Judge sets Facebook hearing status to 'private'

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Pakistani Student Snubs U.S. Ambassador, Payback For Attack

A Pakistani student, Mr. Samad Khurram, today has done what the Pakistani government is afraid to do so far: Snub the U.S. ambassador in the Pakistani capital for the cowardly U.S. attack against our military on the border with Afghanistan.

Samad, a student of law at Harvard University, was in Islamabad to receive a shield of achievement from Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador.

But instead of sucking up to the U.S. ambassador, like many Pakistani officials choose to do, Samad had on his mind the blood of over 30 Pakistanis, half of them soldiers, who were killed on the soil of their homeland on June 10 when the Americans sided with Karzai thugs, also known as the 'Afghan national army', and used massive air power to target a peaceful Pakistani border post.

Ms. Patterson was attending a special ceremony organized at the National Arts Gallery by a privately owned Pakistani school. The school had invited 188 of its former students who received scholarships to study at various American colleges and universities. Parents of the students were present, along with Mrs. Zahida Kiayni, the wife of the Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani.

Ms. Patterson and other U.S. embassy officials were shocked and embarrassed when Samad walked to the stage to receive his award but then announced he was refusing the honor to protest the unprovoked American violation of Pakistani airspace and the murder of innocent Pakistanis.

A shaken Ms. Patterson smiled sheepishly and tried to make the best out of an embarrassing moment.

According to the Associated Press of Pakistan, the official news agency, this is how the U.S. ambassador responded:

"The American ambassador, responding to the protest of the student, said America has deep regrets on the incident."

She said

America is proud to have him (Samad Khurram) in USA for study,

adding,

"The only way to remove the misunderstanding is to exchange ideas and views."

Ms. Patterson had a point there. We need to put our position out to the Americans in a clear way. Samad did just that. He did not boycott the ceremony. He attended it and made sure he rebuked the U.S. ambassador in the full glare of the media.

The unfortunate part is that no one present in the huge hall of NCA joined this nationalist young Pakistani in his gesture. At the very least, Pakistanis present in the hall should have given him a standing ovation

The other unfortunate part is that none of the 80 or so Pakistani news channels highlighted the incident. Why did we allow private Pakistani channels in the first place? Wasn't it to project Pakistani position to the world? If this was the Indian media, if this was the Chinese media, if this was the Iranian media, if this was the Arab media, if this was Turkish media, this incident would have been repeated at the top of every news bulletin for the day.

I hope some of the defeatist 'liberal' Pakistanis working for television news channels might be reading this. If you know someone there, please admonish them.

It is sad that ordinary Pakistanis will always be more nationalist and patriotic than their so-called 'liberal' intellectuals and their non-intellectual politicians

But Samad Khurram, no matter what, we are proud of you.

I urge my fellow nationalist Pakistanis to email Samad and congratulate him. His email is samadkhurram@gmail.com

Google's KML Format Approved As Open Standard

Google on Monday gave up control of its Keyhole Markup Language, or KML, in order that the file format used in Google Earth and Google Maps could become an international standard.

"Starting today, Google no longer controls KML,"

said Michael Weiss-Malik, KML product manager at Google, in a blog post.

"The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international standards body, has announced the completion of KML's standardization process. KML has become an OGC Standard, and the OGC will take responsibility for maintaining and extending it. This transfer of ownership is a strong reflection of Google's commitment to open standards. Fundamentally, our interest is not to control information, but rather to encourage its spread."

The OGC includes 345 companies, government agencies, and academic organizations from around the world with an interest in geographic data standards. In addition to Internet companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the organization counts as members the likes of Boeing, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to name a few.

KML was initially developed by Keyhole Inc., a geospatial visualization company that Google acquired in 2004. KML files define an XML schema for displaying and describing geographic data in two or three dimensions. Microsoft added KML support to its Virtual Earth geospatial application last October.

In a statement, Ron Lake, chairman and CEO of Galdos Systems, a geospatial infrastructure software and services company, said he was glad to see KML become an OGC standard.

"We believe that this is a major step forward for the OGC and for the entire geographic information community, as it provides the first broadly accepted standard for the visualization of geographic information,"

he said.

Standards battles can often be quite contentious, as has been Microsoft effort to get its OOXML specification accepted. KML, however, appears to have won approval without opposition, perhaps because Microsoft has already decided to use the file format.

Stefan Geens, who publishes the Ogle Earth blog, said in an e-mail message that Google's decision to give up KML for standardization signaled a transition from frenetic development to more careful, considered innovation, which will include input from other developers.

"As for the competitive edge over Microsoft -- that comes from having had the first-mover advantage,"

he said.

"It will take awhile before Microsoft's implementation of KML rendering catches up with Google on the more esoteric features, and until then people will regard Google Earth as a kind of reference/gold standard, which I'm sure suits Google fine."

Google says that there have been 350 million downloads of Google Earth. A Microsoft spokesperson wasn't immediately able to provide a figure for Virtual Earth. A comparison of the search terms "Google Earth" and "Virtual Earth" using Google shows 43,500,000 and 7,010,000 results, respectively. Using Windows Live Search, a "Google Earth" search finds 21,400,000 results, while a "Virtual Earth" search returns 4,290,000 results. Google Trends shows significantly more searches being done for "Google Earth" than "Virtual Earth."