Source: no2010.com -

Those who promote the Olympics are interested in power, prestige and profit.
Developers and construction companies stand to benefit from the public money spent on road construction and new sports facilities. Politicians get to preside over a large-scale spectacle. But what will the rest of us get from the [three-year] lead up to the Olympics? What will be the real legacy of the Olympic games?

Politicians and business leaders are quick to promise that the Olympics will not lose money, and that people will not be pushed out of their homes by rent increases, but we can see from the experience of other cities that these promises have not panned out — they are simply a strategy to try to co-opt those opposed to the Games. Continue reading →

Source: Business Insider.com -

Hundreds of thousands of people have descended on Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Three billion are projected to follow on TV and 75 million more on vancouver2010.com.

And people around the world are learning to love obscure sports like curling and biathlon for a couple of weeks.

But before you get too caught up in the sports, remember that the Olympics have little to do with sports.  They’re mostly about money. Continue reading →

Source: NASDAQ

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly declined in January, but the economy continued to shed jobs and revisions painted a bleaker picture for 2009, casting doubt over the labor market’s strength.

The unemployment rate, calculated using a household survey, fell to 9.7% last month from an unrevised 10% in December, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast the jobless rate would edge higher to 10.1%. Continue reading →

Source: CNET

We’ve heard a lot about security issues with the iPhone, but the BlackBerry isn’t immune to threats from malicious apps. Tyler Shields, a senior researcher at the Veracode Research Lab, has written a piece of spyware that allowed me to shoot an SMS command to his phone and have his contact list forwarded to my e-mail address in a demonstration. With another short text command, I was able to get his BlackBerry to e-mail me any SMS messages he sends. Continue reading →