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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Most Perfectest Hamburger in the World Makes My Mouth Orgasm [Video]
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
SAP splashes out in cloud-computing frenzy (Reuters)
FRANKFURT (Reuters) ? SAP's $3.4 billion takeover of SuccessFactors will help it keep up with peers in the frenzied race for cloud-computing business, even if the price it paid is very high at first glance, analysts said on Monday.
"We believe SuccessFactors could be a very good strategic fit for SAP in the cloud sector and we prefer the decision to grow externally in this booming area," DZ Bank analyst Oliver Finger said.
SAP said on Saturday it was buying U.S. web-based services company SuccessFactors for an agreed $40 per share, a 52 percent premium.
The deal helps SAP catch up with rivals in cloud computing, a fast-growing field where data and processes are hosted remotely on the Web. As part of the transaction, SuccessFactors founder and chief executive Lars Dalgaard will join SAP's executive board and will run its cloud business.
"This marks implicit recognition by SAP that their cloud strategy is not working," Evolution Securities analyst Roger Phillips said.
Shares of SAP were down 2.4 percent at 43.635 euros by 1420 GMT, while Germany's blue-chip DAX index was up 0.7 percent.
Analysts had warned that SAP risked losing ground to Oracle in the field of cloud-computing. However, there are not many assets in the business available for it to buy.
Salesforce.com is seen as too big to acquire, rival Oracle bought RightNow Technologies in October, and NetSuite is majority owned by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
"In fact, it is not clear who is next in line behind SuccessFactors. For this reason, despite the apparently rich price tag, we would not rule out the risk of a counter bid," WestLb analyst Jonathan Crozier said.
The price SAP is paying for SuccessFactors represents about eight times forecast 2012 revenues, analysts said, compared with the multiple of about 5.5 that Oracle paid for RightNow.
"The valuation of this deal is high, but reasonable in our opinion, in light of the high-growth, strategic asset that is being acquired," Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund said.
SuccessFactors' operating margin jumped to 9 percent in the third quarter from zero a year earlier, and the company said it could not hire quickly enough to meet demand.
Its shares have gained 26 percent over the past three months, giving the company a market value of about $2.2 billion.
Heino Ruland, an analyst at Ruland Research, said he sees the acquisition as being way too expensive and said the race for cloud-computing technology was heating up to the point where it seemed market players were spending irrationally just to stay in the game, mirroring the dotcom bubble more than a decade ago.
SAP raised its top-line outlook on the deal, saying its revenue could easily reach 21 billion euros by 2015, about a billion euros more than expected.
The deal will hurt SAP's earnings in 2012 but will have a positive impact from 2013 onward, SAP has said, prompting analysts to revise down their 2012 estimates.
SuccessFactors, which first went public at $10 a share four years ago, makes human resources software used by companies to review employee performance. It competes with Taleo Corp and Kenexa Corp.
JPMorgan Chase advised SAP on the deal, while Morgan Stanley advised SuccessFactors.
(Editing by Erica Billingham)
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More community collaboration (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)
Monday, December 5, 2011
University pioneers research on surf industry (AP)
SAN DIEGO ? The California city that inspired "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," the 1982 comedy film that did much to propagate the laid-back surfer image, is now home to the world's first Center for Surf Research. And, no, it's not a clever way for college kids to earn their degrees by hanging out at the beach.
Jess Ponting has heard those jokes. A sustainable tourism professor, he recently founded the first-of-its-kind institute at San Diego State University with the aim of building a database and spreading awareness about what has evolved from a beach counterculture to a multibillion dollar global industry, with both positive and negative impacts. Ponting was amazed to find how little research and critical analysis exists on the surf industry
"We want to quantify exactly what we're dealing with," said Ponting, who, on the university's web site, sports a suit-and-tie while holding a surf board. "I think it's way bigger than anybody gives it credit for, but no one has taken it seriously enough to look at it before."
Decades ago, long-haired surfers chasing isolated ocean peaks far from the crowded beaches of Australia and California stumbled into remote villages from Indonesia to Latin America and kicked off the global phenomenon. Today, so many surfers are traveling the globe in pursuit of that perfect swell that surf tourism is being seen as a top income-generator for nations from Papua New Guinea to Liberia, Ponting said. Even China has created a so-called Minister for Extreme Sports to dive in on the booming business.
Yet there is virtually no concrete data on just how big the board-carting crowd has become nor exactly how much money they generate. Scholars like Ponting estimate surf fever has caught on in more than 100 countries, while the U.S. surf industry alone generates an estimated $7 billion annually, according to the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association.
Chad Nelsen, who is doing a dissertation on the economics of surfing as part of his doctorate studies in environmental science at the University of California Los Angeles, said the only other university he has found with a formal surfing program is Great Britain's Plymouth University, which offers a Surf Science and Technology degree. That program focuses more on training students in design, production and marketing of surf products and tourism.
The SDSU research center has scheduled summits to bring together surfers, environmental organizations, tourism businesses and the small but growing wave of scholars studying surf economics. Ponting is arranging trips that will take students to places where tourism driven by surfers is making a difference in alleviating poverty and protecting the environment.
One of Ponting's hopes is that connecting the different facets of the surf industry will carry over into helping governments in developing countries understand the surf crowd and develop plans to handle the hordes.
To date, few people question the impact of surfers, Ponting said, and there are few sweeping plans about how to properly manage the surf tourism trade.
Ponting, a lifelong surfer from Australia, has traveled the globe catching waves and has seen how crowds of swell seekers have transformed remote parts of the world ? in both good and bad ways.
With no planning, many poor, remote communities discovered by surf explorers in the 1960s got caught up in what Ponting calls "the race to the bottom" with locals expanding their homes and offering cheap accommodation, but with little infrastructure to handle the mounting sewage and trash, which seep into pristine marine environments.
As a result, "surf slums" sprang up in paradise. Ponting points to some traditional Muslim villages in Indonesia that found themselves dealing with big-city problems brought in by the outsiders, including illegal drug use and prostitution.
On the other hand, there are places like Papua New Guinea, a model that has a national surf management plan limiting the number of surfers to popular spots and taxing them to help pay for sewage treatment, water systems and schools. Papua New Guinea also requires surfers to pay for a local surf guide, creating jobs for its people instead of merely playing host to foreign travel companies.
Surfers are unique in that they ? unlike other kinds of tourists ? will often pursue a wave no matter how far and difficult it may be to get there, Ponting said. They flock to nations in the midst of wars or after natural disasters, making them a resilient market for impoverished countries struggling to persuade traditional tourists to return.
That makes them a key market for places like Liberia, which has struggled to lose its image as a place of civil unrest but is quickly rising as the next unexplored surf frontier. Ponting is working on funding for a joint project with a nonprofit organization to guide the country's tourism department so locals reap the benefits instead of foreigners who may better understand the market.
The research center is working on developing a program that would certify surf hotels that ensure their operations do not pollute and that invest money back into the local communities where they are located. There is a growing tide of philanthropy among surfers wanting to help the places they visit.
Nelsen, who works as an environmental director at Surfrider Foundation, said the surf research center will give a much needed boost to organizations like his working to make the industry sustainable. He said it will also give credibility to scholars who have been dismissed because of the "Spicoli bias," referring to Jeff Spicoli, the apathetic, stoned surfing character in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
"If you have academically vetted information, it's a lot more valuable and accepted, and there's precious little of that out there on surfing," Nelsen said. "We don't want to see surfers discounted when they talk to their local city councils. This will provide tools so surfers can justify their interest in protecting surfing areas."
Corrine Roybal, a 21-year-old SDSU hospitality and tourism management major, said she held those stereotypes before taking a class from Ponting.
"It's an industry I didn't know really existed," said Roybal, after listening to Ponting lecture on a recent afternoon about how boats shuttling surfers to waves are destroying reefs with their anchors. "I had the stereotypical view of a surfer just out there to surf. It has really opened my eyes."
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ZTE Warp (Boost Mobile)
With the Galaxy Prevail?($149.99, 4 stars), Samsung brought a really solid Android smartphone?over to Boost Mobile. The Samsung Transform Ultra?($229.99, 4 stars) improved upon the Prevail and added a nice, physical QWERTY keyboard. Now ZTE is throwing its hat in the ring with the $199.99 ZTE Warp. It brings a large, 4.3-inch display to Boost's low-cost lineup, but it doesn't have quite the level of build quality we loved about those Samsung phones.
Design and Call Quality
The ZTE Warp measures 5.1 by 2.7 by .5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.9 ounces. The back is made of textured, soft-touch black plastic that looks like a fingerprint. There are silver plastic buttons on the right and left sides of the phone, and the small bit of detail on the front is all shiny black plastic. The 4.3-inch glass capacitive touch LCD has 480-by-800-pixel resolution, and it looks good when you turn the brightness level up a few notches. Unfortunately, it looks like the LCD is set further back than we see in most devices, which makes the screen much more reflective and smudge-prone than normal. This never prevented me from using the phone properly?I had no trouble browsing the Web?but I did find myself needing to clean the screen a lot more often than usual.
The Warp is a dual band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. It connected to my WPA2-encrypted Wi-Fi network without a problem. Reception is average, and call quality is good overall. Voices sound rich and clear in phone's earpiece. Calls made with the phone are also clear and easy to understand, with good background noise cancellation. The speakerphone sounds fine, but it's just a touch too low to use outdoors. Calls sounded somewhat thready through a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($99, 4.5 stars), but voice dialing worked well. Battery life was good at 6 hours 36 minutes of talk time.
Pricing, Performance, and Apps
On October 6, Boost began charging an additional $5 monthly for its unlimited data and messaging services on Android-powered devices. That means that plans now start at $55, which are reduced by $5 every 6 months you pay your bill on time, until you reach $40. Existing $50 Monthly Unlimited customers with Android can keep their current price plan as long as they don?t let their account expire. Considering that Boost uses Sprint's nationwide network, these are pretty incredible prices compared with the rates on the major carriers, which can easily cost $100 and up.
The Warp runs the latest version of Android, 2.3.5 Gingerbread, and ZTE has done almost nothing to modify it. There's not much bloatware or preinstalled apps, aside from Mobile ID. Mobile ID allows you to install "ID packs" on your phone that include applications, ringtones, wallpapers, and widgets. It isn?t for diehard Android purists, but some users may like it.?
The Warp is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 MSM8655 processor, the same as the Samsung Transform Ultra. Both phones benchmarked similarly. The scores don't come near those of the latest dual-core Android devices, but Boost doesn't carry any of those. This phone should be just fine for most needs aside from high-end gaming.
All of the standard Android apps are here. There?s Google Maps Navigation for free voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions. The phone syncs email, calendars, and contacts for Gmail and Microsoft Exchange accounts, and works with many other popular email accounts. The Warp's standard screen resolution offers maximum app compatibility in the Android Market, so you also shouldn't have much trouble running any of the 250,000+ available third-party apps.
Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
There?s a 2GB microSD card preloaded in the slot beneath the battery cover; my 32GB and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine as well. There's an additional 2.6GB of internal memory available. The standard 3.5-mm headphone jack means you can use the Warp with just about any pair of wired headphones. Music sounds great, both over wired earbuds as well as through?Altec Lansing BackBeat?Bluetooth headphones ($99, 3.5 stars). The music player is stock Android, and I was able to play AAC, MP3, OGG, and WAV files, but not FLAC or WMA. Standalone video support is also pretty good. The Warp was able to play DivX, H.264, and MPEG-4 files at resolutions up to 720p, though it doesn?t support XviD.
The camera is a low point. It's a 5-megapixel shooter with an LED flash. Shutter speeds are painfully slow?it takes an average of 2.1 seconds to snap a photo?and the photos aren't worth the wait. The camera captures decent detail, but colors are so washed out that photos almost look hazy. And the video camera isn't any better. Recorded videos max out at VGA (640-by-480 pixels) resolution, and they play back at a choppy 13 frames per second.
If you're a Boost user looking to upgrade to a smartphone, the ZTE Warp is a good choice. If you can get past the overly-reflective screen and poor cameras, it becomes even better. But if you can't, the Samsung Transform Ultra gets you a nice physical keyboard along with a screen that's easier to see. Phones like the?Motorola Photon 4G?($199.99, 4.5 stars) on Sprint offer faster dual-core processors, along with nicer displays, but Sprint's monthly rates are much higher than Boost's. The?Motorola Triumph?($299.99, 4 stars) on Virgin Mobile is another good option, though the same unlimited pricing plan on Virgin costs $60 as compared with Boost's $55, and it doesn't come with Boost's shrinkage bonus.
Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 6 hours 36 minutes
More Cell Phone Reviews:
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/BOeLMpkRl9c/0,2817,2397121,00.asp
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Sunday, December 4, 2011
EU tightens Iran sanctions and mulls oil ban (Reuters)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? The European Union tightened its sanctions against Tehran on Thursday and laid out plans for a possible embargo on Iranian oil in response to mounting concerns over the OPEC producer's nuclear work.
At a meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers decided new sanctions on energy, transport and financial sectors should be drawn up in time for their next meeting in late January.
The measures could lead to gradual cuts in Europe's imports of Iranian crude, although some EU governments want assurances that any impact on their economies would be limited before giving their final approval, diplomats said.
"We are working on it," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters when asked about the possibility of an oil ban. "We have to work with different partners so that the interruption of (oil) deliveries from Iran could be compensated by a rise in production in other countries."
Experts say global crude prices could rise if the EU bans Iranian oil, increasing economic pain as Europe struggles with a debt crisis and the specter of recession.
Greece is wary, because financial woes have led it to buy more Iranian crude. Sources say Tehran has been offering better financing terms while banks are reluctant to lend to Athens.
"Greece has voiced some concerns, we have to take them into account," Juppe said.
NEW STEPS
Concern over Iran's program grew in November after the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report that suggested Iran has worked on designing an atom bomb.
Separately from the oil discussions, EU governments added 180 Iranian people and entities to a sanctions blacklist that imposes asset freezes and travel bans on those involved in the nuclear work, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.
Britain, along with France, had pushed for decisive EU action after Tuesday's storming of its Tehran embassy by protesters angry over London's decision to impose sanctions on the Iranian banking sector, including the central bank.
Britain shut Iran's embassy in London on Wednesday, saying the attack on the British mission could not have taken place without consent from Iranian authorities.
In solidarity with Britain, EU foreign ministers issued a statement saying they were "outraged" by the Tehran attack.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said after the meeting in Brussels details of any energy sanctions had yet to be ironed out. He said Britain, which has already imposed unilateral measures, was eager to see the EU target Iran's banking sector.
"There is more work to be done on what we will do in the energy sector," he said. "So I think it would be going too far to say an embargo has been agreed."
He argued previous measures had hurt Tehran's nuclear work.
Hague said later: "The EU made very clear that it will not bow to Iran's intimidation and bullying tactics ... We want Iran to come to the table and negotiate meaningfully about its nuclear program. Despite events this week we still want a diplomatic solution."
Hague's Italian counterpart Giulio Terzi said the economic impact of sanctions had to be taken into consideration when any new measures are finalized.
EU experts will discuss details of new sanctions in the coming weeks, foreign ministers of the bloc's 27 states said in Thursday's statement.
"The detail of exactly what should be done now goes to the technical experts, who decide what will work, what is appropriate for European Union member states to do and what will have what effect," said Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said he was prepared to agree to a crude oil embargo, but questioned its effectiveness.
"I am prepared to go along with that," he told reporters. "I don't think it will necessarily have that much of an effect because of the nature of the global oil market."
(Additional reporting by Ilona Wissenbach, Julien Toyer, Sebastian Moffett and Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Andrew Roche)
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Saturday, December 3, 2011
Astronomers look to neighboring galaxy for star formation insight
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
An international team of astronomers has mapped in detail the star-birthing regions of the nearest star-forming galaxy to our own, a step toward understanding the conditions surrounding star creation.
Led by University of Illinois astronomy professor Tony Wong, the researchers published their findings in the December issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a popular galaxy among astronomers both for its nearness to our Milky Way and for the spectacular view it provides, a big-picture vista impossible to capture of our own galaxy.
"If you imagine a galaxy being a disc, the LMC is tilted almost face-on so we can look down on it, which gives us a very clear view of what's going on inside," Wong said.
Although astronomers have a working theory of how individual stars form, they know very little about what triggers the process or the environmental conditions that are optimal for star birth. Wong's team focused on areas called molecular clouds, which are dense patches of gas ? primarily molecular hydrogen ? where stars are born. By studying these molecular clouds and their relationship to new stars in the galaxy, the team hopes to learn more about the metamorphosis of gas clouds into stars.
"When we study star formation, an important question is, what is the environment doing? How does the location of star formation reflect the conditions of that environment? There's no better place to study the wider environment than the LMC."
Using a 22-meter-diameter radio telescope in Australia, the astronomers mapped more than 100 molecular clouds in the LMC and estimated their sizes and masses, identifying regions with ample material for making stars. This seemingly simple task engendered a surprising find.
Conventional wisdom states that most of the molecular gas mass in a galaxy is apportioned to a few large clouds. However, Wong's team found many more low-mass clouds than they expected ? so many, in fact, that a majority of the dense gas may be sprinkled across the galaxy in these small molecular clouds, rather than clumped together in a few large blobs.
"We thought that the big clouds hog most of the mass," Wong said, "but we found that in this galaxy, it appears that the playing field is more level. The low-mass clouds are quite numerous and they actually contribute a significant amount of the mass. This provides the first evidence that the common wisdom about molecular clouds may not apply here."
The large numbers of these relatively low-mass clouds means that star-forming conditions in the LMC may be relatively widespread and easy to achieve. The findings raise some interesting questions about why some galaxies stopped their star formation while others have continued it.
To better understand the connection between molecular clouds and star formation, the team compared their molecular cloud maps to maps of infrared radiation, which reveal where young stars are heating cosmic dust.
For the comparison, they exploited a carefully selected sample of newborn heavy stars compiled by U. of I. astronomy professor You-Hua Chu and resident scientist Robert Gruendl, who also were co-authors of the paper. These stars are so young that they are still deeply embedded in cocoons of gas and dust.
"It turns out that there's actually very nice correspondence between these young massive stars and molecular clouds," Wong said. "That's not entirely surprising, but it's reassuring. We assume that these stars have to form in molecular clouds, and it tells us that the molecular clouds do hang around long enough for us to see them associated with these massive young stars."
Wong hopes to continue to study the relationship between molecular clouds and star formation in greater detail. If researchers can determine the relative ages of young stars, they can correlate these against molecular clouds to figure out which clouds have star formation, how long the clouds live and what eventually leads to their destruction. They also plan to use a newly constructed array of telescopes in Chile to see the cloud environment in higher resolution, pinpointing exactly where inside the molecular cloud star formation will occur.
"This study provides us with our most detailed view of an entire population of clouds in another galaxy," Wong said. "We can say with great confidence that these clouds are where the stars form, but we are still trying to figure out why they have the properties they do."
###
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: http://www.uiuc.edu
Thanks to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115606/Astronomers_look_to_neighboring_galaxy_for_star_formation_insight
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Friday, December 2, 2011
White House mum on tax cut if no deal to pay costs (AP)
WASHINGTON ? The White House refused to say Tuesday whether President Barack Obama would agree to payroll tax cuts if they add to the nation's deficit, as the top Senate Republican predicted lawmakers eventually would reach an agreement to prevent taxes from increasing on 160 million Americans.
The tax cut is set to expire at the end of the year, raising taxes by about $1,000 on the average household unless Congress and Obama act. As the deadline approaches, political support is building for at least continuing the tax cut ? and thereby heading off a politically bruising tax hike. But the holdup remains on how to offset the cost.
Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the president prefers that lawmakers find a way to pay for the cuts that does not add to the federal debt. Indeed, Obama has made that promise over and over.
But Carney pointedly avoided questions from reporters about what Obama would do should Congress pass the extension without figuring out how to cover the cost.
The White House is being pressed on whether Obama is showing maneuvering room in his stand as he seeks to give a jolt to the economy, or at least to prevent another setback.
""We don't know what the end game is yet," Carney said. "There is no value in this process ? or ultimately to the American people, who want and deserve this tax cut ? to negotiate an end game here before we even have a vote. So I'm not going to go any further on that."
Obama included the extension and expansion of the payroll tax cuts in the jobs bill he released in September. In pressuring Republicans to get behind that bill, Obama has been emphatic that every single provision, including the extension of the payroll tax cut, will be offset somewhere else so the enormous federal debt will not worsen.
When he unveiled his plan, he put it plainly: "The American Jobs Act will not add to the deficit. It will be paid for."
Senate Democrats are set to hold a test vote on a plan later this week that would pay for Obama's proposed extension and expansion of the payroll tax cut with a 3.25 percent tax surcharge on the very wealthy. The White House says the president supports that proposal.
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted Tuesday that Republicans would not back an increase in taxes on the wealthy as a method of paying for the extension.
However, McConnell did say the GOP would propose extending last year's reduction and paying for the measure, though he did not say how.
"In all likelihood we will agree to continue the current payroll tax relief for another year, but we believe it should be paid for," McConnell said.
Republicans said that to pay for the extension, GOP leaders would consider using some of the savings discussed by Congress' failed supercommittee, which tried to reach a bipartisan deal on deficit reduction.
That included savings from agriculture assistance, federal asset and broadcast spectrum sales, civil servants' retirement benefits, and higher fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee mortgages, plus fees levied by the Transportation Security Administration.
McConnell said there is "clearly a majority sentiment" among Senate Republicans to renew last year's payroll tax cut, and cited the near $15 trillion national debt as the reason why it must be offset with savings.
In a deal with Obama last year, Congress cut the 6.2 percent payroll tax ? which helps finance Social Security ? to 4.2 percent for this year, a reduction that cost about $112 billion.
The president has proposed cutting the payroll tax further, to 3.1 percent next year at a cost of $179 billion, plus adding another $69 billion in payroll tax breaks for employers.
Without at least extending last year's cuts, the White House says a family making $50,000 would pay about $1,000 more in taxes in 2012.
Many economists say that could put another dent in the already shaky economic recovery.
___
Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.
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