What is Metro E?

Metro E is short for Metro Ethernet, a popular and rapidly expanding network connection service.

Metro E is Ethernet like the protocol you run on your Local Area Network (LAN). But it has been standardized and adapted to also run on a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). The organization behind this standardization is the MEF or Metro Ethernet Forum. It’s an industry standards organization dedicated to Carrier Ethernet.

Here’s why you should you know about Metro E and seriously consider using it for your business connectivity. Metro Ethernet services are better suited to today’s packet switched networks than the legacy telecom services such as T1. Connectivity is almost trivial. Ethernet is what nearly all networks are running as a protocol. The connection from your service provider is an Ethernet jack. That’s it. No need for special conversion equipment to connect to your switches and routers.

Metro E is supported by a number of incumbent telecom carriers, plus many new competitive service providers that have no connection to legacy telephone services. Nearly all of these new competitors have built their networks on fiber optic lines and IP or MPLS core networks. Metro Ethernet services are easily transported on these networks. The result of all this competition is that Metro E prices are often considerably lower per Mbps than T1, DS3, or OCx bandwidth. It is not uncommon to get 3 Mbps Ethernet service for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1 and similarly reduced costs at higher bandwidths.

Like other telecom services, Metro Ethernet can be set up to provide point to point connectivity between two business locations. Unlike older technologies, Ethernet Line Service can be configured as a layer 2 connection between two LANs, effectively connecting them to make one larger LAN. Ethernet LAN Service, or ELAN, can do the same thing for multiple locations. It’s a high performance and cost effective way for businesses to tie-together branch offices, factories, headquarters and warehouses. It works just as well for hospitals and their related medical centers in the area.

Another use for Metro E is as an access network connection. Metro E links are used as last mile connections to larger MPLS networks for national or worldwide service. They are also used as dedicated broadband Internet connections for small, medium and large organizations.

Metro E bandwidth tends to be easily scalable. Service at 3 Mbps is a popular entry level bandwidth. Many companies move up to 10 Mbps, a standard LAN speed. Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps, 1000 Mbps and 10 Gigabit Ethernet are other standard LAN speeds that are also supported by Metro E providers. While these speeds are popular, most providers offer incremental bandwidths between each of these levels. You can order any bandwidth up to the limit of your installed Ethernet port. Start with what you need now and easily upgrade as the need arises.

One thing you should know is that the Metro in Metro E generally means just that. This service is available in most metropolitan areas, but rarely in rural areas. It may be possible to get Ethernet connectivity over T1 lines, called EoDS1. This is a way to extend service to include remote business locations.

If Metro E the right service for your business situation? A quick way to find out is to request a list of Metro E service levels and prices for your business location or locations.

Stock Market Toys for Christmas

Here are some interesting stock market related items to add to your list. The time to order is now so that it arrives in time.

"Stock Market" Letter Opener

Stock Market Ticker Tape Machine, Silver

Stock Market Ticker Tape Machine, Gold

Boxing Stock Market Bull Statue- Figurine

Stock Market Business Card Holder w/Pen

Stock Market Clock, Bronzed Metal

Stock Market Business Card Holder

Black Marble Stock Market Bookends

"Stock Market" Memo Pad Holder

Stock Market Specialist - The Official Game of the American Stock Exchange

(over the) Pond Life

The U.S. government has seized control of dozens of websites it says are offering unauthorized copyrighted or counterfeit content. The Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division took over 82 domains including Torrent-Finder.com, RapGodFathers.com, DVDProStore.com, Cartoon77.com, NFLJerseySupply.com and Handbag.com. The seizure orders come from courts in eight states and take place shortly after a U.S. Senate Committee approved the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which aims to empower the Justice Department to use tactics similar to those just employed by Homeland Security and ICE.

Wired.com report that EMI Records has asked the federal judge overseeing the label's copyright infringement lawsuit against music locker service MP3tunes to bar digital civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) from submitting a "friend of the court" brief in the case saying that the EFF brief is "a pure advocacy piece, not a 'friend of the court," and also that the brief is "duplicative," "contains unsupported speculation," and exceeds the court's page length restriction. EMI also argues that, should EFF's brief be allowed, parties supporting EMI's position should be allowed to submit additional briefs.

TorrentFreak reports that the US Copyright Group, which has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against tens of thousands of internet users who have allegedly illegally downloaded movies such as "Far Cry" has been hit with a class action lawsuit by over 4,500 of those sued. The retaliatory class action lawsuit alleges "extortion, fraudulent omissions, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, racketeering, fraud upon the court, abuse of process, fraud on the Copyright Office, copyright misuse, unjust enrichment and consumer protection violations" and says that the offences were committed by US Copyright Group in its efforts to extract settlement fees from alleged file-swappers. The claim also says that the producers of "Far Cry" did not secure a copyright registration for the film until after it began collecting information on peer-to-peer traffic, and argues that this fact invalidates any earlier claims of infringement.

In case you missed it, there is a war of words going on over in the USA all about a letter sent to PC Mag by the major record labels and other music industry trade groups in response to a PC Mag story about the demise of Limewire, which the labels say was promoting unauthorized copyright infringement by naming alternatives to the now defunct Limewire. Apart from the fact it seems that the original story was actually published by PC World (a competitor of PC Mag) the accusations stirred up a hornets nest, in particular over the magazine’s right of free speech with PC Mag saying “PC Mag's job is to cover all aspects of technology, which includes the products, services and activities that some groups and individuals might deem objectionable. We covered these Limewire alternatives because we knew they would be of interest to our readers. We understand that some might use them to illegally download content. We cannot encourage that action, but also cannot stop it. Reporting on the existence of these services does neither.” Not content with that, the letter goes on to say “It worries me that the music industry took this action, because it reeks of desperation. The RIAA and other music industry organizations have spent the better part of the decade fighting the digital transition, with only a shrinking business to show for it. In recent years, though, the fist of anger has turned into at least one open hand as the music industry embraces the once shunned digital music industry. Unfortunately, that warm embrace, and the change that comes with it, are not happening fast enough. Clearly the music industry is still losing money to music piracy and even the recalibrated profit margins brought on by legal music sharing services. It's time for these music execs to pull their collective heads out of the sand and fully acknowledge and accept all the ways their industry has changed. They also have to understand that nothing will stop technology's inexorable march forward. Things will continue to change. Music downloads and sharing will never go away. These execs have to find a way to use all that technology allows and make a business”.

A US teenager has failed in her appeal to have her damages for illegally downloading overturned because she didn’t know what she was doing was illegal. As a 16 year old Whitney Harper had used the then popular Kazaa service to download 37 tracks and she was sued by the RIAA and faced damages of $27,750.00. Harper argued that she was not aware that the file-sharing program on her computer was dealing in stolen property saying she thought the songs could be downloaded for free, just like listening to the radio on the Internet. The Supreme Court disagreed (with one judge dissenting) and upheld the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled in February that Harper could not pay a reduced minimum fine of $200 per infringed track -- instead of $750 -- as an "innocent infringer." The federal appeals court cited a provision that says infringers should know they are breaking the law since a copyright notice "appears on the published phonorecord."

Now on to Sarah Palin, who has secured much needed publicity for her new book after HarperCollins, the publisher of "America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag", reached a settlement in their a lawsuit with Gawker.com. The website had published several leaked pages of the book and was ordered to take them down by a New York City judge earlier this week. "In settling the case, Gawker has agreed to keep the posted material off its website and not to post the material again in the future" HarperCollins said in an official statement.

And finally to Bradford Cox, the artist behind Deerhunter and Atlas Sound who had a rather unusual weekend after Sony Music issued a DMCA takedown notice against his blog on Friday, it seems in connection with two albums of his own bedroom-made demos which he had uploaded for his fans to download for free. This was somewhat confusing because Cox is not and has never been signed to any Sony Music label so the album's cannot be their property. Deerhunter are signed to Beggar's 4AD while Atlas Sound release via indie label Kranky according to the CMU Daily. The major has now admitted to Billboard that it had made a mistake and that it had made Cox, his manager and music server Mediafire aware of this fact. Which brings us full circle to the first story and the risks we all run when content owners are given legal powers to have allegedly infringing websites taken offline – what happens if they get it wrong?

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/211832/courts_shut_down_82_sites_for_alleged_copyright_violations.html

www.techdirt.com

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/11/29/32147.htm

Bonded T1 Solution Increases Bandwidth

T1 bandwidth at 1.5 Mbps has been a staple for smaller business applications. For many businesses, a solid 1.5 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload is more than adequate. Some businesses can even use an Integrated T1 solution to deliver both telephone and Internet service on the same line. But other businesses are finding that T1 bandwidth is becoming a bottleneck to productivity. They need and want more bandwidth.

So, what is the easiest and most cost effective solution? A straightforward approach is to add another T1 line. This doubles your bandwidth from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. But don’t just run out and order a second T1 line just anywhere. If you want to two T1 lines to work as if they were one larger line, then you’ll need to get them from the same supplier and request a bonded T1 solution. Bonding is a technical process that combines the bandwidth of the otherwise independent T1 lines.

Why would you not want your lines bonded? One reason is redundancy. If the two lines are bonded and from the same source, chances are that a fault that takes out one line might well take out the other as well. You’ll be left with no bandwidth at all until repairs are completed. Fortunately, this is usually a matter of hours at most for top tier T1 line service providers. Even so, by keeping the lines separate and from totally different carriers coming in on different wire bundles from different directions, you stand a good chance of an outage being limited to one line or the other.

Redundant lines are easiest to implement when they feed different networks. Say, half your users are on one line and half on the other. Or, you can use a device called a TRUFFLE from Mushroom Networks to combine two or more broadband lines to create one larger bandwidth. If you lose one input to the TRUFFLE, the others keep feeding the network.

Another situation where a bonded T1 solution makes sense is delivering larger amounts of bandwidth to locations where fiber optic service isn’t available or is way too expensive to bring in. You can bond 3 T1 lines to get 4.5 Mbps, 4 T1 lines to get 6 Mbps, 5 T1 lines for 7.5 Mbps, 6 lines get you 9 Mbps, and bonding 7 T1 lines will deliver 10.5 Mbps. That’s equivalent to basic Ethernet network speeds and is more than enough for applications like video conferencing and broadband Internet access for medium size companies.

Bonding this many lines often makes a lot of sense for companies located in rural areas or just far enough from Metro Ethernet service that fiber isn’t practical. That includes WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) and rural medical centers, as well as office buildings of all types. T1 line service is available just about anywhere you can get telephone service and is provisioned on the same type of twisted pair cable that brings in analog or digital phone lines.

Finally, a bonded T1 solution can provide short term connectivity while fiber optic service is under construction. In most cases, the copper wiring to support bonded T1 bandwidth is already in place. A service provider only needs to install customer premises termination equipment and provision the service. Once fiber has been brought in and turned up, you can discontinue the bonded T1 connection or keep it as a backup service that will be unaffected by faults in the fiber optic network.

Can you business benefit from a fast, reliable T1 based bandwidth service? Check prices and availability for a bonded T1 solution now. If you have an older T1 line contract, you may find that you can get more bandwidth for the same money today.

Bull and Bear Gifts

Here are some more gift ideas for stock market traders and investors, with the Bull and Bear motif:

Executive Gift Stock Market Wall Street Bull and Bear Silver Plated Sculpture Figurines Paperweights

Executive Gift Wall Street Stock Market Wall Street Charging Bull & Bear Statue Sculpture on Burtwood Bronzed Metal

Bear and Bull Cufflinks - Business/Finance Themed Formal Wear - Cufflinks

Bull & Bear Executive Gift or Award Resin Sculpture

Wall Street Bull and Bear Statue

BULL and BEAR Executive Wall Street Stock Broker Cufflinks w/ Gift Box

Bear and Bull Bronzed style Bookends

Stock Market Bull and Bear See-Saw Sculpture

Bulls and Bears in the Market Art Poster Print by William Holbrook Beard, 36x27

Buck Creek Knives 6682DS Stainless Steel Little Bear & Bull Congress Pocket Knife with Genuine Stag Handles

Gift List for Fans of Warren Buffett

If you have a friend or relative who is a fan of Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, you might want to give them one of the following videos or books as a gift.

Books

1. The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Second Edition

2. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

3. Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Search for the Company with a Durable Competitive Advantage

4. The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition

5. Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Greatest Investor

6. Trade Like Warren Buffett

7. How to Pick Stocks Like Warren Buffett: Profiting from the Bargain Hunting Strategies of the World's Greatest Value Investor

Videos

8. Warren Buffett: Woodstock for Capitalists video

9. Buffett and Gates Go Back to School video

10. ABC News Nightline Warren Buffett video

BlackBerry Picking On Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is the new traditional time to find great online special offers, much the same as Black Friday has become that tradition for bricks and mortar stores. With that in mind, let’s have a look a one very special product line this year. It’s the BlackBerry device from Research in Motion.

BlackBerry has long been the choice of business users for mobile voice and data connectivity. RIM has made it their mission to support corporate IT services with the performance and security needed for serious business use in the field. But, how affordable are the popular BlackBerry models?

Make no mistake about it, BlackBerry devices are expensive technology. That doesn’t mean you have to pay a bundle for the model of your choice. In fact, shop now and you can get 19 different BlackBerry phones free when you order them with new wireless service. The others range in price from $9.99 to $149.99. Not bad for devices that retail for up to $600.

Just what is available at no charge for as long as these special offers last? How about the new BlackBerry Torch? Yes, it’s free when you order it with AT&T wireless service. The Torch offers the BlackBerry OS6 operating system on a combination touchscreen interface plus a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard. You also get an impressive 5 Megapixel digital camera with flash, continuous auto-focus, digital zoom, face detection integrated GPS location tagging and video capture. The full touch screen features a full HTML Web browser with pinch-to-soom and tabbed browsing. By the way, the BlackBerry Torch is available in black, red or white.

The BlackBerry Tour is a popular smartphone for Verizon Wireless users. it’s an international 3G phone with 3.2 Megapixel digital camera, GPS support for VZ Navigator Global navigation services. Yes, this phone runs on both the 800 & 1900 CDMA bands for Verizon and GSM 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 for overseas. Your worldwide tour will be more enjoyable with the BlackBerry Tour, especially since you got it free.

The BlackBerry Curve has been so popular that it is available on most cellular networks. That includes AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and NEXTEL. There are various models, so check out the details to make sure you get the features you want in a Curve phone. Some have WiFi and/or 3G for fast downloads. Color choices include the classic black, graphite gray, violet/purple, red, white, titanium and fuchsia.

The BlackBerry Storm2 is available free on the Verizon Wireless network. It has a brilliant 3.25 inch display, WiFi, 3G in 150 countries, a full HTML Web browser and a 3.2 Megapixel digital camera. Yes, that’s right. It’s free while you can get it.

Are you a bold person? By that I mean a fan of the BlackBerry Bold. It’s another free BlackBerry model for the AT&T wireless network. You’ll get free access to more than 20,000 AT&T WiFi hotspots nationwide with this very smartphone. It also features international connectivity for data in 185 countries and voice roaming in over 215 countries.

Which BlackBerry you pick is a personal matter. What’s important is that you get your choice at the best deal... preferably free of charge. That means you need to do your shopping now while the best deals are online. Check out the complete selection of BlackBerry phone models right now and get free shipping along with your free phone.

Spotlight on a 4.6% Gas Utility Generating Revenues for Over 150 Years

This stock has been around for a long, long time. This is a stock that is the eighth oldest listed stock on the New York Stock Exchange, has traded on the exchange for 121 years, was one of the original stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896, has increased its dividend for the last seven years, and was founded in 1857, more than a century and a half ago. On top of that, the company just boosted its quarterly dividend by 2.5% to 40.5 cents per share, providing a very favorable yield of 4.6%.

The stock, Laclede Group Inc. (LG), which was formerly known as Laclede Gas Company, is a natural gas utility that provides natural gas service to about 630,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Missouri. It trades at 13.5 times forward earnings and has an operating cash flow of about three times its total dividend payout. The company has increased its dividend every year since 2003.

Laclede recently reported net income for its fiscal year ended September 30, 2010 at $2.43 diluted earnings per share, the third-highest in the company's history. For the fourth fiscal quarter of 2010, the company narrowed its loss, reporting a loss of $0.07 per share, versus a loss of $0.22 per share for the same quarter last year. Quarterly earnings rose 12.7% year over year.

There are many other high yield natural gas and propane gas utilities. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has just updated its Excel list of 25 gas utilities with yields ranging up to to 7.5%, such as Nicor (GAS) yielding 4.2%, Spectra Energy (SE) yielding 4.2%, and Chesapeake Utilities (CPK) yielding 3.5%.

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

By Stockerblog.com

How originality is reinventing itself

On Friday Mrs Justice Proudman handed down her judgment in NLA v Meltwater and PRCA, [2010] EWHC 3099 (Ch), a judgment that examines the way European law is transforming English copyright law and the effectiveness of website terms in controlling how content is accessed and used.

Meltwater provides an online media monitoring service to business customers. Customers choose search terms and Meltwater sends them ‘Meltwater News’ – reports of articles containing those search terms. Meltwater News includes the headline of an article (which hyperlinks to the article), the opening words of the article and an extract showing the context in which the search term appears.

The Newspaper Licensing Agency has recently started two licensing schemes, one for media monitoring organizations and the other for end users of those monitoring services. The Agency and several newspapers have sued Meltwater and the professional association for PR companies (PRCA). The issue for the court in this judgment was whether Meltwater’s end users, such as PRs, should require a licence from NLA – would they be infringing copyright if they did not have one? The conclusion reached was that without a licence, end users are infringing the publishers’ copyright.

Copyright infringement

The starting point was that end users are making a copy of Meltwater News on their computers. Were the headlines and extracts in Meltwater News infringing copyright? Headlines, Proudman J found, are sometimes independent literary works and, in that case, copying them is automatically copyright infringement. The text extracts, on the basis of the ECJ’s Infopaq judgment, are theoretically capable of being substantial enough for the purposes of s. 16(3) CDPA and, in practice, in many cases the text extracts did contain elements that are the expression of the intellectual creation of the author. Although Infopaq had changed the test for the part of a work from substantiality to originality, this made little difference in the present case.

European law has challenged the traditional analysis of whether copyright in parts of works has been infringed in two significant ways. Firstly, the CDPA says copyright is infringed when a ‘substantial part’ is copied. The Information Society Directive just says you need to copy ‘a part’. However, Infopaq says that the part must be the ‘expression of the intellectual creation of the author’ – which arguably implies a higher level of originality than has previously been required under English law. Proudman J’s argument becomes a little hard to follow at this point: it was wrong in principle for the court to assess if the extract was itself novel or artistically worthwhile but a part must ‘demonstrate the stamp of individuality reflective of the creation of the author’. This latter statement does seem to raise the bar for originality.

One point that wasn’t touched on is that the InfoSoc Directive provides that sanctions and remedies in respect of infringements should be appropriate and proportionate. Could proportionality provide an alternative mechanism to substantiality to avoid overreacting to small infringements?

Database copyight

End users were not infringing newspapers’ s. 3 CDPA database right. Although newspapers’ websites are ‘databases’ (collections of independent works, systematically arranged and individually accessible), Meltwater’s end users are copying the articles, not their arrangement within the database. (Compare and contrast with Football Dataco v Brittens Pools, currently before the Court of Appeal.)

Was it an infringement of copyright for end users to click Meltwater’s hyperlinks through to the publishers’ sites?

The judge thought it was infringement, more likely than not. The terms of publishers’ sites sometimes say customers of commercial monitoring services require a licence to use the content and they always say they cannot be used for commercial purposes. Nevertheless, the judge was somewhat unimpressed that the claimants were here complaining about users visiting their sites while elsewhere they were complaining that Meltwater’s customers didn’t click through, so depriving the sites of traffic.

Exceptions

End users’ uses failed to fall within any copyright exception: temporary copies, criticism/review or news reporting. Article 10 of the Berne Convention did not persuade Proudman J to take a relaxed approach to quotation: ‘Berne cannot displace the express provisions of the InfoSoc Directive or override what was said by the ECJ.’ She didn’t buy the defendants’ argument that Meltwater benefited from the criticism or review exception because it was letting end users decide whether material was likely to be of interest. And it was tortuous to say that copying to spot mentions of clients in the press fell within the news-reporting exception. In any case, even if exceptions applied, there was no fair dealing and no author acknowledgment.

Recent publications

Issues five and six of the 2010 series of Sweet & Maxwell's European Copyright and Design Reports (ECDR) have both now been published, within days of one another. Cases reported include the recent England and Wales Chancery Division decision on summary judgment for copyright infringement in Allen v Bloomsbury and Rowling (noted by this blog here), the Irish High Court ruling in EMI and others v UPC on the availability of injunctive relief against internet service providers (noted here) and the Court of Justice ruling in the Dali resale rights case (noted here).

The fourth and final issue of Sweet & Maxwell's Intellectual Property Quarterly (IPQ) for this year features "The Centrality of Architecture in Copyright Law" by the University of Exeter's James G. H. Griffin -- the architecture in question being that of Lessig rather than Wren or Palladio: "the way the world is, or the way specific aspects of it are".  Indeed ...

Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel have a highly challenging and lively essay, Imagine there's no copyright and no cultural conglomerates too (you can download it here at no cost). Joost, who is Research Fellow, Research Group Arts & Economics at the Utrecht School of the Arts, explains,

"I just became aware of your interesting blog 1709. Three centuries after this event my co-author and I analyse that it is time to get rid of this tool called copyright. As mentioned in the title of the book, we should also reduce the size of cultural conglomerates that dominate markets substantially, by using revitalised anti trust policies. It does not make sense to approach the question of IP rights isolated from the question whether markets are level playing fields or not. What Queen Anne did [in 1709] was to avoid that book markets would be level playing fields. Now, it's time to reverse this trend". 

Not content with abolishing copyright, the authors dismantle patents too. For those who enjoy vigorous assertion, provocative claims, enthusiastic generalisations and a perspective based largely on the writings of some distinguished radical academic commentators on intellectual property, this is a must-read document.

"The body corporate as author of a copyright protected work" is a Current Intelligence case note by Ankur Gupta on the recent Singapore decision in Pioneers & Leader (Publishers) Ltd v Asia Pacific Publishing Pte Ltd [2010] SGHC 211.  It'll be published in the hard-copy version of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice next year, but the online version has been available since last week. You can read it here on the jiplp weblog. This decision expanded the scope of authorship under Singapore's copyright law, holding that there is nothing in principle to prevent an incorporated body being deemed the author of a copyright protected work.

Top Yielding Electric Utilities

Winter is here, the weather is getting colder and snow is starting to appear around the country. That means more electricity to run electric heaters, more people will be spending time indoors, and more electricity will be consumed. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com just updated its list of electricity stocks and there are more than 25 with yields above 4%. In addition, these companies can provide relative safety, security, and stability compared to many other stocks. In the past, utilities have paid favorable dividends for many years with low volatility.

Here are some examples of utility stocks with CD beating yields.

The Empire District Electric (EDE) trades at 18.5 times current earnings and 12.4 times forward earnings. The stock sports a price earnings growth ratio of 1.54 and pays a yield of 5.8%.

Duke Energy Corporation (DUK) yields 5.5%, has a trailing PE of 18.7, and forward PE of 13.1. The price earnings growth ratio is 2.83.

Westar Energy, Inc. (WR) also pays a decent yield of 4.9%. It has a trailing PE of 13.6, and forward PE of 14.4. The price earnings growth ratio is 1.71.

For more top yielding stocks, you can access a free downloadable Excel database of high yield electric utility stocks including one which yields more than 6%, which you can update, change, and sort, at WSNN.com.

Disclosure: Author does not own any of the above.

By Stockerblog.com

Water Desalination Stocks

As a resident of California, I am very aware of the issues and political football called water rights. Access to water is a topic of concern for all the states in the southwest. But it is not just a United States issue, water scarcity is a problem for countries around the world, especially in the Middle East. Water desalination, also referred to as desalinization and desalinisation, could be one of the leading industries in the next decade. Some major companies, such as Siemens (SI) and General Electric (GE) have water desalination divisions that make up a small part of their businesses, but there are other companies which are more of a pure play in the industry.

According to the list of water purification and desalination stocks at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, there are over twenty companies involved in the treatment of water, and several of them have specifically targeted desalination.

Consolidated Water Co. Ltd (CWCO) is one of the purest plays in the sector. It operates seawater desalination plants and other water services in the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda, using reverse osmosis technology to convert seawater to drinkable water. The stock trades at 17 times forward earnings and provides a nice yield of 3.2%. The company has raised its dividend in eight of the last ten years.

Tetra Tech (TTEK) designs and builds desalination systems that use seawater, brackish water, and reclaimed wastewater sources to help increase water supply, and has been designing desalination plants in Florida since the 1990s. It also designed the first California desalination plant, the Corona Temescal Desalter. The stock has a forward price to earnings ratio of 15.

To see an Excel list of all the stocks involved in desalination and purification, which can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

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

By Stockerblog.com

St Vincent and the Grenadines

Back in the 1960s we all used to make jokes about St Vincent and the Grenadines being the name of a pop group -- and now the island state has indeed shown itself greatly interested the legal side of the music industry.

By WPPT Notification No. 79 the World Intellectual Property Organization has announced that the Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has deposited its instrument of accession to the 1996 WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, which enters into force there on 12 February 2011.

A Plethora of Free Android Phones

Christmas is just not Christmas without the phones you love. The true love of smartphone aficionados this year is the Android phone. But, can you really afford to give an Android to a loved one or yourself? You sure can when that Android is free.

Free is a big deal in the world of smartphones. These phones are the cutting edge of technology and have cutting edge prices to match. It’s not unusual to see a price tag of $500 or $600 attached to the latest models. These are computer prices. Come to think of it, a smartphone, particularly an Android smartphone, is as much a computer as it is a telephone. They run on 3G and 4G wireless networks with enough bandwidth to do the sort of things most people use a desktop or laptop computer for. That includes Web browsing, social networking, email and watching videos.

If you think about it, five or six hundred dollars isn’t that extravagant for a fully functioning computer, but why shell out when you can get your choice of Android phone for free? Save your money for a new tablet computer or something else completely. The trick to getting our phone without paying for it is to order it online with a new service plan. You need a cellular service plan anyway, regardless of what phone you pick. The plans carry exactly the same monthly cost whether you buy them in a carrier store, a big box electronics retailer, or through a high volume online retailer. So, why not be smart about where you make the purchase and get a free smartphone in the process?

Let’s take a look at what’s available in the way of free Android phones as of this writing. The selection changes all the time, but there are always lots of models to choose from.

You’ve hear of the DROID INCREDIBLE? It’s an Android 2.2 phone from HTC for Verizon Wireless. This phone is widely discussed and desired. It has an advanced 8 Megapixel digital camera with a 2x power LED flash. The processor is a screaming fast 1 GHz Snapdragon with 8 GB of internal Flash memory. It comes with the HTC Sense user interface that organizes all of your incoming texts, emails, tweets and Facebook messages by sender. You could pay the retail price of $550 to get this incredible INCREDIBLE or you can get yours free when you sign up for a new Verizon Wireless account online.

How about the popular Motorola DEVOUR in silver? It’s a $500 Android smartphone that you can get also get for free with new Verizon Wireless service. This one features a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard in a durable shell. The MOTOBLUR user interface syncs all your messages, status updates and contacts to your customizable homescreens. Your favorite Google apps come preloaded and include Google Maps, GTalk, Gmail, YouTUbe, Latitude and more.

Other popular Android phones available for free right now include the T-Mobile myTouch 4G, LG Optimus T, DROID X by Motorola, Samsung Intercept in gray steel or satin pink, HTC Aria for AT&T, LG Ally, DROID 2, LG Vortex in black or violet, Motorola BACKFLIP, Bravo, CHARM, Citrus, CLIQ, Cliq XT, Flip Out, Flipside, Captivate and Fascinate. That’s a lot of models just from Motorola. The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for AT&T and T-Mobile Comet are also free.

Do you think that one of these free Android phones might be just what you are looking for this year? Well, don’t wait too long. You want to get yours delivered in time for the holidays and before supplies inevitably run out. Learn more and check out all the free Android special offers, plus an amazing array of other cell phones and high-end Android phones at deep discounts.

tvcatchup.com may not be broadcasting – but it might be communicating

‘Communicating to the public’ may be becoming more fashionable judging by today’s decision in ITV v TVCatchup.

ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 are in the process of suing TV Catch Up Ltd for infringing their copyright by communicating their broadcasts to the public. tvcatchup.com streams more than 50 channels, making its money from the adverts that it places before programmes and around them as a frame. It’s name is a misnomer: it used to let you catch up by storing shows, but no longer – now it’s all live streaming.

Tvcatchup.com applied for summary judgment on the basis that it could not be defined as ‘communication to the public’ because it was not a ‘broadcast’. Section 20 CDPA (‘Infringement by communication to the public’) states that ‘communication to the public’ includes both (a) broadcasts and (b) making available to the public in such a way that they may access it at a place and time of their choice.

Both parties accept that tvcatchup.com doesn’t fit the definition of ‘broadcast’ in the CDPA, nor can viewers choose when they see the programmes. ‘So,’ the defendants said, ‘tvcatchup.com isn’t communication to the public.’

But the judge said that though ‘communication to the public’ includes broadcasts and on-demand, it can include other things too. (Also, just because tvcatchup.com isn’t a ‘broadcast’ didn’t mean it can’t infringe copyright in a broadcast.)

Anyway, does anyone know why both parties agreed tvcatchup.com doesn’t fall within the definition of ‘broadcast’?