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Amadeus to provide travel booking data to the United Nations	28 November 2007
Statistics will be used to monitor and predict global trends
TURKEY TO TREAT 200 AFGHAN PATIENTS EVERY YEAR	01 January 0001
ANKARA (A.A) - Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag said Wednesday Turkey will treat 200 Afghan patients free of charge every year.
It was right to extradite NatWest Three	28 November 2007
ANDREW FASTOW’S allegation that the NatWest Three were involved in the financial deceits which brought down Enron does not mean the men are guilty. But it does mean that they have a case to answer — a case which is rightly being tried in the US. <br/> <br/> The US has had no particular beef with British businessmen. It seeks out suspects of white-collar crime whoever they are, wherever they are. Kobi Alexander, the chief executive of Comverse Technology, was apprehended this week in Namibia, ending his two-month flight from American law enforcers seeking to prosecute him for the back-dating of stock options. The “perp walk” — the US practice of hand-cuffing and frog-marching a multi-millionaire American executive out of his office and into a waiting police car in full view of the waiting, tipped-off camera crews — has become a regular feature of the nightly news in the US. Foreigners who do business in America know full well that the Land of the Free is not nice to criminals, nor even criminal suspects. <br/> <br/> The public outcry over the extradition of the NatWest Three — Gary Mulgrew, David Bermingham and Giles Darby — has from the outset felt like a misplaced, sometimes mendacious venting of national frustration at Washington. <br/> <br/> The fact is that this case has nothing to do with the war in Iraq, with the presidency of George W. Bush, with Tony Blair’s Atlanticist inclinations. Even the esteemed British chief executives and chairmen who signed up to the letter calling for fair trials abroad looked like suckers: their campaign seemed to put patriotism, even a huffy anti-Americanism, before the due process of law. <br/> <br/> Certainly, they had a just complaint: the British Government agreed an extradition treaty without securing reciprocity from the US. But, for that, more fool the British Government. It knows a pledge from the Administration will not necessarily be honoured by Congress, particularly involving the issue of extradition. <br/> <br/> Fastow’s claims against the three British men may be suspect. The quiet chief financial officer of Enron has made a second career for himself shopping his old acquaintances. In 2002, he was indicted on 78 counts of fraud, money-laundering and conspiracy. Thanks to his “co-operation with the authorities”, he has been sentenced to six years in prison. <br/> <br/> Nonetheless, Fastow’s legal deposition describes a “close, personal relationship” with Mulgrew. Enron collapsed in 2001, undone by an intricate, ingenious web of financial fraud. Fastow claims that, in his financial dealings with the men as late as 2000, they “knew what I expected”. The deposition seems to skewer the argument that the men should be tried in Britain. They may have to face allegations of defrauding their former British employers too, but if they played a part in Enron’s downfall, then they have a case to answer in America as well. There is a principle at stake, one which underpins global capitalism and one which is as dear to every Briton as it is to every American: respect for the due process of law.
Weak orders hit US firms	28 November 2007
US factory orders fell for the third month in a row, a further sign of the slowing economy, government data shows. a survey shows.
Discs 'worth £1.5bn' to criminals	28 November 2007
Two missing discs containing personal data of 25 million people could be worth £1.5bn to criminals, say the Lib Dems.
Programming less	28 November 2007
A programming lesson I keep relearning. The design of the central data structure of an app determines the quality of the app, in every way. Any extra thought that goes into this, will pay off in: 1. Maintainability of the code. 2. Size of the code (you'll write less code with a well thought-out central data structure). 3. Simplicity of the user interface (the structure inevitably shows through in the UI). 4. Ability to respond to feature requests. 5. Adapt to new hardware, OS changes, other apps. 6. More "it just works" experiences. This is why it's sometimes the right thing to start over from scratch. Programmers often want to start over because they look at the code and it looks complicated, and they think they can make it simpler if they start over. They're right, of course, it will be simpler when they start over, because it won't do nearly as much as the mature product does. Once they finish building out the feature set, it may well be just as complicated. It's a judgement call. I remember looking at the source of Unix kernel for the first time as a grad student in Wisconsin, and being amazed at the simplicity and obviousness of the code. I couldn't believe something so simple actually worked. Your code at its kernel level must have this simplicity. But at the edges, where you're accomdating the minds of users, inevitably it gets a little messy. The key thing to look for is how hard is it to add a completely new feature. It should be easy to do that. If it's not, it's likely because of a poorly organized (and therefore not well-understood) central data structure. I've rewritten apps many times, over many years, because when I wrote the first or second versions, I didn't understand the problem well enough, and the code had turned into a morass of patches and workarounds. Right now I'm recoding the internals of a special-purpose aggregator. I've written many of these, over the years, always quickly, trying to get something running fast, and then lived with data structures that resulted. This time I'm going slowly and carefully, with an installed base of one (me) and ripping up the pavement whenever I find even a slightly better way of doing something. I have other users who are waiting, but that's life. 5/7/97: "When a programmer catches fire it's because he or she groks the system, its underlying truth has been revealed."
MIT OpenCourseWare expands for high school students	28 November 2007
Social-learning network with free access to MIT course content to add portal for high school students and teachers.
Google service uses cell towers to locate users	28 November 2007
Google launched a location service for mobile users on Wednesday that doesn't rely on GPS.Google Maps with My Location, currently in beta, locates users who don't have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn't as accurate as GPS but works for people who lack the positioning technology in their phones."It helps users speed up search by showing the general neighborhood they're in," said Steve Lee, product manager at Google for the service. Without the location service, users must type in their address or neighborhood in order to find nearby businesses using Google Maps.Google Maps with My Location will use GPS data to locate the user if the phone has the capability. But even for users of GPS-enabled phones, the cell location service might be useful, Lee said. That's because the cell tower feature works better indoors than GPS, it doesn't drain the phone battery as quickly and can bring up a result quicker, he said.The service could be useful to a person who might be traveling in an unfamiliar city and looking for restaurants or other businesses. A user pulls up Google Maps and hits the zero key on the phone. A blue dot will appear on the map in the user's location. If the service used GPS in the phone, the blue dot will be solid. If the service used cell towers to determine the location, the blue dot will have a halo around it, indicating that the location isn't precise. The user can then search for nearby businesses.Google says the cell tower technique will locate the user within about 1000 meters. It doesn't use triangulation, which calculates a user location based on the user's distance to three nearby towers. Instead, it essentially shows the range of the tower that the user's phone is connecting to.But the accuracy should improve as more people use the service, Lee said. That's because Google is keeping a database of location queries, minus any personal information like individual phone numbers or names. That will allow Google to learn more precise information about the range of each tower so that it can deliver a more accurate location area to users. The coverage area of cell towers can vary from about a quarter of a mile to several miles based on whether the tower is in an urban or rural area.For now, Google Maps with My Location doesn't feature any advertising, but it could in the future. "This product makes a lot of sense for advertising," Lee said.In order to use the service, phone owners must download a free application from Google. The application will work on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones as well as many phones that support Java. A few notable exceptions include the Samsung Blackjack, Moto Q, and Palm Treo 700W, which don't support the APIs Google requires to find cell towers, Lee said.
Micron exec: SSDs to reach portable devices in 2008	28 November 2007
Memory maker Micron Technology on Wednesday introduced a line of solid-state drives (SSDs) and said it would plug the technology into portable storage devices by mid- to end 2008.Micron's new RealSSD hard drive, announced at an event in San Francisco, will come in sizes of 1.8 inches and 2.5 inches with storage capacities of 32GB and 64GB. Micron also announced embedded SSD modules for blade servers with storage capacities of 1GB to 8GB.Purported by many to be the future replacement of hard drives, the growth of SSDs has been stymied by high pricing, longevity, and storage issues. However, the power-efficient and ruggedness of SSDs may attract users, said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron.RealSSD is 50 percent lighter than standard hard drives, and at under 2 watts of power consumption, the drives will be ideal for laptops, Klein said. The drives also support the SATA II interface, a standard typically used to connect hard drives to computer systems.With no moving parts, RealSSD drives also have a rugged design and store data reliably. They handle vibrations and resist shock better than rotating media, Klein said.Despite multiple advantages, SSDs may not replace hard drives as storage devices in the near future, he said. SSD technology is under development, and some markets are sensitive to price-per-gigabyte of SSDs, Klein said.SSDs currently cost between $7 and $10 per gigabyte, making them much more expensive than hard drives, which cost $0.20 to $0.30 per gigabyte, according to data from research firm iSuppli.Initial consumers for RealSSD could be OEMs or enterprises, which look for reliability and high data throughput, and laptop consumers, which require portability and power efficiency, Klein said.RealSSD drives could reach consumers in the form of portable storage devices or ExpressCards by mid- to end 2008, depending on consumer demand, Mark Adams, Micron's vice president of digital media said in an interview. An ExpressCard fits in a laptop's PCMCIA slot.Sending SSDs to consumers immediately is questionable as the emerging technology hasn't proven itself yet, Adams said. There is a risk in being first-to-market if the product doesn't sell, which will build up unnecessary inventory of SSDs. Instead, Micron will try to get feedback from OEMs that include SSDs in their products and develop devices accordingly, Adams said.Micron sells portable consumer storage devices through Lexar Media, which it acquired last year.There are already a few vendors that include SSDs in their hardware. Aurora, a gaming systems manufacturer, includes them in its Area-51 ALX and Aurora ALX desktop PCs, and Toshiba includes SSDs in its laptops.
Verizon Wireless' open network earns praise	28 November 2007
Verizon Wireless' decision to open its network to outside mobile devices and applications has won praise from several groups, including past critics.Verizon Wireless officials announced Tuesday they would open up their network to any devices and software customers want to use by the second half of 2008. Any device that passes a minimal connectivity test will be allowed on the Verizon Wireless network, officials said.That announcement drew applause from a wide variety of groups. Public Knowledge, a consumer rights group that has pushed for open network regulations from the U.S. Congress or the Federal Communications Commission, said it was "cautiously optimistic" about Verizon's decision.Verizon's decision could lead to "a more open network in the wireless industry at large," said Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president. Wireless carriers have fought an FCC decision to require open access on a portion of spectrum in the 700MHz band to be auctioned starting in January, she noted."The Verizon announcement, however, is very limited," Sohn added. "If other carriers don't follow the same model, then consumers will still find their phones tied to a specific technology or wireless company. In order for an open network to become a reality, all carriers will have to participate."Verizon will still decide what phones can operate on its network, she said. Public Knowledge would prefer to have a third party decide what phones can operate on the Verizon network, she said.She also has continuing questions about prices. If Verizon continues to offer its preferred mobile phones at a discount, "then the adoption of the open model will be minimal, absent a rapid decline in cell phone prices," Sohn said. "We need to know whether the rates for Verizon service plans will vary for those with subsidized phones and for those customers with a phone bought elsewhere."Others were less guarded with their praise.Verizon's announcement, combined with the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, is a "significant" step toward the goal of more open wireless networks, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, said in a statement."As I noted when we adopted open network rules for our upcoming spectrum auction, wireless customers should be able to use the wireless device of their choice and download whatever software they want onto it," Martin added. "I continue to believe that more openness -- at the network, device, and application level -- helps foster innovation and enhances consumers' freedom and choice in purchasing wireless service. I am optimistic that Verizon Wireless's commitment along with the upcoming spectrum auction will ensure an exciting new era in wireless technology for the benefit of all consumers."Solveig Singleton, an adjunct senior fellow with Maryland think tank the Free State Foundation, said Verizon's voluntary decision makes more sense than open network regulations, such as net-neutrality rules pushed by Public Knowledge and other groups."Requiring openness or neutrality beyond the basics now supported by demand would needlessly make development far more costly and slow," she said. "A company that wants to invent a new type of phone with cutting-edge features already has a good bit to think about without having to worry about new phones and networks being simultaneously built by everyone else."Many proposed net-neutrality rules would require wireless and broadband providers to treat all network traffic equally, she said."Mandate 'open' and 'neutral' everywhere all the time for everything, and innovation will slow to a snail's pace and network traffic will jam," she added. "Competition between operators to offer innovative combinations of services at special prices would become almost impossible. In this fast-changing context, a regulatory command to treat all traffic all the same is just a bad idea."Also praising Verizon's decision were Funambol, a developer of open-source calendar and messaging tools for mobile phones, and the New America Foundation, a think tank that has pushed for open access rules on the 700MHz spectrumThe FCC and Google deserve credit for pushing the issue forward, said Michael Calabrese, director of New America's Wireless Future Program."This appears to be a move to head off market entry and new wireless competition from Google and other Internet companies that would result if the incumbent carriers were unwilling to meet minimal FCC consumer choice requirements," he said in an e-mail.