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05.30.13

Links 30/5/2013: Linux Mint 15 Released, Linux Reigns in Embedded

Posted in News Roundup at 4:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Transformers: More Than Meets the Automotive Eye

    Cadillac, Ford, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota. These carmakers are transforming their industry through software. Cars are no longer just about metal. A new car already has 5 to 15 million lines of software code that are reliant on and integrated with thousands of mechanical and electrical components. If you’re in the car business today you’re also a software maker.

  • [VIDEO] Former Microsoft Exec Embraces Linux for Networking Software

    For more years than I care to count, I read statements and saw Microsoft server events where Bob Muglia declared why Microsoft’s server was so good.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • Wayland they’d called it

        Let’s commence with a joke. If the British automotive industry of the 70s had been the one to invent the display server protocol, they would have called it British Wayland. Get it? It’s subtle. Very subtle. Anyhow, without focusing too much on the technical lingo, Wayland is a new protocol, designed to replace the sturdy and reliable X Windows System. The idea is to create a more modern, more relevant method of transferring video frames from applications to the on-screen display, in a manner that is fast, efficient and extensible. On paper, it’s an interesting approach to an old problem, but the question is, is there a problem really?

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Ivy Bridge: UXA vs. SNA – Updated Benchmarks

        With the testing of the very latest Intel X.Org graphics driver, the SNA 2D acceleration back-end for the Ivy Bridge graphics is now the clear-cut winner for the Linux desktop over using the default UXA back-end.

        If you aren’t familiar with Intel SNA, you surely haven’t been reading enough of Phoronix as it’s been extensively covered on the site over the past two years through many articles. Long story short, SNA is an experimental 2D acceleration architecture that’s been extensively tuned to insane detail by Intel OTC’s Chris Wilson. For the past several months now it’s generally been working well across all generations of Intel hardware from Sandy/Ivy Bridge to even old Intel IGPs.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • XBMC running in Linux on a TV box with an Amlogic AM8726-MX chip (video)

      The folks behind the XBMC media center application have made a lot of progress porting the software to run on Android. But if you’d rather have a small, low-power XBMC box that runs on Linux, new options might be available soon.

    • Linux strong, Android surging says embedded survey

      Linux crept up slightly in the EE Times 2013 Embedded Market Study, representing 34 percent of current projects while Android showed the greatest growth, jumping to 16 percent, for a total of 50 percent for Linux-based platforms. Meanwhile, ARM processors continue to attract more embedded developers.

      In early March, UBM Technology shared some preliminary details on current OS use from its survey-based EE Times “2013 Embedded Market Study.” Now, UBM has released the full report, showing further details on future OS plans among embedded developers, processor preferences, and much more.

    • BeagleBone Black Review
    • Add More Fruit to Your Raspberry Pi!

    • Phones

      • Android

        • How to Get Android as Google Intended

          Ever since Android became a mainstream mobile operating system, companies like Samsung and HTC have continuously tinkered with their phone and tablet interfaces to deliver their own unique take on the platform. While these manufacturer modifications have improved over time, some users still yearn for the stock Android experience — one that can only be found on a handful of devices, primarily with Google’s own Nexus line of smartphones and tablets. Fortunately, there is more than one way to use the OS in the way Google intended, which can be enjoyed by owners of both rooted and non-rooted devices.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nivis Announces Open Source ISA100 Wireless Software Platform

    Nivis, a global company active in smart grid and industrial wireless networks, has announced the release of an ISA100 Wireless Application Layer Software Development Kit (SDK) along with the availability of the ISA100.11a communication stack and related code on an open source basis. The SDK and open source ISA100.11a code can improve supplier’s ROI for ISA100 Wireless products by reducing development time and per-unit costs.

  • Web Browsers

    • What’s the best Firefox or Opera browser alternative?

      One of Google Chrome’s major weaknesses or shortcomings is the browser’s lack of user interface customization options. It is a take it or leave it interface that is giving users no options whatsoever to customize it.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla’s WebFWD accelerator helping Anahita become ‘the Linux of social’

        Anahita is the ancient Persian goddess of water, which is essential for life, health, and fertility. It’s also a very modern set of software building blocks for a social infrastructure for everything essential for enterprise-level life, health, and — in a sense — fertility.

        At least, according to Vancouver-based project founder and core architect Rastin Mehr.

      • Foxconn to announce Firefox OS devices, maybe a tablet

        Apple OEM contractor Foxconn is prepping several products based on Mozilla’s Firefox OS, says an industry report. The new products, one of which is rumored to be a tablet, are expected to be announced on June 3 in collaboration with Mozilla.

        On May 27, Focus Taiwan reported that Mozilla and Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., better known as Foxconn, will on June 3 unveil a device running Mozilla’s Linux- and HTML5-based Firefox OS. The story also noted that an industry insider told the publication the product was likely to be a tablet.

      • Rumour: Foxconn Firefox Tablet Coming June 3rd

        Foxconn is rumoured to be making a new tablet PC for Firefox OS, and we could catch our first glimpse next week.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Healthcare

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Take action for free JavaScript

      Choosing to run free software on your computer is a powerful statement. Unfortunately, regardless of what you have installed on your desktop or laptop, you are almost certainly running hundreds of nonfree programs as you surf the Web. Web sites often use programs written in JavaScript to expand the capabilities of HTML, adding menus, buttons, text editors, music players, and many other features. Browsers come configured to download and run the JavaScript without ever making the user aware of it. Contrary to popular perception, JavaScript does not run “on the Web site” — it runs locally on users’ computers when they visit a site.

    • Free Software is Activism

      The Free Software is defined such as software that gives some freedoms to his users: use, copy, modify and redistribute modified copies. So, we can understand the free software as collective property generated by the users and developers.

      Although, from the Open Source philosophy, this problem has changed until that if the Free Software continues being collective property, sometimes is not being generated by the real interests of users and developers, it’s generated by the market interest, with especulative criteria and financial bumbles in a similar way than another market product.

      So, the Open Source philosophy, drop the ethical arguments about if is reasonable or don’t use Free Software, the only argument will be if technically is or don’t a good option, if is a good business and another similar arguments. But they don’t think if it’s good the good common, it’s out of the discourse. Many corporations has done good contributions creating Free Software products from this philosophy, but sometimes mixed with the philosopy of the propietary software: Ubuntu, Android, etc.

    • Denemo – News: Release 1.0.4 is imminent

  • Licensing

    • VP8 cross-license draft compatible with FOSS licensing

      Google and MPEG-LA recently disclosed a draft cross-license under which patents related to the VP8 video compression format would be licensed to the general public. SFLC reviewed these terms and considered some criticisms that have arisen in the free software community. Our opinion expressed here is ours alone, and does not necessarily reflect the position of any client of SFLC.1

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Open source, 3D printing and the race to re-engineer manufacturing

        While we’re all arguing about the future of Australian manufacturing in the wake of Ford announcing the closure of their Australian factories, the entire manufacturing industry is facing another wave of massive change as 3D printing and open source hardware change the economics of the sector.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Internet: Basket In Which We Put All Our Eggs

      Naturally, we’re filled with umbrage and are busy blaming the Chinese military for being dastardly. How dare they do what we would expect any country’s military to do? Also naturally, we’re not putting any blame on ourselves. No one is suggesting that such sensitive information, perhaps, shouldn’t be placed on a computer facing the Internet, no matter how secure. Nor is anyone suggesting that maybe the largest and most advanced military on the planet needs to have their own world wide web that’s not connected to the one used by the rest of us. No one is suggesting that this isn’t the way we won World War II.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Cablegate

    • Julian Assange: Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Guilty Plea Part of Crackdown on Journalism, Activism

      Jeremy Hammond of the hacktivist group Anonymous has pleaded guilty to hacking into the private intelligence firm Stratfor, the FBI and other institutions. Hammond says his goal was to shed light on how governments and corporations act behind closed doors. Some five million Stratfor emails ended up on the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, shedding light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. In a statement, Hammond said he accepted the plea deal in part to avoid an overzealous prosecution that could have resulted in at least 30 years in prison. He has already served 15 months, including weeks in solitary confinement. Joining us from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Hammond’s prosecution comes as part of a wider crackdown “on effective political activists and alleged journalistic sources.” Click here to watch our web-only extended interview with Assange.

    • Assange: U.S. Probe of WikiLeaks & “Show Trial” of Bradley Manning Aims to Scare Whistleblowers

      Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of disclosing a trove of government documents and cables to WikiLeaks, is set to go on trial next week. Manning has already pleaded guilty to misusing classified material he felt “should become public,” but has denied the top charge of aiding the enemy. Speaking from his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange calls Manning’s case “a show trial … to terrorize people from communicating with journalists and communicating with the public.” Assange also discusses his own legal status as he continues to evade extradition to Sweden. Assange fears that returning to Sweden would result in him being sent to the United States, where he fears a grand jury has secretly indicted him for publishing the diplomatic cables leaked by Manning. Click here to watch our web-only extended interview with Assange.

  • Finance

    • Good News, Everyone! (Except You Wage-Earners)

      When you look into the numbers, it looks more dubious still. The average U.S. household spends about 4 percent of its gross income on gasoline–so you’d need a pretty dramatic change in gas prices to have an appreciable impact on a typical family’s finances. In fact, they’re down roughly 15 percent from their peak earlier this year, but they’re still about 15 percent more than the low they hit around this time last year–and if you look at gas prices over the past couple of years, they’ve bounced up and down without really going anywhere.

    • Meet the New and Improved Goldman Sachs

      The bank announced plans to undergo a “rigorous self-examination” to avoid an Abacus repeat. Goldman certainly took its time, but the deep look into the mirror is complete. Meet the new and improved Goldman Sachs.

    • German Official Warns of Immediate ‘Revolution’ if EU Adopts US Model

      German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble urges adherence to Europe’s welfare model

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Civil Rights

    • The courage in Egypt is breathtaking, Europe should push for it in leadership too

      I’ve just returned from Egypt: impressed by the courage and ambition I found, worried by some of trends I saw, and pleased that the Minister was willing to commit the open internet.

      Deep inside one of the Pyramids in Giza (you can climb many stories into them! incredible experience), the guide turned and announced: “the problem with Egypt is that we talk too much about the things we DID, and nothing about the things we will DO.”

    • The Denial of Justice

      I don’t think any single person who has considered the matter seriously, has any real doubt that Jack Straw was complicit in torture in an active and involved way, and has lied about it continually. There are some who would argue he was ethically justified, but that is a different argument. It is not worth engaging in ethical argument with anybody who maintains that the facts which are the basis of the argument, should not be known.

    • Reporters Tell Attorney General Eric Holder They Won’t Agree To ‘Off The Record’ Meeting As Scale Of Journalist Spying Expands

      A few quick updates on the continuing saga of the DOJ’s highly questionable spying on the communications of reporters. First up, we find out that the AP is claiming that the DOJ’s scooping up of phone records wasn’t nearly as limited as some people have suggested, but rather contained records for “thousands and thousands” of phone calls. Remember, the DOJ’s own guidelines say that any such record retrieval must be very targeted rather than broad.

    • Holder’s Regrets and Repairs

  • DRM

    • EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM in HTML5

      Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a formal objection to the inclusion of digital rights management (DRM) in HTML5, arguing that a draft proposal from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) could stymie Web innovation and block access to content for people across the globe.

      The W3C’s HTML working group is creating a technical standard for HTML5, an upcoming revision to the computer language that creates webpages and otherwise displays content online. The working group has accepted a draft that includes discussion of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), which will hard-wire the requirements of DRM vendors into the HTML standard.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • EU Ombudsman: EFSA fails on conflict of interests

      European Food Safety Authority mishandled a major revolving doors case with biotechnology company Syngenta

    • WHO warns countries not to hoard secrets of coronavirus

      The World Health Organization (WHO) warned countries with possible cases of the SARS-like novel coronavirus on Thursday that they must share information and not allow commercial labs to profit from the virus, which has killed 22 people worldwide.

    • How Long Before A Patent Kills A Hundred Million People?

      Fortunately, the virus does not seem to have spread widely during that three-month delay, but next time we might not be so lucky. It seems bordering suicidal that concerns about patenting should over-ride health concerns, especially when a viral pandemic could potentially kill a hundred million people, as it did in 1918. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court recognizes this as yet another reason not to allow patents on genes, and that this becomes part of a broader move to share freely vital knowledge that can save lives and alleviate suffering around the world.

    • Copyrights

      • White House Makes It Impossible For The Blind To Sign Petition Supporting Copyright Treaty For The Blind

        Last week, we discussed a recent We The People petition at the White House, asking the administration to support the treaty for the blind, which would make it easier to access creative works for the blind by creating a few small “exceptions” to copyright law (i.e., returning rights to the public) for the sake of sharing formats that are accessible to the blind across borders. However, some blind advocacy groups have discovered that, if you happen to be blind/visually impaired, it’s basically impossible to sign the petition.

      • Blind advocates blast White House

        The National Federation of the Blind is fuming mad over the White House web site, complaining that its members have been unable to sign an important online petition.

      • TV Broadcasters Launch Aereokiller Lawsuit in Washington

        Is the battle over the digital distribution of broadcast television eventually headed to the U.S. Supreme Court?

      • Inside the GOP Labs – Internet Association at odds with RIAA over DMCA – Swire: Consensus doesn’t equal unanimous – New tech makes gov’s buying easier, cheaper
      • Internet Association Hits Back At RIAA’s Desire To Wipe Away DMCA Safe Harbors

        On Friday, we wrote about how the RIAA has already started pitching the terrible idea that we should do away with the important DMCA safe harbors, which make sure that liability for infringement is properly applied to those actually infringing, rather than tools and services. The RIAA, however, thinks that it should be everyone else’s responsibility to prop up their increasingly obsolete business model, so they want to do away with the safe harbors and make every internet service liable if anyone uses their service for infringement. Of course, what this would do is stifle innovation broadly, because companies would avoid any kind of user generated services, because the liability would be super high. Sure, some of the big players would stick around, because they’ve got enough money and lawyers, but new startups would be few and far between.

      • The Aftermath Of Napster: Letting Incumbents Veto Innovation Slows Down Innovation Drastically

        Last fall, law professor Michael Carrier came out with a really wonderful paper, called Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story. He interviewed dozens of people involved in the internet world and the music world, to look at what the impact was of the legal case against Napster, leading to the shutdown of the original service (the name and a few related assets were later sold off to another company). The stories (again, coming from a variety of different perspectives) helps fill in a key part of the story that many of us have heard, but which has never really been written about: what an astounding chill that episode cast over the innovation space when it came to music. Entrepreneurs and investors realized that they, too, were likely to get sued, and focused their efforts elsewhere. The record labels, on the other hand, got the wrong idea, and became totally convinced that a legal strategy was the way to stem the tide of innovation.

05.29.13

Links 29/5/2013: Humble Indie Bundle 8, Fedora 19 Previews

Posted in News Roundup at 3:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • A lesson from Tumblr: Who’s in control?

    It’s no surprise that many Tumblr users are less than pleased with Yahoo!’s recent acquisition of their favorite personal publishing platform. The news is a sobering reminder that creators who don’t control the tools of their trade are at the mercy of those who do.

  • Open source project management on the rise

    Frank Bergmann, founder of ]project-open[, talks with us about the open source project management solution and how the company strives for an open culture at the office. He says maintaining communication is essential, and it entails complete transparency and honesty.

  • Glyn Moody Trashes Latest BSA-Study

    After seeing MSCEs spend hours trying to update one of my computer labs I found I was able to convert most labs to the latest installation of Debian GNU/Linux in one hour and update all the software in a few minutes for routine updates and less than an hour for migration to a new release. The rest of my time was then freed for useful business, education. With that other OS, I was a slave giving very little economic benefit to my employer because that other OS was constantly giving us trouble.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Foxconn reportedly building a Firefox OS smartphone

        According to Focus Taiwan, Taiwan’s Hon Hai, which trades as Foxconn, and Mozilla will be holding a press conference on Monday 3 June to announced a partnership around the Firefox OS mobile device operating system. The event will take place in Taipei in the run up to the Computex trade show and will, says the news site, be the nineteenth wireless telecomms company to form a partnership with Mozilla.

      • Is Mozilla Aiming Firefox OS at Tablets and Phones?

        While Mozilla has not officially taken the wraps off a specific device, The Register, CNET and other media outlets have followed up on reports regarding the Mozilla Foundation saying that it is working with Apple hardware specialist Foxconn on a tablet device that will run the new Firefox OS mobile platform. Until now, there had only been phones discussed for the operating system, which Mozilla is putting massive resources behind. Not only is the news of a tablet of interest, but Foxconn is a world-class hardware partner for Mozilla to have.

      • Mozilla teams up with Foxconn for Firefox ‘fondleslab’

        Mozilla is working with Apple hardware-maker Foxconn to release a mobile device running Firefox OS, it told news outlets on Monday, and plans to unveil it at an event next week.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • What Will Follow OpenStack Havana?

      The current OpenStack open source cloud platform release is named Grizzly – due to the fact that OpenStack had a Summit in San Diego, which is in California, which has a Grizzly bear on its flag.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Business

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GnuCash 2.5.2 (Unstable) released

      The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.5.2, the third release in the 2.5.x series of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.6.0. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX.

  • Project Releases

    • Xine Now Supports VA-API, GL 2.0 Output, EAC3

      A new version of xine-lib was released today, which is the library that powers the Xine multimedia playback engine. The xine-lib 1.2.3 release brings numerous features including VA-API hardware video decoding and support for OpenGL 2.0 output.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Civic coding strengthens open source skills

      I’ve been thinking a bit too much lately about GitHub and Drupal.org. More broadly, I’ve had my mind on open source + community. Sometimes this is called social coding.

    • Slow progress on govt open source policy

      More than six years after Cabinet approved a policy for free and open source software (FOSS) in government, little has been achieved.

      This was conceded by chairman of the State IT Agency’s (SITA’s) board, Jerry Vilakazi, at the Government Information Technology Officers (GITO) Council Summit yesterday.

    • Schools In Basel Are Using The Open Source Groupware Kolab

      Following their overall Free Software and Open Standards strategy, the public schools in the Swiss city of Basel are providing the Open Source Kolab Groupware Solution to their teachers, students and administrative staff. This enables them to coordinate their work and collaborate as efficiently as possible. The students are learning early to make use of modern information and communication technologies. Markus Bäumler head of the responsible ICT Media department in Basel says “We are delighted to have a Free Software solution that we can deploy for this purpose which reliably meets our professional requirements.”

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Google defends its use of proprietary tech in Hangouts

      oogle is feeling the heat over its decision to build its new Hangouts IM and audio/video chat product with proprietary technology that doesn’t support server federation via the XMPP industry standard, but the company is defending its move.

      Specifically, Google maintains that XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) industry support is weak, which dilutes its purpose as a common protocol, and that its technology hasn’t kept up with the times.

Leftovers

  • Bob Schieffer Is Tired of Booking Bad Guests on His Show

    It’s more good than bad that a lot of mainstream reporters are speaking openly about the chilling effect of the Obama White House’s investigations into leaks of classified material. But this willingness to talk about how the White House operates can lead some journalists to make some rather strange arguments.

  • Yearbook prank leads to high school student’s arrest in Columbia, Mo.

    A Columbia high school student faces a possible felony charge after her arrest for changing a classmate’s name in the school yearbook to a sexually suggestive term.

    The 17-year-old Hickman High School junior was arrested May 14 after she allegedly changed a student’s last name from Mastain to “masturbate” in the 100th edition of the Hickman Cresset yearbook. She could be charged with first-degree property damage, a felony, and harassment.

  • Science

  • Security

    • DoS vulnerability in ModSecurity fixed – Update
    • PayPal vulnerable to cross-site scripting again

      17-year old German schoolboy Robert Kugler has posted information on a cross-site scripting vulnerability in payment processing service PayPal to the Full Disclosure mailing list. Kugler wanted to report the bug to PayPal as part of its official Bug Bounty Program, but the program only pays out to participants who are 18 or over. To vent his frustration, he has now gone public with the bug.

    • OpEDL: ‘Anonymous’ targets far-right English Defense League

      Individuals claiming to be part of international hacktivist group Anonymous have published phone numbers and addresses for supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) as part of what they said was the first phase of a campaign to destroy the far-right street protest movement.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Standing up to Golden Dawn in Greece

      The economic crisis in Greece has led to a rise in support for the far-right Golden Dawn and an increase in racist attacks. Jamal Osman talks to one man who is fighting back.

    • Toronto cops hospitalize hotel guest who recorded them arresting another guest

      A man staying at Toronto’s Sheraton Centre Hotel used his Blackberry to video-record police who were arresting another guest. The police objected and several of them piled onto him, beating him savagely while screaming “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” They broke two of his ribs. The whole thing was captured on the man’s phone and on hotel CCTV. He’s suing.

    • Did Senator McCain Violate NDAA by Hanging Out with Syrian Rebels?

      In case you missed it, Senator John McCain took the opportunity this Memorial Day to cross the Turkey-Syria border and hang out with Syrian rebels. These are the same rebels with ties to Al Qaeda. These are the same rebels cutting out and eating the hearts of dead soldiers. According to reports, Senator McCain wanted to go further into combat but was not allowed.

    • Stop NDAA in your State? Grassroots Activism Works

      Last week, the California Liberty Preservation Act, AB351, was passed unanimously by the Assembly Appropriations Committee and sent to the full State Assembly for a vote.

      The bill would play a big part in nullifying the “indefinite detention” provisions of both the NDAA and the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF).

    • Washington steps up hacking allegations against China

      On Monday the Washington Post published a classified list compiled by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board of military systems and technologies allegedly compromised by Chinese hacking. Though the previously undisclosed report does not present any evidence for these claims, it is being used to escalate charges against China that it is hacking US secrets.

    • Guantanamo: the Legal Mess Behind the Ethical Mess

      LAW profs deem force-feeding “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

    • Tyranny Got You Down?

      Our political strategy brings to mind the definition of insanity often attributed to Albert Einstein..

    • America’s Greatest Challenge

      I’ve been reading a few articles on the “alternative” media which really have me thinking. One, by Chris Hedges entitled “Rise Up or Die” made me think about just how bad things really are nowadays here in the USA. The other article by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, “You are The Hope” was also a particularly dark piece.

      It’s not that I don’t agree with what the two have said…I do; still, I don’t think they quite accurately reflect the growing dis-connects between what many Americans and the mainstream media, along with the Powers That Be would have us believe.

    • Woolwich Attack: Overreacting To Extremism ‘Could Bring Back Al Qaeda’ Ex CIA Officer Warns

      One of the world’s leading terrorism experts has branded the government’s proposals to muzzle Islamist hate preachers and crack down on violent extremism in the wake of the Woolwich attack as “a waste of time”.

      Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and former CIA operations officer who worked with the Afghan mujahedin in the late 1980s, says that “a good [counter-extremism] policy should be based on an understanding on what’s happening on the ground.

      “The notion that there is any serious process called ‘radicalisation’, or indoctrination, is really a mistake. What you have is some young people acquiring some extreme ideas – but it’s a similar process to acquiring any type of ideas. It often begins with discussions with a friend.”

    • Drone Strikes Mostly Transferred from CIA to DoD

      As promised in his speech this week, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is largely assuming control of the embattled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) combat operations in the Middle East. The program had been run over the past several years by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and was responsible for death strikes on four Americans, only one of which was an intended target for death.

    • CIA/MI6 helped spawn a Frankenstein’s monster

      In response to the hacking to death of Lee Rigby, a young off-duty British soldier killed on a London street in broad daylight, Britain’s Home Office plans measures to prevent the radicalization of Muslim youth which include censorship of jihadist Internet websites, a crackdown on extremist organizations and the cleansing of mosques and place of learning from preachers promoting “a poisonous narrative.” That’s all very well but unless the government acknowledges the root of the problem those steps will constitute a mere band-aid covering a suppurating sore.

    • Kern County Coroner Declares David Silva’s Death To Be ‘Accidental,’ Heart Disease-Related

      Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood held a press conference last Thursday to declare his department’s innocence in the death of David Silva. This claim is based on the coroner’s report prepared by the Kern County Coroner’s office, which reports to the Sheriff’s Office. David Silva’s death has been declared “accidental,” with the official cause of death listed as “cardiac hypertension.”

  • Cablegate

    • AGP slams Rahul Gandhi after WikiLeaks revelation

      Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters in Guwahati, AGP secretary Durga Das Boro said that the party was contemplating legal action against Rahul Gandhi for making such a comment on the Assam’s regional party, which formed the government in the state for three terms since 1986. Boro said that the WikiLeaks had recently revealed that “(Gandhi) had said that AGP leaders were insurgents and India allowed separatists to form the government in Assam and the United States should also allow Hamas.”

    • Julian Assange’s human rights are being violated by UK, says Ecuador
    • Ecuador accuses UK of ‘violating Assange’s human rights’

      Ecuador has accused the UK of violating Julian Assange’s human rights by refusing to allow the WikiLeaks founder to take shelter in South America, which granted him political asylum nearly a year ago.

    • Ecuador: Concern for Rights of WikiLeaks Founder
    • ‘Hactivist’ Faces 10 Years in Fed Prison for Stratfor Leaks

      Anonymous hacker Jeremy Hammond agrees to “non-cooperating plea agreement” as alternative to endless court battle and decades of prison time

    • LulzSec Hacker Jeremy Hammond Pleads Guilty To CFAA Charge; Faces 10 Years

      In yet another Computer Fraud and Abuse Act case, in which the DOJ piled on charge after charge after charge until the person they were pressuring accepted a plea bargain, Jeremy Hammond has officially accepted a plea deal for helping LulzSec/Anonymous hack Stratfor. He admits that he did it, and given that, it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that some punishment is warranted, but it still seems troubling the amount of pressure that the DOJ used to get him to take a plea bargain.

    • Setting an example: Why we must defend Manning and Assange

      WikiLeaks released an enormous treasure-trove of classified US government documents in 2010. It included US military logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 250,000 diplomatic cables, and Collateral Murder, a video depicting the killing of 12 civilians by a US helicopter gunship in Iraq.

      The source of the leaks, US Private Bradley Manning, acted on his conscience. He believed that people have a right to see the information he had been privy to as an army intelligence analyst. He was prepared to risk his life and liberty to reveal that information.

    • Bradley Manning’s Trial begins 3 June. Call-out for solidarity everywhere
    • ‘We Steal Secrets’ Documentary Focuses on Personalities of Assange, Manning Over Significance of WikiLeaks

      Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney held a special screening for his new documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, in Washington, DC, on May 21. Gibney also participated in a question and answer session after the film that was moderated by POLITICO‘s Josh Gerstein.

      First, the title reinforces widespread perceptions created by the United States government that the WikiLeaks organization is out to “steal” secrets. Gibney has claimed that the title is “ironic.” Actually, the US government steals secrets. Former NSA director Michael Hayden says this in the film, but this aspect of US government operations takes up only a few seconds of the film. He does not explore how US government agencies are actually the ones engaged in stealing so the “irony” does not come through at all.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Solar-Powered Hospital in Haiti Yields Sustainable Savings

      But in Haiti’s Central Plateau, the flow of energy is intermittent at best. Consider that in Mirebalais, located 30 miles north of Port-au-Prince, the power goes out for an average of three hours each day. This poses an enormous challenge to running any hospital; surgeries are jeopardized, neonatal ventilators stall, the cold chain is interrupted, and countless everyday tasks get derailed. As Partners In Health co-founder Paul Farmer noted during a recent lecture at the Harvard School of Public Health, “It’s not great if you’re a surgeon and you have to think about getting the generator going.”

    • South Korea’s faked safety certificates: just another nuclear scandal
    • Solar Power Notches A Victory In Minnesota

      By 2020, 1.5 percent of the energy that public utilities in Minnesota generate will have to come from solar. It’s estimated that this new requirement, signed into law last week by Gov. Mark Dayton, will result in a 32-fold increase in solar capacity in the state, up to 450 megawatts.

  • Finance

    • The Real Numbers: Half of America in Poverty — and It’s Creeping Upward

      Since the recession, the disparities have continued to grow. An OECD report states that “inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve,” with the U.S. experiencing one of the widest gaps among OECD countries. The 30-year decline in wages has worsened since the recession, as low-wage jobs have replaced formerly secure middle-income positions.

    • Digital currency biz Liberty Reserve shut down, founder arrested

      Digital currency Liberty Reserve has been shut down after U.S. and Costa Rican authorities arrested founder Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk in Spain.

    • Stressed Ecosystems Leaving Humanity High and Dry

      On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years, which distorts the natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia. Two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking due to pumping out groundwater, oil and gas. Some deltas are falling at a rate four times faster than global sea level is rising.

  • Censorship

    • Facebook gives way to campaign against hate speech on its pages

      Company agrees to update policies in response to protest by more than 100 advocacy groups

    • Now PETA Wants to Sue People Who Leave Anonymous Comments

      PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is incensed over an article in the Huffington Post that details that organization’s unsettling practice of euthanizing animals in a Virginia facility that many have assumed is a no kill shelter.

      According to the New York Post, PETA wants to sue some of the people who have left comments on the article. The problem is that, following the practice of many on the Internet, many of the comments are under assumed names or are anonymous. PETA is attempting to discover the true identities of their critics so that it can sue them for defamation.

    • Judge Deems Facebook-Posting Rapper Cameron D’Ambrosio A ‘Threat,’ Denies Bail

      Cameron D’Ambrosio, the Massachusetts teen arrested and charged with “communicating terroristic threats” (or “bomb threats,” depending on who’s doing the reporting) via a Facebook post (in the form of rap lyrics — CammyDee has aspirations), has been denied bail by the state’s Superior Court.

    • In Denmark, Online Tracking of Citizens is an Unwieldy Failure
    • Danish Police Admit That Data Retention Hasn’t Helped At All

      There’s been a big push around the globe to ramp up data retention rules, which require various online services to keep all sorts of data on their users for a long time, just in case it’s possible that law enforcement officials might need that data at some later date. That this only adds to the pile of data, and often makes it more difficult to find useful data, is never discussed. That this likely puts more people’s private data at risk of being hacked or accidentally revealed is never discussed. Also, almost never discussed: whether or not such data retention laws actually help solve crimes.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Hundreds of workers ‘illegally’ dismissed in Alexandria

      Around 350 workers have been dismissed from their jobs at a factory in Alexandria on Sunday morning, without adequate justification, according to the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR).

      Mohamed Adel, a lawyer at ECESR said that between 350 and 400 workers at the Hi Tech Textile factory in Alexandria were relieved of their duties because they demanded higher wages. According to Adel, the owner of the factory laid off the Egyptian workers in favour of foreign workers because their wage demands are lower than the Egyptian workers.

    • Teacher facing discipline for reminding students of Constitutional rights

      An Illinois community is rallying around a teacher who is reportedly up against disciplinary action for informing his students of their rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment before the high-schoolers answered a survey regarding their personal behavior.

    • Amnesty International defends refugees in Kenya
    • How Prosecutors Fought to Keep Rosen’s Warrant Secret

      The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret, arguing to a federal judge that the government might need to monitor the account for a lengthy period of time.

      The new details are revealed in a court filing detailing a back and forth between the Justice Department and the federal judges who oversaw the request to search a Gmail account belonging to Rosen, a reporter for Fox News. A 2009 article Rosen had written about North Korea sparked an investigation; Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department adviser who allegedly leaked classified information to Rosen, insisted that the reporter should not be notified of the search and seizure of his e-mails, even after a lengthy delay.

    • Two Judges Told DOJ It Had To Disclose Spying On Journalist; DOJ Found A Third Judge Instead

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Authoritarian Governments Still Trying To Seek More Control Over The Internet

      There was plenty of attention paid to the failed WCIT meeting last year, in which some countries effectively sought greater control over the internet, leading many countries to refuse to sign on. There has since been plenty of reasonable concern that the end result of this is a fragmented internet, with one internet for those who believe in internet freedom and openness… and one for those who don’t.

      And, of course, the whole ITU WCIT process was never going to be the end of such discussions. Eli Dourado, who has been following this stuff closely for a while, recently had a good report about how various authoritarian governments made a bit of a power play for more control over internet governance. The issue may seem bureaucratic and messy, but that’s also why it’s important to pay attention. Because mixed in with all that bureaucracy are some key decisions.

    • Jaron Lanier’s Ignorance Of History, Basic Economics And Efficiency Is Getting Ridiculous

      So… we’d already taken a stab at debunking Jaron Lanier’s “gobbledygook economics” a few weeks back when it started appearing, but since then there’s been more Lanier everywhere (obviously, in coordination with his book release), and each time it seems more ridiculous than the last. Each time, the focus is on the following economically ridiculous concepts: (1) there should be micropayments for anyone doing anything free online because someone benefits somewhere (2) modern efficiency via technology has destroyed the middle class. Both of these claims make no sense at all.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Fear Mongering Report Suggests ‘IP Theft From China’ One Of The Biggest Problems America Faces

      A bunch of folks have been sending in variations on a report that came out last week, grandly titled “The IP Commission Report” as if it were some sort of official body. In the subhead, we find out that it’s actually by the even more ridiculously named “The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.” Who put together this “commission”? Well, it’s the National Bureau of Asian Research, which also is not an official government organization as you might think, but a private think tank that more or less was spun out of the University of Washington, and was originally the National Bureau of Asian and Soviet Research, put together at the behest of Senator Henry Jackson, who believed strongly that America should intervene around the globe to promote American interests, often at the expense of those where we were intervening. He supported interning Japanese Americans during WWII. He strongly supported the Vietnam War. He’s considered the spiritual father of today’s neoconservatives. As you may have guessed, the “National Bureau of Asian Research” is not exactly about figuring out the best way to understand and improve relationships between the US and Asia. It’s about how US interests can dominate Asia.

    • US-EU Trade Deal In Trouble Before It Even Starts?

      For the last few months, Techdirt has been following the surprisingly rapid embrace on both sides of the Atlantic of the proposed transatlantic free trade agreement, known variously as TAFTA or TTIP. Coming out of nowhere, the agreement is being talked about as if its success and benefits are more or less guaranteed.

    • WHO calls Middle Eastern virus, MERS, ‘threat to the entire world’ as death toll rises

      …they patented the virus…

05.28.13

Links 28/5/2013: Salix 14.0 (Live Xfce), Elive 2.1.42

Posted in News Roundup at 6:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Top 3: Puppy, Backbox and Linux 3.10

    Linux continues to grow not just because of any one vendor or particular use case, but because Linux is applicable to so many different use cases.

    Two such very different use-cases were on display this past week, with new releases of Pupply Linux and Backbox Linux

  • Is Linux Still Short on Apps vs Windows? Reality Check

    Sometime this July will mark my seventh anniversary of becoming a desktop Linux user. While I may or may not bake a cake to celebrate the occasion, it has gotten me thinking about what has changed in the world of Linux since I entered it — and, especially, how much more usable my Linux PC has become then. And what better way to quantify those improvements than to take stock of just how many apps are now available for Linux users that were not seven years ago?

  • Desktop

    • DesktopLinux.com Finally Dies

      A while back DesktopLinux.com changed ownership when the corporation owning it was sold. Since then the site has been rudderless with no moderator/authour and gradually fewer contributors to the public forum.

  • Kernel Space

    • Did You Know? – 15 Less Known But Interesting Facts About Linux and Linus
    • Rustboot: A 32-Bit Kernel Written In Rust

      Rust, the general purpose programming language developed by Mozilla for being a safe, concurrent, and practical language, can even be used to write a system kernel.

    • Linux Foundation Adds New Members From Car Software and Gaming Industries

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that AllGo Embedded Systems, Suntec Software and Wargaming are joining the organization.

      The demand for devices to become more intelligent and connected in the gaming and automotive industries is driving more demand for interactive entertainment and embedded software in the Linux market. The newest Linux Foundation members are expanding investment in Linux in order to advance software in-vehicle systems and online gaming and leverage the collaborative development model. These and other topics will be discussed this week at the Automotive Linux Summit Spring 2013 in Japan on May 27-28 followed by LinuxCon Japan and CloudOpen JapThe Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that AllGo Embedded Systems, Suntec Software and Wargaming are joining the organization.

      The demand for devices to become more intelligent and connected in the gaming and automotive industries is driving more demand for interactive entertainment and embedded software in the Linux market. The newest Linux Foundation members are expanding investment in Linux in order to advance software in-vehicle systems and online gaming and leverage the collaborative development model. These and other topics will be discussed this week at the Automotive Linux Summit Spring 2013 in Japan on May 27-28 followed by LinuxCon Japan and CloudOpen Japan on May 29-31.an on May 29-31.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Replacing X With Wayland On The Raspberry Pi

        Last week I wrote about the emergence of a new Wayland Weston compositor renderer for the Raspberry Pi. There was a fair amount of discussion about it and since then additional details have emerged.

      • Intel 2.21.8 Driver Takes Care Of COW Regressions

        Just one week after the Intel X.Org driver was updated with support for all known Haswell variants and introducing some new copy-on-write support for cloning pixmaps, a new release has been warranted.

      • Raspberry Pi’s Raspbian Improves Its Performance

        The Debian-based “Raspbian” Linux distribution for the Rasperry Pi ARM development board is now a heck of a lot faster thanks to recent software improvements.

        Raspbian is the Debian Linux distribution optimized for the ARMv7 Raspberry Pi. Older versions of Raspbian are based upon Debian Linux 6.0 on the Linux 3.1 kernel and GCC 4.4.5. However, the latest Debian Linux 7.0 on the latest Raspbian package-set has the Linux 3.6.11 armv6l kernel and GC 4.6.

    • Benchmarks

      • Eight-Way BSD & Linux OS Comparison

        Being benchmarked today at Phoronix is a comparison of eight different BSD and Linux operating systems. The contenders for this performance roundabout include PC-BSD 9.1, DragonFlyBSD 3.4.1, Ubuntu 13.04, Linux Mint 15 RC, CentOS 6.4, Fedora 18, Mageia 3, and openSUSE 12.3. Which of these operating systems are the fastest and slowest for a variety of different workloads? Read on to find out.

      • CPU-Z for Linux?: 6 Free Linux System Profilers

        A system profiler is a utility that presents information about the hardware attached to a computer. Having access to hard information about your hardware can be indispensable when you need to establish exactly what hardware is installed in your machine. For example, the information will help a technical support individual diagnose problems, or help to evaluate whether a system will support certain software or hardware.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Akademy-es 2013 schedule ready!

      As you probably know we are having Akademy-es 2013 just a few days earlier than Akademy in Bilbao, from 11th to 12th of July.

    • News in kdepim 4.11: Header theme (3/3) Grantlee theme generator (headerthemeeditor)

      For helping user to generate a KMail theme based on Grantlee, I created an application: “headerthemeeditor”.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • One serving of 53 amazing students please

        The accepted students for Google Summer of Code and the Outreach Program for Women have just been announced. I am so happy that we were able to accept 50 students for GSoC.

      • A Summer of Coding — and More!

        Google has just announced the 2013 Google Summer of Code students! And that means that the Outreach Program for Women list is also announced. It’s been some weeks of anxious waiting, not just for the students and interns involved, but also for the whole Krita community, developers and artists. But everyone can breathe again now!

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 3 on the loose

        I’ve used Mageia 3 full time since its release and it’s not perfect – but it’s darn close. Nothing is perfect and that is so true for Linux. It’s a matter of what bugs bug you less. I used Mageia 1 for quite a while and I’ll probably hang around in Mageia 3 too. It performs well. It boots really quickly and the desktop as well as most applications are very responsive. Never underestimate the charm of instantaneous results. I have a nice fresh install of Sabayon Linux 13.04 just waiting, but it looks like I may end up not using it.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project News – May 27th, 2013

        The Debian GNU/Hurd team announced the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release. On the Debian Ports archive you can find the installation ISO images to download (netinst, CD or DVD), as well as a pre-installed disk image which makes it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd. Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with more than 10,000 software packages available.

        Please make sure to read the configuration information, the FAQ, and the translator primer to get a grasp of the great features of GNU/Hurd.

      • Elive 2.1.42 development released

        This version includes some misc features like:

        Bug fixes in the automatic date and time configuration
        If you move to another country it is automatically detected and your time is updated to the new location
        Updated firmwares to support a wider range of wifi’s and other devices
        Automatic detection of lvm devices inside crypted filesystem
        Fixed a bug with thumblerd process, which can sometimes block devices from unmounting

      • Debian Linux 7.0 Wheezy: Hands on

        I’ve been experimenting with installing the new Debian release across a number of devices – here’s what I’ve found so far.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Another Reason Why Open Source Wins: Fairness

    I’ve written a number of posts looking at less-familiar advantages of open source over closed source, and here’s another one. Proprietary systems can’t be forked, which means that it’s not possible to change the underlying ethos, for example by tweaking the software or using code on a different platform. But you can with open source, as this interesting example shows.

    Fairphone is, as its name implies, built with fairness in mind. That contrasts with today’s smartphones which contain many minerals sourced in a variety of unsavoury ways, ranging from being “merely” exploitative to downright bloodstained. That’s not something we think about much as we play with our latest shiny toy, but Fairphone wants to change that. And of course, as part of its fairness, everything will be open (although it’s based on Android 4.2, so I wonder whether some elements will be closed nonetheless.)

  • Migrating to open source needs a plan

    Perhaps you’ve considered migrating your company to an open source desktop productivity suite? There are a host of good reasons for such a move. The most obvious one that comes to mind is to save on license fees, but don’t be fooled. For the migration process to be a success and the full benefits to be reaped, you must invest in the changeover itself. Don’t believe that because you want to save money long term you should skimp short-term. A look at the City of Freiburg’s attempted migration reveals the dangers of treating the new software as a drop-in replacement.

  • When It Comes To FOSS, Who Don’t You Trust?

    Probably the best corporate ownership of free and open source products comes from Red Hat, for reasons that should be obvious. Red Hat makes their living developing and supporting FOSS products, so they tend to be excellent FOSS players, obeying both the spirit and letter of the GPL. In addition, they defend the license, because what’s good for free and open source software is good for Red Hat.

    The other side of the coin, the bad players in the free software world, might be best represented by Oracle, who inherited a slew of important open source projects with their takeover of Sun Microsystems a few years back. As we’ve observed before, part of the problem with Oracle is that sharing and software freedom isn’t in the company’s genetic structure. Like many proprietary vendors, they believe in nurturing their clients by using the mushroom philosophy–that is by keeping them in the dark and feeding them plenty of malarkey.

    Oracle also obviously has some conflict-of-interest issues when it comes to one of their most important FOSS offerings, the MySQL database, which probably steers at least half of the worlds websites. Oracle, of course, became one of the biggest companies in tech by selling their own proprietary database. Although in most instances Oracle’s database doesn’t directly compete with MySQL, we know it gripes Larry Ellison’s arse to be giving a database away when he thinks he could be making money selling it.

  • BSA Study Demonstrates Open Source’s Economic Advantage

    I love the spring. Not, of course, because of the glorious weather, since we don’t have any. But because it’s time for the annual BSA report on piracy, which is guaranteed to provide me with hours of innocent fun as I go through finding its methodological errors and dodgy data.

  • One Small Step for NASA, One Giant Leap for Open Source

    “When you really need performance/weight as in the space program, who are you going to call: an OS designed by salesmen in secret and in league with hardware suppliers,” asked blogger Robert Pogson, “or an OS designed by computer geeks trying hard in the open to get the last bit of performance and reliability out of hardware?”

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Cloud Hosting For Static Sites

      GitHub Pages: GitHub is most well known as a popular source code repository, but they also offer free hosting as part of GitHub Pages. You can use a standard git repository to publish your site, which is how I managed my personal blog for years. For each new article, run the jekyll command line tool, and then push the site to GitHub. GitHub’s Pages takes care of the rest. There is also a web based tool with a few themes and an online markdown editor.

    • OpenStack Brings Open Source Cloud to CeBIT

      The OpenStack® community will take part in CeBIT Australia for the first time when the show opens in Sydney this week, bringing the promise of cost savings, speed of deployment and freedom from vendor lock­in to Australian enterprises. CeBIT will run from May 28th through 30th and will be held at the Sydney Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour; OpenStack will be on stand O01 in the Cloud Ecosystem section in Hall 4.

  • CMS

    • Open Source Blogging Platform WordPress Turns Ten, And Its Community Gets To Blow The Candles Out

      Ten years ago today, WordPress, the open source blogging software, was born. It’s amazing to think that it’s been that long, but considering it had all of the elements that other startups and projects have tried to emulate over the past 10 years, then it makes sense.

      When speaking with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, you’d think that he was only a small part of the movement that attempted to empower anyone and everyone to self-publish. While that might be partially true, Mullenweg has taken all of his learnings over the years and poured them into the for-profit arm, Automattic.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open-Source House Building

      Think of a world where you could simply download the blueprints of your future home for free just like you download any open source software today. A team of British architects developed just that and they are hoping their project called WikiHouse will radically change the way we think about building homes.

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

    • CGit Update Adds Exciting Features, Security Fix

      CGit, the widely-used replacement to GitWeb, has out a new release today. Besides incorporating some useful new functionality, it also takes care of a security fix where out-of-date CGit installations could allow arbitrary access to files from the system.

    • OCLint: Another Way For Clang Static Code Analysis

      For those looking at new static code analysis tools, OCLint is an open-source utility powered by LLVM’s Clang foundation to provide a variety of features when inspecting C, Objective-C, and C++ code-bases. In recent testing of OCLint for an internal C-based Phoronix code-base, OCLint proved to be quite useful.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • This Pentagon Project Makes Cyberwar as Easy as Angry Birds

      For the last year, the Pentagon’s top technologists have been working on a program that will make cyberwarfare relatively easy. It’s called Plan X. And if this demo looks like a videogame or sci-fi movie or a sleek Silicon Valley production, that’s no accident. It was built by the designers behind some of Apple’s most famous computers — with assistance from the illustrators who helped bring Transformers to the silver screen.

    • PayPal denies teenager reward for finding website bug

      A 17-year-old German student contends PayPal has denied him a reward for finding a vulnerability in its website.

      Robert Kugler said he notified PayPal of the vulnerability on May 19. He said he was informed by email that because he is under 18 years old, he did not qualify for its Bug Bounty Program. He will turn 18 next March.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • F*ck You NRA! Principal Fires Guards, Expands Arts and Sees Test Scores Soar

      In defiance of societal trends, a K-8 principal fired all his public school’s security guards and reinvested in the arts, drastically improving grades and test scores in a school that once “had a prison feel,” NBC News reports.

      Orchard Gardens, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was founded in 2003, but quickly fell to the bottom of public schools in the state. Of 800 students, “more than 90% qualify for free or reduced lunch, 25% are learning to speak English, and 25% require Individual Education Plans to meet special needs,” according to the pilot school’s website.

    • Did Obama’s Speech Really ‘Narrow’ the War?

      followed the coverage of President Barack Obama’s May 23 speech at the National Defense University, you would think something big happened to the “war on terror.” Specifically, its scope was narrowed, perhaps considerably, as the war as it is currently being waged winds down.

  • Cablegate

    • Statement from Jeremy Regarding His Plea

      Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline.

  • Finance

    • Is EVERY Market Rigged?

      Unless you live under a rock, you know about the Libor scandal.

    • Delinquent US student loans hit record high, with over $100 billion past due

      The number and value of overdue student loans has reached an all-time high in the US as nearly a third of 20- to 24-year-olds are currently unemployed, according to a report by the Department of Education.

      With continued concern regarding rising college costs, the amount of outstanding student loans has now reached $1 trillion, making that the largest category of consumer debt in the US aside from home mortgages.

    • UK courts face radical privatisation shake-up

      The idea would establish the courts service as a commercial enterprise, paying its way and freed from Treasury control, with court buildings and thousands of staff put in the hands of private companies. It would save the Ministry of Justice pound stg. 1 billion ($1.56bn) a year.

  • Censorship

    • Houston police shut down Kanye West screening at Rothko Chapel

      Houston singer Dominique attended the library screening and said it was shut down due to “technical difficulties.” It was rescheduled for later that night/morning, but police eventually shuttered that screening, too, after a tense back and forth.

  • Privacy

    • Labeling Reporters “Criminals,” or Just Complying With the Privacy Protection Act?

      There has been a lot of outrage expressed recently over the contents of an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant to search the e-mail accounts of reporter James Rosen. The government’s affidavit offered the view that Rosen violated the law by aiding and abetting the alleged violations of laws prohibiting the disclosure of classified national security information. Specifically, the affidavit stated, “there is probable cause to believe that the Reporter . . . has committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. 793(d) either as Mr. Kim’s co-conspirator and/or aider and abetter.” To some, the fact that the government would make this argument shows that the Obama Administration is engaging in a War on Journalism. According to this thinking, the Obama Administration is not only trampling on the rights of a free press by going after its sources. Incredibly, they even think of a reporter as a criminal — and are willing to say so in court.

    • Leakers, Recipients, and Conspirators

      Leaks to reporters — and investigations of the leaks that included subpoenas of reporters’ e-mail logs and searches of reporters’ e-mail — have been in the news; see this post by Orin about the AP story and this post by Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic) about the Fox News story. I thought I’d say a few things about the First Amendment issues involved in such matters, especially in response to the Friedersdorf post.

    • Yet more Communications Data Bill confusion

      During the debate about the Communications Data Bill, one of the points we repeatedly made was that while this bill was not about reading the contents of messages, but that the details of who you communicate with were still incredibly private information.

    • Snoopers’ Charter – How You Can Stop it Coming Back…Again

      The Snoopers’ Charter is back in the news. It’s come back sooner than any of us expected. We’ve stopped it twice already so we know we can win. What can you do to help stop a revived Snoopers’ Charter?

    • Metropolitan Police were offered access to mobile users’ individual personal information

      The reports suggested that the Metropolitan Police were offered access to mobile users’ individual personal information – including web history, location and spending patterns. The claims were subsequently rejected by Ipsos MORI and mobile operator EE.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto

    • Trademarks

      • Trademark Protection: Is Litigation Worth the Cost?

        Anybody who has any involvement with Intellectual Property (“IP”) knows full well that protecting IP means a multi-step process. Obviously, step one is the conception of the invention, idea, trademark, trade name, or other innovation where protection might be necessary. Step two is the decision about what to do with the “new” idea, etc. in terms of the need to try for exclusivity on it –or not. Many “new” things do not need IP protection – and other “new” things may not qualify for it. If the “new” idea fits into the area where protection is desirable and it qualifies, then the next step is to seek legal protection. Of course, such protection will have a cost – whether or not the protection is sought by the inventor/conceptualizer himself/herself or itself (in the case of an organization) or assistance of counsel is required.

    • Copyrights

      • US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!

        The hilariously named “Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property” has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that’s pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there’s a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.

      • Vine, hip-hop and the future of video sharing: old rap songs and new copyright rules

        What does video tool Vine have in common with iconic rappers like the Beastie Boys and the Notorious BIG? More than you think. Like hip-hop, Vine is a way to sample and collect culture — and it may have to run the same legal gambit that rappers did a decade ago.

      • Hollywood Studios Want Google to Censor Dotcom’s Mega

        Two major Hollywood studios have asked Google to remove the homepage of Kim Dotcom’s Mega from its search results. Warner Bros. and NBC Universal claim that their copyrighted content is hosted on the URL and want it taken down. Dotcom is disappointed by the news and points out that constant takedown abuse is restricting access to legitimate files. “This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behavior we have experienced for years,” he says in a response.

      • Commission suggests hacking and hijacking the computers of suspected IP pirates

        Should owners of intellectual property be allowed to attack anyone they suspect of pirating their goodies? That’s a question that was raised last week by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.

      • Five Undercover Police Cars Sent To Arrest Single Alleged Movie Pirate

        Police assisted by the Federation Against Copyright Theft showed up in large numbers to arrest an alleged movie pirate in the UK this week. Armed with an emergency search warrant issued out of hours by a judge, five undercover police vehicles containing detectives and FACT officers were deployed to arrest a 24-year-old said to have recorded the movie Fast and Furious 6.

      • Why Are UK Police Allowing Entertainment Industry Employees To Arrest And Interrogate People With Their Help?

        We’ve discussed in the past the oddity of how a UK anti-piracy group, FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft), which is a private organization set up and controlled by large entertainment industry players, being deeply involved in criminal investigations and cases against individuals. In the case against Surfthechannel, FACT was directly involved in seizing and keeping the computers involved and then in paying the police for the prosecution. Even if you can reasonably argue that they should be involved in helping with providing information for the investigation, you’d think most people would agree that that’s where the industry’s involvement should end. They shouldn’t be present on raids. They shouldn’t get to touch or keep the evidence. And they certainly shouldn’t be financing and pressing the criminal case.

05.27.13

Links 27/5/2013: Linaro Connect, Linux 3.10 RC3

Posted in News Roundup at 1:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source is a Mindset, says Appcelerator CEO

    While covering the launch of Appcelerator Enterprise Platform at Mountain View last week, we enjoyed a short chat with Jeff Haynie, co-founder and CEO of Appcelerator.

    Haynie explained that his company’s new enterprise platform is important because it leverages mobility, cloud, and Big Data. These three game-changing advancements have really transformed the way the enterprise does business. We are moving away from package software deployed inside of middleware and enterprise app software that has been the trend for the last 15 years, and now towards on-demand subscription-oriented software, Haynie says.

  • “30 day” office suite Joeffice launched

    Joeffice is an alpha version of a open source Java-based office suite, which was created by its author, Anthony Goubard, in thirty days. Goubard documented the development process in a series of videos now available on YouTube.

    The application’s framework, and the tool used to develop the application, is the NetBeans platform. It is well known that NetBeans is an IDE, but the IDE also supports being effectively hollowed out and being used as the basis for applications. This is called the NetBeans platform and gives applications all the support for customisable editors for documents and having a fully tab-supporting, dock-enabled, single window or multi window environment with toolbars, menus and other interface elements.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • OpenStack Brings Open Source Cloud to CeBIT

      Local OpenStack Innovators and Tech Leaders Will Demonstrate Cloud Capabilities at Premier Technology Event

      SYDNEY May 27, 2013 – The OpenStack® community will take part in CeBIT Australia for the first time when the show opens in Sydney tomorrow, bringing the promise of cost savings, speed of deployment and freedom from vendor lock in to Australian enterprises. CeBIT will run from May 28 through 30 and will be held at the Sydney Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour; OpenStack will be on stand 001 in the Cloud Ecosystem section in Hall 4.

  • Education

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Taking the Open Source Enterprise Plunge

        Devops represents a dramatic change from the old siloed developers and script-heavy system administrators of yesterday. Any tools that can provide some common ground for developers and IT operations professionals can help, and it seems Chef and Puppet often do.

  • Project Releases

    • Libjpeg-Turbo Gets New Release

      The libjpeg-turbo library, which is the increasingly-used fork of the JPEG library that provides faster performance through SIMD optimizations, has out a new release.

  • Public Services/Government

    • The Philippines adopts Indonesia’s open source disaster mitigation tool

      The Department of Science and Technology revealed plans to adopt InaSAFE, a disaster mitigation technology from Indonesia, to its Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazard (NOAH) project in a bid to improve disaster planning and preparedness in the country.

    • Philippines: Adoption of Indonesia’s Open Source Disaster Mitigation Tool

      The website Futuregov Asia reported that the Philippines are planning to improve their disaster mitigation efforts by adopting an Indonesian mapping and planning tool: “The Department of Science and Technology revealed plans to adopt InaSAFE, a disaster mitigation technology from Indonesia, to its Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazard (NOAH) project in a bid to improve disaster planning and preparedness in the country. InaSAFE, or Indonesia Scenario Assessment for Emergency, is an open source software that produces realistic natural hazard impact scenarios to help decision makers in their disaster planning, preparedness and response activities.

  • Programming

    • The Best Features Of LLVM / Clang 3.3

      With next month’s release of LLVM 3.3 quickly approaching, here’s an overview of some of the best and most exciting features coming to this next major update of the LLVM compiler infrastructure and Clang C/C++ compiler front-end.

      Some of our favorite features coming to LLVM 3.3 include:

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Intelligence linked to ability to ignore distractions

      People with higher IQs are slow to detect large background movements because their brains filter out non-essential information, say US researchers.

      Instead, they are good at detecting small moving objects.

      The findings come in a study of 53 people given a simple, visual test in Current Biology.

      The results could help scientists understand what makes a brain more efficient and more intelligent.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Victory for Food Rights and Wisconsin Farmer Vernon Hershberger

      In what has been roundly declared a victory for food rights and private food transactions by supporters, a jury returned a verdict of not guilty on three of four charges against Wisconsin raw milk farmer Vernon Hershberger in the early morning hours of March 25. “It’s a beautiful day. . . . They tried their best to set me free,” Hershberger told The Complete Patient after a few hours of sleep.

  • Security

    • Labeling Reporters “Criminals,” or Just Complying With the Privacy Protection Act?

      There has been a lot of outrage expressed recently over the contents of an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant to search the e-mail accounts of reporter James Rosen. The government’s affidavit offered the view that Rosen violated the law by aiding and abetting the alleged violations of laws prohibiting the disclosure of classified national security information. Specifically, the affidavit stated, “there is probable cause to believe that the Reporter . . . has committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. 793(d) either as Mr. Kim’s co-conspirator and/or aider and abetter.” To some, the fact that the government would make this argument shows that the Obama Administration is engaging in a War on Journalism.

    • Reporters use Google, find breach, get branded as “hackers”
    • Privacy on the Line: Security lapse exposes some Lifeline phone customers to ID theft risk
    • Reporters threatened with CFAA, labeled hackers for finding security hole

      Scripps News reporters discovered 170,000 Lifeline phone customer records online that contained everything needed for identity theft. After requesting an interview with the COO of TerraCom and YourTel, the reaction was kill-the-messenger style; the reporters were called “Scripps Hackers” and threatened with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

    • One-Time Pad Reinvented to Make Electronic Copying Impossible

      The ability to copy electronic code makes one-time pads vulnerable to hackers. Now engineers have found a way round this to create a system of cryptography that is invulnerable to electronic attack.

    • Ragebooter: ‘Legit’ DDoS Service, or Fed Backdoor?

      On Monday, I profiled asylumbooter.com, one of several increasingly public DDoS-for-hire services posing as Web site “stress testing” services. Today, we’ll look at ragebooter.net, yet another attack service except for one secret feature which sets it apart from the competition: According the site’s proprietor, ragebooter.net includes a hidden backdoor that lets the FBI monitor customer activity.

    • Twitter’s 2FA: SMS Double-Duty

      Twitter introduced multi-factor login verification on Wednesday. Good news? Well… that depends.

      Twitter’s initial implementation of two-factor authentication (2FA) relies on SMS.

      But… Twitter also uses SMS as a way to send and receive Tweets (making use of SMS for double-duty: social and security). It’s possible to “STOP” incoming Tweets via SMS, and that makes sense, because people sometimes end up roaming unexpectedly — and there needs to be a way to stop the SMS feature. Otherwise it could generate a costly bill.

    • How to Hack Twitter’s Two-Factor Authentication
    • 0-days in Novell Client for Windows

      Those users who are still using Novell Client for Windows should look around for alternatives. In recent weeks, at least two 0-day exploits for the kernel driver have surfaced on the internet. The security firm eEye has documented the issues with the ids 20130510 and 20130522.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Still Getting Gitmo Wrong

      Those 86 prisoners have not been, and will not be, charged with any crime whatsoever; they are not “terror suspects.”

    • We’ve moved on from the Iraq war – but Iraqis don’t have that choice

      The dust in Iraq rolls down the long roads that are the desert’s fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a ball; and it carries, according to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, “the seeds of our death”. An internationally respected cancer specialist at the Sadr teaching hospital in Basra, Dr Ali told me that in 1999, and today his warning is irrefutable. “Before the Gulf war,” he said, “we had two or three cancer patients a month. Now we have 30 to 35 dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48% of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years’ time to begin with, then long after. That’s almost half the population. Most of my own family have it, and we have no history of the disease. It is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us; the mushrooms grow huge; even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can’t be eaten.”

    • 20 injured, 61 arrested as Swiss street parade turns violent (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

      The rally, now in its third year, is tolerated by the authorities, but just like a year ago when 10,000 participated, it was not given official permission to take place.

      Like last year’s parade, hardliners managed to spray graffiti on parliament, leading authorities to take extra precautions. Bern’s Old Town was locked down on the eve of the event, with extensive riot police deployments and barricades erected around Parliament Square.

    • Clashes at Cairo demo calling on Morsi to resign
    • ‘Conclusive proof’ CIA torture flights landed at Scottish airports

      Investigators believe they have found “conclusive” new proof that CIA-linked planes landed regularly in Scottish airports as part of the “extraordinary rendition” programme.

    • UK government must come clean on rendition flights

      SNP MSPs have urged the UK government to come clean on what knowledge it has on rendition flights using Inverness, Wick and Aberdeen airports.

      Rob Gibson, who has campaigned against these flights, said new findings that claim to have “conclusive” proof rendition planes landed regularly in Scottish airports, was “shocking”.

      The study by Kingston and Kent universities found that 13 flights to these airports may have been involved in the US security service’s rendition programme.

    • UK provided more support for CIA rendition flights than thought – study

      The UK’s support for the CIA’s global rendition programme after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US was far more substantial than has previously been recognised, according to a new research project that draws on a vast number of publicly available data and documentation.

    • CIA’s ‘al-Qaida Mole’ Morten Storm Had Links to Woolwich Murder Suspect’s Network

      Storm was offered $250,000 (£165,000) to help track down the radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in 2011. But the relationship soured when the CIA refused to pay him, saying that despite his assistance, the information that led to the kill came from other sources.

    • The Real Costs of CIA Cash

      When the New York Times reported recently that the CIA routinely provides cash payments to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, totaling in the tens of millions of dollars, many were surprised. I wasn’t among them. The Karzai scandal cycle has developed a certain amount of redundancy: his odd outbursts, his family’s endless corruption, the vacillating positions on peace negotiations and about faces on the Taliban one day and the United States the next — it has lost the power to shock. CIA payments are not even at the front of this parade of infamies.

    • LISTEN: The CIA Shapes the #Torture Debate
    • Obama should pardon CIA whistle blower

      Currently ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou is serving a 30-month prison term essentially for embarrassing the U.S. government. What was so embarrassing? He exposed the CIA’s torture program during the Bush administration.

    • Boston Marathon bombing: Suspects’ mum was on CIA terror list

      Russian agents warned them that both Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and 26-year-old Tamerlan were militant Islamists

    • The entire globe is a battlefield for Pentagon

      Forget it; the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is not becoming more “democratic” – or even transparent.

      US President Barack Obama now pledges to transfer the responsibility of the shadow ‘Drone Wars’ from the CIA to the Pentagon – so the US Congress is able to monitor it.

    • Gmail and the CIA … and China! … and Fox News!

      On the other hand, we now also know (again thanks to the Washington Post) that James Rosen, the Fox News reporter almost certainly communicated some of the time with his alleged source Stephen Jin-Woo Kim through a Gmail account. Those communications are at the heart of a leak investigation in which DOJ is, as Jack has noted, pushing very hard. So, apparently what I consider an obvious lapse in tradecraft is, to at least one sophisticated news reporter, …. a surprise. And if Fox News doesn’t know that Gmail is insecure, maybe it is too much to expect that the CIA would know.

    • Boston and the CIA ‘Snafu’: The grey eminence behind Turkey’s Erdogan and AKP

      In the first part, geopolitical analyst William Engdahl discussed the role of CIA’s Graham Fuller in creating the policy of using angry Jihadist Muslims as trained terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere against the Soviet Union. Herein—largely drawing on the revelations made by FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edwards—Engdahl throws the spotlight on the entire CIA-sponsored Islamic Jihadist operations run through Fetullah Gülen across Turkey into Central Asia and Russia and China.

    • Amnesty International challenges Poland’s ‘slow’ CIA prisons probe

      Amnesty International has stated in its annual report that it is concerned about the pace of Poland’s investigation into alleged CIA prisons for terrorists on Polish soil.

    • CIA’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights mapped

      Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States rounded up suspected terrorists wherever they were and then moved them to secret prisons around the globe, where they were detained and questioned. The program, largely carried out by the CIA, was known as extraordinary rendition.

    • Prosecutors applying to extend CIA prison investigation

      Prosecutors are applying to the Attorney General to extend the investigation into an alleged CIA prison in Poland, where renditioned prisoners have complained they were imprisoned and tortured.

  • Cablegate

    • ‘Filled with errors and speculation’: WikiLeaks slams ‘We Steal Secrets’ doc film

      WikiLeaks has lashed out at a forthcoming US-made documentary on founder Julian Assange. The whistleblowing group decried the film for its alleged inaccuracies, chiefly implications that Assange conspired with Bradley Manning to commit espionage.

      The anti-secrecy organization released an annotated copy of the film’s transcript that took no prisoners. Even the documentary’s name – ‘We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks’ – was condemned by the group as misleading.

    • WikiLeaks vs. Alex Gibney Battle Over New Film Intensifies

      As I noted in intro to my interview with Alex Gibney, director of the new We Steal Secrets film re WikilLeaks, he has been slammed by Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks Twitter feed for months, for various reasons, no doubt. It seems that Assange early on got some kind of leaked script or transcript for the film in process. Gibney hit back for basing a critique on some words on the page, when a film is a quite different experience.

    • Bhopal gas tragedy-WikiLeaks expose US role

      The disclosures known as the “Kissinger cables” make the US Administration ethically and morally, if not legally, responsible for the Bhopal Gas Disaster that took thousands of lives, sickened and maimed many more. If one looks at the larger picture of the Bhopal tragedy one would find officials of the US Administration including those in its Indian embassy and some Indian collaborators working against all ethical or moral and legal norms from the beginning to end for the benefit of a big corporation. The entire script, however, was prepared and choreographed by the US.

    • Wikileaks Cables Reveal State Dept. Promoting GMOs Abroad
    • New Analysis of Wikileaks Shows State Department’s Promotion of Monsanto’s GMOs Abroad

      In Nigeria, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the drafting of legislation to assist the progress of GE crop approval there. Other forms of coercion were more gentle, even glamorous; they included a “magical evening” with famed Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli on Venice’s San Giorio Maggiore island and State-sponsored biotech conferences, receptions and delegations of agriculture officials and reporters to U.S.-based biotech centers.

    • Everything done to WikiLeaks is now being done to US reporters
    • Virtually Everything the Government Did to WikiLeaks is Now Being Done to Mainstream US Reporters

      At Freedom of the Press Foundation, we believe it’s vital to defend WikiLeaks’ right to gather and publish classified information in the public interest, just as it’s vital to protect the rights of Associated Press and Fox News to do the same. Under the law, the AP, Fox News, and WikiLeaks are no different (a fact that even the government argues). If one falls, the others will not be far behind.

    • Meet the smart lawyer for WikiLeaks
    • WikiLeaks cables dismantle Labor’s Iraq withdrawal spin

      Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd fulfilled his campaign pledge to withdraw Australian “combat” forces from Southern Iraq on June 2008. Rudd used the occasion to condemn former Prime Minister John Howard for joining the war, but US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show the Rudd government wanted to keep more Australian forces in Iraq than it had withdrawn.

      After the withdrawal of soldiers, about 1000 Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel remained in Iraq, including sailors on board warships in the Persian Gulf ― Australia’s contribution to the multinational Task Force 158 (TF158) guarding Iraqi oil platforms.

    • New Head Of CIA National Clandestine Service Featured In Wikileaks Cables On Torture Case

      The Aafia Siddiqu case that Archibald was involved with became controversial in Pakistan. The facts surrounding Siddiqui’s activities and arrest remain disputed and though she was eventually tried and convicted in New York City her case remains controversial due to questions surrounding her possible kidnapping, detainment, and torture by U.S. forces as well as disputes regarding forensic evidence and due process rights.

    • ‘Interview with Julian Assange costs million dollars’

      London: An interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would cost an interviewer as high as a million dollars.

  • Finance

    • Professor Wolff on the Economic Crisis
    • I Bought Some BitCoins

      On Tuesday evening I gave an envelope full of hundred-dollar bills to a friendly long-haired young man I’d never met in an undistinguished coffee-shop in an undistinguished neighborhood. By the time I got home, the BitCoins I’d bought were worth noticeably less than I paid.

    • Google’s Eric Schmidt: change British law and we’d pay more tax

      Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, has continued to defend the company’s tax affairs, insisting it would comply with British law if it was changed and claiming to be perplexed by the debate.

      In a phrase less snappy than the more celebrated “don’t be evil”, Schmidt said Google had “a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders” that prevented the internet company from paying more tax abroad. However, he said: “It’s not a debate. You pay the taxes.”

    • The End of the Beginning of the End

      nearly half the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 a day.

      [...]

      The incomes of 100 people out of the seven billion on the planet could fix that, and then fix it again, and then fix it again, and then fix it again. The exact total of the wealth of these individuals is actually something of a mystery, thanks to the tax havens they use to hide their fortunes. There are trillions of dollars squirrelled away in those havens – no one knows quite how much – and the subtraction of that money from the global economy has a direct and debilitating effect on the people not fortunate enough to be part of that elite 100.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Communications data bill response

      Responding to calls to revive the communications data bill…

    • Four-star general in eye of U.S. cyber storm

      Depending on your point of view, U.S. General Keith Alexander is either an Army four-star trying to stave off a cyber Pearl Harbor attack, or an overreaching spy chief who wants to eavesdrop on the private emails of every American.

    • NSA Utah Data Center Facing Unexpected Energy Taxes

      The 1 million square-foot Camp Williams facility in Bluffdale, Utah will house a 100,000 square foot data center, while the remaining 900,000 SF will be used for technical support and administrative space. Wired has estimated the Utah Data Center would consume $40 million of electricity a year, which translates into about $2.4 million annually in additional taxes under HB325.

    • Inside the Ring: NSA under Reagan

      It was the first time the NSA made public the number of people who work for the agency, whose post-9/11 workforce is now estimated at between 30,000 and 40,000.

    • Are All Telephone Calls Recorded And Accessible To The US Government?

      ….every telephone conversation… with or without a search warrant — “is being captured as we speak.”

  • Civil Rights

    • Justice Department’s scrutiny of Fox News reporter James Rosen in leak case draws fire

      Journalists, First Amendment watchdogs and government transparency advocates reacted with outrage Monday to the revelation that the Justice Department had investigated the newsgathering activities of a Fox News reporter as a potential crime in a probe of classified leaks.

      Critics said the government’s suggestion that James Rosen, Fox News’s chief Washington correspondent, was a “co-conspirator” for soliciting classified information threatened to criminalize press freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Others also suggested that the Justice Department’s claim in pursuing an alleged leak from the State Department was little more than pretext to seize his e-mails to build their case against the suspected leaker.

    • Immigration reform may spur software robotics

      The Senate immigration bill’s H-1B restrictions have clearly upset Indian firms. But sometimes being in a tough spot can prompt new ways of approaching problems. One firm is implementing software robots.

    • Cleared of Charges of Setting Off a School Explosion, Florida Honor Student Heads to Space Camp

      In late April, the 16-year-old central Florida honor student was accused of igniting a chemical explosion on school grounds, leading to her arrest and suspension from school, but authorities dropped criminal charges last week.

    • Judge finds Ariz. sheriff’s office racially profiles Latinos in immigration patrols

      A federal judge has ruled that the office of America’s self-proclaimed toughest sheriff systematically singled out Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols, marking the first finding by a court that the agency racially profiles people.

    • Woolwich murder: Theresa May vows to get tough on extremist websites

      A dramatic battery of measures to prevent radicalisation of British Muslims was outlined on Sunday by the home secretary, Theresa May, including tougher pre-emptive censorship of internet sites, a lower threshold for banning extremist groups and renewed pressure on universities and mosques to reject so-called hate preachers.

    • Full California Assembly to Vote on Rejecting NDAA “Indefinite Detention”

      Today, the California Assembly Appropriations Committee gave a “Do-Pass” approval to a bill that could render toothless the federal “indefinite detention” powers under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The bill, by ASM Tim Donnelly was previously passed unanimously by the Public Safety Committee and is expected to get a vote in the full state assembly in the coming week.

    • Obama Impeachment: Articles Of Impeachment Must Be Issued to Recover Faith in Government

      In the past few years we have witnessed the worst of government. President Barack Obama now represents a lawless government incapable of any accountability. It’s my belief that “Articles of Impeachment” must be brought forward in order to check the executive branch. Congress must make itself relevant again; otherwise no president will fear anything and the executive branch of will become more and more tyrannical.

    • In Guantanamo, fine words are no substitute for freedom

      When President Obama delivered a major speech on America’s drone program and the ongoing existence of the Guantanamo prison, the majority of those most affected by the latter – the prisoners themselves – were, ironically, unable to hear his speech.

    • AP probe: White House claims no knowledge, Justice Dept defends actions
    • On Guantánamo, The Three Steps Obama Needs To Take Now – OpEd

      Late on Friday evening, RT published an article I had been commissioned to write for them, entitled, “In Guantánamo, fine words are no substitute for freedom.” In it, I examined in detail the parts of President Obama’s national security speech on Thursday that dealt with the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where a prison-wide hunger strike has been raging for nearly four months.

      The 166 men still held are expressing their despair at having been abandoned by all three branches of the US government — by President Obama and his administration, by Congress and by the judiciary, and for good reason — 86 of these men were cleared for release three years ago by an inter-agency task force that President Obama established when he took office in 2009, and most of the 80 others would be entirely justified in concluding that, in their cases, justice has gone AWOL.

    • English Defence League protest met with cries of ‘Nazi scum, off our streets’ in Newcastle

      A counter-rally, under the name of Newcastle Unites, was also held in the city, with people chanting: “NazI scum, off our streets”.

    • LibertyReserve.com shuttered, founder arrested in Spain

      Website of Liberty Reserve, a digital currency, has been shut with the founder arrested by police in Spain this week over his alleged involvement in money laundering.

  • DRM

    • Judge says leaning toward U.S. in Apple e-books case

      In an unusual move before a trial, a federal judge expressed a tentative view that the U.S. Justice Department will be able to show evidence that Apple Inc engaged in a conspiracy with publishers to increase e-book prices.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • New International Coalition to TPP Negotiators: We Demand a Fair Deal for the Internet

      Today EFF joins organizations from the around the world representing a diversity of interests in launching a new coalition to ask for A Fair Deal on intellectual property (IP) in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The coalition has launched a website at www.OurFairDeal.org calling for TPP negotiators to “reject copyright proposals that restrict the open Internet, access to knowledge, economic opportunity and our fundamental rights.” The TPP meetings are taking place in Lima, Peru this week until May 25th, and EFF has been on the ground working with groups to fight those provisions and demand a seat at the table at these secretive negotiations.

    • Brocade and A10 settle patent case one hour before a jury hears it

      One of the longer-running and higher stakes high-tech patent disputes has been laid to rest. Brocade and A10 Networks settled their patent and copyright dispute over their competing application delivery controllers today. The deal was struck just one hour before a San Jose jury was going to hear opening statements in a damages trial, according to Mike Swift, a reporter for the MLex legal and regulatory news service.

    • Copyrights

      • Prenda Law: The Sound of One Shoe Dropping

        There have been many small-to-medium developments in the Prenda Law saga. I’m preparing for trial, so I won’t be covering them any time soon. But I will leave you with one: a consequence for a Prenda Law lawyer in the Ninth Circuit.

      • Prenda blows sanctions deadline, ordered to pay an extra $1,000 per day

        The four lawyers linked to the Prenda Law copyright-trolling organization were slapped with an $81,000 sanctions order, which as of today, they have missed the deadline to pay. They did make time to file a last-minute motion to delay the sanctions, which only got referred back to the judge who’s angry at them in the first place: US District Judge Otis Wright.

      • First Hand Account Of Judicial Smackdown Of Prenda In Minnesota

        Yesterday we had a story about how a judge in Minnesota, Judge Ann Alton, angrily accused Paul Hansmeier of fraud in the lawsuit filed by Alan Cooper against Prenda. There was some confusion by the judge about whether Cooper and Godfread were in on the fraud too, which seems to have made the judge less open to possible damages against Prenda. Either way, without a court reporter, Matthew Sparby, who was in attendance, wrote up the following first-hand account of what happened in the court room. It’s definitely disappointing to see that the judge made a few bad assumptions about Cooper/Godfread, but good to see that she knew that Prenda has been up to no good.

      • RIAA losing money, firing employees, giving execs raises

        The RIAA has submitted its latest Form 990 tax filing to the IRS, which details the organization’s precipitous shelving off in budget and employees (though the execs gave themselves fat raises)…

      • RIAA Makes Drastic Employee Cuts as Revenue Plummets
      • Broadcasters go after Aereo by suing smaller competitor, Aereokiller

        ABC, NBC, and Fox file a new copyright suit against a far less formidable opponent

      • Pirate Bay Blessing Propels New BitTorrent Tracker to Great Heights

        In recent weeks a new Demonoid-inspired standalone tracker entered the BitTorrent ecosystem with a bang. Blessed by The Pirate Bay, Demonii has quickly become one of the most used BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. TorrentFreak decided to catch up with the admin to find out how it all came to be.

      • Pirate Bay Blessing Propels New BitTorrent Tracker to Great Heights

        In recent weeks a new Demonoid-inspired standalone tracker entered the BitTorrent ecosystem with a bang. Blessed by The Pirate Bay, Demonii has quickly become one of the most used BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. TorrentFreak decided to catch up with the admin to find out how it all came to be.

      • Someone’s Trying to Nail the RIAA for Downloading Porn

        With a reputation of taking harsh measures against unauthorized file-sharing, the RIAA has made quite a few enemies over the years. How ironic is it then that the RIAA website now appears to be seeding more than a dozen pirated porn videos? Or could it be that someone is trying to nail the RIAA in a clever way?

      • Copyright… Patent… It’s All The Same To The World’s Third-Largest News Agency

        While we realize that the intricacies of IP law (and its often-attendant ridiculousness) can be rather difficult for the average, uninterested person to parse, it’s really not asking too much to expect large international news agencies to make an effort to get the terminology right.

        As you recall, Kim Dotcom recently announced he holds a patent for two-factor authentication, which he then waved in the direction of other internet titans like Twitter and Google, promising not to sue in exchange for contributions to his legal defense fund.

        Here’s how AFP (Agence France-Presse), the third-largest news agency in the world (and one of the oldest) titled its coverage of the Dotcom/patent story: Kim Dotcom might sue Twitter, Google and Facebook over copyright infringement.

05.25.13

Links 25/5/2013: Beaglebone Black (BBB), Tizen Comeback

Posted in News Roundup at 5:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Dandelion Linux Desktop

    Some desktops are featured because of their widgets, while others because they’re full of useful data. This week’s featured desktop, from Lifehacker Chookstar, gets the nod because it’s simple, elegant, and uses smart GNOME tweaking to bring everything together neatly.

  • Considering a Linux career? Four tips for new college grads

    Tis the season for college graduations, and that means there are countless fresh grads out there looking for their first real, professional jobs.

    Those in IT would be hard-pressed to come up with a better area to focus on than Linux, which is consistently shown to offer higher salaries and more opportunities than do other parts of IT. There’s tremendous demand for Linux skills today, so those who possess them are in a nice position as they enter the job market.

  • It Seems I Won’t Be Writing For Linux Advocates After All

    Last week I had announced in the LXer forums that I would be a contributing author to Linux Advocates. That was followed by a post on the site announcing that I would be joining their team. I was honestly excited about this. I felt that writing for Linux Advocates would add credibility to my stories and bring me back some of the wider audience I had when I wrote for O’Reilly Media. The additional exposure would help me market my consulting business which brings Linux and FOSS solutions to businesses and organizations looking to reduce IT costs and enhance the reliability, stability and security of their IT infrastructure.

    Today it became clear that I wouldn’t be writing for Linux Advocates after all. I’ve learned a lot in the past week and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is for the best.

    First, a number of prominent writers and developers in the Linux community tried to get me to reconsider. The big issue for them was what they saw as heavy handed moderation by Dietrich Schmitz, including banning a number of them from the site entirely. I’ve argued that website owners have the right to moderate and control the content on their sites. I’ve made clear that such editorial control is most definitely not censorship as some have claimed. The dispute between Mr. Schmitz and those who felt they were unfairly treated, including several former Linux Advocates writers, spilled over into five different threads in the LXer forums and several Google+ pages and included a great deal of rather heated language.

    [...]

    Mr. Schmitz’ response was direct and to the point. If I can’t accommodate how he chooses to run his site then I should go elsewhere. Once again, he was getting writing from me on a voluntary basis on a website were he is currently begging for money to make ends meet. This is a Linux advocacy site. You’d think he’d be the one to accommodate an aversion to proprietary tools that aren’t in any way necessary for him to publish my writing. I guess not.

    So.. no, sorry, Mr. Schmitz, I won’t be accommodating you. I’ll find ways to bring traffic to my blog which don’t require sacrificing my security, privacy or principles. I still have other outlets who would like me to write for them as well.

  • More Twists And Turns On the GNU/Linux Advocacy Site That’s Not

    Welcome to the club of refugees from some tyrant on an ego-trip, Caitlyn. You and others might be more comfortable at GNU/Linux Advocates.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • The apps of KDE 4.10 Part VI: Calligra Suite

        You may be a bit confused as to what Calligra Suite is, in fact you may not have ever even heard of it before now. Essentially Calligra Suite is a fork of the KOffice project from back in 2010 and has now become the de facto group of KDE publishing/office applications, as KOffice isn’t really being developed any more. It consists of the following applications:

      • Solutions Linux and KDE Paris Dinner

        This year we also have a KDE Paris Dinner on Tuesday evening, at 21h. Location has not been defined but it will be in Paris (of course).

  • Distributions

    • Linpus Lite 1.9 review

      Linpus Lite is a desktop distribution published by Linpus Technologies, Inc., a Linux software solutions provider headquartered in Taiwan. It is based on Fedora, but with a focus towards modern hardware and mobile computing.

      The latest edition, Linpus Lite 1.9, was released back in early February of this year, and was updated in the first week of this month. The last edition before this latest round of releases, was Linpus Lite 1.7, which was released in March of 2012, and reviewed here. This article presents a detailed review of this latest release, based on test installations on real hardware and in a virtual environment.

    • A New X.Org-Free Wayland LiveCD Released

      For technology demos and testing, the “first true Wayland LiveCD” has been released that can start Wayland directly without depending upon an X.Org environment.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandrake, Mandriva Archives Safe

        For those that still hold some nostalgia for Mandriva/Mandrake, there’s good news. The OpenMandriva project was able to obtain a lot of the files before their server was scrapped. An archive has been set up by the OpenMandriva gang for all to share.

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • IT Thought Leaders to Keynote at Red Hat Summit 2013

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a lineup of keynote speakers featuring executive thought leaders from Accenture, Cisco, HP, IBM and Intel for the ninth annual Red Hat Summit, to be held June 11-14, 2013 in Boston. Red Hat Summit brings together a diverse group of senior business and technical leaders to learn, network and experience open source and to discuss the innovative technologies and best practices organizations are applying to drive innovation and business.

      • Red Hat OpenStack, Linux, Virtualization: Cloud Triple Play?

        OpenStack has hundreds of backers. But the Red Hat OpenStack distribution, still under development, could emerge as the preferred open source platform for public and private clouds. Here’s why.

      • Red Hat Discusses Gluster Roadmap Ahead of LinuxCon Japan Workshop

        Fresh on the heels of his talk on achieving total data center victory at Collaboration Summit in April, John Mark Walker, Gluster community leader at Red Hat will show us how to get there at the Gluster Workshop at LinuxCon Japan on Friday, May 31 in Tokyo.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project, Community, Mourns Loss of Ray Dassen

        The Debian Project today is mourning the loss of legendary Linux developer Ray Dassen. Ray Dassen served the Linux community and Debian at large for nearly all of Debian’s life, having joined the project in the very beginning working hand-in-hand while the project’s founder, Ian Murdock.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Important Points about Beaglebone Black (BBB)

      If you can’t communicate to your BBB from Browser, Use Google Chrome Browser. There is Some Problem with Firefox. Never use Internet Explorer.

    • Intel Shows Off GNOME3-Based Tizen Shell
    • Latest Tizen sightings: Samsung phone, Intel laptop demo

      Days after releasing version 2.1 of the Linux-based Tizen mobile operating system, Samsung confirmed an upcoming GT-I8805 Tizen smartphone, and Intel demonstrated a laptop running Tizen 3.0 in a GNOME shell. Other developments around this week’s Tizen Developers Conference include a Tizen App Challenge and 2013 phone launch promises from NTT DoCoMo and Orange.

    • Introducing the BeagleBone Black’s Linux 3.8 kernel

      This guest column by BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner introduces the BeagleBone Black’s cutting-edge Linux 3.8 kernel, up from the original BeagleBone’s 3.2 kernel. The new kernel incorporates a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) display driver architecture, as well as full support for the Device Tree data structure introduced in Linux 3.7 in order to streamline ARM Linux development and hardware support.

    • BeagleBone Black ships, climbs Linux 3.8 Device Tree
    • Handheld SDR Transceiver runs Linux on ARM/FPGA SoC

      Epiq Solutions announced a handheld software defined radio (SDR) device with an RF transceiver that tunes from 300MHz to 3.8GHz, plus a built-in 1PPS GPS. The Matchstiq Z1 is built around a Linux-ready iVeia Atlas-I-Z7e computer-on-module equipped with a Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 SoC, which integrates dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores along with FPGA circuitry.

    • Phones

      • blinkx launches open-source video player for Tizen

        For mobile app creators in the Tizen community, blinkx has developed an open source HTML5 video player to help developers incorporate a fully functional video player into their applications. The lightweight and easy-to-use code allows developers to build a single- or multi-video player experience with their own videos in multiple formats. As a result, creators of new and existing Tizen apps will be able to easily incorporate a video player with customisable playlists and configurable settings.

      • Tizen Linux demo on an ultrabook (video)

        Tizen is a Linux-based operating system that’s backed by Samsung and which is expected to ship on Samsung smartphones this year. But the OS isn’t just for mobile devices like phones and tablets.

      • Tizen with GNOME 3 shell shown by Intel

        Tizen, the mobile operating system that has yet to see a device launched with it, is already widening its reach to laptops. Tizen, a Linux Foundation project with Intel and Samsung collaborating on development, is due to appear on smartphones in the latter part of the year with Tizen 2.1, which uses a Linux base layer with a user interface built using Enlightenment libraries to run HTML5-based apps. At the Tizen Developers Conference held this week though, Intel showed an early version of what will become part of Tizen 3.0 later in the year. Tizen Experts recorded a video of the Intel Tizen variant running on an i7 Ultrabook.

      • Samsung, carriers tout first Tizen mobes for late 2013

        ou could be forgiven for thinking there’s not much going on with Tizen, the Linux Foundation’s open source mobile OS. It’s been two years since the project was launched and there still are no Tizen devices on the market. But that’s about to change – and there has been a lot happening behind the scenes, as well.

      • Ballnux

        • HTC One ‘Google Edition’ with stock Android reportedly in the works

          HTC may follow Samsung’s lead and produce a “Google Edition” of its latest flagship smartphone running stock Android. According to sources that spoke to Russell Holly at Geek, work on a version of the HTC One without its Sense software customizations is underway, with a US launch said to be “imminent.” Holly previously leaked accurate information on the Galaxy S4 Google Edition ahead of its announcement at the I/O conference.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • 62 Open Source Replacements for Popular Financial Software

    The open source community offers a wide array of options to assist you, whether you’re tracking your personal bank accounts, managing your small business, setting up an online shop or monitoring finances for a large enterprise.

    Like much of the software industry, financial software is in the midst of great change. While many consumers and companies still use traditional software that they have installed on their PCs and/or servers, many are turning to cloud-based solutions. In addition, many users are looking for solutions that include mobile capabilities.

  • Five Companies Partner, Launch Open Source Video Viewability Tech
  • Japplis Releases the First Open Source Office Suite Written in Java
  • Is Google Code In Trouble? No More Open Source Downloads For You

    At the time of its creation, I had thought that it would competitive with Sourceforge (which it was), but as it turns out Sourceforge will now get the last laugh.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome 28 Beta gets faster, brings fullscreen mode to Android

        Google has released a beta version of Chrome 28 that introduces a number of new developer features and performance improvements. The increased page rendering speed is, Google says, due to a new threaded HTML parser that is part of its WebKit fork Blink. The company claims the new parser improves page loading times by ten per cent, mostly through pipelining DOM content. The parser also has to stop less during parsing which also reduces load time.

    • Mozilla

      • Restore Firefox’s All Tabs preview feature

        If you have upgraded the Firefox web browser to version 21, the most recent version at the time of writing, you may have noticed that it is missing the All Tabs preview feature that was included in previous versions of the browser.

      • Mozilla’s Firefox Flicks Contest Is Calling for Your Short Video

        There are lots of people in the U.S. gearing up for a long Memorial Day weekend, and if you happen to have extra time on your hands this weekend you may want to consider entering Mozilla’s Firefox Flicks contest. It’s a global video contest designed to give budding filmmakers the opportunity to create and submit short videos about letting people discover “the power of the web on mobile devices.” (We covered it when it launched.)

      • Poll: Firefox Does Not Need Fewer Options

        You may remember that back on March 22, Christine Hall penned an article here on FOSS Force concerning worries expressed by Alex Limi, a project design strategist at Mozilla, over configuration issues with Firefox. It seems that Mr. Limi expressed concerns on his blog over the fact that was possible for a user to “render the browser unusable to most people, right in the main settings.”

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Building a cloud ecosystem with open source software

      Mention the words “open source” to IT pros interested in adopting cloud computing, and their ears likely will perk up. Open source software offers a solution to the vendor lock-in concerns many enterprises have with committing to a cloud platform. And cloud platforms like the OpenStack Foundation, which fosters ‘coopitition’ among seeming competitors in the hot cloud computing market, give companies the option to build interoperable open source clouds. But what options do enterprises have when seeking open source PaaS?

    • Open Source Big Data: DataStax Expands Cassandra, Hadoop Business in Europe

      Big Data is becoming a big deal beyond the United States, and it’s time for the international channel to pay attention. The latest evidence: DataStax, which provides enterprise database management services based on open-source software. The company is making an aggressive push into the European market in what may be the first move toward a greater presence throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region as a whole.

    • Introduction to OpenStack Part One, From Zero to Domination

      OpenStack is a cloud software stack designed to run on commodity hardware, such as x86 and ARM. It has no proprietary hardware or software requirements, and it integrates legacy systems and third-party products. In other words you can adopt it into your existing tech infrastructure without disruption.

    • Cloudscaling, Focused on OpenStack, Gets $10 Million in Funding

      San Francisco-based company Cloudscaling is the latest small company focused on the open source OpenStack cloud computing platform to score some meaningful venture capital. The company has raised $10 million in Series B funding from partners including Trinity Ventures, Juniper Networks and Seagate. That’s some pretty solid backing, and Cloudscaling–which provides infrastructure-as-a-service support–is just the latest Northern California company to get solid funding.

  • CMS

    • Matt Mullenweg on how open source is democratising the web

      From the mind of a 19-year-old to the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) — WordPress has done some serious growing up in 10 years. Used by major publishing houses such as CNN and the New York Times and influential blogs like TechCrunch, the CMS has making publishing easy for a decade.

  • Education

    • Computers are today’s pencils

      Not everyone has a computer. And, not all schools have access to the types of technology that are second nature to many of us at our workplace. It is also true that many people in the general public don’t know about open source and the free alternatives that are available to them, like LibreOffice instead of Micrsoft Word.

      The Kramden Institute is doing something about it by refurbishing computers and installing Ubermix on them, which is an open source operating system preloaded with over 60 educational, science, and learning applications for students.

  • Funding

    • Gittip Wants to Make Working on Open Source A Sustainable Living

      What if I told you could work on open source projects full-time and make a living from that? You would get to do what you love and make money for it. That’s what Chad Whitacre is looking to accomplish with Gittip. The site, which uses the tag line: inspiring generosity, is doing just that. With over 1,110 active community members on Gittip in under a year, they are currently exchanging over $3,000 every week. While it’s not necessarily at the point where you would be able to quit your job and work on open source projects full-time, the site has been continually growing.

    • Wargaming to Support Open-Source Foundations

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • OpenGov Voices: Data.gov relaunches on open source platform CKAN

      Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions profileof the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Deborah Estrin wants to (literally) open source your life

      Estrin talks about how this is a big departure from traditional medical research. “Instead of relying on federal grants or venture capital, we want to bring rapid prototyping to this field, innovating on modular software methods so that clinicians can borrow, blend and adapt mobile tools to transform chronic disease management.”

      Will Cornell Tech work at reinventing CS grad school? Will Estrin’s Open mHealth project bring open source down to the cellular level? It is certainly worth watching both efforts to see her progress.

    • Transparency Camp event report and review of new tools

      I got bitten at camp this weekend, but indifference would have been the only relevant repellant and thankfully, I’m allergic to that. Here’s what I learned as a first-time camper.

  • Programming

    • LLVM Clang 3.3 RC2 Is Ready For Testing

      The release of LLVM 3.3 along with its sub-projects like the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end and Compiler-RT is imminent. A second release candidate was posted just prior to the weekend to usher in some last minute testing.

Leftovers

  • Peak Facebook: British users lose their Liking for Zuck’s ad empire

    Facebook’s popularity is slumping in the UK as users become fed up with being bombarded with advertising, a YouGov survey has revealed.

    In a report examining social media use among web-savvy Brits, the market research firm found a 9 per cent drop in Facebook usage since April 2012.

  • The Price of Popularity: $18/1K Followers!

    No, I’m not referring to the army of ‘Bielbers’ with posters of the singer hanging in their bedroom. I mean ‘bots’ or fake Twitter accounts. Of the international pop sensation’s 37.3 million followers on Twitter, 53% are so called ‘bots’. And he’s not alone. Recent news has exposed many celebrities with a significant percentage of their Twitter followers coming from inactive or automated accounts. This doesn’t stem solely from Hollywood either. Supposedly, President Obama’s Twitter audience is made up of around 70% inactive or fake profiles, totaling over 21 million. That’s more than the population of the state of New York (which has 29 electoral votes!).

  • Security

    • News service served with cease and desist after server access

      The Scripps Howard News Service recently reported on a data leak it had found which exposed the sensitive information of up to 170,000 phone company customers who had applied for discounted phone lines. But instead of a statement from the data’s owners, the authors got a cease and desist.

    • Google to replace SSL certificates

      Google will update its certificate infrastructure and has, as a precaution, warned of potential problems. Starting in August, the company will replace its SSL certificates to implement new, longer keys. The change will also affect the root certificate that Google uses to sign all its own certificates.

  • Finance

    • Goldman Sachs’s New Business Standards

      We could believe that Goldman Sachs is now taking on new ethical standards if they even mentioned how they would change the old unethical standards used before the financial crisis. When a bank does not have to even admit wrongdoing, why in the world would they stop doing wrong ? The whole effort by Goldman is really a public relations exercise that investors will probably believe but we don’t.

    • Looking for Gulnara

      Truly disgraceful behaviour by the Swiss authorities.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Alex Jones: Conspiracy Inc.
    • NFIB and AHIP: Hidden influence-peddling in Washington

      I was not among those who believed the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of corporate money to influence elections and public policy. While the decision enables corporations to call for the election or defeat of federal candidates, those expenditures have to be reported and few corporations will take the risk of losing customers by getting involved in politics so publically.

  • Civil Rights

    • Security forces fire rubber bullets at striking South African miners

      Police fired volleys of rubber bullets at striking South African miners at a mine owned by Lanxess Chrome Mining Ltd on Tuesday, near the city of Rustenburg. Some 500 miners had assembled at daybreak, taking action without union approval. At least 10 miners were hospitalized, and police forces subsequently took control of the mine.

    • “Operation Tripwire” — the FBI, the Private Sector, and the Monitoring of Occupy Wall Street

      This article was first published by PRwatch.org on December 31, 2012, while we were writing our report “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” published by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy in May 2013. We re-release it now as part of a PRwatch series on the new report.

05.24.13

Links 24/5/2013: Fedora ‘Pidora’, CIvil Rights Debated in the US

Posted in News Roundup at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • LinkSmart’s Low-Cost, Big Data Plan with Linux and MapR

    LinkSmart’s audience and link management platform for publishers was built with big data at its core. So when management decided to migrate the cloud-based application to their own hardware, there was no question it would be completely powered by Linux.

    Linux-based infrastructure allows the 3-year-old startup to cut costs, both by avoiding the licensing fees of proprietary systems and by tapping the community’s collective knowledge base instead of paying for expensive support contracts, said CTO Manny Puentes.

  • LinkSmart’s Low-Cost, Big Data Plan with Linux and MapR

    LinkSmart’s audience and link management platform for publishers was built with big data at its core. So when management decided to migrate the cloud-based application to their own hardware, there was no question it would be completely powered by Linux.

    Linux-based infrastructure allows the 3-year-old startup to cut costs, both by avoiding the licensing fees of proprietary systems and by tapping the community’s collective knowledge base instead of paying for expensive support contracts, said CTO Manny Puentes.

  • Linux-Based Education OS Gets New Features
  • GNU/Linux Is Important After All

    If I was the type to have heroes, Richard Stallman would be near the top of my list, not far below John Lennon and Abbie Hoffman, and way out ahead of Tom Hayden or the several-times-over reinvented Bob Dylan, though the freewheeling Bob Dylan who took it down Highway 61 will always be near the top of the list.

  • Desktop

    • HP And Operating Systems

      Little by little, OEMs are coming to the realization that if they don’t sell FLOSS, someone else will do it. Being an M$-only OEM is no longer good business.

    • USA Too

      GNU/Linux had a huge double spike, doubling ~April 15 and again on May 18. What’s with that? It’s bigger than possible with most organizations. Could it possibly be Dell’s selling Ubuntu GNU/Linux? How could that shift display itself overnight like that?

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Digia launches Boot to Qt technology preview
      • Introducing Boot to Qt – A Technology Preview
      • Digia Announces “Boot To Qt” Project

        Digia has announced a new commercial endeavour that pairs a lightweight Qt stack atop an Android kernel/base operating system.

        Boot To Qt is Digia’s new solution for developing “slick user interfaces on embedded devices.” This new stack consists of a UI component driven by thr Qt Framework, ready-made developer images, full Qt Creator integration, and a VirtualBox-based simulator. Android is being used as the base layer to the OS.

      • KDE 4.11 Will Be The Last Major KDE4 Workspaces Feature Release

        For those that didn’t hear already, KDE 4.11 will be the last Plasma Workspaces feature release in the KDE4 series and this upcoming version will be maintained for a period of two years.

      • Pre-order Akademy 2013 T-shirt
      • A rich python console and more in Kate editor

        I have done some improvements in the plugins: python_console_ipython, python_autocomplete, python_utils, js_utils, xml_pretty and django_utils. These plugins I added a month and a half ago (except python_console_ipython) to the kate repository. I have done two improvements and a new feature:

      • Plasma Workspaces to go into feature freeze with version 4.11

        KDE developer and Plasma team leader Aaron Seigo has announced that version 4.11 of Plasma Workspaces will be a long term support (LTS) release. Seigo says the developers are close to a feature freeze for the next version of KDE’s desktop shell and that, once Plasma Workspaces 4.11 is released, there will be no more feature developments in this branch. However, as part of their stabilisation releases, the developers will provide bug fixes and translation updates for two years after the 4.11 release.

  • Distributions

    • Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

      A recent poll on Hacker News asking about Linux distributions of choice got me thinking, what can can we learn from a bigger picture of the distro landscape than a single HN poll? I went looking around and dug up a couple of other sources of information — Linux Journal’s annual reader’s choice awards, and data from Google Trends.

      What makes these three particular choices interesting is that they span a broad swathe of user types, from the hacker (Hacker News) to the enthusiast (Linux Journal) to the “average” Linux user (Google). That means we can learn from the trends across these three user types — considering which communities may be more predictive or more technical vs which represent broader adoption today.

    • Zorin OS 7 Release Candidate out now

      Pre-release version of Zorin OS 7 Core available for testing, the RC including Linux Kernel 3.8 and an overhauled graphical interface

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Pidora, Raspberry Pi’s Unfortunately Named Fedora Remix

          Unfortunately, while Pidora looks to be a very interesting distribution for the Raspberry Pi, with many features taking advantage of the board’s unique properties, the Fedora team made one critical error during its development: they forgot to Google their intended name.

          As it turns out, Pidora has a rather embarrassing meaning to some members of the community: in Russian, “pidora” is a derogatory word for a male homosexual. It’s closest translation into English would be “faggot”.

        • Raspberry Pi’s Fedora becomes Pidora

          Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology released an optimized Fedora 18 Remix for the Raspberry Pi, and unveiled a new name for the remix. “Pidora 18,” based on a new build of Fedora optimized for ARMv6, features speedier performance and includes packages from the Fedora 18 package set, says the Pidora project team.

        • Pidora: Fedora Linux for the Raspberry Pi ARMs Up (Thanks to Seneca)

          You can now add another Linux distro to the list that will run on the Raspberry Pi. The core distro for the small device is the Debian based Raspian and there is also an Arch based Linux for the Pi too.

        • Meet Pidora: A Custom Version of Fedora for Raspberry Pi

          As the diminutive $25/$35 Linux-based Raspberry Pi devices continue to contribute to imaginative applications, they’re also emerging as shining examples of new ways Linux can be deployed. Tinkerers have already put all flavors of Linux on the devices, and now, Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology (CDOT) have announced the release of Pidora 18, a custom version of Fedora specifically for the Raspberry Pi. Here is more on it.

        • Fedora Project Announces Pidora Remix for Raspberry Pi

          The Fedora Project has been supporting Raspberry Pi, the diminutive $35 computer, for some time. Today they’re making the Pidora “remix” of the core Fedora distribution available. Like the Raspbian distribution of Debian, Pidora is compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware already built into the Raspberry Pi.

        • Fedora ‘Pidora’ now optimised for Raspberry Pi mini-computer

          The Raspberry Pi mini-computer is to be served with new “Pidora” build of Fedora packaged for ARMv6 architecture.

          NOTE: Fedora is a free and open source Linux-based operating system sponsored by Red Hat — it is typically classed as the second-most commonly used Linux distribution, after Ubuntu.

        • Pidora is Fedora Linux for the Raspberry Pi
        • Fedora Raspberry Pi remix reborn as Pidora
        • New Fedora Package Manager Still on Track
        • Review: Korora 18 “Flo” KDE

          That is where my time with Korora 18 “Flo” KDE ended. The odd error message in the installation of Skype may cause other people to reconsider entirely, which is why I can almost but not quite recommend Korora for newbies. Given the popularity of Skype and given that the helper package in the repositories conflicts with a core system package (making it useless now), it might be good if developers in that community could come together to write a more current tutorial on how to deal with Skype. Also, the stunted nature of Mupen64Plus means I wouldn’t use this for myself. But really, it only needs a tiny bit more work before I can comfortably recommend this.
          You can get it here.

        • Pidora 18 (Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix) Release
        • New Security Feature in Fedora 19 Part 3: Hard Link/Soft Link Protection

          It is surprising to most people who understand Linux and Unix that you are allowed to Hard Link to any file on the OS as long as it is on the same file system.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Build your own supercomputer out of Raspberry Pi boards

      Who says you need a few million bucks to build a supercomputer? Joshua Kiepert put together a Linux-powered Beowulf cluster with Raspberry Pi computers for less than $2,000.

    • Arduino Yun SBC adds Wifi, Linux to Leonardo features

      Arduino announced the first open source Arduino hacker board with built-in WiFi, and also the first to run Linux. The $69 Arduino Yún integrates the functions of an Arduino Leonardo, featuring an ATmega32u4 microcontroller and 14 GPIO pins, with an Atheros AR9331 WiFi SOC running OpenWRT embedded Linux on a 400MHz MIPS processor.

    • Introducing the BeagleBone Black’s Linux 3.8 kernel

      This guest column by BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner introduces the BeagleBone Black’s cutting-edge Linux 3.8 kernel, up from the original BeagleBone’s 3.2 kernel. The new kernel incorporates a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) display driver architecture, as well as full support for the Device Tree data structure introduced in Linux 3.7 in order to streamline ARM Linux development and hardware support.

    • BeagleBone Black ships, climbs Device Tree with Linux 3.8

      BeagleBoard.org has begun shipping its faster, cheaper “BeagleBone Black” SBC with a Linux 3.8 kernel, supporting Device Tree technology for more streamlined ARM development. The $45 BeagleBone Black runs Linux or Android on a 1GHz TI Sitara AM3359 SOC, doubles the RAM to 512MB, and adds a micro-HDMI port.

    • First Linux-Driven Arduino Board Reaches Out with WiFi

    • Phones

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Report: Android-related Projects Far Outpace iOS Projects

          The creation of new Android-related open source projects picked up in a big way in 2012, radically outpacing new iOS projects, according to data released by Black Duck Software. Black Duck manages and secures implementations of open source software, and has large samples of real-world data on open source software in use and in development. Its latest study shows that new Android mobile projects outstripped iOS projects by a factor of four in 2012, expanding by at least 96 percent in each year since 2007. New iOS project growth, by comparison, was 32 percent from 2011 to 2012.

        • Google’s Android Strategy For Smartphone Domination

          Many people will be quick to point out that it Google is a technology Company with lot of products. However, Google at heart is Advertising Company.

        • Google Is On A Mission To Make Android Developers Rich

          Google always wants developers to build apps for Android first and not iOS. Google I/O 2013 was developer’s paradise which showed that the company is committed to making tools that make things easy for developers.

          To attract developers into choosing Android as the first option, Google is striving to help them take full advantage of the Android Ecosystem to generate monetary profits for themselves. Android apps have come a long way and are at par with its iOS counterparts, therefore Google can now focus on optimising the ecosystem and innovate.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Intel Demo GNOME-Powered Tizen OS Ultrabook

        Tizen, the open-source Linux software platform aiming to power everything from smartphones to smart TVs, is seemingly coming to laptops.

        Intel demoed a Tizen laptop experience at the Tizen Conference 2013 in San Francisco, USA, earlier this month. And it wasn’t demoed on any old heap of hardware, either: Intel were showing off the OS newcomer on an i7 Ivybridge Ultrabook.

        The Tizen OS experience is powered by ‘Tizen Shell’ – a UI built upon GNOME-Shell.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source, cross-platform office suite Joeffice was created in just 30 days

    Called Joeffice, it works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux as well as in browsers, according to the developer, Anthony Goubard. It includes a very basic word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database software, Goubard said.

  • ProjectLibre edges in on Microsoft Project dominance

    ProjectLibre is an open source project management solution ready to give Microsoft Project a run for their money.

  • Google Abandons Open Standards for Instant Messaging

    In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing “Talk” platform with a new one called “Hangouts” that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users.

  • Getting involved in Free Software
  • Open-source office suite written in Java

    The first open source office suite written in Java has been released by Japplis, a company based in the Netherlands.

  • New Maven plugins for simpler architecture management

    Macker, the second plugin, allows specific dependencies between packages to be defined and those rules to be automatically verified. The plugin is the result of observations by the company that targets for dependencies between packages set at the beginning of a project are often not met. Macker is a fork of software of the same name from Codehaus that hasn’t been updated since 2003. The forked plugin from andrena objects has been adapted to current versions of Java.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 22 Beta Ready To Test

        Keeping track of where Firefox is going is difficult given you have at least two horizons to keep your eyes on. Here we have a brief look at what to expect in Firefox 22, currently in beta and close to being rolled out.

        The big news in Firefox 22 is either WebRTC or asm.js depending on your particular interests.

        WebRTC isn’t new but now it is deemed stable enough to be on by default.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Pattern, Open Source Framework, Aims to Accelerate Analytics on Hadoop
    • Open Source Big Data: DataStax Expands Cassandra, Hadoop Business in Europe

      Big Data is becoming a big deal beyond the United States, and it’s time for the international channel to pay attention. The latest evidence: DataStax, which provides enterprise database management services based on open-source software. The company is making an aggressive push into the European market in what may be the first move toward a greater presence throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region as a whole.

      DataStax, which is based in California and counts 20 Fortune 100 companies among its customers, distributes an integrated Big Data platform based on the open-source technologies Cassandra, Hadoop and Solr, all of which are developed by the Apache Foundation. It focuses on database scalability and reliability, and has been particularly innovative in the NoSQL trend.

  • Databases

    • Salesforce Nabs Open Source Database Guru for War on Oracle

      The grudge match between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his former protege Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, has reached legendary proportions in recent years. Ellison and Benioff pepper their speeches and interviews with not so subtle digs at each other’s companies, and Oracle even went so far as to cancel Benioff’s scheduled keynote at the Oracle Open World conference in 2011.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Single-board computers and software freedom

      Single-board computers (SBCs) are computers delivered as one circuit board that are powerful enough to run a real operating system. SBCs are typically inexpensive and versatile, making them an exciting tool for a wide range of applications, from education to scientific research. But there’s a problem; all of the SBCs currently available have major flaws — hardware that doesn’t work without running a nonfree program.

  • Programming

    • Google Code disables direct file downloads

      Google has announced that it will in future not allow direct file downloads from its Google Code hosting service. The company says that “increasing misuse” of the service has forced it to take the step in the interest of keeping the platform’s community “safe and secure”.

Leftovers

05.23.13

Links 23/5/2013: Threat to Civil Rights in UK, KDE 4.11 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 12:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • $99 Linux stick turns any HDMI display into a virtual desktop

    Hard on the heels of the news that Dell’s “Project Ophelia” thumb PC is expected to ship this summer, thin client vendor Devon IT on Tuesday rolled out a similar contender of its own called the Ceptor.

  • Samsung Talks About Its Aggressive Linux Talent Recruitment Strategy
  • From subversive to mainstream: Looking back on 18 years with Linux
  • CCE Addresses Growing Demand in CAE Space by Extending Support to Linux Platforms

    CCE, a leader in advanced interoperabilitytechnology, announced that in response to a growing demand from customers in the CAEspace, it has successfully completed porting of its 3D CAD interoperability technology toLinux platforms.

  • GNU/Linux chosen as operating system of the International Space Station

    This is a wise choice for the space station, and a high-profile victory for software freedom. It brings good publicity for free software, demonstrating its respected position in the world of science and technology.

  • It’s Easier Than Ever to Slap Your Favorite Linux Distro Onto a Chromebook

    If you’ve been in the market for a portable computer, you may very well have considered buying a Chromebook. And, if you favor a particular Linux distro, perhaps Ubuntu or Mint, you may be interested in buying a $200 or $250 Chromebook only to put your favorite flavor of Linux on your new system. (The Acer system shown here sells for $199.) As we’ve reported, many OStatic readers have expressed interest in buying a Chromebook to run Linux. Now, there are very simple instructions for doing so online and a growing body of evidence that people are having good experiences with their Linux Chromebooks.

  • Designing Electronics with Linux

    In many scientific disciplines, the research you may be doing is completely new. It may be so new that there isn’t even any instrumentation available to make your experimental measurements. In those cases, you have no choice but to design and build your own measuring devices. Although you could build them using trial and error, having a way to model them first to see how they will behave is a much better choice—in steps oregano. With oregano, you can design your circuitry ahead of time and run simulations on it to iron out any problems you may encounter.

  • LinuxTag: LiMux firmly established in Munich

    Peter Hofmann, the leader of Munich’s Linux migration project, has denied rumours that the LiMux clientGerman language link will be “decommissioned” when the initiative runs out at the end of the year. “The City of Munich has no intention to switch”, he said at the LinuxTag conference in Berlin on Wednesday. The basic instruction given by Munich’s City Council in 2003 was to create more independence and autonomy for Munich’s IT, said Hofmann. This task won’t be completed when the project runs out in October, he explained, adding that further adjustments will be needed in the specialised application and server areas.

  • Linux Ranks Among Top Skills for Big Data Jobs
  • Linux Format 172 On Sale Today – Has Ubuntu lost it?

    With its Distrowatch ranking falling faster than Man Utd now that Sir Alex Ferguson has departed, Ubuntu is no longer the all-conquering force that it was. So what’s happened? Has it, in fact, lost it, or is there a more subtle game afoot? We answer this conundrum (sort of) in the latest Linux Format.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Qt 5.1 Launches on Tizen with Standard Look and Feel
      • Finnish mobile maker Jolla announces first MeeGo phone

        Another thing to notice is that a compatibility layer on the device allows the user to even run Android apps on the phone.

      • May Updates to KDE Plasma and Applications
      • Plasma Workspaces 4.11: A long term release

        One of the most exciting things about this direction is that our distribution and packaging partners will be able to have a version that will see releases which focus exclusively on stabilization for at least two years. There will be no new features added after 4.11.0 to Plasma Desktop and Netbook, though the code will be adjusted as needed to maintain and improve existing functionality. This should make Plasma Desktop 4.11 an excellent candidate for inclusion in distributions that have a longer shelf-life.

      • KDE 4.11 to be Long Term Release

        It was just last week we looked at some of the proposed features for upcoming KDE 4.11 as it neared soft feature freeze. Well, today some new information about KDE 4.11 came to light. Aaron Seigo said today that 4.11 would be a “long term release.”

        A long term release means a particular version will be kept up to date with stabilization and security updates for an extended period of time; in this case, two years. This will give distributions that skate safely in the well-worn groove of stability a chance to have a longer term plan and more stable offerings. Seigo said, “no new features [will be] added after 4.11.0 to Plasma Desktop and Netbook, though the code will be adjusted as needed to maintain and improve existing functionality.” He believes this will help developers and distribution developers a chance to focus on polishing.

      • Digia previews “Boot to Qt” platform
      • Digia launches Boot to Qt technology preview

        Digia launched a technology preview of Boot to Qt, a commercial offering that provides “a fully-integrated solution for the creation of slick user interfaces on embedded devices.” The current version of Boot to Qt is built on top of an Android kernel base layer, and includes support for the Nexus 7, BeagleBoard-xM, SABRE Lite, and x86 hardware.

      • ReKonq Gaining Chrome Extension Support, Still Sponsored By Blue Systems

        It’s been just a little over a year since the mystical Blue Systems started sponsoring development of ReKonq. Blue Systems is second only to the KDE e.V. in platform investment, sponsoring not only numerous core applications, but multiple distributions as well. ReKonq has come a long way since 0.9.2 (May 2012) and with the help of Blue Systems developer Adjam, it is taking baby-steps towards Chrome Extension support.

      • Quo vadis, Dolphin? First results from the user study.

        We conducted a large study about strength and weakness of file managers in may 2013. In this article we present first results, discuss issues and questions that occur during the study, and present the schedule for the statistical analysis.

      • Homerun 1.0.0!

        Today, I am happy to announce the release of Homerun 1.0.0. This new version comes with a few new features.

  • Distributions

    • Another Day, Another Distro: Antergos Linux Is Born

      “A distribution I never heard of has changed its default desktop, stopped supporting Cinnamon — though it is still included — and changed its name,” said Mobile Raptor blogger Robin Lim. “To me, it really is of little significance. No offense meant to the development team — I am sure it is a fine distribution — it is just that it is floating in a sea of fine distributions.”

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Rating Lowered to Market Perform at BMO Capital Markets (RHT)

      • Fedora

        • Raspberry Pi’s Fedora becomes Pidora

          Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology released an optimized Fedora 18 Remix for the Raspberry Pi, and unveiled a new name for the remix. “Pidora 18,” based on a new build of Fedora optimized for ARMv6, features speedier performance and includes packages from the Fedora 18 package set, says the Pidora project team.

        • Free and open source support for RAR archives in Fedora

          RAR is somewhat of a legacy format in terms of compression ability but RAR remains popular in many places especially for its split archive feature. Current Fedora users are used to installing unrar command line utility from RPM Fusion to get the ability to extract RAR files and unrar is supported by the GNOME (File Roller) and Ark (KDE) archive managers however it is a proprietary utility and unavailable for other architectures like ARM which are getting popular in Fedora as well.

        • Another week of rawhide (2013-05-21 edition)
        • When Xubuntu and Debian fail, Fedora it is for HP Pavilion g6-2210us laptop

          I’ve spent just about a month with this new HP Pavilion g6-2210us laptop that shipped with Windows 8. That means UEFI and Secure Boot.

          And new hardware. We all know how difficult Linux can be with new hardware.

        • Fedora 18 Comes To ARMv6, Raspberry Pi

          While Fedora 18 has been out for months and so has Fedora 18 for ARM, an ARMv6 spin of Fedora 18 targeting the popular Raspberry Pi development platform has finally been released.

          Fedora 19 isn’t too far out now, but Fedora 18 for ARMv6 to cater towards the very low-end Raspberry Pi hardware has been spun. This release is being falled “Pidora 18″ and was announced on Wednesday,

    • Debian Family

      • Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 rounded up

        The GNU/Hurd development team at the Debian project has released a version of the Distribution based on Debian 7 “Wheezy” and the GNU Hurd kernel. Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 is the first major release of the distribution after years of development work, even though it is not an official Debian release. The Hurd kernel is a Unix-like microkernel design based on the Mach kernel and has itself been under development since 1990.

      • CrunchBang 11 Waldorf

        CrunchBang 11 has been released so it’s time for a review. I last looked at CrunchBang back in 2009. Wow! Has it been that long? I’m pleased to report that CrunchBang 11 didn’t disappoint in any way.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux-friendly SBC suits display apps on trains, planes, buses

      MEN Mikro announced a compact, rugged single-board computer based on Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom E600-series embedded processors. The Linux-friendly SC27 SBC is aimed at driver displays and in-seat infotainment systems in trains, buses, and airplanes, where wide-temperature operation and resistance to shock, vibration, and dust are critical.

    • Raspberry Pi Gets New Wayland Weston Renderer

      After working on the Raspberry Pi support for Wayland/Weston, Pekka Paalanen has announced a new “rpi-renderer” for the low-cost ARM development board.

      The rpi-renderer is better than the current gl-renderer and should be better for the hardware although it’s not as flexible.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Driving innovation with Open Source

    Yesterday, eighteen technology decision-makers from the Singapore Government gathered at the FutureGov lunch briefing — conducted in partnership with Red Hat — to discuss how Open Source technology can drive openness and innovation in the public sector.

  • Why The “Star Trek Computer” will be Open Source and Released Under Apache License v2

    If you remember the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, then you know exactly what someone means when they use the expression “the Star Trek Computer”. On TNG, “the computer” had abilities which were so far ahead of real-world tech of the time, that it took on an almost mythological status. And even to this day, people reference “The Star Trek Computer” as a sort of short-hand for the goal of advances in computing technology. We are mesmerized by the idea of a computer which can communicate with us in natural, spoken language, answering questions, locating data and calculating probabilities in a conversational manner, and – seemingly – with access to all of the data in the known Universe.

  • Concurrent is building a Hadoop assembly line in open source

    Cascading creator Concurrent has developed a new open source tool called Pattern for running machine learning models on Hadoop clusters. When combined with its SQL tool called Lingual, users can move data from one stage to another easily.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • OpenStack Public Cloud Setbacks: Real or Imagined?

      Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) has killed its OpenStack public cloud plan. Rackspace (NYSE:RAX) is not growing as quickly as planned, despite betting the company on OpenStack. Some pundits now wonder if a giant like IBM can save OpenStack. Should cloud integrators be concerned about the open source platform? Absolutely not. Here’s why.

  • Databases

    • A Look Inside Tumblr’s Architecture

      tumblrYahoo recently purchased Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion. Tumblr pushes some surprisingly high numbers through their service, so aninside look at the architecture that Yahoo bought is well worth the read. The portion I found most interesting are the details on the MySQL database setup, and how Tumblr uses MySQL to scale massively, and keep the service available.

    • SQLite gets memory-mapped I/O

      SQLite, the ubiquitous, lightweight, C-based SQL engine, which is embedded in many applications, has been updated to SQLite version 3.7.17 with support for memory-mapped I/O which could potentially double performance and use less RAM. The new functionality adds xFetch() and xUnfetch() methods which are automatically called if memory-mapped I/O is activated, to map the data into memory. The developers point out that there are disadvantages to the technique that require coders using the functions be more robust in how they handle pointers and errors and that it is possible to not see performance boosted in certain test cases. Therefore, by default, memory-mapped I/O is turned off. Programmers wishing to exploit the functionality should consult the documentation.

  • CMS

  • Business

  • Public Services/Government

    • Impact of open by default on local government

      For those of you that may not have read the memorandum in its entirety it directs federal agencies to make all data open and machine readable by default. Obviously there are caveats to that. Agencies can redact data that does not meet disclosure standards regarding security and privacy. The excitement centers around the language of open by default.

  • Licensing

    • Unlicensed code: Movement or Madness?

      One of the hot topics of commentary on open source development at the moment is the licensing situation on GitHub. When code is committed to GitHub, the copyright owner (usually the author or their employer) retains all rights to the code, and anyone wishing to re-use the code (by downloading it, or by “forking” and modifying it) is bound by the terms of the license the code is published under. The point of discussion in this case, is that many (indeed, the majority) of repositories on GitHub contain no license file at all.

    • Jante’s Shield

      It’s difficult to be critical of open source software. Often, it’s created by volunteers who are motivated purely by the challenge and the desire to do something good. This attitude is why we’ve got such a thriving ecosystem of distributions and software, and why the GPL has become such a disruptive idea. It has also enabled many companies to build a viable business model supporting, extending and distributing this software in ways that would never occur if they were shipping their own proprietary software. This is what causes the occasional friction in the community, and it’s completely understandable. On the one hand you have communities working together in a way that I think is similar to the Swedish ‘Law of Jante’ – the idea that individual success is downplayed in favour of the achievements made by the groups. On the other hand you have traditional company values, bigging up its individual success and vitality in order to compete with other (non-open source) businesses doing the same.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Science finds a better foundation for research in the open

      The flipside of having to resolve such issues, though, is the incredible power of transparency in the research process which openness offers. Any researcher that has hammered away at a piece of published research for months in a futile attempt to recreate its findings will understand the feeling of extreme frustration when the scientific literature falls short of reproducibility. If so much of our research isn’t repeatable, aren’t we building houses upon rather sandy foundations?

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

    • Linux System Programming, 2ed
    • Google Code disables direct file downloads

      Google has announced that it will in future not allow direct file downloads from its Google Code hosting service. The company says that “increasing misuse” of the service has forced it to take the step in the interest of keeping the platform’s community “safe and secure”.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Open Source, Open Standards 2013 Conference, 18/04/2013, America Square Conference Centre

      A member of the Geospatial Engineering team at Newcastle, David Alderson, recently attended a GovNet series conference in London, entitled “Open Source, Open Standards”. This was held at the America Square Conference Centre, and more information about the conference can be found here.

      The conference delegates were largely comprised of various government agencies including the Department for Transport, Office of National Statistics, representation from emergency services, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Education, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as well as representation from many local councils from around the UK. From within these various organisations the delegates were largely found to be based within some part of their specific IT operations.

Leftovers

  • Driver who tweeted about knocking cyclist over is under investigation

    A motorist is being investigated by police after she boasted on Twitter that she had knocked a cyclist off his bike.

  • Apple Mobile Devices Cleared for Use on U.S. Military Networks

    The Pentagon cleared Apple Inc. (AAPL) devices for use on its networks, setting the stage for the maker of iPhones and iPads to compete with Samsung Electronics Co. and BlackBerry for military sales.

    The Defense Department said in a statement today that it has approved the use of Cupertino, California-based Apple’s products running a version of the iOS 6 mobile platform.

  • A shield law for reporters? Thanks, but no thanks!

    A lot of journalists have embraced the idea. But I believe that journalists should say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

    Tempting as it might be, a federal shield law is a bad idea for journalists. We do not need it, and we may ultimately regret it. The relevant part of the First Amendment to the Constitution says: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. That powerful simple phrase “no law” means just that – no law, period. It means Congress simply cannot legislate in this area.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Raw Milk Supporters Rally in Baraboo, Wisconsin for Farmer Vernon Hershberger’s Criminal Trial

      Farmer Vernon Hershberger’s trial started May 20 in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and will most likely continue until May 24 at the earliest. Hershberger is a raw milk producer. As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported, he is charged with four misdemeanor offenses: operating a retail food establishment without a license, operating a dairy farm as a milk producer without a license, operating as a dairy plant without a license, and violating a holding order. If convicted, the Amish father of ten children faces up to 30 months in county jail and fines of over $10,000.

      Supporters suspect that he is being singled out to make a cautionary example threatening other raw milk producers in Wisconsin (Wisconsin’s law allows “incidental sales” of raw milk on the farm, but its interpretation has been increasingly strict in the last few years).

  • Security

    • Report: DDoS service as a legitimate, FBI-approved business

      US security blogger Brian Krebs writes about a service that is relatively new, at least to the general public: DDoS attacks. Apparently, one enterprising “stress tester” discovered by Krebs even told the blogger that he was working for the FBI.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust

      Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.

  • Finance

  • Censorship


    • RIAA: 20 Million Piracy Takedowns Sent to Google, Still No End in Sight

      To mark the occasion of 20 million URL takedown notices sent to Google by RIAA member companies, the organization has complained that search engines still aren’t doing enough to reduce the piracy problem. The RIAA says it is using a bucket to deal with “an ocean of illegal downloading”, one in which content is replaced and re-indexed in a never-ending loop. Notice and takedown procedures aren’t fit for today’s reality and must be revised, the music group argues.

  • Privacy

    • Privacy Alert #1: Explicit Consent, the Cornerstone

      When you are browsing the web, can you say who collects information about you, what is the nature of that information and who may access it? Can you control who may know what about you? The European Commission intended to give you the power to do so, but European Parliament may vote otherwise, under pressure by corporate lobbies.

  • Civil Rights

    • Jailed Pussy Riot member declares hunger strike

      A jailed member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot told a court she is on a hunger strike after being barred from attending a parole appeal hearing in person, Russian state news agency Ria Novosti reported Wednesday.

      Maria Alyokhina was sentenced in August to two years in prison for performing a song critical of then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a prominent Orthodox cathedral last year.

    • Feds Tracked Reporter’s Movements, Personal E-Mail in Criminal Conspiracy Investigation

      In an effort to unmask a leaker who fed a reporter classified information about North Korea, FBI investigators tracked the journalist’s movements in and out of a government building, obtained copies of e-mails from his personal account and also took the unprecedented step of alleging that the reporter engaged in a criminal conspiracy simply for doing his job.

    • US Suspends Constitution in Permanent World War on Terror
    • Capitalising on tragedy

      Yesterday’s events in Woolwich were appalling, but Lord Carlile and John Reid wasted no time in attempting to use this atrocity in justifying a return to reductions in personal privacy and other human rights.

    • Now is not the time for politics, Lord Reid

      Today, the country begins the process of coming to terms with the horrific attack in Woolwich yesterday.

      We know little about those who have committed this brutal terror attack. Videos and photographs have brought the chilling savagery of the perpetrators into our homes.

      As the Prime Minister said:

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Newegg nukes “corporate troll” Alcatel in third patent appeal win this year

      In 2011, Alcatel-Lucent had American e-commerce on the ropes. The French telecom had sued eight big retailers and Intuit saying that their e-commerce operations infringed Alcatel patents; one by one they were folding. Kmart, QVC, Lands’ End, and Intuit paid up at various stages of the litigation. Just before trial began Zappos, Sears, and Amazon also settled. That left two companies holding the bag: Overstock.com and Newegg, a company whose top lawyer had vowed not to ever settle with patent trolls.

    • European Parliament aims for fake openness in TTIP / TAFTA

      The draft European Parliament resolution on EU trade and investment negotiations with the United States of America aims for fake openness. Paragraph 21 of the draft resolution recalls the need for continuous and transparent engagement by the Commission with a wide range of stakeholders. I have visited some Civil Society Dialogues organised by the Commission. The Commission just states there are no problems and, sorry, as trade negotiations are secret, they can give no details. A masochist may find such meetings rewarding.

      Civil society organisations want access to draft negotiation texts, at least for regulatory aspects. Companies have access, the Commission discriminates against citizens, while access is a human right. See the FFII letter to European Parliament Trade committee; see also KEI comments.

    • How Cheap Genetic Testing Complicates Cancer Screening For Us All

      Sometimes, more medical information is a bad thing. The influential United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends against most women getting genetic screenings for their susceptibility to breast cancer. Why? Because the tests are imperfect: for every woman who gets tested for genes associated with onset breast cancer, even more will falsely test positive, leading spooked patients into needless surgery or psychological trauma. Super cheap genetic testing from enterprising health startups, such as 23andMe, have complicated cancer detection for us all by increasing the accessibility of imperfect medical information.

      After discovering a mutated BRCA1 gene, known to increase the likelihood of breast cancer 60 to 80 percent, actress Angelina Jolie underwent a radical preventive double mastectomy. Her brave confession in the New York Times brought much needed attention to breast cancer awareness, but it’s dangerous in the hands of a statistically illiterate population.

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me

        Kim Dotcom has announced that he is the inventor of the so-called two-step authentication system and has a patent to prove it. The Megaupload founder says the security mechanism, which has just been introduced by Twitter, is being used by U.S. companies more than a billion times every week without permission. Dotcom says he doesn’t want to sue, but might if the likes of Google and Facebook don’t help fund his legal battle with the U.S. Government.

      • Is a broadcast to everyone private under the Copyright Act?

        For the final post in my copyright series, I want to focus on another example in my series of discussions about formalism vs. policy in copyright. Today’s case is WNET v. Aereo, which allowed continued operation of a creative television streaming service. As I’ll discuss below, the case pretty clearly complies with the statutory scheme, much to the relief of those who believe content is overprotected and that new digital distribution methods should be allowed. This time, the policy opposition is best demonstrated by Judge Chin’s dissent in the case.

      • TAFTA: First Step Towards a Super-ACTA

        In a plenary vote, the European Parliament just adopted a mandate to the European Commission explicitly allowing it to “include strong protection of intellectual property rights (IPR)” in the proposed EU-US trade agreement negociations, the “Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement” (TAFTA), also know as “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP).

05.22.13

Links 22/5/2013: Debian GNU/Hurd, New Go Language Release

Posted in News Roundup at 11:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Devon Ceptor: $99 Linux-based HDMI stick for enterprise

    Devon IT plans to launch a tiny device called the Ceptor in July which you can plug into any TV or monitor to turn it into a thin client machine. Basically the Ceptor is a $99 device that’s small enough to fit in your pocket. It has an ARM-based processor and runs a Linux-based operating system, but it’s really designed to let you login to remote server running virtual desktop software.

  • Steven Ovadia: I wiped Windows and never looked back

    I run My Linux Rig

  • Linux is an Art – Driving Force Behind Linux

    We comes across Linux (Foss) in our day-to-day life. In fact we are surrounded by Foss technologies. The first thing that might come to the mind of ours is that why is Linux appraised so much even in Windows and Mac user Community.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Is the Instrument Panel the Next Target for Open Source Software in Cars?

      The In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) System has received much of the focus from open source software initiatives in the automotive industry so far with the Automotive Grade Linux working group and the GENIVI alliance. But the instrument panel, which shares many technologies with IVI, is also ripe for development with Linux.

      The instrument cluster will probably be the next focus of open source software development in the automotive industry, said Rudolf Streif, Director of Embedded Solutions at the Linux Foundation. Traditionally the instrument panel was a set of mechanical guages that monitored speed, engine temperature, fuel levels and more. Most dashboards are electronic now and will eventually be replaced by another screen and integrated with the IVI system, he said.

    • Linux Kernel 3.9.3 Is Now Available for Download

      A few minutes ago, Greg Kroah-Hartman proudly announced that the third maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.9 kernel series is now available for download.

    • Linux 3.10-rc2 Kernel Takes In A Few Extra Pulls

      The second release candidate for the LinuThe second release candidate for the Linux 3.10 kernel is now out there. Torvalds released 3.10-rc2 on Monday with a few extra pulls that he wouldn’t have accepted later on in the release cycle. x 3.10 kernel is now out there. Torvalds released 3.10-rc2 on Monday with a few extra pulls that he wouldn’t have accepted later on in the release cycle.

    • Hot Relocation HDD To SSD Support For Btrfs

      In working to enhance the performance of the Btrfs file-system in cases where certain data/files are frequently used, a set of patches for providing hot relocation support has been posted.

      The Btrfs hot relocation support comes down to when storing data on a traditional (rotating) hard disk drive, when data gets “hot” (a.k.a. being frequently used), these patches would allow the data to be automatically migrated to a non-rotating disk (i.e. solid-state drive). By moving the frequently used data over to an SSD, the performance would obviously be much more optimal than keeping it on an SSD but making it so not all of your data would need to be stored on a costly SSD.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KTp 0.6.2 Released

        We have just released version 0.6.2 of KDE Telepathy, KDE’s instant messaging client.

      • rekonq, working on extension support
      • Calligra Author Gets a Distraction Free Mode

        wanted to throw a little light on a feature that just landed in the Calligra repositories: A distraction-free writing mode for Calligra Author and Calligra Words.

        The distraction-free mode means that we disable most UI elements and lets the user focus totally on the contents. This was one of the most asked-for features when I did a little survey half a year ago and asked which features that our potential users wanted. I say ‘potential’ because this was before the first release of Calligra Author and we didn’t have any users at all by then.

      • Okular welcomes configurable review tools

        This way you can decide that by default you want your highlighter to be green instead of yellow. Or even have two highlighters in the review bar.

      • Qt For Tizen Launches, Based On Qt 5.1

        Just two weeks after talking about a Qt 5 tool-kit port for the Tizen platform being worked on, the first release is now available.

      • Grid + Assistant = Awesome Perspective Assistant

        Been quiet some time since my last blog about Krita, well, I had been a bit busy with college work. Nonetheless, with whatever time I had, and all the help from Boud, I have been able to import a particular feature from the Perspective Grid to the Perspective Assistant.

  • Distributions

    • Emmabuntus 2 – The French Revolution

      One of my favourite things about writing about Linux is when I decide to review one of the smaller distributions.

    • New Releases

      • Neptune 3.1 is ready

        We worked hard and spend a lot of effort in creating this service release for Neptune 3.0. So if you like it please consider donating to us a small amount of money so we can further develop and strenghtens our efforts.

      • Puppy 5.6 (Precise)

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia Linux 3 brings a raft of key updates

        Mageia has long been what you might call a “best-kept secret” of the Linux world, consistently residing among the top five distributions in DistroWatch’s page-hit rankings despite minimal marketing and hoopla.

        The distro has only been around since it was forked from Mandriva Linux back in 2010, of course, but after several weeks’ delay the Mageia project on Sunday finally launched the third major version of the free and open source operating system.

      • Mageia 3, the WONT FIX scim bug, and iBus
      • OpenMandriva Picks Name, Releases Alpha

        While the rest of Linuxdom was reading of the Debian 7.0 and Mageia 3 releases, the OpenMandriva gang have been hard at it trying to get their new distribution some attention. The OpenMandriva name was made official and an alpha was released into the wild.

      • More good news: We have an iso that installs
      • Mageia 3 KDE Review: Simple, refined, elegant and fantastic!

        To be honest, I have used quite a few KDE distros in last couple of years but never saw a resource efficient distro like Mageia 2. Under similar conditions, Mageia performed better than almost all the KDE distros I have used. Plus, with Mandriva Linux going commercial and PCLinuxOS becoming independent of Mandriva, Mageia and ROSA are perhaps the limited ways to know what’s brewing in the Mandriva camp. Incidentally both the Mandriva derivatives present really beautiful KDE distros!

      • Mageia 3 out, no more delays

    • Debian Family

      • 2013-05-debian gnu hurd 2013

        It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian “sid” at the time of the Debian “wheezy” release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

      • News about Debian GNU/Hurd
      • Removing unwanted applications in Debian

        One of the biggest pitfalls for a new Debian (or Linux) user is attempting to remove an unwanted application than came installed with the Desktop installed. This can result in the Debian package manager informing the user that there are various packages which can be autoremoved. Allowing the package manager to autoremove these packages then removes packages essential to the Desktop environment, destroying the installation. Why?

      • Derivatives

        • Tails 0.18 Screenshots
        • Tails 0.18 can install packages on the fly

          Version 0.18 of Tails, The Amnesiac Incognito Live System designed for users who need to protect their privacy and be as anonymous as possible, has been released with a preview of a new feature which allows a custom list of packages to be installed and automatically updated each time a network connection is made. The new feature makes use of the persistent volume support in the distribution but users should be aware of the ramifications of using the persistence when attempting to leave no traces.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu: Restoring the Community Link

            The story of Ubuntu and the Missing Community Link has progressed in the last week. A conflict that initially seemed symbolic of the division between Canonical employees and Ubuntu volunteers has since transformed into an illustration of Ubuntu’s skill at handling community conflict.

            For now, at least, the issue appears to have been resolved, although concerns linger about how to avoid similar divisions in the future.

            The conflict arose when Canonical’s design team removed the link to the community site from the main menu on the Ubuntu home page to a sub-menu at the bottom of the page. The change resulted in one-third fewer click-throughs to the community site, but more importantly, the change seemed to confirm fears of a continuing de-emphasis of the Ubuntu community.

            As a result, Benjamin Kerensa and Mark Terranova, two prominent Ubuntu members, began a campaign to restore the position of the link. Much of the campaign was kept within conventional channels, but events reached a low point when Kerensa’s private video that compared Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to Adolf Hitler was briefly made public by Mark Terranova.

          • May 2013 Ubuntu Developer Summit Summary
          • Respect in Community Discussion and Debate

            Recently there was yet another storm in a teacup that distracted us from creating and sharing Ubuntu and our flavors with others. I am not going to dive into the details of this particular incident…it has been exhaustively documented elsewhere…but at the heart of this case was a concern around the conduct in which some folks engaged around something they disagreed with. This is not the first time we have seen disappointing conduct in a debate, and I wanted to share some thoughts on this too.

          • The key to the success of Ubuntu

            To finish this aloud thinking, I really think that Ubuntu is doing something right. And that is, taking the important decisions fast, and sticking to a plan. I do not know if the path they are following will give them the final success, but I am sure that if the start listening everyone who disagree with that said path, they are never going to succeed.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Kubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail review – Cushty

              It is time to test the third sibling in the Ubuntu family, the one named Kubuntu. So far, we’ve had Ubuntu, which was somewhat bland. Then we also had Xubuntu, which worked like a charm, except for a kernel oops thingie affecting the entire range, a silly thing to coincide with the official release. The KDE version is next.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster built by US PhD candidate

      Joshua Kiepert, a PhD candidate from Boise University, has built an awesome 32-way cluster from Raspberry Pis. Although clusters from Pi’s have been made before, and even much larger, this is still a seriously cool project.

    • Raspberry Pis Chained Together Provide Massive Computing Muscle

      As we’ve covered before, when it comes to the top open source stories of the last 12 months, it’s clear that one of the biggest is the proliferation of tiny, inexpensive Linux-based computers at some of the smallest form factors ever seen. The Linux-based Raspberry Pi, priced at $25 and $35, leads the pack among these devices.

      But in a new twist on what Raspberry Pi devices are capable of, they’re being chained together to form supercomputers and powerful clusters. If it sounds like a joke, you may be surprised at the enormous computing power these lash-ups are capable of. They may even have the power to democratize supercomputing-level data crunching at very low price points.

    • HOT Raspberry Pi DIY Mini Desktop PC Build

      We recently set out to design a mini desktop computer with the wildly popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. The Raspberry Pi is a Linux-driven, ARM processor-based micro computer that is known for its low cost and small size. People use the device for a variety of projects, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, our goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. One of the high level goals of this project was also to learn about programming with Linux and get a good feel for it with the Debian distribution.

    • TI OMAP5432 dev kit boasts Linux and Android support

      Texas Instruments (TI) introduced a development kit for designs based on the TI OMAP5432 SOC (system-on-chip), which integrates dual 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore CPUs. The OMAP5432 EVM (evaluation module) targets high performance, graphically oriented, low power embedded applications such as human-machine interfaces, portable data terminals, digital signage, and medical monitoring devices.

    • Arduino launches Wi-Fi board and ready-to-roll robotics platform

      Arduino has launched a new family of development boards and its first full robotics platform at Maker Faire Bay Area over the weekend. The Arduino Yún is the first release in a new line of Wi-Fi enabled boards and is based on the Arduino Leonardo coupled with an embedded Wi-Fi board running a MIPS variant of Linux. The Arduino Robot is the company’s first robotics platform that is fully functional out of the box and consists of two boards connected by a ribbon cable which are equipped with motors, wheels and sensors in a circular design that is reminiscent of the Roomba. The design also features a color LCD screen, microSD card slot, a compass, LEDs and control elements.

    • BeagleBone Camera Cape gains Android 4.1.2 support

      QuickLogic has released Android 4.1.2 support for its custom Parallel Camera Interface (CAM I/F) chip for TI’s Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 SOC (system-on-chip). The new support, which comes in addition to earlier Linux support, adds Android compatibility to the BeagleBone’s 3.1-megapixel Camera Cape.

    • Accessing the Raspberry Pi’s 1MHz timer

      A fixed-rate timer is not part of the ARM specification, but most ARM-based SoC’s have such a timer. The Raspberry Pi is no exception. However, reading its timer in Linux takes a Unix hacker’s understanding.

    • Phones

      • Jolla Smartphone Announced

        At an online presentation today, Jolla Ltd. released further details around the Jolla phone and its Sailfish operating system, an open source OS based on the Linux Meego project. The world’s first Jolla device was shown to an enthusiasic group of developers.

        [...]

        With Jolla, your other half, you have the ultimate freedom to let loose, innovate and individualize your own mobile world.

      • Jolla seeks Sailfish smartphone pre-orders

        Jolla Ltd. opened pre-order voucher sales for the first smartphone to run its Sailfish OS, an open source distribution based on the Linux MeeGo project. The dual-core, 4.5-inch Jolla phone features a gesture UI, Android app compatibility, and interchangeable “Other Half” back covers that switch user profiles.

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Sony releases its Android drivers for AOSP

          As part of its AOSP for Xperia project, Sony has released proprietary Wi-Fi drivers and OpenGL graphics libraries of its Xperia S smartphone, Xperia Z smartphone and Xperia Tablet Z. The company has opened GitHub repositories for all three devices that include Android source code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), the proprietary drivers and instructions to build AOSP images with the drivers and libraries and then install them on the company’s devices.

        • Google I/O: How to build battery-efficient apps
        • Tough Cat B15 Android Phone Marks U.S. Debut

          The makers of tractors and other construction equipment are trying to drum up partners to sell its rough ‘n’ tumble Android smartphone.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why we do this crazy thing we do

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • HeidiSQL 8.0 arrives with polished user interface

      Ansgar Becker has announced the release of HeidiSQL 8.0, the latest version of the open source SQL client for Windows. The new version brings a query history function, supports search and replace in results and introduces folders for tables, views, routines and sessions that allow users to better organise the user interface. HeidiSQL supports MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server and Microsoft SQL databases and enables database administrators to browse and edit data as well as import and export data from SQL files.

    • SQLite Now Faster With Memory Mapped I/O

      SQLite 3.7.17 was released yesterday. What makes this new release of the popular lightweight SQL database software noteworthy is that it introduces support for memory-mapped I/O.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Seven great features of OpenOffice and Libre Office that you probably ignore

      For many people Apache OpenOffice and Libre Office, which I’ll call collectively FOs (Free Offices suites) for short, are nothing but “free, as in free beer” substitutes of Microsoft Office for basic to intermediate needs. Many users in this category may run the FOs for years without ever discovering some of their features, that is, without realizing the full power and flexibility of these tools.

  • CMS

    • Pantheon’s Drupal Open Source CMS Partner Program

      The demand for expertise in open-source programming has come up fairly frequenly in recent months (here’s an example). And the channel seems to be taking notice, as an announcement Tuesday by Pantheon of a partner program for connecting developers with expertise in Drupal, the open-source content management system (CMS), with organizations building enterprise-quality websites.

      Drupal, which is now more than a decade old, is a key open-source technology behind the modern Web. Alongside alternative open-source CMS engines, like WordPress, Drupal makes it easier to build complex websites. It’s the system behind some of the most popular sites out there, from McDonald’s to the Linux Foundation to — last but not least — Britney Spears’s homepage.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • ktap 0.1 released

      I’m pleased to announce that ktap release v0.1, this is the first official
      release of ktap project, it is expected that this release is not fully
      functional or very stable and we welcome bug reports and fixes for the issues.

    • [ANNOUNCE] ktap 0.1 released
    • KTAP Released For Linux Kernel Dynamic Tracing
    • Jira 6 adds mobile interface, revamps web interface

      Jira, Atlassian’s issue tracker and management software, has received a user interface revamp and got a new mobile interface. Jira began life as a software development tool, but according to Atlassian, a recent survey found two thirds of the user base also used it for tasks other than software development. With this in mind, Atlassian set out to make Jira more modern and quicker to use.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Top 5 misconceptions about open source in government programs

      On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the “leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community” published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates ‘preference’ for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK’s new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK’s government for public consumption.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Rapid development of citizen cyberscience projects on Crowdcrafting.org

      At a workshop on Citizen Cyberscience held this week at University of Geneva, a novel open source software platform called Crowdcrafting was officially launched. This platform, which already has attracted thousands of participants during several months of testing, enables the rapid development of online citizen science applications, by both amateur and professional scientists.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Review of the new Digital Public Library of America

        (The official launch had been planned to occur at the Boston Public Library but the temporary closing of the library due to the Boston Marathon tragedy prompted that event to be postponed until the fall.)

  • Programming

    • Google Updates Go Open-Source Language
    • Zend Framework 2.2 focuses on consistency

      Most of these services now include “abstract factories” that are either registered by default or can be added to an application’s configuration. The service manager uses abstract factories to handle multiple services that follow the same instantiation pattern, but which have different names. The developers have also implemented new plugin manager instances, Zend\Stdlib\Hydrator\HydratorPluginManager and Zend\InputFilter\InputFilterPluginManager. The first can be used for retrieving hydrator instances and, for example, allows custom hydrators to be used across all form instances, while the second makes it possible to retrieve input filters. This allows input filters to be reused and ensures that all input instances are provided with custom validators and/or filters. The developers have also added the new translators and sessions factories.

Leftovers

  • Does a ‘fiscal cliff’ await software vendors switching to cloud?

    The move to cloud is seen as the ultimate form of product cannibalization for software vendors, since customers will be switching from high-end purchases to relatively low monthly payments.

  • Hardware

  • Finance

    • The Search for Change

      Of course UKIP are not a real alternative. I said “do not despise UKIP supporters”, not “do not despise UKIP”. UKIP are a false “alternative” dangled by the mainstream media and the bankers. But the support for them is evidence that the public do very much want some alternative. I shall append this to the article as it must be more ambiguous than I thought.

    • Sen. Warren Asks AG Holder Why No Wall Street Prosecutions
    • Sen. Warren demands to know why criminal bankers aren’t being locked up

      There’s been a rash of mega-settlements between the government and the nation’s largest banks in recent years over allegations of foreclosing on people without just cause, knowingly making bad loans and reselling the debt, making false statements to rob from retired pensioners, laundering money for drug cartels, repressive regimes and terrorists, and agreeing to settlements and then ignoring them, to name a few.

    • “True the Vote,” the Victim? Voter Vigilante Group Says IRS Targeted Its “Verify the Recall” Effort in Wisconsin

      The Texas-based Tea Party group True the Vote is claiming they were one of the groups inappropriately “targeted” by the IRS since their application for charitable status has been delayed for years. Although many Tea Party groups were singled-out by the IRS for improper reasons, there may be good reasons for the agency to take a close look at True the Vote’s application for charitable status, particularly given the group’s involvement with the Wisconsin “Verify the Recall” effort.

    • How the Government Targeted Occupy

      Freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human freedoms. This freedom is not merely about one’s ability to choose to believe or not believe in religion or a particular philosophy. In a democracy, freedom of conscience is about the ability to be critical of government and corporations, and to be free from the chilling fear that being critical will subject you to government surveillance.

      Freedom of conscience is not fully realized in isolation. Without the ability to share one’s thoughts, to speak out about injustice, or to join with others in peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances, this core freedom is not truly free. Americans should be able to exercise these most sacred rights in free society without worry of being monitored by the government.

    • Rise Up or Die

      Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information.

    • Yahoo: $1.1 Billion Tumblr Buyout Blunder?

      So Yahoo is buying its way into a crowded market to acquire a business that has no profits. Sounds like a disaster.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • A Quick Look at some Mobile Providers’ Customer Data Policies

      There’s been concern recently about what mobile providers are doing with customers’ data after a Sunday Times article on EE selling information about them. We’ve had a brief look at some of their customer data policies to try to work out what’s going on.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • 3D Printing

      If you read this blog you must have an internet connection, so presumably have heard of 3D printing. It is a very disruptive technology with potential to change manufacturing in a variety of ways – and indeed even things such as medicine. I recently had some correspondence with Joshua Pearce whose engineering group is working on materials for use in 3D printing. He is concerned about a patent arms race in this area being drag on innovation. He is looking at creative ways to preempt some of the patent nonsense.

    • Trademarks

      • A monopoly over numbers?

        Are you familiar with the ISBN? A unique identifier issued by the U.S. Government to identify books? Did you know that the U.S. Government has granted a private company Bowker a monopoly over issuing them? They are very proud of it…as if it is a good thing!

    • Copyrights

      • Do we need a law?

        In the dimension of copyright, the issue of plagiarism often comes up. There is a common misunderstanding that there is a connection between copyright or plagiarism. Plagiarism is not generally a violation of copyright law – although in some cases where extensive copying takes place it may be. Rather it is a failure of attribution. Basically plagiarism is not illegal – but it is heavily punished through contract law. It is a good example of “why we don’t need a law for that” contrary the oft expressed opinion if something is bad we need a law against it.

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