Microsoft offering free Windows Phone 7 handsets this weekend with AT&T contract [TNW Mobile]

Like everyone else, Microsoft is pushing hard to get its products into the hands of consumers this weekend, announcing on its Windows Facebook Page that, for this weekend only, fans can pick up an HTC Surround or a LG Quantum Windows Phone 7 for $0. However, the phones are only on offer to users willing to renew a two year contract with provider AT&T.

The feedback so far on the Facebook Page is mixed, with responses to the actual devices being generally positive, but with users less happy about being forced into an extended AT&T contract. As one commenter put it:

I was about to ?like? this??. then I saw AT&T. Sorry Microsoft.

For those of you that can?t make it to a Microsoft Store, Microsoft will be posting online details of the offer early Friday morning, US time. We?ll update you with that link when it becomes available.

Windows Phone 7, released in October, has seen a resurgence in Microsoft?s mobile fortunes as their previous offerings were seen as dated in comparison to the competition from Apple?s iPhone and Android based smartphones.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/11/26/microsoft-offering-free-windows-phone-7-handsets-this-weekend-with-att-contract/

nfl power rankings week 12 westminster abbey school closures due to weather lee majors

The Key Ingredient to Effective Cancer Treatments

About 50 percent of cancer patients have tumors that are resistant to radiation because of low levels of oxygen?a state known as hypoxia. A startup in San Francisco is developing proteins that could carry oxygen to tumors more effectively, increasing the odds that radiation therapy will help these patients.

Last month, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) gave that startup, Omniox, $3 million in funding. Omniox is collaborating with researchers at the NCI to test whether its oxygen-carrying compounds improve radiation therapy in animals with cancer.

Most tumors have hypoxic regions, and researchers believe they have a significant impact on treatment outcomes in about half of patients. Tumor cells proliferate with such abandon that they outstrip their blood supply, creating regions with very low levels of oxygen. This lack of oxygen drives tumor cells to generate more blood vessels, which metastatic cells use to travel elsewhere in the body and spread the cancer.

Radiation therapy depends on oxygen to work. When ionizing radiation strikes a tumor, it generates reactive chemicals called free radicals that damage tumor cells. Without oxygen, the free radicals are short-lived, and radiation therapy isn't effective. "Radiation treatment is given today on the assumption that tumors are oxygenated" and will be damaged by it, says Murali Cherukuri, chief of biophysics in the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI in Bethesda, Maryland. "Hypoxic regions survive treatment and repopulate the tumor."

Since the 1950s, researchers have tried many ways to get more oxygen into tumors, without success. Having patients breathe high levels of oxygen prior to radiation doesn't work, and developing an agent to carry oxygen through the blood to a tumor has proved very difficult. Artificial proteins that mimic the body's natural oxygen carrier, hemoglobin, can be dangerously reactive?destroying other important chemicals in the blood. And other oxygen carriers tend to either cling to oxygen too tightly or release it too soon, before it gets to the least oxygenated regions of the tumor.

"We're hoping that since most tumors are hypoxic, we could improve the effectiveness of radiation therapy in a large number of people," says Stephen Cary, cofounder and CEO of Omniox. The company has developed a range of proteins that are tailored to hold onto oxygen until they're inside hypoxic tissue. These proteins are not based on hemoglobin, so they don't have the same toxic effects.

The company's technology comes from the lab of Michael Marletta, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. "Most blood substitutes have failed," says Marletta, because they were based on globin proteins, which includes hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is able to work in the body because it's encased in red blood cells. Unprotected, oxygenated globin proteins react with nitric oxide in the blood, destroying the oxygen, the nitric oxide, and the protein itself.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=d688a4fa220bd62a8ddda1e451c2acca

school closures due to weather lee majors idaho road conditions beaverton school district

Flipboard?s new FlipGifts section could redefine shopping catalogs [TNW Media]

Right in time for Black Friday and with many of its users sitting around on sofas digesting their turkey, iPad news app Flipboard has just announced a new curated section called FlipGifts that allows you to flip through posts, deals, and announcements about holiday shopping.

This is a really, really good idea.

Why? Well, first of all, as with all of Flipboard, the FlipGifts section recreates the sensation of casually flipping through a magazine, or in this case a shopping catalog. Beyond the curation aspect of it, it?s really the image integration that is super compelling after just flipping through a few pages of FlipGifts. In three flips, we saw images of Blu-Ray players, blenders, watches, a Victoria?s Secret model, cowboy boots, and cologne. That took all of about five seconds to process.

One you click on any of the posts you of course see the beginning of the article, but also of course you see the reactions (mostly retweets) in the right hand panel. This could turn into a great way to see what people are saying about the deal you?re looking at.

Ok, so that?s about the story right now with FlipGifts, but let?s look into the future a bit. First of all, we can easily imagine retailers lining up at Flipboard?s office to get a custom FlipGifts section built for their stores. Going even further into the future, when tablets are more ubiquitous, we could see people going beyond casually looking at these tablet catalogs at home to even using something like this in-store.

Basically, if Flipboard (or someone else perhaps) plays its cards right, it could eventually replace shopping catalogs ? that?s got to be a huge market, and one that with some refinement and more partners, we see no reason why Flipboard couldn?t go after right now.

Here?s some shots of what the FlipGifts section looks like right now:

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://thenextweb.com/media/2010/11/26/flipboardss-new-flipgifts-section-could-redefine-shopping-catalogs/

thanksgiving quotes nfl power rankings week 12 westminster abbey school closures due to weather

G.O.P. Senators Detail Objections to Arms Treaty

In a memorandum to his colleagues, the senator, Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the upper chamber and his party?s point man on the treaty, called New Start, detailed his objections for the first time since declaring last week that there was not enough time to consider the treaty this year.

From the beginning, Mr. Kyl wrote, he has been clear that he ?could not support reductions in U.S. nuclear forces unless there is adequate attention to modernizing those forces and the infrastructure that supports them.? The administration has committed to spend more money for that purpose, but ?there remain a few substantial concerns about the adequacy of the proposed budget,? the memo said.

?Until these issues are resolved, it will be difficult to adequately assess the updated 1251 plan, despite the welcome increases in proposed spending,? the memo added, using a term referring to the modernization proposal. ?And as has always been clear, assurances from the appropriate authorizers and appropriators must be obtained to ensure that the enacted budget reflects the president?s request.?

The memo, circulated privately to Republican senators on Wednesday and obtained by The New York Times, was also signed by Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, another important figure in the debate. Mr. Corker voted for New Start when it was passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September, but now agrees with Mr. Kyl that it should not come to a floor vote during the current lame-duck session of Congress.

The White House argued that the problem predated Mr. Obama?s time in office. ?We agree with Senators Kyl and Corker,? said Bob Jensen, a White House spokesman. ?Modernization is needed. As the paper notes, the weapons complex was underfunded? for the five previous years. ?It took several years of underfunding in the period before the president took office to get in this hole,? he said. ?President Obama has a plan to get us out of it.?

Since Mr. Kyl?s statement last week, the White House has mounted a high-profile campaign to press the Senate to approve the treaty before the end of the year, making it a signal test of President Obama?s political strength at home after an election that cost his party control of the House as well as his credibility abroad as he tries to rebuild the relationship with Russia.

In an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said that the stakes for the treaty were high. ?Our uniformed military supports it,? he wrote. ?Our European allies support it. Our national security interests are at stake. It is time for the Senate to approve New Start.?

The White House has been working with Mr. Kyl for months and contends that it has gone out of its way to address his concerns about modernization. It had already proposed spending $80 billion over 10 years on the nuclear complex and added $4.1 billion on Nov. 12 and a little more last week. White House officials felt blindsided by Mr. Kyl?s statement that not enough had been done to assuage him on the treaty.

In their seven-page memo on Wednesday, Mr. Kyl and Mr. Corker said they welcomed the administration?s effort, but wanted further assurances. For one thing, they wrote, the vast bulk of the original $80 billion would have been spent anyway, just ?keeping the lights on? at nuclear laboratories and plants for safety, security, upkeep and routine warhead maintenance. Only $10 billion was new money for weapons activity, they wrote, a point the administration disputes. The latest administration plan, delivered Nov. 17, increased the total 10-year plan to between $85.4 billion and $86.2 billion.

Most of the new money would go to designing and building a new plutonium processing plant at the Los Alamos complex in New Mexico, and a new uranium processing plant at the Oak Ridge complex in Tennessee. The new facilities would replace buildings left over from the Manhattan Project era, when the first nuclear bombs were developed.

But while the facilities would begin partial operations by 2020, they would not be fully functional until 2023 and 2024. ?Additional funding could be applied to accelerate the construction of these facilities to ensure on schedule completion,? the Republican memo said.

Moreover, the new facilities would not have the capacity to produce enough weapons for a larger arsenal should the international political situation demand a renewed buildup, the memo said. And it said the administration should be more clear about its vision for the nuclear triad, meaning the bombers, missiles and submarines that make up the nation?s nuclear force.

The White House played down the differences. ?To the extent there are concerns outlined in the paper, they are about details of the plan,? Mr. Jensen said. ?We can discuss those with the Congress and will continue to do so.?

The memo did not address the treaty?s merits or urge its rejection. Instead, it compared the nation?s nuclear laboratories to a rundown garage trying to maintain Ferraris that have sat in storage for 30 years: ?This is the state of our nuclear deterrent today, except we?re dealing not with cars, but with the most sophisticated and dangerous weapons ever devised by man.?

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1d4e79e0db0d57d10d84dc18615fc9a0

ina garten north korea bombs south korea thanksgiving games cranberry sauce recipe

The Key Ingredient to Effective Cancer Treatments

About 50 percent of cancer patients have tumors that are resistant to radiation because of low levels of oxygen?a state known as hypoxia. A startup in San Francisco is developing proteins that could carry oxygen to tumors more effectively, increasing the odds that radiation therapy will help these patients.

Last month, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) gave that startup, Omniox, $3 million in funding. Omniox is collaborating with researchers at the NCI to test whether its oxygen-carrying compounds improve radiation therapy in animals with cancer.

Most tumors have hypoxic regions, and researchers believe they have a significant impact on treatment outcomes in about half of patients. Tumor cells proliferate with such abandon that they outstrip their blood supply, creating regions with very low levels of oxygen. This lack of oxygen drives tumor cells to generate more blood vessels, which metastatic cells use to travel elsewhere in the body and spread the cancer.

Radiation therapy depends on oxygen to work. When ionizing radiation strikes a tumor, it generates reactive chemicals called free radicals that damage tumor cells. Without oxygen, the free radicals are short-lived, and radiation therapy isn't effective. "Radiation treatment is given today on the assumption that tumors are oxygenated" and will be damaged by it, says Murali Cherukuri, chief of biophysics in the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI in Bethesda, Maryland. "Hypoxic regions survive treatment and repopulate the tumor."

Since the 1950s, researchers have tried many ways to get more oxygen into tumors, without success. Having patients breathe high levels of oxygen prior to radiation doesn't work, and developing an agent to carry oxygen through the blood to a tumor has proved very difficult. Artificial proteins that mimic the body's natural oxygen carrier, hemoglobin, can be dangerously reactive?destroying other important chemicals in the blood. And other oxygen carriers tend to either cling to oxygen too tightly or release it too soon, before it gets to the least oxygenated regions of the tumor.

"We're hoping that since most tumors are hypoxic, we could improve the effectiveness of radiation therapy in a large number of people," says Stephen Cary, cofounder and CEO of Omniox. The company has developed a range of proteins that are tailored to hold onto oxygen until they're inside hypoxic tissue. These proteins are not based on hemoglobin, so they don't have the same toxic effects.

The company's technology comes from the lab of Michael Marletta, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. "Most blood substitutes have failed," says Marletta, because they were based on globin proteins, which includes hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is able to work in the body because it's encased in red blood cells. Unprotected, oxygenated globin proteins react with nitric oxide in the blood, destroying the oxygen, the nitric oxide, and the protein itself.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=d688a4fa220bd62a8ddda1e451c2acca

cranberry sauce recipe thanksgiving word search printable cranberry relish sweet potato casserole

White House Seeks Chinese Help With N. Korea

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged China to act, calling Beijing ?absolutely critical? to the international effort to get North Korea to stop its military provocations. ?It?s very important for China to lead,? Admiral Mullen said Wednesday on the ABC program ?The View.? ?The one country that has influence in Pyongyang is China.?

President Obama was preparing to make a personal telephone plea to President Hu Jintao of China, White House officials said. They added that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is likely to call China?s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, to follow up on similar calls from other senior American officials to their Chinese counterparts.

But few analysts expect China, wary of destabilizing the North, its unpredictable neighbor, to employ its economic and military leverage in any substantial way to try to alter its behavior. And in Seoul, the South Korean government was left struggling to find the right response, as President Lee Myung-bak found himself with no clear way to proceed despite his past vows to take a hard line against the North.

Mr. Lee spent Wednesday conferring with stern-faced generals and talking on the phone with world leaders like Mr. Obama, who offered him sympathy and support over the artillery attack on Tuesday on a South Korean island, the latest in a series of provocations by the North.

Mr. Lee?s government traded threats with the North, warning of heavy retaliation should it attack again, while the North warned against even the slightest incursions into its territory.

But despite the strong words, South Korea is showing few signs of planning a more forceful retaliation to the attack on Yeonpyeong Island, which killed two civilians and two marines. While it placed its armed forces on high alert and sent F-15 fighter jets to the area, South Korea?s only military response so far came during the attack itself, when marines on the island returned fire at North Korean positions.

On Thursday, the South?s government ordered the deployment of extra troops on islands near the disputed border with North Korea, Reuters reported

On Wednesday, during an emergency session of the National Assembly, South Korea?s legislature, right-wing lawmakers called for bolder military action in response to the shelling and criticized Mr. Lee for not retaliating with greater force right away.

?North Korea?s artillery stronghold should have been destroyed three minutes after the attack,? said one lawmaker, Song Kwang-ho. ?South Korea?s air force sallied forth but did not attack. The gong sounded, and it?s too late now. Where were our resolute measures??

The impasse underscored the quandary both countries face: neither the strengthened sanctions Mr. Obama and Mr. Lee pushed after a North Korean nuclear test last year, nor the resumed aid and diplomacy Mr. Lee tried just a few months ago, have persuaded the North to cooperate with the outside world.

For that reason, both have looked to China for crucial assistance. The reclusive government in North Korea is diplomatically isolated to begin with; its sole big supporter is China.

But while China has in the past tried to influence North Korea, it has been reluctant to do so in recent months. The reason in part, analysts say, is that Beijing does not want to destabilize the North when it is in the middle of a succession process brought on by the illness of its leader, Kim Jong-il, who is believed to be making way for one of his sons, Kim Jong-un, to take over.

?Beijing doesn?t want the collapse of the regime,? said Victor Cha, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. China, said Mr. Cha, who worked at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, has ?made the core strategic calculation that unification of the North and the South, with the United States as an ally, is not in Chinese interests.?

That puts the Obama administration and South Korea in the precarious position of trying to press Beijing to take a stand that China?s leaders do not believe to be in China?s best interests ? a tough job under any circumstances, but particularly now, during North Korea?s succession.

Mr. Obama?s decision to accelerate the deployment of an American aircraft carrier group to the region is intended to prod the Chinese. American officials hope that by presenting Beijing with an unpalatable result ? the expansion of American maneuvers off its shores ? China will decide that pressing North Korea is the lesser of two evils.

Pentagon officials said the joint exercise in waters west of the Korean Peninsula would run Sunday to Wednesday. Military officials said the carrier George Washington had been preparing to sail from its port in Japan to join the Japanese Navy in an exercise to begin Dec. 3. After the artillery exchange between the two Koreas, the carrier was ordered to drill with South Korea?s navy before joining the Japanese.

Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Martin Fackler from Seoul, South Korea. Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=560306f3f21fbfad06ed68b158c21968

easter 2011 thanksgiving trivia school closures turkey brine

Finding New Ways to Measure Success in Social Media [TNW Social Media]

Well according to the Huffington Post and APCO ? there is. A recent study by the two organisations ? Social EQ ? sought to rank the Fortune 40?s top admired companies, in terms of the effectiveness of their social media strategies. The results (shown below) might be surprising, which begs the question of whether this really is an accurate measure of success in social media. To give some context to the study, it was run by working with a group of Social Informants (avid users of social media inside and out) who identified 6 key factors of social media success: dialogue; customer service; quality of content; platform diversity; engagement & interaction; optimisation. Then a larger group of over 4,000 people were surveyed, to rank the 40 companies according to these factors. The graphic below shows the rankings:

The difference between popularity and effectiveness

The findings of this survey have to be taken in context. This was not looking at which companies worldwide are the most social, but using the indicator of the Fortune 40 companies that are listed as the most admired. So how does that admiration translate in social terms? While there are some companies in the top 10 of that list that fully deserve their place ? such as Disney and Coca-Cola, others are more surprising, such as Apple and Google. Were I to think of the top social companies, these certainly wouldn?t be in my top 10. That?s where the difficulty comes for what is actually effective, and what is perceived to be effective. Because the whole of Twitter is talking about Apple, does that mean their social media strategy is effective, or that in fact that are an incredibly popular company that is talked about by default, rather than engaging with these conversations directly?

To break it down, it?s worth looking at one of the companies in more detail, to see how the study translates. A look at Google?s social profiles tells us the following : the official Google blog is updated around 3 times per day, including cross-postings from other Google product blogs. Yet although the blogs claim to ?love feedback?, this is done through email. You?re not allowed to comment on a post in the usual way. Granted Google are a huge company and this would require some serious moderation, but nonetheless I wouldn?t equate this with effective engagement, dialogue, or customer service (3 of the 6 Social EQ factors).

The official Google Facebook page has over 2 million Likes, and the company updates it at least once every day. That?s certainly quality content, but if you click on to see the updates left by ?just others?, there are spam comments that haven?t been deleted, and not one reply from Google when you scroll back through hundreds of comments. They also hardly ever reply to comments left on their own updates. The same pattern can be seen on their Twitter account ? plenty of content and a large amount of followers, but no @ replies or retweets to other users. This may not be indicative of their entire social media effort, but it does tell us a lot. Compare Google?s or Apple?s social media strategy to someone like Coca Cola, who regularly create engaging content for their readers and invest in diversity of content through Facebook apps etc.. and it?s difficult to understand how they ranked above them.

Do numbers mean success?

If you were to look at this without the numbers, you wouldn?t say that this is an effective social media strategy from Google, effectively pushing one-way content through to users, with no engagement. But the difficulty arises from the fact that their followers are in the millions. This means we effectively perceive their social media strategy as effective, or more precisely that the groups in the study viewed numbers as a measure of success or effectiveness. As difficult as this may be for some to accept ? we know that the numbers tell only half the story ? this is unarguably the perception of social media success. And it sort of confirms what we knew anyway. Importantly this study hasn?t come from a company that has come out with their own arguments on social media success, these are the rankings given by a large group of Social Informants, giving their opinion.

Now of course this is my interpretation of the study, but it?s surprising that this association of success with numbers, is at odds with Evan Krauss, director of APCO Online and his analysis of the research. In an article he said ?We at APCO believe influence is a far more more important gauge than raw numbers?. The study was certainly organised to reflect this, with ?dialogue? being the most heavily weighted of the six factors, equating for 30% of the final score. But rather than looking at the quality of dialogue, i.e. little to none from Google, the wealth of dialogue of their followers was clearly deemed as important. Despite the fact that they were effectively talking to themselves, with no engagement from the organisation.

This is without doubt one of the most interesting studies into social media effectiveness that I?ve seen in a while. It holds a lot of merit and the strategy behind it shows an understanding of social media that we haven?t really seen in any previous studies. The sophistication of this model should not be underestimated. But when Nestle are ranked at number 18 (and number 15 for dialogue), you know there?s something that?s not quite right yet! I hope this study continues and evolves as I think it holds the most potential. I would like to see the approach expanded out to different areas and niche industries, to gain a deeper understanding of social media success.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/11/25/finding-new-ways-to-measure-success-in-social-media/

westminster abbey school closures due to weather lee majors idaho road conditions

The Key Ingredient to Effective Cancer Treatments

About 50 percent of cancer patients have tumors that are resistant to radiation because of low levels of oxygen?a state known as hypoxia. A startup in San Francisco is developing proteins that could carry oxygen to tumors more effectively, increasing the odds that radiation therapy will help these patients.

Last month, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) gave that startup, Omniox, $3 million in funding. Omniox is collaborating with researchers at the NCI to test whether its oxygen-carrying compounds improve radiation therapy in animals with cancer.

Most tumors have hypoxic regions, and researchers believe they have a significant impact on treatment outcomes in about half of patients. Tumor cells proliferate with such abandon that they outstrip their blood supply, creating regions with very low levels of oxygen. This lack of oxygen drives tumor cells to generate more blood vessels, which metastatic cells use to travel elsewhere in the body and spread the cancer.

Radiation therapy depends on oxygen to work. When ionizing radiation strikes a tumor, it generates reactive chemicals called free radicals that damage tumor cells. Without oxygen, the free radicals are short-lived, and radiation therapy isn't effective. "Radiation treatment is given today on the assumption that tumors are oxygenated" and will be damaged by it, says Murali Cherukuri, chief of biophysics in the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI in Bethesda, Maryland. "Hypoxic regions survive treatment and repopulate the tumor."

Since the 1950s, researchers have tried many ways to get more oxygen into tumors, without success. Having patients breathe high levels of oxygen prior to radiation doesn't work, and developing an agent to carry oxygen through the blood to a tumor has proved very difficult. Artificial proteins that mimic the body's natural oxygen carrier, hemoglobin, can be dangerously reactive?destroying other important chemicals in the blood. And other oxygen carriers tend to either cling to oxygen too tightly or release it too soon, before it gets to the least oxygenated regions of the tumor.

"We're hoping that since most tumors are hypoxic, we could improve the effectiveness of radiation therapy in a large number of people," says Stephen Cary, cofounder and CEO of Omniox. The company has developed a range of proteins that are tailored to hold onto oxygen until they're inside hypoxic tissue. These proteins are not based on hemoglobin, so they don't have the same toxic effects.

The company's technology comes from the lab of Michael Marletta, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. "Most blood substitutes have failed," says Marletta, because they were based on globin proteins, which includes hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is able to work in the body because it's encased in red blood cells. Unprotected, oxygenated globin proteins react with nitric oxide in the blood, destroying the oxygen, the nitric oxide, and the protein itself.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=d688a4fa220bd62a8ddda1e451c2acca

sweet potato casserole columbia house thanksgiving math worksheets easter 2011

U.S. to Drop Color-Coded Terror Alerts

There goes another punch line.

The Department of Homeland Security is planning to get rid of the color-coded terrorism alert system. Known officially as the Homeland Security Advisory System, the five-color scheme was introduced by the Bush administration in March 2002.

Red, the highest level, meant ?severe risk of terrorist attacks.? The lowest level, green, meant ?low risk of terrorist attacks.? Between those were blue (guarded risk), yellow (significant) and orange (high).

The nation has generally lived in the yellow and orange range. The threat level has never been green, or even blue.

In an interview on ?The Daily Show? last year, the homeland security chief, Janet Napolitano, said the department was ?revisiting the whole issue of color codes and schemes as to whether, you know, these things really communicate anything to the American people any more.?

The answer, apparently, is no.

The color-coded threat levels were doomed to fail because ?they don?t tell people what they can do ? they just make people afraid,? said Bruce Schneier, an author on security issues. He said the system was ?a relic of our panic after 9/11? that ?never served any security purpose.?

The Homeland Security Department said the colors would be replaced with a new system ? recommendations are still under review ? that should provide more clarity and guidance. The change was first reported by The Associated Press.

?The goal is to replace a system that communicates nothing,? the agency said, ?with a partnership approach with law enforcement, the private sector and the American public that provides specific, actionable information based on the latest intelligence.?

The department has already begun working toward the goal of providing more specific alerts.

After a Nigerian citizen, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was accused of trying to bring down a Detroit-bound plane last Christmas with explosives, the department issued new guidelines to airports and airlines without raising the threat level.

While the system may have had limited usefulness for the American people, it proved to be comedy gold for late-night shows.

Conan O?Brien joked, ?Champagne-fuchsia means we?re being attacked by Martha Stewart.? Jay Leno said, ?They added a plaid in case we were ever attacked by Scotland.?

Meanwhile, critics of the Bush administration argued that the system was a political tool.

And even Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush, has raised questions. In his memoir, ?The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again,? Mr. Ridge said Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, pushed for an elevated terrorism level in October 2004 after a threatening tape from Osama bin Laden was revealed.

Mr. Ridge wrote that after ?a vigorous, some might say dramatic, debate, I wondered, ?Is this about security, or politics?? ? While the security level ultimately was not raised, he said the incident helped him decide that it was time to leave the government in February 2005.

Amy Wax, president of the International Association of Color Consultants North America, said ? perhaps not surprisingly ? colors could be an effective part of a warning system if tied to specific action. ?How are we going to take those instructions and apply it to our lives?? she said. ?Are we going to go to the airport, or not go to the airport??

She said the agency?s use of ?childish? primary colors like red, yellow and blue might have diluted the impact. ?Purple, orange and magenta might create a sense of something that would get attention,? she said.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=076acd57da37a45474495c6dfa34df7e

lee majors idaho road conditions beaverton school district ina garten

Apple Store taking $101 off MacBook Air and Pro tomorrow, $41 off iPad [TNW Apple]

Apple has posted its Black Friday deals for the US, with the largest discounts coming on its Mac line, with $101 off the MacBook Air and iMac.

The iPad is $41 off (so you can get the 16GB WiFi version for $458 before tax), the pretty expensive to start with 2TB Time Capsule is $51 off (so $448), and the 1TB version and the iPod Touch are $21 off ? everything else is either $5 or $11 off.

We?d say by far the best deal is the $101 off the new MacBook Airs, as they are Apple?s newest gadget and we?d expect a fair number of them to sell at that price. The iPad at $41 off isn?t that bad either, especially as many people are probably buying them as gifts at this point in the year, as they are just about the #1 ?want? tech item of the season.

Also, as 9to5 Mac reports, international Apple Stores are currently down right now, which we have confirmed.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/11/26/apple-store-taking-101-off-macbook-air-and-pro-tomorrow-41-off-ipad/

north korea bombs south korea thanksgiving games cranberry sauce recipe thanksgiving word search printable