Thursday, March 9, 2006

Toronto’s public utility, Toronto Hydro Telecom, will make Canada’s largest city into a huge wireless hotspot.

“This is both an exciting and very important initiative for the city of Toronto”, said Toronto’s mayor, David Miller. “It puts us on the leading edge of the telecommunications industry nationwide and globally.”

Toronto Hydro Telecom will offer customers free access for the first six months. After that, it will begin to charge for services.

“Wi-Fi technology is the new benchmark for urban living”, stated Toronto Hydro president David Dobbin. “It’s standard equipment in many electronic devices, from laptops to portable entertainment units.”

Private telephone companies are questioning why a public utility needs to compete with the private sector.

Mike Lee of Rogers Communications Inc. questioned why the city of Toronto wanted to enter the internet access business.

“It will not be an easy business”, Lee told the National Post. “In this day and age, the focus should be on core operations more than anything. I was surprised to see they are looking to get into this business.”

Brian Sharwood, a telecom analyst in Toronto, said the municipality will likely install the wireless transmitters and receivers on its lamp posts as a way to blanket the city, a process known as “wireless mesh networking”.

Thursday, February 3, 2005

Georgia –Zurab Zhvania, Prime Minister of Georgia, was found dead of gas poisoning at a friend’s home. The China Daily quotes Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili: “This is a tragic accident… It was a gas poisoning.”

Zhavani was visiting in the home of Raul Usupov, deputy governor from the Kvemo-Kartli region, when an apparent carbon monoxide leak from a gas space heater overcame and killed both him and his host.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is not unknown in Georgia; 45 deaths by carbon monoxide poisoning are reported by the official Russian Information Agency. Power supplies are not entirely reliable, and central heating systems are not universal, so small portable heaters are common even in the capital.

President Mikhail Saakashvili called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss responding to the death. “(Zhvania’s death) is a huge blow for our country and personally for me as a president and as a person,” quotes the China Daily, “I have lost my closest friend, my most loyal adviser, my biggest ally.”

Once a protegé of Eduard Shevardnadze, and widely viewed as his chosen successor, Zhvania chose to join the opposition in supporting Saakashvili. He has been viewed as a moderating influence on Saakashvili, who appointed Mr. Zhvania after taking office one year ago.

Zhavania joined Georgia’s Green Party in the 1980s. He was chair of Georgia’s Parliament from 1995-2001.

“He played an important role in helping Georgia meet its aspirations for greater peace, prosperity and euro-Atlantic integration,” NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in his expression of condolences.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone is currently, courtesy of the Israeli government and friends, visiting Israel. This is a first-hand account of his experiences and may — as a result — not fully comply with Wikinews’ neutrality policy. Please note this is a journalism experiment for Wikinews and put constructive criticism on the collaboration page.

Dr. Yossi Vardi is known as Israel’s ‘Father of the Entrepreneur’, and he has many children in the form of technology companies he has helped to incubate in Tel Aviv‘s booming Internet sector. At the offices of Superna, one such company, he introduced a whirlwind of presentations from his baby incubators to a group of journalists. What stuck most in my head was when Vardi said, “What is important is not the technology, but the talent.” Perhaps because he repeated this after each young Internet entrepreneur showed us his or her latest creation under Vardi’s tutelage. I had a sense of déjà vu from this mantra. A casual reader of the newspapers during the Dot.com boom will remember a glut of stories that could be called “The Rise of the Failure”; people whose technology companies had collapsed were suddenly hot commodities to start up new companies. This seemingly paradoxical thinking was talked about as new back then; but even Thomas Edison—the Father of Invention—is oft-quoted for saying, “I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

Vardi’s focus on encouraging his brood of talent regardless of the practicalities stuck out to me because of a recent pair of “dueling studies” The New York Times has printed. These are the sort of studies that confuse parents on how to raise their kids. The first, by Carol Dweck at Stanford University, came to the conclusion that children who are not praised for their efforts, regardless of the outcome’s success, rarely attempt more challenging and complex pursuits. According to Dweck’s study, when a child knows that they will receive praise for being right instead of for tackling difficult problems, even if they fail, they will simply elect to take on easy tasks in which they are assured of finding the solution.

Only one month earlier the Times produced another story for parents to agonize over, this time based on a study from the Brookings Institution, entitled “Are Kids Getting Too Much Praise?” Unlike Dweck’s clinical study, Brookings drew conclusions from statistical data that could be influenced by a variety of factors (since there was no clinical control). The study found American kids are far more confident that they have done well than their Korean counterparts, even when the inverse is true. The Times adds in the words of a Harvard faculty psychologist who intoned, “Self-esteem is based on real accomplishments. It’s all about letting kids shine in a realistic way.” But this is not the first time the self-esteem generation’s proponents have been criticized.

Vardi clearly would find himself encouraged by Dweck’s study, though, based upon how often he seemed to ask us to keep our eyes on the people more than the products. That’s not to say he has not found his latest ICQ, though only time—and consumers—will tell.

For a Web 2.User like myself, I was most fascinated by Fixya, a site that, like Wikipedia, exists on the free work of people with knowledge. Fixya is a tech support site where people who are having problems with equipment ask a question and it is answered by registered “experts.” These experts are the equivalent of Wikipedia’s editors: they are self-ordained purveyors of solutions. But instead of solving a mystery of knowledge a reader has in their head, these experts solve a problem related to something you have bought and do not understand. From baby cribs to cellular phones, over 500,000 products are “supported” on Fixya’s website. The Fixya business model relies upon the good will of its experts to want to help other people through the ever-expanding world of consumer appliances. But it is different from Wikipedia in two important ways. First, Fixya is for-profit. The altruistic exchange of information is somewhat dampened by the knowledge that somebody, somewhere, is profiting from whatever you give. Second, with Wikipedia it is very easy for a person to type in a few sentences about a subject on an article about the Toshiba Satellite laptop, but to answer technical problems a person is experiencing seems like a different realm. But is it? “It’s a beautiful thing. People really want to help other people,” said the presenter, who marveled at the community that has already developed on Fixya. “Another difference from Wikipedia is that we have a premium content version of the site.” Their premium site is where they envision making their money. Customers with a problem will assign a dollar amount based upon how badly they need an answer to a question, and the expert-editors of Fixya will share in the payment for the resolved issue. Like Wikipedia, reputation is paramount to Fixya’s experts. Whereas Wikipedia editors are judged by how they are perceived in the Wiki community, the amount of barnstars they receive and by the value of their contributions, Fixya’s customers rate its experts based upon the usefulness of their advice. The site is currently working on offering extended warranties with some manufacturers, although it was not clear how that would work on a site that functioned on the work of any expert.

Another collaborative effort product presented to us was YouFig, which is software designed to allow a group of people to collaborate on work product. This is not a new idea, although may web-based products have generally fallen flat. The idea is that people who are working on a multi-media project can combine efforts to create a final product. They envision their initial market to be academia, but one could see the product stretching to fields such as law, where large litigation projects with high-level of collaboration on both document creation and media presentation; in business, where software aimed at product development has generally not lived up to its promises; and in the science and engineering fields, where multi-media collaboration is quickly becoming not only the norm, but a necessity.

For the popular consumer market, Superna, whose offices hosted our meeting, demonstrated their cost-saving vision for the Smart Home (SH). Current SH systems require a large, expensive server in order to coordinate all the electronic appliances in today’s air-conditioned, lit and entertainment-saturated house. Such coordinating servers can cost upwards of US$5,000, whereas Superna’s software can turn a US$1,000 hand-held tablet PC into household remote control.

There were a few start-ups where Vardi’s fatherly mentoring seemed more at play than long-term practical business modeling. In the hot market of WiFi products, WeFi is software that will allow groups of users, such as friends, share knowledge about the location of free Internet WiFi access, and also provide codes and keys for certain hot spots, with access provided only to the trusted users within a group. The mock-up that was shown to us had a Google Maps-esque city block that had green points to the known hot spots that are available either for free (such as those owned by good Samaritans who do not secure their WiFi access) or for pay, with access information provided for that location. I saw two long-term problems: first, WiMAX, which is able to provide Internet access to people for miles within its range. There is already discussion all over the Internet as to whether this technology will eventually make WiFi obsolete, negating the need to find “hot spots” for a group of friends. Taiwan is already testing an island-wide WiMAX project. The second problem is if good Samaritans are more easily located, instead of just happened-upon, how many will keep their WiFi access free? It has already become more difficult to find people willing to contribute to free Internet. Even in Tel Aviv, and elsewhere, I have come across several secure wireless users who named their network “Fuck Off” in an in-your-face message to freeloaders.

Another child of Vardi’s that the Brookings Institution might say was over-praised for self-esteem but lacking real accomplishment is AtlasCT, although reportedly Nokia offered to pay US$8.1 million for the software, which they turned down. It is again a map-based software that allows user-generated photographs to be uploaded to personalized street maps that they can share with friends, students, colleagues or whomever else wants to view a person’s slideshow from their vacation to Paris (“Dude, go to the icon over Boulevard Montmartre and you’ll see this girl I thought was hot outside the Hard Rock Cafe!”) Aside from the idea that many people probably have little interest in looking at the photo journey of someone they know (“You can see how I traced the steps of Jesus in the Galilee“), it is also easy to imagine Google coming out with its own freeware that would instantly trump this program. Although one can see an e-classroom in architecture employing such software to allow students to take a walking tour through Rome, its desirability may be limited.

Whether Vardi is a smart parent for his encouragement, or in fact propping up laggards, is something only time will tell him as he attempts to bring these products of his children to market. The look of awe that came across each company’s representative whenever he entered the room provided the answer to the question of Who’s your daddy?

Wednesday, March 9, 2005File:Plastic bag stock sized.jpg

They are cheap, useful, and very plentiful, and that is exactly the problem, according to researchers. A report issued on Feb. 23 by a cadre of environment and economics researchers suggested that Kenya should ban the common plastic bag that one gets at the checkout counter of grocery stores, and place a levy on other plastic bags, all to combat the country’s environmental problems stemming from the bags’ popularity.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Two powerful suicide attacks struck different areas of northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, apparently targeting the country’s security forces. In the first attack, a bomber killed at least six people and wounded more than 60 others outside a police station in Bannu.

Shortly thereafter, in Peshawar’s commercial district, another attacker blew himself up outside a bank affiliated with the Pakistani army, killing ten people and wounding more than 70 others.

Authorities in Bannu said the suicide bomber exploded a small truck full of explosives, destroying the police station and surrounding buildings.

District Police Officer Iqbal Marwat said nearby civilians were wounded, but most of the casualties were police officers. He said the attacker tried to ram the vehicle through the main gate, but then detonated the bomb after police opened fire.

Local media are quoted a representative for the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as taking responsibility for the bombing.

In a telephone call, Taliban spokesman Qari Hussain Mehsud warned civilians to keep away from security checkpoints and other police installations, saying that “we have broken the silence as the government did not understand the pause in attacks, and from now there will be an increase in the number of suicide bombings.”

This is the first time the alliance of more than a dozen militant groups with links to al-Qaida has claimed responsibility since its former leader Baitullah Mehsud was reportedly killed in a U.S. missile strike. Analysts had suggested the group was in disarray following Mehsud’s death.

Hours later in Peshawar, officials say an attacker in a parked car threw a grenade at a crowd of people outside the Askari Bank before detonating a bomb in his car.

“Ten people have been killed and 71 wounded, five of them critically,” said the chief government administrator of Peshawar, Sahibzada Anis, to the Reuters news agency.

“It was terrible. My children are very frightened. All the windows of my house are broken. It was very frightening,” said Beenish Asad, a witness to the event, who lives near where the explosion took place.

No one has claimed responsibility for that particular attack. Senior police official Ghafoor Afridi told Voice of America that the bomber had managed to bypass multiple security checkpoints. “There was checking all around. But somehow, it is not possible to check all vehicles, so they might have slipped a vehicle inside and exploded it,” said Afridi.

North West Frontier Province’s information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said that the recent violence would not discourage government forces from fighting the rebels. “It is not only our duty […] to fight this menace of terrorism, it is a responsibility of the whole world. We are on the front line today, that’s why our blood is being shed.”

Hussain also said “we are not scared of these people and we have to extend our operations wherever these terrorists are operating,” adding that forty suspected would-be suicide bombers had been apprehended within the past several months.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan released a statement in which it condemned the bombings. “[The attacks] highlight the vicious and inhuman nature of this enemy whose true target is the democratically elected government of Pakistan and the security of all Pakistanis,” the embassy said.

Saturday’s attacks come as the Pakistani military works to expand its offensive against the Taliban from in and around Swat Valley to the north to South Waziristan.

Friday, May 10, 2013

George M. Leader, former Governor of the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, died in Hershey, Pennsylvania yesterday at the age of 95.

Leader’s death, at a retirement community he and his wife founded in 1985, comes after the former governor suffered a short illness. The community’s spokeswoman, Kelly S. Kuntz, announced Leader’s death.

Leader was born in York County, Pennsylvania in 1918. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1939, he joined his father’s poultry business. Shortly thereafter, in World War II, Leader served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy.

After serving in the State Senate for four years, Leader, a Democrat, was elected Governor of Pennsylvania in the 1954 election. Sworn-in in 1955, he served as Governor until 1959.

Upon taking office at the age of 37, Leader became the second-youngest Governor of Pennsylvania behind Robert E. Pattison, who was 32 years old at his 1883 inauguration.

Current Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett mandated state flags be flown at half staff until the evening of Leader’s burial. Corbett also praised Leader, describing him as someone who “defied political labels and conventional thinking in his tireless work for Pennsylvania and its people.”

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell also commented on Leader’s death, saying he would be remembered as “a man who cared very deeply about what happened around him.”

Sunday, June 1, 2008

A couple from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has been arrested on charges of public mischief after listing their seven day old baby girl on the popular Internet classified ads website Craigslist.

The listing claimed that the baby was unexpected, “healthy and very cute”. It asked CAN 10 000 for the baby. It also listed a phone number belonging to a stolen cellphone, which was used to find the couple.

It was first noticed by a 62-year old grandmother browsing the website for furniture, who said “I was shaking, and I thought, ‘Come on, how did this even get through?'” The couple claimed that the listing, which has since been removed, was a hoax.

The father, Jeremy Pete, had a history of car thefts and evasion of police, while the mother, 23-year-old Bethany Granholm, had convictions of property theft, fraud and impersonation. The parents have now been released, but charges are still being considered. The baby has been placed in provincial care.

A suspected copycat incident occurred just four days later, also offering a seven-day-old baby girl for CAN 10 000 on Craigslist. This incident turned out to be a hoax, and no child was in danger.

Last week saw a similar incident in Germany, where a couple listed a seven month old baby on eBay. In this case the police have launched a child trafficking investigation, despite the parents’ assertion that the listing was a joke.