A page for randomness

For one of the nastiest substances on earth, crude oil has an amazing grip on the globe. We all know the stuff’s poison, yet we’re as dependent on it as our air and water supplies — which, of course, is what oil is poisoning.
Shouldn’t we be technologically advanced enough here in the 21st Century to quit siphoning off the pus of the Earth? Regardless whether you believe global warming is threatening the planet’s future, you must admit crude is passé.

Americans should be celebrating rather than shuddering over the arrival of $4-a-gallon gasoline. We lived on cheap gas too long, failed to innovate and now face the consequences of competing for a finite resource amid fast-expanding global demand.

A further price rise as in Europe to $8 a gallon — or $200 and more to fill a large SUV’s tank — would be a catalyst for economic, political and social change of profound national and global impact. We could face an economic squeeze, but it would be the pain before the gain.

The U.S. economy absorbed a tripling in gas prices in the last six years without falling into recession, at least through March. Ravenous demand from China and India could see prices further double in the next few years — and jumpstart the overdue process of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels.

Read more: Eight reasons you’ll rejoice when we hit $8-a-gallon gasoline - MarketWatch

Although Nautilus—the GNOME file manager—includes many useful features and offers an excellent implementation of the spatial paradigm, its browser mode is less impressive and is missing some must-have functionality. The Nautilus developers are about to deliver a big improvement, however, with the addition of full support for tabbed browsing.

A tabbed user interface is among the most frequently requested features for Nautilus. The original request in the GNOME bug tracker was opened in 2001 and has 10 duplicates. Despite significant demand, the developers long resisted implementing the feature because it required significant changes to the file manager’s underlying architecture. Some GNOME users have switched to the lightweight PCMan file manager just for the tab support.

Read more: GNOME file manager gets tabbed file browsing

In my last post, sendmail was one of the services on my box that was starting when I enter runlevel 2. Maybe I don’t want sendmail to start, or rather, if it is already started, when I enter runlevel 2, I want to kill it. In other words, I don’t want it running for runlevel 2. How can I make this change?

Well, first, I could just delete the soft link from the runlevel directory /etc/rc2.d/:

aaron@kratos:~ 1355 % sudo rm /etc/rc2.d/S21sendmail
Password:

That would definitely keep it from starting when I enter runlevel 2, but what if I wanted to kill it if it was already started from a previous runlevel? Just deleting the soft link won’t do it. I need to turn it into a K-script. Further, deleting and creating soft links in my /etc/rc[0-6].d/ directories by hand is a bit of a pain. This is where the update-rc.d command comes in:

aaron@kratos:~ 1356 % sudo update-rc.d -f sendmail remove
Password:
Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/sendmail …
/etc/rc0.d/K19sendmail
/etc/rc1.d/K19sendmail
/etc/rc2.d/S21sendmail
/etc/rc3.d/S21sendmail
/etc/rc4.d/S21sendmail
/etc/rc5.d/S21sendmail
/etc/rc6.d/K19sendmail
aaron@kratos:~ 1357 % sudo update-rc.d sendmail stop 20 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 .
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/sendmail …
/etc/rc0.d/K20sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail
/etc/rc1.d/K20sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail
/etc/rc2.d/K20sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail
/etc/rc3.d/K20sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail
/etc/rc4.d/K20sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail
/etc/rc5.d/K20sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail
/etc/rc6.d/K20sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail

We’ll get into the syntax a bit later, but these commands, as observed, removed any existing soft links that previously existed, and created new K-scripts for all of my runlevels.

First off, why two separate commands? Well, by Debian policy, no package upgrade will ever overwrite a previous configuration. This includes updating soft links in the runlevel directories. This also ensures persistent changes and allows the system administrator to prevent daemons from launching. So, if soft links already exist, they first need to be removed, then new links created.

Source: Aaron Toponce : Managing Services in Ubuntu, Part II: Managing Runlevels

During a live interview, FOX Contributor Liz Trotta jokingly wished for the assassination of Sen. Barack Obama.

This latest incident from FOX News continues the trend in violent rhetoric about Sen. Obama from pundits, politicians, and entertainers.

Grinning While Joking About Killing A Candidate
The incident happen in an exchange with the FOX News anchor. When asked her opinion of the recent scandal surrounding some comments made by Sen. Hillary Clinton, which Trotta described by saying that, “some are reading [it] as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama.” Hemmer quickly corrected Trotta, having noticed that she had said “Osama” when she meant “Obama.” At this point, Trotta said, “Obama. Well…both if we could!” Trotta then laughed gleefully.

What prompted Trotta to joke about the assassination of Sen. Obama was her apparent inability to differentiate between Sen. Obama and the terrorist leader responsible for the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001.

Since Sen. Obama first declared his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president, right-wing pundits on FOX News and a variety of other broadcast outlets have regularly called the Sen. Obama by the name “Osama” in a systematic propaganda campaign to convince the American public that a sitting member of their government has secret ties to terrorists.

As if she were providing a punchline to that long-running propaganda campaign, Trotta made known that the conclusions the public should draw were (1) that Sen. Obama and Osama bin Laden are equivalent, and (2) they both deserve to be assassinated.

Read more: Jeffrey Feldman: FOX Pundit Wishes for Obama Assassination, Laughs - Media on The Huffington Post

Leaked documents are one of the banes of modern western politics. They reveal exercises and actions being proposed that are generally objectionable to the public. Such a leak occurred with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which seeks to turn the internet into a virtual police state.

Again, it’s one of the few bastions of anti-corruption, Wikileaks, that has spilled the beans on this unsavory topic. Yesterday the site revealed a document proposing a treaty that will significantly limit the privacy and rights of Internet users, to the benefit of multimillion dollar companies.

“ACTA” is basically an attempt to criminalize the Internet, thus allowing a virtual police state to occur by the selective prosecuting of crimes. In short, it’s an international treaty, or hopes to be, that will greatly increase already draconian copyright measures, in a poor attempt to appease the copyright and patent industries.

Read more: Proposed Treaty Turns Internet Into a Virtual Police State | TorrentFreak

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) issued a subpoena Thursday to former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove for testimony about politicization of the Department of Justice (DOJ), including the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who was jailed for bribery in what was widely seen as a political prosecution.

In response, Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin questioned why the subpoena was necessary and mocked Conyers in a letter copied to RAW STORY.

“I do not misunderstand either the Committee’s procedures or the scope of its interest in Mr. Rove; nor, in light of your reported remarks about the need for ’someone’ to ‘kick his ass,’ am I the least bit confused about the Committee’s motives and intentions,” Luskin wrote. “I confess, however, that I do not understand why the Committee is threating a subpoena to Mr. Rove for information related to the alleged ‘politicization of the Department of Justice,’ when, as the Committee is surely aware, Mr. Rove has already received a subpoena for the same subject matter from the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

“I also do not understand why the Committee refuses to acknowledge that, in these matters, Mr. Rove is not a free agent,” he adds.

Read more: The Raw Story | Conyers subpoenas Karl Rove over Justice Department scandal

Barack Obama has picked up a series of superdelegates this morning, one of which at the expense of Sen. Clinton.

Today, two California superdelegates endorsed Obama, Reps. Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza. Cadoza has previously endorsed Hillary Clinton.

In addition, two of John Edwards’ New Hampshire delegates, who have since been designated as unpledged delegates, endorsed Obama.

Read more: Superdelegates Shift To Obama - Politics on The Huffington Post

One in eight U.S. high school biology teachers presents creationism or intelligent design in a positive light in the classroom, a new survey shows, despite a federal court’s recent ban against it.

And a quarter of the nation’s high school biology teachers say they devoted at least one or two classroom hours to the topics, with about half presenting it favorably and half presenting it as an invalid alternative.

Those results are part of a nationally representative, random sample of 939 teachers who filled out surveys between March 5, 2007, and May 1, 2007 on questions concerning the teaching of evolution. The figures have a 3 percent margin of error.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, also revealed that between 12 percent and 16 percent of the nation’s biology teachers are creationists, and about one in six of them have a “young Earth” orientation, which means they believe that human beings were created by God in their present form within the past 10,000 years.

Scientists, on the other hand, agree that humans evolved from a common primate ancestor in a process that stretches back tens of millions of years. The theory of evolution on which this is based is one of the most well-supported theories in science.

Read more: Creationism Creeps into U.S. Classrooms | LiveScience

Kennedy’s wife and children have been with him each day since he was hospitalized. Senator Kennedy’s son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., plans to stay at the hospital for the time being.

“Obviously it’s tough news for any son to hear,” said spokeswoman Robin Costello. “He’s comforted by the fact that his dad is such a fighter, and if anyone can get through something as challenging as this, it would be his father. So he’s optimistic, he’s hopeful, but obviously he’s concerned.”

President Bush was notified by his staff of Kennedy’s diagnosis at 1:20 p.m.

“He said he was deeply saddened and would keep Sen. Kennedy in his prayers,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Malignant gliomas are a type of brain cancer diagnosed in about 9,000 Americans a year — and the most common type among adults. It’s a starting diagnosis: How well patients fare depends on what specific tumor type is determined by further testing.

Average survival can range from less than a year for very advanced and aggressive types — such as glioblastomas — or to about five years for different types that are slower growing.

Surgery can be an option for some types, especially to reduce symptoms as a tumor enlarges and puts pressure on the rest of the brain. Many gliomas infiltrate normal brain tissue instead of forming a solid mass, making it hard to remove much of the tumor.

In a sadly ironic twist, just two weeks ago Kennedy called for a new “war on cancer,” saying at a Senate hearing that he planned to introduce legislation to encourage more coordination of cancer research, prevention and treatment.

“Cancer is still the second-highest cause of death in America,” Kennedy said at the hearing. “Clearly, we need a new way forward in battling this frightening disease. We must build on what the nation has already accomplished and launch a new war on cancer for the 21st century.”

Read more: Kennedy has malignant brain tumor - Capitol Hill- msnbc.com

We all suspected it, but now it is confirmed: someone very, very close to the 3G iPhone launch has told me that Apple will announce their new model at the WWDC Keynote on June 9th. The second-generation iPhone will be available worldwide right after the launch, and not at year’s end, as previously thought. The new model will also herald new sales policies in some countries.

In Spain, for example, the 3G iPhone will be available for sale at the June 18th grand opening of Telefonica’s megastore—an Apple Store-like shop located in the company’s historical building in Madrid’s Gran Vía— with nationwide availability the next day or after a few hours. The other European countries with iPhone availability will have similar launch schedules.

According to another source involved in the launch, the 3G iPhone will no longer be available at a fixed price point—at least in some countries, and its launch will also bring new sales policies, although these have not been completely specified yet.

The move is a logical step, since the iPhone has clearly solidified its position as the cellphone to beat during the last 12 months, and companies in the cutthroat European cellphone market need to use it as an incentive to capture clients aggressively.

This most probably means the new 3G iPhone will be integrated in the usual marketing systems of carriers, with point-based trade-ups, discounts for carrier switchers and other service-based subvention packages.

Source: Breaking: iPhone 3G Launch Date Confirmed

Barack Obama, in Montana, responded moments ago to McCain’s ridicule of the Illinois Senator for saying that Iran is a minuscule threat compared to the former Soviet Union.

McCain said this revealed Obama’s “inexperience and reckless judgment.” Here’s the key part of Obama’s reply…

“Here’s the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn’t have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn’t we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That’s what strong countries do, that’s what strong presidents do, that’s what I’ll do when I’m president of the United States of America.”

Obama also said: “What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of”?

This sort of thing will thrill Democrats who want to see how a Democratic presidential candidate will fare if he adopts something other than the oft-employed “hawkish” rhetoric that’s supposedly necessary for Dems to win an argument with Republicans about national security.

Judging by these early skirmishes between McCain and Obama — who appears to be trying to do nothing less than redefine what it means to be “strong” and “tough” on foreign policy — we may soon find out.

Source: Obama Responds To McCain: “Strong” Presidents Aren’t Afraid To Meet With Enemies

That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. -Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765

No living Homo sapiens is above the law. -(Notwithstanding our good friends and legal ancestors across the water, this is a fact that requires no citation.)

With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I’ve been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for “the little guy”), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain’s run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I’m giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read.

Read more: Vincent Bugliosi: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder - Politics on The Huffington Post

Windows developers are confirming the results of a survey released yesterday that found fewer than 1 in 12 programmers currently writing applications targeting Windows Vista.

“None of our customers are saying, ‘G******it, we need those WPF controls now!’” said Julian Bucknall, CTO for Windows programming tools maker Developer Express Inc. , referring to one of Vista’s most highly-touted features, its new graphical subsystem, Windows Presentation Foundation . Rather, “we find most are still sticking with ASP.Net and Windows Forms applications.”

True to Microsoft ’s form, ASP.Net and Windows Forms and most of Windows XP ’s other legacy technologies still work fine in Vista. (The converse is also true: many Vista features can be installed as add-ons to XP.)

But as in every upgrade cycle, Microsoft runs the risk that developers may bypass the latest technologies — in Vista’s case, WPF, the XPS printing format that Microsoft is touting as a rival to Adobe ’s Portable Document Format (PDF); Windows Sidebar ‘gadgets,’ and others — in favor of those further down the road, such as those expected in Vista’s successor, Windows ‘7′.

“Microsoft tends to dump ten new technologies on us, but only 2 or 3 really stick,” said Michael Krasowski, vice-president of PDSA Inc., a Microsoft-focused 20-developer firm in Tustin Calif., citing the Windows DNA Architecture as an example.

Microsoft Corp. undoubtedly wanted to avoid its current predicament. It has been publicly talking up features in Vista since 2003 — half a decade.

Read more: PC World - Business Center: Coders Tell Why They’re Avoiding Vista

Nowhere is the opinion divide on gay marriage sharper than in the nation’s religious communities. And last week’s same-sex marriage ruling will do little to bring agreement on the definition of marriage, a social and religious touchstone that has torn apart families, congregations and entire dioceses.

“I don’t expect the picture in the religious community to change very much with this decision,” said Mary Tolbert, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry in Berkeley. “As more and more gays and lesbians marry, it may become less of an issue, but right now I don’t expect much to change, maybe not for a decade.”

While clergy addressing Bay Area liberal congregations this morning, including pioneers in the battle to win legal recognition of gay marriage, are celebrating the decision, many others, including evangelical and Catholic pastors, are decrying the ruling that they say promotes a gay agenda and is at odds with their religious doctrines.

Thursday’s California Supreme Court ruling allowing state-sanctioned same-sex marriages, of course, has no legal consequences for organized religions. Still, the controversial topic has not stopped faith leaders from crossing into the political arena. Faith leaders on both sides of the divide are gearing up for the expected battle over a constitutional amendment, likely headed to the November ballot, that would attempt to overturn Thursday’s ruling and write a ban into the state’s constitution.

Read more: Gay-marriage ruling splits faith leaders - San Jose Mercury News

Let me play devil’s advocate here. Mark Shuttleworth’s recent pledge to join a synchronised release plan for Enterprise Linux distributions is no more than a wish to benefit from a lot of work that Novell and Red Hat are already doing in the Enterprise space.

Let me explain.

Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux offering is a very important proposition to businesses, not only because Red Hat guarantees and has proven to support each RHEL version for 7 years after general availability, but mostly because each version is updated with new hardware support every 6 months.

Why is that important ?

When a version comes out all components that comprise a distribution have been frozen half a year before and have been tested very hard. But hardware does not freeze and companies buy new hardware constantly. Red Hat needs to provide support for newer selected hardware from vendors to make its solution acceptable to customers. This work is not taken lightly. Red Hat has to backport fixes and backport kernel infrastructure, update drivers, perform regression tests and provide QA together with hardware vendors.

Every 6 months a new update release is being made to ensure that newer hardware is ready to be deployed with a recent RHEL version. Red Hat guarantees that new boot media is available with newer hardware support for another 3 years. That means 2 RHEL releases at every point in time are being maintained to support new hardware.

Read more: Ubuntu’s need to catch a wave | Field Commander Wieers

If the recent exchanges between President Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain on Hamas and terrorism are a preview of the general election, we are in for an ugly six months. Despite his reputation in the media as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won’t stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel.

President Bush picked up this theme yesterday. Without naming Obama during his speech last night to Israel’s Knesset, Bush suggested that Democrats want to “negotiate with terrorists” while Republicans want to fight terrorists.

The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude a way as Bush did yesterday. Charging your opponents with appeasement and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.

McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain’s statement on Hamas, “I don’t think that anybody should take that seriously.” Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will. That’s why they say such things.

But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

Read more: James P. Rubin - Hypocrisy on Hamas - washingtonpost.com

President Bush has said repeatedly that he would not insert himself into the presidential race, but that stance changed dramatically today during his trip to Israel. After likening Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Osama bin Laden, Bush compared Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Obama himself quickly responded to the comparison, calling it a false attack and listing past presidents who didn’t think that diplomacy was such a bad idea:

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel.”

“Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”

It was only yesterday that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued that United States needed to engage with Iran:

“We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them,” Gates said. “If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.”

Read more: Bush Compares Obama To Nazi Appeasers - Politics on The Huffington Post

Hillary, today in Rapid City, South Dakota, defended Obama from President Bush’s apparent comparison of him to Neville Chamberlain, Ken Vogel reports.

She told reporters:

President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush.

“There is a very clear difference between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy and that difference will be evident once we take back the White House.

Read more: Ben Smith’s Blog: Clinton defends Obama from Bush - Politico.com

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden, D-Delaware, called President Bush’s comments accusing Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats of wanting to appease terrorists “bulls**t” and said if the president disagrees so strongly with the idea of talking to Iran then he needs to fire his secretaries of State and Defense, both of whom Biden said have pushed to sit down with the Iranians.

“This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset…and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” Biden said angrily in a brief interview just off the Senate floor.

“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has. His intelligence community pointed that out not me. The NIE has pointed that out and what are you talking about, is he going to fire Condi Rice? Condi Rice has talked about the need to sit down. So his first two appeasers are Rice and Gates. I hope he comes home and does something.”

Source: CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Biden calls Bush comments ‘bulls**t’ « - Blogs from CNN.com

He quoted Gates saying Wednesday that we “need to figure out a way to develop some leverage and then sit down and talk with them.”

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court’s 4-to-3 decision, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, will make California only the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days, is certain to be an issue in the presidential campaign.

“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote of marriage for the majority, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

California already has a strong domestic partnership law that gives gay and lesbian couples nearly all of the benefits and burdens of heterosexual marriage. The majority said that is not enough.

Given the historic, cultural, symbolic and constitutional significance of the concept of marriage, Chief Justice George wrote, the state cannot limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. The court left open the possibility that the Legislature could use another term to denote state-sanctioned unions so long as that term was used across the board for all couples.

The state’s ban on same-sex marriage was based on a law enacted by the Legislature in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000, both defining marriage as limited to unions between a man and a woman. The question before the court was whether those laws violate provisions of the state Constitution protecting equality and fundamental rights.

Conservative groups have proposed a new initiative, this one to amend the state constitution, to ban same-sex marriage. If it is allowed onto the ballot and approved by the voters, Thursday’s decision would be overridden.

In 2004, San Francisco issued marriage licenses to thousands of same-sex couples until the courts put a halt to the practice. The state Supreme Court ultimately voided the licenses, saying that city officials had exceeded their authority. Thursday’s decision did not appear to affect the voided licenses.

Read more: California Court Affirms Right to Gay Marriage - New York Times

Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software’s built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users trying to record prime-time NBC shows on Monday evening, using both over-the-air broadcasts and cable. Although the problem is being “looked into” by both NBC and Microsoft, the incident serves as another reminder that DRM gives content providers full control, even if by accident.

Vista MCE users began reporting problems on Monday evening, starting with posts on the popular DVR-enthusiast forum on The Green Button. While trying to record shows like American Gladiator and Medium, Vista users were presented with an error that read, “Recording cancelled. [TV show] cannot be recorded. Restrictions set by the broadcaster and/or originator of the content prohibit recording of this program.” The Green Button user justinjas posted a screenshot of the error on his blog.

It seems the flag only triggered copy protection measures in Vista, as one of our staffers with a DirecTV HD DVR recorded Gladiators as usual, and a TiVo spokesperson told CNet that the company had not received any complaints. Spokespersons from Microsoft and NBC also told CNet that the issue was being looked into, indicating that the broadcast flag was likely switched on by accident.

The serves as a unsettling reminder that broadcasters can give instructions to the software built into DVRs, although they almost never do. Many DVRs and other, similar devices appear to be aware of the content-restriction flags set by broadcasters, even if they’re not programmed to “obey” them by default. Still, broadcasters would love to have the power to stop users from recording their shows, watching them later, and most importantly, skipping commercials when they do it.

Read more: NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards endorsed Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“The reason I’m here tonight is because the Democratic voters have made their choice, and so have I,” he told the boisterous crowd.

“There is one man who knows and understands that this is a time for bold leadership. There is one man that knows how to create the change, the lasting change, that you have to build from the ground up,” Edwards said. “There is one man who knows in his heart there is time to create one America, not two … and that man is Barack Obama.”

Edwards also praised Sen. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

“What she has shown … is strength and character, and what drives her is something that every single one of us can and should appreciate,” Edwards said. “She is a woman who, in my judgment, is made of steel, and she’s a leader in this country not because of her husband but because of what she has done.”

Read more: Edwards endorses Obama, praises Clinton - CNN.com

Fedora Project

What’s new in Fedora 9? Read the release notes. >>

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.

The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.

Learn more. >>

A weakness has been discovered in the random number generator used by OpenSSL on Debian and Ubuntu systems. As a result of this weakness, certain encryption keys are much more common than they should be, such that an attacker could guess the key through a brute-force attack given minimal knowledge of the system. This particularly affects the use of encryption keys in OpenSSH, OpenVPN and SSL certificates. This vulnerability only affects operating systems which (like Ubuntu) are based on Debian. However, other systems can be indirectly affected if weak keys are imported into them. We consider this an extremely serious vulnerability, and urge all users to act immediately to secure their systems. (CVE-2008-0166)

This advisory also applies to the corresponding versions of Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu.

== Who is affected ==

Systems which are running any of the following releases:

* Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty)

* Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

* Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy)

* Ubuntu “Intrepid Ibex” (development): libssl <= 0.9.8g-8

* Debian 4.0 (etch) (see corresponding Debian security advisory) and have openssh-server installed or have been used to create an OpenSSH key or X.509 (SSL) certificate.

All OpenSSH and X.509 keys generated on such systems must be considered untrustworthy, regardless of the system on which they are used, even after the update has been applied. This includes the automatically generated host keys used by OpenSSH, which are the basis for its server spoofing and man-in-the-middle protection.

Source: [USN-612-1] OpenSSL vulnerability

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls.

A landslide victory for Mrs Clinton in West Virginia will do little to improve her fading hopes of winning the Democratic nomination, because Mr Obama has an almost insurmountable lead in the overall race.

But Tuesday’s contest is likely to reinforce Mrs Clinton’s argument that she would be the stronger opponent for Mr McCain in November, and raise fresh doubts about whether the US is ready to elect its first black president.

Read more: FT.com / World / US & Canada - W Virginia keeps distance from Obama

While John McCain is practically assured the Republican presidential nomination, many party members are having a hard time accepting him — and showing it with symbolic votes against him in primary contests.

The Republican nomination battle has been all but decided for over two months. Still, some Republicans used the April 22 Pennsylvania primary and last week’s votes in Indiana and North Carolina to register their unhappiness with the de facto victor.

Some vote for libertarian Texan Ron Paul, who has refused to quit the race and has racked up more than one million votes, according to his campaign.

Other Republicans keep voting for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — both markedly more conservative than McCain — although both have long since dropped out of the race and endorsed him.

As many as 25 percent of Republican voters want a different candidate to represent their party in the November 4 presidential election. In Pennsylvania, 27 percent opted for Huckabee or Paul; in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6, McCain opponents earned 23 percent of the vote.

The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, calculated that McCain had garnered no more than 45 percent of the Republican vote since January.

McCain’s reputation as a party maverick and a compromising moderate has left the party’s most conservative and ideological members disgruntled.

Read more: McCain faces doubts among Republican conservatives

Wine 1.0-rc1 was released today, with the following main changes:

Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.

Binary packages are in the process of being built and it may take a few days for them to appear, but the source is available now. You can find out more about this release in the announcement. Check out our download page for packages for your distribution.

Get it: Wine HQ

Within hours of its release, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.

The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft’s Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.

“My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up,” complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. “After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t,” said ‘Doug W’.

Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. “I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals,” wrote ‘Paul’. “Now I can’t get the computer to boot.”

Dozens of other posters reported similar problems.

It’s not uncommon for major operating system updates to cause problems. Typically, the glitches are due to conflicts with software, such as drivers, system files, or applications already resident on the user’s PC. Microsoft has yet to indicate whether it will issue an update to address some of the problems, though it has done so with previous updates.

Microsoft released Windows XP SP3 to broad distribution on Wednesday. It’s available from Microsoft’s automated Windows Update service or as a file that can be pulled from the Download Center on the company’s Web site.

Read more: Windows XP SP3 Sows Havoc, Users Complain — Microsoft Windows — InformationWeek

The news that Microsoft has finally made Windows XP SP3 available for public download after many delays may not be the cause for joy that many XP SP2 users are hoping for. In fact, there are some ominous smoke signals on the horizon which may well sound a warning for intending users not to download it just yet.

As one who has been stung by the Vista SP1 scorpion just recently, I feel there are some clear signs that all is not well in the Windows development labs at Redmond. After using Vista quite happily for six months or so, I founded myself being goaded by Microsoft into “upgrading” to Vista SP1.

Read more: iTWire - Windows XP SP3: Beware the service pack!

Mr. Obama’s very public arrival in the House chamber on Thursday morning underscored the fact that the most important front in the Democratic nominating fight was suddenly Washington, where many of the superdelegates were milling around on the House floor voting on amendments to a housing bill.

And it was in marked contrast to Mrs. Clinton’s private meetings near the Capitol the day before as she sought to convert undecided lawmakers. Aides to Mr. Obama said they saw his visit as an opportunity to create an image of Mr. Obama as the soon-to-be-nominee. Elated members on the floor seemed to share that view.

“I think he is feeling comfortable and confident, and he should,” said Representative Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, an Obama backer. “My colleagues are beginning to really see him as the candidate. The consensus is that he is the nominee.”

Mr. Obama created an uproar as he worked the chamber for more than half an hour, accepting congratulations for his primary showing Tuesday, shaking hands and sharing hugs with Democrats in his camp, some in Mrs. Clinton’s camp and even some Republicans. He did a little curtsy before Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, chairman of the Budget Committee and one of the sought-after uncommitted superdelegates.

Read more: Race Over or Not, Obama Takes a Victory Lap - New York Times