Wednesday, May 4, 2005

The Turbolinux operating system, a variety of GNU/Linux free/open source software, has been chosen as the in-house server software for the front-end banking operations of China’s largest bank, replacing SCO Unix. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) announced the migration on Thursday, April 28.

The announcement is significant in terms of the sheer size of the bank. “This is the biggest Linux implementation in China,” said General Manager Claude Zhou of Turbolinux China. The ICBC serves more than 108 million customers and manages their combined assets of US$640 billion (5.3 trillion renminbi). Its 390,000 employees are scattered across 20,000 branch offices throughout China. The planned deployment will be undertaken in steps and is estimated to take three years.

Zhou described the reasons for the planned migration as the stability and security of Linux. Nielse Jiang, an analyst at IDC, also attributed the switch to insufficient support by the SCO Group. “In China, SCO Unix offers very weak support for customers; they have so few employees,” Jiang said.

ICBC selected Turbolinux over its various competitors, including Microsoft Corporation, in part because of its need to maintain its custom-written Unix-based software. The increasing scalability and stability of Linux also were factors in the decision.

Turbolinux has been China’s number one source of Linux for the past 4 years. In 2004, Turbolinux held 62.0% of the Chinese server market, and also had 24.9% desktop market share, a much larger portion of desktop share than GNU/Linux holds in the United States.

Turbolinux is an Asian-Pacific distribution of Linux with its corporate headquarters located in Tokyo, Japan, and offices in China and the United States. Turbolinux claims that its “Turbolinux 7 Server was the first-ever to conform to Internationalization standards to help simplify development of applications that require multiple language support — a critical requirement for software distributed globally,” and supports the use of its software in the Japanese and Chinese languages.

Turbolinux was also used as the operating system of choice for China’s recent supercomputer, the Dawning 4000A. With its unveiling on November 15, 2004, China became the third country, after the U.S. and Japan, to surpass the 10 teraflops level of performance in a single machine. The computer, located in Shanghai Supercomputing Center, contains 2,560 64-bit Opteron processors from AMD, each running at 2.2 GHz, and at its introduction was the 10th fastest computer in the world.

Turbolinux is being spread throughout China, both throughout government and the business sector, in key areas such as transportation and telecommunications. In December 2004, ZTE Corporation, the largest telecommunications manufacturer in China, partnered with Hewlett-Packard and Turbolinux to bring the benefits of GNU/Linux software to that industry.

The other three largest banks in China have either already announced plans for major migrations to GNU/Linux servers running various distributions, or are expected to do so later this year.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

A man shot and killed a Broward County Sheriff’s Office police dog in Miami Beach after a two-county chase in Florida early Thursday morning.

The shooter, Delvin Lewis, 27, was firing shots at his girlfriend during a domestic dispute in Oakland Park. When police arrived, the suspect got into his car and fled, engaging roughly 20 cruisers in a 30-mile chase which ended near Mount Sinai Medical Center’s emergency room in Miami Beach. An exchange of gunfire followed in which Lewis reportedly killed the dog. ER doctors tried to save the animal but it was too late.

The shooter was also struck and has been taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital where he remains with no life threatening injuries.

According to a Mount Sinai spokeswoman hospital facilities are now accessible after the authorities locked down the area for three hours following the shooting.

Lewis has been arrested 26 times by Florida authorities including one in July 2003 in which he injured a police dog striking him repeatedly on the head with a cellphone.The suspect has been charged with aggravated assault with a motor vehicle on a law enforcement officer, aggravated fleeing and eluding, resisting an officer with violence and principal in the death of a police dog.

Hitting a police dog is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in jail, while killing a police officer is a capital offense which can lead to the death penalty.

Miami-Dade Police Department is handling the investigation which involves Broward Sheriff Office and Miami Beach police.

Lewis has been in and out of jail since 2000 and had been arrested for domestic battery in 2000 and 2004, when he beat a pregnant woman.

The dog, whose name was Oozi, was a 7-1/2 years old Belgian Malinois assigned to BSO’s Cooper City district. He was trained in narcotics and helped in hundreds of arrests in his career, including 35 this year.

Oozi and his partner, Deputy Gerald Wengert, were named BSO’s Employees of the month in May for their role in the apprehension of three burglary suspects.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Representatives from the British insurance industry have said that the cost of the earthquake which hit Britain early yesterday could be over 10 million GBP. The Association of British Insurers has said in a statement that the cost for the earthquake is “likely to run into the low tens of millions of pounds.”

The Senior claims manager at the UK bank Norwich Union has described the damage by saying that at the moment most insurance claims regarding the earthquake describe “minor damage such as tiles off roofs, breakages inside the homes and brick walls collapsing.” It has also been reported that approximately 1,200 insurance claims were made in the first twelve hours after the earthquake hit Britain.

These reports come one day after the United Kingdom was hit by a 5.2 earthquake. Tremors were reported as widespread as Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield, Middlesbrough, Cambridge, London, Birmingham and Southampton .

Thursday, April 30, 2015

On Friday, Eva Mozes Kor, a 81-year-old Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, publicly forgave and embraced 93-year-old former SS guard Oskar Gröning, who is currently on trial in Germany as an accessory to 300,000 murders of Jews at Auschwitz.

Kor, who was among many Jews medically experimented on at Auschwitz, has thanked Mr Gröning for answering to the crimes he aided during his time as an Auschwitz guard.

Kor is amongst a number of Auschwitz survivors attending the trial who have joined the prosecutors as co-plaintiffs in the case against Mr Gröning. While Kor has forgiven Mr Gröning, she still holds him liable for his involvement during the Holocaust, as she did last week when she testified against him. Other survivors have recently spoken out about the trial; survivor Eva Pusztai-Fahidi said on Tuesday the trial itself against a former SS guard matters more than the end punishment.

During the first day of Mr Gröning’s trial, he denied any direct role in the killings, though he did admit to having witnessed them. Mr Gröning said he shared “moral guilt” for the crimes, regardless of whether his actions make him criminally guilty.

The prosecutors have argued that serving as a concentration camp guard is legally accessory to the act of murder. Mr Gröning is reportedly one of three remaining former SS guards that have been identified for trial. If found guilty, the former SS Guard could reportedly face up to fifteen years in prison.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Brampton, ON — On Wednesday, May 31 at 6:30 p.m., sculptor Alvaro Cervantes will host a meet and greet at the Visual Arts Brampton Creative Studio. Cervantes will be showing his precise sculptures to guests, and promoting his upcoming multi-week workshop at the studio. The course is open to students who love cartoon, no matter their skill levels or experience sculpting.

“We’re extremely pleased to present such a unique course at VAB,” group president Keith Moreau commented. “Alvaro is a master of his craft, and students are sure to benefit immensely from the experience.”

Alvaro has specialized in maquettes for 16 years, creating sculptures used by companies including Disney, Pixar, and Marvel Comics. His works have served as reference for animators, and as prototypes for toys. Some of his most recent work is for the Disney-Pixar film Cars, which will was released today in theatres. Cervantes has taught the workshop at Oakville’s Sheridan College, home of a respected Animation BA program.

The meet-and-greet is free for everyone. The timing and price of the course will be established by Wednesday.

The Visual Arts Brampton Creative Studio is located in the Bartley’s Square Mall, at the corner of Hurontario and Steeles Avenue. The studio is the only suite in the lower level, and is accessible through a glassed in lobby.

For more information on the meet-and-greet or the course, contact visualartsbrampton@gmail.com, or phone 905-453-9142.

Wednesday, March 9, 2005File:Plastic bag stock sized.jpg

They are cheap, useful, and very plentiful, and that is exactly the problem, according to researchers. A report issued on Feb. 23 by a cadre of environment and economics researchers suggested that Kenya should ban the common plastic bag that one gets at the checkout counter of grocery stores, and place a levy on other plastic bags, all to combat the country’s environmental problems stemming from the bags’ popularity.