GE // Current

Report: NBC-Comcast deal could come this week

General Electric and cable giant Comcast have apparently reached a tentative agreement... more

knews121
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23 days ago
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Vscan Handheld Ultrasound: GE Unveils 'Stethoscope Of The 21st Century'

The future of ultrasound technology, as interpreted by General Electric Co., looks a... more

atomiclegion
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1 month ago
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Vilsack earns moans, groans, hisses, and even boos

With a packed house, and time for only one more question, author Jeffrey Smith stepped... more

NonGMOTalk
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1 month ago
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Technology going green for the home

Going green is a dominant theme in home furnishings this year; some appliance makers... more

NextpertNews
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2 months ago
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GE's Ad Placement Division: Universal Studios

This Written By article by the High School Musical writer outlines the profound... more

JonRaymond
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4 months ago
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2 comments

Hollywood Writers: Downward Employment Trend / Dim Outlook

In this ArtfulWriter.com blog Craig Mazin (Scary Movie franchise writer-director) discusses a turn of events in Hollywood to something called the step deal. Now I don't fully fathom what that is. But it sounds like a way for studios to short change writers by having them sign an option to do a first draft with the studio having the right to then go to another writer for that writer's first draft, as the film's second draft. Confused? I believe second and subsequent drafts by the same writer pay better than the first. At least it's another solid gig. Certainly any writer would prefer to do as many drafts of a film as possible, if not all of them exclusively.

Anyway, what I find most intriguing is not the post itself, but the reactions in the comments by working and not so working industry writers. Specifically one post by CP who is apparently 28 and on the verge of poverty for the sake of his passion to write, forsaking all those around him. The problem is that in 2009, screenwriting doesn't fair well for this kind of new independent writer.

In fact the industry seems to be more and more steeped in business plans that have little to do with writing talent. It's about marketing what can be made into a video game and can be marketed on an international scale, and what can have a music component like sound track hits, for example. These Hollywood industries like GE, which owns Universal along with a plethora of other mostly finance industry companies, see movies as a small part of their big corporate Wall Street picture, little more than add placement opportunities, if you will. In this regard, Transformers is a two hour Camaro commercial. GI Joe is a Pentagon recruitment ad. Transformers too, considering all the pro military tripe it espouses. After all, Transformers' director Michael Bay started out making commercials, car commercials I believe.

What self respecting writer coming out of film school wants to write two hour commercials, and yet if they don't their future looks very dim? But are all studios like GE subsidiaries? Perhaps not.In this ArtfulWriter.com blog Craig Mazin (Scary Movie franchise writer-director)... more

JonRaymond
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4 months ago
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t r u t h o u t | GE Promotes Manufacturing Jobs in US, Then Ships 'Em Overseas

Jeffery Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, has led the outsourcing charge in the past.

BUILDUSMAXIMUS
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4 months ago
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Questioning GE's control of NBC and MSNBC

I want to return to the subject of GE's silencing of Keith Olbermann both because there are new facts I've obtained that shed light on what happened here and because this is one of the most blatant examples yet of pernicious corporate control over America's journalism. The most striking aspect of this episode is that GE isn't even bothering any longer to deny the fact that they exert control over MSNBC's journalism. They've brazenly dispensed with the long-held fiction of the sanctity of journalistic independence from interference by the corporate parents that own America's largest news organizations.

Instead, GE is now openly and proudly boasting of their editorial control over the news organizations they own, and publicly rubbing it in the faces of NBC News journalists that they're subservient to GE's corporate agenda. Look at this smug, creepy quote from GE executive spokesman Gary Sheffer explaining in The New York Times why GE issued its gag order preventing Olbermann from criticizing Fox and O'Reilly, all but mocking NBC and MSNBC journalists as nothing more than GE's office of corporate spokespeople:

"We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion," Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. "We’re happy that has happened."

Why is GE even speaking for MSNBC's editorial decisions at all? Needless to say, GE doesn't care in the slightest about "civility" in general. Mika Brzezinski can spout that people who dislike Sarah Palin aren't "real Americans" and Chris Matthews can say about George Bush that "everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs," and GE executives won't (and didn't) bat an eye. What they mean by "civility" is: "thou shalt not criticize anyone who can harm GE's business interests or who will report on our actions." Thus: GE's journalists will stop reporting critically on Fox and its top assets because Fox can expose actions of GE that we want to keep concealed.

Does anyone need it explained to them why it is so dangerous and destructive to have our political debates controlled by GE executives, sitting in their offices censoring the journalism of our leading media outlets in the name of "civility," code for: you will respect those who can harm us? Our entire political culture is already designed to ensure corporate control of our political institutions. Their lobbyists literally write the laws enacted by Congress and control their implementation. The reason the journalism industry insisted for so long on the ludicrous fiction that corporate parents never violated the sanctity of journalistic independence is precisely because everyone understood why that would be so dangerous. Apparently, they no longer feel a need to maintain that fiction.I want to return to the subject of GE's silencing of Keith Olbermann both because... more

sespian
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4 months ago
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Doctors: Avoid Genetically Modified Food and GMOs

A group of leading doctors has warned the public to avoid genetically modified food... more

covelogibbs
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6 months ago
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1 comment

infoMania 5.21.09: American Idol

This week on infoMania we share our favorite moments from this week's season finales... more

infoMania
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6 months ago
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9 comments

Sarah Haskins in Target Women: Laundry

Laundry. Once you start...you can't stop. It just feels so GOOD. And your first time... more

Sarah_Haskins
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6 months ago
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16 comments

GE talks up 500GB-per-disc optical storage disc

GE is initially developing micro-holographic storage technology that is DVD sized but... more

Stevox
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7 months ago
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G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc

General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.

The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices.

But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets.

“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.

The promising work by the G.E. researchers is in the field of holographic storage. Holography is an optical process that stores not only three-dimensional images like the ones placed on many credit cards for security purposes, but the 1’s and 0’s of digital data as well.

The data is encoded in light patterns that are stored in light-sensitive material. The holograms act like microscopic mirrors that refract light patterns when a laser shines on them, and so each hologram’s recorded data can then be retrieved and deciphered.

Holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, used in DVDs and the newer, high-capacity Blu-ray discs, in which information is stored as a pattern of marks across the surface of a disc. The potential of holographic technology has long been known. The first research papers were published in the early 1960s.

Many advances have been made over the years in the materials science, optics and applied physics needed to make holographic storage a practical, cost-effective technology. And this year, InPhase Technologies, a spinoff of Bell Labs of Alcatel-Lucent, plans to introduce a holographic storage system, using $18,000 machines and expensive discs, for specialized markets like video production and storing medical images.General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology... more

ClipsFC
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7 months ago
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Holographic Breakthrough Squeezes 100 DVDs Into a Single Disc!

______Wired______ "Picture a single disc large enough to store your entire DVD... more

Get_Cape
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7 months ago
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Guest Commentary:Safety is an issue with GE/GMO

This article relates to what is happening in Lake County at the present time with genetic engineering (GE) and genetically modified organisms (GMO). What is GE/GMO? GE/GMO is cloning' of our food utilizing bacteria, viruses, biopolymers, (plastics,) DNA genes from other plants, seeds etc.

The gene for Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is used in insecticidal crops and Bt toxin kills beneficial organisms such as bees, ladybugs, lacewings and butterflies through pollen. Bt toxins are also secreted into soil from Bt plant roots and are toxic to earthworms, lepidoptera, and other members of soil fauna, (Stotzky, et al. Nature 402, 480 1999). Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a plant pathogen (literally "cancer causing") used to inject genes into plants and viral genes as a promoter to make the genes express themselves once in the plant. This is the field of molecular biology.

GE/GMO is still a relatively new technology and not well understood. What is known is only the tip of an iceberg. Dr. Craig Venter, a leader in the Human Genome Research Project states: "We know nothing about biology." I fully agree with Dr. Venter's statement. We humans, our entire planet's creatures, plants, vegetation, forests and everything else in our ecosystem could become endangered.

There is no indication that this technology will solve world hunger. Instead, it is known that genes will contaminate our healthy food if we could call it healthy food any more with all the contaminants in the atmosphere, water and soil. In Scotland, pollen was carried 10 miles from the mainland and contaminated crops on Ailsa Craig Isle. In other parts of Europe, years after they stopped planting GE/GMO crops, their non-GMO crops got contaminated. Once genetic pollution gets into the environment it cannot be called back. This could present a very serious problem for our organic and conventionally grown food and possibly threaten our existence.

In May 2000, Canada shipped unapproved GMO seeds (supposedly by accident) to the United Kingdom and other countries of Europe where many acres of the crop had to be destroyed. In the U.S.A. in 2000, massive contamination, corn (maize) crop and the human food chain by Starlink, an unapproved variety for human consumption, showed that genetic pollution to non-transgenic crops and food is inevitable. In India, the GE/GMO rice contaminated an entire region of wild rice. Wild rice is gone, possibly, forever, in that region.

During the 1970s, Republicans and Democrats, working together, created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and passed 28 major laws to protect our air, water, endangered species, wetlands, food safety and public lands. Powerful corporate polluters were finally held accountable, but not for long.

In 2001 the White House instructed the EPA to stop filing new cases against giant factory farms and others without approval from upper-echelon political appointees in the EPA. We have laws on the books, yet crimes go unpunished.

The Food and Drug Administration Agency which is supposed to protect the safety of our food, has betrayed the public and approved GE/GMO without any real scientific study. Furthermore, they allowed GE/GMO to be secretly used in many foods without the publics' knowing. All ingredients, vitamins and minerals must be posted on the container. But not GE/GMO. It is inside our food. There are not enough independent studies done to establish if it is safe for human or animal consumption.

The Lake County Board of Supervisors first voted to ban cultivation of GE/GMO in Lake County, then turned around and formed an advisory committee to advise on what? We scientists have a serious problem with GE/GMO safety. It is an intruder and a pest in our natural foods that humans have consumed ever since the beginning of time. Advisory committee members are good elements of humanity, but they do not have scientific knowledge of this subject.This article relates to what is happening in Lake County at the present time with... more