Skiing the waves in Hawaii
Posted By RichC on February 13, 2011
I’m thinking my snow skiing brother-in-law might enjoy this kind of freeskiing — (video clip below).
worth watching fullscreen – ^^^ —
Egypt: Mubarak steps down and hands power to the Army
Posted By RichC on February 12, 2011
I’m not comfortable quoting the Muslim Brotherhood’s English PR website, but today does seem to be a historic day for pro-democracy seekers in Egypt – “Peaceful Protest and the Reward of Perseverance.” The non-violent tactics in conjunction with social networks, news media and international 
pressure looks to have toppled the dictator Hosni Mubarak’s role as President and his control over the citizens of Egypt. We can all hope that the void being created will not be filled by another dictator or a radical element seeking to institute sharia law under fundamental Islamic leadership.
My reading and study of the Muslim Brotherhood has me concern that the moderate tone being expressed through public channels could be a “wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing,” but for now, having the iron fisted 30-plus year dictator step down and watching free people celebrating and making it happen peacefully is a good thing.
Of concern: If the Muslim Brotherhood gains a political foothold in Egypt, what would their goals be … for Egypt, the middle east, Europe and America?
The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia
…The general goals and strategic plans of the Muslim Brotherhood are only found in Arabic documents. One for Europe called “The Project” was found in 2001 in Switzerland, another for North America was found in 2005 called the “General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” An evaluation of this Memorandum was made for the US-Congress and for the Pentagon. Their influence is fast growing, especially in Europe, but not easy to trace while the active members have to keep their membership secret.
One citation from the document “General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” makes the objectives of the MB clear: “The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
As for the radical elements likely to seek power, I’m going to archive what is being said today … we’ll see how it matches up down the road.
What the Muslim Brothers Want – NYT’s article from the MB website
Friday, February 11,2011 13:51
THE Egyptian people have spoken, and we have spoken emphatically. In two weeks of peaceful demonstrations we have persistently demanded liberation and democracy. It was groups of brave, sincere Egyptians who initiated this moment of historical opportunity on Jan. 25, and the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to joining the national effort toward reform and progress.
In more than eight decades of activism, the Muslim Brotherhood has consistently promoted an agenda of gradual reform. Our principles, clearly stated since the inception of the movement in 1928, affirm an unequivocal position against violence. For the past 30 years we have posed, peacefully, the greatest challenge to the ruling National Democratic Party of Hosni Mubarak, while advocating for the disenfranchised classes in resistance to an oppressive regime.
We have repeatedly tried to engage with the political system, yet these efforts have been largely rejected based on the assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a banned organization, and has been since 1954. It is seldom mentioned, however, that the Egyptian Administrative Court in June 1992 stated that there was no legal basis for the group’s dissolution.
In the wake of the people’s revolt, we have accepted invitations to participate in talks on a peaceful transition. Along with other representatives of the opposition, we recently took part in exploratory meetings with Vice President Omar Suleiman. In these talks, we made clear that we will not compromise or co-opt the public’s agenda. We come with no special agenda of our own — our agenda is that of the Egyptian people, which has been asserted since the beginning of this uprising.
We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians. We do not intend to take a dominant role in the forthcoming political transition. We are not putting forward a candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for September.
While we express our openness to dialogue, we also re-assert the public’s demands, which must be met before any serious negotiations leading to a new government. The Mubarak regime has yet to show serious commitment to meeting these demands or to moving toward substantive, guaranteed change.
As our nation heads toward liberty, however, we disagree with the claims that the only options in Egypt are a purely secular, liberal democracy or an authoritarian theocracy. Secular liberal democracy of the American and European variety, with its firm rejection of religion in public life, is not the exclusive model for a legitimate democracy.
In Egypt, religion continues to be an important part of our culture and heritage. Moving forward, we envision the establishment of a democratic, civil state that draws on universal measures of freedom and justice, which are central Islamic values. We embrace democracy not as a foreign concept that must be reconciled with tradition, but as a set of principles and objectives that are inherently compatible with and reinforce Islamic tenets.
The tyranny of autocratic rule must give way to immediate reform: the demonstration of a serious commitment to change, the granting of freedoms to all and the transition toward democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood stands firmly behind the demands of the Egyptian people as a whole.
Steady, gradual reform must begin now, and it must begin on the terms that have been called for by millions of Egyptians over the past weeks. Change does not happen overnight, but the call for change did — and it will lead us to a new beginning rooted in justice and progress.
Essam El-Errian is a member of the guidance council of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Great graphic on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
Posted By RichC on February 11, 2011
Archiving a scanned graphic from Fortune Magazine entitled “Race to the Bottom: Oil Wells Dive a Mile Under the Gulf.”
Click for full sized version
Giraffes taking a little cruise
Posted By RichC on February 11, 2011
Food for thought
Posted By RichC on February 11, 2011
“In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.”
— Walter E. Williams
Video: Clay Matthews on Jay Leno
Posted By RichC on February 11, 2011
Clay Matthews, the hard hitting defensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers and a smooth talking new face for the NFL, made an appearance after winning the Superbowl on the Jay Leno Show (below). After listening to his conversation with Jay, I think he’ll end up comfortably behind a microphone (or in the movies) after his football career is over … I’m thinking someone like Howie Long.
Clay Matthews on Leno
Thursday 02-10-2011
If the video below doesn’t work, CLICK HERE to watch
If the video below doesn’t work, CLICK HERE to watch!
If the video below doesn’t work, CLICK HERE to watch!
In keeping with the HP-Palm webOS news …
Posted By RichC on February 9, 2011
I particularly liked the new advertising coming to my email from HP above … nice! (I’m also including the specs and a couple hands-on first-look videos from Engadget below)
Press Release:
HP TouchPad Brings webOS to the Big Screen
First webOS tablet works the way you do, introduces fun, mobile productivity on larger scale
PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 9, 2011HP today enlarged the HP webOS world with the first webOS slate – the HP TouchPad – the breakthrough webOS user interface fully realized in the tablet experience.
With its vibrant 9.7-inch diagonal flush capacitive multitouch display, virtual keyboard, instant-on access, support for Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 beta in the browser and access to thousands of webOS applications, TouchPad works the way you do and is designed not just for fun but for mobile productivity. It’s ideal for anyone who wants the benefits of the amazing webOS platform on a much bigger scale.
TouchPad is one of the products HP announced today to introduce a unique experience for customers around connected mobility, offering a unified experience for the first time across a variety of devices. It’s one of the building blocks in HP’s vision to seamlessly connect all your worlds through the power of HP webOS.“Today we’re embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available,” said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager, Palm Global Business Unit, HP. “The flexibility of the webOS platform makes it ideal for creating a range of innovative devices that work together to keep you better connected to your world.”
Designed to be used alone or as a digital companion to your webOS phone, TouchPad connects you and your devices through the elegant webOS experience. Never miss an important call or SMS message – they can be answered and viewed right on your TouchPad. Plus, HP’s exclusive new touch-to-share feature will let you simply touch an enabled webOS phone to your TouchPad to share web URLs.
With the HP Synergy feature, you simply have to sign in to your Facebook®, Google, Microsoft® Exchange, LinkedIn and Yahoo!® accounts and your contacts, calendar and email automatically populate your TouchPad.
TouchPad works the way you do
The TouchPad user interface is a visual representation of your workspace, so you can manage your workflow in a naturally intuitive way that’s easy and fun. The power of webOS true multitasking lets you have multiple applications running at the same time. webOS shows you your activities in the form of cards, not a sea of application icons on numerous home screens.This helps you do all the things you want to do, all at once, so you can listen to music, update your status on Facebook, read email and chat on IM at the same time.(4,7) As you launch new activities, webOS will automatically group related cards – for example, an email and an associated web page – together in a card stack, so you can easily track all related items together.
TouchPad also features a webOS communication suite powered by HP Synergy that keeps you connected and creative, making all of your communications simpler, richer and in your control. It’s a complete solution, including email, instant messaging, contacts, calendar, videos and a front-facing camera for video calling. Connected photo albums make it easy to share and view your pictures directly from popular services such as Facebook, Snapfish and Photobucket. It works seamlessly with TouchPad’s user interface for a natural and efficient experience.
Around the house or on the go
TouchPad offers a great internet experience around the house or on the go, so you can manage your busy life, be productive wherever you are and stay connected with work, friends, family and social networks. It keeps you connected anywhere there’s Wi-Fi for easy access to the web and entertainment.At home, whether you’re watching TV, relaxing on the sofa, at the kitchen table or in bed, you can check in with friends, surf the web, play games or read a book, magazine or newspaper. Amazon.com today announced that it will launch a free Kindle app for HP webOS tailored for TouchPad that will give you access to more than 810,000 titles from Amazon’s Kindle Store. You also can subscribe to popular magazine titles, such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and People, and download movies and TV shows through the HP Movie Store. The TouchPad music app lets you transfer and play all your favorites from your personal music collection, with amazing sound quality by Beats Audio™. You can start an email, create a message, update your status, search your favorite websites – all before you’ve even opened an application. Whenever you want to do something on your TouchPad, Just Type.
Buy and sell on Amazon.com, do your banking, buy movie tickets from Fandango or check the news. Whether your thing is Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, IM, video calling or email, TouchPad brings it all together with thousands of available webOS applications and the convenience and power of HP Synergy for integrated contacts and calendar to keep your busy life on track.
It’s great for road trips, on a plane, while commuting, in public places, while visiting friends and on vacation. It’s easy to pack, has a long-lasting battery and integrated GPS (3G only), and posting vacation photos is a snap.
Mobile productivity
When productivity is key, TouchPad makes an excellent companion. You can read and write email, view your work and personal inboxes together, or easily toggle between them. Integrated messaging conveniently combines all your text messages, picture messages and IM conversations with one person into a single view, and you can connect through SMS, Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! Messenger.TouchPad’s virtual full QWERTY keyboard includes a number row, which reduces keyboard switching, making typing easy and fast. It powers on instantly and brings you back to exactly where you left off, whether you were in the middle of composing an email, playing a game or browsing a web page. With webOS true multitasking, it’s like you never left.
For maximum productivity, HP is working with Quickoffice to include the Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite, which lets you view and edit documents, such as Microsoft Word and Excel. It also comes with VPN support to connect to corporate networks.
With its 1.3-megapixel front-facing webcam, TouchPad offers video calling capability. It’s also compatible with HP’s industry-leading printing solutions, so you can wirelessly print documents, photos and emails to compatible wireless and networked HP printers.
TouchPad has built-in HP Touchstone technology for easy charging, so it’s compatible out of the box with the HP Touchstone for TouchPad (sold separately), and you can charge in either portrait or landscape mode, even without removing the TouchPad case (sold separately). The webOS Exhibition feature lets you run applications designed specifically for Touchstone. Set your TouchPad on Touchstone and Exhibition launches automatically, showing you anything from today’s agenda to a slideshow of your photos.TouchPad is one of three webOS products announced today (see separate announcements for HP Veer and HP Pre3). Each product plays a distinct role in the growing webOS family, designed to meet the varying needs of customers in a rapidly evolving mobile landscape.
Availability
HP TouchPad is scheduled to be available in the summer. Exact pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.HP TouchPad features and specs
* HP webOS
* High-speed connectivity
* Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-CPU APQ8060 1.2-GHz processor
* 9.7-inch diagonal XGA capacitive, multitouch screen with a vibrant, 18-bit color, 1,024 x 768 resolution display
* The option of either 16 GB or 32 GB of internal storage
* High-performance browser with full access to the web, including support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta for access to rich, Flash-based web content
* Wireless connectivity:
o Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication
o A-GPS (3G only)(10)
o Bluetooth® wireless technology 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
* Multimedia options, including music, photos, video recording and playback, and a 3.5 mm headset/headphone/microphone jack
o Internal stereo speakers and Beats Audio
o Front-facing 1.3-megapixel webcam for live video calling
* Email, including EAS (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers) and personal email support (Google Gmail push, Yahoo!, POP3, IMAP)
* Robust messaging support
* Light sensor, accelerometer, compass (magnetometer) and gyroscope
* Rechargeable 6,300 mAh (typical) battery
* Micro-USB (Charging and PC Connect) with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
* Built-in HP Touchstone technology for easy charging (HP Touchstone for TouchPad sold separately) and HP touch-to-share to share web addresses between TouchPad and compatible webOS phones
* Dimensions: 190 mm x 242 mm x 13.7 mm (7.48 inches x 9.53 inches x .54 inches)
* Weight: approximately 740 g (1.6 pounds)More information about HP TouchPad is available at www.palm.com/TouchPad.
About HP
HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com/.
HP-Palm introduces the Veer, Pre3 and TouchPad today
Posted By RichC on February 9, 2011
No major shocker from HP-Palm today, who as expected announced new hardware utilizing webOS on a computer tablet; the 9.7” TouchPad was announced today at a San Francisco press event. Technology watchers tweeted with excitement as Jon Rubinstein highlighted some interesting innovations. The “touch-to-share” between devices, where a Palm Pre and TouchPad transfer information from one to the other was pretty unique. Another great feature is the wireless Touchstone charging dock for the new dualcore 1.4Ghz TouchPad. Engadget posted photos play by play from the event today on their LiveBlog.
Besides announcing their expected TouchPad, HP also introduced a new cute and tiny full physical keyboard phone called the Veer … a replacement for the Pixi.
For those of us using the Pre, perhaps the biggest surprise was another new phone called the Pre3 with an even bigger screen and faster processor than the Pre2. I think I’ve found my new phone.
We just had a chance to play around with the Pre 3 at some length… and we have to say it feels good. The body of the device is sleek and solid, and the weight feels good in your hand. The screen is a relatively spacious 3.6-inches, and webOS looks absolutely stunning on it. The extra resolution is a big help on readability and clarity. The slider mechanism feels pretty solid, though there’s a little give just at the end of it that made us slightly concerned. Compared to previous devices, however, it seems far more solid. We’re still messing around with the phone and will report back on what we find, but in terms of hardware quality, HP has taken a big step up here.
— Engadget
Now for the disappointment, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to buy the new TouchPad or smartphones until summer, even after the remarks made by Leo Apotherker.
UPDATED – The San Francisco HP-Palm event:
Tweetdeck’s deck.ly for longer Twitter messages
Posted By RichC on February 9, 2011
The latest install of the Tweetdeck (v0.37.2) Twitter client added a new feature, a shortcut link called deck.ly, that allows for longer messages. Although the feature enables significantly more text to be included in a tweet, it does take away from the simplicity of Twitter … and the necessity to be concise. Personally I doubt that there will be many embracing and “following” those who regularly send long messages, but we’ll see.
Since the feature works seamlessly for those using Tweetdeck (v0.37.2), deck.ly messages show up in the Twitter client. For those using other clients or web-based tools, the shortcut link appears enabling readers to click on and view the entire text as with the screenshot below.
Here’s the video explanation:
Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee
- lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
- digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.