07.21.12

Gemini version available ♊︎

Links 21/7/2012: Web Apps, Ubuntu and Dell

Posted in News Roundup at 10:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Open Source Initiative: Add your voice

    One of my personal open source community highlights this year was joining the Open Source Initiative (OSI) board. I first discovered OSI in 2003 when I was asked to weigh in on proposed legislation in Oregon that was designed to mandate the use of open source by all state agencies. Yep, I actually wrote the official executive branch position–but that’s another story.

  • Like an open book: Your 2012 summer reading
  • Open Source Drives Small Business

    Open-source software is a key driver for small business in the U.S. and contributes an enormous amount to the economy, perhaps to the tune of $1 trillion in economic output.

  • Open source alternatives to Windows Home Server

    The news that Microsoft is to kill off Windows Home Server in favour of a cut-down version of Windows Server 2012 hasn’t been met with universal approval. The low-cost, low-power Windows Home Server has proved popular since its introduction, and its absence is going to leave a hole in the market – a hole that the OEM-only Windows Server 2012 Foundation and $425 Windows Server 2012 Essentials is unlikely to fill.

  • Open Source Initiative Accepting Individual Members

    The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is now accepting individual members as the organization moves to enhance its impact in the open source world.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Infographics
    • Spain’s Las Palmas’ moves 1200 PCs to LibreOffice

      The administration of the city of Las Palmas on the Canary Island will start using LibreOffice on all of its 1200 desktop PCs. This free and open source office suite is already used on nearly 120 of the city’s desktop PCs. In a press release published on 27 June, the city explains that is why it can calculate that the migration will save about 400,000 euros.

    • Oracle courts CentOS users

      On a recently published web page, Oracle addresses CentOS users in an attempt to persuade them to switch to Oracle Linux. On the page, the company even offers a scriptDirect download that makes various changes to CentOS or Scientific Linux (SL) installations and causes them to receive future package updates and operating system packages from the Oracle Linux repositories. Ultimately, this will turn CentOS and SL installations into Oracle Linux systems.

    • Manage Google Docs With LibreOffice

  • BSD

    • PC-BSD 9.1 preview

      PC-BSD 9.1 beta 1, the latest pre-stable version of what will become PC-BSD 9.1, has been released. PC-BSD is a desktop-centric distribution based on FreeBSD. It used to be primarily a KDE-using distribution, but the installer now has options to install a system using other major desktop environments.

      Aside from KDE, users can opt to install a PC-BSD desktop system powered by Xfce, LXDE or the GNOME desktop environment. The installer also makes it easy to install a FreeBSD server, as well as a server installation called TrueOS. Below are select screen shots from test installations of all four supported desktop environments.

    • FreeNAS 8.2.0

  • Project Releases

    • SelekTOR V2.07 released as open source.

      My reasons for going GPL are varied from folks worried about security issues regarding what SelekTOR does with their underlying system proxies to ensuring the longevity of the code as once its out there it can’t be taken back.
      Well not only do you have access to the debug facility here is the code as well.
      It also brings it in line with my other offerings which have been open source for quite some time.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Facebook exec: Celebration “premature” until OEMs open source their x86 systems

      Since unveiling its Open Compute Project and data center designs in 2011, Facebook’s Open Compute project has been rallying OEMs to support and build open, interchangeable components. At Oscon 2012 today, the project’s chief urged developers to accelerate the trend of open source hardware by refusing to buy “gratuitously differentiated” systems

  • Programming

    • Komodo 7.1 lets users add their own language support

      ActiveState has released version 7.1 of its integrated development environment (IDE) Komodo. The latest release of the IDE for Python, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl and web development includes several improvements to the editor as well as new features for cloud deployment and easier integration with version control systems. Komodo 7.1 also updates the IDE’s support for several languages and frameworks and lets users add language support themselves.

Leftovers

  • Sheldon Adelson, GOP Mega-Donor, Investigated for Bribing Chinese Government Officials

    Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas casino magnate and GOP mega-donor, is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department under suspicions he violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) while dealing with the Chinese government and his Macau casino ventures. The FCPA, introduced in 1977 by U.S. Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), prohibits American companies from bribing foreign government officials.

  • Here’s The Proposal The FCC Says Doesn’t Exist To Move Network Diagnostics To Proprietary Servers

    We recently wrote about some concerns by Vint Cerf and others that the FCC was considering a proposal to move some of their network diagnostics efforts — which are a really good thing — from the open M-Labs solution to proprietary servers run by the telcos. As we noted, the telcos denied that this was happening — and Henning Schulzrinne, the CTO of the FCC, showed up in our comments to strongly deny that such a proposal existed.

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Walmart Heirs Have As Much Wealth As Bottom 40 Percent Of Americans Combined

      Last year, Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, found that as of 2007, the Walton family — heirs to the Walmart fortune — had a net worth equal to that of the bottom 30 percent of Americans. And due to the effects of the Great Recession that ratio has gotten substantially worse.

      New Federal Reserve data analyzed by both Allegretto and Josn Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute shows that the Waltons now hold as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined…

    • Export Nation: Does A Tipping Point Approach?

      Since 2009, exports from the US have grown at a faster rate than GDP. This is reflected in the weak, national recovery in jobs while export-oriented regions and export-sector jobs have fared much better. As US exports are nearing 15% of GDP, one wonders that a nation long accustomed to protecting consumption may finally have to think about protection, and enhancement, of production. | see: US Exports as a Percentage of GDP 2007 – 2012.

    • Goldman Sachs’s Blankfein Says Libor Scandal Undermines Trust

      Allegations of interest-rate rigging by global banks are hurting the financial system by undermining trust, said Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

    • Donald Mullen, Ex-Goldman Sachs Mortgage Chief, Starts Fund For Buying Foreclosed Homes

      Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive Donald Mullen, one of the architects of the subprime mortgage trade, is trying to raise at least $500 million for a fund that will buy foreclosed homes with an eye toward renting them out.

  • Civil Rights

    • It’s Bucky v. Adidas: Indonesia Labor Rights Violations Head to Court in Wisconsin

      A student rendering of Bucky Badger puts the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s furry mascot in a lock-up formed by the Adidas three-bar logo.

      But in a historic test, it is the midwestern university that is now putting Adidas on trial.

      The university filed a complaint against the global sportswear giant in Dane County Circuit Court on July 13 calling on a judge to determine whether the university’s code of conduct required Adidas to pay severance and other benefits to nearly 3,000 Indonesian workers. The workers were left jobless and impoverished by a Korean contractor’s abrupt exit from Indonesia in January 2011. The lawsuit marks the first time that one of the more than 100 U.S. universities in a national anti-sweatshop consortium has sought to enforce its code in the courts.

    • YouTube Introduces Face Blurring Tool To Protect Protesters

      As the governments are becoming more and more powerful and using all means to crush protest, it is becoming harder for activists to stand against suppressive governments.

      YouTube has become a very powerful means for citizens to provide video coverage/footage of events. But now governments are using these footage to identify protesters and take action against them. There is no way a protester can hide this identity and escape the wrath of government.

    • Is NSA’s Accumulo open source or Google knock-off?

      A new bill on Capitol Hill could have far reaching implications for government use and development of open source platforms – potentially requiring all open source projects to “prove adequate industry support and diversification.”

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New

  1. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 28, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, May 28, 2023

  2. Daniel Stenberg Knows Almost Nothing About Gemini and He's Likely Just Protecting His Turf (HTTP/S)

    The man behind Curl, Daniel Stenberg, criticises Gemini; but it's not clear if he even bothered trying it (except very briefly) or just read some inaccurate, one-sided blurbs about it

  3. Links 29/05/2023: Videos Catchup and Gemini FUD

    Links for the day

  4. Links 28/05/2023: Linux 6.4 RC4 and MX Linux 23 Beta

    Links for the day

  5. Gemini Links 28/05/2023: Itanium Day, GNUnet DHT, and More

    Links for the day

  6. Links 28/05/2023: eGates System Collapses, More High TCO Stories (Microsoft Windows)

    Links for the day

  7. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 27, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, May 27, 2023

  8. No More Twitter, Mastodon, and Diaspora for Tux Machines (Goodbye to Social Control Media)

    People would benefit from mass abandonment of such pseudo-social pseudo-media.

  9. Links 28/05/2023: New Wine and More

    Links for the day

  10. Links 27/05/2023: Plans Made for GNU's 40th Anniversary

    Links for the day

  11. Social Control Media Needs to be Purged and We Need to Convince Others to Quit It Too (to Protect Ourselves as Individuals and as a Society)

    With the Tux Machines anniversary (19 years) just days away we seriously consider abandoning all social control media accounts of that site, including Mastodon and Diaspora; social control networks do far more harm than good and they’ve gotten a lot worse over time

  12. Anonymously Travelling: Still Feasible?

    The short story is that in the UK it's still possible to travel anonymously by bus, tram, and train (even with shades, hat and mask/s on), but how long for? Or how much longer have we got before this too gets banned under the false guise of "protecting us" (or "smart"/"modern")?

  13. With EUIPO in Focus, and Even an EU Kangaroo Tribunal, EPO Corruption (and Cross-Pollination With This EU Agency) Becomes a Major Liability/Risk to the EU

    With the UPC days away (an illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo court system, tied to the European Union in spite of critical deficiencies) it’s curious to see EPO scandals of corruption spilling over to the European Union already

  14. European Patent Office (EPO) Management Not Supported by the EPO's Applicants, So Why Is It Still There?

    This third translation in the batch is an article similar to the prior one, but the text is a bit different (“Patente ohne Wert”)

  15. EPO Applicants Complain That Patent Quality Sank and EPO Management Isn't Listening (Nor Caring)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German (here is the first of the batch); the following is the second of the three (“Kritik am Europäischen Patentamt – Patente ohne Wert?”)

  16. German Media About Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) and the European Patent Office (EPO)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German; this is the first of the three (“Industrie kritisiert Europäisches Patentamt”)

  17. Geminispace Continues to Grow Even If (or When) Stéphane Bortzmeyer Stops Measuring Its Growth

    A Gemini crawler called Lupa (Free/libre software) has been used for years by Stéphane Bortzmeyer to study Gemini and report on how the community was evolving, especially from a technical perspective; but his own instance of Lupa has produced no up-to-date results for several weeks

  18. Links 27/05/2023: Goodbyes to Tina Turner

    Links for the day

  19. HMRC: You Can Click and Type to Report Crime, But No Feedback or Reference Number Given

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were reported 7 days ago to HMRC (equivalent to the IRS in the US, more or less); but there has been no visible progress and no tracking reference is given to identify the report

  20. IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, May 26, 2023

  21. One Week After Sirius Open Source Was Reported to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for Tax Fraud: No Response, No Action, Nothing...

    One week ago we reported tax abuses of Sirius ‘Open Source’ to HMRC; we still wait for any actual signs that HMRC is doing anything at all about the matter (Sirius has British government clients, so maybe they’d rather not look into that, in which case HMRC might be reported to the Ombudsman for malpractice)

  22. Links 26/05/2023: Weston 12.0 Highlights and US Debt Limit Panic

    Links for the day

  23. Gemini Links 26/05/2023: New People in Gemini

    Links for the day

  24. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 25, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, May 25, 2023

  25. Links 26/05/2023: Qt 6.5.1 and Subsystems in GNUnet

    Links for the day

  26. Links 25/05/2023: Mesa 23.1.1 and Debian Reunion

    Links for the day

  27. Links 25/05/2023: IBM as Leading Wayland Pusher

    Links for the day

  28. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 24, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, May 24, 2023

  29. Links 25/05/2023: Istio 1.16.5 and Curl 8.1.1

    Links for the day

  30. Gemini Links 25/05/2023: On Profit and Desire for Gemini

    Links for the day

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts