China's complicated history with video games: when a ban isn't really a ban

Earlier this week, China Daily quoted an anonymous government source -- allegedly straight from the Ministry of Culture -- saying China is considering lifting a 12-year-old "ban" on game consoles soon. While it's was unclear how reliable the source was at the time, the Tokyo stock market sucked it up anyway, with Bloomberg observing a significant rise for Sony and Nintendo after the rumor was published. Then today we learned from Tech In Asia that Dongfang Daily followed up with two representatives from the Ministry of Culture, one of which said the department has never looked into lifting the ban, while the other person was more vague about the matter. But here's the thing: game consoles were never really banned in China. Allow us to set the record straight for you.

Filed under: Gaming, Sony, Microsoft

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/30/china-console-ban/

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Colorado GOP bill would nullify possible federal gun limits

In an effort to stave off firearms restrictions being handed down from Washington, state Republicans have presented a bill that would nullify such federal efforts in Colorado.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins, would prohibit state employees from enforcing some firearms laws or statutes that become effective after Jan. 1 of this year ? specifically any laws that ban assault weapons, limit magazine size or restrict a person's ability to buy a gun.

The bill would make it a misdemeanor for a federal agent to attempt to enforce such a law and authorize the state attorney general to defend a Colorado resident accused of violating such a federal regulation.

In January, President Obama issued 23 executive orders aimed at curbing gun violence. Among those orders, the president called for the launch of a national gun safety campaign and the need to improve incentives for states to share information with the federal background check system.

"It protects law-abiding citizens," Marble said, in reference to her bill. "We can't let the federal government infringe on our Second Amendment rights."

The bill's presentation comes after sheriffs in El Paso, Larimer, Garfield and Weld counties in the past recent weeks issued statements against enforcing gun regulations they considered unconstitutional.

The bill has no support from Democrats, who control both houses of the legislature, says Marble. It's set to be heard next month in the State, Veterans and Military affairs committee where it will likely die.

"The bill's lack of respect for the supremacy of federal law and federal jurisdiction over states is astonishing," said state Sen. Pat Steadman, D- Denver.

Recently the County Sheriffs of Colorado called on state and national lawmakers to hold off on any "hasty" new gun laws in the wake of mass shootings in Aurora and at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Colorado Democrats are poised to introduce legislation that would require background checks on all private gun sales and a ban on high capacity magazines in the coming weeks.

Source: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22482962/colorado-gop-bill-would-nullify-possible-federal-gun?source=rss

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Misconceptions about a popular pet treat

Jan. 28, 2013 ? A popular dog treat could be adding more calories than pet owners realize, and possibly be contaminated by bacteria, according to a study published this month by researchers at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University and the University of Guelph.

The treat in question: the "bully" or "pizzle stick." The American and Canadian researchers analyzed the caloric density and bacterial contamination of these popular items, made from the uncooked, dried penis of a bull or steer. They also administered a survey to pet owners to assess their knowledge of these treats.

The study, published in the January 2013 issue of the Canadian Veterinary Journal, examined 26 bully sticks purchased from retailers in the United States and Canada and made by different manufacturers.

A random subset of the 26 bully sticks was tested for caloric content. These bully sticks tested contained between nine to 22 calories per inch, meaning the average six inch stick packed 88 calories--nine percent of the daily calorie requirements for a 50-pound dog, and 30 percent of the daily calorie requirements for a 10-pound dog.

"While calorie information isn't currently required on pet treats or most pet foods, these findings reinforce that veterinarians and pet owners need to be aware of pet treats like these bully sticks as a source of calories in a dog's diet," said Lisa M. Freeman, DVM, PhD, DACVN, professor of nutrition at TCSVM who is board-certified by the American College of Veterinary Nutrition.

Freeman was first author on the paper. Co-authors were J. Scott Weese, professor in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph, and Nicol Janecko, a research associate at the Canadian university.

"With obesity in pets on the rise, it is important for pet owners to factor in not only their dog's food, but also treats and table food," Freeman added.

All 26 treats were tested for bacterial contaminants. One (4 percent) of the sticks was contaminated with Clostridium difficile; one (four percent) was contaminated with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a type of staph bacteria that is resistant to certain antibiotics; and seven (27 percent) were contaminated with Escherichia coli, including one tetracycline-resistant sample.

The number of treats sampled was small and not all of these bacterial strains have been shown to infect humans. However, the researchers advise all pet owners to wash their hands after touching such treats, as they would with any raw meat or raw meat diets. The very young, elderly, pregnant, immunocompromised and other high-risk individuals should avoid all contact with raw animal-product based treats and raw meat diets, note the scientists.

To learn more about veterinarian and pet owner perceptions of dog foods and treats, the research team developed a 20-question Web-based survey. The survey was posted online for public participation for 60 days and all responses were anonymous. It was completed by 852 adults from 44 states and six countries. Most respondents were female dog owners.

"We were surprised at the clear misconceptions pet owners and veterinarians have with pet foods and many of the popular raw animal-product based pet treats currently on the market," said Freeman. "For example, 71 percent of people feeding bully sticks to their pets stated they avoid by-products in pet foods, yet bully sticks are, for all intents and purposes, an animal by-product."

Another surprising finding was the large number of people who did not know what bully sticks actually were. A higher proportion of veterinarians (62 percent) were able to correctly identify the source of bully sticks as bull penis compared to general respondents (44 percent). Twenty-three percent of the respondents fed their dogs bully sticks.

Further research with a larger sample size is needed to determine whether the calorie content and contamination rate found in this study is representative of all bully sticks, or other types of pet treats, according to the authors.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Tufts University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Journal Reference:

1. Lisa M. Freeman, Nicol Janecko, J. Scott Weese. Nutritional and microbial analysis of bully sticks and survey of opinions about pet treats. Canadian Veterinary Journal, January 2013

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/nutrition/~3/mAJUX0F5Meo/130128082912.htm

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China to lift longtime ban on video game consoles? - AfterDawn

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Marcos dictatorship victims to be compensated

MANILA, Philippines (AP) ? Philippine lawmakers are preparing to approve $246 million in compensation for thousands of people who were persecuted decades ago under dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

It will be the first time the government officially recognizes the suffering of people like Bonifacio Ilagan, a playwright and writer for an underground communist newspaper. He was arrested and tortured, and his sister disappeared in a maze of police cells and military houses.

Marcos placed the Philippines under martial law in 1972. Detentions, beatings, harassment and killings of regime opponents continued until Marcos was toppled in 1986.

Now, 27 years later, the Philippine Congress is expected to ratify a bill awarding compensation and recognition to martial law victims on Tuesday or Wednesday. The money was recovered by the government from Marcos' ill-gotten wealth.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/marcos-dictatorship-victims-compensated-074737789.html

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They're back: J. C. Penney adds sales

This image provided by J.C. Penney shows the company's new advertising campaign. Penney is still embracing its ?fair and square? strategy as the cornerstone of its reinvention plan, and says the promotions will be targeted. But the latest tactic acknowledges that middle-income shoppers can't be weaned off sales. (AP Photo/J.C.Penney)

This image provided by J.C. Penney shows the company's new advertising campaign. Penney is still embracing its ?fair and square? strategy as the cornerstone of its reinvention plan, and says the promotions will be targeted. But the latest tactic acknowledges that middle-income shoppers can't be weaned off sales. (AP Photo/J.C.Penney)

This image provided by J.C. Penney shows the company's new advertising campaign. Penney is still embracing its ?fair and square? strategy as the cornerstone of its reinvention plan, and says the promotions will be targeted. But the latest tactic acknowledges that middle-income shoppers can't be weaned off sales. (AP Photo/J.C.Penney)

This image provided by J.C. Penney shows the company's new advertising campaign. Penney is still embracing its ?fair and square? strategy as the cornerstone of its reinvention plan, and says the promotions will be targeted. But the latest tactic acknowledges that middle-income shoppers can't be weaned off sales. (AP Photo/J.C.Penney)

NEW YORK (AP) ? J.C. Penney is bringing back sales.

The struggling department store chain this week will begin adding back some of the hundreds of sales it ditched last year in hopes of luring shoppers who were turned off when the discounts disappeared, CEO Ron Johnson told The Associated Press.

Penney also plans to add price tags or signs for more than half of its merchandise to show customers how much they're saving by shopping at the chain ? a strategy used by a few other retailers. For store-branded items such as Arizona, Penney will show comparison prices from competitors.

The reversal comes on the eve of the one-year anniversary of its original vow to almost completely get rid of the sales that Americans covet but that cut into a store's profits. The idea was to offer everyday low prices that customers could count on rather than the nearly 600 fleeting discounts, coupons and sales it once offered.

The bold plan has been closely watched by others in the retail industry, which commonly offers deep discounts to draw shoppers. But so far the experiment has served as a cautionary tale of how difficult it is to change shoppers' habits: Penney next month is expected to report its fourth consecutive quarter of big sales drops and net losses. After losing more than half of its value, Penney's stock is trading at about $19. And the company's credit ratings are in junk status.

Johnson, who rolled out the pricing plan shortly after taking the top job in November 2011, told The Associated Press the latest moves are not a "deviation" from his strategy but rather an "evolution."

"Our sales have gone backward a little more than we expected, but that doesn't change the vision or the strategy," said Johnson, who previously masterminded Apple Inc.'s retail stores and Target Corp.'s cheap chic fashion strategy. "We made changes and we learned an incredible amount. That is what's informing our tactics as we go forward."

But critics say Johnson is backpedaling. Walter Loeb, a New York-based retail consultant, said Johnson "is now realizing that he has to be more promotional to attract shoppers."

The pricing strategy has been a key part of Johnson's plan to reinvent Penney, which had failed to change with the times as its competitors updated their stores to make them cool places to shop. The plan includes adding hip new brands such as Joe Fresh and replacing racks of clothing with small shops-within-stores by 2015. But this isn't the first time the pricing strategy has been tweaked.

When it was rolled out in February 2012, the plan entailed permanently slashing prices on everything in the store by 40 percent. Penney decided to have just 12 monthlong sales events on some merchandise. And there would be periodic clearance events throughout the year.

But the new pricing plan wasn't well received on Wall Street or Main Street, so six months after launching it, Johnson ditched the monthlong sales, saying that they were too confusing to shoppers. Johnson said Penney has learned that people don't shop on a monthly basis, but rather they buy when they need something for say, back-to-school or during the winter holidays. And during those times, he said, they're looking for even more value.

"I still believe that the customer knows the right price, but they want help," he said.

Penney declined to say how many sales events it will offer going forward, citing competitive reasons. But the company said the figure will still be well below the nearly 600 it used to offer. The company said the discounts will vary depending on the sale. From Feb. 1 through Feb. 14, for instance, shoppers will get 20 percent off some jewelry for Valentine's Day. One example: half-carat diamond heart pendants on sale for $96, below Penny's everyday price of $120.

Penney said the decision to add tags or signs on much of its merchandise that shows the "manufacturer's suggested retail price" alongside Penney's "everyday" price was a result of his realization that shoppers want a reference price to consider.

National brands were also asking Penney to show the suggested price to shoppers, he said. Penney began showing the suggested manufacturer's price on Izod men's merchandise last fall and was encouraged by the response.

Burt Flickinger, a retail consultant, said the move could help Penney because manufacturers' suggested retail prices can be as much as 40 percent higher than what retailers wind up charging. The practice is common in the home appliance industry but spotty in the department-store industry because stores generally hike prices up even more to give shoppers the illusion of a big discount, he said.

"The strategy will be helpful for shoppers to understand lower prices," Flickinger said. "At the same time, it will be tough to get consumers back in the store from competitors."

But Craig Johnson, another retail consultant, said that adding the suggested manufacturer's price is just a gimmick. "The objective of this exercise is to maximize the perceived value for the purchase."

Johnson said that for Penney's own store brands like Arizona and Worthington, the team will research other stores and will submit supporting data to its legal team for approval before it advertises comparison prices, using certain criteria. For example, they'll make sure the fabric used is of the same quality as its rivals. For jewelry, Penney is using the International Gemological Institute, a third-party appraiser.

"There are no makeup prices here," Johnson said. "It's all about trying to communicate what it's worth to the customer."

Penney will not show comparison prices for merchandise that is part of exclusive partnerships with brands such as Nicole Miller and Mango, however. The company said it's difficult to offer such references.

To promote the strategy, Penney on Wednesday will begin launching TV, print and digital ads. One TV ad compares a $9 polo shirt under its store brand Arizona with $19 "elsewhere." ''Two polos, same color, same vibrant, same details, same swing, same swagger, different prices," the ad said.

Johnson reiterated that he expects Penney to return to sales growth sometime in 2013. That would be a welcome change for Penney, which has had steep sales and profit losses since the new strategy was launched.

For the first nine months of its current fiscal year, Penney lost $433 million, or $1.98 per share compared with a loss of $65 million, or 30 cents per share in the year-ago period. Total sales dropped 23.1 percent to $9.1 billion.

Analysts expect Penney to post a loss of 17 cents on sales of $4.22 billion for the fourth quarter. They expect the company's annual sales to fall by 23 percent, or nearly $4 billion, to $13.3 billion for the latest year. Revenue at stores opened at least a year ? a measure of a retailer's health ? are expected to drop 25 percent, in line with the third quarter, according to analyst polled by research firm FactSet.

Meanwhile, investors have sent shares down more than 55 percent from a peak of $43 in the days after the plan was rolled out in February. Shares slipped 18 cents to $19.17 on Monday.

"A year ago, we were launching a major transformation and didn't know what to expect," he said. "Today, I know what happened. Our team has a year's worth of history. This is going to be a great year because the new JCP is coming to life for customers."

____

Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at www.twitter.com/adinnocenzio

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-01-28-JC%20Penney-Sales%20Are%20Back/id-553d631281f54c1f9ed3b6514b2f1daa

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Casey Anthony files for bankruptcy in Florida

FILE - In this July 7, 2011 file photo, Casey Anthony smiles before the start of her sentencing hearing in Orlando, Fla. A Florida appellate court on Friday, Jan. 25, 2012 set aside two of the four convictions Anthony faced for lying to detectives during the investigation into her missing 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony was acquitted of killing Caylee in 2011. Jurors convicted her of four counts of lying to detectives, and her attorneys appealed those convictions. Anthony was sentenced to time served for the misdemeanors. Judges on the 5th District Court of Appeals agreed with Anthony's attorneys that two of the charges constituted double jeopardy, or being convicted more than once for the same crime. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, Pool, File)

FILE - In this July 7, 2011 file photo, Casey Anthony smiles before the start of her sentencing hearing in Orlando, Fla. A Florida appellate court on Friday, Jan. 25, 2012 set aside two of the four convictions Anthony faced for lying to detectives during the investigation into her missing 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony was acquitted of killing Caylee in 2011. Jurors convicted her of four counts of lying to detectives, and her attorneys appealed those convictions. Anthony was sentenced to time served for the misdemeanors. Judges on the 5th District Court of Appeals agreed with Anthony's attorneys that two of the charges constituted double jeopardy, or being convicted more than once for the same crime. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, Pool, File)

FILE - In this July 7, 2011 file photo, Casey Anthony smiles before the start of her sentencing hearing in Orlando, Fla. A Florida appellate court on Friday, Jan. 25, 2012 set aside two of the four convictions Anthony faced for lying to detectives during the investigation into her missing 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony was acquitted of killing Caylee in 2011. Jurors convicted her of four counts of lying to detectives, and her attorneys appealed those convictions. Anthony was sentenced to time served for the misdemeanors. Judges on the 5th District Court of Appeals agreed with Anthony's attorneys that two of the charges constituted double jeopardy, or being convicted more than once for the same crime. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, File)

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? Casey Anthony filed for bankruptcy in Florida on Friday, claiming about $1,100 in assets and $792,000 in liabilities.

Court records show that Anthony, who was acquitted of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2011, sought Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Tampa.

Her listed debts include $500,000 for attorney fees and costs for her criminal defense lawyer during the trial, Jose Baez; $145,660 for the Orange County Sheriff's office for a judgment covering investigative fees and costs related to the case; $68,540 for the Internal Revenue Service for taxes, interest and penalties; and $61,505 for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for court costs.

The filling also states that she is a defendant in several civil suits, including one brought by Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez for defamation in Orange County Circuit Court.

Fernandez-Gonzalez claims her reputation was damaged by Anthony telling detectives that a baby sitter by the same name kidnapped Caylee. The detectives were investigating the 2008 disappearance of the girl, who later was found dead. Anthony's attorney said details offered by Anthony did not match Fernandez-Gonzalez and clearly showed Anthony wasn't talking about her.

Court papers list Anthony as unemployed, with no recent income.

An attorney for Anthony, David Schrader, did not immediately respond to messages from the Associated Press.

Anthony lists about 80 creditors in the 60-page court filing. The claims largely cover fees for legal, medical, psychiatric and forensics consulting or services. But one claim covers a debt for scuba diving services.

According to the courts, the aim of seeking Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection is to be discharged of most existing debts ? essentially to obtain a fresh financial start. A trustee may have the right to take possession of and sell non-exempt property and use the sale proceeds to pay creditors, but Anthony lists little in the way of assets. A debtor may still be held responsible for some obligations, such as taxes and student loans.

The filing came on the same day that a Florida appellate court set aside two of the four convictions she faced for lying to detectives during the investigation into her missing daughter.

Though Anthony was acquitted of killing Caylee, jurors convicted her of four counts of lying to detectives, and her attorneys appealed those convictions. Anthony was sentenced to time served for the misdemeanors.

She was sentenced to a year of probation after her release from jail for an unrelated case. For her protection, her whereabouts have been kept secret since she was released from state supervision last year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-27-Casey%20Anthony/id-50e4fd45da69454e8d2811fae1ebe1cd

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The Enterprise Cool Kids | TechCrunch

No, this isn?t a guest column by Aaron Levie. Though he and his startup Box, the poster child of the ?sexy enterprise,? are definitely included in the bunch. ?You should definitely kick Aaron off the list. Just to mess with him,? Zendesk founder Mikkel Svane commented when he heard what we were writing.

With VCs voting with their feet and eschewing consumer startups this play period, we?re seeing a major shift of sentiment and momentum to enterprise startups. Perhaps the most major in a while, definitely as far as we can remember. Venture money that a year ago was going into consumer deals is now flowing into enterprise, as the Series A crunch and reticence about Facebook?s lackluster IPO has dampened investor enthusiasm?for photosharing apps and their ilk.

In contrast to Facebook, a series of stellar enterprise IPOs like?Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and (perhaps the original enterprise cool kid) Workday have fired the collective entrepreneurial?imagination. ?We see entrepreneurs come in every other day telling us how they?re going to reinvent Splunk,? Sequoia?s Aaref Hilaly tells me. ?The successful enterprise IPOs serve as beacons for the companies that come after them.?

Although the VC profits baseline has traditionally come from enterprise deals, they certainly weren?t media darlings. Consumer startups, despite their high beta and tendency to be outliers, were the bell of the mainstream tech blog ball. ?Consumer technology tends to create fewer winners. Its easier to keep track of what a Facebook or a Twitter may be doing than myriad enterprise software vendors,? NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson notes. ?[There it] may take decades to decide the actual winners.?

But the hype is changing. Conversations about ?the next Instagram? at Coupa, The Creamery or on Caltrain have been replaced with staid assessments about the future of Big Data, storage and the cloud. The mobile, social, local gold rush of 2011 has been put on pause, at least as far as consumer Internet is concerned. VCs are?staffing up with enterprise experts to handle the sharp shift in focus. We?ve even heard someone was working on something described only as, ?a Path for enterprise.?

While the phenomenon is recent enough that the exact flow of investment dollars from consumer to enterprise has yet to be captured in a study, the data points are beginning to pop up. For example 2012 was the?first year in First Round Capital?s history in which consumer companies were less than 50 percent of investment dollars, according to a report it published this week. Expect to see many more of these sorts of reports. And more enterprise coverage on TechCrunch.

Enterprise startups are finally the cool kids. N?e, sexy.

?I would say the market is schizophrenic,? says Marc Andreessen, on why Workday > Facebook might not mean the end of investor interest in social. ?Right now we are in an era where the market wants enterprise companies. I am just saying, ?Wait a year, that will flip again; wait another year after that, that will flip again.??

For now it?s enterprise?s time to shine. Due to the ubiquity of mobile computing, the cloud and the Bring Your Own Device movement, the lines are blurring between enterprise startups and consumer startups.?Is Google Apps an enterprise product? Is Dropbox? Is Evernote??With an increasing proliferation of these sorts of enterprisumer startups, we?re a far cry from the IBM SAGE era, where the only computing customers were literally big businesses.

In the past everything was top down. Large corporations and the government spent a lot of money on R&D, and technologies developed in that R&D like the mainframe/computer, the color TV and even the Internet would trickle down from large institutions to the mainstream user. Once these products hit the mainstream, the gravitational pull of the mainstream and its purchasing power slowly changed the adoption cycle from top down to bottom up.

?Consumers can make buying decisions much more quickly than businesses can,? Andreessen points, ?because for the consumer, they either like it or they don?t, whereas businesses have to go through these long and involved processes.? He maintains that the reason the enterprise wasn?t particularly appealing for many entrepreneurs between 2000-2008 was that consumer software was the only software that anybody could adopt.? This is no longer the case, as the enterprise world evolves from a sales-driven to a product-driven approach.

?

?The user is now the buyer, and the center of gravity is no longer in IT, it?s actually in the line of business themselves,? says Christian Gheorghe,?CEO of mobile first metrics management startup?Tidemark, outlining the factors in that evolution. ?The cloud is not just a cost-based improvement, but a new computational platform. And mobile is surpassing the desktop.?

?The demand for ?consumer-grade? enterprise technologies ? from the?standpoint?of having strong UX, being mobile, and platform agnostic ? is an?irreversible?trend,? says Levie. ?To the point that hard-to-use enterprise software will soon become more surprising than well-designed enterprise software (give it a few years).?

?Today all the consumerized enterprise stuff is as easily usable by the small business as it is by the large business,? Andreessen explains. ?In fact, it?s probably more easily usable by the small business than it is by the large business, because with a small business, it?s like you can just use it. You don?t have to go through a long process, you don?t have to have a lot of meetings, you don?t have to have committees, you don?t have to have all this stuff. You can just start picking up and using it.?

Because of this confluence of elements, an enterprise startup?s ?land and expand? strategy has become more complex than having a huge sales force or wining and dining the CIO. It actually boils down to making a product that people want to use, as consumers are already using cloud products, and fall back on them when their older enterprise solutions fail.

?The Exchange Server is down? No problem, I?ll use Gmail. Email policy doesn?t allow an attachment over 2 GB. No problem, I?ll use YouSendIt, Dropbox or Box,? Ron Miller?succinctly puts it.?Box?s early business customers were CIOs who called into the company with concerns about security,?irate that their employees were using the platform to covertly share files. Those calls eventually turned into deals. In fact, one could argue that consumer startup Dropbox was the best thing to ever happened to Box, familiarizing the layman with cloud file sharing. Box then innovated on the use case, by offering increased security and controls to appease CIOs and enterprise execs.

?The first generation of this new enterprise wave was replacement technologies at lower prices (like Salesforce and SolarWinds),? says Asana co-founder Justin Rosenstein, ?but the new wave is technologies that compete by being better products. The *new* inefficiency to compete against isn?t just total cost of operations (through SaaS) or cost ? it?s beating them with a better product.?

Because adoption is getting easier and other related factors, we?re seeing an onslaught of entrepreneurs building products for businesses that employees actually can use or want to use. We?re even seeing the emergence of companies like Okta, which are enterprise only, but still display the ease of a consumer startup. Not only is the number of companies that are taking their design cues from the consumer Internet increasing, it is rapidly becoming the norm.

??Enterprise sexiness? has come from the increasing awareness that the new breed of vendors have gotten the consumerization thing right (especially with UI and mobile), and that the business models are known to be sustainable and viable,? says Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri. ?Indeed, in the case of companies like Asana and Cloudera, some of the founders themselves came from the consumer Internet.?

That consumer background is helping the companies below get a lot more notice from VCs to consumers to the media because they know how to pitch themselves ? and yes many of them have pretty cool products, specifically targeting millennials just getting situated in the workforce. PeopleSoft, Aol?s HRM software, is as atrocious to use as its name sounds ? I?d much rather be using Workday.

While this list is by no means comprehensive (there are a ton of cool enterprise startups, and most people are vehement?favorites), here are just a few of the new guard that are fast becoming household names ? through their focus on intuitiveness and design, awareness of mobile and fresh approaches to decades-old problems.??The existing enterprise players are building software people tolerate,? as Rosenstein concisely puts it. ?The future players are building software people love.?

Okta

Okta is a single sign-on service for companies ? ?Facebook Connect? for the enterprise. As a user, you can log in to your company?s admin page and access both private data hosted on your company?s server (intranet) and data from cloud products like Box, Salesforce and Google Apps. Administrators can easily manage the credentials across various applications and devices.

Competitors: Salesforce has just launched Salesforce Identity to compete directly with Okta.

Secret sauce:?Okta is compatible with every web app you can think of. The startup has raised $52.5 million in?funding from Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, FLOODGATE and Sequoia.

Cloudera

Cloudera is the solution de jour?for managing big data in a company, offering software, services and support for databases. When a user needs to analyze raw data to find a trend or to see if they can find valuable answers in unused data, Cloudera (built on top of Hadoop) allows them to complete more efficient queries.

Competitors: MapR?and Hortonworks, but they are much smaller. For big companies, they can ask for custom solutions from IBM, but it?s a lot more expensive.

Secret sauce:?Timing and it handles everything (software, development, support?). Cloudera has big funding as well, having raised $141 million from?Greylock, Accel, Meritech Capital Partners, In-Q-Tel and others.

Box

The original ?sexy? enterprise startup, Box?allows you to store, manage and collaborate on your documents in the cloud. Founded back in 2006 (before Dropbox!), the company is helmed by the colorful Aaron Levie. Like Okta, Box?s main advantage is that it integrates well with many enterprise apps and offers security in addition to collaboration functionality. Interoperability is crucial: Users can find their files uploaded to Box in their favorite CRM apps, etc.

Competitors: Microsoft SharePoint, consumer products, Dropbox, Google Drive?

Secret sauce: It was there first! Box effectively competes by constantly iterating on its product, focusing on enterprise even when Dropbox caught on, and good partnerships. Box has thus far raised $284 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Scale Venture Partners,?Andreessen Horowitz and others.

GitHub

Developers need a place to track and share their code changes, and GitHub, with social coding features that make it really easy for open source projects, is the repository of choice. GitHub is so popular that its version control technology, Git, is replacing SVN based on merit. GitHub offers premium subscriptions and self-hosted versions, and many companies and startups have switched to private GitHub repositories, some very early (Spotify).

Competitors: Google Code for the social coding aspect, self-hosted repositories on an Intranet.

Secret sauce: Git. Git is such an ace technology that developers couldn?t resist adopting it, and GitHub is *the* best way to use Git. The runner up in the Bootstrapped Startup category at the 2011 Crunchies, GitHub eventually relented and took $100 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz last year.

Zendesk

Zendesk is user-friendly help desk software that allows companies to handle support requests in bulk. Zendesk is IPO-bound and, like enterprise pal Workday, might be another point of light in a series of lackluster tech IPOs.

Competitors:?Tons of companies are building desk software, and there are many open source apps for small and medium companies. Desk.com (formerly Assistly, acquired by Salesforce) and Tender Support are quite popular, but Tender Support doesn?t have the same breadth of resources as Zendesk.

Secret sauce:?Zendesk was the first modern help desk, but Desk.com is gaining a lot of traction with Salesforce behind it. The company has plenty of money in the bank, having raised $85.5 million from Charles River Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Matrix Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, GGV Capital, Goldman Sachs and Silicon Valley Bank.

Asana

Taking the lessons they learned from an early stint at Facebook, Asana co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein have built a beautiful and streamlined collaboration tool with a focus on to-do lists. The interface is flexible and easy to understand. In Asana, everything is a to-do item. The platform?doesn?t try to do it all, but its design is very very intuitive, adhering humbly to its core goal of?easing communications within a team.

Competitors: Basecamp from 37signals, Do.com from Salesforce, and other communication tools that may make it useless (think Yammer) and many small alternatives (Producteev, Flow, etc.). For all these companies, the closest competitor might be basic emails.

Secret sauce:?The Asana product is relatively easy to use, and this is important for a latecomer to the collaboration software space. Pricing is friendly, too. For small companies, many of which have yet to switch to a collaboration tool, you can basically use it for free. Asana has raised over 38.2 million from?Peter Thiel,?Founders Fund?Benchmark?Capital,?Andreessen Horowitz and angels like Ron Conway and Adam D?Angelo.

GoodData

GoodData is a less expensive data-analytics solution for large companies. Companies can integrate GoodData?s platform into their own cloud-based SaaS products (i.e. Salesforce, Zendesk) and then access operational dashboards, data warehousing and advanced data reporting.

Competitors:?IBM, SAP and Oracle.

Secret sauce:?Cheaper than competitors, GoodData integrates easily with Zendesk and Salesforce to track, aggregate and analyze data. Its simplicity and ?out of the box? integrations make it ideal for small and medium enterprises. GoodData has $53.5 million in funding from?Andreessen Horowitz,?General Catalyst Partners,?Tim O?Reilly and others.

Atlassian

?The coolest thing to come out of Australia,? according to Accel?s Ping Li, Atlassian is low-cost project management software. It provides a series of enterprise web apps: Jira is a project-tracking tool focused on software development; Confluence is a more traditional collaboration and communication tool; and developers use many of its other smaller product offerings in their workflows. Finally, Atlassian acquired HipChat, a hip chat app.

Competitors: Open source project management solutions and native apps compete with Jira. Confluence competes with Basecamp, Yammer, etc. HipChat competes with Campfire from 37signals.

Secret sauce: Founded in 2002, Atlassian is not a kid anymore. Over the years, it has proved to be a reliable web app developer. The company has thus far raised $60 million in Series A solely from Accel Partners.

Nimble Storage

Nimble Storage is an online storage service for developers. It has found a way to provide a large storage capacity with 5x the performance and 5x the capacity as existing products from EMC and NetApp. Nimble Storage has a unique caching system based on the flash storage commonly found in PCs and mobile phones. The result is a great speed increase, comparable to putting an SSD drive in your old computer. That technology is patented for online data storage.

Competitors: EMC, NetApp, Amazon S3 and other online storage solutions.

Secret sauce: Improving read/write speeds is a great challenge for hosting solutions these days, and Nimble is faster than its competitors, yet costs the same. It has received $81.7 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and others.

MobileIron

MobileIron is a device management tool for system admins. Now that the BYOD trend is taking over businesses, admins have to find new ways to handle security settings and push mobile apps to employees ? all of this across multiple phones, tablets and operating systems. MobileIron provides a single platform to manage all devices even though most of them are personal devices that employees bring to the workplace.

Competitors: In-house solutions and restrictions, checking security settings one phone at a time or choosing not to care about security.

Secret sauce: MobileIron makes it much easier for system admins to handle custom phone settings. If you convert one system admin, the entire company will switch to MobileIron. Since 2007, it has raised $96.8 million from Sequoia Capital, Storm Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners.

?They are all basically new companies,? says Andreessen, who agreed with many of the ?Cool Kids? choices. ?I think who is not on that list are all the existing companies that sell business software.? And being younger, more agile companies automatically makes them much more interesting. For anyone who?s read my post about SAP buying SuccessFactors, and misunderstood it, it?s not SuccessFactors that was boring (it?s not at all) but SAP ? whose stock performance is positively reflecting its acquisitions of hipper players like SuccessFactors ? itself.

?The joke about SAP has always been, it?s making 50s German manufacturing methodology, implemented in 1960s software technology, delivered to 1970-style manufacturing organizations,? says Andreessen. ?The incumbency ? they are still the lingering hangover from the dot-com crash.?

?We all secretly fear making the same mistakes as previous-generation enterprise software companies ? bloating our products and building out costly sales operations,? says Zendesk?s Svane. ?The new enterprise software companies that avoid these traps will be tomorrow?s winners.?

So I was wrong, at least on a macro level: Perhaps there is no more compelling story in technology today than the David versus Goliath tale of enterprise upheaval. ?Today is the most exciting time in enterprise technology history?? SuccessFactors CEO himself Lars Dalgaard shares, ?and we get to have no excuses for building a delicious user experience for everything we launch. Our benchmark is more delicious looking than Apple, simpler than Twitter.?

And investors, public and private, increasingly agree: Being that we?re in a consumer rut, am I going to be writing about the enterprise for the next two years?

The advantage of the consumer businesses is they tend to be much broader-based with a much larger number of customers and relatively faster adoption patterns. The advantage of the enterprise companies is that they have revenue numbers off the bat if they?re good, and thus they are not as subject to consumer trends, fads or behavior, which is why investors, having raised less money to invest in 2013 in the first place, are being cautious.

?Folks have realized that businesses buy close to $300 billion worth of software ($285 billion according to Gartner in 2012),? says Rosenstein, ?and that companies who exhibit those attributes have the potential to build *very* large businesses. This is compounded by the opportunity to grow very quickly, since the economics of scaling a software business have been forever changed by things like Amazon on the backend, and self-service sales on the frontend.?

?The businesses are good, which is nice,? Andreessen adds, ?and then I think it?s also sector rotation. We talk to a lot of the big hedge funds, mutual funds. It?s really funny. We are talking about big hedge funds, mutual funds ? about six months ago they all started saying, well, you know, we really think there is going to be a rotation from consumer and enterprise and we are going to really get ahead of that. And I am like, yeah, you and 10 other guys in the last two weeks have told me the same thing. It?s like, good job, like you are way out ahead on the leading edge on this.?

You have to give credit to the foresight of the Levies, Bhusris, Svanes of the world who took a bet on enterprise when it wasn?t the new girl in school. And, especially, the Ellisons and Benioffs for building the school. In fact, there is a salacious rumor making the rounds that Levie actually has a picture of Ellison as his iPhone home screen. ?No comment,? he says.

As DFJ partner Andreas Stavropoulos brings up, ?Interestingly, enterprise companies like Box that are gaining traction now were started in 2004-2007 when it wasn?t cool to be enterprise-focused. This shows some of the best innovations happen when most of the market is looking the other way.?

?My running joke has been, it?s like little kids,? says Andreessen. ?Like everybody out of the consumer pool, everybody into the enterprise pool. So everybody out of the wading pool, everybody into the hot tub.?

And right now the enterprise is a pretty hot hot tub.

Additional reporting by Romain Dillet, Alex Williams and Leena Rao. Images by Bryce Durbin.?You can read more on the riveting world of enterprise computing in ?Marc Andreessen On The Future Of Enterprise.?

After starting as a college business project in 2005, Box was officially launched in March of 2006 with the vision of connecting people, devices and networks. Box provides more than 8 million users with secure cloud content management and collaboration. They say their platform ?allows personal and commercial content to be accessible, sharable, and storable in any format from anywhere?.

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Okta is an enterprise-grade identity management service, built from the ground up in the cloud and designed to address the challenges of a cloud, mobile and interconnected business world. Okta integrates with existing directories and identity systems, as well as thousands of on-premises, cloud-based and mobile applications, to enable IT to securely manage access anywhere, anytime and from any device. More than 200 enterprises, including Allergan, BMC Software, Clorox, LinkedIn, T.D. Williamson and SAP, use Okta to increase security and...

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Nimble Storage solutions are built on the idea that enterprises should not have to compromise between performance, capacity, ease of management, and price. Nimble?s patented Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL) architecture, designed from the ground up to effectively combine flash with high capacity drives, makes high performance affordable, simplifies and enhances disaster recovery and backup, and delivers stress-free operations. Nimble Storage is funded by Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

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Cloudera, the commercial Hadoop company, develops and distributes Hadoop, the open source software that powers the data processing engines of the world?s largest and most popular web sites. Founded by leading experts on big data from Facebook, Google, Oracle and Yahoo, Cloudera?s mission is to bring the power of Hadoop, MapReduce, and distributed storage to companies of all sizes in the enterprise, Internet and government sectors. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Cloudera has financial backing from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners...

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Zendesk provides an integrated on-demand helpdesk - customer support portal solution based on the latest Web 2.0 technologies and design philosophies. The product has an elegant, minimalist design implemented in Ruby on Rails and provides seamless integration of the back-end helpdesk SaaS to a company?s online customer-facing web presence, including hosted support email-ticket integration, online forums, RSS and widgets. This is unusual, because most SaaS helpdesk solutions focus exclusively on the backend helpdesk and treat the Web as...

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Asana is a web application that keeps teams in sync - a single place for everyone to quickly capture, organize, track and communicate what they are working on. It was founded by Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook, and Justin Rosenstein, an alum of both Facebook and Google.

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GoodData provides a cloud-based platform that enables more than 6,000 global businesses to monetize big data. GoodData is headquartered in San Francisco and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners, Next World Capital, Tenaya Capital and Windcrest Partners.

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The leader in Mobile Device Management software, MobileIron has been chosen by thousands of organizations that are transforming their businesses through Mobile IT. Available as an on-premise or a cloud solution, MobileIron was purpose-built to secure and manage mobile apps, content, and devices for global companies. MobileIron was the first to deliver key innovations such as multi-OS mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM), and BYOD privacy controls. For more information, please visit http://www.mobileiron.com.

? Learn more Andreessen Horowitz, Ning, Facebook, Qik, Hewlett-Packard, Kno, Bump Technologies, eBay, Asana, CollabNet, Opsware, Netscape

Mr. Marc Andreessen is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. He is also co-founder and chairman of Ning and an investor in several startups including Digg, Plazes, and Twitter. He is an active member of the blogging community. Previously, Andreessen developed Mosaic and co-founded Netscape. Mosaic was developed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications, on which Andreessen was the team-leader. Andreessen co-founded what later became Netscape Communications which produced the ?Netscape Navigator?. Netscape Navigator...

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Aaron Levie co-founded Box with friend and Box CFO Dylan Smith in 2005. The Box mission is to provide businesses and individuals with the simplest solution to share, access and manage their information. Aaron is the visionary behind Box?s product and platform strategy, which is focused on incorporating the best of traditional content management with an easy to use user experience suited to the way people collaborate and work today. Box is one of the fastest growing companies in...

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Justin Rosenstein is the co-founder of Asana, along with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Asana?s software enables organizations to coordinate their people and teams without effort, providing key communication infrastructure to companies like Twitter, Airbnb, and Foursquare. Justin has led the development of products that hundreds of millions of people use daily. At Facebook, he was the tech lead for projects including the Like button and Facebook Pages, and designed the in-house project management system that Facebook relies on to this...

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Aneel Bhusri is a Partner at Greylock and Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive at Workday. Aneel joined Greylock in 1999 from PeopleSoft, where he was named vice chairman after several years as the company?s senior vice president in charge of product strategy, business development and marketing. At PeopleSoft, he was responsible for developing and guiding all product strategy, corporate and product marketing. He also led the company?s business development efforts in key areas such as new product development, vertical market initiatives and...

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Workday is the leader in SaaS-based enterprise solutions for human resources, payroll and financial management, providing new levels of business agility for a fraction of the cost of buying, deploying and maintaining legacy on-premise systems. More than 130 customers, spanning mid-sized organizations to global Fortune 500 businesses, have selected Workday. Workday Human Capital Management and Workday Financial Management use modern, standards-based technologies to provide an unparalleled level of agility, ease-of-use, and integration capability. For more information...

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?Andreas is a Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, where, in addition to the TrustedID Board, he serves on the Boards of Akimbo, AppStream, everdream, H5 Technologies, MeetUp, Mobile 365, Pronto Networks, SilverPop, Technorati and Wavemarket. In addition, he led the firm?s investments in Centerpost, ePocrates, 4info, Mimeo and Polaris Wireless. Andreas focuses primarily on software investments (enterprise infrastructure and consumer/internet), wireless networking, and technology-enabled services. Prior to joining DFJ, Mr. Stavropoulos was with McKinsey & Company?s San Francisco...

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Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/27/the-enterprise-cool-kids/

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Relatives: Boy accused of massacre not 'monster'

Courtesy of the Griego Family / Reuters

An undated family photo of Nehemiah Griego, the 15-year-old accused of killing his parents and three siblings. Surviving relatives say he may have suffered a mental breakdown.

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

Relatives of a New Mexico teen accused of killing his parents and three siblings say he's not a "monster" but a "misguided" boy who may have suffered a mental breakdown.

Police have portrayed Nehemiah Griego, 15, as an "unemotional" video-game fanatic who plotted a killing spree for more than a week because he was mad at his mother and emailed a photo of the slain woman to his 12-year-old girlfriend.

A statement released by an uncle, former state lawmaker Eric Griego,?paints a far different picture of a "bright, curious and incredibly talented young man," describing him as a doting older brother who played the guitar and drums, ministered to other youths and hoped to one day join the military.

"We have not been able to comprehend what led to this incredibly sad situation. However, we are deeply concerned about the portrayal in some media of Nehemiah as some kind of a monster," the statement said.

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"It is clear to those of us who know and love him that something went terribly wrong. Whether it was a mental breakdown or some deeper undiagnosed psychological issue, we can?t be sure yet. What we do know is that none of us, even in our wildest nightmare, could have imagined that he could do something like this."

The statement said that Nehemiah Griego was not a loner and only wore his dad's fatigues because of his interest in serving his country. It cautioned against anyone using the tragedy to make a point about gun control.

"He is a troubled young man who made a terrible decision that will haunt him and his family forever," it said. "Five lives have been senselessly and needlessly ended. Ruining one more without trying to get to the bottom of what really happened and more importantly -- why -- would be equally tragic."

Bernalillo County

Nehemiah Griego, 15, in a booking photo after he was arrested for killing his parents and three siblings.

Bernalillo County authorities said Griego had not been diagnosed with any mental illness and was apparently not on drugs or alcohol when the family was slaughtered Saturday.

Using his father's .22 rifle and a AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, he allegedly shot his sleeping mother, killed his 9-year-old brother and then fatally shot two sisters, 5 and 2. Police say he lay in wait at least four hours for his father, Greg, a reformed gang member and chaplain, and then shot him dead.

According to a timeline provided by police, Griego sent his girlfriend a photo of his mother and later spent most of the day with her before going to church and telling officials there his family was dead.

At one point, he considered killing the girlfriend's parents, as well as shooting up a Walmart and dying in a firefight with cops, police said.

The 12-year-old girl has not been charged with a crime, but the investigation is continuing, sheriff's Deputy Aaron Williamson said Wednesday.

Prosecutors said they plan to try Griego in adult court, though he could face less jail time if convicted because of his age.

Griego had five older siblings who did not live at home and escaped harm.

Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston, at a press conference Tuesday, said 15-year-old Nehemiah Griego was "involved heavily in...violent games."

?

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/23/16664373-new-mexico-teen-charged-with-massacre-not-a-monster-relatives-say?lite

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Follow Cagewriter on Twitter for the latest on UFC on Fox 6

With UFC on Fox 6 in Chicago this week, I will be at the open workouts, press conference and weigh-ins to cover everything going on with John Dodson's title bout with Demetrious Johnson, and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson's fight with Glover Teixiera. Follow Cagewriter on Twitter for the latest on what is happening at all of fight week's events.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/cagewriter-twitter-latest-ufc-fox-6-153702024--mma.html

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Is Obama Trying to Destroy the GOP?

At least 10 times during his second inaugural address, President Obama made unmistakable allusions to Republican ideas that he rejects and wants the country to reject ? even as he wrapped the critiques in a call for togetherness.

Progress in the past has been a collective enterprise, Obama said, whether it involved transportation, education, caring for the vulnerable, or ensuring fair play in a free market. To realize the ?limitless possibilities? of the current moment, he said, Americans must move forward ?as one nation, and one people.?

In defining his vision of forward, Obama did not spare conservatives. Here are some of his more pointed remarks:

• ?The commitments we make to each other,? such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, strengthen people rather than sap their initiative. ?They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great,? he said. Those were direct rebuttals of claims by conservatives, topped by the Republican ticket he defeated.
• ?Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science,? but the nation must respond to the threat of climate change. That was a reminder of the antiscience strain of the GOP. ?We will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God,? he said, invoking a stewardship principle popularized by some evangelical Christians.
• ?We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries.? It was a defense of his administration?s investments in clean energy, in the face of GOP attacks on the failed investment in Solyndra and picking winners and losers in general.
• ?Enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.? That was aimed at George W. Bush?s foreign policy and Republicans who want to extend the 11-year U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
• ?Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.? An attempt to pin those lines on voting restrictions imposed by Republican legislatures.

Obama also mentioned income inequality, equal pay for women, equal treatment of gay people, a warm welcome for immigrants, and safety for children in Newtown, Conn., and elsewhere ? an indirect reference to his gun-control agenda.

Every one of these issues fractures Republicans. The speech, devoid as it was of olive branches, played into the emerging Republican consensus that Obama is trying to divide and destroy the GOP.

They are right about the division part, though likely mistaken when they impute a motive to destroy. As in, he is proposing comprehensive gun control and immigration reform ? instead of teeny slices of those packages ? in order to set GOP factions against each other and blow up the party. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently made that argument, yearning for the ?learn to crawl? piecemeal approach but anticipating that Obama would choose ?kill the wounded? instead.

By that logic, coming from Brooks and others, you could assume a president was aiming to destroy the opposition party every time he or she did anything that attracted some opposition votes but not all of them. Bush-era initiatives that divided Democrats would include tax cuts, the Iraq war, and his Medicare prescription-drug program. Did he propose invading Iraq because it would pit Democrat against Democrat? ?

Please. It?s far more likely that Bush believed in those causes and peeled off as many Democrats as he could in order to win passage or, if he had enough votes, to earn a bit of bipartisanship and justification for his ?uniter, not divider? campaign slogan.

The same likely holds true for Obama. The difference is that for most of Obama?s first term, the GOP resembled what Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan called a ?grim monolith? ? no differences of opinion or conscience votes allowed. She pleaded with Republicans to think and vote for themselves.

On Monday, Obama pitched his speech over the heads of Congress and directly to citizens, prodding them to get involved and ?set this country?s course.? He did that secure in the knowledge that not only did he win reelection, but that public opinion polls show majority support for most of his goals.

That includes a path to legal status for illegal immigrants, a ?balanced? budget approach that includes both tax hikes and spending cuts, and universal background checks for gun purchasers. Brooks lamented that last proposal as ?inviting a long battle? with the National Rifle Association, yet one poll found 90 percent support for it.

Republicans clearly have some choices ahead, and Obama is not making it easy for them. He did not in his inaugural address speak soothingly of sitting down and reasoning together (though he did sit down for coffee at the White House with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday). Instead, he called out Republicans with this declarative sentence: ?We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.?

While that may not be the best relationship-building technique, it's a fact that Republicans did not make the past four years easy for Obama. The unanswered question is how hard they will make it for themselves, and him, over the next four.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-trying-destroy-gop-063007183--politics.html

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Watering fields in California boosts rainfall in Southwest

Irrigation has downstream effects on climate and runoff to Colorado River

By Erin Wayman

Web edition: January 22, 2013

Enlarge

Downstream effects

Irrigation in California?s Central Valley affects the climate of the American Southwest, a new study suggests. Water vapor from evaporation in the valley travels to the Southwest, where it fuels rain and increases runoff to the Colorado River (shown).

Credit: Adrille/Wikimedia Commons

Farmers in California help make it rain in the American Southwest, a new computer simulation suggests. Water that evaporates from irrigated fields in California?s Central Valley travels to the Four Corners region, where it boosts summer rain and increases runoff to the Colorado River, researchers report online January 12 in Geophysical Research Letters.

This climate link may be crucial to the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River for drinking water. That number could nearly double in the next 50 years at the same time that droughts are projected to become more common in the Southwest. Since the Central Valley?s supply of irrigation water faces an uncertain future, it?s important to examine how shortfalls in California might affect climate change in the region, says study coauthor Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine.

?We have to understand these connections better to deal with changes in water availability,? he says.

The Central Valley is one of the world?s most productive agricultural regions. More than 50,000 square kilometers of the valley are irrigated, equaling one-sixth of all irrigated land in the United States.

A study in 2011 showed that watering the area?s crops cools local temperatures and increases humidity. But the work didn?t find any larger climate ties outside the region, because it relied on a regional climate simulation, which has trouble estimating conditions along the boundaries of a study area, Famiglietti says.

To overcome this problem, Famiglietti and Min-Hui Lo, now at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, simulated global climate over a 90-year period. They added in 350 millimeters of water ? coming from groundwater and surface reservoirs ? to the Central Valley between May and October each year. The researchers say that?s a realistic amount of irrigation based on published agriculture and climate data.

The simulations revealed that evaporation doubles in the Central Valley when there?s irrigation. That water vapor circulates to the Southwest during the summer monsoon season, which naturally brings rain to the area. ?The monsoon is like a big campfire burning away over the Southwest,? Famiglietti says. ?The irrigation acts as fuel on the fire.? In addition to bringing more water to the atmosphere, the water vapor brings more energy. And it changes the regional circulation, drawing in even more water vapor from the Gulf of Mexico.

Together, these changes intensify the monsoon season, resulting in a 15 percent increase in rainfall in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona and a 28 percent increase in runoff to the Colorado River compared with simulations lacking irrigation. Some of the water returns to California via the All-American Canal, which brings water from the Colorado River to Southern California, the simulation suggests.

?It?s a nice first step,? says hydrologist Michael Puma of Columbia University. ?And it?s a link that we need to investigate quite a bit more.? Many other variables, such as sea surface temperatures, also influence climate in the Southwest. To better estimate the strength of irrigation?s effect in the real world, more complex simulations that take these other factors into account are needed, Puma says.

The study also highlights the importance of investigating irrigation?s role in climate in other parts of the world, as well as other ways in which people?s use of water might have unintended consequences, Famiglietti says.?What we do with water management really has an impact on climate ? locally, regionally and globally.?

---

Suggested Reading

S. Perkins. Crop irrigation could be cooling Midwest. Science News. Vol. 177, February 13, 2010, p. 15 [Go to]

S. Perkins. Going down: climate change, water use threaten Lake Mead. Science News. Vol. 173, February 23, 2008, p. 115. [Go to]

S. Perkins. Hey, it?s cooler near the sprinklers. Science News. Vol. 171, March 17, 2007, p. 174. [Go to]

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/347691/title/Watering_fields_in_California_boosts_rainfall_in_Southwest

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NJ's 'baddest lawyer' accused in FBI informant murder

Martin Oeser / AFP - Getty Images, file

Paul W. Bergrin at the Legal Center of the U.S. Army's Taylor Barracks in Mannheim, Germany, on 24 August 2004. Bergrin is accused of orchestrating the murder of an FBI informant.

By Joseph Ax, Reuters

NEWARK, New Jersey -- New Jersey attorney Paul Bergrin facilitated a litany of crimes through his law firm, including drug trafficking, prostitution and the murder of an FBI informant, prosecutors said on Tuesday as his trial began in Newark federal court.

A former federal prosecutor and prominent defense lawyer, Bergrin, 57, faces charges that he orchestrated the 2004 murder of Kemo DeShawn McCray, an FBI informant and witness against one of his clients, as well as 24 other counts ranging from racketeering to conspiring to kill witnesses.

But Bergrin, who has represented rapper L'il Kim and U.S. soldiers accused of crimes in Iraq, said the government's case rests almost entirely on the testimony of career criminals intent on reducing their sentences.

"You'll find in this case conclusively that you can't trust any of the witnesses against me," Bergrin, who is acting as his own attorney, told the jury on Tuesday during opening arguments.

The witnesses include a number of Bergrin's former associates and clients who prosecutors acknowledge were active participants in Bergrin's criminal enterprise.

The trial represents the U.S. Justice Department's second attempt to prosecute Bergrin, dubbed "the baddest lawyer in the history of Jersey" by New York Magazine.

The first trial included only the McCray murder charges, after U.S. District Judge William Martini severed them from the rest of the indictment.

McCray was gunned down in broad daylight on a Newark street, after prosecutors claim Bergrin told a client, "No Kemo, no case," implying that McCray's death would help a gang associate beat criminal charges. A jury deadlocked in November 2011 on whether to convict Bergrin.

Since then, the case has traveled a labyrinthine legal path.

Last June, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia removed Martini from the case and ruled that he had erred in separating the McCray charges from the racketeering counts, which allege that all of Bergrin's crimes can be tied to the criminal enterprise he ran out of his law practice.

With two dozen additional counts to prove, prosecutors plan to introduce new evidence, including a recording of Bergrin allegedly telling a Chicago hit man to murder another witness and make it look like a home invasion.

"It cannot under any circumstances look like a hit," Bergrin allegedly told a Latin Kings gang member secretly working with the government, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gay.

But Bergrin said jurors would see that recording, when taken in context, for what it was: "bluffing" and "gamesmanship" in which Bergrin led the presumed hit man on after he realized the man had no intention of killing anyone.

In addition, prosecutors claim Bergrin was involved in trafficking hundreds of pounds of cocaine, using his law firm to connect suppliers with distributors and allowing cocaine to be stored at a restaurant he owned.

He is accused of tampering with witnesses, including what Gay described as the "brainwashing" of a 9-year-old girl so that she would lie about the brutal stabbing of her mother by her father, a Bergrin client.

"This case is about a lawyer who used his law license to disguise the fact that he was a drug dealer, a pimp and a murderer," Gay said.

Bergrin, however, said the jury would "be unable to separate fact from fiction" thanks to the unreliability of the government's witnesses.

"All I ask is that you keep an open mind," he said.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/23/16655924-baddest-lawyer-in-history-of-jersey-accused-of-orchestrating-fbi-informants-murder?lite

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Should worst-flooded areas be left after Sandy?

SEA BRIGHT, N.J. (AP) ? Superstorm Sandy, one of the nation's costliest natural disasters, is giving new urgency to an age-old debate about whether areas repeatedly damaged by storms should be rebuilt, or whether it might be cheaper in the long run to buy out vulnerable properties and let nature reclaim them.

The difficulty in getting aid for storm victims through Congress ? most of a $60 billion package could get final approval next week ? highlights the hard choices that may have to be made soon across the country, where the federal, state and local governments all say they don't have unlimited resources to keep writing checks when storms strike.

But the idea of abandoning a place that has been home for years is unthinkable for many.

"We're not retreating," said Dina Long, the mayor of Sea Bright, N.J., a chronically flooded spit of sand between the Atlantic Ocean and the Shrewsbury River only slightly wider than the length of a football field in some spots. Three-quarters of its 1,400 residents are still homeless and the entire business district was wiped out; only four shops have managed to reopen.

Despite a rock and concrete sea wall and pumping equipment in the center of town, Sea Bright floods repeatedly. It is the go-to spot for TV news trucks every time a storm roars up the coast. But as in many other storm-damaged communities, there is a fierce will to survive, to rebuild and to restore.

"Nobody has come to us and said we shouldn't exist," she said. "It is antithetical to the Jersey mindset, and particularly to the Sea Bright mindset. We're known for being strong, for being resilient, for not backing down."

The story is different in the Oakwood Beach section of Staten Island, N.Y., where despite 20 years of flood protection measures, Sandy's 12- to 14-foot-storm surge inundated the community, forcing some residents to their attics or roofs to survive. Three people died.

"Building again and again in this very sensitive flood plain will only achieve the same results ? flooding, and possibly untimely death," homeowner Tina Downer told about 200 of her neighbors who gathered to discuss a potential buyout program last week. "It is not safe for anyone to live there."

The problem has worsened in recent decades with an explosion of development near the nation's shorelines. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that in 2003, approximately 153 million people ? 53 percent of the nation's population ? lived in coastal counties, an increase of 33 million people since 1980. The agency forecasts 12 million more to join them by 2015.

Scientists say that putting so many people in the most vulnerable areas is a recipe for disaster.

Jon Miller, a professor of coastal engineering at New Jersey's Stevens Institute of technology, said retreating from the most vulnerable areas makes scientific sense. But he adds that the things that were built there ? beach clubs, boardwalks and amusement piers ? give communities their character, and fuel tourism and business.

If buyouts did occur, he predicted they would happen in areas with lower property values because of the high cost of buying up prime coastal real estate. That could have the unintended consequence of placing the shore off-limits to all but the wealthy, he said.

"I grew up in Rahway and I remember the controversy when several properties along the Rahway River were bought out due to repetitive flood losses," Miller said. "It was painful and caused dissension in the community."

Residents feared not only being forced from their homes but also not getting enough money to purchase a suitable home in the same community, Miller said.

A 1988 Duke University shore protection study cited a nor'easter that occurred in Sea Bright four years earlier, causing $82 million in damages ? about equal to the value of all the town's buildings at the time.

"Clearly the economics of this situation dictate that Sea Bright is not worthy of salvation, although politics and other considerations may decide otherwise," the study asserted. "The prudent management alternative in this community would be the gradual removal or relocation of the buildings."

Talking about post-storm retreat is one thing; actually doing it has proven much harder.

After Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans in 2005, there was talk of abandoning some of the most flood-prone areas. But a proposal from a storm panel excluded the hard-hit Lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East, a neighborhood long home to affluent and upper-middle-class black families, touching off an uproar that scuttled the plan.

More than seven years later, much of New Orleans is thriving: unemployment is relatively low, the tourism industry is healthy, the city is preparing to host a Super Bowl, and no neighborhood has been abandoned.

But not everyone has come back. As of July 2011, the Census Bureau estimated New Orleans' population at 360,740, less than three-quarters its population in 2000. In the Lower 9th Ward, vacant lots and abandoned homes dominate the landscape, and four out of five residents who lived there before the storm have left.

The question of whether to rebuild or retreat touches many East Coast communities.

Westerly, R.I. recently got $1.1 million in federal money to buy eight low-lying properties near the Pawcatuck River that are frequently flooded. In North Carolina, some have called for deserting Highway 12 ? the only land link between Hatteras Island and the mainland ? in favor of a ferry system after Hurricane Irene and Sandy caused $14 million in damages. A state panel in Delaware found few affordable options as it considered what to do about seven Delaware Bay communities threatened by storms and rising sea levels.

Sea Bright is requiring homeowners to raise their rebuilt properties higher ? as much as 17 feet above sea level in some cases ? if they want to qualify for federal flood insurance.

Frank and Dee Kurzawa, whose home near the river took on 4 feet of water, could have to spend $30,000 to raise it. Yet they're staying put, even if it's a little higher than before.

"Even with the possibility of this happening again, we're coming back," Dee Kurzawa said. "We plan to pass this house on to our grandchildren."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie considers strategic retreat from some storm-damaged areas on the table "in a broad way," but said he wants to leave the ultimate decisions to individual towns after giving them advice later this week on how to rebuild.

Part of a neighbor's home broke loose and smashed through the wall of Karen Finkelstein's Sea Bright home. She's still "shell-shocked" in Sandy's aftermath, but can't see herself leaving.

"I want to see us come back, but with precautions in place," she said. "You're taking a risk by choosing to live in this area. But when it's home to you, it's really hard to leave the familiar place where your roots are."

____

Associated Press writers Eileen AJ Connelly in Staten Island N.Y., Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Michelle Smith in Westerly, R.I., Martha Waggoner in Raleigh N.C. and Randall Chase in Dover, Del. contributed to this story.

___

Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/worst-flooded-areas-left-sandy-162639609.html

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