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05.15.13

Man From Microsoft Runs the Ubuntu Project Now

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Ubuntu at 10:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Current front page of Ubuntu.com, featuring the Microsoft-dominated Dell (with Linux patent tax)

Dell at Ubuntu

Summary: How the leadership of Ubuntu has changed and how it may relate to some strategic decisions inside the project

I ADDRESS this issue not from a position of hostility but a position of concern. I write this from a *Ubuntu box, my main workstation for years. I started using Ubuntu in 2005 (first release) and have since then publicly posted links to around 10,000 pro-Ubuntu articles, installed Ubuntu for many (even relatives of mine in the States), and helped people with all sorts of technical trouble related to it, never for a fee. I really contributed a lot to the project, not just as a user. Back in the days some people used to call me “Ubuntu shill”, accusing me of working for Ubuntu in some ways (I never had).

Ubuntu changed recently, but I perpetually tried to ignore it and dismiss all negative moves as illegitimate reasons to turn my back on the project. It has been a gradual process of consistent exacerbation. There was no last straw.

“Back in the days some people used to call me “Ubuntu shill”, accusing me of working for Ubuntu in some ways (I never had).”In short, the project became less recognisable since upstream got abandoned, some time around 2010. From not contributing to upstream (or barely contributing to it, notably the kernel, Linux) Ubuntu turned to drying up upstream, inadvertently perhaps, by creating other routes that are exclusive to Canonical. The list of such projects has been named completely in several other blogs, so I’ll spare the details. Ubuntu has been upsetting many in the community and closed down development recently (the process went into private hands). Ubuntu is deviating from upsteam, ignoring decisions and even developing in secret (neither source code nor access to read-only decision-making). How can that be? It’s evidently against the spirit, the philosophy and the motto I put my weight behind around 7 years ago.

Earlier this week it turned out that Canonical is closing down a community participation site. I heard some Ubuntu proponents trying to justify this, but their reasoning was weak and hardly persuasive. The other day I saw a link about a Ubuntu.com redesign that would further de-ephasise the community in favour of the shareholders community. Right now it’s promoting Dell, which pays Microsoft for GNU/Linux and deserves a boycott for it.

“That person, who from Microsoft, became Vice President (VP) of Ubuntu some months ago.”More relevant to my perspective is Ubuntu signing deals with Microsoft, usually accompanying those with promotional language for Microsoft, the abusive monopolist. Even UEFI Restricted Boot got assisted by Ubuntu, aiding an agenda that harms many distributions of GNU/Linux (yes, GNU too, by demoting GRUB [1, 2]). The same applies to Mono and Moonlight.

The person behind some moves that were beneficial to Microsoft, such as indirect Mono promotion (concurrent with GNU demotion [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) and adding Yahoo as a search supplier for Ubuntu (Yahoo is just a Microsoft front end), came from Microsoft itself. Guess what? That person, who from Microsoft, became Vice President (VP) of Ubuntu some months ago. Yes, Mr. Spencer is now the head of Ubuntu. He got promoted some months ago, climbing up the ladder over the years until becoming “Vice President, Ubuntu at Canonical Ltd.” He still lives in “Greater Seattle Area”, far from Canonical and much closer to Microsoft. Who might he hang out with in his spare time?

I stated a couple of times this month (in microblogs) that I had ceased promoting Ubuntu in microblogs. It’s just not worth the time and the future of the project seems less clear now that the Microsoft friendliness can be explained in terms akin to entryism.

Microsoft mentality seems to have been brought to Canonical after Red Hat too had hired from Microsoft for a top position [1, 2]. Learn a lesson from Nokia next time (if there is a next time). █

05.14.13

Has Microsoft Irreversibly Taken Over ZDNet (CBS) to Disseminate Its Lies?

Posted in Apple, Deception, Microsoft, Vista 8 at 3:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

ZDNet censorship

Summary: ZDNet promotes Microsoft in the editorial sections, not just in the ads, and it employs Microsoft people who habitually also censor commenters for expressing views that may upset the customers (advertisers like Microsoft)

One has to be naive to genuinely believe that the corporate press has no bias because bias is built into it; it is the business model. When it comes to companies like Apple, for instance, Apple can pay a lot of money for favourable coverage to sites like CNET through the parent company, CBS (the payments are bade through ad contracts), which also owns ZDNet now. What this tends to lead to is the hiring of people more friendly to companies that advertise with the network (both Apple and Microsoft do that aplenty) and firing (or cultural driving out) of ‘misfits’. We gave examples before.

“A verbal memo [no email allowed] was passed around the MS campus encouraging MS employee’s to post to ZDNet articles like this one”
      –Michelle Bradley, MicrosoftNot so long ago we showed Microsoft advertising creeping into editorial sections/structure of ZDNet. there is also an increasing number of former and present Microsoft staff there, acting as “journalists” (syndicated in news feeds) whose bias reeks. Zack Whittaker, former Microsoft UK staff, uses this tech tabloid to spin Microsoft antitrust cases and this month he used this CBS-owned tabloid to spread Microsoft lies about Vista 8 ‘sales’. These are lies. It’s like libel but in reverse, lying for a company rather than against it (hence it’s unlikely that a formal complaint will be raised). The spinner takes the lie as a given, spreads it, and then attempts to shift attention to another topic in his headline. Disgusting.

Some more Google bashing in this tech tabloid comes from Microsoft staff (link) and the Microsoft-bribed Bott (peripheral PR), who encourages us to go to Microsoft for our Fog Computing needs (Bott plays a special role for Microsoft along with Mary Jo Foley and Microsoft Jack). Here is the link to the ad (Ed). Others in the site have a mixed history with Microsoft; some try to announce the death of form factors where Microsoft could never make headway (link), but the bottom line is, ZDNet has a disproportional amount of Microsoft coverage (promotional), which is not surprising given that even Microsoft staff, not just peripheral unofficial staff or former staff, works there under the banner of ‘journalism’.

When did Microsoft PR agencies infiltrate the media to that high a degree? And how, except boycotting CBS sites, can one counter this?

There were times when corporations were leaning on journalists to print stuff. Now the corporations are journalists. No doubt about it, it is convenient for Microsoft. Even antitrust cases are covered in the press by its former employees (in CNET also, but that’s a subject for another day).

It should be noted that my comments in ZDNet got censored by the management not for being against the terms of service but for simply not expressing opinions they agree with. CBS employs sensitive deletionists who make the comments look friendly to the writers by deleting challenges. █

‘The author of the email, posted on ZDNet in a Talkback forum on the Microsoft antitrust trial, claimed her name was Michelle Bradley and that she had “retired” from Microsoft last week.

‘”A verbal memo [no email allowed] was passed around the MS campus encouraging MS employee’s to post to ZDNet articles like this one,” the email said.

‘”The theme is ‘Microsoft is responsible for all good things in computerdom.’ The government has no right to prevent MS from doing anything. Period. The ‘memo’ suggests we use fictional names and state and to identify ourselves as students,” the author claimed.’

–Wired Magazine

Microsoft is Attacking Boston Over Brand Ideology

Posted in FSF, Google, Mail, Microsoft at 2:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Boston

Summary: Another hypocritical attack of Microsoft against Google, this time in Boston

THE home of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the principal battleground for Microsoft's anti-ODF wars in the US is going to abandon Microsoft. Relation expected, right? Microsoft, as we saw before, is getting all nasty about it.

Well, “despite the Anti-Google FUD-slinging” Boston will ditch Exchange: “Faced with the choice of saving serious money or buying a load of FUD, the City of Boston has become the latest enterprise customer to dump Microsoft Exchange in favor of Google Apps.

“The thing to do is not to learn from Boston’s government branches but from the Boston-based FSF.”“And the city’s 20,000 employees won’t be the last to make this move until Microsoft either closes the cost chasm or comes up with a scarier story.”

Here is more: “THE CITY OF BOSTON has switched its 20,000 employees from Microsoft Exchange to Gmail in a move that will save $280,000 a year.”

Neither choice is acceptable. They are both proprietary and not privacy-respecting. So on what grounds does Microsoft attack Google? The same was done by Novell and Microsoft in California. They are all hypocrites because Microsoft itself is trying to do exactly what Google is doing.

The thing to do is not to learn from Boston’s government branches but from the Boston-based FSF. What they need is encrypted, self-hosted, FOSS-based mail. Later in the week we shall write about some newly-discovered Microsoft surveillance. Microsoft is a lot worse than Google when it comes to privacy. █

Software Patents Reality Distortion Field

Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 2:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Media coverup allegedly helps shelter the train wreck which is software patents

Train

Summary: How press coverage of software patents in the EU and New Zealand (NZ) varies depending on the source; allegations that the US press tries to dismiss end of software patents by twisting an outcome of a major trial

THE EU, NZ, and the US: are software patents actually really banned there? It’s all about perspective, or so we may be led to think by the corporate press.

Europe

First of all, software patents in Europe are not an impossibility due to the “as such” loophole. As software patents continue to creep into the continent the German government steps in to stop the potentially illegal practice. “Siemens tried to enforce a software patent against a German webshop owner in 2007 http://ur1.ca/du5ku #swpat threat in Europe is real,” writes the FSFE’s founder, Georg C. F. Greve. The FSFE has just published a “response to German Parliament on #swpat ur1.ca/dtypk (German) Today @kirschner in Parliament hearing #endswpat” (here it is from the current head of the FSFE).

New Zealand

In Europe, the loophole which facilitates software patenting is virtually the same as in New Zealand, where software patents are still possible albeit officially denounced (we wrote about it twice before).

The patent lawyers’ sites which are more inflammatory (yes, IAM again) deny that software patents are banned in NZ and the NZ press focuses on domestic reactions like this one (ignore US press to dodge talking points of US-based corporations). One NZ-based site (not US site with NZ localised version like IDG’s) says: “The Government has announced a change to planned new patent rules today which has put an end to fears that computer software might be covered by new patent protection.”

There are “no patents on computer program “as such”,” says one person who is familiar with these matters. It’s not perfect, “but better than nothing,” says Glyn Moody ‏ in Twitter. Here is some other coverage of interest. NZ is in the same position that Europe is in. Software patents are not “officially” legal, but in practice one can get them anyway, defying the law using loopholes (characterising software as an inseparable part of a general-purpose, programmable computing device).

United States

Over in the US, the corporate-dominated USPTO, SCOTUS and even CAFC (to a lesser degree) call the shots. These people don’t know how to use computers or program them. They know just the very basics. As one person puts it: “Out of touch Fed Circuit judges? Two are over age 75. None under 60. I’m guessing none ever wrote a line of code, or use Instagram.”

Another says: “Computers Compute i.e. do Maths. Maths isn’t patentable therefore Software shouldn’t be patentable – Simple”

And moreover from the same person: “Surely it can’t be difficult for the Patent Office to recognize that a Computer Computes Maths; says what it does in the name :(”

Lastly: “The problem with most lawyers IMO is that they don’t have a clue about Programming & think it’s all Innovative when it’s not”

So the US press has been trying to decipher or spin the CAFC’s latest decision on this subject. Will Hill writes: “No matter what happens, the Microsoft press will say the results are unclear or favor software patents. Bilski seemed to be a rejection of software patents.”

Here is Crouch’s response, which we cited before. He insinuates that many but not all software patents may be dead given this decision and some allege that all software patents are dead in the US now. Another legal site calls it a “nightmare”. The business press dismisses this as a game changer. We wrote about it twice before, initially calling this a missed opportunity to reform the system. The British press is more optimistic than that, insinuating that software patents died in the US. Compare that to US news sites with headlines like “Mixed Ruling In Software Patent Case Raises More Questions Than Answers” (prevalent headline) and Australian perspective which focuses on the Australian company. A fairly independent US-based site summarised it all as follows: “Ten judges, seven opinions, 135 pages, zero legal precedent.”

Not everyone agrees. Rupert Murdoch’s influential corporate press continues to entertain this discussion in comments and polls at WSJ. Its coverage of the trial came under the headline “Long-Awaited Patent Ruling Yields Few Answers” (prevalent talking point in US sites).

Meanwhile, report some Russian journalists: “The United States Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of biotech giant Monsanto, closing the door on a patent case that has pitted a smalltime farmer from Indiana against a titan of the agriculture industry.”

The US report was quick to dismiss claims that this may be applicable to software (here is AOL). The SCOTUS almost always rules in favour of large corporations. Justices are appointed by politicians that those corporations are bribing.

In the post “Diagnosis From USA Federal Circuit – Software Patents Are Sick” Canadian blogger Robert Pogson alleges software parents were crushed. He adds: “Isn’t that a hoot? Can you hear the patent-FUD rushing out of M$’s collapsing balloon? Can you hear the “partners” who have signed up to pay M$ per Android/Linux smart thingy calling their lawyers and accountants? Can you see the small cheap computers becoming even less expensive? I can.”

Who can be trusted? Legal sites that say software patents are affected (completely dead or partially dead) or corporate press which almost uniformly argues that there is no change whatsoever? The confusion or the mixes signals sure serve the status quo. █

Links 14/5/2013: Android Growth Explosion

Posted in News Roundup at 10:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • NASA migrates ISS laptops from Windows to Linux
  • Debian Linux now Google Compute Engine’s default OS

    Want to run Linux on the Google Computer Engine cloud? Starting immediately, Debian Linux is Google’s Linux of choice.

  • Linux-based Robonaut 2 preps for active ISS duty

    NASA’s Linux-based “Robonaut 2″ is undergoing extensive testing on the International Space Station (ISS), and will soon be put to work. The humanoid Robonaut 2 will soon receive a major upgrade that will provide legs and an expanded battery pack, enabling it to perform more duties, including space walks.

  • Open source cellular targets rural comms

    Start-up RangeNetworks is hoping that the combination of low cost and transparent software will allow it to break into the notoriously locked-down cellular network market.

  • Microsoft is lagging Linux

    Microsoft’s kernel is falling behind Linux because of a cultural problem at the Volehill of Redmond, claims one of its developers.

    The anonymous Microsoft developer who contributes to the Windows NT kernel wrote a response acknowledging the problem and explaining its cause.

  • Could Chrome OS Thrive in Public Kiosks and in Cars?

    Could Google’s Chrome OS arrive on platforms that have hardly been discussed for it yet? According to rumblings from Google and some media reports, the answer is yes. Of course, there has been a lot of talk about possible mergers between Chrome OS and Android, and talk of Chrome OS tablets. But there are some facts about the guts of Chrome OS that could make it ideal for other applications.

  • A shot in the arm for enterprise Linux

    This year’s 2013 Enterprise End User Report show the world’s largest enterprises are increasing their investments in Linux for the third consecutive year and management’s perception remains increasingly positive.

    According to a press statement from the Linux Foundation, “These advancements are resulting in more companies wanting to contribute to the advancement of Linux and understand how to benefit from collaborative development.”

  • Open Ballot: The final frontier

    With this, it seems, Linux has conquered the final frontier, but that doesn’t mean world domination is complete. So, our question is this: Where would you like to see Linux adopted next?

  • Desktop

    • Samsung ARM Chromebook Review

      The Samsung ARM Chromebook is one of a few ARM devices that I prepare Bodhi Linux images for. As such I’ve owned the hardware for almost six months now and during this time I’ve used it a fair amount. The goal of this post is to provide a comprehensive review of the product to see if it is something that could be useful to you.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Torvalds unveils first Linux 3.10 release candidate

      Linus Torvalds released RC1 of the new kernel on the eve of Mother’s Day, together with some advice on how to treat Mum/Mom right on the occasion.

      “So this is the biggest -rc1 in the last several years (perhaps ever) at least as far as counting commits go,” Torvalds wrote in the release announcement. “Which was unexpected, because while linux-next was fairly big, it wasn’t exceptionally so.”

    • Linux Kernel 3.8 Reaches End of Life (EOL)

      Along with Linux kernel 3.9.2, 3.0.78 LTS and 3.4.45 LTS comes the thirteenth and last maintenance release of Linux kernel 3.8, as announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman on May 11, 2013.

    • 30 Linux Kernel Developer Workspaces in 30 Weeks: Greg Kroah-Hartman

      Welcome to 30 Linux Kernel Developer Workspaces in 30 Weeks! This is the first in a 30-week series that takes a new approach to the original series, 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks. This time we take a look inside developers’ workspaces to learn even more about what makes them tick and how to collaborate with some of the top talent in all of software. Each week will share a picture and/or a video of the workspaces that Linux kernel developers use to advance the greatest shared technology resource in history.

    • The Iron Penguin, Part 1
    • Linux 3.10 Kernel Integrates BCache HDD/SSD Caching

      After being in development for more than one year, BCache was finally merged on Wednesday into the mainline Linux kernel code-base. BCache serves as an SSD caching framework for Linux by offering write-through and write-back caching through a newly-exposed block device.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • ROSA Desktop Fresh LXDE alpha preview

      ROSA Desktop Fresh LXDE is the end-user edition of ROSA Desktop that uses the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. This is not the same as the LXDE edition which was released in June 2012. That one is the enterprise edition, which ships with Debian-style stable Linux kernel and software, and uses the Marathon code name. (See ROSA 2012 LXDE review

    • New Releases

      • MEPIS 12 Beta

        A new test release of MEPIS 12, version 11.9.86, is available for testing. It may take up to 24 hours for the ISOs to appear at the mirrors.

      • Antergos 2013.05.12 – We’re back

        After a month since our last release under the name “Cinnarch”, we’re glad to announce the new name of our project and our first release being out of beta. We’re stable enough to make this step.

      • Manjaro 0.8.5.2 Community Releases unleashed (KDE, Cinnamon, Mate)

        We are happy to announce three new Manjaro Community Editions featuring Mate 1.6, Cinnamon 1.7, Gnome 3.8 and KDE 4.10.2. “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.

      • OS4 Enterprise 4.1 Released

        Today we are pleased to announce the release of OS4 Enterprise 4.1. With this release we bring many advancements to the worlds premier enterprise Linux platform. We learned a lot from our release of Enterprise 4.0 and this release is based on customer feedback. Starting with the user interface. Many of our Enterprise customers coming from Red Hat and Oracle Linux wanted a consistent user interface that they had become accustomed to with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle Enterprise Linux and we believe we have achieved that and with some of the flare that OS4 is famous for. They also wanted features on par with what they were accustomed to on their platforms and what we came up with was perhaps the most feature rich enterprise Linux product on the market today.

      • Open source NAC PacketFence 4.0 released

        PacketFence is a fully supported, trusted, free and open source NAC solution.

    • Arch Family

      • Cinnarch successor Antergos arrives

        In just a month since the last release of Cinnarch, during which the developers decided to drop Cinnamon for GNOME, they have produced a new release that brings a distribution that is more desktop agnostic than ever before. Cinnarch development was halted after the developers were finding it harder to synchronise the Cinnamon development with the rolling nature of Arch Linux.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Ceph improves Red Hat support in new release

        The third stable release of the Ceph distributed storage platform, named the “Cuttlefish” edition, has enhanced Red Hat support and improvements to make it easier to deploy. Ceph, which is developed by Inktank, offers a distributed system that can be presented to users as an object storage system, a block storage system, or as a POSIX compatible filesystem. Ceph 0.61 now has RHEL 6.0 tested packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux available from the Ceph site and in the EPEL (Extra Packages For Enterprise Linux) repository; the company says it is discussing with Red Hat the possibility of including Ceph in a future RHEL.

    • Debian Family

      • A little look at Debian 7.0

        Having a virtual machine with Debian 6 on there, I was interested to hear that Debian 7.0 is out. In another VM, I decided to give it a go. Installing it on there using the Net Install CD image took a little while but proved fairly standard with my choice of the GUI-based option. GNOME was the desktop environment with which I went and all started up without any real fuss after the installation was complete; it even disconnnected the CD image from the VM before rebooting, a common failing in many Linux operating installations that lands into the installation cycle again unless you kill the virtual machine.

      • Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?
      • Upcoming Features of Debian 8.0

        Now that Debian 7 “Wheezy” has been officially released and it’s ready to be installed on your Linux-powered computers, the developers can concentrate their full resources on the next major release, Debian 8.

      • A proposal for an always-releasable Debian

      • Derivatives

        • SimplyMEPIS 12 Reaches Beta Quality

          Warren Woodford announced this past weekend that development on SimplyMEPIS 12 has reached Beta quality and thus he has released a test image. This release brings some newer elements, but the announcement tells of the kibosh on two of them. With little else to go on, it was time for a boot.

          The graphics of SimplyMEPIS 12 haven’t changed since the alpha released last Fall. Some software version numbers have jumped, but some haven’t. The Beta features Linux 3.8.2, Xorg X Server 1.12.4, GCC 4.7.2, and KDE 4.8.4. GRUB 2 is default, but UEFI and GPT drive support have been “deferred.” Woodford said of that, “Unfortunately each hardware vendor is implementing the “standard” differently.” The MEPIS tools look pretty much unchanged as well.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Strikes Out on Its Own Again

            “I don’t know what’s wrong with Canonical,” said blogger Robert Pogson. “They seem not to understand that GNU/Linux is a cooperative product of the world, and wasting resources to do things differently when existing software is working well is poisoning the well. FLOSS is the right way to do IT, whether as a developer, a distributor, OEM, retailer or user.”

          • Ubuntu SDK apps to get own package format

            Canonical’s Foundations Team are creating a new application packaging system to sit alongside the existing “apt and dpkg” system that Ubuntu currently uses. The plan was disclosed by Colin Watson, technical lead of the Foundations Team which is responsible for the core of the Ubuntu system, in a mailing list post.

          • Ubuntu Developer Summit: This Week!

            Just a quick note to remind everyone that our next Ubuntu Developer Summit is taking place this week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and is open and available to everyone to participate. This is the event where we get together to discuss, debate, and plan the next three months of work.

          • On Simplicity
          • Possible Changes In Ubunu 13.10 Saucy Salamander [UDS]

            Ubuntu Developer Summit is a meeting where software developers gather to discuss the next Ubuntu version changes and features.

            The Ubuntu Developer Summit (uds-1305) will start tomorrow, will last for 3 days and some major possible changes will be discussed, like “click packages”, Chromium replacing Firefox as the default web browser, Unity 8 with Mir being available for testing on the desktop and more.

          • Ubuntu – A Replacement for Chrome OS

            n the broadest sense Chrome OS is a consumer of Google Services. But it is not alone in this role. This topic has been broadly discussed in the context of Google services for Apple’s iOS and others. I am thinking of Google Maps and Google Now.

          • Ubuntu.com update

            I’d like to give an update on upcoming plans for Ubuntu.com and to respond to recent concerns about the positioning of the community within the website.

          • Ubuntu to stop Brainstorm

            The Ubuntu Technical Board has decided, at its most recent meeting, to finally abandon the Ubuntu Brainstorm ideas site. The site was created in 2008 to bring together the community and developers on a collaborative crowd-sourced platform where problems could be posed, ideas for solving the problems offered and users could vote on preferred solutions. If solutions were popular they could find themselves implemented by Canonical or Ubuntu teams.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Mir in Kubuntu

              As you might have seen in Jonathan’s blog post we discussed Mir in Kubuntu at the “Mataro Sessions II”. It’s a topic I would have preferred to not have to discuss at all. But the dynamics in the free software world force us to discuss it and obviously our downstream needs to know why we as an upstream do not consider Mir adoption as a valid option.

            • Ubuntu 11.10, 10.04 Desktop and 8.04 Server reach end of life

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • The International Space Station Goes Linux and RunRev goes open source
  • Is Open Always Better?

    As supporters of open source software, our knee-jerk reaction to the question of if open development always results in better quality code is often an unqualified, “yes, of course!”. However, it may do the community good to take an objective look at the state of some of our projects, and how it reflects on the open source movement as a whole. It has been my experience that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, proprietary software is fantastic, and it would do us all a bit of good to ask why.

  • Open-source RF boards available from Richardson RFPD

    The open-source RF design initiative, dubbed Myriad, has the support of US-based distributor Richardson RFPD.

    Richardson RFPD will begin stocking and selling the Myriad-RF-1 board to customers around the world via its website immediately.

  • Open source Java projects: Akka

    The actor model is a message-passing paradigm that resolves some of the major challenges of writing concurrent, scalable code for today’s distributed systems. In this installment of Open source Java projects, Steven Haines introduces Akka, a JVM-based toolkit and runtime that implements the actor model. Get started with a simple program that demonstrates how an Akka message passing system is wired together, then build a more complex program that uses concurrent processes to compute prime numbers.

  • Events

    • Upcoming Conferences Bode Well for Open Source Fans

      Details are emerging for some of the most important technology conferences of the next several months, which promise to feature lots of compelling speakers and content for open source fans. The Google I/O conference begins this week in Northern California, and is likely to bring with it lots of news related to Android and Google’s phone and tablet strategies. Meanwhile, The Linux Foundation has announced the keynote speakers for LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America, taking place September 16-18, 2013 at the Hyatt New Orleans in New Orleans, La.

    • Gabe Newell and Eben Upton to keynote LinuxCon

      Valve Software boss Gabe Newell and Raspberry Pi Foundation founder Eben Upton have been announced as keynote speakers for the Linux Foundation’s LinuxCon and Cloud Open North America conferences. The two events will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana from 16 to 18 September. Newell and Upton will be joining Jonathan Bryce of the OpenStack Foundation, HP Labs Director Martin Fink, and representatives from Intel and Wired Magazine on stage as keynote speakers. The popular Linux Kernel Panel, which features leading kernel developers and maintainers discussing the future of the open source operating system, will also be back.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Packaged Apps for Chrome Browser Point to Google’s Long-Term App Strategy

        While it hasn’t generated a whole lot of buzz yet, Google has begun to take the wraps off of a strategy that will allow users of the Chrome browser to easily find and run “packaged apps” just like sophisticated web apps that users of Chrome OS are used to running. In an announcement on the Chromium Blog, Google officials unveiled a developer preview of Chrome packaged apps and the Chrome App Launcher. Chrome packaged apps are now available in the Chrome Web Store for anyone on Chrome’s developer channel on Windows or Chrome OS.

      • Google Delivers Tools for Integrating Chrome with iOS Apps

    • Mozilla

      • Fourth cycle approaches for Mozilla’s WebFWD open accelerator

        Mozilla’s WebFWD programme is seeking applications for its fourth cycle of classes which are designed to teach new innovators to build healthy businesses by embracing the best of open source and startup principles. By getting entrepreneurs to create businesses what make the Web better and more open, Mozilla hopes to ensure that future businesses on the internet are more effective in enabling an open web.

      • Mozilla Can’t Seem to Keep its Firefox OS Strategy Straight

        As I noted yesterday, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs (who will be leaving his CEO post this year) made very clear in comments at the All Things D: Dive Into Mobile conference that Mozilla has very ambitious plans for its new Firefox OS mobile operating system. Specifically, he sees it as an innovation-centric platform. As quoted by ABC News, Kovacs said, “We haven’t done a great job [on mobile browsing]. I’m expecting someone will do an Apple on the whole browsing experience.”

      • Australis launches in Firefox UX versions

        The Firefox Australis theme that is going to be released later this year if things go as planned seems to split the community. Some users are looking forward to a modernized theme while others fear that it will change the browser that they are using in away that it is not as customizable and usable anymore.

      • Mozilla’s Firefox OS will also appear on high-end phones

        The upcoming Firefox OS will appear on higher-end smartphones, and not just entry-level handsets, with Sony expected to release a premium device running the operating system, a Mozilla executive said.

        “Sony is known for quality and user experience. So they are targeting for very very high (end). We are in joint discussions on the kind of device and what’s the product,” said Li Gong, Mozilla’s senior vice president for mobile devices.

      • You should remove everything after the ? when you share a link ;)

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • How Open Source Python Drives the OpenStack Cloud [VIDEO]

      There are a lot of different programming languages in use today. When it comes to the cloud, thanks in part to the strong position of OpenStack, the open source Python language has emerged as being one of the most important. OpenStack is written in Python and is in used by many leading IT vendors including IBM, HP, Dell and Cisco.

    • The role of open source in cloud infrastructure

      Today, open source cloud platforms are winning the IaaS battle, open source storage and file systems are expanding their footprint, and open source databases are replacing closed source rivals. Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems explains why nearly everything is being snatched by open source software

    • OpenNebula Releases First Open Source Enterprise Cloud Manager
    • OpenNebula 4.0 Released – The Finest Open-source Enterprise Cloud Manager!

      The fourth generation of OpenNebula is the result of seven years of continuous innovation in close collaboration with its users

      The OpenNebula Project is proud to announce the fourth major release of its widely deployed OpenNebula cloud management platform, a fully open-source enterprise-grade solution to build and manage virtualized data centers and enterprise clouds. OpenNebula 4.0 (codename Eagle) brings valuable contributions from many of its thousands of users that include leading research and supercomputing centers like FermiLab, NASA, ESA and SARA; and industry leaders like Blackberry, China Mobile, Dell, Cisco, Akamai and Telefonica O2.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Business

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Study: open source remixing seems to lead to less original work

      What is it that means one open source project takes off, while another doesn’t? There are a lot of ways to analyse this question depending on the example at hand, but a more general study of the “remixability” of online content has found a surprising correlation — there’s a trade-off between originality and the chance it will inspire new versions.

      Researchers Benjamin Mako Hill from MIT and Andrés Monroy-Hernández from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University wanted to look at a particular dilemma — despite “proponents of remix culture often speaking of remixing in terms of rich ecosystems where creative works are novel and highly generative”, actual examples of it happening “can be difficult to find”, Monroy-Hernández writes on Hill’s blog.

  • Project Releases

    • Graph processing platform Apache Giraph reaches 1.0

      Used by Facebook and Yahoo, the Apache Giraph project for distributed graph processing has released version 1.0. This is the first new version since the project left incubation and became a top-level project in May 2012, though for some reason it has yet to make it to the Apache index of top level projects.

    • Blender 2.67 renders cartoons
    • OpenStreetMap launches new map editor

      The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project has announced that it will make its new map editor, which it had originally unveiled in February, available to all its contributors today. Development on the new iD editor was partly funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation and unlike the software it replaces, the new editor does not require Flash to run. The tool is written completely in HTML5 and uses the D3 visualisation library.

  • Public Services/Government

    • NSA Asks Open Source Developers to Help Protect Agency Cloud; Keith Alexander Comments

      The National Security Agency has started developing a cloud computing platform intended to help secure the government’s network infrastructure, FedScoop reported Friday.

      David Stegon writes NSA has reached out to the country’s open source community by allowing developers to collaborate in shoring up the cloud infrastructure’s code for the cloud infrastructure.

    • State offers online open source data trove (O’Malley style)

      The Maryland state government quietly announced its brand-new online open source data trove last Wednesday.

    • Default to open data: an Executive Order
    • US president issues open data order

      US president Barack Obama is aiming to breathe new life into US information portal data.gov. Over the last two years, the portal appears to have faltered somewhat. Under an executive order issued by the White House on Thursday, data in new government and public sector IT systems will have to be stored in “open and machine readable” formats. The requirements also apply to data processing facilities which undergo modernisation or renovation, which will also be required to make information available via the US government’s open data portal.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Your next language

      One of the commonly asked questions I hear is “I want to get into programming, which language should I learn?” It’s closely followed by “I write in X but I want to do something else… what language should I be looking at?” There used to be some nicely canned answers to these questions over which the merits and demerits could be discussed over coffee or beer but the culture and practice of open source has changed that. Now, I can only give one answer… “all of them”.

    • Python-accelerating PyPy 2.0 for x86 released

      The developers of PyPy, an alternative Python 2.x implementation with a just-in-time compiler that’s “almost a drop-in replacement for CPython 2.7″, have announced the release of PyPy 2.0. According to the developers’ benchmarking site PyPy 2.0 is around 5.71 times faster than CPython 2.7.3.

    • Why IBM Now Views LLVM As Being Critical Software

      It wasn’t until the middle of 2012 that IBM viewed LLVM as being “critical” to support but since then they have decided to fully support LLVM across all IBM server platforms. Last week in Paris at the European LLVM Meeting, one of their developers talked about the tipping point in supporting LLVM on IBM hardware and their current development status.

    • PyPy 2.0 alpha for ARM

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • [Dvorak's tongue in cheek article] Dear Microsoft: Windows 8 Is Great

    Your idea that all interfaces should be simple, to-the-point, and touchable is the way to go. To heck with convention! We are all sick of the desktop and the whole idea of a desktop. It’s not a desktop anyway—it’s a screen and there are better things to put on it than folders and icons. These are dumb and they assume we all work in offices. Or worse, it assumes we work at all.

    Just look at the old-fashioned interface. Those faux shadows and cutesy icons symbolize what exactly? This is not the interface for today’s modern user. We need representation. Something that reflects the “now.” A symbol of the public—today’s public. Like some bland, square, one-dimensional tiles. Dumbed-down to an extreme. Dopey even. Tiles say it all. And you can poke at them and move them around.

    Microsoft, you nailed it!

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Demanding CIA Accountability for Drone Strikes
    • Pakistan’s likely PM says CIA drone strikes test sovereignty

      The Pakistani politician poised to become the country’s next prime minister said Monday that Islamabad has “good relations” with the United States, but called the CIA’s drone campaign in the country’s tribal region a challenge to national sovereignty.

      Nawaz Sharif spoke to reporters from his family’s estate outside the eastern city of Lahore on Monday, two days after his Pakistan Muslim League-N party won a resounding victory in national elections.

    • US drone strikes: ‘deadly and dirty’ warns new book

      On the agenda were “kill lists” — names of individuals whose perceived threat to America’s security made them targets for assassination by unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

      The kill lists, scrutinised personally by Obama at the weekly meetings, were soon expanded to become what US journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of Dirty Wars, calls a form of “pre-crime” justice where individuals are considered fair game if they met certain life patterns of suspected terrorists.

    • Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control by Medea Benjamin – review

      Throughout history, some forms of war and weaponry have been viewed with greater horror than others. Even ancient civilisations tried to codify the rules of war – jus in bello. Homer’s Greeks disapproved of archery; real men fought hand-to-hand, not at a distance. Shakespeare’s Henry V roared with anger when, at Agincourt, the French cavalry killed his camp followers. At the beginning of the last century, dum-dum bullets, a British invention, were outlawed following an appeal by Germany. Revulsion against the widespread use of gas in the first world war led in the 1920s to an international convention prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons – not that the ban stopped the British using chemicals in Iraq, or the Italians in Ethiopia in the 1930s. A landmine convention was agreed in 1997, though not signed by the US, China or Russia. Today, China, India, and perhaps surprisingly North Korea are among nuclear‑armed states that have pledged no first use, though Nato, Israel and the US have not.

    • Bringing drones out of the shadows

      Even ex-Obama administration officials are expressing qualms about targeted killings.

    • Will Pakistan finally stand up against illegal US drone attacks?

      The Peshawar high court has delivered a damning verdict on the strikes. Pakistan must now move towards protecting the security of its citizens

    • Israel grounds fleet of drones after crash

      Palestinians say Israel uses drones to fire missiles, but Israel has never offered a confirmation.

    • Drones come home to roost as Pakistan’s new government flies high

      The strikes, Khan told the Star’s Michelle Shephard, are only “creating anti-Americanism. It is helping the militants to recruit people. Collateral damage means anyone losing a family (member) goes and joins the militants.”

    • CIA agent intercepted in Moscow – reports

      An alleged CIA agent has been briefly detained in Moscow for allegedly trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer, Russian media report.

    • Russia: ‘Undercover CIA Agent’ Detained
    • Russia ‘detains CIA agent’
    • Bungles: CIA messes

      The CIA secretly smuggled millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai over more than a decade, The New York Times revealed. Karzai confirmed the report.

    • How Can We Understand Benghazi Without Probing the CIA’s Role?

      After catching up on coverage of the Benghazi attack over the weekend, there’s something that has me very confused: why are so many journalists ignoring the fact that the Americans there were mostly CIA? Here’s how The New York Times began a Benghazi story published online Sunday: “A House committee chairman vowed Sunday to seek additional testimony on the Obama administration’s handling of last year’s deadly attack on the American diplomatic post in Libya.”

    • Pakistani court rules CIA drone strikes are illegal

      In the first major Pakistani court ruling on the legality of the CIA’s drone campaign in the country, a Peshawar High Court judge said this morning that strikes are ‘criminal offences’. Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan ordered Pakistan’s government to ‘use force if need be’ to end drone attacks in the country’s tribal regions.

    • SCHRAM: CIA didn’t get much for big sacks of cash

      America’s long-running courtship of Afghanistan’s mercurial Hamid Karzai got even wackier last week.

      Now, things that used to be top secret — like CIA bags of cash delivered to a government famously rife with corruption — have been featured on screens everywhere. And Washington policy is looking like a comic parody of the way the world really works.

      Scene One: Afghanistan’s president convenes a Saturday news conference and publicly confirms the CIA’s longtime practice of bringing him bags of money. It had been a top secret until The New York Times disclosed it April 28. Karzai explains how and why he has been spending the CIA’s millions, which is as he sees fit, accountable to no one.

  • Cablegate

    • Bitcoins, Wikileaks, 3D printers, PGP and the gov’s battle against information

      The U.S. government has a hard enough time parrying foreign threats like terrorist groups and hostile nations but it’s the unfettered distribution of information in the form of software that could pose the greatest threat of all.

    • WikiLeaks: Indira Government charged two American under Official Secret Act

      WikiLeaks reveal that Indira Gandhi Government had charged two Americans under Official Secret Act. The cable says: ” Two Americans await trial in India on charges of spying and are expected to go on trial here within two months in the first case in India of Westerners. Anthony Fletcher and Richard Harcos were arrested on April 26, 1973 in Calcutta. they have been charged under the Indian Official Secret Act.” The cable also reveals that on February 19, the Home Ministry in New Delhi had issued official sanction permitting the Government of West Bengal to try Anthony Fletcher and Richard Harcos under the Official Secret Act. The trial which will be held in Calcutta has not been scheduled. The West Bengal Government has set another hearing in the case for February 27. At a preliminary hearing in Calcutta on February 13, the possibility of bail was discussed, and the decision on bail may be issued on February 27. I have instructed the Consul General in Calcutta to keep you and the Deraprtment of State informed on the progress of this case. I assume your Office will inform Mrs. Fletcher of the forgoing and I am writing separately to her in response to her letter to me of February 12.”

    • WikiLeaks Sees Credit Card Donations Return After Court Ruling

      Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks can again accept credit card donations today after Valitor hf, the Icelandic partner of MasterCard Inc. (MA) and Visa Europe Ltd., began processing payments after losing a court case.

      Valitor was ordered by Iceland’s Supreme Court on April 24 to begin processing WikiLeaks payments within 15 days or face daily fines amounting to 800,000 kronur ($6,800), according to the ruling. The company was sued by WikiLeaks’s payment services provider, Reykjavik, Iceland-based DataCell, which has also lodged complaints against Visa and MasterCard with the European Commission.

  • Finance

    • Obama, Cameron Promote Trade Deal Granting Corporations Political Power

      President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday pledged to pursue a broad trade agreement between the U.S. and European Union, amid growing domestic unrest with the Obama administration’s plans to include new political powers for corporations in the deal.

      Negotiations have not formally begun, but a series of meetings between U.S. and EU officials have established some ground rules and the preliminary scope of the talks. Since tariffs are already low or nonexistent, the agreement will focus on regulatory issues. That emphasis has concerned food safety advocates, environmental activists and public health experts, who fear a deal may roll back important standards.

    • Nohmul Pyramid Bulldozed In Belize For Rocks

      A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize’s largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

      [...]

      “It’s a feeling of incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road fill,” Awe said. “It’s like being punched in the stomach, it’s just so horrendous.”

    • ‘WikiLeaks of financial data’ prompts worldwide hunt for tax evaders

      A cache of data amounting to a whopping 400 gigabytes of information leaked by bank insiders has triggered an offshore tax evasion investigation across the United States, the UK and Australia.

  • Privacy

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright in France: Wishful Thinking and Real Dangers

        Pierre Lescure has handed in his report [fr] on culture at the digital era to French President François Hollande1. La Quadrature du Net denounces a flawed political process revealing the harmful influence of industrial groups at all levels of policy-making. How will the French government react to Lescure’s proposal to expand the scope of competence of the audiovisual media regulator (CSA) to the Internet? Will it to pursue former President Sarkozy’s anti-sharing policies and even supplement them with new ACTA-like measures encouraging online intermediaries to become private copyright police?

05.13.13

Links 13/5/2013: New Linux/Open Source Documentary, Lots More About International Space Station

Posted in News Roundup at 5:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • OSI Board Meeting Report

    The new OSI Board met in Washington DC last week. We held an effective face-to-face meeting where we discussed the progress of our plans to transform OSI into a member-based organisation. We held officer elections, once again electing Martin Michlmayr as Secretary, filling the vacancy for CFO left by Alolita Sharma by electing Karl Fogel and replacing him as Assistant Treasurer by electing Mike Milinkovich. I was re-elected as President and thank the Board for that vote of confidence in this time of change.

  • A Disturbance In The FLOSS In Canada, May 2013

    What do I make of this? For such large swings it can only mean some large organization was tweaking their operating systems. It looks to me that a bunch of GNU/Linux and “8″ systems were acquired and some “7″ systems were retired or replaced with XP… The bottom line is that in one month that other OS lost a couple of percents and GNU/Linux doubled to ~2.8%.

  • Scratching an Itch
  • Motivation and Reward

    A few months ago, the GNU project had to withdraw its article on motivation and monetary reward, because its author did not allow them to spread it anymore. So I recreated the core of its message – with references to solid research.

  • SDN: Cash Contest Promotes Open-Source High-Speed Networking

    What happens when next-generation networking, cash prizes and the open-source ethos converge? Answer: The Innovative Application Awards program, which is now accepting proposals from developers seeking to build open-source software that takes advantage of OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking (SDN) features. And there’s big cash behind this endeavor to encourage investment in big-bandwidth networks, with winning proposals receiving up to $10,000 in funding.

  • Events

    • Impressions from the Open Source Business Conference 2013

      At the Open Source Business Conference 2013, conversations on innovation, disruption, and open source leadership dominated the sessions. The conference chair, Matt Assay, crafted a program where each presentation and conversation reinforced how traditional business strategies are being disrupted by new market dynamics. The dynamics are shifting power away from closed, proprietary corporate leadership towards open collaboration and user-led innovation. The shift is disrupting traditional business strategies, IT operation practices, and market dominance.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Personalization with Respect

        Mozilla’s mission compels us to provide people with an Internet experience that puts them in control of their online lives and that treats them with respect. Respecting someone includes respecting their privacy. We aspire to a “no surprises” principle: the idea that when information is gathered about a person, it is done with their knowledge and is used in ways that benefit that person. People should be made aware of how information is collected and used. Each individual should also be able to decide whether the exchange of personal data for the services received in return feels fair. This can be challenging to achieve, especially when balanced against convenience and ease of use: people expect a fast, streamlined user experience without excessive prompts and confusing choices. But we are always striving toward this ideal.

      • Firefox 21.0: Find out what is new

        Mozilla will release Firefox 21.0 on May 14, 2013 and shortly thereafter update the Beta, Aurora and Nightly channels of the browser to Firefox 22.0, 23.0 and 24.0 respectively.

        The updates will be transferred to Mozilla’s ftp server first before they will be announced on the official website. If you have configured automatic updates, you should not have to worry about that though as your browser will get updated automatically when you start it after the update becomes available.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • The Power of Brand and the Power of Product, Part 1

      “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful” said G. E.P. Box of Box-Jenkins fame. Today we’re going to look at a model of market share, and I hope it is a useful model. One nice property of it is that it is very easy to estimate the parameters of this model. A single survey question will do.

    • Results of Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Logo Survey

      A quick update on our recent logo survey for Apache OpenOffice 4.0. We called on community members to submit proposals for a new project logo. The response was huge. We received over 40 logo proposals. To narrow down the choices we sought out feedback from users. We created a survey asking users to rate each logo on a 5-point scale, from Strongly Dislike to Strongly Like, as well as give an optional comment on each logo. The survey ran for one week and 5028 responses were received. Full details of the results can be found in the Apache OpenOffice Logo Survey Report. In this blog post we want to highlight some of the highest scoring logos, recognize the designers, and talk about next steps.

    • Apache OpenOffice: Help pick a new logo

      The release of Apache OpenOffice 4 will not happen tomorrow, but it is getting close. How close? Well, let’s just say it will happen soon. In months time, not weeks.

      To usher in what will be a milestone release for the Free Software Office suite, The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) wanted a new logo to replace the old OpenOffice logo, and requested design submissions from the community. There were 40 entries.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Open data: Meaningful, visual information

        One of the keys to a successful open data portal is to make it useful for the end user. Citizens and developers should be able to understand data sets without needing a PhD. I’ve been following the progress of Raleigh, North Carolina’s open data initiative, which launched a beta of their data.raleighnc.gov portal in March 2013.

Leftovers

  • Backlash begins against Adobe’s subscription-only plan
  • Time to Abolish the BBC

    I increasingly find myself advocating political opinions I would have found anathema five years ago. I am forced to the opinion that now it is time to abolish the licence fee and end all public funding to the BBC. We should not be blinded by nostalgia; the BBC has no claim to impartiality or “public service ethic.” Nor, for the most part, to quality. Talent shows, reality TV and endless cooking and property auction programmes are not something everybody should be obliged to pay for, on penalty of not owning a television.

  • What if people told European history like they told Native American history?

    Why do you include those “pre-contact” European things? Because they explain the motivations and reasons for what Europeans did. But people largely imagine North America as this timeless place and don’t recognize that pre-contact American history had just as much of an affect on post-contact history because it provides explanations of the motivations and reasonings behind indigenous peoples’ actions.

  • Security

    • Google to make 2-step verification mandatory, phones to replace passwords

      The rise of mobile devices and persistent connectivity, as well as apps and cloud services, has put us all at potential risk when it comes to online security. Simply put, it’s no longer as basic as using strong passwords and strong encryption on websites and services. According to a recent effort by Google in making its systems more secure, the company is looking into implementing smartphone tagging, life-long tokens, and requiring two-step verification on its services.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Plantwatch: Under attack – the wild British daffodil

      Spring went off with a bang in last weekend’s sunshine as blossom, flowers and new leaves burst out, although everything was about a month behind normal. But now even bluebells began to open this week over much of southern England, spurred on by the warm weather.

  • Finance

    • Wall Street is back

      American investment banks dominate global finance once more. That’s not necessarily good for America

    • Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card

      Google will update its Wallet product at its I/O developer conference next week, but will not include the physical credit card that the company had considered launching at the event, according to sources.

    • 27% of Spaniards are out of work. Yet in one town everyone has a job

      As Spanish unemployment reaches another record high, the residents of rural Marinaleda could be forgiven for feeling a little smug.

      In the small village in deepest Andalusia, the joblessness remains firmly – and almost certainly uniquely within Spain – at zero. With one set of traffic lights, two bars (one jammed with football paraphernalia for the First Division side Seville) and one central avenue lined with of low terraced houses, Marinaleda looks like many villages in western Andalusia.

      But huge wall murals depicting the destruction of tanks and weaponry, the binning of Nazi symbols, and a column of workers marching through the fields, are far from the usual graffiti found in such places. Nor do many villages name their sports hall after Che Guevara, or have oversized placards of doves of peace dotted on streets named after left-wing heroes such as Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda.

    • Ex-Senator Gregg Said to be Top Candidate to Lead Bank Lobby

      Former Senator Judd Gregg is a leading candidate to run Wall Street’s biggest lobbying group, according to people briefed on the discussions.

      Gregg, 66, a New Hampshire Republican who retired from the Senate last year, is being considered for the post as president and chief executive officer of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said four people who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter isn’t public.

      [...]

      Gregg has served as an adviser to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. since retiring from the Senate after serving since January 1993.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Billionaires Un-Friending Zuckerberg’s Political Group FWD.us
    • Ghost in the Machine: Pete Peterson Haunts College Campuses

      An odd couple made an appearance on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus recently: Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson and Madison’s progressive Congressman Mark Pocan. The two were invited to participate in a conversation about the national debt hosted by a local student organization and a bevy of national groups, including the Comeback America Initiative, the Concord Coalition, the Can Kicks Back, and the Campaign to Fix the Debt. On the agenda: debt, deficits, and the economy.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • EE selling your data to pollsters and police

      The Sunday Times has published an explosive piece about an exclusive deal for the sale of customer data between mobile operator Everything Everywhere and polling organisation Ipsos Mori, who in turn have tried to sell the data to the Met Police.

    • EE and sale of user data: does Anonymisation work?

      This afternoon, EE called ORG to ask us about our blog. They did not question the article, but confirmed that it is their belief that IPSOS MORI employees misrepresented what the data they are offering can do.

  • Civil Rights

    • Justice Department Complies With FOIA By Releasing Completely Redacted Document

      Yes, the Department of Justice complied with the letter of the law and responded to a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU seeking insight into the Obama Administration’s policy on intercepting text messages from cell phones.

    • The Hoopla around Boston makes us forget the possible End of the Species

      The imperial system lives by searching for scapegoats (previously, there were the communists, then the subversives, and now the terrorists, the immigrants… who will be next?) on whom the desire for collective vengeance falls. That way, the system divests itself of guilt or error. But, above all, it does everything possible so that this lethal threat to the human species is not acknowledged, and transformed into a dangerous collective consciousness.

    • America Keeps Honoring One of Its Worst Mass Murderers: Henry Kissinger

      Henry Kissinger’s quote recently released by Wikileaks,” the illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer”, likely brought a smile to his legions of elite media, government, corporate and high society admirers. Oh that Henry! That rapier wit! That trademark insouciance! That naughtiness! It is unlikely, however, that the descendants of his more than 6 million victims in Indochina, and Americans of conscience appalled by his murder of non-Americans, will share in the amusement. For his illegal and unconstitutional actions had real-world consequences: the ruined lives of millions of Indochinese innocents in a new form of secret, automated, amoral U.S. Executive warfare which haunts the world until today.

  • DRM

    • W3C presses ahead with DRM interface in HTML5

      W3C logo On Friday, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the first public draft of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). EME enables content providers to integrate digital rights management (DRM) interfaces into HTML5-based media players. Encrypted Media Extensions is being developed jointly by Google, Microsoft and online streaming-service Netflix. No actual encryption algorithm is part of the draft; that element is designed to be contained in a CDM (Content Decryption Module) that works with EME to decode the content. CDMs may be plugins or built into browsers.

05.12.13

Prominent GNU/Linux/KDE Developer Jonathan Riddell Complains About UEFI Restricted Boot, Calling it “a giant Microsoft conspiracy to make installing Linux more faffy than it already is.”

Posted in Antitrust, GNU/Linux, KDE, Microsoft at 11:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Jonathan Riddell
Image from jriddell.org

Summary: UEFI abuses continue, but Microsoft PR, lies, and attempts to silence the media go a long way, ensuring evidence gets insufficient coverage

A few days ago we wrote about UEFI, stressing that it offers no real security and that Debian should issue a complaint to improve the antitrust complaint already filed in Europe. This has not got sufficient coverage; a lot was done to legitimise UEFI in the press. Power-hungry companies love it because it takes control away from computer users.

Microsoft engages in patent racketeering and anticompetitive sabotage, so Microsoft’s arrogant manager should quit telling the press to stop criticising Microsoft. If journalists whom Microsoft has not given gifts and bribes seem unwilling to self-censor, then it’s because Microsoft is worse than a technical failure. It’s an abusive, anti-social, manipulative, corrupt, deceitful and despite all of this highly vain movement. Microsoft treats its domination as a right, not a status quo. And it acts accordingly.

Dr. Garrett, who has since his Microsoft apologism for UEFI left Red Hat (assuming he was not pushed out), tried to make Secure (Restricted) Boot sound benign and now he does the same for Treacherous Computing. His latest long post concludes with: “TPMs are useful for some very domain-specific applications, drive encryption and random number generation. The current state of technology doesn’t make them useful for practical limitations of end-user freedom.”

“Microsoft is probably going to drop the RT version of Surface…”
      –Christine HallBut they will almost certainly be used for that, in due course. Every war starts with the claims of ‘national security’ and UEFI restricted boot got marketed similarly before it got sort of cracked. Is Dr. Garrett not reading history books, only biology or technology book? Security has almost a monopoly on being used as pretext and excuse for control over people.

Microsoft would love to see UEFI lock-in creeping into more hardware (one where restricted boot cannot be disabled) and Christine Hall writes: “Our bet is that it’ll be a long, loinng time before we see a 64-bit version of RT made available to consumers. Microsoft is probably going to drop the RT version of Surface, and OEMs aren’t going to want to touch it until there’s a decent list of apps available for it–which will probably be never.

“If you don’t believe us, you might want to read what Toshiba had to say about RT at a product launch in Sydney, Australia this week.”

Thankfully, she is probably right, but Microsoft should never be tying hardware to software like this. It’s what Apple used to do. Well, even Apple suns Windows RT, so we know Microsoft’s copycat will go extinct.

Anyway, this brings us to the core of this post. A prominent KDE developer writes: “We installed Kubuntu but it didn’t set up Grub and we couldn’t do much useful at the Grub command line.”

KDE/Kubuntu is my choice for the main workstation, so Jonathan Riddell’s post is relevant to me. Last month I upgraded to the latest LTS and found myself struggling with the Grub command line. The system would not even start. Fortunately, on my Debian box, I was able to search the Web for a complicated solution that required chrooting the installation from a live CD. Nobody without a dose of Linux skills would manage to achieve this. It’s demoralising. Even I nearly gave up and resorted to a clean Debian install on my main workstation, abandoning Kubuntu after 4 years (I had used Mandriva before that).

The post from Riddell reveals a Microsoft riddle. The monopolist has made it very difficult to install GNU/Linux, and it is not a coincidence or side effect. “If you go to ubuntu.com,” writes Riddell, “to download it points Windows 8 users to this scary UEFI wiki page with scary headings like “Installing Ubuntu Quickly and Easily via Trial and Error”.

“Kubuntu is slightly more broken then Ubuntu but not much.”
      –Jonathan RiddellHere is his conclusion: “UEFI is a giant MS conspiracy to make installing Linux more faffy [implies hassle] than it already is. Kubuntu is slightly more broken then Ubuntu but not much. Only silver lining is that Windows 8 is rubbish and when we tried it there genuinely was a notification saying “Warning: your children might not be protected”. Think of the children and don’t use Windows 8!

“Oh well, here’s some pretty pictures to keep you amused.”

Vista 8 is a pile of garbage, just like its logo, which looks like a rotated garbage can. Microsoft has been releasing lies about “sales” and sending out trolls to deceive the public. These are all lies wrapped in a riddle. And unless we appeal to regulators Microsoft will continue to warp the market, the press, and computer users’ rights.

Microsoft is hardly a victim of negative press. It reserves a lot more negative press. Some turncoats in the FOSS world helped prevent negative coverage regarding anticompetitive aspects of UEFI. And now they suffer the consequences. Remember that Kubuntu is no longer run by Canonical (the project was hardly warped by Canonical/Mark’s ego, so Canonical abandoned it). I strongly endorse Kubuntu. █

Facebook and Microsoft Get Closer, Now Reaching Their Relationship’s Peak as Facebook Declines

Posted in Microsoft, Search at 11:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Facebook ranks

Summary: Facebook starts leaning on Microsoft for help now that its users (products) no longer log in and give data (content) to consume advertisements (Facebook’s real clients) as much as they used to

Irrespective of financial performance, Facebook is losing impact based on various metrics that we have tracked for years. Confirmatory media reports aside, Alexa ranks show Facebook peaking and then plateauing in 2011, finally suffering a statistically-significant decline of 4% in the past month alone. The past month has been exceptionally bad for Facebook, showing not just plateau but decline. In order to stay relevant, Facebook has been lobbying with Microsoft against public interests (this contributes to further isolation and alienation). Just like Yahoo, which is stuck with Microsoft after getting hijacked by Microsoft, Facebook is too closely aligned with Microsoft and against Google. As CNN put it, “Yahoo may want out of its search agreement with Microsoft, but the Internet giant doesn’t really have another option.” Yahoo nearly signed a Google deal some years ago, but Microsoft used AstroTurf tactics to stop it. Now Yahoo! is a dead man walking. Microsoft’s investment in Facebook has had a similar effect. It doesn’t let Facebook deviate from the ‘Microsoft line’.

“Facebook will decline from majority market share to negligible market share in years to come.”Now we discover that Bing, the Microsoft-censored ‘search’ which scrapes Google results pages, is to be further integrated with Facebook. Just like Nokia, Facebook will decline from majority market share to negligible market share in years to come. Don’t let Microsoft-friendly sites make it seem like Nokia after the Microsoft takeover is anything but irrelevant. Even they say that “if you are thinking that this new Lumia is giant leap forward for Nokia and Windows Phone, you are mistaken.”

Microsoft never helps companies. It devours of them. It leaves the unwanted bits out in the cold to rot. █

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