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HERMANN MISSOURI OKTOBERFEST 2010
HERMANN MISSOURI OKTOBERFEST 2010 - CLICK ON PHOTO FOR THIS YEARS SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
NASA's Messenger spacecraft has released its first image of Mercury -- the first ever glimpse of the innermost planet's dusty craters taken by a craft in orbit a mere 124 miles from the planet.
NASA's Messenger spacecraft has released its first shots of Mercury -- the first ever taken by a craft in orbit around the innermost planet in our solar system.
The high-res glimpse of the myriad dusty craters on the distant planet is the first tantalizing offering from Messenger, which has sailed into orbit high above the planet’s south pole and reveals Mercury's previously unseen surfaces.
“The entire Messenger team is thrilled that spacecraft and instrument checkout has been proceeding according to plan,” said Sean Solomon, Messenger's principal investigator from the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
“The first images from orbit and the first measurements from Messenger’s other payload instruments are only the opening trickle of the flood of new information that we can expect over the coming year. The orbital exploration of the Solar System’s innermost planet has begun,” he said.
The very first image taken by Messenger from orbit revealed a large rayed crater called Debussy, as well as a smaller crater called Matabei. The bottom portion of the image show Mercury's south pole and includes a region of Mercury's surface not previously seen by spacecraft.
Other pictures released by the space agency show a pock-marked planet remarkably similar to the moon, scarred by the impact of countless asteroids and other space rocks regularly pelting Mercury at high speeds, scientists said.
Mission chief scientist Sean Solomon said that what is surprising to scientists so far is that there are more secondary craters than expected. Those are craters created by the falling soil kicked up from space rock collisions.
Solomon said the craters look different from those on the moon because the space rocks are moving faster and hit Mercury harder.
On March 17, Messenger became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. In the course of the $446 million probe's one-year primary mission, the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation will unravel the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet.
The spacecraft is in an tight orbit that brings it within 124 miles of Mercury at the closest point -- and takes it out more than 9,300 miles away at the farthest point.
NASA and the Messenger team will release additional photos over the next few days -- the spacecraft is set to photograph 1,185 images over a three day period, the agency said.
While Messenger is the first mission ever to orbit around Mercury, it is not the first spacecraft to visit the planet. NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft flew by the planet three times in the mid-1970s.
ALGIERS - Libya's government warned on Wednesday that it would sue any international company that concluded energy deals with rebels who control some of the country's oil infrastructure, the state news agency reported.
The threat is likely to make it more complicated for the rebels based in eastern Libya to sell oil on the international market, a trade they had been counting on to finance their insurgency against the rule of Muammar Gaddafi.
"The National Oil Corporation ... is the entity authorized by law to deal with external parties. Because of the strategic importance of these goods -- oil and gas -- at the global level, no country can leave their management to armed gangs," said a government communique carried by the Jana news agency.
"The Libyan state will sue any party that seals deals regarding Libyan oil with parties other than the National Oil Corporation," it said.
A senior Libyan rebel official said on Sunday a Gulf oil producer, Qatar, had agreed to market oil produced from east Libyan fields that are no longer under Gaddafi's control.
On Monday, Qatar became the first Arab country to recognize the rebels. A U.S. official said crude oil sales by Libyan rebels would not be subject to U.S. sanctions if they were not connected to Gaddafi's government entities.
However, energy trading sources say shipping and legal risks mean it is unlikely the rebels will be able to market their oil abroad for several weeks.
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March 30, 2011
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A scheduled pulse of water into the Missouri River in March to benefit the endangered pallid sturgeon has been canceled. A natural pulse from the eastern South Dakota tributaries is occurring instead.
The melt of the extensive plains snowpack in eastern South Dakota has raised river levels well above the flow limits, eliminating the need for a two-day pulse.
Tributary streams in eastern South Dakota are well above flood stage and are forecast to remain high for the next several weeks. The magnitude of the March pulse was to be 5,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) minus the flow on the James River at just above its confluence with the Missouri River upstream of Sioux City.
Today's flow on the James River is nearly 25,000 cfs. It is expected to crest later this week, but remain high for the foreseeable future.
The Missouri River is above the downstream flow limits at all three locations: Omaha, Nebraska City and Kansas City.
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Half of the registered voters surveyed for the poll think that the president does not deserve a second term in office, while 41 percent say he does. In another Quinnipiac poll released just four weeks ago, 45 percent said the president did not deserve reelection, while 47 percent said he did.
The decline in support for a second Obama term comes as his approval rating has dropped 4 percentage points since early March, landing at 42 percent – a record low – in the poll released Wednesday. His disapproval rating has risen from 46 percent to 48 percent.
The downward shift may in part be the result of dissatisfaction over U.S involvement in Libya, with 47 percent of those surveyed saying they oppose it. By a margin of 58 percent to 29 percent, registered voters said that Obama has not clearly stated U.S. goals for the mission.
The poll as conducted March 22-28 and surveyed 2,069 registered voters. The error margin is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
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Baltic Sea letter in a bottle found 24 years later
By NATALIYA VASILYEVA and MELISSA EDDY
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March 30, 2010
MOSCOW – Nearly a quarter-century after a German boy tossed a message in a bottle off a ship in the Baltic Sea, he's received an answer.
A 13-year-old Russian, Daniil Korotkikh, was walking with his parents on a beach when he saw something glittering lying in the sand.
"I saw that bottle and it looked interesting," Korotkikh told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "It looked like a German beer bottle with a ceramic plug, and there was a message inside."
His father, who knows schoolboy German, translated the letter, carefully wrapped in cellophane and sealed by a medical bandage.
It said: "My name is Frank, and I'm five years old. My dad and I are traveling on a ship to Denmark. If you find this letter, please write back to me, and I will write back to you."
The letter, dated 1987, included an address in the town of Coesfeld.
The boy in the letter, Frank Uesbeck, is now 29. His parents still live at the letter's address.
"At first I didn't believe it," Uesbeck told the AP about getting the response from Korotkikh. In fact, he barely remembered the trip at all; his father actually wrote the letter.
The Russian boy and the German man met each other earlier this month via an Internet video link.
Korotkikh showed Uesbeck the bottle where he found the message and the letter that he put in a frame.
The Russian boy said he does not believe that the bottle actually spent 24 years in the sea: "It would not have survived in the water all that time," he said.
He believes it had been hidden under the sand where he found it — on the Curonian Spit, a 100-kilometer (60-mile) stretch of sand in Lithuania and Russia.
In the web chat earlier this month, Uesbek gave Korotkikh his new address to write to and promised to write back when he receives his letter.
"He'll definitely get another letter from me," the 29-year-old said.
Uesbeck was especially thrilled that he was able to have a positive impact on a life of a young person far away from Germany.
"It's really a wonderful story," he said. "And who knows? Perhaps one day we will actually be able to arrange a meeting in person."
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Eddy reported from Berlin.
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In this photo made available Tuesday March 29, 2011 by Israeli Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs shows a Facebook page calling on Palestinians to take up arms against Israel. Facebook removed the page on Tuesday following a high-profile Israeli appeal. The page, titled 'Third Palestinian Intifada,' had more than 350,000 fans before it was taken down. It called on Palestinians to take to the streets after Friday prayers on May 15 and to begin an uprising. 'Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews,' a quote from the page reads.
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Facebook cuts 'uprising' page after Israel protest
By ARON HELLER, Associated Press –
Mar 29
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JERUSALEM – Facebook on Tuesday removed a page calling on Palestinians to take up arms against Israel, following a high-profile Israeli appeal to the popular social-networking site.
The affair highlighted how Facebook is increasingly involved in charged political conflicts, balancing between protecting freedom of expression and defending against hate speech.
The page, titled "Third Palestinian Intifada," had more than 350,000 fans when it was taken down. It called on Palestinians to take to the streets after Friday prayers on May 15 and begin an uprising. "Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews," a quote from the page read.
Facebook said the page began as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used the term "intifada," which it said has been associated with violence in the past.
"However, after the publicity of the page, more comments deteriorated to direct calls for violence," said Andrew Noyes, Facebook's public policy communications manager. He said the creators of the page eventually made calls for violence as well.
"We monitor pages that are reported to us, and when they degrade to direct calls for violence or expressions of hate — as occurred in this case — we have and will continue to take them down."
Facebook added that it typically does not take down content that speaks out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas.
With the "Facebook Revolutions" helping to bring down regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, the social networking site has become an agent of change and a powerful political tool that finds itself asked to make rulings on the content posted by its millions of users worldwide.
Jerome Barron, a law professor and First Amendment expert at George Washington University, said that as a private concern, Facebook does not fall under the guidelines of U.S. freedom of expression legislation and is free to decide on its own policies.
Barron noted arguments that companies like Google and Facebook were growing so powerful that they should be regulated by the freedom of expression guidelines.
In a letter last week to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Israeli Cabinet Minister Yuli Edelstein said the page included "wild incitement," with calls to kill Jews and of "liberating" Jerusalem through violence.
Edelstein applauded Facebook for removing the page, saying he hoped the action would be an example to others and deter similar postings in the future.
"I asked Mr. Zuckerberg that the red lines of freedom of expression and incitement and violence should not be crossed," he said. "I welcome that decision even though I am sure that more cat-and-mouse games await us and there will be attempts by our enemies and those who hate us to enter Facebook in other ways."
The original page featured a fist in the colors of the Palestinian flag and images of dead Palestinian children. Since its removal, several other pages with of the same name have been created — each attracting only a few hundred "likes" apiece.
Facebook's content regulations prohibit posting material that contains or promotes "hateful or violent content directed at an individual or group" — including those based on national origin or religious affiliation.
It has previously removed pages deemed to violate their policies — ranging from Holocaust deniers, anti-gay bullying groups and even people using fake names.
Jewish advocacy groups launched a counter page, encouraging users to report "Third Palestinian Intifada" for its hateful content and demand that Facebook remove it.
Initially, Facebook seemed hesitant to do so, citing its support for freedom of expression.
The Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based Jewish advocacy group, lauded Facebook's eventual decision.
"By taking this action, Facebook has now recognized an important standard to be applied when evaluating issues of noncompliance with its terms of service involving distinctions between incitement to violence and legitimate calls for collective expressions of opinion and action," the ADL said in a statement.
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The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing the high-profile Wal-Mart gender discrimination case today, which has been called the largest job discrimination lawsuit ever.
I noticed a mention in an Associated Press story earlier this week that one of the six plaintiffs in the case first complained of being passed over for promotions when working at a store in Missouri.
So I started snooping around to find out more about the Missouri connection and here's what I found:
Christine Kwapnoski started working as a cashier at a Wal-Mart-owned Sam's Club in Grandview, Missouri in 1986. She was 22 at at the time. Grandview is on the western edge of the state, near the Kansas border.
According to her court declaration, Kwapnoski received good evaluations at the Grandview store and often expressed her desire to be promoted to management. But promotions did not materialize. In the meantime, she said she observed that some of her co-workers, most of them male, would be suddenly moved into higher positions as soon as they became available and before she had a chance to express interest in those jobs.
In 1993, she moved to Concord, Calif. with the promise of a $2 an hour raise at a Sam's Club there, but she said she never got the raise. For more than a decade, she continued to express her interest in becoming a manager, but watched as men she had trained received promotions above her.
Finally, in June 2001 -- two weeks after the lawsuit was filed -- she was promoted to a management position. In her new role, a male supervisor later asked her to "doll up" and to "blow the cobwebs off my make-up," according to the court brief.
Kwapnoski continues to work at that Sam's Club in California.
The issue the Supreme Court is expected to rule on is whether the case can go forward as a class action on behalf of all women who work at Wal-Mart. The world's largest retailer has argued that the lawsuit is too broad in including women in many different positions.
The plaintiffs' website -- walmartclass.com -- also list declarations from 115 women around the country who claim they have been discriminated against by Wal-Mart. The list includes eight other women from Missouri.
One of the women -- Jaime Lanois -- said she started working at a Wal-Mart in Springfield, Mo. when she was 15. A couple years later, she said a male stock employee sexually assaulted her when he put his hand down her shirt and grabbed her. When she complained to management, she said the employee was given just a verbal warning. She was not aware of the employee receiving further punishment.
Lanois later worked at a different Wal-Mart store in Springfield and ended up resigning in 1998 in part out of frustration for being passed over for promotions by less-qualified male employees.
The Supreme Court is not expected to release its decision in the case until June.
WASHINGTON -- Christine Kwapnoski hasn't done too badly in nearly 25 years in the Wal-Mart family, making more than $60,000 a year in a job she enjoys most days.
But Kwapnoski says she faced obstacles at Wal-Mart-owned Sam's Club stores in both Missouri and California: Men making more than women and getting promoted faster.
She never heard a supervisor tell a man, as she says one told her, to "doll up" or "blow the cobwebs off" her make-up.
Once she got over the fear that she might be fired, she joined what has turned into the largest job discrimination lawsuit ever.
The 46-year-old single mother of two is one of the named plaintiffs in a suit that will be argued at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. At stake is whether the suit can go forward as a class action that could involve 500,000 to 1.6 million women, according to varying estimates, and potentially could cost the world's largest retailer billions of dollars.
But the case's potential importance issue goes well beyond the Wal-Mart dispute, as evidenced by more than two dozen briefs filed by business interests on Wal-Mart's side, and civil rights, consumer and union groups on the other.
The question is crucial to the viability of discrimination claims, which become powerful vehicles to force change when they are presented together, instead of individually. Class actions increase pressure on businesses to settle suits because of the cost of defending them and the potential for very large judgments.
Columbia University law professor John Coffee said that the high court could bring a virtual end to employment discrimination class actions filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, depending on how it decides the Wal-Mart case.
"Litigation brought by individuals under Title VII is just too costly," Coffee said. "It's either class action or nothing."
Illustrating the value of class actions, Brad Seligman, the California-based lawyer who conceived of and filed the suit 10 years ago, said the average salary for a woman at Wal-Mart was $13,000, about $1,100 more than the average for a man, when the case began. "That's hugely significant if you're making $13,000 a year, but not enough to hire a lawyer and bring a case."
The company has fought the suit every step of the way, Seligman said, because it is the "biggest litigation threat Wal-Mart has ever faced."
A trial judge and the federal appeals court in San Francisco, over a fierce dissent, said the suit could go forward.
But Wal-Mart wants the high court to stop the suit in its tracks. The company argues it includes too many women with too many different positions in its 3,400 stores across the country. Wal-Mart says its policies prohibit discrimination and that most management decisions are made at the store and regional levels, not at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.
Theodore J. Boutrous, Wal-Mart's California-based lawyer, said there is no evidence that women are poorly treated at Wal-Mart. "The evidence is the contrary of that," Boutrous said.
The company is not conceding that any woman has faced discrimination, but says that if any allegations are proven, they are isolated. "People will make errors," said Gisel Ruiz, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for people, as the company calls its human resources unit. "People are people."
Ruiz paints a very different picture of the opportunities offered women at Wal-Mart. She joined the company straight from college in 1992. "In less than four years, I went from an assistant manager trainee to running my own store," she said. "I'm one of thousands of women who have had a positive experience at Wal-Mart."
Kwapnoski, who works at the Sam's Club in Concord, Calif., is one of two women who continue to work at Wal-Mart while playing a prominent role in the suit. The other is Betty Dukes, a greeter at the Walmart in Pittsburg, Calif.
"It's very hard for anyone to understand how difficult that is and what courage that is," Seligman said of Kwapnoski and Dukes. "They're Public Enemy No. 1 at Wal-Mart and they are known for their involvement in this lawsuit. Nevertheless, they get and up and go to work every day."
Kwapnoski didn't want to discuss any issues she faces at work as a result of the suit.
She said she has seen some changes at Wal-Mart since the suit was filed in 2001. The company now posts all its openings electronically. "It does give people a better idea of what's out there, but they still can be very easily passed over." she said. "But before you didn't even know the position was open."
The suit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, contends that women are grossly underrepresented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responds that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.
Kwapnoski said she and a lot of women were promoted into management just after the suit was filed, although she has had only a couple of pay increases in the nine years since. She is the assistant manager in her store's groceries and produce sections.
Now, she said, promotions are back to the way they were before, favoring men over women.
She said she's hoping the long-running court fight will force Wal-Mart to recognize that, stories like Ruiz's aside, women are not valued as much as men are and that her bosses will begin to "make sure that good men and good women are being promoted, not just men."
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Online:
Briefs in the case: http://tinyurl.com/4ckzfz5
Associated Press March 24, 201
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Starz has become the latest pay TV channel to pull back from its embrace of subscription video provider Netflix Inc. and treat it more like a competitor.
The channel, a unit of Liberty Media Corp., said Thursday that beginning with its new "Camelot" series on April 1, new episodes of original series will be allowed to play on Netflix Inc.'s streaming service only 90 days after they debut on Starz.
Previously, Netflix customers were able to stream new episodes of original series "Spartacus" as soon as they aired. That meant Netflix customers only interested in original series could forego a separate subscription to Starz.
Starz said the delay will soon apply to "exclusive first-run movies" as well.
Starz has the pay TV rights to movies from The Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp. The immediacy of being able to stream those popular movies on Netflix has been a driving force in its being able to sign up new subscribers.
That deal has been widely criticized as being too favorable for Netflix and analysts expect the company to have to pay a hefty premium to renew the deal after it expires in the middle of the first quarter of next year.
Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey insisted "the movies that we have through Starz to watch instantly are unchanged" until the current deal expires. "In 2012, some may or may not be available in the same window. We'll work that out at the time," he said.
The Starz scheduling change was announced just a day after CBS Corp. confirmed that this summer it will stop allowing Netflix to stream back episodes of current season original shows from its Showtime pay channel such as "Dexter" and "Californication." Netflix argued that the decision wasn't final and was subject to negotiations.
Netflix, which grew to 20.2 million subscribers by the end of the year, is increasingly being seen as a competitor to traditional pay TV channels like HBO, Starz and Showtime. Time Warner Inc.'s HBO has an estimated 28 million customers, Starz ended the year with 18.2 million and Showtime had less than 20 million.
Unlike traditional pay TV channels, getting a Netflix subscription does not require also buying dozens of other channels in lower-level price tiers, and Netflix's streaming service can be watched on computers and a wide array of devices that connect the Internet to people's televisions.
The traditional channels are countering that move by offering their services for free online to paying subscribers.
Netflix has been buying up content for its streaming service and wants to wean people off of ordering rental DVDs by mail to save on postage costs.
Last week, it announced it was buying the right to debut original series "House of Cards" from executive producer David Fincher. That foray into new original content put it even more into direct competition with the pay TV operators.
Shares of the Liberty Starz Group tracking stock were down 46 cents at $77.70 in after-hours trading Thursday after closing down $1.32, or 1.7 percent, at $78.16. Netflix shares fell $1.63 to $227.50, after rising 7 cents in the regular session to $229.13.
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Netflix closes deal to run original TV series online
By BRIAN STELTER New York Times March 21, 2011
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There is a new competitor for HBO and Showtime in the television landscape — and, for the first time, it is not a television network. Netflix, the popular online film service, said Friday that it had licensed the exclusive rights to “House of Cards,” a show to be directed by David Fincher, the director of “The Social Network,” and to star Kevin Spacey.
The deal immediately makes Netflix a player in premium television programming.
“House of Cards,” a serialized political drama, will look and feel like a traditional TV show, but it will not be distributed that way. Rather than having its debut at a certain time and date on a TV channel, “House of Cards” will have its debut online, where there are no set show times. It will be marketed through Netflix’s recommendation engine. And it will probably be released in batches, several episodes at a time, since subscribers like to binge on serialized shows.
“Just a couple years ago, this would be completely unheard of,” Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix, acknowledged in an interview. “It speaks a lot to how quickly this market is emerging and to how quickly Netflix has become a real, legitimate entertainment brand in the eyes of both consumers and content creators.”
The deal, previewed several days ago by Deadline.com, underscored just how muscular Netflix has become in the media business. By licensing “House of Cards,” Netflix is essentially selling itself to Hollywood as an alternative to networks like HBO — and indicating that it is willing to pay high prices for high-quality shows. Netflix would not comment on the value of the deal, but it was believed to be close to $100 million.
“Netflix is the original unbundled TV purveyor — the opposite of a network,” said Terry Heaton, a new media expert and the author of the PoMo Blog. He said the Netflix move was bold and “a big loud knock on the door” for other companies.
Analysts said that through the deal, Netflix was both striving to differentiate its service and to reduce its dependence on films and TV shows licensed from third parties. Netflix has become a target of HBO and that network’s parent company, Time Warner, as well as other major media companies, and it is likely to face much steeper costs for those licenses.
Netflix has more than 20 million subscribers, and it is adding more rapidly, thanks in part to the proliferation of connected screens like iPads.
Ingrid Chung, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, upgraded Netflix to buy from neutral this week. She said in an analyst’s note that about 27 percent of consumers in the U.S. now stream movies and TV shows over the Internet, up from 16 percent at the same time last year. Many do so through Netflix, which Chung said “now has sufficient scale to make it difficult for new entrants, given low price points and expensive content costs.”
Netflix’s stock, which nearly quadrupled last year, closed Friday at $209.40, down $4.50.
A small group of other companies, Hulu, the YouTube division of Google and the Xbox division of Microsoft among them, have also contemplated distribution setups like the one conceived by Netflix and Media Rights Capital, which is producing “House of Cards.”
Asif Satchu, a co-chairman of Media Rights Capital, said he was shocked when he first saw how many subscribers Netflix had amassed.
“They have a distribution platform that could rival the networks’,” he said Friday in an interview.
Netflix is licensing the North American rights to 26 episodes of the show. That is the equivalent of two seasons of a cable television drama. That is a departure from the normal model of TV production, in which one pilot episode is completed before one season is ordered. The production company will retain international, syndication and DVD sales rights.
On Friday, Netflix sought to tamp down talk about the risk it was taking with the show. The company already streams past seasons of hundreds of TV shows, Sarandos said; the difference this time is that “we made a commitment prior to production.”
The show will not have its debut until late 2012, giving the producers ample time to “get the show right,” Satchu said.
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For the full story, go to The New York Times.
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By JIM GALLAGHER post-dispatch.com Wednesday, March 30, 2011
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The TV set and the Internet are getting married, and no one knows what the result of that union might be. In south St. Louis County, Jacob and Robin Metheny show one way that things might go — with worrisome implications for the pay-TV business.
The 30-something couple cut their AT&T U-verse service. "We were paying like $100 a month, and we were only watching three or four stations," said the husband.
So they went back to the days of rabbit ears and broadcast channels — but they kept their high-speed Internet connection and got a $9.99 monthly subscription to Netflix, which offers Internet viewing of hundreds of movies and TV reruns. They connect their two TVs to the Internet through a Blu-ray disc player and a Wii game console. Do they miss cable?
"Eh! It's no loss," says Jacob Metheny, adding the family only misses one show they can't currently get.
Their situation underscores the rapid fragmentation of the TV viewing market, where the rise of on-demand online entertainment threatens the longtime dominance of pay-television services. The digital revolution — which already has made mincemeat of the traditional models for selling intellectual property ranging from newspapers to music — now appears poised to undercut pay-TV providers such as Charter Communications. Based in Town and Country, Charter is the nation's fourth-largest cable company and employs 3,000 people locally and 17,000 total.
New cable and satellite TV customers, after years of growth, appear to have crested the hill — and could soon begin a descent. The fast-evolving market now teems with competitors and competing models for both revenue and delivery. Netflix and similar services offer thousands of movies and TV shows. Broadcast networks and cable channels put certain shows online or sell them through retailers such as Apple. And you can watch on more devices — from laptops to tablets to smartphones.
Increasingly, the Internet and the TV screen are becoming one. TiVo, video game systems, Apple TV, Roku, Google TV and other systems link Internet content to the TV screen. TV manufacturers are marketing sets that connect directly.
Pay-TV operators "ought to be worried. If they're not worried, they're not paying attention to the potential threat," says Ian Olgeirson, senior analyst at SNL Kagan, an investment data and analysis firm. Signs of decline
About 100 million households pay for TV service through cable, phone company lines or satellite. For the first time, that number dipped slightly last spring and summer. Though the losses have since been recovered, it's a sign that pay TV may have reached the saturation point, with 89 percent of homes connected by wire or satellite. Throw in cheaper or free Web options, and more viewers will be cutting the cable cord, says Olgeirson.
At the moment, people in the pay-TV business are betting that the giant flat screen won't give way to a slim tablet. Internet connections still suffer from clunkiness and limits to the shows you can watch, and the growing presence of high-definition TVs also favors cable subscriptions. Many consumers won't trade that for "fuzzy" Internet reception, says Kurt Scherf, principal analyst at Parks Associates, a digital marketing and research firm in Dallas.
But some of the more tech-savvy and determined customers may provide a window into how television and movies get consumed in the future. In O'Fallon, Mo., Robert Hollis, an engineer by trade, rigged up his own "home theater PC" for Web access on the big-screen TV, using a remote tuner, an HD antenna on the garage wall for broadcast, and a music center and surround sound. He spent $850 on equipment.
Then he cut his satellite TV service — substituting Netflix, Hulu's TV show rerun service and other free Internet video. "I was paying $70 for the satellite. It paid for itself rather quickly," he said.
The devices will get better with time, which is why the industry is busily trying to find ways to make money distributing content across multiple platforms. Cable companies might put pay TV online, for instance, but only for cable subscribers. HBOGo already lets subscribers watch the pay channel's programs over the Internet on demand. "This is really more about evolution than revolution," Bruce Leichtman of Leichtman Research Group in New Hampshire. "The future is going to look more like today than some Jetson-esque future."
Cable companies such as Charter and Des Peres-based Suddenlink are joining forces with TiVo to offer customers a way to connect TV to the Internet, as well as time-shift programming — allowing the viewer to record and watch later. Over the long term, these cable providers hope to become the Googles of video search, offering searchable video on demand. Borrowing tactics from Netflix and social media, they can track your viewing habits to offer suggestions and allow you to connect with friends to trade recommendations.
"You'll be able to pull down any piece of content and watch it on any device," says Rich DiGeronimo, vice president for product management at Charter.
___________________________________________________________________________________ US Navy P-3C, USAF A-10 and USS Barry Engage Libyan Vessels
3/29/2011
USS MOUNT WHITNEY, At Sea (NNS) -- A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft and guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52), engaged Libyan Coast Guard vessel Vittoria and two smaller craft March 28.
The vessels were engaged after confirmed reports that Vittoria and accompanying crafts were firing indiscriminately at merchant vessels in the port of Misrata, Libya.
The P-3C fired at Vittoria with AGM-65F Maverick missiles, rendering the 12-meter patrol vessel ineffective and forcing it to be beached after multiple explosions were observed in the vicinity of the port.
Two smaller Libyan craft were fired upon by the A-10 using its 30mm GAU-8/ Avenger cannon, destroying one and forcing the other to be abandoned.
Barry provided situational awareness for the aircraft by managing the airspace and maintaining the maritime picture.
The P-3C, A-10 and Barry are currently supporting operations for Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn.
Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn is the U.S. Africa Command task force established to provide operational and tactical command and control of U.S. military forces supporting the international response to the unrest in Libya and enforcement of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1973. UNSCR 1973 authorizes all necessary measures to protect civilians in Libya under threat of attack by Qadhafi regime forces.
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Workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant are working in overdrive, attempting to stop the spread of radioactive materials into the ocean as well as avoid a full scale meltdown.
In a startling development, Crews found traces of plutonium in the soil outside of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex on Monday, but officials continued to insist there was no threat to public health. Plutonium is highly dangerous and has raised the level of fear tenfold.
Worried? Apparently at least one person now believes that Plutonium is actually good for human health!
Plutonium, one of the most feared radioactive substances on earth, may in fact enhance human health, according to unexpected new findings published in the journal, Health Physics, wrote Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kanhas statedthat Japan is on Maximum Alert and the situation remains unpredictable and ever changing.
Multiple embassies in Japan have started to pass out potassium iodide tablets as a precautionary measure. These tablets are being distributed in a 250km radius yet Japanese officials continue to claim that potassium iodide is only needed within the 20km evacuation zone.
The difference in opinion between the Japanese government and Foreign embassies is so huge that it seems impossible that Japan is not covering up the extent of this disaster.
“The recommendation by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority that all Swedes who are staying within a radius of 250 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant to take iodide tablets every three days is still valid,” the embassy’s website, last updated Saturday, says. “Best protection against radioactive iodine is to take iodide tablets before the exposure, as doing so afterward will prove too late,” reported The Japan Times.
Officials with TEPCO are also facing a major dilemma. They need to cool the reactors with water but at the same time keep the water from contaminating the ocean with toxic radioactive materials.
“TEPCO is in an awful dilemma right now,” said Jim Walsh, an international security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “One the one hand, they want to cool the reactor and keep the reactor cool, so they have to pour water in. If there is a leak in one of the containment vessels, that water keeps leaking out. So they have a problem where the more they try to cool it down, the greater the radiation hazard as that water leaks out from the plant,” reported the CNN Wire Staff. Fox News is reporting that TEPCO officials have LOST the battle to save one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
“The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell,” Lahey told the Guardian.
Meanwhile the Head of TEPCO has all but vanished since a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan on March 11th. He was last seen on the 13th which has led many to speculate that he has left the country.
Amid rumors that Shimizu had fled the country, checked into a hospital or committed suicide, company officials said Monday that their boss had suffered an unspecified “small illness” because of overwork after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami crashing onto his company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, reported the Washington Post.
There is no way to tell if Shimizu is actually in Tokyo due to the fact that no one has actually seen him.
Officials in the United States have continued to claim that the levels found in the U.S. are no worse then background radiation, ignoring the simple fact that most of these radioactive particles do not normally occur in the atmosphere at all. Radiation from Japan N-plant reaches Britain
Nuclear Crisis In Japan Will Not Slow Relicensing of U.S. Plants
3/29/2011
Tom Brakefield/Thinkstock
(WASHINGTON) -- The nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant will not have an impact on the re-licensing of U.S. nuclear reactors, a top Nuclear Regulatory Commission official told lawmakers Tuesday.
“There’s no technical reason, that I’m aware of, that this would impact the license renewal process for the remaining plants in the U.S.,” Bill Borchardt, the NRC Executive Director for Operations, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Over half of the 104 operating reactors in the U.S. have already received license renewals for an additional 20 years of operation. The NRC expects that the other half will continue with the license extension process.
“If there was a design change necessary in order to adapt the plants to what we’re learning from Japan we would take that action absent or outside of the license-renewal, review process,” Borchardt explained. “We would take that without hesitation.”
Several lawmakers have called for a moratorium on relicensing in light of the ongoing crisis in Japan.
Peter Lyons, the acting assistant secretary for Nuclear Energy at the Department of Energy, explained that the Fukushima Daiichi plants “are in a slow recovery from the accident. However, long-term cooling of the reactors and pools is essential during this period and has not been adequately restored to date.”
Borchardt agreed. “The situation in general continues to further stabilize, although there are many hurdles that remain.”
Among those hurdles are reports of radioactive water in the basements of the turbine buildings which, according to Borchardt, is from the water that has been injected to cool the reactors.
“We believe that the water is the result of the ‘bleed and feed’ process that they have been using to keep water in the reactor cores and in the containment of the units,” Borchardt said. “The exact flow path of that leakage has not been determined.”
As for reports of plutonium in the soil near the nuclear plant, Lyons said the news did not come as a surprise. “All operating reactors, whether they start with any plutonium in the fuel or not, build up plutonium in the course of operation. So finding plutonium that was derived from either the operating reactors or the spent fuel pools would not be regarded as a major surprise. Certainly it would be a concern if it were in significant levels,” he explained.
US Stores Spent Nuclear Fuel Rods At 4 Times Pool Capacity
The Intel Hub By Rady Ananda - Contributing Writer
March 27th, 2011
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Spent fuel pool at the top of a nuclear reactor
In a recent interview with The Real News Network, Robert Alvarez, a nuclear policy specialist since 1975, reports that spent nuclear fuel in the United States comprises the largest concentration of radioactivity on the planet: 71,000 metric tons. Worse, since the Yucca Mountain waste repository has been scrapped due to its proximity to active faults (see last image), the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has allowed reactor operators to store four times more waste in the spent fuel pools than they’re designed to handle.
Each Fukushima spent fuel pool holds about 100 metric tons, he says, while each US pool holds from 500-700 metric tons. A single pool fire would release catastrophic amounts of radioactivity, rendering 17-22,000 square miles of area uninhabitable. That’s about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont – from one pool fire.
In a March 25th interview, physician and nuclear activist Dr Helen Caldicott explains that “there’s far more radiation in each of the cooling pools than there is in each reactor itself…. Now the very short-lived isotopes have decayed away to nothing. But the long-lived ones, the very dangerous ones, Cesium, Strontium, Uranium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, Neptunium, I mean really dangerous ones, the long-lived ones – that’s what the fuel pools hold.”
Nuclear waste, in the form of tiny pellets, are loaded into metal rods, that are then bundled into a “fuel assembly.” The assemblies are stored inside casements that are then submerged in cooling pools that are located at the top of a nuclear reactor, as the following images reveal:
The image at the top of the article shows an entire pool filled with these assemblies. There are millions of these rods around the planet, reports Reuters.
As a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Alvarez was part of a multidisciplinary international team that looked at possible terror attacks on nuclear facilities, focusing on the spent fuel storage pools. In 2003, they released a report, Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States, which calls for transferring the spent fuel from the pools into dry-cask storage. (Summary here.)
The report recommends that 75% of the spent rods be removed from each of the pools and stored in ultra-thick concrete bunkers capable of withstanding aerial impact. The project would take about ten years and would “reduce the average inventory of 137Cs (radioactive cesium) in U.S. spent-fuel pools by about a factor of four.”
The NRC attempted to suppress the IPC report, Alvarez says. “The response by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nuclear industry was hostile.” But the National Academy of Sciences agreed that a fire in an overloaded fuel pool would be catastrophic. The NRC attempted to block the Academy’s report, as well.
The NRC serves industry, not the public, and by controlling the purse strings, Congress has forced the NRC to “greatly curtail its regulatory programs,” says Alvarez.
Engineer Keith Harmon Snow couldn’t agree more. He recently lambasted the NRC and mainstream media for downplaying the ongoing catastrophe in Japan. He notes that, “The atomic bomb that exploded at Hiroshima created about 2000 curies of radioactivity. The spent fuel pools at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant (U.S.) are said to hold about 75 million curies.” [emphasis added]
And that’s just one US nuclear plant, out of 104, not to ignore the undisclosed number of research sites. Then consider that several nuclear plants sit on geologic faults, as this image by Public Integrity reveals:
Also see this global map of earthquake activity and nuclear power plant locations.
Nuclear waste is a serious, deadly and growing problem that the industry refuses to address, preferring to externalize disposal costs onto the public (even suing the US government to clean up its mess for them, under a 1998 law it no doubt favored).
Unless the radioactive waste is laser-launched toward the sun, we’re stuck with waste that will contaminate the biosphere for thousands of years, for the measly prize of 25-30 years of electricity, as nuclear activist and mathematician Gordon Edwards so eloquently explained. The risk far outweighs the benefit; this energy choice exemplifies the insanity of the nuclear industry and its government protectors.
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