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Thursday, January 26, 2012
CW?s Remodeled ?Modeling Agency or Modeling School??
If you didn’t catch the premiere of CW’s high-octane docu-series show,?Remodeled, be sure to tune in as the drama unfolds during the show’s second episode?tonight at 9/8c and Wednesday for a second time at 9/8c.??This time,?fashion mogul/agent and President of The Network, Paul Fisher, travels to South Dakota to makeover a modeling agency. During his [...]
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
High-tech models help guide restoration efforts to save threatened plants
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Public release date: 23-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Sherri Eng
sleng@fs.fed.us
510-559-6327
USDA Forest Service - Pacific Southwest Research Station
HILO, HawaiiA team of scientists from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) and two universities will begin research using sophisticated topographic models to identify areas within dry forests that have the most potential for ecological restoration.
The research team, which includes Dr. Susan Cordell, PSW research ecologist; Dr. Erin Questad, assistant professor, Biological Sciences Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; and Dr. James R. Kellner, assistant professor, Department of Geography at the University of Maryland, recently received a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense's Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) to conduct their work on the 105,000-acre Pohakuloa Training Area on the island of Hawaii.
The research team developed topographic models using elevation measurements from high-resolution airborne light detecting and ranging (LiDAR) that accurately predicted habitat suitability for existing threatened, endangered and at-risk plant species, which occur in dry environments. In dry ecosystems, high-quality areas are often topographic depressions where soil and water accumulate and where plants are protected from strong winds. The scientists will expand this technology by using data collected from high-resolution stereographic satellite observations to create digital elevation models which will further gauge habitat suitability. Because satellite imagery is readily available for locations across the globe, the methodology the team develops can be used to generate habitat suitability models for threatened and endangered species recovery for dry sites anywhere in the world. These models will help determine which areas are most suitable for plant growth and survival, and guide effective restoration efforts.
The four-year project will begin in June. The team will first develop a habitat suitability model, and then will set up a demonstration plot where they will test plant survival across a range of predicted suitability.
"Overcoming barriers to plant restoration in dry environments is especially critical for threatened and endangered species management. In Hawaii alone, the DoD spends nearly $10 million annually on environmental programs to protect these species and their associated critical habitat," says Cordell. "Outside of Hawaii, the top 10 DoD installations in the U.S. with the greatest number of federally listed species occur in dry ecosystems. This work could potentially re?define the way conservation-related land management agencies in dry ecosystems manage their restoration programs by providing a set of quantitatively based and spatially explicit tools to ensure effective and compliant land use management for species recovery."
###
The goal of the ESTCP, DoD's environmental technology demonstration and validation program, is to identify and demonstrate cost-effective technologies that address DoD's highest priority environmental requirements. Both the ESTCP and DoD's Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) are designed to harness the latest science and technology to improve DoD's environmental performance, reduce costs, and enhance and sustain mission capabilities. www.serdp.org/
Located in Hilo, Hawaii, the Pacific Southwest Research Station's Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry is a leading research institution addressing many critical natural resource-related issues in the Pacific. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/locations/hilo/
Headquartered in Albany, Calif., the Pacific Southwest Research develops and communicates science needed to sustain forest ecosystems and other benefits to society. It has laboratories and research centers in California, Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. For more information, visit www.fs.fed.us/psw/.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 23-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Sherri Eng
sleng@fs.fed.us
510-559-6327
USDA Forest Service - Pacific Southwest Research Station
HILO, HawaiiA team of scientists from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) and two universities will begin research using sophisticated topographic models to identify areas within dry forests that have the most potential for ecological restoration.
The research team, which includes Dr. Susan Cordell, PSW research ecologist; Dr. Erin Questad, assistant professor, Biological Sciences Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; and Dr. James R. Kellner, assistant professor, Department of Geography at the University of Maryland, recently received a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense's Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) to conduct their work on the 105,000-acre Pohakuloa Training Area on the island of Hawaii.
The research team developed topographic models using elevation measurements from high-resolution airborne light detecting and ranging (LiDAR) that accurately predicted habitat suitability for existing threatened, endangered and at-risk plant species, which occur in dry environments. In dry ecosystems, high-quality areas are often topographic depressions where soil and water accumulate and where plants are protected from strong winds. The scientists will expand this technology by using data collected from high-resolution stereographic satellite observations to create digital elevation models which will further gauge habitat suitability. Because satellite imagery is readily available for locations across the globe, the methodology the team develops can be used to generate habitat suitability models for threatened and endangered species recovery for dry sites anywhere in the world. These models will help determine which areas are most suitable for plant growth and survival, and guide effective restoration efforts.
The four-year project will begin in June. The team will first develop a habitat suitability model, and then will set up a demonstration plot where they will test plant survival across a range of predicted suitability.
"Overcoming barriers to plant restoration in dry environments is especially critical for threatened and endangered species management. In Hawaii alone, the DoD spends nearly $10 million annually on environmental programs to protect these species and their associated critical habitat," says Cordell. "Outside of Hawaii, the top 10 DoD installations in the U.S. with the greatest number of federally listed species occur in dry ecosystems. This work could potentially re?define the way conservation-related land management agencies in dry ecosystems manage their restoration programs by providing a set of quantitatively based and spatially explicit tools to ensure effective and compliant land use management for species recovery."
###
The goal of the ESTCP, DoD's environmental technology demonstration and validation program, is to identify and demonstrate cost-effective technologies that address DoD's highest priority environmental requirements. Both the ESTCP and DoD's Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) are designed to harness the latest science and technology to improve DoD's environmental performance, reduce costs, and enhance and sustain mission capabilities. www.serdp.org/
Located in Hilo, Hawaii, the Pacific Southwest Research Station's Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry is a leading research institution addressing many critical natural resource-related issues in the Pacific. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/locations/hilo/
Headquartered in Albany, Calif., the Pacific Southwest Research develops and communicates science needed to sustain forest ecosystems and other benefits to society. It has laboratories and research centers in California, Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. For more information, visit www.fs.fed.us/psw/.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/ufs--hmh012312.php
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Mewt Gromney
Florida is a haven for retirees, and Newt Gingrich seemed like one during the GOP debate in Tampa Monday night. Instead of the firebrand he?s been in the previous seventeen outings, he was in a constant state of repose, ducking attacks, tolerating moderators, and generally just paddling around in the shallow waves hoping for a nice soak. Mitt Romney was shark-like: He wore a permanent smile and attacked with emotionless precision.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=dd34c3b4ae96624993e4f5f95fddc27f
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
NYT: Why Apple won't make iPhones in the US
When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley?s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can?t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs?s reply was unambiguous. ?Those jobs aren?t coming back,? he said, according to another dinner guest.
The president?s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn?t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple?s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that ?Made in the U.S.A.? is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.
However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple ? and many of its high-technology peers ? are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.
Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple?s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple?s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.
?Apple?s an example of why it?s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,? said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.
?If it?s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.?
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone?s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company?s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
?The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,? the executive said. ?There?s no American plant that can match that.?
Similar stories could be told about almost any electronics company ? and outsourcing has also become common in hundreds of industries, including accounting, legal services, banking, auto manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.
But while Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs. What?s more, the company?s decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.
?Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn?t the best financial choice,? said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. ?That?s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.?
Companies and other economists say that notion is na?ve. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.
To thrive, companies argue they need to move work where it can generate enough profits to keep paying for innovation. Doing otherwise risks losing even more American jobs over time, as evidenced by the legions of once-proud domestic manufacturers ? including G.M. and others ? that have shrunk as nimble competitors have emerged.
Life Inc.: US employers say they can't find enough workers
Apple was provided with extensive summaries of The New York Times?s reporting for this article, but the company, which has a reputation for secrecy, declined to comment.
This article is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors ? many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs ? as well as economists, manufacturing experts, international trade specialists, technology analysts, academic researchers, employees at Apple?s suppliers, competitors and corporate partners, and government officials.
Privately, Apple executives say the world is now such a changed place that it is a mistake to measure a company?s contribution simply by tallying its employees ? though they note that Apple employs more workers in the United States than ever before.
They say Apple?s success has benefited the economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. And, ultimately, they say curing unemployment is not their job.
?We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,? a current Apple executive said. ?We don?t have an obligation to solve America?s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.?
?I want a glass screen?
In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.
Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.
People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. ?I won?t sell a product that gets scratched,? he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. ?I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.?
After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.
For over two years, the company had been working on a project ? code-named Purple 2 ? that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality ? with an unscratchable screen, for instance ? while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit?
The answers, almost every time, were found outside the United States. Though components differ between versions, all iPhones contain hundreds of parts, an estimated 90 percent of which are manufactured abroad. Advanced semiconductors have come from Germany and Taiwan, memory from Korea and Japan, display panels and circuitry from Korea and Taiwan, chipsets from Europe and rare metals from Africa and Asia. And all of it is put together in China.
In its early days, Apple usually didn?t look beyond its own backyard for manufacturing solutions. A few years after Apple began building the Macintosh in 1983, for instance, Mr. Jobs bragged that it was ?a machine that is made in America.? In 1990, while Mr. Jobs was running NeXT, which was eventually bought by Apple, the executive told a reporter that ?I?m as proud of the factory as I am of the computer.? As late as 2002, top Apple executives occasionally drove two hours northeast of their headquarters to visit the company?s iMac plant in Elk Grove, Calif.
But by 2004, Apple had largely turned to foreign manufacturing. Guiding that decision was Apple?s operations expert, Timothy D. Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive last August, six weeks before Mr. Jobs?s death. Most other American electronics companies had already gone abroad, and Apple, which at the time was struggling, felt it had to grasp every advantage.
In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn?t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.
For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia ?came down to two things,? said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia ?can scale up and down faster? and ?Asian supply chains have surpassed what?s in the U.S.? The result is that ?we can?t compete at this point,? the executive said.
The impact of such advantages became obvious as soon as Mr. Jobs demanded glass screens in 2007.
For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.
Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.
When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant?s owners were already constructing a new wing. ?This is in case you give us the contract,? the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.
The Chinese plant got the job.
?The entire supply chain is in China now,? said another former high-ranking Apple executive. ?You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That?s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.?
In Foxconn City
An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers ? and diligence ? that outpaced their American counterparts.
That?s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.
The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn?s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. ?The scale is unimaginable,? he said.
Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility?s central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes.
Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world?s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.
?They could hire 3,000 people overnight,? said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple?s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. ?What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms??
In mid-2007, after a month of experimentation, Apple?s engineers finally perfected a method for cutting strengthened glass so it could be used in the iPhone?s screen. The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That?s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms ? white and black shirts for men, red for women ? and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones. Within three months, Apple had sold one million iPhones. Since then, Foxconn has assembled over 200 million more.
Foxconn, in statements, declined to speak about specific clients.
?Any worker recruited by our firm is covered by a clear contract outlining terms and conditions and by Chinese government law that protects their rights,? the company wrote. Foxconn ?takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our more than one million employees a safe and positive environment.?
The company disputed some details of the former Apple executive?s account, and wrote that a midnight shift, such as the one described, was impossible ?because we have strict regulations regarding the working hours of our employees based on their designated shifts, and every employee has computerized timecards that would bar them from working at any facility at a time outside of their approved shift.? The company said that all shifts began at either 7 a.m. or 7 p.m., and that employees receive at least 12 hours? notice of any schedule changes.
Foxconn employees, in interviews, have challenged those assertions.
Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple?s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company?s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.
In China, it took 15 days.
Companies like Apple ?say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,? said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor?s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. ?They?re good jobs, but the country doesn?t have enough to feed the demand,? Mr. Schmidt said.
Some aspects of the iPhone are uniquely American. The device?s software, for instance, and its innovative marketing campaigns were largely created in the United States. Apple recently built a $500 million data center in North Carolina. Crucial semiconductors inside the iPhone 4 and 4S are manufactured in an Austin, Tex., factory by Samsung, of South Korea.
But even those facilities are not enormous sources of jobs. Apple?s North Carolina center, for instance, has only 100 full-time employees. The Samsung plant has an estimated 2,400 workers.
?If you scale up from selling one million phones to 30 million phones, you don?t really need more programmers,? said Jean-Louis Gass?e, who oversaw product development and marketing for Apple until he left in 1990. ?All these new companies ? Facebook, Google, Twitter ? benefit from this. They grow, but they don?t really need to hire much.?
It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone?s expense. Since Apple?s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.
But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans ? it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren?t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad.
Manufacturing glass for the iPhone revived a Corning factory in Kentucky, and today, much of the glass in iPhones is still made there. After the iPhone became a success, Corning received a flood of orders from other companies hoping to imitate Apple?s designs. Its strengthened glass sales have grown to more than $700 million a year, and it has hired or continued employing about 1,000 Americans to support the emerging market.
But as that market has expanded, the bulk of Corning?s strengthened glass manufacturing has occurred at plants in Japan and Taiwan.
?Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,? said James B. Flaws, Corning?s vice chairman and chief financial officer. ?We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that?s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.?
Corning was founded in America 161 years ago and its headquarters are still in upstate New York. Theoretically, the company could manufacture all its glass domestically. But it would ?require a total overhaul in how the industry is structured,? Mr. Flaws said. ?The consumer electronics business has become an Asian business. As an American, I worry about that, but there?s nothing I can do to stop it. Asia has become what the U.S. was for the last 40 years.?
Middle-class jobs fade
The first time Eric Saragoza stepped into Apple?s manufacturing plant in Elk Grove, Calif., he felt as if he were entering an engineering wonderland.
It was 1995, and the facility near Sacramento employed more than 1,500 workers. It was a kaleidoscope of robotic arms, conveyor belts ferrying circuit boards and, eventually, candy-colored iMacs in various stages of assembly. Mr. Saragoza, an engineer, quickly moved up the plant?s ranks and joined an elite diagnostic team. His salary climbed to $50,000. He and his wife had three children. They bought a home with a pool.
?It felt like, finally, school was paying off,? he said. ?I knew the world needed people who can build things.?
At the same time, however, the electronics industry was changing, and Apple ? with products that were declining in popularity ? was struggling to remake itself. One focus was improving manufacturing. A few years after Mr. Saragoza started his job, his bosses explained how the California plant stacked up against overseas factories: the cost, excluding the materials, of building a $1,500 computer in Elk Grove was $22 a machine. In Singapore, it was $6. In Taiwan, $4.85. Wages weren?t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task.
?We were told we would have to do 12-hour days, and come in on Saturdays,? Mr. Saragoza said. ?I had a family. I wanted to see my kids play soccer.?
Modernization has always caused some kinds of jobs to change or disappear. As the American economy transitioned from agriculture to manufacturing and then to other industries, farmers became steelworkers, and then salesmen and middle managers. These shifts have carried many economic benefits, and in general, with each progression, even unskilled workers received better wages and greater chances at upward mobility.
But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today?s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations ? at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers ? that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.
Even Mr. Saragoza, with his college degree, was vulnerable to these trends. First, some of Elk Grove?s routine tasks were sent overseas. Mr. Saragoza didn?t mind. Then the robotics that made Apple a futuristic playground allowed executives to replace workers with machines. Some diagnostic engineering went to Singapore. Middle managers who oversaw the plant?s inventory were laid off because, suddenly, a few people with Internet connections were all that were needed.
Mr. Saragoza was too expensive for an unskilled position. He was also insufficiently credentialed for upper management. He was called into a small office in 2002 after a night shift, laid off and then escorted from the plant. He taught high school for a while, and then tried a return to technology. But Apple, which had helped anoint the region as ?Silicon Valley North,? had by then converted much of the Elk Grove plant into an AppleCare call center, where new employees often earn $12 an hour.
There were employment prospects in Silicon Valley, but none of them panned out. ?What they really want are 30-year-olds without children,? said Mr. Saragoza, who today is 48, and whose family now includes five of his own.
After a few months of looking for work, he started feeling desperate. Even teaching jobs had dried up. So he took a position with an electronics temp agency that had been hired by Apple to check returned iPhones and iPads before they were sent back to customers. Every day, Mr. Saragoza would drive to the building where he had once worked as an engineer, and for $10 an hour with no benefits, wipe thousands of glass screens and test audio ports by plugging in headphones.
Paydays for Apple
As Apple?s overseas operations and sales have expanded, its top employees have thrived. Last fiscal year, Apple?s revenue topped $108 billion, a sum larger than the combined state budgets of Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Since 2005, when the company?s stock split, share prices have risen from about $45 to more than $427.
Some of that wealth has gone to shareholders. Apple is among the most widely held stocks, and the rising share price has benefited millions of individual investors, 401(k)?s and pension plans. The bounty has also enriched Apple workers. Last fiscal year, in addition to their salaries, Apple?s employees and directors received stock worth $2 billion and exercised or vested stock and options worth an added $1.4 billion.
The biggest rewards, however, have often gone to Apple?s top employees. Mr. Cook, Apple?s chief, last year received stock grants ? which vest over a 10-year period ? that, at today?s share price, would be worth $427 million, and his salary was raised to $1.4 million. In 2010, Mr. Cook?s compensation package was valued at $59 million, according to Apple?s security filings.
A person close to Apple argued that the compensation received by Apple?s employees was fair, in part because the company had brought so much value to the nation and world. As the company has grown, it has expanded its domestic work force, including manufacturing jobs. Last year, Apple?s American work force grew by 8,000 people.
While other companies have sent call centers abroad, Apple has kept its centers in the United States. One source estimated that sales of Apple?s products have caused other companies to hire tens of thousands of Americans. FedEx and United Parcel Service, for instance, both say they have created American jobs because of the volume of Apple?s shipments, though neither would provide specific figures without permission from Apple, which the company declined to provide.
?We shouldn?t be criticized for using Chinese workers,? a current Apple executive said. ?The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.?
What?s more, Apple sources say the company has created plenty of good American jobs inside its retail stores and among entrepreneurs selling iPhone and iPad applications.
After two months of testing iPads, Mr. Saragoza quit. The pay was so low that he was better off, he figured, spending those hours applying for other jobs. On a recent October evening, while Mr. Saragoza sat at his MacBook and submitted another round of r?sum?s online, halfway around the world a woman arrived at her office. The worker, Lina Lin, is a project manager in Shenzhen, China, at PCH International, which contracts with Apple and other electronics companies to coordinate production of accessories, like the cases that protect the iPad?s glass screens. She is not an Apple employee. But Mrs. Lin is integral to Apple?s ability to deliver its products.
Mrs. Lin earns a bit less than what Mr. Saragoza was paid by Apple. She speaks fluent English, learned from watching television and in a Chinese university. She and her husband put a quarter of their salaries in the bank every month. They live in a 1,080-square-foot apartment, which they share with their in-laws and son.
?There are lots of jobs,? Mrs. Lin said. ?Especially in Shenzhen.?
Innovation?s losers
Toward the end of Mr. Obama?s dinner last year with Mr. Jobs and other Silicon Valley executives, as everyone stood to leave, a crowd of photo seekers formed around the president. A slightly smaller scrum gathered around Mr. Jobs. Rumors had spread that his illness had worsened, and some hoped for a photograph with him, perhaps for the last time.
Eventually, the orbits of the men overlapped. ?I?m not worried about the country?s long-term future,? Mr. Jobs told Mr. Obama, according to one observer. ?This country is insanely great. What I?m worried about is that we don?t talk enough about solutions.?
At dinner, for instance, the executives had suggested that the government should reform visa programs to help companies hire foreign engineers. Some had urged the president to give companies a ?tax holiday? so they could bring back overseas profits which, they argued, would be used to create work. Mr. Jobs even suggested it might be possible, someday, to locate some of Apple?s skilled manufacturing in the United States if the government helped train more American engineers.
Economists debate the usefulness of those and other efforts, and note that a struggling economy is sometimes transformed by unexpected developments. The last time analysts wrung their hands about prolonged American unemployment, for instance, in the early 1980s, the Internet hardly existed. Few at the time would have guessed that a degree in graphic design was rapidly becoming a smart bet, while studying telephone repair a dead end.
What remains unknown, however, is whether the United States will be able to leverage tomorrow?s innovations into millions of jobs.
In the last decade, technological leaps in solar and wind energy, semiconductor fabrication and display technologies have created thousands of jobs. But while many of those industries started in America, much of the employment has occurred abroad. Companies have closed major facilities in the United States to reopen in China. By way of explanation, executives say they are competing with Apple for shareholders. If they cannot rival Apple?s growth and profit margins, they won?t survive.
Life Inc.: US employers say they can't find enough workers
?New middle-class jobs will eventually emerge,? said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. ?But will someone in his 40s have the skills for them? Or will he be bypassed for a new graduate and never find his way back into the middle class??
The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices? speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay.
Before Mr. Obama and Mr. Jobs said goodbye, the Apple executive pulled an iPhone from his pocket to show off a new application ? a driving game ? with incredibly detailed graphics. The device reflected the soft glow of the room?s lights. The other executives, whose combined worth exceeded $69 billion, jostled for position to glance over his shoulder. The game, everyone agreed, was wonderful.
There wasn?t even a tiny scratch on the screen.
This story, "How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work," oringinally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright ? 2012 The New York Times
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46091572/ns/business-us_business/
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Monday, January 23, 2012
8 Ways to Finance Your Startup with Debt: Part 2
I mentioned this article to someone recently who was surprised at the limited number of debt options for startup companies.? I asked her to do some research and encouraged her to come on and comment on the story if she has some other suggestions.? It?s not that we?re discussing the ?only? debt options for startups but, rather, we?re talking about the most common options or the solutions that can be employed by the majority.? The answers to all your prayers may not be here but it?s important to clearly understand your options and the beginning of empowerment is to know what can and can?t be done so that decisive action can be taken.
So here we go with our next set of startup debt financing options:
SBA Loan ? We?re all familiar with SBA loans and I know they have a bad name with some but, if you?re a startup, don?t discard this option.? Brock Blake is the CEO of Lendio, a free small business resource that should be utilized by any small business owner looking for capital.? According to Blake:
?SBA can be a great option for startups looking for capital.? One of the most important requirements is strong personal credit. With good credit, it?s likely that a startup could get approved for a loan up to $35,000 through the Community Express or Community Advantage loan programs. For larger loan sizes, the business owner will need a combination of strong credit, industry experience, collateral, and a thorough business plan.?
Home Equity Line of Credit or HELOC ? I realize this isn?t 2007 so there are not nearly as many HELOC?s being handed out.? However, there are still people who either own their homes free and clear with no financing or they have a lot of equity.? People who have been downsized after several years in the workforce.? Others have inherited a property from parents or grandparents and now they have options to borrow against their new home.? So, despite the fact that approximately 30% of homeowners owe more than their homes are worth, there is still a large army out there with equity.? If you?re part of the silent ?equity army? and you?re looking for a HELOC then you may be wise to look at the smaller banks and credit unions since the lending challenges and issues at the big banks are well documented.? Lastly, even though HELOC?s are not nearly as prevalent as they once were, they belong on the list of options.
Peer to Peer Loan aka P2P ? I?m still amazed that, with all the requirements involved in being a lender and the burdensome requirements of the SEC, that we still have lenders who are willing to offer small loans like the P2P lenders.? So on one hand they are great.? But if you visit the websites for two of the largest P2P lenders, Prosper and Lending Club, you?ll quickly learn that these loans aren?t cheap.? With closing costs and high APY?s this is not your bank loan with minimal closing costs and a reasonable interest rate.
However, there are tens of millions of dollars of loans being issued through these networks and the default rates are rather minimal.? So they have created models that work.? The downside is that loan amounts are pretty low on average.? Lending limits are usually $25,000 to $35,000 and the average loan sizes that are being approved are much lower than those limits.? You?ll almost always get better terms on a credit card which allows you to use the funds over and over again instead of only once like a loan ? and you may be able to get a larger credit limit as well.? P2P loans may not be cheap and they do have their downsides but these are a good fit for the right person.
Contract Financing ? This is a relatively new financing option that allows business owners to capitalize on a contract that is either existing or in the beginning stages of negotiation.? Kris Roglieri is the founder of Commercial Capital Training Group and the President of a national commercial finance company who has used contract financing for many clients.? Roglieri explains it like this:
?By having a contact, some lenders can immediately monetize a portion of the fixed payment stream from the contract to fund the small business in order to perform on the contract. This method allows the business to grow effectively and is a far cheaper debt option compared to giving up equity to a lender or investor.??
The credit of the borrower and financials of the new business are not a factor in determining whether or not a business can access capital from their contract.? Roglieri points out that:
?The underlining factor in a lenders decision to monetize a contract is solely done on the issuer of the contract and their credit worthiness.? Ideally, the business provides a unique technology or service to an investment grade company and has a fixed contract over a period of time.?
So the bottom line is to know and understand what your options are.? After all, how can you make the best decision if you don?t know what your options are and which one or which combination is best for you???Be sure to check out Part 1 too.? I realize that not every option is here but we welcome your comments.? So to all my fellow business owners keep living the dream!
Home Equity Loan Photo via Shutterstock
About the Author
Tom Gazaway is President of Hawkeye Management, a firm that specializes in unsecured business credit lines for small business owners. Through their pre-qualification process and detailed analytics, they match small business owners with lenders who will issue business credit without collateral. Tom also blogs at The Small Business Lending Blog. Connect with Tom Gazaway:
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Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/01/8-ways-to-finance-your-startup-with-debt-part-2.html
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Egypt Islamists: military will not escape scrutiny (Reuters)
CAIRO (Reuters) ? The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, set to be the biggest party in Egypt's new freely elected parliament, said Friday interim military rulers would be held accountable after handing power to civilians for any mistakes made during their time at the helm.
The military budget will also be subject to parliamentary oversight, the Brotherhood's general guide, Mohamed Badie, said in an interview with private Egyptian channel Dream TV, three days before the first session of parliament's lower house.
The military council, which took over from Hosni Mubarak last February after the president of 30 years was ousted during 18 days of popular protests, has promised to relinquish power to civilian officials once presidential elections are completed in June. But activists fear it is actually working behind the scenes to maintain sway over Egyptian politics.
Some analysts have suggested the military will not fully abandon politics unless the Muslim Brotherhood and other prominent political parties offer guarantees that it will not face legal retribution over the killing of protesters.
Mubarak, 83, has been put on trial following he 2011 uprising, in which at least 850 people lost their lives.
Badie said it was time to work through the institutions of state and not to make an enemy of the army through the repeated protests organized by youth groups opposed to military rule.
He rejected comparisons between the military council and what he described as Mubarak's corrupt regime. But he warned that the new elected parliament would hold the military council responsible for its conduct during its interim rule, in which dozens of protesters have been killed and wounded.
"We say that we respect and appreciate the army but the military council must be held accountable for any mistakes... No one is above accountability," Badie said.
"This is a transitional period and we urge everyone to cooperate until we reach safety. Then the free, elected People's Assembly will adopt all remaining demands to ensure they are achieved. The first of your demands is for those who made mistakes to be held accountable and for the rights of the martyrs and the wounded. Those who made mistakes will be summoned by the People's Assembly and held to account."
On the foreign policy front, Badie said the Brotherhood would respect Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel as it respects any international agreement, provided the Jewish state did not violate the terms of the deal.
Coming from the very top of the Islamist group, whose leaders met with senior U.S. diplomats earlier this month, those comments are likely to reassure Washington, an important strategic ally of Cairo.
BUDGET OVERSIGHT
Some analysts had suggested that the Brotherhood's decision to keep its followers largely off the streets in recent months and focus on elections and consolidating its power in parliament indicated that it may not be willing to confront the military.
Badie's comments suggest a more muscular approach to the military after the Brotherhood, which had been banned for decades, won almost half the seats in the lower house of parliament in Egypt's first free elections for 60 years.
Badie said a national security council should be established to manage Egypt's security but that parliament, not the military, should decide who sits on that body and that the military would be subject to parliamentary oversight.
"The responsibility for oversight on all the people's institutions lies with the people's assembly and that includes the military because it is a national institution just like all the other national institutions."
Regarding the military's budget, he said: "This is part of the budget of Egypt and it must be reviewed and studied and scrutinized by the People's Assembly... but through a special committee that includes those responsible for national security in order to protect Egypt's military secrets."
The military-backed interim government presented in November a set of supraconstitutional principles that would have shielded the military's budget from parliamentary oversight, limiting the ability of elected officials to keep the generals in check.
The proposals caused an outcry across a spectrum of political groups and the Muslim Brotherhood organized a major demonstration on the eve of the elections to protest the move.
(Writing by Lin Noueihed)
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
AMD A8-3870K
There's good news and less-good news about AMD's new A8-3870K Accelerated Processing Unit (or APU). The good news is that it surpasses its predecessor, the A8-3850, in every way (if only slightly),
and provides overclocking features and performance potential beyond what you may think you can expect from a chip with a $135 (list) price?whether from AMD or Intel. But for all the strides AMD has made since it released the previous APU this past summer, the A8-3870K still can't replace a solid CPU?discrete video card combo for even quasi-serious gamers. But it shows that AMD is taking its Fusion product seriously, and thus hints at more good things to come.
Like the A8-3850, the A8-3870K is based on a 32nm production process and contains four CPU cores and a DirectX 11 (DX11)?supporting Radeon HD 6550D GPU with 400 GPU cores (in roughly the middle budget range of AMD's video products, judging by the previous generation's naming scheme). There's 128KB of L1 cache and 1MB of L2 cache available per core, and the APU supports dual-channel DDR3 memory at speeds of up to 1,866MHz. The A8-3870K of course also requires a motherboard that uses the (relatively) new FM1 socket, based on either AMD's A75 (with enhanced USB 3.0 and SATA III support) or A55 (USB 2.0 and SATA II) chipsets.
One important reminder about the graphics system on the APU: If you have a discrete video card installed, the APU will by default function as the boot-up video adapter, meaning any displays connected to a video card won't work until Windows loads the proper video drivers. This can be annoying if you only have one display, but you can toggle this "feature" in the motherboard's BIOS or UEFI settings. Second, the APU lets you access AMD's new Dual Graphics technology to "combine" the power of a discrete GPU with the integrated graphics; but this only works if both your hardware (the video card must be relatively low-end, and if you're only using one DIMM of memory, the whole thing might not work) and software (you'll need the AMD Vision Engine Control Center running) is correctly configured. Make sure your PC meets all the requirements before trying it out.
The biggest difference between the A8-3850 and the A8-3870K is in terms of the clocks. The CPU core on the newer chip has been bumped up from 2.9GHz to 3GHz, though the GPU clock remains unchanged at 600MHz?but both are now unlocked. This means you may overclock them to your heart's (and your PC's thermal) content, independently of each other, to get as much new performance as you can muster. It's also one of the first genuinely compelling reasons we've seen for enthusiasts (or just wannabes) to consider an APU that, by the broader standards of AMD's product line, is not an exceptional performer.
As we said when we reviewed the A8-3850 last year, Intel doesn't have any products that directly compare with AMD's new APUs in terms of overall capabilities. But if you care about raw processing more than graphics, an Intel platform based on chips like the lower-end Core i3-2100 or the considerably more powerful Core i5-2500K will serve you better. At its stock clock speeds, the A8-3870K represents only a tiny increase over the A8-3850; its multicore CineBench R11.5 score rose from 3.46 to 3.55, it took only six seconds less (5 minutes 12 seconds versus 5 minutes 18 seconds) to apply 12 filters in Adobe Photoshop CS5, cryptography throughput in TrueCrypt 7.0 raised from 106MBps to 109MBps, and its score in our full-system Futuremark PCMark 7 benchmark was functionally unchanged.
Video tests showed similarly small increases, with scores rising from 1,024 to 1,026 in 3DMark 11, frame rates increasing from 6.3 frames per second (fps) to 6.4fps in Lost Planet 2, and frame rates not improving at all in the Heaven Benchmark 2.5 (it remained at 5.5fps both times). These were all at basic resolutions, by the way?the Performance (1,280 by 720) preset for 3DMark 11, and 1,280 by 1,024 for the other two?though we maxed up all the details. By reducing the titles' resolutions or turning down the visual effects, you'll be able to get something much closer to playable frame rates, but you'll be making quite a few sacrifices.
This is where the overclocking comes in, right? Theoretically. We're happy to report that overclocking (when the APU was installed in the Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H motherboard) was a breeze, and being able to separately focus on the CPU and GPU was an enormous frustration reducer. We had very little trouble nudging the GPU clock up from 600MHz to 900MHz and the CPU clock from 3GHz to 3.5GHz, using just a basic air cooler?and AMD tells us that, with more aggressive cooling and fine tuning of voltages, a combo rate of 960MHz/3.8GHz is possible. The A8-3870K offers you a lot of leeway.
But is it worth it? That depends on your point of view. The 3DMark 11 score rose from 1,026 to 1,244, CineBench from 0.90 to 1.04, the Heaven Benchmark from 5.5fps to 6.4fps, Lost Planet 2 from 6.4fps to 7.5fps, PCMark 11 from 2,509 to 2,691, Photoshop times down from 5:12 to 4:36, and TrueCrypt throughput up from 109MBps to 119MBps. (Predictably, load power rose as well, from 134.6 watts to 142.3 watts.) These aren't poor jumps by any stretch of the imagination. But except for those who might be really excited to overclock with such an inexpensive chip, we're not sure they're dazzling enough to set many hearts racing.
Still, the AMD A8-3870K is a fascinating part that shows how serious AMD continues to take the mainstream processor race. Our conclusion with this APU remains the same as with the A8-3850: Though you'll want a standalone video card for any real gaming purposes, AMD's blending of processing and video performance delivers a balance you just can't get from Intel right now. This may change when Intel ships its Ivy Bridge CPUs, which will support advanced DX11 graphics rather than Sandy Bridge's DX10, in a few months. But for now, AMD's Fusion approach is generating the most comforting heat in the midrange market.
More Chipsets & Processors Stories:
??? Intel Roars to Record 2011, Sets Sights on Ultrabooks, Tablets in 2012
??? AMD A8-3870K
??? Rumor: iPad 3 to Sport Quad-Core Chip, LTE, HD Display
??? AMD Positions Lightning Bolt to Take on Intel's Thunderbolt
??? Apple Makes Rare Hardware Acquisition With Israel-Based Anobit
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/2pbnTN29974/0,2817,2398957,00.asp
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Home sales hit 11-month high (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Home sales hit an 11-month high in December and the number of properties on the market was the fewest in nearly seven years, pointing to a nascent recovery in the housing sector.
The National Association of Realtors said on Friday existing home sales increased 5 percent to an annual rate of 4.61 million units, with all four of the nation's regions recording gains.
Sales of both multifamily and single-family homes rose.
"It seems that the housing sector may be slowly picking itself up off of the mat," said Omair Sharif, an economist at RBS in Stamford, Connecticut.
The fairly upbeat data and reports that debt-stricken Greece was close to a deal with its private-sector creditors pushed U.S. Treasury debt prices lower. Stocks on Wall Street were mixed, while the dollar was little changed against a basket of currencies.
While the home sales pace was a touch below economists' expectations, December marked the third straight month of gains, adding to hopes that a tentative recovery was taking shape.
But a glut of unsold properties that is weighing down on prices and stringent lending practices by banks is likely to make progress painfully slow.
SHADOW INVENTORY WORRIES
There were 2.38 million unsold homes on the market last month, the fewest since March 2005. That represented a 6.2 months' supply at December's sales pace, the lowest since April 2006 and down from a 7.2 months' supply in November.
The Realtors group noted, however, that the inventory of unsold homes tends to decline in winter.
A supply of 6 months is generally considered ideal and anything higher suggests prices will decline further.
The median sales price fell 2.5 percent to $164,500 in December from a year ago. For 2011 as a whole, prices dropped 3.9 percent to an average of $166,100, the lowest since 2002.
Further pressure could come in the months ahead as banks finish working out kinks in the foreclosure process and push more homes onto the market.
"That so-called 'shadow' inventory has to come to the market eventually and will keep downward pressure on home prices long after a pickup in building and sales activity," said Ellen Zentner, a senior economist at Nomura Securities in New York.
LOOKING TO HELP
The Federal Reserve has suggested a number of ways other policymakers could step in to help the beaten-up market, including giving government-controlled mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a bigger role in refinancing loans.
Some officials at the Fed say the central bank should consider further purchase of mortgage-backed securities as a way to help spur a stronger recovery, but no action is expected at a policy meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday.
The data on previously owned homes was just the latest in a number of signals on housing to show improvement, gains economists pinned to an improving labor market.
Data earlier this week showed single-family home starts rose for a third straight month in December and optimism among builders this month was the highest in four-and-a-half years.
"It is very encouraging that the current phase of the recovery is being driven by economic fundamentals as opposed to being fostered by temporary stimulus," said Millan Mulraine, a senior macro strategist at TD Securities in New York.
Existing home sales in December were up 3.6 percent from a year earlier. A total of 4.26 million homes were sold last year, up 1.7 percent from 2010.
But the road to recovery will be bumpy. Distressed properties, foreclosures and short sales, which typically occur at deep discounts, accounted for 32 percent of overall sales last month, little changed from November.
A third of pending existing home sales contracts were canceled, the NAR said.
"There is every reason to believe that banks are not going to reduce credit standards back to pre-recession days, when all that was required was the ability to fog a mirror - and only a faint fog was necessary," said Steven Blitz, a senior economist at ITG Investment Research in New York.
"This, plus the slow pace of the upturn, will keep the housing market from a dynamic turn. It is, however, increasingly safe to say the market has finally turned positive."
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows (omg!)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Guest lineups for the Sunday TV news shows:
ABC's "This Week" ? 2012 GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
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NBC's "Meet the Press" ? Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J.
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CBS' "Face the Nation" ? Former Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
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CNN's "State of the Union" ? Santorum; Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.
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"Fox News Sunday" ? House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; Stuart Stevens, campaign strategist for 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
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Top CIA lawyer never approved NYPD collaboration
FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2011, file photo, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks at a news conference as Mayor Michael Bloomberg listens in Brooklyn, N.Y. Former intelligence officials tell The Associated Press that when the CIA first embedded a veteran agency officer inside the New York Police Department the CIA's top lawyer never signed off on the arrangement. The CIA officer, Lawrence Sanchez, became the architect of controversial NYPD spying programs. Approval by the CIA general counsel would have been required under the presidential order that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said authorized the unusual assignment. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)
FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2011, file photo, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks at a news conference as Mayor Michael Bloomberg listens in Brooklyn, N.Y. Former intelligence officials tell The Associated Press that when the CIA first embedded a veteran agency officer inside the New York Police Department the CIA's top lawyer never signed off on the arrangement. The CIA officer, Lawrence Sanchez, became the architect of controversial NYPD spying programs. Approval by the CIA general counsel would have been required under the presidential order that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said authorized the unusual assignment. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The CIA's top lawyer never approved sending a veteran agency officer to New York, where he helped set up police spying programs, The Associated Press has learned. Such approval would have been required under the presidential order that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said authorized the unusual assignment.
Normally, when the CIA dispatches one of its officers to work in another government agency, rules are spelled out in advance in writing to ensure the CIA doesn't cross the line into domestic spying. Under a 1981 presidential order, the CIA is permitted to provide "specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel" to local law enforcement agencies but only when the CIA's general counsel approves in each case.
Neither of those things happened in 2002, when CIA Director George Tenet sent veteran agency officer Lawrence Sanchez to New York, former U.S. intelligence officials told the AP. While on the CIA's payroll, Sanchez was the architect of spying programs that transformed the NYPD into one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies.
The CIA's inspector general cleared the agency of any wrongdoing in its partnership with New York, but the absence of documentation and legal review shows how murky the rules were as the CIA and NYPD formed their unprecedented collaboration in the frenzied months after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
In a series of investigative reports since August, the AP has revealed that, with the CIA's help, the NYPD developed spying programs that monitored every aspect of Muslim life and built databases on where innocent Muslims eat, shop, work and pray. Plainclothes officers monitored conversations in Muslim neighborhoods and wrote daily reports about what they heard.
Kelly, the police commissioner, has vigorously defended the NYPD's relationship with the CIA. Testifying before the City Council in October, Kelly said the collaboration was authorized under the 1981 presidential order, known as No. 12333.
"Operating under this legal basis, the CIA has advised the police department on key aspects of intelligence gathering and analysis," Kelly said.
Kelly cited the section of the presidential order, 2.6c, that also requires the CIA's top lawyer to approve such arrangements, but he did not tell the city council that approval by the CIA's top lawyer was required.
The CIA's general counsel at the time, Scott Muller, did not approve the arrangement, former intelligence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. CIA lawyers, particularly those in New York, were aware Sanchez was working out of the NYPD offices but the rules of the arrangement were not documented in advance, the officials said.
Muller, now in private practice in New York, said he had not been following the issue and declined to comment. The CIA did not respond when repeatedly asked to explain the justification for Sanchez's assignment and why Muller did not sign off.
Sanchez, a CIA veteran who spent 15 years overseas in the former Soviet Union, South Asia and the Middle East, instructed officers on the art of collecting information without attracting attention. He directed officers and reviewed case files. Sometimes intelligence collected from NYPD's operations was passed informally to the CIA, former NYPD officials said.
The CIA's internal watchdog found nothing wrong with the partnership and concluded that the agency did not violate the executive order. U.S. officials have said that's in part because the CIA never instructed Sanchez to set up the NYPD spying programs.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that the rules were murky. They attributed that to the desperate push for better intelligence following the attacks.
Sanchez left the department in late 2010 but was followed last summer by a senior clandestine operative who holds the title of special assistant to David Cohen, a former CIA officer who runs the intelligence division. The CIA has asked the AP not to publish the operative's name. The CIA would not say whether its current general counsel approved his being sent to the NYPD.
The clandestine CIA operative's role at the NYPD remains unclear. Officially, he is there on a sabbatical to observe the NYPD's management. Kelly said the operative provides the NYPD with foreign intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus described him as an adviser. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described him to Congress as an analyst, then Clapper's office acknowledged that was incorrect.
The CIA's relationship with the NYPD has troubled lawmakers and top intelligence officials.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said the CIA has "no business or authority in domestic spying, or in advising the NYPD how to conduct local surveillance."
Clapper also said it did not look good for the CIA to be involved in any city police department.
___
Online:
Executive Order 12333: http://1.usa.gov/Ac4t5G
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Friday, January 20, 2012
Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky: Expecting!
Chris Hemsworth has a very busy 2012 in front of him.
The actor will play a key role in the summer blockbuster The Avengers and has also now confirmed that he's expecting his first child with wife Elsa Pataky.
The actors got married in December 2010 and, according to their rep, are "delighted and very excited" to become parents.
"Having the person that you love by your side and starting a family with them is the best thing that can happen to you in this life. You can't ask for more," Pataky tells ¡Hola!.
[Photo: WENN.com]
Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/01/chris-hemsworth-and-elsa-pataky-expecting/
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HP Pavilion dm1-3010nr (Verizon)
If you're a road warrior who still needs all the features of a computer to be productive, HP has a netbook for you. The Pavilion dm1-3010nr (Verizon) ($769.99, $599 with two-year contract) uses Windows 7 as its operating system and has a decent screen, a full-size keyboard, and a performance-minded AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) for handling computing and graphics tasks on your travels. It's also equipped with Bluetooth and a Verizon 4G modem that will get you online anytime, anywhere. The dm1-3010nr has quite a bit to offer, provided you're a user looking to do more work than play.
Design
Like a majority of netbooks wanting to keep costs low, the HP Pavilion dm1-3010nr has a plastic clamshell design. The difference here is that the lid and bottom are made of resin, which is sturdier and more refined than glossy plastics. The entire chassis weighs 3.43 pounds, putting it on the heavier end of the netbook category. At 2.98 pounds, the Acer Aspire One AO722-0828 ($349.99 list, 3.5 stars) is definitely one of the lightest in the class; the 3.05-pound Sony VAIO VPC-YB35KX ($549.99 direct, 3.5 stars) is about average.
The 11.6-inch widescreen on the dm1-3010nr is big enough for working comfortably in one program. The screen displays in 1,366-by-768 resolution, a standard among netbooks. There's a VGA webcam above the screen for video chatting. The adjacent chiclet keyboard provides a wonderful typing solution for users on the go. The Pavilion dm1-3010nr utilizes HP's ClickPad, a frustrating feature that the company has since done away with in its laptop lines and newer dm1z netbooks, as it tends to cause the cursor to jump. (We experienced that while we were testing this netbook, too.) One way to circumvent this issue is to use one-finger touch-to-click navigation.
Features
There's a 320GB hard drive inside the dm1-3010nr, which is small compared with the 500GB drives you'll find on the Aspire One AO722-0828 and Sony VAIO VPC-YB35KX. Like the Pavilion dm1z ($449 direct, 4.5 stars), however, the Pavilion dm1-3010nr's drive spins at a faster 7,200rpm, whereas the Aspire One AO722-0828 and VAIO VPC-YB35KX spin at a slower 5,400rpm. This difference in speed does affect overall performance, although on a small level. Unfortunately, a considerable amount of bloatware litters the drive, including shortcuts to Netflix, Hulu, and eBay on the desktop, Blio ereader, Bing Bar, Fences desktop organizer, and Times Reader. So, if you want a bloatware-free system, you'll have to set aside a considerable amount of time to clean off some of these extraneous programs.
4G Performance
Tested in eight locations in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, New York, we found that the HP's built-in modem gave the dm1-3010nr a significant signal advantage over our Editors' Choice Pantech UML290 USB modem ($99.99-$249.99, 4 stars), which was connected to a Lenovo U400 laptop. Receive signal strength varied from -3 to -11dBm better than on the USB modem, with resulting average download speeds almost twice as fast: 8.62Mbps down compared with 4.86Mbps, with a max of 24.51Mbps rather than 10.20Mbps. On one test, we couldn't connect with the USB modem at all; the HP netbook pulled in a weak?but acceptable?signal.
Upload speeds were closer, with the USB modem actually besting the HP notebook at 6.82Mbps average speeds for the USB modem compared to 6.04Mbps for the HP. And in our Web tests, processor speed mattered more than which modem we used. The Lenovo's 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor let it load Web pages more quickly through curl than the HP's 1.6GHz AMD E-350, even though the Lenovo's USB modem got a weaker signal.
Computing Performance
The dm1-3010nr utilizes AMD's E-350 APU, a 1.6GHz chip that has the CPU and graphics processors on the same die; it's also loaded with 2GB of RAM. The system garnered a score of 54 on SYSmark 2007 (an overall performance gauge). The VAIO VPC-YB35KX (AMD E-450) had the same results, but the Editors' Choice Pavilion dm1z and Lenovo IdeaPad S205 ($579.99 direct, 3.5 stars) each scored 57 with the same APU. The main differentiating factor between the three systems is the amount of RAM (the IdeaPad S205 has 4GB, the Pavilion dm1z has 3GB, and the Pavilion dm1-3010nr has 2GB).
For netbooks, battery life is one of the biggest deciding factors. The dm1-3010nr's 55Wh battery lasted 6 hours 41 minutes in our MobileMark 2007 rundown test, enough to last through a coast-to-coast flight and then some. But you can do better: The dm1z, which has the same 55Wh battery, lasted 7 hours 8 minutes; and the Sony VAIO VPC-YB15KX/S ($599.99 list, 4 stars), loaded with a slightly smaller 54Wh battery, lasted 7 hours 53 minutes.
The HP Pavilion dm1-3010nr is a fine computing solution for business workers and other users who spend at least as much time traveling as they do chained to a desk. Verizon's 4G and standard 802.11n Wi-Fi will keep you connected wherever you are, and the netbook's battery life will get you through most of your workday. But if your job and life don't require you to be jacked into the Internet constantly, the Editors' Choice HP Pavilion dm1z is a better portable solution, especially if you're looking to go the cheaper route. You always have the option to buy a 4G modem for the dm1z later on. But if you're looking for an all-in-one wireless package the dm1-3010nr is one of the best options out there.
Eugene Kim contributed to this review
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Panasonic Toughbook CF-S10 with several other laptops side by side.
More laptop reviews:
??? HP Pavilion dm1-3010nr (Verizon)
??? Dell Latitude E6420 XFR
??? Lenovo IdeaPad U400
??? Gateway ID47H07u
??? j5 Create JUC100 Wormhole KM Switch
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Sai2kwVT1o4/0,2817,2398822,00.asp
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Thursday, January 19, 2012
Huawei Ascend P1 S, Smartphone Android Tertipis dengan Tebal 6.68 mm
HUAWEI membocorkan ponsel Android super slim besutannya, Huawei Ascend P1 S saat gelaran CES. Ya, sebagai pabrikan ponsel yang tergolong aktif merilis ponsel, Huawei ingin mencoba menjadi pesaing utama di pasar smartphone Amerika Serikat.
Huawei Ascend P1 S berjalan pada sistem operasi Android Sandwich Ice Cream dan prosesor dual-core CPU A9? 1.5 Ghz dan chip grafis SGX 540, salah satu yang tercepat di pasaran.
Smartphone ini menawarkan resolusi tinggi 960 x 540 pada layar Super AMOLED berukuran 4.3 inci, dengan kamera 8-megapiksel belakang dan memori 1-gigabyte RAM.
Ascend hadir sebagai ponsel tertipis di dunia sampai saat ini, dengan tebal hanya 6,68 milimeter, mengalahkan pemegang rekor sebelumnya yaitu ponsel Fujitsu yang memiliki ketebalan dua milimeter.
Sementara, untuk performa waktu siaganya, Ascend mengandalkan baterai 1800 mAh. Untuk harganya, Huawei Ascend P1 S dibanderol dengan harga antara $ 200 dan $ 300.
(maya/CN19) Bagi Anda pengguna ponsel, nikmati berita terkini lewat http://m.suaramerdeka.com
Dapatkan SM launcher untuk BlackBerry http://m.suaramerdeka.com/bb/bblauncher/SMLauncher.jad
Source: http://suaramerdeka.com/v1/index.php/read/gaya/2012/01/05/1355
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What the @#$%! is 'Family' kid about to say?
AP
Little Lily shocks her "Modern Family" by swearing on Wednesday's show.
By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Wednesday's episode of "Modern Family" hasn't even aired yet, but it's already controversial.
The episode, called "Little Bo Bleep," has been in the news for weeks now. On the show, 2-year-old Lily delivers an F-bomb, shocking her dads, who are prepping her to serve as a flower girl.
The actress who plays Lily, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, is actually 4, and she doesn't really say the word in question.?In a reversal of?Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," she actually said "Fudge!" But the show then bleeped the word and pixelated her mouth, leaving the impression she actually swore.
One protest against the episode comes from 18-year-old McKay Hatch, a student at Utah's Brigham Young University, who started the No Cussing Club at his California junior high back in 2007, when he was just 14. Hatch, who has appeared on the "Tonight Show," has asked ABC to pull the episode, the Associated Press reports. The network has made no comment on the show.
On Sunday, "Modern Family" won the Golden Globe for best TV comedy or musical.
Do you think it's OK for Lily to swear? Vote in our poll, and elaborate on your answer on Facebook.
Is it OK with you if 'Modern Family' has a toddler appear to curse?
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Source: http://theclicker.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/18/10183629-what-the-is-family-kid-about-to-say
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