Karlin has returned to the States, is it just a coincidence that Data Retention was brought in just a week before she left? Hehe. I hope the weather is better out there Karlin!
Month: March 2005
TSA Lied About Protecting Passenger Data
Dan Gillmor points out this rather curious story from the US, covered by Bruce Schneier. Choice quote:
I’ll say it: the TSA lied.
Study highlights global decline
This is all over the Internet, the BBC do a good job of rounding it up.
The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth’s ability to sustain future generations. The report says the way society obtains its resources has caused irreversible changes that are degrading the natural processes that support life on Earth. This will compromise efforts to address hunger, poverty and improve healthcare. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations over a period of four years. It reports that humans have changed most ecosystems beyond recognition in a dramatically short space of time.
Multiplayer GTA3
My dreams have come true. Some clever people out there have made a hack for GTA called Multi-Theft Auto. It allows people to play in the GTA city in a multiplayer environment. As /. notes:
Now I can streetrace and play Liberty City Survivor with real people, not just use the “crazy pedestrians” cheat. Rockstar would be nuts not to hire these guys. So, anyone up for a deathmatch? Meet me at the Malibu Club in Vice, or the construction site on Staunton Island.
It has been released before in other incarnations, it is really only good for LANs, net play is a bit laggy.
Test post
Test post with nokia 6630!
Mostafa Moeen blogs
Iranian (living in Toronto) blogger Hossein Derakhshan reports that Iranian presidential candidate Mostafa Moeen is blogging. The comments on Hossein’s blog don’t seem all that encouraging though.
Data retention slips into law
Karlin wrote a great piece on data retention legislation in last Friday’s Irish Times. The best part of the article was the final paragraph.
And so here we are, the best little banana-republic style state in the EU, sneaking in the laws we don’t want the citizens to see, willing to risk the State’s future economic health and business environment in order to make one Minister’s quest for a surveillance state a success.
I could not agree more. I am sure Karlin will be publishing the full piece on her blog soon, it is well worth the read.
Europe is risking silence to end its longest war
Jonathan Steele writes in the Guardian about Europe’s silence on the situation in Chechnya.
In short, Europe is replacing its old policy of publicly denouncing Russia over Chechnya. At the current session of the UN Human Rights Commission, the EU has not proposed a resolution this year. But, diplomats argue, the silence is not motivated by cynicism or “condemnation fatigue”, let alone agreement with Moscow that Chechnya is a front in the war on international terror. It is part of a new policy of constructive engagement.
The hope is that low-key offers of help by European governments, and support at the Council of Europe for Chechnya’s political forces to start a dialogue, could have a better chance of success. The policy is worth trying, but the risks are enormous. If it turns out that Russia is merely coopting the EU behind its brutal tactics of “Chechenisation”, the new strategy must be dropped.
Coal in a nice shade of green
Thomas Homer-Dixon and S. Julio Friedmann suggest using a new-type energy source known as gasification. What is it?
Here’s how it works: In a type of power plant called an integrated gasification combined-cycle facility, we change any fossil fuel, including coal, into a superhot gas that is rich in hydrogen – and in the process strip out pollutants like sulfur and mercury. As in a traditional combustion power plant, the heat generates large amounts of electricity; but in this case, the gas byproducts can be pure streams of hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
This matters for several reasons. The hydrogen produced could be used as a transportation fuel. Equally important, the harmful carbon dioxide waste is in a form that can be pumped deep underground and stored, theoretically for millions of years, in old oil and gas fields or saline aquifers. This process is called geologic storage, or carbon sequestration, and recent field demonstrations in Canada and Norway have shown it can work and work safely.
The marriage of gasified coal plants and geologic storage could allow us to build power plants that produce vast amounts of energy with virtually no carbon dioxide emissions in the air. Moreover, these plants are very flexible: Although coal is the most obvious fuel source, they could burn almost any organic material, including waste cornhusks and woodchips.
There are hurdles. For example, we need a crash program of research to find out which geological formations best lock up the carbon dioxide for the longest time.
On balance, though, this combination of technologies is probably among the best ways to provide the energy needed by modern societies – including populous, energy-hungry and coal-rich societies like China and India – without wrecking the global climate. The combination of gasified coal plants and geologic storage can be our bridge to the clean energy of the 22nd century and beyond.
Easter
I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend, I am so my blogging has been very light! I did finally decide on the Nokia 6630, a full report when I get the phone on Tuesday.