Who's Making Money

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was on Fox Business News today, and she was plenty Bartz-y. When Fox anchor Liz Clamen asked her repeatedly if she was on the way out, she said she was there to stay, adding “Do I look like a wimp?”

No. You do not. Even if you think Bartz is running the company into the ground, you have to give her credit for not holing up and hiding the way her predecessor Jerry Yang did, for continuing to be herself and holding her head high amid a pretty nasty storm of rumors. She further added that she wasn’t hiring a strong number two, saying she didn’t need one.

The question is, do we believe her? I don’t mean that question as a knock on her; frequently CEOs say they’re not going anywhere or not doing a deal or not launching a product just before they do. But Bartz didn’t help her credibility with her answer to Clamen’s question about whether she was tough to work for. She said: “So change just happens with new management and it’s actually refreshing for all of us.  So 15,000 employees, three people left?  That’s OK.”

Am I totally misunderstanding this or is she saying only three people have left Yahoo in the last year and a half? I think I’ve talked to three this week. I’m not convinced Bartz was a good fit for Yahoo, but I’ve long been a fan of her outspoken, here’s-the-way-it-is management style. And that statement isn’t how things are at Yahoo.

I’m somewhere between those onlookers who loathe Bartz and those who love her. I know a lot of talented executives who have left Yahoo in part because of her. They aren’t haters; they just don’t feel she gets the product or the business. And few metrics have been up during her short tenure, other than profitability which is up 80%, but that’s mostly through cost cutting and frankly, Yahoo had a lot of fat to cut. But on the other hand, I think Bartz is cleaning up a big mess that was a long time in the making. Not even a fictional wonder-CEO could do that in 18 months.

Let’s remember: The business hasn’t grown for six years and Bartz has only been there 18 months. She’s not the one who turned down Microsoft’s $31 a share offer. She’s not the one who bungled an acquisition of Google, YouTube or Facebook. And while we had some fun at her expense over her comments about the technical challenges of blogging– I can tell you from experience Yahoo’s in house content management system was impossible to use. Should it have taken this long and a pile of money to update it? Of course not. But it shows just how asleep the board and prior management was when it came to building a strong modern content creation company– not just a content aggregation company. Eight years after Google bought Blogger, and at least five years after most old media companies embraced blogging platforms like Moveable Type and WordPress, Yahoo is finally figuring it out. You can’t put that on Bartz.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Yahoo CEO job has a way of making smart people look inept. Maybe she wasn’t the best pick, but who is this magical better person who’s out there just dying to take her spot?

Back to the Fox segment: There were two rumors Bartz didn’t deny. The first was when she was asked about the takeover rumors and she, as expected, said it wasn’t appropriate for her to speculate. The second was about Yahoo’s investment in Alibaba. She didn’t say they were selling the assets– even when needled by Clamen– but she didn’t say they weren’t  selling them, the way she categorically denied an upcoming ouster or talk of a strong number two joining her team. She definitely signaled that she views Alibaba as a wise financial investment and of little strategic value.

Given how much of global Internet traffic is increasingly coming from overseas, and how brilliantly Jack Ma has navigated infrastructure and political challenges endemic to a country like China, I just don’t see how Bartz doesn’t get how much Yahoo could learn from Alibaba or on a more basic level, the advantages of having someone like that as an ally. For sheer entertainment value, I’d give an arm to see Bartz, Jerry Yang and Jack Ma at a board meeting, when and if Yahoo get its contractually-obligated second seat on Alibaba’s board.

From the transcript:

CLAMAN:  I need to ask you about Alibaba, this Chinese site in which you have a near 40 percent stake that is extraordinarily valuable.  Everyone is wondering are you going to cash in on that.  What are you going to do with Alibaba?

First of all, is it 7 billion in value?  Is it 11 billion?  I can’t get a straight number from anybody.

BARTZ:  Well, I think one of the reasons you can’t get a straight number is it’s a private company, so there’s a lot of people that are doing their best analysis of that.

You know, the company five years ago had some trouble in China and made such a wise decision to move the business out of China and not operate in China cause we see what can happen in some of the issues with that.

CLAMAN:  Meaning Google and that situation.

BARTZ:  And we partnered up with a fantastic entrepreneur named Jack Ma. Five years later, everybody is salivating because it was such a good decision and such a good investment.

So we continue to watch this investment.  We’re on the board of Alibaba.  And we’re also always watching what is best for the shareholders.

CLAMAN:  Would you wait until it goes public or do you not want to miss an opportunity that may be before that?

BARTZ:  You’re always evaluating things like this, Liz.  Any investment you’re evaluating should I take some out now, should I wait and do these things later.

We have a team of very strong financial experts that both work here and advise us, and we will do the right thing for the shareholders, no doubt about it.

CLAMAN:  It must be tempting, though, when you look at — OK, let’s use the low number — $7 billion, if that’s what Alibaba is valued at, to say, boy, you know, this would get some of the analyst heat off my back.

(LAUGHTER)

BARTZ:  You know, I have a job that absorbs the heat.  That is my job.  And so, hey, listen, sometimes it is not fun  that you get a little more heat than you expect.  But we have such confidence in what we’re doing and we have such confidence in that investment that we will not do anything silly because of supposed heat.  We will do the right thing as a management team and the right thing for the shareholders.

What makes a man want to amass more money than God, and once he has, keep going? For each hedge-fund manager the answers are a little bit different, and a little bit the same. From today's Bloomberg Markets we believe we have identified the four primary things that motivated Harbinger Capital founder Philip Falcone (or as readers of this blog may know him, Mr. Lisa Falcone), whose fund made $11 billion betting against subprime, to become who he is today.

We begin with a sepia-tinted moment when Falcone first leaves his Minnesota hometown, all gawky of limb and Lionel Richie of hair, to seek his fortune in the big city.

Neil Sheehy, from nearby International Falls, had offered Falcone a ride to Harvard University, which had recruited both of them to play hockey for the Crimson. The car stalled in front of Falcone’s house, and Sheehy had to restart it on a hill while Falcone’s mother and one of his sisters sobbed their goodbyes.

“It’ll be all right, Mrs. Falcone; it’ll be all right,” Sheehy recalls telling Caroline Falcone as the car chugged to life and headed east.

Falcone was one of nine, and his mother still cared that he was leaving home! This is meaningful and leads us to Motivation 1: Phil can never let his mama down.

[To wit, later: "Galloway says he once set up a meeting for Falcone with a billionaire investor who was interested in Harbinger. Falcone said he couldn’t make the meeting because he had to go see his mother."]

Immediately after leaving home, life decided to punk young Philip by showing him that even when you think that things are tough, they can always get worse.

Falcone rode to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his feet on the dashboard because Sheehy had packed a skate-sharpening machine on the floor of the front seat... Halfway there, the roof liner came loose and showered the young men with fiberglass insulation that stuck to them as they sweated in the late.

Motivation 2: The fuck he's going to go through something like that again. He is going to kick life's ass!

Then, he did not quite fit in at school.

Falcone was wide-eyed when he arrived at Harvard in 1980, says hockey teammate Greg Olson, who’s now a dentist in Minnetonka, Minnesota. “He was a deer in the headlights,” Olson says. After recovering from the initial shock, Falcone made himself something of a campus don. Hockey teammates called him “Fashion Phil” because he cared so much about his clothes, Olson says. He had a blue, three-piece suit that he wore often, and he always wore stylish shoes.

Motivation 3: Show those jerkoffs who called him a hick and a fag who the man is.

But after graduation, he was more confident.

[Wife Lisa] was working as a model when she met Phil Falcone through mutual friends at a Manhattan restaurant in the late 1980s.

Motivation 4: GIRLS!

Of course, a hot wife and incredible financial success doesn't keep the critics at bay. If anything, it just makes them worse.

“Just because a manager got the subprime trade right, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a skilled manager,” says Brad Balter, managing partner of Balter Capital Management LLC, a Boston-based firm that invests in hedge funds for clients. “There have been several funds that benefited from that bet in 2007 whose performance was mediocre before and continues to be mediocre today.”

Motivation 5: Show those jerkoffs who suggest he is a one-hit wonder who the man is. Then show them again. And again. Until he dies.

Falcone Losing Touch Borrowing From Funds While His Investors Denied Cash

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was on Fox Business News today, and she was plenty Bartz-y. When Fox anchor Liz Clamen asked her repeatedly if she was on the way out, she said she was there to stay, adding “Do I look like a wimp?”

No. You do not. Even if you think Bartz is running the company into the ground, you have to give her credit for not holing up and hiding the way her predecessor Jerry Yang did, for continuing to be herself and holding her head high amid a pretty nasty storm of rumors. She further added that she wasn’t hiring a strong number two, saying she didn’t need one.

The question is, do we believe her? I don’t mean that question as a knock on her; frequently CEOs say they’re not going anywhere or not doing a deal or not launching a product just before they do. But Bartz didn’t help her credibility with her answer to Clamen’s question about whether she was tough to work for. She said: “So change just happens with new management and it’s actually refreshing for all of us.  So 15,000 employees, three people left?  That’s OK.”

Am I totally misunderstanding this or is she saying only three people have left Yahoo in the last year and a half? I think I’ve talked to three this week. I’m not convinced Bartz was a good fit for Yahoo, but I’ve long been a fan of her outspoken, here’s-the-way-it-is management style. And that statement isn’t how things are at Yahoo.

I’m somewhere between those onlookers who loathe Bartz and those who love her. I know a lot of talented executives who have left Yahoo in part because of her. They aren’t haters; they just don’t feel she gets the product or the business. And few metrics have been up during her short tenure, other than profitability which is up 80%, but that’s mostly through cost cutting and frankly, Yahoo had a lot of fat to cut. But on the other hand, I think Bartz is cleaning up a big mess that was a long time in the making. Not even a fictional wonder-CEO could do that in 18 months.

Let’s remember: The business hasn’t grown for six years and Bartz has only been there 18 months. She’s not the one who turned down Microsoft’s $31 a share offer. She’s not the one who bungled an acquisition of Google, YouTube or Facebook. And while we had some fun at her expense over her comments about the technical challenges of blogging– I can tell you from experience Yahoo’s in house content management system was impossible to use. Should it have taken this long and a pile of money to update it? Of course not. But it shows just how asleep the board and prior management was when it came to building a strong modern content creation company– not just a content aggregation company. Eight years after Google bought Blogger, and at least five years after most old media companies embraced blogging platforms like Moveable Type and WordPress, Yahoo is finally figuring it out. You can’t put that on Bartz.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Yahoo CEO job has a way of making smart people look inept. Maybe she wasn’t the best pick, but who is this magical better person who’s out there just dying to take her spot?

Back to the Fox segment: There were two rumors Bartz didn’t deny. The first was when she was asked about the takeover rumors and she, as expected, said it wasn’t appropriate for her to speculate. The second was about Yahoo’s investment in Alibaba. She didn’t say they were selling the assets– even when needled by Clamen– but she didn’t say they weren’t  selling them, the way she categorically denied an upcoming ouster or talk of a strong number two joining her team. She definitely signaled that she views Alibaba as a wise financial investment and of little strategic value.

Given how much of global Internet traffic is increasingly coming from overseas, and how brilliantly Jack Ma has navigated infrastructure and political challenges endemic to a country like China, I just don’t see how Bartz doesn’t get how much Yahoo could learn from Alibaba or on a more basic level, the advantages of having someone like that as an ally. For sheer entertainment value, I’d give an arm to see Bartz, Jerry Yang and Jack Ma at a board meeting, when and if Yahoo get its contractually-obligated second seat on Alibaba’s board.

From the transcript:

CLAMAN:  I need to ask you about Alibaba, this Chinese site in which you have a near 40 percent stake that is extraordinarily valuable.  Everyone is wondering are you going to cash in on that.  What are you going to do with Alibaba?

First of all, is it 7 billion in value?  Is it 11 billion?  I can’t get a straight number from anybody.

BARTZ:  Well, I think one of the reasons you can’t get a straight number is it’s a private company, so there’s a lot of people that are doing their best analysis of that.

You know, the company five years ago had some trouble in China and made such a wise decision to move the business out of China and not operate in China cause we see what can happen in some of the issues with that.

CLAMAN:  Meaning Google and that situation.

BARTZ:  And we partnered up with a fantastic entrepreneur named Jack Ma. Five years later, everybody is salivating because it was such a good decision and such a good investment.

So we continue to watch this investment.  We’re on the board of Alibaba.  And we’re also always watching what is best for the shareholders.

CLAMAN:  Would you wait until it goes public or do you not want to miss an opportunity that may be before that?

BARTZ:  You’re always evaluating things like this, Liz.  Any investment you’re evaluating should I take some out now, should I wait and do these things later.

We have a team of very strong financial experts that both work here and advise us, and we will do the right thing for the shareholders, no doubt about it.

CLAMAN:  It must be tempting, though, when you look at — OK, let’s use the low number — $7 billion, if that’s what Alibaba is valued at, to say, boy, you know, this would get some of the analyst heat off my back.

(LAUGHTER)

BARTZ:  You know, I have a job that absorbs the heat.  That is my job.  And so, hey, listen, sometimes it is not fun  that you get a little more heat than you expect.  But we have such confidence in what we’re doing and we have such confidence in that investment that we will not do anything silly because of supposed heat.  We will do the right thing as a management team and the right thing for the shareholders.

What makes a man want to amass more money than God, and once he has, keep going? For each hedge-fund manager the answers are a little bit different, and a little bit the same. From today's Bloomberg Markets we believe we have identified the four primary things that motivated Harbinger Capital founder Philip Falcone (or as readers of this blog may know him, Mr. Lisa Falcone), whose fund made $11 billion betting against subprime, to become who he is today.

We begin with a sepia-tinted moment when Falcone first leaves his Minnesota hometown, all gawky of limb and Lionel Richie of hair, to seek his fortune in the big city.

Neil Sheehy, from nearby International Falls, had offered Falcone a ride to Harvard University, which had recruited both of them to play hockey for the Crimson. The car stalled in front of Falcone’s house, and Sheehy had to restart it on a hill while Falcone’s mother and one of his sisters sobbed their goodbyes.

“It’ll be all right, Mrs. Falcone; it’ll be all right,” Sheehy recalls telling Caroline Falcone as the car chugged to life and headed east.

Falcone was one of nine, and his mother still cared that he was leaving home! This is meaningful and leads us to Motivation 1: Phil can never let his mama down.

[To wit, later: "Galloway says he once set up a meeting for Falcone with a billionaire investor who was interested in Harbinger. Falcone said he couldn’t make the meeting because he had to go see his mother."]

Immediately after leaving home, life decided to punk young Philip by showing him that even when you think that things are tough, they can always get worse.

Falcone rode to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his feet on the dashboard because Sheehy had packed a skate-sharpening machine on the floor of the front seat... Halfway there, the roof liner came loose and showered the young men with fiberglass insulation that stuck to them as they sweated in the late.

Motivation 2: The fuck he's going to go through something like that again. He is going to kick life's ass!

Then, he did not quite fit in at school.

Falcone was wide-eyed when he arrived at Harvard in 1980, says hockey teammate Greg Olson, who’s now a dentist in Minnetonka, Minnesota. “He was a deer in the headlights,” Olson says. After recovering from the initial shock, Falcone made himself something of a campus don. Hockey teammates called him “Fashion Phil” because he cared so much about his clothes, Olson says. He had a blue, three-piece suit that he wore often, and he always wore stylish shoes.

Motivation 3: Show those jerkoffs who called him a hick and a fag who the man is.

But after graduation, he was more confident.

[Wife Lisa] was working as a model when she met Phil Falcone through mutual friends at a Manhattan restaurant in the late 1980s.

Motivation 4: GIRLS!

Of course, a hot wife and incredible financial success doesn't keep the critics at bay. If anything, it just makes them worse.

“Just because a manager got the subprime trade right, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a skilled manager,” says Brad Balter, managing partner of Balter Capital Management LLC, a Boston-based firm that invests in hedge funds for clients. “There have been several funds that benefited from that bet in 2007 whose performance was mediocre before and continues to be mediocre today.”

Motivation 5: Show those jerkoffs who suggest he is a one-hit wonder who the man is. Then show them again. And again. Until he dies.

Falcone Losing Touch Borrowing From Funds While His Investors Denied Cash

bench craft company complaints

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bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

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bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

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A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

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EXCLUSIVE: Fox News Channel's signature news anchor Shepard Smith has signed a new multi-year deal to continue as the channel's lead news anchor as well as anchor of FOX Report and Studio B. Smith's most recent pact with Fox News inked ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Online Money Making Opportunities

Did I mentioned companies? I apologize my concern is not companies but individuals and small starups the people on the fringe not stabilished players, that get resources cut out from them with such rules.



If we're not talking about companies, then we shouldn't be talking about "commercial use," but all use. I, too, disapprove of copyright law when it's used to attack the public (as is the case with the RIAA suing file sharers). Even if it was a good business move somehow, it would still be trampling on the public's rights. But business entities aren't members of the public, and don't have those rights.



That's why I suggested that an entity needs to be registered as a business, or actually selling the content, for the use to be considered commercial. Individuals would be exempt.



Whether the company is a startup or an established player doesn't really matter to me, just as a startup company couldn't ignore minimum wage laws.



Now explain the labor thing, because I don't think I understand what you want to say.



The value of your labor is not in how hard you work, it's in how much monetary value your labor brings to the market.



You understood the salesman analogy? He is still earning a commission on income from his clients, even though it is much harder to land a new client than it is to be a rep for an existing client. It's not how hard he works, it's how much money his work is bringing in.



Think of a song as being a salesman. The song, like the salesman, is continuously bringing income into the company. So, the company owes it a commission. The flip side is if that song isn't generating sales, then you don't owe it any commission at all - as is the case with non-commercial use.



A financial transaction will be made with and agreement between two parties not through compulsory regulation.



If companies are allowed to use works without compensation or permission, then there is no "agreement" to be made. You effectively remove the artist from that market.



You are talking about permission, I am talking about freedoms, you start limiting something and it will get expanded



Minimum wage laws are also a limitation on a business's freedom. Have those laws expanded? Would that expansion be bad thing for society in general?



Or when they are covering someone else songs.



That would mean that you don't think songwriting is labor, or that this labor doesn't add value to a song. If that's the case, then you should do your own labor, and write your own song.



Also, people should only have to pay if that cover song is used for commercial use, and only paid for by the commercial entity that generates income from that use.



Does sirius force people ot hear them? Paying a fee it is not a problem when it is a choice, when it is mandatory then we got a problem.



Are you forced to eat at McDonald's? No. That doesn't mean McDonald's employees shouldn't be paid. And paying McDonald's employees for their work is not a choice, it's mandatory.

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With social gaming consolidating around big startups, people are starting to wonder if there is no more room for Facebook game startups. But the team at A Bit Lucky has been a bit lucky in proving that assumption wrong.

With its first game, Lucky Train, A Bit Lucky has scored more than 1.5 million users on Facebook. That’s enough for the 20-person company to keep investing in the app as a service, or something that is upgraded or maintained for the users every day.

Frederic Descamps (pictured top, right), chief executive of the Redwood City, Calif. company, said in an interview that the company has done well by focusing on its quality game design and breaking some of the rules. The presence of startups such as A Bit Lucky shows that there is room for a wave of companies in social games that are coming behind the leaders who are already on the merger warpath.

The first rule it broke was the notion that Facebook games have to be appealing to women in order to succeed, since many of Facebook’s 500 million users (and its 200 million game players) are women. Trains are decidedly a boy thing, as stereotypes go, and so it was a risk making a train simulator for a first game. The game is particularly popular with parents who have young kids, but it’s also popular with just about anyone. Roughly 65 percent of players are male.

The game play is simple. You create a train and then send it to your friends. They can load it with passengers. Each time one of your trains makes a round trip between different players, you get coins and experience points. Then you can use those rewards to decorate your county or create more impressive trains. The fun part is that you never really know what your friends are going to send you.

Sending messages to your friends about your trains is a natural part of the game play, and it also happens to be a good way to help the game spread. That fact is more important because Facebook cracked down in the spring on viral communications, making it harder for startups with no current game audiences to spread in a viral way.

Jordan Maynard (pictured top left), chief creative officer at A Bit Lucky, also made a bet that a deeply designed game would work well on Facebook. Maynard and Descamps worked together on hardcore online games at Trion Worlds, which has been making massively multiplayer online games for the past five years. Maynard also worked on Spore at Electronic Arts, and the team of 20 people includes a number of video game veterans.

With A Bit Lucky, they can now work on something that gets them feedback much more quickly. They started the company in November of last year, raised money in February, launched the game in June, and are now busy doing updates for the game, such as creating Halloween-themed material.

They were pretty late in starting a new game company on Facebook. Just before they started, Electronic Arts began a consolidation phase by purchasing Playfish for as much as $400 million. But Descamps, who was also a veteran of the startup Xfire, and Maynard were excited about the new opportunities in social games. Descamps started a regular social game entrepreneur party, partly to learn from others and partly to recruit employees. The parties have now grown to hundreds of people, a reflection of the buzz around social games in Silicon Valley. It was a very social way for A Bit Lucky to dive into the social gaming universe.

The fans are pretty dedicated. The average play session is about 13 minutes, which is about four or five times higher than the average play session for a Facebook game. Players have created 7.5 million trains since the game launched in June, and there have been 21 million train stops in the past month. More than 70 million round trips, where players send a train to a friend and they send it back, have been completed in the last month. About 200,000 users play the game on any given day. Those are all good metrics.

“We feel that our numbers show that our social game is more social than a lot of other ’social games’ are,” Maynard said.

One of the reasons the game has done well is that the animation is fast for Facebook, where load screens on social games can be painfully slow. The company also used Applifier, a promotion bar that is installed on top of the game and promotes a bunch of third-party games. It helps games feed users to each other.

For sure, it’s a crowded market, with bigger companies such as Zynga, Disney Playdom, EA-Playfish, CrowdStar, LOLapps, Digital Chocolate, Booyah and others. The list goes on and on. In the Facebook game space, it’s becoming harder to find spaces that others aren’t already occupying. Maynard said that doesn’t mean startups can’t compete with the big companies. It just means they can’t use the exact same tactics — such as heavily advertising — to fight them.

A Bit Lucky has raised $2.6 million from angels including SV Angel (Ron Conway’s firm), Chris Dixon’s Founder Collective, Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures, Red Octane founders Charles and Kai Huang, IGN co-founder Mark Jung, Google M&A chief David Lawee, Lerer Ventures, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, early Facebook employee Jed Stremel, and XG Ventures. With that group behind it, A Bit Lucky should have a chance to do something unique.

You could say that Lucky Train is a copy of old train simulators such as Railroad Tycoon, but it’s more accurate to say that it’s a reinterpretation of that once-popular genre for the modern era. Maynard knows games from the older days because his father was an early employee at Electronic Arts. For more than a decade, he has worked on games where users have been very engaged with the content, and he believes that measure will become more important in the future. To keep users engaged, small Facebook startups will have to take more risks.

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. We’ll cover the topic at DiscoveryBeat 2010. Startups and big companies alike should consider entering our Needle in the Haystack discovery business idea competition. VentureBeat would like to thank the industry leaders that are supporting DiscoveryBeat 2010, including co-host Flurry, AppLaunchPR, Herakles Data Center, Adobe, Offermobi, Appolicious, and appbackr. Unique sponsorships are still available. For more information contact sponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, click on this link.

Next Story: Nokia to make phones for LightSquared’s wholesale 4G network Previous Story: 5 ways to break the startup funk

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AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: MoveOn woman kicked &amp; stomped by &#39;Libertarian <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.

bench craft company complaints
bench craft company complaints

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: MoveOn woman kicked &amp; stomped by &#39;Libertarian <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Did I mentioned companies? I apologize my concern is not companies but individuals and small starups the people on the fringe not stabilished players, that get resources cut out from them with such rules.



If we're not talking about companies, then we shouldn't be talking about "commercial use," but all use. I, too, disapprove of copyright law when it's used to attack the public (as is the case with the RIAA suing file sharers). Even if it was a good business move somehow, it would still be trampling on the public's rights. But business entities aren't members of the public, and don't have those rights.



That's why I suggested that an entity needs to be registered as a business, or actually selling the content, for the use to be considered commercial. Individuals would be exempt.



Whether the company is a startup or an established player doesn't really matter to me, just as a startup company couldn't ignore minimum wage laws.



Now explain the labor thing, because I don't think I understand what you want to say.



The value of your labor is not in how hard you work, it's in how much monetary value your labor brings to the market.



You understood the salesman analogy? He is still earning a commission on income from his clients, even though it is much harder to land a new client than it is to be a rep for an existing client. It's not how hard he works, it's how much money his work is bringing in.



Think of a song as being a salesman. The song, like the salesman, is continuously bringing income into the company. So, the company owes it a commission. The flip side is if that song isn't generating sales, then you don't owe it any commission at all - as is the case with non-commercial use.



A financial transaction will be made with and agreement between two parties not through compulsory regulation.



If companies are allowed to use works without compensation or permission, then there is no "agreement" to be made. You effectively remove the artist from that market.



You are talking about permission, I am talking about freedoms, you start limiting something and it will get expanded



Minimum wage laws are also a limitation on a business's freedom. Have those laws expanded? Would that expansion be bad thing for society in general?



Or when they are covering someone else songs.



That would mean that you don't think songwriting is labor, or that this labor doesn't add value to a song. If that's the case, then you should do your own labor, and write your own song.



Also, people should only have to pay if that cover song is used for commercial use, and only paid for by the commercial entity that generates income from that use.



Does sirius force people ot hear them? Paying a fee it is not a problem when it is a choice, when it is mandatory then we got a problem.



Are you forced to eat at McDonald's? No. That doesn't mean McDonald's employees shouldn't be paid. And paying McDonald's employees for their work is not a choice, it's mandatory.

(reply to this)
(link to this) (view in thread)

With social gaming consolidating around big startups, people are starting to wonder if there is no more room for Facebook game startups. But the team at A Bit Lucky has been a bit lucky in proving that assumption wrong.

With its first game, Lucky Train, A Bit Lucky has scored more than 1.5 million users on Facebook. That’s enough for the 20-person company to keep investing in the app as a service, or something that is upgraded or maintained for the users every day.

Frederic Descamps (pictured top, right), chief executive of the Redwood City, Calif. company, said in an interview that the company has done well by focusing on its quality game design and breaking some of the rules. The presence of startups such as A Bit Lucky shows that there is room for a wave of companies in social games that are coming behind the leaders who are already on the merger warpath.

The first rule it broke was the notion that Facebook games have to be appealing to women in order to succeed, since many of Facebook’s 500 million users (and its 200 million game players) are women. Trains are decidedly a boy thing, as stereotypes go, and so it was a risk making a train simulator for a first game. The game is particularly popular with parents who have young kids, but it’s also popular with just about anyone. Roughly 65 percent of players are male.

The game play is simple. You create a train and then send it to your friends. They can load it with passengers. Each time one of your trains makes a round trip between different players, you get coins and experience points. Then you can use those rewards to decorate your county or create more impressive trains. The fun part is that you never really know what your friends are going to send you.

Sending messages to your friends about your trains is a natural part of the game play, and it also happens to be a good way to help the game spread. That fact is more important because Facebook cracked down in the spring on viral communications, making it harder for startups with no current game audiences to spread in a viral way.

Jordan Maynard (pictured top left), chief creative officer at A Bit Lucky, also made a bet that a deeply designed game would work well on Facebook. Maynard and Descamps worked together on hardcore online games at Trion Worlds, which has been making massively multiplayer online games for the past five years. Maynard also worked on Spore at Electronic Arts, and the team of 20 people includes a number of video game veterans.

With A Bit Lucky, they can now work on something that gets them feedback much more quickly. They started the company in November of last year, raised money in February, launched the game in June, and are now busy doing updates for the game, such as creating Halloween-themed material.

They were pretty late in starting a new game company on Facebook. Just before they started, Electronic Arts began a consolidation phase by purchasing Playfish for as much as $400 million. But Descamps, who was also a veteran of the startup Xfire, and Maynard were excited about the new opportunities in social games. Descamps started a regular social game entrepreneur party, partly to learn from others and partly to recruit employees. The parties have now grown to hundreds of people, a reflection of the buzz around social games in Silicon Valley. It was a very social way for A Bit Lucky to dive into the social gaming universe.

The fans are pretty dedicated. The average play session is about 13 minutes, which is about four or five times higher than the average play session for a Facebook game. Players have created 7.5 million trains since the game launched in June, and there have been 21 million train stops in the past month. More than 70 million round trips, where players send a train to a friend and they send it back, have been completed in the last month. About 200,000 users play the game on any given day. Those are all good metrics.

“We feel that our numbers show that our social game is more social than a lot of other ’social games’ are,” Maynard said.

One of the reasons the game has done well is that the animation is fast for Facebook, where load screens on social games can be painfully slow. The company also used Applifier, a promotion bar that is installed on top of the game and promotes a bunch of third-party games. It helps games feed users to each other.

For sure, it’s a crowded market, with bigger companies such as Zynga, Disney Playdom, EA-Playfish, CrowdStar, LOLapps, Digital Chocolate, Booyah and others. The list goes on and on. In the Facebook game space, it’s becoming harder to find spaces that others aren’t already occupying. Maynard said that doesn’t mean startups can’t compete with the big companies. It just means they can’t use the exact same tactics — such as heavily advertising — to fight them.

A Bit Lucky has raised $2.6 million from angels including SV Angel (Ron Conway’s firm), Chris Dixon’s Founder Collective, Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures, Red Octane founders Charles and Kai Huang, IGN co-founder Mark Jung, Google M&A chief David Lawee, Lerer Ventures, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, early Facebook employee Jed Stremel, and XG Ventures. With that group behind it, A Bit Lucky should have a chance to do something unique.

You could say that Lucky Train is a copy of old train simulators such as Railroad Tycoon, but it’s more accurate to say that it’s a reinterpretation of that once-popular genre for the modern era. Maynard knows games from the older days because his father was an early employee at Electronic Arts. For more than a decade, he has worked on games where users have been very engaged with the content, and he believes that measure will become more important in the future. To keep users engaged, small Facebook startups will have to take more risks.

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. We’ll cover the topic at DiscoveryBeat 2010. Startups and big companies alike should consider entering our Needle in the Haystack discovery business idea competition. VentureBeat would like to thank the industry leaders that are supporting DiscoveryBeat 2010, including co-host Flurry, AppLaunchPR, Herakles Data Center, Adobe, Offermobi, Appolicious, and appbackr. Unique sponsorships are still available. For more information contact sponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, click on this link.

Next Story: Nokia to make phones for LightSquared’s wholesale 4G network Previous Story: 5 ways to break the startup funk

bench craft company complaints

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: MoveOn woman kicked &amp; stomped by &#39;Libertarian <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: MoveOn woman kicked &amp; stomped by &#39;Libertarian <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: MoveOn woman kicked &amp; stomped by &#39;Libertarian <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

Nevada Voters Complain Of Problems At Polls - Las Vegas <b>News</b> Story <b>...</b>

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

personal finance money management

If you walked into the average bookstore, you'd think that women rule the roost when it comes to personal finance. From Suze Orman's now-classic Women and Money to the more recent (and more colorfully titled) Bitches on a Budget, there's no shortage of do-it-yourself financial advice tailored to women.



Apparently, though, when women make the momentous move from self-help to seeking professional advice about investing and retirement, things go rapidly downhill. A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that women perceived themselves as receiving wealth management services at a level of quality that is inferior to that received by their male counterparts.



According to the study, women are the key decision-makers when it comes to 27% of the wealth worldwide: that's $20 trillion! But despite the massive chunk of power they wield, 55% of the women surveyed in the study said they felt their wealth manager could do a better job of advising them. Almost a quarter of the respondents said private banks needed "significant improvement" in the services they offer to women.



"The dissatisfaction stems from the unshakable perception that men get more attention, better advice, and sometimes even better terms and deals," according to study co-author Peter Damisch. "We heard this sense of subordination time and time again in our interviews."



This perceived disparity in service arose from several key disconnects in the relationships and communications between women and their financial advisers. Manisha Thakor, Chartered Financial Analyst and women's financial literacy advocate, offers some steps savvy female investors can take to avoid being under-served by their wealth managers and investment advisers:



1. Find your adviser and get your financial education from women-run resources.



The financial services industry is dominated by males and therefore the "DNA is structured around the male experience," Thakor explains, adding that she sees many firms making an effort to change this. Most financial advisers are men, who may not inherently understand the whole-life nature of the average woman's financial plans and needs. They also may have very different communication styles than their women clients.



Thakor recommends women use women-created resources like LearnVest and DailyWorth to educate themselves in order to avoid the intimidation factor when talking about investment products with their advisers. She also encourages women to consult Garrett Planning Network, founded by Certified Financial Planner Sheryl Garrett, to locate a local certified financial planner who works on an hourly-fee-only basis. Taking these steps, Thakor explains, may alleviate the concern expressed by many women in the BCG study that they were not being taken seriously or talked to on the same level as male clients by their financial advisers.



2. Expressly state your ideal career trajectory, then ask how you should alter your investment plans accordingly.



In the BCG study, women stated that their investment advisers fundamentally misunderstood what was actually important to them, and recommended a too-narrow range of inappropriate investment vehicles as a result. Many said their advisers assumed they had a lower risk tolerance than they actually did, or that their advisers focused on short-term results and disregarded their long-term goals, which often included time out to care for a child or parent.



Thakor offers women a script of sorts to remedy this communication disconnect. "Go in and say: "I want to be a mom and I may take X amount of time out of the work force," she advises. Then ask, "How do we adjust how much I need to save and how I should invest to compensate for this?"



3. Start saving early.

At Obama's Town Hall meeting recently, I asked the President when he was going to "stop whacking Wall Street like a piñata?" Critics took the comment and ran with it, indicating that I'm a Wall Street elitist who is out of touch with Main Street. The piñatas started coming to my office and Jon Stewart said that I was a new cast member for "Jersey Shore." "What's up with the piñatas being filled with regular candy?" I joked, "After all I am a Wall Street elitist deserving of Godiva." As for Mr. Stewart, my 18-year-old son who enjoyed his invective (what kid doesn't like seeing their old man roasted) said, "Dad, how can you be a Jersey Shore cast member and a Wall Street elitist at the same time?" One of the huge misconceptions that I want to state clearly is that I am one of the founders of two small businesses in asset management, and have not been the recipient of bailout money. Both of these businesses were small enough to fail and had to be managed prudently in the crisis.

Something is rotten with the rhetoric in our society; it is divisive and polarizing and doing nothing to heal our nation's current woes. Perhaps the way I worded my question was off, but I do not feel apologetic for the underlying message. Wall Street has been beset with problems. The cycle of greed and personal aggrandizement and lifestyle grandstanding is an affront to any American. Yes, there are nefarious rogues on Wall Street who have contributed to the financial crisis and helped to exacerbate the steep recession. There is no debate about that. The fact that banks accepted federal bailout money, and with the tone deafness of a chimpanzee trying to play Mozart paid out egregious bonuses, has certainly contributed to the collective societal anger and the horrific public perception of Wall Street. The sentiment is so bad that perhaps here I need to apologize to all of the world's chimpanzees for the comparison.

Many people did the wrong thing and collectively the financial services leaders needed to act with a greater social conscience. We can and need to do better. The better side of Wall Street is when it is acting as an efficient mechanism of capital formation and capital flow, which helps businesses invest. I am certain that if our goals are to have more jobs, wage growth and a return to the economic prosperity that we as a nation are capable of, this angry dialogue is doing more harm than good.

I understand that it is easy to vilify the world of Wall Street and finger point at the wealthy, especially in a time when so many are struggling. However, by attacking all of Wall Street, the pundits and the President are failing to recognize several key facts. Making sweeping over-generalizations is classically un-American. Was every person in the oil industry responsible for the BP spill or everyone at Enron responsible for bankruptcy and scandal? Are we saying everyone who works in real estate and finance is responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 7.576 million employees working in the "financial activities" sector as of August 2010. Are all of these people to be criticized and ridiculed? I am just not going to accept that and I am going to implore you not to as well. Most of these people are honest, charitable and have their clients' interests and families at heart. Scapegoating the whole industry is unfair and demoralizing.



In addition to the executive responsibility of handling and managing the government, the President has an important voice that sets the tone for much of our national discourse. He is President for all of the people and while the populist rhetoric may result in some short term applause and positive polling, it is hurting our ability as a nation to heal; Main Street, Wall Street and Washington. It also sets the President up for the perception that he is anti-business. Despite the fact that the President and his staff view themselves as pro-business, by continuing to bash an industry that represents approximately 15% of the S&P 500's market capitalization, the anti-business perception will remain and cause huge damage to the national psyche. Intuitively we all know that we need the nation's business communities to do well and if the President is out there seeking populist applause our collective fears become irrational. What if he is a socialist? What if he is going to tax me or over regulate me into a state of poverty? How can I, as a business person, really know what all of the costs are to hire more people and grow? This uncertainty is aiding and abetting the new normal of stagnant to little private sector job creation. Until businesses start hiring again, Main Street will suffer. We will watch as countries like China, India and Brazil outpace us by close to three to one and that will not be easy. Bring down the rhetoric of anger and raise up that of healing and it will have a dramatically positive psychological effect on the country and the economy. Let us all heal together.

The other problem with the angry, unforgiving rhetoric is it lays the foundation for class warfare. The experiment that is America, what Lincoln described as the "hope of the earth" became so when it was abundantly clear that here in this great land you could accomplish anything with enough grit and hard work. Here you could move economic classes in one generation and through the mechanisms of the free market achieve what everyone wants in this country -- our own individual piece of the American Dream. Our ancestors that came from Europe or other parts of the world recognized the lack of class mobility and personal freedoms when a government becomes too intrusive or a country too set in its aristocratic ways. Americans want America to stay America, not turn into the statism and stagnation of the countries that our forefathers took enough risk to leave. When we trample "fat cats" we are setting up a division that none of us truly want.

There are many in this world who set out looking to make money, but also enjoy or have a passion for what they do. How is Wall Street different from people who set their sights on making a career as a doctor or lawyer, school principal or rock star? If you work hard at your craft and are successful at it does that make you greedy? Or just living the American dream? Most who walk on Main Street and Wall Street recognize that we are connected and much about our lives are the same. Some people are rich and some are poor, but all are trying to do the best they can and set up the next generation for success. My parents were raised humbly; neither attended college but also never once begrudged anyone who was perceived to have money. What they wanted is what just about all of us want -- for their children to do better than themselves. It is classically American never to begrudge the success of others but through the processes of our meritocratic system to reach our own level of success.

When American entrepreneurs and business leaders are doing better it is better for the nation. Jobs are created, capital is invested and our living standards improve. There is no doubt that we need greater responsibility and accountability from our business leaders, not only on Wall Street but throughout the society. The legendary Goldman Sachs senior partner, John Weinberg, often said, "Some people grow; other people swell. You better figure out quickly who you are." Growing right now at this moment in our history means forgiveness and putting aside the anger for what happened and focusing on what we can do together. It has been a humbling time, but if we come together now, we can recapture the American can do-ism and the optimistic spirit that has made us the most economically powerful and philanthropic people in the history of the planet. The American Dream is all we have. It is the dream that we cling to and want to keep alive for all Americans. We have done it before and will do it again. The roads we each travel on, Main Street, Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue are all connected. We need to be conscious of this symbiosis in order to be mutually successful. It's time now for all of us to move from piñata to peace pipe.

Anthony Scaramucci is founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm. He is a regular contributor to CNBC and is the author of Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul.

After <b>news</b> of Google tax dodges, Obama raises money with Google <b>...</b>

Google, according to a report by Bloomberg News, has used paper transactions to shift $3.1 billion of its income to Bermuda and other low-tax havens in recent years. The company's aggressive use of such tax dodges has reduced its ...

Scripting <b>News</b>: Rule 1 of local blogs

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

Scripting <b>News</b>: The Juan Williams controversy

I always thought he was pretty liberal, but then also shows up on Fox News. When he's on Fox, it's as if he's a different person. Very odd. Permanent link to this item in the archive. He said something on Fox that caused NPR to fire him ...

eric seiger eric seiger

If you walked into the average bookstore, you'd think that women rule the roost when it comes to personal finance. From Suze Orman's now-classic Women and Money to the more recent (and more colorfully titled) Bitches on a Budget, there's no shortage of do-it-yourself financial advice tailored to women.



Apparently, though, when women make the momentous move from self-help to seeking professional advice about investing and retirement, things go rapidly downhill. A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that women perceived themselves as receiving wealth management services at a level of quality that is inferior to that received by their male counterparts.



According to the study, women are the key decision-makers when it comes to 27% of the wealth worldwide: that's $20 trillion! But despite the massive chunk of power they wield, 55% of the women surveyed in the study said they felt their wealth manager could do a better job of advising them. Almost a quarter of the respondents said private banks needed "significant improvement" in the services they offer to women.



"The dissatisfaction stems from the unshakable perception that men get more attention, better advice, and sometimes even better terms and deals," according to study co-author Peter Damisch. "We heard this sense of subordination time and time again in our interviews."



This perceived disparity in service arose from several key disconnects in the relationships and communications between women and their financial advisers. Manisha Thakor, Chartered Financial Analyst and women's financial literacy advocate, offers some steps savvy female investors can take to avoid being under-served by their wealth managers and investment advisers:



1. Find your adviser and get your financial education from women-run resources.



The financial services industry is dominated by males and therefore the "DNA is structured around the male experience," Thakor explains, adding that she sees many firms making an effort to change this. Most financial advisers are men, who may not inherently understand the whole-life nature of the average woman's financial plans and needs. They also may have very different communication styles than their women clients.



Thakor recommends women use women-created resources like LearnVest and DailyWorth to educate themselves in order to avoid the intimidation factor when talking about investment products with their advisers. She also encourages women to consult Garrett Planning Network, founded by Certified Financial Planner Sheryl Garrett, to locate a local certified financial planner who works on an hourly-fee-only basis. Taking these steps, Thakor explains, may alleviate the concern expressed by many women in the BCG study that they were not being taken seriously or talked to on the same level as male clients by their financial advisers.



2. Expressly state your ideal career trajectory, then ask how you should alter your investment plans accordingly.



In the BCG study, women stated that their investment advisers fundamentally misunderstood what was actually important to them, and recommended a too-narrow range of inappropriate investment vehicles as a result. Many said their advisers assumed they had a lower risk tolerance than they actually did, or that their advisers focused on short-term results and disregarded their long-term goals, which often included time out to care for a child or parent.



Thakor offers women a script of sorts to remedy this communication disconnect. "Go in and say: "I want to be a mom and I may take X amount of time out of the work force," she advises. Then ask, "How do we adjust how much I need to save and how I should invest to compensate for this?"



3. Start saving early.

At Obama's Town Hall meeting recently, I asked the President when he was going to "stop whacking Wall Street like a piñata?" Critics took the comment and ran with it, indicating that I'm a Wall Street elitist who is out of touch with Main Street. The piñatas started coming to my office and Jon Stewart said that I was a new cast member for "Jersey Shore." "What's up with the piñatas being filled with regular candy?" I joked, "After all I am a Wall Street elitist deserving of Godiva." As for Mr. Stewart, my 18-year-old son who enjoyed his invective (what kid doesn't like seeing their old man roasted) said, "Dad, how can you be a Jersey Shore cast member and a Wall Street elitist at the same time?" One of the huge misconceptions that I want to state clearly is that I am one of the founders of two small businesses in asset management, and have not been the recipient of bailout money. Both of these businesses were small enough to fail and had to be managed prudently in the crisis.

Something is rotten with the rhetoric in our society; it is divisive and polarizing and doing nothing to heal our nation's current woes. Perhaps the way I worded my question was off, but I do not feel apologetic for the underlying message. Wall Street has been beset with problems. The cycle of greed and personal aggrandizement and lifestyle grandstanding is an affront to any American. Yes, there are nefarious rogues on Wall Street who have contributed to the financial crisis and helped to exacerbate the steep recession. There is no debate about that. The fact that banks accepted federal bailout money, and with the tone deafness of a chimpanzee trying to play Mozart paid out egregious bonuses, has certainly contributed to the collective societal anger and the horrific public perception of Wall Street. The sentiment is so bad that perhaps here I need to apologize to all of the world's chimpanzees for the comparison.

Many people did the wrong thing and collectively the financial services leaders needed to act with a greater social conscience. We can and need to do better. The better side of Wall Street is when it is acting as an efficient mechanism of capital formation and capital flow, which helps businesses invest. I am certain that if our goals are to have more jobs, wage growth and a return to the economic prosperity that we as a nation are capable of, this angry dialogue is doing more harm than good.

I understand that it is easy to vilify the world of Wall Street and finger point at the wealthy, especially in a time when so many are struggling. However, by attacking all of Wall Street, the pundits and the President are failing to recognize several key facts. Making sweeping over-generalizations is classically un-American. Was every person in the oil industry responsible for the BP spill or everyone at Enron responsible for bankruptcy and scandal? Are we saying everyone who works in real estate and finance is responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 7.576 million employees working in the "financial activities" sector as of August 2010. Are all of these people to be criticized and ridiculed? I am just not going to accept that and I am going to implore you not to as well. Most of these people are honest, charitable and have their clients' interests and families at heart. Scapegoating the whole industry is unfair and demoralizing.



In addition to the executive responsibility of handling and managing the government, the President has an important voice that sets the tone for much of our national discourse. He is President for all of the people and while the populist rhetoric may result in some short term applause and positive polling, it is hurting our ability as a nation to heal; Main Street, Wall Street and Washington. It also sets the President up for the perception that he is anti-business. Despite the fact that the President and his staff view themselves as pro-business, by continuing to bash an industry that represents approximately 15% of the S&P 500's market capitalization, the anti-business perception will remain and cause huge damage to the national psyche. Intuitively we all know that we need the nation's business communities to do well and if the President is out there seeking populist applause our collective fears become irrational. What if he is a socialist? What if he is going to tax me or over regulate me into a state of poverty? How can I, as a business person, really know what all of the costs are to hire more people and grow? This uncertainty is aiding and abetting the new normal of stagnant to little private sector job creation. Until businesses start hiring again, Main Street will suffer. We will watch as countries like China, India and Brazil outpace us by close to three to one and that will not be easy. Bring down the rhetoric of anger and raise up that of healing and it will have a dramatically positive psychological effect on the country and the economy. Let us all heal together.

The other problem with the angry, unforgiving rhetoric is it lays the foundation for class warfare. The experiment that is America, what Lincoln described as the "hope of the earth" became so when it was abundantly clear that here in this great land you could accomplish anything with enough grit and hard work. Here you could move economic classes in one generation and through the mechanisms of the free market achieve what everyone wants in this country -- our own individual piece of the American Dream. Our ancestors that came from Europe or other parts of the world recognized the lack of class mobility and personal freedoms when a government becomes too intrusive or a country too set in its aristocratic ways. Americans want America to stay America, not turn into the statism and stagnation of the countries that our forefathers took enough risk to leave. When we trample "fat cats" we are setting up a division that none of us truly want.

There are many in this world who set out looking to make money, but also enjoy or have a passion for what they do. How is Wall Street different from people who set their sights on making a career as a doctor or lawyer, school principal or rock star? If you work hard at your craft and are successful at it does that make you greedy? Or just living the American dream? Most who walk on Main Street and Wall Street recognize that we are connected and much about our lives are the same. Some people are rich and some are poor, but all are trying to do the best they can and set up the next generation for success. My parents were raised humbly; neither attended college but also never once begrudged anyone who was perceived to have money. What they wanted is what just about all of us want -- for their children to do better than themselves. It is classically American never to begrudge the success of others but through the processes of our meritocratic system to reach our own level of success.

When American entrepreneurs and business leaders are doing better it is better for the nation. Jobs are created, capital is invested and our living standards improve. There is no doubt that we need greater responsibility and accountability from our business leaders, not only on Wall Street but throughout the society. The legendary Goldman Sachs senior partner, John Weinberg, often said, "Some people grow; other people swell. You better figure out quickly who you are." Growing right now at this moment in our history means forgiveness and putting aside the anger for what happened and focusing on what we can do together. It has been a humbling time, but if we come together now, we can recapture the American can do-ism and the optimistic spirit that has made us the most economically powerful and philanthropic people in the history of the planet. The American Dream is all we have. It is the dream that we cling to and want to keep alive for all Americans. We have done it before and will do it again. The roads we each travel on, Main Street, Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue are all connected. We need to be conscious of this symbiosis in order to be mutually successful. It's time now for all of us to move from piñata to peace pipe.

Anthony Scaramucci is founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm. He is a regular contributor to CNBC and is the author of Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul.

After <b>news</b> of Google tax dodges, Obama raises money with Google <b>...</b>

Google, according to a report by Bloomberg News, has used paper transactions to shift $3.1 billion of its income to Bermuda and other low-tax havens in recent years. The company's aggressive use of such tax dodges has reduced its ...

Scripting <b>News</b>: Rule 1 of local blogs

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

Scripting <b>News</b>: The Juan Williams controversy

I always thought he was pretty liberal, but then also shows up on Fox News. When he's on Fox, it's as if he's a different person. Very odd. Permanent link to this item in the archive. He said something on Fox that caused NPR to fire him ...

eric seiger eric seiger

Im Making Money

Weezer Responds To Fan Fundraising Attempt To Get Them To Stop Making Crappy Albums

from the connecting-with-anti-fans? dept

There are so many "fan-funding" platforms, like Kickstarter, out there that involve trying to raise a certain amount via a bunch of fan pledges, where they only have to pay if they reach the goal. Usually, we see projects on those sites used for things like funding a new album or a book or something. But what about an anti- funding project? Hypebot points us to the fact that some "fans" (and perhaps I should use that word loosely) of the band Weezer are using one of those platforms to try to raise $10 million dollars to get the band Weezer to break up. The organizer is apparently upset that the band doesn't make good albums any more:

I have never been a fan of this band. I think that they are pretty much horrible, and always have been. Even in the early 90's.



But this isn't about me. This is about the Weezer fans. They are our brothers and sisters, our friends, our lovers.



Every year, Rivers Cuomo swears that he's changed, and that their new album is the best thing that he's done since "Pinkerton," and what happens? Another pile of crap like "Beverly Hills" or "I'm Your Daddy."



This is an abusive relationship, and it needs to stop now.



I am tired of my friends being disappointed year after year.



I am tired of endless whimsical cutesy album covers and music videos.



I'm sick of hearing about whatever this terrible (and yes, even if you like the early stuff, you should be able to admit that they are wretched now) excuse for a band is up to these days.



If all 852,000 of you (really?) who bought "Pinkerton" pitch in $12, we will meet our al.



I beg you, Weezer. Take our money and disappear.

Amusingly, one of the band members responded via Twitter saying:

if they can make it 20, we'll do the "deluxe breakup"!

Nicely done. Of course, now that it's gotten attention, the guy who originally posted it is taking it down, saying that he did it (of course) for the lulz (as if anyone thought he was serious?). Anyway, perhaps we should have tried this for our $100 million offer to have us silence Techdirt.

8 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Google made a stunning revelation this morning: the existence of a secret self-driving car project. Even more amazing: it has been in testing for months, on actual roads across California, and things seem to be running smoothly. Fans of Total Recall, Minority Report, and Knight Rider are hyperventilating at the prospects. And while the technology is likely still a long way from being widely implemented (The New York Times piece on it suggests eight years), there is one big question: why?

Google’s answer seems to be a “betterment of society” one. “We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today,” Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, who spearheaded the project (and also runs Stanford’s AI Labs, and co-invented Street View), writes today.

That’s great. But Google is still a public company in the business of making money for its shareholders. So one can’t help but wonder what, if any, money-making prospects there are here?

“The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments,” according to the NYT. Further, they quote Thrun as saying that this project is an example of Google’s “willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years.”

We know Google has a history of idealism — co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in particular — but this project cannot come cheap. And the fact is that Google remains basically a one-trick-pony when it comes to making money. They are so reliant on search advertising revenues, that if something suddenly happened to the market, they’d be totally screwed. Android may prove to be their second trick, but it’s not there yet.

But there may be more to these automated cars than just an awesomely cool concept. At our TechCrunch Disrupt event a couple weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech about “an augmented version of humanity.” He noted that the future is about getting computers to do the things we’re not good at. One of those things is driving cars, Schmidt slyly said at the time. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense,” he noted. “It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers.”

If your car can drive itself, a lot of commuters would be freed up to do other things in the car — such as surf the web. One of Google’s stated goals for this project is to “free up people’s time”. That matched with Schmidt’s vision of mobile devices being with us all the time every day, likely will translate into more usage of Google.

That may sound silly and not worth all the R&D an undertaking as huge as this will require, but don’t underestimate Google. This is a company who cares deeply about shaving fractions of a second off of each search query so that you can do more of them in your waking hours. Imagine if you suddenly had an hour or more a day in your car to do whatever you wanted because you no longer had to focus on driving? Yeah. Cha-ching.

Or imagine if your on-board maps where showing you Google ads. Or you were watching Google TV in your car since you didn’t have to drive. Or you were listening to Google Music with Google ads. It’s all the same. This automated driving technology would free you up to use more Google products — which in turn make them more money. Make no mistake, Google will enter your car in a big way. And automated driving would up their return in a big way.

And, of course, none of this speaks to what, if anything, Google would actually charge for such technology implementation. You would have to believe that if and when it’s available, this automated driving tech would be built-in to cars. Would car manufacturers pay Google for it and pass off some of the costs to customers? Or would this all be subsidized by the above ideas?

It’s way too early to get into that, I’m sure. And in 8 years, there will be things out there that we can’t even imagine right now. But it’s interesting to think about. The Google Car.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have little doubt Google is being sincere in their broader hopes for such a technology. Here’s their key blurb on that:

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.

That first part is awesome. If we could halve the number of traffic deaths each year, it would be world-changing. And if energy consumption could be cut, it could re-shape economies and save our future. But again, don’t gloss over the last part. Freeing up those 52 minutes a day to be productive — that’s a lot of potential money for Google.

And that’s great too. If Google can spend the time and money working on such amazing technology they should be rewarded for it. There’s no rule that says you shouldn’t be able to make money by changing the world. And Google can’t be praised enough for trying.

More:

• Google Has A Secret Fleet Of Automated Toyota Priuses; 140,000 Miles Logged So Far.


• Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago 

[images: Dreamworks and TriStar Entertainment]

robert shumake detroit

Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

Dallas Mavericks Blog - Dallasnews.com's Dallas Mavericks coverage includes the latest news, notes, commentary, analysis, blogs, e-mail newsletters, photos and videos of the Mavericks.

robert shumake hall of shame

Weezer Responds To Fan Fundraising Attempt To Get Them To Stop Making Crappy Albums

from the connecting-with-anti-fans? dept

There are so many "fan-funding" platforms, like Kickstarter, out there that involve trying to raise a certain amount via a bunch of fan pledges, where they only have to pay if they reach the goal. Usually, we see projects on those sites used for things like funding a new album or a book or something. But what about an anti- funding project? Hypebot points us to the fact that some "fans" (and perhaps I should use that word loosely) of the band Weezer are using one of those platforms to try to raise $10 million dollars to get the band Weezer to break up. The organizer is apparently upset that the band doesn't make good albums any more:

I have never been a fan of this band. I think that they are pretty much horrible, and always have been. Even in the early 90's.



But this isn't about me. This is about the Weezer fans. They are our brothers and sisters, our friends, our lovers.



Every year, Rivers Cuomo swears that he's changed, and that their new album is the best thing that he's done since "Pinkerton," and what happens? Another pile of crap like "Beverly Hills" or "I'm Your Daddy."



This is an abusive relationship, and it needs to stop now.



I am tired of my friends being disappointed year after year.



I am tired of endless whimsical cutesy album covers and music videos.



I'm sick of hearing about whatever this terrible (and yes, even if you like the early stuff, you should be able to admit that they are wretched now) excuse for a band is up to these days.



If all 852,000 of you (really?) who bought "Pinkerton" pitch in $12, we will meet our al.



I beg you, Weezer. Take our money and disappear.

Amusingly, one of the band members responded via Twitter saying:

if they can make it 20, we'll do the "deluxe breakup"!

Nicely done. Of course, now that it's gotten attention, the guy who originally posted it is taking it down, saying that he did it (of course) for the lulz (as if anyone thought he was serious?). Anyway, perhaps we should have tried this for our $100 million offer to have us silence Techdirt.

8 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Google made a stunning revelation this morning: the existence of a secret self-driving car project. Even more amazing: it has been in testing for months, on actual roads across California, and things seem to be running smoothly. Fans of Total Recall, Minority Report, and Knight Rider are hyperventilating at the prospects. And while the technology is likely still a long way from being widely implemented (The New York Times piece on it suggests eight years), there is one big question: why?

Google’s answer seems to be a “betterment of society” one. “We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today,” Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, who spearheaded the project (and also runs Stanford’s AI Labs, and co-invented Street View), writes today.

That’s great. But Google is still a public company in the business of making money for its shareholders. So one can’t help but wonder what, if any, money-making prospects there are here?

“The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments,” according to the NYT. Further, they quote Thrun as saying that this project is an example of Google’s “willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years.”

We know Google has a history of idealism — co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in particular — but this project cannot come cheap. And the fact is that Google remains basically a one-trick-pony when it comes to making money. They are so reliant on search advertising revenues, that if something suddenly happened to the market, they’d be totally screwed. Android may prove to be their second trick, but it’s not there yet.

But there may be more to these automated cars than just an awesomely cool concept. At our TechCrunch Disrupt event a couple weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech about “an augmented version of humanity.” He noted that the future is about getting computers to do the things we’re not good at. One of those things is driving cars, Schmidt slyly said at the time. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense,” he noted. “It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers.”

If your car can drive itself, a lot of commuters would be freed up to do other things in the car — such as surf the web. One of Google’s stated goals for this project is to “free up people’s time”. That matched with Schmidt’s vision of mobile devices being with us all the time every day, likely will translate into more usage of Google.

That may sound silly and not worth all the R&D an undertaking as huge as this will require, but don’t underestimate Google. This is a company who cares deeply about shaving fractions of a second off of each search query so that you can do more of them in your waking hours. Imagine if you suddenly had an hour or more a day in your car to do whatever you wanted because you no longer had to focus on driving? Yeah. Cha-ching.

Or imagine if your on-board maps where showing you Google ads. Or you were watching Google TV in your car since you didn’t have to drive. Or you were listening to Google Music with Google ads. It’s all the same. This automated driving technology would free you up to use more Google products — which in turn make them more money. Make no mistake, Google will enter your car in a big way. And automated driving would up their return in a big way.

And, of course, none of this speaks to what, if anything, Google would actually charge for such technology implementation. You would have to believe that if and when it’s available, this automated driving tech would be built-in to cars. Would car manufacturers pay Google for it and pass off some of the costs to customers? Or would this all be subsidized by the above ideas?

It’s way too early to get into that, I’m sure. And in 8 years, there will be things out there that we can’t even imagine right now. But it’s interesting to think about. The Google Car.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have little doubt Google is being sincere in their broader hopes for such a technology. Here’s their key blurb on that:

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.

That first part is awesome. If we could halve the number of traffic deaths each year, it would be world-changing. And if energy consumption could be cut, it could re-shape economies and save our future. But again, don’t gloss over the last part. Freeing up those 52 minutes a day to be productive — that’s a lot of potential money for Google.

And that’s great too. If Google can spend the time and money working on such amazing technology they should be rewarded for it. There’s no rule that says you shouldn’t be able to make money by changing the world. And Google can’t be praised enough for trying.

More:

• Google Has A Secret Fleet Of Automated Toyota Priuses; 140,000 Miles Logged So Far.


• Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago 

[images: Dreamworks and TriStar Entertainment]

benchcraft company portland or

Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

Dallas Mavericks Blog - Dallasnews.com's Dallas Mavericks coverage includes the latest news, notes, commentary, analysis, blogs, e-mail newsletters, photos and videos of the Mavericks.

robert shumake hall of shame

robert shumake hall of shame

robert shumake hall of shame

Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

Dallas Mavericks Blog - Dallasnews.com's Dallas Mavericks coverage includes the latest news, notes, commentary, analysis, blogs, e-mail newsletters, photos and videos of the Mavericks.

robert shumake hall of shame

Weezer Responds To Fan Fundraising Attempt To Get Them To Stop Making Crappy Albums

from the connecting-with-anti-fans? dept

There are so many "fan-funding" platforms, like Kickstarter, out there that involve trying to raise a certain amount via a bunch of fan pledges, where they only have to pay if they reach the goal. Usually, we see projects on those sites used for things like funding a new album or a book or something. But what about an anti- funding project? Hypebot points us to the fact that some "fans" (and perhaps I should use that word loosely) of the band Weezer are using one of those platforms to try to raise $10 million dollars to get the band Weezer to break up. The organizer is apparently upset that the band doesn't make good albums any more:

I have never been a fan of this band. I think that they are pretty much horrible, and always have been. Even in the early 90's.



But this isn't about me. This is about the Weezer fans. They are our brothers and sisters, our friends, our lovers.



Every year, Rivers Cuomo swears that he's changed, and that their new album is the best thing that he's done since "Pinkerton," and what happens? Another pile of crap like "Beverly Hills" or "I'm Your Daddy."



This is an abusive relationship, and it needs to stop now.



I am tired of my friends being disappointed year after year.



I am tired of endless whimsical cutesy album covers and music videos.



I'm sick of hearing about whatever this terrible (and yes, even if you like the early stuff, you should be able to admit that they are wretched now) excuse for a band is up to these days.



If all 852,000 of you (really?) who bought "Pinkerton" pitch in $12, we will meet our al.



I beg you, Weezer. Take our money and disappear.

Amusingly, one of the band members responded via Twitter saying:

if they can make it 20, we'll do the "deluxe breakup"!

Nicely done. Of course, now that it's gotten attention, the guy who originally posted it is taking it down, saying that he did it (of course) for the lulz (as if anyone thought he was serious?). Anyway, perhaps we should have tried this for our $100 million offer to have us silence Techdirt.

8 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Google made a stunning revelation this morning: the existence of a secret self-driving car project. Even more amazing: it has been in testing for months, on actual roads across California, and things seem to be running smoothly. Fans of Total Recall, Minority Report, and Knight Rider are hyperventilating at the prospects. And while the technology is likely still a long way from being widely implemented (The New York Times piece on it suggests eight years), there is one big question: why?

Google’s answer seems to be a “betterment of society” one. “We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today,” Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, who spearheaded the project (and also runs Stanford’s AI Labs, and co-invented Street View), writes today.

That’s great. But Google is still a public company in the business of making money for its shareholders. So one can’t help but wonder what, if any, money-making prospects there are here?

“The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments,” according to the NYT. Further, they quote Thrun as saying that this project is an example of Google’s “willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years.”

We know Google has a history of idealism — co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, in particular — but this project cannot come cheap. And the fact is that Google remains basically a one-trick-pony when it comes to making money. They are so reliant on search advertising revenues, that if something suddenly happened to the market, they’d be totally screwed. Android may prove to be their second trick, but it’s not there yet.

But there may be more to these automated cars than just an awesomely cool concept. At our TechCrunch Disrupt event a couple weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech about “an augmented version of humanity.” He noted that the future is about getting computers to do the things we’re not good at. One of those things is driving cars, Schmidt slyly said at the time. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense,” he noted. “It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers.”

If your car can drive itself, a lot of commuters would be freed up to do other things in the car — such as surf the web. One of Google’s stated goals for this project is to “free up people’s time”. That matched with Schmidt’s vision of mobile devices being with us all the time every day, likely will translate into more usage of Google.

That may sound silly and not worth all the R&D an undertaking as huge as this will require, but don’t underestimate Google. This is a company who cares deeply about shaving fractions of a second off of each search query so that you can do more of them in your waking hours. Imagine if you suddenly had an hour or more a day in your car to do whatever you wanted because you no longer had to focus on driving? Yeah. Cha-ching.

Or imagine if your on-board maps where showing you Google ads. Or you were watching Google TV in your car since you didn’t have to drive. Or you were listening to Google Music with Google ads. It’s all the same. This automated driving technology would free you up to use more Google products — which in turn make them more money. Make no mistake, Google will enter your car in a big way. And automated driving would up their return in a big way.

And, of course, none of this speaks to what, if anything, Google would actually charge for such technology implementation. You would have to believe that if and when it’s available, this automated driving tech would be built-in to cars. Would car manufacturers pay Google for it and pass off some of the costs to customers? Or would this all be subsidized by the above ideas?

It’s way too early to get into that, I’m sure. And in 8 years, there will be things out there that we can’t even imagine right now. But it’s interesting to think about. The Google Car.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have little doubt Google is being sincere in their broader hopes for such a technology. Here’s their key blurb on that:

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.

That first part is awesome. If we could halve the number of traffic deaths each year, it would be world-changing. And if energy consumption could be cut, it could re-shape economies and save our future. But again, don’t gloss over the last part. Freeing up those 52 minutes a day to be productive — that’s a lot of potential money for Google.

And that’s great too. If Google can spend the time and money working on such amazing technology they should be rewarded for it. There’s no rule that says you shouldn’t be able to make money by changing the world. And Google can’t be praised enough for trying.

More:

• Google Has A Secret Fleet Of Automated Toyota Priuses; 140,000 Miles Logged So Far.


• Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago 

[images: Dreamworks and TriStar Entertainment]

robert shumake hall of shame

robert shumake twitter

Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

Dallas Mavericks Blog - Dallasnews.com's Dallas Mavericks coverage includes the latest news, notes, commentary, analysis, blogs, e-mail newsletters, photos and videos of the Mavericks.

robert shumake hall of shame

robert shumake hall of shame

Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

Dallas Mavericks Blog - Dallasnews.com's Dallas Mavericks coverage includes the latest news, notes, commentary, analysis, blogs, e-mail newsletters, photos and videos of the Mavericks.

robert shumake twitter

Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

Dallas Mavericks Blog - Dallasnews.com's Dallas Mavericks coverage includes the latest news, notes, commentary, analysis, blogs, e-mail newsletters, photos and videos of the Mavericks.

robert shumake hall of shame

Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

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Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

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Apple Butter

Apples probably the most desired holiday food. Apple Pie, Apple cobbler,Apple Bread, Apple Sauce, Apple Butter, Apple pumpkin Butter Etc Etc Etc.

I have to say my favorite pie is Apple then Pumpkin I make them all but maybe its the anticipation of fall that makes it all so good. Apple season I will usually make a about a dozen Pie fillings and freeeze them. Its funny I think so many people like to cook but yet they really dont cook at all. Cooking is as much about smell as it is taste. And taste of course for those of you waiting for us to get done is about anticipation. Of course to us who cook it its about much more.

Its about the oh honey the house smells so good. The umm this is really good and seeing the smile and someone saying can I have more. Can I have more a cooks favorite words the word that always puts a smile on hard work for the ones you love. A truly good cook knows this.

A friend of mine a manager for a restaurant asked me if I had a good fried chicken recipe. I was taken back because in my mind their are basics and Fried Chicken is one of them. It is so simple milk chicken flower and seasoning and of course grease. I like shake and bake but it is just so expensive. So I make my own as with peanut butter and cashew butter.

So as a tribute to my readers I will give a simple recipe for apple butter and an even simpler one for home made Shake and Bake it is the best you will taste. You can put it in the fridge and it will last forever.

Apple Butter is simple. I can make it simpler. Its about one thing cooking down the apples to a paste without burning them or the butter. Apple butter will thicken in the fridge so keep this in mind as you are cooking it down. Now to the die hard apple butter cook 3 or 4 different kinds of apples will be used. As each apple does taste different and the blend is what you want. But as with everything else its about prep time.

So here is simple way. Go to Kroger or walmart Buy 2 large jars of apple sauce 50 oz jars. This will cook down to about 8 half pint jars.

IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT

At this time adding anything except sugar can ruin everything it will not taste the same when you start as when you finish. Cooking things down makes the spices and salts stronger so be sparing with them in the beginning.

So the easiest way to make your apple butter is with your crock pot. Empty the 2 jars into your crock pot large crock pot. Add 5 cups of sugar and turn it on high for 2 hours. This will take all day or longer depending on how thick you like your butter.

I usually cook mine down to half the volume that I started with.

Ok lets back up for a minute if you want apple sauce and apple butter you will have to start with real apple's and will need a blender or food processor.

Apple butter whether you start from whole apples or apple sauce always starts with apple sauce. SO naturally when I make my apple butter I also make apple sauce. I make my apple sauce with no sugar. So I can add it for whatever it is im making next. Some times I like it without sugar other times I add it to my apple sauce my tastes change like the weather.

Keep in mind SO if you are buying your apple sauce this can also be considerably cheaper. As apples at walmart can start in season at about a dollar fifty a pound in season. And usually cost close to the same at your local farmers market. So if you buy your apple sauce natural unsweetened it will cost you 1.86 for 3 pounds this is cheaper than fresh apples and you can not tell the difference when your done. I have done both and prefer to buy apple sauce but only if Im making butter only. Which on occasion someone wants a batch of apple butter. And you can save the big jars for something else.

Ok you will see in the recipe that their are very few actual measurements except apples and sugar. And even then the sugar isnt a stick to the recipe. I dont use many measures I have them but to me its season to taste. So I add it as I go towards the end for example I like just a hint of salt just enough to tell you its their.

Ok a little known tid bit if you take a spoon and taste your cold jams or jellies or other refrigerated foods the enzymes from your mouth will continue to break down the food when you store it thats why when you open the jelly or jam or anything else their is water in it. Its then enzymes from the human body doing their job without you. Never take a spoon twice in the food unless you use another clean spoon its not bad but it will go bad faster then if you us a clean spoon or other utensil every time.

The Basics to Apple butter are:

Apples at least 5 pounds if starting from apples buy some red and some gala and some granny smith green apples granny smith is just a name for sour apples which are used in apple pie.

This is all season to taste about an hour before you say its as thick as you like it.

Cinnamon
Ground clove
Salt
Sugar

Now you can subtract or add here some people do not like clove I do Some people replace the clove with ground nut meg some people add vanilla all of these are good and work all though be very careful with ground nutmeg I like it but a little goes a long ways. I do not use Vanilla I like vanilla but not in apple butter. This is all season to taste.

If Starting from apples peel and core the apples place in food processor and blend till smooth add water till desired texture is achieved. Wella you have apple sauce all natural no additives all natural.

Place the Apple sauce in the crock pot turn it on high for two hours then to low now if you are like me you have many other things to do so low is good it wont burn and still gets the job done. If you have nothing else to do and are just making apple butter us High it gets done faster. In 12 hours it will be cooked down enough and have enough thickness for you to add your other flavors and spices.

If you do not have a crock pot use a thick bottom pot with the burner on low and stir constantly to assure it does not burn the butter. If you intend on doing a lot of cooking at home you would be wise to buy yourself a good set of cookware. If you live in areas where their is a ross store you can buy the best piece by piece and not really save much but it takes the sting out a nice set of cookware as with knives. Its easier in the beginning to buy a good set of knives Chicago cutlery or J.A. Hinkle you can buy Hinkle at Target stores by the piece or Chicago Cutlery at walmart by the piece. These knives can be sharpened and last way longer than a cheap set if you buy either you will have them forever and most electric can openers have knife sharpeners on the back.

A good quality Knife set will set you back a minimum of 200 bucks.

Ok now to the Shake and Bake

Here is the reason you never throw away the heal in the bread and a away to use un used bread. save them till you have enough I just throw mine in the freezer and when the pile starts to bother me and take up to much space then I make my Shake and Bake or bread crumbs. All shake and Bake is is bread crumbs that have been seasoned to taste and oil but I do have a recipe which I will give you. Just remember you go to the store and pay good money for bread crumbs and shake and bake STOP That.

I usually make about for cups at a time so I save my bread in the freezer and when it gets to be to much I start toasting it. To me I like my toast a little on the burnt side so I toast for a little longer. Ok it is way to hard to take bread that has not been toasted and make bread crumbs you need to toast it then drop it in the food processor or blender and blend to crumbs.

Put it in a bowl and add your seasoning and oil toss till it is well tossed and put in the fridge wella again your done. when you need it for so chicken or pork take it out and put some in a baggy and add chicken or pork shake and put on cookie sheet. cook like you would any other meat cook your chicken till it reaches 160 degrees inside and take it out let cool and eat.

Directions for Shake and Bake

4 cups dry bread crumbs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon minced onion
1 pinch dried basil leaves
1 pinch dried parsley
1 pinch dried oregano

In a large bowl combine the crumbs, oil, salt, paprika, celery salt, pepper, garlic salt, minced garlic, minced onion, basil, parsley and oregano. Seal bag and shake all ingredients together. Have Fun and Merry Christmas


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Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

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iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

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Election 2010: NBC <b>News</b>, MSNBC Slate Midterm Coverage Plans - TVNewser

New York – October 18, 2010 – NBC News will offer comprehensive coverage of the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections on Nov. 2 across all its platforms, including msnbc, Msnbc.com, Telemundo, NBC News Radio and NBC News Mobile. ...

Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the Watershed debuts Waterproof Bag for iPad. Find more iPad Accessories news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

Mavericks to give McCants a look-see | Dallas Mavericks Blog <b>...</b>

Dallas Mavericks Blog - Dallasnews.com's Dallas Mavericks coverage includes the latest news, notes, commentary, analysis, blogs, e-mail newsletters, photos and videos of the Mavericks.