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Wednesday, April 10, 2013
WikiLeaks Spills Its Biggest Ever Stash of Secret US Records
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Roger Ebert gets his final 'thumbs up'
Roger Ebert's funeral was attended by family, friends, and fans. "It didn't matter to him your race, creed, color," said his widow. "He had a big enough heart to accept and love all."
Movie critics Roger Ebert (r.) and Gene Siskel trademarked their 'two thumbs up' phrase. Mr. Siskel passed on in 1999 and Mr. Ebert passed on last week; his funeral was held today in Chicago.
Disney-ABC Domestic Television / AP / File
EnlargeRoger?Ebert, one of the nation's most influential film critics who used newspapers, television and social media to take readers into theaters and even into his own life, was laid to rest Monday with praise from political leaders, family and people he'd never met but who chose movies based on the direction of his thumb.
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"He didn't just dominate his profession, he defined it," said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a brief eulogy to hundreds of mourners who gathered at Holy Name Cathedral just blocks from where?Ebert?spent more than 40 years as the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.?Ebert?died last Thursday at the age of 70 after a yearslong battle with cancer.
It was?Ebert?who told readers which films to see and needed to see and which ones they should stay away from, Mr. Emanuel said, remembering the influence?Ebert?had on movie goers through his newspaper reviews and the immensely popular television show he hosted with fellow critic Gene Siskel during which they would issue thumbs-up or thumbs-down assessments.
"Roger spent a lot of time sitting through bad movies so we didn't have to," joked the mayor.
In a 90-minute funeral mass, speakers took turns talking about how?Ebert?spent his career communicating his ideas about movies, social issues, the newspaper business and finally the health problems that left him unable to speak.
"He realized that connecting to people was the main reason we're all here and that's what his life was all about," said Sonia Evans, his stepdaughter, her voice choking with emotion.
That realization, she and other speakers said, helped explain?Ebert's?fascination with outlets such as Twitter and his blog that he took to just two days before he died to tell readers he was taking a "leave of presence."
"Roger was 24-7 before anybody thought of that term," said John Barron,?Ebert's?former boss at the Sun-Times, who said?Ebert?was among the first to recognize the changing media landscape as well as the first in the office to use a computer or send emails.
Ebert?was also a champion for the little guy, as over the years he weighed more and more on social issues and other topics that had nothing to do with film.
Gov. Pat Quinn spoke as much, if not more, about?Ebert's?"passion for social justice" and the fact that he was a "union man," as he did about?Ebert?as a film critic.
Ebert's?widow, Chaz, who received a standing ovation as she made her way to the lectern to speak, expanded on that devotion.
"It didn't matter to him your race, creed, color," she said. "He had a big enough heart to accept and love all."
That was the message of Jonathan Jackson, who, after relating comments from his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, told the crowded church why?Ebert's?early support for the films of Spike Lee and other black filmmakers was so important.
"He respected what we had to say about ourselves," said Jackson, who pointed to?Ebert's?glowing review of Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing' in the late 1980s. "It was not his story but he understood the value of an important film was authenticity and not the fact that it depicted your interests."
As when other Chicago icons such as former Cubs great Ron Santo died, fans of?Ebert?flocked to the church to pay tribute to someone they saw as one of their own: a Chicago guy. Fans said they liked it that?Ebert?never left the city for Los Angeles or New York, and that he remained a newspaper writer until the end. Some clapped when Barron ended his remarks with a story about how?Ebert?kept his word to stay at the paper.
And they liked it that he didn't hide after surgeons had to remove portions of his jaw.
"He let himself be the face of cancer and that illness," said Peggy Callahan, a 67-year-old retired teacher. "He did that and he kept doing that."
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/i1ROLHQ0JGc/Roger-Ebert-gets-his-final-thumbs-up
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Ackman may be eyeing exit as JC Penney bet in tatters
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Katya Wachtel
BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - William Ackman's multiyear bet that he could overhaul ailing retailer JC Penney
On Monday, JC Penney's board dismissed Ron Johnson, a former Apple executive handpicked by Ackman to remake the retailer, and brought back Mike Ullman, whom Ackman has previously criticized.
Now the hedge fund manager is likely searching for his own quick exit from an investment that is costing his $12 billion Pershing Square Capital Management millions in losses and has tarnished his reputation, say industry analysts and investors.
Selling off parts or taking the company private would be ways to quit now that JC Penney's slumping stock price has cost Pershing Square some $500 million in paper losses, people familiar with the firm said.
"The faster Ackman and group sell JCP's valuable assets to someone else, the more value they will capture," said George Bradt, managing director of PrimeGenesis, an executive consulting firm. "The longer they stay distracted with sure-to-fail ideas like fixing the business or taking it private, the less value will be left when JCP finally ceases to exist."
Taking it private is also a viable way for Ackman to get out. Even before Pershing Square and Vornado Realty Trust showed up in 2010, private equity investors were circling.
Today, a purchase would be cheaper with the stock price near at $14 a share, down about six dollars a share from where Ackman started buying. And a deal would still be attractive for players like Blackstone Group
Ackman has long championed JC Penney's vast real estate holdings as one reason the company should be trading at a higher stock price. Joining the JC Penney board in 2011, he also said less than a year a ago that Pershing Square could make 15 times its money if Ron Johnson's ambitious turnaround plans worked.
But that strategy resulted in Johnson's dismissal, and his plans to upgrade the stores and merchandise is in tatters. Now Mike Ullman, the CEO Ackman forced out has been brought back from retirement to run the company, so there is little reason for an activist investor to stick around.
The usually voluble Ackman has yet to publicly comment on the management changes at JC Penney, and he did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Shares of JC Penney rose almost 11 percent late Monday after Johnson had been ousted, but the stock fell when the company said Ullman was back, and continued its plunge on Tuesday, its shares down more than 10 percent in early afternoon trade.
"What we have now is clearly the worst case scenario and Bill will be looking to make as graceful an exit as quickly as possible," said one Pershing Square investor, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly.
Privately Ackman has long said the investment could be risky because it relied so heavily on shoppers liking Johnson's plan.
More stinging for Ackman personally may be that he appears to have been marginalized on a board that went back to the old boss, even though Ullman's tenure may not be long given that he has no employment contract.
"It appears the board is grasping for stability and the situation is more dire than outsiders realized," said Damien Park, the president of Hedge Fund Solutions, which tracks activist investors who push for management changes. "Ackman and the remainder of the board have a lot of work to do to demonstrate they're acting as a cohesive group."
One thing Ackman will likely not do is try to put the JC Penney investments into a side pocket the way some other hedge funds have done with their own poorly performing assets.
So far Pershing Square, which has strict liquidity conditions where investors need about two years to get their money back, has not been hit with heavy redemptions and the JC Penney investment is liquid enough to sell it off over time.
Pershing Square returned 6.1 percent during the first quarter even as JC Penney's stock was tumbling, suggesting that investors have no reason to run for the exits right now.
But the pick does cast a shadow over Ackman's record where average annual returns of 20 percent have made him a favorite with pension funds and other big investors.
The failure of Ackman's "candidate has resulted in substantially diminished credibility for him prospectively," said one investor who is not invested with Ackman but did not want to be named due to his continuing work in the hedge fund industry.
This does "not bode well for the board's receptivity to future recommendations. He is now a neutered activist," the person said.
(Reporting By Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston and Katya Wachtel in New York; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ackman-may-eyeing-exit-jc-penney-bet-tatters-173248898--sector.html
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Remains of The Day: Facebook Home Raises Privacy Concerns
- Answering Your Questions on Home and Privacy Like most things Facebook does, it's forthcoming Home Screen/Android Launcher Facebook Home has been met with much concern over how private the new application would be. Today Facebook responded, reassuring users that the app can be turned off/uninstalled and, like other Facebook apps, collects information on how you interact with it. Due to it's nature as a home/lock screen replacement, this means that while the type of information Facebook Home gleans from you isn't very different, the quantity of information could potentially be much higher. A very janky, pre-release version of Facebook Home leaked earlier this morning, but seems to have since been taken offline. [Facebook Newsroom]
- 14.0.477 ? An Update of Feedly Desktop Focused on Performance and Quality Feedly, your favorite Google Reader alternative, released an update today for Chrome/Safari/Firefox browsers. The changes include a fix for a bug that required users to re-login when the server was under a high load, increased width and sharing options in title only view, and faster load times. [Feedly]
- Microsoft Planning Xbox Event for May Rumors say that Microsoft is planning to unveil the next Xbox, codenamed Durango, at an event on May 21st. [The Verge]
Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).
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Monday, April 8, 2013
'Star Trek' phaser sells for $231K at auction
By Andy Lewis, The Hollywood Reporter
A one-of-a-kind phaser rifle used by?William Shatner?in the second pilot made for the original "Star Trek"?series sold for $231,000 at an auction conducted by Julien's.?
Reuters
A laser rifle from the William Shatner-starring 2nd pilot for "Star Trek" sold for $231,000 at auction.
The price is the second-highest paid at auction for a prop from the 1960s edition of "Star Trek," surpassed only by the $304,750 a collector laid out for the captain's chair in 2008. A miniature special effects model of the enterprise from?"Star Trek: The Next Generation"?sold for $576,000 in 2006.?
More from THR:?'Star Trek: The Next Generation' Cast Headlines Toronto ComiCon
Props and memorabilia from the original series are highly sought after by collectors. In addition to being an iconic and beloved show, many original items were lost or destroyed so that authentic memorabilia is comparatively rare.?
Toy designer?Reuben Klamer?created the prop for?Gene Roddenberry?to use in the pilot in exchange for licensing rights to produce toys based on the design. The rifle was seen in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," which was filmed as the series pilot but was the third episode of the series broadcast, airing on Sept. 22, 1966.??
The story revolves around a Lt. Commander who gains telepathic and telekinetic powers that threaten the crew. Captain Kirk (Shatner) kills the officer with the phaser rifle when he threatens the whole crew. After the pilot was completed, the phaser rifle was replaced with the now familiar handgun-style phaser.?
Photos from THR: 'STar Trek: Into Darkness'
The rifle never appeared in another episode, though it was seen in publicity photos of Shatner as Kirk and on an early lunchbox.?The prop is made of wood with an aluminum barrel and is painted with a metallic blue-green paint.??
After production, the rifle was returned to Klamer. See a video of the designer talking about its origins and construction below.
More in The Clicker:
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Sunday, April 7, 2013
Eyeing Syria, White House woos regional rulers
WASHINGTON (AP) ? When President Barack Obama meets over the next month with leaders from Mideast and other regional nations, he will have a timely opportunity to try to rally the Syrian opposition's main backers around a unified strategy to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Jordan, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates ? whose Sunni Muslim leaders will meet separately with Obama starting April 16? are all believed to be arming or training rebel forces seeking to overthrow Assad's regime. But disparate political, geographic and religious considerations have led to conflicting approaches to which rebel factions to back and what kind of support to provide.
Infighting among mostly Sunni opposition groups and their failure to agree on a power structure to take over if Assad falls has been an important factor aiding the Alawite president as he clings to power two years into a civil war that has left at least 70,000 dead. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the civil war has largely broken down along sectarian lines.
As resolute as Obama and most U.S. allies are that Assad must go, officials are increasingly worried about what Syria will look like if the regime falls before opposition groups can agree on a governing structure. That has resulted in extra U.S. pressure on regional allies to convince the opposition to unite.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the high-level visits by leaders from the four nations reflect Obama's "deep personal interest" in the region and his commitment to the policies the U.S. is advocating.
"He will use these opportunities to discuss the complex developments in the broader Middle East," Carney said. "Not just Syria, but including Syria."
He pointed to other developments related to the Arab Spring and Obama's visit in March to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories as other topics the president would likely discuss with the Arab leaders. Secretary of State John Kerry also is returning to the Middle East on Saturday for meetings on Syria and Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Additionally, senior Obama administration leaders at the White House, State Department and Pentagon held a high-level meeting Friday that focused on Syria among its top national security priorities, according to two officials familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the talks to the news media. Senior U.S. officials have been meeting regularly to discuss a range of options on U.S. involvement in Syria, including whether to arm the rebels.
"We are constantly reviewing every possible option that could help end the violence and accelerate a political transition," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. "We are focusing our efforts on helping the opposition become stronger, more cohesive and more organized."
The global community's response to Syria will also be high on the agenda next Thursday, when Obama meets with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the Oval Office. Washington has resisted arming the rebels, in part for fear that some weapons could fall into the hands of jihadi groups that are designated as terrorist fronts linked to al-Qaida.
But the U.S. has helped train some of the opposition fighters ? mostly former Syrian regime soldiers who have defected ? in Jordan and tacitly endorsed shipments of arms to the opposition from Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Additionally, Kerry said last month that the U.S. will not stop Western nations seeking to open the possibility of arming the rebels, including Great Britain and France.
But the bulk of the aid to rebels has come from Sunni-led governments in Turkey and the Mideast ? as several Shiite leaders in the regions have spirited weapons, fighters and aid to Assad's forces.
Turkey and Qatar, along with Saudi Arabia, are widely believed to have been providing rebels with tanks and surface-to-air missiles to fight regime soldiers. Salman Shaikh, a Mideast expert who specializes in Gulf politics, said those countries have strongly backed the opposition Syrian National Council and its allied fighters ? which include elements of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists, as well as secular groups.
The United Arab Emirates, by contrast, has been unenthusiastic about aiding Islamist elements of the opposition. Shaikh said the Emirates is believed to be sending limited weapons, like small firearms and ammunition, to secular fighters but mostly have focused on supplying the opposition with humanitarian aid.
Syria's protracted civil war has been particularly taxing for Jordan, a close U.S. ally that shared its northern border with Syria and has absorbed more than 460,000 refugees fleeing the conflict ? the equivalent of 10 percent of Jordan's population. It's been just a few weeks since a meeting between Obama and Jordan's ruler, King Abdullah II, in which Syria topped the agenda.
"We are extremely concerned of the risk of prolonged sectarian conflict that, if it continues as we're seeing, leads to the fragmentation of Syria," Abdullah said then, standing alongside Obama in Amman.
Jordan mostly has been helping train and arm rebel fighters who defected from Assad's forces and has done so with U.S. help. It also has served as a way station for rebels' weapons flow into Syria, and this week drew a harsh warning from Assad about "playing with fire" amid Jordanian fears that its larger neighbor might try to retaliate.
The two leaders will meet in Washington on April 26 in what one U.S. diplomat predicted will be Abdullah's attempt to ensure that he has full U.S. backing as Jordan's campaign to help the rebels continues. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks more candidly.
"Regional players will find it difficult to always be singing off the same sheet," said Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center think tank in Doha. "The U.S. hanging back and outsourcing a regional role is never going to achieve the goal of a unified opposition (to the regime) or even the military on the ground."
___
Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
___
Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter: https://twitter.com/larajakesAP
Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshledermanAP
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Jim Ingraham's iChart: Examining the best NFL draft-eligible names
When you get right down to it ? and no country on the planet gets right down to it better than ours, don't you think? ? the only NFL mock draft you need is this one.
The Mock Draft of Names. This has nothing to do with 40-yard dash times, bench-press figures, agility drills or Wonderlic scores.
None of that matters. Because this is the mock draft that names names. In fact, that's all it does.
In this mock draft, the only thing that matters is the player's name. All of the following players are actual players actually eligible for the actual NFL draft later this month, and ? that's right ? these are their actual names.
This is how the draft would shake down if the only thing that mattered were names. So alert the Green Room. Here we go:
1. Kansas City: Stansly Maponga, DE, TCU ? He's not Stan, he's not Stanley, he's Stansly, and there's only one of him. "Maponga"? Sheer poetry.
2. Jacksonville: Barkevious Mingo, DE, LSU ? The strength of this draft is melodically-named defensive linemen, and Barkevious Mingo is one of those once-in-a-generation names that could have gone directly from high school to the NFL.
3. Oakland: Momo Thomas, CB, Colorado State ? After this pick, there will be no mo Momo in this draft.
4. Philadelphia: Isi Sofele, RB, California ? Isi Sofele? You bet he is.
5. Detroit: Taimi Tutogi, FB, Arizona ? Pancaked victims of this blocking back can consider themselves "Tutogi'd". Continued...
6. Browns: Laadarian Waddle, OT, Texas Tech ? After considering trading sideways, the Browns keep this pick, because you can't afford to bypass the chance to add a player named after a traditional dance done at Armenian wedding receptions.
7. Arizona: Blidi Wreh-Wilson, CB, UConn ? Whenever you have a chance to draft a guy named Blidi Wreh, you bloody well better.
8. Buffalo: Oday Aboushi, OG, Virginia ? Some feel this is a reach, but the Bills say they are OK with Oday.
9. Jets: Artavious Dowdell, DE, Eastern Illinois ? Offense sells tickets, but cadence wins games.
10. Tennessee: Trent Dupy, C, Tulsa ? The Titans, who would have settled for a Dopey, a Dippy or a Deppy, are joyously loopy at landing Trent Dupy.
11. San Diego: Jaheel Addae, S, Central Michigan ? It was Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh who first said, "A Jaheel Addae keeps the doctor away."
12. Miami: Cole Zwiefellhofer, P, South Dakota ? His punts and his last name both have legendary hang times.
13. Tampa Bay: Robbie Rouse, RB, Fresno State ? He falls to the Bucs here because some feel Robbie Rouse is a rabble rouser.
14. Carolina: Gokhan Ozkan, OT, Buffalo ? As expected, the Panthers go with the best available Ozkan.
15. New Orleans: Ziggy Ansah, DE, BYU ? What do you get when you ask a Ziggy question? Continued...
16. St. Louis: Ray Ray Armstrong, S, Miami (Fla.) ? Really excels in double coverage.
17. Pittsburgh: Cass Covey, P, Citadel ? A punter in the first round? The Steelers give their fans a stomach ache when they are unable to pass Cass.
18. Dallas: Blaize Foltz, OG, TCU ? We know it and the Cowboys know it. Their biggest need is a hunk-a-hunk o'burning run blocking.
19. Giants: Star Lotulelei, DT, Utah ? He not only has "Star" written all over him, but he fills a need for the Giants because he's the only player in the draft whose name rhymes with "ukulele."
20. Chicago: Alonzo Tweedy, S, Virginia Tech ? Size-wise Tweedy is a tweener. Name-wise Tweedy is a keeper.
21. Cincinnati: Uona Kaveinga, ILB, BYU ? As any defensive coordinator in the league will tell you, you haven't lived until Uona Kaveinga.
22. St. Louis: Toben Opurum, DE, Kansas ? Inexplicably skipped his own pro day workout, causing some scouts to label him "The Phantom of the Opurum."
23. Minnesota: Paipai Falemalu, DT, Hawaii ? Rumor has it that "Paipai" is Polynesian for "Popeye," and that's good enough for the Vikings.
24. Indianapolis: Nick Kasa, TE, Colorado ? After the pick is in, Commissioner Roger Goodell looks to those sitting at the Colts' table and announces "Nick Kasa es su Kasa."
25. Minnesota: Roderick Rumble, WR, Idaho State ? Some names are just made for the NFL. Continued...
26. Green Bay: Joe Unga, OT, Midwestern State ? The over-Unga on his draft slot is 20th.
27. Houston: Zenel Dembasas, OT, Pitt ? The only player in the draft named after a percussion instrument used by most symphony orchestras.
28. Denver: Uzoma Nwachukwu, WR, Texas A&M ? Last name rhymes with "Mwachukwu".
29. New England: Jawanza Starling, S, USC ? ? always a Starling.
30. Atlanta: Omoregie Uzzi, OG, Georgia Tech ? A steal this late in the first round, he is just Uzzing talent.
31. San Francisco: Joaquenssi Eugene, OG, Alabama A&M ? Better known by his nickname "Joaquenss".
32. Baltimore: Eloy Atkinson, C, UTEP ? Would have gone higher in the draft if he wasn't a center, because really cool names should never be wasted on centers.
-- When Cavs forward Tristan Thompson called it "bogus," he was not talking about the lack of effort by so many players in recent games, but about rumors that coach Byron Scott could be in trouble. Apparently Thompson left the University of Texas before taking the class "Cause and Effect 101."
-- It's official. Compared to Kevin Ware the rest of us are a bunch of babies. The University of Louisville folk hero appeared on David Letterman Thursday night to personally read "The Top 10 Thoughts Going Through Kevin Ware's Mind At The Moment Of The Broken Leg."
Number eight: "Hey look ? my tibia!"
I'll never whine about a paper cut again.
-- After Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who (nudge-nudge) rarely ever says anything designed to get publicity for himself, suggested that he might consider drafting Baylor University All-American Brittany Griner, Miami's Shane Battier said the day is coming when a woman will play in the NBA.
Battier, who allegedly was educated at Duke, said the reason he thinks that is because of "the law of averages."
That must be the same law that says if you drop an anvil out of a second story window enough times that it will eventually fall up.
Nobody enjoys watching women's basketball more than me, but it's hard to envision a woman playing in the NBA when 99.9 percent of the men on planet can't play in the NBA ? including a few who are in the NBA.
-- The closer-less Detroit Tigers have signed their former closer Jose Valverde to a minor-league contract.
The Tigers did not re-sign Valverde after last year's postseason, when in four appearances he gave up nine runs on 11 hits, including two home runs, while only recording eight outs.
By the end of the World Series Valverde's nickname had evolved, from "Papa Grande" to "Mama Mia!"
Weak of the week
The NFL last week announced the exhibition schedule for the coming season, but only what teams will play, and where. The league will announce the exact dates and times of those games sometime later this month.
The NFL did not announce what day it will announce what days and what times those meaningless games will be played. The NFL will make those announcements when its good and ready. The NFL to its fans: You just sit there and wait. So there.
Weak. Very weak.
Source: http://news-herald.com/articles/2013/04/06/sports/nh6763359.txt
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Why mammography won't always detect breast cancer | PIX 11
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Source: http://pix11.com/2013/04/05/why-mammography-wont-always-detect-breast-cancer/
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NASA chooses all-sky planet hunter, neutron star watcher for liftoff in 2017
MIT
An artist's conception shows the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, in space. (Planets not to scale.)
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
NASA has selected two new space missions for launch in 2017:?a satellite that can scan the entire sky for exoplanets and a space station experiment that can monitor cosmic X-ray emissions. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) won out at the end of a selection process that took more than two years.
"With these missions we will learn about the most extreme states of matter by studying neutron stars, and we will identify many nearby star systems with rocky planets in the habitable zone for further study by telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said in a statement Friday.
Under the terms of NASA's Explorer Program, the TESS mission will be budgeted at no more than $200 million, and NICER's mission costs will be capped at $55 million. Those price tags exclude the cost of the launch vehicle.
Planet hunter
TESS is designed to follow up on NASA's Kepler mission, which is surveying a patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra for extrasolar planets. Like Kepler, TESS would detect other worlds by looking for the faint dips in starlight as they make regular transits across their parent suns. TESS' array of wide-angle cameras would take in much more territory, however.
"TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," principal investigator George Ricker, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said in a statement. "It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth."
The mission's scientists say it will be possible to study the masses, sizes, densities, orbits and atmospheres of a wide range of planets, including a sampling of the rocky worlds in the habitable zones of nearby planetary systems. "The selection of TESS has just accelerated our chances of finding life on another planet within the next decade," said MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager.
TESS won out over another planet-hunting mission designed to study alien atmospheres, known as the?Fast Infrared Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey Explorer or FINESSE.
NASA
An artist's conception shows the boxlike NICER array attached to the International Space Station.
Star watcher
NICER is an instrument that's about the size of a college dorm-room refrigerator, equipped with an array of 56 telescopes that can measure the variability of cosmic X-ray sources ? a method known as X-ray timing.?It's designed to explore the exotic states of matter within neutron stars and reveal their interior and surface compositions. The device can also monitor the stars' positions as a navigational aid.
"Our technology demonstration will establish the viability of spacecraft navigation using neutron stars, while the same instrument gives scientists an important new tool with which to better understand these stars that can serve as navigation beacons," principal investigator Keith Gendreau of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said in a news release.
NICER would be brought to the International Space Station aboard a Japanese HTV robotic transport craft or a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule, and attached to the station's exterior.
NASA's Explorer Program is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space for astrophysics and solar science missions. The program has launched more than 90 missions, starting with Explorer 1 in 1958. The most recent Explorer mission to be launched was the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The next one is the?Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, due for launch sometime in the next couple of months.
More about exoplanets:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Democrats lose fight in Montana Senate over ballot measures (reuters)
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
The Engadget Interview: Vertu CEO Perry Oosting talks specs and rationale
"Hi, I'm Richard Lai from Engadget. You guys probably hate us but..."
"No no, I don't hate you," Vertu's 52-year-old President and CEO interjected with a charming smile. He then laid a hand on my shoulder and explained our in-joke to the other chuckling diners, "These guys, they read the specs and they only judge by the specs."
Of course, it was just a light-hearted banter the night before our interview, but having been with the luxury phone maker since June 2009 as President, Perry Oosting obviously knew of everyone's ongoing jokes about the rationale of his super expensive phones. Even before Vertu, the Dutchman would've faced a similar problem when he held senior positions at the likes of Bulgari, Prada, Gucci and Escada, except these brands have been around for a lot longer; and for us mere mortals, their existence is already widely accepted. Not so much for the luxury gadgets, though.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/11/vertu-ceo-perry-oosting-interview/
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The KBMOD Guide to Safer Surfing, Part I - KBMOD | Keyboard + ...
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Published on March 11th, 2013 | by seanbutnotheard
About the time we were going to publish this article, friend and fellow KBMOD community member @Sagesparten007 published his own security guide, and he included some really useful information beyond what we had planned to include. So with his most gracious permission, we merged his suggestions with ours, resulting in what will become a much more comprehensive series. His original write-up can be found here. Thanks Sage!
Let?s face it, surfing the web is pretty risky, and it?s definitely not very private. So we here at KBMOD thought it would be useful to list a few steps you can take to make your web browsing and other internet usage a little bit safer and more private. This is not meant to be a completely exhaustive guide, but by following a few of the steps in this series, your internet browsing will be much more secure than if you did nothing at all. Since the PC gaming community tends to be pretty savvy compared to the rest of the population, some of these steps may seem obvious to you? but others might not.
Security-Centric Browser Addons
If you care about security and privacy, you?ll want to use either Firefox or Chrome for your web browsing. If you?re using Internet Explorer, you?re doing it wrong. Admittedly, recent versions of Microsoft?s browser offering have been much better since the painful days of IE6. Even so, Firefox and Chrome offer the ability to install add-ons which can greatly improve your browser?s security and privacy features. Here are a few addons that we recommend for use on a regular basis:
- HTTPS Everywhere.You already access your bank?s site over what is called an SSL connection? this means that your communication between the bank?s site and your computer is encrypted and thus not (easily) read by a third party snooper (called a man-in-the-middle attack). So why not use encryption to access every website then? HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox add-on (currently in alpha for Chrome) that is relatively straightforward to use: Most popular web sites like Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, etc. have an encrypted version that is accessible by changing protocol in the address bar to https instead of http? but typically they don?t use it by default, and often as you browse around the site the encryption gets turned off. HTTPS Everywhere makes sure all of your communication with these sites is secured, and the list of sites it supports grows all the time. If you?re a bit web/xml savvy, there?s even a tutorial to show you how to add rules to encrypt the other sites you visit, if they support it (KBMOD does? check this forum thread). For the rest of us, just installing the add-on and letting it do its thing will be sufficient. Get HTTPS Everywhere for Chrome or Firefox from here.
- AdBlock Plus. You may already be familiar with this one, but perhaps didn?t think of it as a security necessity. However, since many ads contain Flash and Javascript, and since ad providers no doubt track as much as they possibly can related to their audiences, it?s a good idea to block them from running on all but your trusted/favorite sites. And of course it has the added benefit of speeding up your web surfing experience somewhat. However as many sites rely on ad revenue to pay the bills, so it?s a good idea to add sites you trust to ABP?s whitelist. Get Adblock Plus for: Chrome | Firefox
- Do Not Track. This add-on inserts Do Not Track requests into all HTTP requests made by your browser, which alerts the sites you are visiting that you would like to opt-out of third-party tracking. However it?s up to the site you?re visiting to honor this request, so it?s primarily useful on the larger, more-reputable sites. Get Do Not Track for: Chrome | Firefox
- NoScript. The last add-on is a bit more involved when it comes to daily use, but it becomes more transparent the more you use it. NoScript blocks any active content (primarily JavaScript and Adobe Flash) coming from sites that you don?t trust. Like AdBlock Plus, NoScript also has a default list of trusted sites (Google, Microsoft, etc) but you will definitely find yourself adding to that list. As you browse you?ll see an Options? button pop up in the lower-right corner of your browser window, which will allow you to either temporarily or permanently add a site to your trusted list. If you are trying to access a site and it doesn?t seem to be working correctly, go for that button because a script is probably being blocked. However, quite often you?ll find many sites work just fine without any active content, and most of the scripts are just for advertising and collecting marketing data ? which is exactly what we want to block out. One caveat to watch out for: Often, sites like Facebook.com and Google.com rely on secondary domains (called a content delivery network, or CDN) to serve up media (images, videos, etc.) and other objects. So for example to get the full Facebook experience, you?ll need to add fbcdn.net and facebook.net to the trusted list in addition to facebook.com. The general rule of thumb is, only enable the scripts you absolutely need, starting from most obvious (i.e., enable scripts coming from the domain name you?re visiting and the sister CDN site if necessary) down to least obvious, and stop enabling scripts as soon as the site works. One way to make this semi-automatic is to open up the NoScript preferences, and under the general tab, enable Temporarily allow top-level sites by default, and also select the Base 2nd level domains option. What this will do is enable running scripts on any site that your browser is actually pointed to? I.e., if you?re on kbmod.com it will allow running any scripts from kbmod.com and its subdomains, but scripts pulled in from other sites will not run unless you specifically allow them. Get NoScript for Firefox here. Currently it?s not available for Chrome, but there?s a similar Chrome addon called NotScripts.
Help Us Help You
That?s it for part one, and believe me we?re just scratching the surface. Like it or not, we?ve entered an age when governments and corporations increasingly try to blur the line of what?s acceptable when it comes to handling information about you, so the more you can learn about ways to protect yourself, the better. To that end, we want to hear what you do to keep your information secure. Let us know here in the comments, or jump over to the appropriate section in our forums for a more in-depth conversation.
Next time, we?ll look at a few pieces of software outside of browser plugins that can make your internet experience more secure.
About the Author
seanbutnotheard Sean lives in the country, makes his own beer, and might someday record the next top radio hit in his spare bedroom, if he could just stop playing games long enough. How's he involved with KBMOD? Hell if I know. I think he does something with the web site.
Source: http://www.kbmod.com/2013/03/11/safer-surfing-i/
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Closest star system found in a century
Mar. 11, 2013 ? A pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to the Sun, according to a paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The duo is the closest star system discovered since 1916. The discovery was made by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a researcher in Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds.
Both stars in the new binary system are "brown dwarfs," which are stars that are too small in mass to ever become hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. As a result, they are very cool and dim, resembling a giant planet like Jupiter more than a bright star like the Sun.
"The distance to this brown dwarf pair is 6.5 light years -- so close that Earth's television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there," Luhman said. "It will be an excellent hunting ground for planets because it is very close to Earth, which makes it a lot easier to see any planets orbiting either of the brown dwarfs." Since it is the third-closest star system, in the distant future it might be one of the first destinations for manned expeditions outside our solar system, Luhman said.
The star system is named "WISE J104915.57-531906" because it was discovered in a map of the entire sky obtained by the NASA-funded Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. It is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnard's star, which was discovered 6.0 light years from the Sun in 1916. The closest star system consists of Alpha Centauri, found to be a neighbor of the Sun in 1839 at 4.4 light years, and the fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1917 at 4.2 light years.
Edward (Ned) Wright, the principal investigator for the WISE satellite, said "One major goal when proposing WISE was to find the closest stars to the Sun. WISE 1049-5319 is by far the closest star found to date using the WISE data, and the close-up views of this binary system we can get with big telescopes like Gemini and the future James Webb Space Telescope will tell us a lot about the low mass stars known as brown dwarfs." Wright is the David Saxon Presidential Chair in Physics and a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA.
Astronomers have long speculated about the possible presence of a distant, dim object orbiting the Sun, which is sometimes called Nemesis. However, Luhman has concluded, "we can rule out that the new brown dwarf system is such an object because it is moving across the sky much too fast to be in orbit around the Sun."
To discover the new star system, Luhman studied the images of the sky that the WISE satellite had obtained during a 13-month period ending in 2011. During its mission, WISE observed each point in the sky 2 to 3 times. "In these time-lapse images, I was able to tell that this system was moving very quickly across the sky -- which was a big clue that it was probably very close to our solar system," Luhman said.
After noticing its rapid motion in the WISE images, Luhman went hunting for detections of the suspected nearby star in older sky surveys. He found that it indeed was detected in images spanning from 1978 to 1999 from the Digitized Sky Survey, the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, and the Deep Near Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky. "Based on how this star system was moving in the images from the WISE survey, I was able to extrapolate back in time to predict where it should have been located in the older surveys and, sure enough, it was there," Luhman said.
By combining the detections of the star system from the various surveys, Luhman was able to measure its distance via parallax, which is the apparent shift of a star in the sky due to Earth's orbit around the Sun. He then used the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pach?n in Chile to obtain a spectrum of it, which demonstrated that it had a very cool temperature, and hence was a brown dwarf. "As an unexpected bonus, the sharp images from Gemini also revealed that the object actually was not just one but a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other," Luhman said.
"It was a lot of detective work," Luhman said. "There are billions of infrared points of light across the sky, and the mystery is which one -- if any of them -- could be a star that is very close to our solar system."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Penn State. The original article was written by Barbara K. Kennedy.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/iPtH4oHD7jY/130311124052.htm
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Monday, March 11, 2013
Comets & Life On Earth: Impacts May Have Jump-Started Biological Evolution
By: Mike Wall
Published: 03/08/2013 10:09 AM EST on SPACE.com
Life's building blocks can form in the harsh environment of deep space, a new study suggests, bolstering the odds that a comet or meteorite strike may have jump-started biological evolution on Earth.
Linked pairs of amino acids called dipeptides can take shape in space-like conditions, a team of chemists found. Dipeptides brought to Earth aboard a comet or meteorite billions of years ago may have then catalyzed the formation of even more complex molecules necessary for life as we know it, such as proteins and sugars, researchers said.
"It is fascinating to consider that the most basic biochemical building blocks that led to life on Earth may well have had an extraterrestrial origin," study co-author Richard Mathies, of the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
The chemists created a mock mini-comet in the lab, chilling a mixture of carbon dioxide, ammonia and various hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane down to 10 degrees above absolute zero (minus 442 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 263 degrees Celsius) in a vacuum chamber.
They then zapped the mixture with high-energy electrons, simulating the effect of impacts by cosmic rays ? fast-moving charged particles that pervade our Milky Way galaxy.
The electrons sparked some interesting reactions. The team detected many complex, carbon-containing organic molecules, including nine different amino acids and at least two dipeptides.
The new study, which was published online last week in The Astrophysical Journal, breaks ground by showing that molecules as complex as dipeptides can probably form far from Earth. But it also adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that organics may be common throughout the solar system.
Amino acids have been found in comets and meteorites, and organics swirl about in the thick, nitrogen-based atmosphere of Saturn's huge moon Titan. Many researchers think organics are also common on the dwarf planet Pluto and other objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall.?Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?or?Google+. Original article on?SPACE.com.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Also on HuffPost:
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/10/comets-life-earth-origin_n_2839863.html
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Google Doodle celebrates Douglas Adams' 61st birthday
Here's to a hoopy frood who really knew where his towel was.
Via: The Guardian
Source: Google
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/11/google-doodle-douglas-adams/
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Researchers: We may have found a fabled sunstone
This photo taken in Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, dated June 2012 and released on Friday March 8, 2013 by scientist Guy Ropars shows the Alderney Crystal, a piece of calcite. Researchers say the rough, whitish crystal recovered from the wreckage of 16th century English warship may be a sunstone, a special kind of mineral believed by some to have helped medieval seafarers navigate the high seas. (AP Photo/Guy Ropars)
This photo taken in Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, dated June 2012 and released on Friday March 8, 2013 by scientist Guy Ropars shows the Alderney Crystal, a piece of calcite. Researchers say the rough, whitish crystal recovered from the wreckage of 16th century English warship may be a sunstone, a special kind of mineral believed by some to have helped medieval seafarers navigate the high seas. (AP Photo/Guy Ropars)
LONDON (AP) ? A rough, whitish block recovered from an Elizabethan shipwreck may be a sunstone, the fabled crystal believed by some to have helped Vikings and other medieval seafarers navigate the high seas, researchers say.
In a paper published earlier this week, a Franco-British group argued that the Alderney Crystal ? a chunk of Icelandic calcite found amid a 16th century wreck at the bottom of the English Channel ? worked as a kind of solar compass, allowing sailors to determine the position of the sun even when it was hidden by heavy cloud, masked by fog, or below the horizon.
That's because of a property known as birefringence, which splits light beams in a way that can reveal the direction of their source with a high degree of accuracy. Vikings may not have grasped the physics behind the phenomenon, but that wouldn't present a problem.
"You don't have to understand how it works," said Albert Le Floch, of the University in Rennes in western France. "Using it is basically easy."
Vikings were expert navigators ? using the sun, stars, mountains and even migratory whales to help guide them across the sea ? but some have wondered at their ability to travel the long stretches of open water between Greenland, Iceland, and Newfoundland in modern-day Canada.
Le Floch is one of several who've suggested that calcite crystals were used as navigational aids for long summer days in which the sun might be hidden behind the clouds. He said the use of such crystals may have persisted into the 16th century, by which time magnetic compasses were widely used but often malfunctioned.
Le Floch noted that one Icelandic legend ? the Saga of St. Olaf ? appears to refer to such a crystal when it says that Olaf used a "sunstone" to verify the position of the sun on a snowy day.
But that's it. Few other medieval references to sunstones have been found, and no such crystals have ever been recovered from Viking tombs or ships. Until the Alderney Crystal was recovered in 2002, there had been little if any hard evidence to back the theory.
Many specialists are still skeptical. Donna Heddle, the director of the Center for Nordic Studies at Scotland's University of the Highlands and Islands, described the solar compass hypothesis as speculative.
"There's no solid evidence that that device was used by Norse navigators," she said Friday. "There's never been one found in a Viking boat. One cannot help but feel that if there were such things they would be found in graves."
She acknowledged that the crystal came from Iceland and was found near a navigation tool, but said it might just as easily have been used as a magnifying device as a solar compass.
Le Floch argued that one of the reasons why no stones have been found before is that calcite degrades quickly ? it's vulnerable to acid, sea salts, and to heat. The Alderney Crystal was originally transparent, but the sea water had turned it a milky white.
Le Floch's paper ? written with Guy Ropars, Jacques Lucas, and a group of Britons from the Alderney Maritime Trust ? appeared Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
___
Online:
The paper: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rspa.2012.0651
A video tutorial on how birefringence works: http://www.sixtysymbols.com/videos/birefringence.htm
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
Marketing Online Tips ? Hellofor facebook profiles find friends online ...
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search engine marketing is more prevalent than we would think. Many marketers today employ the search engine optimized or SEO to market their goods plus services. Doing a Google search about any search engine and plenty of marketing is completed. This advertising is generally performed by keywords.
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Needless to say, there are numerous online business directories that could target specific users or industries, but the query remains: how do these Organization Directories promote themselves? Isn't it true that many internet consumers make use of larger search engines (like Google, Yahoo and MSN) to locate business info, rather of jumping directly to a nearby company directory? This is a fair query, and with it they believe truly the only method to be listed about the look motors is to have an expensive website. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Source: http://www.hellofour.com/blog/97616/marketing-online-tips/
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A national digital library endowment: How America's billionaires ...
?He prefers books,? she said in an admiring way, ?and reads avidly.?
As if electronic books don?t exist! As if millions of Americans are not downloading e-books to iPhones, iPads and other devices! As if a young Buffett today wouldn?t love to read scads of library e-books each year!
No, I won?t beat up on either Buffett or Ms. Jarvis, given people?s varying tastes in reading formats. In fact, for retirement purposes, I?m a small shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway, his company, and I trust his long-term judgment on Wall Street matters.
So perhaps Buffett, Gates and other billionaires can themselves finance a new national endowment to help fund two separate but tightly intertwined national digital library systems?one public, one academic.
On bytes and paprika: Why digital counts
Our libraries need paper books, too, especially for the youngest children and others who may not take immediately to the current digital variety.
If nothing else, local libraries could tap into national collections to meet the precise needs of local people through standard Web capabilities such as hyperlinks.
Consider the public library system in Lorain, Ohio, as well as the fact that about 18 percent America?s Gross Domestic Product goes for healthcare costs. The Lorain library is out with a spiffy section on the home page promoting fitness books and DVDs for the New Year. We?re talking about a heavily ethnic town with more than 70 nationalities. Now, what if Lorainites could not just locate generic books on healthful cooking but also trustworthy guides to lower-calorie, lower-fat or lower-sodium variants of popular Puerto Rican, Polish, Hungarian (above photo shows a Hungarian paprika vendor in Budapest), Ukrainian and African-American recipes? And find out the good as well as the bad? Would you believe, the capsicum peppers used for paprika teem with more vitamin C per gram than is found in lemon juice.
Via links on the home page and elsewhere, Lorainites could speed to the actual e-books, articles and online videos?not just catalogs listing them. What more, a well-planned national digital library system could make it easier for local librarians to set up online forums and curated wikis for their patrons to swap recipe tips with their neighbors. Librarians and local patrons alike could link to specific pages within the national collection.
Those are only a few examples of the power of melding local and national. Just as local food-lovers swapped heart-healthy recipes with people nearby and far off, local entrepreneurs could benefit from library-facilitated connections?virtual and face to face?in keeping with public libraries? potential as drivers of economic development. Also consider such possibilities as the preservation, discussion and dissemination of local history. In other ways, too, digital items like e-books can be far richer in possibilities than paper books and magazines. Writers and publishers can embed multimedia into books, for example, or links leading to related items?ideally aided by the permanence of well-funded digital libraries. No, I don?t want everything, especially novels, to be riddled with hyperlinks that I can?t turn off. But these days I cannot read many books without thinking, ?What if I could instantly call up the full texts of the author?s sources or maybe even hear the music she was playing when she composed a certain passage??
Of course, we have the World Wide Web, but links and content come and go. Even countermeasures, such as the Internet Archive?s fabulous Wayback machine and the Library of Congress?s Born Digital project and LOC?s valuable Tweet-preservation initiative, are far from a full solution. The more we rely on the library model, the more trustworthy and valuable the Internet will be?not just for academic purposes but also commercial ones. If Cengage can turn an extra buck with a history book linking reliably to source documents, I?m all for it..
Why talk of national digital libraries could be extra-timely now
National digital library talk could be extra-timely now, and not just because a local Texas library system is starting out digital from scratch, without any paper books. Also keep in mind the warm response of many to a Washington Post article saying the FCC wants to ?create? what the article calls ?super WiFi networks across the nation? for public use. Imagine: free WiFi from Uncle to help us conveniently download library e-books, among other items! But dream on. The federal government itself is not currently preparing to build such networks. Still, even without a direct library reference, the Post article was endlessly useful in raising the possibilities, if accidentally?remember who mainly paid for the construction of the Interstate Highway System, with economic and defense benefits in mind. What?s more, the FCC has in fact been working to grow the amount of spectrum space that people and organizations can use for WiFi for free and without licenses.
Here?s one of the many benefits even if the FCC?s proposals are far less ambitious than as described or at least implied in the Post. Local and state government agencies could more easily offer free WiFi service to citizens for general Internet use or for special purposes such as library ones. Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide could especially come out ahead, and via the National Digital Library Endowment proposed here, some of our richest citizens could at least help pay the WiFi-related costs. At the same time we could tackle associated issues beyond content and connectivity, such as training for librarians and patrons, as well as the right tablets and other hardware to encourage reading (this isn?t a one-size-fits-all situation).
A tie-in with the Giving Pledge from Gates and Buffett?if they are open to the endowment idea?
A truly major digital library initiative would also jibe well with the Giving Pledge by Buffett, Gates and others to donate ?the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice either during their lifetime or after their death.? I am not expecting the majority of the promised billions to go for libraries. But I?d hope that pledge-makers would be open to the idea of meaningful donations to the National Digital Library Endowment during their lifetimes as well as the posthumous variety. While the Gates Foundation has aided libraries in the U.S. and abroad, it has done relatively little so far to grow the supply of library e-books despite a recent questionnaire offering some hope.
I can understand the concerns of Buffett, Gates and other prospective donors about e-books or about large donations to help public e-libraries pay for them. Unless Buffett is publicly shunning e-books to reinforce his image as The Billionaire Next Door, however, perhaps he can take a little time to acquaint himself with the technology.
Mr. Buffett, meet my sister, a retired schoolteacher.
Dorothy once feared digital books, before she discovered she could read more easily with E: she can blow up the words on her iPad screen. My wife feels the same way. If nothing else, regardless of personal reading preferences, Buffett should dispassionately view library needs just as he does stocks in analyzing them. Go by what Mr. Market says; I?ll supply statistics later in this essay to document the need and the demand.
As for the possible concerns of Bill Gates, he still chairs Microsoft, which has sunk hundreds of millions into Barnes & Noble, and he is accustomed to profiting off content of one kind of another, from software to the contents of the Corbis images service, which he owns entirely. In that sense Gates differs somewhat from Andrew Carnegie, who funded library buildings, but presumably never gave away steel. How to resolve this conflict? One way would be for Gates to disassociate himself, the Gates Foundation or both from content-related efforts entirely and turn the money over to others. But based on what I know of Gates from afar, I suspect that he wants at least indirect personal involvement. So how to be a Carnegie but still be Microsoft?s chair and do justice to shareholders? On the surface, this could be far more of a challenge for Gates than for Buffett to separate his own reading preferences from millions of other people?s.
Perhaps, however, some wisdom would be apropos from The Crack-Up, an essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, one of Gates?s favorites:
"Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation?the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
Now, how about some new context for this old wisdom? Maybe the same test also could apply to a willingness to look beyond the customary business models and even simultaneously promote others. A digitally enhanced public library system could vastly expand the demand for books and in the end actually help publishers and other content providers, not merely libraries and makers of e-book-friendly devices, including, yes, Microsoft?s new Surface tablets?not just Apple?s iPads or Amazon Kindles or Google-branded? tablets.
While Bill Gates will profit off text-related content by way of Microsoft?s investment in B&N, he has far more of a financial interest in variants of Windows and hardware that runs it. Ideally he?ll consider this in staking out his position in book-related copyright and library matters.
Gates might also keep in mind some sagacity from Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, who, despite libertarian tendencies, has acknowledged the synergies from different business models working together: ?I?m a diversitarian,? Bezos says in acknowledging that governments have roles to play, not just nonprofits, individuals and corporations. As I?ll show here, well-financed national digital library systems combined with the private sector would be far, far more desirable than either the private or public approach alone. What?s more, just as gas taxes and other user fees have financed the Interstate Highway System, similar concepts could help make national digital library systems sustainable for the long run, no minor criterion for Bezos. So could the existence of a Carnegie-inspired National Digital Library Endowment, along with recognition of the economic benefits of national digital library systems for the public and even many corporations.
Please note that the Carnegie parallel here isn?t exact. He built libraries but expected others to supply the land and pay for their operation. In a digital era and especially with libraries facing so many financial uncertainties, life for them will be different. The idea of ?ownership? diverges from that associated with physical books. As I?ll explain in detail later, an endowment would be one way to help guarantee perpetual access to books even if libraries paid per-use fees (yes, the ideal model from a strict library perspective would be full ownership or, better yet, no limits on use whatsoever?with rights holders paid in advance for removal of all sharing restrictions). Meanwhile remember that local libraries are spending money on paper books anyway, and that most or much of it could be diverted in time to the digital variety through fees paid to the national system.
How the endowment and related efforts could benefit publishing and society in general
Like Brian O?Leary, a Harvard MBA and well-respected publishing expert, I believe that the book world should worry less about dividing the pie through constant copyright wars between librarians and publishers and far more about growing revenues for both sides. One means to bring the latter about would be the creation of an informal Library-Publisher Complex, inspired by the Pentagon and its contractors?with a major difference: this one would be much more respectful of the American taxpayer and rely on private donations as well as public money.
Such a complex could be a far easier sell than the skeptics think. Fifty-eight percent of American adults own library cards, even if 48 percent of the owners of Nooks, Kindles and the like don?t know whether their libraries carry e-books. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, ?69 percent? of surveyed citizens ?say that their local library is important to them and their family.? Use the national collections to empower local libraries, through cobranding and other techniques, besides ease of localization of content; and the Library-Publisher Complex will appeal in time to the hearts and minds of U.S. voters even if the process isn?t instant.
The public wouldn?t be the only winners. Writers, publishers and savvy retailers could benefit from ?buy the book? links within library catalogs, just as they do now under the arrangement between Amazon and OverDrive, the largest supplier of library e-books; indeed, users could chose the stores with ?buy? links customized for them in particular (including those to a librarian-run service). Given the decline of the bookstore chains in their brick-and-mortar incarnations, just imagine what this could mean in terms of replacement exposure.
Now, consider the chains? electronic sides. People buying books from Amazon via library links might even enjoy small discounts on Kindles or other products, while those going for B&N?s books would benefit from the same on the company?s e-reading hardware. So it turns out that Microsoft?s B&N interests might not suffer so badly after all, especially if B&N adjusted its product priorities.
But it is the economic welfare of people, not corporations, that is foremost on my mind here. Gates?s father and Buffett have both spoken out against the jarring disparities in opportunities and incomes among Americans, and a Library-Publisher Complex could help both the public and publishers in that regard. According to an analyst from Sanford Bernstein, the lower 40 percent of Americans lack disposable incomes after paying for necessities. The national digital library model, with a focus not just on providing content but on encouraging the public to enjoy and absorb it, through family literacy programs, K-12-related efforts connections and otherwise, would fit in well. Just how many of these truly cash-strapped families will buy book after book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, especially without a concerted national strategy to make books count more in their lives?
No free lunch: Library should start their own e-book rental and purchase program (since affordability isn?t the only issue and even billionaires can?t pay for everything)
Mind you, the issues go beyond household income. The average wage-earning American household spends $2,572 annually for entertainment, but just $115 on books and other reading materials, according to recent Labor Department statistics. How to get people to spend more at the personal level rather than simply rely on library books, especially since even well-funded libraries can?t afford to offer all suitable books?
Well, as it happens, many borrowers become buyers.
Also, libraries could offer and adequately promote a rental and purchase program well integrated with library catalogs?services that subscribers could sign up for through federal and state tax check-offs and take advantage of the economies of scale. This and other library-related services could introduce billions into the publishing industry over the years because of easier discovery of promising books (aided by stable book-to-book hyperlinks, among other capabilities) and greater convenience of buying.
I?m all for private e-book-lending services and for publishers offering their own discovery capabilities both online and, in effect, through physical book stores. But library and commercial priorities can or at least should differ somewhat, especially in regard to which wares are featured.? Different business models are best for different kinds of content. Half of the top ten sellers on an Amazon list in 2012, combining both print and digital titles, were erotic romances; and a librarian-run rental and purchase service could help expand the range and appeal of good books without oppressively trying to turn masscult and midcult into high cult. Paying customers wouldn?t have to wait interminably to borrow bestsellers, at least those covered by the plan?they could in fact enjoy instant access.
Along the way, libraries purchase-or-rent service would help build the public?s interest in greater numbers of books being absolutely free to borrowers without such limitations as extra-short lending periods for the most popular books. Meanwhile low-income people could still enjoy access even if they had to wait longer for best-sellers, assuming they didn?t qualify for subsidies, which I?d hope that many would.
The appeal of ?free?
But, yes, ?free? is the ideal for libraries in general and their e-books in particular, just so content providers get paid fairly. Doubt its appeal? When asked, fifty-three percent of surveyed Americans ?definitely? want ?a broader selection of e-books? in public libraries, according to the Pew Foundation?s research. That means free books at the patron level if we?re speaking about the present. Furthermore, the percentage will most likely go only higher as the technology dramatically improves and the number of e-book-lovers climbs. Other Pew research shows a big rise in interest in e-books among U.S. readers who ?read at least one book in the past 12 months.? The E-using percentage in the sample zoomed from 21 percent in December 2011 to 30 percent in November 2012, with the percentage now at a whopping 44 percent for book-readers earning more than $75,000 a year. For all readers 30-39 years of age, the percentage was 41 percent.
Hello, Mr. Buffett? Mr. Market is speaking. Eighty percent of respondents in the first Pew survey mentioned in the above paragraph considered the lending of books?not just E?to be ?very important? for public libraries, the same percentage regarding librarian-related information services as important.
Libraries today vs. what they could be with help from a national endowment
So what does this all mean? Countless borrowers of library e-books will want access to more than dwarf-sized local collections. At the same time, a national digital public library system could actually strengthen local libraries since local librarians could still play up the material most relevant to their patrons and could buy content from outside the national system.
Alas, while the number of e-books offered by U.S. public libraries has tripled since 2003, the figures are still pathetic in size and outrageous in geographical differences. Check out the Fiscal Year 2010 statistics, from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and you?ll find that the number of public library e-books ranged from 157.2 per 1,000 people in the Plains States to fewer than 20 per 1,000 in the Southwestern U.S. An earlier document from IMLS, offering state-by-state breakdowns for Fiscal Year 2009, showed that public libraries in Ohio were spending a mere $7.53 per capita on print and electronic content, the most of any state. The $7.53 was more than four times Mississippi?s $1.53 and many more times the respective 16 cents and 35 cents for the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico. The national average for content that year was $4.41 per capita. Illustrating the potential of e-books to drive down costs per book, the $4.41 was just 12 percent of the $36.84 in ?operating and collection expenditures of public libraries? per capita at a time where print still reigns supreme in the world of library budgets. With lower costs, E-books could make it easier to mitigate regional differences. Young people, families and others?especially those in rural areas ill-served by physical collections?mustn?t be penalized by geography. Hence the appeal of a national digital library endowment.
Adding to the ?savage inequalities? of the present is the tendency of the rich to favor charitable causes benefiting the upper classes, as documented in the Chronicle of Philanthropy in a subscriber-only article headlined ?Charities Suffer from a Wealth Gap, too.? Exactly! In the same publication, a writer takes aim at the rich for a number of other tendencies such as ?giving to Harvard or any other large endowment? without the same urgent needs as less fashionable and less prestigious alternatives.
The rewards for the endowment?s donors
A national digital library endowment, however, could conveniently package major donations at the national level but at the same time attend to community and grassroots needs. And just like Harvard, it also could provide the accompanying PR rewards?for example, public recognition of top donors in well-publicized ceremonies conducted by both the White House and members of Congress. Gates, Buffett and other business leaders shouldn?t strive to micromanage the library endowment. But they could serve on an advisory committee to elevate the endowment?s profile and strengthen its ties with other potential donors.
Collections in certain categories could be named after major donors with special interests in the various topics. Among the possibilities would be a Bill and Melinda Gates Technology Collection, or the Gates Collection of Popular 20th Century Classic American Literature. What?s more, librarians could serve up lists of specific books for possible support. Then, for example, instead of just acquiring rare editions of The Great Gatsby to stash away in his waterside mansion, Gates could buy the rights for the national digital systems or ideally even for the public domain and see himself mentioned in the e-book edition as donor. You can love or hate Microsoft?s cofounder. But regardless of how you feel?I myself have never hesitated to speak up against various business practices of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple and others?bear in mind that he is in some ways positively angelic compared to the Andrew Carnegie as an industrialist.
The business and organizational models
Money for the National Digital Library Endowment could come overwhelmingly and perhaps almost entirely from private sources in the beginning, given the current budget fixations in Washington, even though I?d hope that the public percentage would increase over the years.
Some of the private donations might go for special purposes such as a possible buyout of OverDrive, as well as a burst of immediate collection development. But ideally most of the money would be perpetually invested in the spirit of a traditional endowment; in fact, this is more important in the digital era. Library budgets bob up and down. Correctly, librarians now feel threatened when publishers and others resist their efforts to truly own e-books and other digital content even within the limits of fair use (which in this case means one-patron-at-time use unless legal arrangements allow more). Adding to libraries? challenges are such practices as publishers overpricing library e-books, putting caps on how many borrowers can see each purchased copy, or even holding books temporarily or permanently from library use. Pick your hassles. Random House commendably said libraries can own e-books, which will help if libraries switch to different aggregators of content. But then what about the prickly issue of RH?s present and future prices?
Steady streams of money from the National Digital Library Endowment, however,? as well as greater bargaining power from national digital library systems, could help mitigate the uncertainty. At the same time, librarians also should remember that the demand for most library books shrinks within a few years of publication, and that plenty of libraries regularly cull their collections in the paper era of limited storage. Just how long will they care about offering their most ephemeral titles, anyway?
In return for libraries being more open to metering of E as opposed to full or almost-full ownership, publishers need to be less hawkish on the issue of copyright terms, now grotesquely lengthened by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. With a well-funded digital library endowment and hopefully shorter terms, libraries could more easily keep e-books accessible to the public without their being yanked from collections for fiscal reasons. Significantly, publishers and writers, too, would come out ahead, with so many more billions available to the publishing world, even if endowment was far from able to pay for everything. The total net sales revenue of 1,977 reporting book-publishers, in the U.S. in 2011 was around $27 billion, according to an industry survey. While the figure is not necessarily complete and do not reflect full retail prices, it still shows how small the book business is?in a country with a Gross Domestic Product of more than $15 trillion. I see plenty of room for growth, then, given that American read so few books compared to what they could. Far, far better for the book publishers to expand this way than to keep beseeching Washington for increasingly restrictive copyright laws?the very stuff that drives away readers, especially when books have so much competition from other sources of entertainment.
The endowment could be either a nonprofit or a government agency: I can see arguments either way. A nongovernment nonprofit might draw more support from some government-hating business people than would a public agency. On the other hand, a government agency would better blend in with such organizations as the Institute of Museum and Library Services and state and local libraries.
How the endowment would coexist with existing agencies and institutions
Staff could be small no matter what the digital library endowment?s business model. The heaviest lifting would be done by recipients of money from the endowment?for example, the public and academic library systems and a shared technical services organization, as well as IMLS, which would continue its current grants to libraries. In various ways, the Library of Congress might benefit as well (even though its main mission is to serve Congress rather than the population at large). Same for the National Archives and Records Administration, and museums and other cultural institutions such as the Smithsonian, just so the main focus of the digital library endowment was on libraries. Agencies like the National Endowment for the Humanities would still be free to make library-related grants.
A major beneficiary of the digital library endowment might be the nonprofit, Harvard-based Digital Public Library of America (along with its potential contractors ranging from Amazon and Google to the Internet Archive and Haithi Trust).
Why the endowment should nudge the DPLA toward a two-system model
In awarding money to the DPLA, the National Digital Library Endowment ideally would encourage the organization to aim for a dual-system approach. One national digital library system, as noted, would be public; the other, academic. With this strategy, a higher than otherwise fraction of resources could truly go for the needs of schoolchildren and others in general population; we mustn?t let the digital divide issue, preschool education, family literacy and others concerns of the nonelite fall between the cracks. Let?s remember that charity gap. For more on the two-system approach and the divide, go here.
The above, the call for separate public and academic digital systems, is no small detail if the National Digital Library Endowment is to get its money?s worth. The DPLA, as one of its founders has wisely observed, can?t be everything to everyone. And, yes, this issue is worthy of public interest; for the organization has attracted luminaries from the library world such as Susan Hildreth, director of IMLS, and it has even held meetings at the National Archives, presided over by David Ferriero, the national archivist. You might even consider the DPLA to be an informal think tank on library issues for the Obama Administration. That actually has its positives. Once annoyingly secretive in some respects, the DPLA has opened up its meetings and improved in many other ways. But consider one example of the DPLA?s continuing need for the greater focus that two systems would allow.
In School Library Journal, DPLA leader John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor who switched careers to become head of school at Phillips Academy Andover, addressed the K-12 angle. I very much like his commentary telling how the library organization could help underfunded school libraries. Let?s hope that the DPLA and related efforts can in fact live up to their potential here, but that Palfrey and colleagues also remember that school libraries and other K-12-specific efforts are no substitutes for preschool education and family literacy programs and others to promote learning and reading beyond the school walls or even beyond summer reading initiatives. A two-system approach, with teachers and public librarians setting the tone for the national public system and playing up the family approach, would help Peoria and Muskogee more than would a public-academic system likely to be dominated immediately or later by the academic and economic elites. What?s more, compared to academic librarians, public librarians would be more responsive to the needs of people without school or other institutional affiliations.
Far from being hostile to the academics, I want much more material from universities and colleges to be available to the public at large, through open access business models and otherwise; and in many other ways, too, such as some overlapping board memberships and a common technical services organization, the two systems should be intertwined. Let?s invigorate our public library collections with the facts and thoughts from campuses. But must we pit the acquisition of John Grisham novels against that of scholarly monographs, especially when public libraries exist to please taxpayers and academic libraries are for such purposes as the growth and spread of knowledge, as well as cultural preservation? Also, a public system could focus on domestic needs, while an academic one was more internationally oriented in content and other ways. Two systems, then, please?if we don?t want to upscale our public libraries to the disadvantage of the American poor and even our middle class.
Granted, I see the paradox: asking for money from billionaires but hoping that the results on the public side will be small-d democratic. Somehow, though, perhaps in part because Carnegie was self-made, he and the public library world managed to work together for the good of society at large. Ideally such an example can inspire Gates, Buffett and others even if they didn?t start out their careers in a bobbin factory.
More on the need for a digital endowment
First off, a major caveat: let?s not to play down the importance of brick-and-mortar libraries. I?d worry if, say, the percentage spent on content reached 75 percent rather than the current, much smaller proportion; local librarians offer their share of services as in-person explainers, popularizers and social workers, and that should continue even if the National Digital Library Endowment pays for a 24/7 national reference service to augment local ones. Via IMLS and otherwise, the endowment could help support such activities as family literacy and the use of paper books to help popularize reading of all kinds, including the electronic variety. For reasons of nostalgia and out of respect for history, I myself can still appreciate the paper books even if, for me and many others, well-displayed e-books are easier to read.
Just the same, the future of library books and other content will be overwhelmingly digital. Someday, for example, public libraries may even offer such items as unencumbered files to serve as templates for the design of new products?prototyped through 3D printers. With local libraries providing both knowledge and ways for young entrepreneurs to collaborate online and in person, whether or not they were enrolled in academic institutions, consider the potential for new creation of wealth. Aided by the rise of 3D printing and also robotics eventually, innovations in the most unlikely industries may come from small startups born in garages, some of them in small towns. A digital endowment approach could help our ubiquitous public libraries make those opportunities a standard part of American life, just as the Gates Foundation did with computers in so laudably helping our libraries ?wire up?; and all this would certainly honor the Carnegie vision of libraries as tools for self-improvement.
William F. Buckley, Jr., in fact, my political opposite, invoked Carnegie?s name in the 1990s in calling for Gates to work toward a national digital library system in the spirit of my TeleRead proposal as it existed then. If Buffett, Gates and others can be 21st-century Carnegies by way of a National Digital Library Endowment?with help ultimately from a Library-Publisher Complex?maybe America can finally catch up with WFB regardless of so many politicians? current antipathy toward new government programs.
?I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions,? Gates has been quoted, ?they will be moved to act.? In a national digital library context, here?s a chance for him and likeminded business people to prove it.
Editor's note - this article was re-published with the author's permission, from his blog, Library City.
Source: http://www.llrx.com/features/digitallibraryendowment.htm
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