches, teams usually start to stick together to knock down towers and eventually the base structures—the melee and ranged barracks in Dota 2 and the inhibitors in LoL which strengthens creep waves. Destroying the nexus or ancient is the only way to end the game without forcing a surrender vote.
Champions in League of Legends are more likely to have skillshots and spells that can be spammed. As a result, LoL focuses not only on traditional, attack damage (AD) carries, but also on ability power (AP) carries. Unlike in Dota 2, you can buy items that increase the damage output of your abilities in LoL. The laning phase in League games usually involve quite a bit more ability-based harass. Poking your opponent with a skillshot or target spell is reasonable because of the low mana costs that accompany most spells. Every single champion in this game has four main, character-specific spells along with room for two summoner spells; Flash is one spell that you’ll see all the time because it lets you jump a short distance in the direction of your cursor.
The comparatively lesser emphasis on skillshots doesn’t mean that Dota 2 isn’t a skill-driven game. It makes up for it by having a diverse pool of heroes that are able to build items to satisfy different roles. Dota heroes have much more explosive power with the ability to execute combos that usually leads to battles that last only a few seconds. These powerful spells come at a cost—the mana required to cast these spells is usually high—which prevents them from being used constantly. Another distinguishing factor of Dota 2′s hero pool is the Invoker—playable proof of the wide variety of heroes available in the game. With a total of 14 abilities at his disposal, the Invoker is considered by many to be the most complex character in any MOBA game. Mixing and matching reagents to invoke new spells demonstrates just how versatile and varied Dota 2 heroes can be.
However, those ads will be running alongside a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign orchestrated by the Koch brothers. According to the Think Progress Blog, the conservative group Americans for Prosperity is spending a fortune on television ads aimed at turning Americans against the new healthcare law. The group's first ad is called "Questions," and it features a mother of two who tells viewers that she "has some questions about Obamacare." Her so-called questions imply that under the Affordable Healthcare Act, she will be paying higher premiums and won't be able to select her family's doctor. The ad perpetuates myths that have been clearly debunked. As Think Progress points out, there is nothing in Obamacare that stops patients from choosing their own doctors, and people who get their insurance through their employer likely won't see any changes at all.
And, while the Americans For Prosperity ad refers to higher healthcare premiums, we've seen insurance rates go down in states implementing the law – like California – and millions of Americans will qualify for subsidies to purchase healthcare through insurance exchanges. In fact, it's Republican policies – like refusing to implement the law's Medicaid expansion – not Obamacare – that will leave some people uninsured. The constant misinformation from the Right is exactly why states like Oregon and New Jersey are working so hard to inform the public about the law's new benefits with their new television ads. However, thanks to the Koch brothers, Americans will have a difficult time sorting through the lies, and figuring out the real ways Obamacare will improve their lives.
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