05.14.12

Links – TPP Meeting Infiltrated, More Protest Needed.

Posted in Site News at 5:50 pm by Guest Editorial Team

Reader’s Picks

• Will “8″ Fly or is it Cripple-ware?

  Non free software is always cripple/mal/spyware.

• Science

  • Emotion Can Shut Down High-Level Mental Processes Without Our Knowledge, in Our Native Language

    The psychologists made this discovery by asking English-speaking Chinese people whether word pairs were related in meaning. Some of the word pairs were related in their Chinese translations. Although not consciously acknowledging a relation, measurements of electrical activity in the brain revealed that the bilingual participants were unconsciously translating the words. However, uncannily, this activity was not observed when the English words had a negative meaning.

• Hardware

  • Chuckle. No One Wants Small Expensive Computers.

    2012 will blow away records for tablets shipped in 2011 and M$ will be a no-show.

    Don’t expect Windows on ARM tablets till 2013. A few companies are going to launch expensive WinTel tablets

  • The Setup, Eric S Raymond

    The interesting details about my desktop setup are the peripherals. I like Model-M-style clicky keyboards (I’m typing on a Unicomp Model M). I prefer trackballs over mice and use a Logitech TrackMan. I like lots of vertical pixels for my Emacs window, so I’m rocking a Samsung SyncMaster 1100DF at 1800×1440 with 120dpi. My road machine is a Lenovo Thinkpad X60 … I like intricate music playing while I hack (Liquid Tension Experiment playing now).

• Security

  • IAmA a malware coder and botnet operator, AMA

    The author says a lot of interesting things in comments. Of course, it’s all Windows.

  • Lauren Lauren Weinstein: More details on the .secure TLD proposal

    You may recall my posting yesterday (http://j.mp/Ku8pEd) where I suggested that the .secure TLD proposal is fundamentally flawed for many reasons. The CTO of the company involved contacted me this morning, pointing at their blog with more details: http://unhandled.com/ — After reviewing this information, which includes their proposals for a broader “domain policy framework,” I’m forced to stand by my earlier characterization. … The concept of .secure is essentially 180 degrees away from the model I believe we should be working towards. Rather than centralizing security, we need to be distributing it…

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

    The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • US Citizens: Support the End Polluter Welfare Act

  • Warm water marine species spreading northwards into British waters

  • Decades of Data Show Spring Advancing Faster Than Experiments Suggest

  • Greenpeace: Demand the White House publicly release all information around the Gulf disaster and stop offshore drilling

    It’s not too late. The government has yet to announce the amount of money BP owes for the damages caused by the disaster.

    The US government blocked independent scientists, stolen samples and concealed the results of their own limited studies with lame excuses of safety and proper investigation. State and local governments, for the most part, were bought out with DHS and BP money for toys and advertising campaigns. Demand better!

• Finance

  • Eurozone crisis: Greek left leader renounces bailout deal

    Tsipras said he would … “end the agreements of subservience”. The signing of the loan had not been “a salvation but a tragedy”

    Good for Greece.

  • Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy

  • Want to stop banks gambling on food prices? Try closing the casino

    Roosevelt’s administration came up with a simple solution: position limits. If you were not a participant in the food business – neither a farmer nor a baker – you could trade no more than 5,000 futures contracts. This prescription worked well, and endured until the late 1990s, when position limit exemptions were quietly granted to a number of large investment banks. Wall Street subsequently rushed into commodities, and the world is still reeling.

• Anti-Trust

  • Firefox on Windows on ARM – Microsoft Says No

    you don’t get those privileges (certain API access) unless you’re the default browser and I think that’s deeply unfair (a post for later,) but at least we’re able to build a competitive browser and ship it to Windows users on x86 chips. But on ARM chips, Microsoft gives IE access special APIs absolutely necessary for building a modern browser that it won’t give to other browsers

    Microsoft has played API games forever, what’s new is that they are pretending it’s OK and are trying to extend their death grip to ARM [2].

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Goldman Looks to Hire Social Media Strategist

    The rich and powerful already have a tremendous astroturf presence, most graphically revealed in the HB Garry/Aaron Barr email spill. Techrights has covered Microsoft’s disgusting astroturf effort for years.

• Censorship

  • Few Companies Fight Patriot Act Gag Orders, FBI Admits

    “Thus far, there have been only four challenges to the non-disclosure requirement,” Holder wrote, “and in two of the challenges, the FBI permitted the recipient to disclose the fact that an NSL was received.” … The FBI has sent out nearly 300,000 NSLs since 2000, about 50,000 of which have been sent out since the new policy for challenging NSL gag orders went into effect. Last year alone, the FBI sent out 16,511 NSLs requesting information pertaining to 7,201 U.S. persons.

  • If You Meet a Censor, Ask Them This One Question

  • Dutch Judge Who Ordered Pirate Bay Links Censored Fount to be Corrupt

    … the plaintiff’s representative in the case – a professor Visser – offered commercial courses in anti-piracy, together with the judge, Chris Hensen. The plaintiff and judge were running a commercial enterprise together, one that had a direct bearing on the subject matter of the case. … It’s not just any course they do together, it’s part of the Dutch bar association’s official training program for lawyers.

  • In the US, you can still say almost anything, but someone just may be listening in

    a new kind of corporate oligopoly is emerging. Coupled with increasingly controlling activities by government, often in concert with corporate interests, the new choke points threaten to re-centralize media, or at least return control to a few dominant parties. … wired-line carriers believe that they should be able to decide what bits of information get delivered in what order and at what speed, if they get delivered at all. … The serious potential for problems with wired-line broadband is nothing next to the actual situation with mobile carriers. … The copyright industries have every intention of being another [chokepoint]. … Private companies are creating their own ecosystems, with minimal regulatory interference … If you create a journalism app to be sold in the iPhone or iPad marketplace, you explicitly give Apple the right to decide whether your journalism content is acceptable under the company’s vague guidelines. … Facebook is another potential threat to independent journalism. … journalists need to upgrade their own techniques and technology when it comes to protecting sources.

    It is not surprising that one monopoly helps the other, as big publishers and telco helped Apple, because the monopolies are ultimately owned be the same few wealthy families that want to guard their relative position. What’s shameful is the willingness of our government to serve them at everyone else’s expense.

• Privacy

  • Stallman: CISPA ‘nearly abolishes’ the right not to be unreasonably searched

    What CISPA says as passed by the House of Representatives is any ISP, any website, any company that has some of your data in it can voluntarily hand it over to the government for a wide range of reasons …

  • Oops! Air Force Drones Can Now (Accidentally) Spy on You

    if an Air Force drone accidentally spies on an American citizen, the Air Force will have three months to figure out if it was legally allowed to put that person under surveillance in the first place. … Acceptable surveillance includes flying drones over natural disasters; studying environmental changes; or keeping tabs above a domestic military base.

    Spying on a person from miles away with a telescope is no accident, it takes pinpoint precision and advanced knowledge of the target’s location.

  • http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2012/mobile-internet-censorship

    The only sensible child protection policy is sound public education and digital freedom.

• Civil Rights

  • Gay rights in the US, state by state

  • Caught on Tape: Walker Plans for a Single Party State

    Walker: “Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. . .”

    So there you have it, the attack on civil servants in Wisconsin was not motivated by budget it was politics and class warfare.

  • Dell response regarding insensitive comments from Mads Christensen

    “The IT business is one of the last frontiers that manages to keep women out. The quota of women to men in your business is sound and healthy” he says. “What are you actually doing here?” he adds to the few women who are actually present in the room. … [more tastless stuff] … the moderator of the day finishes of by asking all (men) in the room to promise him that they will go home and say, “shut up bitch!”.

    Dell is sorry they got caught laughing about discrimination against women in the workplace. It’s amazing how little attention this got a month ago compared to the “Virgin of Emacs.” That’s more evidence of an organized campaign around to smear RMS.

  • Why Are People Resigning Before The Copyright Industries’ Will?

    When did people forget that legislators, and not corporations, have the final say over our laws?

• Education Watch

  • How Private Bottling Companies Water-Down Education to Boost Profits

    Nestlé Waters North America, the organization’s main sponsor, is the last entity that should be empowered to educate the public about responsible water use. When you consider the bottled water behemoth ‘s track record of hogging global water supplies and profiting from them, Project WET’s supposed mission is a slap in the face to any community that has had its water muscled away by Nestlé.

  • Reframing the Doomday Budget Discussion

    After years of hard cuts, Califorinia’s universities are starting to shut down programs as they face even worse. Students are facing more tuition hikes.

  • Ninth Circuit Reaffirms Ruling That Trainee Teachers Not Intended as “Highly Qualified” Under NCLB eg: Teach for America

    A federal appeals panel yesterday re-affirmed its September 2010 ruling that the U.S. Department of Education unlawfully diluted the standard of teacher owed every student in the country under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) when it issued a 2002 regulation classifying teachers in training as “highly qualified.”

  • Weekly Update : The Philadelphia horror story, no more school libraries in DC if the school chancellor has anything to do with it, other privatizing insanity and the push back

  • More on the WSPTA Convention: Oops, the new teacher evaluation system would not impact charter schools

    So, we see that “evaluations” are mostly a tool to punish people opposed to charter schools.

  • Bringing the PTA into the 21st Century or What I learned at the Washington State PTA Convention

    Next year, the convention will be in Bellevue, a stone’s throw from Seattle. A decision with no regard for other regions attending. Bellevue is also more expensive than Seattle and farther away from SeaTac airport. I guess everyone can take a limo. (Or is it eat cake?) So how do we get the WSPTA into the 21st century and relevant again? How do we encourage and support parents, teachers and students to be involved? How does the WSPTA get the diversity of membership that it keeps attempting to obtain? First we do it with the technology that we have available and we take a look at how we handle our state and national elections. If this is to be a democratic process that is accessible to all, let’s make that happen.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Keeping the Internet Neutral

    A good history of what is wrong with US internet access.

• Digital Handcuffs

  • Technology should help us share, not constrain us

    Printed books let us do that. I couldn’t do it with most commercial ebooks; it’s not “allowed”. And if I felt like telling the publishers to take their evil rule and stuff it, the software in e-readers has digital restrictions management – malicious features that restrict reading, so it simply won’t allow it. And the books are encrypted in such a way to force you to use that malicious software. Many other habits that readers are accustomed to are “not allowed” for ebooks.

• TPP

  • Live from the Trenches: TPP Negotiations in Dallas

    The public is excluded from meaningful monitoring or input.

  • Party ends badly for U.S. trade reps, federal agents

    The crowd of negotiators and corporate representatives applauded, and “Haversall” continued: “I’d like to personally thank the negotiators for their relentless efforts. The TPP agreement is shaping up to be a fantastic way for us to maximize profits, regardless of what the public of this nation—or any other nation—thinks is right.” … Mr. Haversall confidently re-took the microphone and warmly invited Kirk to accept the award.

    Kirk moved towards the stage, but federal agents blocked his path to protect him from further embarrassment. At that point, a dozen well-dressed “delegates” (local activists, some from Occupy Dallas) broke into ecstatic dance and chanted “TPP! TPP! TPP!” for several minutes until Dallas police arrived.

    The look of panic on the corporate spokes drone in this video is almost as funny as US Trade representative Kirk’s “We came, we saw, we shopped”.

  • EFF petition: No Backroom Deals to Regulate the Internet: Speak Out Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership!

  • Before and After SOPA

    The defeat, even if only temporary, of SOPA and PIPA was surely one key factor in the sudden upswelling of protests against ACTA, which until that point had seemed almost certain to be ratified in the EU. The actions against SOPA and ACTA have led to renewed analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), currently being negotiated behind closed doors in Dallas.

    Let’s make these defeats permanent.

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