Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 19/2/2013: Android Smartwatch, Canonical's Ubuntu Tablet Effort Unveiled





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Linux Top 3: Steam, Sabayon and Ubuntu Phones Home


  • Top 10 Linux Networked Storage Systems Under $1,000
    Cloud storage may be on the move, but local network-attached storage (NAS) systems continue to be in hot demand, especially as they integrate cloud backup and mobile access. In the enterprise NAS, unified storage, and SAN (storage area network) world, Linux shares the pie with Unix and Windows. But in the faster-growing small and medium business (SMB), small office and home office (SoHo), and consumer NAS segments, Linux is clearly dominant.




  • Kernel Space

    • Linux file permissions and chmod


    • The Kernel Panic
      If you have ever been on one of these types of calls, you know that they are always rather uncomfortable. The manager is upset because something went wrong, and on top of that it was something that they don’t fully understand. During such conversations I’ve found that it is normally best to keep explanations correct, but succinct. I explained that a kernel panic is what happens when the operating system encounters an error that it cannot recover from. That explanation seemed to be enough for him, but as I thought about it later, I found that it was not nearly enough for me.



    • What's new in Linux 3.8
      Improved graphics drivers and a new filesystem for flash disks are two of the most important changes in Linux 3.8. Kernel developers have also made improvements to btrfs and ext4 and merged a number of new drivers.


    • The Non-Babble Intro to Cloud Computing on Linux


    • Install/Upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.8 (Stable) in Ubuntu/Linux Mint


    • umockdev: record and mock hardware for debugging and testing


    • Xen 4.3 Is Running Heavy On New Features
      Xen 4.3 is expected to be released in June of this year. While the developers working on this virtualization platform are only half-way through its development cycle, they already have an impressive number of features that are coming into this next open-source release.


    • Linux 3.8 released
      Linus Torvalds has released version 3.8 of the Linux kernel, which brings with it full support for the graphic cores in Intel's upcoming processor generation Haswell and everything a system needs to use the 3D acceleration on all NVIDIA GeForce graphics chipsets. F2FS, a filesystem that is optimised for flash media as used in cameras, tablets, smartphones, USB flash drives and memory cards, is another innovation in Linux 3.8.


    • Linux Foundation Welcomes Members From Android, Embedded and Cloud Communities
      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that BORQS, Denx, Gazzang, Genymobile, Mandriva and Seneca College are joining the organization.


    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD Radeon 2D Performance On Linux Remains Mixed
        The results in yesterday's article, AMD Radeon Gallium3D Starting To Out-Run Catalyst In Some Cases, were interesting but limited to OpenGL games. In this article are more test results from the same system configuration and Ubuntu Linux releases but now taking a look at the 2D performance of the open and closed-source AMD Radeon Linux graphics drivers.


      • X.Org Server 1.14 Is Being Readied For Release Soon
        The second release candidate of X.Org Server 1.14 is now available ahead of the official release in a few weeks time.

        RC1 came in mid-December while on Wednesday night was finally RC2 as tagged by Keith Packard. With RC2 being out, only critical bug-fixes will now be accepted ahead of the xorg-server 1.14 release. The final release of X.Org Server 1.14 is expected to happen on 5 March.


      • NVIDIA's PRIME Helpers Are Ready For Linux 3.9
        Aside from a lot of other exciting DRM driver happenings for the Linux 3.9 kernel, it looks like the DRM "PRIME Helpers" that were conceived by NVIDIA to help them support DMA_BUF in their binary driver will be merged.

        NVIDIA can't directly utilize the Linux kernel's DMA_BUF buffer sharing mechanism -- a zero-copy way to share buffers between different kernel drivers whether it be DRM or other sub-systems -- due to GPL-only kernel symbols and bickering amongst kernel developers.


      • An SDK Is Being Developed For Wayland's Weston






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



  • Distributions

    • Ubuntu? Fedora? Mint? Debian? We'll find you the right Linux to swallow
      The third factor in our trio is how well the desktop of your choice is supported. In some ways this is a chicken-and-egg question for newcomers since most won't know which desktop they want to use.

      Pretty much any Linux application can be installed on any Linux system, at least in theory. That means any desktop can be installed with any distro, but in the real world it doesn't always work out quite that smoothly. For example, the Cinnamon desktop is a relatively new desktop interface developed by the same people who created Mint Linux, which means Cinnamon is nicely integrated with the rest of Mint. That doesn't mean you can't install Cinnamon on Fedora or Arch. You can and people do, but it will most likely be a bit trickier and finding solutions to your problems can be more difficult since fewer users will be using your particular setup. That's why, to stick with the Cinnamon example, it would make more sense to use Mint if you really want to use Cinnamon.


    • First look at SparkyLinux 2.1 "Ultra" edition


    • Does Rebellin have a Cause?
      When I first test drove Rebellin for a section in an upcoming Linux Format, I reported that basically it seemed like a nice solid Debian respin, but many such are for free. It doesn't seem that Linux users gravitate towards the projects that require payment before trying. When I explained this to the founder and, currently, the sole developer, he said that there are indeed reasons why folks should want to pay the $5.

      Is $5 too much to spend for a distro that you can't test-drive first? Utkarsh Sevekar says, "people don't realize that there are very small players (like me) out there who can't wait till someone sponsors them or donate money to keep things going. Bills are a big thing." He says the $5 fee, that will actually be used for broadband costs for the downloads, will also include "email support to all which lasts for the lifetime of the product. There is no monthly/yearly fee here. All included in the initial price. There are no limits to communication either. Customers can bug me as much a they want."


    • New Releases



    • Screenshots



    • Red Hat Family

      • CentOS 5.9 Gnome Desktop Review
        CentOS 5.9 leaves users with a warm fuzzy and familiar feeling offering Gnome 2.16 as the primary desktop which is featured in this review. The desktop prospects for this release are not very impressive, but the server capabilities are endless. Derived from the recently released RHEL 5.9, here is what this version has to offer.


      • Red Hat Updates OpenShift PaaS
        Red Hat is updating its cloud server application technology stack with a new release of OpenShift Enterprise.




    • Debian Family





  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • What Does the FOSS Community Need?
    What does the FOSS community really need? We've tackled that question from a few different angles here on OStatic. We've pondered whether Linux could benefit from a united, community fund and wondered whether the FOSS community simply needs better evangelists.

    On Slashdot today, there is a lively discussion going on about what the FOSS world needs. Some of the ideas from readers are off the cuff, like this one: "Better hygiene. Less beards. More women." Quite a few of the idea are good, though.


  • GitHub's Boxen open sourced
    GitHub , the Git-centric project hosting and collaboration company, has announced the open sourcing of Boxen, its management and automation tool used within the company for managing Mac systems. The project, which was originally named "The Setup", was designed to allow developers to go from a new laptop to a system ready to hack the GitHub.com source within thirty minutes with a single command. They then ditched "The Setup" and wrote Boxen to replace it, so that any company could use it.


  • Events

    • Interview: Roy Sutton
      Roy Sutton is the community manager for HP's Open webOS. He supports developers in porting Open webOS to new platforms and is a contributor to the Enyo project. Roy too a few minutes for an interview with the SCALE Team about his presentation "From Closed to Open: The Open webOS Story," which will take place at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 24, in room Los Angeles B.


    • SCALE 11X update
      An update on events and happenings at SCALE 11x coming next weekend in Los Angeles.


    • SCALE 11X: Game on
      With more than 100 exhibitors and about 95 speakers at SCALE 11X this weekend, there's a lot to do and see. But when the sun goes down, the sessions end and the expo hall closes, the fun really begins for the attendees.




  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome

      • Report on the activity of companies in the WebKit project
        Today Bitergia presents the first of a series on analytics for the WebKit project. After the preview we published some weeks ago, we finally have more detailed and accurate numbers about the evolution of the project. In this case, we’re presenting a report on the activity of the companies contributing to WebKit based on the analysis of reviewed commits.




    • Mozilla

      • Download Firefox 19 for Windows, Mac and Linux
        Firefox 19 is slated for an official release on Tuesday, it will be released in few hours. If you can’t wait to grab the download you can do so through the Mozilla FTP servers. Downloads are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Browse the FTP folder and identify your platform file and download.


      • Mozilla Won't Join Opera at the WebKit Party
        Last week, Opera Software announced that its browser has reached 300 million active users, and dropped the news that the browser will move away from the longstanding Presto rendering engine and moving to WebKit. As noted here, this means that the number of browsing rendering engines to take seriously moves down to only three players, and WebKit--already legendary in the open source world--gets even more momentum and community involvement. But many observers are noting that the move isolates Mozilla, which remains focused on its Gecko Web rendering engine and SpiderMonkey Javascript engine for the Firefox browser.


      • Chrome OS Was Originally Based On......Firefox?
        Former Google engineer Jeff Nelson has a blog post up that is generating lots of buzz due to the inside details it supplies about the origin of Google's Chrome OS platform. The cloiud-focused operating system has drawn lots of headlines lately as more individual users, schools and businesses adopt Chromebooks.

        It's well-known that the Chromium core of Chrome OS was based on Linux, and Canonical even helped Google shape the operating system. But among the details that Nelson recalls, the first versions of Chrome OS were actually based on Mozilla Firefox.






  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Ernst & Young: Cloud, SaaS dominating tech industry acquisitions


    • Rackspace lands Staples as cloud customer, OpenStack pilots ramp
      During Rackspace's third quarter, the company had a bevy of high-level conversations with technology executives about OpenStack, an open source cloud operating system. Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier noted the fourth quarter turned many of those OpenStack conversations into pilots.


    • Open source education program, CanDo, handles big data
      In 2005, Arlington Career Center teacher David Welsh had an unmanagable list of 77 Video and Media Technology competencies to evaluate for each student in his classes. A Yorktown High School computer science teacher Jeff Elkner was teaching his students to program in Python and bursting with enthusiam for engaging students and teachers in open source processes. I had a new job leading the SchoolTool project with a charge from entrepreneur and philanthropist Mark Shuttleworth to create open source administrative software for schools around the world.




  • Databases

    • How the co-creator of MySQL came to love databases
      Monty Widenius, the co-creator of the MySQL database, became a multimillionaire when MySQL was sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008. But Monty subsequently left MySQL just before Sun was acquired by Oracle, and hired many of the original developers to work on his fork, MariaDB.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • How to affordably own your office software
      If you take a close look at Microsoft's new Office licensing, it's crystal clear: Microsoft no longer wants you to own your office software. They want you to rent it. So, why not get LibreOffice for free instead?




  • CMS

    • Webmaking with trainee teachers
      This year’s programmes now include:

      * Plenty of blogging – we’ve a Drupal powered bespoke blog/portfolio system, so trainees quickly get used to adding links, uploading images and embedding media; we also showcase The 100 Word Challenge and a few sign up for the team.




  • Education

    • Why libraries are intrinsically open and should adopt open source solutions
      Sharing is a fundamental part of the open source philosophy, and the same goes for libraries. Spreading, disseminating, and breaking down barries to gaining knowledge is a core mission of most library systems and their staff.

      That that end, libraries—which are essentially hubs of knowledge and gathering places for learning and continuing daily education—may choose to implement open source tools and software.

      An advocate for "open libraries", Nicole Engard, is one of our new opensource.com community moderators, a long-time contributor, and a 2013 People's Choice Award winner. She has a passion for libraries and wants libraries' core operations to run on open source.




  • Funding



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Gnuplot—the Grandfather of Graphing Utilities
      In these columns, I have covered several different scientific packages for doing calculations in many different areas of research. I also have looked at various packages that handle graphical representation of these calculations. But, one package that I've never looked at before is gnuplot (http://www.gnuplot.info). Gnuplot has been around since the mid-1980s, making it one of the oldest graphical plotting programs around. Because it has been around so long, it's been ported to most of the operating systems that you might conceivably use. This month, I take a look at the basics of gnuplot and show different ways to use it.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Data

      • Using open data for regional collaboration
        I have a regional, collaborative philosophy of open data initiatives and municipalities. In North Carolina, the cities of Cary, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill all share the economic engine that is the Research Triangle Park. They also share the innovation engine of five, top universities.




    • Open Access/Content

      • LIVE WEBCAST: Lessig discusses Aaron’s Law
        A long time friend and mentor of Swartz, who helped develop RSS as a teen, co-owned the popular website Reddit, and was a key architect of the Creative Commons, Lessig has written about Swartz on his personal blog and the Huffington Post, and he spoke about Schwartz’s life and achievements on the radio show Democracy Now. Swartz is the inspiration for “Aaron’s Law,” a draft bill, introduced by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), which would limit the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.



      • Aaron Swartz files reveal how FBI tracked internet activist




    • Open Hardware







Leftovers

  • Reinstalling -- gasp! -- Windows
    I love my Compaq Presario 2170CA laptop. It has every peripheral that I use in my multifarious adventures, being one of the last laptops made with both a floppy disk drive and a "real" parallel port. But I'm preparing to travel with it, and its 40 GB hard drive was full. So rather than buy a new laptop, I decided to upgrade the hard drive. I found a new 120 GB drive on eBay, and installed it with no problems.


  • That Mitchell & Webb Crook
    he has now found a way to channel his hatred of the anti-necon movement into “comedy”, by making a sitcom poking fun at me, and making light of our government’s alliance with the Uzbek dictatorship.

    Our Men, commissioned by the BBC, is a hilarious comedy about the drunken and incompetent British Ambassador in Tazbekistan [which the BBC says does not represent Tashkent, Uzbekistan] and the jolly despot President Kairat [No relation, says the BBC, to President Karimov].


  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Israeli soldier posts Instagram image of Palestinian child in crosshairs of rifle


    • Georgia Set to Execute Man with IQ of 70 Today
      Warren Hill has an IQ of 70 and placed in the third percentile on his middle-school standardized test. Doctors have found him to be "mildly mentally retarded." But even though the US Supreme Court in 2002 ruled that executing the mentally handicapped is unconstitutional, Hill will be put to death today, barring a late intervention by the courts.



    • The Undetectable Firearms Act and 3D-printed guns (FAQ)
      They might come for your plastic gun, but they're not coming for your 3D printer just yet.



    • Warning – Disturbing Images: The Last Hours Of The Son Of Prabhakaran
      A series of photographs taken a few hours apart and on the same camera, show Balachandran Prabhakaran, son of Villupillai Prabhakaran, head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). One of them shows the boy sitting in a bunker, alive and unharmed, apparently in the custody of Sri Lankan troops. Another, a few hours later, shows the boy’s body lying on the ground, his chest pierced by bullets.

      [...]

      The photographs will place additional pressure on David Cameron to announce whether or not he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM), e in Sri Lanka in November. A Downing Street official with Mr Cameron on his visit to India said on Monday that no decision had yet been taken.

      NGOs and organisations, among them the cross-party Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, have called on him to boycott the meeting.



    • An Attempt to Take Tools From Tyrants
      Mr. Muhafdha continues to fight for human rights even though the Bahraini government has clamped down on any opposition, intensifying its electronic surveillance. “No matter how I communicate, they know,” Mr. Muhafdha said in an interview. “The regime has sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment allowing it to spy on everything we do by social media, e-mail and phone.”


    • German Prosecutor Would Have Filed Indictments for CIA Rendition Had US Provided Information
      The German newspaper Spiegel has an interview with a German prosecutor, who ultimately decided not to file indictments in the case of Egyptian Muslim cleric Abu Omar. Omar was kidnapped in a CIA operation in Italy and rendered to Germany and then Egypt, where he was tortured.

      Last week, according to Reuters, a Milan appeals court in Italy sentenced the country’s foreign military intelligence chief, Niccolo Pollari, to 10 years in jail for his role. Pollari’s former deputy, Marco Mancini, was sentenced to 9 years. The sentencing followed a move by the court to sentence the American former CIA station chief to seven years in absentia for his involvement. And the court awarded 1 million Euros in damages to Omar along with one half a million Euros to his wife.


    • Amazon sacks 'neo-Nazi' security firm
      Amazon has ended its relationship with a security firm in Germany following accusations that guards in neo-Nazi uniforms were intimidating foreign workers at the online retailer's distribution centres.


    • Amazon Fires 'Neo-Nazi' Guards In Germany


    • German president meets neo-Nazi victims’ families
      German President Joachim Gauck has received the families of Turks who were killed by Neo-Nazis in Germany and said he wanted societal prejudices to be tackled as well as problems within institutions.


    • Terror Tuesday: why kill list courts are not the answer
      If you were surprised to hear one particular rhetorical flourish in the President’s State of the Union address, imagine how Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) felt. For well over a year he and a handful of other Senators had been trying to obtain the government’s legal justification for its targeted killing program without getting any response from the Justice Department.


    • Don't even think of proposing new gun-control laws, legislator says


    • Carrie Cordero on FISA Court Lessons for a “Drone Court”


    • John Kiriakou Orange Ball | Fresh Juice Party
      Disgruntled Heiress teams up with Code Pink and Fresh Juice Party to throw posh prison send-off for CIA Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou


    • Is the FBI’s Community Outreach Program a Trojan Horse?
      In December 2011, the ACLU released FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, which showed that San Francisco FBI agents were exploiting community outreach programs for intelligence-gathering purposes. Now it appears FBI agents in Minneapolis have adopted this ruse, and may be using it in even more sinister ways.



    • The Softball Question That Wasn’t
      During a Google+ Hangout yesterday, conservative commentator Lee Doren asked President Obama whether he claims the authority to kill a U.S. citizen suspected of being associated with al Qaeda or associated forces on U.S. soil. Notice the question was restricted to only a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil (our concerns are, of course, broader and apply to the White House’s illegitimate claim of authority to kill people it unilaterally deems a threat, even if they are far from any battlefield, abroad).



    • The Lesser Evil
      What the Obama administration isn’t telling you about drones: The standard rule is capture, not kill.


    • The Civil War and World War II: The Worst Guides in the War on Terrorism
      Obama's defenders keep citing sui generis conflicts to justify his actions in radically different circumstances.


    • Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet


    • Why a `Drone Court’ Won’t Work
      President Barack Obama’s drone war is in danger of becoming an Abu Ghraib-style public-relations nightmare, drawing criticism at home from left and right (and, it seems, even many U.S. troops), spurring angry protests in Pakistan and Yemen, and becoming a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.


    • Obama, the puppet master
      The results are transformational. With more technology, and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has tipped unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous development, and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan of the mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. And future presidents from both parties will undoubtedly copy and expand on this approach.



    • As Automatic Defense Cuts Near, Defense Contractors Keep Congress At Arm's Length
      Nearly half of the $1.2 trillion federal budget reduction would come from defense spending.


    • Hubris Isn't the Half of It
      As our government was making a fraudulent case to attack Iraq in 2002-2003, the MSNBC television network was doing everything it could to help, including booting Phil Donahue and Jeff Cohen off the air. The Donahue Show was deemed likely to be insufficiently war-boosting and was thus removed 10 years ago next week, and 10 days after the largest antiwar (or anything else) demonstrations in the history of the world, as a preemptive strike against the voices of honest peaceful people.



    • Tomgram: Greg Grandin, Why Latin America Didn't Join Washington's Counterterrorism Posse
      There was a scarcely noted but classic moment in the Senate hearings on the nomination of John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism “tsar,” to become the next CIA director. When Senator Carl Levin pressed him repeatedly on whether waterboarding was torture, he ended his reply this way: “I have a personal opinion that waterboarding is reprehensible and should not be done. And again, I am not a lawyer, senator, and I can't address that question.”



    • Racial Profiling, Islamophobia, and Whistleblowers: Targeting the Unruly Threat


    • The AUMF Fallacy
      All of them claim the Administration is operating exclusively within the AUMF, and based on that assumption conclude certain things about what the Administration has done.

      There is abundant evidence to refute that. After all, the Administration invokes self-defense about as many times as it does AUMF in the white paper. The white paper actually situates the authority to kill an American in “constitutional responsibility to protect the country” — that is, Article II authority — and inherent right to self-defense even before it lists the AUMF.


    • BATRAVILLE AND LEW: DoD plans are shortsighted, unethical


    • Combatant Immunity and the Death of Anwar al-Awlaqi
      The importance of the combatant-civilian distinction was apparent when the Pentagon prepared the latest version of the Manual for Military Commissions [PDF], the rulebook for the trials of some of the alleged unlawful enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay. The 2007 version of the Manual for Military Commissions, which made rules implementing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, said that "[f]or the accused to have been acting in violation of the law of war, the accused must have taken acts as a combatant without having met the requirements for lawful combatancy." It went on to add that such persons "do not enjoy combatant immunity because they have failed to meet the requirements of lawful combatancy under the law of war." That language was removed when the current manual was drafted because of concerns among senior US government officials that the language on lawful combatancy and combatant immunity could be viewed as an acknowledgment that CIA civilian drone operators are committing war crimes.



    • UN Committee Criticizes Obama Administration’s Use Of Child Soldiers’ Waivers
      As the conflict in Mali wages on, reports from the frontlines reveal that the al-Qaeda linked Northern Mali rebels have conscripted child soldiers into their ranks. These reports reflect the persistence of a gross human rights violation in military conflict.

      And Mali is not alone. Child soldiers are used by non-state groups and government forces alike. American soldiers around the world have come under attack from forces using child soldiers, a complex challenge for the U.S. military. However, the United States has also provided military assistance to governments using child soldiers within their ranks or within government-supported armed groups. Child Soldiers International (CSI), an international NGO committed to preventing the recruitment and use of child soldiers, has found evidence of child soldiers in government militaries and government supported armed groups with which the US military maintains key military-aid relationships, such as Afghanistan Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Libya, the Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan, Thailand and Yemen.



    • The premises and purposes of American exceptionalism
      ...insufficient to claim the mere mantle of Greatest Country on the Planet


    • Don't Trust the Government on Drones




  • Cablegate



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance

    • Goldman Sachs Back To Hurting Clients As Firm Is Targeted In Insider Trading Probe
      Goldman Sachs is apparently back to it’s old tricks despite the $550 million settlement with the SEC over hurting clients in the mortgage securities market. Acting on what may have been inside information (more on that later) the firm decided it wanted to heavily invest in Heinz (HNZ), which later would announce it was in talks to be bought out by Warren Buffet. So Goldman Sachs started buying up shares ahead of the merger.


    • Goldman Sachs says cooperating with Heinz probe
      Goldman Sachs Group Inc is cooperating with a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe into insider options trading in H.J. Heinz...


    • DC’s quest to silence Elizabeth Warren
      No, what’s important here is what Politico actually got right in its story: namely, that the assumption in Washington is, indeed, that silence is a virtue – that, in other words, the best thing for a newly elected liberal senator to do is shut her mouth, go along to get along, play by the club’s rules and not make any waves. Summing up that Beltway conventional wisdom, Politico writes that only by “flying under the radar” can a liberal “star” like Warren develop a “reputation as a serious legislator.”





  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Censorship



  • Privacy



    • Can Police Be Trusted With Drones?
      Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern wants to buy a surveillance drone, or, as he prefers to call it, a "small Unmanned Aerial System." At a meeting before the county's Board of Supervisors last week, he claimed that he'd only use the drone for felony cases, not to spy on people or monitor political activists. But a few minutes later he'd seemed to change his mind, adding: "I don't want to lock myself into just felonies."

      Catcalls and hisses erupted from a crowd of some 100 anti-drone activists. One man later called the proposal "an assault on my community."


    • Should drones be used to spy on Americans?
      Drones aren't just for fighting the war on terror in the Middle East anymore - they might be watching you.



    • Ask the Expert: Is the Government Really Trying to Get Access to Websites for Surveillance Purposes?


    • Washington State Residents Say "No!" to Police Surveillance Drones
      Last February, President Obama signed a bill allowing up to 30,000 police drones to be flown by police departments and the Department of Homeland Security within the United States to keep an eye on “we the people.”


    • Logic of surveillance and problems of the enforcer class
      Ian Welsh's piece on the "logic of surveillance" makes several good points, but this one really smacked me in the face: "The enforcer class...is paid in large part by practical immunity to many laws and a license to abuse ordinary people."


    • The Logic of Surveillance


    • Your Own Smart Phone, Turned Against You
      My day starts out normally enough: I drop the kids at school and head to the Starbucks, where I use my Smart Phone to pay for my tall Caffé Mocha soy because that’s how I roll: I save one minute not having to reach into my wallet to physically pull out my credit card, it’s logged into the app.

      After "checking in" with Foursquare, which tells me a couple of moms from the school have already been there this morning, and then my Facebook, which tells me another "friend" is headed there now, I dash to the Safeway, where I get discounts on my feta cheese, avocados, organic yogurt and Fat Bastard chardonnay because I logged it all in the store’s Just for U program. Again, that’s how we roll.


    • First interview in 57 years for chief of Germany’s most secretive spy agency
      The head of the German military’s counterintelligence service, which is widely seen as the country’s most secretive intelligence organization, has given the first public media interview in the agency’s 57-year history. Most readers of this blog will be aware of the Federal Republic of Germany’s two best-known intelligence agencies: the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), tasked with domestic intelligence, and the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the country’s primary external intelligence agency. Relatively little is known, however, about the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD), which has historically been much smaller and quieter than its sister agencies. As part of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, the MAD is tasked with conducting counterintelligence and detecting what it terms “anti-constitutional activities” within the German armed forces. It is currently thought to consist of around 1,200 staff located throughout Germany and in at least seven countries around the world, including Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Djibouti.




  • Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • Intellectual Monopolies





Recent Techrights' Posts

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We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries
Links 26/03/2024: Inflation Problems, Strikes in Finland
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Losing Children, Carbon Tax Discussed
Links for the day
Mark Shuttleworth resigns from Debian: volunteer suicide and Albania questions unanswered, mass resignations continue
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 26/03/2024: 6,000 Layoffs at Dell, Microsoft “XBox is in Real Trouble as a Hardware Manufacturer”
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Microsofters Still Trying to 'Extend' Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Look What IBM's Red Hat is Turning CentOS Into
For 17 years our site ran on CentOS. Thankfully we're done with that...
The Julian Paul Assange Verdict: The High Court Has Granted Assange Leave to Appeal Extradition to the United States, Decision Adjourned to May 20th Pending Assurances
The decision is out
The Microsoft and Apple Antitrust Issues Have Some But Not Many Commonalities
gist of the comparison to Microsoft
ZDNet, Sponsored by Microsoft for Paid-for Propaganda (in 'Article' Clothing), Has Added Pop-Up or Overlay to All Pages, Saying "813 Partners Will Store and Access Information on Your Device"
Avoiding ZDNet may become imperative given what it has turned into
Julian Assange Verdict 3 Hours Away
Their decision is due to be published at 1030 GMT
People Who Cover Suicide Aren't Suicidal
Assange didn't just "deteriorate". This deterioration was involuntary and very much imposed upon him.
Overworking Kills
The body usually (but not always) knows best
Former Red Hat Chief (CEO), Who Decided to Leave the Company Earlier This Month, Talks About "Cloud Company Red Hat" to CNBC
shows a lack of foresight and dependence on buzzwords
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 25, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 25, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Discord Does Not Make Money, It's Spying on People and Selling Data/Control (38% is Allegedly Controlled by the Communist Party of China)
a considerable share exists
In At Least Two Nations Windows is Now Measured at 2% "Market Share" (Microsoft Really Does Not Want People to Notice That)
Ignore the mindless "AI"-washing
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Still Has Hundreds of Thousands of Simultaneously-Online Unique Users
The scale of IRC