Barack Obama unveiled another huge government spending programme yesterday aimed at reversing America’s high unemployment rate — a recognition that the issue of job losses poses the greatest threat to his presidency. Mr Obama, speaking in Washington, proposed a series of measures intended to stimulate job creation and bring down the country’s 10 per cent unemployment rate, the highest for a quarter of a century.
It was the latest in a series of speeches focusing attention on America’s jobs crisis, and on what Mr Obama says his Administration has done in the past year to alleviate “the second Great Depression”. It reflects that the economy is the dominant issue among voters as Mr Obama and his Democratic Party head into 2010, a mid-term election year. Recent polls show that his approval rating has dropped below 50 per cent, with the jobless rate a significant factor.
Mr Obama proposed tax cuts for small businesses — the engineroom of the US economy — and a fresh round of infrastructure spending on roads, bridges and railways.
In a move decried by Republicans, he also proposed using as much as $200 billion (£122 billion) of unspent funds from last year’s $700 billion bank bailout legislation to be redirected towards small businesses, rather than using the money to reduce the enormous budget deficit.
Mr Obama declared it a “false choice” to suggest that the Government needed to begin paying down the deficit or spend money on job creation. He argued that investing in new jobs in the short term would help to reduce the deficit later.
“Even though we have reduced the deluge of job losses to a relative trickle we are not yet creating jobs at a pace to help all those families who’ve been swept up in the flood,” Mr Obama said at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank. “There are more than seven million fewer Americans with jobs today than when this recession began. That’s a staggering figure and one that reflects not only the depths of the hole from which we must ascend but also a continuing human tragedy.”
Polls show that despite Mr Obama inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit — something he reminded his audience of yesterday — blaming the previous Administration is no longer an effective tactic. In essence, America’s economic woes are now fully Mr Obama’s problem, though he lambasted Republicans for criticising his spending programmes, including his push for health insurance reform. He said that the huge deficit was produced by tax cuts and welfare programmes passed under George Bush but which were never paid for.
“These budget-busting tax cuts and spending programmes were approved by many of the same people who are now waxing political about fiscal responsibility while opposing our effort to reduce deficits by getting health care costs under control,” Mr Obama said. “It’s a sight to see.”
The White House did not put a figure on the package but Republicans described it as tantamount to a second stimulus, after the stimulus plan passed in February.
Hitzmagic To Earn!!!!
Click this picture and Regester It.
Waoindia To earn!!!Everybody
Monthly Earn $500 by AW
Website For Promotion
If you want to promote your site You can Promote here. For that click this picture
Earn By Click(Per day $100 and Payout $10,000)
Earn Now!!@@
Register Here You'll get $10 And Work there!!!!!!1
Per Ad click $0.01 and Payout $4
$1 per Click and Payout $1000
My couter
        |
That is my google search!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Custom Search
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Playing politics
Alistair Darling will admit today that Britain faces an era of deep spending cuts as he pledges to halve the £180 billion budget deficit while protecting hospital, school and police services.
In a surprise move he will disclose a Treasury “assessment” that has been conducted in recent weeks to determine the sums needed to safeguard the front line in health, schools and the Home Office.
In an attempt to win credibility for his four-year “deficit reduction plan”, he will acknowledge that other government departments will have to meet the cost with “real cuts”, including the scaling back or cancellation of some high-profile projects.
The Chancellor will put a figure on the sums that he has decided schools, hospitals and the police will need to avoid damaging their performance. Treasury sources admitted that the figure would imply that substantial cuts would be suffered elsewhere.
Although Mr Darling will claim that growth, efficiency savings and some new taxes — including a supertax on bankers’ bonuses — will soften some of the impact, he will begin axing future budgets.
“We are not fixing departmental budgets now but people have the right to know which services we will prioritise and how we intend to pay for them,” a Treasury source said. “We are under no illusion that that will mean some tough choices — cutting unnecessary programmes and lower priority budgets.”
Today’s Pre-Budget Report is intended to supply Labour with ammunition for the coming general election. The Conservatives will be challenged to match specific guarantess, such as a two-week maximum wait to see a cancer specialist. But in putting figures on pledges to protect “frontline services” Mr Darling is confronting voters with the scale of the coming cutbacks in other areas.
The Tory leadership launched a pre-emptive attack on the Chancellor’s credibility, claiming that Britain faced the “disaster” of losing its top credit rating.
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, seized on an international agency’s warning that plunging tax receipts in future years meant an “inexorable deterioration” of the affordability of Britain’s record debts.
He claimed that the latest warning from Moody’s was “further evidence that Britain faces the disaster of having its international credit rating downgraded unless we get on top of our debts”.
But the Treasury accused him of “playing politics” with the country’s standing in the money markets. “To selectively quote is irresponsible and deliberately misleading. All three credit rating agencies have reaffirmed the Government’s AAA rating this year, including Moody’s in October and again today.”
In a surprise move he will disclose a Treasury “assessment” that has been conducted in recent weeks to determine the sums needed to safeguard the front line in health, schools and the Home Office.
In an attempt to win credibility for his four-year “deficit reduction plan”, he will acknowledge that other government departments will have to meet the cost with “real cuts”, including the scaling back or cancellation of some high-profile projects.
The Chancellor will put a figure on the sums that he has decided schools, hospitals and the police will need to avoid damaging their performance. Treasury sources admitted that the figure would imply that substantial cuts would be suffered elsewhere.
Although Mr Darling will claim that growth, efficiency savings and some new taxes — including a supertax on bankers’ bonuses — will soften some of the impact, he will begin axing future budgets.
“We are not fixing departmental budgets now but people have the right to know which services we will prioritise and how we intend to pay for them,” a Treasury source said. “We are under no illusion that that will mean some tough choices — cutting unnecessary programmes and lower priority budgets.”
Today’s Pre-Budget Report is intended to supply Labour with ammunition for the coming general election. The Conservatives will be challenged to match specific guarantess, such as a two-week maximum wait to see a cancer specialist. But in putting figures on pledges to protect “frontline services” Mr Darling is confronting voters with the scale of the coming cutbacks in other areas.
The Tory leadership launched a pre-emptive attack on the Chancellor’s credibility, claiming that Britain faced the “disaster” of losing its top credit rating.
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, seized on an international agency’s warning that plunging tax receipts in future years meant an “inexorable deterioration” of the affordability of Britain’s record debts.
He claimed that the latest warning from Moody’s was “further evidence that Britain faces the disaster of having its international credit rating downgraded unless we get on top of our debts”.
But the Treasury accused him of “playing politics” with the country’s standing in the money markets. “To selectively quote is irresponsible and deliberately misleading. All three credit rating agencies have reaffirmed the Government’s AAA rating this year, including Moody’s in October and again today.”
74,000 Doller
Alistair Darling today will contest growing doubts over Britain’s economic recovery as he tries to show the markets that he is serious about halving the £180 billion deficit in four years.
On the eve of his Pre-Budget Report, the Chancellor was confronted with figures that suggested that Britain would struggle to climb out of recession before the end of the year.
Industrial output failed to grow in October — considerably worse than expected — and a CBI survey suggested that gloomy manufacturers expect output to fall in the coming months.
One international ratings agency put Mr Darling on notice that he must act swiftly to pay off the record public debt or risk losing Britain’s prized “triple-A” credit rating.
function slideshowPopUp(url)
{
pictureGalleryPopupPic(url);
return false;
}
Related Links
Credibility deficit
Bankers dodging to save bonuses from tax
Darling warns Whitehall of ‘real cuts’ to halve £180bn budget deficit
The agency, Moody’s, said that plunging tax receipts for years to come would mean “an inexorable deterioration” in the Government’s ability to pay its debts. It said that Britain was in a fundamentally weaker position than Germany, France and Canada, which also have AAA ratings.
Its comments sent the pound lower on foreign exchanges against both the dollar and the euro.
The agency indicated that Britain had only retained its rating because it had convinced international investors that it would take action to reduce the budget deficit.
In a further sign of how poorly Britain’s public finances are regarded by the international markets, the cost of insuring against a possible debt default by the UK Government yesterday climbed to the same level as that to insure against a default by Portugal, whose economy is regarded as one of the weakest in Western Europe.
Insuring $10 million of UK government bonds against default rose to $74,000 a year, up from $72,500 on Monday. At the end of September the cost was $44,000.
The Chancellor will acknowledge a new era of deep spending cuts. Existing budgets will remain unchanged until 2011, but he will admit that safeguarding frontline hospital, school and police services will mean deep cuts elsewhere in the years that follow.
On the eve of his Pre-Budget Report, the Chancellor was confronted with figures that suggested that Britain would struggle to climb out of recession before the end of the year.
Industrial output failed to grow in October — considerably worse than expected — and a CBI survey suggested that gloomy manufacturers expect output to fall in the coming months.
One international ratings agency put Mr Darling on notice that he must act swiftly to pay off the record public debt or risk losing Britain’s prized “triple-A” credit rating.
function slideshowPopUp(url)
{
pictureGalleryPopupPic(url);
return false;
}
Related Links
Credibility deficit
Bankers dodging to save bonuses from tax
Darling warns Whitehall of ‘real cuts’ to halve £180bn budget deficit
The agency, Moody’s, said that plunging tax receipts for years to come would mean “an inexorable deterioration” in the Government’s ability to pay its debts. It said that Britain was in a fundamentally weaker position than Germany, France and Canada, which also have AAA ratings.
Its comments sent the pound lower on foreign exchanges against both the dollar and the euro.
The agency indicated that Britain had only retained its rating because it had convinced international investors that it would take action to reduce the budget deficit.
In a further sign of how poorly Britain’s public finances are regarded by the international markets, the cost of insuring against a possible debt default by the UK Government yesterday climbed to the same level as that to insure against a default by Portugal, whose economy is regarded as one of the weakest in Western Europe.
Insuring $10 million of UK government bonds against default rose to $74,000 a year, up from $72,500 on Monday. At the end of September the cost was $44,000.
The Chancellor will acknowledge a new era of deep spending cuts. Existing budgets will remain unchanged until 2011, but he will admit that safeguarding frontline hospital, school and police services will mean deep cuts elsewhere in the years that follow.
$ 500,000 Salary
the U.S. paymaster for rescued companies, will exempt some executives at American International Group Inc. (AIG) from a $500,000 salary cap after at least five employees threatened to quit because of the limits, people familiar with the matter said.
Feinberg may issue a ruling as early as next week on pay limits for 75 of the bailed-out insurer's executives, the people said. Last week, five executives said they were prepared to resign if their compensation was significantly cut, according to the people, who declined to be named because the talks are ongoing. Two have since retracted the threat, the people said.
"It's the equivalent of saying, 'We're going home and we're taking our toys with us," Frank Glassner, CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants LLC, said yesterday in an interview. By paying more in salary, AIG is "increasing what may be considered guaranteed pay."
Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for executive compensation, said in October that base salaries at AIG wouldn't exceed $500,000 a year except in cases where there was "good cause" to pay more. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials have urged him to strike a balance between curbing excessive pay and retaining key employees. AIG was rescued with a bailout valued at $182.3 billion.
In October, Feinberg announced he reduced 2009 cash salaries for New York-based AIG's 13 top-earning executives by 91 percent, and used more stock for their total compensation. He controls pay for the 25 highest-paid employees at AIG and advises on the compensation structure for the next 75 workers. About half of the first group of 25 departed since the insurer's September 2008 bailout.
the U.S. paymaster for rescued companies, will exempt some executives at American International Group Inc. (AIG) from a $500,000 salary cap after at least five employees threatened to quit because of the limits, people familiar with the matter said.
Feinberg may issue a ruling as early as next week on pay limits for 75 of the bailed-out insurer's executives, the people said. Last week, five executives said they were prepared to resign if their compensation was significantly cut, according to the people, who declined to be named because the talks are ongoing. Two have since retracted the threat, the people said.
"It's the equivalent of saying, 'We're going home and we're taking our toys with us," Frank Glassner, CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants LLC, said yesterday in an interview. By paying more in salary, AIG is "increasing what may be considered guaranteed pay."
Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for executive compensation, said in October that base salaries at AIG wouldn't exceed $500,000 a year except in cases where there was "good cause" to pay more. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials have urged him to strike a balance between curbing excessive pay and retaining key employees. AIG was rescued with a bailout valued at $182.3 billion.
In October, Feinberg announced he reduced 2009 cash salaries for New York-based AIG's 13 top-earning executives by 91 percent, and used more stock for their total compensation. He controls pay for the 25 highest-paid employees at AIG and advises on the compensation structure for the next 75 workers. About half of the first group of 25 departed since the insurer's September 2008 bailout.
Feinberg may issue a ruling as early as next week on pay limits for 75 of the bailed-out insurer's executives, the people said. Last week, five executives said they were prepared to resign if their compensation was significantly cut, according to the people, who declined to be named because the talks are ongoing. Two have since retracted the threat, the people said.
"It's the equivalent of saying, 'We're going home and we're taking our toys with us," Frank Glassner, CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants LLC, said yesterday in an interview. By paying more in salary, AIG is "increasing what may be considered guaranteed pay."
Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for executive compensation, said in October that base salaries at AIG wouldn't exceed $500,000 a year except in cases where there was "good cause" to pay more. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials have urged him to strike a balance between curbing excessive pay and retaining key employees. AIG was rescued with a bailout valued at $182.3 billion.
In October, Feinberg announced he reduced 2009 cash salaries for New York-based AIG's 13 top-earning executives by 91 percent, and used more stock for their total compensation. He controls pay for the 25 highest-paid employees at AIG and advises on the compensation structure for the next 75 workers. About half of the first group of 25 departed since the insurer's September 2008 bailout.
the U.S. paymaster for rescued companies, will exempt some executives at American International Group Inc. (AIG) from a $500,000 salary cap after at least five employees threatened to quit because of the limits, people familiar with the matter said.
Feinberg may issue a ruling as early as next week on pay limits for 75 of the bailed-out insurer's executives, the people said. Last week, five executives said they were prepared to resign if their compensation was significantly cut, according to the people, who declined to be named because the talks are ongoing. Two have since retracted the threat, the people said.
"It's the equivalent of saying, 'We're going home and we're taking our toys with us," Frank Glassner, CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants LLC, said yesterday in an interview. By paying more in salary, AIG is "increasing what may be considered guaranteed pay."
Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for executive compensation, said in October that base salaries at AIG wouldn't exceed $500,000 a year except in cases where there was "good cause" to pay more. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials have urged him to strike a balance between curbing excessive pay and retaining key employees. AIG was rescued with a bailout valued at $182.3 billion.
In October, Feinberg announced he reduced 2009 cash salaries for New York-based AIG's 13 top-earning executives by 91 percent, and used more stock for their total compensation. He controls pay for the 25 highest-paid employees at AIG and advises on the compensation structure for the next 75 workers. About half of the first group of 25 departed since the insurer's September 2008 bailout.
Media Center application
There’s a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta — it has to date been available only in a Alpha version — that has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends. There’s a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta — it has to date been available only in a Alpha version — that has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends. There’s a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta — it has to date been available only in a Alpha version — that has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends. There’s a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta — it has to date been available only in a Alpha version — that has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends. There’s a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta — it has to date been available only in a Alpha version — that has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends. There’s a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta — it has to date been available only in a Alpha version — that has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends. There’s a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta — it has to date been available only in a Alpha version — that has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta.
For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer.
But it doesn’t stop there. It’s so good, that I’ve heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them.
That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away.
Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products.
In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It’s also social: You can share what you’re watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends.
Human Natures
The last decade has been an economic perfect storm. Things got off to an unpleasant start with the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The Enron/WorldCom/Tyco scandals followed close behind. The past few years have featured the subprime mortgage crisis and the credit crunch precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. For equity investors pummeled by losses, this has been a decade to forget.
When bad things happen, human nature yearns to identify and punish whoever is responsible. Seeking protection, we also want to fix things so that such problems never occur again. However, this can be a bit like generals fighting the last war: Legislating a "one-size fits all" solution in response to a particular economic situation is rarely effective at preventing future, largely unpredictable problems. If it were otherwise, the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation enacted in 2002 would have eliminated all problems in corporate governance, financial controls, and disclosure.
That hasn't happened. Sarbanes-Oxley has not, as many predicted when it was enacted, eliminated all corporate ills. While the legislation certainly did not create the subprime mortgage crisis, it unfortunately did not prevent it. In fact the subprime meltdown and its aftereffects may well be the best testimony that even the most comprehensive revision to American corporate governance in more than a generation could not repeal the economic cycle or pop the next "bubble" before it burst.
The reality is that no set of corporate-governance mechanisms could have forestalled a crisis of the magnitude or complexity of the one we have experienced.
U.S. directors act for shareholders
What is corporate governance and why should we care about it? In modern capitalism there often is a distinct separation of ownership (the shareholders) from control (the board of directors and senior management) of the business enterprise. Corporate governance defines the relationship between the shareholders and the managers. The willingness of investors to purchase a corporation's shares is based not only on the performance of the business, but also on the trust in that corporation created by effective corporate governance.
In the U.S., the cornerstone of corporate governance has long been reliance on the board of directors to act on the shareholders' behalves to supervise and direct the management of the corporation.
Corporate governance is not designed just to avoid the next financial disaster. Effective corporate governance is also good for business. Academic studies have consistently shown that companies with independent boards of directors produce greater returns on shareholder equity, achieve higher profit margins and return more capital to their investors than competitors without independent boards. The shareholders of Enron learned the hard way that weak corporate governance can facilitate an environment in which fraud and mismanagement can occur.
When bad things happen, human nature yearns to identify and punish whoever is responsible. Seeking protection, we also want to fix things so that such problems never occur again. However, this can be a bit like generals fighting the last war: Legislating a "one-size fits all" solution in response to a particular economic situation is rarely effective at preventing future, largely unpredictable problems. If it were otherwise, the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation enacted in 2002 would have eliminated all problems in corporate governance, financial controls, and disclosure.
That hasn't happened. Sarbanes-Oxley has not, as many predicted when it was enacted, eliminated all corporate ills. While the legislation certainly did not create the subprime mortgage crisis, it unfortunately did not prevent it. In fact the subprime meltdown and its aftereffects may well be the best testimony that even the most comprehensive revision to American corporate governance in more than a generation could not repeal the economic cycle or pop the next "bubble" before it burst.
The reality is that no set of corporate-governance mechanisms could have forestalled a crisis of the magnitude or complexity of the one we have experienced.
U.S. directors act for shareholders
What is corporate governance and why should we care about it? In modern capitalism there often is a distinct separation of ownership (the shareholders) from control (the board of directors and senior management) of the business enterprise. Corporate governance defines the relationship between the shareholders and the managers. The willingness of investors to purchase a corporation's shares is based not only on the performance of the business, but also on the trust in that corporation created by effective corporate governance.
In the U.S., the cornerstone of corporate governance has long been reliance on the board of directors to act on the shareholders' behalves to supervise and direct the management of the corporation.
Corporate governance is not designed just to avoid the next financial disaster. Effective corporate governance is also good for business. Academic studies have consistently shown that companies with independent boards of directors produce greater returns on shareholder equity, achieve higher profit margins and return more capital to their investors than competitors without independent boards. The shareholders of Enron learned the hard way that weak corporate governance can facilitate an environment in which fraud and mismanagement can occur.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
FASTSUBMIT
Submitexpress
If you want submitexpress?
This is My reffer? so it is my visitors.........
