Author: Serkadis

Larry Ellison may be remembered as the one who steered clear of the “folly” that is cloud computing. Or he may be remembered for ignoring the real and considerable impacts that the cloud brings.

Or he may also be remembered for staying true to what Oracle does best. And that’s providing the underlying infrastructure for any platform, be it in the cloud or on-premise.

Or it may be that Ellison is simply bluffing. Oracle is really not killing the Sun Open Cloud. In its marathon event last week to discuss its plans for Sun, Ellison apparently hooted and howled about the cloud. He asked if anyone could explain it to him at all. He heard little if no response. He said Oracle is discontinuing the Sun Open Cloud, that they don’t want to be like Amazon Web Services, that they are not a public cloud service, and that Oracle is not in the business of renting by the minute.

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We’re not so sure.

Look closer and it’s clear Oracle has many of the pieces for a cloud strategy. The SmoothSpan blog has a good vision for how an Oracle cloud strategy might unfold.

For example, the post points out how systems integrators are clamoring for a SasS environment from Oracle.

“….In that world, the System Integrators are the gatekeepers for the market. They’re very powerful, and the interesting discovery Tony [Hemelka, Helpstream’s CEO] made is that they absolutely love Force.com. It’s not hard to see why. The SaaS model squeezes the SI ecosystem. The normal meat and potatoes business around just getting on-premises software installed is greatly reduced. The business of just keeping the lights on is almost non-existant for SaaS. Yet SI’s have a lot to bring to the table. A good SI often understands the Domain, its Best Practices, and the key Business Processes better even than the software vendor. Having access to a SaaS platform makes it possible for the SI to turn that valuable knowledge into product which can then be sold. That’s why having a platform on which to do that is so important to them.”

A Theory About the Open Web

But even if Oracle does have all the pieces, is its culture right for developing a cloud-based approach to the enterprise?

Earlier this week, we touched on the relationship between the social Web and cloud computing. Oracle is not considered a superstar of the social Web. Sure, the company uses the social Web, but it is not experimenting to the degree that you see with a company like IBM, perhaps Oracle’s biggest competitor.

IBM is developing a cloud-based collaboration platform. It is developing its own cloud computing service. It is diving deep into the world of the cloud and how the open Web fits with enterprise collaboration environments. In our view, these go hand in hand. It makes a lot of sense that if you want to be a cloud services provider, you need to understand the different ways Web oriented architectures function within the enterprise. A Web oriented architecture requires an online network. With that understanding comes the knowledge how to serve clients that depend on cloud-based infrastructures for their IT services.

Oracle does not want to be like Amazon, providing a public cloud infrastructure.

Instead, the Sun Open Cloud infrastructure will be configured for providers that want to provide their own public clouds and enterprises that seek to create private clouds.

You see? Oracle provides infrastructure – a complete IT services platform. Right now, all Oracle cares about is being the underpinning for all the systems in the enterprise IT environment.

As Dana Gardner points out:

“In doing complete IT package gig, Oracle has signaled the end of the best-of-breed, heterogeneous, and perhaps open source components era of IT. In the new IT era, services are king. The way you actually serve or acquire them is far less of a concern. Enterprises focus on the business and the IT comes, well, like electricity.

This is why “cloud” makes no sense to Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison. He’d rather we take out the word “cloud” from cloud computing and replace it with “Oracle.” Now that makes sense!”

It sure does. Oracle sees the cloud through the vision of its own technology infrastructure. The Sun cloud fits into that vision even if for now it is getting mothballed.

Discuss

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Filed under: Government/Legal, Plants/Manufacturing, Recalls, Safety, Toyota

In an effort to stem the flow of potentially defective accelerator pedal parts at the source, Toyota announced earlier this week that replacement pedal components had begun shipping directly to its factories. While the announcement was a welcome step in the right direction towards a long-term resolution, Toyota retail dealers – face-to-face with millions of concerned customers seeking a fix – were understandably angered that the automaker had apparently left them out of the loop.

That changed late Frida, when Toyota announced that gas pedal parts had started shipping directly to the dealers too. Brian Lyons, Toyota company spokesman, said the parts “are on their way to the dealers in preparation for the recall launch.” The so-called “recall launch” will be more clearly defined next week when the automaker officially announces how it intends to solve the problems potentially affecting 4.2 million of its vehicles worldwide.

Right now, Toyota’s “solution” (reportedly involving shims) is being reviewed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – they presented it to the NHTSA on Thursday – which must approve it before the automaker moves forward. Even then, Toyota will need to train dealers and mechanics on how to make the repairs and educate vehicle owners on the process.

[Source: WFFA.com, Associated Press]

ThrottleGate: Toyota will now send needed pedal repair components directly to dealers originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi KAMPALA, Jan 29 (IPS) Every morning Pepe Julian Onziema wakes up not knowing if she will live to see another rising sun. Onziema is transgender and she lives in fear for her life because of a national campaign against gay people.

Although she has done nothing wrong, Onziema lives like a fugitive – always on the lookout to avoid trouble.

Her days are spent in fear and as darkness descends she securely locks the doors to her flat in Ntinda, a Kampala suburb where she lives with her partner.

Onziema is a well-known activist and the national programmes coordinator of Sexual Minorities Uganda, an advocacy network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organisations. She has appeared on television several times defending the rights of LGBTs. But it has not made her life any easier.

Just like other LGBTs in her country Onziema has been arrested; spat on; attacked; insulted and even stoned by neighbours.

She cannot comfortably sit in a restaurant for fear of being recognised and evicted, or even use public transport.

Her name has been listed in tabloids as one of the members of Uganda’s ‘immoral society’. And when a crime is committed against her, she cannot report it to the police because sex between two people of the same gender is against the law in Uganda and she will be discriminated against.

"It’s a crazy world we are living in as gays. We are really suffering," Onziema says.

In recent months a campaign against LGBT people has intensified the discrimination.

The campaign is being headed by a section of the legislature and religious leaders. Last year Uganda’s leading Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje, called for LGBTs to be rounded up and exiled on an island on Lake Victoria until they died.

Pentecostal pastor Martin Sempa, from the Makerere Community Church, leads a coalition of Christian churches against homosexuality. He also regularly organises anti-LGBT rallies and campaigns on radio and TV talk shows. In 2008 a local tabloid The Red Pepper listed alleged LGBTs in Uganda in a bid to ‘shame them’ and The Observer newspaper published an article on ‘How to spot a gay Ugandan'.

Consequently, suspected LGBTs have been evicted by landlords and some have had their homes set ablaze. Lesbians have been raped by men who say they are teaching them ‘how to be a woman’. But when these crimes are committed, many do not report it. Like Onziema they are scared of the police who arrest and detain them for being gay.

"When the day breaks, I pray. I pray that there is no gay person in trouble today. I do not even get adequate sleep. You can’t switch your phone off because someone might need help. You could save a life."

Trauma

As an activist, Onziema has been arrested by police at least four times. After one of the arrests, police could not easily identify her gender so they gave her a forced physical examination.

"And some point, because they were having this ridiculous argument about my sex, two female officers came in to my room, while the third, a male one stood at the window. They asked me to undress. Because I was hesitant, one police woman decided to force off my pants and touched my private parts…"

It was a traumatising experience that happened after Onziema was detained for protesting at an international HIV/AIDS implementer’s meeting in Kampala in June 2008.

LGBT and HIV/AIDS activists were peacefully protesting statements made by the director general of Uganda’s AIDS Commission, Dr Kihumuro Apuuli, that no funds would be directed toward HIV programs targeting men who have sex with men.

"Gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda, but because of meagre resources, we cannot direct our programmes at them at this time," he reportedly said. And it is a stance the government has stuck to.

Double stigma

While men who have sex with men are identified as a population at a high risk of contracting and transmitting HV, there are no deliberate programmes to include them in the country’s national HIV/AIDS response.

"I worked as an HIV peer counsellor before and I was actually thrown out (of) the place because I was helping couples who were of the same sex," Onziema says.

Many LGBTs are also afraid of going for HIV testing or even counselling due to the double stigma of being sexual minorities and HIV-positive.

"We have had people who do know their status and those who have actually gone to access Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) under the pretext that they are straight…We need systems and a policy where gay people can honestly reveal their history so that you (doctors) are able to administer treatment to them accordingly," Onziema said.

The Bill

Sex between two people of the same gender is a crime punishable by life imprisonment through provisions in the Penal Code and the 1995 Constitution.

In April 2009 minister of ethics and integrity, Nsaba Buturo, declared the current laws insufficient to fight homosexuality, which he described as ‘immoral and un-African’.

Shortly after, an Anti-Homosexual Bill (2009) which ‘aims at strengthening the nations capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family’ – was tabled in parliament as a private members Bill by MP David Bahati.

"We want it (the Bill) to become law in that if someone is a homosexual, or confesses to being gay, then he/she is a criminal," Buturo said.

Under the proposed law, it becomes a crime just to be an LGBT. The Bill also criminalises same sex marriages and same-sex sexual acts.

But most controversial of all is the death sentence imposed for the crime of ‘aggravated homosexuality’. This is where an HIV-positive LGBT person has sex with a person who is either under the age of 18 years or has disabilities. And if someone is caught repeatedly having non-heterosexual sex, they will be classified as a serial offender and also face the death sentence.

The proposed Bill also provides for forced HIV testing for those accused of aggravated homosexuality. But the Bill does not merely extend to LGBTs. It includes a sentence for all members of the public – including parents, landlords and health workers – who fail to report LGBTs.

"Those who have really read through it realise that it affects almost everybody. It is a Bill that the public has not been sensitised about and we as gays have also not been given the opportunity to sensitise the public about it," said Onziema.

Buturo has accused international human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for supporting non-heterosexual sex by funding LGBT rights advocacy groups in the country. The Bill now declares criminal any non-governmental organisation that supports LGBT activity with a provision to revoke their licences.

It is a Bill that has received strong opposition from not only from the LGBT community and rights organisations in Uganda but from political leaders and rights organisations across the world.

Donor pressure

Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has always openly criticised homosexuality. He even strongly supported the proposed Bill during his speeches. However, at a recent meeting with his ruling National Resistance Movement party members at State House on Jan. 13, Museveni indicated he would not back a Bill that imposes a death sentence for the crime of ‘aggravated homosexuality’.

"This is a foreign policy issue and we have to discuss it in a manner that does not compromise our principles, but also takes care of our foreign interests," Museveni told members, asking them ‘to go slow’ on the Bill. He did not elaborate further.

However, analysts say the Ugandan president could have bowed to international pressure after he revealed that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton had all urged him to reconsider the Bill. U.S. President Barack Obama also expressed concern, local media reported.

Early this year, British Labour MP Harry Cohen introduced a motion in parliament asking the British government to demand that Uganda scrap criminal penalties for homosexuality.

Human rights groups have also called on western nations to withhold aid from Uganda if the draconian Bill is passed. Half of the country’s national budget comes from international aid.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has also threatened to expel Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) arrangement if the Bill is passed. AGOA is an economic arrangement that provides duty-free treatment to imports originating from beneficiary African countries.

However, Sempa who claims homosexuality is a foreign import, says Uganda must not succumb to donor pressure.

"We must be strong… Any country (like Uganda) that puts sodomy on the top of its foreign policy is making a big mistake…And if the selling of our cotton to America means that we receive sodomy in exchange, then that is a trade we cannot do."

Uganda’s speaker of parliament, Edward Ssekandi. said consideration of the Bill would proceed despite the President’s ‘go slow’ appeal.

Article Tags: Front Page News, Headline Story, Himalayan Glacier Data

The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure. He told The Times on January 22 that he had only known about the error for a few days. He said: “I became aware of this when it was reported in the media about ten days ago. Before that, it was really not made known. Nobody brought it to my attention. There were statements, but we never looked at this 2035 number.”

Asked whether he had deliberately kept silent about the error to avoid embarrassment at Copenhagen, he said: “That’s ridiculous. It never came to my attention before the Copenhagen summit. It wasn’t in the public sphere.”

However, a prominent science journalist said that he had asked Dr Pachauri about the 2035 error last November. Pallava Bagla, who writes for Science journal, said he had asked Dr Pachauri about the error. He said that Dr Pachauri had replied: “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.”

Click source to read FULL report by Ben Webster

Source: timesonline.co.uk

Read in full with comments »   

Article Tags: Law/Policy

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe represented Al Gore in the disputed 2000 Supreme Court case against George W. Bush but that didn’t stop him from attacking one of the favorite tactics of the anti-global warming crowd: Lawsuits. In an article posted today by the conservative Washington Legal Foundation, Tribe argues that federal judges have committed grave error by allowing global-warming suits to proceed instead of leaving the issue of limiting carbon emissions to Congress.

“Courts squander the social and political capital they need in order to do what may be politically unpopular …when they yield to the temptatiuon to treat lawsuits as ubiquitously useful devices for making the world a better place,” write Tribe and his coathors, Joshua D. Branson, a third-year at Harvard Law; and Tristan L. Duncan, a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, the Kansas City law firm perhaps best known for defending Philip Morris and other tobacco companies.

In the brief but powerfully worded article, Tribe et al argue that courts since the days of Marbury vs. Madison have recognized that some questions are inherently political and can’t be decided through litigation (Marbury, of course, is the famous case where the Supreme Court decided it couldn’t decide poor Marbury’s case but it did have the last word on whether laws are constitutional).

Click source to read FULL report by Daniel Fisher

Source: blogs.forbes.com

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Ferrari and McLaren Mercedes have barely presented their 2010 single-seaters these days and already the world of Formula One seems at war. The thing all commotion revolves around is the double diffuser. Yes, you got it right, the same F1 car component that caused a chaotic and controversial first half of the season back in 2009.

Back then, it was Brawn GP that introduced the concept in Formula One, leading to immense criticism and ultimately a contestation from the majority of the teams regar… (read more)

So, you have a great idea. You want to move your vision from whiteboard to web host, but the trade-offs (resources, time, money) make it difficult to decide what to spend your hard earned capital on. What can you do to get your idea out to the market with the least amount of investment, while also be ready a flood of new users?

Luckily, it is now less expensive than ever to get started getting an web application to market. This newest generation of agile, cloud-based services help prepare your application and team for success. Now, your software and hardware can be ready for the time when your app is a hit, so you won’t be famous for your own personal failwhale. We take a look at two companies that can help both small and large companies ramp up web offerings.

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Pivotal Labs: Discipline. Collaboration. Results.

Pivotal Labs helps companies design your team and system to scale your app.

Companies like Twitter, Best Buy, and SalesForce.com have chosen to become clients of Pivotal Labs. These highly available applications have called upon Pivotal Labs to assist in scaling and integrating the stream of code into a harmonious production environment.

Pivotal Labs optimizes your companies assets by helping your team build rock-solid code from day one. One attractive thing about their model is that they operate in coordination with your small or large team and actually help your processes become stronger.

This model seems much more attractive than outsourcing the work of creating the intellectual capital for your business. They offer a series of software patterns that help solve some of the scaling challenges no one should find out after it is too late. As the saying goes, “teach a man to fish, and he’ll never be hungry”. If your product is worthy of world-class code, it may be worthwhile to give the team at Pivotal Labs a chance to dig into your project.

Heroku: Rock Solid Ruby Platform

Heroku is an innovative cloud infrastructure for allowing a Ruby development team to provision applications with one command. The infrastructure is designed to leverage the default mechanics within your Ruby application and promises to manage the entire back end application for your team without having to think about the details. Today, Heroku claims almost 50,000 applications being hosted in their infrastructure.

Heroku’s application for provisioning services is compelling and visually pleasing. It has an easy to understand menu of capabilities, many of them with catchy names you’ll likely not forget. Get started for free with Blossom a single, shared 5 mb database. Upgrade to Koi to get a shared 20gb for an estimated monthly cost of $15. If you feel better about dedicated services, a single “computing unit” is estimated at $200 per month and can server up to 2TB per month. Heroku defines a computing unit like this:

Database performance on Heroku is measured by “CPU Units”. A CPU Unit is a measure of how fast the CPU and overall IO of the underlying machine are. Shared databases run on very high performance machines, shared among many different applications. Dedicated databases allow you to choose the performance package that best meets your needs.

Heroku looks like a next generation infrastructure provider for model-driven applications using the Ruby pattern. It will be interesting to see how many developers turn to this class of services for their cloud infrastructure as time goes on. It seems attractive both as a way to get started, and to grow.

It is becoming clear that the spark of innovation will be the prevailing market advantage for entrepreneurs. It is going to become easier and easier to develop predictable and affordable applications that scale with services like Pivotal Labs and Heroku in the market. If your competitor is ramping up with services like this, it is possible they may get there faster and also be ready to scale at the same time.

What’s next? We predict that there soon will be a software layer that takes converts the back-of-the-napkin to an enterprise class service.

What do you think? Would you entrust your idea with these services? Can you afford not to?

Discuss

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By Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi KAMPALA, Jan 29 (IPS) Every morning Pepe Julian Onziema wakes up not knowing if she will live to see another rising sun. Onziema is transgender and she lives in fear for her life because of a national campaign against gay people.

Although she has done nothing wrong, Onziema lives like a fugitive – always on the lookout to avoid trouble.

Her days are spent in fear and as darkness descends she securely locks the doors to her flat in Ntinda, a Kampala suburb where she lives with her partner.

Onziema is a well-known activist and the national programmes coordinator of Sexual Minorities Uganda, an advocacy network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organisations. She has appeared on television several times defending the rights of LGBTs. But it has not made her life any easier.

Just like other LGBTs in her country Onziema has been arrested; spat on; attacked; insulted and even stoned by neighbours.

She cannot comfortably sit in a restaurant for fear of being recognised and evicted, or even use public transport.

Her name has been listed in tabloids as one of the members of Uganda’s ‘immoral society’. And when a crime is committed against her, she cannot report it to the police because sex between two people of the same gender is against the law in Uganda and she will be discriminated against.

"It’s a crazy world we are living in as gays. We are really suffering," Onziema says.

In recent months a campaign against LGBT people has intensified the discrimination.

The campaign is being headed by a section of the legislature and religious leaders. Last year Uganda’s leading Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje, called for LGBTs to be rounded up and exiled on an island on Lake Victoria until they died.

Pentecostal pastor Martin Sempa, from the Makerere Community Church, leads a coalition of Christian churches against homosexuality. He also regularly organises anti-LGBT rallies and campaigns on radio and TV talk shows. In 2008 a local tabloid The Red Pepper listed alleged LGBTs in Uganda in a bid to ‘shame them’ and The Observer newspaper published an article on ‘How to spot a gay Ugandan'.

Consequently, suspected LGBTs have been evicted by landlords and some have had their homes set ablaze. Lesbians have been raped by men who say they are teaching them ‘how to be a woman’. But when these crimes are committed, many do not report it. Like Onziema they are scared of the police who arrest and detain them for being gay.

"When the day breaks, I pray. I pray that there is no gay person in trouble today. I do not even get adequate sleep. You can’t switch your phone off because someone might need help. You could save a life."

Trauma

As an activist, Onziema has been arrested by police at least four times. After one of the arrests, police could not easily identify her gender so they gave her a forced physical examination.

"And some point, because they were having this ridiculous argument about my sex, two female officers came in to my room, while the third, a male one stood at the window. They asked me to undress. Because I was hesitant, one police woman decided to force off my pants and touched my private parts…"

It was a traumatising experience that happened after Onziema was detained for protesting at an international HIV/AIDS implementer’s meeting in Kampala in June 2008.

LGBT and HIV/AIDS activists were peacefully protesting statements made by the director general of Uganda’s AIDS Commission, Dr Kihumuro Apuuli, that no funds would be directed toward HIV programs targeting men who have sex with men.

"Gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda, but because of meagre resources, we cannot direct our programmes at them at this time," he reportedly said. And it is a stance the government has stuck to.

Double stigma

While men who have sex with men are identified as a population at a high risk of contracting and transmitting HV, there are no deliberate programmes to include them in the country’s national HIV/AIDS response.

"I worked as an HIV peer counsellor before and I was actually thrown out (of) the place because I was helping couples who were of the same sex," Onziema says.

Many LGBTs are also afraid of going for HIV testing or even counselling due to the double stigma of being sexual minorities and HIV-positive.

"We have had people who do know their status and those who have actually gone to access Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) under the pretext that they are straight…We need systems and a policy where gay people can honestly reveal their history so that you (doctors) are able to administer treatment to them accordingly," Onziema said.

The Bill

Sex between two people of the same gender is a crime punishable by life imprisonment through provisions in the Penal Code and the 1995 Constitution.

In April 2009 minister of ethics and integrity, Nsaba Buturo, declared the current laws insufficient to fight homosexuality, which he described as ‘immoral and un-African’.

Shortly after, an Anti-Homosexual Bill (2009) which ‘aims at strengthening the nations capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family’ – was tabled in parliament as a private members Bill by MP David Bahati.

"We want it (the Bill) to become law in that if someone is a homosexual, or confesses to being gay, then he/she is a criminal," Buturo said.

Under the proposed law, it becomes a crime just to be an LGBT. The Bill also criminalises same sex marriages and same-sex sexual acts.

But most controversial of all is the death sentence imposed for the crime of ‘aggravated homosexuality’. This is where an HIV-positive LGBT person has sex with a person who is either under the age of 18 years or has disabilities. And if someone is caught repeatedly having non-heterosexual sex, they will be classified as a serial offender and also face the death sentence.

The proposed Bill also provides for forced HIV testing for those accused of aggravated homosexuality. But the Bill does not merely extend to LGBTs. It includes a sentence for all members of the public – including parents, landlords and health workers – who fail to report LGBTs.

"Those who have really read through it realise that it affects almost everybody. It is a Bill that the public has not been sensitised about and we as gays have also not been given the opportunity to sensitise the public about it," said Onziema.

Buturo has accused international human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for supporting non-heterosexual sex by funding LGBT rights advocacy groups in the country. The Bill now declares criminal any non-governmental organisation that supports LGBT activity with a provision to revoke their licences.

It is a Bill that has received strong opposition from not only from the LGBT community and rights organisations in Uganda but from political leaders and rights organisations across the world.

Donor pressure

Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has always openly criticised homosexuality. He even strongly supported the proposed Bill during his speeches. However, at a recent meeting with his ruling National Resistance Movement party members at State House on Jan. 13, Museveni indicated he would not back a Bill that imposes a death sentence for the crime of ‘aggravated homosexuality’.

"This is a foreign policy issue and we have to discuss it in a manner that does not compromise our principles, but also takes care of our foreign interests," Museveni told members, asking them ‘to go slow’ on the Bill. He did not elaborate further.

However, analysts say the Ugandan president could have bowed to international pressure after he revealed that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton had all urged him to reconsider the Bill. U.S. President Barack Obama also expressed concern, local media reported.

Early this year, British Labour MP Harry Cohen introduced a motion in parliament asking the British government to demand that Uganda scrap criminal penalties for homosexuality.

Human rights groups have also called on western nations to withhold aid from Uganda if the draconian Bill is passed. Half of the country’s national budget comes from international aid.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has also threatened to expel Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) arrangement if the Bill is passed. AGOA is an economic arrangement that provides duty-free treatment to imports originating from beneficiary African countries.

However, Sempa who claims homosexuality is a foreign import, says Uganda must not succumb to donor pressure.

"We must be strong… Any country (like Uganda) that puts sodomy on the top of its foreign policy is making a big mistake…And if the selling of our cotton to America means that we receive sodomy in exchange, then that is a trade we cannot do."

Uganda’s speaker of parliament, Edward Ssekandi. said consideration of the Bill would proceed despite the President’s ‘go slow’ appeal.

A video BoomTown posted earlier this week–following around my All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg at the launch of the Apple iPad–has gotten an awful lot of attention, due to a little over two minutes of him kibitzing about the device with CEO Steve Jobs.

I get the interest in the video, since it is not often you see the highly controlled Jobs just chit-chatting and even making the case about an Apple (AAPL) product, which he did in the video.

Since the Jobs section of my longer video was in the middle, I decided to put all the Jobs clips I had together, all done in my usual shaky spycam style and which you can see below.

In the video, Mossberg asked Jobs about the iBooks application and the price of e-books, with Jobs insisting the price would be the same on Apple as it was on Amazon.

“The prices will be the same,” said Jobs, before getting in a little dig at the maker of the Kindle e-reader. “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon, because they’re not happy with it.”

Jobs also told Mossberg that the iPad will have “140-something hours, I think, of continuous music playback” and that the 10 hours of battery life for the iPad was more than enough for anyone.

“It’s all about the display…Our chips don’t use hardly any power,” said Jobs.

He also said consumers don’t necessarily need even more battery time, “because you just end up pluggin’ it in. You end up docking it or whatever you’re going to do with it. It’s not a big deal. Ten hours is a long time, because you’re not going to read for 10 hours.”

Mossberg also asked Jobs if he should pen his review of the iPad on the iPad and if he could convert it into a Word document, which Jobs endorsed.

“Write it in Pages, you could make a Word version and send it in an email to your editors,” Jobs said.

Asked Mossberg: “All from here?”

“Yeah,” said Jobs.

I also had another video of Jobs talking to Mossberg about why he used the iPad name, which has been made fun of my some.

Unfortunately, my Flip camera ate it–after I watched it and took notes–when I was transferring it.

But, according to my notes, Jobs dismissed all the incoming flack he said he expected to receive about the name.

“You forget, but they made fun of iPod name when it came out,” he said, in part. “What matters is the product and what it means to consumers.”

Jobs noted that in a year’s time, the name iPad would become rote to people, as long as they like the mobile device and consider it innovative and its software useful.

In addition, he said it was an inevitable brand extension from iPod and iPhone.

“Plus the fonts look great together…iPod, iPhone, iPad,” he said.

That particular exchange is not in this video, but here’s what I did shoot in the demo room at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, after the launch on Wednesday:

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Heavy Rain is right around the corner. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy some more teasers, though. Like this new Mall Gameplay trailer.
 
 
 
 

Please don’t attempt to adjust your computer screens, that really is supermodel Kate Moss with streaks of silver-grey hair. Well, according to Kate, it’s actually blue.

The 36-year-old Waif hasn’t succumbed to the ravages of old age just yet– but she is the victim of a dye job gone wrong. Those streaks of silvery grey are actually supposed to be light blue.

Harvest Hemp
[phpbay]Harvest Hemp, 25[/phpbay]
[phpzon]Harvest Hemp, 20[/phpzon]

Harvest Hemp is a post from the Vegetarian Vitamins Guide blog where you can find suggestions and advice from vegetarians and vegans on vegetarian diets, supplements, vitamins and overall nutrition.

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Nikon’s D300S isn’t exactly tailor made for D300 owners, but for those waiting patiently to jump into the semi-pro DSLR game, it offers up a pretty delightful array of specs. Boasting SD and CF slots, a 720p movie mode and 12.3 megapixels of sharp shooting goodness, this here cam received overwhelmingly positive reviews late last year. Strategically positioned between the full-frame D700 and the lesser-specced D90, we’re sure the D300S found its way into quite a few hearts (and under quite a few trees) between then and now. If you’ve been firing off snaps with one of these for a few months now, we’re curious to know how you’d tweak things if the power were yours. Does the “S” really add enough to the D300 package to warrant the boost in price? How’s the image quality? Is the video mode a-okay for your purposes? Spill your heart out in comments below — we’re here to hold your hand if necessary.

How would you change Nikon’s D300S? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A young UK-based startup called Favilous has joined the crowded social bookmarking space. It hopes to differentiate itself from the legions of existing bookmarking services by building a community behind the bookmarks, so users can share descriptions of sites and help each other discover new online destinations.

On the site, users can see other users’ popular bookmarks as well as the most popular bookmarks in various categories, including “Top Sites” and picks for categories such as food, entertainment, and travel. Once you sign up, you pick a number of categories, for example, blogs or music, that are of interest to you. Favilous populates the top sites in each of those categories, and to edit this list, you need to expand the category to see “all sites” and narrow it down from there, or else enter in a URL manually.

At this point, there is no way to transfer bookmarks directly from a browser upon registration, but that is about two weeks away, according to founder Steve Whyley. Right now, it seems a bit too manual to me, and that may be why the service hasn’t seen much pickup, accumulating just under 200 users in about a week.

The company also plans to add customized theme pages in the coming weeks as well as the ability to integrate social networking profiles so you can easily share bookmarks with your friends.

The company plans to make money in 3 ways: by licensing the API to businesses and allowing them to customize Favilous for their own needs; by creating a subscription model to bookmark music playlists (they have reached out to Spotify to allow users to bookmark their playlists); and to possibly look at affiliate relationships and advertise to users, although they are hesitant to do that at this time.

The site is better looking than a lot of its competitors, but whether or not it will make for a better social bookmarking experience won’t be evident until the promised features roll out in the next couple of weeks.

Favilous was founded by Whyley and Mike Doyle. Competitors include Pinboard, Instapaper, which charges for its iPhone app but not for use of its site, and Delicious, which is free. Favilous is self-funded.

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The founders of Sofa.com, Pat Reeves and Rohan Blacker, have launched a new startup that should be particularly useful for anyone who has ever had trouble finding things to do in their community, or while on vacation.

With Ooh.com, they’re offering a place for activity providers to sell their services with as little fuss as possible — much like eBay did in the late nineties for used and collector goods, but without the auction aspect.

At the site, activity providers can post their events (pretty much anything “time-bookable”) for free, and allow customers to check out via Paypal or Google Checkout. Activity providers can incorporate Flickr and Youtube into their listings and can promote events to Facebook and Twitter from within the site. It doesn’t look like the site has any place for free events — but given that there are so many other online venues for finding free activities, it’s probably better for Ooh.com to stick within the paid event niche.

Ooh.com competes with the likes of Craigslist and Eventbrite, but its all-in-one solution for activity providers is fairly unique. It’s simpler than Craigslist because the activity provider doesn’t have to worry about tracking incoming payments via a third-party service, and it caters to individuals and smaller activities better than Eventbrite.

The UK-based service already boasts some 1,000 activities from North America, Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. According to the company’s press release, the variety of courses and activities listed so far include:

[A] jam and chutney making course in Hampshire, paragliding with hawks in Nepal, a holiday cottage in Dorset, medieval jousting lessons in California, film screenings in London, financial crisis tours in New York with a former bond trader, ski lessons in Japan, lindy hop lessons in Belfast, hip hop tours in Harlem and bushcraft days in Missouri.

While there are many similar options available, Ooh.com’s simplicity may be an appealing option to activity providers and users just looking for something fun to do.

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CSI: Miami actress Eva La Rue is at the center of a property battle in California after she had a wooden gate erected on her Glendale property without proper permits. The former All My Children regular was cited for code violations and ordered to remove the structure.

If there’s a threat of danger, should Eva be allowed to keep her illegal fence as a protective measure?

After learning the star had acted to block her home from the eyes of an alleged stalker, a zoning administrator with the Los Angeles Planning Commission allowed the gate to stay. That decision didn’t go over so well with Eva’s suburban L.A. neighbors, who’ve accused local officials of affording the actress special treatment.

“I’m looking to you for a safety and protection and I literally beg you to let me keep my gate….” the single mother, who shares the ritzy mansion with her 8-year-old daughter, plead during a public hearing this week.

The council remains deadlocked, according to The Glendale News Press.

Oscar-nominated actress Anne Hathaway was honored by Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatrical Student Drama Troupe on Thursday as she was named Hasty Pudding Theatrical’s “Woman of the Year” during a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Thursday. Hathaway joins a long list of actresses who have been feted by the Harvard theatrical group for their contributions to the arts.

Anne was forced to arm-wrestle and slay a dragon to earn her prize. The all-male cast donned drag to portray the celeb’s former co-stars Meryl Streep and Julie Andrews, before forcing her to sing and mock battle a student dressed as ‘Puff Daddy the Magic Dragon.”

Over the past few years, the entertainment industry has been pushing hard on the claim that copyright infringement and organized crime (or terrorism) are somehow connected. It’s a regular talking point and is often brought up in discussions about ACTA. And yet, where is this supposed link? Glynn Moody discusses what a bogus concept it is, and why a new EU report is massively discredited in simply taking the claim at face value:

I’ve noted several times an increasingly popular trope of the intellectual monopolists: since counterfeiting is often linked with organised crime, and because counterfeiting and copyright infringement are vaguely similar, it follows as surely as night follows day that copyright infringement is linked with organised crime.

But, of course, that’s not the case. In fact, those who traffic in things like counterfeit DVDs are discovering that unauthorized access to online files is actually harming the counterfeit DVD business that organized crime has used in the past. Based on the logic put forth by the entertainment industry, shouldn’t we cheer on The Pirate Bay for putting DVD counterfeiters (and thus, organized criminals and terrorists) out of business?

Moody goes on to challenge the idea that copyright infringement leads to people being put in harm’s way:

*Counterfeiting* can certainly be a threat to consumer health and safety, and needs to be combated vigorously, but the idea that copyright infringement might be is simply risible, and it’s an insult to our intelligence even to suggest it.

Indeed. This is a problem. So, let’s start calling the industry on this. Can they show any actual evidence that basic online copyright infringement is in any way linked to organized crime or terrorism?

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Just a hunch here, but we’re guessing that Alienware’s CES stash all hit the production line at right about the same time. During the past day, we’ve seen the company’s M15x, M17x and OptX AW2310 hit the shipping stage, the latter of which is the firm’s first-ever 3D monitor. Checking in at 23-inches and boasting a full 1080p panel, this one also packs a 3 millisecond response time, 120Hz refresh rate and stereoscopic support when NVIDIA’s GeForce 3D Vision Kit is utilized. It’s up for order right now at $469, but if you follow that Logicbuy link down there, you’ll be able to snag it (for a limited time) for $449.10. Too bad that 3D kit will set you back another $200, but hey, no one said that witnessing the third dimension was cheap. Or remotely interesting. But mostly cheap.

Alienware now shipping 23-inch OptX AW2310 1080p 3D monitor originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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