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10.25.14

Taking Microsoft Windows Off the Grid for Damage to Businesses, the Internet, and Banking Systems

Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 4:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

Summary: Microsoft’s insecure-by-design software is causing massive damages (possibly trillions of dollars in damages to date) and yet the corporate press does not ask the right questions, let alone suggest a ban on Microsoft software

According to the New York Times and other news sites, “Staples Is Latest Retailer Hit by Hackers” because it was using Microsoft Windows. Well, other recent examples included UPS, which basically hurt millions of people because it let crooks have lots of credit card details. The TJ Maxx heist and other credit card heists were also the fault of Microsoft Windows, not GNU Bash or OpenSSL, among other bits of software that dominate the news in the context of security. It sure looks like Microsoft Windows is the target, not FOSS. There are hardly any stories at all about an apocalypse or any great damage caused by bugs in Bash or in OpenSSL. So go figure what the press is doing, in part because the OpenSSL bug has been hyped up by Microsoft partners at a very strategic time (same day as Windows XP support ending).

As Will Hill put it the other day, “Business Week Covers Up for Microsoft In Target Hack and Misses the Big Story”. Mr. Hill adds that “The US government covering up for Microsoft is not too surprising after learning about the HACIENDA program [2]. That’s a massive program where the US government has been cracking servers and ordinary around the world to serve as botnets. If everyone used software that was better then Microsoft’s intentionally weak garbage, GHCQ, NSA and other spooks would not be able to cover their tracks. Because of US government promotion of Microsoft and their combined incompetence, criminals around the world have it easy. NSA spying has put trillions of dollars in commerce at risk.”

Those botnets do even greater damage than what was done at Staples. They are taking down a lot of Web sites and fill the Internet with heaps of SPAM. To quote our reader, complaining about articles like these: “Somehow they manage to omit the key role of Windows yet again.” They must call out Windows.

Another new article was sent to us by a reader. It is titled “Computer users who damage national security could face jail” and it was published by a Bill Gates-sponsored newspaper. This reader of ours asked: “What about those that knowingly deploy Windows on machines connected to the Internet?”

Our sites are still under DDOS attack (for over a month ago). Tux Machines has been offline for several hours now after a DDOS attack from Windows botnets hit it.

Why are ISPs still permitting customers to connect to the Internet with Windows? When will ISPs or users face liability for the damage they cause? Some people have been trying to take down my sites for well over a month now and they have used Microsoft Windows as a weapon. Windows has weaponised back doors, so it should be banned already.

Speaking of takedowns, watch the latest commentary [1,2] about Microsoft breaking the law to take material and sites (or even entire networks) offline, despite them doing nothing illegal.

The corporate media should start directing some tough questions at Microsoft, not just its victims. The company should face massive fines for the damages it causes on the Web. Ultimately, its software should be banned until security — not insecurity (weaponised back doors) — is its goal. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Takedown notices served by Microsoft to videos that ‘DO NOT’ infringe on anything

    Microsoft has gained immense popularity over its never-ending war on software piracy. However, this time, the company appears to have caused a bit of collateral damage. So who are the victims? A handful of prominent and highly acclaimed YouTube video bloggers.

  2. Microsoft Takes Down A Bunch Of Non-Infringing YouTube Videos Over People Posting Product Keys In Comments

    Oh, Microsoft. The company has now admitted that it ended up sending a bunch of DMCA takedown notices on non-infringing videos, all because someone had posted product keys in comments to those videos. To its credit, Microsoft has apologized and said that it has “taken steps to reinstate legitimate video content and are working towards a better solution to targeting stolen IP while respecting legitimate content.” That’s all well and good, but this seems like the kind of thing that they should have done long before issuing obviously bad takedowns. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a tool like the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision that makes it just so damn easy to censor content. Those issuing the takedowns do little to nothing to make sure the content being removed actually infringes. They just use either automated means or someone rushing through the process with little review, sending off takedowns willy nilly with no real concern about how they might kill off perfectly legal content. It still boggles the mind that a basic notice-and-notice regime couldn’t suffice to handle situations like this. That and making sure that those issuing bogus DMCA notices receive some sort of real punishment to give them the incentive to stop sending bogus takedowns.

City of Berlin Does Not Abandon Free Software, It’s Only Tax Authorities

Posted in Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 3:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Berlin is already a Windows shop and it’s not window-shopping

Window shopping

Summary: A Softpedia report that says the City of Berlin is moving to Microsoft Office is flawed and may be based on a poor translation

Last year we wrote about Berlin's reluctance to follow the lead of Munich, which happily uses Free software and GNU/Linux, despite the FUD from Microsoft (including some of the latest, not just last year's). It has been over a year since a formal investigation was launched into Microsoft’s bribery of officials in many countries. We are not aware of any progress on it, but all we can say is that Microsoft did try ‘soft’ bribes in derailing Munich’s efforts. There is a lot of rogue stuff going on and we covered it in past years.

According to this one report in English, “City of Berlin Going from OpenOffice Back to Microsoft Office”. The problem is, we are not aware of Berlin ever moving to OpenOffice. I spoke to an old friend in Berlin (he works on LibreOffice) as this report continued to seem a little suspicious. I followed through to the source, assuming it either shows that once again Microsoft bribes have paid off or that Microsoft is spreading lies and FUD. As it turns out, a poor translation by Silviu Stahie may be the issue.

“As it turns out, a poor translation by Silviu Stahie may be the issue.”According to this report, Microsoft OOXML is again interfering with adoption of Free software in government. To quote: “It’s difficult to say what the steps that prompted the city officials to make this decision were. It might just as well be the fact that documents created with OpenOffice 3.2 can’t be opened by people with newer or proprietary software, or vice versa.

“The fact of the matter is that LibreOffice, a much newer and modern office suite open source solution, can do all these things. It’s already used in cities around the world, so others don’t seem to have the same problems as Berlin. From what we can gather from the Golem.de report, the switch to Microsoft Office is already happening and it should be finished by the end of 2015.

“A much bigger issue is the lack of intervention from the German government, which has yet to implement or regulate the use of open source formats in its own branches. Things would be much simpler if everyone used a single kind of file format that can be read by both proprietary and open source software.”

The original article (in German) basically says that it’s about the tax authorities, not the City of Berlin. The article also blames it squarely on OOXML, stating at the end (now translating into English) that a requirement that one should use open formats for the government of a state is possible, as shown in the United Kingdom, which established in July of this year PDF and ODF as the standards for documents. █

Nadella a Liar in Chief at Microsoft, Pretending That His Anti-Competitive Practices Are Unfortunately Imposed on Microsoft

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 3:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux as “piracy” again

Addicted

Summary: The nastiness of Microsoft knows no bounds as even its assault on GNU/Linux and dirty tricks against Free software adoption are characterised as the fault of ‘pirates’

Last week we wrote about Microsoft boosters and Microsoft-friendly sites saying that Microsoft is loving Linux simply because Nadella says so. It is a lie, but if repeated often enough some people might believe it. Nadella is now saying that stuff acquired for free (like Windows) was “forced upon it [Microsoft] by pirates” although it could not be further from the truth.

Nadella got caught lying again or maybe he just doesn’t know Microsoft’s lies and therefore he repeats these lies. Either way, these are lies. Bill Gates once said (in public): “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

“It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not” Microsoft was quoted as saying on another occasion.

As a reader of ours put it the other day: “Microsoft does not make its money off the software, it makes its money off the rents on the software. There’s a big difference. Rents depend on market share, not sales alone.”

As I learned only a couple of days ago at Currys/PC World (apparently to other people’s interest too), Microsoft is essentially forcing all PC buyers to get Windows; there’s hardly any other option and there is punishment for people who remove Windows from their new PC. These “rents”, as our reader called it, are now ending in parts of Europe, but not in the UK. As the FSF stated last night: “The Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) issued a judgment1 that bans the “Microsoft tax,” a commercial practice that discourages users from converting their PCs to GNU/Linux or other free operating systems by forcing them to pay for a Windows license with their PCs. PC producers in Italy now cannot refuse to refund the price of the license to purchasers that will not run Windows.”

I may soon register a complaint with the British authorities.

Here is Nadella lying in public:

New comments from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella suggest that luring people in with zero-cost products is of great interest to the company. However, while services such as OneDrive are free with premium options by design, Nadella says Microsoft has long had a freemium business model, but one that was forced upon it by pirates.

Over at The Register, which receives money from Microsoft through some deals, the Microsoft booster Gavin Clarke now portrays Steve Ballmer and Microsoft as friendly to competition. This propaganda or revisionism, casting Microsoft as a role model for playing nice with competition, is worse than insulting. It’s a disgrace and a shame to British journalism. █

Reuters Writes About the Demise of Software Patents, But Focuses on ‘Trolls’ and Quotes Lawyers

Posted in Law, Patents at 3:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: How the corporate media chooses to cover the invalidity of many software patents and the effect of that

FOR a number of years we have written a great deal about software patents, hoping for change and hoping for acknowledgement of change in the corporate media, which typically just quotes lawyers when it comes to patent matters. Engineers are rarely part of this debate. The corporate media treats them as passive observers that barely count.

“Engineers are rarely part of this debate.”There was a widely
circulated article at Reuters last week and it spoke about positive developments in the area of patents, pulling together some important facts and figures:

For two decades, companies that buy software patents to sue technology giants have been the scourge of Silicon Valley. Reviled as patent trolls, they have attacked everything from Google’s online ads to Apple’s iPhone features, sometimes winning hundreds of millions of dollars.

But now the trolls are in retreat from the tech titans, interviews and data reviewed by Reuters show.

In the wake of several changes in U.S. law, which make it easier to challenge software patents, patent prices are plummeting, the number of court fights is down, and stock prices of many patent-holding companies have fallen. Some tech firms say they are punching up research budgets as legal costs shrink, while support for major patent reform is under fire as trolls get trounced.

“Their entire business model relies on intimidation, and that has lost its edge,” said Efrat Kasznik, president of intellectual property consulting firm Foresight Valuation Group. “If the patents are not enforceable in court anymore… the troll has no legs to stand on.”

With the headline “Big Tech Winning Battle With ‘Patent Trolls’” it’s clear that they take the narrative of big businesses and mostly ignore the relevance of software patents in this case. It’s all about big business!

This is evidence-based as opposed to emotion-based (like analyses from patent lawyers), but it does quote a lot of people who are in the patent business and have a conflict of interest. █

10.24.14

Links 24/10/2014: Microsoft Tax Axed in Italy, Google’s Linux (ChromeOS/Android) Leader Promoted

Posted in News Roundup at 6:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

    • oVirt Node: hosted-engine

      oVirt Node 3.5 contain ovirt-node-plugin-hosted-engine available which make possible setup oVirt Node run oVirt Engine as virtual machine with HA (more then one node required).

    • Cumulus Linux 2.5 adds mainstream L2 features to bare-metal switching

      As Cumulus Networks attempts to expand beyond the early adopters of its Cumulus Linux bare-metal switch operating system, it is adding Layer 2 networking features aimed at making it easier for enterprises to make the transition from legacy environments to the IP fabrics that most cloud computing customers operate.

  • Kernel Space

    • MSI X99S SLI PLUS On Linux

      For Intel Core i7 5960X Haswell-E Linux testing I originally bought an MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard as it was one of the most interesting, lowest-priced boards available at the time of the Intel X99 chipset debut. While I initially ran into some problems, those issues have now been confirmed to be isolated, and with a replacement X99S SLI PLUS motherboard I have been stressing it constantly for the past few weeks on Fedora and Ubuntu. The X99S SLI PLUS has now proven itself to be a reliable motherboard that’s still among the least expensive X99 ATX motherboards on the market.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • The Linux desktop-a-week review: LXDE

      Over the last two weeks I’ve run nothing but LXDE as my primary Linux Desktop Environment (other than a few excursions into Android land). Been using LXDE. Been enjoying LXDE.

      But I have practically nothing to really say about LXDE. I feel like, after all this time, I should have something interesting to talk about. But I just plain don’t.

      It’s fast, blisteringly fast. And it’s damned lightweight too. After that, things get pretty boring.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Kubuntu Shirts are Back

        Kubuntu T-shirts and Polo Shirts are available again. This time our supplier is HelloTux who are working with the Hungarian Ubuntu LoCo. $3 from each shirt goes to Kubuntu and $1.5 to the Hungarian LoCo team.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Introducing Gthree

        I’ve recently been working on OpenGL support in Gtk+, and last week it landed in master. However, the demos we have are pretty lame and are not very good to show off or even test the OpenGL support. I’ve looked around for some open source demos that used modern GL that we could use, but I didn’t find anything that we could easily use.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Neptune OS 4.2 Features a Refreshing KDE Desktop

        ZevenOS-Neptune 4.x branch is called “It’s all about you” and it was initially made available back in June. This is the second update for the distribution and the devs have refined some of the features and have added some new packages into the mix.

        The system is based on KDE, but don’t expect to find a regular stock version implemented. It’s clear that the devs have put a lot of effort into making the DE experiences unique. Users can immediately recognize what distribution they are looking at just with a glance, and that’s always a good sign.

    • Arch Family

      • Diary of a new Arch user, week two

        So, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and installed Arch Linux. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. For those of you who haven’t come across this distro before, it’s built on the idea that the user should have full control of their system. This means that the basic install is just the Linux kernel and a few essential utilities. In order to create a fully working system, you need to choose what bits you want to install on top of that yourself. There’s no installer to guide you (but there is a package manager and a wiki to help you).

    • Red Hat Family

      • Video: Getting Ready for systemd (in RHEL7)

        I found the link to this video (Getting Ready for systemd) on the systemd documentation page. It is a Red Hat “Customer Portal Exclusive” and “Not for Distribution” but it is ok for me to provide a picture that links to it… that looks like a video-ready-to-play.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 22 Could Get the Desktop from elementary OS

          The Fedora Linux distro is an operating system with a very rich history and it comes with all sorts of desktop environments. A proposition has been made now to give users a new desktop environment to play with, Pantheon.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Make Your Own Wireless Printer With A Raspberry Pi

      Wireless technology is perhaps the best improvement to home printing for years. Fewer cables, flexibility about where you can put your printer – it’s win-win. Unless you have an older printer.

    • Google’s Nest buys Linux automation firm, adds five partners

      Google’s Nest Labs acquired Revolv, a maker of Linux-based home automation devices, and announced five new Nest-compatible devices. including the Pebble.

      After Google acquired Nest Labs in January $3.2 billion, placing a stake in the fast-growing home automation business, Nest acquired home surveillance camera maker Dropcam in June for $555 million. Now Nest announced it has acquired another major home automation company in its purchase of Revolv. The acquisition, which was announced with no dollar amount, came shortly after the Boulder, Colo. based company announced compatibility with the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect CO/smoke detector.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Tizen Developer Summit Shanghai 2014 #TDS14SH

          At the Tizen Developer Summit shanghai 2014, Brian Warner kicked off the Keynote sessions to a packed Chinese crowd, which was a great sight to see. He drew attention to the fact that there have been releases several Tizen products this year, which hasn’t been the case in recent times.

        • Is the Tizen Samsung Z Alive and running Tizen 2.3 SM-Z910F ? #TDS14SH

          At the Tizen Developer Summit 2014 Shanghai, Samsung were showing off the Gear S, and also the Samsung Z Smartphone. Taking a further glimpse at the settings we can see that it is listed as running Tizen 2.3, which recently saw the release of the Tizen 2.3 Beta SDK. As a recap, the Samsung Z was the Tizen flagship Smartphone that Samsung were due to release at the Tizen developer summit in Russia, but cancelled the launch with only 48 hours to spare.

      • Android

        • How to Get Open Source Android

          Android is an astonishing commercial success, and is often touted as a Linux success. In some ways it is; Google was able to leverage Linux and free/open source software to get Android to market in record time, and to offer a feature set that quickly outstripped the old champion iOS.

          But it’s not Linux as we know it. Most Android devices are locked-down, and we can’t freely download and install whatever operating systems we want like we can with our Linux PCs, or install whatever apps we want without jailbreaking our own devices that we own. We can’t set up a business to sell Google Android devices without jumping through a lot of expensive hoops (see The hidden costs of building an Android device and Secret Ties in Google’s “Open” Android.) We can’t even respin Google Android however we want to and redistribute it, because Google requires bundling a set of Google apps.

        • Another Tor router crowdfunding project nixed by Kickstarter

          Kickstarter is apparently not the place to go if you’re trying to crowdfund privacy hardware. Just days after the Anonabox project, a highly criticized effort to package the Tor privacy protection service into a portable miniature Wi-Fi router, was suspended by the crowdfunding site, another similar project has met its demise—and its founder’s account has been deleted.

        • LG’s first SoC debuts on 5.9-inch G3 Screen phone

          LG announced its first SoC, a Cortex-15 and –A7 octa-core “Nuclun” with LTE-A Cat.6 tech that debuts this week in a Korea-bound LG G3 Screen Android phone.

        • Google CEO Page appoints Sundar Pichai as product boss

          Google Inc. CEO is handing over responsibility for the company’s products to a key lieutenant, Sundar Pichai, putting him in charge of research, search, maps, Google+, commerce, ads and infrastructure, Re/code reported.

Free Software/Open Source

  • LinkedIn and Twitter Contribute Machine Learning Libraries to Open Source

    Twitter’s engineering group, known for various contributions to open source from streaming MapReduce to front-end framework Bootstrap recently announced open sourcing an algorithm that can efficiently recommend content. This is a really important problem for Twitter as it helps promoting the right ads to the right users and recommending which users to follow. The algorithm, named DIMSUM, can pre-process similarity data and feed the actual recommendation algorithm with a subset of users that are calculated to be above a similarity threshold.

  • Why Open Source Is Becoming A Big Developer-Recruiting Tool

    Most companies are just coming around to the idea that open source can help lower costs and boost innovation within their organizations. But Web companies like Netflix, Twitter and Facebook understand that open source can be more: a powerful weapon for recruiting and retaining top engineering talent.

  • SimplyTapp launches open source tokenization project

    “We don’t want to put any hindrance in the way of a bank launching cloud-based payments because they have to buy or rely on another ecosystem player for new technology and so we thought it was a perfect use case for an open source project. Open source allows a perfect line of audit where you can actually see the source code, modify the source code and make updates to the source code for your environment before you’re running it.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • MozFest 2014 begins today

        More than 1,600 participants from countries around the globe will gather at Ravensbourne in East London for a weekend of collaborating, building prototypes, designing innovative web literacy curricula and discussing how the ethos of the open web can contribute to the fields of science, journalism, advocacy and more.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Apache CloudStack Arrives in New Version, Stays Popular

      The Apache CloudStack project has released version 4.4.1, the new version of its private, public and hybrid cloud software. The latest revision of the open source CloudStack platform has “dozens of new features and improvements,” as noted in an Apache Software Foundation release.

    • HP Launches Helion OpenStack Build/Services, to Take on AWS

      HP has steadily been making a lot of noise about its commitment to cloud computing overall, and the OpenStack platform in particular. And, back in May, HP chief Meg Whitman announced the cloud-focused Helion brand, and pledged to commit $1 billion over the next two years on products and services surrounding OpenStack.

  • Databases

    • eBay open sources a big, fast SQL-on-Hadoop database

      eBay has open sourced a database technology, called Kylin, that takes advantage of distributed processing and the HBase data store in order to return faster results for SQL queries over Hadoop data.

    • What you missed in Big Data: Oracle, eBay join Hadoop open-source party

      The past week has seen not one but two technology giants take on a bigger role in the open-source community’s efforts to bring modern analytics within the grasp of the traditional enterprise. Online retail giant eBay Inc. led the charge with the contribution of a homegrown OLAP engine that it said makes querying Hadoop both easier and significantly faster.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Swiss crowdfund pays for signed PDFs LibreOffice

      In just three days, the Swiss open source community Wilhelm Tux reached its crowdfunding target of 10,000 CHF (about 8000 euro) to add support for digital signatures in PDF documents. The feature will be added to LibreOffice, a free and open source suite of office productivity tools. The project is awarded to Collabora, an open source IT service provider, which will deliver the new functionality in April.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Guardian launches open-source data journalism tool

        Collaborative data journalism platform Swarmize has launched today to offer editors and journalists better tools for the use of data, including real-time visualisation.

        Swarmize, now in alpha, won funding through the Knight News Challenge in June, and has been built at the Guardian over the last four months.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • America, The Defensive: Wars, Terrorism And Thirty Years Of Perpetual ‘States Of Emergencies’

      If there’s anything our government can do well, it’s take a word loaded with tension and abuse it to the point of abstraction. First, we had “war.” The word described the hellish events of the First and Second World War, along with armed, bloody conflicts dating back to the rebellious creation of the nation itself. Now, it’s simply a term applied to any conflict with the weight of a self-serving bureaucracy propelling it. A “war” on drugs. A “war” on illiteracy. And so on.

    • Canada’s war on terror: Fear runs high, but evidence often lacking

      Homegrown. Lone wolf. High-risk traveller. These words are now part of the lexicon of a renewed war on terrorism, a vocabulary Ottawa officials use as they grapple with extremism inside Canada’s borders.

    • Canada’s Coverage of the Ottawa Shootings Put American Cable News to Shame

      Anchored by the unflappable Peter Mansbridge, news of the shootings in Ottawa unfolded live on the CBC much like they do here in the United States: lots of sketchy details, conflicting reports, unreliable witnesses, and a thick fog of confusion. All of that was familiar. What was less familiar was how Mansbridge and his team managed that confusion, conveying a concise and fact-based version of fast-moving events to viewers across Canada and the world.

    • Valerie Plame on the New Age of National Security

      In 2002, the CIA asked Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore for weapons of mass destruction. Wilson told the agency that the claims were “highly unlikely.”

      Nevertheless, in his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush reiterated the claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from contacts in Africa. Wilson accused the Bush Administration of lying to the American people to drum up support for the invasion of Iraq.

      A few months later, Plame’s name—and her secret identity as a CIA officer—appeared in a column by Bush supporter Robert Novak. Plame and Wilson believe Novak leaked Plame’s identity in retaliation, though a special prosecutor declined to prosecute federal officials for the crime, apart from charging Lewis Libby with obstruction of justice.

      In an interview with The Takeaway’s John Hockenberry, Plame reflects on the state of Iraq today. “Certainly, if we had not invaded Iraq on intelligence that was clearly manipulated and cherry picked, we would be in a different position today,” she says.

      “There is no question that what we are seeing—the horrible advance of ISIS—goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq,” Plame continues. “I think the Bush Administration was bound and determined on regime change, and we will be paying the price of that for some time to come.”

    • Special report: America’s perpetual state of emergency

      The United States is in a perpetual state of national emergency.

      Thirty separate emergencies, in fact.

      An emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter on the 10th day of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 remains in effect almost 35 years later.

    • Jury returns guilty verdicts for all 4 former Blackwater guards charged in Iraq shootings

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Rick S. Piltz, whistleblower on federal climate policy, dies at 71

      Rick S. Piltz, a longtime climate policy analyst who exposed how top-level George W. Bush administration officials edited scientific reports to minimize the link between human activity and climate change, died Oct. 18 at a hospice center in Washington. He was 71.

  • Finance

    • OMB Director Sets a Low Bar for Deficit Reform

      The national debt, which was about $5.7 trillion when George W. Bush entered office and $11 trillion when he turned the White House over to Barack Obama, is now at just a shade under $18 trillion. And the director of the Office of Management and Budget declares that a “return to fiscal normalcy.” Where is Warren Harding now that we need him?

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Big Problem With Time’s Teacher-Bashing Cover Story

      Time reports that Welch and his ilk were able to find “a flood of new academic research on teacher quality ” to back up their hunch that bad teachers are the problem. One research team relied on a “a controversial tool called value-added measures (VAM)” to measure teacher effectiveness, and they “found that replacing a poorly performing teacher with an excellent one could increase students’ lifetime earnings by $250,000 per classroom.”

      So there’s a technique that supposedly measures teacher quality, and you can sue public schools that fail to adopt it. Does anyone have a problem with this approach? Of course. Teachers, for example, and their unions–who are, shockingly, never quoted in Time’s piece.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Support the right for journalists to protect their sources

      Today we have also released a report on how police forces are using ‘directed surveillance’ powers permitted under RIPA, calling on the government to introduce judicial authorisation for all use of surveillance powers, increased transparency around how the powers are being used, and for the right of redress for those who have been spied on.

    • Former NSA Official: Anyone Who ‘Justified’ Snowden’s Leaks Shouldn’t Be Allowed A Gov’t Job

      A few days ago, the FTC announced that it had appointed Ashkan Soltani as its chief technology officer. Soltani is a well-known (and often outspoken) security researcher who has worked at the FTC in the past. Nothing about this appointment should be all that surprising or even remotely controversial. However, recently, Soltani had been doing a lot of journalism work, as a media consultant at the Washington Post helping Barton Gellman and other reporters really understand the technical and security aspects of the Snowden documents. His name has appeared as a byline in a number of stories about the documents, detailing what is really in those documents, and how they can impact your privacy.

    • FTC hires new CTO with deep links to Snowden documents
    • Federal Trade Commission Appoints Ashkan Soltani as Chief Technologist
    • MI5 spied on leading British historians for decades, secret files reveal

      MI5 amassed hundreds of records on Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill, two of Britain’s leading historians who were both once members of the Communist party, secret files have revealed.

      The scholars were subjected to persistent surveillance for decades as MI5 and police special branch officers tapped and recorded their telephone calls, intercepted their private correspondence and monitored their contacts, the files show. Some of the surveillance gave MI5 more details about their targets’ personal lives than any threat to national security.

    • Exclusive: Shakeup At NSA After BuzzFeed News Reports On Potential Conflict Of Interest

      Top National Security Agency official Teresa Shea is leaving her position after BuzzFeed News reported on her and her husband’s financial interests. The move comes as the NSA faces more questions about the business dealings of its former director Keith Alexander, and potential ethics conflicts. This post has been updated to include a response from the NSA.

    • US Government Moves to Dismiss Lawsuit Against ‘Suspicious Activity’ Program Which Keeps Files on Innocent People

      The United States government has moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of five US citizens who say they were victims of a domestic surveillance program, which involves the collection of “suspicious activity reports” on individuals.

    • How Congress supports the NSA by doing nothing

      It’s been almost a year and a half since whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk and warrantless surveillance programs were first brought to light. Since then, we’ve learned more disturbing details about the NSA’s programs: The NSA has collected emails and other Internet data directly from companies’ fiber optic cables, built backdoors into encryption software, and partnered with other intelligence services around the world to collect and share private information.

  • Civil Rights

    • Roca Labs Story Gets More Bizarre: Senator Threatens Bogus Defamation Lawsuit, While Nevada Quickly Rejects Bogus Bribery Charge

      If you thought the Roca Labs story couldn’t get any more bizarre, well, then you haven’t been paying much attention, because no matter how bizarre the story was the last time you looked, it seems to get even more bizarre with the next step. We’ve already gone through the Roca gag order, lawsuit against PissedConsumer, lawsuit against unhappy customer, threats against witnesses, and weak attempts to use the fame of Alfonso Ribeiro and Tommy Chong in implied endorsements. Oh, and also the threat against us and the fact that a main “doctor” backing their product was a pediatrician who lost his license due to child porn claims.

    • Homeland Security confiscates Royals underwear in Kansas City

      Peregrine Honig says she just wanted to help celebrate the hometown team when she designed Lucky Royals boyshorts.

      The panties, with “Take the Crown” and “KC” across the bottom, were set to be sold in Honig’s Birdies Panties shop Tuesday. But Homeland Security agents visited the Crossroads store and confiscated the few dozen pairs of underwear, printed in Kansas City by Lindquist Press.

    • DHS Agents Raid Lingerie Shop, Save America From Unlicensed Underwear
    • Attorney General Holder ‘exasperated’ by Ferguson grand jury leaks, source says

      Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has told Justice Department lawyers that he is “exasperated” with leaks emerging from the grand jury involved in investigating the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, according to a Justice official.

    • In a federal trial examining a classified military deal, don’t mention the Navy SEALs

      Witnesses, attorneys and even the judge took special care not to let the phrase “Navy SEALs” pass their lips during a federal criminal trial in Alexandria this week, further cloaking an already mysterious case involving the purchase of hundreds of unmarked rifle silencers for the military.

    • Justice Department Rejects Key Reforms to FBI Whistleblower Regulations

      The Federal Bureau of Investigation is considering an array of new procedures that may modestly improve protections for whistleblowers, however, the Justice Department rejected a number of key reforms that “whistleblower advocates” have urged the agency to adopt.

      Under a presidential policy directive President Barack Obama issued in October 2012, which applied to whistleblowers with “access to classified information,” Attorney General Eric Holder was required to deliver a report within 180 days that assessed the “efficacy” of the FBI’s regulations. But it was not until June 2, 2014, that Holder delivered this report that was long overdue.

    • Senator Blasts CIA for Censoring ‘Torture’ Report

      Sen. Ron Wyden says the CIA is trying to blunt the impact of an upcoming Senate report examining the harsh treatment of al-Qaida detainees by insisting on censoring the pseudonyms used for agency officers mentioned in the document.

      “The intelligence leadership doing everything they can to bury the facts,” said Wyden, D-Ore., a Senate Intelligence Committee member who has been a frequent critic of the spy agency.

      The Senate, the CIA and the White House are negotiating over what should be blacked out for national security reasons in the 600-page summary of the report that is set for public release sometime after the November elections.

      President Barack Obama and other senior officials have said the CIA’s use of waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation and other harsh techniques on some detainees constituted torture. Many current and former CIA officers dispute that.

Links 24/10/2014: GNU/Linux History, Fedora Delay

Posted in News Roundup at 9:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Taiga, a new open source project management tool with focus on usability

    Whether you are a developer, project manager, or a stakeholder of any level—you’d like to have a clear view of where the project is headed. Are the deadlines being continuously achieved? How is the load on developers? How much of the project is complete? What is next for you in the project? And so on.

    A project management tool generally answers all these questions. Ideally, you can just login to the system and check the project status. But as with other things in life—it’s very difficult to achieve an ideal scenario here. People may be too busy (or even just outright lazy) to update their status in a project management tool. So, it’s almost always the case that the project management tool doesn’t reflect the actual project scenario. One solution to this is using a tool that is intuitive and fits alongside the developer’s normal workflow. Additionally, a tool that is quick to update and attracts users to use it.

  • [Mac Asay] Open source has won — let the infighting begin!

    For years, the open source world has taken comfort in a bit of Gandhi wisdom: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Red Hat went so far as to emblazon the phrase on the walls of its lobby, a reminder to open sourcers everywhere to take courage against the proprietary software machine.

  • Brocade Wants to Be Red Hat of OpenDaylight

    Brocade wants to have the same relationship with OpenDaylight as Red Hat has with Linux.

  • broadwell: add new intel SOC
  • Coreboot Now Has Support For Intel Broadwell Hardware

    It appears that Google engineers are getting ready Intel Broadwell support for future Chromebooks/Chromeboxes. Broadwell support is now present within Coreboot.

  • eBay joins open-source community with ultra-fast OLAP engine for Hadoop

    Like arch-rival Amazon.com, the soon-to-split eBay Inc. is something of an oddity in that it hasn’t historically been a big contributor to the open-source community. But the e-commerce pioneer hopes to change that with the release of the source-code for a homegrown online analytics processing (OLAP) engine that promises to speed up Hadoop while also making it more accessible to everyday enterprise users.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • OpenStack for humanity’s fast moving technology

      OpenStack has presented a huge opportunity for technologists at many levels. Niki Acosta is one of those technologists who strives to pull together all aspects of the OpenStack community for the betterment of everyone.

      Niki is the Director of Cloud Evangelism at Metacloud, now a part of Cisco. Metacloud delivers private infrastructure as a service based on the popular and open source cloud platform, OpenStack. As an active OpenStack participant, tweeter, and blogger, she has become a recognized name in the cloud industry.

    • 2014′s most significant cloud deals have OpenStack at heart

      2014′s slate of cloud deals reflect a few important trends in the market for the open source cloud software. One is that traditional enterprise vendors continue to see potential in OpenStack and they’re willing to shell out the cash to buy the expertise and technology they need to pursue the market.

  • CMS

    • Jeffrey McGuire From Acquia Explains Drupal 8, the GPL, and Much More

      Tux Machines has run using Drupal for nearly a decade (the site is older than a decade) and we recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jeffrey A. “jam” McGuire, Open Source Evangelist at Acquia, the key company behind Drupal (which the founder of Drupal is a part of). The questions and answers below are relevant to many whose Web sites depend on Drupal.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 10.1 RC3 Has ZFS, UDPLite Fixes

      FreeBSD 10.1 RC3 was a few days late but it’s out there this Thursday afternoon. FreeBSD 10.3 takes care of an API incompatibility between 10.0-RELEASE and the earlier 10.1-RC2 state (due to the libopie library) and aside from that this third release candidate has a lot of other fixes.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Quick PHP patch beats slow research reveal

      Patches have been flung out to cover vulnerabilities in PHP that led to remote code execution and buffer overflows.

      The flaws were detailed this week by Swiss researchers High-Tech Bridge in versions 5.4.33, 5.5.17 and 5.6.1 on a machine running Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS and the Radamsa fuzzer.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Unifont 7.0.06 Now Available

      This release adds coverage for the following Supplemental Multilingual Plane scripts: Old Permic, Ornamental Dingbats, Geometric Shapes Extended, and Supplemental Arrows-C. The SMP now contains over 5700 glyphs.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • SecTor: Why DevOps Is the Key to Security

      For many organizations, the typical approach to implementing security is as a bolt-on feature after development. At the SecTor security conference in Toronto, Securosis CEO and analyst Rich Mogull explained why the emerging world of DevOps can radically remake how security is built into the software development and deployment process.

      “The problem is that by nature, security is often reactive,” Mogull said. “We don’t control our destiny and we have to secure new stuff all the time.”

    • SecTor Speaker Shows How Credit Card Thieves Get Caught

      Credit card theft continues to be among the most common and widespread forms of digital crime. Speaking at the SecTor security conference here Oct. 22, Grayson Lenik, principal security consultant at Nuix, outlined how these credit card thieves—known as “carders”—operate and how they eventually get caught.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Pentagon warns the US military of climate change

      Climate change does not respect borders and we must work together to fight its threats. These are not the words of a tree-hugger, but the US Department of Defense.

      A report published on Monday says that extreme weather, rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall and rising oceans could fuel armed insurgency and heighten the impact of a pandemic, through their effects on political instability, poverty, migration and resource disputes.

  • Finance

    • WSJ Stumbles in Latest Attack on Campaign Finance Law

      The Wall Street Journal editorial board’s crusade against the enforcement of Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws has gone off the rails.

    • Big Money Bankrolls Opposition to Movement to Overturn Citizens United

      An historic vote in the U.S. Senate earlier this year to amend the constitution to reverse Citizens United and stem the flood of money into our elections – expected to top $1 billion this election cycle – has the Koch brothers spooked.

      If passed by Congress and approved by two-thirds of the states, the amendment could put a brake on outside spending from groups like the Koch brothers’ political network, which spent over $400 million on the 2012 elections and is reportedly planning to drop another $300 million on the 2014 midterms.

  • Privacy

    • With Launch of Germany Region, AWS Strives to Quell Privacy Concerns

      Amazon Web Services this morning announced it has launched a new region, this time in Germany, and the company worked hard to assure European businesses that its services are totally secure, even from U.S. government snooping.

    • Off The Record: How the police use surveillance powers

      The research focuses on the use of ‘directed surveillance’ contained in the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) by police forces; a form of covert surveillance conducted in places other than residential premises or private vehicles which is deemed to be non-intrusive, but is still likely to result in personal information about the individual being obtained.

    • GCHQ chief: Internet has become refuge for plotters

      Sir Iain Lobban, the outgoing head of GCHQ, says that the idea the internet doesn’t need policing is a flawed ‘Utopian dream’ as he argues the security services need ‘strong capabilities’ to stop those who want to harm Britain

    • Departing GCHQ Boss Insists GCHQ Isn’t Engaged In Mass Surveillance… If You Define ‘Mass’ And ‘Surveillance’ The Way He Does

      With the UN declaring mass surveillance a violation of human rights, the proper thing for the world’s biggest intelligence agencies — who regularly engage in mass surveillance — to do, might be to cut back on the practice and go back to targeted surveillance projects that most people find acceptable. Or, you know, they can do what the outgoing head of the GCHQ (the UK’s equivalent of the NSA), Sir Iain Lobban, did and just redefine the English language. That’s easier.

    • California woman charged with possessing cellphone spyware and using it to intercept law enforcement communications (UPDATED)

      San Jose — Kristin Nyunt was charged by information today with two counts of illegal wiretapping and the possession of illegal interception devices, announced United States Attorney Melinda Haag and FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson.

    • Woman Faces Criminal Wiretapping Charges For Deploying Spyware On Her Husband’s Phone

      A woman deploys spyware on her soon-to-be ex-husband’s phone, an act that is probably more common than anyone wants to admit, but one that rarely results in criminal charges. In this case, however, her husband happened to be employed by the Pacific Grove (CA) Police Department. If not for that simple fact, would there have been an investigation, much less charges brought? This story deals with multiple layers of official privilege — the extra attention those labeled “law enforcement” receive as victims of criminal activity, as well as the extra access law enforcement officers have, and how easily it can be abused.

    • Research Shows Mass Surveillance Fails ‘Drastically’ In Striking Balance Between Costs And Benefits To Society

      One of the many problems with the debate on mass surveillance is that it is largely driven by emotions, on both sides. Facts are few and far between — much is secret, for obvious reasons — which makes objective discussion hard. What is needed is some rigorous research into this area. Surprisingly, it turns out the European Union has been funding just such a project, called “Surveille,” a name derived from “Surveillance: Ethical Issues, Legal Limitations, and Efficiency.”

    • FBI Director Says Congress Will Fix Phone Encryption ‘Problem;’ Congress Says ‘Bite Us’

      James Comey’s pleas that something must be done for the [potentially-molested] children of the United States seem to be falling on mostly deaf ears. Mostly. After realizing that there’s nothing in current laws that compels Google and Apple to punch law enforcement-sized holes in their default encryption, Comey has decided to be the change he wishes to force in others.

    • Congress to the FBI: There’s ‘Zero Chance’ We’ll Force Apple to Decrypt Phones
    • People unknowingly add to ever-growing mountain of available personal data

      What do a philosopher, a law school dean, a technologist and a private investigator named Emery Goad all have in common?

      This:

      They say we humans are creating huge databases about our personal information, our tastes, our flirtations, our finances.

      We’re doing this with nearly every phone call, text, keystroke, Facebook posting and store purchase. We’re unwittingly sketching out glimpses of our virtues, vices, sins and souls.

    • Stock Symbol: KILL

      Last year, a propaganda campaign for attacking Syria was evidently stopped in its tracks by an overwhelmingly war-weary U.S. citizenry. But in recent months, the “drums of war” have been beating fiercely yet again. Retired generals, allegedly experts on war “policy,” predictably advocated another military intervention in the Middle East (this time to stop the menacing advance of ISIS, an “enemy” virtually unheard of as recently as several months ago). It is, of course, a well-known but rarely mentioned fact that such retired military generals and admirals generally hold considerable stock in these “defense” behemoths. With new military “engagements,” product-demand is ramped up (the profit-margin already exorbitant on contracts), as Congress invariably approves increases for such costly weapons as Apache attack helicopters, Tomahawk cruise missiles (Raytheon), and Hellfire air-to-ground missiles (Boeing/Martin)—the latter “delivered” by Predator/Reaper drones (General Atomics).

    • The illegal drones flying above London… and the chair of the government’s drones committee who was “horrified” to discover Google Maps

      Drone footage can be breathtaking, capturing aerial views that you just can’t get any other way.

    • More U.S. Citizens Have Been Killed by a Drone Strike Than by Ebola

      It’s an epidemic—killing hundreds of thousands of people and leaving many others hospitalized. It’s present in over 148 countries and has expanded out of control. I’m talking not about Ebola, but the U.S. government. The very entity that many turn to for protection has been responsible for wars, police shootings, withholding of drugs that could save lives, and many other acts of violence and negligence that have resulted in far more deaths than Ebola.

    • Drone protestors make a stand at the air base

      Normally it’s retired military rallying support for the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station drone program but on Thursday veterans joined anti-drone protestors at the base’s entrance to publicize their opposition.

      The air base is the site of the home of the 107th Airlift Wing which is converting from flying C-130 cargo planes to the remotely operated MQ-9 Reaper. No drones will launch from Niagara Falls but pilots who operate them will be stationed at the base.

      [...]

      “When people lose family members to drones,” Ross said, “the blowback is incredible. We are recruiting people for terrorist organization from our use of drones.”

    • Pakistan calls for ban on LAWS

      Pakistan has called for a pre-emptive ban on the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), also known as the ‘killer robots’ that are capable of making their own combat decisions without human intervention, saying such devices would undermine world peace.

    • Blackwater, torture and US imperialism

      On Wednesday, a jury of eight women and four men in a federal district court in Washington, DC convicted four Blackwater mercenaries for their role in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre. The jurors found one of the contractors guilty of murder and another three guilty of manslaughter for firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition and grenades at Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in a brutal operation that left 17 dead and another 20 wounded.

    • Religious Community Skeptical of Lethal Drones

      For more than a year, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace studied the use of drones and targeted killings. In May 2013, Bishop Richard Pates, chair of the International Justice and Peace Committee, wrote to National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, raising moral questions about the use of drones for targeted killings. He asked that the U.S. be more transparent in its policies and exercise leadership in advancing international agreements on their use.

  • Civil Rights

    • Decade of Dissent

      I do not think there is a single person in public life or social media nowadays who would not accept that the FCO were simply lying. Jack Straw was blatantly to lie about it to parliament. But ten years ago the public and media knew much less than they know now. Nobody outside secret circles had ever heard the words extraordinary rendition. It was a year later – May 2005 – before the New York Times revealed the CIA was sending people to Uzbekistan to be tortured, precisely as I had stated.

      [...]

      After going on the Today programme I went on the run, in fear for my life. I am not paranoid, remember David Kelly. I first stayed with my old friend Andy Myles in Edinburgh, then I think Chief Executive of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He was phoned the next morning by the FCO. When he denied knowledge of my whereabouts, they not only said they knew I was staying with him, they said which bedroom I was sleeping in. Ten years ago today I was hiding in Aviemore in the house of my old friend Dominic.

      That was the start of a decade as a dissident where I have devoted my life to exposing, and trying to counter, the evil of the neo-conservative policy pursued by our political class at the behest of the corporations who fund them. I have suffered a huge loss in money, status and most of the other normal aspirations. But what I have gained is invaluable. I have respect and love, while Blair and Straw will forever be despised.

    • Occupy protesters forced to hand over pizza boxes and tarpaulin

      When is a pizza box a pillow? Or an umbrella a ‘structure’? In Parliament Square Occupy Democracy protesters have spent their seventh night sleeping on the ground on top of piles of newspapers. According to the 2011 Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act, the local authority for the City of Westminster has the power to confiscate items that count as sleeping equipment or a structure, so mattresses and tents are forbidden.

      But protesters say the police are getting creative with their interpretation of the bylaw, confiscating backpacks and pizza boxes, claiming that they count as sleeping equipment. Umbrellas have similarly been confiscated because they count as a structure. Some have been told that sleeping bags are allowed to keep them warm while they’re awake, but not when they’re asleep.

    • Law Enforcement–Related Deaths in the US

      For over a decade and a half, Project Censored researchers at Sonoma State University have been monitoring law enforcement–related deaths in the United States. In the most recent phase of this research, we interviewed members of fourteen families who had lost a loved one in a law enforcement incident. In this study, we let the families tell their stories in their own voices, and we report the commonalities in their trauma and mistreatment by law enforcement and the corpo- rate media after the death of their loved ones.

    • New Blog Details The Unfortunate Experience Of Being On Homeland Security’s Terrorist Watchlist

      Kashmir Hill at Forbes has a great profile of (not-very-anonymous-after-all) blogger Peter Young, who has received the dreaded SSSS designation from the TSA. Ringing up 4 S’s means every TSA agent thinks you’re a terrorist and every visit to the airport means extra patdowns and questioning. Young has been detailing the humdrum existence of your everyday terrorist over at his blog, “Jetsetting Terrorist,” where he notes that his decidedly non-terroristic appearance causes the consternation and confusion at smaller airports where 4-S designations are few and far between. Not that being a jetsetting terrorist doesn’t have its upsides…

    • A Tale of Two Riots: ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Vs. ‘Bring Out The BearCat’

      There was another large riot recently, one that resulted in a large police presence. Maybe you heard something about it. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe the media portrayed this riot as “rowdiness” fueled by alcohol that just “got out of hand.” Maybe it didn’t. The annual Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hampshire, somehow devolved into overturned cars, smashed windows and lit fires, but there’s been no extensive handwringing about the police response to that situation — one composed mostly of white, college-age males. [h/t to Techdirt reader WulfTheSaxon for the NBC News link]

    • UN Torture Treaty does not apply to US actions in foreign lands – says US

      Last week, the investigative journalistic world got a severe shock: the United States strongly consider that the United Nations Convention Against Torture which universally ban “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” does not apply to C.I.A. and the U.S. military operations abroad – which includes US-run prisons – and that the Obama administration is considering reaffirming the previous Bush administration’s position that the (UN) treaty imposes no legal obligation on the United States to bar cruelty outside its borders.

    • Charlie Rangel: ISIS Is Not A Threat To Our National Security

      “We are seeing a battle in Kobani. We’re seeing Baghdad being surrounded. We’re seeing threats on the Green Zone in Baghdad by ISIS. What do you think that we as a government should be doing, and are we doing enough?” asked MSNBC host Jose Diaz-Balart Thursday.

    • Law forum tackles Mideast drone strikes

      And stretching those principles, Rogers said, increases the risk that other nations will do likewise. “Other countries can justify the use of force using the same arguments,” he said. “When the United States weakens these principles, other states will use them and it weakens the international order.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Anti-Piracy Police PIPCU Secure Govt. Funding Until 2017

        The City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has received substantial new funding which secures its future until at least 2017. The £3 million cash boost, announced this morning by Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe, will come from public funds. It’s being billed as good news for the economy and bad news for pirates.

      • City Of London Police Fail And Censor Their Way To A Lot More UK Taxpayer Money

        We’ve written plenty about the City of London Police and its Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), which despite an official jurisdiction covering a square mile of London, has made it clear that it considers itself Hollywood’s private police force worldwide when it comes to stopping copyright infringement online. PIPCU has basically been a bumbling, censoring mess from the beginning. A year ago, it started ordering domain registrars to kill off websites with no court order and no legal basis — demands that actually violated ICANN’s policies. For registrars that ignored those baseless, bogus censorship demands, PIPCU started sending ridiculous threats claiming that they were engaged in criminal behavior. Of course, PIPCU’s understanding of both the internet and “criminal” laws is suspect. The head of the unit, Adrian Leppard, claims that “the Tor” is “90% of the internet” and “is a risk to society.” Another top officer, Andy Fyfe, somehow believes that if PIPCU isn’t running around censoring sites there would be anarchy online.

      • German Publishers Grant Google A ‘Free License’ Google Never Needed To Post News Snippets

        Remember earlier this year when German newspaper publishers, led by rights management firm VG Media, demanded Google pay them a massive amount of money (11% of all ad revenue on any page linking to their works) for having the gall to send those publishers traffic via Google News? VG Media insisted that Google’s use of “snippets” was illegal. German regulators rejected this demand, but VG Media was still pursuing legal efforts to force Google to pay. Given that, Google did what made the most sense and removed the snippets for VG Media associated publishers. You’d think that this would make VG Media happy. Instead, it claimed that Google was engaged in “blackmail.”

      • German Publishers Cave, Grant Google Free Permission to Use Snippets in Search Results

        Google’s 4-month-long fight with German news publishers over license fees for search result snippets came to a close today when the publishers threw in the towel.

      • Judge: The Supreme Court Has Said Aereo Must Die, So Go Die

        This isn’t a huge surprise, given Judge Alison Nathan’s recent comments during the Aereo hearing, but Judge Nathan has now basically granted the networks what they want — a pretty broad injunction (pdf) against Aereo.

      • Marvel Goes DMCA Crazy Over Leaked Avengers 2 Trailer, Then Puts It On Its Own YouTube Page

        As the saying goes, death and taxes are both certainties — as is the fact that politicians lie. But another near universal certainty is that Marvel will totally freak out whenever it gets the slightest inkling that its intellectual property is threatened. The latest head-scratching example of this was yesterday’s leak of a trailer for The Avengers 2, which Marvel promptly DMCA’d.

10.23.14

Links 23/10/2014: New *buntu, Benchmarks

Posted in News Roundup at 5:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Container Security

    Hypervisors present a smaller attack surface than containers. This is somewhat mitigated in containers by using seccomp, selinux and restricting capabilities in order to reduce the number of kernel entry points that untrusted code can touch, but even so there is simply a greater quantity of privileged code available to untrusted apps in a container environment when compared to a hypervisor environment[1].

  • Currys/PC World (UK) Voids Warranty on Hardware If Buyer Installs GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • GNU/Linux Is Catching Fire On The Desktop, But It’s Not Your Daddy’s GNU/Linux

      If we thought your Dad’s GNU/Linux desktop was a threat to Wintel, ChromeOS is Armageddon. It took a decade for Wintel to ship as many PCs as ChromeOS is shipping in one year and it’s still just starting out. Wintel’s huge installed base is only 6-8 years’ production… Further, it’s not just about price.

    • ARM vs. Intel: Why chipmakers want your Chromebook’s brains

      Case in point: Samsung’s new Chromebook 2, announced Friday, which has Intel’s Bay Trail M Celeron N2840—not one of Samsung’s own Exynos dual-core ARM chips. Earlier Chromebook 2 versions shipped with ARM processors and will continue to do so, but in a briefing with PCWorld, Samsung product manager David Ng said Chromebooks are quickly trending toward Intel components. “More than 50% of Chromebooks sold these days have Intel processors,” Ng said.

    • Chromebook Sales Jump 67 Percent In Last Three Months

      Sales of Chromebook computers have soared over the past few months as manufacturers and consumer begin to embrace the low-cost portable devices, new research has found.

    • Best Chromebooks 2014

      Whether it’s because of their very affordable prices or an aversion to Windows 8′s complexity, more and more shoppers are buying Chromebooks. There are some valid reasons to choose a Chromebook over a Windows machine, including a very intuitive interface (it’s largely browser based), a lack of upgrade headaches, and less worrying about malware. And while Chromebooks have limited offline capability, there’s a growing number of apps that work without a Wi-Fi connection.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mesa 10.4 Tentatively Planned For Early December

        Emil Velikov, the new Mesa release manager, has issued a straw-man proposal to release Mesa 10.4 in early December.

        In sticking to the three month release cadence of Mesa, Emil is proposing the Mesa 10.4 feature freeze and release candidate for 14 November with new release candidates to come weekly until the official release. Emil is tentatively thinking about the Mesa 10.4 release for 5 December.

    • Benchmarks

      • Ubuntu 14.10 XMir System Compositor Benchmarks

        With Ubuntu 14.10 “Utopic Unicorn” due for release today, here’s some benchmarks showing how the standard Unity 7 desktop on Ubuntu 14.10 is comparing to the still-experimental Unity System Compositor and using XMir for running traditional Linux OpenGL games.

        From a standard Intel Core i7 Haswell system with HD Graphics I ran benchmarks with the development snapshot of Ubuntu Utopic as of yesterday to see how well the stock Unity 7.3.1 environment is comparing to when it’s run with unity-system-compositor installed and using Mir support with XMir for running a variety of standard OpenGL benchmarks as well as some 2D X11 benchmarks.

      • What Linux Benchmarks Would You Like To See Next?

        At Phoronix.com and with the Phoronix Test Suite / OpenBenchmarking.org we’re always looking to cater to the interests of more parties and as such are interested to see what other benchmarks you’d like to see incorporated.

      • 6-Way Ubuntu 14.10 Linux Desktop Benchmarks

        In celebration of Ubuntu 14.10′s Utopic Unicorn release today, here’s some fresh benchmarks of one of the most requested topics: 2D/3D benchmarks of different desktop environments. In this article is a look at six of the popular desktop offerings found in Ubuntu 14.10.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Enlightenment’s EFL 1.12 Alpha Has Evas GL-DRM Engine, OpenGL ES 1.1 Support

      The first alpha release for the 1.12 version of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) was released this week.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Discover the Power of Konqueror

        Many Linux users have a set of applications – browser, file manager, image viewer – that they’re loyal to. In most cases, these applications correspond to the default setup of a Linux distribution. If you’re a KDE user, you’ve probably heard of Konqueror. It’s a powerful application that has been a part of KDE for years, but it’s often unfairly neglected in favor of newer apps. Did you know you can use Konqueror not only as a file manager, but also as a web browser, PDF viewer and document editor?

      • KDAB contributions to Qt 5.4: qmllint

        One type of bug I see very often comes down to syntax errors in QML and JavaScript files. Most of the time these errors are simple typos; however, they creep in, go unnoticed by continuous integration and sometimes reach production — especially on delayed loaded components.

      • KDE Connect feature brainstorming

        In a recent informal meeting of KDE users in Seattle, Andrew Lake from the KDE Visual Design Group gave me some ideas he had for KDE Connect. Since I think that we all have a different vision and different ideas that are possible to implement on top of KDE Connect, I decided to write this post asking for your ideas, in some kind of community brainstorming.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Development of Nautilus – Popovers, port to GAction and more

        In an application that already use GAction and a normal GMenu for everything is quite easy.

        But Nautilus is not using GAction neither GMenu for its menus. Not only that, Nautilus use GtkUIManager for managing the menus and GtkActions. And not only that, Nautilus merge parts of menus along all the code.

      • Cairo-Dock / GLX-Dock 3.4 is now available

        Cairo-Dock 3.4 is finally released! One year after the 3.3 version.

        Cairo-Dock is a pretty, fast and customizable desktop interface. You can see it as a good alternative/addition to Unity, Gnome-Shell, Xfce-panel, KDE-panel, etc.

      • Cairo-Dock 3.4 Shows A Lot Of Progress, Works Toward EGL/Wayland Support
      • Most Popular Linux Desktop Environment: GNOME Shell

        Even after settling on a Linux distribution to use, you still have to decide on a desktop environment. There are tons to choose from, and last week we asked you for your favorites. Then we looked at the five best Linux desktop environments. Now we’re back to highlight your favorite, 11,000 votes later.

      • AN EARLY VIEW OF GTK+ 3.16

        We’ve had long-standing feature requests to turn scrollbars into overlayed indicators, for touch systems. An implementation of this idea has been merged now. We show traditional scrollbars when a mouse is detected, otherwise we fade in narrow, translucent indicators. The indicators are rendered on top of the content and don’t take up extra space. When you move the pointer over the indicator, it turns into a full-width scrollbar that can be used as such.

      • perf.gnome.org – introduction

        My talk at GUADEC this year was titled Continuous Performance Testing on Actual Hardware, and covered a project that I’ve been spending some time on for the last 6 months or so. I tackled this project because of accumulated frustration that we weren’t making consistent progress on performance with GNOME. For one thing, the same problems seemed to recur. For another thing, we would get anecdotal reports of performance problems that were very hard to put a finger on. Was the problem specific to some particular piece of hardware? Was it a new problem? Was it an a problems that we have already addressed? I wrote some performance tests for gnome-shell a few years ago – but running them sporadically wasn’t that useful. Running a test once doesn’t tell you how fast something should be, just how fast it is at the moment. And if you run the tests again in 6 months, even if you remember what numbers you got last time, even if you still have the same development hardware, how can you possibly figure out what what change is responsible? There will have been thousands of changes to dozens of different software modules.

      • GTK+ Lands Experimental Backend For Mir Display Server

        GTK+ apps now run not only on X11 and Wayland under Linux with native support but the mainline GTK+ Git code now also supports running Ubuntu’s Mir Display Server. That’s right, there’s now mainline Mir support in GTK for the GNOME/GTK 3.16 release.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • ROSA Desktop Fresh R4 Review: Refreshing Mandriva based KDE spin

        ROSA is a Russian company developing a variety of Linux-based solutions. Its flagship product, ROSA Desktop, is a Linux distribution featuring a highly customized KDE desktop and a number of modifications designed to enhance the user-friendliness of the working environment. The company also develops an “Enterprise Server” edition of ROSA which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. On 9th October 2014, Ekaterina Lopukhova has announced the release of ROSA R4 “Desktop Fresh” edition, a desktop Linux distribution featuring a customized and user-friendly KDE 4.13.3 desktop: “The ROSA company is happy to present the long-awaited ROSA Desktop Fresh R4, the number 4 in the “R” lineup of the free ROSA distros with the KDE desktop as the main graphical environment. The distro presents a vast collection of games and emulators, as well as the Steam platform package along with standard suite of audio and video communications software, including the newest version of Skype. All modern video formats are supported. The distribution includes the fresh LibreOffice 4.3.1, the full TeX suite for true nerds, along with the best Linux desktop publishing, text editing and polygraphy WYSISYG software. The LAMP/C++/ development environments are waiting to be installed by true hackers.” The present version is supported for 2 years. ROSA was previously based on Mandriva but now independent like many of the formerly Mandriva based distros, e.g. PCLinuxOS, Mageia, OpenMandriva Lx (based on ROSA), to name a few. Mandriva in turn was based on Red Hat Linux and a lot of programs which work for Fedora or OpenSUSE, worked on ROSA as well.

    • Gentoo Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Review: Scientific Linux 7.0 GNOME

        It has been a while since I have done a review (almost 3 months, in fact). It has been significantly longer since I have looked at Scientific Linux (over 3 years, in fact). Given that, I figured it might be worthwhile to make this review about Scientific Linux 7.0. I’m just glad that I did it before the time elapsed for something else to come up (around 3 minutes, in fact — OK, I just made that one up to match the other statements).

      • Up the revolution! The rise of Red Hat

        One of the IT industry’s quiet successes of the last 20 years has been Red Hat (some stories say it was named for the red caps favoured by 18th and 19th century revolutionaries). In 2012 the vendor reported revenues of $1B+ for the first time and this has increased to $1.5B+ in its most recent full financial year (ending Feb 2014). 26% of Red Hat’s revenue is generated in Europe and more than 20% its 7,000 employees are based in the EU, including those at its Bruno-based development in the Czech Republic.

      • OpenShift Enterprise By Red Hat Powers The FICO Analytic Cloud For Faster, More Versatile Delivery Of Automated Business Solutions

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that FICO, the predictive analytics and decision management software company, has built and rapidly scaled the FICO® Analytic Cloud on OpenShift Enterprise, Red Hat’s award-winning private platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering.

      • openSUSE, ROSA, and Red Hat

        Today in Linux news, Jamie Watson is back with a look at the “coming attractions” of Makulu, openSUSE, and Fedora. Lifehacker has the winner of their “best desktop” survey and there are public builds of upcoming Unreal Tournament available. IT-Director.com published an article on “The rise of Red Hat” and Red Hat’s Jackie Yeaney talks marketing with Advertising Age. Blogged reviews include Scientific Linux and ROSA R4 and Make Tech Easier discovers “the power of Konqueror.”

      • Fedora

        • Contributing to the Fedora Project

          Once of the many things I do for the Fedora Project is Tagging, it’s something any one can do and it’s a quick/easy way to give back to Fedora.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • How to spot the most talented innovators

      Back in 2002, one Dutch small business with just 38 employees took part in their first of several EU-funded research projects: developing new digital services for people on the move. That “small business” was TomTom: which since 2002 has grown to over 4000 employees in 37 countries, now a globally recognised brand leader.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Linux-based smart glasses keep it stylish

          Laforge is prepping a $399 beta version of its Linux-based Icis eyewear, as well as a $549 Bold model due in 2015 that adds a camera and higher resolution.

          Relatively few of the smart eyewear products now coming to market compete directly with Google Glass as a general-purpose consumer device. Most are vertical-market helmets for industrial or field service use (Vuzix M100), or are designed for specific activities such as skiing (Recon’s Snow 2) or motorcycle riding (Skully AR-1.) Laforge Optical’s Icis stands out from the pack with its consumer focus and its foundation in embedded Linux rather than the stripped-down Android stacks used by most smart eyewear.

        • 12 Must Have Android Apps

          While some Android apps are important, some truly are must have Android apps. I’ve learned to tell the difference. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been a very happy Android fan. Being a refugee from the iOS platform, I cannot express just how much more full-featured Android is when compared to my old iPhone.

        • Feeling Scammed After Anonabox? Android-Based Project Sierra Claims To Be The Real Deal

          In the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s big reveal on government spying, there’s been a concerted effort by companies big and small to try and make our lives truly private. One seemingly promising solution was Anonabox, a little plug-and-play device that routes traffic through Tor to keep our online activities anonymous. Unfortunately, we were all misled on a number of levels, prompting Kickstarter to remove the project forever. Hot on its heels is Project Sierra, a network encryption device that’s supposedly the real deal.

        • Microsoft’s Garage project releases niche apps for Android
        • Keep your conversations private with these 10 super secure messaging apps

          How do you feel when you learn that someone has been watching, reading every incoming-outgoing message from your phone and computer? Quite freaked out, probably. Millions felt the same in June 2013 when ex-NSA computer geek Edward Snowden exposed the US Government’s snooping and logging activities.

        • Android Wear gets GPS support, offline music in first major update

          Google promised that it would consistently improve Android Wear with a number of updates, and now the first major update is here. Announced today in a blog post, the update unlocks some key fitness functionality. It now supports watches with built-in GPS sensors, providing new tools to track your distance and speed independent of your phone. Additionally, with the new software, you’ll be able to pair Bluetooth headphones, and offline music playback will also be enabled. And, of course, we’re sure the Android Wear team has squashed some bugs along the way.

        • Tiny Android SBC taps quad-core A31s SoC

          Boardcon launched a 92 x 65mm “Compact A31S” SBC that runs Android 4.2.2 on a quad-core Allwinner A31s SoC backed up with 2GB of soldered RAM and 4GB flash.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

    • Top 3 open source alternatives to Google Analytics

      Let’s start off by taking a look at the open source application that rivals Google Analytics for functions: Piwik. Piwik does most of what Google Analytics does, and chances are it packs the features that you need.

      Those features include metrics on the number of visitors hitting your site, data on where they come from (both on the web and geographically), from what pages they leave your site, and the ability to track search engine referrals. Piwik also has a number of reports and you can customize the dashboard to view the metrics that you want to see.

      To make your life easier, Piwik integrates with over 65 content management, ecommerce, and online forum systems like WordPress, Magneto, Joomla!, and vBulletin using plugins. With anything else, you just need to add a tracking code to a page on your site.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Introducing the 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellows

        The Knight-Mozilla Fellowships bring together developers, technologists, civic hackers, and data crunchers to spend 10 months working on open source code with partner newsrooms around the world. The Fellowships are part of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project, supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. During their fellowship year, the Fellows collaborate with journalists to build the tools news organizations need to thrive on the open web.

      • Mozilla’s Webmaker App Could Spur Firefox OS App Developers

        Mozilla continues to push ahead with its Firefox OS mobile operating system, which is arriving on phones in many markets around the world. In fact, the company has aligned its whole strategy around the mobile platform. The OS is gaining enough traction that many observers see it as eventually being competitive with iOS and Android phones, but I’ve made the point that If Firefox OS is to be a resounding success, it’s going to need a very healthy ecosystem of apps to attract users. Apps count for a lot in the mobile game.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Announcing Apache™ CloudStack™ v4.4.1

      The Apache CloudStack project announced the immediate availability of Apache CloudStack v4.4.1, the latest version of the turnkey Open Source cloud computing software platform used for creating private-, public-, and hybrid cloud environments.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 10.1-RC3 Now Available

      The third RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • European Greens RFC: ‘Transparency implies use of open source’

      The Greens/European Free Alliance in the European Parliament want to find out for once and for all if the use of free and open source software is essential for the democratic institution. The political group is asking for comments on a study linking the use of free software to the European Parliament’s principles of openness and right to information.

    • These 12 agencies embraced open source. Why?

      Why do government agencies turn to open source software? FutureGov has interviewed 12 senior officials to find out.

      Australia’s Chief Technology Officer, John Sheridan, has moved his country’s citizen-facing portal onto open source software, and is offering to help agencies migrate too. “Open source licence arrangements enable the development of some sort of public good, where people contribute or benefit from it,” he says.

      Other agencies clearly agree. Hong Kong’s Office of the GCIO is notably enthusiastic, with Victor Lam telling FutureGov that “We recognise the fact that it is the kind of technology [where] we need to be ahead of the curve”.

      What was their experience of migrating to open source, and how does it match with others?

    • Going Dutch: the Netherlands Shares UK’s Open Source Woes

      Not quite sure what that last bit means, but it’s nonetheless good to have news from other countries grappling with the same issues as those in the UK. The fact that similar problems are found elsewhere suggests that maybe more could be done for those seeking to introduce open source in central government to meet up and swap their experiences – both good and bad.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Why open data matters in education

        Rajan attends a school in a small village located around 140 kilometers from my hometown of Amritsar, India. Otherwise an active boy who is adept in handling numbers in the ledger book at his father’s convenience store and who loves playing flute, he falls into the depths of apathy and indifference the moment he enters his classroom. Rajan is not at fault for the abrupt change in his behavior at the school. He attends a school that has one teacher for all its students from classes starting from the first standard through the fifth standard, that has no proper infrastructure, a dilapidated library, and an obsolete teaching methodology.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Reading and Writing and Open Source

        Digital textbooks with open-licensed content — and sometimes even complete open source textbooks — are two publishing models that are starting to change the way students and teachers interact with subject material.

        The budget-busting prices of traditional printed textbooks and the ubiquity of mobile devices in schools have provided textbook authors and educational leaders with convincing reasons to give students an alternative. Textbook publishers are offering digital alternatives to traditional printed books with copyright protection against reproducing or altering their content.

      • Library hosts Open Access Week events to promote open source research

        An effort to increase immediate access to research results is in full swing at Cal State Fullerton through Open Access Week this week.

  • Programming

    • Build It! Must-Have Open Source Development Tools

      These days, there is big demand for strong web and application development skills in the job market. The good news is that there are many open source tools to help you with your web project or application, and given the costs of proprietary development environments, they can save you a lot of money. Here are many good examples of development tools and tutorials, with some unsung choices that you may not have considered.

Leftovers

  • Departing EU Digital Commissioner Warns Against ‘Analogue Europe’ Blocking Digital Innovation

    After talking about how Europe used to dominate in innovation, it’s since fallen behind both the US and Asia.

  • Facebook Files Lawsuit against Lawyers over ‘Fake’ Founder Claim

    The company this week filed charges against members of huge law firms Milberg LLP and DLA Piper for representing a man who previously claimed that he owns a major stake in Facebook. The social networking site simply stated in its complaint that those lawyers should have known better than support a ‘scam’ artist.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • BBC Accused of Rwandan Genocide Denial

      Rwanda’s parliament has accused the BBC of genocide denial, claiming their documentary film “Rwanda: The Untold Story” allegedly misinterpreted historical facts and distorted real states of affairs, BBC reported on Thursday.

    • Why the U.S. Drone War Could Last Forever

      The U.S. military’s combat mission in Afghanistan is scheduled to end this year, presumably closing the chapter there on 13 years of war. But the covert drone war in that country and neighboring Pakistan could continue long after most American troops return home, according to a White House spokesperson.

    • When only 4 per cent of those killed by US drone strikes are named members of al-Qaeda, it’s hard to trust American foreign policy

      John Kerry says all those fired at by drones in Pakistan are “confirmed terrorist targets” – but with 1,675 unnamed dead how do we know?

    • John Kerry says all those fired at by drones in Pakistan are “confirmed terrorist targets” – but with 1,675 unnamed dead how do we know?

      Responding to a question about drone strikes on BBC’s Hard Talk last year, US Secretary of State John Kerry laid out a clear message. “The only people we fire a drone at are confirmed terrorist targets at the highest level,” he said. “We don’t just fire a drone at somebody and think they’re a terrorist.”

      Earlier this month, the US completed its 400th drone strike in Pakistan, a significant milestone in the covert anti-terrorism programme that has been going since 2004 and has claimed 2379 lives, according to available figures.

    • Pakistan calls for ban on lethal autonomous weapons

      Pakistan has called for pre-emptive ban on the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), known as killer robots that are capable of making their own combat decisions without human intervention, saying such devices would undermine world peace.

    • Blackwater Guards Found Guilty In 2007 Shootings In Iraq

      Four private security guards working for the Blackwater Worldwide firm who were charged in the 2007 shootings of more than 30 Iraqis have been found guilty by a federal jury.

      Nicholas Slatten was found guilty of first-degree murder, and three others — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were found guilty of multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter.

    • Four Blackwater Guards Convicted of Killing 14 Unarmed Iraqis

      Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard were among the Blackwater guards riding in a convoy of armored vehicles through downtown Baghdad in September 2007 who abruptly began firing machine guns and throwing grenades at unarmed Iraqis in a busy traffic circle, killing 14 and wounding at least 17 others. During the trial, the men’s lawyers maintained they were responding to gunfire at Nisour Square and acted in self-defense, while the prosecution said the shootings were unprovoked. Jurors in Washington sided with the government, convicting Slatten of first-degree murder, a charge that carries a life sentence, and the three others of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and using military firearms while committing a felony, which means they each face a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison. All four men are military veterans.

    • ‘Killer robots’: Ex-GCHQ boss calls for drone controls

      Commercial drones could be invading the UK within 20 years, used by everyone from terrorists to burglars, an ex-GCHQ boss warns. It found the growing use of drones raises “significant safety, security and privacy concerns.”

      In a report released by the University of Birmingham Policy Commission, led by the former head of GCHQ Sir David Omand, it was found that the greater civil and military use of drones is inevitable.

    • Pentagon Says It Will Investigate Stray Arms Drop Over Syria

      The Pentagon says it will investigate a video released by the self-declared Islamic State showing its fighters purportedly rifling through crates of U.S. arms intended for Kurdish forces fighting the extremist group.

    • Ottawa shootings: a spectacular failure for Canadian intelligence

      Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, armed with a high-powered rifle, drove to Parliament Hill, left his car running, shot a ceremonial guard at the nearby National War Memorial, before heading to the seat of Canada’s democracy, where he was gunned down by the head of security for the building.

      In a room just a few metres from where the gunman fell, prime minister Stephen Harper was discussing how to respond to the increased threat of homegrown terrorism with members of his party. That response will be even more treacherous now.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • BP’s Misleading Oil Spill PR Campaign Is Now In Politico Magazine

      But Morrell’s Politico Magazine article was misleading. Wildlife in the region is still experiencing the consequences of the spill, according to a recent report from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). The NWF studied 14 species that have suffered effects from the spill, including the ongoing illness of bottlenose dolphins and a “dramatic increase” in sea turtle deaths. The report concluded that more needs to be done to speed up the region’s recovery. CBS reported of its findings: “No matter how much money is exchanged and what efforts are done, there remains no guarantee that the Gulf Coast regions will fully recover to pre-spill conditions.”

    • Officials propose making ‘South Florida’ 51st state

      A group of Southern Florida politicians are tired of being left out to sea when it comes to addressing climate change concerns for the southern part of the state.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Senator Leahy Blasts DEA For Impersonating Woman On Facebook

      Citing a case revealed by BuzzFeed News, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said it’s “appalling” that a Drug Enforcement Administration agent created a fake Facebook page using a real woman’s name and photos — without her knowledge.

    • NYPD Commissioner Bratton vows to push against Apple, Google smartphone encryption

      Bratton says the companies’ new operating systems, which can block law enforcement access, ‘does a terrible disservice to the public.’

    • NY Police Commissioner Bill Bratton Latest To Complain About Phone Encryption

      That’s some mighty fine spin by Bratton. Something that will make a vast majority of the public’s data less susceptible to hackers’ attacks is a “disservice to the public” because in a very small number of cases, this encryption could hamper an investigation. Because some criminals might use this encryption, no one should be allowed to have it.

    • James Clapper’s Report On Progress Towards President’s Surveillance Reforms Mainly Explores Executive Branch Loopholes

      James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, has issued an interim report on the intelligence community’s minimal progress towards minimal compliance with the minimal reforms ordered by the administration last year in response to the Snowden leaks. Presidential Policy Directive 28 (PPD-28) was issued in January and Jame Clapper’s office is proud to announce that it’s still in the process of thinking about complying with the stuff the President asked them to do so many months ago.

      [...]

      The EFF asks if the NSA has ever used this reading to its own advantage. Certainly no answer is expected, but the agency has long been a fan of fluid terms and malleable definitions. Which brings us to the ultimate show of executive branch deference, albeit one that implies the administration will help the agency do the things it really wants to, Presidential Policy Directive or no.

    • Rep. Mike Rogers Now Claims Ed Snowden Should Be Charged With Murder, Because Someone Might Die

      Meanwhile, if doing things that might lead to more soldiers getting hurt or killed makes you guilty of murder, shouldn’t Rogers be talking about getting himself and other members of Congress charged with murder? After all, remember it was Congress that failed to equip soldiers with proper body armor.

    • Riding with the Stars: Passenger Privacy in the NYC Taxicab Dataset

      There has been a lot of online comment recently about a dataset released by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. It contains details about every taxi ride (yellow cabs) in New York in 2013, including the pickup and drop off times, locations, fare and tip amounts, as well as anonymized (hashed) versions of the taxi’s license and medallion numbers. It was obtained via a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request earlier this year and has been making waves in the hacker community ever since.

      The release of this data in this unalloyed format raises several privacy concerns. The most well-documented of these deals with the hash function used to “anonymize” the license and medallion numbers. A bit of lateral thinking from one civic hacker and the data was completely de-anonymized. This data can now be used to calculate, for example, any driver’s annual income. More disquieting, though, in my opinion, is the privacy risk to passengers. With only a small amount of auxiliary knowledge, using this dataset an attacker could identify where an individual went, how much they paid, weekly habits, etc. I will demonstrate how easy this is to do in the following section.

    • Handful of Virginia police agencies sharing seized phone data

      A newly publicized document shows that five local police departments in southeastern Virginia have been secretly and automatically sharing criminal suspects’ telephone metadata and compiling it into a large database for nearly two years.

    • Bluetooth-tracking beacon programs uncovered in LA, Chicago

      Marketers are using beacons to see who sees what in their ad networks.

    • Pro-Privacy Senator Wyden on Fighting the NSA From Inside the System

      The Democrat from Oregon, who has served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since 2001, thought he knew the nature of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities. As a committee member with a classified clearance, he received regular briefings to conduct oversight.

    • What Does the Return of the ‘Crypto Wars’ Mean for Bitcoin?

      The crypto wars have returned to the United States. Apple’s announcement of their intent to provide better encryption for their customers launched the latest battle. With this new, higher-level of encryption, iPhone users would allegedly be able to better secure their private communication data from law enforcement.

    • Q&A: Poitras on capturing history in a hotel room

      Imagine if Bob Woodward’s clandestine meetings in a Washington D.C. parking garage with Deep Throat had been documented — or, better yet, filmed by Woodward, himself.

      The analogy isn’t perfect, but that’s about the closest equivalent to Laura Poitras’ one-of-a-kind documentary “Citizenfour,” which captures former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden during his leak of NSA documents to Poitras (a documentarian and reporter) and journalist Glenn Greenwald.

    • Filming in fear: Edward Snowden as ‘Citizenfour’

      U.S. documentary maker Laura Poitras has found herself in many a risky situation in Iraq and Yemen. But she never felt in as much danger as when she was filming Edward Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel while he prepared to blow the whistle on massive secret surveillance programs run by the U.S. government.

    • Germans use password managers more

      Almost a quarter of all internet users in Germany use password manager programmes to manage the access to computers or online services, according to a recent survey conducted by technology association Bitkom.

    • State and Local Cops Running Protection Racket for Federal ‘Partners’

      The drug war not only ushered in the era of state-federal task forces, it also turned on the funding spigot. Suddenly, state and local law enforcement agencies found themselves flush with cash flowing from federal grants to fight the War on Drugs. It also flung open the door to militarizing state and local police, as the feds began arming Mayberry with tanks, body armor and automatic weapons.

    • THURSDAY: Laura Poitras on Her New Edward Snowden Documentary, “CitizenFour”
    • VIDEO TIMELINE: NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s Revelations on Democracy Now!

      Scroll through our video timeline to see all of our coverage of whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the reporting he fueled that exposed the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance state. See our archive of interviews with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.

    • Untenable invasion of privacy

      Certain local police departments are stockpiling and sharing consumer cellphone data, including call logs and the contents of seized devices, under a program established nearly two years ago.

    • Why Was the NSA Chief Playing the Market?
    • Former NSA chief traded shares in commodities firms

      While he was running the National Security Agency, former director Keith Alexander owned and traded commodities firms linked to China and Russia, according to a report.

      A new report by Foreign Policy Magazine shows that Alexander’s financial disclosure forms show Alexander was involved in commodities trades that have been called an “opaque” by experts. The report, which cited forms first disclosed in Vice Magazine, noted that Alexander’s activity was cleared by ethics officials.

    • As the NSA scandal matures, outrage fizzles into business as usual

      It’s been 16 months since The Guardian published its first story on the National Security Agency’s bulk collection program, launching a series of reports that would introduce the public to cryptic terms like PRISM and Boundless Informant.

    • Why is Mark Udall — one of the Senate’s most powerful surveillance reformers — hurting for tech sector cash?

      Out in Colorado, Democrat Mark Udall, the state’s first-term U.S. senator, is finding himself financially outmatched by his Republican opponent: Rep. Cory Gardner raised some $1.3 million in the first half of this month, reports the Associated Press. Udall raised just more than half that. Udall has far less cash on hand than Gardner, too. Yet the race is quite close. Udall is polling at 43 percent to Gardner’s 46 percent, which just barely puts the Republican’s lead beyond the margin of error.

      And that presents an intriguing angle on the race for those of us who obsess over tech policy. Udall is known as one of Congress’s most vociferous advocates for reforming how government, and the National Security Agency in particular, conducts its surveillance programs. He has been for years. And changing how the NSA works is one of the technology world’s top priorities. So while Udall’s political future is up to Colorado’s voters, of course, how is it that Udall is hurting for cash when tech is one of the country’s wealthiest industries?

    • One Of The NSA’s Biggest Critics In The Senate May Lose His Seat

      In the past, we’ve noted how unfortunate it was that the Senator who fought strongest for our civil liberties in Congress, Russ Feingold, got voted out of office back in 2010 — in favor of a “Tea Party” candidate who has consistently voted in favor of the intelligence community since replacing Feingold. Since then, plenty of attention has gone to Senator Ron Wyden for picking up where Feingold left off, but with him on issues of civil liberties as it relates to the intelligence community has always been Senator Mark Udall — who has been perhaps even more vocal than Senator Wyden on these issues.

    • Can Mark Udall Win in Colorado? His Spartan-Like Get-Out-The-Vote, Ground Game Says YES!

      Mark Udall can win, but it`ll be a tough fight! I`m examining some of the sources this morning, and after a modicum of focused analysis, I believe Udall will be able to retain his senate seat. It`s a little scary when you see that Cory Gardner has a 3.8% lead over Mark Udall, according to the Real Clear Politics site (which averages the last 4 polls-those are stale bread after about 24 hours).

    • EU group: NSA’s ‘balance’ of security, privacy in surveillance sucks

      Three SURVEILLE teams of EU-funded experts studied NSA mass surveillance techniques for the purpose of a counter-terrorism investigation and basically found the surveillance ‘failed drastically in striking the correct balance between security and privacy.’

    • T-Mobile quietly hardens part of its U.S. cellular network against snooping

      Wireless carrier T-Mobile US has been quietly upgrading its network in a way that makes it harder for surveillance equipment to eavesdrop on calls and monitor texts, even on the company’s legacy system.

      [...]

      Tests by the Post in New York, Washington, and Boulder, Colorado showed that AT&T calls used the older A5/1 encryption, making them more vulnerable to interception by law enforcement officials or criminals with access to advanced surveillance technology. The tests were performed using a custom application called Darshak which was released at the Black Hat security conference in August.

    • Opinion: Transatlantic trust only goes so far

      John Kerry’s visit to Berlin 25 years after the Wall fell highlighted the crucial role transatlantic ties played earlier and can still play today. But to fulfill that promise, controversial issues can’t be glossed over.

      [...]

      In his remarks, Kerry – as has become almost customary for US officials since the NSA scandal – heaped plenty of praise on his German hosts. He extolled Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for their leadership not only in the Ukraine crisis and within NATO, but also for their role in all other major global issues mentioned above.

      To be sure, it is essential to keep the example of the successful and historic transatlantic cooperation that culminated in the fall of the Wall 25 years ago alive for a younger generation that did not experience it. And it is also important that the United States and Germany work together closely and responsibly on today’s global crises despite the still remaining underlying tensions over the fallout from the NSA scandal and disagreements over the transatlantic trade deal TTIP.

    • Congress Tells FBI There’s ‘Zero Chance’ Of Giving The Bureau Backdoor Access To Americans’ Cellphones
    • Congress: FBI Has “Zero Chance” Of Getting Encrypted Data

      FBI Director James B. Comey said the agency is not happy with Apple (AAPL) and Google’s (GOOG) new encryption on phones, and may have to go through legal routes to make sure the FBI can access criminals’ smartphones.

    • Police have a disconnect

      The NSA will still sweep up data en masse from every electronic platform, and law enforcement will still be able to get a warrant, provided they have probable cause, to search online records or request information from online companies.

    • Edward Snowden Receives Students for Liberty’s Highest Honor

      On Tuesday, Students for Liberty (SFL) announced its 2015 Alumnus of the Year Award will be given to former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

      According to a statement by SFL President and Cofounder Alexander McCobin, the organization has decided to honor Snowden for “initiating a global conversation on the balance of power between governments and peoples that has led to and continues to bring about meaningful reforms to intrusive, abusive, and unjust government surveillance programs.”

    • Why Outlawing Encryption Is Wrong

      In a chilling move toward an all-knowing police state, FBI Director James Comey is making the news rounds to equate data encryption with letting child pornographers, kidnappers, and terrorists roam unchecked. The assertion: Law enforcement will have no tools to catch bad guys if encryption works as designed. So all of a sudden other advances in law enforcement technology are trumped? Let’s get real.

  • Civil Rights

    • CIA Apparently ‘Impersonated’ Senate Staffers To Gain Access To Documents On Shared Drives

      The CIA is still fighting for creative control of its most anticipated 21st century work: the Torture Report. Long before it got involved in the ongoing redaction battle, it was spying on those putting the report together, namely Senators and Senate staffers. Hands were wrung, apologies were made and it was medically determined that Sen. Dianne Feinstein doesn’t have an ironic bone in her body.

    • White House Chief Of Staff Negotiating Redaction Of CIA Torture Report

      White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is personally negotiating how much of the Senate’s so-called torture report, a probe into the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program, will be redacted, according to sources involved in the negotiations.

      McDonough’s leading role in the redaction discussion has raised eyebrows in the Senate, given that his position comes with a broad array of urgent responsibilities and that the Obama White House has a team of qualified national security advisers.

    • You Know Who Else Hates Everyone In Congress? Congress!

      Hating on Congress is basically a national past time here in the US. Other than a brief moment of probably misguided solidarity after September 11th, the public’s view towards Congress tends to be pretty negative, and it’s been getting worse lately. Here’s a historical look from Gallup at the public’s approval ratings of Congress.

    • Trial court allows police to use “Glomar” response to deny records requests

      In what appears to be an unprecedented decision, a New York trial court has allowed the New York Police Department (“NYPD”) to issue a “Glomar” response to a state open records request, meaning the government refuses to confirm or deny whether responsive records exist.

    • New York City Court Buys NYPD’s Claims Of ‘National Security,’ Grants It Power To ‘Glomar’ FOIL Requests

      A New York City court has given the NYPD one of the few things separating it from the “big boys” (CIA, FBI and NSA): the permission to issue “Glomar responses” (the infamous “we can neither confirm nor deny…”) to FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests. Like the audacity of the department itself in pursuing this additional method of keeping the public separated from public documents, the decision is unprecedented.

    • The truth about torture is Obama never wants you to find it

      The cover-up of the CIA’s secret surveillance on the US Senate Intelligence Committee is only getting deeper. As the Huffington Post’s Ali Watkins and Ryan Grim reported on Tuesday afternoon, a still-classified Inspector General report alleges CIA officials “impersonated Senate staffers in order to gain access to Senate communications and drafts of the Intelligence Committee investigation” while Senate staffers were completing their now infamous – but still somehow unreleased – report on the CIA’s Bush-era torture program.

      You would think the White House might be aghast at such revelations, given that it’s the Senate Intelligence Committee’s job to oversee the CIA. But instead of worrying about the Constitution or legal violations, all the Obama administration seems to care about is saving CIA director John Brennan’s ass. There have already been multiple calls for Brennan to resign since he lied to the public about spying on the Senate. And now the White House seems intent on siding with the CIA director beyond all reason.

    • “Pay Any Price”

      No single review or interview can do justice to Pay Any Price, the new book by James Risen that is the antithesis of what routinely passes for journalism about the “war on terror.” Instead of evasive tunnel vision, the book offers big-picture acuity, focusing on realities that are pervasive and vastly destructive.

    • The feds’ ‘truthy’ new chill on free speech

      The government is worried about speech. Big deal. Speech is none of the government’s business.

    • The ‘Hacker Wars’ Documentary Does Hacktivism No Favors

      Weisman also errs in giving too much screen time to Weev, who speaks intelligently about hacktivism in some scenes, but his main function—as far as I can tell—is to celebrate the troll’s role in internet culture. That leaves Jeremy Hammond as the one true hacktivist out of the film’s central characters.

    • US focus on naming foreign hackers gets criticized

      Is Washington spending too much of its time trying to call out countries that carry out cyber attacks?

      That’s what one top industry official argued Wednesday at a conference hosted by the Atlantic Council.

      Dmitri Alperovitch, CTO of Crowdstrike, which is accredited by the National Security Agency to respond to cyber attacks, said Congress should put more of its focus on punishing foreign entities that carry out cyber attacks, even if the government can’t pinpoint exactly who ordered the attack.

    • On Malala, mainstream media and missing the point

      Malala Yousafzai is extraordinary. She is the embodiment of the determination, fearlessness and power possessed by thousands of children in Pakistan and across the Indian subcontinent who struggle for a fair education. After being singled out and shot in the head by the Taliban two years ago, the miracle of her full recovery garnered international attention and catapulted her into the spotlight. She has always been a fierce advocate for girls’ education — only now, she has a global platform.

      [...]

      Yes, the Taliban is seriously hindering opportunities for education and progress in many areas in Pakistan, but not any more than the American drones that are taking the lives of innocent men, women and children in the same areas. The incessant bombing of Pakistan by the U.S., supposedly an intervention that is meant to aid in the counterattack, has produced the same results. Here’s the difference: The Taliban is strongly and rightfully demonized by the entire world, while Obama’s well-funded drone program continues murdering innocent people, supported by our very own tax dollars.

      Yousafzai is a champion of women’s rights and education in Pakistan, but she is also an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy. How often do we hear about that?

    • Gaza and the Bi-Partisan War on Human Rights

      Israel’s seven weeks of attacks this summer on heavily populated civilian neighborhoods in Gaza has led to unprecedented concern among Americans who, while still broadly supportive of Israel, found the attacks to be disproportionate and unnecessary.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Italian Parliament Publishes Draft Internet Bill Of Rights

      There then follow 14 digital rights, including things like basic human rights; right to access the Net; Net neutrality; control of personal data online; protection against surveillance without the approval of a judge; right to online anonymity; and the right to be forgotten.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • International Copyright Policy Laundering and the Ongoing War on Access to Knowledge

        How is it possible that someone could face years in prison for sharing an academic paper online? How did we arrive at such extreme criminal punishments for accessing knowledge and information? Well, this has been long in the making. We got here because Big Content interests have dominated secretive, back-room copyright negotiations over several decades, resulting in laws that are increasingly restricting our speech, and our ability to comment, control, re-use, and access knowledge, culture, and the devices that we own.

      • U.S. Government Shuts Down Music Sharing Sites

        The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appear to be continuing with Operation in Our Sites. In recent days two large music sharing sites, RockDizFile.com and RockDizMusic.com, were taken offline. Their domain names are now pointing to a prominent seizure banner.

      • Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Insist ‘Criminal Elements’ Are A Part Of The Copyright Reform Effort

        George Mason University — which not too long ago put out an entire book about the need for copyright reform — apparently also wants to present “the other side.” It recently held a conference entitled “Common Ground: How Intellectual Property Unites Creators and Innovators.” You might assume that this would be along the lines of the point we’ve been making for years that content creators and entrepreneurs are really on the same side, creating new content and tools that better serve the public. But it was actually a conference that appears to have only invited copyright and patent maximalists, to talk about how oppressed both of them are by efforts to reform those two bodies of law away from the maximalist positions. It was a laugh riot, I’m sure.

      • Copyright Law Stifling Free Speech And Artistic Criticism

        Pacific Standard Magazine has a really great article by Noah Berlatsky, looking at how copyright is stifling artistic criticism. Much of it focuses on a recent paper by John Tehranian, whom we’ve written about before. The paper is called Dangerous Undertakings: Sacred Texts and Copyright’s Myth of Aesthetic Neutrality — and focuses on how aesthetic judgments about the value of works almost always applies in copyright cases, which is a bit dangerous when it comes to art, criticism and free speech. Berlatsky’s piece focuses on the famous case of The Wind Done Gone, the famous “unauthorized retelling” of Gone With The Wind from the perspective of another character. The lower court said it was infringing, and the appeals court overturned it — but both were based, at least in part, on aesthetics, rather than underlying legal issues…

10.22.14

Links 22/10/2014: Chromebooks Surge, NSA Android Endorsement

Posted in News Roundup at 4:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Let’s Pay for Open Source with a Closed-Source Software Levy

    This column has often explored ways in which some of the key ideas underlying free software and open source are being applied in other fields. But that equivalence can flow in both directions: developments in fields outside the digital world may well have useful lessons for computing. A case in point is a fascinating post by James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), a non-governmental organisation concerned with public health and other important issues.

    It is called “The value of an open source dividend”, and is a discussion of the problems the world of pharma faces because of the distorting effect of patents – problems it shares with the world of computing…

  • Free software hacker on open source telemetry project for OpenStack
  • Google Releases Open-Source Material Design Icon Pack

    Looking for a new set of icons? In an effort to spread the Material Design look, Google on Tuesday released a set of cool new icons that anyone can download for free. Need icons for your app, website, or just curious to see what they look like? You can head on over to Github and download the full package. There are 750 in total, and they’re protected under a CC-BY-SA Creative Commons license, which means you can use them for whatever you want.

  • Head of Open Source at Facebook opens up

    We have 200 active projects at Facebook, with 10 million lines of code. Many hundreds of engineers working on these, with over 100,000 followers and 20,000 forks.

  • Hey Apple, we’re gonna tailor Swift as open source – indie devs throw down gauntlet

    A group of independent developers have launched a project to develop a free, open source implementation of Apple’s Swift programming language.

    Dubbed Phoenix, the project is being developed under the auspices of Ind.ie, a group that claims to want to develop “consumer products that are beautiful, free, social, accessible, secure, and distributed” and that eschew business models based on “corporate surveillance.”

  • Phoenix Is Trying To Be An Open Version Of Apple’s Swift

    Apple unveiled the Swift programming language at this year’s WWDC event but sadly it’s still not clear whether Apple will “open up” the language to let it appear on non-Apple platforms. Swift is built atop LLVM and designed to be Apple’s successor to Objective-C in many regards while suppoorting C/Obj-C/Obj-C++ all within a single program. With non-Apple folks being interested in the language, it didn’t take long before an open-source project started up around it.

  • Four Simple Words to Remember on FOSS Forums

    The problem here is that this lack of civility, this absence of open-mindedness, and this departure from decent behavior scales in an enormous way in FOSS: from the new user warmed in the glow of their new-found FOSS enlightenment thinking their first distro is “the Holy Grail,” to some of those who got the ball rolling back in the day and are responsible for the world-altering digital movement in which we now find ourselves.

  • Events

    • The Share Economy is Dead, Long Live to the Share Economy!

      The so-called “shared economy” is just replacing the existing and often inefficient and/or ineffective intermediaries, with a new set of powerful intermediaries. While the companies backing all the share-central initiatives are somehow failing to see their true social potential, they introduced many people to the collaborative economy.

    • GStreamer 2014 Conference Videos Posted: Wayland, HTML5, 3D

      The GStreamer Conference 2014 took place last week in Düsseldorf alongside other Linux Foundation events. For those that missed out on being there in person, Ubicast has once again provided wonderful video recordings of each of the sessions.

  • Web Browsers

  • Funding

  • BSD

    • Configuring FreeBSD as a FreeIPA client

      A recent thread on the freeipa-users mailing list highlighted one user’s experience with setting up FreeBSD as a FreeIPA client, complete with SSSD and Sudo integration. GNU+Linux systems have ipa-client-install, but the lack of an equivalent on FreeBSD means that much of the configuration must be done manually. There is a lot of room for error, and this user encountered several “gotchas” and caveats.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Automatic Feedback Directed Optimizer Merged Into GCC

      AutoFDO is the Automatic Feedback Directed Optimizer. AutoFDO relies on the Linux kernel’s perf framework for profiling with performance counters. AutoFDO interprets the perf output and attempts to use the FDO infrastructure to produce better optimized code generation. AutoFDO according to its Google engineers is said to be noticeably faster than traditional FDO for GCC.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Norway closes its open source resource centre

      Amundsen says the centre and its board were not notified in advance of the funding cut. The plan had not been mentioned in meetings with the Ministry of Local Government and Modernization, he explains. “We’ve always told them to warn us in advance. So, their announcement came as a shock.”

      In its 2015 budget, the Norwegian government writes that its funding for Friprog had always been a start-up grant, and that the centre has had since 2007 to find alternative sources of income.

    • U.S. government releases open source gamification software

      The United States’ National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has made some of its internally-developed gamification software available for free on GitHub under the MIT free software license.

      Developers may find it useful as a tool for configuring a server to track “gamification” systems like points or badges against user accounts on apps or websites; at the very least, it offers interesting insight into how the NGA is using game design tenets in its training programs.

    • Munich’s return to proprietary desktop would cost millions

      The move to Linux and other open source solutions has helped the city save some 11 million euro over the past years, Reiter writes. He points to a 2012 report by the city’s IT department. Their cost comparison includes savings on proprietary licences for operating system and office productivity tools and on PC hardware.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Digital government, openness and open cloud — new cornerstones of democracy

      For us, an open cloud embraces a wide range of open source languages, databases and services. This is why we support thousands of open source technologies and open standards. Industry, open communities and government need to work together to develop the open source code and open standards needed to reach the goal of fluid interoperability.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Open access platform to save the Odia Indian language

        In February 2014, the Government of India declared the South Asian language Odia as the 6th classical language of India which is one among 22 scheduled languages of India and has a literary heritage of more than 5,000 years. There are documents for more than 3,500 years, and the rest are undocumented oral histories. The native Odia speakers became hopeful of getting a lot of language related projects implemented to grow the lineage of this long literary heritage and see the language used and spoken globally, not just in literature but in computer and mobile games, interactive computer applications and in other digital media—and to reach the masses as a communicative language.

    • Open Hardware

      • Take Control With Open Source Hardware

        “Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design. The hardware’s source, the design from which it is made, is available in the preferred format for making modifications to it. Ideally, open source hardware uses readily-available components and materials, standard processes, open infrastructure, unrestricted content, and open-source design tools to maximize the ability of individuals to make and use hardware. Open source hardware gives people the freedom to control their technology while sharing knowledge and encouraging commerce through the open exchange of designs.”

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • US-Backed Ukraine Army Used Cluster Bombs Against Its Own People: Reports

      The Ukraine Army, backed by both the U.S. and NATO throughout its military campaign against rebel factions in eastern regions of the country over recent months, appears to have fired cluster munitions on the city of Donetsk earlier this month, according to a Human Rights Watch investigation and independent reporting by the New York Times.

    • Bowen’s friend was George W. Bush, and the job was to investigate corruption and waste in Iraq

      Bowen’s friend was George W. Bush, and the job was to investigate corruption and waste in Iraq, where his buddy George had launched a misguided and very costly war, as well as an effort to reconstruct that country’s fractured economy. The watchdog soon learned that Air Force transport planes had been airlifting whole pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills from the U.S. to Baghdad – totaling some $14 billion!

    • Send Books Not Drones: Malala Yousafzai On Nobel Win, Continuing Fight For Girls’ Education

      While confident beyond her years in front of a crowd Yousafzai’s journey began a long way from the city of brotherly (and sisterly) love’s massive convention center. She was born in 1997 in Mingora, a district in northwest Pakistan. Her father ran a local school and held the locally radical belief that girls should be educated too. Even though Malala’s mother is illiterate her father consults her before making any decisions. This has helped the eldest of their three children and only daughter feel emboldened. Of course, it helps that Malala is smart. She thrives in school and has always been motivated by competition with her classmates.

      [...]

      A drone attack may kill two or three terrorists but it will not kill terrorism. If the drones continue terrorism will spread.

    • Drones and domination

      Words like ‘precision’, ‘necessity’, ‘cure’ and ‘excision’ dominated the semantics of the drone project. The drones were operated from several oceans away, everyone knew, but some trust could be put in the American superpower’s ability to know of threats and to eliminate them from the hapless and diseased soil of its ally.

      [...]

      The bureau’s project, Naming the Dead, collects available data on the people killed by drone attacks (to the extent it is made available). As per these statistics, they say that of 2,379 people killed, only 704 have been named, and only 295 of the total named have been reported to be members of some armed group. Only 84 (4pc) have actually been identified as members of Al Qaeda. Furthermore, nearly 30pc of those killed by drone attacks were not linked to any militant group at all.

    • On Killing Trayvons

      A movement is coalescing around reforming police procedures and taking away their military weapons.

    • My Father Was Killed By A Computer, Says 7 Year Old Afghan Child

      As Imal grew up, he kept asking his mother where his father was. His mother finally told Imal that his father had been killed by a drone when he was still a baby.

    • ‘Cleansing the stock’ and other ways governments talk about human beings

      Those who kill for a living employ similar terms. Israeli military commanders described the massacre of 2,100 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians (including 500 children), in Gaza this summer as “mowing the lawn”. It’s not original. Seeking to justify Barack Obama’s drone war in Pakistan (which has so far killed 2,300 people, only 4% of whom have since been named as members of al-Qaida), Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that “you’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.” The director of the CIA, John Brennan, claimed that with “surgical precision” his drones “eliminate the cancerous tumour called an al-Qaida terrorist while limiting damage to the tissue around it”. Those who operate the drones describe their victims as bug splats.

    • U.S. Jewish lawyer to Hamas goes on anti-Israel Twitter tirade
    • Terror Suspects’ Lawyer Stanley Cohen Rants Before Prison Sentence
    • Better A Hundred Palestinians Killed Than One Israeli Soldier

      For years now, Israel has been appearing in world media mainly as a country that occupies the Palestinian lands. Press photos of Israelis almost always show heavily armed and armored soldiers confronting protesting Palestinians, often children. Few of these pictures have had an immediate dramatic impact, but the cumulative, incremental effect should not have been underestimated.

    • Women Against War quilts target US drones

      Four six-by-six quilts are on display for the next month throughout the Capital District as part of an exhibit to make the general public aware of military drones and their civilian casualties.

      The quilt squares represent dozens of drone casualties, said Maureen Aumand with Women Against War, which is sponsoring the local exhibition currently in the concourse of Empire State Plaza. There are 144 squares in the quilts.

    • Violence kills a child every five minutes, says UN

      One child dies every five minutes as a result of violence, but only a minority die in war zones, according to a report by the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

    • Being the ‘indispensable nation’ is killing American democracy

      President Barack Obama, scorned by his Republican critics as an “isolationist” who wants to “withdraw from the world,” is waging the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan, boasts of toppling the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya, launches airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State and picks targets for drones to attack in as many as eight countries, while dispatching planes to the Russian border in reaction to its machinations in Ukraine, and a fleet to the South China Sea as the conflict over control of islands and waters escalates between China and its neighbors.

      [...]

      But endless war undermines the Constitution.

    • British drone operators could be breaking international law, says former GCHQ chief

      British military and intelligence personnel working at US Air Force bases on the controversial drones programme could be at risk of breaking international law, according to a new report from the former director of GCHQ.

      Washington’s “remotely piloted aircraft” (RPA) programme has killed terrorists and civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, drawing the condemnation of human rights organisations.

    • We Can’t Properly Debate Drone Casualties Without Knowing The Names of Those Killed

      The most important question to ask of the Global War on Terror should be the most simple to answer. Instead, it is a perennial shadow cast over US counter-terror operations since 9/11.

      We still don’t know, and still must ask: Who exactly is the enemy?

      [...]

      The Bureau found that fewer than 4 percent of the people killed by drone fire in Pakistan have been identified by available records as named members of al Qaeda. This doesn’t mean, to be sure, that only 4 percent of drone deaths were named members of al Qaeda. Rather, of the killed individuals identified using a variety of sources, only 4 percent matched with already named al Qaeda members. The Bureau spent more than a year looking into 2,379 deaths, using multiple sources including “both Pakistani government records leaked to the Bureau, and hundreds of open source reports in English, Pashtun, and Urdu.”

    • Afghanistan Déjà Vu?

      If we are to learn anything from the attempt to remake Iraq and promote democracy through methods that emphasize brute force, more war is not the answer for Afghanistan. It is time to put US intellectual and material resources into developing another way.

    • America’s Policy: War Now, Justifications Later

      In the counterterrorism realm, “imminence” is the magic word these days. The government need only utter it to hand itself a virtual license to kill.

      Understanding how language can be marshaled for controversial and even bloody purposes requires the ear of a linguist and the mind of a contracts lawyer.

      But the time to go back to school is now—with “imminence” seemingly exploding everywhere.

      In the past few years, the term has been invoked again and again in reference to the thousands targeted by the United States drone program. And it pops up just about every time the U.S. plans another drone attack or military commitment.

    • Analysts criticize US-led airstrikes against Iraqi troops

      According to a security source in Baghdad, an Iraqi General among with eight soldiers were killed on Sunday after an army patrol from the Baghdad Operations Command was targeted in a US bombing in Duwayliba, west of the capital.

    • US Seeks to Avoid Civilian Casualties During Drone Strikes: White House

      New statistics were released on October 16 by the UK Bureau of Investigative Journalism, claiming that fewer than 4 percent of the victims of US drone strikes in Pakistan had been identified as members of Al Qaeda. A greater number of casualties were described as militants, but with little corroborating evidence.

    • Only 4% Of Drone Victims In Pakistan Named As al-Qaeda Members
    • Pakistan-US: Death From The Skies – Analysis

      The present series of drone attacks, which raised the death toll to 35 within a week, concentrated around areas where Pakistan is presently conducting the military Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched on June 15, 2014, in the aftermath of the attack on Karachi Airport on June 8-9, 2014. At least 33 persons, including all ten attackers, were killed in the Karachi attack. Operation Zarb-e-Azb has, according to Pakistan Army sources, thus far killed more than 1,200 terrorists and 86 soldiers (no independent verification of fatalities of identities of those killed is available, as media access to the areas of conflict if severely limited).

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Panetta clashed with CIA over memoir

      Former CIA director Leon Panetta clashed with the agency over the contents of his recently published memoir and allowed his publisher to begin editing and making copies of the book before he had received final approval from the CIA, according to former U.S. officials and others familiar with the project.

  • Finance

  • Censorship

    • A New Way to Silence Mumia Abu-Jamal

      This is not the first time there has been an attempt to silence Abu-Jamal. In 1994, NPR abruptly cancelled plans to air commentaries by him it had commissioned to air on All Things Considered.

      And the fact that Democracy Now! is covering this story now brings to mind what happened in 1997, when the show was set to begin airing a series of Abu-Jamal commentaries. The radio station at Philadelphia’s Temple University, KRTI, abruptly canceled its contract with Pacifica and Democracy Now! (Extra!Update, 4/97) right before the pieces were to air.

      In both cases, there were questions raised about what kinds of pressure were brought to bear on the media outlets. The controversy over NPR led lawmakers like Sen. Bob Dole to muse about the need for “closer oversight.” In the case of KRTI, there were suggestions that state funding could be at risk.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • A ‘Worthless and Whiny’ Attack on a Genuine Journalistic Hero

      Since the release of the film Kill the Messenger, there has been renewed focus on Webb’s story, which documented how CIA-linked drug traffickers were supplying US drug dealers with cheap cocaine that helped fuel the crack epidemic in the 1980s. For the Post, this means it’s time to argue once again that Webb got the story wrong.

    • Hardly an ennobling choice

      There are many like Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan whom the West chose to ignore

    • Understanding And Defeating Resurgent Fascism

      Usually, fascism is described as a form of authoritarian nationalism in which a dictator has complete power and violently suppresses opposition and criticism while emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and racism. (If you want to read a 14 point characterization of fascism, see Professor Lawrence Britt’s ‘Fascism Anyone?‘

    • Movie ‘The Hacker Wars’ proves we are under U.S. government surveillance

      Weisman’s new documentary, “The Hacker Wars,” is frightening and a must-see. Why? Because the movie makes clear that we Americans should be screaming at our government for trampling our rights. Aside from spying on us, they are punishing those who exercise their right to free speech. The U.S. Constitution is becoming a bad joke. The U.S. government is arresting people left and right for telling the truth.

      NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake makes a powerful statement in the film, “The United States has unchained from the constitution, this is an alien form of government.”

    • The CIA’s Role In Australia’s Coup: RIP Gough Whitlam

      Though you would never know it from reading The New York Times obit of former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who passed away yesterday at the age of 98, the CIA likely played a central role in the effective coup that removed Whitlam from office in 1975. In today’s post Snowden world, it wouldn’t shock anyone perhaps–but it’s important to remember that the spying, dishonesty, illegality and crimes perpetuated by the government’s intelligence agencies, usually at the behest of the White House, stretch back decades. Two key words are missing from the obit: Pine Gap.

    • Charging Snowden With…Murder? Really?

      So far the Justice Department has not charged Snowden with murder, or even hinted in that direction. Pursuing a murder count would raise the stakes significantly, both for the United States and, naturally, Snowden himself. It’s also totally unclear what basis, if any, Rogers may have for suggesting this. Who exactly is Snowden supposed to have killed, when, and where? If Rogers has any grounds—factual or legal—for this rather dramatic statement, he should make them clear.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • U.S. Control of ICANN Likely Ending

      Now, significant change is in the air. That contract expires in September, 2015. NTIA said in March that it may move ICANN to multinational stewardship. The details aren’t set yet, but needless to say, the matter is steeped in controversy. The group held a meeting, ICANN 51, last week in Los Angeles.

    • Bloomberg Host Calls Out Telecom CEO On Net Neutrality Stance

      Bloomberg TV co-host Cory Johnson called out the hypocrisy of activist telecommunications investor Jeff Pulver who misleadingly stoked fears that proponents of net neutrality advocate for regulations that would hamper telecommunications innovations in. Johnson pointed out that without an open internet, the CEO might have been unable to create his own business.

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