Spanish medicine stands to turn Google Glass from spring 2014’s hottest accessory into a way to save lives. From the first surgery performed entirely through the eye of the Glass to dozens of mobile applications, Spanish Glass-based innovation is poised to change the way doctors work and communicate.
This June, Dr. Pedro Guillen became the first to operate wearing Google Glass. The chief of trauma at the Clínica CEMTRO de Madrid performed a highly complex chondrocyte implantation, to form a membrane in the damaged knee of a 49-year-old. The surgery, which requires harvesting cartilage from another part of the leg and which Guillen pioneered in 1996, was streamed in real time to 150 doctors around the world, all sharing the same view as him.
The purpose of Google Glass — a lightweight pair of glasses equipped with a camera, GPS, bluetooth, microphone and viewfinder — is to connect with smartphones to allow the wearer to search and access information online and to use an eye-level camera, all hands-free. For Guillen, Google Glass gives the phrase “doctors without borders” a whole new meaning.
He described Google Glass as “la universidad de hospitales de todos los países del mundo” — the university for all medical schools around the world. “You see my hands, how I do the surgery,” he said, in awe of the possibilities of Google Glass in his field. In this first Glass surgery, Guillen was accompanied by Dr. Homero Rivas, director of innovative surgery at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and an expert in telemedicine, who advised the doctor throughout the course of the surgery, all from his packed classroom on the California campus. “The universities can interact with me,” Guillen said, as Rivas could also pass on questions from his students, many of whom were witnessing surgery from a firsthand perspective for the first time.
Guillen seems simply thrilled to be able to perform surgery with Google Glass, not just for the teaching opportunities, but for his own sake, too. He enthusiastically talked about being able to use Glass’s miniature split screen to look at the arthroscopic view of the knee he’s working on and a video refreshing how to properly separate and repair the joint, all at the same time, without taking his eyes off the operating table.
“In one minute, I can Google ‘anatomy of the knee,’ for example,” and find and watch a video he already prepared, or he could reference his own chondrocyte implantation from the exact same view that he performed it. If something were to go wrong, like during a live sports game, he could even rewind the tape to review the surgery then and indoor Tracking. Not only does he have the information the moment he needs it and doesn’t need to distract himself to discover it, but also keeping difficult-to-sterilize computers out of the O.R. helps prevent infections.
Guillen, who, like all surgeons, is preoccupied with the comfort and ease of use of anything added to their routine, assured us that the glasses — which he said are “at the perfect height” over his own — were not uncomfortable, and, by the time he was in surgery, he didn’t notice them at all.
Of course, like all smartphones and tablets, Google Glass is nothing without the apps. Murcia-based mobile app company Droiders has an entire department called Glassters, developing everything from augmented realities to assistance for those with disabilities. On the medical side, they are working on developing apps that enable ophthalmologists to examine eyes directly and to compare with results of Google’s “Search by Image.” There’s also talk of an app that would allow any doctor or nurse to take a pulse rate without having to touch a patient. Guillen’s surgery was broadcast live through the Glassters Streamer.
Guillen is ready to perform his next Google Glass surgery on September 17, where he will be able to show from his perspective another operation that he invented — wireless arthroscopic surgery, which was first performed in 2007. Guillen and his team at the Clínica CEMTRO de Madrid invented the Wireless Arthroscopic Device, which is a tiny camera inserted through a small incision used to examine and sometimes repair a damaged joint. Since the joint isn’t fully opened, recovery time is much shorter.
He said that his clinic is “probably the top in the world” for such surgeries and that “all of my patients are out-patient,” including former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, footballer Fernando “El Ni?o” Torres, and several rhythmic gymnasts, an Olympic sport that Spain typically medals in.
"Later that evening I checked my Bank of America account online and noted not only had I been charged for my purchase, but there was an additional charge for $213.96 from Verizon," said Guinan, 63. "Interestingly, the charge had been made an hour-and-a-half later, after the first — and correct — Verizon charge."He said he immediately called Bank of America to report the unauthorized charge. He said he also talked to Verizon, which acknowledged there was a problem, and it said it would work with the bank to correct it.
"The money was placed back in my account and all was well until Feb. 15, 2013, when the $213.96 was debited from my account," he said, noting he received a letter from the bank on the same day."They said after investigating, they found that there was a signature on the receipt and therefore it was an ‘authorized purchase," he said.Knowing that wasn’t the case, Guinan called Bank of America.
"After explaining and discussing the situation, the Bank of America representative determined that the claim was in the wrong category and it would be placed in the correct category — fraud — and the claim would be reopened," he said.Guinan said he knew it could take several months, so he waited it out.
On July 26, Giunan said, he called Bank of America again."They said that the charge was authorized by a signature and therefore was a legitimate charge," he said. "I stated that it clearly was not mine, but that didn’t seem to matter. The Bank of America representative said to go back to Verizon."
So he did, visiting the Union store during the first week of August.Guinan said the manager was able to bring up Guinan’s account, confirming he purchased the phone case for $24.06. He said the manager was also able to view the $213.96 charge, and had access to the buyer’s name, address and phone number.
"I received a copy of the Verizon receipt for the $213.96 purchase," he said. "Not only was the signature clearly not mine, but the phone number listed with the account was in no way connected to me."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年9月2日星期一
Trans Pacific Partnership
With President Barack Obama’s popularity at home and overseas suffering, there’s yet another area of policy where his influence is diminishing: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement. World leaders from 12 different countries wrapped up a week of negotiations in Brunei Friday and will meet again later this month in the United States. The TPP represents the largest free trade agreement in U.S. history.
As Congress comes back from its August recess, it’ll be facing big questions about U.S. intervention in Syria as well as raising the debt ceiling, putting the administration’s goal of completing the TPP by year’s end in doubt. Negotiators have run into protectionist roadblocks at home, and with many of the main sticking points making no progress during the Brunei talks, some countries, such as Malaysia, admit things have reached a critical stage and they’re contemplating whether to withdraw from the pact completely.
Japan, who only joined talks mid-summer, is seeking exceptions to aspects of the TPP, which is causing other countries to balk at the effects the TPP could have on their own native, many of them state-owned, industries. Japan is seeking to shelter certain key agricultural crops from the removal of tariffs as required by the TPP. The five major products its seeking to protect are: rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar.
However, the ‘official’ joint statement by TPP members claimed the negotiations were ‘successful’ and that progress was made: “…discussions both jointly and bilaterally were successful in identifying creative and pragmatic solutions to many issues and further narrowing the remaining work.”
Progress was touted on market access, rules of origin, investment, financial services, intellectual property, competition and environment, as well as providing access to each other’s markets for “goods, services, investment, financial services, temporary entry and government procurement.”
But insiders say some work groups were not as successful as desired, including the environmental work group that made less than 40 percent of the progress expected. This was the last of the major negotiating sessions, and now the focus is said to be turning inward to ‘intercessional’ talks ahead of a planned TPP summit on October 8 in Bali, Indonesia.
Opposition isn’t just brewing overseas. Obama, though he’s cozy with big labor interests, started pushing the TPP on an unsuspecting U.S. public in 2008 with an ambitious Asia-Pacific free trade region that would cover 40 percent of global economic output representing about one-third of rtls. The countries at the table so far include: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. The TPP is expected to be a ‘docking agreement,’ leaving the door open for other nations to join with Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea and others already expressing some interest.
According to Citizens Trade Campaign, these corporate interests are seeking new access to cheap labor (Vietnamese workers are paid one-third that of Chinese workers), the ability to skirt environmental laws, longer drug patents (delaying the production of low-cost generic drugs), financial de-regulation (preventing regulations that could stave off ‘too big to fail’ bailouts), caps on food safety protections (ie – limit liability for pesticides and genetically modified foods), concentration and hence control of global food supplies (making ‘buy local’ initiatives harder), and tax advantages.
First implemented under President Richard Nixon, fast track “trade promotion authority” is a trade negotiation and approval process designed to keep the terms of trade agreements out of the hands of the public and its elected representatives and into the hands of an un-elected trade representative and private corporations. This will allow the TPP to be signed before the public can see or scrutinize it. Fast track rules allow such trade agreements to be rushed through Congress and bypass normal Congressional review.
Opponents claim the TPP is another NAFTA and will threaten more U.S. jobs at a time when unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly high, especially among 18-35 year olds. The lack of high-paying, gainful employment relevant to one’s college education has sparked an effort by the administration to forgive student loan debt riddling the millennial generation, debt that’s causing many to be stuck living at home with their parents delaying home ownership and starting their own families.
The success of upcoming meetings in Washington and later in Bali will largely determine how quickly the TPP could come to fruition. But with some countries re-thinking the threat to their own economies and key markets, the TPP may be another Obama initiative that bites the dust in 2013.
Levequests are special solo quests you can take over and over again at various levels and locations that are a great way to level your character up quickly. Guildhests partner you with three other players in increasingly difficult co-op missions.
Even some of the earlier story quests—or at least one of mine at about level 19—required a party to undertake, forcing solo players to at the very least team up for a brief dungeon. The only problem here was the wait time, and finally through various chatting diplomacy we cobbled together a party rather than wait for one to be made. This is largely due, I suspect, to the lack of certain types of classes at this point, since specific combinations of classes are required.
If I had to recommend one version over the other, I’d say stick with the PC both for graphics and the mouse-and-keyboard. Gamepad support is quality, but this is really a keyboard and mouse game. Action-MMO it is not, and really action is the only time a gamepad works particularly well.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
As Congress comes back from its August recess, it’ll be facing big questions about U.S. intervention in Syria as well as raising the debt ceiling, putting the administration’s goal of completing the TPP by year’s end in doubt. Negotiators have run into protectionist roadblocks at home, and with many of the main sticking points making no progress during the Brunei talks, some countries, such as Malaysia, admit things have reached a critical stage and they’re contemplating whether to withdraw from the pact completely.
Japan, who only joined talks mid-summer, is seeking exceptions to aspects of the TPP, which is causing other countries to balk at the effects the TPP could have on their own native, many of them state-owned, industries. Japan is seeking to shelter certain key agricultural crops from the removal of tariffs as required by the TPP. The five major products its seeking to protect are: rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar.
However, the ‘official’ joint statement by TPP members claimed the negotiations were ‘successful’ and that progress was made: “…discussions both jointly and bilaterally were successful in identifying creative and pragmatic solutions to many issues and further narrowing the remaining work.”
Progress was touted on market access, rules of origin, investment, financial services, intellectual property, competition and environment, as well as providing access to each other’s markets for “goods, services, investment, financial services, temporary entry and government procurement.”
But insiders say some work groups were not as successful as desired, including the environmental work group that made less than 40 percent of the progress expected. This was the last of the major negotiating sessions, and now the focus is said to be turning inward to ‘intercessional’ talks ahead of a planned TPP summit on October 8 in Bali, Indonesia.
Opposition isn’t just brewing overseas. Obama, though he’s cozy with big labor interests, started pushing the TPP on an unsuspecting U.S. public in 2008 with an ambitious Asia-Pacific free trade region that would cover 40 percent of global economic output representing about one-third of rtls. The countries at the table so far include: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. The TPP is expected to be a ‘docking agreement,’ leaving the door open for other nations to join with Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea and others already expressing some interest.
According to Citizens Trade Campaign, these corporate interests are seeking new access to cheap labor (Vietnamese workers are paid one-third that of Chinese workers), the ability to skirt environmental laws, longer drug patents (delaying the production of low-cost generic drugs), financial de-regulation (preventing regulations that could stave off ‘too big to fail’ bailouts), caps on food safety protections (ie – limit liability for pesticides and genetically modified foods), concentration and hence control of global food supplies (making ‘buy local’ initiatives harder), and tax advantages.
First implemented under President Richard Nixon, fast track “trade promotion authority” is a trade negotiation and approval process designed to keep the terms of trade agreements out of the hands of the public and its elected representatives and into the hands of an un-elected trade representative and private corporations. This will allow the TPP to be signed before the public can see or scrutinize it. Fast track rules allow such trade agreements to be rushed through Congress and bypass normal Congressional review.
Opponents claim the TPP is another NAFTA and will threaten more U.S. jobs at a time when unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly high, especially among 18-35 year olds. The lack of high-paying, gainful employment relevant to one’s college education has sparked an effort by the administration to forgive student loan debt riddling the millennial generation, debt that’s causing many to be stuck living at home with their parents delaying home ownership and starting their own families.
The success of upcoming meetings in Washington and later in Bali will largely determine how quickly the TPP could come to fruition. But with some countries re-thinking the threat to their own economies and key markets, the TPP may be another Obama initiative that bites the dust in 2013.
Levequests are special solo quests you can take over and over again at various levels and locations that are a great way to level your character up quickly. Guildhests partner you with three other players in increasingly difficult co-op missions.
Even some of the earlier story quests—or at least one of mine at about level 19—required a party to undertake, forcing solo players to at the very least team up for a brief dungeon. The only problem here was the wait time, and finally through various chatting diplomacy we cobbled together a party rather than wait for one to be made. This is largely due, I suspect, to the lack of certain types of classes at this point, since specific combinations of classes are required.
If I had to recommend one version over the other, I’d say stick with the PC both for graphics and the mouse-and-keyboard. Gamepad support is quality, but this is really a keyboard and mouse game. Action-MMO it is not, and really action is the only time a gamepad works particularly well.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月28日星期三
Hacker scenes are all the same
Look, I get it. When the hero inevitably runs into a dead end, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that a fictional hacker can solve everything. But it’s not 1995 anymore; computers are not relatively new inventions, so over time, these hacker scenes have only become more tedious than revolutionary.
Let’s start with the latest hacking-as-a-plot-point offender: this summer’s Elysium. Toward the end, our hero Max is forced to carry critical data to the “core” of the wealthy outpost in space. Who does he bring along? A hacker named Spider who just happens to know exactly how to use the data stored in Max’s head to—what else?—save the world.And Spider does what every movie hacker does: He types a thousand lines of “code,” steps back and clasps his sweaty hands together, praying that what he just keyboard-smashed will work.
I didn’t always find “hacking” scenes so annoying to watch. When Lex tries to reboot the security system in Jurassic Park, I remember being on the edge of my seat, nervously gritting my teeth while she navigated the files. I used to sweat alongside Livingston Dell in Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, as he used one shortcut after the next to help his fellow thieves access casino vaults.
Not anymore. Now, whenever a character takes a seat in front of a computer, cracks his knuckles and starts typing, I’m bored out of my mind, because every hacking scene ends up looking the same. Fingers fly over the keys, sweat drips from the hacker’s eyebrows and the monitor displays some fancy graphic to convince you that, yes, this hacker is doing something. And when screenwriters don’t know what else to do, they have the characters ramble off gibberish to distracts the viewer. Even Hugh Jackman can’t make scenes like those coherent.
And then there’s the annoying trope of timing. A buffering video is frustrating enough; why must films involving hackers have them staring at a bar slowly go from 98 percent… to 99 percent… to 100?It’s become a weak ploy to get the audience invested in the drama and Indoor Positioning System, simply put, no fun to watch. Yes, it can play up the tension, but if most of the film already includes hacking as a plot device, it slows down the pace.
It’s not just the portrayal of these scenes, but the portrayal of the hackers as well. Most hackers—Matt Farrell in Live Free or Die Hard, the aforementioned Dell in Ocean’s Eleven, Skip Tyler in White House Down—are shown to be awkward, stuttering, usually bespectacled nerds.
It’s been done so often that every hacker, no matter what weird characteristic they’re given, comes off as one-note, socially awkward outcasts. And no, not every film is meant to delve into extensive character backgrounds, but enough with this stereotype already. Hackers can be cool, too. Smallville’s Chloe was my idol, and another Chloe is set to play Skye, a hacker on Agents of SHIELD, who promises she won’t be one of the “weird outcasts who only know how to deal with electronics.” Even though they’re still victim to hacking scenes, both Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptations characterize Lisbeth Salander as more than just a hacker.
Ultimately, it’s all about hacking as a skill, not as the sole characteristic or a vague plot device. Break a firewall and the MI6 headquarters blow up? Type some gibberish and all of America goes in lockdown? You’re better than that, screenwriters. Before you dive into making movies about Wikileaks or the NSA, remember: It’s not about whether or not the hacking is realistic, it’s about using that hacking effectively in your plot.
Despite the fact that he was making his presentation to an assembly of some of the world's most accomplished semiconductor engineers, Parviz stayed away from technical matters, and didn't reveal anything about Glass beyond what is already known. Instead, he focused on its possible impact on, well, everyone.
Parviz characterized Glass as the next step in communication. At the dawn of history, he said, "Basically what we did was we talked to each other, so we had to be in physical proximity of each other, carry our emotions through speech, and communicate – that was the only thing we could do."
Next came the invention of writing, which enabled sending messages long distance – an improvement, but slow. Enter the telegraph, he said, which was able to send text messages quickly over long distance. Then came the telephone – fast, long-distance, without the requirement for conversion into text, with the ability for instant back-and-forth conversation, but tethered.
The digital age brought email – essential a private, mobile telegraph – and untethered, aka mobile, phones. All well and good, but from Parviz's point of view, "What we haven't really had actually, to this day, genuinely, has been a device, a technology that has been engineered from the get-go for visual communication from person to person – and that's one of the main drivers of Google Glass."
Sure, he said, you can take photos with your smartphone and email them to a friend, he said, "But that is sort of an extension of taking a picture and putting it in paper mail and mailing it to someone else."
A camera-equipped computing device that, as Parviz put it, "lives on your head," will enable you to immediately live-stream what you're looking at to one or many viewers who can "experience [your] life at this very moment" while leaving your hands free. "This has a camera that sees the world through my eyes – and that's unique to this form factor," he said. "We don't have other electronic devices that can live with me as I live my life rather than be an intrusion into my life."
With the world of human interaction upgraded from mere speech to "see the world as I'm seeing it when I'm seeing it" pictorial communication, Parviz moved on to how humans have looked for information over the years, how they have sought out answers to questions they might have had. "A few thousand years ago," he said, "basically you were out of luck" if you didn't know someone who could answer your question.
Over time, however, as mankind became urbanized, you could maybe track down your local polymath would could answer your questions – but whether that smart person was actually correct, you had no way of knowing. After that came writing, scrolls, and books, and you could look things up in the library – a big improvement that ruled the roost for centuries.
Let’s start with the latest hacking-as-a-plot-point offender: this summer’s Elysium. Toward the end, our hero Max is forced to carry critical data to the “core” of the wealthy outpost in space. Who does he bring along? A hacker named Spider who just happens to know exactly how to use the data stored in Max’s head to—what else?—save the world.And Spider does what every movie hacker does: He types a thousand lines of “code,” steps back and clasps his sweaty hands together, praying that what he just keyboard-smashed will work.
I didn’t always find “hacking” scenes so annoying to watch. When Lex tries to reboot the security system in Jurassic Park, I remember being on the edge of my seat, nervously gritting my teeth while she navigated the files. I used to sweat alongside Livingston Dell in Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, as he used one shortcut after the next to help his fellow thieves access casino vaults.
Not anymore. Now, whenever a character takes a seat in front of a computer, cracks his knuckles and starts typing, I’m bored out of my mind, because every hacking scene ends up looking the same. Fingers fly over the keys, sweat drips from the hacker’s eyebrows and the monitor displays some fancy graphic to convince you that, yes, this hacker is doing something. And when screenwriters don’t know what else to do, they have the characters ramble off gibberish to distracts the viewer. Even Hugh Jackman can’t make scenes like those coherent.
And then there’s the annoying trope of timing. A buffering video is frustrating enough; why must films involving hackers have them staring at a bar slowly go from 98 percent… to 99 percent… to 100?It’s become a weak ploy to get the audience invested in the drama and Indoor Positioning System, simply put, no fun to watch. Yes, it can play up the tension, but if most of the film already includes hacking as a plot device, it slows down the pace.
It’s not just the portrayal of these scenes, but the portrayal of the hackers as well. Most hackers—Matt Farrell in Live Free or Die Hard, the aforementioned Dell in Ocean’s Eleven, Skip Tyler in White House Down—are shown to be awkward, stuttering, usually bespectacled nerds.
It’s been done so often that every hacker, no matter what weird characteristic they’re given, comes off as one-note, socially awkward outcasts. And no, not every film is meant to delve into extensive character backgrounds, but enough with this stereotype already. Hackers can be cool, too. Smallville’s Chloe was my idol, and another Chloe is set to play Skye, a hacker on Agents of SHIELD, who promises she won’t be one of the “weird outcasts who only know how to deal with electronics.” Even though they’re still victim to hacking scenes, both Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptations characterize Lisbeth Salander as more than just a hacker.
Ultimately, it’s all about hacking as a skill, not as the sole characteristic or a vague plot device. Break a firewall and the MI6 headquarters blow up? Type some gibberish and all of America goes in lockdown? You’re better than that, screenwriters. Before you dive into making movies about Wikileaks or the NSA, remember: It’s not about whether or not the hacking is realistic, it’s about using that hacking effectively in your plot.
Despite the fact that he was making his presentation to an assembly of some of the world's most accomplished semiconductor engineers, Parviz stayed away from technical matters, and didn't reveal anything about Glass beyond what is already known. Instead, he focused on its possible impact on, well, everyone.
Parviz characterized Glass as the next step in communication. At the dawn of history, he said, "Basically what we did was we talked to each other, so we had to be in physical proximity of each other, carry our emotions through speech, and communicate – that was the only thing we could do."
Next came the invention of writing, which enabled sending messages long distance – an improvement, but slow. Enter the telegraph, he said, which was able to send text messages quickly over long distance. Then came the telephone – fast, long-distance, without the requirement for conversion into text, with the ability for instant back-and-forth conversation, but tethered.
The digital age brought email – essential a private, mobile telegraph – and untethered, aka mobile, phones. All well and good, but from Parviz's point of view, "What we haven't really had actually, to this day, genuinely, has been a device, a technology that has been engineered from the get-go for visual communication from person to person – and that's one of the main drivers of Google Glass."
Sure, he said, you can take photos with your smartphone and email them to a friend, he said, "But that is sort of an extension of taking a picture and putting it in paper mail and mailing it to someone else."
A camera-equipped computing device that, as Parviz put it, "lives on your head," will enable you to immediately live-stream what you're looking at to one or many viewers who can "experience [your] life at this very moment" while leaving your hands free. "This has a camera that sees the world through my eyes – and that's unique to this form factor," he said. "We don't have other electronic devices that can live with me as I live my life rather than be an intrusion into my life."
With the world of human interaction upgraded from mere speech to "see the world as I'm seeing it when I'm seeing it" pictorial communication, Parviz moved on to how humans have looked for information over the years, how they have sought out answers to questions they might have had. "A few thousand years ago," he said, "basically you were out of luck" if you didn't know someone who could answer your question.
Over time, however, as mankind became urbanized, you could maybe track down your local polymath would could answer your questions – but whether that smart person was actually correct, you had no way of knowing. After that came writing, scrolls, and books, and you could look things up in the library – a big improvement that ruled the roost for centuries.
Abbott's policy on the run at Rooty Hill debate
Kevin Rudd has thrown the lever to populism by calling for tighter restrictions on the sale of Australian land to foreign individuals and state-owned enterprises and admitting he feels ''anxious'' about foreign ownership.The clearly vote-driven shift came as the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott faced off at the third and final leaders debate of the 2013 campaign at Rooty Hill RSL Club in Sydney.
Mr Rudd was pressed on his political assassination of Julia Gillard in late June, and Mr Abbott was criticised for his paid parental leave scheme.An exit poll of the audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott's 38. However, 19 remained undecided.
Small businessman Ian told Mr Abbott: ''I just think that a fork-lift driver from Mt Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the north shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid.''Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff''.
Kevin Rudd.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: "I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country". Photo: Alex EllinghausenHe said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.
The shift will be seen as rank populism that threatens to overturn a longstanding consensus in Australian mainstream politics between free market-oriented figures in both the Liberal Party and the ALP. The shift appeared to come without prior party consultation.
The second questioner – Amanda – asked if he ''honestly'' believed that he was not ''destabilising'' Ms Gillard’s leadership, and if he really thought voters had not seen through it.''I can say that through all of that, I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and Indoor Positioning System,'' he said.The question was one of several hostile queries directed at both men, although Mr Rudd received the majority.
Mr Abbott found himself defending his plans for budget management as Mr Rudd accused him of not committing to the full six years of the education spending promised by Labor and of having secret plans to close Medicare Locals at the expense of services and hundreds of jobs.In response, Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. This definitive guarantee also appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.''
But it was in response to a complaint about foreign land sales, from a grandmother called Janine, that both leaders broke with Australia's established globalism to shun foreign investment.Mr Abbott, who admitted there were many circumstances where someone investing ''hundreds of millions'' was a good thing for Australia, said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold for the Foreign Investment Review Board to examine acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' – down from the current threshhold of more than $220 million.
Robocop may not be real, but his efficiency is something worth aspiring to. Through the use of Google Glass, communications vendor Mutualink may soon give public safety and military personnel a chance to capture some of the half-robot, half-man’s technological capabilities. Showcased from August 18 to 21 at the annual Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference in Anaheim, Calif., Mutualink demonstrated how Google Glass could serve real-time information, hands-free, to public safety officials using their interoperability communications platform.
Mutualink provides public safety and military organizations with the ability to share all kinds of data despite mismatched hardware or software. During their demonstration at APCO, hundreds of indoor Tracking, schools, hospitals, utility plants and operation centers were connected, able to share video, voice and data ad-hoc. That, said VP of Innovation Michael Wengrovitz, is the basic capability already offered by their company. Google Glass, about to enter the consumer market, will provide a new avenue for delivery of their services, Wengrovitz explained.
Google Glass doesn’t change how their system works, he said. In many ways, it’s just another computer, but with the important difference that it frees up the hands of the person using it. In one demonstration, the company illustrated how Google Glass and their network could allow video or a map to be shared during a mock school shooting.
“We really saw firsthand that first responders inside a school need to have timely and situational awareness and they need their hands. Both of them,” he said. Google Glass’s heads up display (HUD) allows users to look to the right in their peripheral vision and view information that is being served to them, like maps, blueprints, surveillance video feeds, or other documents. Information can also be returned back to command and control from the field.
“What we showed there, which I think is very unique, is that our system can bridge together facilities that are already on wired connections with facilities that become connected to FirstNet when it deploys across the United States,” Wengrovitz said. This is important, he noted, because there will be a migration period when people are moving to FirstNet’s network and Mutualink will be there to support everyone, regardless of which network they’re on.
Google Glass is a very promising technology, said Mutualink Senior VP Joe Mazzarella, but for public safety, there are a couple improvements that could be made. The audio, which works through cranial vibration, works well, but its reliability in a loud environment is an open question. And the HUD, while useful, will also continue to evolve in future wearable computers, he said, adding that all of this is pushing people toward an augmented reality.
Eventually, he said, wearable computers will have more advanced HUDs. “You’re looking at your normal view through your eyes, but through a screen that allows data to be opposed onto that view space so that you could look at different information,” he said. This type of capability will be very useful for first responders and soldiers alike, he said – adding that the capabilities of this technology will only become greater as companies like Google enchance their products.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Mr Rudd was pressed on his political assassination of Julia Gillard in late June, and Mr Abbott was criticised for his paid parental leave scheme.An exit poll of the audience of 100 undecided voters scored the debate as a comfortable win for Mr Rudd with 45 votes, to Mr Abbott's 38. However, 19 remained undecided.
Small businessman Ian told Mr Abbott: ''I just think that a fork-lift driver from Mt Druitt should not be paying his taxes so a pretty little lady lawyer on the north shore on 180 grand a year can have a kid.''Declaring himself ''old-fashioned'' when it comes to allowing foreign access to Australian land, Mr Rudd said he was ''not quite as free market as Tony [Abbott] on this stuff''.
Kevin Rudd.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: "I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and by the country". Photo: Alex EllinghausenHe said he was far more in favour of joint venture approaches to ensure Australian land stayed in Australian hands.
The shift will be seen as rank populism that threatens to overturn a longstanding consensus in Australian mainstream politics between free market-oriented figures in both the Liberal Party and the ALP. The shift appeared to come without prior party consultation.
The second questioner – Amanda – asked if he ''honestly'' believed that he was not ''destabilising'' Ms Gillard’s leadership, and if he really thought voters had not seen through it.''I can say that through all of that, I believe I was doing absolutely the right thing by the party and Indoor Positioning System,'' he said.The question was one of several hostile queries directed at both men, although Mr Rudd received the majority.
Mr Abbott found himself defending his plans for budget management as Mr Rudd accused him of not committing to the full six years of the education spending promised by Labor and of having secret plans to close Medicare Locals at the expense of services and hundreds of jobs.In response, Mr Abbott declared he would not close any Medicare Locals. This definitive guarantee also appeared to be improvised after he had pointedly left open the possibility of closures less than a week ago when he said: ''Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that.''
But it was in response to a complaint about foreign land sales, from a grandmother called Janine, that both leaders broke with Australia's established globalism to shun foreign investment.Mr Abbott, who admitted there were many circumstances where someone investing ''hundreds of millions'' was a good thing for Australia, said a Coalition government would lower the scrutiny threshold for the Foreign Investment Review Board to examine acquisition proposals above ''about $15 million'' – down from the current threshhold of more than $220 million.
Robocop may not be real, but his efficiency is something worth aspiring to. Through the use of Google Glass, communications vendor Mutualink may soon give public safety and military personnel a chance to capture some of the half-robot, half-man’s technological capabilities. Showcased from August 18 to 21 at the annual Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference in Anaheim, Calif., Mutualink demonstrated how Google Glass could serve real-time information, hands-free, to public safety officials using their interoperability communications platform.
Mutualink provides public safety and military organizations with the ability to share all kinds of data despite mismatched hardware or software. During their demonstration at APCO, hundreds of indoor Tracking, schools, hospitals, utility plants and operation centers were connected, able to share video, voice and data ad-hoc. That, said VP of Innovation Michael Wengrovitz, is the basic capability already offered by their company. Google Glass, about to enter the consumer market, will provide a new avenue for delivery of their services, Wengrovitz explained.
Google Glass doesn’t change how their system works, he said. In many ways, it’s just another computer, but with the important difference that it frees up the hands of the person using it. In one demonstration, the company illustrated how Google Glass and their network could allow video or a map to be shared during a mock school shooting.
“We really saw firsthand that first responders inside a school need to have timely and situational awareness and they need their hands. Both of them,” he said. Google Glass’s heads up display (HUD) allows users to look to the right in their peripheral vision and view information that is being served to them, like maps, blueprints, surveillance video feeds, or other documents. Information can also be returned back to command and control from the field.
“What we showed there, which I think is very unique, is that our system can bridge together facilities that are already on wired connections with facilities that become connected to FirstNet when it deploys across the United States,” Wengrovitz said. This is important, he noted, because there will be a migration period when people are moving to FirstNet’s network and Mutualink will be there to support everyone, regardless of which network they’re on.
Google Glass is a very promising technology, said Mutualink Senior VP Joe Mazzarella, but for public safety, there are a couple improvements that could be made. The audio, which works through cranial vibration, works well, but its reliability in a loud environment is an open question. And the HUD, while useful, will also continue to evolve in future wearable computers, he said, adding that all of this is pushing people toward an augmented reality.
Eventually, he said, wearable computers will have more advanced HUDs. “You’re looking at your normal view through your eyes, but through a screen that allows data to be opposed onto that view space so that you could look at different information,” he said. This type of capability will be very useful for first responders and soldiers alike, he said – adding that the capabilities of this technology will only become greater as companies like Google enchance their products.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月26日星期一
Hillary, Helmets, Crossfire and Cash
When Reince Priebus pressured Comcast's NBC to drop a miniseries starring Diane Lane as Hillary Clinton, the hostage that the RNC chairman threatened to snuff was the network's access to the 2016 presidential primary debates. When the N.F.L. forced Disney's ESPN to pull out of a documentary about concussions jointly produced with PBS's Frontline, the league's leverage was its deal with Disney's ESPN to air Monday Night Football. And when Time Warner's CNN hired Newt Gingrich for its exhumed edition of Crossfire, its motive wasn't political journalism in service of democracy; it was stunt casting in service of ratings.
On the surface, the fight between the GOP and NBC is about the effects of media on audiences. The party's presumption -- based on no evidence -- is that the miniseries would put Clinton in a favorable light, and -- also based on no evidence -- that the halo would translate into votes. But if a movie could do that, then John Glenn, heroically portrayed in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, would have been the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee. The real issue here isn't the impact of entertainment on audiences, it's the coup that took presidential debates out of the hands of rtls and handed them to party hacks.
Once upon a time, groups like the League of Women Voters sponsored the debates, and all cameras were welcome to cover them. But starting in 1988, the Democratic and Republican parties wrested control of the process. Since then, the general election debates have had an aura of patriotic respectability, but in reality they've been run by the same folks who've earned an eight percent approval rating for Congress. The primary debates have become cash cows for the networks, interest groups and faux think tanks. They're spectacles that provide free media to candidates, attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers and offer co-branding opportunities to burnish the images of the evenings' co-sponsors. The right question isn't whether NBC's miniseries would put a finger on the scale. It's why the hell a political party should be permitted to use the money that can be milked from the democratic process as a bargaining chip.
When ESPN withdrew its logo and credit from Frontline's "League of Denial," a two-part investigation of the N.F.L.'s handling of head injuries, its explanation was that "the use of ESPN's marks could incorrectly imply that we have editorial control." The N.F.L., of course, denies that it coerced ESPN, but as the New York Times has reported, ESPN's turnabout came a week after a heated lunch between Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L., and John Skipper, ESPN's president. For more than a year, the ground rules covering editorial authority had been working just fine; Frontline and ESPN each had control over what each aired. PBS and ESPN executives had even appeared together this summer at the Television Critics Assn. to promote the coming documentary. But when the N.F.L. belatedly realized -- hello? -- that they were about to get slammed for their see-no-evil response to players' brain traumas, they took ESPN to the woodshed. Disney is paying $1.1 billion for the lucrative rights to broadcast Monday Night Football this season, and $2 billion next season. "Nice deal you've got here. Too bad if anything were to happen to it." Surely nothing like that got said over the salad.
What makes this especially grim is its impact on the ESPN newsroom. Ever since CBS discovered that 60 Minutes could make a profit, the networks have treated news as a revenue center within their entertainment businesses. For sports reporters operating within that corporate structure, there's an inherent conflict between the network's financial contracts with sports content rights-holders, and its journalistic contract with its viewers. The fate of "League of Denial" is a case study of who wins that fight.
CNN, like NBC and ESPN, lives and dies by ratings. Outside of the new morning show New Day, CNN president Jeff Zucker's efforts to resuscitate the network have not much tested the possibility that actually covering the news, rather than filling time with blowhards, food fights and murderers, could be a winning strategy. Anyone who's watched CNN International while traveling abroad knows that CNN can in fact deliver solid, round-the-clock journalism, but apparently management thinks Americans are too ADD-addled, or maybe just too dim, to have a hearty appetite for real news. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that CNN is pulling Crossfire out of Indoor Positioning System, or that it's giving a certifiable demagogue like Newt Gingrich a regular seat at its table.
When Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire in 2004, he was the guest from hell. "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America," he told its then hosts, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. "I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media, and they're hurting us... I would love to see a debate show," he said, but calling Crossfire a debate show was "like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition... You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.... I watch your show every day. And it kills me... It's so -- oh, it's so painful to watch... Please, I beg of you guys, please... Please stop." That clip went viral.
The story goes that King Canute had his throne carried to the shore, where he ordered the waves to stop. When they didn't stop, he said he'd done this to demonstrate that kings were powerless compared to God. Three months after Stewart's "stop hurting America" appearance, when CNN announced it was cancelling Crossfire, I thought he was a god. Now, with Crossfire coming back, it looks like the god with the last laugh is Mammon.
It has taken six decades for the CIA to formally acknowledge that it undertook a coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, but the spy agency might never concede that some of its officers joined in a political strike against a sitting U.S. president in 1980, yet that is what the evidence now indicates.
As with the ouster of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the motive for sabotaging the reelection of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 appears to have flowed from fears about the direction of the Cold War, with American hardliners justifying their actions based on an assessment that Carter, like Mossadegh, was a dangerous idealist.
In 1953, the nationalistic Mossadegh was challenging America’s British allies over control of Iranian oil fields, prompting concerns that an armed confrontation between Great Britain and Iran might play to the Soviets’ advantage, according to a secret CIA document declassified last week. In 1980, Cold War hardliners, including disgruntled CIA officers, were warning that Carter’s decision to make human rights the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy was dangerously na?ve, inviting Soviet advances.
But a key difference between the two episodes was that the ouster of Mossadegh, an operation codenamed TPAJAX, was carried out in 1953 “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” the CIA report said, presumably meaning President Dwight Eisenhower himself.
The apparent 1980 plot to undermine Carter by sabotaging his negotiations with Iran over the fate of 52 American hostages would have been pulled off by rogue CIA officers collaborating with the Republican presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan (and his running mate George H.W. Bush), without the knowledge of Carter and CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
On the surface, the fight between the GOP and NBC is about the effects of media on audiences. The party's presumption -- based on no evidence -- is that the miniseries would put Clinton in a favorable light, and -- also based on no evidence -- that the halo would translate into votes. But if a movie could do that, then John Glenn, heroically portrayed in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, would have been the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee. The real issue here isn't the impact of entertainment on audiences, it's the coup that took presidential debates out of the hands of rtls and handed them to party hacks.
Once upon a time, groups like the League of Women Voters sponsored the debates, and all cameras were welcome to cover them. But starting in 1988, the Democratic and Republican parties wrested control of the process. Since then, the general election debates have had an aura of patriotic respectability, but in reality they've been run by the same folks who've earned an eight percent approval rating for Congress. The primary debates have become cash cows for the networks, interest groups and faux think tanks. They're spectacles that provide free media to candidates, attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers and offer co-branding opportunities to burnish the images of the evenings' co-sponsors. The right question isn't whether NBC's miniseries would put a finger on the scale. It's why the hell a political party should be permitted to use the money that can be milked from the democratic process as a bargaining chip.
When ESPN withdrew its logo and credit from Frontline's "League of Denial," a two-part investigation of the N.F.L.'s handling of head injuries, its explanation was that "the use of ESPN's marks could incorrectly imply that we have editorial control." The N.F.L., of course, denies that it coerced ESPN, but as the New York Times has reported, ESPN's turnabout came a week after a heated lunch between Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L., and John Skipper, ESPN's president. For more than a year, the ground rules covering editorial authority had been working just fine; Frontline and ESPN each had control over what each aired. PBS and ESPN executives had even appeared together this summer at the Television Critics Assn. to promote the coming documentary. But when the N.F.L. belatedly realized -- hello? -- that they were about to get slammed for their see-no-evil response to players' brain traumas, they took ESPN to the woodshed. Disney is paying $1.1 billion for the lucrative rights to broadcast Monday Night Football this season, and $2 billion next season. "Nice deal you've got here. Too bad if anything were to happen to it." Surely nothing like that got said over the salad.
What makes this especially grim is its impact on the ESPN newsroom. Ever since CBS discovered that 60 Minutes could make a profit, the networks have treated news as a revenue center within their entertainment businesses. For sports reporters operating within that corporate structure, there's an inherent conflict between the network's financial contracts with sports content rights-holders, and its journalistic contract with its viewers. The fate of "League of Denial" is a case study of who wins that fight.
CNN, like NBC and ESPN, lives and dies by ratings. Outside of the new morning show New Day, CNN president Jeff Zucker's efforts to resuscitate the network have not much tested the possibility that actually covering the news, rather than filling time with blowhards, food fights and murderers, could be a winning strategy. Anyone who's watched CNN International while traveling abroad knows that CNN can in fact deliver solid, round-the-clock journalism, but apparently management thinks Americans are too ADD-addled, or maybe just too dim, to have a hearty appetite for real news. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that CNN is pulling Crossfire out of Indoor Positioning System, or that it's giving a certifiable demagogue like Newt Gingrich a regular seat at its table.
When Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire in 2004, he was the guest from hell. "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America," he told its then hosts, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. "I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media, and they're hurting us... I would love to see a debate show," he said, but calling Crossfire a debate show was "like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition... You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.... I watch your show every day. And it kills me... It's so -- oh, it's so painful to watch... Please, I beg of you guys, please... Please stop." That clip went viral.
The story goes that King Canute had his throne carried to the shore, where he ordered the waves to stop. When they didn't stop, he said he'd done this to demonstrate that kings were powerless compared to God. Three months after Stewart's "stop hurting America" appearance, when CNN announced it was cancelling Crossfire, I thought he was a god. Now, with Crossfire coming back, it looks like the god with the last laugh is Mammon.
It has taken six decades for the CIA to formally acknowledge that it undertook a coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, but the spy agency might never concede that some of its officers joined in a political strike against a sitting U.S. president in 1980, yet that is what the evidence now indicates.
As with the ouster of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the motive for sabotaging the reelection of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 appears to have flowed from fears about the direction of the Cold War, with American hardliners justifying their actions based on an assessment that Carter, like Mossadegh, was a dangerous idealist.
In 1953, the nationalistic Mossadegh was challenging America’s British allies over control of Iranian oil fields, prompting concerns that an armed confrontation between Great Britain and Iran might play to the Soviets’ advantage, according to a secret CIA document declassified last week. In 1980, Cold War hardliners, including disgruntled CIA officers, were warning that Carter’s decision to make human rights the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy was dangerously na?ve, inviting Soviet advances.
But a key difference between the two episodes was that the ouster of Mossadegh, an operation codenamed TPAJAX, was carried out in 1953 “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” the CIA report said, presumably meaning President Dwight Eisenhower himself.
The apparent 1980 plot to undermine Carter by sabotaging his negotiations with Iran over the fate of 52 American hostages would have been pulled off by rogue CIA officers collaborating with the Republican presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan (and his running mate George H.W. Bush), without the knowledge of Carter and CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
How Google designed its wearable Glass gadget
When Google set out to create Glass, it was looking for the next big platform for communications and computing, he said in a talk at the Hot Chips engineering conference at Stanford.The first prototype was not impressive. Smartphones weigh around 135 grams, but the first Glass prototype required a backpack and weighed 3,350 grams — 7.4 pounds.
Glass is a sophisticated computing platform in that it takes pictures and videos, recognizes your speech commands, and delivers sound to you via a bone conduction method. It has a dual-core processor running at more than a 1Ghz. And it has a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, a magnetometer, and global positioning system location information. These devices give sensor information on your location and Indoor Positioning System.
The device is not symmetric, with two Glass elements covering both eyes, because it’s much more complex. It doubles the weight, increases power consumption, and distracts your other eye from the real world.“Comfort is very important because we want people to wear it the whole day,” Parviz said.
The device can transfer data via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios. At the moment, there is no plan to add cellphone service or a data modem. If there is an overriding mission of Glass, it’s to deliver information fast.“As I talk to you, this is how fast I can access the computer,” he said. “The camera sees the world through my eyes. It lives with me as I live my life. This device is intimately aware of what I see.”
One of the advantages of the form factor is that you can use it to perform tasks much more quickly than even if you were pushing buttons on your smartphone. It responds to touches or to voice commands, and it delivers sound directly to the bone in your head, rather than into your ears.Google Glass can also be more immersive, as the screen can be closer to your eye and make you feel like you are immersed in a computing environment. Smartphone screens can do that, but they are already getting too big.
“This is possible now because of you guys and what you enable in the electronics industry,” Parviz said. “We have also take advantage of the smartphone and the infrastructure it created.He noted smartphone camera resolution has risen from virtually nothing in 2002 to more than 16 megapixels today. That’s a huge leap that paved the way for Glass.
“It produces a beautiful image, and it costs a few dollars,” he said. “That is mind-boggling, and it is an example of why this device was not possible 15 years ago.”As to why Google embarked on this task in the first place, Parviz noted how it is the next logical step in the expansion of knowledge.“This device significantly expands my knowledge base,” Parviz said. “This is why we created Google Glass. The answers are just a question away.”
Today, the company is selling its first Google Glass units for $1,500. Over time, that price will come down. Parviz described it as an interesting first step.“As we released it to a number of Hands free access, and they tested it; it was amazing to experience their lives through their eyes,” he said. “We noticed if you have an electronics device all day, it should not impede any of your other senses.” His eyes and ears are still open and hands are free. ”That was very important,” he said. “You can get very rapid access to technology when you need it.”
Parviz said, “Now you use a huge amount of computing power for a fraction of a second. You ask a question, and it gets back to you.On the road ahead, Parviz wants technology to disappear. That’s why he likes Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system. You don’t even know it’s there.“It should be the least intrusive,” he said.He said this will require advances in optics, photonics, miniaturization, transducers, computing power, and ultralow power designs. Since the device is on your body, it can’t generate much heat. That puts a lot of constraints on design.
“We are very excited about this platform, potentially as the major next thing in computing and communication,” Parviz said.He said the team takes security very seriously. Everything is pushed from the cloud, and an app cannot be installed and run on the device itself. That might change in future versions, and that will introduce implications for security.
Asked what he thought of the privacy issues as Glass technology becomes more invisible in the future, Parviz said, “That’s already an issue with smartphones. Back in the 1880s, when the first camera came out, and it became possible for someone to take a picture of you, it made people uncomfortable. It took some time for society to figure it out. The trajectory for a device like this is something similar.”
TasksEveryDay promised just such a service for around $10 an hour, which is about half the rate I'd have had to pay a personal assistant in my area. Looking at the site now, I see things that should have clued me in to the possibility that the rates weren't low just because of global labour arbitrage. It's rife with clip art, its marketing copy is riddled with not-quite-correct punctuation and capitalisation, and customer testimonials bear more than a passing resemblance to hostage videos. But in my stupor I was blind to these flaws. What's more, my negotiations with the company's sales representative went smoothly. The woman on the phone was polite, spoke English fluently, and expertly soothed my fears about how the site's assistants would handle my personal data. In addition to a non-disclosure agreement, the company constantly monitors its workers' online activities, its call centre is outfitted with surveillance cameras, and assistants aren't allowed to install any storage devices (like USB disks) into their computers. I was sold.
Things started promisingly. The saleswoman introduced me to my assistant, a young man I'll call Mr F. He sent me an email with his picture - big, slicked-back hair, a boyish face, Bible-salesman suit - and a promise to "put in my best efforts to ensure that all your tasks are executed 100 per cent efficiently".
At 9 am the next day, I shared my Google Calendar and Gmail accounts with Mr F, and I gave him his first task. I needed a flight from San Francisco to Minneapolis. I gave him my dates. I wanted times and prices. Once he'd found an ideal flight, I planned to give him my credit card number so he could book it for me.
But after sending him my request, I heard nothing. After 40 minutes, I sent him a follow-up to make sure he'd received the task. About 40 minutes after that, he responded: "Yes I have received your email and I have started working on it."
Huh. This task should have taken him about 10 minutes; why was he just getting started after a nearly an hour and a half? Around noon - about three hours (and $30) after I'd assigned the task - Mr F finally sent me an email to say he was done. Now I saw why he'd taken so long: Instead of looking for the best two or three flights that conformed to my calendar, he'd created a spreadsheet listing all the details of 10 flights. This was madness: I could have got a similar list myself in 30 seconds on any travel site. What I needed was someone to help me narrow down my options, not replicate a web search. And why did he think I'd need an Excel version? Why didn't he just send me a link to his search?
I chalked it up to first-day troubles. The weekend was coming up, and I didn't need Mr F on Monday morning. I told him to be ready to work on Tuesday. But on Tuesday I heard nothing. Not on Wednesday either. The whole week passed. Then another week. If I had a personal assistant, I would have had him call up TasksEveryDay to find out what kind of two-bit operation they were running. But I had no such help, so the task of calling up the firm to complain was added to a dozen other low-priority tasks on my to-do list. I did revoke Mr F's access to my Gmail and calendar.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Glass is a sophisticated computing platform in that it takes pictures and videos, recognizes your speech commands, and delivers sound to you via a bone conduction method. It has a dual-core processor running at more than a 1Ghz. And it has a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, a magnetometer, and global positioning system location information. These devices give sensor information on your location and Indoor Positioning System.
The device is not symmetric, with two Glass elements covering both eyes, because it’s much more complex. It doubles the weight, increases power consumption, and distracts your other eye from the real world.“Comfort is very important because we want people to wear it the whole day,” Parviz said.
The device can transfer data via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios. At the moment, there is no plan to add cellphone service or a data modem. If there is an overriding mission of Glass, it’s to deliver information fast.“As I talk to you, this is how fast I can access the computer,” he said. “The camera sees the world through my eyes. It lives with me as I live my life. This device is intimately aware of what I see.”
One of the advantages of the form factor is that you can use it to perform tasks much more quickly than even if you were pushing buttons on your smartphone. It responds to touches or to voice commands, and it delivers sound directly to the bone in your head, rather than into your ears.Google Glass can also be more immersive, as the screen can be closer to your eye and make you feel like you are immersed in a computing environment. Smartphone screens can do that, but they are already getting too big.
“This is possible now because of you guys and what you enable in the electronics industry,” Parviz said. “We have also take advantage of the smartphone and the infrastructure it created.He noted smartphone camera resolution has risen from virtually nothing in 2002 to more than 16 megapixels today. That’s a huge leap that paved the way for Glass.
“It produces a beautiful image, and it costs a few dollars,” he said. “That is mind-boggling, and it is an example of why this device was not possible 15 years ago.”As to why Google embarked on this task in the first place, Parviz noted how it is the next logical step in the expansion of knowledge.“This device significantly expands my knowledge base,” Parviz said. “This is why we created Google Glass. The answers are just a question away.”
Today, the company is selling its first Google Glass units for $1,500. Over time, that price will come down. Parviz described it as an interesting first step.“As we released it to a number of Hands free access, and they tested it; it was amazing to experience their lives through their eyes,” he said. “We noticed if you have an electronics device all day, it should not impede any of your other senses.” His eyes and ears are still open and hands are free. ”That was very important,” he said. “You can get very rapid access to technology when you need it.”
Parviz said, “Now you use a huge amount of computing power for a fraction of a second. You ask a question, and it gets back to you.On the road ahead, Parviz wants technology to disappear. That’s why he likes Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system. You don’t even know it’s there.“It should be the least intrusive,” he said.He said this will require advances in optics, photonics, miniaturization, transducers, computing power, and ultralow power designs. Since the device is on your body, it can’t generate much heat. That puts a lot of constraints on design.
“We are very excited about this platform, potentially as the major next thing in computing and communication,” Parviz said.He said the team takes security very seriously. Everything is pushed from the cloud, and an app cannot be installed and run on the device itself. That might change in future versions, and that will introduce implications for security.
Asked what he thought of the privacy issues as Glass technology becomes more invisible in the future, Parviz said, “That’s already an issue with smartphones. Back in the 1880s, when the first camera came out, and it became possible for someone to take a picture of you, it made people uncomfortable. It took some time for society to figure it out. The trajectory for a device like this is something similar.”
TasksEveryDay promised just such a service for around $10 an hour, which is about half the rate I'd have had to pay a personal assistant in my area. Looking at the site now, I see things that should have clued me in to the possibility that the rates weren't low just because of global labour arbitrage. It's rife with clip art, its marketing copy is riddled with not-quite-correct punctuation and capitalisation, and customer testimonials bear more than a passing resemblance to hostage videos. But in my stupor I was blind to these flaws. What's more, my negotiations with the company's sales representative went smoothly. The woman on the phone was polite, spoke English fluently, and expertly soothed my fears about how the site's assistants would handle my personal data. In addition to a non-disclosure agreement, the company constantly monitors its workers' online activities, its call centre is outfitted with surveillance cameras, and assistants aren't allowed to install any storage devices (like USB disks) into their computers. I was sold.
Things started promisingly. The saleswoman introduced me to my assistant, a young man I'll call Mr F. He sent me an email with his picture - big, slicked-back hair, a boyish face, Bible-salesman suit - and a promise to "put in my best efforts to ensure that all your tasks are executed 100 per cent efficiently".
At 9 am the next day, I shared my Google Calendar and Gmail accounts with Mr F, and I gave him his first task. I needed a flight from San Francisco to Minneapolis. I gave him my dates. I wanted times and prices. Once he'd found an ideal flight, I planned to give him my credit card number so he could book it for me.
But after sending him my request, I heard nothing. After 40 minutes, I sent him a follow-up to make sure he'd received the task. About 40 minutes after that, he responded: "Yes I have received your email and I have started working on it."
Huh. This task should have taken him about 10 minutes; why was he just getting started after a nearly an hour and a half? Around noon - about three hours (and $30) after I'd assigned the task - Mr F finally sent me an email to say he was done. Now I saw why he'd taken so long: Instead of looking for the best two or three flights that conformed to my calendar, he'd created a spreadsheet listing all the details of 10 flights. This was madness: I could have got a similar list myself in 30 seconds on any travel site. What I needed was someone to help me narrow down my options, not replicate a web search. And why did he think I'd need an Excel version? Why didn't he just send me a link to his search?
I chalked it up to first-day troubles. The weekend was coming up, and I didn't need Mr F on Monday morning. I told him to be ready to work on Tuesday. But on Tuesday I heard nothing. Not on Wednesday either. The whole week passed. Then another week. If I had a personal assistant, I would have had him call up TasksEveryDay to find out what kind of two-bit operation they were running. But I had no such help, so the task of calling up the firm to complain was added to a dozen other low-priority tasks on my to-do list. I did revoke Mr F's access to my Gmail and calendar.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月19日星期一
6 ways to repurpose a retired PC
Oh, joy! You’ve unboxed your new computer and are a ready to enjoy the faster processor, better display, and shiny new keys – but what do you do with your old computer? Many folks might just sell it to earn back some of the money spent buying their new machine, but you might be wondering how you can repurpose your old computer to keep it around longer.
If you’re like most of us, you’ll probably just stick it in a closet or leave it on a shelf to collect dust. If you’d rather make use of your old PC instead, there are actually several clever ways to reuse your old clunker. More often than not, it can fill a void that’s been missing in your home computing repertoire. Here are six new uses for your old PC.
Home theater PCs don’t need a lot of computing power to do basic home theater tasks, which makes an old computer a great option. Plus, all you really have to do is connect the computer to the TV using some sort of video cable, like HDMI, S-Video, DVI, or VGA. From there, you can watch Netflix shows, YouTube videos, and your own movie collection right on your TV from that old computer.
If you want to get even more advanced, you can install media center software, such as XBMC or Plex, in order to have a TV-friendly user interface to browse through your Indoor Positioning System. If you feel that your HTPC needs are growing over time, you can even upgrade it by putting a larger hard drive in to make room for more media files.
Old computers make great NAS boxes, mostly because they don’t need a lot of power to run in the first place. If you have multiple computers in your home and want a central storage system that each of these computers can access, turning an old computer into a NAS is a great way to go. There are a number of free NAS software solutions out there, including FreeNAS. Ubuntu is a great alternative as well.
If you’ve always wanted to try out Linux but didn’t want to experiment with it on your main computer and risk messing something up, use your old computer! By using your old PC for experiments, you’ll feel more liberated to try new things without the fear of wiping all your important files. Use it try out different distros and become familiar with the open-source operating system that everyone is talking about.
Furthermore, if Linux doesn’t interest you, you can still use that old PC to do experiments on, such as trying out buggy beta software, or simply just giving a new program a trial run before you commit to it and install it on your main computer.
Wouldn’t it be nice to look up a recipe online right from your kitchen? Or look up a how-to video on fixing your car while you’re in the garage? Putting a computer in a room that you spend the most time in (besides your home office or living room) can be beneficial for a lot of reasons. It can be useful for looking up recipes on the fly while in the kitchen or using it to watch videos to pass the time while you prepare and cook food.
A computer can also be an indispensable tool in your toolbox out in the workshop or garage. If you’re a novice carpenter or are DIYing a car repair, having a computer at your fingertips to look up tutorials can be extremely handy. Just make sure you get a keyboard and mouse that you don’t mind getting dirty, as your hands will no doubt be covered in grease and oil from car parts and such.
If all of the above options don’t really interest you, just go ahead and donate your old computer, either by giving it to Goodwill or Salvation Army, or handing it down to a relative or friend who needs a computer. It’s quicker and less of a hassle than selling it, and you’ll most likely make someone’s day in the process.
Of course, before you hand off your old computer to someone else, be sure to wipe it clean and delete any personal information that you might still have on there. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to back up all that info before you wipe it, just in case you ever need it in the future. The built-in tools in Windows are usually sufficient enough if you’re just handing your old machine over to a relative or indoor Tracking, but if you’re donating it to a stranger, it’s always a good idea to use a more robust piece of software to completely erase everything on the hard drive.
Hubris is from ancient Greek. According to Webster's, it means "overweening pride or self-confidence; arrogance." According to Wikipedia, hubris "often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments and capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power."
Let's start with Sept. 11, 2001. We may have forgotten how terrified New Yorkers were then. The day after Rupert Murdoch visited Ground Zero, his NY Post in an editorial endorsed then police commissioner Bernard Kerik as commissioner "for life."
That's what it was like amid the terror. You grabbed on to whatever you could. Anything that seemed solid. Commissioner for Life.
Well, we all know what happened to Kerik. He got so carried away with sex [his publisher Judith Regan] and money [hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans and freebies from contractors and real estate guys] that he ended up serving three years in federal prison.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani also got carried away. He convinced himself that only he could shepherd the city through 9/ll and attempted to have his mayoral term extended three months. New Yorkers didn't go for the idea.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
If you’re like most of us, you’ll probably just stick it in a closet or leave it on a shelf to collect dust. If you’d rather make use of your old PC instead, there are actually several clever ways to reuse your old clunker. More often than not, it can fill a void that’s been missing in your home computing repertoire. Here are six new uses for your old PC.
Home theater PCs don’t need a lot of computing power to do basic home theater tasks, which makes an old computer a great option. Plus, all you really have to do is connect the computer to the TV using some sort of video cable, like HDMI, S-Video, DVI, or VGA. From there, you can watch Netflix shows, YouTube videos, and your own movie collection right on your TV from that old computer.
If you want to get even more advanced, you can install media center software, such as XBMC or Plex, in order to have a TV-friendly user interface to browse through your Indoor Positioning System. If you feel that your HTPC needs are growing over time, you can even upgrade it by putting a larger hard drive in to make room for more media files.
Old computers make great NAS boxes, mostly because they don’t need a lot of power to run in the first place. If you have multiple computers in your home and want a central storage system that each of these computers can access, turning an old computer into a NAS is a great way to go. There are a number of free NAS software solutions out there, including FreeNAS. Ubuntu is a great alternative as well.
If you’ve always wanted to try out Linux but didn’t want to experiment with it on your main computer and risk messing something up, use your old computer! By using your old PC for experiments, you’ll feel more liberated to try new things without the fear of wiping all your important files. Use it try out different distros and become familiar with the open-source operating system that everyone is talking about.
Furthermore, if Linux doesn’t interest you, you can still use that old PC to do experiments on, such as trying out buggy beta software, or simply just giving a new program a trial run before you commit to it and install it on your main computer.
Wouldn’t it be nice to look up a recipe online right from your kitchen? Or look up a how-to video on fixing your car while you’re in the garage? Putting a computer in a room that you spend the most time in (besides your home office or living room) can be beneficial for a lot of reasons. It can be useful for looking up recipes on the fly while in the kitchen or using it to watch videos to pass the time while you prepare and cook food.
A computer can also be an indispensable tool in your toolbox out in the workshop or garage. If you’re a novice carpenter or are DIYing a car repair, having a computer at your fingertips to look up tutorials can be extremely handy. Just make sure you get a keyboard and mouse that you don’t mind getting dirty, as your hands will no doubt be covered in grease and oil from car parts and such.
If all of the above options don’t really interest you, just go ahead and donate your old computer, either by giving it to Goodwill or Salvation Army, or handing it down to a relative or friend who needs a computer. It’s quicker and less of a hassle than selling it, and you’ll most likely make someone’s day in the process.
Of course, before you hand off your old computer to someone else, be sure to wipe it clean and delete any personal information that you might still have on there. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to back up all that info before you wipe it, just in case you ever need it in the future. The built-in tools in Windows are usually sufficient enough if you’re just handing your old machine over to a relative or indoor Tracking, but if you’re donating it to a stranger, it’s always a good idea to use a more robust piece of software to completely erase everything on the hard drive.
Hubris is from ancient Greek. According to Webster's, it means "overweening pride or self-confidence; arrogance." According to Wikipedia, hubris "often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments and capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power."
Let's start with Sept. 11, 2001. We may have forgotten how terrified New Yorkers were then. The day after Rupert Murdoch visited Ground Zero, his NY Post in an editorial endorsed then police commissioner Bernard Kerik as commissioner "for life."
That's what it was like amid the terror. You grabbed on to whatever you could. Anything that seemed solid. Commissioner for Life.
Well, we all know what happened to Kerik. He got so carried away with sex [his publisher Judith Regan] and money [hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans and freebies from contractors and real estate guys] that he ended up serving three years in federal prison.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani also got carried away. He convinced himself that only he could shepherd the city through 9/ll and attempted to have his mayoral term extended three months. New Yorkers didn't go for the idea.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
The world through a child's eyes
When you're a kid, everything seems huge. Teachers tower over you; playgrounds stretch on to infinity. Now, researchers have found a way to make grownups feel the same way. By placing volunteers in virtual reality, scientists are helping adults see the world through the eyes of a child.
Virtual reality is more than an illusion. To enter, people put on full-body suits that track their movements and goggles that display an artificial world in which they have a virtual body. If their virtual and real movements sync up, their computer-generated bodies start to seem real.
Previous research has shown that subjects begin to feel like their body has changed into the simulated figure, even if it is different from their own body; volunteers placed into the body of a teenage girl,real time Location system, “felt it” when her mother slapped her computer-generated representation.
But scientists did not know how this virtual body “ownership” affected people's perception of the world around them and whether this could help people relate with others unlike themselves.
To find out, computer scientist Mel Slater of the University of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues placed adult volunteers into a virtual outdoor scene in which they did not have a computer-generated body. They were asked to estimate the sizes of six different cubes within the scene and were told whether their guesses were too big, too small, or correct. Later, they reentered the scene and repeated the exercise with three cubes, without feedback from the researchers. Their size estimates without a virtual body were noted.
After this training exercise, the researchers placed the subjects in two different avatars, virtual characters controlled by participants. One was a four-year-old child of the same gender as the participant. The other was an adult who was the same height as the child. While standing in a virtual living room, the participants again gauged the size of the cubes without feedback.
Adults stated that they felt the two virtual bodies were equally real, and they misjudged object size in both avatars. But those in the child avatar rated the cubes about twice as large, rtls, as did those in the adult bodies, Slater's team reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a test after the simulation, participants who had been in the virtual child body were quicker to mischaracterise themselves with childlike traits than their actual ones. For example, someone who had embodied the virtual four-year-old was more likely to identify themselves as attending primary school than someone who had embodied the scaled-down adult.
When movements of the virtual and real bodies did not match, participants no longer felt their avatars were real. They still overestimated the size of the cubes, but there were no differences between the adult and child avatars. The researchers conclude that the type of avatar can affect how people see their virtual environment only if they feel connected with their virtual body.
Slater notes that the experimental setup in this study could be used to help people empathise with others who are unlike themselves, for example by putting criminal offenders in the virtual body of the victim at the crime scene to help them see the event from the other perspective.
The study demonstrates that we may need to think harder about the implications of spending time in a digital world, says cognitive psychologist Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford University. He describes a hypothetical danger of Google Glass, a pair of glasses that gives users hands-free access to the Internet.
The Big Vanilla originally opened in Arnold in 1977 as a tennis and racquetball club. Since its inception, Big Vanilla has transformed into a multi-purpose, family-focused, sports, wellness and recreational club.
The Y will continue to provide high-quality programs and membership experiences while maintaining a commitment to the community and dedication to promoting a health-centered lifestyle, which Big Vanilla and the Y share as common values.
There will be several changes made to align the center with the Y’s quality standards (in effect in all Family Center Ys across the region) and to reflect the Y’s core mission. The changes include special member discounts on youth development programs, scholarships for those who can otherwise not afford Y services, opportunities for volunteerism, access to the entire network of Family Center Ys throughout Central Maryland and many free programs, services, special events and activities.
The Y currently operates four summer camps and eight before and after school enrichment program sites in Anne Arundel County. With the addition of the Greater Annapolis Family Center Y, the Y will now have a hub from which to fully deliver Y programs and services that support its charitable mission and provide full access to Y services for the surrounding community.
As part of the transition process, current staff of the Arnold location will be offered the opportunity to become Y employees and it is the Y’s desire that they will decide to stay on and join the Y team.
“The Y and Big Vanilla share many of the same values. This was a great opportunity to join forces with an organization that is community-centric and will continue to support families in the area,” said Larry Ray, owner of Big Vanilla Athletic Clubs in Arnold and Pasadena in a release. “As someone who has been in the health and wellness business for a very long time, I have a great deal of respect for the Y and I know that I am leaving the business I built in the hands of an organization that will do good for the community.”
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Virtual reality is more than an illusion. To enter, people put on full-body suits that track their movements and goggles that display an artificial world in which they have a virtual body. If their virtual and real movements sync up, their computer-generated bodies start to seem real.
Previous research has shown that subjects begin to feel like their body has changed into the simulated figure, even if it is different from their own body; volunteers placed into the body of a teenage girl,real time Location system, “felt it” when her mother slapped her computer-generated representation.
But scientists did not know how this virtual body “ownership” affected people's perception of the world around them and whether this could help people relate with others unlike themselves.
To find out, computer scientist Mel Slater of the University of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues placed adult volunteers into a virtual outdoor scene in which they did not have a computer-generated body. They were asked to estimate the sizes of six different cubes within the scene and were told whether their guesses were too big, too small, or correct. Later, they reentered the scene and repeated the exercise with three cubes, without feedback from the researchers. Their size estimates without a virtual body were noted.
After this training exercise, the researchers placed the subjects in two different avatars, virtual characters controlled by participants. One was a four-year-old child of the same gender as the participant. The other was an adult who was the same height as the child. While standing in a virtual living room, the participants again gauged the size of the cubes without feedback.
Adults stated that they felt the two virtual bodies were equally real, and they misjudged object size in both avatars. But those in the child avatar rated the cubes about twice as large, rtls, as did those in the adult bodies, Slater's team reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a test after the simulation, participants who had been in the virtual child body were quicker to mischaracterise themselves with childlike traits than their actual ones. For example, someone who had embodied the virtual four-year-old was more likely to identify themselves as attending primary school than someone who had embodied the scaled-down adult.
When movements of the virtual and real bodies did not match, participants no longer felt their avatars were real. They still overestimated the size of the cubes, but there were no differences between the adult and child avatars. The researchers conclude that the type of avatar can affect how people see their virtual environment only if they feel connected with their virtual body.
Slater notes that the experimental setup in this study could be used to help people empathise with others who are unlike themselves, for example by putting criminal offenders in the virtual body of the victim at the crime scene to help them see the event from the other perspective.
The study demonstrates that we may need to think harder about the implications of spending time in a digital world, says cognitive psychologist Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford University. He describes a hypothetical danger of Google Glass, a pair of glasses that gives users hands-free access to the Internet.
The Big Vanilla originally opened in Arnold in 1977 as a tennis and racquetball club. Since its inception, Big Vanilla has transformed into a multi-purpose, family-focused, sports, wellness and recreational club.
The Y will continue to provide high-quality programs and membership experiences while maintaining a commitment to the community and dedication to promoting a health-centered lifestyle, which Big Vanilla and the Y share as common values.
There will be several changes made to align the center with the Y’s quality standards (in effect in all Family Center Ys across the region) and to reflect the Y’s core mission. The changes include special member discounts on youth development programs, scholarships for those who can otherwise not afford Y services, opportunities for volunteerism, access to the entire network of Family Center Ys throughout Central Maryland and many free programs, services, special events and activities.
The Y currently operates four summer camps and eight before and after school enrichment program sites in Anne Arundel County. With the addition of the Greater Annapolis Family Center Y, the Y will now have a hub from which to fully deliver Y programs and services that support its charitable mission and provide full access to Y services for the surrounding community.
As part of the transition process, current staff of the Arnold location will be offered the opportunity to become Y employees and it is the Y’s desire that they will decide to stay on and join the Y team.
“The Y and Big Vanilla share many of the same values. This was a great opportunity to join forces with an organization that is community-centric and will continue to support families in the area,” said Larry Ray, owner of Big Vanilla Athletic Clubs in Arnold and Pasadena in a release. “As someone who has been in the health and wellness business for a very long time, I have a great deal of respect for the Y and I know that I am leaving the business I built in the hands of an organization that will do good for the community.”
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年8月14日星期三
The difference between the two plans
The two major parties are at odds over how much the country should spend to have better broadband connection. Underneath all the bluster, are their proposals so different?
No matter who wins the election on September 7, Australia's telecommunications networks will receive a long-overdue multibillion-dollar facelift funded by the federal government.
Australia has never topped global broadband rankings for speed and value. The OECD ranks us 25th in the world for fibre connections in its latest communications outlook report and Australia still has more dial-up internet connections than any other country in the OECD, apart from New Zealand.
There are differences - including network speeds, construction efforts, and using the Telstra copper network - but not as many as Labor politicians have been claiming during this campaign.
For example, Communications Minister Anthony Albanese claims towns will be ''divided by broadband'' and that ''planned [broadband] construction ... will be cancelled''. While NBN Co under a Coalition government might change fibre-to-the-home installations to fibre-to-the-node in years to come, the Coalition no longer plans to halt construction and sell off the network like it did in 2010.
Earlier this year the Coalition party room adopted the very un-Liberal policy of publicly funding a government-managed and real time Location system. This is because it can't unscramble Labor's omelet, and partly because it recognised votes were lost in 2010 when its broadband policy seemed to lack vision and did nothing to improve broadband speeds.
''It certainly was one of the things that affected us, definitely,'' says one Coalition frontbencher. ''Tony's [Abbott's] 7.30 Report interview was pretty bad. And the press conference with Andrew Robb and [former opposition communications spokesman] Tony Smith where they unveiled our policy was a debacle.''
The new broadband policy ''makes the best of a bad situation'' and the ''vast majority'' of Coalition members support it, he adds.The opposition's current communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, convinced Tony Abbott the party needed a better policy. It turns out that policy will cost $30 billion, but at least the party can argue against accusations of being troglodytes.
Turnbull says his plan can be delivered sooner and at less cost with ''everyone in the nation'' getting access to minimum speed of 25 megabits per second [Mbps] by 2016 and 100 Mbps to the majority by 2020.
Turnbull says he still believes the best model is private sector upgrades done with ''judicious levels of government subsidy to make sure uncommercial areas are dealt with''. However, he has to live with the facts on the ground and work out how to complete the network that has been started.
''The gap between the parties' [policies] would be regarded outside Australia as being relatively modest ... what I have got to do ... is completely depoliticise this thing,'' he says in an interview with Fairfax Media. ''Our job is to open all the books, rtls, lay it all out and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is where we are. This is the business you own. This is the position you're in. Here are our options for sorting it out.'''
Turnbull's policy adopts Labor's plan to raise tens of billions of dollars through government bonds, which keeps the project off the budget, and spend that money building networks that are available to all service providers at the same prices. Both aim to separate Telstra so its retail operations cannot benefit from it also owning infrastructure and evenutally privatising NBN Co to recoup costs.
"Very very similar"The Coalition's regional communications spokesman, Luke Hartsuyker, says both broadband policies are ''very very similar'' for the 7 per cent of Australia's population in regional areas that have been told to expect a fixed wireless or satellite connection.''We will maximise the value of the assets that we inherit. We will not be junking the work that has been done on ideological grounds,'' he says.
Albanese says the differences between Labor's NBN and the ''Coalition's lemon of an alternative couldn't be more stark''. He pointed to faster speeds, guaranteed upload speeds, free fibre installations and universal pricing.
''The Coalition's alternative relies on last century's copper, will be obsolete before it is finished, forces homes and businesses to pay as much as $5000 to connect directly to fibre, will result in regional Australians paying more for broadband than people living in the cities, and costs only 3 per cent less in terms of government investment than Labor's vastly superior NBN.''
There is certainty in Labor's policy that is missing in the Coalition's, partly because Turnbull wants to initiate three reviews if he becomes minister that could change his current rollout plans. Labor's NBN Co charges the same wholesale prices around the country, whereas the Coalition wants a regulated price cap that allows lower prices in viable areas. While Telstra's is settled under Labor's plan, the regulations surrounding NBN Co have stalled over concerns about cost and pricing into the future.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
No matter who wins the election on September 7, Australia's telecommunications networks will receive a long-overdue multibillion-dollar facelift funded by the federal government.
Australia has never topped global broadband rankings for speed and value. The OECD ranks us 25th in the world for fibre connections in its latest communications outlook report and Australia still has more dial-up internet connections than any other country in the OECD, apart from New Zealand.
There are differences - including network speeds, construction efforts, and using the Telstra copper network - but not as many as Labor politicians have been claiming during this campaign.
For example, Communications Minister Anthony Albanese claims towns will be ''divided by broadband'' and that ''planned [broadband] construction ... will be cancelled''. While NBN Co under a Coalition government might change fibre-to-the-home installations to fibre-to-the-node in years to come, the Coalition no longer plans to halt construction and sell off the network like it did in 2010.
Earlier this year the Coalition party room adopted the very un-Liberal policy of publicly funding a government-managed and real time Location system. This is because it can't unscramble Labor's omelet, and partly because it recognised votes were lost in 2010 when its broadband policy seemed to lack vision and did nothing to improve broadband speeds.
''It certainly was one of the things that affected us, definitely,'' says one Coalition frontbencher. ''Tony's [Abbott's] 7.30 Report interview was pretty bad. And the press conference with Andrew Robb and [former opposition communications spokesman] Tony Smith where they unveiled our policy was a debacle.''
The new broadband policy ''makes the best of a bad situation'' and the ''vast majority'' of Coalition members support it, he adds.The opposition's current communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, convinced Tony Abbott the party needed a better policy. It turns out that policy will cost $30 billion, but at least the party can argue against accusations of being troglodytes.
Turnbull says his plan can be delivered sooner and at less cost with ''everyone in the nation'' getting access to minimum speed of 25 megabits per second [Mbps] by 2016 and 100 Mbps to the majority by 2020.
Turnbull says he still believes the best model is private sector upgrades done with ''judicious levels of government subsidy to make sure uncommercial areas are dealt with''. However, he has to live with the facts on the ground and work out how to complete the network that has been started.
''The gap between the parties' [policies] would be regarded outside Australia as being relatively modest ... what I have got to do ... is completely depoliticise this thing,'' he says in an interview with Fairfax Media. ''Our job is to open all the books, rtls, lay it all out and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is where we are. This is the business you own. This is the position you're in. Here are our options for sorting it out.'''
Turnbull's policy adopts Labor's plan to raise tens of billions of dollars through government bonds, which keeps the project off the budget, and spend that money building networks that are available to all service providers at the same prices. Both aim to separate Telstra so its retail operations cannot benefit from it also owning infrastructure and evenutally privatising NBN Co to recoup costs.
"Very very similar"The Coalition's regional communications spokesman, Luke Hartsuyker, says both broadband policies are ''very very similar'' for the 7 per cent of Australia's population in regional areas that have been told to expect a fixed wireless or satellite connection.''We will maximise the value of the assets that we inherit. We will not be junking the work that has been done on ideological grounds,'' he says.
Albanese says the differences between Labor's NBN and the ''Coalition's lemon of an alternative couldn't be more stark''. He pointed to faster speeds, guaranteed upload speeds, free fibre installations and universal pricing.
''The Coalition's alternative relies on last century's copper, will be obsolete before it is finished, forces homes and businesses to pay as much as $5000 to connect directly to fibre, will result in regional Australians paying more for broadband than people living in the cities, and costs only 3 per cent less in terms of government investment than Labor's vastly superior NBN.''
There is certainty in Labor's policy that is missing in the Coalition's, partly because Turnbull wants to initiate three reviews if he becomes minister that could change his current rollout plans. Labor's NBN Co charges the same wholesale prices around the country, whereas the Coalition wants a regulated price cap that allows lower prices in viable areas. While Telstra's is settled under Labor's plan, the regulations surrounding NBN Co have stalled over concerns about cost and pricing into the future.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年8月12日星期一
Huawei attacks ABC over bias
Ascendant Chinese telecoms vendor Huawei has attacked the nation’s public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), over what it claims is bias and favouritism over which mobile device operating systems Aunty supports when viewers access its hugely popular ‘iView’ video-on-demand service.
As one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of handsets powered by Google’s Android software, Huawei claims the ABC has an “anti-Android” bias because it still hasn’t released a native iView app for the world’s most popular to alternative to Indoor Positioning System.The dispute has political and international trade implications because non-Apple vendors are increasingly using the public-facing operating system preferences of government organisations as ammunition to lobby to get better access to markets.
The claim of bias is not the first time Huawei has picked up the cudgels against Canberra. The company has mounted a relentless publicity and lobbying campaign in an effort to try and overturn a ban on it supplying carrier equipment for the National Broadband Network because of adverse advice from national security agencies.Former US intelligence officials have also accused Huawei of spying for the Chinese government, statements that have exacerbated tensions over market access and trade relations.
The dispute over ABC apps for different operating systems has fomented since December 2010 when the broadcaster released its iView app for the Apple iPad. This was followed by the iPhone version in June 2012.Since then Android device sales have exploded and now non-Apple vendors want their customers to have their own app for ABC’s free internet broadcasting service that offers full-screen video on-demand.
Now companies like Huawei are complaining that the public broadcaster is effectively locking out their user-base despite big growth in the number of devices in Australian hands.The push for an Android iView app is also being propelled by the proportion of Apple users falling relative to Android according to research from analysts like International Data Corporation (IDC).
This has led telecommunications and technology vendors that use the competing Android system such as Huawei to interpret the ABC’s sluggish rollout of an Android version of the iView app as preferential treatment for the popular American consumer electronic brand.Huawei corporate affairs director, Jeremy Mitchell, isn’t pulling any political punches. Mr Mitchell said the ABC has continued to favour one company’s product and platform.
“Is the ABC the Apple Broadcast Corporation or the Anti-droid Broadcast Corporation? Looking at the evidence, they both fit so well,” Mr Mitchell said.Mr Mitchell said it was “disappointing” that the public broadcaster has turned its back on the “predominant operating system” that is “free, open and not aligned to one particular company”.Ironically Apple users are familiar with discrimination. Prior to the disruptive arrival of the iPhone and iPad government agencies including the Australian Taxation Office routinely produced client software for Microsoft’s Windows operating system leaving Apple and users of open source products like Linux out in the cold.
Much of the software developed by Google, including operating systems, is based on open source products rather than closed proprietary software.But that isn’t stopped Huawei.The vendor has claimed that the ABC was granted $30 million in taxpayer funds to strengthen its online service delivery in 2013, but the iView app has been available only for indoor Tracking, “a technological lifetime ago”.
A statement from Huawei said the ABC has acknowledged that demand for its Android news app has grown by 360 per cent in the past year, “yet the broadcaster has been dragging its heels in breaking the popular iView service to Android smartphones and tablets”.
The ABC has been cautious about being drawn into a verbal fire fight over Huawei’s criticisms. So far Aunty has stuck to its script in simply pointing to its online Frequently Asked Questions as well as tweets by ABC managing director Mark Scott to reassure Android users that a version for their devices is on the way.
The tweets from Mr Scott on 16th July 2013 said “And yes - the #iview android app is well into development and will be with you as soon as it is ready” and on 6th August said “And yes, the Android app is coming”.However the ABC didn’t have a direct response for Huawei’s accusation of an anti-Android bias.But the tweets and the FAQ have done little to convince Mr Mitchell, who said that he, like many Australian Android users have been hearing “the Android iView app is coming” for “far too long”.“Despite the claims of the ABC, there has been no real evidence that there is any desire to fill this blatant gap. It feels like Godot will arrive before the iView app gets here on Android,” Mr Mitchell said.
As one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of handsets powered by Google’s Android software, Huawei claims the ABC has an “anti-Android” bias because it still hasn’t released a native iView app for the world’s most popular to alternative to Indoor Positioning System.The dispute has political and international trade implications because non-Apple vendors are increasingly using the public-facing operating system preferences of government organisations as ammunition to lobby to get better access to markets.
The claim of bias is not the first time Huawei has picked up the cudgels against Canberra. The company has mounted a relentless publicity and lobbying campaign in an effort to try and overturn a ban on it supplying carrier equipment for the National Broadband Network because of adverse advice from national security agencies.Former US intelligence officials have also accused Huawei of spying for the Chinese government, statements that have exacerbated tensions over market access and trade relations.
The dispute over ABC apps for different operating systems has fomented since December 2010 when the broadcaster released its iView app for the Apple iPad. This was followed by the iPhone version in June 2012.Since then Android device sales have exploded and now non-Apple vendors want their customers to have their own app for ABC’s free internet broadcasting service that offers full-screen video on-demand.
Now companies like Huawei are complaining that the public broadcaster is effectively locking out their user-base despite big growth in the number of devices in Australian hands.The push for an Android iView app is also being propelled by the proportion of Apple users falling relative to Android according to research from analysts like International Data Corporation (IDC).
This has led telecommunications and technology vendors that use the competing Android system such as Huawei to interpret the ABC’s sluggish rollout of an Android version of the iView app as preferential treatment for the popular American consumer electronic brand.Huawei corporate affairs director, Jeremy Mitchell, isn’t pulling any political punches. Mr Mitchell said the ABC has continued to favour one company’s product and platform.
“Is the ABC the Apple Broadcast Corporation or the Anti-droid Broadcast Corporation? Looking at the evidence, they both fit so well,” Mr Mitchell said.Mr Mitchell said it was “disappointing” that the public broadcaster has turned its back on the “predominant operating system” that is “free, open and not aligned to one particular company”.Ironically Apple users are familiar with discrimination. Prior to the disruptive arrival of the iPhone and iPad government agencies including the Australian Taxation Office routinely produced client software for Microsoft’s Windows operating system leaving Apple and users of open source products like Linux out in the cold.
Much of the software developed by Google, including operating systems, is based on open source products rather than closed proprietary software.But that isn’t stopped Huawei.The vendor has claimed that the ABC was granted $30 million in taxpayer funds to strengthen its online service delivery in 2013, but the iView app has been available only for indoor Tracking, “a technological lifetime ago”.
A statement from Huawei said the ABC has acknowledged that demand for its Android news app has grown by 360 per cent in the past year, “yet the broadcaster has been dragging its heels in breaking the popular iView service to Android smartphones and tablets”.
The ABC has been cautious about being drawn into a verbal fire fight over Huawei’s criticisms. So far Aunty has stuck to its script in simply pointing to its online Frequently Asked Questions as well as tweets by ABC managing director Mark Scott to reassure Android users that a version for their devices is on the way.
The tweets from Mr Scott on 16th July 2013 said “And yes - the #iview android app is well into development and will be with you as soon as it is ready” and on 6th August said “And yes, the Android app is coming”.However the ABC didn’t have a direct response for Huawei’s accusation of an anti-Android bias.But the tweets and the FAQ have done little to convince Mr Mitchell, who said that he, like many Australian Android users have been hearing “the Android iView app is coming” for “far too long”.“Despite the claims of the ABC, there has been no real evidence that there is any desire to fill this blatant gap. It feels like Godot will arrive before the iView app gets here on Android,” Mr Mitchell said.
2013年8月7日星期三
The report estimates that under the Pay
It Forward plan, an average student who obtains a bachelor’s degree would pay $39,653 into the Pay It Forward fund, which would cover the value of their tuition and fees, plus another $7,000 or more. In some ways, the plan would function like social insurance, socializing the costs of education and cutting down on the risks for students. If you happen to strike it rich, you will pay much more than your tuition might have cost, but if you’re unemployed (or stuck in a low-wage job), you pay next to nothing. The plan would lower most graduates’ monthly payments, but not eliminate individual responsibility to pay.
This policy seems aimed squarely at students who come from modest means, who are looking at a college degree as their path up the socioeconomic ladder — in other words, students who look at college as an investment in their future, but who know that in today’s economic climate, even a college degree isn’t a clear path to stability and comfort.
However, Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of education policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, sounds a warning note on the Century Foundation’s website. For most students, Hands free access, tuition and fees are not the largest part of college expenses. At the University of Oregon, for instance, tuition and fees run about $9,800 per year, while room and board costs more than $10,000 and books and other expenses another $3000-plus. Many students, she writes, would still wind up having to borrow to cover costs without having to work while in school — unless they receive federal Pell Grants or Oregon maintains its Opportunity Grant program for lower-income students.
Goldrick-Rab, additionally, says in a blog post that the system could be improved by creating more incentives for lower-income people to attend college, by making community colleges free for the first year, and by imposing some form of graduated repayment rather than a flat rate, so that students who go to community colleges pay back a smaller percentage of their income than those who go to four-year universities, and those who go on to make above the 80th income percentile would pay a premium.
Alloy and Rackham agree that that maintaining some level of need-based aid for the lowest-income students is important in addition to this plan. “We’ve been working closely with advocates, including the state treasurer, to implement this in a way that would be complementary to need-based aid, to open doors to students in the most accessible way possible,” Alloy says. “We don’t want students who would otherwise get their education for free to be accountable to pay into a fund for 24 years.”
A less-discussed aspect of Pay It Forward is that it would take the profit motive out of state-level student lending. Instead of private lenders (or the federal government, which pays private lenders to administer its direct loans) making money off of the often-steep interest on student loans, students would pay their money directly back to the state, in a process more akin to paying taxes than paying back a loan. Pay It Forward would thus remove the fat interest payments for private lenders and perhaps most importantly, put that money back into the hands of the state to reinvest in the university system.
“We see this as an issue [of] how we prioritize investing in our future,” Alloy says. “Are we funneling money out of the local economy straight to the financial sector or are we putting it into students?”
The current debate on the federal level, she notes, has been limited to renegotiating interest rates or allowing income-based repayment, at least since the Obama administration’s 2010 move to end direct subsidies to private lenders by moving from the Federal Family Education Loan Program to direct lending. But big lenders like Sallie Mae continue to benefit in either of those cases, Alloy notes. To take advantage of income-based repayment and loan forgiveness, you transfer your loan to the real time Location system — which means the government buys out your lender, and the government, not the lender, takes the loss. Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist who studies inequality in higher education, points out that the devil will be in the details when it comes to getting the banks out of the business. Financial institutions and student lenders are big spenders on lobbying, and will no doubt fight hard against anything that would cut into their profits.
The Working Families Party has made fighting Wall Street a central part of its agenda nationally, and Alloy says that cutting the financial sector out of the process is especially important to them as the plan moves toward implementation.
The ultimate question is whether Pay It Forward will solve the problems with the current system. “This is an admirable political mobilization around this issue, but the plan is very porous in its current state,” says Cottom. “There are a lot of holes, and we should be really explicit about what those are. Whenever you have implicit assumptions, that’s where inequality tends to manifest itself.”
Students who expect to make a lot of money after college — or whose families already have enough to pay for school up-front — may see Pay It Forward as yet another incentive to go to a private university or leave the state entirely. “Higher-income students are never shopping for colleges locally. For them, the college shopping process is a national process, so a state-based focus doesn’t address them at all,” Cottom says. The students who stay in state are the ones who are less likely to see exponential returns from their college degree, she points out. “Knowing what we know about their likelihood of social mobility, I don’t know how taxing those students on their income is sustainable. If you don’t have wealthy people paying into the system I don’t know how it works.”
Those from lower-income families or those who look at the bleak job market and see little to inspire them may still not want to pay 3 percent of their income in an economy where low-wage service jobs are the fastest-growing fields. They may still see the cost of college as too high.
A recent Pew survey found that student debt was nearly a quarter of the household income of the lowest fifth of households by annual income; it is only 2 cents of each dollar that the richest 10 percent make. Pay It Forward would represent a slight increase for the wealthiest, while it would be a major break for the poorest.
In the 1970s, Yale tried a somewhat similar “equity finance” plan for its attendees, who would pay into a fund based on their incomes. While the Yale plan was substantially different from Pay It Forward, it’s worth noting that graduates who wound up well off (as Yale graduates are wont to do) complained about having to pay more than other graduates. Timothy Noah wrote about this at Slate in 1999, noting: “[T]he only significant way the program seems really to have gone awry is in misjudging the gratitude of those who would benefit from it.”
There were also problems with collection, which is also a concern for the Oregon program — particularly figuring out ways to collect payments from former students who then leave the state.
Another problem, pointed out by the American Federation of Teachers in a white paper on Pay It Forward, is that to ensure funding for the program, institutions will have an incentive to admit students who are likely to make more money after graduation. Cottom agrees, pointing out, “An unintended consequence of this is judging how successful the program is based on graduates’ income levels.” One of the biggest questions that the pilot program will have to address is that of start-up funding. If upfront costs are eliminated, schools will face a funding gap until the Pay It Forward fund generates enough money to be self-sustaining. The student report suggests bonds, which would then have to be paid back.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
This policy seems aimed squarely at students who come from modest means, who are looking at a college degree as their path up the socioeconomic ladder — in other words, students who look at college as an investment in their future, but who know that in today’s economic climate, even a college degree isn’t a clear path to stability and comfort.
However, Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of education policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, sounds a warning note on the Century Foundation’s website. For most students, Hands free access, tuition and fees are not the largest part of college expenses. At the University of Oregon, for instance, tuition and fees run about $9,800 per year, while room and board costs more than $10,000 and books and other expenses another $3000-plus. Many students, she writes, would still wind up having to borrow to cover costs without having to work while in school — unless they receive federal Pell Grants or Oregon maintains its Opportunity Grant program for lower-income students.
Goldrick-Rab, additionally, says in a blog post that the system could be improved by creating more incentives for lower-income people to attend college, by making community colleges free for the first year, and by imposing some form of graduated repayment rather than a flat rate, so that students who go to community colleges pay back a smaller percentage of their income than those who go to four-year universities, and those who go on to make above the 80th income percentile would pay a premium.
Alloy and Rackham agree that that maintaining some level of need-based aid for the lowest-income students is important in addition to this plan. “We’ve been working closely with advocates, including the state treasurer, to implement this in a way that would be complementary to need-based aid, to open doors to students in the most accessible way possible,” Alloy says. “We don’t want students who would otherwise get their education for free to be accountable to pay into a fund for 24 years.”
A less-discussed aspect of Pay It Forward is that it would take the profit motive out of state-level student lending. Instead of private lenders (or the federal government, which pays private lenders to administer its direct loans) making money off of the often-steep interest on student loans, students would pay their money directly back to the state, in a process more akin to paying taxes than paying back a loan. Pay It Forward would thus remove the fat interest payments for private lenders and perhaps most importantly, put that money back into the hands of the state to reinvest in the university system.
“We see this as an issue [of] how we prioritize investing in our future,” Alloy says. “Are we funneling money out of the local economy straight to the financial sector or are we putting it into students?”
The current debate on the federal level, she notes, has been limited to renegotiating interest rates or allowing income-based repayment, at least since the Obama administration’s 2010 move to end direct subsidies to private lenders by moving from the Federal Family Education Loan Program to direct lending. But big lenders like Sallie Mae continue to benefit in either of those cases, Alloy notes. To take advantage of income-based repayment and loan forgiveness, you transfer your loan to the real time Location system — which means the government buys out your lender, and the government, not the lender, takes the loss. Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist who studies inequality in higher education, points out that the devil will be in the details when it comes to getting the banks out of the business. Financial institutions and student lenders are big spenders on lobbying, and will no doubt fight hard against anything that would cut into their profits.
The Working Families Party has made fighting Wall Street a central part of its agenda nationally, and Alloy says that cutting the financial sector out of the process is especially important to them as the plan moves toward implementation.
The ultimate question is whether Pay It Forward will solve the problems with the current system. “This is an admirable political mobilization around this issue, but the plan is very porous in its current state,” says Cottom. “There are a lot of holes, and we should be really explicit about what those are. Whenever you have implicit assumptions, that’s where inequality tends to manifest itself.”
Students who expect to make a lot of money after college — or whose families already have enough to pay for school up-front — may see Pay It Forward as yet another incentive to go to a private university or leave the state entirely. “Higher-income students are never shopping for colleges locally. For them, the college shopping process is a national process, so a state-based focus doesn’t address them at all,” Cottom says. The students who stay in state are the ones who are less likely to see exponential returns from their college degree, she points out. “Knowing what we know about their likelihood of social mobility, I don’t know how taxing those students on their income is sustainable. If you don’t have wealthy people paying into the system I don’t know how it works.”
Those from lower-income families or those who look at the bleak job market and see little to inspire them may still not want to pay 3 percent of their income in an economy where low-wage service jobs are the fastest-growing fields. They may still see the cost of college as too high.
A recent Pew survey found that student debt was nearly a quarter of the household income of the lowest fifth of households by annual income; it is only 2 cents of each dollar that the richest 10 percent make. Pay It Forward would represent a slight increase for the wealthiest, while it would be a major break for the poorest.
In the 1970s, Yale tried a somewhat similar “equity finance” plan for its attendees, who would pay into a fund based on their incomes. While the Yale plan was substantially different from Pay It Forward, it’s worth noting that graduates who wound up well off (as Yale graduates are wont to do) complained about having to pay more than other graduates. Timothy Noah wrote about this at Slate in 1999, noting: “[T]he only significant way the program seems really to have gone awry is in misjudging the gratitude of those who would benefit from it.”
There were also problems with collection, which is also a concern for the Oregon program — particularly figuring out ways to collect payments from former students who then leave the state.
Another problem, pointed out by the American Federation of Teachers in a white paper on Pay It Forward, is that to ensure funding for the program, institutions will have an incentive to admit students who are likely to make more money after graduation. Cottom agrees, pointing out, “An unintended consequence of this is judging how successful the program is based on graduates’ income levels.” One of the biggest questions that the pilot program will have to address is that of start-up funding. If upfront costs are eliminated, schools will face a funding gap until the Pay It Forward fund generates enough money to be self-sustaining. The student report suggests bonds, which would then have to be paid back.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Camp teaches kids the art
A group of local video game developers have launched a program to get metro-area teens interested in the science and art of game-making.
Pixel Arts Game Education, founded by Portlanders Will Lewis and Jeffrey Sens, held its first “video game camp” at Portland Youth Builders in Southeast Portland on July 27 and 28. About 30 participated in the free two-day camp, which featured lessons on art and Indoor Positioning System, computer programming and game design.In addition to the technical aspects of game-making, participants learned communication, leadership, self-motivation skills in their small groups, Lewis said.
“It’s very do-it-yourself,” Will said. “We wanted kids to work through their mistakes.”Lewis, who also founded the developer collective Portland Indie Game Squad, said the camp was a pilot project to determine how best to teach 12- to 18-year-olds about the complexities of video games. A group of about 25 volunteers helped the camp run smoothly and made the instruction as hands-on as possible.
One of the most popular projects among the campers, Lewis said, was the creation of their own game character and learning what it takes to animate it.Digital skills are increasingly important and in-demand, but many kids don’t have the resources to learn or don’t know what’s out there, Lewis said. At the end of the day, even if kids don’t end up becoming game designers or developers, they’ll have become more digitally literate, Lewis said.
Everyone agrees that the $1 trillion in student debt carried by Americans is a problem. Yet on a national level, Congress has only managed a deal that will keep interest rates low for new loans this year, but let them go up in the future.Now, one state, Oregon, is looking at broader, more far-reaching changes. On July 1, the state legislature unanimously passed a bill that could dramatically alter how public education in Oregon is funded.
The proposed program, called Pay It Forward, was conceived by students and backed by the Oregon Working Families Party, a political party/grassroots organization that promotes progressive, pro-labor candidates and policies. Pay It Forward would eliminate tuition as we know it at the state’s public universities and colleges. Instead of paying up front, students would sign up to pay the state a proportion of their income after they finish school.
It’ll be a few years yet before anything goes into action. The bill instructs the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Committee to set up a pilot plan for Pay It Forward to be considered by the state’s 2015 legislature. But the move has set off a broad debate nationally, with both conservatives and progressives coming out for and against the plan.
Some herald it as a debt-free degree, but that largely depends on how you define “debt.” Students won’t have a fixed sum hanging over their head, gathering interest that’s being skimmed off by a for-profit lender or big bank — but they will be making regular payments of a (small) chunk of their income for a (rather long) time. Though the indoor Tracking will be hammered out in the pilot program, the bill suggests that graduates of four-year programs pay 3 percent of their income — and grads of two-year schools pay 1.5 percent — for 24 years. The goals are to eliminate the upfront cost of college and to allow students to take jobs that pay less but have more social benefit without worrying about making monthly debt payments. Students who make a lot of money will pay a larger amount into the fund, and each generation will fund schools for the generation after them — hence the name, Pay It Forward.
It’s noteworthy that the proposal came from students themselves. In the fall of 2012, Barbara Dudley, the founder of the Oregon Working Families Party, taught a capstone class at Portland State University on student debt with professor Mary King. The Pay It Forward plan had been considered elsewhere — most recently in Washington state — and the students considered it as along with other proposals for state and national action to solve the student debt crisis. “We fell in love with it,” says Kevin Rackham, who was a junior at Portland State when he took Dudley and King’s course.
The students were deeply involved in every step of shaping the bill, says Sami Alloy, a WFP campaign manager. “They decided that they thought this was a just way to create a shared responsibility model that would remove that initial financial and psychological barrier.”
“With the hard work of the students and the political power we’ve built as the WFP, we were able to build consensus in the legislature, but I don’t think that anybody expected it to move this fast or to be so unanimous,” Alloy says. “The reason this has struck such a chord is that people are hungry for a solution to the student debt crisis.”
In 2011, the student report notes, 60 percent of Oregon University System students took out loans to pay for education, and the average student graduated with $22,216 in debt, above the national average of about $21,700. According to the students’ report, Oregon ranks 42nd in the nation in terms of state appropriations for higher education, with per-student funding from the state dropping by $2,700 between 1990 and 2010. In same period, published tuition and fees at public universities more than doubled. And those universities are at record enrollment and projected to keep growing.
In 2011, Oregon’s legislature passed Senate Bill 253, which established educational objectives for the by 2025: that all adults in the state have a high school diploma or equivalent, 40 percent have an associate’s degree or other meaningful postsecondary certificate, and 40 percent have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. In other words, the legislature has stated that higher education is a public good and that the state has an interest in ensuring that Oregonians have access to it.
Pixel Arts Game Education, founded by Portlanders Will Lewis and Jeffrey Sens, held its first “video game camp” at Portland Youth Builders in Southeast Portland on July 27 and 28. About 30 participated in the free two-day camp, which featured lessons on art and Indoor Positioning System, computer programming and game design.In addition to the technical aspects of game-making, participants learned communication, leadership, self-motivation skills in their small groups, Lewis said.
“It’s very do-it-yourself,” Will said. “We wanted kids to work through their mistakes.”Lewis, who also founded the developer collective Portland Indie Game Squad, said the camp was a pilot project to determine how best to teach 12- to 18-year-olds about the complexities of video games. A group of about 25 volunteers helped the camp run smoothly and made the instruction as hands-on as possible.
One of the most popular projects among the campers, Lewis said, was the creation of their own game character and learning what it takes to animate it.Digital skills are increasingly important and in-demand, but many kids don’t have the resources to learn or don’t know what’s out there, Lewis said. At the end of the day, even if kids don’t end up becoming game designers or developers, they’ll have become more digitally literate, Lewis said.
Everyone agrees that the $1 trillion in student debt carried by Americans is a problem. Yet on a national level, Congress has only managed a deal that will keep interest rates low for new loans this year, but let them go up in the future.Now, one state, Oregon, is looking at broader, more far-reaching changes. On July 1, the state legislature unanimously passed a bill that could dramatically alter how public education in Oregon is funded.
The proposed program, called Pay It Forward, was conceived by students and backed by the Oregon Working Families Party, a political party/grassroots organization that promotes progressive, pro-labor candidates and policies. Pay It Forward would eliminate tuition as we know it at the state’s public universities and colleges. Instead of paying up front, students would sign up to pay the state a proportion of their income after they finish school.
It’ll be a few years yet before anything goes into action. The bill instructs the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Committee to set up a pilot plan for Pay It Forward to be considered by the state’s 2015 legislature. But the move has set off a broad debate nationally, with both conservatives and progressives coming out for and against the plan.
Some herald it as a debt-free degree, but that largely depends on how you define “debt.” Students won’t have a fixed sum hanging over their head, gathering interest that’s being skimmed off by a for-profit lender or big bank — but they will be making regular payments of a (small) chunk of their income for a (rather long) time. Though the indoor Tracking will be hammered out in the pilot program, the bill suggests that graduates of four-year programs pay 3 percent of their income — and grads of two-year schools pay 1.5 percent — for 24 years. The goals are to eliminate the upfront cost of college and to allow students to take jobs that pay less but have more social benefit without worrying about making monthly debt payments. Students who make a lot of money will pay a larger amount into the fund, and each generation will fund schools for the generation after them — hence the name, Pay It Forward.
It’s noteworthy that the proposal came from students themselves. In the fall of 2012, Barbara Dudley, the founder of the Oregon Working Families Party, taught a capstone class at Portland State University on student debt with professor Mary King. The Pay It Forward plan had been considered elsewhere — most recently in Washington state — and the students considered it as along with other proposals for state and national action to solve the student debt crisis. “We fell in love with it,” says Kevin Rackham, who was a junior at Portland State when he took Dudley and King’s course.
The students were deeply involved in every step of shaping the bill, says Sami Alloy, a WFP campaign manager. “They decided that they thought this was a just way to create a shared responsibility model that would remove that initial financial and psychological barrier.”
“With the hard work of the students and the political power we’ve built as the WFP, we were able to build consensus in the legislature, but I don’t think that anybody expected it to move this fast or to be so unanimous,” Alloy says. “The reason this has struck such a chord is that people are hungry for a solution to the student debt crisis.”
In 2011, the student report notes, 60 percent of Oregon University System students took out loans to pay for education, and the average student graduated with $22,216 in debt, above the national average of about $21,700. According to the students’ report, Oregon ranks 42nd in the nation in terms of state appropriations for higher education, with per-student funding from the state dropping by $2,700 between 1990 and 2010. In same period, published tuition and fees at public universities more than doubled. And those universities are at record enrollment and projected to keep growing.
In 2011, Oregon’s legislature passed Senate Bill 253, which established educational objectives for the by 2025: that all adults in the state have a high school diploma or equivalent, 40 percent have an associate’s degree or other meaningful postsecondary certificate, and 40 percent have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. In other words, the legislature has stated that higher education is a public good and that the state has an interest in ensuring that Oregonians have access to it.
2013年8月5日星期一
Turkish Court Hands Down Prison Sentences in Coup Plot
A Turkish court sentenced dozens of high-ranking military officers, politicians, journalists and others to long prison terms on Monday for plotting to overthrow the government in a long-running case that captivated the nation for its audacity, laid bare the deep divisions within Turkish society between Islamists and secularists and earned sharp criticism from the international community over issues of judicial fairness.
The highest-profile defendant, Ilker Basbug, a former chief of staff of the military, received a life sentence. Three members of Parliament were given long terms, and at least 20 journalists were also sentenced.As judges read out the verdicts one by one, protesters who had gathered outside the courthouse and prison complex in Silivri, a coastal town west of Istanbul, faced tear gas fired by members of the real time Location system.
The verdicts, which are subject to appeal, came as Turkey is increasingly divided between the followers of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-inspired government and those who are loyal to the country’s old secular elite or those — especially the young — who are casting about for a new voice in politics. Those fissures were exposed in June during huge and sometimes violent street protests that began over urban development plans in Istanbul, but similar divides had been exposed during the court case, which dragged on for five years.
The case was initially seen by many as an important move by Mr. Erdogan’s government to engineer democratic reforms by taming the military, which has carried out three coups in modern Turkey’s history and had been regarded as the guardian of the secular system laid down by Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Many democracy advocates in the country have grown weary of military interventions in politics, and hailed the trial, at its start in 2008, as a major step toward civilian rule.
But as the case grew and ensnared journalists, academics and prominent government critics, it came to be seen as a politically motivated attempt at silencing dissent. It also carried the notion of revenge and rtls, analysts said, because Mr. Erdogan and his religious followers represent a class that was marginalized under the old military-dominated order. Mr. Erdogan himself was once imprisoned for reciting a religiously inspired poem in public.
“In these cases, they tried to create a thornless rose garden by silencing opposition and intimidating patriotic people with secular principles,” said Celal Ulgen, a lawyer representing 16 defendants, including a journalist, Tuncay Ozkan.
With at least 20 journalists sentenced to prison terms between 6 and 34 years, the case also illuminated Turkey’s poor record on media freedom. Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris, has referred to Turkey as “the world’s biggest prison for reporters” and ranked Turkey 154th of 179 countries, behind Iraq and Russia, in its 2013 World Press Freedom Index.
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, a member of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, said in a televised news conference: “We are not at the point of liking or not liking the verdict. After all, it is a judicial verdict, and we have to abide by it.”
“We are not those that celebrate convictions or applaud arrests,” he continued. “There is a court verdict, and everyone has to respect it.”
Others sentenced on Monday included Mustafa Balbay, an elected member of Parliament from the opposition Republican People’s Party, who was given a prison term of 34 years and 8 months; Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer who has filed complaints against at least 40 writers for “insulting Turkishness,” including the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk; Veli Kucuk, the lead suspect in the trial and a former brigadier general suspected of founding Jitem, a wing of the Turkish gendarmerie; and another opposition member of Parliament.
On Monday, families were denied access to the final hearing, and state officials blocked access to the Silivri courthouse. Roads leading to the town were closed in the early morning, preventing buses carrying protesters from reaching the area.
Television images showed security forces erecting barricades around the prison premises and at checkpoints on the Silivri highway, as well as antigovernment protesters in an open field far from the prison waving flags behind a security cordon. On Saturday, in what critics said were pre-emptive measures before the verdict, the Istanbul police raided several locations, including offices of a neo-nationalist youth group, and detained at least 20 people who called for public protests against the trial.
When the case began nearly five years ago, it had all the elements of a fantastic and conspiratorial spy novel: nearly 300 military officers, politicians, journalists and others were accused of being part of a clandestine organization whose roots stretched back to the days of the Central Intelligence Agency’s dirty work in Turkey during the cold war.
The modern incarnation of the “deep state,” according to the thousands of court documents, was an underground organization called Ergenekon, named for a mythical valley, that had plotted to overthrow Mr. Erdogan’s government by sowing chaos in the streets and carrying out assassinations. The case summoned forth the ghosts of Turkey’s past, when the military lorded over civilian governments and the possibility of a coup was omnipresent in the country’s politics. That, in turn, underscored how much the Turkish state had changed under Mr. Erdogan, who through this case and others has secured civilian authority over the military.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
The highest-profile defendant, Ilker Basbug, a former chief of staff of the military, received a life sentence. Three members of Parliament were given long terms, and at least 20 journalists were also sentenced.As judges read out the verdicts one by one, protesters who had gathered outside the courthouse and prison complex in Silivri, a coastal town west of Istanbul, faced tear gas fired by members of the real time Location system.
The verdicts, which are subject to appeal, came as Turkey is increasingly divided between the followers of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-inspired government and those who are loyal to the country’s old secular elite or those — especially the young — who are casting about for a new voice in politics. Those fissures were exposed in June during huge and sometimes violent street protests that began over urban development plans in Istanbul, but similar divides had been exposed during the court case, which dragged on for five years.
The case was initially seen by many as an important move by Mr. Erdogan’s government to engineer democratic reforms by taming the military, which has carried out three coups in modern Turkey’s history and had been regarded as the guardian of the secular system laid down by Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Many democracy advocates in the country have grown weary of military interventions in politics, and hailed the trial, at its start in 2008, as a major step toward civilian rule.
But as the case grew and ensnared journalists, academics and prominent government critics, it came to be seen as a politically motivated attempt at silencing dissent. It also carried the notion of revenge and rtls, analysts said, because Mr. Erdogan and his religious followers represent a class that was marginalized under the old military-dominated order. Mr. Erdogan himself was once imprisoned for reciting a religiously inspired poem in public.
“In these cases, they tried to create a thornless rose garden by silencing opposition and intimidating patriotic people with secular principles,” said Celal Ulgen, a lawyer representing 16 defendants, including a journalist, Tuncay Ozkan.
With at least 20 journalists sentenced to prison terms between 6 and 34 years, the case also illuminated Turkey’s poor record on media freedom. Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris, has referred to Turkey as “the world’s biggest prison for reporters” and ranked Turkey 154th of 179 countries, behind Iraq and Russia, in its 2013 World Press Freedom Index.
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, a member of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, said in a televised news conference: “We are not at the point of liking or not liking the verdict. After all, it is a judicial verdict, and we have to abide by it.”
“We are not those that celebrate convictions or applaud arrests,” he continued. “There is a court verdict, and everyone has to respect it.”
Others sentenced on Monday included Mustafa Balbay, an elected member of Parliament from the opposition Republican People’s Party, who was given a prison term of 34 years and 8 months; Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer who has filed complaints against at least 40 writers for “insulting Turkishness,” including the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk; Veli Kucuk, the lead suspect in the trial and a former brigadier general suspected of founding Jitem, a wing of the Turkish gendarmerie; and another opposition member of Parliament.
On Monday, families were denied access to the final hearing, and state officials blocked access to the Silivri courthouse. Roads leading to the town were closed in the early morning, preventing buses carrying protesters from reaching the area.
Television images showed security forces erecting barricades around the prison premises and at checkpoints on the Silivri highway, as well as antigovernment protesters in an open field far from the prison waving flags behind a security cordon. On Saturday, in what critics said were pre-emptive measures before the verdict, the Istanbul police raided several locations, including offices of a neo-nationalist youth group, and detained at least 20 people who called for public protests against the trial.
When the case began nearly five years ago, it had all the elements of a fantastic and conspiratorial spy novel: nearly 300 military officers, politicians, journalists and others were accused of being part of a clandestine organization whose roots stretched back to the days of the Central Intelligence Agency’s dirty work in Turkey during the cold war.
The modern incarnation of the “deep state,” according to the thousands of court documents, was an underground organization called Ergenekon, named for a mythical valley, that had plotted to overthrow Mr. Erdogan’s government by sowing chaos in the streets and carrying out assassinations. The case summoned forth the ghosts of Turkey’s past, when the military lorded over civilian governments and the possibility of a coup was omnipresent in the country’s politics. That, in turn, underscored how much the Turkish state had changed under Mr. Erdogan, who through this case and others has secured civilian authority over the military.
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2013年7月31日星期三
Lairds warn Holyrood
The Duke of Roxburghe and other representatives of the nobility have taken the rare step of putting their heads above their parapets to express reservations about government moves to help individuals and communities buy land that has been in their hands for generations.
They say private ownership has led to real economic benefits for local communities, providing employment and investment. Some of the submissions highlight the benefit of private ownership to endangered species, while others say absolute right-to-buy proposals have “no place in any democratic system”.
The fact that around half of Scotland is owned by just 500 people has long been a matter for fierce political debate, with land-reform campaigners arguing for a redistribution of countryside ownership.A Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) has been set up by the Scottish Government to examine ways of increasing community ownership of the land, with an interim report suggesting earlier this year that a Land Agency could be set up to help negotiate land purchases.
In a separate move, rtls, Richard Lochhead, has said that a forthcoming review of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act will look at granting an absolute right-to-buy for tenant farmers. That would give them the right to buy-out landowners, even if they are unwilling to sell.But now a host of Scottish aristocratic families have made their views known in a series of documents published this week, defending their role as custodians of their estates.
In his submission to the Scottish Government, the Duke of Roxburghe said he was “disappointed” that the Land Reform Group appeared to concentrate on community ownership, when private ownership delivered “social, economic and environmental benefits”.The duke owns the Roxburghe Estate, an enterprise with a ￡10.1 million turnover with Floors Castle, near Kelso, at its heart. The estate employs 164 people and includes the Roxburghe Hotel and a championship golf course.
Referring to an absolute right-to-buy which would increase the number of owner-occupier farms, the duke added: “Radical proposals that threaten private property rights and which impact adversely on private enterprise, investment and development or which deprive young aspiring farmers the opportunity to get a firm foothold on the farming ladder would be immensely damaging in our view and act against the interests of the communities involved.”
Roxburghe Estates emphasised that it had created employment which benefited the community, through its sporting estates, golf course, hotel and other enterprises. That theme was taken up by other lairds, who argued that breaking up estates would do little for employment prospects or investment in the countryside.
In its submission, Seafield and Strathspey Estates, which has the Earl of Seafield at its head, warned against the “fragmentation” of the land.“Flora and fauna live in a habitat not bounded by ownership issues and the larger footprint of estate management allows government policy – including programmes for the benefit of endangered species and habitats, such as capercaillie, black grouse, native woodland, moorland etc – to be implemented more easily and cost-effectively than would be the case in fragmented ownership,” the estate’s submission said.
On the absolute right-to-buy, James Carnegy-Arbuthnot, director a family company that owns the 3,250-acre Balnamoon Estate, near Brechin, described it as a “highly vexatious proposal in the eyes of landowners”.He added: “This amounts to the dispossession of land from one person to the advantage of another and has no place in any democratic system. Remove this threat and discussion on other land reform issues will become easier.”
Atholl Estates, which oversees 145,000 acres in Highland Perthshire, was critical of increasing community ownership as a means of redistributing land, saying: “It certainly should not be used as a tool to politically engineer property ownership away from one group of people to another as this fundamentally undermines Scotland’s credibility as a nation that respects the private sector, free markets and the protection of property rights as a cornerstone of human rights and financial security.”
Other lairds were keen to shed the pariah status that some critics have conferred on the landed classes, emphasising the benefits brought to the community through responsible land management.A document prepared by the Douglas and Angus Estates, which are owned by the family of the former Tory prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home and currently under the stewardship of David, the 15th Earl of Home, remarked that the LRRG would be a “positive step, if it can help to dispel many of the popular misconceptions that landowners are villains and estates contribute little of benefit to life of rural Scotland”.
Douglas and Angus Estates argued an absolute right-to-buy would be “disastrous” for rural communities and the current ownership arrangement put the estates at the heart of community life.Kinnordy Estates, Kirriemuir, owned by Lord Lyell, the former Tory minister, noted in a submission that it provided housing for the local letting market and land for the local golf course.
But other responses underlined the controversial nature of the lairds’ position. A submission by land-reform campaigner Andy Wightman said: “I want to live in a land where class distinctions are no longer legitimised by the recognition of aristocratic titles and where the principle of equality underpins access to land rights… I want to live in a country that ?nally puts an end to the centuries of landed power and returns the land to the people of Scotland – both men and women.”
The Scottish Government’s LRRG was established to build on the work carried out by the Labour-led Scottish Executive, which passed a Land Reform Act around ten years ago enshrining a community right- to-buy. The Review Group is looking at strengthening those measures.A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Scottish ministers previously announced that a review of agricultural holdings legislation would be undertaken within 18 months of the Agricultural Holdings Act 2012 coming into force. The timetable for that review will be announced soon after the summer.”“The review, once undertaken, will consider recommendations made by the Tenant Farming Forum, which is expected in the autumn.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
They say private ownership has led to real economic benefits for local communities, providing employment and investment. Some of the submissions highlight the benefit of private ownership to endangered species, while others say absolute right-to-buy proposals have “no place in any democratic system”.
The fact that around half of Scotland is owned by just 500 people has long been a matter for fierce political debate, with land-reform campaigners arguing for a redistribution of countryside ownership.A Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) has been set up by the Scottish Government to examine ways of increasing community ownership of the land, with an interim report suggesting earlier this year that a Land Agency could be set up to help negotiate land purchases.
In a separate move, rtls, Richard Lochhead, has said that a forthcoming review of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act will look at granting an absolute right-to-buy for tenant farmers. That would give them the right to buy-out landowners, even if they are unwilling to sell.But now a host of Scottish aristocratic families have made their views known in a series of documents published this week, defending their role as custodians of their estates.
In his submission to the Scottish Government, the Duke of Roxburghe said he was “disappointed” that the Land Reform Group appeared to concentrate on community ownership, when private ownership delivered “social, economic and environmental benefits”.The duke owns the Roxburghe Estate, an enterprise with a ￡10.1 million turnover with Floors Castle, near Kelso, at its heart. The estate employs 164 people and includes the Roxburghe Hotel and a championship golf course.
Referring to an absolute right-to-buy which would increase the number of owner-occupier farms, the duke added: “Radical proposals that threaten private property rights and which impact adversely on private enterprise, investment and development or which deprive young aspiring farmers the opportunity to get a firm foothold on the farming ladder would be immensely damaging in our view and act against the interests of the communities involved.”
Roxburghe Estates emphasised that it had created employment which benefited the community, through its sporting estates, golf course, hotel and other enterprises. That theme was taken up by other lairds, who argued that breaking up estates would do little for employment prospects or investment in the countryside.
In its submission, Seafield and Strathspey Estates, which has the Earl of Seafield at its head, warned against the “fragmentation” of the land.“Flora and fauna live in a habitat not bounded by ownership issues and the larger footprint of estate management allows government policy – including programmes for the benefit of endangered species and habitats, such as capercaillie, black grouse, native woodland, moorland etc – to be implemented more easily and cost-effectively than would be the case in fragmented ownership,” the estate’s submission said.
On the absolute right-to-buy, James Carnegy-Arbuthnot, director a family company that owns the 3,250-acre Balnamoon Estate, near Brechin, described it as a “highly vexatious proposal in the eyes of landowners”.He added: “This amounts to the dispossession of land from one person to the advantage of another and has no place in any democratic system. Remove this threat and discussion on other land reform issues will become easier.”
Atholl Estates, which oversees 145,000 acres in Highland Perthshire, was critical of increasing community ownership as a means of redistributing land, saying: “It certainly should not be used as a tool to politically engineer property ownership away from one group of people to another as this fundamentally undermines Scotland’s credibility as a nation that respects the private sector, free markets and the protection of property rights as a cornerstone of human rights and financial security.”
Other lairds were keen to shed the pariah status that some critics have conferred on the landed classes, emphasising the benefits brought to the community through responsible land management.A document prepared by the Douglas and Angus Estates, which are owned by the family of the former Tory prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home and currently under the stewardship of David, the 15th Earl of Home, remarked that the LRRG would be a “positive step, if it can help to dispel many of the popular misconceptions that landowners are villains and estates contribute little of benefit to life of rural Scotland”.
Douglas and Angus Estates argued an absolute right-to-buy would be “disastrous” for rural communities and the current ownership arrangement put the estates at the heart of community life.Kinnordy Estates, Kirriemuir, owned by Lord Lyell, the former Tory minister, noted in a submission that it provided housing for the local letting market and land for the local golf course.
But other responses underlined the controversial nature of the lairds’ position. A submission by land-reform campaigner Andy Wightman said: “I want to live in a land where class distinctions are no longer legitimised by the recognition of aristocratic titles and where the principle of equality underpins access to land rights… I want to live in a country that ?nally puts an end to the centuries of landed power and returns the land to the people of Scotland – both men and women.”
The Scottish Government’s LRRG was established to build on the work carried out by the Labour-led Scottish Executive, which passed a Land Reform Act around ten years ago enshrining a community right- to-buy. The Review Group is looking at strengthening those measures.A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Scottish ministers previously announced that a review of agricultural holdings legislation would be undertaken within 18 months of the Agricultural Holdings Act 2012 coming into force. The timetable for that review will be announced soon after the summer.”“The review, once undertaken, will consider recommendations made by the Tenant Farming Forum, which is expected in the autumn.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月29日星期一
Cambodia Opposition Rejects
Cambodia's main opposition party has rejected the results of a parliamentary election and has called for an investigation into allegations of widespread electoral fraud.Prime Minister Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party [CPP] claimed a narrow victory in Sunday's vote, admitting to its weakest showing since taking a dominant role in Cambodian politics almost three decades ago.Shortly after the polls closed, the CPP said it won 68 seats in the nation's 123-member parliament - a significant decline from the 90-seat majority it previously held. It said the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party [CNRP] took the remaining 55 seats, almost doubling the 29 seats it held in the outgoing parliament.
The CPP appeared to base its claims on partial results released by the National Election Committee, which was not expected to disclose final election figures for several weeks.CNRP leader Sam Rainsy told reporters Monday the CNRP would not accept the results of the ballot because of what he characterized as widespread fraud.
"We ask local and international bodies to send experts now to be part of a joint committee to investigate all the irregularities, and to assess the implications of those irregularities on the Hands free access," said Rainsy.Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan told VOA the opposition's announcement was typical of its election behavior. "The opposition party uses this game after every election," he said.
"There were serious fraud allegations leading up to the elections," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch [HRW], who was in Cambodia observing the election campaign. "They included illegal behavior on behalf of government security authorities; things like 'ghost' voters, de-registration of opposition voters, biased behavior by the national election commission, unequal access to national media, the list goes on and on. It is a serious problem and it does deserve an independent investigation."
The non-profit Transparency International Cambodia echoed those concerns. The group, which sent 900 observers to about 400 of the nation's 19,000 polling stations, says it found a litany of breaches.
Chief among those was that in 60 percent of polling stations, some people who had the right identification papers could not find their names on the voting list. It also found that people who lacked the correct identification were allowed to vote in a quarter of the polling stations.
"The opposition does not have access to funds, weapons or patronage. So the financial power will continue to be in the hands of the CPP. Foreign aid will flow to the government, which is controlled by the CPP," he said. "I think politics will become more interesting and vibrant, but I do not think that will involve the transfer of power to any extent."
The CNRP appeared to get a boost in the election from the merger of two of its founding parties, who joined forces last year to challenge the long-ruling CPP. The united opposition party touted a populist platform calling for a sharp rise in civil servants' salaries, monthly payments to those over 65 years old, and an increase in the minimum wage. It also pledged to regulate government prices for agricultural products, lower gas costs and provide free health care for the poor.
Robertson of HRW said the promise of change made many voters more enthusiastic about participating in the election."It really propelled the opposition to make major gains. But, we should not confuse outcomes with processes and procedures," he said. "The processes and procedures of the election were not fair and favored one side. They were designed to deny the civil and political rights of the Cambodian people."
Last week a Kansas healthcare management company, Nueterra, cleared the first hurdle to open a privately-owned, third surgical hospital in Casper. What’s bothersome about the proposal is the possibility the project could jeopardize vital public health services while a few people get rich. But the company and their rumored local doctor investors aren’t talking about it. Period. No discussion. Their response was to file a site plan for the project with the city but without much comment. Apparently their strategy is to ram it down our throats, like it or not.
County government and others have expressed multiple reasons why added hospital capacity would be detrimental to nearly everyone in the county. As reported in the Casper Journal during the past month, at risk are trauma care and indigent care at Wyoming Medical Center. There’s been some talk of a possible new property tax to support the public hospital if necessary.
When the doctor-owned Mountain View Regional Hospital was opened, the reason was clear. A very public falling-out between the medical center and the doctors involved with the new hospital made it easy to understand. There have been ups and downs and good and bad with the real time Location system, but the competition has arguably been good in some respects. Both existing hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid. WMC maintains the only full-service emergency room with trauma care and a cardiac catheterization lab, where doctors can open blocked arteries during a heart attack.
But Nueterra’s newly-proposed Summit Medical Center appears to be different. The public is only hearing from one side: basically the county and the operator of the county-owned hospital’s side. Nueterra and its rumored local doctor investors are mum. Sources have told the Casper Journal the company employs a comprehensive confidentiality agreement. It’s a private business, but its actions will likely impact delivery of other public health services and could cost every citizen in the county more money. No wonder they don’t want to talk!
By their silence, these doctors and their Kansas partner leave us to draw our own conclusions. They apparently aren’t interested in explaining who or how another hospital in Natrona County will benefit anyone. We’re left with the impression this project is just about the money, greed that would dilute the quality of healthcare for the common man to benefit a few.
A free enterprise argument may apply in some areas of the complicated world of healthcare, but not in emergency room, trauma or indigent care. When your loved one has a stroke or accident, there’s no thoughtful decision where to seek care; you go to the nearest, if not the only, emergency room. And if you need elective surgery, most often your doctor decides where that procedure will be performed. And if the doctor owns an interest in a hospital, where do you think they’ll believe is best for you to have the procedure? This isn’t free enterprise because the customer is most often not making the buying decision.
Dependable emergency care are services private hospitals shun because they are, by their comprehensive nature, expensive and must be supported by the more predictable procedures private hospitals siphon away from publicly-supported medical centers.
The CPP appeared to base its claims on partial results released by the National Election Committee, which was not expected to disclose final election figures for several weeks.CNRP leader Sam Rainsy told reporters Monday the CNRP would not accept the results of the ballot because of what he characterized as widespread fraud.
"We ask local and international bodies to send experts now to be part of a joint committee to investigate all the irregularities, and to assess the implications of those irregularities on the Hands free access," said Rainsy.Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan told VOA the opposition's announcement was typical of its election behavior. "The opposition party uses this game after every election," he said.
"There were serious fraud allegations leading up to the elections," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch [HRW], who was in Cambodia observing the election campaign. "They included illegal behavior on behalf of government security authorities; things like 'ghost' voters, de-registration of opposition voters, biased behavior by the national election commission, unequal access to national media, the list goes on and on. It is a serious problem and it does deserve an independent investigation."
The non-profit Transparency International Cambodia echoed those concerns. The group, which sent 900 observers to about 400 of the nation's 19,000 polling stations, says it found a litany of breaches.
Chief among those was that in 60 percent of polling stations, some people who had the right identification papers could not find their names on the voting list. It also found that people who lacked the correct identification were allowed to vote in a quarter of the polling stations.
"The opposition does not have access to funds, weapons or patronage. So the financial power will continue to be in the hands of the CPP. Foreign aid will flow to the government, which is controlled by the CPP," he said. "I think politics will become more interesting and vibrant, but I do not think that will involve the transfer of power to any extent."
The CNRP appeared to get a boost in the election from the merger of two of its founding parties, who joined forces last year to challenge the long-ruling CPP. The united opposition party touted a populist platform calling for a sharp rise in civil servants' salaries, monthly payments to those over 65 years old, and an increase in the minimum wage. It also pledged to regulate government prices for agricultural products, lower gas costs and provide free health care for the poor.
Robertson of HRW said the promise of change made many voters more enthusiastic about participating in the election."It really propelled the opposition to make major gains. But, we should not confuse outcomes with processes and procedures," he said. "The processes and procedures of the election were not fair and favored one side. They were designed to deny the civil and political rights of the Cambodian people."
Last week a Kansas healthcare management company, Nueterra, cleared the first hurdle to open a privately-owned, third surgical hospital in Casper. What’s bothersome about the proposal is the possibility the project could jeopardize vital public health services while a few people get rich. But the company and their rumored local doctor investors aren’t talking about it. Period. No discussion. Their response was to file a site plan for the project with the city but without much comment. Apparently their strategy is to ram it down our throats, like it or not.
County government and others have expressed multiple reasons why added hospital capacity would be detrimental to nearly everyone in the county. As reported in the Casper Journal during the past month, at risk are trauma care and indigent care at Wyoming Medical Center. There’s been some talk of a possible new property tax to support the public hospital if necessary.
When the doctor-owned Mountain View Regional Hospital was opened, the reason was clear. A very public falling-out between the medical center and the doctors involved with the new hospital made it easy to understand. There have been ups and downs and good and bad with the real time Location system, but the competition has arguably been good in some respects. Both existing hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid. WMC maintains the only full-service emergency room with trauma care and a cardiac catheterization lab, where doctors can open blocked arteries during a heart attack.
But Nueterra’s newly-proposed Summit Medical Center appears to be different. The public is only hearing from one side: basically the county and the operator of the county-owned hospital’s side. Nueterra and its rumored local doctor investors are mum. Sources have told the Casper Journal the company employs a comprehensive confidentiality agreement. It’s a private business, but its actions will likely impact delivery of other public health services and could cost every citizen in the county more money. No wonder they don’t want to talk!
By their silence, these doctors and their Kansas partner leave us to draw our own conclusions. They apparently aren’t interested in explaining who or how another hospital in Natrona County will benefit anyone. We’re left with the impression this project is just about the money, greed that would dilute the quality of healthcare for the common man to benefit a few.
A free enterprise argument may apply in some areas of the complicated world of healthcare, but not in emergency room, trauma or indigent care. When your loved one has a stroke or accident, there’s no thoughtful decision where to seek care; you go to the nearest, if not the only, emergency room. And if you need elective surgery, most often your doctor decides where that procedure will be performed. And if the doctor owns an interest in a hospital, where do you think they’ll believe is best for you to have the procedure? This isn’t free enterprise because the customer is most often not making the buying decision.
Dependable emergency care are services private hospitals shun because they are, by their comprehensive nature, expensive and must be supported by the more predictable procedures private hospitals siphon away from publicly-supported medical centers.
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