Reuters:

EW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) reported weakness in corporate sales and fewer-than-expected wireless customers for the fourth quarter, and warned that pension costs would hurt earnings in 2009, dragging its shares down as much as 6.5 percent.

The results showed the No. 2 U.S. phone company was not immune to the recession and plunging global markets, although analysts were impressed by strong growth in Verizon’s FiOS television and high-speed Internet subscribers.

Verizon said on Tuesday that quarterly profit rose to $1.2 billion, or 43 cents a share, from $1.1 billion, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier.

Reuters:

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Two years ago anyone uttering the words “state” and “regulation” in the same sentence would have been sneered at in high-powered banking circles gathered by the ski slopes of Davos.

Now, more than 18 months into the biggest financial upheaval in the last eighty years, those bank executives that still have jobs are preparing to swallow large doses of regulatory medicine to help cure a crisis they are accused of causing.

With bank lending still frozen, the world sliding into recession and more than 300,000 financial jobs already gone, policymakers are replacing bankers in the driving seat at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) to discuss short- and long-term solutions to the sector’s woes.

Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The economy shrank at its fastest pace in nearly 27 years in the fourth quarter, government data showed, sinking deeper into recession as consumers and business cut spending.

The Commerce Department on Friday said gross domestic product, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, plummeted at a 3.8 percent annual rate, the lowest pace since the first quarter of 1982, when output contracted 6.4 percent. GDP fell 0.5 percent in the third quarter. These were the first consecutive declines in GDP since the fourth quarter of 1990 and the first three months of 1991.

Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Corning Inc posted weaker-than-expected quarterly results and gave a weak forecast due to a significant decline in sales of glass for televisions and computer monitors, and said it would eliminate 4,900 jobs to cut costs.

The results proved that Corning, like many other large manufacturers, is struggling to find balance and plan for the future in a decaying economic environment where both consumers and corporations are curtailing spending.

Media Research Center:

…anchor Norah O’Donnell derided Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for attending the annual Alfalfa dinner in Washington, D.C., declaring: “Sarah Palin is coming to D.C. she ran as a maverick this whole campaign, wanted nothing to do with people in Washington, the anti-establishment candidate, and now she’s coming to the most exclusive dinner in Washington, to hobnob with perhaps the President, ambassadors, senators, all the people she derided during the campaign. What’s up with that?” O’Donnell spoke with Republican strategist John Feehery and Democratic strategist Morris Reid. O’Donnell turned to Reid and asked: “Didn’t she call him a terrorist on the campaign trail?” In fact, Palin charged that Obama was “palling around with terrorists,” like his long-time Chicago associate and former domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers.

Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) - “Cello scrotum,” a nasty ailment allegedly suffered by musicians, does not exist and the condition was just a hoax, a senior British doctor has admitted.

WichitaLiberty.org:

Underlying these arguments is the assumption that we need experienced, effective legislators, county commission members, city council members, and school board members. If your goal is to expand the power and influence of government, maybe so. But if you seek to limit the power of government and tip the balance back towards individual liberty, experienced and powerful elected representatives are not what we need.

The argument that we need experienced elected officials to provide a counter to powerful staff members and bureaucrats can be eliminated by, well, eliminating powerful staff and bureaucrats.

Reuters:

The company, which also said on Wednesday to expect a loss in the current quarter, posted a net loss of $37 million, or 8 cents per share, for the first quarter ended December 26, compared with a year-earlier profit of $949 million, or $1.90 per share.

Macworld.com:

The Macintosh SE/30

The Mac I think most fondly of remains my Macintosh SE/30. While we were undergraduates, my now wife and I bought it as a double-floppy SE, and I built it a 30MB external hard drive from parts. Later, we upgraded to the SE/30 logic board, and installing a video card in its single slot introduced me to the wonders of multiple monitors. When I finally bought a new Mac, I gave the SE/30 an Ethernet card and made it a Web and mailing list server; it ran for 10 years, until 2001. Now it sits on a bookshelf, reminding us of just how wonderful the Mac has been.—ADAM C. ENGST

ComputerWorld: The next iPhone –

The iPhone that Apple will likely be releasing in June has been popping up all around the southern San Francisco area.  What kind of sweet upgrades will this thing have that will make those with older iPhones want to upgrade?

Processor.  I think Apple will match (or exceed) Palm’s Pre with an ARM Cortex A8 class processor.  I doubt we’ll see multiple cores but would love to be surprised by the PA Semi crew at Apple.

Video.   Imagination technologies will likely make some kind of video processor that will put the current one to shame.  Multi-core?  Perhaps, but it had better not drink too much battery.  Bonus points for OpenCL capabilities.