Opponents to Walker: Back off new rent-to-own rule

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Milwaukee's Roman Catholic archbishop and a Republican state senator joined with others Friday to pressure Gov. Scott Walker to back off his plan to free rent-to-own businesses from Wisconsin's consumer protection act.

The provision in the Republican governor's executive budget proposal ensures the businesses wouldn't have to disclose what industry opponents say are exorbitant interest rates.

"I assume Gov. Walker does not know how predatory and plain evil this chain is," Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said of Rent-A-Center, which he said he's been fighting for 18 years. "I hope we can get Gov. Walker to change his mind."

Grothman, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, the director of the consumer advocacy group WISPIRG, the president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin and others spoke at a press conference Milwaukee. They contended rent-to-own businesses prey on the poor, uneducated or those with language barriers and charge exorbitant interest rates similar to payday lenders.

"The budget is now in the hands of the Joint Finance Committee and they can remove the proposal if they choose to do so," Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said in an email to The Associated Press Friday.

Rent-A-Center spokesman Xavier Dominicis said the contracts aren't credit transactions and Wisconsin's consumer act shouldn't apply to them.

"If you really do a deep dive into it, what you discover is there are very key differences between rent to own and traditional consumer credit," he said.

Rent-to-own businesses offer customers a chance to rent items such as appliances, electronics, computers and furniture with no credit check. Typically, customers can exit and rejoin the deals as they wish with no effect on their credit rating. People who complete their contracts can exercise options to buy the items.

Dominicis said the critics aren't giving consumers enough credit to read their contracts, which he said are clear on how much customers will pay if they make payments to the end.

"It's not smoke and mirrors," he said.

He said rent-to-own businesses are particularly helpful for people with bad credit or who don't want to take on more credit.

"It's making life manageable for everyday Americans," he said.

Listecki said rent-to-own businesses keep people in economic servitude.

"If someone wants to pay seven times the amount for an item, they are more than welcome to pay more than seven times for the amount for the item," he said. "The difficulty is when you are not told when you are paying seven times the amount."

Grothman said some other Republicans agree with him but won't speak up publicly. He also said he spoke to Walker about it before the governor introduced his budget proposal and hopes to speak with him again.

"I am going to have to be a lot more vocal about the details if I can get in to see him again," Grothman said.

Forty-seven states have separate laws governing rent-to-own businesses; Wisconsin, New Jersey and North Carolina do not, according to research by Columbia University economics instructor Alejo Czerwonko.

More than 8,500 rent-to-own storefronts were operating in all 50 states and Canada in 2009, generating more than $7 billion and employing more than 50,000 people, according Czerwonko's research. Walker's office says about 50 rent-to-own businesses operate in Wisconsin.

A Wisconsin appeals court ruling in 1993 affirmed the state's consumer protection act governs the industry here, agreeing with a circuit court judge that rent-to-own deals are indeed credit transactions.

In 1999, the state Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Rent-A-Center Inc. The agency accused the company of not abiding by provisions in the act requiring the businesses to disclose all terms of its deals to customers, including finance charges and interest rates. Three years later, a Milwaukee County judge sided with DOJ and ordered Rent-A-Center to pay the state $7 million in restitution and $1.4 million in penalties and fees, according to court documents.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/opponents-walker-back-off-rent-205210427.html

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College of the Ozarks wants debt-free students - Columbia Missourian

Friday, April 26, 2013 | 11:13 a.m. CDT

POINT LOOKOUT ? April Gregory spends part of each week in a warm, sometimes stuffy laundry on the campus of College of the Ozarks, washing, drying and pressing clothes and linens.

The Joplin Globe reported that the college sophomore from Harrison, Ark., also maintains an off-campus job and has held summer jobs, but she's not complaining. Her jobs ? plus a new no-debt policy at her school ? will ensure that she graduates in a few years without any debt to her name.

"It's definitely a lot of hard work," said Gregory, who is majoring in animal science and agriculture business. "You're just working for your education so you don't have to pay it off. Just to know that you're graduating and you can focus on getting a place to live, or a job, and you don't have to pay (your education) off ? you can focus on other things, like a car. We will have more freedom than being tied down to debt."

During a time when most students are graduating from college with loan debt, College of the Ozarks, a private, four-year school of nearly 1,400 students near Branson, is swimming against the tide. It has long discouraged student debt by not participating in any federal or state loan programs, and its president, Jerry C. Davis, recently announced that the college will no longer honor private bank loans for students.

"Basically what we're saying is if you want to borrow money, go somewhere else," he said. "Trust me; there are plenty of colleges that will loan you money. This is not one of them."

Davis said that in recent years, an average of 90 percent of the college's students were graduating debt-free thanks in part to the school's debt policies. But administrators had also been noticing a slight uptick in the number of private loans being taken out to help cover college costs, he said.

"We don't think that's a good idea because debt is bad," he said. "We would not be doing these kids a favor by letting them get into debt. You could argue it's a disservice. You're just giving them another brick to swim with when they get out."

Under the system that has given the college its "Hard Work U" nickname, students pay for their tuition, which was $17,600 for the 2011-12 academic year, by working on campus each semester for 15 hours per week, plus two 40-hour work weeks. They fill a variety of roles, including upkeep of the scenic campus, staffing the college's restaurant and lodge, operating the on-campus laundry business, labor of new on-campus construction and tending to the school's dairy and beef farms.

Any remaining tuition balances not covered through the work education program are filled in with student grants, if eligible, and a scholarship from the college, which boasts on its website that "students should owe absolutely no cash for tuition."

"It's better for students to work than it is for students to go in debt," Davis said.

The college also has a summer program for eligible students to work 12 40-hour work weeks at their campus job to cover the costs of room and board fees, which total $5,900.

Davis said fewer than 100 students are expected to be affected next year by the new policy excluding private loans, which they generally used toward room and board. To assist with the transition, he said the college will increase the number of slots in its summer work program from about 490 to roughly 550.

"At least there's going to be one college to stand up and say: There's a better way to do this,'" he said. "And it's called work."

Amanda Hart, a sophomore from Jefferson City who is majoring in elementary education, works on the "guest experience team," greeting visitors to the college lodge and also taking responsibility for its cleaning. She said that work, plus a scholarship and her college savings, cover her tuition, while she hopes to be accepted into the summer work program this year to pay for her room and board. Although she is still a few years away from graduation, she said she expects to obtain her bachelor's degree without incurring any debt ? and that was a major reason she chose College of the Ozarks.

"I wanted to be able to go wherever there was a need (for teachers) and not worry about making enough to pay off student loans," she said.

Ruben De La Rosa, a senior from Pleasant Hill, expects to graduate next month with a degree in criminal justice with an emphasis in law enforcement. Having worked two campus jobs, as both a server and a student manager in the college's restaurant, Dobyns Dining Room, he said he plans to take next year off to work and save some additional cash before pursuing his goal of working in the CIA.

De La Rosa didn't choose College of the Ozarks because of its work program or debt-free policies, but he said he now considers himself lucky to be on the cusp of graduation without any debt weighing him down.

"Truth be told, it's a very big blessing to be here," he said. "As I'm getting closer to graduation, it's such a relief to know I'm only taking care of my own personal stuff (financially). We're like 150 steps ahead of the average college student."

At other schools in the region, loans are still very much a part of the average college student's life. A report released last fall by the Project on Student Debt noted that students in the class of 2011 who borrowed in college graduated with an average of $26,600 in loan debt, up from $25,250 the year before.

Source: http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/161345/college-of-the-ozarks-wants-debt-free-students/

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What outsiders can teach us about creativity

Liz Else, associate editor

Naked Family, 1997, by Sakiko Kono (Image: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters)

When it comes to art and science, there are many ways to be an outsider. There are the fully trained but disaffected, there are the licensed jesters who play at dissent, and then there are those expelled from the academy for bad behaviour.

But perhaps more interesting are two other outsider groups: the self-taught who generally work outside established channels or institutions but who may exhibit or write papers challenging the mainstream; and the wholly untrained, who work only for themselves and do not seek an audience.

Two London exhibitions are set to deal with these latter groups. Upcoming in a few weeks is The Alternative Guide to the Universe at the Hayward Gallery, which will feature a mix of everyone from fringe physicists to the inventors of new languages, and from artists who map cities of the future to others who design imaginary technologies. Its organisers describe it as ?bracingly eccentric? and as a kind of a parallel universe where ?ingenuity and inventiveness trump common sense and received wisdom?.

But right now and until the end of June is Souzou: Outsider art from Japan, at the Wellcome Collection - one of the most amazing, moving and shocking shows you could hope to see.

Souzou brings together 300 works by 46 artists, all of whom live in or attend social welfare institutions across Japan?s main island of Honshu - and all of whom have neurodevelopmental disorders (some involving very poor communication skills) or mental illnesses.

The show is organised into six overlapping sections: Language, Making, Representation, Relationships, Culture and Possibility. These labels underscore both the artists? marginalisation and their triumph over their ?disabilities?.

Aside from the sections, there is little in the way of hand-holding: Wellcome wants its visitors to experience the art with as little mediation as possible, and maybe ask themselves difficult questions. What is the nature of art - especially when it flows so copiously from people considered by society to be damaged? Is it really art at all - or just therapy? Does their ?art? tell us anything new about the complex cognitive processes of creativity?

There are no easy answers. The show is organised with the Het Dolhuys, the museum of psychiatry in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and the Social Welfare Organisation Aiseikai, based in Tokyo, Japan, so we are already in a world of multiple meanings.

For example, souzou, the show?s title, has no translation in English but has a dual meaning in Japanese: "creation" or "imagination", with both alluding to a force by which new ideas are born and take shape in the world.

The subtitle, however - "outsider art" - can connect us to the art brut ideas of 20th-century artist Jean Dubuffet, who was interested in art produced by people in the old asylums, or to other Western notions of naive, untutored art by ?normal? people, sometimes only discovered after their death.

In Japan, the kind of institutions where the Souzou artists live and work are all about training people to improve their chances of finding employment and a place in society. They owe much to artist Kazuo Yagi, who insisted on his students? right to self-expression, arguing that they should be allowed to produce non-functional objects of their choosing whenever they pleased, without being trained or directed to do so.

Eventually this policy of non-intervention in the creative process became a model for other social welfare institutions throughout Japan. Until recently, work created in the institutions was rarely displayed.

Surprisingly, then, some of the work at the Wellcome Collection could easily sit in mainstream exhibitions. Take Marie Suzuki?s very accomplished pen drawings, which deal, darkly, with sex, gender and procreation. Any of the shockingly titled pieces (Unwanted Release, Don?t Move Without Asking, It?s All Your Fault) could give Tracey Emin a run for her money.

What are we to make of this sophistication? How did she gain such mastery? We learn little of Suzuki beyond the stark caption, "Marie Suzuki. Born 1979. Lives and works in Nagano Prefecture."

Then there is the even younger artist Shoichi Koga, whose work Londoners may already have seen advertising the show. With just papier m?ch?-like techniques, he has created amazing, globally appealing fantasy people and animals.

And Norimitsu Kokubo?s wall-long citiscapes with their 360-degree panoramas are imaginary but very real places, with amazingly detailed technical and cultural references (maglev trains, for instance) that show how open the artist is to the world.

There is great vitality and diversity in Souzou, ranging from wonderful embroideries and textiles (such as Takahiro Shimoda?s Fried Chicken Pyjamas) to spiky sea urchins and a whole miniature army of action figures created out of wire twist ties by Shota Katsube.

There is also great tragedy and poignancy: it would take a heart of stone not to be moved by Sakiko Kono?s near-life-size fabric dolls, which represent friends and carers in the facility where she has lived for 55 years, and whose size is determined by how kind they were to her.

For those who want more a structured approach, Wellcome will be running an event with psychiatrist David O?Flynn in June to explore the idea of art as therapy and other themes. Or you could just go along and have a think about the nature of art and creativity - and ponder why you probably couldn?t produce anything half as good.

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Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/2ac5abd2/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A130C0A40Coutsider0Ejapan0Eart0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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Biofuels are "irrational strategy"

14 April 2013 Last updated at 20:29 ET By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, BBC News

The UK's "irrational" use of biofuels will cost motorists around ?460 million over the next 12 months, a think tank says.

A report by Chatham House says the growing reliance on sustainable liquid fuels will also increase food prices.

The author says that biodiesel made from vegetable oil was worse for the climate than fossil fuels.

Under EU law, biofuels are set to make up 5% of the UK's transport fuel from today.

Continue reading the main story

?Start Quote

It creates a financial incentive to buy refined palm oil, cook a chip in it to turn it into used cooking oil and then sell it at profit...?

End Quote Rob Bailey Chatham House

Since 2008, the UK has required fuel suppliers to add a growing proportion of sustainable materials into the petrol and diesel they supply. These biofuels are mainly ethanol distilled from corn and biodiesel made from rapeseed, used cooking oil and tallow.

Deep fried fuel

But research carried out for Chatham House says that reaching the 5% level means that UK motorists will have to pay an extra ?460m a year because of the higher cost of fuel at the pump and from filling up more often as biofuels have a lower energy content.

The report say that if the UK is to meet its obligations to EU energy targets the cost to motorists is likely to rise to ?1.3bn per annum by 2020.

"It is hard to find any good news," Rob Bailey, senior research fellow at Chatham House, told BBC News.

"Biofuels increase costs and they are a very expensive way to reduce carbon emissions," he said.

The EU biofuel mandates are also having hugely distorting effects in the marketplace. Because used cooking oil is regarded as one of the most sustainable types of biodiesel, the price for it has risen rapidly. Rob Bailey says that towards the end of 2012 it was more expensive than refined palm oil.

"It creates a financial incentive to buy refined palm oil, cook a chip in it to turn it into used cooking oil and then sell it at profit,"

"It is crazy but the incentives are there."

There are also worries that taking EU land out of production to grow rapeseed oil in particular is creating more climate problems than it solves. The more fuel of this type that is put into cars the bigger the deficit created in the edible oils market. This had lead to increased imports of palm oil from Indonesia, often produced on deforested land.

"Once you take into account these indirect effects, biofuels made from vegetable oils actually result worldwide in more emissions than you would get from using diesel in the first place," said Rob Bailey.

"Plus you are asking motorists to pay more for the fuel - it makes no sense, it is a completely irrational strategy."

Biofuel benefits

The European Biodiesel Board (EBB), which represents the industry across the EU, said it was aware of the problems caused by the mandate. But it believes that biofuels have many positives.

"Blaming biofuels for all the troubles in the world is a bit too exaggerated," said Isabelle Maurizi, project manager at the EBB.

"It has brought lots of benefits. It has improved the security of our diesel; it has reduced EU dependency on animal feed imports, thanks to the rapeseed we grow for biodiesel."

"If there was no biodiesel farmers would just make their land idle - no food, no feed!"

As the UK hits the 5% of liquid fuels mark, the government faces some difficult decisions on how to move forward on this issue as it faces tripling the costs for motorists by 2020.

Insiders suggest its preference would be to try and get agreement in Brussels on the impacts of indirect costs which might constrain what counts as biofuel. However getting agreement from countries with powerful agricultural sectors who benefit from the current arrangement will be difficult.

"When you have a lobby which includes the agricultural sector and the oil sector it is very hard for Governments to make a U-turn," said Rob Bailey.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22127123#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Good Question: 'Reply All': College Athlete Insurance, Signs ...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ? Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware is recovering after breaking his leg during the NCAA tournament.

Miriam Ring from Burnsville, Minn., wondered: Who pays college athletes? medical bills?

At Louisville, they have a secondary insurance policy on varsity athletes, but just like most college kids, athletes are generally on their parents insurance.

Being an athlete is technically not a job, so it?s not covered by workers compensation laws.

And the NCAA only requires that athletes have proof of insurance ? not that the school provide it.

If you have a claim that?s more than $90,000, the athlete qualifies for the NCAA?s catastrophic coverage, which has some continuing coverage. But in general, when you?re out of school and out of athletics, you?re out of luck.

Jesse Koester from Vadnais Heights was looking around and wondered: Why are all the street signs green?

Jesse, there was a time that they were not all green. Different cities would have different local colors until the 1980s, when the federal government created National Standards for Traffic Control Devices.

All street signs had to be green with reflectable white lettering. Green was the contrast to the red stop sign: green meaning proceed.

Amy Hahn from Gaylord wanted to know: Why do they call it a Spelling Bee?

We?ve used it since at least 1875, but according to spellingbee.com, ?bee? refers to a social gathering.

The earliest known example in print is a spinning bee in 1769.

It?s not likely related to the buzzing bumblebee, linguists think. It may have come from the Middle English word bene, which means ?a prayer? or ?a favor.?

Because people would come together to knit or spin wool as a favor for friends, bee may have been a shortened for of bene.

Source: http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/04/12/good-question-reply-all-college-athlete-insurance-signs-spelling-bees/

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The After Math: beer, lasers and $5K 4K TVs

Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week's tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages

In a bid to neatly wrap up this week's events, we gaze at some high-priced 4K gear at NAB 2013, figure out whether we can physically... pocket either of Samsung's Galaxy Mega variants and think about lasers: sometimes beautiful, sometimes deadly and sometimes fighting the future war against drones. We've got the numbers -- and a few dollar signs -- right after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Science, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/14/the-after-math-samsungs-mega-phone-lasers-4k-tv/

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Bacteria completes epic Unity project, crams 15 consoles in one

When it comes to modding consoles there are two names that generally stand above the rest: Mr. Benjamin J. Heckendorn and the man known as Bacteria. The latter has done his fair share of portable machines, but his latest completed project takes console hacking to lofty new heights. Unity crams a stunning 15 different consoles (including classics like the SNES and not-so-classics like the TurboGrafx 16) into a single, admittedly bulky box. The one of a kind entertainment center is the culmination of three years and $700 invested in bringing this dream to life. All of the hardware inside is either from the original consoles (no emulation of clone systems here!) or custom built -- such as the 16-position switch. And, it should go without saying, that it took a whole lot to get these gaming machines to share a single power supply, video cable and control pad. Now that the epic project is finally complete Bacteria has provided a rather lengthy walk though of all the various features and the work that went into it, which you can check out after the break.

Filed under: Gaming

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Source: Made-by-Bacteria 1, 2

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/12/bacteria-completes-epic-unity-project-crams-15-consoles-in-one/

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Screenwriters Say 'Winter Soldier' Sets Stage for 'Avengers 2 ...

Iron Man 3 comes out in a couple of weeks, Thor: The Dark World is nearing the completion of production, and shooting on Captain America: The Winter Soldier has gotten underway. Yup, Marvel Phase 2 is shaping up nicely, but it?s that last title that has the most mystery to it, and coincidentally it is also the one of the three with the most direct connection to The Avengers 2.

Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely penned The Winter Soldier, and they also did some work on The Dark World, so they are as close to an authority on Phase 2 you can get after say Kevin Feige or Joss Whedon. While doing a round of press for a non-Marvel film that they wrote, Michael Bay?s Pain & Gain, Markus and McFeely talked with /Film about their process working on Marvel films, the difference between the two Captain America movies, and what their work on Winter Soldier might say about The Avengers 2.

I saw you guys speak soon after Captain America: The First Avenger came out and you were already working on Captain America 2. Since then, how much has the script changed? Was it always the Winter Soldier, did it have Black Widow, Nick Fury and everyone else?

Stephen McFeely: When you saw us speak, we probably were just in the throwing stuff against a wall phase. So that would?ve been like July or June of 2011. For those, say, next three or four months, it was a process of us going back and forth with Marvel and thinking what about ?this, and what about this??. And eventually that sort of steered down into an outline and then we started writing that outline in late 2011. So from the summer, it changed plenty, but from the outline in late that year, it?s been the same

Christopher Markus: ?It?s been pretty drilled down.

So if you were writing that movie, how did you have time to work on Thor: The Dark World as well?

Markus:?Between Cap drafts, Kevin gave us a call. We were in a great place on Cap because we had a lot of lead time on Cap 2 so there was a certain amount of leisurely pacing. We had the time.

McFeely:?And when you turn in drafts you don?t automatically get notes the next day. Sometimes it takes a while. So Kevin said ?You?re gonna have a month or whatever? and so we slid over to Thor. To be honest, we don?t know who?s gonna get credit on that movie. There are a lot of people who contributed to it so it may not be us, we don?t know.

Thor and Cap are such different characters, how do you go about balancing writing for each of them?

McFeely:?We?re inheriting that story so we didn?t come up with the story for Thor 2. We just came in and said ?How can we tell this better and differently?? So your question doesn?t really come up to us. We say ?Here?s the problem Thor is dealing with. These are the people and this is the plot. How do we balance character and plot efficiently here?? And we do the same thing with Cap, but in that case we?re just on it for much longer.

Markus:?Cap is much more about realism. They?re tonally quite different genres, almost. Things get a lot more ?way out? in Thor, so the chance of tonal overlap is pretty slim.

Just looking at Cap?s release date, plus knowing it?s set in the same time, same city, and with the leader of The Avengers, it seems likely it?ll do a lot of legwork for The Avengers 2. You obviously can?t talk specifics, but how do you work with Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon to make sure your film, as well as Thor 2, all fits in for Avengers?

McFeely:?Kevin is the dungeon master, so if there?s something we really need to know, he?ll tell us, but he doesn?t steer us. With rare exceptions does he say ?We can?t do that because of this next movie.? More often than not he?ll say ?Let?s get this movie right and whatever falls out after that,we?ll address in the next movie. We?ll make sure that we don?t steer that movie in the wrong direction.?

Markus:?And more often than not, when you?re thinking of the movies as a whole, it?s ?What do you want the state of the world to be when Avengers 2 kicks off?? It?s never like, Cap has to put down a briefcase so the Hulk can pick it up. It?s never that specific. It?s sort of like, ?Where do you want loyalties to lie when that movie opens??

How much bigger is The Winter Soldier from The First Avenger?

McFeely:?It?ll feel like a different genre, we?ll can say that. We?re very proud of the first one because it was our love letter, and Joe Johnson?s love letter, to Indiana Jones, so it had that Forties vibe to it. This is much more of a modern conspiracy political thriller. So it?s a fast ride. The action will fell commensurate. You?ll see Cap fight in a way that you have never seen before, or at least not for him. The DNA is the same, but the animal is different.

Finally, do you want to continue doing Marvel movies or would you like to pepper in different genres like with Pain & Gain?

Markus:??We always want to switch it up, but I?m VERY comfortable at Marvel (laughs). They?re very nice people and I love playing with their toys.

McFeely:?Chris is right. A lot of people walk in and say ?If you get to a position where you can pick things, you do one for us and one for them.? We like doing big and small, and in terms of big, I don?t know where else I?d rather do big movies than Marvel. I know everybody. When they say let?s write this script, I know they?re going to make the movie. There are expectation. I like all of it. We could go do other things, and maybe we will, but there?s no guarantee that they?ll be as good or as culturally relevant. And that?s fun. It?s really fun for my mom to say my son wrote that.

Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, open November 8, 2013 and April 14, 2014 respectively.

Source: http://nerdbastards.com/2013/04/12/screenwriters-say-winter-soldier-sets-stage-for-avengers-2/

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How to Evolve on Gays in Public (Atlantic Politics Channel)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/297468703?client_source=feed&format=rss

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10 Startups That Turn Complexity Into Simplicity

Here’s the thing about simplicity. It’s all relative. A developer’s idea of simplicity is different from a finance chief or a customer service agent. I run across a variety of startups in my daily work at TechCrunch. But few have that innate sense of elegance or the capability to abstract complexity to such an extent that anything else seems antiquated in comparison. Here are 10 that turn traditional complex processes into simple ways to get work done. This is by no means a comprehensive list nor are these services necessarily market leaders. Instead it’s a snapshot of companies that embody what mak?es a great app or service and why they are so important as it becomes ever more necessary to get more done in less and less time. CloudMunch I thought a lot about simplicity at Cloud Connect this past week after a lunchtime chat with Pradeep Prabhu, CEO and Founder at CloudMunch. I had been skeptical of the CloudMunch service. It took me some time to understand how the company has automated the manual steps that developers have to take to get their apps ready to launch. CloudMunch offers what it calls a “GitHub to Cloud,” one-click functionality. Collaborating on code makes GitHub awesome but it’s a monstrous task when it comes to sharing code across multiple clouds. The company does this by offering a platform that allows for continuous delivery all in one SaaS app. It fixes a problem that nags at development teams. Code has to be continually tested, but in this new, distributed world, it’s a bit like herding cats. CloudMunch pulls it all together so developer teams can stay on track, do their test/development and deploy. There is a complexity in managing code,?Prabhu said in an interview last week. What works on one cloud may not work on another. The code also needs to work on multiple devices. CloudMunch simplifies the process through its continuous delivery platform. Code gets delivered, deployed and then managed through real-time analytics and monitoring. GitHub GitHub has simply changed the way developers work. Open-source projects now turn to GitHub for posting code. On GitHub you can copy someone’s code and fork it. To share the code, a developer can submit a pull request, asking if the code can be added to the original creator’s project. That user can then easily merge the changes. Through this process of forks, pull requests

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CoqK8ut545o/

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Can Rebel Wilson Be Movie Awards Host And Winner?

On Sunday, 'Pitch Perfect' star faces Ezra Miller, Quvenzhané Wallis and more noobs for Breakthrough Performance prize.
By Kevin P. Sullivan

Ezra Miller and Rebel Wilson
Photo: MTV / Getty Images

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1705125/rebel-wilson-movie-awards-host-winner.jhtml

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iPhone 5 now available for pre-order with T-Mobile

Hey, T-Mobile subscribers! Eager to get your mitts on the iPhone 5? Sure, the phone isn?t going to be available until April 12, the mobile carrier has begun taking pre-orders on the oh-so-popular smartphone.

It?s important to bear in mind that T-Mobile, a bit of an underdog?among?the major U.S. carriers, recently did away with mobile contracts altogether, in an attempt to draw in more customers, eager to take advantage of the coverage of a major carrier, with the flexibility to up and leave at any time.

Why is this important? Because if you really want the iPhone, you?re going to have to shell out between $580 and $780, the full price of the phones. But don?t worry, you won?t have to do it all at once. If you?re looking for a 16GB unit, you?ll only have to put down $100, and then pay $20/month for the next two years, until you pay off the phone. For the 32GB model, a down payment of $200 is required, and the 64GB phone will set you back $300 initially, both also requiring the same $20/month payment. Black and white options are available for all three variations.

And then, of course, you?ll have your monthly phone plan to pay.

We?re eager to see how well-received this will become. On the one hand, Apple fans are an extremely loyal group of people, and the idea of not being tied down by a contract is pretty appealing. On the other hand, the contracts aren?t so bad, particularly when it means paying a fraction of the cost for a phone.

Would you pay full price for an iPhone, just to escape the clutches of a contract?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaltrends/~3/T5_30GJt79A/

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SA Tour - Tokyo Dome Day 2 Tabs - Tablatures, Chords and Sheet ...

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Source: http://www.yourforumisgluedtoasiteonfire.net/topic/5421-sa-tour-tokyo-dome-day-2-tabs/

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CA-NEWS Summary

Five die in Christian-Muslim clashes in Egypt

EL KHUSUS, Egypt (Reuters) - Five Egyptians were killed and eight wounded in clashes between Christians and Muslims in a town near Cairo, security sources said on Saturday, in some of the worst sectarian violence in Egypt for months. Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of former president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hardline Islamists repressed under his rule.

Powers and Iran fail to end nuclear deadlock in Almaty

ALMATY (Reuters) - World powers and Iran failed again to end the deadlock in a decade-old dispute over Tehran's nuclear program in talks that ended in Kazakhstan on Saturday, prolonging a standoff that could yet spiral into a new Middle East war. No new talks were scheduled but big power negotiators, who earlier this year were insisting that time was running out, were at pains to say the diplomatic process would continue.

Embassies staying put in North Korea despite tension

SEOUL (Reuters) - Staff at embassies in North Korea appeared to be remaining in place on Saturday despite an appeal by authorities in Pyongyang for diplomats to consider leaving because of heightened tension after weeks of bellicose exchanges. North Korean authorities told diplomatic missions they could not guarantee their safety from next Wednesday - after declaring that conflict was inevitable amid joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises due to last until the end of the month.

Two new bird flu cases in China amid poultry crackdown

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Two more people have contracted bird flu in Shanghai, China's health ministry said on Saturday, as authorities closed live poultry markets and culled birds to combat a new virus strain that has killed six people. State-run Xinhua news agency said authorities planned to slaughter birds at two live poultry markets in Shanghai and another in Hangzhou after new samples of the H7N9 virus were detected in birds at the three sites.

Air strike kills 15 in Aleppo, Assad warns of regional turmoil

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Syrian government air strike killed 15 people on Saturday, including nine children, in a district of the northern city of Aleppo where Kurdish fighters have been battling forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, a violence monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a warplane had bombarded the western edges of the Sheikh Maqsoud district of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, where Assad's forces have been battling rebels for nine months.

Portugal ruling poses difficulties for bailout goals: government

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal's government said on Saturday the constitutional court's rejection of key austerity measures from this year's budget creates "serious difficulties" in meeting international commitments under a bailout. Following an extraordinary cabinet meeting after the court ruling late on Friday, State Secretary for Cabinet Affairs Luis Marques Guedes told reporters the decision "jeopardizes the country's hard-earned credibility" gained with its European partners and lenders.

Egyptian police fire tear gas to disperse Cairo protest

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police fired tear gas to prevent opponents of President Mohamed Mursi storming a court and the prosecutor-general's office in central Cairo on Saturday, witnesses said. Eight people were injured in Cairo during another protest in al-Fayoum south of the capital, the state news agency MENA said.

Kosovo too high a price to pay for EU, Serbian church says

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's Orthodox Church warned on Saturday against a 'betrayal' of Kosovo, piling pressure on the ruling coalition as it weighs whether to cede the country's last foothold in its former province in exchange for talks on joining the European Union. The appeal by the patriarch comes before a Tuesday deadline for the government to tell the EU whether it accepts a plan to tackle Kosovo's ethnic partition between its Albanian majority and a small northern pocket populated by Serbs.

New premier pledges to shield Lebanon from Syria dangers

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese politician Tammam Salam was named prime minister on Saturday after he won a sweeping parliamentary endorsement, pledging to bridge the country's deep divisions and shield it from the dangers of neighboring Syria's civil war. Salam was designated after the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Mikati, whose two years in office were dominated by efforts to contain sectarian tensions, violence and economic fallout from the Syrian conflict.

South Africa's Mandela leaves hospital after pneumonia

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African president Nelson Mandela left hospital on Saturday after more than a week of treatment of pneumonia that raised global concern about the health of the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader. "(He) has been discharged from hospital today ... following a sustained and gradual improvement in his general condition," the South African presidency said in a statement.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-news-summary-005824843.html

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Video: An Under-the-Radar Portfolio Pick: Pro

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/51434640/

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Jeremy Irons on Gay Marriage: What About Incest?!?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/jeremy-irons-on-gay-marriage-what-about-incest/

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