Thursday, March 31, 2011

Clod Computing Challenges The Cloud

Cloud computing is making a name for itself by challenging the cost of running traditional corporate data centers. But just as the cloud is reaching critical mass, a new challenger appears with an even lower cost model. They call it clod computing.

Be sure to recycle your electronics responsibly. Click to see how.Just what is the “clod” and why is it cheaper? The business model is based on reducing infrastructure cost by getting computing resources for free. As explained by startup vendor Chip-On-A-Shingle, “A clod is simply a cluster of unwanted computers and peripherals all hooked together to create some really awesome processing.”

It’s true that there is a surplus of computers headed for landfills simply because they are no longer the new shiny thing. Most computers go to their graves perfectly functional. They’ve simply gotten too slow due to lack of memory or processing power to keep up with the latest software applications. Some are tossed for simple ugliness as UV exposure turns their once cream colored cases a nasty shade of orange.

“What gave me the idea,” said J. Unkmann, a pioneer in the new technology of OaaP (Obsolescence as a Platform), “was when I saw all these computers sitting out by the curb on trash day. It seemed like every other house had a tower or a monitor. They didn’t even bother putting them in the recycling bins. I got to thinking about all that processing power going to waste and decided to pick up a few and see what I could do with them.”

Unkmann’s breakthrough was in networking dozens, then hundreds, of old computer CPUs and selling the processing capability as a service. As he points out, “Any old 486 may not have much throughput, but when you have hundreds or thousands of cores you’ve got yourself a super-computer. I don’t dare take my array out of the country. The government has laws against exporting this advanced technology.”

Instead, Unkmann and a legion of similar visionaries are offering their services to anyone from caffeinated gamers to corporate IT departments. Unkmann’s below-ground data center has wooden racks filled from floor to ceiling with everything from old IBM PCs to brightly colored iMacs. The primary cost of the operation is electricity. “Heat could also be a problem, he remarked, but we live up North so it’s cold most of the time. Security isn’t much of a issue, either. Mom’s got a mean dog upstairs and the storm cellar door has been rusted shut for years.”

In addition to processor cycles, Chip-On-A-Shingle offers scalable storage as a service. “You can see how extensive our disk array is,” noted Unkmann pointing at a shelf stacked high with hard drives. “Some of these are only 40 GB or so, but people are throwing out computers with 250 GB drives these days. Just call up and tell me how many you want and I’ll plug ‘em in.”

Costs for clod computing are running considerably lower than those quoted by well known cloud service providers. J. Unkmann has flexible financing available that includes anything from PayPal contributions to bartering arrangements. “I’m most interested in PoD (Pizza on Demand),” he commented.

Connectivity arrangement are flexible, too. “We can wire up just about anything you want. Dial-up works just fine if you are on a tight budget. I’ve got maybe a thousand modem cards in a box over there. We can also go wireless. Just send me a time card for my prepaid phone.”

Major carriers and cloud service providers have been loath to embrace clod computing so far. But as the recession drags on, breakthrough ideas such as this may come to fill a very low end niche in the marketplace, until the economy picks up... hopefully by next April 1.



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Flooding and landslides in southern Thailand

If you are thinking about going to southern Thailand or to one of the islands in the Andaman Sea for a holiday, you may want to hold on to that plan. The torrential rain not only affected our own Perlis state, it is also causing mud slides in southern Thailand.

Thai soldiers joined the search for victims of deadly mudslides that engulfed homes in the flood-hit south, as naval boats rescued hundreds of tourists stuck on holiday islands.


Full story: The Star..Thai navy rescues tourists stranded on islands

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the First Week of April


Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends'. This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend. This technique generally works only in bull markets. In flat or choppy markets, you have to be extremely careful.

In order to be entitled to the dividend, you have to buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, and you can't sell the stock until after the ex date. The actual dividend may not be paid for another few weeks. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has compiled a downloadable and sortable list of the stocks going ex dividend during the next week or two. The list contains many dividend paying companies, all with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the market capitalization, the ex-dividend date and the yield.

Kite Realty Group Trust (KRG) market cap: $337.2M ex div date: 4/4/2011 yield: 4.6%

Raytheon Company (RTN) market cap: $18.3B ex div date: 4/4/2011 yield: 3.4%

Banco de Chile ADR (BCH) market cap: $7.0T ex div date: 4/5/2011 yield: 4.5%

Campbell Soup Company (CPB) market cap: $10.6B ex div date: 4/7/2011 yield: 3.5%

General Mills, Inc. (GIS) market cap: $23.3B ex div date: 4/7/2011 yield: 3.1%

Progress Energy, Inc. (PGN) market cap: $13.6B ex div date: 4/7/2011 yield: 5.4%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found at wsnn.com. (If you have been to the website before, and the latest link doesn't show up, you may have to empty your cache.) If you like dividend stocks, you should check out the high yield utility stocks and the Monthly Dividend Stocks at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com or WSNN.com.

Dividend definitions:

Declaration date: the day that the company declares that there is going to be an upcoming dividend.

Ex-dividend date: the day on which if you buy the stock, you would not be entitled to that particular dividend; or the first day on which a shareholder can sell the shares and still be entitled to the dividend.

Record date: the day when you must be on the company's books as a shareholder to receive the dividend. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks two business days before the record date.

Payment date: the day on which the dividend payment is actually made, which can be as long at two months after the ex date.

Don't forget to reconfirm the ex-dividend date with the company before implementing this technique.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

AirAsia chief conferred CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire)

Congratulations!

AirAsia CEO Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes has added another feather to his cap - he received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) award from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Fernandes' CBE was attributed to his “services to promote commercial and educational links” between the United Kingdom and Malaysia.

Full story from The Star..AirAsia chief conferred CBE

Burp-Free Food for Cows to Reduce Methane

Scientists in the United Kingdom have been researching ways of changing the diet of cows to reduce methane in order to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

China's Ghost Cities and Malls

Have you heard about China's ghost cities and ghost malls?

The Future Of Nuclear Energy In The U.S.

On today's Fresh Air, New York Times energy reporter Matthew Wald joins Terry Gross for a wide-ranging conversation about the history — and future — of nuclear energy in the United States. Though storage and safety mechanisms are in place, he says, many unknown variables exist that are nearly impossible for regulators to forecast.

Source: npr.org

Friday Frolics - What Does Your Favorite Month Say About You?

We have just completed 1Q of 2011. So many things happened in that first three months - notably the turmoil in the Middle-east and north Africa, and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on 3/11, plus the nuclear plant issue.

Today is April 1st, a day for pranksters. Do you love this day or even hate it from past experiences? Have you been punk'd today so early in the morning or have already fooled someone?

Like all other things, we all have our favorite day of the week and/or month of the year. What is your favorite month? Did you know the month you choose as your favorite tells something about you? See if the quiz is true in your case..

Nevertheless, have a wonderful, wonderful month ahead. I know I'll enjoy the colors in the gardens and everywhere around me.


December Says That Happysurfer Is Perceptive



You're the type of person who was practically born wise. You see things that others can't see.

You are good at getting down to essentials and figuring out what really matters.



You also have a gift for reading people. You consider yourself a "Human Lie Detector" of sorts.

You are always aware and processing information. It's hard for your mind to take a rest.

All Things Nuclear • IAEA Confirms Very High Levels of Contamination Far From Reactors

IAEA Confirms Very High Levels of Contamination Far From Reactors


Today the IAEA has finally confirmed what some analysts have suspected for days: that the concentration per area of long-lived cesium-137 (Cs-137) is extremely high as far as tens of kilometers from the release site at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, and in fact would trigger compulsory evacuation under IAEA guidelines.
The IAEA is reporting that measured soil concentrations of Cs-137 as far away as Iitate Village, 40 kilometers northwest of Fukushima-Dai-Ichi, correspond to deposition levels of up to 3.7 megabecquerels per square meter (MBq/sq. m). This is far higher than previous IAEA reports of values of Cs-137 deposition, and comparable to the total beta-gamma measurements reported previously by IAEA and mentioned on this blog.
This should be compared with the deposition level that triggered compulsory relocation in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident: the level set in 1990 by the Soviet Union was 1.48 MBq/sq. m.
Thus, it is now abundantly clear that Japanese authorities were negligent inrestricting the emergency evacuation zone to only 20 kilometers from the release site.

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Entomb? Cement pumps flown in to nuke plant

TOKYO — Some of the world's largest cement pumps were en route to Japan's stricken nuclear plant on Thursday, initially to help douse areas with water but eventually for cement work — including the possibility of entombing the site as was done in Chernobyl.

Operated via remote control, one of the truck-mounted pumps was already at the Fukushima Dai-ichi site and being used to spray water. Four more will be flown in from Germany and the United States, according to the German-manufacturer Putzmeister. The biggest of the five has an arm that extends well over 200 feet.

"Initially, they will probably pump water," Putzmeister stated. "Later they will be used for any necessary concreting work."


Source: msnbc.com
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Radiation Found in Milk from California and Washington

Radiation “far below” levels that pose a risk to humans was found in milk from California and Washington, the first signs Japan’s nuclear accident is affecting U.S. food, state and Obama administration officials said.

The U.S. is stepping up monitoring of radiation in milk, rain and drinking water, the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration said yesterday in a statement.

Radiation levels in the U.K. are normal and extra testing isn’t needed to protect the food supply, the Food Standards Agency said.

The number of dead and missing from the earthquake and tsunami had reached 27,690 as of 10 a.m. today, Japan’s National Police Agency said.


Source: bloomberg
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Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Hi-Res Photos

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Hi-Res Photos

Radiation Found in Milk - Spokane, WA

SPOKANE - Minimal but still acceptable levels of radiation have been detected in Spokane-area milk, federal health and safety regulators confirmed today.

The Environmental Protection Agency performed the tests and confirmed milk sold in the county is safe to drink.

A sample taken Friday detected levels of radioactive Iodine-131 that were 5,000 times below levels that would cause concern from the federal Food and Drug Administration, according to a Gov. Chris Gregoire spokesperson.



Source: theolympian


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Ref’s Net penalty decider

This week the recently retired Lord Justice Jacob referred an important question to the ECJ in Football Dataco v Sportradar [2011] EWCA Civ 330. It’s about whether someone who uploads infringing content on the internet is liable in the country where he is – or where the content is viewed – or both.

Football Dataco compile Football Live, a database of UK football statistics updated during matches (goals, goal scorers, yellow and red cards, substitutions). Sportradar provides a competing service, Sport Live Data, with servers in Germany and Austria, accessible in the UK via betting sites. Football Dataco claim that Sportradar are copying data from Football Live, constituting infringement of UK copyright and database right.

Last November, Floyd J, determining whether the English courts had jurisdiction, held in [2010] EWHC 2911 (Ch):

  1. There was a good arguable case that Football Dataco’s content was protected by copyright, that Sportradar had copied a part of it and had authorized/was jointly liable for copyright infringements by punters in the UK who had reproduced the data on their computer screens.
  2. There was a good arguable case that Sportradar would be jointly liable with punters for database infringement by extraction and with the UK betting site for re-utilization.
  3. Sportradar had not itself re-utilized Football Live in the UK. ‘Re-utilization’ is defined as ‘making available’, which Floyd J concluded would be committed where Sportradar’s servers are, not in the UK.

All points were appealed and on Tuesday the Court of Appeal held:

  1. Football Live might be protected by copyright but there was no copyright infringement if Sportradar had copied data from it. ‘Its recording may sometimes involve some skill (who scored in a goalmouth scramble) but it is not creative skill.’ It followed that Sportradar could not be authorizing or jointly liable for punters’ copyright infringement.
  2. There was a plausible case of Sportradar being jointly liable for database infringements by the UK betting site and punters.
  3. The question of whether ‘making available’ occurs where a site is hosted and/or where it is viewed required a reference to the ECJ.

It was only in December that Jacob LJ referred to the ECJ the question: ‘Does “author’s own intellectual creation” require more than significant labour and skill from the author, if so what?’ He appears to now know at least part of the answer (creative skill).

The jurisdictional question now being sent to the ECJ concerns the database right not copyright, and the copyright and database ‘making available’ rights are not identical. However a parallel question exists in relation to copyright and it would seem likely that whatever the ECJ decide for the database right would also apply to copyright. The legislative history and case law of copyright’s making available right therefore come into consideration.

Sportradar make the policy argument that if making available on the internet happens everywhere that a site can be seen, then websites have the impossible task of making themselves compliant with all the different national laws in the world. A counter policy argument would be: if liability were only wherever servers are located, then infringement is avoided by using servers in countries with lax or no relevant laws.

While the ECJ nuts this out, the proceedings concerning joint-tortfeasorship will continue. This too could make foreign websites liable under the law of the country where they are viewed, through joint liability with end users’ infringements.

The Web is big and it is sticky.

U.S. Building Underground BUNKERS on a Mass Scale

In Conspiracy Theory 2012, with Jesse Ventura, we learned that the U.S. government is still engaged in the building of massive underground bunker systems. According to Ventura, one of the largest has been built under the new Denver airport. In fact, the US government is reportedly building so fast and so widespread, that private contractors in the bunker business are having a difficult time obtaining necessary equipment and supplies to continue their developments.

We even have an entire department, funded by taxpayers to the tune of $6 billion per year that is specifically tasked to deal with disaster scenarios. We normally only hear about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during hurricanes, floods, fires and earthquakes, but they are responsible for responding to all major emergencies across the country. According to some, but denied by many, FEMA has even built refugee camps to deal with millions of people who may be displaced in large scale emergencies or during a declaration of martial law.

Anecdotal reports over the years suggest that the largest buyer of freeze dried goods from major freeze dried food manufacturers is none other than the U.S. government. One of our recommended emergency preparedness partners indicates that they serve not only retail customers, but government entities as well, including the Transportation Security Administration, US State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.

The government is and has been preparing for something, perhaps many things, for decades. The very existence of FEMA and Department of Homeland Security suggests that they are planning for wide a variety of possibilities. To be clear, the fact that they are planning for something doesn’t necessarily mean that it will happen – just that it’s a possibility.

If nothing else, this proves that there are agencies within the US government that dedicate time, money (lots of it) and resources to the study of scenarios that can be considered The End of The World As We Know It.

Those very same people – your neighbors, friends, and family members – who may consider your personal preparedness efforts a little over the top would likely agree that the government spending billions of dollars on emergency preparedness is worthwhile project given the many possibilities for calamity to occur.

The issue, however, is that the government may be spending billions, but they cannot possibly prepare for widescale, total collapse situations where tens of millions of lives are at risk. It is simply not possible.

Our government, even if they tried, would not be able to stock enough food and resources for the entire population of the United States. They can’t possibly respond to widespread catastrophes that may include simultaneous nuclear, biological or chemical attacks on multiple U.S. cities, or an electromagnetic pulse threat from a rogue nation, or even a solar flare that threatens our power grid infrastructure.

In Food and Water in an Emergency (pdf) FEMA makes it clear that they may not be able to provide assistance. If an earthquake, hurricane, winter storm, or other disaster strikes your community, you might not have access to food, water, and electricity for days or even weeks,warns the report. The recommendations, similar to those we have made in our emergency preparedness reports over the last couple of years, suggest that everyone take responsibility for themselves, â€Å“by taking some time now to store emergency food and water supplies, you can provide for your entire family.

The US government is preparing for large scale disasters. Are you?



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Al-Qaida Brings More Russian Made Suitcase Nukes to U.S.

According to captured al-Qaida leaders and documents, the plan is called the "American Hiroshima" and involves the multiple detonation of nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border with the help of the MS-13 street gang and other organized crime groups.

Al-Qaida has obtained at least 40 nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union – including suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and even some missile warheads. In addition, documents captured in Afghanistan show al-Qaida had plans to assemble its own nuclear weapons with fissile material it purchased on the black market.

In addition to detonating its own nuclear weapons already planted in the U.S., military sources also say there is evidence to suggest al-Qaida is paying former Russian special forces Spetznaz to assist the terrorist group in locating nuclear weapons formerly concealed inside the U.S. by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Osama bin Laden's group is also paying nuclear scientists from Russia and Pakistan to maintain its existing nuclear arsenal and assemble additional weapons with the materials it has invested hundreds of millions in procuring over a period of 10 years.

At least half the nuclear weapons in the al-Qaida arsenal were obtained for cash from the Chechen terrorist allies.

But the most disturbing news is that high level U.S. officials now believe at least some of those weapons have been smuggled into the U.S. for use in the near future in major cities as part of this "American Hiroshima" plan, according to an upcoming book, "The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime and the Coming Apocalypse," by Paul L. Williams, a former FBI consultant.


According to Williams, former CIA Director George Tenet informed President Bush one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that at least two suitcase nukes had reached al-Qaida operatives in the U.S.


"Each suitcase weighed between 50 and 80 kilograms (approximately 110 to 176 pounds) and contained enough fissionable plutonium and uranium to produce an explosive yield in excess of two kilotons," wrote Williams. "One suitcase bore the serial number 9999 and the Russian manufacturing date of 1988. The design of the weapons, Tenet told the president, is simple. The plutonium and uranium are kept in separate compartments that are linked to a triggering mechanism that can be activated by a clock or a call from the cell phone."


However, it is worth noting that Bush failed to translate this policy into securing the U.S.-Mexico border through which the nuclear weapons and al-Qaida operatives are believed to have passed with the help of the MS-13 smugglers. He did, however, order the building of underground bunkers away from major metropolitan areas for use by federal government managers following an attack.


According to Williams' sources, thousands of al-Qaida sleeper agents have now been forward deployed into the U.S. to carry out their individual roles in the coming "American Hiroshima" plan.


The future plan, according to captured al-Qaida agents and documents, suggests the attacks will take place simultaneously in major cities throughout the country – including New York, Boston, Washington, Las Vegas, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles.







Source: wnd.com


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Japan under pressure to widen nuclear evacuation zone


Pressure is mounting on Japan to expand the evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, as the prime minister says he plans to review the country's nuclear energy policy.

The government has so far resisted calls to evacuate more people from the area, but said its policy was under constant review, and that monitoring of radiation levels was being increased.

More than 70,000 people living inside the 20km zone have been evacuated, but another 136,000 living between 20-30km away have been told to stay in their homes. The US has recommended that its citizens stay at least 80km away.

Radiation fears have prevented authorities from collecting the bodies of as many as 1,000 people living in the evacuation zone who died in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

Kyodo news agency cited police sources as saying the corpses had been exposed to high radiation levels and would probably have to be decontaminated before they could be collected and examined by doctors.

Left as they were, the bodies could pose a health threat to relatives identifying them at morgues, the agency said. Cremating them could create radioactive smoke, while burying them could contaminate soil.

Nuclear safety officials said rising contamination in the sea near the plant pointed to a constant leak of radiation. On Thursday, Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency said radioactive iodine near drains running from the plant was 4,385 times higher than the legal limit.

Experts said workers at the plant, 240km north of Tokyo, faced the problematic task of cooling overheating reactors with seawater while ensuring that contaminated runoff does not end up in the surrounding sea and soil.


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NYC - Undercounted AGAIN!??!!


March 31st, 2011 Census Update

Here's an article in The New York Times about New York City's presumed "undercount." The Census Bureau had originally estimated an increase in the past decade of 400,000 in NYC's population, (which would have represented a 5% increase over Census 2000 population counts) but the actual Census survey showed an increase of only 167,000, which equals about a 2% increase over the Census 2000 population count.  The mayor and Borough Presidents are crying "Foul," and it is not just because they are trying to protect NYC's reputation as a powerhouse of growth and innovation: many Federal $$ programs are dispensed to locations based on population counts.  NYC will lose out if the current numbers stand. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/nyregion/31nycensus.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29

But this overall increase of 2% masks many important local differences (as usual!).  If you think your part of the city is now more crowded than in the recent past, you may be right - population in some parts of the city DID increase significantly, balanced out by other parts of the city that lost population.  See maps from The NY Times, above and below.  Of course, compared to many cities, NYC is not doing too badly in the "keeping them here" department - Detroit, by comparison, lost fully 25% of its population in the past 10 years.

From The NY Times - Interactive 2010 Census Mapping
Browse population growth and decline throughout the U.S., changes in racial and ethnic concentrations and patterns of housing development (by county).
http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map?ref=nyregion


Much Ado About Kindergarten

I have been following for some time now - and with growing bemusement - a heated debate in Germany over the use of sheet music in nursery schools. The apple of discord is a letter from German collecting society GEMA, sent on behalf of another German collecting society (VG Musikedition, which represents composers, lyricists and publisher of sheet music) to some 36,000 German nursery schools. In said letter, GEMA reminds the nursery schools that under German copyright law you need a licence to copy sheet music and proposes the conclusion of a respective licence agreememt.

So far, so normal, one may think, but to most of the German press, this simple occurrence was a complete outrage. Emotions running high, most headlines read something along the lines of "Nursery Schools to Pay for Singing!" and "GEMA Rip-off in Kindergarten!" Inevitably, politicians jumped on the bandwagon: Sibylle Laurischk (of liberal democratic FDP) said that "singing in nursery schools is a basic part of education" and that, therefore, GEMA should exempt nursery schools from paying licences (http://www.bild.de/politik/2010/fuer-kinderlieder-15226246.bild.html). Heiko Maas (of social democratic SPD) echoed the "rip-off in kindergarten" view and said singing in nursery schools was an expression of an untroubled childhood (http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/gema-kritik-an-kinderlieder-gebuehr_aid_585392.html). They and most other critics conveniently ignored that the letter did not actually concern the singing of any songs whatsoever. Unless nursery school children perform at a public event, they may sing whatever they like free of charge.

What the letter does concern is the copying of sheet music. German law only contains a very limited private copy exception for sheet music. According to s. 53 subs. 4 lit. a) German Copyright Act, one may only make a copy of a graphic recording of a musical work (1) by means of manual copying, (2) for the inclusion in a personal archive if and to the extent the reproduction is necessary for that purpose and a PERSONAL copy of the work is used to make the reproduction, or (3) if the copy is for personal use AND the work has been out of print for at least two years. All other uses require a licence from the right holder. GEMA (as instructed by VG Musikedition) now offers such licences to nursery schools for €56 per annum for up to 500 copies, € 112 for up to 1,000 copies and so on. So that's roughly €0.11 per copy (if you get a licence for up to 2,500 copies or more, the rate decreases slightly).

That is, if you actually make copies. I don't know about the esteemed readers of this blog, but when I was at nursery school, I learned songs by repeating from and singing along with my teachers. Most children aged three to six can arguably neither read lyrics nor musical notation, so the number of copies needed (if any) should in most cases be accordingly minor. Also, one may, of course, copy public domain works to one's heart's content. Concerning the arrangement of such public domain works, s. 3 sent. 2 German Copyright provides that "insignificant adaptations of a non-protected musical work shall not enjoy protection as independent works."

One good thing that has come out of this at times rather ludicrous debate is a collection of just such public domain songs suitable for children (which make me feel about four years old and can be downloaded here: http://data.musikpiraten-ev.de/public/kinder-wollen-singen.pdf). The initiators, Frankfurt-based "Musikpiraten e.V." have pledged to print some 50,000 copies of the booklet and donate them to nursery schools throughout Germany; the campaign is funded by charitable contributions from a range of companies and individuals who raised about €40,000 in less than two months (http://musik.klarmachen-zum-aendern.de/kinderlieder) - quite an achievement!

One maybe or maybe not so good thing is a draft bill for an amendment of the German Copyright Act submitted to the Bundestag by the parliamentary group of socialist party DIE LINKE ("The Left"). I shall mercilessly dissect it in a separate blog post tomorrow, so watch this space.

A tip to increase traffic to your site

Google has a nice doodle today. It's to honour Robert Bunsen who would have been 200 today if he were still alive. Does the name ring a bell? Bunsen? Something to do with science?

Robert Bunsen, the German scientist who developed the Bunsen burner.
What else is happening around the world today? Libya is still worrisome, so is the nuclear leakage in Japan, floods in Perlis, mudslide in Krabi, Thailand, and tourists had to be helped out to safety on Tao Island. McD served its last breakfast this morning. The outlets must have been crowded with long queues. And traffic to my sites seeking printable vouchers has also tapered off.

I'm no expert on SEO but I must be doing something right on keywords in the title of the posts. I read that keywords in the title can get your post/blog listed higher up on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) meaning that your post appears higher up in the page of search results. Research has shown that chances of people clicking on your site are much higher when you are listed on top, preferably above the fold on page 1.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

"Bring Your Daughter and Son to Work" Day

In the west, some corporations have a program that involves giving children of employees a chance to see what their parent(s) do at work. They call it 'Bring your daughter/son to work' Day.

Malaysian parents who work in the airline industry will soon have a chance to let their children experience their nature of work.

KIDZANIA Kuala Lumpur recently unveiled its first outlet fixture in the form of an AirAsia fuselage as part of its airport terminal facade.

The fuselage taken from an actual Boeing 737-300 aircraft will eventually be fitted out to house realistic flight simulators that will allow children to “pilot” an airplane.

AirAsia check-in counters will also be set up at the main entrance of KidZania, which will see children checking in to receive boarding passes to enter.

The 80,000 sq ft indoor educational theme park at the Curve NX is accessible via a bridge connected to The Curve shopping mall. It is expected to open to the public in the fourth quarter of this year. Parents may want to take note.

Besides being a part of an airline crew, children can also role -play as a bank customer, taking a driving course, being a journalist for a day as well as hosting and supporting a tv programme production.


Source: The Star..Where kids can be pilots and cabin crew

Where Competition Is Cutting Telecom Costs

Everyone is on the lookout for cost savings these days. One potential area of savings is in your monthly telecom costs. Telecom expenses tend to be be large and murky. It’s well worth your while to wade in and see what you can spot that is ripe for cutting or re-bidding. You should also be aware that there can be huge differences in what you pay depending on where you are located.

New service options help you save on your telecom expenses. Click for quotes.We tend to think that the price of goods and services are pretty much the same no matter where you are. You know that’s not true for real estate. It’s also not true for some telecom services. Location means everything. Let’s take a look at why this is.

We get the impression that telephone calls are all priced at a flat rate. That impression comes from the way cellular phone service is sold. You pay a flat rate for a fixed number of minutes each month. It doesn’t matter where you call, within the US and not overseas. A minute is a minute. You can call from your home office or you can call from a hotel in another state and talk to anyone in the country using the same minutes you use for local calls.

Landline services don’t generally work that way. You pay a monthly fee for dial tone and local calls. You typically pay by the minute for state to state long distance calls. There is also something called local long distance or IntraLATA (Local Access and Transport Area). A LATA is a geographical area handled by a particular phone company. These areas may include more than one city or a city and the surrounding rural areas. Prices for IntraLATA calls vary all over the place, with areas served by smaller phone companies typically more expensive than you’ll find in areas served by larger phone companies in more populous areas.

What’s upset the apple cart on this pricing model is the rise of VoIP service providers. Unlike local phone companies that are tied to their customers by dedicated twisted pair copper phone wiring, VoIP is a network service that is transported by the Internet, a private SIP trunk, or an MPLS VPN network. Your VoIP provider can be a Cable operator in your city or a carrier located across the country. Pricing plans can be similar to what you get from the telephone company or they can be unlimited local calling with a flat per minute rate for all long distance, or even a flat rate for unlimited domestic calling. By considering a VoIP solution, you give yourself more options to match your monthly telecom expenses closely with the type of calls you typically make and receive.

Competition in the line services market is even more intense. Here, the price you pay per Mbps for point to point data links or dedicated Internet access varies widely. In general, the closer you are located to the heart of a metropolitan business center, the better the pricing. Out in the country, your options are few and prices are higher.

A new service that has highly attractive bandwidth prices is Ethernet over Copper. Prices for both EoC and T1 lines are now under $300 a month in major cities, but you may get twice the T1 bandwidth for that price using Ethernet over Copper. You also have the ability to get higher bandwidths, such as 10 or 20 Mbps without having to bring in fiber optic service.

One limitation with Ethernet over Copper is that you need to be within about 12,000 feet, a couple of miles or so, of the service provider’s point of presence to qualify for service. That restricts availability to metro areas. So, too, other competing services such as HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax) and fixed wireless tend to have limited geographical service areas and tend to be found in town much more than farther out.

Regardless of whether you are looking for voice, data or video telecom services, or some combination, competition is greater today than ever before. You may not be aware of many options that have recently become available in your area. One fast and easy way to see if you can save on your monthly telecom expenses is to get competitive quotes for telecom services suitable for your business location. This process is fast, easy and free. You may be able to save more than you think.

Click to check pricing and features or get support from a Telarus product specialist.




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Corexit and Crude Oil Still in Gulf A Year After BP Disaster; Marine Life Dead and Some People Sick

New evidence that Corexit dispersant is degrading very slowly while sea floor marine life suffocate covered by oil. Dolphin stillborn deaths in January and February 2011 were ten times normal and many Gulf coastal residents are sick

Source: Earthfiles

The Segmentation of America


The 12 States of America, by Dante Chinni and James Gimpel, from “Patchwork Nation”

Over the past few months, this blog has explored a number of spatial facets of the American landscape: migration trends, re-regionalization, some new socio-demographic patterns as shown in the 2010 Census, issues of gentrification, urban inequities, megaregions, the national Twitter, criminal justice spending, and a host of others topics, including a number of historical-geographical look-backs on our recent and not-so-recent pasts, and how they inform our current lived experiences. 
Continuing in this theme of putting the U.S. under the “spatial microscope” (giving props to Andrew M. for turning me on to this phrase), this posting introduces the reality of the segmentation of America.  Starting off with looking at how fragmented (and unevenly distributed) our country is in terms of basic economic indicators, we move on to how this fragmentation is used by marketers/advertisers/corporations to categorize you, pigeon-hole you, to better enable them to sell you stuff (market segmentation), or to deny you stuff.  And how, in general, our lives are being monitored and tracked to a degree never before imagined outside of 1984, and science fiction (and this if often with our own tacit or implicit permission! We are complicit in our own surveillance!).  Well, it’s perhaps not the cheeriest of postings.  But it is pretty interesting! 

The 12 States of America
I recently saw this map and an article called “The 12 States of America (Since 1980, Income Inequality has Fractured the Nation),” published in The Atlantic.  And of course I was intrigued.  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/map-inequality/8416/
The authors, Dante Chinni and James Gimpel, who also wrote the book associated with this work, “Patchwork Nation,” http://www.patchworknation.org/  say they assembled thousands of data points to categorize each county in the U.S. by one of 12 different themes, which presumably describes each specific county better than any one of the other categories.  The themes are: 
§  Boom towns
§  Campuses and careers
§  Emptying nests
§  Evangelical epicenters
§  Immigration nation
§  Industrial metropolis
§  Military bastions
§  Minority central
§  Monied 'burbs
§  Mormon outposts
§  Service worker centers
§  Tractor country

This process of assigning socio-demographic profiles to counties is fraught with problems, as commenters on The Atlantic blog have duly noted.  First of all, it reduces a heterogeneous and multi-faceted county to a uni-dimensional descriptor.  Many counties would rightfully be able to lay claim to being in several of these categories, and despite the fact that the authors say they had a method for ascertaining which was the most appropriate category, it still feels a bit arbitrary and unsatisfactory.  If you click on the category name, they do give some definitions and demographic graphs, fleshing out their classification process a little more.  For instance, “service worker centers” are defined as “Midsize and small towns with economies fueled by hotels, stores and restaurants and lower-than-average median household income by county.”  According to this, the service worker centers have a predominantly white population, with a lower household income than the country average, and place very high on the “Hardship Index.”  Whereas the “Immigration Nation” category means “Communities with large Latino populations and lower-than-average incomes, typically clustered in the South and Southwest.” 

Another downside to the 12 States approach is that some of the categories are so broken up geographically that there aren’t contiguous groups of counties formed but merely dots of categories scattered here and there throughout the landscape, which doesn’t appear very helpful in obtaining a snapshot of who and where we are these days.  So rather than 12 contiguous “states,” as the geographical way we normally think of states, we get more like hundreds of city-states and vast hinterlands.  The most problematic categories in terms of excessive geographical fragmentation seem to be Industrial Metropolis, Monied ‘Burbs, and Military Bastions.  Only Minority Central, Tractor Country, and Service Worker Centers seemed to have any real geographic cohesiveness, and even those were pretty spotty.
Their website, however, is quite interesting.  You can plug in your zip code and see how your county is classified.  I tried some zipcodes around the country that I knew off the top of my head, and I have to say, the matching-up of zip code to descriptor was not always very accurate, in my estimation.  Their methodology is explained fully in their book, but basically you have to take them at their word that they tried to pick the most definitive category based on their criteria, since each county could be assigned only one descriptor. 
There are some cool datasets that allow you to map, among other things, numbers of Walmarts per county (an indication of blue-collar-ness?), counties containing a Cracker Barrel restaurant (presumably some metric of “redneck-edness”?), gun dealers per 100K pop (scary-ass-place-ness?), percent attending church regularly (the high in the data range is only 20%???), and various voting patterns. 
The Federal spending per capita is an interesting one.  The category of over $80,000 per year per capita occurs most frequently in the middle of the farm belt, and doesn’t seem to be an urban phenomena at all.  Certain counties in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska, isolated other spots in Texas and Louisiana seem to top the charts for Federal spending per capita at well over $80K per person.  The Bronx, by comparison, was $13K, Queens is 9K, and NY County (Manhattan) is 15K.  Poor Brooklyn is only 6K!  For some odd reason, Cape May, NJ has over 120K of Federal dollars coming in per person!  Dare County, NC (which is listed as a “boom town” category) gets 122K per capita in federal spending.  What are they doing down there?  No wonder it’s a boom town!   In fact a lot of the coastal counties in the south seem to be getting inordinate amounts of the Federal largesse.  Could it be for hurricane protection or something?  I can’t imagine.  But even Orleans parish itself where New Orleans is located, doesn’t see close to these amounts.  Maybe it's for defense? A disproprotionate number of elderly live in these counties? 
So the data is fun to map and toggle around with, but the authors commit the cardinal sins of choroplething absolute numbers, and also overlaying two choropleth maps on top of one another, in order to visualize multivariable data (NOT!!!).  Oh, well. 
They also break the country down in a more geographical sense by “districts,” and here they have 9 categories, and these appear to have more geographical cohesiveness.  They also bear some conceptual resemblance to the regions in Joel Garreau’s book Nine Nations of North America:
§  Established wealth,
§  The shifting middle
§  Booming growth
§  New diversity
§  Young exurbs
§  Old diversity
§  Wired and educated
§  Christian conservative
§  Small town America

Socio-Demographic Profiling for Marketing:
            I have a general problem with these socio-demographic profiles, right from the get-go.  Years ago, when firms like Claritas started segmenting markets into categories of supposedly like-minded individuals for the purpose of pinpoint targeting for advertising/marketing/purchasing, I used to cringe.  Now it has become a common place with many such firms entering the fray.  Their categories are much more extensive and fine-tuned than the Patchwork Nation ones, and include such distinctions as globetrotters, business class, golden agers, power couples, technovators, up-and-comers, middleburg managers, multi-culti mosaic, park bench seniors, money and brains, pools and patios, bohemian mix, upper crust, country squires, urban achievers, new homesteaders, big sky families, and so forth.  They have a number of different classification systems, one of which seems to be all about income and leisure activities and spending, and one is all about stage in the life cycle and lifestyle/housing/community/geographical choice and situation.  You can see all the different classification schemes and categories on the Claritas website at http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=30&id1=2000

Claritas has one scheme focusing on media connectivity, which has categories such as Antenna land, plugged-in families, satellite seniors, old time media, the unconnected, land line living, generation wifi, cyber-sophisticates, new kids on the grid, low speed boomers, analoggers, cinemaniacs, dish country, cyber strivers, internet hinterland, IM nation, kids and keyboards, and so forth.  I don’t know about you, but I hate the idea of the unique and messy complexity of “me” being reduced to a uni-dimensional category, (what would I be in their scheme of things, anyway? Digital dreamer? Grey power?).  But most of all, I hate that “they” know so much about me that they are able to fit me (or shoehorn me) into one of their categories.  It reminds me of that scene in the film Minority Reports (2002) where Tom Cruise walks down the street and all the billboards and advertisements talk to him directly, because they can respond to exactly “who” he is according to the interactive information the advertisements can glean from his unique ID (in that case, a retinal scan).  People, we are not far away from that at all, in fact the technology exists and is used in a limited fashion. 
This potential for privacy infringement and Big Brother-like surveillance is actually one of the more objectionable things about the universality of GPS enabled devices, mapping and tracking capabilities.  We have recently learned how dangerous it is to post digital photos on Facebook and other social networking sites because embedded within them is a geographical marker of exactly where the photo was taken, leading virtually anybody right to your doorstep.  See short ABC news story “TMI – Picture Privacy(Thanks for the link to this story, Kristen.) http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=7621105

From GIS for the Urban Environment: “Geodemographic data now can pinpoint the geographic location of individuals and with it, previously intimate and private information attached to those locations and individuals. Much information about an individual based solely on an address can be gathered from public or private sources.  Privately held data includes buying habits, income, vacation destinations, leisure activities, telephone and computer use, religious affiliation, banking and investment accounts, educational record, and medical information. Public data includes assessed value of a home, motor vehicle information, political contributions, and criminal record.  Many people clamor for full access to data until they realize what that might entail for the dissemination of private data about themselves. Where do we draw the line? What constitutes legitimate use of private data? 
There is an enormous potential for abuse in the use of data about individuals and the concomitant surveillance possibilities.  ‘The prospect of socioeconomic application of GIS permitting efficiently functioning organization such as insurance companies to develop ‘geodemographical’ insurance rate schedules based on the identification of zones and localities of high risk, the targeting of civil rights groups (the ‘politically militant’) for particular police or vigilante attention, or the extension of direct-mail solicitation to exact-market targeting based on recorded purchasing and general expenditure records (already a reality, of course) . . .’ is generally seen as objectionable when stated in terms of rights to privacy. All too often, however, these uses of GIS are seen as normal and neutral, as scientific uses of socioeconomic data (Pickles, Ground Truth: The Social Implications of GIS, 1995:16).
The construction of data profiles is particularly troubling in terms of privacy, since an individual can be profiled by someone utilizing individual level data, such as that available from credit card companies, governmental agencies, and so forth, and combining these with publicly-available aggregate data, such as sociodemographic data from the census or other data providers at the tract or ZIP Code level. This type of data profile may be an eerily accurate portrayal of an individual, and the potential for abuse of this profile is enormous,” (from GIS for the Urban Environment, 2006:285).

This, of course, has come true, with a vengeance.  Just the other day in The New York Times, there was quite an amazing piece about a German politician in the Green Party, and his quest to find out how much the phone company tracked his whereabouts by his cell phone location.  After much legal wrangling, he obtained 6 months of data pinpointing his whereabouts, with over 35,000 of his locations having been tracked (and stored!) by the phone company!  Then Mr. Spitz decided to map out the locational data points to obtain a visual narrative of the phone company tracking.  You can see it illustrated in a very cool interactive website, mapping where he (or more correctly, his cell phone) was during those 6 months.  Interactive map of 6-months of his locational data:  http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-vorratsdaten

A visualization of data collected by Malte Spitz's mobile phone

“The data were contained in a massive Excel document.  Each of the 35,831 rows of the spreadsheet represents an instance when Spitz’s mobile phone transferred information over a half-year period.  Seen individually, the pieces of data are mostly inconsequential and harmless. But taken together, they provide what investigators call a profile – a clear picture of a person’s habits and preferences, and indeed, of his or her life.
This profile reveals when Spitz walked down the street, when he took a train, when he was in an airplane. It shows where he was in the cities he visited. It shows when he worked and when he slept, when he could be reached by phone and when was unavailable. It shows when he preferred to talk on his phone and when he preferred to send a text message. It shows which beer gardens he liked to visit in his free time. All in all, it reveals an entire life.
To illustrate just how much detail from someone’s life can be mined from this stored data, ZEIT ONLINE has 'augmented' Spitz’s information with records that anyone can access: the politician’s tweets and blog entries were added to the information on his movements.  It is the kind of process that any good investigator would likely use to profile a person under observation,” From “Data Protection: Betrayed by our Own Data,” in Zeit Online

“In the United States, there are law enforcement and safety reasons for cellphone companies being encouraged to keep track of its customers.  Both the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration have used cellphone records to identify suspects and make arrests.
If the information is valuable to law enforcement, it could be lucrative for marketers.  The major American cellphone providers declined to explain what exactly they collect and what they use it for.
Verizon, for example, declined to elaborate other than to point to its privacy policy, which includes: “Information such as call records, service usage, traffic data,” the statement in part reads, may be used for “marketing to you based on your use of the products and services you already have, subject to any restrictions required by law.”
AT&T, for example, works with a company, Sense Networks, that uses anonymous location information “to better understand aggregate human activity.” One product, CitySense, makes recommendations about local nightlife to customers who choose to participate based on their cellphone usage. (Many smartphone apps already on the market are based on location but that’s with the consent of the user and through GPS, not the cellphone company’s records.)”

From the New York Times article, March 27, 2011

It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know, by Noam Cohen.


It’s a brave new world.