Large corporations regularly use big data to get insight on consumer behavior, target their marketing and boost revenue.
But small businesses typically do little with big data. Until now, most owners have considered it too difficult, too expensive and just plain intimidating.
That’s changing. These days an increasing number of small businesses are collecting and crunching volumes of data to lift their sales.
“Small businesses shouldn’t be scared off by big data,” says Steve King, partner at Emergent Research and coauthor of the recent report The New Data Democracy: How Big Data Will Revolutionize the Lives of Small Businesses and Consumers. “The growth of the Internet, wireless networks, smartphones, social media, sensors and other digital technology is fueling a big data revolution. Big data was the exclusive domain of statisticians and large corporations but not anymore.”
There is now an array of technologies that give small businesses access to cost-effective, sophisticated data analytics. Google AdWords, for one. It’s a big data app that offers small firms market insight, improved decision-making ability and better bottom-line results—all those tools that were once the exclusive domain of corporations.
King gives an example. The Spillers Group, a company that owns three restaurants in Dallas, uses a data application called Roambi that enables it to share among management all the business information it collects, including point-of-sale data, labor metrics and accounting numbers. With Roambi, Spillers can link managers’ pay to their restaurant’s performance. The app has also cut Spillers’ labor costs 10%, saving thousands of dollars every two weeks.
“Before their data was a hodgepodge,” King says. “They had sales data in one place, supply data in another place and staffing data in another—and they never looked at how to bring them all together. So they were inefficient when it came to scheduling and supplies. When they brought the data together they discovered quickly they could cut costs by making minor changes. That’s a huge win.”
Small businesses that use data intelligently can do business better. They can improve pricing and just-in-time supply chains. They can find cheaper suppliers that are closer to their location and that offer more price transparency.
Small businesses can also use data to tailor products and services to individual customers. “Local shopkeepers once knew what their customers liked, right down to color, size and taste,” King says. “Big data is bringing back personalized service by giving businesses greater insight into consumer preferences, many times without even talking to them, because customers leave digital footprints when they use the Internet, use a credit card or post on Facebook FB +5.36%.”
It’s the same information that shopkeepers once collected and memorized from behind the counter. Modern merchants can now gather that data digitally and use it to deliver the goods and services customers want. Result: more loyal customers and higher sales.
Businesses can identify key customers and treat them better. They can understand customer patterns, know when they’re likely to come in and reward them for multiple visits.
“All this big data is helping to level the playing field for small businesses,” King says. “Even though the field is still tilted in favor of big business, big data is a way for small business to fight back. A lot of this stuff is made easy for small business, like Google GOOG +0.27% Analytics. You don’t have to be a data scientist to use these tools and get good insights.”
Roofing contractors are not the first professionals who spring to mind when you think cutting-edge technology. But some roofers are using big data to drastically cut their costs. A contractor used to take a call, drive to look at a roof and, often, realize it was not a job he could take on. That meant time and money wasted. Smart roofing companies use big data to avoid that expense. A contractor gets a call, takes an address and inspects the roof at Google Earth. If he does the job, he can use Google Earth to check out the roofs of other homes in the neighborhood and offer the owners a deal.
“Another trend is the rise of sensors to track and make decisions,” King says. “Small businesses are starting to benefit from that. FedEx has a cool product called SenseAware that lets you put sensors on perishable packages. It provides a shipment’s exact location, precise package temperature and information on whether a package has been opened or exposed to light or whether it was dropped, based on the recorded G forces.”
Nice breakdown. I’m gonna have to go read Stu’s take on that state. People forget this, but Begich was not declared the winner until the week of Thanksgiving. On election night Ted Stevens – who was found guilty less than two weeks before Election Day – was ahead by a couple thousand votes, but so many votes came from far-flung places that eventually Begich won.
(Side note: They’d eventually have a 60-senator caucus, but Dems went to sleep Election Night ’08 with only 56 certain! Oregon, Alaska and Minnesota hadn’t been called, and Specter was 6 months away from switching parties.)
In each of those top four races you’ve listed, Rs are trying to re-litigate the health-care law. Begich, Pryor, Landrieu and Hagan all voted for “Obamacare” and this is their first time on the ballot since. Republicans believe they can nationalize these races around those votes. Once again Senate Rs will try to nationalize the races, and Ds will once again run these races as mini-presidential campaigns built around the individual personalities and the broad cross-section of positions taken by incumbents.Read the full story at www.ecived.com/en!
2013年5月30日星期四
2013年5月28日星期二
Twitter's Lead Generation Card expands social media marketing options
This week Twitter announced a bold expansion of its year-old Twitter Cards program, giving marketers a new way to directly obtain interested business leads via the social media service.
The new Lead Generation Card is squarely aimed at business tweeters, and it functions a lot like its name implies. Marketers can now embed a card within a standard Twitter message, generally promising some sort of promotional offer (such as "50% off on your first visit"). When readers expand the tweet by clicking on the embedded link, they're prompted to send their information to you. The neat trick is that the user doesn't have to fill out an "I'm interested" form. Their name, Twitter user name, and email address are pulled from their Twitter account, so getting in touch is a single-click operation. On the back end, you receive this information directly, after which you can follow up with the reader to make your sales pitch. In conjunction with Promoted Tweets, the promotional punch of the Lead Generation Card could be impressive.
The Lead Generation Card is currently in beta and launched this week to Twitter's managed clients. The company says it will be made available to small- and medium-sized businesses soon.
The Lead Generation Card is just the latest expansion to the functionality of Twitter, which originally limited tweets to a mere 140 characters of nothing but text. But now, as regular Twitter users surely have found, tweets can be embedded with all manner of extra goodies, including the popular Photo Card for embedded photographs and the new App Card for those who want to promote links to mobile phone applications.
The Lead Generation idea isn't a new one. LinkedIn pioneered the concept through its advertising system, which gives marketers an option to overlay their page with a lead collection pop-up that's similar to Twitter's Lead Generation Card. LinkedIn's Lead Generation prompt asks simply, "Would you like Bob's Donuts to follow up with you Indoor Positioning System?" As with Twitter's Lead Generation Card, potential customers can choose to send their information to the marketer with a single click.
This is a smart move on Twitter's end and potentially a great option for small businesses. It's a much needed step that may finally solve, at least for some businesses, a long-running, nagging problem with social media advertising. Many a business owner has now figured out that social media ads can make it easy to get additional followers on Twitter or Facebook, and then wondered what to do with them. For many business, followers and "Likes" are great, but they don't necessarily lead to increased sales. A case in point: Last month the New York Times reported on Coca-Cola's corporate study which took a hard look at its social media following. Despite 60 million Facebook fans and 700,000 Twitter followers, Coke "found that online buzz had no quantifiable impact on short-term sales."
Samsung targeted this midfield between a laptop and a tablet with its ATIV Smart PC range of laptops - essentially a tablet PC with a detachable solid keyboard and mouse trackpad. There's the ATIV Smart PC – which is the subject of this review – and the ATIV Smart PC Pro, which has a stronger kick to the teeth and your wallet.
But even the "starter" one of the two has a solid right-hook, albeit finely hidden. Let me explain: If you were to take a look at the specs, it might not sound all that great, but the real-life performance is quite impressive – listen to this: dual core Intel Atom processor, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 8 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front camera, built-in wireless, 3G slot, S-Pen stylus, 11.6-inch screen, 1366x768 resolution, 128 GB built-in storage, microSD slot, and Bluetooth.
Like I said: on paper this doesn't sound all that impressive, but when you start to use it you'll be surprised at how well it handles. Much of this is due to Windows 8 being fairly light on its feet – you never get the feeling that the hardware had been partnered unfairly with the operating system.
Of course, the Pro version gets really serious. Most of the features between the two versions are the same, but the Pro has a few performance boosters: Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB RAM, 256 GB built-in storage, and a 1920x1080 Full HD resolution screen. There's a small trade-off in the 5 megapixel rear camera.
Both come with three USB ports – one on the tablet and two on the detachable keyboard. The tablet part of the PC also has a mini-HDMI, a microSD, and a SIM card slot. Tucked into the bottom right corner on the back of the tablet you'll also find an S-Pen stylus.
Personally I found the stylus fairly cumbersome to use as it wasn't sensitive enough to – quite frankly – replace my finger when using in tablet mode and certainly not good enough to replace a mouse when using in laptop mode.
The star of the hardware show is the physical keyboard – it has solid, responsive keys and the trackpad works as it should. In fact, when you've got it connected to the tablet, you'll see no difference between what you have before you and a normal laptop.
There were two hardware design issues that completely burned the harvest for me though: the tilt-level of the screen and opening the clamshell "laptop" (the latter revealing a shocking lack of foresight in design).
When the tablet is connected to the keyboard and serves as the screen, you can't tilt it back past a certain angle. This is very annoying as it doesn't go back far enough for you to have the correct viewing angle if you're tall. I tried to see whether there is a reason for why they would design it like this, but for the life of me I couldn't find out any. It's especially annoying as Samsung has created tablet/laptop hybrids before and those could fold open flat.
The other rather annoying niggle is that the opening mechanism – when using this device in laptop mode – is badly designed. There's a lot of fumbling going on before you're able to flip the clamshell open.
These two elements are frustrating and disappointing, but far from show-stoppers as it's off-set so much by the ATIV Smart PC's other attributes.
Case in point is the battery life: Samsung claims a 14.5 hour Mobile Mark battery life (that's actual usage, not standby time) and 10 hours video play-time. Normally one giggles a bit when faced with such numbers, but we got very close to that – which impressed us no end.
Right, so how much does all of this cost? Indeed, that's the thing: the ATIV Smart PC has a RRP of R10449 and the Pro version goes for R18999. Yes, those are choke-on-your-pie kind of numbers... but is it worth it? Perhaps not... I love this laptop but the price is steep.
The new Lead Generation Card is squarely aimed at business tweeters, and it functions a lot like its name implies. Marketers can now embed a card within a standard Twitter message, generally promising some sort of promotional offer (such as "50% off on your first visit"). When readers expand the tweet by clicking on the embedded link, they're prompted to send their information to you. The neat trick is that the user doesn't have to fill out an "I'm interested" form. Their name, Twitter user name, and email address are pulled from their Twitter account, so getting in touch is a single-click operation. On the back end, you receive this information directly, after which you can follow up with the reader to make your sales pitch. In conjunction with Promoted Tweets, the promotional punch of the Lead Generation Card could be impressive.
The Lead Generation Card is currently in beta and launched this week to Twitter's managed clients. The company says it will be made available to small- and medium-sized businesses soon.
The Lead Generation Card is just the latest expansion to the functionality of Twitter, which originally limited tweets to a mere 140 characters of nothing but text. But now, as regular Twitter users surely have found, tweets can be embedded with all manner of extra goodies, including the popular Photo Card for embedded photographs and the new App Card for those who want to promote links to mobile phone applications.
The Lead Generation idea isn't a new one. LinkedIn pioneered the concept through its advertising system, which gives marketers an option to overlay their page with a lead collection pop-up that's similar to Twitter's Lead Generation Card. LinkedIn's Lead Generation prompt asks simply, "Would you like Bob's Donuts to follow up with you Indoor Positioning System?" As with Twitter's Lead Generation Card, potential customers can choose to send their information to the marketer with a single click.
This is a smart move on Twitter's end and potentially a great option for small businesses. It's a much needed step that may finally solve, at least for some businesses, a long-running, nagging problem with social media advertising. Many a business owner has now figured out that social media ads can make it easy to get additional followers on Twitter or Facebook, and then wondered what to do with them. For many business, followers and "Likes" are great, but they don't necessarily lead to increased sales. A case in point: Last month the New York Times reported on Coca-Cola's corporate study which took a hard look at its social media following. Despite 60 million Facebook fans and 700,000 Twitter followers, Coke "found that online buzz had no quantifiable impact on short-term sales."
Samsung targeted this midfield between a laptop and a tablet with its ATIV Smart PC range of laptops - essentially a tablet PC with a detachable solid keyboard and mouse trackpad. There's the ATIV Smart PC – which is the subject of this review – and the ATIV Smart PC Pro, which has a stronger kick to the teeth and your wallet.
But even the "starter" one of the two has a solid right-hook, albeit finely hidden. Let me explain: If you were to take a look at the specs, it might not sound all that great, but the real-life performance is quite impressive – listen to this: dual core Intel Atom processor, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 8 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front camera, built-in wireless, 3G slot, S-Pen stylus, 11.6-inch screen, 1366x768 resolution, 128 GB built-in storage, microSD slot, and Bluetooth.
Like I said: on paper this doesn't sound all that impressive, but when you start to use it you'll be surprised at how well it handles. Much of this is due to Windows 8 being fairly light on its feet – you never get the feeling that the hardware had been partnered unfairly with the operating system.
Of course, the Pro version gets really serious. Most of the features between the two versions are the same, but the Pro has a few performance boosters: Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB RAM, 256 GB built-in storage, and a 1920x1080 Full HD resolution screen. There's a small trade-off in the 5 megapixel rear camera.
Both come with three USB ports – one on the tablet and two on the detachable keyboard. The tablet part of the PC also has a mini-HDMI, a microSD, and a SIM card slot. Tucked into the bottom right corner on the back of the tablet you'll also find an S-Pen stylus.
Personally I found the stylus fairly cumbersome to use as it wasn't sensitive enough to – quite frankly – replace my finger when using in tablet mode and certainly not good enough to replace a mouse when using in laptop mode.
The star of the hardware show is the physical keyboard – it has solid, responsive keys and the trackpad works as it should. In fact, when you've got it connected to the tablet, you'll see no difference between what you have before you and a normal laptop.
There were two hardware design issues that completely burned the harvest for me though: the tilt-level of the screen and opening the clamshell "laptop" (the latter revealing a shocking lack of foresight in design).
When the tablet is connected to the keyboard and serves as the screen, you can't tilt it back past a certain angle. This is very annoying as it doesn't go back far enough for you to have the correct viewing angle if you're tall. I tried to see whether there is a reason for why they would design it like this, but for the life of me I couldn't find out any. It's especially annoying as Samsung has created tablet/laptop hybrids before and those could fold open flat.
The other rather annoying niggle is that the opening mechanism – when using this device in laptop mode – is badly designed. There's a lot of fumbling going on before you're able to flip the clamshell open.
These two elements are frustrating and disappointing, but far from show-stoppers as it's off-set so much by the ATIV Smart PC's other attributes.
Case in point is the battery life: Samsung claims a 14.5 hour Mobile Mark battery life (that's actual usage, not standby time) and 10 hours video play-time. Normally one giggles a bit when faced with such numbers, but we got very close to that – which impressed us no end.
Right, so how much does all of this cost? Indeed, that's the thing: the ATIV Smart PC has a RRP of R10449 and the Pro version goes for R18999. Yes, those are choke-on-your-pie kind of numbers... but is it worth it? Perhaps not... I love this laptop but the price is steep.
Doubts face a new proposal for prominent downtown parcel
He sees the stars finally aligning for the property where the Southern Hotel used to stand. Clarke has proposed developing a 22-story apartment tower and parking garage there. There's now strong demand for housing and parking downtown, Clarke said.
The project would incorporate three vacant buildings fronting East Baltimore Street, but not the Thomas Building at the corner of Light and East Baltimore streets that's home to a McDonald's.
City development officials, disappointed by many false starts, are skeptical that construction will happen there any time soon.
"Our board of directors doesn't believe the current ownership … will ever build anything on the site," said Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, which monitors economic and real estate development in the city center.
The partnership has asked City Hall to consider moving toward condemnation so that new owners can try their hand at developing the properties.
The land is owned by Capital Guidance Corp., a private global investment firm with offices in Washington, Paris, Geneva and Beirut. In the early 1990s the firm brought on Clarke, who has worked on apartment and office buildings throughout the metro area, including the Baltimorean Apartments in Charles Village, to develop the Indoor Positioning System.
Two decades ago when he was first brought on, Clarke sought to use the site for an office tower.
"In everybody's mind, that was Main and Main," he said of the Light and East Baltimore intersection, just steps from Charles Center. Though an office building seemed like a natural fit, no one wanted office space at the time, he said, and the idea fizzled.
The Southern Hotel, which was to be incorporated into the redevelopment, eventually was torn down and Clarke considered other options over the years. A hotel integrated within an office tower was proposed, as was a mixed hotel and residential building. Proposals were submitted for headquarters buildings at the site for T. Rowe Price and Exelon. Nothing stuck — except for the surface parking lot, which has been leased to tenants of 10 Light Street.
Capital Guidance believed Exelon to be a good prospect, Clarke said. The utility company could get a "huge amount of parking" and easy access to the city's metro system at the site, he said. "At the end of the day, they chose Harbor East."
In 2011, a consulting firm commissioned to analyze the site determined that its true economic potential was in residential use.
That same year, Clarke and Hord Coplan Macht Inc., the Baltimore-based architecture firm that has worked on various plans for the site since the early 2000s, presented a 16-story residential tower to the city's architectural review board. The residential tower, called One Light Street, was well received by the design panel but that plan, too, failed to move forward.
When it rains it pours or so it must feel to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives as the many accumulated clouds on their horizon finally give way to a perfect storm.
By now the Prime Minister probably wants voters to forget that he ever mused about his hope for an Ontario Conservative trifecta made up of Ontario’s Tim Hudak, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and himself.
The last thing Harper needs as he tries to control the damage of a spending scandal in the Senate was another hit on the law-and-order image of the conservative movement.
In his book, drug allegations involving Toronto’s leading municipal Conservatives almost certainly qualify as an additional “distraction” — to use the word he chose last week to describe the Senate crisis.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s 2013 budget played to tepid reviews. He has been battling a painful illness. In the lead-up to a mid-term shuffle there has been unprecedented speculation as to his future role in the government.
For different reasons, outgoing Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright — who both played strategic roles on Harper’s economic watch — are simultaneously out of the picture.
For the first time since Harper became leader, some elements of the religious right have waged open war on his leadership. That comes on the heels of a public collision between the prime minister’s parliamentary lieutenants and the social conservative wing of his caucus over the abortion issue. That clash has morphed into a larger internal battle over the democratic rights of government MPs.
An early attempt to clip the wings of Justin Trudeau seems to have backfired. Polls suggest that the latest Liberal leader is less vulnerable to the black magic of Conservative spin doctors than his predecessors.
In yet another first, the prime minister lost a seat to a byelection earlier this month and, in the process, his only Newfoundland-and-Labrador minister. Peter Penashue had initially resigned over 2011 election spending violations.
On the same general theme, a federal court judge found that fraudulent phone calls to non-Conservative voters in the last election were part of a systemic attempt to prevent them from voting. While last week’s ruling did not point the finger at the Conservatives, it did conclude that whoever was behind the manoeuvre accessed the party’s data bank.
The project would incorporate three vacant buildings fronting East Baltimore Street, but not the Thomas Building at the corner of Light and East Baltimore streets that's home to a McDonald's.
City development officials, disappointed by many false starts, are skeptical that construction will happen there any time soon.
"Our board of directors doesn't believe the current ownership … will ever build anything on the site," said Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, which monitors economic and real estate development in the city center.
The partnership has asked City Hall to consider moving toward condemnation so that new owners can try their hand at developing the properties.
The land is owned by Capital Guidance Corp., a private global investment firm with offices in Washington, Paris, Geneva and Beirut. In the early 1990s the firm brought on Clarke, who has worked on apartment and office buildings throughout the metro area, including the Baltimorean Apartments in Charles Village, to develop the Indoor Positioning System.
Two decades ago when he was first brought on, Clarke sought to use the site for an office tower.
"In everybody's mind, that was Main and Main," he said of the Light and East Baltimore intersection, just steps from Charles Center. Though an office building seemed like a natural fit, no one wanted office space at the time, he said, and the idea fizzled.
The Southern Hotel, which was to be incorporated into the redevelopment, eventually was torn down and Clarke considered other options over the years. A hotel integrated within an office tower was proposed, as was a mixed hotel and residential building. Proposals were submitted for headquarters buildings at the site for T. Rowe Price and Exelon. Nothing stuck — except for the surface parking lot, which has been leased to tenants of 10 Light Street.
Capital Guidance believed Exelon to be a good prospect, Clarke said. The utility company could get a "huge amount of parking" and easy access to the city's metro system at the site, he said. "At the end of the day, they chose Harbor East."
In 2011, a consulting firm commissioned to analyze the site determined that its true economic potential was in residential use.
That same year, Clarke and Hord Coplan Macht Inc., the Baltimore-based architecture firm that has worked on various plans for the site since the early 2000s, presented a 16-story residential tower to the city's architectural review board. The residential tower, called One Light Street, was well received by the design panel but that plan, too, failed to move forward.
When it rains it pours or so it must feel to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives as the many accumulated clouds on their horizon finally give way to a perfect storm.
By now the Prime Minister probably wants voters to forget that he ever mused about his hope for an Ontario Conservative trifecta made up of Ontario’s Tim Hudak, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and himself.
The last thing Harper needs as he tries to control the damage of a spending scandal in the Senate was another hit on the law-and-order image of the conservative movement.
In his book, drug allegations involving Toronto’s leading municipal Conservatives almost certainly qualify as an additional “distraction” — to use the word he chose last week to describe the Senate crisis.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s 2013 budget played to tepid reviews. He has been battling a painful illness. In the lead-up to a mid-term shuffle there has been unprecedented speculation as to his future role in the government.
For different reasons, outgoing Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright — who both played strategic roles on Harper’s economic watch — are simultaneously out of the picture.
For the first time since Harper became leader, some elements of the religious right have waged open war on his leadership. That comes on the heels of a public collision between the prime minister’s parliamentary lieutenants and the social conservative wing of his caucus over the abortion issue. That clash has morphed into a larger internal battle over the democratic rights of government MPs.
An early attempt to clip the wings of Justin Trudeau seems to have backfired. Polls suggest that the latest Liberal leader is less vulnerable to the black magic of Conservative spin doctors than his predecessors.
In yet another first, the prime minister lost a seat to a byelection earlier this month and, in the process, his only Newfoundland-and-Labrador minister. Peter Penashue had initially resigned over 2011 election spending violations.
On the same general theme, a federal court judge found that fraudulent phone calls to non-Conservative voters in the last election were part of a systemic attempt to prevent them from voting. While last week’s ruling did not point the finger at the Conservatives, it did conclude that whoever was behind the manoeuvre accessed the party’s data bank.
2013年5月26日星期日
South Africa
It is “simply wrong” to be spending billions of rands on a brand new presidential jet when so many people in our country are poor and battle each day just to survive, says Democratic Alliance defence spokesman, David Maynier. He was reacting to the confirmation by defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula that funding had been approved to buy a new jet for President Jacob Zuma. Maynier said the existing plane, Inkwazi, was “perfectly serviceable”. The main reason given for spending “a fortune” on a jet was to have one with greater range. Maynier added the acquisition of a new presidential jet was “also likely to be at the cost of other more urgent defence capital acquisition projects such as transport aircraft”.
A former national police commissioner says what happened at Marikana, where 34 miners died at the hands of the police, stems from disgraced commissioner Jackie Selebi’s decision to dismantle public order policing units. George Fivas, who was appointed by president Nelson Mandela, told City Press a major problem at Marikana was that specialist units “were decentralised to stations all over the country”. Fivas said that during Mandela’s term as president, Gauteng had public order policing units “second to none”, who had undergone psychometric testing, and were properly trained and equipped. “How on earth can you have a country where you have so many marches per month without a special unit dealing with public order?” Fivas asked.
Oscar Pistorius has been audited by the South African Revenue Services (Sars) and found to have undeclared taxes, for which the tax authority has fined him “less than R1 million”, according to City Press. The paralympian, accused of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day, had to declare his assets at his bail hearing which led to the audit by Sars. Police say the investigation into Steenkamp’s murder will be completed in August, but Pistorius is due to appear in court on 4 June. The National Prosecuting Authority said in a statement it is “content with the progress thus far" of the investigation. Pistorius is currently out on R1 million bail.
A Kruger National Park ranger has been shot during a joint operation between SANParks and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in which they encountered armed poachers. SANParks spokesman Reynold Thakhuli said ranger Andrew Desmet was shot in the stomach and airlifted to a medical facility in Mbombela where he underwent an operation. He is now in a stable condition. “While this incident was unfolding, another group of rangers made contact with a second group of armed poachers approximately two kilometres away where a shoot-out ensued,” Thakhuli said. The poachers escaped and no arrests were made. SANParks CEO David Mabunda said the ranger corps was facing “a war out there”.
The Cape Town jogger arrested for showing a rude hand sign to a convoy carrying President Jacob Zuma had a rifle bag placed over his head, the High Court has heard. The Sunday Times reported that papers filed by police minister Nathi Mthethwa said the rifle bag was placed on [Maxwele's] head so as to eliminate the possibility of him seeing the route that the president uses to get to his residence”. Chumani Maxwele, a political science student, is suing the state for R1.4 million for wrongful arrest. Lawyers for Mthethwa also said Maxwele's hands were cable-tied behind his back for "his own safety" as police escorting him had equipment and firearms in their possession and which were in close proximity to him”.
Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille says President Jacob Zuma is responsible for clearing whether President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will receive the freedom of Cape Town, an honour they have already accepted. De Lille said Zuma’s office is responsible for the Obama’s itinerary during their upcoming visit to South Africa. "So we've been in contact all the time with the president's office. It is up to the president's office to work with [Obama's] office to make the Indoor Positioning System," she told the Sunday Times. The ANC has accused the DA-run Cape Town city council of “political expediency” in granting the award. Obama has requested meeting Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu during his visit.
The agriculture department must come clean on why meat products – including water buffalo, donkey and horsemeat – from Brazil and India, despite it posing “significant” risks. The Democratic Alliance agriculture spokeswoman, Annette Steyn said a reply to a parliamentary question from agriculture Tina Joemat-Pettersson failed to give reasons why the meat was considered to pose “significant risk” nor who was responsible for importing them. Steyn said the party would submit an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to the department of agriculture to determine exactly why this meat is considered hazardous, and who the responsible parties are. “The public deserves to know,” said Steyn.
Letlapa Mphahlele, president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), has been expelled from the party, Sapa reported. The party’s disciplinary committee said Mphahlele had been charged with failing to account for parliamentary and Independent Electoral Commission funds, not respecting national executive committee (NEC) decisions, and appointing a chief administrator even though the position was not catered for in the PAC constitution. It also accused him of promoting factionalism in the ranks. The committee said neither Mphahlele nor his legal representative attended the meeting.
We will say no more about this except to ask – what is so irresistible about being modern that we should wish it on Jane Austen? What does Persuasion lose, what does Pride and Prejudice lose, by having been written 200 years ago? (I don't need to tell you that the second of those extracts was from Persuasion. The first was from The Temptation by K.M. Golland.
Is Anne Elliot's agitation, on being helped into the carriage by Captain Wentworth, any less materially present to us, is her disarrangement any less sensually felt, because there's no mention of where Wentworth puts his hands in relation to her bra strap? Isn't the fact that he puts his hands on her at all, that “he had placed her there” – sufficiently electrifying to explain Anne Elliot's perturbation? Don't be misled by the decorousness of the language. If the spirit is perturbed, so is the flesh. “His will and his hands had done it”: an act of unlooked-for consideration, but also of confident authority – thrilling, if you like your sea captains masterful – performed by a man Anne regrets having long ago rejected, and whose feelings for her now she can only guess at. “Yes, he had done it.” The shock, the sense of fait accompli, Anne's total capitulation to Wentworth's decisiveness, are all the proof that the thing done is no small matter to her. Just because Anne Elliot's skin is not described as “buzzing with excitement”, doesn't mean it isn't.
A former national police commissioner says what happened at Marikana, where 34 miners died at the hands of the police, stems from disgraced commissioner Jackie Selebi’s decision to dismantle public order policing units. George Fivas, who was appointed by president Nelson Mandela, told City Press a major problem at Marikana was that specialist units “were decentralised to stations all over the country”. Fivas said that during Mandela’s term as president, Gauteng had public order policing units “second to none”, who had undergone psychometric testing, and were properly trained and equipped. “How on earth can you have a country where you have so many marches per month without a special unit dealing with public order?” Fivas asked.
Oscar Pistorius has been audited by the South African Revenue Services (Sars) and found to have undeclared taxes, for which the tax authority has fined him “less than R1 million”, according to City Press. The paralympian, accused of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day, had to declare his assets at his bail hearing which led to the audit by Sars. Police say the investigation into Steenkamp’s murder will be completed in August, but Pistorius is due to appear in court on 4 June. The National Prosecuting Authority said in a statement it is “content with the progress thus far" of the investigation. Pistorius is currently out on R1 million bail.
A Kruger National Park ranger has been shot during a joint operation between SANParks and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in which they encountered armed poachers. SANParks spokesman Reynold Thakhuli said ranger Andrew Desmet was shot in the stomach and airlifted to a medical facility in Mbombela where he underwent an operation. He is now in a stable condition. “While this incident was unfolding, another group of rangers made contact with a second group of armed poachers approximately two kilometres away where a shoot-out ensued,” Thakhuli said. The poachers escaped and no arrests were made. SANParks CEO David Mabunda said the ranger corps was facing “a war out there”.
The Cape Town jogger arrested for showing a rude hand sign to a convoy carrying President Jacob Zuma had a rifle bag placed over his head, the High Court has heard. The Sunday Times reported that papers filed by police minister Nathi Mthethwa said the rifle bag was placed on [Maxwele's] head so as to eliminate the possibility of him seeing the route that the president uses to get to his residence”. Chumani Maxwele, a political science student, is suing the state for R1.4 million for wrongful arrest. Lawyers for Mthethwa also said Maxwele's hands were cable-tied behind his back for "his own safety" as police escorting him had equipment and firearms in their possession and which were in close proximity to him”.
Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille says President Jacob Zuma is responsible for clearing whether President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will receive the freedom of Cape Town, an honour they have already accepted. De Lille said Zuma’s office is responsible for the Obama’s itinerary during their upcoming visit to South Africa. "So we've been in contact all the time with the president's office. It is up to the president's office to work with [Obama's] office to make the Indoor Positioning System," she told the Sunday Times. The ANC has accused the DA-run Cape Town city council of “political expediency” in granting the award. Obama has requested meeting Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu during his visit.
The agriculture department must come clean on why meat products – including water buffalo, donkey and horsemeat – from Brazil and India, despite it posing “significant” risks. The Democratic Alliance agriculture spokeswoman, Annette Steyn said a reply to a parliamentary question from agriculture Tina Joemat-Pettersson failed to give reasons why the meat was considered to pose “significant risk” nor who was responsible for importing them. Steyn said the party would submit an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to the department of agriculture to determine exactly why this meat is considered hazardous, and who the responsible parties are. “The public deserves to know,” said Steyn.
Letlapa Mphahlele, president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), has been expelled from the party, Sapa reported. The party’s disciplinary committee said Mphahlele had been charged with failing to account for parliamentary and Independent Electoral Commission funds, not respecting national executive committee (NEC) decisions, and appointing a chief administrator even though the position was not catered for in the PAC constitution. It also accused him of promoting factionalism in the ranks. The committee said neither Mphahlele nor his legal representative attended the meeting.
We will say no more about this except to ask – what is so irresistible about being modern that we should wish it on Jane Austen? What does Persuasion lose, what does Pride and Prejudice lose, by having been written 200 years ago? (I don't need to tell you that the second of those extracts was from Persuasion. The first was from The Temptation by K.M. Golland.
Is Anne Elliot's agitation, on being helped into the carriage by Captain Wentworth, any less materially present to us, is her disarrangement any less sensually felt, because there's no mention of where Wentworth puts his hands in relation to her bra strap? Isn't the fact that he puts his hands on her at all, that “he had placed her there” – sufficiently electrifying to explain Anne Elliot's perturbation? Don't be misled by the decorousness of the language. If the spirit is perturbed, so is the flesh. “His will and his hands had done it”: an act of unlooked-for consideration, but also of confident authority – thrilling, if you like your sea captains masterful – performed by a man Anne regrets having long ago rejected, and whose feelings for her now she can only guess at. “Yes, he had done it.” The shock, the sense of fait accompli, Anne's total capitulation to Wentworth's decisiveness, are all the proof that the thing done is no small matter to her. Just because Anne Elliot's skin is not described as “buzzing with excitement”, doesn't mean it isn't.
2013年5月23日星期四
Big IBDs Hit a Speed Bump
The rate of revenue growth slowed last year by more than half when compared with the prior year, according to numbers provided by the firms themselves - a falloff due in part to a volatile equity market and a slowdown in recruiting.
And while the industry's fundamentals and long-term prospects look solid, a shifting competitive and regulatory landscape has the potential to radically reshape its future.
"IBDs are a bit of a wild card to predict because their business model is evolving quickly," says Chip Roame, managing partner of Tiburon Strategic Advisors. Citing just one of the industry's X factors, he adds, they "may be the big recipients of the breakaway brokers [from wirehouses] or they may face their own attrition issues as advisors move to fee-only models."
The 28th annual FP50 ranking of the nation's largest independent broker- dealers captures an industry that has healed and grown stronger after the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. Yet the industry also faces a transformative 15- to 20-year process of consolidation, numerous observers say; depending on who you talk to, the broker-dealers are either well along that road or still at the beginning. And a number of external factors last year may have combined to slow industrywide revenue growth: Median revenue grew by 4.7% in 2012, down from 11.9% in 2011.
At first glance, the rankings of the top five seem to have changed little from last year's figures. The industry's leader, behemoth LPL, is still the No. 1 firm by an ever-widening margin after 17 years at the top of the list. With 13,336 advisors, LPL is now the fourth-largest financial services firm in the country after the three largest wirehouses - and dwarfs the No. 2 firm, Ameriprise, with 7,449 independent advisors.
Even typically turbocharged LPL saw its growth cut in half, however, falling to 7.3% last year from 14% in 2011. The drop was even more precipitous for Ameriprise, where growth dropped to 2.4% from 14.8% the Indoor Positioning System. Raymond James, at No. 3, scored a slightly better 4%, off from 15.2% in 2011.
Industry standard bearers Commonwealth, at No. 4, and Cambridge Investment Research, at No. 9, outperformed other members of the top 10 with growth rates of 10.1% and 13.5%, respectively (versus 11.5% and 17% in 2011).
Further down on the top 20, however, the rankings show a couple of other changes. After a period of aggressive recruiting, Wells Fargo Advisors rose to No. 6 from an adjusted seventh-place slot; it also scored the highest growth rate in the top 10, at 14.7%, after a 17% drop in revenue in 2011. MetLife dropped to No.8 from No. 6, reflecting a contraction that may have lead the firm to sell its two independent broker-dealers, Tower Square Securities and Walnut Street Securities, to Cetera Financial Group earlier this year.
In theory, the growth horizon should look practically limitless for this financial advisory channel. Independent broker-dealers stand to benefit, along with the rest of the financial services industry, from the generational transfer of assets now under way. For the next two decades, somewhere between $15 trillion and $30 trillion is anticipated to move from retiring baby boomers to their Gen X and Gen Y offspring. This megatrend, along with expectations that global wealth will balloon to $330 trillion by 2017, from $223 trillion last year , may very well float all financial advisory boats.
"In my view it's the most exciting time to be an advisor in this business," says Larry Roth, CEO of the Advisor Group network and a 30-year industry veteran. "We will have more potential retail clients than we can probably handle for the next 20 years. This year will be the best year or the second best year in [Advisor Group's] history."
Yet the channel faces an array of potential spoilers, including regulatory challenges as well as competition from rival RIAs and wirehouses.
For their part, wirehouses have wised up to the stream of advisor departures. Looking to stem the flow, the Wall Street giants have put rich retention packages in place for key troops. "They've been much more aggressive in trying to lock down their advisors," says Bill Williams, executive vice president of Ameriprise Franchise Group, which oversees the company's independent advisory business.
The wirehouses are also dangling fat transition packages - typically three to three-and-a-half times trailing 12-month revenue - to lure in top fee-based teams, according to Mindy Diamond of advisor recruiting firm Diamond Consultants. She says an advisor who is willing to work in an environment that is less than fully independent might logically think: "Why not go to the wirehouse world, where there's much more support, more technology and a big fat transition package?"
At the other end of the spectrum, the broker-dealers must counter the appeal of the RIA space - particularly if regulators fail to monitor that space as fully as they currently oversee wirehouses and independent broker-dealers. That regulatory differential is actually exacerbating the competition for talent, executives say.
"RIAs are regulated infinitesimally compared to B-Ds," says Cambridge Investment Research CEO Eric Schwartz. "If [regulators] make it harder and harder to do commission-based business, those changes could be a huge blow to the independent B-D space."
Raymond James CEO Scott Curtis agrees. "We need to close that gap," Curtis says. "Those differences are pretty stark and pretty wide. ... [Advisors] all ought to be operating under the same standard of care."
In just one indicator of the current uneven playing field, Curtis points out that blogs and marketing materials, while heavily regulated at independent broker-dealers, escape compliance oversight at RIAs. "That is a big difference," he says.
Traditionally, one of the most important ways to grow revenues has been to add advisors to a firm. Many independent broker-dealers, especially the largest ones, have done so by either acquiring other firms or recruiting advisors. But recruiting in particular has become more difficult, experts say.
"Overall, we are seeing a trend of slowing recruiting," says Phil Palaveev, founder of Seattle-based practice consulting firm Ensemble Practice. "The IBD industry has consolidated dramatically and the remaining firms are very strong. Those are not B-Ds that lose advisors very easily." As competition for talent increases, independent broker-dealers are focusing on internal growth more intensely than ever. In fact, organic growth may be the new, unsung success story.
And while the industry's fundamentals and long-term prospects look solid, a shifting competitive and regulatory landscape has the potential to radically reshape its future.
"IBDs are a bit of a wild card to predict because their business model is evolving quickly," says Chip Roame, managing partner of Tiburon Strategic Advisors. Citing just one of the industry's X factors, he adds, they "may be the big recipients of the breakaway brokers [from wirehouses] or they may face their own attrition issues as advisors move to fee-only models."
The 28th annual FP50 ranking of the nation's largest independent broker- dealers captures an industry that has healed and grown stronger after the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. Yet the industry also faces a transformative 15- to 20-year process of consolidation, numerous observers say; depending on who you talk to, the broker-dealers are either well along that road or still at the beginning. And a number of external factors last year may have combined to slow industrywide revenue growth: Median revenue grew by 4.7% in 2012, down from 11.9% in 2011.
At first glance, the rankings of the top five seem to have changed little from last year's figures. The industry's leader, behemoth LPL, is still the No. 1 firm by an ever-widening margin after 17 years at the top of the list. With 13,336 advisors, LPL is now the fourth-largest financial services firm in the country after the three largest wirehouses - and dwarfs the No. 2 firm, Ameriprise, with 7,449 independent advisors.
Even typically turbocharged LPL saw its growth cut in half, however, falling to 7.3% last year from 14% in 2011. The drop was even more precipitous for Ameriprise, where growth dropped to 2.4% from 14.8% the Indoor Positioning System. Raymond James, at No. 3, scored a slightly better 4%, off from 15.2% in 2011.
Industry standard bearers Commonwealth, at No. 4, and Cambridge Investment Research, at No. 9, outperformed other members of the top 10 with growth rates of 10.1% and 13.5%, respectively (versus 11.5% and 17% in 2011).
Further down on the top 20, however, the rankings show a couple of other changes. After a period of aggressive recruiting, Wells Fargo Advisors rose to No. 6 from an adjusted seventh-place slot; it also scored the highest growth rate in the top 10, at 14.7%, after a 17% drop in revenue in 2011. MetLife dropped to No.8 from No. 6, reflecting a contraction that may have lead the firm to sell its two independent broker-dealers, Tower Square Securities and Walnut Street Securities, to Cetera Financial Group earlier this year.
In theory, the growth horizon should look practically limitless for this financial advisory channel. Independent broker-dealers stand to benefit, along with the rest of the financial services industry, from the generational transfer of assets now under way. For the next two decades, somewhere between $15 trillion and $30 trillion is anticipated to move from retiring baby boomers to their Gen X and Gen Y offspring. This megatrend, along with expectations that global wealth will balloon to $330 trillion by 2017, from $223 trillion last year , may very well float all financial advisory boats.
"In my view it's the most exciting time to be an advisor in this business," says Larry Roth, CEO of the Advisor Group network and a 30-year industry veteran. "We will have more potential retail clients than we can probably handle for the next 20 years. This year will be the best year or the second best year in [Advisor Group's] history."
Yet the channel faces an array of potential spoilers, including regulatory challenges as well as competition from rival RIAs and wirehouses.
For their part, wirehouses have wised up to the stream of advisor departures. Looking to stem the flow, the Wall Street giants have put rich retention packages in place for key troops. "They've been much more aggressive in trying to lock down their advisors," says Bill Williams, executive vice president of Ameriprise Franchise Group, which oversees the company's independent advisory business.
The wirehouses are also dangling fat transition packages - typically three to three-and-a-half times trailing 12-month revenue - to lure in top fee-based teams, according to Mindy Diamond of advisor recruiting firm Diamond Consultants. She says an advisor who is willing to work in an environment that is less than fully independent might logically think: "Why not go to the wirehouse world, where there's much more support, more technology and a big fat transition package?"
At the other end of the spectrum, the broker-dealers must counter the appeal of the RIA space - particularly if regulators fail to monitor that space as fully as they currently oversee wirehouses and independent broker-dealers. That regulatory differential is actually exacerbating the competition for talent, executives say.
"RIAs are regulated infinitesimally compared to B-Ds," says Cambridge Investment Research CEO Eric Schwartz. "If [regulators] make it harder and harder to do commission-based business, those changes could be a huge blow to the independent B-D space."
Raymond James CEO Scott Curtis agrees. "We need to close that gap," Curtis says. "Those differences are pretty stark and pretty wide. ... [Advisors] all ought to be operating under the same standard of care."
In just one indicator of the current uneven playing field, Curtis points out that blogs and marketing materials, while heavily regulated at independent broker-dealers, escape compliance oversight at RIAs. "That is a big difference," he says.
Traditionally, one of the most important ways to grow revenues has been to add advisors to a firm. Many independent broker-dealers, especially the largest ones, have done so by either acquiring other firms or recruiting advisors. But recruiting in particular has become more difficult, experts say.
"Overall, we are seeing a trend of slowing recruiting," says Phil Palaveev, founder of Seattle-based practice consulting firm Ensemble Practice. "The IBD industry has consolidated dramatically and the remaining firms are very strong. Those are not B-Ds that lose advisors very easily." As competition for talent increases, independent broker-dealers are focusing on internal growth more intensely than ever. In fact, organic growth may be the new, unsung success story.
2013年5月21日星期二
Not exactly the president’s choice
He can spin all he wants but make no mistake: Bryan Colangelo has one foot and four toes out the door. He is only slightly less persona non grata than Brian Burke was when he was sent packing by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Ltd., and likely owes his continuing possession of an Air Canada Centre pass-card to the fact he does a better job than Burke of playing well with others.
Not that Colangelo seemed to understand on Tuesday the message behind losing the title of the job that was the reason the Toronto Raptors wanted him in the first place.
Colangelo, who in what seems like a sop to Larry Tanenbaum and maybe even NBA commissioner David Stern has hung on to the title of Toronto Raptors president after being relieved of the general manager’s powers, said in a conference call on Tuesday that he was “thrilled and excited being part of this thing – in terms of putting the finishing touches on a team that I think is well on its way to being a competitive team … a playoff team.”
He has brass ones, our Bryan: leading off his conference call by describing as a “mis-characterization” the description of his reaction to the news that had been offered up by his boss, Tim Leiweke, about an hour earlier. Colangelo preferred “disappointed,” to “ticked off,” – so much so that he gave ‘disappointed’ an extension.
While Leiweke, who has decided to move up his arrival in Toronto as president and chief executive officer of MLSE by a month to June 3, spent part of his conference call talking about how he wanted to establish the Raptors brand across Canada, Colangelo spent his time working on his Indoor Positioning System.
In case anybody had forgotten, he reminded the world that he knows just about everybody in the NBA and that under his watch the Raptors took their training camp and played exhibition games across the country while he himself serves on the board of directors for Basketball Canada. So there! How do you like those nationalistic bona fides, eh?
Absent was any mention of the franchise-crushing decision to name Canada’s own Jay Triano as head coach in place of Sam Mitchell; or the fact that Colangelo came out of last summer’s dalliance with Steve Nash absent the greatest Canadian basketballer of all time but very much in possession of Landry Fields, signed as a way of forcing the New York Knicks out of the Nash sweepstakes. Talk about a booby prize.
He has an “NBA out” in his contract, and with the family name pretty much hoops royalty it would not be out of the question to see him get a job in the NBA front office when Adam Silver replaces Stern. After all, it was Stern who steered Colangelo, then one of the game’s bright young things, to Toronto in order to save the franchise.
It worked for a couple of years, but signing Hedo Turkoglu, putting too much faith in Andrea Bargnani and mis-reading Chris Bosh’s intentions started the downward spiral. Colangelo’s supporters, all six of them, will point out that the signing of Turkoglu was widely-heralded (true) and that the Bargnani draft wasn’t exactly choc-a-block with stellar first-rounders (also true) and that because the team was close to a playoff spot Colangelo couldn’t trade Bosh ahead of free agency because he wouldn’t get value (likely true.) But that misses the point; Colangelo isn’t supposed to be as smart as analysts or columnists or fans. He was supposed to be smarter; he was supposed to see stuff the rest of us couldn’t see.
By the end of his conference call, Colangelo seemed to have pulled in his horns. Perhaps Leiweke texted him with a gentle reminder that he’d been stripped of power, not had it re-distributed. By the end he was talking about “helping whoever is in the [G.M.’s] job if they want my help.”
Perhaps it was the realization that nobody much wants him to be part of any “finishing touches,” especially since his finishing touches would likely include signing Rudy Gay to a contract extension, or at least the realization that nobody much wants the guy whose decisions created the need for a rebuild to oversee the rebuild.
In the 21st century, we have U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act,” which would set the interest rate on student loans at the rate at which banks borrow from the Federal Reserve. The justification — if you can call it that — is that if the Federal Reserve lends money to banks at less than 1 percent, the federal government shouldn’t charge students more than that.
A petition to the White House in support of the bill has been singled out by detractors as one of the stupidest responses to the “We the People” initiative, but it has attracted a quarter of a million signatures. If the laws of finance, like the value of pi in Indiana, are put to a vote, Warren’s bill will pass in a landslide.
Memo to the senator and her post-adolescent petition signers: Just because you’re angry doesn’t mean you’re right.
The Federal Reserve’s discount rate is lower than the rate charged on student loans because banks, unlike students, provide collateral for loans.
There’s nothing wrong with tying an interest rate to a lender’s level of risk — in fact, banks are criticized by regulators if they don’t. You pay a higher rate on your credit card than your car loan because if you default on a car loan the repo man tows your car away, putting your lender back in funds promptly.
When you default on your credit card, the bank gets in line with everybody else and gets pennies on the dollar. What they lose on each bad debt they have to make up somewhere else.
Student borrowers offer no security, in contrast to those bad banks who, according to Warren’s “fact” sheet, “wrecked our economy.” Most college grads have no immediate source of repayment, and their near-term prospects aren’t much better unless they majored in a subject that will lead to a high-paying job quickly.
So a proposal to charge students the same rate as banks is about as smart as the kid who majors in puppetry and expects to land a high-paying job when he graduates.
Not that Colangelo seemed to understand on Tuesday the message behind losing the title of the job that was the reason the Toronto Raptors wanted him in the first place.
Colangelo, who in what seems like a sop to Larry Tanenbaum and maybe even NBA commissioner David Stern has hung on to the title of Toronto Raptors president after being relieved of the general manager’s powers, said in a conference call on Tuesday that he was “thrilled and excited being part of this thing – in terms of putting the finishing touches on a team that I think is well on its way to being a competitive team … a playoff team.”
He has brass ones, our Bryan: leading off his conference call by describing as a “mis-characterization” the description of his reaction to the news that had been offered up by his boss, Tim Leiweke, about an hour earlier. Colangelo preferred “disappointed,” to “ticked off,” – so much so that he gave ‘disappointed’ an extension.
While Leiweke, who has decided to move up his arrival in Toronto as president and chief executive officer of MLSE by a month to June 3, spent part of his conference call talking about how he wanted to establish the Raptors brand across Canada, Colangelo spent his time working on his Indoor Positioning System.
In case anybody had forgotten, he reminded the world that he knows just about everybody in the NBA and that under his watch the Raptors took their training camp and played exhibition games across the country while he himself serves on the board of directors for Basketball Canada. So there! How do you like those nationalistic bona fides, eh?
Absent was any mention of the franchise-crushing decision to name Canada’s own Jay Triano as head coach in place of Sam Mitchell; or the fact that Colangelo came out of last summer’s dalliance with Steve Nash absent the greatest Canadian basketballer of all time but very much in possession of Landry Fields, signed as a way of forcing the New York Knicks out of the Nash sweepstakes. Talk about a booby prize.
He has an “NBA out” in his contract, and with the family name pretty much hoops royalty it would not be out of the question to see him get a job in the NBA front office when Adam Silver replaces Stern. After all, it was Stern who steered Colangelo, then one of the game’s bright young things, to Toronto in order to save the franchise.
It worked for a couple of years, but signing Hedo Turkoglu, putting too much faith in Andrea Bargnani and mis-reading Chris Bosh’s intentions started the downward spiral. Colangelo’s supporters, all six of them, will point out that the signing of Turkoglu was widely-heralded (true) and that the Bargnani draft wasn’t exactly choc-a-block with stellar first-rounders (also true) and that because the team was close to a playoff spot Colangelo couldn’t trade Bosh ahead of free agency because he wouldn’t get value (likely true.) But that misses the point; Colangelo isn’t supposed to be as smart as analysts or columnists or fans. He was supposed to be smarter; he was supposed to see stuff the rest of us couldn’t see.
By the end of his conference call, Colangelo seemed to have pulled in his horns. Perhaps Leiweke texted him with a gentle reminder that he’d been stripped of power, not had it re-distributed. By the end he was talking about “helping whoever is in the [G.M.’s] job if they want my help.”
Perhaps it was the realization that nobody much wants him to be part of any “finishing touches,” especially since his finishing touches would likely include signing Rudy Gay to a contract extension, or at least the realization that nobody much wants the guy whose decisions created the need for a rebuild to oversee the rebuild.
In the 21st century, we have U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act,” which would set the interest rate on student loans at the rate at which banks borrow from the Federal Reserve. The justification — if you can call it that — is that if the Federal Reserve lends money to banks at less than 1 percent, the federal government shouldn’t charge students more than that.
A petition to the White House in support of the bill has been singled out by detractors as one of the stupidest responses to the “We the People” initiative, but it has attracted a quarter of a million signatures. If the laws of finance, like the value of pi in Indiana, are put to a vote, Warren’s bill will pass in a landslide.
Memo to the senator and her post-adolescent petition signers: Just because you’re angry doesn’t mean you’re right.
The Federal Reserve’s discount rate is lower than the rate charged on student loans because banks, unlike students, provide collateral for loans.
There’s nothing wrong with tying an interest rate to a lender’s level of risk — in fact, banks are criticized by regulators if they don’t. You pay a higher rate on your credit card than your car loan because if you default on a car loan the repo man tows your car away, putting your lender back in funds promptly.
When you default on your credit card, the bank gets in line with everybody else and gets pennies on the dollar. What they lose on each bad debt they have to make up somewhere else.
Student borrowers offer no security, in contrast to those bad banks who, according to Warren’s “fact” sheet, “wrecked our economy.” Most college grads have no immediate source of repayment, and their near-term prospects aren’t much better unless they majored in a subject that will lead to a high-paying job quickly.
So a proposal to charge students the same rate as banks is about as smart as the kid who majors in puppetry and expects to land a high-paying job when he graduates.
2013年5月19日星期日
College helping students tackle debt
With tuition costs rising in recent years, many students are turning to loans to pay for college leaving many in debt. Student loan debt surpassed credit card debt in 2010. More and more students graduate with student loans.
An article published in the New York Times entitled "A generation hobbled by the soaring cost of college" states that about two-thirds of bachelor's degree recipients borrow money to attend college, either from the government or private lenders. That number does not include money borrowed from family members.
While the national student loan default rate for students not repaying their loans is over 13 percent, not all borrowing is bad according to Dan Tramuta, associate vice president for student enrollment for SUNY Fredonia and former president of the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association.
"It is important that people understand that borrowing isn't the devil. The student loan program is a terrific loan program. It's been a vehicle for many students and families to be able to access higher education and not only gain an undergraduate degree but a post-undergraduate degree," he said. "Borrowing irresponsibly is the Indoor Positioning System."
To encourage responsible borrowing, SUNY Fredonia provides a financial literacy guide to students. This 28-page guide was honored by New York State Higher Educational Services Corporation as being the best in the state about six years ago, Tramuta said. The guide is something the college sends to every accepted freshman and transfer student.
Students also participate in fireside chats on campus as well as access to a loan servicing center for help with questions. The campus also has entrance and exit counseling for all students who take out loans. The school has been chosen for a new SUNY initiative to help students not go into default on their loans. The SUNY Smart Track Initiative is a program that Fredonia has been chosen as one of six pilot schools to participate in.
"I'm really excited about this track initiative. It's about smart borrowing and about awareness early on the moment students walk on our campus. It involves not just the financial aid office but many other student offices on campus which is really critical. It's not just one area, it takes a whole campus to address this issue," Tramuta said.
The program will engage students from before they enter onto campus as well as follow them throughout their college career. As incoming freshmen, students and families will be given information on how to piece together working summer jobs, scholarships and loans to help pay for college. This campuswide effort will track students through undergraduate and past graduation. Tramuta says the campus looks for indicators that students may default on loans.
"We know the pivot points and the factors that would indicate borrowers who might have a high risk for going into default. That could be low income borrowers, borrowers that drop classes. What the engagement piece will do we will begin immediately engaging our freshman borrowers, our returning undergraduates and separated borrowers," he said.
Students will know how to borrow responsibly and to not over borrow. Tramuta said sometimes students will borrow more than they need to cover tuition giving the student a bigger refund back in the spring. Tramuta said if students need extra money during the semester, a campus job is an alternative to borrowing more than is necessary. Through the new initiative, students will also take online quizzes while learning about financial literacy, the importance of budgeting and how to be responsible with credit cards. He wants students to understand borrowing and what smart borrowing is.
The loan service center on campus will use email, snail mail, phone calls and is looking into a smart phone app to keep students informed about their loans as they go through college. Upon graduation the college will also be able to track students with their repayment as well as educating them on repayment options through the smart track initiative.
"Many times students don't know what their options are once they leave us. They don't know there are options that can keep them out of a delinquent default status," Tramuta said. "The student is not going into default intentionally. They may be underemployed or unemployed. Helping students understand their repayment options can make a huge dent in an institutional default rate.
"Our president, President (Virginia) Horvath, has been talking to me about financial literacy the moment she walked on campus in the role of vice president. She's very committed and I think with the smart track initiative we're going to engage borrowers more so than we done in the past," Tramuta added.
The student loan service center will contact graduating seniors and talk to them about knowing their rights and responsibilities as a loan borrower as well as knowing when repayment starts. Typically, loans start repayment six months from graduation unless the student is attending graduate school. Tramuta said students can avoid default status by making the minimum payment. There are other repayment options including income-based, income-contingent and extended repayment. Students can make payments based on what they currently are making or extend the terms of repayment past the typical 10 years.
"A student might have $25,000 in debt which would be $250 a month for 10 years. They may right now be underemployed so maybe all they can afford right now is $40 a month. There's ways to do that until that student gets over that underemployment status and gets more money," he said.
Loans may also be forgiven if a student enters into a teaching position in a low-income school or other service related fields. If a student cannot find a job following graduation, Tramuta said the college will work with the student to offer additional resources to help out students.
An article published in the New York Times entitled "A generation hobbled by the soaring cost of college" states that about two-thirds of bachelor's degree recipients borrow money to attend college, either from the government or private lenders. That number does not include money borrowed from family members.
While the national student loan default rate for students not repaying their loans is over 13 percent, not all borrowing is bad according to Dan Tramuta, associate vice president for student enrollment for SUNY Fredonia and former president of the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association.
"It is important that people understand that borrowing isn't the devil. The student loan program is a terrific loan program. It's been a vehicle for many students and families to be able to access higher education and not only gain an undergraduate degree but a post-undergraduate degree," he said. "Borrowing irresponsibly is the Indoor Positioning System."
To encourage responsible borrowing, SUNY Fredonia provides a financial literacy guide to students. This 28-page guide was honored by New York State Higher Educational Services Corporation as being the best in the state about six years ago, Tramuta said. The guide is something the college sends to every accepted freshman and transfer student.
Students also participate in fireside chats on campus as well as access to a loan servicing center for help with questions. The campus also has entrance and exit counseling for all students who take out loans. The school has been chosen for a new SUNY initiative to help students not go into default on their loans. The SUNY Smart Track Initiative is a program that Fredonia has been chosen as one of six pilot schools to participate in.
"I'm really excited about this track initiative. It's about smart borrowing and about awareness early on the moment students walk on our campus. It involves not just the financial aid office but many other student offices on campus which is really critical. It's not just one area, it takes a whole campus to address this issue," Tramuta said.
The program will engage students from before they enter onto campus as well as follow them throughout their college career. As incoming freshmen, students and families will be given information on how to piece together working summer jobs, scholarships and loans to help pay for college. This campuswide effort will track students through undergraduate and past graduation. Tramuta says the campus looks for indicators that students may default on loans.
"We know the pivot points and the factors that would indicate borrowers who might have a high risk for going into default. That could be low income borrowers, borrowers that drop classes. What the engagement piece will do we will begin immediately engaging our freshman borrowers, our returning undergraduates and separated borrowers," he said.
Students will know how to borrow responsibly and to not over borrow. Tramuta said sometimes students will borrow more than they need to cover tuition giving the student a bigger refund back in the spring. Tramuta said if students need extra money during the semester, a campus job is an alternative to borrowing more than is necessary. Through the new initiative, students will also take online quizzes while learning about financial literacy, the importance of budgeting and how to be responsible with credit cards. He wants students to understand borrowing and what smart borrowing is.
The loan service center on campus will use email, snail mail, phone calls and is looking into a smart phone app to keep students informed about their loans as they go through college. Upon graduation the college will also be able to track students with their repayment as well as educating them on repayment options through the smart track initiative.
"Many times students don't know what their options are once they leave us. They don't know there are options that can keep them out of a delinquent default status," Tramuta said. "The student is not going into default intentionally. They may be underemployed or unemployed. Helping students understand their repayment options can make a huge dent in an institutional default rate.
"Our president, President (Virginia) Horvath, has been talking to me about financial literacy the moment she walked on campus in the role of vice president. She's very committed and I think with the smart track initiative we're going to engage borrowers more so than we done in the past," Tramuta added.
The student loan service center will contact graduating seniors and talk to them about knowing their rights and responsibilities as a loan borrower as well as knowing when repayment starts. Typically, loans start repayment six months from graduation unless the student is attending graduate school. Tramuta said students can avoid default status by making the minimum payment. There are other repayment options including income-based, income-contingent and extended repayment. Students can make payments based on what they currently are making or extend the terms of repayment past the typical 10 years.
"A student might have $25,000 in debt which would be $250 a month for 10 years. They may right now be underemployed so maybe all they can afford right now is $40 a month. There's ways to do that until that student gets over that underemployment status and gets more money," he said.
Loans may also be forgiven if a student enters into a teaching position in a low-income school or other service related fields. If a student cannot find a job following graduation, Tramuta said the college will work with the student to offer additional resources to help out students.
2013年5月16日星期四
The Constitution And The 3D Printed Plastic Pistol
Last week, the State Department’s arms export office demanded that Defense Distributed remove CAD files for the Liberator from its website. Defense Distributed complied with the takedown letter right away, despite strong language on its website promising it would be “a home for fugitive information” and “No object file will be censored unless it is malicious software.” Predictably, it didn’t take long for the CAD files to make their way to BitTorrent, where they’ll be available forever.
It’s worth reading the letter from the State Department, which is only two and a half pages long. In a nutshell, the letter demands the takedown while it decides whether publishing firearms-related CAD files online violates ITAR. ITAR, which stands for the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, are rules that the State Department promulgated under the Arms Export Control Act. One part of ITAR is the United States Munitions List, which is a master list of products and technologies that can’t be exported without prior government approval under a licensing system. Because Defense Distributed didn’t seek an export license, there’s a problem.
Are CAD files munitions? The State Department believes the Liberator files fall under the Category I of the US Munitions List, which covers firearms and related “technical data.” Section 120.10 of ITAR says “technical data” includes “blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation” about “the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of defense articles” — so that appears to cover CAD files for Indoor Positioning System.
Unsurprisingly, Defense Distributed is already saying (melodramatically) that it will fight the takedown demand: “It seems we may have to have our rights declared in court to simply keep developing gun files to put into the public domain. DD’s right to exist is being challenged.”
What will probably happen next is that Defense Distributed will apply for an export license, which the State Department will deny, and Defense Distributed will sue to get a judge to issue an order that the State Department can’t block it — and that is where things will get interesting.
It’s worth reading the letter from the State Department, which is only two and a half pages long. In a nutshell, the letter demands the takedown while it decides whether publishing firearms-related CAD files online violates ITAR. ITAR, which stands for the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, are rules that the State Department promulgated under the Arms Export Control Act. One part of ITAR is the United States Munitions List, which is a master list of products and technologies that can’t be exported without prior government approval under a licensing system. Because Defense Distributed didn’t seek an export license, there’s a problem.
Are CAD files munitions? The State Department believes the Liberator files fall under the Category I of the US Munitions List, which covers firearms and related “technical data.” Section 120.10 of ITAR says “technical data” includes “blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation” about “the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of defense articles” — so that appears to cover CAD files for guns.
Unsurprisingly, Defense Distributed is already saying (melodramatically) that it will fight the takedown demand: “It seems we may have to have our rights declared in court to simply keep developing gun files to put into the public domain. DD’s right to exist is being challenged.”
What will probably happen next is that Defense Distributed will apply for an export license, which the State Department will deny, and Defense Distributed will sue to get a judge to issue an order that the State Department can’t block it — and that is where things will get interesting.
I predict the Constitutional wrangling will focus on the First Amendment, not the Second. (For foreign readers, the First Amendment to the US Constitution provides extremely strong protections for citizens’ freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment provides a right “to keep and bear arms” — although the language is a mess and reasonable people disagree on how to interpret it.) This is going to spawn some strange bedfellows: I would not be surprised to see the NRA and ACLU on the same side in this fight.
Why is this a First Amendment case? One of the issues is whether the government can prevent citizens from publishing gun blueprints. A big gateway question, though, is how to characterize Defense Distributed’s CAD files in the first place. Is a CAD file expressive speech that should be protected, or a functional thing that should be regulated? This distinction is important because the government has tremendous power to regulate things, but far less power to regulate speech. When courts first started to come to grips with software, they came out on the side of protecting it as speech despite its functional aspects, but they might view 3D printing files differently because when you “run” them, you get things.
It’s worth reading the letter from the State Department, which is only two and a half pages long. In a nutshell, the letter demands the takedown while it decides whether publishing firearms-related CAD files online violates ITAR. ITAR, which stands for the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, are rules that the State Department promulgated under the Arms Export Control Act. One part of ITAR is the United States Munitions List, which is a master list of products and technologies that can’t be exported without prior government approval under a licensing system. Because Defense Distributed didn’t seek an export license, there’s a problem.
Are CAD files munitions? The State Department believes the Liberator files fall under the Category I of the US Munitions List, which covers firearms and related “technical data.” Section 120.10 of ITAR says “technical data” includes “blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation” about “the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of defense articles” — so that appears to cover CAD files for Indoor Positioning System.
Unsurprisingly, Defense Distributed is already saying (melodramatically) that it will fight the takedown demand: “It seems we may have to have our rights declared in court to simply keep developing gun files to put into the public domain. DD’s right to exist is being challenged.”
What will probably happen next is that Defense Distributed will apply for an export license, which the State Department will deny, and Defense Distributed will sue to get a judge to issue an order that the State Department can’t block it — and that is where things will get interesting.
It’s worth reading the letter from the State Department, which is only two and a half pages long. In a nutshell, the letter demands the takedown while it decides whether publishing firearms-related CAD files online violates ITAR. ITAR, which stands for the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, are rules that the State Department promulgated under the Arms Export Control Act. One part of ITAR is the United States Munitions List, which is a master list of products and technologies that can’t be exported without prior government approval under a licensing system. Because Defense Distributed didn’t seek an export license, there’s a problem.
Are CAD files munitions? The State Department believes the Liberator files fall under the Category I of the US Munitions List, which covers firearms and related “technical data.” Section 120.10 of ITAR says “technical data” includes “blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation” about “the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of defense articles” — so that appears to cover CAD files for guns.
Unsurprisingly, Defense Distributed is already saying (melodramatically) that it will fight the takedown demand: “It seems we may have to have our rights declared in court to simply keep developing gun files to put into the public domain. DD’s right to exist is being challenged.”
What will probably happen next is that Defense Distributed will apply for an export license, which the State Department will deny, and Defense Distributed will sue to get a judge to issue an order that the State Department can’t block it — and that is where things will get interesting.
I predict the Constitutional wrangling will focus on the First Amendment, not the Second. (For foreign readers, the First Amendment to the US Constitution provides extremely strong protections for citizens’ freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment provides a right “to keep and bear arms” — although the language is a mess and reasonable people disagree on how to interpret it.) This is going to spawn some strange bedfellows: I would not be surprised to see the NRA and ACLU on the same side in this fight.
Why is this a First Amendment case? One of the issues is whether the government can prevent citizens from publishing gun blueprints. A big gateway question, though, is how to characterize Defense Distributed’s CAD files in the first place. Is a CAD file expressive speech that should be protected, or a functional thing that should be regulated? This distinction is important because the government has tremendous power to regulate things, but far less power to regulate speech. When courts first started to come to grips with software, they came out on the side of protecting it as speech despite its functional aspects, but they might view 3D printing files differently because when you “run” them, you get things.
2013年5月14日星期二
Upper Gwynedd man among trio nabbed in alleged interstate marijuana scheme
An Upper Gwynedd man and two other men face felony drug charges after allegedly attempting to pick up a large shipment of marijuana — hidden inside a pallet of boxes — that was sent from California to the K’NEX toy manufacturing facility in Hatfield last month.
Nghia Binh Thach, 37, of the 600 block of Whittaker Place, along with Hieu Thach, 26, and Hai Danh, 33 — both of Camden, N.J. — have been arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance and related offenses.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, on April 12 police were notified by K’NEX staff that they had received a delivery of 10 boxes on a pallet, wrapped in plastic, that had been shipped from California to the factory at 2990 Bergey Road, and that paperwork associated with the shipment indicated that K’NEX was the intended receiver.
Police said the boxes contained cases of martini shakers, and further inspection revealed a total of 47 pounds of marijuana — packaged in one-pound bags — inside six of the Indoor Positioning System, with an estimated street value of $164,500 to $282,000.
Around 7:30 a.m. on April 16, the affidavit states, Hatfield detectives received a call from K’NEX advising them that a male was on location at the factory requesting to pick up the pallet. Police responded to the scene and took the man, Nghia Thach, into custody and, according to the affidavit, found a U-Haul Self Storage security access card in his possession.
A subsequent search of the storage locker turned up an additional 15 pounds of marijuana — also packaged in one-pound bags, with a total street value of $52,500 to $90,000 — along with 115 cases of martini shakers, the affidavit states.
Hatfield detectives received another call from K’NEX alerting them that two Asian men — later identified as Hieu Thach and Hai Danh — were at the facility asking to pick up the same shipment of 10 boxes, police said. When detectives arrived, the two men had departed, but a man called K’NEX shortly after, inquiring about the pallet and asking if he could send his drivers back to pick up the shipment of martini shakers; a detective got on the phone and told the caller he could send his drivers back, according to the affidavit.
Limited mobile device storage capacities and expensive capacity steps have produced a growing market for alternative storage options. Already on the market, there are several generations of wireless portable hard drives and flash drives that typically have ranged from $100-$200 and offer robust capacity so that users can essentially take all of their content with them anywhere. These devices offer benefits including that large capacity as well as battery life from 5-10 hours, the ability to produce their own wireless networks and to pass-through connect to another network. Some can even be set up as a NAS. There are also card readers designed for mobile devices which are very inexpensive options, but they don't feature solid support found with established brands and often cannot be shared across mutiple devices and operating systems.
The Kingston MobileLite Wireless fits somewhere in the middle of those options. With it, users can expand storage in a smaller footprint and at a cheaper price point than wireless HDDs, and they gain a well-designed Kingston app and can use existing storage from both flash drives and compatible memory cards to provide flexibility. There are workflow gains for some, like photographers who may want to instantly see their shots on a larger tablet screen. There are also sharing benefits, for instance in the event that multiple users need access to the connected storage device all at once.
In order to get the Kingston MobileLite Wireless up and running, users need to make sure it is charged first. The battery level LED shows green if the device is at 50% or greater, orange for 25-50% and red for 25% or less. To charge, users can just plug in the MobileLite Wireless to a USB port. When the device has a charge, users can press and hold the power button for three seconds to operate the device, initiating the power-on sequence that turns on the power and Internet LEDs. Assuming users have a memory card or flash drive with content loaded, users can then connect to the MobileLite Wireless network which the device produces, and then insert their memory card or USB flash drive. The MobileLite Wireless also features pass-through connect so that users can access the Internet while using their MobileLite Wireless.
The app can be downloaded for both Android and iOS devices (we used an iPad for testing) and has a smooth interface that users will find intuitive. From the outset, SD cards and flash drives appear and users can select one from which they want to access content. From there, all of the data is divided into four categories: files, photos, videos and music. Users can select to view files such as photos by thumbnail, list or watch a slideshow. Playing media also works simply with users doing so by performing essentially the same functions natively found on their device. Icons at the bottom of the screen also enable sharing to the camera roll for photos, moving files to the user device or deleting files.
There is also a setting button at the bottom of the screen. Clicking this icon displays the device's name, its battery life and firmware version as well as all of the MobileLite's connection status. Users can password protect the network using WPA2 security which is helpful in public settings like a coffee shop, and they can select a network through which they want to connect on top of their connection to their MobileLite Wireless.
Another interesting, handy feature of the MobileLite Wireless is the battery bank feature that enables users to charge a mobile device using the mobile device's USB cable for emergency charging. As one could expect, this cannot be done with wireless storage mode active and it does reduce the overall battery life for playback and viewing files. However, the feature is yet another that adds value to the device. To start charging, users connect their device to MobileLite Wireless and then press the power button for one second. (This startup and the three second startup are so that users won't accidentally turn the device on or off.) The battery LED flashes red rapidly, but that just means the device is charging. This isn't an alternative to using a mobile device's native power adapter, but it will get the device more than enough juice to make a few important phones call in a jam.
Nghia Binh Thach, 37, of the 600 block of Whittaker Place, along with Hieu Thach, 26, and Hai Danh, 33 — both of Camden, N.J. — have been arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance and related offenses.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, on April 12 police were notified by K’NEX staff that they had received a delivery of 10 boxes on a pallet, wrapped in plastic, that had been shipped from California to the factory at 2990 Bergey Road, and that paperwork associated with the shipment indicated that K’NEX was the intended receiver.
Police said the boxes contained cases of martini shakers, and further inspection revealed a total of 47 pounds of marijuana — packaged in one-pound bags — inside six of the Indoor Positioning System, with an estimated street value of $164,500 to $282,000.
Around 7:30 a.m. on April 16, the affidavit states, Hatfield detectives received a call from K’NEX advising them that a male was on location at the factory requesting to pick up the pallet. Police responded to the scene and took the man, Nghia Thach, into custody and, according to the affidavit, found a U-Haul Self Storage security access card in his possession.
A subsequent search of the storage locker turned up an additional 15 pounds of marijuana — also packaged in one-pound bags, with a total street value of $52,500 to $90,000 — along with 115 cases of martini shakers, the affidavit states.
Hatfield detectives received another call from K’NEX alerting them that two Asian men — later identified as Hieu Thach and Hai Danh — were at the facility asking to pick up the same shipment of 10 boxes, police said. When detectives arrived, the two men had departed, but a man called K’NEX shortly after, inquiring about the pallet and asking if he could send his drivers back to pick up the shipment of martini shakers; a detective got on the phone and told the caller he could send his drivers back, according to the affidavit.
Limited mobile device storage capacities and expensive capacity steps have produced a growing market for alternative storage options. Already on the market, there are several generations of wireless portable hard drives and flash drives that typically have ranged from $100-$200 and offer robust capacity so that users can essentially take all of their content with them anywhere. These devices offer benefits including that large capacity as well as battery life from 5-10 hours, the ability to produce their own wireless networks and to pass-through connect to another network. Some can even be set up as a NAS. There are also card readers designed for mobile devices which are very inexpensive options, but they don't feature solid support found with established brands and often cannot be shared across mutiple devices and operating systems.
The Kingston MobileLite Wireless fits somewhere in the middle of those options. With it, users can expand storage in a smaller footprint and at a cheaper price point than wireless HDDs, and they gain a well-designed Kingston app and can use existing storage from both flash drives and compatible memory cards to provide flexibility. There are workflow gains for some, like photographers who may want to instantly see their shots on a larger tablet screen. There are also sharing benefits, for instance in the event that multiple users need access to the connected storage device all at once.
In order to get the Kingston MobileLite Wireless up and running, users need to make sure it is charged first. The battery level LED shows green if the device is at 50% or greater, orange for 25-50% and red for 25% or less. To charge, users can just plug in the MobileLite Wireless to a USB port. When the device has a charge, users can press and hold the power button for three seconds to operate the device, initiating the power-on sequence that turns on the power and Internet LEDs. Assuming users have a memory card or flash drive with content loaded, users can then connect to the MobileLite Wireless network which the device produces, and then insert their memory card or USB flash drive. The MobileLite Wireless also features pass-through connect so that users can access the Internet while using their MobileLite Wireless.
The app can be downloaded for both Android and iOS devices (we used an iPad for testing) and has a smooth interface that users will find intuitive. From the outset, SD cards and flash drives appear and users can select one from which they want to access content. From there, all of the data is divided into four categories: files, photos, videos and music. Users can select to view files such as photos by thumbnail, list or watch a slideshow. Playing media also works simply with users doing so by performing essentially the same functions natively found on their device. Icons at the bottom of the screen also enable sharing to the camera roll for photos, moving files to the user device or deleting files.
There is also a setting button at the bottom of the screen. Clicking this icon displays the device's name, its battery life and firmware version as well as all of the MobileLite's connection status. Users can password protect the network using WPA2 security which is helpful in public settings like a coffee shop, and they can select a network through which they want to connect on top of their connection to their MobileLite Wireless.
Another interesting, handy feature of the MobileLite Wireless is the battery bank feature that enables users to charge a mobile device using the mobile device's USB cable for emergency charging. As one could expect, this cannot be done with wireless storage mode active and it does reduce the overall battery life for playback and viewing files. However, the feature is yet another that adds value to the device. To start charging, users connect their device to MobileLite Wireless and then press the power button for one second. (This startup and the three second startup are so that users won't accidentally turn the device on or off.) The battery LED flashes red rapidly, but that just means the device is charging. This isn't an alternative to using a mobile device's native power adapter, but it will get the device more than enough juice to make a few important phones call in a jam.
2013年5月12日星期日
Tech News
Seven Indian original-equipment manufacturers — in the mobile phone and tablet space — have inked a pact with Opera Software to pre-install the Opera Mini mobile web browser on the manufacturers’ upcoming mobile devices that run on the Android operating system. Opera Mini will be be pre-installed on all Android devices manufactured by Celkon, Karbonn, Lava and Intex, a press release from Opera Software stated. Opera Mini will also be preinstalled on select Android devices by Fly and Zen, as well as on HCL ME tablets. The Opera Mini is suited for Indian mobile networks as it uses a server to pre-process and compress websites to as little as 10 per cent of their original size before sending them to the mobile device. The open source browser has seen wide adoption in India, Opera Software claims. “The number of Indians accessing the web from mobile devices is growing at a much faster rate than those using a computer.
Hardware major Intel has launched a nationwide integrated campaign to increase the relevance and demand of personal computing devices, and to drive domestic adoption of technology by targeting consumers with the message of how a personal computer (PC) can change their lives. The six-weeklong campaign started this week in Rajasthan and will cover 40 cities across 10 States. It will continue to educate consumers on why a PC is a transformational device. Sandeep Aurora, Director of Marketing and Market Development, Intel South Asia, in a release, said: “In our quest to bring about nationwide awareness for digital literacy, we will continue to scale up our efforts under the National Digital Literacy Mission and through this new campaign we will urge consumers to pursue their passions and creativity with the power of an Intel processor-powered computer.” Intel will create experience zones under its ‘My Discoveries’ programme across 40 cities.
Tata Elxsi, a tech-design firm, announced the launch of the second edition of the Ignite Design Contest, which aims to encourage budding designers to enable change through design. The contest is part of connect D, an annual event organised by Tata Elxsi to commemorate World Industrial Design Day. This year’s theme, ‘Design enriching everyday life’, has been aligned to the Indoor Positioning System, ‘Industrial design is open’, set by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). The theme intends to convey the growing recognition of the importance of design across industries and how it can help brands and companies solve day-to-day problems to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace, a release from the firm stated. Design students pursuing full-time UG and PG courses in Product and Visual Design (Branding, Graphic Design and UI) in India can participate in the contest. Applicants can submit their entries in two categories: Age-friendly Kitchen Appliances for the Elderly, and Re-defining a Smart TV.
Zoho announced the launch of Card Scanner, an online business card scanning application for Zoho CRM. Now, users can take a photo of a business card and Card Scanner intelligently converts the image to text that is automatically saved either as a new contact, a lead in Zoho CRM, or as a new contact in Card Scanner, a release from the company stated. This app now eliminates the process of manually entering data into the CRM module for Zoho users. In a release, Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho, said: “Entering data manually into any CRM application is a daunting task. Automating this process and making it simple for our users is the primary idea behind the launch of our new mobile app for Zoho CRM, Card Scanner. The app lets users save business cards on their iPhones while at meetings, events, conferences and trade shows, thus saving time and digitising the process.”
Combining their technical know-how with some business savvy and a little luck, the childhood friends and one-time University of Florida roommates have created a smartphone app for digital business cards that has attracted investors with international ties in venture capital — the kind of high-risk, high-reward financing that built Silicon Valley and other major technology centers.
So though Florida's share of the nation's newly invested venture capital has plummeted during the past year, the early success of Feathr — brainchild of Bishop Moore grad Aidan Augustin and Wekiva High grad Neal Ormsbee — could become a template for certain startups looking to finance future ventures.
"These guys are smart, energetic and, perhaps most importantly, they are coachable," said Dennis R. Pape, a veteran Central Florida venture capitalist and founder of VenturePitch Orlando, a networking event where Feathr demonstrated its product last week. "They are really a cut above the young entrepreneurs that we usually see."
After operating on a bootstrap budget since its founding last year, Feathr has secured $150,000 from a group of Indian-American investors in Tampa who are members of TiE Florida, the state chapter of an international organization of Indian entrepreneurs. Combined with money raised from "angel" investors — family members and advisers — Feathr has raised nearly $200,000 in the past 18 months.
The TiE Florida investors were impressed by Feathr's product and the sophistication of the novice entrepreneurs — especially Augustin, the company's chief executive and its point person when it's time to pitch the business.
"He was constantly in touch with us, persistently following up on his dream," said Sunal Jain, founder of the Tampa-based TiE chapter and president of Medical B&T Services LLC, a billing-technology company. "When we finally visited his place, saw his team and where they worked, and interviewed each team member, we were convinced of the prospects for this company."
Hardware major Intel has launched a nationwide integrated campaign to increase the relevance and demand of personal computing devices, and to drive domestic adoption of technology by targeting consumers with the message of how a personal computer (PC) can change their lives. The six-weeklong campaign started this week in Rajasthan and will cover 40 cities across 10 States. It will continue to educate consumers on why a PC is a transformational device. Sandeep Aurora, Director of Marketing and Market Development, Intel South Asia, in a release, said: “In our quest to bring about nationwide awareness for digital literacy, we will continue to scale up our efforts under the National Digital Literacy Mission and through this new campaign we will urge consumers to pursue their passions and creativity with the power of an Intel processor-powered computer.” Intel will create experience zones under its ‘My Discoveries’ programme across 40 cities.
Tata Elxsi, a tech-design firm, announced the launch of the second edition of the Ignite Design Contest, which aims to encourage budding designers to enable change through design. The contest is part of connect D, an annual event organised by Tata Elxsi to commemorate World Industrial Design Day. This year’s theme, ‘Design enriching everyday life’, has been aligned to the Indoor Positioning System, ‘Industrial design is open’, set by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). The theme intends to convey the growing recognition of the importance of design across industries and how it can help brands and companies solve day-to-day problems to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace, a release from the firm stated. Design students pursuing full-time UG and PG courses in Product and Visual Design (Branding, Graphic Design and UI) in India can participate in the contest. Applicants can submit their entries in two categories: Age-friendly Kitchen Appliances for the Elderly, and Re-defining a Smart TV.
Zoho announced the launch of Card Scanner, an online business card scanning application for Zoho CRM. Now, users can take a photo of a business card and Card Scanner intelligently converts the image to text that is automatically saved either as a new contact, a lead in Zoho CRM, or as a new contact in Card Scanner, a release from the company stated. This app now eliminates the process of manually entering data into the CRM module for Zoho users. In a release, Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho, said: “Entering data manually into any CRM application is a daunting task. Automating this process and making it simple for our users is the primary idea behind the launch of our new mobile app for Zoho CRM, Card Scanner. The app lets users save business cards on their iPhones while at meetings, events, conferences and trade shows, thus saving time and digitising the process.”
Combining their technical know-how with some business savvy and a little luck, the childhood friends and one-time University of Florida roommates have created a smartphone app for digital business cards that has attracted investors with international ties in venture capital — the kind of high-risk, high-reward financing that built Silicon Valley and other major technology centers.
So though Florida's share of the nation's newly invested venture capital has plummeted during the past year, the early success of Feathr — brainchild of Bishop Moore grad Aidan Augustin and Wekiva High grad Neal Ormsbee — could become a template for certain startups looking to finance future ventures.
"These guys are smart, energetic and, perhaps most importantly, they are coachable," said Dennis R. Pape, a veteran Central Florida venture capitalist and founder of VenturePitch Orlando, a networking event where Feathr demonstrated its product last week. "They are really a cut above the young entrepreneurs that we usually see."
After operating on a bootstrap budget since its founding last year, Feathr has secured $150,000 from a group of Indian-American investors in Tampa who are members of TiE Florida, the state chapter of an international organization of Indian entrepreneurs. Combined with money raised from "angel" investors — family members and advisers — Feathr has raised nearly $200,000 in the past 18 months.
The TiE Florida investors were impressed by Feathr's product and the sophistication of the novice entrepreneurs — especially Augustin, the company's chief executive and its point person when it's time to pitch the business.
"He was constantly in touch with us, persistently following up on his dream," said Sunal Jain, founder of the Tampa-based TiE chapter and president of Medical B&T Services LLC, a billing-technology company. "When we finally visited his place, saw his team and where they worked, and interviewed each team member, we were convinced of the prospects for this company."
2013年5月9日星期四
Nvidia beats earnings targets despite PC slowdown
The world’s biggest standalone graphics chip maker reported non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting practice) revenue of $954.7 million, down 14 percent from $1.11 billion in the previous quarter and up 3.2 percent from $924.9 milllion a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings per share were 18 cents, compared to 35 cents in Q4 and 16 cents in Q1 a year ago.
Analysts had expected earnings per share of 10 cents on revenues of $940.6 million. Analysts have been worried about a steep drop in the PC business and the effect that can have on Nvidia’s core business of making graphics chips for PCs. But Nvidia has been diversifying for years into mobile devices with its Tegra line of mobile processors.
As previously mentioned, Nvidia plans to return more than $1 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and Indoor Positioning System.
“The success of Kepler-based GPUs within and beyond the PC helped drive another quarter of record margins,” said Jen-Hsun Huang [pictured], president and chief executive officer of Nvidia. “Kepler is capturing share among gamers, strengthening our workstation and supercomputing segments, and will fuel new growth opportunities for our GRID server graphics solutions. With Tegra 4 devices and Tegra 4i certification on the way, we’re gearing up to return to growth in the second half.”
In after-hours trading, Nvidia’s stock price is up 2 percent. Looking forward to the second fiscal quarter, Nvidia expects revenue of $975 million, plus or minus 2 percent, and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be flat at 54.6 percent.
Nvidia’s Kepler-based PC graphics chips, such as those in the GeForce GTX Titan card, are selling well. Nvidia also said it has engaged with more than 100 potential customers for its GRID VCA visual computing appliance, which helps workstation users become more mobile through cloud technology. Nvidia has also introduced its Tegra 4i chip, which combines a 4G LTE modem with a mobile processor. That could give Nvidia an advantage in mobile devices the future.
Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insight & Strategy, said, “Nvidia’s solid earnings came on the back of higher-end Kepler-based gaming and workstation chips and cards where they have been gaining a lot of mindshare. The Tegra business was on a roll in the past few quarters driven by wins in Google Nexus 7 and Microsoft RT’s tablets, but that appears to have receded. While Tegra 4 hasn’t been benchmarked yet by reviewers, controlled bench-set [non-phone/tablet] numbers supplied by Nvidia shown that it performs pretty well, but the challenge will be bottling that into a phone. Project Shield [Nvidia's upcoming handheld game device] could end up being the biggest surprise as it leverages trends in mobility, Android gaming, and will also pull from the console business.”
Huang said during the investor day that Nvidia’s Tegra business is at break-even, even as the company ratchets up the investment to more than $300 million a year. Overall, Nvidia research and development has reached $1.2 billion annually. About $880 million of that is core investment in chip design, while $10 million each is focused on new opportunities including Grid systems and the Project Shield handheld gaming system.
“We increased our operating expenses to invest in once in a lifetime opportunities,” Huang said during the investor day. “These investments are so timely and they must happen now. So our first half is rather muted. We’ll have growth in the second half. The disruption of the traditional market literally happened overnight. That’s why it’s so important for us to keep our foot on the gas.”
This year, Nvidia is investing heavily in the first half in the hopes of achieving growth in the second half, Huang said. He pulled in investments in Tegra 4i, a mobile graphics processor with built-in LTE modem. That investment, he said, “was a good decision by all measures.” That pushed out the debut of Tegra 4 by a quarter, from the first to the second quarter. As a result, Tegra sales will be flat for the year, he said.
Overall, “the exciting thing is the market opportunity ahead of us,” Huang said. The total available market for Tegra chips [with $300 million investment] is $10 billion. The opportunity for Grid computing is $10 billion, and the traditional graphics processing unit (GPU) market opportunity is $6 billion, Huang said. Huang said he thinks the computing business, if not PCs, will continue to grow.
With Grid computing, Nvidia is taking that business into the cloud, enabling remote graphics processing and it will lead to multiple users on a single graphics chip. But Huang said the competition was fierce.
Huang said earlier that Nvidia will return $1 billion this fiscal year to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividend payments, including $100 million in stock being repurchased this quarter. This will bring to $1.2 billion the total capital returned to shareholders since the company announced its quarterly dividend program in November.
Nvidia’s GPU business in the first fiscal quarter had revenue of $785.6 million, dow 5.6 percent sequentially and up 8.1 percent from a year ago. Nvidia saw declines in both desktop and notebook revenue. PC makers continue to closely manage inventory in advance of the Intel Haswell platform launch in June. Tegra revenue was $103.1 million in Q1, down 50.5 percent sequentially and down 22.2 percent from a year ago. The decline happened as Nvidia makes the switch from Tegra 3 to Tegra 4.
Analysts had expected earnings per share of 10 cents on revenues of $940.6 million. Analysts have been worried about a steep drop in the PC business and the effect that can have on Nvidia’s core business of making graphics chips for PCs. But Nvidia has been diversifying for years into mobile devices with its Tegra line of mobile processors.
As previously mentioned, Nvidia plans to return more than $1 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and Indoor Positioning System.
“The success of Kepler-based GPUs within and beyond the PC helped drive another quarter of record margins,” said Jen-Hsun Huang [pictured], president and chief executive officer of Nvidia. “Kepler is capturing share among gamers, strengthening our workstation and supercomputing segments, and will fuel new growth opportunities for our GRID server graphics solutions. With Tegra 4 devices and Tegra 4i certification on the way, we’re gearing up to return to growth in the second half.”
In after-hours trading, Nvidia’s stock price is up 2 percent. Looking forward to the second fiscal quarter, Nvidia expects revenue of $975 million, plus or minus 2 percent, and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be flat at 54.6 percent.
Nvidia’s Kepler-based PC graphics chips, such as those in the GeForce GTX Titan card, are selling well. Nvidia also said it has engaged with more than 100 potential customers for its GRID VCA visual computing appliance, which helps workstation users become more mobile through cloud technology. Nvidia has also introduced its Tegra 4i chip, which combines a 4G LTE modem with a mobile processor. That could give Nvidia an advantage in mobile devices the future.
Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insight & Strategy, said, “Nvidia’s solid earnings came on the back of higher-end Kepler-based gaming and workstation chips and cards where they have been gaining a lot of mindshare. The Tegra business was on a roll in the past few quarters driven by wins in Google Nexus 7 and Microsoft RT’s tablets, but that appears to have receded. While Tegra 4 hasn’t been benchmarked yet by reviewers, controlled bench-set [non-phone/tablet] numbers supplied by Nvidia shown that it performs pretty well, but the challenge will be bottling that into a phone. Project Shield [Nvidia's upcoming handheld game device] could end up being the biggest surprise as it leverages trends in mobility, Android gaming, and will also pull from the console business.”
Huang said during the investor day that Nvidia’s Tegra business is at break-even, even as the company ratchets up the investment to more than $300 million a year. Overall, Nvidia research and development has reached $1.2 billion annually. About $880 million of that is core investment in chip design, while $10 million each is focused on new opportunities including Grid systems and the Project Shield handheld gaming system.
“We increased our operating expenses to invest in once in a lifetime opportunities,” Huang said during the investor day. “These investments are so timely and they must happen now. So our first half is rather muted. We’ll have growth in the second half. The disruption of the traditional market literally happened overnight. That’s why it’s so important for us to keep our foot on the gas.”
This year, Nvidia is investing heavily in the first half in the hopes of achieving growth in the second half, Huang said. He pulled in investments in Tegra 4i, a mobile graphics processor with built-in LTE modem. That investment, he said, “was a good decision by all measures.” That pushed out the debut of Tegra 4 by a quarter, from the first to the second quarter. As a result, Tegra sales will be flat for the year, he said.
Overall, “the exciting thing is the market opportunity ahead of us,” Huang said. The total available market for Tegra chips [with $300 million investment] is $10 billion. The opportunity for Grid computing is $10 billion, and the traditional graphics processing unit (GPU) market opportunity is $6 billion, Huang said. Huang said he thinks the computing business, if not PCs, will continue to grow.
With Grid computing, Nvidia is taking that business into the cloud, enabling remote graphics processing and it will lead to multiple users on a single graphics chip. But Huang said the competition was fierce.
Huang said earlier that Nvidia will return $1 billion this fiscal year to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividend payments, including $100 million in stock being repurchased this quarter. This will bring to $1.2 billion the total capital returned to shareholders since the company announced its quarterly dividend program in November.
Nvidia’s GPU business in the first fiscal quarter had revenue of $785.6 million, dow 5.6 percent sequentially and up 8.1 percent from a year ago. Nvidia saw declines in both desktop and notebook revenue. PC makers continue to closely manage inventory in advance of the Intel Haswell platform launch in June. Tegra revenue was $103.1 million in Q1, down 50.5 percent sequentially and down 22.2 percent from a year ago. The decline happened as Nvidia makes the switch from Tegra 3 to Tegra 4.
2013年5月7日星期二
Charter Schools Future Unclear
Charter school advocates say funding for new charters included in Gov. Maggie Hassan’s budget proposal is being held hostage by House lawmakers who want to use that money as a bargaining chip when they begin to negotiate a final budget with the Senate.
If the funding isn’t replaced, it could dash the hopes of several groups wanting to open charter schools in the next two years. The state could also lose more than $5 million in charter startup grants from the federal government. Stoddard Rep. Dan Eaton, a House budget writer, denies playing politics with charter funding, saying it was his understanding that there weren’t enough completed applications to receive the grant money.
In exchange for submitting to greater accountability standards, charter schools are given the freedom to tailor their curriculum to a particular specialization or learning style. Since first being approved in 2005, 17 charter schools have opened in New Hampshire and the funding for another is already in place. Close to 1.5 percent of public school students now attend charters.
Kerin Sevasco, a stay-at-home mother with a background in early childhood education, leads one such group in Nashua. Sevasco and nine other parents have spent thousands of hours meeting with real estate developers, city officials, teacher training groups and other trade organizations in the hopes of opening an arts oriented charter school.
She heard positive feedback from Department of Education employees throughout the application process. After their application was completed in May 2012, a meeting they were promised with Education Commissioner Virginia Barry never materialized.
“That vote was a total surprise for us,” Sevasco said. “We felt a lot of anger and frustration at that time.”
Board of Education Chairman Tom Raffio acknowledged that they could have done a better job of communicating with applicants and said the decision was the result of uncertainty about whether the Legislature would provide funding for new charter schools.
“The way the biannual budget process works, every couple of years we won’t be in a position to approve new charter schools on a timely basis because we don’t know what’s going to be in the budget,” Raffio said.
He said that uncertainty is created by a 2010 law change that removed the open-ended funding mechanism for real time Location system, forcing them to wait and see what money is in the budget before approving additional spending.
Charter school advocate Matt Southerton said the state’s inaction has already lost them close to $800,000 in federal grant money, and, if it continues, they could lose more than $5 million more. Raffio said if the money is lost, it’s his understanding the state can reapply and the funds will likely be returned.
Southerton said House budget writers pounced on the Board of Education’s decision, using it to carve out a bargaining position for future negotiations with the Senate. He recorded, and later uploaded to YouTube, a clip of Eaton, who chairs a House finance committee, saying during a public hearing on the budget that charter funding could be used for political gain.
Eaton said he hasn’t seen the clip but believes he’s being taken out of context. He added, though, that such political maneuvers are perfectly acceptable and widely used. He said the Department of Education told him there weren’t enough sufficiently completed charter applications to receive the federal grant money anyway.
Deputy Education Commissioner Paul Leather said his department didn’t tell Eaton that, but he declined to comment on the readiness of charter applications at that time or their bearing on federal aid. Repeated calls seeking further comment from the Department of Education weren’t returned.
Sen. Nancy Stile, R-Hampton, who chairs the Senate education committee, said she believes the Senate will be able to include money for several new charters, but she would like to see accurate enrollment estimates so a precise appropriation can be made.
Beyond the uncertainty in the Legislature, much about the future of new charters in the state is unsettled. Raffio said if the money for new charter schools is replaced in the budget, then the board will start approving completed applications in June or July. But he said a wider policy debate must take place over the number of charters the state can support long term.
Some worry charters could upset the economic sustainability of New Hampshire’s public education system by syphoning per pupil adequacy dollars away from traditional public schools at a time when resources are spread thin and those schools are struggling to meet fixed costs.
Southerton said he believes charter schools will always represent a relatively small percentage of public school enrollments, but there should not be an arbitrary limit on children’s educational options.
Sevasco said her group still hopes to open its own school, but it won’t give up on its mission to bring greater attention to the arts in public education. If the money never materializes, she said, they have discussed working through the existing schools in their district.
If the funding isn’t replaced, it could dash the hopes of several groups wanting to open charter schools in the next two years. The state could also lose more than $5 million in charter startup grants from the federal government. Stoddard Rep. Dan Eaton, a House budget writer, denies playing politics with charter funding, saying it was his understanding that there weren’t enough completed applications to receive the grant money.
In exchange for submitting to greater accountability standards, charter schools are given the freedom to tailor their curriculum to a particular specialization or learning style. Since first being approved in 2005, 17 charter schools have opened in New Hampshire and the funding for another is already in place. Close to 1.5 percent of public school students now attend charters.
Kerin Sevasco, a stay-at-home mother with a background in early childhood education, leads one such group in Nashua. Sevasco and nine other parents have spent thousands of hours meeting with real estate developers, city officials, teacher training groups and other trade organizations in the hopes of opening an arts oriented charter school.
She heard positive feedback from Department of Education employees throughout the application process. After their application was completed in May 2012, a meeting they were promised with Education Commissioner Virginia Barry never materialized.
“That vote was a total surprise for us,” Sevasco said. “We felt a lot of anger and frustration at that time.”
Board of Education Chairman Tom Raffio acknowledged that they could have done a better job of communicating with applicants and said the decision was the result of uncertainty about whether the Legislature would provide funding for new charter schools.
“The way the biannual budget process works, every couple of years we won’t be in a position to approve new charter schools on a timely basis because we don’t know what’s going to be in the budget,” Raffio said.
He said that uncertainty is created by a 2010 law change that removed the open-ended funding mechanism for real time Location system, forcing them to wait and see what money is in the budget before approving additional spending.
Charter school advocate Matt Southerton said the state’s inaction has already lost them close to $800,000 in federal grant money, and, if it continues, they could lose more than $5 million more. Raffio said if the money is lost, it’s his understanding the state can reapply and the funds will likely be returned.
Southerton said House budget writers pounced on the Board of Education’s decision, using it to carve out a bargaining position for future negotiations with the Senate. He recorded, and later uploaded to YouTube, a clip of Eaton, who chairs a House finance committee, saying during a public hearing on the budget that charter funding could be used for political gain.
Eaton said he hasn’t seen the clip but believes he’s being taken out of context. He added, though, that such political maneuvers are perfectly acceptable and widely used. He said the Department of Education told him there weren’t enough sufficiently completed charter applications to receive the federal grant money anyway.
Deputy Education Commissioner Paul Leather said his department didn’t tell Eaton that, but he declined to comment on the readiness of charter applications at that time or their bearing on federal aid. Repeated calls seeking further comment from the Department of Education weren’t returned.
Sen. Nancy Stile, R-Hampton, who chairs the Senate education committee, said she believes the Senate will be able to include money for several new charters, but she would like to see accurate enrollment estimates so a precise appropriation can be made.
Beyond the uncertainty in the Legislature, much about the future of new charters in the state is unsettled. Raffio said if the money for new charter schools is replaced in the budget, then the board will start approving completed applications in June or July. But he said a wider policy debate must take place over the number of charters the state can support long term.
Some worry charters could upset the economic sustainability of New Hampshire’s public education system by syphoning per pupil adequacy dollars away from traditional public schools at a time when resources are spread thin and those schools are struggling to meet fixed costs.
Southerton said he believes charter schools will always represent a relatively small percentage of public school enrollments, but there should not be an arbitrary limit on children’s educational options.
Sevasco said her group still hopes to open its own school, but it won’t give up on its mission to bring greater attention to the arts in public education. If the money never materializes, she said, they have discussed working through the existing schools in their district.
2013年5月5日星期日
An Examination of David Sirota and The Impotence of Deduction
A few months ago, when a clip aired revealing that current Arab Spring president of Egypt Morsi had, before he was elected, maintained that the Jewish people are “apes and swine”, it became apparent to any rational observer of the mainstream media that the mainstream media’s knowledge of Islam is an inverse limit approaching zero. Like one of those horrendous calculus strings as things go from bad to worse, the media either didn’t report Morsi’s sentiments because it is salaciously inconvenient, or chose to obfuscate by appeals to western ignorance of the nuances of the region, alleged Israeli atrocities, and its flagship ideology, Islam.
Obfuscation is the latest and only tactic left for the media in all matters concerning Islam and Muslims, a tactic not afforded to any other group. It has hallmarks of an affirmative action mindset, where everything is reduced to grievance and historical justification, and causes are deduced from those grievances. And in so being, it is highly incoherent. Tangentially, as an easily accessible example, the conclusion that is often nimbly deduced from this mindset is that nationalism is bad because nationalism is the cause of the abuse of which Muslims have been subjected; whether it be the French, the British, Israelis or the Russians, a nation and their xenophobic national pride or colonial avarice is to blame. But without an idea of a collective nation or culture, what use is the argument of collective grievance? And if it is of no use in regards to the French, but in fact a source of great self-deprecation, why is it used in respect to the Chechens, the Palestinians, or,Indoor Positioning System, the Tibetans?
We expect as much from Mr. Sirota. He seems to have a fetish with white men. He writes about them constantly. And if it weren’t for the tragic circumstances under which the article was written it would be amusing. But it is not. It is a prime of example of deductive impotence and a fine example of the lengths to which the left will go to construct the political skirmish on a battlefield of its own choosing. Sun Tzu once warned that you should never fight an enemy on the field of its choosing, but choose your place and time and you will be victorious. Like a good liberal, Sirota has heeded the advice of sun Tzu and created a controversy and thus a battle on the grounds on which he chooses to fight. This piece was a strategic offensive written before the bombing suspects were identified in order to turn the conversation away from where it should empirically go. It was strategic brilliance, but tactical error. He cannot be victorious.
He cannot be victorious because the turf on which he chooses to wage rhetorical war is highly deductive and therefore highly vulnerable. A deductive argument is one in which axioms flow to conclusions without hesitation and hindrances. Socrates being a man, and men being mortal, leads to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal. The argument is entirely dependent on its premises, premises on inductive facts; Men are mortal is a conclusion only revealed by observation and induction. If one of these premises is suspect, the cards collapse and the conclusion becomes irrelevant. Having fired off the first salvos, we must respond to Sirota forthwith.
Sirota betrays his argument before the first sentence is even penned with the title itself. Let’s hope… the Marathon Bomber is a white American. There is no plurality here. The bomber is assumed to be a single white American bomber by the singular use of the verb “to be” and “bomber”. This elementary stuff, elementary stuff of which Sirota is ignorant. If he had wanted to make the argument that he advances, entitling the screed “Let’s hope the Marathon bomberS ARE white American neo-Nazis with intricate connections with a network of terror cells operating in the south,” would have been more effective. But in as much as it is elementary, it is also minutia, and merely serves to capitalize the fact that Sirota is an idiot.
The raw meat of his argument, however, is in this group of sentences: “This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.”
Here Mr. Sirota conflates ethnicity with motive without as much as the bat of the eye in the case of “white dudes” while condemning the same mental movement in the case of minorities. Whiteness is implicitly the cause of the mass shootings and is also referenced as evidence of white male privilege in the collective response to those shootings, while the non-white ethnicities of “minorities,” a highly ambiguous term the definition of which shifts depending on which way the winds blow in the Arctic, are in his schema the reason for alleged profiling. Mr. Sirota just profiled the entire nation for profiling minorities, a circumstance that suggest that we are not dealing with an intellectual argument but an ideological smear. Considering the fact that, if we assume white male privilege, the motive of white males when shooting up a school or a movie theater is never entirely clear because if a white male is raging against a society intoxicated by white male privileged their violent outburst is something of a bizarre masochistic aberration, while minorities that do so are implicitly raging against a white male dominated society and are therefore absolved of serious criminality. In this way, the argument works to refute its own claim and justify minority terrorism. Either there is white male privilege, these crimes being an aberration, or society needs to profile white males as well. His argument does nothing to mitigate his concern about ethnic profiling, but actually expands it.
While a deductive refutation of Sirota is not going to get us to the conclusion “there is no such ephemeral quality of society as white male privilege as it regards terrorism,” neither is the conclusion “white male privilege accounts for why white males are not collectively denigrated as it regards terrorism.” An empirical procedure, however, will take us exactly to the former and refute definitively the latter.
The first empirical assessment that we need to make is to test the idea that white male terrorism has never been considered an existential threat. In 1871, Republican President Ulysseses S. Grant signed into law the Klu Klux Klan act. Unfortunately for Sirota, this was not a situation in which the former Commanding General of the Union forces was institutionalizing the ideology of the Klu Klux Klan, but specifically targeting as enemy combatants a group of white extremists racist terrorist, who happened to be citizens, on behalf of a minority recently set free by the sacrifice of nearly 300,000 union soldiers.
About a hundred years later, the FBI was tasked with finally crushing the Klan under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. In pursuit of this task, the FBI considered the Klan to be the utmost threat to the integrity of the nation and all manner of profiling, infiltration, unconstitutional wiretapping, serial violations of due process, and other schemes were brought to bear on the inveterate racial ideology and its patrons. David Sirota’s notion that we generally conceive of white male terrorists as lone wolves is wrong in any objective historical examination.
Obfuscation is the latest and only tactic left for the media in all matters concerning Islam and Muslims, a tactic not afforded to any other group. It has hallmarks of an affirmative action mindset, where everything is reduced to grievance and historical justification, and causes are deduced from those grievances. And in so being, it is highly incoherent. Tangentially, as an easily accessible example, the conclusion that is often nimbly deduced from this mindset is that nationalism is bad because nationalism is the cause of the abuse of which Muslims have been subjected; whether it be the French, the British, Israelis or the Russians, a nation and their xenophobic national pride or colonial avarice is to blame. But without an idea of a collective nation or culture, what use is the argument of collective grievance? And if it is of no use in regards to the French, but in fact a source of great self-deprecation, why is it used in respect to the Chechens, the Palestinians, or,Indoor Positioning System, the Tibetans?
We expect as much from Mr. Sirota. He seems to have a fetish with white men. He writes about them constantly. And if it weren’t for the tragic circumstances under which the article was written it would be amusing. But it is not. It is a prime of example of deductive impotence and a fine example of the lengths to which the left will go to construct the political skirmish on a battlefield of its own choosing. Sun Tzu once warned that you should never fight an enemy on the field of its choosing, but choose your place and time and you will be victorious. Like a good liberal, Sirota has heeded the advice of sun Tzu and created a controversy and thus a battle on the grounds on which he chooses to fight. This piece was a strategic offensive written before the bombing suspects were identified in order to turn the conversation away from where it should empirically go. It was strategic brilliance, but tactical error. He cannot be victorious.
He cannot be victorious because the turf on which he chooses to wage rhetorical war is highly deductive and therefore highly vulnerable. A deductive argument is one in which axioms flow to conclusions without hesitation and hindrances. Socrates being a man, and men being mortal, leads to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal. The argument is entirely dependent on its premises, premises on inductive facts; Men are mortal is a conclusion only revealed by observation and induction. If one of these premises is suspect, the cards collapse and the conclusion becomes irrelevant. Having fired off the first salvos, we must respond to Sirota forthwith.
Sirota betrays his argument before the first sentence is even penned with the title itself. Let’s hope… the Marathon Bomber is a white American. There is no plurality here. The bomber is assumed to be a single white American bomber by the singular use of the verb “to be” and “bomber”. This elementary stuff, elementary stuff of which Sirota is ignorant. If he had wanted to make the argument that he advances, entitling the screed “Let’s hope the Marathon bomberS ARE white American neo-Nazis with intricate connections with a network of terror cells operating in the south,” would have been more effective. But in as much as it is elementary, it is also minutia, and merely serves to capitalize the fact that Sirota is an idiot.
The raw meat of his argument, however, is in this group of sentences: “This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.”
Here Mr. Sirota conflates ethnicity with motive without as much as the bat of the eye in the case of “white dudes” while condemning the same mental movement in the case of minorities. Whiteness is implicitly the cause of the mass shootings and is also referenced as evidence of white male privilege in the collective response to those shootings, while the non-white ethnicities of “minorities,” a highly ambiguous term the definition of which shifts depending on which way the winds blow in the Arctic, are in his schema the reason for alleged profiling. Mr. Sirota just profiled the entire nation for profiling minorities, a circumstance that suggest that we are not dealing with an intellectual argument but an ideological smear. Considering the fact that, if we assume white male privilege, the motive of white males when shooting up a school or a movie theater is never entirely clear because if a white male is raging against a society intoxicated by white male privileged their violent outburst is something of a bizarre masochistic aberration, while minorities that do so are implicitly raging against a white male dominated society and are therefore absolved of serious criminality. In this way, the argument works to refute its own claim and justify minority terrorism. Either there is white male privilege, these crimes being an aberration, or society needs to profile white males as well. His argument does nothing to mitigate his concern about ethnic profiling, but actually expands it.
While a deductive refutation of Sirota is not going to get us to the conclusion “there is no such ephemeral quality of society as white male privilege as it regards terrorism,” neither is the conclusion “white male privilege accounts for why white males are not collectively denigrated as it regards terrorism.” An empirical procedure, however, will take us exactly to the former and refute definitively the latter.
The first empirical assessment that we need to make is to test the idea that white male terrorism has never been considered an existential threat. In 1871, Republican President Ulysseses S. Grant signed into law the Klu Klux Klan act. Unfortunately for Sirota, this was not a situation in which the former Commanding General of the Union forces was institutionalizing the ideology of the Klu Klux Klan, but specifically targeting as enemy combatants a group of white extremists racist terrorist, who happened to be citizens, on behalf of a minority recently set free by the sacrifice of nearly 300,000 union soldiers.
About a hundred years later, the FBI was tasked with finally crushing the Klan under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. In pursuit of this task, the FBI considered the Klan to be the utmost threat to the integrity of the nation and all manner of profiling, infiltration, unconstitutional wiretapping, serial violations of due process, and other schemes were brought to bear on the inveterate racial ideology and its patrons. David Sirota’s notion that we generally conceive of white male terrorists as lone wolves is wrong in any objective historical examination.
2013年5月1日星期三
Egypt-IMF deal pending updated reform plan
Egypt is moving ahead with talks over a standby loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pending an updated national economic programme that guarantees key reforms will be successfully implemented to pave the way for growth, an IMF official told Ahram Online.
Whereas Tunisia sealed a $1.7 billion deal with the fund last week, Egypt is now on its third attempt to conclude its own $4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.
Previous stats on the budget deficit and the soaring subsidies bill became outdated after disruptive politics forced post-revolutionary governments to suspend two previous agreements.
Now finance officials on both sides are busy aligning numbers and forecasts. Once the IMF receives the data it will verify and analyse it to ensure the Arab world’s most populous country can meet its target reforms and qualify for the loan.
“We and the Egyptian authorities are working to make sure we have the most recent data to design a programme which will be successful in its implementation,” Masood Ahmed director of the IMF’s Middle East and Asia department told Ahram Online at the fund’s Washington Indoor Positioning System.
“As time goes on, the economic situation changes and the numbers move. The data at the time when we reached the earlier agreement is no longer relevant,” said Ahmed.
“We need to look collectively with the Egyptians at the recent data to make sure that what we are basing the programme on reflects the most complete information available.”
Egyptian officials are concluding a new package with updated figures and new deadlines for implementing reforms to present the IMF for review before sealing the deal. IMF officials including Ahmed and mission chief for Egypt Andreas Bauer held a follow-up teleconference call with their Egyptian counterparts earlier this week.
According to one Egyptian official, who requested anonymity, the new package currently being finalised will not include any new measures but will offer the most recent figures on the status of the country’s economy.
“Speed is of the essence as we do not have the luxury to kickstart reforms on subsidies and taxes slowly, gradually,” he said. “What is important is that we explain to people what is happening and ensure that it process is smooth and efficient.”
An agreement would shore up Egypt’s depleted foreign reserves, pave the way for more aid from donor countries and boost investor confidence.
To qualify for the loan, however, Egypt is in for some serious belt-tightening. It must introduce a string of austerity measures that include lifting energy subsidies that eat up a fifth of the country’s budget, and raising sales tax on select items to broaden the tax base.
With a slow growth rate of 2 percent annually and a high level of unemployment, the government has been reluctant to impose any of these fiscal measures, fearing a popular backlash in the chaotic return to the free market.
Egypt is seeking the IMF loan to narrow its widening budget deficit, which reached 10.8 percent of GDP in 2012. Because of delays in implementing fiscal measures, it is likely to miss its target deficit reduction for the year ending June, with the deficit expected to reach 11.5 percent of GDP verses the 10.4 targeted previously. The government has said it to reduce the gap for the year 2013/14 to reach 9.5 percent of GDP.
Political instability and the presence of multiple voices in a burgeoning post-Mubarak democracy have held back the pace of negotiations on the much-needed loan. Egyptian officials of various capacities and varying degrees of economic know-how have often come up against each other because of gaps in experience and approach.
Others have faced resistance from lawmakers at the Shura Council, currently Egypt’s only legislative body, which on Monday postponed studying a tax law draft the government has submitted and which lawmakers said was missing data.
A handover of financial expertise from long-standing Mubarak-era officials to those from the now-ruling Muslim Brotherhood is still in force. Government officials close to the negotiations with the IMF have expressed frustration over the decision-making process, specifically the speed of implementing reforms and who would be responsible for implementation.
Asked about delays in the past, Ahmed said that the IMF has always dealt with a core group of interlocutors who have been “diligent and cooperative” in working towards finalising an agreement. But he added that the challenge was for a new government like Egypt’s to gain the trust of the public and commit to fairly implementing reforms.
Delays have also been partly an outcome of the IMF adopting a new approach to negotiations, which no longer simply rely on government authorities but now involve outreach to opposition groups and the general public to explain why certain reforms are needed.
“People can understand that if you're buying a litre of gas [petrol] for $10 and selling it for $1 then there's an issue. What has been difficult to explain and is politically challenging for the government is that the public doesn't believe that when you make those savings you're actually going to spend it on something that is important to them,” he explained.
Egypt plans to ration diesel fuel using a smart-card system by July this year as part of its fuel subsidy reforms to shore up government finances. Under the new system, consumers will receive limited amounts of subsidised fuel, beyond which they will have to pay market prices. The IMF has had doubts on the government’s ability to implement such a system efficiently.
Whereas Tunisia sealed a $1.7 billion deal with the fund last week, Egypt is now on its third attempt to conclude its own $4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.
Previous stats on the budget deficit and the soaring subsidies bill became outdated after disruptive politics forced post-revolutionary governments to suspend two previous agreements.
Now finance officials on both sides are busy aligning numbers and forecasts. Once the IMF receives the data it will verify and analyse it to ensure the Arab world’s most populous country can meet its target reforms and qualify for the loan.
“We and the Egyptian authorities are working to make sure we have the most recent data to design a programme which will be successful in its implementation,” Masood Ahmed director of the IMF’s Middle East and Asia department told Ahram Online at the fund’s Washington Indoor Positioning System.
“As time goes on, the economic situation changes and the numbers move. The data at the time when we reached the earlier agreement is no longer relevant,” said Ahmed.
“We need to look collectively with the Egyptians at the recent data to make sure that what we are basing the programme on reflects the most complete information available.”
Egyptian officials are concluding a new package with updated figures and new deadlines for implementing reforms to present the IMF for review before sealing the deal. IMF officials including Ahmed and mission chief for Egypt Andreas Bauer held a follow-up teleconference call with their Egyptian counterparts earlier this week.
According to one Egyptian official, who requested anonymity, the new package currently being finalised will not include any new measures but will offer the most recent figures on the status of the country’s economy.
“Speed is of the essence as we do not have the luxury to kickstart reforms on subsidies and taxes slowly, gradually,” he said. “What is important is that we explain to people what is happening and ensure that it process is smooth and efficient.”
An agreement would shore up Egypt’s depleted foreign reserves, pave the way for more aid from donor countries and boost investor confidence.
To qualify for the loan, however, Egypt is in for some serious belt-tightening. It must introduce a string of austerity measures that include lifting energy subsidies that eat up a fifth of the country’s budget, and raising sales tax on select items to broaden the tax base.
With a slow growth rate of 2 percent annually and a high level of unemployment, the government has been reluctant to impose any of these fiscal measures, fearing a popular backlash in the chaotic return to the free market.
Egypt is seeking the IMF loan to narrow its widening budget deficit, which reached 10.8 percent of GDP in 2012. Because of delays in implementing fiscal measures, it is likely to miss its target deficit reduction for the year ending June, with the deficit expected to reach 11.5 percent of GDP verses the 10.4 targeted previously. The government has said it to reduce the gap for the year 2013/14 to reach 9.5 percent of GDP.
Political instability and the presence of multiple voices in a burgeoning post-Mubarak democracy have held back the pace of negotiations on the much-needed loan. Egyptian officials of various capacities and varying degrees of economic know-how have often come up against each other because of gaps in experience and approach.
Others have faced resistance from lawmakers at the Shura Council, currently Egypt’s only legislative body, which on Monday postponed studying a tax law draft the government has submitted and which lawmakers said was missing data.
A handover of financial expertise from long-standing Mubarak-era officials to those from the now-ruling Muslim Brotherhood is still in force. Government officials close to the negotiations with the IMF have expressed frustration over the decision-making process, specifically the speed of implementing reforms and who would be responsible for implementation.
Asked about delays in the past, Ahmed said that the IMF has always dealt with a core group of interlocutors who have been “diligent and cooperative” in working towards finalising an agreement. But he added that the challenge was for a new government like Egypt’s to gain the trust of the public and commit to fairly implementing reforms.
Delays have also been partly an outcome of the IMF adopting a new approach to negotiations, which no longer simply rely on government authorities but now involve outreach to opposition groups and the general public to explain why certain reforms are needed.
“People can understand that if you're buying a litre of gas [petrol] for $10 and selling it for $1 then there's an issue. What has been difficult to explain and is politically challenging for the government is that the public doesn't believe that when you make those savings you're actually going to spend it on something that is important to them,” he explained.
Egypt plans to ration diesel fuel using a smart-card system by July this year as part of its fuel subsidy reforms to shore up government finances. Under the new system, consumers will receive limited amounts of subsidised fuel, beyond which they will have to pay market prices. The IMF has had doubts on the government’s ability to implement such a system efficiently.
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