President Obama on Small Business Jobs & Tax Cuts: "We Don't Have Time for Any More Games"

Having just emerged from a Cabinet meeting focused on getting every agency doing all they can to help America create jobs, the President zeroed in on two major fights for the middle class.

The first was the long-overdue breaking of the Republican blockade against help for small business -- for which he thanked the two Republican Senators who stepped up and abandoned their party's parliamentary gimmicks. The second was the ongoing attempt by Republicans in Congress to hold middle class tax cuts hostage to additional, excessive tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans.

And while I am grateful for this progress, it should not have taken this long to pass this bill. At a time when small business owners are still struggling to make payroll and they’re still holding off hiring, we put together a plan that would give them some tax relief and make it easier for them to take out loans. It’s a bill that’s paid for. It won’t add a dime to the deficit. It’s a bill that was written by both Democrats and Republicans.

Right now, we could decide to extend tax relief for the middle class. Right now, we could decide that every American household would receive a tax cut on the first $250,000 of their income.

But once again, the leaders across the aisle are saying no. They want to hold these middle-class tax cuts hostage until they get an additional tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

We simply can’t afford that. It would mean borrowing $700 billion in order to fund these tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans -- $700 billion to give a tax cut worth an average of $100,000 to millionaires and billionaires. And it’s a tax cut economists say would do little to add momentum to our economy.

Now, I just don’t believe this makes any sense. Even as we debate whether it’s wise to spend $700 billion on tax breaks for the wealthy, doesn’t it make sense for us to move forward with the tax cuts that we all agree on? We should be able to extend right now middle-class tax relief on the first $250,000 of income -- which, by the way, 97 percent of Americans make less than $250,000 a year. So right off the bat, 97 percent of all Americans would get tax relief on all their income. People who are making more than $250,000 a year, say, you’re making half a million dollars, you’d still get tax relief on half your income.

And everybody agrees that this makes sense. Middle-class families need this relief. These are the Americans who saw their wages and incomes flat-line over the last decade, who’ve seen the costs of everything from health care to college tuition skyrocket and who have been hardest hit by this recession.

Extending these tax cuts is right. It is just. It will help our economy because middle-class folks are the folks who are most likely to actually spend this tax relief -- for a new computer for the kids or for maybe some home improvement.

And if the other party continues to hold these tax cuts hostage, these are the same families who will suffer the most when their taxes go up next year. And if we can’t get an agreement with Republicans, that's what will happen.

So we don't have time for any more games. I understand there’s an election coming up. But the American people didn't send us here to just think about our jobs; they sent us here to think about theirs. They sent us here to think about their lives and their children’s lives, and to be responsible, and to be serious about the challenges we face as a nation.

That's what members of both parties have now done with the small business jobs bill. And I hope we can work together to do the same thing on middle-class tax relief in the weeks to come.

Revitalizing American Manufacturing

Some people think our economy can run on white collar and service jobs alone, but they are wrong. We can and must make high quality products in America. We are on the verge of a new Industrial Revolution and I believe it will revolve around the greatest untapped opportunity of our time, clean energy. China and Europe see this opportunity and they are already moving aggressively to be at the forefront of it. It is time for America to get into the clean energy race and play to win -- and that is exactly what A123 Systems is doing in Michigan.

At a difficult time for America’s workers and businesses, A123 Systems is leading the way to a brighter future. It is building factories in Livonia, Romulus, and Brownstown. It has already has hired 200 local workers since last August and it expects to hire more than 3,000 people by 2012. Today marks an important milestone for A123 Systems, as they open largest lithium-ion automotive battery production facility in North America. This will help make sure the cars of the future are built right here in America.

This particular project is important because it has managed to link innovation in America to manufacturing in America, an essential connection that has been neglected in recent years.

We are – and have long been – the world leader in innovation. To give just a few examples from the last century: we created the laser, the solar cell, the transistor, and GPS technology. Historically, we’ve also been a powerhouse in manufacturing. But where are high tech products made today? They are largely manufactured in Asia.

With A123 Systems, the private sector, government and academia have all worked together to reverse that trend.

President Obama recognized that earlier today in a call he placed to the employees of A123 systems, lauding them for being the “first American factory to start high-volume production of advanced vehicle batteries.”

This is noteworthy because as he stated “just a few years ago American businesses could only make 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles.” But thanks to the work being done at companies like A123 Systems and funding from the Recovery Act we’re poised “to get up to 40 percent of the world’s capacity” by 2015.

Instead of watching a technology be discovered here and then shipped overseas, we fought to keep it here. And we are winning.

In the weeks ahead, more American battery manufacturing plants will be coming online thanks in large part to the Recovery Act, which funded a healthy competition among 9 battery makers, 11 battery suppliers, and 10 component makers. These new factories are already driving down battery costs faster than anyone thought – which means more car sales, more jobs, and less dependence on foreign oil.

The Department of Energy has long been charged with accelerating energy innovation in America. But in this Administration, we are taking things one step further – we are making that critical link between innovation and manufacturing.

A123 Systems is a perfect example of what’s possible when the private sector, government, and academia work together.

Yahoo Mail to get a Revamped User Interface Soon

Yahoo is all set to revive its mail service with a new interface and features under a project currently dubbed Minty. Revamping its mail service is an active step to address the drop in the number of users and to improve the performance of the interface. The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo will introduce iPad and Android friendly interfaces of its mail service after juicing up the performance. So we can expect Yahoo Mail to move entirely to HTML5 interface for running faster on Apple's iOS and Google's Android platform.

In U.S., Yahoo is still the number one email service that rests above Google's Gmail and Microsoft's Hotmail combined together. However, comScore figures, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal state that Yahoo suffered a 7 percent year-on-year drop in users compared to Hotmail's 3 percent YoY growth and Gmail's 22 percent growth. Clearly, Yahoo did have to make an attempt to retain users.

Last year, Yahoo spruced up the web mail interface by adding more social features and also the mobile mail interface. But post Minty interface refresh, Yahoo account holders would be able to enjoy tighter integration of popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Apart from that, the entire interface would be made lighter to be usable on slow or weaker Internet Connections.

We can expect faster and more social Yahoo Mail interface post refresh. The company did not mention how long will it take to implement this new interface for general public usage. Be ready for surprise anytime soon.

How Hackers Work

Thanks to the media, the word "hacker" has gotten a bad reputation. The word summons up thoughts of malicious computer users finding new ways to harass people, defraud corporations, steal information and maybe even destroy the economy or start a war by infiltrating military computer systems. While there's no denying that there are hackers out there with bad intentions, they make up only a small percentage of the hacker community.

The term computer hacker first showed up in the mid-1960s. A hacker was a programmer -- someone who hacked out computer code. Hackers were visionaries who could see new ways to use computers, creating programs that no one else could conceive. They were the pioneers of the computer industry, building everything from small applications to operating systems. In this sense, people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were all hackers -- they saw the potential of what computers could do and created ways to achieve that potential.

A unifying trait among these hackers was a strong sense of curiosity, sometimes bordering on obsession. These hackers prided themselves on not only their ability to create new programs, but also to learn how other programs and systems worked. When a program had a bug -- a section of bad code that prevented the program from working properly -- hackers would often create and distribute small sections of code called patches to fix the problem. Some managed to land a job that leveraged their skills, getting paid for what they'd happily do for free.

As computers evolved, computer engineers began to network individual machines together into a system. Soon, the term hacker had a new meaning -- a person using computers to explore a network to which he or she didn't belong. Usually hackers didn't have any malicious intent. They just wanted to know how computer networks worked and saw any barrier between them and that knowledge as a challenge.
In fact, that's still the case today. While there are plenty of stories about malicious hackers sabotaging computer systems, infiltrating networks and spreading computer viruses, most hackers are just curious -- they want to know all the intricacies of the computer world. Some use their knowledge to help corporations and governments construct better security measures. Others might use their skills for more unethical endeavors.

In this article, we'll explore common techniques hackers use to infiltrate systems. We'll examine hacker culture and the various kinds of hackers as well as learn about famous hackers, some of whom have run afoul of the law.

MTS launches smart phones in Bihar

Patna, Sep 8 (PTI) Mobile telephony services company MTS today launched a range of internet enabled smart phones for the trendy and techonolgy oriented new generation subscribers, especially the college going and young professionals. The smart phones are among the most competitive and fully loaded devices which will set a benchmark in the industry with 3G capabilities, Vsevolod Rozanov, President and CEO of Sistema Shyam Teleservices Limited, which owns MTS, told reporters here. All MTS Smart phones are available with bundled offers aimed at providing complete package to its customers. They have been designed to suit the young and net savvy professional's requirements through a wide variety of offerings at a highly competitive prices ranging from Rs 4,999. M K Sachdeva, chief operating officer, Bihar circle, SSTL, said MTS smart phones devices offering voice and data packaged together at affordable prices and with the inaugural offer of 20GB free download will help the subscribers to get on to an entirely new digitally connected world. SSTL is a joint venture between Sistema of Russia and Shyam group of India. Sistema is the majority shareholder in this joint venture with a 74 per cent equity share. The Shyam group holds 23.5 per cent stake and the remaining 2.5 per cent is publicly held. SSTL has been allocated spectrum to provide mobile telephony services in all the 22 cricles across the country, Sachdeva said.