"As you can see, after just three years, the iPad is becoming the primary computer for users. When we first ran the survey, only 29.1% of people said it was a primary computer. Today, it's 46.7% of users.
In the last three years, the iPad has gotten lighter and more powerful. Additionally, developers have built a variety of applications to make it more useful. Imagine what's going to happen in the next three years."
FLORIDA’S state primary is a month away, the presidential election is four months off and the Palm Beach County League of Women Voters (LWV) is busy. During the lunch rush at JFK Medical Centre on a recent Tuesday afternoon, several volunteers fanned out across the cafeteria, registration forms in hand. This was the first of three hospital-based voter-registration drives planned for the week, and it followed an event on July 4th that yielded 23 new registrations.
The Independence Day event was, however, the group’s first of the summer. Corinne Miller, the volunteer in charge of the JFK drive, says that by this stage in previous elections the LWV had already completed up to 30 drives. This time their efforts have been disrupted by a row over a law that went into effect last year, requiring all completed voter-registration forms to be submitted to the electoral authorities within 48 hours or risk a fine. Dennis Baxley, the Florida representative who sponsored the original bill, said the law was intended to encourage those registering to turn in the forms promptly, and to “minimise opportunities for mischief”. A federal judge disagreed, striking down the 48-hour rule on May 31st as excessive. But a degree of damage has already been done.
Supporting stability, abetting repression
BY TOBIAS HAGMANN
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — Next time I travel to Ethiopia, I may be arrested as a terrorist. Why? Because I have published articles about Ethiopian politics.
I wrote a policy report on Ethiopia’s difficulties with federalism. I gave a talk in which I questioned Ethiopia’s May 2010 elections, in which the ruling EPRDF party (Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front) won 545 out of 547 seats in the Parliament. As part of my ongoing research on mass violence in the Somali territories, I interviewed members of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a separatist rebel group in eastern Ethiopia that the government has designated as a terrorist organization.
In the eyes of the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, my work is tantamount to subversion. Not only do his officials have zero tolerance for criticism, they consider people who either talk to or write about the opposition as abetting terrorists.