Velvet revolver

Me not make more good music, no?

Reuters - China tells Paulson strategic talks building trust

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China tells Paulson strategic talks building trust

Wednesday, Apr 02, 2008 4:43AM UTC

By Glenn Somerville

BEIJING (Reuters) - China reaffirmed its commitment on Wednesday to regular high-level talks with the United States that visiting Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson hopes will help to pry open Chinese markets and speed the yuan's rise.

Paulson began two days of talks in the Chinese capital by meeting newly promoted Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, who is taking charge of the U.S.-China "Strategic Economic Dialogue" (SED) that the Treasury chief was instrumental in launching in 2006.

Wang told Paulson that the new Chinese government, formally installed last month by the annual session of parliament, highly valued constructive and cooperative ties with the United States.

China attached particular importance to the twice-yearly SED, which addresses a spectrum of long-range issues ranging from energy saving to financial liberalization, said Wang, a former mayor of Beijing.

"We have reached a lot of common understandings, increased our mutual strategic trust and also made important contributions to promoting the steady growth of China-U.S. business relations and China-U.S. relations as a whole," Wang said of the three SED sessions that have taken place so far.

Paulson, speaking before reporters were ushered out of the room, said he looked forward to working with Wang and to preparing the next two rounds of the SED.

The next meeting is scheduled for June in Washington.

While economic issues are the focus of Paulson's visit, U.S. officials have said the touchy issue of Tibet will also come up.

In Washington on Tuesday, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, left open the possibility that heads of state should boycott the opening ceremony of August's Olympic Games in Beijing because of the way China has dealt with recent deadly rioting in Tibet.

YUAN ON THE RISE

Paulson is due to meet President Hu Jintao later on Wednesday, but U.S. officials have offered no guidance about specific issues he will raise with the Chinese leader, who has said security for the Olympics is a top priority.

Paulson was a China veteran long before taking over the helm of the Treasury in mid-2006, making dozens of trips when he was chief executive of Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, and enjoys exceptional access to China's leaders.

The Treasury chief has emphasized the need to use diplomacy to convince China that it is in its own interest to open its markets wider and let the yuan rise more swiftly.

The Chinese central bank has in fact let the yuan climb much more quickly in recent months.

The currency gained 4 percent against the dollar in the first quarter, compared with 6.86 percent in all of 2007, as China used a stronger exchange rate as one of the tools to fight inflation, which is at a near 12-year high of 8.7 percent.

However, Tao Wang, head of Greater China economics with Bank of America in Beijing, said she did not expect this pace to last.

"Once the current inflation pressure abates and weak export numbers become obvious, the yuan/dollar adjustment is expected to slow," she said in a report released on Wednesday.

Nor was any major change to China's exchange rate policy likely to be announced either during Paulson's visit to China or at next week's meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and the Group of Seven industrial nations.

"Given the uncertainties regarding the dollar and U.S. financial market, the exchange rate-related discussions in these meetings will likely be much more centered on dollar movements than yuan appreciation," Wang wrote.

(Reporting by Glenn Somerville; Writing by Alan Wheatley; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree)

Reuters - Velvet Revolver splits with rocker Scott Weiland

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Velvet Revolver splits with rocker Scott Weiland

Tuesday, Apr 01, 2008 10:59PM UTC

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Four founding members of the rock
band Velvet Revolver said on Tuesday they were splitting with
the group's troubled singer, Scott Weiland, citing his
"increasingly erratic" behavior.

The announcement came in a terse statement from the group's
management company as Weiland, 40, and his recently reunited
original band, Stone Temple Pilots, were set next week to
announce plans for a highly anticipated summer tour.

The Pilots, also known by their acronym, STP, already have
confirmed a handful of upcoming dates, beginning with the Rock
on the Range festival in Columbus, Ohio, on May 17-18.

For Weiland, whose career has long been overshadowed by
heroin addiction, Rock on the Range will mark his first show
with STP since the band played 13 concerts to promote its last
album of new material, 2001's "Shangri-La Dee Da."

Following the breakup of STP, Weiland was welcomed as lead
singer for Velvet Revolver, the newly formed grunge rock band
founded by three former members of Guns N' Roses -- guitarist
Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum -- along
with second guitarist Dave Kushner.

Velvet Revolver was confronted from the start with
Weiland's drug and legal problems as it juggled performance
schedules, recording sessions and promotional work to
accommodate his court dates and rehab.

Last month, Weiland pleaded innocent to a charge of driving
under the influence of drugs stemming from his arrest on a Los
Angeles freeway ramp in November. He is free on $40,000 bail
and is due back in court for a pretrial hearing on Friday.

A public feud between Weiland and Velvet Revolver's drummer
already had cast doubt on the band's future when the statement
on behalf of Sorum, Slash, McKagan and Kushner was issued under
the headline "Velvet Revolver to Part Ways with Singer."

"This band is all about its fans and its music, and Scott
Weiland isn't 100% committed to either," Slash was quoted as
saying. "Among other things, his increasingly erratic on-stage
behavior and personal problems have forced us to move on."

There was no immediate comment from Weiland, Stone Temple
Pilots or their representatives.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb)

Reuters - State centers tap into personal data: report

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State centers tap into personal data: report

Wednesday, Apr 02, 2008 4:33AM UTC

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Intelligence centers run by U.S. states have access to personal information about millions of Americans, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Citing a document obtained by the newspaper, the report said resources used by dozens of the centers in the northeastern United States rely far more on access to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed.

A survey conducted last year shows the centers have subscriptions to private information-broker services that maintain records about Americans' locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and other information, the newspaper said, citing officials familiar with the material.

Pennsylvania buys credit reports while analysts in Rhode Island have access to car-rental databases. Authorities in Maryland use a data broker called Entersect, which claims it maintains some 12 billion records about 98 percent of Americans, the Post reported.

The newspaper said dozens of the intelligence organizations known as "fusion centers" were created after the September 11, 2001 attacks to identify potential threats and improve information sharing among state and federal authorities.

(Reporting by Joanne Allen; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Clinton is Rocky. H. A. !

Clinton is Rocky? Rocky did not win against Creed did he? And he is a work of fictio

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Reuters - Microsoft promises full Web browser for mobile

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Microsoft promises full Web browser for mobile

Tuesday, Apr 01, 2008 7:31PM UTC

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it would offer full Web browsing for cell phones this year, following the footsteps of Apple Inc's iPhone, which has won praise for the way it displays Web sites as they would appear on a computer.

Microsoft said at CTIA, the annual U.S. mobile show, that it will make Internet Explorer Mobile available to phone makers in the third quarter with the first phones to go on sale by year end.

Microsoft has been gaining ground with its operating system for smartphones with computer-like features such as e-mail, but it faces stiff competition from the likes of Apple, Blackberry maker Research In Motion and Palm Inc.

Before the iPhone was launched last June with a combined phone, browser and music player, cell phones mostly showed stripped-down versions of Internet sites as they were easier to view on tiny screens. Full graphic-heavy Web sites often take a long time to download and are hard to read.

Now other developers are following suit.

Microsoft also announced a new version of its mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.1, that would make it easier for users to navigate the feature menus in their phones.

The company has said it expects license sales of its mobile operating system to outpace smartphone market growth in the next few years. It expects the market to quadruple in size in 3 to 4 years to around 400 million handsets.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Brian Moss)

Reuters - Nokia unveils N810 mobile Internet tablet for WiMax

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Nokia unveils N810 mobile Internet tablet for WiMax

Tuesday, Apr 01, 2008 6:15PM UTC

By Sinead Carew

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Nokia's N810 mobile Internet tablet will be one of the first devices designed for a new high-speed wireless network that Sprint Nextel Corp will launch commercially in April.

Nokia on Tuesday unveiled a version of the handheld device, which has a 4.13-inch touch screen, for WiMax -- the emerging wireless technology that Sprint is betting on for its next generation of high-speed services.

WiMax promises to blanket cities with mobile Web links that are five times faster than today's speeds. Like the first N810, which went on sale in the fall, the new version will also work on Wi-Fi, a short-range wireless technology used in hotspots such in coffee shops.

"The difference with WiMax is that you can move out of that hotspot," Mark Louison, head of Nokia's North American business, said in an interview ahead of the CTIA annual U.S. wireless show in Las Vegas.

Sprint, which has been seeking outside funding to expand WiMax beyond an initial three markets, has promised to open the network to a wide array of devices, such as music players or cameras, which consumers could buy from any store. The three initial markets are Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Sprint has said it would have 10 WiMax devices at launch.

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has trailed Motorola Inc and Samsung Electronics in the United States as it has won little business with U.S. carriers, which tightly control the phones that work on their networks.

There has been uncertainty about the U.S. future of WiMax. Sprint, which is losing customers from its existing service, has said it is re-examining its commitment to spend $5 billion on WiMax by 2010.

Sprint and Clearwire Corp, a smaller WiMax provider, are in talks to combine their WiMax assets in a venture with investment by other companies such as Comcast Corp, Intel Corp and Google Inc, sources familiar with the talks said last week.

Asked if Nokia would consider joining such a venture, Louison said: "Our business model is focusing on building devices and applications that run on devices ... We've never invested in an operator."

Even if the U.S. WiMax market evolves more slowly than expected, Louison said Nokia was confident it would find a market for the N810 overseas.

"WiMax is bigger than Sprint," he said.

The WiMax N810 will be available from Nokia's online store and its shops in New York and Chicago for $479, Nokia said.

(Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

Reuters - Microsoft wins document format standards battle

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Microsoft wins document format standards battle

Tuesday, Apr 01, 2008 6:40PM UTC

By Georgina Prodhan and Laura Macinnis

FRANKFURT/GENEVA (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O> has won a battle to have a key document format adopted as a global standard, improving its chances of winning government contracts and dealing a blow to supporters of a rival format.

The OpenDoc Society, which had argued Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format was unripe for ratification by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), published the results showing Microsoft's win on its Web site.

Microsoft welcomed the decision, which was leaked on Tuesday ahead of an official ISO statement expected on Wednesday, saying it created a "level playing field" for OOXML to compete with other standards.

Supporters of rival Open Document Format (ODF), which is already an ISO standard and widely used, said multiple formats defeated the purpose of having standards and that the result would help Microsoft tighten its grip on computer users.

Tom Robertson, Microsoft's head of interoperability and standards, said: "Open XML joins the ranks of PDF, HTML and ODF among the ranks of document formats. I think it makes it easier for governments to offer users choice."

"The control over the specification now moves into the hands of the global community. This is going to be one of the most, if not the most important document format around the world for years to come," he added in a phone interview.

James Love, director of Knowledge Economy International, which campaigns for fairer access to knowledge, told Reuters: "We are disappointed."

"Microsoft's control over document formats has destroyed competition on the desktop, and the fight over OOXML is really a fight over the future of competition and innovation."

Microsoft, shepherded through a fast-track ISO approval process by European standards organization Ecma, lost a first ISO vote in September. Under the process, a second vote was allowed after a so-called ballot resolution meeting last month.

In the second voting period that closed on March 29, Microsoft won the approval of 86 percent of voting national bodies and 75 percent of those known as P-members. A two-thirds majority of the P-members was required.

Among those voting in favor of OOXML were the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan, according to the OpenDoc Society list. Opponents included China, India and Russia.

The process tested ISO to its limits as national bodies waded through the 6,000 pages of code that define OOXML, then dealt with more than a thousand points of order at the ballot resolution meeting, which was designed to help reach consensus.

ODF has just 860 pages of code, one of the reasons that many experts argue that translation between the two is too incomplete to allow true interoperability -- a concept that Microsoft has recently publicly embraced.

Michiel Leenaars, who is on the OpenDoc Society board and chaired the Dutch committee in the first stage of the ISO process, said OOXML was not ready to be an international standard and that the 15-month ISO process had been too fast.

"It was mission impossible," he told Reuters by phone. "The process wasn't meant for this type of thing."

(Editing by David Holmes and Braden Reddall)