• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

The Price of Wintel

So, for about half the capital cost and half the cost of operation giving the same performance, you should use GNU/Linux rather than that other OS. It makes sense. When you add to these obvious advantages, which alone are sufficient to make the choice, the advantages of freedom from M$’s EULA, and the freedom to run the code, examine, modify and distribute the code under a FLOSS licence, it’s a no-brainer. Use FLOSS. Use GNU/Linux. I recommend Debian GNU/Linux.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • 15 Basic ‘ls’ Command Examples in Linux

  • Monitor your wireless network with Wireshark

  • Some useful command with iproute2

  • Installing And Using OpenVZ On Scientific Linux 6.3

• Wine or Emulation

• Games

  • How the Liberated Pixel Cup changed gaming on Linux

    Humans may be the most creative species on the planet, but we spend a lot of time doing tedious things.

    Look at the internet: it’s a revolutionary and disruptive technology, with the potential to change education, governments and scientific research, yet most people use it to post comments on YouTube videos of mobile phones being unboxed.

    Here in the free software world, we’re familiar with the collaboration opportunities that the internet brings, and many great applications have been developed by teams of programmers around the globe.

  • Natural Selection 2′s Lua-based IDE released as open source, use it to make your own game

    The very cool tones of Blues News bring word that Natural Selection 2 developers Unknown Worlds have released their ‘Decoder’ IDE – their Integrated Development Environment, or Thing Wot They Used To Program The Game – for free, taking the exciting decision to make it open source as well. The team created Decoder in 2007 using the programming language Lua, and until now they’ve been licensing it out to other developers, using the money to fund the company. Now that NS2 is out, Unknown Worlds have decided to not only remove the licensing fee but to open its innards to the public, with the intention of making it “the best IDE out there!”

  • 3 Linux games on the Be Mine Anniversary bundle

    There’s also music on this $1 tier: Be Mine Anniversary Special EP, Recalibrated Vol. 1 (unlocked bonus) and Square Tactics (unlocked bonus)

  • Dagon engine that poweres the horror game Asylum is open sourced

    …they need just under $20,000 more to hit their target with 12 days to go.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Comparison of Linux Desktops OpenGL Performance

  With Steam officially being released for Linux I took some time out this evening to run a few benchmarks on my Ubuntu 12.04 based Bodhi system to see how a few of the different modern Linux desktops compare in terms of OpenGL performance with the source engine. Please do not take my numbers to be anything super scientific or precise. I simply recorded a short demo using Team Fortress 2, loaded TF2 from Steam under each of the Linux desktops with no other background applications running and ran the demo through a built in source engine bench marking tool.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 27th January 2013

Distributions

• Precise Puppy 5.4.3 – Linux At It’s Very Best!

• This Week in Linux: Mageia, *Ubuntu, and Korora

  Several cool Linux items have popped up this week that deserved a mention. Someone over at Mageia is quite excited about the formation of a new documentation team. Just in case one person out there missed it, the Ubuntu family of distros released developemental versions of their upcoming 13.04s and the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS got an update. And for some strange reason, Chris Smart changed the name of Kororaa Linux to Korora Project.

• Five Best System Rescue Discs

  When your computer starts behaving strangely, won’t boot, or you start getting strange errors that you can’t pin down, a great way to troubleshoot the problem is to boot to a rescue disc and see if you can isolate the problem. It might be your operating system, it could be hardware, but you’ll never know until you boot to some other media to take a look. That said, there are tons of great system rescue discs to check out if you want a tool to save your ailing system. This week we’re looking at five of the best, nominated by you, our readers.

• New Releases

  • New Manjaro MATE Community Edition released!

    “Community Editions” of Manjaro Linux are released as bonus flavours in addition to those officially supported and maintained by the Manjaro Team, provided that the time and resources necessary are available to do so.

    Due to popular demand from members of the Manjaro community, this now includes a special new release of the MATE flavour for both 32 and 64-bit systems.

  • SystemRescueCd 3.4.0

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Virtualbox and USB support in Mageia 2

    For those people who use Mageia 2 and like to test other OSs or need to keep another OS for work purposes, installing Virtualbox from the Mageia repositories might lead them to a disappointment. The distro seems to only support Virtualbox OSE (as it is the only package in the repos), which does not allow one to enable USB support. Therefore, you end up with a Virtual Machine that cannot read your flash drive.

    To solve this pesky problem, you must understand that the situation springs from having installed a Virtualbox version that does not do what you need or want. You must, then uninstall it and grab the Virtualbox PUEL version package from the Oracle site here.

• Gentoo Family

  • Gentoo Bugday Strikes Back

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Picks Up Another Graphics Driver Developer

    Red Hat has hired another well known name from the open-source Linux graphics driver community.

    Rob Clark, the graphics driver developer from Texas Instruments that was part of the OMAP team and also collaborated with Linaro, has joined Red Hat. Rob Clark was the one largely responsible for the TI OMAP DRM/KMS driver, he’s also proposed DRI2 Video, worked on Wayland video playback, and most recently began the Freedreno driver.

  • OpenShift gears up with Enterprise 1.1 release

  • Fedora

    • rawhide: 2013-02-05 to 2013-02-12

      One rough spot was the boost rebuild. Boost has a cycle similar to Fedora, so a new major version comes along about every 6 months or so and requires rebuilding all the packages that use it. In Fedora thats around 170ish packages or so. I communicated with the Boost maintainers and we decided the best way forward was to just commit the new Boost and rebuild everything in one day and then fix up the parts that broke.

    • Fedora 16 end of life, Fedora 19 coming in June

      Fedora 16 reached its official end of life at the beginning of the week. This means that the release was maintained for 16 months as opposed to the usual 13 months. In most cases, Fedora discontinues support for a release when the next version over has been released for a month. The three-month delay in the release of Fedora 18 explains the longer support cycle in this case.

Devices/Embedded

• Fractal Design Node 304 Review – From NAS to Mini PC Box

  Last month saw the review of the Define R4, a big ATX tower that could easily double up as a small server case, with a lot of bells and whistles. This month we’re looking at the Node 304, also from Fractal Design, a small, Mini ITX case with a very minimal aesthetic. Don’t let appearances deceive you though, the Node can do a lot more than you’d think at a cursory glance.

• Phones

  • Ballnux

    • Samsung reportedly plans to sell 100M Galaxy S IV phones, could pull resources away from Apple

  • Android

    • MTV Launches Android Powered Phone In India

    • Google To Open Retail Stores?

    • EXCLUSIVE: Motorola Google Smartphone A ‘Game Changer’

      Motorola is set to launch a brand new smartphone in Australia which one senior Telstra executive has described as a “game changer”.

    • Black HTC One render leaks

    • HP’s Mobile Revival May Include Android

      CEO Meg Whitman may be directing HP to get back in the tablet game, and the first example could be an Android device. The move to go with Google’s OS is getting tongues wagging in Silicon Valley, but HP apparently wants in on an OEM trend to offer different operating systems as companies look to stay competitive in a changing computing environment.

    • Frosty attack on Android encryption

      Two researchers at the University of Erlangen in Germany have demonstrated a way of accessing an encrypted Android smartphone using a freezer. To access the cryptographic key stored in the phone’s memory, they placed the phone in the freezer compartment for an hour, with the result that the memory content remained – almost literally – frozen. They used a special tool to read the cryptographic key from the phone’s memory (cold boot attack).

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • ARCHOS Introduces the New Platinum Range

    ARCHOS, an award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, introduces the Platinum range, a new line of tablets that feature a sleek aluminum design combined with the best high-definition IPS displays, quad-core processors and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. There will be three tablets in the range including an 8-inch, 9.7-inch and 11.6-inch, all of which deliver true vivid colors, sharper text and amazingly fast performance.

  • What about the PengPod tablet?

    So instead of just running a pure Android tablet, you get the option to run your favorite Linux distribution and Android in dual-boot fashion, provided your Linux distribution has an edition for the hardware.

Ease of Use is Key in New Zarafa WebApp Release

DataSift Launches Open Source Query Builder, Aims To Embed Social Monitoring In Enterprise Tools

PeerJS enables WebRTC browser-to-browser banter

PeerJS is a new open source JavaScript library and associated server which is designed to allow web applications running on different systems to contact each other. The developers say that PeerJS completes WebRTC, as the video connection protocol says nothing about how WebRTC-based clients should locate users to connect with.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox Flicks Video Competition Returns with Familiar and New Hollywood Faces; and an Once-In-A-Lifetime Grand Prize for the Winner

    We are proud to announce that Firefox Flicks will welcome back: Edward Norton (Oscar Nominated Actor), Shauna Robertson (Producer of hit comedies, including Superbad & Knocked Up) and Couper Samuelson (We Own the Night and Sundance Winning short, Whiplash ), to the judging panel, along with new judges Bob Harvey (EVP Global Sales and Marketing for Panavision), Franklin Leonard (founder of the Black List) and Catherine Ogilvie (EMEA Marketing for Dolby).

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• A free substitute for Microsoft Office

• Kim Komando Blesses LibreOffice

  The growth of FLOSS seems to be growing exponentially with few corners of the world remaining ignorant of FLOSS and therefor having choice in IT. What a refreshing time in which we live.

Business

• Open Source ERP software

Openness/Sharing

• Open Access/Content

  • DOJ To Brief Congress On Aaron Swartz Prosecution

    Justice Department officials will give a congressional briefing Friday afternoon on DOJ’s handling of the case against Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist who was facing years in prison when he took his own life, a congressional aide tells The Huffington Post.

    The aide said that Steven Reich, an associate deputy attorney general at DOJ, is expected to brief House Oversight Committee staffers, and potentially members, on Friday afternoon. A Justice Department spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

Programming

• Building basic packages in GNU R

• 9 of the Best Free R Books

  R is an open source programming language and software environment for statistical computing and visualization. The R language is frequently used by statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and data analysis. The language is mature, simple, and effective. R is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. It offers a large collection of intermediate tools for data analysis. R supports procedural programming with functions and, for some functions, object-oriented programming with generic functions. It includes conditionals, loops, user-defined recursive functions and input and output facilities.

• More Perl in Texinfo 5.0

  Version 5.0 of the Texinfo GNU documentation format is now available and is designed to be more extendable thanks to the new Perl-based converter. According to the developers’ announcement, texi2any can convert Texinfo files to any format that is supported by texi2dvi and makeinfo. To use it, Perl 5.7.3 and its standard Encode module are required.

The meat scandal shows all that is rotten about our free marketeers

Digital capitalism produces few winners

Science

• Machiavelli arrest proclamation unearthed in Italy

  A British academic has unearthed a 500-year-old proclamation calling for the arrest of the Renaissance political writer Niccolo Machiavelli.

Health/Nutrition

• Israeli growers use CIA technology on vegetables
  

  The crops under the association’s authority undergo their testing through an Israeli firm called Lab Path, which imports the same equipment used by the FBI and the CIA. Unlike the American intelligence organizations, the Ein Yahav association does not actually use the technology to check for chemical terror in the crops, but the incredibly expensive, sophisticated equipment allows Israeli agriculturists to ensure that the vegetables they sell are entirely residue free and safe to eat, Sade explained.

Security

• A world of hurt after McAfee mistakenly revokes key for signing Mac apps

  A McAfee administrator accidentally revoked the digital key used to certify desktop applications that run on Apple’s OS X platform, creating headaches for customers who want to install or upgrade Mac antivirus products.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• New anti-NDAA bill would ban indefinite detention in Montana

• So, this is the office that will investigate Afghanistan’s Kam Air?

  Key questions about the credibility of the Afghan attorney general’s office as it prepares to investigate accusations that Kam Air is involved in drug-smuggling.

• Zygier ‘did not commit treason,’ was arrested because he ‘might’ have leaked info

  Mossad man was not a senior agent and did not do anything ‘iniquitous,’ writes leading Israeli security analyst, blaming Australian intelligence for putting media on his trail

  [...]

  Zygier was not a senior Mossad agent, Ben-Yishasi stressed, but rather filled a role as more of a “support operative.”

  Ben-Yishai speculated that an officer or officers in the ASIO, which called in Zygier and two other suspected Australian-Israeli Mossad agents for questioning months before his arrest — reportedly suspecting espionage activities and abuse of Australian passports — may have leaked the names of the trio out of frustration that the suspects hadn’t cracked, or injured professional pride, or anti-Israeli sentiment. Later, another factor may have been anger at Israel’s reported use of Australian passports in the alleged Mossad assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the Hamas weapons dealer, in January 2010 in Dubai. (A Kuwaiti claim that Zygier was himself involved in the alleged Mossad hit in Dubai has been widely discredited.)

• US Media to Palestinian Hunger Striker: We Don’t Care If You Die

  Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi, 33, embarked on a hunger strike over 203 days ago to protest Israel’s inhumane treatment of detainees, making it one of the longest hunger strikes in human history.

• Florida Prisoner Who Escaped in Texas Is Killed

  A Florida prisoner who escaped in Texas after stabbing a detective with his eyeglasses was shot and killed by law enforcement officers early Saturday after police officers responded to a report of a home burglary near Dallas, the authorities said.

• The War and Intelligence behind Anwar al-Awlaki’s Targeting

  Believe it or not, there’s a fascinating debate going on over at NRO. First, Charles Krauthammer points to the muddle of the Administration’s white paper, which could have (he argues) just authorized Awlaki’s killing under the laws of war.

• Game of drones

  What are the implications of US news outlets concealing the truth about drones in the interest of national security?

• I Will Not Fight For Queen and Country

• The justice and security bill is a chilling affront to British justice

  It pays to ask a simple question when confronted with a piece of legislation such as the justice and security bill, which has become so complicated that probably no more than 100 people in the country fully understand it.

• The lonely soldier and the moral scars of war

  Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan find little ethical defence in the ‘just war’. Each of us struggles to make peace with our actions

• CIA nominee met with ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ filmmaker

  President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the CIA met for an hour with one of the filmmakers of “Zero Dark Thirty,” the movie about the agency’s effort to find and kill Osama bin Laden.

• Why a Secret Court Won’t Solve the Drone Strike Problem

  In our system, courts don’t grant indulgences or offer absolution; they decide cases, and they don’t advise the president.

• [2012] No-Fly List Of Suspected Terrorists More Than Doubled In Past Year

• The paranoia of the superrich and superpowerful

  …special ops are blindly pushing the process of destabilisation forward.

• Zygier ‘bragged about killings’

• BATRAVILLE AND LEW: DoD plans are shortsighted, unethical

  As early as this April, Yale plans to welcome a training center for interrogators to its campus.

  [...]

  But who is to say we should align ourselves with U.S. foreign policy? Though its goals are at times morally defensible, they can also be appalling. The techniques soldiers learn at Yale might be used, for example, to identify candidates for President Obama’s “kill list,” which is itself unethical and likely illegal. If someone lies to protect their friend from ending up on that kill list, is that a lie it is moral to detect? By training soldiers to perform these interrogations, Yale would be complicit in achieving these goals.

• Colleen McMahon: The Covert Op that Killed Anwar al-Awlaki Was Illegal

  But I’m not aware of anyone commenting at length on the section she titles, “Constitutional and Statutory Concerns about Targeted Killings,” a 5-page discussion of assessing targeted killing in terms of due process, treason, and other laws.

• Dumb and dumber: A secret CIA drone base

• Prosecutor on Rendition Case: Kidnapping a ‘Disgrace And Should Be Prosecuted’

• At Least 20 CIA Prisoners Still Missing

• CIA Finds More Photos Of Osama Bin Laden’s Corpse, But We Still Can’t See Them

• Could the Senate Intelligence Committee Do Oversight of CIA Drone Strikes?

  Different US Senate committees are supposed to do oversight of different federal agencies. The Senate Judiciary Committee is supposed to oversee the Department of Justice. The Senate Armed Services committee is supposed to do oversight of the Pentagon. And the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to do oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency. Since the CIA is conducting drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and since this is, to say the least, a controversial policy, the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be doing oversight of that.

Cablegate

• Ecuador election: President Rafael Correa wins

  Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has been re-elected for a third term with more than 50% of the vote. His main challenger has admitted defeat.

• Correa calls for resolution of Assange

  ECUADORAN President Rafael Correa has called on Europe to quickly settle the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who has been holed up in the country’s embassy in Britain for eight months.

• Julian Assange: Women Are ‘Braver Than Men’

• Julian Assange: Wikileaks Party will attract female voters

• Westwood supports Assange on London catwalk

• Westwood supports Assange on London catwalk

• Westwood wears Julian Assange T-shirt on the catwalk

• ‘WikiLeaks Party will attract the support of many women’: Assange

• Tea with the ‘high-tech terrorist’

  That should be enough to slingshot him from Knightsbridge to Canberra. Set aside the cheap diatribes and what you think of Julian Assange as a person, or whether he’s done this or not achieved that. The fact is that electoral victory for him later this year would be one of those rare political miracles that make life as a citizen worth living. In a country weighed down by sub-standard politicians, sub-standard journalists and sub-standard freedom of information laws, the political triumph would be great. It would breathe badly-needed life into Australian democracy. And, yes, if the miracle happened, from that very moment the fun party down under would begin.

• John Keane: Julian Assange, from leaker to senator?

  WikiLeaks didn’t unleash the end to government secrecy some feared (or hoped for). But Julian Assange, holed up in a London embassy, is planning his next act: running for the Australian Senate.

• Lunch and dinner with Julian Assange, in prison

• Stratfor and Sri Lanka: An initial study of ‘The Global Intelligence Files’

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Billionaires Secretly Funded Vast Climate Denial Network

  Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

  The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives.

• A Debate: Should the U.S. Approve TransCanada’s Massive Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline?

  Thousands of environmental activists from across the continent plan to gather in Washington, D.C., tomorrow to launch a two-week protest against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. The massive pipeline would cross the Yellowstone River, as well as the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest freshwater aquifer in the United States.

Finance

• Report: Facebook paid no income tax last year

• America’s bail system: one law for the rich, another for poor

• Senator to watchdogs: bring more banks to trial

  A senator critical of Wall Street took regulators to task on Thursday for failing to take banks to court over misconduct, coming out swinging in her first public appearance as a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• CNN’s Anderson Cooper Caught Faking Interview In Front Of Blue Screen Background

  The next scenes feature backstage shots of the Saudi Arabia “set” – an entire news crew, complete with fake props.

  Turns out Jaco, Rochelle and their crew aren’t in Saudi Arabia at all. They are on a sound set near the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, a faked broadcast that the cable news channel eventually had to quietly admit.

  The video contains clips of Jaco and crew clowning around. Jaco holds up a mock SCUD missile with a rag attached to its tail that acts as a rocket “plume.” The CNN reporter goes on to joke about how “they always call an ‘all clear’” when he orders his “burger and fries.” He clowns around about other things as well.

Privacy

• Philip Vermeer speaks to European legislators

  Ambassador Philip Verveer addresses internet governance and casts water on European cloud privacy concerns.

Civil Rights

• WHY BREACH OF CONTRACT SHOULD NEVER BE A CRIME

  In the face of efforts to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), some buinesses have told lawmakers that the CFAA should be used to punish breach of contract where the breacher acted “for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain”. Such a proposal does not fix the ability of prosecutors to go after people for disregarding terms of service.

• NDAA & Incarceration of Japanese Americans

  The 2012 NDAA authorizes the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, including American citizens on U.S. soil, without a warrant or due process if the military simply suspects them of supporting terrorism. This is exactly what the U.S government did in 1942 to 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, and who spent years in prisons without notice of charges, the right to an attorney, or the right to a trial.

• Progress and the NDAA

  Compare what Hirabayashi was fighting in 1942 with what is now legally codified under the most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Obama threatened to veto until it included language allowing U.S. citizens to potentially be indefinitely detaine

• Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker’s New Ambitious Feature Documentary on War on Whistleblowers

• Washington legislature considering a bill to challenge NDAA’s unconstitutional detention provisions

  The Washington State House is considering bill HB1581, which would create “the Washington state preservation of liberty act condemning the unlawful detention of United States citizens and lawful resident aliens under the National Defense Authorization Act.” There are 21 co-sponsors, with representatives from both major parties: Representatives Overstreet (R), Santos (D), Shea (R), Taylor (R), Buys (R), Condotta (R), Scott (R), Upthegrove (D), Fitzgibbon (D), Blake (D), MacEwen (R), Crouse (R), Wylie (D), Pollet (D), Pike (R), Harris (R), Kagi (D), Moscoso (D), Warnick (R), Magendanz (R), and Stonier (D).

• STATES PILE ON AGAINST FEDERAL DETENTION PLAN

  Indiana, South Carolina both bucking idea of arresting, holding Americans

• Fighting the NDAA: Hedges vs. Obama

  Chris Hedges, a former correspondent for the New York Times and a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, is lead plaintiff in a suit brought by a group of reporters and activists against the Obama Administration over the NDAA provision authorizing indefinite detentions without trial. He was one of a group of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the New York Times’ coverage of global terrorism.

• NDAA: Pre-emptive prosecution coming to a town near you

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • The Python Foundation Asks For Help Re PYTHON Trademark in EU ~pj

    The Python Software Foundation is in the midst of a trademark battle. A UK company is trying to trademark the name Python for software, services and servers everywhere in Europe. If successful, that would make it impossible for Python to continue to use the name in Europe, despite using it now for some 20 years. They have issued a call for help, which I’ll reproduce here to make sure everyone knows exactly how you can help.

  • Python trademark at risk in Europe: We need your help!

  • Firm moves to trademark ‘Python’ name out from under the language

  • Python v. Python: Software foundation fights for trademark in EU

• Copyrights

  • Pirate Bay Proxy Crowdfunds Legal Fight Against Hollywood Group

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

The Ultimate Operating System

Microsoft should use a Linux base for an OS. Right, now I’ve got the awful part of saying it out the way I’ll go into detail about how and why I think this would be such a good idea. For everyone. Yes, including Microsoft.

OK, here goes. I’m not going to go into the ideals and fundamentals of open-source, freedom, free software and all the stuff that Linux represents, that’s everywhere else, and I really don’t have time. For this post I’m only interested in the ideals. Henceforth I present my case m’lud.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to install the Steam gaming client on Ubuntu (Gallery)

• Games

  • Top 10 Best Games on Steam for Linux So Far

    Steam for Linux has already garnered quite a few interesting games, but some of them will stand out due to their quality. We compiled a list of the most interesting titles that are working right now and have the most potential.

    The list is not put together in any particular order, but it does respect one condition. All the games mentioned here are working and are not in Beta, with one guilty exception.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • If You Are Buying Into Ubuntu Phone Claims, You’re Being Duped: Aaron Seigo

    Canonical’s Ubuntu Phone has got a lot of people excited about it. I am also excited about Ubuntu Phone but having learned from Ubuntu TV and Ubuntu for Android hype last year, I am being a bit careful this time.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Gnome 3.8 on Ubuntu 13.04!

    Testing and even using not-ready-yet technology of tomorrow is something that characterizes almost any Gnome user out there.

    Many of us want to see the new exciting changes that the 3.8 release will bring, test the new features and see how the new version our favorite DE is evolving in almost real time.

  • GNOME Shell 3.6.3 release fixes 4 major bugs

  • My favorite GNOME Hackers for 2012

    This post is about two months late and just one day after IGNOME Valentine’s Day ..and is pure gossip

    The girl on the left, is Karen Sandler and she is my personal favorite Gnomer for 2012!

    This hasn’t to do anything about good or bad developers or how significant their contribution is in GNOME. Therefore I am not including people as Bastien Nocera, Matthias Clasen, Emmanuele Bassi, Florian Mullner and others. As a matter of fact I am including only people I have talked with. The order is totally random, with the exception of Karen and Jasper, which I place them in first position

Distributions

• Review: Chakra 2013.02 “Benz”

  It’s been a while since I looked at Chakra, so I was thinking now might be a good time to do that. Plus, KDE 4.10 just came out with a whole bunch of new features and fixes, so I wanted to check that out too. So this is the subject of today’s review.

  I’ve tried Chakra a number of times before. It was originally derived from Arch, but since a couple years ago it has been developed in a fully independent manner. It uses a “semi-rolling” release model, in which applications like Mozilla Firefox and other front-end features like KDE are updated on a rolling basis, while core system components are held to be more stable.

• New Releases

  • Zorin OS 6.2 Lite is released

    The Zorin OS Team have released Zorin OS 6.2 Lite, the latest evolution of the Zorin OS Lite series of operating systems, designed specifically for Windows users utilizing old or low-powered hardware. This release is based on Lubuntu 12.04.2 and uses the LXDE desktop environment to provide one of the fastest and most feature-packed interfaces for low-spec machines. This new release includes newly updated software out-of-the-box. We also include our innovative Zorin Look Changer, Zorin Internet Browser Manager, Zorin OS Lite Extra Software and other programs from our earlier versions in Zorin OS 6.2 Lite.

• Gentoo Family

  • Press Release: Sabayon 11

  • Sabayon 11 Review

    The 11′th iteration of Sabayon has been released, as Fabio Erculiani announced on the official Sabayon page, stating that “this is a release you cannot miss!”

    Those who don’t know, Sabayon Linux is a Gentoo-based rolling-release Linux distribution created by Fabio Erculiani that pursues the “Out of the box” thinking that’s available in both x86 and x64 architectures. It comes in many flavours and is available for users of all the leading Desktop Enviroments like KDE, GNOME, MATE, XFCE, and others.

  • Sabayon Linux 11 Released

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Releases OpenShift 1.1

    Red Hat has announced the release of version 1.1 of OpenShift which brings a number of enhancements and updates. OpenShift Enterprise 1.1 features a fully supported developer console that enables application deployment via a web browser, in addition to OpenShift Enterprise’s CLI and Eclipse IDE interfaces.

  • Fedora

    • Steam for Fedora Now Available

      Valve gave the best Valentine Day gift to its fans (to be precise Linux fans) by launching the Steam for Linux client officially. The company is endorsing Ubuntu Linux at the moment as it finds easier to focus on one product when it is experimenting.

    • Fedora 18: Graphical Installer Horror

      I am usually quick to write an article or something on the latest Ubuntu or Fedora release. But for Red Hat’s new Fedora 18 operating system, I thought I’d hold off a little and read some other users opinions before I make my own final call of judgement. Reading others opinions and reviews prompted me to check it out for myself due to the mixed reactions that I read. To be blunt,

      Fedora 18 is a horrible release. Let me explain the issues that I encountered with the latest update.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Finally It’s Steam for Linux But Only Officially for Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Developer Preview for Nexus 4, Galaxy Nexus arrives February 21st

        As was promised, enthusiasts and developers will be able to flash Ubuntu onto their Galaxy Nexus’ before the end of the month. Canonical has announced that the Developer Preview of the new operating system will be released on February 21st. The surprise, however, is that the company has added support for the Nexus 4, and users with the latest Nexus phone will be able to download and flash Ubuntu onto their devices on the 21st as well. Additionally, the source code for the operating system and the tools needed to flash phones will come out on that date.

      • What Ubuntu Phone Apps Should Look Like

        Canonical is working on creating a pleasant experience on Ubuntu Phone, which is expected to be released later this year. The company made a call for collaboration on core apps and according to Mika Meskanen of Canonical the response has been great. This response encouraged the team to help those developers and designer who are working on core apps.

      • Ubuntu for Phones Hits Developers Next Week

        Canonical — the company behind the Ubuntu project — announced that the Touch Developer Preview of Ubuntu will be available for the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 4 on Feb. 21, 2013.

        Canonical says the Touch Developer Preview is designed for enthusiasts and developers — giving them a chance to “familiarize themselves with Ubuntu’s smartphone experience and develop applications on spare handsets.”

        Even better, Canonical will install the new OS on the phones of developers who want it and are attending Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona Feb. 25-28.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Fuduntu 2013.1 in my production setup!

          Remember the perfect grade that Fuduntu got in my earlier review? Well, it’s not gonna happen this time. There are three reasons for that. One, it’s too easy to enable the Testing repository and screw your system. Two, the package manager needs more rework, namely being more flexible and responsive, having fewer issues with the locking, allowing easier, friendlier and more robust search, and allowing a smooth, seamless installation of the graphics drivers without the user having to resort to any command line tricks and tweaks. Lastly, the Nvidia driver installation was not flawless.

          At the end of the day, I was having a badass distro that was fast, light, beautiful, and modern, but the cost was some pain, several hours of time lost, and the knowledge that a pristine setup is impossible. Overall, Fuduntu 2013.1 did what I needed, and I had my Nvidia drivers in place. I do not regret my decision to include this distribution in my setup, and the decision stays. But there’s more work needed, especially under the hood, to make sure that nothing goes wrong in multi-boot setups, blessed with tons of proprietary drivers. All that said, Fuduntu 2013.1 is still an awesome product.

          To conclude this review, yes, another revolution did happen. I am running a Fedora-based distribution in my setup. It’s bleeding edge, it’s fast, modern, light, elegant, and comes with a mighty punch of programs, including Steam and Netflix. That’s nothing you can sneeze at. Fuduntu 2013.1 promises to be a big player in the Linux arena, and it sure has the capability to stand alongside Ubuntu and friends without feeling antiquated or complex or anything of that sort. The ultimate question of long-term support and relevance remains, the ability to remain flexible and adapt to changes, as well as iron out all and any bugs in the user space that could lead to systems being unbootable, botched or both. If this can happen, then Fuduntu 2013.1 could very well become No.1 Linux distro. for now, with this test concluded, it gets 9/10. Almost perfect. So damn close.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • WebOS Dies Again

    I always had high hopes for the Palm WebOS. I even owned a Palm Pre briefly, but returned it when I found the signal at my house was too low. Even though the mobile operating system had fewer features, I always thought that WebOS was superior to Android, at least in terms of usability and design. I’m still jealous of how you could swipe up to view all open apps as “cards”, and swipe between them to choose your next app. Unfortunately, it is not always the best technology that wins the market, and now ZDNet is predicting that HP is dropping WebOS in favor of Android.

  • Android

    • Now we know why Apple was leaking stupid iWatch rumors: Samsung’s releasing one

      According to screenshots unearthed by SlashGear from a Korean messageboard, Samsung looks like it is building a smartwatch, probably but not certainly on an Android foundation…

    • Android Helps Samsung Secure ‘Colossal’ Lead Over Apple iPhone

    • Vertu chooses Android over Windows for luxury handset

    • MTV and Swipe Telecom launch the Volt in India, a 6-inch smartphone with pre-installed TV player

      MTV has partnered with mobile handset maker Swipe Telecom to release its first co-branded smartphone called the MTV Volt in India.

Adobe Photoshop v 1.0 Source Code Published

The Computer History Museum has made available the source code of version 1.0.1 of Photoshop for non-commercial use. Adobe Photoshop is the magic software which redefined the image manipulation. This 20 year old software which was first written for Apple’s Mac in pascal has become a verb.

An Open Source Prodigal Returns

A few years ago, I was given the opportunity to spend my days working with and talking about Open Source software. It was exhilarating while it lasted, but after a few years, I had to return to product-based professional services to make a living.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The State of Open Source Office Software in 2013

  If the arrival of Windows 8 opened new doors for Linux in the world of desktop operating systems last fall, then it seems fair to say that the recent arrival of Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365 has surely done something similar for free and open source office suites.

Education

• Hackathon-style sprint event to build Intro to Open Science course

Openness/Sharing

• Open Access/Content

  • Former Copyright Registers: We Must Limit Fair Use At Public Universities, For The Poor Publishers Who Are Paying Us To Say This

    We’ve written a few times now about an important case involving fair use within university libraries and their “e-reserves.” It involves some academic publishers (Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications) suing the Georgia State University for daring to allow professors to designate content such that it can be checked out electronically, just like they would with physical content. The publishers demand to be paid extra for such things, because the key to things going digital, to them, is the ability to get paid multiple times for what used to be free. The court eventually came out with a detailed and complex ruling that found most of the e-reserves to be fair use. We had some concerns about some seemingly arbitrary “tests” that the judge came up with, but on the whole were encouraged by the strong fair use support.

• Open Hardware

  • This Open-Source, Robotic Tentacle Will Haunt Your Dreams

    In the underground world of robotic tentacle makers, there are two rules: 1) don’t talk about underground tentacle-making and 2) don’t talk about underground tentacle-making. Both of those rules have been shattered by Matthew Borgatti, a robotics designer who has created a life-like, 3D-printed tentacle that flails around quite disturbingly using Arduino boards and a set of mini air compressors.

Standards/Consortia

• Multistakeholder WCIT

  The article of Klimburg overlooks that ITU-T is a multistakeholder organisation and European players embark on a cybersovereignty approach, simply because the multistakeholderism of the US does not give them a fair share, still they cannot support an expansion of power for ITU world governance: In a world with more than 200 nations “world governance” leads to hypocrite political corruption, nurtures a political class that at best trickles down the “capacity building and technical assistance” in their nation.

Science

• Russia meteor prompts U.S. lawmakers to call for protective steps

Security

• Famed US hacker helps Ecuador secure its vote

  Kevin Mitnick, who once gained notoriety as America’s most wanted computer hacker, now heads a thriving Internet consultancy tasked with helping keep Sunday’s presidential elections in Ecuador secure.

  “Eighteen years ago I was busted for hacking. I do the same thing today but with full authorization. How cool is that?” Mitnick wrote on his @kevinmitnick Twitter account on the eve of the vote.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Cornel West: Obama is a ‘war criminal’ who has killed ‘over 200 children’

  Appearing on the radio Thursday with host Tavis Smiley, professor Cornel West argued that President Barack Obama is, like Presidents George W. Bush and Richard Nixon before him, a “war criminal” uniquely responsible for the deaths of “over 200 children.”

  West’s words were in response to a question about the administration’s seeming preference for killing terrorism suspects from the air rather than risking American lives to take them prisoner and hold them for an indefinite amount of time in military custody. A legal whitepaper obtained by NBC News recently exposed the Obama administration’s once-secret justification for the program, which authorizes a deadly airstrike if intelligence officials believe it may take out any “senior operational leaders” of al Qaeda or “associated forces,” even if that includes an American

• One dead, 26 injured as protests sweep Egypt

• Ex-LA Cop Brian Bentley on Dorner Manifesto: ‘Not Only do I Believe it, but I Lived it’

  *Brian Bentley, 49, doesn’t agree with what Christopher Dorner — the ex-cop at center of a massive manhunt for the killings of three people—has done, but he certainly understands it.
  As a former LAPD officer, Bentley, who is now an author, says that a Dorner-like situation was just a matter of time.

• Waco Massacre: 20 Years after

• An Intentional Fire? Police Use of Incendiary Tear Gas Criticized in Killing of Christopher Dorner

• From Dorner to Waco to MOVE Bombing, A Look at Growing Militarization of Domestic Policing

• Death in Singapore

  Mary and Rick Todd were anxious about entering the apartment where their oldest son had lived and died. Late last June the couple had flown from Montana to Denver to Los Angeles to a colonial-era house in the Chinatown district of Singapore to try to make sense of an unthinkable loss: Shane Todd, a young engineer who had just wrapped up an 18-month stint with a government research institute known as IME, was dead – an apparent suicide, according to the Singapore police. Mrs Todd felt her heart pounding as she climbed the narrow staircase to his apartment and thought about what the police had told her a day earlier.

  [...]

  The Todds agree that Shane’s hard drive may be a critical piece of evidence in how he died and could shed fresh light on the vulnerabilities of technology safeguards. But they question how the Singapore police have so far investigated Shane’s death, so they won’t hand over the drive. They are offering, instead, to send a copy of the contents of the drive. In return, they want the Singapore police to send them a copy of all files on Shane’s laptops, which are still in police custody. And again, they are asking the Singapore authorities to invite the FBI to help investigate how their son died.

• The Continued Subversion of Attorney-Client Privilege at Guantanamo Bay

  With each hearing before the Guantanamo military commission, it becomes more evident that privileged legal communications defense attorneys are supposed to be able to have with their clients are being violated.

  Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi are all on trial for their alleged involvement in the September 11th attacks. Their lawyers have challenged alleged eavesdropping on communications during commission proceedings, in holding cells and in meeting facilities.

  [...]

  …FBI had installed listening devices in the facilities where they have been holding attorney-client meetings.

• America’s False Flag Attacks

• Tammy Duckworth’s Deadly Hot Cocoa

  The act of killing is an unnatural act for everyone.

• Is Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ the Inspiration for a DOJ Legal Brief on Drones?

• Judges shouldn’t decide about drone strikes

• “Too Big to Fail has become Too Big for Trial”

• “Hubris”: New Documentary Reexamines the Iraq War “Hoax”

  An MSNBC film, hosted by Rachel Maddow and based on Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s book, finds new evidence that Bush scammed the nation into war.

• Visiting Libyan doctor reports harsh treatment by FBI

  Three Libyan doctors, visiting Boston and Seattle to begin a health-care partnership with U.S. physicians, say they were detained and interrogated as soon as they arrived in the U.S.

• Obama says his is ‘most transparent administration’ ever

• Obama Asserts Administration ‘Most Transparent Ever’ Even as It Fights Release of Targeted Killing Details

  The administration of President Barack Obama refuses to acknowledge to a court that the CIA actually has a drone program that exists. This act is repellent in one respect because the administration’s nominee for CIA chief, John Brennan, sat before senators and answered questions about the program during his confirmation hearing. It is also detestable and fraudulent because President Obama continues to assert his administration is the most transparent and ethical administration in the history of the United States, even as it vigorously fights a major Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in court that would further reveal the legal basis for the administration’s claimed authority to target and execute persons abroad without charge or trial.

• Does John Brennan think the executive branch could order targeted strikes on US soil?

• SILENCED – First Trailer for James Spione’s New Documentary – 2013

• National Counterterrorism Center’s ‘Terrorist Information’ Rules Outlined In Document

  A training document released in response to a civil liberties organization’s lawsuit and obtained by The Huffington Post reveals that the government considers an “analyst’s wisdom” the ultimate arbiter of whether data on American citizens can be classified as “terrorist information” and retained forever.

  “Only a CT (counter-terrorism) analyst can determine whether data constitutes terrorism information,” the electronic training course for new National Counterterrorism Center analysts states. “There is no requirement that the analyst’s wisdom be rock solid or infallible.”

• Here’s Why Obama Won’t Say Whether He Can Kill You With a Drone: Because He Probably Can

• John Brennan Refuses to Deny the Government Collects US Person Data with No Predicate

• FBI hid microphones in Guantánamo, but no one listened, prison commander testifies

• This Isn’t Hard, Mr. President: Do You Think You Can Kill Us on American Soil or Not?

• Gene Healy: Obama’s executive death warrants

  Don’t Americans have “the right to know when their government believes it’s allowed to kill them”? As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., put it last week, you’d think that’s “not too much to ask.”

  For three years now, thanks to Obama administration leaks, we’ve known that the president claims the right to summarily execute American citizens far from any battlefield. He even joked about it at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner in 2010, telling the Jonas Brothers to stay away from his daughters: “Two words for you: ‘predator drones.’ You will never see it coming.” (Oh, Barack — you slay me.)

• CRS Report on Publishing Classified Info. Gets Drake Case (& A Lot More) Wrong

  The Congressional Research Service (CRS), which normally publishes stellar reports, just did one on Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information.

• Terror – America Scared Witless

• Obama’s Reverse Imaginary Friend, the Assassination Robot

• Suicide Made Easier

  The current gun control debate is focused, not surprisingly, on the carnage from rapid-firing assault weapons, like the one used in the Connecticut school massacre. But beneath the surface lies a disturbing reality: nearly two-thirds of the 30,000 gun deaths each year are not the work of deranged mass shooters but the suicides of troubled individuals with easy access to firearms, often in quiet family homes.

• DOJ: John Brennan Didn’t Officially Disclose CIA Drones Program

  John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s nominee to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency, didn’t officially acknowledge the CIA’s role in the use of drones in the targeted killing of suspected terrorists overseas during his testimony last week, a Justice Department lawyer contended in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit this week.

• This Stay-at-Home Mom Gave Obama a Tougher Interview Than 60 Minutes

  This is disingenuous. First of all, Obama is empowered to declassify anything that he likes. More to the point, even U.S. senators with direct oversight responsibility have complained about the White House’s failure to answer multiple, specific information requests, as the John Brennan hearings illustrated. The problem isn’t just that this information isn’t on the front page of the New York Times. For example, Senator Ron Wyden isn’t even permitted to know in how many countries America is killing people!

Cablegate

• [2010] Why does PPE rule Britain?

  It is the degree of choice for the Westminster elite, claiming six cabinet members and three Labour leadership contenders among its alumni. Why does Oxford’s politics, philosophy and economics course dominate public life?

• Cost of monitoring Julian Assange running at £6m a year

  The full cost to Scotland Yard of preventing Julian Assange from escaping from the Ecuador embassy was disclosed yesterday as £2.9 million.

  The figure, released after a Freedom of Information Act request by The Times, includes £2.3 million diverted from normal policing duties and £600,000 in extra overtime.

• Oh Yoko! Ms. Ono at 80

  …campaigned against fracking and honored Julian Assange..

• US pressure to seize explosives behind 2011 Cyprus Naval Base explosion

  The Evangelos Florakis Naval Base explosion in Mari occurred on 11 July 2011, when 98 containers of explosives that had been stored for 2½ years in the sun on the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base near Zygi self-detonated. The resulting explosion killed 13 people, and damaged all of the buildings in Zygi, the island’s largest power station, then responsible for supplying over half of Cyprus’ electricity.

  The containers of explosives on the base had been seized by the US Navy in 2009 after it intercepted a Cypriot-flagged, Russian owned vessel, the MV Monchegorsk, travelling from Iran to Syria in the Red Sea. According to US diplomatic cables leaked through WikiLeaks, the US pressured Cyprus to confiscate the shipment, as it was apparently in violation of UN sanctions on Iran. [1] The Cyprus Navy was given responsibility for the explosives, and it moved them to the Evangelos Florakis a month later.

• Calls to reduce Met Police’s 24/7 Julian Assange guard

• Assange’s $4.5-million lockdown: UK police spending huge sums on 24-hour patrol

  British police have already spent some $4.5 million in patrolling for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, eight months into his confinement at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, Scotland Yard says.

• “Our government refused to listen to us” – WikiLeak’s Castro

  Sam Castro, the co-founder of the WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance, spoke with the VOR’s John Robles about Julian Assange’s Australian Senate bid, internal Australian politics and the rules and current condition of Australian government policies, the public’s support of Mr. Assange and the soon-to-be-official WikiLeaks Party and what has happened to Australia and the Australian people since the United States of America pulled Australia into the endless “War on Terror”. Her viewpoint from the inside of Australia is both refreshing and informative as she details everything from surveillance to foreign policy.

Finance

• Einhorn case against Apple rests on unusual legal tactic

  Hedge fund star David Einhorn wants to force Apple Inc to share some of its huge cash reserves with investors, but his lawsuit rests on a U.S. securities rule that has little legal precedent.

• Apple CEO on shareholder lawsuit: ‘It’s a silly sideshow’

• SEC sues unknown traders over Heinz options

  U.S. securities regulators filed suit on Friday against unknown traders in the options of ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co, alleging they traded on inside information before the company announced a deal to be acquired for $23 billion by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc and Brazil’s 3G Capital.

  The suit, in federal court in Manhattan, cites “highly suspicious trading” in Heinz call options just prior to the Feb. 14 announcement of the deal. The regulator has frequently in past filed suit against unnamed individuals where it has evidence of wrongdoing, but is still trying to uncover the identities of those involved.

• Arrested Development

  But compare this rapid arrest of “small men” with the LIBOR scandal, where banks indisputably rigged, deliberately and repeatedly rigged, the basis of many trillions of dollars worth of financial transactions. It was deliberate dishonesty, fines on the banks have added up to billions, but not one of the fraudulent bankers who did it has been arrested – even though it is known who they are and there is a ton of documentary evidence. Not one arrest. Not one. Just as nobody has been arrested in this country for the fraudulent sub-prime packages and interest rate swaps that led ordinary, and even very poor, people to have to pay out huge proportions of their income to “bailout” the bankers.

• Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

  How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it

• Elizabeth Warren Embarrasses Hapless Bank Regulators At First Hearing (VIDEO)

• Elizabeth Warren Asks The Most Obvious Question Ever And Stumps A Bunch Of Bank Regulators

  Someone drank too much coffee this morning before a Senate Banking Committee hearing and decided to “do the job we hired her for” and ask the question the rest of us have been “asking for years.” That someone is my new favorite senator, Elizabeth Warren. Someone go on another Starbucks run for her, pretty please?

• POGO Sticks It to the SEC

  In our last episode of that ongoing Washington soap opera, “As the Door Revolves,” we introduced you to former federal prosecutor Mary Jo White, pursuer of drug lords and terrorists, who left government to become a hot shot Wall Street lawyer defending such corporate giants as JPMorgan Chase, UBS, General Electric and Microsoft. Oh yes — and former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta, currently appealing his insider trading conviction.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• John Bolton’s Fake Applause

  The Oxford Union has dubbed fake applause onto the videos of John Bolton’s address to the Union. It has not done this for any other speaker.

Privacy

• CISPA is Back.

  This week, CISPA was reintroduced in the House of Representatives. EFF is joining groups like ACLU and Fight for the Future in combating this legislation.

• California Sheriff Faces Loud Privacy Protests Against Drone Plans

  Yesterday the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office presented a proposal for the purchase of a drone in a public hearing with the Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee in Oakland, California. EFF joined the ACLU of Northern California and several other public interest groups in testifying against a drone purchase until the Sheriff’s Office adopts a substantive, binding privacy policy—with no loopholes—that protects citizens from undue surveillance.

• As Secretive “Stingray” Surveillance Tool Becomes More Pervasive, Questions Over Its Illegality Increase

  A few months ago, EFF warned of a secretive new surveillance tool, commonly referred to as a “Stingray,” being used by the FBI in cases around the country. Recently, more information on the device has come to light and it makes us even more concerned than before.

• The Spy in Your Pocket: Mobile Journalism’s Risk

  For now, while journalists can take some steps to protect themselves and their sources, they are limited by the nature of their cellphones. At a panel in May, investigative journalist Matthew Cole, who works on U.S. national security and intelligence issues, demonstrated how he conducts his work using an elaborate protocol taught to him by digital security expert Chris Soghoian. Cole uses two cellphones; they are bought anonymously; they are never used together; and one always has its battery removed, to prevent it from accidentally being activated and to ensure the two numbers are never linked.

• Big Brother televisions: Intel is the latest firm to announce TV box that spies on you and selects ads that match your behaviour

  The company, which makes the microchips found inside most personal computers, has launched an entirely new division, Intel Media, to make and market the Orwellian streaming-television product.

• Bipartisan Bill Introduced in Congress Would Prohibit Warrantless Drone Surveillance

Civil Rights

• Immigration tactics aimed at boosting deportations

  Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors tougher enforcement, said ICE “wouldn’t have to do a hail Mary to juice the numbers” if it hadn’t ordered its agents to halt efforts to deport some illegal immigrants.

• Charlie Rose: `America’s Unwritten Constitution’

• Senior British rabbi filmed telling alleged child abuse victim not to go to the police

• Military Commissions 5.0: Conflicting Testimony f/ Top Leaders on Gitmo FUBAR

  The past two weeks have brought us 3 bombshell exhibits on why the military commissions at Guantanamo are an utter faiure. First,we learned that the audio and video feeds at the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and 4 others mysteriously went out as the defense was presenting a motion, to the surprise of even the judge. (It turned out the “Original Classification Authority” (read: CIA) was the culprit.

  Then we learned that the government has been eavesdropping on attorney-client privileged communications through a microphone disguised as a smoke detector.

• VA doctor: I was punished for speaking out

DRM

• Evasi0n Is The Most Popular Jailbreak Ever: Nearly Seven Million iOS Devices Hacked In Four Days

  Nearly seven million iPhone, iPad and iPod touch owners have cracked Apple’s restrictions on their devices…

• Apple Last in E-Book Case After Macmillan Settles

  Macmillan agreed Friday to let retailers reduce the costs of its e-books, the Justice Department said, leaving Apple to face price-fixing charges at trial.

Intellectual Monopolies

• US And Europe Move On To TAFTA: Yet Another Chance To Push Through ACTA/SOPA Style IP Maximalism

  ACTA and SOPA may have flopped, but minor setbacks like that won’t stop the onslaught of abuses from the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries looking to use the international treaty process to try to pressure everyone to keep ratcheting up protectionist laws concerning copyright, patents and trademarks. Obviously, we’ve been talking about the still worrisome TPP agreement involving a bunch of Pacific Rim countries, but it’s not stopping there. Back in October, we warned that the US and EU were preparing a new trade agreement as well, and the preliminary plans noted that it would include a “high level of intellectual property protection, including enforcement.”

• Copyrights

  • Anti-Piracy Group to The Pirate Bay: We Want You To Sue Us!