FILE - This Sept. 19, 2007 file photo shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md. As many as one of every five worldwide terror threats picked up by U.S. government surveillance has been targeted on the United States, the Obama administration says. But officials are reluctant to say much more about the 50 plots they claim have been thwarted. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE - This Sept. 19, 2007 file photo shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md. As many as one of every five worldwide terror threats picked up by U.S. government surveillance has been targeted on the United States, the Obama administration says. But officials are reluctant to say much more about the 50 plots they claim have been thwarted. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama is holding his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board Friday as he seeks to make good on his pledge to have a public discussion about secretive government surveillance programs.
Obama has said the little-known Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will play a key role in that effort. The federal oversight board reviews anti-terror programs to ensure that privacy concerns are taken into account.
The president is also tasking the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, to consider declassifying more details about the government's collection of U.S. phone and Internet records. Obama is specifically asking Clapper to review possible declassification of opinions from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the surveillance efforts.
Obama's meeting with the board was taking place Friday afternoon, but the White House wasn't planning to allow press coverage.
The government has already lifted some of the secrecy surrounding the programs following disclosures earlier this month about their existence by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. But the legal opinions from the highly secretive court remain private.
The privacy board was created in 2004 but has operated fitfully ever since, given congressional infighting and at times, censorship by government lawyers. The board was dormant during Obama's first term and only became fully functional in May, before the NSA programs became public.
The board's chairman, David Medine, said the five-member group has a "broad range of questions" to ask about the NSA's widespread collection programs. The board was given a classified briefing on the programs last week and plans to release a report eventually with recommendations for the government.
___
Follow Julie Pace at on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
The 10-year-old girl whose family successfully fought a rule preventing her from qualifying for adult lungs has woken up nine days after receiving a lung transplant from an adult donor.
Sarah Murnaghan of Newtown Square, Pa., was able to respond to yes and no questions on Friday. Her aunt Sharon Ruddock confirmed to ABC station WPVI-TV in Philadelphia that even though Sarah is still on a ventilator she was able to communicate to her family by nodding and blinking.
On Wednesday she was moved off a heavy-duty breathing machine to a traditional ventilator.
Mom on Lung Transplant: 'New Beginning for Sarah' Watch Video Girl, 10, Denied Lung Transplant Due to Age Policy Watch Video Lung Transplant Patient Gets Donor From Same Hospital Watch Video
Sarah was dying of cystic fibrosis when her family brought the Under 12 Rule, a little-known organ transplant policy, to national attention after arguing that it had been pushing Sarah to the bottom of the adult lung transplant waiting list.
The family won a court order to put Sarah on equal footing with adults on the transplant list and prompted an Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network policy change.
On June 12 Sarah underwent a lung transplant with lungs from an adult donor.
"Sarah got THE CALL," her mother, Janet Murnaghan, wrote on her Facebook page. "She will be taken back to the O.R. in 30 minutes."
There have been no reported complications from the transplant although Sarah's mother Janet Murnaghan cautioned that her recovery would be "hard and long" for the 10-year-old.
"As you all know, Sarah was very, very sick going into transplant, therefore the road out is hard and long," her mother, Janet Murnaghan, wrote on her Facebook page. "We are focusing all of our attention on Sarah and as a result are silent."
Sarah was born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that affects cells that produce mucus, sweat and digestive fluid. Patients typically suffer so much lung damage that they often go into respiratory failure, which is why Sarah needs a lung transplant to survive.
Does having health insurance make people healthier? It?s widely assumed that it does.
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Obamacare advocates repeatedly said that its expansion of Medicaid would save thousands of lives a year. Obamacare critics seldom challenged the idea that increased insurance coverage would improve at least some people?s health.
Now, out of Oregon, comes a study that casts doubt on the premise that insurance improves health.
In 2008, Oregon state government had enough Medicaid money to extend the program to 10,000 people but many more were eligible. So the state set up a lottery to determine who would get coverage.
That created a randomized control trial (RCT), to compare the health outcomes of about 6,000 people who won the lottery with a similar number who lost.
RCTs are the best way to test the effects of public policies, as Jim Manzi argues in his recent book ?Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics and Society.?
Other studies compare the effect of policies on populations that may differ in significant ways ? apples and oranges. RCTs compare apples and apples.
The only previous RCT on health care policies was conducted by the RAND Corporation between 1971 and 1982. It found no statistically significant difference in health outcomes from having more insurance. But health care has changed a lot since then.
The Oregon Health Study, published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, found much the same thing. Comparing three important measures ? blood sugar levels, blood pressure and cholesterol levels ? It found no significant difference after two years between those on Medicaid and those who were uninsured.
It did find lower levels of reported depression among the group on Medicaid. And it found, unsurprisingly, that they did save significant money. Those findings may not be unrelated.
The findings have serious implications for Obamacare. Half of its predicted increase in insurance coverage comes from expansion of Medicaid.
Obamacare supporters have assumed that those eligible for Medicaid ? poorer, sicker and less steadier in habits than the general population ? would have great difficulty getting health care without insurance.
The Oregon Health Study is evidence that at least in that state Medicaid-eligible people without insurance ? a ?pretty sick? population, one state official said ? nevertheless managed somehow to get care that produced results about as good as those who won the lottery.
It may just be that ordinary people, even those with significant problems, are more capable of navigating the seas of American life than elites, either liberal or conservative, tend to assume. These results run contrary to the predictions of many Obamacare fans, who expected to see more positive effects from Medicaid coverage. It undermines at least a little the case for Obamacare?s vast expansion of Medicaid.
Some Obamacare backers, and others as well, point out that the study did not measure all possible health care outcomes. It couldn?t because it covered only two years; and Oregon, with more Medicaid money, ended the lottery experiment, so there won?t be any more RCT results.
In particular, in a two-year period you aren?t going to have too many cases of catastrophic illness among a population of 12,000. There?s no way you can measure outcomes in those with long-running ailments like cancer, Parkinson?s disease or Alzheimer?s.
Blood sugar levels, blood pressure and cholesterol levels can be treated with relatively inexpensive generic drugs. Medicaid coverage may result in more people getting heart bypass surgery and needing expensive drugs for rare ailments.
But that is another way of saying that health insurance as we know it may not do much to improve the treatment of common health problems.
Most U.S. health insurance today, thanks to the tax preference for employer-provided insurance, is not real insurance at all.
Real insurance pays for rare, expensive and unwelcome events, like your house burning down. It doesn?t make sense to insure for routine expenses, like repainting your living room.
The Oregon Health Study suggests that insurance isn?t necessary for people to get what are now, for people of a certain age, routine measures like blood pressure medicine. Maybe government should help poor people pay for them, but they manage to get them nevertheless.
Americans have come to expect health insurance to pay for routine treatments. Obamacare reinforces that in its requirements for coverage and makes it more difficult for many to insure against catastrophic health care expenses.
That?s not likely to make people healthier.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner (www.washingtonexaminer.com), is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
Also see,
A Libertarian Turn on Marijuana Legalization, Same-Sex Marriage and Gun Rights
Microsoft will soon launch the new Windows 8.1 Preview, so in order to make sure that its next OS release will be extremely secure, the company is also announcing a new security bounty program.
Basically, all those who find a vulnerability in Windows 8.1 will be rewarded with $100,000 (?75,500), just to help Microsoft patch the operating system and keep its users on the safe side.
?Microsoft will pay up to $100,000 for truly novel exploitation techniques against protections built into the latest version of our operating system (Windows 8.1 Preview). Learning about new exploitation techniques earlier helps Microsoft improve security by leaps, instead of capturing one vulnerability at a time as a traditional bug bounty alone would,? the company explained.
The new program will debut on June 26, the same day when the company is set to introduce the new Windows 8.1 Preview at the BUILD developer conference in San Francisco.
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the University of Sheffield have found that high quality science by female academics is underrepresented in comparison to that of their male counterparts. The researchers analyzed the genders of invited speakers at the most prestigious gatherings of evolutionary biologists in Europe ? six biannual congresses of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and found that male speakers outnumbered women. Even in comparison to the numbers of women and men among world class scientists ? from the world top ranked institutions for life sciences, and authors in the top-tier journals Nature and Science - women were still underrepresented among invited speakers."
The products keep coming. The latest announcement from Samsung is a new addition to its ATIV range and it's a hybrid in more ways than one. Similar to the ASUS Transformer Book Trio, announced earlier this month at Computex, Samsung just introduced its own dual-OS portable. It's called the ATIV Q, and it combines Android 4.2 and Windows 8, with equal parts tablet and typing. Under the hood, the device is powered by a Haswell-series Intel Core i5 processor and manages to fit a 13.3-inch, 3,200 x 1,800 touchscreen into a 1.29kg package that measures just 13.9mm thick. Other notable specs include an S Pen with 1,024 degrees of sensitivity. There's space for the stylus to be stored in the bottom corner of the device. Hardware considerations have also been folded into the design, with the processor housed inside the ATIV Q's hinge. Samsung says that this ensures that heat dissipates from the back of the device.
A software highlight from this particular Windows 8-Android team-up is the ability to share files (photos, documents... seemingly anything that can be opened with programs on the other OS) and share folders across the operating system divide. We can certainly see the usefulness in this approach -- sharing images to your favorite Android social app and generally unifying how you use the hybrid, regardless of OS. The ATIV Q will launch globally in Q3, and we've been told "in time for the back-to-school season", which sounds like sooner rather than later. We've managed to spend a bit of time with the new multi-talented slider: check out some first impressions after the break.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A flood of new federal agents and high-tech surveillance devices would be dispatched to the southwestern U.S. border with Mexico under a deal aimed at winning passage of an immigration bill in the U.S. Senate, congressional sources said on Thursday.
The proposal, which could be formally offered as an amendment to the sprawling immigration bill as early as Thursday, would double the overall number of U.S. border patrol agents, according to senior Senate Democratic aides.
That would mean assigning 21,000 new officers to the southwestern border in an attempt to shut down future illegal crossings by foreigners.
The bipartisan bill, which was crafted by a group of eight senators and is supported by President Barack Obama, currently calls for adding 3,500 Customs and Border Protection officers by 2017.
The plan also calls for building 700 miles of border fencing or walls, on top of the 650 miles already constructed, Senate aides said.
At a price tag of around $40 billion to $50 billon, the amendment, if passed, would represent a potentially massive investment of federal resources in securing the border.
While the legislation would authorize these security programs, it would be up to Congress in the future to actually appropriate the money for them.
The deal represents a significant win for Republicans who have been clamoring for tougher border security measures. But Democrats could also claim a victory in fending off Republican attempts to delay legalizing 11 million undocumented residents until new border security measures were in place.
However, one of the aides said that the newly legalized residents would not get "green cards" allowing permanent resident status until the border security measures were in place. Gaining permanent resident status would take 10 years under the bill, giving the federal government a decade to install the added border manpower and equipment.
During debate of the bill by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, some lawmakers were skeptical that such a huge investment would be a smart use of federal dollars and they questioned whether 700 miles of new fencing was even practical.
But supporters of the legislation are hoping to capture the votes of more undecided Republican senators with this deal, improving chances of a major rewrite of immigration law in the more conservative House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans.
Besides the additional agents and fencing, the measure also calls for employing large amounts of unmanned aerial drones, radars and other surveillance devices to catch or deter illegal crossings.
The plan brought a harsh reaction from at least one civil liberties and human right group.
Christian Ramirez, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, said the huge buildup in agents, surveillance hardware and fencing "is expensive and extreme."
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Ramirez expressed fears that adding so many more armed officers would compound problems already being experienced involving fatal shootings of bystanders on either side of the border.
"The current force on the U.S.-Mexico border is already excessive. What makes matters worse is that there are no checks and balances" on border patrol activities, Ramirez said.
Border patrol officials were not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Thomas Ferraro; Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Fred Barbash and Paul Simao)
When you look back in time, it's easy to forget what exactly happened when. Things sort of just blend together. Luckily we have YouTube videos to do our remembering for us now. Remember Videos just created a video about 1990 that shows off all that happened in pop culture back then, think Windows 3.0 Back to the Future 3, Total Recall, Robocop 2, some incredibly dated video games and more.
You can keep up with other years in history at Remember Video's website here. You will lose time to this. [Remember via Laughing Squid]
If confirmed, the dark gap in space debris will challenge astronomers' theories
By Andrew Grant
Web edition: June 19, 2013
Enlarge
A dark ring appears about halfway through the dusty disk surrounding the star TW Hydrae in this Hubble Space Telescope image. A planet may have swept away debris, creating the gap.
Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Debes/STScI, H. Jang-Condell/Univ. of Wyoming, A. Weinberger/Carnegie Inst. of Washington, A. Roberge/GSFC, G. Schneider/Univ. of Arizona, A. Feild/STScI
A mysterious gap in a star?s dusty shell of debris could be the signature of a young planet circling its sun at twice the distance of Pluto?s orbit. If it does exist, the far-flung planet?s birth may be hard for astronomers to explain.
?If this is a planet, it is extremely challenging for existing planet formation theories,? says Katherine Kretke, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.
Most planets are thought to begin their lives as small clumps of hot, rapidly moving dust and gas within vast disks of debris that orbit newborn stars. As a planet grows it behaves like a snow plow, scooping up some material to bulk up while flinging other material away, until it has cleared a smooth orbital path.
John Debes, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, used the Hubble Space Telescope to study a disk around TW Hydrae, a 10-million-year-old star located about 176 light-years from Earth.
Hubble images revealed an unmistakable gap 12 billion kilometers from the star, 80 times farther than Earth is from the sun. ?It?s very striking,? says Phil Armitage, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder. ?It looks like what you?d expect from a forming planet.?
If the planet?s existence is confirmed, astronomers have their work cut out for them explaining how it got there. Compared with particles in tighter orbits, ones near that gap are less densely packed and move much more slowly, Kretke says. As a result, it would be difficult for a potential planet to accrue enough material to clear its own orbit.
An alternative theory of planet formation posits that clumps of gas within a disk can rapidly collapse together in a process similar to the one that forms stars. That could account for the outer bulky planets recently discovered around the star HR 8799 (SN Online: 12/3/10). But Kretke says that process is capable only of building worlds more massive than Jupiter, while this potential planet would be the size of Neptune or a large Earth.
?No matter how you look at it, if there?s a planet there it?s going to change theories of how planets form,? Debes says. His team?s results appear June 14 in the Astrophysical Journal.
The next step is to find the planet, Debes says, which will be no easy task. Just identifying the gap in TW Hydrae?s disk was akin to seeing a groove in an LP record from six kilometers away; now astronomers hope to find a speck hidden within that groove.
Debes notes that the Hubble photos were taken by a nearly 20-year-old instrument; he is confident that next-generation telescopes will see the planet if it exists.
Microbial diversity course designated as a 'Milestones in Microbiology' sitePublic release date: 19-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Garth Hogan ghogan@asmusa.org 202-942-9389 American Society for Microbiology
Washington, DC The Microbial Diversity Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Massachusetts, has been named a Milestones in Microbiology site by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The ASM Milestones in Microbiology program recognizes institutions and the scientists who worked there that have made significant contributions toward advancing the science of microbiology. A ceremony unveiling the plaque that will mark the site is scheduled for Saturday, June 22, 2013, at 4:30 pm in the MBL Club during the Microbial Diversity Course. Jeffery Miller, President of the ASM, will present the plaque on behalf of the Society.
The Course is an intensive six-and-a-half-week research and training experience for graduate and postdoctoral students, as well as established investigators, who want to become competent in microbiological techniques for working with a broad range of microbes, and in approaches for recognizing the metabolic, phylogenetic, and genomic diversity of cultivated and as yet uncultivated bacteria. Admission is limited to 20 students.
"Since its creation in 1971 by Holger Jannasch, the MBL Microbial Diversity Course has trained many outstanding microbiologists from around the world, providing scientific tools that they have used to make many important discoveries," said Stanley Maloy, a past-President of ASM. "MBL has been a major place where scientists have gathered (mostly over the summer) to discuss and do research on marine biology, ecology, and development and microbiology has influenced and been influenced by each of these areas. MBL, including the Microbial Diversity Course, has had an important impact on our understanding of the critical role that microbes play in the environment, from the characterization of microbes that use unusual sources of nutrients to the discovery of microbes that live in unique ecosystems in the depths of the ocean. For example, work by Jannasch led to the discovery of bacteria that live adjacent to deep-sea hydrothermal vents and use sulfur as an energy source. Research on microbial ecology and physiology has led to many practical applications, from novel enzymes in laundry detergents to enzymes used for genetic engineering, from bioremediation to energy production, from novel antibiotics to phage therapy, and from environmental health to animal and human health."
One feature of the MBL summer courses, including Microbial Diversity, is that every four or five years, a new set of directors brings a fresh approach and a new set of tools to the course. "Each year, the Course has a different 'menu,' because during the winter months, directors become 'chefs', developing elaborate plans for each microbial 'feast of the week', deciding which areas to feature and whom to invite for the 20 or more guest lectures," writes Ralph S. Wolfe in a brief history of the course.
Many leading microbiologists have served as directors of the Microbial Diversity Course over the years, including course founder Holger Jannasch, Harlyn Halvorson, Ralph Wolfe, E. Peter Greenberg, Martin Dworkin, John Breznak, Edward Leadbetter, Abigail Salyers, Caroline Harwood, Alfred Spormann, William Metcalf, Thomas Schmidt, and current co-directors Daniel Buckley and Stephen Zinder.
The Microbial Diversity Course has shaped the careers of generations of outstanding microbiologists, and continues to be a premier site for advanced training at the leading edge of microbiological investigation.
In recognition of these contributions, the American Society for Microbiology is pleased to designate the Marine Biological Laboratory Microbial Diversity Course as a Milestones in Microbiology site. By placing plaques at Milestones sites, ASM hopes to increase professional and public recognition and appreciation of the significance of the science of microbiology.
###
Previously designated Milestones in Microbiology sites include the Waksman Laboratory at Rutgers University; Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey, California; the site of the University of Pennsylvania Laboratory of Hygiene; Scripps Institution of Oceanography; the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine; and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. For more information on these sites, visit http://www.asm.org/choma
The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 38,000 scientists and health professionals. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide. More information is available at http://www.asm.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Microbial diversity course designated as a 'Milestones in Microbiology' sitePublic release date: 19-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Garth Hogan ghogan@asmusa.org 202-942-9389 American Society for Microbiology
Washington, DC The Microbial Diversity Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Massachusetts, has been named a Milestones in Microbiology site by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The ASM Milestones in Microbiology program recognizes institutions and the scientists who worked there that have made significant contributions toward advancing the science of microbiology. A ceremony unveiling the plaque that will mark the site is scheduled for Saturday, June 22, 2013, at 4:30 pm in the MBL Club during the Microbial Diversity Course. Jeffery Miller, President of the ASM, will present the plaque on behalf of the Society.
The Course is an intensive six-and-a-half-week research and training experience for graduate and postdoctoral students, as well as established investigators, who want to become competent in microbiological techniques for working with a broad range of microbes, and in approaches for recognizing the metabolic, phylogenetic, and genomic diversity of cultivated and as yet uncultivated bacteria. Admission is limited to 20 students.
"Since its creation in 1971 by Holger Jannasch, the MBL Microbial Diversity Course has trained many outstanding microbiologists from around the world, providing scientific tools that they have used to make many important discoveries," said Stanley Maloy, a past-President of ASM. "MBL has been a major place where scientists have gathered (mostly over the summer) to discuss and do research on marine biology, ecology, and development and microbiology has influenced and been influenced by each of these areas. MBL, including the Microbial Diversity Course, has had an important impact on our understanding of the critical role that microbes play in the environment, from the characterization of microbes that use unusual sources of nutrients to the discovery of microbes that live in unique ecosystems in the depths of the ocean. For example, work by Jannasch led to the discovery of bacteria that live adjacent to deep-sea hydrothermal vents and use sulfur as an energy source. Research on microbial ecology and physiology has led to many practical applications, from novel enzymes in laundry detergents to enzymes used for genetic engineering, from bioremediation to energy production, from novel antibiotics to phage therapy, and from environmental health to animal and human health."
One feature of the MBL summer courses, including Microbial Diversity, is that every four or five years, a new set of directors brings a fresh approach and a new set of tools to the course. "Each year, the Course has a different 'menu,' because during the winter months, directors become 'chefs', developing elaborate plans for each microbial 'feast of the week', deciding which areas to feature and whom to invite for the 20 or more guest lectures," writes Ralph S. Wolfe in a brief history of the course.
Many leading microbiologists have served as directors of the Microbial Diversity Course over the years, including course founder Holger Jannasch, Harlyn Halvorson, Ralph Wolfe, E. Peter Greenberg, Martin Dworkin, John Breznak, Edward Leadbetter, Abigail Salyers, Caroline Harwood, Alfred Spormann, William Metcalf, Thomas Schmidt, and current co-directors Daniel Buckley and Stephen Zinder.
The Microbial Diversity Course has shaped the careers of generations of outstanding microbiologists, and continues to be a premier site for advanced training at the leading edge of microbiological investigation.
In recognition of these contributions, the American Society for Microbiology is pleased to designate the Marine Biological Laboratory Microbial Diversity Course as a Milestones in Microbiology site. By placing plaques at Milestones sites, ASM hopes to increase professional and public recognition and appreciation of the significance of the science of microbiology.
###
Previously designated Milestones in Microbiology sites include the Waksman Laboratory at Rutgers University; Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey, California; the site of the University of Pennsylvania Laboratory of Hygiene; Scripps Institution of Oceanography; the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine; and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. For more information on these sites, visit http://www.asm.org/choma
The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 38,000 scientists and health professionals. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide. More information is available at http://www.asm.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
When Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One the reaction was split into two camps due to the details surrounding a new DRM system.? The new console would need an ?always on? internet connection so that games you owned could be checked to ensure you hadn?t transferred ownership to someone else.? Your Xbox One would do a check every 24 hours and if you were playing on another console every hour.? It also meant that if you had a physical disc you couldn?t loan, sell?or give it?away unless the publisher allowed the transfer of that game.
Those that want to buy pre-owned copies or trade-in unwanted games have been very vocal and I have a friend who will be buying a Playstation 4, despite being an Xbox owner since the beginning, because of this.? I can certainly understand this opinion but anyone who has moved away from books to a Kindle have had to come to terms with this new digital age.? It?s important to note that with these negatives come some very important positives.
With the Xbox One it was going to be possible to play disc based games (which would be automatically copied to the hard drive upon inserting the disc)?without ever inserting the disc into the console again unlike you have to do with the Xbox 360 if you had manually copied the game to the hard drive.? It also meant that your game library was stored? in the ?cloud? so you could play a game you owned on disc at a friends house without taking the disc with you.? You could also share your digital game library with up to 10 ?family? members (they didn?t actually have to be family) and I believe that 2 of those could even play the game on another console while you were also playing it.
Unfortunately Microsoft have heard the negative feedback and today announced a U-turn on this new digital age.? Don Mattrick, President, Interactive Entertainment Business, explains the impact in his blog post:
So, today I am announcing the following changes to Xbox One and how you can play, share, lend, and resell your games exactly as you do today on Xbox 360. Here is what that means:
?
An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games ? After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.
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Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today ? There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.
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In addition to buying a disc from a retailer, you can also download games from Xbox Live on day of release. If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console ? there will be no regional restrictions.
Yes, they are reverting back to the old Xbox 360 system and this has a massive impact on the game sharing as Mattrick goes on to explain (emphasis mine):
These changes will impact some of the scenarios we previously announced for Xbox One. The sharing of games will work as it does today, you will simply share the disc. Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.
While this will be seen as a victory for those who were crying out against this bold new world I am really disappointed because the way the Xbox 360 works is really frustrating.? I really dislike that a game I?ve copied to the hard drive I still have to go get the disc off the shelf just to play it.? It?s for this reason that I?ve started purchasing games via the Xbox Marketplace and Games-on-Demand but then it means my kids can?t play games round at a friends house unless the friend also owns it.
All this actually makes the Xbox One less appealing for me.? I do hope that Microsoft listens to people like me, who where happy with the new DRM limitations because of the benefits, and make one last policy change to allow the digital limitations to be opt-in for people like me.
DatabaseJase
I'm a PC, husband, father to 2 boys, SQL DBA and a technology enthusiast that loves gadgets. Co-host of TDL Mobile with Jonathan.
KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwanda has reduced fuel prices after a decline in prices on the international market over the last three months.
Fuel prices and other components collectively have an impact on the rate of inflation in the central African economy, where urban inflation rose to 4.37 percent in the year to April from 3.25 percent last month.
The price for both Super Petrol and Diesel in Kigali was set at a top limit of 1,000 Rwandan francs per litre, down from 1,050 Rwandan francs, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said on Monday evening.
The new fuel prices will take effect on Tuesday June 18.
Fuel prices went up in mid-March by 50 Rwandan francs after the prices on the international market rose.
The increment in March had come three months after yet another reduction in December.
Fuel prices in the country have been fluctuating mainly due to unstable prices on the international market where petroleum products prices increased by an average of 10 percent since January, the ministry said earlier.
Rwanda has managed to keep inflation levels in check even when most countries in the wider East African region were affected by soaring inflation levels in 2011, after the global financial meltdown.
The country's major export routes Kenya and Uganda have since registered a steady decline in inflation levels due to stronger agricultural output.
Rwanda has said inflation has been project to gradually go up to 7.5 percent by the end of the year. The projected increase in inflation levels is attributed increasing commodity prices.
What's it like to fly the A350? Only a handful of pilots know for sure, but Jean-Michel Roy has a pretty good idea. The Airbus test pilot has flown a variety of yet-to-be-certified aircraft over the years, and he'll soon step behind the controls of the company's answer to Boeing's Dreamliner, the A350. While the first batch of pilots are back at the aviation giant's Toulouse HQ preparing for the next test flight, Roy is schmoozing with customers a few hundred miles to the north, at the Paris Air Show. It's an arguably safer task for the industry vet, but something tells us he's itching to climb aboard this latest wide-body aircraft. We were hoping for such an opportunity here in Paris, but a delayed rollout means attendees will be lucky just to see the A350 perform an unscheduled flyover sometime over the next few days, with a cockpit mockup serving to satisfy airline execs for now.
As deep-pocketed buyers queued up for a first look at the A350 flight deck, we managed to sneak a quick peek, with Jean-Michel Roy on hand to answer questions and provide a video tour. As you might expect, the cockpit is as modern as they come, with large LCDs taking the place of traditional avionics. In fact, the layout looks more like something you'd find on a stock broker's desk -- it's quite a contrast to the aging panels many commercial pilots still use today. The overhead system controls are presented in a layout similar to what you'll find on an A320 or A330, as is the flight control unit just below the windshield. The screens below, however, are much more accessible, offering up aircraft manuals, charts, checklists, camera feeds, weather information -- you name it. A trackball and keyboard make it easy to enter info, while side-mounted joysticks let the pilots control orientation while also serving to create a cleaner look and feel. Fly past the break for a first-hand look at this state-of-the-art demo deck.
As it promised it would, Google is fighting the government's gag order on releasing how many users are monitored by the National Security Agency. Unlike Facebook and Microsoft, Google and Twitter publicly rejected a government deal to disclose the total number of spying warrants for user data, which would include (but not detail) the number of requests coming from the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA).
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two coordinated suicide bombings at a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Baghdad killed at least 29 worshippers at noon prayers on Tuesday, medics said.
The first bomber detonated his charge at a checkpoint about 100 meters (yards) away from the mosque in al-Qahira district of northern Baghdad. He was followed minutes later by a second who blew himself up inside the building.
"The (second) suicide bomber detonated himself among the worshippers, who were gathering after the call to prayer," said policeman Furat Faleh, who was near the site of the blast.
More than 1,000 people were killed in militant attacks in Iraq in May, according to the United Nations, making it the deadliest month since the sectarian war of 2006-2007.
Ten years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled former president Saddam Hussein in 2003, a stable power-sharing compromise between Iraq's Sunni, Shi'ite and ethnic Kurdish factions remains elusive.
Sectarian relations in Iraq have come under strain from the conflict in neighboring Syria, where mainly Sunni rebels are fighting to overthrow a leader backed by Shi'ite Iran.
Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'ites have crossed into Syria to fight on opposing sides, heightening concerns they are bringing the conflict back home, where both sects have been targeted by violence since the beginning of the year.
The wave of attacks has coincided with protests by Iraq's Sunnis, who accuse the Shi'ite-led government of marginalizing their minority sect and being a stooge of Iran.
Sunni Islamist insurgent groups appear to be feeding on Sunni discontent and gaining recruits.
It is not clear who exactly is behind the attacks but a number of Sunni Islamist insurgent groups operate in Iraq, including an affiliate of al-Qaeda.
Al Qaeda's local wing, Islamic State of Iraq, may spearhead the violence, but other Sunni armed groups are also resurgent, including the Naqshbandi army, an expanding network of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party members and ex-army officers.
(Reporting by Kareem Raheem; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? There's good news for most companies that provide health benefits for their employees: America's slowdown in medical costs may be turning into a trend, rather than a mere pause.
A report Tuesday from accounting and consulting giant PwC projects lower overall growth in medical costs for next year, even as the economy gains strength and millions of uninsured people receive coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law.
If the calculations are correct, cost spikes because of the new health care law should be contained within a relatively narrow market segment. That would come as a relief for Democrats in an election year during which Republicans plan to use criticism of "Obamacare" as one of their main political weapons.
"There are some underlying changes to the system that are having an impact, and we can expect lower increases as we come out of the recession," said Mike Thompson of PwC's Health Research Institute, which produced the study. Cost "is still going up, but not as much as it used to."
The report comes with a caveat that sounds counterintuitive at first: self-employed people and others who buy coverage individually could well see an increase in premiums in 2014.
The reasons have to do with requirements in the health care law. For example, starting next year insurers must accept patients with pre-existing medical problems, who cost more to cover. Also, new policies have to provide a basic level of benefits more generous in some cases than what's currently offered to individual consumers.
About 160 million workers and family members now have job-based coverage and are less likely to be affected. The individual market is much smaller, fewer than 20 million people. Still, it's expected to grow significantly over the next few years as a result of the health care law, which will also provide tax credits to help many people afford their premiums.
The US spends more than $2.7 trillion a year on health care, well above any other developed country. But quality is uneven, there's widespread waste and fraud, and the system still leaves about 45 million people uninsured.
For years US health care spending has grown much faster than the overall economy and workers' wages, but since the recession those annual increases have slowed dramatically. The debate now is whether that's a continuing trend. The answer will be vitally important, not only for companies and their employees, but for taxpayers who foot the bill for government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Obama's coverage expansion.
PwC's report forecasts that direct medical care costs will increase by 6.5 percent next year, one percentage point lower than its previous projection. The cost of care is the biggest component of premiums, followed by administrative expenses and overhead.
Cost-shifting to workers and efficiency measures from employers got most of the credit for slowing growth. PwC also said the health care law's push for hospitals and doctors to be more accountable may be starting to have an impact.
Four big factors were seen as pushing costs down next year:
?Patients seeking more affordable routine services in settings like clinics springing up in retail stores, as opposed to a doctor's office or the emergency room.
?Major employers contracting directly with hospital systems that have a proven record for complicated procedures such as heart surgery and certain back operations.
?The government ramping up penalties on hospitals that have too many patients coming back with problems soon after being discharged.
?Employers' ongoing effort to shift more costs to workers through higher annual deductibles, the amount people must pay each year before insurance picks up.
By using such shifting, PwC estimates that employers may be able to drive their share of next year's cost increase even lower than 6.5 percent.
On the other hand, two big factors will push costs upward:
?The high price of new "specialty" drugs to treat serious chronic illnesses such as autoimmune diseases and some types of cancer.
?Industry consolidation, with big hospitals buying up smaller ones, as well as medical practices and rehab centers. The downside of the demand for greater efficiency by employers and government is that it may be fostering new health care monopolies.
My Sunday Washington Post Business Section column is out: Missed the big market rally? Here?s what to do now.
In the office, we have been getting lots of calls from people who missed the big move off of the 2009 lows. What should they do in those circumstances?
Here?s an excerpt from the column:
?What do you do now? How to begin to repair the damage?
It is a two-part process: The initial steps are designed to help you overcome your risk aversion ? the emotional aspects of investing. Call it your ?erroneous behavioral economic zone.? After we fix that big underutilized brain of yours, we can move on to the investment steps that allow you to work your way back into markets.?
Some parting thoughts:
?When your investing timeline is measured in decades, you cannot afford to continually miss an ongoing rally because of day-to-day volatility.
Markets that rally 150 percent come along once a generation. If you missed this one, it is probably because you based your investing on some form of guess as to what stocks were going to do. Experience teaches us that we are all pretty bad at making forecasts nearly all of the time. This is why any prediction-based investment strategy is doomed to failure. The outcome is binary: Your guesses are either right or wrong.
Consider instead a probability-based investment approach. The idea behind asset allocation is to allow mean reversion, rebalancing and diversification to work in your favor. No guesswork required.?
Go read the whole thing here.
>
Source: Missed the big market rally? Here?s what to do now. Barry Ritholtz Washington Post, June 16 2013?? http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/missed-the-big-market-rally-heres-what-to-do-now/2013/06/14/b9b96894-d1e3-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html
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Apple may consider the iPhone to be a gaming device, but even it's willing to admit that traditional gaming demands a proper gamepad. The folks at Logitech apparently agree, and seem to be preparing to release an iPhone 5-compatible gamepad with its G-prefix branding. An image acquired by Kotaku shows four-button Logitech gamepad build around an iPhone shaped hole. A Lightning connector pokes at of the gap's right side, indicating a hard-wired (or at least device powered) peripheral. According to Kotaku, this will be just one of several third-party gamepads designed for iOS 7's Game Center overhaul, and Apple won't be providing a first-party solution, either. The blurry image ought to be flavored with the standard amount sodium chloride, but we wouldn't scoff at an officially supported gamepad solution.
Strong gun control laws were recently passed in Connecticut and New York, so Gov. Rick Perry will visit gunmakers in both states this week to try to bring them to gun-friendly Texas.
By Mark Sappenfield,?Staff writer / June 16, 2013
Mark Malkowski, owner of Stag Arms in New Britain, Conn., talks last month about his company's newly designed Stag-22, a weapon he says will be legal in the state of Connecticut, despite new gun control laws. Gun control advocates say the move violates the spirit of the new law.
Jim Shannon/The Republican-American/AP
Enlarge
The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., have brought into high relief one of the anachronisms of the American economy: Some of the biggest and most influential makers of firearms in the United States are located in some of its bluest ? and most antigun ? states.
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That is a fact that Gov. Rick Perry (R) of Texas hopes to turn to his advantage this week.
He is scheduled to visit Colt's Manufacturing, which has been in Connecticut since 1847, and Mossberg & Sons of North Haven, Conn., the largest maker of shotguns in the US, among other manufacturers and suppliers in Connecticut and New York.
The visits are the most public move in discussions that have been ongoing for some time, officials say. "We've been reaching out to them via letters and the governor's talked on the phone to some of them," Lucy Nashed, the governor's spokeswoman, told the Connecticut Post. "This is something he's been doing for a long time ? talking to companies in different states."
Forcing the issue are sweeping gun-control measures passed first by New York then by Connecticut in response to the Sandy Hook shootings. When Connecticut lawmakers were considering the bills in March, Colt shut down manufacturing for a day and bused 400 workers to the statehouse in a show of force. Other manufacturers did the same.
?We exhausted ourselves testifying during public sessions at the state capital, reaching out to journalists, busing our employees to Hartford and more, but in the end it didn?t matter. They wrote the bill in secret,? Mark Malkowski, president of Stag Arms in New Britain, Conn., told Forbes.
The tone of Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) has frayed the state's relationship with gunmakers further. Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" after he signed the bill, Governor Malloy said: "What this is about is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible ? even if they are deranged, even if they are mentally ill, even if they have a criminal background. They don?t care. They want to sell guns.?
ISTANBUL (AP) ? Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday it was his "duty" to order riot police to evict activists occupying an Istanbul park that became a center of defiance against his rule, even as the government crackdown continued across town with tear gas fired at protesters trying to regroup.
In a thunderous speech to hundreds of thousands of supporters in western Istanbul, Erdogan also railed against foreign media coverage of the unrest amid criticism over his government's handling of the protests that left his international image battered, and exposed deep rifts within Turkish society.
About 10 kilometers (six miles) away in central Istanbul, riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons on thousands of defiant protesters attempting to regroup and demonstrate again in the city's main Taksim Square. Clashes broke out in nearby neighborhoods with stone-throwing youths.
Protesters are angry over the eviction of overwhelmingly peaceful activists at Gezi Park, next to Taksim Square, who oppose government plans to rip down its trees and erect a replica Ottoman-era barracks. But the protests quickly spiraled into a widespread denunciation of what many say is Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian way of governing ? charges he vehemently denies.
Speaking to his supporters, Erdogan recalled telling Interior Ministry officials: "You are going to clear Gezi Park. We have reached an end. We cannot stand it anymore.' And as you know, yesterday the operation was carried out, and it was cleared."
"I did my duty as prime minister," he said, "Otherwise there would be no point in my being in office."
Police in uniform and plain clothes sealed off Taksim Square and Gezi Park, which riot police cleared of thousands of peaceful protesters in a swift but muscular operation Saturday evening. Crews worked through the night to remove all traces of a sit-in that started more than two weeks ago and became the focus of the strongest challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his 10 years in office.
Istanbul's governor, Huseyin Avni Mutlu, said the square was off-limits to the public for the time being, and nobody would be allowed to gather. A spokesman for the protesters vowed the group would retake Gezi Park.
"We will win Taksim Square again and we will win Taksim Gezi Park again," Alican Elagoz said.
Thousands of protesters trying to reach the area were stuck on side streets and in nearby neighborhoods in a blanket of tear gas. Stumbling to avoid the gas, they piled into nearby cafes and restaurants, where waiters clutched napkins to their faces.
Stone-throwing youths and riot police clashed in Istanbul's Sisli neighborhood next to the Taksim area. Television footage showed police deploying two water cannon trucks against the youths, standing near a flaming barricade blocking the street. Rocks littered the roadway.
The protests in Istanbul began as an environmental sit-in to prevent a development project at Gezi Park, but anger over a violent crackdown there on May 31 quickly spread to dozens of cities and spiraled into a broader expression of discontent.
The protests have left at least five people dead, including a police officer, according to a Turkish rights group, and more than 5,000 injured.
___
Fraser reported from Ankara. Burhan Ozbilici and Jamey Keaten in Ankara contributed to this report.
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Public release date: 19-Jun-2013
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As it promised it would, Google is fighting the government's gag order on releasing how many users are monitored by the National Security Agency. Unlike Facebook and Microsoft, 
