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An anonymous reader writes "Today the first ID cards that include iris and fingerprint biometric information were registered and issued in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. (Original article in Spanish.) The juicier part of the story is that for now, only children will be enrolled in this national biometric database. It is intended that by December 2012 all children in the country will be registered. The alleged purpose of the new ID card is to hinder the abduction of children and prevent child exploitation. The first ID cards are being issued in the same city that last year started implementing a mandatory iris scan for convicted felons and voluntary members of the public in a Minority Reportesque plan to combat delinquency that features iris readers in public transport and ATMs. This comes from the country that last year attempted and failed to create a national database of mobile phone users, again with the purported intention to tackle extortion and kidnappings."

Several months ago, as a way to prevent the use of cellular phones in criminal activities, the government of Mexico started a program to require all phone owners to register cell phones in their own names. The registry associates each phone with the listed owner's Clave Unica de Registro de Poblacion (CURP) [CURP, in English], which is supposed to be a unique ID for every Mexican citizen. Now, as nanahuatzin writes, Yesterday the timeline to register the cell phones expired, and there are [approx 26] million cell phones yet unregistered (English translation of the Spanish original). While the procedure is simple, sending a text message with the CURP to a special number, most people do not want to register: some are wary of the uses to which the government will put the data; others did not understand or did not know the procedure. So far, only 69% have registered, most of them in the last few days, while the system to register has been oversaturated. So in an unprecedented move for any country, the Mexican government is announcing the shutdown of 25.9 million cell phone lines. Meanwhile, as a measure of protest, hundreds of people have registered their cell phones in the name of the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, to show how pointless is the registry."

kampi writes: "As I found on heise newsticker the volcano Popocatepetl's eruption is being broadcast live to the Internet. You can get more info from the National Centre For Protection of Catastrophes, if you understand Spanish. " You can also use the fish, of course, for translation.

How many of you are using Gnome right now? Wow! A lot of hands went up. How many of you have had a chance to meet or chat with Miguel de Icaza, Gnome's chief instigator? Hmmmm ... not nearly as many. Miguel's a cool dude, way out there on the forefront of Linux GUI development, and well worth meeting. If you don't get to a lot of Linux conferences, here's your chance to get to know him a little better. Take a look at his activity log and you'll see that he's about as busy as a human can be. What should you ask Miguel? Up to you. Post your questions below. One question per post, please, and try to keep things brief instead of submitting extended essays. We'll forward 10-15 of the highest-moderated questions to Miguel by e-mail shortly after 12 noon Tuesday (US EST -- that's 17:00GMT); his answers will run within the next week.

Jacob Javits Convention Center, Manhattan,NY Tonight the Free Software Foundation gave out its Second Annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software. The nominees were introduced by our own CmdrTaco, fetchingly clad in a light blue plaid shirt. The awards themseleves were presentd by Richard M. Stallman, who wore a wonderfully fuzzy, warm-looking red, white, grey, and blue sweater. (More below)

The awards were given out in conjunction with theBazar, a gathering of Open Source experts, boosters, and devotees featuring a number of tutorials on assorted Open Source and GNU/Linux-related topics.

Last year's Award for the Advancement of Free Software went to PERL-meister Larry Wall. This year the three finalists were Donald Knuth, John Gilmore, and Miguel de Icaza.

And the winner was (drum roll please) Miguel de Icaza!

Miguel lent the proceedings a moment of extra drama by arriving - literally - at the second his name was announced, right after RMS said he was not there and could not, therefore, be expected to make a speech. But there he was, and the speech was both brief and charming.

A surprise award was also given to Blockstackers, which has donated a significant amount of money to the Free Software Foundation. This award was accepted by a shocked - and literally blushing - Rob Malda.

We join the Free Software Foundation in congratulating Miguel de Icaza.

See pictures of the award ceromony and participants here.

Foaf writes "According to his activity log, Miguel of Gnome and Gnumeric fame is quitting his university job and moving to the US to provide 'kick-ass applications for users all around the globe.' " And, yes, now I can rest easy knowing that Miguel will be unfettered in his attempts to consume all of the world's coffee *grin*. Seriously, this is the continuation of a wonderful trend - more time developing Linux applications is good for everyone.

Miguel de Icaza , GNOME Guru, and candidate for most hyper human being in the history of humans being, has written an essay discussing Red Hat and the beating that they have taken within the Linux Community. This is worth a read.

The following was written by GNOME Guy, Slashdot Reader and pure energy beam, Miguel de Icaza

Recently many people have criticized Red Hat from many points of view, and during the construction of their arguments, they have ignored a lot of the work that Red Hat has given back to the community. Having personal friends at Red Hat and having talked to them in the past has given me a wider perspective on what actually is going on at Red Hat than most people who only have heard about them.

The importance of Free Software (as in Open Source).

People have complained that some ISV companies are targeting a specific GNU/Linux distribution, and that this alienates the users of other distributions. I do believe that people are looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. Many ISVs are not only targetting some particular version of GNU/Linux, they are also targetting a specific platform of GNU/Linux. They are not allowing the end user to make a choice of kernel, the choice of a distribution, or the choice of a platform.

Let me explain: people who write proprietary software are interested in marketing a software product as a piece of intellectual property that they own and that comes with a price tag, which does not provide the end users with any of the freedoms that the GNU project has identified as important for software. Without these freedoms you are not only potentially locked to a particular distribution: you are locked to a particular kernel, and you are definely locked into a particular platform. You will not get proprietary software to work on your favorite port of the operating system. Forget about the SPARC, the Alpha, the PowerPC, the Motorola, and the StrongARM architectures if you go the proprietary way.

Red Hat and Freedomware (as in OpenSource, Free Software)

So far, Red Hat is the only major visible commercial distribution that distributes all of their development under a free license (LGPL or GPL for their new work, or under the proper compatible license for packages they do not maintain). And they also manage to make money during this process.

Now, making money by giving away your intelectual property is a hard problem. Some people have just given up. Various distributions include proprietary code in their distribution to add a value to their product. The result is of course, a non-free product: you as an end user are forbidden from making copies of it entirely, you might not even get the source code in some cases, and you are definetly forbidden from making changes and redistributing modified versions of it. It comes to mind, the proprietary graphical install programs being shipped these days.

Red Hat standing for Freedomware

When the KDE desktop project started to take off, the licensing problem of Qt became obvious to many people: If we allowed this important component to be non free in a GNU/Linux system, then it would have been impossible to have a completely free (in the sense of freedom) desktop system that people could use, distribute, modify, and redistribute.

Many distributions chose to ship the non-free KDE/Qt combo as part of their systems, as it gave them a competitive advantage on the market. Concerns about a free system came in second place. Red Hat instead of going for the easy money, actually devoted a growing team of programmers to help build a completely free desktop: I am sure they lost sales while preparing for this free system to be built, and I am sure it costed them money to pay their GNOME programmers.

Still, Red Hat stood up for the free software community. To them it was more important to have a full open source desktop than making a quick sell. Given that the Qt toolkit will soon be released with an open-source license this is not an issue anymore. I am presenting this exclusively as an historical data point.

XXXX

Red Hat and Debian are my favorite Linux-based distributions. Actually, they are the best designed and open distributions of Unix from my point of view: they do ship all of their code under a free license.

This, from my point of view is very appealing. Various of my friends are involved in deploying free systems based on GNU and Linux in Mexico in a number of very different setups.

They did require modified versions of the installation program, and modified versions of the packages they use. Not all, but some of them. So the distribution is pretty much Red Hat Linux with some added features that they need for their vertical application. This is something that can be done legally thanks to the fact that the Red Hat distribution does not include "special cases".

Doing something

If you want to see commercial-grade applications on the free systems and have users have total control of the code, the platform, the operating system and the distribution, promote free software: help free software developers, contribute code, contribute proof-reading time, contribute documentation or help other people understand why free software is important.

Disclaimer

These are just my personal opinions. I am not speaking for any project I am involved with in this mail nor am I speaking for any organization I belong to. These are strictly my personal opinions.

I do not work for Red Hat and I have not worked for Red Hat in the past. I have just contributed and worked with their hackers in the past.

Miguel de Icaza.
miguel@nuclecu.unam.mx

Miguel de Icaza , GNOME Guru, and candidate for most hyper human being in the history of humans being, has written an essay discussing Red Hat and the beating that they have taken within the Linux Community. This is worth a read.

The following was written by GNOME Guy, Slashdot Reader and pure energy beam, Miguel de Icaza

Recently many people have criticized Red Hat from many points of view, and during the construction of their arguments, they have ignored a lot of the work that Red Hat has given back to the community. Having personal friends at Red Hat and having talked to them in the past has given me a wider perspective on what actually is going on at Red Hat than most people who only have heard about them.

The importance of Free Software (as in Open Source).

People have complained that some ISV companies are targeting a specific GNU/Linux distribution, and that this alienates the users of other distributions. I do believe that people are looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. Many ISVs are not only targetting some particular version of GNU/Linux, they are also targetting a specific platform of GNU/Linux. They are not allowing the end user to make a choice of kernel, the choice of a distribution, or the choice of a platform.

Let me explain: people who write proprietary software are interested in marketing a software product as a piece of intellectual property that they own and that comes with a price tag, which does not provide the end users with any of the freedoms that the GNU project has identified as important for software. Without these freedoms you are not only potentially locked to a particular distribution: you are locked to a particular kernel, and you are definely locked into a particular platform. You will not get proprietary software to work on your favorite port of the operating system. Forget about the SPARC, the Alpha, the PowerPC, the Motorola, and the StrongARM architectures if you go the proprietary way.

Red Hat and Freedomware (as in OpenSource, Free Software)

So far, Red Hat is the only major visible commercial distribution that distributes all of their development under a free license (LGPL or GPL for their new work, or under the proper compatible license for packages they do not maintain). And they also manage to make money during this process.

Now, making money by giving away your intelectual property is a hard problem. Some people have just given up. Various distributions include proprietary code in their distribution to add a value to their product. The result is of course, a non-free product: you as an end user are forbidden from making copies of it entirely, you might not even get the source code in some cases, and you are definetly forbidden from making changes and redistributing modified versions of it. It comes to mind, the proprietary graphical install programs being shipped these days.

Red Hat standing for Freedomware

When the KDE desktop project started to take off, the licensing problem of Qt became obvious to many people: If we allowed this important component to be non free in a GNU/Linux system, then it would have been impossible to have a completely free (in the sense of freedom) desktop system that people could use, distribute, modify, and redistribute.

Many distributions chose to ship the non-free KDE/Qt combo as part of their systems, as it gave them a competitive advantage on the market. Concerns about a free system came in second place. Red Hat instead of going for the easy money, actually devoted a growing team of programmers to help build a completely free desktop: I am sure they lost sales while preparing for this free system to be built, and I am sure it costed them money to pay their GNOME programmers.

Still, Red Hat stood up for the free software community. To them it was more important to have a full open source desktop than making a quick sell. Given that the Qt toolkit will soon be released with an open-source license this is not an issue anymore. I am presenting this exclusively as an historical data point.

XXXX

Red Hat and Debian are my favorite Linux-based distributions. Actually, they are the best designed and open distributions of Unix from my point of view: they do ship all of their code under a free license.

This, from my point of view is very appealing. Various of my friends are involved in deploying free systems based on GNU and Linux in Mexico in a number of very different setups.

They did require modified versions of the installation program, and modified versions of the packages they use. Not all, but some of them. So the distribution is pretty much Red Hat Linux with some added features that they need for their vertical application. This is something that can be done legally thanks to the fact that the Red Hat distribution does not include "special cases".

Doing something

If you want to see commercial-grade applications on the free systems and have users have total control of the code, the platform, the operating system and the distribution, promote free software: help free software developers, contribute code, contribute proof-reading time, contribute documentation or help other people understand why free software is important.

Disclaimer

These are just my personal opinions. I am not speaking for any project I am involved with in this mail nor am I speaking for any organization I belong to. These are strictly my personal opinions.

I do not work for Red Hat and I have not worked for Red Hat in the past. I have just contributed and worked with their hackers in the past.

Miguel de Icaza.
miguel@nuclecu.unam.mx

Finally a chance to break in my cheesy little "Quickies" icon *grin*. First up is Miguel "Mr GNOME" de Icaza who wrote in to point us at Open Resources which looks like a pretty nice site. NiceGuy wrote in to say that Propaganda 6 is out if you happen to be sick of your desktop- some of the finest textures I've seen yet. Rob Biggs wrote in to say that Transmetta has opened up their website. *cough*. Aurik sent us linkage to some geek toys like a plasma fire saber and mass drivers and rail guns Jowey wrote in to say that ReBoot has been bought by the cartoon network and will be re-aired. Now I gotta get a dish. broken sent us a link to the Pig Dance. Is anyone else really sick of these? Brian Fair sent us linkage to a sticker that I guess you could put on your big truck if you have one. Those things amuse me. I've seen them with Ford Logos and stuff, I guess it was only a matter of time. Ah well, thats it for me. I'm gonna wail on some badly tuned power chords, watch Futurama and just take it easy for a bit.

Arturo Aldama wrote to gnome-list this afternoon announcing that a project in Mexico, Scholar Net, has decided to install GNU/Linux workstations with GNOME sofware. The software should be installed in every elementary and mid-level school in Mexico, he says. This means about 140,000 centers in the next five years. He stated reasons such as "cost, reliability, and configuration" for the decision. Here is a link to the message he sent. I don't know about you, but this made my day! As a double bonus, this means they will be aiding in GNOME development.

Miguel de Icaza has announced version 0.30 of the GNOME libraries ("Bouncing Bonobo"). The new libraries are much more stable and is the first release with CORBA support in the core. Other new features include the GNOME metadata library implementation, the GNORBA library (for mixing CORBA & GNOME), and much better documentation. Update: Miguel wrote in with a link where you can read about the bonobo.

Federico Mena let us know that you can get a New Gnome if you're interested. Number 0.13 has expanded pretty significantly to encompass a wide array of utilities, and many more are on the wings. Check out The Official Site for more details, or just download the new version and enjoy the cool new toys. Gnome has crossed over the line from toy to tool guys, It's pretty exciting. I hope anyone developing under motif is paying attention.

Federico Mena let us know that you can get a New Gnome if you're interested. Number 0.13 has expanded pretty significantly to encompass a wide array of utilities, and many more are on the wings. Check out The Official Site for more details, or just download the new version and enjoy the cool new toys. Gnome has crossed over the line from toy to tool guys, It's pretty exciting. I hope anyone developing under motif is paying attention.

Esteban Gutierrez wrote in with this link where you can read about new technology that could be used to store 400 gbits/in^2. Current CDs hold 1.

Recent activities on the Gnome front have made it a hot topic. RHAD snagged Raster and declared Enlightenment will soon use the Gnome API. Imlib will be ported to GTK. It's a crazy world guys. Anyway, Federico Mena was the frist to tell me that a new GNOME is out for testing.