But if you have a Wonder Woman costume left over from last year that you thought you’d don again this October, be warned that you’ll be woefully out of date, as DC Comics is presenting a Wonder Woman for the 21st century. In celebration of reaching issue number 600 of the Wonder Woman comic series, the superwoman is finally getting some pants.

That’s right: pants. (Well, leggings, if you want to get technical.) The traditional Wonder Woman, who debuted in 1941, fights crime in a leotard and legs that are bare except for high red boots. The new-and-improved Wonder Woman gets to wear black leggings and a rad motorcycle jacket (check out a drawing of her new ensemble here). Basically, she’s going to be a lot warmer during the winter months (as will be those who choose to dress up as her to go Trick-or-Treating).

She also looks a lot more like the kind of superhero who demands respect and can kick butt in the name of justice, rather than somebody who belongs in the Miss America swimsuit line-up. This is a refreshing update, even if Wonder Woman writer Jodi Picoult couldn’t convince DC Comics to ditch the bustier, of which she complained, “as a woman, I know you wouldn’t fight crime in a bustier.” While we’ll have to see how the new Wonder Woman’s sales go (and there are tales of a movie in the works), tuning in to female preferences for an empowered 21st century image might prove to be a big win for DC’s marketing plan.

Photo credit: Loren Javier

It’s About Time for Wonder Woman to Wear the Pants

But if you have a Wonder Woman costume left over from last year that you thought you’d don again this October, be warned that you’ll be woefully out of date, as DC Comics is presenting a Wonder Woman for the 21st century. In celebration of reaching issue number 600 of the Wonder Woman comic series, the superwoman is finally getting some pants.

That’s right: pants. (Well, leggings, if you want to get technical.) The traditional Wonder Woman, who debuted in 1941, fights crime in a leotard and legs that are bare except for high red boots. The new-and-improved Wonder Woman gets to wear black leggings and a rad motorcycle jacket (check out a drawing of her new ensemble here). Basically, she’s going to be a lot warmer during the winter months (as will be those who choose to dress up as her to go Trick-or-Treating).

She also looks a lot more like the kind of superhero who demands respect and can kick butt in the name of justice, rather than somebody who belongs in the Miss America swimsuit line-up. This is a refreshing update, even if Wonder Woman writer Jodi Picoult couldn’t convince DC Comics to ditch the bustier, of which she complained, “as a woman, I know you wouldn’t fight crime in a bustier.” While we’ll have to see how the new Wonder Woman’s sales go (and there are tales of a movie in the works), tuning in to female preferences for an empowered 21st century image might prove to be a big win for DC’s marketing plan.

Photo credit: Loren Javier

It’s About Time for Wonder Woman to Wear the Pants

It’s time to bring the last outdated plants into the 21st century! The dangerous mercury pollution that these antique plants release is fouling our oceans, threatening public health, and harming wildlife, including tuna, whales, swordfish and polar bears.

The Mercury Pollution Reduction Act will ensure that all chlorine plants use new, mercury-free technology. It’ll protect our oceans and wildlife, promote clean-energy, and help make our seafood safe. Tell your Senators mercury pollution from chlorine plants can — and should — be a thing of the past.

Make Mercury Pollution A Thing Of The Past

On June 22, the AP broke what should be a significant story to very little attention; most media outlets simply reprinted the brief report. “CSC gets $25M gov’t records task order,” read the headline. The $25 million order allows CSC to perform scanning, indexing, and records management for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Good for them right? Well not really. Further investigation shows that CSC — Computer Sciences Corporation — has a long history of “winning” government contracts. Yet the disastrous state of the immigration system suggests that we’re not getting what we pay for.

According to the company timeline, starting in May of 1961 with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory contract, CSC has won billions in government contracts, including services for every U.S. Armed Forces division, NASA, the IRS, and major airports; Medi-Cal and Medicare claims processing; and even processing claims when natural disasters strike. In cases where CSC has not won the contracts, CSC often buys the companies that do, like DynCorp, which they acquired in March of 2003.

Through DynCorp, CSC was able to profit from a $50 million contract to support law enforcement functions in Iraq and a $200 million contract extension from the U.S. Postal services. With every awarded contract, CSC’s goal is eerily similar: to modernize the respected agencies technology capabilities with innovative concepts such as outsourcing so they can focus on their tasks. So what, this is America and we reward innovation, right? And what does it have to do with immigration reform?

What happened to rewarding competition? CSC has long had been profiting from contracts with divisions of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS.

In May 2009, CSC “won” $27 million for record digitization from USCIS. Before that, Datatrac Information Systems Inc., was awarded a $150 million contract in 2006 for the same services; CSC acquired Datatrac in December 2006. CSC also “won” $53 million in October 2007, for among other things, “modernizing” the operational technology requirements associated with the REAL ID Act of 2005 and legislation mandating the use of E-Verify. In November 2007, they “won” a $34 million contract to assist with immigration’s customer service center. That is $289 million in less than three years!

One need only add their press releases for 2010 to realize that not counting immigration services, CSC has “won” over $717 million in government contracts this year alone. And that excludes the $2.8 billion opportunity for a visa application contract. I wonder if they’ll win?

Yet despite all of this “modernization,” “outsourcing,” and “innovation integration,” any immigration attorney will tell you that the U.S. Immigration system is a horrendous backlog of expired visas and citizenship requests. Meanwhile, CSC keeps “winning” in the form of revenue, without offering great results.

CSC’s most recent reported revenue for the fiscal year ending in April 2010 was $16.1 billion. Our elected officials like to preach about pork barrel spending, yet, amid a campaign season, not one is inquiring about the excessively large funds currently allocated towards Immigration Services. Is this really the best use for taxpayer money? Has our immigration system improved with the help of CSC?

Watch CSC North American Public Sector promo here .

Where Do Billions Of U.S. Immigration Service Funds Go?

On June 22, the AP broke what should be a significant story to very little attention; most media outlets simply reprinted the brief report. “CSC gets $25M gov’t records task order,” read the headline. The $25 million order allows CSC to perform scanning, indexing, and records management for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Good for them right? Well not really. Further investigation shows that CSC — Computer Sciences Corporation — has a long history of “winning” government contracts. Yet the disastrous state of the immigration system suggests that we’re not getting what we pay for.

According to the company timeline, starting in May of 1961 with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory contract, CSC has won billions in government contracts, including services for every U.S. Armed Forces division, NASA, the IRS, and major airports; Medi-Cal and Medicare claims processing; and even processing claims when natural disasters strike. In cases where CSC has not won the contracts, CSC often buys the companies that do, like DynCorp, which they acquired in March of 2003.

Through DynCorp, CSC was able to profit from a $50 million contract to support law enforcement functions in Iraq and a $200 million contract extension from the U.S. Postal services. With every awarded contract, CSC’s goal is eerily similar: to modernize the respected agencies technology capabilities with innovative concepts such as outsourcing so they can focus on their tasks. So what, this is America and we reward innovation, right? And what does it have to do with immigration reform?

What happened to rewarding competition? CSC has long had been profiting from contracts with divisions of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS.

In May 2009, CSC “won” $27 million for record digitization from USCIS. Before that, Datatrac Information Systems Inc., was awarded a $150 million contract in 2006 for the same services; CSC acquired Datatrac in December 2006. CSC also “won” $53 million in October 2007, for among other things, “modernizing” the operational technology requirements associated with the REAL ID Act of 2005 and legislation mandating the use of E-Verify. In November 2007, they “won” a $34 million contract to assist with immigration’s customer service center. That is $289 million in less than three years!

One need only add their press releases for 2010 to realize that not counting immigration services, CSC has “won” over $717 million in government contracts this year alone. And that excludes the $2.8 billion opportunity for a visa application contract. I wonder if they’ll win?

Yet despite all of this “modernization,” “outsourcing,” and “innovation integration,” any immigration attorney will tell you that the U.S. Immigration system is a horrendous backlog of expired visas and citizenship requests. Meanwhile, CSC keeps “winning” in the form of revenue, without offering great results.

CSC’s most recent reported revenue for the fiscal year ending in April 2010 was $16.1 billion. Our elected officials like to preach about pork barrel spending, yet, amid a campaign season, not one is inquiring about the excessively large funds currently allocated towards Immigration Services. Is this really the best use for taxpayer money? Has our immigration system improved with the help of CSC?

Watch CSC North American Public Sector promo here .

Where Do Billions Of U.S. Immigration Service Funds Go?

It’s time for America to choose cleaner energy—we must move away from outdated, dirty energy sources to smarter choices. New clean energy and energy efficiency technologies will create safe, green jobs, provide power without contaminating our land, water, and air, and will help curb global warming pollution.

Unfortunately, the Senate has yet to overcome the political impasse that is delaying action on this critical issue.

Please tell President Obama and Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Policy, that we need their leadership to break this impasse and ensure that Congress passes comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year.
Time to Break through the Politics and Act on Climate

The just-announced 2010 Laureates — David Beckmann and Jo Luck — are both innovators in grassroots efforts to help fight hunger and poverty around the world. They have each shaped their organizations, Bread for the World and Heifer International, into leaders in global poverty-alleviation and hunger-reduction by figuring out the best ways to inspire widespread support and action.

Beckmann, a Lutheran pastor and economist, heads Bread for the World, “a collective Christian voice urging decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad.” The organization has inspired at least a quarter of a million constituents every year to contact their elected officials to demand policies that help the world’s poor get enough food.

As CEO of Heifer International, Luck has helped 12 million families feed themselves by getting donors to provide them with food- and income-producing animals. Luck has institutionalized the idea of “paying it forward,” or, in Heifer-ese, “Passing on the Gift,” a policy that asks every family that receives an animal to give one of the animal’s female offspring to another needy family. The gifts allow families to sustain themselves, leading to greater independence, self-empowerment, and food security.

Innovators like Beckmann and Luck teach us more than just the technicalities of how to feed hungry people around the world. These types of visionaries are looking at systems and institutions in new ways and forging new paths to help fix old problems. This type of thinking is what we need in every aspect of the world’s food systems.

Around the U.S., people are similarly engaged in looking at our own food systems in new ways. Folks across the country are finding ways to work in food kitchens and community gardens, change policies to help feed more hungry children and level the playing field for small food producers, and campaign to support small farmers.

What all these people demonstrate is that when things seem hopeless, there’s always something that can be done if you have the heart and the will. All you need is to look at things with new eyes and get busy working in innovative ways.

Photo: stock.xchng

2010 World Food Prize Recognizes Grassroots Hunger-Fighters

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 was an act created by the United States Congress in an effort to protect health insurance for workers and their families, but also to ensure that there was a national standard when dealing with electronic health care data. It ensures the privacy and protection of individual patents when dealing with issues such as the Internet.

Title I: Health Care Access, Portability, and Renewability

The first half of HIPAA, Title I, focused predominately on the type of health care that was going to be provided and, more importantly, what happens with preexisting conditions. The first thing that Title I did was prevent wide spread restrictions against preexisting conditions. In other words, if an individual had health insurance with one company and then changed companies, they had to be provided with health insurance even if they had a preexisting condition. This meant that people didn’t have to worry about having no health insurance just because they had changed a job.

Title II: Preventing Health Care Fraud and Abuse; Administrative Simplification; Medical Liability Reform

The first thing that Title II did was create a series of health care related offenses that had penalties—civil and criminal—attached to them. On top of that, programs were created to try and prevent/control abuse and fraud that was typical in the vast health care system.

The most important aspect of Title II, though, was the large amount of Administrative Simplification rules. These were a solid way of ensuring that an individual’s health care information isn’t abused and found by the average individual.

The first part of this section was the privacy rule. This was a rule that put regulations on Protected Health Information. This information was anything held by an entity that covered payment, the providing of health care or other health statuses. In other words, it meant that there were severe regulations for the use of an individual’s medical record or their payment history.

The next part of this section was the transactions and code sets rule which demanded the transfer of data to be very careful. For example, if a doctor wanted to send information to a pharmacy for a prescription, it would have to use the HIPAA compliances. This made sure that the filings were done properly.

Finally, the security rule was added. This was specifically for all electronic data. There needed to be enough safeguards to ensure that the data couldn’t be intercepted. That included the physical servers that held the information, the software used to protect against intrusion and other programs. On the flip side, it also enacted rules that only those that needed to see the information could. It limited how open the data was to the average employee of a company.

HIPAA is an effective way of providing security for the average American who has health care. It ensures that health care isn’t denied when changing careers. It also ensures that the data including one’s health care information is safe from intrusion.

Tech study firm Gartner this week released a record which said that Google’s Android OS went from the 0.Five pct marketplace reveal in 2008 up to Three.9 % by the end of 2009, and that the rival iPhone more than doubled the size of its user base at the same time.

Roberta Cozza, a principal research analyst at Gartner, claimed that “Android’s success knowledgeable inside the fourth quarter of 2009 need to continue into 2010 as extra suppliers launch Android products, but some CSPs and suppliers have expressed increasing issue about Google’s intentions within the cellular market.” Any discontent among producers and telecoms could hinder the OS’ progress in 2010, she mentioned.

Gartner notes that Apple’s large gain helped it push Windows Cellular out with the third slot during the smartphone OS rankings, but some specialists have noted the current release of Windows Phone 7 and mentioned that Microsoft’s cellular OS could possibly be poised for any comeback in 2010.

Despite the fact that its market place write about fell sharply, Symbian remained the most well-liked smartphone OS in 2009, claiming a 47 pct market place share.ADNFCR-2628-ID-19635102-ADNFCR

via San Francisco Web Design

With the advent of web designing, one thing that was linked to it was the use of tables. But as the trends are changing, technologies are emerging, so do the linked tables. Once the ‘in’ thing, they are now actually ‘getting out of place’. When most of the websites used tables in their design, some designers thought about throwing it out and bring some change in designing.

In simple words, web design in tableless manner is a method where HTML tables are not used to achieve page layout control. The control is rather achieved using a masterpiece of World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, in other words, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS was designed so that HTML can be relieved from the job of presentation and can solely focus on semantic purposes. CSS is also used for better web accessibility.

There are a lot of answers to the question that why have tables nearly disappeared? The most important of the answers to this is that tables do not adhere to the standards of Search Engines. If a web page does not use table then it becomes easier for Search Engine to index and rank it. The page rank refers to the ranking given to a web page by a Search Engine. The higher the page rank, the better for the page as a high page rank ensures that the page link will be displayed in the first few search pages. It thus ensures a greater number of visitors to the site and thus in turn good business.

Over a few years, there have been developments to incorporate logic into sites and improve the accessibility of the web to the user. In due course, mobile phones, text readers, blogs etc. were considered. Thus the need arose to eliminate tables so as to make sites compatible to these elements.

All the browsers operational now-a-days support CSS and thus any site using it is compatible with them. Hence there is no room for tables to stay. Moreover a tableless web design is the standard of W3C now.

An important use of the new technology is that any change can be applied to whole of the website in one go instead of changing code for every page. For example, the design of all the headlines of a site can be changed to newer one using CSS layout control.

The code which is unnecessary is removed and cleared with the help of XHTML and CSS thus leaving a more manageable and sleek code.

There are some web designers who favor the use of tables as it simplifies the design process. Also tables are compatible with most of the web browsers but keeping in mind the above reasons for web designing going tableless, tables are getting removed.