05.13.15
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 8:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Locked inside Gates
Summary: Microsoft’s proprietary software, such as Visual Studio Code and PowerShell, thrown at GNU/Linux users in an effort to promote Microsoft’s way of doing things and re-enforce lock-in
MICROSOFT is trying very hard to confuse the population. It’s aiming at low-hanging fruit — the non-technical people who are easy to bamboozle and convince through repetition that Microsoft is now “Open Source”. Microsoft’s googlebombing, as we have stated here before, keeps pushing Microsoft and “Open Source” into headlines. Jim Martin from PC Advisor is doing the “Windows Open Source” routine even one month after something actually happened (publicity stunt in Wired Magazine) and another British news site does the “Microsoft Open Source” routine (yet again!). If one isn’t careful, he or she might be led to believe that Microsoft completely embraced “Open Source”. See yesterday’s headline “What if Windows went open source tomorrow?” Days ago we found openwashing in a puff piece from Kevin Kelleher at Time Magazine. This is propaganda. It’s effective. People repeat what the propaganda tells them.
The most serious issue with all this is perspective or perception. In this new article about “.Net Core” (as in open core) Bill Weinberg is correct about what ‘open’ (openwashed) .NET does; it’s all about Windows and Microsoft lock-in. It is about leading people, including developers, into the prisons of proprietary software (Windows, Office, SQL Server, Hyper-V and so on). Microsoft recently used some non-news about Visual Studio Code (which is as proprietary as can be) to seduce people into the fantasy of “Open Source Microsoft”. As one GNU/Linux-centric site put it: “Microsoft Visual Studio Code, as opposed to the original Visual Studio for Windows, is not a complete integrated development environment containing an its own compiler and typical tools of this kind of development environments but it’s simply a code editor like sublimetext, atom, kate or brackets.”
So it’s not only proprietary but also less potent than Free/libre software. Paul Krill, the Editor at Large at InfoWorld, continues his Microsoft apologism, going further than openwashing Visual Studio. “Continuing its overtures toward open source,” he says (loaded statement), “Microsoft is unveiling technologies for packaging applications and remotely debugging JavaScript.”
Another article, titled “Visual Studio Code For Linux: What it Means”, provides another kind of analysis and notes that ‘Linus Torvalds once said: “If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I’ve won.”‘
“Bill Gates once said: “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” That very well applies to developers as well as end users. Microsoft is trying to make developers ‘addicted’ to Microsoft.”Well, but those applications are proprietary. They’re unwanted. A Microsoft promotion site wants people to run “.NET on Linux and Mac OS X” (that’s the real goal, spreading .NET). By repeating the words “open source” in relation to proprietary software Microsoft gives people the wrong/false impression that its proprietary software is suddenly “open”. Microsoft is doing that to its Web browser right now [1, 2] and by extension, by saying that this proprietary browser may run on Windows for phones, Microsoft promotion sites serve to openwash Windows Phone [1, 2]. How appalling it that? Cross-platform efforts with proprietary software and a little bit of “open core” in very few areas (getting developers ‘hooked’ on Microsoft APIs) is not “Open Source”. It’s only now that Microsoft says it may finally stop torturing the Web with ActiveX, so never mind “Open Source”, what has Microsoft ever been for standards? Bill Gates once said: “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” That very well applies to developers as well as end users. Microsoft is trying to make developers ‘addicted’ to Microsoft.
Microsoft booster Darryl K. Taft was one among several (including Adrian Bridgwater) who promoted Telerik, a longtime booster of .NET (“enhancements to its existing solutions, ongoing support for Microsoft development tooling” says the latest press release). The push for the whole world to become prisoner of .NET is reaching new heights as even Fedora 23 is chewing Mono [1,2] (after it got rid of it half a decade ago).
Let’s remind ourselves that amid all the “Microsoft Open Source” nonsense (googlebombing) there is very little that is actually open and a lot which is proprietary and geared towards lock-in. Microsoft now wants to ‘addict’ UNIX/Linux users to Microsoft’s command-line syntax [1, 2]. As if GNU/Linux hasn’tgot enough Free software shells like GNU Bash… well, apparently it needs Windows, too. Microsoft insists it needs proprietary Windows blobs like PowerShell. To quote one report: “After having shocked the world by releasing Visual Studio Code for Linux, Microsoft had the pleasure of announcing today the immediate availability for download of PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) for GNU/Linux operating systems.”
Compiling a pile of Windows lock-in for another platform is not openness. It’s a proprietary trap, just like Visual Studio Code. Developers are hopefully wise enough to see through the lies and the gross spin. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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We announced last week that the release schedule of the upcoming Fedora 23 Linux operating system has been published and that the distribution might arrive on October 27, 2015, if everything goes according to plan and no unexpected delays occur during the development cycle.
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Aside from the other features proposed thus far for Fedora 23, the update of the popular Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution due out in late 2015, you can add Mono 4.0 to the list.
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 7:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The latest moves from Microsoft, which is eager to undermine Android and GNU/Linux (desktop/server) by all means possible
Microsoft really hates GNU/Linux. It shows it too. We wrote about several clear signs of it just a couple of month ago. It’s summarised in the following series which we published in order to — at the very least — act as a reminder amid Microsoft’s media blitz (claiming that it “loves Linux” and embraces “Open Source”):
“Windows ideology [is] causing harm just to be spiteful,” wrote to us a reader yesterday morning, “yet again.” He cited this new article which shows an attack on GNU/Linux from a Microsoft-faithful CIO.
“The CIO,” says the article, “had already released a memo to all tech support chiefs, stating that all retiring hardware should be placed on pallets for pick up by a soon-to-be-named reclamation and recycling vendor. The real kick? They’re paying big money to have their stuff picked up and parted out for profit — all in the name of “responsible recycling.” Rick quietly shared with me that the CIO was miffed because we were repurposing their donated computers with GNU/Linux. Because we were removing Windows, he thought the donated hardware was being wasted.”
How is it a waste to throw away proprietary software with back doors? Surely it would not be a gift if handed over to the disenfranchised in this form (with Windows). Windows is a tool of espionage against its users, so wiping it off should make sense by now, especially after the NSA leaks which prove Microsoft’s complicity. Microsoft Peter (Peter Bright) frames Microsoft as anti-leaks after the NSA’s Exchange Server spewed out almost everything the NSA had in store. It’s hilarious to see how far Microsoft propagandists in Ars Technica are willing to go with such spin.
In other news of interest, the New York Times whitewashes a patent troll (Paul Allen) who attacks Android through Interval. Microsoft, in the mean time, spreads more Android FUD (security-flavoured), showing its clear disdain for Free/Open Source software. Is this the “nice Microsoft” or “new Microsoft” we keep hearing about? How about Microsoft’s attacks on Android through Cyanogen as a proxy? It’s a Microsoft vassal which tries to remove Google from Android and put Microsoft in charge. Jack Wallen recently published this article about “Microsoft and Cyanogen”, asking: “But why Microsoft? Why jump from one juggernaut to another, from one lockdown to another? It’s really clear why Microsoft would make this deal: their mobile platform is going nowhere. In order to get their fingers embedded in the mobile pie, they have to embrace other platforms. And what better way to embrace mobility than to get in league with the leader–Android. By working with Cyanogen, Microsoft effectively gets their own version of Android–we’ll call it MS Android.
“From my perspective, Cyanogen partnering with Microsoft on Android doesn’t open the platform, it closes it up tight. This is especially true considering we’re not talking about simply adding a few apps, we’re talking about bundling. Microsoft’s history of bundling is not littered with praise for being “open”. Instead, what this looks like to me is an attempt at Cyanogen turning its back on Google to say “We’ll show you!””
Microsoft’s spinners Peter Bright and Andrew Orlowski both feel unhappy that Microsoft tries bringing Android software to Windows [1, 2]. They view this as surrender or suicide, as if Microsoft has any chance against Android/Linux and GNU/Linux, except by destroying/undermining them.
“Microsoft closes sole Helsinki outlet,” says a Microsoft-friendly paper after Microsoft killed Nokia. “Software giant Microsoft,” it explains, “has shut the doors of its only retail outlet in Helsinki, saying that it will focus sales of its consumer devices online and in other retailers’ outlets. Located in prime commercial real estate in the heart of downtown Helsinki, the store operated under the Microsoft banner for less than one year.”
Yes, just under a year. It means that Microsoft layoffs carry on. We’re entering a post-Microsoft era, one that is dominated not just by an alternative brand but also a software distribution alternative. Free software is getting its way. Microsoft actively attacks Free software. Microsoft cannot coexist with freedom, as history serves to show. █
“I do hope that the suit can help demonstrate that Microsoft’s claims of succeeding through innovation are a complete fraud. Their only innovation has been in inventing predatory business practices. Other than that, they have been perhaps the greatest borrowers in the history of the software industry.”
–Sybase Chairman Mitchell Kertzman
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 6:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Linux Foundation Helps .NET
Photo from a Microsoft marketing site
Summary: The voices and brute-force impact of Microsoft are gradually penetrating the Free/Open Source software (FOSS) world, including the Linux Foundation
Earlier this year we wrote about Sam Ramji, Microsoft’s mole inside Free/Open Source software, entering the Linux Foundation [1, 2, 3]. No lessons learned yet from Nokia and Elop?
Either way, according to some articles (see also [1,2] below), Ramji’s new position (at Cloud Foundry) now facilitates Microsoft and .NET. How predictable. It didn’t even take long, only months.
“GE Launches Cloud Foundry ‘Industrial Dojo,’” says one new press release, “Contributes to Open Source to Foster Continued Development of the Industrial Internet” (more coverage in [1, 2, 3, 4]), so “Microsoft and Canonical are partnering up on IoT,” to quote SJVN.
This is what we have come to expect when ‘former’ Microsoft staff was allowed to join the Linux Foundation. Watch how an operating system (DCOS) that is backed by Microsoft’s anti-Linux manager (Silverberg) is getting tied up to Microsoft right now, facilitating control over the competition (GNU/Linux guests). This is a sign of defeat, not a victory over Microsoft, and it is going to lead to more proprietary software (which DCOS is).
North Bridge, somewhat of a sidekick of Black Duck (founded by a man from Microsoft to badmouth the GPL and sell proprietary software), is doing Black Duck’s marketing in Red Hat-run site, not just in Linux Foundation sites. The author says: “It’s been nine years since my firm, North Bridge, began our annual examination of trends in open source, which we conduct in conjunction with Black Duck Software.”
Congratulations, Chamberlains of the world. We now have Microsoft-occupied FOSS. Microsoft tells FOSS what to think and compels FOSS to invite Microsoft in, even though Microsoft remains proprietary, attacks FOSS (even in the courtroom), bribes officials, eliminates standards etc. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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IBM announced a bunch of new Bluemix services to help developers create analytics-driven cloud apps.
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Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Security at 6:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The plague which is Microsoft staff swapping hats (to masquerade as journalists) is still impacting news giants
OVER the past half a decade (or more) we have given many examples where CBS hired from Microsoft and appointed ‘journalists’ who not only had worked for Microsoft (to cover Microsoft issues and/or bash Microsoft’s competition) but even people who still worked for Microsoft. It’s like they are wearing two hats. The latest such example goes only a month or two back. There are dozens of such people (in total) and it is a very big deal because CBS owns and controls ZDNet and CNET, among many more sites. Last night we were told by a writer from Ars Technica (owned by Condé Nast, just like Wired and Reddit) that Microsoft sponsored the launch of Ars Technica UK, where every single page right now bears a huge Microsoft advertisement (which ad blockers are unable to hide). Ars Technica already employs several pro-Microsoft propagandists.
IDG, which owns and runs a huge number of sites that cover technology and proclaim to be news sites, can serve to show the security bias which we last mentioned the other day. As spotted by this comment, “Roger Roger A. Grimes] currently works for Microsoft as a principal security architect.”
“The author clearly has never met a good troll,” said another comment. The title of the piece is “We need the Internet police now more than ever”. This is total nonsense. What we need are operating systems without back doors, i.e. we need to abandon the likes of Microsoft (no more Windows). It facilitates cyber-crime, leads to botnets, DDOS attacks, extortion, etc.
This article is not atypical; this is just Microsoft propaganda (whether planned/coordinated or not). It’s Microsoft philosophy publicly projected. There is mostly blaming of the victims from Microsoft’s Grimes (Microsoft salaried ‘journalist’). Watch one of his latest: “Get real about user security training” (because it’s easy to blame the victims).
One day it may become possible to effectively screen journalists. We hope that journalism wouldn’t be so easy for Microsoft to penetrate and use to its advantage, leaving Microsoft only with aggressive PR agencies that try to push 'prepared' articles to journalists. █
“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
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05.12.15
Posted in News Roundup at 5:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Looking for an alternative to Windows? You may not think of your business as an enterprise shop, but you might be surprised at what enterprise Linux vendors have to offer SMBs.
The three major commercial Linux vendors—Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu Linux—provide excellent products and services for all businesses, large, small, and in between. These are the top three commercial Linux vendors, and when you want to evaluate Linux as an option for your business you might as well start at the top.
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The bottom line: wearable computing is where the future belong and Linux is going to play a major role there, thanks to Google.
Now a new research is going to make things even more exciting. An international team of scientists have create what is called the world’s truly electronic textile, using Graphene.
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While the notion of free software has lasted since the days Richard Stallman was sleeping under his desk at MIT, the full thrust of collaboratively and openly licensed software really took off with the advent of Linux.
Linux took a principle and filled in an important technology gap that inspired the filling of a thousand other gaps too. This led to the rise of the venerable Linux distribution, as myriad as consumer-grade platforms such as Ubuntu and Fedora, to server-grade such as CentOS and Debian, and down to the downright weird such as RebeccaBlackOS.
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Kernel Space
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I’m announcing the release of the 3.18.13 kernel.
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On May 11, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 3.19.8, while informing users that the Linux 3.19 kernel branch reached end of life and they should move to the Linux kernel 4.0.x series as soon as possible.
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Sasha Levin announced this past weekend that the thirteen maintenance release of the Linux 3.18 kernel was available for download, urging all users of the 3.18 kernel series to upgrade as soon as possible.
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Back in 2013 the Jailhouse Hypervisor was announced as a partitioning hypervisor that’s lighter-weight than KVM. Last year saw the release of Jailhouse 0.1 and finally coming out today is the next update: Jailhouse 0.5.
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Graphics Stack
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Bryce Harrington announced the Wayland 1.8 Alpha on the wayland-devel list. Wayland 1.8 is bringing a new scanner option, new headers (wayland-client-core.h and wayland-server-core.h), and other changes.
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Render-nodes expose a GPU for off-screen rendering and GPGPU without needing display access. DRI_PRIME makes it possible to use an alternative GPU for rendering an application/game using the DRI_PRIME environment variable. DRI_PRIME is particularly useful for those with notebooks/ultrabooks sporting dual graphics processors.
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The current plan is to branch Mesa 10.6 from Git master on Friday, which would put the official 10.6.0 release in early June.
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Months after working on direct state access support in Mesa, Fredrik Höglund of KDE has finished off this OpenGL 4.5 feature for core Mesa.
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Intel as of late seems quite set on seeing OpenGL ES 3.1 becoming a reality for Mesa in the near-term.
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Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center continues to hire new developers for working on their Linux graphics stack. Back in 2013, Intel had 20~30 full-time Linux graphics driver developers and since then that number has only risen.
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Applications
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Linux commandline is the best and most powerful thing that fascinates a new user and provides extreme power to experienced users and geeks. For those who work on Server and Production, they are already aware of this fact. It would be interesting to know that Linux console was one of those first features of the kernel that was written by Linus Torvalds way back in the year 1991.
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The Guake development team has recently announced the availability of a new update for one of the most appreciated drop-down terminal emulator applications on the open source market.
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The digiKam Team is proud to announce the release of digiKam Software Collection 4.10.0. This release includes a new sets of bugs fixes from Maik Qualmann who maintain KDE4 version while KF5 port is under progress.
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After recent porting python-gammu to Python 3, it was quite obvious to me that new release will have some problems. Fortunately they have proven to be rather cosmetic and no big bugs were found so far.
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More likely, Emacs was the victim of competition. The command line editor nano scored roughly the same as Emacs in the LinuxQuestions polls, while the desktop editors gedit and Kate scored slightly better. Another sixteen editors scored .1-4%. Almost all these editors can be learned in a matter of minutes, while Emacs’ arcane features are the subject of jokes, even among users..
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Unity WallpaperSwitcher remembers each of your workspace-specific wallpapers and changes it each time you switch to a different workspace. When you disable the app, all workspaces are set to the currently used wallpaper however, the wallpapers set for each workspace will be remembered and they will be used the next time you enable it.
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Another major step for the Ipsilon project: we have just released version 1.0.0[1]!
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qBittorrent, a multi-platform BitTorrent client, designed to run on all major platforms that has pretty much all of the features you would need, is now at version 3.2.0 and is ready for download.
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Rygel, a home media solution (UPnP AV MediaServer) that allows users to easily share audio, video, and pictures to other devices, has been upgraded to version 0.26.1 and is now ready for download.
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Macaw-Movies is the latest KDE incubator project, which is focused on providing movie organization/management features to open-source fans.
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Proprietary
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Instructionals/Technical
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In this article, I demonstrate a method to build one Linux system within another using the latest utilities within the systemd suite of management tools. The guest OS container design focuses upon BusyBox and Dropbear for the userspace system utilities, but I also work through methods for running more general application software so the containers are actually useful.
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Congratulations! You’ve decided to set up a Web site. The site might be for your personal use, for sharing family pictures, for a blog, for an SaaS application, or any number of other possibilities. In all of those cases, people will access your site using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP has evolved and improved through the years, but one thing about it hasn’t changed—the fact that all of the traffic sent on an HTTP connection is unencrypted.
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Wine or Emulation
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Per the latest World Wine News (WWN), USB support for Wine is being discussed yet again but as of right now it’s not clear if any new work will materialize as a result of the latest discussions.
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Games
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It’s sad, but not entirely unexpected that we will be left waiting for Trine 3. We did have to wait for ports of Trine and Trine 2, but when our editor Cheeseness spoke to Frozenbyte it sounded like the Linux version would be out during Early Access.
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Valve today pushed out the SteamOS 159 update into the Alchemist repository today, which matches the recent changes to the Alchemist Beta repository. This update isn’t too exciting as it’s mostly stable fixes, branding updates, etc, but the NVIDIA Linux driver update does remove the support for pre-Fermi graphics cards.
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Don’t let the cute looks deceive you. Behind its innocent looking facade, Snakebird from developer Noumenon Games hides a fiendishly hard puzzle game that should give even the most seasoned puzzle veteran a proper challenge.
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Invisible, Inc. has snuck out the door and is now available on your favourite operating system. I’ve been looking forward to this for some time, so I took a look.
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If you’re a fan of 4X strategy games, then you will have probably heard of Master of Orion. Honestly, Master of Orion 2 is one of my all time favourite games, and now I can play it without any messing around on Linux.
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Black Mesa is a total conversion of the original Half-Life with the Source 2 engine that’s been in works for years. Now, the developers are pushing their work into Early Access, and it looks like they are also targeting the Linux platform as well.
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The PlayOnLinux is an application based on Wine that allows users to install and run Windows games, and the developers are seriously considering a major upgrade.
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For over one year we’ve been looking forward to Crytek bringing CryENGINE to Linux with an OpenGL renderer. That was announced back at GDC 2014 and we haven’t heard much lately, but finally there’s an update and the Linux support is expected soon.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Spring is in the air, taxes are done, and it’s time to focus on fun stuff—like digital painting! Krita is attempting a second stab at success with another Kickstarter that started earlier last week. For 2015, Krita has Photoshop in their crosshairs with the anticipation of making Krita as fast or faster than Photoshop. I was able to speak to Krita’s lead developer, Boudewijn Rempt, about the 2015 Kickstarter campaign and upcoming year.
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KDE had the pleasure of announcing today, May 12, the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the first point release of their KDE Applications 15.04 software suite for the KDE Plasma 5 desktop.
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Today KDE released the first stability update for KDE Applications 15.04. This release contains only bugfixes and translation updates, providing a safe and pleasant update for everyone.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Among other things, it summarizes what your elected board of directors has been up to these past twelve months.
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The GNOME developers are hard at work these days to bring us the second and last official point release of the stable GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, which was announced back in October 2014.
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DistroWatch.com has a list of Linux distros and ranks them based on popularity. Currently, Mint is the distro of choice for many Linux users followed by Ubuntu and Debian. There are hundreds of distros available and you can’t possibly use or play around with all of them. Most of these distros are just offshoots of the more popular distros. If I were to narrow it down to just a few distros, I would go with these magnificent seven.
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The Foresight Linux Council has determined that there has been insufficient volunteer activity to sustain meaningful new evelopment of Foresight Linux. Faced with the need either to update the project’s physical infrastructure or cease operations, we find no compelling reason to update the infrastructure.
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Reviews
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Most of the reviews I write for DistroWatch come about after I have installed and run a distribution for a week. I have worked my way into a routine where I grab a couple of new installation images each week, select one that looks good and/or interesting, run it for a week and then write about the experience. However, I rarely write about the distributions that, for whatever reason, do not make the cut. Each week I end up with a small collection of ISO files that will not be written about for one reason or another. Sometimes a distribution I have downloaded is too similar to one I have written about recently. Other times the rejected software did not install properly. Sometimes I think an operating system has promise, but it is still in beta and not yet ready for release. The end result is, unfortunately, that a lot of the interesting material I download does not get talked about. This week I want to take a break from my usual reviewing style and talk briefly about some operating systems I downloaded this month that I found interesting, but did not get selected for a full trial.
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Screenshots/Screencasts
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Red Hat Family
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In the case of an organization like Red Hat (the organization where I am the CEO) which operates as part of multiple open source software communities like Linux and OpenStack, these questions are all the more difficult to answer — like how to measure someone’s contribution to an external community — and traditional performance reviews just don’t cut it for us. For example, building open source software, like we do at Red Hat, involves collaborating with people outside of the company who volunteer their efforts. That means you can’t simply issue orders or direct what work gets done and when. What you can do is build influence and trust with other members of the community. But doing that can involve making contributions that offer no direct output or result. It’s not quid pro quo, and it’s not easy to track and measure.
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Red Hat, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source solutions, announced Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) 6.4 and expanded benefits for JBoss EAP subscribers deploying their Java applications in hybrid cloud environments.
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In today‘s fast-moving, demanding economy, organizations are using DevOps and bi-modal IT initiatives to compete and achieve the next level of developer productivity. They also seek complementary, flexible technologies that enable them to experiment, fail fast, and still deliver innovations on time.
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Philip Papadopoulos announced on May 11 the immediate availability for download of Rocks Cluster 6.2, a specialist Linux kernel-based operating system derived from the well-known CentOS distribution, which in turn is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
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Everyone can grab and install Fedora 21-22 on APM Mustang. But what if you want something more enterprise ready? Answer is simple: you can install CentOS 7 (at Alpha stage now).
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Fedora
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Jan Šilhan was proud to announce the other day that the highly acclaimed DNF command-line package manager for RPM-based Linux operating systems reached version 1.0.0.
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The DNF 1.0 version was released, being considered as stable and ready to be the main command line package manager in Fedora 22 and later. Along with a many bug fixes, the DNF stack release adds HTTP authentication support, enhances repoquery and builddep plugin and more. For more information look at release notes of DNF and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE.
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The day is coming where DNF is replacing Yum as the default package manager on Fedora Linux. DNF 1.0 was just released today to mark the point of stability and it being ready to take over Yum’s responsibilities with the upcoming Fedora 22 release.
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A Phoronix reader recently asked whether Fedora developers have yet enabled F2FS file-system support within their packaged kernel. While I didn’t mention it before, yes, they ended up enabling support for the Flash-Friendly File-System.
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For early adopters of Fedora 22 that have been missing out on the packages provided by the third-party RPM Fusion repository, they have started rolling out their support for this next Fedora Linux release.
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DNF 1.0 released, will become default package manager in Fedora 22
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GNOME Software is awesome. I started a fresh F22 installation on my laptop and thought I had installed.. $package. Whatever it was. I typed out the application name, a matching thing popped up, I pressed enter, and found out “Oh, this isn’t installed, I need to press this one button first”. Then I was done. It was really easy; no messing around with a terminal, no visiting sketchy blogs, no third party sites visited. I have a sense that this is exactly the kind of experience you’d like when a user wants to use flash, or Virtualbox, or listen to MP3s – everything they want to do Just Works on Fedora.
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Here is a preview video of the upcoming Fedora 22 release (running in a KVM VM). This is my personal remix (with non-Fedora provided rpmfusion-free packages, google-chrome-stable, and flash-plugin added) and I haven’t bothered with the branding nor customization at all… and I don’t really publicly distribute it.. but I’d be happy to share my kickstart file if anyone wants it.
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Debian Family
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Thanks to Charles C. for alerting me that the Debian team has released version 8 of Debian Linux, nicknamed “Jessie.”
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The Debian Ruby Ruby team had a first sprint in 2014. The experience was very positive, and it was decided to do it again in 2015. Last April, the team once more met at the IRILL offices, in Paris, France.
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C.H.I.P., a Linux-based mini-PC priced at just $9, is receiving an overwhelming response on Kickstarter. Launched last Thursday with a funding goal of $50,000, it has chalked up more than 16,000 backers who have shelled out upwards of $815,000. The project still has 25 days to go.
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One of the promises made by the new Debian leader, Neil McGovern, was that he will push for the implementation of PPA support. It’s an interesting proposition, but it doesn’t mean that Debian will support the existing Ubuntu PPAs.
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Canonical is developing a new package format called Snappy that will bring a lot of new features to the desktop, like containment, carefree dependencies, and security, just to name a few. From the looks of it, the new Debian leader is concerned that it might affect the free software ecosystem, in the long run.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Linux is engineered with security in mind. In fact, the most fundamental security mechanisms are built right in to the kernel itself, which makes it extremely hard for malicious code to bypass. Unfortunately, attackers always are looking for ways to break down security walls, and engineers constantly are patching security weaknesses.
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A user by the name of Zack Smith, published an article on his website entitled “Is There Spyware in Ubuntu?” and targeted at Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Jane Silber, the CEO of Canonical.
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No. There is no reason to assume that the compiled executables and libraries that comprise most of Ubuntu are built from the same source code that Canonical makes publicly available. It may have had “patches” added that provide spying capability. Any spyware in the object code only needs to behave stealthily.
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Making Linux distros look like other operating systems is one of the favorite pastimes for some of the users, and a new transformation pack named MBuntu Y has been published.
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Unity and GNOME are two very different desktops, and users of each of them can be…er…passionate in their loyalty. But what are the pros and cons of GNOME and Unity? Gary Newell at About recently did a comparison post, and found that both desktops have strengths and weaknesses.
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While Linux distributions like Fedora and Mageia have adopted predictable/persistent network interface names, Ubuntu has not. However, that is looking to change and it might also be the case for upstream Debian.
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Ligo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) may not get the same kind of attention in the media as other physics experiments, but it should. It’s designed to detect gravitational waves, and it looks like the scientists are also using Linux (Ubuntu) to do that.
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One of the more interesting stories today was Zack Smith’s question, “Is There Spyware in Ubuntu?” Elsewhere DNF 1.0 was released triggering a blog post and a how-to. Several Linux lists caught my eye as well; which distributions would be best for Windows XP holdouts, 10 best distros for privacy, and the “magnificent seven.”
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A supposedly Meizu MX5 image has been leaked, and it has gotten everyone very excited because it shows a phone with no bezels. It’s interesting for Android systems, but it would fit like a glove with an Ubuntu system.
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Ubuntu developers are working to bring Mir and Unity 8 to the desktop, but users need to know that there will be some minor issues, at least until these new technologies become more mature.
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Mir, Canonical’s display server for Unity 8 that’s currently in use by Ubuntu Touch, is now under development for its next major version.
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Softpedia was just informed today by the Linux AIO team that new builds are now available for download for their Linux AIO Ubuntu project, which has been updated to Ubuntu 15.04.
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Flavours and Variants
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I’d like to thank CompuLab for sending the development team three MintBox Mini. I just received mine 
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MintBox Mini is a mini-PC that runs Linux Mint, and it’s developed by a company called CompuLab. The new PC went on sale a few weeks ago, and they are sold out the same day. Now, Clement Lefebvre, the leader of the Linux Mint project has finally got one and he shared some details about it.
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An open source, Debian Linux based “Chip” SBC going for $9 has surpassed $740K on Kickstarter. An optional mini-tablet “PocketChip” version sells for $49.
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Imagination released a new version of its MIPS-based Creator CI20 hacker board with a squared-off design, better WiFi, and a built-in FlowCloud IoT API.
Imagination Technologies, which licenses MIPS processor IP, launched the MIPS-based, Linux- and Android-ready Creator CI20 hacker SBC last December, and shipped it shortly thereafter. The company has now released an update with a redesigned PCB layout that squares off the previous indent and wing. In the process, several components have shifted position, and Imagination has added more mounting holes to make it easier to attach to different platforms, such as robots.
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Startup Next Thing is turning to Kickstarter to tap funding for its pocket-sized computer — CHIP — which runs Google’s Chrome browser, uses Linux, and costs just $9 to start.
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A crowdfunded project to bring to market a $9 computer has blown past its initial goal of $50,000 to raise over $500,000 in a few days. But what does $9 buy you?
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The Raspberry Pi is going to the International Space Station and it’s doing that in the most awesome aluminum case that you have ever seen.
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Phones
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Tizen
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The Samsung Gear S Smartwatch has been getting the firmware update R750XXU1BOC1 in several countries over the last couple of months, but I’m pleased to see the BTU version has FINALLY reached the UK shores. The file is available via a 33.84Mb Over the Air (OTA) update or you can download the full firmware file from Sammobile at 430Mb. Users are reporting a definite increase in battery life and a couple of extra watch faces are now available.
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Samsung have today released their new Tizen SDK to developers that have previously signed up for their Samsung Gear Early Access SDK. The new Tizen SDK will help developers to build “richer and differentiated apps for the next generation Gear device”. The current release is Tizen SDK 2.3.1 RC7, with downloads available for Mac OSX-64bits / Ubuntu-32bit / Ubuntu-64bits / Windows-32bits and Windows-64bits.
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Android
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The T-Mobile variant of the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge with the model number SM-N915T has just started receiving the latest Android 5.0.1 Lollipop firmware update. Although the firmware may not be available for all users of the device at the same time, users can download the update for manual installation.
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The Android 5.1 Lollipop update for Sony Xperia Z series of devices is reportedly scheduled for this week. In addition, the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop for Nexus 9 and Nexus 7 has officially been rolled out. Here are some details about the new updates:
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Android mascots are lined up in the demonstration area at the Google I/O Developers Conference in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, May 10, 2011.
Android Lollipop is currently being distributed to older models of smartphones and is already available out of the box for most if not all new models of smartphones. As this is happening, rumors are already abound that a new version of the mobile OS, initially called Android M, is in the works.
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Android: If you’re a little tired of your phone’s default launcher, FlowHome is an alternative that puts favorite apps a tap away, but transforms your home screen into scrolling tiles of useful information, updates from inside your favorite apps, and notifications with as much information shown as they need to be useful.
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It looks like saying sorry wasn’t enough. After Google was forced to apologize for an image of the Android mascot urinating on the Apple logo in Google Maps last month, the company is temporarily shutting down its maps editor, Map Maker, until it can appropriately respond to people abusing the tool.
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I’ve touted the awesomeness of Calibre in the past. And although the Web-based calibre2opds still is an awesome way to access your eBook library, using a native Android app is even smoother. If you have your Calibre library on your local network, using Calibre Companion ($3.99 in the Google Play Store), your Android device connects to your library like a device connected via USB. It’s possible to load books directly onto your device without syncing your entire collection into the cloud!
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Google’s new Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update for Nexus devices brings fixes for lingering Android Lollipop problems. However, it also appears to deliver some problems of its own. With that in mind, we take a look at five things you need to know, right now, about Nexus Android 5.1.1 Lollipop problems as we push further away from its roll out.
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Google might well follow through with handing app permission control back over to end users. Find out why Jack Wallen doesn’t think this is such a good idea.
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Google’s recent slip about the Android M update got the rest of the market buzzing on what’s in store for its next operating system. Primary features expected in the update include Voice Access for a possible hands-free user experience and Nearby for proximity-based communication. More importantly, Google is not only aiming to update its Android OS; it has also been working on Project Fi, offering users a new messenger option.
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Google is supposedly working on making Android Wear smartwatches compatible with iPhone, which might be a clever way to combat Apple’s popular Apple Watch. However, while Google has yet to release Android Wear support for iOS, you can already connect Android Wear devices to iPhone and iPad.
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Android M will reportedly be the new version of Android unveiled at Google’s I/O developers conference, to be held May 28 and 29 in San Francisco. The official schedule initially said that Android M would be revealed during the Android for Work session, as Android Police reported, but apparently that session has been removed from the schedule.
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Motorola has a mixed record when it comes to device updates. The first-gen Moto X made the jump from Jelly Bean to KitKat quite smoothly, but Lollipop has proven to be more of a challenge. Motorola recently announced the 2013 Moto X would go straight to Android 5.1, but when? Soon, according to Motorola’s David Schuster.
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Motorola last month announced that its first-generation Moto X will not receive the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, and will directly receive the Android 5.1 update. Now, the company has confirmed that Android 5.1 ‘test drive’ for the Moto X (Gen 1) has started and the update should start rolling out in some weeks.
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Android One devices are coming to Turkey, with a twist. While Google and its local partners offer Android One phones in India and other Asian countries for around $110, the first Turkish model features better specs and a $260 price tag.
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Sony was one of the earliest players to enter the wearable space when it had launched its first smartwatch in 2012, followed by a second version in 2013. However, the first and second iterations of Sony’s smartwatch didn’t exactly set the market on fire, as they failed to stand up to the intense competition in the smartwatch category due to various shortcomings. The Japanese company has now launched Sony SmartWatch 3, which runs on the Android Wear platform, Google’s operating system that works exclusively with Android smartphones, resulting in improved features as well as functionality.
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Today Google announced that it has officially expanded Android One to Turkey. The launch represents the program’s debut in Europe, and brings the total count (so far) to seven countries. Android One, which Google unveiled last September, aims to spread affordable smartphones throughout the developing world. The devices run a close-to-stock version of Android, though up until now the hardware has been somewhat underwhelming.
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Android enjoys such a thriving developer community, that the question of “what can an Android smartphone do?” is better voiced as “What can’t an Android smartphone do?” Control your computer from afar? Check! Play PSP games? Betcha! But can you boot Windows 8 from it? Guess what, the answer’s yes! DriveDroid is a brilliant app that lets you convert your Android smartphone to a bootable CD/USB stick that’s able to boot your computer into multiple operating systems, provided you got the images. Pure sorcery!
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The 8-inch device will run Android 5.0 Lollipop and be available either for $49.99 with a two-year contract or for $10 per month on an installment plan.
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Google has launched the Android One initiative in an attempt to bring to the market affordable handsets that deliver a stock Android experience and quick software updates.
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Remember pico projectors? A few years ago, the idea of being able to carry a tiny projector anywhere with you was one of the most popular visions for the future of tech. Even your phone would have one baked in so you could easily give presentations or watch a movie with your friends anywhere.
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To make it simpler for organizations to embrace an open source framework for rapid application development (RAD), IBM has thrown its weight behind the Ionic open source RAD platform.
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The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced the appointment of Dr. Bithika Khargharia as the director of product and community management. Bithika’s service to ONF is being provided by Extreme Networks, an ONF member company where Bithika is a principal architect of solutions and innovation. She will continue in her role at Extreme Networks while also taking on her new responsibilities with ONF.
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You hear it all the time: Linux and Free/Open Source software depend on contributors. After all, someone has to make all that great software. But what does this really mean? You might think you don’t have any useful skills, or it will be drudgey and no fun, or people will yell at you. The Linux/FOSS universe is very large, and it is quite possible to find yourself in communities that are drudgey and no fun, and people yelling at you. Which is pointless and punitive; why bother? It’s not as though we lack opportunities to enjoy pointless and punitive endeavors.
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Comcast joined the OpenDaylight Project today and we wanted to share how we’ve been using the OpenDaylight platform and how it fits into our long-term network direction.
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From HTTP Server, to Hadoop and Cassandra, there’s no doubting the effectiveness of the Apache Software Foundation in fostering open-source innovation.
Yet the other side of its collaborative, consensual approach is the freedom it gives people to duplicate software engineering efforts, which in other contexts might be seen as wasteful.
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He said instead of software’s inherent value being its cost, it was better as a means to an end. “The value isn’t in the software, it’s in the utility that the software provides.”
“My call to action is … is there something in your portfolio of products or services that you can open source.”
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Open source software projects ensure transparency, enabling community collaboration to improve overall quality. However, the guarantees that come with vendor-backed software projects help ease IT concerns and greatly benefit end users. To maximize business potential, companies are now turning to commercial open source options.
In commercial open source, backing from a vendor ensures the availability of product support and lets users know that the product is suited for commercial use, even for non-technical end users. According to Olivier Thierry, chief marketing officer of Zimbra, the mutually beneficial relationship between commercial vendor and community creates a powerful positive feedback mechanism that improves all aspects of the software. Any ecosystem needs support from its end users and trained experts if it intends to thrive, and commercial open source creates a platform where new opportunities and innovation can be sparked by this input. However, to make it work for your business, you need to identify the main goals of your commercial open source initiative and ensure transparency, flexibility and long-term value are central aspects of your plan.
This slideshow features six ways to leverage commercial open source software for your business.
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Qualcomm Atheros, Lantiq (part of Intel) and Broadcom have joined the Prpl Foundation.
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Events
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As all the last year in May the event row called Linuxwochen makes it stop in Vienna and I represented Fedora there. This year it was an special event as the Linuxwochen could celebrate their 15th anniversary. And this years event was indeed special, normally this event is compared to others a smaller one as it is from Thursday to Saturday. But this year it was on Thursday already crowded and it looked some more Germans have found their way to Vienna. Also both of the workshop I gave in Vienna was an success and as always filled with people.
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We had our weekly planning meeting today. Comparing to earlier Fudcon planning meeting with today’s, we have done lots of progress. Most of the things are already in good shape including Travel, Accommodation, FUDPub, Website and Scheduling etc.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Mozilla Firefox 38 is being officially released today and with this open-source web browser update comes new functionality.
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Mozilla has just released the stable version of the Firefox 38.0 Internet browser, which has arrived with some pretty interesting new features, including a new tab-based preference menu.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Mirantis, the pure OpenStack company, has forged a partnership with Pivotal to integrate and deliver the Cloud Foundry-based platform-as-a-service on OpenStack-based cloud infrastructure. Under the deal Pivotal will support Pivotal Cloud Foundry, a distribution of Cloud Foundry, on Mirantis OpenStack.
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The idea of open source software development projects is to bring many people and organizations together from around the world to work on a common initiative or goal. It is quite communal in nature. That means lots of different entities are going to be weighing in on code development, design, revisions, security and other issues throughout the lifetime of the project.
[...]
To date, more than 150 companies have agreed to support the mission of OpenStack by providing architectural input, contributing code or integrating the code into their business offerings, the community says.
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Using DCOS, developers and operators don’t need to focus on individual virtual or physical machines but can easily build and deploy applications and services that span entire data centers. Here’s more on Mesosphere’s news and some relevant excerpts from our recent interview with the company’s Ben Hindman (shown).
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OpenStack Kilo—the 11th release of the open-source OpenStack cloud project since NASA and Rackspace first launched the effort in 2010—was officially released on April 30, providing cloud administrators with new features and capabilities. A key focus in OpenStack Kilo was stability, as 7,257 bugs were fixed during release cycle. However, bugs weren’t the only focus, as OpenStack Kilo also introduced a new project to the integrated release, as well as new features. The Ironic bare-metal service makes its debut in OpenStack Kilo, enabling cloud administrators to provision bare-metal services alongside virtual resources. In the OpenStack Swift storage project, erasure codes have been added, providing new data protection capabilities. The OpenStack Keystone identity project, meanwhile, gained new federation features, enabling multicloud federation. In all, 1,494 individuals affiliated with 169 organizations contributed to the cloud platform release. The top companies contributing code for Kilo were Red Hat, HP, IBM, Mirantis, Rackspace, Yahoo, NEC and Huawei. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the key innovations in OpenStack Kilo.
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Cloudera and Intel, which have had a significant partnership together are out with many new details on how their Hadoop-focused partnership has accelerated innovation in big data over the past year. Through collaborative efforts they’ve deliered solutions focused on security, optimization of core Hadoop technology in four releases of the Cloudera distribution, and greater manageability.
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Akanda Inc., the startup that spun out of DreamHost last year to monetize the network virtualization technology powering its public cloud, has released the first stable version of the software with the promise of helping organizations decouple operations from the underlying infrastructure. It has a high bar to meet from the outset.
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Storage
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Funding
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BSD
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Earlier this month we wrote about DragonFlyBSD having experimental Broadwell graphics support and now this updated DRM driver code has landed in the BSD distribution. Besides supporting the new Intel Broadwell HD/Iris Graphics, there’s also a number of other new features.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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With GCC 5 the C compiler changed its default to C11/GNU11 and now for the next version, GCC 6, C++11 might become the default C++ language compiler target.
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Musl has long aimed at being a lightweight, simple, free, and correct libc library. However, hindering its adoption has been out-of-tree patches required against GCC for supporting the Musl C library. Fortunately, Musl support has now been merged into GCC.
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The GNU inetutils team is proud to present version 1.9.3 of the GNU networking utilities. The GNU Networking Utilities are the common networking utilities, clients and servers of the GNU Operating System.
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Project Releases
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Licensing
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While verified copies of our licenses can be useful, this is unfortunately a project that sounds straightforward at first, but all the corner cases found in the wild muck it up.
One relatively frequent request we receive is for the FSF to provide GPG-signed copies of our licenses. GPG is a tool that lets users cryptographically sign or encrypt documents and emails. A GPG-signed document lets anyone who receives it know that they have received the exact same document as the one that was signed. By providing signed documents, users will be able to easily ensure that they have received an unmodified copy of the license along with their software. It’s also possible that some system of signing the documents could help projects tracking the use and adoption of various free software licenses. Providing these signed documents is a simple task: run a command and publish the documents. A trivial investment of resources, or at least that is how it appears at first.
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The Linux Foundation has updated its SPDX standard to v2.0, enhancing the ability to track complex open source license dependencies to ensure compliance.
The Linux Foundation (LF) released version 1.0 of the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) standard in 2011, promoting it as a common format for sharing data about software licenses and copyrights. Now the LF’s SPDX workgroup has released version 2.0 of the standard, with new features that let you relate SPDX documents to each other to provide a “three-dimensional” relationship view of license dependencies.
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Software licenses aren’t very useful if no one adheres to them—and adhering to licenses gets tough quickly when you’re dealing with complex supply chains of software whose numerous, ever-moving parts are licensed differently. That’s why the Linux Foundation’s Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) working group has rolled out an updated specification designed to make open source licensing simpler.
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Openness/Sharing
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Some of the world’s greatest minds are hard at work developing an affordable, long-range electric car for the masses, but the technology needed to do so may already be out there. The Luka EV project at HackaDay is utilizing readily-available open-source information in an attempt to build a 186-mile EV that weighs less than 750 kg/1,653 lbs and only costs around $22,000.
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Programming
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I’ve recently been contacted by Johannes Hubertz, who is writing a new book about Python in German called “Softwaretests mit Python” which will be published by Open Source Press, Munich this summer. His book will feature some interviews, and he was kind enough to let me write a bit about software testing. This is the interview that I gave for his book. Johannes translated to German and it will be included in Johannes’ book, and I decided to publish it on my blog today. Following is the original version.
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One of the biggest shocks of this election is the realisation that you can’t get a socialist paradise on Earth by tweeting. Or even by putting up really angry statuses on Facebook. Who knew? Actually, as people who do this kind of thing all follow each other, it seems that many of them still don’t realise. In the echo chambers some of us inhabit online, everyone not only votes Labour but crows about it in 140 characters.
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The Tories will be even worse in this parliament.
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While it promised to “reverse the Government’s top-rate tax cut, so that those with incomes over £150,000 contribute a little more to help get the deficit down,” it also vowed to “not increase the basic or higher rates of income tax or national insurance.”
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A major earthquake has struck eastern Nepal, two weeks after more than 8,000 people were killed in a devastating quake.
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Security
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Running XMPP over TLS is a good idea.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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By equating the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin to Adolf Hitler, Ukrainian politicians and their Western supporters are trying to cover-up their own shameful history, American professor Grover Carr Furr told Sputnik.
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Transparency Reporting
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Sweden’s highest court has rejected a bid by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to overturn the arrest warrant against him for sexual assault allegations, which means he could yet be sent to the Nordic country for questioning.
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Sweden’s highest court has thrown out Julian Assange’s appeal against his arrest warrant, dashing his immediate hopes of an end to his three-year confinement in Ecuador’s embassy in London.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Amid an epochal drought with no end in sight, farmers in California’s Central Valley have entered a veritable well-drilling arms race to capture water from fast-depleting aquifers, causing large swaths of land to sink and permanently reducing its ability to hold water. But none of that has reined in the pistachio industry’s relentless expansion. Acreage devoted to pistachios grew more than 20 percent between 2012 and 2014; at a conference in March, nut magnate Stewart Resnick, co-owner and president of Wonderful Pistachios, urged growers to plant more, more, more, claiming that the tasty nuts deliver an even tastier $3,519 average per acre profit. (Resnick’s team also beseeched growers to invest some of their windfall in lobbying to maintain industry-friendly water rules.)
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Finance
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It is one of life’s little ironies that the market where geography plays a diminished role – the online sector – is also one where national boundaries are still a huge problem, particularly when it comes to material under copyright, which is often “unavailable in your country” – a ridiculous situation. That’s also the case for the European Union, one of whose core features is the single marketplace. That may be true for analogue goods, but it certainly isn’t for digital ones.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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The reference to Sanders “suddenly getting into the teens” appears to be a reference to polling of Democrats in New Hampshire, where the Vermont senator got 18 percent support in the last Bloomberg poll, and in Iowa, where he was the choice of 15 percent in the latest Quinnipiac poll.
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“The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education just last month.
Yet, he is calling for a 48% increase in the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—an initiative repeatedly criticized by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls.
CMD’s review of appropriations reveals that the federal government has spent a staggering sum, $3.3 billion, of taxpayer money creating and expanding the charter school industry over the past two decades, but it has done so without requiring the most basic transparency in who ultimately receives the funds and what those tax dollars are being used for, especially in contrast to the public information about truly public schools.
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Privacy
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A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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It seems that Facebook is taking an aim at Google by experimenting with its own search engine which will prevent users from leaving the platform.
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Now that the Conservative Party has secured a majority government in the UK, it’s pushing ahead with plans to expand the surveillance state with the Communications Data Bill, also known as Snooper’s Charter, which would require communications providers from BT to Facebook to maintain records of customers’ internet activity, text messages and voice calls for a year. This may have emboldened GCHQ, the British spy agency and chief NSA partner, which has, for the first time, openly called for applicants to fill the role of Computer Network Operations Specialists, also known as nation-state funded hackers.
According to a job ad for a Computer Network Operations Specialist, a student or graduate will have to have, or soon have, “a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree incorporating ethical hacking, digital forensics or information security”.
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The US government’s prosecution of a South Korean businessman accused of illegally selling technology used in aircraft and missiles to Iran was dealt a devastating blow by a federal judge. The judge ruled Friday that the authorities illegally seized the businessman’s computer at Los Angeles International Airport as he was to board a flight home.
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Free tech is about much more than free software. It’s more than just being able to see and modify code and deeper than the rivalry between proprietary and FOSS or Windows versus Linux. It’s not just about computers. Free tech is also about freedom and rights, and keeping our lifestyle from being destroyed by the misuse of technology.
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Anyone can design a cipher that he himself cannot break. This is why you should uniformly distrust amateur cryptography, and why you should only use published algorithms that have withstood broad cryptanalysis. All cryptographers know this, but non-cryptographers do not. And this is why we repeatedly see bad amateur cryptography in fielded systems.
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BitTorrent today launched its encrypted P2P chat app Bleep. You can download the first stable version for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac from bleep.pm.
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Civil Rights
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The CIA subjected “war on terror” detainees it held captive at black site prisons to sleep deprivation, rectal feeding, waterboarding, ice-water baths, painful stress positions, beatings, mock executions, mock burials, and threats of sexual abuse.
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No sooner had General Petraeus received a mild scolding for handing over pages and pages of classified information to his biographer/mistress than the defense team handling Jeffrey Sterling’s case saw a point of entry to argue that the proposed sentence of 19-24 years in prison was too severe.
Petraeus, who was also a CIA official, received two years probation and a $100,000 fine. The defense has asked for something more in line with recent prosecutions of whistleblowers and leakers: something between Petraeus and John Kiriakou (30 months), as it were.
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Federal prosecutors on Thursday defended their use of the Espionage Act to prosecute a former CIA officer who leaked information to a New York Times reporter and suggested it was “mistaken” for him to receive a sentence far below what federal guidelines call for because he gave materials to a journalist, rather than a foreign government.
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A federal judge sentenced ex-CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling Monday to serve 42 months in prison for leaking to a New York Times reporter details of a clandestine agency program aimed more than a decade ago at impeding Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
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A secular blogger has been hacked to death in north-eastern Bangladesh in the country’s third such deadly attack since the start of the year.
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Ananta Bijoy Das, a Bangladeshi writer known for advocating science and secularism, was hacked to death by masked men wielding machetes while on his way to work Tuesday morning.
Das died instantly in the attack, police in Sylhet city told the Associated Press. He is the third Bangladeshi writer to be killed in less than four months.
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Consumer advocate and political reformer Ralph Nader speaks with Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff about his latest book “Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President 2001-2015;” the conversation covers topics from trade treaties and Democratic presidential candidates, to Gaza, Israel and AIPAC.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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With a month left before net neutrality complaints can be filed to the Federal Communications Commission, Internet service providers are continuing to sign agreements to prevent network congestion and a potential scolding from regulators.
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In March of this year, the FCC’s 400-page net neutrality order arrived, and made waves because of the agency’s vote to reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service. The FCC argued that it created “clear and enforceable rules” to protect consumers, but broadband providers and others bristled at the regulation proposals.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Online copyright enforcer Rightscorp contacts alleged Internet pirates, sometimes on their cell phones, and demands $20 per song from them. It’s a business that has led to tens of thousands of payment demands, but Rightscorp is far from profitable.
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Anti-piracy monetization firm Rightscorp has failed in its bid to unmask alleged Internet pirates. The company attempted to use the DMCA to force ISP Birch Communications to expose its customers’ identities but the company stood strong. A federal judge in Atlanta has now ruled in favor of the ISP by quashing Rightscorp’s subpoena.
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05.11.15
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Vista 7, Vista 8, Windows at 4:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft cannot compete with zero-cost Free/libre software anymore
Summary: Microsoft is failing to convince people to ‘upgrade’ Windows, whereupon business models are being altered and migration to Linux-based platforms (like Android) continues uninterrupted
WHILE Microsoft-connected media like the BBC persists with Microsoft propaganda like this nonsense or this one puff piece (a couple among several articles we found, all singing along the lines of Vista 10 being the last version of Windows), it is becoming abundantly clear that the era of Windows is ending. People refuse to adopt the latest versions of Windows, so now comes spin like this: “Reiterating the company’s “Windows as a service” philosophy, Nixon said the firm is planning no new OS version launches in the future. “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10,” he added.”
The name Nixon is just so perfect here. Trust Nixon.
Vista 8 was so bad (worse than ME and Vista in terms of adoption) that only a fool would think Vista 10 can change that. Remember that hype/PR ahead of Vista 8; it’s all promises and bribed-for reviews. Several years after Vista 8 came out there is still a rush towards an operating system more than half a decade old (Vista 7) or some variants of GNU/Linux. The largest branches of the British government are still struggling with a 14-year-old version of Windows and refuse to move on with the upgrade treadmill. See this new report which says: “UK government departments still running Windows XP are now doing so entirely on their own. A framework support agreement between the Crown and Microsoft guaranteeing the release of special security patches for PCs still on Windows XP has ended after one year. That deal – revealed here – expired on April 14 and it’s been decided it will not be rolled into a second year, Microsoft has told The Reg.”
For Microsoft it has become impossible to charge for Windows and expect to gain at the expense of GNU/Linux, Android, etc. Now, as Pogson put it, they need to compete on price. “No longer will the price be hidden,” he wrote. “Consumers who can do the maths will seek alternatives if for no other reason than comparison shopping. GNU/Linux will prevail because there’s no OS out there that gives as great a service for $0 as GNU/Linux. Amen.”
The “PC” is dying based on figures that are derived from sales and Google, whose flagship platform (Android) now commands the lion’s share of the mobile market, says that mobile search tops desktop “Google says that more people now use Google Search on mobile devices than they do on desktops,” to quote just one report. The delusion that Windows will always be around and be used by a majority is a sort of paid propaganda Microsoft still relies on. █
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security at 3:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”
–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive
Summary: How the corporate media, especially that which is connected to Microsoft, fallaciously frames Windows issues as universal issues and lays blame on GNU/Linux where Windows is affected
Our previous post, which talks about OOXML being insecure [via], was a reminder that Microsoft is inherently insecure, usually by design (for surveillance/espionage purposes, among other reasons). Today we would like to show some gross media bias which deliberately fails to highlight Microsoft’s uniqueness when it comes to poor security.
First of all, the Microsoft-occupied BBC is a disgrace. The BBC got very badly stuffed/filled (at management level) with Microsoft UK staff. It happened several years ago. Examples were covered here before. In an article titled “Self-destructing virus kills off PCs” they completely fail to mention that it’s just Windows. Microsoft and Windows are mentioned only in context that promotes them, but not otherwise. “Restoring a PC with its MBR deleted involves reinstalling Windows,” says one paragraph in the middle, “which could mean important data is lost.” Would the article bear the same headline if the virus targeted Android? It’s just so vague. “PC” just means “Windows” now. The BBC seems to serve as a Microsoft advertising platform, there is no pretence of objectivity at all. If the BBC’s language was reversed, it would announce “new version of PC” and “Windows malware destruction of Microsoft Windows” (to amend the aforementioned headline). The BBC has a newspeak name for Microsoft Windows when there’s bad news: “PC”. But it’s called “Windows” (or Vista 10/Windows 10) when there’s good news. How convenient.
Zack Whittaker from Microsoft (formerly working for Microsoft UK) writes about the latest Lenovo back door, neglecting to say that it affects only those who use Microsoft Windows (like previous Lenovo back doors). How convenient an omission.
Last but not least, take a look at this rebuttal to articles from IDG and the highly biased Dan Goodin (among few others whom we cited here the other day). Anti-Linux circles framed general-purpose threat to computers as a “Linux” thing. What a bogus claim that was! “Stealthy Linux GPU malware can also hide in Windows PCs, maybe Macs,” says the latest headline. The author says quite correctly: “Most news stories last week about Jellyfish focused on the Linux aspect, leading some to believe that Windows or Mac PCs can’t be affected by such threats. It now seems that Team Jellyfish is bent on disproving that.”
So once again GNU/Linux is receiving bad press (perception of insecurity) despite it being just a scapegoat in an attack that is hardware-based. We covered very similar examples in recent months.
The media is just so biased against Free software. Bias by omission and scapegoating is a longstanding issue that led to the “call out Windows” campaign. It’s not acceptable that Microsoft receives special treatment. █
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Posted in Europe, Office Suites at 3:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: OpenDocument Format, or ODF as it’s commonly referred to, is spreading quickly throughout Europe after Microsoft failed to kill in in Britain last year
France, like the UK and parts of Germany, is joining the ODF revolution, making the European Union a lot more standards- and Free software-oriented. Germany, in the mean time, attacks OOXML on the basis of poor security. As a European Commission site put it the other day: “Using the proprietary OOXML document format, i.e. docx, pptx and xlsx, makes you more vulnerable to phishing and other attacks. Earlier this month, the Japanese anti-virus company Trend Micro published a blog post describing how the attack group “Operation Pawn Storm” uses spear-phishing mail messages with malicious Office documents to target the military, governments, defense industries and the media.
“Four years ago, Thomas Caspers and Oliver Zendel from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) already presented research results stating that most spear-phishing attacks targeting specific persons or a small group of victims are using “launch actions” in Office and PDF documents to have their malicious code executed.”
We have written nearly a thousand articles about document formats and security aspects too have been covered. Now that France is moving to ODF, joining the UK and some parts of Germany, it it definitely worth revisiting this debate (more on security in our next post). Microsoft attacked ODF in Europe as recently as last year because the EU is gradually removing format lock-in (gateway to Free software), essentially saying bye-bye to Microsoft dependency. Without restrictions on choice — or contrariwise — if people are left to make rational choices, Microsoft will soon be history.
In the words of Gregg Keizer, “Office 365 customers pay Microsoft up to 80% more over long haul”, so the ‘cloud’ nonsense too (giving Microsoft one’s files, not just using Microsoft’s proprietary formats) is a big and expensive mistake, especially where taxpayers foot the bill. Microsoft is making money from corruptible officials or fools who deem Microsoft essential “and lose custody of their own data,” as iophk put it in an E-mail to us.
Prepare Microsoft to increasingly openwash itself, pretending that OOXML is “open”, Office is “open”, Windows is “open”, and so on. █
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