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07.27.14

Links 27/7/2014: KDE 4.14 Beta 3, KDE 4.14 Beta 3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 11:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Millions Stranded as US Passport and Visa System Hit by Mystery Glitch

    Millions of people awaiting US travel documents have been left in limbo, as a major computer glitch crashed the United States global system for passport and visa services.

  • Daniel Radcliffe refused entry to US due to visa problems

    But he was allegedly turned away by border control when he tried to get back to the US for the Comic-Con conference in San Diego.

  • Science

    • 1969 Kokomo grads share space stories

      Shortly before the mission, though, the CIA got word that Russia was about to send a two-man craft to orbit the moon. The U.S. couldn’t let Russia get ahead in the space race, so they changed the mission.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • UN finds second black box of Air Algerie jet among scattered debris in northern Mali
    • Second black box found at Air Algerie crash site (+video)
    • US has not been able to show Russian government was involved in downing of airliner

      A series of unanswered questions about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shows the limits of U.S. intelligence gathering even when it is intensely focused, as it has been in Ukraine since Russia seized Crimea in March.

    • The Mystery of a Ukrainian Army ‘Defector’

      U.S. intelligence officials suggest that the person who fired the missile that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 may have been “a defector” from the Ukrainian army, an apparent attempt to explain why some CIA analysts thought satellite images revealed men in Ukrainian army uniforms manning the missile battery, writes Robert Parry.

    • Does Russia (And Humanity) Have A Future?

      The Russian government has finally realized that it has no Western “partners,” and is complaining bitterly about the propagandistic lies and disinformation issued without any evidence whatsoever against the Russian government by Washington, its European vassals, and presstitute media.

    • Palestinians don’t blame Hamas for civilian deaths

      As the Gaza conflict intensified, the Palestinian death toll surpassed 700, more than two-thirds of them civilians. Add to that 4,000 injured, widespread infrastructure destruction, and 1.8 million Palestinians trapped in an area the size of Manhattan. On the Israeli side, the civilian death toll is three.

    • Over 50 Israeli Reservists Declare ‘We Refuse to Serve’
    • Decrying “Brutal Operation Taking Place in Our Name,” Israeli Military Reservists Refuse to Serve
    • Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza—Debunked

      Israel has killed almost 800 Palestinians in the past twenty-one days in the Gaza Strip alone; its onslaught continues. The UN estimates that more than 74 percent of those killed are civilians. That is to be expected in a population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately 15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the world’s only superpower. In fact, it does not even deny that they are civilians.

    • How the Media Is Helping Hamas

      Hamas and its Palestinian and Western propagandists continue to insist that the Islamist movement does not use civilians in the Gaza Strip as human shields during war. But the truth is that Hamas itself has admitted that it does use innocent civilians as human shields, to increase the number of casualties and defame Israel in the eyes of the international community.

      [...]

      Palestinian sources have confirmed that Hamas has executed at least 13 Palestinians on suspicion of “collaboration” with Israel. None of the suspects was brought to trial, and the executions were reportedly carried out in the most brutal manner, with torture that included severe beating and breaking arms and legs.

    • Israeli soldiers kill three Palestinian demonstrators in West Bank protest

      Army says it has used ‘riot dispersal means’ against protesters but refuses to comment on live round use

    • Israel’s fears are real, but this Gaza war is utterly self-defeating

      An old foreign correspondent friend of mine, once based in Jerusalem, has turned to blogging. As the story he used to cover flared up once more, he wrote: “This conflict is the political equivalent of LSD – distorting the senses of all those who come into contact with it, and sending them crazy.” He was speaking chiefly of those who debate the issue from afar: the passions that are stirred, the bitterness and loathing that spew forth, especially online, of a kind rarely glimpsed when faraway wars are discussed. While an acid trip usually comes in lurid colours, here it induces a tendency to monochrome: one side is pure good, the other pure evil – with not a shade of grey in sight.

    • Israel-Gaza conflict: The secret report that helps Israelis to hide facts
    • It is a war crime to target densely packed Gaza homes

      Once again the Gaza Strip is subject to intense attack from Israeli forces. As of yesterday the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has documented 593 killed, among them 483 civilians – 151 children, 82 women – and 3,197 injured. Among the injured are 926 children and 641 women, although this does not include the figures for the border areas or the Shejeia area.

    • OPINION: Truth also a casualty of Gaza war

      I don’t know about you, but if the attack had happened to me, I would be pretty damn angry. Yet on Monday, Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading human rights organizations, issued a report on the fighting in Gaza that accused Israel of “war crimes” because one of its “accurate missiles” had struck a hospital (unlike in my parable, no one was killed but four patients and staff were wounded). Therefore, according to Human Rights Watch, given the accuracy of the Israeli weapons, this must have been an “intentional or reckless attack” deserving of a war crimes prosecution even though, according to Israel, the hospital grounds were being used by Hamas to fire rockets and Israel had given an advance warning.

    • 45,000 Descend on London to Protest at Israel’s Actions in Gaza

      An estimated 45,000 people marched through London from the Israeli Embassy to Parliament Square, via Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, according to figures released by the Metropolitan Police.

    • Kerry: Libya evacuation not permanent
    • US evacuates embassy in Libya
    • U.S. evacuates embassy in Libya amid clashes

      The United States shut down its embassy in Libya on Saturday and evacuated its diplomats to neighbouring Tunisia under U.S. military escort amid a significant deterioration in security in Tripoli as fighting intensified between rival militias, the State Department said.

    • US embassy in Libya evacuated amid unrest
    • Ceasefire ends as Gaza militants resume firing rockets into Israel

      Militants resumed firings rockets into Israel from Gaza on Saturday, rejecting an extension to a ceasefire in a conflict in which more than 1,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died.

    • Being strategic partner of liars & cowards

      Sunday, July 27, 2014 – Pakistan from the 1950s onwards, is insisting to go together with the US despite all the negative and even shameful experiences we have made in this relationship. The first Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan, preferred to visit the US instead of Moscow first, and was afterwards assassinated when he refused to give air bases to US for spying on USSR.

    • Hamas rejects 4-hour Gaza war truce extension

      A Hamas official says the group has rejected a four-hour extension of a humanitarian truce proposed by Israel.

    • Sign Company Deluged By Orders For “Guns Are Welcome” Signs

      We’ve written twice about the Maryville, Tennessee restaurant that has seen it’s business go through the roof after posting signs that lawfully carried handguns were welcome.

    • Protestors to prison, drones to Afghanistan

      On July 10, 2014, in New York State, Judge David Gideon sentenced Mary Anne Grady Flores to a year in prison and fined her $1,000 for photographing a peaceful demonstration at the U.S. Air National Guard’s 174th Attack Wing at Hancock Field (near Syracuse) where weaponized Reaper drones are remotely piloted in lethal flights over Afghanistan. Dozens have been sentenced, previously, for peaceful protest there. But uniquely, the court convicted her under laws meant to punish stalkers, deciding that by taking pictures outside the heavily guarded base she violated a previous order of protection not to stalk or harass the commanding officer.

    • Moral authority doesn’t mean diddly

      Can’t Golding see the distinction between collateral killing of another nation’s civilians during ‘war’ and extrajudicial slaughter of Jamaican citizens by Jamaican police sworn to protect all citizens? For someone Booklist Boyne insists is brilliant, surely he could’ve found more suitable analogies such as the treatment of black Americans under Jim Crow laws particularly by crazed mobs, including law-enforcement officers hiding under white hoods. Still, the distinction is Jim Crow is defunct, while we still butcher innocents and guilty alike without troubling the courts.

    • Call for more information on Kiwi drone death

      Former Green MP Keith Locke is urging New Zealanders to demand information about the Kiwi killed in a drone strike overseas last year.

    • Why People Are Organizing to End U.S. Empire

      World history is filled with empires, e.g. the Roman and Byzantine empires, the European colonial empires, various ancient Iranian empires, the Arab Caliphate and Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union to name a few. These historic empires have one thing in common: they no longer exist. As the lifecycle of empire wanes, rather than being a benefit to the home country, sustaining empire becomes more expensive than it is worth.

    • Israeli military resumes Gaza operations

      Around 5,000 people took part in a protest against the war in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, with a heavy police presence to deter rightwing extremists who abused and attacked the demonstrators.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • What in the name of Zeus is Bitcoin?

      Bitcoin is a digital currency that became popular in 2013. It’s not controlled by banks, or anyone. It’s a decentralised currency designed to free out money from those who would oppress us. But how does a digital currency work? How can it be valid if there’s no one to say who has what? Ben Everard investigates.

    • NHS manager redundancy payouts total £1.6bn since 2010

      The cost of redundancy payments for NHS managers has hit almost £1.6bn since the coalition came to power and embarked on its sweeping reorganisation, according to the latest Department of Health accounts.

      The total includes payouts to some 4,000 “revolving door” managers, who left after May 2010 with large payouts but have since returned either on full-time or part-time contracts.

    • China gaining on US as top economy

      China is supplanting America’s international role, new data from the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project shows the growing international consensus in this regard.

      The median percentage of people naming US as the world’s leading economic power has dropped from 49% six years ago to 40% today. During the same period, the percentage of people naming China has risen from 19% to 31%, according to Pew’s analysts.

    • 1 per cent Chinese own one-third of national wealth: report

      About one per cent of Chinese households own one-third of the nation’s wealth, a report has said, raising concerns about income inequality in the world’s most populous country led by Communist Party of China.

    • Green party calls for wealth tax on assets of multimillionaires

      Presenting the radical new proposal, Natalie Bennett, the Green leader, said other political parties only offered minor tweaks to the UK’s failed economic system, instead of major changes to deal with inequality.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Met worse than Murdoch

      The revelation that undercover Met officers spied on the family of Jean Charles De Menezes after they murdered him, leaves me utterly appalled.

      You have to consider this in the context of the lies that the Met assiduously spread about De Menezes – that he entered the tube without buying a ticket, that he vaulted the ticket gates, that he ran away from officers, that he was wearing a bulky jacket.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • What I Learned from Edward Snowden at the Hacker Conference

      His audience was the crowd at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference, a group of people no one would ever mistake for attendees at a political convention. Amid the sea of black clothing were many unconventional fashion statements: purple bandanas and balloon pants, and tartan kilts, and white robes, and green hair. The only man in sight in a suit and tie was also toting around a pair of payphones of murky provenance. Even the federal agents present had found a way to blend into the crowd of EFF merchandise and white dude dreadlocks.

    • Two MPs to sue government over data law ‘stitch-up’

      Two MPs, Tom Watson and David Davis, are to sue the government for introducing “ridiculous” emergency legislation allowing police and security services access to people’s phone and internet records.

    • Snowden: “If I end up in chains at Guantanamo, I can live with that”
    • Should NZ reporters fear spying?

      Pen, notebook – and encryption key. It’s time to add digital security to the reporter’s toolkit, security experts say, and that includes journalists in New Zealand.

    • Rogers, Telus Launch Charter Challenge To Police Mass Spying Request

      An Ontario judge has agreed to hear a Charter of Rights challenge brought by Telus and Rogers after they were asked by police in April to release cellphone information of about 40,000 to 50,000 customers as part of an investigation.

      Justice John Sproat says that the case has highlighted important issues about privacy and law enforcement that should be challenged in open court, even though Peel regional police tried to withdraw the requests.

    • US spied on Berisha, Thaci and Tadic

      NSA in 2009 spied also on other leaders of the Balkan countries, like the PM of Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation, Nexhat Brankoviq and the former Croatian president, Stipe Mesiq. The news was made public by the digital library “Kriptom”, that deals with secret documents.

  • Civil Rights

    • Prosecutors Are Reading Emails From Inmates to Lawyers

      The extortion case against Thomas DiFiore, a reputed boss in the Bonanno crime family, encompassed thousands of pages of evidence, including surveillance photographs, cellphone and property records, and hundreds of hours of audio recordings.

      But even as Mr. DiFiore sat in a jail cell, sending nearly daily emails to his lawyers on his case and his deteriorating health, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn sought to add another layer of evidence: those very emails. The prosecutors informed Mr. DiFiore last month that they would be reading the emails sent to his lawyers from jail, potentially using his own words against him.

    • How are execution drugs supposed to work?

      A combination of midazolam-hydromorphone led to Joseph Wood ‘gasping and snorting’ for almost two hours during his execution on Wednesday night

    • Contemporary Democracy Is a Fraud

      What if democracy as it has come to exist in America today is dangerous to personal freedom? What if our so-called democracy erodes the people’s understanding of natural rights and the reasons for government and instead turns political campaigns into beauty contests? What if American democracy allows the government to do anything it wants, as long as more people bother to show up at the voting booth to support the government than show up to say no?

    • CIA Intercepted Whistleblower Communications Related to Senate Investigation into Torture

      The inspector general for the CIA obtained a “legally protected email and other unspecified communications” between whistleblower officials and lawmakers related to alleged whistleblower retaliation. The CIA inspector general allegedly failed to investigate claims of retaliation against an agency official for helping the Senate intelligence committee with the production of their report on torture, according to McClatchy Newspapers.

    • Ex-CIA officials decry no access to detainee study

      About a dozen former CIA officials named in a classified Senate report on decade-old agency interrogation practices were notified in recent days that they would be able to review parts of the document in a secure room in suburban Washington after signing a secrecy agreement.

    • Ex-CIA officials denied access to torture report

      About a dozen former CIA officials named in a classified Senate report on decade-old agency interrogation practices were notified in recent days that they would be able to review parts of the document in a secure room in suburban Washington after signing a secrecy agreement.

      Then, on Friday, many were told they would not be able to see it, after all.

    • CIA Does the Torture, U.S. Ally Pays the Price

      The European Court of Human Rights yesterday ruled against Poland, charging our ally with human rights violations for helping the CIA operate an ‘extraordinary rendition’ program in which two persons suspected of terrorism were delivered to a “black site” in 2002-2003, for detention, interrogation and torture — in the attempt to extract bogus confessions.

    • ‘Ex-Chief of C.I.A. Shapes Response to Detention Report’

      A tentatively titled and reported New York Times article glimpses former agency director George Tenet’s efforts to suppress and discredit a report accusing “former C.I.A. officials of misleading Congress and the White House” about the agency’s detention and interrogation program.

    • Ex-Chief of C.I.A. Shapes Response to Detention Report

      Over the past several months, Mr. Tenet has quietly engineered a counterattack against the Senate committee’s voluminous report, which could become public next month. The effort to discredit the report has set up a three-way showdown among former C.I.A. officials who believe history has been distorted, a White House carefully managing the process and politics of declassifying the document, and Senate Democrats convinced that the Obama administration is trying to protect the C.I.A. at all costs.

    • Ex-officials demand to see CIA report
    • Some Named In Senate’s CIA Torture Report Denied Chance To Read It

      It’s the latest chapter in the drama and recriminations that have been playing out behind the scenes in connection with what some call the Senate torture report, a summary of which is being declassified and is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

      “I am outraged,” said John Rizzo, one of the former officials who was offered, and then refused, a chance to see the summary report before publication. He retired in 2009 as the CIA’s top lawyer after playing a key role in the interrogation program.

    • Former CIA Officials Furious They Can’t Review Senate Torture Report

      Several former CIA officials are outraged that the Senate withdrew its offer to allow them to read an extensive report on interrogation techniques that many of them are implicated in.

    • Senate Report on CIA Interrogations Could Be Released Next Week

      The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is set to publicly release — as early as next week — selected and carefully redacted portions of its 6,300 page report on controversial CIA detention, rendition, and interrogation techniques used after 9/11, several administration and intelligence officials said.

    • The Gospel vs. hysteria

      From El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, these people are coming from nations where the U.S. in the past frequently meddled in their internal affairs, often with quite negative effects.

    • Interview with US immigrants’ rights activist: “This administration has been terrible for us on many fronts”

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Chattanooga and Wilson Petition FCC to Remove Anti-Competitive Restrictions

      Chattanooga and Wilson, North Carolina, are two of the most successful municipal fiber networks by a variety of metrics, including jobs created, aggregate community savings, and more. This has led to significant demand from surrounding communities for Wilson and Chattanooga to expand. We have profiled both of them in case studies: Wilson and Chattanooga.

      [...]

      And both Sam Gustin and Karl Bode were quick to post on the matter as well. Sam wrote on Motherboard at Vice:

      In states throughout the country, major cable and telecom companies have battled attempts to create community broadband networks, which they claim put them at a competitive disadvantage.

      Last week, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican who has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the cable and telecommunications industry, introduced an amendment to a key appropriations bill that would prevent the FCC from preempting such state laws. The amendment passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 233-200, but is unlikely to make it through the Senate.

    • Net Neutrality Astroturfing Stirs Up Conflict Between Latino/Minority Groups

      We’ve written a few times about the highly cynical astroturfing practice in Washington DC, in which certain lobbyist groups basically have “deals” with certain public interest groups. The basic deal is that the lobbyists guarantee big cash donations from their big company clients, and then the lobbyists get to write letters “on behalf of” those organizations for whatever policy they want enacted (or blocked).

  • DRM/Locking

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Apple and Microsoft Are Proprietary Software Companies and the Media Should Stop Openwashing Them

Posted in Apple, Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 6:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Hardware

Summary: New examples where proprietary software giants are characterised as FOSS-embracing and FOSS-friendly by gullible or dishonest ‘journalists’

Apple has made many headlines recently because of its back doors and Microsoft has made many headlines recently because of its massive round of layoffs (almost 20% of the staff). Both companies are proprietary software companies and they have a lot in common.

Techrights is disturbed to have found continued distortion of the facts. “Microsoft might finally be committing to open source” is a new article (reprinted here) which says: “Microsoft is known for keeping its programming secrets to itself. But under CEO Satya Nadella, the maker of proprietary behemoths like Windows and Microsoft Office is starting to show up in the world of open-source software, whose code is public for anyone to see, borrow from and tinker with.”

No, this is fiction. This is the fairly recent PR strategy that tries to associate the new CEO with FOSS, even though he continues using patents to attack FOSS and is running blatantly dishonest attack ads against FOSS products, especially Google’s. If Microsoft brings proprietary software to Android, for instance, this has nothing to do with FOSS. Quite the contrary in fact; it is about contaminating FOSS with proprietary spyware. The puff piece continues: “Late last year Microsoft finally made itself an account on Github, now the de-facto platform that software writers use for sharing and working on open-source code. “Microsoft has changed as a company and is becoming more open in the way that we collaborate with others,” the account’s description reads.”

Wow! Microsoft “made itself an account on Github”! Imagine the heroic act! I already have two accounts on Github, one for my job and one for my personal projects. The article goes on and makes all sorts of softball claims, pretending to be giving Microsoft the sceptical treatment.

Here is another silly new article, pretending that a proprietary NSA-accessible platform called Azure has “Open Source Partnerships”. It then cites the Microsoft proxy/mole “Microsoft Open Tech” by saying: “Microsoft Open Tech (MS Open Tech), a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, has added two new partnerships under its belt. Announced during the ongoing O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Oregon, they have teamed up with Packer.io and OpenNebula.”

This proxy has done nothing FOSS-like. It just wants to devour FOSS by putting it under a proprietary platform with surveillance. OSCON and O’Reilly have once again shown themselves to be soft on Microsoft. Based on the amount of press coverage this has received [1, 2], one might say that Tim O’Reilly keeps giving Microsoft an effective propaganda platform. Microsoft has paid him for this, ensuring that a proprietary surveillance platform gets coverage in a supposedly FOSS-centric conference.

But let’s not focus only on Microsoft. Misreporting is often seen when it comes to Apple, the most hyped-up company in the world. It’s all about perception and branding. One author’s bias (he is a “Mac”-branded PC user) can be found in this supposedly FOSS-centric site. He says that “Apple is a beloved company in the open source community,” but based on our experiences, this is patently false. There is other promotional language there, including: “Despite being one of the most well run technology companies ever, Apple has a surprisingly complicated relationship with open source. Ironically, Apple is a beloved company in the open source community, but, now more than ever, it needs to hear the call to become more open. I’ve also always noted here on OStatic that many open source enthusiasts favor the Mac over Windows systems. That’s no surprise. Apple’s culture closely aligns with many open source principles, though its culture certainly isn’t totally open.”

What?!

“Apple’s culture closely aligns with many open source principles”?

In what universe?

There are other large companies that try to openwash themselves these days. We recently covered HP’s publicity stunts and here we have another, pretending that defanging one’s software patents is somehow an act of becoming “Open Source” (Tesla uses this type of propaganda).

A man from HP, speaking about OpenStack, says that “just as we indemnified Linux 15 years ago, we are doing exactly the same thing now.” Well, indemnification does not achieve much. Why acquire software patents in the first place? Why has HP been so hostile towards GNU/Linux, including in Munich? Why is HP hiring so many executives from Microsoft? Why is HP lobbying for software patents?

The bottom line is that many companies (if not all) want to be seen as “open”, but most of them are faking it. For the press to play along with their marketing/PR ambitious is worse than irresponsible; it is reckless. █

Bloomberg’s Microsoft Propaganda

Posted in Deception at 6:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Bloomberg delivers ‘damage control’ and PR ahead of the layoffs announcement; Microsoft uses Nokia to hide it and Bloomberg helps Microsoft by radically modifying headlines

THERE has been something notably insidious about the coverage of Microsoft matters (and its rivals) in the Wall Street-friendly, plutocrat-owned Bloomberg.

Years ago we found explosive evidence about Dina Bass from Bloomberg. It showed how Microsoft had been grooming her and using her to produce puff pieces. Earlier this month Bass 'broke' the story about Microsoft layoffs but mostly delivered 'damage control', PR and spin. She was acting like a messenger of Microsoft. Microsoft is basically trying to blame it on Nokia, which Microsoft itself just merely destroyed (so much for the “job creator” nonsense).

The reality of Microsoft’s numbers is quite grim. For starters, actual sales (numbers) were down, which has nothing to do with Nokia. Watch this Bloomberg report titled “Microsoft’s Quarterly Profit Hurt by Nokia Acquisition”. This article actually had the headline “Microsoft Profit Misses Estimates on Weak Demand”, but this headline was changed by the editor. Fortunately we spotted this discrepancy and it shows that someone inside Bloomberg is changing the story. Suddenly it’s the fault of “Nokia Acquisition” rather than “Weak Demand”. Big difference, eh? We saw similar misdirections years ago when Microsoft announced other major layoffs.

If one looks closely at the cause, GNU/Linux (in the form of Chrome OS for the most part) is gaining as Microsoft simply scrambles to keep up (dumping) and still fails. As one article put it, “Microsoft (MSFT) has good reason to be worried about Chromebooks, the cheap laptops that run Google’s (GOOG) Chrome operating system.” Sales of Windows are down significantly and a lot of staff is being laid off. As for Nokia, Ahonen says there are “still no profits out of the ex-Nokia handset businessthat Elop wrecked. The smartphone unit has now produced 12 consecutive quarters of losses!” That’s since Microsoft stepped in. “Nokia Xpress Browser and MixRadio are likely to be spun off into a separate business,” says this article, so maybe we have another Jolla in our hands, or another Digia.

“I see that Microsoft has deployed another “Get The FUD” campaign against Chromebooks,” Ryan said in the IRC channels, “like they did when they lost their lunch to Linux in the server market. This time they’re even buying Google ads. I can’t blame them. Nobody uses Bing. It’s even thrown in your face in Vista 8.1, but it must be the first thing people turn off, because even that isn’t helping them.” █

Frequency of Browser Back Doors in Microsoft Windows is Doubling

Posted in Microsoft, Security at 5:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

National Security Agency

Summary: The vulnerabilities which Microsoft tells the NSA about (before these are patched) are significantly growing in terms of their numbers

NOT ONLY Apple should be in the headlines for its back doors, which Apple is hardly denying. Apple admits putting them in there, but is being evasive about the motives. What about Microsoft? Why is the press not covering Microsoft back doors, as confirmed last year?

The other day we found this report [via] about “Internet Explorer vulnerabilities increas[ing] 100%” (year-to-year):

Bromium Labs analyzed public vulnerabilities and exploits from the first six months of 2014. The research determined that Internet Explorer vulnerabilities have increased more than 100 percent since 2013, surpassing Java and Flash vulnerabilities.

Here is more on the subject:

The report summarises public vulnerabilities and exploit trends that the firm observed in the first six months of 2014 and found that Microsoft’s web browser set a record high for reported vulnerabilities in the first half of 2014 while also “leading in publicly reported exploits”.

Remember that Microsoft tells the NSA about these vulnerabilities before they are patched. Perhaps the media should stop focusing only on Apple’s back doors. █

07.26.14

FUD Entities Entering the FOSS World

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Symantec enters the AllSeen Alliance and Sonatype is once again trying to claim great insecurity in FOSS due to software licensing

THE surveillance-oriented AllSeen Alliance has welcomed Microsoft and other patent aggressors (such as Red Bend Software) into its ranks. Now we discover that Symantec, which has been disseminating FUD about GNU/Linux, joins this Alliance, as revealed by the Linux Foundation a couple of days ago. To quote: “Symantec is an AllSeen Alliance Community Member, one of the world’s largest software companies and a leader in security, backup and availability solutions. Roxane Divol, SVP Product and Services Acceleration Group for Symantec, shares why the company decided to join the AllSeen Alliance and how they plan to contribute to AllJoyn for a connected experience that will change the Internet of Things.”

Well, Symantec, like some other companies, has been making money from creation of fear, putting aside its Microsoft connections and history of hostility towards Linux and FOSS. Symantec is one of several.

There are those who cover a “legal” security angle (they call their licensing FUD ‘security’, as per a deceiving headline from some weeks ago). Some of those are well linked to Microsoft (e.g. OpenLogic and Black Duck) and another such player is Sonatype (it targets Microsoft’s proprietary software and .NET developers). We covered its FUD quite recently, after we had observed Sonatype’s FUD reports from last year. Watch the gross misuse of the word “suspected” to insinuate that many organisations don’t comply with FOSS licences. As if proprietary software licences are always obeyed, without leading to assaults from the BSA et al. It is not so hard — let alone expensive — to comply with FOSS licences. █

Groklaw Back in the Wake of ODF in the UK?

Posted in OpenDocument at 11:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Renewed activity in FOSS-leaning legal site Groklaw amid numerous victories for FOSS

IN LIGHT of the good news about ODF, Groklaw has broken its silence and come back to life for the first time in nearly a year. The Document Foundation [1], its members [2], and some FOSS [3] or general news sites [4] have covered this as well because it’s a major breakthrough. There is other good news, such as the USPTO narrowing the scope of software patents, eliminating many of them. The “USPTO’s Scrutiny Of Software Patents Paying Off,” says this one article, which adds: “Though recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings have not provided much help, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s efforts to more closely scrutinize software patents is reducing the incentive for patent applicants to seek vague, broad claims, experts told USPTO officials at a forum Tuesday.”

No wonder Groklaw is eager to say something and perhaps come back for good. It will hopefully return to covering FOSS issues, such as the IRS assault on FOSS, patents against Android (China revealed Microsoft’s patents and Microsoft’s booster Richard Waters reveals that Qualcomm too might be affected [5]), among many other issues that never received an extensive legal coverage. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. The Document Foundation congratulates the UK government for their revolutionary and historical choice of open document standards
  2. What the UK Government’s adoption of ODF really means

    On Tuesday the news that the UK Government had decided to use ODF as its official and default file format started to spread. The full announcement with technical details may be found here; the Document Foundation published its press release on Thursday morning there.

  3. Docker acquires Orchard, SAP supports OpenStack, ODF and more
  4. UK government adopts ODF as standard document format

    The UK government has announced the open standards it has chosen for sharing and viewing official documents.

    The government has formally adopted the Open Document Format (ODF) as the standard for sharing and collaborating on documents and PDF/A or HTML as the standard for viewing documents. These standards are expected to be used across all government bodies.

  5. Qualcomm latest US tech company to reverse in China

    Qualcomm became the latest US technology company to suffer a reversal in China, as it warned on Wednesday that a government investigation there had added to its difficulties in collecting licensing fees on new mobile devices.

    [...]

    The warning follows a dent to Chinese revenues at other US IT companies such as Cisco and IBM, which have been hit by falling demand amid reports of official Chinese moves to discourage purchases of US technology in the wake of the intelligence revelations by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden.

Links 26/7/2014: New Wine, Chromebooks Strong Sales

Posted in News Roundup at 8:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • CoreOS Stable Release

    First off, Happy SysAdmin Day. We think we have a pretty good SysAdmin surprise in store for you today as we are announcing the CoreOS stable release channel. Starting today, you can begin running CoreOS in production. This version is the most tested, secure and reliable version available for users wanting to run CoreOS. This is a huge milestone for us.

  • CoreOS Experiences Its First Stable Release

    CoreOS, the lightweight Linux distribution designed for clustered deployments and depends upon utilization of Docker/LXC software containers, has experienced its first stable release.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • On LibreOffice and the Challenge to Install Linux to the New Office Computer

      Anyway, I took the leap of faith and proceeded with the installation. OpenMandriva Lx worked like a charm: it took care of the partitioning (interestingly, it said “Moondrake” instead of “OpenMandriva” :D) and installed itself in less than 10 minutes. When we booted the machine (expecting a catastrophe, if I must be honest), none of our visions of doom panned out. GRUB2 picked up Windows 7, that OS was fully operational, and OpenMandriva also launched (desktop effects included, yay!).

    • Dialogs and Coverity, current numbers

      We’ve now converted all but 54 of LibreOffice’s classic fixed widget size and position .src format elements to the GtkBuilder .ui format. This is due to the much appreciated efforts of Palenik Mihály and Szymon K’os, two of our GSOC2014 students, who are tackling the last bunch of hard to find or hard to convert ones.

  • Healthcare

    • Google Joins Samsung, Other Tech Titans, in Open Healthcare Race

      Will the next revolution in healthcare be built on open source collaboration and principles? There are increasing signs that it will be, and that the old model of scientists and doctors pursuing breakthroughs behind closed doors might be broken. Samsung, for example, has announced the Samsung Digital Health Initiative, which will be based on open hardware platforms and open software architecture. The initiative has several arms, and one surrounds an open healthcare platform called SAMI. Apple, too, announced its HealthKit at this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, although it remains to be seen how open that effort will be.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Program Octave

      GNU Octave is a project started by James Rawlings and John Ekerdt, but its main developer is John Eaton, with the name inspired by the chemist Octave Levenspiel.

    • Guix 0.7 Can Now Install The GNU Operating System

      The Guix package manager that’s designed to be a purely-functional package manager for GNU with an emphasis on being dependable, hackable, and liberating is out with its latest release.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Bugcrowd Seeks to Streamline Reporting and Handling of Bugs

      “All software contains security flaws,” touts the homepage of Bugcrowd, a new site that seeks to streamline the way flaws are reported by enforcing crowdsourced “responsible disclosure” policies. The Bugcrowd statement is probably pretty close to correct, too. As we’ve reported, Google, Mozilla and other companies have had success offering cash bounties for people who find security flaws, and those who find them are often security researchers.

Leftovers

07.25.14

Links 25/7/2014: GOG With GNU/Linux, Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Chromebooks Emerge as Major New Linux Force on Notebooks

      The Linux faithful have mixed opinions on the success of Google’s Linux- and Chrome browser based Chrome OS. The lightweight OS came along years after Fedora, Ubuntu and other Linux distros, and shares relatively little of their mainstream Linux codebase. Some dismiss it as a limited, browser-only platform — a complaint often applied to Firefox OS — while others warn that Google is co-opting and subjugating Linux, a process already begun with Android.

    • Google targets students with new Chromebook ad

      Google is all geared up to push Chromebooks to students in the US. They have uploaded a new ad on YouTube targeting students. The video titled Chromebook: For Students shows student lockers and a very clear text ‘everything a student needs in a laptop’.

    • Celebrate Chromecast’s first birthday with 3 months Google Play Music free

  • Server

    • Docker Acquires Orchard Laboratories to Manage Containers

      With the rise of containers as an alternative to virtual machines in Linux environments, IT organizations that make that shift will need a way to potentially manage thousands of containers. Looking to become one of the vendors that not only supplies those Linux containers but also manages them, Docker today announced it has acquired Orchard Laboratories Ltd.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Developers Jump Quickly On ACPI 5.1, Helps Out ARM

      Fresh off the release of ACPI 5.1 by the UEFI Forum, Linux developers are updating their support against this latest revision to the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. In particular, ACPI 5.1 is supposed to help out ARM.

      While accessing the ACPI/UEFI specifications still require jumping through some hoops, the ACPI 5.1 update is reported to fix major gaps in supporting ACPI on ARM. Hanjun Guo has already laid out patches for providing Linux ARM64 support compliant with the ACPI 5.1 specification. ACPI 5.1 has “major changes” to the MADT, FADT, GTDT, and _DSD for bettering up this non-x86 platform support.

    • Linux Foundation SysAdmin Eric Searcy Lives By Regex

      Eric Searcy is the IT Infrastructure Manager at the Linux Foundation. Here he tells us how he got started as a sysadmin and at the Linux Foundation, describes his typical day at work, and shares his favorite sysadmin tools, among other things.

    • Linux Foundation SysAdmin Aric Gardner Avoids a GUI at All Costs

      Aric Gardner is a Linux Foundation SysAdmin who works on the OpenDaylight collaborative project. Here he tells the story of how became a sysadmin, shares his specialty in scripting and automation, and describes a typical day at work, among other things.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Open-Source AMD Hawaii Support Should Now Be Working!

        While the Radeon R9 290 series is now mature in the marketplace, the open-source Linux driver support has lagged. The Hawaii support had been broken for months (no working 3D on the open-source driver, but will work under the Catalyst Linux driver) and the few open-source AMD developers weren’t tasked with fixing it over not being sure why it wasn’t working and having no immediate business cases for fixing the support. Fortunately, with a bug comment made tonight, it seems things might be in order.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • No Gmail integration in 4.14 after all :(

        I’m sorry to bring bad news, but after trying to fight some last minute bugs in the new Gmail resource today, I realized that pushing the resource into KDE Applications 4.14 was too hurried, and so I decided not to ship it in KDE Applications 4.14. I know many of you are really excited about the Gmail integration, but there are far too many issues that cannot be solved this late in 4.14 cycle. And since this will probably be the last 4.x release, shipping something that does not perform as expected and cannot be fixed properly would only be disappointing and discouraging to users. In my original post I explained that I was working on the Gmail integration to provide user experience as close as possible to native Gmail web interface so that people are not tempted to switch away from KMail to Gmail. But with the current state of the resource, the effect would be exactly the opposite. And if the resource cannot fulfil it’s purpose, then there’s no point in offering it to users.

      • Plasma’s road to wayland

        With the Plasma 5.0 release out the door, we can lift our heads a bit and look forward, instead of just looking at what’s directly ahead of us, and make that work by fixing bug after bug. One of the important topics which we have (kind of) excluded from Plasma’s recent 5.0 release is support for Wayland. The reason is that much of the work that has gone into renovating our graphics stack was also needed in preparation for Wayland support in Plasma. In order to support Wayland systems properly, we needed to lift the software stack to Qt5, make X11 dependencies in our underlying libraries, Frameworks 5 optional. This part is pretty much done. We now need to ready support for non-X11 systems in our workspace components, the window manager and compositor, and the workspace shell.

      • KDE Developers Continue Working Toward Wayland Support

        KDE’s Sebastian Kügler has provided an update regarding KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5 support for Wayland as an alternative to running on an X11/X.Org Server.

      • A wild “monday” report appears …

        The work on revisiting and expanding the Human Interface Guideline on tooltips has begun. If there’s something that has always bothered you about how tooltips in KDE Applications and Plasma look and feel consider to join in. The work is still in its early stages, so now would be the best time to voice your concerns. [https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=121892]

      • Cutelyst 0.3.0 is now C10K ready!

        Cutelyst uWSGI plugin now has support for –thread, which will create a QThread to process a request, however I strongly discourage its usage in Cutelyst, the performance is ~7% inferior and a crash in your code will break other requests, and as of now ASYNC mode is not supported in threaded mode due to a limitation in uWSGI request queue.

      • Kate “master” branch now KF5 based!

        from today on, the master branch of kate.git is KF5 based.

        That means, for the next KDE applications release after 4.14, Kate will use the awesome KF5 stuff!

        The KTextEditor framework is already in a good shape and most active KatePart development is since months pure KF5 based.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi Model B+ review – a new evolution

      Over the past two years we’ve come to really grow fond of the design of the Raspberry Pi. It’s almost iconic in a way, and we don’t think we’re the only ones to believe this: as you can have see with the Banana Pi review on the previous page the layout is almost identical to the standard model B.

    • Raspberry Pi-based signage player sips 7 Watts

      TinyGreenPC launched a Raspberry Pi and Linux based digital signage player that runs on just 7 Watts, and offers optional WiFi and an OPS interface.

      The Pi Media Player is one of the most power-efficient signage players on the market, according to TinyGreenPC, a subsidiary of UK-based embedded manufacturer and distributor AndersDX. It helps that the 7 Watt, Raspian Linux-enabled signage player runs on a Raspberry Pi.

    • Dive in, penguins: Upstart builds Linux virtual SAN

      Three Bulgarian engineers who co-founded a firm called StorPool – which builds a virtual SAN using the aggregated storage of Linux KVM servers – are aiming to expand the reach of their three-year-old project.

      Boyan Ivanov, CEO, Boyan Krosnov, chief product officer, and Yank Yankulov, the chief tech officer, started the firm in November 2011 with $261,600 seed funding. In February this year they raised an undisclosed amount of cash in an A-round. We’d guess it’s in the $1m – $2.5m area.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • 35 Free Android Apps for Business
        • Best Android Apps for Disney Fans

          Disney movies have the uncanny ability to make us laugh, cry, and dance with joy at the same time. Whether you are a young kid or an adult, these films have a special place in many people’s hearts. Apart from winning many Oscars, these movies have garnered fans across all generations. From overbearing grandmas to unapologetically brash kids, Disney movies are so irresistible that they can make anyone laugh or cry. That’s why today we have for you a list of some of the best Android apps out there that are made for Disney fans.

        • Xiaomi unveils Mi4 flagship smartphone and Mi band fitness tracker
        • How open sourcing Android made it a mobile market leader

          About 10 years ago, when I got my first mobile phone, I hardly knew anything about its operating system or its processor. Even its screen size didn’t matter. I was just happy to have a ‘mobile’ phone.

          Today, the mobile phone paradigm has shifted from feature phones to smart phones. When people consider purchasing a new mobile phone, they examine its operating system, its configuration, and its screen size. Increased attention to these details can be attributed to technological advancements—and, more importantly, to the slew of new mobile operating systems available today. In this highly competitive market, Android has obtained about 80 percent of the global market share, making it the clear leader among mobile operating systems.

          What makes Android so popular? Why has the mobile market swung toward Android lately? Let’s take a quick look at how Android has achieved this, as well as the role of open source in the Android story.

        • OnePlus AOSP stock ROM for those who don’t want CyanogenMod

          OnePlus have developed quite a buzz over the last few months with the release of their first device the OnePlus One. Part of the allure is the incredibly low asking price of $300 – which is typically half the cost of its on-spec rivals. However another feature which has greatly attracted attention is the OnePlus One comes with CyanogenMod (CM) custom ROM as stock out of the box.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • SAP Stamps Cloud Foundry and OpenStack with Meaningful Endorsements

      SAP may not be on every individual user’s radar, but the company is a giant global force in running enterrprise back-end systems, new forays into the cloud and other new platforms, and managing enterprise class applications. Now, SAP has announced that it is committing to Cloud Foundry and OpenStack, providing a clear path forward for an open cloud ecosystem.

    • Let’s party!

      Yesterday, we released ownCloud 7. You might have read that somewhere on the internet – it was widely announced and broadly picked up. If you do not have ownCloud yet, you really should try it now, and if you are one of the people happily using ownCloud for a while, update soon!

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Education

    • Open source education for lifelong learners

      In the world of the Internet, where everything is so easily available, it seems like all technology is a benefit to online learners. For those who aren’t able to use the available traditional resources for various reasons, open source technology specifically is a huge boon. Let me share my seven-year journey of using open source and how it helped me add more value to both my personal and professional lives.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Nginx Plus r4 Improves Web Server Security

        Nginx, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Nginx Web server, is out today with a new release of its Nginx Plus server. The Nginx Plus r4 release provides users with new security and load balancing features.

  • BSD

    • Pkg 1.3.0 Released To Improve Package Management On FreeBSD

      After more than a half-year in development and working on tens of thousands of lines of code, Pkg 1.3.0 has been released by FreeBSD developers.

      Pkg 1.3.0 introduces a new solver to automatically handle conflicts and dynamically discover them, pkg install can now install local files and resolve their dependencies via remote repositories, sandboxing of the code has happened, improved portability of the code took place, the pkg API has been simplified, improvements to the multi-repository mode, and a ton of other changes and fixes took place.

      More on the pkg 1.3.0 release for improved package management on FreeBSD can be found via this mailing list post.

    • FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report – Second Quarter 2014

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • We Have Strayed from the Original Ideas of Unix

      In some ways we have actually made improvements to the Unix Philosophy with Richard Stallman’s GPL. We also have a mostly standardized graphical system with the X Window System. I can’t find any overt references to sharing of source code from the early days of Bell Labs but it clearly did happen even if it was de facto
      rather than de jure.

    • GNU Guix 0.7 released

      We are pleased to announce the next alpha release of GNU Guix, version 0.7.

      This release is an important milestone for the project since it is the first to provide an image to install the GNU system from a USB stick.

  • Public Services/Government

    • City of Toulouse moves to LibreOffice, saves €1 million

      The United Kingdom recently made an announcement about its decision to adopt the Open Document Format (ODF) as its in-house standard for all new documents. And now, Microsoft has lost another important fight in yet another European city.

      Toulouse, France’s fourth largest city, has ditched Microsoft Office in favor of LibreOffice.

  • Licensing

    • An Interview with Karen Sandler

      Karen Sandler is a veteran of the free and open source software world. Having completed an engineering degree, she has worked as a lawyer for the Software Freedom Law Center, was Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, and recently accepted a position as Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. I interviewed Karen via email to ask her about her background and insight into various issues in the free and open source world.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • How do team dynamics relate to open source?

      Recently I had the opportunity to watch a soccer game (football to the majority of the world). This game was one of the most amazing displays of team effort I’ve ever had the privilege of watching. (Here’s an obligatory link if you don’t know to which game I refer). Almost every score was predicated with a series of passes and touches by various players. There was a level of unselfish play and team spirit I don’t often see when observing professional sports.

    • Open source product development most effective when social

      Benetech started out in the 90s without even understanding the meaning of the term open source. They just “needed an easy way to interface with different voice synthesizers” to develop readers for people who are blind and “shared the code to be helpful.”

  • Programming

    • PHP 5.5.15 Officially Released

      PHP 5.5.15, an HTML-embedded scripting language with syntax borrowed from C, Java, and Perl, with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in, has been released and it’s now available for download.

Leftovers

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