But it’s not just Red Hat that is focusing the mindset of the Linux platform. Canonical has taken the desktop-centric Ubuntu and completely turned that business model on its head. With the switch to the Unity desktop, it is now possible to support every device running Ubuntu much more easily — as the interface remains the same. Not only that, but Canonical has made sure that every aspect of Ubuntu is polished and professional. As much as many want to deny it, in the world of business, image actually matters. With the efforts of Red Hat and Canonical, the Linux image has evolved into something ready and able to take on the tasks thrown at them by enterprise needs.
But what about the software itself? How has it evolved? Cloud computing
One of the aspects that really shows off the power of Linux is cloud computing. Most major clouds are run from Linux platforms. Two of the largest clouds on the planet are run off Linux servers:
* Amazon EC2: Almost half a million Linux servers
* Netflix: nearly 1,000 Linux servers run the front end which connects to hundreds of Amazon S3 servers
From inception, Linux was built for the likes of cloud computing. It’s networkability, security, and reliability make it the perfect candidate and companies like Red Hat, OpenStack, RackSpace, SUSE, and Canonical have used those strengths to their advantage to develop outstanding cloud platforms.
The International Space Station's laptops are moving from Windows to Linux, and R2, the first Linux-powered humanoid robot in space, is now under-going in-flight testing.
If IBM (NYSE:IBM) sells its x86 server business to Lenovo (as many reports expect) it's a safe bet that Lenovo will remain committed to supporting Linux (Red Hat and SUSE, in particular) and Windows Server across the hardware line. Here's why.
After eight Release Candidate versions, Linus Torvalds proudly announced a couple of hours ago, April 28, the immediate availability for download of the highly anticipated Linux 3.9 kernel.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into searchable, editable documents. OCR software is able to recognise the difference between characters and images, and between characters themselves.
The use of paper has been displaced from some activities. For example, the vast majority of journeys on the London Underground are made using the Oyster card without a paper ticket being issued. We have witnessed talk of a paperless office for more than 40 years. However, the office environment has shown a resistance to remove the mountain of paper generated. Things have changed in the past few years, with a marked shift in the paperless office concept. Paper documents contain a wealth of important management data and information that would be better stored electronically. There is computer software that makes this conversion possible. The benefit of scanning documents is not purely for archival reasons. OCR technology is vital for gaining access to paper-based information, as well as integrating that information in digital workflows.
You know that Linux kernel thing, that has thousands of developers from all over the world, some of which do it professionally, most of which do it for the love of solving problems (or something)?
The following tutorial will teach you how to install the Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) operating system.
Also known as the Raring Ringtail, Ubuntu 13.04 arrived on April 25, 2013 and is the 18th release of the Ubuntu operating system.
The Wine development release 1.5.29 is now available.
Receiver was created for the 7-day FPS challenge to explore gun handling mechanics, randomized levels, and unordered storytelling. Armed only with a handgun and an audio cassette player, you must uncover the secrets of the Mindkill in a building complex infested with automated turrets and hovering shock drones.
Planetary Annihilation is really starting to look awesome, the RTS that was Kickstarter funded has been doing regular live streams for people to ask questions, see gameplay and all that jazz, their latest one shows off combat!
Hidden Path Entertainment did a Kickstarter last year that sadly hit no way near it's goal for a sequel, even though the Kickstarter was successful for an expansion to the original (Not on Linux).
The Castle Doctrine is a massively-multiplayer game about burglary and home defence by Jason Rohrer. The website is a bit odd using one of the old "start pages" from the 90's where you click an image to go to the actual website, on the website...eh?
It’s been a while since I’ve written a real blog post, so I’m going to do a bit of a roundup here. Brace yourselves.
May 7, 2013. Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. These updates continue the series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.10 series. 4.10.3 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the 4.10 release and are recommended updates for everyone running the 4.10 release series. As this release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone.
Today we released the KDE release of OS4 OpenDesktop 13.4. With this we bring you the very best the K Desktop Environment offers along with the ease of use that people have come to expect with OS4 OpenDesktop.
The GNOME Projects announced a few days ago that the first maintenance release of the GNOME Settings Daemon 3.8 package is now available for download, ready for the GNOME 3.8.1 desktop upgrade.
A new stable version of the GVFS application for the GNOME desktop environment has been announced a few days ago, bringing various fixes and the usual translation updates.
The first maintenance release of the GNOME Documents 3.8 app, the main document viewer of the GNOME desktop environment, has been released a few days ago, bringing various fixes and improvements.
Thanks to Alexander Larsson, GNOME Documents 3.8.1 now supports rubberband selections in views. Also, thanks to Debarshi Ray, the default response in Properties has been fixed in this version.
Desklets, a new screensaver and a Spices management component are among the major improvements of the just released Cinnamon 1.8. Like KDE plasmoids and Android widgets, these desklets can be positioned on a desktop screen's background to display information. The new version includes three default desklets: a launcher, a clock and a photo frame; further community-developed desklets are available on the project's web page.
The GNOME developers announced a few days ago that a new version of the GNOME Initial Setup software for the GNOME desktop environment is available for download, fixing various issues found in previous releases.
Recently I’ve posted an article about the Windows manager and desktop environments that use less resources on Linux and thanks to a comment of Sebastian I’ve discovered Livarp, a lightweight GNU/Linux Distro.
Brian Manderville has announced a couple of hours ago, April 28, that the 4th release of his Descent|OS Linux operating system is now available for download.
Offensive Security, the developer behind the Backtrack and Kali Linux operating systems, has announced on April 26 that a new version of the the Kali Linux distribution for forensic and penetration testing tasks has been released.
I’ve written lots of distro reviews over the years, but every once in a while I find a new one that turns out to be a delightful surprise. Manjaro 0.8.5 is definitely one of those. Manjaro is based on Arch Linux, and promises to provide an easy to use distro that is still highly customizable.
Philip Müller and the Manjaro development team has announced the first maintenance release for Manjaro 0.8.5, which was made available for download two weeks ago.
Eugenio Paolantonio has had the pleasure of announcing today, April 27, that the 4th version of his Semplice Linux operating system is now available for download.
Dubbed Atom Heart Mother, Semplice Linux 4 brings beautiful new artwork and visual effects, which consists of a new default theme, a new wallpaper, as well as the Faenza icon theme.
The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
There hasn't been a time that I can recall over the past year that when I check the Distrowatch ranking that Mageia wasn't in the top 5.
It goes to show that this Distro has legs and has the essential attributes of a thorough-bred commercial Distribution.
That's because in spite of its community status, Mageia is a fork of commercial Distro Mandriva Linux.
Lennart Poettering has announced the release of systemd 203 or as he calls it: "a good release to synchronize a distribution on." Poettering says the Fedora developers are planning to include this version in the upcoming Fedora 19 release because the development branch of systemd will most likely receive extensive changes in the near future that would introduce too much uncertainty so close to the distribution's release date. These changes are necessary as Poettering and his team are planning to introduce a number of bigger features with the next version of their open source startup manager.
It’s that time again for a new Ubuntu – should you be raring to go with it, or is it a case of more of the same?
Now that Ubuntu 13.04 has been released, Caonical has started work on Ubuntu 13.10 (code-named Saucy Salamander), CEO Mark Shuttleworth announced in his personal blog. The blog gives the Ubuntu community a preview of what version 13.10 will look like.
For starters, expect that version, or at least its artwork, to have a lizard theme, since Shuttleworth has dubbed Ubuntu 13.10 the "Saucy Salamander." This is, of course, in keeping with the trend that began with the first Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 4.10 "Warty Warthog," of bestowing an alliterative codename on each new version of Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger," the names have also progressed in alphabetical order, although Shuttleworth inexplicably skipped "C." (Was it a slight, in the tradition of the apocryphal Pierre l'Enfant vs. John Jay tale, against New Jersey governor Chris Christie? We can only speculate.)
So why is FOSS held to a different standard?
Because FOSS developers have no accountability. If you don't like it, fix it. And if you can't fix it.....
Fuh-Q. Move on.
Over the years, I have almost always opted for a clean install rather than an update. That meant backing up my data files and formatting my drive for a fresh installation of the new operating system. I know, that sounds like a lot more work than simply clicking on the Upgrade button in Ubuntu’s Update Manager, but experience has taught me this approach was the most trouble-free in the long run.
Finding the right Ubuntu software titles used to be a bit of an art form, especially before the Ubuntu Software Center became available. And even with the benefit of the Ubuntu Software Center, knowing whether an application is worth checking out still requires a bit of research.
In this article, I'll share my preferred applications, plus my own methods for discovering new software.
Ubuntu 13.04 was released yesterday, but is 13.04 a hit, or miss? This release brings some major underlying changes to Ubuntu, though Unity is still nearly the same. Here are some of the new features for anyone that is looking for an excuse to download Ubuntu 13.04.
With the release of Ubuntu 13.04 today, Canonical have revealed the name of the next version – Saucy Salamander
I've always had a little bit of "distrohopper" in me. I'd usually get bored and want to try something new after reading about it.
Almost always I end up back on Ubuntu after a while. I've really been using Ubuntu pretty much exclusively since 2005.
Ubuntu 13.04 is out tomorrow, 25th April, and the Raring Ringtail is getting some new features over the Quantal Quetzal
Apple iOS and Google Android remain the dominant operating systems for smartphones and tablets. But alternatives like Canonical's Ubuntu and Firefox OS are hoping to disrupt the mobile market -- despite the stark reality that even Microsoft and Blackberry are having trouble gaining ground. So how do upstarts like Ubuntu hope to grab market share?
The Edubuntu team has announced today, April 25, that the final release of the highly anticipated Edubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) operating system is now available for download.
I haven't checked out Fuduntu in over a year. I wasn't particularly planning to do so either, because I wasn't exactly expecting huge changes. But then I saw some news that changed my mind.
The EMB-2500 is the latest single-board, SoC computer to be released this year. Ever since the Raspberry Pi hit the streets and became hugely popular with its target audience, there has been several similar attempts to outdo it, but none has shipped with standard storage connectivity that the average computer user can use.
Congatec AG announced a Linux-ready COM Express Type 6 computer-on-module (COM) based on AMD’s new Embedded G-Series system-on-chip (SOC). The Conga-TCG is offered in two quad- and two dual-core versions backed with up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and features extensive I/O, including HDMI, DisplayPort, SATA, and 10 USB ports.
Roboteq launched a Kickstarter project to build an I/O add-in card for robotics navigation that stacks atop a Linux-based Raspberry Pi board. The RIO (Raspberry IO) is based on a 32-bit STM32 microcontroller, and includes a 3A DC/DC converter, several serial interfaces, a CAN interface, 21 GPIO, and an optional module with an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer for robotics navigation.
The Automotive Grade Linux workgroup aims to get more open source technology in vehicles
Plair says it is now shipping its “Plair” media-streaming device to U.S. customers. Unveiled earlier this year at CES, the $99 embedded Linux-powered gadget is said to provide AirPlay-like beaming of multimedia content from Apple, Windows, and Android devices to “any HDTV” with an available HDMI port.
ARM has added embedded Linux support to its free ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Community Edition (CE) integrated development environment (IDE), which previously had only targeted Android. DS-5 CE now offers full Linux support for its Eclipse IDE, GNU cross-compiler, DS-5 Debugger, and the ARM Streamline performance analyzer.
Inforce Computing has unveiled a $149 Linux- and Android-friendly Pico-ITX single-board computer (SBC) based on a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 processor. The tiny SBC comes with 2GB RAM and 4GB flash memory, and provides HDMI out, MIPI-CSI camera input, WiFi and Bluetooth wireless, a GbE port, and numerous other functions.
A developer by the name of "threewater" has posted a video showcasing a device powered by the ARM-based AllWinner A10 booting Linux in just 1.2 seconds.
Wind River, a software subsidiary of Intel, has announced an enhanced version of the National Security Agency’s Security Enhanced (SE) Android, along with two other tools designed to improve the security of Android devices. “Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android, Security” includes modules for SE Android, Lightweight Partitioning, and Secure Boot.
In my last post I showed you one view of the Apache Software Foundation, the relationship of projects as revealed by the overlapping membership of their Project Management Committees. After I did that post it struck me that I could, with a very small modifications to my script, look at the connections at the individual level instead of at the committee level. Initially I attempted this with all Committers in the ASF This resulted in a graph with over 3000 nodes and over 2.6 million edges. I’m still working on making sense of that graph. It was very dense and visualizing it as anything other than a giant blob has proven challenging. So I scaled back the problem slightly and decided to look at the relationship between individual members of the many PMCs, a smaller graph with only 1577 nodes and 22,399 edges.
Churnalism US is a new web tool and browser extension that allows anyone to compare the news you read against existing content to uncover possible instances of plagiarism. It is a joint project with the Media Standards Trust.
Businesses are moving from closed systems to open, collaborative innovation. Red Hat CEO, Jim Whitehurst, focused on the three major components influencing this shift in his keynote, Open or die?, at the Open Business Conference held in San Francisco this week (April 29-30, 2013).
First, there are two major shifts happening in technology and innovation that are laying the foundation for the open innovation model. On the technology side, the way computing is being built and delivered has changed. During the industrial revolution, the auto lathe revolutionized the making of standard parts. We’re seeing that same paradigm shift happen today in how computing is becoming a commodity.
A group of IBM researchers has released a Github project that implements a homomorphic encryption system – a way to work on encrypted data in a file without first decrypting the whole file.
Massive disruption is occurring as marketing goes digital. Business is moving steadily towards providing a fully personalized and truly integrated digital experience—building upon recent advances in user experience, analytics, cloud computing and storage, and an omni-channel experience across mobile platforms and social media.
During my second year at Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey (SNDT) Women's University, the first of its kind in India as well as in South-East Asia, I attended a workshop on Python and Orca by Krishnakant Mane. My classmates and I were novices to free and open source software (FOSS) and astonished when we saw a visually impaired person using a computer with the same ease as we did.
Here's a job title you may not have considered: Open Source Officer. The CIA hires Open Source Officers (OSOs) to collect and analyze publicly available information in foreign affairs to provide unique insights into national security issues. OSOs may specialize in an area of the world (country or region) or a specific topic (like, emerging media technologies or cyber security).
"The biggest danger is when an open source company gets confused about what it sells. If you think you are selling open source software, there aren't a lot of buyers for that now," said Puppet Labs Founder and CEO Luke Kanies. "But if you have promises about what you sell, those promises make a very lucrative business. "
Mozilla released its first fully-baked simulation engine for Firefox OS, while the first Geeksphone “Keon” development phones for the open source Linux-based mobile operating system remain sold out. Firefox OS Simulator 3.0 adds rotation and geolocation API simulations, faster boot-times, and a push-to-device feature that lets users transfer apps to a developer phone.
The Hadoop ecosystem relies on composability — the ability to use output from one tool as input to the next — to efficiently process data at scale, from simple projects, to processing streams of real-time data, to building data warehouses.
MapR, the Hadoop and Big Data company, has big European ambitions despite a mixed economic outlook in the region. MapR recently opened a new Paris office that will focus on operations in France, Benelux and southern Europe. The move follows the company's establishment of a European headquarters late last year in London.
Is Oracle VM, built on the open source Xen hypervisor, a true market alternative to VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization? And will Oracle leap beyond virtualization to support Software Defined Networking (SDN)? Perhaps it's time to rethink those questions -- especially as a new Oracle Desktop Virtualization offering (called Oracle Secure Global Desktop) reaches the market. Here's the update, including an exclusive interview with Oracle Senior VP Wim Coekaerts.
Blender is a powerful open source 3D drawing and animation program. This software was previously a commercial product, but is now available as a free download. Blender has been used to create stunningly beautiful 3D animated videos, including Big Buck Bunny. Check out some of the gorgeous animated movies made with Blender at the web site's Features Gallery.
Test Releases
2013-04-19 - First ISO image as a test release. Based on OpenBSD 5.3 (not official release yet) No additional application softwares
Trisquel is a 100 per cent 'free as in free speech' GNU/Linux distribution started by Rubén Rodríguez Pérez nine years ago.
"It started as a project at the university I was studying at. They just wanted a custom distro because... everybody was doing that at the time!" Pérez says.
Jim Whitehurst has been president and CEO of prominent Linux distributor Red Hat since December 2007. During that time, Red Hat has blazed a trail in becoming a profitable vendor in the open source software space, challenging Microsoft and Unix companies and adding such technologies as the JBoss application server. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Whitehurst, asking him about the company's dealings with Microsoft, how Linux sizes up against rivals, and where Red Hat's technology is headed.
In an effort to help increase female participation in open source development, the Ada Initiative recently announced they had entered into an agreement with social programming site GitHub, wherein any female who requested a private repository on the service could receive one free of charge (a feature which usually costs $7+ per month).
Last week Open Source, Open Standards 2013 took place in London, an event focused on the public sector. Naturally these being two topics we’re very keen on here at OSS Watch I went along too.
Overall the key message to take away from the event was just how central to public sector IT strategy these two themes have become, and also how policy is being rapidly turned into practice, everywhere from the NHS to local government.
On 30 April 1993, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau were given official permission by CERN in Geneva to distribute the libwww library free of charge, "to create a server or a browser, to give it away or sell it, without any royalty or other constraint. Whew!" (Tim Berners-Lee in Weaving the Web).
The architects of this particular World Wide Web (WWW) anniversary deserve recognition even today, though the commercialisation of the internet was certainly not their objective. Complex negotiations between the universities involved were required before the go-ahead for a general release could be given – there was no commercial involvement at that time.
I retired 10 years ago after a long career as a research scientist for Agriculture Canada. When I was on the payroll, I was the designated scientist of my institute to address public groups and reassure them that genetically engineered crops and foods were safe. There is, however, a growing body of scientific research – done mostly in Europe, Russia, and other countries – showing that diets containing engineered corn or soya cause serious health problems in laboratory mice and rats.
Wisconsin ranks 44th in the nation for new job creation. Rather than rolling up their sleeves and finding new and innovative ways to help create jobs, the Wisconsin legislature is spending its time telling people needing food assistance what they should be eating. AB 110, which will be up for a vote in the Assembly on Tuesday, May 7, is geared toward limiting "the amount of food stamp benefits that could be spent on junk food." But some of the fine print of the bill, bizarrely, would ban people from choosing more healthy and less expensive options for their families. The bill is one of many being considered that are unduly punitive of the poor.
Nice little business you have there, but it has vulnerabilities. It would be a shame if anything happened to it. Can I help?
Network equipment supplier D-Link has released firmware security updates for five routers and eight IP cameras. Whilst the router vulnerabilities are strongly reminiscent of vulnerabilities previously fixed in other models, the camera vulnerabilities conceal a nasty surprise – unauthorised viewers can intercept the camera stream as either a video stream or ASCII output.
On Sunday, Israel dropped massive bombs near Damascus, ones which the New York Times, quoting residents, originally reported (then evidently deleted) resulted in explosions "more massive than anything the residents of the city. . . have witnessed during more than two years of war." The Jerusalem Post this morning quoted "a senior Syrian military source" as claiming that "Israel used depleted uranium shells", though that is not confirmed. The NYT cited a "high-ranking Syrian military official" who said the bombs "struck several critical military facilities in some of the country's most tightly secured and strategic areas" and killed "dozens of elite troops stationed near the presidential palace", while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that "at least 42 soldiers were killed in the strikes, and another 100 who would usually be at the targeted sites remain unaccounted for."
Israel used "a new type of weapon", a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.
[...]
Depleted uranium is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process that creates nuclear weapons, and was first used by the US in the Gulf conflict of 1991. Unlike the radioactive materials used in nuclear weapons, depleted uranium is not valued for its explosiveness, but for its toughness – it is 2.5 times as dense as steel – which allows it to penetrate heavy protection.
Israel’s massive air strikes against Syria are, beyond argument, illegal. There is no provision in international law that enables you to bomb another country because that country is in internal chaos. Yet the reporting on the BBC, and indeed throughout the mainstream media, makes no mention of their illegality, and makes no mention of the people killed. Contrast this to the condemnatory tone of BBC reporting of North Korean ballistic missile tests, or of Iran’s civil uranium enrichment programme, both of which I view as neither wise nor desirable, but both of which are undoubtedly quite legal.
These airstrikes bring to mind the previous round of Israeli airstrikes inside Syria in January of this year (FAIR Blog, 2/4/13). Then, like now, the story from anonymous officials was that Israel struck a convoy of weapons heading to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those sources were telling U.S. reporters what had happened, and some of those reporters were reporting these anonymous claims as "confirmation" of the story.
All of this could be true, of course. Or perhaps none of it is. What is certain is that the assessments of the airstrikes are being shared anonymously by governments involved in carrying them out, a scenario that cries out for more skepticism.
Around 1,000 people set out Monday on a three-month peace march from Tokyo to Hiroshima in western Japan, calling for the abolishment of nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation, according to organizers.
David Gauke reacted positively to plan to challenge Osita Mba's account of 'sweetheart' deal, according to leaked emails
It was of course Lawson who was Thatcher’s accomplice in destroying most of our real industries, the ones which actually made something visible. It was replaced by the crazed idea of elevating the financial services sector, from providers of middlemen services for a small percentage, into the greatest net recipients of income in the economy, through creation of price gambling instruments and South Sea Bubble schemes. The result has on average cost everybody in the UK and US the equivalent of their housing cost again in extra tax, plus plunged the entire world into recession.
In anticipation of protests at ALEC's recent meeting in Oklahoma City, state legislators were handed a set of talking points that read "The American Legislative Exchange Council recognizes the first amendment rights of free speech and assembly, and asks that _____ do the same," apparently to prepare legislators for press questions about citizen activism. But ALEC didn't live up to those spoon-fed talking points: ALEC assembled a dossier of disfavored reporters and activists, kicked reporters out of its conference who might write unfavorable stories, and managed to boot a community forum critical of ALEC from its reserved room.
Shortly after the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) told the press "we really believe in transparency," new documents show the organization directing legislators to hide ALEC meeting agendas and model legislation from the public. This effort to circumvent state freedom of information laws is being called "shocking" and "disturbing" by transparency advocates.
For more than a year, the EU Parliament have been examining the Proposal for a Regulation of the EU Commission aimed at reforming the European data protection legal framework. Until now, the parliamentary committees examining the Proposal have so far proposed to restrict the protections of our fundamental right to privacy. As a crucial vote is approaching1 in the “Civil Liberties” (LIBE) Committee, La Quadrature du Net launches a series of analysis dealing with key points, stakes, development and threats of the reform.
Columnist Jim Dwyer, one of the brighter lights at the New York Times, had an exceptionally dim moment on Friday (5/3/13)–comparing sending innocent teenagers to prison with holding the prosecutor who did so accountable.
Dwyer was writing about a petition that asked that Manhattan assistant district attorney Elizabeth Lederer–the lead prosecutor in the case of the Central Park Five, young African-Americans who were falsely convicted of rape–lose her part-time teaching position at Columbia Law School.
A new computing facility at the National Security Agency will help the country better defend against cyber attacks , agency officials and members of Congress said Monday.
During last year’s U.S. floor debate on the reauthorization of the notorious “indefinite detention” sections of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) shouted at a hypothetical detainee, “And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them, 'Shut up.' You don't get a lawyer.”
The definitions of terror currently employed by Washington are far more ambiguous. The United States government has passed laws (e.g. The Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA], the National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA]) that are grounded on broad formulations of what constitutes terrorist acts. They include an encompassing category of aiding and abetting terrorism. These statutes are so loosely drawn that, as a practical matter, a terrorist is anyone the authorities want to declare a terrorist. It should be noted that the U.S. government's charge against the Boston bomber includes "the use of weapons of mass destruction." Anyone want to define WMD in this context? For scholarly and analytical purposes, therefore, the term "terrorism" as widely employed has no value -- unless the subject of study is its several uses and abuses. For the purpose of making ethical judgments, these broad formulations are equally pointless since they do not frame the questions of standards, responsibility and accountability in any instructive way. In the vocabulary of American officials, and most commentators, "terrorism" is used for hortatory purposes alone.
Noam Chomsky: I don’t know what base he’s appealing to. If he thinks he’s appealing to the nationalist base, well, they’re not going to vote for him anyway. That’s why I don’t understand it. I don’t think he’s doing anything besides alienating his own natural base. So it’s something else. What it is is the same kind of commitment to expanding executive power that Cheney and Rumsfeld had. He kind of puts it in mellifluous terms and there’s a little difference in his tone. It’s not as crude and brutal as they were, but it’s pretty hard to see much of a difference.
Special Report: Lawyers and human rights groups say it is just a matter of time before the detainees start to die
For many Greeks, Orthodox Easter is a chance to see friends and family, to eat good food or to worship. But for the neo-Nazis in Golden Dawn, who only recently made the switch from "Hellenic" paganism to a professed love for Christianity, it has been an opportunity for propaganda. Last Thursday, the party made headlines with its attempt to stage a "Greeks-only" food distribution in Athens's Syntagma square. The next day, when Athenians were driving back to home towns and villages, Golden Dawn members held open motorway toll booths – which have become a symbolic point of resistance against the rising cost of living in the wake of austerity – so cars could pass for free.
Today the FFII sent a letter to the European Parliament committee on International Trade. Thursday 25 April 2013 the committee will vote on 198 amendments to a draft resolution on the EU – US trade agreement (TTIP / TAFTA)
The long-awaited order following last month’s Prenda Law sanctions hearing is now out, and it’s a doozy. After a hearing that lasted 12 minutes and consisted of lawyers pleading the fifth, there was little doubt that Federal Judge Otis Wright was not best pleased, and it was evident in the order he released late yesterday.
Megaupload’s legal team are not restricting their fight with the U.S. Government only to the courts. Today they published a detailed white paper accusing the White House of selling out to corporate interests, particularly Hollywood. “The message is clear. The White House is for sale. More and more of our rights are eroding away to protect the interests of large corporations and their billionaire shareholders,” Dotcom summarizes.
Here are two words that have no business hanging out together: "used MP3s." If you know anything about how computers work, that concept is intellectually offensive. Same goes for "ebook lending", "digital rental" and a host of other terms that have emerged from the content industries' desperate scramble to do the impossible: adapt without changing.
...powerful corporations are deemed to be of greater importance than the rights of individuals.