November 12, 2009

Medvedev Stresses Modernization in Address

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia needs to move beyond the industrial legacy of the Soviet Union and build a modern high-tech economy to survive, President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday in his annual state-of-the-nation address.

He ordered a sweeping modernization of aging Soviet-built military arsenals, and called for a foreign policy aimed at attracting investment and improving living standards.

"We mustn't puff out our chest," he said, speaking in an ornate Kremlin hall before parliament members and government officials. "We are interested in the flow of capital, new technologies and modern ideas."


The New York Times

November 11, 2009

Happy Veteran's Day

The 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student said he was walking home from work about 1:15 a.m. Tuesday when he was pulled into an alley and told to lay face down and with a gun to his neck. Four men took his wallet, $16, keys, his cell phone and even a PowerBar wrapper from his pants pockets, he said.

But the hostile tone quickly changed when one of the robbers, whom the reservist presumed was the leader, saw an Army ID in the wallet. The robber told the others to return the items and they put most of his belongings on the ground next to him, including the wrapper, the reservist said.

"The guy continued to say throughout the situation that he respects what I do and at one point he actually thanked me and he actually apologized," said the reservist, who asked not to be identified Tuesday because the robbers still had his keys.

The reservist said he asked the men, who all had hoods or hats covering their faces, if he could get up and they said he could before starting to walk away.

"The leader of the group actually walked back, gave me a quick fist bump, which was very strange," he said.


FOX News

Google Latitude Gets Snoopier: Adds Location History and Alerts

Just when you thought Google Latitude would no longer haunt your dreams, the service has been updated to make it a smidge creepier than before. Now Latitude tracks your location history and alerts you when your friends are nearby -- two add-ons that could make stalking that much easier!


PCWorld

November 9, 2009

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us




Well worth the watch. Thanks Melvillian

Murdoch could block Google searches entirely


Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.

In recent months, Murdoch and his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google's search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.



guardian.co.uk