Covered at Reason 24/7: Obama Says He Needs Nancy Pelosi as Speaker

The
2016 race for president may already
be getting under way, but there’s a more imminent election in
2014, and the campaigner-in-chief is
in California today raising money for that effort, and, by
extension, for his second-term plans.

From Politico:

President Barack Obama said Wednesday at a DCCC
fundraiser it would be difficult for him to pass a slew of
second-term agenda items without Nancy Pelosi regaining her
speakership.



"I would be dishonest if I didn’t say that it would be a whole lot
easier to govern if I had Nancy Pelosi as Speaker," Obama said at
the second Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser
he attended, this one at the home of San Francisco investor Gordon
Getty.

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don't forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247.

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Covered at Reason 24/7: Obama Says He Needs Nancy Pelosi as Speaker

The
2016 race for president may already
be getting under way, but there’s a more imminent election in
2014, and the campaigner-in-chief is
in California today raising money for that effort, and, by
extension, for his second-term plans.

From Politico:

President Barack Obama said Wednesday at a DCCC
fundraiser it would be difficult for him to pass a slew of
second-term agenda items without Nancy Pelosi regaining her
speakership.


"I would be dishonest if I didn’t say that it would be a whole lot
easier to govern if I had Nancy Pelosi as Speaker," Obama said at
the second Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser
he attended, this one at the home of San Francisco investor Gordon
Getty.

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don't forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247.

Read More

On My Honor Eagle Scout Coalition Says 'Discreet' Gay Boy Scout Participants Are Already Allowed

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) aren't slated to make a decision regarding their controversial policy on gay participants until May, but that hasn't stopped a new group from coming forward with an unusual interpretation of the guidelines.

As Fox News is reporting, a coalition of Eagle Scouts, Scoutmasters and parents have come together as a new organization called OnMyHonor.net. Members of the group say they believe that the BSA's existing policy should not be amended because "discreet" gay participants are already permitted, according to the report.

Calling the BSA "one of the great jewels of American culture," OnMyHonor founder John Stemberger said, "What they want is full-blown gay activism in scouting, and that’s what they can’t have under the current policy.”

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Apple Should Create Stolen iPhone 'Kill Switch,' Says Top City Prosecutor

The top prosecutor in San Francisco wants Apple to design a "kill switch" for iPhones that would render devices useless after they are stolen.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said he pressed an Apple representative last week to embed such technology in every iPhone to diminish the product's value on the thriving black market for stolen mobile devices.

Gascon described the meeting as “very underwhelming," and said he now wants to meet with Apple chief executive Tim Cook to discuss development of an iPhone "kill switch."

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More on iTheft

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Hollande Revises Schedule for Withdrawal From Mali, Says Objectives Achieved

French President Francois Hollande has said that
only 1,000 French troops will remain in Mali by the end of the
year. Roughly 4,000 French troops entered Mali in January at the
invitation of the Malian government to expel Islamic militants that
had taken over much of northern Mali.

Throughout the French-led intervention in Mali French officials
have
revised their schedule for withdrawal. The French government is
keen for African forces in Mali to begin taking on more missions.
United Nations Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon recently said that he would like the African forces
to form a peacekeeping force and for another force to be put
together that would be engaged in fighting Islamic militants.
Hollande said that the remaining French troops would
probably be part of the peacekeeping force.

While the French-led intervention has pushed Islamic militants
out of most of their strongholds the political situation in Mali
remains tenuous.

The Tuareg group the National Movement for the Liberation of the
Azawad (NMLA), which originally fought with Islamist fighters
against the Malian government,
appointed its own governor for the Kidal region this week.
Malian soldiers, who have been accused of abuses against
Tuaregs and Arabs, have not been welcomed in some of
the areas previously controlled by Islamic militants.

Hollande has said that he wants the Malian election to be held
in July, though the French will not be backing any particular
candidate. However, the political instability in parts of the
country shows that although the Islamic militants may be gone the
political situation is not stable. From
UPI:

French and Malian forces have since liberated key northern
cities like Timbuktu and Gao.

However, local militia member Moussa Boureima Yoro told France
24 there's no formal political presence in Gao.

"How can they ask us to go and vote? For who? And what for? It's
clear we represent nothing in Malian politics," he said. "So we,
alone, need to make our own destiny and transform this town."

The French report notes Gao in February became the first city in
Mali to experience a suicide bombing. Residents told the newspaper
they haven't seen a politician from the capital since the French
intervention.

The worst of the fighting against Islamic militants may well be
over, but the political struggle ahead could very well present
plenty of additional problems for French and Malian
forces. 

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VMware Says PayPal, Is NOT Ditching Its Software

Our story that PayPal was rolling out OpenStack, a new, hot cloud-computing operating system, with eventual plans for PayPal and its parent company, eBay, to rip out VMware software from tens of thousands of servers caused quite a stir.

That's because a big cloud computing company can act as a role model for other enterprises.

We heard from sources that the story sparked panicked, angry phone calls between top executives at VMware, eBay, and Mirantis, the cloud-computing company that helps companies install OpenStack, which told us about the project.

On Wednesday, VMware's senior vice president, Bogomil Balkansky, published a blog post that quoted a PayPal executive promising that PayPal wouldn't entirely ditch VMware.

Here's what Nat Rajesh Natarajan, VP of platform engineering and operations at PayPal, told VMware:

Our initiative with OpenStack is intended to enable agility, innovation and choice. We’re not interested in a “rip and replace’ approach. In fact, this collaboration will help us utilize robust virtualization technologies such as VMware. They are a valued PayPal partner, and we intend to continue leveraging their core strengths in our cutting edge cloud environment.

That's not what PayPal told Business Insider. A PayPal spokesperson said in an email that the company had adopted some OpenStack software, but still had some VMware software in place.

PayPal can opt for OpenStack for its cloud, instead of VMware's vCloud, and still use VMware's main product, its "hypervisor" software, which allows servers to run multiple types of software, including operating systems, at once. OpenStack works with a bunch of hypervisors.

PayPal told us it also uses Red Hat technology. Red Hat has a hypervisor, too, called KVM. KVM works with OpenStack, too.

As we previously reported, most enterprises are not looking to ditch VMware's hypervisor to save money because they like how reliably it works. But low-cost alternatives to its hypervisor, such as KVM, or even Microsoft's Hyper-V, abound.

They'll be watching the big vendors like PayPal to see how they build their clouds and which technologies they use.

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