It is not an iPad, nor is it one of the many iPad wannabes from competitors like Samsung and Motorola. It's a Microsoft tablet. Not a tablet built by Dell or HP or Lenovo running Microsoft Windows, but an actual device built and sold by Microsoft.
The device, dubbed "Surface," has no publicly disclosed release date nor an indication of its price, but it is already making waves because it marks the first time that Microsoft has decided to build its own computer. The apparent decision to jump into the fray and compete head-on with Apple in the tablet market has sparked all sorts of reactions.
On one side of the equation, you have those people who are quick to point to the Kin (a failed Microsoft-built phone for Verizon Wireless) and Zune (a failed portable music device meant to compete with the iPod) as proof that Microsoft doesn't have the internal chops to do hardware right. The design process is different. The supply chain is an entirely new animal for a company used to just packing up software. And the company's DNA just doesn't support it, they say. Plus, what about the current original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that sell Windows machines? Isn't making tablets their territory?
On the other side seem to be boosters of the strategy. The "ecosystem model" has failed, they say. Commodity hardware doesn't deliver. These pundits have been quick to point out that Apple is basically unrivaled in market with the iPhone, with the iPad, and with more traditional computers like the MacBook they make far more money than any other OEM. These people want alternatives to Apple without having to sacrifice quality and ending up with some flimsy, plastic HP notebook and a slow, buggy Agros tablet.
Some in the latter camp even argue that Apple has so decisively run away with both the media and market share that Microsoft is being compelled to change its business model from software-platform licenser. Essentially, it is said, Microsoft has no choice now but to copy Apple.
When most people think of "Big Brother", they think of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and other shadowy government agencies. Yes, they are definitely watching you, but so are many big corporations. In fact, there are some companies that are making tens of millions of dollars by gathering every shred of information about all of us that they can and selling it for profit to anyone willing to pay the price. It is called "data mining", and these data miners want to keep track of literally everything that you do.
Most people know that basically everything that we do on the Internet is tracked, but data mining goes far beyond that. When you use a customer rewards card at the supermarket, the data miners know about it. When you pay for a purchase with a credit card or a debit card, the data miners know about it. Every time you buy a prescription drug, that information is sold to someone. Every time you apply for a loan, a whole host of organizations is notified.
Information has become an extremely valuable commodity, and thanks to computers and the Internet it is easier than ever before to gather information. But that also means that our personal information is no longer "private", and this trend is only going to get worse in the years ahead.
You have probably never even heard of many of these companies that are making millions of dollars selling your personal information. Acxiom and Epsilon are two of the biggest names in the industry, and most of the time they are selling your information to companies that want to sell you stuff.
Almost every single day, very personal information about you is being bought and sold without your permission and it is all perfectly legal.
Wireless energy transfer (WET), a.k.a. wireless energy transmission, is the transference of electromagnetic energy transmitted from a central power source without the use of connecting wires.
Tesla’s coil experiments, proving the feasibility of WET, during his experiments in Colorado in the early 1900s were the pre-cursor to the “inventions” in this field today.
After Tesla died, the US government confiscated all documents pertaining to his experiments and classified them. Since the 1950s the US government has held this technology in secret.
In the UK, the induction power transfer (IPT) is the first commercially available wireless electric car charger. HaloIPT, a start-up corporation, has released this technology in certain areas of England’s motorways or car parks. Electric cars will be charged automatically when the integrated receiver pad is enabled.
General Motors (GM) has invested $5 million into a wireless charging device called PowerMat that uses inductive charging, which transmits electricity via magnets without any actual, physical connection. Since GM is owned by the US government, their new device may have more to do with the release of certain Tesla technology covertly.
Marin Soljačić, assistant professor at MIT, searching for ways to transmit power wirelessly, focused on mid-range power that could charge portable devices, such as cell phones, PDAs and laptops. Using the phenomenon of resonant coupling, Soljačić was able to tune two objects to the same frequency to exchange energy.
Magnetic resonance can freely transfer magnetic fields with little effect on the surrounding environment. This technique enables devices to automatically recharge by wireless transfer.
Soljačić attracted the attention of the US Department of Defense (DoD); which is now funding more projects to perfect the technology. According to their Fiscal Year 2012 Operational Energy Budget Certification Report, they are researching experiments to facilitate the energy required for military operations. In the name of national security, the DoD is “directly [supporting] military operations [that] require a steady supply of energy for mission success”. WET technology obviously would expedite this need.
In conjunction with the “2009 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) directed theappointment of a Director of Operational Energy Plans and Programs in the DoD . . . are coordinating and overseeing program activities related to the implementation of operational energy [strategies], research and development, investments” for the exclusive use of the US government.
Dr. Heinz Schandal, lead researcher for the Social Systems, Institutions and Governance in the Social and Economic Sciences Program at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, is working with governments and local communities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region to make “recommendations” regarding industrial and developing nations, and their relationship to sustainability.
Schandal, working with the United National Environment Program (UNEP), under the CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Corporation, is coercing and pressuring nations worldwide through eco-terrorism to alter their lifestyle and consumption to reflect the UNEP’s international regulations.
In Australia, the UNEP and Schanal are admonishing the government of consequences of their resource use and emissions.
Seeking to change governmental policy to reflect the UN’s sustainable development adherence, as well as control individual household rights to energy and consumption, Australia is being pressured to adopt the mandates in the Growing the Green Collar Economy report.
The UN admonishes carbon dioxide emissions as the direct causation to global warming (although this theory has been debunked by empirical scientific data). With wireless energy transmission, Jerome Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, claims they will avert a “potentially catastrophic” global problem “and eventually open up new energy sources such as solar panels in Earth’s orbit.”
Essentially, the US government is working with the UN to develop wireless energy transmission technology for the express use of the UN.
The support of the US government in the schemes of global governance of the UN locks this once independent nation into being an accessory to the march of the globalist Elite toward one world government.
The founder of MegaUpload may be down, but he’s not out.
Despite having watched the U.S. government destroy his cloud-based storage website and accuse him of a “mega conspiracy” to defraud movie and music studios, online entrepreneur Kim Dotcom revealed this week that his ambitious new music service “Megabox” is still on track.
In an update published to the micro-blogging service Twitter, Dotcom revealed that his next business venture will connect artists and music lovers directly, offering free downloads and unlimited cloud-based media storage while also funneling advertising dollars to the content creators.
“The major Record Labels thought Megabox is dead,” Dotcom wrote. “Artists rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you.”
Speaking to the technology publication Torrentfreak, Dotcom said the service, conceived more than a year ago, will allow artists to keep 90 percent of their profits from actual music sales.
Another innovation: artists will even get paid for free downloads through a new internal technology Dotcom is calling “Megakey.” It’s not yet clear how this would work, but it is likely based on technology developed for MegaUpload.
The service is expected to offer users free cloud-based media storage and social networking capabilities. A launch date has not yet been announced, but Digital Music News reported last December — just a month before Dotcom’s mansion was raided by police — that Megabox was already rife with major label content, and that they had partnered with Amazon MP3 and several other major players in digital music distribution.
“These guys think an iPad is a facial treatment, the internet is the devil, and wired phones are still hip,” Dotcom reportedly said. “They are in denial about the new realities and opportunities. They don’t understand that the rip-off days are over.”
Dotcom was arrested in January at his mansion in New Zealand after U.S. authorities accused him of running the largest copyright infringement scheme in history. Prosecutors are not having an easy go of the trial, however, and New Zealand courts have been hesitant to accept the charges at face value.
Uruguay’s national government has said it plans to send a bill to Congress that would allow it to sell marijuana, making it the first country in the world to do so.
Under the plan, only the government would be allowed to sell marijuana and only to adults who register on a government database when buying the drug to keep track of their purchases over time.
Minister of Defence Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro told reporters at a press conference in Montevideo that the measure aims to weaken crime in the country by removing profits from drug dealers and diverting users from harder drugs.
He said the bill would be sent to Congress soon, but an exact date had not been set.
Uruguayan newspapers have reported that money from taxes on marijuana sold by the government would go towards rehabilitating drug addicts. The government did not provide details.
There are no laws against marijuana use in Uruguay. Possession of the drug for personal use has never been criminalised.
Media reports have said that people who use more than a limited number of marijuana cigarettes would have to undergo drug rehabilitation and that money from taxes on the cigarettes would go to rehabilitating addicts.
But some Uruguayans wondered how successful such a measure could be.
“People who consume are not going to buy it from the state,” said Natalia Pereira, 28, adding that she smokes marijuana occasionally. “They’re going to mistrust buying it from a place where you have to register and they can typecast you.”
A debate over the move lit up social media networks in the country, with some people worried about free sales of marijuana and others joking about it.
“Legalising marijuana is not a security measure,” one man in the capital of Uruguay wrote on his Twitter account.
“Ha, ha, ha!” joked another. “I can now imagine you going down to the kiosk to buy bread, milk and a little box of marijuana.”
The idea is to weaken crime by removing profits from drug dealers and diverting users from harder drugs.
“The main argument for this is to stop addicts from dealing and reaching (crack-like) substances” such as base paste, said Juan Carlos Redin, a psychologist who works with drug addicts in Montevideo.
“Some studies conclude that a large number of base paste consumers first looked for milder drugs like marijuana and ended with freebase.”
Mr Redin said Uruguayans should be allowed to grow their own marijuana because the government would run into trouble if it tries to sell it. The big question he said will be, “Who will provide the government (with marijuana)?”
“If they actually sell it themselves, and you have to go to the Uruguay government store to buy marijuana, then that would be a precedent for sure, but not so different than from the dispensaries in half the United States,” said Allen St.Pierre, executive director of US-based National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.
Mr St Pierre said the move would make Uruguay the only national government in the world selling marijuana. Numerous dispensaries on the local level in the US are allowed to sell marijuana for medical use.
The International Trade Committee (INTA) of the European Parliament recommends rejecting ACTA.
The committee rejected the controversial legislation 19 votes to 12. This is the fourth and final committee to deliver its report on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and will likely affect the European Parliament’s vote early July.
MEP Marietje Schaake, a member of the INTA committee, shares her satisfaction about the vote on the “undesirable treaty.”
“With this vote my committee has given an important advice to the plenary vote in two weeks. The EU should reject ACTA,” says Schaake, who has opposed ACTA since the beginning.
“ACTA contains some troublesome provisions for policy areas such as internet freedom and access to medicines. By regulating several policy areas in one document, ACTA enforces laws in an undesirable and dangerous way,” she adds.
“The way is now paved for a quick and total rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament! With a political symbol of such a global scale, the way will be open for copyright to be reformed in a positive way, in order to encourage our cultural practices instead of blindly repressing them,” concludes Jeremie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net told RT.
ACTA is aimed at protecting copyright in many industries from software engineering to agriculture. Critics say the national governments would have to make a draconian attack on online privacy to implement provisions of the treaty on their soil.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been in development since 2007. The purpose of the international document has been establishing international standards for intellectual property rights and creating a global framework for targeting counterfeit goods on the Internet.
ACTA supporters claim the treaty is the only way to respond to pirated copyright and global trade of counterfeit goods. Their opponents insist ACTA is an act of war, that would create a new governing body outside the existing World Trade Organization and United Nations.
In February, the EU suspended efforts to ratify the ACTA treaty due to a wave of protests from human rights activists and Internet users. Thousands rallied across the EU over the amount of power ACTA would give global corporations.
