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ZIMBABWE’S RULER ROBERT Mugabe has lashed out at Europe’s “homosexual nonsense” and condemned the refusal of its leaders to accept his grip on power in his latest marathon tirade.
“The Europe of yesterday is gone, we have a Europe of today which has no principles at all,” the 90-year-old told a crowd of thousands gathered in a Harare stadium today to mark 34 years since the country’s independence from Britain.
Mugabe, who has been Zimbabwe’s ruler since independence, faces EU sanctions as a result of his authoritarian rule. He refused to attend an EU-Africa summit earlier this month after his wife was denied a visa to enter Europe.
“The Europeans will never ever accept a ZANU-PF government in this country,” he said, referring to the political party he dominates.
“What is natural is made unnatural. And what is unnatural they want to say it is natural,” he said in the speech, which lasted an hour and a half.
Mugabe repeated his claims that Europe is trying to force gay rights on Africa.
“(Europe says) If you pass a law that rejects homosexual marriages we will punish you like they are doing to Uganda and us,” he said.
Let Europe keep their homosexual nonsense there and not cross over with it here.
Mugabe, who once said gays and lesbians are worse than pigs and dogs, warned Western diplomats in Zimbabwe against preaching gay rights, saying they would be deported.
His election victory last year was rejected by many Western countries amid claims of widespread rigging and intimidation.
But a defiant Mugabe has refused to brook any dissent, and threatened the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, saying its plan to lead protests over the deteriorating economy and high unemployment would not be accepted.
“We shall never tolerate acts of violence,” he said.
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Coming soon – Aldi OS
Obviously to be followed the week after by the Lidl one
Would the windows os smartphones not be the third and Firefox the fourth?
They.have blackberry and now tizen to deal with too.
LOL Microsoft mobile products. That’s a good one. Its already dead in the water along with Nokia who is flogging them. They’ve recently indicated they’re ready to make android phones in the near future and to prevent its total destruction and no amount of cash MS throws at then will make or worth their while.
I don’t see what niche Firefox OS is going to service. Their browser has been hemorrhaging users to Chrome for years, and iOS and Android are mature systems which are meeting most users needs. Another OS is just another headache for developers and users.
I have to agree with Eric here, i think they’ll struggle, android is already more or less free to use, Apple has it’s market. if these guys have a few good ideas they will just be copied by the others. Android became established because they were up against an established closed expensive opposition, they came in with the concept of being free, someone else now has to compete with two established companies the slick apple designs and the open free androids.
What’s the Firefox edge?
While OpenSource is great and all, the reality is constantly full of bugs – FireFox browser is one of the most resource heavy applications you can run
Agreed, the Android SDK feels like it’s being held together with duct tape.
You’re talking crap. If open source is so buggy then linux wouldn’t be powering 70% or more of the worlds servers. I could go on and on with examples of the crap you are talking but I think my first point illustrates it nicely.
Conor, I was referring to FireFox and it’s browser with its countless bugs, not Linux which I am fully aware of
http://m.threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/firefox-18-brings-21-updates-fixes-nearly-3000-bugs-010913
They’re really coming to the market *very* late. When you consider that even the mobile industry giant that is Nokia struggled (and ultimately failed) to get their next generation Maemo / Meego smartphone OS to market and even Windows Mobile 8 isn’t getting all that much traction so far, you’d have to wonder if there’s space for yet another mobile OS ?
To me, it looks like Android is becoming to the mobile/tablet world what Windows is to the desktop world i.e. the de facto OS. It already has 68.4% of the global market!!
Apple’s iOS is occupying a similar (but bigger) space to the Mac OS for laptops/desktops i.e. a very respectable market share of almost 20% of the global market, but a closed Apple-only hardware-software solution that occupies a chunk of the market at the high end. With that kind of chunk of the market, at the top end, and controlling the hardware, software and ecosystem (App Store). That still makes Apple an absolutely hugely profitable, runaway success.
Blackberry’s rather niche and business-focused and fighting to stay relevant while Windows Mobile is still to prove itself as a main stream mobile OS. It may well do this year, but the jury’s still out.
Personally, I just can’t see where Firefox’s Mobile OS would find a foothold in the market! It could be a great OS, but it would still have to sign up handset makers and create a massive ecosystem of developers to build apps before it would be even in the same league as Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Getting into the Google / Apple league would be a rather amazing feat if they ever achieved it!
I don’t think it’s much of a challenge to Google or Apple to be perfectly honest.
There is always a market, especially in one as competitive as the mobile phone market. The problem is you need to offer something unique that sets your product apart. iOS has simplicity, Android has customisation and Blackberry’s OS is marketed as a business solution.
Microsoft didn’t offer anything new to set it apart other than the name. What will this offer? If it does bring something new it will find traction but if it doesn’t it will be dead in the water.
I guess you’re not anybody these days unless you have a mobile operating system.
Its not going to be here 2013. Thus is firmly a third world is for this year. Cheap and cheerful, wil probably be really successful at that
Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Mobile are the big 4.
Now it seems everyone and their mother are making operating systems for phones: Firefox, Ubuntu, Samsung Tizen. Symbian and bada are still alive somewhere.
More OS’ means more time developers take to make apps for each platform which in turn means slower updates, more bugs and less stable.
Probably means the browser…
Uh, reply to Partysaurus this was.
Mybe if they went with decent manufacturers they might have a chance but generally ZTE LG and Heuwei don’t make great handsets. This is talking from experience.
have your say