Saturday, September 10, 2011

JavaScript Toolkit V1.1.0 Released

23584970 story Programming Software The Internet Upgrades Posted by timothy on Friday September 02, @08:03PM
from the new-toolkit-to-blame dept. First time accepted submitter Mensa Babe writes "Oliver Morgan, the original author of the JavaScript Toolkit, or just 'The Toolkit' as it is known in the JavaScript community, has just announced the release of the long awaited version 1.1.0, with better documentation and added function support. Quoting the project documentation: '[JavaScript] Toolkit offers a large number of integrated methods and utilities to help enrich the javascript object library. Javascript was built originally for browsers and as such lacks a large number of data utility methods with are seen in languages such as Python and Ruby. However times have changed and JavaScript is being used more and more in backend platforms. JS Toolkit aims to bridge that gap and provide everyone a modern developer needs to produce fast, secure and tidy code quick and easily.' The Toolkit fully supports ECMAScript 5 and runs on the most important virtual machines that we have today, including Node.JS, V8, Rhino, RingoJS, and many others. It continues to be actively developed."

PostSecret App Brings Postcard Blog to Smartphones

The new PostSecret iPhone app will allow users to find secrets posted near their current locations.

PostSecret started with people mailing postcards spilling their deepest, darkest, most private thoughts to founder Frank Warren, who published the most intriguing ones on his blog. Now that intimate and anonymous exchange is going mobile with an app that could fundamentally change the crowd-powered art project.

The PostSecret app, scheduled to be released Sunday, will let users take photos with their phones, add 140 characters worth of “secret” and upload everything anonymously to the PostSecret mobile community. Users of the app can then look through the intimate messages and “heart” them, comment on them or add their own secret posts.

It’s a big leap for a successful crowdsourced website that’s always been dependent on the postal service.

“This could be the death of the PostSecret blog,” Warren said in an interview with Wired.com. “My father was visiting with me last week and he said, ‘Frank, I don’t think you realize this but with the PostSecret app, people aren’t going to need you anymore, they’re not going to send postcards, it’s not going to be on the web anymore; it’s going to be on these mobile devices.”

Because the app is mobile, users will be able to tag the locations of their secrets. They won’t have to say exactly where they are, but can pick a nearby location to tag the submission with. The intentionally simple app will also feature Instagram-esque options like photo filters and the ability to make the post less-than-secret by feeding it to Facebook, Twitter or to an e-mail address.

At a time when we often don’t know if our connection to our gadgets is pulling us away from actual human interaction or revealing too much about who we are and where we go, creating an app that collects our most intimate secrets and keeps us anonymous — while simultaneously making us feel closer — could prove to be a welcome relief.

Or it could become a secret-spilling powder keg. Warren is well aware that providing too open of a forum could lead to disasters, but said he hopes users will decide what the best use of the app is.

“There have been apps in the past or websites that have been very popular on college campuses, where it got kind of out control and people were using it to bully or say slanderous things,” Warren said. “We want to make sure the way the app is used is in the best interest of the community.”

To that end, users will be able to flag inappropriate content if they think a post is bullying or damaging. To protect themselves, users, who post anonymously (the app doesn’t require an e-mail address), have the option to remove posts they regret. They can also set their phones to “forget” things as soon as they’re posted, so there’s no evidence on their devices.

‘Maybe there’s a way we could identify a certain college that might be struggling with abuse issues or people thinking about suicide.’

Ultimately, Warren said he hopes the app will serve a greater purpose than just allowing users to confess their sins or share their sexploits.

“Right now I’m looking at a stack of over a half-million postcards — it’s a huge singular resource, but it’s kind of stagnant,” Warren said. “If we could have that information be dynamic like it’ll be in the app, it allows us to think further down the road. Like the way Google can identify where flu is breaking out based upon searches — maybe there’s a way we could identify a certain college that might be struggling with abuse issues or people thinking about suicide, and we could alert the school to make resources available in real time.”

That’s a big ambition. But then again, so was asking total strangers to mail you the things they’ve never told anyone.

The PostSecret app will be available for iPhone (an Android version is coming soon) on Sunday for $2.


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Wednesday links: a risk reversal

Quote of the day

Barry Ritholtz, “The US banking sector is not healthy.”  (Big Picture)

Chart of the day

INTC ED Wednesday links: a risk reversal

Intel ($INTC) has a higher dividend yield than Consolidated Edison ($ED).  (Ticker Sense)

Markets

The market seems to be tracing out a higher low.  (Crossing Wall Street, TheArmoTrader)

Is the Brazilian stock market down 25% a buy?  (FT Tilt)

ETF investors are just as nervous as mutual fund investors.  (IndexUniverse)

How long before so-called ‘double-decker funds‘ come to the US?  (WSJ)

Strategy

There is not one beta, but many betas.  (All About Alpha)

On the importance of trend following.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

The nuance behind the practice of portfolio rebalancing.  (ETF Replay)

What capitulation looks like.  (DowntownTrader)

Unconventional wisdom

Commission-free ETFs are not necessarily cheap.  (Wealthfront)

Individual investors has some very real advantages over professional investors.  (Minyanville)

Don’t believe the hype from system salesmen.  (Peter L. Brandt)

Why writing headlines about market action is a suckers game.  (A Dash of Insight)

Companies

Product momentum is now more important than ever in the tech sector.  (NYTimes)

Kindle Plus:  how Amazon ($AMZN) could create a viable competitor to the iPad.  (Slate)

The regulations surrounding mobile payments is exceedingly complicated.  (Felix Salmon)

Caterpillar ($CAT) as a bellwether for global growth.  (research puzzle pix)

Finance

Why bank stock prices matter.  (NetNet also FT Alphaville)

NYSE vs. Nasdaq for the big tech IPOs.  (Institutional Investor)

Complex products work for the banks, but not their customers.  (Expect[ed] Loss)

What goes on behind the scenes when a broker leaves a firm.  (I Heart Wall Street)

Global

Japan is pulling out some unconventional tools to offset the strong Yen. (WSJ, HuffPo, The Source)

China has had enough of the Euro.  (The Source)

What the case of Italy tells us about the Eurozone crisis.  (Curious Capitalist)

The global economy could take any number of diverging paths.  (Deus ex Macchiato)

Economy

Where QE2 went off the rails.  (FT Alphaville)

Durable and capital goods orders don’t point toward a recession, yet. (Capital Spectator, CBP)

The Baltic Dry Index is showing signs of life.  (MarketBeat)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

What you missed in our Wednesday morning linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

Too bad the country of Greece isn’t earning royalties off increasingly popular Greek yogurt.  (Atlantic Business)

Feeling a bit chunky?  Blame the bear market.  (LiveScience)

Abnormal Returns is a founding member of the StockTwits Blog Network.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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Did Apple Impersonate Police To Recover the Lost iPhone 5?

23582072 story Iphone Apple Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 02, @04:34PM
from the yes-no-maybe dept. zacharye writes "This whole lost iPhone 5 prototype story just got whole lot more interesting. According to SF Weekly, six investigators claiming to be members of the San Francisco police department descended upon one Bernal Heights, San Francisco man's home in search of a lost iPhone 5 prototype that CNET originally reported had been left in a bar. The scary part? The SFPD does not seem to be aware of such an investigation. Instead, it appears as though they may have actually been members of Apple's security team allegedly impersonating police officers." So far this claim seems to be developing solely through media communications; in order for the SFPD to start an investigation, the man whose house was searched would need to speak with the police directly.

Friday, September 9, 2011

How to See a Supernova This Weekend From Your Backyard

Starting this weekend, the closest supernova found in at least 25 years will be visible from your backyard with just binoculars or a small telescope. The exploding white dwarf star is currently brightening in the Pinwheel Galaxy, nestled, from our perspective, within the Big Dipper.

Astronomers found the type Ia supernova Aug. 24 within hours, they believe, of its explosion. The team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, credit the early detection to a specialized survey telescope at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California and advanced computing.

Most supernovas spotted at the Palomar Observatory are around 1 billion light-years away, far too distant to be seen by amateurs. At only 21 million light-years away, the newly discovered, violently exploding star is a close cosmic neighbor. In the video above Berkeley Lab’s Peter Nugent describes how to spot this supernova, set to reach peak brightness Sep. 9.

Video: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Danielle Venton is a science writer who fosters a special love for bugs, plants, mountains, books and gorgeous space photos. She likes writing with a fountain pen and hopes to walk across the Himalayas one day.
Follow @DanielleVenton on Twitter.

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The diversification debate

I always find it interesting when two of my favorite bloggers come out on opposite sides of a topic at the very same time.  Today the topic is diversification.  First up Howard Lindzon with one of his rules for investing:

2. Diversification is overrated. Bill Gates is only diversified because he has money managers and an estate plan to think about. You don’t have that problem.

Next up Carl Richards writing at the Bucks Blog on the so-called “lost decade for stocks”:

Clearly things were bad for the S.&P. 500 during the past decade, but singling out one market to declare a decade of investing as “lost” ignores the reality: a broadly diversified portfolio can deliver respectable returns even if individual classes perform poorly.

First off both pieces are worth reading in their entirety.  Allow me to split hairs here.  Carl is correct that a broadly diversified portfolio is the best solution for the vast majority of investors.  Howard’s advice is targeted more towards intrepid investors, like himself.  In that sense both bloggers can be correct.

This highlights one of the great challenges of the investment blogosphere.  Bloggers come at topics with different experiences, perspective and audiences in mind.  Readers need to do their part in understanding the perspective of the blogger before they can truly understand their advice.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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Friday 7atSeven: the volatility zone

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Analysis: Damages ruling may be pivotal in BP case

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A key court ruling in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill litigation could change the landscape in the massive case -- encouraging more plaintiffs to sue, or spurring the parties to make a deal to resolve what could be a long string of trials over damages.

Last week, the judge overseeing a group of spill-related lawsuits against BP Plc and its business partners ruled that claims for punitive damages -- not just compensatory damages -- could be brought by fishermen and other plaintiffs alleging harm to physical property. If a jury ultimately awards these plaintiffs punitive damages, defendants could be forced to pay out big.

The ruling gives some potential plaintiffs more of an incentive to sue because of the possibility of higher damage awards, experts say. Some people have been on the fence about suing or seeking payouts from BP's $20 billion victims' compensation fund, which offers settlements as an alternative to litigation.

Also, the possibility of massive settlements to resolve the plaintiffs' claims involving BP and other corporate defendants may now be more likely.

That is because tossing punitive damages into the legal mix tends to scare defendants. Punitive damages are awards that are often multiples of the amounts that plaintiffs are reimbursed for their losses. They are intended to punish defendants and prevent others from engaging in similar conduct.

The prospect of punitive damages of any size is a "potent inducement to settle," said David Logan, dean of Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Such claims can strengthen plaintiffs' bargaining position in settlement negotiations by presenting an added risk for defendants, said Howard Erichson, an expert in complex litigation and a professor of law at Fordham University.

Neither BP nor the plaintiffs' attorneys would comment on the possibility of a settlement before a liability trial is scheduled to begin in February 2012.

PINNING BLAME

The February trial will decide who is to blame for the largest-ever U.S. offshore oil spill. If there are claims outstanding by the time that proceeding is done, multiple smaller trials will be scheduled to determine specific dollar amounts for damages.

The punitive damages ruling was handed down by Judge Carl Barbier of U.S. District Court in New Orleans, who will preside over the February trial.

In an emailed statement on Thursday, BP representative Daren Beaudo said: "The court's decision builds on the earlier dismissal of several other types of plaintiffs' claims. The court agreed with BP on several key issues, including dismissing plaintiffs' state law claims, limiting availability of attorneys' fees, and significantly narrowing the group of plaintiffs who are eligible to try to prove punitive damages."

Co-defendants Transocean, Cameron, Anadarko and Halliburton declined to comment.

BP is sparring with its former business partners over the disaster. On Friday, Halliburton said it had moved to add fraud claims against BP in the federal multi-district litigation pending in New Orleans, and had also filed defamation and other claims against BP in Texas court. Halliburton handled cementing services on the blown-out Macondo well.

BP has been hit with unrelated legal woes in Russia, as special forces there raided its Moscow offices earlier this week in connection with legal action brought by minority shareholders in its Russian joint venture TNK-BP. BP said on Friday that the lawsuit was "absurd."

NO STRAIGHTFORWARD VICTORY

In the U.S. oil spill litigation, the punitive damages ruling had been one of the major issues pending before Judge Barbier.

While the ruling largely benefits plaintiffs, it is not a straightforward victory for them, legal experts said. Barbier dismissed all claims brought under state law in the ruling, as well as general maritime negligence claims against Anadarko and MOEX, a unit of Japan's Mitsui & Co Ltd.

Supreme Court decisions in the last decade could also serve to limit the size of punitive damages juries can award, said David Uhlmann, a professor of law at the University of Michigan. In the long-running Exxon Valdez case, the high court in 2008 ruled that punitive damages could not exceed the amount of compensatory damages awarded.

Also, it is not clear how much the ruling could translate into in dollar terms for the Gulf spill plaintiffs. Plaintiffs who say they suffered indirect losses -- as opposed to fishermen and those with property damage -- are not eligible for punitive damages. It is unknown how many of the 108,000 private claims before Barbier alleged such indirect losses, including restaurants and hotels claiming lost revenue as tourism fell.

Still, the prospect of winning punitive damages for clients could help plaintiffs' lawyers bring more claims from property owners and fishermen, said Byron Stier, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.

"The punitive damages green light is huge," Stier said. "That's the threat to BP, and that's what's animating the plaintiffs' lawyers."

Plaintiffs' lawyers are competing with the BP victims' compensation fund, known as the Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

Lead plaintiffs' lawyers in the litigation criticize the fund's offers to settle with BP and other defendants in exchange for giving up the right to sue. They say claimants may be better-served in court. Kenneth Feinberg, who administers the fund, has said litigation will take years and could prove less generous than the fund.

If punitive damages are not limited by the Exxon precedent, the potential upside for some plaintiffs who choose to go to court is massive.

But if that is not the case, suing might not be victims' best option, said Uhlmann, of the University of Michigan. Victims, he said, may do better turning to the settlement fund rather than "litigating for years and seeing most of the additional money paid to their attorneys under contingent fee arrangements."

The case is In re: Oil Spill, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, 2:10-md-02179.

(Reporting by Moira Herbst; Editing by Martha Graybow and Matthew Lewis)


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Gadget Lab Podcast: Sony's Tablet, Apple's iPhone Follies

Gadget Lab Podcast: Sony’s Tablet, Apple’s iPhone Follies | Gadget Lab | Wired.com Subscribe to Wired Wired Home Subscribe Subscribe to Wired Sections Cars 2.0 Culture Entertainment Gadgets Gaming How-To Med Tech Multimedia Politics Product Reviews Science Software Tech Biz Tech Jobs Wired Biz Wired Insider Blogs Autopia Danger Room Decode Epicenter Gadget Lab Game | Life GeekDad Playbook Raw File This Day in Tech Threat Level Underwire Webmonkey Wired Science Wired Science Blogs All Blogs ReviewsAutomotiveDesktopsDigital CamerasGaming GearHome Audio/VideoHouseholdMedia PlayersMobile AudioMobile PhonesNotebooksRoundupsSoftware/AppsSports/OutdoorsTablets/eBooksTelevisionsAll Reviews Video How To Magazine iPad RSS Feeds RSS Feeds All WiredProduct ReviewsMagazine HowTo Video Gadget Lab Hardware News and Reviews Previous post Next post Gadget Lab Podcast: Sony’s Tablet, Apple’s iPhone Follies By Mike Isaac Email Author September 2, 2011  |  1:30 pm  |  Categories: Gadget Lab Podcasts, Miscellaneous Follow @mj_isaac


          

This week on the Gadget Lab podcast: The gang chats about yet another Android tablet, HP’s mobile problems and Apple’s latest iPhone fiasco.

Staff writer Mike Isaac kicks the show off with product reviews editor Michael Calore, as the two talk about Sony’s entrant into the Android tablet arena. Verdict? It’s got a rad shape, and is far nicer to hold than most other tablets we’ve used.

Next, the two talk about another company’s tablets, HP and its TouchPad devices. The Silicon Valley giant previously said it was getting out of the hardware business, yet decided to give it one last go with another run of TouchPads before they discontinue the product. Oh, HP.

Finally, staff writer Christina Bonnington stops by the studio to chat with Mike about the latest in the Apple iPhone 5 saga. The rumor of the day: Apple has lost another prototype in nearly the exact same circumstances as the year previous. It’s almost too unbelievable to be true.

The two end the show with a brief bit on the latest iOS 5 preview, where developers get a taste of Apple’s new music service, iCloud and iTunes Match. Is it cool? We’ll have to wait for the full release to fully weigh in.

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds.

Or listen to the audio below:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #124

Mike is a Wired.com staff writer covering Google and the mobile beat. He's written on a number of different tech topics, from startups to social media. Check out his Google+ profile here.
Follow @mj_isaac and @GadgetLab on Twitter.

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Thursday, September 8, 2011

Monday links: natural constraints

Quote of the day

Paul Carr, “He [Steve Jobs] did not set out to destroy existing business models, he just noticed their lack of relevance and came up with new ones that kept consumers happy and Apple fat.”  (NYTimes)

Chart of the day

AAPLc1dl1215 Monday links: natural constraints

Apple ($AAPL) stock has shrugged off the Steve Jobs resignation.  (Businessweek)

Video of the day

Robert Shiller on the malaise gripping the US economy and home markets.  (WealthTrack)

Markets

Who says equity market valuations have to rise?  (Big Picture)

Defensive sectors continue to lead the market.  (Dragonfly Capital)

Future equity returns depend in large part on the history used.  (EconomPic Data)

Emerging market bonds have turned into a safe haven asset class.  (WSJ)

Most Americans don’t care about stocks.  (TheArmoTrader)

Have we really seen the panic necessary for a real bottom?  (Humble Student)

Strategy

Loss aversion at work.  (Crossing Wall Street)

Tom Brakke, “The natural constraints of an investment style or strategy can be too easily ignored.”  (the research puzzle)

Commodity prices are too high.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

The attraction of building a portfolio with multiple strategies.  (Term Sheet)

Research

Evidence of SAD from mutual fund flows.  (SSRN via Capital Spectator)

Underpromise and overdeliver:  the case of CEO promises.  (SSRN via Empirical Finance Blog)

The Jackson Hole papers.  (FT Alphaville)

Companies

The other shoe drops at Bank of America ($BAC) with a sale of half of its stake in China Construction Bank.  (Dealbook)

The secret plan over the past year to kill Hewlett-Packard ($HPQ) is working out as planned.  (WSJ)

All eyes are on the potential Amazon ($AMZN) tablet.  (AllThingsD)

The next new blockbuster pharmaceutical.  (Bloomberg)

Are there second acts in venture capital?  Kleiner Perkins hopes so.  (WSJ)

Global

Why is the ECB so focused on inflation?  (James Surowiecki)

Every dog has his day:  the Greek stock market rallies.  (Bespoke, Crackerjack Finance)

Emerging markets have not really decoupled from the rest of the world.  (Michael Pettis)

You can buy a share of Manchester United, just don’t expect voting rights.  (WSJ)

Economy

The national ISM manufacturing survey is likely to come in weak.  (MarketBeat, Modeled Behavior)

Pres. Obama gets a new CEA chief, Alan Krueger.  (WSJ, Bloomberg, Modeled Behavior, Megan McArdle)

Consumer spending on the rise.  (Calculated Risk, Capital Spectator)

Consumer balance sheets still have a ways to go to get back to historical norms.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Why so much focus on the role of speculation in oil futures?  (Econbrowser)

The US economy is becoming more vulnerable to hurricanes.  (Real Time Economics)

Changing demographics and an easy fix for the economy.  (FT Alphaville)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

What you missed in our Monday morning linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

Rising stock correlations:  this too shall pass.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

Some end of summer reading: The Little Book of Trading by Michael Covel.  (Au.Tra.Sy Blog)

Identity+context=the killer app.  (Howard Lindzon)

Abnormal Returns is a founding member of the StockTwits Blog Network.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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U.S. Sources Exposed as Unredacted State Department Cables Are Unleashed Online

An encrypted WikiLeaks file containing 251,000 unredacted U.S. State Department cables is now widely available online, along with the passphrase to open it. The release of the documents in raw form, including the names of U.S. informants around the globe, has raised concerns that dozens of people could now be in danger.

The release of the file comes amidst a heated blame fest between WikiLeaks and the Guardian newspaper in London, which let slip the encrypted version of the database and the decryption key respectively. As details surface about how the leak occurred, it appears that both organizations share the blame.

The 1.73-GB file and passphrase were published Thursday on Cryptome, a competing secret-spilling site, after news broke over the last week that the file had been circulating on the internet unnoticed for several months. Wired.com’s keyword search of the file shows that the uncensored cables contain more than 2,000 occurrences of the phrase “strictly protect”, which is used in cables to denote sources of information whose identities diplomats consider confidential.

It’s unclear how the release will affect imprisoned 23-year-old Pfc. Bradley Manning, who’s facing a court-martial for allegedly leaking the database to WikiLeaks last year.

WikiLeaks had given the Guardian access to the file, along with the passphrase, last summer when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange met with Guardian editor David Leigh.

WikiLeaks, the Guardian and other media outlets have been publishing the cables in dribs and drabs since last November, after carefully removing the names of most informants. The full database of cables was to have been released piecemeal through Nov. 29 of this year. But last Friday, as news of the leaked file and passphrase was made public, WikiLeaks suddenly began publishing a torrent of cables from the database. It has so far published about 144,000 cables, most of them unclassified. The Associated Press found the names of 90 confidential U.S. sources, including human rights workers laboring under totalitarian regimes, named in that subset of cables.

WikiLeaks said in a statement that it “advanced its regular publication schedule, to get as much of the material as possible into the hands of journalists and human rights lawyers who need it,” before information about the file and passphrase was widely published and repressive regimes sifted through the cables. WikiLeaks has been soliciting votes from the public on whether people agree or disagree that all 250,000 of the cables should be released in raw, unredacted form.

The popular vote favors release, and WikiLeaks has hinted on Twitter its intention to publish. But this time third parties have overtaken the secret-spilling site, and the file is already easily found elsewhere.

WikiLeaks blames the Guardian for disclosing the password in a book it published earlier this year about its WikiLeaks collaboration. WikiLeaks called the Guardian’s action “gross negligence or malice.” “The Guardian disclosure is a violation of the confidentiality agreement between WikiLeaks and Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, signed July 30, 2010,” the group said in a lengthy statement.

The Guardian has downplayed its role in the debacle, while simultaneously revealing a lack of security savvy at the dawn of its relationship with WikiLeaks. The paper notes that although the Guardian’s book did reveal the passphrase, it did not reveal the location of the file, and that Assange had told the paper that “it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.”

“No concerns were expressed when the book was published, and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security, they have had seven months to remove the files,” the paper went on to say. “That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book.”

Crypto keys, however, last forever, and even if WikiLeaks hadn’t blundered in its handling of the encrypted file, the Guardian clearly should have treated the key as highly sensitive for the foreseeable future.

The fracas heated up last Friday when an editor for the German news weekly Der Freitag revealed that his publication had found the uncensored cables in a 1.73-GB password-protected file named “cables.csv” that was available on the internet, and that the password had inadvertently been published online.

WikiLeaks revealed on Wednesday that the passphrase had indeed been published in a book written by Leigh. In the book, Leigh wrote that during the paper’s meeting with Assange in Belgium last year, Assange had given him the passphrase, in part in writing, and in part orally.

Assange had told the paper that the file, which was placed in a subdirectory on a WikiLeaks server, would remain online only a short time, after which it would be removed. Assange, however, apparently never removed the file, and it later found its way into the hands of the organization’s former spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and then back to WikiLeaks, after which it wound up on BitTorrent as part of a large archive of WikiLeaks files, which could be downloaded by anyone.

See also:

Kim Zetter is a senior reporter at Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, security and civil liberties.
Follow @KimZetter on Twitter.

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Pentagon Is Undisputed U.S. Champ of No-Bid Contracts


It was time for a change, Pentagon officials thought. In 2010, they had just wrested control of a $1 billion contract to train Afghan policemen from the Pentagon, and they thought the work should go to Xe Services, the infamous private security firm formerly known as Blackwater.

The deal, an umbrella-style contract, would come from an unlikely, obscure Army bureau called the Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office, or CNTPO, that brings new tech to foreign allies’ counternarcotics efforts.

One problem: The new task slotted into the CNTPO contract —  known as an “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” contract — had nothing to do with counternarcotics or technology. Afghan police needed training in basic skills like shooting straight and controlling riots.

But the CNTPO contract, first awarded in 2005, was already held by Blackwater and four other companies. Using it meant the Pentagon could slip Blackwater into the training job — and avoid holding a new full-and-open competition.

Another problem: Rival security firm DynCorp already held the existing training contract, which was run out of the State Department, not CNTPO or any other Pentagon arm. DynCorp didn’t want to give up its lucrative training business. But since DynCorp wasn’t among the five companies that held the CNTPO award, it couldn’t even compete for the work it was already performing.

The would-be noncompetitive Blackwater contract fits into a larger pattern of Pentagon contracting identified by the Center for Public Integrity. Although the Pentagon isn’t the only agency to face criticism for noncompetitive contracting, its large budget and wartime responsibilities have made it responsible for an outsized portion of such spending.

Over the past 10 years, the Pentagon has “competed” only about 60 percent of its total contract dollars. By contrast, the State Department “competed” 75 percent of its contract dollars in fiscal year 2010, while the Energy Department “competed” almost 94 percent of its contract dollars.

Another unique Pentagon attribute: The Blackwater-DynCorp fiasco shows that even when the Pentagon tries to limit competition over its contracts, it recognizes that the most qualified companies are the ones it excludes.

Even government bureaus accused of being hotbeds of waste do better than the Pentagon. The U.S. Agency for International Development, which faced heavy criticism in the early days of the Afghanistan conflict for handing out sole-source contracts, competed almost 80 percent of its total contract dollars in fiscal year 2010. The Department of Homeland Security, much derided for a series of disastrous contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, competed almost 76 percent of its contract dollars in 2010.

The Pentagon’s police-training contract came under scrutiny when an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed that an employee of a Blackwater subsidiary called Paravant, which was working on another Afghanistan training contract, used the name of a South Park character, Eric Cartman, to sign out for 200 weapons. Paravant employees used those weapons for their personal use, violating U.S. Central Command rules — and the weapons were supposed to go to precisely the people the CNTPO contract sought to train: Afghan cops. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), the committee’s chairman back then, wrote to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates to protest Blackwater getting the job.

In parallel with the Senate investigation, DynCorp, the incumbent on the Afghan police-training contract, protested the Blackwater award to the Government Accountability Office. The office sided with DynCorp. The CNTPO contract, the GAO said, never should have included any police training that wasn’t directly related to counteract narcoterrorism.

Although the Army argued there was a “nexus” between Afghan policing and counter-narcoterrorism, the GAO just rolled its eyes. ”The Army admits that the Ministry of the Interior and Afghan National Police are primarily involved in counterinsurgency activities,” the GAO decided. Ultimately, in December 2010, the Army announced DynCorp would keep the contract — after holding a competition for it.

For its part, the Pentagon defends its overall contracting record. “The [fiscal year 2010] competition rate of 61.7 percent is consistent with the [Defense Department's] 10-year-average competition rate of 61.8 percent,” wrote Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman, in response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity about the Pentagon’s competition-procurement rates. As part of the Pentagon’s recent push to curb no-bid contracting, the various Defense Department buying agencies are supposed to come up with plans to improve competition somewhere between 2 percent and 10 percent.

But according to data reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News, the Pentagon has made no substantive gains in increasing the amount of contracts competed.

In fact, it’s actually gotten worse. Competed dollars dropped from 63.5 percent of contracts awarded in 2009 to 61.7 percent in 2010 — and just 55 percent in the first half of 2011.

When it comes to real competition — meaning having companies bid on specific goods and services — even those numbers may be misleading, because the data excludes certain types of contracts. Large umbrella contracts, like the CNTPO indefinite delivery–indefinite quantity contracts, are initially awarded competitively. But they typically cover many years, and many different types of work. Once companies win them, they’re part of an exclusive club that doesn’t have to face full and open competition.

A recent report by the Defense Science Board, an independent advisory committee to the Pentagon, found widespread problems with such service contracts.  ”Approximately 66 percent of services were procured using indefinite delivery–indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts in 2010, something that was never contemplated when IDIQs were first proposed,” the report stated.

For Charles Tiefer, a commissioner on the Wartime Contracting Commission, the GAO decision on the police-training contract was “a major embarrassment to Defense.” As Tiefer describes it, the Defense Department went from using a contract that explicitly excluded DynCorp to holding a full and open competition, which DynCorp subsequently won.

In other words, Tiefer said, after first excluding DynCorp from the competition, “the military could not find in all the world a contractor willing to do the job better than DynCorp.”

Photo: U.S. Army. A DynCorp-trained Afghan police commander addresses recruits.


View the original article here

Tuesday links: better credits

Quote of the day

Gillian Tett, “At the end of last week, trading in the credit derivatives markets implied that no less than 70 large US companies are now considered a better credit bet than the American government, according to Markit data.”  (FT also MarketBeat)

Chart of the day

SPXinflection Tuesday links: better credits

The S&P 500 at inflection points.  (Big Picture)

Markets

Ten reasons to look at the bright side of things.  (Brett Arends contra Jon Markman)

What the stock market typically does the last two days of the month.  (Bespoke)

Contango has eased across many commodity markets, except WTI.  (FT Alphaville, ibid)

Strategy

What fund managers are likely doing this week.  (Investing With Options)

What the ultimate stock pickers are buying and selling.  (Morningstar)

Momentum generally works, just not at market turning points.  (Morningstar)

Is all the bitching on Twitter worth something after all?  (The Reformed Broker)

Why trading is nothing like sports.  (Minyanville)

Spread trades

ExxonMobil ($XOM) vs. Chevron ($CVX).  (Dynamic Hedge)

Coal vs. gas:  a tale of the tape.  (Dragonfly Capital)

Companies

Winners and losers:  the Apple ($AAPL) disruption edition.  (Big Picture)

Kevin C. Tofel, “Amazon has levers that few others can pull in the tablet space in terms of price flexibility.”  (GigaOM)

College kids are going back to school in plush new apartments.  How to play the trend.  (YCharts)

In praise of subscription fees for social sites, like Angie’s List.  (WSJ)

Finance

The social media and greater access to information will upend current business models in finance.  (Data Diary)

Hedge funds are about marketing and fees, not performance.  (Clusterstock)

Algorithms are smarter than people until they start interacting with each other.  (The Physics of Finance)

The media, Warren Buffett and Bank of America ($BAC).  (Value Plays)

Why (and how) the stock price of a mutual fund manager matters.  (SSRN)

Global

Sino-Forest bonds are trading at 33 cents on the dollar.  (Globe and Mail)

Poland’s economy is a bright spot in Central Europe.  (beyondbrics)

Economy

US consumer confidence falls even farther into the dumps.  (Bloomberg, EconomPic Data, Credit Writedowns, TRB)

The double dip in housing per Case-Shiller.  (Calculated Risk)

Is there anything that can be done about the economy?  (The New Republic)

Would another round of bank stress tests boost confidence?  (Free exchange)

Painful problems are normally not anticipated.  (Falkenblog)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

The quest for alpha cuts both ways.  (Abnormal Returns)

What you missed in our Tuesday morning linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

Pundits are prone to change their methods to fit their conclusion.  (A Dash of Insight)

How to get the most out of StockTwits.  (Howard Lindzon, Chicago Sean)

In praise of working less.  (The Atlantic)

Abnormal Returns is a founding member of the StockTwits Blog Network.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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Android Tricorder Killed By CBS

The summary includes a link to the wiki article about it being killed by lawyers. This in turn includes the text of the DMCA takedown notice. Take a look:

lxxxxxxn@cbs.com to support-portal@google.com
Reply - More info Aug 23
Options

AutoDetectedBrowser: Internet Explorer 7
AutoDetectedOS: Windows XP
IIILanguage: en
IssueType: lr_dmca
Language: en
agree1: checked
agree: checked
android_app_developer_1: Moonblink
android_app_name_1: Tricorder
android_app_url_1: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.hermit.tricorder [android.com]
companyname: CBS
country_residence: US
description_of_copyrighted_work: LCARS graphical user interface
dmca_signature: Lxxxxxxn
dmca_signature_date_day: 23
dmca_signature_date_month: 8
dmca_signature_date_year: 2011
full_name: Lxxxxxxn
hidden_product: androidmarket
location_of_copyrighted_work: LCARS graphical user interface, an example of which can be viewed at the URL below: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-trek-padd/id446277240?mt=8 [apple.com] represented_copyright_holder: CBS Studios Inc.

Now, I used to have an app on my Palm PDA that pretended to be a tricorder but didn't actually do anything (other than make some chirp noises and display various jokes). That's not what this is; this "tricorder" app displays the outputs from various sensors on an Android phone. You can get a magnetic compass, sound data from the microphone, GPS data, etc. The DMCA takedown isn't about this functionality, but just about the LCARS interface.

The solution is obvious: reskin the app, using an Android sort of theme, and for extra safety change the name. The result shouldn't bother CBS anymore.

I don't even really like LCARS much.

P.S. I presume that CBS will go after the people who install LCARS themes on their desktops. What a waste of time.

steveha


View the original article here

<em>Reflecting the Stars</em> Splashes Constellations on the Hudson

The Reflecting the Stars project returns a bit of the night sky's wonder to New York City. (Click to enlarge.)

New York City’s light pollution leaves the stars invisible to the unassisted eye, making the city feel “like living in a low-ceilinged room,” according to artist Jon Morris.

In response, the Brooklyn transplant created Reflecting the Stars, an art installation that re-creates constellations on the surface of the Hudson River. The display, unveiled earlier this week after a delay caused by Hurricane Irene, brings the natural wonder of the night sky down to sea level off Pier 49.

“I grew up in Kentucky, and I’d go lay out on the pier and look at the stars,” Morris told Wired.com. “You think about what happens when you can’t see stars. Are we losing our sense of humility?”

Off the west side of Manhattan, near 11th Street, Morris and his collaborators have installed 201 lights on the stray pylons of an abandoned pier. The lights are activated by a nearby plaque, which visitors can operate to evoke the pattern of a real constellation on the water’s surface. As the tide rises and falls, the lights will take on different patterns. As Morris says, “Nature consumes the installation.”

The project began as a guerilla art installation. “I was thinking I’d just grab some lights, jump in, and attach them,” Morris said, but he thought it was too beautiful a concept to install with haste.

The idea went beyond haphazard wires and waterproof lights. “The lights needed to disappear and not disrupt the beauty of the wood posts,” he said.

Morris began with no knowledge of electronics, but fulfilling his vision for Reflecting the Stars meant adopting some major science. He worked with industrial designer Andy Baker to design the lights; when the question of compensation came up, Baker just asked that Morris take him to his first Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Morris and Baker tried every way to make the lights work, but they kept running into problems with the solar charging sustaining bulb life. Jon reached out to a friend of a friend from his Indonesian dance ensemble, and soon Google software engineer Adam Berenzweig came on board.

Berenzwieg had to realign his expertise. Rather than working with servers where memory is measured in terabytes, the lights for which he was writing software held around 1 kB of data. “I would spend an hour debugging and realize the problem was that I would overwhelm it with debugging code,” Berenzwieg said.

The problem was power consumption. The lights had to conserve power during the day and run at a steady power level at night, all while self-monitoring battery life. “I designed a radio protocol to run every five seconds,” pacing the power output, Berenzwieg said.

Once they finalized the light setup — each unit consists of eight LEDs with four white and four blue lights, a small battery, and an integrated solar panel — they had to be sure the lights were ready to go. “We covered it with a marine sealant,” Morris said. “We could scrape at it and smash it, but once we set them, we couldn’t fix them if we wanted.”

‘Blue does crazy things with your eye along the visible spectrum.’

The last days of testing were conducted on the roof of Morris’ apartment building. They decided to go with the blue lights. “Blue does crazy things with your eye along the visible spectrum,” he said. More importantly, the blue light distinguishes the constellations from the New Jersey skyline.

Once Berenzwieg and Morris finalized the design, the lights were set in pipe casings that would rust and decay with the wood upon which they were set.

When the lights were ready for mounting, Morris and five other eager volunteers paddled out to the jagged pylons in canoes, donned wetsuits and lifejackets, and entered the Hudson’s opaque water. “Everyone wanted to come and install them,” Morris said. “‘They were saying, ‘Enough of this coming over to solder diodes. We want to get in the water.’”

Morris and his installers took four and a half hours to set up the lights. They arrived at high tide and rode the flow from the highest pylons down to the lowest, affixing each light with a zip tie, legs akimbo, clinging to the barnacle-encrusted wood.

At Reflecting the Stars‘ unveiling, after speakers discussed light pollution and the importance of humility in the face of stars, a woman whose mother had recently died came to spread her ashes across the lights. She spoke about how her mother would be moving on to a new galaxy this way.

The lights will be on display as long as the LEDs last.

Wetsuits and life jackets make installation of Reflecting the Stars in the Hudson River more manageable.

Alexander George is ambivalent about his New Jersey provenance. He currently lives in San Francisco and writes for Wired.
Follow @Engeorged and @TheUnderwire on Twitter.

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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Sept. 2, 1859: Telegraphs Run on Electric Air in Crazy Magnetic Storm

filament_trace_big

1859: A magnetic explosion on the sun causes bright auroras on Earth and upends the the fledgling telegraph network.

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.

In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a 3,000-word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose.

“With this a beautiful tint of pink finally mingled. The clouds of this color were most abundant to the northeast and northwest of the zenith,” the Times wrote. “There they shot across one another, intermingling and deepening until the sky was painfully lurid. There was no figure the imagination could not find portrayed by these instantaneous flashes.”

As if what was happening in the heavens wasn’t enough, the communications infrastructure just beginning to stretch along the Eastern Seaboard was going haywire from all the electromagnetism.

“We observed the influence upon the lines at the time of commencing business — 8 o’clock — and it continued so strong up to 9 1/2 as to prevent any business from being done, excepting by throwing off the batteries at each end of the line and working by the atmospheric current entirely!” the astonished telegraph operators of Boston wrote in a statement that appeared in The New York Times later that week.

The Boston operator told his Portland, Maine, counterpart, “Mine is also disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?” Portland responded, “Better than with our batteries on,” before finally concluding with Yankee pluck, “Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?”

In terms of the relationship between the Earth and its star, it is probably the weirdest 24 hours on record. People struggled to explain what had happened.

NASA’s David Hathaway, a solar astronomer, said that people in the solar community were beginning to understand that there was a relationship between events on the sun and magnetism on Earth. But that knowledge was not widely disseminated.

Another theory held that auroras were actually atmospheric phenomena, that is to say, weather of a particular type. Proof of various sorts was offered. Auroras apparently had a sound, “the noise of crepitation,” or crackling, that marked them as Earth-bound phenomena. Even weirder explanations arose, like meteorologist Ebenezer Miriam’s hilariously quacky quote in The New York Times.

“The Aurora (electricity discharged from the craters of volcanoes) either dissolves in the atmosphere, and is thus diffused through space or concentrated into a gelatineus[sic] substance forming meteors, called shooting stars,” Miriam wrote. “These meteors dissolve rapidly in atmospheric air, but sometimes reach the earth before dissolving, and resemble thin starch.”

But some scientists were on the right track. Eighteen hours before the storm hit, Richard Carrington, a young but well-respected British astronomer, had been making his daily sunspot observations when he saw two brilliant spots of light. We know now that what he was seeing was the heating up of the surface of the sun beyond its standard fusion-powered temperature of about 5,500 degrees Celsius [10,000 degrees Fahrenheit]. The energy to do so came from a magnetic explosion as a distended part of the sun’s magnetic field snapped and reconnected.

“They give off the energy equivalent of about 10 million atomic bombs in the matter of an hour or two,” Hathaway said. “[The 1859] one was special, and it was noticed, because it was a white light flare. It actually heated up the surface of the sun well enough to light up the sun.”

Though back then Carrington didn’t know what he was looking at, five years of staring at the sun had taught him that what he was seeing was unprecedented. When in the wee hours of the next night, the skies all over the globe began turning brilliant colors, Carrington knew he was on to something.

“I think that it represents a tipping point in astronomy because for the first time, astronomers had concrete evidence that a force other than gravity could communicate itself across 93 million miles of space,” said Stuart Clark, author of the book The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began.

Still, it would be decades before the scientific theory would catch up with the observations. British heavyweights like Lord Kelvin opined that the sun could never deliver the level of energy that had been observed on Earth. Understanding what was happening without understanding how the sun worked or the nature of particles was not exactly easy.

“It’s a great example of where theory and observation don’t match up,” Clark said. “The scientific establishment tends to believe the theory, but it’s usually the other way around, and the observations are correct. You have to build up a critical mass of observations to shift the scientific theory.”

Over time, more and more observations did shift the theory, and the sun was held properly responsible for geomagnetic storms. The technological lesson that electrical equipment could be disturbed was largely forgotten, though.

When a geomagnetic storm hits the Earth, it shakes the Earth’s magnetosphere. As the magnetized plasma pushes the Earth’s magnetic field lines around, currents flow. Those currents have their own magnetic fields and soon, down at the ground, strong electromagnetic forces are in play. In other words, your telegraph can run on “auroral current.”

Geomagnetic storms, though, can have less benign impacts. On Aug. 4, 1972, a Bell Telephone line running from Chicago to San Francisco got knocked out. Bell Labs researchers wanted to find out why, and their findings led them right back to 1859 and the auroral current.

Louis Lanzerotti, now an engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, went digging in the Bell Labs library for similar events and explanations. Along with field research, the history became the core of a new approach to building more robust electrical systems.

“We did all this analysis and wrote this paper in ‘74 for the Bell Systems Technical Journal,” Lanzerotti said. “And it really made a helluva of a difference in Bell Systems. They redesigned their power systems.”

The fight to secure the Earth’s technical systems from geomagnetic anomalies continues. In late 2008, the National Academies of Science put out a report on severe space weather events. If a storm even approaching 1859 levels were to happen again, they concluded the damage could range upwards of a $1 trillion, largely because of disruptions to the electrical grid.

The data on how often huge storms occur is scarce. Ice cores are the main evidence we have outside human historical documents. Charged particles can interact with nitrogen in the atmosphere, creating nitrides. The increased concentration of those molecules can be detected by looking at ice cores, which act like a logbook of the atmosphere at a given time. Over the last 500 years of this data, the 1859 event was twice as big as anything else.

Even so, the sun remains a bit of a mystery, particularly these tremendously energetic events. Scientists like Hathaway are able to describe why one geomagnetic storm might be bigger than another based on the details of how it arose, but they are hard pressed to predict when or why a freakishly large storm might arise.

Scientific understanding of how the sun impacts the Earth and its tech-heavy humans isn’t complete, but at least we know when it got its start: the early hours of Sept. 2, 1859.

“It’s at that point we realize that these celestial objects affected our technologies and the way we wanted to live our lives,” Stuart said.

And it turns out, our burning hot star still does.

Image: TRACE/NASA

This article first appeared in Wired Science on Sept. 2, 2009.

Alexis Madrigal is now a senior editor at The Atlantic. He’s the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.

See Also: April 27, 1791: Samuel F.B. Morse, ‘American Leonardo,’ BornThe Geomagnetic Apocalypse — And How to Stop ItAstronaut Captures Fantastic Shot of Aurora From SpaceNew Aurora Webcam Captures Spectacular Videos, ImagesScientists Discover What Makes Northern Lights DanceNorthern Lights’ Source Found in Giant ‘Magnetic Ropes’Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night SkiesApril 25, 1859: Big Dig Starts for Suez CanalMay 15, 1859: Pierre Curie, Radium’s Co-Discoverer, Is BornMay 22, 1859: It’s Elementary, My Dear ReaderAug 17, 1859: U.S. Airmail Carried by BalloonAug. 27, 1859: America Enters the Oil BidnessNov. 1, 1859: A Welcome Sight for Those in Peril Upon the SeaSept. 2, 1969: First U.S. ATM Starts Doling Out DollarsSept. 2, 1993: U.S., Russia Ink Space PactSept. 2, 1985: Hey, Everyone, We Found the Titanic

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Journal Editor Resigns Over Flawed Global Warming Paper

boring "all AGW sceptics are creationists" meme.

You don't have to be a creationist to be an AGW skeptic, but it helps.

Then again, you only need to work for a creationist, or oil company, and that's just as good.

I get a kick out of you guys who registered as Slashdot users a few days ago just to refute climate science. You even go to the trouble of making one, maybe two short little posts on a few other stories before you get to the real reason you came here.

Be honest - which of the "New Media Strategies" outfits do you work for? How well do they pay? There are three of you here in this one discussion, all who joined Slashdot within a few days just to post in the climate stories, all posting exactly the same tone in the same language, so I assume you're all the same guy. With the "yourmommycalled" username you didn't even bother to post comments to any story but the climate stories. I guess you're still learning the ropes. Is it hard to keep your usernames straight?

Look, I know it's hard to make a buck right now and recent grads are having a real hard time of it, but don't you feel a little bit like a shit for doing what you're doing? Like someone who's giving blowjobs for ten-spots in a bus station bathroom? Because that's kind of what it seems like to me. You might be a perfectly decent guy who just needed the work, but at some point, you've got start to think that there has to be better ways to make a living.

I wish you luck, friend. It can't be easy.


View the original article here

Your Guide to Living Life in 10 Fictional Worlds

Credits: Monopoly: Corbis; Kronos, Narnia, Cylon, Galactic, Mordor, Sodor: Everett

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Canadian authorities probing employees of SNC-Lavalin Group

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Canadian authorities are investigating employees of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc for possible corruption involving a $1.2 billion World Bank bridge project in Bangladesh, a bank spokesman said on Friday.

The World Bank said it had been informed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had raided several locations as part of their investigation. SNC-Lavalin confirmed it was cooperating with Canadian authorities, but gave no details.

Canadian authorities launched the probe following a referral from World Bank officials about alleged corruption in the bidding process for the Padma Bridge, a bank spokesman said. He said the bank was continuing its own investigation.

The World Bank approved financing for the Padma Bridge project in April, but had not disbursed any funds given the ongoing investigation, said the spokesman.

"We commend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for its robust response to the World Bank referral and look forward to the outcome of its investigation," said the spokesman.

Leslie Quinton, a spokeswoman for SNC-Lavalin, said the company was assisting Canadian authorities with an investigation on a specific case, but gave no further details.

"We are complying fully with their requests and are not aware of any reason that would warrant such an investigation," Quinton said. "Because the situation is under investigation, we cannot comment any further."

Constable Julie Morel, spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, confirmed that the police agency had executed search warrants at several locations as part of an investigation of SNC-Lavalin employees on Thursday.

She declined to identify which locations or to provide any further details since the investigation was still under way.

The World Bank signed a 40-year deal in April to loan $1.2 billion to Bangladesh to build a bridge linking its underdeveloped south with the capital, Dhaka, and the country's main port, Chittagong.

An international consortium, led by the World Bank, last year agreed to lend Bangladesh up to $2.9 billion for the 6-km (4-mile) multi-purpose bridge over the river Padma.

The bridge, about 50 km (30 miles) south of Dhaka, is expected to be completed by 2014, improving transportation between Bangladesh and other countries, and establishing a missing link along the longest corridor under the Asian Highway Network that connects Tokyo to Istanbul.

The World Bank last week outlined its increased efforts to prevent and deter fraud and corruption. Over the past year, the bank said its new Preventive Services Unit (PSU) had helped build precautions against fraud into 48 high-risk projects in 29 countries with a total value of $14.1 billion.

The bank said it had trained over 2,700 government officials and bank staff on how to conduct forensic audits and identify suspicious transactions.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa and Tim Ahmann; editing by Carol Bishopric)


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Apple hunted lost item - clue points to new iPhone

OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - San Francisco police said on Friday they had helped Apple Inc security search for a "lost item," following a week of reports that a prototype of the newest iPhone had gone missing in July.

Officers did not say exactly what Apple had lost, but they left a clue -- the San Francisco Police Department's Friday press release about the hunt was called "iphone5.doc," an apparent reference to a new version of the mobile phone that tech industry watchers expect to be released soon.

Apple declined to comment on the matter.

Tech news service CNET this week said an iPhone 5, which has not been released, went missing in a San Francisco bar in July. SF Weekly, a local newspaper, on Friday quoted a San Francisco man as saying police had come to his house in July searching for a lost iPhone.

Although a prototype of the iPhone 4 went missing in 2010, police said this time Apple had tracked "the lost item" to a San Francisco house and four police accompanied two Apple employees to the house.

"The two Apple (security) employees met with the resident and then went into the house to look for the lost item. The Apple employees did not find the lost item and left the house," the police statement said.

It did not say why police accompanied Apple security or the circumstances under which Apple employees "went into the house to look for the lost item". Police did not respond to a request for further comment.

SF Weekly quoted a 22-year-old man who described himself as the resident of the searched house as saying the group identified themselves as police and that none had said they were working for Apple. They had traced the phone to the house using satellite positioning software on the device but did not find anything in the house, he said he was told.

The man, identified by SF Weekly as Sergio Calderon, could not be reached for comment by Reuters.

Police, meanwhile, gave different versions of events during the day on Friday, while Apple has declined to comment at all.

Hours before San Francisco police issued their statement about the search, SFPD spokesman Lieutenant Troy Dangerfield denied that police had been contacted by Apple in connection with any lost phone, or by the person visited by Apple security and the police.

"No one has reported anything," Dangerfield told Reuters.

In general, Dangerfield said SFPD requires a supervisor's approval for personnel who are not law enforcement officers to accompany police during investigations.

"It's not routinely done at all," Dangerfield said.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson and Dan Levine)


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Tuesday 7atSeven: buyback blues

Thanks for checking in with us for seven (or so) links at 7AM Eastern.  Good luck out there.

The equity markets are at a fork (2008 or 2010) in the road?  (Global Macro Monitor)

Is the liquidation phase over?  (Doug Kass)

The Dow Jones Transport index is 25% off its high.  (MarketBeat)

Only a handful of global markets sit above their 200-day moving averages.  (My Simple Quant)

The cyclical stock plunge continues.  (Crossing Wall Street)

How to evaluate gold in the midst of a blow-off phase.  (chessNwine)

The chickens are coming home to roost at Bank of America ($BAC).  (Money Game, Deal Journal, NetNet, WSJ, naked capitalism)

S&P gets a new credit ratings head and investors call for a breakup of McGraw-Hill ($MHP).  (Dealbook, Bloomberg)

What’s the deal with stock buybacks?  (The Reformed Broker, FT)

Thanks for checking in with Abnormal Returns. For all the latest you can follow us on StockTwits and Twitter.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Building 2011's Sub-$200 Computer

23585226 story The Almighty Buck Hardware Posted by timothy on Friday September 02, @08:59PM
from the trade-one-form-of-depreciation-for-another dept. adeelarshad82 links to PC Magazine's recent account (updating a similar quest detailed last year) "to see if a decent PC could put together for less than $200. Turns out that between some great deals, an AMD processor, and a Linux OS, it can actually be done." They actually come out with a decent-enough system for that money — but omitting an optical drive in a full-size desktop computer build seems something like cheating.

Jobs woes sink Wall Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks tumbled 2 percent on Friday after data showing zero jobs growth in August brought investors face-to-face with the prospect of another recession.

The declines left Wall Street lower for the sixth week out of seven as declining issues far outweighed winners on a light-volume day ahead of the long U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend.

Stocks had rebounded recently on expectations the Federal Reserve would introduce new stimulus to boost the sluggish economy. But the Labor Department's latest report underscores that action by the Fed alone cannot address the economy's deep problems.

"By itself the Fed can't restore confidence or create jobs, so any steps it might take won't be game-changing for the economic growth prospects," said Leo Grohowski, chief investment officer at BNY Mellon Wealth Management in New York, where he oversees about $171 billion in client assets.

Bank shares were again among the day's biggest losers, with Bank of America Corp tumbling 8.3 percent to $7.25, making it the top decliner on the Dow, where all 30 components fell. JPMorgan Chase & Co fell 4.6 percent to $34.63 and the KBW banks index lost 4.5 percent.

A U.S. housing regulator filed a lawsuit against Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and other big lenders over mortgage practices that led to losses at government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

There was no growth in nonfarm jobs in August as sagging consumer confidence discouraged already skittish businesses from hiring, keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve to provide more monetary stimulus to the economy.

U.S. President Barack Obama, in a speech set for Thursday, will unveil a jobs program he hopes will provide "meaningful" tax relief and help the nation's long-term unemployed, a top aide told Reuters Insider.

"The likelihood of more stimulus has increased dramatically as a result of this and some other recent data, but at this point it's unclear how much that will really help markets," said Derek Hoyt, chief investment officer at KDV Wealth Management in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 253.16 points, or 2.20 percent, at 11,240.41. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 30.46 points, or 2.53 percent, at 1,173.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 65.71 points, or 2.58 percent, at 2,480.33.

Friday marked the S&P's biggest drop in two weeks.

Despite the day's sharp decline, stocks were only modestly lower for the week, after a rally in the first three day of trading. For the week, the Dow fell 0.4 percent, the S&P lost 0.2 percent, and the Nasdaq was flat.

Losing stocks outnumbered winners by more than six-to-one on both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The CBOE Volatility index, a gauge of investor fear, rose 5.9 percent.

Volume was light ahead of the holiday, with about 6.88 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, below last year's daily average of 8.47 billion.

Netflix Inc weighed on the Nasdaq, falling 8.6 percent to $213.11 after the collapse of its content distribution talks with pay-TV operator Starz Entertainment.

Energy shares dropped as U.S. crude futures fell 2.5 percent on concerns economic weakness could curb fuel demand. Chevron Corp dipped 2.1 percent to $96.41, while the PHLX Oil service sector index declined 3.3 percent.

As investors sought safer assets, gold prices climbed 3 percent. Newmont Mining was the S&P's top gainer, rising 3.2 percent to $64.47.

(Editing by Leslie Adler)


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Feds sue big banks over sales of risky investments

NEW YORK (AP) — The government on Friday sued 17 financial firms, including the largest U.S. banks, for selling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic when the housing market collapsed.

Among those targeted by the lawsuits were Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Large European banks including The Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Bank and Credit Suisse were also sued.

The lawsuits were filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It oversees Fannie and Freddie, the two agencies that buy mortgages loans and mortgage securities issued by the lenders.

The total price tag for the mortgage-backed securities sold to Fannie and Freddie by the firms named in the lawsuits: $196 billion.

The government didn't say how much it is seeking in damages. It said it wants to have the securities sales canceled and wants to be compensated for lost principal, interest payments as well as for attorney fees.

The government action is a big blow to the banks, many of which have seen their stock prices fall to levels not seen since the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Until now, the stocks have been undermined mostly by unrelated worries about the U.S. and European economies.

It is particularly damaging to Bank of America, which bought Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2008 and Merrill Lynch in 2009. All three are being separately sued by the government for mortgage-backed security sales totaling $57.5 billion.

After Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase was listed in the lawsuits with the second-highest total at $33 billion. Royal Bank of Scotland followed at $30.4 billion.

Bank of America has already paid $12.7 billion this year to settle similar claims. Last month insurer American International Group Inc. sued the bank for more than $10 billion for allegedly selling it faulty mortgage investments.

In a statement Friday, Bank of America rejected the claims in the government's lawsuits.

Fannie and Freddie invested heavily in the mortgage-backed securities even after their regulator said they didn't have the needed risk-management capabilities, the bank said. "Despite this, (Fannie and Freddie) are now seeking to hold other market participants responsible for their losses," it said.

Bank stocks fell sharply on Friday as news of the government's lawsuits emerged. Bank of America tumbled 8.3 percent, JP Morgan Chase fell 4.6 percent, Citigroup lost 5.3 percent, Goldman shed off 4.5 percent and Morgan Stanley's ended down 5.7 percent.

Residential mortgage-backed securities bundled pools of mortgages into complex investments. They collapsed after the real-estate bust and helped fuel the financial crisis in late 2008.

The FHFA said the mortgage-backed securities were sold to Fannie and Freddie based on documents that "contained misstatements and omissions of material facts concerning the quality of the underlying mortgage loans, the creditworthiness of the borrowers, and the practices used to originate such loans."

The FHFA filed a similar lawsuit in July against Swiss bank UBS AG, seeking to recoup more than $900 million in losses from mortgage-backed securities.

Also sued Friday were are Ally Financial Inc., formerly known GMAC LLC, Deutsche Bank AG, First Horizon National Corp., General Electric Co., HSBC North America Holdings Inc., Morgan Stanley, Nomura Holding America Inc., and Societe Generale.

JPMorgan, Goldman, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the lawsuits. Ally Financial said in a statement said the government's "claims are meritless, and the company intends to defend its position aggressively." A spokeswoman for First Horizon said the bank intends to "vigorously defend" itself.

Ken Thomas, a Miami-based banking consultant and economist, said he expects the banks to settle soon with the government.

"This will be nothing but a distraction to them and the quicker you settle something like this the better," he said.

___

Christina Rexrode contributed to this report.


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Wednesday 7atSeven: twisting by the pool

Thanks for checking in with us for seven (or so) links at 7AM Eastern.  Good luck out there.

How much capital does Bank of America ($BAC) need to raise? (FT Alphaville, Clusterstock also All Star Charts)

Why banks should listen to their risk managers.  (Kid Dynamite, Deal Journal)

Paul Tudor Jones II is cutting fees, but don’t worry he will be OK.  (WSJ)

Sprint ($S) needs all the help it can get.  iPhone 5 to the rescue.  (Deal Journal, WSJ)

Reports of Facebook’s demise are greatly exaggerated.  (TechInsidr also Term Sheet)

Moody’s takes a whack at Japan’s credit rating.  (WSJ)

Eurobonds ain’t gonna cut it.  (FT, voxEU)

The markets are expecting the Fed to engage in “operation twist.”  (Real Time Economics, Pragmatic Capitalism)

Why so many people felt yesterday’s Richmond earthquake.  (The Atlantic)

Thanks for checking in with Abnormal Returns. For all the latest you can follow us on StockTwits and Twitter.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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Buy vs. build: the ETF index decision

Just a quick note on what could be a profound change in the way the ETF industry works.  Olivier Ludwig at IndexUniverse reports that Blackrock ($BLK) owner of the iShares ETFs has filed to become an index provider.  In so doing they have upped the ante on what it takes to be a player in the ETF industry.  I am surprised that this story has not gotten more play in the financial media.

Right now most ETF provider license the indices they use that underlie ETFs from outside providers.  Blackrock is now changing the game by moving to an in-house index model.  It will be interesting to see if and when they move to switch over the indices for some of the world’s largest and most popular ETFs.  Ludwig writes:

If iShares chooses to segue to its own indexes on existing funds, the effects would reverberate widely in the U.S. ETF industry. After all, the firm now has almost $430 billion in ETF assets, according to data compiled by IndexUniverse. It didn’t shed any light on its long-term intentions in the filing.

If I were in the index business I would not be a happy camper today.  This business has been quite lucrative for the index providers as assets under management in the ETF industry have swelled.*  If Blackrock is going to take their index business in-house, you can bet that other firms will seriously contemplate doing this as well.

At the same time it is widely believed that more firms will join the ETF fray in anticipation that actively managed ETFs will eventually take off.  It will be interesting to see if this move by Blackrock into the index business is part of a broader strategy that take into account the active ETF side of things.

*See an earlier piece by The Reformed Broker on the wacky ETF index business.

Updates:  Ian Salisbury at WSJ picks up on the story and explores some of the reasons why Blackrock is making this move.  Miles Weiss at Bloomberg provides some additional detail on why the SEC is concerned about in-house index providers.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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Apple Investigators Allegedly Posed as Cops in iPhone Prototype Hunt

Former CEO Steve Jobs handles the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

A little more light has been shed on the odd story of Apple losing another iPhone prototype in a Bay Area bar.

The man who’s home was searched by what he believed to be San Francisco Police Department officers was Bernal Heights resident Sergio Calderón, SF Weekly discovered. And the police officers? They may have been investigators working for Apple who were actually impersonating police officers.

Impersonating a police officer is a misdemeanor in California, and is punishable by up to a year of jail time. Another option is that Apple was working with police officers, and a proper report was never filed. When the SFPD has been called and asked about the Apple incident, representatives said they had no knowledge of the search.

“This is something that’s going to need to be investigated now,” SFPD spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield told SF Weekly. “If this guy is saying that the people said they were SFPD, that’s a big deal.”

On Wednesday CNET News.com reported that in late July an Apple representative lost a “priceless” next generation iPhone prototype in San Francisco bar Cava 22. Apple reportedly used GPS to track the phone to a Bernal Heights area home, where police officers were given permission to search the home for the device. The resident was offered money by Apple for the iPhone’s safe return, but it was not turned in. The phone was sold on Craigslist for $200, according to CNET, but no independent evidence of the post has surfaced.

The incident is reminiscent of what happened last year when an iPhone 4 prototype was left at a Redwood City bar, and purchased for $5,000 by Gizmodo.

Here’s what went down, according to the new report by SF Weekly:

Calderón said that at about 6 p.m. six people — four men and two women — wearing badges of some kind showed up at his door. “They said, ‘Hey, Sergio, we’re from the San Francisco Police Department.’” He said they asked him whether he had been at Cava 22 over the weekend (he had) and told him that they had traced a lost iPhone to his home using GPS.

They did not say they were there on Apple’s behalf, but they said that the “owner of the phone” would offer Calderón $300 for the phone.

Calderón told SF Weekly that he was threatened by the law-enforcement officers when they visited his house, and said that he has no knowledge of the prototype.

One of the officers who visited the Calderón household was a man named “Tony”. He left his phone number with Calderón in case he discovered any information about the lost phone. It turns out the phone number belongs to an ex-cop named Anthony Colon, who apparently now works for Apple. A search on LinkedIn found that Colon works as a special investigator for Apple and is a former San Jose police officer. That page is now removed from the site, but caches can still be viewed.

This tale keeps getting weirder and weirder. Apple hasn’t returned phone calls on the matter from Wired.com.

via The Giz

Christina is a Wired.com staff writer covering Apple, robotics, and everything in between. She's also written for Gizmodo and Wired magazine. Check out her Google+ profile here.
Follow @redgirlsays and @gadgetlab on Twitter.

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Monday, September 5, 2011

Alt Text: How Apple and HP Win Big by Losing

In a significant victory for corporate personhood, Apple has developed a drinking problem. For the second time, a prototype iPhone has been left behind in a bar, presumably abandoned after the owner was propositioned by an Android smartphone with more “swagger.”

bug_altextI take away two things from these twin incidents. First, whatever flaws iPhones have, they’re gin-proof. This is a relief; I lost my first Newton to a Singapore Sling in ‘94.

Secondly, Apple has a suspicious knack for headline-friendly loss incidents. A bar is an ideal place to lose a hip new piece of consumer technology. “Apple Loses Another iPhone Prototype at a Bar” sounds a lot better than “Blackberry Prototype Lost at Marketing Seminar.”

Meanwhile, in nearly related news, HP has discovered that the only way to win against Apple in the tablet market is not to play. Or, more precisely, to play to lose. By selling doomed hardware coupled with abandoned software for less than the price of a week’s parking in San Francisco, HP is selling out of tablets that a month ago got less love than a herpetic bedbug.

The approach has been so successful that, like an aging rock band, HP is planning a second farewell tour. It promises to lose more money on a new batch of obsolescent tablets any day now. After all, the “lose money with no real plan” approach has worked so well for web companies — give or take the odd economy-shattering dot-com crash — that it’s about time hardware companies joined the party.

All this is taking place against the backdrop of the departure of Steve Jobs from Apple, which has led to widespread speculation as to whether his replacement will have enough chemistry with Jim and Dwight to carry the trendsetting international company through its eighth season.

What changes will we see at Apple over the next year or so? It’s anybody’s guess.

Wait, strike that. It’s my guess. I’m the guesser here.

Look for porn to get its own category in the App Store.

First off, porn and lots of it. Jobs’ bluenose App Store policies have left millions of dollars on the mattress, and the new Apple is going to want to make up for lost revenue. Look for porn to get its own category in the App Store, a “Porn App of the Week” and some very distracting billboards.

Secondly, Apple will soften its stance toward news outlets that publish unauthorized information about upcoming products. The descendants of the editors and reporters will only be cursed unto the seventh generation, instead of the current Apple policy of cursing them until the coming of the Great Shutdown.

Thirdly, the iMac will finally get a floppy drive.

And finally, the standing policy of giving out product prototypes to forgetful, bar-hopping employees will be modified somewhat, forbidding the practice unless at least two publicity agents and a professional photographer are present.

- - -

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become an innovator, an excavator and an elevator.

Award-winning humorist Lore Sjöberg is the author of The Book of Ratings, a founder of The Brunching Shuttlecocks, and the creator of The Cyborg Name Decoder. His work has appeared in Wired magazine, Adbusters, and has appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered.
Follow @loresjoberg and @theunderwire on Twitter.

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