Apple Computer - Live Mac Pro Unboxing ~ Chris Pirillo:
"Yes, finally my Mac Pro is here! I know, watching me cut open a box isn’t very exciting to you. However, it was quite exciting to me!
The first thing I pulled out of the box is the wireless keyboard I ordered. I can’t get over how tiny and thin it is! I also have the wireless Mighty Mouse. Some people don’t really like it, but I do. I’m not sure if I’ll use it as my primary mouse. I’m still a Microsoft Mouse kind of guy. Ohhhh. Apple sent me the batteries for the mouse and keyboard. It figures that I received my Mac Pro with OS X Version 10.5.1 on the same day that 10.5.2 was released. Isn’t that just the luck? Yes… I just sniffed the styrofoam that covered up the Mac. What do you expect? I’ve waited for this day for a LONG time."

America's Green Policy Vacuum:
"Without a fully funded, federal alternative energy policy, the U.S. risks squandering the potential of a powerful economic engine and will continue to depend on foreign energy resources

In 2006, companies in renewable energy and energy efficiency industries accounted for 8.5 million jobs and generated $970 billion in revenues.
It's been a year since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth packed theaters and won an Oscar. And a good year it has been for the green movement. Venture capital firms poured a record $2.6 billion into clean tech startups in the first three quarters of 2007. Meanwhile, the green buzz has only grown louder. This year, green building construction starts are projected to reach $12 bil"

Smarter Ways to Make Currency Plays

Smarter Ways to Make Currency Plays:
"Currencies? Aren't they just for the big-money, no-fear types like George Soros—or the institutional players with powerful computer models at their disposal?

Not exactly. While in the past, investments linked to movements in the currencies of the world's leading economies have been viewed as too risky or too complicated for smaller investors, fund companies are starting to offer exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other vehicles that make currency plays available to the little guy at affordable prices."

Obama vs. Clinton: Leadership Styles

Obama vs. Clinton: Leadership Styles:
"The virtual dead heat in the Super Tuesday Democratic primary is being attributed by the punditocracy to the absence of any significant policy differences separating candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The two nonetheless have drawn clear distinctions between the ways in which they each propose to govern the nation, and those differences sound a lot like a rehashing of past debates about opposing styles of corporate leadership.

Senator Clinton (D-N.Y.) argues that the role of the President is not only to provide visionary leadership outward from the Oval Office to the nation and the world but also to control and direct the federal bureaucracy downward to ensure that policies are carried out faithfully and effectively.

In sharp contrast, Senator Obama (D-Ill.) declares he will do the chief executive's job by focusing completely on providing leadership vision, judgment, and inspiration. As for controlling the agencies that would report to him, he says he will delegate that responsibility. He pledges to stay above the managerial fray and, instead, hold agency heads fully accountable for the performance of the bureaucracies in their charge."

Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays - Joost

Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays - Joost:
"With the reconstruction of Ground Zero finally underway, anchor Brandon Armstrong invites two guests to discuss the progress."

Hands-on with Modu | GSMA (3GSM) Mobile World Congress - CNET Reviews

Hands-on with Modu | GSMA (3GSM) Mobile World Congress - CNET Reviews:
"The diminutive Modu phone.
Modu has generated a lot of buzz for itself at the GSMA World Congress. The Israeli company has developed a concept for a modular cell phone that can be placed into 'jackets' that change the both the appearance and the functionality of the handset. I got the chance to check out the Modu phone today, and I admit it's an intriguing concept that could prove to be successful if it evolves as Modu promises."

World Future Council - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

World Future Council - Wikipedia
The World Future Council (WFC) is an international, non-governmental organisation, whose goal is to work for a sustainable future in the fields of environment, peace, governance, human development and human rights issues.

History

The World Future Council was founded by the Swedish writer and activist Jakob von Uexkull in reaction to politics across the world being dominated by short-term, economic thinking. The idea for a global council was first aired on German radio in 1998. It hit a chord, with German TV immediately expressing an interest in broadcasting the Council’s sessions. In October 2004 the organisation was officially launched in London with funding from private donors in Germany, Switzerland, USA and the UK.

Networks

The Council works closely with international networks of around 25,000 parliamentarians and 8,000 civil society organizations to identify and disseminate long-term solutions to the global issues of the day.

Climate campaign

Climate change is the overarching topic which is being addressed at present. The mission of the WFC is to clearly define climate stabilization as fundamental necessity and human responsibility for a more just, peaceful and sustainable world for future generations. Initially WFC activities will be focus on transforming global energy systems:^[1]

We need a transition to clean, secure, renewable and decentralized energy for all, while reducing the total global demand for energy. Our materials promote existing political solutions that have significant impacts on all these aspects and we seek to build strategic networks between those seeking to act towards this energy renaissance.^[1]

Further topics that will be taken up in the climate campaign are: sustainable cities, sustainable food systems, the conservation of rain forest and the establishment of an International Renewable Energy Agency.^[1]

AlterNet: Three Reasons to Hate Facebook

AlterNet: Three Reasons to Hate Facebook

I know it's uncharitable of me to say I hate Facebook.com, because, after all, I have a Facebook profile and I log in to the infernal site several times a week. But I do hate it, and I'm not afraid to say why.

1. I don't want you to know who my friends are. Facebook is a second-generation social network, which means its developers have learned from the mistakes of early social networks like Friendster and MySpace. Like its predecessors, Facebook will give you a free profile page, where you can list as much information about yourself as you are willing to give up -- including what you've just bought online. As you make "friends," you link to their profiles and they link to yours.

Like its predecessors, Facebook is all about showing people who your friends are. And frankly, there are plenty of people I might want to connect with online who don't need to know about one another. It's not like I've got anything to hide, but even if I did, so the fuck what? Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons not to introduce all of my friends to one another.

I realize there are privacy restrictions on Facebook that allow me to hide my friend lists or make them only semivisible to people in networks, blah blah blah. But those are a pain in the ass to set up, and so, like most people on Facebook, I default to letting my friends see one another. I don't have to go around parties in real life advertising whom else at the party I know or have slept with. Why should I have to do so if I want to socialize online?

2. Too many annoying, inexplicable, and useless software applications are circulating on Facebook. Every time I log in to Facebook, I see in the upper right-hand corner of the screen all the "requests" and "pokes" and whatever the fucks I have from my social network. Many of these requests are generated by small software applications that people have written to run on top of Facebook. See, Facebook opened up parts of its system called application programming interfaces, or APIs, which allow anyone to write some dumb program that will send you crap.

Recently a number of those programs had allowed people in my social network to go through their friend lists and send automatically generated requests to join groups, take quizzes, or whatever. Here is the insane list I had in my requests bar: "1 gay request, 1 american citizen test request, 1 good karma request, 1 smartest friend invitation." And there have been so many others, like "hottest friends invitation," "zombie invitation," "vampire bite request," and "compare movie scores invitation." Yes, it sounds fun and whimsical at first, as if social relations have been turned into a fanciful playground. But then you get a spam feeling.

Usually, responding to requests requires you to sign up for something and give some information about yourself and download another piece of software. And why the hell do I want to answer a gay request from a zombie? I mean, that sounds good until you have to download unknown software from an unknown gay zombie. The fun turns out to be just noise. And there's nothing worse than noise in your personal profile space.

3. Facebook enforces social conformity. Some people are only figuratively forced to join Facebook, because if they don't it will be hard for them to network with friends and business associates. But I was actually forced to join by my employers, because we use Facebook as our employee contact list. OK, nobody pointed a gun at my head, but it was either join or be unable to access the contact information of anybody at my company. I'm not saying my company is evil or even wrong -- Facebook is a reasonable way of setting up an employee contact list for a company full of telecommuters.

It's just that being forced made me feel more than ever that Facebook is a tool of social conformity. The more public our friend lists are, the more we'll feel like we have to pick friends based on public opinion.

Obamanomics: Barack Talks Tough on Trade:
"Obamanomics: Barack Talks Tough on Trade"
When I talked with Russ Feingold last week about what the Democratic candidates for president should do to win Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, he suggested that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should go to the senator's hometown of Janesville and talk about trade.

Obama got the hint.

On Wednesday, the first full day of a Wisconsin primary campaign that he hopes will solidify his emerging lead over his once "inevitable" rival, the Illinois senator started in Janesville, where he delivered a rebuke to free-trade policies of the Bill Clinton and George Bush eras that sounded a little like a speech Feingold might have delivered.

"We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control. The fallout from the housing crisis that's cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle. It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington -- the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy and the growing inequality it's produced," Obama told workers at the General Motors Assembly Plant in the southern Wisconsin city.

AlterNet: Water: Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water

AlterNet: Water: Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water:
"From Chile to the Philippines to South Africa to her home country of Canada, Maude Barlow is one of a few people who truly understands the scope of the world's water woes. Her newest book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, details her discoveries around the globe about our diminishing water resources, the increasing privatization trend and the grassroots groups that are fighting back against corporate theft, government mismanagement and a changing climate.

If you want to know where the water is running low (including 36 U.S. states), why we haven't been able to protect it and what we can do to ensure everyone has the right to water, Barlow's book is an essential read. It is part science, part policy and part impassioned call. And the information in Blue Covenant couldn't come from a more reliable source. Barlow is the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which is instrumental in the international community in working for the right to water for all people. She also authored Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World's Water with Tony Clarke. And she's the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (known as the 'Alternative Nobel') for her global water justice work."

Al Jazeera English - News - Hezbollah Declares 'War' On Israel

Al Jazeera English - News - Hezbollah Declares 'War' On Israel:
"The leader of Hezbollah has said that his Lebanese Shia movement is ready for 'open war' with Israel, in a speech to supporters mourning the death of a senior commander.
Israel immediately ordered its military and embassies to go on high alert.
Accusing Israel of killing Imad Moghaniyah in a car bomb blast on Tuesday in Damascus, the Syrian capital, Hassan Nasrallah said that it had 'crossed the borders'.
'With this murder, its timing, location and method - Zionists [Israel] if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: let this war be open,' he said."

Al Jazeera English - News - Putin Aims To Wield Power As Pm

Al Jazeera English - News - Putin Aims To Wield Power As Pm:
"Vladimir Putin has confirmed his intention to wield significant power as Russia's prime minister after next month's presidential election.

In his final annual news conference as president on Thursday, he also warned Russian missiles could be pointed at Ukraine should it join Nato and attacked Western support for Kosovo independence as 'immoral'."

Henri Salvador; Singing Blues To Bossa Nova - washingtonpost.com

Henri Salvador; Singing Blues To Bossa Nova - washingtonpost.com:
"Henri Salvador, 90, one of France's most enduring and multi-talented entertainers, whose musical range spanned pre-war chansons and whispery bossa nova to children's favorites and 'Le blues du dentiste,' his gimmicky 1950s tune that helped introduce the nation to rock-and-roll, died Feb. 13 at his home in Paris of an aneurysm.

During a 70-year career, Mr. Salvador attained popularity as a musician, singer, songwriter, dancer, pantomime artist and television personality."

Today (2008-02-13), a GREAT MAN (at the age of 90) sailed to the other side - Henri Salvador - one of Sigalon's favorites.
See some of his creations at YouTube and DailyMotion

Henri Salvador - Dans mon ile
Uploaded by Henri-Salvador

Exclusif: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy: "Je ferai de mon mieux" - L'Express

Exclusif: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy: "Je ferai de mon mieux" - L'Express:
"Dans une interview à Rue89, Michel Labro, directeur de la rédaction du Nouvel Observateur, répond ce mardi soir aux accusations de Carla Bruni, formulée ci-dessous, à l'encontre du site Internet de son journal, où elle compare ses méthodes - en l'occurrence un article relatant l'envoi d'un présumé SMS par Nicolas Sarkozy à son ex-épouse Cécilia par lequel il lui aurait demandé de revenir - à celles des journaux de la collaboration. 'On ne joue pas avec ce genre d'affirmation, prévient Michel Labro, qui juge l'interprétation de la nouvelle première dame de France 'parfaitement hallucinante, assez incroyable et pathétique', bref 'parfaitement imbécile'."

Sony Ericsson Unveils Xperia X1 Windows-Based Smartphone -- Smartphone -- InformationWeek:

"The first and most notable device in Sony Ericsson's lineup is the Xperia X1, a Windows Mobile smartphone with a touch screen overlay and a full QWERTY keyboard. The phone comes with 3G technology called HSDPA and Wi-Fi for a high-speed mobile experience. It also has built-in GPS for personal navigation."

Zurich art museum robbed of a Cézanne, a Degas, a Van Gogh and a Monet - International Herald Tribune

Zurich art museum robbed of a Cézanne, a Degas, a Van Gogh and a Monet - International Herald Tribune:

"While one held a pistol and ordered visitors and staff members to lie on the floor in the main room of the museum, the two other men removed the four paintings from the wall: Claude Monet's 'Poppy Field at Vétheuil,' Edgar Degas's 'Ludovic Lepic and his daughter,' Vincent van Gogh's 'Blooming Chestnut Branches' and Paul Cézanne's 'Boy in the Red Waistcoat.'"

BBC NEWS | Africa | New-born rhino named Kofi Annan:
"Rangers did not say there were any obvious comparisons between Mr Annan and the horned beast, but some have suggested he will need a thick skin to push forward difficult negotiations between Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga.
'Thick-skinned Kofi Annan is likely to spend years in the wild,' the United Nations said in a statement."

Black rhinos were nearly wiped out by poachers in the 1970s and 80s

Techcrunch

Techcrunch:

"Over the weekend we relaunched Crunchbase, our online database of startup, investor and entrepreneur information. We first launched the site last year as a simple place to dump all the structured data about startups that we get our hands on. Our interns work to add all the data that flows into our inboxes every day to keep it updated, and the site now tracks 1,515 companies, 4,499 people and 762 financial investors."

ScienceDaily: Solar Energy News: "

Organic Solar Cells: Electricity From A Thin Film
Teams of researchers all over the world are working on the development of organic solar cells. Organic solar cells have good prospects for the future: ... > full story"

UN chief decries 'brutal and unspeakable attack' on East Timor president - International Herald Tribune

UN chief decries 'brutal and unspeakable attack' on East Timor president - International Herald Tribune:

"UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday decried the 'brutal and unspeakable attack' on East Timor's critically injured President Jose Ramos-Horta and offered prayer for the Nobel Peace Prize winner's speedy recovery from gunshot wounds."

Analysis: Obama has advantage in weeks ahead - CNN.com

Analysis: Obama has advantage in weeks ahead - CNN.com:

"NEW YORK (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's dominant coast-to-coast performance this weekend set a new tone for the post-Super Tuesday phase of an unprecedented struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination."

AFP: Societe Generale launches 5.5 billion-euro capital increase

AFP: Societe Generale launches 5.5 billion-euro capital increase

PARIS (AFP) — Societe Generale on Monday launched a 5.5-billion-euro capital increase -- offering shares at a massive discount -- to cover losses it blames on rogue trader Jerome Kerviel who is to fight his detention in jail.

The French financial giant, which estimates Kerviel's unauthorised trades cost it 4.9 billion euros (7.1 billion dollars) also needs the money to cover growing losses on the US sub-prime meltdown.

In announcing the capital increase, Societe Generale also raised its estimated subprime losses from two billion euros to 2.6 billion euros (3.75 billion dollars).

Shares would be on sale from February 21 to 29 at 47.50 euros per share, nearly 40 percent below their current level, it said. Societe Generale shares fell 2.29 percent to 75.94 euros in opening trade on the Paris stock exchange.