Google vs. Microsoft: Santa-tracking systems go out of sync

8 hrs.

Not even Santa Claus can avoid getting drawn into the tech clash between Google and Microsoft: The two companies have set up separate online systems to track where the Jolly Old Elf has been on Christmas Eve?? but they show him simultaneously at widely separated locations, delivering presents at a dramatically different rate.

On the official "NORAD Tracks Santa" website, powered this year by Microsoft, Santa Claus was in Rome, well past the 3-billion-present mark in his holiday rounds. At the same time, Google's Santa Tracker showed him buzzing through Agadez in the African country of Niger, not quite up to the 1-billion-present mark.

They can't both be right. Can they? Here's the word from Search?Engine?Land's Danny Sullivan, who has been tracking the discrepancy in this year's?Santa-tracking software:

"NORAD explains that it uses everything from radar to jets to track Santa. Google doesn?t explain its technology, but I suspect it tries to triangulate Santa using his cell phone signal or use of wifi hotspots.

"As for why NORAD shows Father Christmas delivering three?times the number of gifts that Google is listing, perhaps NORAD?s radars can better pinpoint presents while Google might be doing estimating.?Meanwhile? both services sometimes show presents being delivered over oceans! And why is NORAD showing Santa arriving in some places at 9pm rather than midnight, as has been the case in the past?"

Maybe this is just the sort of thing that happens when you switch software: NORAD (also known as the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been monitoring Santa's flight as a public service since 1955, and five years ago, it teamed up with Google to keep up with the crush of Web traffic. This year, however, the NORAD Santa operation parted ways with Google and partnered with Microsoft instead.

Google stayed in the Santa game by setting up its own tracking system for "Santa's Dashboard" and Google Maps?? a system that doesn't make use of NORAD's tracking data.

Today, Canadian Maj. Gen. Andre Viens, a spokesman for NORAD, declined to intervene in the Santa-tracking war.

"It's not affecting our tracking," Viens told MSNBC. "We're not in competition with anyone. Our role, and we've been doing that for more than?50 years, is to track Santa and make sure that he has a safe and secure journey throughout the world, and throughout North America in particular."

TODAY:?Follow Santa's Christmas Eve flight

PhotoBlog: Inside NORAD's command center

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising to find?that it's so difficult to get a firm fix on Santa's position, considering how many presents he has to deliver in so little time. Some experts have speculated that the only way Santa could ?deliver gifts (or lumps of coal) to billions of homes in the course of just a few hours would be if he somehow harnessed quantum teleportation. And once you accept that, it's not that big of a leap to detect Santa in two places at once.

Alan Boyle is the science editor for NBC News Digital, and has been tracking NORAD's Santa tracker since 1998.?Boyle's usual online?hangout is over at Cosmic Log.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/google-vs-microsoft-santa-tracking-systems-go-out-sync-1C7657754

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'Hobbit' holds on at $36.9M, 'Reacher' does $15.6M

Director Peter Jackson arrives at the UK premiere of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" at The Odeon Leicester Square, London on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012. (Photo by Jon Furniss/Invision/AP)

Director Peter Jackson arrives at the UK premiere of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" at The Odeon Leicester Square, London on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012. (Photo by Jon Furniss/Invision/AP)

(AP) ? "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" easily defended its box-office title, remaining the No. 1 film for a second weekend with $36.9 million.

A rush of newcomers mostly had modest openings, led by Tom Cruise's action tale "Jack Reacher" at No. 2 with $15.6 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," Warner Bros., $36,940,000, 4,100 locations, $9,010 average, $150,093,000, two weeks.

2. "Jack Reacher," Paramount, $15,600,000, 3,352 locations, $4,654 average, $15,600,000, one week.

3. "This Is 40," Universal, $12,030,690, 2,913 locations, $4,130 average, $12,030,690, one week.

4. "Rise of the Guardians," Paramount, $5,900,000, 3,031 locations, $1,947 average, $79,694,000, five weeks.

5. "Lincoln," Disney, $5,525,774, 2,293 locations, $2,410 average, $116,673,598, seven weeks.

6. "The Guilt Trip," Paramount, $5,390,000, 2,431 locations, $2,217 average, $7,421,000, one week.

7. "Monsters, Inc." in 3-D, Disney, $4,774,686, 2,618 locations, $1,824 average, $6,259,667, one week.

8. "Skyfall," Sony, $4,700,000, 2,365 locations, $1,987 average, $279,972,000, seven weeks.

9. "Life of Pi," Fox, $4,017,237, 1,750 locations, $2,296 average, $76,373,481, five weeks.

10. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ? Part 2," Summit, $2,626,955, 2,000 locations, $1,313 average, $281,632,689, six weeks.

11. "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away," Paramount, $2,135,000, 840 locations, $2,542 average, $2,254,000, one week.

12. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $1,819,036, 1,444 locations, $1,260 average, $171,741,561, eight weeks.

13. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $1,781,196, 371 locations, $4,801 average, $19,861,238, six weeks.

14. "Dabangg 2," Eros International, $1,019,213, 166 locations, $6,140 average, $1,019,213, one week.

15. "Argo," Warner Bros., $903,000, 450 locations, $2,007 average, $106,439,000, 11 weeks.

16. "Red Dawn," Film District, $794,880, 1,011 locations, $786 average, $42,626,783, five weeks.

17. "Flight," Paramount, $709,000, 742 locations, $956 average, $90,989,000, eight weeks.

18. "Anna Karenina," Focus, $667,669, 331 locations, $2,017 average, $9,645,583, six weeks.

19. "Hitchcock," Fox Searchlight, $579,676, 535 locations, $1,084 average, $4,194,968, five weeks.

20. "Playing for Keeps," Film District, $424,105, 851 locations, $498 average, $12,410,463, three weeks.

___

Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-12-24-Box%20Office/id-39899d9d215f4fac8e23279575f48643

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Aleppo's fledgling government reflects a society shaped by war

Representation on Aleppo's Transitional Revolutionary Council will be determined partially by the number of each community's residents killed in the uprising and the level of destruction there.?

By Tom A. Peter,?Correspondent / December 23, 2012

Two men ride a motorcycle past the infantry college in the countryside in Aleppo, Syria, Friday, Dec. 21.

Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

Enlarge

Members of the Syrian opposition in Aleppo are preparing to unveil what will be the most ambitious transitional government effort to come from inside Syria since the revolution began 21 months ago.

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Aleppo?s Transitional Revolutionary Council, a civilian effort to provide government services in areas of?northern Syria under opposition control, has created a 224-person Grand Assembly with representatives for every area of the province, even those still under government control. The new legislative body plans to have its first meeting within a month.

The creation of the opposition?s Grand Assembly comes on the heels of weeks of major rebel gains?in northern Syria and is emblematic of their growing confidence in Aleppo. But the new legislature faces challenges finding sufficient funding and securing locations to meet, underscoring the challenges that remain despite recent progress.

?What makes this project successful here in Aleppo is that most of Aleppo is liberated,? says Rafat Rifai, a freelance journalist who works as a consultant for the Transitional Revolutionary Council. Still, he adds, ?the main financial resources are still with the regime so if the new assembly tries to take on the same role of the [Assad] government, it will need the same budget.?

The assembly has only limited funding. It comes from a mix of sources including Syrian expatriates and local businessmen, and the new Syrian opposition coalition formed in Doha last month is said to be considering offering assistance. The modest budget will force the group to prioritize its efforts on essentials such as repairing the electric grid and addressing bread shortages.

Throughout opposition-controlled areas in Aleppo province, citizens have formed a variety of?ad hoc councils?to manage their villages and neighborhoods in the absence of a central government, but the Grand Assembly is the first attempt to create a representative body that can begin to operate more like a traditional government body.

The new legislators were chosen in town hall style meetings by their communities. In areas still under control of the Assad army, representatives were selected from residents of these areas who had fled to opposition-controlled territory.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/_59AaJTdyVc/Aleppo-s-fledgling-government-reflects-a-society-shaped-by-war

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Web Hosting Evaluations A Wonderful Way To Analyze A Hosting ...

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Top 10 Internet Obstacles You Must Overcome for a Successful E ...

Topics: ecommerce obstacles, how to ecomerce business -->

It takes a lot of hard work to be successful in an E-commerce business, you need a strategy a creative team and a lot of innovative ideas to overcome any potential obstacles and outfox your competitors.

A quick search for internet providers in my area on this site will show you what is available where you live.?Furthermore, listed below are the top 10 obstacles you will face in an E-commerce business.

1-Security
The Internet is not a secure environment and the whole idea of e-commerce is to provide a huge data bank that everyone around the world can access, but due to breach of security, hackers can fiddle with important data. Any website that seems insecure will automatically put off visitors who may turn to alternates.

Every E-commerce business should select a hosting service very carefully, the platform must be encrypted and password protected or else someone could just hack into the database and steal vital information.

The server must also have backup so that all the data you store online is not lost in case the system crashes.

2-Dynamic Environment
The internet is a very dynamic environment that is constantly changing at a rapid pace. If you are unable to cope with the latest trends and technologies then your business will be left behind, so a wise idea is to implement a strategy that guides your business step by step.

3-SEO
In the highly competitive online industry, a business just can?t survive if customers do not know about its existence. Online search engines are unlikely to place a new business? website at the top of the search results, so what you need to do is create awareness through search engine optimization techniques.

SEO consultants can help drive business growth and increase sales.

4-User Interface
Any successful online business has a good user interface; the design should be user friendly and divided into categories. If customers can?t find what they are looking for, they will be frustrated and will move on elsewhere.

So make sure that your website is simple to operate with a search option as well. Category-wise, you could divide your products by price, gender, and so on.

5-Logistics
Small businesses can?t keep every single item in their catalog; instead, they only have the best selling items. However, when an order for a product that is unavailable comes up, you are left in disarray and will possibly lose the sale if you don?t act fast.

Modern E-commerce businesses have a system through which they can automate the process of order fulfillment. If the product is unavailable then the order is directly sent to the wholesaler who then delivers the product immediately.


6-Bringing the Product Closer to the Consumer

One major disadvantage of E-commerce is that a customer can?t touch or feel the product, so it is a lot more difficult to sell anything as compared to personal selling.

However, you can overcome this problem by bringing the customer as close to the product as possible by using images and video on your website to show consumers what they will be buying. Take pictures from multiple angles and provide as much detail as possible.


7-Lack of Information

Since there is no sales staff in an E-commerce business, you are unable to provide full detailed information to customers. For example: A consumer might not specifically know what type of memory card he should use in the camera he just bought, however there is a solution to this problem.

Your E-commerce platform should have further categories that show consumers add-ons or any other related product categories so that your customers are well informed.

8-Language Barrier
A lot of E-commerce businesses operate on a large scale, but are unable to generate high sales despite their high market reach; this is mainly because of the language barrier.

English is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, but in order to expand your business across the globe you must offer more than one language on your website or else you could miss out on some fantastic business opportunities.

9-Geographical Barrier
If you?re operating from a small city, you might never be able to fulfill large orders from across the globe because there are differences in time zones.

Currency is probably the biggest geographical barrier. A customer in Brazil will want to know the value of the product in terms of ?reais?, if he faces any difficulty then he might not buy the product.

Your E-commerce website should have currency converter option, along with metric or imperial size measurements depending on the requirements.

10- Checkout Process
A lot of customers abandon their purchase after reaching the checkout phase. People feel that this stage is too complex and misleading for them to continue.

Companies often do not offer complete details of the purchase or even a summary to help consumers. A solution to this problem is to have an expert design your website and make sure that you cover these minute details as they can hurt your chances of making a sale.

Conclusion

You can achieve success in your E-commerce business if you follow these simple guidelines and avoid mistakes.?A quick search for internet providers in my area on this site will show you what is available where you live.


Source: http://www.softize.net/top-10-internet-obstacles-you-must-overcome-for-a-successful-e-commerce-business/

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Annoying fine print may not even be legal

By Bob Sullivan

Can the New York Yankees change the First Amendment and make their fans agree to the change? They tried recently.

"Ticket holders acknowledge and agree that the Yankees' ban on foul/abusive language and obscene/indecent clothing does not violate their right to free speech," the team wrote recently in a new far-reaching set of fine print published in the October edition of Yankees Magazine. ?The phrase appears on tickets, too.

Anyone who?s been to the Bronx recently probably wouldn?t fault an attempt to make it more family friendly, but can a baseball team change the Constitution and force you to accept it?


Welcome to the world of ?boilerplate? language -- also known as mouseprint, standard form contracts, fine-print fraud, shrink-wrap contracts, etc. ?

U.S. consumers rarely engage in any kind of transaction today without clicking or signing away a wide swath of their rights. Cellphone contracts, software purchases, baseball tickets, credit card applications -- all include lengthy tomes full of ominous warning that most of us ignore.

Regular readers of this column know I am a collector of fine print and its absurdities, such as school waiver forms asking parents to sign away their kids? right to ?enjoy life.?

Consumers hate fine print, but emotions rarely carry the day in courtrooms. So corporations have been having a field day with barely readable terms and conditions for some time. In fact, fine-print writers have been emboldened by a recent Supreme Court decision in which the court took their side.

But in a new book titled ?Boilerplate,? author and lawyer Margaret Jane Radin is taking aim at the intellectual and legal basis of fine print, trying to put a serious dent in the legal argument behind it.

"I don't think there's a contract, ever, when something is just dropped on us," Radin said, "especially when there is no option to vote with your feet as a consumer, when there are no alternatives.?

Radin?s point is that contracts, by definition, involve two equal parties that negotiate terms, while fine print is issued on a "take-it-or-leave-it" basis. (Just try to negotiate a lower early termination fee or strike out any clause when you sign a cellphone agreement.)? In layman's terms, fine print is merely a list of bad things that can happen to you, the consumer. You might get hit with a penalty fee; your service might be terminated; your right to join a class-action lawsuit is surrendered.

Some lawyers would call these take-it-or-leave-it agreements "contracts of adhesion," a special class of contracts that can be ruled unenforceable if the consumer persuades a judge that the provisions are "unconscionable." As you might imagine, that's a high bar -- it means generally that such provisions would be shocking to a normal person's conscience as excessively unfair. Such a legal battle also involves an excessive amount of legal fees, so it's not a realistic option for an aggrieved cellphone holder.

Radin wades into this confusing situation with a fairly radical idea. Trying to shove fine-print agreements into contract law, she argues, is like trying to shove a round peg into a square hole. She calls it ?legal gerrymandering.? Instead, courts need to adopt a brand-new way of looking at fine print, she says.

Her view is simple: Interactions between consumers and companies are more like brief encounters with strangers than negotiated bargains between equal parties. As such, they fall into the realm of tort law, rather than contract law, Radin argues.

That change would have dramatic implications for fine-print haters everywhere. Were these agreements viewed as torts, angry cellphone owners would retain the right to sue for damages, including pain and suffering, if they believe a company has violated their rights, by making an unauthorized withdrawal from the consumer's checking account, for instance.

Generally, the argument in favor of fine print has been economic. Industry groups have repeatedly argued that standard-form agreements are essential because no one wants every consumer negotiating their own terms and conditions for every transaction. The logic runs like this: Form agreements save companies money, particularly when they limit liability and the potential for costly lawsuits, and that savings is passed on to consumers.

But some rights can't be signed away, Radin argues, even if a consumer seemingly agrees to that. Even if it saves them money.

"Important rights can't be canceled by a private party just because they pay the value," she said. "For example ? you can't sell food with E. coli just because it's cheaper. ? You can't say we haven't maintained our airplanes, but our prices are cheaper, so you assume the risk if we fall out of the sky."

Fine print that limits liability or complicates consumer costs is everywhere ?? ?on coffee cups, on dog bone packaging. It?s flashed for a brief moment on TV mortgage ads, it?s read at record-breaking speed on radio ads for car leases. Falling under the general term ?disclosure,? its absurdity and ineffectiveness is hard to debate.

?Disclosure doesn't work. We don't understand it, even if it's in large print. We don?t read it, even lawyers,? Radin said. ?That?s why we have to start evaluating these disclosures a different way. They aren?t contracts.?

When consumers talk about fine print, they usually focus on hidden language that imposes punishing late fees, doubles prices after some unknown trial period or springs other tricks and traps that ding their wallets. But when consumer lawyers talk about fine print, they are usually complaining about something a bit more theoretical -- common provisions within agreements that indicate consumers waive their rights to sue the company if something goes wrong or join in a class-action lawsuit.? Instead, consumers are forced into a process known as binding mandatory arbitration. Most consumer agreements with banks, cellphone companies, credit card issuers, television subscription services and other service providers ?include arbitration clauses.

Consumer groups and class-action lawyers despise such provisions and have been fighting them in courtrooms around the country for some time, arguing that waiver of jury trial rights is ?unconscionable.?

After compiling a mixed legal record, the fight was dealt a devastating blow last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with AT&T in a case involving a consumer who sued to have a class-action lawsuit waiver thrown out of a cellphone contract. Within months, similar waivers began appearing in nearly all consumer agreements, dealing a blow to the entire class-action system.

Consumer lawyers argue that waiving a right to a jury trial in order to buy a car or baseball ticket is similar to waiving the right to free speech.

Anyone who's ever received a 50-cent coupon because of an old class-action lawsuit that earned lawyers millions knows that lawsuits are hardly a panacea for the problem of misbehaving companies or those that impose overreaching terms and conditions.? But neither is a free market, argues Radin, unless it is truly a thriving market with informed consumers.

In many markets, consumers have few or no choices. Most cellphone firms have the same early termination fees and arbitration clauses, for example.? Meanwhile, if fine print is too small to read or too arcane to understand, there won't even be a handful of ace consumers who can provide a watchdog effect. What happens next is called a "lemon's equilibrium," a term first coined in the 1970s by economist George Akerlof.??

"If there is a lot of competition in a marketplace, and at least some consumers are very well informed, then market forces can have a positive impact on fine print,? Radin explained. ?But even if there's a lot of competition, but not enough people in the market know what's going on, there's a race to the bottom. Everybody just buys the cheaper product ... and everyone gets a lemon."

Radin's argument is broader than a need to protect consumers from $480 satellite dish early termination fees or to preserve their right to sue. She thinks that industry's reliance on sweeping rights clauses in every consumer agreement, and the courts' compliance with that, has created an alternate legal system in America -- one that voters never agreed to.

"This is creating a mockery of state legislatures. We elect legislators, they decide something is important and debate it, then vote on a law, then it becomes law,? she said. ?Then corporations write rules and they effectively become law, contradicting what the legislature did. What we think of as a contract is really important to our conception of social order. Think of how many people are affected by (boilerplate language). If it is thousands or millions of people, that's letting a firm create a new legal universe.? That undermines our rule of law."

* Follow Bob Sullivan on?Facebook.

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More from Red Tape Chronicles:

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Source: http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/21/16048353-annoying-fine-print-may-not-even-be-legal?lite

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Most Beautiful Items of the Week: December 14-21, 2012

Deck your brains with beautiful items, falalalala la la la la. Sing that to the tune of, obviously, Deck the Halls. Get yourself in a festive mood for design! Check out all the most lovely things we posted this week. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/7GjseWAWISI/

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Video: Kids give Santa Claus some advice

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'Dateline NBC,' the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime, premiered in 1992. Since then, it has been pioneering a new approach to primetime news programming. The multi-night franchise, supplemented by frequent specials, allows NBC to consistently and comprehensively present the highest-quality reporting, investigative features, breaking news coverage and newsmaker profiles.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/vp/50276294#50276294

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