Jumat, 01 April 2011
Autism Awareness Month
Autism Speaks, the largest autism science-and-advocacy organization in the U.S., estimates that 67 million people worldwide live with the condition, which remains the fastest-growing developmental disability in the world -- affecting 1 out of every 110 children. Recent efforts in early detection and educational intervention have shown encouraging results, bringing a measure of hope to often difficult family situations. Relatives and caretakers of those with autism will tell you that it can be both the most frustrating and the most rewarding work of their lives.
Show some love to those affected and participate in related events this month. Happy April!
WTF??? Anarchists to disrupt royal wedding
(CNN) -- "God Save the Queen ... the fascist regime," sang The Sex Pistols to mark Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee in 1977. Now, Britain's anarchists are targeting the royals again.
According to one leading anarchist protester, plans are being drawn up for a demonstration using "shock and awe" tactics to disrupt Prince William's marriage to Kate Middleton on April 29.
Charlie Veitch, a former City banker who was made redundant during the financial crisis, heads a group of colorful protesters called the "Love Police Academy." He says that anarchists will put on a "disruption spectacular."
"As an anarchist, philosophical and political anarchist, I cannot support the royal family, I cannot support this government's actions," he said.
Veitch says Love Police Academy is committed to non-violent protest against the austerity cuts, the status quo and the establishment. He was one of those involved in last year's violent student protests against the UK government's plan to triple tuition fees for university students and advocates extreme tactics.
"I give full support to black bloc tactics that we saw at the weekend," he added, referring to the black-clad, hooded hardcore of protesters who have marred legitimate anti-austerity rallies in London in recent weeks. Police charged 149 people following the violence, during which paint, fireworks and flares were thrown at buildings and windows smashed.
Veitch is open about his privileged "right wing, traditional" family background. Indeed, he was the epitome of the British establishment until he was made redundant during the downturn.
He is also candid about the anarchists' plans for April 29, the day of the royal wedding.
He says they are putting together a "shock and awe" campaign. "It will involve a lot of fireworks, it will involve a lot of people dressed in black, it will involve a lot of very, very loud music to try and hack all the mainstream media broadcasts of that day."
Security expert Roy Ramm says the royal wedding presents an incredibly tough challenge for police.
"The police have got a job to get the public in close-up to the wedding, but they have to keep the people who want to cause disorder and damage like we have seen here (at recent protests), away from the wedding. It could be immensely disruptive," he said.
Anarchist websites are already humming with references to the wedding.
"There are plans, which are being passed around online in encrypted forums and through encrypted emails -- which the government cannot hack -- to disrupt the procession route as well," said Veitch.
Veitch predicts tens of thousands of people will try to protest on the day of the wedding, but admits that "maybe one or two thousand" will be directly involved with disrupting the event.
"I'd say it will be a big mass rally. There will be of course people who are dressed all in black, who will be involved in more direct action. Of course, they will remain nameless," he said.
More from CNN
Africa: Rebels reach Ivory Coast president's palace..... as Nigeria Goes to Polls
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara's forces battled loyalists of his rival Laurent Gbagbo near his Abidjan residence on Friday, having seized control of state television overnight.
With the television station cut off, no news emerged from Gbagbo's camp, which has been hit by a number of high-level defections in the military, but a Paris-based adviser said his surrender was "out of the question." The main city in the world's top cocoa grower has turned into a war-zone since forces loyal to the internationally recognized president marched in on Thursday after a swift push south aimed at ousting Gbagbo, who has refused to quit since a November 28 election that U.N.-certified results said he lost.
The African Union called on Gbagbo to hand over power immediately. Residents locked up in their homes reported barrages of heavy arms fire punctuated by detonations throughout the night. On the peninsula where the presidential palace is situated, buildings were shaking with each explosion, witnesses said.
The brewing civil war no one is talking about Patrick Achi, a spokesman for the country's internationally recognized leader Alassane Ouattara said the fighters had breached the city limit overnight and were waging battles at the palace and the residence. Achi said the forces, who are former rebels who fought in a civil war a decade ago that left Ivory Coast divided, had seized Radio Television Ivoirienne, or RTI, the government-owned broadcaster late Thursday.
About 10 p.m. the state TV signal was cut. Achi said that they were having technical difficulties transmitting their own images, but a senior diplomat said that fighting continued outside the station, and that it was unclear if Ouattara's forces fully control it.
Read more from MSNBC
Nigeria Goes to polls
Nigeria: Tomorrow April 2, Nigerians will be stepping out to vote in new officials into government vacant postions starting from the National Assembly.
LeadershipNigeria: Whether we like it or not, come midnight Friday of this very week, we will just be stepping into the much awaited 2011 Election Day. April 2, 2011 is a much anticipated beginning to an election cycle in the history of Nigeria where the government of President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan has promised Nigerians and the international community free and fair elections.
The three major presidential candidates with the incumbent in the middle
The government claims to have created and facilitated, to the best of its ability, an electoral body separate and completely independent, and free from any form of influence from the government of the day. This body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is headed by Professor Attahiru Jega who has made it clear to whoever cares to listen that he is a man of integrity, ready and willing to take on the challenges of ensuring a free and fair electoral cycle this year, with total disregard for any personal interests regardless of how highly placed such an individual or individuals may be. We Nigerians have listened and watched patiently as huge amounts of money have been voted and handed over to INEC for the purpose of preparing and executing an unfettered election; we have also now watched and listened patiently as several more billions have been voted and are currently being handed over to security agencies for the purpose of securing the polity during the elections. With all the preparations, money spent and doled out in so many directions and spread amongst many different agencies; it is finally time to put this expensive exercise to the test. It is time to call Jega’s bluff, or is it? If we momentarily disregard whatever challenges we may have had and continue to experience as fallout from the activities leading up to Election Day, April 2, 2011, what are the applicable laws and rules of engagement on this Election Day to the numerous offices being contested?
For the avoidance of any doubt, it is imperative that we sensitise everyone on the offices to be contested and on which specific dates the election to the different offices will be held in line with INEC’s published election timetable as follows:
• National Assembly, April 2, 2011
• Presidential election, April 9, 2011
• Governorship/State House of Assembly, April 16, 2011
It is also important to note that for those contesting these positions, all forms of campaigning must stop 24 hours before the election as stated in Section 101 of the Electoral Act 2010 and as stipulated in the published timetable by INEC.
Prior to delving into the rules governing activities on Election Day, in recognition of the fact that there are still a few days between now and D-day, with electioneering campaigns coming to a crescendo and deafening conclusion, we should also be abreast of the rules and regulations which are still in play for these last few days which are primarily as follows:
•Section 227 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 and as amended in 2010 states that “no association shall retain, organize, train or equip any person or group of persons for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use or display of physical force or coercion in promoting any political objective or interest or in such a manner as to arouse reasonable apprehension that they are organized and trained or equipped for that purpose”. This provision of the Constitution is also inculcated into the Electoral Act 2010 in section 95 (5). In recognition of section 227 of the Constitution, section 81 of the Electoral Act 2010 states the penalty for violating section 227 of the Constitution as a fine in the case of a political party of N500,000 in the first instance, N700,000 for the second offence and N50,000 for each day the offence subsists; while in the case of an individual who aids and abets the political party in the commission of this offence, if found guilty, he will be liable to pay a fine of N500,000 or sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison or both.
Wow: Google making app that would identify people's faces
(CNN) -- Google is working on a mobile application that would allow users to snap pictures of people's faces in order to access their personal information, a director for the project said this week.
In order to be identified by the software, people would have to check a box agreeing to give Google permission to access their pictures and profile information, said Hartmut Neven, the Google engineering director for image-recognition development.
Google's Profiles product includes a user's name, phone number and e-mail address. Google has not said what personal data might be displayed once a person is identified by its facial-recognition system.
"We recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues," Neven told CNN in an exclusive interview. "Face recognition we will bring out once we have acceptable privacy models in place."
While Google has begun to establish how the privacy features would work, Neven did not say when the company intends to release the product, and a Google spokesman said there is not a release timeline.
The technology wouldn't necessarily be rolled out in a separate app, a Google spokesman said. Instead, facial recognition could be issued as an update to an existing Google tool, such as its image search engine.
Google has had the technical capabilities to implement this type of search engine for years.
Just as Google has crawled trillions of Web pages to deliver results for traditional search queries, the system could be programmed to associate pictures publicly available on Facebook, Flickr and other photo-sharing sites with a person's name, Neven said. "That we could do today," he said.
But those efforts had frequently stalled internally because of concerns within Google about how privacy advocates might receive the product, he said.
"People are asking for it all the time, but as an established company like Google, you have to be way more conservative than a little startup that has nothing to lose," said Neven, whose company Neven Vision was acquired by Google in 2006. "Technically, we can pretty much do all of these things."
Neven Vision specialized in object and facial recognition development. The object-related programs are reflected in an image search engine, called Goggles. The face-recognition technology was incorporated into Picasa, Google's photo-sharing service, helping the software recognize friends and family members in your computer's photo library.
In 2009, Google acquired a company called Like.com, which specialized in searching product images but also did work in interpreting pictures of people. Google has also filed for patents in the area of facial recognition.
Privacy concerns
As Google's size and clout grow, so does the chorus of critics who say the company frequently encroaches on people's privacy. Over the years, Google has made various missteps.
The company agreed to pay $8.5 million last year in a legal settlement over grievances that its Buzz social-networking service published the names of people with whom Gmail users regularly communicated. Google quickly fixed the problem, but its repercussions are still being felt: On Wednesday, Google announced it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to receive an independent review of privacy procedures once every two years.
Google also faces numerous inquiries from governments regarding information collected by its Street View vans. Developers who report to Neven work on aspects of that street-level photography initiative -- mainly privacy-minded features such as the automatic blurring of faces and license plates, he said.
Google also is concerned about the legal implications of facial recognition. Even during trials among its own employees, Google has taken steps to ensure testers have explicitly agreed on record to try out the service.
The novelty of this sort of product may help attract early adopters. But policies would need to be uncomplicated and straightforward to keep users from abandoning it over privacy concerns, experts said.
"Online, people don't think about the privacy concerns; they think about the fun activities they're doing," said Karen North, director of a University of Southern California program that studies online privacy. "They're going to have to figure out a way where people who like the ease and fun of some of these technologies ... online don't feel burned at any given point. Because once they feel burned, they'll opt out."
North said she believes Google has a tendency to push boundaries in order to outdo competitors. The service could push too far by, say, aggregating every photo of a user it finds on the internet without giving that user an easy way to erase certain images, she said.
"Google, in all the best ways, has put itself in a very difficult position -- that no matter what they do, they have to do it biggest and best," North said. "They have trouble starting small and building up because they're Google."
A 'cautious route'
Google acknowledges the nefarious ways someone could leverage facial-recognition technology.
Many people "are rightfully scared of it," Neven said. "In particular, women say, 'Oh my God. Imagine this guy takes a picture of me in a bar, and then he knows my address just because somewhere on the Web there is an association of my address with my photo.' That's a scary thought. So I think there is merit in finding a good route that makes the power of this technology available in a good way."
Neven and a Google spokesman described the facial-recognition app concept as "conservative" in relation to privacy.
"I think we are taking a sort of cautious route with this," the spokesman said. "It's a sensitive area, and it's kind of a subjective call on how you would do it."
While the opt-in requirement limits the app's utility, Neven foresees many circumstances where people would agree to be found.
"If you're an actor in L.A., you want to have everyone recognizing you," he said, sitting outside in the sun at Google's beachside office some 12 miles from Hollywood.
A facial-recognition app could tie in to social-networking initiatives Google is said to be working on. For example, people looking to connect online could use their phones to snap each other's pictures and instantly navigate to that person's profile, rather than having to exchange business cards or remember a user name.
This month, Google redesigned its Profiles pages in a change that more closely resembles Facebook's site. On Wednesday the company announced a new social-search tool, called +1, that allows people to share helpful search links with their friends.
Royal Wedding: No ring for Prince William - see why
Ahead of the royal wedding, it's no longer news that Prince William will not be wearing the traditional wedding ring after the wedding. People have been wondering the motive for this, well continue reading to see why the Prince will be ditching the ring tradition in his wedding.
"There will only be one ring, which is in accordance to the wishes of Prince William and Catherine," a Clarence House spokesperson tells UsMagazine.com.
(PEOPLE.com) -- For her, a band of royal gold. For him ... a bare ring finger!
Prince William is going to eschew the modern-day tradition of men wearing wedding bands.
A spokeswoman at the palace tells PEOPLE, "There is only going to be one ring, in accordance with the couple's wishes."
Not to worry, royal watchers: Kate Middleton will have a wedding band, and it will be made from Welsh gold.
PEOPLE.com: William & Kate's fairy-tale romance
A tiny amount of gold mined from the Welsh mountains (not far from where the couple will start their married life on Anglesey,) has been kept in the royal vaults since it was originally presented to William's grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.
The Queen has "given a piece of the gold that has been in the family for many years to Prince William as a gift," a palace source says.
An expert craftsman, unnamed by the palace but likely to be the Crown Jeweler Harry Collins, has been tasked with fashioning the nugget into a piece for Kate.
Worth noting: Prince Charles does wear a wedding band -- sometimes spotted underneath his signet ring.
Kamis, 31 Maret 2011
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