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Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

1 History of the WWW
2 Future of the WWW
3 Final question
4 External links

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Images of Pakistan International Airlines sacrificing a goat went viral on Monday as the beleaguered state-run airline resumed ATR flights. All ten ATRs in its fleet were grounded last week in the aftermath of a crash near Havelian earlier this month.

PIA ground staff ritually slaughtered the black goat beside an ATR-42, the same type of aircraft lost in the disaster. The move is thought to ward off bad luck in Pakistan. The ATR-42 was the company’s first ATR back in service following the crash. PIA said on December 15 they had chartered a Lockheed C-130 Hercules from the air force to resume cancelled services.

PIA Flight 661, an ATR-42 just under ten years old, crashed into mountainous terrain in the Abbottabad region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa two weeks ago. The crash killed all 47 on board and left burning wreckage strewn for several kilometres.

PIA still operate five ATR-42s and five ATR-72s. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced inspections on December 11. The airline expected disruption to flights to smaller airports. Flight 661 was heading to Islamabad, having taken off from Chitral on a domestic flight. The plane reported engine trouble and lost control before the crash.

PIA sacrificed the goat at Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto International Airport, ahead of a successful test flight to Multan. PIA stated ground staff acted on their own volition and were not influenced by managers.

Another PIA ATR experienced troubles ahead of takeoff on December 11 and aborted the flight. The airline denied local media claims an engine caught fire. Pakistani media has claimed Flight 661 was operating with some known technical faults. The Aviation Herald reports receiving information to the contrary, and the airline also denies this.

The CAA has left decisions on returning aircraft to service at the discretion of PIA and ATR. A CAA letter to PIA expressed concern over engine failures at the airline, and accused PIA of “shortcomings in maintenance [and] quality assurance.”

The latest crash is the tenth time a PIA aircraft has been written off since 2000. Only one other such accident was fatal, the loss of PIA Flight 688 in 2006. Flight 668, a Fokker F-27, crashed on takeoff. The disaster killed 45. That accident also involved an engine failure and a loss of control.

The ATR-42 can carry up to 48 passengers. It is a twin-engine turboprop capable of using unpaved runways. PIA said the C-130 would be used for flights to Gilgit. With one ATR-42 declared airworthy as of December 15 PIA also said flights to Chitral could be expected to resume soon. A flight on December 15 using the C-130 was postponed by one day.

	Please have me shifted to Islamabad where I can study and fulfil my parents’ dream

Chairman Azam Saigol quit on December 12 for what he said were personal reasons. He had been drafted in to replace Nasser Jaffer following controversy generated when crews staged strikes to protest planned privatisation. The airline loses around 12-to-15 billion rupees annually, with taxpayers making up the shortfall.

Saigol has been on PIA’s board since 2013. The company said it needed a chair since changing organisational structure under provisions in the Companies Ordinance of 1984. He became chairman in May and is a prominent industrialist nationally, heading up major organisations. Saigol had been working for free, PIA said on December 12 ahead of his resignation.

The government has offered his job to several candidates, all of whom have turned it down.

Another issue for the airline comes in the form of a recently-submitted notice in the Senate. Filed by the People’s Party of Pakistan, it describes an ‘illegal’ sale of a PIA Airbus A-310 to a German firm. Senator Saleem Mandviwalla said the jet had a valid certificate of airworthiness and originally went to Malta to be used in a film.

Mandviwalla said the plane ended up in the hands of a German museum and was sold without the PIA board’s consent. Federal Minister Muhammad Zubair said the aircraft was sold for for 290,000 euros despite being worth millions. Mandviwalla has called for a criminal investigation.

In the continuing Safety Investigation Board’s investigation into Flight 661’s crash, a team of French and Canadian experts from ATR reached Islamabad on December 12 and took forensic samples from the wreck site. The team, assisting the safety board, was also there to plan wreckage removal.

The crash site is remote, with conventional vehicular access ending several kilometres away. Rescuers had to walk the remainder.

PIA state the aircraft was maintained in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions, including engine changes. The airline also say the crashed plane’s engines were inspected, as standard, ahead of its final flight. An airline spokesperson asked journalists to refrain from speculating on the accident’s cause.

Bodies have been identified using DNA analysis, with at least sixteen returned to families. Identification was undertaken by the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).

The dead included six members of the same family, leaving behind a fourteen-year-old girl. Haseena Gul is entitled to tens of millions of rupees (equivalent to hundreds of thousands of euros) in compensation and numerous people have come forward claiming to be her relatives; she had remained with a friend in Chitral to study while her family travelled to Islamabad.

Gul is currently receiving treatment from PIMS for psychological problems. “They will not let me study in Chitral,” she appealed to the government. “Please have me shifted to Islamabad where I can study and fulfil my parents’ dream.”

Also on board was Junaid Jamshed, a celebrated popstar who abandoned music in favour of preaching after joining Tableeghi Jamaat. Jamshed ran a nationally successful fashion business. His wife joined him on the flight. Other passengers included Osama Warraich, who was a senior civil servant in Chitral, and two infants.

On Monday, Flight 898 to Kuala Lumpur diverted to Karachi. A replacement aircraft reached its destination over four hours late. PIA denied media claims the original plane suffered bursts in its hydraulics, but did not clarify what had happened. Also on Monday Flight 764 from from Jeddah to Faisalabad arrived ten hours late. All 130 passengers had their luggage left behind; PIA said it could take up to two days before they were reunited with their belongings.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Goodluck Jonathan, the acting president of Nigeria, was formally sworn in today, several hours after president Umaru Yar’Adua died.

The oath of office was administered in the capital Abjua. According to the constitution, Jonathan will be the country’s leader until next elections next April; he is also to nominate a vice president, who must be approved by the senate.

Jonathan already has been running the country when he became acting president since February, when Yar’Adua was hospitalised in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment.

After being sworn in, Jonathan made an address. “While this is a major burden on me, and indeed the entire nation, we must — in the midst of such great adversity — continue to gain our collective efforts towards upholding the values which our departed leader represented […] One of the true tests will be that all votes count, and are counted, in our upcoming presidential election,” he said.

Yar’Adua, aged 58, was buried earlier in the Katsina state; the government has declared a week of mourning.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Journalist, counselor, painter, and US 2012 Presidential candidate Joe Schriner of Cleveland, Ohio took some time to discuss his campaign with Wikinews in an interview.

Schriner previously ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, but failed to gain much traction in the races. He announced his candidacy for the 2012 race immediately following the 2008 election. Schriner refers to himself as the “Average Joe” candidate, and advocates a pro-life and pro-environmentalist platform. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, and has published public policy papers exploring solutions to American issues.

Wikinews reporter William Saturn? talks with Schriner and discusses his campaign.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Vinay Deolalikar, a mathematician who works for HP Labs, claims to have proven that P is not equal to NP. The problem is the greatest unsolved problem in theoretical computer science and is one of seven problems in which the Clay Mathematics Institute has offered million dollar prizes to the solutions.

The question of whether P equals NP essentially asks whether there exist problems which take a long time to solve but whose solutions can be checked quickly. More formally, a problem is said to be in P if there is a program for a Turing machine, an ideal theoretical computer with unbounded amounts of memory, such that running instances of the problem through the program will always answer the question in polynomial time — time always bounded by some fixed polynomial power of the length of the input. A problem is said to be in NP, if the problem can be solved in polynomial time when instead of being run on a Turing machine, it is run on a non-deterministic Turing machine, which is like a Turing machine but is able to make copies of itself to try different approaches to the problem simultaneously.

Mathematicians have long believed that P does not equal NP, and the question has many practical implications. Much of modern cryptography, such as the RSA algorithm and the Diffie-Hellman algorithm, rests on certain problems, such as factoring integers, being in NP and not in P. If it turned out that P=NP, these methods would not work but many now difficult problems would likely be easy to solve. If P does not equal NP then many natural, practical problems such as the traveling salesman problem are intrinsically difficult.

In 2000, the Clay Foundation listed the “Clay Millenium Problems,” seven mathematical problems each of which they would offer a million dollars for a correct solution. One of these problems was whether P equaled NP. Another of theseseven, the Poincaré conjecture, was solved in 2002 by Grigori Perelman who first made headlines for solving the problem and then made them again months later for refusing to take the prize money.

On August 7, mathematician Greg Baker noted on his blog that he had seen a draft of a claimed proof by Deolalikar although among experts a draft had apparently been circulating for a few days. Deolalikar’s proof works by connecting certain ideas in computer science and finite model theory to ideas in statistical mechanics. The proof works by showing that if certain problems known to be in NP were also in P then those problems would have impossible statistical properties. Computer scientists and mathematicians have expressed a variety of opinions about Deolalikar’s proof, ranging from guarded optimism to near certainty that the proof is incorrect. Scott Aaronson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has expressed his pessimism by stating that he will give $200,000 of his own money to Deolalikar if the proof turns out to be valid. Others have raised specific technical issues with the proof but noted that the proof attempt presented interesting new techniques that might be relevant to computer science whether or not the proof turns out to be correct. Richard Lipton, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, has said that “the author certainly shows awareness of the relevant obstacles and command of literature supporting his arguments.” Lipton has listed four central objections to the proof, none of which are necessarily fatal but may require more work to address. On August 11, 2010, Lipton reported that consensus of the reviewers was best summarized by mathematician Terence Tao, who expressed the view that Deolalikar’s paper probably did not give a proof that P!=NP even after major changes, unless substantial new ideas are added.

Monday, October 9, 2006

Jamie Lee Curtis, 47, has stated that she will end her acting career, but said that she will continue writing.

“I’m not an actor anymore,” she told Access Hollywood host Nancy O’Dell. “I really don’t imagine I’ll do that again.” She later said in the conversation, “I’m just focused on my family and just can’t imagine anything that’s going to pull me away from them right now.”

Curtis appeared on the Access Hollywood show to promote her newest children’s book, Is There a Human Race?. The interview she participated in with O’Dell will appear on the show’s weekend episode.

The picture book writer had this to say about ending her acting career, “No. I don’t want to be somebody else anymore.”

The last film Curtis starred in was the 2005 film The Kid & I.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Jared Foster, a transfer quarterback with the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) Rebels football team, was arrested yesterday in Oxford, Mississippi and charged with selling steroids.

Rebels head coach Houston Nutt said that Foster will not be allowed to remain with the team.

Foster was arrested for alcohol possession by a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 2006 while a star player for Madison Central High School in Madison, Mississippi. Prosecutors agreed then not to try the case on the conditions that Foster help police in a steroid investigation and stay out of trouble.

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.

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Categories

Wikinews interviews World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau

Contents

Pakistan International Airlines sacrifices goat, resumes ATR flights

Nigeria swears in new president after death of Umaru Yar’Adua

Wikinews interviews Joe Schriner, Independent U.S. presidential candidate

Researcher claims solution to P vs NP math problem

Turn Back Time With A Pelleve Non Surgical Facelift

Jamie Lee Curtis quits acting

Ole Miss player arrested; charged with selling steroids

Surgeons reattach boy’s three severed limbs

Using Shipping Services In Fort Myers Fl To Keep Items Free Of Damage