I think my colleague John Geddes came closest in his piece last week. It isn’t just that the Tories habitually ignore the expert consensus on a wide range of issues—crime, taxes, climate change—it’s that they want to be seen to be ignoring it. It’s the overt antagonism to experts, and by extension the educated classes, that marks the Tory style. In its own way, it’s a form of class war.

You can see it in the sneering references to Michael Ignatieff’s Harvard tenure, in the repeated denunciations of “elites” and “intellectuals.” In the partial dismantling of the census, we reach the final stage: not just hostile to experts, but to knowledge.

[...]

To whip up popular hostility to intellectuals is to invite the public to jump on its own funeral pyre.

How long do you think it will be before they start burning books? (via Dawg’s Blog)

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So I thought I would give Ubuntu a whirl … first on my netbook, then on my laptop, and who knows, maybe even on my desktop? Problem is, the current version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition (10.04) — and even the standard desktop install – doesn’t let you encrypt your whole hard drive (and I’m used to having this done, in case my laptop… goes missing). Sure, you can encrypt your home directory, which is where all your documents would likely be, but most crypto geeks say stuff could ‘leak’ out (through temp files etc.)

Plus, if I want to share stuff between all users of the laptop, like music and pictures and video that I don’t want a laptop thief to find, I’d have to figue out how to encrypt THAT directory in a way that any user login could decrypt it. Probably possible, but… too much trouble, and the first problem is still there.

So, on the ubuntu forums, I found a set of instructions for accomplishing exactly this. It’s for 9.04, but worked perfectly for 10.04 as well:

Originally Posted by LonelyAppleHater

BTW, I’m able to resume and hibernate with my encrypted swap. I have a hard drive, not an SSD, so I don’t have to take care with excessive writes.

Here’s the updated procedure without the need for the Fedora install (thanks jiink):

Encrypted Linux Install

1. Set up partitions.

Code:

# sudo -i
# cfdisk /dev/sda
### Create first partition with type 83 (Linux) for /boot
### Create second partition with type 8e (Linux LVM) for our encrypted volumes

2. Setup the encrypted volume to contain our LV’s

Code:

# apt-get install lvm2 cryptsetup
# modprobe dm-crypt
# modprobe aes
# cryptsetup -y -s 256 -c aes-cbc-essiv:sha256 luksFormat /dev/sda2
# cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 sda2_crypt
(enter password)

3. Now the encrypted volume is ready – let’s use it for Logical Volumes.

Code:

# pvcreate /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt
# vgcreate vg /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt
# vgchange -a y vg
# lvcreate -L 3G -n swap vg
# lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n root vg

4. Finally format the volumes so the installer partitioner recognizes them. There’s no need to format again in the partitioner after this.

Code:

# mkfs.ext4 -L boot -M /boot /dev/sda1
# mkfs.ext4 -L root -M / /dev/vg/root
 # mkswap -L swap /dev/vg/swap

5. Start installer. No need to reformat partitions. Don’t reboot after installer is done.

5.5

Code:

# mkdir /target2

as /target/ existed on my live unr version after the installer was finished i createt a new directory called target2

Code:

# mount /dev/vg/root /target2/
# mount /dev/sda1 /target2/boot
# chroot /target2
# mount -t proc proc /proc
# mount -t sysfs sys /sys
# apt-get install lvm2 cryptsetup

6. Using your favorite text editor (I used nano), enter the following entry in /etc/crypttab:

Code:

sda2_crypt     /dev/sda2     none      luks

7. Now put the following in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules:

Code:

aes-i586
dm-crypt
dm-mod
sha256

8. Now edit /etc/fstab. What you need to do here is comment out or delete the UUID that is associated with your encrypted volumes and put in the actual path for the volume. Apparently, the UUID’s might be wrong, so you need to use the path instead.

So, for example, it might say in the comment “Was on /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 during installation.” You should see the UUID below. So, replace the UUID with /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00. Repeat for the encrypted swap volume as well. There’s no need to do this for any other partition in the fstab file.

9. Finally, save and close the fstab file and enter one final command:

Code:

# update-initramfs -k all -c

Also, to fix the unusual position of the window buttons, see here.
(basically, hit Alt-F2, run gconf-editor, and change the apps/metacity/general button_layout to “menu:minimize, maximize, close”)

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Calgary Herald:

Do you see what I see in the new copyright Bill C-32? Amid all the noise about new rights for users, upon closer scrutiny, this bill, rather than granting new rights, can effectively block users from making use of any and all of their rights, even existing ones. It is true that this bill now recognizes rights that we all thought we already had, like viewing our legally purchased Irish video in Canada, or playing our Leonard Cohen song on our CD and copying it to our iPod, or watching Desperate Housewives on Monday instead of Sunday evening. But even the new rights granted to teachers to use excerpts from Catcher in the Rye or clips from the Anne of Green Gables television show are meaningless if vendors choose to use a digital lock.

Globe and Mail:

The problem here is twofold. Practically, it puts all the power in the hands of digital content creators. They can wave a wand and – more or less arbitrarily – declare their content locked and beyond the reach of the hoi polloi and their “fair use.”

But more important, I think, is the fact that giving locks special legal status doesn’t make intuitive sense. If you want people to follow a law in their day-to-day lives, and you don’t want to create a police state to enforce it, you have to meet them halfway on the grounds of moral reasoning. And turning digital locks into unbreakable magic seals – as opposed to judging what the user does after they break a lock – is counterintuitive.

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She states “the Prime Minister’s Office’s position was, move quickly, satisfy the United States.” When Bernier and then-Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda protested, the PMO replied “we don’t care what you do, as long as the U.S. is satisfied.”

[...]

[I]t would appear that the PMO’s decision to side with Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore in requiring strict anti-circumvention rules reflects a long-term decision to prioritize U.S. interests on copyright ahead of the national interest.

With a new copyright bill to be unveiled shortly, all the more reason to keep an eye out and make your voices heard.

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I’ve written a few times before about the controversy over whether cell phones (a.k.a. mobile phones in most of the rest of the world) cause brain cancer, concluding on more than one occasion that the evidence does not support a link. For example, there has not been a large increase in brain cancer or other cancers claimed to be due to cell phone radiation in the 15 to 20 years since the use of cell phones took off back in the 1990s, nor has any study shown a convincing correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer.

Of course, one would not expect a priori, based on what is known about basic science, that cell phone radiation would cause cancer. After all, the development of cancer in general ultimately requires mutations in critical genes regulating cell growth and development. For an outside treatment to cause such mutations, as far as we know, requires the ability to cause DNA damage through the breaking of chemical bonds. Ionizing radiation can do this, as can certain cehmicals and chemotherapeutic agents. Indeed, that’s how these agents work against cancer because cancer cells tend to be more sensitive to DNA damaging agents than normal cells due to defective DNA repair mechanisms. Thus, it is highly implausible based on basic science that cell phone radiation could cause cancer. It’s not homeopathy level-implausible, but it’s pretty implausible.

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(via BoingBoing)

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It’s an hour long, but well worth it!

(via SBM)

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Start with the rear-view mirror. Adjust it to get the best possible view out the back window.

Next, roll down the driver’s side window, stick your head halfway out and adjust the left mirror so you can just see the side of your car.

For the right mirror, lean over almost completely into the passenger’s seat. Adjust the mirror so you can just see the right side of your car. (Obviously, you should do all this while parked.)

The only caveat, on some older cars (like my wife’s Nissan Altima), the mirrors don’t go out far enough for this.

Also, if you have something big in the back (like your cousin Nimmo)  blocking the rear view mirror, obviously you may need to readjust a bit, too.

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