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12.10.14

Links 10/12/2014: Fedora 21, Ubuntu Core

Posted in News Roundup at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Databases

    • MariaDB Enterprise adds Suse Linux and IBM Power8 support

      MARIADB LAUNCHED the latest release of MariaDB Enterprise on Tuesday with support for tailored software configuration notifications and IBM Power8 hardware systems as well as Suse Linux distributions.

      “MariaDB Enterprise’s new Notification Service means that crawling through lengthy change logs and wondering if the latest security vulnerability will affect database performance are in the past,” the firm said.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Making good and solid templates

      Well this is exactly one of the most common mistakes. Making templates for Writer is NOT converting Word templates. Its building new templates from scratch using the best tool for it: LibreOffice. If you choose the short cut and converts Word templates to LibreOffice templates, you will get into trouble. Big trouble.

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Taking A Stick To Flouters of EU Procurement Policies

      he EU has pretty strongly emphasized that government procurement should not prop up monopoly, yet the practice continues.

    • Report: 15 percent of IT tenders ask for brand instead of solution

      Each year 15 per cent of public administrations flout procurement rules by requesting specific brands and trademarks that prevent competition, shows a European study into 12.808 ICT procurement requests published over the past five years. Nearly a quarter of all awarded ICT requests got one single offer, also indicating there is a lack of competition when it comes to government ICT solutions.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • The New York Times R&D Lab releases Hive, an open-source crowdsourcing tool

      Today the R&D Lab is opening up the platform that powers the whole thing. Hive is an open-source framework that lets anyone build their own crowdsourcing project. The code responsible for Hive is now available on GitHub. With Hive, a developer can create assignments for users, define what they need to do, and keep track of their progress in helping to solve problems.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Congress relaxes whole grain standards for schools

      Congress is taking some whole grains off the school lunch line.

      A massive year-end spending bill released Tuesday doesn’t allow schools to opt out of healthier school meal standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama, as House Republicans had sought. But it would ease standards that require more whole grains in school foods.

      The bill also would put off rules to lower sodium in school meals. Those rules were supposed to kick in by 2017.

  • Security

    • Tuesday’s security updates
    • Using IT Shouldn’t Be Like Hand-carrying Bags Of Money Through Gang-territory But It Is Thanks To M$ And Adobe

      “bugs that allow hackers to hijack PCs via Internet Explorer, Word and Excel files, and Visual Basic scripts.

      Everyone is urged to install the fixes, as well as a batch of updates from Adobe: a flaw in the Flash plugin is already being exploited by hackers to take over victims’ computers via the web.” It would be tedious if it weren’t terrifying but just about every month we learn what the malware-industry already knows, non-FREE software stinks. Just using it to do ordinary things the way they were intended to be used exposes one’s IT to all kinds of criminals. Don’t blame the victims. Blame the purveyors of this garbage, M$ and Adobe, who force the world to use their stuff only to be victimized.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • World Oil Politics

      If you wish to see a target of Saudi inaction, it is the United States, not Russia.

  • Finance

    • The Wages of Global Capitalism

      In the “developed world” wage growth in 2012 was 0.1 percent, and in 2013 it was 0.2 percent. Far from portending any economic “recovery,” that level of wage “growth” is rather called “wage stagnation.” In stunning contrast, wage growth in the major emerging growth economies was much better: 6.7 percent in 2012 and 5.9 percent in 2013.

    • Professor Wolff on The Real News Network: “The State of Workers’ Wages around the World”

      Economist Richard Wolff compares the stagnation of wages in the U.S. for the past 30 years to the increase in wages in emerging markets and explains why capital left America.

  • Civil Rights

    • “Rectal Feeding,” Threats to Children, and More: 16 Awful Abuses From the CIA Torture Report

      On Tuesday morning, the Senate intelligence committee released an executive summary of its years-long investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. President George W. Bush authorized the so-called “enhanced interrogation” program after the 9/11 attacks. The United States government this week has warned personnel in facilities abroad, including US embassies, to be ready in case protests erupt in response.

    • The Bush Administration Homicides

      The Justice Department may not be prosecuting the torture-memo writers, but John Sifton asks, what about those who killed an estimated 100 detainees during interrogations?

    • Hayden’s testimony vs. the Senate report

      A look at then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden’s testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 12, 2007, compared with the extensive summary on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program, released on Tuesday.

    • Senate Report on Torture

      Can I just say how pleasant it is to be vindicated ten years after being sacked by Jack Straw for opposing the torture and extraordinary rendition programme – which Blair and Straw claimed I was inventing.

    • Washington Post Does Not Call It Torture When We Torture

      The early report at the Washington Post website about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of CIA torture is gripping, well-documented and sickening. But one thing jumps out: The paper doesn’t use the word “torture” to describe the CIA’s torture program. And that’s not an accident.

    • Conservative Media’s Celebration Of Torture

      Conservative media celebrated the effectiveness of torture in response to news that the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee would release its report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) detention and interrogation program, attacking the Senate for releasing the report and disputing the report’s findings. Military and interrogation experts have emphasized that torture is an ineffective interrogation technique, and human rights groups support the release of the report.

    • Inside the CIA’s Sadistic Dungeon

      The CIA was alerted of allegations that anal exams at Cobalt were conducted with “excessive force.” An attorney was asked to follow up, but no records indicate what happened next. Agency records said that one of the detainees housed at Cobalt, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, was later diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse.

    • David Hicks heckles George Brandis and claims government knew about his torture

      Former Australian detainee at Guantanamo Bay makes claims after damning report into CIA torture methods revealed

    • Architects Of CIA Torture Program Raked In $81 Million, Report Reveals

      Two psychologists were paid $81 million by the CIA to advise on and help implement its brutal interrogation program targeting detainees in the war on terror, according to the Senate torture report summary released Tuesday.

      The contract psychologists are identified with pseudonyms — Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar — like most of the individuals named in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA program. Published reports dating back to 2007, however, identify the two men as James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both former members of the military.

    • 17 Disgraceful Facts Buried In The Senate’s 600 Page Torture Report

      “In 2006, the value of the CIA’s base contract with the company formed by the psychologists with all options exercised was in excess of $180 million; the contractors received $81 million prior to the contract’s termination in 2009. In 2007, the CIA provided a multi-year indemnification agreement to protect the company and its employees from legal liability arising out of the program. The CIA has since paid out more than $1 million pursuant to the agreement.” [Page 11]

    • CIA torture: Fox News says ‘the US is awesome’ – and torture report is just ‘one last shot at Bush’

      Fox News has condemned the release of a damning report into the CIA’s use of torture as a political manoeuvre designed to show Americans “how we’re not awesome”.

      The broadcaster’s National Security Analyst K.T. McFarland argued that the techniques were both “legal and justified” by the 9/11 terror attacks.

      And she denounced the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee report as a move made by Democrats to “do harm” to the country by angering terrorists.

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