Schwarz Network

Romney 'carpet bombing' Gingrich

Newt Gingrich slammed Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney for "carpet-bombing" his record ahead of Tuesday's pivotal presidential primary in Florida, trying to cut into the resurgent front-runner's lead in the final hours before the vote. On the defensive after a barrage of attacks from Romney and a political committee that supports him, Gingrich said Romney had lied and the Republican Party establishment had allowed it.

"I don't know how you debate a person with civility if they're prepared to say things that are just plain factually false," Gingrich said during appearances on Sunday TV talk shows. "I think the Republican establishment believes it's OK to say and do virtually anything to stop a genuine insurgency from winning because they are very afraid of losing control of the old order."

The Florida contest has become decidedly bitter and personal with Gingrich casting himself as the insurgent candidate against Romney, the party establishment's favourite. Romney and Gingrich have tangled over policy and character since Gingrich's stunning victory over the well-funded Romney in the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21.
Gingrich has been under heavy attack from Romney and allies of the former Massachusetts governor. Romney had spent the past several days, including during two Florida debates, sharply criticizing Gingrich's discipline,

temperament and ethics during and after his time as the speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s.
On Sunday, Gingrich objected to a Romney campaign ad that includes a 1997 NBC News report on the House's decision to discipline the then-House speaker for ethics charges.

Netflix's Demise Was Greatly Exaggerated
Total Subscribers up 25% From Last Year Despite Missteps
by Karl BodeWhile Netflix still dominates the streaming video market to the tune of 65%, 2011 wasn't a particularly pretty PR year for the company. Netflix instituted a relatively-massive price hike, an announcement of a split off of their DVD and streaming services, a confusing reversal of that plan, and somehow found time to insult everybody in America. The company also decided several times to revamp a GUI that wasn't really broken in the first place -- instituting interface changes on both their website and Xbox 360 app that actually made their streaming product less useful.

Not too surprisingly, Netflix took a significant customer satisfaction hit. There was also oodles of hand-wringing analyst pontification about how Netflix was doomed. Forgotten amongst these dour tirades was the fact that Netflix is competing against a cable industry that institutes bi-annual rate hikes, with their obliviousness to consumer price sensitivity teetering into the obnoxious.

The fact is that even at existing price points, with a streaming catalog that's increasingly sparse due to studio suffocation, Netflix still offers good value to content consumers.

FBI to build social network spy app
App would crawl Twitter and Facebook
By Antony Savvas | Computerworld UK | 27 January 12

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is planning to develop an application that can track the public's postings to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, in order to aid how it predicts and reacts to criminal behaviour, including public disorder and terrorism.

An FBI request for information document has been published, asking potential contractors to contact the bureau by 10 February. The FBI wants respondents to the document to outline how they would build such a system and how much it would potentially cost.

The bureau said the system it wants must be able to automatically search "publicly available" material from Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for keywords of interest. FBI agents would be alerted if the searches come up with evidence of "breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats". Agents would have the ability to display any information on a map, and they could then add other layers of information, including past incidents and locations of important buildings like embassies and military installations. The document notes that agents need to "locate bad actors and analyse their movements, vulnerabilities, limitations, and possible adverse actions".