Bessemer Chamber of Commerce developing new visitors map ...

BESSEMER, Alabama -- In a time of GPS and tablet computers and smart phones, people seemingly hold a world of information in their hands and take it with them wherever they go.

So you might not think a traditional paper visitors map would have much value for a tourist, conventioneer or business person who comes to your town and ventures out of the motel in search of a good BBQ joint or a place to drop off some dry cleaning.

But that is not necessarily the case, say officials at the Bessemer Area Chamber of Commerce

"Even with all the electronics, it's still the map that you get from the hotels and motels, and it's got everybody listed on the back," according to William Parsons, Chamber board chairman. "This is so much better if you have the map in your hand. You can locate things you didn't know were here. People from out of town don't know the local businesses."

And Barbara Highbargin of Village Profile, a firm based in Elgin, Ill., that develops maps and other products for chambers of commerce across the United States, says that maps are "a big help for some of the mom and pop businesses."

"GPS is really great, and it's really helped businesses that are big chain businesses," Highbargin said during a presentation at the Bessemer Chamber offices on Thursday. "So if you go somewhere and you want to go to Wendy's... that's going to get you there. But if you go to a new town and you don't know where their star restaurants are, this tells you that."

That is why the Bessemer Chamber is working with Village Profile to do a new visitors map for Bessemer -- the first new map developed for the city in over a decade -- as well as a web site that will feature the advertisers who are on the map.

The new site will complement, not replace, the present chamber site.

The hope is that these new products will help the chamber more effectively promote Bessemer, including its businesses and all of its attractions -- such as the Bessemer Civic Center, the Hall of History and Frank House Municipal Golf Course.

Village Profile, according to Highbargin, is a family-owned media and publishing business that has been in operation for 25 years.

Village Profile offers such products as maps, print publications, web sites, e-books, smartphone apps and mobile business directories.

The firm is a member of 600 chambers of commerce and does business with about 1,400, according to Highbargin.

"We're a big supporter of chambers of commerce," she said. "They are our primary customers."

Ronnie Acker, President of the chamber, said that it is important for the chamber to have a new map since it has been about a decade since a map was developed and about 5 years since there were any copies of it left to give out.

The Chamber will receive assistance from the City of Bessemer -- namely Eddy Parsons in the city's IT and economic and community development departments -- in making the map as accurate as possible, according to Acker and Parsons.

The new map will include projections of new streets or changes to streets that are forecast over the next 2 or 3 years. "That way the map will stay up to date," Acker said.

"It will be a good map," Parsons said.

And the map will not be just a traditional paper map but a map for the 21st century.

Advertisers on the map will also receive an ad on the new web site, and they'll have the option of including a QR code in their ad, so someone with the map and a smart phone in their hand can scan the code and go straight to the advertiser's own web site.

Highbargin used her tablet computer to show a?similar site that her firm did in Decatur, Ala. The site has chapters -- things like history, shopping, and recreation and entertainment.

The Bessemer site will be similar, according to Highbargin. "This provides good overall information for visitors and, because of the way we link this, if somebody types in "Bessemer history" or "shopping and dining Bessemer' (in an Internet search), this site is going to come up," she said.

Advertisers can buy chapter ads or smaller banner ads on the site, and the ads will link to the advertisers' web sites. Businesses who buy ads will also be included in an interactive map on the site, according to Highbargin.

Highbargin will sell the ads herself, going on sales calls in person. "That's why I like Village Profile," Acker said. "They have her here selling face to face. And that's what my members like.'

The chamber will share in the proceeds of the ad sales for the map and web site, according to Highbargin, who said the chamber's share will probably be in the range of 10-15 percent. The ads will also pay for the cost of developing and printing the map.

"The money is not that important," Parsons said. "It's about promoting Bessemer."

"This is the best deal for our members and the city," according to Acker, who said that the chamber considered doing the map in house but realized that it would strain their volunteers -- who are already producing a magazine -- and that the product would ultimately not be as good.

Highbargin said that businesses have until July 15 to buy an ad.

In the next phase, by August 15, she said that Acker must supply her with any of the basic editorial information about the city -- including locations and contact information of local attractions, hospitals, and other services -- that will be included on the web site.

The map should be available by November 1, with the number of copies dependent on how many ads Village Profile has been able to sell. "I am hoping for about 5,000 copies," Acker said.

The map will be distributed by such entities as hotels, real estate agents, the city of Bessemer and the chamber.

The web site will be operational by about January 1, according to Highbargin.?

For more information, call the Chamber at (205) 425-3253. The chamber's web site is www.bessemerchamber.com.

Source: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/06/bessemer_chamber_of_commerce_i.html

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Court documents reveal secret rules allowing NSA to use US data without a warrant

NSA's information gathering practices have been further detailed in court papers revealed by The Guardian. While the agency has continued to reiterate that it doesn't collect its data indiscriminately, the leaked papers detail several loopholes that allow it to gather data from both American and foreign origins without the need for a warrant. If you use data encryption or other privacy tools, your communications are likely to receive extra attention, and the agency can indefinitely keep any information assembled for "crypto-analytic, traffic analysis or signal exploitation purposes" -- in short, if the NSA believes may be relevant in the future.

One reason to hold onto said files could simply be the fact that the data is encrypted and NSA wants to be able to analyze its protection. The security agency can also give the FBI and other government organizations any data if it contains a significant amount of foreign intelligence, or information about a crime that has (or will be) committed. Any data that's "inadvertently acquired" through the NSA's methods -- and could potentially contain details of US citizens -- can be held for up to five years before it has to be deleted. The Guardian's uploaded the leaked papers in full -- hit the source links for more.

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Disabled workers paid just pennies an hour ? and it's legal - Open ...

By Anna Schecter, Producer, NBC News

One of the nation's best-known charities is paying disabled workers as little as 22 cents an hour, thanks to a 75-year-old legal loophole that critics say needs to be closed.

Goodwill Industries, a multibillion-dollar company whose executives make six-figure salaries, is among the nonprofit groups permitted to pay thousands of disabled workers far less than minimum wage because of a federal law known as Section 14 (c). Labor Department records show that some Goodwill workers in Pennsylvania earned wages as low as 22, 38 and 41 cents per hour in 2011.

"If they really do pay the CEO of Goodwill three-quarters of a million dollars, they certainly can pay me more than they're paying," said Harold Leigland, who is legally blind and hangs clothes at a Goodwill in Great Falls, Montana for less than minimum wage.

"It's a question of civil rights," added his wife, Sheila, blind from birth, who quit her job at the same Goodwill store when her already low wage was cut further. "I feel like a second-class citizen. And I hate it."

Section 14 (c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was passed in 1938, allows employers to obtain special minimum wage certificates from the Department of Labor. The certificates give employers the right to pay disabled workers according to their abilities, with no bottom limit to the wage.

Most, but not all, special wage certificates are held by nonprofit organizations like Goodwill that then set up their own so-called "sheltered workshops" for disabled employees, where employees typically perform manual tasks like hanging clothes.

For more on disabled workers and sub-minimum-wage pay watch 'Rock Center' tonight.

The non-profit certificate holders can also place employees in outside, for-profit workplaces including restaurants, retail stores, hospitals and even Internal Revenue Service centers. Between the sheltered workshops and the outside businesses, more than 216,000 workers are eligible to earn less than minimum wage because of Section 14 (c), though many end up earning the full federal minimum wage of $7.25.

NBC News

Harold Leigland, who is blind, with his guide dog on the bus during his morning commute to the Goodwill facility in Great Falls, Montana, where he works hanging clothing.

When a non-profit provides Section 14 (c) workers to an outside business, it sets the salary and pays the wages. For example, the Helen Keller National Center, a New York school for the blind and deaf, has a special wage certificate and has placed students in a Westbury, N.Y., Applebee's franchise. The employees' pay ranged from $3.97 per hour to $5.96 per hour in 2010. The franchise told NBC News it has also hired workers at minimum wage from Helen Keller. A spokesperson for Applebee's declined to comment on Section 14 (c).

Helen Keller also placed several students at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Manhasset, N.Y., in 2010, where they earned $3.80 and $4.85 an hour. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman defended the Section 14 (c) program as providing jobs to "people who would otherwise not have [the opportunity to work]."

Most Section 14 (c) workers are employed directly by nonprofits. In 2001, the most recent year for which numbers are available, the GAO estimated that more than 90 percent of Section 14 (c) workers were employed at nonprofit work centers.

Critics of Section 14 (c) have focused much of their ire on the nonprofits, where wages can be just pennies an hour even as some of the groups receive funding from the government. At one workplace in Florida run by a nonprofit, some employees earned one cent per hour in 2011.

"People are profiting from exploiting disabled workers," said Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. "It is clearly and unquestionably exploitation."

Defenders of Section 14 (c) say that without it, disabled workers would have few options. A Department of Labor spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News that Section 14 (c) "provides workers with disabilities the opportunity to be given meaningful work and receive an income."

Terry Farmer, CEO of ACCSES, a trade group that calls itself the "voice of disability service providers," said scrapping the provision could "force [disabled workers] to stay at home," enter rehabilitation, "or otherwise engage in unproductive and unsatisfactory activities."

Harold Leigland, however, said he feels that Goodwill can pay him a low wage because the company knows he has few other places to go. "We are trapped," he said. "Everybody who works at Goodwill is trapped."

Leigland, a 66-year-old former massage therapist with a college degree, currently earns $5.46 per hour in Great Falls.

His wages have risen and fallen based on "time studies," the method nonprofits use to calculate the salaries of Section 14 (c) workers. Staff members use a stopwatch to determine how long it takes a disabled worker to complete a task. That time is compared with how long it would take a person without a disability to do the same task. The nonprofit then uses a formula to calculate a salary, which may be equal to or less than minimum wage. The tests are repeated every six months.

NBC News

Harold Leigland works at the Goodwill facility in Great Falls, Montana, where he earns $5.46 an hour.

Leigland's pay has been higher than $5.46, but it has also dropped down to $4.37 per hour, based on the time-study results.
He said he believes Goodwill makes the time studies harder when they want his wage to be lower.

"Sometimes the test is easier than others. It depends on if, as near as I can figure, they want your wage to go up or down. It's that simple," he said.

His wife, Sheila, 58, spent four years hanging clothes at the Great Falls Goodwill for about $3.50 an hour. She said the time study was one of the most degrading and stressful parts about her job. "You never know how it's going to come out. It stressed me out a lot," she said.

She quit last summer when she returned to work after knee surgery and found that her wage had been lowered to $2.75 per hour, a training rate.

"At $2.75 it would barely cover my cost of getting to work. I wouldn't make any money," she said.

Harold said he believes Goodwill can afford to pay him minimum wage, based on the salaries paid to Goodwill executives. While according to the company's own figures about 4,000 of the 30,000 disabled workers Goodwill employs at 69 franchises are currently paid below minimum wage, salaries for the CEOs of those franchises that hold special minimum wage certificates totaled almost $20 million in 2011.

In 2011 the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Southern California took home $1.1 million in salary and deferred compensation. His counterpart in Portland, Oregon, made more than $500,000. Salaries for CEOs of the roughly 150 Goodwill franchises across America total more than $30 million.

Goodwill International CEO Jim Gibbons, who was awarded $729,000 in salary and deferred compensation in 2011, defended the executive pay.

"These leaders are having a great impact in terms of new solutions, in terms of innovation, and in terms of job creation," he said.

Gibbons also defended time studies, and the whole Section 14 (c) approach. He said that for many people who make less than minimum wage, the experience of work is more important than the pay.

"It's typically not about their livelihood. It's about their fulfillment. It's about being a part of something. And it's probably a small part of their overall program," he said.

Read Goodwill's full statement

And Goodwill and the organizations that run the sheltered workshops are not alone in their support for Section 14 (c). In many cases, the families of the workers who have severe disabilities say their loved ones enjoy the work experience, enjoy getting a paycheck, and the amount is of no consequence.

NBC News

Sheila Leigland, who is blind, with her guide dog. She quit her job at Goodwill in Great Falls, Montana, after her hourly wage was lowered to $2.75.

"I feel really good about it. I don't have to worry so much about him," said Fran Davidson, whose son Jeremy has worked at Goodwill in Great Falls, Montana, for more than a decade. "I know he's not getting picked on, and he's in a safe place. He enjoys what he's doing, and he's happy, and that's what we like for our kids." Jeremy started out working for a sub-minimum wage but did well on his last time study and is currently earning $7.80 an hour, Montana's minimum wage.

But foes of Section 14 (c) have hopes for a new bill that's now before Congress that would repeal Section 14 (c) and make sub-minimum wages illegal across the board.

"Meaningful work deserves fair pay," the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Gregg Harper, R.-Miss., told NBC News. "This dated provision unjustly prohibits workers with disabilities from reaching their full potential."

The bill is opposed by trade associations for the employers of the disabled, and past attempts to change the law have failed. But Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind and a foe of the sheltered workshop system, is cautiously optimistic that this time the bill will pass, and end what he called a "two-tiered system."

That system, explained Maurer, says "'Americans who have disabilities aren't as valuable as other people,' and that's wrong. These folks have value. We should recognize that value."

Monica Alba contributed to this report.

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Source: http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/21/19062348-disabled-workers-paid-just-pennies-an-hour-and-its-legal

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Scientists clear quantum computing hurdle

Researchers have devised a new way to prevent neighboring quantum bits from interfering with each other, bringing large-scale quantum computing one step closer to reality.

By Eoin O'Carroll,?Staff / June 19, 2013

This illustration looks nothing like an actual atom. The electrons that orbit an atomic nucleus are actually in all possible places at the same time.

Illustration by Jake Turcotte

Enlarge

Large-scale quantum computing, that is, leveraging the seemingly paradoxical behavior of subatomic particles to develop blazingly fast computers, is now one step closer to reality, now that scientists have found a way to better control how these particles behave.?

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Normal computers store information in binary digits, or bits. A bit can have only one of two values, most commonly represented by a 0 or a 1. Bits can be embodied in levers, punch cards, vacuum tubes, magnetic strips, tiny pits on compact discs, electrical capacitors, or any thing that can have two distinct states. ?

Quantum computers, by contrast, use quantum bits, or qubits, which arise out of the properties of elementary particles. At the atomic and subatomic scales, the rules seem to be different from those for larger objects. An electron, for instance, exists in more than one place at the same time. The same goes for the magnitude of its angular momentum, or "spin," which can have more than one value at the same time. ??

This behavior, called quantum superposition, allows qubits to have values of 0, 1, or both, all at the same time, creating the potential for computers that can carry out incredibly complex calculations in a fraction of the time that it would take a traditional computer. One of the most promising ways to create quantum computer chips is to use electrodes to control and harness the superposed spins of electrons bound to phosphorous atoms within silicon chips.?

But researchers attempting to do this kept running into a problem: When you change the spin of one electron, you end up affecting the spin of the ones next to it. Think of it like a garage door opener that opens every garage on the street.

In the current issue of the journal Nature Communications, scientists at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, working with theorists at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico say they have found a way around this inadvertent quantum jostling.?

?It is a daunting challenge to rotate the spin of each qubit individually,? says Holger B?ch, a UNSW doctoral candidate and lead author of the new study, in a press release.

Mr.?B?ch and his colleagues found that, if each electron is bound to a different number of phosphorous atoms than its neighbor, each will respond differently to a tuned electromagnetic frequency, allowing each qubit to be distinguished from the ones around it.

?This is an elegant and satisfying piece of work,? said UNSW Professor Michelle Simmons, B?ch's Ph.D advisor. "This first demonstration that we can maintain long spin lifetimes of electrons on multi-donor systems is very powerful. It offers a new method for addressing individual qubits, putting us one step closer to realising a practical, large-scale quantum computer."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/9WGoA7aEm5Y/Scientists-clear-quantum-computing-hurdle

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Video: Kudlow: Bernanke Jumped the Gun

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Lenny Dykstra Released From Prison

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/lenny-dykstra-released-from-prison/

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Report: Cyclist Jan Ullrich admits blood doping

BERLIN (AP) ? Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour de France winner, has admitted for the first time that he received blood-doping treatment from Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes during his career, according to an interview with a German magazine published Saturday.

Ullrich had previously acknowledged having unspecified "contact" with Fuentes, but went further in an interview with the weekly Focus.

"Yes, I received treatment from Fuentes," the German rider was quoted as saying.

Asked if he only engaged in blood doping with Fuentes, Ullrich replied that "the doctor's diagnosis says that." He said he couldn't remember how many times he had received treatment from Fuentes.

In February 2012, the Court of Arbitration for Sport banned Ullrich for two years for blood doping.

The CAS ruled that the German was "fully engaged" in Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes' doping program, exposed in the Operation Puerto probe. The court stripped him of his third-place finish at the 2005 Tour. Ullrich retired in 2007.

Ullrich didn't contest the CAS ruling, saying at the time that he wanted to "put an end to the issue."

IOC vice president Thomas Bach said the confession is "too little, too late."

"Jan Ullrich had his chance for a creditable admission a couple of years ago and he missed it," Bach said in an emailed statement. "Today's confirmation of some of the already well known and established facts does not help Jan Ullrich nor cycling."

The head of Germany's cycling union echoed that sentiment.

"He would have done himself and cycling a favor years ago with such a confession," Rudolf Scharping told German news agency dpa. "But this no longer has anything to do with cycling today."

In Saturday's interview, the 39-year-old Ullrich said that while he had made bad decisions during his career, "I did not harm or defraud anyone."

"Almost everyone took performance-enhancing substances then. I took nothing that the others didn't also take," he was quoted as saying. "For me, fraud starts when I gain an advantage. That wasn't the case. I wanted to ensure equality of opportunities.

"The issue is dealt with for me. I only want to look forward, and never again backward."

Germany's national anti-doping agency said it welcomed acknowledgement of past wrongdoing by athletes, but added that it hoped Ullrich would go beyond the interview and answer its questions.

The agency said in a statement that it would try to get in touch with Ullrich for "further leads and background" which might help its work.

Ullrich's interview comes after Lance Armstrong, the dominant cyclist of his generation, acknowledged in January that he doped for all seven of his Tour wins from 1999-2005. On three of those occasions, Ullrich finished second.

"I am no better than Armstrong, but no worse either," Ullrich was quoted as saying. "The great 'heroes' of earlier years are now people with failures that they have to come to terms with."

Earlier this year, Armstrong said doping became so routine it was "like saying we have to have air in our tires or water in our bottles."

Asked about that comment, Ullrich told Focus: "I can't understand that. I always knew that I was doing something forbidden and wrong."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/report-jan-ullrich-admits-blood-doping-091803638.html

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