Saturday, October 30, 2010

To All Humans, Happy Halloween !!!!!



Happy Halaloween Everybody !!!

Ron Root of Citrus Heights, California shows off his first place ribbon next to his 1,535 pound Atlantic Giant Pumpkin during the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California.

A polar bear at the San Diego Zoo gets into the Halloween spirit as he bobs for a pumpkin on October 28, 2004 at his Zoo haunt Polar Bear Plunge in San Diego, California. Kalluk, a 735- pound sub-adult male bear pounced on, tackled and hugged the large plastic jack-o-lantern which provided him hours of amusement.

Happy Halloween Everybody !!!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Bill Gates Income Tax

Framed on a wall in my office is a personal letter to me from Bill Gates the elder. "I am a fan of progressive taxation," he wrote. "I would say our country has prospered from using such a system—even at 70% rates to say nothing of 90%."

It's one thing to believe in bad policy. It's quite another to push it on others. But Mr. Gates Sr.—an accomplished lawyer, now retired—and his illustrious son are now trying to have their way with the people of the state of Washington.

Mr. Gates Sr. has personally contributed $500,000 to promote a statewide proposition on Washington's November ballot that would impose a brand new 5% tax on individuals earning over $200,000 per year and couples earning over $400,000 per year. An additional 4% surcharge would be levied on individuals and couples earning more than $500,000 and $1 million, respectively.

Along with creating a new income tax on high-income earners, Initiative 1098 would also reduce property, business and occupation taxes. But raising the income tax is the real issue. Doing so would put the state's economy at risk.

To imagine what such a large soak-the-rich income tax would do to Washington, we need only examine how states with the highest income-tax rates perform relative to their zero-income tax counterparts. Comparing the nine states with the highest tax rates on earned income to the nine states with no income tax shows how high tax rates weaken economic performance.

In the past decade, the nine states with the highest personal income tax rates have seen gross state product increase by 59.8%, personal income grow by 51%, and population increase by 6.1%. The nine states with no personal income tax have seen gross state product increase by 86.3%, personal income grow by 64.1%, and population increase by 15.5%.

It's striking how the high-tax states have underperformed relative to those with no income tax. Especially noteworthy is how well Washington has performed compared to states with no income tax.

If Washington passes Initiative 1098, it will go from being one of the fastest-growing states in the country to one of the slowest-growing. And passage of I-1098 will only be the beginning. Just look at Ohio, Michigan and California to see that once a state adopts an income tax, there is no end to the number of reasons that such a tax could be extended, expanded and increased.

Over the past 50 years, 11 states have introduced state income taxes exactly as Messrs. Gates and their allies are proposing—and the consequences have been devastating.

[artlaffer]

The 11 states where income taxes were adopted over the past 50 years are: Connecticut (1991), New Jersey (1976), Ohio (1971), Rhode Island (1971), Pennsylvania (1971), Maine (1969), Illinois (1969), Nebraska (1967), Michigan (1967), Indiana (1963) and West Virginia (1961).

Each and every state that introduced an income tax saw its share of total U.S. output decline. Some of the states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, have become fiscal basket cases. As the nearby chart shows, even West Virginia, which was poor to begin with, got relatively poorer after adopting a state income tax.

Washington's I-1098 proposes a state income tax with a maximum rate higher than any of those initially adopted by the other 11 states. In one fell swoop, Washington would move from being one of the lowest-tax states in the nation to being one of the top nine highest. It's economic suicide.

The states that have high income tax rates or have adopted a state income tax over the past 50 years haven't even gotten the money they hoped for. They haven't avoided budget crises, nor have they provided better lives for the poor. The ongoing financial travails of California, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan and New York are cases in point.

Over the past decade, the nine states with the highest tax rates have experienced tax revenue growth of 74%—a full 22% less than the states with no income tax. Washington state has done better than the average of the nine no-tax states. Why on earth would it want to introduce a state income tax when it means less money for state coffers?

What's true for those states with the highest tax rates is doubly true for the 11 states that have instituted state income taxes over the past half-century. They too have lost huge sums of tax revenue.

A final thought for those who want to punish the rich for their success: As the nearby chart shows, those states with the highest tax rates, and those states that have introduced state income taxes, have seen standards of living (personal income per capita) substantially underperform compared to their no-tax counterparts.

If Mr. Gates Sr. and his son feel so strongly about taxing the rich, they should simply give the state a chunk of their own money and be done with it. Leave the rest of Washington's taxpayers alone.

Why So Many People Can't Make Decisions


Some people meet, fall in love and get married right away. Others can spend hours in the sock aisle at the department store, weighing the pros and cons of buying a pair of wool argyles.

Seeing the world as black and white, in which choices seem clear, or shades of gray can affect people's path in life, from jobs and relationships to which political candidate they vote for, researchers say. People who often have conflicting feelings about situations—the shades-of-gray thinkers—have more of what psychologists call ambivalence, while those who tend toward unequivocal views have less ambivalence.

High ambivalence may be useful in some situations, and low ambivalence in others, researchers say. And although people don't fall neatly into one camp or the other, in general, individuals who tend toward ambivalence do so fairly consistently across different areas of their lives.

For decades psychologists largely ignored ambivalence because they didn't think it was meaningful. The way researchers studied attitudes—by asking participants where they fell on a scale ranging from positive to negative—also made it difficult to tease apart who held conflicting opinions from those who were neutral, according to Mark Zanna, a University of Waterloo professor who studies ambivalence. (Similarly, psychologists long believed it wasn't necessary to examine men and women separately when studying the way people think.)
Different Strokes

PEOPLE WHO SEE THE WORLD AS BLACK AND WHITE TEND TO...

* Speak their mind or make quick decisions.
* Be more predictable in making decisions (e.g., who they vote for).
* Be less anxious about making wrong choices.
* Have relationship conflicts that are less drawn out.
* Be less likely to consider others' points of view.

PEOPLE WHO SEE THE WORLD IN SHADES OF GRAY TEND TO....

* Procrastinate or avoid making decisions if possible.
* Feel more regret after making decisions.
* Be thoughtful about making the right choice.
* Stay longer in unhappy relationships.
* Appreciate multiple points of view.

Now, researchers have been investigating how ambivalence, or lack of it, affects people's lives, and how they might be able to make better decisions. Overall, thinking in shades of gray is a sign of maturity, enabling people to see the world as it really is. It's a "coming to grips with the complexity of the world," says Jeff Larsen, a psychology professor who studies ambivalence at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

In a recent study, college students were asked to write an essay coming down on one side or another of a contentious issue, regarding a new labor law affecting young adults, while other groups of students were allowed to write about both sides of the issue. The students forced to choose a side reported feeling more uncomfortable, even physically sweating more, says Frenk van Harreveld , a social psychologist at the University of Amsterdam who studies how people deal with ambivalence.

If there isn't an easy answer, ambivalent people, more than black-and-white thinkers, are likely to procrastinate and avoid making a choice, for instance about whether to take a new job, says Dr. Harreveld. But if after careful consideration an individual still can't decide, one's gut reaction may be the way to go. Dr. van Harreveld says in these situations he flips a coin, and if his immediate reaction when the coin lands on heads is negative, then he knows what he should do.

Researchers can't say for sure why some people tend towards greater ambivalence. Certain personality traits play a role—people with a strong need to reach a conclusion in a given situation tend to black-and-white thinking, while ambivalent people tend to be more comfortable with uncertainty. Individuals who are raised in environments where their parents are ambivalent or unstable may grow to experience anxiety and ambivalence in future relationships, according to some developmental psychologists.

Culture may also play a role. In western cultures, simultaneously seeing both good and bad "violates our world view, our need to put things in boxes," says Dr. Larsen. But in eastern philosophies, it may be less problematic because there is a recognition of dualism, that something can be one thing as well as another.

One of the most widely studied aspects of ambivalence is how it affects thinking. Because of their strongly positive or strongly negative views, black-and-white thinkers tend to be quicker at making decisions than highly ambivalent people. But if they get mired in one point of view and can't see others, black-and-white thinking may prompt conflict with others or unhealthy thoughts or behaviors.

People with clinical depression, for instance, often get mired in a negative view of the world. They may interpret a neutral action like a friend not waving to them as meaning that their friend is mad at them, and have trouble thinking about alternative explanations.

Ambivalent people, on the other hand, tend to systematically evaluate all sides of an argument before coming to a decision. They scrutinize carefully the evidence that is presented to them, making lists of pros and cons, and rejecting overly simplified information.

Ambivalent individuals' ability to see all sides of an argument and feel mixed emotions appears to have some benefits. They may be better able to empathize with others' points of view, for one thing. And when people are able to feel mixed emotions, such as hope and sadness, they tend to have healthier coping strategies, such as when a spouse passes away, according to Dr. Larsen. They may also be more creative because the different emotions lead them to consider different ideas that they might otherwise have dismissed.

People waffling over a decision may benefit from paring down the number of details they are weighing and instead selecting one or a few important values to use in basing their decision, says Richard Boyatzis , a professor in organizational behavior, psychology and cognitive science at Case Western Reserve University.

For example, in making a decision about whether to buy a costly piece of new medical equipment, a hospital executive may weigh the expense, expertise needed to operate it and space requirements against its effectiveness. But ultimately, Dr. Boyatzis says, in order to avoid getting mired in a prolonged debate, the executive may decide on a core value—say, how well the equipment works for taking care of patients—that can be used to help make the decision.

In the workplace, employees who are highly ambivalent about their jobs are more erratic in job performance; they may perform particularly well some days and poorly other times, says René Ziegler, a professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Tübingen in Germany whose study of the subject is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Positive feedback for a highly ambivalent person, such as a pay raise, will boost their job performance more than for someone who isn't ambivalent about the job, he says.

Every job has good and bad elements. But people who aren't ambivalent about their job perform well if they like their work and poorly if they don't. Dr. Ziegler suggests that black-and-white thinkers tend to focus on key aspects of their job, such as how much they are getting paid or how much they like their boss, and not the total picture in determining whether they are happy at work.

Black-and-white thinkers similarly may recognize that there are positive and negative aspects to a significant relationship. But they generally choose to focus only on some qualities that are particularly important to them.

By contrast, people who are truly ambivalent in a relationship can't put the negative out of their mind. They may worry about being hurt or abandoned even in moments when their partner is doing something nice, says Mario Mikulincer, dean of the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel.

Such shades-of-gray people tend to have trouble in relationships. They stay in relationships longer, even abusive ones, and experience more fighting. They are also more likely to get divorced, says Dr. Mikulincer.

Recognizing that a partner has strengths and weaknesses is normal, says Dr. Mikulincer. "A certain degree of ambivalence is a sign of maturity," he says.

New iPad !

Some of the nicest, if little discussed, benefits of using an Apple iPad tablet are that it starts instantly, resumes where you left off, and has a long enough battery life that you aren't constantly fretting about running out of juice or looking for a place to plug it in. And it can do a lot of things for which people use laptops.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578341059569632.html?mod=djemptech_t#

What if somebody designed an actual laptop that worked this way—you know, a computer with a real keyboard and a larger screen that could run traditional computer software and store more files than an iPad? And what if it was almost as light and portable as an iPad? Well, somebody has, and that somebody is Apple itself.

Walt Mossberg tests two new MacBook Air laptops and finds they really do offer the different, more iPad-like experience that Apple claims they do. But if you're a heavy-duty user, who needs lots of power and file storage they may be too lightweight.

The computer in question is the company's new MacBook Air, which went on sale last week, starting at $999—a price that's very low for an Apple laptop, though hardly a bargain for a Windows one. The new Air comes in two sizes. The base $999 model has an 11.6-inch screen (versus 9.7 inches for an iPad) and weighs 2.3 pounds (versus 1.5 pounds for an iPad). The larger—but still thin and light—model starts at $1,299, has a 13.3-inch screen, and weighs 2.9 pounds.

I've been testing both versions, but especially the 11.6-inch model, and I find that, despite a few drawbacks, they really do offer the different, more iPad-like experience Apple claims they do. Battery life is strong, and the wake up from sleep is almost instant, even after long periods of being unused.

Like their predecessors in the Air family, these are gorgeous, very thin and light, but very sturdy aluminum computers. And, like their predecessors, or like iPads and smartphones, they rely on solid-state storage—flash chips—instead of a conventional hard disk to hold all your files. But Apple has dramatically reduced the physical size of the flash storage to make room for larger sealed-in batteries, so battery life is longer. It has also cut the price from the last version of the Air, a 13-inch model that cost $1,799 with a solid-state drive.

Also, the company has re-engineered the way these new Airs sleep, adding a long "standby" period of very low power consumption that Apple says lasts up to 30 days. This standby mode kicks in after about an hour of idle time, and replaces the traditional hibernation system, where your current activity is saved to a conventional hard disk just before the battery dies. With hibernation, getting back to where you were can be slow and somewhat uncertain. With the new "standby" mode, the process just takes a few seconds, only a bit longer than normal sleep.

These are just the first of a number of changes Apple plans in order to make its computers behave more like the iPad and iPhone, without losing their greater power and more traditional keyboards, touchpads and mice, and ability to run conventional programs.

For instance, Apple has said it will soon introduce an "app store" for the Mac, which would make it simpler to find and download programs for the computers, and notify users of updates. And it will also roll out, in its next Mac operating system, called Lion—due next summer—a system of apps icon screens, like those on iPhones and iPads, that you can flick through with the company's multitouch touchpad gestures.

In my harsh battery tests, I found the two new Air models almost matched Apple's battery claims, even with all power-saving features turned off, Wi-Fi kept on, the screen on maximum brightness and a continuous loop of music playing. The 11-inch model lasted four hours and 43 minutes, versus Apple's claim of up to five hours. The 13-inch model lasted six hours and 13 minutes, versus Apple's claim of up to seven hours.

This means that, in normal use, with power-saving features turned on, you'd be almost certain to meet, or possibly exceed, Apple's claimed battery life. For comparison, I did the same battery test on a new Dell 11.6-inch model, the M101Z, which costs about $450, but is much thicker and heavier than the smaller Air, and uses a conventional hard disk. It got only two hours and 41 minutes of battery life, which means that in normal use you'd probably get three to four hours.

The new models are designed to hardly ever require a traditional bootup or reboot. The idea is that you'd only reboot if you had a problem, or installed software that required a reboot, or if the machine had been idle and unplugged more than a month. But even booting is very fast.

In my tests, a cold boot took 17 seconds and a reboot, with several programs running, took 20 seconds. By contrast, the Dell I tested took more than three minutes to fully boot up and be fully ready for use.

Unlike on many netbooks, these two new Apples also have high screen resolutions so you can fit more material into their relatively small sizes. The 13-inch model has the same resolution as Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 11-inch Air has greater resolution than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Also, unlike on many netbooks, they feature full-size keyboards, though the 11-inch model has reduced-size function keys.

The new Airs aren't meant to be the most robust machines. They use last-generation Intel processors and have only two gigabytes of memory in their base configurations, and their storage is well below typical hard-disk capacities.

For example, the 11-inch, $999 model has a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage; the 13-inch model starts at a still-weak 128 gigabytes of storage, and even the high-end version of the larger model, which costs $1,599, has just 256 gigabytes of storage. And neither the storage nor the memory can be expanded once you choose your initial specs.

I'd recommend buyers of the 11-inch model spend $200 more to double the storage to 128 gigabytes. And people doing a lot of video editing might want to double the memory on either model to four gigabytes, for an extra $100.

Also, as with the earlier Air models, these two lack a DVD drive and an Ethernet port. Apple sells an external drive for $79 and an Ethernet adapter for $29. If you add in all these extras, prices can climb quickly.

They also lack ports called HDMI ports, becoming common on Windows PCs, for easy connection to televisions, and their keyboards aren't backlit. The two new models do, however, have two USB ports instead of the single USB port in the older Air.

I was surprised to find that even the base $999 model was powerful enough to easily run seven or eight programs at once, including Microsoft Office, iTunes and the Safari browser with more than 20 Web sites open. It also played high-definition video with no skipping or stuttering.

So, if you're a light-duty user, you might be able to adopt one of the new Airs as your main laptop. If you're a heavy-duty user, who needs lots of power and file storage, they're likely to be secondary machines.

Overall, Apple has done a nice job in making these new MacBook Airs feel more like iPads and iPhones without sacrificing their ability to work like regular computers.

Departing Ozzie tells Microsoft: Look to a post-PC world

Ray Ozzie

Microsoft's departing software chief has urged the company to move on from its Windows and Office roots and imagine a "post-PC world" of simple, global web devices.

Five years after Ray Ozzie made his mark with his "Internet Services Disruption" memo - regarded as Microsoft's manifesto for internet-based "cloud computing" - he is again calling on the software giant to envision a future where simplicity is key.

Ozzie's emotional call to arms comes alongside what some analysts say is a watershed moment for the third largest company on the Standard & Poor's 500, which in November will see the first of a new generation of smartphones driven by its operating system hit store shelves, in a belated attempt to become a major player again in the booming wireless devices market.

Let's mark this five-year milestone by once again fearlessly embracing that which is technologically inevitable

"Let's mark this five-year milestone by once again fearlessly embracing that which is technologically inevitable," Ozzie said in a personal blog post addressed to executive staff and direct reports.

"The next five years will bring about yet another inflection point - a transformation that will once again yield unprecedented opportunities for our company and our industry catalyzed by the huge and inevitable shift in apps and infrastructure that's truly now just begun."

That world, Ozzie argues, will be one where users access always-available services through "devices that are fundamentally appliance-like by design, from birth. They're instantly usable, interchangeable and trivially replaceable without loss."

The call from Ozzie, who announced his retirement from Microsoft last week, is meant to galvanise the company, which has fallen behind Apple and Google in the rapidly growing phone and tablet computer sector and has been surprised by phenomenon such as social network Facebook.

"Close our eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look like, if it were to ever truly occur," wrote Ozzie in a memo posted on his personal blog. "Those who can envision a plausible future that's brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead."

More disruption

Shortly after joining Microsoft, Ozzie wrote his now famous "Internet Services Disruption" memo in which he evangelised now-common cloud computing.

In Monday's blog, Ozzie said some of the goals he envisioned five years ago "remain elusive and are yet to be realised."

He goes on to praise competitors for "seamless fusion of hardware and software and services," which appears to be a nod to Apple's iPhone and Google's Android phone system and application marketplaces, which are proving more popular with consumers than Microsoft's own offerings.

"Their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences," said Ozzie.

Their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences

Microsoft's new phone software arrived in the UK this month and a slew of Windows-powered tablet devices are expected next year, starting with HP's Slate 500.

Instead of a tech world founded on PCs and software - which Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office suite of programs essentially created - Ozzie urges Microsoft to think about "cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding" and "appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services."

Such devices could be at home, in the car, controlling elevators or highways, said Ozzie.

"Today's PCs, phones and pads are just the very beginning," said Ozzie. "We'll see decades to come of incredible innovation from which will emerge all sorts of 'connected companions' that we'll wear, we'll carry, we'll use on our desks and walls and the environment all around us."

If accurate, that represents a long-term threat to Microsoft, whose core Windows and Office units make up more than half of the company's $62 billion annual sales and 80 percent of its operating profit.

Ozzie, 54, is working on some of Microsoft's entertainment projects before retiring from the company in several months. He took over the role of Chief Software Architect from co-founder Bill Gates in 2006.

Gates started the tradition of the "call to action" internal memo, his most widely read being the "Internet Tidal Wave" memo in 1995, which urged the company to put the web at the center of all its efforts.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer said there are no plans to appoint a new chief software architect when Ozzie retires.

Read more: Departing Ozzie tells Microsoft: Look to a post-PC world | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/362221/departing-ozzie-tells-microsoft-look-to-a-post-pc-world/print#ixzz13efsBzax

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Dog Philosophy

1. Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joy ride.

2. Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.

3. When loved ones come home, always run and greet them.

4. When it's in your best interest, always practice obedience.

5. Let others know when they've invaded your territory.

6.Take naps and always stretch before rising.

7. Run, romp and play daily.

8. Eat with gusto and enthusiasm.

9. Be loyal.

10. Never pretend to be something you're not.

11. If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.

12. When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.

13. Delight in the simple joys of a long walk.

14. Thrive on attention and let people touch you.

15. Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.

16. On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.

17. When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.

18. No matter how often you are criticized, don't buy into the guilt thing
and pout. Run right back and make friends.

19. Try to poop twice a day.

20. Live in the moment !

...thanks Rabea !!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Father of the Internet

J.C.R Licklider

Licklider was first interested in computers when he worked at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Lincon had a model TX-0 computer where a man named Wesley Clark worked, Licklider studied the computer and became interested in the relationship between man and computers. In 1960 Licklider wrote a paper called "Man-Computer Symbiosis" where he wrote about the computer and mans dissimilarities which often benefit from each other. He gives an example of a Fig tree and a insect Blastophaga grossorum. The insect pollinates the fig tree and the and the fig tree houses the insect, both cant live without each other, but are completely dissimilar organisms. In the "Man-Computer Symbiosis" Licklider explains the Symbiosis of man and computer to come:

In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluation. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking.(Licklider, 1960)

Licklider was the first to believe that computers could be used for more that just large calculators but instead they could perform scientific thinking(Licklider p1). A copy of the paper "Man-Computer symbiosis" can be found in appendix 3..

In 1964 J.C.R Licklider left ARPA but not with out changing ARPA’s main focus from war game scenarios to research into timesharing, computer graphics and computer language.

http://www.securenet.net/members/shartley/history/licklider.htm



Diane Warren - Extraordinary Song Writer

Songwriter Diane Warren works seven days a week, often 12 hours a day, and refuses to be far from a keyboard. A creature of habit, she has started every day for the last 25 years with an ice-blended mocha that she picks up driving east from her house in the Hollywood Hills to her studio in a grungier section of Hollywood. Mouse, her cat, rides in the passenger seat of her blue Bentley coupe and, upon arrival, joins her 18-year-old parrot, who lives at the studio. It is clearly where Ms. Warren really lives too.

Ms. Warren was born in 1956 into a Russian immigrant Jewish family in Van Nuys, Calif., the third child of an insurance salesman father and a homemaker mother. Obsessed with listening to the radio, at age 7 she pointed to "the name in parentheses" on her older sister's albums and said, "That's what I'm going to be—the songwriter."

creating_warren
Emily Shur for The Wall Street Journal

"If I didn't have the outlet of my songs, I'd be dead, homeless, crazy," Warren says.

Those parentheses have included the name Diane Warren on more than 1,500 songs, including hits like Céline Dion's "Because You Loved Me," Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart," LeAnn Rimes's "How Do I Live" and Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing." Her songs have been recorded by Roberta Flack, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Ringo Starr, Cher, Rod Stewart, Patti LaBelle, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, Roy Orbison, Whitney Houston, Gloria Estefan, Christina Aguilera, Carrie Underwood, Mariah Carey, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and Mary J. Blige, to name a few. She was the first songwriter in the history of Billboard to have seven hits, by different artists, on the singles chart simultaneously.

Here's a playlist of some of her songs

http://www.amazon.com/Some-Songs-Diane-Warren-Songwriter/lm/2SDK8RTLJNTTJ

She works at the studios of Realsongs,

http://www.realsongs.com/

her publishing company, which she started in 1986 in one small room. The company now occupies the entire floor, but that room, which she still works in occasionally, has remained unchanged and, apparently, uncleaned for 25 years.

Ms. Warren admits to a certain superstition about the "Cave." Cassettes are piled on the floor, tables, chairs and piano in dangerous disarray. "I like cassettes for playback," she said. "I can take the cassette out, and I know the song is there. If it's digital, I don't know if it's there. I'm old-school: My writing tools are a notebook, a pen and a cassette. If it sounds good on a cassette, it's good."

Songs come to Warren from anywhere and everywhere. "They can start with an idea," she explained, "a title, or the chorus or a good drum beat. 'Un-Break My Heart' came to me as a title. It popped into my head, and I thought, 'I don't think I've heard that before, that's kind of interesting.' I started playing around on the piano with these chords and did a key change, and then I knew, 'OK, this is magic.'" The song went platinum in seven countries.

Ms. Warren doesn't read music and snoozed through the one music theory class she ever took. She considers her lack of formal musical training to be a source of freedom. "I'm always doing things you're not supposed to do musically, but, hey, I don't know any better!" She said the writing of a song is "like being in a really cool place in the forest, and figuring out how am I going to get out." She writes one a week.

"I don't ever write lyrics first and then the music. They come together." She composes on a piano, various synthesizers and sometimes a guitar, the first instrument her father gave her as a child. In the Cave she still occasionally uses her original Yamaha DX7 synthesizer from 1985.

Though Ms. Warren is most famous for her ballads—songs that center around the romantic notion of one love forever—she has been single her whole life. "I write the most intimate songs, some of the biggest wedding songs, but I know nothing about intimacy. But I feel it, the yearning," Ms. Warren said. "In real life, I'm afraid of it. I haven't been in a relationship for 20 years. If I didn't have the outlet of my songs, I'd be dead, homeless, crazy."

In the larger of her two recording studios, Ms. Warren asked a couple of engineers to play a new Cher single called "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" from the upcoming film "Burlesque." Everyone sat except Ms. Warren, who stood, eyes closed, in a black T-shirt that reads "Traumatized by Mediocrity," tight black jeans and black-lace up sneakers studded with rhinestones. While she beat time with her foot, her body moved with the song, clearly inside it.

In her newer writing room at Realsongs, the carpet is purple with a green border, and there is a gold throne with daggers criss-crossing for legs next to one wall. Ms. Warren sang two songs, one she finished last week and one she's still working on. Her voice is classic rock, beautiful and warm, operating at a lower decibel level than some of the huge female voices like Céline Dion and Whitney Houston that are associated with her songs.

Ms. Warren may be "missing the intimacy gene" for her own kind, but she is clearly passionate about the more noble beasts. She gives vast amounts of her considerable fortune to various animal charities. Her eyes well up talking about a photo she was sent that morning of an abused German shepherd. Ms. Warren has a special love for the massive grey pachyderms who, like her, are vegetarian. "Elephants fall in love for their whole life, and they cry," she said. "They die of a broken heart."

Greatest Hits

  • The only time anything has been moved in songwriter Diane Warren's "Cave" was during the big 1994 earthquake. Piles of cassettes remain where they landed then.
  • At age 14, Ms. Warren says, she ran away from home for two weeks and stayed with "some bank robbers and junkies" in a motel but returned home because she missed her cat.
  • Ms. Warren says she sometimes writes songs from a man's point of view, other times from a female point of view. She likes being able to inhabit both.
  • Leaning on the entrance desk at Realsongs is Ms. Warren's red bicycle and a rock that reads: "I'm not moody, disorganized or self-absorbed, I'm artistic." When she feels like taking a break from writing, she'll grab the bike and head out to Sunset Boulevard. Julie Horton, her executive vice president, prefers not to accompany her: "She's a crazy bike rider, up and down the sidewalks, going against traffic."
  • Ms. Warren doesn't care if the average listener doesn't know she wrote a certain song. "I want them to believe the singer so much that they believe they wrote it. I just want my name on it—and on the check!"

Watch List: 20 iPad Competitors

The Apple iPad has re-energized the market for tablet computers but it has gone nearly all of 2010 without a serious challenger. That will soon change.

Here are 20 upstarts taking aim at the iPad.

The best way to view this list is the companion photo gallery so that you can get a look at each of the tablets. Otherwise, you can read about each of them all and get a quick summary in the list below. I’ve
only featured tablets that have at least 7-inch screens and that have been officially announced (in
most cases). The list also serves as a ranking. I’ve put the ones that are the most promising and the
most likely to actually make it to market at the top of the list.
1. Samsung Galaxy Tab
Based on a similar design to the Samsung Galaxy S smartphones, this 7-inch Android 2.2 tablet is
loaded with strong specs and will be available on multiple carriers. It will likely be the iPad’s most
serious competitor to arrive before the end of 2010.
2. Cisco Cius
Primarily an enterprise communications and collaboration device, the Cisco Cius is an 7-inch Android
tablet with a heavy layer of Cisco customization on top. Consumers won’t be interested, but existing
Cisco customers who want a corporate-controlled tablet might be.
3. BlackBerry PlayBook
Aimed at stopping the iPad’s momentum with executives and business professionals, the 7-inch
BlackBerry tablet will be built on its own QNX operating system and is flush with power with a 1 GHz
Watch list: 20 iPad competitors | ZDNet http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/watch-list-20-ipad-competitors/4...
1 of 4 10/23/2010 3:54 PMdual core CPU and 1 GB of RAM. However, battery life may be an issue and it won’t arrive until 2011.
4. Toshiba Libretto
One of the more innovative tablet competitors is the Libretto with its dual 7-inch multi-touch screens.
One screen can be used entirely as a virtual keyboard while you work on the other. It runs Windows 7
acts a little more like a netbook than a tablet but it’s an interesting concept.
5. ASUS Eee Pad
Now one of the world’s top five computer makers and one of the leaders in design, ASUS has talked
throughout the year about launching various iPad competitors (branded “Eee Pad”) from 9-inch to
12-inch models, running Windows 7, Windows Embedded Compact, or Android. ASUS has promised
a tablet will be coming in the first quarter of 2011.
6. Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid
One of the big hits of CES 2010, the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is a convertible tablet with a multi-touch
screen that detaches from a hardware keyboard. The main system runs Windows 7 but the detachable
11.6-inch screen turns into a standalone tablet running Linux. It has been delayed until 2011, but
Lenovo says the standalone tablet will be released separately as the Lenovo LePad in December.
7. Archos 10.1
Archos is a PDA and tablet company that has been trying to break into this market for a couple years
with several different form factors and operating systems. The company could have a moderate
success with its 10-inch tablet running Android 2.2
8. ViewSonic ViewPad 100
This 10-inch tablet dual boots Windows 7 and Android 1.6. It has an LED display, 1 GB of RAM, a 1.66
GHz CPU, and a 16 GB onboard SSD drive.
9. Toshiba Folio 100
This 10-inch tablet runs on the Nvidia Tegra processor and Android 2.2. Unlike the Toshiba Libretto,
this is a standard slate form factor. It’s a vanilla tablet that Toshiba will try to price as low as possible.
10. HP Slate 500
Announced by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 in January, this HP “Slate PC” was meant to
preempt Apple’s iPad announcement later that month. It was reportedly canceled when HP bought
Palm and said it was going to create a webOS tablet instead. Then, it was revived this fall.
11. LG Android tablet
Watch list: 20 iPad competitors | ZDNet http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/watch-list-20-ipad-competitors/4...
2 of 4 10/23/2010 3:54 PMWe don’t know much about this one other than it will run Android, have “high-end features,” focus on
productivity, and LG executive Chang Ma said ”Our tablet will be better than the iPad.”
12. MSI WindPad 100
This one is expected to come in both Windows 7 and Android versions. The Windows version has
heavy specs with an Intel Atom processor, 2 GB of RAM, 2 USB ports, an HDMI port, and a 32 GB
SSD drive.
13. Notion Ink Adam
One of the more intriguing iPad alternatives is the Adam from Notion Ink. It features a very slim,
attractive design in a 10-inch tablet with a unique Pixel Qi display, Nvidia Tegra2, and Android 2.2.
14. ExoPC Slate
This is a minimalistic tablet running Windows 7, an 11-inch display, and an Intel Atom processor. It
has its own custom UI running on top of Windows and is focused primarily on multimedia.
15. Motion J3500
Motion has been on the most effective Tablet PC makers for niche industries, even as Microsoft let the
Tablet PC platform languish in recent years. The J3500 is a ruggedized tablet that can run up to a
Core i7 processor and Windows 7. It has both Microsoft’s traditional pen technology as well as
capacitive touchscreen. It’s expensive but powerful.
16. Fusion Garage JooJoo
Originally known as the “CrunchPad” and intended to be an ultra low-cost tablet primarily aimed at
web browsing, the JooJoo is now a 12-inch tablet divorced from TechCrunch (in pending legislation)
with a custom OS made to boot into a web browser as soon as possible, but also able to do video calls
and multi-tasking.
17. Viliv X70 EX
The X70 EX looks less like the iPad and more like the Windows Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) of the
past. It’s a 7-inch tablet made to operate with two hands. It’s a Windows + Intel device that is also
made to easily mount in your car as a GPS.
18. EnTourage eDGe
Like the Toshiba Libretto, the enTourage eDGe features dual screens, but the eDGe has an e-ink
e-reader on one side and an Android tablet OS on the other side.
19. Nefonie WeTab
Watch list: 20 iPad competitors | ZDNet http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/watch-list-20-ipad-competitors/4...
3 of 4 10/23/2010 3:54 PMThis tablet (formerly called the “WePad”) runs the MeeGo OS in an 11-inch form factor and is
powered by an Intel Atom processor.
20. Augen Gentouch78
Also known as the “K-Mart tablet,” the Gentouch78 is perhaps best known for its low price - $150.
However, considering this Android tablet is barely functional, even 150 bucks might be too much to
spend on this 7-incher.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Avoid These Office Buzzwords...

A handy guide... avoid these insipid office buzzwords and euphemisms.

In transition. A change from one state of being to another; recession variation: collecting unemployment compensation. Example: “Since the downsizing, I’ve been in transition.” Synonym: doing some consulting.

Brand. Put a good face on. Example: “Okay, so we polluted the groundwater by failing to follow those finicky safety regulations. How should we brand it?”

Space. Industry or field. Example: “I’m in the manufacturing space,” “I’m in the waste disposal space,” “She’s in the adult film space,” or “He’s in the space exploration space.”

Go offline. Pester me about this after the meeting — or preferably never. “Jones, could we go offline to discuss the $10 underpayment of your expense account reimbursement?”

End of the day. Formerly 5 to 5:30 p.m., now defined as an uncertain point in the future when everything magically turns out okay. Example. “At the end of the day, the pollution in the groundwater may just drain into the earth’s core and become unnoticeable.”

Transparent. Open about the facts, but not to be confused with honest. Example: “We’ve been totally transparent about the 15% fee; we disclosed it on page 37.”

Can’t Wrap One’s Head Around. Unwilling to get into the details or deal with the facts; intellectually lazy. Example: “I can’t wrap my head around all this recycling business; Let’s throw everything in the dumpster behind Home Depot and let them deal with it.”

Bandwidth. Money, staff, computing capacity or other resources. Example: “She lacks the bandwidth to compute compound interest.”

KPI (Key Performance Indicators) Important measurements, usually of the immeasurable. Example: “The American Psychological Association recently established KPIs for marriage: the weekly incidence of sexual intercourse plus the number of hours spent watching the same TV shows, minus total minutes bickering over the proper loading of the dishwasher.”

Low-hanging fruit. Easy to get, though in the end, often not worth the effort. Example: The Taliban might be low-hanging fruit for our production overrun of beard combs.”

Human Capital. Human Resources, previously Personnel. Example: “Human Capital is on the fifth floor.”

Skill set or Fit. Qualifications, generally modified by the words “wrong” or “bad,” and most often used by Human Capital staffers as an excuse for not hiring somebody. Example: “His inability to speak in tongues obviously makes his skill set wrong for the litigator position.”

Knowledge economy. An environment in which a person has run up $150,000 in student loans to pay for a law degree only to see jobs exported to India whose citizens are apparently very knowledgeable about the U.S. legal system. Example: “The best job in the knowledge economy is plumbing because nobody with an advanced degree knows how to use Drano.”

Throughput. Not your conclusions, but the mind-numbing numbers and facts you chewed over to get there; information generally demanded by a micro-manager who won’t believe that you did the work. Example: “Don’t tell me what you’ve decided about the Taliban beard-comb project; I just want your throughput.”

Footprint. Impact, formerly ecological, but now applicable to anything. Example: “Auntie Meg’s rear end had a significant footprint on our sofa.”

Impactful. Having a large footprint. Example: “Auntie Meg’s rear end had a very impactful effect on our sofa.”

Two of my favorite bits of jargon come from a reader in the U.K. who says he made them up. The first: is “failure cascade”, which he defines as a “sequence of bad stuff happening.” An example might be: “The knowledge economy seems to be in a failure cascade.” “Bus factor,” he says, is a measure of how much the company would suffer if person X got hit by a bus. Example: “Billy has a really high bus factor.” He reports that both phrases seem to be catching on.

Such inventiveness should be an inspiration to us all. If you don’t love the gobbledygook you’re with, then create some gobbledygook you’d like.


http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/consumer-reporter/just-so-you-know-the-latest-greatest-in-office-jargon/590/?tag=active-mw#comments

Now That's A Serious Motorcycle

I Think They're Heading to WalMart.



thanks to Carolynn !

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Moon Not Only Has Water, but Lots of It

Scientists have discovered significant amounts of water on the moon—about twice the quantity seen in the Sahara Desert—a finding that may bolster the case for establishing a manned base on the lunar surface.

In an audacious experiment last year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration slammed a spent-fuel rocket into a lunar crater at 5,600 miles an hour, and then used a pair of orbiting satellites to analyze the debris thrown off by the impact. They discovered that the crater contained water in the form of ice, plus a host of other resources, including hydrogen, ammonia, methane, mercury, sodium and silver.

Jack Pfaller/NASA

NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its Centaur booster rocket crashes into the moon in this artist's illustration.

NASA announced its groundbreaking discovery of lunar water last October. Now, a more detailed analysis of the data—the subject of six research papers being published Friday in the journal Science—concludes that there is a lot more water on the moon than anyone expected.

"It's really wet," said Anthony Colaprete, co-author of one of the Science papers and a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. He and his colleagues estimate that 5.6% of the total mass of the targeted lunar crater's soil consists of water ice. In other words, 2,200 pounds of moon dirt would yield a dozen gallons of water.

The presence of so much water strengthens the argument for establishing a manned lunar base from which to launch other interplanetary adventures. Water is crucial because its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are key ingredients for rocket fuel.

Having a source of water on the moon is critical because the cost of transporting a large amount from earth would be prohibitive. On the moon, a bottle of water would run about $50,000, according to NASA, because that is what it costs, per

The U.S. likely won't be involved in manned voyages to the moon anytime soon. President Barack Obama recently canceled a NASA program to return astronauts to the lunar surface a decade from now. The agency, however, is working on the grander, longer-term prize of a manned trip to Mars.

But other countries are gearing up. China has pledged to land astronauts on the moon by 2025 and India by 2020. Japan wants to establish an unmanned moon base in a decade, potentially setting the stage for a manned mission later. Only the U.S. has sent astronauts to the moon thus far.

Cabeus is a cosmic trap. Any material from space landing there tends to stick. "There's almost no energy to warm up the molecules, so that they can't bounce off again," said G. Randall Gladstone, co-author of one of the Science papers and a planetary scientist at the nonprofit Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

Dr. Gladstone and others believe that Cabeus contains cosmic material that has accumulated over a billion years or more.

Scientists know that most of the moon is drier than the driest terrestrial desert. And while remote observations had suggested that water ice might be present at cold-trap regions of the moon, there was no direct evidence.

To settle the debate, NASA devised a clever plan and set it in motion on June 18, 2009, with the launch of a rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The rocket was stacked with an upper-stage rocket known as Centaur. Above it, sat the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, roughly the size of a Volkswagen Bug. Atop that sat another satellite, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO.

Soon after lift off, LRO separated and headed for the moon. So did the still-joined LCROSS and Centaur modules, but via a different route. On Oct. 9, the Centaur sped off on its own—aimed for Cabeus and trailed by a hurtling LCROSS.

Drained of fuel, Centaur was now the equivalent of an empty soda can that was 36 feet tall. When it slammed into the crater, it blew a hole some 75 feet wide. It also spewed at least 8,800 pounds of debris, dust and vapor into LCROSS's sunlit field of view. LCROSS by then was 373 miles above the lunar surface. Its instruments began collecting data about the quantity of water vapor and ice in the plume, then zapping it to receiving stations on earth. Four minutes later, LCROSS smashed into the lunar ground as well, becoming dirt.

The LRO satellite, meanwhile, orbited 31 miles above the moon. Its main task—which it continues to do today—was to create a three-dimensional map of the moon's surface. But it also collected data on the impact plume. One instrument aboard the LRO was an ultraviolet spectrograph that can detect various gases and substances. Many of the findings were unexpected.

About 20% of the Cabeus dirt is a mix of different elements and volatile compounds, including water. "That was a real surprise. I don't think anyone appreciated that it would be as much as 20%," said Dr. Colaprete. A lot of the remaining dirt is made from the typical components of moon rock, including feldspar and basalt.

The scientists also found molecular hydrogen in the soil. "That's interesting because if you want to make rocket fuel you could heat up the soil and hydrogen would come pouring out," said Dr. Gladstone.

In 1999, American scientist George W. Reed published a study arguing that lunar cold traps would likely contain significant amounts of mercury, which is toxic to humans. The paper was titled "Don't drink the water."

He was right: LRO's instruments detected sizable quantities of mercury—about 1%—in the lunar soil.

Researchers were also surprised to find compounds such as hydrogen sulphide, which are the result of a chemical reaction. But how could any reactions occur in such a cold place? Dr. Colaprete speculates that solar winds and cosmic rays may be providing minute amounts of energy, allowing such reactions to take place over hundreds of millions of years.

Is that also how the water got there? "No, that approach would only create small amounts of it," said Dr. Colaprete. "It suggests to me that water and some of the other elements were brought in by a comet. Cabeus is an old comet site."