The iPhone and iPod Touch haven taken the mobile market by storm. Apple’s AppStore is full of interesting applications that take advantage of the two devices’s capabilities. But what’s in there for Linux users? Sadly, GTKPod and Amarok cannot yet transfer files on an iPhone with the 2.x firmware upgrade, but there are other interesting ways your iPhone can interact with your Linux desktop and even servers.
In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.
Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama’s appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect’s unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.
But Mr. Obama’s decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.
According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it “alienating” to have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language.
Courts in recent years have been raising the evidentiary bar law enforcement agents must meet in order to obtain historical cell phone records that reveal information about a target’s location. But documents obtained by civil liberties groups under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest that “triggerfish” technology can be used to pinpoint cell phones without involving cell phone providers at all.
Less than two weeks before Election Day, the chief strategist behind a ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California called an emergency meeting here.
“We’re going to lose this campaign if we don’t get more money,” the strategist, Frank Schubert, recalled telling leaders of Protect Marriage, the main group behind the ban.
The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a sharp-elbowed advertising campaign, and support for the measure was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote.
Same-sex couples exchanged vows Wednesday for the first time in Connecticut amid cheers and tears of joy, while gay activists planned protests across the country over the vote that took away their right to marry in California.
Surrounded by red roses and smiles, Jody Mock and Elizabeth Kerrigan, who led the lawsuit that that overturned the state law, emerged from West Hartford’s town hall to the cheers of about 150 people and waved their marriage license high.
“We feel very fortunate to live in the state of Connecticut, where marriage equality is valued, and hopefully other states will also do what is fair,” Kerrigan said.
Even as the company was pleading the federal government for another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week.
Reporters for abc15.com (KNXV) caught the AIG executives on hidden cameras poolside and leaving the spa at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, despite apparent efforts by the company to disguise its involvement.
About 300 gay-rights advocates fanned out along sidewalks leading to Saddleback Church in Lake Forest to voice their anger of the church’s support of Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment approved by voters Tuesday that overturns a state Supreme Court decision in May legalizing same-sex unions.
Ed Todeschini, a Human Rights Campaign volunteer, accused Saddleback in particular of helping propagate what he called misinformation about the Supreme Court ruling, including that gay marriage would have to be taught to kindergartners.
President-elect Obama’s advisers are crafting plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and prosecute terrorism suspects in the U.S., a plan the Bush administration said Monday was easier said than done. Under the plan being crafted inside Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials.
But, underscoring the difficult decisions Obama must make to fulfill his pledge of shutting down Guantanamo, the plan could require the creation of a new legal system to handle the classified information inherent in some of the most sensitive cases.
The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that it will be taking legal action against anyone discovered telling friends, acquaintances, or associates about new songs, artists, or albums. “We are merely exercising our right to defend our intellectual properties from unauthorized peer-to-peer notification of the existence of copyrighted material,” a press release signed by RIAA anti-piracy director Brad Buckles read.
The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
“The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that’s a big problem,” said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. “In a liquid market, this wouldn’t matter, but we’re not. The market is very nervous and very thin.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday expressed hope that the California Supreme Court would overturn Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage. He also predicted that the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who have already wed would not see their marriages nullified by the initiative.
“It’s unfortunate, obviously, but it’s not the end,” Schwarzenegger said in an interview Sunday on CNN. “I think that we will again maybe undo that, if the court is willing to do that, and then move forward from there and again lead in that area.”
The tally of failed banks in 2008 rose to 19 as the government announced that a Texas and a California bank had been shuttered Friday night.
Franklin Bank, a Houston, Texas-based bank and Security Pacific Bank, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based bank were shut down by state regulators Friday, marking the 18th and 19th bank failures this year.
Fears are growing that Mr Obama, who will become America’s first black president following his inauguration next year, will be the subject of an assassination attempt.
The secret service is reported to have already investigated more than 500 death threats against Mr Obama during the presidential election contest. Last month, two neo-Nazi skinheads were arrested for conspiring to assassinate Mr Obama.
He is expected to be protected by a secret service detail with hundreds of close-protection agents. Over the past few weeks, the US government has also begun secretly testing a new ultra-secure presidential limousine able to withstand most bomb blasts and terror attacks. Details of his movements will be a closely guarded secret for all but his most senior aides.
Troubled insurer American International Group got a new, $152.5 billion deal from the federal government on Monday, as the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department made significant changes to the terms of the company’s original bailout.
The Fed announced that it will reduce AIG’s original $85 billion bridge loan to $60 billion, and it will cut the interest rate by 5.5 percentage points.
In addition, the Treasury will use its special authority under last month’s $700 billion bailout law - the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program - to purchase $40 billion in preferred stock.
Artifex Software, the company behind the open source Ghostscript PDF processing software, has filed a lawsuit against voting machine vendor Diebold and its subsidiary Premier Election Solutions. Artifex says that Diebold violated the GPL by incorporating Ghostscript into commercial electronic voting machine systems.
Ghostscript, which was originally developed in the late 80s, is distributed for free under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This license permits developers to study, modify, use, and redistribute the software but requires that derivatives be made available under the same terms. Companies that want to use Ghostscript in closed-source proprietary software projects can avoid the copyleft requirement by purchasing a commercial license from Artifex. Among commercial Ghostscript users who have purchased licenses from Artifex are some of the biggest names in the printing and technology industries, including HP, IBM, Kodak, Siemens, SGI, and Xerox.
Evidence of Diebold’s Ghostscript use first emerged last year when electronic voting machine critic Jim March was conducting analysis of Pima County voting irregularities. He brought a technical question to the Ghostscript mailing list relating to his investigation and mentioned in passing that Diebold’s use of Ghostscript could potentially fall afoul of the GPL. This view was shared by Ghostscript developer Ralph Giles, who referred the matter to the Artifex business staff so that it could evaluate the legal implications.
From the front lines of Iraq to more genteel spots like Harry’s Bar in Paris, the election of Barack Obama opened a floodgate for the world’s hope that a new U.S. leader would redeem promises of change, rewrite the political script and provide a kind of leadership that would erase the bitterness of the Bush years.
Whether it was because of Obama’s youth, race, message or manner, some European leaders abandoned diplomatic niceties to compete for extravagance in their praise, while others outside the United States - fascinated by an election that had been scrutinized around the globe - reached for their most telling comparisons.
“There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different kind of leader,” said Alejandro Saks, an Argentine script writer in Buenos Aires. Or, as Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of political science in Istanbul, put it, “The U.S. needs a facelift and he’s the one who can give it.”
There were some glaring departures from the feel-good mood. One in particular illustrated the challenges that will test the president-elect: President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia chose the day to lambast the United States and threaten new missile deployments.
Hopper said that he had been a Republican since Reagan, but the choice Sarah Palin pushed him over the edge and he voted for Barack Obama instead. He then told a lovely anecdote of Obama saying kind words to him about his mother’s death once.
Barack Obama told supporters that “change has come to America,” as he addressed the country for the first time as the president-elect. “The American people have spoken,” rival John McCain told supporters earlier.
The workers claim they were told to say they were GOP volunteers even though they were getting paid $10 an hour for the work. They were required to sign agreements stating they would not speak publicly about their work with anyone including reporters, but they decided to speak out because they were angry they had not been paid for their final few days.
“I told the Republican Party and Allstaff, I wanted to know why we were lying to these residents,” said Loyalty Dixon, 26, a Milwaukee resident who worked about two weeks in Waukesha. “I said, isn’t that fraudulent? They didn’t give me a good explanation. They said, you guys know you’re getting paid. Don’t worry about it.”
She recalled getting praised by Waukesha residents at gas stations and at a McDonald’s for being a McCain supporter. Some residents at their doors even asked whether they were getting paid, she said.
“We had to lie to these people and say we were volunteers,” she said.
Three other employees shared similar stories on Monday.
The 3,000-year-old pottery shard with five lines of text was found during excavations of the Elah Fortress, the oldest known Biblical-period fortress that dates to the 10th century B.C.
It is the most important archaeological discovery in Israel since the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to lead researcher Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology.
His team believes the text may provide evidence for a real-life King David and his vast kingdom, the existence of which has been long doubted by scholars.
Carbon-14 dating of olive pits found at the archaeological site, as well as analysis of pottery remains, also place the text to between 1000 and 975 B.C., the time King David, head of the Kingdom of Israel, would have lived.
“This means that historical knowledge of King David could pass from generation to generation in writing—and not just as oral tradition.”
It’s no secret that much of the code-base that makes up the modern-day X.Org Server is old and in some places bloated. The X.Org Server continues to evolve and has received a number of major additions in recent times, but wouldn’t a clean and lighter server that is designed around today’s needs be ideal? Red Hat’s Kristian Høgsberg has started a new project, which is currently known as Wayland, and is just that: a new lightweight X Server. Wayland isn’t just a rewrite of the current X Server, but instead it’s a small server that is designed around some of the latest graphics technologies such as kernel mode-setting and the Graphics Execution Manager. Wayland also has its own built-in compositing manager.
The Wayland display server is very simple: everything is direct rendered and composited. There is no complicated APIs or objects to deal with like there is now with the X.Org Server. In an email to Phoronix, Kristian Høgsberg, creator of Wayland and also responsible for much of the DRI2 work in the current X.Org Server, describes this project as “a new display server that implements just the tiny fraction of X features that we actually use when running a composited desktop. Which is essentially buffer management (close to what DRI2 does in X.org), input handling and hooks to allow a compositor to composite the desktop. All rendering is done client side as direct rendering (how OpenGL works today, but pixman and thus cairo, for example, could learn how to do direct rendering too), and modesetting and other hardware setup is done in the kernel. This takes a lot of complexity out of the server.”
The reason I bring this up is that while I can’t vote, I did want to say publicly anyway that I really really hope that Obama will be the US president elect after Tuesday night. I realize it probably won’t come as a big shock to anybody (yes, I’m a socially liberal open source freak from Europe - so what would you expect?), and others will just be angry.
If anybody wants a reason for that, just watch (or listen to) Obama’s “Call to Renewal” keynote speech from 2006. It looks like it’s split into 5 pieces on youtube - the whole thing is about 40 minutes - but it’s worth it, just to hear something rare: mentioning religion in the US without being black-or-white.
Today, Barbara Anwine of the Election Protection Coalition (1-866-OUR-VOTE), a nonpartisan group, told MSNBC about voter suppression tactics they have witnessed around the country.
The group says it has received over 80,000 voter calls at the Election Protection Command Center.
Some emerging trends:
- Broward County leads Florida in voter requests for assistance.
- Registration-related problems rank #1 in nearly every battleground state - hundreds of calls focus on that problem, most often in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, and California
- Georgia voters are reporting more incidents of voter intimidation than any other state. Other reports of voter intimidation, scams or misinformation are also emerging in Ohio and Missouri.
- Florida voters rank #1 in requests related to criminal status and voting.
- Early voting problems are also being noticed, particularly Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Florida and California
Newly obtained computer schematics provide further detail of how electronic voting data was routed during the 2004 election from Ohio’s Secretary of State’s office through a partisan Tennessee web hosting company.
A network security expert with high-level US government clearances, who is also a former McCain delegate, says the documents – server schematics which trace the architecture created for Ohio’s then-Republican Secretary of State and state election chief Kenneth Blackwell – raise troubling questions about the security of electronic voting and the integrity of the 2004 presidential election results.
“When I voted yesterday electronically, the first vote that you vote for on the ballot is the presidential candidate. It was my first time doing electronic, so I didn’t mark the X strong enough, or I held down too long. Because then when I went back to check it, it had not recorded my presidential vote,” she said.
She then simulated her meltdown, shaking and breathing heavily while stuttering out the words, “It didn’t record my presidential vote.”
Sarah Palin endorser Bishop Thomas Muthee, in a speech he gave before blessing and anointing Sarah Palin as a political leader, on October 16, 2005 at the Wasilla Assembly of God, laid out the current agenda of the New Apostolic Reformation - how “God’s kingdom” needed to “infiltrate” seven sectors of society. Muthee listed most of them: business and finance, schools and education, media and entertainment, politics and government.
Muthee also stated “The Bible says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. Sarah Palin was in the audience. Minutes later, she was anointed, and blessed, with the laying on of hands.
Thomas Muthee is an internationally known celebrity in the New Apostolic Reformation and a personal friend of the movement’s head, C. Peter Wagner. In June 2006 Wagner proclaimed that “God has declared through His prophets that the wealth of the wicked will be released to the Kingdom of God,” and declared, threateningly, “the enemies’ camp will be plundered.”
With the presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him “a PLO spokesman”; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers — a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance — was at the dinner.
In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by “attacks” from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama’s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate’s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
The long lines of early voters at the Temple Terrace Library have caused concern for the Republican Headquarters a block away. It has also caused a major storm in local politics.
The head of the Hillsborough GOP, David Storck, distributed an email from a Republican Party volunteer saying the voters are a threat.
That’s because, as the volunteer says in the email, he sees “car loads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama.”
It goes on to say, “This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little the he is at minimum a socialist and probably Marxist in his core beliefs.” The Republican volunteer says that is because, “After all he is black- no experience or accomplishments but he is black.”
Hillsborough Commissioner Kevin White says, “There’s no place in our community for those types of views.” White, who can’t believe the email was distributed, says Storck should resign.
White says when he reads emails like this, he realizes hatred and racism is still alive and well.