Eideard

The capital of Wisconsin is buying 600 iPads this spring and plans to buy another 800 this fall, all paid for using funds from the state’s settlement with Microsoft related to consumer lawsuits claiming the company overcharged customers for its software…

Smojver added that the new iPads will enable students to wirelessly share their work and enable schools to replace textbooks with digital apps or ebooks, referring to Apple’s recent announcement related to iBooks 2, iBooks Author and digital textbooks as a “significant development.”

District deputy superintendent Sue Abplanalp noted that Madison administrators had been impressed by the results of an iPad trial by Chicago Public Schools, which found the tablets were successful in keeping students more engaged in the classroom.

Wisconsin’s iPads are being paid for through $3.4 million of the nearly $80 million settlement Microsoft agreed to pay the state to settle claims that it has systematically cheated consumers into paying too much for its software…

Har! Something somewhere in there about karma.

After enjoying a few drinks, some people go dancing. Others order food. And for some, it’s time to shop online.

“I have my account linked to my phone, so it’s really easy,” said Tiffany Whitten, of Dayton, Ohio, whose most recent tipsy purchase made on her smartphone — a phone cover — arrived from Amazon much to her surprise. “I was drunk and I bought it, and I forgot about it, and it showed up in the mail, and I was really excited.”

Shopping under the influence has long benefited high-end specialty retailers — witness the wine-and-cheese parties that are a staple of galleries and boutiques. Now the popularity of Internet sales has opened alcohol-induced purchases to the masses, including people like Ms. Whitten, who works in shipping and receiving and spent just $5 on the cat-shaped phone cover…

Online retailers, of course, can never be sure whether customers are inebriated when they tap the “checkout” icon. One comparison-shopping site, Kelkoo, said almost half the people it surveyed in Britain, where it is based, had shopped online after drinking.

But while reliable data is hard to come by, retailers say they have their suspicions based on anecdotal evidence and traffic patterns on their Web sites — and some are adjusting their promotions accordingly.

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Many internet users in the United States have watched with horror as countries like France and Britain have proposed or instituted so-called “three strikes” laws, which cut off internet access to those accused of repeated acts of copyright infringement. Now the U.S. has its own version of this kind of law, and it is arguably much worse: the Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced in the House this week, would give governments and private corporations unprecedented powers to remove websites from the internet on the flimsiest of grounds, and would force internet service providers to play the role of copyright police.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes in a post on the proposed legislation, the law would not only require ISPs to remove websites from the global network at the request of the government or the courts (by blocking any requests to the central domain-name system that directs internet traffic), but would also be forced to monitor their users’ behavior in order to police acts of copyright infringement. Providers who do not comply with these requests and requirements would be subject to sanctions. And in many cases, legal hearings would not be required…

In addition to using what some are calling the “internet death penalty” of removing infringing websites from the DNS system so they can’t be found, the proposed bill would also allow copyright holders to push for websites and services to be removed from search engine results and to have their supply of advertising cut off — and would require that payment companies like PayPal and ad networks comply with these orders. If you liked what PayPal and others did when they shut off donations to WikiLeaks, you’re going to love the new Stop Online Piracy Act…

The bottom line is that if it passes and becomes law, the new act would give the government and copyright holders a giant stick — if not an automatic weapon — with which to pursue websites and services they believe are infringing on their content. With little or no requirement for a court hearing, they could remove websites from the internet and shut down their ability to be found by search engines or to process payments from users. DMCA takedown notices would effectively be replaced by this nuclear option, and innocent websites would have to fight to prove that they deserved to be restored to the internet — a reversal of the traditional American judicial approach of being assumed innocent until proven guilty — at which point any business they had would be destroyed.

Just as our Congress has become the kind of legislative body that would make any corporation happy and content, this bill would make for the kind of internet that would increase smiles and profits for media conglomerates — regardless of the stifling blanket dropped on the whole Web.

Global subsidies for fossil fuel consumption are set to reach $660 billion in 2020 unless reforms are passed to effectively eliminate this form of state aid, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

“Governments and taxpayers spent about half a trillion dollars last year supporting the production and consumption of fossil fuels,” the energy watchdog to 28 industrialized countries said. “In a period of persistently high energy prices, subsidies represent a significant economic liability,” it said in an extract of its annual World Energy Outlook…

“It’s a huge amount of money,” the IEA’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol told reporters at a joint press briefing with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which also presented a report on the issue…

In 2010, Birol had forecast that fossil fuel subsidies would reach $600 billion as early as 2015 without further reforms. He said the slower rate of growth was partly due to efforts in certain major countries including China and India.

“This is thanks to the improvements in India, China, Russia. They have made significant efforts. We have to be fair,” he said, adding that only 8 percent of those subsidies reached the poorest population…

OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria urged developing and rich nations to phase out the subsidies urgently. “As they (nations) look for policy responses to the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, phasing out subsidies is an obvious way to help governments meet their economic, environmental and social goals,” Gurria said at the press briefing.

Eliminating fossil fuel consumption subsidies by 2020 would cut global energy demand by 4 percent and considerably reduce carbon emissions growth, the IEA said on Tuesday.

Indeed, we might eliminate the subsidies Congress gives to the wealthiest corporations on Earth – stipends to cheapen their cost of doing business. All that achieves, short-or-long-term is bumping up their profits. Nothing dribbles down to consumers. Your tax dollars at work.

Fears of radiation from Japan have driven some customers at health food stores on the West Coast to stock up on kelp out of a belief its iodine content can protect against thyroid cancer…

Health officials have repeatedly said United States residents face no risk from radiation drifting across the Pacific Ocean from Japan’s stricken nuclear plants.

But that has not stopped some Americans from buying potassium iodide, considered a defense against radiation poisoning. Authorities have warned against taking potassium iodide unnecessarily because of a potential for side-effects.

Meanwhile, consumers are turning to more health-friendly sources of iodine, with kelp tablets high on the list and suppliers running out, health store owners and managers along the West Coast told Reuters.

Seaweed snacks and blue-green algae liquid are also popular items, and one Washington State homeopath is even recommending miso soup and brown rice, because of an anecdote that it helped a Japanese doctor protect against radiation decades ago…

Willow Follett said consumers are “just grasping at straws” in an effort to do anything they can to protect themselves, even though they face no risk…

That did not stop the phone from ringing off the hook at Justin Brotman’s Seattle supplements and health food store Heleo, from people worried about nuclear radiation.

Callers asked about potassium iodide, which Brotman said he would not sell them because of its potential side effects. Instead, he sold them the more healthy alternative of blue-green algae, which also has some iodine.

“I even stopped answering the phone to be honest with you”, said Brotman, 29.

A required reaction to natural disaster is watching out for criminal profiteering. In a case like this, Left-coasters stampeding like two-footed lemmings on the basis of unreasonable fear – I hope these people pay through the nose for their supply of homeopathic humbug.

Up to 3,000 tonnes of an animal feed additive sold in Germany have been found to contain traces of dioxin, according to a government report.

Earlier, officials said they believed that just 527 tonnes of the additive – which is a type of fat – had been contaminated.

After dioxin was found in eggs and poultry last week, more than 1,000 farms were banned from selling eggs…

Dioxin is a poisonous chemical, linked to the development of cancer in humans…

Police carried out searches on Wednesday at the Schleswig-Holstein farm which produced the fat, Harles and Jentzsch, and a subsidiary in Lower Saxony.

Harles and Jentzsch sold the fat to 25 German feed manufacturers…

Officials say the warning to consumers applies only to eggs sold before 23 December.

Under current German law, offenders who use harmful or banned substances in food and animal feed can be fined or face up to three years in prison.

And, um, don’t feel too smug or encouraged by our own FDA regs just having been upgraded for the first time in over 70 years. The Party of NO has vowed to prevent any funding for inspection or enforcement of new food safety procedures.

DONGGUAN — Companies here in China’s industrial heartland are toiling to reinvent their businesses, fearing that the low-cost manufacturing that helped propel the nation’s economic ascent is fast becoming obsolete…

For years, factories here in the Pearl River Delta region have served as the low-cost workshops for global brands, turning this part of China into the nation’s biggest export zone. The city of Dongguan, about 35 miles northwest of Hong Kong, has long churned out toys, textiles, furniture and sports shoes — including hundreds of millions of sneakers a year for companies like Nike and Adidas.

But now, with manufacturing costs rising and China looking to create a consumer middle class, experts say the revamping of this region’s industries could help reduce the nation’s wide income gap and encourage more balanced and sustainable economic growth.

“It is my hope that China’s comparative advantage as a low-wage producer does disappear — the sooner the better,” Fan Gang, an economics professor at Peking University, wrote in a recent essay, adding that China needed to upgrade and embark on “the next stage of development…”

There is also the looming prospect that China’s currency, the renminbi, will strengthen against other world currencies in the coming years. That would make goods produced here even more expensive to export, and further erode what manufacturers say are already thin profit margins.

Seeking lower costs, some Pearl River Delta factories are relocating to poor inland regions of China where wages are as much as 30 percent lower than in coastal provinces. Other factories are moving to lower-wage countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam.

But for companies that have invested billions of dollars in factories here, simply packing up and pulling out is not always financially feasible. That is why many owners of Dongguan factories are experimenting with other solutions.

“We’ve decided that we’re not going to be on the low end,” says Roger Lee, the chief operating officer at TAL Apparel, part of the TAL Group.

TAL, which is based in Hong Kong and says it makes one of every six dress shirts sold in the United States, is expanding into supply-chain management for J. C. Penney, one of its big shirt-buyers. Through an extensive computerized system, TAL can stock and restock shirt shelves in all 1,100 of Penney’s retail stores in the United States, as demand warrants.

“Too much inventory kills retailers,” Mr. Lee said. “Now, we’re managing inventory in each store. We get sales data. We know what’s in the warehouse, what’s on the boat. We help reduce inventory…”

TAL is but one example of many in the article. I really recommend reading it.

Not that it will sink into the consciousness of consumers or politicians stuck into Cold War punditry. But, the rest of these United States had better learn to develop new commerce and technology and the education to compete with the rest of the world – and especially China – or go the way of the Dodo.

A public relations company and its owner have been cited for having staff post glowing reviews of game applications for companies it represents at the online iTunes store.

According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Reverb Communications and its owner Tracie Snitker engaged in deceptive advertising by having its employees pose as ordinary consumers when posting the reviews.

“Companies, including public relations firms involved in online marketing need to abide by long-held principles of truth in advertising,” said Mary Engle, director of the FTC’s advertising practices division.

The California-based Reverb Communications represents dozens of major video game companies and developers.

The FTC, however, claims Reverb did not disclose the reviews were written by its staff, nor that they were hired to promote the games and that they often received a percentage of the sales.

That information is relevant to consumers who were using the endorsements as a guide to whether or not to buy the games…

Under a proposed settlement order, Reverb will have to remove any previously posted endorsements that misrepresent the authors as ordinary consumers.

Sleaze ain’t any less relevant when it’s geeks and gamers indulging in the practice.

When we like a product, do we think others will like it, too? And when we believe others like a product, do we like it as well? A new study…says these two questions are fundamentally different.

“The answer to the first question (Will others like it?) requires people to start with their own product preferences, which we call projection,” write authors Caglar Irmak (University of South Carolina), Beth Vallen (Loyola University), and Sankar Sen (Baruch College). The second question (If others like it, do I?) makes people think first about others’ preferences and then decide whether they like the product or not, which is called “introjection.”

“We show that different psychological processes underlie projection and introjection,” the authors write. “In particular, we demonstrate that providing our own opinion about a product before thinking about others’ preferences, as in projection, affirms one’s unique concept.” This, in turn, weakens uniqueness motivations and leads consumers to predict others will like what they themselves like.

On the other hand, thinking about others’ preferences before our own (introjection) threatens our sense of uniqueness. “As a result, those who are in high need for uniqueness don’t like what other people like,” the authors explain…

“If we learn others’ preferences before forming our own, we tend to preserve our uniqueness by altering our product preferences accordingly,” the authors write. “If, however, we already have an opinion about a product, we are okay with others following us.”

Uh, OK.

2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid hits showrooms late this year

Automakers have to learn how to make cars greener — and sexy too.

A new generation of electric cars, hybrids and fuel-efficient small cars took center stage at the New York International Auto Show. Pushed to the back were vehicles boasting big horsepower and glamorous styling, but with little fuel efficiency…

Compacts, crossovers and electric cars dominated the show’s main hall at the Jacob Javitz Center, while trucks and big SUVs were displayed to a much-smaller space two floors down.

“There is a real push on getting the products people want, rather than feeding their fantasy with extravagance,” said Dave Champion, director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “Small cars are where the market is going…”

Survivors of last year’s crash continued to exhibit financial frugality and vigilance, with products geared toward real consumer demand and low-key displays in muted colors, devoid of spectacular events or lavish refreshments…

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