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Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
InFullBloomUS: RT @pizzutillo: "@OnTechnicalDebt: http://t.co/vSchzXIl The Scourge of HRM Software-Technical Debt @infullbloomUS" #techdebt #appdev #sap
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"@OnTechnicalDebt: bit.ly/uGdpaY The Scourge of HRM Software-Technical Debt @infullbloomUS" #techdebt #appdev #sap 
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Source: http://twitter.com/InFullBloomUS/statuses/149983676841725952
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APNewsBreak: 10,000 US troops leave Afghanistan
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's order to withdraw 10,000 American troops from Afghanistan this year has been accomplished, a little more than a week before the year-end deadline, military officials said Thursday.
The drawdown is the first step in the plan to wind down the war, transition security to Afghan forces and end the combat role for international troops by the end of 2014.
It also gives the Obama administration a second war-related accomplishment to tout this month - coming just a week after U.S. officials marked the end of the war in Iraq and the last convoy of American soldiers rumbled out of that country into Kuwait.
Officials say there are now 91,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan - down from the peak of 101,000 in June.
In December 2009 Obama announced he was sending an additional 33,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a bid to beat back the escalating Taliban insurgency and change the course of the war. Six months ago, declaring that the "tide of war is receding," Obama said he would withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of this year, and another 23,000 by the end of next summer.
The decision was met with initial opposition from military leaders who thought the withdrawal was too much, too soon, particularly since it would pull troops out before the end of next year's fighting season, which can last well into October and even November.
Last week, however, during a trip to Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta repeatedly told troops that the U.S. had reached a turning point in the war. And at one point he went so far as to say, "I really think that for all the sacrifices that you're doing, the reality is that it is paying off and that we're moving in the right direction. ... We're winning this very tough conflict here in Afghanistan."
Contrasting that assessment is the ongoing violence in Afghanistan's east, along the Pakistan border, and the high-profile attacks and assassinations that continue to wreak havoc in and around Kabul. The violence is compounded by worries about government corruption, the fragile economy, and fears that Afghan forces won't be ready to take over security of the country as American and NATO troops leave.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/22/2557713/10000-american-troops-pulled-out.html
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Oracle's miss sparks Wall St fears of spending cuts (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? Oracle Corp shares fell 14 percent on Wednesday, a day after its results fell short of expectations, dragging down the tech sector as investors feared the rare miss was a sign corporate America may be pulling back on tech spending.
Troubles at the No. 3 software maker follow profit warnings from big tech names including Hewlett-Packard Co, Intel Corp and Texas Instruments Inc. The warnings were not limited to Silicon Valley, with U.S. industrial conglomerate Emerson Electric Co reporting a drop in orders for equipment used in big data centers.
"With all the fear about Europe, and the fact that Oracle had beaten for the previous four quarters ... makes you take a step back," said Daniel Morgan, a portfolio manager at Synovus Securities in Atlanta. "Is this a preliminary example of what we could expect in January from Microsoft and other players? It raises an eyebrow that things may not be as hunky dory as we've been led to believe in terms of IT spending."
Given that Oracle's results were for a quarter that ended in November, they could signal trouble at peers whose quarters end in December, such as SAP AG and Microsoft Corp, investors reasoned.
"The majority of deals in the fourth quarter are traditionally closed in the last two weeks of the quarter, so the delay of Oracle's deals is a negative cross read for SAP," Silvia Quandt analyst Michael Busse said.
A slowing in tech spending would be a troubling sign for the U.S. economy, which has had few bright spots in recent years.
"Since the technical end of the recession (in June 2009) we've been seeing double-digit growth in investment in technology. If Oracle is the canary in the coalmine, that would be something to worry about," said Michael Goodman, director of economic and public policy research at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
But the decline could also reflect corporate software users' reluctance to commit to major new investments at a time of uncertainty about the effects of Europe's debt crisis.
"There's a lot of concern about what the immediate future holds, so this may just be customers putting off investments they want to make until they feel like they have a better handle on what the future looks like," Goodman said.
MIXED SIGNALS
U.S. companies have been sending mixed signals about their spending plans for 2012. A survey released last week by the Business Roundtable found that 16 percent of CEOs of large U.S. companies planned to cut their capital spending over the next six months, up from 13 percent who planned to cut in the third quarter.
But other data released on Wednesday by the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association showed U.S. businesses signed up for $6.2 billion in loans, leases and lines of credit to fund capital expenditures in November, a 38 percent increase from the month a year ago.
Oracle's stock fell $4.01 to $25.15, the lowest point since August, making it the sixth-biggest decliner on the Nasdaq early Wednesday afternoon.
Other big decliners in the sector including VMWare, down 11.3 percent to $75.65 in the steepest drop on the New York Stock Exchange; NetSuite, down 8.7 percent to $41.06; and SAP , whose U.S. listed-shares were down 7.6 percent at $51.41. The Standard & Poor's software and services industry group index fell 4 percent.
Emerson shares fell 6.3 percent to $46.54.
Emerson said that orders for network power equipment - including uninterruptible power supplies and cooling systems for data centers - fell by 5 to 10 percent in the three months ended November 30, citing factors including an uncertain economic outlook.
"Overall, we have seen in the last 60 days ... a significant weakness in this whole electronics space," said Emerson Chief Executive David Farr. "I don't see that changing for the time being."
NEW BUSINESS SLOWING DOWN
"We have seen a dramatic deceleration in new business for Salesforce.com and slowing growth from Red Hat recently," J.P. Morgan Securities wrote in a note. "This may be just the beginning of a long list of IT companies that struggle over the next quarter or more."
BofA Merrill Lynch, however, said Oracle was well positioned for the longer term.
"The acquisition of Sun places Oracle as a datacenter player, providing a complete integrated stack of hardware and software," the brokerage wrote in a research note.
"We expect Oracle to gain incremental revenue and cost synergies from the acquisition, resulting in higher EPS potential longer term."
Investors are watching Oracle's hardware division, which it added in 2010 with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Second-quarter hardware systems product revenue fell to $953 million, missing the $1.06 billion expected by analysts polled by StreetAccount.
(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore, Maria Sheahan, Christoph Steitz and Marilyn Gerlach in Frankfurt and Nicola Leske and Nick Zieminski in New York, writing by Scott Malone)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/software/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111221/bs_nm/us_oracle
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Friday, December 23, 2011
EU airline carbon charge 'valid'
21 December 2011
Last updated at 06:00 ET
EU plans to levy an emissions tax on airlines are valid, according to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The decision means all airlines flying to and from the 27 states of the European Union will face a tax on emissions from 1 January.
US, Canadian and other carriers argue the charges violate climate change and aviation pacts.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a warning of "appropriate action" should the charges go ahead.
American carriers argue that the taxes contravene the Open Skies Agreement, which allows airlines to fly between any EU country and any point in the US.
No delayAirlines will now be subject to the Emissions Trading System (ETS), used to charge industries such as oil refineries, power stations and steel works for CO2 emissions, as part of Europe's efforts against climate change.
"Application of the emissions trading scheme to aviation infringes neither the principles of customary international law at issue nor the Open Skies Agreement" across the Atlantic, the court decided.
"It is only if the operators of such aircraft choose to operate a commercial air route arriving at or departing from an airport situated in the EU that they are subject to the emissions trading scheme," it added.
As a result of this choice, the EU system "infringes neither the principle of territoriality nor the sovereignty of third states, since the scheme is applicable to the operators only when their aircraft are physically in the territory of one of the member states of the EU".
The EU has made it clear that it will not bow to US pressure following Wednesday's decision.
"We will neither abandon nor delay (the Emissions Trading System). The measure will fully enter force on January 1, 2012," said the spokesman for EU climate change commissioner, Connie Hedegaard.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-16282692
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Google+ interest on the wane, say search statistics
By Rosa Golijan
When Google put out its annual zeitgeist list, it bragged that "Google+" was the No. 2 fastest-growing search term of the year.?But that label may be a bit deceiving.
As?TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld points out,?it's no surprise that?"Google+" was such a popular search term in 2011. It didn't even exist prior to this year and people wanted to know what it's about. "On a percentage basis the growth in the number of searches for the term was astronomical," explains Schonfeld.
But that's not where the story ends, folks.?You see, apparently searches for "Google+" aren't as common as they used to be at this point.
By using the Google Insights for Search tool?? a feature which allows people to track search trends and patterns?? it is possible to see (in the chart above) that after an initial spike around the social network's launch and small bumps around other announcements, searches for the term "Google+" started dropping.
When you look at the embedded chart to the right, the picture becomes far more clear: Rival social networks such as Facebook and Twitter command far more ongoing interest in Google's own search engine, and that's in the U.S. alone, where Google+ has had more reach.
And according to Schonfeld, this is a problem:
Searches are an indication of pure intent. People search for what they intend to do. [...] If fewer and fewer people are searching for ?Google+?, it makes you wonder if anyone is actually using it. Remember, just because Google+ has tens of millions of registered users, that doesn?t mean those people ever came back after Google made them click to register.?
Related stories:
Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.
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Self-affirmation may break down resistance to medical screening
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 21-Dec-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science
People resist medical screening, or don't call back for the results, because they don't want to know they're sick or at risk for a disease. But many illnesses, such as HIV/AIDS and cancer, have a far a better prognosis if they're caught early. How can health care providers break down that resistance?
Have people think about what they value most, finds a new study by University of Florida psychologists Jennifer L. Howell and James A. Shepperd. "If you can get people to refocus their attention from a threat to their overall sense of wellbeing, they are less likely to avoid threatening information," says Howell. Do that, and people are more likely to face a medical screening even if it means undertaking onerous treatment and even if the disease is uncontrollable. The findings will appear in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.
The researchers undertook three studies, each with about 100 students of both sexes. In all three studies, they asked the participants to think of a trait they valued; they chose traits such as honesty, compassion, and friendliness. Participants then wrote either about how they demonstrated the trait (expressing self-affirmation) or a friend (not affirming themselves) demonstrated the trait.
Next participants watched a video about a (fictional) disorder called thioamine acetlyase (TAA) deficiency that ostensibly impairs the body's ability to process nutrients and can lead to severe medical complications. They then completed an online risk calculator for the disease and decided either to receive their risk feedback or not.
In the first study, fewer participants who wrote self-affirming essays avoided learning their risk than did participants who wrote non-affirming essays. In studies 2 and 3 researchers investigated the effects of affirmation on two conditions known to increase avoidance of risk feedback. In the second study, participants learned that testing at high risk for TAA deficiency would either require an easy or onerous follow-up examination process. Participants who were not affirmed avoided learning their risk more when they thought it might necessitate an onerous, as compared to an easy, follow up. However, affirmed participants showed little avoidance regardless of the difficulty of follow up. In the third study, participants learned either that TAA could be managed with a pill; or that there was no effective treatment. Again, the non-affirmed group avoided learning their risk almost twice as often when hearing they had no control over the illness. By contrast, affirmed participants were unlikely to avoid the news, regardless of the possibility of treatment.
The researchers acknowledge it's sometimes rational to choose not to know about an incurable disease you might (or might not) get. "But when it is important to prepare for negative eventsgetting your affairs in order, finding the coping resources you'll need," Howell suggests, going through with that screening might wise.
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Jennifer L. Howell at Jenny.Howell@ufl.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Reducing Information Avoidance Through Affirmation" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 21-Dec-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science
People resist medical screening, or don't call back for the results, because they don't want to know they're sick or at risk for a disease. But many illnesses, such as HIV/AIDS and cancer, have a far a better prognosis if they're caught early. How can health care providers break down that resistance?
Have people think about what they value most, finds a new study by University of Florida psychologists Jennifer L. Howell and James A. Shepperd. "If you can get people to refocus their attention from a threat to their overall sense of wellbeing, they are less likely to avoid threatening information," says Howell. Do that, and people are more likely to face a medical screening even if it means undertaking onerous treatment and even if the disease is uncontrollable. The findings will appear in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.
The researchers undertook three studies, each with about 100 students of both sexes. In all three studies, they asked the participants to think of a trait they valued; they chose traits such as honesty, compassion, and friendliness. Participants then wrote either about how they demonstrated the trait (expressing self-affirmation) or a friend (not affirming themselves) demonstrated the trait.
Next participants watched a video about a (fictional) disorder called thioamine acetlyase (TAA) deficiency that ostensibly impairs the body's ability to process nutrients and can lead to severe medical complications. They then completed an online risk calculator for the disease and decided either to receive their risk feedback or not.
In the first study, fewer participants who wrote self-affirming essays avoided learning their risk than did participants who wrote non-affirming essays. In studies 2 and 3 researchers investigated the effects of affirmation on two conditions known to increase avoidance of risk feedback. In the second study, participants learned that testing at high risk for TAA deficiency would either require an easy or onerous follow-up examination process. Participants who were not affirmed avoided learning their risk more when they thought it might necessitate an onerous, as compared to an easy, follow up. However, affirmed participants showed little avoidance regardless of the difficulty of follow up. In the third study, participants learned either that TAA could be managed with a pill; or that there was no effective treatment. Again, the non-affirmed group avoided learning their risk almost twice as often when hearing they had no control over the illness. By contrast, affirmed participants were unlikely to avoid the news, regardless of the possibility of treatment.
The researchers acknowledge it's sometimes rational to choose not to know about an incurable disease you might (or might not) get. "But when it is important to prepare for negative eventsgetting your affairs in order, finding the coping resources you'll need," Howell suggests, going through with that screening might wise.
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Jennifer L. Howell at Jenny.Howell@ufl.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Reducing Information Avoidance Through Affirmation" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/afps-smb122111.php
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