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Monday, May 28, 2007

An Islamic cleric named Ezzat Atiya issued a fatwa to get around gender segregation and hijab in Islam. He stated that symbolic breastfeeding could be used to make it permissible for male and female colleagues to work together alone.

Dr. Atiyah had stated that the breastfeeding does not have to be by the woman herself. “[This can also be achieved] by means of the man’s mother or sister suckling the woman, or by means of the woman’s mother or sister suckling the man” he wrote.

Atiya works at the Al-Azhar University, an Islamic seminary in Egypt. The seminary was established by a Shi’a caliphate and is named after Fatima Al-Zahra. Zahra was the wife of Ali. Al-Azhar University has a fatwa that officially sanctioned martyrdom operation with one condition only: martyrdom operations are only allowed in Israel. The university has had this ruling for a long time and has stood by it.

Atiyah had said,

According to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, “If someone tells you he has a new interpretation of Islam, sock him in the mouth.”

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The Creative Archive project is a BBC led initiative which aims to make archive audio and video footage available to be freely downloaded, distributed, and ‘remixed’. The project is still in a pilot stage, and is only available to UK residents, but the long-term future of the project could have a major impact on the way audiences interact with BBC content.

The project is partly inspired by the Creative Commons movements, and also by a general move within the BBC to be more open with its assets. Additionally, educational audiences such as schools have expressed an interest in using BBC content within the classroom, both to watch and to create multimedia content from.

So far, clips made available under the licence have included archive news footage, nature documentary footage, and video clips content designed for educational uses. “It’s done very well with the audiences we’ve directed them towards – heavy BBC users,” says Paul Gerhardt, project leader. Users downloading the clips are also prompted to fill in a questionnaire, and so far 10-15% of people seem to be doing something with the material, although the BBC can’t be sure what exactly that is.

One of the biggest limitations within the licence as it currently stands during the pilot scheme is that the material is only available for use by people resident in the UK. The BBC’s Creative Archive sites use ‘geo-IP filtering’ to limit downloads to the UK, but there is some confusion over whether people who create their own content using the material can upload their creations to their own websites. A question within the FAQs for one of the more recent selections of clips suggests that this isn’t possible, saying “during this pilot phase material released under the terms of the Creative Archive Licence cannot be used outside the UK – therefore, unless a website has its use restricted to the UK only, content from the ‘Regions on Film’ archive cannot be published on it.”

“We want people to make full use of this content, whether they cut and paste it or whether they share it, and we completely accept that we’ve got a bit of a contradiction at the moment by saying UK-only and yet encouraging people to put it on their sites to share it with others, because you can’t expect people to have geo-IP restriction technology,” admits Mr Gerhardt. “We’re thinking hard about how to deal with this after the pilot – at the moment it’s quite likely that we’re probably going to need to find a distribution partner outside of the UK, so that if you’re outside of the UK you’ve got roughly the same experience as in the UK, but the content could be surrounded by sponsorship messages or advertising or whatever. Once we’ve done that then leakage from one to the other won’t really matter very much.”

The Creative Archive project has not been without critics from the commercial sector, worried that the BBC giving away their content for free would make it difficult for them to be able to make money from their own content. The BBC has explained to some of the commercial players that the content would be limited during the pilot, would not be available in broadcast quality, and that watermarking technologies would be trialled so that content could be recognised when it crops up elsewhere. The BBC is also investigating a business model for the future where there would be a “close relationship between public access to low-resolution content and a click through to monetising that content if you want to buy a high-resolution version”. People who want to play around with the material might discover they have a talent and then find they need to get a commercial license to use it properly, Mr Gerhardt explains, and the project wants to make it easy for this to happen.

Before the project can go ahead with the full scale launch, it will have to go through a ‘public value test’ to assess its overall impact on the marketplace, and commercial media companies will have a chance to input at this point.

For ease in clearing the rights, all of the content available under the pilot project is factual, but in the future the project could include drama and entertainment content. The BBC may also, in the future, work the Creative Archive licences into the commissioning process for new programmes. “This raises some really interesting ideas – if you have a documentary series, you could use the Creative Archive to release the longer form footage, for instance – that would create a digital legacy of that documentary series,” Mr Gerhardt explains. “The other interesting thought in the longer term would be for the BBC, or another broadcaster, to contribute to a digital pool of archive material on a theme, and then invite people to assemble their own content out of that. We could end up broadcasting both the BBC professionally produced programme accompanied by other programmes that other people had made out of the same material.”

One of the ways that the Creative Archive licence differs from the other ‘copyleft’ licences like Creative Commons, aside from the UK-only limitation, is that the licence currently allows the BBC to update and modify the licence, which may worry those using the licence that their rights could suddenly become more restricted. “The licence at the moment is a draft, and we’ve given warning that we may well improve it, but we wouldn’t do that more than once or twice. The ambition is that by the time we scale up to the full service we would have a fixed licence that everyone was comfortable with, and it wouldn’t change after that.”

“The ambition is to think about creating a single portal where people can search and see what stuff is out there under the same licence terms, from a range of different suppliers. The idea is that if we can create something compelling like that, we will attract other archives in the UK to contribute their material, so we’d be aggregating quite a large quantity.”

The Creative Archive project has captured the interest of many Internet users, who are growing increasingly, used the idea of being able to ‘remix’ technologies and content. Some groups have been frustrated with the speed at which the project is developing though, and with some of the restrictions imposed in the licence. An open letter to the BBC urges the dropping of the UK-only limitation, the use of ‘open formats’, and to allow the material to be usable commercially.

Mr Gerhardt has publicly welcomed debate of the licence, but makes it clear to me that the whole BBC archive will never all be available under the Creative Archive terms. “We will make all our archive available, under different terms, over the next five to ten years, at a pace to be determined. There would be three modes in which people access it – some of the content would only be available commercially, for the first five year or so after broadcast, say. The second route is through a ‘view again’ strategy where you can view the programmes, but they’d be DRM-restricted. And the third mode is Creative Archive. Over time, programmes would move from one mode to another, with some programmes going straight to the Creative Archive after broadcast.”

Others who disagree with the ‘UK-only’ restriction within the licence include Suw Charman, from the Open Rights Group, who has said “it doesn’t make sense in a world where information moves between continents in seconds, and where it is difficult for the average user to exclude visitors based on geography.” On the project generally, though, she said “I think that it is a good step along the way to a more open attitude towards content. It is a toe in the water, which is far preferable to the attitude of most of the industry players, who are simply burying their heads in the sand and hoping that lawsuits and lobbying for new legislation will bolster their out-dated business plan.”

Other organisations currently participating in the Creative Archive scheme include the British Film Institute, the Open University and Teachers’ TV. Two artists have been awarded scholarships to create artworks using BBC archive material, and BBC Radio 1 has held a competition asking people to use the footage in creative ways as backing visuals to music. The process of making the BBC’s archive material fully available may be a long one, but it could end up changing the way that people interact with the UK’s public service broadcaster.

Monday, July 31, 2006

Today New Zealand’s new coins have been released. The new coins replace the 10, 20 and 50 cent coins, while the 5-cent coin is being removed from circulation for good.

The new coins retain the same design as before but the 10-cent coin is now copper coloured. All coins except the 10-cent are now made from plated steel and nickel, making them lighter and cheaper to produce. The 10-cent coin is made from plated steel and copper.

Brian Lang, Reserve Bank of New Zealand Currency Manager, said: “The introduction of smaller, lighter coins is one of New Zealand’s biggest currency changes since the introduction of decimal currency on 10 July 1967.”

The Reserve Bank reports that they have issued 1,037 million coins since the introduction of decimal currency.

However, people can still use their old change between now and 1 November 2006, when the old coins will cease being legal tender.

A survey conducted by ACNielsen, on behalf of the Reserve Bank, in January 2004 shows that 51% liked the idea of the new coins initially.

The ANZ Bank are asking for people to donate their old 5-cent coins to Plunket in their ‘5s for under fives’ appeal.

Friday, January 12, 2007

The iPhone only made its appearance as a prototype and there have been controversies aroused.

The dispute has come up between the manufacturer of the iPhone (which was presented on Wednesday for the first time) — Apple Inc. — and a leader in network and communication systems, based in San Jose — Cisco. The company claims to possess the trademark for iPhone, and moreover, that it sells devices under the same brand through one of its divisions.

This became the reason for Cisco to file a lawsuit against Apple Inc. so that the latter would stop selling the device.

Cisco states that it has received the trademark in 2000, when the company overtook Infogear Technology Corp., which took place in 1996.

The Vice President and general counsel of the company, Mark Chandler, explained that there was no doubt about the excitement of the new device from Apple, but they should not use a trademark, which belongs to Cisco.

The iPhone developed by Cisco is a device which allows users to make phone calls over the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP).

April 27, 2005

The world’s largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380, has made its maiden flight after lifting off from Toulouse in France.

The take-off, at 08:30 UTC, was apparently normal and took place exactly on time. The aircraft flew into clear blue skies with a flight crew of six (all wearing parachutes as a safety precaution) and twenty tonnes of test equipment on board.

Around 50,000 people watched the maiden flight, many sitting on grass banks lining the runway. More people watched the flight on a giant screen erected in the centre of Toulouse.

The test flight lasted four hours, with the aircraft flying no higher than 10,000 nor further than 100 miles from Toulouse as it circled the Bay of Biscay.

The A380, known for many years during its development phase as the Airbus A3XX, will be the largest airliner in the world by a substantial margin when it enters service.

The first A380 prototype was unveiled during a lavish ceremony in Toulouse, France, on January 18, 2005. Its manufacturer’s serial number is 001, and it is registered F-WWOW.

The new Airbus will initially be sold in two versions: the A380-800, a full double-decker configuration, able to carry 555 passengers in a three-class configuration or up to 800 passengers in a single-class economy configuration. Range for the A380-800 model is expected to be 8,000 nautical miles (14,800 km). The second model, the A380-800F dedicated freighter, will carry 150 tons of cargo 5,600 miles (10,400 km).

The cost of the project so far is £8.4bn, £1bn over budget. 144 planes have already been ordered. Singapore Airlines, which will be the first company to operate the new air giant, in July 2006, have opened a reservation site for this first regular flight.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Dell Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will partner up with the Microsoft-Nortel Innovative communications alliance (ICA) team to sell Unified Communications and VoIP products.

The announcement on Tuesday the 16th of October 2007 includes Dell selling VoIP, data and wireless networking products from Nortel and the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and other unified communications products.

The partnership with both manufacturers should allow Dell to provide a pre-integrated solution.

In March 2007, competitors IBM and Cisco announced they would join in the competition for developing unified communications applications and the development of open technologies around the unified communications and collaboration (UC2) client platform an application programming interfaces (APIs) offered by IBM as a subset of Lotus Sametime.

“We want to make it simple for our customers to deploy unified communications so their end users can get access to all their messages in one place – whether its e-mail, phone or mobile device. This will pave the way for more business-ready productivity tools,” said vice president of solutions, Dell Product Group, Rick Becker.

• Customers have four options:
  • Core Office Communication Server 2007 – provides instant messaging and on-premise Microsoft Live Meeting.
  • Office Communication Server: Telephony – enables call routing tracking and management, VoIP gateway and public branch exchange (PBX) integration.
  • Audio and Video Conferencing – allows point-to-point conference, video conference and VoIP audio conference.
  • Exchange Unified Messaging – provides voicemail, e-mail and fax in Microsoft Outlook, and anywhere access of Microsoft Outlook Inbox and Calendar.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Police have said that an explosion in a hotel garage in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, that sparked an evacuation of a large area was an act of vandalism. What was initially thought to be an explosion, at around 7:30am local time, forced police to shut off a major entrance into the area prompted the Clarion Inn, a two-story hotel, and surrounding buildings to be evacuated. A bomb squad were called to the scene, and an armored robot was sent into the garage to examine the scene.

Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant John Romero said that investigators were treating the incident as an act of vandalism, and said that detectives will be examining surveillance footage of the garage. He confirmed that a caller had reported an explosion in the area. Officers who responded did not initially find anything suspicious, but a short time later a Port Police officer on patrol discovered a Lincoln Navigator with its windows blown out in an underground garage. The Los Angeles Fire Department also responded to the call.

“On closer inspection and using their training, bomb squad is confident the damage was caused by something other than a bomb. Based on what we know now, they’re scaling the operation way back,” he said. “There’s any variety of things that can sound like a bomb or a blast, particularly in a subterranean environment. The danger has passed.” He refused to speculate as to what may have caused the damage, or, if it was not a bomb, where the noise had come from. He added: “Now that the robots have gone forward and had a good look, we are confidant there was not an explosion. There was a hole blown in the door, and the glass was blown out so, now we have to find out who did it.”

A witness, the owner of a diner two blocks away from the hotel, said that he heard a loud sound while preparing the day’s menu. He said: “I was cooking my food and I heard something like ‘boom’! I said, ‘What happened?’ And I checked everything in the kitchen but saw nothing. An hour later I went outside and saw a lot of police.” Romero added that the vehicle had shown signs of an explosion and that no one in the hotel was killed or injured. At 8:20 a.m. the police issued a citywide tactical alert and surrounding streets were closed to the public. Police have said that there is shattered glass surrounding the vehicle and one of the doors exhibits evidence that an explosion had taken place. Romero added: “We still want to be very careful how to proceed. Something did happen to the car. Now they have to figure out what happened and who did it.”