Monday, October 31, 2011

Enterprise Communications Services To The Cloud

There’s a great migration underway. This is a technical migration, from the public switched telephone network and private branch exchanges to cloud based communications services. XO communications is a leader in cloud communication services. Here’s why they predict that in the next few years 60% of companies will move close to a third of their voice communications to the cloud...



If you would like a complementary consultation and competitive quotes for your enterprise communication needs, we can offer you prompt and courteous service through our affiliated Telarus product specialists.

So, is it time to rethink your approach to voice communications, such as business telephone? You know that the upgrades you want to make are going to cost a fortune in up-front capital at a time when big capital outlays are frowned upon. You could just let the whole thing go until the economy picks up steam and money flows like water. But...

Here’s the problem. You want and need the productivity improvements you can get with unified communications right now. You may also suspect that you are spending too much on operations and maintenance, and rightly so. The dilemma is that with traditional approaches you can’t afford to make the changes that will give you the available savings.

Now, here’s the solution. It’s called communications as a service. Instead of trying to be in the telephone business yourself, turn that over to experts in enterprise level VoIP over MPLS networks. That way, you can get all of your many business locations on the same network using the same equipment with the same connectivity. You can get niceties like HD voice and video, mobility integration, plus calling features you don’t have now. Best of all, you pay as you go with a predictable per-user monthly cost.

No need to stay mired in limbo. XO cloud communications and other competitive carriers offer migration paths where you can integrate what you have now while you gradually shift to the new cloud solution. Eventually, you just pull the plug on the old PBX and PSTN trunk lines when you no longer need them.

Does pay as you go sound like a better business model for these days than invest and wait years for a payback? If so, you owe it to yourself to take a few minutes and get a complementary consultation and competitive quotes for enterprise services in the cloud.

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




Follow Telexplainer on Twitter

Further updates on Bangkok flood situation, Nov 1

Sorry to sound like an old record but since the last update on the flood situation, the blog is still getting hits on the flood situation so thought some new updates would be good to provide an inkling on the situation.

The following are from various sources as put together by the Thailand Tourism site. The Bangkok Post says, Inner Bangkok passes danger point as today is the last day of high tide. Bangkok North sees reduced water volume at Khlong Rangsit, Bang Pa-in. Click the link for the rest of the article.

The Suvarnabhumi Airport is still fully operational at the moment and is ready for floods. Airport officers are monitoring water levels at six flood gates including Lat Krabang, Saen Saeb and Samrong. Airlines operating at the airport are notified of water level every three hours, to ensure smooth aviation operations in Thailand despite the flooding in Don Muang Airport. The airport yesterday accommodated 945 flights, a new daily record since the opening.

Thailand Tourism site has a good map of Affected and Unaffected areas. There is also useful contact numbers for Flood Information, Highway Hotline, Highway Police, Visa Inquiry, etc. Check out the Thailand Tourism site here.

Humans are not the only ones in distress during emergencies. Animals are too, perhaps even more so, as seen on some images received via email the other day. Will have them up in a separate post. Look out for them.

Rats in NYC! (Happy Hallowe’en Part 2)


311 Service Requests From 2010-Present Where Complaint Type is Rodent, by Gretchen Culp

Keeping with our macabre Hallowe’en theme for the day (see Zombie Map! at http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/10/map-of-week-10-31-2011-zombie-map.html), here we have a wonderful example of a Hexbin method map, created by Gretchen Culp, cartographer extraordinaire and ace doctoral student.  She decided to try out the Hexbin method discussed in my blog posting from a couple of days ago (at http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/10/hexbins.html), and created this terrific (and terrifying!) map of rodent complaints in NYC.  I love the way the legend is done!  This is a really nice map.  Even if there is an alarming number of rodent complaints in many areas.  UGH!  RATS!  

Sunday, October 30, 2011

SONET Rings To Support Ethernet

The hot bandwidth service these days is Carrier Ethernet. Everybody wants it once they see the cost advantage over the WAN connection they have now. The big question is can they get it?

Get Ethernet services on SONET fiber optic networks...In most cases, the answer is yes for a couple of reasons. First, new competitive carriers are rapidly building out their fiber optic core networks based on IP from the start. These networks are tailor made for Carrier Ethernet services. It’s relatively easy to get a point to point Ethernet connection between two distant business locations and use it to link their respective LANs. The result is one larger bridged LAN that enables all employees to be on essentially the same corporate network.

The other reason that Ethernet WAN services are so readily available is that established SONET fiber optic networks are being pressed into service to deliver Ethernet to the customer. This is known as Ethernet over SONET or EoS. The core of the network is still SONET, but operations at that level are invisible to you. As far as you are concerned, your connection is Ethernet all the way.

There’s no reason that SONET can’t transport Ethernet, ATM or other protocols. It was designed as a transport technology and has been adapted over the years to carry whatever traffic required hauling. The origins of SONET, like T-Carrier, are with the telephone industry. The name is an acronym for Synchronous Optical NETwork. Note the term synchronous. That tells you SONET is set up to be a highly synchronized network. The designed is based on multiplexing thousands of small channels called DS0s that each hold one telephone call. These DS0 building blocks can be combined to create T1 and T3 lines or SONET services such as OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48.

The beauty of synchronization for circuit switched architectures based on time division multiplexing is that everything is orchestrated so tightly and you can easily multiplex and demultiplex channels and higher level services. The device that does this is called an ADM or Add/Drop Multiplexer. An ADM can drop off a T1 line, DS3, OC3 or other service at your door from a much higher speed fiber line that carries traffic for many customers.

How does Ethernet squeeze into those tiny telephone channels? It takes some doing, considering that each DS0 carries exactly 64 Kbps. That’s about the speed of an old dial-up modem. What the industry has done is replace the telephone oriented channels with large concatenated frames and various mapping techniques to more efficiently carry Ethernet packets. SONET networks can now readily carry Ethernet services from standard 10 Mbps Ethernet to 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet (GigE), and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE).

A feature of most SONET networks that makes them highly reliable is their twin ring design. Two separate fiber strands are used simultaneously. Each carries the same traffic, but in opposite directions. If a fault occurs in the working ring, the network switches over to the protection ring within 50 mSec. This self-healing property works best when the two rings are widely separated so that a single backhoe cut or equipment fault doesn’t take out both rings at once.

Ethernet over SONET and native IP networks are making Carrier Ethernet services of all speeds readily available for businesses looking to upgrade their bandwidth connections at reasonable costs. How much are we talking? Find out with an instant online Ethernet Fiber quote for 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps service levels. Higher bandwidths and SONET services quotes need some manual effort but will be sent to you promptly.

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




Follow Telexplainer on Twitter

Map of the Week 10-31-2011: Zombie Map


Happy Hallowe'en!

           “How do you combine an obsession with Zombie movies and data analysis of Google Maps?
Simple, you produce the map, above.  It was created by Oxford University's Internet Institute - and the guys behind the fantastic dataviz site, Floating sheep: Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton, Matthew Zook and Monica Stephens.
Using a keyword search for "zombies", it visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database.
It shows how Africa, where the word 'zombie' originally came from, misses out on those criteria.
Graham, whose favourite Zombie movie is the original Romero Dawn of the Dead (‘the classic of the genre’) says of the map:
The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse.”  From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/sep/23/zombie-map-world

Text written on the map itself:
“Using a keyword search for “zombies” the following map visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database.  The map reveals two important spatial patterns.  First, much of the world lacks any content mentioning “zombies” whatsoever.  Second, and related, the highest concentrations of zombies in the Geoweb are located in the Anglophone world, especially in large cities.  The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse. 
Visualization by Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton, Matthew Zook, and Monica Stephens.  This map and other visualizations can be found on the OII visualization website (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK) at www.oii.xx.ac.uk/vis" Check out the website for more interesting visualizations.

Copyright Debate: Is NLA v Meltwater the end of browsing?

Making a debating point --
or hailing a London taxi ...?
It all seems a bit sudden, but in not much more than two weeks from now there will be a free-to-attend copyright debate on the motion "Is NLA v Meltwater the end of browsing?"  The date is Tuesday 15 November 2011 and the two sides will lock horns from 5.15pm to 7.00 pm. The venue is the London office of Baker & McKenzie LLP.

1709 Blog team member Jeremy will be taking the chair. Speaking for the motion are Professor Andrew Murray (London School of Economics) and Dr Neil J. Wilkof (head of Intellectual Property, Herzog Fox & Neeman).  Ranged against them are Dominic Young (blogger and former director and chairman of the Newspaper Licensing Association) and Justine Pila (lecturer at Oxford University).

Why should you attend this debate? As the hosts explain:
The Court of Appeal for England and Wales recently upheld the High Court's judgment that users of commercial news aggregation services infringe copyright when they click on links to articles (The Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd and others v Meltwater Holding BV and others [2011] EWCA Civ 890, 27 July 2011, on which see earlier 1709 Blog posts here, here and here). As a result anyone who clicks on an internet link creates an infringing copy of the webpage on their computer screen unless they have a licence. 
The Supreme Court's decision as to whether they will accept an appeal from this decision is eagerly awaited, but in the meantime the question that arises is: Is NLA v Meltwater the end of browsing as we know it?
To attend, email Naomi Harrison here and hope there's still room since space is limited.

The debate is CPD-accredited for 1 hour and 30 minutes - Solicitors Regulation Authority Authorisation 009/BAMC

Mapping the History of Poverty


“Poverty has fallen faster over the past 50 years than in the previous 500.  But 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty.”  From http://www.povertyover.org/

Mapping the History of Poverty (and some other cool socio-demographic mapping projects)
This is an informative and innovative interactive map that lets you see an animated timeline of countries, showing when (and if) they transitioned out of poverty, as well as the degree of their development (symbolized by color intensity).  You can also tilt the map and see the poverty/development data symbolized by height, higher representing an increased degree of development. http://www.povertyover.org/
Check out Cuba!  It is one of the few countries that rises and falls, most others just rise as time goes by, or stay flat.  See if you can pick out a few other anomalous ones that go back and forth in development status. 
I’m not sure that I like the way that “development” is seen as the opposite of “poverty.”  As if those are the only two choices!  And that increasing development (however THAT is defined!) is the solution to poverty! The "growth is good" mentality, regardless of how that can possibly be sustained in even the short-run,  is what is sending this world of ours into the downward spiral. Not to mention the often-overlooked fact that if everyone in the world had the standard of living that we in the US, Canada, and western Europe enjoy, the earth would run out of resources in about 3 months.   But I’m not going to get all hung up on semantics – the concept of the map and the data are pretty interesting. 


MigrationsMap.net
Where are migrants coming from? Where have migrants left?
Another very interesting demographic website is: http://migrationsmap.net/  This interactive map shows you, for any given country, in flow map format, where people who are migrating OUT of the country are going TO (“Departures”), and conversely, where people who are migrating TO the country are coming FROM (“Arrivals”).  They also quantify the populations on the move.  The basis of these maps is something called the Global Migrant Origin Database, and you can download the actual spreadsheets used, and read about the methods and limitations in the construction of the database at: http://www.migrationdrc.org/research/typesofmigration/global_migrant_origin_database.html


Population Pyramids, 1950-2050
             This is extremely cool!  View pop pyramids for individual countries, as well as world regions and globally, looking back to 1950, and projected forward to 2050, in 5-year increments. 
             Population pyramids are one of the best ways we have to explore the basic demographic structure of a place – they provide us with information on age cohorts, male/female ratios, and in most cases, absolute numbers of various population sub-groups.  According to Wikipedia, “a population pyramid, also called an age structure diagram, is a graphical illustration that shows the distribution of various age groups in a population (typically that of a country or region of the world), which forms the shape of a pyramid when the population is growing.  It typically consists of two back-to-back bar graphs, with the population plotted on the X-axis and age on the Y-axis, one showing the number of males and one showing females in a particular population in five-year age groups (also called cohorts).  Males are conventionally shown on the left and females on the right, and they may be measured by raw number or as a percentage of the total population.”  From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_pyramid
Generic Population Pyramids, showing the four main stages in demographic transition:

Example of a population pyramid from the Stage 1 “expanding” population category.  Nearly half of Libya’s 2011 population consists of youths under age 20.

America’s Demographic Opportunity – the Demographic Dividend
And as an important aside to the population pyramids, many of the more affluent countries are currently in the position of having “contracting” populations (the last stage in the demographic transition model, the last of the generic population pyramids).  This means that there are more people at the upper reaches of the pyramid (older populations, living longer) than there are younger ones.  This has serious implications for those nations where this is occurring, in terms of economic growth, employment, taxation, innovation, support for the elderly, and future development.  An interesting blog posting from New Geography recently detailed what this might mean for some of those contracting nations (Japan, Italy, etc.) and why the U.S. is not quite as badly off in terms of population numbers skewed toward the elderly.  I had sent this link around to those on my Listserv, but I include it again here, even though there are parts of it that I don’t agree with (as I rarely do with most of the New Geography posts! Especially their pro-urban sprawl tendencies).  Nevertheless, it is worth a read. BTW, notice how in the graph above, the legend and the symbols are shown incorrectly (they are reversed).  This was pointed out to me by an observant Jon Jenkins.  Thanks Jon, for your gimlet editor's eye for detail!  I looked at this graph dozens of times (and carefully, I thought!) and never noticed the error.  Of course, the little "%" symbols next to the numbers make the meaning clear, but STILL!  Shame on New Geography or whomever put these graphs together originally!
“Among the world’s major advanced countries, the United States remains a demographic outlier, with a comparatively youthful and growing population.  This provides an unusual opportunity for America’s resurgence over the next several decades, as population growth elsewhere slows dramatically, and even declines dramatically, in a host of important countries.” From: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002492-americas-demographic-opportunity?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Newgeography+%28Newgeography.com+-+Economic%2C+demographic%2C+and+political+commentary+about+places%29

The Spread of Immigrant Groups in the U.S.
And another really nice one on U.S. immigrant groups and their spread across the United States.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html
You can select specific nationalities or regions of origin, and the map changes from a multivariate choropleth to a proportional symbol map. You can also adjust the "bubble" size to see the detail better.  Thanks, Kristen Grady, for sending the link

Life expectancy across the U.S. / Global BMI and Diabetes
American women live an average of 2.5 years longer than men, but as life expectancies vary across the country, both men and women in certain counties, particularly in the South and Southeast, can expect to die more than a decade sooner than others.  See interactive map, where you can get data by county, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/life-expectancy-map/

        Thanks, Urban Demographics, for the link.  On the same page, there is another link to an animated scatterplot showing how global BMI (Body Mass Index) has changed for men and women, 1980-2008, as a metric for cardiac risk. You can look separately at each nation, also.  Weight of the World:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/health/weight-of-the-world-bmi/
Another tab on that page shows Diabetes worldwide and for each nation. 


Bottom of the Heap
And, lastly, a sobering look at social justice in various nations around the world.  The United States, one of the overall richest countries in the world, is very low on the charts.  What does this say about the so-called "American Exceptionalism"? 
Table from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/10/29/opinion/29blow-ch.html?ref=opinion
from the editorial "American's Exploding Pipedream by Charles M. Blow at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/opinion/blow-americas-exploding-pipe-dream.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
"The differences in the prevention of poverty and access to educational opportunities are immense in the OECD.  The northern European countries are best of all at providing for equal opportunities for achievement. At the same time, many continental European and Anglo-Saxon states have considerable catching up." from the report at http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/&ei=dh2rTqy2KsLh0QGgtJWPDw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCIQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%253Fq%253Dhttp://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de%2526hl%253Den%2526client%253Dsafari%2526rls%253
These (the successful nations) are the very countries that some of our would-be leaders in the U.S. deride as dangerous socialist welfare states.  Meanwhile, we (the U.S.) are literally at the bottom of the heap, just slightly above Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey.  We are in the lowest category, "the bottom five," for Pete's sake!

Saturday, October 29, 2011

How to Invest in Halloween


Have you bought your candy yet? Halloween is practically here. Do you think Halloween related stocks may be tricks or treats? There are several stocks that may benefit from the holiday.

Watching scary movies is one of the popular activities of teenagers (and adults too) on Halloween, either in a theater or renting a DVD. Netflix (NFLX) took a huge dump after reporting earnings. That was scarier than watching Halloween I, Halloween II, and Halloween III. If you think the stock has hit bottom, you may want to take a closer look. The company has a substantial number of horror movies in its collection of titles. The stock currently trades at 14 times current earnings.

Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF), one of the top studios that produces scary movies, has made such films as American Psycho, Ginger Snaps, Route 666, The Devil's Rejects, House of the Dead 2, Saw VI, See No Evil, Hostel: Part II, My Bloody Valentine 3D and more. The company has a forward price to earnings ratio of 24.

The big beneficiaries of Halloween are the candy companies. Hershey Foods (HSY) is the large chocolate and confectionery company which is known for its Hershey Bars. The stock has a forward P/E of 18, and a yield of 2.4%.

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (RMCF) is a very low cap Colorado based company which makes and markets chocolate and candy. The stock has a forward P/E of 12 and pays a generous yield of 4.5%.

Tootsie Roll Industries (TR) makes all kinds of candy for trick-or-treaters including Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Roll Pops, Caramel Apple Pops, Charms, Blow-Pops, Blue Razz, Zip-A-Dee Pops, Cella's, Mason Dots, Mason Crows, Junior Mint, Charleston Chew, Sugar Daddys, and Sugar Babies. The stock has a forward P/E of 26 and a yield of 1.2%.

Halloween costumes and decorations are available at discount retailers such as Target (TGT) which has a forward P/E of 13, and a yield of 2.2%. Wal-Mart (WMT) is another major Halloween retailer. It has a forward P/E of 12, and a yield of 2.5%.

If you like interesting sectors of stocks, such as casino stocks, cloud computing stocks, birth control stocks, coffee stocks, and China stocks, check out WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

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

By Stockerblog.com

How the Sub Prime Mortgage Crisis Really Happened


This 30 second commercial from Raiffeisen Bank in Hungary that came out in 2007 is a perfect example of how banks around the world gave out loans like Halloween candy. The banks in the United States weren't this blatant with their ads, but maybe the Hungarians were more honest about the fact that banks couldn't care less about whether people could pay their mortgages.

Take a Bite Out of High Yield Food Stocks

No matter how bad the economic downturn and the recession is, people still need to eat. Which makes food stocks pretty much recession-proof. Now to boost sales, food companies are looking at innovative ways of increasing sales. For example, H. J. Heinz Company (HNZ), known for its famous Heinz Ketchup, has now turned to Facebook to market its special edition ketchup which utilizes balsamic vinegar instead of white vinegar.

Heinz is one of the high yielders that appears on the free list of food stocks at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, as it pays a generous 3.6%. The stock trades at 15 times forward earnings. Revenues for the latest quarter ending July 27 were up 14.9%, however, earnings dropped 6%.

Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT), the third largest food and beverage company by revenues, is another high yielding food company, which offers its shareholders a decent yield, paying 3.3%. Company brands include Cadbury, Kraft, Maxwell House, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang. The stock has a forward price to earnings ratio of 14. Earnings for the last quarter were up 4.2% on a 13.3% rise in revenues. The company reports latest quater earnings on November 2.

To see the entire free list of food stocks, which can be downloaded and sorted, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Are You Financially Literate?

Are You Financially Literate? A Checklist for Managers
Guest Article By Richard A. Lambert,
Author of Wharton Executive Education Finance & Accounting Essentials

Managers must constantly evaluate their firms' strategies to assess how their decisions have been performing, modify these strategies as conditions change, and devise new strategies to boost performance in the future. Which activities should we devote more resources to and which should we cut back on? Which resources are not being used effectively? Should we outsource an activity or continue to perform it ourselves? Business decisions like these need to be based on information, and financial statements are a major source of this information.

But many managers don't have a background in accounting and finance, so they don't have the tools they need to answer these questions. They don't understand the reports they are given to help them make these decisions. They either ignore the information completely, they misinterpret what the numbers mean, or they aren't even aware of what isn't in the numbers at all. All of these behaviors are dangerous to your firm's financial health. They are like trying to fly a plane with no instruments and with the windshield fogged up.

Does this mean managers should run out and memorize a bunch of rules and regulations or hone the art of compiling financials? No, leave that to the accounting and finance teams. What managers and business owners should be concerned with is how to use the financial statements that are provided to them to better assess company performance and pinpoint opportunities.

As a business decision-maker who wants to evaluate investment strategies and make better business decisions for long-term profit, the following areas of knowledge are critical. To get a better sense of your financial literacy, check off the items you know how to do:

* Read and interpret balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.
* Dissect an income statement and balance sheet to understand the drivers of profitability.
* Understand financial reporting concepts, such as revenue recognition, inventory costing, depreciation, and taxes.
* Recognize how capital structure -- the mix of debt and equity used to finance assets -- influences profits and risk.
* Identify the relevant costs for decisions and calculate break-even points.
* Evaluate investment strategies and conduct discounted cash flow analysis.
* Put all of this together to develop a coherent business strategy.

If you have some open spots on the checklist, then there is still great untapped potential to put financial statements to work for you. Interpreting data and mastering financial statements can help you make better decisions and increase one's value to a firm whether you are an experienced manager, executive, or leader at a large or small public or private company.

Another important reason for you to learn accounting and finance skills is to help you become a more valuable participant in discussions of corporate strategy and to be more effective in championing your ideas in the boardroom.

Gaining a better grasp of financials helps you know what questions to ask and what to focus on, determine what's most important, and know what to avoid and to what to pay attention. It's the synergies that arise from merging managerial experience with finance and accounting skills that can generate the most value to you and to your organization. Hence, boosting your financial knowledge makes good business sense.

© 2011 Richard A. Lambert, author of Wharton Executive Education Finance & Accounting Essentials


Author Bio

Richard A. Lambert, author of Wharton Executive Education Finance & Accounting Essentials, is Miller-Sherrerd Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches finance and accounting in the MBA and Executive Education programs, as well as seminars in the doctoral program. The recipient of several teaching awards, his articles have appeared in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Rand Journal of Economics, and Strategic Management Journal.

The Government's Response to the Ongoing Financial Crisis and the Practices that Led to It

Upcoming lecture at the Museum of American Finance:

'The Government's Response to the Ongoing Financial Crisis and the Practices that Led to It'

Thursday, November 10, 2011
5:30 - 7:30 pm

Museum of American Finance
48 Wall Street
New York City

STOP starts war of words


New cross party US legislation, The STOP Online Piracy Act, has set off heated arguments both for and against the new proposals. The entertainment industry is broadly on one side, supporting the law’s provisions. Against are an array of groups including advocates on behalf of individual and civil liberties, the technology industry and other pressure groups. The Bill was introduced by House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). The draft legislation is set out as a bill "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes."

SOPA (HR 3261) is an attempt to tackle websites and addresses that violate U.S. copyright laws but have no physical presence in the country. They key is to make offending sites invisible to US internet users - and to strangle their income. It requires Internet Service Providers block access to offending sites, and ensure search engines omit them from results. It will also require credit card and other financial services to block payments to them, and US firms from advertising with them. But opponents say that what SOPA doesn’t do is require is any kind of verification that the site is actually infringing and “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property”. Those against SOPA instead express concerns that the proposed law contains too many vague terms, it is technically unfeasible, and it presumes guilt. You can find the Bill here http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/112%20HR%203261.pdf

John Conyers (D-Mich) and one of the Bill’s sponsors said “Today marks an important step in furthering Congress’ constitutional prerogative to protect the rights of artists and innovators” adding “I look forward to working with all of the entities in the online ecosystem to effectively choke off the funding for rogue websites and eliminate their safe-havens as the bill becomes law. Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America’s intellectual property are critical to our economy’s long-term success.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation strongly disagrees. “Under this bill, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. Websites that simply don’t do enough to police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would qualify as ‘enough’) are now under threat, even though the DMCA expressly does not require affirmative policing” and many others do too.”

To explain the various positions I thought it easiest to use their words and so below I set out some (but nowhere near all) of the public facing responses. Those against the Bill include The Center for Democracy and Technology, Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, Fight for the Future and Tech Freedom. Those for the Bill include The US Committee on the Judiciary, the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association. of America (MPA), the Copyright Alliance, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, National Music Publishers Association, the American Association of Independent Music and a joint statement from the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) amongst others.

FOR THOSE AGAINST

The EFF said this of SOPA under the headline Disastrous IP Legislation Is Back – And It’s Worse than Ever: “We've reported [here] often on efforts to ram through Congress legislation that would authorize massive interference with the Internet, all in the name of a fruitless quest to stamp out all infringement online. Today Representative Lamar Smith upped the ante, introducing legislation, called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or “SOPA” that would not only sabotage the domain name system but would also threaten to effectively eliminate the DMCA safe harbors that, while imperfect, have spurred much economic growth and online creativity.

As with its Senate-side evil sister, protect-ip, SOPA would require service providers to “disappear” certain websites, endangering Internet security and sending a troubling message to the world: it’s okay to interfere with the Internet, even effectively blacklisting entire domains, as long as you do it in the name of IP enforcement. Of course blacklisting entire domains can mean turning off thousands of underlying websites that may have done nothing wrong. And in what has to be an ironic touch, the very first clause of SOPA states that it shall not be “construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech.” As if that little recitation could prevent the obvious constitutional problem in what the statute actually does.

But it gets worse. Under this bill, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. Websites that simply don’t do enough to police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would qualify as “enough”) are now under threat, even though the DMCA expressly does not require affirmative policing. It creates new enforcement tools against folks who dare to help users access sites that may have been “blacklisted,” even without any kind of court hearing. The bill also requires that search engines, payment providers (such as credit card companies and PayPal), and advertising services join in the fun in shutting down entire websites. In fact, the bill seems mainly aimed at creating an end-run around the DMCA safe harbors. Instead of complying with the DMCA, a copyright owner may now be able to use these new provisions to effectively shut down a site by cutting off access to its domain name, its search engine hits, its ads, and its other financing even if the safe harbors would apply. And that’s only the beginning: we haven’t even started on the streaming provisions. We’ll have more details on the bill in the next several days but suffice it to say, this is the worst piece of IP legislation we’ve seen in the last decade — and that’s saying something. This would be a good time to contact your Congressional representative and tell them to oppose this bill!”

Also against, Tech Freedom said: “Last summer, House leaders assured Silicon Valley they would correct serious defects in the Senate’s Protect IP bill, defects that would have caused long-term unintended damage to innovation. SOPA does just the opposite. SOPA would give media companies unwarranted and unprecedented new powers to shape the structure and content of the Internet. It creates vague, sweeping standards for secondary liability, drafted to ensure maximum litigation. It treats all U.S. consumers as guilty until proven innocent. SOPA is an early Christmas present for Hollywood, and a jobs bill for trial lawyers.

SOPA, regrettably, represents a big step backward in Washington’s efforts to support the digital revolution, one of the only sectors of the economy that continues to grow. A bill that was supposed to target the "worst of the worst" foreign websites committing blatant and systemic copyright and trademark infringement has morphed inexplicably into an unrestricted hunting license for media companies to harass anyone—foreign or domestic--who questions their timetable for digital transformation.

Only by carefully crafting narrow remedies against truly rogue websites can Congress achieve copyright's goal of promoting creativity without undermining basic freedoms and distorting the healthy development of the Internet itself.”

AND FROM THOSE FOR

The US Chamber of Commerce said this: “A coalition of over 380 businesses, trade associations, and professional groups from nearly every sector of the economy in all 50 states support enhanced enforcement against rogue sites. Today, the U.S. House of Representative has responded to that call with the introduction of Stop Online Piracy Act. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauds the introduction of Stop Online Piracy Act that will disconnect websites dedicated to online piracy and counterfeiting from the U.S. marketplace. This legislation will provide U.S. law enforcement with refined legal tools to act against “rogue sites,” which steal American jobs, threaten consumer health and safety, and weaken the online commerce ecosystem.

“Websites that blatantly steal the creativity and innovation of American industries violate a fundamental right to property,” said Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber. “Operators of rogue sites threaten American jobs, endanger consumer safety, and undermine the vitality of the online marketplace. I commend Representatives Smith, Goodlatte, Conyers, and Watt for standing up to the mass theft of American intellectual property.” The bipartisan House proposal is also co-sponsored by Representatives Quayle and Berman.

The Stop Online Piracy Act will disconnect websites dedicated to online piracy and counterfeiting from the U.S. marketplace. This legislation will provide U.S. law enforcement with refined legal tools to act against “rogue sites,” which steal American jobs, threaten consumer health and safety, and weaken the online commerce ecosystem.

Rogue sites attract 53 billion visits per year, jeopardizing the more than $7.7 trillion of U.S. GDP and 60% of exports that the industries they steal from produce for our economy. The sweeping alliance of business and labor leaders, which represent nearly every sector of the 19 million Americans employed in IP-dependent industries, have all called for enhanced enforcement against rogue sites.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to those who take advantage of U.S. innovators and chip away at the American workforce,” Donohue added. “While rogue sites pose a unique set of challenges, legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act introduced today offer clear, tailored enforcement tools to effectively root them out. The U.S. Chamber looks forward to working with the broad coalition of businesses of every size and shape, and organized labor to support Members of the House and Senate and ensure that rogue sites legislation is enacted this year.”

And the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) “announced its support of bi-partisan, comprehensive intellectual property enforcement legislation introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives ..... the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), which considers the role of all players in the online ecosystem and aims to follow the money supporting online theft, could help stem the loss of thousands of jobs resulting from the illegal online distribution of content. Jean Prewitt, IFTA President & CEO, said, “Online theft in the U.S. and overseas threatens the independent film industry and must be stopped. For the Independents, who finance films by pre-selling the rights to distributors worldwide, the drastic damage caused by online theft is measured both in films that cannot be produced and in lost returns on investment in films that have been produced. Independents account for 70% of all U.S. film production, so every independent film that can’t be financed and produced has a dramatic impact on jobs and the economy. We appreciate the House Judiciary Committee’s serious bipartisan work in bringing this bill forward to address both rogue websites and felony streaming, and we look forward to working with them to ensure that strong measures are adopted.” IFTA is working alongside the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc. and a growing coalition of entertainment union workers and organizations, businesses and labor groups involved in the production, sale and distribution of creative content in support of the legislation.”


And finally a group comprising the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Directors Guild of America (DGA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada (IATSE), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) today released the following statement:

“As the Guilds and Unions that represent more than 400,000 craftspeople, actors, technicians, directors, musicians, recording artists and others whose creativity is at the heart of the American entertainment industry, we applaud Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI), and Congressmen Howard Berman (D-CA) and Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) along with several other Members of Congress, for introducing HR 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act today.

“This legislation, a companion bill to the PROTECT IP Act currently in the Senate, will provide U.S. law enforcement agencies with the tools to protect American intellectual property, including the films, television shows and sound recordings created by our members, from foreign rogue websites that knowingly and deliberately engage in the illegal distribution of our content for profit.

“Left unchecked, these rogue websites threaten the vitality of the online marketplace by stealing the work of American innovators and undermining legitimate business. They profit by offering access to content that they had no role at all in creating or financing, and they threaten real jobs, not only for our members but for those with whom they collaborate on set and hundreds of thousands of others whose livelihoods are dependent on the economic health of our business. Without proactive measures like the STOP Online Piracy Act, rogues sites will continue to siphon away wages and benefits from members of the creative community, greatly compromising our industry’s ability to foster creativity, provide opportunities, and ensure good jobs.

“We thank Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Conyers, and Congressmen Berman and Goodlatte as well as the bill’s other cosponsors for recognizing through their action today that the works created by our members - the result of talent, creativity, collaboration and years of hard work – are not only valuable contributions to our culture but are worthy of being protected from rogue sites and the profiteers who operate them. We look forward to working with Chairman Smith, the cosponsors of the bill, and the members of the House Judiciary Committee to ensure that this important legislation moves forward.”

http://techfreedom.org/blog/2011/10/28/larry-downes-statement-stop-online-piracy-act-sopa

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/disastrous-ip-legislation-back-%E2%80%93-and-it%E2%80%99s-worse-ever

http://www.uschamber.com/press/releases/2011/october/us-chamber-praises-house-legislation-protect-jobs-and-sever-rogue-websit

http://www.ifta-online.org/ifta-new-house-intellectual-property


http://www.sag.org/joint-statement-sag-afm-aftra-dga-iatse-and-ibt-regarding-stop-online-piracy-act-hr-3261

Another stop sign image - this one from www.freefoto.com

Vladimir Kush "To The Safe Haven" here http://www.artbrokerage.co.uk/artist/Vladimir-Kush/To-the-Safe-Haven-41093

Celebrity Sightings: Vina Morales

     Posing with Vina Morales near the baggage carousel of Ninoy Aquino International Airport terminal 2.

And no... We are not Mang Inasal endorsers :)



Friday, October 28, 2011

Bangkok flood situation update - October 29 2011

This image from The Star shows the scene at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport as tourists and locals alike flee Bangkok in view of rising flood waters.

As officials step up warnings, more residents are forced to leave their homes in northern Bangkok and head for higher ground. This is the worst flooding in Thailand in 50 years.


Foreigners have been advised by their governments to stay away but if travel is necessary from Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok-bound flights on MAS (Malaysia Airlines), AirAsia and Thai Airways flights from Kuala Lumpur have not been cancelled, according to MATTA (Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents).

Latest update from the Tourism Authority of Thailand is that Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport is open ad operating normally, Don Muang airport is closed. More answers can be obtained from their Flood FAQ.

Good news came in just as I'm writing this post: The Star reported that Receding floodwaters north of Bangkok have reduced the threat to the Thai capital, the prime minister said on Saturday. But a rise in coastal high tides in the Gulf of Thailand will still test the city's flood defences.


Read
- November 1 update here..
- Latest, Nov 5 update
- Bangkok flood - Pictures

Peter Schiff Defends Capitalism at Occupy Wall Street

Reason.tv taped this interview of investment guru and radio show host, Peter Schiff while he spent 3 hours at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street area. The video is 18 minutes but very interesting.

The Big Short

Michael Lewis was the author of Liar's Poker, The Blind Side, and Moneyball, the last two of which were made into motion pictures.

His latest book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, is a look at the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and financial crisis that ensued during 2008. However, he has taken a completely different approach on the subject; he looks at the crisis from the eyes of those who predicted what was going to happen early on, shorted the market, and made billions.

Lewis delves deep into the personalities of the people who saw what was happening and the trials and tribulations they went through before their windfalls came in. One track in the book was couple of guys who started a hedge fund with just $110,000 of their own money and built that money up to $135 million, buy buying credit default swaps.

By the way, if you never knew what a credit default swap is or a collateralized debt obligation is, you will by the first quarter of the book. Lewis makes the financial terminology very easy to understand, and what actually happened during the crisis.

It is amazing that this nonfiction book on recent financial history is a page-turner. If you are looking for some fascinating reading during the Thanksgiving hliday, get The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

Top Yielding Diversified Computer Systems Stocks

So what are the Diversified Computer Systems companies? These are the big players, like Teradata Corporation (TDC). These are the companies that are involved in everything from hardware to software to consulting to clouds.

On example is Hewlett-Packard, which announced yesterday that it has decided its personal computer business. The stock trades at 6.5 times current earnings and six times forward earnings with a favorable price to earnings growth ratio of 0.71. The yield on the stock beats any bank account, paying 1.9%. Earnings for the latest quarter were up 8.6% on a revenue increase of 1.5%.

Another dividend payer in this category is Big Blue, or more officially known as International Business Machines Corp. (IBM). The company has a price to earnings ratio of 14, a forward PE of 12, with a PEG ratio of 1.12. The stock offers a yield of 1.6%. Earnings for the latest quarter ending September 30 grew by 7% with similar growth in revenues.

To see a list of all the diversified computer systems stocks, check out the free list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written.


By Stockerblog.com

Collecting Societies Again

The press office of the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) informs us that the copyright senate of the BGH has issued a judgment on the calculation of collecting society tariffs (BGH, 27 October 2011 - I ZR 25/10, press release available here).

In respect of indoor events, it is the established practice of German music collecting society GEMA to calculate the royalties it collects based on the size of the room where the music is played. To GEMA at least, it seemed logical enough to apply the same to outdoor events such as street fairs and Christmas markets. Accordingly, it took the size of the entire venue as reference point, from the first to the last stall or from the first to the last wall enclosing the space where the event took place (it's Friday, time to rhyme...).

As such things go, the organisers of a number of such outdoor events disagreed with GEMA's calculation methods. In their view, only the space where the sound from the stage can actually be heard should be taken into account. From that space, one should deduct the areas where visitors could not go, i.e. the stalls, the areas where they could not stay for more than a fleeting amount of time, i.e. public transport areas, and the areas where the music from the stage was overlaid with other music, i.e. music played at individual stalls.

Both the court at first instance and the court of appeal decided that the GEMA was entitled to determine royalties according to the size of the entire venue. The BGH confirmed these decisions. It pointed out that it is typical for outdoor events such as street fairs and Christmas markets that the audience in front of or in good listening distance to the stage constantly changes and new listeners replace the old. Consequently, the overall number of people listening to the music is substantially larger than the number of people the space where the music can be heard clearly could hold at any one time. The court added that the music played on stage usually characterises the entire event and that it would be unreasonable to ask GEMA to attend every single outdoor event in the country and measure the space where the music from the stage is clearly audible, and the space within that range where the audience cannot or must not stay or where other music overlays the music emanating from the stage. For reasons of practicality, then, GEMA's method of calculation was deemed appropriate.

I can't help remarking that a constantly changing audience - whether on a market or in a club - means that many people listen to little bit of music, whereas a constant audience - whether at an indoor or an open air concert - means that fewer people listen to more music. If 1,000 people listen to 10% of the music, isn't the end result the same as if 100 people listened to 100% of the music?

Also, I'm not exactly a science whiz, but shouldn't the laws of physics enable you to calculate the area where the music is audible if the organiser lets you know how loud he's going to play it? Throw in a plan of the site - which must exist because German authorities would not allow the organisers to put up stalls willy-nilly - and you can calculate the area covered by stalls as well as any areas where visitors cannot or must not go. Which leaves the musical overlay issue. While personally I find involuntarily listening to random mash-ups of songs that weren't so great in the first place deeply annoying, it appears to be something the organisers of such events seem to encourage for some reason. Otherwise surely they could just play music on the big stage and make putting up a stall conditional upon not playing your own music. So in my view, there is no good reason for deducting the areas of overlay.

We shall all have to wait for the written judgment to be released in order to find out why the BGH thinks the solution I just came up with is less than brilliant. In the meantime, I look forward to any comments or alternative approaches.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Combine T1 Lines For Higher Speed

T1 lines have been popular with small and medium businesses for decades. They are highly reliable, private, dedicated bandwidth, and easy to come by. With fierce competition bringing down prices in recent years, what’s not to like? If only you could get T1 lines to run faster....

Combine T1 lines with bonding to increase bandwidth...There’s a way to do that and still keep all the advantages of T1 line technology. The technique is called bonding. It’s an industry standard method of combining the bandwidth of multiple T1 lines so that they behave as a single much larger connection.

You can’t really hot-rod a single T1 line. The system was designed to be synchronized so that the line can be segmented into 24 separate telephone lines or multiplexed into higher bandwidth services. A T1 line runs at 1.5 Mbps and that’s that. What bonding does is let you bring in another T1 line and hook the two together for 3 Mbps.

Why upgrade in the first place? Bandwidth demands are increasing. You know that every few years you need to upgrade the processing power and RAM in your PCs to keep running efficiently with upgraded browsers and other applications. Expect the same to be true of your WAN connections. Whether it’s file transfers from point to point between business locations, Internet access or a connection to cloud services, you’ll need higher bandwidth to stay competitive.

T1 lines can be combined in larger groups to give you even more bandwidth. Bonding 3 T1s provides 4.5 Mbps, 4 T1 lines offer 6 Mbps, 5 bonded lines equal 7.5 Mbps, 6 T1s provide 9 Mbps, 7 T1 lines offer 10.5 Mbps and 8 bonded T1 lines get you to 12 Mbps. Eight line bonding is about as high as most carriers go. The cost of bonded T1 is equal to the price of a single T1 times the number of lines used. When you get past 8 T1s it is generally cheaper to move up to DS3 or even fiber optic connections.

How do you connect all these T1 lines coming into your facility? Your service provider will take care of that. They supply a managed router with multiple WAN Interface Cards (WIC) that handled the interface to each T1 line. The router then does the bonding in tandem with carrier equipment on the other end and delivers a single bandwidth port (RJ45) running at the higher bonded speed.

This is important. For bonding to work, you need to get all of your T1 lines from a single provider. If you try to mix and match vendors, they have no way of coordinating line operation and you just wind up with Individual T1 lines. You can do load balancing with your own routers or buy a bandwidth aggregation appliance to combine unrelated lines, but this is not true bonded T1.

Does any other service compete directly with bonded T1? Yes, Ethernet over Copper does something very similar. It bonds multiple twisted copper pair (up to 8 pair) to deliver a single bandwidth service from 2 Mbps to over 100 Mbps. The trick in delivering the higher bandwidths is a more sophisticated modulation scheme that is distance sensitive. The nearer you are to the central office, the higher the speed available. If available, you can probably get higher bandwidths and better prices than bonded T1 services. However, availability is generally limited to metropolitan areas at this time.

What are the best bandwidth services available to support your applications? Get instant online pricing for bonded T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper to compare prices and availability at your business locations.

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




Follow Telexplainer on Twitter

Friday Frolics - What Hand Gesture Are You?

Now here is an interesting personality quiz, the Hand Gesture quiz. Nah, no middle-finger answer here, I'm sure. Take the quiz and find out the Hand Gesture that you are.



You Are an "A-OK"




Your life philosophy can be summed up as, "Whatever will be, will be."

Your greatest wish is to live each day a little better than the next.



You are naturally calm and stable. Some people would call you a rock.

You feel one with the world. You are a spiritual person, though no one who knows you would guess it.

Top Insurance Stocks: Brokers, Health, Life, Property & Casualty

The Aflac (AFL) duck must be really quacking. The company just reported operating earnings of $1.66 per share muck higher than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.60 and significantly higher than $1.45 for the same quarter last year. Aflac, a provider of health, accident, and life insurance, pays a yield of 2.9% and trades at seven times forward earnings.

There are plenty of ways to invest in the insurance business, depending on the type of insurance the companies offer. First, you can invest in the insurance brokers. then you have the insurance providers: Health and Accident, Life, Property & Casualty, and Title and Surety.

In the life insurance sector, Sun Life Financial Inc. (SLF) has a forward price to earnings ratio of 8, a favorable price to earnings growth ratio of 0.84 and a dividend yield of 6.0%.

Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (MHLD) is an interesting company in the property casualty arena. The company provides specialty reinsurance for the global property and casualty market. The stock trades at 6.5 times forward earnings, a 0.68 PEG ratio, and a yield of 4.0%.

In regards to surety and title insurance companies, Fidelity National Financial, Inc. (FNF), trades at 13 times forward earnings, has a PEG of 0.93, yields 3.1%.

Finally the brokers. Marsh & McLennan (MMC) pays a yield of 2.9%, has a forward PE of 14, and a PEG of 1.71.

To access free lists of all the stocks in the various segments of the insurance industry, Brokers, Health and Accident, Life, Property & Casualty, and Title and Surety, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Travel: Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon, Philippines

MANOLO FORTICH, BUKIDNON IN BRIEF
     Bukidnon is located in Northern Mindanao of the Philippines. It is a landlocked province with Malaybalay City as its capital. The airport in its capital is currently closed as of this writing so access to Bukidnon is by land travel from Cagayan De Oro City. Manolo Fortich is a first class municipality in this province.

HOW TO GET THERE
     Refer to my post on how to get to Cagayan De Oro City, then from there land travel to Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon, particularly Dahilayan Adventure Park, is about two to three hours drive from Cagayan De Oro City proper. Public transport to Dahilayan is not so easy so it is practical to rent a car to go to Dahilayan.

PLACES TO VISIT
Dahilayan Adventure Park
     Dahilayan Adventure Park is a very nice place for adventurers and nature lovers. This nature park features Asia's longest dual zipline with a length of 840 meters. The start point of this zipline is located at 4500 feet above sea level. One more thing that adds to the fun of conquering this zipline is you can have a certificate of your photo which includes your picture. If you are not comfortable with the adrenaline rush this longest zipline offers, you can also try the 320 meters plus 120 meters zipline. Other activities are also available such as horseback riding, ATV driving, ropes course, wall climbing, dropzone and winch boarding. For more information about their rates visit their official website.



My 840 meter Zipline Certificate
 

Posing with friends after the ride
 

Launch tower sign post

Bagalangit Ultimate Bivouac
     While you are in Dahilayan, its very much worth it to drop by Bagalangit Ultimate Bivouac. This place offers ultimate experience and training. They are open from thursday to monday at 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. Many activities are available such as camping, archery, tactical shooting, airsoft games, wall climbing and rapelling and team building obstacle courses. Accomodations are also available, they have van cottages and tipi huts. Their airsoft games features three scenarios namely; warpig, airbase and jungle. For more information or inquiries contact Jonathan at +639177112554, Cyrus at +639051773659 or Bebing at +639177187883/ +630888515693. See their facebook account at bivouacbagalangit@yahoo.com.


Firing 1911 .45 cal pistol at their short range

Posing with the target
 USEFUL LINKS



Governance for UK collecting societies: your chance to have a say

The UK remains one of just three European countries which does not provide statutory supervision and minimum standards for collecting societies. This is either a good thing, because British collecting societies are so sensitive to the interests of licensees, members and the market at large that they are in no need of regulation -- or it may be a serious omission which requires urgent attention in order to safeguard a plethora of competing interests in a rapidly-changing world.

There's no doubt which of those positions appealed to the Hargreaves Review, which recommended the imposition of a legislative framework within which collecting societies should have to adopt doubly-approved codes of practice, blessed by both the Intellectual Property Office and the competition authorities, to ensure that they operate in a way that is consistent with the further development of efficient, open markets. The UK government has agreed -- but still has to fathom out how best to transfer this aspiration into reality.

Like owls, many of the most successful panelists are those
who look pretty knowledgeable but don't actually say anything ...
Now for the exciting bit. In just under a fortnight, a special event has been laid on for the purpose of sampling, in the discreet and cosy atmosphere of the House of Parliament:, the views of stakeholders, whatever their stake.  The event, "Copyright collecting societies: does the UK need minimum standards?", is fixed for Tuesday 8 November, and is split into two halves: (i) there's a panel event from 6 to 8pm in Committee Room 7; (ii) a reception will then be held from 8 to 10pm, Dining Room R (Portcullis House).  To attend, email the organisers here.

For the record, the fare on offer at the reception has not been divulged.  Panelists on the menu, however, are as follows: 
  Dr Stef van Gompel, postdoc researcher Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam. Stef has written on supervision of collecting societies in Europe and is secretary of the Dutch Copyright Committee, which advises the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands on copyright. He will give an overview of how different European countries supervise collecting societies. See Collective Management in the European Union 
  Frances Lowe, head of regulatory and corporate affairs at PRS for Music. PRS is the only UK based collecting society that has adopted a Code of Practice in a ‘commitment to be easy to do business with’. Frances will talk about the process leading up to the adoption of the Code, and the role of the independent Ombudsman. See the PRS Code of Practice and the PRS Members Code 
  Brigid Simmonds OBE, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA). Following a 200-300 percent increase of PPL’s licensing tariff for background music the BBPA and the British Hospitality Association won a Copyright Tribunal case in 2010 which resulted in PPL having to refund £20 million to retail and hospitality businesses. Brigid will talk about why the BBPA supports minimum standards for collecting societies. See the joint submission of the BBPA and the BHA on the Hargreaves Review to the Business Innovation and Skills committee inquiry
  Chris Johnstone, head of legal at Music Choice. Music Choice’s 2003 complaint against collecting societies led to the so called CISAC decision in 2008, where European authorities ruled that European music collecting societies’ reciprocal agreements violated competition law. Chris will explain why Music Choice originally brought the complaint, give a music user’s perspective on what has happened since then and reflect on whether minimum standards could help to make copyright licensing fit for the digital age. See Interview with Chris Johnstone on CISAC complaint