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Saturday, 15 February 2014

Gwadar Port: Pakistan, China all set to develop master plan

Under the short-term plan, Islamabad and Beijing want to develop Gwadar Port, whose control had already been given to China, in a bid to attract investment in different sectors. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD:

In a strategic move, Pakistan and China are set to make headway towards developing a master plan for Gwadar Port as part of an economic corridor that envisages investment of $12 billion by Beijing.

Officials of the two countries will take up the matter during talks in Beijing on February 17, where Pakistan’s team will be led by Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal, officials say.

As part of the economic corridor that will turn Pakistan into a hub of regional cooperation, Gwadar Port will be connected through road, rail and fibre links to China to help enhance trade between the two countries.

Oil and gas pipelines are also part of the economic corridor over the long run, which is expected to provide a much-needed boost to economic activities in insurgency-hit Balochistan, according to the officials.

Under the short-term plan, Islamabad and Beijing want to develop Gwadar Port, whose control had already been given to China, in a bid to attract investment in different sectors to make it a hub of economic activities. Under this plan, an oil city will be set up at the port to meet fuel needs.

However, the United States and India are not pleased with the handing over of Gwadar Port to China, which will enhance its presence in the sea.

The government is also looking to revive the abandoned Coastal Oil Refinery at Gwadar, a project that had been shelved by China in 2009-10 after operations of the port were handed over to the Singapore Port Authority. A global recession compounded the problems, providing another reason to shelve the project.

The refinery, designed to have a maximum output of 60,000 barrels of oil per day, is part of China’s plan to invest $12 billion in multiple projects in Pakistan.

Oil pipeline

Officials pointed out that the oil and gas pipelines depended on normalisation of relations between the US and Iran.

Though Iran supplies oil and gas to Turkey, China and India, the US is piling on the pressure on Pakistan to stop it from importing energy from Tehran. Experts describe it an attempt to push Pakistan towards economic collapse due to acute energy shortages.

The PML-N government, which took over in June last year, has already offered Beijing to lay an oil pipeline from Gwadar to western China – a move that will allow the latter to diversify and safeguard crude oil import routes.

Officials suggested that the oil pipeline could later be linked with Iran, which had already offered to build a pipeline from its territory to Gwadar for the transport of crude oil.

During the previous government’s tenure, Iran had also expressed its willingness to set up an oil refinery at Gwadar Port with a production capacity of 400,000 barrels per day.

Officials pointed out that Gwadar Port was quite close to the Persian Gulf through which nearly 40% of world’s oil supply flows. China meets 50% of oil demand through imports from the Middle East. The supply line to China runs over the 10,000km Dubai-Shanghai-Urumqi ocean route.

“The crude oil processed and refined at the Gwadar oil refinery can be exported to Urumqi through the shortest possible route, which is Dubai-Gwadar-Urumqi spanning over 3,600 km. For this, an oil pipeline will be laid through the energy corridor up to western China via Karakoram Highway/Khunjrab Bypass,” an official said.

Friday, 14 February 2014

Robot construction crew works autonomously, is kind of adorable

(Credit: Eliza Grinnell, Harvard SEAS)

Engineers and scientists at Harvard have developed a team of robots based on termite behaviour that can build independently, without supervision.

Have you ever seen a termite mound? Those little bugs are amazing engineers, constructing giant (compared to their own size) structures, working relentlessly even though individual insects die.

It was this system of self-organisation that inspired Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University scientists and engineers in building a team of autonomous construction-bots.

Termes, the result of a four-year project, is a collective system of autonomous robots that can build complex, three-dimansional structures such as towers, castles and pyramids without any need for central command or dedicated roles. They can carry bricks, build stairs, climb them to reach higher levels and add bricks to a structure.

"The key inspiration we took from termites is the idea that you can do something really complicated as a group, without a supervisor, and secondly that you can do it without everybody discussing explicitly what's going on, but just by modifying the environment," said principal investigator Radhika Nagpal, Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard SEAS.

The way termites operate is a phenomenon called stigmergy. This means that the termites don't observe each other, but changes in the environment around them — much like the way ants leave trails for each other. The Termes robots operate on the same principal. Each individual robot doesn't know how many other robots are operating, but they are able to gauge changes in the structure and readjust on the fly accordingly.

This means that if one robot breaks down, it does not affect the rest of the robots. Engineers simply program the robots with blueprints and leave them alone to perform the work.

The robots at the moment are quite small — about the size of a toy car — but are quite simple, operating on just four simple types of sensors and three actuators. According to the team, they could be easily scaled up or down to suit the needs of the project, and could be deployed in areas where it's difficult for humans to work — the moon, for instance, although that's an extreme example.

"It may be that in the end you want something in between the centralised and the decentralised system — but we've proven the extreme end of the scale: that it could be just like the termites," Nagpal said. "And from the termites' point of view, it's working out great."

A paper on the project, "Designing Collective Behavior in a Termite-Inspired Robot Construction Team", has been published in the 14 February edition of Science.

Snowden stole co-worker's password, NSA memo alleges

Edward Snowden

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden obtained access to classified documents by stealing one of his co-worker's passwords, according to an unclassified NSA memo obtained by NBC News.

That co-worker resigned after being stripped of his security clearance, according to the report, which also indicated that a member of the US military and a contractor were barred from accessing National Security Agency facilities after being linked to actions that may have aided Snowden. Their status is currently under review, according to the memo (PDF).

Although the civilian employee was unaware that Snowden "intended to unlawfully disclose classified information," the memo states that the employee's security clearance was revoked in November after it was determined he "failed to comply with security obligations." The memo was sent to congressional intelligence and judiciary committees after senior members of Congress demanded to know whether the NSA was disciplining any of its employees in connection with the leak of sensitive documents.The civilian NSA employee entered his password into Snowden's computer "at Snowden's request," according to a February 10 memo sent to key members of Congress. "Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information," according to the memo, which was signed by Ethan Bauman, the NSA's director of legislative affairs.

The memo appears to be the first official confirmation of a Reuters report in November that as many as 20 to 25 workers at an NSA base in Hawaii revealed their log-in credentials to Snowden, allowing him to obtain some of the documents that he eventually leaked to the media. Reuters reported at the time that some of the employees who shared their passwords had been identified, questioned, and removed from their assignments.

Turkey approves legislation to block Internet sites

(Credit: CNET)

Turkey is one step closer to enacting a law that would give the government the power to block any Internet site.

Late Wednesday Turkish lawmakers passed a bill that would let the presidency of regulatory agency Telecommunication and Communication (TIB) curtail access to an Internet site within four hours of receiving complaints alleging privacy violations, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday. Such an action would not require a ruling from a court. Further, Turkish Internet companies would have to hold onto traffic information for as many as two years.

The next step falls to Turkish president Abdullah Gul, who must either approve the bill for it to become the law, or veto it. But the Journal sees the bill's approval as likely since Gul has rarely vetoed any legislation since taking office in 2007.

Privacy advocates and such organizations as the European Union and US watchdog Freedom House have already condemned the bill as a way of legislating censorship.

"The Turkish public deserves more information and more transparency, not more restrictions," a spokesperson for the EU said, according to the Journal. "The law in the current form introduces several restrictions to the freedom of expression."

Lutfi Elvan, minister for Turkey's transport, maritime affairs and communications, claims the bill is not an attempt at censorship and instead a way to protect privacy without having to deal with lengthy court procedures, the Journal added.

Some also suspect the bill is politically motivated.

A recent scandal in which allies of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan were charged with graft led to prison sentences for 20 suspects. News, videos, and images of the scandal went online for all to see, further embarrassing the government.

The opposition party known as the Republican People's Party (CHP) wants the court to overturn the law. If the court fails to do so, the CHP will file a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights, party lawmaker Umut Oran told Journal.

"Erdogan wants to turn the Internet into his own portal,"Oran said. "This law is to cover up Erdogan's illegal activities, injustices, and bribery allegations. It also aims to prevent the surfacing of future charges

EU court: Go ahead and hyperlink. It's OK, really

European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

(Credit: European Commission)

Common sense prevails!

The highest court in Europe ruled on Thursday that it will not mess up a vital part of the Internet's functionality -- a decision that could have left much of the Internet in the 28 member state bloc to its knees.

The Luxembourg-based court decided that it would not be necessary to seek out the copyright holder's permission before someone links to their news article, blog post, or Web site.

In the case of Nils Svensson et al vs. Retriever Sverige, the court ruled this was a silly idea and to leave the Internet alone.

As you might expect, it was yet another copyright-related case, summed up:

"In its judgment delivered today, the Court holds that the provision of clickable links to protected works constitutes an act of communication. Such an act is defined as the making available of a work to the public in such a way that members of the public may access it (even if they do not make use of that possibility). In addition, the potential users of the site operated by Retriever Sverige can be regarded as a public, since their number is indeterminate and fairly large.

The court ruled that, "the owner of a website, such as that of Retriever Sverige, may, without the authorisation of the copyright holders, redirect internet users, via hyperlinks, to protected works available on a freely accessible basis on another site."

In a nutshell, you can provide a list of hyperlinks on a Web site and not have to seek permission first.

Or, in layman's terms, a paywall.The only caveat is, "where the hyperlink permits users of the site on which that link appears to circumvent restrictions put in place by the site on which the protected work appears in order to restrict public access to that work to the latter site's subscribers."

Considering hyperlinks are core to the very heart of the Internet we hold so dear, screwing around with them frankly would have left some serious headaches in how the Internet actually operates.

'The Day We Fight Back' calls for protests against NSA spying

(Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Those of you angered over reports of NSA spying are being urged to add your voices to those of a group of 5,300 companies and Web sites staging a worldwide protest.

Dubbing February 11 "The Day We Fight Back," organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, Free Press, Mozilla, Reddit, and Tumblr want Internet users to call or e-mail their legislators to pressure them to end the National Security Agency's mass surveillance program. The groups also are asking Web site owners to set up banners on their pages to urge visitors to join the cause.

Susan Molinari, Google's vice president of public policy, used the occasion to argue in a blog post that the US government should make major changes to how it responds to electronic privacy concerns. She said Congress ought to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to require the government to get a warrant before compelling tech firms to disclose the content of user communications; and pass the USA Freedom Act, a proposed law that would codify proposed surveillance reform principles.

A series of protests also are planned today in the United States and other countries. And the groups involved have suggested setting up local events as another way for people to participate.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is drawing attention to its 13 Principles, a document that it says outlines how surveillance can be conducted without impinging on human rights. The overall goal behind "The Day We Fight Back" is to raise awareness and put more pressure on Washington to limit the NSA's methods, which have been criticized by Internet users, privacy groups, and several of those serving in Congress.

"Since the first revelations last summer, hundreds of thousands of Internet users have come together online and offline to protest the NSA's unconstitutional surveillance programs," Josh Levy, Internet campaign director at Free Press, said in a statement. "These programs attack our basic rights to connect and communicate in private, and strike at the foundations of democracy itself. Only a broad movement of activists, organizations, and companies can convince Washington to restore these rights."

Apple, Samsung reportedly fail to reach truce in patent wars

You can bring Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung Mobile chief JK Shin together, but you can't make them reach an amicable accord, apparently

(Credit: CNET/James Martin)

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung Mobile head JK Shin reportedly met last week to hammer out an agreement to their long-running patent feud. The result? No agreement.

Neither company has fessed up to such a meeting. But ZDNet Korea and other sources claim the two execs met in the US after being ordered by the court to try to settle their legal differences amicably. The court reportedly wanted to see a settlement by February 19, but the bad blood between the two companies seems to have been too much of an obstacle.

The court could reveal its final verdict after February 19, according to ZDNet Korea. And if Samsung is on the losing side, the Korean handset maker may have to pay Apple damages as high as $930 million.