[Quote:]

While Somalia recently has been in the news for its notorious pirates, back on-shore the country continues to struggle through a years-long war that has intensified lately, and to seek some sort of functional unifying government. Back in January, the Transitional Federal Parliament of Somalia elected moderate Islamist Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as President. Ahmed has gained international backing in his efforts to bring an end to 18 years of civil conflict. However, hard-line Islamist groups such as al Shabaab, Hezb al-Islamiya and others continue to reject the government and have been attacking its forces and civilians for years now, most of the fighting taking place in the capital city of Mogadishu. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) provides over 3,000 troops to maintain security where it can. Since the start of this insurgency in December 2006, nearly 17,000 civilians have lost their lives. (32 photos total)

11
Teenage hard-line Islamist fighters man a checkpoint at a road near the presidential palace in Mogadishu, on May 14, 2009. Insurgents have been redeploying many forces from across the country to launch an unprecedented offensive, while Ugandan and Burundian African Union peacekeepers held the fort for Sharif’s beleaguered administration. Government forces-backed AU peacekeepers controlled only the presidential compound, a handful of other government institutions in adjacent buildings, the airport and the seaport, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said. (MUSTAFA ABDI/AFP/Getty Images) #

Apple accepted another 5 of my citymaps for the iPhone…

München
New York
Turin
Stockholm
Venice

[Quote:]

Right now, in Geneva, at the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world’s copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners.

At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages). This should be a slam dunk: who wouldn’t want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it’s possible for disabled people to get access to the written word?

The USA, that’s who. The Obama administration’s negotiators have joined with a rogue’s gallery of rich country trade representatives to oppose protection for blind people. Other nations and regions opposing the rights of blind people include Canada and the EU.

Also opposing rights for disabled people: Australia, New Zealand, the Vatican and Norway.

[Quote:]

To say that Rush Limbaugh has been among the most prolific critics of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor would be something of an understatement.  

In the last few days, he has blasted her as “an angry woman” and a “bigot”, an “anti-constitutionalist,” the “greatest living example of a reverse racist,” while urging Republicans to “go to the mat” to oppose her and prevent her from getting confirmed.

All of which is pretty standard stuff from Limbaugh.  But, just for old time’s sake, I thought I’d highlight this quote from him back in 2005 in which he literally screamed at Democrats to “shut up” about Bush’s Supreme Court nominees because, until they could start winning elections, their views didn’t matter:

I’m tired of these Democrats acting like they won the election. Somebody needs to stand up and say, “When you win the election, you pick the nominees. Until then, shut up! Just shut up! Just go away! Bury yourselves in your rat holes and don’t come out until you win an election. When you win an election, you can put all these socialist wackos, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, all over the court, but until then, SHUT UP! You are really irritating me.”

[Quote:]

In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.

Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately.

[Quote:]

A fraudster has been sentenced to eight and a half years in prison after copping to a series of phishing scams that affected 7,000 victims and netted an estimated $700,000 in illicit income.

Sergiu Daniel Popa, 23, started his fraudulent activities almost seven years ago back in June 2000 when he was only 14 years-old, the Minneapolis Star Ledger reports.

Popa, who was originally from Romania, crafted scam emails that posed as messages from institutions such as SunTrust, Citibank and PayPal, in a bid to trick recipients into handing over login details to the bogus websites he created. The miscreant harvested names and addresses, bank account numbers, credit card and social security information as well as PIN codes from credulous marks.

[Quote:]

Anti-Aliasing is a very well known technique used to improve the visual quality of images when displaying them on low resolution devices. It’s based on the properties of the human vision. Look at the following picture and try to guess what it means.

Well, it’s a word drawn with Anti-Aliasing. In terms of Kotelnikov-Shannon’s theorem, the maximal frequency of the image is far above of the Shannon limit.

Now look at the same picture that has normal size and within the context.

You easily recognize word “stereo”. However, the pictrures are exactly the same. The first one is just an enlarged version of the last one. This very property allows us to reconstruct missing information on the basis of accumulated experience. Anti-Aliasing doesn’t make you see better, it basically makes you brain work better and reconstruct missing details. The result is great. It allows us to draw much more detailed maps for example.

via

Apple accepted another 16 of my citymaps for the iPhone…

Kopenhagen
Edingburg
Denver
Helsinki
Dubai
Cairo
Havana
Nassau
Oslo
Milan
Marseille
Lissabon
Miami
Dublin
Naples (Italy)
Moncao, Cannes, Nice