• There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free
• The event is all ages
• Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 2:30PM on Saturday, doors will open for seating at 4:30PM, and the show begins at 5PM
• You cannot collect tickets for friends or family -- anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket
• Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we're full, we're full
• The venue is located at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City (map after the break)
• The show length is around an hour

Continue reading The Engadget Show tapes tomorrow, with Nicholas Negroponte and PlayStation Move!

The Engadget Show tapes tomorrow, with Nicholas Negroponte and PlayStation Move! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s still unconfirmed, but word is going around that Intel is struggling to meet the demand for its new family of Core mobile processors. The chips, which are expected to be used in the upcoming updates for Apple’s MacBook and MacBook Pro lines are in high demand, apparently Acer has made a rather large order for Intel’s latest Core i3/i5/i7 chips, and coupled with Apple’s chip requirements, this is going to give second-tier and smaller notebook makers a hard time. Hopefully Intel manages to get its supply issues sorted out soon, as we certainly want to see new notebooks rocking the latest processors, don’t we?

Permalink: Is Intel Having Trouble Meeting The Demand For Its Latest Processors? from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

What the crap? A French comic? Are the French even allowed to make comics? Aren't they too busy being snooty and smoking Gauloises and wearing inappropriate swimwear? Where do they find the time to make comics, anyway?*

Well, the French can do all those things as long as they keep making comics this good, I tell ya. West Coast Blues is a cracking good crime comic, not really noir but definitely a tale of bad people doing bad things to each other. It's also, oddly enough, very wryly humorous, in a way we don't often see in crime comics here in the States. It was a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette in 1976, and in 2005, Manchette's old collaborator, Jacques Tardi, finally adapted it to comics (and then Kim Thompson translated it into English). Presumably, had DC's association with Humanoids continued, this would have been a DC book. As it is, Fantagraphics has published it in the States. Good for them!

The plot is deceptively simple, as for most of the book, we have no idea what's going and Manchette simply follows his main character around. We begin in the present with George Gerfaut, cruising around in his Mercedes in the middle of the night listening to West Coast style jazz (hence the name of the book - George digs the jazz!). After a few pages, we're introduced to another man, Alonso Emerich y Emerich, a Dominican of German descent who used to be in military intelligence. We have, initially, no idea what his purpose is, because we quickly get back to George, who is passed by two cars, one chasing the other. The first car crashes, the second car takes off, and George helps the first driver to the hospital. Then he returns to his house. A few days later, his family heads out on vacation. It takes us a few pages to realize that this is happening in time well before the opening scene, because Manchette doesn't give us any indication that we've flashbacked. That's okay, though - the transition between the "present" and the "past" is interesting because Manchette links them through George driving late at night. While we may be a bit lost initially, we quickly regain our footing.

George doesn't realize he's being tailed by two hitmen in the employ of Alonso, who goes by Mr. Taylor. Again, we don't know why they want to kill George (we can figure out it has something to do with the driver of the car, but we don't know what), but that's part of the fun. Because as the follow George to the seaside, the plot kicks into high gear. It's rather humorous - the hitmen can't kill George. Through, really, very little effort on his part, he manages to elude them. In their first attempt, he manages to grab one of the killer's balls, which of course tends to put him off. This attempt switches something on in George, and he abandons his wife and returns to Paris. The killers can never quite catch up with him, and when they do, he escapes again, killing one of them almost accidentally. Then he flees into the forest and ends up in the foothills of the Alps, where he's found by a slightly eccentric woodsman. And he simply stays there. He becomes someone else completely, learning how to be self-sufficient, hooking up with a woman, and changing his appearance by growing a beard. But the second killer tracks him down, and George ends up back in the world, ready to find out exactly why these two men were sent to kill him.

The fascinating thing about this story is the character of George. Actually, Carlo and Bastien, the two hitmen, are pretty interesting as well, but George is the central character, so he ought to be fascinating. As I pointed out, he doesn't escape from the killers because he's tougher than they are; he might be a bit smarter, but he's also really lucky. Manchette doesn't make it a ridiculous, corny kind of luck, but he does show that George happens to do things that throw them off the track without knowing he's doing it. This makes the pursuit rather odd and darkly humorous. The book is full of violent death, and it's definitely not a comedy, but just the fact that these two professional killers have such a tough time blowing away this rather inept sales manager makes it border on the surreal. Then, we think the book will be about George becoming more of an independent dude and less of a simpering whiner, as he's forced to live in the wild for so many months. But Manchette doesn't quite give us that, either. George is a complicated guy who realizes certain things about the way society is structured but still yearns for other things. By the end of the book, we're back on the freeway, but Manchette has made us see that George has changed, just maybe not enough that we would expect. West Coast Blues is, in my mind, very "European" in that regard - this is a broad generalization, but Europeans are more bound by history, both societal and personal, than Americans, so if this book had been written by a Yankee, it probably would have ended much, much differently. That it doesn't is a testament, I think, to Manchette's storytelling - he never takes the easy way out, even if George's fate might seem like he does. George has been affected by what happens to him, but in not so overt (American?) way.

Tardi's art is quite stellar, as well. He's amazingly detailed, but he doesn't pull any tricks on the reader - his work is very straight forward. He relies on very strong storytelling skills, as he simply takes us through George's story. We get a great sense of place from Tardi, either in the urban settings or, even more impressively, in the rural interlude George experiences. Tardi does masterful work with the characters, too - they look and move like people, stumbling when you might expect it, breaking bones when you'd expect it, acting like human beings. His best work might be with Carlo and Bastien, as George remains very low-key throughout (except for one brief scene). Carlo and Bastien, however, have a fun relationship, and Tardi helps with it. Manchette gives them good banter, but Tardi manages to portray their care for each other even as he keeps their faces impassive. It's a very verbose comic, but Tardi matches Manchette with panels that demand a great deal of attention - this is a visual feast as well as a literary one.

I suppose the only problem one might have with the book is its somewhat excessive narration, because often Manchette simply tells us what the pictures already do (and Tardi adapted it to comics, so why he didn't cut some more of it is beyond me). Occasionally, the narration is absurdly excellent - when Manchette lists all the weapons Carlo and Bastien have in their car, for instance, it's a comic mini-masterpiece - but occasionally, we can tell exactly what's going on and don't need to be told. Again, this is a comic adapted from a book into French and then translated into English, so there are many filters for it to go through. I don't have too big an issue with the words, but I should caution you that it feels bloated every once in a while.

Other than that, West Coast Blues is a very good crime comic. The fact that it has a slightly different sensibility than most American crime fiction makes it refreshing, and the fact that Manchette has a wry sense of humor about the material works well, too. And it looks great. And Ed Brubaker thinks Tardi is great. Dare you go against Ed Brubaker????

* Before you jump my shit, I'm joking. I am well aware of the long French tradition of comics, and cut my teeth on Asterix and Obelix before I had even heard of the X-Men when I was but a lad. Chillax, people!

Next: Can it be more Tardi? Well, of course it can!

Productivity is plummeting this week. Everybody (well, 3 million people) are watching March Madness instead of doing work, according to CBS Sports and the NCAA's March Madness stats for CBSSports.com.

According to their NCAA March Madness on Demand traffic figures through Thursday, March 18:

• 3.4 million total hours of live streaming video and audio consumed
• 3 million unique visitors to the NCAA March Madness on Demand video players
• 1.7 million clicks of the "Boss Button" - over 60% of the total clicks of the Boss Button for the entire 2009 tournament. (2.77 million)
• The most watched game from 3/18 was the double-overtime Florida vs. BYU game with 521k hours of streaming video and audio. That's +50% over 2009's most watched game from the first day of the first round (Washington vs. Mississippi State) which had 348k hours of streaming.
• The most watched hour yesterday was 2:00-2:59 p.m. ET with 533k streaming hours (16% of the total for the day). It peaked at 2:45 p.m. with 147k streaming hours between 2:45 and 2:59 p.m. ET.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• CBS Scores $37 Million In Online Ad Sales For March Madness
• Re-Live The Best March Madness Moments With The NCAA's Cool New 'Vault'

Denzel Washington and Scarlett Johansson head list of talent heading to Broadway amid Hollywood economic crisis

New Yorkers will not need to go to their nearest multiplex cinema to catch the latest performances by stars such as Denzel Washington, Scarlett Johansson or Christopher Walken. Instead, they will soon be able to see some of Hollywood's A-list in the flesh.

A flock of famous movie talent has swapped the sunshine and glamour of making films in Los Angeles for the more artistically rigorous demands of New York's theatre world.

Washington is starring in a new revival of Fences, a play by American writer August Wilson, which opens next month. Johansson and Liev Schreiber are already starring in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. Walken's performance as a deranged killer in Martin McDonagh's new play, A Behanding in Spokane, is also drawing in big crowds. Other current or recent big names appearing on stage include Laura Linney, Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman and Jude Law.

Many Hollywood stars claim that appearing on stage represents a purer form of acting than celluloid and boosts their credibility as thespians, not mere film stars. "The first thing I want to do is more theatre. The second thing I want to do is direct movies. Acting in movies is now No 3 on the list," Washington told the New York Post tabloid recently.

But there may be a more prosaic reason. Hollywood studios are currently in the middle of an economic crisis. Studios have been hit by the lingering impact of the 2008 Hollywood strike and then the deep bite of the recession. Despite recent mega-hits such as Avatar, many studios are cutting costs and binning new film projects. MGM, for example, released just one movie last year, and some industry watchers think it is teetering on the verge of collapse. The famed independent movie studio Miramax is up for sale after huge job losses. It too slashed the number of films it is releasing.

At the same time many top Hollywood stars have seen a drop in their ability to demand massive wages for a movie. Lucrative deals where stars took a first cut of a film's box office have all but disappeared.

In short, a lot of film stars are finding work and cash a little harder to come by. No wonder a spell on Broadway suddenly looks good.

New York's theatre world is, however, welcoming them with open arms, despite a little behind-the-scenes grumbling from some of the city's thousands of perennially under-employed actors. Attaching a big name to a play guarantees press attention and a healthy public interest. If the names are big enough it can even make a production "review-proof" as audiences will flock to see the stars whatever the reviews. Many New York theatres and producers are now basing their business model around short-run plays with big star names.

"It is nice to have such an influx of stars coming to Broadway. It does help the business. They can help draw an audience and that will help any producer," said Dan Bacalzo, managing editor of Theatremania, a leading New York-based theatre website. Certainly some plays clearly do much better with star names than without. When a recent production of God of Carnage opened with an all-star cast, including James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden, it played to packed houses. But when its cast switched to a group of highly praised but lesser-known actors, its take dropped and during the usual bonanza of Christmas week the once packed-out play was showing in front of a house at only 69% capacity.

Lucy Liu, star of the Charlie's Angels movies, has now been brought into the show.

Of course, being a famous movie star does not always mean someone can act in the theatre, especially when swapping the pampered movie world of multiple takes and reshoots for the brutal and unforgiving arena of live performance.

Yet many recent film stars have also drawn rave reviews, especially Walken, Law and Johansson. "I think if anybody was annoyed that Scarlett Johansson was here, they should go and see A View From The Bridge. She has been excellent in that part," said Bacalzo.

Denzel Washington is starring in an upcoming production of the play Fences.

Scarlett Johansson is earning rave reviews in a View From The Bridge.

Laura Linney is playing a war photographer in Time Stands Still.

Lucy Liu is appearing in God of Carnage.

James Spader is starring in David Mamet's Race.

Christopher Walken is the lead role in the gruesome new play A Behanding in Spokane.

Anthony Mackie, who starred in the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, is playing opposite Walken.

John Lithgow is in Mr and Mrs Fitch.

• Theatre
• New York
• Scarlett Johansson
• Denzel Washington
• Daniel Craig
• Hugh Jackman
• Jude Law
• United States
• Film industry

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As one of ReadWriteWeb's iPhone users, I'm always looking for new applications to try out. Some get downloaded for a day and then deleted right away, others slowly inch their way closer to my homescreen. Even rarer are the ones that become actively used on a regular basis. Occasionally, we like to share our findings regarding our favorite new apps. (See, for example, last month's list here). Although I can't guarantee that all of the ones on the list below will become favorites forever, they piqued my interest enough to get a coveted spot on my iPhone this month. Let us know what you think about their potential for long-lasting success.

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I've been playing with Miso off and on for a week or so. Dubbed a "Foursquare-Like App for Homebodies" by yours truly, this app lets you "check-in" to the TV shows and movies you're watching and earn badges. While I like the idea, I've found that the app suffers from the lack of an easy way to find and follow other users. That leaves us TV-watching "stay-at-home" folks feeling a little too isolated when already taking part in a rather non-social, non-interactive activity. However, if the app can improve the ability to find and follow other like-minded entertainment consumers, there's potential for a fun "niche use" type of app here. (Review: Miso: A Foursquare-Like App for Homebodies)

MediaServer seems so promising, but I've had trouble getting all aspects of it to work properly. The app is designed to be an easy way to view your iPhone media on your TV set by way of a Media Center-type hardware device (XMBC, Boxee, etc.) or game console (PS3, XBox 360). And it is easy to use. You install the app, launch it, and boom!, your media console sees your iPhone - no configuration required. As far as viewing user-created videos or photos, the app excels. But streaming music or video? Not so much. Due to varying degrees of DRM applied to the files themselves and codec support on the hardware device, playing media on your TV is harder than it should be. (I tried with the Xbox in my tests.) Whether it's the app that's to blame or the hardware, I can't tell. However, MediaServer did become a great way to do iPhone photo slideshows on the TV and that alone is keeping it on my phone for now. Hopefully the rest will be improved in time.

The RWW bloggers who attended the recent SXSW festival have come back raving about the barcode-scanning Stickybits app (iTunes link). The app, which debuted at the conference, goes hand-in-hand with the online service that lets you either print your own barcodes or buy pre-made stickers which you can then associate with real-world objects. Using the Stickybits iPhone application, anyone encountering these stickers in the wild can scan them to discover whatever data theyv'e been associated with. Will Stickybits actually stick around though? It's too soon to tell, but it sure is fun to play with in the meantime. (Review: Stickbits: Portal to Another Dimension or Graffiti for Nerds?)

Although not brand-new, the Siri app which debuted in February on the iPhone is rapidly becoming one of our all-time favorites and therefore has to make this list again. If you have not installed Siri yet, do so now! Built with artificial intelligence technology, Siri functions as a personal assistant which can provide information on a variety of topics from weather to movie listings to restaurants, events and more. You can either type into the app's search box or speak your query to get started. And the more you use it, the smarter it gets. The voice recognition works well, too, although it never understood "Alice in Wonderland movie" no matter how many times I said it. (Maybe it already knew I wouldn't like that movie?) We'll give it a pass there, though - voice recognition is a tough nut to crack. Still, the intelligence of this app will soon have you relocating the apps it replaces (movie listing apps, restaurant finders, etc.) to back screens of the iPhone. (Review: Siri: Your Personal Assistant for the Mobile Web)

Obsessed with ego-tracking your Twitter stats or tasked with managing a corporate account of some kind? Then Tweeb's new Twitter analytics tracker (iTunes link) is a handy app to have. For $1.99, you get access to real-time, on-demand statistics including tweet counts, follower counts, retweets, mentions and clickthroughs on your tweeted links. You can also use the app to tweet, manage your friends, block or unblock users, view Twitter profiles, view your following lists and manage multiple Twitter accounts. The data is presented in clean, easy-to-read layouts and there is even a history section so you can measure your growing influence over time. Well worth a couple of bucks if you access this data on a regular basis!

The first app to access Google Buzz natively is pretty great, but I'll admit that I'm more likely to switch over to Buzz from Google Reader's mobile website than launch a standalone app. If the iPhone had app multitasking though, that would be a different story. Still, Buzzie has a few standout features - photo-sharing and photo browsing, most notably. It also feels "a lot snappier" than Google Buzz's web app, noted Frederic earlier this month during his demo. (Review: Buzzie: The First Native Mobile App for Google Buzz)

Part of Springpad's service, this Evernote competitor functions as a mobile note-taking and reminder app. Similar to Evernote's offering, you can write a note or snap a photo to remember something (which is then added to your online account), but it also introduces barcode-scanning as another way to "remember" an item. You can use the app to access all your saved data, too - handy for accessing shopping lists, recipes and restaurants you want to try while you're out and about. (Review: Springpad Takes on Evernote with Semantic Technology, Barcode Scanner)

Other apps getting demoed on our iPhones include the following:

• Brizzly for Twitter: Will we leave Tweetie 2 for this new Twitter iPhone app? It could happen!
• Feathers: Want to have a little fun with your tweets? Feathers lets you decorate them with symbols, icons or even post them upside-down.
• Notifio: Just launched, this app tries to bring Android-style notifications to one central place on the iPhone, but it's dependent on others to use its API to do so. If successful, it could be amazing...but that remains to be seen.

You can see all the apps on my iPhone courtesy of AppsFire here.

FlyTreeView for ASP.NET is a dynamic treeview control. Native ASP.NET control, features visual designers, native .net DataBinding to any ADO.NET source (DataSet, DataReader, arrays, and IList implementations, etc.), drag-and-drop operations, full ASP.NET viewstate support, highly customizable styles and behaviors, XML node sources to enable load on demand, FlyNodeSet control to provide on demand nodes renderring and loading (ex. file system) , checkboxes, multiple postback events (select, deselect, expand, collapse, check, uncheck), server side handling of all client events, comprehensive client object model, context menu, flexible licensing options.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
Apple Swears iPad Partners to Secrecy  —  Developers must sequester the tablet computer in rooms with blacked-out windows, reflecting secrecy around a product that may mean billions of dollars in sales  —  Apple makes big demands of software developers who want an early crack at the iPad.

Palm shares plunged in late trading Thursday after the company posted yet another dismal quarter and warned that revenue for the current one will fall far short of Wall Street expectations. The company will have to take substantial charges to help its carrier partners eat through excess inventory, and whatever luster once existed for its flagship Pre is long gone. The question now is, who’s going to pick up Palm?

Palm’s last-ditch gamble on webOS has been a disaster. The operating system — which debuted last summer on the Pre — has received solid reviews, but an utter lack of effective marketing from Sprint — and more recently, Verizon Wireless — shackled handset sales. And an upcoming partnership with AT&T — which looked to be Palm’s last chance at redemption — is reportedly fizzling already after the carrier delayed the launch of webOS handsets, slashed its order and cut its marketing budget.

So what are Palm’s options? CEO Jon Rubinstein is projecting a “stay the course” attitude, saying better training of Verizon Wireless sales staffers will begin to pay off — a questionable theory given the flat-line demand for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus so far. Producing a tablet would be an interesting strategy, as James over at jkOnTheRun suggested yesterday. But the market for tablets is still very uncertain, and there’s little reason to believe Palm can move a different kind of hardware when it can’t sell phones. So a suitor will likely sweep in and pick up Palm, snatching up webOS — the company’s most valuable asset — and a sizable patent portfolio. Here’s a quick rundown of the most likely (or most highly speculated) candidates for acquiring Palm — including their odds of doing so:

• Google : The most intriguing play on the board, Google might be compelled by Palm’s patent portfolio, as Gizmodo noted yesterday. What’s more, Google and Palm both operate Linux-based mobile operating systems, which would make it easy for Google to cherry-pick the best features from webOS and add them to Android. Google could easily afford Palm, and as a bonus would keep it from falling into the hands of a competitor. Odds: 7-1
• Dell : The Texas computer vendor joined the smartphone space a few months ago, launching handsets in Brazil and China, and will soon launch an Android-based device through AT&T. But its late entry means Dell will have a hard time differentiating its hardware, and coming to market with its own mobile operating system, app store and developer community could be a great way to stand out from the crowd. Odds: 7-1
• Hewlett-Packard: HP’s tiny smartphone business is dissolving in the superphone era. Picking up what amounts to a turnkey mobile OS would be a huge — if costly — move to attract attention and breathe life into its mobile business. Odds: 11-1.
• Nokia : Nokia has long been mentioned as a potential buyer for Palm, but successfully marrying the two has become an increasingly difficult proposition. Nokia already claims the world’s most popular smartphone OS in Symbian, and its Maemo — um, sorry, I mean MeeGo – operating system appears to be its long-term strategy. What’s more, Ovi has gained impressive traction in recent months. Adding another platform to the mix would only serve to distract Nokia just as it finally appears to be regaining its focus. Odds: 25-1
• Motorola : Another hardware maker that might be compelled by the idea of owning its own OS, Motorola’s $8 billion in cash ensures plenty of capital to pocket Palm. Yet despite what Om suggested earlier this year, taking on a mobile operating system would likely be more than Motorola could handle, given its difficulty in regaining its once-dominant market share in smartphones. Marriages of two weak players from different spaces rarely end up happy. Odds: 30-1
• Microsoft : Palm and Microsoft seemed like a great fit just a few months ago. But that was before the gang from Redmond went public with its plans to scrap Windows Mobile in favor of Windows Phone, an impressive, consumer-targeted platform set to debut late this year. Windows Phone may fail gloriously, but there’s no reason to bring another OS into the fold — and webOS is largely considered to be Palm’s most valuable asset. Odds: 35-1
• Cisco : An acquisition of Palm would enable Cisco to immediately expand beyond infrastructure into the mobile consumer market. Such a move wouldn’t exactly be unprecedented for Cisco, which last year bought the maker of Flip Video camcorders for $590 million, but maintaining a mobile operating system is a far more sophisticated endeavor than simply churning out camcorders. Odds: 40-1.

This is only a partial list, of course, and new potential suitors are sure to emerge as Palm begins to circle the drain. The clock is ticking, and there’s almost no hope Palm can reverse course at this point. So someone in the mobile space might be able to do very well by picking up a dying company at a cut-rate price.

Related content from GigOM Pro (sub req’d):

Could Games Redeem Windows Mobile and Palm’s webOS?

Image courtesy Flickr user nathangibbs.

BBC sites are responsible for 40 percent of the visits to iPlayer, according to Hitwise.

The BBC will make viewing of its on-demand videos more social by adding Facebook, Twitter and Bebo integration into its widely popular iPlayer online video application, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. The addition of more social sharing features has the potential to greatly increase usage and viewer engagement for the iPlayer, which continues to post record numbers month after month.

In an interview with the Telegraph, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, said that social sharing features would be built into the iPlayer 3.0 beta, which is set to launch soon. According to Huggers, partnerships with the various social networking sites have already been signed, but the Beeb has been waiting until the release of the newest version of its player before making the new features available to users.

The integration will allow users to easily share what they are watching or listening to with friends and contacts on the social networking site. But for the integration to work, they will have to first register an account and log into the BBC iPlayer before adding their Facebook, Twitter and Bebo information to that account. Once that information is stored, they will no longer have to log into the services separately to post updates to their account from the iPlayer.

We’ve long believed that media companies can benefit by adding more social features around online video viewing. As we’ve seen in the case of CNN’s integration with Facebook at the Obama inauguration, social networks can do a lot to drive interest in online video, particularly for live events.

While the iPlayer could see a boost from social sharing, the video catchup service is doing just fine on its own, posting record numbers (again!) for the month of February. The iPlayer site was visited by an average of 1.4 million people per day , with 3.5 million requests for TV and radio programs during the month. But the most telling stat might be the amount of time viewers spent on the site. iPlayer viewers spent more than an hour — 64 minutes — catching up on TV programs online.

Related content on NewTeeVee: Watching the iPlayer Around The World: BBC, Meet VPN

Related content from GigaOM Pro: Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking? (subscription required)

The UK Government continues to push forward the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) that aims to protect copyright holders from online pirates. On 15th March the House of Lords approved the bill and handed it over to the House of Commons.

To the absolute dismay of most outside the music and movie industries, some of the most controversial elements of the Bill are unlikely to receive any major scrutiny and will be dealt with quickly under the so-called “wash-up”, a short period between the announcement of an election and parliament being closed down.

“It’s a deeply unsatisfactory and very worrying development,” a senior executive from an ISP told The Guardian. “The fear is that no one will know what is being cooked-up before it becomes law. It’s legislation on the hoof.”

But this situation suits the BPI just fine. This week a leaked memo from the BPI fell into the hands of Cory Doctorow which showed that the “LibDem amendment” – a proposal under the DEB which would allow for websites to be blocked if, essentially, the BPI didn’t like their activities – was in fact written by the BPI. Very cosy.

But the controversies don’t end there. Doctorow also received an internal document prepared by the BPI’s Director of Public Affairs and prospective Labour parliamentary candidate, Richard Mollet. In the document he admitted that the only reason the DEB had a chance of passing is because MP’s are resigned to voting on it without debate.

“Translation: if MPs got to debate the Bill, they would tear it to unrecognizable pieces as they realized what terrible rubbish it really is,” wrote Doctorow. The scandals go on and on, but we have to stop somewhere.

Nevertheless, UK Music head Feargal Sharkey says that he is confident that the DEB will be passed before the general election, although others are not so sure.

“It will still be nip and tuck to get the Digital Economy Bill onto the statute book before the election so the battle is not won yet,” wrote Shadow Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt, on his blog this week.

According to Jim Killock at the Open Rights Group, UK citizens aren’t leaving anything to chance with 10,000 of them having written to their MPs in the last three days to demand a debate on the Digital Economy Bill.

“It is outrageous for corporate lobbyists including the BPI, FAST and UK Music to demand that MPs curtail democracy and ram this Bill through Parliament without debate,” says Killock, adding: “The British people did not elect UK Music and the BPI to write our laws.”

Killock says that what is making the 10,000 so angry is the pushing through of the DEB without debate, an act he describes as “undemocratic and dangerous”.

If you’d like to add your dissenting voice, please email your MP, write to your local newspaper, and attend the planned demonstrations.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Ankeena Networks, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of new media infrastructure solutions, has raised approximately $16 million in new VC funding, according to a regulatory filing (via peHUB).

No word about who backed the company with this third round of financing, but Ankeena Networks was listed by one of its main business partners, Juniper Networks as one of their investments when they announced their $50 million fund recently, so that’s one name at least. Ankeena had previously raised $15.2 million from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund and Trinity Ventures, so this brings its total to a healthy $31.2 million.

Ankeena Networks’ flagship product is a content delivery platform dubbed Media Flow Director, which enables mobile operators and other service providers to take advantage of rising consumer demand for mobile content and other rich media content across mobile devices, PCs and televisions.

MFD aims to ensure users receive a smooth viewing experience without buffering or stuttering despite of varying network conditions, regardless of the viewing device, over mobile as well as wire-line broadband networks. Ankeena does this by dynamically detecting the available bandwidth and varying the delivery bit-rate.

Ankeena Networks was born under another name, Nokeena, back in 2008. The company was co-founded by CEO Rajan Raghavan, chief strategy and technology officer Prabakar Sundarrajan, chief strategy and technology officer, VP of Engineering Kumar Narayanan and Jaspal Kohli, chief architect, along with Deepak Srinivasan, VP of Business Development.

Collectively, this team brings leadership expertise from companies like Akamai/Speedera, Cisco, Citrix/NetScaler, Exodus Communications, HP, IBM, InSilicon/Virtual Chips, Intel, Level 3 Communications, Mirapoint and Yahoo.

One to watch closely.

Filed under: Motorsports, MISC, Racing

Gallery: Rendered: McLaren MP4-12C GTR

McLaren could develop racing version of MP4-12C for privateers originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

UK government 'shamefully' refuses to support Kenyan proposal for a ban aimed at reducing elephant and rhino poaching

The Conservatives today criticised the government for failing to support proposals from a number of African countries to impose a 20-year ban on any legal sales of ivory.

The plan, led by Kenya, is being discussed at the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in a bid to tackle the poaching of elephants and rhino.

It counters a bid by Tanzania and Zambia to hold one-off sales of their legally held ivory and "downlist" their elephants from the highest level of protection.

The UK government said it was initially "sympathetic" to the Kenyan proposals, subject to a review after 10 years of the scheme, but the EU, which votes as a bloc at Cites, decided not to back it. But on a Cites vote this week on whether to ban the international trade in bluefin tuna, the UK acted alone rather than as a bloc with Europe and chose to support the Monaco proposal of opposing the ban.

There are concerns that, if the one-off sales of ivory from four African countries in 2008 results in a lower demand for illegal ivory, a 20-year moratorium would not be a positive step.

But conservationists have raised fears over a rise in illegal trade and poaching following the sales, which they believe stimulate the market and provide a cover for traders to offload illegal stocks.

Shadow environment secretary Nick Herbert said the government had "shamefully" refused to support the Kenyan proposal for a ban on sales and continued to back stockpiling of legal ivory - for example from animals which had died naturally.

"Instead of flooding the market with more ivory and legitimising the trade, these stockpiles should be destroyed. We should be choking demand for ivory, not stoking it," he said.

The UK opposes the bids by Tanzania and Zambia to have one-off sales of their ivory, but EU countries are still considering their requests to "downlist" their elephants from Appendix I to Appendix II of the convention.

Such a move would not allow a trade in ivory, but could let other elephant body parts be traded internationally and the sale of live elephants, for example to safari parks elsewhere, could go ahead.

It could pave the way for a potential ivory sale in the future.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) spokeswoman said: "The EU has agreed with the UK's position to vote against the proposals from Tanzania and Zambia to sell ivory stocks in a one-off sale.

"The EU has decided not to support Kenya's proposal for a moratorium of ivory sales for 20 years."

She said that, regardless, the UK would not consider other sales of ivory until the effects of the 2008 one-off sale of ivory, which was intended to reduce demand for illegal poached ivory, had been fully analysed.

That would take at least another six years, she said.

The 20-year ban would extend an existing nine-year moratorium, agreed at the time the four African countries were given the go-ahead to sell their legal ivory stocks, on any further sales.

Yesterday efforts to increase protection of polar bears and Atlantic bluefin tuna were defeated at the international meeting.

• Conservation
• Wildlife
• Kenya

Launchpad has a feature where it periodically checks the status of remote bugs (as in, bugs recorded in another bug tracker, like bug 12720 in Django).

When someone links a bug on Launchpad with a remote bug it’s called a bug watch. All the bug watches for a bug appear in the Launchpad bug page in an area called “Remote bug watches”. Check out bug 513719 to see a bug watch for bug 12720 in Django.

If the remote bug tracker has been set as the bug tracker for a project in Launchpad, bug tasks for that project can be linked to a specific remote bug too. When the status of the remote bug changes, Launchpad changes the status of the bug task to match, and sends out email to subscribers, the same as if the status had been changed in Launchpad. See the Django bug task in bug 513719 for an example.

Going further, comments can be synchronized too, in both directions. Recent versions of Bugzilla have this capability built in, but older versions can be supported with a plugin. There’s also a plugin for Trac.

This is all very nifty stuff, but it suffers because it doesn’t work very well! Yet.

We support 7 different remote bug tracker types: Debian Bugs, Trac, Bugzilla, Mantis, RT (Request Tracker), Roundup and SourceForge.

We try to support a range of versions for each of these trackers, and a range of different access methods.

For example, with Bugzilla, we support old (v2) installations, more recent (v3) ones, recent ones with the Launchpad plugin, and very recent ones with the API built-in. And we support Issuezilla, a variant of Bugzilla.

We try to work around many idiosyncrasies and customizations in the remote systems.

With Mantis, for example, sometimes we need to log in anonymously before we can download bug statuses. Some Mantis installations allow us to download status information in CSV form, in a batch, but not all. If not, we screen-scrape the individual bug pages. Even if we get CSV, it’s often slightly corrupt, so we try and correct for that where we can.

Then there are simply hundreds of things that are beyond our control that Launchpad must cope with and move on, like HTTP errors, errors without correct HTTP codes, slow responses, unrecognized responses, and so forth. We check about 7k remote bugs every day (we aim to do more than 30k a day, but we’re not there yet) so there are a huge number of errors to sift through. It’s a big task to figure out if each problem is transient, a problem in Launchpad, or a remote problem, never mind actually fixing it!

We must also be gentle with the remote systems, and not issue too many requests in a short time, or otherwise make unreasonably large demands on them. We must be nice.

The bug watch code in Launchpad is a bit creaky. Originally it was designed to run in a single thread in a single process. This means that one badly performing bug tracker can starve the whole system of updates.

In the past we’ve tried to alleviate this by choosing the bug watches to check more carefully, or by batching requests, but this has not been enough for a some time.

Also, while we do record a lot of information about errors, it is still a Herculean task to constantly monitor the errors coming out of the system.

We also can’t test or do QA against other people’s systems. For testing we must use test doubles to simulate the behaviour of remote systems, but this can get confusing. For QA, sometimes we must test against remote systems. This is acceptable for testing the status fetching code, but not for comment synchronization.

However, we have not had the time available to give the bug watch system a big overhaul, only to make small improvements and bug fixes. For a long time it’s needed some big changes to make it work with the volumes of work it’s expected to cope with.

We’re trying to fix these issues now.

We’ve made checkwatches – the program that drives the bug watch machinery – run multi-threaded. This works, but it hammers our database, so we need to figure out how to alleviate that next.

We’ve started the work to move the code base over to using Twisted. This is a better model for managing a lot of concurrent network activity. As more and more bug watches are registered with Launchpad, we’re going to need it.

We’re going to keep more history of success and failure in the database, so that checkwatches can throttle back checks for remote bugs that persistently error. This is really important because it will reduce the work that checkwatches needs to do each day. It will also, we hope, reduce the deluge of errors to a more manageable stream, so that we’re better able to spot genuine bugs that need our attention. Lastly, we hope to display this information on the web pages so that users can help to diagnose problems themselves.

We’re getting some more infrastructure in place, so that we can develop and QA against real installations of Bugzilla, Trac, et al.

We’re also fixing up as many bugs in checkwatches as we can.

Abel Deuring, Graham Binns and Gavin Panella. We’re meeting up next week in Norwich, England for a sprint, a culmination of a couple of months of dedicated effort on the bug watch system.

Deryck Hodge is also coordinating with the Canonical IS team to deliver the QA infrastructure.

For all of us, the aim is to get checkwatches to work reliably, even if it’s not the most efficient or elegant system inside. We also want future development to be more sustainable than it has been in the past.

We want users to be able to rely on this feature.

The Numbers Behind the World’s Fastest-growing Web Site: YouTube’s Finances Revealed; Viacom releases YouTube’s finances from before the Google acquisition. (MediaMemo)

Hulu’s Ad Sales Team Is Undercutting Its Parent Companies; Hulu’s sales team is “actively subverting” the ad sales of its parent companies, which are also trying to sell ads for their shows, according to a source. (The Business Insider)

ITV Goes Cold on YouTube, Hulu; a senior ITV executive says that the broadcaster has “no plans” to do output deals to put its programming on video-on-demand aggregation services such as Hulu, YouTube, SeeSaw or MSN Video Player. (paidContent)

Madison Avenue Finds Old and New Media Can Coexist; more marketers are turning to web video, but many are increasingly doing so along with — rather than in place of — television. (NY Times)

Indie Web Producers Try to Overturn BBC’s Online Cull; Pact (the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television), which represents independent online multimedia producers that have work commissioned from the BBC and others, urges the BBC not to cut its investment in digital media. (paidContent:UK)

The Guardian Finds Video Success With the Contextualization of Content; the newspaper has been innovating with online video since 2006, has invested heavily in video operations in its new headquarters and is finding traction with its own brand of journalistic video. (Beet.TV)

In a March 19 editorial, the Washington Times falsely claimed that "[t]his week, the New England Journal of Medicine [NEJM] released a survey of doctors showing that 46.3 percent" of primary care physicians will either leave or want to leave their medical practice if health care reform passed. In fact, the NEJM did not conduct the "survey," which was not a scientific poll.

From the Washington Times editorial, titled, "Hiding the true cost of Obamacare":

This week, the New England Journal of Medicine released a survey of doctors showing that 46.3 percent of "primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine." Not only will doctors leave medicine, but "27 percent [of physicians] would recommend medicine as a career but not if health reform passes." The survey is merely suggestive, but if the real reduction in the number of doctors is even 5 percent or 10 percent, medical costs will rise significantly. A lower supply of doctors amid rising demand for care means higher medical prices.

NEJM Spokeswoman confirmed survey has nothing to do with NEJM's "original research" and "was not published" by Journal. Media Matters for America contacted NEJM and received confirmation from spokeswoman Jennifer Zeis that the study had "nothing to do with the New England Journal of Medicine's original research." Zeis also made clear that the study "was not published by the New England Journal of Medicine." In fact, the Medicus Firm conducted the survey in December 2009. Medicus, a Dallas- and Atlanta-based firm that recruits and places physicians in jobs was responsible for conducting the survey. It issued a press release about the results on December 17, 2009. The report then appeared in Recruiting Physicians Today, an employment newsletter produced by the Massachusetts Medical Society, "the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine."

The Medicus Firm - a medical recruiting firm -- conducted the survey in December 2009. The Medicus Firm, a Dallas- and Atlanta-based firm that recruits and places physicians in jobs, was responsible for conducting the survey. It issued a press release about the results on December 17, 2009. A report written by the Medicus Firm subsequently appeared in Recruiting Physicians Today, an employment newsletter produced by Massachusetts Medical Society, "the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine." The report also appeared on the NEJM "CareerCenter" website, but was taken down on March 17.

Methodology consisted of emailing doctors in the Medicus Firm's database. The NEJM CareerCenter article indicated that "[t]he survey sample was randomly selected from a physician database of thousands. The database has been built over the past eight years by The Medicus Firm (formerly Medicus Partners and The MD Firm) from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, public directories, purchased lists, practice inquiries, training programs, and direct mail responses. The survey was conducted via emails sent directly to physicians."

Survey write-up was essentially a promotional document for the firm. After discussing the results of its survey, Medicus touted the importance of physician recruitment firms "[a]fter health reform is passed and implemented":

What does this mean for physician recruiting? It's difficult to predict with absolute certainty, but one consequence is inevitable. After health reform is passed and implemented, physicians will be more in demand than ever before. Shortages could be exacerbated further beyond the predictions of industry analysts. Therefore, the strongest physician recruiters and firms will be in demand. Additionally, hospitals and practices may be forced to rely on unprecedented recruitment methods to attract and retain physicians. "Health reform, even if it's passed in a most diluted form, could be a game-changer for physician recruitment," said Bob Collins, managing partner of The Medicus Firm in Texas. "As competitive as the market is now, we may not even be able to comprehend how challenging it will become after health reform takes effect."

My friend Jeff Pulver commandeered a room on the 4th floor at SXSW and had several people who he has met around the world present what they believed were success stories about the Twitter service.  This goes hand in hand with the 140 Conferences that he is throwing around the world.  One such speaker, Bowen Payson, was from the airline Virgin America that has been using Twitter to outreach to their customers.

Bowen began his session by speaking about the differences in their airline from a physical experience.  From the black leather Recaro seats, to the mood lighting.  Their on-demand in flight entertainment is just as high tech as their communication strategy.  The Twitter story began without a strategy and unfolded and matured into more than
60,000 followers as I write this.  Their main social contact, Nick Schwartz is the voice of the airline and loves social networking, partially because of his age.  They try to keep a consumer centric voice and mind set, and work to make the experience better incrementally.

Tags: bowen payson, free wi-fi, google, jeff pulver, sxsw, sxsw 2010, sxswi, sxswi 2010, twitter, virgin america, wi-fi, wifi,