06.18.13
Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 1:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The hallmarks of Microsoft — AstroTurfing, vapourware, developers disdain and interference with journalism — found sparingly in the gaming consoles scene
Microsoft’s ‘new’ console is a story full of abuses of all sorts. Microsoft’s friends at Amazon are apparently playing along with the marketing campaign. “Sony of rootkit and retroactively-cancel-linux fame,” says iophk, is winning polls, so “Amazon Prematurely Ends PS4 vs Xbox One Poll When PS4 Takes 95% of the Vote” (Microsoft’s poll rigging is common and it is part of the AstroTurfing). It is all about what’s sometimes referred to as “perception management” [1, 2] in Microsoft’s PR agencies. There is apparently this new document for guiding a consistent hype campaign, aiding for example Microsoft’s Reddit astroturf and other perception management activities that are illegal. The PR agencies of Microsoft are desperate to turn a series of Xbox failures into something successful like the PS2. Here is what Slashdot says about that newly-discovered document:
“In the wake of a disastrous E3 product reveal Microsoft has purportedly distributed a confidential internal 100-point ‘FAQ’ for the Xbox One that reads like it’s from the Ministry of Truth. It was of course immediately leaked on pastebin. Kotaku has the story and an amusing online poll. In the discussion below make sure to line up the FAQ entries with the AC comments for extra ‘Informative’ moderation.”
Former Microsoft MVP Ryan (DaemonFC in our IRC channel) says “the silver lining is that people are absolutely up in arms over the XBOX One. It looks like Microsoft has finally crossed the line. They’ll either backpedal or be crushed.”
Watch this article about illegal activities from Microsoft, relying on euphemisms like “reputation management” (defined therein as “the term social media marketers use to “pose as happy customers” on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments”).
“It looks like Microsoft has finally crossed the line. They’ll either backpedal or be crushed.”
–RyanMicrosoft just knows it cannot perform well without playing dirty. This has always been true, perhaps with few exceptions. Microsoft should just be closing shop when it comes to gaming. Android, iOS and to some degree Valve/Steam, which is cross-platform now , generally mean that Microsoft’s inertia through games is mostly over. Some consoles are now based on GNU/Linux (Piston for example) or Android (Ouya and others), so the worst Microsoft can do is set barriers for games, such as this new case, which Slashdot summarises as follows: “The new Oddworld game New ‘n’ Tasty is coming to every platform in the current generation and even the next generation but not the Xbox One. It’s not that developer Oddworld Inhabitants isn’t porting the game. It’s not that they hate Microsoft or the Xbox One. No, it’s that Microsoft has taken an anti-indie dev stance with the Xbox One. While the game industry is moving to Kickstarter and self-funded shops, Microsoft has decided all developers must have a publisher to grace their console.”
This is a sure way to keep developers away.
Meanwhile, point out some sources, “Xbox One Games At E3 Were Running On Windows 7 With Nvidia GTX Cards?”
If true, then this means that what Microsoft has at the moment is partly vapourware and this may as well explain the descent to dirty tricks. █
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Posted in FUD, IBM, Microsoft, SCO at 12:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”
–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO
Summary: The SCO v. IBM case is reopened, despite a glaring lack of funds, resuming the FUD against Linux
Microsoft is now openly — not just covertly [1, 2] — supporting Apple’s fight against Android. “Microsoft disagrees that Judge Posner created a “categorical rule” or “blanket prohibition” on injunctive relief for infringement of SEPs,” says this post. “It calls the question of a RAND-encumbered patent owner’s entitlement to injunction relief “an interesting question — but not a question presented on appeal here.” Microsoft argues that RAND commitments must be considered as part of the eBay analysis, which it says Judge Posner precisely did here” (Posner is against software patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).
Here we have Microsoft interfering with a competitor using a proxy or a litigation ally. It is typical Microsoft behaviour which goes back to the SCO case and prior to it, too. According to this [via], SCO’s case is still going on:
The Hon. David Nuffer has ruled on the SCO v. IBM motions, granting SCO’s motion for reconsideration and reopening the case, which IBM did not object to. Judge Nuffer apologizes to the parties for the error in his previous order refusing to reopen the case. Sounds like a mensch to me. I love it when judges don’t pretend something is the lawyers’ fault when it’s really the judge’s fault. He’s newly assigned to this case, and it’s been going on for over a decade, so he specifically tells the parties not to assume his familiarity, asking them to provide him with enough detail in the various briefs going forward to work with. And he has essentially accepted the IBM suggestions on how to go forward, which SCO did not want to happen. I was fairly confident he would, though, precisely because he’s new and he surely needs some time and help from the parties to get up to speed.
The pro-FOSS news site says: “After both parties have submitted their motions, the court will decide whether the case will be closed without further hearings with a summary judgement or if it will be re-opened in earnest.”
A Microsoft partner says “IBM’s lawsuit with SCO over just who owns Unix has crawled out of the grave and seems set to shuffle back into US courts.
“For the uninitiated, or those who’ve successfully tried to forget this turgid saga, a brief summary: SCO in 2003 sued IBM for doing something nasty to bits of Unix it owned. Or felt it owned. SCO also sued Novell, which it felt did not own some copyrights for Unix.
“Many private school educations later for the offspring of the lawyers involved SCO lost against Novell. By this time SCO was out of cash with which to keep up the fight against Big Blue, so the matter hibernated for a while.”
“Decade-old lawsuit exhumed in response to SCO motion for reconsideration,” writes Lee Hutchinson. Richard Adhikari writes the following summary in ECT:
The news that lawyers for The SCO Group have filed a new motion to reopen its case against IBM was greeted with incredulity, to put it mildly. Turns out that the bankrupt SCO really isn’t attempting to retry the case — there are some loose ends from the long and drawn-out proceedings that still need to be tied up. The motion did provide an excuse for traveling once more down memory lane, though.
What we have here is Microsoft-funded litigation. This one involved copyrights and Microsoft is currently trying patents, also using proxies to enhance impact (e.g. patent-stacking).
Thankfully there are some actions to curb patents in the US right now, even if some are misguided and badly-aimed [1, 2, 3]. Recently we got this ruling [1, 2] that “May Be A Boon For Biotech Startups” (no more patents on nature's basic genetics) and the text in Groklaw opens with:
I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature.
Watch the patents boosters react. Pamela Jones replies to this booster by saying: “He’s arguing CLS Bank was wrongly decided. Still. The law is quite specific that you can’t patent function in such a broad way it closes off all competition such that no one else can make a device that “scrolls intuitively”. But with software patents, that’s exactly what has been happening, and that isn’t even talking about the fact that software is mathematics and should not be patentable subject matter in the first place. But if it is going to be, the issue isn’t hardware or software; it’s specificity. If you want a patent, then, and it’s 100% software, be specific so you patent only the precise way you did what you did; that leaves room for others to do it a different way. And that is what President Obama said he’d like to retrain the USPTO examiners so they recognize the difference.”
In order to defend Linux we must watch out for patents on software and those who promote them. Microsoft is trying to sustain a SCO-like smear and scare, showing that the copyright plot against Linux is not completely dead yet (Microsoft has since then moved on to patents). █
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Posted in Dell, Microsoft at 12:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The company with history of hostility towards GNU/Linux is now becoming part of Microsoft
COMPUTER giant Dell was recently hijacked by Microsoft and now it’s Best Buy‘s turn. iophk calls it “Yet another reason to avoid Best Buy,” adding that “they’re really worried about the chromebooks that people would otherwise buy” (see upcoming daily links for major news related to this).
Here is a report showing what happened:
Microsoft, in a new take on the store-within-a-store model, will take over the entire computer section of 600 Best Buy stores.
Microsoft, tweaking the store-within-a-store concept, has announced plans to build Windows Stores inside of 500 Best Buy stores in the United States and another 100 in Canada.
Best Buy was reportedly wakened by Vista series machine and now made hostage by the very same company which arguably caused its demise. It’s the same as Dell and Novell. This has “Stockholm Syndrome” written all over it. Our new Wiki page about Best Buy helps provide other reasons to boycott Best Buy, notably the store’s FUD campaign against GNU/Linux. Fortunately, there are many alternatives to Best Buy. █
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06.17.13
Posted in News Roundup at 4:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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It’s definitely happening on small mobile devices, but how about the thick clients and thin clients on desks of business, schools and governments?
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The sixth generation of the SBench 6 data acquisition software has now been released by Strategic Test, and now the software is available for both Windows or Linux users. SBench continues to support all of the companies PCI Express, PCI, PXI and CompactPCI digitizer, waveform generator and high-speed digital I/O cards, some 300 variants in total. The Base version of Sbench 6 is supplied at no-cost with each UltraFast card. In addition, a fully functional demo version of the Professional Version with a limited run time is also included. The software is also able to run simulated demo cards to allow full software test even without hardware.
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Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a new series by SUSE community marketing manager Brian Proffitt for Linux.com called “Reality Check” that will take a look at Linux in the real world. The first, 5 Linux Features You Want in Your Company, was published in May.
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“Terrorists can adapt to non-use of telephone/Internet just as Osama bin Laden did,” countered blogger Robert Pogson. “Despite $billions spent, it took many years to hunt him down.
“PRISM and other such blunt instruments will not discourage alert terrorists,” he opined. “Further, terrorists could use PRISM to set false alarms or to entrap responders.”
[...]
“There is NO difference between left and right; all we have in this country is right-wing and ultra right-wing, nothing else,” he explained.
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Desktop
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The Gazelle Professional and the Galago UltraPro both come pre-loaded with Ubuntu 13.04
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Server
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Tianhe-2, with 3.1 million processor cores and a lot of Chinese-build technology, is the new leader of the twice-yearly list of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Kernel Space
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Linus Torvalds has released the Linux 3.10-rc6 kernel on Saturday afternoon. While there’s still some time ahead before the official Linux 3.10 kernel release, the rate of change appears to be slowing.
After worrying last week about all of the changes still being pushed for Linux 3.10, Torvalds threatened to be more strict about the changes he would permit. A week has passed and the rate of pull requests to take care of only regressions has decreased.
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The National Security Agency or NSA is now in the public eye for some nefarious surveillance, but Linux users should know that the agency also had an active role the Linux kernel development, with the addition of SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux).
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Graphics Stack
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The X.Org Foundation has finally announced the details concerning the 2013 X.Org Developers’ Conference.
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More Mesa / Gallium3D patches out of Google have come about this month for improving the open-source graphics stack.
Google has been using Mesa/Gallium3D drivers for use on their Intel-powered Chromebooks. Google had invested heavily in the Intel Gallium3D driver for use on their older Chromebooks, but now they are starting to push more of their Mesa/Gallium3D changes that have been building up in months past.
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Benchmarks
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Utilizing the core-avx2 CPU optimizations offered by the GCC 4.8 compiler can provide real benefits for the Intel Core i7 4770K processor and other new “Haswell” CPUs. For some computational workloads, the new Haswell instruction set extensions can offer tremendous speed-ups compared to what’s offered by the previous-generation Ivy Bridge CPUs.
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With Phoronix Test Suite 4.8 “Sokndal”, the minimum and maximum performance results are now being commonly displayed along side the rest of the results.
Aside from showing the average performance result, the standard error, the actual result values, and other data already displayed through the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org has been to also display the minimum and maximum results. This min/max request has most commonly been for when displaying the frames-per-second (FPS) results on graphics tests. With Phoronix Test Suite 4.8, due out next quarter, this will commonly happen.
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Already published on Phoronix have been Intel HD Graphics 4600 benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux from the Intel Core i7 4770K “Haswell” processor and compared against previous generations of Intel HD Graphics. Being benchmarked today is the Intel HD Graphics 4600 on Linux compared against various AMD Radeon graphics cards using both the open and closed-source graphics drivers.
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Applications
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Ardour lead developer Paul Davis has announced the release of version 3.2 of the open source digital audio workstation (DAW). The biggest new addition in this version is video support, a feature on which developer Robin Gareus “has worked for a couple of years”, according to Davis. Video support allows users of the DAW to easily extract, edit and mix audio tracks associated with video while being able to see the video in a preview.
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Recoll is a GUI interface to Xapian, a search engine and indexer. While designed for programmers,
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Back in April we reported on the release of Napster.fm by Ryan Lester, a service which used YouTube to serve up streaming music right in the users’ web browser. Ryan released his software under the GPLv3 on GitHub, and thanks in no small part to the notoriety of the Napster name, the service rapidly gained popularity.
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I have a few programs that I use often but rarely think to mention, just because they are static background tools.
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‘Zeegaree Lite’ is a beautifully designed stopwatch & a timer application for Ubuntu users. The interface also has a ‘hybrid’ type look, which gives the impression that it may work really well on both desktop and Ubuntu touch based user interfaces.
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Eric Wirttman, CEO of POTI (Pioneers of the Inevitable), which produces the open source media player Songbird, has announced on the Songbird blog that, for financial reasons, Songbird development will cease and POTI will shut down its business activities as of 28 June.
Songbird first saw the light of day early in 2006, as a hybrid browser/media player with a look and feel similar to Apple’s iTunes. It exited the alpha phase around two years later with the release of version 0.7. The first big cuts arrived in 2010, when financial constraints caused the company to drop Linux support.
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The campaigners say it is time for a broad public debate about the value of work in society and the widening gap between rich and poor – and more specifically to grant every legal resident in Switzerland contributions of CHF2,500 ($2,597) a month outright. The aim is to give everyone the right to self-determination and to live a life with less pressure, according to a promotional leaflet.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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Being in a code freeze now ahead of the Wine 1.6 official release in the coming weeks, no new features are coming but just bug-fixes.
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Games
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QFusion is the game engine that’s derived from the Quake 2 code-base but has advanced a great deal and presently powers the popular open-source Warsow first person shooter. Since Warsow 1.0, the QFusion engine has advanced a great deal and the code has now been released.
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While a lot of Linux gamers are waiting for the appereance of the linux-version of Dota 2, a very similar game Heroes of Newerth has been supported on Linux for a while now.
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For a while now, the project Humble Bundle has been publishing, in addition to the Indie and the Android Bundles, the Humble Weekly Sale which usually contains several games from one game company.
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Half-Life 2 is a first-person shooter developed by Valve that was released back in 2004 and it has recently been ported on the Linux platform. The first patches have started to arrive.
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Paradise Perfect Boat Rescue is an interesting title from Calvin French (@psysal the developer of The Real Texas), the game is just as the title may suggest, boat around and save people from islands!
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Paradise Perfect Boat Rescue is an interesting title from Calvin French (@psysal the developer of The Real Texas), the game is just as the title may suggest, boat around and save people from islands!
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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A few days back I attended the first freedesktop summit/sprint where a few hackers from different free desktops met with the objective of working together. We were people from Razord-qt, GNOME, Unity and of course KDE.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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The developers at the KDE project have released a first beta version of KDE 4.11 – including Plasma Workspaces, the KDE Platform and its associated applications. New features include experimental Wayland support in the KDE window manager KWin, the introduction of more Qt Quick elements to Plasma Workspaces and several improvements to file indexing and the desktop’s contact management application.
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With the large number of changes, the 4.11 releases need a thorough testing in order to maintain and improve the quality and user experience. Actual users are critical to maintaining high KDE quality, because developers simply cannot test every possible configuration. We’re counting on you to help find bugs early so they can be squashed before the final release. Please consider joining the 4.11 team by installing the beta and reporting any bugs.
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The KDE team have announced the release of first beta of KDE SC 4.11, which includes Workspaces (desktop environment), Applications and development platform. The KDE team will now focus on fixing bugs and polishing the software as API, feature and dependencies have been frozen.
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We saw last week the release of the first beta of KDE Plasma Workspace and applications 4.11
From my side, that’s a very important milestone, because it’s pretty much the coronation of what we intended the 4.x series of the workspace to be. It was a long ride, but I think this future release will be pretty stable and “defined” in its own identity.
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The main purpose of this blog, or rather the reason it came into existence, is to write about Google Summer of Code, more specifically about my own GSoC project. The title of this proposal is Reimplement Amarok 1.4 (FastForward) & iTunes importers on top of Statistics Synchronization framework, and add Amarok 2.x and Rhythmbox as synchronization targets. Amarok is a legendary music player, part of the KDE software suite (I’d say it’s a Linux music player, but that’s not entirely true).
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Well, this ought to be interesting. Battle royale, except we have no gentry, just the two seemingly and arguably dominant desktop environments for Linux. In my humble and narrow perception, there has been a dramatic shift in the Linux desktop usage in the past several years. Come the season of Gnome 3, a split happened in the community, breaking the decade old Gnome-KDE dominance. A whole generation of desktop environments was born, forked and knifed. Unity took its own path, Gnome 2 returned as MATE, and Gnome 3 was eclipsed by Cinnamon. Only KDE remained as it was, and now it was facing a new rival.
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Independent of the meeting, a stabilization request has already been filed for KDE 4.10.3; thanks to the work of the kde stable testers, we can keep everyone uptodate. And as a final note, my laptop is back to kmail1… Cheers!
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This post describes a few of the coordinate systems that KStars uses to keep track of the positions of various astronomical objects, and how they relate to one another.
All of the points used in KStars can be thought of as lying on a sphere, because it really makes no difference how far away a sky object like a star is – we only care about the direction. We can then imagine that these points “live” on the celestial sphere, an imaginary sphere surrounding the Earth. The problem of rendering a map of the night sky is then the problem of figuring out how to transform this sphere onto the screen.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Any distribution of GNU/Linux could be said to be a “community distro” in that it’s FLOSS and anyone including end-users could run, examine, modify and distribute it. The question really boils down to the health and vitality of the community surrounding particular distros. I recommend distros that have been around a while with large repositories and large numbers of contributors. Debian GNU/Linux is my particular favourite because, with the APT package management system, huge repository and huge fleet of mirrors around the globe there’s very little that can’t be accomplished with it and one person can easily manage a system large or small. What more can be asked of a distro? Debian is completely open with a large core of package managers, users able to examine and post bug-reports often with immediate responses and great documentation both within packages and on Debian sites. Of particular value to people who actually depend on IT to work or study or enjoyment is that Debian is serious about the quality of each package and the compatibility of the whole system with formal rules for packaging and releasing distros that all but guarantee working systems indefinitely. It is a healthy and vital community.
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New Releases
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CRUX PPC is a volunteer driven non-profit project based on the releases of CRUX for x86. It contains software written by a lot of different people, each software comes with its own license, chosen by its author. Parts written by CRUX PPC Team are to intend as free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
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Screenshots
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Red Hat Family
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It felt fitting that an upgraded Groupon (GRPN) jumped 10.23% last week, for the market overall reduced many investors to coupon-clipping penury. Shares slumped as a global trail of tears extended from Tokyo to Istanbul, whose customs officials have happily maintained an enduring faith in unicorns amid a crisis in the capital’s central square.
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Red Hat Inc. (RHT – Snapshot Report) is set to report its first-quarter 2014 results on Jun 19. In the previous quarter, the company’s earnings of 25 cents beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 19.05%. Let’s see how things are shaping up for the company in this quarter.
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Red Hat made its first $1 billion commercializing Linux. Now, it hopes to make even more doing the same for OpenStack.
Red Hat executives say OpenStack – the open source cloud computing platform – is just like Linux. The code just needs to be massaged into a commercially-hardened package before enterprises will really use it. But just because Red Hat successfully commercialized Linux does not guarantee its OpenStack effort will go as well.
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Red Hat has made a name for itself as the only U.S.-based public company that is exclusively focused on open source, and it has proven that its Linux-focused strategy is very profitable. In fact, the company is the first open source-focused company to hit the $1 billion revenue mark. That said, though, Wall Street has been questioning where else the company might be able to generate revenues in the future.
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Fedora
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PSA: if you’re running Fedora 19 or 20, I highly recommend you stop what you’re doing right now and do this instead. There are a couple of unfortunate bugs in F19/F20 right now which may well be screwing the hell out of your log files.
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Debian Family
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The Debian project is pleased to announce the first update of its stable distribution Debian 7 (codename “wheezy”). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Intel’s latest mobile processor to see action in majority of the coming Ultrabooks out there in the market has been given the codename Haswell, and this time around, we are treated to the System76 Galago UltraPro which is powered by an Intel Haswell processor no less (it offers more than decent processing performance without sipping up too much juice along the way), with Ubuntu as the operating system of choice. The System76 Galago UltraPro is a sleek new notebook which is touted to be the first notebook that measures under 1″ of thickness, all the while sporting Intel’s Iris Pro graphics. Anyone out there who wants to dispute that particular claim?
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For any PC powered by Rockchip’s RK3188 quad-core processor, Ubuntu and other Linux operating systems are now available to run on the devices as well as the standard Android OS that probably came with the device.
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For those of us Linux users who are more adventurous, switching to a new operating system can be pretty exciting. Unfortunately, problems tend to crop up when a new user seeking help isn’t familiar with the best practices for finding support.
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A FUNNY thing happened on my Macbook Air the other day. Out of habit, I went to the left side of the screen to look for my launcher.
Now any Mac user will consider this strange behavior, because the default location for the dock on OS X—and many other user interfaces—is at the bottom of the screen. You can change this to any of the other three sides of the screen, but it’s an option most folks will leave alone.
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Since my last post i’ve got a lot more done towards this project. I’ve made a crowdfunding account so i can get sponsored. I’ve got a shortlist of cases, the poll is here. I also have a PSU and sleeving is on it’s way. If you have advice or want more frequent updates, either use the comments here, my email ( noskcaj@ubuntu.com ) or http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=54532
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When Ubuntu 13.04 was released I had been running the OS on my Lenovo T500 for almost five months, but I was not able to migrate my main laptop due to two bugs.
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Flavours and Variants
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We shall now commence the second review of Linux Mint 15 Olivia. In the first installment, we played with the distro on top of a T61 laptop, which comes with Intel graphics and two internal SSD. There were no cardinal issues, then again, neither there were any with Ubuntu, which later failed miserably when thrown against the HP machine and its Broadcom Wireless and Nvidia graphics.
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The Raspberry Pi – I just can’t stop tinkering with it. Fresh from setting it up as a media centre and a retro games console, I’ve recently started looking at the possibilities of the device as something more important.
You may have seen one of our earlier posts about the unusual uses for a Raspberry Pi. One of these was using it as the computer in a low-budget space program, something that would make the Pi more portable than most computers on earth! Sticking to the point, however – there are several ways in which a grounded Raspberry Pi can break free of power supply and its compact little Perspex or Lego case and be used as a an actual laptop computer.
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D-Link has begun shipping four new models in its line of Linux powered surveillance-oriented “Cloud Cameras,” and has updated its web-based “Mydlink” software with new remote monitoring and video management features. The new cameras boast improved sound/motion detection, 802.11n WiFi extender capabilities, enhanced night vision, and weatherproof casing.
The new cloud cameras, which include the Cloud Camera 1050 and 1150, the Pan & Tilt Day/Night Network Camera, and the Outdoor HD Wireless Day/Night Network Camera boost D-Link’s embedded Linux-based Cloud Camera line from 10 to 14 models. All the devices connect via WiFi to the company’s cloud-based Mydlink monitoring and control platform.
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Phones
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Finland’s third largest mobile carrier DNA has confirmed it will be the first and so far the only in the world to sell Jolla’s Sailfish OS smartphone when it arrives.
DNA was an early supporter of the Finnish startup’s work on remnants of Nokia’s abandoned MeeGo phones and will now also help Jolla sell its successor.
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Ballnux
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A video from the Korean device maker shows the abuse its Android flagship smartphone is put through before hitting the public.
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Android
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Rockchip’s RK3188 quad-core processor is one of the fastest ARM Cortex-A9 chips on the market. But up until now if you’ve had a tablet, TV stick, or other devices with an RK3188 chip, you’ve probably only been able to run Android on it.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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The company is just the latest looking at the burgeoning market, according to Pocket-Lint.
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If you thought you were seeing tablet computers everywhere, you were right. Over a third of Americans now own a tablet and more are buying them every day.
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Rather than watching for communications between infected systems and command-and-control servers, companies can detect stealthy malware when it attempts to spread
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Sony has pushed its Bluetooth SmartWatch project to a more open status with an invitation to software application developers to now design, develop and code applications and ancillary firmware and/or other extensions to the device.
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Wearable gadgets have become a real trend. While the other giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung are busying with their wearable gadget plans, Sony already has a smartwatch in the market. Although the small device didn’t get too much attention from the tech fans when it launched but it may get a little more from now with Sony’s recent announcement that its smartwatch has now become open-sourced.
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Three years later, the foundation’s thesis has given rise to an open-source software platform called Mobile Technology for Community Health (Motech), which an increasing number of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations and humanitarian groups are using to address pandemics such as tuberculosis and HIV.
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Don’t like Microsoft Office? Just build your own office suite—this guy did.
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S.H.O.V.E.L. is yet another multitool, but an unusual one. It sports a combined fork/spoon for eating, a serrated edge for cutting things, a bottle opener and a length of paracord. It’s also open source so you can customise it yourself.
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WANdisco announced that it has snagged TortoiseSVN.net, the website that hosts the open source Subversion client of the same name. According to the company, this domain attracts 500,000 unique visitors each month and supports over five million downloads each year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but WANDisco revealed that lead developer Stefan Küng will be joining its ranks.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Google has just enabled their new, royalty-free VP9 video codec within their Chromium / Chrome web-browser.
We have known for a while that VP9 was coming, the codec successor to the increasingly-used VP8 codec. In May we learned that VP9 was nearly ready and now as of today it’s enabled by default within the latest Chrome web-browser.
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Mozilla
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We’re excited to announce the launch of the Mozilla Science Lab, a new initiative that will help researchers around the world use the open web to shape science’s future.
Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn’t transformed scientific practice to the same extent we’ve seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the “analog” age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around “papers,” for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible.
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The legal battle over PRISM and the NSA’s phone records program is only getting under way, but advocacy groups are striking while the issue is hot. Stop Watching Us, a website that encourages citizens to digitally sign a letter that will be emailed to their elected representatives, today passed the 100,000 signature mark.
That milestone, passed this morning, comes less than 48 hours after the start of the program. Currently Stop Watching Us has collected 112,279 total signatures. A quick multiplication indicates that 336,837 emails will be generated, at a minimum; each person has two Representatives and one Senator.
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Databases
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In a surprise move, Red Hat has announced that version 7 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) will ship with the MariaDB database installed by default, in place of MySQL.
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In the aftermath of one of its most dramatic announcements, Red Hat, the premier Linux company, continues to demonstrate that its main strengths lie in things other than technology.
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Back in 2010, when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, MySQL founder Monty Widenius (shown) was very vocal about the acquisition, and raised many questions about the future of the open MySQL database, which he founded. In fact, we did an interview with Monty here on OStatic, where he said, “It’s clear that Oracle is in the game for the profit and it’s in their interest to get out as much money from MySQL as they can over the long term.”
Monty went on to become the lead developer of MariaDB, a fork of MySQL, and now there are reports that Red Hat will switch the default database in its RHEL enterprise product, from MySQL to MariaDB, upon the release of version 7. That’s a big vote of confidence in MariaDB.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Around three and a half years have passed since the last major version jump of the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE). It was intended that Java EE 6, which was designed with developer performance and simplification in mind, would become technologically more powerful in Java EE 7 through the addition of cloud support. These plans proved too ambitions at quite a late stage. As a result, the version that was completed in mid-April contains very few fundamentally new aspects and just represents a consistent effort to round off existing features.
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CMS
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Funding
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Middleware outfit looking to help facilitate expansion of Linux games library
Game engine provider Leadwerks is attempting to crowdfund native Linux development using its tech on Kickstarter.
The company is looking for $20,000 to fund the engine’s compatibility with Linux operating systems, starting with Ubuntu 12.04.
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Public Services/Government
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Checkbook NYC illustrates how the city government spends its nearly $70 billion annual budget. Using a dashboard that combines graphs and user-friendly tables, the site displays up-to-date information about the city’s revenues, expenditures, contracts, payroll and budget. It also offers that information programmatically via APIs.
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“Over the last ten years, open source has become unremarkable. I think that’s a great achievement. We no longer argue about whether it’s secure or not, or whether it’s safe to use. We focus now on how best to use open source to get the best value for every tax dollar,” said Gunnar Hellekson, Chief Technology Strategist for Red Hat’s US Public Sector Group.
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Licensing
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I have been made aware of a meme passing around Government purchasing circles to the effect that Government ought not to be dictating licence terms in the course of procurement. This has two variants, a strong variant that Government ought not be specifying, for example, a class of licence that ought to apply to the procurement and a less strong variant to the effect that Government ought not be specifying particular licence terms.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Hardware
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Dane Christianson’s X-Cube is not the weirdest, most complex or most sophisticated puzzle cube I’ve ever seen. But Dane didn’t really want to make the world’s most difficult or intimidating take on the Rubik’s cube. His aim with the X-Cube was to make a fun and relatable product to raise people’s awareness about 3D printing.
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Programming
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Kushal Das thinks he knows what you’re doing this summer: joining him and his team of volunteers in free, online programming classes, where you’ll learn more than just how to code. In Kushal’s hands, you’ll also receive a crash course in the open source way.
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State supreme court justices are favoring the corporate interests that finance their election campaigns, a comprehensive new study concludes.
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Health/Nutrition
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In 2011, Dan Ravicher at PubPat led a group of 23 plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Monsanto seeking declaratory judgment of non-infringement and invalidity of Monsanto’s genetically modified seed patents. Although not directly related, the patents challenged here are the same as those that Monsanto has asserted against dozens of farmers for growing unlicensed versions of its Round-Up Ready Soybeans. See, e.g., Bowman v. Monsanto (2013). In the present case, however, none of the plaintiffs want to grow genetically modified crops. Instead, the case asserts that the organic and heritage seed growers are in fear of becoming liable for inadvertently growing patented seeds. In many ways, patent infringement can be considered a strict liability tort and, as such, the unknowing use of another’s patented invention still creates liability for patent infringement. Thus far, Monsanto has promised that it will not sue farmers who inadvertently grow its patented crops so long as the farmers do not take
advantage of their glyphosate resistant properties and so long as the farmer’s do not intentionally re-plant GM progeny. However, Monsanto has not offered any clear covenant-not-to-sue for inadvertent growing. Recent news that Monsanto’s experimentally genetically modified and non-FDA approved wheat has inadvertently spread even though Monsanto had attempted to destroy all of the crops.
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Security
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Industrial Control System CERT (ICS-CERT) of US-CERT and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have published an advisory that some 300 medical devices from around 40 firms can be easily manipulated because they use hard-coded passwords. A growing number of medical devices have embedded web servers that are connected to the internet or the hospital’s network and could potentially be open to attack.
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Finance
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The Bank of Canada has appointed former Merrill Lynch executive Lynn Patterson as special adviser to new governor Stephen Poloz, the central bank said on Friday.
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President Barack Obama’s administration should release documents the U.S. and 10 other Pacific-region nations are using as they negotiate a new trade agreement, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said.
In a letter to Michael Froman, Obama’s nominee to lead the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, the Massachusetts lawmaker said releasing details of what is being considered by the parties would give citizens a chance to evaluate the deal before negotiations are completed.
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The chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs blames the lagging U.S. economy on Americans’ negativity, which he has partly attributed to Congress and the media.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Hundt, a Democrat, said in an interview that the Koch statement “proves my point that they distort public dialogue.” He reiterated from his remarks last week that a lot has changed in the media landscape over the past decade as new platforms have emerged and led the way for more diversity of news and analysis.
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Join the Center for Media and Democracy at this year’s Netroots Nation conference in San Jose, California. On Friday, June 21, CMD is hosting a panel called “ALECexposed: Strategies and Tactics for our 2013 Campaign” taking place at 10:30am in the Town Square. See the panel description here.
This session will focus on the strategies and tactics being used by groups and individuals working to expose ALEC, including our work on ALECexposed.org and our reporting on ALEC at PRWatch.org. It will include new angles to our corporate campaign, new tactics in our outreach to legislators and new research on ALEC “stink tanks” and on immigration, guns, voting, climate, federal legislation among other issues.
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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recently adopted a “model” bill from an oil-industry lobby group, that would limit the ability of states to negotiate regional “low-carbon fuel standards” (LCFS), a mechanism designed to reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels. If agreed by states, LCFS could have a significant impact on the sale of fuels derived from Canadian tar sands in the United States, regardless of any decision the Obama administration makes over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
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Censorship
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Parental filters for pornographic content will come as a default setting for all homes in the UK by the end of 2013, says David Cameron’s special advisor on preventing the sexualization and commercialization of childhood, Claire Perry MP.
Internet service providers (ISP) will be expected to provide filtering technology to new and existing customers with an emphasis on opting out, rather than opting in.
“[In the UK] we will have filters where if you do nothing, the parental filters will come pre-ticked,” said Perry, speaking at a Westminster eForum on 14 June.
The move is part of a government effort to force ISPs to make filtering a standard option across industry and to make the technology easier for consumers to use. As ISPs are voluntarily rolling out filtering technology, it will require no new legislation or regulations.
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We regularly collect blocking reports from mobile users, via blocked.org.uk – and we’ve recently had some interesting ones.
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Privacy
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The slides from this weeks talk on the ‘Snoopers Charter’ are available here : wmk.me/10bdcFq
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One could argue that Google is a corporation whose content and cash flow results from their ability to survey the Internet with unfettered access to users’ information under protection of the Safe Harbor Provision of the DMCA. The provision is a corporate loop-hole that allows Google to not be held responsible for content that might otherwise be personal, private, or illegal as defined by the U.S. Constitution and The Geneva Accords. Google claims to be software without moral judgment and purposely refuses to admit that it may be facilitating mafia-style corporations counterfeiting without license and thus profiting through illegal gain by eradicating people’s property rights as otherwise guaranteed.
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While helping our colleague Dave Bean as he worked to get his essay on Google and the NSA ready for publication, I found myself wondering if any of this latest news on the government’s forcing their nose into everybody-in-the-world’s business would have any lasting effect. Sadly, I figured not–if there was any change, it’d only be temporary. I’ve spent too many years on this planet to expect too much in the way of permanent change for the better.
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National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.
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1) Abandon the cloud
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Such criticism of the treatment of Manning could make Hong Kong judges less willing to accept any U.S. request for extradition.
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For those of us who had been following the story for a decade, this was no “bombshell.” No “leak” was required. There was no need for an “expose” of what had long since been exposed.
As the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez and others reminded us, the NSA’s surveillance activities, and many of the details breathlessly reported last week, weren’t even secret. They come up regularly in Congress, during hearings, for example, about renewal of the USA Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the principal laws that govern the activity.
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Two programs go beyond phone calls to email and cloud storage to gather info about terrorism and provide it to the NSA and British intelligence.
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The migration from desktop computing to the cloud is on every tech firm’s playlist this season, with Apple [AAPL] expected to deliver improvements to its iCloud service later today — but recent revelations regarding the US government’s PRISM surveillance technology could be the kiss of death to these future tech promises. (You may also wish to read this more recent report).
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Since the 29-year-old intelligence contractor Edward Snowden outed himself as the source of the NSA leaks on Sunday, reporters and pundits—heck, even Snowden himself—have compared him with Bradley Manning, the Army private on trial for passing classified material about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to Wikileaks. There’s obviously something to the comparison—both men were apparently dedicated enough to the cause of transparency to risk their lives for it. But, after reading the early biographical reporting about Snowden, I can’t help recalling another transparency activist in the news recently: Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in January while awaiting trial for downloading millions of pages from JSTOR, the online database of academic articles.
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Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill’s account of the NSA’s “PRISM” program in the Guardian is woefully short on technical details of how the program works. This lack of clarity should be troublesome to those attempting to decide whether they should be outraged. Does this program allow the government to look at private communications on a company’s central servers without a valid court order, or is it something more benign?
[...]
These details matter. These details completely change the nature of the story, and they shouldn’t just be brushed aside as a minor technical footnote. Serious accusations were made, and have been roundly denied by the implicated parties. There is no aspect of this story more important than finding out which account is accurate.
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An Otago University-based security expert believes Kiwis are under constant surveillance and the Government should own up to its part in the operation.
University of Otago information science Associate Professor Hank Wolfe made the comments today after ex-CIA whistle blower Edward Snowden revealed electronic data was being collected from around the globe by a massive US intelligence monitoring programme called Prism.
“The [National Security Agency] has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything,” Snowden said.
“With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.’’
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And yet Booz Allen, and through the company the NSA, gave Snowden a $200,000 salary and access to and apparent operational control over the most sensitive, powerful surveillance instrument ever devised by man. By Snowden’s account, he had no trouble whatsoever in assembling the data about the program and taking it out of the office. He claims to have had “full access to the rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth.”
If he had wanted to turn that data over to the Chinese or Russians, he could have done so. As he described his operational authority, he could have tapped into the email stream of any person in the world, up to and including President Obama, without oversight. And presumably he could have used information gathered through the program as he saw fit, from leaking it to celebrity magazines to turning it to blackmail to using it for financial gain in the markets.
Now, is all that true? Former NSA employees have told the media that it’s highly doubtful, but they also express astonishment at the range of material, including a subpoena from a top-secret federal court, that Snowden was clearly able to acquire. So the truth is that we don’t know, and that’s kind of the point. When you give these agencies immense power and huge budgets and cloak them in invisibility, accountability disappears.
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Early last month, even while he was finalizing his discussions with Edward Snowden, The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald reported on a conversation between Tim Clemente, a former FBI agent, and CNN host Carol Costello. In the interview about the Boston Marathon investigation, as seen at right, Clemente makes the claim that “all digital communications are — there’s a way to look at digital communications in the past.” Costello refers to a previous appearance in which Clemente claimed the government could access phone calls, even “exactly what was said in that conversation.”
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A bipartisan group of eight prominent US senators announced a new bill today to declassify the court opinions that give the US National Security Agency the legal power to carry out the sweeping internet surveillance program known as PRISM and the separate phone records surveillance program, both revealed last week by leaked documents. “Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” said Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the architect of the bill, a version of which he originally introduced last December, but which failed to gain traction at the time.
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EU officials demand answers on what data snooping programmes entail and whether they breach human rights
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Edward Snowden has surfaced again, according to a local Hong Kong newspaper, telling them he has no intention of hiding from whatever may come next….”People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden told the paper.
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Several key U.S. senators are lobbying for treason charges against Edward Snowden, the former analyst who leaked information about government spy programs. So how rare and unusual would that be?
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In the first publicly known victory by a non-government party before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secret court today granted a motion filed by EFF related to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger characterised PRISM as “dangerous”.
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Government officials have made many statements about the warrantless surveillance since it became public in 2005. They’ve done so in court, in Congress, and in the media. Unfortunately, their words have too often served to evade or obscure, rather than clarify, their actions.
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There’s been a lot of focus elsewhere concerning the FISA rulings that were leaked, showing that the government is scooping up the details of pretty much every phone call. However, a case concerning some guys who were trying to rob an armored truck may lead to some interesting revelations related to what the government collects. Daryl Davis, Hasam Williams, Terrance Brown, Toriano Johnson, and Joseph K. Simmons were charged with trying to rob a bunch of armored Brink’s trucks, in which one of the robberies went wrong and a Brink’s employee was shot and killed. As part of the case against the group, the DOJ obtained call records. However, during discovery, the government refused to hand over call records for July of 2010, claiming that when they sought them from the telco, the DOJ was told that those records had been purged. Terrance Brown’s lawyer is now claiming that since it appears the NSA has sucked up all of this data for quite some time, it would appear that the government should, in fact,
already have the phone records from July 2010, which he argues would show that he was nowhere near the robbery when it happened.
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In a secret court in Washington, Yahoo’s top lawyers made their case. The government had sought help in spying on certain foreign users, without a warrant, and Yahoo had refused, saying the broad requests were unconstitutional.
[...]
But the decision has had lasting repercussions for the dozens of companies that store troves of their users’ personal information and receive these national security requests — it puts them on notice that they need not even try to test their legality. And despite the murky details, the case offers a glimpse of the push and pull among tech companies and the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that try to tap into the reams of personal data stored on their servers.
It also highlights a paradox of Silicon Valley: while tech companies eagerly vacuum up user data to track their users and sell ever more targeted ads, many also have a libertarian streak ingrained in their corporate cultures that resists sharing that data with the government.
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Alexis Ohanian discusses the NSA’s controversial surveillance program and says it’s time to ‘draw a line in the sand’ for what’s off-limits in the digital age.
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Snowden disclosed information about a secret program that he reasonably believed to be illegal. Consequently, he meets the legal definition of a whistleblower, despite statements to the contrary made by numerous government officials and security pundits. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky), Sen. Mark Udall (D-Co), Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Ca), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) have also expressed concern about the potential illegality of the secret program. Moreover, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wi) who is one of the original authors of the Patriot Act – the oft-cited justification for this pervasive surveillance – has expressed similar misgiving.
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Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.
The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.
[...]
A second review implies that the analysts’ findings were being relayed rapidly to British representatives in the G20 meetings, a negotiating advantage of which their allies and opposite numbers may not have been aware: “In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential.”
In the week after the September meeting, a group of analysts sent an internal message to the GCHQ section which had organised this live monitoring: “Thank you very much for getting the application ready for the G20 finance meeting last weekend … The call records activity pilot was very successful and was well received as a current indicator of delegate activity …
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American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal.
The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
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In a roundtable discussion, a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers tell USA TODAY that Edward Snowden succeeded where they failed.
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The whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history answered your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations
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Having recently posted about local councils reducing the number of CCTV cameras in their local area it seems that the Government has taken the additional step to ensure that pub landlords aren’t forced into using CCTV when it is not necessary to do so.
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GCHQ and the NSA between them employ tens of thousands of people. I am bemused by the shock at the “revelation” they have been spying. What on Earth did journalists think that spies do all day? That includes electronics spies.
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An exchange between Rep. Jerrold Nadler and FBI director Robert Mueller is coming under some scrutiny after a reporter claimed it concretely proves that NSA analysts can listen to domestic phone calls without a warrant.
CNet’s Declan McCullugh published a story Saturday night purporting to prove Edward Snowden’s claim that NSA analysts can wiretap domestic phone calls without a warrant. His case was built entirely around an exchange between Rep. Jerrold Nadler and FBI director Robert Mueller that happened during an FBI oversight hearing with the House Judiciary committee on Thursday.
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Civil Rights
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc has in recent months been only hiring temporary workers at many of its U.S. stores, the first time the world’s largest retailer has done so outside of the holiday shopping season.
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Stopped by Spanish language tech journalists at an airport, the Apple co-founder says that after the NSA revelations, he questions his own government and wonders whether it’s behaving like a king.
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DRM
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According to the government, Cue was the main intermediary between Apple and five major publishers, and the “chief ringleader” of an alleged conspiracy to shift the e-book industry from the wholesale pricing model established by Amazon to an agency model where publishers, not retailers, set e-book prices, sending them higher than they had been in the past. But on the witness stand Thursday, Cue maintained he was anything but.
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Apple is the last defendant standing in the government’s antitrust case against six of the world’s leading publishers and two subsidiaries. Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster all settled in April 2012. Penguin joined the settling bandwagon in December, and Macmillan copped to its role in the scheme two months later.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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The copyright on the world’s most popular song? A new lawsuit says it’s bogus.
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New research commissioned by the Australasian Performing Right Association reveals that Australian file-sharers are more affluent and better educated than their non-downloading counterparts. One in three Aussie Internet pirates earn more than $100,000 and one in four enjoyed a university education. The results further confirm that pirates tend to be relatively young, with 44% of file-sharers under 30 years of age.
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Posted in IRC Logs at 3:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
IRC Proceedings: June 9th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: June 10th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: June 11th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: June 12th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: June 13th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: June 14th, 2013
IRC Proceedings: June 15th, 2013
Enter the IRC channels now
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Posted in Site News at 2:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Thanks to
Summary: Server maintenance complete, making pageloads faster and the Web site more robust, hence resilient against attacks
RECENTLY we have been having unprecedented problems with availability. After preparations last week we finally migrated and upgraded the Techrights server, doubling the CPU capacity and completing all the associated tasks over the weekend. A few changes remain to be applied shortly. Technical details are in my personal blog (not so relevant to the scope of Techrights).
Copilotco has kindly provided hosting for over 4 years. Without it, Techrights would not have been where it is today. It all started when Techrights came after DDOS attacks lasting several days. There are people (or companies) out there who would like to see the site dead. █
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06.15.13
Posted in News Roundup at 2:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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A partial Linux solution could solve Windows 8 woes
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I’ve spent the past two years interviewing people about their desktop Linux setups, asking them about the Linux distributions they chose, the desktop environments they use, and the software upon which they rely. Over the past 73 interviews, a number of common lessons have emerged. Most of these apply to anyone who relies on a computer to do their work, Linux user or not. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned from these interviews:
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It used to be quite the challenge to make a Linux desktop business-ready. Most every business depended upon niche, proprietary software that simply could not be run on anything but Windows. However, times have changed and so much of business is now handled through a web browser. Add to that how much the Linux platform has matured and you have the makings for a big win on the open source front.
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Being a broke university student who couldn’t afford a technician’s fee, a client of this new ISP’s (and hardly servile at that), and with no other ISP options due to the grand monopolization of the region and who knows, maybe price fixing, I looked to my father and brother for advice. Brother recommended reinstalling Windows XP. Father recommended Debian GNU/Linux.
And so it was. I didn’t want to deal with virus scanners and paying heed to time allocated to ensuring my shit was safe, so I went Father’s way with a free disk from Brother.
The first few times I ran Ubuntu GNU/Linux (my brother deviated from Debian), the new ISP couldn’t give me a connection, leaving me to call their tech people yet-a-friggin’-gain. Since I changed network names and passwords, there’ve been no issues in that regard, though I am still using their provided modem.
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Desktop
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Trying to buy Dell’s developer-orientated Ubuntu laptop – the XPS 13 – is a confusing affair at present.
Several readers have contacted us to say that the device is no longer being offered for sale on the Dell US website.
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The world’s first ultra-thin laptop to use Intel’s Iris Pro graphics has today been unveiled by Ubuntu-dedicated hardware company System76.
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Server
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At the recent Red Hat Summit in Boston, IBM, the giant international computer and server company, has announced its plan to expand the adoption of Linux accross its enterprise. There will be two new Power Systems Linux Centers in Austin and New York and support for Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) will be extended to its Power Systems portfolio of server products.
In July, the two first North American IBM Power Systems Linux Centers will be opened, in Austin, Texas and in New York. With these centers, software developers will find it easier to develop and deploy new softwares for big data, cloud, mobile and social business computing on open-sourced technology building blocks using the latest IMP processor technology and Linux.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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In this episode: It looks like Rockwell was right – somebody was watching him (and us). There’s a great new Raspberry Pi installer called NOOBS and the President of the US promises action against patent trolls. Ubuntu’s ‘bug one’ has been fixed and the EFF objects to DRM in HTML 5. As ever, hear our discoveries and your opinions in this epic length podcast.
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Kernel Space
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced new initiatives to further support and speed up the adoption of the Linux operating system across the enterprise. These include two new Power Systems Linux Centers and plans to extend support for Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology to its Power Systems portfolio of server products.
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Graphics Stack
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The “Ilo” open-source driver that provides unofficial Intel Gallium3D graphics support for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge graphics cores on Linux now is advertising GLSL 1.40 compliance. The GL Shading Language update comes after landing UBO and TBO support.
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Benchmarks
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Being published this afternoon are benchmarks of the Gallium3D LLVMpipe software driver compared to Intel HD 4600 graphics on Mesa 9.2 Git when using an Intel Core i7 4770K. While this Intel “Haswell” CPU is faster than previous generations, it’s still obviously best not relying upon LLVMpipe.
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Applications
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Liferea, a free news aggregator capable to store articles for offline reading and with full synchronization with Google Reader and TinyTinyRSS, is now at version 1.10 RC4.
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Ardour lead developer Paul Davis has announced the release of version 3.2 of the open source digital audio workstation (DAW). The biggest new addition in this version is video support, a feature on which developer Robin Gareus “has worked for a couple of years”, according to Davis. Video support allows users of the DAW to easily extract, edit and mix audio tracks associated with video while being able to see the video in a preview.
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Retroshare is the next generation of peer to peer sharing networks. Unlike classic peer to peer software, it only connects to trusted friends and not just anyone.
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Glances is a CLI curses based monitoring tool for GNU/Linux and BSD OS.Glances uses the PsUtil library to get information from your system.It is developed in Python.
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Proprietary
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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Games
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Linux has struggled to earn its gaming stripes across the years in the face of stiff competiton from Windows and, in recent times, OS X.
That began to change when Valve launched its Steam gaming service on Ubuntu-flavoured desktops earlier this year, with some hailing its arrival as a turning point for the operating system.
Jon ‘maddog’ Hall, Executive Director of Linux International, told TechRadar: “Quite frankly, the lack of games is one of the big reasons why Linux hasn’t made it onto [more] desktops.”
Hall continued: “Even people who are 50 years old are going to say they have to have a particular game, so they have to have to do a dual boot and stick with Windows.
“Of course, developers look for the largest install base possible, which is typically Windows, and then Apple. They don’t take it to the third platform as that would take away engineering resources for making new additions and features.”
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They were originally on Steam’s Greenlight, found a publisher who was supposed to get them onto Steam normally, Steam then blocked it to “send a message” and so they had to do it all again.
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Scraps is a bit like the multiplayer melee mode in Interstate ’76, except you build your vehicle from the chassis up instead of just bolting on weapons and armour. It’s kind of like how you put stuff together in Stratosphere: Conquest Of The Skies except that it’s a vehicle instead of a floating platform.
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Paranautical Activity combines the classic FPS action of games like Doom and Quake, with the randomness and difficulty of modern roguelikes like Binding of Isaac and Spelunky. I don’t usually shout out sales since our sales page, but these guys really need it…
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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Zen suite, a theme compatible with GTK+ 2.x and GTK+ 3.x that aims to be simple, consistent and visually appealing, is now at version 0.11.3.
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A lot of users have turned to the flat model for their themes, but if you don’t like this type of embellishments, you can go the other way and install spherical icons.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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With Canonical’s planned adoption of their in-house Mir Display Server over the next year rather than using an X.Org Server or Wayland, derivatives such as KDE-based Kubuntu continue to fear the change and what exactly the options will be.
KDE will not support Mir as long as it remains a one-distribution solution. With KDE not coming to Mir for the foreseeable future, Jonathan Riddell of Kubuntu started a new technical discussion about non-Unity flavors and Mir.
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Years ago I had a clear political opinion. I was a civil-rights activist. I appreciated freedom and anything limiting freedom was a problem to me. Freedom of speech was one of the most important rights for me. I thought that democracy has to be able to survive radical or insulting opinions. In a democracy any opinion should have a right even if it’s against democracy. I had been a member of the lawsuit against data preservation in Germany. I supported the German Pirate Party during the last election campaign because of a new censorship law. That I became a KDE developer is clearly linked to the fact that it is a free software community.
But over the last years my opinion changed. Nowadays I think that not every opinion needs to be tolerated. I find it completely acceptable to censor certain comments and encourage others to censor, too. What was able to change my opinion in such a radical way? After all I still consider civil rights as extremely important. The answer is simple: Fanboys and trolls.
When one starts to have a blog in free software one learns the hard way that being a relatively good developer means that you get hated. If you achieve something you get attacked, you get insulted, you get called a dictator [1], you get compared to Hitler [2], etc. etc. People say that you need a thick skin if you want to work in free software. I disagree. There shouldn’t be a need to have a thick skin. We are improving the world, we donated lots of our spare time to work on free software, we donate the source code we write for the public good and we are thanked by insults. This is not acceptable! Even if people dislike some specific software or are a great supporter of another software there is no reason to insult the people or the products. It never is! Not even if it is Microsoft or Apple or Google. There is no reason to attack them.
[...]
Final remark: please don’t come and tell me that I’m the same by criticizing Mir. It’s not the same. Criticizing decisions and having discussions is important, but of course critic has to be constructive. I have never attacked any of the Mir developers or have attacked the software in any way. I criticized the decision and the reasoning and pointed out the problems it causes for us, but I have in no way attacked Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir.
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Today KDE released the beta of the new versions of Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team’s focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing.
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Mehrdad Momeny, the developer of the KDE microblogging client Choqok, has announced that he plans to hand development of the application over to the community. Momeny had previously apologised for not finding a maintainer to take over the project after admitting that personal circumstances did not leave him enough time and energy to continue development.
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Today we bumped KDE SC 4.11 beta 1 (4.10.80) in the gentoo kde overlay. The semantic-desktop use flag is dropped in >=kde-base/4.10.80, as you may already noticed or read in dilfridges blog post. So if your hardware is not powerful enough or you just don’t want to use the feature you can easily disable it at runtime.
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SFLPhone-KDE 1.2.3 have been released today as a bug fix release 6 months after 1.2.2. This version is (hopefully) the last in the 1.2.* serie. The next generation (1.3) is under heavy development since the last release. According to git diff –stat, 1.3 branch have a massive 16000 lines of changes. It is also 10x faster, less memory hungry and usable (more on that in an upcoming blog post(s)). As for 1.2.3, the new features include macro support, new command line options and being able to be invoked from KaddressBook. Important bug fixes include compilation fix on Fedora 19 beta, prevent race condition when launching SFLPhone-KDE in autostart. On the daemon side, many bugs have been fixed there too. Overall, this release should be quite stable.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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About a week and a half ago, I was nearly taken-in when an item appeared on The Register that tied recent Linux desktop woes to behind the scenes moves by Microsoft to enforce patents against GNOME. Supposedly, GNOME was violating Redmond’s patented designs of the Windows 95 desktop, most specifically the Start Menu and the Start button. According to the story painted by reporter Liam Proven, KDE was also guilty of violating the same patents, but got a pass as they benefited from the famous Novel/Microsoft patent swap deal, being they were the default desktop in SUSE.
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Users today have countless ways of knowing or getting notified when their friends and family have birthdays. The most popular way comes from social networking where such data is shared publicly, but is there a way to get Gnome Shell notifications about this?
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Look at any major service provider: Heroku, Google, Amazon, Apple. All of them offer different levels of access to what they offer, usually at different prices. There’s even an established route to enticing customers towards the paid plans, via the well-worn ‘freemium’ model.
Let’s be clear about this: Linux isn’t dividing into paid and unpaid. It’s not going the freemium route (although the cynical will suggest that Canonical might be thinking about it). What we’re seeing, though, is the development of a clear split. A kind of meiosis.
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New Releases
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The lightweight, cloud connected distro gets its first update in a year, and ditches Openbox in favour of Xfwm4
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Screenshots
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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Gentoo Family
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Red Hat Family
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In a standing room-only set of sessions at the Red Hat Summit here this week, the future of Red Hat Enterprise Linux was revealed.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the Linux vendor’s core platform, had its last major release with the debut of RHEL 6 in November of 2010. Red Hat has been releasing major new RHEL platforms every two to three years, and at its 2012 Summit event the company had hinted that 2013 could be the year in which RHEL 7 might be released.
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The message coming out of Red Hat’s annual Red Hat Summit is that while Linux is Red Hat’s foundation, OpenStack is its future.
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As more enterprises develop technology-dependent products and services, interest in robust and reliable middleware continues to grow. These enterprises are reconsidering existing investments in middleware as they look at open hybrid clouds, yet may find themselves unable to proceed as easily as they would like with proprietary middleware solutions because of “cloud unfriendly” features and practices, including rigid architectures, prohibitive license structures, and lack of portability. In addition, the technical complexity and mission-critical nature of enterprise applications present numerous migration challenges when the time comes to change platforms.
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At the Red had Summit 2013 yesterday, Hortonworks and Red Hat announced an engineering collaboration to advance open source big data community projects. The engineering partnership will be a collaboration effort on enabling more storage file systems to work with Apache Hadoop. In order to accelerate the enablement of the broader file system ecosystem being used with Apache Hadoop, the engineering teams at Hortonworks and Red Hat will be working directly with the Apache Hadoop Community.
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Linux Warehouse, the premier distributor of enterprise open source software for southern Africa and an authorised distributor in southern Africa for Red Hat, today announced the latter’s new community resources designed to help enterprises migrate to open source middleware technologies, including a community-driven JBoss Migration Centre and new tooling to ease the process of migrating from proprietary application server technologies to the open source JBoss platform.
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Full Storage Live Migration support and a framework for plugins are two of the new features included in the now available version 3.2 of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation (RHEV). Storage Live Migration allows the storage media that is used by virtual machines to be migrated from one storage domain to another at runtime. The new plugin framework enables programs to access the management interface of Red Hat’s virtualisation platform and offer additional interface features to administrators; companies such as HP, NetApp and Symantec plan to use it to provide maintenance and operational features for their products this way.
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Cisco has over 10,000 RHEL instances.
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This morning I was on a panel at the Red Hat Summit with Scott Merrill from TechCrunch and Jon Brodkin from Ars Technica with moderation from 451 Groups John Abbot.
Officially the session was titled, “Hot Off the Press: Top Journalists on Today’s Tech Trends” but it really could have just been called – What Do You Want to Ask a Linux Journalist?
We had about 60 people or so in the room and the primary topic of discussion – not surprisingly – was cloud . Also not surprising is the fact that no one in the audience had actually deployed an OpenStack cloud. Considering that this is a Red Hat conference, that’s not terribly surprising either – since Red Hat’s full product is not yet available.
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New features in Red Hat Virtualization include Storage Live Migration, new third-party plug-in framework and support for new AMD and Intel chips
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Debian Family
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The Debian project is warning users that the unofficial Debian Multimedia repository now has to be considered unsafe. According to the Debian maintainers, the debian-multimedia.org domain is not being used by the maintainers of the unofficial repository any more and is now registered to a party unknown to the Debian project. This means that the repository is no longer safe to use and users should remove it from their sources.list file as soon as possible.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Galago UltraPro and Gazelle Professional combine Linux smarts with ultrabook style
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In recent months we have been seeing tremendous growth and interest in the Ubuntu SDK that is at the heart of building applications for Ubuntu for phones, tablets, desktops, and TVs. The SDK provides the ability to build rich native applications in QML/Qt that hook right into the system, platform services, messaging, social media and more. We will also be providing support for HTML5 apps soon (with deep platform integration), and for OpenGL apps too.
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The Ubuntu community is a core part of what makes us what we are, and right at the center of that are our Ubuntu Members. Ubuntu Members provide significant and sustained contributions over a wide range of areas such as packaging, documentation, programming, translations, advocacy, support, and more. We always want to do our best to recognize and appreciate our many members in the Ubuntu family, across these many different teams and our flavors.
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Read the post How do I choose which way to enable/disable, start/stop, or check the status of a service?. Compare that with systemctl enable/disable/start/stop/status service and tell me, for a user, which is easier?
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This is where it starts to get exciting, folks. The future starts now.
Ubuntu is an operating system for the server, the cloud, the desktop, and the mobile device. One single OS. That makes it different from Apple’s OSes (Mac OS X on the desktop, iOS on the mobile) and Microsoft’s current OSes (Windows 8 on the desktop, Windows RT on the mobile, and Windows Server 2012 on the server and in the cloud).
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Has OpenStack, the open source cloud computing platform, come into its own? Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux—which happens to be the most popular OS for OpenStack deployments—is saying so this week as it touts the rapid maturity of the software. Now, the question becomes: Does the channel agree?
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Flavours and Variants
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It’s that time of the year again. Linux Mint has just released the latest version of its distribution, and I’m going to review it.
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According to our “Newbie” Distro Poll, someone considering moving from Windows or Mac to Linux should consider taking Linux Mint for a spin. The poll asked the question, “What Linux distro would you be most likely to recommend to a new Linux user?” Evidently this was a subject that interested many of you, because a whopping 1,339 votes were cast in this poll, making it the most number of votes one of our polls has ever received.
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RS Components has introduced an open-source software area as part of its DesignSpark website aimed at design engineers.
It will include details of how design projects can be developed with resources such as PCB schematics and layout files for DesignSpark PCB, for example, along with mechanical blueprints, software code and/or machine code, mechanical drawings and CAD files.
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Phones
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This week, Finnish smartphone creator Nokia announced that it had shipped its final handset running the Symbian operating system. As the last company in the world building phones using the Symbian OS, Nokia’s withdrawal from the platform means Symbian is now completely defunct.
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webOS and the mobile devices that it powered made Palm (remember that company) a media darling. webOS was going to be another successful mobile Linux distribution (after Android). But it was all a dream that never came true. Palm was sold to HP. At some point, HP abandoned webOS, deciding that it was better to sell Android devices.
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Android
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Reactions to yesterday’s iOS 7 reveal were largely positive, but one current of criticism kept flowing: that Apple may have relied a little too hard on copying other operating systems—in particular, Google’s Android (though the stark flatness of Windows Phone 8 got cited, too).
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The Smart Display DA220HQL touchscreen is an impressive piece of hardware that performs extremely well. It looks like a really big tablet; however, this all-in-one device packs enough power to make it a viable second desktop computer or PC replacement. Typing on its wireless full-sized QWERTY keyboard — minus number pad — is an absolute pleasure.
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More details of the rumored HTC One Mini appeared yesterday. Samsung is releasing the Galaxy S4 Mini and I wonder if we are starting to see a trend towards smaller smartphones.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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The Root 101 is an open source tablet loaded with a completely stock version of Android (Jelly Bean 4.2) with no bloatware apps and no ugly skinned version of Android. Root access is default, so you can install any app and even custom ROMs.
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The Computex show in Taiwan is still a PC show, but it’s increasingly known for debuting tablets and tablet reference designs. There have been some misfires over the years, like the thick, Atom-based Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) shown in 2008, the “Smartbooks” of 2009, and the flawed “Honeycomb” Android tablets of 2011. Things have looked up since then, however, with the 2012 event showcasing numerous high-octane Android 4.x slates that have gone on to collectively overtake the iPad and threaten the PC market.
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London-based software development company AppShed has detailed plans to migrate its app development platform towards an Open Source footing.
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Internet of Things (IOT) advocate Michael Koster fixated makers and hackers at the recent Maker Faire in San Mateo, California, a few weeks ago. Standing in front of samples of many versions of Arduino, Rasberry Pi, and sensors, he spoke of an open source horizontal platform that will unify the IOT. He changed people’s perspectives from looking up from a small control circuit of dedicated sensors and actuators to seeing the unique value that will be created by looking down at a unified world of horizontally interconnected sensors.
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Contrary to popular belief, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, was alive and well, this year. But the rise of Ouya, Steam Box, and GamePop later this year could mark the end of an era. With relatively small revenue generated by a typical open-source game, indie developers simply won’t be able to afford to go.
At the same time, there’s going to be more and more of them, playing a huge part in the gaming ecosystem.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Google has announced that Chrome Frame will no longer be supported or updated from January 2014. The plugin adds a Chrome engine to versions 6 to 9 of Internet Explorer. When a requested web page sends a special header, Internet Explorer will implicitly switch to the Chrome-driven display mode.
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Canonical are discussing the possibility of replacing Firefox with Chromium in the next version of Ubuntu
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Mozilla
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Think back to the first thing you created on the web. For me, it was making a Geocities homepage when I was a teenager (Hollywood, represent). I was amazed that by writing HTML, I could make images of the Green Bay Packers and my favorite PEZ dispensers appear on a web site with my witty commentary.
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SaaS/Big Data
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The National Security Agency (NSA) apparently uses Hadoop, NoSQL and other open source software to wage its Big Data war against terrorism, according to anecdotal evidence and industry pundits who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.
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It’s been a big week for solid-state device (SSD) storage and the channel. Earlier this week, Intel (INTC) unveiled a new line of SSD hardware for the cloud and Big Data. Then, a day later, SolidFire, which provides SSD storage infrastructure for cloud hosts, announced a partnership with Red Hat (RHT) that will integrate the company into Red Hat’s OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network. Here are the details on this latest news.
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Databases
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Red Hat will switch the default database in its enterprise distribution, RHEL, from MySQL to MariaDB, when version 7 is released.
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The open source JSON document database RethinkDB has gained fourteen new array operations and the ability to match regular expressions within stored documents in its latest version, RethinkDB 1.6 code-named “Fargo”. RethinkDB is a rapidly developing database which works with Python, Ruby, or JavaScript in Node.js and supports clustering, sharding and replication. The developers compare it to MongoDB.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Maybe the most important thing about LibreOffice’s 4.0 release was the work done in cleaning the code and making it more efficient, while also doing the biggest API cleanup that has ever occurred since the beginning of the project. This would theoretically help boost the project’s development tempo and make things easier for contributors.
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It looks like LibreOffice will get a new set of flat icons, based on Gnome’s symbolic icons. The icon set isn’t completed yet, but you can try it already – below you’ll find instructions on how to easily try the new icons.
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Some of the Linux faithful will look at this and say: “There he goes again, bashing open-source. He’s just a Microsoft shill.” They will use the fact I am an MCSE as ‘proof’ of their opinion.
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LibreOffice 4.1.0 is right around the corner and developers are busy as beavers getting it ready. One of the things featured this release might be hard for ordinary users to see, but is every bit as important. Continued code refinement and clean-up will make LibreOffice 4.1.0 more efficient, smaller, and easier to contribute to and compile.
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Oracle has announced public availability of Java EE 7, the first major release of the enterprise formulation of Java since the database giant took control of the platform in 2010. The last version shipped way back in 2009.
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Public Services/Government
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EU flag On Thursday, the European Parliament approved new rules, introduced by the European Commission, for re-using public sector information. These changes will require that administrative data is published according to open data principles. When implemented, all documents made accessible by public organisations will be re-usable for any purpose, unless they are protected by third party copyright.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Data
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The government has responded to the independent review of Public Sector Information (PSI) carried out by Stephan Shakespeare, chair of the Data Strategy Board. Here are our first impressions.
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Open Access/Content
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Good university students finish projects by their assigned deadlines. The best ones submit their finished work in advance.
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Programming
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The latest version of Google’s App Engine, version 1.8.1, adds the ability to git push deployments of Python and PHP applications to its PaaS (Platform as a Service). Once developers have enabled “Push-to-Deploy” in their applications, they will then be able to clone a repository from the project. After making changes locally, they can then deploy the changed application with the command git push appengine master.
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The latest Eclipse Community Survey results highlight some challenges for the Java IDE. For example, new version adoption for the annually updated IDE has slumped: in 2012, 76.9% of users were using the then current release Eclipse 3.7, but in 2013, only 56% are using Eclipse 4.2. Ian Skerrett, Marketing Director at the Eclipse Foundation, believes that this is most likely “the result of the performance issues found in Eclipse 4.2″. He notes in a blog post that overall satisfaction with Eclipse has dropped from last year’s 90% to only 81% being satisfied or very satisfied this year. This is something Skerrett hopes will be addressed “as the Eclipse 4.x platform continues to mature,” but, as it stands, it isn’t very good news.
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Hardware
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Notebook brand vendors have recently started the request-for-quotation (RFQ) process for 2014 orders. But because of the notebook industry’s weak shipments and Lenovo increasing in-house production, competition between ODMs are expected to be fierce. Upstream suppliers may also see gross margins fall, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
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Security
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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has prompted a change of direction in the debate that has been going on for months around China’s alleged hacker attacks on the US. The former Booz Allen Hamilton employee and contractor to the US National Security Agency (NSA) told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper that the intelligence agency has been launching hacking attacks on targets in Hong Kong as well as mainland China.
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Folks who are comfortable with the cost, complexity and vulnerability of M$’s OS have not experienced the joy of IT that works, works for the user instead of for M$. M$ is all about “getting value” from its OS above all else. It is an OS designed by salesmen who love to sell more cost and complexity as “new features”. Unfortunately for the world, that brings vulnerabilities galore. Fortunately for the world, there is an alternative Debian GNU/Linux and other distributions of Free Software.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Quite simply I do not believe the US, UK and French government’s assertion that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebels “multiple times in small quantities”. Why on earth would they do that? The claim that “up to 150 people have died” spread over a number of incidents makes no sense at all. In a civil war when tens of thousands of people have died, where all sides have been guilty of massacres of scores at a time, I cannot conceive of any motive for killing a dozen or so at any one time with the odd chemical shell. It makes no military sense – chemical weapons are designed for use against population centres and massed armies. They are not precision weapons for deployment against small groups.
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abc-assad-chemIf you watched ABC World News last night (6/13/13), the story of Syria and the use of chemical weapons had shifted pretty dramatically. Anchor David Muir declared at the top of the show: “The White House now confirming Syria’s president has in fact used chemical weapons to kill.”
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Who has Crossed the “Red Line”? Barack Obama and John Kerry are Supporting a Terrorist Organization on the State Department List
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Finance
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Traders at some of the world’s biggest banks manipulated benchmark foreign-exchange rates used to set the value of trillions of dollars of investments, according to five dealers with knowledge of the practice.
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Censorship
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On Tuesday, I spoke at an event organised by the Sunday Times and Policy Exchange about online pornography and child protection. This was in the run-up to the opposition debate that took place in Parliament on Wednesday on these topics.
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Privacy
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I voted for Barack Obama in his first term. I had serious doubts about him even then, and today I wish I hadn’t done it, but I did vote for him. I wouldn’t say I completely fell for the “change you can believe in” baloney, but I decided to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
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In researching the stunning pervasiveness of spying by the government (it’s much more wide spread than you’ve heard even now), we ran across the fact that the FBI wants software programmers to install a backdoor in all software.
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It seems that the fight against the ‘snoopers charter’ rages on. In a letter to The Times, signed by Jack Straw, David Blunkett, Alan Johnson, Lord Baker, Lord King and Lord Carlile, called for the ‘snoopers charter’ to be revived. The intention of the letter seems to be to put increasing pressure on Nick Clegg to drop his opposition to the draft Bill
In the letter, the group state that “coalition niceties must not get in the way of giving our security services the capabilities they need to stay one step ahead of those that seek to destroy our society”.
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In positive step towards transparency Eric Pickles MP, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, has published new guidance which explicitly states that Councils should allow the public to overly film and council meetings.
DCLG was forced to publish the guidance after a string of councils had prevented individuals from recording council meetings on health and safety and legal grounds. The guidance will only apply to English councils, but it certainly creates a serious precedent for councils in Wales.
Public access to meetings is a key part of holding local councils and public bodies to account and it’s wholly wrong for people not being able to film or tweet in public meetings for spurious legal reasons.
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The World Wide Web is the greatest system for sharing information ever created – but how do you stop it sharing too much? Ben Everard investigates.
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Many amendments proposed by Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Ludford to the Data Protection Regulation would leave us with less control of our personal information. In this post, we focus on consent and loopholes.
Yesterday we wrote about Baroness Ludford’s amendment to the Data Protection Regulation (amendment number 1210) that would mean your data could be transferred to a third country or international organisation without you being told. In the light of the PRISM revelations, we suggested this amendment should be withdrawn.
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Reports this week revealed that the US successfully pressed the European Commission to drop sections of the Data Protection Regulation that would, as the Financial Times explains, “have nullified any US request for technology and telecoms companies to hand over data on EU citizens.
The article, (as you can read below), would have prohibited transfers of personal information to a third country under a legal request, for example the one used by the NSA for their PRISM programme, unless “expressly authorized by an international agreement or provided for by mutual legal assistance treaties or approved by a supervisory authority.”
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Revelations about the PRISM project involve US tech companies have been compelled to provide special assistance to US intelligence agencies. This has also drawn fresh attention to “responsible disclosure” systems regarding information about security vulnerabilities in those companies’ products.
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NSA scandal has exploded fears of being watched on the Internet, but a new website lists ways to escape the Panopticon
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Whatever the details might be, it seems clear that dozens of technology companies — and perhaps even more — have co-operated with the NSA on its surveillance program. And they could pay a high price for doing so.
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Civil Rights
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In ten short days, Wisconsin Republicans steamrolled a radical abortion bill through the state legislature to mandate ultrasounds and close abortion clinics, despite passionate opposition from Democratic Assemblywomen. The debate had many dramatic moments and video of the Senate President furiously gaveling down the opposition made national news.
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Open Rights Group’s third national conference took place last weekend at the Institute of Engineering and Technology, with a fantastic set of speakers and hundreds of attendees.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Thank you for inviting me to speak. Net neutrality can be a polarising debate. But I often find there is much we agree on. We agree that the internet is a great place to exercise and enjoy liberty. A great place to innovate, and implement new ideas without having to ask permission. And an open forum for all kinds of activity.sentence
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Bill C-56, the anti-counterfeiting bill that opens the door the Canadian implementation of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, has been referred to the Industry Committee for review.
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Posted in Microsoft at 7:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Nobody needs hardware-level back doors when Windows (or other proprietary software) is installed
Summary: Official confirmation that the NSA is being notified about ways of hijacking Windows before Microsoft releases fixes
Half a decade ago I put together some links about backdoors in Windows. I had accumulated those links for years. Now that we know how corrupt and aggressive the NSA can be (common knowledge after the latest leak), with cracking attacks on China, espionage, and unlimited mass surveillance in a fascistic manner (with corporations fully complicit), it all seems far less improbable and hardly far-fetched.
According to a new report from the corporate press (as corporate as it can get, being Bloomberg), Microsoft tells NSA staff about universal unpatched holes before they are being addressed:
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world’s largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft (MSFT) and other software or Internet security companies have been aware that this type of early alert allowed the U.S. to exploit vulnerabilities in software sold to foreign governments, according to two U.S. officials. Microsoft doesn’t ask and can’t be told how the government uses such tip-offs, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.
Frank Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft, said those releases occur in cooperation with multiple agencies and are designed to be give government “an early start” on risk assessment and mitigation.
Glyn Moody asked, “why would anyone ever trust Microsoft again…?”
Frank Shaw is not a technical man. His job is to lie, e.g. about sales of Vista 8 (quite famously and most recently). He came from Waggener Edstrom, a lying and AstroTurfing company. The above should be read as follows: when new holes exist which permit remote hijacking the unaccountable, cracking-happy NSA is being notified. What can possibly go wrong now that we have proof that the NSA is cracking PCs abroad with impunity? Germany, are you paying attention?
Here is more about this news:
Some of the back and forth is innocuous, such as Microsoft revealing ahead of time the nature of its exposed bugs (ostensibly providing the government with a back door into any system using a Microsoft OS, but since it’s don’t ask, dont’ tell, nobody really knows). However the bulk of the interaction is steeped in secrecy: “Most of the arrangements are so sensitive that only a handful of people in a company know of them, and they are sometimes brokered directly between chief executive officers and the heads of the U.S.’s major spy agencies, the people familiar with those programs said.”
In IRC, Sosumi highlighted this article and said, “tell me something that isn’t known already, like PRISM is just an evolution of a previous snooping program and that the NSA has built an AI, even if rudimentary, in order to assist them sort the information… also I wonder if Keith Alexander will be at this year’s DEFCOM conference” (part of the PR and recruitment exercise).
Here is an interesting new post which relates to what we know about NSA’s cracking of people’s PCs (the lesser-advertised role of the NSA):
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In researching the stunning pervasiveness of spying by the government (it’s much more wide spread than you’ve heard even now), we ran across the fact that the FBI wants software programmers to install a backdoor in all software.
Skype is said to have several back doors. Our latest post about it got updated with new information. Skype can be used as a back door on any platform (known holes left unaddressed), GNU/Linux included. Microsoft controls it and it has a monopoly on the source code.
Watch the MSN corporate press (Microsoft’s pseudo ‘news’ site) promoting both Skype and Facebook:
Thanks to a simple inquiry on Facebook, it’s now a day to celebrate with a father who didn’t know he existed for nearly three decades.
“Whitewashing of Skype and Facebook” is what iophk called this. “Notice the lack of I-told-you-so articles about FB snooping or any coverage of the snooping at all.”
Skype is a Microsoft-controlled product (acquired and quickly altered to reduce decentralisation, user control, and privacy). Advertising it with the partly Microsoft-owned Facebook is too shallow a case of bogus ‘journalism’.
There is also something about spying capabilities of the Xbox One, summarised by the headline “US Navy serviceman calls Xbox One’s 24-hour online check “a sin committed against all service members”” (people seem to be getting the importance of privacy, over time).
A few weeks ago we spoke about expanding the scope of coverage in Techrights to privacy-related matters. We’ll soon conduct an interview with Richard Stallman (to be published later this month) as privacy becomes a central issue relating to software freedom. We should start using the privacy card to advance the Free/libre software agenda. █
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Further Recent Posts
- Links 6/1/2017: Irssi 1.0.0, KaOS 2017.01 Released
Links for the day
- Watchtroll a Fake News Site in Lobbying Mode and Attack Mode Against Those Who Don't Agree (Even PTAB and Judges)
A look at some of the latest spin and the latest shaming courtesy of the patent microcosm, which behaves so poorly that one has to wonder if its objective is to alienate everyone
- The Productivity Commission Warns Against Patent Maximalism, Which is Where China (SIPO) is Heading Along With EPO
In defiance of common sense and everything that public officials or academics keep saying (European, Australian, American), China's SIPO and Europe's EPO want us to believe that when it comes to patents it's "the more, the merrier"
- Technical Failure of the European Patent Office (EPO) a Growing Cause for Concern
The problem associated with Battistelli's strategy of increasing so-called 'production' by granting in haste everything on the shelf is quickly being grasped by patent professionals (outside EPO), not just patent examiners (inside EPO)
- Links 5/1/2017: Inkscape 0.92, GNU Sed 4.3
Links for the day
- Links 4/1/2017: Cutelyst 1.2.0 and Lumina 1.2 Desktop Released
Links for the day
- Financial Giants Will Attempt to Dominate or Control Bitcoin, Blockchain and Other Disruptive Free Software Using Software Patents
Free/Open Source software in the currency and trading world promised to emancipate us from the yoke of banking conglomerates, but a gold rush for software patents threatens to jeopardise any meaningful change or progress
- New Article From Heise Explains Erosion of Patent Quality at the European Patent Office (EPO)
To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies
- Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management – Part V: Suspension of Salary and Unfair Trials
One of the lesser-publicised cases of EPO witch-hunting, wherein a member of staff is denied a salary "without any notification"
- Links 3/1/2017: Microsoft Imposing TPM2 on Linux, ASUS Bringing Out Android Phones
Links for the day
- Links 2/1/2017: Neptune 4.5.3 Release, Netrunner Desktop 17.01 Released
Links for the day
- Teaser: Corruption Indictments Brought Against Vice-President of the European Patent Office (EPO)
New trouble for Željko Topić in Strasbourg, making it yet another EPO Vice-President who is on shaky grounds and paving the way to managerial collapse/avalanche at the EPO
- 365 Days Later, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas Remains Silent and Thus Complicit in EPO Abuses on German Soil
The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
- Battistelli's Idea of 'Independent' 'External' 'Social' 'Study' is Something to BUY From Notorious Firm PwC
The sham which is the so-called 'social' 'study' as explained by the Central Staff Committee last year, well before the results came out
- Europe Should Listen to SMEs Regarding the UPC, as Battistelli, Team UPC and the Select Committee Lie About It
Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)
- Video: French State Secretary for Digital Economy Speaks Out Against Benoît Battistelli at Battistelli's PR Event
Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')
- When EPO Vice-President, Who Will Resign Soon, Made a Mockery of the EPO
Leaked letter from Willy Minnoye/management to the people who are supposed to oversee EPO management
- No Separation of Powers or Justice at the EPO: Reign of Terror by Battistelli Explained in Letter to the Administrative Council
In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash
- FFPE-EPO is a Zombie (if Not Dead) Yellow Union Whose Only de Facto Purpose Has Been Attacking the EPO's Staff Union
A new year's reminder that the EPO has only one legitimate union, the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO), whereas FFPE-EPO serves virtually no purpose other than to attack SUEPO, more so after signing a deal with the devil (Battistelli)
- EPO Select Committee is Wrong About the Unitary Patent (UPC)
The UPC is neither desirable nor practical, especially now that the EPO lowers patent quality; but does the Select Committee understand that?
- Links 1/1/2017: KDE Plasma 5.9 Coming, PelicanHPC 4.1
Links for the day
- 2016: The Year EPO Staff Went on Strike, Possibly “Biggest Ever Strike in the History of the EPO.”
A look back at a key event inside the EPO, which marked somewhat of a breaking point for Team Battistelli
- Open EPO Letter Bemoans Battistelli's Antisocial Autocracy Disguised/Camouflaged Under the Misleading Term “Social Democracy”
Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term "social democracy" whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by 'King' Battistelli
- EPO's Central Staff Committee Complains About Battistelli's Bodyguards Fetish and Corruption of the Media
Even the EPO's Central Staff Committee (not SUEPO) understands that Battistelli brings waste and disgrace to the Office
- Translation of French Texts About Battistelli and His Awful Perception of Omnipotence
The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
- 2016 in Review and Plans for 2017
A look back and a quick look at the road ahead, as 2016 comes to an end
- Links 31/12/2016: Firefox 52 Improves Privacy, Tizen Comes to Middle East
Links for the day
- Korea's Challenge of Abusive Patents, China's Race to the Bottom, and the United States' Gradual Improvement
An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population's interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
- German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, Who Flagrantly Ignores Serious EPO Abuses, Helps Battistelli's Agenda ('Reform') With the UPC
The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
- Links 30/12/2016: KDE for FreeBSD, Automotive Grade Linux UCB 3.0
Links for the day
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