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Early next year Samsung will be selling an 11+" 'retina' type display tablet, and that will begin the end of apple's dominance. http://m.computerworld.com/s/article/9230159/Samsung_details_next_gen_Exynos_processor_for_smartphones_and_tablets?mm_ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fnews%2Fi%2Fsection%3Fgl%3Dus%26pz%3D1%26cf%3Dall%26topic%3Dtc http://www.tehrantimes.com/science/100502-samsung-is-moments-away-from-a-true-ipad-alternative

Now that you mention it...

Iran asks Interpol to prosecute two U.S. officials

I'd look on Interpol's website to see if it issued Red Notices for Iran on the two US officials mentioned in the article, but apparently it's slashdotted, heh.

So cool. Seems like a really solid technical accomplishment. Assuming that it's true. Now, what would I need to do to get me a drone...

The cyber warfare unit managed to take over controls of the drone and bring it down, a military official said, according to the TV.
http://tehrantimes.com/component/content/article/93221

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=232874

KIPTUSURI, Kenya (The New York Times) — For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market.

Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid.

Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.

That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches.

“My main motivation was the phone, but this has changed so many other things,” Ms. Ruto said on a recent evening as she relaxed on a bench in the mud-walled shack she shares with her husband and six children.

As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role.

Since Ms. Ruto hooked up the system, her teenagers’ grades have improved because they have light for studying. The toddlers no longer risk burns from the smoky kerosene lamp. And each month, she saves $15 in kerosene and battery costs — and the $20 she used to spend on travel.

In fact, neighbors now pay her 20 cents to charge their phones, although that business may soon evaporate: 63 families in Kiptusuri have recently installed their own solar power systems.

“You leapfrog over the need for fixed lines,” said Adam Kendall, head of the sub-Saharan Africa power practice for McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm. “Renewable energy becomes more and more important in less and less developed markets.”

The United Nations estimates that 1.5 billion people across the globe still live without electricity, including 85 percent of Kenyans, and that three billion still cook and heat with primitive fuels like wood or charcoal.

There is no reliable data on the spread of off-grid renewable energy on a small scale, in part because the projects are often installed by individuals or tiny nongovernmental organizations.

But Dana Younger, senior renewable energy adviser at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private lending arm, said there was no question that the trend was accelerating. “It’s a phenomenon that’s sweeping the world; a huge number of these systems are being installed,” Mr. Younger said.

With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford, he noted. “You’re seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts,” Mr. Younger said.

In Africa, nascent markets for the systems have sprung up in Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana as well as in Kenya, said Francis Hillman, an energy entrepreneur who recently shifted his Eritrea-based business, Phaesun Asmara, from large solar projects financed by nongovernmental organizations to a greater emphasis on tiny rooftop systems.

Just in time for the 2013 solar storms... http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=221828

folks:

there was never a fabled era where news media was unbiased or high quality. look up the term "yellow journalism" from a century ago. the spanish american war was started with the "bombing" of the uss maine in havana that was just as much bullshit as iraq's supposed nuclear program. the newspaper "reporting" from a century ago makes fox faux news blatant warmongering agenda look like amateur hour

additionally, there never will be such a thing as unbiased news media. ever. here. in russia. in china. in europe. never, anwyhere

all news media has a bias. GET USED TO IT. accept it, and shut up with the bogus complaints

to criticize news media from a judgment of its bias or not simply means you yourself are hopelessly naive and ignorant about the reality of what news media is or ever could be. furthermore, it presupposes a frightening concept: that, in some magical realm, news media actually somehow could be completely unbiased... which means everyone would trust it implicitly. obviously, complete trust in your news media is far more frightening a concept than the fact news media has some bias

so the solution? get your news FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. read nytimes, bbc, npr, msnbc, cnn, hell even fox news, china daily, and the tehran times:

http://www.tehrantimes.com/

its all propaganda, its all biased, every news source you could ever possibly find. the only error you could ever make is trusting one and only one source of news: then you have failed

in this way, you will train yourself to have a good bullshit meter, and you learn to trust nothing. THAT's the only valid and intellectually coherent approach you could ever possibly have to news media, in this lifetime or any other

so please, shut the fuck up with complaints about quality and bias: such a basis for complaints only reveal your own inadequate grasp of the topic: what news media is, and how it should fit into your life

"If Theocracies are so bad, why aren't you worried about Tibet?"

tibet as sovereign entity doesn't exist, and its theocratic structure has been outlawed by the chinese. but were tibet an independent theocracy with nukes, i would be equally worried about it as i am about iran. conversely, if iran were still a theocracy, but didn't have nukes, i wouldn't be nearly as worried about iran as i am

"Seriously, bigotry is the problem, not Theocracy"

this is like saying cancer is a problem, not heart attacks. they are both fatal problems

"While I think that there are better methods of administration, the types of democracy that we have in most western countries are not participatory nor representative... it is effectively a mediaocracy."

this is called self-disenfranchisement. your belief merely supports your own lack of accountability, and has no value when applied to the society you live in (assuming you live in a western country). you are projecting self-referential psychology like a teenager onto those aroud you. no, those around you are perfectly capable of believing and seeing the realit yof their vote mattering, and their opinion tyo be independent. this may not be true of you, but it is true of plenty in your society. i just voted for barack obama 3 months ago. where is my lack of participation or representation?

and what the heck is a "mediaocracy"? ultimate power rests in an editorial news room? a meaningless buzzword

in the west, i can choose to consume any media i like. this includes al jazeera or iran's mouthpiece, if i choose to. now, if i lived in iran, meanwhile, and i clicked on those links, and they pointed to the bbc or the new york times, i would be blocked, and perhaps even reported for unislamic activities, for not sticking with the governing parties official media. is that the "mediaocracy" you are talking about?

"Knowledge and culture sharing are a better solution that trying to stop nukes"

yes, and world war ii would have never happened if hitler and tojo were given hugs and kisses. pffft. man i need some of what you are smoking

"The whole clash of cultures idea is also patently absurd"

in some subsaharan cultures, they perform clitorectomies on female children. do you have a problem with that? congratulations, you are engaging in a clash of cultures

"it's clash of money and oil interests in the upper echelons of both so-called empires at the expense of their own peoples that is the real problem."

how did you get to work or school today? did you ride a car or bus? do you have a job or do you pay for school? in either case, you have money and oil interests. but you have this absurd idea that only the "upper echelons" are the ones gobbling up money and oil just because its cool in a hollywood bad guy sort of way. or, perhaps, governments are concerned with access to resources and the flow of capital, for the rightful reason of the well-being of their citizens. could that be it? nah...

"I, for one extend my hand of congratulations to the Iranian people and look very suspiciously at those who would tell them what to do/think/go to war over."

i agree with you 100%. i am glad you are finally ready to stand with me and condemn the ayatollahs and their constant war propagandizing of the iranian people

"Ditto applies to the American administration (and anyone else who is spineless enough not to sign the nuclear disarmament treaty),"

absolutely, we need to engage in nuclear disarmament. how does belief in that allow for iran getting nukes? iran should get nukes because the usa has them? ok, you can believe that if you want

but now you are expressing belief in nuclear proliferation. make up your mind, but you can't believe in nuclear disarmament and iran getting nukes at the same time. either you insist iran not get nukes and the usa get rid of them, or that the usa keep its nukes and iran get them too. but saying the usa

"They(the Americans) removed Saddam Hussein for acts of abuse, but who will remove Bush and Rumsfeld for inciting these acts?"

If people want to go to a radioactive disaster, maybe they should pick a more current one and have a look at what depleted uranium weapons are doing to the locals. Levels of background radiation are 300 times what they were before the 'shock and awe' terrorist campaign.

I go to a number of sites for "news" news; I find that the "same" news is very different coming from different countries:
BBC News, which everyone's familiar with;
CNN, the epitome of US government-sanctioned news;
The Economist, of course;
The Times of London,
Japan Today,
Pravda,
The Beijing Review,
Le Monde, and
The Tehran Times

...and a couple of sites for tech and science news:
EurekAlert, a great site for science and medicine press releases,
the former, but still running, Hacker News Network,
BottomQuark,
the phenomenal journal Nature,
Science magazine,
and, of course, The Source.

Some good comics, most of which you will all know, but which I love; here are a couple you might not know:
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, a comic that actually features a female sysadmin/techgoddess, and
Bateman Political cartoons, a fun political comic updated regularly.

And, of course, take a look at my sig... Click every day.

Yes, all independent news sources should be cherished, but I would also encourage people to use this thing called the 'internet' in order to check out news from other countries, The BBC, or CBC news sites are very good, but try something like the tehran times for example. By reading all news sources, comparing and contrasting to each other, you can start to pick out the truth of the situation, and get a well rounded view. And it will at least raise some eyebrows if you start to notice a certain lack/onesided bias of information reaching you through your local media

I was born and raised in Canada, and now I'm currently living in New Zealand. I grew up watching american news side by side to CBC, and now I can compare CNN and BBC side by side here in NZ. It has become very obvious to me just how very biased and sensationalistic american media is. It's just awful, very US centric. All american media is so busy blasting outwards, hardly anything penetrates from the outside. You have to actively seek it out . I'm not saying other countries are always better BBC and CBC are pretty good examples of media, but I'm sure they show some bias. I just think the last media you should trust is your own, no matter where you are.

Tehran Times article on the attack itself.

"From a sociological point of view, terrorism is a multifarious form of social anomaly with numerous psycho-socioeconomic causes.

Considering the intricate nature of this menace, it would be naive to imagine that terrorism can be rooted out with a war, even of a cold nature as pr[e]scribed by Rumsfeld."

• Times of India
• South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
• Tehran Times opinion piece on the whole shebang Ha'aretz Daily (Isreal)
• Khaleej Times (Dubai, UAE)

  More to come..