07.04.12

Links 4/7/2012: Blizzard’s Linux PR Crisis, Fuduntu 2012.3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 11:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why We Still Need the Open Source VLC Media Player

    The Monday Version 2.0.2 release of the free open source VLC media player points out a surprising hole in the age of the Internet video – there is still no universal standard for video formats and players.

    Fortunately, VLC is there to fill in the gaps among proprietary formats and competing ecosystems, playing just about every video in use.

  • .FREE, .OPEN gTLDs may not be open to public

    The applications for new gTLD domains offered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have been made public, and although the .LINUX registry has been unclaimed, other potentially FLOSS-related gTLDs are being vied for in this big Internet land grab that could leave some domains out of public reach and in the hands of corporations.

  • Anubex Successfully Migrates BEZEQ to Open Platform

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • CMS

  • Education

  • BSD

    • Dru Lavigne talks about FreeBSD | Interview

      IT happens to be my third career. I started out as an entrepreneur (co-owner of an independent moving company). Once the company was established, I took a second job as a municipal government worker. After a few years it became obvious that the glass ceiling at that agency was far too short for my liking, so I went back to school to learn telecommunications, networking, and system administration.

    • The State Of Gentoo FreeBSD: Gentoo Sans Linux

      To some surprise, Gentoo FreeBSD — the port of Gentoo running with the FreeBSD kernel rather than the Linux kernel — is progressing.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Glibc 2.16 supports the x32 ABI – Update

      Among the new features of the GNU C Library (Glibc) 2.16, which was released on Saturday, is support for the x32 ABI (Application Binary Interface); the Linux kernel has offered support for the interface since version 3.4. Programs that are compiled for the x32 ABI can now access the 64-bit registers and data paths of 64-bit x86 processors while only using 32-bit pointers and data fields. In general terms, programs that are compiled for the x32 ABI avoid the overhead that comes with full 64-bit operation while making use of some of the most important advantages of x86-64 processors; this is thought to be of particular relevance for low-specification systems in the embedded and mobile markets.

  • Project Releases

    • Computer vision library ccv reaches 0.1 milestone

      After two years in development, ccv 0.1, “a modern computer vision library”, has been released. Ccv began development in 2010 when author Liu Liu, frustrated by problems with image preprocessing for a gesture recognition demonstration, decided to work on a different approach.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • ‘Governments that embrace open data will also switch to open source’

        Public administrations that grasp the benefits of making publicly available their data will also increase their use of free and open source, experts on open data agree. Open data and open source face comparable threats: initial lack of support and a fear for the impact on the organisation.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Free, open ebook offers ideas for rebooting American government

        Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age collects the wide-ranging, provocative, and often blunt responses this question generated. But the book’s title is somewhat misleading. The writers it features aren’t interested in merely rebooting American government — interrupting its core processes, taking it momentarily offline, then restoring it to an earlier, somehow simpler, state. They’re hacking on its principal architectures — its frameworks and principles — sketching mock-ups for a government that embraces open technologies and values to become more transparent, nimble, responsive, and accountable than previous iterations.

    • Open Hardware

      • How Open Source Hardware Is Driving the 3D-Printing Industry

        The potential of 3D printing to transform the way we get things – the market is predicted to hit $3.1 billion in the next four years – gets a lot of press. But not much of that attention has focused on the unique role of open source hardware in enabling 3D printing to realize its promise.

        Open source software has been a key player in all kinds of disruptive technologies – from the Web to big data. Now the nascent and growing open source hardware movement is helping to power its own disruptive revolution.

  • Programming

    • PCC: Portable C Compiler Isn’t Quick To Advance

      The Portable C Compiler 1.0 was released in April of 2011, but since then there hasn’t been many updates out of this open-source compiler that was originally spawned in the late 1970′s.

      The PCC web-site remains rather basic with not much information and the latest news is last year’s 1.0 release. The only information since that I’ve been able to find is that they do have limited C++ support going into PCC for the past few months, but the support is still very limited. The main language for the Portable C Compiler is C99. At the project’s current development pace, don’t expect C11 or C++11 coverage any time soon. And for supporting all of the latest instruction set extensions on the latest ARM and Intel CPUs, guess again.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Security vulnerability found in Cyberoam DPI devices

      Last week, a user in Jordan reported seeing a fake certificate for torproject.org. The user did not report any errors when browsing to sites such as Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter, which suggests that this was a targeted attack. The certificate was issued by a US company called Cyberoam. We first believed that this incident was similar to that of Comodo and DigiNotar, and that Cyberoam had been tricked to issue a fake certificate for our website.

  • Finance

    • MMT: A Doubly Retrospective Analysis

      *We’re going to take a break from the regularly-scheduled MMP this week. In its place, I’m posting the keynote talk I gave at Bill Mitchell’s annual Coffee conference in Newcastle. As most of you know, Coffee is the sister center to UMKC’s CFEPS. Some of the participants asked for copies of my talk and I figured some of you might also enjoy it, so am posting it here. It has some of the history of the development of MMT—although it is based on my faulty memory so should not be taken too seriously!

    • Wall Street banks angling for Dodd-Frank loophole

      While all eyes were on the Supreme Court and Obamacare, a quieter battle was being waged against the president’s other major initiative, the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. Wall Street has already watered down or delayed most of Dodd-Frank. Now it wants to create a giant loophole, exempting its foreign branches from the law.

      ‌

      Yet the overseas branches of Wall Street banks are where the banks have done some of their wilder betting. Four years ago, bad bets by American International Group’s London office nearly unraveled the U.S. financial system.

      One advantage of being a huge Wall Street bank is you get bailed out by the federal government when you make dumb bets. Another is you’ve been able to choose where around the world to make the dumb bets, thereby dodging U.S. regulations. It’s a win-win. Wall Street wants to keep it that way.

  • Civil Rights

    • US Government Wants Access To Your Data

      US is becoming one of the most restrictive and invasive countries in the world. The recent Twitter transparency report, inspired by Google, shows that US government is topping the chart with maximum number of request to gain access to user data.

  • Copyrights

    • Kim Dotcom: Joe Biden Ordered the Megaupload Shutdown

      Kim Dotcom says he knows who ordered the shutdown of his company and related sites. The Megaupload founder informs TorrentFreak that he has insider information which reveals that none other than Vice President Joe Biden directed attorney Neil MacBride to target the site. Biden is known to be one of the best friends of former Senator Chris Dodd, who’s now heading the MPAA.

    • ACTA

      • ACTA Is DEAD After European Parliament Vote

        The battleground wasn’t some administrative office, but the representatives of the people – the European Parliament – which decided in the end to do its job beautifully, and represent the people against special interests.

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Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. Sites in Bed With the EPO and UPC 'Covering' the 'News' Without Mentioning Any of the Overt Abuses

    It is rather sad that blogs like IP Kat have turned into proponents of abusive EPO management and Team UPC increasingly resorts to lying using pseudonyms (to avert criticism and accountability); much of the rebuttal or response that’s hinged on reality/facts can only be found in comments, which are still subjected to a face-saving moderation process (conducted by Team UPC)

  2. Suppressed Facts of the Free Software Movement and Its Community of Volunteers – Part IV: Stories From the Depths of the Free Software Foundation (FSF)

    To reduce or alleviate suspicions and a potential of mistrust the FSF needs to become more transparent and liberate information (such as the real reason Bradley Kuhn left, as noted in the previous part)

  3. Links 18/1/2021: GNU Radio 3.9, Wikipedia at 20

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  4. InteLeaks – Part XIX: Intel's Web 'Experts' Seen as Microsoft Champions Dealing With the Platform Microsoft is Looking to Destroy

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  5. Adding Images as Characters to the Daily Bulletins of Techrights

    Our daily bulletins now have inside them coarse graphics, depicted using characters alone, and the tool used to generate them announced a new release earlier today; we showcase some of its features (in a new video)

  6. Links 18/1/2021: Weekly Summaries and Linux 5.11 RC4

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  7. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 17, 2021

    IRC logs for Sunday, January 17, 2021

  8. The Oligarchs' Parties Will Never Choose the Side of Software Freedom Because Free Software Cannot Bribe Officials

    The tough reality is that next week's (or this coming week's, depending on what Sunday counts as) inauguration ceremony is partly symbolic as all the same and important issues remain largely untouched, for corporations control almost everything of significance

  9. COVID-19 Has Actually Helped Software Freedom Due to Financial and 'Spare Time' Factors

    Developers and users are increasingly exploring what the Free software world has to offer; this is actually measurable and it contradicts claims to the contrary

  10. Future Plans and Using Videos to Complement Text

    Remarks on recent and impending site changes; We are not replacing text with video, we're just trying to enhance the presentation a bit, especially where visuals help make a point or where browsing through Web sites (or leaks) is more suitable than static, linear presentation

  11. InteLeaks – Part XVIII: Intel Does Not Know How to Properly Do Research and It Seems Apparent Unscientific Methods Are Used to Justify Poor Documentation

    There appears to be a severe crisis at Intel; they cannot recruit scientists (or those whom they recruited are walking away) and as a result the company produces bad products with poor documentation (or highly defective chipsets that top-notch marketing cannot compensate for); in this video we walk through some examples of how studies are being conducted (as already noted in Part XVII)

  12. Suppressed Facts of the Free Software Movement and Its Community of Volunteers – Part III: The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Seems More Like a Victim of Destabilisation Campaigns

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF), which turns 36 later this year, is looking to raise money that helps support the GNU Project, soon 38 years old and likely the most important Free software project to exist (ever)

  13. Links 17/1/2021: EasyOS on Raspberry Pi and GNU libsigsegv 2.13

    Links for the day

  14. InteLeaks – Part XVII: The High Cost of Microsoft Windows Users in GNU/Linux Development Teams

    A look inside Intel explains what holds back the technical team, which bemoans the lesser technical people getting in the way and not even using the product that they are writing about

  15. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 16, 2021

    IRC logs for Saturday, January 16, 2021

  16. Suppressed Facts of the Free Software Movement and Its Community of Volunteers – Part II: Why Bradley Kuhn Left the Free Software Foundation (FSF)

    The founder of the FSF is still at the FSF (albeit not publicly) and the person who lobbied to oust him has basically been 'banished' by the founder

  17. Links 16/1/2021: LibreOffice 7.1 Release Candidate, Zeroshell 3.9.5, FreeBSD Report, and GhostBSD 21.01.15

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  18. Free Speech on the Web Not Respected by Companies That Used to Support Software Freedom

    Mozilla does not have to make its Web browser about politics; it can just make an excellent piece of software that is neutral about the Web pages that it renders, based on the user's personal preferences

  19. Suppressed Facts of the Free Software Movement and Its Community of Volunteers – Part I: We Are Under Attack by Corporations and Their Salaried Facilitators

    The corporate takeover (taking over the Commons, produced by volunteers who are motivated by altruism) is a subject we must speak about and somehow tackle; this series will highlight uncomfortable or difficult truths

  20. InteLeaks – Part XVI: Intel Cannot Do Command Line, Even When It's Vastly Simpler and More Suitable for Development

    The Developer eXperience (DX) team at Intel seems to be full of Microsoft drones instead of developers and/or mildly technical people; this has not only harmed the quality of documentation but also upset staff, alienating people who actually understand what developers need (more than buzzwords like "DX")

  21. IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 15, 2021

    IRC logs for Friday, January 15, 2021

  22. Links 15/1/2021: KaOS 2021.01, Whisker Menu 2.5.2, Istio 1.8.2

    Links for the day

  23. InteLeaks – Part XV: Intel is Blind to Blind and Colour-Blind People

    Intel does not seem to grasp very basic concepts associated with accessibility; nevertheless, Intel shamelessly tries painting itself as "woke" and a "justice warrior" (policing speech while overlooking much-needed practical work)

  24. Links 15/1/2021: GStreamer 1.18.3 and Proton 5.13-5

    Links for the day

  25. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 14, 2021

    IRC logs for Thursday, January 14, 2021

  26. Links 14/1/2021: Wine 6.0, Debian 11 Freeze, and Alpine Linux 3.13

    Links for the day

  27. Patent Propaganda and UPC Jingoism Instead of Actual News

    Today's so-called 'news' about the EPO (Europe's second-largest institution) and the failed UPC is nothing short of shameless propaganda

  28. Links 14/1/2021: Season of KDE 2021 Selection, Mesa 21.0.0-RC1, Tor Browser 10.0.8

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  29. InteLeaks – Part XIV: Technical Incompetence and Incoherence Leading to Alienation and Brain Drain

    The idea that Intel "loves Linux" or "supports Linux" is somewhat of a sham; one needs only to consider what Intel insiders are saying about that, having witnessed it firsthand

  30. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 13, 2021

    IRC logs for Wednesday, January 13, 2021

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