text:
In an attempt to capitalize on the huge opportunity in the embedded systems market, and the dominance of the Java programming platform, Oracle has unwrapped a new set of offerings facilitating the design of applications across a wide range of embedded systems. These systems include network appliances, healthcare devices, home gateways and routers, and large multifunction printers.
The company unveiled a pair of offerings as part of its embedded systems push: Oracle Java Embedded Suite 7.0, which aims to speed development of embedded systems; and Oracle Java Micro Edition (ME) Embedded 3.2, a run-time version geared for microcontrollers with less than a megabyte of memory, and as little as 130K bytes of RAM and 350K bytes of ROM.
Citing stats such as 1 billion Java downloads annually, and the fact that more than 3 billion devices are powered by Java technology, Oracle officials said the market is ripe for more powerful development tools built on the programming language, and optimized for the design of embedded systems applications. Especially, they claim, in light of the growing interest in creating machine-to-machine applications (M2M), or what's being called the "Internet of Things."
"M2M is touted as the next big wave of technical innovation," Peter Utzschneider, Oracle's vice president of product management, told us. He said Java is the perfect programming solution to propel this trend, given the huge numbers of entrenched developers, and the fact that Java code is transportable between an array of devices.
In fact, Utzschneider said traditional methods of writing native code for embedded systems applications don't lend themselves to the new world of M2M, where applications need to be continually refreshed. "Devices have tended not to get smarter over time, or get new features rolled out because that hasn't been the nature of the business," he said. "But with the Internet of Things coming, that means devices have to be connected and intelligent enough to do things that we're asking them to do, or report back on what they've done. The way people have developed (applications) in a proprietary, isolated fashion no longer works."
To address the new demands of the emerging market, Oracle Java Embedded Suite 7.0 bundles a Web server, Web services, and database technologies, along with an applications framework, into a standards-based solution optimized for embedded devices. Specifically, the bundle is based on the Oracle Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) Embedded 7, Java DB, versions of GlassFish for Embedded Suite, and the Jersey Web Services Framework (optimized for a reduced footprint).
Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small, embedded, low-power devices like microcontrollers, sensors, and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. With support for on-the-fly application downloads and updates, remote operation in challenging environments, and the ability to add new capabilities without impacting existing functions, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 brings a commercial implementation of the programming language for small-footprint devices based on the ARM architecture, including Cortex-M and Cortex-A.
Target applications include wireless modules for M2M, industrial and building control, smart grid infrastructure, home automation, and environmental sensors.
Related posts:


text:
Talkie of the Week: Harvey
USA 1950, 104 minutes, black & white, Universal International Pictures. Director: Henry Koster, Written by Mary Chase and Oscar Brodney, Based on the play "Harvey" by Mary Chase. Cast: James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Peggy Dow, Charles Drake, Cecil Kellaway, Victoria Horne, Jesse White, William H. Lynn, Wallace Ford, Nana Bryant, Grace Mills, Clem Bevans.
Plot summary: Elwood P. Dowd is a likable, regular fella with a unique, mythical friend who never leaves his side no matter how weird others think he is.
Review: Elwood P. Dowd is quite a character. He's pleasant, sweet and quirky – the kind of relative children would love but adults are frequently embarrassed by. Elwood lives with his sister Veta and niece Myrtle Mae both of whom love him dearly but also want to get rid of him. They do not know how to handle his peculiarities, particularly his friendship to Harvey, a 6'3.5" tall rabbit. Visible only to Elwood, Harvey is a Celtic myth, a so-called pooka, as real or unreal as you imagine him to be.
James Stewart played Elwood Dowd, a simple fellow whose devotion to his unseen companion makes him genuinely smart. At first glance, he may be flirting with addiction and mental illness, his heart, however, is in the right place and his statements are everything but random. Always a natural at playing humble personalities with a touch of greatness, James Stewart was rewarded with his fourth Academy Award nomination in 1951. He was supported by a powerful Josephine Hull whose Veta Louise Simmons was lusciously torn between loving her brother and losing her own mind. She was rightly recognized by the Academy as Best Supporting Actress and, like Stewart, created a unique character you cannot help but like.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Mary Chase, Harvey is still every bit as remarkable and entertaining as it was upon release. Unwilling to give easy answers but offering bittersweet questions instead, the film is funny, sad but also uplifting – a rare mix in movies today and thus a real treat for anyone who enjoys the quality and depth of Hollywood's Golden Age.
The film is available on DVD and VHS. You can get a glimpse at the trailer here.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Repeatedly people ask us why we spell Aliza's name the way we do. Some ask why we don't spell it the 'Mormon' way like Eliza Roxbury Snow or some of the others in church history. It is very popular in Utah and is mostly confined to the intermountain west. As we found out in Oklahoma, not many people even knew how to say the name who did not know LDS history.
Truth be told, we first stumbled upon the name at St. John the Baptist, a church in Halesowen, Worcestershire, England. Here is a picture of the tombstone that caught our attention.
Joseph Willetts (1842 – 1903) is the son of Samuel Willetts (1800 – ?), Samuel Willetts (1800 – ?) is the son of Samuel Willetts (1769 – ?) and Mary Crumpton (1773 – 1787). Samuel Willetts (1800 – ?) is the brother to my Letitia Willetts (1795 – 1875). Letitia is my 4th great-grandmother who married James Coley (1795 – 1875).
I have written of James and Letitia before.
At any rate, Aliza is the wife of Joseph Willetts. I don't even know her maiden name. But once we saw the name, we both knew that we liked it and wanted to name our daughter after this Aliza Willetts (1844 – 1915) buried at St. John the Baptist in Halesowen, England.
Halesowen and nearby Hasbury and Lutley are strongholds of my Coley, Willetts, Parish, and Lea lines. Hopefully I will get to visit again some day when the heavens have not opened to unleash rains upon us. I also hope that maybe Aliza might be able to visit the grave of this namesake, maybe even with us.


text:
Persian Handmade enamel On Copper Vase - Multicolor Design
Minakari or Enameling is the art of painting, coloring and ornamenting the surface of metals. The art of Minakari is called miniature of fire as well as the decoration of metal and tile with mina glaze. Lobed rim enamelware with its light cyan, aqua and pale turquoise colors can take you from the middle of modern and colorless industrial world with skillful hands of an enameller (minakar) to the middle of sky and its fantastic drawings lead a memorable tranquility.
Enamel products include Enamel on Copper Pedestal Candy/Nut Bowl Dish, Enamel on Copper Sugar Pot/ Candy Dish, Enamel on Copper Wine Decanter, Enameled Wall Hanging Plate and other products. Enamel works can be washed with lukewarm water, soap and even ordinary detergents.
Isfahan is the most important Iranian enameling hub. Enamel work of Isfahan, is comprised of a pattern of birds and animals on a floral background in light blue, green, yellow and red. The paintings or patterns used for enamel works in Iran are traditional designs depending on the taste and preferences of the artist. In the Iranian version of enameling, copper and silver are the most dominant metals used. In the past, the enamel had been applied to tile, ceramic or glass, but nowadays copper is more often used because it is malleable and flexible. Different kinds of local symmetrical patterns are used in Minakari paintings, are 'Eslimi' and 'Pardaz' which are the well-known Islamic patterns.
All Enamel products are handicraft
All products will be delivered 3-4 weeks after placing order
- Sales number: 127
- Brand: Other
- Product Code: Home Decor
- Availability: In Stock
- 221.00 AED All Prices are VAT-Inclusive
Tags: Handmade, home decoration, enamelware, Vase, Persian


text:
You are here
Hot Panda's Fall Tour
August 17, 2011
Our pals in Hot Panda are feeling a little restless. In addition to preparing for Vancouver's always exciting Victory Square Block Party, they are writing new material and packing their bags for their second European tour. Not bad guys, not bad.
Their dates look like this:
Aug 18 - Comet Tavern, Seattle, WASep 04 - Victory Square Block Party, Vancouver, BCSep 15 - Guilt and Co, Vancouver, BCSep 24 - Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg, Germany
Sep 26 - Weekender, Innsbruck, AustriaSep 28 - L'Internationale, Paris, FranceSep 30 - The Brixton Windmill, London, UK
Oct 01 - Labour Club, Northhampton, UK Oct 02 - The Old Queen's Head, London, UKOct 03 - The Bull and Gate, London, UK


text:
Pacifica, CA Dog Travel Tips
Looking for a great place to bring Fido in Pacifica? This should help! The 2 posts below feature some of our favorite pet friendly hotels, restaurants, and activities in Pacifica.
Fetching results...
Unable to load blog posts.
There are no blog posts matching your query. Try changing your search options.{{/results}}


text:
Yelp can manipulate ratings, court rules
Yelp has long faced accusations that it manipulates its business-review ratings to sell advertising - five stars for a big ad buy, say, and two stars for a turndown.
The verdict from a federal appeals court: There's nothing illegal about that.
Yelp adamantly denies giving its paying clients more favorable reviews, but even if such allegations could be proved, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Yelp is entitled to set a price for its ads - and the businesses reviewed have no legal right to a high rating.
"As Yelp has the right to charge for legitimate advertising services, the (alleged) threat of economic harm ... is, at most, hard bargaining," and not extortion or unfair business practices, Judge Marsha Berzon said in Tuesday's 3-0 ruling.
The court upheld a federal judge's dismissal of a proposed class-action damage suit by small-business owners who claimed Yelp's sales representatives told them their ratings would depend on their decision to buy ads.
"I've got hundreds of people who have called me with this problem: When they stopped advertising with Yelp, their good reviews got stripped out," the business owners' lawyer, Lawrence Murray, said after Tuesday's ruling.
"What does it take, to have a gun to their head? ... This is extortion in any other setting."
Yelp said it's not true and couldn't happen, because its review-filtering software doesn't distinguish between advertisers and non-advertisers.
"For years, fringe commentators have accused Yelp of altering business ratings for money," said the San Francisco company's litigation director, Aaron Schur. "Yelp has never done this, and individuals making such claims are either misinformed or, more typically, have an ax to grind."
One plaintiff, Boris Levitt, owner of a furniture-restoration business in San Francisco, said several five-star ratings disappeared from his Yelp page two days after he refused to buy ads. Tracy Chan, a San Francisco dentist, said a Yelp sales representative offered her "lots of benefits" for advertising, then removed nine five-star ratings from her page a few days later - ratings that were restored after she signed an advertising contract.
Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital of Santa Barbara said Yelp offered to "hide negative reviews" in exchange for ad sales. The owner of Wheel Techniques, a Santa Clara auto body shop, said he asked Yelp why a competitor had a higher rating and was told that the rival company bought ads.
Such claims, if credible, might tarnish Yelp's own ratings with the public. Like the businesses its users rate, Yelp must work hard to maintain its own credibility with consumers, said Gartner Research Director Brian Blau.
"On the surface, you'd think this news would be an endorsement for Yelp," Blau said Wednesday. But it could leave consumers wondering, "If Yelp is permitted to do this, will they? They said they aren't, but will they in the future? That's going to be the bigger question."
In this case, the appeals court said the plaintiffs failed to show that the company violated their rights or broke any laws, even if they proved all their allegations.
Yelp's ratings, based on reviews by members of the public, are within its discretion, Berzon said - a "benefit" the company chooses to provide. Because the company's ads also have value, she said, "any implicit threat by Yelp to remove positive reviews absent payment for advertising was not (legally) wrongful."
Chronicle staff writer Benny Evangelista contributed to this report.
Online extra
To view the ruling, go to http://1.usa.gov/W7Esnl.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: email@example.com Twitter: @egelko


text:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882 / Boston / United States)
» Click to list general statistics » OR, select a date :
From The Persian Of Hafiz I
Butler, fetch the ruby wine,
Which with sudden greatness fills us;
Pour for me who in my spirit
Fail in courage and performance;
read more >>
- Hits: Number of visitors who read the poem on the given date.
- Posts: Number of visitors who posted the poem to a friend (via e-mail) on the given date.
- Dates that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list.
- Dates, poems and poets that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list. Statistics are generated daily.


text:
A service to send a cellphone or Nauta recharge to your friends and relatives in Cuba. It is fast, secure, and very simple to use. A cellphone recharge is an excellent gift.
Your credit card or PayPal account is charged only when ETECSA confirms that the cellphone or Nauta WiFi recharge has reached Cuba.
Very secure, we don't even store your payment details in our servers.
Sending a cellphone or Nauta WiFi recharge to your friends and relatives in Cuba takes less than one minute.
You'll be notified by email after your recharge completes. Optionally, you may send an SMS with a personal note along with your recharge.
More Information


text:
Susan Sarandon branded Pope Benedict "a Nazi" in an interview Saturday.
Sarandon appearing at the Bay Street Theatre at the Hamnptons Film Festival in New York Saturday, where she was interviewed by actor Bob Balaban, was talking about her 1995 film "Dead Man Walking" when she mentioned she had sent a copy of the book it was based on to the Pope.
"The last one," she said, "not this Nazi one we have now."
U.S. & World
When Balaban pressed her, Sarandon repeated her remark, according to Newsday.
The liberal actress also discussed Occupy Wall Street, which she visited last week in a limo on her way to the airport.


text:
Got Inspiration?
Easy way to get inspired
So, a while back, I posted an article taking about the necessity of inspiration for artists. Whether your chose medium is painting, sculpture, performing arts of whatever the case may be, inspiration is essential.
Today, many of us use smart phones. And with smart phones comes the availability of various apps. One such app that can possibly help to get those creative juices flowing for Android users (I'm sure iphones have something similar) is simply called "Inspirational Quotes."
It's a free listing of a seemingly endless number of famous and inspirational quotes from some of the greatest thinkers, innovators and entertainers of all time. At the very least, something like this might help to kick start the flow of your creative juices.


text:
MLG and ESPN Team Up for First-Ever eSports Event at X Games Austin
MLG X Games Invitational to Take Place at X Games Austin June 6-8 with X Games Medals Awarded to MLG Pro Gamers for the First Time
NEW YORK (April 28, 2014) – Major League Gaming (MLG), the global leader in eSports, and ESPN X Games are teaming up for the first-ever MLG X Games Invitational at the inaugural X Games Austin from June 6-8, 2014, at Circuit of The Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. As part of the X Games Austin festival experience and for the first time in history, MLG Pro Gamers will be awarded X Games medals and MLG's Pro Circuit competition will be showcased with Skateboard, BMX, Moto X, Rally and Stadium SUPER Trucks, renowned musical performers and more.
MLG will invite the top five Call of Duty®: Ghosts teams based on MLG Pro Points rankings and the top three finishers (CompLexity, EnVyUs and OpTic Gaming) from the recent Call of Duty® Championship, presented by Xbox, to compete in the three-day invitational to be played on Xbox One. Fans can watch the competition in person beginning Friday, June 6 or tune in to the broadcast via MLG.tv, MLG.tv apps for iOS and Android, and MLG.tv app for Xbox 360.
"The popularity of competitive gaming and the MLG Pro Circuit is at an all-time high with millions watching the best gamers compete each month on MLG.tv," said Don Reilley, MLG EVP Sales. "This collaboration with X Games will help further bring MLG to the mainstream while we provide advertisers with quality exposure and deep engagement with our fan base on MLG.tv across all platforms."
Tickets for X Games Austin are available at www.ticketmaster.com/xgames. A three-day X Games Experience ticket is available for $89 and provides access to the MLG tent in addition to all X Games activity. For only $100 more, fans can purchase an extremely limited "3-Day Major League Gaming Premium Upgrade" to secure reserved seating in the MLG tent, a behind-the-scenes tour, meet and greets with top Call of Duty players, a gift bag including MLG merchandise, gaming gear and more.
From June 6-8, fans can watch all of the MLG X Games action on MLG.tv across all platforms (www.MLG.tv, MLG.tv app for Xbox 360, MLG.tv apps for iOS and Android devices).
MLG's presence at X Games Austin will be highlighted during X Games telecasts, airing on ESPN and ABC, and on X Games digital and social platforms.
About Major League Gaming:
Major League Gaming (MLG) is the global leader in eSports. The company operates MLG.tv, the #1 online broadcast network for professional level competitive gaming; the MLG Pro Circuit, the longest-running eSports league in North America; and MLG: Play, the largest cross platform online gaming tournament system with 9 million registered users across the globe. MLG is one of the fastest growing digital networks worldwide with over 1557% growth in audience over the last four years. Each month, the company reaches millions of highly-engaged fans via web, mobile, connected TVs and gaming consoles making it the definitive property for major advertisers to reach young men (90% male, 50% 16-34 year olds, 76% 21+, and over 40% HHI $100k+). The robust MLG.tv programming line-up is available
via www.MLG.tv, MLG.tv apps for iOS and Android and the MLG app for Xbox 360. For more information: www.majorleaguegaming.com.
Media Contacts:
Major League Gaming Katie Goldberg, 917-558-6462, [email protected]
ESPN Communications Danny Chi, 213-405-4400, [email protected]


text:
Ambit Energy's U.S.-based Customer Care Center is here to assist all of our Customers promptly and professionally. From billing and usage questions to renewals, our Customer Care team is available to help you with your account and answer questions when you need assistance or more information. Take a look at this list of FAQs for tools that will guide you through your customer service experience at Ambit Energy.
When should I contact the Customer Care Center?
Anytime you have a question, feel free to call us at (877) 282-6248. You may find that our website, www.AmbitEnergy.com, can answer your questions. MyAmbit Account is another resource for you to pay your bill online, track Travel Rewards points and renew your service plan.
How can I get in touch with a Customer Care Representative?
You can call our Customer Care Center toll-free at (877) 282-6248 or (877) 28-AMBIT.
When is the Customer Care Center open?
Our Customer Care Center is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. CT, and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. CT.
Will I get to speak with a "real" person?
Yes! Our Customer Care Center is located in the U.S. and you will always have the option to speak with a representative in real-time during our hours of operation.
Where can I find my Customer ID number?
When calling our Customer Care Center, have your Customer ID number on hand. Your Customer ID number is an 8-digit number that starts with an "A". This number, which was given to you when you signed-up for Ambit's services, can be found on your welcome letter or on your bill. Our representatives will ask you for this number so they can locate your account information.


text:
NSB has been deeply impressed by the Raspberry Pi project, which is about to release a small, extremely low cost, computer that aims to give children an exciting way of learning programming, just like kids were able to do with their ZX Spectrums in the 1980s.
Eben Upton, one of the trustees of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, kindly agreed to an interview with NSB recently. It was a fascinating discussion, touching on how the number of people studying Computer Science has dropped over the last 10-15years, tips for youngsters who want to enter this field, and what it has been like to develop the Raspberry Pi device. A transcript of the best bits is shown below. Enjoy.
NSB : Going right back to when you were working in the admissions department in Cambridge University, can you give a feel for what you were seeing at that time?
Eben Upton : I came up to Cambridge University in 1996 as an undergraduate student to read computer science and the vast majority of the people on the course with me had been programming since they were around 8-12years of age [using] machines in their bedrooms that were easily programmable and [that] you could use to write commercial quality games. People were almost tricked into becoming computer programmers, you would buy a Spectrum in order to play games on it or a BBC micro in order to do your word processing and you would find that when you turned the thing on the first thing it did was to beep and then give you a BASIC prompt. And even if 99 times out of a 100 the first thing you did with the device was to load a game or start a word processor you could still write that two line program :
10 PRINT "I'm great"
So that was the environment I came from and it was reflected in the skill set of the people I was at university with.
Program me, you know you want to. Go on, just a little one. . .
Ten years later, I had graduated, done a PhD and got involved in admissions. The really surprising thing to me, in 2005, was that your average student now, rather than knowing BASIC, one or two assembly languages, maybe some "C" or some PASCAL, had done, at best, a little bit of PHP, a little bit of web programming. And that is an amazing change over 10 years in terms of skill set and the really alarming thing was it went alongside a halving in the number of people who were applying. So we went from having nearly 500 applying for 80 places. . . to a situation where we had under 250 applying for broadly the same number of places.
Although superbly equipped, an unfortunate mix up between centimetres and inches
resulted in the roof for the new Cambridge University Computer Science Centre being the wrong size. . .
So this was very dispiriting for us so we looked around for why skills might have changed and. . . the thing we could do something about was that kids used to have programmable hardware, which was replaced by games consoles and then by family PC's. And even if you are a middle class family that can afford PC hardware, it's still the case that that could be the "family" PC and you are not going to be encouraged to mess around with it, in particular, you are not going to be allowed to risk breaking it in the same way that you could risk breaking your machine in the 1980s when if you broke it, that was your fault and you had to save up and buy a new one.
Don't you dare try to program me, there is no built-in programming language
and your parents won't let you anyway
So we looked around to see what we could do and what we have come up with after about five years of effort is this thing that we call Raspberry Pi.
NSB : Just to pick up on one aspect of that - what was it like to be an undergraduate in computing at Cambridge University.
Eben Upton : Enormously competitive is probably my memory of it. . . we had 20 weeks (of teaching) in a year, so that's 60 weeks over three years. 60 weeks isn't very long to go from knowing nothing to being a Cambridge graduate. So there is a feeling of pressure, of competition. As I found out in one or two courses, if you don't pay attention for 15minutes in a lecture then that course is dead, there is a treadmill and you fall off it. . . .But it's a fantastic experience to mix with people (like) Alex Evans who subsequently has gone on to run a company called Media Molecule who produce Little Big Planet. So that's the kind of calibre of person you would sit around and have a drink with.
Thinking about Kylie, Tom Cruise, yesterdays Man U - Arsenal game could cost you dear.
NSB : Are there any tips you can give students at sixth form who are keen to do computer science? What would advise them to focus on?
Eben Upton : Looking today, thinking about the "pre-Raspberry Pi" world and good things to get involved with if you want to be a computer scientist, you can pretty much ignore anything called ICT because it's not going to teach you anything that is useful. We even had a thing at Cambridge when we were doing admissions where if people were doing an ICT A-Level, we didn't even count that as as A-Level, and that was heartbreaking because we would be getting people who had done perhaps Maths, Physics and ICT - and they would have chosen ICT because they wanted to read Computer Science at Cambridge. They would come for an interview and we would have to say "Look, as far as we are concerned, you've doing 2 A-levels and we can't make you an offer.
There is I understand, from OCR, a GCSE course that some schools are starting to offer which is much more Computer Science oriented, which is good news.
In terms of your spare time, one thing that is a very popular way in still is writing mods for games. A lot of games have the ability to create mods for them and those mods are written in scripting language and it is a genuine, legitimate piece of programming. It's one of the few ways that people today can come up in the same way that we did. There is a thing called "Garry's Mod" which is quite popular for Half-Life2. There is a programming language called "Lua" which is very popular in the games industry, so there are these tools which let you get involved in serious scripting and you will probably come out of that knowing as much as I did when I left school.
Half-Life2 : Guns and the ability to write scripts to modify the game.
Does it get any better than this ?
NSB: Lets move forward to 2008. You had decided to do something to improve the situation and were starting to build the Raspberry Pi board of trustees. What was that process like? What were the challenges? What was easy? What was hard?
Eben Upton : I guess its about finding people who have a common interest. We were very lucky because this is an issue that affects a lot of people and that means there are a lot of people who are interested in finding a solution. So on the board of trustees we have myself and five other people:
David Braben, a game developer from the 1980s who learnt his stuff on a lot of the same hardware that I learnt my stuff on and who has experienced this problem because he is trying to hire graduates and the reduction in the supply of graduates directly affects his business. This issue is something that has been close to David's heart for a long time, well before I met him. Together with people like Ian Livingstone, the former head of Eidos, David has been talking to the government about the general skills problem.
Pete Lomas, who is a hardware engineer and runs a company up in Cheshire that has exactly the same problem,
Professor Alan Mycroft and Dr Rob Mullins from Cambridge University, that's quite an obvious fit.
Jack Lang, a long time Cambridge entrepreneur and angel investor.
And I have a relationship with Broadcom, which is my day job.
So the nice thing is, these are all people who have a common interest but who have complimentary skills.
If you have a problem, if nobody else can help, and if you can find them,
maybe you can hire the Trustees-of-the-Raspberry Pi-Foundation
NSB : There have been a number of recent reports by the Royal Society and others who wanted to see more programming and a sense of excitement for computing in the way it is taught at schools. Do you feel that, going forward, these will address the problems that you are seeing?
Eben Upton : I think we have been lucky with this government. . . for a long time we were pushing at a closed door with the (previous) government. I think we have been very lucky with initiatives such as thos from Ian Livingstone, Steve Furber or the Royal Society report and a new government that has come along. It has nothing necessarily to do with the ideology of the new government but the fact that new governments tend to do new things.
NSB: Why did you have such trouble initially, for all those years when the door was closed?
Eben Upton : There is just such an enormous amount of inertia associated with changing a curriculum and it requires the government to be scared, to perceive that there is a problem. And its hard to convince the government there is a problem because you look out there and we do have a functioning economy and we have the financial services sector which consumes quite a lot of our engineering output and everything kinda looks fine. So this is a delayed action time bomb.
And things have to start to get bad. Maybe five years ago we only had 5 years of their not being graduates, now we have 10 years. People are looking around in engineering companies saying "Where are all the guys in their 20s? Why are we only hiring 35yr olds these days".
Changing government policy can be like trying to get one of these to do a handbrake turn. . .
NSB: To move forward to today, where is the project now and can you give some information about the physical size of the Raspberry Pi, because it is quite a small device.
Eben Upton : It is exactly the size of a credit card. We used the ISO spec for a credit card to size the product, so this thing is, within a millimetre, the size of a credit card; about half an inch tall; around the outside its got connectors for analogue and digital television, analogue audio, USB to allow you to attach a mouse and keyboard and a 100Mbit Ethernet connection so that you can connect to a network. It takes its power from a mobile phone charger. The idea is that all the peripherals are things that people already own.
The Raspberry Pi in all its tiny, low cost, programmable, connectable glory.
NSB :So when you switch it on, what happens? Does it go into a programming mode?
Eben Upton : You switch it on and it boots just like an ordinary Linux PC. If you want to use this as a productivity machine, you can configure it to boot into a desktop. If you want to use it as a media player you can configure it to boot into a media player - we have a port of the X-Box media centre for it. If you want to use it for programming you can configure it to boot into Python (a programming language); you can configure it to boot to a prompt where you can then start programming it in "C" or BASIC or of the other popular programming languages.
Programming in Python on Raspberrypi. So excting that you may lose control of some bodily functions.
NSB : There may be people out there who are wondering how they can get hold of one of these?
Eben Upton : Anybody who is interested in this should go to our website www.raspberrypi.org. We currently have a batch (a few thousand) being manufactured for us in China. We are then going to go into volume manufacture. One of the big challenges for us is that we forecast that if we had 50,000 devices today we would have zero tomorrow. And for a charitable foundation like ours, with limited sources of capital, that is extremely hard to satisfy. So we have been working on a number of approaches to try and solve that problem, one of these is by scaling very fast, another is to open sourcing the design, releasing the design to third parties so that they can make their own versions. So visit www.raspberrypi.org and watch for status updates.
|Go here for more info.
NSB : The website is fascinating as you really get a feel for the process of designing and manufacturing this device.
Eben Upton : It's interesting to do this thing in public. Hardly anyone ever tries to do this in public. What this means is that we said we would like to get this out in the fourth quarter of 2011 but we hit some problems and some people were critical. By December we had some, but only a trial quantity. And now we are in February and I'm saying that we are only a couple of weeks away. If we had gone into stealth mode we wouldn't be having this and it would be easier in some ways, but it would also be harder because I very much enjoy some of the lovely email that I get, encouraging email that keeps you going when things get tough, something that we would be deprived of if we were in stealth mode.
NSB : The last question that we have for you is one that we ask all guests on the show : What do you think is the best thing about living in the UK?
Eben Upton :What would I put at the top of my list of the best things about living in the UK? I've lived in a number of places. I've lived in France and I've lived in the US and the thing about the UK is that it feels like having been the UK for a very long time. It has a lot of institutions that have been around for a long time, like the University of Cambridge which has been around for an enormous amount of time. They're not perfect, heaven knows that the University is not a perfect institution. You can stand in the middle of Cambridge and you are standing in the city that gave us Newton and a thousand scientists and a thousand philosophers. And there is just something about that sense of history about the place and the fact that that co-exists, certainly in Cambridge in any case, with an enoumous economic dynamism that we at Raspberrypi are trying to keep going. It makes it a very congenial place. I love it in the UK.
Eben was interviewed as a guest on the "Building for the Future" show on Nottinghams community radio station "Radio Dawn 107.6FM"
Image Sources:
Raspberrypi logo and device image courtesy of Raspberrypi. All other images from Wikipedia
To NSB's delight and amazement, this interview got a mention in the Guardigan(as No1 son used to call it )


text:
The first bundle combined shades of blue, red, and purple, resulting in what I believe to be a very rich and warm palette.
The second assortment was a bit more unusual and unexpected. One of the colorways of Prince Charming features gorgeous tones of teal and honey. I paired them with another of Kate Spain's leaf prints and another shade of houndstooth. The solid was a complete fluke, but I love the earthy stone color that somehow grounds the palette.
I even made mention of this color combination over on the GenQ blog today!
Here's the Farmer's Wife block I made with this bundle:
Well, after making both blocks, I was still itchy. I wanted to play with these fabric bundles even more. It just so happens we were working on issue 7 of Fat Quarterly at the time, and I decided to draw up a pair of mini quilt patterns to showcase the fabric assortments. After all, the entire issue is all about color! I decided to name my project "Duet".
Issue 7 of Fat Quarterly, the color issue, is now available for purchase.


text:
An excerpt from Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS, Verso, 2006, List $23.00
Part I: Introducing the Global Perspective
1. Moving Mountains
In 1991, during the Lenten Carnival season in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, I drove up to Delmas, a densely populated shantytown of dirt streets and brightly painted one-room shacks that cling to the edge of the hills above the capital, threatening to slide into garbage-filled ravines full of snakes. I'd come to the island for a short visit to report on political affairs and see family and journalistic colleagues.
It was a rare afternoon of political stability on the island. It was extremely humid. On the radio, different Carnival bands were competing to have their song declared the best. Back downtown near the National Palace I'd left several friends from New York whom I'd met through the activist network ACT UP -- the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.
For my generation, ACT UP served as a crash-course on activism. By taking to the streets to risk arrest, ACT UP had achieved many victories related to access to life-saving medicines. It launched its first protests against the high price of AZT, a former cancer drug approved for AIDS in March 1987 -- at a cost of $10,000 a year. Ronald Reagan was in office then, and 20,000 Americans had already died of AIDS. ACT UP had helped focus my activism, while the politics and science of AIDS shaped my personal and professional life. I shifted from international reporting about politics and human rights in Haiti and elsewhere to covering gay issues and AIDS in America, and related social justice battles. Now and then, I reported on the Haitian AIDS crisis, which was generally ignored by the mainstream US media, as was Africa's, until the late 1990s.
In Haiti, the death toll from AIDS in 1987 can only be guessed at, but no one was getting AZT, unless they were the wealthy children of the elite who'd gotten their hands on a few months' supply of the drug. I'd begun tracking the epidemic there in 1984, and, to this day, Haiti remains my lens for viewing the global epidemic. My father was born there and the family's roots go far back; my extended family still lives there. I spent many childhood summers in Haiti and grew up with an acute awareness of the repressive political climate of terror that existed under "President for Life" François "Papa Doc" and his political goons, the infamous Tontons Macoutes militia, and his successor-son, Jean-Claude or "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
I did my first reporting in Haiti, covering political events and the grassroots pro-democracy movement. In 1987, Haiti began a long dechoukaj -- or uprooting -- of the thirty-year Duvalier dictatorship. Baby Doc and his wife were sent packing to exile in France, having looted the national coffers. The streets and shantytowns were filled with the victims of political violence. AIDS might have been killing more people, but they were hidden.
By then, a handful of Haitian doctors I knew were doing their best to treat severe cases of pneumonia, diarrhea and skin cancers that, in a matter of months, laid waste to young men and women already weak from malnourishment and chronic diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and waterborne parasites. I recall how hard it was to spot AIDS cases among the emaciated, sweaty patients batting away flies in the public hospital. Whenever I was in town, I'd stop by the AIDS clinic on Rue Berne, where my doctor friends would decry the silent epidemic they were battling with limited medicine and almost no support.
Outside of their clinic, the hospital and the morgue, the epidemic was not on the global or domestic radar. AIDS was something whispered about, la maladi katrach -- the four H's -- for the four groups first identified as targets: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin users and Haitians. It was linked with prostitutes and masisis -- queers -- two stigmatized groups. There was little government talk of AIDS. Families turned their sick children out, husbands blamed their wives, and many AIDS patients died alone in hospitals, shunned even by fearful hospital staff, according the Haitian doctors treating the early epidemic.
Today, the taboos surrounding discussions of sexuality continue to shroud AIDS in Haiti, a country steeped in catholicism and voudon, an animist religion. It's common for gay and bisexual men to live closeted lives, to marry and have children in order to fulfill parental expectations. Stigma prevents those who are ill from risking disclosure to seek HIV testing and care until they are quite ill.
That was the reason I was driving up away from the pre-Carnival party downtown to a quiet house in Delmas, where a human rights worker I'd never met, a friend of a friend, was sick. As someone working in AIDS, I'd been asked by a colleague to stop by, to see what I could do.
What I found there is seared in my memory. His wife, an intelligent, composed young woman, led me to the dark inner bedroom of a small house where her husband was dying of AIDS, though no one uttered the word. A half-dozen people from the neighborhood were sitting beside his small bed on stools and overturned buckets, praying softly and chanting.
The man was standing up in bed, semi-naked, wild-eyed and delirious. He eyed me with suspicion and fear. Who was I?, he asked his wife, confused. Was I Legba -- the voudon guardian of doorways and barriers? I was wearing a straw hat, a Carnival souvenir. Was I Baron Samedi in my hat -- a symbol of the dead (and not coincidentally, of the elder dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier)? The people in the room smiled, embarrassed.
The wife calmed her husband down. She introduced me as someone from America, from a Haitian family, who knew about medicine, who wasn't a doctor but might be able to help them. She made me feel his head: he had a very high fever and was trembling, he was hotter than the sweltering room. She explained that he'd already been hospitalized for weeks. There was little the doctors could do for him besides relieve his pain, she'd been told; they had no more medicine. He was kondane -- condemned. Her husband's family, peasants from the interior, didn't like being at the hospital. If he was going to die, she wanted him home.
Away from the scene, I told her what I knew about the treatment of latestage brain infections linked to AIDS. I'd come empty handed, with no warning of what to expect. I left her with the name of another doctor who promised to come up as soon as he could to see this man. The next day, I dropped off vitamins, strong painkillers and, at the insistence of my friend Jon Greenberg, a believer in holistic therapy, ampoules of injectable liquid vitamin B-12 that ACT UP friends with HIV thought helped brain function. Jon was using this experimentally to boost his own depleted immune system. I promised to send better medicine back as quickly as I could. But it was too late. The man died seventy-two hours later.
What I encountered in 1991 continues today, on a global scale that is hard to imagine. The headlines have been trumpeting these statistics for years now: 25 million already dead of AIDS, 42 million affected with the virus, including 35 million in less-developed countries. By almost any measure -- human, social, cultural, economic, financial, political -- the scope and impact of the pandemic makes it almost unfathomable, a many-headed Hydra.
Today, the great majority of people living with HIV and AIDS -- 28 million -- live in sub-Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region. In some countries -- like South Africa, the hardest-hit nation -- infection rates top 70 percent among some groups of young women. In Botswana, where 40 percent of adults are affected, adult life expectancy has fallen from seventy-three to thirty-seven years. AIDS has wiped out entire families and villages, and left no sector of society untouched. The epidemic has so depleted the workforce of southern Africa that several countries are headed into negative economic growth due to a decline in productivity.
These are numbing, staggering statistics; the numbers become abstractions. But each one is a life, a member of a family. Whenever it gets too big, I break it down, think of this person I met or that one. With drugs, they could be alive, they could be pulled back from madness or blindness -- another symptom of untreated late-stage AIDS.
Let me offer another portrait. In 1999 I met Chatinkha Nkhoma, a dynamic, newly minted AIDS activist from Malawi. We met at a virology conference in Baltimore, where, in her inimitable way, she'd wangled an invitation to sit among the leading AIDS scientists to learn more about the virus and newer treatments. Over thirty years old, she was good-natured, yet very angry with the big drug companies, a mother and woman living with HIV in a kind of exile, on borrowed time and money. She'd gotten to Baltimore via a contact in Malawi and was accessing AIDS drugs free by participating in a US federal clinical drug trial. Against crazy odds, she'd reached the land of treatment -- the United States of America.
Life wasn't great for her in Baltimore. Back in Malawi, she'd worked in a government ministry, been relatively well paid, and supported others. Now she had no money and couldn't legally work. It was painful to accept charity, she said, but she'd done it to survive. She lived in a small apartment with her son. She was lonely and she worried daily about her relatives back home. Several had died; others were battling the virus. None had treatment. Years back in Malawi, she'd been given up for dead; they'd planned her funeral. By luck, she'd gotten her hands on some recycled antiretroviral medicine, a few weeks' supply. Two drugs at first, then three. It did the trick. It got her on her feet. She later ran out, then got more. It wasn't the prescribed way to take AIDS medicine, it wasn't the way Western doctors recommended to avoid resistance or drug failure, she knew, but she'd done it and she'd recovered. Her son, now college age, was not an orphan -- yet.
When I later saw her walking with a cane, suffering from early deterioration of her hip joints -- a serious drug-related side-effect emerging in some patients after years of therapy -- she waved away my concern. HIV was no picnic, she reminded me, nor were the medicines. Eventually, she might need a hip replacement. But she was undaunted. She'd walk again, go back to Malawi, soon, start a treatment access program there.
In her wheelchair, she attended the Thirteenth International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2000, a turning point in the global fight to access medicine. At a protest rally organized by South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign and ACT UP -- the first major AIDS protest on African soil -- she grabbed the microphone, pointed to a building behind her where World Bank officials and drug company experts were discussing the cost-effectiveness of global AIDS treatment, and shouted to a sea of African faces like hers: "There is a crime being committed here! You cannot have 42 million people dying and have the issue be about money!"
The crime Chatinkha is referring to is the lack of affordable AIDS medicines for the world, and the huge gap in access that has allowed people in rich countries to live and those in poorer countries to die. While many people in the United States and Western Europe have had access to AZT and other antiretroviral drugs for fifteen years, these drugs have been too highly priced for the rest of the world. A three-drug HIV regimens costs $10,000 in the US. Compare that with a $5-a-year per capita health budget for citizens in the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and the treatment gap becomes very clear.
In truth, the drugs are too costly for many US patients, too, and there are waiting lists on the federal programs that provide these drugs for those who lack insurance. Most people get the drugs through their employee insurance policies, but many don't. HIV causes disability, and that can lead to unemployment. One thread that connects the access issue in rich and poor countries is poverty, which is linked to AIDS and other diseases of the poor like tuberculosis, and in Africa and Asia to malaria and sleeping sickness.
Scratch the surface and the AIDS access battle reveals a single, ugly motive: profit. That's what has led the big drug companies to charge so much for their drugs, yet block competitors from selling generic alternatives at a fraction of that cost. There are billions to be made. Patents and international trade laws are the instruments used to keep AIDS and other essential medicines from reaching Africa. It's important, then, to see AIDS as not merely a medical or public health issue, but fundamentally a social and political one. That's why AIDS activists adopt the language of human rights and social justice to discuss the access battle.
This book is about the global challenge to provide HIV treatment and care to people living in resource-poor settings. It examines the feasibility of that effort in light of existing and emerging obstacles that lie ahead for governments and affected communities. Given the complexity of the AIDS epidemic, the challenges are immense. Each step forward reveals a new layer of complexity.
I began this reporting after the 2000 street protests in Durban, which put the issue of global AIDS center-stage in the world's consciousness -- where it has remained. At that time, the question of whether to treat was still being hotly debated. Many skeptics were demanding concrete proof -- hard clinical data
This book focuses on the frontline efforts of pioneering groups who established pilot programs in the months following Durban. I wanted to chronicle the first steps -- and missteps -- of these groups in order to identify some of the key ingredients of their success or failure. By looking at what was happening in rural hospitals and community clinics, in the field, in prisons, in the halls of government, in classrooms, and in the bedroom, I hoped to offer an early litmus test of our collective progress so far.
I was particularly interested in efforts to educate and mobilize communities around treatment, and whether this would in fact help break down stigma. I wanted to see how treatment was impacting on the lives of the first lucky few, like Chatinkha, who accessed drugs. I wanted to focus on where the gaps existed between blueprints and funding promises versus concrete action and commitment, where the hurdles were proving greater or smaller than expected.
This book does not aim be a comprehensive survey of the global AIDS epidemic. It looks more narrowly at the myriad challenges -- political, social, medical, technical, cultural -- to delivering therapy, and to issues related to disease control and the capacity of nations to mobilize their civil societies and health sectors to deliver accelerated access to AIDS medicines.
The management of HIV is complex in wealthy countries with state-ofthe- art tools. It is far more difficult in impoverished Africa where HIV rides on the coat-tails of endemic co-diseases like tuberculosis and malaria. How would doctors cope with fewer resources and without tools such as HIV diagnostic tests? Would new, simpler daily drug regimens and alternative treatment guidelines for managing HIV in limited-resource settings prove useful to patients and doctors in the field?
Each chapter reflects this unfolding story at a particular time and place, offering a multifaceted view of the fast-changing landscape of global treatment. I visit projects in a range of countries and different geographic settings. I compare public and private programs, urban and rural programs, government and community-based programs. I also look at how treatment programs are linked to prevention, vaccine and research efforts.
In each country I focus on a specific issue, angle or obstacle that is critical to HIV treatment there. In Mexico, for example, I look at the issue of infrastructure, as well as the challenge of delivering treatment and care in urban versus rural settings. In Haiti, I also look at the infrastructure question, but focus on an innovative strategy being used to help poor villagers adhere to their daily regimens -- Directly Observed Therapy. In Uganda, which has attracted attention for national prevention efforts, I study mother-to-child transmission, trying to gauge whether MTCT prevention programs will indeed provide stepping stones to treatment in adults. In India, I look at the emerging generic AIDS drug industry, and the issues that underlie the bitter competition between multinational drug companies and the Indian upstarts.
I am also interested in the experiences and needs of women, sexual minorities, drug users, prisoners, youths, and other vulnerable groups. Russia provides a close look at a fast-moving epidemic that is crossing over from high-risk groups to the general population. I also examine the frontiers of HIV science and research, to determine the potential impact of future threats on developing countries.
With new money pouring into the international AIDS arena, it seems like everyone is beginning to chase research and treatment dollars -- be they scientists, public health officials, agencies, physician groups, non-profit organizations, community and activist groups. What matters most is how new programs will directly benefit those living with HIV and AIDS, and those very ill or dying in hospitals or bedrooms, desperately waiting for medicine. With new groups at all levels entering this fast-growing arena, I want to know who they are and what role they may play. I am concerned that while the expanding field of global AIDS offers fresh opportunities -- funding, programs, jobs, influence -- to established and new groups, it will inevitably lead to negative competition and lack of cooperation between frontline groups. This could easily lead to a duplication of efforts and a squandering of precious resources rather than the unified action that is needed. That scenario has played itself out in richer countries, and it would be foolish to expect anything different in much poorer ones, where the fight for resources is even more intense.
For now, provision of the money and resources needed to carry out the monumental task of the global treatment rollout is growing, but remains completely inadequate. That makes the odds of achieving an overall victory impossibly high. It also makes it unrealistic to hope to predict accurately the long-term outcome of the global effort. But a close look at the money, groups and agendas can give a rough picture of what we can expect in the short term.
As I write, in the fall of 2003, the number of people actually receiving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for HIV has more than doubled in the developing world, and increased by over two-thirds in Africa, since 2000. But it remains minuscule -- only 1 percent of the 4 million people in southern Africa who need drugs today actually get them. At the start of this year, official figures show that, of the 300,000 people in developing countries on ARV therapy, half were Brazilians who receive free HIV drugs through Brazil's much-lauded universal health system. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that 6 million people require treatment now and will die without it in the near future. The agency has now dedicated itself to having 3 million people on antiretrovirals by 2005 -- the "3 _ 5 plan" -- though the agency will not actually be providing the treatment.
How quickly this commitment translates into action, into medicine getting into bodies through sustainable, effective national programs, remains the burning question. Much will depend on the openness and ability of political leaders and health officials who are developing comprehensive AIDS programs to learn from each other's mistakes; and on their national commitment to medical treatment and a range of steps that will help assure greater access for citizens.
If the global effort succeeds, it will radically alter what our world will look like in the future. With so many lives hanging in the balance, the most important questions are: How many can be saved? How quickly? For how long? By then, how many more will have contracted the virus? Will the push to treat bolster prevention and vaccine efforts, as hoped? Will it help hard-hit nations to rebuild their basic health infrastructure? To fight other diseases? To reverse the economic devastation wreaked by AIDS?
And what about those with HIV? How will poor rural Haitians and Mexicans and Ugandans and others in developing countries manage HIV treatment-for-life? How well will they adhere to simplified regimens? Will we see a global version of what occurred in the US and Western Europe, where ARV drugs quickly cut the AIDS death rate and extended survival to patients? Or will the chronic lack of basic life resources -- food, water, shelter, jobs -- prevent such miracles from being repeated in poorer countries?
There are also problems associated with long-term use of potent but toxic AIDS therapies in richer countries, including drug resistance and serious side-effects. These side-effects include lipid and metabolic problems that cause damage to major organs like the liver, pancreas, heart, and kidneys. Studies show the risk of developing drug side-effects is linked to the length of time on therapy. So we may not see such problems in Africa for a few years, but what about down the line? Will people there also develop resistance to new simplified regimens being introduced, and then require alternatives? What if substitutes aren't available?
In a later section, I'll look at the myriad treatment challenges that physicians and individuals encounter in poor settings. As my field reports illustrate, these offer a glimpse of what new problems could crop up, and what life on HAART -- highly active antiretroviral therapy -- may be like in these countries.
If treatment-for-life is going to succeed, we need to develop and implement such plans and programs soon to ensure that the initial benefits of therapy are not short-lived. That means looking squarely at the potential global downside of treatment, not just the miracles.
In other words, what if the grand plan fails? Or the big money doesn't fully materialize? Or begins to flow, then is delayed or stopped, as frequently happens when programs rely on outside funding? What if treatment succeeds in some places, but not as well in others (a likely scenario)? How well can any region contain HIV, if the epidemic is poorly controlled in neighboring countries?
As the recent lessons of SARS remind us, viruses know no borders in a world of globalization and fast travel. What occurs in Dar es Salaam can affect what happens in Bangkok or Moscow. Looking ahead, will ever-wily HIV -- with its proven ability to quickly mutate, recombine into new substrains, and lie dormant in the body for a lifetime -- gain the global upper hand? Instead of disappearing or being controlled by drugs, will HIV eventually follow the path of other global diseases of the poor like tuberculosis and malaria, and in time become resistant to the current drug arsenal? By then, will new weapons be available in Africa or Haiti?
Compared with AIDS, there is little social stigma attached to SARS, perhaps because SARS is not viewed as a sexually-transmitted disease. There is fear of contagion and illness, but it is not linked to a moral judgement of human behavior. It is striking to note the difference in the world's response to these two global threats. Although Chinese officials initially covered up the SARS epidemic, global health officials issued an emergency call for all nations to respond to what they viewed as a threat to global public health. SARS was a matter of concern to all citizens, while AIDS is still viewed by many as a disease that is punishment for a sexual or other transgression from the social norm.
As we look to the future, no one can predict which new doomsday scenarios may emerge with AIDS or HIV, or where they will occur. But it's safe to assume that if funding or programs are started then abandoned, if political and civic leaders fail to unite or act responsibly, if stigma continues to prevent people from accessing testing and care, if drug companies block generic manufacturers, if privatization weakens public health systems, then such scenarios present a considerable risk.
One obstacle common to all developing countries is weak infrastructure, including public health systems. This issue is often cited by skeptics as a justifiable reason not to offer AIDS drugs to the world's poor. But as we learn from Brazil's example, AIDS treatment programs provide an opportunity to develop infrastructure, to introduce education and testing, to prepare communities for vaccine trials. Infrastructure -- or lack of it -- is not an acceptable reason to withhold, delay or scale back treatment.
To quote Paul Farmer, a pioneer of AIDS treatment in Haiti, "You'll always find people looking for excuses not to act, and AIDS is no exception. I find they're usually the people holding the purse strings. That doesn't make them right in my book, it just makes them greedy." Farmer was speaking to me in 2001, when his own project was just beginning to get global recognition. Like many in the trenches, he casts the access issue in moral terms of justice and health equity.
Yet Farmer is the first to acknowledge that it's harder to treat HIV in poor settings than rich ones. The extreme poverty of people in some countries makes the task of fighting and controlling any disease a complex endeavor, one linked to issues of national, regional and local development. How can one ask individuals to take AIDS medicines when they don't have enough food or clean water to swallow their pills? That's a question I wanted to ask in Haiti, where I know people don't eat every day.
As Farmer and others argue, infrastructure can indeed be developed, but it requires money, materials and human resources. In many countries there are resource gaps of all kinds across the board: not enough hospitals, clinics, trained doctors, nurses, basic medicine, affordable tests to deliver care to those living far from cities; not enough roads, warehouses, trained patent officials, pharmacists to procure, register, store and deliver drugs; not enough telephones, dependable electricity, refrigerators, computers, and other physical infrastructure to test thousands of blood samples and provide immediate results to patients; not enough of an industrial base or trained engineers or chemists to embark on local manufacturing of generic HIV drugs and make it cost-effective; not enough teachers, educators, lay counselors, and community organizers to take on the urgent task of educating and mobilizing local communities to take charge of their own care.
Instead, sub-Saharan Africa has been, and remains, under siege. So do parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, where the degree of overall poverty and development may be less severe, but still leads to limited or low-quality health and HIV services for the poorest citizens. In the hardest-hit countries of southern Africa, like Botswana and South Africa, a critical percentage of the very workforce needed to administer AIDS programs, deliver care or educate people about HIV has died or is ill: civil servants, doctors, nurses, technicians, midwives, teachers. Time and money are lacking to quickly replace and train a new generation of professionals. That spells a diminished human capacity to carry out the national AIDS effort.
Treatment education and literacy -- including cultural literacy -- are also critical factors in developing a national response to AIDS. This is challenging due to the diversity of populations, with so many languages spoken. It's not enough to provide information about HIV and drugs, but to make sure the information can be understood, is culturally sensitive, and addresses the educational needs of target groups. AIDS requires a discussion of the body, sexuality, identity, social attitudes toward healing and illness. Here again, the experience and resources of the West require translation, adoption, and redefinition to fit an African, Asian or other cultural model.
What are experts doing to prepare communities around the world for these challenges? It's one thing to roll out treatment, quite another to sustain programs for decades. Doing so requires much more than a steady supply of drugs, food and clean water to take pills. It demands long-term emotional support for individuals facing not only a life-threatening illness, but daily battles with nausea, fatigue and other common drug side-effects; with depression and suicidal thoughts; with worries that HIV will win the upper hand despite treatment; with failure to take exactly the right pills on time to avoid resistance. We know from the experiences and testimonies of US and other patients that life with HIV is very hard, and life on therapy is no picnic. All of this is likely to be even more challenging for individuals trying to cope with far fewer resources.
There are myriad challenges in maintaining good health, particularly in settings where daily survival is the name of the game. But many of the supportive elements that are taken for granted in rich countries are missing for patients in the poorest settings. The denial of AIDS has affected mainstream society. HIV is not talked about openly. Instead people are stigmatized and face fear, hostility, violence and overt discrimination. Those on treatment are likely to hide this aspect of their lives from neighbors and even loved ones to avoid being stigmatized. Right now, there aren't support groups for those with HIV in many countries, and relatively few mental health services have been developed with AIDS and HIV-positive individuals in mind. Along with drug therapy, the provision of mental health needs to be introduced into the formula. What it looks like will reflect social and cultural practices in different communities.
Ethics present yet another challenge. Up to now, people with AIDS who are receiving treatment have often been excluded from the decision- making processes that greatly affect them. A far greater effort is needed now to bring their voices into the discussion, at all levels of planning and administration. I knew this from the experience in the US, where people with HIV had to fight to get onto the review boards of clinical trials, and inside closed-door meetings to discuss drug development with manufacturers.
Right now, those with the most at stake in relation to treatment are individuals at death's door and their loved ones. After a few weeks on therapy, they are likely to regain their health, and then they need jobs, training, housing and other services -- just like other citizens, except that HIV provides an extra challenge. Without housing or work, it becomes that much harder to care for yourself. Are governments and NGOs prepared for that challenge? Are they taking into consideration housing, mental health services, such as rape counseling for women, family planning services, or school programs for HIV-positive children?
Care providers and institutions need long-term support too. In some countries, there are few non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or community- based groups with experience in rolling out comprehensive AIDS programs. As we saw in the US and Western Europe, the learning curve can be steep. Given the dearth of resources and funding in the poorest countries, there will be problems of mismanagement, of funds being squandered, of corruption -- all problems seen in richer countries. Given that outside donors and agencies are funding treatment programs, how prepared are they for the difficult road ahead? What about scientists, health professionals, medical schools? How prepared are they for the long-term test of controlling HIV?
The upside of all these challenges is the many opportunities they present for creating capacity, for providing resources, jobs, and solutions. HIV treatment is related to the challenge of development, of providing these resources in such a way that individuals, groups, institutions, governments and societies become self-sufficient. Here again, there is no simple blueprint. Instead, politics and economics are big factors that threaten to derail the best-laid plans of political and health leaders or communities.
The ability of affected communities to shape national treatment efforts is linked to their status in society. The effective treatment and control of AIDS also requires laws and policies that do not discriminate, but instead offer protection and support to vulnerable groups. The explosion of AIDS among women worldwide, for example, is directly linked to issues of gender, to the physical, social, economic and sexual vulnerability of women and girls in decision-making, to their decreased access to education, work and healthcare, to their exposure to domestic violence and rape. Getting drugs into bodies is a hard enough task, but getting a woman into a clinic may be equally difficult if her husband refuses to allow it, or will beat her or divorce her if she gets tested.
Today, many developing countries also have strict laws outlawing homosexuality, prostitution, and recreational drug use. The criminalization of such behaviors makes it harder to reach out to closeted gay men, sex workers, and drug addicts who need access to testing, support, treatment and care. Changes in law and policy are thus integral to supporting the goals of global AIDS treatment.
Immigrants are another vulnerable group. On a global level, there is an important question -- a contradiction -- that is being ignored by global leaders and activists alike. In pushing for treatment, we are asking millions of people to come forward for testing, to risk disclosure. Yet almost every nation has laws that track those with HIV, and that prevent their easy passage across borders. By advocating access to treatment, are we also asking people to risk the loss of their civil rights? Little of this discussion has made its way into media coverage, but I imagine it has taken place among individuals and groups contemplating treatment. Or has it? How much information do communities have about the implications of starting HIV treatment, beyond their immediate need to survive?
This book opens with the case of Brazil, widely considered the model for a global scaling up of treatment. I went there after visiting many other countries. I wanted to look at how far Brazil had come, and what the limits of its program might be now. How well does its model apply to the exploding epidemics in Lagos, Addis Ababa, Kiev, or the Henan province of China? Will it prove a global exception, or the rule for the developing world?
Looking beyond AIDS to the greater revolution in global health-care and policy, will the gains of the access movement extend to other arenas? Will medicine for life-threatening diseases be removed from the realm of commercial profits? Will the battle over AIDS drugs and patents lead to wider use of generics globally? Will the anti-globalization battle lead to a reconsideration of proposed international forums like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA), which stand to have a profound effect on our health in the future?
As I crossed the globe, all these questions and more informed my travels. Then and now, what seems most important is to ask a lot of questions, look hard at the numbers, read the plans, note what is and isn't getting included and why; to talk with people with HIV and their family members, with activists and doctors, researchers and policy makers, with health and trade officials, with drug manufacturers on both sides of the drug war -- all in an effort to gain insight into this unfolding epic challenge.
To order this book, please click here.


text:
We were proud to be a part of the first O'Reilly Ignite meetup in the UK, even more so as it was in our home town of Leeds. There were plenty of interesting and amusing presentations across a wide range of topics and we had a great night. We set up the FriiSpray equipment for [...]
Entries Tagged as 'igniteuk'
FriiSpray presents at O'Reilly UK Ignite North
January 23rd, 2009 · 1 Comment · selected events
Tags: friispray·ignite·igniteuk·ir tracking·leeds·obh·oreilly·presentation·selected events·wiimote


text:
Male Enhancing Pills Increase Size | Testosterone Booster for Men | Male Enhancement | Maca Root | Erection Pills Fast Acting Metabolism Booster by Oasis Herbals | Tongkat Ali, L-Arginine 60 Capsules
Get that boost you've been looking for with our unique potent Machismo formula! As men get older it's part of the aging process that performance, energy and endurance begin to diminish in certain areas of life, especially our love life. Instead of being discouraged why not get that little added "extra" that men sometimes need… Read More »


text:
They also brought along some iris bulbs for my sister Steph to plant in her yard; she and Clinton recently planted grass seed (well, probably a little more Clinton and a little less Steph), and are looking for other ways to add color to their yard since a tornado destroyed their previous house on the property (that was one year ago today- can you believe it?).
Since it was 60 degrees out and beautiful the day I was there and the ground wasn't frozen solid like it is here, I was a very happy lady indeed when Steph asked me to help plant the bulbs around her front yard. Flowers! Dirt! Things I haven't experienced in what feels like half my life! (Have I mentioned how long this winter has felt? I don't think it's ever going to end. EVER.)
As we began gathering everything we needed to take outside (bulbs, Vada, etc), I asked my sister a very natural question: "Do you have a trowel?"
"Do you have a shovel?"
"No... but I do have these two spoons!"
"I have these two kitchen spoons that I use for digging."
For 0.5 second I thought she was kidding. She wasn't.
I asked several questions like, "Are you serious?" and "Isn't this a farm?" and "Are you serious?"
She was serious. We headed outside armed with bulbs, a baby, and one spoon apiece.
After maybe a minute of digging and right about the time I got two inches down and hit clay, Clinton appeared, a nimbus of light surrounding him like a halo, and I heard the voice of God say, "STOP TRYING TO DIG IN THE DIRT WITH SPOONS, IDIOT CHILDREN."
Well, not really. But I did hear Clinton say, "You know, we have shovels and stuff in that barn right there." Which basically meant the same thing.
He came back with a shovel and a hoe, we forfeited our spoons, and the four of us planted the bulbs. Well, Vada supervised, but I'm sure we couldn't have done it without her.
|"Hello, my name is Stephanie. Watching two babies five days a week has caused me to lose my mind and do things like try to garden with spoons."


text:
Merry Christmas!
I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas with family and friends! We're looking forward to a fun day together here in our new home!
Today I have a Christmas card to show you for Heartfelt Creations using one of the card fronts in their Christmas Card Collection Designer Papers.
These card fronts make card making so easy! I didn't do any stamping or anything on this! I cut the card front from the designer paper, matted it with tan cardstock, wrapped it with some twine, and added it to a card base with pop dots. It doesn't get much easier than that!
To embellish my card, I added bows, a button with twine, and a tag also cut from the designer paper.
I'm submitting this to the following Challenge:
Word Art Wednesday Challenge #112 - Anything Goes
I pray you all have a wonderful and blessed Christmas!
Heartfelt Creations Products and Products Carried by HC:
HCDP1 236 - Christmas Card Paper Collection
Product ID: 452255 – Grand Calibur
Product ID: 368770 – Scor-Pal
Other Products Used:
Paper: Early Espress (SU), tan (Recollections)
Ink: Forest Moss Distress Ink (Ranger)
Accessories: Brown Sheer Organza with Satin Center, Moss Jute String (Really Reasonable Ribbon), twine (American Crafts), Bow-Easy, sponge, button
Instructions: Card measures 5 3/8" x 5 3/8" square with Early Espresso cardstock. Cut card front (shown) from designer paper, ink edges with Forest Moss, and mat with tan cardstock measuring 5 3/16" x 5 3/16". Wrap jute string around card front/mat three times as shown and secure in place. Add to card base with pop dots. Cut sentiment tag from designer paper and add as shown with pop dots. Add bows with ribbon, jute string, and button with twine bow.


text:
The May issue of Smart Computing has at least three articles that might be of interest to genealogists. I have mentioned this magazine several times in the past. Nobody knows more than me, how expensive they can be, and I subscribe to quite a number including a fair share of genealogy publications. I have always thought that if you want to read it, and don't want to subscribe, just check out your library.
This issue has "To Tweet Or Not to Tweet?" a three page article, "Gmail Goodies," and "Roll Your Own Blog with Tumblr."
You would think that with all the magazines I subscribe to, I would be smarter in the technology aspect of computers. I even had my first computer class at the Pentagon, no less, many years ago. So far back, that we had a tour of their computer center and the computers were five feet tall or higher! But, it was genealogy that interested me, and now the two have messed! Amazing how that turned out.


text:
Singapore is a party to the Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty, and as a result the state regularly reports to the United Nations CEDAW Committee. This happened most recently in July 2011. Various NGOs including AWARE also submitted shadow reports to the Committee. AWARE's report includes the following references to marital rape and No To Rape:
19.23 Singapore's Fourth Periodic Review to CEDAW 2008 highlights the amendment to the Penal Code that has criminalized forced sex on a spouse under certain circumstances, e.g. in cases where a Personal Protection Order (PPO) was issued against the offending spouse. While a step in the right direction, it is submitted that this does not go far enough. In fact, the CEDAW Committee's Concluding Comments voiced some concern for the recognition of marital rape as a crime in such 'narrowly defined circumstances'.
19.24 AWARE, in its previous shadow report discussed this discriminatory provision that denies all married women full recourse for the criminal offence of rape merely by virtue of the fact that her husband is the perpetrator. The amendment that came into force in February 2008 clearly does not go far enough as many women might not be aware or able to get PPOs, and therefore effectively these women will have no legal recourse. It is time that protection and recourse to rape be provided for all women irrespective of marital status.
19.25 In December 2009, a petition with 3,609 signatures was submitted to the Prime Minister's office by the 'No To Rape' online petition coordinator, a group of 'concerned Singaporeans who have come together for the single purpose of promoting change on this issue.'
The United Nations Committee has considered the submissions of the government and NGOs and issued a statement, which also includes remarks on marital rape:
The Committee expresses its concern at the persistence of violence against women in the State party, in particular, domestic and sexual violence, which remains, in many cases, under-reported. While welcoming the amendments to the Penal Code in 2008 on the criminalization of rape of a spouse, the Committee is concerned that it only applies when the perpetrator and the victims are living apart and are in process of termination of their marriage, and if the victim applied for a personal protection order.
The Committee urges the State party to:
(a) Review its Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code in order to specifically criminalize domestic violence and marital rape, and ensure that the definition of rape covers any non-consensual sexual act;
(b) Provide mandatory training for judges, prosecutors and the police on the strict application of legal provisions dealing with violence against women and train police officers on procedures to deal with women victims of violence;
(c) Encourage women to report incidents of domestic and sexual violence, by de- stigmatizing victims and raising awareness about the criminal nature of such acts;
(d) Provide adequate assistance and protection to women victims of violence, by strengthening the capacity of shelters and crisis centres, and enhancing cooperation with NGOs providing shelter and rehabilitation to victims; and
(e) Collect statistical data on domestic and sexual violence disaggregated by sex, age, nationality and relationship between the victim and perpetrator.
No To Rape welcomes AWARE's and the Committee's call to change the law so that all women enjoy protection from sexual violence regardless of their marital status or their relationship with the perpetrator.


text:
Connecting Boricuas Around the World – Conectando Boricuas Alrededor Del Mundo
You need to log in or create an account to post to this user's Wall.
Michelle Evans became a registered member 5 months, 2 weeks ago
This field can be seen by: Everyone Change
Register Now
We will never post to your social media profiles without your permission. | Nunca publicaremos en sus perfiles de redes sociales sin su permiso.
To finish activating your account, check your inbox for our Welcome message and confirm your email address.
Remember Me
Forgot password?
Sign In
Username or E-mail:
Enter the destination URL
Or link to existing content


text:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer safety advocates are questioning the Food and Drug Administration about incomplete and seemingly erroneous data used to support the safety of silicone breast implants in an agency review last year.
The FDA concluded last summer that silicone-gel implants are basically safe as long as women understand they come with complications. The agency reported that one in five women who get implants for breast enhancement will need to have them replaced within five years.
The National Research Center for Women and Families issued a letter asking why the FDA did not present information showing that women reported lower emotional, mental and physical well-being after implantation. Additionally, the group questions why figures submitted by implant manufacturers appear to show implant complications declining over time. Implants are known to fail over time.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


text:
Julianne Hough is returning to "Dancing with the Stars," Access Hollywood has learned.
The ballroom babe-turned-country cutie will return to the ABC reality competition for Season 11, a source close to the show told Access Hollywood.
The blonde dancer has been absent from the show for two seasons, having left the show to launch her country music career and start acting.
During her time on the show, she won two mirrorball trophies – one during Season 4 with Olympian Apolo Anton Ohno and the following season with Indy 500 champ Helio Castroneves.
She last danced on the show during Season 8 with then-boyfriend, country music singer Chuck Wicks. The two split up not long after they were voted off the show.
Julianne's return to "Dancing," which is expected this Fall, will kick off a busy season for the star. She is expected to launch her second album toward the end of the year. Additionally, her first major movie, "Burlesque," starring Christina Aguilera and Oscar winner Cher, is coming out in November.
Related Content from AccessHollywood.com:
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Keepin' It Real With TV's Hottest Reality Stars!
VIEW THE PHOTOS: 'Dancing' Beauty & Country Cutie Julianne Hough
PLAY IT NOW: 2010 Academy Of Country Music Awards: Julianne Hough - Working With Cher Was 'Cool'
PLAY IT NOW: Julianne Hough On Returning To 'Dancing:' 'I'm Sure I'll Be Back' (October 27, 2009)
MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Julianne Hough - Dancing With the Stars - Reality TV - TV - Access Hollywood


text:
Your choice of Musicalitee Design applied To A Premium Quality Ladies Long Sleeve Blouse with a great choice of Options Including FREE Personalisation. A wonderful music gift for yourself or that special musician in your life.
Classic cut ladies' shirt design with a single button collar, rounded 2 button adjustable cuffs, V-shaped pocket over left chest & rounded hem. Comes with spare buttons. made from Easy Care 100% 125g/m² Cotton Poplin.
To ensure we can offer a wide range of colours & sizes we utilise a few of the worlds leading brands that offer durability, comfort and wash performance.
|For Help & Guidance Please Give Us A Call On: +44 (0)116 2870780
or E Mail:
- Be the first to review this product
Write your review
Write Your Own Review
UK Shipping: Is by Royal Mail Recorded or Special Delivery & needs to be signed for. We aim to ship within 2 to 3 days, however custom design items may take longer & we will advise accordingly.
Please note that some products will not fit through a normal letterbox. We suggest either using a place of work etc. and you can tell us this alternative address in Checkout.
Or tell us in the message box found in each listing of an alternative place to leave your parcel - maybe with a neighbour, in your porch etc.
Accurate Costs Can Be Seen In Your Shopping Basket
European & Worldwide Shipping: Is by DHL or Royal Mail International Tracked & Signed. We aim to ship within 2 to 3 days.Custom design items may take longer & we will advise accordingly. Please allow between 5 & 20 days for delivery dependent on your location. The Cost Is Calculated In The Shopping Basket.
We make every effort to ensure our products are dispatched in perfect condition. But occasionally things can go wrong and we will replace or refund your purchase if we have made an error or it is faulty.
Here are a few tips to help avoid the hassle & disappointment of having to return your purchase:
1) If at all possible try and check that the size is correct. If you have access to the recipients similar type of garment simply lay the garment on a table and measure armpit to armpit and check that against our size charts.
2) If the recipient is not in your household, try and get a family member or friend to discover the correct size.
3) Check that you have selected the correct instrument. It is easy to get confused - for example we offer 4 types of saxophone - again if possible try and confirm what the recipient actually does play.
4) Check that any names / words to personalise a product are spelt correctly.
You are fully covered by UK / EU Distance Selling Regulations but please remember that refunds for personalised products may be at our discretion.
For Help & Guidance Please Give Us A Call On: +44 (0)116 2870780
or E Mail:


text:
Relax during your next trip to San Jose Silicon Valley and avoid the hassle of dealing with expensive cab rides and stuffy buses. Instead, book your Europcar car rentals in San Jose Silicon Valley today, right here on Expedia.com and experience the comfort and convenience of traveling with your own set of rental wheels. This way, you can explore all the major sites and attractions of San Jose Silicon Valley at your leisure instead of trying to navigate public transportation routes.
Europcar Rental San Jose Silicon Valley Deals
Find Cheap Europcar Rental Deals in San Jose Silicon Valley
At Expedia, we are proud to work with Europcar due to their history of superior customer service as well their large fleet of premier vehicles. Start browsing through the great selection of rental cars by entering your search preferences into our online booking wizard and sorting through everything from spacious SUVs to compact luxury cars. Meaning, whether you need an economy car for a quick business trip or a roomy vehicle to fit the entire family on a long road trip, we've got you covered. And, what's more, we always offer Europcar San Jose Silicon Valley cars at the lowest possible prices. Backed by our Best Price Guarantee, our prices on Europcar rentals in San Jose Silicon Valley can't be beat. Get started and peruse our myriad of cheap deals and discounts on rental cars for your time in San Jose Silicon Valley today.
Car Pickup Locations from Europcar in San Jose Silicon Valley
- Next
- Page 1 of 1
- Showing Results 1-1 of 1
Europcar: 2300 Airport Boulevard, Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CA 95110, USA
Location: In Airport
Pickup Method: Shuttle to Pickup
- Next
- Page 1 of 1
- Showing Results 1-1 of 1


text:
Towel review
Quality is good. Could be a little bigger
Loaded Lifting
All order are shipped with Australia Post via Shippit, tracking can be found at https://www.shippit.com/
As Loaded Lifting is primarily an online distributor we do not currently offer local pickup.
Once you have placed an order you will receive a confirmation email with your order details. Once your order is dispatched you will receive an email with shipping and tracking details. We aim to get your order to you as promptly as possible. If there is an issue with your order we will contact you immediately to make any necessarily arrangements prior to dispatch.
We offer FREE returns for change of size. Please provide your order number when requesting a return.
Simply head to 'returns' to begin the first step.
If you needed further assistance please contact email@example.com and one of our friendly customer service staff will assist you.
Quality is good. Could be a little bigger
Better quality that I thought it would be. Looks great feels nice as it wipes the sweat from my bald head