Weekend tech reading: Verizon getting iPhone 4 this month?

Verizon finally lands the iPhone The iPhone is finally coming to Verizon Wireless.
The largest U.S. wireless carrier will make the long-awaited announcement at an event Tuesday in New York City. The phone will make its way to Verizon Wireless stores around the end of January, a person familiar with the matter said. WSJ

U.S. Subpoenas Twitter over WikiLeaks supporters Prosecutors investigating the disclosure of thousands of classified government documents by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks have gone to court to demand the Twitter account activity of several people linked to the organization, including its founder, Julian Assange, according to the group and a copy of a subpoena made public late Friday. NYT

AMD releases Radeon HD 6000 series open-source support On the same day that we learn VIA's Linux support is basically dead and after a troubling week for Intel with regards to open-source graphics support for their new Sandy Bridge CPUs, Advanced Micro Devices has come forward and released open-source graphics driver support for their AMD Radeon HD 6000 series. Phoronix

Asus shows off Rampage III Black Edition for CES Shaking Nevada with a new product is tough - doing it with a mainboard is right near impossible. ASUS's latest is the brainchild of their immensely extreme Republic of Gamers (ROG) team - squeezing out the last drop of performance and integrating never-before features onto an Intel X58 Express Chipset mainboard. VR-Zone

Turbine: Lord of the Rings Online revenues tripled as free-to-play game Turbine's massively-multiplayer Lord of the Rings Online is bringing in three times as much revenue as a free-to-play title than it did as a subscription-based title, the company has revealed. Gamasutra

Star Wars coming to Blu-ray in September You'll have yet another chance to buy Star Wars this September, when the sci-fi classic -- with its two sequels and three prequels -- arrive on Blu-ray high-definition discs. A bundle of all six movies will sell for $139.99... The Washington Post

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Business Background Defines Chief of Staff

And now William M. Daley, the son and brother of Chicago mayors and a behind-the-scenes political player himself, will hold one of the most powerful jobs in Washington: chief of staff in the White House, where he will help decide who gets into the Oval Office and what President Obama?s Capitol Hill agenda should be.

Mr. Daley?s recruitment to Pennsylvania Avenue from the corporate boardroom is seen as a smart step by some in Washington, who argue that Mr. Obama has long needed a White House confidant who has the ear of the business community and a record of bipartisanship that might help the president negotiate with Republicans in Congress.

?I think it?s a very, very strong choice,? said Thomas J. Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been a harsh critic of the Obama administration and provided financial support that helped Republicans take control of the House in the November elections. ?Daley is a business person who understands politics.?

Mr. Daley, or the corporations he has served in recent years, have worked aggressively behind the scenes to water down or defeat central elements of Mr. Obama?s agenda, opposing the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and elements of the health care bill.

That record is among the reasons his appointment, announced by Mr. Obama on Thursday afternoon, has alarmed some of the president?s liberal supporters, who say that bringing Mr. Daley into the White House violates a commitment to curtail the sway of special interests.

?As the chief of staff, he is the gatekeeper, and that means real power in Washington,? said Ellen S. Miller, co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation, which celebrated the move by Mr. Obama early in his presidency to release detailed logs of White House visitors and to impose restrictions on hiring lobbyists as aides. ?Just about any way you look at it, it creates a huge potential for a conflict of interest.?

The chief of staff job has sometimes been filled by corporate types, like Donald T. Regan, a top Wall Street executive and former Treasury secretary, who held the job in the Reagan administration. But more often, it goes to a political insider whose primary allegiance is to the president.

Mr. Daley, 62, who is not close to Mr. Obama even though both consider Chicago their base, has a well-rounded résumé. He has been a lawyer in private practice, a bank president, a telecommunications company executive, a political strategist, a fund-raiser and campaign chief, a lobbyist for foreign corporations (he advocated on tax matters for Nestlé and a Canadian petroleum company) and the commerce secretary in the Clinton administration for three years. His brother, Richard M. Daley, is departing after six terms as mayor of Chicago, where his family has an almost royal status.

Mr. Obama, during a ceremony in the East Room on Thursday, cited that long list of jobs as part of the reason he picked Mr. Daley.

?Few Americans can boast the breadth of experience that Bill brings to this job,? the president said, adding that he was ?convinced that he?ll help us in our mission of growing our economy and moving America forward.?

JPMorgan Chase has been Mr. Daley?s primary corporate home since 2004. He was hired, company officials said, as something of consolation prize to Chicago when Chase, which has its headquarters in New York, was taking over Bank One, which was based in Chicago. Chase executives, including Jamie Dimon, its chairman, wanted to bring in someone with Chicago connections who could smooth over relations with wealthy clients and corporations there.

One Chase official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, recalled, ?A few bankers said we should hire a Bill Daley,? meaning someone with Chicago political connections and clout who could serve as a new public face for Chase.

Mr. Dimon?s response was simple: ?How about Bill Daley??

Mr. Daley started as chairman of Chase?s Midwest operations, but by 2007 he had expanded his portfolio, joining the bank?s senior leadership team as chief of its new Office of Corporate Social Responsibility, whose most important function was to oversee the company?s global lobbying efforts.

At the time, Chase was trying to raise its profile in Washington. Senior company executives, including Mr. Dimon, began taking more trips to the capital to try to influence the terms of the TARP bailout ? they pushed to make it easier for banks to repay the money ? in 2008. Last year, Chase officials fought aspects of the historic revision of the nation?s financial regulations, including the creation of the consumer protection bureau.

Mr. Daley was never registered as a lobbyist for Chase, but he played a role in hiring and was the direct supervisor of Peter L. Scher, another former Clinton administration official, who runs the bank?s lobbying shop in Washington. Mr. Daley also served as the bank?s chief liaison with the White House, frequently consulting with Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, and Rahm Emanuel, whom he is replacing.

Mr. Daley?s salary is not public, but one person with knowledge of Chase?s executive compensation said that he has made $3 million to $5 million a year. He will be taking a considerable pay cut in accepting the $170,000-a-year White House post.

Boeing, which is also based in Chicago, named Mr. Daley to its board in 2006, saying that his appointment would enhance its lobbying efforts and help promote international sales of its commercial planes and military equipment. In 2009, he earned $230,000 from Boeing in compensation and stock awards and $220,867 from Abbott Laboratories.

Abbott Labs, like Boeing and Chase, has a long list of regulatory and legislative matters in play in Washington, like a tax in the health care bill that could cost medical-device makers like Abbott $20 billion over the next decade. A White House chief of staff is likely to be involved in discussions about repealing the legislation, as House Republicans have proposed, or aspects of it.

Critics of Mr. Daley?s appointment said his corporate work would cause problems. They argue that he will have to recuse himself from matters relating to Chase, Abbott and Boeing or bow out of discussions involving financial regulations, health care and major Defense Department acquisitions, like the contract for a giant Air Force refueling tanker for which Boeing is competing.

?These are all issues that come across the chief of staff?s desk,? said James A. Thurber, an American University professor and specialist on ethics and lobbying in Washington. ?Is he going to stand outside of the flow as each of them heads to the president? I don?t see that, and if he doesn?t, there will the perception, and maybe the reality, of a conflict of interest.?

Others dismiss such concerns as unfounded, saying that Mr. Daley, who is to start his new job as early as next week, would not make decisions on policy and would hardly have sole power over who sees the president.

Supporters of the appointment say Mr. Daley?s diversity of experience is exactly what Mr. Obama needs ? an experienced manager who can serve as an intermediary for the White House with various constituencies whose support is critical to the president. David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president who is leaving the White House soon, said Mr. Obama thought hard before naming his new top aide.

?The chief is the only one in the administration who has as broad a responsibility as the president, and he?s the one who?s ultimately accountable to the president,? Mr. Axelrod said in an interview. ?It is a very, very serious and consequential decision.?

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington, and Eric Dash from New York. Barclay Walsh contributed research.

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Republicans Are Given a Price Tag for Health Law Repeal, but Reject It

The new House speaker, John A. Boehner, flatly rejected the report, saying it was based largely on chicanery by Democrats.

Mr. Boehner?s dismissal of the report by the Congressional Budget Office, at his first formal news conference as speaker, was the latest salvo in the battle over the health care law. White House officials on Thursday said they were stepping up efforts to defend the law, with a new rapid-response operation to rebut Republican claims and to deploy supporters to talk about the benefits of the law.

But Mr. Boehner?s remarks held wider implications, effectively putting him on a war footing with the independent analysts whose calculations generally guide discussions about the projected cost or savings of any legislation.

?I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit,? he said.

?C.B.O. is entitled to their opinion,? he said, but he said Democrats had manipulated the rules established for determining the cost of a program under the 1974 Budget Act.

?C.B.O. can only provide a score based on the assumptions that are given to them,? Mr. Boehner said. ?And if you go back and look at the health care bill and the assumptions that were given to them, you see all of the double-counting that went on.?

But the analysis released by the budget office on Thursday was based on the health care repeal bill that House Republicans introduced on Wednesday. And it highlighted the difficult position that Republicans are in as they try to address what they insist are the top two priorities of voters who elected them in November: cutting the deficit and undoing the health care law.

According to the budget office, those goals are contradictory.

The budget office estimated that the health care law, including education provisions, would reduce deficits over 10 years by $143 billion. Tax increases and cuts in projected Medicare spending would more than offset the cost of extending health insurance to millions of Americans. The budget office projected that the law would result in even bigger savings beyond 2019.

Republicans have said they do not believe that many of the Medicare cuts will ever take hold. They say that government subsidies to help people buy health insurance will prove far costlier than the budget office has predicted, and that the Democrats wrote the law to mask the steep future costs of some provisions, like a new long-term-care insurance program.

The budget office did not comment on Mr. Boehner?s remarks. Douglas W. Elmendorf, its director, has frequently said his office applies the longstanding budget rules. He says it uses its own professional expertise, as well as consulting with outside experts, to derive its projections, which represent the ?middle of the distribution of likely outcomes.?

Mr. Elmendorf has warned that Congress may find it difficult to follow through with parts of the health care law, particularly the cuts to Medicare. The law?s cost would rise if the cuts were not enacted.

In the report on Thursday, Mr. Elmendorf, a former Clinton administration official appointed in 2008 when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, said that a preliminary analysis showed that repealing the law would increase federal budget deficits by a total of $145 billion from 2012 to 2019 and by $230 billion between 2012 and 2021.

Moreover, he said, if the law is repealed, 32 million fewer people will have health insurance in 2019, compared with estimates of coverage under the existing law. As a result, he said, the number of uninsured would be 54 million, rather than 23 million, in 2019.

At Mr. Boehner?s news conference, reporters peppered him with questions about repealing the law ? including the cost analysis and a plan by Republicans not to allow amendments on the repeal measure even though the party had promised to maintain a more open legislative process.

?Well, listen, I promised a more open process,? Mr. Boehner said. ?I didn?t promise that every single bill was going to be an open bill.?

Mr. Boehner grew testy when a reporter noted that Democrats who controlled the Senate were unlikely to bring up the repeal measure, let alone support it, and that Mr. Obama could veto it.

?Don?t you think it?s a waste of time?? Mr. Boehner was asked.

?No, I do not,? he said, raising his voice. ?I believe it?s our responsibility to do what we said we were going to do. And I think it?s pretty clear to the American people that the best health care system in the world is going to go down the drain if we don?t act.?

In their own report on Thursday, intended to illustrate how the law would lead to job losses, Republican leaders put the cost of the health care law ?when fully implemented? at $2.6 trillion and said it would ?add $701 billion to the deficit in its first 10 years.?

Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

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Video - Spinning Nano Yarns

Spinning Nano Yarns

Researchers at the University of Texas in Dallas make high-tech yarns from nanotubes and powders. The yarns could be woven into battery electrodes, superconfucting fabrics, and wearable electronics.

01.07.2011
Video by Science/AAAS, edited by Brittany Sauser - Read the Article

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Video - Reprogramming Life

Reprogramming Life

Researchers are developing software tools to make it easier and faster to redesign microbes that make biofuels or drugs.

01.05.2011
Video by Katherine Bourzac, edited by Brittany Sauser - Read the Article

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The Caucus: Sperling Returns as Obama's Top Economic Adviser

President Obama will name Gene Sperling today to replace Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council, White House officials said.

The move, which had been widely predicted in recent days, shifts Mr. Sperling from his current role as a counselor at the Treasury Department to Mr. Obama?s top economic adviser in the West Wing.

It will be a return engagement for Mr. Sperling, who served as director of the council under President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.

Mr. Obama will make the announcement Friday morning at a window-manufacturing company in Landover, Md. The company, which makes energy-efficient windows and doors, has recently expanded and hired new workers as a result of tax credits created by Mr. Obama?s policies.

In addition to the Sperling announcement, the president will also elevate Jason Furman to principal deputy director of the council. Mr. Furman got his start in the White House during Mr. Sperling?s first tour as N.E.C. director.

White House officials said the president will also nominate Katharine Abraham, a professor at the University of Maryland, to be a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. And he will nominate Heather Higginbottom, a deputy director at the White House Domestic Policy Council, to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

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Obama Shifts Economic Team to Focus on a Recovery

LANDOVER, Md. ? President Obama on Friday completed the midterm makeover of his core economic team as it turned from crisis management to recovery measures, naming Gene B. Sperling as senior economic adviser in the White House.

As director of the Mr. Obama?s National Economic Council, Mr. Sperling returns to the same job he held under President Bill Clinton for four years, succeeding Lawrence H. Summers, who has returned to teach economics at Harvard University.

Mr. Sperling, who has been a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, is the latest Clinton-era veteran to take a prominent place in the West Wing, after Thursday?s announcement that William M. Daley, former commerce secretary under Mr. Clinton, is the new White House chief of staff.

?One of the reasons I?ve selected Gene is he?s done this before,? Mr. Obama said. During the Clinton administration, the president added, ?He helped formulate the policies that contributed to turning deficits to surpluses and a time of prosperity and progress for American families.?

Mr. Obama also named several other deputy economic advisers during an appearance at a manufacturing plant in Landover, Md., just east of the capital, at which he also hailed Friday?s government report of continued job growth in December. But with unemployment remaining high, he added, the administration is ?not letting up on our efforts? to create jobs.

The White House chose the plant site because the family-owned Thompson Creek Window Manufacturing credits its recent expansion to administration tax incentives for hiring and equipment purchases and to the increased sales of its windows, doors and siding by customers using tax incentives for buying energy-efficient home products.

Mr. Obama also promoted Jason Furman, who will remain as deputy director of the National Economic Council but with higher rank. Mr. Furman also worked under Mr. Sperling in the office during the Clinton administration. Neither Mr. Sperling nor Mr. Furman need Senate confirmation.

The president nominated Katharine G. Abraham as the third member of his Council of Economic Advisers, taking the seat previously held by Austan Goolsbee before Mr. Obama promoted him last year to the council?s chairmanship. And he named Heather Higginbottom, currently a White House domestic policy adviser, to become the deputy to the recently installed director at the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob J. Lew.

With the elevation of Mr. Sperling, Mr. Obama has replaced three of the four principals of his original economic team, who took office with him at the height of a recession and global financial crisis. Then he chose people for their experience in global economics and crisis management, including Mr. Summers and Mr. Geithner, the only one of the original foursome who remains.

In Mr. Sperling and Mr. Lew, who as budget director also returned to the same job he had in the Clinton administration, Mr. Obama has two officials experienced in navigating Washington?s policy-making process through the executive and legislative branches, at a time when he must both put past policy achievements into effect and defend them against Congressional Republicans? attacks.

Mr. Sperling, as the director of the National Economic Council, is charged with coordinating economic and fiscal policy with the other advisers and Cabinet departments and brokering differences, a job for which he is regarded as better suited than the brilliant but sometimes abrasive Mr. Summers. Mr. Sperling is renowned even among Republicans as a workaholic with a knack for melding policy-making and effective political marketing of those policies, despite a reputation for disorganization.

Both he and Mr. Lew are liberals, but proven pragmatists. And both have records of negotiating bipartisan compromises of the sort Mr. Obama inevitably must seek now that he, like Mr. Clinton before him, confronts a Congress in which Republicans have won greater power.

Mr. Obama credited Mr. Sperling with helping to reach the tax cuts deal sealed with Republicans last month in Congress?s lame-duck session. Mr. Sperling, he said, helped devise a payroll tax cut and other tax incentives for low-wage and moderate-income workers now showing up in their paychecks.

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Facto! is a place for posting facts about yourself #Fact

Facto! is a place for posting facts about yourself #Fact

Facto! is a place for you to tell the world how interesting you are by posting facts that people might not know about you.

The Facto! service gives users a unique profile page that displays your entire list of amazing facts, and each fact itself has a unique url similar to a Twitter status update making sharing easy.

Facto!
Adding facts is similar to creating a status update on Facebook and Twitter and they?re discoverable by the Facto! community. The facts can be voted up and each one can be ?liked? on Facebook and shared on Twitter. There?s currently no way to ?follow? people within Facto! but each profile page provides a direct link to your Twitter page.

Facto!
This service is great for posting self-centered facts about yourself that nobody asked for. But hey, maybe it will spark a conversation or garner you a few followers on Twitter. And, it?s an interesting link to add some flavour to your bio and a cool way for people to get to know you. This service falls in line with other egotistical services that assist us social folk in sharing pictures of our cats (Facebook), our location ?check-ins? (FourSquare) and what we?re up to (Twitter).

Fact: Kyle Bragger, the creator of Facto! is also the founder of Forrst, a community for developers and designers to share knowledge about their craft.

Fact: I find it comical that Kyle?s last name is Bragger, considering the theme of Facto!. Just Sayin.

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SAP's Plan to Make Money by Cutting Carbon

Three years ago, software provider SAP was informed by one of its customers, a large European telecommunications company, that their business relationship would cease unless SAP produced a report detailing its energy use and greenhouse-gas footprint. A growing number of companies headquartered in Europe, as SAP is, were producing such documents along with their traditional annual reports. "It went from a nice-to-have to a must-have," says Rami Branitzky, the managing director of SAP Labs North America.

The company, which is based in Walldorf, Germany, not only created the report but also set an ambitious goal of cutting its global carbon emissions in half by 2020. In 2009 alone, it was able to cut emissions by 15 percent, saving 90 million euros (about $120 million). The emissions reduction?the equivalent of taking 50,000 cars off the road?was achieved in large part by changes in behavior at the $15 billion company, including cutbacks in air travel. SAP's internal savings, however, are just the beginning. The company calculates that its 105,000 customers in 120 countries collectively account for one-sixth of global carbon dioxide emissions. If those clients could be helped to make similar cuts, Branitzky says, the environmental benefits could be immense?and SAP could reap new business in the process, since it creates and sells analytical software that lets companies monitor their own carbon footprints and increase their energy efficiency. According to SAP's own estimates, the market for "sustainability software" will reach $7 billion within five years. "They've really taken the ball [on sustainability software] and are running with it faster and harder than any of the large players," says Warren Wilson, an energy and sustainability analyst at the London-based market research firm Ovum.


To highlight the reductions in its own carbon footprint, SAP recently showcased five efficiency initiatives at its campus in Palo Alto, California. The projects included installations of LED lights and solar panels. The company also overhauled its data center and has begun purchasing a fleet of electric vehicles and charging stations.

But the project with the fastest return on investment involved telepresence communication systems, which make it easier for meetings to happen virtually rather than requiring air travel. SAP installed three videoconferencing systems from Cisco Systems that use high-end visual and audio equipment to create the sense of being in the same room as others who may be half a world away. Each system cost $300,000, but SAP says they paid for themselves in one year by reducing the need for business trips. "Our biggest footprint that we generate by far is airplanes, as many people commute back and forth to Germany," says Branitzky. "I think we knew it inherently, but only when we started measuring it did we see the impact and do something about it."

SAP sought to get more efficiency out of the data center by spending $128,000 on a retrofit that cut the facility's energy requirements by 15 to 20 percent and should pay for itself in five years. The company installed a rectifier, a device that converts all electricity coming into the data center from AC power to DC. Electricity is typically converted from AC to DC at each server using small, inefficient rectifiers that give off a significant amount of waste heat. Doing the conversion in one central device increases the efficiency of the process and reduces the amount of heat generated in the server racks.

Of all the initiatives, this is the most significant, according to Michael LoCascio, an analyst at Lux Research. But he suggests that SAP could even go further in this regard. "I find it amazing that there is no focus on their data center's cooling systems," he says. "You get more bang for your buck, but it isn't sexy." Branitzky says the company is just getting started on its data center efficiency efforts and has already begun improving the cooling systems at similar facilities in Germany.

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OCOSMOS launches two tablets with Windows 7, Oak Trail

Guest said:
@Lawfer:

Alright, there was ONE typo in my earlier post; don't chastise me for it. Go through and look at all your posts, I am sure you have errors, too. Look at the post you just made, "such as first-person shooters; or face-paced games as you seem to call them... ". You do not use a semi-colon before the word 'or', nor do you use it before: and; but; nor; yet. But, you can use them in lists, as I just have done. Basically, you do not use a semi-colon before a conjunction. Remember "Conjunction junction, what's your function" from Schoolhouse Rock?

From what Slashgear says (the weblink within the techspot article), OCS1 ships with 1GB RAM expandable to 2GB. OCS9 doesnt have a specification for RAM, neither have specifics on CPU clocks. They can say "capable of running the most demanding online PC games, MMORPG, 3D, productivity and social networking applications"*, and you can believe them, fine. But, if you believed it could run well enough to actually do anything with, doubtful with such low amounts of RAM. Let alone control configurations. I could "run the most demanding PC games" on a crappy old AMD K6 chip, but with crappy responses and errors.

* http://www.slashgear.com/ocosmos-osc1-tc-and-osc9-get-offici
l-tiny-oak-trail-gaming-tablets-07124718/

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