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HANK “I Don’t Recall” PAULSON
(AM session) – (PM session)

highlights…
REP Towns - TARP

REP Kucinich – Secret Mergers Illegal Acts

REP Speier – $15B Force

REP Burton – Too Many Secrets

REP Kanjorski – Meltdown

REP Cummings – AIG Goldman

REP Kaptur – The Greatest Hail Mary Pass Of ALL TIME!

REP Stearns – Bait and Switch – No Credibility – Recuse

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Move To Legalize Marijuana Takes Root
In a 1969 Gallup poll, only 12% of Americans supported making marijuana legal. By 2005, support had grown to 36%. And in a Zogby International poll taken earlier this year, 44% of Americans said marijuana “should be taxed and legally regulated like alcohol and cigarettes.”The most interesting information, however, is in the demographic breakdown. more

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Conservative Group Offers Endorsement For $2M
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s president flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.

In the three-page letter asking for money on June 30, the conservative group backed FedEx. After FedEx says it rejected the offer, Keene signed onto a two-page July 15 letter backing UPS. Keene did not return a message left on his cell phone.

Maury Lane, FedEx’s director of corporate communications, said: “Clearly, the ACU shopped their beliefs and UPS bought.” more
.pdf letter
Where’s My Bailout?

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W.H.O. Says It Plans to Stop Tracking Swine Flu Cases
In a move that caught many public health experts by surprise, the World Health Organization quietly announced Thursday that it would stop tracking swine flu cases and deaths around the world.

The last W.H.O. update, issued on July 6, showed 94,512 confirmed cases in 122 countries, with 429 deaths.

Many epidemiologists have pointed out that, in reality, millions of people have had swine flu, usually in a mild form, so the numbers of laboratory-confirmed cases were actually meaningless. And performing the tests has overwhelmed many national laboratories. W.H.O.

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byś nie odleciał przypadkiem

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yum!

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Congressional Lawmakers Invest In Their (Financial) Health
As members of Congress assess the proper dose of reform for the nation’s health care system, many of them have likewise invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of their personal funds into the very companies whose financial fortunes depend on what measures become law.

While some political scientists and other experts are concerned this reality inhibits good policy, lawmakers themselves say the financial health of their constituents — not their investment portfolios — alone drive their decisions.

Legislators held significant investments in pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Amgen, the Center for Responsive Politics has found. Through 2008 — the most recent year for which lawmakers filed this information — many congressional members’ personal funds were also invested in big-time insurers Aetna, UnitedHealth Group and Metlife, among others.

“Having personal funds in healthcare companies has the potential to influence someone’s understanding of the issues and affect the policies they support. The potential for being influenced by one’s own self interest is present whenever Congress is considering legislation that could have an impact on the profits of the companies,” said Leonard Weber, Professor Emeritus at the University of Detroit Mercy and an ethics consultant for health establishments. “It would certainly be better if these self-interests were not part of the decision-making process.”

Nearly one in four current members of Congress had invested some money in health companies during 2007, the most recent year CRP calculated lawmakers’ extensive personal finances. (Data for 2008 will be available in our personal financial disclosure database come October). That made for a total of between $44.2 million and $93.9 million. And while the market has changed significantly since then, a scan of their 2008 reports show that lawmakers held onto–or even purchased–stock in these companies during 2008.

Because lawmakers report the value of their assets in ranges, it’s impossible to determine their exact worth.

Merck, Pfizer and UnitedHealth rank among the top 10 investments in 2007, and are part of an industry that opposes one of the main components of reform proposals–a public health insurance option that would compete with private insurers. more

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Drug Makers Score Early Wins as Plan Takes Shape
The pharmaceuticals industry, which President Barack Obama promised to “take on” during his campaign, is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul.

The final contours of the legislation are far from settled, but the industry, led by a onetime powerful congressman, has notched a string of victories.

Legislation expected soon in the powerful Senate Finance Committee will leave out cost-cutting steps as part of an agreement with the industry and the White House, according to Congressional aides, industry lobbyists and others involved in the talks. more

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Joy of Sachs

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IMF warns pound could be at risk from uncertainty
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that Gordon Brown risks a run on the pound if he does not set out a clear path for reducing national debt.

In a report published yesterday following a staff mission to Britain in May, the IMF said that a “credible plan” was needed to reverse the rapid deterioration of the public finances if confidence in the UK was to be upheld.

“Market conditions suggest the UK has been getting the benefit of the doubt, both in the Government bond market and also the foreign exchange market,” said Ajai Chopra, the IMF’s mission chief for the UK. “This benefit of the doubt is not going to last forever and it’s going to be important that the Government does not test the limit of the market’s confidence.

“The authorities will need to move more aggressively in their fiscal consolidation plans and to be specific it will be important to set public debt on a firmly downward path faster than is envisaged in the 2009 Budget,” he added….

The report added: “Should fiscal sustainability come into question, interest rates would rise despite monetary easing efforts, the ability of the Government to provide support to the financial sector would be severely limited and pressures on the currency could emerge.” telegraph uk £

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itty bitty Working With News publishers
Last week, a group of newspaper and magazine publishers signed a declaration stating that “Universal access to websites does not necessarily mean access at no cost,” and that they “no longer wish to be forced to give away property without having granted permission.”

We agree, and that’s how things stand today. The truth is that news publishers, like all other content owners, are in complete control when it comes not only to what content they make available on the web, but also who can access it and at what price. This is the very backbone of the web — there are many confidential company web sites, university databases, and private files of individuals that cannot be accessed through search engines. If they could, the web would be much less useful.

For more than a decade, search engines have routinely checked for permissions before fetching pages from a web site. Millions of webmasters around the world, including news publishers, use a technical standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) to tell search engines whether or not their sites, or even just a particular web page, can be crawled. Webmasters who do not wish their sites to be indexed can and do use the following two lines to deny permission: more
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Clickables

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QOTD: “Oh, My Hat!”

Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies
It could be a combination of 19th-century mechanics, 21st-century technology — and a 20th-century horror movie.

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that’s right, “EATR” — “can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable,” reads the company’s Web site.

That “biomass” and “other organically-based energy sources” wouldn’t necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they’d be plentiful in a war zone.

EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone Power Technology of Pompano Beach, Fla., which uses an “external combustion chamber” burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.

The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced.

Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things — a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship.

In press materials, Robotic Technology presents EATR as an essentially benign artificial creature that fills its belly through “foraging,” despite the obvious military purpose.
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Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program?

Congress is outraged that Cheney concealed a CIA program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders, but they should also be investigating why Obama is continuing—and expanding—U.S. assassinations. more

update

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Q: Want Health Care Reform In The US  Done By Tomorrow?
A: Cancel all Government Tax Payer Health Care For Congress Today.

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The Fed Under Fire

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New Hampshire Man Charged 23 Quadrillion Dollars For Smokes
A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.

Josh Muszynski (Moo-SIN’-ski) checked his account online a few hours later and saw the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars).

Muszynski says he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers and the $15 overdraft fee. The bank corrected the error the next day.

Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.

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New World Currency
Even if Russia’s call for a global currency failed to gain much traction at a G8 summit, President Dmitry Medvedev took home a coin meant to symbolize that the dream may one day come true.

The Russian leader proudly displayed the coin, which bears the English words “United Future World Currency”, to journalists after the summit wrapped up in the quake-hit Italian town of L’Aquila.

Medvedev said that although the coin, which resembled a euro and featured the image of five leaves, was just a gift given to leaders it showed that people were beginning to think seriously about a new global currency.

The coin was minted in Belgium and presented to the heads of G-8 delegations.

The question of a supranational currency “concerns everyone now, even the mints,” Medvedev said. The test coin “means they’re getting ready. I think it’s a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are.”

“In all likelihood something similar could appear and it could be held in your hand and used as a means of payment,” he told reporters. “This is the international currency.” “You can see it and touch it.”

Russia, along with China, has been a vocal proponent of diversifying the global currency system away from the dollar, which has dominated global finance and commerce since the end of World War II.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the summit joined the band in favour of dumping the dollar as the international currency of reference, insisting that “we cannot stick with just one single currency.”

Medvedev press conference at G8

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watch people shop

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1981-2009
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yum!

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Stephen Fry Compares RIAA to “Big Tobacco”
“Making examples of ordinary people is the stupidest thing the record industry can do,” he told the audience, and he doesn’t believe that bands “are in favor” of the strategy, many of which have said they certainly are not. “My business – the film business, the television business, the music business – is doing the wrong thing.”

Fry also reminded people that rigid copyright laws stifle creativity and innovation, a point made last week by Christian Engström, newly elected member of the Swedish Pirate Party to the European Parliament.

“We are not nouns, we are verbs,” he added. “Weak copyright encourages creativity.” Z
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klimt

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you wanna piece of me?

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le quatorze juillet

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Financial Genocide – Max Keiser

Goldman Sachs- Indentured Slavery – Max Keiser
office space

G8 – Max Keiser

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Goldman – The Great American Bubble Machine
Full Text
Matt Taibbi Interview PT1 – PT2 – PT3 – PT4

Goldman Sache 666

Goldman – How Goldman Sachs Took Over The World

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UPDATES!

Goldman – Life Sucking Albatross

Goldman – REP Stearns – Bait and Switch! – No Credibility – Recuse!

Goldman  – The Joy of Sachs

Goldman -  On Huffpo

Goldman Sachs Are Scum!

Goldman Sachs Are Crooks pt 2

Goldman – Executives Sold $700M Stock- Most During Bailout

Goldman – Barack Obama’s Largest Contributor In The 2008 Election Was Goldman Sachs Receiving $994,795.00

Goldman – Follow The Money

Goldman – A Doctors Named Goldman Who Squeezes Your Sach?

Goldman – Geithner Grilled On Sachs

Goldman – Too Big To Fail

Goldman – Socialism For Banks

Goldman – Goldman Larceny

Goldman -  Government, Media and Corporate Influence

Goldman – A.I.G. Chief Owns Significant Stake in Goldman

Goldman – CBS: Goldman’s Influence

Goldman – Hires Law Firm To Shut Blogger’s Site

Goldman – CEO Lloyd Blankfein Addresses House Financial Services Committee watch for the Bloomberg bio

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History
Marcus Goldman
Samuel Sachs
Goldman Sachs Group
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Morgan Stanley aka Salomon Brothers aka Saloman Smith Barneyaka Traveler aka Citi

BOA Merrill Lynch aka Credit Suisse aka Union Bank of Switzerland aka First Boston

Besides Manipulating And Skimming The Stock Market With Computer Codes Goldman Sachs Took The US Tax Payer TARP Money And Gave Us All Their Worthless Junk and hen awarded themselves $14Billion in Bonuses.

As The British Were To Us Before 4 July 1776 So Is Goldman Sachs Now.

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Goldman THEFT! Are They Rigging The System?

REP Cummings – Goldman Awarded AIG Bailout Money, Why?

Ex-Worker Said To Steal Goldman Code

Ex-Goldman Programmer Described Code Downloads to FBI

Goldman Employee Out On $750,000 Bail

Web Manager Won’t Say If Others Saw Goldman Code

In-Depth Look – Stealing Secrets from Goldman Sachs – Bloomberg
- “What is Goldman Sachs doing with this trading code that could manipulate the markets?”

- “And Goldman got on the phone to the Justice Department and got them so fast to nail this guy, it’s almost – you wonder if they have a red line to the government.”

- “It is amazing within one day of Goldman calling they had FBI agents at his driveway doing surveillance. The next day they arrested him…”

- “It’s interesting that the prosecutor from the testimony that I’ve read, it almost sounds as if he’s working at Goldman Sachs.”

“The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.”

Goldman Sachs Loses Grip On Its Doomsday Machine

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Law Suit
Time For A $1 Trillion Class Action Lawsuit
How Goldman Sachs Does It

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Congress
Dick Durbin: Banks “Frankly Own The Place”

The Rules

1st Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.

2nd When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body, not usually Discovered.

3rd Show Nothing to your Friend that may affright him.

4th In the Presence of Others Sing not to yourself with a humming Noise, nor Drum with your Fingers or Feet.

5th If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately; and Speak not in your Yawning, but put Your handkerchief or Hand before your face and turn aside.

6th Sleep not when others Speak, Sit not when others stand, Speak not when you Should hold your Peace, walk not on when others Stop.

7th Put not off your Cloths in the presence of Others, nor go out your Chamber half Dressed.

8th At Play and at Fire its Good manners to Give Place to the last Commer, and affect not to Speak Louder than Ordinary.

9th Spit not in the Fire, nor Stoop low before it neither Put your Hands into the Flames to warm them, nor Set your Feet upon the Fire especially if there be meat before it.

10th When you Sit down, Keep your Feet firm and Even, without putting one on the other or Crossing them.

100 more

spineless democrats

“It’s got it all — lust, passion, romance and 14,000
jobs being eliminated every day.” – Michael Moore

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Michael Jackson Is Dead – NSFW

sock tribute -  shamon
enough MJ

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Jackson’s Brain
“As soon as we are done with the brain, we will return it,” Winter said. “There is a whole series of tests that will be done.” more

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Copyright Laws Threaten Our Online Freedom

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French hackers unveil the HADOPI router: cracks nearby WiFi and makes your traffic traceable to your neighbors
French hackers claim to have sabotaged Internet forensics by creating a firmware for routers that cracks nearby WiFi networks and routes your traffic through them at random, creating false trails leading to your neighbors instead of you. They’re calling it the HADOPI Router, in honor of Nicolas Sarkozy’s crazy Internet law of the same name.

HADOPI originally required ISPs to disconnect users after three unsubstantiated claims of copyright infringement (Princeton’s Ed Felten compared this to giving publishers the power to take away all the printed matter in your household if you were accused of committing three acts of illegal photocopying or cut-and-paste). The law was initially defeated in the French parliament, then it passed on reintroduction, only to be struck down by France’s high court on the grounds that it violated human rights. more
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YouTube Ordered to Pay $1.6M to ASCAP
A district judge has ordered YouTube to pay $1.61 million in royalties to U.S. songwriters, and $70,000 per month going forward. The judgment came last Wednesday in New York, but we didn’t see coverage of it until today when Techdirt picked it up; there was an earlier report on Law360 that you can read if you register. Songwriters, like everyone else, want a piece of YouTube; for instance the co-writer of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” recently claimed he’s been exploited by the “rickrolling” phenomenon, only earning £11 from Google for his trouble.

The particulars of the fee are only temporary as YouTube and ASCAP go to trial over blanket licenses for ASCAP’s songs in a case brought last May. As Techdirt describes it more

YouTube User Happiness Survey

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Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims
Rupert Murdoch’s News Group News­papers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public ­figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemized phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators. more

there ought to be a law….
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How to creatively get even

United Breaks Guitars
update

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Secret itty bitty Presentation Defends Invasive Behavioral Ads
Online search giant Google, already under fire for its privacy policies and a self-serving online book publication deal, is now apparently trying to persuade Capitol Hill policymakers that its so-called behavioral advertising, which targets users based on their browsing–is benign, said Consumer Watchdog. The nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy group has obtained  a “confidential” and “proprietary” Google presentation for lawmakers that, ironically, touts Google’s commitment to “transparency,” but skirts tough questions about its secretive user data tracking, storage and sharing policies.

Google increasingly spies on what consumers do online, including what web sites they visit; creates dossiers on users’ online behavior without their prior permission; then harvests this private information to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, said Consumer Watchdog.

Consumer Watchdog posted the presentation along with an annotated version, prepared by an industry insider, that calls out Google’s deceptions. The group urged lawmakers and the Justice Department to view both versions and consider strict limits on how Google collects and uses its customers’ online behavior.

View the documents two ways:
Original: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/GoogleJuly09-CWD.pdf
Annotated: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/GoogleJuly09Annot-CWD.pdf
more

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Possible Environmental Causes For Alzheimer’s, Diabetes
A new study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital have found a substantial link between increased levels of nitrates in our environment and food, with increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Volume 17:3 July 2009).

Led by Suzanne de la Monte, MD, MPH, of Rhode Island Hospital, researchers studied the trends in mortality rates due to diseases that are associated with aging, such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes and cerebrovascular disease, as well as HIV. They found strong parallels between age adjusted increases in death rate from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes and the progressive increases in human exposure to nitrates, nitrites and nitrosamines through processed and preserved foods as well as fertilizers. Other diseases including HIV-AIDS, cerebrovascular disease, and leukemia did not exhibit those trends. De la Monte and the authors propose that the increase in exposure plays a critical role in the cause, development and effects of the pandemic of these insulin-resistant diseases, more

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HR 1207 Co-Sponsors (as of 7/8/2009)

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A message to Warner Music Group

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Thousands of Chinese troops flooded into this city Wednesday to separate feuding ethnic groups after three days of communal violence left 156 people dead, and a senior Communist Party official vowed to execute those guilty of murder in the rioting in western China.

Long convoys of armored cars and green troop trucks with riot police rumbled through Urumqi, a city of 2.3 million people. Other security forces carrying automatic rifles with bayonets formed cordons to defend Muslim neighborhoods from marauding groups of vigilantes with sticks.

Military helicopters buzzed over Xinjiang’s regional capital, dropping pamphlets urging people to stay in their homes and stop fighting. Special police from other provinces were called in to patrol the city.

The crisis was so severe that President Hu Jintao cut short a trip to Italy, where he was to participate in a Group of Eight summit. It was an embarrassing move for a leader who wants to show that China has a harmonious society as it prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist rule. more

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Swiss ready to seize UBS data to stifle Washington
The Swiss government on Wednesday waded into the legal battle between UBS and the US authorities by saying it would forbid the bank from handing over confidential client information, if a crucial court case next week required it.

Bern warned it might go as far as confiscating the data, should a US court in Miami rule the bank was obliged to transfer the client names requested.

The move marks a major escalation in the war of words between Bern and Washington over US demands that UBS hand over names of up to 52,000 US taxpayers holding offshore accounts in Switzerland. more

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US officials eye North Korea in cyber attack
.S. authorities on Wednesday eyed North Korea as the origin of the widespread cyber attack that overwhelmed government Web sites in the United States and South Korea, although they warned it would be difficult to definitively identify the attackers quickly.

The powerful attack that targeted dozens of government and private sites underscored how unevenly prepared the U.S. government is to block such multipronged assaults.

While Treasury Department and Federal Trade Commission Web sites were shut down by the software attack, which lasted for days over the holiday weekend, others such as the Pentagon and the White House were able to fend it off with little disruption.

The North Korea link, described by three officials, more firmly connected the U.S. attacks to another wave of cyber assaults that hit government agencies Tuesday in South Korea. The officials said that while Internet addresses have been traced to North Korea, that does not necessarily mean the attack involved the Pyongyang government.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

South Korea intelligence officials have identified North Korea as a suspect in those attacks and said that the sophistication of the assault suggested it was carried out at a higher level that just rogue or individual hackers.

U.S. officials would not go that far and declined to discuss publicly who may have instigated the intrusion or how it was done.

In an Associated Press interview, Philip Reitinger, deputy under secretary at the Homeland Security Department, said the far-reaching attacks demonstrate the importance of cybersecurity as a critical national security issue.

The fact that a series of computers were involved in an attack, Reitinger said, “doesn’t say anything about the ultimate source of the attack.” more

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itty bitty Google to Challenge Microsoft With Operating System
Google Inc., owner of the most- visited Internet search engine, is developing a computer operating system based on its Chrome Web browser, taking aim at Microsoft Corp. in its strongest market.

The system will be designed at first for low-cost laptops called netbooks, Google said in a blog post. The company is in talks with partners on the project and computers running the software will be available in the second half of 2010.

The plan escalates Google’s rivalry with Microsoft, which extends to Web search, browsers and business applications such as word processing and spreadsheets. Windows, Microsoft’s flagship product, runs about 90 percent of the world’s personal computers. Google is also trying to spur Web-ad sales after reporting its first sequential revenue drop as a public company.

“There is a possibility that the new OS can break the paradigm Microsoft and Intel created over the past 20 years,” aid Yukihiko Shimada, a computer analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co. in Tokyo. “There is plenty of business opportunity for Google in this market.”

Google said it’s working with computer makers to introduce a number of netbooks next year, without identifying any of the companies. The Chrome OS will be open-source, meaning the program code will be open to developers, Google said. The software will work on top of the Linux operating system.

Netbook Competition
Frank Shaw, a spokesman for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, declined to comment. Windows accounted for 28 percent of the company’s $60.4 billion annual revenue in the 12 months ended June 30, 2008.

Microsoft has stepped up its efforts in the netbook market. It said in May it plans to remove a restriction of running three applications at a time on its forthcoming Windows 7 Starter Edition, which is designed for netbooks. The announcement eliminated one of the most significant differences between the basic edition of the operating system and a pricier one.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, rose $5.86, or 1.5 percent, to 402.49 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 4 p.m. New York time. Microsoft advanced 3 cents $22.56. Google has risen 31 percent this year and Microsoft has added 16 percent.

Online Strategy
The Chrome OS is consistent with Google’s focus on getting people to use software online, which contrasts with Microsoft’s approach of providing programs on the computer itself. Google started offering business software in 2007, allowing users to access spreadsheets and word-processing documents via the Web, just as anyone might access the search engine or Google News.

“We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better,” Google said. “The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web.”

Google is trying to encourage people to spend more time online to fuel demand for Internet ads, which accounted for more than 90 percent of its 2008 revenue of $21.8 billion. In the first quarter of this year, Google had its first sequential sales drop since it went public in 2004 as the recession prompted companies to curb advertising spending.

The open-source Chrome OS will probably win over companies that don’t want to pay for Windows, said Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co. in New York. The system may also help Google sell Web-based applications, such as the Gmail e-mail service, that run on top of it, he said.

“They really haven’t cracked the enterprise yet,” said Friedland, who rates Google’s shares “outperform” and doesn’t own any. “We’ve seen some inroads around the edges.”

‘More Options’
Computer makers such as Acer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc. already have plans to offer computers running Android, an open- source operating system backed by Google and initially designed for mobile phones. Acer, the world’s second-largest laptop maker, said last month it plans to release a low-cost notebook powered by Android. Asustek Computer has also developed a netbook that runs on Google’s software.

“Having another OS or another interface does create more options, and with the weight of the Google name behind it, does lift its prominence,” said Bryan Ma, a computer analyst at IDC in Singapore.

Google said that while the Chrome OS is separate from Android, the two will overlap in some areas. The Chrome operating system is designed to save users from having to deal with viruses and security updates, Google said.

“Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems,” Google said. “While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.”

‘Beneficial to Users’
Hewlett-Packard is studying the Chrome OS and is open to “various approaches to meet its own customer needs,” Marlene Somsak, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an e-mail. She declined to comment on whether Hewlett-Packard plans to introduce products based on the system.

Dell constantly assesses new technologies as part of its product-development process, said Anne Camden, a spokeswoman for the company.

Tony Chen, chief operating officer of Asustek’s notebook unit said by phone the company will consider “anything that’s beneficial to users.” Fujitsu Ltd. spokeswoman Nozomi Endo said the company will monitor market conditions before deciding whether to introduce products using Google’s operating system.

Spokespeople for Acer, Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., NEC Corp., Panasonic Corp., and Toshiba Corp., declined to comment.

Search Rivalry
The Chrome OS — which will run on traditional Intel Corp.- based x86 chips along with semiconductors designed by ARM Holdings Plc — will work on lightweight netbooks along with more powerful computers, including desktop PCs, Google said.

Google’s Chrome still faces an uphill battle against Microsoft’s browser. Chrome, which was unveiled last year, had 1.2 percent market share in February, compared with 67 percent for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, according to research firm Net Applications, which tracks Web statistics.

In May, Microsoft introduced a search engine called Bing that has enhanced shopping, travel and sorting features. Bing’s market share climbed to more than 10 percent in June, according to Comscore Inc.

Google’s search engine is No. 1 in the U.S., holding more than 60 percent market share. Microsoft is No. 3, according to ComScore. bloomberg

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If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.

On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.

This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it.This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.

File-sharing occurs whenever one individual sends a file to another. The only way to even try to limit this process is to monitor all communication between ordinary people. Despite the crackdown on Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services over the past decade, the volume of file-sharing has grown exponentially. Even if the authorities closed down all other possibilities, people could still send copyrighted files as attachments to e-mails or through private networks. If people start doing that, should we give the government the right to monitor all mail and all encrypted networks? Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.

The world is at a crossroads. The internet and new information technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will change. But the direction has not been decided.

The technology could be used to create a Big Brother society beyond our nightmares, where governments and corporations monitor every detail of our lives. In the former East Germany, the government needed tens of thousands of employees to keep track of the citizens using typewriters, pencils and index cards. Today a computer can do the same thing a million times faster, at the push of a button. There are many politicians who want to push that button.

The same technology could instead be used to create a society that embraces spontaneity, collaboration and diversity. Where the citizens are no longer passive consumers being fed information and culture through one-way media, but are instead active participants collaborating on a journey into the future.

The internet it still in its infancy, but already we see fantastic things appearing as if by magic. Take Linux, the free computer operating system, or Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Witness the participatory culture of MySpace and YouTube, or the growth of the Pirate Bay, which makes the world’s culture easily available to anybody with an internet connection. But where technology opens up new possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them. Linux is held back by patents, the rest of the examples by copyright.

The public increasingly recognizes the need for reform. That was why Piratpartiet – the Pirate party – won 7.1 per cent of the popular vote in Sweden in the European Union elections. This gave us a seat in the European parliament for the first time.

Our manifesto is to reform copyright laws and gradually abolish the patent system. We oppose mass surveillance and censorship on the net, as in the rest of society. We want to make the EU more democratic and transparent. This is our entire platform.

We intend to devote all our time and energy to protecting the fundamental civil liberties on the net and elsewhere. Seven per cent of Swedish voters agreed with us that it makes sense to put other political differences aside in order to ensure this.

Political decisions taken over the next five years are likely to set the course we take into the information society, and will affect the lives of millions for many years into the future. Will we let our fears lead us towards a dystopian Big Brother state, or will we have the courage and wisdom to choose an exciting future in a free and open society?

The information revolution is happening here and now. It is up to us to decide what future we want.

By Christian Engström

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