Microsoft and Casio enter cross licensing agreement, world wonders if Casio actually makes Linux-based devices
September 21, 2011 No Comment
If you happen to be making devices that run on Linux — of which Android is a subset — odds are pretty good that you’ll be getting a phone call from Redmond at some point . And that’s just what happened to Casio, who’s joining existing licensees TomTom and Amazon in signing a cross license agreement with Microsoft for patents pertaining to the Tux-approved OS. Covering Linux on “certain Casio devices,” the joint statement was equally vague about how many greenbacks exchanged hands, simply stating: “[both] parties acknowledge that Microsoft is being compensated by Casio.” There ain’t much more to it, but folks looking to humor themselves can do so after the break. Continue reading Microsoft and Casio enter cross licensing agreement, world wonders if Casio actually makes Linux-based devices Microsoft and Casio enter cross licensing agreement, world wonders if Casio actually makes Linux-based devices originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. “Should the truth about the world exist,” writes Joseph Brodsky, “it’s bound to be nonhuman.” Early humans understood this believing animals were entitled to a kind of reverence and rights by virtue of being affectionate social creatures, capable of emotion and pain. They also thought that since animals were capable of suffering, they should not be treated as ends to human needs, that is, dominated by machines and technologies and more recently exploited through factory farms, entertainment industries and scientific labs. It seems that humankind is again trying to rediscover their Paleolithic roots, roots consisting of animism. Animism is the…
Continue reading …Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. “Should the truth about the world exist,” writes Joseph Brodsky, “it’s bound to be nonhuman.” Early humans understood this believing animals were entitled to a kind of reverence and rights by virtue of being affectionate social creatures, capable of emotion and pain. They also thought that since animals were capable of suffering, they should not be treated as ends to human needs, that is, dominated by machines and technologies and more recently exploited through factory farms, entertainment industries and scientific labs. It seems that humankind is again trying to rediscover their Paleolithic roots, roots consisting of animism. Animism is the…
Continue reading …Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
September 21, 2011 No Comment
Type: Book Title: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President See all customer reviews Product Description: The hidden history of Wall Street and the White House comes down to a single, powerful, quintessentially American concept: confidence. Both centers of power, tapping brazen innovations over the past three decades, learned how to manufacture it. Until August 2007, when that confidence finally began to crumble. In this gripping and brilliantly reported book, Ron Suskind tells the story of what happened next, as Wall Street struggled to save itself while a man with little experience and soaring rhetoric emerged from obscurity to usher in “a new era of responsibility.” It is a story that follows the journey of Barack Obama, who rose as the country fell, and offers the first full portrait of his tumultuous presidency. Wall Street found that straying from long-standing principles of transparency, accountability, and fair dealing opened a path to stunning profits. Obama’s determination to reverse that trend was essential to his ascendance, especially when Wall Street collapsed during the fall of an election year and the two candidates could audition for the presidency by responding to a national crisis. But as he stood on the stage in Grant Park, a shudder went through Barack Obama. He would now have to command Washington, tame New York, and rescue the economy in the first real management job of his life. The new president surrounded himself with a team of seasoned players—like Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner—who had served a different president in a different time. As the nation’s crises deepened, Obama’s deputies often ignored the president’s decisions—“to protect him from himself”—while they fought to seize control of a rudderless White House. Bitter disputes—between men and women, policy and politics—ruled the day. The result was an administration that found itself overtaken by events as, year to year, Obama struggled to grow into the world’s toughest job and, in desperation, take control of his own administration. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ron Suskind introduces readers to an ensemble cast, from the titans of high finance to a new generation of reformers, from petulant congressmen and acerbic lobbyists to a tight circle of White House advisers—and, ultimately, to the president himself, as you’ve never before seen him. Based on hundreds of interviews and filled with piercing insights and startling disclosures, Confidence Men brings into focus the collusion and conflict between the nation’s two capitals—New York and Washington, one of private gain, the other of public purpose—in defining confidence and, thereby, charting America’s future. See the details
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The largest GSM carrier in the country is popular amongst travelers because you can use nearly all of its phones anywhere in the world . Messaging whilst abroad, however, has always been an expensive headache since the best option on AT&T was a bundle of 50 SMS / MMS messages for $10. That’s a quaint number, to say the least, considering many of us can burn through that many messages in an hour. Beginning today, two more options are available for the more text-savvy roamers: you can get a package of 200 for $30, or 500 for $50. This number only reflects the number of messages you send, which means those received are counted against your US bucket of texts (if you’re on a pay-per-use messaging plan, they’ll cost 20 cents). Given the company’s recent history of streamlining , we applaud the additional choices global jetsetters now have. Enjoy the presser after the break. Continue reading AT&T launches new global messaging plans, lets you comfortably roam AT&T launches new global messaging plans, lets you comfortably roam originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 03:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Howard Lederer and Christopher Ferguson charged in Ponzi scheme, live video footage Justice Department Claims Full Tilt Poker Was A Massive Ponzi Scheme Howard+Lederer+busts+Elezra+and+sets+a+Record casinobonusbet says: U.S. Alleges Full Tilt Poker Was Ponzi Scheme: By ALEXANDRA BERZON As professional poker players, Howard Lederer … http://t.co/uKvJAQWb
Continue reading …Senior Met officer: we should not have tried to force Guardian to reveal sources
September 21, 2011 No Comment
Deputy assistant commissioner says using Official Secrets Act on journalists investigating phone hacking was ‘not appropriate’ The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police has admitted that invoking the Official Secrets Act in attempts to make the Guardian reveal its confidential sources for stories relating to the phone-hacking scandal was “not appropriate”. Speaking a day after the Met announced an abrupt climbdown in its bid to make Guardian reporters disclose their sources for articles relating to the phone hacking of the murder victim Milly Dowler, Mark Simmons, head of professionalism issues at Scotland Yard, defended the police’s duty to investigate “robustly” leaks of information to the media. But he said claims that Amelia Hill , one of the reporters who broke the scandal, could have incited a source to break the Official Secrets Act – and broken the act herself – should not have formed a part of Scotland Yard’s strategy. The Met had been due to apply on Friday for a production order to obtain all the material the Guardian holds that would help identify sources for the phone-hacking stories. “The view I came to when I looked at the matter was that the Official Secrets Act was not an appropriate element of the application,” Simmons told the BBC. “We have acknowledged, and I have acknowledged, the role the Guardian has played in the history of what brought us to where we are now both in terms of its focus on phone hacking itself and indeed its focus on the Met’s response to that. “But in all the glare that’s been thrown on to our relationships with the media, we have had to ask ourselves the question about how do we do more to ensure that public confidence in our officers treating information that is brought to them in confidence … is maintained.” Simmons said that, although he had been aware that an application was underway, he had not been aware of its detailed content or of the reference to the Official Secrets Act. After an intervention by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Scotland Yard abandoned its bid to force the Guardian to disclose its sources on Tuesday night. Simmons said: “What I have clearly done is taken a view, based on consultation with the DPP [director of public prosecutions], based on, as I say, our own legal advice, that the use of the Official Secrets Act this time … was not appropriate, and that’s the basis for withdrawing the application.” The statement put out by the Met announcing its retreat left open the possibility that the production order could be applied for again, but the Guardian’s lawyers have been told that the police have dropped the application. A senior Yard source said: “It’s off the agenda.” The Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, cautioned against moves to curb responsible journalism. “I just hope that in our effort to clean up some of the worst practices we don’t completely overreact and try to clamp down on perfectly normal and applaudable reporting,” he told Radio 4′s Today programme. “This was a regrettable incident, but let’s hope it’s over.” The police application was formally made under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, but with an assertion that Hill had committed an offence under the Official Secrets Act by inciting an officer from Operation Weeting – the Met’s investigation into phone hacking – to reveal information. The Yard source said: “There will be some hard reflection. This was a decision made in good faith, but with no appreciation for the wider consequences. Obviously, the last thing we want to do is to get into a big fight with the media. We do not want to interfere with journalists. In hindsight the view is that certain things that should have been done were not done, and that is regrettable.” Many lawyers had expressed astonishment at the police resorting to the Official Secrets Act. Their surprise was reinforced on Monday when the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, revealed that the CPS had not been contacted by officers before the application was made. Neil O’May, the Guardian’s solicitor, said: “This was always a misconceived application for source material. Journalists’ sources are protected in law. For the Metropolitan police to turn on the very newspaper which exposed the failings of the previous police inquiries and reported on hacking by the News of the World was always doomed to failure. The Metropolitan police need to control the officers who are involved in these sensitive areas.” In a statement, the CPS said: “[On] Monday the Metropolitan police asked the CPS for advice in relation to seeking a production order against Guardian Newspapers. “The CPS has asked that more information be provided to its lawyers and has said that more time will be needed fully to consider the matter. As a result, the scheduled court hearing will not go ahead on Friday. [The Metropolitan police] will consider what application, if any, it will make in due course, once it has received advice from the CPS.” The Met said in a statement: “The Metropolitan police’s directorate of professional standards consulted the Crown Prosecution Service about the alleged leaking of information by a police officer from Operation Weeting. “The CPS has today asked that more information be provided to its lawyers and for appropriate time to consider the matter. In addition the MPS [Metropolitan police service] has taken further legal advice this afternoon and as a result has decided not to pursue, at this time, the application for production orders scheduled for hearing on Friday 23 September. We have agreed with the CPS that we will work jointly with them in considering the next steps. “This decision does not mean that the investigation has been concluded. This investigation, led by the DPS [directorate of professional standards], not Operation Weeting, has always been about establishing whether a police officer has leaked information, and gathering any evidence that proves or disproves that. Despite recent media reports, there was no intention to target journalists or disregard journalists’ obligations to protect their sources.” The picture painted by Met insiders is that a relatively junior officer took the decision to take on the Guardian without consulting his superiors, setting off a calamitous chain of events that saw the Met condemned for an attempted assault on press freedom. The senior source said: “There were not a lot of happy people at our place over the weekend because it was a decision made by the SIO [senior investigating officer]. There was no referral upwards, and you would have thought on something as sensitive as this there would have been.” Metropolitan police The Guardian Phone hacking Official Secrets Act London Police Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Owen Bowcott Vikram Dodd Lizzy Davies guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Senior Met officer: we should not have tried to force Guardian to reveal sources
September 21, 2011 No CommentDeputy assistant commissioner says using Official Secrets Act on journalists investigating phone hacking was ‘not appropriate’ The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police has admitted that invoking the Official Secrets Act in attempts to make the Guardian reveal its confidential sources for stories relating to the phone-hacking scandal was “not appropriate”. Speaking a day after the Met announced an abrupt climbdown in its bid to make Guardian reporters disclose their sources for articles relating to the phone hacking of the murder victim Milly Dowler, Mark Simmons, head of professionalism issues at Scotland Yard, defended the police’s duty to investigate “robustly” leaks of information to the media. But he said claims that Amelia Hill , one of the reporters who broke the scandal, could have incited a source to break the Official Secrets Act – and broken the act herself – should not have formed a part of Scotland Yard’s strategy. The Met had been due to apply on Friday for a production order to obtain all the material the Guardian holds that would help identify sources for the phone-hacking stories. “The view I came to when I looked at the matter was that the Official Secrets Act was not an appropriate element of the application,” Simmons told the BBC. “We have acknowledged, and I have acknowledged, the role the Guardian has played in the history of what brought us to where we are now both in terms of its focus on phone hacking itself and indeed its focus on the Met’s response to that. “But in all the glare that’s been thrown on to our relationships with the media, we have had to ask ourselves the question about how do we do more to ensure that public confidence in our officers treating information that is brought to them in confidence … is maintained.” Simmons said that, although he had been aware that an application was underway, he had not been aware of its detailed content or of the reference to the Official Secrets Act. After an intervention by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Scotland Yard abandoned its bid to force the Guardian to disclose its sources on Tuesday night. Simmons said: “What I have clearly done is taken a view, based on consultation with the DPP [director of public prosecutions], based on, as I say, our own legal advice, that the use of the Official Secrets Act this time … was not appropriate, and that’s the basis for withdrawing the application.” The statement put out by the Met announcing its retreat left open the possibility that the production order could be applied for again, but the Guardian’s lawyers have been told that the police have dropped the application. A senior Yard source said: “It’s off the agenda.” The Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, cautioned against moves to curb responsible journalism. “I just hope that in our effort to clean up some of the worst practices we don’t completely overreact and try to clamp down on perfectly normal and applaudable reporting,” he told Radio 4′s Today programme. “This was a regrettable incident, but let’s hope it’s over.” The police application was formally made under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, but with an assertion that Hill had committed an offence under the Official Secrets Act by inciting an officer from Operation Weeting – the Met’s investigation into phone hacking – to reveal information. The Yard source said: “There will be some hard reflection. This was a decision made in good faith, but with no appreciation for the wider consequences. Obviously, the last thing we want to do is to get into a big fight with the media. We do not want to interfere with journalists. In hindsight the view is that certain things that should have been done were not done, and that is regrettable.” Many lawyers had expressed astonishment at the police resorting to the Official Secrets Act. Their surprise was reinforced on Monday when the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, revealed that the CPS had not been contacted by officers before the application was made. Neil O’May, the Guardian’s solicitor, said: “This was always a misconceived application for source material. Journalists’ sources are protected in law. For the Metropolitan police to turn on the very newspaper which exposed the failings of the previous police inquiries and reported on hacking by the News of the World was always doomed to failure. The Metropolitan police need to control the officers who are involved in these sensitive areas.” In a statement, the CPS said: “[On] Monday the Metropolitan police asked the CPS for advice in relation to seeking a production order against Guardian Newspapers. “The CPS has asked that more information be provided to its lawyers and has said that more time will be needed fully to consider the matter. As a result, the scheduled court hearing will not go ahead on Friday. [The Metropolitan police] will consider what application, if any, it will make in due course, once it has received advice from the CPS.” The Met said in a statement: “The Metropolitan police’s directorate of professional standards consulted the Crown Prosecution Service about the alleged leaking of information by a police officer from Operation Weeting. “The CPS has today asked that more information be provided to its lawyers and for appropriate time to consider the matter. In addition the MPS [Metropolitan police service] has taken further legal advice this afternoon and as a result has decided not to pursue, at this time, the application for production orders scheduled for hearing on Friday 23 September. We have agreed with the CPS that we will work jointly with them in considering the next steps. “This decision does not mean that the investigation has been concluded. This investigation, led by the DPS [directorate of professional standards], not Operation Weeting, has always been about establishing whether a police officer has leaked information, and gathering any evidence that proves or disproves that. Despite recent media reports, there was no intention to target journalists or disregard journalists’ obligations to protect their sources.” The picture painted by Met insiders is that a relatively junior officer took the decision to take on the Guardian without consulting his superiors, setting off a calamitous chain of events that saw the Met condemned for an attempted assault on press freedom. The senior source said: “There were not a lot of happy people at our place over the weekend because it was a decision made by the SIO [senior investigating officer]. There was no referral upwards, and you would have thought on something as sensitive as this there would have been.” Metropolitan police The Guardian Phone hacking Official Secrets Act London Police Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Owen Bowcott Vikram Dodd Lizzy Davies guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Senior Met officer: we should not have tried to force Guardian to reveal sources
September 21, 2011 No CommentDeputy assistant commissioner says using Official Secrets Act on journalists investigating phone hacking was ‘not appropriate’ The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police has admitted that invoking the Official Secrets Act in attempts to make the Guardian reveal its confidential sources for stories relating to the phone-hacking scandal was “not appropriate”. Speaking a day after the Met announced an abrupt climbdown in its bid to make Guardian reporters disclose their sources for articles relating to the phone hacking of the murder victim Milly Dowler, Mark Simmons, head of professionalism issues at Scotland Yard, defended the police’s duty to investigate “robustly” leaks of information to the media. But he said claims that Amelia Hill , one of the reporters who broke the scandal, could have incited a source to break the Official Secrets Act – and broken the act herself – should not have formed a part of Scotland Yard’s strategy. The Met had been due to apply on Friday for a production order to obtain all the material the Guardian holds that would help identify sources for the phone-hacking stories. “The view I came to when I looked at the matter was that the Official Secrets Act was not an appropriate element of the application,” Simmons told the BBC. “We have acknowledged, and I have acknowledged, the role the Guardian has played in the history of what brought us to where we are now both in terms of its focus on phone hacking itself and indeed its focus on the Met’s response to that. “But in all the glare that’s been thrown on to our relationships with the media, we have had to ask ourselves the question about how do we do more to ensure that public confidence in our officers treating information that is brought to them in confidence … is maintained.” Simmons said that, although he had been aware that an application was underway, he had not been aware of its detailed content or of the reference to the Official Secrets Act. After an intervention by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Scotland Yard abandoned its bid to force the Guardian to disclose its sources on Tuesday night. Simmons said: “What I have clearly done is taken a view, based on consultation with the DPP [director of public prosecutions], based on, as I say, our own legal advice, that the use of the Official Secrets Act this time … was not appropriate, and that’s the basis for withdrawing the application.” The statement put out by the Met announcing its retreat left open the possibility that the production order could be applied for again, but the Guardian’s lawyers have been told that the police have dropped the application. A senior Yard source said: “It’s off the agenda.” The Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, cautioned against moves to curb responsible journalism. “I just hope that in our effort to clean up some of the worst practices we don’t completely overreact and try to clamp down on perfectly normal and applaudable reporting,” he told Radio 4′s Today programme. “This was a regrettable incident, but let’s hope it’s over.” The police application was formally made under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, but with an assertion that Hill had committed an offence under the Official Secrets Act by inciting an officer from Operation Weeting – the Met’s investigation into phone hacking – to reveal information. The Yard source said: “There will be some hard reflection. This was a decision made in good faith, but with no appreciation for the wider consequences. Obviously, the last thing we want to do is to get into a big fight with the media. We do not want to interfere with journalists. In hindsight the view is that certain things that should have been done were not done, and that is regrettable.” Many lawyers had expressed astonishment at the police resorting to the Official Secrets Act. Their surprise was reinforced on Monday when the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, revealed that the CPS had not been contacted by officers before the application was made. Neil O’May, the Guardian’s solicitor, said: “This was always a misconceived application for source material. Journalists’ sources are protected in law. For the Metropolitan police to turn on the very newspaper which exposed the failings of the previous police inquiries and reported on hacking by the News of the World was always doomed to failure. The Metropolitan police need to control the officers who are involved in these sensitive areas.” In a statement, the CPS said: “[On] Monday the Metropolitan police asked the CPS for advice in relation to seeking a production order against Guardian Newspapers. “The CPS has asked that more information be provided to its lawyers and has said that more time will be needed fully to consider the matter. As a result, the scheduled court hearing will not go ahead on Friday. [The Metropolitan police] will consider what application, if any, it will make in due course, once it has received advice from the CPS.” The Met said in a statement: “The Metropolitan police’s directorate of professional standards consulted the Crown Prosecution Service about the alleged leaking of information by a police officer from Operation Weeting. “The CPS has today asked that more information be provided to its lawyers and for appropriate time to consider the matter. In addition the MPS [Metropolitan police service] has taken further legal advice this afternoon and as a result has decided not to pursue, at this time, the application for production orders scheduled for hearing on Friday 23 September. We have agreed with the CPS that we will work jointly with them in considering the next steps. “This decision does not mean that the investigation has been concluded. This investigation, led by the DPS [directorate of professional standards], not Operation Weeting, has always been about establishing whether a police officer has leaked information, and gathering any evidence that proves or disproves that. Despite recent media reports, there was no intention to target journalists or disregard journalists’ obligations to protect their sources.” The picture painted by Met insiders is that a relatively junior officer took the decision to take on the Guardian without consulting his superiors, setting off a calamitous chain of events that saw the Met condemned for an attempted assault on press freedom. The senior source said: “There were not a lot of happy people at our place over the weekend because it was a decision made by the SIO [senior investigating officer]. There was no referral upwards, and you would have thought on something as sensitive as this there would have been.” Metropolitan police The Guardian Phone hacking Official Secrets Act London Police Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Owen Bowcott Vikram Dodd Lizzy Davies guardian.co.uk
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Self-proclaimed bishop of church in Peckham, south London, claimed he could give ‘miracle babies’ to infertile couples A pastor who claimed he could give infertile couples “miracle babies” is to be extradited to Kenya where he stands accused of child abduction, the Home Office has confirmed. Gilbert Deya faces trial in his home country, where he is alleged to have stolen five children from a hospital between 1999 and 2004. The self-proclaimed bishop of a church in Peckham, south London, has fought removal from Britain since 2007, claiming he faces torture and inhuman and degrading treatment if sent back. However, the Home Office said Theresa May had formally sanctioned his extradition after he exhausted all avenues of appeal in the UK. A spokesman for the department said: “On Tuesday 13 September the secretary of state decided that Mr Deya’s extradition should proceed. “He has exhausted all avenues of appeal against extradition under the Extradition Act.” A decision to deport Deya was rubber-stamped by Jacqui Smith when she was home secretary in December 2007. The evangelist then failed in a high court appeal before being refused permission to take his case to the House of Lords. His lawyers had argued that his human rights would be breached if he returned and claimed he was the victim of a political vendetta in Kenya. Deya runs the registered charity Gilbert Deya Ministries, which claims a UK membership of 36,000. Police in Nairobi say their investigation revolves around the disappearance of babies from Nairobi’s Pumwani maternity hospital and involves suspects in Britain, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. Extradition Kenya Child protection Fertility problems Christianity Children UK criminal justice London Africa Religion guardian.co.uk
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