8rzv Umfrage- Deutsche in Kauf- und Baulaune_3

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:21:00 +0000

Heute ist ein guter Tag zum Hausbau – oder zum Kauf einer Wohnung. Trotz aller wirtschaftlichen Probleme und Unw?gbarkeiten denken 53,4 Prozent der Deutschen, dass im Moment ein guter Zeitpunkt ist, in Wohneigentum zu investieren. Das sind über fünf Prozent mehr als noch im November 2009, als lediglich 47,9 Prozent der gleichen Meinung waren. Damit hellt sich die Stimmung hierzulande weiter auf. Der ?Stimmungsindex Baufinanzierung“, der die Bereitschaft zur Immobilienfinanzierung mittel Kredit anzeigt, stieg dementsprechend um 2,8 Punkte auf 106,0 Punkte.

Hausbauer k?nnen sich derzeit neben günstigen Immobilienpreisen und wenig steigenden Preisen am Bau vor allem über niedrige Hypothekenzinsen freuen, die sich seit geraumer Zeit auf einer sprichw?rtlichen Talfahrt befinden. Die langfristige Finanzierung der Immobilie wird so günstiger, da nur die wenigsten das Haus aus der Portokasse bezahlen k?nnen und so auf ?externe“ Finanzierer zurückgreifen müssen. Die Akzeptanz, auf Darlehen von Geldgebern zurückzugreifen, w?chst entsprechend. So würden 42 Prozent der Befragten auf ?ffentliche Finanzierungshilfen wie die Kredite der KfW-F?rderbank – sofern diese wieder Geld zur Verfügung hat – für die Finanzierung der Immobilie nutzen. Im November lag dieser Wert noch bei 35,1 Prozent.

Umfrage: Deutsche in Kauf- und Baulaune

Es wird die Hausbaufirmen freuen: über die H?lfte der Deutschen bezeichnet die derzeitigen Bedingungen für den Kauf der eigenen vier W?nde als ?günstig“, 5,5 Prozent mehr als noch im November. Das geht aus einer repr?sentativen Umfrage des Meinungsforschungsinstituts Forsa im Auftrag der comdirect bank unter mehr als 1.000 Personen in Deutschland hervor.

?Wer diese F?rdermittel in Anspruch nehmen m?chte, sollte sich darüber m?glichst frühzeitig Gedanken machen“ mahnt Tobias Lücke von der comdirect bank, da der Antrag noch vor dem Kauf oder dem Beginn des Neubaus eingereicht werden müsse. Bevorzugtes Instrument der Finanzierung bleibt laut Umfrage aber weiterhin der Immobilienkredit. Knapp 60,5 Prozent würde ein Hypothekendarlehen in Anspruch nehmen, um die eigenen vier W?nde zu finanzieren.

Hausbau: Deutsche sehen derzeit günstige Bedingungen.

jycy Cook County- Craigslist’s ‘erotic’ section mu

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 19:06:00 +0000

“Just to prove my point we put our own ads on Craigslist,” Dart said. “One of them read ‘15-year-old looking for sex,’ and it got three hits including one from a convicted sex offender. We put up ‘14-year old looking for sex.’ Nobody filed any complaints and that one was left up. So its clear there’s no policing going on. Craigslist, part of your site is being misued. Work with me to rectify it. Monitor it and I’ll go away.”

Sheriff Tom Dart has asked the court to force Craigslist to remove the Web publication’s erotic section. Cook County also wants $100,000 in compensation for the man hours the county has had to pay police to investigate alleged criminal services being advertised on the site.

In an interview with CNET News following a press conference, Dart made clear that he isn’t blaming Craigslist for prostitution in his county and said Craigslist is great for renting rooms or sellingcars and hundreds of other legal uses.

Craigslist, the Web’s biggest publication of classified advertisements, promised in November to begin cracking down on ads for prostitution after coming under fire by several state attorneys general.

Cook County: Craigslist's 'erotic' section must go

Craigslist's San Francisco headquarters

But he said all the statistics shows Craigslist is the country’s biggest marketing tool for the illegal sex trade and also makes it harder for law authorities to catch bad guys.

Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET.

“Near as we can tell they have a total of about 24 employees,” Dart said. “They freely admit that their policing and monitoring is all done by the participants. As I said, we can all act like we’re idiots here but that gets old after a while. Are you trying to tell me that the people going to a prostitution site are going to be so horribly offended that they’re going to register a complaint? No they’re not.

As for its potential defense in the sheriff’s civil case, Craigslist can claim to be immune from liability under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. “

Dart, who is sheriff of one of the most populous counties in the United States with about 5.3 million residents, said he has asked for help from Craigslist and done everything possible to negotiate with managers there. He said he held off filing suit to see whether the deal between the state attorney general would have any impact on the problem.

CNET’s Declan McCullagh contributed to this report

Best said that Craigslist managers have yet to receive a copy of the complaint issued by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

Updated at 12:13 p.m. PST to include comments from Craigslist.

“Craigslist is an extremely unwise choice for those intent on committing crimes since criminals inevitably leave an electronic trail to themselves,” Best continued. “On a daily basis, we are being of direct assistance to police departments and federal authorities nationwide.”

(Credit:Greg Sandoval/CNET News)

“Misuse of Craigslist to facilitate criminal activity is unacceptable, and we continue to work diligently to prevent it,” said Susan MacTavish Best, a Craigslist spokeswoman. “Misuse of the site is exceptionally rare compared to how much the site is used for legal purposes. Regardless, any misuse of the site is not tolerated on Craigslist.

Updated at 1:55 p.m. PST to include quotes from Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who was interviewed by CNET News.

The sheriff of Illinois’ Cook County, which includes Chicago, filed suit in federal court Thursday against Craigslist, alleging that the Web’s largest classifieds publication is “facilitating prostitution.”

Updated at 12:13 p.m. PST to include demands made in civil complaint filed by Cook County sheriff.

“I’ve said all along that I’m not blaming them for prostitution,” Dart said. “What I am blaming them for is that one part of their site is being horribly misused. Either shut that part of the site down or put some real monitoring in place.”

wffm Clearing the Hurdles_860

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:51:00 +0000

Responsibility for achieving wage gains in global sportswear supply chains is more widely distributed than it might be in a national industry producing for domestic consumption, because global sportswear production takes place in a context of:

Freedom of association and collective bargaining

If the sportswear industry is serious about changing the way business is currently done, there is an urgent need to take immediate steps to address these three central issues.

Home-based workers stitching soccer balls in Jalandhar, India told Play Fair researchers that piece rates have remained stagnant for the last five years, despite local inflation rates last year estimated at between 6.7% and 10%. Depending on the type of ball, a home-based hand stitcher makes between US$0.35 and US$0.88 per ball, completing two to four balls a day. Home-based workers also face a total lack of income security. During months when orders are low, households are often plunged into debt to money lenders.

Concrete Actions and Measurable Targets

Three Hurdles to Overcome

Play Fair researchers also found that wages for sportswear workers are still well below a local living wage. Even where governments raised the legal minimum wage or sportswear brand buyers attempt to impose limits on overtime, Play Fair researchers found evidence of employers finding new ways to evade their responsibilities.

A small sample of the actions and targets that can be taken include:

Sportswear brands should require suppliers to adopt a policy on freedom of association and communicate this to the workers in the form of a written “Right to Organize Guarantee.” This should be done at a minimum of 30% of a brand’s suppliers by Vancouver 2010, and 100% by London 2012. By Vancouver 2010, sportswear brands and retailers should provide measurable incentives to factories which have a Collective Bargaining Agreement with an independent trade union. Such incentives could include: Preferential order placement; Long-term, stable supply contracts; and A measurable CBA premium in unit pricesSportswear suppliers must ensure that, by Vancouver 2010, at least 95% of workers engaged in the company’s core business are employed under open-ended or undetermined duration contracts, and that: Any use of fixed duration contracts is in response to a clearly defined plan justifying their use; Any workers on fixed duration contracts are provided the same salary and benefits accorded to permanent workers performing the same work; Once a short-term employee has been hired on a fixed duration contract twice by the same employer, or for two years, the employee is automatically hired on an undetermined duration contract with the third contract. By Vancouver 2010, buyers should report publicly on the company’s policies for supplier/vendor selection, management, and/or termination, including new source approval process, linking of supplier CSR performance with sourcing decisions, and strategy for managing impact of exiting factories. Multi-stakeholder initiatives should require this of their members. Buyers should commit to the attainment of a living wage in at least 25% of supply factories by London 2012, by: Collaborating with other buyers (possibly through a multi-stakeholder initiative) to identify suppliers where participating buyers collectively control more than 75% of production on a regular basis; Facilitating the establishment of negotiating structures to enable factory management and trade union(s) to consolidate the living wage element into the existing pay structure at those factories; Individually negotiating with factory management on measures needed to meet a living wage target proportional to each buyer’s share in production. The Challenge

For these reasons, a coordinated effort to increasing wages in the sportswear industry must be developed. It should focus initially on major suppliers and relatively stable factories where a critical mass of buyers have a long-term relationship with the supplier factory and all are willing to take steps to ensure that workers receive wages that fall within the range of living wage estimates for the region.

Across the global sportswear industry, workers manufacturing sports apparel, footwear, and soccer balls all report the same kinds of problems. These findings are not new. A particular business model, lack of incentives, competing interests, institutional inertia, and other factors have often negated even the best efforts to fix the endemic problems that continue to plague this industry.

The Maquila Solidarity Network is a labor and women’s rights organization that supports the efforts of workers in global supply chains to win improved wages and working conditions and a better quality of life. They authored this report on the behalf of Play Fair 2008. Recommended Citation:

Suppliers and/or buying agents using multiple factories in one or more countries make choices about which factories receive which orders, affecting the viability of one or another facility. Buyers also, either by decision or simply by neglect, fail to support facilities that have been more compliant with labor standards -especially those with collective bargaining agreements -leading to closures. Because we are dealing with global supply chains, a narrow assessment of one isolated facility’s economic viability is not sufficient to rationalize a closure. A true assessment of a facility’s economic viability must also take into account the order patterns from buyers, whether prices paid by buyers are sufficient to support labor rights compliance at a facility, and the finances of the parent company.

The rash of factory closures that has accompanied industry restructuring over the past few years contributes to a climate of fear amongst workers and suppliers, feeding the myth that any efforts to improve conditions will only lead to more job losses. When workers face employment insecurity, they are less likely to take steps to challenge abusive practices.

Although comprehensive global data across the industry is not available, in recent years, unions and labor rights organizations have reported an increasing use by supplier factories of successive short-term employment contracts and third-party employment contract agencies.

Despite more than 15 years of codes of conduct adopted by major sportswear brands, such as adidas, Nike, New Balance, Puma and Reebok, workers making their products still face extreme pressure to meet production quotas, excessive, undocumented and unpaid overtime, verbal abuse, threats to health and safety related to the high quotas and exposure to toxic chemicals, and a failure to provide legally required health and other insurance programs.

Soccer ball stitchers in Pakistan, for example, report that they receive between US$0.57 and US$0.65 for each ball they produce, a rate that hasn’t changed in six years even though the consumer price index rose by 40% over that period. Garment workers in Cambodia earn an average of US$70 to US$80 a month, including overtime and bonuses -not enough to provide a worker and family with a decent standard of living. In Bangladesh, where massive worker protests in 2006 led to a long-overdue increase in the minimum wage to US$24.30 a month, the real value (after inflation) of their monthly wage is now worth even less than the 1995 minimum wage. In Turkey, the prevailing industry wage in the garment sector is estimated to be less than half the living wage.

While a few brand-sensitive sportswear companies are willing to discuss how to minimize the negative impacts of restructuring and consolidation, the vast majority refuse to even consider whether they have an obligation to justify their decisions to workers or communities that will be negatively affected.

For example, when the Chinese government raised the minimum wage in Dongguan province in order to account for a skyrocketing inflation rate on basic goods like food, employers at many of the athletic footwear factories studied by Play Fair found ways to nullify the increase. Some employers raised production targets, thereby reducing or eliminating production bonuses, a significant portion of worker incomes. Others introduced new charges for food, lodging or other services. Some of the workers interviewed now receive less income than before the minimum wage increase.

But there is another side to the story. Before the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the Play Fair at the Olympics Campaign -the biggest international worker rights mobilization of its kind ever undertaken -brought the world’s attention to the underside of the sportswear industry: the abysmal working conditions endured by the young women and men, and children, who make the shoes, jerseys, footballs and other items in contract factories and subcontract facilities around the world.

The problem is that the sportswear industry is addicted to flexibility. In the prevalent sportswear business model, retailers, brands, and transnational suppliers seek to maximize their ability to change not only the styles and products being produced, but the factories or countries in which the goods are being made, all in pursuit of the quickest, most reliable, best quality and, of course, cheapest production.

By linking their brands with the Olympic Games, as well as other sporting events like the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) 2008 Euro Cup, sportswear companies hope to reach for the gold in sales, market share and brand recognition. And if the past is any guide, these major sporting events should prove extremely profitable for some of the major players in this global industry.

Workers face considerable obstacles when they try to exercise their right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, including:

The lack of respect for workers’ right to freedom of association and to bargain collectively impedes worker efforts to resolve workplace problems as they arise and to negotiate long-term improvements in wages and working conditions.

Just as workers at the bottom of the supply chain have been forced to bear the lion’s share of risks associated with the industry’s demand for flexibility, workers have also been forced to shoulder the costs associated with consumer demand for low prices.

Clearing the Hurdles

The 2008 Beijing Olympics represents a golden opportunity for the brand-conscious sportswear industry to associate its products with the cherished Olympic brand. For a costly, but manageable sponsorship or licensing fee, a sportswear company can infuse its athletic shoes and clothes with the lofty Olympic ideals of fair play, perseverance and, most importantly, winning.

The dominant attitude and practice in this industry is so biased against the development of trade unions that we believe a more proactive approach is needed to create a positive (rather than just neutral) climate for unions. We believe that companies should adopt a positive approach towards the activities of trade unions and an open attitude towards the organizational activities of workers.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that sportswear factories would seek to “flexibilize” their workforces. As long as the global system of sportswear production remains unstable, there will be a drive to download the bulk of the risk involved in competing for business and orders. Those that can no longer download the risk -the workers at the bottom of the supply chain -end up bearing the brunt of the instability in the system.

Play Fair’s research also indicates that despite increasing work pressure and excessive working hours, worker incomes remain, on the whole, well below a living wage. While industry leaders have been willing to take action in some cases to ensure that workers receive the legal minimum wage or prevailing industry wage, there has been very little action to date to ensure that workers’ wages are sufficient to meet basic needs.

Based on interviews with over 320 sportswear workers in China, India, Thailand, and Indonesia, as well as reviews of company and industry profiles, published and unpublished reports, newspaper articles, web sites, and factory advertisements, researchers from the Play Fair network found that while some brands have developed labor rights monitoring and compliance programs and taken action on a number of issues and cases, substantial violations of worker rights are still the norm for workers in the sportswear industry.

“We have no savings so we have nothing left during emergencies,” said a 50-year-old soccer ball stitcher. There are few if any safety nets available for homeworkers: sickness or an accident can amount to a catastrophe. “I have lost my wife’s gold, which I gave as security to a moneylender and could not repay,” he said. “Once I even rented my cooking gas cylinder to arrange some money for a health emergency suffered by my wife. The situation is similar for all of us. One of my friends even sold his blood to get some extra money to meet an emergency.”

Photo by Maquila Solidarity Network.

Rather than merely rehashing a litany of abuses, this report seeks to identify solutions to these persistent workplace problems, focusing on three central hurdles that, if not overcome, will inhibit the industry’s ability to make real progress on other issues in the future.

Growth in precarious employment

Flash forward four years, with the Beijing Olympics upon the horizon, and it’s time to ask, “What, if anything, has improved?”

Maquila Solidarity Network, “Clearing the Hurdles” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, August 20, 2008)

Four years ago Play Fair asked the industry to take up the challenge of making real, substantial improvements in labor standards compliance by the Beijing Olympics. As the opening flame was lit in Beijing progress toward these goals was limited at best. If the sportswear industry -buyers, suppliers and the multi-stakeholder initiatives that include them as members -is truly serious about addressing the issues outlined in this report, it must demonstrate its willingness to undertake concrete action to meet measurable targets to ensure that when the next Olympic Games come around in two and four years’ time, workers can expect real improvements in their conditions rather than two or four years’ more talk about vague commitments.

Closures should only occur when a factory is no longer able to sustain itself economically, and all other options to rescue the business have been exhausted. But it’s not always easy to disentangle the responsibility for economic decisions that affect the viability of a particular factory.

In some cases, Play Fair researchers discovered, workers are not even receiving the legal minimum wage, despite working 12-13 hours a day. As well, in a number of the factories studied, there was evidence of employers falsifying factory records to mask the fact that employees were being forced to work excessively long and illegal hours and were not receiving the legal overtime premium pay.

What Researchers Found

The Fourth Hurdle: a living wage

The growing use of short-term contracting and other forms of precarious employment is denying workers their social security and other legal entitlements, discouraging worker organizing, and undermining the enforcement of labor regulations, which too often do not apply to non-permanent workers.

To seriously address the lack of freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively, precarious employment, and the impacts of factory closures, and to raise incomes to a level that meets workers’ basic needs, sportswear companies will need to take a series of concrete, measurable actions in close collaboration with multi-stakeholder initiatives, trade unions, non-governmental organizations, and governments.

hlcd Clampi Trojan stealing online bank data from

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:50:00 +0000

Stewart has identified 1,400 Web sites in 70 different countries out of 4,500 sites being targeted by the Trojan attack. The sites include banks, credit card companies, online casinos, retail sites, utilities, ad networks, stock brokerages, mortgage lenders, and government and military portals.

Clampi has spread quickly through Microsoft-based networks in a worm-like fashion in recent months, Stewart said. It uses domain administrator credentials that were either stolen by the Trojan or based on an administrator logging into an infected system. It then uses a Windows executable SysInternals tool, “psexec,” to copy itself to all the computers on the domain, he said.

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.

When the infected computer is used to access a targeted banking or other site, the log-in and other information is stolen.

“This type of Trojan, banking Trojans in general, are the biggest threat to home computer users and businesses doing banking online,” he said. “You can’t rely on antivirus. At some point you are going to visit the wrong site and they’ll get a Trojan on your computer.”

Clampi, also known as Ligats, Ilomo, or Rscan, infects computers in drive-by downloads when people visit Web sites hosting malicious code that exploits vulnerabilities in browser plug-ins Flash and ActiveX, said Joe Stewart, director of malware research for the Counter Threat Unit of SecureWorks.

Because it can take days or weeks to get a sample of the latest version of the Trojan, antivirus protection is often delayed, arriving after a PC is already infected, according to Stewart.

Stewart recommends that consumer and business Web surfers use a dedicated computer for their banking and other sensitive financial online activities that is separate from the computer where e-mail is accessed and Web surfing is done. People should also be careful using removable drives on those isolated computers as Trojans can spread that way.

Clampi Trojan stealing online bank data from consumers and businesses

SecureWorks’ intrusion prevention software doesn’t stop computers from getting infected but it prevents the stealing of the data by blocking the encrypted traffic that it deemed suspicious, he said.

Even so, the losses from Clampi are starting to be publicized. The Trojan was behind the theft of nearly $75,000 from Slack Auto Parts in Gainesville, Ga., according to the Security Fix blog at The Washington Post.

Joe Stewart, SecureWorks' director of malware research for the Counter Threat Unit, has been researching the Clampi Trojan for two years.

Clampi also serves as a proxy server for criminals to anonymize their activity when logging into stolen accounts.

Based on the techniques they are using, Stewart said criminals in Eastern Europe are believed to be behind Clampi.

By now, the criminals “probably have way more accounts than they can actually clean out,” Stewart said.

(Credit:Elinor Mills/CNET)

The Trojan uses three types of encryption and sophisticated virtual machine-based packing technology to disguise itself in order to get through antivirus filters, according to Stewart.

LAS VEGAS–Hundreds of thousands of Windows computers are believed to be infected with a Trojan called “Clampi” that has been stealing banking and other log-in credentials from compromised PCs since 2007, a security researcher said on the eve of the Black Hat security conference.

Ercg Behind Microsoft’s open-source jitters_4282

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:19:00 +0000

Because Microsoft, more than any other company, has built a massive distribution channel through its partners, one that is seriously threatened by the vastly more efficient open-source model: the free (as in price and is in license) download.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, once told me that Microsoft knows how to compete with 1 cent but fears 0 cents, and so it seeks to impose a patent tax on open-source software in order to raise its price to a level at which its highly efficient licensing model can compete. Open source, however, refuses to cooperate, continuing to spread itself through free downloads with no proprietary strings attached.

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.

George Orwell might pay “Homage to Catalonia,” but why should Microsoft care about a tiny deal in a tiny market?

I’ve asked before why Microsoft, of all the enterprise software companies, stands alone in accusing open source, and specifically (though not exclusively) Linux, of stealing intellectual property. Why don’t we see Oracle, IBM, and other big software companies deriding open source?

Microsoft is a distribution model. It’s certainly not an innovator. Open source challenges Microsoft because it offers an alternative distribution model, one that is more efficient.

It’s not just license costs that are lower, either. It’s the cost of entry: Microsoft software generally requires other Microsoft software to run. If you want to run SharePoint or BizTalk, for example, you’re going to need Windows, SQL Server, etc. Open-source solutions, however, work with other free and open-source databases, application servers, and operating systems.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

The answer came from my friend and Alfresco CTO John Newton while we were talking yesterday:

Microsoft, in other words, is being Microsofted, and the Redmond giant doesn’t like it. Even as Microsoft has dramatically reduced the cost and complexity of computing, so, too, is open source reducing Microsoft’s price even further, beating Microsoft at its own game.
Behind Microsoft's open-source jitters
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently struck a deal with the president of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Spain, which had earlier made a commitment to move off Microsoft and other proprietary software to open source, to get free Microsoft touch-screen PCs and other technology.

Why does Microsoft struggle with open source? Because open source is a dramatically thinner, fitter version of Microsoft’s own partner-dependent distribution model. If open source were a vendor, Microsoft could compete. It struggles, however, to compete with a phenomenon.

We talk often of open source as a development methodology, and so it is. But I agree with John: the open-source distribution model is arguably much more subversive to Microsoft’s market hegemony than its development model.
acbk Bedlam breaks out at Circuit City_5504

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:18:00 +0000

On Friday, Circuit City said it was liquidating all of its stores. Then, on Saturday, there was a big liquidation sale at my local Circuit City–up to 30 percent off. The checkout line was almost as long as the lines you encounter on a typical Saturday at Fry’s–the mostly California- and Texas-based sprawling electronics warehouse. (The line actually snaked to the back of the store.)

Understand that I’m not giving Fry’s any backhanded praise. Fry’s is so big, so unwieldy, and, in some respects, its sales policies so lax that, as a rule, I avoid it (unless I need a nuts-and-bolts item like a Torx screw).
Bedlam breaks out at Circuit City
After Best Buy mega-stored Circuit City to oblivion, the hapless retailer has quickly gone to pieces.

Inside, it was close to pandemonium. (The manager would not let me take pictures inside the store.) Consumers swarming everywhere: every one of them with at least a few breathless questions and scant employees to provide answers. And consumers seemingly snapping up anything that wasn’t nailed down. (I’ve never seen so many HP wide-screen monitors in one checkout line.)

Ask your casual consumer, who is familiar with both stores, why Circuit City failed and the answer is often summed up in two words: Best Buy. Others will say Amazon–but that’s another story.

One male employee in the section I was browsing, spent most of the time I was there (about 15 minutes) pleading ignorance and searching for a manager who never (apparently) materialized.

My local Circuit City (in southern California) on Saturday had lines inside as long as Fry’s–though that isn’t necessarily a compliment

Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones’ Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times’ Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec.

A female employee I talked to outside (she was on break) said no one knew it would happen–until it happened.

But Fry’s is still a going concern. Circuit City isn’t. The store that I visited on Saturday had been taken over lock, stock, and barrel by the liquidator. I interviewed (very briefly because she was on checkout duty) the “store manager” who said that, as of Saturday, her new immediate boss was the person from the liquidation company. That person, in effect, was now running the show, she said.

My take as a consumer? The sheer scale, selection, organization, and relative attention to display detail that one senses at Best Buy proved to be a huge disincentive for going back to Circuit City–and CompUSA for that matter. Statistics don’t lie. I have been to Best Buy dozens of times in the past two years. I’ve been to Circuit City–even though it’s closer–maybe six times, and always as a last resort.

(Credit:Brooke Crothers)

What was ironic (and sad) was that I had been to this same Circuit City a few weeks before and an employee had boasted that this store would not close (in the wake of the limited nationwide store closings Circuit City had announced in November) and would be around for a long time.

The study

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:41:53 +0000

The latest study was carried out by Dr Gerald Draper and colleagues from the Childhood Cancer Research Group at Oxford University, and Dr John Swanson, a scientific adviser at National Grid Transco.
It looked at more than 29,000 children with cancer, including 9,700 with leukaemia, born between 1962 and 1995, and a control group of healthy youngsters in England and Wales.
The researchers measured the distance from children’s home addresses at birth from the nearest high voltage power line.
They found that 64 children with leukaemia lived within 200m of the line, while 258 lived between 200-600m away.
Overall, youngsters living within 200m of the lines were about 70% more likely to develop leukaemia, and those living between 200 and 600m away about 20% more likely to develop leukaemia than those who lived beyond 600m from high voltage pylons.
Although the trend was definite, the researchers said they could not reasonably explain why it occurred.
For this reason, they caution that it might be down to factors other than the pylons themselves, such as the type of people who live near pylons or the general environment where pylons are located, which they plan to investigate.

Pylons ‘may be a leukaemia risk

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:41:43 +0000

Living too close to overhead power lines appears to increase the risk of childhood leukaemia, researchers say.
A major study found children who had lived within 200m of high voltage lines at birth had a 70% higher risk of leukaemia than those 600m or more away.
But the Oxford University team stressed that there are no accepted biological reasons for the results and that they may, therefore, be chance.
Alternatively, it may be down to the environments where pylons are located.
And they said it did not resolve the debate about whether it was unsafe to live next to power lines.
Around 1% of homes in the UK are estimated to be within 200m of high voltage National Grid power lines.
The researchers said their findings showed living in such close proximity to power lines at birth could account for five extra cases of childhood leukaemia in a total of around 400 that occur in a year – a total of 1%.
The British Medical Journal study did not look at level of exposure to magnetic fields.
But other scientists who have considered the issue have suggested that low frequency magnetic fields, such as those caused by the production of electricity, could possibly be linked to cancer.
However, others have disputed this link. And experts agree that there are likely to be many factors involved in leukaemia, including genes and the environment.
Even if the apparent risk was found to be real, the number of cases of leukaemia that would result would be very few, said the authors.

‘High aspirations’

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:40:12 +0000

The programme aims to challenge some of the “negative stereotyping” that leads some children from poorer backgrounds to believe that universities and certain careers are out of reach for them.
Children will be offered career-related learning in a range of areas to raise awareness of what they can achieve.
It is hoped this will lay the foundations for them to make good subject choices in secondary schools and inspire them to do well.
As part of the new careers strategy, parents will be urged to think while their children are still in primary school about what jobs they might want to do.
75% saying they want to go to university.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families wants teachers and parents to build on this to get children thinking about higher education, especially those from homes where no members of their family have been to university before.
The department stresses the scheme is not about helping children decide what job they want to do, but showing them what can be possible so they fulfil their potential.
There will also be more help for disadvantaged and disabled young people in accessing work experience and every young person is to get a careers mentor.
Children are also to be offered good information, advice and guidance online on Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites.

World » shoes

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