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08.04.14

Links 4/8/2014: Linux Kernel 3.16, Another Steam Users Survey

Posted in News Roundup at 8:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Google Confirms That Chromebooks Are Selling Well in Schools

      While market predictions for PCs have been generally bleak, Chromebooks–portable computers based on Google’s Chrome OS platform–have been doing well in sales terms. That’s especially true in schools, where many districts are purchasing the low cost systems that run cloud applications for students to use.

  • Server

    • What is Docker and why is it so darn popular?

      Docker, a new container technology, is hotter than hot because it makes it possible to get far more apps running on the same old servers and it also makes it very easy to package and ship programs. Here’s what you need to know about it.

    • No interruptions! Technologist at work

      Work in the technology trenches tends to bubble over like an ignored pot of pasta boiling on the stovetop — but not because it’s being ignored. Rather, we fall victim to the fact that we need to be available at any given moment to deal with emergencies or to clarify technical facts for future planning or to provide an answer to a blocking problem. Folks who do data center and system architecture design and management do not have the luxury of being able to concentrate on a single task. Switching gears quickly and abruptly is part of the game.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linus Torvalds Releases Linux Kernel 3.16, Get While It’s Hot

      The final version of Linux kernel 3.16 has been released by Linus Torvalds and the next development cycle for the 3.17 branch has been officially opened.

    • The Linux 3.16 Kernel Has Been Released
    • Linux 3.16
    • Someone is trolling the Linux kernel mailing lists really hard

      There are many theories around why the pather might be doing it. Some say that he is writing a University Thesis on trolling the kernel development process (either by seeing if an obviously broken patch could be snuck past the peer review system, or to see if he can try to get someone to lose their temper much like Linus is supposed to do all the time — not realizing that this only happens to people who really should know better, not to clueless newbies), are that he’s a badly written AI chatbot, or just a clueless high school student with more tenacity than one usually expects at that age,” says Theodore.

    • x86 Will See KVM Improvements In Linux 3.17

      For Linux 3.16 the KVM improvements were mostly about POWER, S390, and MIPS architectures while for Linux 3.17 the table has turned to focus upon x86 improvements to the Kernel-based Virtual Machine.

      Paolo Bonzini sent in the first round of KVM changes for the Linux 3.17 merge window. The MIPS/S390 architectures in particular have seen little changes this kernel development cycle while x86 has been a greater focus. Linux 3.17 KVM has nested VMX improvements, optimizations for old processors (up through Intel Nehalem CPUs), and various x86 emulator bug-fixes.

    • Xen EFI Support Being Added To Linux 3.17

      With the Linux 3.17 kernel that’s now officially under development since yesterday’s Linux 3.16 release is now support for Xen EFI.

      With the upcoming Linux 3.17, it’s possible to boot using (U)EFI under Xen Dom0. Daniel Kiper who worked on the Xen EFI patches explained, “Standard EFI Linux Kernel infrastructure cannot be used because it requires direct access to EFI data and code. However, in dom0 case it is not possible because above mentioned EFI stuff is fully owned and controlled by Xen hypervisor. In this case all calls from dom0 to EFI must be requested via special hypercall which in turn executes relevant EFI code in behalf of dom0.”

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD’s R600 GPU LLVM Back-End To Be Renamed

        Tom Stellard of AMD is seeking the approval of other LLVM developers to rename the R600 back-end to something more generic like “AMDGPU” instead. The R600 back-end was originally developed for AMD’s R600 class hardware with support through the HD 6000 “Northern Islands” graphics cards, just as is the case for the R600 Gallium3D driver. However, while AMD developed the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for the HD 7000 series graphics processors and newer, the existing R600 LLVM back-end has been extended to support all newer AMD GPUs up through the latest Rx 200 series graphics cards. As a result, the “R600″ name is rather irrelevant and no longer meaningful.

      • Mesa 10.2.5 Arrives with AMD Hawaii Improvements
      • Linux OpenCL Performance With The Newest AMD & NVIDIA Drivers

        The latest Linux GPU benchmarks at Phoronix for your viewing pleasure are looking at the OpenCL compute performance with the latest AMD and NVIDIA binary blobs while also marking down the performance efficiency and overall system power consumption.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Akademy 2014 Program Schedule: Fast, fun, inspiring

        The Akademy Program Committee is excited to announce the Akademy 2014 Program. It is worth the wait! We waded through many high quality proposals and found that it would take more than a week to include all the ones we like. However we managed to bring together a concise and (still packed) schedule.

      • Taking advantage of OpenGL from Plasma

        David Edmundson and I have been working hard the last weeks. It’s not that we don’t usually work hard, but this time I’m really excited about it.

        A bit of context: in Plasma an important part of the system drawing is painting frames (others are icons, images and the like). Those are in general the elements that are specified in the Plasma themes. These will be buttons, dialog backgrounds, line edit decorations, etc.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 Preview now available

      We have released the Preview of Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6. The release of Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 signals our 8 years of operation in the enterprise and education sectors. There were three things that we focused on with this release.

    • Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 Preview Is Powered by GNOME 3 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

      Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 Preview, a distribution that is better known after its previous name, OS/4 OpenLinux, has been released and is now available for testing.

    • IPFire 2.15 Core 80 Is a Powerful and Free Linux Firewall OS

      Michael Tremer, a developer for the ipfire.org team, has announced that IPFire 2.13 Core 80, a new stable build of the popular Linux-based firewall distribution, has been released and is now available for download.

    • Evolve OS Alpha 3 Is a Gorgeous Linux OS with a Brand New Desktop Experience

      Evolve OS, a Linux distribution that it’s still under development and which boasts a beautiful new desktop environment called Budgie, has just got its third Alpha release.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Libvirt 1.2.6 Virtualization Tools Now Available for Download

        Libvirt 1.2.7, a collection of software tools that provide a convenient way to manage virtual machines and other virtualization functionality, such as storage and network interface management, has been released and it’s now available for download.

      • Does Oracle Linux 7 Give Larry A Cutting (Open) Edge?

        Oracle has this month introduced the Oracle-flavoured Linux 7 open source operating system. Freely distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2), Oracle Linux is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and follows the RHEL7 release, which arrived this June.

        This distribution of Linux represents what Oracle would like to us to consider as its more open and community focused side, although of course a paid support model is available and widely adopted.

    • Debian Family

      • Like Ubuntu 14.10, Debian 8.0 Jessie Will Be Also Using Kernel 3.16 As Default

        Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Kernel 3.16 stable will be released soon, for now only the seventh release candidate of the kernel being available (Kernel 3.16 RC7).

        The usage of a new kernel is a very important, due to the fact that the newest kernels support the newest hardware specs and come with important performance improvements, compared to the previous ones.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • $149 networking security gizmo runs Snort on OpenWRT

      Itus Networks is set to launch a $149 “iGuardian” network security appliance on Kickstarter that runs OpenWRT Linux and the Snort IPS stack on a MIPS64 SoC.

      Few vendors have targeted the consumer network security appliance market, and even fewer have done so with pricing under $500. A San Jose, Calif.-based startup called Itus Networks, however, plans to protect your home WiFi router with a $149, open source Linux iGuardian device that offers both a network intrusion prevention system (NIPS) and a network intrusion detection system (NIDS). The device blocks cyber attacks while also filtering out malware “and other undesirable content,” says the company. Like other network security appliances, it sits between your Internet source and your WiFi router, acting as a security firewall.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • What owning your personal cloud means for the open source movement

    The real motivation for Sandstorm is, and always has been, making it possible for open source and indie developers to build successful web apps.

    In today’s popular software-as-a-service model, indie development simply is not viable. People do it anyway, but their software is not accessible to the masses. In order for low-budget software to succeed, and in order for open source to make any sense at all, users must be able to run their own instances of the software, at no cost to the developer. We’ve always had that on desktop and mobile. When it comes to server-side apps, hosting must be decentralized.

  • Helping citizens and businesses live and work easier with open source

    The appeal of open source solutions to government agencies around the world is not surprising as these solutions can address concerns which had prevented governments from reaping the full benefits of cloud, including security, governance and data transparency. The number of countries actively using open source solutions in their infrastructure is a testament to how it is an appropriate model for IT systems in the public sector.

  • IT Careers: Open Source, Open Resume

    Don’t trash the traditional resume just yet, but developers who contribute to open source projects may find their code becomes their best career-boosting tool.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla’s Developer Network Site Has Leaks

        Mozilla’s website dedicated to developers has suffered from a database error that has exposed email addresses and encrypted passwords of registered users for about a month, the company announced.

  • Databases

  • CMS

    • Eight Steps to Eliminating Security Risks in WordPress

      The open-source WordPress blog and content management system platform is widely deployed around the world and powers some of the most popular sites on the Internet. WordPress’ popularity has also made it a target for attackers. WordPress is deployed in one of two ways, which affects what steps users should take to secure themselves. Users can directly set up and host a site with the WordPress.com service. In that scenario, much of the heavy lifting for ensuring secure configuration and server platforms is done by WordPress.com. The other scenario is the self-hosted one in which users set up their own WordPress sites, with code that is freely available under an open-source license from WordPress.org. For self-hosted WordPress users, the security challenge is more involved and requires that users take proactive steps to reduce risk. In multiple incidents in the last year, self-hosted WordPress user sites were attacked and leveraged as a basis for attacks against others. In March, the pingback URL tacking feature in WordPress was abused in a widespread attack. In June, attackers took advantage of flaws in the Timthumb image-processing library plug-in. Here are guidelines to help users limit security risks in WordPress.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Toledo Residents Rush To Michigan For Water, Ohio Gov. Declares State Of Emergency

      Toxins possibly from algae on Lake Erie fouled the water supply of the state’s fourth-largest city Saturday, forcing officials to issue warnings not to drink the water and the governor to declare a state of emergency as worried residents descended on stores, quickly clearing shelves of bottled water.

      “It looked like Black Friday,” said Aundrea Simmons, who stood in a line of about 50 people at a pharmacy before buying four cases of water. “I have children and elderly parents. They take their medication with water.”

    • Toledo Residents Rush To Michigan For Water, Ohio Gov. Declares State Of Emergency

      Residents in Toledo are flocking to stores in Michigan in search of water after Ohio officials issued a “do not drink” warning and declared a state of emergency.

      Authorities in Toledo issued an alert around 2 a.m. Saturday, warning residents not to consume any of its water after tests revealed the presence of a toxin possibly related to algae on Lake Erie. The warning applies to about 400,000 people in the area. By the afternoon, Ohio’s governor had declared a state of emergency.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Israel Says Tunnel Campaign Over Within Hours Amid Truce Reports

      The Gaza offensive, which Israel says is also intended to quash rocket salvoes, has been the deadliest in the territory since Israeli settlers and soldiers left in 2005. At least 1,868 Palestinians have been killed, including hundreds of civilians, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra. Sixty-seven people have been killed on the Israeli side, 64 of them soldiers.

    • Israel ‘breaks Gaza ceasefire’ as 8-year-old girl killed

      Palestinians have accused Israel of breaking its own cease-fire by launching an attack which killed an 8-year-old girl in a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip

    • Israel pulls ground troops from Gaza
    • Israel withdraws most troops from Gaza

      Israeli soldiers mourn over the grave of Israeli Army 2nd. Lt. Hadar Goldin during his funeral at the military cemetery in the central Israeli city of Kfar Saba on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014. Israel announced that Goldin, a 23-year-old infantry lieutenant feared captured in Gaza, was actually killed in battle. Israel had earlier said it feared he had been captured by Hamas militants Friday near Rafah in an ambush that shattered an internationally brokered cease-fire and was followed by heavy Israeli shelling that left dozens of Palestinians dead. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

    • The Fourth Branch

      In this century, a full-scale second “Defense Department,” the Department of Homeland Security, was created. Around it has grown up a mini-version of the military-industrial complex, with the usual set of consultants, K Street lobbyists, political contributions, and power relations: just the sort of edifice that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his famed farewell address in 1961. In the meantime, the original military-industrial complex has only gained strength and influence.

    • The Rise to Power of the National Security State [same as above]

      Increasingly, post-9/11, under the rubric of “privatization,” though it should more accurately have been called “corporatization,” the Pentagon took a series of crony companies off to war with it. In the process, it gave “capitalist war” a more literal meaning, thanks to its wholesale financial support of, and the shrugging off of previously military tasks onto, a series of warrior corporations.

    • A pretense for war in Vietnam

      August 2 marked the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the U.S. reported attacks on a Navy destroyer by North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Lyndon Johnson the authority to send U.S. forces to Vietnam to combat “communist aggression.”

      To provide the background to the U.S. government’s war drive, we reprint an excerpt from the 2007 book Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost by SocialistWorker.org contributor Joe Allen. It is taken from the chapter “From the Overthrow of Diem to the Tet Offensive.”

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Candidate: Remove big money from elections

      Me and Ben & Jerry’s want to get the influence of big money out of politics. You too? Well, we are the people, and its is up to us to make the impossible possible.

      Is it impossible to get big money out of the governor’s position? You tell me. If it’s up to me, I will.

      Without big money, how does one run for governor, you might ask? I meet a lot of people, write a lot of letters, go a lot of places. If you want money out of politics too, you are going to have to help level the playing field.

    • Another SuperPAC Trying Another Approach To Getting ‘Dark’ Money Out Of Politics

      We’ve written a bunch about Larry Lessig’s MayDay SuperPAC and its crowdfunded attempt to elect politicians who promise to change the way money in politics works. And many users also pointed to Wolf PAC, which is another high profile political action committee committed to dealing with the issue of money in politics. Now another such PAC has been announced, kicked off by some more Silicon Valley folks, called CounterPAC, the focus is on getting candidates to take a pledge not to accept so-called “dark money”.

  • Censorship

    • Jimmy Wales: digital champion of free speech

      As he prepares to host a Wikimania festival in London, the Wikipedia co-founder is also gearing up to challenge Europe’s controversial ‘right-to-be-forgotten’ legislation

  • Privacy

    • Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond launches attack on GCHQ critics during visit to Cheltenham

      Philip Hammond launched an attack on critics of GCHQ and the British intelligence community on a visit to Cheltenham today.

      The Foreign Secretary described the listening post as a “critical asset” which helps keep people safe at home and abroad.

      But with the operations of GCHQ under more scrutiny than ever amid the continuing revelations of the American whistle blower Edward Snowden Mr Hammond believes some people have lost sight of how important its work is.

      He told the Echo: “There are people across the political spectrum who have given the intelligence community a hard time who see this only through one lens; the civil liberties, data protection lens, and refuse to look at the benefits that this work brings us.

    • Editorial Roundup: CIA spying on its own overseers suggests a deeper problem
    • Spying on the overseers

      Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was right last week to demand further action on an internal CIA report that confirmed, despite Director John Brennan’s earlier denials of wrongdoing, that the agency hacked Senate Intelligence Committee computers that were used to produce a damning review of the CIA’s former interrogation program.

    • Letter from Munich

      The Germans are correct that the U.S.A. has a multitude of failings, but they don’t deny our easy access to wild landscape. We have inadequate biking lanes here in S.B., our government attacks foreign lands, we aerially assassinate thousands, the NSA spies on us, our infrastructure is collapsing, and some foolish politicians want to starve government and privatize public schools. At least we can easily drive to the nearby hills with our kids from time to time and temporarily escape this madness.

    • Urge senators to take up Freedom Act upon return from recess

      After a 2008 presidential campaign that criticized the Bush administration for increased government surveillance and lack of government transparency with the Patriot Act, the Obama administration has since expanded those very things it sought to diminish.

    • NSA Has ‘Far-Reaching’ Partnership With Israeli Intelligence Agency

      Documents published Monday by The Intercept revealed the “far-reaching” extent of the U.S. National Security Agency’s collaboration with Israeli intelligence services. The revelations came as the U.S. State Department criticized Israel for its “disgraceful” shelling of a U.N. school, and the death toll in the Israeli offensive in Gaza surpassed 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis.

    • Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack

      The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

    • State must help protect New Yorkers’ privacy

      As if revelations about government spying weren’t alarming enough, it’s clearer that what have become routine practices that erode the privacy of citizens need thoughtful legislative intervention.

      State lawmakers from this region such as Senators Ted O’Brien, Joe Robach and Michael Ranzenhofer, who are all members of a special Senate committee that deals with technology issues, should take the lead in conducting an assessment. If their special Senate Science, Technology, Incubation and Entrepreneurship Committee isn’t best suited for the task, then they should push Senate leaders to find better alternatives.

      A state response to growing privacy concerns is a logical followup to steps currently underway in Washington to reform the National Security Agency. Red flags went up after it was learned that the NSA collects and stores phone data on virtually all Americans’ phone records.

    • UNLAWFUL WIRETAPPING: TURKEY’S ANSWER TO THE NSA SCANDAL

      On February 24, 2014, Turkish daily Yeni Şafak broke the story that the authorities had eavesdropped on the phone calls and intercepted e-mail messages of thousands of citizens, including several Daily Sabah journalists, under secret court orders. Local media reported that the scandal was uncovered after several prosecutors were reassigned in mid-January citing their affiliation with the Gülen Movement, which the news outlets claimed had formed a shadow state involving members of law enforcement, public prosecutors and judges. Five months later, on July 22, dozens of police officers who allegedly were involved with unlawful mass surveillance were detained for questioning. Subsequently, an Istanbul court ordered the formal arrest of over 30 police officers on charges of wiretapping, forging documents and espionage. Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of Istanbul withdrew terrorism charges against victims of unlawful wiretapping and ordered the destruction of all illegally obtained personal data.

    • Key must “come clean” on NSA / GCSB fibre optic cable interception

      The Green Party has called on Prime Minister John Key to “come clean” after revelations that a US National Security Agency (NSA) engineer was in New Zealand in 2013, discussing with the GCSB the setting up of an interception site on the country’s only fibre optic cable.

      Documents obtained by the New Zealand Herald show that in February 2013, an engineer from the NSA visited Blenheim, the location of the GCSB’s Waihopai spy base, to participate in discussions about a future Special Source Operations (SSO) site.

    • Editorial: Senate bill strikes balance between core intelligence needs, civil liberties
    • German paper reports Israel spied on John Kerry’s calls
    • The silent smartphone

      This Israeli start-up no longer operates a website. But it has peddled its wares to the Mexican government, gotten on the radar of Central Intelligence Agency officials and recently was bought by an American private equity firm.

    • Strong talk against snooping, US immigration bill leaves John Kerry dejected

      The fifth edition of the India-US Strategic Dialogue was not a cheerful occasion for US Secretary of State John Kerry, the highest-ranking leader to visit India since Narendra Modi came to power.

      Kerry wanted the dialogue to be the right springboard for Modi’s trip to Washington in September but returned dissatisfied over India’s strong reservations against NSA snooping, the US immigration bill and a sense that economic reforms may not be introduced at a faster pace.

  • Civil Rights

    • The Senate Is Not Happy That the CIA Censored Its Report on CIA Torture

      Two officials with access to the declassified executive summary told VICE News that some of the redactions allegedly pertain to the manner in which the detainees were held captive, and to certain torture techniques that were not among the 10 “approved” methods contained in a Justice Department legal memo commonly referred to as the “torture memo.” The officials said the never before–revealed methods, which in certain instances were “improvised,” are central to the report because they underscore the “cruelty” of the program. Some other redactions allegedly pertain to the origins of the program and the intelligence the CIA collected through the use of torture, which the Senate report claims was of little or no value — a claim with which the CIA disagrees.

    • CIA Torture Of 9/11 Suspects Was ‘Unjustifiable’ –Sen. King

      U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee member Senator Angus King said on Sunday that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel committed an “unjustifiable” act when they tortured 9/11 terror suspects.

    • CIA controversy: Sen. King calls torture ‘unjustifiable’
    • Obama’s frank admission

      Before his election to the top office, Obama was known as a soft-spoken person and enjoyed image of a gentleman who feels for others. But soon after his entry in the White House he understandably had to follow dictates of the very powerful US establishment. Then he took several decisions which could not be considered as a true reflection of sentiments of the President but his frank admission at the televised news conference shows that he was opposed to the mistreatment that security officials done to the detainees. But what is more surprising is that to this day many of the Bush era officials who carried out the CIA programme insist that what they did was not torture.

    • Government officials can’t seem to tell truth

      Truth in state government and here in the federal capital again has trumped all as the most elusive quality in public affairs. Five months ago, CIA Director John Brennan blandly said of charges that his agency spied on Congress, “nothing could be further from the truth.”

    • What is the Value of American Values in Africa?

      “We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks; we did some things that were contrary to our values. When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be understood and accepted,” said President Obama at a press conference a couple of days ago.

      [...]

      I believe American business investments in Africa without morality breed only misery and thievery.

    • Heinrich Blasts Redcations In CIA Interrogation Report

      U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following statement on the CIA’s redactions to the executive summary of the Committee’s study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.

    • Senate report: Some CIA actions were ‘torture’

      The torture debate will continue with the release of a Senate report on the controversial interrogation techniques the CIA used after the September 11 attacks.

    • CURL: Obama making fools of the media

      The move was extraordinary: Germany, one of America’s closest allies, went public with a private gripe. More, the move was the kind expected by a rival country like Russia, signaling a complete breakdown of diplomacy between the U.S. president and the German chancellor.

    • Obama ‘confident’ in CIA director; some in Senate aren’t so sure

      Will an apology be enough to soothe the strained relations between the CIA and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee? It’s a critical lingering question in the rare public spat between the intelligence agency and the lawmakers charged with the agency’s oversight.

      Tempers on the committee flared in recent months over reports that the CIA spied on computers used by intelligence committee staffers. A CIA inspector general’s report confirmed these reports this past week, prompting CIA Director John Brennan to apologize to committee members Thursday. However, some members aren’t satisfied, citing Brennan’s previous remarks that batted down the spying accusations…

    • Public servants acting as public masters: Column

      CIA responded to Obama’s acquiescence when it spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and Transparency

      Transparency has been one of the key issues for TTIP – and is, of course, a prime concern of this blog. As people who follow me on Twitter may have noticed, I recently had quite a long, er, discussion with the TTIP team at the European Commission that centred on transparency, or lack of it.

    • Copyrights

      • The Copyright Monopoly Should Be Dead And Buried Already

        Every time somebody questions the copyright monopoly, and in particular, whether it’s reasonable to dismantle freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of information, and the privacy of correspondence just to maintain a distribution monopoly for an entertainment industry, the same question pops up out of nowhere:

        “How will the artists get paid?”.

        The copyright industry has been absolutely phenomenal in misleading the public in this very simple matter, suggesting that artists’ income somehow depend on a distribution monopoly of publishers. If the facts were out, this debate would have been over 20 years ago and the distribution monopoly already abolished quite unceremoniously.

Bill Gates Now Bribes NBC in Exchange for Favourable (and Profitable) Coverage

Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 11:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Rupert Murdoch with Bill Gates

Summary: How the corporate media continues to accept payments from plutocrats such as Bill Gates and then promotes their agenda, for power and for profit

Bill Gates relies on buying the media. Without buying it people would sooner or later realise that he is no better — if not much worse — than the Koch Brothers (they are a tad late in buying the media, which they try to buy because they realise they have a public ‘perception’ problem). Bill Gates has bribed a lot of the media over the years. Here in this site we lost track and lost count of many blogs, local media, press outlets of moderate size and also very large networks Bill Gates had paid in exchange for propaganda (puff pieces, gagging of Gates’ critics, attacks on Gates’ opponents, competition, etc.), with examples ranging from private entities such as The Guardian to public ones like PBS, NPR, and the BBC.

On the one hand we have lobbying at the personal level, which is influenced not only by the media. Professor Ravitch recently explained how Bill Gates distorted the media and all sorts of groups, including politicians, to make a profit from the public education system in the US. Others cite her observations [1] that continue to come out.

On the other hand we have corporate media pushing the Gates line. Journalists do not seem to be doing their job. Well, a lot of them don’t even state who funded their so-called articles (it would embarrass them), but one media outlet does [2]. Yes, Bill Gates bribes the press to promote policy that grants him public funds and gets Microsoft more contracts. NBC finally admits being part of it. How long has this been going on for? A lot of trend-setting media coverage about Common Core turns out to be directly funded by Gates, who would gain from it through Microsoft and InBloom, a surveillance company that Rupert Murdoch too would gain from.

It should be seen as no coincidence that Murdoch is using his tabloid to attack Ravitch, the messenger, trying to label her a sexist. Murdoch, unlike Gates, does not need to buy the media as he already has a lot of media. Ravitch slams Common Core and InBloom (which makes Murdoch rich through spying on students), so Murdoch’s tabloid attacks her.

Media control has enabled Bill Gates to slam critics, which is why Melinda Gates was ousted from the Washington Post (she smeared critics/competition there). It’s often hard to say who’s behind the articles because the payments from Gates are discreet, whereas in the case of Murdoch it is quite clear who owns the news channels (News Corp.), acting as instruments as indoctrination, just like the education system that Gates and Murdoch pursue. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Replace Arne Duncan with Secretary of Education Bill Gates

    As Ravitch reminds us, any replacement “would have to be acceptable to DFER, Stand on Children, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the other reformers.” And, that gets to the real reason why the Obama administration, which teachers and our unions helped elect and reelect, has spread the insanity to the point where schools are reduced to test prep factories. The Billionaires Boys Club in general, and Bill Gates in specific, are really in charge of our nation’s education policy. We’ve had a “barrage” of weird ideas, based solely on the hunches of elites, and Arne Duncan coerced states into making them the laws of most of the land.

  2. Whoa: Look who’s being paid by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to cover Common Core

    Wow. Here’s a link to the Gates-subsidized NBCNews.com article. There is no indication that it’s an advertisement or advertorial. It appears to be a bona fide news story written by a bona fide reporter (Nona Willis Aronowitz). Here it is featured along with NBC News’ other articles on its education page:

08.03.14

Links 3/8/2014: Wine 1.7.23 Out, New Linux Imminent

Posted in News Roundup at 6:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Experts to expose flaws in cyber security devices

      High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/897f35e2-19ad-11e4-8730-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz39MVkoiJS

      Internet-connected cameras, USB sticks and even a web browser promising anonymity have serious security flaws, according to researchers preparing to lay bare the dangers of online life at conferences in Las Vegas this week

      Cyber security researchers from across the world will gather for the Black Hat and Def Con conferences, aiming to expose vulnerabilities in devices and software that people trust in order to fix the problems and try to make companies more careful when designing technology.

    • Hackers show the dangers of USB Thumb Drives. But this may be nothing new

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Israel withdraws most troops from Gaza as it seeks to wind down monthlong war

      Israel withdrew most of its ground troops from the Gaza Strip on Sunday in an apparent winding down of the nearly monthlong operation against Hamas that has left more than 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis dead.

    • Gaza is not as I expected. Amid the terror, there is hope

      The world is not so blessed that it can afford to waste the lives of the 1.8 million Palestinians who live there

    • Sainsbury’s forced to close stores after pro-Palestine demonstrations

      SUPERMARKET giant Sainsbury’s were forced to close several stores after pro-Palestine demonstrations were held in response to the retailer stocking Israeli goods.

    • Terra Incognita: Hypocrisy of the first order

      Why do people who self-identify as “Jewish Americans” not subject the “American” part of that identity to the same high standards?

    • Report: Israel tapped John Kerry’s phone when he was brokering peace talks

      Several sources in the intelligence community confirm to ‘Der Spiegel’ that Israel listened to US Secretary of State’s unencrypted calls.

    • Ed Miliband accuses David Cameron of ‘inexplicable silence’ in row over Gaza

      “Sustainable security for Israel cannot be achieved simply by permanent blockade, aeriel bombardment and periodic ground incursion. Instead, it requires acknowledging the legitimate claims of Palestinians to statehood, and sustained efforts to secure a viable Palestine alongside a secure Israel.

    • Gaza crisis: Ed Miliband demands David Cameron ‘stands up to Israel’ after air strike on school
    • How Gaza became one big suicide bomb

      Gaza is a suicide bomb. It is rigged by its leaders to explode.

      This is not a metaphor. It is a war crime. It makes the calculus of proportionality in the use of armed force by the Israeli Defence Forces complex and uncertain.

      The Hamas use of suicide bombings is well-developed. A decade ago, it involved the leadership preparing vulnerable Arab individuals to end their lives by blowing up Jews in Israeli cities. The use of Hamas towns and local populations in their entirety as huge suicide bombs to kill Israeli soldiers drawn into them by repeated Hamas provocations is an innovation.

    • MAPPING DEATH (IGNORE THE STUFF ABOUT THE TUNNELS; PURE NONSENSE)
    • You learn a lot very quickly in Gaza…

      Remember one other fact: about half of Gaza’s people are under the age of 18. No one fights in Gaza without maiming, killing, displacing or traumatising legions of children. This not a campaign waged in empty desert, mountain or plain – forget Iraq or Afghanistan – but a battle fought in narrow alleyways crowded with infants and families.

    • Israeli air strike hits UN school in Gaza

      An Israeli air strike has killed at least 10 people and wounded about 30 others in a UN-run school in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and medics said, as dozens died in renewed Israeli shelling of the enclave.

      The Israeli military declined immediate comment on the attack, the second to hit a UN school in less than a week.

    • Israel-Gaza conflict: At least 100 dead in 24 hours in Rafah

      The death toll in Rafah has risen to more than 100 in 24 hours since the Israeli military unleashed its fury on the town after announcing that one of its soldiers, Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, had been captured and two others killed in an ambush in which a suicide bomber was used. Last night, Israel’s military declared that the missing 23-year-old had been killed in battle on Friday.

    • British drones kill hundreds of Taliban fighters in secret SAS attacks in Afghanistan

      British drones have killed ­hundreds of Taliban fighters in secret SAS attacks, reveals the Sunday People.

    • British drones kill hundreds of militants

      Since 2008 RAF Reapers have been armed with smart weapons like Hellfire anti-tank missiles and 500lb bombs. They can fly unseen and unheard for 18 hours a day at altitudes of 30,000ft, transmitting real-time video of suspects to their controllers.

    • Secrets kill

      Why Pakistan must declassify wars in order to stop them

      It was 2004 when a bird like object turned into a missile mid-air and killed Nek Muhammad, who was a tribesman leading a tribal revolution with allies in the government and the Taliban. The drone strike was one of the first where CIA had agreed to kill him and Pakistan government allowed them to enter the air space of Pakistan to hunt down the American enemies on the soil.

    • On Roboethics and the Robotic Human

      Let me begin with whether robots can kill, since whether we should or should not kill another person is ultimately a moral question. Unmanned and remotely operated Predator drones (Telerobots as they are sometimes referred to) have, in the last five years, killed more than 2,400 people. However, since Predator drones are robots programmed and remotely controlled by human soldiers, it would be more accurate to say they are the proximate not the ultimate cause of death. Given this, moral accountability and the bestowal of praise or blame continues to remain with the human soldier-pilot. Recently, however, the UN hosted a debate between two robotics experts on the efficacy and necessity of “killer robots.” In a report on the debate, the BBC described the latter as “fully autonomous weapons that can select and engage targets without any human intervention.” Although such robots do not presently exist the authors assure us that “advances in technology are bringing them closer to reality.”

    • After US, British involvement in arming Israel revealed

      The documents, which were obtained by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that the weapons used by Israel against Gaza contain British-made components.

    • [Scotland] Yes vote will distance us from bloody foreign policy
    • UK involvement in arming Israel revealed
    • Britain to review arms sales to Israel after criticism of Gaza war

      British government’s Business Innovation and Skills Department (BIS) to review all UK export licenses for arms sales to the Jewish state.

    • Israel gets boost from US, UK

      US Congress okays $225m fresh aid to strengthen Israel’s anti-missile defence system

    • Israeli Soldier With UK Links ‘May Have Been Killed’ In Gaza, Hamas Say, As Britain’s ‘Role’ In Arming Israel Is Revealed

      Hamas have said an Israeli soldier with links to the UK may have been killed in a strike on his captors by the Israeli military, Hamas has said.

    • US aid, Pakistani anger

      The US Mission in Pakistan started requiring the display of US flags along with its logo so that illiterate Pakistanis became aware of the origin of assistance

    • Alleged terrorist worked for airlines

      Jones, 30, and Australian Christopher Havard were killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in November. They were not the primary targets of the attack, but were described as “collateral damage”. Australian media have quoted anonymous intelligence officials as saying Jones, also known as Muslim bin John and Abu Suhaib al-Australi, and Havard were “foot soldiers” for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

    • US drone strike kills three people in Afghanistan

      Another US-led assassination drone strike in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost Province has reportedly left at least three people dead.

    • Op-Ed: Libya’s new parliament holds crisis meeting in Tobruk

      Libya’s new parliament elected earlier this year held an emergency meeting to discuss Libya’s deteriorating security situation in the eastern city of Tobruk. Handover of power to the new parliament was scheduled to happen August 4 in Benghazi.

    • Throw the Book at Him

      W.’s fear of being unmanned led to America actually being unmanned. We’re in a crouch now. His rebellion against and competition with Bush senior led directly to President Obama struggling at a news conference Friday on the subject of torture. After 9/11, Obama noted, people were afraid. “We tortured some folks,” he said. “We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

      And yet the president stood by his C.I.A. director, John Brennan, a cheerleader for torture during the Bush years, who continues to do things that are contrary to our values.

      Obama defended the C.I.A. director even though Brennan blatantly lied to the Senate when he denied that the C.I.A. had hacked into Senate Intelligence Committee computers while staffers were on agency property investigating torture in the W. era. And now the administration, protecting a favorite of the president, is heavily censoring the torture report under the pretense of national security.

      The Bushes did not want to be put on the couch, but the thin-skinned Obama jumped on the couch at his news conference, defensively whining about Republicans, Putin, Israel and Hamas and explaining academically and anemically how he’s trying to do the right thing but it’s all beyond his control.

      Class is over, professor. Send in the president.

    • Police files reveal ‘endemic corruption’ at the Met

      Scotland Yard holds an astonishing 260 crates of documents on police corruption in one corner of London alone – and very few of the rogue detectives have ever been successfully prosecuted.

      A review led by one of Britain’s most senior police officers has unearthed a mammoth amount of intelligence spawned by Operation Tiberius, a secret police report written in 2002 that concluded there was “endemic corruption” inside the Metropolitan Police.

      The file found organised crime networks in north-east London were able to infiltrate the Met “at will” to frustrate the criminal justice system.

      The huge number of crates, revealed in a letter by Craig Mackey, the Met’s deputy commissioner, indicates the scale of criminality inside Scotland Yard’s north-east London units, which appears to have gone almost unchallenged since Tiberius was compiled 12 years ago.

      Research suggests that only a tiny number of the scores of then-serving and former police officers named as corrupt by Tiberius have been convicted.

    • July 2014 Update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

      At least 32 people died in three CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, making this the bloodiest month since July 2012.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • Slow and steady: Hungary’s media clampdown

      “Soft censorship,” including actions such as quiet dismissals, punitive tax laws, denied radio frequencies and abuse of privacy legislation, is arguably the most worrisome type. It creeps and grows in small increments and therefore often goes unnoticed until it has become institutionalized, at which point it is difficult to reverse. Over the past four years, Hungary has seen dozens of small, and not so small, encroachments on the right to free expression. Taken en masse, certain developments in Hungary indicate a clear trajectory towards authoritarian regulation of the media, and the situation is becoming increasingly dire.

    • Book censorship prompts freedom of expression fears for Indian publishers

      Dinanath Batra, dubbed “the book police” and “the Ban Man” by local media, is a self-appointed censor with wide influence. When he sends a legal notice to publishing houses informing them that their authors have injured Hindus’ feelings, they listen. Fearing long court battles and violent protests by Hindu activists, they have withdrawn and pulped titles or asked authors to rewrite.

    • Why Canadian media embraced censorship during WWI: Ira Basen

      “The first casualty when war comes,” U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson reportedly declared in 1918, “is truth.”

      Johnson was an isolationist who opposed U.S. entry into the First World War, and his concern over the fate of truth in that conflict was justified.

    • Censorship and Myth-Making About Hiroshima and the Bomb

      The US atomic destruction of 140,000 people at Hiroshima and 70,000 at Nagasaki was never “necessary” because Japan was already smashed, no land invasion was needed and Japan was suing for peace. The official myth that “the bombs saved lives” by hurrying Japan’s surrender can no longer be believed except by those who love to be fooled. The long-standing fiction has been destroyed by the historical record kept in US, Soviet, Japanese and British archives — now mostly declassified — and detailed by Ward Wilson in his book “Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

    • Mahathir calls for Internet censorship

      Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad has called for the Internet to be censored to preserve “public morality”, in what the opposition suggested on Saturday was an attempt to silence government critics.

    • Dr Mahathir calls for Internet censorship
    • Censoring the Internet
    • Times Foreign Editor Responds on Israeli Censorship

      Still, the very idea of censorship or gag orders by a foreign government is a disturbing one, not only for journalists but for all who value the free flow of information. It’s heartening to hear that The Times has not submitted any articles for review, and I hope that that will remain the case as this situation develops.

    • Israel Censor Wants To Pre-Approve New York Times Coverage Of Soldier

      The Israeli military told The New York Times on Friday to withhold publishing additional information about an Israeli soldier reportedly captured by Palestinian militants until it is first reviewed by a censor.

    • Censorship in Your Doctor’s Office

      WHEN a doctor asks her patient a question, is the doctor engaged in free speech protected by the Constitution? If you think the answer is obvious, think again. According to a recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, everything a doctor says to a patient is “treatment,” not speech, and the government has broad authority to prohibit doctors from asking questions on particular topics without any First Amendment scrutiny at all.

  • Privacy

    • Surveillance paradise: How one man spied on NSA in Bahamas (VIDEO)

      Following reports the Bahamas are under total NSA surveillance, Nimrod Kamer went to the Caribbean state to investigate for RT how its people cope without any privacy and why local authorities refuse to lift a finger to restore it.

    • Privacy as a premium: Why it’s time to say goodbye to the free internet

      The concept of privacy changed once it went online. What was once a sacred tomb of personal information has been twisted and altered by the digital age, like so many analog and now antiquated concepts before it.

    • Foundation supporting Snowden asks Russian goverment to extend his asylum

      The Courage Foundation dedicated to supporting former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIS) employee and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has forwarded a letter to the Russian embassy to the U.S. to extend his asylum in Russia.

    • Dear America, Would You Please Give Edward Snowden His Medal Of Freedom Already?

      What happened? You guessed it: everyone’s favorite hero/villain/demon/saint, Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum in Russia exactly one year ago. This week, the tech industry threw its weight behind a bill that proposes “sweeping curbs on NSA surveillance” and “would represent the most significant reform of government surveillance authorities since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act 13 years ago.” And it could actually pass — again, thanks to Snowden.

    • Glenn Greenwald says Germany’s NSA investigation is an illusion to keep US happy

      Glenn Greenwald has refused to go to Germany as a witness for their investigation into NSA spying. He has released a full statement where he says that Germany is conducting an illusion of investigation to keep the German public satisfied.

    • The death of privacy

      Google knows what you’re looking for. Facebook knows what you like. Sharing is the norm, and secrecy is out. But what is the psychological and cultural fallout from the end of privacy?

    • Students at Oxford will learn to spy from the NSA’s best friends

      Students in the UK can now get graduate degrees in cyber-spying approved by the masters of the craft at the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters, the British counterpart of the US National Security Agency. Students at the University of Oxford and five other universities can get masters in cyber-security signed off by the best eavesdroppers in the country, the BBC reported.

    • Computers still vulnerable to hackers of start-up codes

      And in December, Der Spiegel reported that a leaked internal NSA catalogue described a tool called DeityBounce that attacked the BIOS of Dell Inc servers.

    • Eye of the spy, there is no escape

      Google has rolled out the beta version of an anonymising proxy service, called uProxy. But Google is allegedly a partner to the NSA in PRISM project. There are other anonymiser browsers like Tor.

      But then while the NSA is trying to take it down, U.S. agencies are funding it.

      Germany and Brazil want a U.N. Resolution for internet privacy. European and Latin American countries are thinking of joining the effort.

      Russia and Germany have switched to typewriters to type out important documents, to avoid electronic snooping.

    • Letters: Bill targets surveillance of Americans

      On Aug. 6 bill SB-828 (4th Amendment Protection Act) will move to keep California from co-opting with the National Security Agency and its massive surveillance programs, many of which will end up in California if this bill is not passed.

    • Twitter insists government precision over user data requests

      In the first half of this year, Twitter’s seen a 46% increase in user data requests from 2013: the majority of these have come from the US (1,257), followed by Japan (192) and Saudi Arabia (189). Due to the large increase in user data requests, Twitter’s talking to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in an effort to have more transparency about what user data the Federal Government wants when it makes requests about Twitter users.

    • Free VPN to surf anonymously and protect your privacy

      Digital security is more important than it’s ever been. Hacks and other digital attacks are on the rise, and to no one’s surprise the NSA is snooping as much as ever.

    • Time India woke up to US surveillance

      AT&T has partnered the NSA since 1985. US court records in the class action suit Hepting Vs. NSA are revealing. (Details at https://www.eff.org/cases/hepting). Page 102 of a “top secret” slide presentation of the NSA shows AT&T as one of the “80 major global corporations” supporting its missions. Page 103 shows the NSA has a ‘Special Source Operation’ which has a list of three major corporates giving it access to various kinds of telecommunication facilities.

    • Google alerts police to man with child abuse images in his emails

      So where does this leave the average user? Does one give up certain privacies for the greater good, or is what someone does online entirely their own business, even if it’s illegal? Only time will tell, but hopefully if Google is watching they’ll continue to help put men like Skillern away.

    • New revelations about Cuban spy Ana Montes

      She “unhesitatingly agreed” to work with them and travel clandestinely to Cuba as soon as possible. The following March, she went there via Spain and Czechoslovakia. The Pentagon report does not state the obvious: while there, she must have received specialized training in intelligence tradecraft.

    • Breach of privilege

      The Sarkozy case raises important questions about the issue of technology and lawyer-client confidentiality.

    • 20140803-torbrowser-launcher
    • What happens during Facebook outage? People dial 911 and turn to Twitter

      While some of us are comfortable with the fact that we can eat breakfast without having to tell our 429 Facebook friends about it, a few users apparently think it is an emergency if Facebook goes down for 30 minutes and prevents them from sharing pictures of the soggy cereal and milk they had for breakfast.

      That is what happened on Friday when Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram experienced a brief outage affecting millions of users around the world and prompting them to take to Twitter to complain. One user, Sgt. Burton Brink of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, posted the following tweet.

    • John Kerry Just Visited. But Should We Just Forget About India?

      Here’s how bad things are between Washington and New Delhi these days: It’s news that Kerry even made the trip. Why this reluctant partnership might be best left to wither.

    • Senate bill on spying strikes a balance

      A pan-ideological group of senators this week unveiled the most high-profile bill yet for reforming the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. The proposal does not go far enough for many civil liberties advocates. But that’s fine: The bill represents a careful, politically achievable balance, advancing several worthwhile reforms without seeking to dismantle the nation’s intelligence capabilities. Just as important, it would insist on the public release of much more information about U.S. intelligence collection, and it would provide a clear timeline for renewed debate on a range of NSA and FBI activities so the country would be able to take another crack at the issue if the bill’s balance proves unsatisfactory.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Quantifying Comcast’s Monopoly Power

      Comcast is a monopoly. The question is, how much of a monopoly is Comcast, and how much of a monopoly will it be after it absorbs Time-Warner Cable (TWC)?

      To help quantify market influence, economists use the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), a metric that is calculated by adding the squares of the market shares of every firm in an industry. HHI produces a number between 0 (for a perfectly competitive industry) and 10,000 (for an industry with just one firm).

    • What is net neutrality?

Windows Will Go Extinct in the Back End and the Desktop

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 7:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The world is leaving Windows behind (at all levels) and Microsoft is now joining companies that are using GNU/Linux, perhaps acknowledging that the demise of Windows is inevitable

MICROSOFT has suffered a huge decline in sales of Windows. It was very clear. Microsoft wasn’t able to hide it anymore. Not even increased pressure on companies to pay up could make up for the alarming numbers which preceded massive layoffs (almost 20,000 staff). As large nations gradually move away from Windows (not ‘upgrading’ Windows) the company is likely to resort to lawsuits (when extortion tactics fail). Without Windows, the common carrier, Microsoft is reduced to almost nothing. This milking cow is the only reason many people still use Office and other offerings from Microsoft.

Gregg Keizer from IDG says that “Windows 8′s uptake was stuck in reverse for the second straight quarter as the reputation-challenged operating system fell behind the pace set by Windows Vista six years ago, according to data released Friday.

“Web metrics firm Net Applications’ figures for July put the combined user share of Windows 8 and 8.1 at 12.5% of the world’s desktop and notebook systems, a small drop of six-hundredths of a percentage point from June. That decline was atop a one-tenth-point fall the month before, the first time the OS had lost user share since its October 2012 debut.”

Regarding the source of the data, Net Applications, it is Microsoft-affiliated, too.

It sure looks like the Windows franchise is becoming a thing of the past; sales of Android devices outpace sales of computers with Windows and as older PCs (running Windows XP) age too much users may move to GNU/Linux or buy new devices with Linux/Android on them. Microsoft (Nokia) tried to make its own version of Android but failed. Nobody wanted Microsoft.

On the server side too this is happening. Microsoft's share in Web servers has been reduced to just spam and inactive domains. GNU/Linux is highly mature a platform and many hosting platforms now use GNU/Linux by default. I see this in my daytime job. There’s an influx/inertia leading to FOSS, albeit quite silently. This means that a lot of companies will make the migration sooner or later, especially now that Windows Server 2003 becomes orphaned [via]:

The end of extended support for Windows Server 2003 is just under a year away. One manager says the average migration will take 200 days, so start thinking about migrating if you haven’t already.

Hopefully he speaks of a migration to GNU/Linux. There is no reason to stay with the Vista equivalent on the server side. There is nothing in it, except newer back doors, increased fees, and more lock-in. Based on the trend in nations such as Russia and China, many systems at the back end will be converted to GNU/Linux, perhaps when support lapses for the current version of Windows (that’s what happened in Munich, Germany).

Microsoft has become so desperate on the server side that it is now liaising with one of the largest users of GNU/Linux, namely Akamai. There is no suggestion that Akamai will be using Windows; in fact, even years in the past (e.g. the Olympic Games in Beijing) Microsoft relied heavily on GNU/Linux (at Akamai) for data delivery. For Microsoft to grow closer to Akamai is rather telling; perhaps Microsoft too is already seeing the writings on the wall. The world is moving beyond Windows, and there’s absolutely nothing Microsoft can do to stop it (except perhaps trying to tax it using software patents). █

Microsoft Censors GitHub

Posted in Microsoft at 6:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft goes batting for DRM, removing other people’s code from the Web for doing exactly what Microsoft itself is doing

As part of Microsoft’s openwashing “charm offence”, the company recently — GASP — opened an account at GitHub. Some gullible writers made a big deal out of it and Microsoft-friendly press once said that “The New Microsoft Is a Pal of GitHub” (“New Microsoft” is a marketing term, the company is now suing Android leaders for antagonising Microsoft extortion). Never mind if Microsoft nearly snatched staff that had created GitHub, potentially ruining GitHub. Microsoft wants us to believe that it is now a “Pal of GitHub”.

Anyway, several weeks ago Microsoft became a mass cleanser of the Internet, bringing down millions of services by aggressively taking over No-IP and then rewriting history. The company clearly cares neither for GitHub nor for the integrity of the Net. Microsoft bombards Google with bogus DCMA takedown requests, too. Takedowns have a long history at Microsoft. The company is a censor. It’s a bully that hates the Web because disruption to its business comes from the Web.

We were not entirely shocked to learn that Microsoft has censored GitHub, removing what was basically the equivalent of what Microsoft already does:

Following a complaint from Microsoft, GitHub has removed the code repository of an app that provides access to unprotected Xbox Music tracks. The developer of the software is surprised by Microsoft’s move, stating that the company itself is offering access to DRM-free music through its API.

Well, this is Microsoft censorship and strong-arming. The company is a bully and this too is a reminder of it. GitHub should not have obeyed Microsoft’s request. █

SPAM Domains Artificially Inflate Microsoft Figures in Netcraft

Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 6:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Netcraft

Summary: Netcraft explains why Microsoft’s numbers seem to be increasing and also finally changes the way it presents market share

Microsoft Windows is a malware farm, so it oughtn’t be too shocking that Web spam (“link farms”), according to Netcraft’s latest figures via], is driving up Microsoft’s share (along with what seems like bribed hosts of parked domains). “Microsoft spin” is what our readers called it. Here is what Netcraft says:

Microsoft’s most recent growth in hostnames since mid-2013 has, for the most part, been caused by a large number of Chinese linkfarms (泛站群). The sites in question provide advertising for gambling sites, online product listings, and normally make use of affiliate schemes. Yet they are hosted in the USA, on generic TLDs such as .com and .net to bypass China’s TLD and internet content provider (ICP) license requirements. Unusually, each linkfarm makes use of a reasonably large number of domains and IP addresses, presumably making them harder for search engines to evade. This would normally be cost prohibitive for this kind of activity, however hosting and domain packages can be found advertised on auction sites specifically for this purpose, with packages of (random/unspecified) .com domains available for as little as ¥17 (~ £2 / $3) each, guaranteed to remain yours for at least a month. It is not clear why IIS has been chosen for these sites, however it does have a considerably higher market share (for all of our metrics) in China compared to worldwide – for example 59% of domains hosted in China use IIS compared to just 29% worldwide.

We previously explained the role of parked domains as well. Here are some posts from a few months ago:

Microsoft software is not only behind inactive domains; it is also running behind spam (link farms). What a source of pride, eh? Microsoft’s real market share on the Web is ~10%, depending on how it’s measured. Top sites hardly have anything from Microsoft in them, so the total active site/domain count can be very misleading. Microsoft’ share on the Web (measured in terms of number of requests for a page) may actually be something far lower than 10%, and maybe lower than 5%. █

08.02.14

Links 3/8/2014: Ubuntu 14.10 Alpha 2, XBMC Becomes ‘Kodi’

Posted in News Roundup at 4:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Mitro makes password manager open source as team heads to Twitter

    The team at Mitro Labs, the developer of a password manager, is joining Twitter, and its software is being released under a free and open source license, Mitro said Thursday.

  • Mitro Releases a New Free & Open Source Password Manager

    Today, Twitter acquired a password manager startup called Mitro. As part of the deal, Mitro will be releasing the source to its client and server code under the GPL.

  • GSA CIO calls for open source to be considered first

    Open source and open data solutions now should receive top consideration at the General Services Administration.

    Sonny Hashmi, the GSA chief information officer, said Thursday during an online chat with Federal News Radio that he recently signed out a memo requiring agency software developers to look at open source before they consider traditional commercial solutions.

  • SDN blogs: Open source SDN; SDN adoption pace remains high

    This week, SDN bloggers took a look at how open source SDN continues to take shape among vendors, how SDN adoption rates are higher than initially predicted, and all you need to know about OpenFlow.

  • New day dawns for open source

    One of the major driving forces behind the plethora of technological innovations in the cloud computing arena is the concept of open source software. With nearly one million open source projects related to the cloud believed to be in progress, new technologies such software as a service are on the rise.

    Companies are contributing more in terms of time, money and support for user-led open source initiatives, with big business benefits such as operational cost reductions, application flexibility and boosts to competitive advantage being on offer.

    Vendor-led development initiatives are gaining ground too, buoyed by massive collaboration projects on a global scale. The increasing ‘democratisation’ of the open source world is a major contributor to its burgeoning success.

  • Open source IT is the way forward

    A PRESENTATION by the European nuclear research organisation CERN at the recent open source convention (OSCON) has provided a glimpse at where IT organisations are going to have to go in order to remain competitive. They will need to leave old legacy proprietary approaches behind and adopt open source.

    CERN collects huge volumes of data every day from thousands of detectors at its nuclear collider ring located under the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva. It organises and archives all of this data and distributes much of it to research scientists located throughout the world over high-speed internet links. It presently maintains 100 Petabytes of legacy data under management, and collects another 35 Petabytes every year that it remains in operation. One Petabyte comprises one million Gigabytes.

  • Bitnami Changes the Face of Application Deployment

    Brescia said that Bitnami’s goal is to make it as easy to deploy an application on a server as it is to install an application on an endpoint computer. Bitnami has more than 90 different open-source applications and development environments in its software library that can be deployed with one-click installer packages on desktop, virtual machine and cloud deployments.

  • Belkin’s WRT54G Router Successor Is Crap On The Software Front So Far

    Belkin revived the Linksys WRT54G in a new 802.11ac model earlier this year and one of its selling points has been the OpenWRT support as what made the WRT54G legendary. However, OpenWRT developers and fans are yet to be satisfied by this new router.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Want Firefox without Australis? Try Pale Moon

        If the release of Firefox’s Australis interface got you down, there are Firefox-based alternatives out there with a more traditional Mozilla UI. One such alternative is Pale Moon and here’s how you get it.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Contributing back as an OpenStack operator

      Paying talented developers to write high quality code isn’t cheap; why on Earth would you then turn around and give that code to your competitors? Turns out, there’s probably a competitive advantage in doing so.

    • ownCloud 7 Arrives with New Features and Improvements

      ownCloud Inc, the popular open source enterprise file sync and share project, has launched the latest ownCloud 7.

    • Cash and Development Resources are Heading Fast for Hadoop

      June and July brought lots of big news surrounding enterprise analytic data management powered by the open source Hadoop platform. Cloudera, focused on supporting enterprise Hadoop, announced in June that it raised a staggering $900 million round of financing with participation by top tier institutional and strategic investors. It also firmed up a partnership with Dell and Intel to launch a dedicated Dell In-Memory Appliance for Cloudera Enterprise that facilitates Hadoop-driven analytics.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • TechCrunch Open Sources Its WordPress Async Task Library

      Back in early 2012, when the TechCrunch developer team (Nicolas Vincent, Alex Khadiwala, Eric Mann, and John Bloch) started working on the TechCrunch redesign, one of the main goals was to improve site performance. During the development process, we implemented several tools to help achieve that goal.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF at CommonBound conference on economic equality

      The FSF is happy to building bridges to new communities, and exploring the role of free software in social justice and economic change.

    • GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 18 new GNU releases!

      A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance: please see https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you’d like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html. To submit new packages to the GNU operating system, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

    • Recap of Friday Free Software Directory IRC meetup: August 1

      Join the FSF and friends every Friday to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open-Source Space

      As I write this, NASA has just passed another milestone in releasing its work to the Open Source community. A press release came out announcing the release on April 10, 2014, of a new catalog of NASA software that is available as open source. This new catalog includes both older software that was previously available, along with new software being released for the first time. The kinds of items available include project management systems, design tools, data handling and image processing. In this article, I take a quick look at some of the cool code available.

      The main Web site is at http://technology.nasa.gov. This main page is a central portal for accessing all of the technology available to be transferred to the public. This includes patents, as well as software.

    • CQC sticks with open source for data capture needs

      The commission’s consideration of open source options for content management was based on Cabinet Office requirements for public sector organisations to look at potential alternatives to proprietary systems dating back to 2010.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • What’s that? A PHP SPECIFICATION? Surely you’re joking, Facebook

      A group of Facebook developers has decided to break with 20 years of tradition and release a formal specification for the PHP programming language.

    • Group Test: Linux Text Editors

      If you’ve been using Linux long, you know that whether you want to edit an app’s configuration file, hack together a shell script, or write/review bits of code, the likes of LibreOffice just won’t cut it. Although the words mean almost the same thing, you don’t need a word processor for these tasks; you need a text editor.

      In this group test we’ll be looking at five humble text editors that are more than capable of heavy-lifting texting duties. They can highlight syntax and auto-indent code just as effortlessly as they can spellcheck documents. You can use them to record macros and manage code snippets just as easily as you can copy/paste plain text.

    • August 2014 Issue of Linux Journal: Programming

      Programming always has been that “thing” people did that I never understood. You’ve heard me lament about my lack of programming skills through the years, and honestly, I never thought I’d need to learn. Then along came the DevOps mentality, and I started introducing programmatic ways of managing my system administration world. And you know what? Programming is pretty awesome.

    • Text Editors, Note Takers, and Program Languages

      Today in Linux news, Jack Germain has a look at the perfect note taker. The Linux Voice has a comparison of text editors for programmers and the Linux Journal introduces their current issue on program languages. In other news, XBMC becomes Kodi and Linux.com has 10 reasons to take the Linux Foundation’s Introduction to Linux edX course.

Leftovers

Microsoft Continues to Further Distort OOXML in Order to Make it Less Compatible With Non-Microsoft Software

Posted in Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 3:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

ooxml_demo_4.jpg

Summary: Microsoft continues to distort the office suites market and impede interoperability using the OOXML pseudo ‘standard’, essentially by branching out into “Strict” and “Transitional”, making it exceedingly hard for developers to deal with files generated by Microsoft Office and vice versa

TRYING to work with Microsoft is misguided. Just look and see what has happened to many companies, including — to name a recent example — Nokia. Microsoft has no honour for anyone but Microsoft itself. Microsoft was bribing officials and abusing sceptics in order to get its way when it comes to document formats. Nobody should forget the crimes that Microsoft committed in order to keep the world stuck with Microsoft Office. We reminded the British government of these crimes and very recently the UK adopted ODF. This was a very smart and timely move because based on people from The Document Foundation (TDF), the bogus ‘standard’ which is basically just an ‘open’-looking gown for Microsoft Office (proprietary) formats is now being further distorted in order to cause trouble for people who are not Microsoft customers. These abuses are even worse than before and Microsoft thinks it can get away with them because it bribed people to put an ECMA and ISO stamp on OOXML (no matters what happens to it later on).

As Charles from The Document Foundation put it the other day:

Regular readers of this blog will remember these glorious days, just before the big financial crisis, where Microsoft had created the so-called OpenXML standard that was supposed to be totally not competing against the OpenDocument Format, managed to have pretty much the entire standards community swallow it in the most creative ways possible, then fell short of actually implementing it in its own products. A good summary of the whole -technical- story is available here. The irony of life has the uncanny ability to devise ways to enchant us. Well, sort of. The format called “OOXML – Strict”, by comparison to “OOXML-Transitional” was the readable open part of the ISO 29500 standard, known as OOXML. For years, it was obvious that Microsoft Office implemented OOXML-Transitional (the heap of the more or less documented parts of the format alongside undocumented blurbs) and nothing else, creating a situation where one standard, OOXML was existing, and another format, OOXML, was fully implemented and spread all around, yet was an undocumented, proprietary specification. That’s the .docx, pptx, and .xlsx you see everywhere, and the one LibreOffice was busy reverse-engineering for all these years.

This unfortunate situation, we were told, was about to change soon, with the full adoption of OOXML-Strict by Microsoft Office. Helas, if you open a purely OOXML-Strict compliant file with Microsoft Office 2013, the file will be declared corrupt. If you open the same one with LibreOffice 4.3, the file will open and you will be able to edit its contents just like with any other format supported by LibreOffice. In other words, LibreOffice can claim to have a better support of OOXML than Microsoft Office, despite years of unfulfilled promises, pledges, and never met expectations by Redmond. I guess that, just like the old saying goes, promises only commit the ones who actually believe them.

IBM’s Rob Weir has just released another piece about document formats [1] and a new interview with Italo Vignoli of The Document Foundation [2] sheds more light on what Charles spoke about. To quote Vignoli: “MS Office locks-in the user not only with proprietary formats but also with the OOXML pseudo-standard format. This is due to the way the supposedly standard format is handled by MS Office.

“In fact, each version of MS Office since 2007 has a different and non standard implementation of OOXML, which is defined as “transitional” because it contains elements which are supposed to be deprecated at standard level, but are still there for compatibility reasons.

“Although LibreOffice manages to read and write OOXML in a fairly appropriate way, it will be impossible to achieve a perfect interoperability because of these different non standard versions.

“In addition to format incompatibilities, Microsoft – with OOXML – has introduced elements which may lead the user into producing a non interoperable document, such as the C-Fonts (for instance, Calibri and Cambria).”

When Microsoft speaks about following standards what it means to say is that “Microsoft is the standard” and everyone must just follow Microsoft. Only a fool would choose OOXML over ODF, especially now. Korea and China seem to be moving away from Office quite rapidly. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Document as Activity versus Document as Record

    And then there is a document as the record of what we did. This is implied by the verb “to document”. This use of documents is still critical, since it is ingrained in various regulatory, legal and business processes. Sometimes you need “a document.” It won’t do to have your business contract on a wiki. You can’t prove conformance to a regulation via a Twitter stream. We may no longer print and file our “hard” documents, but there is a need to have a durable, persistable, portable, signable form of a document. PDF serves well for some instances, but not in others. What does PDF do with a spreadsheet, for example? All the formulas are lost.

  2. Why you should never use Microsoft’s OOXML pseudo-standard format

    The UK government recently announced that they would use ISO approved document standard ODF for viewing and sharing government documents. It’s a very important move because it breaks Microsoft’s vendor lock where single US-based company ‘owns’ and ‘controls’ all the documents created on Earth. Microsoft is infamous for using unethical means to make it harder for other players to offer any kind of interoperability with their products which can threaten Microsoft’s market share.

    So we reached out to Italo Vignoli of The Document Foundation, the organization responsible for developing LibreOffice which is a fork of OpenOffice, to understand the risks of using OOXML…

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