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08.13.11

Links 13/8/2011: Ubuntu’s New Login Manager, Unity UI

Posted in News Roundup at 11:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Has a New Login Manager

            The brand-new display manager, LightDM, has been introduced by Canonical in the current development release of the Ubuntu 11.10 operating system.

            With last night’s updates, the current development release of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system got a brand new and slick login manager, called LightDM.

          • [Screenshots and Video] New Improved Unity Interface Lands in Ubuntu 11.10

            Unity Interface has just received a massive overhaul and the dash looks better than ever. Applications and Files Lenses on the launcher have been removed and are now integrated into the dash only. A new Music Lens has also been introduced for quickly searching and browsing your favorite artists.

            The Ubuntu Button on top left corner has been removed and a new big Ubuntu orb on the launcher now activates the main dash menu. Active blur option for the dash is turned on by default now giving it a really sleek and polished look. Application title, window controls and app menu on top panel now show all the way to the left.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • U.K.’s broken social contract blamed for riots

    The spark that lit riots in Britain last week is rooted in the government’s radical alteration of the social contract with its citizens, says a Toronto psychiatrist who was born and raised in the U.K.
    People at the lower margins of society feel abandoned and powerless to the point where they lash out in fear, says Dr. Kwame McKenzie.

    British society is undergoing a psychological realignment along American lines rather than traditional European values, where there is a straightforward social contract between the individual and the state, he says.

  • On the rap sheet: ‘looter’ who pocketed £1, and a suspect caught with an empty box

    Steven Keith, 43, of Longsight, Manchester was remanded to jail accused of stealing items worth £1 after allegedly burgling M1 News.

    He was said to be among rioters who tore through central Manchester on Tuesday night. He was charged with burglary and a judge at Manchester magistrates’ court remanded him in custody until next week.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • What Kind Of Gm Plants Are On The Market Internationally?

      The expansion of genetic engineering into the food industry has resulted in the growing of GM plants over the past decade or so. Genetically modified food is not only limited to a specific country because several countries worldwide have already adapted this agricultural technology. In fact, there are now a variety of plants that are grown using genetic engineering techniques.

    • Welcome to the Age of GMO Industry Self-Regulation

      As I reported last week, the USDA’s recent surprise decision not to regulate genetically modified bluegrass poked yet more holes in an already-porous regime for overseeing GM crops—essentially to the point of regulatory collapse.

      There were a few important strands I wasn’t able to wrestle into the story. The main one is an odd letter that USDA secretary Tom Vilksack sent Scotts Miracle-Gro as an addendum to the agency’s response to Scott’s GM bluegrass petition. Vilsack’s letter, dated July 1, acknowledges concerns that GM bluegrass will contaminate non-GM bluegrass—that is, that the Roundup Ready gene will move through wind-blown pollen and work its way into non-modified varieties. This is the process known as “gene flow,” and it has already been well-established for GM corn and other modified crops.

    • 93 percent of unborn babies contaminated with GMO toxins, study finds

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Torture in the US Prison System: The Endless Punishment of Leonard Peltier

      In June 2006, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons released “Confronting Confinement,” a 126-page report summarizing its 12-month inquiry into the prison systems. The commission follows up the analysis based on its findings with a list of recommendations. Topping the list of needed improvements is better enforcement of inmates’ right to proper health care and limitations on solitary confinement. Five years after the report’s release and despite its detailed and well-researched studies, inmate abuse continues. More recently, news reports from California’s Pelican Bay Prison amplified the need for change, but after the three-week inmate hunger strike ended, the torture of solitary confinement continues nationwide.

    • ‘I feel like I’ve saved a life’: the women clearing Lebanon of cluster bombs

      Only up close does it become clear that some of the bulky figures in armoured vests scouring the fields of southern Lebanon for unexploded cluster bombs are wearing hijabs under their protective helmets.

      Once local teachers, nurses and housewives, this group of women are now fully trained to search for mines and make up the only all-female clearance team in Lebanon, combing the undergrowth inch by inch for the remnants of one of the most indiscriminate weapons of modern warfare.

    • NY judge won’t order Gitmo psychology probe

      New York judge has declined to force an investigation into whether an Army psychologist developed abusive interrogation techniques for Guantánamo Bay detainees and should be stripped of his license.
      The move halted what advocates have called the first court case amid a push to shed light on psychologists’ role in terror suspects’ interrogations.

    • Camila Batmanghelidjh: Caring costs – but so do riots

      My own view is that the police in this country do an impressive job and unjustly carry the consequences of a much wider social dysfunction. Before you take a breath of sarcasm thinking “here she goes, excusing the criminals with some sob story”, I want to begin by stating two things. First, violence and looting can never be justified. Second, for those of us working at street level, we’re not surprised by these events.

      Twitter and Facebook have kept the perverse momentum going, transmitting invitations such as: “Bare shops are gonna get smashed up. So come, get some (free stuff!!!!) F… the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! Dead the ends and colour war for now. So If you see a brother… SALUTE! If you see a fed… SHOOT!”

    • These riots reflect a society run on greed and looting
    • US official: 85% of USAID to Egypt since 25 January went to US organizations

      About 85 percent of USAID’s funds to Egypt since 25 January has gone to US organizations, including the National Democratic Institute and the International Republic Institute, a US official told the Christian Science Monitor.

      The official, whose name the newspaper did not mention, said the money was directed to training programs on practicing politics, and to bolster political parties’ ability to participate effectively in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

After Icahn Entryism, Motorola Too Considers Strategy of Extorting Linux Phone Makers

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 10:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Motorola phone

Summary: A blogger alleges that Motorola’s Q2 earnings conference drops hints regarding Android extortion, just weeks after Carl Icahn and fellow hawks ‘stole’ the company’s board

Nokia entryism is easy to see because the new CEO of Nokia came from Microsoft and soon thereafter handed over the company to Microsoft's agenda, more or less neglecting Linux in the process (according to the latest news, the MeeGo phone won’t come to the US or even Germany). But what has been going on in Motorola is trickier to show because Microsoft sued Motorola (while Motorola said it would continue working with Microsoft).

Several weeks ago in IRC, one of our readers said that Icahn had approached Motorola and took control of part of the company, naming patents too. For those who did not notice what Icahn did in order to hand Yahoo! over to Microsoft, read our previous posts about this subject.

Carl Icahn

Earlier today, Slashdot appeared in several circles with a rather surprising headline. “Motorola To Collect Royalties For Android” it says, but the evidence defending this remains limited. The description/summary is weaker than the headline as it merely says that “It looks like Motorola wants to join in on the Android patent licensing fun enjoyed by Microsoft and others.” Given information we previously gave regrading what Icahn the bully had been doing behind the scenes inside Motorola, there’s no surprise there. Just like Yahoo! was brought to its knees by this shark, Motorola too is being pressured by Icahn to use its parents (this was in the news last month). But the headline from Slashdot is still baffling; It’s up for debate whether it is FUD.

The original report making the claim about Motorola is a tad weak. It is showing HP and Nokia in there too (the picture suggesting an attack on Android). Did we miss something? There is also a problem with the argument. It says that Motorola “is rapidly loosing it’s market share and significance in Android market,” which is very arguably true.

“Just like Yahoo! was brought to its knees by this shark, Motorola too is being pressured by Icahn to use its parents (this was in the news last month).”The following part seems more reasonable. The writer says: “Or is Sanjay just hinting Larry here: “You better buy us. Soon. You were ready to pay 4B+ for 6K Nortel patents, and we are worth 6.4B today.””

This is the followup post which we have more of a problem with. It says: “Amidst this Android patent insecurity, Motorola recently started touting the strength of its IP portfolio. Nothing surprising here. Motorola is one of the oldest players, with one of the strongest patent portfolios in the industry. Heck, they invented the mobile phone and have been at it for decades. If other mobile industry players decide to go after Motorola’s Android devices, Moto has a lot of patents to retaliate with.

“However, things made a turn for the worse few weeks ago. During its Q2 earnings conference call Motorola hinted that it is ready to join Android patent racket, and start demanding licensing fees for its IP from other Android manufacturers.”

The Q2 earnings conference is probably not official enough to merit the headline in Slashdot. In fact, unless there is more proof of a liaison around patents against Android, it may be safe to remain observant, also in th face of shameless Microsoft boosters like Florian the lobbyist and Eric Savitz the pretend "journalist", who smears of Google at the moment, trying to portray Google as a looter that “steals” because of its patents stance — an issue we last mentioned yesterday when we covered the opinion of Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth, who alleged that patents are misunderstood, misused, outdated, as one site now paraphrases it. To quote: “Patents are archaic, misunderstood and of little or no help to the entrepreneur, according to Mark Shuttleworth, who leads the Ubuntu Foundation, which is behind the open source operating system. In an interview with TechCentral, Shuttleworth was asked about the escalating patent battle in the mobile industry and he provided some choice quotes.”

Shuttleworth is correct and so is Google. There is a cartel being set up against both of them. Ubuntu is already taxed by the MPEG cartel, which is backed by Apple and Microsoft. Does anyone still deny the importance/priority of eliminating software patents? █

Bill Gates Uses Influence Over Washington Post, GOOD and Other Publications He ‘Sponsors’ to Privatise Education, Promote His Patent Monopolies

Posted in Bill Gates, Marketing, Patents at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gates Foundation logo

Summary: Catching up with the mischiefs of Microsoft’s co-founder, who back in February had another PR blitz for self-promotion and selfish benefit disguised as “philanthropy”

WE are gradually catching up with old Gates Foundation news, handling the queue chronologically and starting where we last left off. For the uninitiated, Gates loves polio for PR reasons, even though the problem was mostly eliminated a long time ago and some of Gates’ existing investments actually cause polio, as we explained in previous years [1, 2, 3].

By controlling the corporate media just like he controls education (or strives to control it as it’s still an ongoing campaign), the facts might require proper research and sceptical analysis. We already published dozens of posts demonstrating very clearly that Gates is distorting the press with a budget of approximately a million dollars per day dedicated just to “advocacy” (i.e. media/press/PR). Our friends at Gates Keepers have found that “[t]wo newspapers of record present critical analysis of the Gates Foundation ‘megabucks against polio’ hype.” Quoting the remark preceding the examples (from the corporate press, not just some arbitrary blogs):

Two ‘newspapers of record’ have chosen to counter the flash and hype surrounding the Gates Foundation throwing money at polio eradication in order to present more balanced views. Journalists at The New York Times and Financial Times have done their homework.

It is still the minority of reports. A lot of journalists play safe by just getting along with Gates’ well-funded PR machine. Education too is becoming an area where antagonising Gates can get one dismissed. “Bill Gates (briefly) talks school reform with The [Washington] Post,” says this headline from the paper which may have expelled Melinda Gates after a scandal. The following story sounds familiar as we previously covered cases where Gates uses "health" as a Trojan horse to enter newspapers and then lobby them regarding entirely different subjects (there was a more recent example where he visited the New York Times for this purpose). Read the following:

Bill Gates dropped by The Post on Wednesday morning, mainly to plug his foundation’s campaign to eradicate polio, but we managed to squeeze in a few questions on education reform. The bottom line remains, unsurprisingly, unchanged: He’s a fan of measuring teacher effectiveness and a foe of teacher tenure.

Gates met with several writers and editors in The Post’s ninth-floor boardroom. On education, he was responding to questions from editorial writer Jo-Ann Armao, myself and editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.

(By the way, Melinda F. Gates, wife of the Microsoft founder, is no longer on The Post Co. board of directors. Warren E. Buffett, a major donor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, serves on The Post board but plans to step down in spring.)

He neglects to say the reason. We covered that some months ago. It appeared like Melinda had (mis)used the paper to attack a potential rival. The Gates family does that a lot. Just watch what their lobbying operation does in order to take education away from public hands:

Joanne Barkan, writing in Dissent, argues that three big nonprofit foundations (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation), working together, exert a “decisive influence” on public-school education.

To give another example from around the same time, we already mentioned “GOOD” being sponsored by Gates (how ironic for the name). Watch how “GOOD” is now being used to attack Gates’ competition:

Ann Marie Gardner has written an angry article in GOOD. It includes ad hominem attacks on Horton and others who don’t agree with Gardner and Bill Gates. Is this a GOOD idea? GOOD is funded by the Gates Foundation.

“The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function,” wrote the New York Times in 2008. See the trend here? Someone is monopolising. And even Al Jazeera stoops low enough and kneels for Gates:

Gates has been everywhere this week talking about eradicating polio. Here he talks about this plan on Al Jazeera English. It is very clear that the money is in one big pot right now, so who is going to leap for it? With so much power (re: $$$$), Gates is in the unique position to drive global health

More polio propaganda, going back to around February of this year.

In the coming weeks we hope to catch up with a pile of news we have missed. Microsoft may be going down fast (or becoming a patent troll like Bill’s friend, Nathan Myhrvold), but Bill will stay here for a long time to come, continuing to leech and exploit society with his patent monopolies, always ensuring that he bribes the press sufficiently so that it plays along (blind praise or at least self-censorship). █

SUSE and Xamarin: Helping Microsoft Tax GNU/Linux (Google Should Secede From the Funding)

Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell, OpenSUSE at 8:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: SUSE the Attachmate-run company — just like Mono company Xamarin — is a liability to GNU/Linux and support of both should be questioned for the negative consequences associated with patents and dependence on Microsoft

CONSIDERING all the distributions people can choose to support, we are unable to understand why some folks choose to help Xamarin (still occupied with proprietary stuff) and SUSE, which recently hooked up with Xamarin and then with Microsoft (through a patent deal). SUSE has begun allocating slots for presentation where volunteers provide the content and SUSE reaps the benefits. Yes, that is right. SUSE, which helps Microsoft tax GNU/Linux, looks for free labour (e.g. people to help build the site, create artworks and graphics, and promote the distribution). Some people even prepare for benchmarks, which is a laborious process if a framework does not already exist. Quoting this one new example:

The sources for the benchmark are now on gitorious, and the Wiki entry describes its usage. It’s currently somewhat tailored to SLE11SP1, so you might run into minor issues when running it on a different OS version. And of course, it’s not very polished yet .

It makes no sense to support SUSE at this stage. It helps Microsoft. Google used to allocate some funds to SUSE projects, but should it still do this now that it is under patent attacks from Microsoft? Attacks which were legitimised by Novell and the deal it recently signed with SUSE? There is apparently Google-funded code in SUSE (Marcus’ definitely is [1, 2], as well as others’). There is no doubt that some people feel like part of the (Open)SUSE community, but the project is no longer the same. It is not even managed by the same people. Volunteers would be better off helping distributions not under Microsoft’s control and Google would be better off allocating funds to those distributions too.

“Volunteers would be better off helping distributions not under Microsoft’s control and Google would be better off allocating funds to those distributions too.”The only good thing that Novell still does is that it fights SCO in court, albeit for its own interests that may leave UNIX in the hands of Attachment, potentially to be passed on to hostile hands. Pamela Jones does not expect SCO to last for much longer. She writes:

This is the SCO carcass, and the buzzards are picking the bones.

It isn’t every day, though, that you hear a lawyer tell a court that it would be unquestionably illegal to approve a proposed deal, but that happened that day. And yet the judge approved it anyway.

To borrow Groklaw’s words, Novell too is a “carcass, and the buzzards are picking the bones.” SUSE does not deserve anyone’s support anymore, except Microsoft. █

“Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft”

–LinuxToday Managing Editor

Links 13/8/2011: Android ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’, MySQL Conference 2012

Posted in News Roundup at 7:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Did Linux dominate at Black Hat?

    Linux users comprised 35 percent of the total.

  • Installing Linux on a 386 laptop
  • Windows for Linux users, Part 1

    I’m making a best effort to turn my Windows XP box at work into a usable system. I’m tired of lugging the laptop to the office, and I have neither desk space nor a network connection for it. I’ve run CCleaner and Defraggler. I used the freeware version of Revo Uninstaller to clear out a lot of applications I no longer needed and couldn’t otherwise get rid of.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

    • Top 5 MPlayer Skins for your Ubuntu Desktop

      We have recently started bringing out more eyecandy stuff as we really think that Linux has to shed its “old command only interface for geeks” image to make it appealing to more people and as you know there is strength in numbers. Yeah we know Ubuntu has changed that a lot!! but hey allow us to speed up the process. Here is our take on some of the most appealing themes to juice up your Mplayer experience.

    • MPlayer2 Is Still Alive & Kicking

      Back in March I reported on the MPlayer2 fork of the popular MPlayer multi-media application. MPlayer2 came as a result of one of the MPlayer developers being denounced from the group and from there the developer and others took to implementing their own desired features and functionality from a fork of the open-source code-base. But how’s the MPlayer2 project now doing?

    • Top 5 Music Notation Apps

      LilyPond is one of the best-known open-source sheet-music notation programs in the world. Created by two Dutch musicians (Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen), LilyPond utilizes a powerful yet simple scripting language that includes support for notes, chords, lyrics, orchestral parts, and much more. You can also add the
      composer and lyricist, majors/minors, clefs, and much more. You can then export everything to LaTeX, HTML, or (with a plugin) OpenOffice.org.

      To install LilyPond, use the lilypond package in the universe repository.

    • Proprietary

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

  • Desktop Environments

  • Distributions

    • Gentoo Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Linux makes musical friends with the Apple iPhone

            Linux and Apple’s iPhones, iPods, and iPads usually get along about as well as cats and dogs. Oh sure, you can root a jailbroken iPhone to boot Linux, but that’s just a stunt. And, if you don’t mind living dangerously, you can use the popular Linux music application Banshee to manage your music collection on iPhones or iPods. Generally speaking, though, when you try to bring Linux and Apple devices together, the fur flies. Until now. Today, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux introduced an iPhone streaming music app that lets you stream music from the Ubuntu One cloud to iPhones and iPod.

          • [Screenshots and Video] New Improved Unity Interface Lands in Ubuntu 11.10

            Unity Interface has just received a massive overhaul and the dash looks better than ever. Applications and Files Lenses on the launcher have been removed and are now integrated into the dash only. A new Music Lens has also been introduced for quickly searching and browsing your favorite artists.

            The Ubuntu Button on top left corner has been removed and a new big Ubuntu orb on the launcher now activates the main dash menu. Active blur option for the dash is turned on by default now giving it a really sleek and polished look. Application title, window controls and app menu on top panel now show all the way to the left.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Ultimate Edition 3.0 “Gamers” Released

              On one of the slowest news days of the year came the welcomed announcement of Ultimate Edition 3.0 “Gamers.” The Ultimate Edition, once dubbed Ubuntu Ultimate, is based or derived from Lubuntu, but the “Gamers” Edition takes it to another level by offering an environment suitable for gaming as well as dozens of pre-installed games and emulators.

              Since the Gamers Edition is built on the “Lite” version, regular software is somewhat less than one might find on the full version, but it certainly seems like Ultimate Lite brings more than most other’s full. You’ll find applications such as Firefox, Sylpheed, Amarok, Brasero, Pidgin, and VLC. This sits on Linux 2.6.38-8, Xorg X Server 1.10.1, and GCC 4.4.5 is installable. The list of games is quite extensive, but suffice to say that just about every cool game you can think of that’s freely available for Linux is included. Wine, Winetricks, and PlayOnLinux are also thrown in for good measure.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Android ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ screens revealed

          Two tech blogs have obtained information and images regarding Google’s upcoming “Ice Cream Sandwich” version of Android, apparently from a common source. The release will feature a new, blue-themed user interface, a revised launcher for applications and widgets, and a panorama mode for cameras, among other new features mentioned by Android Police and RootzWiki.

        • Is there really room for a third mobile OS?

          I wrote before that I thought there was no room for four mobile OSs. I felt one between Windows and BlackBerry was not going to make it. Considering Nokia is behind Windows, and the strength of Microsoft, I was betting on Windows to be #3.

          Now I am wondering if there will ever be a #3. I mean, one with significant market share. The way this graph looks, knowing that a Nokia with Windows is not going to be here in Q3 (therefore, this graph is going to look even worse for Q3), considering that the bottom of the market could be taken eventually by BADA, one would conclude there will be two mega players (iOS and Android) and there will just be crumbs for the rest (e.g. below 10%).

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Acer releases seven-inch Android 3.2 tablet for $330

        Acer announced a seven-inch tablet that runs Android 3.2 (“Honeycomb”) on a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. The $330 Iconia Tab A100 offers 1024 x 600-pixel resolution, 8GB or 16GB of flash storage, dual cameras, plus a microSD slot as well as micro-HDMI and micro-USB ports.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Guest Post: How eBay Leveraged Open Source to Streamline Transaction Processing

  • Event Controversy

  • Percona Live MySQL Conference & Expo Planned for April 10-12, 2012

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Netscape Must Be Spinning In Its Grave

        Remember the browser wars when M$ crushed Netscape by all means fair and foul because the Netscape web browser brought us Javascript which M$ saw as a threat to the monopoly?

        Google is beta-testing a native client that can run C in Chrome. This means web applications will be able to run on the client natively, several times faster than Javascript…

        This changes everything:

        * better-performing web applications,
        * a new API, totally familiar to millions of developers,
        * less need for native applications on the client,
        * less need for that other OS if applications essentially can be ported to whatever OS is under the browser as long as the C-code will run on the hardware, and
        * possible new ways for malware to operate…

    • Mozilla

      • Number Of Firefox Users Selecting ‘Do Not Track’ Has Quadrupled

        How do you dramatically increase the number of people using a privacy feature in just a few months? Apparently, just by putting it somewhere they can find it. A new study shows that more than 6 percent of users of the newest version of Firefox are now selecting the “Do Not Track” privacy option, probably because it’s much easier to find than on the previous version.

        Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, was the first browser company to install a “Do Not Track” option in its software. Just a few months ago, the company’s privacy chief said that of the 160 million people using Firefox, the rate of Do Not Track (DNT) users was between 1 and 2 percent.

      • Firefox 6 Next Tuesday?

        If they’re aren’t a new batch of bugs discovered between this weekend and Tuesday, the 16th of August, Firefox fans and users alike can expect a new version of the browser to be available.

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Jaspersoft Offers New BI Knowledge Center for Open Source Community

      Jaspersoft, maker of the world’s most widely used business intelligence (BI) software, today announced Self-Service Express, a new subscription service available to open source community members that want premium, professional-grade BI documentation and knowledge base articles. Requested by over 80 percent of the JasperForge community in a 2011 annual survey, Self-Service Express provides access to Jaspersoft’s entire commercial customer portal and will make tens of thousands of Jaspersoft community members more productive as they create reports and dashboards and do analysis using Jaspersoft open source BI products.

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Resources for learning GNU Octave

      flattr this!

      GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations. That is exactly how it is described on its official web site http://www.octave.org. Unofficially it is also described as a “MatLab clone” although it only aspires to be compatible with MatLab. It is also free software.

  • Licensing

    • Westinghouse Sanctioned in Case Over Open Source

      Open-source software developers convinced a federal judge to impose sanctions on Westinghouse Digital LLC, which was found to have violated an injunction against using free programming code for commercial gain.

      In 1999, programmer Erik Andersen developed software and contributed it to an open-source computer program known as BusyBox. Open-source software can be freely distributed, as long as it is not sold commercially.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Florida Governor Scott Reduces Choice and Competition in Health Care

      As he was gearing up to run for governor of Florida, Republican Rick Scott emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of what he and others began referring to as “Obamacare.”

      Scott created, chaired and bankrolled a group called Conservatives for Patients Rights that spent millions of dollars on TV commercials attacking health care reform, especially a proposal calling for the federal government to create a public health insurance option to compete with private insurers.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Privatised police arrive on the street

      Aradical change in the way we police Britain has sneaked in below the radar over the past 18 months. In a series of Home Office initiatives designed to add manpower with particular skills or knowledge to the regular police force, six new groups of privately sponsored police have been introduced into the Met and are being deployed in a number of the provincial forces.

    • Britain’s prime minister only makes things worse

      To many looking from the outside, the recent unrest in Britain may have come as something of a surprise. Recent months have seen repeated protests, occupations, strikes and huge trade union marches, but street protests with seemingly no rhyme or reason were surely out of the question. With unfortunate timing, one British commentator, Nick Cohen, wrote a piece earlier this month titled “No riots here. Just quiet, ever-deeper misery,” arguing that “the wider public remains resigned rather than enraged; indifferent rather than incandescent.” The student protests of November and December last year were limited outbursts, no more, many agreed; the establishment consensus was that most people would grumpily carry on even in the face of huge cuts to public services, massive unemployment and more severe austerity measures to come.

    • Study: CIA drones strikes have killed 168 children

      Based on international and Pakistani news reports and research on the ground, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has issued a new study on civilians killed by American drones, concluding that at least 385 civilians have been killed in the past seven years, including at least 168 children.

  • Finance

    • SEC Probes Goldman Over Libya Deals

      The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday on the filing, which was made late Tuesday. Goldman said in the filing that a probe of the company’s “compliance with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act” was among the string of investigations and regulatory reviews it faced in the past quarter.

    • The Top 1%
    • Job Creation and Entrepreneurship

      Economists generally agree that our persistent high unemployment rate, – the longest such period since the Great Depression, – is primarily caused by a fundamental reshaping of the economy. The US economy is undergoing structural changes driven to a large extent, by advances in information technologies, which have led to a resurgence in US labor productivity as well as to an increasingly integrated global economy.
      Companies are able to do their present work with fewer people, as a result of advances in IT-based productivity. Moreover, many of these companies are truly global, doing business all over the world. They are cutting jobs in the US and other countries where demand is weak, while adding jobs in the booming emerging markets. Furthermore, they are optimizing their supply chains and shifting work around the world to cut costs. This is a what you would expect the private sector to do given our current global market environment.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Britain’s High-Tech Riots

      Social media and other emerging internet technologies have played key roles in Great Britain’s devastating riots, reportedly sparked by the August 4 fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, a man alleged to have had ties to London gangs, while he was in the custody of Scotland Yard. As it has in other recent uprisings, Twitter played a role in the coordination of England’s riots, but the preferred tool of Britain’s young looters and arsonists was Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry Messenger instant messaging service (BBM). Thirty seven percent of UK teens use BBM, a free service that makes it particularly easy to send messages to groups. BBM’s proprietary encryption also makes messages more private and difficult to trace, another characteristic that made the service popular among perpetrators of England’s extensive chaos, arson and looting. Some point to BBM as the primary planning tool for vandals. Some have even called it the London rioter’s best weapon.

      RIM issued a statement pledging to cooperate with law enforcement and regulatory officials working to squelch the riots and seek justice their aftermath, but the company hasn’t said directly whether it plans to turn over chat logs or other identifying information about its subscribers to law enforcement. RIM’s pledge of cooperation, though, was enough to trigger a group of hackers who call themselves “Teampoison” to post an online threat to RIM warning the company not to cooperate with police. Teampoison claims to have access to RIM’s databases and said if the company turned private information over to police, they would make the names, addresses and phone numbers of RIM’s employees available to rioters. It is unclear whether RIM can un-encrypt messages sent over its BBM messaging system, but the company can shut down the entire service. David Lammy, a member of Parliament from Tottenham, where the worst of the riots started, is urging RIM to do just that. Police are also uploading photos, taken by London’s some 1.5 million closed circuit TV cameras, onto Flickr and asking the public to identify anyone they may recognize. A Google Group even formed in the days following the riots called “London Riots Facial Recognition;” the group’s subscribers are trying to find a way to apply facial recognition technology to identify looters in photos posted on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

    • For all you need to know about Rupert Murdoch, look at his lawyers

      Americans are extremely interested in Rupert Murdoch’s unfolding scandal in the UK. As I wrote a few weeks ago, it has striking parallels with Watergate, an observation I offer based on personal knowledge and experience. (I am sure I speak for many Americans when I shout out a thank you to the Guardian, whose journalism on the Murdoch story is every bit as good, and in many instances better, than the legendary work of the Washington Post during Watergate.) Many Americans wonder if this scandal will leap the Atlantic or remain “contained” in Britain. Because of Watergate, I have some familiarity with containment – when it works and when it does not.

  • DRM

    • High-calibre ebook management

      One of the delights of free software are the applications that do everything I can ever imagine in their general category. Sometimes I may long for leaner or simpler apps, but I know, for example, that K3B will give me everything I need for burning DVDs, or digiKam for managing and editing photos. Now, as I start getting into ebooks, I’m looking at calibre as potentially another of these ultimate apps, destined to be to ebooks what Amarok is to digital music.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Monsanto – the black stain on the biotech industry

      The Monsanto company does not have a Facebook page. They are well aware that if they did, it would just become a wall of constant protest. There’s good reason for the resentment, too: a long, complicated history including everything from poisoning public waterways to manufacturing Agent Orange, bovine growth hormones, and DDT pesticides. They’ve become the black stain on the biotech industry to anyone with a CSA subscription and a reusable bag.

    • Of Patent Cartels and a Rising Africa

      It’s nigh impossible for any company starting life to navigate the patent offices to ascertain what belongs to who. In the meantime, we have these giants applying for as many patents as they can, some so vague as to mean almost nothing. The aim, to rake in licensing fees from competitors. Will the cartel kill creativity with time? Can a rising African tech scene navigate the almost treacherous sea of patent wolves? I guess only time will determine that.

    • Copyrights

IRC Proceedings: August 12th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

#boycottnovell-social log

Enter the IRC channels now

08.12.11

Links 12/8/2011: CompuLab Trim Slice With GNU/Linux; Rioters Analysed

Posted in News Roundup at 6:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Does linux Need Defrag ?

    I’d actually strongly suggest not defraging … the reason behind this? Even on windows most defraggers have 2 options, 1 Defragment, 2 Compact … sometimes called something different, but the end result’s the same.

  • Linux Distros: When It Absolutely, Positively Has to Be Secure

    From a security perspective of Linux reliability, most attacks occur at the kernel level.

  • Desktop

    • CompuLab Trim Slice H mini computer – small but powerful

      If you’re interested, there is a couple of choices to pick from – the Trim Slice H Diskless that lets you include your own hard drive or SSD for $279, but if you think that you can afford to fork out $319 for the H250, then taking that route will let you enjoy Linux pre-installed on a 250GB hard drive.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • [Linus Torvalds view of Kernel 'Voodoo']

      We shouldn’t do voodoo stuff. Or rather, I’m perfectly ok if you guys all do your little wax figures of me in the privacy of your own homes – freedom of religion and all that – but please don’t do it in the kernel.

    • XtreemFS 1.3.0 release candidate arrives with new licence

      The developers of the open source distributed and replicated file system, XtreemFS, have announced, after almost a year of development, the first release candidate for version 1.3. The new version offers cross-site replication with auto-failover as its major new feature, allowing it to work in potentially unreliable cloud environments.

  • Applications

    • Stellarium – A free planetarium software for star gazing in Ubuntu

      Stellarium is an open-source planetarium program that has gained a considerable popularity together with other free and open-source astronomical programs such as Celestia and KStars. What makes Stellarium a standout among a plethora of other contenders is its balance of features and the simplicity it offers for a novice user while maintaining a high scientific accuracy

    • FreeCAD – Free 3d CAD application for Linux

      FreeCAD is an Open Source CAx RAD based on OpenCasCade, Qt and Python. It features some key concepts like macro recording, workbenches, ability to run as a server and dynamically loadable application extensions and it is designed to be platform independent.

    • LogMeIn launches VPN.net
    • An Overview of the Node Package Manager

      NPM is a package management and distribution system for Node. It has become the de-facto standard for distributing modules (packages) for use with Node. Conceptually it’s similar to tools like apt-get (Debian), rpm/yum (Redhat/Fedora), MacPorts (Mac OS X), CPAN (Perl), or PEAR (PHP). It’s purpose is publishing and distributing Node packages over the Internet using a simple command-line interface. With npm you can quickly find packages to serve specific purposes, download them, install them, and manage packages you’ve already installed. npm defines a package format for Node largely based on the CommonJS Package spec.

    • Review: RawTherapee 3.0 on Linux

      The open source raw photo editor RawTherapee released version 3.0 at the end of July, with a revamped interface and a new palette of photo tools. RawTherapee is noteworthy for several reasons, including the fact that builds are available for Mac OS X and Windows, in addition to Linux. But this release also marks the first major update to the program since it was made free software. Let’s take a look.

      In the two years since developer Gabor Horvath switched from a proprietary licensing system to the GPLv3, a small team of contributors has grown up around the RawTherapee code. Many are users of non-Linux OSes, which is good for the outreach side of promoting open source. On the RawTherapee downloads page, you can grab installers for Windows and Mac machines, as well as 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the application packaged for the Ubuntu and Gentoo distributions. A separate page lists build for other distros, including Fedora.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

  • Desktop Environments

    • A foundation for the desktop – one apple, two ideas

      The story of the free software desktop is littered with what-ifs and might-have-beens. The desktop has been ‘good enough’ for years, and can boast some considerable success stories, but has yet to make a significant breakthrough.

      On the face of it, the free software desktop should be an easy choice. The average GNU/Linux desktop costs little, looks good and performs well, and offers a real opportunity to break the upgrade cycle. Cost, security, scalability and versatility are persuasive arguments for the free desktop, but other factors have worked against the uptake of Linux at the corporate level.

      Inertia among users is usually given as the reason and users are made to take the blame, but perhaps there are simpler explanations. The desktop has been left in the hands of the Linux companies, and the Linux companies are many and small. Many have come with grand ambitions and some with high ideals, but few have stayed the course.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KMyMoney 4.6.0 adds CSV import
      • Kate Turning 10 Years Old

        We almost missed it, but 10 years ago Kate was included in KDE’s CVS repository and shipped the first time with KDE 2.2.

      • Plasma Active, the stage is yours

        Thanks a lot to Intel for passing around the ExoPC at the AppUp workshop yesterday. Its kind of nice hardware to start developing for Intel based tablets, whereas for normal use, the battery life and weight is kind of problematic. I really like the idea to be able to write nice and shiny Qt applications which run both on MeeGo and Windows and the AppUp store is really open in respect to allowing distribute open source software.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Rocks 5.4.3 Now Available
      • ConnochaetOS 0.9.0 Released to Replace DeLi Linux

        When I first saw that ConnochaetOS 0.9.0 had been released, I thought a new distribution had appeared. But alas, upon close inspection it turns out that ConnochaetOS is the predecessor of DeLi Linux. Because it seemed like years since I last heard anything about DeLi, I figured I’d take a look this new submission.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Unity Update Part 2: Music Lens, Indicator Changes And More

            Further to our look earlier today at the design changes that Unity 2D in Ubuntu 11.10 is sporting, here is short burst of screen shots and tid-bits on changes to Ubuntu proper.

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Latest Updates Revealed The New LightDM Login Theme | Video Preview

            Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 development release comes with the default LightDM display manager login theme, but after installing recently available updates for Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Oneiric Ocelot! it has a new polished theme as we have seen earlier in this post.

          • Bad to worse? New ubuntu unity design ignites heated arguments

            The unity shell and the top panel was always a design headache for those who behind the development. The design in its current form itself was criticized by many and was one of the reasons why many people hated unity. The daily builds of the unity 2D had a new iteration of the design apparently trying to solve some of the issues associated with the desktop shell. The new design now is now causing far more criticism than the current version.

          • Get Set for Thunderbird Email, Other Changes, in Ubuntu 11.10

            The next major release of Ubuntu is imminent, and it will bring with it some significant improvements and big changes. While some users are still getting to know Natty Narwhal, version 11.04, Ubuntu 11.10, dubbed “Oneiric Ocelot,” is due on October 13th. Several alpha versions of Ocelot have appeared already, but now the new version has had a feature freeze, according to the Ubuntu wiki. Here are some of the changes you can expect in Ubuntu version 11.10.

          • Natty Narwhal netbook: The ultimate network administrator toolkit

            You can be the coolest and best-equipped network administrator on the block with Ubuntu Natty Narwhal Linux on a netbook. Netbooks are lightweight and portable, have long battery life, and bright sharp screens — and, thanks to Linux and open source, you can outfit your netbook with all the software network troubleshooting and fixit utilities you’ll ever need.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Android Ice Cream Sandwich Coming, Images Leaked

          arking the end of so-called fragmentation, Android Ice Cream Sandwich is getting ready for the prime-time. According to reports there are couple of screenshots of the development version of Ice Cream Sandwich making their rounds on the Internet.

          We have gather reports from different source and present you will the picture. Looking at these rumored reports, there is no doubt that iOS 5 will be left far behind and no surprises if Apple will blatantly copy some of these features.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Programming, creativity and open source

    There are people who think software development is devoid of creativity. Of course, anyone who has even a passing interest in development, or, say, has ever found him- or herself having a late night chat in a disreputable Sydney pub with a Drupal/Node.js developer, knows that this is untrue.

    It’s not just the programming process itself — breaking down a problem into its component parts and figuring out how to solve it in the most efficient (or least dangerous!) way possible — that involves creativity

  • Twitter runs open source for developer website
  • Twitter to open source streaming data analyzer
  • Open Source Phone System with Twilio OpenVBX

    OpenVBX comes packaged with Twilio Client, allowing users to make calls directly from the browser and if their status is set to available, they will be able to receive calls right in the browser.

  • Events

    • Linux marking 20 years in Vancouver

      Linux is celebrating its 20th birthday this year—and the party’s officially coming to Vancouver.

    • Session on future directions of FOSS held

      The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) held a consultation session on ‘Future directions of FOSS in India’ at Technopark here on Tuesday in order to establish future directions for the use and promotion of free and open source software in the country.
      The consultation session is first of a series of similar sessions.

  • SaaS

    • Nebula Cloud Project Gets Buzz, But Will Proprietary Players Taint It?

      In case you’ve missed it, Nebula, a new startup from former NASA CTO Chris Kemp, which is focused on open source technology for large private cloud deployments, is generating a lot of hubbub. Nebula is billed as a way for many companies and organizations to leverage the kind of muscle in the cloud that Google and Facebook do, at a fraction of the cost. Simon Phipps has noted that at OSCON, luminaries such as Bill Joy and Al Gore waxed rhapsodic in a video about Nebula. Here is more on what Nebula is all about, including some concerns about whether proprietary players might taint its open source focus.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Funding

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK Digital Future to Fail Without Government Focus

      The Government needs to invest in training developers in open source platforms if the country is to stand a chance of competing with its American and European counterparts in digital development.

      Open source software is extremely valuable for web companies in the UK but many are experiencing skills shortages that are stalling their growth.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Willow Garage Announces Availability of New PR2 Robot for $200,000

        The combination of PR2 and the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) means that researchers benefit from immediate time to innovation. Right out of the box, the PR2 and ROS provide a complete, integrated hardware and software platform for research and development in the personal robotics field.

Leftovers

  • Solving Microsoft’s hard problem

    Microsoft has a problem to solve. On the one hand, open source is not going away – its distributed, modular and iterative approach clearly has many advantages compared to traditional top-down development techniques when it comes to writing and maintaining complex code. On the other hand, Microsoft has spent over a decade propagating variegated FUD against it (although it’s true that it has adopted a more accommodating stance in recent years, what with the release of odd bits of code under open source licences, and various attempts to snuggle up to some open source projects).

    Still, Microsoft’s basic stance remains the same: free software is OK for certain, limited situations, but for serious, enterprise-y stuff you need honest-to-goodness closed source. Given that, how can it begin to tap into the power of open source for its major projects without seeming to admit it got it all wrong, and that open source is actually a better approach?

  • Rupert Murdoch endorses Carey as next in line

    Rupert Murdoch acknowledged publicly for the first time that his son James is not the preferred choice to succeed him as News Corp. CEO, at least in the near-term.

  • Generation F*cked

    The UN’s first ever report on the state of childhood in the industrialized West made unpleasant reading for many of the world’s richest nations. But none found it quite so hard to swallow as the Brits, who, old jokes about English cooking aside, discovered that they were eating their own young.

    According to the Unicef report, which measured 40 indicators of quality of life – including the strength of relationships with friends and family, educational achievements and personal aspirations, and exposure to drinking, drug taking and other risky behavior – British children have the most miserable upbringing in the developed world. American children come next, second from the bottom.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Aggression during G20 rally ‘perpetrated by police,’ judge rules

      A Toronto judge has ruled that “adrenalized” police officers acted as aggressors at a peaceful political rally that led to dozens of arrests during last year’s G20 summit.

      “The only organized or collective physical aggression at that location that evening was perpetrated by police each time they advanced on demonstrators,” Justice Melvyn Green ruled on Thursday. He was referring to a demonstration at Queen St. and Spadina Ave. on Saturday, June 26, 2010.

    • The Patriot Act and the End of the Rule of Law

      Since 9/11, we are living in a political state where personal privacy, free flow of information and freedom of association have been diminished as a result of the Patriot Act, which weakens the rights of individuals while increasing the military and police power of the state and federal governments. The executive branch has undermined the rule of law by eroding rights established in the Constitution. One example is the Bush administration’s use of offshore torture and rendition. Another is the failure to ask Congress for a Declaration of War before invading Iraq and other aggressive military expeditions. Another is the selected assassination of leaders like Osama Bin Laden.

    • London’s Rioters Are Thatcher’s Grandchildren: Pankaj Mishra

      I am often asked, when in the U.S. or Europe, whether I feel frightened while traveling through such obviously dangerous places as Afghanistan and Kashmir.
      It’s hard for me to explain, and so I never confess, that I feel more insecure on the streets of Tower Hamlets, a London borough just south of Tottenham and Hackney, the epicenters of London’s riots.
      Tower Hamlets, where I often go to work in a friend’s apartment, has among the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, overcrowding and crime in Britain. But it is not a ghetto. Segregation is more insidious, and inequality has shrewd disguises, in what is also one of London’s most diverse boroughs.

    • The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

      I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

    • Riot-smashed comic-shop window in Birmingham makes for inadvertent summation of England’s Current Situation

      Joe from Forbidden Planet sez, “A couple of our comics stores in Manchester and Birmingham got damaged during the awful riots this week (what sort of numpty attacks their local comics store?!) – luckily they didn’t get into the stores, it was just the frontage took some bruises and staff are all fine. One of our colleagues at our much loved Nostalgia & Comics store in Birmingham, David, sent us this photo which just seemed to sum things up rather nicely.”

    • The Debt Crisis and the War Economy: Pentagon Purchases $23 Billion Worth Of Global Hawk Drones

      With $14 trillion in the hole and a slew of wars seemingly no one wants America to be in, what better way for the United States to spend their money by putting $23 billion into spy planes?

    • Attacking the messenger: how the CIA tried to undermine drone study

      The US Central Intelligence Agency and unnamed ‘US officials’ are attempting to undermine the Bureau’s investigation into US drone strikes in Pakistan, it was revealed today. The attack is two-pronged.

    • Police monitor beaten in back of police van

      Independent police monitor punched and kicked to the head and legs in back of police van, while monitoring policing of disturbances. The Network for Police Monitoring will make a complaint to the Metropolitan police after one of its volunteers was arrested and beaten by police while monitoring the policing of disturbances in Enfield on the night of Sunday 7th August. Along with two others, Taherali Gulamhussein was stopped and searched by police under section 60 powers, which gives them the right to search for weapons.

    • China Gleefully Uses UK Desire For Censorship To Validate Its Own Censorship

      We’ve talked repeatedly of the blatant hypocrisy of many Western nations talking about the importance of internet freedom and condemning China (and others) for their internet censorship… while still wanting to censor at home. As we’ve warned, such efforts only give repressive regimes who censor the “cover” they need to continue. And, of course, with UK politicians looking to censor the internet to try to stop the riots, China has quickly used this as validation for its Great Firewall censorship:

  • Cablegate/Leaks

    • This week in WikiLeaks Press: 1-7 August
    • Thomas Drake; ‘Yes’ Would do it Again
    • Executive Order Responding to WikiLeaks Due Shortly

      The Obama Administration is putting the finishing touches on a new executive order that is intended to improve the security of classified information in government computer networks as part of the government’s response to WikiLeaks.

      The order is supposed to reduce the feasibility and the likelihood of the sort of unauthorized releases of classified U.S. government information that have been published by WikiLeaks in the past year.

    • Under the long arm of Indonesian intelligence

      IT WOULD seem an unremarkable venture – a group of American tourists visiting a cultural centre in the Papuan town of Abepura. But to one observer the event (lasting, as he later reported, precisely 35 minutes) was laden with potential significance.

      The man in the shadows as the visitors watched a traditional dance was an informant for Indonesia’s elite special forces unit, Kopassus. In a subsequent report, he noted that, while the visit had been ”safe and smooth”, there was no room for complacency. It was a point heartily endorsed by his Kopassus contact, Second Lieutenant Muhammad Zainollah, who alluded, in a report to his own commander, to the risk of foreign tourists ”influencing conditions of Papuan society”.

      ”Politically, there needs to be a deeper detection of the existence hidden behind it all,” he warned, ”because of the possibility of a process of deception … such as meetings with pro-independence groups.”

    • Realigning the Public Perceptions of Anonymous and Wikileaks.

      Proponents of Wikileaks identify Julian Assange as an international hero and liken him to the Founding Fathers of the United States. Critics cast Wikileaks as a nefarious syndicate deserving the label of foreign terrorist organization. Some go even further by demanding Julian Assange be given the death penalty or summary execution. In either case, the situation and stakes are clear. We are living in the age of the information revolution. The invention of the personal computer and internet connected us all. It also produced participatory democracy—on an unprecedented scale—that caught the international power elite completely off guard. Now we observe these power brokers frantically scrambling to return the naïveté of the public back to the levels prior to globalization in the wake of this technological empowerment.

      This should not come as a surprise. Authority figures rarely want to cede power to others. Nevertheless business leaders, government officials, and IGOs need to realize that there is no turning back. The technology is here to stay. The only question remaining is: where do we go from here? The consensus from these entities seems to be to target Wikileaks in order to cut the head off the proverbial snake. However, those who propose this measure fail to comprehend the size and scope of this lofty idea.

      The cyber security giant H.B. Gary realized this when it started testing the waters in defense of Bank of America. In anticipation of a presumably embarrassing document dump by Wikileaks, Bank of America retained H.B. Gary Federal—by recommendation of the U.S. Department of Justice—as a security consultant. Everything seemed okay and out of the public eye until the CEO of H.B. Gary, Aaron Barr, began antagonizing the internet activist group known as Anonymous, which operates in tandem with Wikileaks’ transparency efforts worldwide as a guard dog. In both private correspondences and public statements, Barr boasted of having information that would cripple the infrastructure of the group and render them ineffective.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Shell fights spill near North Sea oil platform

      Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to stop a leak at one of its North Sea oil platforms.

      The leak was found near the Gannett Alpha platform, 180 km (113 miles) from Aberdeen, Scotland.

      The company would not say how much oil may have been spilt so far, though it said it had “stemmed the leak significantly”.

  • Finance

    • Italy turns on the ‘parasites on society’ in tax clampdown

      Italy has launched a hard-hitting television campaign against the country’s endemic tax evasion as Silvio Berlusconi’s government tries frantically to reassure Europe and the markets that it can reduce its massive public debt and avoid a Greek-style meltdown.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Civil Rights

    • 8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

      Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.

    • London Is the Surveillance Society’s Biggest

      london fullness.jpgFor several years now, the British media have been telling us that theirs is a surveillance society. “It could be the 4 million closed-circuit television cameras, or maybe the spy drones hovering overhead, but one way or another Britons know they are being watched. All the time. Everywhere,” Luke Baker wrote in a representative Reuters article published in 2007, going on to note that “Britain is now the most intensely monitored country in the world, according to surveillance experts, with 4.2 million CCTV cameras installed, equivalent to one for every 14 people.”

TechBytes Now Available in Ogg and in WebM Format

Posted in Site News, Videos at 4:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: YouTube allows users to view the videos in HTML5 mode, as part of its current trial

YouTube is finally working properly without Adobe Flash… provided one enables this option. Episodes of TechBytes have all been uploaded to YouTube while Google was encoding as WebM, providing both a fallback hosting service and another free format. TinyOgg is no longer operating, but its purpose of replacing Flash with Free software/codecs has now been fulfilled by Google, at least to an extent. █

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