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Links 25/3/2015: India Moving to Free Software





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Open source and DevOps aren’t mandatory, but neither is survival
    I can’t recall the exact time I learned about open source software, but I can certainly narrow down the place. I quickly realized how transformative it could be. In 1996, I was sitting in the tech support department of a large ISP that provided hosting and connectivity to the Fortune 1000. Most of our servers ran Solaris, floppy disks arrived via snail mail, and we applied security updates manually adhering to a regime of updates and invoices prescribed by Sun Microsystems. It was a huge change from my university career of dumb terminals and mainframes.


  • How open source can improve your software's security
    Let's be blunt: your code is full of security holes. Just as bad, your employees are careless with passwords and other ways of cracking into your data.

    Hence, while we may wring our hands over security breaches at Target, Morgan Stanley, or dozens of other breaches, the reality is that the only reason your company has yet to be cracked is that hackers haven't bothered to try. Yet.


  • Govt formulates policy on adoption of open source software
    The Government on Wednesday formulated a 'Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India' that would encourage the formal adoption and use of Open Source Software (OSS) in Government organisations.

    Currently most eGovernance solutions are developed using Closed Source Software (CSS), which is licensed under the exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. In that the users' right to make modifications, sharing, studying, redistribution or reverse engineering is limited.


  • What the New York Times CIO asks when evaluating open source software
    In this interview, New York Times CIO Marc Frons explains how his teams evaluate whether to use open source or proprietary software and the simple question that helps guide the conversation.


  • Why Amnesty International uses Booktype 2.0 for report publishing
    Human rights NGO Amnesty International, a movement of more than seven million people, released its Annual Report for 2014-15 at the end of February. This 500+ page print book is published simultaneously in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, and translated into 12 other languages by local teams. It is composed of 160 detailed chapters written by regional experts on the human rights situation in most of the countries of the world.


  • Action Launcher 3.3 released with new open-source Live Wallpaper API


  • Events



    • Two microconferences accepted for the Linux Plumbers Conference
      The Checkpoint/Restart and Energy-aware scheduling and CPU power management microconferences will be held at LPC.


    • Shevirah Set to Break Into Mobile Penetration Testing Market
      Weidman, no stranger to the world of mobile security, was the recipient of a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Cyber Fast Track grant in 2012 for her open-source Smartphone Pentest Framework project. In 2015, Weidman has been accepted into the Mach37 Cybersecurity accelerator program, which invests in security startups and provides tools and training to launch companies.




  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Scaling
      ownCloud runs on small Raspberry Pi’s for your friends and family at home but also on huge clusters of web servers where it can serve over hundreds of thousands of users and petabytes of data. The current Raspberry Pi doesn’t deliver blazing fast performance but it works and the new raspberry pi 2 announced last month should be great hardware for small ownCloud deployments. Big deployments like the one in Germany or at CERN are usually ‘spread out’ over multiple servers, which brings us to the secret sauce that makes scalable software possible.


    • MapR Notes Big Demand for Free Hadoop Training Offerings
      Recently, MapR Technologies, focused on Hadoop, has been out with some interesting announcements that we covered. We also interviewed the company's Tomer Shiran (shown), who noted that there is a serious lack of job candidates with advanced Hadoop and data analytics skills. He added that MapR is providing free online training for Hadoop. Now, there is some evidence of how popular the free training has been, with the training program enrolling more than 10,000 registrants worldwide in its first 30 days.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • Healthcare



    • Why open source is key to mHealth data standards
      Open source software that allows for sharing and integration of mHealth data poses tremendous benefit for diagnosing, treating and preventing disease as well as the development of a more tailored patient healthcare strategy, according to Ida Sim, Ph.D, professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • GCC 5 Compiler will be released soon
      And the developers expect to have the final version ready probably at the end of April, this year.


    • LibrePlanet 2015 brings free software luminaries to MIT
      The 2015 LibrePlanet free software conference drew nearly 350 activists from around the world to discuss issues of freedom, privacy, and security in computing. Free Software Foundation founder and president Richard Stallman delivered the opening keynote, "Free software, free hardware, and other things" before a packed room at MIT's Stata Center, with hundreds of remote participants tuning in online.


    • GNU Manifesto Published Thirty Years Ago
      It was in March 1985 that Richard Stallman first set out his belief in the ideal of Free Software with the publication of the GNU Manifesto.

      [...]

      If you have always referred to Linux as just "Linux" then you might be surprised to know that the FSF claims that it really should always be called "GNU/Linux". There is also now a modified GNU/Linux system that has all proprietary and non-free code removed - Linux-libre.




  • Project Releases



  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



    • Intro to Grace: an open source educational programming language
      When it comes to picking a programming language to use when teaching people how to program, there are many, many options. Scratch is a good choice when teaching the basics because of its drag and drop building block method of programming. Python or Ruby are also good choices—both languages have a straight-forward syntax, are used in major real-world projects, and have excellent communities and supplemental projects built around them. Or there is Java, Objective-C, and C#, which are solid programming languages and marketable job skills. Honestly, they are all good choices, but when it comes to teaching programming in an academic setting, are they really the best way to go about doing it?






Leftovers



  • Germanwings to Cancel More Flights as Crew Members Refuse to Fly
    Germanwings will have to cancel more flights today as some crew members refuse to fly, a day after an Airbus A320 operated by the budget arm of Lufthansa crashed in the French Alps.

    "There will be irregularities... There are crew members who do not want to fly in the current situation, which we understand," a spokeswoman for Germanwings said.


  • Germanwings Is An Example Of European Carriers Trying To Compete In The Budget Airline Game
    Germanwings, the airline operating Flight 9525 that crashed in the French Alps Tuesday, may not be well known outside Europe. But the low-cost carrier owned by Lufthansa Group is emblematic of a trend many flag carriers in Europe are embracing: launching their own budget airlines for short-haul flights to compete with wildly successful low-cost carriers that have snatched 26 percent of market share in Europe.


  • Security



    • Google Hit Again by Unauthorized SSL/TLS Certificates
      The purpose of an SSL/TLS digital certificate is to provide a degree of authenticity and integrity to an encrypted connection. The SSL/TLS certificate helps users positively identify sites, but what happens when a certificate is wrongly issued? Just ask Google, which has more experience than most in dealing with this issue.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • New York Times: Nuclear Establishment Tool
      The New York Times' longtime nuclear power reporter, Matthew Wald, has announced that he's been hired as the senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the chief lobbying arm of the nuclear industry. Investigative reporter Karl Grossman wrote a piece a few years ago on the ties between the Times and the nuclear power establishment that go back to the dawn of the Atomic Age.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Jeb Bush Returns to the Washington Fund-Raising Well
      Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, has sounded that theme regularly in his fledgling presidential campaign. But even as he positions himself as a Washington outsider, he seems to have mastered a skill that is crucial in this city: tapping into the money-raising clout of the K Street lobbyists, political operatives, superlawyers and business leaders in Washington’s permanent class.


    • Information Warfare: Automated Propaganda and Social Media Bots
      NATO has announced that it is launching an “information war” against Russia.

      The UK publicly announced a battalion of keyboard warriors to spread disinformation.

      It’s well-documented that the West has long used false propaganda to sway public opinion.

      Western military and intelligence services manipulate social media to counter criticism of Western policies.




  • Privacy



    • Britain’s Surveillance State
      Edward Snowden exposed the extent of mass surveillance conducted not just by the United States but also by allies like Britain. Now, a committee of the British Parliament has proposed legal reforms to Britain’s intelligence agencies that are mostly cosmetic and would do little to protect individual privacy.


    • On CISA the Surveillance Bill
      After the Senate Intelligence Committee passed CISA, its sole opponent, Ron Wyden, said, “If information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections then that’s not a cybersecurity bill – it’s a surveillance bill by another name.” Robert Graham, an expert on intrusion-prevention, argues, “This is a bad police-state thing. It will do little to prevent attacks, but do a lot to increase mass surveillance.”




  • Civil Rights



    • White House chief of staff: 50 years of Israeli occupation must end
      White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough made it clear Monday that the crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations over the issue of a Palestinian state has not dissipated, despite efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to clarify remarks he made late in the election campaign that no such state would be established on his watch.


    • The $450 an Hour Terror Industry Echo Chamber
      Matthew Levitt, a prominent figure in the Terror Industry, has been testifying in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial. He’s one of a number of noted figures who gets presented as experts at trials who doesn’t speak Arabic, who hasn’t bothered to learn Arabic over the course of years of this work.

      Yesterday, Levitt spent several hours explaining how the explanation Dzhokhar wrote on a boat in Watertown had to have come from Anwar al-Awlaki’s propaganda.

      Just before Levitt testified yesterday, he RTed an article describing him as the expert that would testify at Dzhokhar’s trial. As soon as he got done, he RTed several more articles about his own testimony, describing himself as an “expert” “decoding” the boat. And then, for good measure, he RTed a livetweet from his own testimony.

      Today, on cross, it became clear the Awlaki propaganda on Dzhokhar’s computer was all Levitt got from prosectors. He didn’t know how long it had been on Dzhokhar’s computer. Nor did he know what else Dzhokhar has read. He also doesn’t know much about Chechnya, except in the context of Jihad. And though Levitt testified yesterday that there always must be a “radicalizer,” he did not know, nor was he asked, to identify the “radicalizer” in Dzhokhar’s life.


    • In Defense of Doing Wrong
      I want to say that it’s the wrong answer to the wrong question. It’s the wrong answer because we all have a lot to hide. We all talk and behave scandalously, and if all that [information] were available to everybody, it would cause no end of grief. It’s the wrong question because, as you’ve heard from all three of my fellow panelists tonight, privacy isn’t fundamentally about secrecy. It’s about things like autonomy—we’ve heard dignity, liberty, power, control, and maybe we’ll talk about that later. - See more at: http://thepointmag.com/2015/politics/in-defense-of-doing-wrong#sthash.fQbKXkkE.dpuf


    • The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Jail: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Prison


    • A Prosecutor Seeks Redemption. Can We Allow Prisoners the Same?
      BY NOW MANY have read and been moved by the extraordinary mea culpa published in the Shreveport Times by a man named Marty Stroud III, who more than thirty years ago sent Glenn Ford to die for a crime he did not commit.


    • NYT Reported Japanese Internment as 'Pioneering Chapter in US History'
      Reporter Lawrence E. Davies described the first internees as "weary but gripped with the spirit of adventure over a new pioneering chapter in American history." This rah-rah treatment continued throughout the article: The internees were said to have begun "assembling long before daylight near the Pasadena Rose Bowl, scene of many a great football game." Their destination was "a new reception center rising as if by magic at the foot of snow-capped peaks."

      Only two internees are quoted in the article. One, Arthur Hirano, a former New York City chef, says: “This is a wonderful place. We didn’t expect such fine treatment.” Another, Mike Nishida, who is scheduled to join the US military, says, “I'm going up there to do any job they put me on in the meantime.”




  • Internet/Net Neutrality





Recent Techrights' Posts

Unless a Third of All Microsoft Layoffs Worldwide Are in Redmond (Washington) Alone, Microsoft Has Just Lied to Everyone Via Jordan Novet in CNBC (i.e. the Usual Any Time There's Mass Layoffs and Novet Weighs in With False Numbers)
Maybe when Microsoft said 3% it meant ~6,000 or more in the US alone
As Expected, Microsoft Uses Media Operative (Jordan Novet) to Downplay the Scale of Mass Layoffs
here we go
Last Week's Public Talk by Richard Stallman Well Attended and Covered in Technical News Sites
and we're looking at about 60,000 Microsoft layoffs in 3 years
 
Gemini Links 13/05/2025: Apocalyptic Future and More
Links for the day
There Are Also Loads of Microsoft LinkedIn Layoffs Today (Keep Track of the Subsidiaries They Keep Out of Headlines)
Perhaps lost in the smokescreen
McKinsey (McK) is Killing IBM, It's All About Killing This Goose, "National Sales Team 80% on PIP Now" (Preceding Layoffs Without Severance)
PIPs are not based on performance
Links 13/05/2025: Microsoft Breaks Windows Very Badly Again, Mass Layoffs Reported (But False Figures, It's a Lot Higher)
Links for the day
2025 Will be a Big Year For GNU/Linux on Desktops/Laptops
with an economy like this, people who don't live in rich countries won't turn to Apple
Signs of Trouble: Microsoft Job Openings for Jobs That Do Not Exist!
Keeping up appearances?
"Special Place in Hell" for Women Who Help Violent Microsofters From Another Continent Attack Local Women Who Did Nothing Wrong, They Just Got Bullied and Deserve Sympathy or Compensation
Nothing says "Brat" like men who attack women, right?
The Numbers Game: 50,000-60,000 Microsoft Workers Laid Off in 2.5 Years? And Debt Still Tripled Under Nadella.
under Nadella Microsoft's debt trebled
The Slow Death of Windows Will Mean the Inevitable Demise of Microsoft
Once people stop using Windows, it'll be hard for Microsoft to sell anything to them
Gemini Links 13/05/2025: Shopping is an Exasperating Nightmare and Making Phones Minimal
Links for the day
23,000 More Microsoft Layoffs by the End of June If the Estimates Are Correct (In Addition to About 6,000 Layoffs So Far This Year)
There's no questions about many layoffs happening this month. It got leaked already. The only question is when (and also how many).
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 12, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 12, 2025
Major Microsoft Layoffs This Week (Discussed Online)
later we can expect a lot of spin, even misinformation
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: Missed Deadline
they helped expose a number of other scandals
Links 12/05/2025: Measles Rising and Taliban Outlaws Chess in Afghanistan
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/05/2025: Advice, Iorist Ethics, and Touchscreens
Links for the day
The Finances of GAFAM Aren't as They Seem
MICROSOFT FINANCIAL PYRAMID revisited
Links 12/05/2025: US Brain Drain and Reminder That "Microsoft's Lobbying Efforts Eclipsed Enron" (Fraud Coverup)
Links for the day
The Enshittification of Royal Mail (Post Office/Postal Services) Continues
Enshittification is a thing, not only in the digital realm
Red Hat's Owner is Called "America's Worst Tech Company" (IBM) and Microsoft's Liabilities Grow
Microsoft has about a quarter of a trillion (yes, trillion with a "T") in liabilities
If the Gossip is True, Today Microsoft Has "Large M1 Meetings" to Discuss Almost 30,000 More Microsoft Layoffs in 2025
the claim is that Microsoft is preparing to lay off 10% of its staff
Microsoft Has a Long and Proven History of Funding Meritless Lawsuits Against Rivals and Critics (It Always Backfires)
It also looks like the solicitor used by two Microsofters to SLAPP us is being urgently replaced
Links 12/05/2025: Gardens and Kitchens
Links for the day
Links 12/05/2025: Media Being Attacked (New Forms of Attack on the Press), Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 11, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 11, 2025
Links 11/05/2025: Pyotr Wrangel and Kubernetes With FreeBSD
Links for the day
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: A Moment of Silence and Revisionism Amid US Government Investigation and Community Uproar
Not a word this month
Microsoft Florian Becomes Patent Troll, Arranges to Sue Companies (Extorting Money Out of Them)
From campaigner against software patents to paid Microsoft shill to "FOSS patents" (actually attacking FOSS) to revisionism as "books" (for Microsoft)... and now this
How the SLAPPs From Microsoft Staff Are Connected to the Corrupt OSI, Whose Majority of Money Comes From Microsoft for Openwashing, LLM Hype, and Whitewashing GPL Violations During Class Action Trial
Let's explain how some of these things are connected
Links 11/05/2025: China's Fentanylware (TikTok) Tells Kids to Vandalise Schools' Chromebooks and Increased Censorship in India
Links for the day
You Need Not Be a Big Company to Defeat Microsoft If You Can Successfully Challenge Its Core "Ideas"
Maybe that's just a sign that the ideas of RMS have become too effective and thus "dangerous"
Gemini Links 11/05/2025: Yeeting Oligarch Tech, Offline Browsing
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 10, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 10, 2025