Rick Ross Promises to Stand By Meek Mill Through Prison Bid

Bennett Raglin, Getty Images

Maybach Music Group took a heavy blow on Friday (July 11) when Meek Mill was sentenced to three to six months in prison for violating his parole.

Despite this setback, MMG leader Rick Ross promises to stand by the Philadelphia rapper and give him the support he needs.

“I created MMG years ago, my desire was to create a space where the most talented artists in the world could be nurtured and supported. With that came a commitment. I vowed to support these artist, through the good and the bad,” said Rozay in a statement to MTV News on Saturday (July 12).

“Every individual signed to MMG is not just an artist, they are my family. And with family you ride, or you die. Yesterday, my brother, Meek Mill ran into some unfortunate legal issues. It happens. However, his team, our team, will continue to execute Meek’s plan as close to schedule as possible,” he continued.

Mill’s second album, ‘Dreams Worth More Than Money,’ is slated to drop on Sept. 9. But now that he’s in prison there’s speculation that his project will be put on hold. Not so, according to Ross.

“His album is coming,” he said. “We ask that the fans and the media continue to support him and his music during this time. He’ll be home soon. ‘Dreams Are Worth More Than Money,’ and family is worth more than Everything. MMG FOR LIFE.”

Watch Meek Mill’s ‘Dreams Worth More Than Money’ Album Trailer

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Obama Promises Internet Upgrade for U.S. Schools

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — President Obama visited an innovative middle school in central North Carolina on Thursday to demonstrate the Internet-based education programs that he is proposing to make available nationwide.

Speaking to an audience of excited teenagers in a steamy gymnasium, Mr. Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission to expand an existing program to provide discounted high-speed Internet service to schools and libraries, even if it meant increasing the fees that for years had been added to consumers’ phone bills. He said the initiative could lead to better technology at 99 percent of schools in five years.

“There’s no reason why we can’t replicate the success you’ve found here,” Mr. Obama said to the students’ cheers. “And for those of you who follow politics in Washington, here’s the best news — none of this requires an act of Congress.” To further applause, he added, “We can and we will get started right away.”

Mr. Obama was joined by his education secretary, Arne Duncan, whose department would work with the F.C.C. to revamp the initiative, known as the Schools and Libraries program or E-rate, to provide local schools with Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, among the fastest commercially available. With the federal money that Mr. Obama proposes to redirect for this purpose, schools also could pay for wireless networks throughout their buildings and campuses.

The president singled out Mooresville for its program, which not only upgraded technology but also provided a computer to each student and extra training for teachers. School performance has improved in turn.

Mr. Duncan, speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to North Carolina, said that he had learned of the innovations in Mooresville, a town near Charlotte, because the local school superintendent was a friend. Mr. Duncan said the school quit purchasing textbooks several years ago to pay for the technology. Mr. Obama, he added, wants to “shine a spotlight on best practices and try to take them to scale.”

To pay for a similar technology expansion throughout the United States, the administration wants to improve the efficiency of the current program, and for telephone customers to pay up to $5 a year extra, or about 40 cents monthly, on their bills.

The Schools and Libraries program is part of the Universal Service Fund, an $8.7 billion program that distributes money for several purposes. Nearly half the money goes to a program that has long subsidized telephone and Internet service to rural or remote areas. About $2.2 billion goes to Schools and Libraries, a similar amount supports phone service to low-income consumers, and $200 million pays for telephone and Internet service to health care professionals in rural areas.

As an independent agency, the F.C.C. does not answer directly to the president, but he nominates the agency’s chairman. Any changes to the program’s structure would have to go through a rule-making procedure and be approved by a majority of the commission’s members. Currently there are three members; two seats are vacant.

The program assesses the fees on phone companies, but they typically pass the cost to consumers. The tax is roughly 15 percent on the long-distance portion of phone bills, resulting in a monthly assessment of a few dollars on the average combined home and mobile phone plan.

Schools and libraries that qualify for E-rate support receive discounts of 20 to 90 percent on services and equipment, depending on the household income levels of students and whether the school is in an urban or rural area.

Administration officials say that while the E-rate program, established in 1996, provides low-cost Internet connections to community institutions, the speed of those services is rarely different from those that home subscribers can receive, about 20 megabits per second.

That is fast enough for the average home consumer to stream video, but if dozens of classrooms are trying to view video or listen to digital audio files at the same time, a school’s network will operate much more slowly.

Officials say they also expect private companies to expand their offerings of devices and products like electronic textbooks in response to the expanded program.

Jackie Calmes reported from Mooresville, N.C., and Edward Wyatt from Washington.

Internet Speeds Fail to Meet Promises in Germany, Study Shows

The study by the German telecommunications regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur, measured the Internet connection speeds of 250,000 consumers from June through December last year, making it one of the largest reviews of broadband service anywhere.

The results showed that only 15.7 percent of those using fixed telephone lines and 21 percent using mobile devices achieved the advertised maximum speeds.

Nearly half of German consumers using the supposedly fastest wireless broadband networks, which run Long Term Evolution technology, received Internet service at speeds that were no more than half as fast as the advertised maximum, the regulator found.

The German report is believed to mirror the results of an even broader study being compiled by the European Commission on broadband performance across the 27-nation bloc. According to a person with knowledge of the commission’s study, which is in the final review stages, it found that operators were largely failing to deliver on promises of broadband speeds across Europe.

For consumers, slower connection speeds can make for the correspondingly sluggish execution of nearly every click while using an Internet browser, resulting in delays in summoning Web sites or interruptions of streaming video, for example.

The study is significant because Germany was one of the first countries in Europe to adopt high-speed, Long Term Evolution service on a national basis.

In Europe, and in the rest of the world, telecom operators are not legally bound to provide broadband service at a specified rate of speed. Most advertise service in packages with speeds of “up to” a certain level, which in Germany can range from 2 to 50 megabits a second.

Attempts in Brussels to include a legal “minimum speed” obligation on European operators have so far been rebuffed by the telecommunications industry.

Jochen Homann, the Bundesnetzagentur president, said in a statement that he planned to begin a “dialogue” with operators to improve the accuracy of their advertising claims.

The German market is dominated by four main operators — Deutsche Telekom, which runs the former fixed-line monopoly and the mobile market leader, T-Mobile, and the mobile carriers Vodafone; O2, a unit of Telefónica; and E-Plus, owned by the Dutch operator KPN.

Philipp Blank, a Deutsche Telekom spokesman in Bonn, said technical reasons prevented operators from guaranteeing a specific broadband speed to each customer. The quality of a land-line connection is influenced by the length of the copper wire from a home to the phone junction box in the street, with longer connections leading to slower speeds, he said.

With mobile broadband, the level of traffic flowing over a single base station can significantly affect individual performance. Deutsche Telekom gives each customer a “very narrow range” of their expected broadband speed based on an analysis of local wiring, and consumers can void newly signed contracts for two weeks without penalty if they are unsatisfied, Mr. Blank said.

“For physical and technical reasons, we simply have to offer customers some kind of range of speeds in our tariffs,” Mr. Blank said.

A spokesman for the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, a Brussels group representing operators, said it would not comment until it had read the study.

Michael Bobrowski, a spokesman for the Verbraucherzentral Bundesverband, the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, said he was skeptical that the regulator would be able to wring concessions from operators.

“This study is not surprising because we have known this to be the situation for years,” Mr. Bobrowski said. “We called for operators to stop doing this back in 2008, but none have done anything. So I’m not sure what voluntary agreements will achieve.”

Mr. Bobrowski agreed there were technical constraints that made it difficult for operators to guarantee broadband speeds. But the main reason for the discrepancy between advertised speed and performance is the operators’ advertising policies, he added.

“It’s the competitive situation,” Mr. Bobrowski said. “They are all trying to win customers by promising very enticing speeds. The problem is that consumers cannot verify in advance what kind of speeds they will ultimately receive.”

Mr. Bobrowski said that operators should be required to provide binding guarantees in service contracts.

Mr. Homann, the German regulatory chief, said he hoped to convince operators to offer a more narrow range of speeds in their broadband advertising.

“I am very hopeful that Internet providers will make an effort to provide the necessary transparency over what an Internet connection can deliver — and what it can’t,” Mr. Homann said. “Customers should be able to better evaluate the quality of their Internet connections.”

A change in Germany’s main telecommunications law last year gave the regulator the power to improve the “transparency” of telecommunications products. But whether that mandate would let the regulator impose “minimum speed” obligations, which would set a global precedent, is unclear and could be legally challenged by operators.

Gadgetwise Blog: A Vacuum That Promises No More Tangles

The Tangle-free Turbo tool is designed not foul when vacuuming pet hair.

Dyson, the design company known for its bagless cyclonic vacuum cleaners that maintain suction even as they fill with debris, shared an Achilles heel with even the most plebeian vacuums –the nuisance of tangling hair.

The problem is the cleaner head’s “brush bar,” which spins on a horizontal axis to loosen debris on floors so that the vacuum can suck it up.

Pet hair (human hair too, for that matter) tends to wind itself into the spinning mechanism, requiring it to be cut away.

So it was probably a matter of time before Dyson took on brush bar technology. The result is called the Dyson Tangle-free Turbine tool, which replaces the horizontal spinning brush bar with a pair of disks that spin horizontally, like a pair of DJ turntables that face the floor.

According to Dyson it took 187 prototypes to get it right and 19 patents to protect the innovations on just the turbine tool – so named because air intake–not belts–drives the spinning motion of the discs.

The Tangle-free Turbine tool is available for $70 and works with vacuums from the DC21 on, except for DC24 and cordless products. It is included in the tools for the most recent Dyson vacuum, the DC41 Animal Complete, which lists for $650.

We called on Susan Roupe, a professional housekeeper of 28 years, to try it in a home with a long-haired cat. Ms. Roupe, who has owned vacuums from Oreck, Shark, and Dyson, among others, gave the turbine tool high marks, having tried it on a bedspread liberally covered with cat hair. “It picks up better” than the brush tool, she said. And it didn’t tangle after extensive use. Her only concern was that it be kept away from children, because it might be too easy to catch a curious finger in the rotating discs.

Despite Cuomo’s Promises of Transparency, His E-Mail Trail Is Elusive

When he ran for office, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo vowed to operate the most transparent administration in New York State history. And his aides argue that he has: they say that their communication methods differ little from those of other elected officials, and that Mr. Cuomo will preserve more documents than any of his recent predecessors.

But while Mr. Cuomo has taken steps to improve citizen access to the State Capitol, literally as well as digitally, he and his aides have also set up an executive chamber that prides itself on leaving few footprints.

“It communicates a culture of — I don’t know if paranoia is the right word; maybe it’s control,” said Bill Samuels, a Democratic activist and the founder of the New Roosevelt Initiative, a government-reform group. “But it’s not healthy long-term.”

The Cuomo administration’s sensitivity to sunlight is well known. Aides in the governor’s office have been warned about discussing work matters at Albany haunts. On one occasion, Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman worried publicly that someone was rummaging through the office’s trash. And the administration has been aggressive in redacting documents before sharing them with the public; in June, when it turned over months of Mr. Cuomo’s schedules to The New York Times, even the daily weather forecast was blacked out. (The office has since pledged to release the forecasts.)

Mr. Cuomo has struck a pragmatic tone on the issue. “You can always have more transparency,” he said in a radio interview in March. But at the same time, he added, “you can’t live your life in a goldfish bowl.”

The governor and his aides occasionally joke about their reputation for secrecy. A humorous video they produced for the annual dinner of the Albany press corps in May included a scene in which the governor’s communications director, Richard Bamberger, frantically stuffed documents into a shredder.

Yet even in poking fun at their reputation for stealth, Mr. Cuomo’s aides would only go so far: they did not post the video on the Internet and would not immediately provide a copy to The Times. Responding to a request under the Freedom of Information Law, one of Mr. Cuomo’s lawyers wrote that the administration would need to conduct a “diligent search” for the video.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, is no stranger to the consequences of a paper trail. Before becoming governor, he spent four years as state attorney general, a perch from which he witnessed how long-forgotten e-mails could become pivotal during investigations. In 2008, he even accused a top official at the New York Power Authority of “extremely troubling conduct” for deleting e-mails from his BlackBerry as word leaked that he was likely to be investigated by the attorney general’s office.

And he has mused aloud about the potential evidentiary value of electronic communication. “You get into trouble with your significant other, you give them your BlackBerry,” Mr. Cuomo told a newspaper editorial board in 2010. “You want it? Here it is. Ask me anything, I’ll show you.”

In recent years, government reformers have encouraged the move toward so-called proactive disclosure: the White House posts its visitor logs online, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, publishes her daily meetings, and Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican, gives access to his office’s e-mail correspondence in almost real time.

But in the age of sending text messages and posting on Twitter, when government documents can circulate widely on social media in minutes, balancing competing demands for transparency and discretion can be difficult.

“The laws don’t keep up with technology,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group. “If they didn’t want a paper trail before, you used to just call. But now you can text message.”

This month, several weeks after receiving questions from The Times about its record-keeping, the Cuomo administration released a policy that lays out what types of documents must be retained and for how long. The policy generally allows Mr. Cuomo’s aides to determine for themselves which of their electronic messages should be kept and which can be destroyed.

Robert J. Freeman, the executive director of the state’s Committee on Open Government, said Mr. Cuomo deserved credit for creating a records policy, because state law places few requirements on what records the governor’s office must preserve, tasking the governor with keeping, in most cases, only what he deems “of sufficient value for preservation.”

Mr. Freeman said: “In all likelihood, governors could pick and choose what they wanted to keep and what they wanted to destroy, and they could have done it more or less on the spot. Here, at the very least, you have something of a framework.”

Written communications between the governor and his aides are often via BlackBerry PIN messages — short transmissions sent from one BlackBerry to another — which are not logged by Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, or by the governor’s office. The acronym PIN refers to the personal identification number that each BlackBerry is assigned. Aides do not regularly use their government e-mail addresses for substantive correspondence, and some are quite fastidious about deleting the messages they do send.

Mr. Cuomo prefers using the telephone, and does not use e-mail. But in an interview last week, he noted that even when he goes fishing with his brother off Long Island, he takes his BlackBerry. “With the BlackBerry,” he said, “you’re never really away anymore.”

Mr. Cuomo’s office said there was nothing unusual about its use of BlackBerry messaging, which an article in The Daily News described on Monday.

In an e-mail, Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman, Josh Vlasto, said, “The Times has sunk to a new low by suggesting that normal, standard office practices to ensure confidential information is kept confidential is somehow objectionable.”