Weekend tech reading: EA to launch PC gaming campaign?

Why has EA bought the domain CampaignforPCGaming.com? Electronic Arts has a somewhat mixed record when it comes to PC gaming. On the one hand it has released a number of well known exclusive PC game titles such as The Sims, Spore, and others. It's also releasing C free-to-play games like Battlefield Heroes and the upcoming Battlefield Play4Free game. On the other hand it tends to treat the PC like a second class game platform... Big Download

60% of AOL's profits come from misinformed customers Ken Auletta's big New Yorker piece on AOL (subscription only) this week revealed an interesting detail about the company's inner workings. According to Auletta, 80% of AOL's profits come from subscribers, and 75% of those subscribers are paying for something they don't actually need. The Huffington Post

What happens when the CD factory closes? PITMAN, N.J.-- In this corner of the music universe, you won't find many limousines, groupies, or people lighting guitars on fire. While the public often associates the music business with jet-setting rock stars and lavish living, this place is marked by minivans, Phillies and Eagles fans, and, very soon, people without work. CNET

Ballmer to Hu: 90% of Microsoft customers in China using pirated software While Chinese President Hu Jintao knew he'd face some tough questions when he came to the United States this week, he probably figured most of them would come from Barack Obama and members of Congress. But you can add Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to that list. Network World

Graphene won't replace silicon in CPUs, says IBM It appears that silicon will see another day. In an about-face move, IBM has revealed that graphene cant fully replace silicon inside CPUs reports Bit-tech, a UK-based hardware enthusiast site. The reason? A graphene transistor can't actually be completely switched off. ZDNet

Firing Points: Rage Quitting I love me some Left 4 Dead 2, but it can be hard to get a good game going because people give up so easily. If your whole team makes it to the end of Dead Center as Survivors, and then you Charge somebody out a window as Infected, they're probably going to rage quit. Firing Squad

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Blog - Astronomers Crowdsource The Definition of a Galaxy

Defining a galaxy sounds so simple. We all know what a galaxy is, right? Well, not really. Surprisingly, there is no universally agreed upon definition and the ones generally bandied around leave a great deal of wriggle room.

All this has been thrown into stark relief in recent years by the discovery of a growing number of small, faint, galaxy-like objects that were entirely unknown until now. These have been given various names such as ultra compact dwarfs, ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies and dwarf elliptical galaxies.

But it isn't entirely clear whether they have more in common with galaxies like our own or globular clusters, which astronomers generally do not think of as galaxies.

That makes the problem of defining a galaxy a growing concern.

So what to do? Today, Duncan Forbes at Swinburne University in Australia and Pavel Kroup at the University of Bonn in Germany put forward a novel solution. They outline the various characteristics that astronomers think about when classifying galaxies.

These include factors such as the presence of stars, so gas clouds can't be defined as galaxies; being gravitationally bound, so materials that has been stripped away by another galaxy wouldn't count; whether the system is stable or not; whether it hosts a good variety of different types of star, which excludes globular clusters which contain only similar stars; and whether it is held together by dark matter, which many galaxies seem to be.

There are other factors too, of course. (Although they do not include the presence of a black hole at the centre of a galaxy as a defining characteristic , which is odd given the growing interest in the link between galactic evolutoin and black holes.)

Forbes and Kroup go on to suggest that the best way to achieve consensus is to crowdsource the problem. In other works, they want to use the wisdom of the crowd to determine what factors are important what aren't.

They've even set up website to solicit views by means of a survey. To take part, simply read their paper and answer their questions.

It may help to consider the current definitions of a galaxy, which are surprisingly vague.

Here's the definition of a galaxy from the Oxford English Dictionary: "Any of the numerous large groups of stars and other matter that exist in space as independent systems."

That measure includes various objects that many astronomers do not think of as galaxies, such as globular clusters, which do not have huge varieties of stars, or smaller objects such as ultra compact dwarfs which do not seem to sit in a region of dark matter, like our own galaxy .

The definition from Wikipedia is a little more comprehensive: "A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter."

But even this misses out various characteristics that astronomers think are important, such as dominating the local environment, in the way the Milky Way dominates the globular clusters nearby.

By crowdsourcing opinion, Forbes and Kroup hope to avoid the controversy that surrounded the change in the definition of a planet that the International Astronomical Union adopted a few years ago and which resulted in the demotion of Pluto. They say this was hugely unpopular with certain astronomers and with the public in general.

Whether popularity is good measure of the success of a definition is a moot point. But it'll be interesting to see what kind of definition emerges from this approach.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1101.3309: What Is A Galaxy? Cast Your Vote Here...

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iPhone Review: Bad Company 2

They say they devil is in the details, in which case you should imagine Bad Company 2 for the iPhone as having red skin, horns, a trident tail and breath that smells worse than wet, rotten garlic. What really kills Bad Company 2 is the lack of fine polish ? and that, sadly, makes a huge difference to the overall experience.

This is a shame, because Bad Company 2 initially looks good. It has a lengthy singleplayer campaign, which slots neatly into the story of the full, proper Bad Company 2, plus a four-player multiplayer mode that?s supported over WiFi and 3G. The graphics are lush, and it packs in plenty of variety too, despite a disappointing tendency to resort to turret sequences.

The multiplayer is especially impressive, in fact. While five levels and support for four players might not sound like a lot, it?s actually a perfectly judged limitation for a mobile phone game. If you want to sit down and invest yourself in lengthy tournaments and huge clan matches, then you're better off going back to the full version of the game. The iPhone version is much more suited to drop-in, drop-out games that keep you occupied while you?re patiently enduring whatever dross happens to be on TV.


Unfortunately, midway through enjoying these delights, the devil tends to rear his ugly head. There are numerous tiny niggles, such as performance problems on anything less than a full-spec iPhone, and a few crashes to the home screen too.

Worst of all, however, is the way the level design frequently infringes on the game itself, with players constantly getting caught in corners or bumping straight into the walls due to occasionally unresponsive controls. It?s never enough to ruin the game, not at first, but it's a constant irritation and the only saving grace is that the game is balanced so that, on medium difficulty, it?s actually quite hard to die.

While it?s impressive that so much detail and depth has been brought to the iPhone version, with melee attacks, iron sights and secondary fire options putting Bad Company 2 a step above most iPhone shooters, it?s still a shame that some basic features are lacking. There?s no Game Centre support, for example, while the three different control configs are only titled A, B and C, meaning you have to spend time trying each in turn if you want to see how they work.


On the whole, Bad Company 2 remains an interesting and enjoyable addition to the app store, but it?s mainly because of the quantity that?s on offer, rather than the quality of the experience. A few performance tweaks and some further level optimisation is all that would be needed to elevate Bad Company 2 on the iPhone to Recommended status. Lacking them, however, means it?s stuck at being merely average.

Verdict: Fun and lengthy, Bad Company 2 is wounded by a few design oversights and missing features. Still, it?s definitely worth picking up if you?re itching for some mobile violence.

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Facebook raises $1.5 billion, now worth $50 billion

Facebook has announced that it has raised $1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion, but it is has no immediate plans for the funds and will simply continue to build and expand its operations. The transaction consisted of two parts: on Friday, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-US clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock, while last month, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

Facebook said it was approached by DST and Goldman Sachs; the company only then decided that the proposed deal was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders. Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, but the company chose to limit it to $1 billion. Facebook expects to pass 500 shareholders at some point this year, and therefore predicts it will start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

"Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing, David Ebersman, Facebook's chief financial officer, said in a statement. "With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead."

The news that Goldman Sachs was investing in Facebook spread like wildfire last month, but we chose to cover it only now because Facebook has confirmed the deal and because a second, bigger investment was made. The social network was valued at $50 billion on the SecondMarket two months ago, but now it's official.

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Poll Finds Wariness About Cutting Entitlements

Yet their preference for spending cuts, even in programs that benefit them, dissolves when they are presented with specific options related to Medicare and Social Security, the programs that directly touch the most people and also are the biggest drivers of the government?s projected long-term debt.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans choose higher payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security over reduced benefits in either program. And asked to choose among cuts to Medicare, Social Security or the nation?s third-largest spending program ? the military ? a majority by a large margin said cut the Pentagon.

While Americans are near-unanimous in calling deficits a problem ? a ?very serious? problem, say 7 out of 10 ? a majority believes it should not be necessary for them to pay higher taxes to bridge the shortfall between what the government spends and what it takes in. But given a choice of often-discussed revenue options, they preferred a national sales tax or a limit in the deduction for mortgage interest to a higher gasoline tax or taxing employer-provided health benefits.

Americans? sometimes contradictory impulses on spending and taxes suggest the political crosscurrents facing both parties as they gird for debate over how to address the fiscal woes of a nation with an aging population, a complex tax system and an accumulated debt that is starting to weigh on the economy.

On Thursday, a large group of House conservatives called for cutting $2.5 trillion in mostly unspecified spending over the next decade and House Republican leaders have vowed to make spending cuts a priority in coming months after winning a majority on that promise in November?s midterm elections. President Obama is expected to make fiscal responsibility a central theme of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, and of the budget he will send Congress next month for the 2012 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

The antitax sentiment reflected in the poll is in line with Republicans? mantra that spending, not taxes, is the problem for the federal budget. Yet that assessment contradicts the conclusions of several bipartisan and academic panels that proposed debt-reduction plans over the past year.

Those groups ? including, in November, a bipartisan majority of Mr. Obama?s fiscal commission ? each concluded that the growth in the nation?s debt could not be reined in with spending cuts alone. They said the required reductions, including for Medicare and Social Security, would be deeper than anything the public would accept.

The poll of 1,036 adults nationwide, which has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, was conducted Jan. 15 through 19 ? in the days after Mr. Obama gave a widely praised address at a Tucson memorial service for those killed in the shooting rampage that wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona. Nearly two-thirds of Americans approve of his response to the shooting, the poll showed; 11 percent disapprove.

National tragedies or crises often have a rallying-around effect that buoys a president?s public image. The poll, like others recently, shows Mr. Obama with a slightly improved approval rating. Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, approve of his job performance, compared with 39 percent who do not.

The public also gives Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt as he and Republicans adjust to their new power-sharing relationship. After a productive lame-duck session of Congress late last year, in which Mr. Obama won a number of concessions from Republicans in return for extending the Bush-era tax cuts on high incomes, the poll showed that nearly eight out of 10 Americans believe Mr. Obama will try to work with Republicans to get things done ? including 77 percent of independents and 57 percent of Republicans. Less than half of all respondents ? 46 percent ? said Republicans will try to work with Mr. Obama.

The president holds no advantage over Republicans, however, on addressing the deficit and job creation. Americans split on whom they trust more to make the right decisions on both issues. The poll holds other warning signs for the president. With the unemployment rate remaining above 9 percent, majorities disapprove of his handling of the economy (52 percent), job creation (54 percent) and the deficit (56 percent).

Fewer people than ever think Mr. Obama has the same priorities for the country as they do: 52 percent say he does not share their priorities, down from 65 percent who said he did when Mr. Obama first took office.

Representative John A. Boehner, a Republican of Ohio who is the new House speaker, is relatively unknown to the national public; the roughly one-quarter who have an opinion of him are split between those with negative and positive views.

A far-better-known Republican, Sarah Palin, also is far more disliked. She is viewed unfavorably by 57 percent of the public, including a majority of independents ? her highest negative rating ever in Times/CBS polls.

In a week that saw House Republicans vote to repeal Mr. Obama?s signature domestic achievement, the law overhauling the health care system, nearly half of Americans said the law should stand. About four in 10 people support repeal, but many say they want to undo only parts of the law.

Asked what Congress should focus on, 43 percent of Americans say job creation; health care is a distant second, cited by 18 percent, followed by deficit reduction, war and illegal immigration.

If Medicare benefits have to be reduced, the most popular option is raising premiums on affluent beneficiaries. Similarly, if Social Security benefits must be changed to make the program more financially sound, a broad majority prefers the burden fall on the wealthy. Even most wealthy Americans agree.

As budget woes force a national debate over the country?s domestic priorities, preserving money for education ranks at the top for most Americans.

The poll showed that the Arizona shootings had not changed Americans? general opposition to banning handguns. However, more than six in 10 favor a nationwide ban on assault weapons and on the kind of high-capacity magazine used in Tucson.

Megan Thee-Brenan and Marjorie Connelly contributed reporting.

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Gestures that Your TV Will Understand

Thanks to Microsoft's Kinect, millions are casting aside their controllers and using their bodies to play games. Now the company that created the motion-tracking hardware for the Kinect wants to make waving your arms an accepted way to control everything from your TV to your desktop computer.

PrimeSense, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, makes a package that combines one or two conventional cameras, an infrared depth sensor, and specialized computer chips. Together they collect and interpret a person's movements in 3-D. The movements are calculated by projecting a grid of infrared light spots into a room, tracking how light bounces back, and correlating this with information from the stereo cameras. Certain motions can be translated into computer commands or, in the case of Kinect, used to control an on-screen avatar.

While Microsoft focuses on gaming, PrimeSense is trying to establish other uses, for example TV control. In collaboration with PC manufacturer Asus, PrimeSense has developed a device called the WAVI Xtion. It looks a lot like the Kinect controller, but connects via a PC to the TV and lets the viewer use gestures to control what appears on the screen.

The WAVI Xtion camera is positioned next to the TV, while the control box connects to the computer. A user waves a palm in front of the TV to call up a simple menu that would let him choose between watching shows, playing games, or looking at photos. The user points to one of these options with his palm, which is tracked by the cameras and infrared sensor. To choose an option, the user holds a palm over a particular video, or he can flip through options by waving to the right or left. When the clip is playing, he can wave a palm at the screen to call up the controls to rewind the video or turn up the volume.

Adi Berenson, PrimeSense's vice president of business development, says the hands-free approach eliminates a major sticking point with efforts to bring the Internet to televisions. "We believe that the industry is trying to force-fit the PC into the living room, and it won't work," he says. "It's a more relaxed environment that needs a more natural way to interact." Google TV?the search giant's Internet TV effort?relies on a full QWERTY keyboard, a feature that many think is too unwieldy to be practical.

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Obama Picks G.E. Chief for Board as Focus Turns to Jobs

Mr. Immelt will be chairman of the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness that Mr. Obama intends to create by executive order. In a statement issued shortly after midnight, Mr. Obama said he wanted the council to ?focus its work on finding new ways to encourage the private sector to hire and invest in American competitiveness.?

The council will be a reconfigured version of the board Mr. Volcker led, the President?s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. That body, created by Mr. Obama when he took office in the thick of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, is set to expire on Feb. 6.

Asked about his new role during a conference call on G.E.?s earnings, Mr. Immelt said the advisory position would give him a chance to contribute to issues in the broader economy, with a focus on competitiveness and jobs. ?I am honored to serve,? he said.

Mr. Immelt said that his commitment to G.E. would not change. ?This is my passion,? he said of G.E. ?I am committed. I am a hard worker. I am focused on the company.?

The changes in the panel signal what the White House describes as ?a new phase of our recovery,? a shift from crisis to job creation. They come as Mr. Obama has been working to repair his frayed relations with the business community. Mr. Immelt, who was a member of the original board, has often been by the president?s side in recent months, as Mr. Obama has sought to spotlight his efforts on behalf of American companies overseas.

He was with Mr. Obama when the president traveled to India in November. During a stop in Mumbai, the White House announced a string of business deals between India and American companies, including a $750 million order from India?s Reliance Power for steam turbines manufactured by General Electric.

And Mr. Immelt was with the president again this week during the visit of President Hu Jintao of China, taking part in a meeting Mr. Obama convened with business leaders and Mr. Hu and attending the state dinner in Mr. Hu?s honor on Wednesday.

?Jeff Immelt?s experience at G.E. and his understanding of the vital role the private sector plays in creating jobs and making America competitive makes him up to the challenge of leading this new council,? Mr. Obama said.

Schenectady, where the president will make the formal announcement of his appointment, is the birthplace of General Electric and remains home to G.E.?s largest energy division. The steam turbines bought by Reliance Power will be built there. The company reported early on Friday that it had earned $4.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010 and $11.6 billion for the full year, exceeding Wall Street analysts? expectations.

Mr. Immelt mentioned his impending appointment in an opinion article published in The Washington Post on Friday. ?The president and I are committed to a candid and full dialogue among business, labor and government to help ensure that the United States has the most competitive and innovative economy in the world,? he said in the article. ?My hope is that the council will be a sounding board for ideas and a catalyst for action on jobs and competitiveness. It will include small and large businesses, labor, economists and government.?

It was well known in Washington that Mr. Volcker, 83, had sometimes been frustrated in his role as an outside adviser to the president. In the statement, Mr. Obama thanked Mr. Volcker for his service and pledged to continue to call on the former Fed chairman for advice, saying, ?He will always be a member of my team.?

During Mr. Volcker?s time as head of the previous panel, the former Fed chairman met periodically with Mr. Obama and had something of a lukewarm relationship with the administration, which mostly obtained its economic guidance from Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, and Lawrence H. Summers, director of the National Economic Council.

Mr. Volcker, however, became well known for crafting a measure that restricts the ability of banks whose deposits are federally insured from trading for their own proprietary accounts. Mr. Obama proposed what became known as the Volcker rule in January 2010 as part of a broader financial regulatory reform effort, though the measure has been fiercely opposed by some banks and Wall Street firms.

Mr. Obama?s statement called Mr. Volcker ?one of the wisest economic minds? in the country, and someone who has ?fought for policies that help American families and strengthen our economy.?

Mr. Immelt?s appointment comes as Mr. Obama has increasingly turned to people with close ties to the business sector for counsel in the wake of the setbacks of the midterm elections, something highlighted by the appointment of William M. Daley, the former Commerce secretary and senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, as the president?s chief of staff.

Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York.

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Flickr starts letting users login with Facebook

Yahoo recently started allowing its users to login with their Facebook accounts. Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo, has announced it will start letting users login with their Facebook account as well.

Once users have created a Flickr account using their Facebook credentials, they can visit their Flickr account settings to connect the two accounts via Yahoo Updates. This allows users to automatically share their Flickr activity to their Facebook feed, and use their Facebook profile picture as their Yahoo! public photo.

Since Flickr users can instantly share their links for their public photo uploads to Facebook, Flickr may see more referral traffic, but it may also see less direct visits since users won't have to check the website to see if friends have added new photos. Unfortunately, you cannot simultaneously post Flickr photos into your Facebook Photos albums, seeing as this would eliminate the need for the image hosting and video hosting website in the first place.

To learn more, check out the FAQ. You can also give feedback or report bugs you encounter. Also, if you're a Flickr user, will you be using this feature?

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Facebook raises $1.5 billion, now worth $50 billion

Facebook has announced that it has raised $1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion, but it is has no immediate plans for the funds and will simply continue to build and expand its operations. The transaction consisted of two parts: on Friday, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-US clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock, while last month, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

Facebook said it was approached by DST and Goldman Sachs; the company only then decided that the proposed deal was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders. Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, but the company chose to limit it to $1 billion. Facebook expects to pass 500 shareholders at some point this year, and therefore predicts it will start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

"Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing, David Ebersman, Facebook's chief financial officer, said in a statement. "With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead."

The news that Goldman Sachs was investing in Facebook spread like wildfire last month, but we chose to cover it only now because Facebook has confirmed the deal and because a second, bigger investment was made. The social network was valued at $50 billion on the SecondMarket two months ago, but now it's official.

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Obama May Find Useless Regulations Are Scarcer Than Thought

WASHINGTON ? There is a federal regulation that dictates that place names on new highway signs must be spelled with just one capital letter ? like This, not THIS.

Federal rules say that beef from a state-regulated slaughterhouse cannot be sold in other states, but bison from the same slaughterhouse can.

And as President Obama told the nation on Tuesday, one federal agency until recently listed saccharin, an artificial sweetener, as a form of toxic waste.

It has become an article of faith in Washington that the government?s extensive rulebook is riddled with burdensome requirements that are unnecessary, contradictory or, to borrow a phrase from the president, ?just plain dumb.?

His administration, like its predecessors, has now promised a thorough weeding.

But specialists on both sides of the political aisle say that the president is wasting the government?s time. They say there are few rules so dumb, duplicative or outdated that everyone can agree they serve no purpose. Rather, most regulations reviled by some are cherished by others, meaning that any effort to reduce regulation is a political process, not a question of housekeeping.

?The history of these kinds of efforts is that they don?t matter very much,? said Peter Van Doren, editor of Regulation magazine, a publication of the libertarian Cato Institute, which generally advocates for less regulation.

Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit that generally advocates for more regulation, said the cost of the search was likely to outstrip the benefits.

?If saccharin is the most serious example the administration can come up with, then it does not justify doing these lookbacks,? he said.

It is clear that the government?s rulebook keeps getting longer. The amount of time businesses and individuals must spend answering questions from the government ? filing taxes, applying for permits, submitting reports ? has increased by more than 30 percent in the last decade, federal data show. The annual burden now amounts to more than one day per person.

The Obama administration has championed expansions of financial and health care regulation, and it has toughened a wide range of other rules.

The efforts are deeply controversial. House Republicans voted this week to repeal the health care law. Business groups have accused the administration of impeding job growth and dampening the economic recovery.

But those are not the rules the White House is pledging to prune. Instead, echoing a promise made by every president since Jimmy Carter, it is promising to find the regulations that are not controversial at all ? just plain dumb.

There is little reason to think this search will prove more fruitful than its predecessors.

Even the rules of the road signs have powerful friends. Advocates for senior citizens say that This is easier to read than THIS.

Those who complain about the prevalence of silly and outdated rules rarely cite specific examples. Several business groups asked to name specific candidates for the president?s project, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, never called back.

The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of nearly 200 large American companies, cited a proposed expansion of protected habitats for the spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act.

The government ?is restricting activity on lands that may be suitable habitat for the spotted owl, irrespective of whether the owl is present in that region,? the group said in an e-mail. ?This draft plan has the potential to shutter mills and destroy jobs as fiber supply from both federal and private lands is constrained.?

Of course, while spotted owl protections are opposed by the timber industry, they are supported by environmental groups.

There also are institutional obstacles to erasing regulations. When agencies are told to conduct reviews, they usually conclude that the current rules should be kept, according to a 2007 report by Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress.

Even when agencies find that the cost of a given regulation does exceed the benefit, political considerations often keep the rules on the books. In 2007, Congress passed a law, named in honor of a 2-year-old child crushed as his father backed down the driveway, that effectively required the installation of rear-view video cameras in cars.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, charged with writing the new rules, found that the technology would save lives but ? assuming a human life was worth about $6.1 million, a figure used by the agency for its calculations ? that the cost would exceed the benefits by more than $1 billion.

Nonetheless, the agency proposed the requirement, noting that it was responding to the will of Congress and that ?there is a special solicitude for protection of children.? Under the rule, automakers will be required to start installing cameras by 2014.

A federal law already requires agencies to review regulations that affect small businesses every 10 years. Congress also created an Office of Advocacy in the Small Business Administration as an ombudsman for the concerns of businesses. Since 2007, that office has asked businesses to nominate ?outdated and ineffective rules.? It then produces a Top 10 list of rules that it presses other agencies to rewrite.

So far, only one highlighted rule has been changed. After four years of lobbying, the government agreed to end a practice of withholding 10 percent of architects? and engineers? fees for work on federal projects until the job was done.

Other industries still are waiting. Dry-cleaning machines, which emit hazardous gases, must be tested for compliance with the Clean Air Act. The machines have changed considerably since the rules were written in the 1980s, making it difficult to conduct the tests. The industry has long petitioned the E.P.A. to update the rules, so far without success. An E.P.A. spokesman declined to comment.

?They say they?re working on it, but not with any great diligence,? said Bill Fisher, chief executive of the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute, the industry?s trade group.

Persuading the E.P.A. to lift saccharin from the list of toxins took seven years. The agency declared the sweetener a hazardous substance in 1980, after the Food and Drug Administration declared it a potential human carcinogen. Over time, science bent in the other direction, and in December 2000, President Clinton removed the requirement that saccharin-sweetened products carry a warning label.

In April 2003, the Calorie Control Council, an industry group representing makers and users of artificial sweeteners, petitioned the E.P.A. to remove saccharin from the list of hazardous substances. But not until April 2010 did the E.P.A. propose a revision. There were no objections and, in December, the change was made.

The result of this seven-year slog?

Lyn O?Brien Nabors, the president of the Calorie Control Council, said she did not think it would produce significant business savings or lower prices. ?Saccharin is a very inexpensive food ingredient,? she said. ?I don?t think it would have enough of an impact on the costs to make a difference.?

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=cd4400f6d47d336450cd58c800153b4c

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