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Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
Justin Bieber Album Crowned Top Debut of 2012
Take that, Madonna!
In news that absolutely no one finds shocking, Justin Bieber is number-one on this week's Billboard 200 chart, as his new album, "Believe," solid 374,000 copies in its first week of release. That's the biggest debut sales week to date in 2012, surpassing the Material Girl's 359,000 for "MDNA."
The figure also represents a personal best for The Biebs. He previously sold 291,000 albums of "My World 2.0" in April 2010.
Justin, of course, has been anywhere and everywhere this week for promotion. The above still was snapped of him during a performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, while he actually stopped for a sing-along with fans prior to making that appearance.
He also engaged in a pretty great Awesome-Off with Jimmy Fallon earlier in the week. You should watch it.
Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/06/justin-bieber-album-crowned-top-debut-of-2012/
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Are Colorado's wildfires caused by global warming?
The wildfires devastating?Colorado?have been linked to a streak of unusually hot weather, but they that does not necessarily mean that global warming is the culprit.?
The Waldo Canyon fire burns off the southern border of the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado in this Tuesday photo. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for all housing residents of the academy as this fire continues to spread.
Mike Kaplan/US Air Force photo/Handout/Reuters
EnlargeDevastating wildfires scorching the state of Colorado are linked to a nasty streak of hot weather across the central part of the country, but it's tougher to link them definitively to global warming, climatologists say.
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Earlier research has found broad trends linking earlier spring weather, rising temperatures and increased forest fires, suggesting that climate change may play a role in fires like the Waldo Canyon blaze outside of Colorado Springs, which has burned more than 18,000 acres and consumed about 300 homes here. But linking a specific fire to the long-term trend of global warming isn't possible.
"You can't say it's?climate change?just because it's an extreme condition," said Colorado state climatologist Nolan Doesken. So far, Doesken told LiveScience, the spring of 2012 looks much like the spring of 1910, when warm temperatures hit early. That year, he said, was a bad one for fires. [Images: Devastating Colorado Fires]
Fire weather
The Waldo Canyon fire began on June 23 and has ripped through neighborhoods west of Colorado Springs, destroying a yet-unreleased number of homes. Just 130 miles (209 kilometers) to the north, the High Park wildfire outside of Fort Collins is well into its second week and has burned more than 87,000 acres. That fire killed one 62-year-old woman who was caught in her home.
Other significant fires?in the state include a 300-acre blaze 1.5 miles (2.4 km) outside of Boulder, a 9,168-acre blaze near Mancos in the southwestern part of the state and a 23,400-acre wildfire in rugged terrain in the San Juan National Forest, also in the southwestern part of the state.
The immediate driver of these fires is a lack of moisture and a ridge of heat that has settled over the central United States, said New Jersey state climatologist Dave Robinson, who also directs the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. After record snowpack last year, the Rocky Mountains did a 180 this year, Robinson said, seeing little moisture and early snowmelt.
"March and April are supposed to be your snowy months [in Colorado], and they weren't," Robinson told LiveScience. "Thus, the fire danger."
Meanwhile, a high-pressure system in the central part of the country is preventing cloud formation and allowing the sun to bake the ground, heating things up. On Tuesday (June 26) alone, 251 daily?heat records were broken?across the nation, according to the National Climatic Data Center. In the past week, more than 1,000 new daily heat records were put on the books. [The World's Weirdest Weather]
Climate change connection
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In divided Egypt, U.S. plays all sides
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ambiguous outcome of Egypt's revolution leaves Washington no choice but to deal with the country's two major players, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its disagreements with each.
Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement long held at arm's length by the United States, was declared on Sunday to have won Egypt's presidency.
He assumes an office whose powers have been whittled away by the military, whose recent actions are seen as anti-democratic but which remains the country's most powerful institution.
The military and the Muslim Brotherhood are wrestling over how to share power in a country that for the time being has no sitting parliament, no permanent constitution and no clear path toward democracy after last year's ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a long-time U.S. ally who banned and oppressed the Brotherhood.
As a result, current and former U.S. officials say, the United States faces a multidimensional diplomatic challenge. It must deal with everyone as it tries to sustain strategic cooperation with Egypt on its peace treaty with Israel and U.S. access to the Suez Canal, while advocating for democracy in a country whose dominant popular force is an Islamist party.
Working with the Muslim Brotherhood is particularly sensitive for the Obama administration.
The group has renounced violence itself, but has spawned violent spinoffs in the past. Some of its officials have previously questioned Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel and the rights of women and minorities such as Egypt's Coptic Christians.
"We're keeping the lines open" to all sides, said one U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The deliberate even-handedness was visible on Sunday when U.S. President Barack Obama took the rare step of calling both Mursi and Ahmed Shafik, the former Air Force chief and prime minister who lost the presidential election.
'A TOUGH PROBLEM'
The United States has limited ability to influence events in Egypt, Middle East analysts say, and is better off letting the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of the society work out an accommodation.
"This is not a made-in-America issue," said Rob Danin, a State Department official under President George W. Bush now at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The United States can't really affect it too much, nor should it try in the short term."
The power struggle playing itself out in Egypt is visible in a series of recent events.
These include the Supreme Constitutional Court's June 14 ruling to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament - an outcome widely believed within Egypt to have been engineered by the military.
On June 18, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces gave itself the power to legislate until a new parliament is elected, a veto over a new constitution and the right to choose a new assembly to draft a constitution if need be.
Both institutions are problematic partners for the United States - the military because of what analysts regard as their recent anti-democratic actions and the Muslim Brotherhood because of the uncertainty about its long-term policies.
"It is a tough problem. I think in some ways the Brotherhood is the easier side of the equation," said a congressional aide.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the aide said the White House appeared willing to deal with the Brotherhood as long as it acted democratically and inclusively and did not cross U.S. red lines on issues such as peace with Israel and the Suez Canal.
"We've been there before. We've seen Turkey. We've seen Tunisia. We've seen that people who call themselves Islamists might be OK," he said. "We are going to judge behavior, not history."
In a televised address on Sunday, Mursi pledged to be a president for all Egyptians and to unite the nation and, in a gesture directed at Israel's concerns, he promised to uphold all international treaties.
Still, there is ambivalence within the U.S. foreign policy community - notably among pro-Israel conservatives - about the Brotherhood given its officials' past statements calling for a review of the peace treaty and pledging to implement Islamic sharia law and its vociferous criticism of Israel.
"The fear is that rather than setting standards for the Brotherhood, we'll just jump in and say 'Well, they won; now let's all be friends,'" said Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser under Bush.
"I think we need to put pressure on them on questions like the role of women in society, the role of the Copts in Egyptian society, Egypt's relations with Hamas," he added, referring to the Palestinian Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made some of those points, calling on Mursi to include women, Copts and secular liberals as he forms a government.
"We've heard some very positive statements thus far, including about respecting international obligations, which would, in our view, cover the peace treaty with Israel. But we have to wait and judge by what is actually done," she said.
While he Brotherhood, a sprawling religious, political and social movement, has officially renounced violence, its militant spinoffs include Hamas and al Qaeda leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahri.
DIPLOMATIC TENSION
U.S. officials acknowledge strain between their desire to deal with an array of Egyptian politicians and their ambivalence about the Muslim Brotherhood's history and its members, some of whom have been barred from visiting the United States.
"There is this tension. More people want to see us. We want to see more people," said one U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Our relationship is evolving even as the individuals evolve and the nation (Egypt) evolves."
Despite U.S. visa bans and sanctions on Brotherhood leaders, U.S. officials sporadically conducted low-key contacts with Brotherhood representatives for years, often through Egyptian parliamentarians affiliated with the movement.
Last year, following Mubarak's ouster during the "Arab Spring" of popular protests, U.S. officials resumed what were described as formal diplomatic contacts with the movement.
Representative Mike Rogers, Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the United States should be wary.
"There was a whole host of al Qaeda leadership that had been Muslim Brotherhood that graduated to al Qaeda," Rogers said.
"Do I think there are moderate Muslim Brotherhood individuals we are going to have to reach out to and talk to? Yes. But we are going to have to watch it carefully," he added.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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DIY Home Security - Articles :: Networx
The first thing you can do to protect your house from invaders is to what Ethan Hunt did in Mission Impossible. You simply smash a light bulb and lay the shattered glass shards on the flooring outside your front door. That way when someone approaches, you?ll hear the glass crack under their feet and know that your presumably dead boss?s spy-wife is coming back home after a botched mission. Who needs Brinks? And here?s a fun tip: After enough people (invited people, not invaders) have walked through your front door, the glass will break down into sand that you can use to fill your child?s sandbox! (NOTE TO READER: PLEASE DO NOT USE BROKEN DOWN SHARDS OF GLASS TO FILL YOUR CHILD?S SANDBOX. HE WILL BLEED.)
But, you can?t rely on the shattered glass to keep burglars away. That?s merely a warning system. You need a contingency plan for if they get inside. That?s where all the Micro Machines come in. You simply line your entire first floor entryway with little toy cars. At the very minimum, this simple trick will keep Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern from successfully robbing your home. The thing about Daniel Stern, though, is? he?s not as smart as Joe Pesci, but he?s more resilient. You might need to also drop an iron on his face and place an upward facing nail on your basement stairs so he impales his foot. You know, basic DIY home security stuff for when you?re ?In Your House By Yourself?.
Home security isn?t just about preventing break-ins, though. You also need a way to escape your home in case of a fire. And for this, Step #1 is to dress all your kids in matching track jackets and grow their hair out like Ben Stiller. Then, you plan a very intense fire drill to see if you can all get out of your home in a reasonable amount of time. If you can?t, you just bring your whole family to stay with your mom, Angelica Houston, until you figure out a more efficient escape route. Your time with your mom might seem sort of stagnant, low-key, monotone, and boring, but the colors will be vibrant and all of your friends will be really into it.
And just like that, you?ve fully secured your home for hardly any cost at all. You just need a little movie knowledge, a light bulb, and a couple of toy cars. In all likelihood, you already have the matching track jackets for your kids.
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Thursday, June 28, 2012
Fears, hopes grow for Sony under new president
TOKYO (AP) ? The record 9,000 shareholders that packed Sony's annual meeting was no cause for celebration. After four years of losses and a halving of the share price, some angry investors doubt even a new CEO can pull the entertainment and electronics giant out of its slump.
The questions for management at a Tokyo convention hall this week were familiar ones, but only growing harsher. How is Sony Corp. going to regain its past glory? Is Sony finished? When is the red ink ever going to stop?
One man got up and began shouting. One by one, shareholders demanded to know why management didn't have more fresh faces, asked if the quality of Sony products was dropping, and even wondered whether Sony faced the risk of total collapse.
Once an icon of Japan Inc. with its portable Walkman music player and Trinitron TV, Sony reported the worst loss in its 66-year corporate history for the business year ended March with red ink of 457 billion yen ($5.7 billion). Profitability was battered by factors outside Sony's control such as last year's tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan, flooding in Thailand, the global economic slowdown and a soaring yen.
But most critically, Sony stumbled in the face of powerful, often cheaper, rivals such as South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., which dominates the global TV market. Sony has lost money for eight straight years in its TV business. Sony's glamor image is fading next to Apple Inc.'s iPod, iPhone and iPad, now bigger hits not only globally but also in Sony's Japanese home market, displaying the kind of ingenuity that was once prized as Sony's.
"We take the problem Sony's electronics business is facing very seriously, and we feel a sense of crisis," said Kazuo Hirai, the former head of Sony's game division who has taken over as CEO and president from Howard Stringer.
Decades ago, Sony co-founder Akio Morita was praised as a pioneer in unifying entertainment with technology to deliver dazzling fun gadgets such as the Walkman. He was a hero, helping fix Japan from wartime devastation, and catapulting a nation's technological wizardry to the global stage. Steve Jobs often sung the praises of Sony.
The company seemed to mirror and exemplify Japan's own rise as an economic and manufacturing power. Then something started going wrong. Critics often point to Sony's miscalculation of the strength of its digital music players over the last decade as a telling sign it had lost its way. Although Sony had developed digital music players early on, it failed to woo users by sticking to an unpopular proprietary format and not working on compatibility with the widespread MP3 format.
Now Sony's repeated promises of a revival have worn thin and are met with skepticism.
Stringer, who stepped down as CEO in April, pleaded with investors to support Hirai to carry out initiatives under the slogan of "One Sony." It's a strategy of removing barriers between the Tokyo-based manufacturer's sprawling divisions that span electronics, movies, music, banking and games so they all work better together.
But as soon as he stopped speaking, one stockholder asked why Stringer, who had hand-picked Hirai as his replacement, was staying on as chairman when Sony's performance had been so dismal under his seven-year tenure.
Hirai is promising to focus on image technology exemplified in sensors, broadcasting equipment and digital cameras to bring back Sony, but it faces competition from Samsung there as well.
"Japan excels in that core technology," Osamu Kumamoto, director at Asahi Electronics Co. of Japan, which offers image and robotics services, said at a recent manufacturing convention in Tokyo. "But Samsung is very advanced, too."
Hirai is also banking on games, the sector he knows best, having led Sony's U.S. game operations since 2006.
Sony has long faced tough competition from Nintendo Co. and Microsoft Corp. which makes the popular PlayStation machine. But the popularity of the iPhone and other devices that also offer games means Sony will increasingly be threatened by a host of electronics makers.
Still, Hirai departed from the line of his predecessors and didn't stress Sony's prowess in TVs. He only promised to stop the red ink.
Under Hirai, Sony has ended its joint venture in liquid crystal displays for TVs with Samsung to boost profitability. Sony fell behind in flat panel TVs and invested in a Samsung panel factory in 2004, to ensure a steady supply for LCD TVs.
Koichiro Hagiwara, senior analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center, said Hirai might be able to make a difference because of his understanding of entertainment and gadgetry.
"People have said the long promised synergy between software and hardware is a ghost that no one has ever seen," said Hagiwara. "But if anyone can make it real, it's Hirai."
Hirai is also promising to strengthen Sony's smartphone offerings, taking full control over its joint venture with Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson.
He has already said the company will cut 10,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of its global workforce. The job cuts come on top of a couple of rounds of layoffs under Stringer.
Hirai declined to detail upcoming products, saying that must be kept secret to stay competitive. But he acknowledged cost cuts, regrouping and promises won't be enough to revive Sony.
"We need to make sure our customers are moved by our products. We need to pique their curiosity," he told shareholders. "I want our shareholders to feel that Sony has changed."
Sony shares have lost about half their value over the past year to trade recently at about 1,000 yen ($12).
The changes at Sony underline a bigger shift in Japanese electronics to expand into businesses that sell to other businesses, rather than consumers.
There is speculation Sony will tie up with Japan's scandal-tainted Olympus Corp., which boasts a strong medical equipment division. Hirai declined comment on Olympus, but reiterated Sony wants to strengthen its medical business.
Panasonic Corp., which also suffered record losses, is vowing to turn itself around by focusing on such "business-to-business" sectors, including solar panels and batteries for autos, although it's not exiting consumer electronics.
In a reversal of a historical rivalry made famous by the 1980s video format wars between Sony's Betamax vs. Panasonic's VHS, the two companies are joining forces to develop next-generation TV display technology called OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, panels, aiming for low-cost mass production by 2013.
Samsung is planning to start selling TVs with big OLED screens later this year. OLEDs use a different technology than liquid crystal displays and deliver very clear, vivid imagery. Sony was the first in the world to sell an OLED TV, with an 11-inch model in 2007, but it wasn't a strong seller, partly because of its small size and high price.
Despite Hirai's promises to revive Sony, Kazuo Bando, a Tokyo retailer who owns 5,000 Sony shares and was at the shareholders meeting, wasn't feeling too confident.
"The management has failed," he said. "I am worried. I lost a lot of money."
___
Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama
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Congress to hold a hearing tomorrow on the Future of Video
If you're reading this, then you're probably always looking ahead at what technology might bring next. Tomorrow at 10AM ET, US Congress members of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will be doing that too. The specific segment of the market being discussed is video and on the docket to testify is a who's who of the video business. The old guard, NCTA and the MPAA, is being represented by Michael Power -- yes, the previous Chairman of the FCC -- and Michael O'Leary, respectively. On the other side are representatives from Dish Network, Sky Angel, Netflix, Roku and Public Knowledge. So yeah, this could get interesting. The NCTA has already starting posturing on its blog, Cable Tech Talk, with a post highlighting all the wonderful changes in the video distribution industry in the past 20 years -- however, curiously, the upwardly creeping price of the average bill wasn't mentioned. Of course a subcommittee hearing is just the first of a very long process towards real change, and while we'd be shocked if any of our ideas are implemented anytime soon, it's good to see some movement in Washington on a topic we care about.
Congress to hold a hearing tomorrow on the Future of Video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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