Author: Serkadis

Last year we hosted a giveaway for some colorful cat portraits by Italian artist Sebastiano Ranchetti of Animals In Color. Well, his new 2010 calendars are now available and here’s your chance to win one! To enter, please leave a comment on this post. The winner will be chosen in a random drawing on February 3. One entry per person. This giveaway is open to readers everywhere!

Sebastiano’s artwork is also available from the Animals in Color Etsy shop.

Congratulations to Wendy (comment #73), winner of the Ex-Boyfriend t-shirt giveaway! Wendy–along with lots of other readers–chose DJ Kitty as her fave. I’m sure this shirt will lead to plenty of stimulating conversation!

DISCOUNT CODE

With so many great designs, it’s hard to choose just one, so Ex-Boyfriend is offering a 10% discount if you use discount code MODERNCAT at checkout. This code will be good through March 31, 2010.

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, SDK

It’s been a long time coming, but the last hurdle is gone — Apple has lifted the restrictions against 3G VoiP calls from the iPhone Software Development Kit.

The implications of this are pretty huge. Not only does this mean that VoIP apps like Skype [iTunes Link] can now be easily updated to allow VoIP access over 3G on the iPhone, it also means that the 3G-enabled versions of the new iPad should be able to take full advantage of VoIP over 3G as well. The iPad does come with a microphone and a speaker, so while you won’t be able to hold the device up to your ear like a phone (although it would be pretty funny to watch you try), calls over Skype or another VoIP program should theoretically be just as clear on the iPad as they are on the iPhone’s tiny speaker. This has the potential to really shake up the wireless industry, especially in the U.S. — with pay-as-you-go 3G on the iPad costing no more than $30 a month, the iPad suddenly seems like a very attractive alternative to the iPhone with its far more expensive (and contractually obligated) carrier plans.

iCall [iTunes Link] has already been updated with VoIP over 3G enabled, and with all restrictions now lifted, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before Skype and other VoIP apps follow.

[Via Gizmodo]

TUAWiPhone SDK updated: VoIP over 3G now permitted originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, Portables, Odds and ends, Apple Financial

Even though the device won’t be released for another two months, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray has been quick to revise his sales estimates for the iPad. His former estimate of 1.9 million units sold in the first 12 months was based on an estimated average price tag of $600; now that we know the iPad is priced much lower than that, Munster has revised his estimate accordingly. With the official pricing revealed, Munster now projects iPad sales of 3-4 million units in the first twelve months and double that amount in 2011, which would generate $4.6 billion in revenue for Apple next year.

Munster doesn’t think the iPad will cannibalize Mac sales, however. “The gadget is a premium mobile device, not a computer,” Munster believes, and goes on to say that “consumers looking for an affordable portable computer will likely stick with the MacBook lineup.” Munster thinks it far more likely that the iPad will cannibalize sales of the iPod touch, and has revised his sales estimate of that device downward by 1.8 million units for 2010.
I can tell you at least one person who won’t be part of that 3-4 million sales for the iPad: me. When we at TUAW posted about our dreams for the then-unnamed tablet last August, I said, “In order for me to get really excited about an iTablet, it would have to be more than a gap-filler between the iPhone and the MacBook. It would have to be revolutionary, a device that does something neither existing product is able to do.” Based on what I’ve seen about the iPad so far, though, the device seems to be something targeted toward people who don’t already have that particular setup and are missing either an iPhone/iPod touch or a MacBook. That might be exactly what 3-4 million people are looking for this year, and maybe 8 million more next year, but it’s not something that suits my own computing needs in any way.

What do you think? Are you planning on getting an iPad and joining Munster’s legions? Let us know in the comments.

TUAWFirst iPad sales estimates: four million this year, double that in 2011 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Bachelor’s Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney will wed in a televised wedding special airing on ABC this March, the network said Wednesday.

Mesnick famously broke off his engagement with former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Melissa Rycroft — his original fiancee — for a second chance at love with Molly on The Bachelor: After the Final Rose special last winter. Jason and Molly announced their engagement in October and Melissa tied the knot with Tye Strickland last month.

The two-hour special will include the bride’s dress fitting, planning for the big day, bachelor and bachelorette parties and, of course, the ceremony. Several former Bachelor and Bachelorette couples and participants will also be on-hand.

The Bachelor: Jason and Molly’s Wedding is set to air March 8. This is the second time ABC has capitalized off of the success of his long-running reality romance series — now in its 14th season. The Bachelorette’s Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter wed in ceremony that aired live on ABC in 2002.

It’s just been confirmed. There will be a special Premium Edition released for Yakuza 3 when it releases next month in New Zealand. Included in the pack are several downloadable contents and soundtrack.
 
 
 

Is the iPad a Kindle Killer?  I watched closely today as Apple announced their new iPad device and as expected it’s a pretty looking thing.  But is it compelling?  Is it a good choice as an eBook reader?  I don’t think it’s even close to being the Kindle-Killer and here’s why:

If you’re a reader of books, you want something that uses a miniscule amount of energy – hence better battery life, you want something extremely light and easy to hold in one hand, something easy on the eyes and ideally something that allows you to purchase books at a better price than if you picked one up from the local bookstore.  While the iPad and really all other MID devices, tablets and netbooks have advantages with other use cases, they really don’t compete (yet at least) with the Kindle or even the Nook eBook reader for that matter.

eReaders Advantages over iPad

• Size – The Kindle is really perfect for reading.  You can hold it in a single hand, read in bed before going to sleep and easily slip it in your bag to carry with you.  The iPad is heave and too big for this purpose.
• Battery Life – Everyone is raving about the Apple-expected, 10 hours of battery life.  The Kindle lasts about a week on one charge.
• Wireless is free.  The Kindle gives you lifetime, free 3G coverage while the iPad requires you pay a monthly $15 – $30 fee or use WiFi.  WiFi is definitely an advantage though and an area where the Kindle must improve in its next version.
• The Kindle does one thing well – very well and that one thing is to be a vessel for reading.  The iPad’s ability to act as an eReader is more of a “bonus feature” and the fact that Steve Jobs showed off the eBook features of the iPad later in the event as opposed to earlier tells that fact.

So what does the iPad have over the Kindle and Nook for the eReader functions?

• Support for ePub (Nook has this, Kindle doesn’t)
• Better for Magazines and Photobooks – Color, video albeit limited make the Kindle & Nook deficient for these purposes in my opinion and the iPad definitely will handle these tasks better
• Faster and more powerful technology
• If you’re a casual reader or just want to read your Kindle books on the iPad you can do that – Kindle books are supported by the iPad as well as many other devices.

I think Dave Zatz said it best with this tweet:

“Amazon/Kindle’s got nothing to fear. It’s Plastic Logic, and their pricey Que devices, who’s in trouble in light of iPad pricing.”

I agree although I think Amazon’s goal is to make the Kindle compete with paper books, not with MID devices such as the iPad.  What we should watch for is to  see what Amazon does next.  Will they drop the Kindle DX for something more like the iPad device?  Will they announce a color and/or flexible screen?  Regardless of the feature set, I’m betting the next Kindle hardware will be focused on being a good e-Reader, not a great app store vessel.

SINGAPORE: Oil prices rebounded in Asian trade Thursday after steep declines overnight following the release of mixed energy stockpiles data from the United States. New York’’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, climbed 11 cents to 73.78 dollars a barrel. It dropped 1.04 dollars to 73.67 dollars in New York trade Wednesday, its lowest close since December 22. London’’s Brent North Sea crude for March delivery was up 14 cents to 72.38 dollars. Analysts said the closely watched weekly stockpiles report for the United States, the world’’s biggest energy consumer, depressed the market.

When the iPhone first launched in 2007 I was sure I wasn’t going to buy one. Then I played with one. 15 minutes later I was $600 poorer. It was arguably the best tech purchase I’ve ever made. After the Apple event today, I got a chance to play with the new iPad for quite a bit of time. My takeaway? The thing is beautiful and fast. Really fast. If you’ll excuse my hyperbole, it felt like I was holding the future. But is it a must-have? That’s a complicated question.

The quick and dirty answer is: for many people, right now, no. Unlike the iPhone, which filled an already well-established need (cellular telephone usage), there is no existing need the iPad fills. That is, unless you’re an iPhone or iPod touch user. If that’s the case, the iPad does fill a couple of needs — it’s the best way to use apps, and more importantly, the best way to browse the web in a style that is likely your preferred method: by touching it.

That’s the key that Apple only hinted at today. When it launches, the iPad’s initial target audience is iPhone and iPod touch users. Why? Because they are already very comfortable with the way you need to interact with this device. The moment I picked up the iPad today I knew exactly what to do with it. It was second-nature. It was the iPhone, only larger — and that felt good. Meanwhile, I watched some other people who said they didn’t use an iPhone regularly interact with the iPad for the first time and it was not nearly as seamless.

Towards the end of his keynote, Steve Jobs alluded to this idea when he said that the 75 million iPhones and iPod touches that have already shipped ensure that those users will already know how to use the iPad. During the hands-on demos, two different Apple employees said basically the same thing. “If you have an iPhone, you already know how to use this,” one said.

There has been much talk leading up to the iPad’s debut as to what its exact purpose would be. A lot of the buzz was that it would be a killer new way to consume print media. Apple did play that up a bit today, but not as much as you may have expected. They did devote a good amount of time to the new iBooks app and store, but if you think anyone is going to buy this thing just to be an e-reader, you’re mistaken.

In fact, a lot of the Kindle/iPad comparisons now just seem a bit odd. Comparing the iPad to the Kindle now sort of seems like comparing a computer to a typewriter. Having scrolled through a few books on the iPad today, there’s still definitely an argument to be made that the Kindle has an advantage in the one thing it does (thanks to e-ink). But the key point is that it only does the one thing (and those Kindle apps won’t help that much because the device is way too slow) — as many of us have long suspected, it’s going to be relegated to a feature of a device that does more. And that’s exactly what Apple is doing with the iPad (which we correctly translated Jobs as saying back in September when everyone else seemed to think he said he would never do anything with eBooks).

And more functionality is important because it gives Apple more ways to lure new users into this style of computing. But again, the first of those are going to be iPhone and iPod touch users because they will be the most comfortable with using the device. And as that user base keeps expanding, so too will the base of those that are interested in the iPad — many just don’t know it yet.

The thing is, as a heavy iPhone user, I immediately recognize the iPad’s appeal. If it can perform anywhere close to the promised 10 hour battery life, I’ll likely ditch carrying around a laptop most of the time and simply take an iPad with the keyboard accessory. The thing is that snappy — and, at a pound and a half and a half-inch thick, the weight and size savings will be substantial. Oh, and at $30-a-month for unlimited data (yes, sadly through AT&T), I can ditch my $60-a-month laptop 3G card.

Does it have Flash? No. But while that used to be an issue for me when the iPhone first launched, I never think about it anymore. All of YouTube is available through the YouTube app, and I’d bet that sooner or later we’ll see a Hulu app as well. So what am I really missing with Flash? Browser crashes, eaten CPU cycles, and some Facebook games? Good riddance.

What it comes down to for me is that when I don’t need to do something that’s typing-intensive (like writing), I’d much prefer to use my hands to move around applications and browse the web. The iPhone has taught me that. Meanwhile, the rapid movement of data to the cloud has taught me that I have next to no need for most desktop applications anymore. In other words, I’m perfectly primed for this device.

Most people won’t yet, but as long as Apple has its base that will buy and use the iPad, they have plenty of time for either themselves or third-party developers to create the killer uses that make the iPad a must-have product for a broader range of people. We already saw that happen with the App Store and the iPhone/iPod touch. And at $499 (for the low-end version), there will be no shortage of people willing to splurge on the device just to see what all the fuss is about. They’ll get hooked too.

The iPhone and the iPod touch have in a way served as training wheels for us to use this new type of device, the iPad. To a lesser extent, so have Apple’s multi-touch trackpads and the new multi-touch Magic Mouse. All of these devices are pointing towards what Apple obviously believes is the future of computing: touch. That is more clear now than ever before — the iPad is their biggest step yet.

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Google has just posted a set of core privacy principles to its official blog, in honor of tomorrow’s International Data Privacy Day. There’s nothing revelatory here, but it’s a bit reassuring all the same given just how much Google knows about most of us. If you’re interested in more of Google’s privacy stances, they’ve got an entire portal dedicated to them here.

• Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
• Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
• Make the collection of personal information transparent.
• Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
• Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.

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Now that the iPad is finally official, any publisher that wasn’t already figuring out how to bring their content to a color, touchscreen device is probably scrambling to do it now. That’s a bit easier said than done though — while it probably wouldn’t be too tough to simply scan in text and present it in a static format, converting it into something that actually takes advantage of the new platform is going to prove difficult. That challenge is giving rise to some new startups looking to help publishers make the transition from paper to digital.

One such company is called Inkling, a small startup that’s raised $1 million in seed money from Ram Shriram, Mitch Kapor, and other angel investors. Inkling is looking to help textbook makers convert their content into digitized versions that are more than just static reproductions of the original text. In other words, they’re helping spur the kind of innovation that could change the way we learn (but could take publishers a long time to figure out if they’re left to their own devices).

So what exactly can the platform add beyond the text these publishers already have? CEO Matt MacInnis says that Inkling is building tools that give publishers a scalable way to add interactive and dynamic content. They’ll be able to include interactive figures and quizzes. And they’ll be able to give their texts cloud connectivity, allowing students to download new, updated content. Other benefits from connecting to the cloud include the ability to sync your work between multiple devices, and the ability to add social features to a text. Imagine if you had a question about a particular diagram in your text; you could send it to your professor, and they could leave an annotation in the book that would be visible to all other students.

Inkling is currently in talks with all four of the major textbook companies, though MacInnis wouldn’t divulge whether they’d signed any deals yet. He does say that the company is also interested in working with smaller publishers, including free projects like California’s free textbook initiative.

But Inking isn’t the only startup looking to help publishers take advantage of the iPad. Another player is PixelMags, which is looking to help magazine publishers make the leap themselves. PixelMags has actually been around for a while, offering to help magazines get their content on the App Store for consumption on the iPhone. As of today, they’re making the jump to the bigger screen. They company says that it will allow publishers to include both text and streaming media in their magazines, and they’ll take care of getting the content into the App Store.

It’s great to see companies that are looking to help publishers truly take advantage of the iPad, but I am concerned that Apple may soon step on their toes. During its event today, Apple showed off its native eBook reader, but it wasn’t clear if it would be offering a similar universal reader for magazines or textbooks. I suspect they will, otherwise each magazine and book could have an inconsistent user interface. And that means companies like Inkling will have to adjust their content to work within whatever file formats Apple allows for.

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As you can probably imagine, Engadget HQ has been boiling over with heated discussion of Apple’s new iPad today. Love it or hate it (and a lot of you seem to hate it), it’s hard not to see it as a pretty bold statement of what Apple thinks general-purpose computing should look like in the future: a giant iPhone. As you can imagine, that’s a provocative vision, and it’s simply not possible to try and condense the opinions of the staff into one Grand Unified Theory of the iPad — so we’re going to do what we did for the Kindle DX and the Droid, and let everyone speak for themselves. Let’s kick it off with the three people who’ve actually seen and used this thing: Josh, Ross, and Joystiq’s Chris Grant.

Continue reading Editorial: Engadget on the Apple iPad

Editorial: Engadget on the Apple iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the more disappointing (if unsurprising) parts of Apple’s launch of its iPad tablet computer today was the absence of Flash, Adobe’s technology for web video and other media. Now Adobe has responded in two blog posts — one that’s diplomatic, and another that’s not.

In the first, Adobe says it’s excited about the iPad, and it reminds developers of its Packager for the iPhone announced last year, which allows someone to export an application built for Flash into a format that works on the iPhone. Like other iPhone apps, those apps created by the Packager will work on the iPad, and Adobe says it will also add features to support the tablet’s increased screen size.

Flash content still won’t work in the iPad’s Safari web browser, but it sounded like Adobe was trying to put a happy face on a situation it’s can’t be satisfied with. The tone changed in a second post by Adobe’s Adrian Ludwig, which went up a few hours later. There’s a bit of throat-clearing, once again about how the iPad is really exciting, but then he gets to the absence of Flash:

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web

If I want to use the iPad to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab — not to mention the millions of other sites on the web — I’ll be out of luck.

Okay, Ludwig doesn’t exactly tell Apple to go to hell. But there’s a real confrontational tone. That contrasts with Adobe’s previous comments on the issue, which tend to be relatively diplomatic statements to the effect that the ball is in Apple’s court. For example, Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen said last fall, “I’d love to work with Apple to make it happen.” Now the tensions between the two companies, which were visible if you looked for them, have moved to the surface.

And for what it’s worth, I think Ludwig has some good points. I know there are plenty of complaints about how Flash taxes hardware, about how it leads to crashes, and about the fact that an important technology powering the web is controlled by a single company. But as a consumer, the fact that when I turn on the iPad browser I won’t be able to view most of the video on the web creates is a big drawback, especially for a device that’s supposed to provide “the best” movie-watching experiencing.

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Great news for the VoIP world: iCall, the maker of the iCall VoIP iPhone app that can catch a GSM call and flip it over to WiFi, has issued a press release saying that the new iPhone SDK allows for VoIP over 3G cellular connections. Previously such calls had to be made over WiFi, since AT&T’s network (or someone well acquainted with AT&T’s network) didn’t think it was man enough to take the VoIP traffic. Interestingly, iCall says its 3G-friendly VoIP app is available now, and is the first and only such app in the App Store — which seems like some pretty quick turnaround on everyone’s part, but apparently the 3G restriction wasn’t anything to do with the software itself, but instead a server-side block. We just tested this out and it totally works, and while we’ll be looking for more verification that the ban has indeed been lifted, it sounds like it’s time for some cheaply connected international parties in the streets.

Filed under: Cellphones

Apple lifts VoIP over cellular restrictions in new iPhone SDK originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dmitri Soloviev, photo by hro.org

The first criminal case against a blogger Dmitri Soloviev in Russia has a happy ending . After two years of investigation and three socio-linguistic assessments, experts didn't find any evidence of “incitement hatred against police and Russian Security Service officers.”

Soloviev's  victory, however, is rather an exception than a rule. It was not the court that found Soloviev not guilty, but the prosecutor's office. It stopped the prosecution process after realizing that the case against the blogger would fail anyway. But the precedent has been established. The blogger has been found “not guilty” and, more importantly, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and police workers could not be defined as “social groups.”

On March 25, 2008, Dmitri Soloviev (aka LJ user dimon77), an opposition blogger from Kemerovo [EN] (an industrial city in Siberia),  has been accused of “inciting hatred, animosity and disgrace towards police and FSB workers” (infamous part 1 of Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code [EN]). The basis for the accusations turned out to be Soloviev's blog posts critical of political situation in the country. Although his posts are currently available only to Soloviev's friends, they are still widely cited [RUS] online.

The troubles started four years ago when Soloviev was summoned to the regional FSB office “for a conversation.” After that, Soloviev's friends warned him that he had been placed on some sort of an FSB “watch list.” Soloviev is sure that the reason for criminal prosecution wasn't his blog posts, but his active civil position. He believes that his blog became his “Achilles' heel.”

In one of the posts that later was cited as an evidence of his “hatred,” Soloviev wrote:

Вы уверены, что лучший способ общения с гражданином – это когда у гражданина завязан рот. Хорошо, вы заткнули ему рот, Вы связали ему руки и привязали ноги к стулу. И что же Вы получили? Вот это Вы называете суверенной демократией? Вот это Вы пропагандируете на всяких международных форумах как достижение стабильности? Нет, Вы боитесь. Вы дрожите, что все узнают, во что Вы превратили свободную страну за восемь лет. Сколько безвинных сидят в СИЗО, годами дожидаясь несправедливого приговора. Сколько покалечено и сколько убито в ОВД, из которых выбивали признания в том, чего не совершали – и всё ради ежемесячных показателей борьбы с преступностью. А сколько Вы уже забили в планы по двести восемьдесят второй? Савва Терентьев – это обкатка методов? Сколько таких Савв Вы готовы принять в свои железные объятья?

Вот Ваш успех борьбы с экстремистами: с начала года уже 37 убийств по Москве на национальной почве. Впрочем, Вы этого и добивались: нагнетая страх, легче внушить обывателям собственную незаменимость.

The criminal case against Soloviev started on August 11, 2008 after official accusations passed bureaucratic process in the prosecutor's office. The police searched his apartment and confiscated a laptop, mobile phones and stickers of “Oborona” [EN] movement, which he was a member of (later these items were returned, except Soloviev's office computer). On August 20, a group of bloggers organized an online campaign [RUS] claiming that the accusations had no legal base and were anti-constitutional. Livejournal post in Dmitri's defense gathered more than 600 comments. Soloviev convinced that making the case public was exactly what helped him at the end.

Further process of the criminal case is described in a judicial resolution published on December 31, 2009, a year later after the events. Blogger Oleg Kozlovsky published [RUS] its scanned copy online. The resolution shows the mechanisms of the blogger's prosecution, which can be used against every critic of the Russian authorities. The evidence of “incitement of hatred against FSB and policemen” was first found with the help of socio-linguistic assessment.

The first assessment defined Soloviev's postings as propaganda. The experts, however, were not sure if policemen and FSB officers represented distinctive social groups and they requested additional sociological assessment.

The additional assessment, performed on December 1, 2008, claimed that policemen and FSB officers could count as social groups. The assessment report proposed 'scientific' explanation of policemen being a social group:

Сотрудники милиции и ФсБ являются социальными группами, так как обладают отличительными признаками социальных групп: выполняют общественно значимую функцию и объединены сходными знаниями и навыками, чувством идентичности с профессией и другими ее представителями. В текстах статей присутствует негативный образ социальных групп сотрудников милиции и ФСБ.

However, Soloviev's advocates requested third assessment. It was was performed on September 2009 by the experts of the Federal Center of the Legal Medicine in Moscow and Tomsk University. The third assessment report had two important conclusions. First, those experts found that the previous  assessments were wrong and there were no such social group as “policemen” or “FSB officers.” Second, there were no negative images of them in any of Soloviev's posts. The experts also found that his posts were not did not incite hatred towards the authorities. On that basis, the prosecutor's office found Dmitri not guilty and stopped the prosecution process.

Answering GV question if he is going to continue his posts on Livejournal after all that, Soloviev said:

Буду, только это уже будет повзрослевший Дмитрий Соловьев.

I will, but it will be a grown-up Dmitri Soloviev.

Answering GV question if he will be practicing self-censorship, Dmitri said:

В некотором смысле самоцензура есть всегда, она ограничивается
морально-этическими рамками. Но как показало время, еще на это влияет
жизненный опыт и реальная загрузка по времени. Скажу, что сейчас опыта у
меня стало больше, а времени свободного меньше. Но мои жизненные
принципы и взгляды на общество не изменились. Я считал и считаю до сих
пор, что права человека и гражданина, которые прописаны в Конституции,
являются неотъемлемой ценностью, что демократия является наиболее
цивилизованной формой государственного устройства.

Надеюсь, что в будущем не только я повзрослею, но и наше гражданское
общество как главный сдерживающий фактор бесконтрольной власти.

Теперь, я могу снова не боясь говорить фразу, запавшую с детства:
Да пребудет с нами Сила!

Bloggers enthusiastically welcomed the news of the ending of the case. Most of the bloggers were just forwarding news about the case closure. Some were more elaborate:

alexey_ivanov:
Good news. One more good news would be cancellation of the Article 282.

nik_sud:
There are still experts with conscience and judges with honor

The role of anonymous experts in Soloviev's case was critical. The vagueness of the Russian laws usually works to the authorities' benefits who use terms like “extremism” or “social group” in their widest definitions in order to justify accusations. As Soloviev's case shows, local experts tend to cooperate with the prosecutor's office and are more likely to pronounce accusatory results after a socio-linguistic assessment. Federal experts who are less dependent from the regional police or the prosecutor's office in this case presented a more reasonable verdict.

Another important feature of the case is that it was not the court that found Dmitri Soloviev not guilty but the local prosecutor's office that stopped the blogger's prosecution. Since FSB and police officers were proved not be social groups, this was not a judicial verdict but an assessment result that can be appealed.

….Sometimes, there simply are no words……

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is on a mission to save Punxsutawney Phil. The animal rights group has suggested the season-predicting groundhog, appointed to determine how long we’ll have to tolerate Ol’ Man Winter each year, should be replaced with a robot, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Wednesday.

The tomfoolery of this organization never ceases to amaze me. Why are these people allowed to walk the streets without medication?

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Gemma Vaughan, an Animals in Entertainment Specialist with PETA, penned a letter to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club on Wednesday arguing that keeping Phil on display year-round is a “cruel” way to treat the animal. Blah….Blah…Blah!

“Make the compassionate decision to use an animatronic Phil and retire the live groundhogs who are used for Groundhog Day activities to a sanctuary,” Vaughan wrote in the plea. “Tradition is no excuse for cruelty.”

Bill Deeley, president of the Club, has called the request “crazy.”

“Phil is probably treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania,” Deeley said. “He’s got air conditioning in the summer, his pen is heated in winter … He has everything but a TV in there. What more do you want?”

Published Jan. 26, 2010
By Sara Schilling, Tri-City Herald staff writer

Two events aimed at helping Tri-City area students get a jump start on higher education are planned in the next few days at Columbia Basin College in Pasco.

The first event, called College Night, is from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday in the Gjerde Center. Nearly 3,000 area high school seniors and their parents have been invited to learn about CBC’s programs, get information on financial aid, meet instructors and hear from students.

Seniors who attend also will be able to apply for $1,000 College Night scholarships. At least two scholarships will be awarded; students must turn in their applications at College Night to be eligible.

The event is put on annually but typically is aimed at under-represented students, such as those from low-income families. However, this year college officials have broadened their target demographic to include all students.

Because of the slumping economy, “we figure more and more students are going to need to have some other options” when it comes to higher education, said Roy Garcia, CBC’s director of outreach. “What better place than your own backyard?”

CBC also is playing host to a College Goal Sunday event from 2-4 p.m. Jan. 31 in the Thornton Center. Volunteers will be on hand to help students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

The College Goal Sunday at CBC is one of several being put on throughout the state.

Applying for financial aid “can be an overwhelming thing. We want to help as many people as we can get their FAFSA in,” said Andrew Crawmer, CBC’s assistant director of outreach.

Students who attend also will be eligible to apply for two $500 scholarships. The scholarships don’t have to be used at CBC.

The College Goal Sunday event is for all students, not just those planning to attend the Pasco community college.

Students should bring their tax information. Students who are under 24 and are considered dependents should bring their parents’ tax information.

For more information, call 542-4423.

Deadline nears
The deadline to apply for Columbia Basin College Foundation scholarships is Feb. 21. For details, go to columbiabasin.edu/foundation

Additional news stories can be accessed online at the Tri-City Herald.

AReview: NEW YORK: The prosecution in the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who is on trial on attempted murder charges in a New York court, has requested jury to record her testimony despite her inappropriate conduct in court, Areview news reported on Wednesday. The government of Pakistan has sped up its diplomatic and official efforts for release of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Areview has informed that the Pakistan’s ambassador to USA, Hussain Haqqani has met Judge Barman, reviewing her case, in order to seek updates regarding the case, and also met the public prosecutor, and attorney to Dr. Aafia in this regard. Sources have informed that the speeding up of Pakistan’s efforts come in wake of special directives by PM, while interior Rehman Malik has also said to have stepped up his efforts regarding the case. Sources have deliberated that in the coming days, this case would be taking an important turn, and it was possible that America demand ‘some incentives’ from Pakistan in return of Dr. Aafia’s release; which might include exchange of five American terrorists arrested from Sargodha in return of release of Dr. Aafia.