Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 5/6/2014: Lenovo Backs GNU/Linux; International Day Against DRM





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Open-Source Software Specialist Selected as Executive Director of Wikipedia
    The foundation that runs Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, has named a new executive director, Lila Tretikov, a software engineer in Silicon Valley.


  • OpenProject features adaptive timeline reports for project management
    Who doesn't know the challenges in complex project teams and organizations? Multiple projects need to be managed, often with various dependencies to other teams, partners, external suppliers or other parties. Different stakeholders require a different level of information. Questions arise and often cannot be answered satisfactory in many project teams: What is the timeline of our project? What needs to be done to reach the next milestone? How can we track dependencies to other parties in the project plan? Surprisingly, even with the existing OSS tool environment for project management, teams are often still not able to manage complexity.


  • Square reaffirms open source commitment with latest release
    Now the payments platform is gearing up to push out another 250,000 lines of code from one unit alone.


  • ZeGo Open Source Multifunctional Delta Linear Robot
    ZeGo happens to be an opensource multifunctional delta linear robot that relies on magnetic-based attachments to get the job done. In other words, this is a special kind of 3D printer of sorts that arrives at the same destination, albeit taking a slightly different route from what we are more or less used to. The brainchild of a certain Daniel Goncharov (who is one of the co-developer of ZeGo), the ZeGo will be able to transform into a 3D printer, engraver, entry level pick and place machine – and much more, in a twinkling of an eye.


  • Out in the Open: An Open Source Website That Gives Voters a Platform to Influence Politicians
    Argentine political scientist Pia Mancini says we’re caught in a “crisis of representation.” Most of these protests have popped up in countries that are at least nominally democratic, but so many people are still unhappy with their elected leaders. The problem, Mancini says, is that elected officials have drifted so far from the people they represent, that it’s too hard for the average person to be heard.


  • Open Source ‘Eating’ Software World: Samsung
    Samsung Electronics is ramping up its contributions to various open source projects as the company depends more on open source software in its products. The company sees open source software as a faster path to innovation.


  • Open source failure is its greatest success
    Open source is all about experimentation and iteration, which is why a 98% failure rate may well be the best sign of its success.


  • 10 steps to migrate your closed software to open source
    Difio is a Django based application that keeps track of packages and tells you when they change. It provides multiple change analytics so you can make an informed decision on when or what to upgrade. Difio was created as closed software, then I decided to migrate it to open source to allow for in-house deployments and attract a larger community around the project.


  • Atom, GitHub's code editor based on web tech, goes open source
    Code-sharing site GitHub has announced that Atom, its highly customizable code editor, has left beta and its full source code is now available to world+dog under the MIT open source license.

    Why another text editor? In an interview, GitHub developer Nathan Sobo told The Reg that he and the other developers wanted a powerful editor that was fully customizable using JavaScript, which Sobo argued is now the most popular scripting language in the world.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Mozilla offers FCC a net neutrality plan—with a twist
        The Mozilla Foundation today is filing a petition asking the Federal Communications Commission to declare that ISPs are common carriers, but there's a twist.


      • Mozilla Issues Proposal for Protecting Net Neutrality
        For as long as the commercial web has been part of our lives, debates over Net neutrality have been with us as well. We got a reminder of this back in January, when a federal Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order that prevented Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from blocking and discriminating against edge providers, including any website operator, application developer or cloud service provider.


      • All-in-One Internet Application Suite SeaMonkey 2.26 Is Based on Firefox 29
        The project borrows a number of features straight from Mozilla Firefox, but some options can be found only in SeaMonkey. For example, the delimiter for forwarded messages can now be configured, an option to not strip signatures on reply has been added to prevent top signatures from deleting the body, and an OK button has been added to the RSS Subscription dialog.






  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Updated DevStack OpenDaylight VM Image for OpenStack IceHouse
      Here is an updated Fedora 20 image for building OpenStack Icehouse and OpenDaylight. ODL is now merged into the upcoming OpenStack Icehouse release so now you can install ODL directly from OpenStack trunk. The updated image comes from Kyle Mestery who was primarily responsible for getting the OpenStack/OpenDaylight merge and navigating the process. Thanks also to Andrew Grimberg from the Linux Foundation with assisting with getting testing setup and all the code contributors from the community.


    • Deploying OpenStack made easy with Puppet


    • IT Departments are Buying Into the Cloud, But Have Security Concerns
      New data from cloud computing researchers is arriving, and it's clear that enterprises everywhere are poised to boost their spending in the cloud, even as concerns over security may hamper adoption of open cloud platforms.




  • CMS



    • Drupal 8's accessibility advantage
      When it was released in 2011, Drupal 7 was the most accessible open source content management system (CMS) available. I expect that this will be true until the release of Drupal 8. Web accessibility requires constant vigilance and will be something that will always need attention in any piece of software striving to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 guidelines.




  • Business



  • BSD



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • Richard Stallman Answers Your Questions
      A few of the questions asked about "open source software" in such a way that, responding to them directly, I'd be classifying programs as "open" or "closed". That I will not do, because those terms presuppose a different philosophy based on different values.

      Rather than give no answer to those questions, I modified them to say "free software" instead, and answered them that way. (Square brackets show these changes.) I hope the answers to these modified questions are of interest to readers. They are rather different from what an open source supporter would say.


    • GNU Xnee 3.19 ('Lucia') released
      We are pleased to announce the availability of GNU Xnee 3.19


    • GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 30 new GNU releases!




  • Public Services/Government



    • 40% Italian public administrations uses open source
      Just over 40 per cent of Italy's public administrations is using open source software solutions, reports the country's National Statistical Institute, Istat. According to its 'Public institutions' 2011 Census' report, published on 31 March, it is especially state, regional and provincial administrations.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Hardware



      • Build your own open source cargo bike (or buy it from XYZ Cycle)
        April says cargo bikes are better than cars but they are expensive. Over at Low Tech Magazine, Kris de Decker shows an alternative built out of open source technology, the XYZ Nodule designed by N55. You could build this bike yourself; it is all creative commons licenced. The system is so simple that you don't need complicated or expensive tools; really, not much more than a drill and a hand saw.






  • Programming



  • Cisco

    • Cisco Opflex Protocol Moves Forward at OpenStack and OpenDaylight
      A month ago, Cisco announced a new approach to define network policy with the OpFlex protocol. The OpFlex control protocol was submitted as an Internet Engineering Task Force draft on April 2.

      A key promise that Cisco made during its OpFlex release is that the protocol and its associated group policy construct would be contributed to open-source development communities to help foster an open standard.


    • Cisco to Open Source Service Provider Routing Software
      At The Cable Show 2014 in Los Angeles Cisco (CSCO) announced that it will make its service provider customer premise equipment (CPE) routing software available in open-source format, and highlighted the extension of Cisco’s Service Provider architecture for cable operators to deliver more bandwidth, higher service tiers and greater agility in deploying new applications..


    • Little-known Cisco open source project among contributors to OpenStack Neutron policy blueprint
      Multiple vendors, including an open source project within Cisco, have had a policy blueprint approved for the OpenStack cloud platform’s Neutron networking component.

      The blueprint is intended to allow for an application-centric interface to Neutron that complements its existing network-centric interface. Application awareness will take Neutron beyond basic connectivity to network service enablement, such as service chaining, QoS, access control, path properties, and others.






Leftovers



  • UKIP forced to cancel Freepost address after being sent FAECES in the post
    UKIP have cancelled their Freepost address after disgruntled members of the public sent them FAECES in the post.


  • Science



  • Health/Nutrition



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression





  • Finance



    • Railroaded
      It was sad therefore to see Ed Miliband squirming on television yesterday as he struggled to reassure various neo-con mouthpieces that he did not share the good sense of his backbenchers. The present system was not working, he said, and we needed to explore new forms of ownership model. What these were he did not say, but plainly they did not include taking anything back into public ownership. The most he offered was a tepid concern about the reprivatisation of East Coast, but then he did not exactly not want it to be reprivatized either.


    • U.S. attorney general says banks may face criminal cases soon
      The U.S. Justice Department is pursuing criminal investigations of financial institutions that could result in action in the coming weeks and months, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a video, adding that no company was "too big to jail."


    • The ugly truth of offshore outsourcing surfaces at last
      We can deny it no longer. Even the recruitment industry is now saying it. Offshoring has killed the local ICT jobs market.

      Surprisingly, the latest confirmation that Australia is contributing to its own skilled jobs demise comes from a source that has in the past been accused of hyping the fictitious ICT skills shortage.

      Listed recruiter Clarius, which owns the Candle ICT recruitment firm, in its latest Skills Indicator report, states that in the March quarter there was an oversupply of 1800 ICT professionals.


    • Larry Lessig's Anti-SuperPAC SuperPAC Already Halfway To $1 Million Initial Target
      Last Thursday, we wrote about Larry Lessig launching the MAYDAY Citizens' SuperPAC, an attempted "moonshot" to crowdfund a SuperPAC with the long term goal to elect politicians to Congress who will be dedicated to ending the power of money in politics. It is, as we noted, the SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs. The structure of the plan is interesting in that it's a staged approach explained on the Mayone website. The first two "test" stages happen this year, with the first goal being to raise $1 million by the end of May, at which point Lessig will get someone (who almost certainly is already lined up) to donate another $1 million. Then they launch stage 2 for June, which is an attempt to the same, but at $5 million (with a further matching $5 million). If both of those work out, the SuperPAC will then have $12 million, which it will use in 5 races for the mid-term elections this year. And, with that in place, the goal will be to launch a much bigger crowdfunding effort for 2016. Many people seemed to misunderstand the original plan, thinking that this $12 million part was the moonshot. It's not. It's a test flight.




  • Privacy



    • Web round up – Free stuff, NSA Jobs & new packages!
      As is usual, if you were looking to employ people, you wouldn’t go the traditional route of CV’s, interviews and recruitment days….no, you’d go straight to Twitter. Apparently there’s some tweets to “crack” if you want a job. You can read more about it here. For those people who find that code breaking “isn’t their thing”, maybe they can walk around their neighbourhood recording people’s phone-calls and snooping in on their private lives. I’m sure the NSA will snap them up. And if you fail there, you can always apply for the British “Intelligence” service who, as in everything these days, are a pale imitation of their American cousins.
    • Cops Must Swear Silence to Access Vehicle Tracking System
      It’s no secret that police departments around the country are deploying automated license plate readers to build massive databases to identify the location of vehicles. But one company behind this Orwellian tracking system is determined to stay out of the news.
    • Dropbox and Box users are leaking personal data
      CLOUD FILE STORAGE users are inadvertently exposing their personal data to all and sundry due to a security flaw in public link URLs.

      Enterprise collaboration company Intralinks has gleefully reported the discovery made by its team during a "routine analysis of Google Adwords and Google Analytics data".


    • Pensioners withdraw lawsuit against IBM over China sales


    • IBM Shareholder Drops Suit Over Cooperation With NSA
      An International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) shareholder withdrew a lawsuit claiming the company’s cooperation with a National Security Agency eavesdropping program caused a drop in its China sales.


    • Be careful what you send through email on iOS 7
      You might want to hold off on sending sensitive attachments through your iPhone or iPad if it runs on iOS 7 or higher. 9to5Mac draws our attention to a recent post from German security researcher Andreas Kurtz, who claims that encryption for email attachments has been disabled on iOS versions 7 and higher, even the recently released iOS 7.1.1 that was issued specifically to fix security flaws. Kurtz says that he reported the problem to Apple, which supposedly acknowledged it but didn’t give a timeline for when a fix would be released.


    • Chairman of key House committee agrees to proceed with NSA reform bill
      The chairman of a key committee in the House of Representatives agreed to move on a major surveillance overhaul on Monday, after months of delay.


    • ​Dueling NSA reform bills set for showdown in the House


    • Bill to end NSA's mass surveillance moves closer to a vote
      In an effort to get it through committee with its teeth intact a slew of nonprofits and major companies, including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, DropBox, Mozilla and Reddit have signed a letter to its members stating their support. Plus there are 140 co-sponsors in the House and a sister bill working its way through the Senate with the support of Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.




  • Civil Rights



    • Concerned City Resident Pays $15K to Bail Homeless Advocate Out of Jail


    • Here's the Image From Obama's Trip to the Philippines That He Doesn't Want You to See
      That's the reception he got when he visited Manila's presidential palace on Monday. Some 800 activists gathered to protest his signing of a new agreement that grants U.S. forces comprehensive access to Filipino military bases.


    • Arrests, fines as anti-capitalist protest in Montreal declared illegal
      Montreal police arrested five people and handed out more than 130 fines on Thursday as they clamped down on anti-capitalist protesters during the annual May Day demonstration for workers' rights.

      The demonstrators took to the streets to voice their opposition to the "ravages" of capitalism, with this year's theme focused on government austerity, environmental damage inflicted by the mining industry and the financial sector that supports it.

      But the group barely made it two city blocks before riot police cornered them.


    • First Nations Education Act 101: A settler's guide
      You may not be aware of this, but there is an important and heated debate going on among Indigenous communities right now. The issue at hand is a federal bill designed, ostensibly, to return control of First Nations education to the First Nations themselves.


    • Occupy Wall Street Activist Cecily McMillan Found Guilty of Assault on Police Officer


    • Cecily McMillan's guilty verdict reveals our mass acceptance of police violence
    • Cecily McMillan’s Guilt: Injustice at Its Most Basic
      Cecily McMillan’s guilty verdict in Manhattan district court on Monday delivered a gut punch to the last vestiges of Occupy Wall Street. Above all, the decision highlights the workings of a criminal justice system bent on chilling dissent and defending the status quo.

      According to the jury, McMillan, a 25-year-old New School student known in Occupy circles for her moderate views, is guilty of second-degree felony assault on a police officer during an Occupy Wall Street protest on March 17, 2012. Denied bail and taken away in handcuffs, she will await her sentencing in a cell. She faces up to seven years in prison.


    • The Crime of Peaceful Protest
      Cecily McMillan, wearing a red dress and high heels, her dark, shoulder-length hair stylishly curled, sat behind a table with her two lawyers Friday morning facing Judge Ronald A. Zweibel in Room 1116 at the Manhattan Criminal Court. The judge seems to have alternated between boredom and rage throughout the trial, now three weeks old. He has repeatedly thrown caustic barbs at her lawyers and arbitrarily shut down many of the avenues of defense. Friday was no exception.

      The silver-haired Zweibel curtly dismissed a request by defense lawyers Martin Stolar and Rebecca Heinegg for a motion to dismiss the case. The lawyers had attempted to argue that testimony from the officer who arrested McMillan violated Fifth Amendment restrictions against the use of comments made by a defendant at the time of arrest. But the judge, who has issued an unusual gag order that bars McMillan’s lawyers from speaking to the press, was visibly impatient, snapping, “This debate is going to end.” He then went on to uphold his earlier decision to heavily censor videos taken during the arrest, a decision Stolar said “is cutting the heart out of my ability to refute” the prosecution’s charge that McMillan faked a medical seizure in an attempt to avoid being arrested. “I’m totally handicapped,” Stolar lamented to Zweibel.


    • Imprisoned Al Jazeera Journalist Details Abu Ghraib Torture & Why He’s Suing U.S. Contractor CACI
      Ten years after the first publication of photos from inside the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, we speak to Al Jazeera journalist Salah Hassan about his torture by U.S. forces inside the facility. To date, no high-ranking U.S. official has been held accountable for the torture at Abu Ghraib, but Hassan and other former prisoners are attempting to sue one of the private companies, CACI International, that helped run the prison.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • DRM



    • Mark the Day Against DRM with discounts on books and videos; join the EFF live video panel
      Today is the Day Against DRM, organized by the Free Software Foundation through their Defective by Design campaign against digital rights management (DRM), which they refer to instead with the more accurate moniker "digital restrictions management."
    • Amazon Started the Day Against DRM Festivities a Week Early by Intentionally Breaking My Kindle eBooks
      Early this morning I got an email with an ebook I have been waiting for. It was Mytro by John Biggs, which I had backed in the Kickstarter campaign, and the email delivered the DRM-free ebooks I had bought. I’m not one to wait, so i immediately downloaded the ebook and tried to open it in the Kindle app on my PC.


    • Global community rallies for International Day Against DRM
      Today a wide variety of community groups, activist organizations and businesses are taking part in the 8th International Day Against DRM (DayAgainstDRM.org). The groups are united in envisioning a world without Digital Restrictions Management, technology that places arbitrary restrictions on what people can do with digital media, often by spying on them. As the largest anti-DRM event in the world, the International Day Against DRM is an important counterpoint to the pro-DRM message broadcast by powerful media and software companies. The Day is coordinated by Defective by Design (DefectiveByDesign.org), the anti-DRM campaign of the Free Software Foundation.


    • Internet Day Against DRM: Limit the use of DRM technologies
      On International Day Against DRM, the Open Rights Group is calling for limits on the use of DRM technologies, which restrict the ways that we access and control digital content.






Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
 
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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