Democrats are lacking a unifying message to address the lackluster economy, and scrambling to come up with job-creating remedies before voters go to the polls.

For many composers, synthesizers are last decade. Innovations like the mutantrumpet and the flute with a glissando headjoint are expanding the range of concert sounds.

The Army bands’ new musical mission matches current military doctrine: the creation of smaller, self-contained forces.

Some scientists suggest carbon-based molecules may have been destroyed before the Viking landers could find them.

The country, which had sought to show solidarity with Islamic groups and allow religious figures a greater role in public life, has reversed course.

A major earthquake hit west of Christchurch early Saturday morning, causing no immediate reports of casualties but widespread damage, authorities said.

Joe Miller, who defeated Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska’s Republican primary, has devoted much of his life to institutions and isolation.

Recent food riots in poor countries prompted United Nations officials to call for a careful watch on prices.

After being flooded with complaints, the agency said it would continue to allow the sale of the drug midodrine.

The security contractor created dozens of shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain U.S. contracts after it was criticized for its conduct in Iraq, officials and investigators said.

The rapid spread of the U.S. Open brawl video is another example of the power of citizen-shot footage, regardless of its quality.

The Texas attorney general has opened an antitrust investigation into how Google ranks search results, striking at the heart of its main search business.

hi i am using drupal and i create a content type for image. when i upload an image the image store in the lightbox folder and the image size change to 800X210 but i want the orginal size which is 1040X310 what is wrong and where Please Help to save my Time

Travel disruptions and beach closings on Long Island and Cape Cod were among the major effects of Earl, now a tropical storm.

It has been revealed that the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conduction an investigation of Google over complaints of antitrust and anti-competitive behavior, and the search giant is responding.

According to Search Engine Land, the state of Texas’ investigation is focused on whether Google manipulates its search results to the detriment of its competition. The investigation was sparked by complaints from vertical search engines Foundem, SourceTool/TradeComet and myTriggers. While none of these companies operate out of the state of Texas, they only need customers in the state to help spark an investigation.

Google has since responded to the report via a blog post from Deputy General Counsel Don Harrison. In it, Harrison addresses the questions about the “fairness” of the Google search engine while providing background on Foundem, SourceTool/TradeComet and MyTriggers. This background refutes each company’s argument that Google is engaging in anticompetitive behavior.

“We look forward to answering their questions because we’re confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users,” Harrison said in the company’s response.

Google is facing a similar investigation from the European Commission over whether it manipulates search results to stifle competition.

What do you think of the investigation? Do you think Google is engaging in antitrust behavior, or is this smoke and mirrors? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Google

More About: Antitrust, Google, investigation, privacy, texas

For more Tech coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Java gets a bad rap. It's considered old-school. People say that young developers prefer Ruby-on-Rails and other Web-based hot stuff. True - but these are not bad times for Java at all.

James Governor of RedMonk wrote a post that provides several good reasons why Java is really doing quite well.

Elance shows the current demand for people with Google App Engine skills is greater than those knowledgeable about Amazon Web Services. Audrey Watters of ReadWriteCloud saw the news and posted on the topic of IT Jobs as the question for our weekly poll.

Sponsor

The reason why Google App Engine is doing so well? It's all about the enterprise. VMware's Spring Platform is based upon SpringSource, which has become the dominant platform for launching Java-based apps. It now integrates with Google App Engine, a primary reason for the growing success of the platform.

Governor makes some points that are worth noting:

NoSQL is one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Many of the technologies built on the platform are written in Java. It was born on the Web but will eventually move to the enterprise.

MapReduce? It's what Google and Yahoo! use to get fast responses over large data sets. It is built on Java. Hadoop is based on MapReduce. It has its own ecosystem developing around the technology.

And then there's this from Governor:

Of course we're also seeing innovation from the new hotness - thus Erlang underpins CouchDB and RIAK. But Java is certainly core to the innovation. Lets look at RabbitMQ for example - which though written in Erlang was acquired by SpringSource as a messaging engine to underpin a Java-based programming model.

Governor goes on to provide a number of other examples to make his point.

And we have to agree. Java is not dead. it still has plenty of room for innovation.

Discuss

A poll revealed a reversal in public sentiment toward Representative Charles B. Rangel in light of charges of ethical violations.

Peter Stein, a German opera director, said he had been offended by his treatment after applying for a U.S. visa.

The Obama administration back in January promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects.

This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH.

Bi-level rail cars not typical in the US today, would accommodate more passengers, and hopefully alleviate congested roads and some resulting air pollution.

According to the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 95 percent of passenger travel in America is made by car, motorcycle and truck on our highways now.

Expanding highway capacity and overhauling busted roads with more durable and sustainable materials can prevent some traffic jams. But even highway professionals advocate building efficient, intercity, high speed trains and upgrading our freight rail systems.

Wireless companies like Groundlink and D-Link could win business rigging new high speed trains with internet service and related equipment.

Cities that recently won government funding for their high speed passenger rail projects include: Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinatti, Ohio, and Battle Creek, Michigan among others along the Detroit to Chicago route.

Feds promised the biggest piece of the budget in their national high speed rail transit program earlier this year to large-scale efforts in Florida and California that would connect Tampa and Orlando with 168 MPH trains, and Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains running up to 200 MPH.

CrunchBase InformationGroundLinkInformation provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase InformationD-LinkInformation provided by CrunchBase

As a longtime Apple TV owner, I’ll admit a dirty little secret: I really like the device. Sure, it has been one of the rare flops for Apple in recent years. And it could be so much more with say, a Blu-ray player or a web browser. But it is really good at its core functionality: bringing iTunes content into your living room. And that’s why this new version of the Apple TV makes sense — at least for now.

When I first bought the Apple TV, there were two varieties: a 40 gigabyte version and a 160 gigabyte version. I was torn between which one to get, but I ultimately went with the 160 GB one thinking I could put most of my movies on it. Big mistake. I basically never use the hard drive on my Apple TV, so it’s a 160 GB hard drive sitting there doing nothing. Instead, I stream everything to the Apple TV.

In fact, the only time I do use the hard drive on my current Apple TV is when I rent a movie on it. Currently, even when renting, you download a movie to your hard drive where it sits for up to 30 days (or 24 hours after you start playing it). But with the new iTunes rentals (both TV and movies) everything is streamed — no hard drive is required (besides a small one for buffering purposes). Thanks to that, and undoubtedly the knowledge that most owners were using it for streaming, Apple removed the hard drive from the device, and cut it down in size and price.

Now, at one-forth the size and less than half the price, it’s an even more attractive way to get your iTunes content into your living room. And it has a few very nice bonuses. The mixture of the new Netflix functionality with Apple’s new release rental movies makes this an excellent in-home movie machine for the masses. For those who pay $9 a month to Netflix, you get access to tens of thousands of older movies. For those interested in newer movies, they’re $4.99 a pop from Apple.

Yes, Apple removed the option to buy movies on the Apple TV itself. But you can still do this through iTunes on your computer — or on your iPad/iPhone/iPod touch. And guess what? With the forthcoming AirPlay feature, you’ll be able to stream any of those purchased movies right from any of those devices to the Apple TV. In a way, it sort of does make the Apple TV a $99 iPad accessory.

Further, the removal of the option to buy (as well as the removal of the SD options) make Apple TV much less complicated for general consumers. Now there is no question about whether you should rent or buy. There is also no question about whether you should do rent or buy in HD or SD. I suspect most people were renting in HD on the device, which is why Apple made the move it did to eliminate the other unnecessary options. They’re keeping it simple, stupid.

Apple also removed the option to buy TV shows — which never really made much sense to me. There are some shows that people would like to own, but most are definitely watch-once programs. Previously, there was no rental option, you had to buy. Worse, even if you did want to own a lot, the old Apple TV didn’t have nearly enough storage to handle them all — some HD TV show seasons take up 30 GB of space or more. The model just didn’t make a lot of sense.

Granted, Apple’s current $0.99 TV show rental option is pretty weak. They only have shows from ABC and Fox — and only some shows from Fox. But obviously, just as happened with iTunes music and movies, Apple is hoping all the studios eventually get on board.  And if they do relatively soon, the Apple TV will be a very interesting device to consumers as both a movie box and as a potential cable replacement. Sure, most people aren’t going to feel comfortable totally killing cable just yet — but at $99, this will be a very interesting experiment for a lot of people.

All that said, let’s be clear: this Apple TV is not the killer device in the living room. This will be more popular than the current Apple TV, but it will not be iPod/iPhone/iPad-big. And Apple seems to know that, which is why they’re still talking cautiously about it.

The problem Apple faces is the same problem that everyone faces: content agreements. Hollywood is proving much harder to convince than the music labels were. In a few years, if DVD sales keep falling and cable revenues start decreasing, they’ll be more receptive to new options.

The killer Apple TV would have TV network subscription packages. It would offer live events. It would have every movie ever made available on-demand.

And on-demand is the big key to all of this. All of this content is going to move to the cloud. It has too for storage purposes and given how many devices we all have. Rentals just completely made the jump, but eventually purchases will too. At first, you’ll have the option to download certain movies you’ve bought to take on the go, but when you’re at your home, even movies you “own” will be streamed — they’ll simply be streamed for free. And then one day, all of this stuff will be in the cloud entirely as mobile devices will always be connected by high-speed wireless.

This is the future. It’s Apple’s future along with everyone else’s. This Apple TV is one small step in that direction, and at $99 it makes sense for now — at $229, it never did. This is a stepping stone to the cloud age. Right now it’s a mixture of the internal cloud (streaming from within your house) with the external cloud (streaming rentals from the cloud). Soon it will all be external.

If this half-step isn’t your thing, if you want more functionality, buy a Mac mini. There’s a reason Apple just added a HDMI output to it. But that device is too complicated and way too expensive for most consumers to use as a set-top box. The Apple TV is simple.

Oh, and one more thing: the true killer Apple TV device will have apps. I’m still absolutely convinced (as many people are) that it’s only a question of when they make the jump to the living room. The fact that this new Apple TV is running iOS seems to be all the proof one should need that this will come eventually.

When that happens, the Apple TV will become a hell of a lot more than a hobby.

CrunchBase InformationApple TVInformation provided by CrunchBase