With the holiday season fast approaching, it looks like Nokia is eager to bump up sales in the UK lest it get trounced by the competition. For Vodafone customers shopping around for a new Windows Phone, that means getting a free year-long Netflix subscription with the purchase of a Lumia 1020. ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/KZY2QoBN2W0/Around my town, it’s not uncommon at all these days to see teenagers downtown stop in mid stride, arms extended, to snap a “selfie” (or self portrait) with their smart phone. If you didn’t know better, you might think this was a case of mass hysteria—a narcissistic twist on the Salem Witch Trials. If you’re of a certain age, however, you know the compulsive “selfie snapping” is a telltale sign of a snap-chatter.
SnapChat, of course, is that massively popular messaging and picture sharing service that you’ve never heard of and have absolutely no use for if you’re under the age of, say, 17. The two-year-old photo messaging service is the brainchild of Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, who are described as “two Stanford guys who love building cool things.”
Using it, you can send photos or videos of yourself with witty captions to friends who “follow you” (Twitter style) as well as post “Stories” or series of photos or videos to your SnapChat profile.
When you take a “snap,” you can decide how long you want it to be viewable—up to ten seconds. When you send that photo or video to a friend, they can open it and view it for the length of time you specified, after which it is deleted from SnapChat’s servers and from the receiving mobile device.
In short, SnapChat is publicity ... with privacy. And that’s a killer feature for today’s tween-agers and teenagers, who are desperate to “be famous,” even in a small way, and even if that means shining the light of social media into every nook and cranny of their personal lives and personal space.
Here’s the problem, though: SnapChat isn’t really ephemeral—and the likelihood that SnapChat photos will get captured and stored permanently is growing each day.
In a blog post last week, Miccah Schaffer, Snap Chat’s head of Trust & Safety clarified the company’s position on retaining data that its users share. Specifically, Schaffer revealed that SnapChat does occasionally manually retain and review unopened Snaps under certain circumstances. What are those? For one, when the company is ordered by law enforcement to do so pursuant to a search warrant for the contents of Snaps. Schaffer acknowledged that SnapChat has received “about a dozen “ such warrants in the last five months that have resulted in unopened Snaps being turned over to law enforcement.
Beyond that, SnapChat may also retain opened Snaps for a time, contrary to its stated policy of deleting them once they have been opened. Again—this is only under special circumstances “like when law enforcement is determining whether to issue a search warrant for Snaps.”
That kind of legal small print on SnapChat’s terms of service shouldn’t really surprise anyone. The company has always acknowledged that it can’t prevent your SnapChat correspondents from taking a screen shot of the image you send—or pointing a camera at their phone. And the company has tried to compensate for those limitations. Screenshots, for example, are noted by the SnapChat application and reported to the sender.
The bigger threat to SnapChat and its users, though, may come from third-party platforms and applications, which can easily undermine the privacy protections that are seemingly built into the platform. Early releases of Apple’s iOS operating system changed the way in which screen shots could be taken, making it impossible for the SnapChat application to detect when screenshots of SnapChat images were captured.
Also this week came news of a new application, SnapHack Pro, for sale on the iOS App Store. It allows users to log in using their SnapChat credentials and send and receive Snaps. The difference: all images opened and viewed in SnapHack are permanent.
SnapHack, developed by a UK programmer named Darren Jones, was the top-selling mobile application on the UK edition of Apple’s AppStore, though—an indication of the appetite for ways to circumvent the implied “privacy” of SnapChat’s service.
What does this mean for all of us? As the recent revelations about the NSA’s PRISM Program have shown, claims to online anonymity and privacy are falling left and right.
The only way to win, then, is “not to play” (to quote WOPR, the infamous super computer from the movie War Games). Alas, the trend lines point the other way. Data released by Microsoft this week finds that parents are keeping only loose reigns—at best—on their children when it comes to social media.
According to Redmond’s numbers, almost one in five parents with children under the age of 7 allow their children to have unsupervised access to smart phones. Forty percent of parents with children that age allow unsupervised access to computers.
While that's great for their computer literacy, the dark clouds over SnapChat suggest that it probably isn't going to be good news for their privacy in the years ahead!
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Philadelphia schools learned Wednesday they will get an extra $45 million from the state as the district struggles with its worst financial crisis in memory and questions about a student's death after an apparent asthma attack at a school without a nurse on site.
Gov. Tom Corbett announced the state aid to Pennsylvania's largest school district at an unrelated news conference in his Capitol offices and did not take questions afterward. However, he said his decision came a day after a letter from the Philadelphia school superintendent, William Hite, convinced him that district officials had made enough progress toward the governor's educational and financial goals for improvements in the 134,000-student district.
Corbett also said he and his wife sent their sympathies to the family of 12-year-old Laporshia Massey, although a spokesman for Corbett later said the release of the money and the girl's death were not connected.
Still, Corbett's acting education secretary, Carolyn Dumaresq, said Wednesday her department will review the circumstances of Massey's death and will try to determine whether she had an inhaler with her the day she died and whether she was able to self-administer it. Dumaresq also said her department would review the district's emergency plans and staffing, and correct any problems it finds.
Dumaresq said it is not unusual for a smaller public school to be without a nurse on site each day because the state requires that the caseload of school nurses must not exceed 1,500 students per nurse. Sometimes one nurse covers two buildings, Dumaresq said.
Because of the funding problems, the district cut its nursing staff district-wide two years ago; the smaller school that Massey attended had a nurse on duty two days a week.
Hite said Wednesday the money would allow the state-controlled district to restore sports and music for the full year and rehire about 400 people, including guidance counselors, assistant principals and teachers. However, he said he did not plan to rehire any nurses, as union officials and a parent's organization urged, because the district has met the state's caseload standard.
Holding six weeks of classes without the money has been "detrimental," he said.
The district approved a budget of nearly $2.4 billion, and the extra money helps close the gap from the prior year's nearly $2.7 billion budget.
The state Legislature had approved the money in July, although it gave the secretary of education the power to first demand improvements to fiscal stability, educational improvement and operational control.
Initially, Corbett, a Republican, had sought significant concessions from the teachers union, but Corbett's budget secretary, Charles Zogby, said Hite's letter summarizing steps taken, such as managing teacher assignments and closing schools, were satisfactory, even though negotiations with the teachers' union continue without a contract.
Layoff notices that went out in June to nearly 4,000 employees wiped out 20 percent of the district's employees. A pledge by Mayor Michael Nutter to borrow $50 million against future sales tax receipts prompted the rehiring of some laid-off staff and encouraged Hite to back off a threat not to open the schools Sept. 9.
Philadelphia officials had been harshly critical of the administration's decision to withhold the money, and the death of Massey, a sixth-grader at Bryant Elementary, renewed an outcry over conditions in the district. A parents' group, Parents United for Public Education, said the district's lack of money is "dangerous and it is unsustainable. It has put children and families directly in harm's way."
Massey died Sept. 25 after initially reporting that she was unable to breathe at school, her father's lawyer, Ronald S. Pollack, said. Some details remain unclear, but she did not come home from school with her inhaler, Pollack said. She died later at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, he said.
School nurse Eileen Duffey, who was helping to organize a Thursday vigil in Laporshia's honor, said there's no guarantee that Laporshia would be alive had there been a nurse in the building
"But I do know that school nurses, such as myself, we are trained to assess children," Duffey said.
___
Associated Press writer Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia contributed to this report. Matheson reported from Philadelphia.
We're just a year away from the start of production on the second in James Cameron's Avatar movie series, according to its lead actor, with the director currently hard at work "building the ship to Pandora." Hopefully, he means that in the metaphorical sense.
Talking during an interview with Australian radio station Nova 96.9, Sam Worthington said that he expected photography to begin on Avatar 2 in October 2014, with shooting for the second, third and fourth movies in the series to be completed within a year ahead of each new installment's annual release, from December 2016 through December 2018.
STORY: James Cameron Brings in Writer Josh Friedman for 'Avatar 2' Script
It's almost been four years since the release of the first Avatar, and just two months since it was revealed that Cameron would create three sequels instead of the originally planned two, with Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Shane Salerno writing the screenplays. Additionally, novelist Steven Gould has been signed to write four original novels to support the new series.
Congress set a limit on how much debt the U.S. Treasury could accrue back in 1917.
Congress set a limit on how much debt the U.S. Treasury could accrue back in 1917.
Political battles over the debt limit have been around nearly as long as the law passed by Congress in 1917 that set a statutory limit for how much debt the Treasury could accrue.
Since then, Congress has had to increase that limit on more than 100 occasions — and 40 of those times, lawmakers have tried to tie strings to raising the debt ceiling. In the last few years, though, there's been a marked escalation in those demands.
When Treasury Secretary Jack Lew went before the Senate Finance Committee late last week, he put President Obama's Republican adversaries on notice: "We cannot have the debt limit be something that's a threat to the economy unless policy concessions are made — that's not how our democratic system works. A minority can't do that."
Oh, yes, it can, countered Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate's GOP minority. On the Senate floor, McConnell said Obama's refusal to make concessions in this standoff breaks with tradition.
"It's not the way presidents of both parties have dealt with this problem in the past," he said. "Reagan negotiated. Clinton negotiated. And if President Obama wants America to increase the credit limit, he'll negotiate, too."
In fact, Obama tried to negotiate with House Speaker John Boehner in the summer of 2011 to raise the debt ceiling. The president's lingering exasperation with that episode in many ways echoes one of his Republican predecessors.
In a 1987 White House radio address, President Ronald Reagan complained about a debt-ceiling deal that congressional Democrats had just muscled through.
"Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility," Reagan said. "This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veteran benefits."
But economist Alice Rivlin, a veteran of some of those earlier debt-ceiling battles, says they were tame compared to what's going on now.
"The mood is very different, the depth of the antagonism is very different and the risk-taking is different," she says.
Rivlin was White House budget director during the Clinton administration, a time she says when there was no talk of defaulting on the debt.
"Nobody thought in the '90s that we would breach the debt ceiling," she said. "There were attempts to attach things, but it was really much more symbolic than real."
Early in 2006, as the Iraq War raged, a Republican-led Senate voted on raising the debt ceiling, and along with every other Democrat, then-Sen. Barack Obama voted no. The only thing attached to that measure was the Democrats' disapproval.
Five years later, as president, Obama told ABC that no vote was a mistake.
"As president, you start realizing, 'You know what? We can't play around with this stuff. This is the full faith and credit of the United States,' " he said. "And so that was just a example of a new senator, you know, making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I'm the first one to acknowledge it."
Obama recently told reporters that by raising the debt ceiling Congress is simply allowing financing for spending it has already approved. But it's still a tough vote.
Allen Schick, a congressional budget expert at the University of Maryland, says it has always been a challenge for either party to round up enough votes to boost the debt limit — which is why Congress found various ways in the past quarter century to avoid holding actual votes on raising the debt ceiling.
"The issue then was really different than it is now," he says. "Then it was an issue — 'We're short of votes' — now there's an issue of demands made by the two parties which are not acceptable to one another."
Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, says the debt ceiling has simply become an opportunity for Congress to make mischief.
"It's a nuclear-tipped leverage point," he says. "And this year, of course, the Tea Party folks are using it. But if this becomes a legitimate tactic, you might find a Democratic faction three or four years from now saying they want to use it. My view: We should disarm."
Welch co-sponsored a bill this year to abolish the debt ceiling. So far it's gone nowhere.
The Apache Software Foundation unveiled its latest release of its open source data processing program, Hadoop 2. It runs multiple applications simultaneously to enable users to quickly and efficiently leverage data in multiple ways at supercomputing speed, Apache said Wednesday.
Apache Hadoop is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It enables organizations to more efficiently and cost-effectively store, process, manage and analyze the growing volumes of data being created and collected every day.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Get ready for a flood of new Hadoop apps. | Harness the power of Hadoop with InfoWorld's 7 top tools for taming big data. | Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. ]
Hadoop is deployed at enterprise organizations around the globe, including Amazon Web Services, AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, and Hewlett-Packard.
The latest version of the platform, released Wednesday, has been more than four years in the making and has a number of new components. Most notable is the addition of YARN, (Yet Another Resource Negotiator), which is a successor to Hadoop's MapReduce. The new version splits major functions into two separate daemons, with resource management in one, and job scheduling and monitoring in the other.
YARN sits on top of the HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) and serves as a large-scale, distributed operating system for big data applications, enabling multiple applications to run simultaneously for more efficient support of data throughout its entire lifecycle, Apache said in a news release. Hadoop 2 and YARN gives users the ability to mix batch, interactive and real-time workloads within a stable foundational part of the Hadoop ecosystem, it said.
Apache also refers to YARN as MapReduce Version 2. It retains API compatibility with the previous version, and applications written for MapReduce will run on YARN if recompiled, the foundation said.
More than a dozen Apache projects integrate with Hadoop, and 10 more are about to follow, Apache said.
The General Availability (GA) release of Hadoop 2 follows a preview distribution that was released in June, that also included YARN. Apache Hadoop 2 will be released under the Apache License v2.0.
Loek is Amsterdam Correspondent and covers online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com.
While a lighter design for the iPad 5 and Retina for the iPad mini 2 are dominating conversation, there are some other new features that could make an appearance in Apple's next-generation tablets, including Touch ID, the fingerprint identify sensor. Of course, Touch ID requires the new Apple A7 chipset and its secure enclave to work, but that's a likely addition anyway, at least to the full-sized iPad. And with the A7 also comes the possibility of the Apple M7 motion-coprocessor. Would that make sense for a tablet? Would any of it? Let's take a look!
The iPad 4 currently uses the Apple A6X, a quad graphics core version of the iPhone 5's A6. That makes the A7 the logical successor for the iPad 4. The Apple A7 system-on-a-chip (SoC) debuted with the iPhone 5s. Apple says the A7 is twice as fast at both general purpose and graphics processing as its predecessor, the A6, and is 64-bit with support for OpenGL ES 3.0. Codenamed Cyclone, it appears to be 28nm, still dual-core and 1.3GHz, but based on the new 64-bit ARMv8 ISA and paired with a PowerVR Series 6 (Rogue) graphics processor, potentially the G6430, and 1GB of DDR 3 RAM. The only consideration here is whether the GPU is powerful enough to handle Retina on its own, or if we'll see a quad-core A7X to make it even more powerful.
The iPad mini 2 isn't as clear. The current iPad mini uses the Apple A5 from 2011. That reflects its lower price point and secondary position in the iPad product line. The next logical step up from that is the Apple A6. Using that, however, would rule out Touch ID and likely the Apple M7 as well. How well it would perform with a 2048x1536 Retina display is also a question. The A6X could handle it, since it already handles the iPad 4, but then the question shifts to how well that bigger chipset fits the iPad mini's constraints. Going to the Apple A7 or Apple A7X would jump two processor generations, and again shifts the question, this time to costs and production capacity on what's a brand new chipset. We'll talk about iPad mini 2 pricing in a future post, but this is certainly one of the most interesting elements of the iPad mini evolution to watch.
Touch ID currently lets you unlock your iPhone 5s and make iTunes account purchases very literally with a finger. It works so well, people who try it very quickly want it everywhere, including on the new iPads. If Apple does indeed want to grow the footprint of Touch ID, and they have the capacity to produce the sensors in high enough volumes, the iPad 5 certainly seems like the next candidate in line. If it gets an Apple A7 or Apple A7X processor, it should get the secure enclave that comes with it. That means, at least on a technological level, Touch ID would be a possibility.
The iPad mini, again, is a little tougher to figure out. Whether or not Apple brings Retina to the next iPad mini, if they do it with Apple A6 or A6X then Touch ID won't be in the cards. If they go with an Apple A7 or A7X, then Touch ID is in play. The former would keep costs down and keep differentiation up - the big iPad would remain the top-of-the-line iPad - special features and all. If the latter, then, like the iPad 5, Touch ID would certainly be a possibility and low end vs. high end positioning would remain the only consideration.
The Apple M7 motion coprocessor is a sensor fusion hub. It takes in all the information from the accelerometer, magnometer, and gyroscope, and keeps it ready for when the iPhone 5s "wakes up" and an app needs it. Because it's only doing that one job, it requires far less power than the Apple A7 chipset, and so lets the A7 sleep, conserve power, and not have to worry about losing motion data while it does so. Since the M7 keeps a weeks worth of movement, it also means any new apps don't have to start from scratch each time you install them.
But does a chip designed to keep track of moving things make sense on the iPad mini, much less the iPad 5? Sure. Most obviously, for stillness. When the M7 chip detects its not moving, it can power down or slow down other systems to save even more power. For example, it can reduce the frequency of network connections to keep the radios off for longer intervals. It also means apps written to take advantage of the M7 on the iPhone 5s can do the same thing on the iPad 5 or iPad mini 2. Hey, backpackers might want to know their steps as much as runners!
Not surprisingly, just like Touch ID, M7 might be tied to A7. Meaning, if the iPad 5 gets an Apple A7, it could be a candidate for the M7 as well. Likewise the iPad mini. If, however, the mini goes to A6, it seems less likely the M7 will follow.
If it looks like there's a lot of dependencies affecting a lot of product decisions there, imagine how Apple must feel!
iMore will be providing complete coverage of Apple's October 22 iPad and Mac event, including and especially the iPad 5 and iPad mini 5.
iPad (5th gen)
Apple's full-sized tablet gets slimmed down. Rumored features include:
iPad mini (2nd gen)
Apple's most popular tablet goes next-generation. Rumored features include:
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/LB-xBlaKZcE/story01.htmThings to Know About Me.
2. Hero/Villain - a roleplay based on the evolving relationship of a hero and villain.
3. Magical Mayhem - witches in training getting into all kinds of shenanigans as they work to harness their skills.
4. Resurrection (zombie) based roleplay revolving around the idea of someone taking a resurrection potion prior to death and dealing with their new life as the un-dead.
5. I'm A Monster - new monsters adjusting to life (vamps, werewolves, etc.)
6. Modern vs. Old gods - basically the era of the old gods is waning and they must do battle with the modern gods in order to find a place in the modern world.
Anyway the idea is that in this world magical girls are not sparkling warriors of virtue and purity chosen by destiny but rather girls that are recruited either on the brink of death or just after they've died. They are recruited by cute-sy animals called Mascots, who have the task of finding these girls and giving them each a second chance at life by signing a magical contract. The contract allows the girls a second chance at life as magical girls who fight demons, monsters, and the occasional criminal. There is a catch however in that each of the girls is between 12 and 16 when they're recruited and as they near their 17th birthday they become more and more violent until one day (close to their eighteenth birthday) they drop dead and a new girl is recruited. At least that's the story they're told. The reality is that as the girls get older and older they start to lose their humanity until the point near their eighteen birthday where they completely lose their humanity and turn into demons to be hunted down by their former compatriots.
The only one's who know the true extent of the magical girls contracts are the Mascots who themselves carry as secret. Each of the mascots was in fact once a human girl themselves. Instead of being found on the brink of death however these girls made a contract with some magical power as a part of a suicide attempt. The magical power agreed to relieve the girls of their pain and give them a chance at a better life in return for them recruiting innocent girls to be magical girls. The Mascots must recruit a specific number of girls and at the end of it they are allowed the chance to finally rest in peace.
((can be 1x1 or small group))
By Alastair Sharp
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index capped a stellar week with further gains on Friday, extending a two-year peak as industrial and resource stocks gained on data showing the Chinese economy, the world's second-biggest, grew at its fastest pace this year.
Adding to the rosy view for stocks, investors are betting that the U.S. Federal Reserve will delay trimming its stimulus measures due to the economic damage inflicted by the partial U.S. government shutdown that ended on Thursday.
"A lot of Canadian money managers have been sitting on their hands watching what's been happening south of the border and, that having been sorted out, at least in the short term, they are back in the market," said David Cockfield, managing director and portfolio manager at Northland Wealth Management.
"I think this trade deal is encouraging people as well," he added, referring to the signing of a multibillion-dollar trade pact between Canada and the European Union.
The deal will make Canada the only Group of 8 country to have preferential access to the world's two largest markets, the EU and the United States, home to about 800 million people.
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> closed up 99.73 points, or 0.77 percent, at 13,136.09, its highest level since July 2011. It gained 1.9 percent on the week, its best weekly performance since July.
Air Canada rose 4.6 percent to $5.19. The airline, which reached a deal to expand its main hub in Toronto, has risen sharply in recent months amid a major expansion push and solid traffic growth.
Investors pushed aircraft maker Bombardier
"No question the worst is over in China. Things have stabilized and are now on the upswing and that is very important for worldwide growth," said Barry Schwartz, a portfolio manager at Baskin Financial Services.
Third-quarter growth in China, the world's second-biggest economy, was 7.8 percent from a year ago, its quickest pace for the year, thanks largely to investment.
All of Canada's ten main sectors advanced except materials, which was weighed down by retreating gold miners. Some of the biggest gains came from the heavyweight financial and energy sectors.
"If you are sitting on a bunch of cash, you probably slide back into the utilities, the big financials," Northland's Cockfield said.
The financial subgroup rose 0.7 percent, powered by Royal Bank of Canada
RBC, which along with other Canadian banks has been boosted lately by signs that Canada's housing sector is stabilizing, is currently Canada's largest publicly traded company.
Royal, Toronto-Dominion Bank
Baskin's Schwartz said Canada's banks and real estate investment trusts (REITs) have room to rally further.
"Interest rates are now back to where they were before the taper talk, yet the REITs aren't," he said.
Riocan Real Estate Investment Trust
Schwartz said that after the distraction of the U.S. debt crisis, investors should be focused on interest rates, inflation and stock valuations, and that each factor was looking prime for improvement in Canada.
"Stocks are still the shiniest gold coin in a tarnished box of treasure," he said.
The heaviest fall belonged to Athabasca Oil Corp , which plunged 12 percent to C$6.13 after a court ruled that an aboriginal group could appeal the approval of an oil sands project.
(Additional reporting by Cameron French and Solarina Ho; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
FILE - In this Monday, June 15, 2009, file photo, Rober Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale, participates in a panel discussion at Time Warner's headquarters in New York. Americans Shiller, Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
FILE - In this Monday, June 15, 2009, file photo, Rober Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale, participates in a panel discussion at Time Warner's headquarters in New York. Americans Shiller, Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
This undated photo provided by the University of Chicago shows Eugene Fama, 74, of the University of Chicago. On Monday, Oct. 14, 2013, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced that Fama was one of three Americans to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the University of Chicago)
This undated photo provided by the University of Chicago shows Lars Peter Hansen, 60, of the University of Chicago. On Monday, Oct. 14, 2013, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced that Hansen was one of three Americans to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the University of Chicago)
FILE - In the Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2010, file photo, Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale, speaks at the Buttonwood Gathering, in New York. Americans Shiller, Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
FILE - In this Tuesday, April 22, 2008, file photo, economist, author and Yale University Professor Robert Shiller talks about the economy in New Haven, Conn. Americans Shiller, Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Douglas Healey, File)
Ordinary investors don't stand much chance of beating the market. It moves way too fast and efficiently. Or it behaves in ways that make no sense at all.
Three Americans won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for their sometimes-contradictory insights into the complexities of investing.
Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen of the University of Chicago and Robert Shiller of Yale University were honored for shedding light on the forces that move stock, bond and home prices — findings that have transformed how people invest.
Fama's research revealed the efficiency of financial markets: They absorb information so fast that individual investors can't outperform the markets as a whole. His work helped popularize index funds, which reflect an entire market of assets, such as the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index.
"Fama's work was incredibly fundamental in the '60s and '70s," said David Warsh, who follows economists at his Economic Principals blog. "It led to enormous practical change in terms of people not buying particular stocks but buying index funds."
Shiller's research examined asset prices from a contrasting angle. He showed that in the long run, stock and bond markets can behave irrationally, reaching prices that are out of whack with economic fundamentals.
Shiller, 67, predicted the dot-com crash of the early 2000s and the implosion of home prices in 2007. He has also been a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics, or how human emotions, biases and preferences can collectively influence financial markets.
Using mathematical tools like the well-known Case-Shiller index of home prices, Shiller has expanded the available information on asset prices.
Meb Faber, chief investment officer at Cambria Investment Management, said his firm uses a model developed by Shiller to seek stock bargains around the world.
Hansen has focused on statistical models, creating ways to test competing theories of why asset prices move as they do.
Fama and Shiller "provide the ends of the spectrum" between those who believe financial markets are efficient and those who think them deeply flawed, with Hansen "in the middle doing the math," said Allen Sanderson, a University of Chicago lecturer in economics.
The three economists share the $1.2 million prize, the last of this year's Nobels to be announced.
"Their methods have shaped subsequent research in the field, and their findings have been highly influential both academically and practically," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in Stockholm.
Fama, 74, and Hansen, 60, became the 11th and 12th professors from the University of Chicago to win a Nobel in economics, the most for any university. Harvard is second, with six laureates.
Hansen said he received the phone call from Sweden while on his way to the gym Monday morning. He said he was "still working on taking a deep breath."
Fama was preparing to teach his first class as a Nobel laureate Monday. Asked whether his students would get a break, he said: "We'll see, but they're going to get an exam tomorrow, anyway. They paid their money; they're going to get the full pill."
The Nobel prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and peace were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in 1895. Sweden's central bank added the economics prize in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel.
Americans have dominated the Nobel in economics in recent years. The last time there was no American among the winners was 1999.
Collectively, Fama, Shiller and Hansen didn't create a simple, unified theory of how financial markets work. Rather, they worked like "blind men feeling an elephant" — each finding a bit of the truth in a vast and complicated field, Sanderson said.
Fama's work drew criticism after the financial crisis of 2007-09 seemed to prove that financial markets were anything but efficient. Housing prices, after all, had scaled great heights and then crashed.
But David Backus, an economist at New York University, said "people completely misunderstand" what Fama was arguing.
"He said that information out there will be reflected in (asset) prices. That is completely different from saying financial markets work well," Backus said.
It was striking that Monday's prize went to both Fama and Shiller, who emphasizes not market efficiency but market failures and inefficiencies.
"The committee covered all the bases," George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen quipped on his blog, Marginal Revolution.
Still, the University of Chicago's Sanderson said Fama, with his belief that investors can't outsmart the market, and Shiller, with his study of financial excess, would probably offer similar investment advice.
"Both would probably say: 'Don't spend a whole lot of time listening to your stockbroker.'"
___
Wiseman reported from Washington, Ritter from Stockholm. Associated Press writers Malin Rising in Stockholm, Stephen Singer in Hartford, Conn., and Don Babwin and Ashley Heher in Chicago, contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-10-14-Nobel-Economics/id-3a4b1644050241f3a259cb59600dde75“The Ferris wheel is coming!”
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert is reassuring himself as much as he’s boasting about the second most visible attraction of the inaugural Big Top festival. Front and center is the actual big top -- a traditional circus tent complete with sawdust and bold primary colors -- under which the 12-member band will perform on a rotating stage.
Outside on the grounds of Los Angeles Historic State Park, food vendors, magicians and performers of all stripes will entertain the hundreds expected to show, bringing to life a dream Ebert has been mulling since founding his band in 2007. Now 35, it turns out Ebert attended an actual circus for the first time only a couple years ago.
“My primary relationship with the circus is through Dumbo,” he explains to The Hollywood Reporter on Big Top eve, acknowledging that, while one of the saddest animated movies of all-time, it was also “the best -- Dumbo had a major impact on me.”
PHOTOS: Mumford & Sons at The Hollywood Bowl
The idea for the four-day fest, which Ebert and Co. curated, falls in line with the classic big top trope. “The idea is to come into a town and simmer a bit,” says Ebert. “To hang out and eat lunch and play piano randomly in a saloon and then meet the families and see the shows. Then say sayonara and get on your camel and ride.”
Indeed, there will be plenty to see and hear at the Big Top -- although no animals -- where more than 25 bands are slated to appear. Among them: such under-the-radar acts as Torque Method, Fool’s Gold and Henry Wolfe. The criteria for bookings, says Ebert, was straightforward: they needed to be local, have previously played on a bill with Sharpe or “have a similar emotional and spiritual availability” to the concept of “the ideal music troupe experience.”
That includes the in-the-round performance Sharpe and crew have devised. On the night THR visited the band’s dress rehearsal (see photo below), they were testing out a stellar cover of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” as the players all faced each other (another cover planned: Nina Simone's "Ain't Got No"). “It may seem a bit exclusionary -- having our backs to the audience -- but for us to be able to face each other and also for the audience to catch every member's face as they turn around. ... It's fun.”
You could say Edward Sharpe, perhaps more than any other current band, has made untraditional venues a staple of its tours. “As much as we could,” Ebert half-apologizes – though there’s no need; the band has staged shows inside a train and in the London tunnels. Although, if Ebert had his druthers, he adds, “I would play no place -- just parking lots and parks and houses and rooftops and do it very DIY.”
STORY: Live Nation to Offer Locally Grown Foods
On the other hand, Ebert also has grand plans for his Big Top run, including a DVD or film to document the event and, hopefully down the road, creating “an entire town with its own money and commerce, with animals everywhere and people camping. A highly immersive collaborative experience.”
Ambitious much? Or just a big dreamer. If you’re Alex Ebert, likely a little bit of both. "This is supposed to be a traveling thing at some point," he adds.
But first things first: now that the tent is erected, freak show posters are positioned and vendors are taking their places -- all of which is being filmed for a future DVD release -- it's about appreciating what's directly in front of you.
"I'm blown away that we're doing this," says Ebert, who credits Zeros manager Bryan Ling for seeing the project through. "It's a huge undertaking and [takes] a lot of force of will. Because you don't have to do this. It's not a terribly big money maker, so why do it? The reason is to create a sense of being alive."
Twitter: @shirleyhalperin
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ShareContact: Annmarie Christensen
annmarie.christensen@dartmouth.edu
603-653-0897
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
Lebanon, N.H. (October 15, 2013) A new report from the Dartmouth Atlas Project shows that the use of both effective and risky drug therapies by Medicare patients varies widely across U.S. regions, offering further evidence that location is a key determinant in the quality and cost of the medical care that patients receive.
In their first look at prescription drug use, Dartmouth researchers also find that the health status of a region's Medicare population accounts for less than a third of the variation in total prescription drug use, and that higher spending is not related to higher use of proven drug therapies. The study raises questions about whether regional practice culture explains differences in the quality and quantity of prescription drug use.
"There is no good reason why heart attack victims living in Ogden, Utah, are twice as likely to receive medicine to lower their cholesterol and their risk of another heart attack than those in Abilene, Texas, but this inconsistency reflects the current practice of medicine in the United States," said Jeffrey C. Munson, M.D., M.S.C.E., lead author and assistant professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice.
"This report demonstrates how far we still have to go as a nation to make sure people get the care they need when they need it," said Katherine Hempstead, Ph.D., M.A., senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a longtime funder of the Dartmouth Atlas Project. "Instead of varying widely, patterns of care should be nearly uniform across the country for non- controversial drug therapies with a strong evidence for their use."
The new report offers an in-depth look at how prescription drugs are used by Medicare beneficiaries in the program's Part D drug benefit, which had 37 million enrollees in 2012. The report separates the country into 306 regional health care markets and examines variations among them in the quantity and quality of prescription drug use, spending, and use of brand name drugs. To examine the quality of care, the report looks at prescription use in three categories:
"We need to learn from regions that consistently provide high-quality care, and focus attention on regions that appear to offer the worst of both worlds: high-risk and discretionary medications and, in relative terms, low use of effective drug therapies," said Nancy Morden, M.D., M.P.H., report co- author and associate professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. "This will help us understand and ultimately improve prescribing quality for all Medicare beneficiaries."
Total use of prescription medications
The average Medicare Part D patient filled 49 standardized 30-day prescriptions in 2010. At the high end, patients in Miami, filled an average of 63 prescriptions, compared to patients in Grand Junction, Colo., who filled 39 prescriptions per year. Other high-use regions included Lexington, Ky., (59 prescriptions) and Huntington, W.Va., (58), compared to low-use regions in Albuquerque, N.M., (40) and San Mateo County, Calif. (41).
Use of effective prescription care
The report examines the use of proven drug therapies, including the use of beta blockers and statins in the months after a heart attack and the use of osteoporosis drugs after bone fractures.
Nearly eight in 10 heart attack survivors (78.5%) filled at least one prescription for a beta blocker in the seven to 12 months following a hospital discharge in 2008 or 2009. The results ranged from San Angelo, Texas, (91.4%) to Salem, Ore., (62.5%). The pattern of statin use after a heart attack was similar to that of beta blocker use, with 72 percent of heart attack survivors filling a statin prescription in the second six months after leaving the hospital. The results for statin use ranged from a high in Ogden, Utah, (91.3%) to a low in Abilene, Texas (44.3%). The regions that excelled in beta blocker use did not necessarily achieve similar results with statin therapy, despite the fact that both beta blocker therapy and strict control of cholesterol levels are recommended by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for the same condition in the same patients. No single region was in the top 10 regions for highest rates of use for both measures.
NCQA also recommends that survivors of a fracture resulting from osteoporosis should receive drugs that reduce the risk of subsequent fractures. However, only 14.3 percent of fragility fracture survivors received a drug to combat osteoporosis within six months of their fracture. The use of osteoporosis drugs across regions ranged from Honolulu, Hawaii, (28%) to Newark, N.J. (6.8%).
Use of potentially harmful medications
More than one in four Medicare Part D beneficiaries (26.6%) filled at least one prescription in 2010 for medications that have been identified as high-risk for patients over age 65, such as skeletal muscle relaxants, long-acting benzodiazepines, and highly sedating antihistamines. Patients in Alexandria, La., (43%) were more than three times as likely to receive at least one high-risk medication as patients in Rochester, Minn. (14%). More than 6 percent of Medicare patients filled a prescription for two or more different high-risk medications, including 14.6 percent of patients in Alexandria, La.
Total prescription drug spending
Spending on prescriptions by the Part D drug plans and their patients totaled $2,670 per beneficiary. Spending varied nearly threefold across regions, with a $2,968 difference between the lowest-spending regionSt. Cloud, Minn. ($1,770)and the highest spending region, Miami ($4,738).
Prescriptions filled with brand name products
When available, generic medications are generally equally effective and less costly than their brand-name counterparts. Thus, the relative use of brand-name products offers one view of prescribing efficiency. Overall, 26.3 percent of prescriptions were filled as a brand-name product in 2010. Patients in Manhattan (36%) were more than twice as likely to fill a prescription for a brand- name product than patients in La Crosse, Wis. (16.5%).
###
The full report, The Dartmouth Atlas of Medicare Prescription Drug Use, and complete data tables can be found at http://www.dartmouthatlas.org.
Methodology
Overall prescription drug use, spending for prescription drugs, and the use of brand-name medications were measured for Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and over who were continuously enrolled in a stand-alone Part D plan in 2010 (based on a 40% random sample). High-risk and discretionary medication use were also measured in this population. High-risk medications examined were those identified by NCQA as generally conferring more risk than benefit in older people. Discretionary medications were defined as those commonly prescribed in situations with higher diagnostic and therapeutic uncertainty. Effective prescription drug use measures were based on widely accepted, evidence-based prescribing guidelines. Effective drug use was studied for three groups of Part D beneficiaries: patients who had a heart attack, patients ages 65-75 with treated diabetes, and patients with a fragility fracture (a fracture of the hip, wrist, or shoulder commonly resulting from osteoporosis). For some effective care measures, earlier years were included in order to increase the sample size to allow for more accurate estimation of utilization in disease-specific cohorts.
About the Dartmouth Atlas Project
For more than 20 years, the Dartmouth Atlas Project has documented glaring variations in how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States. The project uses Medicare data to provide information and analysis about national, regional, and local markets, as well as hospitals and their affiliated physicians. This research has helped policymakers, the media, health care analysts and others improve their understanding of our health care system and forms the foundation for many of the ongoing efforts to improve health and health systems across America.
About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, measurable, and timely change. For 40 years, the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. When it comes to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need, the Foundation expects to make a difference in your lifetime. Follow the Foundation on Twitter or Facebook.
See more at: http://tdi.dartmouth.edu/press/press-releases/prescription-drug-use-among-medicare-patients-highly-inconsistent#sthash.EDaub79q.dpuf
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
ShareContact: Annmarie Christensen
annmarie.christensen@dartmouth.edu
603-653-0897
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
Lebanon, N.H. (October 15, 2013) A new report from the Dartmouth Atlas Project shows that the use of both effective and risky drug therapies by Medicare patients varies widely across U.S. regions, offering further evidence that location is a key determinant in the quality and cost of the medical care that patients receive.
In their first look at prescription drug use, Dartmouth researchers also find that the health status of a region's Medicare population accounts for less than a third of the variation in total prescription drug use, and that higher spending is not related to higher use of proven drug therapies. The study raises questions about whether regional practice culture explains differences in the quality and quantity of prescription drug use.
"There is no good reason why heart attack victims living in Ogden, Utah, are twice as likely to receive medicine to lower their cholesterol and their risk of another heart attack than those in Abilene, Texas, but this inconsistency reflects the current practice of medicine in the United States," said Jeffrey C. Munson, M.D., M.S.C.E., lead author and assistant professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice.
"This report demonstrates how far we still have to go as a nation to make sure people get the care they need when they need it," said Katherine Hempstead, Ph.D., M.A., senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a longtime funder of the Dartmouth Atlas Project. "Instead of varying widely, patterns of care should be nearly uniform across the country for non- controversial drug therapies with a strong evidence for their use."
The new report offers an in-depth look at how prescription drugs are used by Medicare beneficiaries in the program's Part D drug benefit, which had 37 million enrollees in 2012. The report separates the country into 306 regional health care markets and examines variations among them in the quantity and quality of prescription drug use, spending, and use of brand name drugs. To examine the quality of care, the report looks at prescription use in three categories:
"We need to learn from regions that consistently provide high-quality care, and focus attention on regions that appear to offer the worst of both worlds: high-risk and discretionary medications and, in relative terms, low use of effective drug therapies," said Nancy Morden, M.D., M.P.H., report co- author and associate professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. "This will help us understand and ultimately improve prescribing quality for all Medicare beneficiaries."
Total use of prescription medications
The average Medicare Part D patient filled 49 standardized 30-day prescriptions in 2010. At the high end, patients in Miami, filled an average of 63 prescriptions, compared to patients in Grand Junction, Colo., who filled 39 prescriptions per year. Other high-use regions included Lexington, Ky., (59 prescriptions) and Huntington, W.Va., (58), compared to low-use regions in Albuquerque, N.M., (40) and San Mateo County, Calif. (41).
Use of effective prescription care
The report examines the use of proven drug therapies, including the use of beta blockers and statins in the months after a heart attack and the use of osteoporosis drugs after bone fractures.
Nearly eight in 10 heart attack survivors (78.5%) filled at least one prescription for a beta blocker in the seven to 12 months following a hospital discharge in 2008 or 2009. The results ranged from San Angelo, Texas, (91.4%) to Salem, Ore., (62.5%). The pattern of statin use after a heart attack was similar to that of beta blocker use, with 72 percent of heart attack survivors filling a statin prescription in the second six months after leaving the hospital. The results for statin use ranged from a high in Ogden, Utah, (91.3%) to a low in Abilene, Texas (44.3%). The regions that excelled in beta blocker use did not necessarily achieve similar results with statin therapy, despite the fact that both beta blocker therapy and strict control of cholesterol levels are recommended by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for the same condition in the same patients. No single region was in the top 10 regions for highest rates of use for both measures.
NCQA also recommends that survivors of a fracture resulting from osteoporosis should receive drugs that reduce the risk of subsequent fractures. However, only 14.3 percent of fragility fracture survivors received a drug to combat osteoporosis within six months of their fracture. The use of osteoporosis drugs across regions ranged from Honolulu, Hawaii, (28%) to Newark, N.J. (6.8%).
Use of potentially harmful medications
More than one in four Medicare Part D beneficiaries (26.6%) filled at least one prescription in 2010 for medications that have been identified as high-risk for patients over age 65, such as skeletal muscle relaxants, long-acting benzodiazepines, and highly sedating antihistamines. Patients in Alexandria, La., (43%) were more than three times as likely to receive at least one high-risk medication as patients in Rochester, Minn. (14%). More than 6 percent of Medicare patients filled a prescription for two or more different high-risk medications, including 14.6 percent of patients in Alexandria, La.
Total prescription drug spending
Spending on prescriptions by the Part D drug plans and their patients totaled $2,670 per beneficiary. Spending varied nearly threefold across regions, with a $2,968 difference between the lowest-spending regionSt. Cloud, Minn. ($1,770)and the highest spending region, Miami ($4,738).
Prescriptions filled with brand name products
When available, generic medications are generally equally effective and less costly than their brand-name counterparts. Thus, the relative use of brand-name products offers one view of prescribing efficiency. Overall, 26.3 percent of prescriptions were filled as a brand-name product in 2010. Patients in Manhattan (36%) were more than twice as likely to fill a prescription for a brand- name product than patients in La Crosse, Wis. (16.5%).
###
The full report, The Dartmouth Atlas of Medicare Prescription Drug Use, and complete data tables can be found at http://www.dartmouthatlas.org.
Methodology
Overall prescription drug use, spending for prescription drugs, and the use of brand-name medications were measured for Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and over who were continuously enrolled in a stand-alone Part D plan in 2010 (based on a 40% random sample). High-risk and discretionary medication use were also measured in this population. High-risk medications examined were those identified by NCQA as generally conferring more risk than benefit in older people. Discretionary medications were defined as those commonly prescribed in situations with higher diagnostic and therapeutic uncertainty. Effective prescription drug use measures were based on widely accepted, evidence-based prescribing guidelines. Effective drug use was studied for three groups of Part D beneficiaries: patients who had a heart attack, patients ages 65-75 with treated diabetes, and patients with a fragility fracture (a fracture of the hip, wrist, or shoulder commonly resulting from osteoporosis). For some effective care measures, earlier years were included in order to increase the sample size to allow for more accurate estimation of utilization in disease-specific cohorts.
About the Dartmouth Atlas Project
For more than 20 years, the Dartmouth Atlas Project has documented glaring variations in how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States. The project uses Medicare data to provide information and analysis about national, regional, and local markets, as well as hospitals and their affiliated physicians. This research has helped policymakers, the media, health care analysts and others improve their understanding of our health care system and forms the foundation for many of the ongoing efforts to improve health and health systems across America.
About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, measurable, and timely change. For 40 years, the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. When it comes to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need, the Foundation expects to make a difference in your lifetime. Follow the Foundation on Twitter or Facebook.
See more at: http://tdi.dartmouth.edu/press/press-releases/prescription-drug-use-among-medicare-patients-highly-inconsistent#sthash.EDaub79q.dpuf
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
JH Williams/DC Entertainment
This week sees the release of Batwoman #24, the final issue in the series from the writing team of W. Haden Blackman and J.H. Williams III -- although not the final issue as they had originally intended it. Both Blackman and Williams had originally intended #26 to be their last, bringing an end to the various storylines they'd been crafting for the last two years.
"Issue 24 was already written and being drawn by the time fallout came from our decision to leave the title. There had already been an issue 25 written by us and turned in, but at this point I don’t think this will ever be published," Williams wrote on his blog yesterday. "Issue 26 was to be the final chapter of the arc and is left unwritten by us currently. So DC isn’t publishing the end of the arc. Or at least not in any way we intended. If there is ever an offering of a conclusion to the last 7 months of storytelling, it most likely will be by the hands of others, and we have no idea how exactly that direction will proceed."
STORY: 'Batwoman' Co-Authors Exit, Claim DC 'Prohibited' Lesbian Marriage
He went on, "What saddens me about it is that our issue 26 two months from now would have ended in a place that would serve as an adequate end cap to our run in a lot of ways. We knew how we were going to wrap things by issue 26, and felt we would have done so in a satisfying manner, or so we hoped."
Amongst the many resolutions and developments teased were revelations about the connection between Department of Extranormal Operations Director Bones and Batwoman's alter ego Kate Kane, some hints about how Kate's sister Beth became her arch-nemesis Alice, and events that would "bring the entire family to some form of a beginning to heal." According to Williams, "we would’ve been able to end our run at good spot for the next creative team. But that must only be happening in some parallel world."
Marc Andreyko takes over as the new writer on the series with November's #25.
Verizon's Samsung Galaxy S4 has a new update pushing out for it right now, bringing a couple of new features, tweaks and bug fixes. The 150MB update to software version VRUDMI1 is rolling out over the air and through Samsung's Kies software, though as always it may take a little time before it filters through to everyone.
The main new addition for Verizon GS4 owners is Samsung's Optical Reader app, which can create contacts from business cards using the rear camera and optical character recognition, in addition to translating printed text between languages. Other major changes and tweaks include improved Wifi connectivity, S Memo bug fixes, support for three-way calling when roaming on the Bluegrass network, and roaming support for TELUS in Canada.
If you're upgrading your Verizon Galaxy S4 to the new firmware today, hit the comments and tell us how you're getting on.
Source: Verizon (PDF), via: Android Central forums
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/UEO2z-uGiSI/story01.htm
