Conservationists were not aware that the Persian Leopard still roamed the mountains of Afghanistan. But a series of a photographs taken from a camera trap give indisputable evidence that the large predator is still living in the region.

A series of photographs show an adult Persian Leopard as it inspects, then threatens, a camera hidden in the Hindu Kush highlands.

Ghani Ghuriani, Afghanistan’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, said that the presence of a large predator, like the Persian Leopard, ”means that the rangelands can still support ibex, urial, and other species, which is a good sign for both wildlife and the people of this region who also depend on these grasslands for grazing.”

MSNBC reports that the Persian Leopard isn’t the only rare animal that has been photographed by camera traps. The Wildlife Conservation Society has snapped photos of a lynx, a stone marten, a red fox, and other wild cats. Unfortunately, the cameras have also captured poachers.

Deputy director of WCS’s Asia program, Peter Zahler, said:

“We are thrilled by these images and the story of survival that they tell, but we were sobered by the fact that the cameras also took photographs of local people walking past with guns. Poaching is still a very real threat, and WCS is committed to helping the Afghan government and local communities protect these rare and beautiful animals.”

Yahoo! reports that the WCS and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have been helping the Afghanistan Government to launch initiatives aimed at protecting its wildlife. The country has created its first ever list of protected species and opened its first national park, Band-e-Amir, in 2009.

Rare Persian Leopard Caught on Film is a post from: The Inquisitr

The never-ending saga of the mighty mouse company taking on of the Goliath of elitism and aesthetic perfection has taken yet another rather strange turn of events. Yes folks the sad story of Psystar being hunted to the ends of the court system has reached what can only be termed a rather strange resolution.

Today it was announced that Apple and Psystar have agreed to settle a 17-month lawsuit that will see Psystar from pre-installing Mac OS X on the generic Intel based computers that Psystar sells. Yet the agreement may not stop the company from selling Mac clones as Psystar has laid out the argument that would shift the responsibility for installing Apple’s operating system on to the customer.

Part of Apple’s response to this?

Apple has agreed to voluntarily dismiss all its trademark, trade-dress, and state law claims. As a result of this partial settlement the need for a trial is eliminated and reduces the issues before the court in regards to the scope of any permanent injunction on Apple’s copyright claims. This was the injunction that would have seen the hammer brought down on Psystar effectively shutting down the company for good. Not so now.

Huh?

Well it all seems to center around a piece of software that Psystar has created that would allow customers to install OS X onto any generic PC. Psystar is arguing that the software called Rebel EFI is completely Psystar property and in no way includes any Apple trademarked code.

“Psystar argues only that any injunction from this Court should not extend to Rebel EFI, a Psystar product that is presently the subject of litigation in the Florida case, that is composed exclusively of Psystar software, that is not sold in conjunction with any hardware, and that is sold entirely apart from any copy of Mac OS X or any computer running Mac OS X,” Psystar said.

Source: Computerworld

By getting Rebel EFI excluded from any of the proceeding Psystar is effectively moving the responsibility of installing OS X onto generic Intel based PC onto the consumer. So on one hand Apple gets some satisfaction by appearing to smack down some upstart company as well as maintaining its copyright and trademarks but this is so unlike Apple. After all this is a company notorious for its habit of literally demolishing anyone who they think is infringing on their products or trademarks – they are not a company to give quarter to anyone.

Yet if this argument by Psystar regarding the exclusion of the Rebel EFI software passes muster, and at this point Apple doesn’t seem to be contesting the argument, there would still be a legal avenue for consumers to install OS X on any computer of their choice. Obviously the hope here for Psystar is that it would be one of their systems.

So is this possibly a tacit admission by Apple that while we could stop this if we wanted to let things run their course. If people use this software to try out Mac OS X on some crappy PC Apple will possibly assume that they should be able to move a portion of those people over to their own products arguing that if you liked OS X on a sub optimal machine try it now on a real computer – a Mac.

It’s not like they have anything to lose. they’ve put a irritating upstart back in its place and it now has a possible new way to bring in new customers and they haven’t had to expend a cent developing software that would get a lot of people asking a lot of questions that apple wouldn’t want to answer.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Could Apple use Psystar as a backdoor to a wider consumer marketplace is a post from: The Inquisitr

The latest update to Apple’s Leopard operating system 10.5.7 is causing widespread problems with Mac products including regular OS freezing and overheating issues (both possibly related.)

I know this because my two year old Macbook Pro has been constantly freezing since I installed the update, and when I started searching for a solution it took about 5 seconds in Google to discover that I was far from alone.

My first thought was that the freezing was directly related to the heating problem, and a number of threads say that this might be the case. Macbook Pro’s like the one I own have long been known to have overheating problems, and it has always run hot, so hot that you can’t place it on your lap some days. However until 10.5.7 it has never crashed on a regular basis. The problem though is that it would appear that what ever 10.5.7 does, it’s not just my type of machine having the issue, I’ve read reports of new unibody Macbook’s, iMac’s and even a Mac Pro have the same issues (I’m not game to install it on my Mac Pro yet.) I also implemented a third party fan controller to bump up the fan rate so as to bring the heat under control….and still it freezes on a regular basis.

You don’t have to believe me though: Jeffrey Zeldman who is well known and respected in the design community has reported the exact same thing.

Apple, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on your products because you’ve promised that they just work. Now they don’t. Please fix the issue urgently, it is not acceptable that a laptop I paid $3,300 AUD for constantly crashes and is unusable.

For everyone else: do not install Leopard 10.5.7 if you haven’t yet.

Apple fail: Leopard 10.5.7 causes freezing, overheating issues is a post from: The Inquisitr

For those of you who haven’t placed themselves under some rock somewhere it is kind of hard to escape the fact that Apple hosted its World Wide Developer Conference today that saw line-ups around a whole city block. As usual the rumors and prognostications have been going strong leading up to this morning’s keynote speech and as expected primed up the troops for their dose of Apple goodness.

So I guess it’s kind of cool that they rebranded the current iPhone as … the iPhone but with a kill the Pre buzz price of $99.00. This of course opened up the way for the announcement every iPhone fan was waiting for – well at least some of what they had been hoping for. Video, Voice Control, Auto focus, and of course the holy grail of the one feature to rule them all – cut and paste. all this goodness that has existed on other smartphones for years for the price of $199 (16GB) or $299 (32GB).

Not to mention that for everywhere else except the US iPhone 3GS (S for speed WooHoo!) users would have MMS and tethering capabilities at some point after the 19th of June. For the AT&T suckers customers – well you’ll just have to wait for some undeclared future point in time.

Now the real interesting point for me was the announcement of Snow Leopard being available for $29.00. For those not familiar with this new release of OS X it is an upgrade to the existing Leopard release of the Apple operating system. For anyone else who is having to get it for the first time it’ll still cost you $149.00 (plus the cost of the Mac computer).

In other words they are issuing a service pack that has some enhancements included and you get to pay for the privilege – wow. I can just image the uproar if Microsoft started charging for their service packs, but then of course everyone knows how evil Microsoft is by selling an operating system that can run on just about any computer configuration on the market.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Twitter love-fest and other such useful real-time ego puffing.

[picture courtesy of Digital Daily]

Apple yanks umbilical chord, fanboys get all jizzy is a post from: The Inquisitr

The highlight of the release is Address Book support for syncing with your Google account. To use, users go to preferences with Address Book, add synchronize with Google, then enter their Google account details. Address book does the rest syncing your contact details to and from Google Contacts/ Gmail. Being able to sync contacts was always one of the selling points for a .Mac account, so is Apple planning something there, be it dropping .Mac or something else?

Other fixes include active Directory binding and login, Spotlight searches on remote APF servers, 802.1X behavior and reliability, iChat screensharing, Automator, Parental Controls, and VoiceOver.

The important thing with 10.5.3: it’s safe to install, at least I haven’t had any problems so far after having installed it. This compares to 10.5.2 which was perhaps the buggiest update Apple has ever released. Apple forums were full of people complaining of issues, and it killed both my Macs (relatively new Macbook Pro and MacPro) resulting in both needing fresh installs. On the fresh installs I’d been ignoring the prompts for 10.5.2 ever since.

The Important Thing With Leopard 10.5.3: It’s Safe To Install is a post from: The Inquisitr