News Links 02/25/2012
-
Greek statement on bond swap: in full – Telegraph
Athens has launched a bond swap with private investors to slash €107bn of the country’s debt. Here is the Greek statement in full.
-
Roubini for World Bank president – Outside the Box – MarketWatch
I would recommend someone who predicted the 2008 crisis and who provided real tangible solutions to deal with the situation, not a Washington insider or puppet of the administration or the Wall Street Establishment.
My recommended candidate is Nouriel Roubini. There are four main reasons why Roubini is best for the job.
-
Greeks reveal details of €107bn debt swap with private creditors | World news | The Guardian
Legislation allowing loans held by investors to be exchanged for ones with fixed-interest rate put before parliament
-
Oil price rises above $125 a barrel – Telegraph
Brent crude prices closed at $125.47 a barrel on Friday. Although this is below the record of $147 a barrel hit in July 2008, the pound has fallen against the dollar by more than a fifth since that time. The oil price is also sitting close to all-time highs in euro terms as well.
-
Crude Climbs Above $109 – WSJ.com
Oil prices rallied to a nine-month high as tensions with Iran raised fears about a possible supply disruption or military conflict.
-
U.S. Bulks Up Iran Defenses – WSJ.com
The Pentagon is beefing up U.S. sea- and land-based defenses in the Persian Gulf to counter any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. military has notified Congress of plans to preposition new mine-detection and clearing equipment and expand surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, according to defense officials briefed on the requests, including one submitted earlier this month.
-
Upset About AT&T Throttling Your Data? You May Be in For a Payday
A precedent at least has been set by a California judge who ruled in favor on Friday of a man who sued AT&T charging its practice of slowing down data violated the terms of its “unlimited data” plan.
The man, an unemployed truck driver named Matt Spaccarelli, received $850 in the small claims court suit in Simi Valley, Calif.
-
Upside: Is It Time to Double Down on Apple—or Walk Away? – WSJ.com
Who’s right? Brian Lazorishak says he isn’t sure, but a 52% run-up in the stock over the past year has left him with more exposure than he wants as a portfolio manager at Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Va., which oversees $700 million. He is selling a portion of his position.
Other investors may likewise find they have more Apple exposure than they want—or know. The stock makes up nearly 4% of the S&P 500 index, which weights companies by size. And Apple contributed about 6% of the index’s fourth-quarter earnings, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P.
-
Apple has now had to disable the mobile push email function used through MobileMe and iCloud, after a court ruled earlier this month that Apple had infringed on a Motorola patent claiming IP on push email.
-
Dropbox Can Now Automatically Sync Your Android Photos (And It Has More Up Its Sleeve) | TechCrunch
Dropbox’s mission to solve all of the “hidden problems” that people have with technology, many of which we’ve simply become accustomed to dealing with.
Their first solution to one of these hidden problems? Helping you keep all of your photos, from all of your devices, in one place. And to get things started, they’re launching a new version of their Desktop and Android clients that’ll automatically upload your photos to your Dropbox account. Snap a few photos on your phone, and, without having to hook up any wires, they’ll be on your computer within a minute or two.
-
If we understand risk cannot be eliminated, it can only be transferred, then we will understand why the current financial trickery in Europe and elsewhere is doomed to fail.
-
Ubuntu for Android: Linux desktop on a smartphone | ZDNet
In Canonical’s latest move, the company purposes bringing its Ubuntu Linux desktop to high-end Android phones.
-
BBC News – The myth of the eight-hour sleep
We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night – but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
Really excellent piece by Charles Hugh Smith.
ubuntu have lost there way in my opinion, that and the mess the linux desktop as become over the last few years is seriously testing our business’s commitment to it.
Thanks for the BBC link, by the way. I enjoyed it, Dave. On Ubuntu, I haven’t been following their desktop version though I had downloaded it a few years back. You think it’s not that great, huh?
Hi Edward,
Yes, I feel less guilty about my apparently natural sleeping patterns now..
Re Ubuntu: There are two main desktop environments on Linux, The Gnome Desktop and the KDE Desktop. A few years ago the KDE Desktop made a radical departure from it’s 3.x interface when it moved to it’s 4.x incarnation. That transition upset quite a few of its users, years later and only recently would I consider it stable and usable enough to recommend – but that’s just MHO. Rather than learn from this Gnome recently implemented a similar “upgrade” when they moved from their 2.x to 3.x version. As it is Ubuntu have always based their desktop on Gnome, however rather than use this new Gnome Desktop in it’s vanilla version, they’ve implemented their own shell interface and called it the Unity Desktop.
It’s not so much that it’s not that great (although the initial version I tried was a little clunky) it’s that they’re clearly abandoning a section of there current user base. Many of which seem to moving to Linux Mint – an Ubuntu derivative.
That said it’s clear they going after a piece of the netbook and tablet market, how successful this will be is anyone’s guess.