After encampment ends, NYC Occupiers become nomads (AP)

NEW YORK ? It was only a few nights after the Occupy protesters began sleeping in his church sanctuary when the Rev. Bob Brashear realized that his laptop was missing.

The refugees from Manhattan's Zuccotti Park had found their way to his cavernous Presbyterian church on a cold winter evening, hoping to stay for a few nights, maybe longer. It was the latest stopover for the nomadic group, which has been living in a rotating series of churches since the city shut down its camp in November.

"There was a sense of shock and sadness that it had happened," said Brashear, whose laptop will soon be replaced by Occupy organizers. "And there's a common understanding that if there's one more theft in the church, that's it."

This is what the Occupy encampment has become: a band of homeless protesters with no place to go. Amid accusations of drug use and sporadic theft, they've been sleeping on church pews for weeks, consuming at least $20,000 of the donations that Occupy Wall Street still has in its coffers. Their existence is being hotly debated at Occupy meetings: Are these people truly "Occupiers" who deserve free food and a roof over their heads?

"We don't do this out of charity," said 34-year-old Ravi Ahmad, who works for Columbia University and volunteers with Occupy in her spare time. "We do this so that whoever wants to work in the movement can work in the movement. This is a meritocracy."

But money is draining rapidly from Occupy's various bank accounts, which currently amount to about $344,000. Including church maintenance costs and meals, living expenses are more than $2,000 per week.

"We are all aware that the NYPD destroyed the tent homes of many Occupiers in just one night," someone recently wrote on http://www.nycga.net, Occupy's General Assembly website for New York City. "However, where were they living before Zuccotti Park? Are we paying for housing for homeless people who may be relocated to City shelters?"

The movement, which denounces corporate excess and economic inequality, has been fighting to stay afloat in the city where it began. Media attention and donations have dropped off. And although protesters regularly meet to plan demonstrations, recent marches have had none of the spectacle that captivated New Yorkers and watchers worldwide.

On Monday, the metal barricades surrounding Zuccotti Park were removed for the first time since the November raid. But protesters still can't set up tents to camp overnight ? and they don't have a long-term solution to the housing problem.

Their current home is Brashear's West-Park Presbyterian Church, a stately 100-year-old house of worship on the Upper West Side that badly needs renovation. Occupy organizers see the cracks in the ceiling as an opportunity to repay the favor by helping to fix the place up.

There are about 70 Occupiers staying there and another 30 or so at Park Slope United Methodist Church in Brooklyn.

"Everybody tries to get along, make things work," said Donna Marinelli, 52, of New Britain, Conn., who was sitting on the floor in a sleeping bag alongside her cousin, David Monarca. "We were in the park in tents until they raided us. We wanted to stay for the movement. We didn't want to leave when we just got here."

During the daylight hours, Marinelli attends Occupy events and volunteers at an Occupy kitchen in Brooklyn. Nobody is allowed to stay in the church during the day. At night, the place is patrolled by an Occupy security team led by Marine Corps Sgt. Halo Showzah, a 27-year-old Iraq war veteran from the Bronx.

"We walk around the church with flashlights, making noise to wake these people up and making sure they're good," he said. "No sex in the church, no drinking, no smoking, no shooting, no sniffing."

The church was quiet and cozy Wednesday night as about two dozen people staked out their respective corners of the room. Some prefer the balcony; others like to curl up by the door. Someone fiddled around on the piano and sang a few songs as a cat watched from a pew. Showzah wandered around and chatted with everyone, making jokes and doling out advice to the singer.

The security threat is very real here. At least 30 percent of the crowd is a mix of chronically homeless, drug-addicted people, some of whom suffer from "psychological issues," as several protesters put it. Among other rules, the pastor has demanded that the Occupiers station at least one mental health expert "within easy reach" of the church every night.

Even some of the church dwellers themselves are fed up with their fellow pew mates. Chris Allen, 36, is working on a backup plan in case they get kicked out.

"I feel people are messing up the church and we're not going to have it much longer, so I'm worried about putting money in my pocket," said Allen, an unemployed construction worker from Long Island who lives here with his wife. "Because when it snows and I have nowhere to go, I'm not going to be stuck on the streets like everyone else for being idiots."

Who is allowed to stay at the church is a source of contention and perpetual infighting. If you're not on the official list kept by Occupy organizers, you're not allowed inside. But it's unclear what distinguishes the general populace from an Occupier.

One night in December, police officers were called to the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew when people who weren't on the list came to the door and refused to leave.

"I was turned away one night in the cold and rain," said David Everitt-Carlson, a 55-year-old unemployed former advertising executive who lived in a teepee at Zuccotti Park. "And I slept at Grand Central Station. I found a place behind a Christmas decoration."

About a month ago, a telephone hotline was set up so people could call and request a spot at one of the churches. But space is limited. And each church sojourn has an expiration date.

Some churches willingly opened their doors to provide temporary shelter after the police raid. None of them are equipped to house protesters forever.

"It's a lot of wear and tear on the space," said Michael Ellick, a minister at Judson Memorial Church, which housed protesters for several nights in November. "We're broke, so we don't have a custodial staff. We can't be a full-time housing unit."

During daylight hours, some people migrate down to Occupy's atrium at 60 Wall St., while others head off to hunt for jobs or disappear into the city. At night, there are often counselors on hand for emotional support.

Typical arguments are reminiscent of life at Zuccotti, which had its own share of criminal activity. A frequent complaint, for example, involves a man who apparently never takes showers.

"No fistfights, no weapons involved," said Jeff Brewer, 34, an Occupy organizer. "I believe there was a shampoo bottle that was thrown one time."

Meals are donations from food pantries and leftovers dropped off by nearby restaurants. Occupy's financial donations mostly come in small amounts from private donors, who can funnel money through a myriad of online payment services.

The debate over providing food and shelter for the church Occupiers plays into a larger one that has divided New York's protesters ever since the police raid. While some are determined to occupy another space somewhere in the city, others say an encampment is unnecessary and, at its worst, a burden.

The church dwellers believe they are carrying the torch for the lost encampment ? and that, someday, they will form the foundation of a new one.

"We really have been calling it the `Occupiers army' that we are building," explained protester Jason Harris, a teacher from Massachusetts.

First, though, they'll have to find a way to survive the winter. Brashear hasn't yet decided whether he will allow the protesters to stay at West-Park beyond next week. If they are truly dedicated to forming a community ? and not simply seeking shelter within the church's walls ? he'll be more willing to extend their unspoken lease.

"It's a sort of sink or swim situation," he said. "I think, long-term, they have to make a decision about what, exactly, their movement is about."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120112/ap_on_re_us/us_occupy_wall_street

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Joe Lapointe: Will Republican Union-bashing Draw Backlash in Indiana?

National Football League players, even when their union is locked out by their bosses, rarely connect on an economic level with laborers in the general population. Some athletes' salaries are closer to those of the 1 percent who hold most American economic power than to those of the 99 percent who don't.

Last week, a half dozen NFL guys from Indiana made a halfhearted gesture of solidarity when they opposed the onerous Republican-sponsored so-called right-to-work bill that will reduce the power of unions in the Hoosier State.

But it was not as if Jay Cutler, Rex Grossman, Courtney Roby, Trai Essex, Mark Clayton or Kris Dielman promised even an informational picket line when all the Rush Limbaugh-type swells descend from their private jets to feast at the corporate Woodstock of the Super Bowl in Indianapolis on Sunday, Feb. 5.

By then, the battle could be over and the unions may have lost. Governor Mitch Daniels, one of several anti-worker Republican governors in the industrial Great Lakes region, appears to have the votes and the momentum to successfully conclude a right-wing attack on unions in a presidential election year.

Late Wednesday, the Indiana House announced a few round of hearings on the bill to take place next Tuesday, with a vote possible later in the week.

However -- perhaps! -- winning could be counterproductive, igniting a backlash like the recall campaign against Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin or the referendum rejection of Gov. John Kasich's legislation in Ohio. It might be that the tea party types have again overplayed their hand.

In the meantime, Indiana unions and their Democratic supporters find themselves contemplating third down and long yardage to go with time ticking off the legislative clock.

"We know we can't stay out indefinitely," minority leader Pat Bauer told National Public Radio, regarding the brief Democratic boycott this week. "But we did need to slow the process down, which we've succeeded in doing."

Democrats have walked out on legislative sessions. Union protestors booed Gov. Daniels Tuesday night when he gave his State of the State address. But the Republicans hold a 60-40 voting edge in the state House and appear ready to approve legislation taking away unions' right to assess dues from workers protected by unions in private businesses.

The Indianapolis Star reported that many Democratic chairs were empty when Daniels spoke and quoted a Teamster who said he once voted for Daniels.

"Mitch is a liar!" the man shouted, along with other protestors. "No right-to-work!"

The paper also reported that the Democratic Party of Indiana called Daniels' speech "fifteen minutes of historic back-patting, a few minutes of storytelling and a load of propaganda about policies that will harm working Hoosiers."

Despite Daniels' insistence that surveys show a majority of his state's citizens want the new law, the Star reported that the only nonpartisan poll -- taken by Ball State University -- showed 27 percent support it, 24 percent oppose it and 48 percent are undecided or lacking enough information to decide.

As Daniels left the building, protestors shouted, "Shame on you!"

Some of the scenes and sounds in the hallways Tuesday resembled those of last winter in Wisconsin when Democrats and unionists opposed Gov. Walker's effort to limit collective bargaining rights of public sector unions.

Although Walker won that battle, he could lose the larger war because his many foes hope to recall him, just as they have recalled two Republican state senators there.

When Gov. Kasich of Ohio tried a similar bill last year, his effort was overwhelmingly voted down in a referendum in November.

There are 22 other states with right-to-work laws, most of them in the South and the West. The last state to vote in favor was Oklahoma in 2001. A victory for reactionary Republicans in Indiana would represent a significant incursion of their ideology into the Northeast.

The region could be pivotal this fall as President Barack Obama runs for re-election, perhaps against Mitt Romney, a venture capitalist whose father was an auto executive and governor of Michigan. Many automobile-related jobs remain in the Great Lakes region.

When the economy crashed at the end of the George Bush presidency, Romney said auto companies should go bankrupt. Instead, Obama saved them and the jobs that come with them. Romney last week said he enjoys firing people.

In 2008, running against Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama carried the 79 electoral votes of Wisconsin (10), Illinois (21), Indiana (11), Ohio (20) and Michigan (17).

Republican supporters tout the Indiana bill as good for job creation. But a Bloomberg report showed that the average worker in a right-to-work state is paid $30,167 per year, about $5,333 less than workers in states without the rule, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

The New York Times reported opposition to Daniels from Jim Robinson, a United Steelworkers official in Indiana, who said: "It's a political attack on what the Republicans see as one of their main opponents -- organized labor. They want to weaken unions to help assure continued Republican majorities."

But in the interest of fairness and balance, it should be acknowledged that the right-wing Wall Street Journal -- Rupert Murdoch's top American paper -- managed to see the business-owner side of the issue in an editorial.

The WSJ called the Indiana fight "the labor reform story of the year" and lashed out at what it called "Big Labor" for portraying it as a radical change.

"If Indiana joins the club, it would send a message that even voters in industrial states realize their overall business climate must take precedence over union power," the WSJ wrote. "If President Obama really wants to revive U.S. manufacturing and exports, he'd make all of America right-to-work. But Indiana would be a splendid new precedent."

They're right about part of that last part. It would be a "new precedent;" but it would not be "splendid" for everyone.

This post originally appeared on Current.com.

?

Follow Joe Lapointe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joelapointe

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-lapointe/indiana-right-to-work-bill_b_1206681.html

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Hotel chains team up to offer 1-stop booking shop (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Several major hotel chains have launched a new website in an effort to increase their online booking revenue and lower costs associated with third-party travel services.

This week, six hotel companies announced roomkey.com, a hotel search engine that routes consumers straight to participating hotel companies' websites to book rooms.

Equity partners, who stand to share in proceeds once the Room Key venture generates profits, are currently Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels, Marriott International, InterContinental Hotels Group and Wyndham Worldwide Corp.

Britain's InterContinental said it expects the website to boost its business in the United States.

John Davis III, chief executive of Room Key, said the site would help ease the complexity of finding hotel rooms for consumers while helping the hotel companies lower their distribution costs. He said the service was targeted to leisure and small-business travelers.

Davis told Reuters that fees the hotel companies pay to list on Room Key were cheaper than what they pay online travel services such as Expedia. He also said consumers would find the lowest rates on Room Key, and would have an easier time making changes to itineraries than when using online travel agencies.

"What Room Key is designed to do is to reach brand-neutral consumers and have them use this website rather than an online travel agency website like Expedia or Travelocity to plan and book hotel stays," said Henry Harteveldt, co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group and travel industry analyst.

"It's a challenge to the online travel agencies because the hotels feel the online travel agencies are too expensive and they'd like to find a way to better represent their product," Harteveldt added.

The analyst said the new site, if built out the right way, could offer consumers a convenient one-stop hotel shop. He said consumer reviews, pictures from hotel guests and the addition of other hotels would enhance it.

"If Room Key brings in other chains like Starwood and Accor and luxury brands like Four Seasons and good destination content and other things like that, it has a chance to really help consumers price-shop hotels," Harteveldt said.

Davis, the CEO, said Room Key was open to bringing in more partners, and noted Best Western International signed up to have its hotels listed on the site. He said Starwood Hotels and Resorts initially opted to take a wait-and-see stance on the venture.

(Reporting by Karen Jacobs in Atlanta, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120113/wr_nm/us_hotels_site

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Egypt's New Political Equation: The Military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis (Time.com)

The new year in Egypt has ushered in a new parliament, dominated for the first time in Egypt's history by Islamists. And with that comes the question of just how those newly empowered Islamists -- led by the Muslim Brotherhood with nearly half the seats -- will run the country.

Some activists and politicians have predicted that a violent confrontation will ensue between the military and the Islamist bloc, as a tug-of-war for power and influence, particularly in the drafting of Egypt's new constitution, engulfs the months ahead. They say the Islamist parties, who together hold roughly 62% of parliament, will push forward with the implementation of Shari'a -- Islamic law -- as well as legislation to curtail the military's power and immunity. And they predict that the military will do everything in its power to stop them. "This would give us a new Algeria," says Islam Ahmed Abdallah, a follower of the ultra-conservative Salafi interpretation of Islam, who runs a center geared toward combatting "Christian evangelism." Egypt's Islamists have a history of violent struggle against the regime, he reasons. And if the military challenges their rightfully won authority, Egypt could deteriorate into the kind of violence that wracked Algeria in the 1990s after its military pre-emptively shut down a similar Islamist win. (See TIME's photogallery "Mass Demonstrations in Egypt.")

But other analysts say that a dramatic power play simply isn't in the cards. Rather, argues Kent State University political scientist Joshua Stacher, the dynamic has already been drafted, and it has little to do with extremists like Abdallah, who, embodied in the Salafi Nour party, now control an estimated quarter of the seats in parliament. "The real negotiations will happen at the top of the regime between the Muslim Brotherhood and SCAF [the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces]," he says.

The Brotherhood spent decades organizing, despite the heavy-handed repression inflicted by the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. After participating in the uprising to oust him last winter, the Brotherhood quickly rose to become Egypt's most powerful political party. With their dominance in parliament solidified, the players who matter in charting Egypt's future have been whittled down to two big ones: the Muslim Brotherhood, and the powerful military that Mubarak left behind. Stacher is hardly the only observer to speculate that the two actors are already deeply engaged in closed-door negotiations for Egypt's future distribution of power. Egyptian liberals have warned of such a conspiracy since the spring, alleging that a negotiated partnership kept the Brotherhood out of Tahrir Square (where the liberals have directed their protests against the military council) and cemented the group's win in elections. (See more international news in Global Spin.)

The Brotherhood has categorically denied any such backroom deals. But recent weeks of politicking suggest that they also have little intention of throwing their lot in a coalition with their fellow Islamists, the Salafis. Brotherhood officials made it clear this week that they have abandoned earlier calls for Egypt to become a parliamentary -- rather than presidential -- system, in a move that lifts pressure off the military, and will likely spark condemnation from the ultra-Islamists and liberals. A top Brotherhood official told The New York Times that the group would accept the leadership of military-appointed Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri until July, by which point the military has already said an elected president will take power.

See TIME's Top 10 World Stories of 2011.

Brotherhood officials have also reached out to American and European diplomatic partners in recent weeks, and have assured both constituents and international partners of their commitment to moderate and inclusive policies in the months ahead. Over the weekend, Brotherhood leaders attended the Coptic Christmas mass at Cairo's main church in a gesture to the country's increasingly wary Christian minority, even as Salafi groups lambasted Christmas celebrations as haram -- or un-Islamic. "My sense is that the Brothers feel like the Salafis are politically immature," says Stacher, who notes that the two Islamist blocs also have very different visions of an Islamic Egypt. And the Brotherhood, which as an organization is better acquainted with regime heavy-handedness than the rookie Salafi parties, also knows the military still has the upper hand when it comes to arms and resources. "The Brothers have never really gone for broke, and they're not going to go for broke now," Stacher says. "Now that the Muslim Brotherhood has had their little taste of freedom they're not going back to prison."

Still, the fast rise of the Brotherhood to political prominence doesn't necessarily write the smaller players out of the scene; it merely marginalizes them. Stacher predicts that violent confrontations between the military and liberals or other groups -- like the security crackdowns on protesters in Tahrir Square that have left more than 80 people dead since October -- will continue in 2012. "Now that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis both have seats, SCAF will try to use them against non-Islamist groups. They can kind of favor the Islamists to get the secularists all worked up," he says. "Or they can play the groups off one another." (Read "As U.S. Explores Dialogue with Muslim Brotherhood, Israelis Urge a Tougher Line Against Islamists' Rise.")

Abdallah, the Salafi scholar, says the liberals' influence is on the wane. "Now we are going to control the country," he says. "America will support the liberals with money for a long time, but by the end, they'll be the second Karzai," he adds, comparing their inevitable decline to that of the U.S.-backed president of Afghanistan.

Abdallah's confident rhetoric also raises the specter of the Salafi wild card. Namely, what happens if the most extreme members of parliament find themselves sidelined, either by a Brotherhood seeking a more moderate politics, or by a military that slows -- or even derails -- their quest for pure Islamic law? (Shari'a law is already a basis of the current Egyptian constitution.)

Some Egyptians report that in Egypt's post-Mubarak security vaccuum, some Salafi groups have already started taking matters of Islamic jurisprudence into their own hands. Rumors abound about Salafis enforcing their interpretation of Shari'a on public spaces. In one Alexandria school, Salafis reportedly ordered the segregation of boys and girls; and a Cairo-based blog reported a Salafi attempt to shut down a women's beauty parlor in the Nile Delta. "I am not against living in a country with a religious background," says Marco Safa, a Christian university student in Cairo. "But they have to remember that they are not alone here. They need to respect the rest of the people, and private freedoms should be guaranteed." (See photos of Egyptians heading to the polls.)

A facebook group supporting the "Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" -- the shadowy organization that some Egyptians allege is behind the recent incidents, and which claims a connection to the Salafis' Nour Party -- proposes nothing in matters of parliamentary legislation. Rather, it advises its thousands of facebook fans to "save the Shari'a of God in his lands, and to work according to what he has sent us in his beloved book."

Indeed, Abdallah says the ultra-Islamists, if sidelined, won't need to push legislation anyway; the people will enforce Islamist decrees on their own. "The Egyptians are not satisfied with living with wine in their streets," he says. "And the people, not Islamists [in parliament], are the ones who will stop this in the streets," he adds. "We just started in parliament. So give the sword to the people."

With reporting by Sharaf Al-Hourani/Cairo

See TIME's Top 10 World Stories of 2011.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

View this article on Time.com

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/time/20120111/wl_time/08599210414000

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Keen On?.The Three Winners Of The AT&T Hackathon: Innovation, Innovation and Innovation

Keen On?.The Three Winners Of The AT&T Hackathon_ Innovation, Innovation and Innovation | TechCrunchAs Michael Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute noted in a recent report about "scale and innovation", today's digital economy favors large companies because growth depends to the establishment of ecosystems built around operating systems like Android or iPhone. But it's not just large new media companies like Google and Apple that can benefit from these large ecosystems; older, more established media and technology companies like Verizon, Pearson, Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T also have this same advantage over smaller start-ups to innovate through their ecosystems.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/u7pDcH5K7TQ/

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Parks Canada to launch study of aggressive coyotes

Alyshah Hasham Staff Reporter

After a spate of coyote attacks on humans in a Cape Breton national park, including the death of 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell in 2009, an American urban coyote expert was mystified.

?In Nova Scotia the coyotes up there are breaking the rules,? Stanley Gehrt told the Star in 2010, noting that coyote attacks in North America are generally rare.

Now the chair of McGraw?s Center for Wildlife Research and professor at Ohio State University, could have a chance to solve the mystery. Gehrt is two weeks away from being awarded a $100,000 contract from Parks Canada to develop a plan to reduce coyote aggression towards humans in the Nova Scotia park, unless a better candidate comes forward.

Some of the research areas proposed by Parks Canada in the call-out for the two-year project include ?whether human sourced foods played a role in the aggressive behaviour noted [and] whether there is a seasonal change in habitat use, which may be related to human activity.?

The animals will be live-trapped and fitted with GPS radio collars so they can be tracked. The project is scheduled to end by April, 2014.

Between April 2010 and March 2011, 104 reports of aggressive coyotes were investigated as part of the park?s coyote management program.

It was introduced after the death of Toronto native Taylor Mitchell, an emerging singer-songwriter who was hiking alone in the Cape Breton park in 2009 when she was mauled by two coyotes. She is the second recorded fatality from a coyote attack in North America, and the only adult.

Less than a year later a 16-year-old girl was bitten twice on the head by a coyote in the same park.

Gehrt, who has worked with Parks Canada to curb the Cape Breton coyote problem before, speculated that the aggressive behaviour of the Eastern Canadian coyotes stems from their genetic heritage ? a mix between coyote and wolf. ?It exhibits patterns like a wolf, like hunting together in a pack or group. Some people have speculated this has contributed to these animals considering humans as prey because they?re learning to kill large animals,? he said.

However, there is no research that can explain why Nova Scotia's coyotes have become more bold, an observation challenged by experts who say routine coyote encounters are getting more attention from the media. Some have suggested mild winters, urban sprawl and a diminished supply of snowshoe hares are to blame.

The province began offering a $20 bounty on coyotes in Oct. 2010, and also arranged for trappers to be trained to deal with dangerous ones. About 2,600 of the province's 8,000 coyotes were trapped last season for the bounty.

However, Derek Quann, a resource conservation manager with Parks Canada, said the province's decision to promote a cull was a bad idea. He said studies have shown bounties don't work because coyotes have the ability to reproduce quickly even when their population is under stress.

With files from Debra Black and the Canadian Press

Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1112981--parks-canada-to-launch-study-of-aggressive-cape-breton-coyotes

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Three Ways that Samsung is Copying Apple (ContributorNetwork)

Apple's patent lawsuit against Samsung has been widely publicized ... as have the late Steve Jobs' personal animosity towards Android, and Apple's stated requirements for a tablet which does not infringe on its patents.

But whatever your take on the battle of Apple versus the world's largest Android device maker, tech pundits and Reddit commenters alike have noticed some striking similarities between Samsung and Apple ... both in the products themselves, and in the ways they're presented to people.

Product packaging

The crux of the Apple lawsuit is that Samsung's latest Android tablet, the 10-inch Galaxy Tab, is alleged to be too similar to Apple's iPad. As Reddit commenter MarsSpaceship humorously pointed out, however, the similarities didn't start there.

The old 7-inch Galaxy Tab may not have been easy to mistake for an iPad, since it was half the size and had more buttons, but its packaging drew some obvious inspiration from Apple's. And as the pictures show, not only are many Samsung peripherals and accessories nearly identical to Apple's, but the Samsung booth (at an unspecified trade show or retail location) actually used Apple's app icons in its display.

Product design

The similarities between Samsung and Apple's products are both internal and external. As John Brownlee of the ironically-named "Cult of Mac" noted, Samsung's new entry-level Galaxy Ace phone bears a striking resemblance to Apple's four-year-old iPhone 3G. Many of Samsung's other smartphones have a similar aesthetic, complete with a single home button like Apple's.

Internally, Samsung apps (like the voice recorder shown in the picture on Reddit) sometimes closely resemble their Apple counterparts. Its TouchWiz interface bears a certain resemblance as well, as shown in the pictures on Ina Fried's article for All Things D, although part of this is because Android's home screens bear a strong resemblance to iOS'.

Advertising

A recent Samsung advertisement (which was aired in Korea) for the Galaxy Tab not only mimicked the style of Apple's ads, it used the same child actress who appeared in an iPhone 4S commercial, as Google+ user Cheryl Lindo Jones discovered.

Samsung has pulled the ad from its YouTube page, but has not given any reason why. It also hasn't pulled other ads that it's run in North America, which mock iPhone owners by calling their gadgets "old school." Other ads depict Apple fans waiting in line to buy an iPhone, and show Samsung Galaxy S II owners making fun of them.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120108/tc_ac/10807041_three_ways_that_samsung_is_copying_apple

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Fly Or Die: Does CES Have A Future?

Fly or Die CESThe Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is packed this year, yet its relevance seems increasingly in decline. Microsoft is bailing, no iconic products launched this year, and Apple's presence can be felt everywhere even though they don't exhibit at the show. In this episode of Fly or Die, TechCrunch Gadgets editor John Biggs (who is running our CES coverage) joins me remotely from Las Vegas to discuss the big question: Does CES have a future?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/htCqDSu5Hi8/

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Russian space probe may crash into Indian Ocean

If Phobos-Grunt comes down at the in the predicted window it will fall over a stretch of empty ocean west of the Indonesian island of Java, according to a re-entry projection map Roscosmos published with the update. ?

A doomed Russian Mars probe that's been stuck in Earth orbit for two months may finally come crashing down Sunday (Jan. 15) over the Indian Ocean, Russian space officials say.

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The 14.5-ton?Phobos-Grunt spacecraft?should fall back to Earth sometime between Saturday and Monday (Jan. 14 to Jan. 16), Russia's Federal Space Agency, known as Roscosmos, announced in a statement today (Jan. 11).

If Phobos-Grunt comes down at the "central point" in that window ? 4:18 a.m. EST (0918 GMT) on Sunday ? it will fall over a stretch of empty ocean west of the Indonesian island of Java, according to a re-entry projection map Roscosmos published with the update.

But these projections are far from set in stone. The predicted time and place of re-entry may change as engineers continue to track the spacecraft's decaying orbit, officials said. All that's known for sure is that Phobos-Grunt will come down somewhere between 51 degrees north latitude and 51 degrees south latitude. [Photos of the Phobos-Grunt mission]

Falling back to Earth

Phobos-Grunt launched Nov. 8 on a mission to collect soil samples from the Mars moon Phobos and return them to Earth ("grunt" means "soil" in Russian). However, the probe's main engines failed to fire as planned to send it toward Mars, and the craft got stuck orbiting Earth.

Russian officials still aren't sure what caused the failure. They recently raised the possibility that some form of?sabotage may have crippled Phobos-Grunt?and doomed its $165 million mission.

The spacecraft has been spiraling lower and lower for months, on an inevitable collision course with Earth's atmosphere. The minimum altitude of Phobos-Grunt's orbit as of today is about 106 miles (171 kilometers), according to Roscosmos.

The huge probe is carrying about 7.5 tons of toxic hydrazine?fuel, prompting some observers to worry about potential environmental impacts of the probe's looming re-entry. Russian space officials have repeatedly dismissed those concerns, however, saying that the fuel ? which is encased in an aluminum tank ? should burn up high in Earth's atmosphere.

Most of Phobos-Grunt should meet that same fate. Experts predict that just 20 to 30 pieces, weighing a maximum of 440 pounds (200 kilograms) in total, will actually hit the Earth.

Phobos-Grunt's demise comes close on the heels of two other?uncontrolled satellite falls?recently. NASA's 6.5-ton UARS climate satellite re-entered over the Pacific Ocean in September, and Germany's 2.7-ton ROSAT satellite crashed over the Indian Ocean a month later.

Both the UARS and ROSAT re-entries were expected, however, and the two satellites had long since completed their primary science missions. No one on the ground was hurt in either instance.

A series of Russian space failures

Phobos-Grunt's failure was just one of a?series of embarrassing setbacks?for the Russian space program in 2011.

On Feb. 1, for example, a Rockot launch?vehicle?failed to place an Earth-observing satellite in the proper orbit. On Aug. 18, a Proton rocket similarly underperformed, delivering a $300 million communications satellite to the wrong orbit.

Less than a week later, on Aug. 24, the unmanned Progress 44 supply ship crashed while hauling cargo to the International Space Station. Progress 44 was done in by a problem with its Soyuz rocket. Russia uses a similar version of the Soyuz to launch astronauts to the space station, so manned flights were put on hold until the problem with the rocket could be identified and fixed.

Finally, a Soyuz-2 rocket crashed just after liftoff on Dec. 23, destroying a Russian military communications satellite.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter:?@michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter?@Spacedotcom?and on?Facebook.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/PGFDQm7j3BU/Russian-space-probe-may-crash-into-Indian-Ocean

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Mining, energy sector underpins 5% growth in NZ pay packets


Mining, energy sector underpins 5% growth in NZ pay packets in 2011, SEEK says

By Hannah Lynch

Jan. 9 (BusinessDesk) ? A jump in salaries offered in the mining, resource and energy sectors underpinned a 5 percent national increase in the average pay packet offered by employers using online job website Seek last year.

Roles in mining, resource and energy sector showed the biggest increase, up almost 18 percent in the eleven months to November, for a national salary average of $118,629, Seek said in a statement. That helped the average salary offered across all regions and sectors rise 5 percent to $73,530.

?The mining, resource and energy sector currently boosts New Zealand?s highest average annual salary and we saw a marked increase in available roles in the industry in 2011,? said Janet Faulding, general manager at Seek. ?There is a concentration of roles in this sector both on the West Coast and Taranaki and this is having a positive impact on salaries in these regions.?

That boost came in the months after the Pike River Coal mine explosions that killed 29 miners and scuppered the project for the forseeable future, and also includes the approval for Bathurst Resources to pursue its open-cast mining plans above Westport.

New Zealand?s highest pay packets are not confined to the main centers with both the West Coast and Taranaki recording annual salaries above the national average, two resource-rich areas.

Jobs in advertising, arts and media were the second-biggest gainer in the 11-month period, up 16 percent to an average salary of $70,429.

In Auckland, the average salary rose six percent from January to November to $75,533, while in Wellington it increased $2,825 to $78,952.

The national increase in salaries advertised on Seek outpaced the 3.2 percent annual increase in average ordinary hourly wage to $26.53 by the end of September, according to government data. On a 40-hour working week, that equates to $55,182, or one-third below the average advertised salary on Seek.

(BusinessDesk)

Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1201/S00086/mining-energy-sector-underpins-5-growth-in-nz-pay-packets.htm

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