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02.05.13

Links 5/1/2013: Hewlett-Packard GNU/Linux Laptop, Linux Mint Codename

Posted in News Roundup at 8:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Linux Setup – Chris Knadle, Engineer/System Administrator
  • Open Ballot: Moment of the Millenium

    With Linux continuing its steady rise to world domination, we thought we’d ask you what you think has been the greatest moment for Linux since the start of the millennium.

  • Leaving the Land of the Giants

    The cover of the December 1st–7th 2012 issue of The Economist shows four giant squid battling each other (http://www.economist.com/printedition/2012-12-01). The headline reads, “Survival of the biggest: The internet’s warring giants”. The squid are Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Inside, the story is filed under “Briefing: Technology giants at war”. The headline below the title graphic reads, “Another game of thrones” (http://www.economist.com/news/21567361-google-apple-facebook-and-amazon-are-each-others-throats-all-sorts-ways-another-game). The opening slug line reads “Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are at each other’s throats in all sorts of ways.” (Raising the metaphor count to three.)

  • Linux Top 3: Secure Boot Bricks, Kernel Advances and MariaDB
  • Top Linux and open-source programs survey results

    LinuxQuestions’ annual members choice survey is in and the top Linux distributions and open-source programs are sometimes quite surprising

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Udev fork is a training project say eudev developers

      At a presentation at FOSDEM 2013, three of the developers behind udev fork eudev, stated that their primary aim in launching the project back in November was to learn something. Dislike for the udev/systemd developers was, as they repeatedly stressed, not the reason for launching the project – it was not a “hate based fork”. The developers also noted that their “pet project” was anything but mature and that users foolish enough to use it in its present state could really mess up their systems.

    • RAID 5/6 code merged into Btrfs

    • Graphics Stack

      • Ubuntu and Multiple Monitors – AMD Edition

        There are several ways to end up with a satisfactory experience on the desktop with Ubuntu despite their recent confusion of the user interface. We will discuss some of those another day (KDE vs. Gnome vs. Cinammon vs. Unity). Today we are going to talk about setting up your desktop environment for multiple monitors. This article assumes you are running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or 12.10, however, the process should work equally well back to version 10.04 LTS unless otherwise noted.

        Assuming you have installed Ubuntu and are successfully sitting at the desktop (the window manager at this point is irrelevant), a couple of questions will now come to mind. What am I going to be using my linux desktop environment for? If you are going to be running office applications, email, basic web browsing and the occassional movie, you might be done. The default (read: Open Source) binary video drivers for both AMD (radeon) and Nvidia (nouveaux) are perfectly acceptable for all of those things. In fact, recently, they both have picked up some compositing support (so you can run the nifty 3D window effects in Compiz or KWin) as well as support for gaming. However, that support is spotty and performance still leaves a lot to be desired.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • What’s new with Nepomuk 4.10

        I’ve blogged about some of the more prominent changes in this new Nepomuk release. I thought it would be a good idea to document all the changes, most of which I haven’t publicly blogged about.

      • Little bits of news about Gwenview
      • building KDE software from git.kde.org the easy way
      • new plasma-framework repo

        On November 3, 2008 libplasma moved from kde-workspace to kdelibs sporting a spiffy API that used the new QGraphicsProxyWidget heavily.

        In Randa this past summer we agreed on the last few big decisions for libplasma2. We would remove QGraphicsView and move entirely to QML. In the process, libplasma would have no drawing system dependent code in it. It would be data and business logic only.

      • Alternatives to Knotes

        I am still migrating away from my old KDE tools. Most of them will run under LXDE, or any other desktop, but I’m finding that since KDE 4 came out, the accessories are all fatter, slower, and worst of all, buggy. I reported last month on replacing Korganizer. Next up: Knotes.

      • Krita 2.6 Released, Offers Better Photoshop Compatibility

        Krita 2.6 adds many performance improvements, but also new support for OpenColorIO, a color management system used by movie studios and applications like Blender, which means that Krita now fits into a movie/vfx studio workflow.

      • KDE’s Aaron Seigo Starts Weekly Hangout On Google+

        Great news for KDE users. Aason Seigo, the KDE project lead, is starting a weekly Google+ Hangout. Seigo ‘tested’ the first hangout and it went well, except for some initial glitches caused by Pulse Audio.

      • Video Guide On Building KDE

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Power management in GNOME 3.8
      • GNOME Switching to JavaScript?

        Floating out in newsfeeds today was an interesting tidbit by John Palmieri who said, “So GNOME finally chose an official language and it is JavaScript.” Now I’m not a developer, but everytime I encounter JavaScript it’s causing problems. Is this a good idea for GNOME?

      • JavaScript becoming default language for GNOME apps

        At the GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest in Brussels, the GNOME developer community has tackled the problem of specifying a canonical development language for writing applications for the GNOME desktop. According to a blog post by Collabora engineer and GNOME developer Travis Reitter, members of the GNOME team are often asked what tools should be used when writing an application for the desktop environment and, up until now, there has been no definitive answer. The team has now apparently decided to standardise on JavaScript for user-facing applications while still recommending C as the language to write system libraries in.

      • GNOME project picks JavaScript as sole app dev language

        The GNOME project, developers of the GNOME desktop for Linux, has decided JavaScript will be the only “first class” language it will recommend for developers cooking up new apps for the platform.

      • Dissent on Gnome’s Javascript decision
      • Why I said goodbye to the Gnome Desktop

        It’s finally time for me to leave the Gnome Desktop, thanks to Gnome 3. Fortunately for me, the MATE desktop is a continuation of the Gnome 2 Desktop, and as of Fedora 18, is integrated into the Fedora repository; it’s also fairly easy to install.

  • Distributions

    • 2012 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners

      Desktop Distribution of the Year – Slackware (20.59%)

    • A look at UberStudent 2.0

      UberStudent is a Linux distribution which declares itself as being “Linux for learners”. The project is based on Ubuntu with UberStudent 2.0 using the latest Ubuntu long-term support release as a base. Looking over the project’s documentation we find UberStudent is designed with an eye toward education. The project is targeting people wishing to teach or learn academic computing. The project’s website refers to the distribution as a learning platform, designed to help people become fluent in computer technology. There are several editions of the latest UberStudent release. The main edition comes with the Xfce desktop environment and other editions feature the LXDE and MATE desktops. Each edition is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. I opted to try the Xfce edition which can be downloaded as a 3.5 GB DVD images.

    • Sparkylinux 2.1 “Ultra” Review: Lightweight, fast and elegant Openbox distro for low spec computers!

      From performance point of view, these days, Openbox is my favorite desktop environment. I found it actually to be more efficient and less resource consuming than either LXDE or XFCE and works very efficiently on low powered P4 machines. Perhaps the most famous distros with Openbox DE are Archbang and Crunchbang. Recently, SparkyLinux came up with their version of Openbox spin. In this article, I review SparkyLinux 2.1 “Ultra” Openbox as well as do a brief comparison with Archbang and Crunchbang.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

      • Linux Lite 1.0.4 screen shots

        Linux Lite is a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu. It is uses the Xfce desktop environment, a desktop environment known to be suitable for low-end computers. The latest update, Linux Lite 1.0.4, was released just today.

        It ships with Steam client for Linux, the popular game distribution platform, installed. Because of the memory requirements of Steam, don’t expect to run this edition of Linux Lite on a resource-starved computer, if you intend to play that game.

      • Arch 2013.02.01 Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • PCLinuxOS quarterly rollup release: Hands on

        PCLinuxOS is an “old standard” Linux distribution. Although it doesn’t seem to have been getting as much attention recently it still seems to have a significant number of very loyal followers.

        The strength of PCLinuxOS today is in stability, and a very active and dedicated user community.

        It includes an excellent array of applications and utilities in the base distribution, so for many purposes it is ready to use right out of the box. If you try it and have problems of any kind, you can generally get very capable help from the PCLinuxOS User Forums very quickly.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat, Inc. : Red Hat Joins HP Enterprise Services Technology Alliance
      • Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Trying Desperately to Excite the Market

        Red Hat provides open-source software. It is particularly famous for its Linux operating system. In the third quarter, Red Hat’s revenues increased by 18% y-o-y to hit the $344 million mark, which was in-line with expectations. Subscription revenues experienced a 19% increase that enabled them to hit the $294 million mark. Billing also grew by 18%. More importantly, in the third quarter, the company announced the acquisition of ManageIQ. ManageIQ specializes in cloud management and automation. The acquisition is expected to be a long term gain for Red Hat. It is also an attempt to take on VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) , a company that has managed to make inroads into enterprise through its vCloud platform but failed to enter the public cloud.

      • Red Hat to employees: yes, please bring new apps to work

        Bring us your cool, useful, and productivity-heightening apps and devices and we’ll look at them and work to support your efforts.

        That’s the unique view that Linux vendor Red Hat takes when it comes to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon that’s prevalent in the world of enterprise IT.

      • Cloud9 IDE Builds Online Development Environment with Red Hat OpenShift

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, announced that Cloud9 IDE has built its online development environment with Red Hat’s OpenShift Online hosted Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution. By integrating OpenShift Online into its original online development environment, Cloud9 IDE is able to deliver more flexibility, security and ease of use to developers.

      • HP and Red Hat Partner On Premises and In the Cloud

      • Fedora

        • I’m FedUp with Fedora!

          So normally I do my updates from one version of Fedora to the next using yum, in particular the Upgrading Fedora using yum guide. Usually it works pretty good. I didn’t really have much good experience with PreUpgrade the few times I tried it, so I wanted to give FedUp a try.

        • Fedora 18 review

          The latest edition of Fedora Linux was released on January 15th, after 2 months of delay. This community project is sponsored by Red Hat Linux and is one of the primary showcases for the GNOME desktop and its applications. Among the features making their debut is a much improved Samba setup (which is supposed to let you connect easily with Windows’ Active Directory). Also, the Cinnamon and MATE desktop environments which got their start in Linux Mint are available, although not installed by default.

          This is my review of the KDE edition of Fedora 18, 64-bit version. After 3 reviews of their main release, I decided it was time to check out the KDE Spin edition. Fedora has several different “Spins”, produced to showcase desktops or emphasize scientific, design, gaming, or other focused interests.

        • Fedora 18 Officially Released for IBM System z 64-bit

          Dan Horák announced that the Fedora 18 (Spherical Cow) operating system for IBM System z (s390x) 64-bit systems is now available for download.

        • Fedora 18 for ARM released

          The Fedora 18 for ARM release includes pre-built images for Versatile Express (QEMU), Trimslice (Tegra), Pandaboard (OMAP4), GuruPlug (Kirkwood), and Beagleboard (OMAP3) hardware platforms. Fedora 18 for ARM also includes an installation tree in the yum repository which may be used to PXE-boot a kickstart-based installation on systems that support this option, such as the Calxeda EnergyCore (HighBank).

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • FOSS+CSS: Closed Source DOS Accounting Meets Linux and DOSEMU
  • Guest Post: Patrick McGarry on Open Source Disruption

    The ApacheCon NA 2013 conference is coming up. The event takes place 24 February – 2 March 2013, at the Hilton Portland and Executive Towers, in Portland Oregon. Registration for the event is now open, and you can find more about the conference, and registration here.

    In conjuction with ApacheCon NA 2013, OStatic is running a series of guest posts from influencers in the Apache community. The first in the series ran here. In this second post in the series, Patrick McGarry (shown), a community manager for Inktank, the consulting services company that helps users to learn and deploy Ceph, discusses open source and disruption.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome and Firefox demonstrate plug-in-free video chat

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla improves Firefox’s Do Not Track feature

        If you are on the Internet, chance is that you are being tracked. Advertising companies, Internet services and even Internet Service Provider track users for a variety of purposes, but most often to profile users to increase advertising revenue or sell the data to companies that do.

        While cookies are most often used for that purpose, and I’m using the term lightly so that it includes all different kinds of cookies, it is not the only option that companies have. Fingerprinting may be an option as well which tries to identify users based on factors such as their IP address, operating system, web browser and other data that is submitted automatically when connections are established.

  • Databases

    • Monty has last laugh as distros abandon MySQL

      When the community GNU/Linux distributions Fedora and openSUSE recently announced that they would be switching their default database management system from MySQL to MariaDB, one man in Finland would have had a very hearty laugh.

    • Oracle Releases MySQL 5.6 To Improve NoSQL, Performance

      While there’s many in the open-source community that remain unhappy with Oracle, including the direction of the MySQL database server to the point that Fedora will now ship MariaDB instead, MySQL 5.6 was released this morning by the software giant.

      Oracle says their general availability release of MySQL 5.6 has increased performance, scalability, reliability, and manageability over earlier releases of this open-source MySQL database software.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Microsoft Office and the Big Subscription Bet

      “LibreOffice does everything I need, and in fact I keep learning about new things I can do in LibreOffice,” said Google+ blogger Kevin O’Brien. “I even carry it with me on USB Thumb drive in the Portable Apps version. So please explain to me why I should care about overpriced bloatware? And don’t get me started on the $%^**#%$ Ribbon.”

    • LibreOffice 4.0 Release to Widen Divide with OpenOffice

      It was in September of 2010 that a group of key members of the OpenOffice.org developer team announced that they were no longer willing to wait out the uncertain future of OpenOffice, especially in the face of the lack of interest shown by Oracle, the new owner of the project following its acquisition of Sun Microsystems nine months before.

  • Healthcare

    • Node.js integrates with M: Next big thing in healthcare IT

      Join the M revolution and the next big thing in healthcare IT: the integration of the node.js programming language with the NoSQL hierarchical database, M.

      M was developed to organize and access with high efficiency the type of data that is typically managed in healthcare, thus making it uniquely well-suited for the job.

      One of the biggest reasons for the success of M is that it integrates the database into the language in a natural and seamless way. The growth and involvement of th community of M developers however, has been below the radar for educators and the larger IT community. As a consequece it has been facing challenges for recruiting young new developers, despite the critical importance of this technology for supporting the Health IT infrastructure of the US.

  • Business

    • The impact of open source on business and social good

      I vividly remember the time when my early opinions about open source software were built around questions that made natural (and perfect) sense to me at that point in my life, like: “Why would someone sell a software product for free?” and “Why should anyone participate in a project that does not reap financial rewards?” These formed the basis of my rationale.

      That was before I embarked on my professional journey and as a consequence had not experienced organizational life. My myopic view towards the open source methodology of developing projects, and the profound impact this methodology has on the business world in general and the organizational structure in particular, began to broaden after my first intense exposure to the Linux operating system at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. My understanding about the magnificence of this operating system and the process by which it is constantly iterated caused a 180-degree transformation. This consequently cultivated appreciation for the entire process of peer production and the impact it has on today’s businesses, both big and small.

    • The Right Way To Do IT

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • The Luminosity of Free Software

      About 5 minutes before starting the Hangout last week, I impulsively named it “The Luminosity of Free Software” as that was resonating with the thoughts in my head at the time .. and I think I’ll stick with that name for the time being. You may notice that there is no “KDE” in the title (or my name, either :) and that’s intentional. I want to be able to discuss larger issues in Free software, and this gives me more freedom to do so. The show will be a reflection of my interests and those who watch and participate, so there will be a good amount of discussion that relates to or is relevant for KDE, it just won’t be exclusively about it.

    • Time for GNUPedia again?

      At one time, Wikipedia was a universal source for the useful programming tools and resources. If some language, framework or tool was used in general, it has been covered there. However recently Wikipedia seems raising the requirements to the level that would exclude many useful Free software projects. For instance, recently JAMWiki has been removed – reasonably popular, thousands of downloads (and that is for server side app), mentioned in near every review on Java-based wiki engines over multiple sources on the web – where it has been a problem?

    • FSF licensing team’s 2012 – 400 compliance reports resolved

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Why Aaron Died

        I believe that Aaron’s death was not caused by depression.

        I say this with the understanding that many other people would not have made the same choice that Aaron made, even under the same pressures he faced.

        I say this not in any way to understate the pain he was in — nor, for that matter, the pain that clinically depressed people are in.

        [...]

        I say this because over the last 20 months of his life, Aaron spent more time with me than with anyone else in the world. For much of the last 8 months of his life, we lived together, commuted together, and worked in the same office — and I was never worried he was depressed until the last 24 hours of his life.

        I say this because, since his suicide, as I’ve tried to grapple with what happened, I’ve been learning. I’ve researched clinical depression and associated disorders. I’ve read their symptoms, and at least until the last 24 hours of his life, Aaron didn’t fit them.

        And that makes it hard to read, in so many articles, that “Aaron struggled with depression” — as though the prosecution was just one factor among many, as though, perhaps, he might have committed suicide on January 11 without it.

      • Where Does Mayor Bloomberg Stand on Academic Freedom?

        This morning, Karen Gould, the president of Brooklyn College, issued an extraordinarily powerful statement in defense of academic freedom and the right of the political science department to co-sponsor the BDS event.

        [...]

        So that’s good. But the fight is not over. The New York City Council, as you know, has laid down a gauntlet: if this event goes forward, with my department’s co-sponsorship, the Council will withdraw funds from CUNY and Brooklyn College. As Glenn Greenwald points out this morning, this is about as raw an exercise of coercive political power —and simple a violation of academic freedom—as it gets; it is almost exactly comparable to what Rudy Guiliani did when he was mayor and pulled the funding from the Brooklyn Museum merely because some people did not like what it was exhibiting.

        So now the battle lines are clear: it’s the City Council (and perhaps the State Legislature and Congress too) against academic freedom, freedom of speech, and CUNY.

        Throughout this controversy, there has been one voice that has been conspicuously silent: Mayor Bloomberg. To everyone who is a journalist out there, I ask you to call the Mayor’s office and ask the question: Will he stand with the City Council (and follow the model of his predecessor), threatening the withholding of funds merely because government officials do not like words that are being spoken at Brooklyn College? Or will he stand up to the forces of orthodoxy and insist: an educational institution, particularly one as precious to this city as CUNY, needs to remain a haven for the full exploration of views and opinions, even about—especially about—topics as fraught as the conflicts between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

      • A time for action: One student’s commitment to free and open access

        I have been a PhD student for less than two years.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Social Media and the Professional: Twitter

    In this series I’m looking at my experiences using social media as a business professional. In this entry I examine the rules and policies I personally use regarding Twitter.

    In the introduction to this series of blog entries, I asked several questions regarding my use of particular social media services, and how I manage the intersection of my personal and professional lives in them. Here I’m going to look specifically at Twitter. This is the way I use the service and may or may not be how you do or should use it yourself.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Congress Is About to Introduce Legislation to Decriminalize Marijuana

      Whispers has learned that a member of Congress is about to introduce legislation today to decriminalize marijuana.

      The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2013 will be introduced by Democratic Rep. Jared Polis, from Colo., whose office did not immediately respond to request for comment.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • The Siren Song of the Robot

      The quest for cheap energy and cheap labor is a conquering human urge, one that has played out with notable ferocity starting with the Industrial Revolution. The introduction of coal into British manufacturing and the more recent outsourcing of Western manufacturing to Asia have marked key thresholds in this ongoing progression.

  • Finance

    • Visa Sued by Australian Regulator Over Currency Policy

      Visa Inc., (V) the world’s biggest payments network, contravened Australia’s consumer protection laws by preventing buyers from using a currency of their choice when shopping, the country’s competition regulator said.
      The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in an e-mailed statement that it sued Visa in federal court, claiming the company prevented the expansion of so-called dynamic currency conversion services. A copy of the claim wasn’t immediately available from the court.

    • Group Launched to Support WikiLeaks, Transparency Journalism Reports Incredible Success

      A foundation dedicated to promoting and funding transparency journalism, which launched on December 16, has concluded its first round of funding for organizations. It has enjoyed incredible success and found there are a lot of people who want to support this kind of an organization.

      The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) raised nearly $200,000 for four different organizations, including WikiLeaks, which it collected donations to support because the media organization faces a banking blockade that makes it difficult for it to directly accept funds from supporters.

    • Too Fast To Fail: Is High-Speed Trading the Next Wall Street Disaster?

      AT 9:30 A.M. ON AUGUST 1 a software executive in a spread-collar shirt and a flashy watch pressed a button at the New York Stock Exchange, triggering a bell that signaled the start of the trading day. Milliseconds after the opening trade, buy and sell orders began zapping across the market’s servers with alarming speed. The trades were obviously unusual. They came in small batches of 100 shares that involved nearly 150 different financial products, including many stocks that normally don’t see anywhere near as much activity. Within three minutes, the trade volume had more than doubled from the previous week’s average.

    • Private Prisons Will Get Totally Slammed By Immigration Reform
    • Max Keiser’s unpleasant facts on UK economy (25Jan13)

      Max Keiser deliveres some unpleasant truthes on the state of the UK economy.

    • FBI Monitors Occupy, Denies Violating First Amendment

      Though it should surprise no one, the FBI has been thoroughly tracking the ideas, movements, and members of Occupy Wall Street since August of 2011, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity,” Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, PCJF’s executive director said in a release.

    • Goldman Sachs: Doing “God’s Work” by inflicting the Wages of Sin Globally

      The central point that I want to stress as a white-collar criminologist and effective financial regulator is that Goldman Sachs is not a singular “rotten apple” in a healthy bushel of banks. Goldman Sachs is the norm for systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) (the so-called “too big to fail” banks). Impunity from the laws, crony capitalism that degrades democracy, and massive national subsidies produce exceptionally criminogenic environments. Those environments are so perverse that they produce epidemics of “control fraud.” Control fraud occurs when the persons who control a seemingly legitimate entity use it as a “weapon” to defraud. In finance, accounting is the “weapon of choice.” It is important to remember, however, that other forms of control fraud maim and kill thousands.

    • Carney set for first taste of Bank of England
    • Fixing ‘too-big-to-fail’

      The United States is plagued by large corporations with outsized political power. They are “too big to fail.” So if they are about to fail, they get rescued. Many are so big that they can block the laws needed to stop them from destroying the economy or the environment.

      We need to replace them with smaller companies, but U.S. antitrust law is inadequate. It exists, but has been weakened over the past decades. Consider the proposed “Volcker Rule,” which would make many banks split into two companies, one for risky investments and one for loans based on savings, as the old Glass-Steagall law required. This would address some problems, but would not make banks small enough. Eliminating “too big to fail” banks means making sure that each is small enough that regulators, prosecutors and elected officials won’t hesitate to let it suffer the consequences of its own decisions.

    • Does anybody NOT see the common sense Richard Stallman speaks here?

      It isn’t often that I feel the need to amplify Stallman’s words; he’s usually a little extreme-left for my tastes. But this is one of those times when he reminds me why I still count him as a visionary – perhaps even still ahead of his time.

      In this Reuters interview, he addresses the problem of corporations that are “too big to fail” and proposes that monopoly laws be strengthened, a return to Glass-Steagall-type regulation, and a progressive tax on corporations, where the bigger the company, the more of a percentage they pay.

      Wonderful, wonderful sense, it would fix just about every economic problem we have in this country. And you can hang your hopes on seeing unicorns fly before it actually happens.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • FCC Poised to Open the Door for Unbridled Expansion of Media Empires

      If the world can learn anything from Britain’s phone-hacking scandal, it’s a lesson about the brute force of a media empire.

      Rupert Murdoch’s conglomerate was so powerful, it was allegedly able to invade people’s privacy and pay police officials to grease its dodgy news gathering machine; all while playing kingmaker in British Parliamentary elections and gaining access to the highest reaches of state power.

    • CBS To CNET: ‘Free Beer, Not Free Speech’

      Meanwhile, CNET has been fired by folks at CES. They won’t be choosing the “Best of Show” anymore and they lose credibility as an objective tech news source–at least temporarily.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Police drug search intrudes on husband’s final moments with deceased wife

      A man says Vernal police disrupted an intimate moment of mourning with his deceased wife of 58 years when they searched his house for her prescription medication without a warrant within minutes of her death.

    • Amicus briefs in Hedges v. Obama inform indefinite detention lawsuit

      The Bill of Rights Defense Committee recently coordinated the filing of three amicus (friend of the court) briefs in Hedges v. Obama, a lawsuit in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals challenging domestic military detention under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012.

    • On Rosa Parks’ 100th Birthday, Recalling Her Rebellious Life Before and After the Montgomery Bus

      Born on Feb. 4, 1913, today would have been Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday. On Dec. 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her act of resistance led to a 13-month boycott of the Montgomery bus system that would help spark the civil rights movement. Today we spend the hour looking at Rosa Parks’ life with historian Jeanne Theoharis, author of the new book, “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.” Often described as a tired seamstress, no troublemaker, Parks was in fact a dedicated civil rights activist involved with the movement long before and after her historic action on the Montgomery bus. “Here we have, in many ways, one of the most famous Americans of the 20th century, and yet treated just like a sort of children’s book hero,” Theoharis says.

    • Twitter Wikileaks Court Order – News and Background

      The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, February 15 in a hearing in a legal battle over the government’s demands for Twitter user records. The ACLU and EFF represent Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic parliamentarian and one of the Twitter users whose records were sought by the government.

      On February 8, 2011, a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia unsealed motions filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, EFF, and others concerning government attempts to obtain Twitter account records about three individuals in connection with its WikiLeaks investigation. The documents were originally filed under seal late last month.

    • Bipartisan Washington State Bills Would Nullify NDAA “Indefinite Detention”

      Washington state lawmakers will consider bipartisan legislation that would block any cooperation with attempts to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens or lawful resident aliens in Washington without due process under sections written into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

      If passed, the law would also make it a class C felony for any state or federal agent to act under sections 1021 or 1022 of the NDAA.

    • EFF wants a rewrite of US e-crime laws

      INTERNET ACTIVIST GROUP the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wants the US to reconsider the severity of its computer crime laws and tear them up and start over.
      The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1zoHD)

    • Exposed: Whole Foods’ and the Biggest Organic Foods Distributor’s Troubled Relationships with Workers

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • RIAA Set For Historic 10,000,000th Google URL Takedown
      • The EU Commission’s Outrageous Attempt to Avoid Copyright Reform

        Today starts “Licences for Europe”, an initiative by the European Commission to discuss the issues of today’s copyright regime. Instead of planning for a broad reform that would break away with full-on repression of cultural practices based on sharing and remixing, the Commission is setting up a parody of a debate. 75% of the participants to the working-group concerning “users” are affiliated with the industry1 and the themes and objectives are defined so as to ensure that the industry has its way and that nothing will change. Through this initiative, the EU Commission shows its contempt of the many citizens who participated in defeating ACTA and are still mobilized against repressive policies.

      • Even more delays to the Digital Economy Act

        The Digital Economy Act’s Sharing of Costs Order has been withdrawn – another procedural complication that will delay implementation even further.

      • Japanese Government Plants Anti-Piracy Warnings Inside Fake Downloads

        Last year saw a major upgrade in Japan’s anti-piracy legislation in an attempt to shift Internet users away from file-sharing sites and networks and towards the country’s legitimate outlets. But while the change in the law was significant, getting the legal-downloading message to users proved problematic. In response the government and rightsholders are now seeding fake files with anti-piracy messages hidden inside.

      • Researchers dive into copyrights and wrongs of the download age

        The University of Glasgow will be home to a research centre that will examine how copyright is changing and the need for new business models for distributing creative content.

      • Golden Eye write to alleged copyright infringers

        Just under 1,000 broadband subscribers in the UK received letters in December from O2 or Be Broadband, saying that the company is passing on their name and address details to a company called Golden Eye.

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