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Links 7/9/2011: Linux World Domination, China Picks IBM's GNU/Linux Mainframe



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Project of the Month September 2011 - GCompris


  • New on the site: Open source resources
    We're happy to announce a new open source resources section. To kick things off, we've added pages that highlight open source conferences and events, organizations, and projects and applications. It's not much, but it's a start. We have lots of ideas, and want to make this more robust and improve functionality. But for now, let's see if this idea catches on.


  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS

    • A Way off the Ranch
      In February 2011, Eben Moglen gave a landmark speech to the Internet Society titled "Freedom in the Cloud", in which he unpacked the problem. In the beginning, he said, the Internet was designed as "a network of peers without any intrinsic need for hierarchical or structural control, and assuming that every switch in the Net is an independent, free-standing entity whose volition is equivalent to the volition of the human beings who want to control it".




  • Databases

    • NoSQL Benchmarking
      NoSQL is the talk of the town. And we have already covered what it is for in one of our previous blogs. Today I would like to share the NoSQL benchmark test results we have recently conducted. It will help you to understand if the soon to develop system is compatible to NoSQL, and which NoSQL product to select.

      In this article we will reveal the characteristics of Cassandra, HBase and MongoDB identified through multiple workloads.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Board Elections: Nominations Open


    • Developing LibreOffice
      Not being stopped by that knowledge, LibreOffice developers take a strong bite deep in the code base for improvements now and even better future LibreOffice development. I'm not only impressed, but also get more and more confident in the future of this project.




  • CMS

    • Octopress: Create Static Sites with a Full-Featured Framework
      Static sites have better performance than dynamic sites, but you lose a lot of features by giving up a content management system (CMS), right? Maybe not, if you have a framework like Octopress.

      Last week I looked at static sites and cloud services, but even Todd Hoff's excellent coverage put me off a bit. Then I ran into the Octopress 2.0 announcement.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF's Star Turn in the Android FUDathon, Part 2
      The people and companies ... who disregard the Internet "don't be a dick" rule ... need more incentive to comply. However, even they don't lose the right to use the code permanently unless they decide to "be a dick" permanently. In those cases, it doesn't matter how many copies of the code they get -- each new license for each new copy would be terminated as soon as they attempted distribution outside the terms of the license.




  • Public Services/Government

    • Federal Court may share its DMS as open source, parliament says
      The Swiss Parliament's control committee for the Federal Court is allowing the publication as open source software of Open Justitia, a document management system developed in-house by the court. The software will be made available under the GPLv3 licence soon.


    • NSA Extends Label-based Security to Big Data Stores
      "There is a need for a flexible, high performance distributed key/value store that provides expressive, fine-grained access labels," the developers stated on the proposal page submitted to Apache. "We have made much progress in developing this project over the past [three] years and believe both the project and the interested communities would benefit from this work being openly available and having open development."


    • Open government policy developments in Australasia
      Last week in New Zealand, the Ministers of Finance and Internal Affairs adopted a statement detailing a new Declaration on Open and Transparent Government. The Declaration has been approved by Cabinet, and directs all Public Service departments, the New Zealand Police, the New Zealand Defence Force, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service; encourages other State Services agencies; and invites State Sector agencies to commit to releasing high value public data actively for re-use, in accordance with the Declaration and Principles, and in accordance with the NZGOAL Review and Release process. More information on this statement can be found at the CC Aotearoa New Zealand blog.


    • Publicly Releasing Open Source Software Developed for the U.S. Government by Dr. David A. Wheeler
      This article summarizes when the U.S. federal government or its contractors may publicly release, as open source software (OSS), software developed with government funds. This section is intended for non-lawyers, to help them understand the basic rules they must follow.

      This article was previously published in the Journal of Software Technology (aka Software Tech News), Vol.14, No.1, February 2011. It is part of “Open Technology Development (OTD): Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Military Software”, and thus is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA) License. A one-page summary of this paper is available from MIL-OSS, and the MIL-OSS 2011 conference had a presentation on releasing OSS.




  • Programming



  • Standards/Consortia

    • WS-Calendar 1.0 adopted by OASIS Committee


    • The Next Internet: What's Holding Us Back?
      Tim Berners-Lee, to his credit, did not invent the Internet. He did have one good idea. He was not the first person or even the twelfth with the same idea, but he did make it work. Yet most of the underlying work - the bringing together of dozens of communications systems with slightly or wildly varying protocols - was done before him. He just plugged it in, and for that, he gets most of the credit.






Leftovers



  • Security



  • Cablegate

    • Wikileaks Provides Proof that UK is Eradicating Turks and Caicos Islanders Since Early 2000s


    • Talks over Egypt-Israel gas deal took 10 years, says Wikileaks
      Negotiations over the natural gas deal between Egypt and Israel dragged out over 10 years because of “political concerns in Egypt," a recently revealed Wikileaks cable said.

      A partial extract from cable number 05CAIRO4972 of a confidential document prepared by the US embassy in Cairo one day before the deal was signed said the US described the deal as "the most lucrative ever."

      On July 1, 2005, then Egyptian Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy and Israeli Minister of National Infrastructure Benjamin Ben-Eliezer signed the agreement to supply 1.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) starting October 2006.


    • Addressing confusion about PFC Bradley Manning’s case
      In online discussions attributed to PFC Bradley Manning, he says that he hopes his actions will spur “discussion, debates, and reforms” and that he “want[s] people to know the truth, no matter who they are, because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” This is the classic definition of a whistle-blower (a person who tells the public about alleged dishonest or illegal activities/misconduct occurring in a government department).

      Unfortunately, the government is charging PFC Bradley Manning with “knowingly [giving] intelligence to the enemy, through indirect means,” under Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — an allegation of treason and a capital offense. By this rational, scores of service-person-posted blogs, photos, and videos, would now be punishable by death—simply because they are accessible on the Internet. The charge against Bradley Manning appears to be about sending a message to other would-be whistle-blowers.


    • 2011-09-06 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks
  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Wikileaks has shown us a world we need to know
      Wik€­ileaks has its share of crit€­ics – the or€­gan€­i€­sa€­tion is too cen€­tred around Ju€­lian As€­sange and a per€­son€­al€­ity-type cult ex€­ists – but surely the vast bulk of in€­for€­ma€­tion the group has re€­leased since 2006 makes it a major force for good (not least be€­cause it’s forced gov€­ern€­ments and many jour€­nal€­ists on the de€­fen€­sive about their in€­sider tac€­tics)...


    • Dolphins call each other by name
      Dave the dolphin whistles, and his friend Alan whistles back. We can't yet decipher their calls, but some of the time Dave may be calling: "Alan! Alan! Alan! Alan!"

      Stephanie King of the University of St Andrews, UK, and colleagues monitored 179 pairs of wild bottlenose dolphins off the Florida coast between 1988 and 2004. Of these, 10 were seen copying each other's signature whistles, which the dolphins make to identify themselves to each other.


    • Girl's sex spy saga shocks staid Swiss
      Even by Romanian standards, the plot beggars belief. A hot-blooded young seductress masquerading as a journalist is order- ed by her masters in the Romanian Intelligence Service to lure the Swiss ambassador into bed.

      Once there, her task is to find out anything and everything she can about "Ceausescu's Gold" - the millions of dollars Romania's late dictator is believed to have stashed away in Swiss bank accounts just before his fall.

      Afternoons of passion in the Bucharest penthouse she would persuade him to buy her were to be followed by gentle probing as to the real intentions of ex-King Michael, the former Romanian monarch now exiled in the ambassador's Swiss homeland.

      And far from keeping the affair discreet, the agent is to make sure that she and her consort - a married man with two children - are frequently seen together wining and dining in public and at diplomatic functions. Just for good measure, the exercise will be called "Operation William Tell".




  • Finance

    • NY Approves Goldman Sachs' Sale of Litton with Stipulations
      The New York Department of Financial Services and Banking Department is including several stipulations with its approval of Goldman Sachs’ sale of its Litton Loan Servicing, LP, to special servicer Ocwen Financial Corp.


    • All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup
      ON A BRIGHT SPRING DAY in a wisteria-bedecked courtyard full of earnest, if half-drunk, conference attendees, we were commiserating with a fellow journalist about all the jobs we knew of that were going unfilled, being absorbed or handled "on the side." It was tough for all concerned, but necessary—you know, doing more with less.




  • Copyrights

    • Universities flee Access Copyright
      In the wake of a proposed fee increase, universities across Canada have opted to leave contracts with once-popular copyright licenser Access Copyright. Many schools, including York University, the University of British Columbia and almost every school in the prairie region have abandoned their contracts with Access Copyright in favour of steering the waters of copyright legislation on their own.


    • MPAA Unsurprisingly Behind Australia iiNet Case
      Hid Behind Scenes to Avoid Impression of Being a Bully






Recent Techrights' Posts

Father of XBox Says What Microsoft Does Not Want to Hear About XBox (They All Know It's Dead)
Microsoft just worried shareholders will find out Sharma is "just a face" and an undertaker
France Needs to Focus on Software Freedom, Not Flags
We need more SIP advocacy!
Combatting Censorship in the "Civilised World": The Media Blackout Surrounding EPO Strikes and Other Large-Scale Actions
We - collectively speaking - cannot afford to keep the Office in the hands of a "Mafia"
EPO Strike Actions and Other Industrial Actions Are Effective When Management Fears the Staff and Staff No Longer Fears Any Managers
'António the unready' should get ready to be ousted
 
The Register MS Published a Ponzi Scheme-Boosting Fake Article This Morning. It Mentions "AI" 30 Times.
Will credibility be left after the bubble pops entirely?
They Try to Ruin Linux, Too ("Attestation" in GNU/Linux)
In the context of Web browsers, this isn't unprecedented and we wrote a lot about it
Mozzarella Company: All Our Cheese Comes With Mold Now, But You Can Ask the Seller to Remove the Mold
If you reject and oppose slop, do not download/use Firefox
Stallman Was Right About Back Doors
I had some conversations with Dr. Stallman about security and back doors
Australian Signals Directorate ex-employee sold back doors to Russia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
IBM Debt-Loading and Liability (Toxic Asset) Offloading
One can hope that IBM will be subjected to the same attention Kyndryl received, but this boils down to politics
Links 25/02/2026: 'Hybrid Warfare' and "Boycott the State of the Union"
Links for the day
IBM (and Red Hat) Can Disappear in the Coming Years, Along With Kyndryl (Debt Twice as Big as Its 'Worth')
No wonder Red Hat workers tell us they hate IBM
Software Freedom is Science, But It Also Sustains Life
In some sense, Software Freedom can be explained in the context of nourishing people
“Xbox, like a lot of businesses that aren’t the core AI business, is being sunsetted."
There has been a lot of narrative control lately, including at 9PM on a Friday
3,300 Capsules Known to Lupa and Currently Accessible
Gemini Protocol turns 7 this summer
When it Comes to Firmware, the FSF and Its Founder RMS Won the Argument (But Not the Fight, Yet)
The "whataboutism" tactics are physiological manipulation means of discouraging those who move in the correct direction
Austria Tackles Digital Weapon Disguised as "Social" and/or "Media"
Are we seeing the end days of Social Control Media?
Nothing Over the Horizon for XBox
XBox is not even being sold in many places anymore
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Contradicting Itself: You Can Use Slop to Cheat Clients, But You Can Also Face Disciplinary Actions Over Slop
Where does the SRA stand on the matter?
In Praise of Eben Moglen
Hopefully Professor Moglen will be with us for many decades to come and become an active speaker on issues such as Software Freedom
Sunsetting IBM (for the Benefit of Few Corrupt Officials and Wall Street Speculators)
IBM will not (and cannot) survive for much longer [...] The issue is bad leadership, not any particular nationality/race
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 24, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Gemini Links 25/02/2026: Rise of Solar in 2025 and Smallnet Protocols
Links for the day
HR Blunder at IBM or IBM Struggling With Money?
Weird for such an allegedly rich company to be so stingy
Gemini Links 24/02/2026: x86 Computer In-Browser and Administration
Links for the day
Envy is the #1 Enemy of Richard Stallman
Whenever you see someone mocking Richard Stallman, ask yourself: does this person have a reason to be jealous of Richard Stallman?
Life is Sweeter When Less Means More
People need to think "small", not "big" (as in capital)
Championing a Cause
Probably over 100 million GNU/Linux users on laptops/desktops
Balmoral rape cult & Debian suicide cluster indifference, community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Can Much Longer Can the Financial 'Press' (Pump-n-Dump Megaphone) Cheer for IBM's Accounting Enigma?
IBM has fallen almost 25%
Religious or Not, Consider Quitting Social Control Networks (All of Them) This Season
Lent is a good time to quit addiction such as social control media
Liberating the Self From the Invisible Prison of Plutocrats-Controlled Media and Social Control Media
Can you always see the full picture or does something (someone powerful) obstruct it?
Links 24/02/2026: Drug Cartel Decapitated, Jeffrey Epstein-Connected 'Linux' Foundation Promotes Slop and Buzzwords at MWC Barcelona 2026
Links for the day
2023: Layoffs Are Because of "AI". 2024: Shares Up Owing to "AI". 2025: Shares Recently Fell Due to "AI". 2026 Forbes (Paid by IBM): Shares Falling is Good!
"AI" is smoke and mirrors
Bitcoin: Code of Conduct stifled open source concerns
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Slop Boosters and 'Hype Agents' Render Themselves Irrelevant and the General Public Becomes Incredulous Due to "Bros Who Cry Wolf!"
It won't age well
"Half-baked Vibe Code Shipped Full of Errors"
Seems timely after our latest article
IBM Did Not Fall Because of COBOL Vapourware, IBM Still Collapses Because It's Worthless, Way Overvalued, and Very Likely Cooks the Books
language-to-language conversion (in the context of programming) is nothing new
Links 24/02/2026: Copyright Litigation Over Anne Frank’s Diary, "Arrogance of Developers"
Links for the day
Another New Low for Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA): Authorising Slop Disguised as "Legal Advice"
SRA is a lapdog - not a watchdog - of the "litigation industry"
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part IV - "Many Jobs Were Given to Spanish Employees for No Related Skills At All"
The EPO's fate might be similar to that of the XBox
Gemini Links 24/02/2026: Hardware Tinkering and Slop Bots Attacking the "Small Web"
Links for the day
Quitting Reddit (Social Control Media Controlled by Conde Nast)
There is a new post in Reddit
IBM is the World Champion at Layoffs and There Are Reportedly More Layoffs in IBM This Month (EU)
IBM fired 60,000 in 1993
Free Software is for Everyone
Young and old, rich and poor etc.
Gemini Links 24/02/2026: Voltage Divider on Slide Rule and Many Raspberry Pi Projects
Links for the day
Links 24/02/2026: Telephone Turns 150, Political News Catchup, and Rearmament
Links for the day
Asha Sharma "a Palliative Care Doctor Who Slides Xbox Gently Into the Night"
2026 will probably be the last year of XBox
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 23, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 23, 2026
Probably IBM's Worst Day in Wall Street in Well Over a Decade
They try to blame some Anthropic slop, but that's just a distraction from IBM having nothing to offer
The Monday After the 9PM-on-Friday Prepared Puff Pieces-Under-Embargo Microsoft Strategy for XBox Collapse
There are more layoffs ahead at Microsoft's XBox
Kyndryl Also in a Freefall Today, James Kavanaugh's Accounting Skills Seem to be Based on Pumping and Dumping
What is the real value of Kyndryl when its debt is about twice its alleged "worth"?
Not Much Left to "Pump" in This Slop Bubble
let's hope that by the end of the year the whole bubble fully implodes
IBM Common Stock Crashes Hard (Almost $100 Below the Levels of February's Beginning)
Another Kyndryl?
Links 23/02/2026: Withdrawal From Slop and Ukraine Invasion Enters Fifth Year
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/02/2026: Moving to Gentoo, Wake-on-LAN Script
Links for the day
Kyndryl Fell by About 50% in One Day, IBM Fell 23% in 20 Days
the IBM Titanic
Security and blobs, by Alex Oliva (GNU Linux-Libre)
Reprinted with permission from Alex Oliva
Trusting the Evil Maids
Don't listen to liars and frauds
Aaron Swartz Has Already Explained What Reddit/Conde Nast Meant to Him and Why We Should All Avoid Reddit If We Value Software Freedom
Aaron Swartz did not start Reddit
Valnet's Good Legacy of GNU/Linux Advocacy in Journalism Form
Let's hope they carry on like this
Techrights Thanks Every Single EPO Worker Who Went on Strike Today
We have so much in common
Coders and Thinkers
I used to be a hyper-productive coder; these days I do more thinking and writing
Slop (So-called 'genAI') is Not a Skill, Slop Gets You Suspended or Even Sacked, It Can Eventually End Your Career
Benj Edwards, a so-called 'Senior' so-called 'AI' so-called 'Reporter'
There is No Such Thing as "AI Skills", "AI Competency", "AI Fluency" Etc.
Slop does not give anybody an advantage
EPO Staff Union: The Strike Actions and Other Industrial Actions "Have Already Delivered Measurable Gains."
SUEPO Munich has just issued a statement to staff
Links 23/02/2026: "What Boston Will Cost Me" and Women as Hostages
Links for the day
IRC Usage Levels Seem to be Rebounding This Year
it looks like the total count (tally) of users increased a lot lately
Microsoft Tricked the Media Into Lying About Microsoft Layoffs in January. Now It Does the Same (in February).
Microsoft has got the media by the wallet (or balls)
Free Software Projects Become Slow Due to Slop
It does not improve efficiency or productivity, it reduces both
EPO Strike Has Begun (or Resumed)
The EPO status quo is untenable
Links 23/02/2026: US Surrenders to Climate Change (to Benefit Oil Companies and Slop), UK Court of Appeal to Hear Mazur
Links for the day
GAFAM Jobs No Longer Lucrative
Those days are long gone
Based on Insider Leaks, Asha Sharma's Job is to Kill XBox While Talking About "AI"
They cite SneakerSO
Germans Recognise the Contagion is Digital, Not Racial
How to dismantle or neutralise those weapons? Turn them off
Free Software (or Software Freedom) Ain't No Religion
It's hardly surprising that some of the loudest opponents of Software Freedom and its luminaries also disregard or bend facts
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why the Slop Industry is Like Trespassers and Thieves
interesting new article about robots.txt files
The Demise of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Profession Based Around Bullying With SLAPPs and Empty Threats
For press to survive and thrive in the UK we need the hired gun to be submerged
Linux Kernel 7.0 Release Candidate Comes Out, Stallman Turns 73 in Three Weeks
It predates Microsoft and Apple
In Greenland, Firefox's Gecko and KHTML (KDE, But Bastardised by Apple) Bigger Than Chrome
Are those Danes recognising the risk of monoculture?
Gemini Links 23/02/2026: Imperfect Journal, Evil, and "Progress Goes Boing!"
Links for the day
“Power is a Thing of Perception. They Don't Need to be Able to Kill You. They Just Need You to Think They are Able to Kill You” ― Julian Assange
When leadership becomes corrupt enough to lose a sense of authority its days are numbered; it'll be replaced
IBM Has Already Admitted 2026 Mass Layoffs (in 4Q Earnings Call)
We showed this earlier this month, but some people bring that up again
Reasons to Go on Strike in the European Patent Office (EPO)
If you live in Europe and don't work for the EPO, you can still help
First speech of Chanellor Hitler, Andreas Tille & Debian denounce Branden Robinson
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 22, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 22, 2026