When I was on an airplane several days ago, an entertainment screen broke. As it rebooted and printed the console debug information, I found out that these computers actually ran Linux. But the reboot didn't finish properly...
There was nothing I could do about it, so I just watched it struggle. In this story I pour upon life and death in digital era, and how computers demonstrate human-like feelngs.
A couple of days ago I took a transatlantic flight on an Airbus A330. It is a large plane where each seat is accompanied by a computer named "Entertaintment System". It contained games, movies, and stuff like inflight information (plane location mapped onto the world map, and flight progress details, which is kimda reassuring given that the flight lasts for 10+ hours.) A killer feature of such system is its USB port useful when you want to read/watch something on your mobile phone (or type this story, for instance.)
Both the Linux Foundation and the Genivi Alliance have announced new open source initiatives at the Automotive Linux Summit, which is currently under way in Warwickshire, England. The Linux Foundation has founded the Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup with the goal of streamlining the development of software for automobiles, while the Genivi Alliance has said that it will concentrate all of its development on open source projects going forward.
That's essentially what the return on investment will be when hundreds of thousands--perhaps millions--of enterprise desktops get upgraded to Windows 8. Surely we can figure out something better to do with all that money, even if we have to move some cheese in the process.
And that's where my inner finance child starts struggling with my tech self who's committed to keeping things rolling along. I see my staff and users happily and productively ensconced in the Windows world. I want them to be happy and productive, but I want to get rid of unnecessary ongoing expenses, too, even if it causes temporary pain.
"I just can't buy Intel's explanation for this, since it would be easy for Intel's own Linux kernel developers to add the needed support to Linux," said consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack. "There must be some other reason, and I bet that reason is that Intel is desperately hoping that Windows 8 will extend the Intel/Microsoft juggernaut from the PC market into the tablet market."
More than a few Linux distributions have pulled up their stakes in the decades old System V method of booting and quietly moved to a better way of booting. Better, faster, easier to maintain, and less prone to problems. I say "quietly" not to imply that there haven't been announcements, banners waving, and proper cheers from some segments of the Linux user community, but to emphasize how little disruption has occurred and how little those of us who have been living in the slower-to-change Linux environments have had to pay attention. But the changes are nothing short of huge.
The organisers of the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) 2012, which was held at the end of August in San Diego, have released videos, notes and presentation slides from the conference presentations. The talks are primarily concerned with Linux software that deals with the interaction between hardware and the user interface.
Good news for Linux users, NVIDIA is finally working on a new vesion of its' non-free drivers for Linux which will bring support for its infamous Optimus technology. This technology is used in laptops to save battery life as it automatically switches the power of the GPU off when it is not needed and switching it on when needed again. Linux users were not able to take advantage of this technology due to lack of support by NVIDIA.
“Pay as you like” game collection, Humble Indie Bundle 6 have crossed $1 million mark, and this is just in mere four days. Previous collections of games were also highly successful and considering the current trend of this release, it wont be surprising if this bundle becomes best of all bundles out so far.
Long before Unity or the Unreal Development Kit, Torque was the engine of choice for indie developers with big dreams of making their own shiny 3D games, costing only $100 to license the tech behind Tribes 2. Now, 11 years later, maker GarageGames is preparing to set Torque 3D free and open-source it.
The source code will be released through GitHub under the MIT License, CEO Eric Preisz said in a blog post. Senior developer Dave Wyand noted that he hopes GG will work on improving performance and bringing the engine to Mac and Linux after the switch, though no plans are set.
After the release of Unity and Gnome Shell, XFCE gained more popularity, fans and support for being the reliable “traditional” desktop environment. Fast, modern, mature, light and beautiful, XFCE is naturally becoming the default DE on big distributions like Debian.
"After one month since 2.8.0 release, digiKam team is proud to announce the digiKam Software Collection 2.9.0, as bug-fixes release. This will be the last 2.x release. Next one will be 3.0.0, currently under development, following GoSC 2012 projects, listed here."
The Gnome Foundation had earlier announced an operating system mainly focused for Gnome development, known as Gnome OS. The OS is still in early development stages and developers are currently busy in designing and planning phase. William Jon Mc Cann posted some insights as hoe the boot screen will look like in Gnome OS and its features in Gnome Live! Here is a screenshot below:
This is the 4th post from the “Making GTK3 themes” series. The older posts can be found here, here and here.
Gnome 2 had some really great themes. And now we miss them with GTK3. Porting is not that much hard, but still, not that easy. But with some little tricks, you can ease porting GTK2 themes to GTK3.
Extensions -- plugins that add specialized bits of functionality to a Linux desktop -- have helped many free software projects succeed, including Vim, LibreOffice, Firefox, and Amarok. Could they do the same for the often-beleaguered GNOME 3 release series?
The GNOME Shell Extensions site has been running for a little less than a year now. Technically, it's in beta, but, if my experience is any indication, the problems are few.
GNOME release manager Frederic Peters shares insight into the excitement surrounding the GNOME project…
After a very busy month, I finally had some free time to try Vector Linux, a distro that a facebook friend told me to take a look at. For those of you that dont know, Vector Linux is a distro that has been around for quite a long time. It is based on Slackware, with Xcfe, KDE and LXDE as the available desktop environments. According to the official website, the aim of Vector is to keep the distro simple and small and let the end user decide what their operating system is going to be.
The previous CrunchBang 11 “Waldorf” development images have now been replaced by some updated builds. The updated images include the Debian Installer 7.0 Beta2 release. Other changes have been kept to an absolute minimum. For more information and to leave any feedback, please see the forum announcement.
Patrick Volkerding has announced last evening, September 19th, the immediate availability for download and testing of fifth Release Candidate of the upcoming Slackware 14.0 Linux operating system.
The PCLinuxOS distribution is an interesting creation. The project, originally based on the Mandriva distribution, is now an independent project with its own base, its own packages and its own vision. The project provides a rolling release distro which tries to balance being modern with being stable. It also attempts to balance modern software with a familiar look & feel. Finally, and perhaps most unusually, PCLinuxOS uses RPM software packages, but manages them with the APT package management utilities. It is a unique creation and all the more welcome in a world full of simple re-spins.
Fabio Erculiani proudly announced on September 13th, the immediate availability for download of the Sabayon Linux 10 operating system.
Sabayon Linux 10 is powered by Linux kernel 3.5.4 (with BFQ iosched), and it features the GNOME 3.4.2, KDE 4.9, Xfce 4.10, and the new MATE 1.4.1 desktop environments.
Red Hat Inc (RHT.N), the world's largest distributor of Linux operating software, reported a lower-than-expected adjusted profit as costs rose, and lowered the top end of its full-year revenue outlook on slow growth in its services business.
A recent blog post from Red Hat raises some interesting questions about the paradox that exists between what large enterprises want in terms of their IT future requirements, and what the cloud is now able to offer. And perhaps the first question is whether one of the key drivers now in play is not the issue of what large enterprises want but the perception of established IT vendors as to what the large enterprises ought to want.
Carnival Corp. third quarter net nearly flat to $1.33 billion. FactSet fourth quarter net jumped 19% to $48.5 million. Neogen first quarter net climbed 12%. Paychex first quarter net grew 3% to $153.1 million. Red Hat second quarter net declined 13% to $35 million. Vail Resorts loss narrowed.
On Monday, Red Hat reported that while its revenues were up, its quarterly profit was short of analyst estimates as its cost of doing business rose. Buried within the report were several nuggets of promise for the first-ever billion dollar a year open source company, though. The company's subscription support business rose 17 percent, and Red Hat has a beta version of an updated 5.9 release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The new release will greatly expand RHEL's support for newer hardware, among other enhancements.
Not every enterprise updates to the latest version of new software from Linux vendor Red Hat, but that doesn't mean they can't be updated.
There was a time when x86 was the only major chip architecture Linux vendor Red Hat cared about. That time has now come to an end as the Linux giant is now taking a serious look at ARM.
Red Hat is the most successful pure play open source company on the planet, generating over $1 billion in revenue a year. Its success is rooted in a strong legal basis and understanding of how open source software works.
Red Hat is using its open source expertise to its advantage in a new legal battle over alleged storage patent infringement with the Gluster filesystem. Red Hat acquired Gluster in 2011 for $136 million. The Gluster technology is now the cornerstone of Red Hat's Storage technology, which recently hit its 2.0 release.
Backup storage vendor Twin Peaks Software filed a complaint in July with United States District Court, Northern District of California, San Jose Division, alleging patent infringement. The alleged infringement deals with United States Patent Number 7,418,439, (the '439 patent), titled "Mirror File System," which Twin Peaks owns.
Shares of the Raleigh, N.C.-based company are up 35% year-to-date, and Whitehurst said that the stock's performance is based on strong growth and solid guidance provided in March. Wall Street analysts have been predicting that Red Hat's organic growth would eventually slow to that of GDP growth, currently at 1.7%. Red Hat, however, has been able to continually deliver growth of 20% or more on a constant currency basis. "Our job is to beat the fade," Whitehurst noted. "If we can continue to grow 20% every year, that will drive the stock."
With relatively little fanfare, Linux Mint Debian Edition Update Pack 5 was released on Monday last week. It is a sign of the improving stability and maturity of this distribution that unlike previous Update Packs, this one brings only incremental updates — albeit lots of them — rather than the eagerly awaited and badly needed bug fixes and distribution changes that have come before it.
On the four systems I have updated so far, the download was between 900MB and 1GB, and it took quite a while to install — 30 to 60 minutes after the download completed. If you prefer to wait for updated ISO images incorporating this Update Pack, the Linux Mint teams said in their release announcement that those should become available over the next "weeks or months".
Recently I have been working with David Planella and Michael Hall on my team around a new specification for empowering app developers to deliver their content in Ubuntu. This post provides some background information around this work and the problem it seeks to solve.
Like many of you, I am hugely proud of the progress we have made with Ubuntu over the years. We have worked together to create a simple, powerful experience underlined with the foundation of our core Ubuntu values of creating a free platform, available to all, in your language, irrespective of (dis)ability.
While some are calling it a tempest in a teapot, Ubuntu loyalists are expressing fury that the next version of Ubuntu includes shopping suggestions from Amazon directly in desktop search results. Version 12.10 is imminent, and many Ubuntu users feel like the Amazon inclusions are nothing more than adware. What does Canonical get out of this arrangement, and will the company reverse its decision? Mark Shuttleworth has weighed in.
Version 12.10 of Ubuntu has a lot to like, and it has an updated version of the Unity desktop environment, Unity 3D, which includes a range of desktop effects achieved through hardware acceleration. However, Ubuntu fans of up in arms over the inclusion of Amazon results in the desktop search function, and many are concerned that their personal data will be picked up by Amazon.
There’s some sort of push back going on regarding the Ubuntu shopping lens. It’s a neat little feature that I wouldn’t want to be in the home screen, but would like to have in it’s own category.
According to my sources, it’s almost October, and that can mean but one thing: The debut of Ubuntu 12.10 is almost upon us. To prepare, here’s a look at some of the biggest changes to expect in the forthcoming release of one of the world’s most popular open source operating systems.
With last night's update, Canonical published a major update to the Unity interface of the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) operating system, due for release next month.
The improved Unity interface brings new lenses, such as a Shopping Lens for your online shopping needs and a Google Docs Scope for searching through your online stored documents. Also, price and user ratings ribbons were added on suggested apps – information taken from Ubuntu Software Center.
At OSCON in 2008, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical, challenged the crowd, "The great task in front of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop. Can we not only emulate, but can we blow right past Apple?"
The challenge was a defining moment for desktop Linux, coming near the start of an era in which KDE, GNOME, and Ubuntu would all attempt to rethink the desktop.
Four years later, speaking again at OSCON, Shuttleworth implied victory. "We've leapt ahead of some of the competition," he said, claiming that Ubuntu's Unity desktop was now the second easiest to use after Windows, and showing specific elements in which he felt Unity surpassed Mac OS X.
Marco Ghirlanda has announced a couple of days ago, on September 23rd, that the ArtistX 1.3 Linux distribution is available for download.
ArtistX 1.3 is based on the popular Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system and is powered by Linux kernel 3.0.0.
With over 2,500 open source multimedia applications on-board, this release of ArtistX features the GNOME 3.4 and KDE Software Compilation 4.8 desktop environments.
The cloud era is coming. Some people can argue whether this is good or bad. Maybe that’s only the fashion. Maybe not. Although more and more people think of the cloud as if it were the inevitable future.
Although Raspberry Pi (RPi) is not powerful enough for heavy-duty image processing, you can still put it to some photography-related uses. For example, as an amateur photographer, I take a lot of photos when I travel, and I upload the photos to my Raspberry Pi at home which neatly organizes and keeps them safe till I get back home.
To turn RPi into a photo station, I opted for the Debian Wheezy minimal image. The only thing I needed to install was the usbmount tool which automatically mounts and unmounts external USB storage devices. Although it's possible to save photos on the SD card, I decided to keep them on a dedicated 16GB USB stick which usbmount tool mounts at /media/usb0. Since the minimal image comes with an SSH server enabled by default, I only had to configure my router to make RPi accessible from the Internet.
Raspberry Pi’s can now shift into turbo by changing some configuration settings and getting a 50% power boost, all without voiding the warranty
Unlike an iOS update, which targets only three devices all made by Apple, releasing a new version of the Android operating system is a more complex process. There are different, often competing interests at play, from the software maker to the handset manufacturer to the mobile carrier. Often the result is a delay of weeks or even months.
It's been a very busy week for new Android apps on the Google Play store, so this weekly roundup is back up to 20 apps.
Google plans to add new features to its Google Maps app for Android phones on Wednesday. Conveniently, it is the same day that Apple‘s latest mobile operating system is due to be released, the one that kicks Google’s maps off the iPhone and replaces them with Apple’s own mobile maps.
The Google Maps for Android app, which will be updated sometime Wednesday, will now make it easier to search for places on Android phones and personalize searches on maps.
Two security vendor reports released last week point to the continuation of a longstanding problem with Android devices. The platform remains the prime target for malware, yet there's no easy way for users to keep the software up to date with the latest patches.
Tablets running on Intel's upcoming Atom chip code-named Clover Trail could come with the Android OS, adding another OS option for the processor platform in addition to Microsoft's soon-to-be-released Windows 8 OS, Intel said on Monday.
Intel for months has stressed that the Clover Trail chip was optimized for Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8, which is due for release late October. Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Lenovo have already announced Windows 8 tablets based on Clover Trail, and Intel has said 20 tablet designs are in the works.
Just five years after Google Inc.’s Android appeared on the market in 2008, IHS forecasts that cumulative global shipments of smartphones using the operating system since it was introduced will amount to more than 1 billion in 2013.
KDE developer Aaron Seigo has announced that the release of the Vivaldi KDE tablet has been postponed for now. The 7-inch tablet will use the Mer Project's Linux distribution as its operating system, and KDE Plasma Active as its default desktop user interface. However, the manufacturer of the originally chosen Zenithink C71 tablet has modified the system board of the device at short notice. Having made numerous adjustments to the Linux kernel to support the previous system board, the developers must therefore restart their development work almost from scratch.
CIOs looking to replace legacy systems should consider open source options over proprietary software or public cloud services, according to a study by prominent British IT academic, Professor Jim Norton.
Norton’s study, released today and commissioned by travel industry processing giant Amadeus, assessed the role of open source software in critical transaction systems.
Google has announced its third annual Code-in contest for high school students, an international contest introducing 13-17 year old pre-university students to the world of open source software development. According to the announcement: "The goal of the contest is to give students the opportunity to explore the many types of projects and tasks involved in open source software development. Globally, open source software development is becoming a major factor in all industries from governments, healthcare, and relief efforts to gaming and large tech companies." This looks like one of the better opportunities for young people picking up technical skills to differentiate themselves from the pack.
The vast majority among the Linux community? Incredibly helpful. The minute minority? Less so, suspects Simon…
We often think of open source as "free software." That's a good association. Many people follow the tradition, dating from the '80s, of referring to software that offers users the liberty to deploy, study, modify, and distribute its source code as "free software."
But that's "free" as in liberty, not "free" as in beer. Like it or not, the idea of getting something for nothing still drives many customers to open source solutions -- and can deceive them into into thinking it's wrong to pay people for open source software.
An interview with one of the talented people behind NASAs Open Government initiative.
Big Data often requires “Big Hardware.” In other words, to process and analyze large stores of information, organizations usually need a lot of computing power, which brings with it its own set of demands and maintenance costs. Eying opportunity in this challenge, open source Big Data analytics company Pentaho has partnered with Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) to deliver a complete hardware and software solution for business analytics. Here’s the scoop.
When Rackspace and NASA started OpenStack — a collection of open source tools for building Amazon-style clouds in any data center — Rackspace shouldered the responsibility for organizing the community.
But as that community grew, it became clear that the project needed a more neutral steward, and the company started taking steps to hand the project over to the non-profit OpenStack Foundation.
On Wednesday, that transition was completed, as Rackspace handed over the OpenStack trademark, and the foundation officially took over governance of the project. From here on out, the OpenStack Foundation is responsible for all legal, financial, marketing and operational management issues.
Multimedia creation and consumption continue to be among the most common uses for PCs and mobile devices. Consider: According to recent research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 46 percent of U.S. Internet users have posted original videos or photos online. Seventy-one percent of online Americans have used a video sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo.
Recording industry trade association IFPI reports that more than half of record company revenues from the U.S. come from digital music, and those digital music revenues continue to grow every year. Global Industry Analysts forecasts that mobile entertainment, including video and music, will be a $67.6 billion industry by 2018.
This year's Best of Open Source Software awards includes a whopping 125 products in 7 categories. The real story is the technology leadership so many of these products display
While Microsoft Office is the industry standard in terms of , integrated applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database management, email and desktop publishing. However, it's important for small business owners to know that these types of office applications are also available in free and open source office productivity applications.
Open source office software has come a long way in recent years, so choosing free software over expensive proprietary software doesn't mean you'll lose features and support. Today's open source office productivity software is feature-rich and provides ample access to online documentation and large communities of users and developers.
While Facebook and Twitter is the core of the Internet’s social networking world, some companies and organizations may have reasons to set up their own social networking applications. For some companies, setting up their own social network is a good option because the public Internet may not be secure enough for certain conversations concerning sensitive proprietary information or customer contact information.
Online education startups such as the Khan Academy, along with new efforts by MIT, Stanford, and Harvard have helped spur interest in and add legitimacy to the notion of remote learning. Now Google is lending its brainpower to the rapidly growing area by releasing a tool called Course Builder, open source software designed to let anyone create online education courses.
The Course Builder project came by way of another program Google ran earlier this year called Power Searching With Google. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), which attracted approximately 155,000 students from 196 countries, allowed Google to marry some of the practices now common to online instruction with the company's robust array of collaboration and communication tools. A new Power Searching session begins in two weeks.
Sage Weil started the Ceph filesystem as a research project. Today that research project is a bona fide enterprise option for Big Data and cloud storage purposes.
Ceph is now in the Linux kernel and Weil is the CEO of startup Inktank, which provides commercial support for Ceph.
Linux Foundation events are studded with Linux and open source community leaders, as well as some eccentric personalities. What better place than one of these events to sit down and talk to the people who are making innovation happen in software development and cloud computing?
As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Chinese telecom company ZTE will be launching smartphones based on Mozilla's new "Firefox OS" mobile operating system. Based on open standards, the mobile OS is being aimed at primarily emerging markets around the world. With Qualcomm and Telefonica in place as existing Mozilla partners, the ZTE hookup implies that Mozilla's play in the smartphone arena may have some real legs.
Firefox is the third most popular browser in the world
It’s no secret that Mozilla has been working on a mobile OS. Previously codenamed Boot2Gecko, the project focused on a purely HTML5 based system that worked in many ways like current mobile devices. As the project grew into Mozilla OS, the company has laid out a partnership with ZTE that will have real world devices in certain markets early next year. Testing for this OS had previously consisted of a compiled ROM that would be flashed over a handful of Android devices. Now, Mozilla has moved into full fledged product evaluation mode with their own custom developer phone.
bout a month before the recent HP mobile pwn2own event, I told the event organizers that is extremely likely that the mobile vulns they find will be WebKit related.
As it turns it out I was right and I'm not surprised.
The iPHone 4S was hacked by way of a WebKit vuln and I strongly suspect the NFC attack on the Samsung Galaxy had a WebKit component too. WebKit vulnerability fixes also rank highly (by my count over 50 percent) for all security fixes made in the recent Apple iOS 6 update.
WebKit vulnerabilities also accounted for over 100 flaws fixed in Apple's latest iTunes update.
Enterprise users of Firefox should get ready for the next cycle of Firefox ESR, which will begin on 20 November 2012. The Mozilla developers have clarified their plans for the next release of Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release), the version designed for enterprises and other organisations that require a stable qualified version of the browser for inhouse deployment.
The process, as designed, sees a Firefox ESR release being cloned from the mainstream version of Firefox at a particular point in time, in this case the release of Firefox 17 at the end of November, to create Firefox ESR 17. Then, over the next two cycles of mainstream Firefox development, Firefox ESR is tested and bugs fixed in it creating versions 17.0.1 (alongside Firefox 18 on 8 January 2013) and 17.0.2 (alongside Firefox 19 on 19 February 2013).
At Unixmen, we were lucky enough to score an exclusive interview with former Project Leader of the OpenIndiana, Alasdair Lumsden.
Since Alasdair’s resignation, it has not only sparked discussion on the reasons of Alasdair’s resignation from OpenIndiana, but also generated a lot of interesting discussion on development and the future of OpenIndiana.
I want to really thank Alasdair for taking the time to chat with Unixmen and reveal all in this very intimate and honest view of OpenIndiana from the very inside of the project.
Moodle HQ has released updates to the Moodle open source learning management system. The new Moodle 2.3.2 and 2.2.5, available now, incorporate several minor fixes and enhancements and resolve a number of security-related issues.
The SugarCRM roadshow came to town this week, as the vendor’s CRMAcceleration conference arrived in London as part of a triple-header European tour that also pitches up in Frankfurt and Paris.
It is certain that with just some little errors that contains the form 35837 like the article 3.2.2 about the free software license are not another form of law, but international law for computers an industries and another error in the 3.2.6 which seems to misunderstood Free Software and Open Source.
With the recent release of version 2.6.0, the cross-platform Avidemux video editor has had all of its internals rewritten and now supports more scripting languages. Avidemux is a basic, open source video editing tool designed for simple tasks such as cutting, filtering and encoding; these tasks can be automated using project and job queues, or with Avidemux's built-in scripting capabilities. Supported formats include AVI, DVD-compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, as well as a variety of codecs.
Free Software Foundation Europe and twenty Italian civil society organisations wrote a letter to the President of the Authority for the Protection of Personal Data, asking the agency to ensure that all documents published on its website can be read and used with Free Software programs.
To some people’s surprise, even open-source software has a license attached to it. And with that license comes a description and agreement for what can and can’t be done with the source code of any particular product or service. What exact license the specific open-source software lies under is generally up to the developer(s) and/or current maintainers of the original code.
Open-source software licensing is not something that I have really taken particular notice of in previous and recent times. In fact, all code I have ever created or modified has been done so with no regard to what the license is. I am guilty, yes, as are probably a lot of open-source developers and programmers.
Open source is one of the concepts that has taken off in a variety of implementations: hardware, cars, and… legal documents?
Sure, why not? Docracy, is a start-up that provides free, open-source legal documents to individuals and companies that need them, as well as a framework on which legal agreements can be negotiated and signed electronically.
As a freelance writer, I have used e-signing services myself to get contracts signed so I can get paid. So far, everything has all worked well, in the sense that I am getting paid. But I also wonder how well such electronic signatures would actually stand up in court should I or one of my vendors decide to get squirrelly?
Baccus is an open-source robotic arm project aimed primarily at educators and researchers, but because it is seeking funding on Kickstarter, it also poses value to robotics enthusiasts or people who just want to see the latest and most unique crowdfunded scientific advancements.
The path from birth to death is filled with choices about where to work and what kind of work to do. Sometimes the world is nice enough to allow us some input. These days, developers have a lot more say in their employment, thanks to rising demand for their services.
Whether you're an independent contractor or a cubicle loyalist with a wandering eye, programming want ads abound, each stirring its own set of questions about how best to steer your career. For some, this is entirely new territory, having fallen into employment with computers simply as a means to scratch an itch.
On September 4th, the French-German Television channel, Arte, will show a documentary based on the book The Bank: How Goldman Sachs Rules the World by London-based correspondent for Le Monde, Marc Roche. Last week I spoke with Mr. Roche and co-director of the film Jerome Fritel in London and Paris, respectively, about the new documentary. Every time I think I have heard enough of how bad the banks are and what new thing has been discovered on or off their books, and proven to be legal, if immoral, I am always surprised by how far certain players go to make a profit.
A sort of joke making the rounds a few years back had (billionaire) Bill Gates walking into a working class bar. The joke was that the moment he did everyone in the bar on average became a billionaire. Understand—he didn’t give away any money or, other than possibly ordering a beer and paying for it, did any money change hands. But through the miracle of statistics the gargantuan difference in wealth between Mr. Gates and the other bar patrons was converted to faux equitable distribution under the measure of ‘average’ wealth.
"People can invest what they want,” billionaire industrialist David Koch recently told Politico.
Koch wasn't discussing the stock market or oil futures. He was talking money in politics: wealthy donors "investing" in elected officials, apparently with the expectation of getting a return. In total, donors like the Kochs, along with Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, and "outside" groups have pledged to raise a total of $1 billion this election to elect Republicans, particularly President Barack Obama's opponent Mitt Romney.
The consultation followed a code of conduct signed by the main UK ISPs in October 2011, in which they promised to give new customers a choice about whether they wanted parental controls set up on their account. Shortly afterwards, Claire Perry MP launched a campaign for more internet filtering, and ran an inquiry into the issue. The report, which was sponsored by Premier Christian Media, recommended that ISP level filtering be switched on by default.
Thanks to an EDRi leak, European proposals for widespread action against “terrorism” were revealed last week, with press coverage in the Telegraph and elsewhere.
The project – Clean IT – moved swiftly to deny that they had been a closed project, which is partly true. They also tried to reduce the significance of the document they had produced, saying it was “for discussion” (even though page one of the leaked document suggests the contents are ‘detailed recommendations’).
The plans include measures for upload filtering, corporate censorship, plus procedures for flagging dubious content.
We've been seeing more and more judges reacting negatively to copyright trolls. What's interesting is that they seem to be getting more aggressive in their statements against the trolls, and it seems clear that fewer judges are falling for their antics. The latest is from Judge Harold Baer in the Southern District of New York, who you could say is not impressed by some copyright trolling cases that have ended up in his court, coming from Media Products and Patrick Collins. He had allowed for expedited discovery, which is what copyright trolls want, but it seems quite clear that Baer regrets that decision and now seeks to reverse it. Expedited discovery basically gives the trolls what they want: it lets them subpoena ISPs to find out contact info of users based on the IP addresses they've collected. From that point on, they have no intention of ever proceeding with the actual lawsuit. They just want to start pressuring people into "settling."