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Links 5/11/2010: Google Chrome OS Enters Beta



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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Google open sources Apache server speed mod
    Google has open sourced an Apache server module designed to speed website performance. Presumably, the module is based on the mystery Google Web Server the company uses to serve its own pages.

    Known as "mod_pagespeed," the Apache module speeds performance "on the fly" in 15 separate ways, which include optimizing page caching, minimizing client-server round trips, and reducing payload size. "mod_pagespeed is an open-source Apache module that automatically optimizes web pages and resources on them," Google says. "It does this by rewriting the resources using filters that implement web performance best practices. Webmasters and web developers can use mod_pagespeed to improve the performance of their web pages when serving content with the Apache HTTP Server."


  • The Apache way meets the Oracle way
    There is nothing in open source quite like the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).

    To outsiders it can be maddening. I just finished keynoting ApacheCon and I still don’t get it.

    Jim Jagielski (right) is currently Apache’s president, but having been with the group since its start he’s also an unofficial historian.


  • Open Source Lights Up Darkest Africa
    Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria….countries in Africa that some people have to use an atlas (or at least Google Maps) to locate. While low cost computers, networking hardware and software are helping these countries develop the computer infrastructure they need those are only part of the answer. To really establish a sustainable infrastructure a lot of these countries, who may have been under colonial rule for decades, also need training in entrepreneurship and capacity building.

    A number of years ago I started working with a company called InWent Capacity Building International. Based in Germany, InWent works with the German government, the United Nations and various countries on projects to “teach the teachers” and build economic capacity. Since the German government had embraced Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) early on, it was fairly easy to get InWent to recognize FOSS as advantageous for some of the projects the countries were undertaking.


  • 8 (More) Free and Open Source Project Management Software
    A few months ago, we have featured here some of the best free and open-source project management software. To recap, project management software covers many types of applications that may include scheduling, tracking, reporting, resource allocation, communication and administration among others. It is designed to help companies or organizations complete a project quickly and efficiently.

    For those of you who are interested, here is another round of excellent free and open-source project management software (in no particular order) that we have not included on our previous list.


  • Events

    • Updated open source presentation
      Last spring I gave a talk at OSBC called “Asking the Hard Questions About Open Source Software.” Since that time I’ve given the talk several times to customers and partners, have added some more material about IBM’s use of open source, and tweaked it here and there.


    • Open Source Initiative Bash! - Logitech Loft SF Party


    • Linux Plumber’s Conference Day 1
      First there was an opening talk by Jonathan Corbet, which was a report on the current state of the kernel. Some take-aways I got from the talk is we have about 1100 kernel developers currently, 300 are very active, and the pace is very fast. There isn’t any concern over attracting additional kernel developers as there is a steady influx. Jonathan went over various new features in the kernel, including a few long-term cleanup efforts that are finally getting finished up.




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 4 Beta for Mobile is Now Faster and Sleeker
        We received a lot of great feedback on the previous beta and addressed many of the issues reported, including reduced memory usage, improved text rendering and a 60% install size reduction on Android (from around 43 MB to 17 MB).






  • Databases

    • The 2010 Elections, Reflections, Lessons and Taking Stock
      Disappointed when the Department of Justice allowed Oracle to acquire the assets of MySQL, putting together in one company the leading free software platform and the leading commercial platform for database services. Not surprisingly, Oracle has introduced sharp fee hikes to support MySQL, killed off low-priced support options, and more than doubled what it charges for the commercial versions of the database. More here and here.




  • Oracle

    • Key Java figure says 'JCP no longer credible'
      A senior member of the Java Community Process has resigned from his position on the board's Executive Committee citing Oracle's role within the committee's processes as a driving factor.

      Doug Lea —whose position on the board was due for renewal this year— won't be reapplying to sit on the JCP's executive committee in future years as he feels that "there is no remaining useful role for an independent advocate for the academic and research community on the EC," he said in his explanatory departure letter sent on Friday. "I believe that the JCP is no longer a credible specification and standards body," he added.


    • New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300m92) available


    • The Unsaid Document Foundation (talkbacks)
      Michael Meeks, famous hacker and LibreOffice advocate, replied to my earlier post giving his perspectives on many different subjects related to LibreOffice development.

      Having read his views with great attention - and keeping in mind his long coding experience with OpenOffice.org, as well as his ability to dig deep into complex subjects like copyright assignment – I want to take a chance to go deeper into some points.




  • CMS

    • Six Secrets of Open Source Community Building
      The Drupal content management system (CMS) is one of the most successful open source projects on the Internet today, thanks in no small part to its community.

      At the head of the Drupal community is the project's founder, Dries Buytaert, who started the project ten years ago in his dorm room. In 2008, Buytaert helped to found Acquia which is a commercial support vendor for Drupal, which to date has raised over $20 million in startup capital. The road from dorm room to open source rock star has given Buytaert some insight into how to build a successful open source community. Speaking at the Zendcon PHP conference this week, Buytaert detailed six key secrets to open source success.




  • Funding



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Project Releases



  • Government

    • Cabinet Office managers ban talks on Government IT
      Senior officials in the Cabinet Office have banned their colleagues from talking publicly about Government IT, which will stop reformers arguing the need for radical change.

      In recent weeks several officials in the Cabinet Office have spoken in public on the massive inefficiencies within Government administration. They have set out plans for reducing or cutting out widespread duplication of business processes and IT.


    • The White House gets open source
      I love this video from Dave Cole (Senior Advisor to the CIO, Executive Office of the President) and Macon Phillips (White House Director of New Media). You hear the feds talk a lot about openness and transparency, but not often specifically about open source. But here, you can see that the White House really gets it.


    • Whitehouse.gov Wins OSFA Award
      Melanie Chernoff, Public Policy Manager for Red Hat, posted a story on opensource.com about the recent Open Source for America awards handed out at the Government Open Source Conference.


    • Governments want more commercial out of commercial open source
      The theme of this year’s GOSCON, from my perspective, was that governments remain eager to embrace open source software, and are no doubt already doing so in many cases, but there is still a great demand for more commercial backing of more open source. Even though we continue to see more official adoption and procurement of open source among public organizations, it seems clear after GOSCON there is a need for more awareness, but also for more commercial support of open source.




  • Licensing

    • Is Your Business Compliant with Open Source Licenses?
      There are many ways that vendors of proprietary products try to scare business customers away from open source software, and one of the more commonly heard examples involves vague fears about compliance with open source licenses. There's nothing like the specter of a good lawsuit to scare a company back into a paid vendor's welcoming arms.




  • Openness/Sharing

    • The Zimmer Twins: Crowdsourced animation for kids


    • New user group aims to take on the super vendors
      Open Data Center Alliance, with more than $50B in collective IT spending, hope to yield a big stick


    • Powerhouse Museum to launch open access image repository
      The Powerhouse Museum has moved to embrace Gov 2.0 principles, announcing plans to create an open-access image repository to showcase the organisations’ extensive image archive.

      The portal will initially begin with about 5000 images and grow to include the museum’s glass-plate negatives collection, including some 7903 images from the Tyrrell Photographic Collection, which documents city and country life in the late 1800s and early 1900s.


    • Open Data

      • National Rail Have Killed My UK Train Times App
        Data came from a free API which National Rail (a body representing the UK’s train companies) has run for years. Output was presented in the cleanest way possible – people on the move don’t want to be encumbered with advertising or excessive page furniture!




    • Open Access/Content

      • Flat World Knowledge’s Eric Frank: Open Education and Policy


        At the beginning of this year we announced a revised approach to our education plans, focusing our activities to support of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. In order to do so we have worked hard to increase the amount of information available on our own site – in addition to an Education landing page and the OER portal explaining Creative Commons’ role as legal and technical infrastructure supporting OER, we have been conducting a series of interviews to help clarify some of the challenges and opportunities of OER in today’s education landscape.

        One major venue for the advancement of OER is through the development and support of businesses that levage openly licensed content in support of education. Eric Frank is Founder and President of Flat World Knowledge, a commercial publisher of openly-licensed college textbooks. We spoke with Eric about faculty perceptions of open textbooks, customization enabled by open licensing, and the future of “free online and affordable offline” business models.




    • Open Hardware

      • Getting hooked on open source prosthetics
        The Open Prosthetics Project has outlined the different ways members of their community can help and ingeniously spelled out how they need help within the list. Whether you're new to their community or returning, it's very clear how to get started. On their website, participation is as easy a being a user, donor, grant writer, service provider, researcher, or helping with their legal team.






  • Standards/Consortia

    • Oracle Proposes Cloud Management API Based on Open Standards
      Oracle has released details of a proposed standard API for managing the cloud. The draft specification, released Wednesday, has been submitted to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) for inclusion with the organization's proposed Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) standard.


    • Mark Zuckerberg on HTML5 at Facebook
      If a company like Facebook sees the value in an HTML5-based web application that can run across many modern mobile devices, that, to me is a great testament to the power of the web vs. native mobile apps. Clearly native apps have their place but the more fragmentation we see in the mobile space in both operating systems as well as devices (there are now tablet devices coming out in many different sizes from 11 inches to 7 inches an every size in between) the more important the web will be.






Leftovers

  • Bully-claim dinner lady sacked due to 'embarrassment'
    A dinner lady who told parents their child was being bullied was sacked as governors were "embarrassed by the public outcry", a tribunal has heard.

    Carol Hill, 61, had made her bosses at Great Tey Primary School in Essex "cross" and was unfairly dismissed, her lawyer Claire Darwin told the hearing.

    She was sacked from the school in September last year.


  • With the Jack PC, the computer's in the wall!
    The Jack PC from Chip PC Technologies offers a neat and novel thin-client desktop computing solution where the computer doesn't just plug into the wall, it is the plug in the wall. Running on power provided by the ethernet cable that also connects it to the data center server, the computer-in-a-wall-socket supports wireless connectivity, has dual display capabilities and runs on the RISC processor architecture – which gives the solution the equivalent of 1.2GHz of x86 processing power.


  • News Corporation's bid for BSkyB faces probe
    The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has ordered Ofcom to investigate News Corporation's plan to take full control of broadcaster BSkyB.


  • NI clearly threw in the kitchen sink to get Times online past the magic 100,000 mark
    Raymond Snoddy reveals all from the MediaPro conference - Guardian News and Media is making more money from its online dating service than NI is from Times online; The Independent's new i has only been selling around 125,000 a day; and Lebedev says the Standard and The Independent are "definitely doomed" if they stay as they are...


  • 'Pervy' private chat case springs back into life
    The issue, described by one legal commenter as "the most significant obscenity case so far this century", centres on a prosecution originally brought in May of this year against Gavin Smith, of Swanscombe, whose log of a private online chat he had with another individual was deemed by Kent Police to be obscene.


  • Inside the Google Books Algorithm


  • FTC Names Edward W. Felten as Agency's Chief Technologist; Eileen Harrington as Executive Director
    Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz today announced the appointment of Edward W. Felten as the agency’s first Chief Technologist. In his new position, Dr. Felten will advise the agency on evolving technology and policy issues.

    Dr. Felten is a professor of computer science and public affairs and founding director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He has served as a consultant to federal agencies, including the FTC, and departments of Justice and Defense, and has testified before Congress on a range of technology, computer security, and privacy issues. He is a fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery and recipient of the Scientific American 50 Award. Felten holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington.


  • Will Netflix Destroy the Internet?
    On Sept. 22, Netflix began offering its streaming movie service in Canada. This was Netflix's first venture outside of the United States, and because the company wasn't offering its traditional DVD-by-mail plan to Canadians, its prospects seemed questionable. How many people would pay $7.99 per month (Canadian) for the chance to watch Superbad whenever they wanted?


  • New Surveys Say Publishers Expect Mobile To Pay Off Big Within Two Years
    Two new publishing surveys predict rapid revenue growth for mobile apps in the next few years, although one shows most publishers rejecting the switch to an all-digital format.


  • BBC facing news blackout as journalists strike over pensions


    The BBC faces a news blackout tomorrow across its main TV and radio news programmes, including Radio 4's Today, BBC1's 10pm bulletin and Newsnight, as star presenters including Fiona Bruce and Kirsty Wark join a 48-hour strike over pensions.


  • Science



  • Health/Nutrition

    • Medicine: A Contagious Cancer?
      At first it sounded like a macabre coincidence. Within three days in March 1983, two California cousins learned from their doctors that they had non- Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. One month earlier, a sister-in-law of one of them, living in Washington, had received the same diagnosis. The family was stunned. What could be causing their unbelievable misfortune?

      In Georgia, a few months later, when the married daughter of one of the victims discovered that she too had the malignancy, the family could not avoid what had earlier seemed an illogical, incredible conclusion: four of them had "caught" cancer from a 63-year-old South African aunt who in 1982 had crisscrossed the U.S., visiting her late husband's relatives.




  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • In new memoir, Bush makes clear he approved use of waterboarding
      Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

      In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.


    • Brussels blocks UK from biometric superdatabase
      European judges have rejected an attempt by British security officials to gain access to a huge new store of visa application data being set up to combat illegal immigration, organised crime and terrorism.

      The government went to court to force the EU to allow agencies such as MI5, SOCA and the UK Border Agency to use the Visa Information System (VIS), which will store details of every foreigner who applies to enter the bloc, including their fingerprints and photograph. Intelligence on those who have previously been refused a visa by another country is seen as particularly valuable.


    • Cops Pay $4,000 to Man Who Flipped Them Off
      A suburban Oregon police department is paying a local man $4,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit in which he claimed he was pulled over for flipping off the cops in traffic.

      Twice he saluted with his middle finger while driving, and was pulled over each time by a Clackamas County patrol officer, resulting in what he said was a tongue lashing and “bogus” citations that were later dismissed. He sued (.pdf) in March.


    • Watch Out: The World Bank Is Quietly Funding a Massive Corporate Water Grab
      Even though water privatization has been a massive failure around the world, the World Bank just quietly gave $139 million to its latest corporate buddy.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense
      Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him.

      The result is the Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW. Its operation is fairly simple: Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn't happening or humans aren't responsible for it.

      It then spits back at the twitterer who made that argument a canned response culled from a database of hundreds. The responses are matched to the argument in question -- tweets about how Neptune is warming just like the earth, for example, are met with the appropriate links to scientific sources explaining why that hardly constitutes evidence that the source of global warming on earth is a warming sun.


    • Clearing tropical forests is a lose-lose
      Clearing tropical forests for farmland is bad for the climate – no surprises there. But now we've learned that it's also an inefficient way to feed people.

      Paul West of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues worked out the potential yields of 175 different crops if they were planted in different parts of the world.

      Then they estimated how much carbon would be released into the atmosphere by clearing these areas of wild plants.


    • Icelandic volcano showing signs of erupting
      An Icelandic volcano is showing signs of erupting, months after ash wreaked chaos on European air travel.

      Flood water is pouring out of the Grimsvotn volcano in southern Iceland – a sign, scientists say, that an eruption could be imminent.


    • The real reason (climate) scientists don't want to release their code
      Recently there have been three articles that discuss releasing scientific software. Nature had a piece called Computational science: ...Error, the bloggers at RealClimate wrote about Climate code archiving: an open and shut case? and Communications of the ACM has an article entitled Should code be released?.






  • Finance



  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Civil Liberties Watchdog Feingold Loses Senate Seat
      Civil liberties advocates lost a Senate stalwart Tuesday night when Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) was defeated by Ron Johnson, a little-known plastics manufacturer whose shibboleths against health care reform and government spending tapped into populist anger.

      For years, Feingold was one of the few — and sometimes the only — voice in the Senate skeptical of the government’s increasing demands for domestic surveillance power and control of the internet. He was one of 16 Senators who voted against the Communications Decency Act of 1996, an internet censorship bill later struck down by the Supreme Court, was the only Senator in 2001 to vote against the USA Patriot Act, and he introduced a measure to censure President Bush for his illegal warrantless wiretapping program.


    • Going to the movies? Prepare to be watched while you watch


      Gaining entry to some movie theaters lately gives patrons an experience that is on par with going through a TSA security checkpoint at the airport. Then once you’ve gained access, there are cameras strategically positioned that record your every move. Unfortunately, the extent to which these companies monitor movie-goers is only going to get worse.


    • Chinese general gets shanzhai Peace Prize
      As Ban Ki-moon finalized his preparations for his visit this week to Beijing, one of his top advisors, Sha Zukang, traveled to China to present an award to a retired Chinese general who had authority over troops that fired on unarmed civilians during the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.


    • Tougher privacy rules on way in Europe
      The European Union looks set to adopt tougher privacy laws for online companies. It’s looking into ways to update rules in line with technical advances, most notably the increase in data that is stored online rather than on a user’s computer.


    • QQ vs 360 – on the Chinese Internet users lose
      There are many aspects of the Internet in China that make it unique (see Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China, a page that is no doubt blocked from view in China.)

      * state censorship of non-Chinese content via the Great Firewall * internal (to China) censorship of content by Chinese Internet companies * self-censorship that is a hallmark of any regime that does not have free speech laws

      These are but 3 of the many differences of the Internet in China vs. elsewhere.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Libraries Say 'No DRM'; Springer Agrees


    • New Congress, same approach to hot-button Internet issues?


      Amidst all the shouting over Tuesday's transfer of the House of Representatives to Republican control, a distinct cry of pain could be heard for the loss of one voice—Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA). Republican Morgan Griffith, majority leader of Virginia's House of Delegates, has taken Boucher's seat.

      As Chair of the influential Subcommittee on the Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Boucher's imprint on tech issues—particularly online privacy—was clear as a bell. Now he is gone.

      "Tonight the Congress has lost one of its most intelligent and tech-saavy members," a press statement from Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge declared late Tuesday. "Rick Boucher has been one of the most moderate and thoughtful voices on communications and intellectual property policy."


    • Audio Podcast #65: Usage-Based Billing: The House Wins Again


    • The TPM Provisions in Bill C-32 Are Not In Compliance With The WIPO Internet Treaties
      Unlike most of the rest of the people commenting on Bill C-32 I’ve actually read the WIPO Internet Treaties. Heck, I’ve even quoted them often enough. You can read the specific treaty in question in PDF form here or read the text online here. At this point I’m going to be really nasty. Have you ever wondered why I’m the only person who is willing to post a link to the treaty? Don’t you think that it’s curious that Michael Geist, Barry Sookman, James Gannon, Howard Knopf, etc., etc., etc. never give you a link so that you can read the treaty on your own? Curious, isn’t it.

      [...]

      The problem is that the Recording Industry (as separate from the Music Industry) is suffering from sales drops, and is panicking. In effect the Recording Industry has become obsolete, and they are fighting to try and retain some relevance. Any relevance. And they probably could except for one thing. A couple of days ago I published an article on Canadian military procurement titled F35 Joint Strike Fighter – The Biggest Procurement Mistake Ever in which I mentioned political instability in the United States. The article was published before their election, and my concerns about American political instability were based solely on the news articles of the time. It appears that things may be far worse than I thought. The new composition of the House of Representatives are going to push for enormous spending cuts, which is almost certain to turn the current Recession into a Depression, right behind the Brits and Irish. As the economy gets worse, they will probably attempt to cut spending further, possibly putting the United States economy into a death spiral. And of course if consumers don’t have money, they don’t spend it on things like music. It is quite possible that we could see one or more of the large Recording Industry companies forced into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the near future, because their customers won’t have any money to spend.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • Anti-Piracy Tool For Cinemas Will Recognize Emotions
        For most people going to a cinema is a good night out. Only a few realize that they are often subjecting themselves to extreme and privacy invading security measures that most airports could only dream of. Filmgoers are already being carefully watched for suspicious behavior by Big Brother’s cameras, but soon this technology will be upgraded with sophisticated emotion recognition software.


      • Copyright Enforcer Righthaven Faces A New Obstacle
        Righthaven is a company that was formed earlier this year with a novel business model: find websites that have copied newspaper articles without permission, and sue them for copyright infringement. Since March, it has sued more than 150 websites and reached settlements with more than 50. But now Righthaven faces its biggest challenge yet.

        In its lawsuits, Righthaven typically asks for attorney’s fees and threatens to take over defendants’ domain names. It has used both of those demands very effectively as a hammer to force its targets to settle the lawsuit. A new motion filed by digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that Righthaven doesn’t have the right to demand attorney’s fees or take over defendants’ domains, even if it wins its lawsuits.


      • How The DMCA Is Restricting Online Radio In Ridiculous Ways
        Yet another case of the DMCA putting in place ridiculous restrictions that do nothing to actually stop unauthorized copying.


      • Porn maker sues 7,098 alleged film pirates
        In a move sure to outrage both file-traders on BitTorrent networks and legal watchdogs, a well-known pornographer has filed a federal copyright suit against 7,098 individuals.


      • File-Sharers To Receive Warning Letters, But No 3 Strikes
        In an effort to reduce illicit file-sharing, draft legislation was passed in Finland last week which will require Internet service providers to send letters to customers suspected of unauthorized sharing. The warnings will be initiated by copyright owners, but at no stage will Internet subscribers’ identities be compromised. A three strikes-style regime is not on the agenda.


      • Ministry of Sound Forced To Suspend File-Sharing Shakedown
        World famous nightclub and independent music label Ministry of Sound have been forced to suspend their planned shakedown of tens of thousands of alleged file-sharers. The company had planned to send 25,000 letters demanding hundreds of pounds in compensation to customers of Internet service provider, BT. However, BT has deleted more than 20,000 of those records which now makes the identification of the account holders impossible.


      • Apple's tough iTunes note meant for indie labels


      • Video: Pandora Founder Tim Westergren, Unplugged
        Westergren has had a struggle to get to the top. If not battling the RIAA or pitching venture capitalists that would eventually turn him down, what kept him going was his belief in his idea of personalizing music. He shares his thoughts about building great teams, and inspiring faith and courage amongst his team members.


      • Third P2P verdict for Jammie Thomas: $1.5 million
        The first P2P case to come to trial in the US has lasted five years and now has three verdicts, this one coming after just two hours of deliberation. Jammie Thomas-Rasset must pay $62,500 for each of the 24 songs at issue in the case, for total of $1.5 million.

        "We are again thankful to the jury for its service in this matter and that they recognized the severity of the defendant's misconduct," said the RIAA after the case wrapped up. "Now with three jury decisions behind us along with a clear affirmation of Ms. Thomas-Rasset’s willful liability, it is our hope that she finally accepts responsibility for her actions."


      • Ministry of Sound gives up P2P claims
        Last month we reported on an interesting development taking place in the copyright enforcement front. Law firm Gallant Macmillan requested a Norwich Pharmacal order (NPO) against BT in order to identify thousands of alleged copyright infringers of its music. Because of the ACS:Law email leak debacle, BT decided to fight the NPO, heralding the end of the assumption that IP evidence should never be contended by ISPs.


      • ACTA











Clip of the Day



Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys



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Credit: TinyOgg

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