Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune (blog) (Original Article)

Sen. Al Franken took an offensive stance during a hearing this afternoon on the proposed merger between NBC and Comcast, repeating that the companies cannot be trusted and accusing Comcast’s CEO of contradicting his own legal team.
Franken, a former NBC employee who still receives residual checks from the network, was the most heated lawmaker in the room as he grilled the two companies’ execs. In his opening statement, Franken said he didn’t trust their promises regarding the merger.

"While I commend NBCU and Comcast for making voluntary commitments as part of this merger, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust these promises," Franken said. "And that’s from experience in this business."
The primary worry among lawmakers is that a merger may incentivize Comcast to raise the price of NBC content — to the detriment of rival providers and consumers. Company heads have pledged this will not happen, saying it is in their interest for content to be widely distributed.
Franken countered that price increases do not necessarily mean rival cable companies would stop buying the content.
"If a cable company wants to carry Saturday Night Live and they can’t, no one’s going to use that cable company," Franken said. "They have to get NBC. It would be death to any cable company. So maybe you’re not going to charge them 10 times as much but you can charge them twice as much."
During questioning, the Democratic senator accused Comcast CEO Brian Roberts of misleading him a week ago when the cable chief said in a private discussion that program carriage rules would protect consumers. Franken said he later discovered that Comcast’s lawyers argued in 2008 that the rules are largely unenforceable.

"In other words, looking to get approval for this merger, you sat there in my office and told me to my face flights from Albury to Hobart that these rules would protect consumers," Franken said. …continue reading

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune (Original Article)

Look around and you’ll see a nascent trend in Twin Cities economic development — amphitheaters.
The sloping half-bowls are popping up in a lot of places: New ones opened in September in St. Anthony and White Bear Township. Oakdale added one last spring, and coming this summer are a grand, $2 million structure in Maple Grove and a modest $27,000, 35-seat model in Bunker Hills Regional Park in Coon Rapids.
City officials view them as a way to attract people to downtown businesses and to pull folks together, a destination point. A university professor and former city planner sees the point but offers some alternative views.
"Amphitheaters may be the economic development tool or tourist attraction du jour right now," said David Schultz, a former city planner and professor at Hamline University in St. Paul. Or, he said, building one could be part of a municipal "keeping-up-with-the-Joneses strategy."
The latest amphitheater project was approved last week in Ramsey for the city’s half-developed Town Center. The City Council ordered final design plans for a 300-seat, four-tier project to be built next to a pond starting this spring.
"Amphitheaters make it more of a destination," said City Engineer Tim Himmer. "If people are driving by, they might stop to see it or come for a concert."
Three Rivers Park District spent $300,000 to build what you might call an ambidextrous amphitheater in St. Anthony. It can seat about 300 on a grassy knoll, under 150-year-old oaks. But the stage can be turned around so that it faces the Great Lawn, which can seat up to 3,000, said Denis Hahn, the district’s outdoor education manager.
"Being embraced by the natural world at the same time you experience the creative performances of people, there is a magic in that," Hahn said. "I think people are drawn to that."

The grand opening in Silverwood Park last September cheap flights from Cairns to Brisbane drew nearly 500 people to hear musicians …continue reading

Source: Washington Post (Original Article)

LOS ANGELES — The music world celebrated Grammy weekend at tributes, rehearsals, flights from Cairns to Weipa parties and styling suites. Here’s a look:

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Source: Digital Spy (Original Article)

Rex Features

Massive Attack have said that they nearly split a number of times since the group was founded.The band admitted to several conflicts during their history, while Andy ‘Mushroom’ Vowles’s departure in 1998 left them as a duo of Grant ‘Daddy G’ Marshall and Robert ‘3D’ del Naja.Del Naja told The Daily Telegraph: “We had a period in the middle of [1991's] Blue Lines when we all stopped talking, and on [1994's] Protection the band fell apart for a month.”Marshall added: “Even before we actually became Massive Attack, in 1986, when we were in Japan as The Wild Bunch Soundsystem, there was nearly a parting of the ways then.”[After Mezzanine] we were definitely on the edge of imploding. There didn’t seem any point remaining friends.”Of the making of 2003’s 100th Window, both musicians admitted to feeling “alienated”, with Marshall calling himself “a spectator” who “wasn’t happy” with the songs and Del Naja feeling “abandoned”.Marshall admitted: “Massive Attack is in my blood. Without it things just seem empty.”Del Naja agreed: “We’re family. cheap flight Albury to Hobart We’ve had some moments, but we got over them.”

http://www.afropinion.com/?p=79621
Two British rock musicians on tour in Brazil have drowned while swimming off a paradise beach. Their bandmate saw a “massive” wave engulf them before Leon Villalba, 21, was washed up on Atalaia beach 20 minutes later. …

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Source: Boston Globe (Original Article)

You know where I am
Overlapping technologies track individuals and share information

By
D.C. Denison

Globe Staff

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January 18, 2010

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As he sat near the frosted window of a Cambridge coffee shop, Andrew Blumberg’s academic look easily blended in with the crowd. A laptop computer and a steaming cup of coffee were precariously balanced on a tiny table; occasionally, Blumberg consulted an Apple iPhone pulled from a jacket pocket.Yet Blumberg was acutely aware that he was a long way from anonymity, even though he knew no one there except a reporter he had just met.There were many ways strangers might have identified and tracked him, Blumberg said, pointing out no less than 12 interactions that could have generated such information as he made his way to this specific spot: Darwin’s, Ltd., on the edge of Harvard Square. Had he stopped at an ATM, for example, the bank would know he had been there, and when. Had he traveled on the T, a turnstile could have noted the time and station when he swiped his pass. There were also a half-dozen technologies that could still be tracking him as he sat, he said.Blumberg, a Boston-area native who is an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Texas in Austin, did not appear uncomfortable with the multiple lenses focused on him. “I’m aware of the trade-offs I’ve been making for the sake of convenience,’’ he said casually.Still, he cheap flight Sydney to Hayman Island is among a growing number of academics …continue reading

Source: sometimes for decades - before caring for sick … - Salt Lake Tribune (Original Article)

Click photo to enlargeSecretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki has pledged that the potential health effects from exposure to the open-air burn pits that proliferate Iraq and Afghanistan will not be ignored, as the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange was following the Vietnam War.
«12345»RelatedThe order of the illJan 15:Officials just now recognizing Agent Orange exposuresVets say toxic tests sickened them; government says prove itVets: Burn pits are killing usEditor’s note: First in a three-part series.
 
In Vietnam, Jim Ogden flew through clouds of Agent Orange. In Desert Storm, he hovered past burning oil fields. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, he worked near a thick black plume of burning plastic, metals, chemicals and medical waste.
Along the way he took injection after injection and swallowed pill after pill. He breathed in herbicides and pesticides. And he never questioned whether all of those drugs, toxins and poisons might someday do him harm.
Not until he lost his eyesight.
Now the former Marine and master helicopter mechanic can’t help but wonder what, if anything, was to blame.
Though often in unintended and unexpected

Jim Ogden likes to spend time in his basement among the memorabilia of his career working with helicopters in hot spots around the world. Shortly after his last stint of service as a civilian helicopter mechanic in Iraq, Ogden became blind. Without a way to prove that his blindness is related to his military service, he isn’t eligible for veteran’s benefits.
(Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune)ways, military service has sickened generations of U.S. service members. But the only way for veterans to ensure medical care and compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs is to prove that their illnesses are “service-connected.” But the complexity of linking myriad mysterious ailments to military service – and the budgetary burden of caring for millions of sick cheap flights Perth to Canberra and dying veterans — limits the number …continue reading

Source: Channel News Asia (Original Article)

Posted: 12 January 2010 2339 hrs

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Source: CBC.ca (Original Article)

Even before the doors opened here, the key buzzword on so many lips was 3D.

Just about all the big television manufacturers are touting 3D as the next evolution in home entertainment. But they are also considerably focused on the increasing convergence of television and the internet.

Here at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, both LG Electronics and Panasonic announced support for Skype video calls in high-definition on their internet-enabled TVs, which are coming out this year.

Skype has confirmed that as many as one-third of all its calls are video and it went on to say that the software and technology is now ripe for the bigger screen, where participants can look more crisp and lifelike.

Perhaps the bigger announcement came from Samsung, which unveiled Samsung Apps, an application and widget store that will be rolled out in the spring for its line of LED and 3D TVs.

The addition of a TV-based app store is meant to bridge any gap between mobile devices and television.

According to Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America, ” Samsung devices will connect to each other like never before.”

The app store will launch in the spring with an initial “batch of free apps.”

Samsung says it will be the first “multi-platform” app store and will offer downloads for Samsung mobile phones, TVs, Blu-ray players and possibly other devices after the initial rollout.

No details on pricing have been revealed, though Baxter did say that the store will have an open architecture, meaning that Samsung will supply the developer kit to those interested in creating applications for inclusion in the store.

It is not clear at this point if there will be any applications created purely for Canadian viewers.

For its part, Sharp announced that its internet-connected AQUOS Net service will offer streaming content directly to TVs using Netflix.

Sharp was cheap flight Rockhampton to Adelaide the first to launch live tech support …continue reading