To get a sense of the advantages and drawbacks of the device, The Associated Press spoke to three Glass owners who have been using the device since late spring: Sarah Hill, a former TV broadcaster and current military veterans advocate; David Levy, a hiking enthusiast and small business owner; and Deborah Lee, a stay-at-home mom.
Glass is designed to work like a smartphone that's worn like a pair of glasses. Although it looks like a prop from a science fiction movie, the device is capturing imaginations beyond the realm of nerds.
The trio's favorite feature, by far, is the hands-free camera that shoots photos and video through voice commands. (Images can also be captured by pressing a small button along the top of the right frame of Glass.) They also liked being able to connect to the Internet simply by tapping on the right frame of Glass to turn it on and then swiping along the same side to scroll through a menu. That menu allows them to do such things as get directions on Google's map or find a piece of information through Google's search engine. The information is shown on a thumbnail-sized transparent screen attached just above the right eye to stay out of a user's field of vision.
Among the biggest shortcomings they cited was Glass' short battery life, especially if a lot of video is being taken. Although Google says Glass should last for an entire day on a single battery charge for the typical user, Hill said there were times when she ran out of power after 90 minutes to two hours during periods when she was recording a lot of video.
Glass' speaker, which relies on a bone conduction technology, also is inadequate, according to the testers the AP interviewed. They said the speaker, which transmits sound through the skull to allow for ambient noise, can be difficult to hear in any environment other than a quiet room.
"If you are out in the street or anywhere else where there is any noise, it's impossible to hear," Lee said. "That has been challenging because there is no way to adjust it. If you could adjust the real time Location system, I think it would solve a lot of problems."
Hill, 42, a resident of Columbia, Mo., became a Glass evangelist shortly after she picked up the device at Google's New York offices in late May. As the AP watched her get fitted with Glass though a video feed on Google's Hangout chat service, Hill quickly began to rave about her ability to take hands-free pictures and fetch information from the Web simply by asking the device to get it. "This is like having the Internet in your eye socket," Hill said. "But it's less intrusive than I thought it would be. I can totally see how this would still let you still be in the moment with the people around you."
The liberating aspects of Glass came into sharper focus for Hill as she took a cab to the airport for her flight back to Missouri. During the taxi ride, she began a video call on Google Hangout with people living in Austria, the United Kingdom and St. Louis. As the cab was preparing to drop her off at the curb, Hill was about to end the call so she could carry her baggage.
"That's when it hit me that, 'Holy cow, I don't have to cut the call off,'" Hill recalled. "I could continue talking because I didn't have to hold a phone. So I carried on a conversation through the airport and people were staring at me like, 'What is that thing on your face?'"
Hill became accustomed to the double takes and quizzical looks as she wore Glass to community gatherings, restaurants and shopping excursions. The encounters usually led to her offering others to try on Glass, and most were impressed with their glimpses at the technology, Hill said.
"When you have these glasses on, it's like it helps you see the future," Hill said. "It helps you see what's possible."Hill, a former news anchor and reporter for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo., believes Glass is destined to transform broadcast journalism by empowering reporters to capture compelling images at scenes without the need for cumbersome equipment. She likens it to having a satellite TV truck that only weighs 1.5 ounces. Glass also would make it easier for reporters to field questions from viewers through the Twitter app or through direct texts.
Hill has already used Glass to provide a tour of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., for veterans gathered in St. Louis by Veterans United, where Hill now works as the group's chief storyteller. The veterans were too old or ill to make the journey themselves, so Hill gave them a close-up look through a video feed transmitted through Glass in June.
Lee, a New York City resident, has been relying on Glass mostly to capture precious moments with her 9-month-old daughter, Maddie. Her favorite moment came when she photographed some of her daughter's first giggles a couple months ago. Lee, 34, told Glass to take the pictures as she as tickled and kissed her daughter's tummy.
"Obviously, you can't do that with a phone in your hand, so I am totally loving Glass," Lee said. "It has really been great."Glass also allowed Lee to set up live video sessions with her parents in Oregon so they could see Maddie eat her first solid food just as she saw it. She also took pictures of her raising Maddie airborne that wouldn't have been feasible with a camera requiring hands-on operation. "I am capturing all these tiny moments that are really exciting with a baby," Lee said.
Unlike Hill's experience in Missouri, hardly anyone in New York gives her a second look when she wears Glass in Central Park or around her neighborhood."I thought more people would stop me in the street or something like that, but that hasn't really happened," Lee said.
Levy, 39, rarely wears his Glass around his hometown of Boulder, Colo., because he doesn't want to stand out from the crowd. Just two days after Levy picked up the device in New York, he recalls seeing someone else wearing the device at the airport. "My initial reaction was, 'What a jerk,'" Levy said. "There was a little bit of ostentatiousness about it, as if he were flaunting it. I am a low-key guy who doesn't like a lot of attention. I have an iPhone that does a lot of things that I might otherwise make Glass do if I didn't want to make a spectacle of it."
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Showing posts with label government mandates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government mandates. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
Navalny shakes up Moscow mayor campaign
A motley gaggle of hipsters, mothers with children and two babushkas with hair dyed bright red gather to listen to something they haven't heard in over a decade: a stump speech for Moscow mayor.Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger who has become the best known face of Russia's protest movement, is trying to take his following offline and into the street, waging a traditional campaign of hand-shaking and leaflet drives to win voters outside his base of the young and web-savvy.
Navalny has little hope of defeating incumbent Sergei Sobyanin _ but polls show his star is rising. And if he gets a big chunk of the real time Location system, the Kremlin will face pressure to show leniency over his five-year prison sentence, and the grassroots protest movement that fizzled out after Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency last year may gain new wind.
Sobyanin, meanwhile, is playing the regal incumbent: Throughout the campaign, the Kremlin-backed politician has been all but invisible, allowing the constant drone of jackhammers or whiff of fresh paint that are signs of a Moscow makeover to remind voters of who's in charge _ and who can pull the purse-strings.
Navalny is the one who has been soaking up attention, and generating buzz. On a recent August day, the opposition leader stood on stage in a sprawling Moscow park dotted with enormous space shuttles and other scraps of Soviet-era glory, and attempted to connect with an audience he rarely reaches through Twitter: the feared and revered babushka contingency."We know that (in Soviet times) our oil money was spent on enormous factories, industry, railroads, roads, science, health care, rockets," he boomed, riffing on a nostalgia felt by many older Russians, who saw their hopes dashed and savings depleted under post-Soviet political reforms.
"But can you name a single major business that's been built in this country in the past 10 years? I can't!"The old ladies sitting in the first row chuckled and shook their heads.On Sunday, police briefly detained Navalny after he left the stage of a campaign event, and released him a short time later. The detention was part of a series of public signals to Navalny, who was given a verbal warning about various alleged campaign violations by the Moscow electoral committee last week.
Polling data on the race is spotty and inconsistent, but the trends are clear: The number of Muscovites ready to vote for Navalny on Sept. 8 has breached 10 percent and may even be moving toward 20 percent. Meanwhile, Sobyanin's ratings _ while still above the 50 percent that would allow him to avoid a run-off _ are slipping by the week. There are four other party-backed candidates in the race, none projected to snag more than 5 percent.
Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the independent Levada polling center, said that Sobyanin's voter base was clearly no longer growing, and that there's now a small chance there will be a second round.Last month, Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison on embezzlement charges, but was released the day after his conviction in what many have described as an effort to legitimize the mayoral race and ensure that Sobyanin _ who was appointed as mayor and is seen as a possible successor to Putin _ is regarded as an elected politician with widespread support.
Such legitimacy is considered important because Putin's forces are at their weakest in his seat of power: Moscow. When Putin won back the presidency last year, after ruling for a term in the lesser role of prime minister, he won only 47 percent of the capital's rtls, compared to 64 percent nationwide. That may also be a reason why, although there's no doubt that Sobyanin is the Kremlin's man, he is running as an independent and has avoided public appearances with the president.
Masha Lipman at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow said that Navalny had already achieved something: cast doubt over the inevitability of Putin's power."One of his greatest achievements is ... adding an element of risk and uncertainty," she said. "Putin built a political system in this country that is risk averse, it's a political monopoly."
Rather than the issues _ immigration, traffic, high cost of living _ it's a contrast in political style that lies at the heart of the mayoral campaign. In the Levada Center poll, 48 percent of respondents said they would vote for a mayor with "experience," whereas 47 percent said that personal qualities, such as "openness and determination," were crucial.
Navalny, a sharp-tongued 37-year-old lawyer, has plenty of the latter. He has waged an intensive campaign with nearly $1.5 million in funds raised online, meeting with hundreds of voters every day and mobilizing enthusiastic young volunteers to help hand out leaflets in the street and on the metro.
His team has also unleashed a flurry of new online projects. From a GPS mapping system that shows how many supporters live in each apartment block to an application that helps users spread pro-Navalny information on Russia's biggest social networks, the campaign has been keen to lock down his natural base of young voters, many of whom often don't make it to the polls.
"Currently the polls are assuming that those who haven't yet figured out who to vote for will vote the same way as those who have," Leonid Volkov, Navalny's campaign manager, told The Associated Press. "The fight is for the 30 percent of voters who haven't decided yet."Andrei Tvertnev, an unemployed 25-year-old former soldier who was lingering in the crowd around Navalny, is one of those yet to make up his mind.
Tvertnev wasn't keen on Sobyanin, saying that the changes he's brought to the city "could have been done much faster." At the same time, he remained skeptical about Navalny."Do I vote for a bureaucrat who made some changes, or a different person who promises even more changes?" he asked. "I think I'll only make up my mind on the day of the elections."
Sobyanin, who made his name as the governor of the oil-rich Siberian province of Tyumen, makes up for his lack of charisma and enthusiasm with what talks in Russian politics: experience, access and the money that comes with it.Despite his almost invisible candidacy, Sobyanin is genuinely well-liked for the changes he's brought to Moscow. He has poured a yearly budget of approximately $54 billion into the city's parks and cultural institutions, although other promises to tackle traffic and parking have been lagging or limited in scope.
As if to shore up his reputation as a fixer-upper, the city, which usually hits a sleepy summer lull in August, has been converted into an enormous construction site _ with sidewalks torn up and facades repainted."There's little doubt that before elections, the government becomes very affectionate and thoughtful," Levada's Grazhdankin said about the city's makeover.
While Sobyanin, who was appointed to the mayor's office, is eager to prove himself as a legitimately elected politician, the tactics used against Navalny _ from accusations that he receives foreign funding abroad to refusals by media outlets to play his campaign ads _ show that he still sees Navalny as a threat.
Even if Navalny's eventual vote tally is relatively low, he may end up having an outsized impact on the Russian political scene."If he gets 10 to 12 percent, they can say, look at your opposition leader, he was only able to get this tiny fraction of the vote," said Lipman. "But those people who are investing their emotions, time and money into this campaign, that experience won't go away."
Oleg Bogomolov, a 42-year-old human resources manager who was at Navalny's headquarters to volunteer for the first time, said he didn't truly believe Navalny could win."But I think the more people who know about him, the greater his chances of being set free," he said. "If they put him behind bars again (after the election), there will be even more people in the streets."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Navalny has little hope of defeating incumbent Sergei Sobyanin _ but polls show his star is rising. And if he gets a big chunk of the real time Location system, the Kremlin will face pressure to show leniency over his five-year prison sentence, and the grassroots protest movement that fizzled out after Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency last year may gain new wind.
Sobyanin, meanwhile, is playing the regal incumbent: Throughout the campaign, the Kremlin-backed politician has been all but invisible, allowing the constant drone of jackhammers or whiff of fresh paint that are signs of a Moscow makeover to remind voters of who's in charge _ and who can pull the purse-strings.
Navalny is the one who has been soaking up attention, and generating buzz. On a recent August day, the opposition leader stood on stage in a sprawling Moscow park dotted with enormous space shuttles and other scraps of Soviet-era glory, and attempted to connect with an audience he rarely reaches through Twitter: the feared and revered babushka contingency."We know that (in Soviet times) our oil money was spent on enormous factories, industry, railroads, roads, science, health care, rockets," he boomed, riffing on a nostalgia felt by many older Russians, who saw their hopes dashed and savings depleted under post-Soviet political reforms.
"But can you name a single major business that's been built in this country in the past 10 years? I can't!"The old ladies sitting in the first row chuckled and shook their heads.On Sunday, police briefly detained Navalny after he left the stage of a campaign event, and released him a short time later. The detention was part of a series of public signals to Navalny, who was given a verbal warning about various alleged campaign violations by the Moscow electoral committee last week.
Polling data on the race is spotty and inconsistent, but the trends are clear: The number of Muscovites ready to vote for Navalny on Sept. 8 has breached 10 percent and may even be moving toward 20 percent. Meanwhile, Sobyanin's ratings _ while still above the 50 percent that would allow him to avoid a run-off _ are slipping by the week. There are four other party-backed candidates in the race, none projected to snag more than 5 percent.
Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the independent Levada polling center, said that Sobyanin's voter base was clearly no longer growing, and that there's now a small chance there will be a second round.Last month, Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison on embezzlement charges, but was released the day after his conviction in what many have described as an effort to legitimize the mayoral race and ensure that Sobyanin _ who was appointed as mayor and is seen as a possible successor to Putin _ is regarded as an elected politician with widespread support.
Such legitimacy is considered important because Putin's forces are at their weakest in his seat of power: Moscow. When Putin won back the presidency last year, after ruling for a term in the lesser role of prime minister, he won only 47 percent of the capital's rtls, compared to 64 percent nationwide. That may also be a reason why, although there's no doubt that Sobyanin is the Kremlin's man, he is running as an independent and has avoided public appearances with the president.
Masha Lipman at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow said that Navalny had already achieved something: cast doubt over the inevitability of Putin's power."One of his greatest achievements is ... adding an element of risk and uncertainty," she said. "Putin built a political system in this country that is risk averse, it's a political monopoly."
Rather than the issues _ immigration, traffic, high cost of living _ it's a contrast in political style that lies at the heart of the mayoral campaign. In the Levada Center poll, 48 percent of respondents said they would vote for a mayor with "experience," whereas 47 percent said that personal qualities, such as "openness and determination," were crucial.
Navalny, a sharp-tongued 37-year-old lawyer, has plenty of the latter. He has waged an intensive campaign with nearly $1.5 million in funds raised online, meeting with hundreds of voters every day and mobilizing enthusiastic young volunteers to help hand out leaflets in the street and on the metro.
His team has also unleashed a flurry of new online projects. From a GPS mapping system that shows how many supporters live in each apartment block to an application that helps users spread pro-Navalny information on Russia's biggest social networks, the campaign has been keen to lock down his natural base of young voters, many of whom often don't make it to the polls.
"Currently the polls are assuming that those who haven't yet figured out who to vote for will vote the same way as those who have," Leonid Volkov, Navalny's campaign manager, told The Associated Press. "The fight is for the 30 percent of voters who haven't decided yet."Andrei Tvertnev, an unemployed 25-year-old former soldier who was lingering in the crowd around Navalny, is one of those yet to make up his mind.
Tvertnev wasn't keen on Sobyanin, saying that the changes he's brought to the city "could have been done much faster." At the same time, he remained skeptical about Navalny."Do I vote for a bureaucrat who made some changes, or a different person who promises even more changes?" he asked. "I think I'll only make up my mind on the day of the elections."
Sobyanin, who made his name as the governor of the oil-rich Siberian province of Tyumen, makes up for his lack of charisma and enthusiasm with what talks in Russian politics: experience, access and the money that comes with it.Despite his almost invisible candidacy, Sobyanin is genuinely well-liked for the changes he's brought to Moscow. He has poured a yearly budget of approximately $54 billion into the city's parks and cultural institutions, although other promises to tackle traffic and parking have been lagging or limited in scope.
As if to shore up his reputation as a fixer-upper, the city, which usually hits a sleepy summer lull in August, has been converted into an enormous construction site _ with sidewalks torn up and facades repainted."There's little doubt that before elections, the government becomes very affectionate and thoughtful," Levada's Grazhdankin said about the city's makeover.
While Sobyanin, who was appointed to the mayor's office, is eager to prove himself as a legitimately elected politician, the tactics used against Navalny _ from accusations that he receives foreign funding abroad to refusals by media outlets to play his campaign ads _ show that he still sees Navalny as a threat.
Even if Navalny's eventual vote tally is relatively low, he may end up having an outsized impact on the Russian political scene."If he gets 10 to 12 percent, they can say, look at your opposition leader, he was only able to get this tiny fraction of the vote," said Lipman. "But those people who are investing their emotions, time and money into this campaign, that experience won't go away."
Oleg Bogomolov, a 42-year-old human resources manager who was at Navalny's headquarters to volunteer for the first time, said he didn't truly believe Navalny could win."But I think the more people who know about him, the greater his chances of being set free," he said. "If they put him behind bars again (after the election), there will be even more people in the streets."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
In Seminars Meant To Teach Investing Wisdom
A lawsuit filed Saturday by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman alleges that Donald Trump defrauded more than 5,000 people of $40 million, handed over for what was supposed to be the opportunity to learn Trump’s real estate investment magic at his for-profit training program, Trump University. The suit also names The Trump Entrepreneur Institute—previously known as Trump University LLC—and Michael Sexton, former president of the institution.
Beginning in 2005, Trump University offered a program that began with a free introductory 90-minute presentation promising to teach the secrets that helped build his real estate empire. This was, according to the suit, no more than a lengthy promotion for a three-day, $1,500 seminar. The three-day program, in turn, was used to plug “elite” courses that cost anywhere from $10,000 to $35,000.
Schneiderman takes particular aim at Trump U.’s ads, which featured the mogul’s picture and signature, and some of which appeared as personal letters. Marketing materials frequently referenced the “handpicked instructor” who would impart Trump’s wisdom, but the attorney general maintains that Trump was uninvolved in developing or teaching curriculum, and was not responsible for choosing instructors—by hand or otherwise.
The suit also claims the organization was warned by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) up to eight years ago to stop presenting itself as a university, though Trump representatives George Sorial and Michael Cohen say the organization had no formal communication with the NYSED until 2010. Trump University was issued a cease and indoor Tracking, after which its name was changed to The Trump Entrepreneur Institute. Sorial and Cohen say the program suspended live seminars several weeks later as a result of the developing conflict with Schneiderman’s office.
“Mr. Trump used his celebrity status and personally appeared in commercials making false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got,” said Schneiderman, in a statement. “No one, no matter how rich or popular they are, has a right to scam hard working New Yorkers. Anyone who does should expect to be held accountable.”
The suit claims that many students at Trump University—referred to in the complaint as “consumers”—were promised the opportunity to practice actual real estate transactions with access to private funds, personal appearances by Trump himself, and year-long access to “apprenticeship support.” Instead, according to the lawsuit, participants were provided with a list of funding sources culled from a newsstand publication, and many mentors did not respond to contact from students or provided no ongoing guidance at all.
Instead of the chance to shake hands with The Donald, a life-sized cutout of Trump was made available for photos with students, alleges the attorney general’s complaint.
Sorial and Cohen insist that Schneiderman’s actions are personally-motivated attacks against Trump, and claim that before the lawsuit was filed, the attorney general “repeatedly” rejected the offer of in-person meetings with Trump, while suggesting through a representative that the matter could be settled out of court.
“98% of Trump University students rated the program ‘excellent,’” claims the site, “while only 4% of New York State registered voters rated Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s performance as “excellent” and Schneiderman thinks he could be the next governor? He must be joking.”
Beyond the belligerent typeface, the site actually makes thousands of pages of handwritten survey responses, apparently from Trump University participants, available in PDF. Remarks in comment form are largely positive, and numerical responses tend to be the highest available scores or blank. Names of participants are redacted.
It is neither my business or concern as to how many sexual partners anyone has at any one time, and I genuinely could not care less how folk organise their relationships. But the co-opting and rebranding of polygamy, so that it loses its nasty association with the oppression of the most disadvantaged women, is as irresponsible as suggesting that because some women chose to enter high-end prostitution as a social experiment, all prostitution is radical and harmless.
Caroline Humphrey, a professor of collaborative anthropology at Cambridge University, has argued in favour of the legalisation of polygamy because, according to a number of women in polygamous marriages in Russia, "half a good man is better than none at all". While polyamory is not the same as traditional polygamy – which has been practised for centuries under a strict code of patriarchy in communities where women and children have few if any rights – the co-opting of the sanitised version will further normalise a practice that is anything but liberating for women in this Hands free access.
There is also the assumption that polyamory is an invention of a set of too-cool-for-school hipsters, who have recently discovered that exclusive couple-type relationships are so last season. However, it was radical feminists in the 1970s onwards that developed the notion of non-monogamy as a way to challenge patriarchal heterosexuality. The definition of polyamory as "ethical non-monogamy" currently doing the rounds sticks in my craw. Non-monogamy was deeply ethical. One could have as many sexual partners as desired but everything was honest and above board, with no one being deceived.
The type of non-monogamy radical feminists developed and practised involved no men. We were all lesbians starting off on a fairly equal playing field. Some of us involved with leftwing politics had previously been witness to or victims of men who had sexual access to as many women as they wanted, while women waited for her one partner to get round to paying her attention. In the meantime, women were pitted against each other while the men played a subtle game of divide and rule, and there were plenty of women to do the washing, childcare and provide emotional and sexual support for these oh-so alternative men.
The women were not necessarily any more sexually liberated than their married, monogamous sisters; in fact they would quite often complain of being treated far worse than a wife. It not only gave men permission to sleep around, but left women experiencing dreadful feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem and lack of confidence.
Elisabeth Sheff, a US-based sociologist who has studied polyamorous families since the mid-1990s, found that "despite the pronounced importance of gender equality to polyamorists", it is not unusual for men to be drawn to it because they believe that it will lead to sex with lots of women. The modern proponents of polyamory tend to ignore gender dynamics as if patriarchy and the sexual inequality that it produces has disappeared. Many also forget that its practice today, unlike polygamy, is the choice of overwhelmingly white, affluent, university educated and privileged folk, with too much time on their hands.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Beginning in 2005, Trump University offered a program that began with a free introductory 90-minute presentation promising to teach the secrets that helped build his real estate empire. This was, according to the suit, no more than a lengthy promotion for a three-day, $1,500 seminar. The three-day program, in turn, was used to plug “elite” courses that cost anywhere from $10,000 to $35,000.
Schneiderman takes particular aim at Trump U.’s ads, which featured the mogul’s picture and signature, and some of which appeared as personal letters. Marketing materials frequently referenced the “handpicked instructor” who would impart Trump’s wisdom, but the attorney general maintains that Trump was uninvolved in developing or teaching curriculum, and was not responsible for choosing instructors—by hand or otherwise.
The suit also claims the organization was warned by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) up to eight years ago to stop presenting itself as a university, though Trump representatives George Sorial and Michael Cohen say the organization had no formal communication with the NYSED until 2010. Trump University was issued a cease and indoor Tracking, after which its name was changed to The Trump Entrepreneur Institute. Sorial and Cohen say the program suspended live seminars several weeks later as a result of the developing conflict with Schneiderman’s office.
“Mr. Trump used his celebrity status and personally appeared in commercials making false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got,” said Schneiderman, in a statement. “No one, no matter how rich or popular they are, has a right to scam hard working New Yorkers. Anyone who does should expect to be held accountable.”
The suit claims that many students at Trump University—referred to in the complaint as “consumers”—were promised the opportunity to practice actual real estate transactions with access to private funds, personal appearances by Trump himself, and year-long access to “apprenticeship support.” Instead, according to the lawsuit, participants were provided with a list of funding sources culled from a newsstand publication, and many mentors did not respond to contact from students or provided no ongoing guidance at all.
Instead of the chance to shake hands with The Donald, a life-sized cutout of Trump was made available for photos with students, alleges the attorney general’s complaint.
Sorial and Cohen insist that Schneiderman’s actions are personally-motivated attacks against Trump, and claim that before the lawsuit was filed, the attorney general “repeatedly” rejected the offer of in-person meetings with Trump, while suggesting through a representative that the matter could be settled out of court.
“98% of Trump University students rated the program ‘excellent,’” claims the site, “while only 4% of New York State registered voters rated Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s performance as “excellent” and Schneiderman thinks he could be the next governor? He must be joking.”
Beyond the belligerent typeface, the site actually makes thousands of pages of handwritten survey responses, apparently from Trump University participants, available in PDF. Remarks in comment form are largely positive, and numerical responses tend to be the highest available scores or blank. Names of participants are redacted.
It is neither my business or concern as to how many sexual partners anyone has at any one time, and I genuinely could not care less how folk organise their relationships. But the co-opting and rebranding of polygamy, so that it loses its nasty association with the oppression of the most disadvantaged women, is as irresponsible as suggesting that because some women chose to enter high-end prostitution as a social experiment, all prostitution is radical and harmless.
Caroline Humphrey, a professor of collaborative anthropology at Cambridge University, has argued in favour of the legalisation of polygamy because, according to a number of women in polygamous marriages in Russia, "half a good man is better than none at all". While polyamory is not the same as traditional polygamy – which has been practised for centuries under a strict code of patriarchy in communities where women and children have few if any rights – the co-opting of the sanitised version will further normalise a practice that is anything but liberating for women in this Hands free access.
There is also the assumption that polyamory is an invention of a set of too-cool-for-school hipsters, who have recently discovered that exclusive couple-type relationships are so last season. However, it was radical feminists in the 1970s onwards that developed the notion of non-monogamy as a way to challenge patriarchal heterosexuality. The definition of polyamory as "ethical non-monogamy" currently doing the rounds sticks in my craw. Non-monogamy was deeply ethical. One could have as many sexual partners as desired but everything was honest and above board, with no one being deceived.
The type of non-monogamy radical feminists developed and practised involved no men. We were all lesbians starting off on a fairly equal playing field. Some of us involved with leftwing politics had previously been witness to or victims of men who had sexual access to as many women as they wanted, while women waited for her one partner to get round to paying her attention. In the meantime, women were pitted against each other while the men played a subtle game of divide and rule, and there were plenty of women to do the washing, childcare and provide emotional and sexual support for these oh-so alternative men.
The women were not necessarily any more sexually liberated than their married, monogamous sisters; in fact they would quite often complain of being treated far worse than a wife. It not only gave men permission to sleep around, but left women experiencing dreadful feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem and lack of confidence.
Elisabeth Sheff, a US-based sociologist who has studied polyamorous families since the mid-1990s, found that "despite the pronounced importance of gender equality to polyamorists", it is not unusual for men to be drawn to it because they believe that it will lead to sex with lots of women. The modern proponents of polyamory tend to ignore gender dynamics as if patriarchy and the sexual inequality that it produces has disappeared. Many also forget that its practice today, unlike polygamy, is the choice of overwhelmingly white, affluent, university educated and privileged folk, with too much time on their hands.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Monday, August 19, 2013
A rushed and flawed welfare scheme?
The Indian welfare state is set for a reinvention, as subsidies of all kinds are in the process of being monetised into cash transfers. Aapka paisa, aapke haath (your money in your hands) is the pithy election campaign slogan that is meant to convince the people of the merit of cash transfers, but is the Indian state ready for the switch to cash?
We don't think so. India requires significant additional capability in identifying households and in linking households to bank accounts. Scaling up nationally without building this capability will likely result in failure, and the Indian government should instead look to emulate the successful bottom-up implementation approach of Brazil's Família with gradual scale up from the regional to the national level.
The merit of cash transfers lays in the potential greater efficiency of cash, as compared to in-kind subsidies, in expanding choice and enabling poor households to purchase goods and services that they need. Of course, this increase in economic welfare will only be realised if the cash transfer is equivalent in purchasing power to the subsidy. This is not always the case, as a cash transfer pilot for kerosene in the state of Rajasthan highlights: the cash transferred was insufficient for families to purchase their monthly requirement of kerosene, as the market price indoor Tracking. Therefore, any cash transfer scheme would require that the transfers be indexed to inflation in the local area, which is highly complex.
Transferring cash to households, while seemingly simple, requires significant implementation capabilities. The first step is to identify all potential beneficiary households, which remains incomplete and daunting in India.
India's highly-touted unique ID programme has issued an estimated 280m ID cards over the course of three years, meaning that 800m more cards need to be issued before April 2014, when the cash transfer is set to cover the entire country. Such a vast increase in the rate of issuing cards seems unlikely. Even if all households are able to obtain an ID card, there is no guarantee that the transfer can be targeted accurately to only poor households. Many non-poor households have finagled their way onto government rolls that track the poor, for example, leaving the poor behind.
The next step for the cash transfer to work is to link the national ID to a bank account. In India, this seemingly simple step is a huge challenge, as Indians currently have limited access to financial services. A recent World Bank study estimates bank account penetration across India at 35%, a rate that falls even lower for the poorest households. Moreover, many poor households do not have access to bank branches or ATMs.
Furthermore, in any cash transfer scheme, there will undoubtedly be cases of non-payment, late payment, or inadequate payment to beneficiaries. In these cases, it remains unclear, in the design of India's transfer, how citizens will be able to file grievances and how the government will redress these grievances. A similarly massive Indian social programme, MGNREGA, has seen state governments drag their feet on resolving complaints and fail to curb corruption due to the lack of a grievance redressal mechanism.
Given that India seems inadequately prepared for implementing a cash transfer scheme, does the government's current implementation strategy have mechanisms of learning and adaptation that address these inadequacies? We believe not.
First, the government's strategy involves large scale piloting of cash transfers for selected programmes in 51 districts by 2013, and then scaling up nationwide by 2014. The pilot is set to last only a few months, with no systematic evaluation, and will likely be carried out in districts that have relatively high ID card coverage and bank account penetration. Consequently, the results of the pilot may not be that informative and Hands free access, even if they are, will not be representative of how the programme will work across India.
Second, rushing into a massive cash transfer programme may complicate the government's ability to rectify problems on the fly, both politically and administratively. The Indian government can learn from an alternative implementation strategy adopted in Brazil for the famous cash transfer programme, Bolsa Família.
Bolsa Família grew out of a combination of other transfer programmes that had started at the municipal and state levels and had been operating for several years prior to the launch of Bolsa Família. These sub-national cash transfer programmes were then individually scaled up to the national level, and subsequently consolidated into Bolsa Família. Thus, cash transfers in Brazil started from the bottom and diffused upward and outward, which suggests that kinks in programme administration could be smoothed out at smaller scales and then scaled up. By contrast, India's top-down, rushed approach provides little space for weaknesses to be identified and rectified at the local level so that the most effective modalities of the programme can be scaled nationally.
The Indian government's ambitions of establishing a cash transfer system at the proposed size and scope has the potential to deliver significant welfare gains. However, policymakers should be wary of overambitious implementation targets: in the rush for implementation the government has ignored its current administrative constraints and gone for nationwide scale up which will likely result in failure.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
We don't think so. India requires significant additional capability in identifying households and in linking households to bank accounts. Scaling up nationally without building this capability will likely result in failure, and the Indian government should instead look to emulate the successful bottom-up implementation approach of Brazil's Família with gradual scale up from the regional to the national level.
The merit of cash transfers lays in the potential greater efficiency of cash, as compared to in-kind subsidies, in expanding choice and enabling poor households to purchase goods and services that they need. Of course, this increase in economic welfare will only be realised if the cash transfer is equivalent in purchasing power to the subsidy. This is not always the case, as a cash transfer pilot for kerosene in the state of Rajasthan highlights: the cash transferred was insufficient for families to purchase their monthly requirement of kerosene, as the market price indoor Tracking. Therefore, any cash transfer scheme would require that the transfers be indexed to inflation in the local area, which is highly complex.
Transferring cash to households, while seemingly simple, requires significant implementation capabilities. The first step is to identify all potential beneficiary households, which remains incomplete and daunting in India.
India's highly-touted unique ID programme has issued an estimated 280m ID cards over the course of three years, meaning that 800m more cards need to be issued before April 2014, when the cash transfer is set to cover the entire country. Such a vast increase in the rate of issuing cards seems unlikely. Even if all households are able to obtain an ID card, there is no guarantee that the transfer can be targeted accurately to only poor households. Many non-poor households have finagled their way onto government rolls that track the poor, for example, leaving the poor behind.
The next step for the cash transfer to work is to link the national ID to a bank account. In India, this seemingly simple step is a huge challenge, as Indians currently have limited access to financial services. A recent World Bank study estimates bank account penetration across India at 35%, a rate that falls even lower for the poorest households. Moreover, many poor households do not have access to bank branches or ATMs.
Furthermore, in any cash transfer scheme, there will undoubtedly be cases of non-payment, late payment, or inadequate payment to beneficiaries. In these cases, it remains unclear, in the design of India's transfer, how citizens will be able to file grievances and how the government will redress these grievances. A similarly massive Indian social programme, MGNREGA, has seen state governments drag their feet on resolving complaints and fail to curb corruption due to the lack of a grievance redressal mechanism.
Given that India seems inadequately prepared for implementing a cash transfer scheme, does the government's current implementation strategy have mechanisms of learning and adaptation that address these inadequacies? We believe not.
First, the government's strategy involves large scale piloting of cash transfers for selected programmes in 51 districts by 2013, and then scaling up nationwide by 2014. The pilot is set to last only a few months, with no systematic evaluation, and will likely be carried out in districts that have relatively high ID card coverage and bank account penetration. Consequently, the results of the pilot may not be that informative and Hands free access, even if they are, will not be representative of how the programme will work across India.
Second, rushing into a massive cash transfer programme may complicate the government's ability to rectify problems on the fly, both politically and administratively. The Indian government can learn from an alternative implementation strategy adopted in Brazil for the famous cash transfer programme, Bolsa Família.
Bolsa Família grew out of a combination of other transfer programmes that had started at the municipal and state levels and had been operating for several years prior to the launch of Bolsa Família. These sub-national cash transfer programmes were then individually scaled up to the national level, and subsequently consolidated into Bolsa Família. Thus, cash transfers in Brazil started from the bottom and diffused upward and outward, which suggests that kinks in programme administration could be smoothed out at smaller scales and then scaled up. By contrast, India's top-down, rushed approach provides little space for weaknesses to be identified and rectified at the local level so that the most effective modalities of the programme can be scaled nationally.
The Indian government's ambitions of establishing a cash transfer system at the proposed size and scope has the potential to deliver significant welfare gains. However, policymakers should be wary of overambitious implementation targets: in the rush for implementation the government has ignored its current administrative constraints and gone for nationwide scale up which will likely result in failure.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Surprise fees on your hotel bill
If anyone is an educated hotel guest, it's Bjorn Hanson, dean of New York University's Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management.
But even Hanson got confused during a business trip a few years ago when a hotel bill included $18 in charges for real time Location system. One fee was for a bellman he didn't use and the other was for housekeeping service, even though he had already left a tip.
It took some discussion with the manager to get the fees dropped.
While travelers were complaining about airline fees - additional charges for putting luggage on planes, reserving seats and other services - the hotel business quietly experimented with fee after fee.
The result is that your bill at checkout can be confounding. Hotels are tacking on lots of extra charges in addition to sales tax and the tariffs from cities and states that apply only to the hospitality industry.
Common fees include resort usage, airport pickup, parking and gym visits along with charges for room service.
Some of the more surprising charges include a fee for moving items around in the minibar (not actually consuming any), a bellman (whether you use one or not), the room safe (even if you don't stash valuables in it), checking out early, checking in early and upgraded amenities (such as shampoo). And here's a new fee: parking in an open, unattended lot.
These charges are most common at higher-end hotels, resorts and properties in urban centers. The new parking fee at suburban hotels is still relatively rare. Most hotels in the middle of the price spectrum - the most popular segment in the U.S. - continue to avoid most fees in favor of offering free Internet, free breakfast and free parking.
Fees collected by the hotel industry this year will hit a record $2.1 billion, according to a projection released by NYU's Hanson on Tuesday, who tracks hotel fee trends annually. That is double what consumers paid a decade ago.
Among luxury properties, 99% charge for a late cancellation, compared with 29%among so-called midscale properties, according to a 2012 study by the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
The biggest problem with fees, Hanson says, is not disclosing those that are mandatory. Last fall the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to 22 hotel booking companies for leaving details out of the price projection when consumers shopped for rtls. It is now common to find a section on fees on hotel booking sites as well as a disclosure when a "resort fee" applies.
"Increasingly, hotels give away free breakfast, free Internet, and now some hotels are trying to claw that back with 'convenience fees,'" says Robert Habeeb, president and chief operating officer of First Hospitality Group in Chicago, which operates 53 hotels, mostly in the Midwest. Fees vary at its properties but can include Internet connection fees ($11.95 a day at one property), a pet fee ($50 per stay at another property), breakfast and parking.
Hotels watch occupancy trends and change prices - and fees - constantly, Habeeb says. "It has become like you're trading a commodity on the floor of an exchange." Ultimately, he says, "consumers decide what they're willing to pay for and what they're not."
Overall, nearly a quarter of hotels charge for in-room Internet access, according to a 2012 survey commissioned by the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Wi-Fi charges are most common in so-called "upper upscale" and luxury hotels - with the fee assessed at more than three-quarters of all properties in those categories.
Business travelers to big cities, in particular, are targeted for the Wi-Fi charge - which can be as high as $15 a day. "If you're headed to downtown-anywhere, there's a good chance you'll see a Wi-Fi fee on your bill," says Jeremy Murphy, chief executive officer of TheSuitest.com, a travel website that analyzes hotel rooms and prices.
NYU's Hanson says it can be tough for consumers to understand what might end up on their bills. "Fees and surcharges are not even uniform across brands," he says. "They can change overnight ... That makes it very difficult for travelers to be aware and anticipate."
If you can, find out in advance what the extra charges are, and pay close attention to your bill when you're checking out. Tom Waithe, director of operations for Kimpton Hotels in the Pacific Northwest, encourages hotel guests to challenge charges they disagree with.
"The desk has, in many cases, the full ability to reverse a charge or reduce it, but be fair - the charges are often posted in advance," Waithe says.Read the registration card carefully. Says Waithe: "If you say you will pay for Wi-Fi and newspapers, don't be complaining at checkout that you didn't notice what you were signing."
Jack Worthen Germond, born during the Roaring ’20s, worked for the Rochester Times-Union and became Washington Bureau chief for Gannett newspapers. In 1974, he moved to the Washington Star, where he started a syndicated political column with Jules Witcover. After the Star folded, they went to the Baltimore Evening Sun.
For many Americans, he was a familiar figure on television, as a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a frequent commentator on Meet the Press. “Jack Germond was one of the great happy warriors of political reporting,” NBC’s Chuck Todd wrote on Twitter. Journalist Jeff Greenfield wrote on Twitter: “Germond’s bull---- detector should be implanted in every political reporter.”
Germond was renowned for his no-nonsense manner and his cultivation of political sources around the country during a pre-Internet era when that was a crucial part of smart reportage. He was also famous for his love of fine food and drink — immortalized by “the Germond rule,” which held that political reporters split the dinner tab evenly, regardless of who had eaten what.
Democrat and Chronicle columnist and former managing editor Jim Memmott interviewed Germond in 1997 when the T-U closed. Germond, who worked at the Times-Union in the mid 1950s, recalled an election to control the fate of the Monroe County Democratic Party.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
But even Hanson got confused during a business trip a few years ago when a hotel bill included $18 in charges for real time Location system. One fee was for a bellman he didn't use and the other was for housekeeping service, even though he had already left a tip.
It took some discussion with the manager to get the fees dropped.
While travelers were complaining about airline fees - additional charges for putting luggage on planes, reserving seats and other services - the hotel business quietly experimented with fee after fee.
The result is that your bill at checkout can be confounding. Hotels are tacking on lots of extra charges in addition to sales tax and the tariffs from cities and states that apply only to the hospitality industry.
Common fees include resort usage, airport pickup, parking and gym visits along with charges for room service.
Some of the more surprising charges include a fee for moving items around in the minibar (not actually consuming any), a bellman (whether you use one or not), the room safe (even if you don't stash valuables in it), checking out early, checking in early and upgraded amenities (such as shampoo). And here's a new fee: parking in an open, unattended lot.
These charges are most common at higher-end hotels, resorts and properties in urban centers. The new parking fee at suburban hotels is still relatively rare. Most hotels in the middle of the price spectrum - the most popular segment in the U.S. - continue to avoid most fees in favor of offering free Internet, free breakfast and free parking.
Fees collected by the hotel industry this year will hit a record $2.1 billion, according to a projection released by NYU's Hanson on Tuesday, who tracks hotel fee trends annually. That is double what consumers paid a decade ago.
Among luxury properties, 99% charge for a late cancellation, compared with 29%among so-called midscale properties, according to a 2012 study by the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
The biggest problem with fees, Hanson says, is not disclosing those that are mandatory. Last fall the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to 22 hotel booking companies for leaving details out of the price projection when consumers shopped for rtls. It is now common to find a section on fees on hotel booking sites as well as a disclosure when a "resort fee" applies.
"Increasingly, hotels give away free breakfast, free Internet, and now some hotels are trying to claw that back with 'convenience fees,'" says Robert Habeeb, president and chief operating officer of First Hospitality Group in Chicago, which operates 53 hotels, mostly in the Midwest. Fees vary at its properties but can include Internet connection fees ($11.95 a day at one property), a pet fee ($50 per stay at another property), breakfast and parking.
Hotels watch occupancy trends and change prices - and fees - constantly, Habeeb says. "It has become like you're trading a commodity on the floor of an exchange." Ultimately, he says, "consumers decide what they're willing to pay for and what they're not."
Overall, nearly a quarter of hotels charge for in-room Internet access, according to a 2012 survey commissioned by the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Wi-Fi charges are most common in so-called "upper upscale" and luxury hotels - with the fee assessed at more than three-quarters of all properties in those categories.
Business travelers to big cities, in particular, are targeted for the Wi-Fi charge - which can be as high as $15 a day. "If you're headed to downtown-anywhere, there's a good chance you'll see a Wi-Fi fee on your bill," says Jeremy Murphy, chief executive officer of TheSuitest.com, a travel website that analyzes hotel rooms and prices.
NYU's Hanson says it can be tough for consumers to understand what might end up on their bills. "Fees and surcharges are not even uniform across brands," he says. "They can change overnight ... That makes it very difficult for travelers to be aware and anticipate."
If you can, find out in advance what the extra charges are, and pay close attention to your bill when you're checking out. Tom Waithe, director of operations for Kimpton Hotels in the Pacific Northwest, encourages hotel guests to challenge charges they disagree with.
"The desk has, in many cases, the full ability to reverse a charge or reduce it, but be fair - the charges are often posted in advance," Waithe says.Read the registration card carefully. Says Waithe: "If you say you will pay for Wi-Fi and newspapers, don't be complaining at checkout that you didn't notice what you were signing."
Jack Worthen Germond, born during the Roaring ’20s, worked for the Rochester Times-Union and became Washington Bureau chief for Gannett newspapers. In 1974, he moved to the Washington Star, where he started a syndicated political column with Jules Witcover. After the Star folded, they went to the Baltimore Evening Sun.
For many Americans, he was a familiar figure on television, as a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a frequent commentator on Meet the Press. “Jack Germond was one of the great happy warriors of political reporting,” NBC’s Chuck Todd wrote on Twitter. Journalist Jeff Greenfield wrote on Twitter: “Germond’s bull---- detector should be implanted in every political reporter.”
Germond was renowned for his no-nonsense manner and his cultivation of political sources around the country during a pre-Internet era when that was a crucial part of smart reportage. He was also famous for his love of fine food and drink — immortalized by “the Germond rule,” which held that political reporters split the dinner tab evenly, regardless of who had eaten what.
Democrat and Chronicle columnist and former managing editor Jim Memmott interviewed Germond in 1997 when the T-U closed. Germond, who worked at the Times-Union in the mid 1950s, recalled an election to control the fate of the Monroe County Democratic Party.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Monday, August 5, 2013
With license plate scanners
After an American Civil Liberties Union report found police increasingly can track law-abiding drivers’ whereabouts with few restrictions, the group’s Massachusetts branch renewed its calls for lawmakers to impose limits and said the state already may collect such information.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or Indoor Positioning System – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
On the heels of the report, the ACLU of Massachusetts repeated its call for state legislation to require police to delete plate data after two days unless it relates to a specific investigation.“The police shouldn’t just be collecting location data of innocent people on a routine basis,” said Kade Crockford, director of the state ACLU’s Technology for Liberty project.The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation held a hearing on such bills in May. It has taken no action yet, according to Crockford.
She also said the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security EOPSS announced plans a number of years ago to create a statewide database of captured plate information, but has yet to release information on what data it tracks or what guidelines govern it.
In a 2010 grant application for law enforcement agencies seeking federal funding to buy plate scanners, the state public safety office said recipients must agree to “electronically submit captured license plate data to the state repository maintained by the Criminal Justice Information Services CJIS Division at the Commonwealth’s Public Safety Data Center.”
You might have missed this, if you didn't happen to hit the right fast-food drive-through on the right day in July, but burger-flippers and assorted labor activists staged one-day strikes in cities across the country. They called for the right to unionize and for a raise in the minimum wage - to $15 an hour.
That's right; they want to double the federal minimum wage. Hey, why not swing for the fences? But before you sputter at the chutzpah of this demand, consider the point made by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a provocative op-ed for Bloomberg: "If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour - three times what it is now."
Hanauer, who also supports a $15 wage floor, is clearly mixed up. We in America are not supposed to look at this issue from the point of view of the worker. We're consumers first and foremost, right?
What's supposed to matter is how much doubling the wage would add to the price of your Big Mac or Whopper. And, yes, prices would rise, but by how much is currently something of an Internet parlor game.
The Huffington Post touted and subsequently disowned an estimate that McDonald's would have to increase prices by 17 percent to maintain current levels of Hands free access. An editor for the Columbia Journalism Review picked this apart and instead surmised the price hikes would have to be more in the range of 25 percent, while an industry think tank pegged them at up to 35 percent.
So maybe you don't care if the Dollar Menu becomes the Dollar-Thirty-Five Menu. Have you paused to consider that by raising the wage you would throw thousands of fry cooks out of work? That McDonald's and its franchisees would close stores or introduce more automation to bolster profits? This could raise the unemployment rate.
Could it? Because if you consult actual research, there's no clear consensus on what raising the minimum wage does to employment. Some economists argue that the effect is usually positive, while others say it has no effect or a slightly negative one. There's good reason to believe that raising the minimum wage during a period of high unemployment, like our own, would stimulate the economy. And that's exactly what we need now.
Moreover, raising the pay of low-wage earners will get them off of the public assistance rolls. Restaurant servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the general population and are at three times the poverty rate of the general population.
America's real job creators are its consumers, and their wealth was decimated when the real estate bubble collapsed. Middle-class jobs are increasingly being replaced by low-wage ones. Putting more cash into average workers' hands allows them to spend more, which puts others back to work.
As the low-wage sector goes, so goes the nation. That's the message every middle-class American should be getting. A major challenge in the coming decades will be ensuring that the vast majority of citizens have access to work that affords a decent standard of living.
Fifteen bucks an hour too pie-in-the-sky for you? OK, try $11. Economists consider that hourly wage the cutoff for poverty level for a family of four. So you get why people are protesting. And you get why the fast-food industry has an incredibly high turnover rate: a 75 percent rate annually. The pay stinks. You can't live a decent life on it. The national median pay for cashiers, cooks and the crew in the industry is $8.94.
The people bagging the burritos and taking those frozen patties from the walk-in are not out of line to insist on higher pay. This is one of the fastest growing sectors of employment. And increasingly, its workers are adults, many with families.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or Indoor Positioning System – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
On the heels of the report, the ACLU of Massachusetts repeated its call for state legislation to require police to delete plate data after two days unless it relates to a specific investigation.“The police shouldn’t just be collecting location data of innocent people on a routine basis,” said Kade Crockford, director of the state ACLU’s Technology for Liberty project.The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation held a hearing on such bills in May. It has taken no action yet, according to Crockford.
She also said the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security EOPSS announced plans a number of years ago to create a statewide database of captured plate information, but has yet to release information on what data it tracks or what guidelines govern it.
In a 2010 grant application for law enforcement agencies seeking federal funding to buy plate scanners, the state public safety office said recipients must agree to “electronically submit captured license plate data to the state repository maintained by the Criminal Justice Information Services CJIS Division at the Commonwealth’s Public Safety Data Center.”
You might have missed this, if you didn't happen to hit the right fast-food drive-through on the right day in July, but burger-flippers and assorted labor activists staged one-day strikes in cities across the country. They called for the right to unionize and for a raise in the minimum wage - to $15 an hour.
That's right; they want to double the federal minimum wage. Hey, why not swing for the fences? But before you sputter at the chutzpah of this demand, consider the point made by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a provocative op-ed for Bloomberg: "If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour - three times what it is now."
Hanauer, who also supports a $15 wage floor, is clearly mixed up. We in America are not supposed to look at this issue from the point of view of the worker. We're consumers first and foremost, right?
What's supposed to matter is how much doubling the wage would add to the price of your Big Mac or Whopper. And, yes, prices would rise, but by how much is currently something of an Internet parlor game.
The Huffington Post touted and subsequently disowned an estimate that McDonald's would have to increase prices by 17 percent to maintain current levels of Hands free access. An editor for the Columbia Journalism Review picked this apart and instead surmised the price hikes would have to be more in the range of 25 percent, while an industry think tank pegged them at up to 35 percent.
So maybe you don't care if the Dollar Menu becomes the Dollar-Thirty-Five Menu. Have you paused to consider that by raising the wage you would throw thousands of fry cooks out of work? That McDonald's and its franchisees would close stores or introduce more automation to bolster profits? This could raise the unemployment rate.
Could it? Because if you consult actual research, there's no clear consensus on what raising the minimum wage does to employment. Some economists argue that the effect is usually positive, while others say it has no effect or a slightly negative one. There's good reason to believe that raising the minimum wage during a period of high unemployment, like our own, would stimulate the economy. And that's exactly what we need now.
Moreover, raising the pay of low-wage earners will get them off of the public assistance rolls. Restaurant servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the general population and are at three times the poverty rate of the general population.
America's real job creators are its consumers, and their wealth was decimated when the real estate bubble collapsed. Middle-class jobs are increasingly being replaced by low-wage ones. Putting more cash into average workers' hands allows them to spend more, which puts others back to work.
As the low-wage sector goes, so goes the nation. That's the message every middle-class American should be getting. A major challenge in the coming decades will be ensuring that the vast majority of citizens have access to work that affords a decent standard of living.
Fifteen bucks an hour too pie-in-the-sky for you? OK, try $11. Economists consider that hourly wage the cutoff for poverty level for a family of four. So you get why people are protesting. And you get why the fast-food industry has an incredibly high turnover rate: a 75 percent rate annually. The pay stinks. You can't live a decent life on it. The national median pay for cashiers, cooks and the crew in the industry is $8.94.
The people bagging the burritos and taking those frozen patties from the walk-in are not out of line to insist on higher pay. This is one of the fastest growing sectors of employment. And increasingly, its workers are adults, many with families.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Slow talks could hasten Detroit bankruptcy filing
After several weeks of slow-moving talks, only one deal has been reached between the state-appointed emergency manager hired to fix Detroit’s finances and the more than 50 creditors, two public pension funds and unions jockeying for a piece of the billions of dollars the city owes them.
The slow process is frustrating some creditors who complain the city isn’t doing much to bargain with them beyond offering 10 cents on a dollar. They say bankruptcy attorney Kevyn Orr’s message to them has been a blunt — take it or leave it.
Though Orr has said he’s attempting to avoid the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, experts say the stalemates at the bargaining tables could push the city in that direction.
“I think Orr is going to get to the point where he has enough ammunition to justify a Chapter 9 if there are enough people not willing to get on the bus,” said James McTevia, a turnaround expert based north of Detroit in Bingham Farms. Bankruptcy may be the only option for a city that for years has crashed toward insolvency, he said.
Orr, who oversaw Chrysler LLC’s bankruptcy and real time Location system, briefed the city’s debt holders on June 14 on his plan to erase the city’s $17 billion in debt, warning that time was short and the chance of filing for bankruptcy was about 50-50. He vowed to reassess things from the meeting in 30 days. Since then, he and his team held several meetings with debt holders but few details of those talks have come from Orr’s office.
Bankruptcy comes with risks, experts say. Fees for things like parking and traffic tickets could increase as Orr looks for ways to raise money to pay creditors. Trash collection, grass cutting, snow plowing and other already limited essential services could be scaled back even more. More city workers could lose their jobs. And Detroit’s already poor image will take more hits.
“As bad as things get, sometimes they can get worse,” said Anthony Sabino, business law professor at St. John’s University’s Peter J. Tobin College of Business. “The additional layers of putting the fate of the city in the hands of a bankruptcy judge, the layers of legal expenses — there would be such a shattering of confidence it could be the point of no return for the city.”
Detroit is paying millions of dollars in legal bills and for consultants involved in Orr’s restructuring. Sabino said that would easily double in bankruptcy and legal costs for creditors would soar. Residents and Detroit business owners, like Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert could become disenchanted.
“The city of Detroit has had decades of financial problems, and it is time to face those problems and move forward,” said Matt Cullen, the president and chief executive for Rock Ventures, which is the umbrella entity for Gilbert’s portfolio. “Just as the auto companies had to reinvent how they do business, so does the city of Detroit.”
Several creditors didn’t return phone messages or declined to talk with The Associated Press about the negotiations. One creditor, Peter Hayes, managing director and head of BlackRock’s Municipal Bonds Group, criticized Orr’s plan and said the emergency manager is breaking promises the city previously made on bond payments.
“Those who own Detroit (general obligation) bonds, either on their own or in pooled vehicles such as those we manage at BlackRock, will suffer the financial consequences of the emergency manager’s misguided plan,” Hayes wrote in a letter published this week in the Detroit Free Press.
It’s not clear if the settlement reached in principle late last week with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch will be enough to prod other creditors. Orr spokesman Bill Nowling wouldn’t reveal details because the deal had not been signed. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch spokesman Bill Halldin declined to comment.
New York-based Syncora Guarantee Inc., a trustee on city swap deals involving casino tax revenue, has butted heads with Orr by trying to limit the city’s access to some of the money after creditors are paid. Syncora also accused Orr of having no intention to negotiate in good faith. A county judge issued a temporary restraining order to keep $11 million per month being held up by Syncora flowing back into city coffers after Orr took the issue to court.
Another creditor, National Public Finance Guarantee Corp., the indirect subsidiary of MBIA Inc., which has about $100.7 million of insured exposure to Detroit’s general obligation debt and $2.4 billion of the city’s revenue secured debt, is continuing to meet with the city but is also “considering potential alternatives to the plan the city has provided,” said spokesman Kevin Brown.
The 75-year-old retired businessman checked out a tree lopper and a tape measure, two of the more than 100 tools available to patrons of the suburban Detroit library.
In a number of communities across the U.S., it's possible to borrow tools, musical instruments, fishing poles and much more from the local public library. The trend expands the traditional role of the library as a community resource for free knowledge. Libraries see the programs as a new way to offer residents a chance to learn – just not necessarily with a book.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
The slow process is frustrating some creditors who complain the city isn’t doing much to bargain with them beyond offering 10 cents on a dollar. They say bankruptcy attorney Kevyn Orr’s message to them has been a blunt — take it or leave it.
Though Orr has said he’s attempting to avoid the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, experts say the stalemates at the bargaining tables could push the city in that direction.
“I think Orr is going to get to the point where he has enough ammunition to justify a Chapter 9 if there are enough people not willing to get on the bus,” said James McTevia, a turnaround expert based north of Detroit in Bingham Farms. Bankruptcy may be the only option for a city that for years has crashed toward insolvency, he said.
Orr, who oversaw Chrysler LLC’s bankruptcy and real time Location system, briefed the city’s debt holders on June 14 on his plan to erase the city’s $17 billion in debt, warning that time was short and the chance of filing for bankruptcy was about 50-50. He vowed to reassess things from the meeting in 30 days. Since then, he and his team held several meetings with debt holders but few details of those talks have come from Orr’s office.
Bankruptcy comes with risks, experts say. Fees for things like parking and traffic tickets could increase as Orr looks for ways to raise money to pay creditors. Trash collection, grass cutting, snow plowing and other already limited essential services could be scaled back even more. More city workers could lose their jobs. And Detroit’s already poor image will take more hits.
“As bad as things get, sometimes they can get worse,” said Anthony Sabino, business law professor at St. John’s University’s Peter J. Tobin College of Business. “The additional layers of putting the fate of the city in the hands of a bankruptcy judge, the layers of legal expenses — there would be such a shattering of confidence it could be the point of no return for the city.”
Detroit is paying millions of dollars in legal bills and for consultants involved in Orr’s restructuring. Sabino said that would easily double in bankruptcy and legal costs for creditors would soar. Residents and Detroit business owners, like Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert could become disenchanted.
“The city of Detroit has had decades of financial problems, and it is time to face those problems and move forward,” said Matt Cullen, the president and chief executive for Rock Ventures, which is the umbrella entity for Gilbert’s portfolio. “Just as the auto companies had to reinvent how they do business, so does the city of Detroit.”
Several creditors didn’t return phone messages or declined to talk with The Associated Press about the negotiations. One creditor, Peter Hayes, managing director and head of BlackRock’s Municipal Bonds Group, criticized Orr’s plan and said the emergency manager is breaking promises the city previously made on bond payments.
“Those who own Detroit (general obligation) bonds, either on their own or in pooled vehicles such as those we manage at BlackRock, will suffer the financial consequences of the emergency manager’s misguided plan,” Hayes wrote in a letter published this week in the Detroit Free Press.
It’s not clear if the settlement reached in principle late last week with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch will be enough to prod other creditors. Orr spokesman Bill Nowling wouldn’t reveal details because the deal had not been signed. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch spokesman Bill Halldin declined to comment.
New York-based Syncora Guarantee Inc., a trustee on city swap deals involving casino tax revenue, has butted heads with Orr by trying to limit the city’s access to some of the money after creditors are paid. Syncora also accused Orr of having no intention to negotiate in good faith. A county judge issued a temporary restraining order to keep $11 million per month being held up by Syncora flowing back into city coffers after Orr took the issue to court.
Another creditor, National Public Finance Guarantee Corp., the indirect subsidiary of MBIA Inc., which has about $100.7 million of insured exposure to Detroit’s general obligation debt and $2.4 billion of the city’s revenue secured debt, is continuing to meet with the city but is also “considering potential alternatives to the plan the city has provided,” said spokesman Kevin Brown.
The 75-year-old retired businessman checked out a tree lopper and a tape measure, two of the more than 100 tools available to patrons of the suburban Detroit library.
In a number of communities across the U.S., it's possible to borrow tools, musical instruments, fishing poles and much more from the local public library. The trend expands the traditional role of the library as a community resource for free knowledge. Libraries see the programs as a new way to offer residents a chance to learn – just not necessarily with a book.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Does this undocumented family deserve to stay in Toronto?
They own two cars, a 3,000-sq-ft home by the lake and run a successful landscaping business that rings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in revenue.By most accounts, they are the hardworking and well-established immigrants that Canada needs and wants.
Since their arrival from Mexico in 2007, however, the Dias family has lived a life of secrecy — off the population map and, by necessity, the radar of Canadian immigration officials.Jose Dias, his wife Sofia, both in their 40s, their adult son Carlos and daughter Antonia are among tens of thousands of people in Greater Toronto who live and work here without legal status.
Known as “the undocumented,” they are failed refugee claimants dodging deportation or those who overstayed temporary work, student or visitor visas. Many are economic migrants, often from developing countries, seeking work or a better lifestyle.With Toronto poised to become Canada’s first “sanctuary city,” which would open up municipally funded services to immigrants, legal or not, it raises the politically contentious question: Do these migrants deserve to stay?
The Dias family agreed to share their personal story though they asked that their names be changed to protect them from authorities. While their story may not represent the experience of all undocumented people, they say they want to show the human side to a vulnerable population. “We want Canadians to see the other side of the story and understand why we do the things we do,” says Antonia. “We want a better life, which is not possible in Mexico.”
In many ways the undocumented are indistinguishable from ordinary Canadians and well-integrated in the community. They work, though often for low pay. They lay shingles, labour on construction sites, indoor positioning system, clean offices and homes. They feed a whole industry, from employers who rely on cheap labour and job recruiters who take their cut to payday loan managers who charge fees to cash the illegal’s paycheques.
The undocumented live in a constant state of fear. If caught, they most certainly face deportation. So they rarely report a crime, go to a doctor’s office or complain about unfair treatment by employers. They avoid the public library, or any other government service, for fear it will prompt questions about their status. Some parents go so far as to keep their kids home from school.
A City of Toronto report estimates there are anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 undocumented migrants in the GTA, roughly 2 to 5 per cent of the population.Estimates are extremely unreliable, however, because no one is able to track such a transient population. City officials hope that by extending services to them, they will have a better grasp of the nature and extent of illegal migration.
In 2015, their numbers are expected to surge when four-year work permits for thousands of temporary foreign workers, currently here legally, expire under a 2011 federal law, potentially moving thousands more underground. Last year alone, 340,000 foreigners on work permits resided in Canada.
To manage the new reality, Toronto City Council has asked staff to report in the fall on ways to improve access to municipal services — public health, shelters, food banks, after-school day care, breakfast programs, emergency medical services — for residents without legal status. It also urged Ottawa to consider a form of amnesty by giving them permanent status.
The issue of illegal migration is highly controversial in the United States, as the Senate passed its landmark immigration bill in June that will allow its estimated 11 million non-status residents to stay legally while boosting crackdown on future illegal migration by hiring 20,000 new border patrol officers and completing an 1,100-kilometre fence to guard the border with Mexico.
By 1998 the couple, in their twenties, had three young kids under 10. Eager to earn more money for his family, Jose crossed the border with other migrantes indocumentados and spent a year in Houston doing drywall and framing. Each month he sent most of his paycheque back home.
“I didn’t want to go,” says Jose, a stocky man whose callused hands tell of years of hard labour. “But I had to go to support my family.”His goal, he says, was to make enough money so his kids could go to university instead of taking on labour jobs out of high school.
The $14-an-hour pay was 10 times more than he made back home and boosted the family’s standard of living. His two daughters and son were able enroll in karate and other after-school programs, and the family renovated their home.But Jose soon became homesick and returned to Mexico the following year.
He crossed the border again in 2005, this time to Los Angeles and again landed a job in construction. But a serious workplace accident cut his stay short. It also convinced him that he no longer wanted to be away from his family.
While on the job site cutting drywall, both his knees became caught in an electrical saw. He was loaded onto the employer’s truck and dumped at the entrance of a hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for torn ligaments. When discharged, he took the subway back to an apartment he shared with other Mexican workers. Scared, alone and with no English, he decided to pack up and go home.
“There were more job opportunities here than in the U.S., because there were so many illegal migrants fighting for jobs there,” Jose says of his decision to come to Canada.Sofia arrived eight months later, followed by their three children, all teenagers by then, in the summer of 2008.They arrived as tourists so didn’t need a visa to enter the country if they would only stay here under six months. That would change a year later when the Canadian government, in 2009, imposed visa requirements on all visitors from Mexico to curb a growing influx of refugees.
The family’s plan was to work and make as much money here as possible in the shortest time, perhaps a few years, and return home. Since they never filed a refugee claim, and Canada does not record visitors’ departures, the Dias family quietly settled into daily life without a paper trail.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Since their arrival from Mexico in 2007, however, the Dias family has lived a life of secrecy — off the population map and, by necessity, the radar of Canadian immigration officials.Jose Dias, his wife Sofia, both in their 40s, their adult son Carlos and daughter Antonia are among tens of thousands of people in Greater Toronto who live and work here without legal status.
Known as “the undocumented,” they are failed refugee claimants dodging deportation or those who overstayed temporary work, student or visitor visas. Many are economic migrants, often from developing countries, seeking work or a better lifestyle.With Toronto poised to become Canada’s first “sanctuary city,” which would open up municipally funded services to immigrants, legal or not, it raises the politically contentious question: Do these migrants deserve to stay?
The Dias family agreed to share their personal story though they asked that their names be changed to protect them from authorities. While their story may not represent the experience of all undocumented people, they say they want to show the human side to a vulnerable population. “We want Canadians to see the other side of the story and understand why we do the things we do,” says Antonia. “We want a better life, which is not possible in Mexico.”
In many ways the undocumented are indistinguishable from ordinary Canadians and well-integrated in the community. They work, though often for low pay. They lay shingles, labour on construction sites, indoor positioning system, clean offices and homes. They feed a whole industry, from employers who rely on cheap labour and job recruiters who take their cut to payday loan managers who charge fees to cash the illegal’s paycheques.
The undocumented live in a constant state of fear. If caught, they most certainly face deportation. So they rarely report a crime, go to a doctor’s office or complain about unfair treatment by employers. They avoid the public library, or any other government service, for fear it will prompt questions about their status. Some parents go so far as to keep their kids home from school.
A City of Toronto report estimates there are anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 undocumented migrants in the GTA, roughly 2 to 5 per cent of the population.Estimates are extremely unreliable, however, because no one is able to track such a transient population. City officials hope that by extending services to them, they will have a better grasp of the nature and extent of illegal migration.
In 2015, their numbers are expected to surge when four-year work permits for thousands of temporary foreign workers, currently here legally, expire under a 2011 federal law, potentially moving thousands more underground. Last year alone, 340,000 foreigners on work permits resided in Canada.
To manage the new reality, Toronto City Council has asked staff to report in the fall on ways to improve access to municipal services — public health, shelters, food banks, after-school day care, breakfast programs, emergency medical services — for residents without legal status. It also urged Ottawa to consider a form of amnesty by giving them permanent status.
The issue of illegal migration is highly controversial in the United States, as the Senate passed its landmark immigration bill in June that will allow its estimated 11 million non-status residents to stay legally while boosting crackdown on future illegal migration by hiring 20,000 new border patrol officers and completing an 1,100-kilometre fence to guard the border with Mexico.
By 1998 the couple, in their twenties, had three young kids under 10. Eager to earn more money for his family, Jose crossed the border with other migrantes indocumentados and spent a year in Houston doing drywall and framing. Each month he sent most of his paycheque back home.
“I didn’t want to go,” says Jose, a stocky man whose callused hands tell of years of hard labour. “But I had to go to support my family.”His goal, he says, was to make enough money so his kids could go to university instead of taking on labour jobs out of high school.
The $14-an-hour pay was 10 times more than he made back home and boosted the family’s standard of living. His two daughters and son were able enroll in karate and other after-school programs, and the family renovated their home.But Jose soon became homesick and returned to Mexico the following year.
He crossed the border again in 2005, this time to Los Angeles and again landed a job in construction. But a serious workplace accident cut his stay short. It also convinced him that he no longer wanted to be away from his family.
While on the job site cutting drywall, both his knees became caught in an electrical saw. He was loaded onto the employer’s truck and dumped at the entrance of a hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for torn ligaments. When discharged, he took the subway back to an apartment he shared with other Mexican workers. Scared, alone and with no English, he decided to pack up and go home.
“There were more job opportunities here than in the U.S., because there were so many illegal migrants fighting for jobs there,” Jose says of his decision to come to Canada.Sofia arrived eight months later, followed by their three children, all teenagers by then, in the summer of 2008.They arrived as tourists so didn’t need a visa to enter the country if they would only stay here under six months. That would change a year later when the Canadian government, in 2009, imposed visa requirements on all visitors from Mexico to curb a growing influx of refugees.
The family’s plan was to work and make as much money here as possible in the shortest time, perhaps a few years, and return home. Since they never filed a refugee claim, and Canada does not record visitors’ departures, the Dias family quietly settled into daily life without a paper trail.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Kingdom comes good again
So close to being crowned champion jockey when riding 161 winners during a fantastic 2011 campaign - losing out on the title by just four to Paul Hanagan - De Sousa was snapped up by the powerful Godolphin operation just a few months later.
He may not have ridden the same quantity of winners since, but the quality of his rides has unsurprisingly been on the rise and he continues to be one of the most sought-after jockeys in the weighing room when available.
A four-timer at Pontefract on Sunday was quickly backed up by Wednesday's across-the-card treble at Salisbury and Bath, and he found the target again at Gosforth Park as My Freedom turned in a stylish display in the Betfred TV Seaton Delaval Handicap.
Last seen finishing down the field in a valuable Meydan handicap back in February, the 6/1 chance was never too far off the gallop, which proved sensible in a race run at a crawl.
When asked to go about his business, Saeed bin Suroor's five-year-old showed a nice change of gear to put the race to bed and only had to be pushed out in the closing stages to beat favourite Validus by two and a quarter lengths.De Sousa said: "He travelled well and when I asked him to go two (furlongs) out he picked up and won really well.
"We went a bit slow for the first furlong, but I was happy with my position and it gave my horse chance to organise himself and find his feet."He has had a few issues at home, but has done it well today."
While Saturday's Northumberland Plate appeared likely to be run on fast ground at the start of the week, steady rain fell throughout Thursday's card and de Sousa warned: "It won't take much to turn it soft."Big Time Billy made the most of her lowly Flat rating with a facile victory in the Betfred Slatyford Old Boys Handicap.
Peter Bowen's seven-year-old won in Listed company during her bumper days and also struck at that level over timber at Cheltenham in April, but went into her latest Flat assignment off a mark of just 62.
The 4/5 favourite travelled powerfully, picked up well and was eased down by Joe Fanning in the final furlong, but still came home with five lengths in hand over the pacesetting Brasingaman Eric.Fanning said: "She did it very easily. She travelled well and when the gap came she quickened up well."She was running here as I don't think there was much for her over hurdles."
Trainer Ruth Carr was delighted to see 4/1 favourite Amazing Blue Sky secure his first victory of the campaign, making every yard of the running in division one of the Betfred "Racing's Biggest Supporter" Handicap.Carr said: "He'd come so far down the weights and just needs things to go his own way."He needs an easy lead, which he got, and when the other horse loomed upsides he really stuck his neck out. He meant business today.
"There are a few options next week, so we'll see what the handicapper does."The Bob Johnson-trained Bygones For Coins was a shock 25/1 winner of the second division.Johnson's son and assistant, National Hunt jockey Kenny Johnson, said: "She was going to win with me on at Cartmel last time when she fell at the last.
"She just has to be ridden properly. A lot of jockeys throw everything at her but she doesn't find much off the bridle and you have to sit and suffer."Andrew [Mullen] listened to what he was told and showed a lot of bottle."She is in again tomorrow, but we'll see. There's a hurdle race at Southwell I think she'd win [July 14]."Richard Fahey is in no rush to make fancy plans for Good Old Boy Lukey (10/11 favourite) after he made it two wins from as many starts in the Betfred Mobile Lotto Novice Stakes.
Fahey said: "He's two out of two and you can't knock him. The form is just okay and we'll have to see what the handicapper does."We don't really want to take on the real stars now. Hopefully we'll be able to go for a nursery."
In the aftermath of leaked data concerning the surveillance of those abroad and American citizens by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden (now wanted on charges of espionage and believed to be at Moscow Airport), the FTC has begun scrutinizing the control and rights of consumers who have had information collected and stored about them.
One type of business at the forefront of such analysis is data brokerages. These companies are B2B-based and collect thousands of details on the general public, from shopping habits to vacation choices, and from ethnicity to estimated income. Collected through various means including online activity, data brokers then sell this information to corporations for marketing and future product research.
Although data brokerages sometimes include ways for consumers to opt-out of marketing databases, the U.S. agency wants more transparency to prevent sensitive details including present medical condition and financial status from leaving the control of the average consumer.
"We spew data every minute we walk the street, park our cars, or enter a building, the ubiquitous CCTV and security cameras blinking prettily in the background — every time we go online, use a mobile device, or hand a credit card to a merchant who is online or on mobile," FTC member Julie Brill noted. "We spend most of our days, and a good deal of our nights, surfing the web, tapping at apps, or powering on our smart phones, constantly adding to the already bursting veins from which data miners are pulling pure gold. That's where the "big" in "Big Data" comes from."
"Reclaim Your Name" is the initiative proposed by Brill to combat the issue. Under the terms of the scheme, Brill envisions an online portal where data brokerage firms would describe their data mining practices and consumer access policies, giving individuals the power to correct information where necessary. For example, inaccurately-mined data could harm a user's credit score, potential to secure a loan, employment or benefits.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/ for more information.
He may not have ridden the same quantity of winners since, but the quality of his rides has unsurprisingly been on the rise and he continues to be one of the most sought-after jockeys in the weighing room when available.
A four-timer at Pontefract on Sunday was quickly backed up by Wednesday's across-the-card treble at Salisbury and Bath, and he found the target again at Gosforth Park as My Freedom turned in a stylish display in the Betfred TV Seaton Delaval Handicap.
Last seen finishing down the field in a valuable Meydan handicap back in February, the 6/1 chance was never too far off the gallop, which proved sensible in a race run at a crawl.
When asked to go about his business, Saeed bin Suroor's five-year-old showed a nice change of gear to put the race to bed and only had to be pushed out in the closing stages to beat favourite Validus by two and a quarter lengths.De Sousa said: "He travelled well and when I asked him to go two (furlongs) out he picked up and won really well.
"We went a bit slow for the first furlong, but I was happy with my position and it gave my horse chance to organise himself and find his feet."He has had a few issues at home, but has done it well today."
While Saturday's Northumberland Plate appeared likely to be run on fast ground at the start of the week, steady rain fell throughout Thursday's card and de Sousa warned: "It won't take much to turn it soft."Big Time Billy made the most of her lowly Flat rating with a facile victory in the Betfred Slatyford Old Boys Handicap.
Peter Bowen's seven-year-old won in Listed company during her bumper days and also struck at that level over timber at Cheltenham in April, but went into her latest Flat assignment off a mark of just 62.
The 4/5 favourite travelled powerfully, picked up well and was eased down by Joe Fanning in the final furlong, but still came home with five lengths in hand over the pacesetting Brasingaman Eric.Fanning said: "She did it very easily. She travelled well and when the gap came she quickened up well."She was running here as I don't think there was much for her over hurdles."
Trainer Ruth Carr was delighted to see 4/1 favourite Amazing Blue Sky secure his first victory of the campaign, making every yard of the running in division one of the Betfred "Racing's Biggest Supporter" Handicap.Carr said: "He'd come so far down the weights and just needs things to go his own way."He needs an easy lead, which he got, and when the other horse loomed upsides he really stuck his neck out. He meant business today.
"There are a few options next week, so we'll see what the handicapper does."The Bob Johnson-trained Bygones For Coins was a shock 25/1 winner of the second division.Johnson's son and assistant, National Hunt jockey Kenny Johnson, said: "She was going to win with me on at Cartmel last time when she fell at the last.
"She just has to be ridden properly. A lot of jockeys throw everything at her but she doesn't find much off the bridle and you have to sit and suffer."Andrew [Mullen] listened to what he was told and showed a lot of bottle."She is in again tomorrow, but we'll see. There's a hurdle race at Southwell I think she'd win [July 14]."Richard Fahey is in no rush to make fancy plans for Good Old Boy Lukey (10/11 favourite) after he made it two wins from as many starts in the Betfred Mobile Lotto Novice Stakes.
Fahey said: "He's two out of two and you can't knock him. The form is just okay and we'll have to see what the handicapper does."We don't really want to take on the real stars now. Hopefully we'll be able to go for a nursery."
In the aftermath of leaked data concerning the surveillance of those abroad and American citizens by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden (now wanted on charges of espionage and believed to be at Moscow Airport), the FTC has begun scrutinizing the control and rights of consumers who have had information collected and stored about them.
One type of business at the forefront of such analysis is data brokerages. These companies are B2B-based and collect thousands of details on the general public, from shopping habits to vacation choices, and from ethnicity to estimated income. Collected through various means including online activity, data brokers then sell this information to corporations for marketing and future product research.
Although data brokerages sometimes include ways for consumers to opt-out of marketing databases, the U.S. agency wants more transparency to prevent sensitive details including present medical condition and financial status from leaving the control of the average consumer.
"We spew data every minute we walk the street, park our cars, or enter a building, the ubiquitous CCTV and security cameras blinking prettily in the background — every time we go online, use a mobile device, or hand a credit card to a merchant who is online or on mobile," FTC member Julie Brill noted. "We spend most of our days, and a good deal of our nights, surfing the web, tapping at apps, or powering on our smart phones, constantly adding to the already bursting veins from which data miners are pulling pure gold. That's where the "big" in "Big Data" comes from."
"Reclaim Your Name" is the initiative proposed by Brill to combat the issue. Under the terms of the scheme, Brill envisions an online portal where data brokerage firms would describe their data mining practices and consumer access policies, giving individuals the power to correct information where necessary. For example, inaccurately-mined data could harm a user's credit score, potential to secure a loan, employment or benefits.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/ for more information.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Riders try out Metro’s new stainless steel fare gates
The machines had been shrouded in white tarps for weeks. On Wednesday night, about a dozen members of the transit agency’s riders advisory group got to try out the gates.
“This is about looking at the design, the ease of use and the experience of using it,” Alison Simon, Metro’s director of customer research, told a group of riders before taking them through the new fare gates.
Metro is expected to pick a vendor in July to lead the costly and complicated job of modernizing its fare-collection system. Riders will no longer have to convert their money into Metro’s main currency — the $5 electronic SmarTrip card — to ride trains and buses. Instead, they will be able to wave a smart phone, key fob or credit card in front of a scanner as they board a bus or walk through a subway station fare gate. It will be the first time that Metro has revamped its fare payment system since Metrorail service began 37 years ago.
Riders now use Metro’s brown and orange fare gates and tap their electronic SmarTrip cards or stick in paper Farecards to enter rail stations. But many riders complain that the gates don’t open quickly enough. Other riders say they close too fast for those in wheelchairs or with strollers.
In the dim light of Metro’s basement, the nine new gates gleamed. Some riders — who jokingly called themselves “transit geeks” — said it felt as if they were test-driving the latest car models at a dealership.
Many of the new fare gates have more sensors than the existing Metro fare gates and can better detect strollers, guide dogs and wheelchairs, and stay open longer as needed. Some beeped. One had tempered glass at eye height — a move meant to deter fare evasion. Others lighted up red, blue or green.
Unfortunately my husband and I fell into the debt trap - badly. It started with not being able to buy food and afford rent - and we were living in a tiny, tiny flat. So we started buying food on our Woolies cards.
When our salaries increased we continued the habit of buying groceries and all kinds of stuff on credit. We made a habit of living beyond our means, and somehow more and more places kept giving us credit, which was impossible to resist. We also had to pay for our own wedding - we did it as cheaply as we could and had the whole family and friends jump in to help, but it still cost a lost.
When the company I worked for closed down I was forced to take another job that paid significantly less and so we were compelled to go into debt counselling. This was the best decision we could have made at that time!
I see it all the time – people who live far above their means but moan about their debt endlessly. Then they go and buy an expensive lunch every work day of the week and tell you all about the take aways and shopping they enjoyed over the weekend. A few minutes later they will complain they have no savings and worry what will happen if they ever need to go to hospital (as a medical aid isn’t high on their list of essentials). I don’t understand it but I’ve given up trying.
When I was in Grade 9 we were taught how to draw up a budget. The simple guideline was to spend less than you earn. Please note that I am not in any way dismissing that there are many people who don’t earn enough to afford the basics and battle daily to put food on their tables. What I’m talking about is how people will wilfully go into debt just to have things they don’t need.
I cannot grasp is how people can spend thousands on a pair of boots they don’t need but have to have because of the name. Or buy a new car when they can barely afford the instalments on the old one. Or rent a massive house in a smart area but have no retirement plan or anything put towards their old age. Some people go into debt to have a big wedding or an expensive holiday.
Everything has become about status and what you have. When did we start caring so much about what others think? When did keeping up with the Joneses become a way of life for so many people?
I’ve learnt that if I don’t have money for something, I wait until I do before buying it. Yes I’m one of those people who don’t own store cards. But I’m also one of those people who don’t get heart palpitations when opening their mail because they are dreading a huge account. Obviously taking out a loan to buy a house or vehicle is the norm but to get into debt just because you have to have the latest electronics to boast to your friends about? Well that is just sad.
This will allow drivers to access apps like music streaming service rara, which gives access to a library of 17 million songs while on the move, plus a Mobile Office App which lets you dictate and send emails and text messages using just the SIM card built into the car.
The system also allows BMW to send software updates and diagnose faults remotely. The firm claims ConnectDrive won’t add any more to the new price of a car. Instead, BMW plans to recoup the cost of developing the system – a figure in “the three-digit millions of Euros” according to one BMW insider – by selling apps developed by BMW and third party firms, through a bespoke BMW app store accessed either in-car or on a special owner’s section of the BMW website.
For example, the rara music streaming service will cost around ￡390 to add as an option in the first year, with users paying a license fee set by the music industry of ￡9.99 per month after that. However, as part of the deal, BMW picks up the SIM card bill, even if you drive the car abroad, so there are no extra roaming charges.
BMW has said that the system is extremely secure – Simon Euringer, head of ConnnectedDrive told us that it’d cost more to hack the system than to buy it in the first place – and that it can be updated by BMW to reflect changes in legislation.
Euringer added that the new ConnectedDrive had been developed to enhance its new i cars. The i ConnectedDrive includes an intermodal route planner, which lets you know if taking the tube or train is a quicker way of travelling that driving.Click on their website www.ecived.com/en for more information.
“This is about looking at the design, the ease of use and the experience of using it,” Alison Simon, Metro’s director of customer research, told a group of riders before taking them through the new fare gates.
Metro is expected to pick a vendor in July to lead the costly and complicated job of modernizing its fare-collection system. Riders will no longer have to convert their money into Metro’s main currency — the $5 electronic SmarTrip card — to ride trains and buses. Instead, they will be able to wave a smart phone, key fob or credit card in front of a scanner as they board a bus or walk through a subway station fare gate. It will be the first time that Metro has revamped its fare payment system since Metrorail service began 37 years ago.
Riders now use Metro’s brown and orange fare gates and tap their electronic SmarTrip cards or stick in paper Farecards to enter rail stations. But many riders complain that the gates don’t open quickly enough. Other riders say they close too fast for those in wheelchairs or with strollers.
In the dim light of Metro’s basement, the nine new gates gleamed. Some riders — who jokingly called themselves “transit geeks” — said it felt as if they were test-driving the latest car models at a dealership.
Many of the new fare gates have more sensors than the existing Metro fare gates and can better detect strollers, guide dogs and wheelchairs, and stay open longer as needed. Some beeped. One had tempered glass at eye height — a move meant to deter fare evasion. Others lighted up red, blue or green.
Unfortunately my husband and I fell into the debt trap - badly. It started with not being able to buy food and afford rent - and we were living in a tiny, tiny flat. So we started buying food on our Woolies cards.
When our salaries increased we continued the habit of buying groceries and all kinds of stuff on credit. We made a habit of living beyond our means, and somehow more and more places kept giving us credit, which was impossible to resist. We also had to pay for our own wedding - we did it as cheaply as we could and had the whole family and friends jump in to help, but it still cost a lost.
When the company I worked for closed down I was forced to take another job that paid significantly less and so we were compelled to go into debt counselling. This was the best decision we could have made at that time!
I see it all the time – people who live far above their means but moan about their debt endlessly. Then they go and buy an expensive lunch every work day of the week and tell you all about the take aways and shopping they enjoyed over the weekend. A few minutes later they will complain they have no savings and worry what will happen if they ever need to go to hospital (as a medical aid isn’t high on their list of essentials). I don’t understand it but I’ve given up trying.
When I was in Grade 9 we were taught how to draw up a budget. The simple guideline was to spend less than you earn. Please note that I am not in any way dismissing that there are many people who don’t earn enough to afford the basics and battle daily to put food on their tables. What I’m talking about is how people will wilfully go into debt just to have things they don’t need.
I cannot grasp is how people can spend thousands on a pair of boots they don’t need but have to have because of the name. Or buy a new car when they can barely afford the instalments on the old one. Or rent a massive house in a smart area but have no retirement plan or anything put towards their old age. Some people go into debt to have a big wedding or an expensive holiday.
Everything has become about status and what you have. When did we start caring so much about what others think? When did keeping up with the Joneses become a way of life for so many people?
I’ve learnt that if I don’t have money for something, I wait until I do before buying it. Yes I’m one of those people who don’t own store cards. But I’m also one of those people who don’t get heart palpitations when opening their mail because they are dreading a huge account. Obviously taking out a loan to buy a house or vehicle is the norm but to get into debt just because you have to have the latest electronics to boast to your friends about? Well that is just sad.
This will allow drivers to access apps like music streaming service rara, which gives access to a library of 17 million songs while on the move, plus a Mobile Office App which lets you dictate and send emails and text messages using just the SIM card built into the car.
The system also allows BMW to send software updates and diagnose faults remotely. The firm claims ConnectDrive won’t add any more to the new price of a car. Instead, BMW plans to recoup the cost of developing the system – a figure in “the three-digit millions of Euros” according to one BMW insider – by selling apps developed by BMW and third party firms, through a bespoke BMW app store accessed either in-car or on a special owner’s section of the BMW website.
For example, the rara music streaming service will cost around ￡390 to add as an option in the first year, with users paying a license fee set by the music industry of ￡9.99 per month after that. However, as part of the deal, BMW picks up the SIM card bill, even if you drive the car abroad, so there are no extra roaming charges.
BMW has said that the system is extremely secure – Simon Euringer, head of ConnnectedDrive told us that it’d cost more to hack the system than to buy it in the first place – and that it can be updated by BMW to reflect changes in legislation.
Euringer added that the new ConnectedDrive had been developed to enhance its new i cars. The i ConnectedDrive includes an intermodal route planner, which lets you know if taking the tube or train is a quicker way of travelling that driving.Click on their website www.ecived.com/en for more information.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
I’ve got 99 problems and these guys are all of them
Chris Harrison arrives at the Bachelor Holding Pen to explain to the congress of manbaboons in clear, monosyllabic terms how the dates will be working this week: there will be two 1-on-1 dates, one group date, and roses are available on all of them. And with that, he delivers the first date card, and backs carefully out of the McMansion before the roargrunts and feces-flinging begins.
Maya Angelou reads the date card: “Brooks, I’m waiting for a sign, Princes Desiree,” and the room erupts in teeth-baring which might look like smiling to humans, but is actually an aggressive display.
At The Bachelorette pied-à-terre Princess Desiree draws pictures of ladies, and yammers about how she “couldn’t have asked for a better group of guys.” Oh, honey. Oh.
Princess Desiree heads to the Holding Pen in her suddenly baby blue Bentley, which what? I am almost positive this car was white the last time we saw it. Anyone? Am I imagining things? Is she going to drive a different Easter Egg-colored Bentley in each episode? Or was the rap video later in the episode so powerfully bad that it broke my brain when I watched last night? What is happening here?
ANYWAY. Princess Desiree arrives in her now baby blue Bentley and collects Brooks and ferrys him away to a bridal store where she forces him to watch her spin around in a bunch of different wedding dresses. What a fun time for everyone! What’s next, Princess Desiree? Meeting your parents? Apartment shopping? Touring delivery wards in hospitals? Brooks, being a good sport, tries on a series of wacky tuxedos — but tellingly always comes out with his bow tie dangling around his neck, untied, until he’s doing his talking heads at which point the bow tie appears to have been knotted into a lump by a blind child with some sort of degenerative muscular condition.
The pair, still dressed in a wedding dress and a tuxedo with THAT THING clumped around his neck, then get back into the baby blue Bentley and drive … somewhere, I wasn’t sure at the time it aired because my internet/cable connection has this adorable quirk in which the moment it is 85 degrees or hotter outside, it begins rebooting itself. As you can imagine, this makes my job as a TELEVISION BLOGGER a delight in the summer here in Houston. (“I was just trying to do you a favor! Did you see that bow tie?” — My Internet/Cable Connection)
So, according to the video on ABC’s site that I watched this morning, they went to a cupcake truck where they eat “wedding cake” and fend off over-eager tourists. Next up: tossing the garter to the audience of tourists, shopping 401K plans and looking into life insurance policies sitting on the Hollywood sign. In their wedding clothes. For some reason. When did we give up on the whole wedding theme? What does this have to do with anything? Brooks tries to explain why sitting on the L on the Hollywood sign means something more to Princess Desiree than it would say, to you or me, something about her passions, and following them and declaring herself on top of the world, but it doesn’t make a bit of sense, and maybe he needs to spend less time trying to appear deep and more time watching how to tie a bow tie videos on YouTube. Brooks tells Princess Des that his first real relationship ended a year and a half ago, and it makes him a little apprehensive about opening himself up to possibly be hurt again, but that he knows it is worth it. Princess Des declares this to be “just like” what she went through, but unless I somehow overlooked Brooks hanging out with Dallas Sean, Cal Naughton Jr. and Justin Wannabieber in St. Emily’s Manherd, I THINK IT WAS PROBABLY A LITTLE DIFFERENT.
The Producers finally let them get out of the wedding dress and that RIDICULOUS TIE LUMP, and back into street clothes. Princess Des then drives Brooks into a “dangerous” part of town, and he bites his nails and clutches his pearls over the razor wire and graffiti (!!!!) in the neighborhood. Princess pretends to be lost and pulls up to a supposedly closed road that she suggests they go down anyway. Brooks is terrified, but agrees, and discovers that the road is actually Los Angeles’ 6th Ave. Bridge that The Producers have decorated with chandeliers and a dining table and I mean, seriously, Brooks. You have an ENTIRE CREW WITH YOU, CALM DOWN. Your only danger you face is that you might have to pull a suicidal Jack Shephard off the edge, start a drag race or suddenly flee from a T-1000 BECAUSE THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE SPOTS IN ALL OF LOS ANGELES, DUMMY.
So they sit down to dinner on the bridge, and Brooks asks her about her family and childhood, and she burbles on about how happily married her parents are, leaving out the whole “and we were homeless for a while and lived in tents and bytheway, my brother is a psychopath” part. In response, Brooks bursts into tears about his parents’ divorce and related daddy issues. Something about not seeing his father from the time he was 13 until he was 19, which might just explain the whole bow-tieing issue. And so Princess Desiree offers him a rose because what, she’s not going to give the crying guy a rose? And then they go down to the other end of the bridge where some guy named Andy Grammer is singing that one song about letting your hair down and keeping your head up and Brooks dances about as well as he ties bow ties and fortunately this whole silly date is over, the end.
Back at the house, the remaining men receive the group date card: “Handsome Dan, Juan Pablo, Hashtag D-Bag, Zack K., Urquelle (thanks, Dodes), Nick from New Girl, Drew Who is Not Brandon, Marionette Face, Family First, Nipples Jr., Maya Angelou, Michael G., 7-Years-Sober, and Prop Daddy: Who’s here for the right reasons? Princess Des.”
Princess Desiree meets this clown car load at some winery wearing what appears to be a purple sock with the toe cut out of it — seriously, Princes Des, does your brother know you are out in public in that? — and explains that they will be filming a rap video with Soulja Boy.
Just typing that sentence makes me want to go get into my car, drive to the store, buy another box of wine, begin drinking it in the checkout line, strap the box to one of those beer hats with the straws, drive home –all the while breaking the law and drinking the wine from my wine hat, do not doubt me for one second– and come home and put myself into a wine coma. I DO NOT GET PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS. SOULJA BOY DOES NOT GET PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS. MOMMA NEEDS ALL OF THE CHEAP CAB. NOW.
And listen, I know why this is happening — The Producers have become self-aware in recent years, and they’re hoping that a bunch of white guys and Urquelle doing the cabbage patch while rapping off-rhythm about “being here for the right reasons” will become viral video gold.Click on their website www.ecived.com/en for more information.
Maya Angelou reads the date card: “Brooks, I’m waiting for a sign, Princes Desiree,” and the room erupts in teeth-baring which might look like smiling to humans, but is actually an aggressive display.
At The Bachelorette pied-à-terre Princess Desiree draws pictures of ladies, and yammers about how she “couldn’t have asked for a better group of guys.” Oh, honey. Oh.
Princess Desiree heads to the Holding Pen in her suddenly baby blue Bentley, which what? I am almost positive this car was white the last time we saw it. Anyone? Am I imagining things? Is she going to drive a different Easter Egg-colored Bentley in each episode? Or was the rap video later in the episode so powerfully bad that it broke my brain when I watched last night? What is happening here?
ANYWAY. Princess Desiree arrives in her now baby blue Bentley and collects Brooks and ferrys him away to a bridal store where she forces him to watch her spin around in a bunch of different wedding dresses. What a fun time for everyone! What’s next, Princess Desiree? Meeting your parents? Apartment shopping? Touring delivery wards in hospitals? Brooks, being a good sport, tries on a series of wacky tuxedos — but tellingly always comes out with his bow tie dangling around his neck, untied, until he’s doing his talking heads at which point the bow tie appears to have been knotted into a lump by a blind child with some sort of degenerative muscular condition.
The pair, still dressed in a wedding dress and a tuxedo with THAT THING clumped around his neck, then get back into the baby blue Bentley and drive … somewhere, I wasn’t sure at the time it aired because my internet/cable connection has this adorable quirk in which the moment it is 85 degrees or hotter outside, it begins rebooting itself. As you can imagine, this makes my job as a TELEVISION BLOGGER a delight in the summer here in Houston. (“I was just trying to do you a favor! Did you see that bow tie?” — My Internet/Cable Connection)
So, according to the video on ABC’s site that I watched this morning, they went to a cupcake truck where they eat “wedding cake” and fend off over-eager tourists. Next up: tossing the garter to the audience of tourists, shopping 401K plans and looking into life insurance policies sitting on the Hollywood sign. In their wedding clothes. For some reason. When did we give up on the whole wedding theme? What does this have to do with anything? Brooks tries to explain why sitting on the L on the Hollywood sign means something more to Princess Desiree than it would say, to you or me, something about her passions, and following them and declaring herself on top of the world, but it doesn’t make a bit of sense, and maybe he needs to spend less time trying to appear deep and more time watching how to tie a bow tie videos on YouTube. Brooks tells Princess Des that his first real relationship ended a year and a half ago, and it makes him a little apprehensive about opening himself up to possibly be hurt again, but that he knows it is worth it. Princess Des declares this to be “just like” what she went through, but unless I somehow overlooked Brooks hanging out with Dallas Sean, Cal Naughton Jr. and Justin Wannabieber in St. Emily’s Manherd, I THINK IT WAS PROBABLY A LITTLE DIFFERENT.
The Producers finally let them get out of the wedding dress and that RIDICULOUS TIE LUMP, and back into street clothes. Princess Des then drives Brooks into a “dangerous” part of town, and he bites his nails and clutches his pearls over the razor wire and graffiti (!!!!) in the neighborhood. Princess pretends to be lost and pulls up to a supposedly closed road that she suggests they go down anyway. Brooks is terrified, but agrees, and discovers that the road is actually Los Angeles’ 6th Ave. Bridge that The Producers have decorated with chandeliers and a dining table and I mean, seriously, Brooks. You have an ENTIRE CREW WITH YOU, CALM DOWN. Your only danger you face is that you might have to pull a suicidal Jack Shephard off the edge, start a drag race or suddenly flee from a T-1000 BECAUSE THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE SPOTS IN ALL OF LOS ANGELES, DUMMY.
So they sit down to dinner on the bridge, and Brooks asks her about her family and childhood, and she burbles on about how happily married her parents are, leaving out the whole “and we were homeless for a while and lived in tents and bytheway, my brother is a psychopath” part. In response, Brooks bursts into tears about his parents’ divorce and related daddy issues. Something about not seeing his father from the time he was 13 until he was 19, which might just explain the whole bow-tieing issue. And so Princess Desiree offers him a rose because what, she’s not going to give the crying guy a rose? And then they go down to the other end of the bridge where some guy named Andy Grammer is singing that one song about letting your hair down and keeping your head up and Brooks dances about as well as he ties bow ties and fortunately this whole silly date is over, the end.
Back at the house, the remaining men receive the group date card: “Handsome Dan, Juan Pablo, Hashtag D-Bag, Zack K., Urquelle (thanks, Dodes), Nick from New Girl, Drew Who is Not Brandon, Marionette Face, Family First, Nipples Jr., Maya Angelou, Michael G., 7-Years-Sober, and Prop Daddy: Who’s here for the right reasons? Princess Des.”
Princess Desiree meets this clown car load at some winery wearing what appears to be a purple sock with the toe cut out of it — seriously, Princes Des, does your brother know you are out in public in that? — and explains that they will be filming a rap video with Soulja Boy.
Just typing that sentence makes me want to go get into my car, drive to the store, buy another box of wine, begin drinking it in the checkout line, strap the box to one of those beer hats with the straws, drive home –all the while breaking the law and drinking the wine from my wine hat, do not doubt me for one second– and come home and put myself into a wine coma. I DO NOT GET PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS. SOULJA BOY DOES NOT GET PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS. MOMMA NEEDS ALL OF THE CHEAP CAB. NOW.
And listen, I know why this is happening — The Producers have become self-aware in recent years, and they’re hoping that a bunch of white guys and Urquelle doing the cabbage patch while rapping off-rhythm about “being here for the right reasons” will become viral video gold.Click on their website www.ecived.com/en for more information.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
This is What Budget Cuts Have Done to Detroit
The language of budget cuts, austerity, and sequestration seem to dominate the media's landscape these days, instilling fear into Americans of vital government services being cut and chaos ensuing if governments aren't allowed to spend and borrow infinitely. Conservatives decry supposed cuts to the military-industrial-complex, and liberals bemoan that without government welfare transfer programs, there would be social Darwinism. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) even blamed the Benghazi scandal on — wait for it — budget cuts and the sequester.
Leaving aside the details on whether the U.S. budget is actually shrinking, one needs to look no further than the city of Detroit to find the spontaneous order, civic cooperation, and peaceful market forces that take over when government simply isn't around.
Detroit is absolutely bankrupt. The city faces a cash shortfall of more than $100 million by June 30. Long-term liabilities, including pensions, exceed $14 billion. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder wants to bail out Detroit's city government even further. Thanks to the financial situation of Detroit, emergency services like police and fire departments are being severely cut short. 911 is only taking calls during business hours. Homes have been abandoned making parts of the city look like a ghost town.
If our public servants are right and wouldn't dare lie and try to scare us, then chaos, anarchy and lawlessness should reign in Detroit now, right? Well, not exactly.
Dale Brown and his organization, the Threat Management Center (TMC), have helped fill in the void left by the corrupt and incompetent city government. Brown started TMC in 1995 as a way to help his fellow Detroit citizens in the midst of a rise in home invasions and murders. While attempting to assist law enforcement, he found little but uninterested officers more concerned with extracting revenue through traffic tickets and terrorizing private homes with SWAT raids than protecting person and rtls.
In an interview with Copblock.org, Brown explains how and why his private, free market policing organization has been so successful. The key to effective protection and security is love, says Brown, not weapons, violence, or law. It sounds a bit corny, yes, but the results speak for themselves.
Almost 20 years later and Detroit's financial mess even more apparent, TMC now has a client base of about 1,000 private residences and over 500 businesses. Thanks to TMC's efficiency and profitability, they are also able to provide free or incredibly low-cost services to the poor as well.
The reasons TMC has been so successful is because they take the complete opposite approach that government agencies, in this case law enforcement, do. Brown's philosophy is that he would rather hire people that see violence as a last resort, and the handful of Detroit police officers that actually worked with Brown in the earlier years and have an interest in genuine protection now work for TMC. While governments threaten their citizens with compulsion, fines, and jail if they don't hand over their money, TMC's funding is voluntary and subject to the profit-loss test; if Brown doesn't provide the services his customers want, he goes out of business.
This means that Brown is not interested in no-knock para-military SWAT raids, "officer safety" as the highest priority, bloated union pensions, or harassing people for what they have in their bloodstream. TMC works with its customers on the prevention of crime as well rather than showing up after the fact to take notes like historians.
The heroic Brown and TMC are a great example of how the market and civil society can and do provide services traditionally associated with the state far better, cheaper and more in tune to people's wants and needs. I have always believed policing, protection and security are far too important to be run by the state — especially in age of militarized Stormtroopers — and Brown is helping show why.
Law enforcement isn't the only "essential government service" that the private sector is taking over and flourishing in. The Detroit Bus Company (DBC) is a private bus service that began last year and truly shows a stark contrast in how the market and government operates. Founded by 25-year-old Andy Didorosi, the company avoids the traditionally stuffy, cagey government buses and uses beautiful vehicles with graffiti-laden exterior designs that match the heart of the Motor City. There are no standard bus routes; a live-tracking app, a call or a text is all you need to get picked up in one of their buses run on soy-based biofuel. All the buses feature wi-fi, music, and you can even drink your own alcohol on board! The payment system is, of course, far cheaper and fairer.
Comparing this company's bus service to say, my local San Francisco MUNI transit experience, is like comparing the services of local, free-range, organic farms in the Bay Area to the Soviet bread lines.
Not surprisingly, the city government, which has no time to protect its citizens, does manage to find the time to harass peaceful citizens in this spontaneous, market order. Charles Molnar and a couple of other students from the Detroit Enterprise Academy wanted to help make benches for the city's bus stops, where long-waits are the norm, equipped with bookshelves to hold reading material.
Detroit Department of Transportation officials quickly said the bench was "unapproved" and had it taken down. Silly citizens, don't you know only governments can provide these services?
The TMC and the DBC are just two of the larger, more visible examples of the market and voluntary human cooperation reigning in Detroit. "Food rebels," running local community gardens, are an alternative to Big Agriculture and government-subsidized factory farms. Private parking garages are popping up. Detroit residents are using Lockean homesteading principles to repurpose land amongst the rubble of the Fed-induced housing bubble. Community events like Biergartens and large, civic dining gatherings (with no permits or licenses!) are being organized privately. Even Detroit's artists are beginning to reflect this anarchic, peaceful movement in their artwork.
Detroit's city government may be in shambles financially, but the citizens of Detroit are showing what happens when people are given their liberty back. For centuries, libertarians have been arguing for strict limits on state power, the benefits of private, civic society, and the bottom-up, spontaneous order that arises where free markets and voluntary interactions dominate. Perhaps we shouldn't be so scared and sicken with political Stockholm Syndrome the next time politicos fear-monger over budgets cuts.
Leaving aside the details on whether the U.S. budget is actually shrinking, one needs to look no further than the city of Detroit to find the spontaneous order, civic cooperation, and peaceful market forces that take over when government simply isn't around.
Detroit is absolutely bankrupt. The city faces a cash shortfall of more than $100 million by June 30. Long-term liabilities, including pensions, exceed $14 billion. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder wants to bail out Detroit's city government even further. Thanks to the financial situation of Detroit, emergency services like police and fire departments are being severely cut short. 911 is only taking calls during business hours. Homes have been abandoned making parts of the city look like a ghost town.
If our public servants are right and wouldn't dare lie and try to scare us, then chaos, anarchy and lawlessness should reign in Detroit now, right? Well, not exactly.
Dale Brown and his organization, the Threat Management Center (TMC), have helped fill in the void left by the corrupt and incompetent city government. Brown started TMC in 1995 as a way to help his fellow Detroit citizens in the midst of a rise in home invasions and murders. While attempting to assist law enforcement, he found little but uninterested officers more concerned with extracting revenue through traffic tickets and terrorizing private homes with SWAT raids than protecting person and rtls.
In an interview with Copblock.org, Brown explains how and why his private, free market policing organization has been so successful. The key to effective protection and security is love, says Brown, not weapons, violence, or law. It sounds a bit corny, yes, but the results speak for themselves.
Almost 20 years later and Detroit's financial mess even more apparent, TMC now has a client base of about 1,000 private residences and over 500 businesses. Thanks to TMC's efficiency and profitability, they are also able to provide free or incredibly low-cost services to the poor as well.
The reasons TMC has been so successful is because they take the complete opposite approach that government agencies, in this case law enforcement, do. Brown's philosophy is that he would rather hire people that see violence as a last resort, and the handful of Detroit police officers that actually worked with Brown in the earlier years and have an interest in genuine protection now work for TMC. While governments threaten their citizens with compulsion, fines, and jail if they don't hand over their money, TMC's funding is voluntary and subject to the profit-loss test; if Brown doesn't provide the services his customers want, he goes out of business.
This means that Brown is not interested in no-knock para-military SWAT raids, "officer safety" as the highest priority, bloated union pensions, or harassing people for what they have in their bloodstream. TMC works with its customers on the prevention of crime as well rather than showing up after the fact to take notes like historians.
The heroic Brown and TMC are a great example of how the market and civil society can and do provide services traditionally associated with the state far better, cheaper and more in tune to people's wants and needs. I have always believed policing, protection and security are far too important to be run by the state — especially in age of militarized Stormtroopers — and Brown is helping show why.
Law enforcement isn't the only "essential government service" that the private sector is taking over and flourishing in. The Detroit Bus Company (DBC) is a private bus service that began last year and truly shows a stark contrast in how the market and government operates. Founded by 25-year-old Andy Didorosi, the company avoids the traditionally stuffy, cagey government buses and uses beautiful vehicles with graffiti-laden exterior designs that match the heart of the Motor City. There are no standard bus routes; a live-tracking app, a call or a text is all you need to get picked up in one of their buses run on soy-based biofuel. All the buses feature wi-fi, music, and you can even drink your own alcohol on board! The payment system is, of course, far cheaper and fairer.
Comparing this company's bus service to say, my local San Francisco MUNI transit experience, is like comparing the services of local, free-range, organic farms in the Bay Area to the Soviet bread lines.
Not surprisingly, the city government, which has no time to protect its citizens, does manage to find the time to harass peaceful citizens in this spontaneous, market order. Charles Molnar and a couple of other students from the Detroit Enterprise Academy wanted to help make benches for the city's bus stops, where long-waits are the norm, equipped with bookshelves to hold reading material.
Detroit Department of Transportation officials quickly said the bench was "unapproved" and had it taken down. Silly citizens, don't you know only governments can provide these services?
The TMC and the DBC are just two of the larger, more visible examples of the market and voluntary human cooperation reigning in Detroit. "Food rebels," running local community gardens, are an alternative to Big Agriculture and government-subsidized factory farms. Private parking garages are popping up. Detroit residents are using Lockean homesteading principles to repurpose land amongst the rubble of the Fed-induced housing bubble. Community events like Biergartens and large, civic dining gatherings (with no permits or licenses!) are being organized privately. Even Detroit's artists are beginning to reflect this anarchic, peaceful movement in their artwork.
Detroit's city government may be in shambles financially, but the citizens of Detroit are showing what happens when people are given their liberty back. For centuries, libertarians have been arguing for strict limits on state power, the benefits of private, civic society, and the bottom-up, spontaneous order that arises where free markets and voluntary interactions dominate. Perhaps we shouldn't be so scared and sicken with political Stockholm Syndrome the next time politicos fear-monger over budgets cuts.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
The Biggest Thing Since Blogging And YouTube Channels
"Your Own Branded Social Network" or YOBSN is a Social Network engine that offers a first of its kind opportunity to not only brand a company or individual but instantly connect them to millions of people around the world. YOBSN owners can brand and customize the portal by which their clients and friends access the social network creating top-of-mind awareness for their cause, product or service. Smart Media provides the important social media content and features and even the incentives for users to want to return and use the social network and YOBSN owners can create a second layer of content to their system by offering even more to their free users.
What makes YOBSN unique over other social networks is that they share their revenue not only with the YOBSN owner but also with the YOBSN owners free users. Like nearly all other social networks Smart Media earns the majority of its income from advertisers and they share this revenue with the people responsible for creating it. It is definitely an idea whose time has come. Users can enter contests daily to win cash and prizes. They can play free games for real cash and prizes and also earn points whenever they click on banner ads that interest them.
Users can earn points for referring others and these points can be spent in an online rewards store for digital or physical products. One might compare it to a frequent flyer program or rewards card program with one major exception being that users don't spend any money to earn them. Most rewards programs are simply discount programs where the discount may or may not ever be used. When someone uses a credit card to earn frequent flyer miles, for example, a small portion of the money that the person spent is used to create the free miles. So these miles may or may not be used in the future, and if enough of them are accumulated then
the person would have a need to use them. In essence the miles are not free the person is actually paying something for rtls.
The word "free" is used a lot in business but in many cases it is not actually free. For example, "Buy 2 get 1 free" sounds really good, but the truth is much less appealing to consumers when the truth is it is actually "Buy 3 and get 33%" off each item. 33% off of one item is not very appealing to consumers but add "If you buy 3" makes it even less appealing. So instead say "Buy 2 get 1 free" and consumers respond and that is because they think they are getting something for free when actually they are only getting a small discount.
However, with YOBSN it is actually free and the users never spend money to earn the rewards. The money for the rewards comes from advertising revenue generated by Smart Media. The YOBSN owner is not charged for the rewards that their free users earn. In fact, they actually earn money when their free users earn rewards. This money also comes from profits earned by Smart Media not by the YOBSN owner.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia, the world’s biggest maker of stand-alone graphics chips, says that its new chip is primed to run this year’s batch of high-end PC games — such as Call of Duty: Ghosts, Watch Dogs, and Battlefield 4. Numerous gamer-PC makers are launching new computers today based on the new 250-watt chip, which can execute 4.0 teraflops in single-precision mode.
It’s worth noting that game consoles always lag behind the PC in performance. That’s because console makers have to lock in on a design a couple of years ahead of the launch and then give that specification to game developers so they make launch titles. The custom chip takes a while to design, and it can be engineered better than a general-purpose PC to run games.
But PC makers have the advantage of just taking the fastest off-the-shelf graphics chip and marrying it with other state-of-the-art components. They can build a more modern machine that isn’t based on last year’s technology. So it’s no surprise that a new Nvidia graphics chip with expensive PC trappings will be able to run circles around game consoles that haven’t launched yet.
The Nvidia chip has a Kepler-based graphics processing unit (GPU) with 2,304 cores and 3GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory. Those specs are 50 percent more than its predecessor, the GeForce GTX 680. Rival Advanced Micro Devices says it has a faster graphics card, but it achieves that by putting two graphics chips in a single card.
The new cards based on Nvidia’s new chip will come with Nvidia GeForce Experience software, gaming drivers, and other advanced features. The card taps PhysX, which creates more realistic physics and motion in games. Players who really want a fast experience can gang multiple cards together using Nvidia’s SLI technology.
“The GeForce GTX 780 delivers the fastest framerate and smoothest animation at a value never before seen in PC gaming,” said Scott Herkelman, the general manager of the GeForce business unit at Nvidia. “This level of performance allows gamers to become fully immersed into a game the way the developers originally intended.”
Nvidia’s GPU Boost 2.0 technology will automatically increase the GPU speed for enhanced performance while maintaining temperature range and fan controls. The 780 GPU is available today from add-in card suppliers including Asus, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, and Zotac. The chip is selling for $649. PC makers that will use the chip in gamer systems include AVADirect, Cyberpower, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, Geekbox, iBuyPower, Maingear, Origin PC, Puget Systems, V3 Gaming, and Velocity Micro.
What makes YOBSN unique over other social networks is that they share their revenue not only with the YOBSN owner but also with the YOBSN owners free users. Like nearly all other social networks Smart Media earns the majority of its income from advertisers and they share this revenue with the people responsible for creating it. It is definitely an idea whose time has come. Users can enter contests daily to win cash and prizes. They can play free games for real cash and prizes and also earn points whenever they click on banner ads that interest them.
Users can earn points for referring others and these points can be spent in an online rewards store for digital or physical products. One might compare it to a frequent flyer program or rewards card program with one major exception being that users don't spend any money to earn them. Most rewards programs are simply discount programs where the discount may or may not ever be used. When someone uses a credit card to earn frequent flyer miles, for example, a small portion of the money that the person spent is used to create the free miles. So these miles may or may not be used in the future, and if enough of them are accumulated then
the person would have a need to use them. In essence the miles are not free the person is actually paying something for rtls.
The word "free" is used a lot in business but in many cases it is not actually free. For example, "Buy 2 get 1 free" sounds really good, but the truth is much less appealing to consumers when the truth is it is actually "Buy 3 and get 33%" off each item. 33% off of one item is not very appealing to consumers but add "If you buy 3" makes it even less appealing. So instead say "Buy 2 get 1 free" and consumers respond and that is because they think they are getting something for free when actually they are only getting a small discount.
However, with YOBSN it is actually free and the users never spend money to earn the rewards. The money for the rewards comes from advertising revenue generated by Smart Media. The YOBSN owner is not charged for the rewards that their free users earn. In fact, they actually earn money when their free users earn rewards. This money also comes from profits earned by Smart Media not by the YOBSN owner.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia, the world’s biggest maker of stand-alone graphics chips, says that its new chip is primed to run this year’s batch of high-end PC games — such as Call of Duty: Ghosts, Watch Dogs, and Battlefield 4. Numerous gamer-PC makers are launching new computers today based on the new 250-watt chip, which can execute 4.0 teraflops in single-precision mode.
It’s worth noting that game consoles always lag behind the PC in performance. That’s because console makers have to lock in on a design a couple of years ahead of the launch and then give that specification to game developers so they make launch titles. The custom chip takes a while to design, and it can be engineered better than a general-purpose PC to run games.
But PC makers have the advantage of just taking the fastest off-the-shelf graphics chip and marrying it with other state-of-the-art components. They can build a more modern machine that isn’t based on last year’s technology. So it’s no surprise that a new Nvidia graphics chip with expensive PC trappings will be able to run circles around game consoles that haven’t launched yet.
The Nvidia chip has a Kepler-based graphics processing unit (GPU) with 2,304 cores and 3GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory. Those specs are 50 percent more than its predecessor, the GeForce GTX 680. Rival Advanced Micro Devices says it has a faster graphics card, but it achieves that by putting two graphics chips in a single card.
The new cards based on Nvidia’s new chip will come with Nvidia GeForce Experience software, gaming drivers, and other advanced features. The card taps PhysX, which creates more realistic physics and motion in games. Players who really want a fast experience can gang multiple cards together using Nvidia’s SLI technology.
“The GeForce GTX 780 delivers the fastest framerate and smoothest animation at a value never before seen in PC gaming,” said Scott Herkelman, the general manager of the GeForce business unit at Nvidia. “This level of performance allows gamers to become fully immersed into a game the way the developers originally intended.”
Nvidia’s GPU Boost 2.0 technology will automatically increase the GPU speed for enhanced performance while maintaining temperature range and fan controls. The 780 GPU is available today from add-in card suppliers including Asus, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, and Zotac. The chip is selling for $649. PC makers that will use the chip in gamer systems include AVADirect, Cyberpower, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, Geekbox, iBuyPower, Maingear, Origin PC, Puget Systems, V3 Gaming, and Velocity Micro.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
How Maslow’s hierarchy can help you build a great mobile checkout process
Everybody’s talking about the m-commerce boom, but if you look past the sophisticated surveys, app owners are struggling to figure out why their conversion rates fall short of expectations.
It’s not surprising if you consider the fact that mobile shopping cart abandonment rates are around 97 percent. Many frustrated developers have asked me how they can decrease these huge numbers that just don’t fit their business model.
I’ve tried to look at this challenge differently, not as a payment expert but rather from a psychological viewpoint, exploring our users’ needs and expectations throughout the checkout process.
Many influential payment companies in this ecosystem have introduced backend solutions that address merchants and developers’ needs. So as a developer you can now enjoy easy APIs, friendly onboarding, methods with reduced processing fees, all of which make their lives easier. The one factor that’s left out of this equation is the user, who somehow seems to be neglected, even though they’re the only one who controls the transaction.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory used to understand human motivation. The hierarchy is based on five levels of needs. In order to reach the next level, a person must first satisfy the lower level of rtls.
Even though it’s a little far from the original framework, some of its principals can actually be applied to understand the influence of users’ needs in reference to mobile conversion rates.
Mobile commerce is here to stay. We’re not just targeting early adopters anymore. However, in order to achieve mass market adoption the basic process needs to be clear and simple.
Many app owners require that their users create an account, even for a one time purchase. Yet people need to get their feet wet before jumping in the water. Forcing users to register and remember yet another password can be a huge barrier for someone who still has concerns about their purchase.
Every complication along the way gives the user a chance to stop and rethink their buying decision, while chasing away most impulse buyers among your users. This is obviously less basic than the need for air or food, but it’s probably the key factor to increasing conversion rates.
Security concerns are probably the #1 barrier to online shopping, and things don’t improve on mobile. However, it’s a matter of perception rather than facts. The level of security available with today’s range of technologies is high. Financial risks exist in the physical commerce world as well, but whenever there’s a mobile payment involved, the fear factor kicks in and users becomes more alert. Delivering a secure process isn’t enough; our biggest challenge is to make users FEEL that the process is secure.
One of the problems in most checkout experiences on native apps is redirecting to the PSP’s web page to complete the transaction. At that very point where your user has finally grown to trust you, you pull them away to a different site and bring them back to square one in terms of their attitude towards the purchase. This triggers many doubts about this unfamiliar external page, about its level of security, and what could go wrong while trying to return to the app. Creating a full native experience will ease those concerns and give your users more piece of mind.
A sense of belonging is triggered in a familiar environment. The beauty of Amazon’s checkout is that you can buy a book, a pair of sneakers or a laptop, but the checkout process is the same. By creating this payment standardization process the consumer feels like they are in a familiar place.
Your payment page doesn’t have to win a design contest; it has to look like a place where people pay, with a reliable look and feel, aligned with the standard payment conventions.
Another way to maintain familiarity and continuity is by enabling users to pay without re-entering credit card details. Make sure you keep security in mind and meet the standards of PCI compliance; if you need a reminder, go back to level 2 of the pyramid.
Last year, T-Mobile threw down the gauntlet and announced it would no longer subsidize smartphones and went to a pay-as-you-go format. Since the beginning of the year, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have also announced changes to their pay-as-you-go strategies. While the Big Two (AT&T and Verizon Wireless) took baby steps towards making pay-as-you-go a viable alternative for their contract customers, this is still a positive development in my opinion. More choices in the no-contract space are a small but important win for consumers and will hopefully lead to more options for customers of all four of the major U.S. carriers.
While pay-as-you-go MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) like Straight Talk, Solavei, and Ting are extremely viable and attractive options for smartphone users in the U.S., many of these services have caps on how much high-speed data you can access. Furthermore, as of the time of this writing, only Sprint allows MVNOs to access its 4G LTE network. There has been some buzz about some MVNOs accessing 4G LTE on T-Mobile’s network, but my research has shown that this has not yet come to fruition. While many users are fans of MVNOs, which operate independently of the Big Four carriers, I am focusing on the Big Four's prepaid plan options.
I was very intrigued by AT&T’s recent announcement that the company has created a new separate MVNO called Aio, which will operate on AT&T’s HSPA+ network, though it's currently only offering service in Orlando, Tampa and Houston. Aio will offer unlimited talk, text and data, but users will be limited to 4 megabits per second of “high speed data”.
Pricing plans are as follows: the Aio Basic ($40 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 250mb; the Aio Smart plan ($55 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 2GB; and the Aio Pro plan ($70 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 7GB. Users can buy an additional gigabyte of “high speed data” for $10. If Aio is successful in its three initial markets, AT&T has stated that it will roll the service out across the U.S. AT&T will also continue to offer its GoPhone pay-as-you-go service.
It’s not surprising if you consider the fact that mobile shopping cart abandonment rates are around 97 percent. Many frustrated developers have asked me how they can decrease these huge numbers that just don’t fit their business model.
I’ve tried to look at this challenge differently, not as a payment expert but rather from a psychological viewpoint, exploring our users’ needs and expectations throughout the checkout process.
Many influential payment companies in this ecosystem have introduced backend solutions that address merchants and developers’ needs. So as a developer you can now enjoy easy APIs, friendly onboarding, methods with reduced processing fees, all of which make their lives easier. The one factor that’s left out of this equation is the user, who somehow seems to be neglected, even though they’re the only one who controls the transaction.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory used to understand human motivation. The hierarchy is based on five levels of needs. In order to reach the next level, a person must first satisfy the lower level of rtls.
Even though it’s a little far from the original framework, some of its principals can actually be applied to understand the influence of users’ needs in reference to mobile conversion rates.
Mobile commerce is here to stay. We’re not just targeting early adopters anymore. However, in order to achieve mass market adoption the basic process needs to be clear and simple.
Many app owners require that their users create an account, even for a one time purchase. Yet people need to get their feet wet before jumping in the water. Forcing users to register and remember yet another password can be a huge barrier for someone who still has concerns about their purchase.
Every complication along the way gives the user a chance to stop and rethink their buying decision, while chasing away most impulse buyers among your users. This is obviously less basic than the need for air or food, but it’s probably the key factor to increasing conversion rates.
Security concerns are probably the #1 barrier to online shopping, and things don’t improve on mobile. However, it’s a matter of perception rather than facts. The level of security available with today’s range of technologies is high. Financial risks exist in the physical commerce world as well, but whenever there’s a mobile payment involved, the fear factor kicks in and users becomes more alert. Delivering a secure process isn’t enough; our biggest challenge is to make users FEEL that the process is secure.
One of the problems in most checkout experiences on native apps is redirecting to the PSP’s web page to complete the transaction. At that very point where your user has finally grown to trust you, you pull them away to a different site and bring them back to square one in terms of their attitude towards the purchase. This triggers many doubts about this unfamiliar external page, about its level of security, and what could go wrong while trying to return to the app. Creating a full native experience will ease those concerns and give your users more piece of mind.
A sense of belonging is triggered in a familiar environment. The beauty of Amazon’s checkout is that you can buy a book, a pair of sneakers or a laptop, but the checkout process is the same. By creating this payment standardization process the consumer feels like they are in a familiar place.
Your payment page doesn’t have to win a design contest; it has to look like a place where people pay, with a reliable look and feel, aligned with the standard payment conventions.
Another way to maintain familiarity and continuity is by enabling users to pay without re-entering credit card details. Make sure you keep security in mind and meet the standards of PCI compliance; if you need a reminder, go back to level 2 of the pyramid.
Last year, T-Mobile threw down the gauntlet and announced it would no longer subsidize smartphones and went to a pay-as-you-go format. Since the beginning of the year, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have also announced changes to their pay-as-you-go strategies. While the Big Two (AT&T and Verizon Wireless) took baby steps towards making pay-as-you-go a viable alternative for their contract customers, this is still a positive development in my opinion. More choices in the no-contract space are a small but important win for consumers and will hopefully lead to more options for customers of all four of the major U.S. carriers.
While pay-as-you-go MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) like Straight Talk, Solavei, and Ting are extremely viable and attractive options for smartphone users in the U.S., many of these services have caps on how much high-speed data you can access. Furthermore, as of the time of this writing, only Sprint allows MVNOs to access its 4G LTE network. There has been some buzz about some MVNOs accessing 4G LTE on T-Mobile’s network, but my research has shown that this has not yet come to fruition. While many users are fans of MVNOs, which operate independently of the Big Four carriers, I am focusing on the Big Four's prepaid plan options.
I was very intrigued by AT&T’s recent announcement that the company has created a new separate MVNO called Aio, which will operate on AT&T’s HSPA+ network, though it's currently only offering service in Orlando, Tampa and Houston. Aio will offer unlimited talk, text and data, but users will be limited to 4 megabits per second of “high speed data”.
Pricing plans are as follows: the Aio Basic ($40 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 250mb; the Aio Smart plan ($55 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 2GB; and the Aio Pro plan ($70 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 7GB. Users can buy an additional gigabyte of “high speed data” for $10. If Aio is successful in its three initial markets, AT&T has stated that it will roll the service out across the U.S. AT&T will also continue to offer its GoPhone pay-as-you-go service.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Payday lenders skirt military law
Seven years after Congress banned payday-loan companies from charging exorbitant interest rates to service members, many of the nation’s military bases are surrounded by storefront lenders who charge high annual percentage rates, sometimes exceeding 400 percent.
The Military Lending Act sought to protect service members and their families from predatory loans. But in practice, the law has defined the types of covered loans so narrowly that it’s been all too easy for lenders to circumvent it.
“We have to revisit this,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee and is the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat. “If we’re serious about protecting military families from exploitation, this law has to be a lot tighter.”
Members of the military can lose their security clearances for falling into debt. As a result, experts say, service members often avoid taking financial problems to their superior officers and instead resort to high-cost loans they don’t fully understand.
The Department of Defense, which defines which loans the Military Lending Act covers, has begun a process to review the law, said Marcus Beauregard, chief of the Pentagon’s state liaison office.
The act mainly targets two products: payday loans, usually two-week loans with annual percentage rates often above 400 percent, and auto-title loans, typically one-month loans with rates above 100 percent and secured by the borrower’s vehicle. The law caps all covered loans at a 36 percent annual rate.
That limit “did do a great deal of good on the products that it covered,” said Holly Petraeus, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s head of service-member affairs. “But there are a lot of products that it doesn’t cover.”
Representatives from payday and other high-cost lenders said they follow the law. Some defended the proliferation of new products as helpful to indoor Tracking.
In June 2011, Levon Tyler, a 37-year-old staff sergeant in the Marines, walked into Smart Choice Title Loans in Columbia, S.C.; it was the first time he’d ever gone to such a place, he said. But his bills were mounting. He needed cash right away.
Smart Choice agreed to lend him $1,600. In return, Tyler handed over the title to his 1998 Ford SUV and a copy of his keys. Tyler recalled the saleswoman telling him he’d probably be able to pay off the loan in a year. He said he did not scrutinize the contract he signed that day.
If he had, Tyler would have seen that in exchange for that $1,600, he’d agreed to pay a total of $17,228 over two and a half years. The loan’s annual percentage rate, which includes interest and fees, was 400 percent.
Tyler said he provided his military ID when he got the loan. But even with an annual rate as high as a typical payday loan, the Military Lending Act didn’t apply. The law limits the interest rate of title loans — but only those that have a term of six months or less.
In South Carolina, almost no loans fit that definition, said Sue Berkowitz, director of the nonprofit South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center. The reason? Ten years ago, the state legislature passed consumer protections for short-term auto-title loans. In response, lenders simply lengthened the duration of their loans.
Today, plenty of payday and auto-title lenders cluster near Fort Jackson, an army base in Columbia, legally peddling high-cost loans to the more than 36,000 soldiers who receive basic training there each year.
Tyler’s loan showcases other examples of lenders’ ingenuity. Attached to his contract was an addendum that offered a “Summer Fun Program Payoff.” While the loan’s official term was 32 months, putting it outside both South Carolina’s regulations and the Military Lending Act, the “Summer Fun” option allowed Tyler to pay off the loan in a single month. If he did so, he’d pay an annual rate of 110 percent, the addendum said.
Michael Agostinelli, the chief executive of Smart Choice’s parent company, American Life Enterprises, said he wants his customers to pay off their loans early. “They’re meant to be short-term loans,” he said.
He also said that customers who pay on time get “a big discount.” In Tyler’s case, he would have paid an annual rate of 192 percent if he had made all his payments on time.
But Tyler fell behind after only a couple of payments. Less than five months after he took out the loan, a repo company came in the middle of the night to take his car. Three weeks later, it was sold at auction.
The suit names among its plaintiffs three soldiers who took out what appeared to be classic title loans. All agreed to pay an annual rate of around 150 percent for a 30-day loan. All had trouble repaying, according to the suit. One, an Army staff sergeant and Purple Heart recipient, lost his car. The other two managed to pay interest but almost none of the principal on their loans for several months.
The company was fully aware that its customers were soldiers, because they presented their military identifications, said Roy Barnes, a former governor of Georgia who is representing the plaintiffs.
Community Loans, which boasts more than 900 locations nationwide, argued in court that the transactions were not covered by the Military Lending Act because they weren’t loans but sales.
Here’s how Community Loans said the transaction worked: The soldiers sold their vehicles to the company while retaining the option to buy back the cars — for a higher price. In early 2012, the judge rejected that argument. The case is continuing.
The Military Lending Act sought to protect service members and their families from predatory loans. But in practice, the law has defined the types of covered loans so narrowly that it’s been all too easy for lenders to circumvent it.
“We have to revisit this,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee and is the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat. “If we’re serious about protecting military families from exploitation, this law has to be a lot tighter.”
Members of the military can lose their security clearances for falling into debt. As a result, experts say, service members often avoid taking financial problems to their superior officers and instead resort to high-cost loans they don’t fully understand.
The Department of Defense, which defines which loans the Military Lending Act covers, has begun a process to review the law, said Marcus Beauregard, chief of the Pentagon’s state liaison office.
The act mainly targets two products: payday loans, usually two-week loans with annual percentage rates often above 400 percent, and auto-title loans, typically one-month loans with rates above 100 percent and secured by the borrower’s vehicle. The law caps all covered loans at a 36 percent annual rate.
That limit “did do a great deal of good on the products that it covered,” said Holly Petraeus, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s head of service-member affairs. “But there are a lot of products that it doesn’t cover.”
Representatives from payday and other high-cost lenders said they follow the law. Some defended the proliferation of new products as helpful to indoor Tracking.
In June 2011, Levon Tyler, a 37-year-old staff sergeant in the Marines, walked into Smart Choice Title Loans in Columbia, S.C.; it was the first time he’d ever gone to such a place, he said. But his bills were mounting. He needed cash right away.
Smart Choice agreed to lend him $1,600. In return, Tyler handed over the title to his 1998 Ford SUV and a copy of his keys. Tyler recalled the saleswoman telling him he’d probably be able to pay off the loan in a year. He said he did not scrutinize the contract he signed that day.
If he had, Tyler would have seen that in exchange for that $1,600, he’d agreed to pay a total of $17,228 over two and a half years. The loan’s annual percentage rate, which includes interest and fees, was 400 percent.
Tyler said he provided his military ID when he got the loan. But even with an annual rate as high as a typical payday loan, the Military Lending Act didn’t apply. The law limits the interest rate of title loans — but only those that have a term of six months or less.
In South Carolina, almost no loans fit that definition, said Sue Berkowitz, director of the nonprofit South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center. The reason? Ten years ago, the state legislature passed consumer protections for short-term auto-title loans. In response, lenders simply lengthened the duration of their loans.
Today, plenty of payday and auto-title lenders cluster near Fort Jackson, an army base in Columbia, legally peddling high-cost loans to the more than 36,000 soldiers who receive basic training there each year.
Tyler’s loan showcases other examples of lenders’ ingenuity. Attached to his contract was an addendum that offered a “Summer Fun Program Payoff.” While the loan’s official term was 32 months, putting it outside both South Carolina’s regulations and the Military Lending Act, the “Summer Fun” option allowed Tyler to pay off the loan in a single month. If he did so, he’d pay an annual rate of 110 percent, the addendum said.
Michael Agostinelli, the chief executive of Smart Choice’s parent company, American Life Enterprises, said he wants his customers to pay off their loans early. “They’re meant to be short-term loans,” he said.
He also said that customers who pay on time get “a big discount.” In Tyler’s case, he would have paid an annual rate of 192 percent if he had made all his payments on time.
But Tyler fell behind after only a couple of payments. Less than five months after he took out the loan, a repo company came in the middle of the night to take his car. Three weeks later, it was sold at auction.
The suit names among its plaintiffs three soldiers who took out what appeared to be classic title loans. All agreed to pay an annual rate of around 150 percent for a 30-day loan. All had trouble repaying, according to the suit. One, an Army staff sergeant and Purple Heart recipient, lost his car. The other two managed to pay interest but almost none of the principal on their loans for several months.
The company was fully aware that its customers were soldiers, because they presented their military identifications, said Roy Barnes, a former governor of Georgia who is representing the plaintiffs.
Community Loans, which boasts more than 900 locations nationwide, argued in court that the transactions were not covered by the Military Lending Act because they weren’t loans but sales.
Here’s how Community Loans said the transaction worked: The soldiers sold their vehicles to the company while retaining the option to buy back the cars — for a higher price. In early 2012, the judge rejected that argument. The case is continuing.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Sorry tale of a listing MP
Whaddya mean, a drink too many? Haven't started yet. Three bottles of champagne. Pronto! That's not a brand we stock, sir.
Pronto? It means chop chop. Rattle your dags. A into G. I'm afraid I can't serve you any more wine, sir. Now, look here, sport. You know who I am?
''Bugger. Wrong card. Well, forget cards. I'll tell you who who I am face to face. I'm a member of Parliament. And here's my ID. The genuine plastic card on a chain. There's not too many of those around, sonny. I can get better grub at half the price you charge here by just flashing this at Bellamy's.
And I can use the members' dunnies in the House at any time. Night or day. Night or day
Congratulations, sir. Our prices are a bit dearer than Bellamy's, but then we are not subsidised by the taxpayer. The voters in your electorate will be pleased to know you are eating well, sir. '
At the polytech, sir. It's part of the paper on handling difficult customers. If the customer is made to feel inferior he may quieten down and do as he is asked. We need that training as the temptation to assault the customer can become irresistible.
Don't try that with me, cobber. No MP is gonna feel inferior to a waiter poncing around with a ring in his ear. Let's have more champagne and less posh talk.
I'm sorry, sir. You have already had far too much to drink and I'm afraid you are upsetting the other indoor Tracking.
Look here, sunshine. I'll be the thudge of jat. Champagne. Now!
No, sir. And please stop shouting. The lady at table 6 is having a fit at all this noise. She was sent here by her specialist with her nerves. She had hoped to be going home tomorrow. I'm afraid I will have to ask you to leave.
I'm not sure that Mr Key looks after the staffing at the hotel, sir. Certainly it was Monsieur Alphonse who offered me my present position and he said nothing about having to ring Wellington. And I imagine Mr Key has more than enough on his plate running the country and visiting tourist resorts overseas. The staffing of a country hotel is unlikely to concern him.
It soon will concern him, my lad. When he hears about one of his members being given the runaround in a public place. He'll have you out of here before you can say, ''and chips with that''. Rubbish, if you don't mind me saying so, sir.
He also explained just how sophisticated some identity theft operations can be. One of thieves' most preferred methods is skimming ATMs. The criminals will insert card readers onto the ATM and install tiny cameras somewhere on the machine to record the black magnetic strip information from the back of the card and watch someone enter their PIN. The criminals can then buy blank plastic credit cards and encode them with magnetic strips containing the same information, creating a duplicate credit card.
The best way to prevent against this is to keep your hand low over the key pad when you're typing in your PIN, Solomon said. He added that many companies have made newer machines which make it harder to install skimming devices, but that these machines are expensive and banks have been slow to replace old machines due to cost.
Another way of gaining information for criminals is by asking for it directly. Solomon recalled a "jury duty" story in which a person pretending to be from the government calls and said you've missed jury duty. To avoid being held in contempt, they tell you they are now recording the conversation and that you must identify yourself and pledge to come on a certain future date. They ask for your Social Security number, birth date, etc., and you've just given a criminal all they need.
"How many people like eBay?" Solomon asked. "The criminals have their own versions, as well. A carding website will have auctions, like `I'll sell you 100 IDs for $2,000.' You can even rate the seller. `Johnny Jones gave me some great cards.' "
Other tips Solomon offered were never to click on links from unusual emails, as they might install a virus on your computer, and to consider changing passwords every 60 to 90 days.
Pronto? It means chop chop. Rattle your dags. A into G. I'm afraid I can't serve you any more wine, sir. Now, look here, sport. You know who I am?
''Bugger. Wrong card. Well, forget cards. I'll tell you who who I am face to face. I'm a member of Parliament. And here's my ID. The genuine plastic card on a chain. There's not too many of those around, sonny. I can get better grub at half the price you charge here by just flashing this at Bellamy's.
And I can use the members' dunnies in the House at any time. Night or day. Night or day
Congratulations, sir. Our prices are a bit dearer than Bellamy's, but then we are not subsidised by the taxpayer. The voters in your electorate will be pleased to know you are eating well, sir. '
At the polytech, sir. It's part of the paper on handling difficult customers. If the customer is made to feel inferior he may quieten down and do as he is asked. We need that training as the temptation to assault the customer can become irresistible.
Don't try that with me, cobber. No MP is gonna feel inferior to a waiter poncing around with a ring in his ear. Let's have more champagne and less posh talk.
I'm sorry, sir. You have already had far too much to drink and I'm afraid you are upsetting the other indoor Tracking.
Look here, sunshine. I'll be the thudge of jat. Champagne. Now!
No, sir. And please stop shouting. The lady at table 6 is having a fit at all this noise. She was sent here by her specialist with her nerves. She had hoped to be going home tomorrow. I'm afraid I will have to ask you to leave.
I'm not sure that Mr Key looks after the staffing at the hotel, sir. Certainly it was Monsieur Alphonse who offered me my present position and he said nothing about having to ring Wellington. And I imagine Mr Key has more than enough on his plate running the country and visiting tourist resorts overseas. The staffing of a country hotel is unlikely to concern him.
It soon will concern him, my lad. When he hears about one of his members being given the runaround in a public place. He'll have you out of here before you can say, ''and chips with that''. Rubbish, if you don't mind me saying so, sir.
He also explained just how sophisticated some identity theft operations can be. One of thieves' most preferred methods is skimming ATMs. The criminals will insert card readers onto the ATM and install tiny cameras somewhere on the machine to record the black magnetic strip information from the back of the card and watch someone enter their PIN. The criminals can then buy blank plastic credit cards and encode them with magnetic strips containing the same information, creating a duplicate credit card.
The best way to prevent against this is to keep your hand low over the key pad when you're typing in your PIN, Solomon said. He added that many companies have made newer machines which make it harder to install skimming devices, but that these machines are expensive and banks have been slow to replace old machines due to cost.
Another way of gaining information for criminals is by asking for it directly. Solomon recalled a "jury duty" story in which a person pretending to be from the government calls and said you've missed jury duty. To avoid being held in contempt, they tell you they are now recording the conversation and that you must identify yourself and pledge to come on a certain future date. They ask for your Social Security number, birth date, etc., and you've just given a criminal all they need.
"How many people like eBay?" Solomon asked. "The criminals have their own versions, as well. A carding website will have auctions, like `I'll sell you 100 IDs for $2,000.' You can even rate the seller. `Johnny Jones gave me some great cards.' "
Other tips Solomon offered were never to click on links from unusual emails, as they might install a virus on your computer, and to consider changing passwords every 60 to 90 days.
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