Open Letter to Obama on Energy Policy

Open Letter to Obama on Energy Policy By STEVE AUSTIN for OIL-PRICE.NET, 2012/11/26

Congrats, Mr. President. We hope the second term, you know, without the burden of having to face another election, doesn't make you complacent. You must be wondering why we - dealing predominantly with oil and its cousins - are writing to you. Well, we'll come to that. In March you said, "We can't have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future ? an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy." Well said, but then, all strategies are planned for the future. Who can, Mr. President, plan for the past? (Er, not even you, the most powerful man on the planet). Let's leave it there and talk about:

First-coal

Well, it isn't so 'cool' to talk about dirty coal as, say, nuclear, gas, wind or solar energy. But, we have our reasons. Frankly, we wanted to talk exclusively about oil. With the layoff of 160 workers by Murray Energy that would have been a travesty of whatever we were to write.

There are but a few advocates for coal as a source of energy. Indeed, there ought to be no place for a polluting material as filthy as coal on the planet. No one of sound mind would support coal as THE Yet. fuel, remember, we are talking about a region with the second largest 'recoverable' coal reserves in the world. Electricity and coal, Mr. President, are still bedfellows. According to EIA (Energy Information Administration), coal accounted for 42 percent of the electricity generated in the US in 2011. 'Clean coal' as you say is- oh, come on. You think putting in severe restrictions, like control on the mercury emission, will curtail coal based power plants. In fact, they may. Already, export of coal is on the increase and India might well become the second biggest consumer of coal in two years. Soon, back home, the Environment Agency will come up with a new set of rules for power plants. So, all we say is 'slow down'. The best thing to do is not do anything. As it is, cheaper gas will naturally burn down coal. Surely, you'd have heard of the cries to avoid mixing ideology and policy. As if it were that easy. There are, according to the latest coal report of the EIA-again - 91,611 employees in the coal mines of your country. Let's shed a tear for them.

Now, to oil

Well, things are looking up. We are not saying this with an ironic twist, as you suspect. We do know that oil and gasoline prices are, well, determined by market forces. Still, you can take heart from the recent positive news. Like, US could become the world's biggest oil producer, according to the latest World energy Outlook released by of IEA (International Energy Agency), by 2020. (Still a bit too early to ask: where is this Saudi Arabia?) In this route, the economy will move northwards too. IEA says that the energy map of the world "is being redrawn by the resurgence in oil and gas production in the United States." Just four years ago, the news was filled with global warming, energy scarcity, job losses and high oil prices. Now, there is plenty of (potential) oil, and eh, potential jobs. Told you: good news. From 8.1 million barrels a day in 2011 to 11.1 million barrels a day in 2020 is the projected production. That's too good, isn't it? Sure enough, you may not have to engage the Middle-East through the prism of oil. You don't have to rely on expensive imports. The US could also, now, stop invading countries for oil (more on this later). All this is exciting news when seen from the 'fiscal cliff'. However, you may have to overcome the 'fracking revolution.' There's one underway-yes. For the US to become the leading producer of oil in the world, it has to rely on fracking to extract oil and gas from shale. Fracking is the process where water, sand and chemicals are pumped into the ground at high pressure to blast the rocks/shale to extract the fossil fuels. Fracking causes massive pollution to soil, air and water, hence the protest against the process. In spite of new technologies- like hydraulic fracturing and hydraulic drilling- that have helped recover previously inaccessible hydrocarbons- shale gas extraction retains its polluting rank. Bit tricky: if you have to come true on your promise of cutting oil imports by half in 2020, you'll have to rely on shale gas, Mr. President. In a similar situation, your predecessor tried to bring in biofuels, if you care to look at history. With high grain prices, that effort is losing its sheen. Here's a thought- how about improving the infrastructure for exports and better pipelines to the grid? Indeed, we are talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, a necessity as the $20 difference betwen a barrel of WTI crude oil and Brent crude oil keeps rising for the world to see.

Also, would you put an damper on subsidies given to the oil industry? Just so that the oil companies will pass it on to the consumers, you know. Arguably, higher oil production doesn't mean lower oil prices as oil extraction in the US is still expensive. Several other industries receive subsidies with strings attached. It's only fair that oil subsidies come with somewhat of a guarantee for US tax-payers who subsidize them.

Climate change

After Sandy, the climate change is back in focus, as it should be. As it turns out, we'd like to point out how things were in 2008 when you were quite passionate about the whole issue. In your first term in office, the bill to 'cap-and-trade' to curb the noxious carbon emissions had a rather premature death, and the solar manufacturer, Solyndra declared bankruptcy much like those greedy bankers. Still, the stimulus given as subsidies to wind, solar and biomass were unprecedented in the history of the US itself. An extension to the subsidies, perhaps? Why, even if you want to hand over tax breaks to the renewable sector, we understand, you'll need congressional support. Who said 'green energy' was easy? The solar manufacturers are facing a massive Chinese challenge and cheaper gas is giving stiff challenge to renewables. So, a fillip to renewable energy could help US become the world's second biggest source of power generation by 2012, says the IEA, as renewables are 'indispensable part of the global energy mix'. Hey, we do love solar and wind energy, and if the focus shifts to them that would be a mighty step forward.

Fuel efficiency?

Would you impose stricter fuel efficiency standards for vehicles? Then again, this is going to put pressure on the US refineries. How, you may ask. With stringent fuel standards, the oil demand could fall, you should be aware. As it is, oil consumption dropped in the U.S. last year. On the other hand, global demand for oil is expected to increase to 99.7 million barrels a day in 2035. Well, as you know, the US refineries aren't the best in the world and some of them burnt billions to upgrade and refine heavier crude from imports. With more supply, oil stagnation comes into play. Complex, but there's a solution, and here it comes: the policies do not support crude exports. So, why not lift the crude export ban?

You may understand, now, why we made a point to write to you. We've been saddled with you for another four years. You have arrived at the white house in spite of unfulfilled promises, sluggish growth and record unemployment figures. Of course, we are writing to you assuming you have greater power to make decisions in the energy sector. Of course, we realize that the House of Representatives is tethered to the hands of the Republicans and that you'll be battling budget deficits but if this term of yours is devoted to regulation, more regulation and higher energy costs, that would be such a remarkable pity.

Before we sign off, one more plea (please). When religious extremist threaten to disrupt everything associated with oil, do take their threat more seriously, e.g. not pandering to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, in other words, militants, dictators, belligerent Islamists and kings the world over. Pandering to those guys is submitting to extremism and encouraging their behaviour. To know more on this issue, do read our previous article.

Good Luck!

Source: http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/open-letter-obama-energy-policy.php

dixville notch Remember Remember The 5th Of November African painted dogs What Time Do Polls Open Krysten Ritter cnn barack obama

Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony

Link Information - Click to View

Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony
Elon Musk doesn't just want to put a person on Mars -- he wants to put 80,000. According to Space.com, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX recently spilled details about his hopes for a future Mars colony during a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 16.

Source: Wired
Posted on: Tuesday, Nov 27, 2012, 10:21am
Views: 8

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125500/Elon_Musk_Wants_to_Build________Person_Mars_Colony

walmart black friday Target Black Friday PacSun apple store bestbuy bestbuy gamestop

Rice Returns to Hill to Meet with Collins, Corker

Following a rocky meeting with her strongest Republican critics in the Senate on Tuesday, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice plans to meet with two more Republican senators on Wednesday.

Rice will sit with Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Bob Corker of Tennessee on Wednesday. Corker is next in line to be ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

?She always delivers the party line, the company line, whatever the talking points are,? Corker said, according to the Associated Press. ?I think most of us hold the secretary of state and secretary of treasury to a whole different level. We understand that they're going to support the administration, but we also want to know that they are independent enough, when administration is off-base, that they are putting pressure. I think that's what worries me most about Rice."

Rice has been widely reported as President Obama's top choice for secretary of state, and the president has fiercely defended her amid a firestorm of criticism over her statements explaining the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Libya.

After their meeting with Rice, Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte said they were more disturbed than they were before the meeting. Ayotte said on CBS that she would place a hold on the nomination if Rice were tapped for secretary of state.

?We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn't get concerning evidence that was overwhelming leading up to the attack on our consulate,? McCain said after the morning meeting with Rice.

On Tuesday, the White House and several Democrats on the Hill defended Rice against what they said was unfair criticism.

?There are no unanswered questions about Ambassador Rice's appearance on Sunday shows and the talking points that she used for those appearances that were provided by the intelligence community,? White House spokesman Jay Carney said. ?Those questions have been answered.?

Further, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the criticism ?outrageous,? saying the real questions that need answering surround how to prevent any further attacks on diplomats abroad.

?The personal attacks against Ambassador Rice by certain Republican senators have been outrageous and utterly unmoored from facts and reality,? Reid said on Tuesday, according to AP.

Following her meeting with the three senators of Tuesday, Rice also sat down with retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

If Rice were to be nominated as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?s successor, she would only need five Republicans to reach 60 votes and cloture for the nomination.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rice-returns-hill-meet-collins-corker-073854033--politics.html

Jcpenny ohio state football cyber monday lupus iCarly banana republic gap

Eurasianet.org spreads misinformation about the Armenian church in Nakhichevan

14:47, 28 November, 2012

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 28, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian church built in the 19th century in Nakhichevan has not been merely turned into a cattle shed, but also was introduced as an "Albanian sacred place." The Chairman of a fund studying Armenian architecture Samvel Karapetyan referred to the misinformation published in Eurasianet.org website in his videoblog. As reports "Armenpress" Samvel Karapetyan stated that in the picture of the Eurasianet article is depicted St. Gevorg Church of Dashbulag village, which was entirely Armenian populated before 1918. The church was built in 1823, when "the Albanians" had left the stage 1000 years ago.

Samvel Karapetyan states: "Azerbaijan paid USD 4, 5 million to import cows from Germany and Austria, the photographer took the picture of these cows in Dashbulag, which was entirely Armenian populated before 1918. During Musafat administration the Turkish army massacred all the Armenians of the aforementioned village on their road to Baku. One can clearly see in the picture that the church became a cattle shed without doors. Under the picture there is an inscription saying that this is an Albanian church. According to Azerbaijani fabrication the Albanians are their ancestors. Hence, it becomes a monument constructed by the Turkish Christians, which is being treated as a cattle shed.

But the fact is that the church in Dashbulag was called after St. Gevorg, built in 1828. Among other things it is noteworthy that there had been records about the construction works. There is information about the aforesaid church in "the Albanian Country and its Neighbors" by Bishop Makar Barkhudaryants."

Viewed 358 times

Source: http://armenpress.am/eng/news/700858/

meryl streep oscars school shooting ohio billy crystal oscar winners 2012 billy crystal oscars 2012 angelina jolie oscars chardon high school

Automakers gear up for a green holiday season

5 hrs.

Paul A. Eisenstein, NBC News contributor

If the upcoming L.A. Auto Show is any indication, American motorists are in for a green holiday season.

A preliminary estimate shows as many as 50 new cars, trucks and crossovers will make their debut during the annual event, the first big U.S. auto show of the 2013 model?year.?

A sizable chunk of those new models will be battery-based, including everything from conventional hybrids to pure battery-electric vehicles. But the L.A.?show also will point out how even conventional gasoline powertrain technology continues to become more and more environmentally friendly.

Among the most significant debuts already announced for Los Angeles, Honda will introduce its first plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle, the Accord PHEV.??

Ford will offer a pair of its own plug-ins, the Fusion Energi sedan and the C-Max Energi ?people-mover.???

The list of pure battery-electric vehicles, or BEVs, will include the new Fiat 500e and the Chevrolet Spark EV, General Motors first fully electrified model since it pulled the EV1 from production just before the turn of the new Millennium.

During a recent two-day media background session, GM revealed some ambitious plans for its electrification program ? which began with the December 2010 launch of the Chevrolet Volt plug-in and which will soon add both the Spark EV and the upcoming Cadillac ELR plug-in. In all, the maker hopes to sell 500,000 battery-based vehicles between now and 2017.

?Plug-based solutions will play a significant role in our technology portfolio going forward,? said global product development chief Mary Barra.

Nissan may be even more ambitious.? Before the end of the decade, it intends to be selling as many as 500,000 battery-based vehicles annually, with products including the planned Infiniti LE battery-electric vehicle set to join the Nissan Leaf it launched about the same time the Chevy Volt hit showrooms.

For its part, the Fusion and C-Max Energi plug-ins will be part of a wave of eight advanced battery vehicles Ford plans to launch within the next couple years, according to Ken Czubay, the maker?s vice president of U.S. Marketing, Sales and Service.

But not everyone is quite so upbeat. Though he will try to wear a smile during the debut of the 500e, Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has dubbed battery cars ?economic lemons,? a reference to the reality that the underlying technology is so expensive manufacturers have to absorb a significant portion of the price tag in order to win over consumers.??

By some estimates, the current crop of BEVs and PHEVs cost at least $10,000 more to produce than they are selling for ??before a buyer works in the available federal and state tax credits.

And even then, a new study by J.D. Power and Associates warns that, ?Electric vehicles will remain a very small part of the U.S. market unless automakers can lower prices and demonstrate the economic benefits to consumers.?

No wonder the brand new Honda Fit EV and Toyota RAV4-EV models that will be displayed in L.A. will only be sold at a limited number of California dealerships for at least the next few years.? Critics deride those offerings as ?compliance cars,? built only to satisfy strict zero-emission vehicle, or ZEV, mandates enacted by the demanding California Air Resources Board.

?No one wants to be locked out of the California market,? acknowledges John Mendel, the top American executive at Honda, one of the major makers required to meet the ZEV rules.

Ironically, the L.A.?Auto Show will, yet again, give skeptics the opportunity to promote alternatives to battery power.? The new Dodge Dart Aero model approaches the fuel-efficiency of comparably sized hybrids, note the organizers of the annual Green Car of the Year Award which is announced during the media days at the LA show.

The new Mazda CX-5 SkyActiv crossover will also be in contention, another model that relies on the latest breakthroughs in conventional gas power.?

And the Ford Fusion was named a finalist as much for its advanced, gas-powered EcoBoost engine as for its hybrid and plug-in hybrid options. Only the new Toyota Prius C and Ford C-Max models, among the five finalists, are exclusively battery-based.

The Green Car of the Year Award has notably honored diesels on several occasions. And past winner Audi will bring four new diesels to the LA Auto Show this year, including high-mileage versions of its A6, A7, A8 and Q5 models. Set to start rolling out next year, they?re expected to deliver hybrid-like fuel economy ?but without sacrificing performance,? proclaims Audi of America President Scott Keogh.

While Californians may like to think of their state as the greenest in the country, the reality is that they still appreciate muscle. According to Mercedes-Benz, a full 25 percent of all the maker?s high-performance AMG models are sold in Southern California.

So, no surprise that among the several debuts planned by the German maker it will reveal the fastest production car it has ever built, the 622-horsepower SLS AMG Black Series. (For the moment, Mercedes has not yet committed to bringing a battery-powered version of the 2-seater, the SLS E-Cell, to the U.S. market.)

Bentley, Jaguar and Porsche will also reveal new high-performance products at the LA Convention Center. But these days, one can be mean and green. Or, at least, greener. The new Porsche Carrera 4S will get a big bump in horsepower ? even while delivering about 15% better fuel economy than the outgoing model.

And BMW will bring to LA a version of its upcoming i8 plug-in, the first in a new line of sporty, battery-based vehicles that will also include the i3 battery-electric city car.

The LA Auto Show has a tradition of focusing on green technology.? But California itself has a history of setting the trends that eventually sweep across the rest of America. So what you see at the Los Angeles Convention Center later this month is likely to influence what you drive wherever you live in the years ahead.?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/automakers-gear-green-holiday-season-1C7185476

affirmative action helicon zac efron and taylor swift real housewives of orange county bloom energy franklin graham jambalaya

New Report: Workplace Bullying Should be Treated as Work Health ...

From the Clayton Utz News Alert Service:

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment has tabled its report into workplace bullying, ?Workplace bullying: we just want it to stop?. The Committee made a total of 23 recommendations, grouped into six categories:

The definition of workplace bullying and assessing when it is occurring;

• Legislative and regulatory changes;
• Regulatory implementation;
• Workplace cultures;
• Tools for prevention and resolution; and
• Enforcement and remedies.

A changed definition of workplace bullying

A telling feature of the report?s focus is the recommended new definition of workplace bullying ? ?repeated, unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or group of workers, that creates a risk to health and safety?.

This shifts the focus of workplace bullying from being an HR issue and places it squarely in the work health and safety category. Businesses and undertakings must then apply standard work health and safety risk management principles (just as they do to other hazards in the workplace) in managing workplace bullying, as well as being able to manage complaints of bullying with the robust tools that health and safety provides.

Recommended tools for dealing with workplace bullying

Many recommendations deal with tools for employers and employees to recognise and manage bullying, tools for training, developing workplace cultures and preventing and resolving complaints.

One of the more controversial recommendations (and the subject of a dissenting report by Coalition MPs) is a recommendation that the provisions of the draft code of practice on Managing the Risk of Workplace Bullying not only be finalised as soon as possible but that the code provisions be implemented as regulations in the model Work Health and Safety Regulations. Of course, any regulatory implementation will take some time given:

the growing number of voices saying that businesses are already drowning under regulatory/compliance overkill; and

that it will take each of the States to implement the regulatory reform to their regulations (with those States with Coalition governments likely to back the dissenting report by Coalition MPs).

Other recommendations on workplace bullying

Other important recommendations include:

• implementation of a national resolution service;
• national arrangements that would allow individuals to access an adjudication process. This national mediation or adjudication process is also likely to take a great deal of Commonwealth/State negotiation before any formal resolution/adjudication process can be formalised; and
• a national approach to adopting the Victorian legislative changes under Brodie?s Law. Brodie?s Law amended the offence of ?stalking? in the Victorian Crimes Act 1958 to ?expressly include making threats, using abusive or threatening words, performing abusive or offensive acts, or acting in a way that could reasonably be expected to cause the victim harm or self-harm?. However, it should be noted that there may be constitutional issues in making a national or harmonised approach to such changes to State criminal laws

While these proposals may take some time to result in legislative changes, it is clear that bullying and harassment continue to be complex issues that are no longer seen as a just a behavioural/HR problem. They cannot be resolved in isolation. Business must ensure that they have a clear and definitive approach to managing workplace bullying, centring their efforts and processes within their work health and safety management systems as well as their HR function. Bullying is a clear and present workplace hazard that must be managed as such.

Source

Learn about Barringtons Online Workplace Bullying Training here.

?Blayne Webb, Director, Barringtons?

Source: http://www.getprotected.com.au/2012/new-report-workplace-bullying-should-be-treated-as-work-health-and-safety-issue/

davey jones dead monsanto boston weather dr seuss birthday jennifer garner jennifer garner romney michigan

'Walking Dead' Governor Will Make Rick 'Suffer'

Actor David Morrissey tells MTV News that his 'Walking Dead' villain will deal with his new 'noisy neighbors.'
By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Kara Warner

Andrew Lincoln in "The Walking Dead"
Photo: AMC

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1697848/walking-dead-governor-will-make-rick-suffer.jhtml

neville neville george lucas numerology the game new hampshire primary hue jackson

Miley Cyrus Birthday Presents Include Pig, Big Booty Hoe

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/11/miley-cyrus-birthday-presents-include-pig-big-booty-hoe/

gotye divine mercy cabin in the woods the legend of korra three stooges the three stooges the bee gees

Everplaces Comes Out Of Beta With App Individually Tailored For Travellers

Location-based note-sharing app Findery, which famously had to change its name in July, thinks it might be onto a winner, creating a site for people to bookmark locations. But in fact, it was pre-dated by a European startup which today comes out of beta. We've been tracking the slick Everplaces since March - we called it a Pinterest for location - and have been impressed with its ability to create a destination app for travellers out of allowing them to bookmark and share interesting locations. It now launches a full-blown new iOS app.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CSfkSO1IyrY/

kratom broncos broncos lehigh walking dead season finale matt flynn denver news

Gold Fields Q3 earnings fall as strikes bite

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Gold Fields, the world's fourth largest gold producer, posted a 19 percent fall in third quarter earnings on Thursday that fell short of expectations as a fire and illegal strikes at its South African mines ate into profit.

Gold Fields, a South Africa-based miner with global operations, said adjusted earnings were 202 cents compared to 250 cents in the previous quarter. A Reuters poll of six analysts had forecast 212.8 cents.

Production dropped 6 percent to 810,000 ounces in the three months from July to September after the company lost 30,000 ounces to a deadly fire that shut part of its KDC operations near Johannesburg for months.

A further 35,000 ounces were lost during the wildcat strikes at its South African operations.

Striking miners only returned to work in early November, prompting the company to cut its 2012 production target to 3.3 million ounces from 3.4 million ounces.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gold-fields-q3-earnings-fall-strikes-bite-062657941--finance.html

calvin johnson michael pineda charles taylor bruins boston bruins carl crawford mad cow disease

Oil prices fall as Israel-Hamas truce holds

BANGKOK (AP) ? The price of oil fell Monday as a truce between Israel and the militant group Hamas that stopped fighting in the Gaza Strip appeared to hold despite a confrontation late last week.

Benchmark oil for January delivery was down 33 cents to $87.95 per barrel at midday Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Friday, the contract rose 90 cents to close at $88.28 a barrel on the Nymex after Israeli troops fired on crowds in Gaza surging toward a border fence, killing one Palestinian.

Prior to the shooting, oil prices had been falling, thanks mostly to optimism that the cease-fire agreement between the two sides would prevent a broader conflict in the region that could disrupt crude supplies. The truce was struck last Wednesday to end to an eight-day Israeli offensive against Gaza militants who had fired rockets into Israel, but remains fragile.

Traders were also keeping a close eye on developments in Egypt, said independent oil analyst Stephen Schork. Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Sunday moved to grant himself near-absolute power, sparking street clashes between his supporters and opponents.

Brent, which is used to set prices for many international varieties of oil, fell 33 cents to $111.05 a barrel.

Other futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange:

? Wholesale gasoline lost 0.2 cent to $2.719 a gallon.

? Natural gas lost 5 cents to $3.851 per 1,000 cubic feet.

? Heating oil was unchanged at $3.086 a gallon.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-11-26-Oil%20Prices/id-16f6bcb7ac094896b6535227e723f2b2

kate middleton amanda bynes Revolution TV Show bankofamerica revolution rosh hashanah rosh hashanah

Egypt's Mursi to meet judicial council on decree

While authorities have pegged thick Texas fog as the main culprit in the 140-car Thanksgiving pileup on I-10 just southwest of Beaumont, big rig truckers posting on Internet message boards suggest that civilian and professional drivers maintaining potentially reckless speeds, despite the conditions, may have been another major contributing factor.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-mursi-meet-judicial-council-decree-180449179.html

Canoodle Isaac path Tropical Storm Isaac path Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Isaac Path Isaac Hurricane earthquake san diego

112 killed in fire at Bangladesh garment factory

Relatives of garment factory workers killed in a fire cry as they come to collect bodies from a mortuary in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a late Saturday night fire that raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday. (AP Photo/Khurshed Rinku)

Relatives of garment factory workers killed in a fire cry as they come to collect bodies from a mortuary in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a late Saturday night fire that raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday. (AP Photo/Khurshed Rinku)

Bangladeshi firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, late Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday. (AP Photo/Hasan Raza)

Bangladeshi police officers stand guard outside a burnt garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a late Saturday night fire that raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday. (AP Photo/Khurshed Rinku)

A Bangladeshi police official inspects the burnt garment factory in the Savar neighborhood outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday Nov. 25, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a late Saturday night fire that raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday.(AP Photo/ khurshed Rinku)

A Bangladeshi police officer stands guard outside the burnt garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. At least 112 people were killed in a late Saturday night fire that raced through the multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday. (AP Photo/ khurshed Rinku)

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) ? At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, an official said Sunday.

The blaze broke out at the seven-story factory operated by Tazreen Fashions late Saturday. By Sunday morning, firefighters had recovered 100 bodies, fire department Operations Director Maj. Mohammad Mahbub told The Associated Press.

He said another 12 people who had suffered injuries after jumping from the building to escape the fire later died at hospitals. The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said.

Local media reported that up to 124 people were killed in the fire. The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, and authorities have ordered an investigation.

Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.

Relatives of the factory workers were frantically looking for their loved ones. Sabina Yasmine said she saw the body of her daughter-in-law, who died in the fire, but had no trace of her son, who also worked at the factory.

"Oh, Allah, where's my soul? Where's my son?" wailed Yasmine, who works at another factory in the area. "I want the factory owner to be hanged. For him, many have died, many have gone."

Mahbub said firefighters recovered 69 bodies from the second floor of the factory alone. He said most of the victims had been trapped inside the factory, located just outside of Dhaka, with no emergency exits leading outside the building.

Many workers who had taken shelter on the roof of the factory were rescued, but firefighters were unable to save those who were trapped inside, Mahbub said.

He said the fire broke out on the ground floor, which was used as a warehouse, and spread quickly to the upper floors.

"The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor," Mahbub said. "So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building."

"Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower," he said.

Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition. The recovered bodies were kept in rows on the premise of a nearby school.

Army soldiers and paramilitary border guards were deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered at the scene, Mahbub said. He would not say how many people were still missing.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed shock at the loss of so many lives in the blaze and asked authorities to conduct thorough search-and-rescue operations.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said it would stand by the victims' families.

Bangladesh's garment factories make clothes for brands including Wal-Mart, JC Penney, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Carrefour and Tesco.

Separately, a flyover under construction fell onto a busy market, leaving at least 14 people dead including three construction workers in southeastern city of Chittagong, an official said Sunday.

Local fire official Abdul Mannan said the concrete structure collapsed on Saturday night, and authorities recovered the bodies by Sunday morning from under the debris in the second-largest city after Dhaka.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-11-25-AS-Bangladesh-Factory-Fire/id-d0bcd1d7c90f4ade8b389d64dc661af3

deion sanders creutzfeldt jakob disease the lone ranger yu darvish mad cow pennsylvania primary jerome simpson

Susan Rice battles critics as abrasive style takes toll

(Advisory: please note language in paragraph seven)

UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Susan Rice has had a series of diplomatic triumphs as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. President Barack Obama, an old friend, showed he has her back when last week he publicly challenged her Republican critics over the Benghazi controversy to "go after me" rather than her. She knew former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from the age of 4.

And yet Rice is now fighting for her political future. Her chances of becoming the next secretary of state - replacing Hillary Clinton - have been significantly damaged.

Senior Republicans, such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have said they will oppose her getting the job, signaling a confirmation battle if Obama decides to nominate her. Some critics in the media, such as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, have said she is unsuitable for the position.

The immediate source of a lot of the criticism is her appearances on Sunday morning television shows in September five days after the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans had been killed in Benghazi.

Her critics bitterly complain that she misled the American public by suggesting that the assault was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than an organized assault by affiliates of al Qaeda. During the U.S. presidential campaign, supporters of Republican candidate Mitt Romney seized on the issue to attack Obama.

The antipathy in Washington and elsewhere, though, is based on more than a series of TV interviews. While U.N. diplomats and U.S. officials who have dealt with Rice praise the intellect of the 48-year-old former Rhodes scholar and graduate of Stanford and Oxford, they say she has won few popularity contests during her meteoric rise.

Diplomats on the 15-nation U.N. Security Council privately complain of Rice's aggressive negotiating tactics, describing her with terms like "undiplomatic" and "sometimes rather rude." They attributed some blunt language to Rice - "this is crap," "let's kill this" or "this is bullshit."

"She's got a sort of a cowboy-ish attitude," one Western diplomat said. "She has a tendency to treat other countries as mere (U.S.) subsidiaries."

Two other diplomats - all three were male - supported this view.

"She's not easy," said David Rothkopf, the top manager and editor-at-large of Foreign Policy magazine. "I'm not sure I'd want to take her on a picnic with my family, but if the president wants her to be secretary of state, she'll work hard."

Indeed, along with a "no-nonsense" style, Rice has the most important ingredient for a successful secretary of state - a close relationship with the U.S. president, Rothkopf said.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, himself not known for mincing words, publicly admonished Rice after she said Russian calls for an investigation into civilian deaths in Libya caused by NATO were a "bogus" ploy.

"Really this Stanford dictionary of expletives must be replaced by something more Victorian, because certainly this is not the language in which we intend to discuss matters with our partners in the Security Council," said Churkin, mocking Rice's education at Stanford.

More immediately at the United Nations, she faces criticism from human rights activists and some diplomats because of U.S. opposition to public criticism of Rwanda for its role in the worsening conflict in the Congo.

BREAKING HER SILENCE

Rice, who declined to comment for this article, broke her silence on the Benghazi controversy on Wednesday, defending her September statements about the attack.

But she did so on Thanksgiving eve when many Americans were traveling and when her comments were likely to be overshadowed by news of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

"I relied solely and squarely on the information provided to me by the intelligence community," Rice told reporters at the United Nations. "I made clear that the information provided to me was preliminary and that our investigations would give us the definitive answers."

While Rice said some statements about her by McCain were "unfounded," she may have been trying to mend fences when she added: "I look forward to having the opportunity at the appropriate time to discuss all of this with him."

People who know Rice say she is finding it hard to keep up her spirits during a long autumn of criticism. "It's not easy being attacked publicly by people who have their facts wrong day after day," one U.S. official said.

Rice's defenders say that a lot of the attacks smacked of sexism as the same tough manner she can display has been seen as an asset in some legendary male American foreign affairs officials.

Rothkopf, who was an official in President Bill Clinton's administration, cited James Baker and Henry Kissinger as exemplary secretaries of state.

They were "tough infighters who broke a few eggs and made some enemies. They are admired for their toughness, and (Rice) is attacked for her abrasiveness," he said.

SOME SAY EMINENTLY QUALIFIED

Certainly, Rice has won some accolades for pushing the U.N. Security Council to adopt new Iran and North Korea sanctions, helping secure the toughest U.N. measures to date against those two countries over their nuclear programs. Rice also played a key role in negotiating last year's war resolution on Libya.

Current and former U.S. officials aligned with the Obama administration say Rice is eminently qualified for the post of secretary of state.

They say the attacks on her during the presidential campaign were part of Republican efforts to frame the Benghazi assault as a terrorist attack, possibly linked to al Qaeda, on Obama's watch.

"The president has a great record in fighting al Qaeda, so (Republicans) try to find a way of attacking his record on al Qaeda," said Richard Clarke, who was Rice's boss when she worked at the U.S. National Security Council during Bill Clinton's first term.

Rice became an official in the Clinton administration in the 1990s, at the National Security Council and State. Then, under Obama, she became the youngest woman and the first black female to become U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

She grew up close to the levers of power. She is the daughter of the late Emmett Rice, who was a Cornell University economics professor and member of the Federal Reserve Board of governors. Albright, who is a family friend, recommended Rice to become assistant secretary of state.

"We often traveled together and I took her advice very seriously," said Albright, who served as U.N. ambassador from 1993 to 1997 and secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. "I think she is one of the smartest people I know in national security issues."

REPAIRED TIES

While some Republicans have accused her of sacrificing U.S. interests in her effort to woo U.N. diplomats and also complain that she is too often absent during U.N. Security Council votes, neither criticism is given much credibility by other diplomats in New York.

They say Rice, whose husband and children live in Washington and who is a member of Obama's Cabinet, has an advantage as a U.N. negotiator because other nations' delegations know that when she takes a position on an issue, the president is almost certainly behind her.

A U.N. official said that when Rice took office in 2009 as Obama's U.N. envoy, she repaired much damage done to the U.S. image at the United Nations, an organization often criticized by the administration of former President George W. Bush.

"We have paid the price of stiff-arming the U.N. and spurning our international partners," Rice told an audience in 2009. Washington quickly paid up billions of dollars in dues and said it would work with the United Nations whenever possible.

In late 2009 and 2010, Rice led negotiations on a fourth U.N. sanctions resolution against Iran over a nuclear program that Tehran insists is for peaceful electricity generation but Western powers and their allies suspect is for weapons.

Britain and France, which had drafted the three previous U.N. sanctions resolutions on Iran, were reluctant to allow Rice to be the "pen holder" for a fourth, U.N. envoys said, mostly out of fear the Obama administration would offer a weak draft because of its determination to boost engagement with Tehran.

They were wrong. Rice's draft was far tougher than expected.

The Security Council passed it in June 2010 and European diplomats who worked on it acknowledge that it created one of the toughest sanctions regimes in U.N. history.

DUMBSTRUCK

Then came the battle for control of Libya in early 2011. After weeks of discussions within the divided U.S. administration, Obama decided that Washington could support a U.N. Security Council mandate for outside military forces to use "all necessary measures" short of an occupation to protect Libyan civilians from leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

The British and French were dumbstruck. Their initial reaction when Rice presented U.S. demands for a Libya resolution was that it was a ploy to get the Russians to veto it.

But then they realized she was serious.

Within 36 hours of the resolution passing on March 17, 2011, "the French were bombing Gaddafi's forces as they prepared to attack Benghazi," said one senior Western diplomat involved in the negotiations. "The Americans pushed the process well beyond what we thought we could achieve in the council, and it succeeded."

Still, it is far from smooth sailing for Rice. Security Council diplomats and human rights activists have more recently criticized her over Rwanda.

Her involvement with the East African nation began in the 1990s, when she was a National Security Council official responsible for international organizations and peacekeeping.

Still reeling from its 1993 failure in Somalia, the United States under Clinton did virtually nothing to stop the Rwanda genocide in 1994.

Nearly two decades later, council diplomats and rights groups accuse Rice of protecting Rwanda and President Paul Kagame, a charge that Rice's defenders say is baseless.

U.N. experts who monitor compliance with sanctions on Congo have accused Kagame's Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebellion in eastern Congo. M23, which is suspected of mass killings, rape and other atrocities, on Tuesday captured the city of Goma.

Rwanda denies supporting M23 but council diplomats and U.N. officials say those denials are hardly credible.

In June the experts sent a report on the allegations to the Security Council's Congo sanctions committee, where council diplomats said Rice blocked its publication for weeks. U.S. officials denied blocking it and said Washington only wanted Kigali to have a chance to respond.

Just on Monday, diplomats told Reuters, the U.S. delegation again insisted that Rwanda not be named in a resolution - which was passed by the council on Tuesday - criticizing M23 rebels' seizure of Goma.

Rice's defenders say she is following instructions from Washington, and the U.S. assessment is that singling out Rwanda for backing M23 would not be constructive. They also deny that she is trying to protect Rwanda or Kagame, calling instead for negotiations between Kigali and Kinshasa.

That doesn't wash with some human rights activists. "Despite its influence on Rwanda, in public the U.S. government has been inexplicably silent," said Philippe Bolopion, U.N. director for Human Rights Watch.

(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Martin Howell and Xavier Briand)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/susan-rice-battles-critics-abrasive-style-takes-toll-051050853.html

lsu crimson tide crimson tide 2013 ford fusion bcs jay z glory alabama crimson tide

Become An Online Marketing Expert - Internet Marketing Search ...

Most modern businesses utilize Internet promotion. By using search engine optimization techniques, targeted advertising and other Internet promotion techniques, your sales will grow. If you would like to learn more about affiliate marketing, you may find the following information useful.

Another option is putting it together with a product that is similar and selling it for a good price. You should always state your policies in clear, accessible language so as not to misrepresent yourself.

Publish a glossary on your site to gain credibility. Not only is a glossary useful to readers, but it is also rich in keywords, helping your site show up more often on search engines. If people are searching for these words, they will land at your site.

An FAQ page is a great way to familiarize people with your products. For each issue or question, write a helpful answer, and be sure to mention your products as a solution. Make sure, however, that you do not try too hard to ?sell? your products, as this could turn off readers.

Try adding a blog to sites that don?t change regularly. Google and the ranks like new content, if you do not provide it, your site will move down in rankings. Blogging is a great way to add new content, painlessly. Most blogging platforms even allow you to schedule future posts in advance so, take advantage of this feature to keep your blog updated.

A CRM?or customer relationship management?database can really boost your online marketing efforts. This will help you keep track of your customers so you will be able to effectively market towards your various customer groups. Another benefit is that you will see what extras your current customers might need, which you can then market directly to them.

Try offering free stuff on your site! An excellent freebie to give to your customers is the ability to download a protected article that others may need to pay for. For example, you might offer clients in the salon industry an article about attracting new clients, or designing new services. The main point is that offering something for free is a great way to entice people.

Try mobile marketing. Customers can have the opportunity to subscribe to text alerts for sales or promotions. This is the latest in digital advertising, and it will be a boon to any Internet marketing campaign.

Know what audience you want to reach, and what sort of content will be most attractive to it. Once you have determined who the target audience is, it should not be difficult to come up with content that will attract that audience to your site repeatedly.

Security is extremely important in a payment system. Consider PayPal or a comparable service for secure transactions on your site. Another idea is to allow your customers to have password protected accounts prior to ordering.

The more ways they can pay, the better your business might do. You might think that offering credit card payments is sufficient, but many customers prefer using PayPal or direct debits from their checking accounts.

A good internet marketing strategy should always include giving your customers a money back guarantee if something is not right. Your customers will feel safer and you will be more reputable. It is a lot easier for customers to trust a vendor who has the confidence in his or her products to take on the risk of a money-back guarantee.

Try incorporating different headlines into your site and on any E-zines you put out. The title should catch the reader?s attention and highlight your offering from your site. In fact, the idea is to grab the visitor?s attention, so to that end it doesn?t have to be a headline in the classical sense. You could add a cool graphic image. Make sure your images are in the proper format for the media where they will be published.

Try to get notable and respected people within your industry to give testimonials or advice on your site. To avoid legal issues down the road, ensure you get the proper rights before publishing anything. Use the interviews in article and submit to directories featuring E-zines. You can get a lot of traffic and build your reputation up a lot, giving you a lot of credibility.

Email marketing is an important, beneficial tool. Keep your emails clean and keep them protected. Avoid free email services that delete messages automatically when they get old. It may be important to access these emails later. If you have sensitive information contained in your emails, consider security and archiving methods to keep them safe.

Consider creating a web page for comments and customer reviews of your products and services. Customers like to post their actual experiences with your products and these can provide you with new sales, too.

In conclusion, many businesses use Internet promotion to sell products and services. Internet promotion uses methods such as search engine optimization and advertising to generate sales interest. If you remember the advice in this article, you can use Affiliate marketing to seriously boost interest in your own products and services.

Internet Marketing, SEO

_________________________________________
Here are some other Internet Marketing/SEO related sites that I would like to share with you.
Thanks for visiting Website Host Direct reviews!

The New Easy Way to Get a Page 1 Google Ranking - CBS News
AOL.com Search Video - Internet Marketing Funnel Online
Template:SearchEngineOptimization - Wikipedia the free ...
Flickr: The Milestone Internet Marketing for Hotels Pool
SEO Services Company OneSEOCompany.com Highlights the ...

Related posts:

1. Increase Your Internet Marketing Skills With These Expert Tips!
2. Online Marketing And Your Business: Tips To Succeed
3. Make A Competitive Online Marketing Plan With These Suggestions
4. Expand Your Business With Online Marketing Tips
5. Use The Internet To Your Advantage ? Follow These Expert Tips

Source: http://www.websitehostdirect.com/become-an-online-marketing-expert-start-with-these-must-know-tips/

tornado in dallas texas the island president the maldives harper lee mega millions numbers the fray seahawks new uniforms 2012

Exclusive: African Audio Marketplace Waabeh Helping Artists To ...

• By?TechMoran
• November 24, 2012

?

Waabeh is the slang word for great or awesome in sheng ? (hybrid language of English and Swahili). The name captures what ?Waabeh aspires to be; a great platform, providing great and locally relevant audio content.

Apart from Music, Waabeh also has Podcasts, Audio Books, Radio documentaries and Educational Material.?Currently Waabeh is available as a Web-based and Android application, with tracks ready for?listeners?to discover.

?

TechMoran caught up with the awesome team and this is what they told us.

What is Waabeh?

Waabeh, Africa?s Audio Marketplace as is called has the latest music by musicians from Kenya and across the continent. Waabeh allows users to listen to music or download it from the Internet. Buyers though have to pay for the tracks through a mobile money system already integrated.

We currently have over 500 tracks and the numbers keep growing daily.

We have music ?from JustaBand, Eric Wainaina, as well as timeless tracks from , Mercy Myra, Five Alive, KSouth and???Jongo love? a 12 part fast paced drama set in grimy ghetto of ?Jongo? in Nairobi, as well as excerpts from the Kenyan Constitution.
So far have partnered with various musicians and content producers to make their music and content available on Waabeh.

Just recently Kisima Awards used our?platform?to stream all the nominated music online for?listeners across the world to listen, engage and vote for the various nominees online.

We further partnered with another Kenyan musician, Kevin Provoke to push his new single to over 200 people in one day and we just concluded working on an audio format of Kenya?s new constitution in partnership with the National Council of Kenya Law Reporting. The audio format is now online.

?
Who is your competition?
We do not have much of competition in the African market. The closest is mdundo a Kenyan a music-only scratchcard service and Spintlet a similar music-only download service based in Nigeria, focused mainly on the West African Market.
There is also Itunes & Soundcloud that have very little African audio content and primarily serve users based in the Europe and the Americas.

?

?

What inspired you to launch Waabeh?
Focus.?Africa is the only market that has seen steady overall growth over the last 5 years and the? projections for the next 15 years are astronomical. We realised that surprisingly for a continent such great potential, a billion people and 1000s of different cultures, no one has created a product that allows us to tell, ?distribute, and archive our stories in culturally relevant manner: through an audio platform.

Our culture is still primarily transmitted verbally and the problem with this that it gets lost, diluted and we are unable ultimately to turn it into a beneficial resource. We saw the vast opportunity presented by this as well the growth of smartphones, and internet access across the continent.

Having also worked in Kenya as well as Pan African entertainment industry for the last 12 years, I saw the challenges faced by audio creators with amazing content but lack the ability to distribute it.
While there could be similar products Waabeh?s core platform is built on the ability to stream, download and it is an audio market, which makes it very different from the rest of our would be competitors that have only focused on a small segment, music, and their products are mainly targeted at the youth [ 13- 25] and are only download based.

?
Take us through your different features?
Waabeh is an Audio content publisher that has two kinds of users, the audio consumer and the publishers. For the consumer, our biggest offering is to be able to stream content through the various channels, Apps, Mobile Web, and Web.

?

Our content is available in four main categories:
Music, Life, Education and Soul. Music provides the best of African music, Life provides material that is meant to make life richer and fuller, here we have amongst other information the constitution of Kenya, Education provides Audio books, we are currently working at making available all current 8-4-4 set-books in drammatised audio format here.

In Soul, we cater for the inner man, and here we provide church sermons and motivational talks.
In addition they can be able to download the content, depending on the publishing rights some of the content is available free for download e.g. the constitution, and the church sermons, while content like Music and books need to be paid for download.

Based on our algorithms we are able to determine some of the most popular listened-to content, and we offer ?mix-tape of the week? to our users.
On the other hand we have the content publishers, for them, each has a way for creating their profile, where they can upload,manage their content and interact with their funs, and track how their work is doing through our unique and customised reputation management system that combines the power ?gota?, listenership and pageviews.

In addition, we have studied the market and acknowledge that there is very little of locally relevant content easily available for distribution, therefore, for content publishers who do not have their work or would want to have their work in audio format, we offer recording services that guarantees high quality audio for downloading and streaming, which they can make available in all other mediums.

We offer a feature that allows listeners to access content either directly from the Waabeh platform, but also within the publishers own website through an?embedded?audio player streaming within the confines of their websites, as well as a badge.

?
Have you raised any seed funding or are bootstrapping?
Waabeh is a labor of love, fully bootstrapped by the founders and funded by them. We opted to
make sure we have a product that works well before sourcing for any outside source of funding.
This allows us some level of independence on the growth of our product.

?
How do you want to make money out of Waabeh?
Waabeh has three revenue streams: Advertising, Streaming and Downloads.

?

Advertising; our projected biggest source of revenue is from advertising. Unlike traditional advertising, we will have advertising 3-15sec unobtrusive ads embedded in all the audio content.
Streaming; we will have premier content that users will be charged an affordable monthly access fee.
Downloads; this is a traditional model, whereby, users pay to download content.
Payment is through mobile money, credit cards and our own proprietary credits system.

?

Eric Wainaina

?

How will Musicians or the public benefit?
Waabeh is not only a music platform, but it also is place to listen to all kinds of audio content.
It empowers the audio content creators by providing a platform that allows the distribution and monetization their content.

?

?

?Built in tools on the platform for musicians and audio creators the benefits are threefold:
First we solve the problem of obscurity and invisibility by having an easy way to get discovered
over multiple platforms[ online, native applications for Android, Nokia, BB and IOS].

Secondly,our multiple income streams ie, subscription, advertising, downloads and streaming ensure
more income avenues are now available to them. Thirdly, by dealing with audio creators directly
Waabeh eliminates middlemen, pariahs and the headache of monetization of their content.
Other benefits include detailed statistics about their content usage and their audiences.
For the users, Waabeh solves the problem of discovering great African audio content as well as painless and legal way of obtaining it. We believe that the users of non music audio content [Education and Soul] will eventually be our largest user base as they will be coming to us to solve their immediate problems e.g. ability to access to education curriculum on the phone as an audio book.
In two years, what do you want to achieve?
This year we have just only set up in Nairobi, Kenya, in the next two quarters we plan to firmly expand our network across the country to audio content creators [publishers, podcasters, independent radio producers] as well as expanding to the rest of Eastern Africa.

We also want to be the first service that is synonymous with distribution music and audio, on the African continent.

Kevin Provoke

?

Who is on your management team?
The 4 person Waabeh team [ Tim, King, Jeff and Ciku] bring on board their solid reputations, stellar resum?s and a combined 25 years in Development , UI and system design, Music business and branding. The team is passionate about ?solving problems Africa?s problems using technology.

?
Tim
Waabeh?s Chief Excitement Officer, Tim is a musician who loves tech and whose main responsibility?is to get the world excited about Waabeh. Tim has worked in the Music business for 12 years?gaining such notable clients such as Warner Bros Gaming LA,Tiger Aspect, Universal Music?Group, Endemol, BBC, ActionAid, Safaricom and Reuters.
Kingori ? [ ki NG ? ri ]
Our Binary Masseur [CTO] is in charge of making sure the 1s and 0s make sense. With vast?experience in engineering and development, Kingori is our international man of coding mystery.

Jeff
Waabeh?s Pixel Architect whose sole responsibility is to ensure everything looks and feels great . His?work has been seen offline as well as online for a wide array of clients such as, Capital?Colors, Ihub, Pivot East, Azma Clothing, Apprentice Hub, Rock Resorts.
Ciku [ sh ? K ? ]
Waabeh?s official Gangnam Styler is a recent addition that completed our team, has a?background in system design and has worked in different capacities across Africa.

?

Read 619 times!

Related posts:

1. My African Idea Wants To Be The Largest Crowd-funding Platform For African Ideas Globally My African Idea is the first worldwide crowd funding platform...
2. Interview With Richard Barry, Founder Spaza Shop | A Marketplace For South African Android Apps. According to the World Sustainable Organisation, a spaza shop is...
3. Inside Kenya?s Crowdpesa | Mobile Marketplace For Shoppers & Merchants Crowdpesa is a mobile marketplace for both Merchants and Shoppers...
4. Skype Aims At SMEs With New Online Platform ? Skype,a VoIP telephony Thursday launched a new online platform...
5. iROKING Partners With GoMetro To Take Music Mobile To All Commuters in SA Brand new mobile partnership to bring iROKING artists to South...
6. New music streaming service available in South Africa ? British-based rara.com has announced a major expansion to its...

Source: http://techmoran.com/2012/11/24/exclusive-african-audio-marketplace-waabeh-helping-artists-to-sell-their-music-online/

space shuttle new york courtney upshaw russell wilson catch me if you can delmon young arrested the raven the raven

Video: Call that a ball? Dogs learn to associate words with objects differently than humans do

Video: Call that a ball? Dogs learn to associate words with objects differently than humans do

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Dogs learning to associate words with objects form these associations in different ways than humans do, according to research published November 21 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Emile van der Zee and colleagues from the University of Lincoln, UK.

Previous studies have shown that humans between the ages of two to three typically learn to associate words with the shapes of objects, rather than their size or texture. For example, toddlers who learn what a 'ball' is and are then presented other objects with similar shapes, sizes or textures will identify a similarly-shaped object as 'ball', rather than one of the same size or texture.

Earlier research with dogs has shown that they can learn to associate words with categories of objects (such as 'toy'), but whether their learning process was the same as that of humans was unknown.

In this new study, the scientists presented Gable, a five year old Border Collie, with similar choices to see if this 'shape bias' exists in dogs. They found that after a brief training period, Gable learned to associate the name of an object with its size, identifying other objects of similar size by the same name. After a longer period of exposure to both a name and an object, the dog learned to associate a word to other objects of similar textures, but not to objects of similar shape.

This is a video about the familiarization with word.Credit: Citation: van der Zee E, Zulch H, Mills D (2012) Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis familiaris): Is Shape Important? PLoS ONE 7(11): e49382. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0049382

According to the authors, these results suggest that dogs (or at least Gable) process and associate words with objects in qualitatively different ways than humans do. They add that this may be due to differences in how evolutionary history has shaped human and dog senses of perceiving shape, texture or size.

The bottom line: Though your dog understands the command "Fetch the ball", but he may think of the object in a very different way than you do when he hears it. As the authors explain, "Where shape matters for us, size or texture matters more for your dog. This study shows for the first time that there is a qualitative difference in word comprehension in the dog compared to word comprehension in humans."

###

van der Zee E, Zulch H, Mills D (2012) Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis familiaris): Is Shape Important? PLoS ONE 7(11): e49382. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0049382

Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

Thanks to Public Library of Science for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 77 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125435/Video__Call_that_a_ball__Dogs_learn_to_associate_words_with_objects_differently_than_humans_do

cher morgellons nhl all star draft seal team 6 touch nitrous oxide rihanna thug life tattoo

Super-Earths get magnetic 'shield' from liquid metal

Within supersized alien versions of Earth, a common transparent ceramic may become a flowing liquid metal, perhaps granting those distant worlds magnetic fields to shield life from harmful radiation, researchers say.

Among the hundreds of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that astronomers have discovered in recent years are so-called " super-Earths," which are rocky planets like Earth but larger, at up to 10 times its mass. Scientists have discovered super-Earths that may support oceans of water on their surfaces on their surfaces, and others that may even be planets made of diamond.

The increased mass of super-Earths would bring about internal pressures much greater than Earth's. Such high pressures would lead to large viscosities and high melting temperatures, meaning the interiors of super-Earths might not separate into rocky mantles and metallic cores like Earth's does.

Earth's magnetic field results from its flowing liquid metallic core. If super-Earths lack such dynamic cores, investigators suggested they might lack magnetic fields as well. [ The Strangest Alien Planets (Photos) ]

Now, researchers find that magnesium oxide, a common rocky mineral on Earth, can transform into liquid metal at the extreme pressures and temperatures found in super-Earths. This fluid metal could help generate magnetic dynamos in super-Earths, they say.

Magnesium oxide is a transparent ceramic found from Earth's surface to its deepest mantle. To see how this rocky material might behave in alien planets, researchers fired powerful lasers at small pieces of magnesium oxide, in just 1 billionth of a second, heating and squeezing this mineral to conditions found inside super-Earths, such as pressures up to 14 million times normal Earth atmospheric pressure and temperatures as high as 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit (50,000 Celsius). They watched this rocky substance change to a solid with a new crystal structure, and finally into a liquid metal.

"What was most surprising was how well-behaved magnesium oxide is in the laboratory," said lead study author R. Stewart McWilliams, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "The physical properties of magnesium oxide look very similar to what has been predicted for decades by theorists. As scientists, we can't ask for much better."

These findings might blur the distinction between planetary cores and mantles.

1. Space news from NBCNews.com

   1. Mars rover snaps spooky self-portraits

      Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: It looks as if someone is taking portraits of NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars from a few feet away ? but who's the photographer?

   2. Countdown to a total solar eclipse
   3. Light from first stars in universe spotted
   4. Spacewalkers troubleshoot leaky radiator

"For many decades we have usually imagined terrestrial planets ? the Earth, its neighbors such as Mars, and distant super-Earths ? as all having Earth-like properties: that is, they have a outer shell or mantle composed of nonmetallic oxides, and an iron rich core which is metallic and from which planetary magnetic fields originate," McWilliams told SPACE.com.

"This rule is central to our thinking about super-Earths, yet it is clearly anthropocentric ? that is, we are applying what we know from our own observations on Earth to remote planets for which we can observe very little ? and, as for many anthropocentric ideas, we are finding that more imagination is needed to understand such alien worlds.

"Our results show that the usual assumption that planetary magnetic fields originate exclusively in iron cores is too limiting," McWilliams said. "Magnetic fields might also form within planetary mantles. In fact, this idea has been speculated on for decades, but now we have hard data to show that, indeed, such a 'mantle-dynamo' is plausible."

Earth's magnetic field helps protect it from hazardous electrically charged particles from space.

"It is often said that life on planets may require the presence of a strong magnetic field to protect organisms from dangerous radiation from space such as cosmic rays ? at least this may be true for certain types of life, similar to humans, that live on a planet's surface," McWilliams said. "We find that magnetic fields may occur on a wider range of planets than previously thought, possibly creating unexpected environments for life in the universe."

McWilliams noted that much remains unknown about the physics of super-Earths, and that researchers need to generate computer models to see where and how this liquid metal might exist in nature.

"Everyone, both scientists and the public, should keep in mind that super-Earths are, and probably will remain for some time, a big mystery," McWilliams said. "It is easy to speculate as to their properties ? to draw a picture of one, for example ? but quite difficult to make certain conclusions such as we have for our own Earth. This is both exciting and daunting ? there are many possibilities to explore, but scientists have much work to do. We hope the public has a lot of patience."

The scientists detailed their findings online today (Nov. 22) in the journal Science.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

? 2012 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49940800/ns/technology_and_science-space/

the parent trap invisible children kony 2012 space weather sunspots pac 12 tournament sun storm tri

Why are we stuck with games being released on a Friday? ? Articles ...

By Robert Purchese Published Friday, 23 November 2012

For as long as most folk remember, games have launched on Fridays in the UK and on Tuesday in the US. That's the way of things. Sometimes they converge for a glitzy worldwide launch but mostly they don't - they stick to the norm, and Europeans wait.

But why? Who decided on Friday, and who decided on Tuesday? If some games can be released on a Tuesday worldwide why can't all games be? More pertinently, why do we stick to the same rules for downloadable games? If everyone can buy and pre-install a game on Steam at the same time, why can't they play at the same time - why must someone in the UK wait until Friday but someone in the US can play from Tuesday?

Where do all these rules come from and, more to the point, can they be changed?

How UK Fridays began

In the olden golden days of home computers, there was chaos. Games came from everywhere in the '80s and shops flung them on shelves whenever they turned up. "It was just release whenever you could," recalls Andy Payne, a veteran of the UK industry. "Stuff would release every single day." Even the bigger shop-chains in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras joined the scrum, buying stock from wholesalers, amassing it at warehouses then racing it out to stores to go on shelves "as quickly as you bloody could".

That's what Graeme Struthers tells me, and he should know: he was a games buyer for Dixons Stores Group (Currys, Dixons, PCWorld) at the time. "And we were by far the biggest retailer for 16-bit," he - wait, was he boasting?

Big operators like Dixons weren't happy. They had order for other goods in their stores and they advertised them in newspapers on Fridays and Saturdays. The prospect of stock turning up late and missing the weekend wasn't a good one, so the big shops did something about it.

"Dixons basically started sitting down with the supply chain and saying, 'If you release products on a Friday that means we can include it in our advertising; that means we can promote you.' It's carrot and stick," Graeme Struthers explains. "I wouldn't say that Dixons were the company that made it Fridays, but it was the retail chains that said having product just turning up ad hoc is useless; having product that's got a defined release date means we can all orientate our distribution to get it into all of our shops for a Friday so that we've got the weekend business.

"It was basically retail bringing order to a very chaotic supply chain. Within about six to eight months, everyone was selling things on a Friday. It was very quick to reach that agreement and understanding."

"It was basically retail bringing order to a very chaotic supply chain. Within about six to eight months, everyone was selling things on a Friday.

Graeme Struthers

Dorian Bloch has been researching UK game sales for over 20 years, for some reason. He too remembers that Friday pact made between shops, ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) - now UKIE (Association for UK Interactive Entertainment) - and his company Gallup (now GfK Chart-Track). "The theory was that this was a clear differentiator to music/video releases on Mondays and gave retailers another window of sales opportunity and some great products to sell for the weekend, also giving publishers a clear and unique window in which to release titles," Bloch recalls.

They weren't enforced, those release dates - there weren't any penalties like there were for music. "It was just good for the industry as it brings a bit of order to something," Struthers shrugs, "and everyone seemed to be happy with it for quite a number of years."

Having no proper penalties did have downsides of course, especially as there were many more shops, each wanting to one-up the other. What would you do if stock turned up early one week, on a Wednesday or Thursday, and you had other shops within a stone's throw to compete with?

"Put temptation in front of people and guess what happens..." Payne rolls his eyes. But routine helped, and the cogs of the giant retail machine were soon well oiled and efficient. "Having worked in retail," says Struthers, "if you've got 600 shops, and you've got staff who do lots and lots of things, if there is no routine, if there is no process, the chances of it happening become lessened. If you just say 'hey this week the release date is a Monday', chances are: less compliance."

Friday was really cemented for the UK when home consoles boomed and home-grown games petered out, and when platform holders strode onto the scene. Not so much the NES or the Master System or even the SNES: it was the Mega Drive that went "absolutely bat s**t mental", recalls Graeme Struthers.

By the sounds of things, so too did Sega, flinging adverts all over papers and television, and doing "some amazing quite daring marketing", all the time reinforcing Friday, Friday, Friday. "When I was a kid I knew when I went to the record shop on Tuesday at 4 o'clock that's when all the new singles would be out," he remembers. "I guess there's kids out there who know you go into a shop on a Friday you're going to find what's been released."

And so Fridays came to pass, and so Fridays have remained. That model has stuck for a quarter of a century and today "it's virtually the same as it was" says Don McCabe, who established games shop Chipsworld/Chips in 1986. "They [the games] come in brown boxes, you unpack them, you put them on your system and you put them on your shelf."

That Friday feeling

There's no denying it: one feels a trifle jollier on a Friday than on any other day of the week, presuming you slog nine-to-five or study. But why does that make Friday a good shopping day - why did shops pick it?

"Well Friday inherently was always pay day," Don McCabe begins. "You put the products out in front of customers when it's pay day. That's how it started off years and years and years ago - 26 years ago - everybody got paid at the end of the working week. It made perfect sense to put the product out on the day they had money in their pocket."

"What's the best day to create a buzz - Monday morning?" Andy Payne rhetorically asks. "I would say that Friday is still, if you're going to pick a day, probably the best day, because it's getting towards the weekend when people have more time on their hands and they've got more time to play games."

"If you go out yourself on a Monday or Tuesday into retailers you'll find they tend to be tidying their shops up, putting new displays in place and taking down point-of-sale because they have no customers," adds Graeme Struthers. "We're at work, we're doing other things."

There are practical considerations, too. "Friday gives you a whole week to prepare, get that stock ready in your stores," explains HMV games manager Andy Pinder, a man with 20 years of retail experience, most of it at GAME. "Whereas if you're trying to launch on a Monday or Tuesday, you're relying on things being delivered on a weekend, which doesn't necessarily always go smoothly.

"I like Fridays, Fridays feel right; I've worked my arse off all week and I can fully justify kick-back gaming time."

Rich Eddy

"You've got the whole of that week in which to generate pre-awareness, not so much amongst the core shoppers but for your more casual shopper; there's an opportunity to get that buzz building over the week, climaxing on the Friday, then you go into the weekend when people can buy it, play it, enjoy it.

"The arguments for a Friday release are actually quite compelling," he goes on, "particularly given that music and film is currently releasing on a Monday. It means games have got that day all to themselves. From a retail point of view they get much better stand-out, it's more of an event when you reach a big release and it's out on a Friday. Retailers can make more of a fuss out of it."

"Any retailer in the western world will tell you that the vast majority of your sales will occur Thursday through to Sunday," Struthers chimes in, explaining that Thursday is when the state traditionally pays its workers, the teachers and police and nurses of the world. "If you're a retailer you do something like 60 per cent of your business Friday to Sunday."

Codemasters' long-time director of communications Rich Eddy puts it more bluntly: "I like Fridays, Fridays feel right; I've worked my arse off all week and I can fully justify kick-back gaming time."

Friday releases also helped people think of games as "an acceptable part of the weekend entertainment make-up", Eddy adds, and charts stories on Monday about opening weekend sales made snappy, movie-like headlines. Bombastic weekend launches might have helped publishers fight piracy too, suggests Andy Payne, by flogging as many copies as humanly possible before the inevitable knock-offs circulated.

If Friday is so great, why did America pick Tuesday?

"It started with music," famed US video game analyst Michael Pachter informs me, "then VHS tapes and DVDs. Retailers were very slow to stock shelves, so distributors asked for entertainment products to release on Tuesday so retailers could have them in stores by Friday when consumer traffic picks up.

The early game publishers used music and movie distributors, and games were shipped" - hence the "shipping to stores" hangover we have now - "to the distributors on Tuesday along with CDs, VHS tapes and DVDs. The distributors then sent a single truck to the retailer with a variety of different entertainment products and the retailers put everything on the shelves Tuesday."

It wasn't so much a case of picking a Tuesday as being lumped with it, and one doesn't simply change the US distribution model.

"Retailers were very slow to stock shelves, so distributors asked for entertainment products to release on Tuesday so retailers could have them in stores by Friday when consumer traffic picks up."

Michael Pachter

"To understand US logistics," Graeme Struthers says, "think of pushing stock out to the corners of Europe, up to the icy climbs of Finland and down to the toe of the boot of Italy. It becomes less a street date issue and more of simply filling distribution channels with stock to achieve everyone getting the product at roughly the same time."

He once worked for Take-Two and was invited to see the warehouse of Take-Two's American distribution company. "OK, it's a big building..." he says. "But when I went in there I was bemused because this place? Its scale was ridiculous. It was full of TVs, Hi-Fis, washing machines, video games, video game consoles. So then I understood that these trucks that are going out to these different points are not just taking a copy of Halo 4, they're taking a huge variety of product, and economically I guess it makes sense: to cover those distances you have to do many things."

That's not to say there aren't benefits to launching on a Tuesday. Shelves can be restocked for the weekend if needs be, for instance, and boring Tuesday is transformed into exciting new game Tuesday, and shops make more money as a result.

Publishers have their own distributors now for games, but Tuesday has embedded itself as the US day to sell games.

Coming together

Global launches already happen, particularly for Blizzard games; World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria arrived in shops across the US, Canada, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil on the same day!

More commonly, a global launch means a simultaneous US and European launch (I don't know enough about Middle-Eastern, Asian, Australian or African dates to speak with any authority, unfortunately). Just this week we've had Hitman: Absolution (Tuesday 20th), and last week we had Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (Tuesday 13th). A week before that we had Halo 4 (Tuesday 6th). What's more, the number of Tuesday launches in the UK is sharply on the rise.

There will be 18 different games released on a Tuesday this year, GfK Chart-Track's Dorian Bloch informs me. Last year there were 11, and the year before, eight. But in 2009 there were only two: Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3: ODST. There were three in 2008: LittleBigPlanet (on a Wednesday!), World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and Grand Theft Auto 4. And there were two in 2007: Halo 3 (on a Wednesday!) and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. But in 2006 there were none. And in 2005 there were also none. And in 2004 there were none again. I mean, I could go on - all the way back to 1993. Nothing, nadda, zilch.

"The first notable Tuesday release was Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog 2 for Mega Drive back on 24th November 1992," Dorian Bloch enlightens me - and that day Sega dubbed "Sonic 2sday". "This was followed in 1993 by the first multi-format event release for Acclaim's Mortal Kombat on Mortal Monday (13/09/93) on Mega Drive, SNES, Game Boy, Game Gear and Master System," he goes on. "However, the practice went out of fashion and 'event' titles released outside of Friday in the modern era essentially began again as of 2007 with World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade."

"The first notable Tuesday release was Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog 2 for Mega Drive back on 24th November 1992."

Dorian Bloch

We often refer to them as midnight launches because they tend to involve crowds queuing on Monday to buy the game at a minute past midnight on Tuesday morning. These midweek midnight launches upset the usual way of things, yet they're accepted all the same. That's because they benefit the machine.

Shops like them because they get to make a song and dance out of the whole event and flog a load of copies of - and merchandise for - what is probably a very popular game on a very unpopular day of the week. If you're selected as the official launch partner it's even better, HMV's Andy Pinder assures me. Publishers like them because they make their games stand out from the crowd. They also get a full week of sales for the chart. And you lot must like them otherwise why else would you stand for hours outside on the cold November night?

But as midweek launches increase in frequency, piled on top of the existing Friday schedule, they can cause problems. Shops lose track of what goes when, particularly outlets like Asda or Argos whose staff typically don't know as much about games, and where catalogues are vast and varied. When stock for a Tuesday arrives in the regular delivery cycle on Wednesday or Thursday the week beforehand... That's when accidents happen. "I'm getting double release dates every week," winces Chips' Don McCabe. "I'm having to tell the staff, 'No you can't sell this before this date, no you can't come out before that date.' 'Oh I thought we couldn't sell it yet?' 'Yes, yes: sell it!'..."

"What I want is a consistent release date," he pleads. "What I don't like is the current situation where some games are released on a Friday and some games are released on a Tuesday. I would be happy to switch to a Tuesday as long as it became common, the norm."

Nevertheless, the UK retail machine can clearly handle a Tuesday launch, so why can't we do it more often, or even move entirely to it?

"We probably can," says Andy Payne. "I don't see a reason why we can't. I see no reason why anything can't be moved, frankly. There's no reason why all games shouldn't be sold on the same day, there's no reason it shouldn't happen. But there's always reasons that will get in the way of that happening." Those reasons being a mixture of self-interest, logistical and "no-one ever thought of it".

"You'd have a lot fewer people skiving off college or skiving off work if a game's released on a Friday than if it was released on a Tuesday."

Paul Sulyok

Tick HMV off under self-interest. HMV likes Fridays, and you can bet your pay packet that GAME and probably supermarkets feel the same way too. "I don't see why we should move to meet [Tuesdays] because that would actually diminish our prospects of maximising interest and sales," Andy Pinder puffs. "There's a strong case for a Friday that's been built up over time, and if anyone's looking to move and accommodate, it could well be that the rest of the world's markets should actually synch with UK and European releases which typically now tend to be on a Friday."

"You'd have a lot fewer people skiving off college or skiving off work if a game's released on a Friday than if it was released on a Tuesday," nods Paul Sulyok, CEO of download service Green Man Gaming.

But not everyone releases games on a Tuesday in North America. One of the biggest players of all, Nintendo, opts for Sunday launches and has for some time (mm, Sunday launches). The Wii U was the most recent of these, arriving Sunday, 18th November.

Tuesday is usually the day, though, and it simply won't budge. "US Tuesdays are unmovable," states Codemasters' Rich Eddy, very matter of fact - I get the impression he's been on the abrupt end of an enquiry about their manoeuvrability before. It's much easier to have the teensy UK and most of Europe fall in line with the gigantic US than vice versa. Also, imagine trying to convince a US-based company to favour another market above theirs, because that's effectively how it would be seen. Not only is there national pride to consider, there's also the size of the market: the US dominates approximately 40 per cent of boxed product video games sales worldwide, Dorian Bloch tells me. Europe accounts for 36 per cent, and the UK 30 per cent of that. On this table, the US holds most of the chips.

None of that matters on Steam, does it?

"Gaming's a global business these days and consumers of games are global," announces Green Man Gaming's Paul Sulyok. "It's a bit unfair if gamer-one and gamer-two are members of the same gaming community yet one's played the game for three days and is chatting about it on the forums and the next one is saying 'well I haven't got my copy yet, it's not live in my country'."

"If you're part of a clan and you're working together and you're excluded: that's wrong," declares Andy Payne. "It's going to fragment, and gamers don't want to be fragmented; they don't care much about borders, they care about the game and they care about their mates."

Sulyok continues: "Any gamer will tell you, if they're active in a community, that they've got mates who are in Russia, in the US, in Canada, in Australia, because that's just the gaming community and how the gaming community operates."

Community is the key word: the games with the strongest communities are those most likely to launch simultaneously around the world, not least because there would be pandemonium if they didn't. Case in point, Football Manager 2013, which launched globally on Steam at 00.01 GMT Friday, 2nd November.

"In the digital age, this will be first year that we've actually completely held our release date," Miles Jacobson from Sports Interactive tells me, at the time, hours before launch. "Even last year, which was the first year through Steam, we ended up going live at about eight or nine o'clock in the evening. This year we've said from the outset it will be released at 00.01 GMT on November 2nd and that's the time it will be coming and I'll be the person pushing the button."

Pressing that button, incidentally, was as tricky as having an MSN Messenger conversation with his production team at SI and a couple of people at Steam. Steam then asks if he's ready to go and he says yes and they press go. There's no actual big red button for Jacobson to press, although there is for patches, apparently. Football Manager 2013's launch was both unusual and exciting because it revolved around a Friday and the UK. Mind you it was developed in the UK, and SEGA America didn't resist "because they can't give away Football Manager", Graeme Struthers quips.

"...gamers don't want to be fragmented; they don't care much about borders, they care about the game and they care about their mates."

Andy Payne

"Digital distribution obviously offers more freedom," Rich Eddy from Codemasters accepts, but says as long as there are boxed counterparts for sale in shops then regional release dates will come into play. "It is the model that makes it fair to both digital and physical distribution partners," he stresses. In other words, don't piss off the shops - it's probably hard enough getting shelf space for boxed PC games as it is.

"Those kind of things do come into play," Graeme Struthers nods. "If I was back in my retail days and I was sitting there and I was prepared to give you a purchase order for stock and you said, 'You know we're going to sell this three days before you get it into your shop...'" he trails off. "Yeah, thanks," he quips sarcastically, "why don't you have some more of my cash." I spoke anonymously to someone from a major publisher who reinforced not-pissing-off-shops as a major reason for all this.

Don't be hoodwinked by the notion that boxed sales of PC games have disappeared, either. Another contact tells me boxed and download PC sales only reached parity in July this year in the UK, so boxed sales are still significant enough to matter. And in southern Europe and South America there's "a large portion" of PC games sold on discs, Green Man Gaming's Paul Sulyok says.

Dishonored launched on Tuesday 9th October in the US and Friday 12th October in the UK. UK Steam users watched their American cousins play the game while it sat on their accounts pre-loaded.

That digital freedom is caged further by multi-platform marketing campaigns. If your game is Dishonored and it's on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, you want people to remember one thing: the release date. Watering that message down with different dates for different versions could ruin it all. "I wouldn't separate digital and physical," Paul Sulyok tells me. "You can't just look at the digital distribution element in isolation. If you're going to pay money for a poster or you're going to pay money for a bus stop, you want to make sure that a console gamer and a PC gamer - or whatever platform customers decide to consume that game on - that all of those different stock keeping units are available at the same time."

There are other more boring issues hampering downloadable release date synchronisation. Simple technical issues like dealing with lots of day-one DLC or wanting to staggering load for bandwidth purposes; localisation concerns such as translation or regional age ratings. Germany is particularly tough on blood in games, and publishers might hold up launches in other territories so Germans don't shop elsewhere. "It can sometimes be really, really boring admin issues with age ratings," says Graeme Struthers knowingly - he who helped found Get Games. "Some of that stuff can slow you down."

Speakers, in order of appearance

Andy Payne OBE, owner and MD of Mastertronic, an independent boxed publisher and distributor that's been around since 2004. He's chairman of publisher collective trade body UKIE. He started PC sim specialist Just Flight. Chairman of GamesAid. Founder of Get Games. Member of the BAFTA Games Committee. CEO of digital (mostly mobile) publisher AppyNation (Fluid Football). Where does he find the time? Like Graeme, who he works with at Get Games, Andy is well positioned to comment on all areas of this topic.

Graeme Struthers was, for 10 years between 1984 and 1994, a video games buyer at Dixons Stores Group (Dixons, Currys, PC World). He managed all supplier negotiations and contracts. In other words, it's his specialist subject. He went on to work at Virgin Interactive, EA and Take-Two. Now he's back in small-scale digital publishing at Devolver Digital - responsible for the brilliant Hotline Miami - and digital distribution at Get Games. In other words, he fits the bill for this investigation in plenty of ways. And he's a jolly nice chap. His Devolver cards credit him as a "distinguished gentleman" which in reality means he does the production management. He's a project manager at Get Games.

Dorian Bloch has over 20 years experience researching video games sales in the UK. He's been business group director at Chart-Track now GfK Chart-Track for a mere 16 years. Come on Dorian pull your socks up.

Don McCabe is joint MD of independent video game shop chain Chips, and has been since time began - well, since June 1986, more than 26 years ago.

Andy Pinder has only been at HMV for three months, but worked for 12 years and 8 months at GAME Group before that. His history in UK video games retail stretches all the way back to being a sales assistant at Just Micro Computer Games in 1989.

Rich Eddy was an editor for Newsfield publications (Zzap!64, Crash) before joining Codemasters in 1991, where he now directs all things communication. He's also an award winning gardener.

Michael Pachter is the most famous video games analyst on the planet, whatever you think of him. He gives advice to the myriad sales team at investment company Wedbush Morgan.

Paul Sulyok has been CEO of download service Green Man for three years and six months and CEO of Playfire for five months before - the company bought by Green Man Gaming. Sulyok was also a captain in the British Army for six years, which is of no relevance to this piece.

Miles Jacobson OBE is studio director of Sports Interactive. He worked in music A&R before games. He joined SI as a tester but quickly showed his business acumen and became business advisor. He became part-time MD in 1999 before becoming full-time in 2001. He's one of the co-founders of GamesAid and vice-president of Special Effect. He was on the BAFTA Games Committee for six years.

Special thanks to them and the anonymous others who helped with this piece.

There's also tax and the "outdated" laws that don't transition online where there are no physical borders, Andy Payne adds. "And what happens when people find it difficult is they start making rules up," he tells me, "simplistic rules that seem like they're the right thing to do; but in the context of future-proofing they don't work." They might try and limit a UK-based download shop to selling to UK customers, for example. "'Oh OK," says Payne, sarcastically, "so we're an online business and we're only allowed to sell in the UK....'" He reveals that his Get Games business signed content deals that "restricted what we can and can't sell".

"There are so many things going on in the background," reiterates Paul Sulyok. "Yes you could have a global unlock, however there is a bigger picture that needs a bit more consideration."

So where do we stand, part 1: will boxed dates unify?

Only if we can convince the entire establishment it's worth the upheaval of change. "That long term established process has seen the many, many, manufactures, packers, distributors, logistics companies, warehousing, to-store-deliveries, work their systems around the end result of a game on a shelf on a Friday," stresses Rich Eddy, voice of the publisher. "To change that would take a unilateral acceptance that there is a need to change across all sectors involved in production and logistics - it's a way bigger consideration than just publishers' desire to change."

"Across the board no, it's unlikely," Andy Payne adds. "I can't see the absolute case for doing it. It'll be tough to see the whole industry rallying behind one worldwide release date.

"It's a free world," he shrugs, "it's not impossible that you'd have the two biggest games of the year going out on the same day and one of those game makers will turn around and say, 'Actually we're not doing that. We don't want to go out on the same day as those guys, we'll pick a different day and to be different we're going to say we've got FIFA Thursday or whatever it may be.'

"You're always trying to get attention for your game, and if all the media are geared up to a day of the week then they kind of fall asleep for the rest of the week. It's a free market out there and people are going to use every advantage they can to make the best of their game - and more power to that."

So where do we stand, part 2: will download dates unify?

"We shouldn't be talking about regional release dates for core games we download onto our PCs," Graeme Struthers sates flatly. "That should stop. It should stop now. It certainly shouldn't be around next year.

"Yes, it will change," he adds, "because the retail box business is going away. I can't think of any other reason why you would hold it back."

"We can all see where this going," Andy Payne agrees, "but it's not going to go as fast or as direct as theorists or economists or analysts might say; you've got vested interests, it's as simple as that." The "inexorable" tipping point he believes will come when the EAs, the Take-Twos, the Activisions, the Bethesdas, the Ubisofts decide its in the best interests of their businesses to leave boxed sales behind. Although don't expect boxed sales to disappear entirely, cautions Struthers - expect them stick around like vinyl has "after its demise has been celebrated so many times".

Bear in mind, too, that unified dates might not suit all games, and some companies might not need or want them. "If PopCap want to release the next version of Peggle and they want to stagger the release for whatever reason, I don't think it makes a big deal, no disrespect," Andy Payne points out. "It doesn't matter as much as if you're on Warcraft or Rift or League or Legends or something like that."

"Our preference would be for there to be one single unlock day for a product," Paul Sulyok pipes up. "You're going to see it in the very near future. The games industry is an industry that evolves and adapts very quickly to changes in consumer requirements. If there's consumer pressure to go for one single launch, the industry will recognise that and will cater for it."

"This is a problem that will disappear as more and more people - and guys like yourself - are using their voice."

Graeme Struthers

Graeme Struthers agrees: "This is a problem that will disappear as more and more people - and guys like yourself - are using their voice and saying that if a game's coming out on a digital platform like Steam and it's released on this day and I've got it, I've pre-ordered it, I've pre-installed it, it's a nonsense, it's a fundamental nonsense that it's not available for me to play.

"It's like giving kids a Christmas present on the 25th and saying, 'Can you f*** off and come back on the 28th? You can look at it, you can't f***ing touch it.'"

So what have I learned? That despite the ubiquitous appearance of the internet, underneath is a world of different cultures that for a quarter of a century have honed their methods for delivering games to their people. To change that, to unify that - to convince the myriad cogs of each machine to do things differently - would take a colossal effort as well as one hell of a convincing reason why. "It's not fair my American friend gets to play three days earlier than me" just won't cut it.

In the UK we're lucky because we're geographically small and therefore nimble, so we're able to make exceptions and synchronise with US Tuesday dates. Moving entirely to Tuesdays, though? It doesn't seem to suit the shops that control retail Britain. They like Friday, they like their routine, so they'd block it or make it hard to achieve. Vested interests.

Online, downloadable games are shackled by those decades-old, entrenched boxed-market habits, and will continue to be until the day boxed games pale into insignificance. On PC, that time will come sooner than consoles because of Steam, and because we don't yet know what next-generation masterplans Microsoft and Sony have.

But that "when" also depends on you - so kick up a stink, bray, petition about the Steam version of a game not being available at the same time in the UK (or wherever you live) as in the US. Chances are, if you shout loud enough, appeasing the mob may become a publisher's top priority for business. And when that happens, all other obstructions to a unified launch will seem to miraculously fall away.

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-23-why-are-we-stuck-with-games-being-released-on-a-friday

PNC Bank Jordan Pruitt real housewives of new jersey Kanye West sex tape emmys emmys torrey smith