Via Time Techland:
A spokesman for Zenith Electronics says Eugene Polley, the inventor of the first wireless TV remote control, has died.
John Taylor says the former Zenith engineer died of natural causes Sunday at a suburban Chicago hospital. He was 96.
Great invention.
Via the NYT:
When Facebook goes public in the coming weeks, there will be a lot of winners. Among them is one of the stalwarts of the tech industry, Microsoft, which has a small stake in the company.
But Microsoft has an even bigger bet on Facebook through an alliance between its Bing search engine and the social network. And that partnership is about to get even deeper.
On Thursday, Microsoft introduced a set of changes to Bing that it says will improve searches by tapping into the expertise of friends on Facebook and other social networks. The company hopes to mine people’s online social connections to provide more personal search results for everything from hotel searches in Hawaii to movie recommendations.
Here’s a “handy” video from Microsoft to explain how this works.
According to the report authored by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh: “Google, Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo! Search and other search engine companies are rightly seen as media enterprises, much as the New York Times Company or CNN are media enterprises” and deserve the same protections. It adds that search engines have the same freedom to choose a set of links as do news aggregators like the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post.
Search engine results are a form of opinion, says the report, in which companies offer information they think is most relevant to users.
In practice, this would mean Google has the right to punt sites like Yelp, which has complained that Google is a monopolist, to the search equivalent of Siberia if it decided that was best for users (Yelp now comes up second in a search for “restaurant review”).
The US has a long history of companies claiming First Amendment protections. One example is a newspaper that was allowed to exclude certain advertisers even though it had a “substantial monopoly.”
If search engines such as Google begin choosing what links are presented, as do news aggregators like the Drudge Report, then they are no better than the old Yahoo! sites.
The upcoming London Olympic games are driving up property values in the surrounding areas. And, with the increase in property, comes an increase in rent.
Low-income people who live near London’s Olympic Stadium may have to move to other parts of the country due to rising rents, the borough’s mayor said Tuesday.
Newham Mayor Robin Wales said a new U.K. government policy limiting rental subsidies means that many people can no longer afford to live in the east London borough that now includes the sprawling Olympic Park.
Newham has long been one of the country’s poorest boroughs, but the newly built Olympic Stadium, a large new shopping mall and public parks have regenerated parts of the borough and caused rents to rise.
Predictably, this is a due to the policies of evil conservatives.
In Britain, people with low incomes can apply to have all or part of their housing costs subsidized by local authorities, but the Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-led government last year introduced a controversial benefit cap that limits rent subsidies.
The maximum is now around 400 pounds ($646) a week for a four-bedroom house. Most people are only eligible for much smaller properties with lower benefit caps.
And, children are hardest hit.
“People are being driven out of their homes, their kids are being ripped out of schools, because they can no longer afford their rents,” he told The Associated Press. “These are people’s lives we are dealing with.”
Unreal.
Those evil corporations… Via Der Spiegel:
With the country mired in debt, Italy’s cultural budget has been slashed in recent years, spelling trouble for several historic sites. Many local politicians have turned to corporate sponsorships to raise the money necessary for vital upkeep. The trend has attracted considerable criticism.
The story continues.
Zambuto is the mayor of the town of Agrigent in Sicily, and he says the archeological site there is worth €2 billion. He wants to do his part to market that potential. With local elections approaching in May, Zambuto, 39, is on the stump, and his idea of auctioning off the rights to the site, in hopes of attracting major investors from around the world, plays a central role in his campaign speeches. Only the best will be awarded the contract, he promises. The money generated by the auction, he says, will be invested in the urgently needed maintenance of the temples.
“Italy has the world’s largest heritage of cultural treasures,” says Zambuto, “but we do nothing to maintain it. It’s the government’s responsibility, of course, but if the government is broke — well, then Versace can certainly be a solution.” Or Louis Vuitton, for that matter. As long the investor isn’t a Russian oligarch like Mikhail Prokhorov, Vladimir Putin’s challenger in the presidential elections in March, who has reportedly expressed an interest in buying the Temple of Zeus — although no one knows why he wants it.
Remember ideas that start in Europe have a way of working their way here.
Can you imagine a Pepsi Mt. Rushmore Experience?
It appears pleading for dear leader to “do something” that will help Detroit out of its death spiral passes for editorial perspective at Detroit’s ‘more conservative’ news paper.
Via The Detroit News editorial page:
President Barack Obama arrives today for a pair of fundraisers in Dearborn and West Bloomfield. The president runs on a tightly controlled schedule, but surely his suburban hosts would forgive a delay to allow him to take a detour through Detroit.
The president should see with his own eyes, and from ground level, the depth and disrepair, abandonment and danger in Detroit’s neighborhoods.
If we could suggest a route, we’d start his tour on Detroit’s largely deserted east side, past the heaps of rubble that were once businesses on Harper near City Airport, and into the blocks surrounding Denby High School off East Outer Drive, where there are more abandoned homes than occupied ones. But he could throw a stone almost anywhere in Detroit and hit neighborhoods that have been eaten away by cancerous blight.
It would be an invaluable field trip for the president — either today or sometime in the near future — to witness the shocking living conditions in so many Detroit neighborhoods. We can only imagine that he would summon the full force of his administration to get creative in seeking ways Washington could help stimulate a community revival in Detroit and, for that matter, other industrial cities that suffer from urban decay.
Really?
The opinion leaders at Detroit’s more conservative paper are pleading for Obama and his fellow Washing politicians to get creative? Didn’t we try creative with Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society (way back in 1964)?
Your imagination and your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
A truly creative solution to our (here in Detroit and the rest of the United States) economic problems would involve local, state and national politicians playing a lot of golf while staying out of the economy.
Obama lives it up on the basketball court Easter Sunday:
The “Shoot for Strength” activity took place on the White House basketball court, where Daryll “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins and legendary shooting guard Mitch Richmond joined Globetrotters’ Herb Lang, Fatima Maddox, Jacob Tucker and Wun Versher to conduct drills with kids. The drill consisted of the kids doing pushups every time the professional players or President Obama scored.
In his first three shots he went 0 for 3. He missed seven shots before sinking his first.
The kids switched with the shooters, and the president dropped to the ground to do some pushups.
“Somebody saw me cheating on my pushups,” the president joked.
Way to set an example Barack. It takes quite a man to cheat in a contest with kids.
While Obama cheated on the kids, the United States economy continues to decay:
1. Every fifth man in America is out of a job. Indeed, black male unemployment is now at the highest rate it has ever been since the U.S. government began collecting statistics on the subject in 1972. Just 56.9 percent of black men over the age of 20 are now working. Indeed, according to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), one out of every six African Americans, male or female, are now unemployed.
2. Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.
3. On the last day of President Bush’s presidency, gas prices were $1.84 a gallon. Today under Obama, the average price of a gallon of gas costs $3.94. Easter weekend in Catalina Island, California, drivers saw prices topping $7 a gallon.
4. In 2006 and 2007, 90% of all college graduates found a job. Under Obama, just 56% of college graduates are able to find a job.
5. More than one in four U.S. homeowners are “under water” or owe more than their homes are worth. The housing crisis has now destroyed $7 trillion in U.S. household wealth. Another 9.5 million homes are still at risk of default, sparking what analysts believe will be a second wave of foreclosures in the months to come.
6. President Obama has increased the national debt more in three years than President Bush did in eight. Under Bush, the debt rose $4.899 trillion in eight years. In three years, Obama has exploded the debt by $4.939 trillion.
7. A record 87,897,000 Americans are no longer in the labor force. When the number of individuals who have stopped looking for a job and/or who are working part-time but desire full-time employment is included–a figure known as the “underemployment rate”–real unemployment stands at 19.1%.
The real unemployment rate is 19.1% and Obama continues to spin rather than man up:
Despite the slowdown in hiring, President Barack Obama says overall job growth has been encouraging.
“Our economy’s now created more than 4 million private sector jobs over the past two years and more than 600,000 in the past three months alone,” he said. “But it’s clear to every American that there will still be ups and downs along the way and that we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
Obama cheats on kids and lies to the American people. What a guy.
BTW, the creepy picture on the basketballs Obama used while cheating, are reminiscent of the creepy American flags his zombies… I mean supporters… flew a few weeks ago.
Talk about a cult of personality…
As we move forward from this pivotal phase, the opposition should continue to take important steps to bring about a transition that is peaceful, inclusive and just. As the leadership of the TNC has made clear, the rights of all Libyans must be respected. True justice will not come from reprisals and violence; it will come from reconciliation and a Libya that allows its citizens to determine their own destiny.
In that effort, the United States will be a friend and a partner. We will join with allies and partners to continue the work of safeguarding the people of Libya. As remaining regime elements menace parts of the country, I’ve directed my team to be in close contact with NATO as well as the United Nations to determine other steps that we can take. To deal with the humanitarian impact, we’re working to ensure that critical supplies reach those in need, particularly those who have been wounded.
Libya isn’t getting much play in the ‘news’ these days, since the mission there is not going all that well.
Via gulfnews.com (UAE):
Having intervened to depose Muammar Gaddafi, the West seems to be dissociating itself from the chaos that has ensued in Libya.
With Libyan oil production back to normal, the ‘Friends of Libya’ have re-invented themselves as the ‘Friends of Syria’, and are focused on that tinderbox instead.Meanwhile Libya careers wildly towards disintegration. The Nato-backed revolution in Libya re-ignited old feuds and rivalries, many of them based on ethnicity, tribal loyalties and long-running vendettas; it has spewed up some new ones too.
There are dozens of heavily-armed, warring militias, fiercely guarding their various territories which they run like mini-fiefdoms.
The interim government, the National Transition Council (NTC), is unable to disarm the militias although it has tried to buy their loyalty. Last month the NTC set up a recruitment centre in an old police academy in Tripoli, paying fighters from local brigades hefty sums to patrol the capital. The plan back-fired when gunmen from a rival militia attacked the academy, chased everyone away in a hail of bullets and took the money to pay their own men.
Many Libyans are disillusioned with the unelected, Nato-backed NTC, and fear that its leaders are weak and self-interested. They worry that their revolution has been hijacked and that the NTC has failed to establish a stable infrastructure on which to build the new Libya. The NTC includes several men who were either part of, or close to, the old regime and has signally failed to stamp its authority on the post-revolutionary landscape by bringing the principal culprits to trial — including Saif Al Islam Gaddafi.
Of course, the ‘news’ will not hilight anything that will hinder “The One’s” re-election campaign.
In 1983, a third of all licensed drivers in the United States were under age 30. Today, only about 22 percent of drivers are twentysomethings or teenagers. Further, about 94 percent of Americans in their 20s had a driver’s license in 1983, compared to about 84 percent in 2008.
Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway and South Korea have seen similar declines over time. However, countries such as Israel, Finland, Poland, Latvia, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands have experienced an increase in both young and older drivers over time—although the increase was generally smaller among the younger group.
“Higher societal wealth, an older population in general and a higher proportion of the population living in megacities were each associated with higher licensure rates among young persons,” said Sivak, a research professor at UMTRI. “These patterns are possibly reflections of higher mobility being associated with these factors.
“On the other hand, countries with higher proportions of Internet users were associated with lower licensure rates among young persons, which is consistent with the hypothesis that access to virtual contact through electronic means reduces the need for actual contact among young people.”
Teens and young adults are in constant communication with each other creating less need for obtaining a drivers licence.
If you’re thinking that the J-12 concept looks to be a Wrangler Unlimited fitted with the JK-8 Independence pickup conversion kit and the face of a 1960s-era Jeep J-series Gladiator truck, that’s because it is one. Of course, Jeep didn’t simply graft the face of an old Gladiator onto the front of a JK-8. It also added 18 inches of length to the back of the donor Wrangler Unlimited’s frame, resulting in a full six-foot pickup bed. Functionally, Jeep installed a three-inch suspension lift, new sway bars, and locking axles front and rear. The J-12’s wheel and tire package—old-school 16-inch smooth steel wheels and 36-inch tires—really add to the pickup’s classic feel. Inside, Jeep melded two bucket seats together to create a sort of bench seat. Just like the FC, the J-12 gets plaid cloth accents throughout the interior.
I hope Chrysler goes forward with this concept.
