[Medianews] Netflix CEO Considering Streaming-Only Option in U.S.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369642,00.asp Netflix is considering the launch of a streaming-only U.S. subscription option in the next few months, chief executive Reed Hastings said Thursday. On Friday, Netflix also expand its licensing agreement with NBC Universal to allow members to watch select NBC content via its Watch Instantly streaming library for the first time. The U.S. streaming-only option would allow users to sign up for access to Watch Instantly, but not its DVD delivery service. All Netflix subscriptions currently provide access to its streaming library, but the cheapest option in the U.S. is now $8.99 per month, which allows users to check out 1 DVD at a time. We are looking at adding a streaming-only option for the USA over the coming months, Hastings said in a blog post. Netflix this week launched its service in Canada, where it is offering a streaming-only option for $7.99 per month. Hastings's blog post was not simply to announce a planned U.S. streaming-only launch, but to apologize for a comment he made about Americans being too self-absorbed. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Hastings was asked if Americans would ask for the same $7.99 streaming-only option Canadians were receiving. Hastings responded, How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world? It's something we'll monitor, but Americans are somewhat self-absorbed. Hastings said Thursday that his comment was an awkward joke. I was wrong to have made the joke, and I do not believe that one of the most philanthropically-minded nations in the world (America) is self-absorbed or full of self-absorbed people, he wrote. My apologies to anyone offended by my self-absorbed comment. It's been a week of apologies for the company. Also on Thursday, Netflix apologized for allowing hired extras to misrepresent themselves as potential Netflix customers and speak to the news media at a launch event for Netflix in Canada. Despite the gaffes, Netflix is likely to survive. The company added 3.06 million subscribers in the last quarter to just over 15 million. Netflix also said that the percentage of subscribers who viewed Watch Instantly, or more than 15 minutes of a TV episode or movie, sometime during the second quarter was 61 percent, versus 37 percent for the same period a year ago, and 55 percent for the first quarter. The company's Watch Instantly library does not provide access to Netflix's entire content library; most new releases, for example, are not available. But Netflix has inked several content partnerships in the past few months that will bulk up the number of options in the library, including deals with Nu Image/Millennium Films, Epix, and Relativity Media. On Friday, those options expanded to include NBC content, including episodes of Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, The Office, Law Order: SVU, Friday Night Lights, and Psych. Netflix will also add more than 75 episodes of Syfy's Battlestar Galactica. The multi-year NBC-Netflix deal kicks off next week. A Netflix spokesman said Friday that he did not have additional details on whether Watch Instantly would be further expanded for a U.S. streaming-only launch. In August, Netflix released a version of its mobile app that is compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch. The upcoming Apple TV will also have access to Netflix. ___ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
[Medianews] Eddie Fisher, Singer And Ex Of Elizabeth Taylor, Dies
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1648615/20100924/story.jhtml Eddie Fisher, Singer And Ex Of Elizabeth Taylor, Dies 82-year-old was the father of 'Star Wars' actress Carrie Fisher. Eddie Fisher, one of Hollywood's original bad boys, died on Wednesday at the age of 82. Fisher, as well known for his string of top 40 hits as he was for a scandalous personal life that included struggles with addiction and multiple marriages to Hollywood starlets like Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds, died in Berkley, California, due to complications from recent hip surgery, according to a statement released by his family. He was loved and will be missed by his four children: Carrie, Todd, Joely, and Tricia Leigh as well as his six grandchildren, read the statement, according to Reuters. He was an extraordinary talent and a true mensch ['decent person' in Yiddish]. The fourth of seven children born to Russian-born Jewish immigrant parents in Philadelphia on August 10, 1928, Fisher began his singing career as a child, singing in local amateur contests and radio shows. He eventually dropped out of high school in his senior year to pursue a musical career and was discovered in the late 1940s. After a stint in the Army, he embarked on a multi-faceted career that included two television series, a string of hit singles and bookings in popular nightclubs. A teen idol at a time when the first seeds of rock and roll were being sown, Fisher was a middle-of-the-road singer whose popularity was so great that Coca-Cola signed him to a then-princely $1 million contract to be its spokesperson and headline his first TV series, Coke Time With Eddie Fisher. When rock finally broke through and the more dangerous and alluring Elvis Presley eclipsed Fisher on the charts, Fisher's musical career fizzled. He began a string of notorious celebrity marriages (and divorces) as he struggled with addictions to cocaine, methamphetamine and prescription drugs. In his autobiography Been There, Done That, he admitted that his romantic entanglements would probably overshadow his artistic legacy: It isn't the music that people remember most about me. It's the women, he wrote. His first marriage was to movie star Debbie Reynolds, with whom he had two children. One was Carrie Fisher, the noted author and movie star who portrayed Princess Leia in the original Star Wars films. That marriage fell apart in 1958, when Fisher set off one of the most notorious celebrity scandals of the era by starting an affair with screen queen Elizabeth Taylor while trying to console her about the death of her husband, and Fisher's good friend, movie producer Mike Todd. The scandal cost Fisher his second TV series, The Eddie Fisher Show, and essentially sank his career. But it made Taylor an international sex symbol and superstar. Fisher married Taylor in 1959 and they co-starred in the movie Butterfield 8, but when rumors emerged that Taylor was having an affair with Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton, Fisher was on the outs. Taylor dumped him and married Burton in 1964. Next up for Fisher was actress Connie Stevens; their two-year marriage ended in divorce and produced two more children. One was actress Joely Fisher, best known for her TV roles on the shows Ellen and 'Til Death. Over the years he was romantically entangled with a number of other starlets, including Marlene Dietrich, Dinah Shore, Angie Dickinson and Kim Novak. He also married two more times, to Terry Richard (which lasted one year) and to Betty Lin, who he stayed with from 1993 until her death in 2001. ___ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
[Medianews] Glitch delays space station crew's return to Earth
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9y8S88sR2gY5r7jgLcsQ _USt-BQ (AFP) - 1 hour ago MOSCOW - The Soyuz capsule failed Friday to undock for the first time in a decade of flights to the International Space Station, forcing three crew members to remain an extra day in orbit. The Russian mission control centre near Moscow said the shuttle's return to Earth was rolled back to Saturday over fears that the capsule was not fully airlocked after a computer malfunction. The landing of the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft and crew... has been pushed back by 24 hours to Saturday September 25 due to technical problems, Russia's space agency chief Anatoly Perminov said in a statement. The new plan calls for the Soyuz crew to undock at 5:59 am Moscow time (0159 GMT) and land in the central Kazakh steppes at 9:23 am (0523 GMT), a mission control official told the Interfax news agency. US astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko had been due to make their fiery descent locked in the capsule on Friday morning, after more than six months in orbit. But the manoeuvre was first delayed by a few hours due to small glitches, before being cancelled outright on Friday, Russian space officials said. When the crew attempted to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) one of their computers sent up a red flag -- showing the airlock was not fully sealed, Roskosmos chief Perminov explained. The onboard computer system is picking up a false signal that there is no airlock on the station after the hatch is closed, Perminov said. We have carried out checks on the air tightness. The airlock is confirmed on the ISS and the Soyuz, which is the most important thing for today. Perminov stressed that the Soyuz crew members were in no immediate danger and had all re-boarded the space station to prepare for the new landing schedule. We could have done it (the undocking) today but we need extra time to avoid further risks. There is no reason to rush. The most important thing is to guarantee the safety of the crew, he added. We need to figure out completely the reason for the false signal and fully guarantee that the dynamic processes of the operation are safe. In the event of another computer bug, the crew will pilot the undocking manually, according to a specialist with Roskosmos' human space flight programme. If tomorrow the automatic system again does not allow the Soyuz to undock, cosmonauts will shift to a manual work regime, the unnamed specialist was quoted by Interfax as saying. Friday's incident was the third docking problem at the station in four months after the automatic system failed on two unmanned Russian supply shuttles, causing one to fly past the station in June. The string of mishaps in a space programme that usually strives for and achieves pinpoint accuracy comes just before NASA mothballs its shuttle later this year, leaving the ISS entirely dependent on the Russian Soyuz. It's a regrettable situation which should not have occurred with a system that has always functioned well, Igor Lisov, an expert with leading Russian space science journal Novosti Kosmonavtiki, told AFP. It's the first time that the Soyuz has been unable to undock from the ISS. But a space industry expert cited by the ITAR-TASS news agency revealed that the Soyuz had already had troubles undocking in May, although he said these were swiftly resolved. ___ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
[Medianews] Warning over 'Stuxnet' computer worm
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/24/stuxnet.worm.ft/index.html?hp t=T2 San Francisco, California and London, England (FT.com) -- A piece of highly sophisticated malicious software that has infected an unknown number of power plants, pipelines and factories over the past year is the first program designed to cause serious damage in the physical world, security experts are warning. The Stuxnet computer worm spreads through previously unknown holes in Microsoft's Windows operating system and then looks for a type of software made by Siemens and used to control industrial components, including valves and brakes. Stuxnet can hide itself, wait for certain conditions and give new orders to the components that reverse what they would normally do, the experts said. The commands are so specific that they appear aimed at an industrial sector, but officials do not know which one or what the affected equipment would do. While cyber attacks on computer networks have slowed or stopped communication in countries such as Estonia and Georgia, Stuxnet is the first aimed at physical destruction and it heralds a new era in cyberwar. At a closed-door conference this week in Maryland, Ralph Langner, a German industrial controls safety expert, said Stuxnet might be targeting not a sector but perhaps only one plant, and he speculated that it could be a controversial nuclear facility in Iran. According to Symantec, which has been investigating the virus and plans to publish details of the rogue commands on Wednesday, Iran has had far more infections than any other country. It is not speculation that this is the first directed cyber weapon, or one aimed at a specific real-world process, said Joe Weiss, a US expert who has testified to Congress on technological security threats to the electric grid and other physical operations. The only speculation is what it is being used against, and by whom. Experts say Stuxnet's knowledge of Microsoft's Windows operating system, the Siemens program and the associated hardware of the target industry make it the work of a well-financed, highly organised team. They suggest that it is most likely associated with a national government and that terrorism, ideological motivation or even extortion cannot be ruled out. Stuxnet began spreading more than a year ago but research has been slow because of the complexity of the software and the difficulty in getting the right industry officials talking to the right security experts. Microsoft has patched the vulnerabilities in Windows but experts remain concerned because of the worm's ability to hide once it is in a system. Experts have only begun publishing more of their analyses in the last few weeks, hoping that such steps will get more answers from private companies and government leaders. Siemens said that since July 15, when it first learnt about Stuxnet, 15 of its customers had reported being infected by the worm. The company would not name the customers but said that five were in Germany and the rest were spread around the world. Siemens said critical infrastructure had not been affected by the virus and in each case the worm had been removed. The German conglomerate said it had offered its customers a fix for the virus and that since the Stuxnet virus was detected, there had been 12,000 downloads of its anti-virus software. ___ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
[Medianews] FCC Opens Unused TV Airwaves to Broadband
September 23, 2010 F.C.C. Opens Unused TV Airwaves to Broadband By EDWARD WYATT NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/business/24fcc.html?_r=1ref=businesspagewanted=print WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal on Thursday that would open vast amounts of unused broadcast television airwaves for high-speed wireless broadband networks and other unlicensed applications. The change in available airwaves, which were freed up by the conversion of television signals from analog to digital, constitutes the first significant block of spectrum made available for unlicensed use by the F.C.C. in 20 years. It was a victory that did not come easily, or quickly, however. The F.C.C. first approved a similar measure in 2008, but the technical requirements for unlicensed devices drew objections from 17 companies or groups on both sides of the issue, forcing the commission to redraft its proposal. While computer and Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Dell favored the idea, television broadcasters worried about possible interference problems. The new order eliminates a requirement that devices scan the airwaves for available signals. Rather, they can rely on a database of digital signals, updated daily, for use in locating an available channel on which to transmit. The order also contains provisions that seek to guarantee that wireless microphones have adequate space to operate without interference. Supporters of the measure hope the airwaves will be used for stronger and faster wireless networks — known as “super Wi-Fi” because of the signals’ ability to pass more easily through obstacles — and for use in providing Internet access to rural areas. “Today’s order finally sets the stage for the next generation of wireless technologies to emerge and is an important victory for Internet users across the country,” Richard Whitt, telecommunications and media counsel in Google’s Washington office, said in a posting on the company’s public policy blog. Though unlicensed airwaves have been used for decades in applications like garage-door openers, cordless phones and, most recently, Wi-Fi networks, the newly available signals are stronger and therefore offer greater opportunities for engineers and entrepreneurs, supporters say. But potential problems abound. Many urban areas, including New York, have so many operating broadcast TV stations that unused space is relatively rare. Broadcasters objected to some of the F.C.C.’s proposals, fearing that unlicensed devices would interfere with their station signals. Michael J. Copps, an F.C.C. commissioner who has been a longtime advocate of freeing up the unlicensed airwaves, known as “white space,” said that he expected technology companies would now find ways to overcome those obstacles. “One of the great lessons that I quickly learned here at the F.C.C. is the power of technology to turn scarcity into abundance,” Mr. Copps said. “I look forward to seeing new devices widely available in consumer markets next year.” The F.C.C. also approved changes to the E-Rate program, which provides federal money to pay for Internet connections at schools and libraries. The new rules will allow them to set up Internet connections that use the currently dormant fiber-optic lines that are already in place in many communities, giving users more options and theoretically bringing down the cost of Internet service. The new E-Rate rules also will allow schools to provide Internet access to their communities after students go home in the evenings, further expanding broadband availability. The F.C.C. also voted in favor of an E-Rate pilot program to explore off-campus wireless Internet connections for mobile learning devices, a practice that Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, said would open the way to digital textbooks. The commission also approved measures that it thinks will help improve the ability of emergency call centers to better locate people who call 911 from wireless phones. -- George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu ___ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
[Medianews] Huge Wind Farm Opens Off Coast of Southeast England
September 23, 2010 Huge Wind Turbine Farm Opens Off Coast of Southeast England By JULIA WERDIGIER NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/business/energy-environment/24wind.html?ref=businesspagewanted=print LONDON — The world’s largest offshore wind turbine farm, with a capacity to power more than 200,000 homes for a year, opened on Thursday off the coast of southeast England. The wind farm is operated by Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, and has 100 turbines spread over 13.5 square miles. At 377 feet tall each, the turbines are visible from the coast in Kent. The wind farm took more than two years to build and is expected to generate 300 megawatts of electricity. Vattenfall’s turbines mean that power generated from wind can reach five gigawatts in Britain, enough “to power all homes in Scotland,” Chris Huhne, Britain’s energy secretary said in a statement. “We’re in a unique position to become a world leader in this industry,” Mr. Huhne said. “We are an island nation, and I firmly believe we should be harnessing our wind, wave and tidal resources to the maximum.” The British government has said it aims to support the renewable energy industry to achieve its goal to get 15 percent of energy from sources like wind farms by 2020. The efforts have focused mainly on wind power in recent years. Wind accounts for about 4 percent of Britain’s electricity needs. Some industry executives feared that more government investment would be threatened in October, when the coalition government presented its program of spending cuts intended to reduce the budget deficit. Britain has about 260 wind farms operating across the country and off its coasts. Vattenfall operates 700 wind turbines in countries including Sweden, Germany, Poland and Britain. The British wind farm is part of Vattenfall’s plan to double its electricity generated from wind power from 2009 to 2011 by building nine wind farms in six countries. -- George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu ___ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
