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The bill would establish an 18-member task force of 10 Democrats and eight Republicans with bipartisan co-chairs and seek to examine all aspects of the financial condition of the US government.

The freeze will save between 10 and 15 billion US dollars on the 2011 budget, increase over the next two years and rise to the 250 billion dollar figure, the official said.

“We are proposing a hard freeze in non-security discretionary spending in 2011, and then continuing that freeze in 2012 and 2013,” a senior administration official said on condition of anonymity.

“That’s the decision-making process the president and the economic team went through. It’s the very same process American families have gone through for the past several years.”

The size of the deficit is one factor along with high unemployment and the sluggish economic recovery from the worst financial crisis in decades that is helping to drag down public perceptions of Obama’s economic management. Related article: Obama vows to help middle class

The president has also made populist assaults on Wall Street, and last week traveled to an economic blackspot in Ohio to show everyday Americans that he cares about their plight amid 10-percent unemployment.

On Saturday, Obama offered support for a bi-partisan attempt in Congress to create a fiscal task force intended to tackle the burgeoning deficit.

Discretionary spending in the fiscal 2010 budget amounted to 447 billion US dollars — around a sixth of total outlays — a figure that will remain constant in US budgets until 2013,ghd straightener, the official said.

It may also force Obama to scale back the size of his ambitious reform agenda, just one year into his four-year term of office. Related article: One good term better than two bad ones: Obama

The spending is therefore optional, and the product of a choice by the government, unlike spending on entitlements like health care programs, or Social Security retirement schemes which is mandatory.

“We are in the midst of fighting a war and have security needs — we are going to fund those security needs as necessary,ugg shop,” one official said.

Fierce assaults on Obama’s agenda, including his ambitious health reform plan, were one factor in the Republican victory in a Massachusetts seat last week that stripped away the Democratic supermajority in the Senate.

The fiscal straitjacket will lead to painful decisions on some government programs beloved of Democratic leaders and lawmakers in Congress and will crimp the spending plans of some of the members of Obama’s own cabinet.

The US government closed its 2009 fiscal year with a record 1.416-trillion-dollar budget deficit and the White House forecasts an even bigger gap of 1.502 trillion US dollars in fiscal 2010.

“The savings from the three-year freeze will amount to 250 billion US dollars over the next decade,” the official said.

Obama: worst of economic storm passed

Google must be used to having its neutrality questioned by now. However, when the alleged home of neutrality comes after you,The North Face Coat, perhaps you wonder if all this questioning of your motives is ever going to stop.

Hanspeter Thuer, the federal data protection commissioner of Switzerland, accused Google of not doing enough to blur faces and license plates. And he demanded that “Google immediately take its Google Street View online service off the Internet.”

Noser’s reaction was charming in the extreme: “There is probably no problem for my wife, as you could also recognize my companion in the picture.” Somehow, the use of the word “probably” offers a hearteningly realistic view of humanity on the part of the Parliamentarian. I think he will go far with such a sanguine view of the world’s workings.

Whenever countries in Europe raise objections such as these, it appears that Google finds an appropriately European solution: discussions and talks, followed, no doubt,ugg shoes, by the parsing of a few nuances, until the issue seems to recede from the public eye.

Not so long ago, it was the Greeks who decided they weren’t too happy with Street View’s prying artificial eyes. Now, according to the Associated Press, it’s the Swiss who are getting nervous about their much vaunted (and much-profited from) privacy.

A Google statement to the Associated Press said that the company would discuss the matter further with the authorities in order to “demonstrate our industry-leading applications for protecting the private sphere.”

Ah, Switzerland. I have no reason to believe the man on the bike is a member of Parliament.

Then the Google eye can happily go back to work.

(Credit:CC Robert Thomson/Flickr)

Perhaps the most interesting snippet of this governmental request is that it appears to coincide with the Swiss newspaper NZZ espying a member of Parliament, Ruedi Noser, on Street View in the company of a lady who was not his wife, but was,ugg store usa, praise be, his assistant.

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But in 2008, NORAD officially moved to the nearby Peterson Air Force Base. Still, even to this day, it maintains an alternate command center at Cheyenne Mountain that it shares with U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM.

(Credit:U.S. Air Force)

Now the Swiss go after Google Street View

Google must be used to having its neutrality questioned by now. However, when the alleged home of neutrality comes after you, perhaps you wonder if all this questioning of your motives is ever going to stop.

Ah, Switzerland. I have no reason to believe the man on the bike is a member of Parliament.

Then the Google eye can happily go back to work.

(Credit:CC Robert Thomson/Flickr)

Whenever countries in Europe raise objections such as these, it appears that Google finds an appropriately European solution: discussions and talks,ugg boots usa, followed, no doubt, by the parsing of a few nuances, until the issue seems to recede from the public eye.

Noser’s reaction was charming in the extreme: “There is probably no problem for my wife, as you could also recognize my companion in the picture.” Somehow, the use of the word “probably” offers a hearteningly realistic view of humanity on the part of the Parliamentarian. I think he will go far with such a sanguine view of the world’s workings.

Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

A Google statement to the Associated Press said that the company would discuss the matter further with the authorities in order to “demonstrate our industry-leading applications for protecting the private sphere.”

Perhaps the most interesting snippet of this governmental request is that it appears to coincide with the Swiss newspaper NZZ espying a member of Parliament,ghd hair straightners, Ruedi Noser, on Street View in the company of a lady who was not his wife, but was, praise be, his assistant.

As a potential buyer or follower of the tech industry, please leave a comment below on the type of data you would find useful and how you would like to see that information presented on the site: in monthly blog posts, trend lines on the categories doors, or as part of our product-sorting tools?

Apple tends to hover at about 10 percent, but its share can spike to 15 percent or 20 percent when new models are reviewed. Other manufacturers also see such spikes around new products, but they aren’t as pronounced. (See the above chart, which tracks the major manufacturers and calls out newly published product reviews that resulted in traffic spikes.)

Asus: According to IDC, Asus has risen from almost nothing a couple of years ago to 3.5 percent in the first quarter. CNET’s monthly numbers for the first three months show Asus running between 7 percent and 10 percent, and as of July it was up to 20 percent. (It’s my guess that CNET is a leading indicator when it comes to the popularity of Netbooks and that Asus will show a jump in IDC’s second-quarter numbers–perhaps not as dramatic as the 16 percent to 20 percent seen on CNET, but a nice gain nonetheless.)

Who benefited from Dell’s tumble? Hewlett-Packard began at 24 percent in July 2007, slipped to 20 percent by the spring of 2008, and now sits at 30 percent, giving it the largest share of considered users of any notebook maker on CNET.

The macro numbers are interesting, but the more intriguing stuff can be found in the micro picture. Within the notebook category, the two-year trend lines reveal how the major manufacturers have fared versus their competition. For example, in July 2007, Dell products or prices were viewed by 40 percent of all considered users on CNET, but that number dipped to 25 percent last summer and it has continued to sink in 2009 to less than 20 percent.

As a result, we think you will find the CNET numbers to be another piece of the puzzle when trying to determine which notebook to buy. Just like a single product review, or user opinion, or even a friend’s recommendation, they aren’t the whole or the final answer. But they are useful for seeing in a very timely way which notebook manufacturers are getting most of the attention on our site and how they are faring each month. (CNET also produces lists of specific products that users are interested in, but this new data focuses on manufacturers to provide another view into the current market.)

The online equivalent to seeing what people are checking out in a store is CNET’s Business Intelligence group, which crunches a “Matrix”-worthy amount of data about activity across CNET’s many sites. Their reports are typically used by the sales team to demonstrate the power of the CNET brand and its influence on buyers. Now, however, we are taking the first steps to making that information available to you as one of the tools we provide to meet our core mission: connecting buyers and sellers.

HP: IDC shows HP hovering at around 25 percent for the past couple of years, with a jump to about 30 percent in the first quarter of 2009. CNET also shows HP tracking at around 25 percent until October of last year, when it topped 30 percent (where it has remained since).

Imagine that you’re looking for a new laptop and you ask your friends what they own, what their experience has been with that manufacturer, and whether they would buy the same machine again. Chances are the responses will be useful, to a point. It’s likely your friends have not purchased a notebook in a while, so they have little insight into the current crop. And their experience with breakage and customer service–whether it’s good or bad–is valid but anecdotal.

For now, our foray into this new area is modest–just this blog post and the above charts. In the near future, we will be injecting this data into the site in various ways. For example, the product-filtering tool on the notebook category door and elsewhere will show how certain manufacturers are trending on CNET (the manufacturer choice is the most commonly used filter in this tool, so we know readers are concerned about who is making their hardware).

But we’re also realists. We know that a CNET review is just one part of the research that goes into picking out a new phone, laptop, or TV–especially in this economy. The other sources you’re likely to turn to include other review sites, manufacturer information such as specs, reviews from other users,timberland womens boots, and advice from friends.

What our data shows is that the number of considered users looking at notebooks climbed 31 percent from July 2007 to July 2008 and–despite Depression 2.0–the number of these users climbed another 25 percent in the past 12 months (sorry, the data guardians at CNET won’t let me publish the actual totals but I’m working on them). That’s healthy growth that could be the result of several factors. As the site editor, I’ll list the two I think are most plausible: our superb laptop editors, led by Dan Ackerman, are cranking out more reviews than ever before, and our SEO team has made sure their reviews rank extremely high on Google and other search engines. Even if people aren’t buying as much in this economy, they are certainly researching for when they are ready.

U.S. notebook shipments by manufacturer

The big winner has been Asus, which Ackerman calls “masters of the Netbook.” And right now, Netbooks are hot on CNET. After unveiling its first Eee PC in late 2007, Asus has climbed from 2 percent in July 2007 to 13 percent a year later to 20 percent in July 2009.

After notebooks, we’ll be collecting the data for the other key categories on CNET, particularly TVs and mobile phones, and coming up with novel ways to incorporate the information into the site. For example, we can see which phones are popular with people who live in your area.

As you can see, the trends observed by CNET and IDC are similar. The key difference is that CNET is tracking people while they research and shop, and IDC is following actual shipments. CNET is also compiling stats each month, versus quarterly for IDC. The two reports together are very complementary, but CNET is tracking the consideration phase, so we theoretically can spot trends before they manifest in actual sales, and sooner.

Dell: IDC shows Dell peaking at nearly 28 percent during the last three months of 2007 and then steadily drifting down to 23 percent in the first quarter of this year. CNET shows Dell at about 30 percent in the final quarter of 2007 before sliding to between 24 percent and 26 percent during the first three months of 2009. Since then Dell has slid further to its current 19 percent.

Notebook shopping, with help from CNET's friends

At CNET,uggs boots, we take great pride in the quality and thoroughness of our reviews. We know they play an important role in helping millions of consumers to determine which tech products to buy and which to shun.

Apple: IDC has Apple ranging from 7 percent to 11 percent for the past couple of years. CNET also shows Apple in a similar band, with the notable exception of some sharp monthly spikes around the publication of new product reviews (which typically occur within a day or two of a new notebook being released on the market).

Of course, this data is only part of the picture, and one obvious question is how closely CNET’s numbers track actual sales figures. For those numbers I’ll turn to IDC, which issues quarterly shipments for the major notebook makers, and compare four notable names:

Nokia considers entering Netbook market

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cell phones,sell mbt shoes, could be preparing to enter the crowded Netbook market.

(Credit:CNET )

Nokia is likely hoping to cash in on Netbooks’ popularity.

Nokia has been marketing its N97 smartphone as a mobile computer.