Mint, otro Linux para quienes quieren explorar el mundo fuera de Windows

Una de las grandes virtudes de Linux (un sistema operativo libre para PC y otros dispositivos) es la cantidad innumerable de versiones disponibles. Estas distribuciones, además, son en su enorme mayoría de uso gratis, y representan una buena alternativa para los que no desean invertir en una licencia de Windows o quieren explorar -sin gastar- alternativas para la computadora hogareña.
Hemos recomendado en varias ocasiones opciones sencillas de usar e instalar que tienen herramientas iguales o muy similares a las que pueden encontrarse en Windows, destacando la ductilidad de las distribuciones disponibles y cómo hacer para probarlas sin complicarse demasiado , usando un CD regrabable o un pendrive, para no afectar el Windows instalado en la computadora.
En los últimos años fue Ubuntu el que más hizo para facilitarle el trabajo a los neófitos que venían de Windows, automatizando y simplificando procesos de instalación, creando un sitio amigable, sumando instrucciones de instalación y uso en lenguaje no técnico e incluso haciendo acuerdo para preinstalarlo en equipos de marca , pero la elección de la interfaz de usuario Unity (algo rígida) le hizo perder adeptos.
Una de las alternativas que venía creciendo en popularidad era Linux Mint (gratis), y los últimos números de DistroWatch , un sitio que lista las diferentes distribuciones y su popularidad, lo dan como el rey de 2012. Mint usa a Ubuntu como base, por lo que aprovecha algunas de sus herramientas (como la que permite instalarlo dentro de Windows para poder usarlo sin afectar la instalación original) y viene con una gran cantidad de componentes multimedia preinstalados, para facilitar la reproducción de audio y video, entre otras cosas (las distribuciones más "puras" suelen evitar esto para promover el uso de estándares libres de audio y video).
Hace poco más de un mes Linux Mint liberó su versión más reciente, Nadia 14, que incluye dos entornos de escritorio que resultarán muy agradables para quienes no se sienten cómodos con Unity, porque mantienen el esquema tradicional de Windows y Gnome 2.x: una barra de herramientas en la parte inferior de la pantalla, ventanas con los botones de control a la derecha, etcétera.

Linux Mint 14 tiene dos versiones: MATE (basado en Gnome 2.x, y cuyo nombre está inspirado en la yerba mate) y Cinnamon (canela, en inglés) de aspecto similar pero con algunos detalles visuales más atractivos: menús de notificaciones más sofisticados, escritorios virtuales persistentes, miniaturas en el administrador de ventanas y más.
cómo instalarlo
Cualquiera de ellas se puede meter en un pendrive o disco externo y correr desde allí o, si se quiere, instalarlas en la PC, junto con Windows (es compatible con Windows 8) o en una partición nueva. Alcanza con descargar el archivo ISO de instalación (hay uno para MATE y otro para Cinnamon). Ese archivo (900 MB, aproximadamente) se puede grabar en un DVD con una aplicación para quemar imágenes de disco: en Windows está el freeware CDBurnerXP , por ejemplo. Con el disco en la lectora, al encender al PC debería cargar primero Mint antes que Windows (si no, habrá que cambiar una configuración en el BIOS). Podremos usarlo como si estuviera instalado en la PC y luego, si queremos, instalarlo en el disco rígido de nuestra computadora, cuidando de hacerlo en una partición vacía o dentro de Windows.
Otra opción es instalarlo en una memoria USB (de 2 GB o más de capacidad). Para eso hay que usar la aplicación Image Writer (gratis, hay que cliquear donde dice win32diskimager-binary.zip para descargar el archivo). Luego habrá que cambiar la extensión del archivo de .ISO a .IMG para que Image Writer reconozca el archivo y pueda copiarlo en el pendrive (atención que borrará todo lo que está allí).
Si al prender la PC con el pendrive conectado no lo reconoce, habrá que cambiar el orden de carga de sistemas operativos, una opción que suele aparecer apenas se prende la PC (y que no estará disponible si la computadora es muy vieja) para ordenarle que cargue primero el contenido de la memoria USB.
Para quienes estén pensando en probar una distribución de Linux y buscan reducir el "choque cultural" con una interfaz de usuario que sea parecida -pero no idéntica- a la del Windows tradicional, y que además sea sencillo de usar, tienen en Linux Mint 14 Nadia una opción muy atractiva.

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Makers of $99 Android-Powered Game Console Ship First 1,200 'Ouyas'

Makers of $99 Android-Powered Game Console Ship First 1,200 'Ouyas'
Like Nintendo's Wii U game console, the Ouya (that's "OOH-yuh") has an unusual name and even more unusual hardware. The console is roughly the size of a Rubik's cube, and is powered by Android, Google's open-source operating system that's normally found on smartphones and tablets.
Ouya's makers, who are preparing the console for its commercial launch, encourage interested gamers to pop the case open and use it in electronics projects ... or even to write their own games for it. Especially if they're among the 1,200 who are about to receive their own clear plastic Ouya developer consoles.
Not exactly a finished product
The limited-edition consoles, which have been shipped out to developers already, are not designed for playing games on. They don't even come with any.
Rather, the point of these consoles is so that interested Android developers can write games for the Ouya, which will then be released to gamers when the console launches to the public. Fans who pledged at least $1,337 to Ouya's record-breaking Kickstarter project will get one, and while they're not quite suited for playing games on -- "we know the D-pad and triggers on the controller still need work," Ouya's makers say -- the clear plastic developer consoles serve as a preview of what the finished product will look like, and a reminder of Ouya's "openness."
You keep using that word ...
In the food and drug industries, terms like "organic" and "all-natural" are regulated so that only products which meet the criteria can have them on their labels. In the tech world, however, anyone can claim that their product is "open," for whatever definition of "open" they like.
The term was popularized by the world's rapid adoption of open-source software, like Android itself, where you're legally entitled to a copy of the programming code and can normally use it in your own projects (like Ouya's makers did). But when tech companies say that something is "open," they don't necessarily mean that the code or the hardware schematics use an open-source license.
How Ouya is "open"
Ouya's makers have released their ODK, or developer kit, under the same open-source license as Android itself. This allows aspiring game developers to practice their skills even without a developer console, and to improve the kit however they want. The hardware itself is currently a "closed" design, however, despite the clear plastic case. The makers have expressed enthusiasm for the idea of hardware hackers using it in projects, and have said, "We'll even publish the hardware design if people want it," but so far they haven't done so.
What about the games?
The most relevant aspect of "openness" to normal gamers is that Ouya's makers say "any developer can publish a game." This model is unusual for the console world, where only select studios are allowed to publish their wares on (for instance) the PlayStation Network, but is more familiar to fans of the anything-goes Google Play store for Android. Several big-name Android developers -- including console game titan Square-Enix -- have already signed up to have their wares on the Ouya.
Preordered Ouya game consoles (the normal ones, not the developer edition) will ship in April. They will cost $99 once sales are opened to the general public.

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Can Samsung survive without Android?

Samsung (005930) is the world’s top Android smartphone vendor by a staggering margin. Aside from LG (066570), which managed a small $20 million profit from its mobile division last quarter, no other global Android vendor can figure out how to make money selling Android phones. Meanwhile, Samsung posted a $6 billion profit on $47.6 billion in sales in the third quarter, thanks largely to record smartphone shipments and a massive marketing budget. Even as industry watchers turn sour on Apple, Samsung is seen steamrolling into 2013 and its stock is up nearly 50% on the year while Apple (AAPL) shares continue to fall from a record high hit in September. As unstoppable as Samsung appears right now, one key question remains: Is Samsung driving Android’s success or is Android driving Samsung’s success? Starting in 2013, we may finally begin to find out.
[More from BGR: Unreleased ‘BlackBerry X10′ QWERTY phone appears again in new photos]
Earlier this year, BGR wrote about Samsung’s effort to look beyond Android. Even with its own UI and application suite — and even with its own content services — Samsung will always rely on Google (GOOG) if it continues to base its devices on Google’s latest Android builds.
[More from BGR: RIM teases BlackBerry 10 launch with image of first BB10 smartphone]
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means Samsung will never truly control the end-to-end experience on its products. It also means Samsung will never truly own its smartphones and tablets. Instead, Samsung’s devices will deliver an experience that is an amalgamation of Google’s vision and its own.
But there are alternative options. One example is the path Amazon (AMZN) has taken. Amazon let Google do the grunt work and then took its open-source Android OS and built its own software and service layer on top. Kindle Fire users don’t sit around waiting for Android updates — many of them don’t even know they’re using an Android-powered tablet.
Samsung could do the same thing, but there is a great deal of prep work that would need to be done first. Amazon’s efforts were so successful (depending on your measure of success) because the company already had a massive ecosystem in place before it even launched its first device. Streaming movies and TV shows, eBooks, retail shopping and a stocked application store were all available on the Kindle Fire from day one.
Samsung doesn’t have this luxury. Yet.
Samsung could also take ownership of a new OS, and Tizen may or may not end up being that OS. Samsung is co-developing the new Linux-based mobile platform with Intel (INTC) and others, and a new rumor from Japan’s The Daily Yomiuri suggests Samsung plans to launch its first Tizen phone in 2013. “Samsung will probably begin selling the [Tizen] smartphones next year and they are likely to be released in Japan and other countries at around the same time,” the site’s sources claim.
This will be a slow process. If Samsung follows the same path it took with Bada, Samsung’s earlier Linux-based OS that was folded into the Tizen project, things will start out slow as Samsung launches regional devices that are restricted to a few Eastern markets. Testing the waters before dumping serious marketing dollars into the project isn’t a bad idea, especially considering the battle at the bottom of the smartphone OS food chain that will already be taking place in 2013.
But one thing is clear: Samsung is looking to broaden its strategy and move beyond a point where it relies entirely on another company for its smartphone software.

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Sony No Longer Shipping PlayStation 2 in Japan

You may have grown up with it. Your children may have, too.
Sony's PlayStation 2 home game console, released in 2000, was one of the most popular game consoles of all time, rivaled in sales only by the different kinds of Nintendo DS handheld console. It continued to be sold new on store shelves until just recently, even years after Sony launched its PlayStation 3 successor.
Now, however, Sony's sent out its last shipment of new "PS2" consoles for the Japanese market, according to Japanese gaming news site Famitsu (as reported by Polygon's Emily Gera). Some other regions are continuing to receive shipments for now, but the heart of the PlayStation 2 phenomenon has finally stopped beating.
A gaming legend
Japanese PlayStation fans saw thousands more titles released in their language than English-speaking players. The PlayStation 2 was especially well-known for its role-playing games, such as the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, which was designed so closely around the PS2's capabilities that its Windows PC version uses almost entirely the same graphics and controller-based interface.
New PS2 games continue to ship; Final Fantasy XI is even getting a full-fledged, retail-boxed expansion pack this March. It'll only support the PS2 in Japan, however, where dedicated players continue to use the original "fat" PS2 consoles with the hard drive expansion slot. Internationally, it will only support the PC and Xbox 360.
PS2 games in a post-PS2 world
The first PlayStation 3 consoles -- infamous for the silence which ensued at the Sony event where their price at launch was announced to be "599 U.S. dollars" -- were backwards-compatible with the vast majority of PlayStation 2 and original PSOne games. Sony achieved PS2 backwards compatibility, however, by including the PS2's actual "Emotion Engine" and "Graphics Synthesizer" chips inside each PS3, essentially making it two game consoles in one (and helping to drive up that launch price).
A redesign bumped down the price some, but at the cost of removing the Emotion Engine chip, which caused the redesigned PS3 consoles to sometimes have bugs or fail to play certain games. Today's PS3 consoles lack both chips, which means that while they play PSOne games just fine, they don't support PS2 game discs at all and can't be upgraded to do so.
The legend lives on?
Sony has made HD remakes of certain PS2 titles, and republished others for the PS3 under the "PlayStation 2 Classics" brand. Dozens of such titles have been re-released as digital downloads in the PlayStation Network store.
This method of playing a PS2 game on the PS3, however, involves essentially buying the game again (assuming that it's even in the store), sort of like Sony's method of playing PlayStation Portable games on the Vita. Even rebuying the games for the PS3 doesn't ensure continued playability on modern Sony consoles; the upcoming "PlayStation 4" (not its actual name) reportedly won't be able to play games made for the PS3.

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Ubuntu se mete en los celulares con un sistema operativo propio

Ubuntu se mete en los celulares con un sistema operativo propio
Al igual que otras plataformas que buscan una convergencia entre el mundo móvil y la PC, Canonical confirmó el arribo de su sistema operativo Ubuntu a los dispositivos móviles. Disponible en una primera instancia como una instalación no oficial para la línea de smartphones Nexus 3, la versión de Linux utilizada en más de 20 millones busca posicionarse como una alternativa ante un mercado dominado por compañías como Apple y Google, junto a las propuestas de Microsoft con Windows Phone y Research in Motion con sus teléfonos BlackBerry.
La compañía dio un primer paso en febrero de 2012 con Ubuntu for Android , una distribución para "mejorar" el Android convencional.
La versión actual es un sistema operativo que sólo comparte con Android el uso de sus drivers (ambos están basados en Linux), pero no usa una máquina virtual Java, por lo que los 700.000 programas con las que cuenta Android no estarán disponibles directamente. Ubuntu tendrá su propia suite de aplicaciones, y permitirá la suma de nuevas que estén programadas en HTML5 o sean nativas.
Canonical también planea lanzar un teléfono de diseño propio que llegaría al mercado en 2014, pero no brindó mayores detalles sobre el fabricante involucrado. Los recientes cambios en la interfaz de Ubuntu, denominada Unity, marcaron una tendencia en la distribución hacia la interacción en pantallas sensibles al tacto, y este lanzamiento representa un primer paso de la distribución para ingresar en el mundo móvil de los smartphones y las tabletas.
Las prestaciones de una PC, en un dispositivo de bolsillo
Según Mark Shuttleworth, CEO de Canonical, en un principio esta versión de Ubuntu apunta a los entusiastas de la plataforma, pero con una rápida expansión hacia el resto de los usuarios. "Por primera vez en la historia los usuarios de los teléfonos celulares pueden tener las prestaciones completas que tiene en una PC, y tenemos una ventaja en esto", dijo el ejecutivo.
Así lo explica Mark Shuttleworth en video, mostrando los gestos que permiten controlar Ubuntu móvil:

El concepto se asemeja a la modalidad presentada por Motorola con su teléfono Atrix , que se convertía en una PC al ser conectado en una base que servía de conexión con un monitor. A su vez, el móvil también podía ser utilizado como una notebook mediante un dispositivo denominado lapdock.
Aún no disponible para su descarga, la presentación formal de Ubuntu para teléfonos ante el público será en la feria Consumer Electronic Show de Las Vegas, en donde LA NACION estará presente para la cobertura de los primeros lanzamientos del año que realizará la industria.
En busca del podio móvil
Con los dispositivos basados en iOS y Android, varias compañías disputan ser la alternativa a las plataformas dominantes. Microsoft busca de la mano de Nokia posicionar a Windows Phone junto a fabricantes como HTC y Samsung. La compañía de Redmond también desea aprovechar la integración con Windows 8 para sacar provecho de su dominio en el mundo de las PC, un segmento en lento retroceso frente a los teléfonos inteligentes y tabletas.
En este punto, la integración entre las PC y los dispositivos móviles también forman parte de los objetivos de Apple, que replicó el exitoso modelo App Store en su línea de computadoras con Mac OS X, utilizado en el iPhone y la tableta iPad, mientras que Google mantiene su apuesta en su plataforma basada en la nube con servicios como Gmail y Drive, entre otros.
Por su parte, Research in Motion presentará su nueva plataforma BB10 , un demorado lanzamiento que tendrá lugar a fines de este mes y con el que busca recuperar el terreno perdido en los últimos años con un renovado teléfono móvil tactil basado en el sistema operativo QNX, utilizado en su tableta Playbook.
Dentro de este pelotón de contendientes también se encuentra Firefox OS , un competidor que más se asemeja a la filosofía de la plataforma de Canonical y que ofrece un sistema operativo basado en el navegador web de la fundación Mozilla. Cuenta con el apoyo de las principales operadoras de telecomunicaciones y apunta a contar con un teléfono de costo accesible para mercados emergentes.
Por su parte, un grupo de desarrolladores responsables de Meego, la plataforma utilizada por Nokia para el N9, se reunieron para presentar a Sailfish OS , un sistema operativo basado en Linux que se encuentra en una incipiente etapa de desarrollo y que planea tener también, al igual que Firefox OS y Ubuntu, un teléfono para mediados de este año.

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Obama Meets With Wounded Troops at Walter Reed

President Barack Obama has met with wounded service members during a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
The president traveled to the hospital just outside Washington by helicopter a few hours before the House was expected to consider a Republican proposal to address the "fiscal cliff."
The White House says the president met with 10 wounded troops during his stay. It was Obama's first visit to the hospital since Sept. 11.
Obama has frequently visited service members wounded in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars during his presidency.

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Cliff Poses Tiny Dollar Gap, Wide Political Ravine

When it comes to resolving their "fiscal cliff" impasse, the dollar gap between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner is tiny in federal terms. That masks a monumental political ravine the two men must try to bridge, with most of the burden on the now beleaguered Boehner.
Short of support from his own Republican Party, a chagrined speaker abruptly canceled a House vote Thursday night on his so-called Plan B. The measure would have prevented looming tax increases on everyone but people earning over $1 million annually, but was opposed by rank-and-file Republican lawmakers unwilling to vote for any tax increases at all.
Now Boehner, R-Ohio, and Obama seem likely to bargain anew over a broad package of tax increases and spending cuts, with Thursday night's GOP retreat weakening Boehner's leverage. Ticking ever louder is the start of the new year, which by law will usher in hundreds of billions in tax increases and spending cuts — the "fiscal cliff" — unless the two men avert it by crafting a compromise deficit-cutting package that can get through the GOP-run House and Democratic-led Senate.
Despite the impassioned political clash that the "cliff" has prompted, weeks of intermittent bargaining between Obama and Boehner have left them facing relatively miniscule dollar differences by Washington standards.
Obama wants to raise taxes by about $20 billion a year more than Boehner. The two men differ over spending cuts by roughly the same amount.
By almost any measure, $20 billion is real money. Yet compared to the $2.6 trillion the government expects to collect next year and to the $3.6 trillion it plans to spend, $20 billion barely registers — less than 1 percent of what the government already is on track to raise and spend. Relative to the U.S. economy, which should weigh in at well over $15 trillion next year, $20 billion is even smaller.
"The policy implication is very slight," Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a non-partisan anti-deficit group, said of the $20 billion gaps between Obama and Boehner. "It's not worth the price of not getting a deal. And the impact on the economy is totally insignificant."
On the other hand, economists have warned that the "cliff's" massive tax boosts and budget cuts would heave the economy back into a recession, although likely a brief one.
Though the numbers separating them are small, Obama and Boehner have real policy disputes. Yet their inability to strike a compromise so far underscores that their problem is more than arithmetic: It's largely driven by the difficult politics that Obama and Boehner face in firming up support from their own parties.
Boehner's clout was weakened by the Plan B debacle, and it remains unclear how many GOP votes he could deliver for any compromise he might reach with Obama. Yet while his Plan B would have received virtually no Democratic votes, a bipartisan accord with Obama likely would get significant backing from House Democrats, lightening Boehner's load.
Even before Thursday, the president and the speaker each faced formidable political challenges.
Chastened by Obama's re-election, Boehner has violated a quarter-century of Republican dogma by offering to raise taxes, including boosting income tax rates on earnings exceeding $1 million annually.
Eager for a budget deal that would bolster his legacy and let him address other issues, Obama would cut the growth of Social Security benefits, usually off-limits to Democrats. He also would impose tax increases on a broader swath of people than millionaires — those with incomes over $400,000. That figure is a retreat from what he campaigned on: a $200,000 income ceiling on individuals and $250,000 on couples.
Those concessions mean that both men have angered lawmakers and staunch supporters of their respective parties. Neither wants to risk his political capital by embracing a deal his own party rejects.
"When you walk into a room and represent a group and you have to give ground to get a deal, you have to stay in that room as long as you can and you have to walk out with blood on your brow," said Joseph Minarik, research director for the Committee for Economic Development and a veteran of grueling budget talks as a former Clinton White House and House Democratic aide. "Otherwise, the people outside the room don't believe you've fought hard for them."
In their talks, Obama has proposed raising taxes by $1.2 trillion over the coming decade by boosting the current top 35 percent rate to 39.6 percent for income over $400,000, plus other increases on the highest-earning Americans.
He also says he's offered about $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, including slowing the growth of benefits from Social Security and other programs. His proposed spending cuts also include $400 billion in savings from Medicare and Medicaid, the health care programs for the elderly and poor whose defense Democrats consider precious priorities.
Boehner has offered about $1 trillion in tax increases and roughly the same amount in spending savings. An earlier Boehner offer included $600 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings — well more than Obama — but it's unclear whether the speaker is still seeking that figure.
Because of a dispute over how some savings are classified, Boehner says Obama's offer is really $1.3 trillion in higher taxes and only about $850 billion in spending cuts.
The House speaker says Obama's offer is not balanced because its new taxes and spending cuts are unequal. And he complains it does too little to control fast-growing benefit programs like Medicare, a chief driver of the federal government's mushrooming deficits.
Yet while their offers are relatively close, another obstacle they face is that even slight changes in the numbers could force politically significant policy alterations.
Adding, say, another $100 billion to the tax increase over 10 years could mean that people with incomes well below $1 million a year would get a tax increase, something Boehner wants to limit.
On the other hand, adding $100 billion more in spending cuts could mean a deeper hit than Obama wants to Medicare. The president prefers to limit Medicare cuts to the reimbursements that doctors and other health care providers receive, but ever deeper cuts could mean more doctors would be likely to stop treating Medicare patients — an outcome Democrats don't want.

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Texas cancer agency's nonprofit defends privacy

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A foundation that boosts executive salaries at Texas' troubled $3 billion cancer-fighting effort defended to critical lawmakers Thursday a policy that keeps donors confidential while being lectured over appearances of pay-to-play politics.
Facing pointed and occasionally combative questions from state budget-writers, officials with the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas appeared before a public panel for the first time since prosecutors announced a criminal probe into the beleaguered agency and Gov. Rick Perry called for a moratorium on new awards.
Not all members of the influential House Appropriations Committee were happy with who showed up to testify. Absent were the three top agency executives who have resigned in the past eight months: Executive Director Bill Gimson, Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs and Chief Scientific Officer Alfred Gilman.
All three are principal players surrounding $11 million in taxpayer funds that were awarded in 2010 to a private startup despite the project bypassing an independent review. Republican Jim Pitts, chairman of the House committee, left the door open to the agency's former leadership being hauled in front of lawmakers as soon as January.
That left Barbara Canales, vice president of the nonprofit CPRIT Foundation and a member of the agency's governing board, answering recurring and tough questions about the role of the nonprofit arm. One of the foundation's chief purposes is to supplement the salaries of top institute executives, including Gimson, whose annual salary was $300,000.
The foundation has denied media requests to make its donor list public.
"We have a balancing act to weigh here as board members, and to protect the privacy of our donors so they're not unfairly solicited," Canales said.
Rules prohibit donors from being awarded institute grants, Canales and CPRIT officials testified. But Democrat Rep. Sylvester Turner — who said, "We want an organization with integrity, not a slush fund" — and other lawmakers pressed for certainty that foundation donors were not connected to grant winners.
"What I can tell you is: To the best of my knowledge, it is not our policy to accept donors who are also grant" recipients, Canales said.
Republican Rep. Myra Crownover and other board member said the mere appearance was problematic.
"The pay-to-play potential — maybe there should be more division," Crownover said.
The foundation has raised around $700,000 in each the last two years, according to Canales.
Thursday's hearing came a day after Perry and other state leaders called for a moratorium on new grants until confidence is restored in a once-celebrated agency that has been thrown into upheaval in just three years. The institute controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars, behind the National Institutes of Health.
The federal department's cancer-research arm, the National Cancer Institute, also has said it is reviewing the troubles surrounding the Texas agency.
Turmoil has beset the Texas agency practically all year, but prosecutors didn't take notice until the revelation of an $11 million award to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics that was approved without an independent review. Gimson has chalked up the award as an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one at the agency personally profited from the award.
Peloton received its funding in 2010. Lawmakers asked agency officials whether any of its leadership had known for the last two years that Peloton's proposal had never been scrutinized.
"I can't look into the mind of employees," said Kristen Doyle, the agency's general counsel. "But there are investigations that are going to answer those questions,"

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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?

The defeat of his Plan B - Republicans pulled it when it became clear it would be voted down - is a big defeat for Speaker of the House John Boehner. It demonstrates definitively that there is no fiscal cliff deal that can pass the House on Republican votes alone.
Boehner could not even muster the votes to pass something that would only allow tax rates on those making more than $1 million to go up.
Boehner's Plan B ran into opposition from conservative and tea party groups -including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth - but it became impossible to pass it after Senate Democrats vowed not to take up the bill and the president threatened to veto it. Conservative Republicans saw no reason to vote for a bill conservative activists opposed - especially if it had no hopes of going anywhere anyway.
Plan B is dead.
Now what?
House Republicans say it is now up to the Senate to act. Senate Democrats say it is now up to Boehner to reach an agreement with President Obama.
Each side is saying the other must move.
The bottom line: The only plausible solution is for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to do what they have failed repeatedly to do: come up with a truly bi-partisan deal.
The prospects look grimmer than ever. It will be interesting to see if the markets react.

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