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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Portraits of Uyghurs

In the center of the desert landscapes of Taklamakan, in the northern-western part of China, the land of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a very least populated land while it covers close to a sixth from the country's area. Getting resisted during generations the Han Chinese domination, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or Old Eastern Turkistan, fell within the Chinese Han control in 1949. From then, its population is mostly Uyghur People and Turkish - speaking System.

Islamic primarily, the Uyghur people have a very good religious identification which, in specific, allowed them to keep a strong big difference in opposition to the Chinese invader. Certainly, the Uyghur Kingdom of Mongolia knew a brilliant civilization, until its absorption by the Mongolian Empire in the XIIIth century.

While in their own background, the Uyghurs successively adopted Shamanism, Manicheism, Buddhism and the Nestorianism before finally changing to Islam when the Arab conquerors beat the Chinese in year 751 BC., thus starting the way to the Islamization of the complete Central Asia.

Under the effect of the beliefs which they taken, Uyghur People taken successively, and sometimes in a competing way, a great number of written forms (turco-runic, brahmi, tokharien, soghdien) before developing their own graphic system.

The entrance of Islam was a great modification since it was followed by the absorption of the Uyghur land in the enormous Turkic and Muslim Kingdom. Thus, the descendants of Genghis Khan progressively replaced their writing by a Arabo-Persan alphabet, still used currently.

If their writing, their language and their religion mark a real difference with the tradition of Chinese Han, Uyghur People also differ from their characteristic, so characteristic of Central Asia's people. A matt skin, eyes representing a whole pallet of colors, from black to deep blue, features pointing out to the Mongolian, Turkish or Uzbek roots of these men and these women.

For a few years, China has integrated the proper identity of these remote people, although they represent only 8 million population - a trifle for this large area. Therefore, the Uyghurs are now part of the 56 racial minority groups having been well known in an official way by China.

This statute allows them a few rights in a land exactly where their difference is very often repressed. Thus, Uyghur people escape the "single child policy" and their language is accepted as the second official language in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The integration of the Uyghurs and their culture in the People's Republic of China, however, looks really illusory. The presence of natural resources in Xinjiang, and its area with countries acknowledged as sensitive, clearly urged the government to increase the sinicization of this area. Million of Han thus came to settle in this new Chinese eldorado, monopolizing the greater responsibility work opportunities.

In response to this true will to assimilate the Uyghur people into the Chinese culture, an independent party like East Turkistan Islamic Movement(ETIM) was born in the early 1990.

Asserting more flexibility, but especially the acceptance of their true identity, this movement was severely repressed by the power authorities in place Xinjiang.

The situations of September 11, 2001, were the perfect occasion for the Chinese government to justify true reprisals: they declared the "Uyghur freedom fighters" as dangerous terrorists linked to Al Quaida because of their Muslim origins and their proximity with Pakistan and Afghanistan... However, the terrible repression which followed did not calm down the anger. The Uyghurs population continues today to proudly keep up their identity and their civilization , though they become a minority on their own land.

For much more information about Uyghur people, you can visit a Uyghur website called Uyghur News at http://www.uyghurnews.com

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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

foreclosure help

We are two months into the new year and foreclosures are still a hot news subject. So let’s take a look at how and where we are.

According to Lender Processing Services (LPS) their data indicates about 6.92 million residential mortgages are past due or currently in foreclosure as of the end of January. That is a slight increase from December of 6.87 million. Most likely we are seeing the increase of homes going into foreclosure due to the fact many lenders held off foreclosure through the end of the year because of the foreclosure fraud investigation.

LPS also says the number of loans have risen 8 percent higher from where we were last year. Out of the 6.92 million mortgages not being paid on in the US, about 2.20 million are already in the process of being foreclosed on. About 4.72 million are more than one month past due, while 2.16 million of these homes are about 90 days past due.

So which states still have the highest non-current loans? Florida, Nevada, Mississippi, Georgia and New Jersey still have high foreclosure rates. However, these states are the fewest foreclosure rates Montana, Wyoming, Arkansas, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

According to MBA every state but two saw a drop in the 90 day past due delinquency, North Dakota and Arkansas were the only two states in which 90 day delinquencies did not decline. Total US mortgages that are past due are estimated to be around 8.22 percent, these not including mortgage that are already in foreclosure. MBA numbers for homes that are already in foreclosure averages about 4.63 percent. However according to MBA reports about 13.56 percent are at least one month behind.

Jobs are still slowly on the rise, commodities like gas, oil and food costs are pushing the average American’s budget to the verge of popping and it is only a matter of time before we start seeing foreclosures slowly creep up again.

Question is how the government’s assistance program, HAMP and other loan modification programs continue to help struggling homeowners. Increase discussion about the revamping of the mortgage, lending services and other government agencies will certainly play a role into how our real estate market starts to recover and how soon. As government officials continue to discuss making changes, we can only sit back and see how the next year begins to unfold.

Yves said:

My 2007 post on that tussle was “The Pentagon as Financial Regulator.” Maybe that’s an idea we need to entertain more seriously. It seems to be the only body with the authority and firepower to take on the mortgage industrial complex.

Any image of U.S. military competence is an illusion, an illusion created quite deliberately, but nevertheless an illusion.

Andrew Bacevich, in his two books The New American Militarism and The Limits of Power, goes to great lengths to debunk the illusion of military competence.

“American generalship since the end of the Cold War has seldom risen above the mediocre,” Bacevich writes in The Limits of Power:

[S]enior officials operate on the implicit assumption that they are immunized from accountability. In May 2007, in a stinging critique of post-9/ll military leadership, Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling wrote in “Armed Forces Journal” that “a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”

In The New American Militarism Bacevich explores in great detail why the false illusion is created. It is all part and parcel of the well-oiled sales pitch [well maybe not so well-oiled, thanks to Bradley Manning and Wikileaks] for the all-consuming security state:

In war-as-spectacle, appearance could be more important than reality, because appearance often ended up determining reality… To use force was to strike a posture, to manipulate perceptions, or to send a message…

This image of war transformed derived from—-but also meshed with and seemed to validate—-the technology-hyped mood prevailing during the final decade of the twentieth century.

[….]

In short, by the dawn of the twenty-first century the reigning postulates of technology-as-panacea had knocked away much of the accumulated blood-rust sullying war’s reputation. Thus reimagined—-and amidst widespread assurances that the United States could be expected to retain a monopoly of this new way of war—-armed conflict regained an aesthetic respectability, even palatability, that the literary and artistic interpreters of twentieth-century military cataclysms were thought to have demolished once and for all. In the right circumstances, for the right cause, it now turned out, war could actually offer an attractive option—-cost-effective, humane, even thrilling. Indeed, as the Anglo-American race to Baghdad conclusively demonstrated in the spring of 2003, in the eyes of many, war has once again become a grand pageant, performance art, or a perhaps temporary diversion from the ennui and boring routine of everyday life.

[….]

This new aesthetic has contributed, in turn, to an appreciable boost in the status of military institutions and soldiers themselves, a fourth manifestation of the new American militarism.

Since the end of the Cold War, opinion polls surveying public attitudes toward national institutions have regularly ranked the armed services first. While confidence in the executive branch, the Congress, the media, and even organized religion is diminishing, confidence in the military continues to climb. Otherwise acutely wary of having their pockets picked, Americans count on men and women in uniform to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. Americans fearful that the rest of society may be teetering on the brink of moral collapse console themselves with the thought that the armed services remain a repository of traditional values and old-fashioned virtue. With Americans becoming ever “more individualistic, more self-absorbed, more whiney, in a sense, more of a crybaby nation,” the columnist George Will told midshipmen in the U.S. Naval Academy, it is all the more important for the military to server as a model for the rest of society, preserving values that others might deem “anachronistic.” According to Will, “it is a function of the military to be exemplars.”

Confidence in the military has found further expression in a tendency to elevate the soldier to the status of national icon, the apotheosis of all that is great and good about contemporary America. The men and women of the armed services, gushed “Newsweek” in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, “looked like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. They were young, confident, and hardworking, and they went about their business with pose and élan.” A writer for “Rolling Stone” reported after a more recent and extended immersion in military life that “the Army was not the awful thing that my [anti-military] father had imagined”; it was instead “the sort of America he always pictured when he explained…his best hopes for the country.” According to the old post-Vietnam-era political correctness, the armed services had been a refuge for louts and mediocrities who probably couldn’t make it in the real world. Now the United States military was “a place where everyone tried their hardest. A place where everybody…looked out for each other. A place where people—-intelligent, talented people—-said honestly that money wasn’t what drove them. A place where people spoke openly about their feelings.” Soldiers, it turned out, were not only more virtuous than the rest of us, but also more sensitive and even happier. Contemplating the GIs advancing on Baghdad in March 2003, the classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson saw something more than soldiers in battle. He ascertained “transcendence at work.” According to Hanson, the armed services had “somehow distilled from the rest of us an elite cohort” in which virtues cherished by earlier generations of Americans continued to flourish.

Soldiers have tended to concur with this evaluation of their own moral superiority. In a 2003 survey of military personnel, “two-thirds [of those polled] said they think military members have higher moral standards than the nation they serve… Once in the military, many said, members are wrapped in a culture that values honor and morality.” Such attitudes leave even some senior officers more than a little uncomfortable. Noting with regret that “the armed forces are no longer representative of the people they serve,” retired admiral Stanley Arthur has expressed concern that “more and more, enlisted as well as officers are beginning to feel that they are special, better than the society they serve.” Such tendencies, concluded Arthur, are “not healthy in an armed force serving a democracy.”

In public life today, paying homage to those in uniform has become obligatory and the one unforgiveable sin is to be found guilty of failing to “support the troops.” In the realm of partisan politics, the political Right has shown considerable skill in exploiting this dynamic, shamelessly pandering to the military itself and by extension to those members of the public laboring under the misconception, a residue from Vietnam, that the armed services are under siege from a rabidly anti-military Left.

In The Limits of Power Bacevich concludes:

The exercise of military power will not enable the United States to evade the predicament to which the crisis of profligacy has given rise. To persist in following that path is to invite inevitable overextension, bankruptcy, and ruin.

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Monday, March 14, 2011

personal finances help

There are many ways to manage your finances online, but many of them handle only the paying of run-of-the-mill bills. A site starting in beta-test mode on Monday, called Manilla, is aiming for something broader.

Manilla, which is owned by the publishing company Hearst, wants to help people organize four categories of accounts: household bills, like phone and cable; magazine subscriptions; air travel rewards programs; and financial bills like mortgages and credit cards. Once users sign up for Manilla they can link their personal accounts to the service and are supplied with a simple and clean interface to manage them.

Jessica Insalaco, an executive vice president at Manilla, said people the company surveyed said they were constantly baffled by the bills, subscriptions and other programs they have to manage. People also feel overwhelmed by the piles of paper bills they face on a daily basis, she said.

I tested Manilla ahead of its introduction and found that the process of linking and managing a bill was simple. I linked my AT&T phone bill to the service and it took only a few seconds to hook up the two sites and begin managing my account from Manilla.

Manilla isn’t only trying to help people organize their household finances. The company is teaming with businesses, too, hoping to offer a less expensive alternative to paper bills.

According to the United States Postal Service’s 2010 Annual Report, businesses in the United States send 48 billion account notices, statements and bills to customers each year. That’s a lot of paper that ultimately ends up in garbage dumps and paper shredders.

“Right now, some companies can spend up to 75 cents on a single paper bill,” Ms. Insalaco said. “We want to work with these major companies to send us the bill, reducing the cost of the paper version, and we will act as the middleman to the consumer.”

To make this process even more seamless, Manilla plans to create “premier partnerships” with some companies. Manilla said in a company blog post that it was opening with Comcast as its first premier partner, where cable customers who sign up for Manilla will no longer receive a paper bill, but will instead be billed directly through Manilla.

The company plans to add several premier partners when it has its full introduction in coming months.

I’ve told you before about PerkStreet Financial’s online checking before. To remind you, they provide free online checking. That’s rarity in itself these days but they also provide a cash back bonus on the spending you make with their debit card. This tends to to be about 1-2%. Well, every month PerkStreet announces different cash back categories that net you 5% cash back. Here are the March 2011 5% cash back categories:

1) Home Supply Stores – Shop at stores like Home Depot or Lowe’s and you earn 5% cash back when you use your PerkStreet debit card.

2) Sporting Goods and Apparel stores – Shop for your favorite team’s apparel or stock up on sports equipment and earn 5%.

3) Tax Preparation Solutions – H&R Block, Turbo Tax Online, TaxAct, Liberty Tax Services, and Jackson Hewitt will earn you 5% cash back.

Pretty neat, huh?

Here’s some legal mumbo-jumbo I gotta add:

The amount you can earn at the 5% cash back bonus rate is limited to $250 per household annually (starting on the day your account was opened). The total amount of cash back you can earn remains unlimited. Unless specific stores are named, qualifying purchases are determined by MCC codes. Non-PIN debit card purchases will earn 5% cash back in March in the following categories: Home Supply Warehouse Stores (5200), Sports Apparel and Riding Apparel Stores (5655), and at Sporting Goods Stores (5941) PowerPerks are also available through April 30, 2010 at: H & R Block®, Jackson Hewitt®, TaxAct®, Liberty Tax Service® & TurboTax® (online only).

**The Standard Cash Back Rate Still Stands**:

Earn 2% cash back on all non-PIN purchases for the first 3 months (90 days) following account opening. Once the 90 days is up, earn 2% cash back on all non-PIN purchases when your Account Balance is $5k or more. Or, earn 1% cash back on purchases when your Account Balance is less than $5k – either way you won’t find another bank in America that gives you more rewards on debit.

Check out my review of PerkStreet if you want to find out more about them.

And now for some great personal finance articles you should read:

Good Financial Cents | Home Equity Loan vs. a Hone Equity Line of Credit.

Amateur Asset Allocator | What A Financial Advisor Can And Cannot Do For You

Sense To Save | Renting a Rug Doctor vs. buying my own carpet cleaner

Oblivious Investor | Picking Mutual Funds: Don’t Just Look at the Winners

Toilet Paper Entrepreneur | Inexpensive Ways To Prevent Business Disaster

Clariity Blog | Happily Ever After: Money Matters You MUST Discuss Before Marriage

Generation X Finance | The Mortgage Tax Deduction Myth

PF Firewall | 4 Great Things You Could Be Doing Instead Of Gaming

The Wisdom Journal | Recession Lessons Are Fading Fast – Unless You’re Young (like under 29)

Consumerism Commentary | The Power of the Coupon Compels You

Money Smarts Blog | How to Unlock your Ontario LIRA or locked-in Retirement Account

Debt Free Adventure | Commonly Missed Tax Deductions

Five Cent Nickel | The Home Office Tax Deduction

The Dough Roller | Must Use Websites For Your Resume

Wealth Pilgrim | How To Teach Kids About Money And Get Results

The Simple Dollar | Health Insurance and Downgrading Your Job

PT Money | How to Start a Business with No Money | Want it Bad Enough?

My Journey to Millions | What Do I Need to Bring CPA or Accountant Tax Preparation

Smart on Money | Education Tax Credits Can Help Pay For College Costs

Canadian Couch Potato | How to Lower Your Rebalancing Costs

Couple Money | Save Money By Joining a CSA

The Military Wallet | The Case for Automating your Finances

Moolanomy | Is Using a Debt Snowball a Good Idea?

Credit Card Offers IQ | The Rundown on Foreign Transaction Fees

Studenomics | Why Chasing Bank Interest Rates is a Waste

Cash Money Life | Don’t Chase High Dividend Stocks

And these are the carnivals Free From Broke took part in:

Carnival of Traders and Investors – Edition #5

» Carnival of Personal Finance #298 – | Saving to Inve$t

Carnival of Passive Investing # 3 – Random Probability Examples Edition – February 28th, 2011 – My Personal Finance Journey

Festival of Frugality: 21 Ways to Save for a Rainy Day

Tax Carnival #82: The Tax Awards – Don’t Mess With Taxes

Carnival of Financial Planning – Edition #174 – March 4, 2011

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Friday, March 11, 2011

Making Money Without

Founded in 2009 by Amanda Steinberg, DailyWorth is known as a each day e-mail newsletter that includes information and facts on financial literacy and dough management skewed towards a female audience. DailyWorth’s subjects selection from ways to organize your finances to tax ideas to conserving counsel. And DailyWorth has an outstanding editorial employees to make subject matter. MP Dunleavey, previously a individual finance columnist using the Ny Occasions and presently a contributor with Bucks magazine, is foremost DailyWorth’s editorial crew.

In spite of unions’ very long hatred of Scott Walker, the new governor is shifting to address each the signs and symptoms in the ailment as well as the condition itself-the public-sector union scheme that has molested Wisconsin’s taxpayers and their small children by gaming the model. Unions like Wisconsin’s teachers’ union [WEAC] (which was Wisconsin’s biggest-spending lobby in 2009) were extraordinarily adept at fixing the method by spending hundreds of thousands to elect politicians who, in flip, reward the unions on the expense on the taxpayers.

the Wisconsin fight, when as compared to private-sector negotiations is about: one) the Scope of Bargaining, two) Union “Income” Protection [Right-to-Work vs. Pressured Dues], 3) regardless of whether Wisconsin need to be the unions’ dues collection company [payroll deduction of dues], and four) whether public-sector unions will need to be ‘recertified’ by holding elections every year.

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commercial fishing boats based mostly in Crescent City put to sea very last night when the tsunami alert was first of all broadcast. It is really much easier to trip out big waves at sea than on the dock. Now a lot of those boats are operating very low on fuel, nevertheless they are unable to return to port despite the fact that the surges proceed, explained Chris Renner, proprietor of C. Renner Petroleum Co. in Crescent Metropolis, which serves the fleet

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People Making Money Net

On Monday evening, I watched my first, The Final Word host Lawrence O’Donnell.
Whilst O’Donnell laudably tried using to emphasis the audience’s interest onand hopefully last, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen underneath for good, I used to be overtaken, not from the pulling around the thread, in addition to the voracious audience he serves. It did not make me sad, it made me angry.

On the subject of celebrities, we will be a heartless country, basking in their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Seaside. The impulse is understandable, to some degree. It may be grating to pay attention to complaints from people who like privileges that the majority of us cannot even think about. In the event you can’t muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who tends to make additional bucks for a day’s effort than many of us will make in a decade’s time, I guess I can’t blame you.

Using the rapid speed of events on the web in addition to the material revolution sparked from the Online, it’s highly quick for your engineering marketplace to imagine it is distinct: continuously breaking new ground and accomplishing stuff that no one has actually accomplished earlier than.

But one can find other sorts of internet business which have by now undergone some of the very same radical shifts, and have just as excellent a stake during the long run.

Take healthcare, for instance.

We frequently believe that of it being a enormous, lumbering beast, but in truth, medication has undergone a sequence of revolutions during the previous 200 many years which might be not less than equal to individuals we see in solutions and facts.

Much less understandable, but nonetheless within just the norms of human nature, will be the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and have a look at the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but of your blithe interviewer Sheen’s life as we pass it inside best suited lane of our every day lives. To be honest, it may possibly be challenging for many people to discern the distinction involving a run-of-the-mill awareness whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its very own merits, a quote like “I Am On a Drug. It’s Named Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we can’t all be anticipated to take the complete measure of someone’s lifestyle every time we hear one thing funny.

Extremely fast ahead to 2011 and I'm trying to look into will mean of getting a little more business-like about my hobbies (mostly audio). From the stop of January I had manned up and began to advertise my weblogs. I had made a few several weblogs, which had been contributed to by associates and colleagues. I promoted these routines by Facebook and Twitter.

Second: the minor abomination the Gang of 5 about the Supream Court gave us a 12 months or so in the past (Citizens Inebriated) truly incorporates a touch bouncing betty of its individual that may very effectively go off from the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. Considering this ruling extended the principle of “personhood” to the two businesses and unions, to test to deny them any best to operate within the legal framework that they had been organized underneath deprives these “persons” of the freedoms of speech, association and motion. Which means (after yet again, quoting law school skilled family) that both the courts must uphold these rights for that unions (as individual “persons” as assured from the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they've to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights ought to use to primary companies, also.

We’ve been following the Bernie Madoff saga for so long now, it seems that there’s hardly anything we don’t know about him.

That is, we realized this morning, we’ve never before heard his voice.

Until now.

New York magazine recently landed a series of phone interviews with Madoff, currently serving a 150-year prison sentence for bilking investors out of tens of billions. Click here for the story, which links to taped excerpts of the conversations — between Madoff and reporter Steve Fishman.

Just a few highlights for you, LBers:

Madoff on Madoff: �How could I have done this?� asked his prison therapist, according to the story. �I was making a lot of money. I didn�t need the money. [Am I] a flawed character?� Later, Madoff asked: �Everybody on the outside kept claiming I was a sociopath . . . Am I a sociopath?� (The therapist’s answer: he’s not a sociopath. He has morals and remorse.)

Madoff on his own misery: At the peak of his fraud, as everyone seemed to be getting rich, Madoff was “secretly suffering.” Said Madoff, according to Fishman: �It was a nightmare for me. It was only a nightmare for me. It�s horrible. When I say nightmare, imagine carrying this secret . . . Look, imagine going home every night not being able to tell your wife, living with this ax over your head, not telling your sons, my brother, seeing them every day in the business and not being able to confide in them.”

Madoff on his clients:

�Look, none of my clients, even if they lost every penny they put in there, can plead poverty . . . Look, it doesn�t mean I�m excusing what I did, doesn�t mean I don�t feel sorry for them. I�m embarrassed . . . It was the people that came in very late in the game that got hurt. All of my friends, most of my individual clients, are not net losers,� he said. �Now if you listen to [them], they�re living out of Dumpsters and they don�t have any money, and I�m sure it�s a traumatic experience to some, but I made a lot of money for people. Does it justify it? No.”

�

In his New York Times column complaining about Huffington Post and the new economics of content competition, I think David Carr makes two understandable but fundamentally fallacious assumptions about news and media: that the value in journalism is in content and that making content must be work. Because that's the way it used to be.

In their op-ed the next day in the New York Times complaining about copyright losing its hardness, Scott Turow, Paul Aiken, and James Shapiro extend the error to entertainment, assuming that content is entertainment and content is what content makers make.

Not necessarily.

Pull back to view the true value of these things: information, knowledge, enlightenment, amusement, experience, engagement. Content can be and has been a vessel to deliver their worth. But it is not the only one. That is the lesson of the internet -- indeed, of Huffington Post itself. I have argued that the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the BBC, and other media should have but never would have started the Huffington Post because they, like the gentlemen above, still see content as value in itself and further believe that content is their own franchise (granted by their control of the means of production and distribution). So the benefits of content cannot come from others -- bloggers, commenters, citizens, amateurs -- as new wine in new casks. They instead want to put their old wine in the new skins (witness The Daily).

That is why old media people are missing new opportunities. It's not about the content (stupid). It's about the value.

We can be informed now by many means: by our neighbors telling us what they know, enabled to do so by the net, at a marginal cost of zero, doing so not because it is work (and work must be paid) but because this is what neighbors do for each other. We can be entertained by many means: by clever people making songs and shows and telling stories because they love doing so and because they are compensated in attention rather than royalties (and that attention may well lead to money when they can finally detour around the gauntlet of old media's closed ways to find audiences on their own).

Why do people write on Huffington Post? Because they can. Because they give a shit. Because they like the attention and conversation. Because they couldn't before. Why do they sing their songs on YouTube? Same reasons.

Is there still a role for the journalist, the professional, the artist in this? Perhaps. I think so. That's why I am teaching journalism school. But I'm not necessarily teaching them to make content. That is now only one of many, many ways to meet the goals of adding value to information, time, and society. Some of my entrepreneurial journalism students are, for example, creating businesses that will use data to impart information; they will add value by gathering and analyzing it and making it possible for you to find the intersecting points that matter to you. Other of my students are creating platforms for you to get more value out of your own data. Others are creating platforms for people to connect around interests and make and find their own value. Others are finding new ways to sustain reporting and the making of content. They are all valid if they bring value.

If you concentrate on the value, not the form -- content -- then the possibilities explode.

Turow et al shut down the idea that opening up information can yield greater value that protecting it. Sharers are...

... abetted by a handful of law professors and other experts who have made careers of fashioning counterintuitive arguments holding that copyright impedes creativity and progress. Their theory is that if we severely weaken copyright protections, innovation will truly flourish. It's a seductive thought, but it ignores centuries of scientific and technological progress based on the principle that a creative person should have some assurance of being rewarded for his innovative work.

No, I'd say rather that there are more ways to open up value. If Wikipedia were copyrighted by a publisher, it never would have become Wikipedia because it would be owned, not shared. We now have a new means to collect value rather than merely to own content.

I remember at the DLD conference a few years ago when Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales defended himself from a ninja-knife-wielding Jason Calacanis over paying people to contribute to online resources. Calacanis, like Carr, called it work. Wales instead likened it to a pickup game of basketball. Viewed from a distance, basketball certainly looks like work; they sweat enough. So why don't we demand that they be paid? Why aren't we lamenting the loss of a marketplace for their value? Because that's not where the value is. It's in the fun.

Granted, what's done with that fun -- how it is exploited -- is relevant. If I start charging admission to watch you play basketball -- it is great content, after all -- or if I put sponsors' banners on the court -- you did draw an audience -- you might want a cut. If you can get it -- if you can show that there aren't a million competitors for court time in an open marketplace -- great! But what if the gate or the ads merely support my ability to provide free court time to you or free uniforms to your town-team kids? The economics are not necessarily sweat = work = product = pay. Neither is it any longer true that owning the expensive means of production and distribution assures a return on that investment. There are other expressions of value.

The truth is that Huffington Post recognizes the value of professionalism. I've lately recalled Arianna Huffington talking with Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in London a few years ago when he -- with native irony, in front of his reporters -- asked why the hell she was hiring reporters, who are a pain in the ass to manage and expensive to boot. Because their stories get more traffic, she said. They add value. That's why she has editors and curators. They add value. That's why she has technologists who make the Huffington Post such a social experience. They enable value.

That's what I'm teaching my entrepreneurial students: add value. And be efficient: take advantage of the free exchange that is already happening -- the free and open platforms and the information that now easily passes on them. Then put your precious resources where you most add value. Do that before you even think of extracting value. There are the new economics of what we used to think of as content.

Source: http://removeripoffreports.net/ corporate Reputation Management

Fix your company's bad reputation today!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Ways of Making Money

Of all the interesting new tech that seems poised to garner a lot of buzz in 2011, near field communication (NFC), is probably the most exciting. If it takes off, it will transform the ways we communicate, share, and make payments with digital devices. This will likely take years to happen, but the groundwork is being laid right now. And RFinity is one of those companies at the forefront.

While Google and Apple are responsible for generating much of the buzz about NFC at the moment, the technology goes far beyond simply having the right type of chip in your mobile device. For example, how do you handle different types of data transfers being made from one device to another? And how to you ensure that they happen as quickly as possible? And most importantly, how do you ensure that they happen securely? Those are the things that RFinity is thinking about.

The company has just raised $4 million from Horizons Ventures in Hong Kong. And the space has gotten so red hot, in fact, that we hear they’re already out raising another round.

And it’s an easy bet for investors to make not only because of the space, but because of where the project originated: The U.S. Department of Energy. Specifically, RFinity was born when a bunch of infrastructure security experts working for the government were assigned to find all the vulnerabilities in cell phones. Through software they came up with, they were able to quite easily eavesdrop, manipulate SMS messages, and even compromise LAN security. Then they set out to figure out a way to stop people from doing those very things. That work led directly to RFinity.

Work originally began in the person-to-person and person-to-vendor sales space by way of mobile applications that route transactions through RFinity’s own secure servers. But now that NFC appears ready, RFinity is making sure they’re ready for it. The idea is that their technology could cut out the middle man here: themselves.

Obviously, the company isn’t going to share all the details on how they secure NFC transfers. But the basic overview is that they verify an incoming NFC signal and ask for a user’s permission before taking any action. Further, if the action is a transaction, it requires a PIN, just as you might do an ATM withdrawal. That’s all pretty standard. But the key is one-time-use transaction codes that RFinity creates on the fly along with complex cryptographic signatures. These ensure that an transaction is secure since it means that every transaction can only happen once. Even if those numbers were intercepted by a hacker, they would be useless beyond the one-time payment.

And even if your phone is lost or stolen, a thief couldn’t do anything without your PIN. And you can remotely shut down your NFC capabilities via RFinity. It’s enough to make me wish I could throw out all my credit cards right now. “Today’s identification and transaction systems are based on what? A magnetic strip on the back of a card, based on a 1950’s technology that relies on a base station to read the information embedded as a series of simple magnetic markers in plastic tape,” writes Josh Jones-Dilworth, who is working with the company to bring them to market.

Again, NFC as a technology is great and potentially game-changing. But the software is still needed to make it actually work. And some of the big guys began realizing that early on as companies like PayPal, Bank of America, and even Subway have been testing out different things with RFinity for some time. In fact, RFinity has actually been doing field tests of the software end of their technology since 2009 in places like Idaho, well before most people in the U.S. had ever thought about NFC.

But now people are starting to care. And soon, they could be caring a lot more. NFC is already built-in to Google’s new Nexus S device — and the company has put out a call for developers to start using the tech. Rumors have the next iteration of the iPhone gaining the technology as well. In other words, I suspect we may be seeing acquisition rumors starting to fly around RFinity in about six months or so. Provided their technology proves up to the NFC challenge, of course.

The CNN Washington Bureau’s morning speed read of the top stories making news from around the country and the world. Click on the headlines for more.

WASHINGTON/POLITICAL

For the latest political news: www.CNNPolitics.com

CNN: Obama talks Libya with leaders of France, Italy, UK

President Barack Obama spoke Thursday with the leaders of France, Italy and the United Kingdom on coordinating an international response to the crisis in Libya, the White House said. In separate phone conversations with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and British Prime Minister David Cameron, Obama "expressed his deep concern with the Libyan government's use of violence which violates international norms and every standard of human decency, and discussed appropriate and effective ways for the international community to immediately respond," the White House statement said.

CNN: Senate Democrats readying new offer on budget stalemate

The high-stakes political maneuvering over government spending cuts continued Thursday as Senate Democrats for the first time said they are readying specific budget cuts they hope will satisfy House Republicans. Unless the two sides reach an agreement, the government will run out of money and shut down at the end of next week. However, an aide for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, quickly indicated the proposed cuts don’t go deep enough to end the stalemate. Democrats say they would save billions by speeding up proposed cuts in President Obama’s budget for 2012 and by getting rid of money for earmarks in the spending bill currently funding the government, according to a Senate Democratic aide who would not speak on the record about the negotiations. That current bill, which expires March 4, funds the government at a level $41 billion below what President Obama proposed for this year, a cost savings both Democrats and Republicans are claiming as they debate deeper cuts.

Bloomberg: Obama Aides Say Social Security No Threat to Nation’s Finances

Obama administration officials are rejecting the idea of making major changes to Social Security as part of a debate over reining in the national debt, a stance that’s drawing protests from deficit-cutting advocates. White House Budget Director Jack Lew and Jason Furman, deputy director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, both stressed this week that Social Security isn’t facing an immediate funding crisis and should be viewed separately from moves to reduce the federal budget deficit.

CNN: Budget bill passes Wisconsin Assembly; moves to Senate

The Wisconsin state Assembly passed a Republican bill Friday that strips most public workers of their collective bargaining rights. But the fight over the bill seems far from over. It still has to pass Wisconsin's Senate which could prove to be a more contentious battle. Fourteen Democratic Senators have fled to neighboring Illinois to prevent a quorum from voting on the issue and they remained absent early Friday. "The vote we took wasn't the easy thing to do, but it was the right thing to do," said Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder said early Friday. "I continue to urge my Democrat colleagues in the Senate to come back to Madison so that they can debate this bill and do their job for the taxpayers of Wisconsin."

CNN: Congressman apologizes for 'get bloody' comment

Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Michael Capuano, who came under fire for heated comments he made at a union rally earlier this week, apologized for his remarks Thursday. "I strongly believe in standing up for worker rights and my passion for preserving those rights may have gotten the best of me yesterday in an unscripted speech," he said in a statement. "I wish I had used different language to express my passion and I regret my choice of words." Capuano spoke at a rally outside the statehouse in Boston Tuesday in support of Wisconsin state workers. He encouraged union members to challenge a proposal that would limit collective bargaining rights stating, "Every once in a while you've got to get out in the streets and get a little bloody when necessary. This fight is worth it."

CNN: Providence, Rhode Island, teachers receive pink slips, yet remain on job

Termination notices have been sent to every teacher in the Providence public school system, setting off a wave of anxiety and anger in the Rhode Island city and prompting a union leader to accuse the mayor of anti-union maneuvering. The teachers will remain at work as the school year continues, though the notices sent out this week mean any of them now could lose their jobs at the municipal officials' discretion. During a packed and at-times spirited meeting Thursday night, the city school committee voted 4-3 to back Mayor Angel Tavares' move to send out the notices. The mayor said in an online message Wednesday that he authorized the previous day's decision to dismiss almost 2,000 teachers and staff to allow for greater flexibility as the budget process unfolds.

CNN: Army to probe psy-ops allegations in Rolling Stone

A military officer trained in using psychological tactics to influence the emotions and actions of enemy troops told CNN Thursday her unit was ordered to used those skills to manipulate visiting lawmakers into securing more troops and funding for the war in Afghanistan. After a fellow officer questioned the legality of using "psychological operations" on elected U.S. officers, both received reprimands that could threaten their military careers, she said. "We're not allowed to do that against any U.S. citizen, whether it is a congressman or my neighbor three doors down," said Texas National Guard Maj. Laural Levine. "That is the first thing you are taught - never target Americans, ever."

CNN: GOP-led states skipping payments to governors association

A handful of Republican governors are declining to pay their annual dues to the National Governors Association as they seek ways to trim state government costs in a down economy. The NGA, a bipartisan organization of the nation's governors that meets twice a year to discuss issues of public policy and governance, is holding its annual winter meeting in Washington this weekend. Most of the country's governors are expected to travel to the nation's capital for that conference and other partisan gatherings sponsored by the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations.

Politico: Mitt Romney: Proud of Massachusetts health care law

Mitt Romney rejected Mike Huckabee's call for him to admit that the "RomneyCare" health care program failed, instead saying he's "proud" of "getting everyone covered" when he was governor of Massachusetts. "Mitt Romney is proud of what he accomplished for Massachusetts in getting everyone covered,” Romney’s spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, told the Boston Globe, in the first direct response Team Mitt made to Huckabee's criticism of the health plan in his new book. Fehrnstrom also put daylight between the Romney health care bill and President Obama's reform package, which is unpopular among voters and is the subject of several lawsuits by different states. “What's important now is to return to the states the power to determine their own healthcare solutions by repealing Obamacare," Fehrnstrom added. "A one-size-fits-all plan for the entire nation just doesn't work.”

CNN: Prez preparations for 2012

President Barack Obama will file the official paperwork within weeks to begin collecting money for his re-election campaign in 2012, which will cost more than his successful 2008 run, top aide David Axelrod told CNN this week. In an exclusive interview with CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, Axelrod said field organizers would begin fanning out in targeted states by early spring to kick off the campaign effort.

Roll Call: Tea Party Fracturing Over New York Special Election

Once again, the tea party movement is poised to play a critical role in deciding a New York special election. But major questions remain in New York’s 26th district over whether grass-roots conservatives will support the establishment favorite, state Assemblywoman Jane Corwin (R), or the tea party’s sentimental favorite, Iraq War veteran David Bellavia (R). Their decision could help deliver the traditionally Republican seat to Democrats, although Bellavia appears to be running as a third-party candidate regardless.

Newark Star-Ledger: Security lapses at Newark airport prompt U.S. Sen Lautenberg to call for investigation

A wave of security lapses at Newark Liberty International Airport over the past seven weeks has prompted U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg to call for an investigation. The request followed stories by The Star-Ledger detailing at least a half-dozen security breaches at the airport between Jan. 4 and Monday — including a dead dog being loaded onto a jet despite not being screened for a bomb or disease by Continental Airlines, and a knife in a carry-on bag getting past Transportation Security Administration agents.

NATIONAL

For the latest national news: www.CNN.com

CNNMoney: Air Force awards Boeing $35 billion contract

The Air Force announced Thursday it awarded a $3.5 billion initial contract to Boeing for the production of 18 next-generation aerial refueling tankers. That is a down payment on a contract worth about $35 billion for 179 planes. Aerial refueling tankers allow the military to refuel aircraft in mid flight, greatly extending the range of operation for smaller aircraft, while also providing the capability to carry cargo and airlift personnel. Both Boeing (BA, Fortune 500) and the North American unit of EADS - which owns Airbus –submitted bids for the blockbuster contract and planned to base their planes on popular civilian aircraft, specifically the Boeing 767 and Airbus A330.

CNN: Deaths of baby dolphins worry scientists

Baby bottlenose dolphins are washing up dead in record numbers on the shores of Alabama and Mississippi, alarming scientists and a federal agency charged with monitoring the health of the Gulf of Mexico. Moby Solangi, the executive director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies (IMMS) in Gulfport, Mississippi, said Thursday he's never seen such high death numbers. "I've worked with marine mammals for 30 years, and this is the first time we've seen such a high number of calves," he said. "It's alarming." At least 24 baby dolphins have washed up on the shores of the two states since the beginning of the year - more than ten times the normal rate. Also, six older dolphins died.

USA Today: Reported air-traffic errors rise 81% over 2007

More than 1,800 errors by air-traffic controllers — including 43 most likely to cause a midair collision between planes — were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration last year. The agency says that points up the need for greater safety steps. Air-traffic errors that allowed planes to get too close together jumped 81% from 2007 to 2010, according to newly released data by the FAA, rising from 1,040 to 1,887. Those most likely to cause a collision or an accident were also up from 34 in 2007 to 43 last year, a 26% increase. The higher number of reported errors involving airliners, private planes and military aircraft don't pose a sudden increase in the risk to fliers, the FAA says. Instead, the agency insists the numbers are the result of several years of effort to improve reporting.

CNN: TSA officer pleads guilty to stealing from passengers

A New Jersey Transportation Security Administration officer on Thursday pleaded guilty to federal charges that he and his supervisor regularly stole from passengers during screenings at Newark Liberty International Airport, according to federal prosecutors. Officer Al Raimi, 29, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Newark. He admitted that for nearly a year, he stole between $10,000 and $30,000 in cash from travelers as they passed through a security checkpoint at the airport. Raimi admitted that he would "kick up" some of that money to a supervisor, who in turn allowed him to keep stealing. The supervisor, Michael Arato, pleaded guilty earlier this month to accepting kickbacks and bribes.

CNN: Alleged New England mob boss snared in massive sting pleads not guilty

A reputed former New England mob boss pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court, just over a month after he was among 127 people nabbed in a massive sting targeting organized crime. Luigi "Baby Shacks" Manocchio pleaded not guilty in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island in Providence, according to court documents. He remains behind bars until a March 1 bond hearing. Manocchio's attorney, Mary J. Ciresi, told CNN affiliate WPRI that she was optimistic that Manocchio could make bond next week. All pretrial motions must be filed by May 16, and his trial will start no earlier than June 1, an arraignment and pretrial discovery order from U.S. Magistrate Judge David Martin indicated.

CNN: Shuttle Discovery takes off on its final flight

The Space Shuttle Discovery launched late Thursday afternoon from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the start of its 39th and final flight. "This was a pretty successful day," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations. "It was just an amazing event." The six-member crew will deliver a storage module, a science rig and spare parts to the international space station during its 11-day mission.

CNN: Billboard focused on African-American abortions was taken down

A New York billboard that focused exclusively on African-American abortion rates was taken down because of concerns for public safety, said Hal Kilshaw, spokesperson for Louisiana-based Lamar Advertising, on Thursday. The billboard was erected by group opposed to abortions. The billboard was attached to a building that houses the restaurant Lupe's Kitchen. Some of the wait staff, Kilshaw said, were being harassed by patrons who objected to the billboard. In addition, a scheduled protest Friday by people opposed to the billboard prompted public safety concerns, which led to the company's decision.

INTERNATIONAL

For the latest international news: http://edition.cnn.com

CNN: Libyan chaos raises worries over chemical weapons stockpile

The chaos in Libya has raised fears about the security of deadly mustard gas stockpiled in the country and whether Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi might use it on his own people. A U.S. official said that in a "chaotic situation" there is concern about Libya possessing mustard gas and other chemical agents. Although there has been no signs that the Libyan leader has ordered their use, Gadhafi is often described by officials as an unpredictable, mercurial individual.

CNN: Libya: An opportunity for al Qaeda?

Libya's beleaguered leader Moammar Gadhafi Thursday blamed the uprising sweeping Libya on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, accusing the terrorist group of supplying Libyans with pills inducing them to revolt. "Our children have been manipulated by al Qaeda," he told Libyan state television by telephone. Some may view this as Gadhafi's greatest delusion yet. Militant Islamists have played almost no role in the uprisings in Libya or anywhere else in the Arab world, and for most Arabs, energized by a powerful democracy movement, al Qaeda now appears more irrelevant that ever. But there is nevertheless a danger that spiraling violence in Libya may provide militant Islamist groups future opportunities in the country.

CNN: Analysts: More Libyan bloodshed could prompt U.S., NATO intervention

If the U.S. military were to intervene in an increasingly chaotic Libya, it would most likely be part of a NATO action in which Libyan bloodshed has reached a humanitarian crisis, analysts said Thursday. As reports emerged Thursday about deadly clashes between leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces and anti-government protesters in the town of Zawiya near Tunisia, analysts highlighted how Gadhafi has already pledged to fight a rebellion to martyrdom. Military intervention "is something which I hope doesn't happen, but it looks as though at some point that it should happen," said Simon Henderson, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

CNN: Death toll rises from New Zealand quake as searches continue

The death toll from the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Christchurch this week has risen to 113, police said Friday morning. More people are feared dead, and more than 200 are still missing, police said. Police Superintendent Dave Cliff told reporters that he had "grave fears" for the missing and authorities were having difficulty identifying victims because of the condition of the bodies found. The somber announcement came as authorities carried out more house-to-house searches in a desperate hunt for survivors.

New York Times: U.S. Pulling Back in Afghan Valley It Called Vital to War

After years of fighting for control of a prominent valley in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the United States military has begun to pull back most of its forces from ground it once insisted was central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The withdrawal from the Pech Valley, a remote region in Kunar Province, formally began on Feb. 15. The military projects that it will last about two months, part of a shift of Western forces to the province’s more populated areas. Afghan units will remain in the valley, a test of their military readiness. While American officials say the withdrawal matches the latest counterinsurgency doctrine’s emphasis on protecting Afghan civilians, Afghan officials worry that the shift of troops amounts to an abandonment of territory where multiple insurgent groups are well established, an area that Afghans fear they may not be ready to defend on their own.

CNN: India offers 'hands of our friendship' to Pakistan

Full growth of the Asian subcontinent hinges on normalization of ties between New Delhi and Islamabad, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Thursday as the two arch-foes prepared to resume their dialogue frozen by the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. In his address to parliament, Singh extended what he called his country's hand of friendship to its western neighbor. "I sincerely hope and believe that the new ruling classes of Pakistan would grasp the hands of our friendship and recognize that, whatever are our differences, terror, as an instrument of state policy, is something that no civilized society ought to use," he said.

BUSINESS

For the latest business news: www.CNNMoney.com

CNNMoney: Oil prices spike to $103, then drop back

Oil prices took a slight step back Thursday, but crude has seen a large runup this week as the political upheaval in Libya curtails production from the North African country. The U.S. benchmark oil contract, West Texas Intermediate, for April delivery fell 82 cents, or 0.8%, to settle at $97.28 a barrel. Prices hit a high of $103 a barrel earlier in the session. Just last week, crude prices were trading below $90 a barrel. Brent crude, the European standard, fell 44 cents, or 0.5%, to $110.76 a barrel in electronic trading.

CNNMoney: Oil shock threatens airline recovery

U.S. airlines had their best year in a decade in 2010, but with a mere 2% profit margin. Now that razor-thin cushion is threatened by rising fuel prices - and with it so is the industry's nascent recovery. "While labor costs have been going down, fuel prices have been going up," said Frank Werner, a finance professor at Fordham University and a licensed pilot. "Fuel prices are now the highest cost for the airlines." In recent days, travelers have started witnessing the industry's response. Carriers have successfully increased airfares four times so far this year, exceeding the total number of airfare hikes for all of last year, according to Rick Seaney, chief executive of Farecompare.com. As a result, consumers are paying, on average, $40 more than they were at the end of 2010.

Wall Street Journal: Pressures Mount to Resume Drilling

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to meet with oil industry executives in Houston Friday to assess the industry's readiness to handle a major offshore oil spill, amid growing pressure from congressional Republicans and a federal judge to resume deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Salazar is expected to meet with representatives of an industry-led consortium, Marine Well Containment Co., and Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc., a company that aided BP PLC with BP's response to last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Obama administration has said the oil industry must demonstrate it can quickly contain a large offshore spill before it will allow companies to resume drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet. The recent jump in world oil prices and U.S. gasoline prices following unrest in Libya has spurred renewed calls from many Republicans and Gulf Coast Democrats in Congress to allow more domestic production. One House committee is scheduled to hold hearings on drilling policy next month.

Financial Times: US warns extreme food prices will stay

The world faces a protracted bout of extremely high food prices, the US government has warned, overwhelming farmers’ ability to cool commodity markets by planting millions of additional hectares with crops. The US Department of Agriculture on Thursday forecast nominal record farm-gate prices for corn, wheat and soyabeans in the crop year that begins with the 2011 harvests. It added that food inflation would surge in the second half of this year as wholesale prices filtered through the supply chain, affecting consumers. The warning at the USDA Outlook Forum in Washington, the biggest annual gathering of the agribusiness sector, is likely to fuel global concerns about rising inflation and the potential for destabilising food riots in developing countries.

In Case You Missed It

CNN's Anderson Cooper speaks with a reporter and his source about a recent report in Rolling Stone magazine.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/02/24/exp.ac.rollingstone.report.cnn

CNN's John King talks to Mike Huckabee about his new book and whether or not he'll run again for president.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/02/24/jk.mike.huckabee.book.cnn

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