FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein will open a DTV transition event Thursday on educating residents of rural areas and tribal lands. Cathy Seidel, the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau chief, will moderate the event, 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. at the FCC. Officials of the U.S. departments of Labor, Interior and Health and Human Services, the National Congress of American Indians, the Navajo Nation Telecommunications Commission and the American Library Association are on the first panel. Representatives of Alaska, Massachusetts, the American Farm Bureau, the National Association of Counties, 4-H, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the National Grange are on the second panel. Questions can be sent during the event to dtvworkshop@fcc.gov.
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein will open a DTV transition event Thursday on educating residents of rural areas and tribal lands. Cathy Seidel, the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau chief, will moderate the event, 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. at the FCC. Officials of the U.S. departments of Labor, Interior and Health and Human Services, the National Congress of American Indians, the Navajo Nation Telecommunications Commission and the American Library Association are on the first panel. Representatives of Alaska, Massachusetts, the American Farm Bureau, the National Association of Counties, 4-H, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the National Grange are on the second panel. Questions can be sent during the event to dtvworkshop@fcc.gov.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has upgraded its CBP.gov homepage. According to a CBP news release on the upgrade, this is the first in a series of upgrades designed to provide a modernized, user-friendly Web site. The new homepage features more and larger photos, a rotating news ticker and streamlined layout. Future upgrades will simplify the navigation structure and improve users' experience with second level feature pages. (See ITT's Online Archives or 01/24/08 news, 08012430 1, for BP summary announcing that CBP would be updating CBP.gov.)
Blu-ray “has the advantage in the format war, and consumer adoption of Blu-ray will likely accelerate if Blu- ray can maintain the advantage,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told analysts Wednesday in a quarterly earnings call. Still, Netflix isn’t ready to declare Blu-ray the winner over HD DVD, Hastings said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued its Performance and Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2007 which contains certain performance data concerning CBP's progress in achieving, among other things, the six strategic goals that are set forth in CBP's Strategic Plan for FYs 2005-2010.
The satellite industry is “as stable as I have ever seen it in 20 years,” Sea Launch President Rob Peckham told a Washington Space Business Roundtable lunch Thursday. There’s potential for growth but “at minimum, there’s stability,” he said. That doesn’t mean doing business is easy, he said: “I don’t think there’s too many other businesses out there that are one step away from catastrophe as this industry is.” Sea Launch saw disaster first hand when one of its rockets blew up at launch last January (CD Feb 1/07 p14). Sea Launch’s successful launch last week showed it overcame “two significant hurdles": regaining the company’s “launch tempo” and “understanding what the ocean is capable of.” That doesn’t mean it won’t happen again, he said. He’s satisfied with investigations conducted and improvements made, he said, but “anyone who says ‘never’ will be proven wrong.” This year, Sea Launch plans five more sea launches and three land launches, he said. It plans to launch another nine rockets in 2009 and ten in 2010. Sea Launch is also talking to NASA about providing a resupply service for the International Space Station, Peckham said. “As my predecessor used to say, why would NASA use their brightest minds to get toilet paper and run it up to the station?” Peckham isn’t concerned about rivals, he said. New launch systems mean innovation is occurring in the industry, he said. Meanwhile, there’s no point worrying about China’s reentry and India’s entry into the market because both are government-funded programs. “They're going to be in business whether there’s commercial business or not.”
Shipper's NewsWire reports that the Census Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security have resolved their standoff over the rulemaking to require the electronic filing of export information. According to the article, the rule for mandatory use of the Automated Export System is expected to be published soon in the Federal Register. (SNW, dated 01/23/08, available at http://www.americanshipper.com/SNW_story.asp?news=82393.)
STANFORD, Calif. -- Green startups are on the verge of landing big CE recycling deals, their CEOs said at a MIT/Venture Lab conference here late Tuesday.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, created by an Act of Congress, has issued a notice announcing it will hold its first 2008 open public hearing in Washington, DC on February 7, 2008 to address the "Implications of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment on National Security.'' The hearing is also being conducted to obtain commentary about the status of U.S.-China relations, in order to assess the progress of the bilateral relationship since the granting of permanent normalized trade relations to China, and to identify the challenges facing the relationship in 2008. (USCESRC notice, FR Pub 01/22/08, available at http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20081800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-956.pdf)
On January 15, 2008, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission issued its report to Congress that includes recommendations for creating and sustaining the surface transportation system of the U.S.