Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/2/2012: Linux 3.3 RC5, Orange and x86





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Projects showcase Central La. students' interest in science
    The 12-year-old Pollock Elementary School pupil showed how he believes Linux is better than Windows at the Louisiana Region IV Science and Engineering Fair Saturday at Louisiana State University at Alexandria's Fitness Center.


  • Ten Things I Wish I Knew When Becoming A Linux Admin
    Ten years ago I installed Linux for the very first time. To be exact, it was Slackware 7, the best distribution at the time in my opinion. Since then I’ve come to favor Debian Linux as my favorite version…at least for my Linux servers. I like to have a solid core system installed that I can build from scratch, but this is for another time. This article is for you new Linux admins; here are the ten things I wish I knew when starting my Linux admin journey.


  • Desktop

    • GNU/Linux on the Desktop: Alive and Growing


      So, while Adobe and AK may believe GNU/Linux is dead in the water, the real reason for abandoning Flash on GNU/Linux lies elsewhere, likely the fact that Flash is a dead-end technology with HTML 5 ramping up. Killing Flash in 5 years is irrelevant for that reason.






  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments

    • The Completely Blank Xfce Desktop
      The Xfce desktop environment comes with Xubuntu and is also available in the Xfce versions of Linux Mint, Fedora and other Linux distributions. Using Xfce, you can easily set up a highly functional but completely blank desktop - no icons, no menus, nothing. Just a blank screen or a favourite wallpaper, ideal for the user who hates distractions or loves simplicity. Here's how to do it.




  • Distributions



    • New Releases



    • Gentoo Family

      • Sabayon 8.0: slightly burnt dessert
        February 2012 brought us some fresh releases of Linux-based operating systems. These systems are not as big and famous as Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSuSE, but still have a considerable army of fans.




    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat vs Oracle Linux Support: 10 Years Is New Standard
        The Linux chess match between Red Hat and Oracle now involves a showdown on long-term support strategies. Indeed, both Red Hat and Oracle recently extended their Linux support life cycles to a lengthy 10 years. The big potential winners are partners and customers that are trying to maintain long-term IT road maps involving Linux data centers.


      • Is It Time to Try on Red Hat?
        Software firm Red Hat Inc. (RHT) captured my attention this weekend as I was scanning through lists of stocks. This poor equity was largely abandoned in December by investors despite a strong earnings report. A mix of sky-high expectations and poor news from Oracle (ORCL) in late December had the security dropping close to $39 on extremely high trading volume. The kind of high volume that bottoms are built on.


      • Red Hat’s Cloud and Virtualization Win: More to Come?
        It’s a familiar story: Like so many other telecom services providers, CDLAN is trying to push into cloud services. For CDLAN, the path to SaaS and cloud services involves an open source twist: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Is this a sign of things to come for Red Hat?






  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones







Free Software/Open Source



  • Press Release: KuwaitNet to open source VPN platform
    KuwaitNET, a complete Internet solutions provider, announces the launch of VPNPlatform.org in an effort to give back to the open source community which has been a large driver of their business over the years.


  • Open source opens doors for Aussie start-up
    It's pretty rare for a start-up company to benefit from more than a decade of software development valued at about $2 million each year. Rarer still for one to land a six figure contract before it has even launched a commercial product.

    But that is precisely what Gold Coast-based Opmantek has done. The company was formed in October 2010 to acquire the commercial rights to the popular open source network management software Network Management Information System (NMIS), a product first developed in 1999 by one of Opmantek's founders, Keith Sinclair.


  • Events

    • GNUmed holds mini conference
      GNUmed has been around a while. Most communication happens via the mailing list. Not everyone is comfortable with mailing lists and users tend to stay away from it. That is why we are planning a get together in Leipzig, Germany.




  • Education

    • Nature Editorial: If you want reproducible science, the software needs to be open source
      Modern scientific and engineering research relies heavily on computer programs, which analyze experimental data and run simulations. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a scientific paper (outside of pure theory) that didn’t involve code in some way. Unfortunately, most code written for research remains closed, even if the code itself is the subject of a published scientific paper. According to an editorial in Nature, this hinders reproducibility, a fundamental principle of the scientific method.

      Reproducibility refers to the ability to repeat some work and obtain similar results. It is especially important when the results are unexpected or appear to defy accepted theories (for example, the recent faster-than-light neutrinos). Scientific papers include detailed descriptions of experimental methods—sometimes down to the specific equipment used—so that others can independently verify results and build upon the work.






  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC





Leftovers

  • TEST: How to know if your computer license should be revoked




  • Finance

    • SEC Seeks Testimony of Ex-IKB Employee in Lawsuit Against Goldman’s Tourre
      The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to question a former employee of IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG (IKB) in its lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) trader Fabrice Tourre, court records show.

      The SEC today asked a federal judge in New York to issue a so-called letter of request that would allow the agency to take testimony from Jorg Zimmerman, a resident of Germany.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Facebook suffers lobbying exodus
      The move signals that the gloves are coming off in the ongoing lobbying fight between content providers and Internet companies. Facebook's lobbying spending increased about 285 percent from $351,000 in 2010 to $1.35 million in 2011.




  • Privacy



  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • 'The Free Internet Act' Emerges As Redditors Craft SOPA Alternative
      When two proposed anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA looked as if they could become law, social news site Reddit helped organize a large-scale online protest that led lawmakers to table the bills indefinitely. But the activism didn't stop there, and now Redditors are trying to draft legislation of their own.

      "The Free Internet Act," as the idea has been tentatively named, intends to preempt any future legislation aiming to limit the scope of the Internet or censor content. Redditors have turned the "r/fia" page into a place to craft something they'd like to someday see become a standard for governing the Internet.


    • Study Confirms What You Already Knew: Mobile Data Throttling About The Money, Not Stopping Data Hogs
      Of the four national mobile operators, only Sprint still offers an "unlimited" data plan -- and most industry watchers expect that to go away soon. When the operators talk about this stuff, they complain about how unlimited plans are abused and the amount of data being used by so-called "data hogs" is crippling network bandwidth. Of course, the alternative story is that they just want to charge people higher rates, and putting a toll booth on data usage makes that possible. A new study by Validas confirms that the latter theory seems to match with reality. The company looked at 11,000 mobile phone bills of users on both throttled (tiered) plans and unlimited data plans and found... data usage was effectively the same. In other words, for all the talk about how tiers and throttles are needed to stop bandwidth hogging... reality shows that these plans have little impact on actual data usage. Or, to put it really simply: these plans are all about the mobile operators making more money and have nothing to do with network capacity.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • Why Ebook Portal Library.nu Differed From Other Filesharing Sites
        A couple of weeks ago the popular ebook portal Library.nu was shut down, apparently voluntarily, after a coalition of book publishers obtained an injunction against it and a similar site.


      • Leaked Audit in Eminem Royalty Suit Highlights Huge Stakes for Record Industry
        Here's what an examiner turned up when opening Aftermath's financial books to see how much was owed to Eminem's production team.


      • If You Want To Compete With Free, This Is What You Need To Know
        When it comes to competing with piracy, one of the talking points of copyright maximalists is that content creators "can't compete with free." These people complain that because pirates don't have to cover production costs, competing with them is a losing venture. What these people have not learned, despite our many attempts to teach them, is that price is not the only cost considered when consumers choose between buying legally and pirating. Over at Gamasutra, one expert blogger, Lars Doucet, has shared a very profound look at four "currencies" people consider when making such a choice.


      • One More Copyright Infringement, And HADOPI Must Disconnect Itself From The Net


      • Crony Capitalism: Big Companies Sponsor Fancy Dinner For TPP Negotiators
        We've talked about the ridiculous Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiations, which are being held with incredible levels of secrecy, and which appear to include a wishlist of every copyright reform change that Hollywood wants, with little to no public scrutiny. The USTR, who's in charge of negotiating the agreement for the US claims that there's unprecedented transparency -- and that may be true if you're talking about the unprecedented lack of transparency in the negotiations. And where it gets really ridiculous is that while the public has no access to the information, the big company lobbyists have pretty much full access. We already spoke about the recent meetings in Hollywood, where TPP negotiators got to party with the Hollywood elite -- but civil society/public interest groups who tried to hold an open meeting in the hotel (and reserved space and everything) were kicked out of the hotel.


      • UK Labour Party: Let's Just Get On With Kicking People Offline Over Copyright Infringement
        As Techdirt reported at the time, the UK's Digital Economy Bill was rammed through Parliament, without proper scrutiny or even much democratic process, in the dying hours of the previous government. Since then, the implementation of the Digital Economy Act has moved forward relatively slowly. That's partly because there have been a series of legal challenges from ISPs concerned about its legality (and likely cost for them). In addition, it made sense for the current UK government to wait for the completion of the Hargreaves report on copyright in the digital age before proceeding.


      • Reductio Ad Absurdum: Eternal Copyright Is Crazy... But What About Today's Copyright Term?
        Of course, it's easy to laugh at satire like this... until you remember that some make such arguments seriously. But, similarly, it seems worth recognizing that for most of us, copyright is already effectively eternal. Here in the US nothing has entered the public domain in quite some time and it's questionable if or when anything new will enter the public domain... as most people fully expect Disney to push for another copyright term extension as Mickey Mouse approaches the public domain yet again.


      • ACTA

        • FFII call for action: Act on ACTA
          over the past 10 years we have been at the forefront of many policy initiatives to prevent more risks for software professionals: Software Patents, IPRED1+2, Data Retention, European Interoperability Framework and many others. Since 2008 we have been following the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and sought to bring transparency in the process. Our involvement was partly successful, for instance criminal enforcement was not extended to patents and the Commission released the text of the agreement. However, both process and content are still deeply flawed.


        • ACTA is part of a multi-decade, worldwide copyright campaign
          Last week, we observed that major content companies have enjoyed a steady drumbeat of victories in Congress and the courts over the last two decades. The lobbying and litigation campaigns that produced these results have a counterpart in the executive branch. At the urging of major copyright holders, the Obama administration has been working to export restrictive American copyright laws abroad. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is just the most visible component of this ambitious and long-running project.


        • Where did the patients go?
          The European Commission decided to ask the EU Court of Justice an opinion on ACTA. Commissioner Karel De Gucht stated: “We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess whether ACTA is incompatible – in any way – with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property.”










Recent Techrights' Posts

Misinformation is Not Intelligence
It's low-grade plagiarism and it fails to show any signs of intelligence
'Tech' Gimmicks Are for Advertising, Not for Usability
In the case of Microsoft, they latched onto slop
BetaNews Sacked Brian Fagioli and Deleted His Comments, But He Still Tries to Use the "BetaNews" Brand for Self-Affirmation
Fagioli takes the work of other people
[Meme] Hard to Be a Better Person?
Sooner or later they'll realise that for each pound I spend they need to spend about 1,000 times more
New US Editor for The Register is a Microsoft Booster
"Avram Piltch has served as US editor for The Register since July 2025."
Reda Demanded That FSF Removes Its Founder, Now Reda Works Directly for Microsoft
A sellout and a traitor, first working for GAFAM, now Microsoft
PCLinuxOS is Raising Money to Support Development After Fire Incident at the Host
PCLinuxOS has not had announcements lately
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 24, 2025
A Nadella Memo Distracts From Microsoft's Cheapening Of the Workforce
Right now the "MSM" (mainstream media) is flooded/overwhelmed by garbage pieces that relay lies for Nadella
Vanishing Faces of GNU/Linux
Free software projects do not depend on any one person or company to still exist
Microsoft Says It Lost 400 Million Windows Users, Now It's Waiting for GNU/Linux to Stop Booting on 'Old' PCs
When it comes to Windows, Microsoft is fully aware of the issue and statements it made earlier this summer suggest it lost 400 million Windows users
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, LinuxIac, and More
Also: The Register's Microsoft agenda (new editor)
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Gemtext Aware Titan Editor and Gemini Protocol Comeback
Links for the day
Links 24/07/2025: Convicted Felon Quits UNESCO, "Vibe Coding Goes Wrong", and Signalgate Gets Worse
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/07/2025: Forgejo Woes and Smolnet Directory Week
Links for the day
Links 24/07/2025: Storage Tapes Still Kicking, Windows TCO 'on Steroids' (Microsoft-Induced Catastrophes)
Links for the day
Bobby Borisov (LinuxIac) Has Apparently Begun Experimenting With LLM Slop, So We Cannot Trust LinuxIac Anymore
So did LinuxIac become a slopfarm? Maybe not yet, but it's getting there
Informa TechTarget's ITProToday is Becoming a Slopfarm Generated by Microsoft Chatbots
Busted.
The LLM Con Artists Are Highly Destructive
Who will ever be held accountable for this scam?
Too Bribed by Microsoft to Move to Free Software?
Microsoft lies and Microsoft bribery (in politics)
Microsoft Hiring European Politicians is Another Form of Bribery; There Should be a European Investigation
When Microsoft bribed people in Europe for OOXML (there's no denying this!) a European government delegate said that Microsoft operated like a cult
Speed of the Site Should be Better Now
The "bot attacks" impact the speed of the sister site too
Getting More From AnalogNowhere
Recently we used many images from AnalogNowhere
Microsoft, Microsofters and 'Secure' Boot Shills Already Storming the LWN Report About Expiring Certificate, Shooting the Messenger
LWN has clearly stuck a nerve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Disable "Secure" Boot Today (the Only Better Time to Do So Was Yesterday)
Don't trust anything Red Hat tells you about security
Links 23/07/2025: Windows Killed Company After 150+ Years, US Government Mimics Russia's Attacks on the Media
Links for the day
Freedom Generally Wins at the End, History Shows (But It's Constantly Attacked, Too)
At the moment people realise "Linux" (e.g. Android) isn't enough to guarantee any freedoms
Over 3 Months Later Brett Wilson LLP Still Unable to Recruit a Media Lawyer?
"Immediate start", but not found... still unfilled
“Inhumane” and “Disgusting” Mass Layoff Execution, According to Microsoft Staff
The workers are looking for other places to work
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Slogan for Its 40th Anniversary
The freedoms are what's most important
Microsoft is Trying to "Pull a Nokia" on GNU/Linux as Desktop/Laptop Platform
We all remember that rather well, don't we?
LLM Slopfarms gbhackers.com, "Cyber Press" and CyberSecurityNews Are Drowning Google News (and Shame on Google for Feeding and Facilitating Them)
All are run by the same people
Links 23/07/2025: Droplets GUI Patent Monopoly Challenge, Nokia Leverages Illegal Patent Court Against Rivals
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Community in Geminispace and Challenges With Old Computers
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2025: Slop Patents Tackled, Slop Copyright Misuses Tackled by Politicians
Links for the day
Our Three Lawsuits Against Microsofters Are About to Become a Lot More Relevant to GNU/Linux
The Master will easily understand why Garrett has been attacking me since 2012
Links 23/07/2025: Retreating From Transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, We No Longer Have Press Freedom
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Piano and Food
Links for the day
New and Old
On Ageism in Tech
Slop Is Not Intelligence and It Does Not Enhance Productivity
Like voice dictation, which cannot tell the difference between "sheet" and "shit"
EPO Crimes Are Spreading to the British Court System
Society is now paying the price for failing to tackle crimes at the EPO
It's Time to Dump SharePoint and Here's What to Use Instead
Nextcloud, ownCloud, Bookstack, MediaWiki, and MediaGoblin
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 22, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Brett Wilson LLP Has Gone Silent
Sometimes silence says more than nothing at all
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Planet Ubuntu, and LinuxTechLab
some slopfarms show no remorse and they don't value their reputation at all
Links 23/07/2025: Book Bans, Storms, and Kangaroo Court for Patents Commits More Unlawful Acts of Overreach
Links for the day