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Internet News RecordLibertyNewsprint.com U.S. Edition09/08/09 - 10/08/09
The First Draft: health care heat wave
By Deborah Zabarenko (Front Row Washington)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 7:23:14 AM
The temperature’s heading toward100 in Washington, and things aregetting hotter in the debate overhealth care too, even with Congressout of town for the traditional Augustrecess and President Barack Obamain Mexico for the so-called ThreeAmigos summit.Taking aim at the orchestrated —or not — attacks on congressionalsupporters of the Obama health careplan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosiand House Majority Leader StenyHoyer struck back in an opinionpiece in USAToday: “Drowning outopposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts ishow we failed at this task fordecades.”The two top House Democratsaren’t commenting in avacuum.Obama’s Saturday radio andWeb address focused onthe“outlandish” tactics of someopponents of health care reform.That followed a note by SarahPalin — ex-governor, ex-vice-presidential candidate but stillsomehow claiming attention inWashington — on Facebook lastweek, alleging that Obama’s healthcare plan would have what she calleda “death panel” that would letbureaucrats decide who would be“worthy of health care.” Palin, whohas slammed the media for focusingon her children, said her “baby withDown Syndrome” would have tocome before such a bureaucraticpanel.ABC News asked, reasonably,what Palin was talking about whenshe mentioned a “death panel,” andwas referred to HR3200 p. 425,“Advance Care PlanningConsultation” about end-of-life care.No specific mention of any deathpanel.The non-partisan Factcheck.org sitesays its e-mail inbox has been“exploding” recently with queriesasking whether this provisionencourages suicide at the end of life.The answer, Factcheck.org said, isno. “Page 425 does deal withcounseling sessions for seniors, but itis far from recommending a“Logan’sRun” approach to Medicarespending. In fact, it requiresMedicare to cover counselingsessions for seniors who want toconsider their end-of-life choices –-including whether they want torefuse or, conversely, require certaintypes of care. The claim that the billwould ‘push suicide’ is a falsehood.”Will this be the end of thediscussion? Our considered opinion:not a chance!For more Reuters political news,click here.Photo credits: REUTERS/YuriGripas (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,July 22, 2009, Washington DC)REUTERS/Nathaniel Wilder(Sarah Palin, July 26, 2009.Fairbanks, Alaska)
It’s official: Toshiba finally went Blu-ray today
By Serkan Toto (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 4:00:48 AM
They’ve announced it back in Juneand executed the plan today: Toshibais now officially a Blu-ray supporter.The company issued a short pressrelease(in English) today, statingToshiba has applied for membershipof the Blu-ray Disc Association(BDA). The BDA is a voluntarymembership group aimed at fosteringthe development of the Blu-rayformat on a global scale.Toshiba took a long time for thisdecision, as the company buried theirown HD format, HD-DVD, as earlyas February 2008. It also saidcustomers can expect the first Blu-ray players and Toshiba laptops withbuilt-in Blu-ray drives within thisyear. As to be expected, the word HD-DVD isn’t mentioned in the pressrelease even once.It’s a good move from Toshiba tofinally overcome their pride: InJapan, at least, Blu-ray products areenjoying brisk sales. Blu-ray recordersales, for example, have been toppingDVD recorder sales since November2008.
Crazy scratch UI tocreate cheap, unpoweredtouch surfaces
By John Biggs (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 7:16:26 AM
The same guys who brought you thebubble input have created a crazyscratch UI that allows you to scratchand tap almost any surface. Bysensing the sound and the finding thepeaks and valleys in the waveformthe system can tell if you’rescratching a shape or tapping on thesurface.The UI can be used with anymaterial - it just needs a sensitivemicrophone - and could be used tofollow a pen on a whiteboard surfaceor allow you to control programsfrom your desk. Imagine, if you will,a touchpad on a laptop that consistsof the entire wrist rest - heck, eventhe side panels. You just tap it and itsenses what you’re doing.This comes from some boys over atCarnegie Mellon, my alma mater,which makes it ten times cooler. It’snice to know they’re still geeking outover there. Go Tartans!via Giz
 
2Internet News Record
Feds holding back $100 million in drill leases(AP)
(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 2:40:22 AM
SALT LAKE CITY – BrianWixom's company has paid the U.S.government hundreds of thousands of dollars for leases to drill for oil andgas on federal lands over the years,only to never put a rig in the ground.The money simply sits in a federalbank account as Wixom and otherdrillers wait for an agonizingbureaucratic process to run its course.As it turns out, the federalgovernment is holding a boatload of money for leases it auctioned andsold but hasn't issued, holding themback for bureaucratic review becauseof environmental protests andlawsuits. The backlog grewexponentially under theadministration of President GeorgeW. Bush as it pushed for moredomestic drilling.The Associated Press hascalculated that the government issitting on close to $100 million paidfor millions of acres of energy leasesin the Rocky Mountains that havebeen withheld for as long as sevenyears, according to records andinterviews with BLM officials inUtah, Colorado and Wyoming.Drillers are steamed by the process.They don't understand why thefederal government is sitting on suchan enormous sum of money,especially at a time when politiciansin Washington are so focused onspending stimulus money to revivethe economy."It's just crazy that the government,because of bureaucratic delays, issitting on that kind of money," saidKathleen Sgamma, governmentaffairs director for the Denver-basedIndependent Petroleum Associationof Mountain States. "Talk about aneconomic stimulus."Secretary of the Interior KenSalazar got an earful from oilmen onthe issue during a "listening tour"stop in Salt Lake City in May. Thenonly a few months on the job, Salazarvowed to find out more about theprocess."We think the government shouldissue the leases we purchased or givethe money back," Wixom toldSalazar.Officials acknowledge the leasingdelays have grown worse, but saytheir hands are tied by legalwrangling that allows anyone tochallenge a lease on public lands.Environmentalists seized on thisoption during the Bush years as theadministration rushed to drill more,making the delays even longer."It's gotten very complex," saidKent Hoffman, deputy Utah directorof lands and minerals for the Bureauof Land Management, the federalagency in charge of energydevelopment on public lands. "Wehave to answer the protests in a verylegal fashion, knowing the next stepcould be the Interior Board of LandAppeals or federal court."So-called protest parcels havealways been auctioned on a buyer-beware basis, yet that did little todeter speculators, brokers, drillersand oil companies in the past. It usedto be that protests were resolvedfairly easily either a parcel was fitfor oil and gas development or itwasn't. Now things have turned into"this long-term suspense," said LarryWilliams, Utah director for theAmerican Association of Professional Land Men."It's money sitting in thegovernment's bank, not doinganybody good," Williams said. "It's just sitting there. The governmentcan't use it, because they may have togive it back."BLM records show the agency hasbeen holding 46 leases belonging toWixom's International Petroleum, aSalt Lake City family firm withbacking from outside investors, foradministrative review since 2005. ParFive Exploration LLC of Orem,Utah, and its affiliates have hundredsof thousands of dollars tied up forparcels that the companies paid fromas far back as 2005."If you don't issue them, it's thesame as taking them away," saidKimball Hodges of Par Five.According to Hodges, it's likebuying a car but not being able totake delivery of it and worse, notknowing if or when the car will everarrive on a dealer's lot."When you pay for something, youexpect to get it," he said.The Southern Utah WildernessAlliance takes credit for helping gumup the works."Leases were being issued at abreakneck rate throughout the Bushadministration, and we werechallenging that because they werebeing sold in spectacularlandscapes," said Stephen Bloch, astaff lawyer for the wildernessalliance.The complaints have become morecommon since Salazar in Februaryscrapped the leasing of 77 parcelsthat were offered at a Utah auction inthe final days of the Bushadministration. Salazar said theparcels were too close to wild areasor national parks.In a rare exception, Salazar orderedthe return of that auction money.Yet, according to agency records,the BLM is holding leases worthmore than $40 million in Utah,around $50 million in Wyoming and$1.2 million in Colorado. BLMofficials say that in Colorado, thatamount grows to $6.9 millionincluding withheld leases on coal,uranium and potash rights.Other holdups continue. On June23 in Salt Lake City, the BLM heldwhat it initially described as a protest-free auction, which would have beenthe first time in seven years no parcelwas being offered under protest of any group.That changed during the auction,when Selma Sierra, the director of the BLM's operations in Utah,decided that every one of the drillingparcels offered or sold at the auctionwas, in fact, under protest. Sierradecided at that point to acceptprotests that had been filed after adeadline by the Denver-based Centerfor Native Ecosystems and theWashington, D.C.-based TheodoreRoosevelt Conservation Partnership.Hoffman said it could take monthsfor his team to scrutinize the 31parcels sold to make certain each onewithstands environmental scrutinyrequired by federal law.___On the Net:Bureau of Land Management,http://www.blm.govIndependent Petroleum Associationof Mountain States,http://www.ipams.org/ 
MSI X-Slim X600reviewed: an'attractive choice'
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 7:37:00 AM
MSI's X-Slim X600 may not be thequickest, most nimble or mostpowerful 15.6-inch laptop on themarket today, bit with a thickness of  just 0.75-inches, it's definitely got theultrathin motif down pat. The kindlads and ladies over at Laptop Magrecently secured one of the machinesfor review, and they seemedadequately impressed with thecombination of a low-power CPU(1.4GHz Core 2 Solo SU3500) and amultimedia-friendly discrete GPU(ATI's 512MB Radeon HD 4330) -- atandem that's hard to find anywhere,let alone for $799. All told, themachine performed satisfactorilyacross the board, notching decentscores in a wide array of benchmarksand looking good all the while. Still,critics noted that Sony's VAIO NWwould be more suitable for thosewith a Blu-ray craving and thatGateway's$599 NV is probably betterfor those looking for rawhorsepower. If style is atop your list,though, it'll be tough to dodge the"buy" button on this one.Filed under: LaptopsMSI X-Slim X600 reviewed: an'attractive choice' originally appearedon Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 200907:37:00 EST. Please see our termsfor use of feeds. Read| Permalink|Email this| Comments
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3Internet News Record
Fed payments for holding immigrants vary widely(AP)
(Yahoo! News: U.S. News)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 4:06:12 AM
SAN ANTONIO – As federalofficials begin an overhaul of thewidely criticized system used toincarcerate immigrants awaitinghearings and deportation, theirchallenge includes a deepinconsistency in the amount paid to ahastily assembled network of privateprisons and local jails that holdthousands of such detainees.Contracts obtained by TheAssociated Press illustrate theproblem in paper-heavy detail, andnot all of the discrepancies can beexplained by geography ordifferences in the cost of living. Forexample, a suburban Atlanta countyis paid less than $43 per day to housean illegal immigrant, while a ruralNew Mexico county gets $97 a day just a few dollars shy of the amountpaid for a bed in Los Angeles.Some county jails charge only theactual cost of housing an immigrant,while others acknowledge partneringwith private prison companies toprofit from the system.Last week, the Obamaadministration announced a series of "major reforms" in the detention of illegal immigrants, including placingfederal employees inside the largestfacilities to monitor detaineetreatment. In doing so, John Morton,the new director of Immigration andCustoms Enforcement,acknowledged the current system isboth inconsistent and lacks oversight."There isn't a uniform rhyme orreason to it," he said.Morton pledged to review all theagreements ICE has to detain illegalimmigrants at 350 different facilities,an operation that will cost $1.7billion this year. Most of the facilitieswere designed to hold criminals, butthe immigrants detained by ICE faceonly civil immigration proceedingsand many have never been convictedof any crime. They include familiesand people seeking asylum.Only a tenth of the 33,400 beds inuse are owned by ICE, and many of those beds are guarded by privatecontractors. An additional 16 percentof the beds in the ICE network arecompletely owned and operated byprivate prison companies. Themajority of beds are owned by localand state governments, some of which outsource their jail and prisonoperations to private contractors.The result is that in all but ahandful of cases, the federaldetention of an immigrant involves apayment to an outside company oragency.Many of those contracts werenegotiated over the last decade whenthe government was outsourcing agrowing number of services and ICE,under pressure to detain moreimmigrants who had previously beenallowed to remain free, was rushingto add space."They had to find quick places withbeds," said Peter L. Markowitz,director of the Immigration JusticeClinic at the Benjamin N. CardozoSchool of Law.Through a Freedom of Informationrequest, the AP obtained ICE'scontracts with some of the largestimmigration detention facilities; theagency also recently began postingdozens of other contracts online. Thedaily rate paid for a jail bed varieswidely among 38 government-to-government agreements signed since2006, even within the same regions.For example, Orange County, N.Y.,has a deal to house detainees fornearly $134 per day, compared with$105 per day in Monmouth County,N.J. Separated by 106 miles, thecounties sit about the same distancefrom New York City.The deals ICE signs with localgovernments allow for some profit,said agency spokeswoman ErnestineFobbs. Haskell County, Texas, takesin about $1,000 per month more thanit pays a private contractor to run itsRolling Plains Regional DetentionCenter, and the extra money is usedto boost salaries in the three-mansheriff's department, said the county'stop official, David Davis.But at less than $58 per day,Haskell County receives far less thanthe $97 per immigrant being paid toOtero County, N.M., even thoughboth counties are rural and builtprisons as economic developmentprojects. Davis said he wasn't awarethat other counties were getting paidsubstantially more."I've never compared what we hadwith what they had," he said.Otero County opened itsimmigration detention facility lastyear about 25 miles north of El Paso.Approached by a private contractorlooking to arrange the deal, "thecounty saw a potential to increasesome revenues," said AssistantCounty Manager Ray Backstom.The county makes a "small" profiton every bed that's occupied, saidBackstrom, though he wasn't surehow much. He said he wasn't directlyinvolved in the negotiations betweenICE, the county and Centerville,Utah-based Management andTraining Corp., the private companythat built and runs the facility. ICEpays Otero County about $3 less perimmigrant per day than it pays LosAngeles County.Morton said ICE has long-termplans to find arrangements that aremore suitable than prison-likefacilities. "We're going to focus onbuilding a better mouse trap," hesaid.Immigrant advocates say that couldmean more use of electronicmonitoring, allowing immigrants toremain free while pressing their casesin court. ICE officials have said thatelectronic surveillance programs thatcost about $13 per day have a nearperfect compliance rate, though theycomplain cases generally take longerto resolve when immigrants are free."There are entities that are profitingfrom the use of detention," saidJacqueline Esposito, policycoordinator for Detention WatchNetwork. "There are community-based alternatives and they cost afraction of the price. You have towonder then what the motivation isbehind a detention system that hasexploded."___On the Net:U.S. Immigration and CustomsEnforcement: http://www.ice.gov/ 
ATI Stream goesfisticuffs with NVIDIA'sCUDA in epic GPGPUtussle
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 8:57:00 AM
It's a given that the GPGPU(orGeneral-Purpose GraphicsProcessing Unit) has a long, longways to go before it can make a dentin the mainstream market, but giventhat ATI was talking up Streamnearly three whole years ago, we'dsay a battle royale between it and itsbiggest rival was definitely in order.As such, the benchmarking gurusover at PC Perspective saw fit to pitATI's Stream and NVIDIA's CUDAtechnologies against one another in aknock-down-drag-out for the ages,essentially looking to see whichsystem took the most strain awayfrom the CPU during video encodingand which produced more visuallyappealing results. We won't bothergetting into the nitty-gritty (that'swhat the read link is for), but we willsay this: in testing, ATI's contraptionmanaged to relieve the most stressfrom the CPU, though NVIDIA'salternative seemed to pump out thehighest quality materials. In otherwords, you can't win for losin'.Filed under: PeripheralsATI Stream goes fisticuffs withNVIDIA's CUDA in epic GPGPUtussle originally appeared onEngadget on Mon, 10 Aug 200908:57:00 EST. Please see our termsfor use of feeds. Read| Permalink|Email this| Comments
Get angry: AT&T changes contract to prevent class action lawsuits
By Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear)
Submitted at 8/10/2009 7:30:21 AM
When was the last time you readyour AT&T contract? If youanswered “never,” then may Isuggest you take two minutes to look this over. That's right, unbeknownstto you, you just lost the ability toenter into a class action lawsuitagainst the mobile phone carrier.High five!
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