Links 28/1/2012: Acting on ACTA, PacApt
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2012-01-28 15:42:57 UTC
- Modified: 2012-01-28 15:42:57 UTC
Contents
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Kernel Space
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A lot of noise has been made about a security vulnerability affecting the Linux core. The fault has been corrected and Linux editors are updating all of their systems after exploits appeared on the web.
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Applications
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The Fedora developers are currently working on implementing the plan to move all files stored in the Linux distribution's /bin/, /sbin/, /lib/ and /lib64/ directories to equivalent sub-directories in /usr/. Symbolic links will ensure compatibility with scripts and software that may otherwise be caught out by the change. The restructuring was first mooted last autumn, before being earmarked for inclusion in Fedora 17. The development team has since discarded the idea of moving all files stored in /sbin/ and /usr/sbin/ into /usr/bin/ and deleting the sbin directories.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Desktop Environments
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
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The first tablet computer that comes with Plasma Active pre-installed.
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It’s no secret that we love Arch Linux and one of Arch’s best features is the simple, easy-to-use package manager, Pacman. Here’s how to get Pacman’s simple command structure in other Linux distributions.
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Debian Family
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People Behind Debian: Josselin Mouette, founder of the Debian GNOME team
Josselin Mouette is one the leaders of the pkg-gnome team, he takes sound technical decisions and doesn’t fear writing code to work-around upstream issues. He deserves kudos for the work he has put into packaging GNOME over the years. He can also be very sarcastic (sometimes he even enjoys participating to flamewars on debian lists), and there are quite a few topics where we have long agreed to disagree. But this kind of diversity is also what makes Debian a so interesting place…
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Linux vendor could change the way users interact with enterprise applications with its Heads Up Display. The intelligent HUD interface will understand user needs and respond to them.
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Following our previous articles, Ubuntu Flickr/Shotwell Photos Lens, Ubuntu Spotify Scope, Ubuntu DeviantArt Scope, Ubuntu SSH Lens, Ubuntu Binary Clock Lens, Ubuntu YouTube Lens and Scope, Ubuntu Calendar Lens, Ubuntu Web Sources Lens, Ubuntu Gwibber Lens, Ubuntu Books Lens, Ubuntu Cities Scope, Ubuntu Grooveshark Scope, Ubuntu Calculator Scope and Pirate Bay Torrents Lens for Unity, today we are introducing the Ubuntu Launchpad Lens for the Unity interface.
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Open Source Linux based gaming handheld and mini-laptop Pandora has created lots of buzz when it was revealed 4 years back.
Since then the project has gone under numerous rough stages, production issues, tech spec changes and financial problems. A limited batch of 4000 units was available for pre-orders but not everyone has got the device on time.
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Phones
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In this era of technology and internet, social networking sites are getting more and more popularity. People are spending hours in front of them. For creating a social media website a platform is necessary, to make this easy came the social networking platforms. In the case of social media software, market the competition is very high. If you are looking to start a social media website then it is difficult to choose the platform. Before choosing social media software just get all available information about it and conclude weather, it will benefit you or not. Let us now take a look of the five most popular open source-networking platforms available in the market
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Just 12 months ago, even the largest organisations lacked the infrastructure, tools and skills to turn large datasets into business insight. Today, though, the world has changed. A combination of low-cost, commodity hardware and great open-source software are lowering the Big Data bar for organisations of all types and sizes. Put simply, open-source solutions are allowing organisations to spin up hundreds of servers to support Big Data services in seconds, and pay only for the resources they use.
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Web Browsers
Chrome
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I bet that when you turn on your PC, one of the first programs that you start is your Browser .
Indeed, many say that the browser that we have installed in our computer show a part of us! There is, therefore, who prefer Opera: a browser elegant and very
particular, for those who prefer the aesthetics at the practicality, there are those who, following the mass chose the Firefox browser, which has won a great battle against IE in a recent past.
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Project Releases
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Openness/Sharing
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The Open Source Centre is designed to collect foreign information made public by media reports, press releases and announcements by international organizations, said the official at the Unification Ministry.
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Standards/Consortia
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As Flash's ubiquity begins to erode, standards-based Web technologies are going to become the path forward for developers who want to offer a user experience that works across all screens. The HTML5 video element is already widely supported in modern Web browsers, but the capabilities and codecs that are available differ between implementations.
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Security
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However, at security to get into the Capitol, I was told I could not bring the canteen in, even though it was empty. I asked if there was any reason for this. I was told I just couldn't bring it in. I asked if there was any place I could "leave" it, and I was told to go outside and there were dumpsters to the right. I even asked if someone could hold it for me, since it would just be an hour or so. No luck. Dumpsters, outside to the right. The canteen isn't anything special, but I do like it. According to the price tag still on the bottom, it cost $11 when my wife bought it for me. I can buy another canteen, but really, there's a bit of a principle thing to all of this. If the canteen itself is dangerous, then, putting it in a dumpster outside isn't going to change that.
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Civil Rights
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Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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One of the more important points in understanding some of the fights over the ridiculousness of today's copyright and patent laws is to recognize how knowledge (information) is a natural resource. It is the input that makes other great things. Economist Paul Romer's famous research really showed how knowledge and information as a resource is what creates economic growth. Once you recognize that fact, you begin to run into problems when you think about locking up that natural resource. Think of other natural resources. Do we think the world is better off if there's a greater supply of each of those? An abundance? If we have an abundance of wheat, that's a good thing. If we have an abundance of energy, that's a good thing. There may be side effects of such abundances, but the overall abundance is something worth cherishing.
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Copyrights
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We've talked a lot in the past about the "idea/expression dichotomy." This is an important concept in copyright law that says you can only copyright the specific expression, and not the idea. This is supposed to protect people from getting accused of copyright infringement for basically making something similar to what someone else made. Unfortunately, as we've been noting with dismay over the past few years, the idea that there's some bright line between "idea" and "expression" has been slowly fading away, and courts are, increasingly, effectively wiping out the distinction. In the US, we've seen this with the ridiculous case between a photographer, David LaChapelle, and the singer Rihanna, because some of her videos were clear homages to his photographs. The expression was entirely different, but the judge didn't think so, and Rihanna ended up having to pay up.
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Karaoke might be fun, but it's also proved legally dangerous over the years. One publisher of karaoke discs is taking a publisher co-owned by the Michael Jackson estate to court over alleged abuse.
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ACTA
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Earlier today, Loz Kaye, leader of the Pirate Party, published a statement highlighting a major threat to the Internet, to civil liberties, and our political and legal systems; ACTA. Following this, the Party has received many requests asking what we, ordinary citizens, can do about this and the best way to stop it.
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The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. (excellent analysis from Benkler and Downes) and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia).
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part V - Strongest Strike Under António Campinos
- SUEPO Munich is also reminding people of the threat of PIPs
- GNU/Linux May Have Grown to 7% in Equatorial Guinea
- Has there been some kind of mass migration there or is this just noise in the data?
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- Microslop is Slop, Slop is Considered "Quality"
- no wonder Microsoft's stuff breaks down so often
- thelayoff.com Deletes On-Topic Discussions (Layoffs) While Leaving in Tact Pro-Corporate Trolling Made by LLMs (Slop)
- Who at thelayoff.com deems spam made by LLMs (slop) to be on-topic and unworthy of zapping, whereas actually on-topic and authentic threads get routinely deleted?
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part IV - Machos in Charge of the House (and System), Even If the Faces Are Female (Optics)
- basically a Windows/Microsoft (US) shop
- Gemini Links 09/02/2026: Great Salt Lake Ecological Observatory and Offpunk 3.0 "A Community is Born" Release
- Links for the day
- Links 09/02/2026: Mass Plagiarism and Pollution/FakeCoin Company Nvidia Contacted Anna’s Archives, Narges Mohammadi Gets Second Prison Sentence
- Links for the day
- Links 09/02/2026: Russia Intentionally Killing Civilians, Jimmy Lai Effectively Sentenced for Life for Publishing News
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Competitions, Addictions, and Popularity Contests Are Not Going to Help Perl, They'll Waste Everybody's Time and Give Microsoft More Control Over Its Competition
- Microsoft does not like Perl
- A Can of WORMS - Part IV - They Would Even Attack RMS for Criticising Autocrats (Saying This is "Politics")
- Conforming to society's perceived expectations isn't how effective activism can ever be done or was ever done in the recent past
- Gemini Links 09/02/2026: The Exploration Myth and Making JavaScript Fun
- Links for the day
- EPO Outrage and Maintaining the Pressure
- A vending machine does not fall over after a first push
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 08, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, February 08, 2026
- "Low Performer" and "Underperformer" as Harmful Misnomers That Damage a Company's Reputation
- Misnomers need to be avoided or called out
- Expensive errors: Forbes Gold price, $44 billion Bitcoin given away by Bithumb, South Korea
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 08/02/2026: Microsoft OSI (Openwashing Lobby) in Europe, Raised Against Social Control Media Provocateurs in EU
- Links for the day
- The Open Source Initiative (OSI) Lobbies for Microsoft in the EU, Promoting Proprietary Lock-in
- OSI pushing and selling Microsoft and GitHub. OSI is Microsoft front group.
- Getting the European Court of Justice to Annul the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Kangaroo Court (UPC)
- We're still working on it
- Finland's Dependence on GAFAM (US) Needs to be Lessened, EU Must Follow This Path
- It's unwise to make one's entire national infrastructure (computer systems) dependent on a regime which compares its black citizens to monkeys and assassinates nonviolent dissenters
- Links 08/02/2026: Microsoft GitHub as Burden on Developers and "The Chomsky Epstein Files"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 08/02/2026: "Doing Not Much Tweaking" and "Reclaiming Digital Agency"
- Links for the day
- Forbes: BitCoin, Cryptocurrency pages removed from investment database, links stop working
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Bitcoin warning followed immediately by network outage
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Money Funneled to Protection of Software Freedom, But Nothing Really Lost
- Crossposted from personal site
- They Tell Us Slop Replaces Workers, But the Reality Is, US Debt Has Surged 2,300 Billion Dollars in Six Months (the Economy is Collapsing)
- Oligarchy already entertains the option of running away to (or colonising) some other planet without pitchforks and "unwashed masses"
- Mozilla Firefox Sinks to Just 1.5% in the United States
- According to analytics.usa.gov
- We're Still Fast
- The site is even faster than the BBC's despite being on shoestring budget with only a small technical team
- Gemini Protocol is Not a Waste of Time of Effort
- We see more and more GNU/Linux- or BSD-focused bloggers turning to Gemini
- Our Gemini Protocol Support Turns 5 Today
- today is a rare anniversary for us
- In Today's World, One Must be Tough and Principled to Get Ahead Morally
- But not financially (sellouts)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, February 07, 2026
- The Right Wing in the United States Does Not Support Free Speech, It Supports Its Own Speech
- Free speech is often opposed by those who also oppose Free software
- IRC is a Lot Better Than Social Control Media (They're Not the Same at All)
- A good social analogy for IRC is, there are many buildings with a party in each building
- Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' is 'Dead Meat'
- Or 0xDEADBEEF as some geeks might call it
- When Identifying "Low Performers" and "PIPs" Aren't About Improving Performance But Reinforcing a Clique in Your Company/Organisation
- It's very troubling to see once-respectable brands like IBM and institutions like the EPO resorting to this
- Slop and Flop (IBM), Slopfarms and Hybrids (Linuxiac)
- Did Bobby Borisov assume he would never get caught?
- Crowdfunding vs Bitcoins: donations are better investment than digital tulip mania
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 07/02/2026: Misinformation by Slop, Overrated Slop Causes Stock Market Panic
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/02/2026: Diode Function Generators and Panic Over Buzzwords and Slop
- Links for the day
- A Can of WORMS - Part III - Envying the Influence and Accomplishments of RMS, Socially Deleterious Attacks on Popular Movements
- the actions are deliberate and coordinated, not some 'organic' or grassroots behaviour
- Crisis teams assembled as financial regulators anticipate Bitcoin implosion
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Reddit as a Hive of Trolls, Social Control Media Curated (Many Voices Censored and Banned) by Marketing Firm of GAFAM
- Typical Reddit
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part III - Women Failing Women to Help Violent Americans From Microsoft
- Summed up, SRA will gladly prioritise the "legal industry" over women strangled, raped etc
- The World Gets Smaller, as Does Its Real Economy ('Human Resources') and So-called 'Natural Resources' (What Humans Call the Planet)
- Don't talk about "AI"
- Converting FOSDEM Talk on Software Patents in Europe Into Formats That Work for "FOS" and Don't Have Software Patent Traps
- transcoded version of the video
- Links 07/02/2026: More White House Racism, "Europe Accuses TikTok of Addictive Design"
- Links for the day
- Silent Mass Layoffs: It's Not the Revolution, It's the Loophole and the Hack ("Low Performers" or "Underperformers")
- Layoffs by another approach
- Mark Shuttleworth (MS) Pays Salaries to Microsoft (MS) Employees
- Canonical selling Microsoft
- Links 07/02/2026: Windows TCO Rising, Lousy Patents Invalided
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Leadership: Stop Taxing Us, Tax Only Poor People
- Does Microsoft create jobs?
- Biggest "AI Companies" (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft) Borrowed (Additional Debt) About $100,000,000,000 in a Year
- Who will be held accountable for all this?
- In Case You've Missed It (ICYMI), Google's Debt More Than Doubled in a Year
- Wait till it "monetises" billions of GMail users with slop
- In 2009 Microsoft Was Valued at ~150 Billion Dollars, Now They Tell Us Microsoft Lost ~1,000 Billion Dollars in Value. Does That Make Sense?
- Or Microsoft lost 700 billion dollars in "value" in less than two weeks
- PIPs and Silent Layoffs at IBM (and Red Hat) Still Going on, It's "Forever Layoffs" (to Skirt the WARN Act)
- American workers out
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 06, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, February 06, 2026
- Stressful Times for Team Campinos ("Alicante Mafia") at Europe's Second-Largest Institution
- Keep pushing
- Growing Discrimination in the European Patent Office (EPO)
- it's a race to the bottom, basically
- Google News Drowning in (or Actively Promoting) Slopfarms Again
- LLM slop is a nuisance
- Microsoft Stock Crashed When Alleged Vista 11 Numbers Disclosed
- And last summer Microsoft indicated that it had lost 400 million Windows users
- Gemini Links 07/02/2026: "Choosing a License for Literary Work" and "Social Media Is Not Social Networking (Anymore)"
- Links for the day