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 They say there are few rules so dumb, duplicative or outdated that everyone can agree they serve no purpose.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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Bit-Gamer Competition #3

Bit-Gamer Competition #3

Posted on 5th Jan 2011 at 11:48 by Joe Martin with 24 comments

As we return from our Christmas break, we?ve got another bunch of goodies to give away ? this time not on Twitter! This week three lucky readers will win a copy of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, a matching t-shirt made by Jinx and a copy of Chris Ryan?s Medal of Honor novella.

To stand a chance of winning all you need to do is pledge your allegiance by liking our new Bit-Gamer facebook page. If you want to increase your chances then you can post a message to us as well and tell us what games you are playing at the moment, but you don't have to.

We wouldn?t ask you to do anything we wouldn?t do, so rest assured that we?re already Bit-Gamer fans and we?ve tinkering with Princess Maker 2 lately. Make of that what you will.


The deadline for the competition is January 12th, but we?ll have a new competition lined up shortly after that. We also post regular ad-hoc competitions to the Bit-Gamer Twitter and Facebook accounts, so you can still grab some goodies even if you don?t win this time around.

Speaking of which, it?s time to reveal the winner of our Christmas competition! We asked you to tell us what game you are most looking forward to in a bid to win the lush Assassin?s Creed: Brotherhood Codex Edition. The winner was @Eugenypankov, who told us he was looking forward to The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings ? but worried that he?d have to upgrade heavily before then.

Let us know your thoughts in the forums!

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/Dbg5xBDe1Fo/

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Will ?HTC Sensation? be the HTC Sense for tablets?

Will ?HTC Sensation? be the HTC Sense for tablets?

We are all familiar of the HTC Sense custom user interface for all our Android smartphones. We found out, however, that the Taiwanese company recently filed a trademark under the Trade Marks and Design Registration Office of the European Union that may or may not be the custom UI we will see in the upcoming HTC tablets.

?HTC Sensation,? as they call it, has a very broad trademark description ranging from mobile phones, portable computers, computer hardware and software, to even chargers and cases for mobile phones. This particular detail however, caught our attention:

user interface software; computer hardware and software for user interfacing, telecommunications and telecommunications services;

While still unconfirmed, the name ?HTC Sensation? is pretty much a good candidate for naming the company?s next custom UI. There are no other details yet but rest assured we?ll be on it as soon as we hear more. In the meantime, let us know in the comments section your wishlists for the upcoming custom UI that the HTC tablets will surely have.

About the Author

Francis Tan is the Asia editor of TNW. He is an aspiring entrepreneur who's into indie rock music, mecha, Star Wars, and all sorts of geekery. You can find him on Twitter @francisTNW.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/01/22/will-htc-sensation-be-the-htc-sense-for-tablets/

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Google rolls out Android 2.3.2 update for Nexus S

Google rolls out Android 2.3.2 update for Nexus S

Google is performing a little bit of maintenance this week, rolling out two OTA updates that will fix a certain SMS bug that has been plaguing some Android handset owners.

The Nexus S has received the Android 2.3.2 update, sized at only 600kb, which comes with some important bug fixes, including the SMS bug fix but also addressing the issues that caused the Nexus S to randomly reboot.

Nexus One owners received the Android 2.2.2 update ? not quite a Gingerbread upgrade just yet ? that has been said to address the same SMS bug and also contains other ?important bug fixes?.

If you own a Nexus S and you haven?t yet received the update, it is possible to install it manually. You need to download the file from Google?s Android repository, rename the file to update.zip, place it on the phones internal storage and then apply the patch from recovery.

If this is something you haven?t tried before, we suggest you wait for the official update.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/01/22/google-rolls-out-android-2-3-2-update-for-nexus-s/

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Google rolls out Android 2.3.2 update for Nexus S

Google rolls out Android 2.3.2 update for Nexus S

Google is performing a little bit of maintenance this week, rolling out two OTA updates that will fix a certain SMS bug that has been plaguing some Android handset owners.

The Nexus S has received the Android 2.3.2 update, sized at only 600kb, which comes with some important bug fixes, including the SMS bug fix but also addressing the issues that caused the Nexus S to randomly reboot.

Nexus One owners received the Android 2.2.2 update ? not quite a Gingerbread upgrade just yet ? that has been said to address the same SMS bug and also contains other ?important bug fixes?.

If you own a Nexus S and you haven?t yet received the update, it is possible to install it manually. You need to download the file from Google?s Android repository, rename the file to update.zip, place it on the phones internal storage and then apply the patch from recovery.

If this is something you haven?t tried before, we suggest you wait for the official update.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/01/22/google-rolls-out-android-2-3-2-update-for-nexus-s/

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Treating Genetic Disorders Before Birth

Physicians may one day be able to treat genetic blood diseases before a child is even born. In a study of mice that was published this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have found that transplanting a mother's own stem cells into her fetus populates its bone marrow with healthy cells while avoiding immune rejection.

If the findings hold true in humans, stem-cell transplants from mother to fetus could prime the fetus for a bone-marrow transplant from its mother?or a donor that is tissue-matched to the mother?after birth.

Diseases such as sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia result from abnormal red blood cells and can be treated with bone-marrow transplants. But it's not always possible to find a match.   And standard bone-marrow transplants, even between tissue-matched donors, must be followed with a lifetime course of immunosuppressive drugs.

Scientists theorize that bone-marrow transplants performed when a fetus is still developing would override this problem. They suspect that the fetus's immature immune system could be tricked into adopting those foreign cells and recognizing them as its own. "The fetus is wired to tolerate cells?when it encounters cells from mom, it tolerates them," says Tippi MacKenzie, the pediatric surgeon at UCSF who led the new research.

Research in animals has shown the promise of that approach. But early tests in humans came up against a serious setback?the donor cells were being rejected and killed off before a fetus could assimilate them, and no one was quite sure why. "It's a conundrum," says MacKenzie.

The blame, it seems, may be mom's. MacKenzie and her colleagues found that when they injected a fetus with hematopoietic stem cells (which populate bone marrow and give rise to blood cells) that were not matched to the mother or fetus, the infusion prompted an influx of maternal immune cells into the fetus.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=29403a228509e3e1803ac465839213eb

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Bit-Gamer Competition #3

Bit-Gamer Competition #3

Posted on 5th Jan 2011 at 11:48 by Joe Martin with 24 comments

As we return from our Christmas break, we?ve got another bunch of goodies to give away ? this time not on Twitter! This week three lucky readers will win a copy of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, a matching t-shirt made by Jinx and a copy of Chris Ryan?s Medal of Honor novella.

To stand a chance of winning all you need to do is pledge your allegiance by liking our new Bit-Gamer facebook page. If you want to increase your chances then you can post a message to us as well and tell us what games you are playing at the moment, but you don't have to.

We wouldn?t ask you to do anything we wouldn?t do, so rest assured that we?re already Bit-Gamer fans and we?ve tinkering with Princess Maker 2 lately. Make of that what you will.


The deadline for the competition is January 12th, but we?ll have a new competition lined up shortly after that. We also post regular ad-hoc competitions to the Bit-Gamer Twitter and Facebook accounts, so you can still grab some goodies even if you don?t win this time around.

Speaking of which, it?s time to reveal the winner of our Christmas competition! We asked you to tell us what game you are most looking forward to in a bid to win the lush Assassin?s Creed: Brotherhood Codex Edition. The winner was @Eugenypankov, who told us he was looking forward to The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings ? but worried that he?d have to upgrade heavily before then.

Let us know your thoughts in the forums!

Webmaster Forum | SEO Forum | Coding Forum | Graphics Forum

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/Dbg5xBDe1Fo/

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iPhone sales help China Unicom reach 140m subscribers

iPhone sales help China Unicom reach 140m subscribers

In 2010, China Unicom attracted more than 140 million 3G subscribers special thanks to the huge popularity of the iPhone 4 in China.

The company recently said that the number of 3G users increased by 1.28 million in December to reach 140.6 million subscribers by the end of 2010. It exceeded its annual target of 100 million by 40% in part, due to the company being the only provider in China to offer the iPhone 4 with a contract. Yu Yingtao, GM for marketing, said that the daily orders for the iPhone 4 reached more than 10,000 units. By mid-December, they had already topped 1.3 million since the September launch.

Although still behind China Mobile?s 207 million by the end of 2010, analysts claim that this figure could surge to more than quadruple this year to around 400 million. This may not be far from possible thanks to China Unicom?s efforts to push 3G all throughout the country this 2011 by investing on new infrastructures to broaden their coverage and cheaper 3g handsets.

China telecom, although not much details have been released, expressed a willingness to cooperate with Apple after the launch of the CDMA version of the iPhone 4. It is crucial, however, that they roll this out as soon as possible because the iPhone 5 is due to be released early this year as well.

Just to give you a perspective: China is currently the biggest internet population in the world with 457 million internet users, 303 million of which are on mobile.

About the Author

Francis Tan is the Asia editor of TNW. He is an aspiring entrepreneur who's into indie rock music, mecha, Star Wars, and all sorts of geekery. You can find him on Twitter @francisTNW.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/01/22/iphone-sales-help-china-unicom-reach-140m-subscribers/

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Deutsche Telekom: Windows Phone 7 sold excellently

Deutsche Telekom, the largest telecommunications company in Europe, has come out and voiced its thoughts on Windows Phone 7. The statements are in stark contrast to the negative comments made by LG last week.

Ingo Hofacker, Head of Consumer Marketing at Deutsche Telekom, told the Deutschland version of Yahoo News (via WMPoweruser) that Windows Phone 7 handsets sold by the company were in fact selling excellently. He said that the company was ahead of ahead of budget and that Microsoft was very pleased.

Deutsche Telekom used to be the carrier with iPhone exclusivity in Germany. The carrier is currently selling two Windows Phone 7 devices: the Samsung Omnia 7 and the HTC Mozart.

In slightly related news, Sony Ericsson is reportedly showing interest in Windows Phone 7. This has been rumored for a long time, but while Sony partners with Microsoft in many areas, it is more of a competitor in the entertainment side of the market, and we have yet to see any confirmation that the OEM would go with the software giant's latest mobile OS. Windows Phone 7 devices are reportedly in the in the 2011 pipeline for the company, however, according to sources from Taiwan-based handset makers cited by DigiTimes.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/42092-deutsche-telekom-windows-phone-7-sold-excellently.html

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Can Corsair Succeed Where Nvidia failed?

Anyone remember ESA? Nvidia's attempt at making the PC platform its own with the 'Enthusiast Systems Architecture' software? The idea was to get other manufacturers to include little chips in their hardware that enabled them to talk to Nvidia's motherboards. Nvidia's ESA software would then report all the readouts: voltages, temperatures, speeds and so in a single, central interface.

The problem? Other companies (mostly motherboard makers) already had their own software, and they were (and still are) key features with which to differentiate and sell their products. They already did most of the same tasks, such as temperature and voltage monitoring, as well as overclocking, even if they lacked the fancy 3D interface.

Despite its noble ideals, ESA was never really accepted and it died as quickly as it arrived.

Roll on three years and Corsair is trying the same trick with its new Corsair Link software. The difference is that Corsair isn't trying to drum up support from other companies, as it already builds many different products. Instead, Corsair Link is the company's selling point for its own hardware range, which has considerably diversified in the last 12 months.

In case you didn't realise quite the scope of Corsair's products, it now makes speakers, headphones, PSUs, PC cases, heatsinks (both air-cooling and closed-loop water-cooling), SSDs, flash drives and memory. In fact, you would only need a Corsair graphics card, sound card and motherboard in order to make an entirely Corsair PC. I bet its Pokemon set was unbeatable in school.


As you would expect, all those components can throw out a lot of useful stats for enthusiasts who like to know (okay, often obsess about) what's going on, so tying all that together under one software roof makes Corsair Link a potentially very powerful tool.

It could well work too, because the technology isn't competing with that of other companies - cases, PSUs and memory don't come with monitoring software, although they can be read remotely by the motherboard through its own software.

However, the ways in which Corsair Link differs from the software included with motherboards remains to be seen: does the company have (or plan to have) ESA-style monitoring chips in its cases, PSUs and memory? We'll have to wait and see.

Corsair is busy making a platform for itself, and given its brand strength I can really see it working. But I'm worried; will this help kill competition by pushing the PC more towards being a closed platform?

It's unfortunate that Nvidia's ESA wasn't taken up, as it potentially offered an open standard across the industry to give a greater level of monitoring and control for customers, no matter what hardware you bought. However, with every company wanting to stamp its own brand, design and influence on everything it makes, it was bound to fail. Corsair trying to entice you to buy other Corsair components via technological treats is a different matter, though.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/9Kh3AaXd7kM/

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