Jan
14
2009
Anonymous writes “Ars Technica has discovered that one of the Obama transition team members advising on the digital TV transition has a conflict of interest that would benefit WiMAX carrier Clearwire over Verizon. ‘Barack Obama’s call to delay the DTV transition would affect not only millions of analog TV viewers, but also powerful companies with a vested interest in the changeover date–including at least one with an executive on Obama’s transition team.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Comments Off on Conflict of Interest May Taint DTV Delay Proposal | tags: google, news, obama, tv | posted in technical news
Jan
14
2009
Performances and speeches by U2, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow, Garth Brooks, Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah, Denzel Washington…and I’m just getting started


Comments Off on Stars Set for Obama Inauguration | tags: google, obama | posted in technical news
Jan
14
2009
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says that he understands Obama’s reluctance to pursue investigations but that he may take matters into his own hands


Comments Off on Whitehouse: If Obama doesn’t investigate Bush crimes, I will | tags: google, obama | posted in technical news
Jan
14
2009
heybus writes “Economist Dean Baker, best known for calling the housing bust and warning of the ensuing economic collapse, has just published his recommendations for how to allocate President-elect Obama’s estimated 0 billion economic stimulus plan. Among other things, Baker calls for juicing the economy with billion worth of government spending to support the development of free and open source software. Baker’s idea is similar to the New Deal federal arts and writers’ projects: the government would fund projects as long as they produce freely available code. In addition to employing programmers, ‘the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Comments Off on FOSS Development As Economic Stimulus | tags: consumers, google, news, obama, open source, program | posted in technical news
Jan
13
2009
The Obama team made what I consider to be a political masterstroke yesterday by announcing their selection of respected former Congressman Leon Panetta to head the CIA. Well, what could be the problem? 3… 2… 1… Cue a tone-deaf, self-immolating Democrat shooting the Party in the foot


Comments Off on Dianne Feinstein Can Go Suck an Egg | tags: google, obama | posted in technical news
Jan
13
2009
CurtMonash writes “Much is being made of the deliberations as to whether President Obama will be able to keep using his beloved “BarackBerry.” As the NYTimes details, there are two major sets of objections: infosecurity and legal/records retention. Deven Coldeway of CrunchGear does a good job of showing that the technological infosecurity problems can be solved. And as I’ve noted elsewhere, the ‘Omigod, he left his Blackberry behind at dinner’ issue is absurd. Presidents are surrounded by attendants, Secret Service and otherwise. Somebody just has to be given the job of keeping track of the president’s personal communication device. As for the legal question of whether the president can afford to put things in writing that will likely be exposed by courts and archivists later — the answer to that surely depends on the subject matter or recipient. Email to his Chicago friends — why not? Anything he’d write to them would be necessarily non-secret anyway. Email to the Secretary of Defense? That might be a different matter.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Comments Off on Solving Obama’s BlackBerry Dilemma | tags: email, google, obama, security | posted in technical news
Jan
13
2009
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes ” The U.S. President-elect, Barack Obama has selected Julius Genachowski to lead the Federal Communications Commission. This appears to bode well for a forward-looking (or at least clued) Internet policy, since Genachowski is credited with running Obama’s internet-based election campaign, and, according to ‘Fierce Telecom,’ ‘has an impressive record working with technology and communications companies: He was Chief of Business Operations at InterActiveCorp; he’s co-founder of Rock Creek Ventures, which currently backs 11 internet-based start-ups, and he’s also served on the boards of numerous technology and new media companies, including The Motley Fool, Web.com, Truveo, and Rapt’.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Comments Off on Julius Genachowski To Head FCC | tags: google, news, obama, technology, web | posted in technical news
Jan
13
2009
Let’s get this straight right away. I’m not a dogmatic supply-sider, who believes that tax cuts are the solution to all economic ills.But I believe that Obama’s 0 billion tax cut is essential to ‘recapitalize’ the American consumer, just like the banks are being recapitalized.


Comments Off on Why Obama Must Cut Taxes – It’s Essential! | tags: cap, google, obama | posted in technical news
Jan
12
2009
President-elect Barack Obama has repeatedly said how much his BlackBerry means to him and how he is dreading the prospect of being forced to give it up, because of legal and security concerns, once he takes office.


Comments Off on How Much Is Obama’s BlackBerry Pitch Worth? | tags: google, obama, security | posted in technical news
Jan
12
2009
An anonymous reader writes “‘President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.’ The plan includes having all conventional records converted to digital within 5 years. Independent studies are fixing this cost somewhere in the range of to 0 Billion, with most of the money going to paying and training technical staff to work on the conversion. Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Comments Off on Obama Proposes Digital Health Records | tags: google, news, obama | posted in technical news