Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/251899167?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Sunday, September 30, 2012
Video: Highlights: Sporting Kansas City 2, Chicago Fire 0
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Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/21134540/vp/49220903#49220903
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Saturday, September 29, 2012
Romney Needs To Articulate His Plans For Dealing With Interest On Our Debt
ell us how you are going to deal with the interest on our debt ballooning once you and a Republican Congress start peel back the layers of liberalism that are strangling America
So, here we are.? It is four years after ?Hope and Change?.? That slogan proved to only be more psychobabble from a babbling fool who rode the saying right into the White House.
And here we are with Romney, as bad as he is, but still much better than Obama, struggling to overtake the Messiah in the polls.? Yes, I know most of those polls are oversampling Democrats by seven to ten percent.
The economy is struggling.? As a result, interest rates have been kept artificially low to prevent the United States? debt situation from blowing up.? This has been done for one reason and one reason only: to keep President Obama from looking like the complete nincompoop that he is.? And that?s it isn?t it?? That?s the big, old elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about: what happens when things turn around and we no longer have cheap money?
Right now, thanks to cheap money and low interest rates, payments on the debt of the United States for FY2011 were $454.4 billion [1].? The gross federal debt at the time was $14.8 trillion.? That?s a rate of just 3%.
- In 2008 we paid $451 billion on $10 trillion in debt for a rate of 4.5% [2].
- In 2003 we paid $318 billion on $6.7 trillion in debt for a rate of 4.7%.
- In 1994 [3] we paid $296 billion on $4.7 trillion in debt for a rate of 6.3%.
So, we see that in better times, people demand more return on their investment.? We, as a nation, have to pay a higher rate to get people to buy our debt in the good times.? What?s worse is that as buying our debt becomes riskier, people get uppity and demand more return for greater risk.? We are over 100% debt to GDP ratio right now.? Want to know how hard it is to get people to keep buying debt with that sort of a relationship?? Just ask Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
Something that I have not heard Mitt Romney utter a single word about is what he is going to do, not if, but when we are required to start paying people more to take on our debt.? I know he talks about cutting federal spending.? But the fact is that if he cuts $1 trillion from our yearly spending, that only prevents us from adding to the debt we already owe.? In order to reduce the debt, deeper cuts are in order.? And no plan I have seen out of the Romney/Ryan camp comes even close to cutting $1 trillion for a fiscal year.
Realizing that Mitt is going to continue deficit spending for the foreseeable future, our debt load is going to increase.? When the economy heats up, investors will demand more and the interest rate on our debt jumps.? Where?s that extra money going to come from?
Paying interest on trillions of dollars is a lot of money.? I know Mitt knows it.? I know Obama doesn?t have a clue about such things.? So what?s the plan?? Where do we get the dollars?? Obama?s philosophy is to abuse our children, print more money, and tell them to work harder for less.
Any plans Mitt?? Want to share them with us?
Look, I know it is scary to talk about this stuff.? But it needs to be talked about.? When America starts to recover, we are going to have to deal with real world economics once again.
And Mitt, if you want to be taken seriously as the adult in the room, God knows Obama can?t be, then you need to spell it out.? Tell us how you are going to deal with the interest on our debt ballooning once you and a Republican Congress start peel back the layers of liberalism that are strangling America, but not cutting to the point where we are no longer spending like drunken sailors.? We all know you aren?t willing to go all the way and do what really needs done.
I know the standard line Mitt likes to throw out there.? He talks about how we can ?grow? our way out of our debt problem.? But the kind of debt we are dealing with requires more than ?growth?.? It requires sacred cows to be carved up and sacrificed for the good of this Republic.? Because not only is continuing to spend more than we have a problem, figuring out how to pay back the interest on that money is going to be one Hell of a feat in itself.
| J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the lead editor contributor to American Conservative Daily.? He is the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at libertyreborn.com J.J. Jackson can be reached at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Canadafreepresscom/~3/PLgOHzSi96s/49898
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30 years ago, the CD started the digital music revolution
1 day
The digital music revolution officially hit 30 years ago, on Oct. 1, 1982. While you may be surprised to learn?that the heralds of the coming age were, in fact, the Bee Gees, it probably comes as less of a shock to learn that Sony was at the very heart of it. After years of?research and an?intense period of?collaboration with Philips, Sony shipped the world's first CD player, the CDP-101. Music???and how we listen to it???would never be the same.
Today the CD player might be seen as something of a relic, since our smartphones, iPods and satellite radios provide seamless access to not only our entire music libraries, but to nearly every artist or track available. We can dictate any song or album to an app and have it playing in seconds, or download a new single by visiting an artist's Facebook page.
In such a world, the idea of carrying around a disc loaded with just 10 or 12 tracks and switching it out every hour sounds positively stone-age.?But the MP3 and streaming media are not just the CD's replacements, but its descendants. The future of music in fact made its unofficial debut, believe it or not, in the hands of the Bee Gees.
It was on the BBC show Tomorrow's World in 1981?that the Bee Gees publicly?demonstrated CD technology (and a new album, Living Eyes) for the first time. Artists were excited about the format ? the prospect of a high-quality, track-separated, non-degrading medium was enticing, though many were still skeptical of digital encoding. But music industry heavies like David Bowie and renowned conductor Herbert von Karajan were quick to embrace it, and soon the likes of Dire Straits would hit a million sales and cement the CD's position?as the new standard for music.
That triumph was a long time coming: development of the format began in the '70s, when both Sony and Philips were independently doing research on an digital,?optical disc format to replace cassette tapes and records. Early work at Sony was led by Norio Ohga, who bravely bore the skepticism of his comrades in order to create and demonstrate the earliest versions in 1976 and 1978.
Meanwhile, Philips was on the same track, so to speak. Their original version, an evolution of the laserdisc, was a whopping 20cm in diameter, but after reflection they brought the size of their prototype down to 11.5cm ? the same size, measured diagonally, as a cassette tape.
In 1979, the two companies decided to work together. They set up a task force of less than a dozen people ? engineers who didn't know if they could trust each other. After breaking the ice, however, the team worked for a year and?managed to arrive at a set of standards, called the "Red Book." The manufacturing process and method of encoding were contributed by Philips, while Sony created the digital error-correction that made reading the data reliable.
The new technology was privately inaugurated in 1980, and the first modern CD pressed was Richard Strauss's "Alpine Symphony." The next year, the Bee Gees went on the BBC, and the year after that the CD as we know it today was born.
That October of 1982, the CDP-101 made its debut in Japan alongside the first run of CD albums, led by Billy Joel's 52nd Street. The device was expensive: ?168,000, ?about $730 at the time, or almost twice that when adjusted for inflation. But home audio wasn't cheap then, and there was a market eager to snap up the new, high-fidelity audio format.
The engineers behind it?had really had a task: everything about the system was brand new. As Jacques Heemskerk, one of the senior Philips engineers on the project, told the BBC in 2007:
It was revolutionary in many fields???the optics were new, the disc was new. At the start of development there wasn't even a laser that would work well enough for our needs.?The most advanced laser at the time had a lifespan of only 100 hours.
So the cost was justified by the complexity and novelty of the hardware. Other manufacturers, like Toshiba, Kenwood, and of course Philips, would produce variant CD players over the course of the next year.?
The first CDs to market, with the notable exception of Billy Joel, were mostly classical. In fact, the capacity of the CD was raised during development from 60 to 74 minutes in order to accommodate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The creators of the format knew that classical music lovers were more likely to appreciate (and more likely?to pay for) the increased quality of the CD system.?
The pop and rock market, however, was still in love with cassettes, which were more portable and more ubiquitous than ever. 1979 had brought the first Walkman, and cassette players were now standard equipment in car radios. The CD was, for the moment, strictly for the home, where your nice speakers and amp would make the improved fidelity sing. Even there, to this day, some audiophiles swear by vinyl records and an all-analog setup.
It wasn't until later in the '80s that things really took off. Dire Straits'?Brothers In Arms?sold a million CDs in 1985, suggesting that the format had finally hit its stride. It wasn't long before other artists were selling millions upon millions of their albums in CD format. The Discman, introduced in 1984, and the CD-ROM format, enabling computers to read the discs, further accelerated uptake.
The rest, as they say, is history. Since that time, hundreds of billions of CDs have been shipped and sold ? the numbers are near-impossible to track, since the easily duplicated?digital data led to an enormous increase in piracy and counterfeiting, not to mention the billions of copies and mix-CDs made by normal users.
Music CDs?peaked in 2000 with global sales estimated?at around 2.5 ?billion. Soon (legal) digital downloads began to replace physical media for many music buyers. Though its numbers are on the decline,?CDs are still produced today on the order of hundreds of millions, and it will be many years yet before the world's CD factories shut their doors.
The size and shape of the CD, as well as its capacity, portability, and versatility, have been a major factor in how music has been developed and consumed for decades. Albums were written to fill it, new formats like the DVD were made in imitation of it, and entire new trends in media resulted from it. The Compact Disc started the digital revolution for music in the '70s, and we're still feeling the effects.
Devin Coldewey is a?contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/30-years-ago-cd-started-digital-music-revolution-6167906
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Friday, September 28, 2012
Task coordinating functionality of Samsung Galaxy S II | We Do ...
The Galaxy S II is perfect for handling top organizational features. It is in the values that are built in now, with more to come in the future, of connectivity and operating features in the DLNA compatibility environment. Thanks to its already built-in features this cell phone really represents an outstanding quality in every possible ways. By way of brief background, the DLNA (which stands for Digital Living Network Alliance) was formed in 2003. The alliance forms a strong bond between its international members.
They have agreed to link products by making them compatible. DNLA have almost 250 international members. The fields of manufacturing include electronics designers and manufacturers, computer makers; and as here, mobile communications device makers. DLNA also includes many major component suppliers where the value can be engineered and most important, software developers whose work ties the hardware designs together.
The DLNA companies create new products that work together in a manner greater than the individual parts. The designs contain open standards or other specifications which they share with each other. The collaboration embodies in meetings where members discuss their new developments and the future horizons of business opportunities. As a result of collaboration we can get to see and use several products being greatly compatible with each other. The cell phone industry is currently the most ideal for joint developments. Protect your device with the Samsung Galaxy accessories such as the Samsung Galaxy S II case or the Samsung Galaxy S II screen protector especially to raise the life expectancy of your mobile with proactive protection. The accessories of the cell phone will help you to out-mine all the possibilities that lie in this great phone.
Another organizational feature of the Samsung Galaxy S II is the video and camera system. The Galaxy S 2 has an eight (8)-megapixel camera, which produces full and rich images through its high quality sensor. Watching video from this camera, most are impressed with the rich quality of the images, the photographic depth of field, sharpness of the details. The camera and video capacity and quality is on a professional level, you will be surprised how a phone can have such professional quality features. Most users have been impressed with Samsung?s lenses and video cameras.
You need no experience in making great photos with this cell phone. The software of the camera offers several setting options for the users. There are many and varied color effects, several levels of image quality with manual settings. The camera software does its best to bring out the best of the pictures and videos you take; there are advanced features like Outdoor Visibility, Anti-Shake, and Blink detection. Even when moving and panning from place to place, there will be a well-focused and shake-free image on the screen, the telltale sign of cell phone video simply not there; in its place, a video quality associated with high quality recorders. The screen protector for Galaxy S II and travel charger for S II are part of the many accessories found at Galaxy S2 Source.
Use Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch accessories to help your phone out. Accessories like Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch car mounts and Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch cleaning kits will get the job done.
Source: http://wedonetwork.co.uk/wedotech/2012/09/27/task-coordinating-functionality-of-samsung-galaxy-s-ii/
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Did the butler do it? A Q&A on the Vatican trial
FILE - In this file photo taken Wednesday, May 2, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI arrives in St. Peter's square at the Vatican for a general audience as his then-butler Paolo Gabriele, bottom, and his personal secretary Georg Gaenswein sit in the car with him. Pope Benedict XVI's ex-butler Paolo Gabriele and another Vatican lay employee, Claudio Sciarpelletti, are scheduled to go on trial Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012, in the embarrassing theft of papal documents that exposed alleged corruption at the Holy See's highest levels. Gabriele was arrested May 24 after Vatican police found what prosecutors called an "enormous'' stash of documents from the pope's desk in his Vatican City apartment. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken Wednesday, May 2, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI arrives in St. Peter's square at the Vatican for a general audience as his then-butler Paolo Gabriele, bottom, and his personal secretary Georg Gaenswein sit in the car with him. Pope Benedict XVI's ex-butler Paolo Gabriele and another Vatican lay employee, Claudio Sciarpelletti, are scheduled to go on trial Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012, in the embarrassing theft of papal documents that exposed alleged corruption at the Holy See's highest levels. Gabriele was arrested May 24 after Vatican police found what prosecutors called an "enormous'' stash of documents from the pope's desk in his Vatican City apartment. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
VATICAN CITY (AP) ? The Vatican has never seen anything like it.
Pope Benedict XVI's trusted butler, who dressed the pontiff each morning, attended his daily Mass and helped serve him his meals, stands accused of stealing the pope's private correspondence and giving it to a journalist who wrote a blockbuster book about the secrets of one of the most secretive institutions in the world.
Paolo Gabriele, a 46-year-old father of three, goes on trial Saturday in the most sensational crime committed on Vatican territory since the 1998 double murder of the Swiss Guard commander and his wife. That case never came to trial because the suspect killed himself.
Gabriele, who was replaced after the scandal broke in May, is scheduled to face the three-judge Vatican tribunal, charged with aggravated theft and facing up to four years in prison if convicted. He has already confessed and asked to be pardoned by the pope ? something most Vatican watchers say is a given if he is convicted.
WHAT PAPERS WERE STOLEN?
According to prosecutors, Gabriele had an "enormous" stash of papal documents at his Vatican City apartment. After his May 24 arrest, he admitted he photocopied documents and gave them to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose "His Holiness: The secret papers of Pope Benedict XVI" was published in May. The most damaging letter reproduced in the book was written by the former No. 2 Vatican administrator to the pope, in which he begged not to be transferred as punishment for exposing alleged corruption. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's U.S. ambassador.
WHY WAS IT LEAKED?
Nuzzi has said his source, code-named "Maria" in the book, wanted to shed light on the secrets of the church that were damaging it. Taken as a whole, the documents seemed aimed at discrediting Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state and Benedict's longtime trusted deputy. Bertone, 77, a canon lawyer and soccer enthusiast, has frequently been criticized for perceived shortcomings in running the Vatican.
DID THE BUTLER DO IT?
Prosecutors quoted Gabriele as saying he knew taking the documents was wrong, but that he felt the Holy Spirit was inspiring him to shed light on the problems he saw around him. "Seeing evil and corruption everywhere in the church ... I was sure that a shock, even a media one, would have been healthy to bring the Church back on the right track," Gabriele was quoted by prosecutors as saying during a June 5 interrogation. They quoted him as saying he never intended to hurt the church or Benedict.
IF HE CONFESSED, WHY BOTHER WITH A TRIAL?
In the U.S. legal system, a case such as this might result in a plea bargain. But the Vatican legal system doesn't provide for plea bargains, according to Giovanni Giacobbe, the prosecutor in the Vatican appeals court. He noted that confessions can be coerced or given up to protect someone else. Gabriele's confession must be corroborated by other evidence uncovered during the investigation in order for him to be convicted, he said. A co-defendant, Vatican computer expert Claudio Sciarpelletti, is charged with aiding and abetting Gabriele.
HOW DOES A VATICAN TRIAL WORK?
The hearing opens Saturday at 9:30 a.m. No oaths are taken ? as the Vatican legal system, like the Italian one on which it is based, assumes a suspect may lie for self-protection. The hearing is declared open and one of the judges reads the charges aloud against Gabriele. He doesn't enter a plea. The defense can make objections to the indictment. Both sides may enter their witness lists. Eventually, the presiding judge ? Giuseppe Dalla Torre, president of the Vatican City State tribunal ? questions Gabriele. Unlike the U.S. system, prosecutors don't question suspects directly and there is no cross-examination; the judge conducts the interrogations on behalf of both sides. Eventually, after all witnesses are heard, objections dealt with and evidence examined, the judges convene in their chambers and issue a ruling.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?
There has never been a trial like this before in the Vatican tribunal, so there's no way to know how long it will take. Much depends on what, if any, objections are raised and how many witnesses are called. Hearings are usually only held on Saturdays, since the judges on the Vatican tribunal hold full-time jobs elsewhere.
WHAT'S THE TRIBUNAL LIKE?
The trial takes place in the small, austere courtroom inside a four-story, peach-colored palazzo inside Vatican City. A plaque near the entrance reads "Judicial Offices" and a carved stone papal seal frames the doorway. A metal detector greets visitors. The courtroom features rich wood paneling and gilded molding on the ceiling, and a small crucifix is centered behind the chairs of the three lay judges. Gabriele, assuming he attends, can sit at one of the tables facing the judges with his lawyer. The prosecutor has his own place at the other table. There is a small section for the public.
WHO CAN ATTEND A VATICAN TRIAL?
On paper, Vatican court proceedings are open to the public. But Giacobbe said those wishing to attend must petition the court, which then decides whether to grant permission. Gabriele, who was granted house arrest in July after spending nearly two months in a Vatican police unit, doesn't have to attend. For the media, eight journalists attend each session and report back to the Vatican press corps. No television, still cameras or audio recording is allowed and court transcripts aren't public.
HOW HAS THE POPE AND THE VATICAN REACTED?
The Vatican took the betrayal very seriously: Benedict appointed a commission of three cardinals to investigate alongside Vatican magistrates; they delivered their confidential report to the pope over the summer. Benedict addressed the scandal for the first time a week after Gabriele was arrested, saying "The events of recent days about the Curia and my collaborators have brought sadness in my heart." But in a nod to his confidence in Bertone, he added: "I want to renew my trust in and encouragement of my closest collaborators and all those who every day, with loyalty and a spirit of sacrifice and in silence, help me fulfill my ministry."
___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
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Rats Harmed by Great-Grandmothers' Exposure to Dioxin
Rats harmed by great-grandmothers? dioxin exposure, study finds Image: Flickr/Matthieu Aubry
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Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Pregnant rats exposed to an industrial pollutant passed on a variety of diseases to their unexposed great-grandkids, according to a study published Wednesday.
Washington State University scientists found that third-generation offspring of pregnant rats exposed to dioxin had high rates of kidney and ovarian diseases as well as early onset of puberty. They also found changes in the great-grandsons' sperm.
The great-grandkids ? the first generation not directly exposed to dioxin ? inherited their health conditions through cellular changes controlling how their genes were turned on and off, the researchers reported.
The findings add to a body of research suggesting that the health consequences of exposure to environmental chemicals might be passed to future generations.
?Not only does the individual exposed get the disease, but it?s transmitted to great-grandchildren with no exposure,? said Michael Skinner of Washington State University, who is the senior author of the study, which was published in the journal PLoS One. Skinner is a pioneer in epigenetics ? the study of inherited changes in gene expression.
Dioxins, which have been linked to cancer, reproductive disorders and other health problems, are industrial byproducts created by waste incinerators and other processes.
The dioxin doses used in the study were low for lab rats, but are higher than most people?s exposures from the environment. The study raises questions that won?t be easy to answer about people exposed to dioxins from food and industrial sources.
?The study is a nice demonstration of the large scope of damage from a low-dose dioxin,? said Jennifer Wolstenholme, a biochemist who specializes in epigenetics at the University of Virginia. She was not involved with the research.
One of the most interesting findings, she said, was that multiple organ systems were affected in the rats.
Dioxins have declined in food and the environment over the past few decades because emissions from many industries, including pulp and paper mills, smelters and waste incinerators, have been regulated.
The new study focused on a specific dioxin, known as TCDD, a component of the herbicide Agent Orange that was used during the Vietnam War.
Among Vietnamese people exposed to Agent Orange, a high rate of cancers has been found, and their children have had many birth defects and other health problems, too.?Vietnam veterans from the United States also were highly exposed, and the U.S. government has determined that certain cancers and other disorders are ?presumptive diseases? in veterans who handled Agent Orange.
The new study examined how dioxin exposure affects a person?s epigenome ? a road map of chemical changes to DNA and associated proteins. As a fetus develops, its epigenome is reprogrammed, and it can be permanently altered by exposures. The epigenome is then passed down through generations ? along with susceptibility to adult-onset disease.
?The cause of the higher rates of disease in these [third generation] animals was not due to direct exposure, but rather through transmission of changes in the code that regulates gene expression,? said Abby Benninghoff, who specializes in epigenetics at Utah State University. She was not involved with the study.
Scientists have long known that environmental exposures can cause genetic mutations. But now epigenetics experts are finding that some exposures seem capable of changing how genes are expressed, or turned on and off, without actually damaging the genes. These changes then can be inherited by future generations.
The findings are not directly applicable to humans, researchers said. The way the animals were dosed is not the same way people are exposed to dioxins, and the moms were dosed for a few days ? roughly similar to the first trimester ? which does not mimic typical human exposure that is low and gradual but builds over time, Wolstenholme said. Humans and rats also clear dioxin from their bodies differently, she said.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=647cacbccb35a65cea91a50de93e6375
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Thursday, September 27, 2012
Jennifer Garner: Ben ?Excels? at Tea Time with Our Girls
"I mean, [my daughters] didn't pee in my eye," the Butter star jokes with Ellen DeGeneres.
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/EOVXVUKOpqo/
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RIM: first BlackBerry 10 devices to focus on mid-range and up, entry-level may be ready in 2013
RIM's Q2 earnings details have had a common theme of a silver lining to darker clouds, and that edge may have grown a bit brighter with hints of the company's longer-term BlackBerry 10 roadmap. When asked about the release strategy, CEO Thorsten Heins said that the first BB10 devices would focus on both the mid-range and high-end of the market, a bit wider than the chiefly high-end approach that has been rumored so far. While shy on details, he confirmed that the full-touch smartphone would have a screen with an HD resolution -- that's higher than on the iPhone 5, the executive was eager to point out. More intriguingly, Heins teased the prospect of an entry-level BB10 device arriving as soon as 2013. Although development was in the early stages, the new starter phone just might be ready next year if all goes well. There's a lot of questions left to answer about RIM's strategy, so we won't get too excited yet; even so, the statements are signs that the BlackBerry designer doesn't want to leave any product gaps open for very long.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM
RIM: first BlackBerry 10 devices to focus on mid-range and up, entry-level may be ready in 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/27/rim-first-blackberry-10-devices-to-focus-on-mid-range-and-up/
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TruckLenders USA - #1 in Commercial Truck Finance: 5 Ways to ...
There are several different options available when it comes to the financial structure of commercial truck financing. If you are looking to finance a used semi truck, there are a few things that you should be aware of. One of the things you should know is that you should take good care of your credit. When your credit score is good, you will so much more flexibility and many more choices as to the structure of your financial agreement. The lower your credit score, the fewer and fewer options you will available to you. Commercial truck financing pretty much breaks down into two forms ? a loan or a lease.? A commercial truck loan generally requires a down payment of anywhere from 10%-20% and could be more if your credit is really bad. One of the ways that you could finance a used semi truck if you?re lucky enough, is to get a commercial truck loan with 100% financing. Of course, in order to do this, your credit score needs to be superior and you should realize that your monthly payments will be higher if you put nothing down towards the purchase of the truck. Another way that you can finance a used semi truck is to obtain a commercial loan by putting down 15%-20% of the total sales price. This is usually a more feasible option for those people whose credit score is in the average-to-good range. Yet another option with several different avenues of financing is a commercial truck lease. A commercial truck lease often times does not require a down payment upfront, instead, it may require the first and last month?s payments to be made upfront. Alternatively, if you wish to keep your monthly payment low, you can obtain a commercial truck lease with a substantial residual at the end of the term. The last and final way to finance a used semi truck is a ?lease-purchase? option. This is a fantastic option for many truck owners. A lease-purchase works just as a standard commercial truck lease does throughout its term. You can put money down if you want, or if required by the leasing company due to your credit score, or you can put down only the first and last month?s payments. ?The best part of a lease-purchase is the residual at the end of the lease term. Instead of paying a residual of thousands of dollars, most times the residual at the end of a lease purchase is only $1. There are many different ways to buy a used semi truck by using commercial truck financing. Speak with a commercial truck lender today to find which option is the best for you and your business.
Source: http://trucklenders-trucklendersusa.blogspot.com/2012/09/5-ways-to-finance-used-semi-truck.html
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Vancouver Sun's Ironic Advice ? ?It's clear real estate investors ...
?In 2008 and 2009, Vancouver property developers Michael Knight and Jeff Wiegel were riding a wave of upbeat publicity over their condo project in the Delbrook area of North Vancouver.
?The Brook? was being built to LEED platinum standards, the highest certification for environmentally friendly residency, and was being financed by equity investors, rather than pre-sales, which allowed the developer and his partners to share in future price gains.
The project garnered favourable publicity in The Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail and the North Shore News. What these media outlets didn?t know was Knight had had a history of run-ins with the Financial Institutions Commission (FICOM) and the B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC), and had been slapped with cease-and-desist and suspension orders and financial penalties.?
?
?Acting on complaints, FICOM conducted an investigation and found Knight had committed multiple breaches:
He had provided real estate services without being registered under the Real Estate Services Act.
He had marketed the units without preparing and filing a disclosure statement with the B.C. Superintendent of Real Estate.
He had received money from at least two people to secure an interest in a unit, but did not deposit those funds in a trust account, contrary to the Real Estate Development Marketing Act.?
?
?Beneath the technical breaches are heavy financial losses and much investor grief. The Brook was delayed, ran into financial problems and ended up in receivership. The other two projects never got off the ground. Investors in all three projects have lost most if not all of their money. Many have filed lawsuits.
I think that it?s clear real estate investors should look beneath these pleasing green exteriors and sunny media reports and do their own due diligence before they invest.?
?
- from ?Baines: Green property developers charged with multiple offences?, David Baines, Vancouver Sun, 21 Sep 2012
Hats-off to David Baines for the article, and for pointing out that the Vancouver Sun itself had promoted a shifty RE project.
Recent stories of unsavoury players in the Vancouver RE business can?t be helping sentiment.
- vreaa
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Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Class wars: 'Gate-gate' scandal swamps UK PM
Dan Kitwood / Getty Images file
British minister Andrew Mitchell, who reportedly insulted police officers after they stopped him from cycling out of the main gate down the street from the prime minister's official residence, arrives at a government meeting in May.
By Chris Hampson, NBC News Director of International News
LONDON - We?ve had Watergate, Irangate and even Weinergate.
And now, in London, there?s a new hot-potato controversy that double-dips nicely the neat scandal-enhancing suffix ?gate.?
It?s called ?Gate-gate.?
The first gate in question sits at the end of Downing Street, home to generations of British prime ministers, and in recent years? -- in a nod to those who would destroy us -- a fortified enclave.? It is guarded around-the-clock by heavily armed police, cameras, barriers -- and that big, black, forbidding iron gate.
Now this particular ballyhoo-gate involves a high ranking senior member of the British government, Andrew Mitchell, who wanted to ride his bike through the aforementioned main gate and, when he was refused and told to use the pedestrian exit, ?apparently unleashed a tirade of four-letter abuse at the cops who are there to protect him.
?Best you learn your f***ing place,? he reportedly said in anger. ??You don?t run this f***ing government.?
But it gets worse.? Much worse.
Facundo Arrizabalaga / EPA
Andrew Mitchell speaks to the media in London on Monday.
Mitchell allegedly also called the police officers ?plebs.? ?What?
For those of us for whom Latin is a forgotten language, the plebs (Latin: plebes) of Ancient Rome were the middle-class of society ? free people, skilled artisans, farmers.
But in the intervening centuries the word in Great Britain became something of an insult, suggesting the person in question was common, ignorant and ? importantly ? of a lower order.
It?s an old-fashioned word these days ? not much used by the common people to whom it refers, and seldom heard outside of a certain privileged world.
Now you only have to watch "Downton Abbey" -- the popular TV drama starring overdressed and underworked aristos and their forelock-tugging salt-of-the-earth servants -- to know about the class divide in the United Kingdom.? And if you think it?s as dead as Latin, read on.
'Thrasher'
Enter into this upstairs-downstairs world of ours the quaintly titled Government Chief Whip Mitchell.
He?s an important guy in government. ?Some of his critics call him self-important. ?He has an office and official residence in Downing Street. ??His job -- as the title suggests -- is to be the prime minister?s enforcer, making sure Conservative legislators toe the party line in parliament and outside.
It?s a tough job and one for which Mitchell seems well suited.? He is an alumnus of the elite fee-paying Rugby School, a reputedly tough place that gave its name to the sport and where his disciplinarian ways reportedly earned him the nickname of ?Thrasher.?
In this extended interview, British Prime Minister David Cameron talks to NBC's Brian Williams about Iran, Afghanistan, the 2012 Olympics, the "special relationship" with the United States and whether or not he has danced around like Hugh Grant's character in "Love Actually."
Clearly Mitchell seems not the sort to take any nonsense from the ?lower orders? after a bad day at the office. Which is just what happened last week as he approached that now famous locked and guarded main gate.
The essence of every ?gate? scandal is that the event has far greater consequences than the perpetrator ever imagines as they commit the deed.? It is the stone rolling down the hill before it becomes the avalanche. Gate-gate is no exception.
The furor that Mitchell provoked has reached national level -- and it?s still making front page news.
The day after the outburst, Prime Minister Cameron traveled upcountry to the city of Manchester to pay his respects to the families of two unarmed, female police officers gunned down in cold blood. That evening he had to reprimand his chief whip for showing disrespect to the police.
UK police resist calls to give all officers guns
Then there?s a question of who is telling the truth. The police officers who suffered Mitchell?s tongue-lashing ? members of the elite Diplomatic Protection Group ? wrote down in their notebooks what had been said to them. They knew to expect more trouble.
But Mitchell disputes their version of the truth.? Not that he may have used the f-word, as they claim.? But he denies calling them ?plebs,? which would ? it seems ? be very rude indeed.
(The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday published what it said was a log of the exchange as recorded by the officers involved)
So either we can?t rely on the hand-picked cops chosen to guard our most important people ? or we can?t trust the prime minister?s right-hand man. The police say, quite correctly, that it?s a question of integrity.
Then there?s the politics of it, as the government struggles in second place in the opinion polls.?
Has Britain's Prime Minister Cameron lost his gloss?
Cameron has long tried to shake off the taunt of privilege that haunts him and his closest supporters ?-- a barb that implies they are out of touch with ordinary folk.? That?s tricky for a politician who wants to win elections (ask Mitt Romney).
So ?Dave? Cameron has sought to convince the voters they are as ordinary as you and me.? But not, of course, plebs. He has Mitchell to thank for reinforcing an image he has tried so hard to shake off.?
How tragedy transformed UK PM Cameron
For his part, Mitchell has, eventually, been suitably contrite.? He has apologized to the offended officers more than once, without ever telling us exactly what he did say.
?I didn?t show the police the amount of respect I should have done,? he said Monday, before adding? ?I hope very much we can draw a line under this.?
A view for sure shared by Cameron and his advisors.
The prime minister is toughing it out and saying Mitchell will not lose his job. ?But that?s what beleaguered prime ministers always say.
In the end -- if the cops turn out to be telling the truth -- this particular ?gate? may deliver its own last word.? As in:? ?Make sure the gate doesn?t bang you in the ? on the way out.?
And the police -- whom Mitchell admits he abused -- will take satisfaction in being the ones holding it open for him.
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5 Ways to Finance a Used Semi Truck
There are several different options available when it comes to the financial structure of commercial truck financing. If you are looking to finance a used semi truck, there are a few things that you should be aware of. One of the things you should know is that you should take good care of your credit. When your credit score is good, you will so much more flexibility and many more choices as to the structure of your financial agreement. The lower your credit score, the fewer and fewer options you will available to you. Commercial truck financing pretty much breaks down into two forms ? a loan or a lease.? A commercial truck loan generally requires a down payment of anywhere from 10%-20% and could be more if your credit is really bad. One of the ways that you could finance a used semi truck if you?re lucky enough, is to get a commercial truck loan with 100% financing. Of course, in order to do this, your credit score needs to be superior and you should realize that your monthly payments will be higher if you put nothing down towards the purchase of the truck. Another way that you can finance a used semi truck is to obtain a commercial loan by putting down 15%-20% of the total sales price. This is usually a more feasible option for those people whose credit score is in the average-to-good range. Yet another option with several different avenues of financing is a commercial truck lease. A commercial truck lease often times does not require a down payment upfront, instead, it may require the first and last month?s payments to be made upfront. Alternatively, if you wish to keep your monthly payment low, you can obtain a commercial truck lease with a substantial residual at the end of the term. The last and final way to finance a used semi truck is a ?lease-purchase? option. This is a fantastic option for many truck owners. A lease-purchase works just as a standard commercial truck lease does throughout its term. You can put money down if you want, or if required by the leasing company due to your credit score, or you can put down only the first and last month?s payments. ?The best part of a lease-purchase is the residual at the end of the lease term. Instead of paying a residual of thousands of dollars, most times the residual at the end of a lease purchase is only $1. There are many different ways to buy a used semi truck by using commercial truck financing. Speak with a commercial truck lender today to find which option is the best for you and your business.
Source: http://trucklenders-trucklendersusa.blogspot.com/2012/09/5-ways-to-finance-used-semi-truck.html
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Tuesday, September 25, 2012
3-D printer brings extinct mollusk to virtual life
Scientists have created a lifelike model of a long-extinct sea creature using a 3-D printer.
The oval-shaped mollusk ? a type of multiplacophoran called Protobalanus spinicoronatus ? crept around on ocean floors 390 million years ago with a single, suction-like foot. It also had an imposing armor of stiff plates surrounded by a ring of spines, but scientists were not sure how exactly these features were arranged. Most known fossil specimens of multiplacophorans are broken and decayed.
In fact, scientists are not sure how the multiplacophorans, which are distinguished by their 17 plates, are related to polyplacophorans (also called chitons), another group of armored mollusks.
To find out, a team of researchers used a micro computed-tomography (CT) scan on fossilized fragments of the prehistoric mollusk found in Ohio 10 years ago. The scan gave the scientists an animated view of the creature's shells and spines in their original position; the researchers also used the scan to create a three-dimensional cast of the animal in its reconstructed shape. With this information, along with details on living relatives of this mollusk group, the researchers created a multicolored, textured model made of clay, resin and silicone. The result: a view of what the mollusk looked like millions of years ago. [ See Images of Reconstructed Sea Creature ]
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Science news from NBCNews.com
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Art sleuths just couldn't crack this 'Da Vinci Code'
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The controversial effort to find out whether a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece lies beneath a fresco in Florence has been suspended without resolving a mystery that some have compared to a "Da Vinci Code" riddle.
- 'Cult fiction' dates to ancient Egypt priest
- Famous begging dolphin found dead
- First Japan tsunami debris hits Hawaii
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Art sleuths just couldn't crack this 'Da Vinci Code'
The species was discovered only in the past decade by private collector and co-author of the study, George Kampouris, who donated the fossil to the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. The results of the new study, detailed Sept. 18 in the journal Paleontology, are helping to place multiplacophorans on the evolutionary tree, revealing the long-gone mollusks are, indeed, a stem group of chitons.
"We can now demonstrate that multiplacophorans are distant relatives of the modern chitons, which did not evolve until later in Earth history," researcher Jakob Vinther of the University of Texas at Austin said in a statement. "We can also show that they evolved a number of characteristics seen in some modern chitons convergently."
Research detailed last year in the journal Current Biology found one such chiton characteristic is vision: West Indian fuzzy chitons (Acanthopleura granulata), which are 3 inches (nearly 8 centimeters) long, sport hundreds of eyelike structures that can make out predators lurking above. However, the vision, which scientists say likely emerged only in the last 25 million years, was a thousand times less sharp than human vision.
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook? and Google+.
? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49149811/ns/technology_and_science-science/
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UFC 152 photo gallery
Check out pictures from UFC 152 by Tracy Lee. You'll see Jon Jones come back for a win, Evan Dunham's really bloody face, and more.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/ufc-152-photo-gallery-161314828--mma.html
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ShopInterest, The Startup That Lets You Sell From Your Pinterest Boards, Gets 500 Startups Backing
ShopInterest.co, an e-commerce platform that lets anyone turn their Pinterest boards into online stores,?is today announcing a small, undisclosed investment from 500 Startups, via its newly acquired fund Mexican.VC. It's the first investment 500 Startups has made into the Pinterest ecosystem, says ShopInterest CEO Francisco Guerrero, also the creator of Pinterest analytics platform Pintics. Now that the team is solely?focused on the e-commerce space, Pintics will be shut down next month and users transitioned to former competitor Pinfluencer.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/DW3k2T5bDDc/
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Monday, September 24, 2012
theRSL: Hey @Facebook, your mobile app for the Android is so embarrassingly bad I may uninstall it. I've had 2 long status updates lost today! #fail
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Source: http://twitter.com/theRSL/statuses/249983790926139392
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Rush Vietnam Visa Service For Last Minute Vietnam Tours
Vietnam tourism is on a rise and there is a growing demand for Vietnam holiday packages. Most of the tourists who visit Vietnam continue their journey to other Asian territories. Usually they take time to visit neighboring countries like Cambodia and China. Extensive tour packages cover Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Vietnam tourism companies arrange for such long journeys and they help the tourists in securing necessary travel documents and reservations. If you are planning to visit Vietnam, you should get your passport and visa readied for the entire tour. If you already own a Vietnam visa you can renew it by filling an application form issued at Vietnam consulate in your country. If you do not have a visa, you might need the help of a Vietnam Visa service that can easily guide you through the entire process.
If you have already made your tourism plans but still dont have a Vietnam visa, then you can apply for an urgent visa. This is popularly known as a Rush Vietnam Visa. This is also known as visa on arrival because get it only after you arrive Vietnam. In other words, you can land in Vietnam without a visa. Once you are there you will be verified by the authorities and within 20 minutes they will issue you a tourist visa. This visa is usually valid for one month. If you need a Rush Vietnam Visa, you should get in touch with a Vietnam Visa service provider in your town. You can also get your Vietnam visa from Asian tourism companies and travel agents who make holiday bookings for Southeast Asian countries. Use online sources to find out more about good visa agents in your town. There are several Vietnam tourism companies that offer free Vietnam visa service review for their customers. They review the services of reliable visa agents and branches located in different cities and countries.
You can also apply for Rush Vietnam Visa online. Most of the Vietnam visa services are authorized to issue visas through online applications. These online services were introduced to expedite the entire visa approval process that might take several days if carried out in person. These visa service websites provide a Rush Vietnam Visa online form to be filled out by the customers. Upon submission of the form, you will be immediately contacted by their agent. This is to ensure that the details you have furnished are genuine and also to inform you about further formalities. Then they would forward your application to Vietnam immigration department for immediate approval.
For rush Vietnam visa you can opt for an express service. Express services can get your visa approval processed in 6 to 8 hours instead of 1 to 3 days. There are also services that can get you approval in just 4 hours but they would definitely charge you with an additional sum of around 50 to 60 US dollars.
About the Author:
This article is written by Williams Jones on behalf of Vietnam-visa-service, this is having topics on Rush Vietnam Visa, Vietnam visa information and many more. For more details please click here.
Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Rush-Vietnam-Visa-Service-For-Last-Minute-Vietnam-Tours/4174852
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Sunday, September 23, 2012
Chinese Hospital Introduces Hands-Free Automatic Sperm Extractor
A hospital in China is introducing a sperm extractor to help men who have infertility problems.
The hands-free device has an adaptable massager that can be adjusted according to the person's height.
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A website that's selling the machine for $2,800 says "it can give patients very comfortable feeling."
The machine can be used by men who have fertility issues and can't donate sperms in the old fashioned way, says Zhu Guoxin, director of the urology department at the Zhengzhou Central Hospital.
The machine is pink, blue and gray colored and the user can adjust temperature, amplitude, frequency and speed. The machine has a display screen and a surround sound system, Chinahush reported.
The sperm extractor has been introduced in Nanjing, China. According to media reports, the entry about the sperm extractor on weibo.com has gone viral.
Machine not for sperm donation
Though the weibo entry says that the extractor can be used for sperm donation, Zhu Guoxin has said that the machine is not for sperm donation but will be used by infertility patients, according to Chinahush.
"When male infertility patient come for treatment, we must first fully inspect the sperm which requires sperm extraction. This machine is only recommended for patients that had difficulty retrieving perms, user must use a condom, but lubricant and chemicals on condoms will affect the accuracy of the test results," Zhu was quoted as saying by Chinahush.
"Perhaps netizens misunderstood the usage of the machine, and thought it was used for sperm donation. In fact, sperm bank has very high standards; donors must go through strict medical examination and they will definitely not use a sperm extractor," Zhu said, Chinahush reports.
Some websites already have variants of the sperm extractor on sale.
Source: http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/12276/20120922/china-sperm-extractor.htm
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Apple Is Following Microsoft's Path In Alarming Ways
A company at the height of its glory releases a new operating system. Some of the things it offers are considered to be copies of what another company already offers.
If it?s 1995, the company is Microsoft and the operating system is Windows 95. If it?s 2012, the company is Apple and the operating system is iOS 6.
Where is Steve Jobs?
Two years ago, the iPhone 4 was released and users quickly experienced issues with the antenna built directly into the case. The furor prompted Apple to publicly apologize for the mistake and offer some quick fix to deal with an offering that wasn?t fully there yet.
Last year, Apple releases the iPhone 4S, with Siri as the primary innovation it presented in the new phone. But Siri wasn?t fully baked and people were quick to take to social networks and tell the world about the disappointing offering.
This year, one of the big innovation Apple was to offer in iOS 6, the operating system powering the iPhone 5, was to be a new map offering, ?the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever? if you?re to believe what the Cupertino giant said. But maps, which replaced a similar offering by Google on previous iOS devices, appears to have some issues.
In journalism, there is a rule of 3s: 3 similar events are generally seen as making up a trend. So it appears that, with the last 3 releases, Apple has had at least one major issue. In the old Steve Jobs days, products weren?t released until they were considered good enough; in the post Steve Jobs era, it appears that this form of quality control may be suffering.
Spit and polish
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While calling Apple an innovator may be a bit of a stretch, the company has had, in the past, a great ability at bringing refinement and polish to things that had been introduced in a clunky way by others. When they released the iPod, it wasn?t the first MP3 player on the market but it was the first digital music player that was easy to use; When they released the iPhone, it wasn?t the first smartphone on the market but it was the first polished smartphone experience on the market; When they introduced the iPad, it wasn?t the first tablet on the market but it was the least geeky one with the best overall experience. In each case, what Apple did was take an existing category and polish up the offering so that it presented a new standard for what a decent offering in that category ought to be.
But with the last few releases, the spit and polish has been lacking from the new offerings. Yes, the new antenna on the iPhone 4 was a revolutionary design but no it didn?t work; Yes, Siri looked like a good idea for a better voice-driven interface, but it didn?t work; Yes, Apple?s concept of bringing more 3D resolution to maps is something that looks like it could be better than Google maps, but it doesn?t work.
If those innovations worked, they could be seen as an improvement, a next step in the upmanship between Apple and its competitors but, in those specific cases, they can be seen as a step back. And, more troubling for Apple, they could show some unraveling in what had made Apple great in the past.
Screening and messaging
Another big innovation Apple mentioned with the introduction of the iPhone 5 was a new form factor and a larger screen. But the screen ended up with dimensions that did not conform to any other format known in the industry. Most of the screen industry has gathered around some standard sizes. So most of the larger screens on other smartphones end up being 1280x720 in order to support a 16x9 form factor.
Apple?s marching to the beat of a different drum, however and the iPhone 5 sports a screen that is 1136x640 pixels, a dimension not seen on any other devices in the industry. The reasoning is that your tumb needs to be able to move from one side of the screen to the other. That?s a very valid argument made in a powerful ad by the company.
But the messaging because inconsistent when one sees the other ads made by the company to highlight key features of the device. In each of those other ads, the primary use case is two handed, with no thumb really moving around the screen. I?ve put together a composite of the other ads:
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Coming from a company that use to put so much care into displaying the right time on slides and in ads, this is an odd oversight.
Apple: the new Microsoft?
There seems to be a cyclical approach to how companies grow. A couple of decades ago, Microsoft went from being a scrappy startup (up until the release of Windows 3.1) to a growing force and market leader (with its high water mark being the release of Windows 95, heralded as a cultural event in itself), to being seen as a power-hungry monopolist (with an eventual antitrust lawsuit won by the government in 1999) and eventually becoming a timid, government-controlled also-ran as a new dominant player emerged (nowadays).
Looking at Apple, we might detect some similarities. In the pre-1997 days, Apple was a scrappy computer maker, seldom gathering more than 10% of the market but always primed for a fight. With the introduction of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, Apple?s rise to power has turned it into a clear market leader, defining where the industry ought to go next and?imitated?by a myriad competitor. But if you look at the last few iPhone releases, the company is increasingly falling into a legacy trap where defending what has brought it to the top becomes more important than substantial new innovation.
iOS, now in its 6th outing, is clearly sitting at the core of what makes Apple hum and defending it against attacks from Google (with Android) and others (Amazon, with a reskinned Android; Microsoft with a new operating system) is a core priority to the continued success of Apple?s products. And so Apple is working hard to replace those competitors with Apple products. Whereas it once had a friendlier relationship with Google, leading to the integration of YouTube and Google Maps in iOS, Apple is now seeing them as a major threat and thus had to remove or replace their product. This led to the inclusion of Siri as a new way to deal with search, going after Google?s bread and butter, and the removal of Maps, another critical function of most smartphones today.
The pattern that is starting to appear in Apple tea-leaves reading is that the Cupertino company is now focused on two efforts: first, it must protect and extent the reach of iOS; second, it works on optimizing its operational capacity to sell as many devices as possible (the speed at which the company is rolling out the iPhone 5 around the globe is nothing short of impressive and clearly highlights the operational genius of Apple?s new CEO Tim Cook).
But lurking in the distance is the specter of antitrust. Whether it is fair or not, the moves the company is making to protect its existing business could be seen as power-hungry land-grabs when presented under the wrong lens. And the recent flap over maps has that feel.
Hopefully, the leadership at Apple is smart enough to have studied history and learned from the mistakes made by Microsoft. If not, the company could find itself branded as a monopolist and dragged into court with emails taken out of context (I?d expect Steve Jobs ?Thermonuclear war on Android? being shown as proof of wrong-doing even if it were nothing more than an angry aside about a competitor).
What next?
?
So Apple has a few problems on its hands: on the one hand, there?s the immediate issue around maps and how to deal with it; on the other hand, the company has to worry about the signals it is sending in terms of quality as they may lead some customers to sit on the sideline (when quality at Microsoft started dropping, common wisdom became that you didn?t buy a Microsoft product until its 4th iteration); and then the company has to worry about being seen as a nasty monopolist.
The third part limits the company?s options on dealing with maps. Yes, it does have the hordes of cash needed to buy a superior map company (Tom-Tom or Nokia would come to mind) but doing so could be seen as a negative signal in the marketplace, thus forcing the company to do the fixing work on its own, or by tacking on smaller startups to help it with fixing its offering (I?ve already heard whispers that people saw an Apple / ?Foursquare tie-up making sense).
Attention to details is something Apple has been known for but the trend appears to some of those details falling by the wayside. Steve Jobs??obsessive?attention to every aspect of the company, from its ads to its software to how the back of its hardware looked is legendary and it?s time for the company to find a way to return to that model of cohesive integration of all aspects of the company.
While it continues to defy what can be done at scale in hardware and will probably continue running loops around its competitors when it comes to engineering feats in hardware, Apple must right itself on the software side of the house and pay the same attention to quality there as it does on hardware.
What we?re seeing here is a company where the CEO has a strong understanding of what makes a solid supply chain work but it?s high time for Tim Cook to step out of his comfort zone and focus the same manic energy on software: what made Apple great under Steve Jobs is that its leader understood that software and hardware work hand in hand to deliver revolutionary products and failing to continue in that understanding, the company may find that its best days are behind it.
Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title The devil is in the details. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.
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Read more posts on TNL.net ?
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-devil-is-in-the-details-2012-9
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Why Do Businesses Use A Send SMS Message Online Service ...
Communications:Mobile-Cell-Phone-SMS Articles from EzineArticles.com
Why Do Businesses Use A Send SMS Message Online Service?
Any business today knows how important it is for them to be able to communicate effectively with their clients if they want to see theirs thrive. One way of course of doing this is through them sending information regularly to their customers by sending them SMS messages.
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The SEO Big Four
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, best practices can?t be mastered or accomplished in a day. It requires getting to know Google like an intimate friend ? what it likes, what it doesn?t like, where it ?
Source: http://www.cursebuster.vpanelhosting.net/wordpress/?p=2173
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Saturday, September 22, 2012
Endeavour flies by Golden Gate Bridge, other sites
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Space shuttle Endeavour crisscrossed California Friday in a last aerial hurrah before retiring to a Los Angeles museum.
Hitching a ride on top of a jumbo jet, the pair departed Edwards Air Force Base, 100 miles north of Los Angeles, circling the high desert that gave birth to the shuttle fleet before heading to Northern California.
Thousands of spectators jammed rooftop buildings and streets in Sacramento, cheering as Endeavour made two loops around the state Capitol. A crowd of schoolchildren squealed in delight during the second flyover.
Matthew Montgomery took a break from his work as a legislative aide and brought his 2-year-old son, Tavion, to see Endeavour airborne.
"I was going to leave him in daycare but thought this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal," said Montgomery, whose aunt was an engineer on the early Apollo missions.
After circling Sacramento, Endeavour veered toward the San Francisco Bay area, swooping over the Golden Gate Bridge as throngs snapped pictures on their cellphones and shared on social media sites.
Next up: Los Angeles-area landmarks including the Santa Monica Pier, Hollywood Sign and Disneyland.
At the Griffith Observatory, overlooking the Hollywood Sign, a crowd of people ? many dressed in shorts and flip-flops with kids in tow ? camped out on beach chairs and blankets on the lush lawns, waiting for a flyover later in Endeavour's journey.
The nearly 5-hour air show will culminate with an afternoon landing at the Los Angeles International Airport for an arrival ceremony ? then, in a few weeks, a slow-speed journey across town through neighborhoods to its final museum home.
Since Endeavour will buzz by some of the Golden State's most iconic sights, law enforcement and transportation authorities warned motorists not to "gawk and drive."
"We want people to take in this majestic show," Los Angeles police Cmdr. Scott Kroeber said earlier this week. "But if you're driving, please drive and don't try to take in the show simultaneously."
Extra officers will be on duty along the freeways near the airport to make sure traffic flows smoothly as the shuttle zooms overhead.
Endeavour returned to its birthplace Thursday after an emotional cross-country ferry flight that made a special flyover of Tucson, Ariz., to honor its last commander, Mark Kelly, and his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Giffords, who is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head, was "hooting and hollering" as Endeavour looped around her hometown, according to her former aide C.J. Karamargin.
NASA's shuttle fleet, which retired last year after three decades of flight, was assembled in Palmdale near Edwards Air Force Base. The military outpost 100 miles north of Los Angeles served as the original shuttle landing strip and remained a backup site in case of stormy weather at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
"We're so excited to be welcoming Endeavour home in grand style with these flyovers," Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center, said earlier this week.
The youngest shuttle, Endeavour replaced Challenger, which blew up during liftoff in 1986. NASA lost another shuttle, Columbia, in 2003 when it disintegrated during re-entry. Fourteen astronauts were killed.
During 25 missions, Endeavour spent 299 days in space and orbited Earth nearly 4,700 times, racking up 123 million miles.
On its maiden flight in 1992, a trio of spacewalking astronauts grabbed a stranded communications satellite in for repair. It also flew the first repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to fix a faulty mirror. But most of its flights ferried cargo and equipment to the International Space Station, which is near completion.
Under White House orders to explore beyond low-Earth orbit, NASA is hitching rides on Russian rockets to the orbiting laboratory until private companies can provide regular service.
Endeavour is the second of three remaining shuttles to head to its retirement home. In April, Discovery arrived at the Smithsonian Institution's hangar in Virginia. Atlantis, which closed out the shuttle program, will stay in Florida where it will be towed a short distance to the Kennedy Space Center's visitor center in the fall.
Endeavour will remain at an airport hangar for several weeks as crews ready the shuttle for its own road trip. Unlike Atlantis, it will creep through city streets to the California Science Center near downtown.
Some 400 trees will be cleared along the 12-mile route to make room, a move that has riled some residents in affected neighborhoods. Museum officials have pledged to replant double the number of chopped trees.
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Associated Press writers Tom Verdin and Juliet Williams in Sacramento contributed to this report. Alicia Chang can be followed at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
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Online:
Shuttle history: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle
California Science Center: http://www.californiasciencecenter.org
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/endeavour-flies-golden-gate-bridge-other-sites-175322343.html
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