US Human Right Record : Maher Arar

Maher's Story in Brief

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old wireless technology consultant. Arar was born in Syria and at the age of 17, came to Canada with his family. He became a Canadian citizen in 1991 and in 1997 moved to Ottawa.

In September 2002, Arar was in Tunisia, vacationing with his wife Monia Mazigh and their two small children. On Sept. 26 while in transit in New York’s JFK airport, he was detained by US officials and interrogated about alleged links to al-Qaeda. Twelve days later, he was chained, shackled and flown to Jordan aboard a private plane and from there transferred to a Syrian prison.

In Syria, he was held in a tiny “grave-like” cell for ten months and ten days before he was moved to a better cell in a different prison. He was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession.

During his imprisonment, Monia campaigned relentlessly on his behalf. After many representations from Canadian Human Rights organizations and a growing number of citizens, the Government of Canada, on Jan. 28, 2004, announced a Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar.

Password less ssh login

• On the client, generate a new ssh key
  using "ssh-keygen" command . It will ask you for a path to
  save the file, and a passphrase, just press "enter" to
  select alldefault values and to return to console.
  
  
  ssh-keygen -t dsa
  



• 
  Next copy the file "/home/<user's-home-directory>/.ssh/id_dsa.pub" to the server running "sshd" service using scp or a suitable method. The command mentioned below is for scp.
  
  
  scp /home/<user's-home-directory>/.ssh/id_dsa.pub <user>@<server-system>/home/<user's-home-directory>/id_dsa.pub
  



• 
  To allow multiple system to connect to the server running sshd, add the content of the "id_dsa.pub" file from another system using the following format
  
  
  cat id_dsa.pub >> /home/<user's-home-directory>/.ssh/authorized_keys
  



• After setting up the "authorized_keys" file, run the following command to setup the permission correctly
  
  
  chmod 0700 /home/<user's-home-directotry>/.ssh -R
  

And you done :)

Gnome 2.14

A Look at GNOME 2.14

Good things

• 
  Speed , Speed, Speed
• 
  Search through Nautilus, Yelp
• 
  Metacity had a compositing manager
• 
  Deskbar
• 
  Evolution looks better
• 
  Cairo
• 
  And lots more .....

Missing Stuff :(

• 
  Themes/Icon polish
• 
  gtk-engine cleanup

Hindu Customs in the Muslim Community in India

Hindu Customs in the Muslim Community in India:

"The varying opinions that Indians hold on an issue like cultural identity is highlighted when we talk of our country's ancient past before religions like Islam and Christianity were introduced into India or rather before these religions came into being in the country of their birth. A Muslim or a Christian would be indifferent if not hostile to India's past before his religion came on the scene.

The history and heritage of a nation belongs to all its inhabitants because their forefathers had made it. Subsequent conversion of some of the inhabitants to a religion originating in another country need not deprive them of this heritage. Had this been so, the Greeks after their conversion to Christianity should have disowned the Acropolis, the Olympia and looked with contempt and hatred on Athena, Zeus or Herakles who were deities of the ancient Greek religion and are still fresh in the memory of the Greeks."

Pickled Politics » Much Apu About Nothing

Much Apu About Nothing:

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Ph.D. (sometimes spelled Nahasapeemapetilan) is a fictional character featured in The Simpsons television series. He is the proprietor of the Kwik-E-Mart (a subsidiary of Nordyne Defense Dynamics), the local convenience store. He is an immigrant from India, and, like most Simpsons characters, is a caricature of a common stereotype—that of the South Asian convenience store owner. His most defining characteristics are his exaggerated Indian English, his devotion to the Hindu god Ganesha, and his indefatigable immigrant work-ethic. His catchphrase is "Thank you, come again!"—cheerfully and dutifully repeated to customers after each transaction (no matter how unpleasant). His first name is an homage to the main character in the "Apu Trilogy" directed by Satyajit Ray. His surname, Nahasapeemapetilon, is a spoonerism of the name Pahasaneemapetilon, which was the surname of a school mate of Simpsons writer Mike Reiss.

Evolution: Sex: Is Love in Our DNA?

Evolution: Sex: Is Love in Our DNA?: "

Consider this...

Beautiful young women are sexually attractive to men because beauty and youth are closely linked with fertility and reproductive value. In evolutionary history, males who were able to identify and mate with fertile females had the greatest reproductive success ... A 14-year-old woman has a higher reproductive value than a 24-year-old woman, because her future contribution to the gene pool is higher on average.
--David Buss, 'The Strategies of Human Mating,' American Scientist, 1994


To a primatologist, such preferences must be puzzling. There is not a shred of evidence for any other primate that youth ... or specific body ratios considered indicative of reproductive value -- all commonly cited indices of a woman's 'desirability' ... affect male willingness to mate ... Across virtually all"

Evolution: Sex: The Advantage of Sex

Evolution: Sex: The Advantage of Sex:

"The Red Queen hypothesis for sex is simple: Sex is needed to fight disease. Diseases specialize in breaking into cells, either to eat them, as fungi and bacteria do, or, like viruses, to subvert their genetic machinery for the purpose of making new viruses. To do that they use protein molecules that bind to other molecules on cell surfaces. The arms races between parasites and their hosts are all about these binding proteins. Parasites invent new keys; hosts change the locks. For if one lock is common in one generation, the key that fits it will spread like wildfire. So you can be sure that it is the very lock not to have a few generations later. According to the Red Queen hypothesis, sexual reproduction persists because it enables host species to evolve new genetic defenses against parasites that attempt to live off them."

All about Linux: Make your files immutable which even root can't delete

All about Linux: Make your files immutable which even root can't delete:

Here is a cool tip on how you can make files on your system immutable. By immutable, I mean even root can't delete the files if he choose to. Linux ships with a tool called chattr which can be used for the purpose. 'chattr' is similar to the 'attrib' DOS equivalent tool but much more powerful and flexible.

To make your file (test_file) immutable

# chattr +i test_file

... You can only do it logged in as root. Here the +i option sets the immutable bit for the file. Once this bit is set, even root can't delete or tamper with the file.

If you want to unset the immutable flag, just run the following command:

# chattr -i test_file

You can check what are the attributes of a file by using the following command:

# lsattr test_file
----i--------  test_file

If the immutable flag is set, there will be an 'i' in the listing. This command is used by system administrators to restrict the users from changing a file in a particular way or even the administrator can by mistake delete a critical file because of a mis-typed command. But if the immutable flag is set, these mistakes can be avoided.

chattr can be used to set/unset many more file attributes. Like if you want to allow everybody to just append data to a file and not change already entered data, you can set the append bit as follows:

# chattr +a test_file

Now the test_file can only be opened in append mode for writing data. You can unset the append attribute as follows:

# chattr -a test_file

To know more about this very useful tool in the system administrator's forte, check the man page for chattr.