So, there was a piece in the news recently regarding how Apple & Lenovo scored extremely low in terms of environmental practices when compared with the likes of Nokia and Dell. Now, having been to parts of Scandinavia before, I think I can believe the Nokia attitude, since many of the folks I’ve spoken with from up there seem to indicate that there’s a bit more corporate responsibility going on. I glanced over the report at the time, and decided it seemed a bit on the light side as far as real details were concerned, but assumed that there must have been a bit more to these, and somewhat accepted, albeit reluctantly, that Apple wasn’t doing that great of a job environmentally. Then comes this which among some other recent things, have made me rethink some of my attitude towards the more activist environmental and animal rights organizations. Just because some large portion of corporations or groups of people are doing bad things doesn’t give you license to complain about the sky falling for any one individual one without real, solid, factual data to back things up. It’s almost as irresponsible as using all sorts of toxic materials in your products. Why is this? It’s not just because it’s inaccurate, it’s because we want to appropriately praise or criticize corporations to encourage them to embrace better practices. If you flip things around and do a poor job on research, why are those companies going to want to do a good job next time if they don’t have to, if people don’t care enough do real research before making broad negative claims. At the same time, be careful about criticizing others when your own track record isn’t spotless. Honest, open, communication is essential to making things better.
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That’s not all I have to say regarding this, but it pretty much covers the sentiment. In a time where it was beginning to seem that the US media were completely unable to fire off real, unmitigated criticism of the current administration, we get a clear example to the contrary. Now, that said, this is not something completely out of the blue. There are many others who’ve been directing a critical voice and eye towards the current administration, but I’m glad that someone said the words that he did, on national television and to so many people. I think this is the real sign of the changing tides. The question that remains is whether or not our legal and justice system will turn towards those responsible for the current state of affairs and ask of them that they make reparations for their decisions. Accountability is important, and it is just as important as considering individuals innocent until proven guilty.
This is the level we’re at now. I just don’t understand how people couldn’t see this before. He tries to “keep expectations low”? Well, if they polled for an approval rating how well he’s doing in that department, I’m sure it’d be quite high compared with his overall rating. Are we finally getting to the point where people see him for what he really is? I think regardless of whether you look at his presidency as a snapshot or as a whole, as he recommends, both cases yield a similar view, one requiring low expectations.
Very cool Pen Light animation video courtesy of Digg: http://tochka.jp/pikapika/2006/06/the_past_of_pikapika.html
There may be a more elegant way to do this that requires giving fewer permissions to matlab under SELinux, but the following appears to work for me to get rid of the errors along the lines of the following:
/usr/local/matlab72/bin/glnx86/MATLAB: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/local/matlab72/bin/glnx86/../../sys/os/glnx86/libtermcap.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied
One simply needs to enter the following commands (as root, or through sudo):
chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/local/matlab72/sys/os/glnx86/*.so
chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/local/matlab72/bin/glnx86/*.so
chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/local/matlab72/toolbox/matlab/imagesci/private/*.mexglx
This may also work with newer (when they’re released) or older versions of MATLAB, though I’ve not tested them. According to the postings for other software packages that have had this problem, what MATLAB is doing is somehow bad programming practice, though I’ve not tracked down precisely what it is doing or why this might be bad. The alternatives that I’ve seen are either disabling SELinux entirely (rather ugly) or not running MATLAB (impossible ;-) ), and so this seems like a good solution.
Here’s the closest bit of information I could find on the Fedora Core 5 SELinux FAQ:
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/selinux-faq-fc5/#faq-entry-unconfined_t
Just got this email moments ago. Hard to say what exactly was on those machines, but based on the financial aid information submitted yearly, there’s certainly personal information including addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and of course financial data about earnings and taxes for all those students and their parents. I’ve cut the last paragraph since it has an email and phone number to call in case you suspect your records were compromised. Drop me a comment if you need that contact info.
Northwestern University recently discovered that files containing names and personal identification information were on nine desktop computers that had been accessed by unauthorized persons from outside the University.
You are receiving this e-mail because you are one of as many as 17,000 individuals whose records have been identified as being stored on the computers in the Office of Admission and Financial Aid. Northwestern is continuing to investigate the incident to determine if additional records may have been involved. There is no indication that the unauthorized persons accessed any of the personal information, or were even aware of its existence on those computers.
As soon as the computer security breach was discovered, Northwestern’s technical support personnel shut down the affected computers. In compliance with University policies and privacy regulations, Northwestern is notifying the individuals for whom it has addresses whose information was stored on the computers.
While there is no indication that any personal information was accessed, Northwestern recommends that, as a precautionary measure, anyone who has provided Social Security number information to the University’s Office of Admission and Financial Aid follow the identity theft precautions published by the Federal Trade Commission:
1) Contact the fraud department of one of the three major credit bureaus listed below to check for irregularities on your credit report. You may also want to request that the credit bureaus issue a fraud alert on your accounts.
Credit Bureaus:
Equifax: 800-685-1111 (ordering report) / 800-525-6285 (fraud alert)
Experian: 888-397-3742 (ordering report and fraud alerts)
Trans Union: 800-888-4213 (ordering report) / 800-680-7289 (fraud alert)2) Further information is available from the FTC by visiting http://www.ftc.gov or http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/index.html or by calling toll-free 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357); TTY: 1-866-653-4261.
If you haven’t already checked out iDont, I recommend you do. It’s quite easy just to chalk it up as a stupid media trick to try and get “counterculture” individuals to buy an MP3 player different from Apple’s. There are so many levels on which this marketing campaign is silly, I’m not going to address them all. I will however quote someone from slashdot.org on said topic:
The funny thing is that anyone who changes their mind based on this stupid marketing campaign really is a sheep.
Nobody is really “counterculture” if they buy something based on advertising, since all you’re really doing is aligning yourself with a different corporation, and one that’s doing this not to be counter-anything but Apple. They’re marketing this in this manner not on real selling points, but only to place themselves in a better financial position. This is never a good reason to buy from someone.