12.17.11

Links – FSF success, Microsoft failures and some anti-trust

Posted in Site News at 6:09 pm by Guest Editorial Team

Reader’s Picks

• Will sprint for freedom: Report from the NYC CiviCRM code sprint

  CiviCRM is a “graduate” of the FSF’s High Priority Projects list. A system for nonprofits to organize their fundraising and communicate with supporters had been on the list for quite a while, because this was an area where many people told us they were still forced to use proprietary software.

• There is overwhelming support for government free software use in Canada and Finland, greater than 2/3 of MPs, and both are migrating.

• Science

  • Want to pretend you are aboard the Enterprise for the next 24 hours?

    play -n -c1 synth whitenoise band -n 100 20 band -n 50 20 gain +25

• Security

  • Fixing rogue printers: don’t trade one security threat for another

    Researchers at Columbia University recently demonstrated that many HP printers can have their firmware reprogrammed by specially crafted print jobs. … Unfortunately, some people are advocating a cure worse than the disease. They suggest that these printers should only run code signed by the printer manufacturer.

  • Windows Phone SMS attack discovered, reboots device and disables messaging hu

    The flaw works simply by sending an SMS to a Windows Phone user. Windows Phone 7.5 devices will reboot and the messaging hub will not open despite repeat attempts. We have tested the attack on a range of Windows Phone devices, including HTC’s TITAN and Samsung’s Focus Flash. Some devices were running the 7740 version of Windows Phone 7.5, others were on Mango RTM build 7720. The attack is not device specific and appears to be an issue with the way the Windows Phone messaging hub handles messages.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Russia extends the operating licenses for Chernobyl style reactors.

    These reactors are of an inherently unsafe design, which cannot be improved through upgrades and modernization, and some reactor parts are impossible to replace. Russian environmental groups insist that the lifetime extensions violate Russian law, because the projects have not undergone environmental assessments.

  • EPA Implicates Fracking In Wyoming Pollution
    

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday for the first time that fracking … may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.

  • Poorly done lead abatement is worse than leaving the pipe in place.

• Education Watch

  • Online Learning and Charter School Failures, Successful Military Children and of Course, Much, Much More [success is mostly a matter of money]

    our entire education system is not “in crisis,” as so many executives in the for-profit education industry insist when pushing to privatize public schools. On the contrary, results from Program for International Student Assessment exams show that American students in low-poverty schools are among the highest-achieving students in the world. … the always-demonized teachers’ unions are not holding our education system back.

  • Charter Schools and Constitutional Rights

    Are charter schools allowed to violate students’ civil rights? … You might think it’s a straightforward question, but it’s not. Federal law is inconsistent.

    One thing is sure, that it’s easier for a private school to violate people’s rights.

  • To All Teachers in Seattle: Collective Bargaining Rights Are Civil Rights

    This article also deals with the issue of academic freedom in a defensive way, but we know that charter schools are all about standardized test scores and are more restrictive than public schools.

  • Anti-Trust

    • Microsoft forces new browser on users.

      The author foolishly describes this as good but it just proves that Microsoft thinks they own everyone’s computers.

    • Oracle ends DLJ, making it impossible for Debian and others to distribute Sun Java

    • Bing blocks Cybermonday.com for Cyber Monday to protect people from spammers, blames super smart spam guard algorithms.

      Several of those dropped have wondered if it was all part of an attempt by Bing simply to drive more traffic to a special section of Bing Shopping that was ranking (and still does) in the first page of listing for searches at Bing for black friday and cyber monday,

    • 
      Hung Jury – 11 to 1 for Novell — Mistrial in Novell v. Microsoft ~ pj – Updated 4Xs

      Microsoft was spared a $1.3 billion dollar judgment by one juror who was unsure about Novell’s potential outside of Microsoft’s malice. This comes despite a biased press and a judge that indulged every Microsoft whim.

    • SKYPE FOR LINUX WITH TABS SUPPORT USING SKYPETAB NG (NEXT GENERATION)

      SkypeTab used to only work with Compiz, Openbox and Xfwm but the new version should work with other window managers too, like Kwin, etc (I’ve actually tested it under Kubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and it worked just fine).

      The only good thing about Skype was that it worked without fuss out of a repository, now we see that new software is buggy and picky about window managers.

  • Civil Rights – NDAA passes

    • Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial

      Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. … The legislation’s supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay.

      Dissenting opinon relies on weasel words that don’t mean much, but even they say that the bill should be vetoed. All the rich and powerful have to do to eliminate critics now is provoke riots.

  • Censorship

    • NYPD Continues To Restrict Photographers Despite Assurances

    • The pirates of YouTube

      The real villains of YouTube are the multinational companies cashing in on public domain footage they claim is their own

      Big publishers can load your videos with advertisements or push you off YouTube.

    • Actual engineers quoted by mainstream media summary of SOPA arguments.

      Their letter was authored by Steve Crocker, a longtime member of the Internet Engineering Task Force; David Dagon, a post-doctoral researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology; security researcher Dan Kaminsky; Verisign Chief Security Officer Danny McPherson; and Paul Vixie, chairman of the Internet Systems Consortium and principal author of popular versions of the BIND DNS server software.

      The letter is beautiful but no technical experts were invited to Congress.

    • Support for SOPA crumbled and the obnoxious censorship bill was put off till after Christmas

      More than 1 millions of calls and emails to Congress have been generated over the past month. The level of engagement on this bill is virtually unprecedented for a measure that still has not emerged from the committee process. And it has happened despite a virtual blackout from mainstream media, which is mostly owned by corporations that support the bill.

      Thank you to everyone who acted but watch out, it’s not over yet Keep demanding progress.

    • Chris Dodd blows hot and cold to bash Google and promote SOPA.

      [now] When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites. … [previously]Tell the Chinese government that Google.cn will no longer censor information with Google’s consent. And should the Chinese government not find that acceptable, then Google.cn would shut down its operations

    • Russia competes with the US for internet asininity and menace.

      Russia may outlaw Internet porn, “extremism,” anonymity, and more – “Another proposal regarding internet security has been put forward by senior Interior Ministry official Alexei Moshkov, who said anonymous accounts should be outlawed on social networks and online forums to prevent internet fraud, blackmailing and child abuse. “If you are a just and law abiding person, why would you want to hide?” Moshkov, who heads the ministry’s bureau in charge of technical services, said in an interview with the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta. “There is no censorship on the internet,” he said. He also said the police would not “seek and arrest anyone for criticism” of the authorities.

  • Privacy

    • EU ministers agree to share passenger data with the US

  • Copyrights

    • Big publishers employees use bittorent to share movies and music.

      Big publishers know that sharing is an important form of marketing but insist on punishing people for doing it so they can continue to control our culture.

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IRC Proceedings: December 16th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 3:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Enter the IRC channels now

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5 Years of Techrights, 30 Years of Yours Truly — Decision Time

Posted in Site News at 2:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Time for changes but not without consultation with the Techrights community

IT IS only 7 AM (after 8 hours sleep), but as I mentioned earlier this year, today I turn 30 and there are already greeting cards coming here. Here is one from Harvey (a neat joke): █

I have not been posting much recently, but my intent is to be more prolific and dedicate more time to Techrights (than I did in 2011), even if that becomes a New Year’s resolution. The focus of the site might have to be changed though and readers’ advice would be appreciated here.

Question 1: Should we spent a little less time covering patent issues? They make up about half of all the posts now.

Question 2: Should daily links be abbreviated? To some people they may be too long to follow, but it’s hard to tell for sure.

Question 3: Should comments be opened to non-members? As in the wiki, one of the main drawbacks is the spam this typically leads to.

Question 4: Should the site be further crowd-sourced and responsibilities delegated to make operation efficient. There are already about a dozen ops in the IRC channels.

Question 5: Should we redesign the Web site around Christmas time as Kevin suggested (and offered help)? The drawback might be lack of familiarity with a 5+ year-old theme.

Any other comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. As I have a party tonight I do not expect to find time for new blog posts (there are several ongoing drafts), but any feedback on this post would be taken very seriously. Most of the decisions here were made by readers over the years.

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