Mange Mes Briefs

Thoughts on iTunes10 and Ping

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:08:00 -0700

Like anyone else interested in technology I dutifully downloaded iTunes10 and clicked on the new Ping icon. Looking past the misuse of a common networking term as the name I proceeded to setup my account.

Hmm... I can't just import my stuff from Facebook or Twitter to auto-populate my account? Okay, no Gravatar support, I guess I can understand that, but they have to approve my avatar? Are you kidding me?

Okay, then they ask me to choose a maximum of three genres of music I like. Three? That's it? First, they can't figure that out from my damned iTunes library? Second, their categories are a joke. Nobody listens to Punk, Alternative, Swing, Folk? What the hell?

Based solely on the profile creation section this looks like Apple has absolutely no clue what a social network is. But I digress...
Then they show the artists they recommend I follow: Lady GaGa, Yo-Yo Ma, Katy Perry, U2, Jack Johnson and Linkin Park. This pretty much shows how little intelligence this app has. It is built into my damned iTunes yet it can't look at the music in my library and base recommendations off of that? What a bunch of obviously commercial recommendations. I'll bet these would have been recommended to me regardless of what three genres I chose to like.

Then I use the search bar to look for artists. Twenty in a row and not a single one turns up. FAIL.

This social network is empty and useless. There aren't any artists worth following and you can only comment on purchases or other people's likes. But then it hit me: This isn't about music and it's not terribly social. It's about buying stuff and celebrities. I'm amazed that nobody at Apple looked at Last.fm while building this. Last.fm has the last four years of my music listening history, has recommendations based upon what I actually like and listen to and generally is way more social and about music than Ping could even hope to come close to.

Sorry Apple, how do I delete my Ping account?

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This was done with a slide rule

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:13:00 -0700

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PressTV - Israel invades Gaza on 1st day of talks

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:19:00 -0700

via presstv.ir

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Riding Rails: Rails 3.0: It's ready!

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:16:10 -0700

Rails 3.0: It's ready!

Posted by David August 29, 2010 @ 06:28 PM
Rails 3.0 has been underway for a good two years, so it’s with immense pleasure that we can declare it’s finally here. We’ve brought the work of more than 1,600 contributors together to make everything better, faster, cleaner, and more beautiful.

This third generation of Rails has seen thousands of commits, so picking what to highlight was always going to be tough and incomplete. But here’s a choice selection of major changes for Rails 3:

New Active Record query engine
Active Record has adopted the ARel query engine to make scopes and queries more consistent and composable. This makes it much easier to build complex queries over several iterations. We also delay the actual execution of the query until it’s needed. Here’s a simple example:
users = User.where(:name => "david").limit(20) users = users.where("age > 29") # SELECT * FROM users # WHERE name = "david" AND age > 29 # ORDER BY name # LIMIT 20 users.order(:name).each { |user| puts user.name } Read more in new Active Record guide and watch the Dive into Rails 3: ARel video. New router for Action Controller When we switched to a REST-based approach for controllers in Rails 2, we patched on the syntax to the existing router while we were waiting to see if the experiment panned out. It did and for Rails 3 we’ve gone back and revamped the syntax completely to favor the REST style with less noise and more flexibility: resources :people do resource :avatar collection do get :winners, :losers end end # /sd34fgh/rooms scope ':token', :token => /\w{5,5}/ do resources :rooms end # /descriptions # /pl/descriptions # /en/descriptions scope '(:locale)', :locale => /en|pl/ do resources :descriptions root :to => 'projects#index' end Read more in the new routing guide. New Action Mailer Action Mailer was born with a split-personality of half model, half controller. In Rails 3, we’ve made the choice to make it all controller. This means that the feel and functionality will be much closer to Action Controller and in fact they now share a bunch of underlying code. Here’s a taste of what it looks like now: class Notifier < ActionMailer::Base default :from => "Highrise <system@#{APPLICATION_DOMAIN}>" def new_project(digest, project, person) @digest, @project, @person = digest, project, person attachments['digest.pdf'] = digest.to_pdf attachments['logo.jpg'] = File.read(project.logo_path) mail( :subject => "Your digest for #{project.name}", :to => person.email_address_with_name ) do |format| format.text { render :text => "Something texty" } format.html { render :text => "Something <i>texty</i>" } end end end The new Action Mailer is built on top of the new Mail gem as well. Say goodbye to TMail headaches. Read more in new Action Mailer guide. Manage dependencies with Bundler Managing all the dependencies of a Rails application has long been a hassle of patchworks. We had config.gem, Capistrano externals, custom rake setup tasks, and other incomplete solutions. Bundler cleans all that up and allows you to specify the libraries, frameworks, and plugins that your application depends on. All Rails 3 applications are born with a Gemfile to control it all. See more on the Bundler site. XSS protection by default The internet is a scary place and Rails 3 is watching out for you by default. We’ve had CRSF protection with form signing for a while and SQL-injection protection since the beginning, but Rails 3 ups the anté with XSS protection as well (hat tip to Django for convincing us). See the Railscast on XSS video and the Dive into Rails 3: Cross-site scripting video for more. Say goodbye to encoding issues If you browse the Internet with any frequency, you will likely encounter the � character. This problem is extremely pervasive, and is caused by mixing and matching content with different encodings. In a system like Rails, content comes from the database, your templates, your source files, and from the user. Ruby 1.9 gives us the raw tools to eliminate these problems, and in combination with Rails 3, � should be a thing of the past in Rails applications. Never struggle with corrupted data pasted by a user from Microsoft Word again! Active Model: Validations, callbacks, etc for all models We’ve extracted quite a bit of commonly requested Active Record components into the new Active Model framework. This allows an ORM like Mongoid to use Active Record’s validations, callbacks, serialization, and i18n support. Additionally, in the rewrite of Action Controller, we removed any direct references to Active Record, defining a clean, simple API that ORMs can implement. If you use an API-compliant ORM (like DataMapper, Sequel, or Mongoid), you will be able to use features like form_for, link_to and redirect_to with objects from those ORMs without any additional work. Official plugin APIs We also rewrote Railties with the express goal of using the new plugin API for all Rails frameworks like Active Record and Action Mailer. This means that Rails plugins like the ones for DataMapper and RSpec have access to all of the integration as the built-in support for Active Record and Test::Unit. The new Railtie API makes it possible to modify the built-in generators, add rake tasks, configure default Rails options, and specify code to run as early, or as late as you need. Rails plugins like Devise were able to add much better integration in the Rails 3 version of their plugin. Expect to see a lot more of that in the months ahead. Rewritten internals We rewrote the internals of Action Pack and Railties, making them much more flexible and easier to extend. Instead of a single monolithic ActionController::Base, Rails 3 exposes a number of modules, each with defined APIs, that you can mix and match to create special-purpose controllers for your own use. Both Action Mailer in Rails and the Cells project make heavy use of this new functionality. You can also take a look a this blog post by Yehuda (from last year) to see how the new architecture makes it easy to implement Django-style generic actions in Rails by leveraging Rack and ActionController::Metal. The Rails generator system is got a revamp as well. Instead of monolithic generators that know about all of the Rails frameworks, each generator calls a series of hooks, such as :test_framework and :orm, that plugins can register handlers for. This means that generating a scaffold when using rSpec, DataMapper and Haml will generate a scaffold customized for those plugins. Agnosticism with jQuery, rSpec, and Data Mapper The rewritten internals and the new plugin APIs have brought true agnosticism to Rails 3 for all components of the framework. Prefer DataMapper to Active Record? No problem. Want to use jQuery instead of Prototype? Go ahead. Eager to test with rSpec instead of test/unit? You got it. It’s never been easier to Have It Your Way™ with Rails 3. And at the same time, we’ve made that happen without making using the excellent default stack any more complicated. Documentation Rails 3 has had a long development cycle and while that might have lead to some impatience, it has also given book and tutorial authors a chance to catch up and be ready. There’s a wealth of great Rails 3 documentation available already and more is coming shortly. The Agile Web Development with Rails 4th Ed book is almost ready and there are plenty more books coming. Check out all the new guides, the new official videos, new Railscasts, and a new tutorial. See the recent recap of documentation sources for more. Installation gem install rails --version 3.0.0. We also have a Rails v3.0.0 tag and a 3-0-stable branch. Rails 3.0 has been designed to work with Ruby 1.8.7, Ruby 1.9.2, and JRuby 1.5.2+. Gratitude and next steps I’m personally incredibly proud of this release. I’ve been working on Rails for more than 7 years and the quality of the framework we have today is just astounding. This is only possible as a community effort and Rails 3 has seen so many incredible developers step up and help make this our best release ever (wink). Many thanks to all of you. We’ll continue to develop Rails 3.0 with fixes and tweaks via the stable branch and Rails 3.1 is already cooking on master.
Posted in Releases | 305 comments Comments Leave a response Bryan Helmkamp on 29 Aug 23:31: Congratulations! Ryan W on 29 Aug 23:32: Awesome work! Yuri Tomanek on 29 Aug 23:32: Oh yeah! ProblemChild on 29 Aug 23:32: Congrats + Thanks! Ben Hall on 29 Aug 23:35: Congratulations!! Karmen Blake on 29 Aug 23:35: Awesome! Sam Granieri on 29 Aug 23:36: This kicks ass! Ben Hall on 29 Aug 23:36: Congratulations!! Ben Hall on 29 Aug 23:36: Congratulations!! Martin Aatmaa on 29 Aug 23:36: Congratulations! Jblanche on 29 Aug 23:36: Congrats and thanks a lot ! ProblemChild on 29 Aug 23:36: Congrats + Thanks! Ben Hall on 29 Aug 23:37: Congratulations!! Jonathan Nelson on 29 Aug 23:37: Congrats! Thank you everyone for your hard work! Santiago Pastorino on 29 Aug 23:37: Congratz to everybody!!! Alex MacCaw on 29 Aug 23:37: Great stuff! Congratulations. Matthew Sedlacek on 29 Aug 23:38: Fuck yeah!!! Camille Roux on 29 Aug 23:38: Bravo! @jonathannelson on 29 Aug 23:39: Congrats! Thank you everyone for your hard work and contributions. @jonathannelson @jonathannelson on 29 Aug 23:40: Congrats! Thank you everyone for your hard work and contributions. Jblanche on 29 Aug 23:43: Congrats and thanks a lot ! Jonathan Nelson on 29 Aug 23:44: Congrats! Thank you everyone for all your hard work. Darcy Laycock on 29 Aug 23:46: Awesome job – the Rails 3 beta’s / rc’s have been my preferred way to work for the last few months already and final makes it even easier to decide to use on new projects. Levi Figueira on 29 Aug 23:46: Congratulations folks!! It’s finally here… :D Alex Le on 29 Aug 23:50: Sweet! I can’t wait to get Rails 3 working for my app! I’ve been running Rails 3RC2 and love it. Congrats to everyone for an amazing efforts to push Rails 3.0 out!. Amazing! Camille Roux on 29 Aug 23:51: Bravo! Mutwin Kraus on 29 Aug 23:53: Awesome job, congrats! Omid Zaman on 29 Aug 23:54: Nice work! Congrats and Thanks. Levi Figueira on 29 Aug 23:54: Congratulations folks!! It’s finally here… :D Mutwin Kraus on 29 Aug 23:55: Awesome job, congrats! jason on 29 Aug 23:55: Congratulations and thanks! Mutwin Kraus on 29 Aug 23:55: Awesome job, congrats! jason on 29 Aug 23:55: Congratulations and thanks! Levi Figueira on 29 Aug 23:56: Congratulations folks!! It’s finally here… :D Chris on 29 Aug 23:56: Great. :-) nullobject on 29 Aug 23:56: Big ups to everyone who made this happen, and to the Merb peeps who inspired a new way for Rails. PabloC on 29 Aug 23:56: Rock on!!! !:) Mutwin Kraus on 29 Aug 23:56: Awesome job, congrats! Omid Zaman on 29 Aug 23:56: Congrats and Thanks for all the hard work you and all team put on bringing the project to this phase. Jan Kus on 29 Aug 23:56: Thanks a lot! This is huge! Matt Darby on 29 Aug 23:56: \m/ qmx on 29 Aug 23:57: congrats! nullobject on 29 Aug 23:57: Big ups to everyone who made this happen, and to the Merb peeps who inspired a new way for Rails. PabloC on 29 Aug 23:57: Rock on!!! !:) Omid Zaman on 29 Aug 23:57: Congrats and Thanks for all the hard work you and all team put on bringing the project to this phase. Diego Caliri on 29 Aug 23:57: Awesome!!! Congrats to everyone involved! Diego Caliri on 29 Aug 23:57: Awesome!!! Congrats to everyone involved! Omid Zaman on 29 Aug 23:57: Congrats and Thanks for all the hard work you and all team put on bringing the project to this phase. Roland on 29 Aug 23:57: Thank you very much for Rails 3! I’m now happy to use JQuery and Datamapper together with Rails without having the nasty feeling that it breaks with the next minor release :-) Douglas on 29 Aug 23:57: Hooray and congratulations! Fabio on 30 Aug 00:04: Bravi!!! Pat on 30 Aug 00:05: Congrats all! Raul Souza Lima on 30 Aug 00:05: You guys kick ass! Congrats rails core team! Ryan Bigg on 30 Aug 00:06: Whoop! Rails 3 is a reality! AkitaOnRails on 30 Aug 00:07: Awesome work, contrats to you all! For Brazilians, I wrote a release note myself for Rails 3: http://akitaonrails.com/2010/08/29/rails-3-0-final-acaba-de-ser-lancado DHH on 30 Aug 00:11: Thanks for all the kind words, everyone. It was a long haul and we’re thrilled to finally be here. Roland on 30 Aug 00:11: Thank you very much for Rails 3! I’m now happy to use JQuery and Datamapper together with Rails without having the nasty feeling that it breaks with the next minor release :-) Kang Chen on 30 Aug 00:15: Gotta love the Rails community, big congrats to everyone ! Lucas Renan on 30 Aug 00:17: Congratzzzzzz =) Chris on 30 Aug 00:18: Why no mention of Merb? I thought this was the merging of the two projects zizipo on 30 Aug 00:20: congrats Felipe Coury on 30 Aug 00:21: Awesome! Kevin Faustino on 30 Aug 00:21: Thanks to the core team and everyone involved in making this release a reality :) Jessy on 30 Aug 00:23: Lot’s of things I don’t understand from reading the announcement: 1. Is Rails 3 thread safe? 2. Since the Merb team did all the work, why didn’t they get the privellege to writing this post, instead of DHH … especially given that the Merb team was brought in the fix all of DHH fundamental Rails problems. 3. How does performance compare to Rails 2? مصطفى فرغلى on 30 Aug 00:27: Congratulations Rails team, really great work and very well done. DHH on 30 Aug 00:30: Chris, Jessy, it long since stopped being about a Rails and a Merb team. Today there’s just a Rails 3 team where everyone is working together for the improvement of the framework. See http://contributors.rubyonrails.org/contributors?window=this-year for work done this year. More than 350 people who has commits this year. No factions, just collaboration. Slartibartfast on 30 Aug 00:30: Thanks guys, I’m getting old you know but I’m still amazed at what the young folk of today can achieve. Though Deep Thought was was pretty impressing I must say so indeed! Keith Pitt on 30 Aug 00:30: Internet High Five! Brian Takita on 30 Aug 00:32: Congratulations!! Rafael on 30 Aug 00:32: Congratulations! I’m starting a new app right now, with the right foot. Thank you all so much! DHH on 30 Aug 00:32: Jessy, Rails has been thread safe since 2.3 (so yes). Speed is up in a lot of areas, probably down in a few too. It will depend on your application. Mason on 30 Aug 00:32: Thanks to all the community efforts, it’s really wonderful! Casey Helbling on 30 Aug 00:33: Very cool – and very excited to get going with it – great job core team. Thank you very much! —-——- One quick note – I think there is something funky going on with the api.rubyonrails.com documentation. Jason Lee on 30 Aug 00:44: That the best news for this monday morring. Золзаяа on 30 Aug 00:53: Thanks guys. Go ahead Rubyists. Brandon Martin on 30 Aug 00:58: Awesome and thanks to everyone involved. Julian Hoffmann on 30 Aug 01:01: You guys are just awesome!!! My deepest respect!!! Fabian Ramirez on 30 Aug 01:01: Great WORK! Thanks guys! anger on 30 Aug 01:01: “The Rails generator system is got a revamp as well.” Tom Myer on 30 Aug 01:01: FANTASTIC!!!!!! Thanks guys for all your hard work!!! Mike Cantelon on 30 Aug 01:03: Where’s the big ups to the Merb team in this post? Christopher Meiklejohn on 30 Aug 01:06: Awesome; love the changes! Derick Hitchcock on 30 Aug 01:07: Super excited! Can’t wait to put it to some good use. Nice work y’all. chaosTheLOD on 30 Aug 01:09: I’m not good at Rails, but I love it. Thanks. jd on 30 Aug 01:09: From RubyFrance, congrats! Yehuda Katz on 30 Aug 01:11: I just wanted to say a few things. First of all, this is a huge milestone for Rails. From my perspective, this work is three or four years in the making, from the beginning of the Merb efforts, through the merge, and on until the final release of Rails 3. From a personal perspective, this release is huge closure for me; I feel like I’ve been working on Rails 3 (and associated projects, like Thor and Bundler) for years. When the Merb team merged into the Rails team, we very quickly got to work. The previous animosity actually melted away rather quickly, to be replaced with the somewhat tense, but productive give and take of a core team. One of the really amazing things to come out of the last couple of years is a whole slew of new committers to Rails (in addition to Carl and me): José Valim, Aaron Patterson, Xavier Noria and Santiago Pastorino. Rails 3 would still be limping along if not for these guys, who really went above and beyond the call of duty in the past few months to get things past the finish line. In light of all this, I really haven’t thought much about the old Merb/Rails party lines in a while. I’ve been too focused on Rails and Bundler, and the rest of the core team (old and new alike) have been busy helping. Dmytrii Nagirniak on 30 Aug 01:13: NEXT STEP WOULD BE ENSURING ALL THE PLUGINS ARE UP TO DATE. I wish we could just `s/not-yet-rails3/already-rails-3/g` :) But I believe WE, the community, will help with that. Thanks for the great news! Aaron Tinio on 30 Aug 01:22: Congratulations! And thank you everyone for all your hard work. Emmanuel Oga on 30 Aug 01:23: E P I C :) Thanks for all the hard work from all the people involved! DEkart on 30 Aug 01:27: Champaign to everyone! :) Thanks guys for your work! Igor Leroy on 30 Aug 01:31: Bravo!! Justin Baker on 30 Aug 01:34: Great work! :D I’ve been waiting and waiting for 3.0.0 final, and here it is :D Theo Mills on 30 Aug 01:42: Rails has again surpassed every other software framework with version 3. Much like the first version of Rails shook up the software development world, I think Rails v3 will be influencing new frameworks for years to come. Thanks for giving this to everyone. concept47 on 30 Aug 01:43: Its been a long journey, but the results are more than worth it. Congratulations Rails team. Great work! Sebastian Martinez on 30 Aug 01:45: Awesome work!!! Thanks to all contributors that made this possible :) wangyaodi@gmail.com on 30 Aug 01:47: Big thanks to the brilliant Rails Team. Neal on 30 Aug 01:52: W-H-double O-M-P Pete Bevin on 30 Aug 01:53: Congratulations and thank you! Vasco on 30 Aug 01:53: Congrats for all the work! I salute you rails 3! Lucca Mordente on 30 Aug 01:56: Yay!! Fabrício Ferrari de Campos on 30 Aug 01:59: Great job! Rails Rocks again!!! ;) Erol Fornoles on 30 Aug 02:00: Finally! Congratulations!! Brett on 30 Aug 02:01: Love it – Congrats! When’s v4 coming? kidding Insoo Kim on 30 Aug 02:02: great news aweeeeeesome~ Eris on 30 Aug 02:02: Congratulations and thanks to everybody involved. I’m glad Merb and Rails joined forces because it was a shame having two groups of talented folks working against each other towards the same goal. :) Mars R on 30 Aug 02:10: Thanks for the good news. Congrats to all, who involved for this success John Yerhot on 30 Aug 02:12: I’m really happy with the direction Rails 3 has gone. Good job guys. Anjan Das on 30 Aug 02:14: Great job! Congratulations to all involved. Wait was worth. neilrioszamora on 30 Aug 02:15: great! Parker Selbert on 30 Aug 02:16: Amazing job everyone. Thank you for your tireless work! Mario Tatis on 30 Aug 02:16: Congrats! and thank you guys so much for your hard work! Enhorabuena!!! Mario Tatis on 30 Aug 02:16: Congrats! and thank you guys so much for your hard work! Enhorabuena!!! Julien on 30 Aug 02:18: Great jobs to all! Congratulations! doabit on 30 Aug 02:31: Good job! doabit on 30 Aug 02:31: Good job! Obie on 30 Aug 02:33: Very proud of the core team and the whole community. Rock on! Ra on 30 Aug 02:33: Congratulations! Rodrigo Navarro on 30 Aug 02:39: Congratulations people! Rails 3 is definitively a major milestone not just for the ruby community, but for web development in general. eveevans on 30 Aug 02:46: Por fin, ahora sera ver si los servidores daran soporte para rails 3 Melvin Ram on 30 Aug 02:48: Thank You!! Sam on 30 Aug 02:49: Thank you. This is a great framework. Luis Abarca on 30 Aug 02:53: Woow, congratulations !!! xcjself on 30 Aug 02:57: Great job! Nate Kidwell on 30 Aug 02:59: Though it’s been stable for quite a few releases now, Rails 3.0 was much awaited. one question, the Lighthouse seems to have 55 tickets still for the 3.0 milestone. I don’t care too much, because 3.0 works perfectly for me, but I was wondering about their status (are they punted till 3.1, addressed in a patch, or just to be ignored). Thanks, and “beyond thanks” for all your magnificent work, Nate xiao on 30 Aug 02:59: Great job! But,when i use chenese line “redirect_to(@post, :notice => ’’ 成功” in controller ,i still get an errror as “invalid multibyte char (US-ASCII)”.do i must add ”# encoding: utf-8” in the controller?? Bill Capolongo on 30 Aug 03:04: Kudos to the team on a most excellent release. Rails 3 pulls together a lot of discrete goodness into an elegant wholeness that is FUN to use. Bernardo Arancibia on 30 Aug 03:09: This is a very big new step for the Open Source community and all the web frameworks. Thanks for this piece of wonder. Rails is still alive and more than ever!! 2bi! on 30 Aug 03:26: Gracias, lo esperabamos desde hace mucho! rafael sorto on 30 Aug 03:26: Congratulations! This is awesome news! Hiroshi Hiromoto on 30 Aug 03:30: Congrats!!! Diego Castillo on 30 Aug 03:33: This kick Java’s ass :D! stephen murdoch on 30 Aug 03:51: yaas! Jim on 30 Aug 03:54: Great news! Now off to tutorials :D Vincent Franco on 30 Aug 04:01: Great job! Millisami on 30 Aug 04:02: I’m proud that I am riding the Rails.! @vyaces on 30 Aug 04:05: Thank’s guys. What an amazing achievement! KM on 30 Aug 04:10: congratulations, and thank you for all the hard work. btw pertamax gan doode on 30 Aug 04:14: еееееееееееееееееее it’s awesome!! =))))))) Peter Bell on 30 Aug 04:17: W00t – congratulations! Peter Bell on 30 Aug 04:17: W00t – congratulations! Clay Shentrup on 30 Aug 04:24: Like a BOSS! Erik Dahlstrand on 30 Aug 04:25: Congratulations and thank you!! Naveen on 30 Aug 04:26: Awesome! Congrats! Lu Li on 30 Aug 04:27: Thanks all you guys!Amazing work ayanb on 30 Aug 04:33: Great achievement by the community. Congratulations guys Prashant on 30 Aug 04:34: Kudos ! Binky on 30 Aug 04:40: This is the best rubyonrails ever!! pulkit on 30 Aug 04:46: Waited for this from so many months! And now finally it’s here. I feel so much proud that I am rorinian!!! Andi Altendorfer on 30 Aug 04:50: That’s so cool! I love it. Congratulations! ExpectationGap on 30 Aug 04:53: I’ve been using Rails 3 through the Summer and have been very impressed with the evolution of the framework. The improvements strike a fine balance between performance, modularity, and ease of use. Your monumental efforts help make this an exciting time to be in software development! Alexey Zakharov on 30 Aug 05:00: Ha ha! Great news! We just switched from ASP.NET MVC to Rails 3! ASP.NET MVC really suxx. Jason Keene on 30 Aug 05:19: ^^ typo Jason Keene on 30 Aug 05:21: let’s try this again hre=”http://rubyonr ^^ typo and might want to escape those good ol html tags.. Tobi Knaup on 30 Aug 05:28: Yeah! Congrats guys! seb on 30 Aug 05:32: Crongratulations! I already use rails 3 for months now and I’m happy to see this official release before going to production. Jason Keene on 30 Aug 05:32: Also, CSRF not CRSF. http://www.liangwenke.com on 30 Aug 05:33: Well done! Akshay Rawat [www.activesphere.com] on 30 Aug 05:39: Lets get started already! 娃哈哈 on 30 Aug 05:40: 太棒了！ Marco on 30 Aug 05:44: Congratulations !!! Libo on 30 Aug 05:50: Hurra! Grazie Tak Well Done! Luke on 30 Aug 05:55: w00t! Amazing job guys, Rails 3 Rocks! Johannes on 30 Aug 05:57: Great! Remove the last dot on the version in gem install rails --version 3.0.0 Greetings Johannes foyo99 on 30 Aug 05:59: happy with it! the great rails! Sergey Kuznetsov on 30 Aug 06:02: Yeah! Thanks to the each member of the whole rails community! Kevin on 30 Aug 06:04: I’m still pretty new to Rails – only been at it for a couple of weeks, but I must say this really looks like an incredible release! Well done guys :) Thibaud Guillaume-Gentil on 30 Aug 06:05: Magnifique! Trung LE on 30 Aug 06:16: Tuyet voi! Cam on Rails Team rat nhieu! (Translated to: Awesome! Thanks Rails Team) Johan on 30 Aug 06:22: Great news indeed :) Vitalis on 30 Aug 06:24: Thank you all for doing amazing work!!!! Henrik Berggren on 30 Aug 06:26: Totally awesome! Henrik Berggren on 30 Aug 06:26: Totally awesome! Michael Kastner on 30 Aug 06:29: Thank you! billybobythornton on 30 Aug 06:33: Super Ace People. Long live open source, long live global collaboration, long live rails – something I love doing. Hoping one day it’ll help help me to pay the mortgage! tom on 30 Aug 06:34: guys this is awesome!!! 1000 thanks for all the hard work!! Laurynas on 30 Aug 06:35: Great news! Thanks a lot ;) Pierre Schweiger on 30 Aug 06:35: Et voila! Jules on 30 Aug 06:45: That is awesome! Flavien Cogez on 30 Aug 06:50: LEGENDARY! Ollie on 30 Aug 06:50: Bloody thanks! :) jan on 30 Aug 06:51: Great! Thanks! trung on 30 Aug 06:57: I have been using RC1. Will upgrade to the Final version soon. Thanks! DevHalt on 30 Aug 06:58: endless respect! Javaguy on 30 Aug 06:59: 2 years for a new version? I thought Ruby was a language where you can get things done quickly. mimmo on 30 Aug 06:59: Hey guys, for the next release the only thing missing are the 3d glasses to watch the code three-dimensional … good job, thanks! Andrea on 30 Aug 07:04: Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! jistr on 30 Aug 07:10: That’s awsome! Thanks! SoftMind on 30 Aug 07:22: What else can i say but ….” Awesome Work, by an Awesome Team ”. My wait is over today. Rajeshwar Mothe on 30 Aug 07:23: Great to hear :) Abdul Shajin on 30 Aug 07:28: Glad to know…Am so happy. Cooool. :D :D :D :D :D Falk Pauser on 30 Aug 07:29: Horray! Numbcoder on 30 Aug 07:33: Good job! Thanks! Mantas on 30 Aug 07:37: Ačiū! Sangmin Ryu on 30 Aug 07:37: 와우! 감사합니다! Wow! Thank you! Mike K on 30 Aug 07:38: FORK YEAH!!! LET’S ROCK!! smashes up room Max on 30 Aug 07:41: grats! alexey on 30 Aug 07:45: Hell yeah ! Sébastien Grosjean - ZenCocoon on 30 Aug 07:51: Brilliant! Thanks to all the community for making this possible. Maurizio De Magnis on 30 Aug 07:53: n1 guys! thx a lot! Jeremy on 30 Aug 07:59: Good news! Thanks for your awesome job! Konsi on 30 Aug 08:07: Awesome !!! Fredrik on 30 Aug 08:10: Great news! But the “Dive into Rails 3: ARel video” link doesn’t seem to work. Mišo on 30 Aug 08:12: Thanks! Yaroslav Markin on 30 Aug 08:13: How about announcing new Rails Core members? They definitely deserve that :) Rudth-Mael on 30 Aug 08:15: Yeaah! Great job guys! Peter Lee on 30 Aug 08:15: Awesome !!! Roshan on 30 Aug 08:17: Great Work…. congratulations Todd on 30 Aug 08:18: Fabulous! ariets@gala.net on 30 Aug 08:18: Да! Всех поздравляю! Brice on 30 Aug 08:18: Great! Thanks! Sjoerd on 30 Aug 08:20: Great news. Congrats and thank you guys. sshatunov@yandex.ru on 30 Aug 08:34: Ура!!! С днем рождения, Rails 3 !!! Mathias S on 30 Aug 08:36: Wheres the new Rails 3 blog-in-10-min-video where DHH demonstrates what he does not do :-) feaber on 30 Aug 08:39: Gratzz !!! cies on 30 Aug 08:43: see here a comment from ezmobius of merb fame: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644995 i believe rails3 is -technology wise- better named merb2. and the fact that the merb team is so humble to merge with the rails team, and giving up their name in the process is an act of selflessness clearly for the greater good of the ruby webframework eco system. @DHH: you are right that there is now no longer a merb team and a rails team. true. but this is the big release that was possible only because of the merger, so they deserve to be mentioned/ honoured/ credited, especially in this announcement! congratulations with the great release. respect to the merb guys for giving up name and fame in order to prevent the ‘fractions’ that DHH talks about in his comment. jonny on 30 Aug 09:03: Congratulations, yeah _~~ Nimesh Nikum on 30 Aug 09:04: Great News of the day :) Idonas on 30 Aug 09:07: Wonderful work, congrats to the team, and many, many thanks :)! Εύγε! Rustam on 30 Aug 09:19: Congrats, thank you guys , i am going to ride it right away. Tim Bica on 30 Aug 09:22: Congrats! It’s the state of art. I’m looking forward to start working seriously on it. Messiah! on 30 Aug 09:22: Hell Yeah! Andrey Delov on 30 Aug 09:34: Thanks guys;)!Start update!! Eugen Ciur on 30 Aug 09:38: Congratulations, great work! Pete Shaw on 30 Aug 09:40: Meh! fxposter on 30 Aug 09:42: Thanks, guys! You are all awesome! Tomim on 30 Aug 09:45: Awesome! Thx! Sam Figueroa on 30 Aug 09:56: Epic! Thank you. You guy make our lives as programmers so much easier. Christopher Hlubek


	


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I actually thought the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was smarter than this.  Guess not.
Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:38:21 -0700

	

      
Our Food, Our Right is a CAGJ Food Justice Project publication (72 pages!) that combines hands-on tools for change with community recipes and political awareness to engage YOU in joining in the struggle for food justice! Our Food, Our Right promotes community knowledge sharing, self-sufficiency, accessibility, and food justice through a food sovereignty framework. Buy your copy here!






Buy your fair trade coffee and benefit CAGJ!  Grounds for Change, a local roaster, donates 10% of your purchase to CAGJ if you click the image below. 
 


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This made my day
Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:29:02 -0700

	

      

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Dinner from the garden
Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:20:20 -0700

	



Ian Swope 
SB Direct 
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Scientists call for global policy change on vitamin D
Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:53:08 -0700

	

      

  
  Scientists call for global policy change on vitamin D 

    
    By Lorraine Heller, 10-Aug-2010
  
    Related topics: 
    Regulation, Vitamins & premixes, Bone & joint health, Cancer risk reduction, Cardiovascular health, Diabetes, Immune system  
  
  
International experts have again called out for an increase in daily recommendations for Vitamin D, which they say is crucial to reduce the risk of a host a diseases.



    
  
    
              
The latest call comes from scientists in Europe and the US, who say that higher intake levels of the vitamin could help protect against conditions such as childhood rickets, adult osteomalacia, cancer, autoimmune type-1 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, obesity and muscle weakness.


Writing in the July 28 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, the authors propose worldwide policy changes to increase recommended intake levels of the sunshine vitamin. This, they said, would reduce the frequency of certain diseases, increase longevity and reduce medical costs.


"It is high time that worldwide vitamin D nutritional policy, now at a crossroads, reflects current scientific knowledge about the vitamin's many benefits and develops a sound vision for the future," said Anthony Norman, a professor emeritus of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at the University of California, Riverside. 


D Data


Vitamin D refers to two biologically inactive precursors - D3, also known as cholecalciferol, and D2, also known as ergocalciferol. The former, produced in the skin on exposure to UVB radiation (290 to 320 nm), is said to be more bioactive. 


While our bodies do manufacture vitamin D on exposure to sunshine, the levels in some northern countries are so weak during the winter months that our body makes no vitamin D at all, meaning that dietary supplements and fortified foods are seen by many as the best way to boost intakes of vitamin D. 


The authors of the current study note that the best sources of unfortified foods naturally containing vitamin D are animal products and fatty fish and liver extracts like salmon or sardines and cod liver oil. Vitamin D-fortified food sources include milk and milk products, orange juice, breakfast cereals and bars, grain products, pastas, infant formulas and margarines.



Typical recommended daily intakes (RDIs) lie between 200 and 600 international units (IU) per day while more and more science shows the above benefits can be better achieved with levels closer to 2000IU per day without safety concerns.


"Currently, more than half the world's population gets insufficient amounts of this vitamin. At present about half of elderly North Americans and Western Europeans and probably also of the rest of the world are not receiving enough vitamin D to maintain healthy bone," said Norman.


Benefits for all major diseases


Together with co-author Roger Bouillon of the Laboratory of Experimental Medicine and Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, Norman stresses that if the daily dietary intake of vitamin D is increased by 600-1000 IU in all adults above their present supply, it would bring beneficial effects on bone health in the elderly and on all major human diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular, metabolic and immune diseases.


In addition, they note that rickets in children could be eradicated if present guidelines for vitamin D intake were strictly implemented for pregnant and lactating women, newborns and children.


Increasing vitamin D dietary intake to 2000 IU per day – and more for subgroups of the world population with the poorest vitamin D status – could also “favourably impact multiple sclerosis, type-1 diabetes, tuberculosis, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular risk factors and most cancers,” they said.


Deficiency


In adults, it is said vitamin D deficiency may precipitate or exacerbate osteopenia, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, fractures, common cancers, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases and cardiovascular diseases. 


    
  


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Blog - RoundHouse Managed Server Support
Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:59:54 -0700

	

      
  
    9 Things You Should Be Doing With Your Server, But Probably Aren't
  
  
    Jul 22nd, 2010 at 01:22PM ago
  
  
    
Linux distributions today are incredibly easy to setup and get started.  Whether for a blog, web app, or any other reason, installing the necessary services and getting things running can often be accomplished in a few hours even by an inexperienced developer.  I can't praise the standardized and well written guides from Slicehost enough for the help they provide in this regard.  
But the ease of getting started unfortunately belies the ongoing maintenance that is needed to keep a system stable and in good working order for the long term.  A single server can often run without human interaction for a long time.  But the success of doing so is tied directly to all the other bits and pieces that must be configured ahead of time.
The worst part about every item in this list is that you can probably get away without them, maybe even for months or years.  But missing one of these items can come back to haunt you at the worst time: like during a traffic spike, hard drive crash, or hacking attempt.

Configuration Management
I start with Configuration Management because it's a bit different from the rest of the items on this list.  This one is not as important for a single healthy server, but becomes critical when you have many systems.  Configuration management tools, such as Puppet or Chef, allow you to write 'recipes' for how a server should be put together.  These recipes are run on each server to produce a consistent and easily reproduced setup.  This provides the ability to instantly boot a new copy of any system and can give enormous freedom to your setup.
Configuration management does, however, add a significant amount of initial complexity to server setup: so it's not for the faint of heart.  But even with just two or three servers, the benefits are immense.
Backups
This one is pretty obvious and most sysadmins at least make an attempt in this area.  If you don't have a solid backup strategy, you need to fix it now.  Waiting even a single day can be disastrous.  And make sure you do them right, because backups are prone to being done incorrectly (see the JournalSpace disaster.  At-home backups have made great strides with the likes of Mozy, Carbonite, Backblaze, etc, but similar Linux solutions are far behind in terms of sophistication.  Rsync, tar, and similar scripted tools are still a popular and viable option, but care must be taken to accommodate special cases like MySQL databases.  Everyone's backup needs are different so whatever option you choose be sure to investigate its potential shortfalls.  Your chosen solution should:

Run regularly
Keep several rounds of backups
Automatically drop old backups
Store the backups off-site from your actual system
Remain as secure as your original data
Incorporate all critical data, critical configuration files (anything you might need to get a replacement server up-and-running), and potentially recent logs

Testing your backups
Hot on the heels of having a backup plan is testing it.  This means regularly checking that the backups are still being made, that the files produced are valid and not corrupt, and that they contain all the data you need.  A good rule of thumb is that if your backups rotate out every 30 days, then you should be re-checking them just as often.  Automated tools can help a little here (automatically checking that the backup files are recent, of reasonable size, and possibly valid).  However, nothing is a substitute for human eyes here...otherwise those eyes will be crying when you discover you don't have the backups you thought you did.
Log Rotation
Ubuntu, RedHat, and the other major distributions have gotten a lot better in recent years at having logrotate running and configured for any packages they provide.  So your apache & mysql logs are likely to be properly rotated (maybe not the way you want them, but the defaults are fairly sane).  However anything 'extra' you add, like Rails apps, needs to have its own logrotate entry set up.  Missing this step has been the cause of innumerable server failures as the hard drives fill up at the most inopportune time.  Of course, it's always the logs you didn't even know you had that wind up being a problem.  Resource monitoring is critical for this case.
Resource Monitoring
Tracking CPU, memory use, disk space, bandwidth, etc provides extremely valuable insight into the state of your system(s).  As traffic increases, you can compare your increased memory or IO usage in order to plan your scaling well ahead of time.  RRDTool/Munin, ServerDensity, and Cloudkick are all great options for looking at these metrics over time.  If your chosen tool includes alerting to unforeseen changes (runaway processes, full drives, etc) then you'll be one step ahead of any potential problems.

Process Monitoring

Keeping your Apache, MySQL, and similar processes running is probably critical for your site.  There are several great tools, such as Monit and God, that help to ensure your processes are working as they should.  By checking responses, open ports, or process ids these tools can restart a dead service or even kill a runaway process before it takes down your whole system.  Configuring the rules for such things is notoriously difficult, but when done properly has the potential to save a lot of 3am downtime.

Hardening
Hardening encompasses a lot of different actions that need to be taken to properly secure a stock system.  Even many simple actions are often missed.  Do you really know what every one of those processes running does?  What extra ports and services are open on your system?  Are the proper PAM modules loaded for secure authentication?  Again, RedHat and Ubuntu have blazed the trails recently in putting out secure stock systems and ensuring that the most common packages follow proper security protocols.  But that doesn't mean you can skip this critical step.
Security Updates

Security updates are very easy to perform on an apt or RPM based system.  The catch of course is it's difficult to know if an upgraded package will suddenly cause some sort of error in your stack.  Having an identically configured staging server is really the only good way to know for sure how the updates will affect your system.  Thankfully, interference from security updates is extremely rare.  The risk of a little downtime while fixing an update's compatibility issue is much smaller than the risk from having a known security hole exploited on your system.  So don't let "not knowing" stop you from performing the proper upgrades.  Finally, not every vulnerability gets a security patch right away.  Monitoring the CVE dictionary for applicable alerts allows you to be proactive in keeping your systems secure before a patch is available.  This is another area where there's really no replacement for a good 'ole set of eyeballs to keep everything running smoothly and up-to-date.


Log monitoring / Security Scanning / Intrusion detection
Of all the items on the list, these are probably done the least.  They're easily forgotten and you won't miss them until your system has been compromised.  Constant scanning for unusual activity, hacking attempts, and other foul play is incredibly important to help prevent and mitigate attacks.
Summary
This certainly isn't an exhaustive list, but it's quite extensive and many developers, devops, and sysadmins simply do not have the time, interest, or knowledge to handle them.  Even worse, many development projects are turned over to a customer who has no in-house staff capable of addressing these items once the technical team moves on to another project.
Not everyone needs a service to accomplish these tasks.  There are many devops and sysadmins that enjoy handling these types of tasks and have the knowledge and experience to do it themselves.  But if dealing with this laundry list isn't your cup of tea, we've joined together at RoundHouse in order to provide an affordable option for server management.  We do all these tasks (and more) so that our customers can focus on their end product and not on day-to-day details of keeping their systems healthy.  If you'd like to learn more, please feel free to contact us.
Written by: Drew - Head Conductor
  

  
  

  

  
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Email this • Save to del.icio.us (263 saves, tagged: sysadmin server linux) • Digg This! (7 Diggs) • Share on Facebook • Stumble It! • Add to Mixx! • Discuss on Newsvine

  
    Jul 22nd, 2010 at 01:22PM
  
  
    15 Comments and 224 Reactions
  


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When Agrochemical Corporations Invented Nature - IPS ipsnews.net
Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:41:56 -0700

	

       
                                             
                                              
                                            
                                         
                                          
                                           
 When Agrochemical Corporations Invented Nature
By Julio Godoy
 
 
BERLIN, Aug 6, 2010  (IPS) - A civil society protest against a British agrochemical company that claims it has 
invented a particular sort of broccoli has again focused attention on the question 
who owns natural biodiversity, especially vegetables, seeds, and many forms of 
meat and animal food products.Delegates from some 300 environmental and consumer organisations from all 
over the world gathered last month in Bavarian capital Munich, some 500 
kilometres south of Berlin last month to demonstrate outside the 
headquarters of the European Patent Office (EPO) against the patent the 
agency accorded on broccoli seeds, plants and breeding methods to the 
British agrochemical company Plant Bioscience.

EPO granted the patent in 2002, on a method claimed by Plant Bioscience for 
increasing a specific compound in broccoli through conventional breeding 
methods. The patent, which also faces opposition by two other agrochemical 
multinationals, includes the breeding methods, and the broccoli seeds and 
edible broccoli plants obtained through these procedures.

The demonstration in Munich took place as the EPO opened its litigation 
procedure on the legitimacy of its own patent agreement. A decision on the 
issue is expected in October.

Plant Bioscience claims that its breeding methods increase the anti-
carcinogenic glucosinolates in the species. This is one of hundreds of similar 
claims presented by numerous agrochemical multinational companies, such as 
Monsanto and Syngenta.

For environmental and consumer activists and independent farmers, such 
patents amount to an attempt to expropriate natural biodiversity for the 
benefit of a handful of corporations, which would rule as a cartel upon 
agriculture, especially in developing countries.

Christoph Then, expert on intellectual property rights for the environmental 
organisation Greenpeace, told IPS that what a handful of biochemical 
multinational companies are doing is to "misappropriate biodiversity."

Then is co-author of a study on the 'The future of seeds and food', in which 
he warns of the "monsantosizing of biodiversity." Earlier this year he led a 
successful European campaign against a patent filed by Monsanto, in which 
the company claimed it had invented a particular sort of ham.

Last April, EPO revoked this patent given to Monsanto in 2005. Then told IPS 
that the "revocation of the patent is a major success for consumers and 
farmers in Europe. The EPO's decision shows that even the most powerful 
transnational companies must give in to public pressure."

According to Greenpeace and other environmental organisations researching 
patent claims by agrochemical corporations, the EPO has to decide on more 
than 1,000 other property rights filed on vegetables, seeds and animal 
products presented by the firms Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont-Pioneer, Bayer 
Cropscience, BASF and Dow Agrosciences, and others.

The broccoli case is typical of this battle among multinationals over 
conventional breeding methods. The agrochemical companies Limagrain and 
Syngenta, which have filed opposition against the Plant Bioscience patent, 
argue that the patent has to be revoked as its claims refer to an essentially 
biological process, and so to conventional methods.

According to the European Patent Convention, essentially biological processes 
are not patentable.

Despite this, most patents filed today by agrochemical multinationals concern 
conventional breeding methods. In a study for the Gen-Ethical Foundation, 
German biologist Ruth Tippe showed that the number of patents filed by 
agrochemical multinationals on conventional breeding methods has grown 
more than 20 percent since 2000.

"Nowadays, 30 percent of all patent applications on plant breeding filed by 
Monsanto involve conventional breeding methods," Tippe told IPS. "Before 
2005, such patent applications did not reach five percent of the total."

"The patent on broccoli has become a test case for the patentability of 
conventional seeds and breeding methods," Franz Schaettle, director of the 
international campaign No Patent on Seeds, told IPS. 

No Patent on Seeds represents hundreds of environmental, consumer, and 
farmer organisations across the world, to fight the "monsantosizing of 
biodiversity", and has formulated a global appeal against patents on 
conventional seeds and farm animals addressed to the Enlarged Board of 
Appeal of the European Patent Office, governments, and the executive boards 
of agro-business companies.

"The continuing patenting of seeds, conventional plant varieties and animal 
species leads to far reaching expropriations of farmers and breeders," 
Schaettle told IPS. "Farmers, especially in developing countries, are deprived 
of their rights to save their harvested seeds, and breeders are under strong 
limitations to use the patented seeds freely for further breeding."

Numerous examples of patent applications by agrochemicals confirm the 
warnings of Tippe, Schaettle, and Then. In Monsanto's patent application 
WO2008021413 on maize and soy, methods are claimed that are widely used 
in conventional breeding. 

"On more than 1,000 pages and in 175 claims Monsanto apply for patents on 
various gene sequences and genetic variations, especially in soy and maize," 
Schaettle said. "Monsanto even goes as far as explicitly claiming all relevant 
maize and soy plants, inheriting those genetic elements. Furthermore, all uses 
in food, feed and biomass are listed."

By filing specific regional applications Monsanto shows especial interest in 
applying for this patent in Europe, Argentina and Canada.

By the same token, in patent application WO 2009011847, on meat and milk, 
Monsanto broadly claims methods for cattle breeding, the animals, as well as 
"milk, cheese, butter and meat." Other companies have also filed patents on 
genetic resources needed for feed and food production.

"All these patents are the backbone of a strategy for taking over global 
control on all levels of food production, "Schaettle said. "The patents do not 
stifle research and innovation; they are simply meant to block access to 
genetic resources and technology and to establish new dependencies for 
farmers, breeders and food producers." 

This is particularly the case in developing countries, especially in Africa and 
Latin America. In such regions, in contrast to Europe, small farmers and 
consumer organisations do not have legal or financial resources to fight 
unfair patents. Under such circumstances, the likes of Monsanto can claim 
they have actually invented natural diversity. 
 (END) 
 
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Maan News Agency: Israel says ancient Muslim gravestones 'built illegally'
Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:26:50 -0700

	

       
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Tonight's bedtime reading
Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:25:55 -0700

	



Ian Swope 
SB Direct 
311.280.1859 x6 
iswope@sb-direct.net 
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Mirror image
Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:19:58 -0700

	



Ian Swope 
SB Direct 
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iswope@sb-direct.net 
www.sb-direct.net
	


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Michael Pollan on Why $8 for a Dozen Eggs Makes Sense
Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:35:45 -0700

	

      




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Immigration facts, figures — and thoughts
Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:30:41 -0700

	

      
                    
                    
                    Immigration facts, figures -- and thoughts

                    
                    
                    

                    

                    
  
                    
				    
                    
                        



                    
                    
                    
                    
                            
                     
            
                    
                        
                    
			        
        			       
        
            
                Gregory Rodriguez
                            
								
                            	    
                                    
                    			    
                        	    	
                            		
                                
							

    	                        	
    								
    								
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                        Illegal immigration has actually fallen in the last few years. So why all the heated rhetoric today?
                        
                        
                    
            
            	
	                    
                    
                        
						
            	    	    
                	    	    ByGregory Rodriguez
                  		    
                 	    	

                    	
                    		
                    		
                    		
                    		
                   		
                   		
                   		
                    				
                    				
                   		   	
                   		   	
                   		   	
                     	   July 26, 2010|8:59 a.m.
                    	
            	    	
            	    	
                		
    
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                                    With the immigration debate heating up — and a federal court case over Arizona's SB 1070 brewing — you'd think that the U.S. was besieged by growing numbers of illegal immigrants. But you'd be wrong.

Despite the heightened rhetoric and the bloodcurdling vitriol surrounding the issue, illegal immigration has actually declined significantly over the last few years. While journalists like to characterize the anger over immigration as a response to facts on the ground — i.e. people are inundated and incensed — the numbers don't bear them out.


In fact, the opposite is true. According to a February report by the Department of Homeland Security, the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. actually dropped by a whopping 1 million  between 2008 and 2009, which amounts to the sharpest decrease in 30 years. It was the second year of declining numbers.


                                

                                    
                                        
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Likewise, the Border Patrol reports that apprehensions are down by more than 60% since 2000, to 550,000 last year, the lowest number in 35 years, even though the border is more tightly controlled than ever. As William Finnegan wrote in last week's New Yorker, "The southern border, far from being 'unsecured,' is in better shape than it has been for years — better managed and less porous."

And there's more. Despite the drumbeat about hordes of undocumented Mexicans who have come north to take our jobs, consider this: According to the Pew Hispanic Center, between 2005 and 2008, the number of Mexican migrants arriving in the U.S. actually declined by 40%.


It's not only the number of Mexican illegal immigrants that has dropped. The fact that the U.S. economy is struggling has discouraged high-skilled immigrants from around the globe from looking for jobs in America, and the flow of applicants for H1-B visas, or work permits, has slowed. Before the recession, the entire 85,000 H1-B annual quota would be filled within days of the application date on the first of April. For fiscal year 2010, the quota wasn't reached until December 2009.


Finally, the Census Bureau's American Community Survey last fall revealed a historic decline in the percentage of U.S. residents who are foreign-born — from 12.6% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2008. That represents only about 40,000 people numerically, but it is the first time since the 1970 census — 40 years ago — that the foreign-born percentage of the U.S. population has gone down.


So, in the face of all this data showing that legal and illegal immigration is down dramatically, what's all the fuss about? Why has the debate turned so nasty? Why does it seem worse than it did in 1994, during the debate over Proposition 187, California's anti-immigrant ballot measure?


The easy answer, of course, is that the economy is tough and historically people have looked for targets to blame for their feelings of impotence.


But today I think there are other contributing factors. The political discourse overall is pretty horrific, and while immigration has always brought out the worst in people, today's polarized climate only makes matters worse.


Furthermore, the right wing, where much of the anti-immigrant frenzy comes from, no longer has an authoritative voice of reason pressing for decency on the issue. Four years ago, after President George W. Bush unsuccessfully launched his own effort at comprehensive immigration reform, he warned against "harsh, ugly rhetoric." Today, Bush is hardly heard from and the right has an "open borders" policy on over-the-top rhetoric.


Struggling newspapers seeking to engage readers at any cost are also part of the problem. Whereas racist rants were once confined to marginal websites, today many papers — including this one — have opened their online comments section to, well, complete nut-jobs. Allowing vitriolic racial rhetoric to remain on a mainstream website is to give it a level of acceptability. Just last week, in response to my column on the so-called burka ban in France, a rabid commenter proposed that all those crossing the U.S.- Mexico border without papers should be shot on sight. Nice. Such "dialogue" not only pushes out reasonable people, it emboldens the unreasonable ones. By allowing it to be posted, newspapers are presiding over the mainstreaming of anti-immigrant hate speech.


There may be those who see hatred as a justifiable means to an end. Perhaps they hope that all this harsh rhetoric will keep even more illegal immigrants at home. But they'd be silly to think that such invective only makes life harder for immigrants. Unfortunately, it also actively degrades our culture, our public square and our democracy.


grodriguez@latimescolumnists.com
                                
                            
                            
                        
                	
                                
                
                    
                        



                    
                    
                    
                        


 


                    
                    
                    
                        
                    

	        
                






 




Related stories
From the L.A. Times
U.S. officials boost efforts to protect immigrant crime victims
Social will can add years to our lives
From KTLA
Ariz. Police Release 80 Immigration Protesters from Jail|ktla.com
Judge Blocks Controversial Parts of Arizona’s Immigration Law|ktla.com

 



		
		

                






     



    
    	
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It's not a matter of If but When
Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:15:19 -0700

	Every single Apple power cable except for the Mac Mini which doesn't ever move has crapped out on me. I've gone through three MacBook Pro power cords, two MacBook power cords, two iPod USB connectors and two iPhone USB connectors. Considering everything else on Apple products is engineered to the point of absolute perfection it seems such a shame that their cables are shite.
	


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Real food finally
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:08:42 -0700

	




	


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Nancy showing off the latest in paper dress fashion
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:46:31 -0700

	




	


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If she can sleep through tubes and wires then the neighbors at home should be no problem!
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:44:28 -0700

	




	


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Farren sleeping peacefully
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:41:18 -0700

	




	


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