divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/88495?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+BA+in+talks+with+Qantas+to+create+%27global+airline%27ch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=British+Airways+%28Business%29%2CAirline+industry+%28business%29%2CBusinessc5=Business+Marketsc6=Dan+Milmoc7=2008_12_03c8=1127757c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=British+Airwaysc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FBritish+Airways" width="1" height="1" //divpBritish Airways chief executive Willie Walsh signalled the creation of a "truly global" airline yesterday as the carrier announced pound;3.5bn merger talks with Australian rival Qantas./ppBA is already in talks to combine its services with American Airlines and Spain's Iberia but it took shareholders unawares yesterday with the bold announcement that it had also turned its attention to the Asia-Pacific market as industry consolidation gathers pace. A combined BA and Qantas would create a unique business with 71 million passengers a year, 474 aircraft flying to more than 230 destinations in two continents. /pp"It is an exciting step towards a truly global airline," said Walsh. Consolidation in the airline industry has been confined to intracontinental deals so far, with Air France joining Dutch competitor KLM and Delta Airlines merging with Northwest in the US. Shares in BA rose 12% to 157.10p on the news./ppThe BA boss said he was confident that the Iberia deal, which has been slowed down by concerns over BA's pension fund deficit, would not be derailed by another round of talks. "We can do both at the same time. I expect both deals to progress," said Walsh, who added that the Iberia and Qantas discussions were being conducted by separate teams within BA. Sources close to the talks said BA hoped that news of the Qantas proposal, which Iberia only learned of yesterday, would encourage the Spanish carrier to inject more urgency into discussions./ppBA and Qantas are exploring a dual listing structure similar to the model employed by Anglo-Dutch groups Reed Elsevier and Shell, which would bypass airline ownership restrictions in the UK and Australia. If BA's merger with Iberia goes ahead, the business created by that deal will become one half of the dual listing with Qantas. BA/Iberia and Qantas would have a combined balance sheet, overlapping boards and an integrated management team - but remain separate legal entities with two groups of shareholders. Walsh described the deal as a "merger of equals" but Qantas is the slightly larger business by market capitalisation, with a value of A$4.45bn (pound;1.9bn) compared with BA's pound;1.6bn at yesterday's closing prices./ppIn Australia the ownership limit for foreign airlines is 35%, though the government is proposing to raise that to 49% - in line with UK limits for non-EU carriers./ppAnalysts said a BA and Qantas merger could transform the industry. "If someone can find a way to structure a cross-border airline we can move towards a properly consolidated industry. But the question is can they do it?" said Andrew Lobbenberg, analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland./ppBA and American Airlines are applying for regulatory clearance to collude over fares and schedules in the lucrative Transatlantic market. However, it would stop short of a full-blown merger because of ownership restrictions./ppDouglas McNeill, analyst at Blue Oar Securities, said the AA deal had the biggest cost-saving potential for BA because it already co-operates with Qantas on Heathrow-Australia routes and with Iberia on Heathrow-Madrid services./ppThe flurry of merger and acquisition activity in the airline market is being driven by financial necessity. The International Air Transport Association, the industry trade body, expects the world's airlines to show a collective loss of $9.3bn in 2008 and 2009./ppBA expects a Qantas deal to benefit shareholders because it will combine two separate networks. Qantas has a strong position in an Asian market that, until recently, was growing strongly. Virgin Atlantic, which is urging US authorities to block the BA/AA alliance, also urged regulators in the UK and Australia to investigate the impact of the Qantas deal on passengers./pp"Regulators need to scrutinise these merger attempts like never before and ensure that consumers aren't disadvantaged by BA's attempts to become even more dominant, to the detriment of true competition." /ppThe combined businesses would generate revenues of pound;15.7bn, with BA the bigger earner with turnover of pound;8.7bn last year. Shares in BA are trading more than 50% below the year-high as a result of concerns over the impact of the economic downturn on its profits. The airline is anticipating making a "small" profit this year, after achieving record pre-tax profits of pound;883m in the year to March 2008./ph3Head to head/h3h2Qantas/h2pstrongDestinations /strong145 cities/ppstrongFleet /strong224/ppstrongStaff/strong 37,000/ppstrongPre-tax profit/strong pound;575m /ppstrongMarket cap/strong pound;1.77bn (A$4.3bn)/ppstrongSlogan/strong The Spirit of Australia/ph2British Airways/h2pstrongDestinations/strong 300/ppstrongFleet /strong245/ppstrongStaff /strong65,000/ppstrongPre-tax profit/strong pound;883m /ppstrongMarket cap/strong pound;1.8bn/ppstrongSlogan /strongWorld's favourite airline/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/britishairways"British Airways/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/theairlineindustry"Airline industry/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/UUSPE3z-2JBSn0PD0pNBWTcZ8zE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/UUSPE3z-2JBSn0PD0pNBWTcZ8zE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

The time has come, internet mavens... to comment on this post from 35,000 feet up, of course. After launching to a select handful of lucky souls last week, Virgin America has gone live with its Aircell-engineered Gogo internet service on select flights. As of now, an undisclosed amount of VA flights will offer guests unlimited use (with certain restrictions around VoIP, we hear) while in the air for $12.95 on flights longer than three hours and $9.95 for flights under three hours. The airline's entire fleet should be WiFi-ready by Q1 2009, but for now, why not kill some time tracking planes with live internet access? Fun, right?

Filed under: Transportation, Wireless

Aircell's Gogo in-flight WiFi goes live commercially on Virgin America originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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div align="center"a href="http://gogo.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43amp;item=11"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/12/12-2-08-va-wifi-flights.jpg" alt="" //abr //div The time has come, internet mavens... to comment on this post from 35,000 feet up, of course. After launching to a a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/22/on-virgin-americas-inaugural-gogo-wifi-flight-this-post-publis/"select handful/a of lucky souls last week, Virgin America has gone live with its a href="http://www.engadget.com/tag/Aircell/"Aircell/a-engineered Gogo internet service on select flights. As of now, an undisclosed amount of VA flights will offer guests unlimited use (with certain restrictions around VoIP, we hear) while in the air for $12.95 on flights longer than three hours and $9.95 for flights under three hours. The airline's entire fleet should be WiFi-ready by Q1 2009, but for now, why not kill some time a href="http://wifitracker.virginamerica.com/"tracking planes/a with live internet access? Fun, right?pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/transportation/" rel="tag"Transportation/a, a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/wireless/" rel="tag"Wireless/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/aircells-gogo-in-flight-wifi-goes-live-commercially-on-virgin-a/"Aircell's Gogo in-flight WiFi goes live commercially on Virgin America/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:35:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://gogo.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43amp;item=11Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/aircells-gogo-in-flight-wifi-goes-live-commercially-on-virgin-a/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1389043/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/aircells-gogo-in-flight-wifi-goes-live-commercially-on-virgin-a/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/GGEHZlN3Rkkrdq36rGXgiHcU1xw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/GGEHZlN3Rkkrdq36rGXgiHcU1xw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=aE1c9mRR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=aE1c9mRR" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=vhrM65sh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=vhrM65sh" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/aQjHTkOW9q4" height="1" width="1"/

There's been plenty of attention paid to the news that the website for President-Elect Obama's transition team, a href="http://change.gov/"Change.gov/a has been a href="http://www.techpresident.com/blog/entry/33310/change_gov_swaps_traditional_copyright_for_creative_commons" target="_new"placed under a Creative Commons license/a, allowing others to make use of the content with attribution. However, I'm a bit hard pressed to see how this actually is a big deal. The whole thing is made a bit odd by the fact that federal government content is not covered by copyright, so anything that comes out of the White House is in the public domain. But, apparently since Obama has not yet been inaugurated, the campaign can still claim copyright on the content. But, why would they? Rather than going with a CC license, why not go all the way and put the content in the public domain? After all, in two months, all such content will be in the public domain anyway? It seems a little odd, counterproductive and unnecessary to add imore restrictions/i to the content than there will be once Obama is actually in office. If the Obama team ireally/i wanted to do something meaningful concerning the content on the site, they could follow the advice of Tim O'Reilly and go ibeyond/i just putting the content in the public domain and also add a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/11/change-gov-revision-control.html" target="_new"revision control/a, thereby committing to alerting people to any changes to the content. Now, that would be an impressive change.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081202/0254512992.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081202/0254512992.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081202/0254512992op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=770de2e7b4798e9297e6ba65c8e8d80cp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=770de2e7b4798e9297e6ba65c8e8d80cp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=770de2e7b4798e9297e6ba65c8e8d80c" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=uUgVo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=uUgVo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/472881473" height="1" width="1"/

http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/blog..._digital_g.html

"This growing list of backwards policies is already creating a sense of digital isolation: Canadians can’t stream the videos Americans stream, download the files Americans download, remix the media Americans remix, or tweet the way Americans tweet. With the election of Barack Obama, digital culture in the U.S. hit a tipping point, where a robust online public sphere proved itself capable of changing the world. Meanwhile, here in Canada we’re approaching our own tipping point, where a series of ignorances and capitulations threaten to turn our country into a digital ghetto."

Living in Canada, the digital climate has a direct impact on me and my concerns echo a lot of what Jesse Brown has posted. Internet access, both wired and wireless, in Canada is relatively expensive and slower than our friends south of the border. This in combintion with a growing effort on DRM restrictions makes Canada a less inviting atmosphere for innovation. One case in point mentioned in the article is Twitter recently shutting down outbound SMS messages in Canada. Canadians, well, anyone, needs to make an effort to make sure that their country strives to keep its Internet access as cheap and open as possible. With the impact that a pervasive Internet can have on our lives, it's worth that effort.

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008...-gt-r/?ei=5070

Quote: As Exhibit A, I give you the Nissan GT-R and its soon-to-be-discontinued launch control feature: A bunch of people bought GT-Rs and fried their transmissions using launch control. Said customers then hit Nissan with warranty claims, at which point Nissan took its toy and went home. Thus the 2009 GT-R will be the only vintage of the car with the factory-sanctioned ability to perform a high-r.p.m. clutch drop from a standstill. I’m not sure whether that will make 2009 GT-Rs more valuable on the used-car market, or less.



With the proliferation of dual-clutch sequential manual transmissions comes a thorny issue for car companies — whether or not to include launch control, and how to design the system if they do. Launch control systems address a major performance issue inherent to sequential manual transmissions, which don’t have clutch pedals to drop: namely, how does the driver execute an aggressive takeoff from a standing start? Usually, through an arcane button-pushing routine to initiate launch control.
Nissan’s system was the real deal, an automated version of the sort of machinery-abusing takeoff that a human driver might attempt on a drag strip. There’s a certain video-game-cheat quality to setting up the system, like the button-pushing sequence you’d use to get 30 lives in the old Nintendo game Contra. Set the suspension to ”R” mode, set the transmission to ”R,” turn off the stability control, left foot on the brake, right foot hard on the gas, pop the left foot off the brake … and hold on. The motor would wail, followed by a violent clutch engagement and all four tires clawing frantically under maximum power.


Now, I don’t know the specifics of the warranty claims that caused Nissan to discontinue the GT-R’s launch control system. For instance, were people doing right-angle burnouts while running over manhole covers? (I include that example because an engineer at a car company once told me that he had to duplicate that exact scenario to figure out how customers were causing a certain drivetrain part to fail.) Were people just doing occasional drag strip runs? And at what point does responsibility shift from the customer to the automaker when something breaks? That’s the question plaguing the growing number of companies who offer some form of launch control.



If you own a manual-transmission performance car and you abuse the clutch and transmission to the point of failure, you as the owner have a pretty direct responsibility for what happened. If you take, say, your Subaru WRX STI into the dealer for a new clutch, and they take it apart and discover that you’ve inflicted 90,000 miles worth of wear in 5,000 miles, well, your left foot is the obvious culprit. But in a car with launch control, there’s a philosophical difference. Sure, you may have initiated the launch control sequence 20 times in a row and fried the clutch, but ultimately the car itself was the one doing the dirty work. So if something breaks, why is it your fault simply for using a feature that’s built into the car? It’s an argument that Nissan, at least, has decided it doesn’t want to get into.
Launch control systems in the United States have a history of either being omitted entirely (as in the United States-market Ferrari F430) or dumbed down. For instance, the launch control function on BMW’s single-clutch sequential-manual gearbox, SMG, was a modified version of the system used in Europe. The European SMG would slip the clutch to provide the fastest takeoff possible, at the expense of clutch wear. The American system would quickly — but completely — engage the clutch, which tended to spin the tires and probably cost a few tenths of a second on zero-to-60 time. The rear tires were the circuit breaker of the system, the place where excess energy could be dissipated in a manner conducive to avoiding warranty claims.



But all-wheel-drive cars like the GT-R, Mitsubishi Evolution and Porsche 911 C4, which usually have too much traction to generate significant wheel spin, put the stress on the clutch. And that’s an expensive circuit breaker.
There are different ways of handling that stress. With Mitsubishi’s twin-clutch Sportronic transmission in the latest Evo, the launch control mode restricts full engine power until the car is rolling and the clutch can fully engage. The system also monitors clutch temperature and will call a timeout — forcing the driver to pull over to let things cool down — if multiple launches raise clutch temperature too high (the launch control feature on BMW’s new DCT dual-clutch transmission also keeps a careful eye on temperatures and will take a hiatus if it gets too hot). The Evo with Sportronic does 0 to 60 in 5.2 seconds, while the five-speed manual version is a few tenths of a second faster.



The difference is purely down to the violence of the launch and can be traced to the first 60 feet of an acceleration run, where the manual Evo’s launch r.p.m. and clutch slip are restrained by nothing more than the driver’s penchant for mechanical sadism. In the case of the dual-clutch Evo, the programming is calibrated to err toward longterm drivetrain survival rather than ultimate drag-strip heroics. Mitsubishi points out that, while the dual-clutch car is slower than the five-speed from rest, the Sportronic car’s quicker shifts and extra gear ratio make it faster around a road course. So the virtues of either transmission and the relevance of launch control depends on whether the word ”track” conjures in your mind a drag strip or the Nürburgring.


Then there’s Porsche’s new PDK dual-clutch transmission. A base Porsche 911 Carrera with a six-speed manual can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.7 seconds. The same car with PDK and launch control is actually four-tenths of a second faster. There are no restrictions on how often you can use launch control, and the warranty is identical to that of non-PDK cars. I suppose time will tell whether Porsche, unlike Nissan, has designed a transmission tough enough that launch control doesn’t lead directly to legal damage control.

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divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/54267?ns=guardianpageName=Money%3A+FSA+warns+lenders+over+tracker+mortgagesch=Moneyc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Mortgages+%28Money%29%2CBanks+and+building+societies%2CMoney%2CInterest+rates+%28Money%29%2CBorrowing+and+debt%2CBusiness%2CUK+newsc5=Personal+Finance%2CInvestments%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Rupert+Jonesc7=2008_12_02c8=1127448c9=articlec10=GUc11=Moneyc12=Mortgagesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FMoney%2FMortgages" width="1" height="1" //divpa href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/banks"Banks and building societies/a were today warned they could find themselves in hot water if they use small print terms to avoid passing on this week's likely a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/interestrates"interest rate/a cut to their tracker mortgage customers./ppThe Financial Services Authority has waded into the row over the "collars" or "floors" that some mortgage lenders have in their terms and conditions, which allow them not to pass on rate cuts, even if the contract says the loan is tied to the Bank of England base rate./ppMany holders of tracker home loans are looking forward to another sizeable reduction in their monthly costs if the Bank cuts rates on Thursday. Some economists are predicting a cut of a full percentage point, which would take the main rate down to 2%./ppHowever, some lenders have small print in their contracts which allows them to set a minimum rate for customers. /ppNationwide building society has indicated that once the base rate hits 2.75% it will not pass on any further cuts to borrowers, while Halifax has an option not to pass on any cuts below 3%, but both would be under pressure to do so. The restriction means a borrower with a Nationwide mortgage tracking 0.5% above the base rate will never see their pay rate fall below 3.25%, even if interest rates continue to fall./ppSpeaking today at the Council of Mortgage Lenders annual conference, Jon Pain, the FSA's retail markets managing director, said that while tracker interest rate floors could be a legitimate term of a mortgage, "it can only be if it is clear and unambiguous to the consumer, and is consistently and prominently spelt out in the initial KFI [key facts illustration] and offer document throughout the sales process"./ppHe added: "If it is not [lenders] run the real risk of both breaching our disclosure requirements and having an unfair contract term you cannot enforce."/ppPain said he was well aware of the potential risks some lenders faced in a very low interest rate environment. "But the solution cannot be to introduce contract terms that don't exist or are unenforceable," he added./ppYesterday, Nationwide launched a tracker deal with a collar of 1%, allowing new borrowers to benefit from further rate cuts. However, the rate on the mortgage is pegged 1.99% above the base rate./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"Mortgages/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/banks"Banks and building societies/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/interestrates"Interest rates/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/debt"Borrowing debt/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/KIMTpSpdHBoGS203wCyeliELdwo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/KIMTpSpdHBoGS203wCyeliELdwo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/69858_thumb.jpg" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Gargoyle is an interface for small, widely available routers such as the Linksys WRT54G series and the La Fonera. It provides functionality above and beyond what the default software provides including sophisticated dynamic DNS, quality of service, and bandwidth monitoring tools. The primary goal is to provide a polished interface for these advanced tools that is at least as easy to configure as any existing firmware. This project is based on top of OpenWrt, but unlike other Web interfaces for OpenWrt it places a strong focus an usability and is meant for average users, not just power users. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / Improvements include the addition of an access restriction section to allow filtering of network resources by IP, port, protocol, and/or Web page URL. A bandwidth quotas section has also been added, which allows the setting of fixed limits for upload/download bandwidth of users on the network. Finally, the QoS implementation has been improved dramatically to better handle layer 7 matching. Multiple minor bugs have also been fixed. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/7CyCzSRQt4AvyXbfhKZAJ76bYn4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/7CyCzSRQt4AvyXbfhKZAJ76bYn4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/dw6lKdRnbFk" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/69858_thumb.jpg" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Gargoyle is an interface for small, widely available routers such as the Linksys WRT54G series and the La Fonera. It provides functionality above and beyond what the default software provides including sophisticated dynamic DNS, quality of service, and bandwidth monitoring tools. The primary goal is to provide a polished interface for these advanced tools that is at least as easy to configure as any existing firmware. This project is based on top of OpenWrt, but unlike other Web interfaces for OpenWrt it places a strong focus an usability and is meant for average users, not just power users. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / Improvements include the addition of an access restriction section to allow filtering of network resources by IP, port, protocol, and/or Web page URL. A bandwidth quotas section has also been added, which allows the setting of fixed limits for upload/download bandwidth of users on the network. Finally, the QoS implementation has been improved dramatically to better handle layer 7 matching. Multiple minor bugs have also been fixed. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/333uRXk8ojl_JAISSWCgOyGAGBs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/333uRXk8ojl_JAISSWCgOyGAGBs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/dw6lKdRnbFk" height="1" width="1"/

While fighting continues in the North Kivu province of the DR Congo in spite of a well-publicised ceasefire, in the relatively peaceful neighboring province of South Kivu yet another journalist has been murdered. On the 21st of November Didace Namujimbo, who worked for the UN-backed Radio Okapi, was shot in the head when he was returning to his home in the evening.

Spanish journalist Hernán Zin met Namujimbo in his office when he traveled to Bukavu last summer to report on sexual violence as a weapon of war. He described him in his blog Viaje a la guerra [Es] (Journey into war):

Un hombre alto, de buena presencia, que hablaba un francés impoluto. El primer rostro amigo que encontré en el Congo.

A tall man, with a smart appearance, that spoke with an impeccable French. The first friendly face I met in the Congo.

And he added [Es]:

Además de una honda tristeza, me vuelven recuerdos de las conversaciones que mantuvimos sobre la muerte de su compañero Serge Maheshe, el 13 de junio de 2007. Hablamos sobre quiénes podrían ser los culpables, pues yo tenía la intención de incluir su historia en la sección de este blog Morir para contar.

Besides deep sadness, I'm also reflecting on the conversations we had about the death of his colleague Serge Maheshe on the 13th of June 2007. We spoke about who would be the culprits, since I was planning to include his story in the section of this blog called Morir para contar (Dying to tell).

Radio Okapi news editor Serge Maheshe had been shot in the head on the evening of the 13th of June 2007 when he was returning home, in the exact same way as his colleague and friend Didace Namujimbo a year and a half later. A year after Maheshe's murder, former Kinshasa Radio Okapi journalist Cédric Kalonji wrote [Fr] about the impunity for such crimes in the DRC:

Je constate amèrement que la justice, pilier de l’autorité de l’État qui est le fondement même de la démocratie ne fonctionne pas au Congo. Quand aurons-nous, et qui rétablira une justice efficace et indépendante dans ce pays?

I bitterly realize that justice, the pillar of the State's authority which is the very foundation of democracy, is not working in the Congo. When are we going to have, and go is going to restore an efficient and independent judicial system in this country?

Now Cédric Kalonji wonders [Fr] again about the state of democracy in his country:

En apprenant cette nouvelle, je suis partagé entre douleur, tristesse et colère. Je me demande comment la démocratie s’installera durablement dans un pays où on est visiblement allergique aux journalistes indépendants et professionnels. Devons-nous laisser le Congo entre les seules mains des hommes forts, ceux qui sont armés?

After learning this news, I was torn between pain, sadness and anger. I asked myself how a democracy can last in a country so visibly allergic to independent, professional journalists. Must we leave Congo only in the hands of the strong men, those who are armed?

Kalire [Fr] thinks that Didace Namujimbo's murder represents many others:

Comme Didace, ils sont nombreux à se faire tuer dans le Kivu.
Se faire tuer par «des inconnus», par on ne sait même pas qui: des «rebelles»? des militaires congolais? des bandes de pillards? des voisins jaloux?
Comme Didace, ils sont des centaines à se faire tuer, violer par des «inconnus».
Mais Didace est... était journaliste.
C’est pourquoi sa mort peut parler pour celle des autres.

Like Didace, there are many journalists being killed in the Kivus.
Being killed by “strangers”, we don't even know who: “rebels”? Congolese servicemen? gangs of looters? jealous neighbors?
Like Didace, there are hundreds of people being killed, being raped by “strangers”.
But Didace is… was a journalist.
That's why his death can speak for that of others.

Freddy Mulongo [Fr] at the Radio Revéil FM blog, remembers the six media professionals that have been murdered in similar circumstances during the last three years, including Didace Namujimbo and Serge Maheshe. In his post, he summarizes what all those cases have in common:

Les scénarios sont les mêmes: tous les journalistes congolais sont tués la nuit, à proximité de leur domicile, on retrouve sur eux l'argent mais leur appareils téléphoniques… Et après on arrête des “innocents” que l'on présente comme des assassins. On organise une mascarade de procès souvent dans un auditorat militaire, il arrive parfois que les présumés assassins se rebiffent, pendant ce temps les vrais commanditaires courent toujours et jouissent de l'impunité.

The scenarios are the same: all the Congolese journalists are killed at night, close to their homes, their money is still on them but not their mobile phones… And then some “innocent” people are arrested and presented as the assassins. A farce of a trial is organized, often at the military court, sometimes the alleged killers fight back, and during that time the real sleeping partners are running free and enjoying impunity.

For Freddy Mulongo, the situation of media professionals in the DRC is grim:

Ils sont journalistes et professionnels des médias en danger car comme le dit si bien l'adage des Peuls dans l'extrême Nord du Cameroun: “Si on rase ton camarade. Mouille-toi la tête, ton tour arrive!” A qui le tour? Qui sera le prochain victime?

They are journalists and media professionals in danger, because as the adage of the Peuls people in Northern Cameroon goes: “If your neighbor is being shaved. Soak your head, it's your turn!” So whose turn is it? Who is going to be the next victim?

Colette Braeckman [Fr] , a Belgian journalist and author expert in Central Africa, upon learning about Didace Namujimbo's murder wondered:

Comment concilier ces assassinats, qui semblent être d’origine mafieuse ou politique, avec l’état de droit dont les élections de 2006 auraient du marquer la naissance, avec « la fin de la récréation » solennellement annoncée par le président le jour de son investiture?

How can we reconcile these murders, that seem to have a mafia or political motivation, with the rule of law marked by the 2006 elections, with the “recreation is over” announced solemnly by the President on the day of his inauguration?

Also this week Human Rights Watch has released a new report titled “We will crush you“, on the restriction of political space in the DRC in which as Colette Braeckman notes “they pass a very hard judgement on the two years following the elections”. In the summary of the report they wrote:

Government agents have also threatened, arrested, tortured, and otherwise harassed journalists and members of civil society who were linked to political opponents or who protested abuses against them.

The summary concludes:

Elections themselves cannot bring democracy. Congolese and international actors must work to establish an independent judiciary and a vibrant parliament with an effective opposition to improve human rights, hold the executive to account for its actions, and counterbalance the restriction of political space. Failure to establish such counterweights will endanger Congo’s young democracy.

(Photo of Didace Namujimbo in his Radio Okapi office in Bukavu, taken last May by Elia Varela Serra)

La version PC de GTA IV, sortie aujourd'hui sur le marché américain, est protégée par le système SecuROM, peu appréciée des joueurs. Selon les propos tenus par Rockstar à IGN, il n'y aura pas de restrictions au niveau du nombre d'installations.

Nikon Transfer 1.3

Nikon Transfer is a software application that allows for the simple transfer of images captured with a Nikon digital camera, or images recorded to media such as memory cards, to a computer. It also allows for back-up copying and embedding of information including copyright into image data during transfer.

• Nikon Transfer allows you to specify a software application to launch automatically after images are transferred. When ViewNX (image browser), or the optional Capture NX2 is selected, smooth collaboration with ViewNX allows for natural operation. Use of these two applications together is recommended. See information regarding ViewNX.

Does not support the .NRW (RAW) format.

• Labels and ratings, as well as information including titles and creator, can be applied to images as they are transferred.
• Image attributes and transfer status can be verified in the Nikon Transfer thumbnail list area, and thumbnail display can be categorized by shooting date, file type, or camera folder setting.
• Nikon Transfer allows for specification of a second destination folder, in addition to the primary destination, for saving images to two folders for back-up purposes. This provides back-up of important images in case of deletion of image files from the computer, or similar such accidents.
• Independent sound files (.WAV) recorded by cameras with the voice recording function can be transferred.
• Nikon Transfer can be used to upload images to Nikon's convenient, easy-to-use online photo management service, my Picturetown. Save important images to my Picturetown to increase the ways in which photos add to the enjoyment of your lefestyle (Internet connection required).

Supported Cameras: D3, D2Xs, D2X, D2Hs, D700, D300, D200, D100, D90, D80, D70s, D70, D60, D50, D40X, D40 (The D1X, D1H, and D1 not supported on computers with Intel CPUs running Mac OS X 10.3.9). Coolpix Cameras: All USB connected Nikon Coolpix cameras except Coolpix 880/990/800/900. No serial port connected cameras are supported. Please use a memory card reader for these cameras.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.3:

•  A function that allows for the creation of subfolders within the primary destination folder has been added to the Primary Destination panel
• One of the following options can be selected in the Primary Destination panel:
• • Create subfolder for each transfer: When Create subfolder for each transfer (default setting) is selected, a new subfolder is created with each transfer and named, as before, following the rules applied in the Folder Naming dialog.
  • Choose subfolder under Primary Destination path: When Choose subfolder under Primary Destination path is selected, a new subfolder can be created by entering a name for the folder in the combo box at the end of the Primary Destination path in the upper right corner of the dialog, or by selecting an existing folder, previously used, from the pull-down menu.
  • Don't use subfolder: When Don't use subfolder is selected, a subfolder is not created.
• Corresponding to my Picturetown restrictions, the maximum file size for a single file to be uploaded to my Picturetown is now 2 GB.
• Corresponding to Mac OS restrictions, the maximum file size for a single file to be transferred from a camera to the computer is now 2 GB.

REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.3.9 or later.
DEVELOPERNikon
DOWNLOADS913
DOWNLOAD NOW (25 MB)
More information

Can someone point out to me any limitations or rules that Apple has set out regarding the content of iphone applications? I have a application in mind to develop but before going further into it I thought I would ask.. has anyone seen such a content restrictions?
Thanks.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/29653?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Israel+blocks+aid+ship+bound+for+Gazach=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territories+%28News%29%2CLibya+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Rory+McCarthyc7=2008_12_02c8=1127125c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territoriesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FIsrael+and+the+Palestinian+territories" width="1" height="1" //divpThe Israeli navy yesterday prevented a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Palestinians from docking in Gaza./ppThe voyage of the Marwa, which carried food, blankets and powdered milk, was intended to challenge Israel's economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has tightened in recent weeks. But as the ship approached Gazan waters at dawn an Israeli naval ship ordered it to turn back. The Marwa reportedly docked at al-Arish, an Egyptian port in the northern Sinai just south of Gaza./ppAn Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Andy David, said: "This is a policy we have had for a long time: if somebody wants to bring in humanitarian aid they can do it through the border with Egypt or the Israeli passages into Gaza."/ppHowever, since the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas won parliamentary elections nearly three years ago Israel has imposed ever-tighter restrictions on Gaza. Since last summer, when Hamas took full control of Gaza, those restrictions have become an economic blockade, while Egypt has also kept its one crossing into Gaza at Rafah largely closed. As a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza has unravelled in the past month, so the blockade has again been tightened. Deliveries of food, aid and fuel have been prevented on most days and journalists have been barred from entering./ppPalestinians had gathered at the Gaza City harbour to meet the ship. Five trucks waited to offload the aid. "The civilian boat carrying only humanitarian supplies and food was turned away by an Israeli warship," said Jamal Khoudary, a Palestinian MP and head of Gaza's Popular Committee against the Siege./ppSome reports suggested the aid might be unloaded in Egypt and delivered by road, although until now Egypt has been reluctant to turn the Rafah crossing with Gaza into a regular route for deliveries to the impoverished territory./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israelandthepalestinians"Israel and the Palestinian territories/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/libya"Libya/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/27jJgSu6m48U-0SsWiTrlGIRXyQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/27jJgSu6m48U-0SsWiTrlGIRXyQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Late 2008 might seem a bit late for the launch of a brand new website where bands can post their videos in hopes of being discovered, but Microsoft apparently doesn't think so. The company launched MSN Unsigned on Monday, giving independent bands yet another avenue for distributing their stuff for free online -- in this case to MSN Music's five million-plus British users.

Only UK users will apparently have access to the videos, probably due to copyright concerns, rendering the service relatively useless for music fans outside of Britain. However, there doesn't seem to be a restriction on uploading videos from outside of that territory.

In addition to the videos, MSN Music Unsigned also accepts individual songs for potential inclusion in its podcast, which will feature track-by-track analysis by music insiders. The site also offers more general advice for aspiring musicians with articles like "How to form your own boy band" and "Why you don't need a record deal."

See Also:

• OurStage Looks To Provide Opening Bands for Live Nation
• OurStage: Pushing Bands Up the Long Tail
• OurStage To Promote Winning Artists on AOL
• Microsoft Backtracks On MSN Music DRM Abandonment