09.15.10

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Links 15/9/2010: Linux Mint Coverage, Best Buy Uses Drupal

Posted in News Roundup at 7:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why Your Startup Should Be Involved in Open Source

    Oftentimes, when you hear the arguments for “Why open source?”, they are aimed at convincing companies to use open source software. But the other piece of the argument is, of course, an argument for why your company should build open source – why it should develop its technology in a community-driven, open sourced way.

    Along those lines, Peter Friese, head of mobile development at Itemis recently wrote an article arguing “Why Your Next App Should Be Open Sourced.”

  • Open source, helping the children of the future.

    Fortunately open source software has reached the point where it has become mainstream. Companies are buying other companies purely for their open source components. Other open source programs are extremely popular and grabberments, educational institutions and more businesses than ever before are seriously considering or using open source software. However, you may be thinking, what does this have to do with our children?

  • The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long…

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • What’s next for Firefox on Linux?

        Growth over the last year has been static, and things are about to get worse. A competing open source browser has been able to go from zero to 7% market share, and doesn’t show any sign of slowing down.

  • Oracle

    • OpenSolaris spork ready for download

      It is not quite ready for primetime, but with the announcement of OpenIndiana, a so-called spork of Oracle’s OpenSolaris Unix distribution, the server world is getting a familiar, re-opened, and community-developed operating system aimed specifically at data center workloads.

      Alasdair Lumsden owns a hosting company in London called EveryCity Managed Hosting, and his customers are deployed on Solaris 10, which was made freely available with security patches when it was announced nearly six years ago by Sun Microsystems. The company has 50 servers supporting 250 Solaris containers – not exactly a hyperscale customer by some standards – but Lumsden has been an enthusiastic supporter of the OpenSolaris project and did his part in the community as he built a business running Solaris on x64 servers.

    • Is Oracle poised to effectively end open source software?

      The preferable approach, and the safest approach, to protecting innovation in the field of software development from the chilling effects of patent claims will always be to eliminate the dangerous practice of software patents altogether. It is important to oppose software patents at every turn, and for those of us in the United States to try to get the USPTO to stop issuing patents for software, if you care about healthy innovation in the software industry in general and open source software in particular.

  • CMS

    • Best Buy using Drupal

      Best Buy, one of the biggest retailers of consumer electronics in the United States is using Drupal for their mobile magazine website: http://www.bestbuymobile.com/. Best Buy earns 50 billion USD in revenues and has over 180,000 employees. Needless to say, this is a big enterprise adopting Drupal.

    • Deleted Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Accounts!

      I kept my account on identi.ca, the open source version of Twitter. When there are Open Source solutions for the broader problem of social networking, I’ll install them.

  • Education/Libraries

    • Will Librarians Leave Facebook for Diaspora?

      Librarians uncomfortable with the erosion of privacy on Facebook can now turn to a new social network called Diaspora, a personal Web server that stores shared information securely.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Government

    • Australian e-tax software unjust: Stallman

      E-tax is software provided by the Australian Taxation Office to conduct tax returns online. The office has been under fire for a number of years for not making a version of the software function on Linux or Apple Mac systems.

      However, this wasn’t the reason Stallman called the product “unjust”. His reasoning for this term was that it is not “free” software.

      Stallman feels strongly about freedom and wanted to be very clear on the distinction between free software and open source.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • The Most Powerful Colors in the World

  • Science

    • South Africa Develops Nanotech ‘Tea Bag’ To Filter Water for Pennies (video)

      Provide people cheap access to clean water and you could save billions of lives. South Africa may use tea bags to do just that. Researchers at Stellenbosch University’s Water Institute have developed a new water filtration system that uses activated carbon and nanofibers to quickly filter out pathogens. The carbon and nanofibers are placed in common tea bags and then fitted into a bottle. Fill the bottle with dubious water, install a filter, and drink. It’s that easy. According to SciDev Net, the ultimate price for these ‘tea bag’ nanfiber filters will be around half a cent (USD) each and be able to handle around 1 L before being replaced. A super cheap, portable, easy to use system to purify water? Sounds amazing. Watch developer (and SU dean) Eugene Cloete describe the project in the video below. You know a scientist believes in a product when he’s willing to test it on himself in front of a camera.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Privacy and Safety Questions Loom Over Federal Program to Track Preschoolers

      The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are calling for answers to critical privacy and safety questions that loom over a controversial federal program to track preschoolers with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips at George Miller III Head Start program in Richmond, California.

      In an open letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department, ACLU-NC and EFF are asking officials to disclose what technical and security measures are used by the system to safeguard the privacy and safety of preschoolers, as well as what data is collected, how long it is retained, and who has access to the information. The letter also calls on officials to publicly address why and how the government decided to track Head Start students, and if the government plans to expand such tracking.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Digital Economy (UK)

        • Cor blimey! British ISPs must fund P2P copyright crackdown

          For months now, the brightest minds in the UK—well, the brightest minds in the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills, anyway—have been pondering a thorny question: who should pay for all the warning letters that will soon be winging their way by e-mail and post to (suspected) P2P users? Today, we learned the answer (PDF): rightsholders will pick up 75 percent of the tab, but ISPs will pay the rest.

          Under the Digital Economy Act, passed earlier this year, the UK gave its courts the power to order complete blocks on websites, required ISPs to start sending P2P warning letters from copyright holders, and opened the door to throttling and Internet disconnection for repeat infringement at some future date.

Clip of the Day

Vlmc demo #2


Credit: TinyOgg

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DecorWhat Else is New

  1. [Meme] Alexander Ramsay and Team UPC Inciting Politicians to Break the Law and Violate Constitutions, Based on Misinformation, Fake News, and Deliberate Lies Wrapped up as 'Studies'

    The EPO‘s law-breaking leadership (Benoît Battistelli, António Campinos and their corrupt cronies), helped by liars who don't enjoy diplomatic immunity, are cooperating to undermine courts across the EU, in effect replacing them with EPO puppets who are patent maximalists (Europe’s equivalents of James Rodney Gilstrap and Alan D Albright, a Donald Trump appointee, in the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, respectively)

  2. Has the Administrative Council Belatedly Realised What Its Job in the European Patent Organisation Really Is?

    The "Mafia" which took over the EPO (the EPO's own workers call it "Mafia") isn't getting its way with a proposal, so it's preventing the states from even voting on it!

  3. [Meme] Team UPC is Celebrating a Pyrrhic Victory

    Pyrrhic victory best describes what's happening at the moment (it’s a lobbying tactic, faking/staging things to help false prophecies be fulfilled, based on hopes and wishes alone), for faking something without bothering to explain the legal basis is going to lead to further escalations and complaints (already impending)

  4. Links 24/1/2022: Scribus 1.5.8 and LXLE Reviewed

    Links for the day

  5. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 23, 2022

    IRC logs for Sunday, January 23, 2022

  6. [Meme] Team UPC Congratulating Itself

    The barrage of fake news and misinformation about the UPC deliberately leaves out all the obvious and very important facts; even the EPO‘s António Campinos and Breton (Benoît Battistelli‘s buddy) participated in the lying

  7. Links 24/1/2022: pgBadger 11.7 Released, Catch-up With Patents

    Links for the day

  8. The Demonisation and Stereotyping of Coders Not Working for Big Corporations (or 'The System')

    The war on encrypted communication (or secure communications) carries on despite a lack of evidence that encryption stands in the way of crime investigations (most criminals use none of it)

  9. On the 'Peak Hacker' Series

    Hacker culture, unlike Ludditism, is ultimately a movement for justice, for equality, and for human rights through personal and collective emancipation; Dr. Farnell has done a good job explaining where we stand and his splendid series has come to a close

  10. Links 23/1/2022: First RC of Linux 5.17 and Sway 1.7 Released

    Links for the day

  11. Peak Code — Part III: After Code

    "Surveillance perimeters, smart TVs (Telescreens built to Orwell's original blueprint) watched over our living rooms. Mandatory smart everything kept us 'trustless'. Safe search, safe thoughts. We withdrew. Inside, we went quietly mad."

  12. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 22, 2022

    IRC logs for Saturday, January 22, 2022

  13. Links 23/1/2022: MongoDB 5.2, BuddyPress 10.0.0, and GNU Parallel 20220122

    Links for the day

  14. A Parade of Fake News About the UPC Does Not Change the General Consensus or the Simple Facts

    European Patents (EPs) from the EPO are granted in violation of the EPC; Courts are now targeted by António Campinos and the minions he associates with (mostly parasitic litigation firms and monopolists), for they want puppets for “judges” and for invalid patents to be magically rendered “valid” and “enforceable”

  15. Welcome to 2022: Intentional Lies Are 'Benefits' and 'Alternative Facts'

    A crooks-run EPO, together with the patent litigation cabal that we’ve dubbed ‘Team UPC’ (it has nothing to do with science or with innovation), is spreading tons of misinformation; the lies are designed to make the law-breaking seem OK, knowing that Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos are practically above the law, so perjury as well as gross violations of the EPC and constitutions won’t scare them (prosecution as deterrence just isn’t there, which is another inherent problem with the UPC)

  16. From Software Eating the World to the Pentagon Eating All the Software

    “Software is eating the world,” according to Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape), but the Empire Strikes Back (not the movie, the actual empire) by hijacking all code by proxy, via Microsoft, just as it grabbed a lot of the world’s communications via Skype, bypassing the world's many national telecoms; coders need to fight back rather than participate in racist (imperial) shams such as GitHub

  17. Links 22/1/2022: Skrooge 2.27.0 and Ray-Tracing Stuff

    Links for the day

  18. IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 21, 2022

    IRC logs for Friday, January 21, 2022

  19. Peak Code — Part II: Lost Source

    "Debian and Mozilla played along. They were made “Yeoman Freeholders” in return for rewriting their charters to “work closely with the new Ministry in the interests of all stakeholders” – or some-such vacuous spout… because no one remembers… after that it started."

  20. Links 22/1/2022: Ubuntu MATE 21.10 for GPD Pocket 3, MINISFORUM Preloads GNU/Linux

    Links for the day

  21. Computer Users Should be Operators, But Instead They're Being Operated by Vendors and Governments

    Computers have been turned into hostile black boxes (unlike Blackbox) that distrust the person who purchased them; moreover, from a legislative point of view, encryption (i.e. computer security) is perceived and treated by governments like a threat instead of something imperative — a necessity for society’s empowerment (privacy is about control and people in positions of unjust power want total and complete control)

  22. Peak Code — Part I: Before the Wars

    Article/series by Dr. Andy Farnell: "in the period between 1960 and 2060 people had mistaken what they called "The Internet" for a communications system, when it had in fact been an Ideal and a Battleground all along - the site of the 100 years info-war."

  23. Links 21/1/2022: RISC-V Development Board and Rust 1.58.1

    Links for the day

  24. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 20, 2022

    IRC logs for Thursday, January 20, 2022

  25. Gemini Lets You Control the Presentation Layer to Suit Your Own Needs

    In Gemini (or the Web as seen through Gemini clients such as Kristall) the user comes first; it's not sites/capsules that tell the user how pages are presented/rendered, as they decide only on structural/semantic aspects

  26. The Future of Techrights

    Futures are difficult to predict, but our general vision for the years ahead revolves around more community involvement and less (none or decreased) reliance on third parties, especially monopolistic corporations, mostly because they oppress the population via the network and via electronic devices

  27. [Meme] UPC for CJEU

    When you do illegal things and knowingly break the law to get started with a “legal” system you know it’ll end up in tears… or the CJEU

  28. Links 20/1/2022: 'Pluton' Pushback and Red Hat Satellite 6.10.2

    Links for the day

  29. The Web is a Corporate Misinformation/Disinformation Platform, Biased Against Communities, Facts, and Science

    Misinformation/disinformation in so-called 'news' sites is a pandemic which spreads; in the process, the founder of GNU/Linux gets defamed and GNU/Linux itself is described as the problem, not the solution to the actual problems

  30. Links 20/1/2022: McKinsey Openwashing and Stable Kernels

    Links for the day

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