Nokia head of sales resigns, department aims to reduce 'layers of management'

Nokia head of sales resignsColin Giles, Nokia's executive vice president of sales, has announced that he's stepping down. It follows the company's dour financial results for Q1 and will lead to a restructuring of the company's sales organization, aiming to strip layers from what's currently in place. Giles has been with Nokia since 1992 and was heavily involved in the company's movements in China and the larger Asia market. However, he had only been involved in Nokia's Leadership Team for just under a year. He will stay with the team until June 30 and cites a desire to be closer to his family following his departure. Announced through Nokia's official channels, the process aims to "ensure greater customer focus" -- we suppose that will involve more than just white polycarbonate.

Nokia head of sales resigns, department aims to reduce 'layers of management' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mother, Daughter Team Building A Health Food Chain - Business ...

Forbes:

Green Acres is now a medium sized organic and all natural foods store based on Barbara?s conviction that ?food is our best medicine.? Originally the store served as an alternative to weekly grocery shopping at the large supermarket chain right across the street. But overtime Green Acres has become a shopping destination as it expanded its product mix, including specialty foods, meats, a deli and baked goods?to about 10,000 SKUs, always sticking to the store mantra of no refined sugars, pesticides, chemical preservatives, or hydrogenated oils. The vitamin and supplement business, which now includes a house brand, accounts for about one-third of revenues.

Barbara Hoffmann attributes the success of Green Acres to its basic product integrity along with its heavy emphasis on customer education and community outreach. Both Green Acres stores host regular product demos and cooking classes. In addition, the Wichita stores provides live music on weekends, hosts a farmer?s market every Saturday to highlight local produce; it also produces several large events featuring nationally known health experts, for which it has to rent space in nearby hotels to accommodate the hundreds of customers who show up. For an upcoming 18th anniversary celebration Barbara estimates they will have 1000 people come through the store?in a metropolitan community of just over 600,000!

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Oracle skewers Google as Android trial opens

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Oracle began Monday trying to convince a jury that Google's top executives have long known that they stole a key piece of technology to build the Android software that now powers more than more than 300 million smartphones and tablet computers.

The unflattering portrait of Google Inc. was drawn by Oracle lawyer Michael Jacobs in the opening phase of a complex trial pitting two Silicon Valley powerhouses in a battle delving into the often mind-numbing minutiae of intellectual property and computer coding.

"We will prove to you from beginning to end ... that Google knew it was using someone else's property," Jacobs said near the end of his hour-long opening statement.

Google's lawyers will counter with their opening statements Tuesday.

The showdown in a San Francisco federal court centers on Oracle's allegations that Google's Android software infringes on the patents and copyrights of Java, a programming technology that Sun Microsystems began developing 20 years ago.

Oracle Corp., a business software maker based in Redwood Shores, acquired the rights to Java when it bought Sun Microsystems for $7.3 billion in January 2010.

Google Inc., the Mountain View-based Internet search leader, has steadfastly denied Oracle's allegations since the lawsuit was filed seven months after the Sun deal closed.

The impasse has left it to a 12-member jury to resolve the dispute in a trial scheduled to last as long as 10 weeks. U.S. District Judge William Alsup devoted most of Monday's session to picking the jury, leaving only enough time for Oracle to lay out the framework for its case.

Oracle is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and an injunction that would force Google to pay future licensing fees or find an alternative to Java to keep its Android system running smoothly.

At one point in the lawsuit, Oracle estimated it might be owed as much as $6.1 billion. But Alsup has whittled the case down in a way that has substantially lowered the size of the potential payout if Google loses.

In a sign of how far apart the two sides are, Google last month said it would be willing to pay $2.8 million plus a tiny percentage of its future revenue if the jury decides Android infringed on two Java patents. Google hasn't publicly estimated what it thinks its liability might be if the jury decides Android violated 37 Java programming copyrights as alleged by Oracle.

The copyright disagreement ? the most important point of the case ? will be covered in the first phase of the trial followed by the patent dispute. If necessary, a third phase will be devoted to how much money Google owes Oracle.

Much of the evidence presented during the trial will delve into highly technical fare likely only to appeal to programming geeks and patent-law aficionados. However, there may be dramatic interludes that lift a veil on the inner workings of two of the world's most influential technology companies.

The intrigue will include testimony from the two companies' multibillionaire CEOs, Oracle's Larry Ellison and Google's Larry Page. Oracle indicated on Monday that it could call Ellison to the stand as early as Tuesday.

Several other industry luminaries, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, are also on the list of potential witnesses.

Jacobs focused much of his opening statement on excerpts in internal emails that suggest Google knew it needed to pay licensing fees to use some of the Java technology that went into Android, a project that began in earnest in 2005 when Google bought a startup run by Andy Rubin. The first phone running on Android software didn't go on sale until October 2008, about 15 months before Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and stepped up the attempts to make Google pay up for the Java technology.

Oracle cited an October 2005 email from Rubin to Page as an early sign that Google realized it probably would have to pay Sun for using Java in Android.

"My proposal is that we take a license that specifically grants the right for us to Open Source our product," Rubin wrote.

Jacobs pointed to a May 2006 email from Schmidt to Rubin as an indication that Google knew it might need to seek other solutions for Android if it couldn't work out an agreement with Sun.

"How are we doing on the Sun deal?" Schmidt asked in his message. "Its (sic) it time to develop a non-Java solution to avoid dealing with them?"

By August 2010, Google still hadn't been able to find any satisfactory alternatives to Java, according to an email that Google engineer Tim Lindholm sent to Rubin.

"We have been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck," wrote Lindholm, who worked at Sun Microsystems before joining Google. "We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."

The lack of a licensing agreement ultimately didn't deter Google, Jacobs told the jury, because the company realized it needed a mobile software system to preserve its digital search-and-advertising empire as more sophisticated phones enabled more people to surf the Internet while they were away from their desktop computers. Java provided Google with a springboard into mobile computing because 6 million software programmers were already familiar with the technology and could easily create applications that would run on Android, Jacobs said.

Although Google doesn't charge device makers to use Android, the company makes money from some of the mobile advertising and mobile applications sold on the system. Google has said its mobile advertising revenue now exceeds $2.5 billion, but it hasn't specified how much of that money comes from Android-powered devices.

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Want to be a Masters Champion like Bubba Watson? Check out the data from his MOTOACTV

The Masters golf tournament is a week gone now, and Bubba Watson came out on top to claim the coveted green jacket. Now, thanks to Motorola and the MOTOACTV, you can check out the data from Bubba's practice round in Augusta where you can zoom in on routes and even get a visual look at all the long drive shots he took. Check out the video above and then hit the source link below to start digging into the data from Bubba's MOTOACTV golf edition.

Source: Motorola

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Sony NEX-FS700 cinema camera hands-on (video)

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/15/sony-nex-fs700-hands-on/

Sony's otherwise dull pre-NAB press conference yielded one gem -- the NEX-FS700 cinema camera -- which the company announced earlier this month. The FS700 doesn't include 4K shooting functionality out of the box, but it is 4K capable, with the appropriate software coming later in the form of a firmware update. The camera includes the familiar Sony E-mount, bringing with it compatibility with interchangeable lenses, including the standard 18-200mm lens attached to the demo camera at today's event. There's also a trio of ND filters on board -- 1/64ND, 1/16ND and 1/4ND -- along with some impressive slow-motion capabilities, ranging from 120 to 240 frames-per-second in 1080p, going all the way up to 960fps if you're willing to sacrifice full-HD resolution. Company reps confirmed that the camera is expected to retail for "under $10,000" when it hits the market in June, while that 4K update should hit before the year is out, once Sony's external recorder becomes available. The body itself looks very similar to its predecessor, the NEX-FS100, and is lightweight enough for comfortable handheld shooting. Jump past the break for a closer look live from Las Vegas, with Sony Senior Vice President Alec Shapiro.

Continue reading Sony NEX-FS700 cinema camera hands-on (video)

Sony NEX-FS700 cinema camera hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Conn. legislature approves repeal of death penalty

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) ? After years of failed attempts to repeal the death penalty, Connecticut lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have passed legislation that abolishes the punishment for all future cases.

As expected, members of the House voted 86-62 in favor of the bill after a floor debate that lasted nearly 10 hours on Wednesday.

The legislation, which would make Connecticut the 17th state to abolish the death penalty, awaits a signature from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who has said he would sign the bill into law.

"Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience," the Democratic governor said in a statement following the vote. "Let's throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail."

The bill would abolish the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release.

Lawmakers were able to garner support by making the legislation affect only future crimes and not the 11 men currently on death row. Some bill opponents, however, have called the move a political tool.

"It's tough to explain (the bill) to a four year old and it's tough to explain to a 40-year-old or a 94-year-old because to many it is illogical and does not make sense," said House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk. "...We allow the death penalty to continue for at least 11 people and maybe more."

Rep. Gerald Fox III, D-Stamford, co-chair of the General Assembly's joint Judiciary Committee, said he was pleased to see the bill pass after working for years to repeal the death penalty.

Repeal bill champion Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, D-New Haven, said although he was pleased with the results of the vote, more needs to be done to fix the state's criminal justice system.

"It's just one step in a long movement towards fixing our system and making sure we have safety and equality in our system," he said.

Preserving the death sentence of those still on death row is fairly unusual, although a similar law took effect in New Mexico. The governor there declined to commute the sentences of the state's two death row inmates after the repeal was signed in 2009.

Connecticut has a history of making changes to the death penalty prospective, said Fox. He said in 1846, the state created distinctions between first- and second-degree murders. Prior to that change, all murders were punishable by death.

In 1951, a law was passed allowing a jury to determine whether to impose death or life in prison for a first-degree murder. That law, Fox said, was ultimately upheld by the State Supreme Court.

"There is a history behind this. It has happened before in terms of the prospective nature of our death penalty," Fox said. "...I understand these cases are heavily litigated and every avenue is always explored to its fullest, but that is where our law stands now."

Both advocates and opponents of the repeal bill predicted the repeal would ultimately become law.

Last week the state Senate voted in favor of the bill after nearly 11 hours of debate.

Before the vote, Democratic Senators amended the bill to require that individuals convicted under the new legislation would be subject to prison conditions similar to those of death row inmates.

The House voted in favor of the Senate amendment.

Many officials insisted on that as a condition of their support for repeal in a state where two men were sentenced to death for a gruesome 2007 home invasion in Cheshire.

Despite passing the two Senate amendments, House members voted down a total of 11 amendments, including a measure proposed by the Waterbury delegation that would preserve the death penalty for individuals convicted of killing a police officer.

The amendment came in response to the 1992 murder of Waterbury Police Officer Walter T. Williams III. His killer, Richard Reynolds, currently sits on death row.

Rep. Stephen Dargan, D-West Haven, and Rep. Jeffrey Berger, D-Waterbury, who was a Waterbury police officer when Williams was shot in the line of duty, broke party lines to vote in support of the amendment and against the death penalty repeal bill.

During the debate Berger said he believes the death penalty is an important tool for prosecutors in murder cases and as a way of deterring crime.

Death penalty legislation never made it to the Senate floor for a vote last year after some senators voiced concern about acting when the second of two suspects in that case was still facing trial.

In the past five years, four other states have abolished the death penalty ? New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. Repeal proposals are also pending in several other states including Kansas and Kentucky, while advocates in California have gathered enough signatures for an initiative to throw out the death penalty that is expected to go before voters in November.

Connecticut has carried out only one execution in 51 years, when serial killer Michael Ross was administered lethal injection in 2005 after giving up his appeal rights.

Associated Press

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FDA Launches Voluntary Plan to Reduce Use of Antibiotics In Animals

The FDA's latest effort to end the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animals is getting mixed reviews from activists. Enlarge Rob Carr/AP

The FDA's latest effort to end the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animals is getting mixed reviews from activists.

Rob Carr/AP

The FDA's latest effort to end the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animals is getting mixed reviews from activists.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said today it is calling on the nation's pork, beef, and poultry producers to reduce their use of antibiotics. But some watchdog groups say this voluntary guidance doesn't go nearly far enough.

The issue has been contentious for decades. Just last month, a federal judge ruled that the FDA had to go ahead with a plan it proposed in 1977 that would ban the use of some antibiotics as a growth promoter in animals.

Farm animals in the U.S. actually consume far more antibiotics than people do in part because producers want to keep their animals healthy. But a big reason animals routinely get antibiotics is that the drugs also make them grow faster.

For years, the FDA has been saying that practice is both unnecessary and dangerous. It increases the chances that bacteria in animals will become resistant to drugs ? and those drug-resistant bacteria can then infect people. But that hasn't significantly reduced use.

Today, the FDA unveiled a plan aimed at ending the use of antibiotics for growth promotion. It's the formal and more detailed version of draft guidelines issued in 2010, which lays out a roadmap for making it happen.

Rather than banning that use, the agency aims to collaborate with drug companies, veterinarians, and livestock producers.

?

Update at 5:32 PM ET: That collaboration will be voluntary. Michael Taylor, the FDA's Deputy Commissioner for Food, says this will be a more effective approach, because any attempt to ban specific uses of more than a hundred separate drugs ? and then defend each one in court ? would be a hugely cumbersome undertaking: "Decades of effort, and millions and millions of dollars of resources."

Scott Hurd, a veterinary scientist at Iowa State University, says that the voluntary approach will have a real effect on farmers' practices. "Even though it's called guidance, people take it as the gospel and the law, so growth promotion usages will go away," he says.

Activists were divided on the FDA announcement.

"This is the most sweeping action the agency has taken in this area, as this covers all antibiotics used in meat and poultry production that are important to human health," said Laura Rogers, director of the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, in a statement.

But Avinash Kar, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, says today's action is a "make-believe" solution. He wrote: "industry is not required to do anything. This is an ineffective response to the real and sobering threat of rising antibiotic resistance, which threatens human health."

The NRDC is one of several organizations that sued the FDA to force the agency to implement the 1977 proposed ban. That's the lawsuit that the federal judge ruled on last week.

There's an additional complication. The FDA wants to reduce the use of antibiotics for growth promotion, while allowing continued use of the drugs to prevent disease. But what's truly necessary to prevent disease is a matter of interpretation.

Consider what happened when the European Union banned the use of antibiotics for the purpose of animal growth promotion. The law was passed in the late 1990s, but took effect in 2006.

Dik Mevius, a leading expert on antibiotic resistance at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, says meat producers there simply started using more antibiotics for what was still allowed: Preventing disease or treating it. "We saw a more or less doubling of those drugs that were used for therapy, so the total exposure of animals to antibiotics remained virtually the same from 1999 to 2007," he says.

After that, though ? and after lots of Dutch pig farmers realized that they and their families were carrying antibiotic-resistant strains of disease-causing bacteria ? the Dutch government clamped down hard.

Each farm now has to report how often it uses antibiotics for all purposes. Farms that use a lot are told specifically what they need to do to cut back. The government is funding lots of research into farming methods that don't require antibiotics.

Antibiotic use in the Netherlands is now coming down.

Rogers told NPR that the FDA may need to do something similar so that prescriptions aren't simply re-written to call them disease prevention drugs. "The loophole that does remain is these uses of the drugs for prevention purposes, and they are used in massive quantities. so that's where the FDA is really going to have to dig in," she says.

So stay tuned. Firmer guidance there may now be, but the long wrangle over antibiotics in animals is far from over.

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Sudan mobilizes army as South claims key oil field

KHARTOUM/JUBA (Reuters) - Sudan said it would mobilize its army against South Sudan on Wednesday, and halted talks with Juba over oil payments and other disputed issues after the South occupied an oilfield vital to the North's economy.

With South Sudan in turn accusing Sudan of bombing a village on the southern side of their 1,800-km (1,200-mile) border, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the United States called for an end to clashes that threaten to spark a full-blown conflict.

South Sudan, which seceded in July, has been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute with the North over the fate of the formerly joint oil industry and other issues as fighting has escalated in the ill-defined border region.

South Sudan's army (SPLA) on Tuesday attacked Heglig, a disputed area containing an oilfield that accounts for about half of Sudan's 115,000 barrel-a-day output. The South's army claimed to be holding the oil wells.

"There is no doubt that Heglig area and the oil wells are under control of the SPLA," South Sudanese military spokesman Philip Aguer said, adding that the North's air force had bombed SPLA positions in Heglig and other areas.

A Sudanese official said he expected the fighting would hit oil output.

"I expect ... these oilfields will be affected, definitely, and at least there will not be production. If there is a conflict in the area, this is the least," said Rahamatalla Mohamed Osman, Sudan's undersecretary of foreign affairs.

Motorists worried about a possible disruption to fuel supplies formed lines at petrol stations to stock up as news of the Heglig attack spread through the capital, although the oil ministry issued a statement saying it had enough fuel.

The U.S. State Department condemned South Sudan's attack on Heglig, calling it "an act which goes beyond self-defense".

It also condemned Sudan's "continued aerial bombardment in South Sudan" and said the two sides needed to agree on an immediate cessation of hostilities.

Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman said Sudan had exercised maximum self-restraint and if the U.N. Security Council did not condemn South Sudan's actions and demand it withdraw its troops, then Sudan would be forced to "retaliate severely deep inside South Sudan."

"We are ready for settling all the disputes with the south through peaceful negotiations, but with the recent developments they make it very difficult ... it would be extremely difficult to sit with somebody who has stabbed you in the back," he said.

UNRESOLVED TALKS

The South seceded from Khartoum's rule last year, but the two sides have not agreed on issues including division of national debt, the status of citizens in each another's territory and the exact position of the border.

Oil is among the most sensitive issues. Landlocked South Sudan shut down its roughly 350,000 barrel-per-day output in January in a dispute over how much it should pay to export crude using pipelines and other infrastructure in Sudan.

Sudan's remaining output only serves domestic consumption.

Each side accuses the other of backing rebels in their territory.

"I don't think there can be negotiations in this climate," Osman said. "What happened yesterday is a violation of international laws and an aggression on Sudan, and we have all the right to defend ourselves and regain the territories which were occupied by government of South Sudan."

South Sudan's forces pushed 70 km (40 miles) into Sudan's territory on Tuesday, Osman said. An information ministry statement accused South Sudan of "using mercenary forces and rebel groups" in the attack. Juba routinely denies such charges.

Following the incursion, parliament ordered a halt to negotiations with the South, Sudan's state media said.

State news agency SUNA said Sudan would order a general army mobilization but gave no further details. It quoted Defense Minister Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein as saying the army was capable of preserving stability and controlling the situation.

AU CALLS FOR WITHDRAWAL

SUNA said Sudan would halt all talks with Juba sponsored by the African Union and withdraw its negotiating team from Addis Ababa immediately.

The African Union called for the "immediate and unconditional withdrawal" of South Sudan's army from Heglig and urged restraint on both sides.

U.N. chief Ban contacted South Sudan's President Salva Kiir and Sudan's U.N. ambassador, urging both sides to exercise restraint and avoid further bloodshed, spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters in New York.

"The Secretary-General urged (Kiir) to consider holding a presidential summit immediately to build confidence and assure the peoples of South Sudan and Sudan that peace and dialogue is the only option for both sides," he said.

South Sudan's Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said the Sudanese air force had bombed the village of Abiemnom in South Sudan's Unity state on Wednesday, wounding four people including a child.

He said South Sudan had been acting in self defense after Sudan launched a ground attack from Heglig late on Monday. Sudanese officials also said they were only trying to defend their territory.

(Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz, Khalid Abdelaziz, Aaron Maasho, Louis Charbonneau, Ulf Laessing and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Andrew Roche and Christopher Wilson)

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