Angry Pakistanis turn against army

By: Christina Lamb in Islamabad

IT IS the most expensive - and talked about - property development in Pakistan, but few can get near it. Hidden behind barbed wire, the new state-of-the-art army headquarter to replace a garrison in Rawalpindi is costing a reputed £1 billion and will cover 2,400 acres of prime land in Islamabad, including lakes, a residential complex, schools and clinics.

Originally intended to represent the best of Pakistan, the new army HQ is now being seen as a symbol of all that is wrong with the country.

Amid nationwide anger over the killing of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and a widespread belief that the country’s military or intelligence may have been involved, the population is turning against the army for the first time.

From the wailing rice-pickers at Bhutto’s grave in the dusty village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in the southern province of Sindh to the western-educated elite sipping whisky and soda in the drawing rooms of Lahore, the message is the same: General Pervez Musharraf, the president, must go and the army must return to its barracks.

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Iran may not sign gas pipeline pact with Pakistan next week

Source: The Economic Times

NEW DELHI: Iran is unlikely to sign next week a bilateral agreement with Pakistan for export of natural gas and has said it was keen on India joining the tri-nation ‘peace’ pipeline project. “As we speak, there is no ceremony scheduled for signing of Gas Sales Purchase Agreement (GSPA) with Pakistan next week,” a senior Iranian official told PTI from Tehran.

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Ron Paul Still Tops The Charts On The Internet

Primaries? What primaries?!? All that matters is that Rep Ron Paul, the lovable Presidential candidate that the Internet has embraced, is still top of the charts when it comes to Internet searches!

Over at The Lycos 50, they’re showing off their latest list of the most searched on candidates, and there he is, sitting in the number one spot, Ron Paul. Now, never mind he only got 8% of the vote in New Hampshire, he is being searched on an astounding 150% more than the candidate in second place, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Third place, and topping the Democrats, is Senator Hillary Clinton.

The overall list is fairly interesting, more so than the primaries to me:

1. Ron Paul

2. Mike Huckabee

3. Hillary Clinton

4 Mitt Romney

5. Barack Obama

6. Fred Thompson

7. John Edwards

8. John McCain

9. Alan Keyes

10. Rudy Giuliani

As things are shaping up, Barack Obama has seen the biggest leap in the past 6-months, with an impressive 167% jump in searches, while Fred Thompson has actually slid, John Edwards has held study, and Rudy Giuliani barely registers on the change radar.

Maybe it’s just that older than most of the folks around here, but I have just never seen anything like this.  While I am certainly not endorsing a candidate, going by traditional measuring, Ron Paul has about as much luck as an armadillo in a freeway during rush hour: i.e. No chance.  However, when you go on the Internet, he’s been hailed as the man who can lead us all to the Promised Land.

I don’t begrudge his supporters one bit, I just don’t get the online/off-line disconnect.

Zotero Is Your Online Research Assistant

Zotero (pronounced “zoh-TAIR-oh”) is a new browser plugin that is aiming to help you with your online research for any number of projects.

This tool will help you automatically store citations of webpages used in your research, store PDFs, take notes, export information, integrates with WordPress… basically it sounds like it will take out all the tedium of research and just let you concentrate on the important parts of looking for sources. I’m not sure there is any bigger pain in the universe than writing bibliography, so this sounds like a dream come true to me.

Currently the plugin works with Firefox 2.0, Netscape Navigator 9.0, or Flock 0.9.1, and is suited for cross-platform performance on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Facebook To Allow Users To Hide Apps From Profile

Facebook has announced that due to complaints about the over abundance of apps of user profile pages they will soon allow users to hide their apps.

The “profile clean-up” tool is compared to how a “computer’s desktop will remind you to get rid of unused icons” (note here, Facebook is comparing themselves to Windows) that will allow users to move profile boxes to an “extended portion” of their profile.

Users can choose to move any or all of the application boxes, but according to Facebook’s Julie Zhuo Facebook “will recommend that [users] keep the Friends Box, Mini-Feed, Wall, Basic and Personal Information as well as the top 12 application boxes they have added.” Each profile will then have a link at the bottom to “Show Extended Profile, ” that will allow visitors to then see all applications a user has running.

The changes is a good thing for users of Facebook, who have been bombarded with cluttered profile pages that are reminicent of MySpace (without the awful colors) since the Faceebook platform launched last year. App makers on the other hand might not be so impressed. Many rely on profile exposure to help spread their apps virally, and now users can hide their apps, taking that benefit away. Unfortunately though this is still window dressing stuff from Facebook, the non-stop stream of rubbish that emanates from some apps (Funwall and Superwall in particular) remains untouched.