Schwarzenegger: time to change the energy debate

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD. -proponents of green technology need a better way to make their case, said Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in a speech today, doubtless raised his profile as a main supporter.

Former California Governor and film star gave a keynote at ARPA-E Summit here, alternating one-liners funny and serious discussion on the importance of clean energy technologies for the future prosperity of the country.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

California offers a model for technology companies that can help revitalize the economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, helping the country reduce oil imports, he said. Schwarzenegger signed a law that mandates of global warming reductions in greenhouse gases and the State has a mandate of renewable energies, which resulted in nearly 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources.

But he complained the national debate and the political discourse on clean energy, saying too much of it is stuck in the debate on the science of global warming.

Instead, people should focus on immediate benefits from investing in green technologies, including the improvement of health, save money for consumers from efficiency, economic growth and reduced dependence on foreign oil. He said health, there are about 100,000 premature deaths a year, which may be linked to the use of oil.

"Think about what it means in the Central Valley of California, one in six children must walk with an inhaler. I know that we can change the debate and win the debate, "he said. "We cannot talk about global warming because people who can't relate to."

In California, found that policymakers had to fight efforts to repeal the environmental legislation forces the "status quo" in energy. Elections in the autumn, there was a question of ballot, Schwarzenegger said it was funded by the Ohio coal and oil companies of Texas, to scale back environmental legislation.

He said that the recent instability of the Middle East States sent gyrating oil prices, showing the geopolitical impact of our energy policies. "Why do leftovers small country (e.g. Libya) led by a dictator play havoc with the economic security of America?" he said.

Economically, California has been promoting a green economy with job growth in green technologies than other areas. A company, Solazyme, is the creation of algae fuel that reduce greenhouse gases significantly. It is tested by the Navy, not some wacky environmentalists, "she said.

Instead of crafting "far-sighted policies" in the area of energy, politicians are debating the science of global warming. "There is a disconnect between what is happening and what is being debated," he said.

Another change of "American Idol": Online voting

The boards will be expressed on AmericanIdol.com assisted by Facebook, as a security mechanism, verify the identity of the spectators through a registration process. Each spectator who accesses through Facebook will be allowed to vote 50 times during the weekly after transmission.

The voting of "Idol" beginning on Tuesday. Fox said he would continue to accept votes via toll-free telephone numbers and, for customers of AT&T, text messages.

AT&T to sponsor the online voting, effectively extending its sponsorship of the show. In a statement, Simon Fuller, the creator of "American Idol", said that the show had sought a way to count the votes online for several years.

"Now, Facebook has offered us a safe solution, and we are ready to go," he said.

Adding online voting is one of the most important changes for this year's "Idol", now in its 10th season. As part of a review, the show has two new judges, Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez and has made several changes to the format.

Online vote option should greatly increase the number of votes each week for competitors.

Katherine Meizel, author of "Idolized: music, Media and identity in" American Idol "," said that the addition of online voting could also extend the voting demographic.

"For years, there has been criticism that suggest that the dominance of Southern" Idol "winner is due to the predominance of AT&T in the South, so that this could alleviate that problem," he said in an e-mail.

TV-reality producers are increasingly trying to incorporate the Web the hearing and the Elimination of their competitions. "the X-Factor," the singing contest that Simon Cowell, the former "Idol" judge, import from Great Britain, the United States has reported an option to vote online as well. That show will premiere on Fox in the fall.

MS. Meizel noted that spin-off of "Idol" in other countries have already incorporated online voting, including the Arabic language "Super Star", telecast from 2003 to 2008.

"The public discourse about that show often relied on the idea of democratisation and the potential symbolic significance of the vote in the Middle East," he said. "And Americans are used to talk about the Internet as a democratizing force. For "American Idol", in particular, where voting is really about consumer choice disguised as quintessential Act of the democratic process, the online option really stresses that type of thought. "

New targets nonprofit Tech cooperation, social change

A new non-profit Wednesday launched an advocacy group for tech and co-founder of Twitter will focus on using technology to drive improvements in the U.S. education system and other social changes.

One of the goals of ConvergeUS, the brainchild of TechNet, CEO and co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, is to convene various groups working on a "technology innovation blueprint," a plan for the use of technology and social media to drive social change, said its founders. ConvergeUS will work with three other groups every year to work on social issues, with a Summit each year, where the top thinkers in technology and social issues will gather in Silicon Valley, said Rey Ramsey, CEO of TechNet.

"We have some things really left to do for America," Ramsey said during an event kick-off. "Everybody in this room understands the transformative power of technology. There is almost no area untouched by technology in our lives. But there is still work to do in the social sector. "

A relatively slow pace of technological innovation in the social sector, relation to other areas of growth, "gnaws at me," Ramsey said.

ConvergeUS is based on a philosophy at Twitter that "doing good" is important, Stone said. "You can really have a positive global impact, it is possible to make money, and you can have a lot of fun along the way," he said. "This is a new definition of success for your business. You have all these three things together, or you don't. "

Julius Genachowski [cq], President of the u.s. Federal Communications Commission has appreciated the effort. "All we can do to support this effort to bring our best minds, our talent, our best technology platforms in space, the space of business and social space will pay tremendous dividends, mutually for the country," he said.

The new group will host an annual Summit at the end of this year, social innovators, entrepreneurs, business leaders, problem solvers and subject experts invited to address social issues. The group will work on other social projects as well as three identified as main focuses each year, the founders, he said.

ConvergeUS Wednesday, announced a partnership with two groups focused on improvement of parts of the U.S. education system, elementary reading campaign, a coalition focused on improving reading competence and the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, focused on improving student performance in math and science education.

ConvergeUS has also appointed Babson College as an academic partner. The University of Massachusetts has been rated the # 1 College for entrepreneurship for 14 years running by U.S. News & World Report.

Another non-profit partnership will be announced in a few weeks.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecommunications policy in the Government of the United States for the IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. E-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com of Grant.

Microsoft has a change of heart about keeping the Internet safe

ISPS should those who maintain hacked PC anywhere? Security chief executive of Microsoft used to think so, but now had a change of heart.

Speaking at the RSA Conference Tuesday, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney said that she thought it was a good idea to be service providers that those on the hook to keep infected PCS from the rest of the Internet.

"Last year at RSA, I said, ' you know we need to think about ISP, because the IOC for the public sector, and we need to think about their consumer scan machines and making sure they are clean and possibly quarantined them from the Internet, '" he said. "But over the last year as I thought much more about this I realized that there are many flaws with that model."

Consumers can see security scans as invasive and an invasion of privacy and with more and more people use the Internet as their telephone, quarantining a PC could amount to cutting off someone's 911 service, he said. "We see the scenery, right: a heart attack, I ran to my computer, it says, you must install four patches and reboot before you can access the Internet. That is not the experience that we strive for ".

Then there is the biggest problem of all. ISP would have to bear the costs. "Puts a lot of burden on ISPs, because they are the ones that are gating access to the Internet," said Charney.

ISPs have experimented with different ways to reduce the infected computers. Comcast, for example, has a service called constant guard that warn customers when they have a security problem.

But cut infected customer service is a costly proposition. "It takes only a phone call from a consumer to make you lose your profit margin for the year" on users, said Craig Labovitz, chief scientist with firm Arbor Networks, in a telephone interview network monitoring.

Labovitz said that technology companies are coming up with new ways to rid the world of infected machines for about two decades now, without success. "Even if we force end users to maintain their patch update there are still a huge number of zero days," he said, referring to defects in software patches that can be used to take a fully patched PCS. "It's an arms race that keeps going. There is certainly any single bullet. "

Still, Charney thinks that there are ways to improve things.

He thinks the company Internet could take a page from organizations like the World Health Organization and find new ways to keep infected PCs away from the rest of the network--to "enforce goodness," he said.

Perhaps the solution is for consumers to share trusted certificates on the health of their personal computers--including data if running anti-virus or is fully patched--Charney suggested. He called this "collective defence". An example? A bank may ask customers to sign up for a program that would scan the PC for signs of infection during online sessions. If there is a problem, the Bank could limit then what the customer might make--topping out at $ 2000 transactions, for example.

That may end up to be a more viable model for the Internet, said Charney. "The user remains in control. The user can say I don't want to pass a health certificate, "said" there can be consequences to that decision, but you can do it. "

Robert McMillan covers the security of your computer and General technology breaking news for the IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @ bobmcmillan. E-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com, Robert