Lauderhill police Monday night were investigating an apparent homicide.
Details were sketchy, but police said just before 9 p.m. a woman was shot and killed in the 2800 block of Northwest 55th Avenue.
The victim was dead at the scene.
K-9 units were in the area searching for a possible suspect.
This article will be updated as more details are available.
La elección de un sistema operativo para una computadora es una situación que, en situaciones cotidianas al ingresar a una tienda de venta de artículos electrónicos, está marcada por la presencia de la plataforma Windows de Microsoft. Nada de esto impide que los usuarios puedan optar por software libre, sin costo alguno al momento de realizar la descarga e instalación, con propuestas como Ubuntu, Fedora o Mint , por mencionar sólo algunas de las alternativas disponibles en Internet.
Esto mismo ocurrió con el plan Conectar Igualdad, que busca desarrollar su propia plataforma basada en GNU-Linux adaptada a las necesidades de la comunidad educativa, tanto para los docentes como para los alumnos.
La inciativa comenzó a tomar forma en 2010, cuando Javier Castrillo comenzó a trabajar en Conectar Igualdad, el programa del gobierno nacional que distribuye computadoras portátiles para alumnos y docentes de escuelas públicas. Desde aquel momento, con el antecedente de haber coordinado la implementación de estas iniciativas en el ambiente educativo, impulsó con su equipo el desarrollo de Huayra, el sistema operativo libre basado en GNU-Linux de las netbooks escolares.
“Debido al porte de este programa era necesaria una plataforma estable, libre, un estándar y sobre todo con soberanía tecnológica, para no depender de ninguna corporación. Con nuestro sistema nos aseguramos que va a ser constante en el tiempo, que va a ser gratuito para todos aquellos que lo quieran descargar y, por sobre todas las cosas, libre. Todo el código está publicado a disposición para que cualquiera que tenga los conocimientos lo pueda auditar y modificar”, asegura Javier Castrillo, coordinador del Proyecto Huayra.
En una entrevista exclusiva con LA NACIÓN , Javier Castrillo habla sobre la plataforma, sus características y los prejuicios que aún existen sobre el software libre.
¿Qué es Huayra?
Es el sistema operativo libre que las netbooks del Programa Conectar Igualdad van a traer instaladas a partir de este año. Además cualquier persona puede descargarlo en su máquina desde huayra.conectarigualdad.gob.ar
Está basado en Debian GNU/Linux, es seguro, ágil y con un desarrollo realizado en la Argentina, teniendo en cuenta las necesidades tanto de estudiantes como de docentes, y manteniendo nuestra identidad nacional.
¿En qué instancia se encuentra el desarrollo?
Está en fase Beta pero ya se puede bajar y utilizar.
Un mito presente en este tipo de plataformas es que muchas personas creen que no hay virus porque no se conoce mucho. Esto no es verdad, no hay virus porque el sistema no admite virus porque, como dije, está todo a la vista. Los servidores de la bases de datos de los bancos, las grandes bases de datos importantes son de código libre, Google es libre, por ejemplo.
¿Por qué pensaron que era necesario desarrollar un sistema operativo basado en software libre?
Porque se estaban dejando tres millones y medio de máquinas en manos de una corporación, que tiene intereses económicos y sus tiempos. Asimismo, por ejemplo, si queríamos hacer un procesador de texto para las comunidades aborígenes no podíamos hacerlo porque no es posible traducir el Word o si necesitábamos adaptar la placa de red, según el tipo de servicio de determinada zona también teníamos inconvenientes. Tener un software de una empresa es como comprarte un auto y tener el capó soldado.
¿Cuáles son las ventajas que presenta utilizar Huayra frente a Windows?
Es libre y puede ser utilizado por cualquier persona de la comunidad; es gratuito, y ofrece la libertad de poder administrar ese código y hacer las reformas que queremos. Uno de los problemas que veíamos era que los profesores traían un programa para compartir con los chicos y ponían el pendrive en cada computadora y lo bajaban, sin darse cuenta que podían utilizar la red de la escuela. Lo que sucede es que configurar una red no es algo trivial. Huayra, en cambio, autoconfigura la red entonces el profesor deja el programa directamente en una carpeta especial que comparte y los alumnos entran allí para utilizar el programa.
¿En qué se benefician los alumnos al utilizar Huayra?
Que el Estado les brinde su propio sistema operativo libre es un beneficio implícito es más seguro y mucho más rápido. Además, está pensado para que corra en las máquinas más livianas y también funciona bien en las máquinas más viejas.
Otra gran ventaja para los chicos es que tienen una herramienta que sale de la propia escuela, con las necesidades y el aporte de su institución. Hay cientos de aplicaciones del equipo de Huayra y aportadas por las comunidades escolares. En total son casi 30.000 piezas de software.
¿La interfaz es similar a la de Windows o los usuarios verán muchos cambios?
Es similar y además encontrarán programas que no tenían en Windows porque son muy caros. En Huayra, por ejemplo, hay un software para hacer animaciones en 3D que si tuviéramos que comprarlo saldría muy caro. También hay editores de fotos similares a Photoshop.
El procesador de textos de Huayra permite guardarlo en un formato de Word. En el pasado había grandes problemas de compatibilidad entre el software libre y el licenciado pero ahora todo ha evolucionado y ya no existen esos inconvenientes.
Las netbooks de Conectar Igualdad son de diez fabricantes distintos, y tuvimos que trabajar bastante para el desarrollo del sistema operativo, cuenta Javier Castrillo, responsable del proyecto Huayra
Todavía nos falta un buen programa de Autocad 3D, pero tenemos Autocad en 2D. Pero tenemos son muchas herramientas de programación y de robótica incluidas dentro de Hayra.
¿Cómo se realizará la capacitación?
Las netbooks de nuestro programa, a partir de 2012, incluyen TV Digital abierta y allí incluye un montón de tutoriales y paso a paso para poder aprender a utilizarla.
Por otro lado, todas las instancias de capacitación que tiene Educar y el Ministerio de Educación van a tener cursos de Huayra tanto para alumnos como para docentes. Y ya se han formado comunidades de Huayra en Facebook y en Twitter que hacen su propia formación y su aporte a la comunidad.
¿Qué obstáculos tuvieron que sortear?
La principal fue la compatibilidad de hardware. Las netbooks de Conectar Igualdad son de diez fabricantes distintos y tuvimos que trabajar bastante para hacer funcionar nuestro sistema en todos los equipos. Después debimos luchar con los prejuicios que difunden los propios monopolios, que dicen que Linux es difícil, por ejemplo.
Pero ahora estamos muy entusiasmados porque las pruebas están saliendo bien y estamos dentro de los tiempos previstos.
¿Cuáles son los principales proyectos?
La primera etapa de Huayra es que funcione bien en todas las netbooks y en eso estamos abocados. Luego estamos pensando en que funcione en tablets y celulares.
También queremos trabajar para que la TV digital no sirva sólo para ver canales sino que podamos interactuar y brindarle, a través de ella, información útil para el ciudadano.
Y queremos fomentar el desarrollo para que los chicos programen, dándoles herramientas para que puedan programar aunque no sepan hacerlo, para que puedan, por ejemplo, hacer sus propios juegos con las características de su región, de su lenguaje, sus costumbres y que lo compartan con la comunidad.
El software libre en Conectar Igualdad
Huayra toma su nombre del vocablo quechua que significa viento, una analogía que los responsables del proyecto buscan reflejar con la filosofía del proyecto, relacionada con la independencia tecnológica y la libertad que ofrece el software libre. “Es una práctica habitual dentro de la comunidad para que cada programa esté ser representado por un animal. Linux eligió el pingüino, nosotros una vaca”, explica Javier Castrillo.
El equipo de trabajo de Huayra consta de 13 personas, divididos en tres áreas: Desarrollo (programadores), Diseño (artistas, historiadores del arte, diseñadores gráficos) y Sistematización (Sociólogos y estadísticos).
Además de Huayra existe la iniciativa de la comunidad de software libre Tuquito, con sendas versiones para las computadoras de las iniciativas OLPC y Conectar Igualdad .
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
She can afford the best stylist money can buy, but that's not to say Oprah Winfrey hasn't had her fair share of fashion misses (along with a great deal of hits) over her extensive career.
Pics: Two Looks, One Star!
Join us as we look back at Lady O's changing styles through the years!
The former principal of the high-performing NYCiSchool improperly allowed one of her teachers to re-grade and raise scores on high school Regents exams, school investigators found.
She was among nearly 100 educators — including 17 principals, 61 teachers, seven assistant principals and nine other staffers — who have been implicated in cheating probes by the city Department of Education since 2006, according to documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act filing.
It took the Department of Education nearly 18 months to comply with The Post’s request for cheating cases confirmed by its internal investigative arm, the Office of Special Investigations — in violation of the rules governing public access to documents.
Among the recent cases, NYCiSchool principal Alisa Berger let teacher Susan Herzog re-grade the June 2010 Living Environment Regents exam by herself after they had already been graded.
Herzog said she raised the scores given to students for certain questions after clarifying proper procedures with the State Education Department.
Berger told The Post that student scores were both raised and lowered, but that no students’ grade was changed from failing to passing.
“Did I make a procedural mistake? I did. Was it cheating? Absolutely not,” said Berger, who unrelatedly left the downtown school last year.
Among the biggest cases of cheating, teachers at Hillcrest HS in Queens were found to have bumped up the scores of 255 students on the English Regents exams back in 2006.
The case was never made public and no teachers were punished because the re-scoring practice, known as “scrubbing,” wasn’t technically prohibited.
In another case, Manhattan teacher Iris Ventura helped several classrooms of 8th graders with the state’s high-stakes math exams — at the request of MS 322 principal Erica Zigelman, investigators found.
Despite the DOE’s stated no tolerance policy for cheating, they were both let off with letters of reprimand.
In 2011, Ventura was caught cheating again — this time telling four 7th graders to check their answers on the state math exams, probers found.
She was again let off with a letter in her file, and has since resigned, according to the DOE.
Entrepreneurs, please don’t let the name of our contest scare you.
As we launch our 15th annual Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge today, we are putting out our annual call for entries. But we aren’t looking for long, laboriously detailed business plans. Quite the contrary.
More and more, today’s investors in very early stage companies want to see a succinct presentation of your concept and how you plan to turn it into a success. We do, too.
If you have a business idea or an operating startup that is less than two years old, you can enter the Challenge, our annual celebration of South Florida entrepreneurship. Sponsored by the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University, our contest has three tracks — a Community Track, open to all South Floridians; an FIU Track, open to students and alumni of that university; and a High School Track, co-sponsored by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.
Your entry may be up to three pages and you may attach one additional page for a photo, rendering, diagram or spreadsheet if you wish. Think of it as a meaty executive summary. Experts in all aspects of entrepreneurship — serial entrepreneurs, executives, investors, advisors and finance specialists (see judge bios on MiamiHerald.com/challenge) — will judge your short plan. In doing so, they will be looking at your product or service’s value to the customer, market opportunity, business model, management team and your marketing and financial strategies. See the rules on page 22, which also include tips on preparing your entry.
Your entry is due by 11:59 p.m. March 11. Entries should be sent to challenge@miamiherald.com, fiuchallenge@miamiherald.com or highschoolchallenge@miamiherald.com.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help!
“Frame your business from your customer’s perspective and not yours. Rather than diving into a detailed explanation of your product or service, a more compelling way to tell your business story is to clearly share the problem that you are solving for your customers and how your business is different, better, faster, cooler, cheaper, smarter,” says Melissa Krinzman, managing director of Venture Architects and a veteran Challenge judge.
On Feb 26 at 6:30 p.m. at Miami Dade College, we’ll host a free Business Plan Bootcamp, where you can bring your working plan with you for advice from experts, including Krinzman. Find the sign-up link on MiamiHerald.com/challenge.
And each week in Business Monday and on MiamiHerald.com/challenge, we’ll be bringing you advice and answering your questions. You can post your questions on the Q&A on MiamiHerald.com/challenge or email your questions to me at ndahlberg@miamiherald.com. Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter.
The top six finalists in the Community and FIU Tracks will present their 90-second elevator pitches for our popular video contest. Last year our People’s Pick contest drew more than 18,000 votes.
On May 6, in a special section of Business Monday, we will profile the winners — the judges’ top three selections in each track plus the People’s Pick winners. Along the way, we will unveil semifinalists and finalists to keep the suspense building.
Today, though, we are looking back on the entrepreneurial journeys of our 2012 winners. Funding was a nearly universal challenge, and many faced setbacks in developing their platforms. Throughout the entry period, we’ll also look back on other winners from the past 14 years.
Show us what you’ve got. Let’s make this the best Challenge yet.
TALLAHASSEE --
The Department of Economic Opportunity is one of the most critical agencies in Gov. Rick Scott’s administration, and it has run through four directors — two permanent, two interim — since it launched 16 months ago.
After the fleeting tenures of three bureaucrats and a banker, Scott’s handpicked director, Jesse Panuccio, began his term as the agency’s fifth director three weeks ago.
Panuccio, a 32-year-old attorney, is an outside-the-box choice for jobs chief. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2006 and has been on Scott’s legal team since 2011, becoming the governor’s chief litigant last year.
After defending some of Scott’s most controversial laws in the courtroom, Panuccio faces the crucial task of executing the governor’s job-creation strategy from the state’s official boardroom.
“I chose Jesse for three reasons,” Scott said in a statement. “He is a problem solver, he is a skilled manager of people and he is experienced at holding people and organizations accountable.”
After graduating from Harvard Law, Panuccio clerked for a federal judge and then joined a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C. The New Jersey native said he took the Florida Bar Exam after spending much of his childhood vacationing in the Sunshine State, and was drawn to Scott’s campaign message in 2010. He left Washington and joined the governor’s transition team as deputy general counsel in January 2011.
Throughout Panuccio’s brief professional career, he has fought legal battles in support of conservative causes ranging from gun rights to traditional marriage to state’s rights. His new position will require a full embrace of Scott’s conservative job-creation agenda: less regulation, taxation and litigation.
“My overall view is that the economy, the free market flourishes when government gets out of the way,” he said.
The Department of Economic Opportunity, or DEO, is 1,600-person agency responsible for overseeing many of the state’s economic development initiatives. Created by Scott in 2011, DEO runs Florida’s unemployment compensation system, collaborates job training efforts with regional workforce boards and oversees business incentives programs. As the $140,000-a-year director, Panuccio leads efforts to coordinate local and regional job-creation efforts, and implement an overarching economic development vision for the future.
He shares Scott’s small-government approach to creating jobs, and embraces using taxpayer incentives to draw companies to Florida.
“I do think incentives, especially in a recessionary period like this, are a targeted way of reducing taxation and enhancing the business climate for competitive projects,” he said. “It is a reality right now that we’re competing with other states and other countries for these companies.”
So far, Scott’s approach on jobs has had mixed results. Florida’s economy has improved in the last two years with a rapid decline in unemployment, but job growth is considerably slower than the national pace and wages continue to lag.
Meanwhile, DEO has come under fire — and a federal probe — for restricting access to unemployment compensation benefits, making Florida one of the least generous states in the nation for those who are eligible for aid.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Sarah Bertness slipped into her seat at a recent staging of the musical “Million Dollar Quartet” and, when the lights dimmed, started doing something that’s long been taboo inside theaters: typing away at her iPhone.
The 26-year-old freelance writer from Providence wasn’t being rude. She had a spot in the “tweet seat” section at the Providence Performing Arts Center.
The downtown theater is now setting aside a small number of seats — in the back — for those who promise to live-tweet from the performance using a special hash tag. They might offer impressions of the set, music or costumes, lines of dialogue that resonate with them or anything else that strikes them, really.
At “Million Dollar Quartet,” based on the true story of a 1956 recording session that united music greats Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, PPAC for the first time had cast members tweeting from backstage, too.
A growing number of theaters, including some on Broadway, have been experimenting in recent years with tweet seats and other real-time uses of social media as they try to figure out the relationship between the stage and the smartphone.
Some insist the theater should remain a sacred, technology-free place and that allowing the use of phones during a show — even discreetly — only serves as a potential distraction for other patrons. But others say theaters can’t afford not to engage the digital generation, and that the way performances were once enjoyed, in a vacuum, doesn’t hold up anymore.
“I think that it’s important that PPAC and cultural institutions in general kind of jump on the social media bandwagon and learn to engage a broader audience,” said Bertness, who runs the blog The Rhode Islander and is such a big Johnny Cash fan that she showed up to the performance wearing all black. “I think it’s such a valuable tool.”
Scott Moreau, an understudy for Johnny Cash, hadn’t ever tweeted from backstage during a performance. He tried to provide a glimpse of what life’s like on the tour, which he likened to the special features on a DVD. He said he enjoyed getting instant feedback from the tweeters — feedback he shared with other cast members.
“It makes it feel a lot more personal,” Moreau said.
A picture of Moreau that was tweeted out from backstage — he was tweeting in it himself — prompted someone in the tweet seats to declare that’s what the Man in Black would have looked like, with an iPhone.
Other theaters are also trying different digital ways to engage with patrons. In Boston, the Huntington Theater plans to introduce a “Twittermission” where an artist affiliated with the production, or someone from the theater’s staff, answers questions about the show on Twitter during intermissions. The tweets will also be projected on screens in the theater lobby, according to spokeswoman Rebecca Curtiss.
The theater won’t be introducing tweet seats, though.
“We feel strongly that the experience that an audience member has in our theater should be limited to what they are seeing on the stage,” Curtiss said. “When the lights go down and the show begins, we want the art on stage to speak for itself.”
PPAC isn’t sure yet whether any social media buzz generated by those in the tweet seats will have a measurable effect at the box office. But spokeswoman P.J. Prokop said the theater intends to keep the program through the end of the year, and then evaluate it. Those who sit in the tweet seats get their tickets for free.
Kirsten DiChiappari, who has tweeted three shows there to her nearly 1,400 followers, grew up in New Jersey going to Broadway musicals, plays and the opera. The 41-year-old social media consultant from Bristol sees her live-tweeting as a way to lure people from their living rooms, where many are glued to “horrible reality television.”
“It’s kind of a way to tease people back to support the live arts, the real arts, the original arts,” she said. “I feel like once they go, they’ll go again.”
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
It is assumed that the fashionably fabulous ladies stepping out during awards season have endured weeks of vigorous diet and exercise before their big day, but Parks and Recreation star Amy Poehler wants you to know that she's not one of them.
Pics: Hit or Miss? The Screen Actors Guild Awards!
When asked about her red carpet regimen for Sunday's SAG Awards, a gorgeous-looking Poehler (in sparkling black Zuhair Murad) shrugged, admitting to ET's Rocsi Diaz the glitz and glamour isn't her thing.
"I don't really love getting dressed up," she said, "so I try to make it as painless as possible."
Pics: The Hottest 2013 SAG Gowns
Apparently, the same applies for Poehler's red carpet-body regimen.
"I probably should [diet and exercise]," concedes Poehler. "But I just don't care."
She adds, "I'm sure I need it, but I'm just too tired to do it."
AP
John and Patsy Ramsey, parents of slain child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, drew attention from a Colorado grand jury investigating their daughter's death.
The Colorado grand jury looking into the death of JonBenet Ramsey had actually voted to indict the slain tot beauty queen’s parents 13 years ago, though prosecutors decline to press the case, according to a bombshell new report.
The grand jury voted in 1999 to indict both John and Patsy Ramsey on charges of child abuse resulting in death, a Class II felony that can carry up to 48 years in prison, sources told Colorado’s Boulder Daily Camera newspaper.
The paper said Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter never reveled the indictment vote, but refused to sign it.
He announced the end of the investigation, telling the media: “I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant a filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time.”
The former child beauty queen was murdered in the family’s Boulder home on Christmas Day in 1996.
ZUMA PRESS
JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered on Christmas Day in 1996.
While Patsy died in 2006, a lawyer for John Ramsey yesterday hailed Hunter’s actions.
“If what you report actually happened, then there were some very professional and brave people in Alex’s office,” his attorney Bryan Morgan told the paper.
Experts are unclear whether the DA’s acted properly in not signing the indictment, the paper said.
Warm congratulations to my friend and Miami Woman’s Club sister Dolly MacIntyre, who will be honored as the club’s Historian of the Year for 2013 on Tuesday at the monthly luncheon meeting.
Dolly has been a resident of Miami for 56 years. She began her involvement with local history and historic preservation in 1966. She is a kind and unassuming woman who goes about doing good works without blowing her own horn and she is a highly acclaimed activist for historic preservation and the recipient of numerous awards for dedicated service.
In 2012, she received the Mary Call Darby Collins Award from the state of Florida for her preservation work. Early on, she became a charter member of the Villagers and founding president of the Dade Heritage Trust, and today she remains active in both organizations.
Dolly is a lonttime member and past officer of the MWC, the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove, the Dade County Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Women’s History Coalition. In addition, she is a board and committee member of many community organizations.
The luncheon will begin at 11:30 a.m. with networking, with lunch and the program to follow at noon in the Ballroom of the Doubletree Grand Hotel, 1717 N. Bayshore Dr.
You can still make reservations and pre-order for vegetarian option by calling Nancy Smith at 305-891-3789. The cost is $25 for members and $35 for non members.
Retired FIU professor honored for book
There’s a lot to be happy about today. Howard B. Rock, Florida International University professor of history emeritus, recently was awarded the Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year at the 2012 National Jewish Book Awards. The award was announced Jan. 15 by the Jewish Book Council and was for the three-volume series City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York of which Rock wrote the first volume, Haven of Liberty: New York Jews in the New world, 1654-1865.
Rock shared the top Jewish book award with Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, who authored the second volume, "Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840-1920", Jeffrey S. Gurock, who wrote the third volume, "Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City, 1920-2010", and noted Jewish historian Deborah Dash Moore, who was the general editor of the project.
Rock, a Miami resident and member of Temple Israel of Greater Miami, also co-authored a history of New York Jewry. He taught American history for 36 years at FIU. His speciality is early American history to 1815, early American social history, the history of New York City, early American labor history and early American political history. In addition, he has published an/or edited five books, including Artisans of the New Republic, The New York Artisan, Keepers of the Revolution, The American Artisans, and A History of New York Images.
Guest composer at FIU
The Florida International School of Music will present a program, “East Meets West,” with guest composer Chinary Ung and the FIU Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center, 10910 SW 17th St.
Also featured on the program is the Amernet String Quartet and the NOBUS ensemble and the music of Ung, Garcia, Sudol, Jen and Colangelo.
The concert is free and open to the public.
MDC leader to speak in Homestead
You are invited to hear Jeanne Jacobs, president of the Miami Dade College Homestead campus at noon on Feb. 4, at the Homestead Community Center, 1601 N. Krome Ave. Jacobs is the Black History Month speaker at the Bea Peskoe Lunchtime Lecture series, presented free by the Homestead Center for the Arts.
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