 Canada.com | Photos: Messenger returns to Mercury CNET News - 38 minutes ago On Monday, NASA's Messenger spacecraft drew within 125 miles of Mercury in its second pass by the planet within the past year. NASA 'Messenger' Captures Space Views Of Mercury's Surface InformationWeek NASA: Messenger sends back never-before-seen Mercury images Computerworld MSNBC - eFluxMedia - RedOrbit - Reuters all 103 news articles |
Photos: Messenger returns to Mercury – CNET News
07
Oct
IBM Rolls Out Bluehouse Social Office Suite [Beta Beat]
07
Oct
Kevin Purdy via Lifehacker
shared by 4 people
IBM is offering the public a peek at Bluehouse, an online office portal aimed at making it easier for employees to share documents and desktops, host web conferences, and reach out to clients from one location. Any sized business can sign up to try out the service, though not everything works at the moment. One notably cool feature is the "Live Charts," which does exactly what it sounds like. There's tagging, importing from Outlook or Lotus Notes, and a lot more to fiddle with. Bluehouse is free to use (for the moment), requires a sign-up.
Bluehouse [via Ars Technica]
Lehman Brothers CEO Got Punched In The Face [Dick Fuld Is Punched]
07
Oct
Dick "It Wasn't My Fault" Fuld, the CEO of bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers, (seen here being heckled after testifying on Capitol Hill) was apparently punched in the face while working out in Lehman gym on the Sunday following the bankruptcy, according to CNBC's Vicki Ward.
Fuld testified before the House Oversight Committee yesterday, blaming everyone but himself for Lehman's collapse, an attitude that prompted Ward to confirm reports that he'd been punched in the face and to side with the attacker:
“From two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source – that he went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched this, I’d have done the same too.â€
Are You "With" The Face Puncher?
( polls)
Knock Out: CNBC Confirms Lehman CEO Punched at Gym [Business And Media]
Lehman CEO Fuld Blames Everyone But Not Himself [Gothamist]
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Obama and McCain support “open debates”: remix, reuse, comment, re-distribute.
07
Oct
Just in time for the presidential debates tonight, from Lessig blog:
UPDATE: The McCain campaign has also come out in support of the "open debate" project. My apologies for the earlier omission.
Barack Obama has reaffirmed the position he took in the primaries and asked the Debate Commission to support "open debates." Here's the letter.Craig "Craigslist" Newmark explains that Lessig led the effort, and that "the idea is to make video footage available to everyone for commenting and reuse, a big deal."
[Barack] wrote last year to the Chairman of my Party: "The Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens to participate in the political dialogue around this election. Much of that participation will take the form of citizen generated content. We, as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this participation… I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in a digital age. But there is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection. We have incentive enough to debate. The networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates. Rather than restricting the product of those debates, we should instead make sure that our democracy and citizens have the chance to benefit from them in all the ways that technology makes possible."(via @cnewmark on Twitter)
UPDATE: The McCain campaign has also come out in support of the "open debate" project. My apologies for the earlier omission.
Big Pharma Goes Before Supreme Court To Get State Lawsuits Banned [Wyeth]
07
Oct
"Pre-emption" is a legal doctrine that says the federal government can claim all regulatory power over an area or subject, barring states from acting on their own. The drug maker Wyeth has brought a case before the Supreme Court arguing that a woman in Vermont, who lost her arm due to a drug complication that Wyeth knew about but did not publicize, cannot sue them in state court because of pre-emption. Wyeth says that only the FDA has the power to regulate it—and since the FDA approved Wyeth's drug label, it's the FDA's responsibility. We think Wyeth is pretending to care about federal-versus-state power in an attempt to weasel out of any responsibility.
We understand why Wyeth would pursue this line of reasoning—after all, if they win, then it will put an end to personal lawsuits against drug companies. But if Wyeth got its way, the result would require a huge expansion in the FDA's role in bringing drugs to market and monitoring them afterward, because the FDA would have to shoulder the burden of responsible drug testing and labeling. If the FDA took over this responsibility, it would have to balloon to an enormous and almost certainly unwieldy government agency, and it would likely slow down the time it takes to bring new drugs to market.
On the other hand, it's quite possible that the FDA would simply hobble along in an underfunded, understaffed state, paralyzed by bureaucratic jams and strangled by politicians and the lobbyists who feed them.
This is why we think Wyeth is being duplicitous, by arguing for one thing—greater federal regulation—while knowing that in reality, having only the FDA to answer to will mean less risk of being held responsible for mistakes, incomplete research, or inappropriate marketing.
We're sure Wyeth would love to have it both ways, with limited regulatory oversight combined with the protection of a federal agency that's largely toothless. We hope the Supreme Court tells Wyeth to pay the Vermont woman her $7 million—and to label its drugs more clearly if it wants to avoid such payouts in the future.
"Consumer Issues Top Supreme Court's Docket" [NPR]
"Plainfield Pianist's Case Could Affect Nation" [WCAX] (Thanks to Michael Belisle!)
(Photo: Getty)