Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

02.08.16

Links 8/2/2016: Vista 10 Nags Help GNU/Linux, Nautilus Updated

Posted in News Roundup at 7:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • OpsClarity Extends Monitoring to Open Source Suites

    OpsClarity’s intelligent monitoring solution now provides monitoring for a growing and popular suite of open source data processing frameworks, including Apache Kafka, Apache Storm, Apache Spark as well as datastores such as Elasticsearch, Cassandra, MongoDB. The solution is intended to enable DevOps teams to gain visibility into how these technologies are dependent on each other and troubleshoot performance issues.

  • The future of the network is open source and programmability, says industry expert

    Network technology has changed considerably in the last 20 years, but most of the changes have been incremental – particularly as they relate the roles and responsibilities of network engineers and administrators.

  • HFOSS: Reviewing “What is Open Source?”, Steve Weber

    This blog post is part of an assignment for my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development course at the Rochester Institute of Technology. For this assignment, we are tasked with reading Chapter 3 of Steve Weber’s “The Success of Open Source“. The summary of the reading is found below.

  • Events

    • Linux.Conf.Au 2016 Videos Now Online

      Linux.Conf.Au 2016 ran last week from 1 to 5 February in Geelong, Australia. If you weren’t able to go to this annual Linux conference down under, the videos from all of the presentations have now been uploaded.

    • First Open Source Scholarship recipients

      Catalyst is delighted to announce the first two recipients of the Catalyst Open Source Scholarship. Recipients Liam Sharpe and Aleisha Amohia will receive $2000 towards study costs each year for the next three years, while they complete their Bachelor of Science degrees. Both are majoring in computer science.

    • coala at FOSDEM 2016

      coala was present at FOSDEM 2016 – it was a pleasure for us to be able to show you what we created at our stand and in the talk.

    • LowRISC

      As well as being open, there are a couple of key features that make LowRISC stand out. According to Alex Bradbury, co-founder of the LowRISC project: “I guess the notable features that we’re looking at adding are tagged memory support and minion cores. Tagged memory gives you the ability to annotate memory locations to, say, limit access for security purposes, and minion cores are very small, simple RISC-V processor.”

    • DevConf 2016 is over

      I have also some notes to android mobile apps. First, I have received some negative comments. I must admit I am not Android user and I am not very familiar with Android UX practices. I can fix something, but you must give me detailed description of it.

      The app required Internals privileges. I am sorry for that mistake, I must check AndroidManifest settings.

      I will try to add some features for DevConf 2017. I hope, I will find some time for that.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Apache Spark rises to become most active open source project in big data

      A healthy interest is not a surprise. In Apache Spark’s relatively short life, there’s been much discussion of its ascendancy. In September, Databricks, the company behind Spark, released results from a survey showing that Spark is the most active open source project in big data with more than 600 contributors within the past year, which is up from 315 in 2014. Plus, Spark is in use not just in the IT industry, but areas like finance, retail, advertising, education, health care, and more. That survey also showed that 51% of Spark users are using three or more Spark components.

    • IBM Provides New Analytics Tools, and Big Datasets for Testing

      IBM has already made many big commitments to data analytics and the cloud. It is committing huge finanical resources to Apache Spark for example, and expanding its cloud portfolio. Now IBM has announced four new data services: Analytics Exchange, Compose Enterprise, Graph, and Predictive Analytics.

    • Free RightScale Tool Lets You Compare Public Clouds
    • Eclipse Che Open Source Cloud IDE Now Available in Beta

      Eclipse Che, an open source cloud IDE with RESTful workspaces and Docker-based machines, is now available in beta.

      Che offers a workspace that is composed of projects and its associated runtimes, making its state distributable, portable and versionable. The platform use VMs, containers, and Web services to bring repeatability, consistency, and performance to workspaces.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • a lambda is not (necessarily) a closure

      But if you said “it’s a closure” — well you’re right in general I guess, like on a semantic what-does-it-mean level, but as far as how Guile represents this thing at run-time, hoo boy are there a number of possibilities, and a closure is just one of them. This article dives into the possibilities, with the goal being to help you update your mental model of “how much do things cost”.

      In Guile, a lambda expression can be one of the following things at run-time:

      Gone

      Inlined

      Contified

      Code pointer

      Closure

      Let’s look into these one-by-one.

  • Public Services/Government

Leftovers

  • Brexit will make Britain less safe: police chief

    Leaving Europe will make it harder for the U.K. to protect itself against terrorists, according to the director of the European law enforcement agency, Europol.

    “I think it will make Britain’s job harder to fight crime and terrorism because it will not have the same access to very well-developed European cooperation mechanisms that it currently has today,” Rob Wainwright told the BBC in an interview.

  • Sorry EC2 Amazon Visitors

    I’d like to apologize to people using Amazon EC2 to visit this blog. Sadly, a few hundred of your peers decided to be abusive, so I was forced to block most of EC2 subnets from access.

    Having hundreds of IPs in the EC2 IP range crawling this site constantly just cannot be allowed. It isn’t like we post articles more than once a day – sometimes not even once a month.

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

    • America Is Flint

      WE have been rightfully outraged by the lead poisoning of children in Flint, Mich. — an outrage that one health expert called “state-sponsored child abuse.”

      But lead poisoning goes far beyond Flint, and in many parts of America seems to be even worse.

      “Lead in Flint is the tip of the iceberg,” notes Dr. Richard J. Jackson, former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Flint is a teachable moment for America.”

      In Flint, 4.9 percent of children tested for lead turned out to have elevated levels. That’s inexcusable. But in 2014 in New York State outside of New York City, the figure was 6.7 percent. In Pennsylvania, 8.5 percent. On the west side of Detroit, one-fifth of the children tested in 2014 had lead poisoning. In Iowa for 2012, the most recent year available, an astonishing 32 percent of children tested had elevated lead levels. (I calculated most of these numbers from C.D.C. data.)

      Across America, 535,000 children ages 1 through 5 suffer lead poisoning, by C.D.C. estimates.

    • The Water Next Time: Professor Who Helped Expose Crisis in Flint Says Public Science Is Broken

      Working with residents of Flint, Mr. Edwards led a study that revealed that the elevated lead levels in people’s homes were not isolated incidents but a result of a systemic problem that had been ignored by state scientists. He has since been appointed to a task force to help fix those problems in Flint. In a vote of confidence, residents last month tagged a local landmark with a note to the powers that be: “You want our trust??? We want Va Tech!!!”

      But being right in these cases has not made Mr. Edwards happy. Vindicated or not, the professor says his trials over the last decade and a half have cost him friends, professional networks, and thousands of dollars of his own money.

  • Security

    • Docker Engine Hardened with Secure Computing Nodes and User Namespaces

      Enterprise systems need enterprise-grade security. With this in mind, Docker Inc. has updated its core container engine with some potentially powerful security measures.

      Docker Inc. has described this release as “huge leap forward for container security.” The company also added a plethora of networking enhancements to Docker 1.10, released Thursday.

    • USENIX Enigma 2016 – Defending, Detecting, and Responding to Hardware and Firmware Attacks
    • Vulnerabilities in Font Processing Library Impact Firefox, Linux: Report

      Security researchers have found vulnerabilities in Graphite, also known as Libgraphite font processing library, that affects a number of systems. The vulnerabilities, if exploited, allow an attacker to seed malicious fonts to a machine. The Libgraphite library is utilised by Linux, Thunderbird, WordPad, Firefox, OpenOffice, as well as several other major platforms and applications.

      Security researchers from Cisco have posted an advisory to outline four vulnerabilities in the Libgraphite font processing library. One of the vulnerabilities allows the attackers to execute arbitrary code on the machine, and among other things, crash the system.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Jack Straw’s ministries among worst on freedom of information requests

      The former cabinet minister Jack Straw, who has been tasked with considering how to tighten up the Freedom of Information Act, led two of the Whitehall departments most likely to reject public requests for information.

      Straw’s ministries never ranked higher than 15 out of 21 government departments in terms of releasing information in full, according to a Guardian analysis of government-wide figures.

      In 2010, his final year as lord chancellor, the Ministry of Justice was the worst ranked government department, providing none of the information requested more often than any other ministry.

    • Leaked police files contain guarantees disciplinary records will be kept secret

      Guardian analysis of dozens of contracts revealed by hackers shows more than a third allow or require destruction of civilian complaint records

  • Finance

    • The Trouble With the TPP, Day 26: Why It Limits Canadian Cultural Policies

      The intersection between the TPP and Canadian cultural policies is likely to emerge as one of the more controversial aspects of the TPP, particularly given the government’s emphasis on a stronger cultural policy in its election platform. Earlier in the Trouble with the TPP series, I wrote that the TPP fails to protect Canadian cultural policy. I pointed to U.S. lobby pressure to limit Canadian protection of cultural policies as well as provisions that restrict Canada’s ability to consider expanding Cancon contributions to entities currently exempt from payment. I have not been a supporter of mandating Cancon contributions to online video provides such as Netflix, but restricting Canada’s right to do so in a trade agreement is shortsighted, bad policy.

    • What I didn’t read in the TTIP reading room

      TTIP, the EU-US free trade deal, has secrecy written all over it. Those responsible for it live in dread of any public scrutiny. If it was up to me, I would give everyone who’s interested the chance to make up their own minds on the text of the agreement in its current form. Sigmar Gabriel, Minister for Economic Affairs and a top cheerleader for TTIP, has now set up a reading room in his ministry where since the beginning of February German MPs can each spend two hours looking at those texts on which consensus has already been reached.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • How dark money stays dark: The Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and the right’s biggest, most destructive racket going

      How do you stop states and cities from forcing more disclosure of so-called dark money in politics? Get the debate to focus on an “average Joe,” not a wealthy person. Find examples of “inconsequential donation amounts.” Point out that naming donors would be a threat to “innocents,” including their children, families and co-workers.

      And never call it dark money. “Private giving” sounds better.

      These and other suggestions appear in internal documents from conservative groups that are coaching activists to fight state legislation that would impose more transparency on the secretive nonprofit groups reshaping U.S. campaign finance.

      The documents obtained by ProPublica were prepared by the State Policy Network, which helps conservative think tanks in 50 states supply legislators with research friendly to their causes, and the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a Washington policy group founded by Edwin Meese, a Reagan-era attorney general.

    • Fox & Friends Slam Beyonce’s Super Bowl Performance: She Saluted Black Lives Matter And Attacked Police Officers

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • India blocks Facebook Free Basics internet scheme [Ed: it was a huge danger]

      India’s telecoms regulator has blocked Facebook’s Free Basics internet service as part of a ruling in favour of net neutrality.

      The scheme offered free access to a limited number of websites.

      However it was opposed by supporters of net neutrality who argued that data providers should not favour some online services over others.

      The free content included selected local news and weather forecasts, the BBC, Wikipedia and some health sites.

    • No discriminatory tariffs for data services in India

      Finally we have won. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued a press release some time ago telling that no one can charge different prices for different services on Internet. The fight was on in an epic scale, one side spent more than 100million in advertisements, and lobbying. The community fought back in the form of #SaveTheInternet, and it worked.

    • India Bans Zero Rating As The U.S. Pays The Price For Embracing It

      As expected, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has passed new net neutrality rules (pdf) that specifically ban the practice of zero rating. The rules are relatively clear in that they prevent either content companies or ISPs from striking deals that exempt select content from usage caps.

    • Verizon Gives Net Neutrality A Giant Middle Finger, Exempts Own Video Service From Wireless Usage Caps

      In 2010, Verizon successfully sued to demolish the FCC’s original net neutrality rules. In 2015, Verizon joined the rest of the industry in helping launch a barrage of lawsuits to try kill and kill a more legally-sound and updated version of those same rules. While that case continues through the courts, Verizon has made it clear that 2016 will be the year the telco raises a giant middle finger to the FCC and net neutrality supporters alike.

    • 20 Years Ago Today: The Most Important Law On The Internet Was Signed, Almost By Accident

      The internet as we know it would be a very, very different place if 20 years ago today, President Clinton hadn’t signed the Communications Decency Act. To be fair, nearly all of the CDA was a horrible mess that was actually a terrible idea for the internet. A key part of the bill was about “cleaning up” pornography on the internet. However, to “balance” that out, the bill included Section 230 — added by two Congressmen in the House of Representatives: Ron Wyden and Chris Cox. They had pushed this clause as a separate bill, the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, but it didn’t get enough traction. It was only when they attached it to the Communications Decency Act (which had passed the Senate without it), that it was able to move forward. And thus, 20 years ago today, when President Clinton signed the CDA, most of the attention was on the “stopping indecency” part, and very little on the “throw in” of Section 230. And yet, there’s a strong argument that Section 230 may be one of the most important laws — perhaps the most important — passed in the past few decades.

    • It’s Been 20 Years Since This Man Declared Cyberspace Independence

      When digital dystopians and critics of Internet libertarians need a rhetorical dart board, they often pull out a document written by John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, a former cattle rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. On this day in 1996, Barlow sat down in front of a clunky Apple laptop and typed out one very controversial email, now known as the “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace,” a manifesto with a simple message: Governments don’t—and can’t—govern the Internet.

    • Also Turning 20 Years Old Today: John Perry Barlow’s Declaration Of The Independence Of Cyberspace
    • Sweden Telecom Official Göran Marby Named To Lead ICANN

      Senior Swedish official Göran Marby today (8 February) was announced as the new president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, succeeding Fadi Chehade who leaves the ICANN to join the World Economic Forum in mid-March. Marby will be the first European to lead ICANN, the internet domain system technical oversight body founded in 1998.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Ikea loses trademark in Indonesia

        Ikea has lost the right to use its name in Indonesia after a local furniture company was handed victory by the country’s Supreme Court.

        The court said that the trademark belonged to PT Ratania Khatulistiwa, a company based in the city of Surabaya, which manufactures rattan furniture. Rattan is made from palm.

        Although Ikea registered a trademark for its name in Indonesia in 2010, it did not open its first store until 2014.

      • 2015 in Canadian IP cases: trade mark

        Managing IP is rounding up important intellectual property decisions coming out of Canadian courts last year. Trade mark cases included a rare interlocutory injunction in a trade mark case and a ruling on the use of a competitor’s mark in metatags

      • Fox loses appeal over Glee TV series

        But the Court has said it will hear further arguments on the question of whether the trade mark at issue is invalid on the ground that series trade marks are incompatible with EU law.

        The decision, published today, is largely a victory for Comic Enterprises, which operates entertainment venues in the UK featuring comedy and music. It owns a UK trade mark for The Glee Club in class 41, which was registered in 2001 (pictured).

Share this post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Reddit
  • co.mments
  • DZone
  • email
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • NewsVine
  • Print
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis
  • Facebook

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. Links 1/6/2020: OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 2020.05, Linux Lite 5.0 Release, FreeBSD 11.4 RC2

    Links for the day

  2. It's a Common Mistake and Common Misconception/Error to Treat Microsoft as Just Another 'Large Company' (or 'Big Tech')

    It's a Common Mistake and Common Misconception/Error to Treat Microsoft as Just Another 'Large Company' (or 'Big Tech')

  3. Lessons of Michael Arrington (About Microsoft)

    Microsoft and Bill Gates have a long history bullying their critics; the quote above (or below) shows how even people who advertise with Microsoft are becoming the target of abuse

  4. 'Best' of Both Worlds: GNU/Linux Freedom + Malware With Keyloggers and DRM

    Running a Microsoft-controlled GNU/Linux instance under Vista 10 ("Windows Subsystem for Linux") in the age of virtual machines, dual boot and containers makes as much sense as chopping some carrots to go with the veal meal to appease vegetarian diners

  5. First They Bribe the Employer, Media Lynch Mobs May Follow

    The 'cancel culture' lynch mobs, which leverage social causes (or marginalised groups), remain a convenient means by which to oust one's political/business opposition; but money too is a massive contributing factor and the more one has of it, the easier it is to control media narrative and subversive focus

  6. Upcoming Series Teaser: The Bribery Operation of William Henry Gates III

    Bribery goes a very long way when it comes to the megalomaniac who pays the media to portray him as the world's most generous person

  7. Windows Ransomware Must Not be Unspeakable When People Die in Large Numbers Due to That (and Windows Has Intentional Back Doors)

    Loss of electronic patient records, ransom and downtime among the severe consequences of deploying Microsoft inside hospitals; yet the media rarely names the real culprit (manslaughter charges theoretically possible) and nobody gets punished except those who offer real solutions

  8. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 30, 2020

    IRC logs for Saturday, May 30, 2020

  9. Burning the House That Richard Stallman (RMS) Built: An Open Letter to GNU Maintainers Who Opposed RMS

    An open letter to people who petitioned RMS to step down and who outsource GNU projects to Microsoft (GitHub)

  10. Links 30/5/2020: Godot Editor Under Web Browsers, Alpine Linux 3.12.0 and EasyOS 2.3

    Links for the day

  11. EPO's Illegal Patents and Massive Corruption Go Unnoticed by Corporate Media and Sites That Cover Patent News

    Very major corruption scandals still emerge in Europe's second-largest institution and illegal patents get granted as well as promoted; somehow, perhaps miraculously, this no longer seems to bother anybody in the media (corruption and radical policies have been gradually 'normalised')

  12. Never Mind If GNU/Linux Works Better Inside Hospitals and Free Software Not Only Safer But Vastly More Efficient...

    With lives on the line one might expect hospitals to choose what's most secure and generally works best; but in practice there seems to be a leaning towards what bribes best

  13. Sick Alexander Ramsey is Using a Public Health Crisis to Lie About the Unitary Patent, Whose Fall Made Him Redundant and/or Obsolete

    Weaponised media continues to manufacture utterly ridiculous puff pieces for Team UPC, containing intentional lies from beginning to end

  14. IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 29, 2020

    IRC logs for Friday, May 29, 2020

  15. They Came, They Saw, He Died

    Microsoft is an inherently sociopathic company; today's story of AppGet is an important reminder that Microsoft has not changed and isn't changing (Maui is another week-old example of trademark-hijacking tactics by Microsoft)

  16. Microsoft-Connected CloudGuru Doesn't Care About GNU/Linux and Now It's Gradually Killing the BSD/Linux-Centric Jupiter Broadcasting (Bought by Linux Academy)

    Assuming Docker is being 'killed' by Microsoft (or at least hijacked to push Windows, Azure and so on) while the GitHub-hosted (Microsoft) CloudGuru, whose co-founder comes from Microsoft, ‘finishes the job’ with Linux Academy and its assets, it’s time to take stock of a pattern/trend that ruins the media too

  17. What Happened to Docker is a Cautionary Tale About the Not-So-New Microsoft

    It’s hardly shocking that Docker collapsed (mass-scale layoffs) after the company had gotten close to Microsoft and got rid of its very own founder (a Red Hat veteran) while the software is being killed off/co-opted by Microsoft (all over the news this week; we’ve omitted links by intention as it’s only puff pieces, no investigative journalism anywhere); we only ask one thing: is anyone paying attention and, if so, what are the lessons learned?

  18. If You Want to Support and Follow Us 'Properly', Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is Most Reliable and Robust to Censorship

    Our longstanding position on social control media (we reject it and don't participate in it) is only proven ever more justified now that the mere idea of fact-checking is seen as controversial if not illegal

  19. Links 29/5/2020: Genode OS 20.05 and FSF Video Conferencing Service

    Links for the day

  20. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 28, 2020

    IRC logs for Thursday, May 28, 2020

  21. Weaponised Media Promoting an Illegal Patent System (UPC), Exploiting Major Pandemic in the Process

    The whole 'unitary' scam/ploy (merely a Trojan horse for litigation and low-quality/invalid patents) is being promoted by Thierry Breton as EU Internal Market Commissioner (in spite of illegalities and constitutional issues), merely reinforcing the view that the EU is rather complicit in the abuses perpetrated by Team Battistelli; the media in the pockets of oligarchs and litigation firms (fronting for these oligarchs) plays along, as usual

  22. Links 28/5/2020: OpenSSH 8.3, New Mesa Release, Raspberry Pi 4 News, Fedora 32 Elections

    Links for the day

  23. The EPO Became a Very Radical Institution

    Projection tactics are doomed to say more about the people who utilise them than about anybody else; the EPO has become so autocratic and corrupt that corruption is seen as normal and workers who explain this corruption are framed as "irrational" or "crazy" or "radical"

  24. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 27, 2020

    IRC logs for Wednesday, May 27, 2020

  25. Allegations That Microsoft Will Ruin Besieged Clinics and Hospitals to Retaliate Against Those Who Name the Culprit

    With a broader picture coming into view, as per the above index, we're starting to wrap up the series while issuing a call for more stories and eyewitness testimonies, exposing the nature of attacks on hospitals (those almost always target Microsoft and others' proprietary software, which is technically unfit for purpose)

  26. Microsoft Has Ideas...

    Based on the pattern of media coverage, composed by Microsoft MVPs and Microsoft-affiliated blogs/sites, confusing the public about the meaning of GNU/Linux is reminiscent of an "Extend" phase

  27. ZDNet Proves Our Point by Doing Not a Single Article About Linux (RC7), Only About Linus and Windows Clickbait Junk

    It seems abundantly clear that nobody wants to cover the actual news about Linux and instead it’s all about which PC Linus Torvalds is using (gossip/tabloid); ZDNet‘s latest two articles are an example of this…

  28. UPC Lies That Make One Laugh...

    IP Kat and Bristows (overlaps exist) are still pretending that the UPC is coming because reality doesn’t seem to matter anymore, only self-serving agenda

  29. Canonical Continues to Help Promote Windows Instead of GNU/Linux or Ubuntu

    Thrice in the past week alone Canonical used the official “Ubuntu Blog” to help Microsoft instead of GNU/Linux and it is part of a disturbing trend which lends credibility to jokes or rumours about a Microsoft takeover; it's not like many people use this thing, either (Canonical helps Microsoft shore up a dying/languishing EEE attempt)

  30. Links 27/5/2020: CoreOS Container Linux Reaches Its End-Of-Life, 2020 GNOME Foundation Elections Coming

    Links for the day

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

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

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

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

Recent Posts