Tricky Call for New Governors: Price of Their Inaugurals

After their election night victory speeches, the nation?s 26 new governors have had to wrestle with a symbolically rich decision that could set the tone for their time in office: how big a party to give for themselves.

It is always a tricky call. Penny-pinching can convey pessimism and impotence. Lavish celebrations may telegraph triumphalism and insensitivity in these budget-crunched times (?Out of touch,? groused a Democratic Party official in Florida about Mr. Scott?s inaugural plans. ?Inexcusable,? grumbled one local editorial.)

But after an election rife with messages about voter anger and mistrust, the risks of an off-key bash are higher this inauguration season, and the governors-elect have starkly different answers to the question of how much party to put into party politics.

Or several parties, in some cases. In Nevada, Brian Sandoval, a Republican, will host back-to-back $1,000-a-head V.I.P. receptions, one of them at the Wynn Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

In Oklahoma, Mary Fallin, also a Republican, has organized two ?preinaugural balls,? not to be confused with the inaugural ball itself, which will be held later at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

Others are embracing conspicuous frugality. In New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, is having a small preinauguration dinner for close friends at the governor?s mansion, and has parceled out so few invitations to his no-frills swearing-in ceremony that even some top aides have not made the cut.

Jerry Brown of California has issued guidelines: no paid entertainment (a school choir will sing) and a rent-free evening reception (in a state-owned building). To highlight his thrift, Mr. Brown, a Democrat, plans to stop at a cookout after he takes the oath to snack on hot dogs and chips.

The extremes seem to reflect the uncertain economic times: shoppers may have returned to their prerecession ways during the holidays, but state budget deficits are ballooning, and there are persistent mutterings about the deep repair work that is needed to fix the economy.

What is certain is that the new chief executives and their staffs, no matter the party, are carefully considering the optics of opulence.

?They are pros who understand what a high-stakes gamble it is,? said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin who has written extensively about political transitions.

?It?s awkward because it?s self-promotion. Whatever you do, somebody will think it?s insufficient, or too much. So you want to alienate the fewest and capture the attention and respect of the most.?

Not everyone succeeds. Take two of Florida?s governors. In 1995, Lawton Chiles shot off a homemade potato gun during his inaugural, grazing a car. Twelve years later, Charlie Christ refused to sing the state?s official song, ?Old Folks at Home,? citing the racially insensitive lyrics. Some Floridians found it disrespectful.

This year, some incoming governors say they are being sensitive to the financial plight of their constituents. In New York, which recently slashed $40 billion from its budget, ?people are disillusioned and disappointed,? Mr. Cuomo said in an interview.

As his staff sat down to plan a celebration, the governor-elect said he told them there was nothing to celebrate. ?No balls, no concerts, no parades ? no fanfare,? he said. ?I think it would be discordant to the feeling of the body politic.?

Mark Dayton, the Democratic governor-elect in Minnesota, said he considered canceling his party, which is scheduled for Jan. 8. Instead, he has authorized a ?Blue Jeans to Black Tie? ball with a loose dress code and a flexible ticket price. He plans to show up in jeans and an old hockey jersey.

Then there is Mr. Scott in Florida, whose multiday, multicity inauguration has become known wryly in political circles here as the ?coronation.?

Preparations began shortly after Election Day with a prodigious fund-raising drive. Mr. Scott, a wealthy former health-care executive who dug into his own pocket to finance his campaign, received donations of $25,000 each from dozens of major state employers like Disney, Office Depot and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, collecting nearly $3 million.

Good-government groups complained about potential conflicts of interest. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Scott said that in return for the donations companies would receive ?nothing more than a series of events honoring and celebrating the people of this state.?)

Monica Davey contributed reporting from Chicago.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7b8064f97af0f7d1c9c113667fb263bb

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HP's Sandy Bridge-powered dv6, dv7 appear in stores

Intel may be waiting until CES 2011 to roll out the red carpet for its latest processor architecture, but that's not stopping retailers from selling Sandy Bridge ahead of schedule. Some Malaysian stores began selling desktop Sandy Bridge chips last week and various notebooks with the new processors have appeared from companies including Asus and Santech.

Adding to that list, VR-Zone reports that an electronics store in Singapore is selling the new Sandy Bridge-powered HP Pavilion dv6. The dv6-4103TX is aesthetically identical to existing systems, except for an updated Intel sticker, but it's internals have been upgraded to the 2GHz (2.9GHz Turbo Boost) Core i7-2630QM processor and AMD Radeon HD 6570M graphics.


Meanwhile, a forum member over at Notebook Review has purchased a new HP dv7 (the dv7-4290us to be exact) from Micro Center and it's also outfitted with an i7-2630QM and Radeon HD 6570M. Other specs include 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1TB 5400RPM HDD, a Blu-ray player, a 5-in-1 card reader, a 9-cell 93WHr battery, and a 17.3-inch 1600x900 LED-backlit display.

The owner of the dv7 posted some pictures and preliminary benchmark results. Its 9-cell battery provides just under four hours of life when running Hulu, and 4.5 hours when browsing the web and listening to music. The system also scored 41.07fps/4.81pts in Cinebench 11.5's OpenGL/CPU tests, 10065 3DMarks in 3DMark06, and P1281 3DMarks in 3DMark11.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41782-hps-sandy-bridgepowered-dv6-dv7-appear-in-stores.html

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For Holder, New Congress Means New Headaches

Mr. Holder is a particularly juicy target because he presides over issues that have served as recurrent fodder for political controversy ? including using the criminal justice system for terrorism cases, and federal enforcement of civil rights and immigration laws.

More than most administration officials, he has served as a proxy for Republican attacks on what they see as President Obama?s left-leaning agenda. At least two possible 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls have already called for Mr. Holder?s resignation.

?It?s likely to be a difficult year,? said Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who said Mr. Holder?s coming fights are likely to ?attract press attention in a way that steps on other messages the Obama administration would like to have front and center.?

Sitting in a conference room adjacent to his office this month, Mr. Holder pointed out that he had been deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, when both chambers of Congress were under Republican control and were conducting aggressive oversight of the Justice Department.

?You?ve got to understand that I cut my teeth in the leadership of this department dealing with the situation we?re about to encounter,? he said.

He defended himself in advance on some hot-button issues, and he seemed to hint at some steps in the realm of counterterrorism policies that might hearten his conservative critics in Congress but could draw criticism on the left. He also laid out what amounts to an agenda for the coming year, from continuing to restore the ?traditional mission? of the department ? law enforcement work put on the back burner after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 ? to national security matters, including a fresh push to overhaul an important surveillance law.

As Mr. Holder takes up such work, the incoming House chairmen most likely to play leading roles in Justice Department oversight are Representatives Lamar Smith of Texas, the new head of the Judiciary Committee, and Darrell Issa of California, who will lead the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Both declined to be interviewed, but Mr. Smith said in a statement, ?I am committed to fair and reasonable oversight of the Justice Department and to ensuring openness and transparency of our federal law enforcement agencies.?

Mr. Holder said that he did not know Mr. Issa well, but that he had known Mr. Smith for years. The two recently had lunch, and Mr. Holder said he believed they could work together.

Like much of Washington, the two chairmen are likely to start off focusing on economic issues. But it seems inevitable they will turn to Mr. Holder, a frequent target of their criticism over the past two years.

Last March, for example, they released a joint letter criticizing the Justice Department for not doing more to investigate the community activist group Acorn, and for an early 2009 decision to downsize a voter-intimidation lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party, a black-nationalist fringe group they portrayed as an Obama administration ally.

?We?ve already seen this administration dismiss one case against a political ally ? the New Black Panther Party ? for no apparent reason,? Mr. Issa and Mr. Smith wrote. ?We remain concerned that politicization at the Justice Department once again may result in the administration?s political friends getting a free pass.?

Asked about the prospect of oversight hearings and subpoenas involving the New Black Panther case, Mr. Holder said, ?there is no ?there? there.?

?The notion that this made-up controversy leads to a belief that this Justice Department is not color-blind in enforcement of civil rights laws is simply not supported by the facts,? he said. ?All I have on my side with regard to that is the facts and the law.?

Another high-profile issue confronting Mr. Holder in the new year is how to deal with mounting pressure to prosecute the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, over his role in a major disclosure of classified government documents. Prosecutors have been examining whether Mr. Assange could be charged as a conspirator to the leak, or for publishing the materials.

Mr. Holder pushed back against the suggestion that indicting Mr. Assange would open the door to prosecuting traditional news organizations that take steps to ferret out and disclose information the government says should be a secret ? including The New York Times, which published some of the WikiLeaks documents and often writes about classified matters.

?Do you think that what you do is consistent with what you understand Assange and WikiLeaks did?? Mr. Holder asked a reporter. ?Would I have liked not to see the stuff appear? Yes. But did The Times act in a responsible way? I would say yes. I am not certain I would say that about those people who were responsible for the initial leaks and the wholesale dumping of materials.?

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2e21df2275e7a83ab2d8ca12ba86bf4b

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Bit-Gamer Competition #2

Bit-Gamer Competition #2

Posted on 20th Dec 2010 at 11:31 by Joe Martin with 23 comments

Congratulations to the three winners from last week, who told us their favourite games ever over Twitter. We sent them each a copy of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit on PlayStation 3 as a prize, but here's what the winners chose, in case you were wondering:

@dragronphreak - Pools of Radiance Ultima 7
@xmvx - Diablo 2
@Krisposkitt - BioShock

Now it's time for our second competition to celebrate the launch of Bit-Gamer.net. This time we've got a copy of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Codex Edition on Xbox 360 to send out - and, yes, this competition is open worldwide.


To be in for a chance of winning, all you have to do is Follow @bit_gamer on Twitter and send us a tweet telling us which game you're most looking forward to next year.

The deadline for this competition is 5 January 2011.

We've already handed out a few unannounced prizes over Twitter too, and we expect to be giving out a lot more of as we've got a ludicrous amount of prizes to be given away. Congratulations to @darth_careful and @alastor2004, both of whom grabbed themselves copies of Diamond Dan on Steam.

We'll be bringing you a new competition after the New Year. Don't worry if you're not interested in signing up for Twitter either; you'll get a chance to win something soon!

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/3W66eQ0uJx4/

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Blog - Best of 2010: Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe

As one of the few astrophysical events that most people are familiar with, the Big Bang has a special place in our culture. And while there is scientific consensus that it is the best explanation for the origin of the Universe, the debate is far from closed. However, it's hard to find alternative models of the Universe without a beginning that are genuinely compelling.

That could change now with the fascinating work of Wun-Yi Shu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Shu has developed an innovative new description of the Universe in which the roles of time space and mass are related in new kind of relativity.

Read the full post...

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=5362e90f033f507588b3d3ee6800b9bf

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Blog - Best of 2010: Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe

As one of the few astrophysical events that most people are familiar with, the Big Bang has a special place in our culture. And while there is scientific consensus that it is the best explanation for the origin of the Universe, the debate is far from closed. However, it's hard to find alternative models of the Universe without a beginning that are genuinely compelling.

That could change now with the fascinating work of Wun-Yi Shu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Shu has developed an innovative new description of the Universe in which the roles of time space and mass are related in new kind of relativity.

Read the full post...

Print Favorite Share facebook twitter
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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=5362e90f033f507588b3d3ee6800b9bf

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Game-on!: Social Network for Hockey Players

hansons_back_on_iceOut of all of the stereotypes associated with being Canadian, the one that is most endearing is that fact that we all worship at the altar of the Stanely Cup. That isn?t necessarily true across the board but for those of us Canucks that do, services like Hockey-Community will easily assist you in getting your game-on.

Hockey-Community is a Canadian based service that offers a series of tools to help hockey players organize games, find rinks and locate players in their local areas.  Rinks, drop-in games and goalies can be located from the website or through the mobile iPhone web app which uses GPS to find your location.

This is great news for hockey players that have trouble convincing enough of their friends to play a game.  With Hockey-Community, you can meet other players (that actually want to play) and you can join games that match your particular skill level.

Instead of finding players on your own, Hockey-Community can also find people for you to play with. Players will receive recommendations based on their position, skill level and rinks that have been ?followed?.  After searching my city, It was able to find all of the rinks in my area and it allowed me to follow them similar to the follow feature on Twitter.

The heart of the service is social, hockey nuts have a place to swap game facts and a way to invite other users to play a game. Users can also earn reward ?pucks? and notoriety for getting involved.  Organizing a game, commenting on an ice rink or adding a new rink are all actions that will earn players puck badges.

This is the first hockey-themed social community I?ve seen that connects players by skill level and enables users to find and follow rinks. I know a lot of guys here in Canada that play in private leagues and I?m certain they?ll use this service.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/ca/2010/12/31/game-on-social-network-for-hockey-players/

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Taiwan motherboard makers fall short of 2010 shipment goals

This proved to be a rocky year for Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, according to DigiTimes. Between the bond crisis in Europe and weaker-than-expected demand in China, all Taiwan-based motherboard makers fell short of their shipment goals for 2010.

Asus reportedly moved some 21.6 million boards this year, which is on par with 2009, but still lower than its intended 25 million shipments. Gigabyte also remained flat on-year, shipping 18.5 million motherboards, which is 1.5 million less than the company hoped for.

Meanwhile, Elitegroup Computer System (ECS) and Micro-Star International (MSI) are said to have shipped 6.5 and seven million boards, and despite having a strong OEM presence, neither company met its goal for 2010. DigiTimes noted that ASRock surpassed both firms in branded shipments this year, moving eight million units, which is one million more than 2009 and a million short of the company's target for 2010.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41780-taiwan-motherboard-makers-fall-short-of-2010-shipment-goals.html

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The Year in Web

Spies and the Internet

The year started off with revelations from Google that China was attacking the Web giant's corporate infrastructure (Google Reveals Chinese Espionage Efforts). The company said, among other things, that the attackers went after Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human-rights activists, and that 20 other large companies had also been targeted.

That was the first of many examples of how the Internet is changing the way secrets are being kept and revealed. In April, researchers from the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs detailed how over the course of several months social sites helped hackers steal classified documents from the Indian government (Social Sites Cover Chinese Hackers' Tracks).

But the name that became synonymous with sharing secret information was Julian Assange's Wikileaks (Everything You Need to Know About Wikileaks). In the summer, U.S. officials were still probing for the source of 91,000 war documents that the site had posted (The Hunt for the Wikileaks Whistle-Blower). At the end of the year, the site began to release a trove of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables. U.S. officials called for the site to be shut down, triggering a series of back-and-forth denial-of-service attacks by the site's detractors and supporters (DIY Censorship).

Your Secrets

Even as large organizations struggled with the Internet's capacity for collecting and revealing secrets, individuals fought a different version of the privacy battle. Social networking sites have continued to grow in popularity, and users are trusting them with more information than ever before. At the same time, those sites are looking to make money, and that often means selling data about users. Sites such as Facebook have made a number of changes to facilitate their business models, challenging users' privacy in the process (The Changing Nature of Privacy on Facebook).

Google launched a new social network, Buzz, that drew fire when it automatically connected users to people they had previously e-mailed. Google frantically backpedaled and adjusted the social network's features (A Steady Buzz of Changes).

Not all privacy violations resulted from decisions websites have made. In some cases, sites leaked data inadvertently, giving users more reasons to be concerned about the data that companies store (Peeking Into Users' Web History).

Despite having many reasons to be vigilant, users were for the most part undeterred. Oddly, a study found that people are actually more likely to trust their information to sites that seem less likely to store it securely (How Websites Make You Spill Your Secrets).

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=50693fcfdd2948fafca72e9034f0fd71

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