As Washington and the states pile up mountainous liabilities - $3 trillion for unfunded state pensions, $10 trillion in new federal deficits through 2019, and $38 trillion (or is it $50 trillion?) in unfunded Medicare promises - the U.S. needs once again to call on its chief strategic asset: radical innovation.

One laboratory of growth will continue to be the Internet. The U.S. began the 2000’s with fewer than five million residential broadband lines and zero mobile broadband. We begin the new decade with 71 million residential lines and 300 million portable and mobile broadband devices. In all, consumer bandwidth grew almost 15,000%.

CIA drones are killing terrorists — and civilians — in Pakistan almost every day. The unmanned aircraft are becoming the weapon of choice in the fight against al-Qaida and its allies. But the political, military and moral consequences are incalculable. SPIEGEL ONLINE has investigated Barack Obama’s remote-controlled campaign against terrorism.

The national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has long been intimidated by the Murdoch press in the obsessive manner of the campaign waged against the BBC. Funded directly by governments, the ABC has none of the nominal independence afforded by a licence fee. Last year, HarperCollins, owned by Murdoch, was awarded a lucrative “partnership” with ABC Books.

In 1983, there were 50 major corporations dominating the world’s media. By 2002, this had been reduced to nine. Rupert Murdoch says that eventually there will be three, including his own. If we accept this, media and information control will be the same, and we all shall be citizens of a murdochracy.

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption.

Toyota is in a world of hurt. Analysts estimate the automaker’s contingent liabilities top $5 billion. It will be 15 years before the class-action hounds let go.

It is easy to criticize Toyota’s handling of sudden acceleration complaints, but no issue this complex is one-sided. What Toyota has done wrong — and the wrong others have done to it — bear study.
Toyota sat on allegations that could not stay quiet. Its officials continued delaying even after the dike started cracking.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves put two groups on notice Tuesday that they will be paying the network more in the future than they have in the past.

Advertisers will pay more in the form of higher prices for commercials. And the network’s local TV affiliates will pay more too, in the form of substantial portions of the retransmission consent fees they receive from cable operators-or they will risk losing their network affiliations.

News release prepared by: Nellie Ryan, 785-532-6415, media@k-state.edu

Friday, March 12, 2010

K-STATE JOURNALISM EXPERT SAYS INTERNET CHANGING NEWS, NEWSPAPERS

MANHATTAN — News is changing in several ways and innovation is taking place at record-breaking speed, according to Angela Powers, director of the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University.

Powers researches influences on news content, media leadership and ethics, and media convergence.

“Some newspapers in the U.S. are laying off people, closing their doors,” she said. “Yet, other newspapers have an enthusiasm for new methods and techniques for gathering news and information that is completely changing the way they’re doing business.”

Part of that transformation has to do with the Internet, which has created massive interconnectedness, Powers said.

“Journalists are now routinely producing original content for the Internet and determining which medium is most appropriate, rather than simply covering a story for print or electronic media,” she said. (more…)

Link.

Link.

While the rest of America was stunned to hear that a suburban Pennsylvania woman allegedly used the Internet identity of Jihad Jane and tried to join militant jihadists, for a group of ‘Net vigilantes it was old news.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin adores the company’s social network called Google Buzz. We know this because an engineer working five feet from Brin used Google Buzz to say so. “I just finished eating dinner with Sergey and four other Buzz engineers in one of Google’s cafes,” engineer John Costigan wrote a day after the Twitter-and-Facebook-esque service was announced. “He was particularly impressed with the smooth launch and the great media response it generated.”

The Internet allowed extremists to contact, recruit, train and equip the suspect responsible for the attempted Flight 253 bombing on Christmas Day “within weeks,” a top Pentagon official told lawmakers Wednesday.

That relatively brief timeframe only speaks to how quickly extremist groups have “optimized” the Web and developed a “highly evolved” process by which to develop terrorist networks, added Garry Reid, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism.

Link.

Link.

NEW YORK–It was apparently one step short of a cattle stampede when low-cost airline JetBlue used its Twitter account to announce that as part of its 10th anniversary celebration it would be giving out about a thousand free round-trip tickets at three undisclosed locations in Manhattan on Wednesday.

(Reuters) - Media companies longing to bring a paid-for culture to the Internet might just get what they want if they pay more attention to the smartphone revolution that is changing the way people access the Web.

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — Volkswagen AG, Europe’s biggest car maker, said Thursday it expects to increase its deliveries, sales revenue and operating profit this year, as it forecast a “slight recovery” in the global automotive market.

Still, the firm warned that the climate in the car industry will remain “harsh,” with interest- and exchange-rate volatility continuing to weigh on its profit.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Earnings reports from National Semiconductor Corp. and Aeropostale Inc., as well as the latest figures on videogame sales are expected to highlight after-hours trading Thursday.

Urban Decline: Detroit was once the epitome of an industrial boomtown. From 1900 to 1930, it was the fastest growing city in the world. Now, ravaged by recession and a plummeting population, the city is shrinking.

As recently as 1950, Detroit was a manufacturing mecca, bustling with 1.9 million residents and the energy of thousands of workers at a dozen auto companies, not to mention the industries, shops and stores that sprang up to service them.

Today, the population of the former Motor City is 800,000 and falling. Since the start of 2008, the greater metropolitan area has lost nearly a quarter of its manufacturing jobs, and the city suffers from a 50% unemployment rate.

Link.

Published with permission.

March 9, 2010
Dear Kansas Supporter,

As you know, the federal government has been trying to force states to
create a national ID card. This National ID is dangerous because it would
give the federal government your finger prints and digital photos that can
be run through facial recognition software. Privacy advocates have noted
“Real ID is a ‘real nightmare’ for America that will only lead to a national
identity card system that violates personal privacy, bigger bureaucratic
messes, longer lines, increased identity theft and higher fees.”

In order to stop this federal power grab, we need to pass legislation to
keep Kansas bureaucrats from trying to implement it. (more…)

HB 2411 will make it illegal to buy, sell or possess the chemicals, sold commercially under the brand name K2. The substance is made in a lab; when smoked it acts on the brain in a similar manner to marijuana.

(CNSNews.com) - “We would encourage people to continue to use Drudge. That’s a great source,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R.-Okla.) told CNSNews.com Tuesday after his staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee received an email informing them that the Senate Sergeant at Arms believed the Drudge Report and whitepages.com had been responsible for infecting Senate computers with viruses and advising Senate personnel not to visit the Web sites.