● 01.22.11

● Links 22/1/2011: Pardus 2011, Red Hat’s Andreas

Posted in News Roundup at 1:22 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• I’ve recently turned to looking at lighter weight distros with lower impact on on the limited resources. After some research I found an excellent article on Tuxradar which attempts to answer the question What’s the best lightweight linux distro? I’ve seen a few excellent options and after further reading the distro I’m particularly interested in trying is Lubuntu. All I need now is time, hopefully I will be able to try Lubuntu over the next few days. I will of course be posting a first impressions followed by a review.

• The Linux blogosphere is “all shook up” these days, skewering Sony for suing a hacker for jailbreaking the PS3, and hammering Mozilla for skimping on hardware acceleration in the Linux Firefox 4 beta. Meanwhile, Google’s decision to drop H.264 from its Chrome browser for open source alternatives received praise from the open source world, but also a surprising amount of criticism.

• elLoka Techsolutions Pvt Ltd a Hyderabad based product design and manufacturing company that delivers Ultra Low Cost Computer Platforms(ULCCP), has come up with a palm-sized computer that is very cheap and consumes very little power.

• Searching is one of the five major functions of computerized information processing: searching, creating, modifying, storing and presenting. In the early days of PCs one could keep a scrap of paper or such with a list of floppies and a directory listing would get you close to your data sooner or later. Now, one can keep track of stuff on many terabytes of storage in an instant.

• I recently stumbled with this great French site, which contains some of the most amazing Linux wallpapers I have found. Many Linux distributions are featured, including the usual suspects, like Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora, but also some other distros that are perhaps not as popular yet, such as CrunchBang or Pardus.

Server

• Hey, IBM? You know what would be really nice of you? If you could just mention the word “Linux” somewhere in your taping of the show tomorrow. It wouldn’t kill you, would it? Just once, we’d like to hear the word “Linux” out loud on TV. I want to hear how Alex Trebek pronounces it.

Audiocasts/Shows

• I was interviewed by MintCast in Episode 50.

Applications

• I recently switched to vim full time after years of asking myself that question. It seemed like a huge percentage of the better hackers I came across used vim, but all I could see was “no mouse, no IDE goodies, no deal.” Why would anyone subject themselves to that? Well, turns out, here’s why: Vim is ubiquitous

• For web developers who do a decent amount of SSH’ing and editing on a server somewhere, this is huge. Pretty much any Linux box you can find yourself in will have vim installed, and it’s a huge plus when that editor just happens to be the editor you use day in and day out and are comfortable with.

• XPlanetFX is an incredible tool for rendering high quality real time earth wallpaper in Ubuntu. XplanetFX comes with a handy GTK interface which makes things a whole lot simpler. I never knew such a tool even existed until one of our readers mentioned us about it.

• Announced today the release of Radio Tray 0.6.2, this new version comes to fix some bugs…

• The ever-expanding world of chat clients and servers makes selecting a solution an exercise worthy of a trade study. In our search for the right instant messaging solution, we tried many that were too big and many that were too small. But we found one that was just right: an easily configured XMPP (aka Jabber) server that is compatible with the majority of today’s key clients (Jabber, Momentum, Pidgin, and so on). It’s also nice that this server — Ignite Realtime’s Openfire — is open source and saved us money.

Proprietary

• We have just pushed a new Opera 11.00 release for Linux and FreeBSD to our ftp, deb and download servers. The reason we’re doing this is that we just realized that the signing key for Debian packages expires the 23rd this month. Since Opera 11.01 is slated to be shipped after this date, we need to issue an updated Opera 11.00 with a new signing key before that, so that people are actually able to update to Opera 11.01 using the default package manager.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Shadow Clones is a 3D top down shooter where you play a role of space commando left alone on a military base infested with aliens on Mars.

• Years ago, when I was in high school, I remember getting very addicted to turn-based adventure strategy games like the popular Ultima series.

• The allure of these games is that they draw you into the plot with an interesting and emotional plot with intrigue and adventure.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Pardus 2009.2 “Geronticus Eremita” Live CD This one’s going to be short. I selected Pardus, saw a little bit of boot text, and then…nothing. I was stuck at a blank screen. I tried again, this time waiting for 15 minutes — still nothing. I find it slightly ironic that Pardus won the last comparison test considering that it couldn’t even start here. Then again, I have a strong suspicion that it’s an issue with MultiSystem and that MultiSystem doesn’t support Pardus nearly as well as its (MultiSystem’s) developer(s) thought it would. Oh well. That was the end of that.

GNOME Desktop

• GNOME 3 is the GNOME project’s ambitious effort to take its desktop into the future. A key component of the desktop is the window manager, which defines much of the overall feel of the system. Thomas Thurman, the maintainer of Metacity—GNOME’s current window manager—is looking ahead to “Mutter” as the window manager for GNOME 3. Metacity 2 will gradually be phased out in favor of Mutter; in GNOME 2.28 it will be an alternative window manager, while in GNOME 3, it will take over the reins from Metacity.

Distributions

• I’ll admit it right here: Gentoo is my primary operating system and remains my favorite distribution of Linux.

• For those of you were waiting for Pardus 2011, the waiting is finally over!

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

Red Hat Family

• Latest price action range, defined by a peaks and troughs algorithm places calculated support at $45.50 and calculated resistance at $48.78. These levels will be closely watched by traders, as they provide great insight into the latest price dynamics defined by Red Hat shares.

• Kevin Fenzi, one of release-engineers for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) and long time member of the EPEL Fedora Special Interest Group (SIG) discusses the EPEL 6 release.

• Andreas currently detects bugs in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 cases, and is expected to quickly expand to include additional products, including earlier versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and our JBoss Enterprise Middleware product suite.

Debian Family

• Debian’s announcement to release “Squeeze” with a completely free Linux kernel caused quite some attention, which is actually a good thing. However, it also seems to have caused quite some uncertainty and was often partially misunderstood and miss quoted.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• At the time of writing this article, Ubuntu 11.04 codenamed “Natty Narwhal” is still very much in its nascent stages of development. I really wanted to take it for a spin and write about my first hand impressions on latest build Ubuntu Natty. I installed Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Alpha 1 in my USB drive and things went pretty smooth from the word go.

• Canonical, the business arm of Ubuntu, has one of the most promising business models in the Linux world, and also the most misunderstood. First of all, Ubuntu is in a market termed by economists as a perfectly competitive market. This means that it cannot charge any price beyond that which is determined by the market. The only way to make profit, as has rightly been identified by Canonical is to create an ecosystem of products and services around Ubuntu, which would complement the functions of the OS.

• This is model of making profit is not new. There are other companies that make money from this method. Give the primary product for free but then create other value added products and services that complements this primary product. To make profit from this kind of business model takes time and a lot of investment. Mark Shuttleworth, the financial backbone of the Ubuntu project rightly knows so and is doing exactly that. Most critics of the Ubuntu distro, are convinced that it’s only a matter of time before Ubuntu also capitulates like its predecessors for lack of funds. They couldn’t be further from reality.

• Honestly, I’m not surprised by this. We’ve been down this road once before, with the original Ubuntu Netbook Remix requiring advanced graphic support, and in subsequent releases it was adapted to work quite adequately without the fancy graphic bells and whistles. If there is anything surprising about it, it is that Canonical/Ubuntu didn’t learn the lesson the first time. If you are going to start dictating hardware requirements to your users, and demanding that they have nothing but the absolute latest, greatest and most powerful systems, then you might want to consider changing your name to “Microsoft”.

Flavours and Variants

• Much of E17′s functionality is contained in modules.

• I am also especially pleased to welcome Christopher Michael (devilhorns) to our team. Christopher has been working with the Enlightenment development team for nearly ten years. He is working hand in hand with the Bodhi team and community to get any issues that occur with the desktop corrected ASAP. He will also be coding some new things that will allow Bodhi to provide a better desktop experience for everyone.

Free Software/Open Source

• Once the term “open source software” was coined, it was also defined. The official Open Source Definition is clear, and explains how software must be licensed to qualify as open source software. The specific points of the Definition address issues related to:

• 1. Redistribution 2. Source Code 3. Derived Works 4. Integrity of the Author’s Source Code 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor 7. Distribution of License 8. License Product Specificity 9. License Restrictions on Other Software 10. License Technology Neutrality

• Perhaps for that reason, since 2008 Cisco Systems, EMC, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, and others have dropped off its membership rolls, as pointed out on TechRights.

• These companies may recognize the PR hit they take each time the BSA succeeds in nabbing an alleged pirate. But perhaps they also recognize that there are better ways to policy piracy.

• With over 100 audio and video formats, FFmpeg is at the heart of countless multimedia programs, and it is one of the show-piece projects on the open source scene. Originally founded by Fabrice Bellard, Michael Niedermayer started maintaining the project in 2004. However, a team of 18 developers has now ousted him and appointed seven new project maintainers, among them the main x264 developer, Jason Garrett-Glaser (“Dark Shikari”), and Ronald S. Bultje. Some of the most active FFmpeg developers had been dissatisfied with Niedermayer’s project management and had accused him of slowing down the development of the codec library, which is licensed under the GPL / LGPL, by focussing on unnecessary details and causing superfluous discussions.

• Data security is always top of mind for CIOs and CSOs, and there is no shortage of challenges when it comes to picking the right tool for the job.

• With network and software vulnerabilities growing at a perpetual rate, good security software can help defend against many of the large-scale threats that occur locally and from all over the Internet.

Events

• The annual conference is one of the largest Open Source conferences in the southern hemisphere, and one of three major international grassroots Linux conferences worldwide, the other two being Linux Symposium and Linux Kongress.

• Originally founded in 1999 by Linux Kernel Hacker Rusty Russell under the acronym “CALU,” the conference changed its name to linux.conf.au in 2001, when it was held in Sydney.

Databases

• You’ve just heaved a sigh of relief after the latest release of your online system—but you can already see troubled times ahead, with performance issues cropping up after adding on just a few concurrent users. You don’t have time for elaborate load or scalability testing, since the user count will grow rapidly in the next few weeks. As the solutions architect, you know that you’ll get the maximum returns on your investment of effort by taming the database. Will you start scrambling for tools, hoping they will help you? Or will you simply decide to throw more powerful hardware at the system, to postpone solving the problem?

• The approach we advocate is to tune your MySQL database system for the most efficient performance before you begin throwing new hardware at the problem, or begin re-designing the very solution itself. Let’s learn to use some very effective tools—most of which are included in your MySQL installation—to make this process a pleasure. We can start right away if you are ready to take the plunge.

Oracle

• Colbourne later recounted that “Shortly after the merger I spoke to a Sun employee who was now employed by Oracle. Their view was that Oracle had no idea what they had really bought with Java. The meaning was that Oracle did not understand the role of the wider community in the success of Java”. Since then, a specification for Java SE 7 has been released, but Oracle’s intransigence on the IP issue has led the Apache Software Foundation to leave the JCP.

CMS

• When Drupal 7 was released that meant that Drupal 5 was no longer supported. This announcement is merely a reminder of that fact. It is the policy (and, to large extent a matter of pragmatics) of the Drupal community to support only the current major release of Drupal (currently Drupal 7.x), and the previous release (currently Drupal 6.x). See Drupal’s version info for more details on this policy.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The GNU Icecat project is a web browser built to deal with the influx of threats to freedom and privacy on the web from traps such as nonfree plugins and nonfree JavaScript.

Government/Transparency

• The European Council has some difficulties to apply the TURCO judgement of the ECJ which clearly mandates a disclosure of legal advice unrelated to court proceedings. Legal advice concerning the enhanced cooperation on an unitary patent, they think they are permitted to keep it confidential. I strongly doubt so.

Standards/Consortia

• There will be no HTML version 6 or version 6.2.3, or any other numbered version. Instead, HTML will just be considered a “living document,” one that will be updated on an ongoing basis, said Ian Hickson, a member of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), in a blog post Wednesday.

Leftovers

• A student who admitted throwing a fire extinguisher from the roof of Millbank Tower during November’s tuition fees protests was sentenced to 32 months in jail today by a judge who warned those who abuse the right of peaceful protest to expect lengthy custodial sentences.

• Italy’s constitutional court has opened the way for Silvio Berlusconi to be put back on trial, throwing out crucial parts of the law that represented his latest attempt to shield himself from prosecution.

• Buildings kill people, not earthquakes. The seismologists’ saying has never been more true, with deaths from tremors continuing to rise despite advances in earthquake resistant design.

Health/Nutrition

• In the first part of a special BMJ series, Brian Deer exposes the bogus data behind claims that launched a worldwide scare over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and reveals how the appearance of a link with autism was manufactured at a London medical school

Defence/Police/Aggression

• The undercover police officer whose seven-year infiltration of the green protest movement has sparked widespread controversy is said to have named another eco-activist as a fellow police spy, the Guardian can reveal.

• One of three police officers revealed by the Guardian to have infiltrated the green protest movement has been restricted from duty pending an investigation into his professional conduct.

• Jim Boyling, who carried out covert surveillance for five years while undercover as eco-activist Jim Sutton, was accused of engaging in sexual relationships with targets. It emerged this week that Boyling had married an activist and had gone on to have two children with her before divorcing two years ago.

• The undercover police officer whose unmasking led to the collapse of a trial of six environmental protesters on Monday apparently also worked as a corporate spy, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

• So “Mark Stone” was not acting alone. The most extraordinary feature of the police penetration of the green movement was the alleged presence of a woman constable, “and others … lots of others.” I looked again at the picture of the Ratcliffe Six, who appeared to be “greens” from central casting. It recalled Chesterton’s satire on the early Met police special branch, The Man Who Was Thursday, in which all the members of the “supreme anarchist council” turned out to be policemen. So, are the greens all policemen, and if so what is their game?

• “The endurance of the gun in America is not about nostalgia for a golden past,” says Sugarmann. “It’s about political fear. Politicians have abandoned their moral responsibility to ensure public safety because of the perceived power of the gun lobby.”

• To the extent that any liberals have talked like number 2 about conservatives, that is beyond the pale and unacceptable. I don’t think I’ve done it. I use big words and I snarl and I sneer and I call people idiots and liars and so forth, but I don’t say things like let’s have open season on right-wingers, or don’t retreat, reload. I don’t use that kind of imagery. If I have, I am sorry. But I don’t think I have. Guns aren’t part of my life, so it’s just not the imagery that comes to mind for me.

• If one giant outfit gives war profiteering its full modern meaning, though, it’s Lockheed Martin. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you read today’s post. As much as any robber baron of the nineteenth century, that corporation has long deserved its own biography. Now, William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, has written Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, the definitive account of how that company came to lord it over our national security world.

• UPDATE: Today, the Israeli Military Court has accepted the military prosecution’s appeal to extend Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s sentence. Abu Rahmah was supposed to be released on November 18th 2010, but was kept in detention at the military prosecution’s request despite having finished serving his term. He will now serve an additional 2-3 months in prison, making his serving time a total of sixteen months.

• Jonathan Pollak, an activist against the occupation and a leader of the group Anarchists Against the Wall, is due to enter Hermon Prison this morning to serve the three-month term to which he was sentenced for illegal assembly. In January 2008 Pollak took part in a protest by bicycle riders in Tel Aviv against the siege of the Gaza Strip. Some 30 riders participated in the demonstration, but Pollak was the only one arrested, tried and punished. His arrest should trouble every citizen who cares about human rights in Israel.

• Pollak had participated in a peaceful, non-violent demonstration, which is not merely the right of every citizen, but also the duty of everyone who wishes to fight against wrong. In similar demonstrations that took place on highways, such as that of the motorcyclists against raising insurance rates or the demonstration by firefighters, no one was arrested. The fact that Pollak was the only one arrested in the cyclists’ demonstration raises serious suspicions that he was being singled out by police and the courts because of his long struggle against the occupation.

• [...]

• Pollak’s incarceration is a dark day: not only for Pollak but for all those who fear for democracy in Israel.

• Three-hundred Palestinians were displaced Wednesday afternoon when their homes outside a village were torn down by Israeli military order, and witnesses said parts of a schoolhouse were also destroyed.

• Ivory Coast is on the brink of civil war, and chocolate companies could play a critical role in saving lives and bringing peace.

• Under Australian law, inciting violence is a serious crime: an offense which could even trigger the prosecution of members of the US political class and mainstream media who called for the assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to his attorney.

• Comments by Robert Stary, Assange’s Melbourne-based lawyer, were carried in the US by a Friday broadcast of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Conservationists have unveiled plans to preserve and protect the world’s most important species of coral, in a response to increasing threats that they say will lead to “functional extinction” within decades.

• Led by scientists at the Zoological Society of London, the Edge Coral Reefs project has identified 10 coral species in most urgent risk of becoming extinct.

• The final report from the presidential commission investigating the causes of BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster is expected to recommend today that the US oil industry adopt the North Sea approach to safety.

• The US government is expected to radically overhaul its discredited regulatory regime covering offshore operations, which had merely required companies to fill out uniform box-ticking safety audits. It is also expected that the commission will recommend the setting up of an independent safety institute responsible for auditing companies’ plans.

• BP failed to observe proper environmental safety procedures during construction of an oil pipeline in Colombia, according to allegations in a case lodged by a group of farmers at the high court in London.

• The case comes at the worst possible time for BP as it deals with the fallout from the new report into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the shutdown of the Trans-Alaska pipeline on Saturday after a leak.

• On January 11, the oil spill commission released its final reporting. The report offers a sweep of reforms that would protect taxpayers and make offshore drilling safer for workers, while also protecting the environment and Gulf Coast businesses from future oil spills that damage wetlands and hurt the region’s fishing and tourism industries.

• While it is no longer surprising, it remains disheartening to see a blistering attack on climate science in the business press where thoughtful reviews of climate policy ought to be appearing. Of course, the underlying strategy is to pretend that no evidence that the climate is changing exists, so any effort to address climate change is a waste of resources.

• A recent piece by Larry Bell in Forbes, entitled “Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts”, is a classic example.

• The year of devastating floods, freak snowstorms, forest fires and heatwaves that was 2010 has tied for the warmest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today.

• The Earth’s temperature was 0.62C (1.12F) above the 20th-century average of 13.9C(57F), tying 2005 for the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880, the analysis by the National Climatic Data Centre showed.

• The researchers found that the survival rates for king penguins with flipper bands dropped by 16% and the birds produced 39% fewer chicks. The finding raises serious questions about the ethics of banding penguins for research and casts doubt on years of data produced by tagging the birds in this way.

• The government’s Green Investment Bank could fund the building of new nuclear reactors, it has emerged.

Finance

• Britain’s banks have been given the go-ahead to pay unlimited bonuses, drawing to a close a two-year political battle to rein in the City.

• After months in which a series of government ministers of all parties have threatened a toughening in the stance over City bonuses, Downing Street said the government did not intend to intervene in the pay of the UK’s top bankers.

• Paul Krugman joined a debate on the morality of markets, arguing that the United States has not met the fundamental condition of equality of opportunity that libertarian conservatives agree is necessary for fairness. While this is true (only in looney tune land does a kid growing up in Anacostia have the same opportunity as a kid growing up in Chevy Chase), this argument wrongly cedes the main point to the right.

• It is ridiculous to argue that the inequality in the U.S. is simply the result of free markets. Markets are structured by governments, and the rich have used their control of the government to structure the market in ways to make themselves richer.

• The mechanisms for upward redistribution can be seen everywhere.

• The Ibanez case ruled against the lender in a lender-borrower dispute over the validity of a foreclosure proceeding is not just a highly political homeowners’ protection issue. It sets a precedent expected to greatly affect the mortgage industry in the future.

• Creditors and shareholders will now have to absorb some of the losses when the federal government steps in to dismantle large failing financial firms.

• Fewer credit card accounts slipped into default in December than in any other month of 2010, and signs point to further improvement ahead.

• Goldman Sachs executives have long been among the most richly paid on Wall Street in the best of times. They are now poised to reap a windfall that was sown in the dark days of the financial crisis in 2008.

• Nearly 36 million stock options were granted to employees in December 2008 — 10 times the amount issued the previous year — when the stock was trading at $78.78. Since those uncertain days, Goldman’s business has roared back and its share price has more than doubled, closing on Tuesday at nearly $175.

• President Obama on Tuesday ordered “a governmentwide review” of federal regulations to root out those “that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive,” but he exempted many agencies that most vex corporate America.

• The White House announced a new government-wide review of regulations Tuesday, heeding the call of business groups.

• In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, President Obama said the country’s “excessive” and “inconsistent” regulations have sometimes had a “chilling effect” on job growth and — in a nod to the priorities of the new House Republican majority — observed that small businesses often bear the burden.

• The European Union finance ministers vowed Tuesday to closely monitor rules governing bankers’ compensation while promising that new banking stress tests would be stricter than the ones conducted last year.

• The chairman of a financial services oversight panel sent a letter to Elizabeth Warren, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying he is skeptical of the new bureau’s very existence and demanded details about how it will operate.

• Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), who chairs an oversight panel of the Financial Services Committee, said in the letter sent Tuesday that he thinks Warren is “tasked with executing a fatally flawed plan.”

• Citigroup Inc. was profitable in the fourth quarter, but only after reaching into reserves that it no longer needed for loan losses. Revenues from trading stocks and bonds fell sharply.

• The New York bank reported fourth-quarter income of $1.3 billion Tuesday, or 4 cents a share, falling short of the 7 cents expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet. Citi’s stock fell 6 percent to $4.82 in heavy trading.

• Goldman Sachs’s decision to offer shares of Facebook only to offshore investors is simple risk management. The risk here can be attributable to the scrutiny that this transaction, and Goldman Sachs generally, are now under.

• About a week ago, I discussed the legal issues associated with the Goldman-Facebook share sale. One of the items I noted was that in order to make sure that the full registration requirements of the securities laws were inapplicable, Goldman could not engage in a “general solicitation” of shareholders.

Politics/PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The sentiments expressed in this letter may have more meaning more for you now that the results of the mid-term elections are clear. You have seen what can happen when a number of your supporters lose their enthusiasm and stay home or do not actively participate as volunteers.

• In your first two years, you have developed a wide asymmetry between your association with Big Business executives and the leaders of national civic and labor groups whose members are in the tens of millions. You have met repeatedly at the White House and other locales with corporate officials, spoken to their gatherings and even traveled abroad with them to promote their exports.

• Recently on your trip to India with a covey of business leaders, you vigorously touted their products, some by brand name (Boeing and Harley-Davidson’s expensive motorcycles). Your traveling companions could not have been more gratified as you legitimized their view that WTO trade rules were a net plus for employment in the United States as well as India. Imagine—the President as business agent.

• His story is one of many that reflect the callous nature of the ordeal several returnees have had to face: continued isolation and enforced separation from their families. Lahmar and his wife and children, the youngest of whom he’s never seen – an all too familiar consequence of the Guantánamo experiment – continue to live apart, as he has no way of getting to Bosnia, nor they of coming to France.

• FBI agents are taking advantage of an American teenager’s detention in Kuwait to illegally harass and interrogate him without counsel, the teen’s lawyer said Wednesday. Gulet Mohamed, a Somali-born American Muslim, says he was tortured and interrogated after he was detained by Kuwaiti security officials last month. He claims that Kuwaiti interrogators asked him questions about his travels, his past, and his family that he and his lawyer believe were fed to the Kuwaitis by US officials.

• Sometime during Barack Obama’s term in office, there’s a good chance an American citizen will be killed on the president’s orders.

• The Department of State has denied a Freedom of Information Act request that environmental groups filed seeking a record of correspondence between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a former member of her campaign staff who is now lobbying for an international oil services company. The company is seeking approval from the State Department for a massive oil pipeline that would run from Canada to Texas.

• Friends of the Earth, Corporate Ethics International and the Center for International Environmental Law submitted the request last month, seeking any communication between Clinton’s office and the top lobbyist for TransCanada, Paul Elliott, who served as her national deputy director during the 2008 campaign. The ties between the two have drawn scrutiny, as the State Department is in the process of deciding whether to approve TransCanada’s proposal for the Keystone XL pipeline. Clinton raised ire among environmental groups and some senators when she indicated last October that the pipeline would likely be approved despite the fact that the evaluation of the proposal is still underway.

Censorship

• Unfortunately, a set of mine with hundreds of photos in it has now been almost entirely deleted on Flickr. Oddly Flickr deleted every single photo in the set (except for the ones that I’d manually marked as “moderate” or “restricted” content) in conjunction with this notice on my account. I suspect those will be the next to go.

• By clamping down on the Facebook.com social networking service, Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party is revealing its discomfort with the rapidly expanding avenue for free expression even as it pushes to transform the once poor agrarian nation into a modern industrial society by 2020.

• The European Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA) has called on the European Parliament to consider permanently removing internet based child sexual abuse content at source, which would be instead of forcing EU and UK ISPs into merely filtering out (blocking) such material. The latter would only provide a merely cosmetic appearance of having done something useful and is easily circumvented.

Civil Rights

• Israel’s opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, today said a wave of evil was sweeping the country, characterised by legislation to investigate the funding of civil and human rights organisations.

• Her party, Kadima, would oppose the establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into groups such as B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, she said. Her comments followed an attack by the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, whose party sponsored the bill, on rightwing opponents of the measure. He said they had “bleeding hearts” and were harming the “national camp”.

• Imagine a college student returning to her university after spending Christmas break at home. At the airport she logs on to the Internet to double check some of the sources she used in her final take-home exam for the course “Introduction to Human Rights.” She gets online and begins to surf the web; however, she soon realizes that the websites of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are blocked. She calls the service provider’s 800 number, only to find out that all human rights organizations’ websites have indeed been restricted and that they can no longer be accessed from the airport.

• This, you are probably thinking, cannot happen in the United States. Such practices are common in China, North Korea and Syria, but not in liberal democracies that pride themselves on the basic right to freedom of expression.

• In the United States students can of course access human rights websites, no matter where they surf from. But in Israel, which is also known as the only democracy in the Middle East, human rights websites as well as the websites of some extreme right-wing organizations cannot be accessed from Ben-Gurion, the country’s only international airport.

• In your time, you succeeded in infecting all of the US with hysteria. You detected a Soviet agent under every bed. You waved a list of Soviet spies in the State Department (a list which nobody was ever shown). In a hundred languages around the world – including Hebrew – the name McCarthy, McCarthyism, has become a household word. Yes, you made your mark alright.

• But you were, after all, only a plagiarist. Before you, the House Anti-American Activities Committee terrorized the country, destroyed careers, hounded people into suicide and tarnished the reputation of the US throughout the democratic world. It “investigated” intellectuals and artists and branded many of them as “anti-American”.

• Today a group of state legislators announced they will introduce bills in their state legislatures intended to deny Americans the fundamental protections of the 14th Amendment by requiring states to deny standard birth certificates to many U.S. citizen babies born in the U.S. to immigrant parents. The proposed legislation directly contradicts the long-standing 14th Amendment guarantee that all people born in the U.S. and under its jurisdiction are citizens of the U.S. and the state in which they reside and subject to equal protection under the law. If enacted, the bills are unlikely to survive legal scrutiny since the Constitution can only be changed by amendment, not by state or federal statute.

• The involvement of the private sector in this non-centralized or “federated” identity scheme is of course preferable to a direct, centralized government-run identity system. That kind of a system would be a non-starter. But we would also have questions about what the private sector will do with this system. The interests and values of large companies tends to push toward stability, security and predictability — not toward the raucous freedom that online privacy and anonymity makes possible. Once a standard is in place, will people have to start identifying themselves everywhere online — even when it’s totally unnecessary. This has happened all too often in the offline world. It could be driven by the need for legal due diligence (we need to know you’re over 18 or we can’t market to you and our lawyers say if we don’t use this system we could be liable; we need to track you in case you later turn out to be a hacker) and the opportunity to collect reliable personal data for online advertising and other purposes.

Clip of the DaySymphony of Science – ‘The Big Beginning’ (ft. Hawking, Sagan, Dawkins, Shears, Tyson)Credit: TinyOgg Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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