YouTube launches broad entertainment venture

YouTube is making a bold step into original programming in an entertainment venture with some 100 content creators, from Madonna to The Wall Street Journal. The Google Inc.-owned video site said Friday that it's launching more than 100 new video channels. The partners include an array of Hollywood production companies, celebrities and new media groups that will produce mainly niche-oriented videos. YouTube is shelling out $100 million to producers, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The money is...

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Commonwealth leaders raise polio vaccine spending

Commonwealth government leaders meeting in Australia agreed Saturday to step up efforts to eradicate polio worldwide, despite the Afghanistan war setting back vaccination efforts there and in neighboring Pakistan. Leaders of Britain, Canada, Australia and Nigeria, as well as billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, committed tens of millions of dollars in additional funding toward the World Health Organization's campaign to wipe out the disabling disease from the four countries where it remains endemic — India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. All...

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The NCAA's 'sweeping reform' of college sports

New standards for recruiting, player compensation, and academics are unveiled after years of corruption and exploitation allegations One month after Taylor Branch's damning cover story in The Atlantic about the NCAA's shameful exploitation of college athletes — which itself followed a raft of accusations of bribery and foul play — the organization that governs college sports announced "sweeping reform" this week. Changes include adding a stipend to athletic scholarship packages, holding athletes to more rigorous academic standards, and restructuring...

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Why won't Mitt Romney make his tax returns public?

Rick Perry is calling for Mitt Romney to release his tax returns. Mitt Romney has never made his returns public. Why not? Welcome to the rumble in the tax return jungle. Rick Perry wants Mitt Romney to cough up his form 1040s (that’s the US individual tax return document). The Romney camp demurred, saying they would consider doing so next year. (Remarkably, Romney has NEVER released, even during his governorship of Massachusetts.) Why won’t Romney do it? Speculation, from liberal group ThinkProgress and others, is that Romney pays a way lower...

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Top 1 Percent's Income Grew 275 Percent From 1979 to 2007

The income of the richest 1 percent in the U.S. soared 275 percent from 1979 to 2007, but the bottom 20 percent grew by just 18 percent, new government data shows. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a study this week that compared real after-tax household income between 1979 and 2007, which were both after recessions and had similar overall economic activity. While the income of the richest 1 percent nearly tripled, increases were smaller down the economic ladder. After the 1 percent,...

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Thai capital warned "massive" water on the way

Floods swamped a new area of Thailand's capital on Wednesday as some shops rationed food and Bangkok's governor warned of "massive water" on the way that could put many parts of the sprawling city in danger by the end of the week. Large-scale evacuation was underway in Bang Phlad, a riverside area some way from Bangkok's inundated northern districts, as floods hit the capital on a second front, deepening anxiety in the city of 12 million people, many of whom were expected to flee before a special...

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Telstra gets most gongs at Excellence Awards

ICT leaders gather in Sydney for Frost & Sullivan's 2011 Australia Excellence Awards The outstanding performance of companies in the Australian ICT industry was recognised at the 2011 Frost & Sullivan Australia Excellence Awards. Now in its sixth year, 18 awards spanning three industry categories including security and infrastructure, enterprise communications and telecommunications. Telstra took home the most awards including Hosted Contact Centre Service Provider of the Year; Data Communications...

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3 Giant Steps Forward in Improving Network Energy Efficiency

Since the launch of Climate Savers Computing four years ago, our members and global partners have helped save well over $2 billion in annual energy costs by decreasing CO2 emissions from computing equipment by approximately 41 – 45 million metric tons. We’ve done this by increasing the use of computer power management and through the development and adoption of more energy efficient computing technologies. Now we’re about to embark on our next major milestone by readying the release of three important...

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Schneider Electric Canada shows off new green facility at customer day in Mississauga

Schneider Electric Canada invited customers and media to its new corporate head office in Mississauga, Ont., recently to demonstrate its commitment to the environment with its construction upgrades, and to highlight its own solutions for energy management. Located at 5985 McLaughlin Road, the 100,000-sq.-ft. facility — 64,000 sq. ft. of office area and 36,000 sq. ft. of plant space — is home to 285 employees representing the company’s five domains of expertise — power, industry, energy, data centres and buildings. Previously, the company had multiple...

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The new reality for healthcare providers: Access to data is crucial; measurement is mandatory

ACOs, CINs and the transition to a patient-centered medical home model for both prevention and treatment are making data access crucial for physicians. As the ideas of patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), clinically integrated networks (CINs) and accountable care organizations (ACOs) move from concept to reality, health data must be readily available, easily analyzed and effectively deployed in a comprehensive and holistic manner. Health information technology companies have responded to this growing need by developing tools that help a wide...

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Adobe on track for 2012 opening

Adobe is different. Developers have unveiled grandiose plans for northwest Lehi in the previous decade -- shops connected by a water canal where gondolas transport shoppers through an outdoor mall; a community with large wakeboard lakes, underground roadways and the tallest building in Utah -- that have remained nothing but dreams. Adobe, however, appears well grounded in reality and is moving forward to open phase one of its new campus by the end of 2012. The company executives gave a site tour to Lehi politicians on Tuesday afternoon. "It's...

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OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 6 now available

OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 6, first announced last month, is now available for purchase. Perfect Photo Suite 6 is a collection of plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop, and, now, also for Apple Aperture and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. See our earlier story on the product's initial announcement for more details on the individual components of the suite. A new license for Perfect Photo Suite 6 sells for US$299.95; for previously licensed users, an upgrade costs US$149.95. The suite's component applications are also available individually—most for a new,...

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Obama announces help for student loan borrowers

President Barack Obama recalled his struggles with student loan debt as he unveiled a plan Wednesday that could give millions of young people some relief on their payments. Speaking at the University of Colorado Denver, Obama said that he and his wife, Michelle, together owed more than $120,000 in law school debt that took nearly a decade to pay off. He said that sometimes he'd have to make monthly payments to multiple lenders, and the debt meant they were not only paying for their own degrees but saving for their daughters' college funds simultaneously. "I've...

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Top 1 Percent's Income Grew 275 Percent From 1979 to 2007

The income of the richest 1 percent in the U.S. soared 275 percent from 1979 to 2007, but the bottom 20 percent grew by just 18 percent, new government data shows. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a study this week that compared real after-tax household income between 1979 and 2007, which were both after recessions and had similar overall economic activity. While the income of the richest 1 percent nearly tripled, increases were smaller down the economic ladder. After the 1 percent,...

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Obama's Blunder: The Sorry Truth About Alternative Energy

Despite the hype, green energy has been a big disappointment for investors. Yet there is one sure thing staring us right in the face. And McKinsey estimates it'll soon be worth $520 BILLION... Discover how you can position yourself to profit now! Dear Fellow Investor, President Obama took a beating over the Solyndra scandal. He lost major political capital, and some $535 million in taxpayer money just went up in smoke. But I'm not writing to argue about whether the government should be guaranteeing...

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Adobe to plug Flash-related Webcam spying hole

Adobe Systems is working on a fix for a Flash-related vulnerability that could be used by Web sites to surreptitiously turn on a visitor's microphone or Webcam. The problem is in the Flash Player Settings Manager on Adobe's servers and not with software on customer computers, Adobe spokeswoman Wiebke Lips told CNET today. "Engineering is currently working on a fix," she said in an e-mail. "Note that this issue does not involve/require a product update and/or customer action. (In other words, there will not be a security bulletin.) It's a fix...

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Adobe to Fix Flash Flaw That Allows Webcam Spying

Adobe is working on a fix for a Flash Player vulnerability that can be exploited via clickjacking techniques to turn on people's webcams or microphones without their knowledge. The issue was discovered by a Stanford University computer science student named Feross Aboukhadijeh who based his proof-of-concept exploit on a similar one disclosed back in 2008 by an anonymous researcher. Technically known as user interface (UI) redressing, clickjacking is a type of attack that combines legitimate Web programming features, like CSS opacity and positioning,...

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Mexico tackles epidemic of childhood obesity

Anghella Torres is just 4 years old, but already she weighs 66 pounds (30 kilos) — twice what she should. Because of her excess girth, her little feet constantly hurt from bearing the extra weight. Anghella knows she is obese and she doesn't like it. And now, even though she doesn't know how to read or count calories, she is on a diet. With the help of her grandmother and caretaker, Elizabeth Sucilla, Anghella is following a modest diet and exercise program established for her by a nurse at a local public hospital earlier this year. "I have to...

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Mosquito lab handles "world's most dangerous animals"

He keeps them in warm, comfortable bug dorms, feeds them on meals of human blood with the occasional sugar water snack and lives in awe of their killing power. Seattle-based research scientist Stefan Kappe says mosquitoes are the most dangerous animals in the world. Which is probably why when his laboratory colleagues slice their heads off with miniscule needle-like scalpels and squeeze them with tweezers to extract early forms of the malaria parasite from their saliva glands, he feels no concern about cruelty to animals. Kappe has spent his...

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Ideology trumped science at Texas agency, two lawmakers say

Two Democratic state senators from Texas accused the state's environmental agency of letting ideology trump science when it deleted information about the implications of global warming from a draft report. The leaders of the agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, are appointed by Republican Governor Rick Perry, who said in a recent presidential debate that the science of climate change was "unsettled." At issue is "The State of the Bay 2010" report commissioned by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which has come under...

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Conducting a Cloud Planning Analysis

Cloud computing can introduce new stress points that demand great robustness of the IT infrastructure. In order to prepare, it’s important to first evaluate the viability of a cloud deployment and conduct a thoughtful cloud planning analysis. Once this legwork has been completed, cloud may be an excellent choice based on the problem you are trying to solve and the opportunity cost. For potential cloud adopters, I believe there are several key focus areas that must be accounted for as part of any effective cloud planning analysis. To narrow it...

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Medium Voltage Power Transfer Switches

ASCO MVPTS have an integrated ASCO Power Control Center to improve the systems' communications capabilities and better manage circuit breaker operation. They are functionally similar to the company's low voltage transfer switches, but incorporate a pair of medium voltage circuit breakers as the preferred transfer mechanism. They monitor power and provide information about potential fault proble...

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All Against Cain: Upstart Targeted in GOP Debate

Republican presidential contenders attacked upstart Herman Cain's economic plan as a tax increase waiting to happen Tuesday night, moving swiftly in a fiery campaign debate to blunt the former businessman's unlikely rise in the race for the party's nomination. Old animosities flared, too, as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry swapped criticism in unusually personal terms. "You have a problem with allowing someone to finish speaking," Romney declared as the two men...

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