aashiks'in

I have been using Chromium web browser on my Arch Linux, on which Google Chrome is based. It was a pleasent experience. It loads fast, hogs less memory and loads tabs very fast. On the whole, I liked it so much that I use it for most of my browsing except for online banking. I do miss the extensions , but the speed and responsivness makes up for it.

Since it was a wee bit older ( it didnt have the extensions feature ), I thought I would update it via Arch User Repository. I had forgotten the exact name of the package so I did a search for Chromium and the following entry popped up on my screen.

“aur/iron 4.0.227-1 (125)
A web browser based on chromium without Google’s tracking ‘features’”

It was then that I realized that even chromium has phone back home features built into it. But it was then that another facet of FOSS world showed itself . SRWare took the source code, removed those tracking features and added features ( like ad blocking and and a later version of webkit ). I uninstalled Chromium right away and replaced it with Iron. I must say that its sweeter than Chromium. I think people should give it a try.

I just noticed this on wikileaks tweet feed. A can of worms is in the sights ..

Link: http://bit.ly/4mOrx4

From wikileaks :

“Confidential plans for 1.2 billion ID cards: Creating a Unique ID for every resident in India, Nov 2009

This confidential working paper (49 pp) presents the current plan for India’s Unique ID Databse Project. Numerous RTI (Right to Information ) petitions failed to obtain this document about the world’s biggest citizen identification scheme.
Because the project will likely become a model for many countries the document is of global interest.
Jounalists can contact Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of UIDA, the Unique Identification Authority.
This confidential working paper (49 pp) presents the current plan for India’s Unique ID Databse Project. Numerous RTI (Right to Information ) petitions failed to obtain this document about the world’s biggest citizen identification scheme.
Because the project will likely become a model for many countries the document is of global interest.
Jounalists can contact Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of UIDA, the Unique Identification Authority.”