The New Year is always associated with reflection, renewal, and a commitment to change your lifestyle and achieve new goals. By January 20^th, most of those goals have succumbed to the daily routine of work, family, and friends. Goal planning is apt to fail if the goal isn’t supported with tactical steps to reach the goal. I might want to lose 20 pounds or learn how to play guitar but unless I have real actions to support the goal, I might as well as buy a pair of jeans with a bigger waistline and unsubscribe from Guitar World magazine.

To project managers, aligning goals with action plans isn’t anything new; every year we set goals and objectives, initiate projects, and develop detailed tasks. Despite the utility of project schedules, I’m not likely to build a weight loss plan or develop a rehearsal schedule in Microsoft Project. For the personal goals, I like using a task-list approach that I can check off as I make progress to the end goal.

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland on Thursday signed an international copyright agreement, sparking more demonstrations by Internet users who have protested for days over fear it will lead to online censorship.

After the signing, protesters rallied in the Polish cities of Poznan and Lublin to express their anger over the treaty. Lawmakers for the left-wing Palikot's Movement wore masks in parliament to show their dissatisfaction, while the largest opposition party — the right-wing Law and Justice party — called for a referendum on the matter.

Controversy in Poland has been deepening over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Though many other industrialized countries have signed it, popular outrage appears to be greater in Poland than anywhere else.

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NOT SO FAST: Although Israel has a long history of high-tech breakthroughs produced by scrappy little companies, it has fallen behind in one critical area, the speed of Internet connections.

THE REMEDY: In the coming months, Israel's state-owned electric company hopes to change this by rolling out a nationwide, high-speed broadband network.

THE POTENTIAL: Experts say the fiber-optic lines can provide connections of 10 to 100 times current speeds, transforming the way the Internet is used in such areas as entertainment, business and health care.

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Expensive sports channels are pushing cable bills to levels that make Internet-only subscriptions seem ever-more appealing. After its earnings report, Time Warner seemed to be in a bit of denial over the cable exodus as we discussed yesterday. At least one reason for the rise in cord cutting has to do with cost. As commenter TooDiesel lamented, cable packages don't come cheap. "I think part of the problem is the ridiculously high price of TW cable too.  I live in Charlotte, can't get TW for less than $75 no matter what package I select," he wrote. Well, TooDiesel a lot of that has to do with sports packages driving up those prices, as data offered by AllThingsD's Peter Kafka confirms. 

RELATED: No Matter What Time Warner Says, Cord Cutting Is Happening

Looking at Kafka's chart of 2012 wholesale prices for each channel (below), we see that sports channels rank as the number one and two most expensive offerings, with a smattering of rankings in the top 25, confirming the fears cable execs had expressed back in December as they came to deals with these channels. 

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Volcanic seafloor vents that roar with the scalding heat of Earth's interior don't stay hot forever. Eventually, over hundreds or thousands of years, they flicker out and turn cold.

Yet new research reveals that the action on these oases of life on the seafloor doesn't stop when the heat goes off. Life goes on in the frigid dark, but on a teeny scale.

It turns out that large populations of bacteria live on expired vents, and these microbes are very different from those that thrive when the vents are piping hot, according to a study published this week in the journal mBio.

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Volcanic seafloor vents that roar with the scalding heat of Earth's interior don't stay hot forever. Eventually, over hundreds or thousands of years, they flicker out and turn cold.

Yet new research reveals that the action on these oases of life on the seafloor doesn't stop when the heat goes off. Life goes on in the frigid dark, but on a teeny scale.

It turns out that large populations of bacteria live on expired vents, and these microbes are very different from those that thrive when the vents are piping hot, according to a study published this week in the journal mBio.

Read more...