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07.12.14

Links 12/7/2014: CrossOver, New Wine

Posted in News Roundup at 2:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • BitPay’s Copay Open Source Multisig Wallet Launches in Beta

    We’ve heard a bit on BitPay’s doings in the open source field, and today, the company announced on their blog that they’ve got a multisig, open source wallet in the works called Copay.

    We’ve heard of Copay previously, but now it’s got its own website at Copay.io, and has launched in beta.

  • BitPay is pleased to announce Copay, an open source, multi-signature wallet
  • BitPay Releases Beta for Open-Source, Multi-Signature Bitcoin Wallet
  • Asciidoctor coder writes less documentation

    I’ve been working as the documentation manager for the Koha project for six and a half years, so when I saw that Sarah White would be talking about documentation at OSCON this year I knew I wanted a chance to interview her.

  • Understanding the metrics behind open source projects

    What do the numbers behind an open source project tell us about where it is headed? That’s the subject of Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona’s OSCON 2014 talk later this month, where he looks at four open source cloud computing projects—OpenStack, CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula—and turns those numbers into a meaningful analysis.

  • LinkedIn behind the scenes: How open source software can transform a company – and the world

    Open source also helps the branding of our engineering team – the fact that we work on world-class technical problems, the scale of the problems we have to solve, and the complexity of the features that we’re building. Being able to showcase our technology to the world is something that hopefully is going to be attractive to world class engineers around the world, which we would love to have work for us.

  • Metaswitch unveils open source NFV project Calico to bolster cloud datacentres

    Networking technology vendor Metaswitch Networks announced the formation of Project Calico, which will focus on developing an open source networking virtualisation solution it claims will help enable the implementation of large, cloud datacentre infrastructures as IP-based starts to account for the majority of network traffic.

  • Metaswitch Contributes Virtualised Network Code To Open Source

    UK-based Metaswitch Networks has given away some of its network virtualization code to the open source community, designating it as Project Calico.

    The technology integrates with OpenStack and provides the framework for orchestrated IP routing between virtual machines (VMs) and host machines, along with internal and inter-data centre interconnects. It describes Layer 3 virtualisation techniques, and is aimed at large cloud data centres.

  • As Chef gets bigger, it’s learning how to appease its open source community

    A former employee singled out the open source configuration management company for not practicing what it preaches, and as a result, Chef said it will be working on addressing its developer community.

  • Mellanox Contributes the World’s First Open Source Ethernet Switch MLAG Implementation
  • iSchool Pair Demo Open-Source Code at Labman Conference

    Two Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) information technology professionals wowed the crowd at this year’s Labman computer lab managers conference by presenting a live demonstration of their Remote Lab 2.0 software, which they recently released as open-source code.

  • CartoDB’s Odyssey.js Is An Open-Source Tool For Telling Stories With Interactive Maps

    Everything happens somewhere. That’s the logic behind Odyssey.js, an open-source tool that utilizes maps to help turn data into interactive multimedia stories without the user needing coding skills.

  • Building an Inter-University Private Cloud with Open Source ownCloud

    In late 2011, a lively discussion (we enjoy lively discussions here in Germany) among the IT managers of the publicly-funded research universities in Northrhine-Westfalia (NRW), Germany’s most populouIn late 2011, a lively discussion (we enjoy lively discussions here in Germany) among the IT managers of the publicly-funded research universities in Northrhine-Westfalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous federal state, started over a set of interrelated topics:s federal state, started over a set of interrelated topics:

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome Remote Desktop Plug-in Now Supports Linux Users

        Being able to access a computer remotely, or let someone else remotely access your computer, can be an enormous convenience. It can help you retrieve a much needed presentation that you left behind while on a trip, and it can help you allow a distant user to make changes to or access your files.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • CMS

    • Introduction to 4 Open Source CMS

      A content management system (CMS is a computer application that allows publishing, editing and modifying content, organizing, deleting as

  • Funding

    • Is the IRS scheming to destroy open source projects?

      The IRS is one of the most feared and loathed parts of the federal government. It has recently been found to target political groups that don’t tow the line of the people currently in charge of the US government.

  • BSD

    • There’s Now Even LLVM Support For Pascal-86

      The latest programming language that can leverage using LLVM and its plethora of back-ends is Pascal-86, a language most Phoronix readers have probably never even heard of.

    • LLVM’s Clang Is Working Better For Building Windows Programs

      While LLVM’s Clang compiler is predominantly used on Linux, OS X, and BSD systems, the Microsoft Windows support has been a focus over the past several months and is reaching an improved state for building native Windows programs with Visual C++ compatibility.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Untapped potential? Rise of open source council web tools

      UK councils are so far failing to tap into the full money-saving potential and speed of open source web service tools, but moves are underway to address this, delegates heard at yesterday’s ‘Building perfect council websites’ conference in Birmingham.

      Although most councils still run a Microsoft-based ICT infrastructure, almost all do also now run at least some open source software, Kevin Jump, director of digital services firm Jumoo, told delegates.

      Jump is former web manager at Liverpool City Council, which migrated to open source CMS Umbraco in 2011.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Working to keep the Internet an open source

      In a nutshell, open-source is the opposite of proprietary. Consider the sale of a muffin. The person who sells you the muffin is selling you a proprietary product. The ingredients (what they are and from whence they came) are kept a secret. With open source, the person not just gives you the muffin; she also gives you the recipe and invites you to change it even more, and pass it along to the next person.

    • ‘Open source’ real estate brokerage willing to share best practices

      “We call it an open source real estate company,” he says. That’s because Go Realty not only shares lessons that agents have learned within the company, but with other companies.

    • Xiki shell Kickstarter, HummingBoard computer, and more

    • Open Access/Content

      • What is open knowledge and how do you spread it?

        Beatrice Martini shared the work she does alongside a talented group working to bring openness to the world for Open Knowledge with me earlier this year. This time she tells me what it’s like to bring to fruition an event like OKFestival 2014, organised by Open Knowledge. How does a gathering organized by one organisation (and a small team) reach out to the global ecosystem of open communities? How can participants co-create its message and mission?

    • Open Hardware

      • Open source robot is waiting for you to make it even more amazing

        It is not uncommon to hear that many people don’t like bugs. Those tiny, many-legged creatures are the source of our worst nightmares. Robots, on the other hand, are fantastic. Whether they come to us as Furby-sized companions or giant robot protector of the Earth Gundams, they amuse and entertain us to no end. So when we heard of the open source project combining insect-like parts and robotics, we timidly decided to check it out.

  • Programming

    • rest: Open Source REST Framework For Haskell

      Silk has recently open-sourced a REST framework for Haskell, called “rest”. It provides a DSL for defining REST services which can then be run in popular web frameworks such as happstack. This comes with features such as type-safe URLs, abstraction of format-type support, and a clean separation of API specification and business logic.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • FTC files suit against Amazon over accidental in-app purchases

    For most parents, seeing a random $358 charge on their credit card bill would elicit a lot of questions.

    But for the parents of the 71% of children who play mobile games such as Angry Birds or Temple Run, those seemingly random charges are becoming more common as the games allegedly trick children into buying virtual goods with real-world money.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Why ABC Thought Suffering Palestinians Were Israelis

      But there’s a pretty well-established pattern of corporate media trying to paint the conflict as between equals, a type of false balance that treats the threats to Israeli lives and Palestinians lives as similar. But at times it’s much more than that; this ABC report, and others like it, foreground the fear that Israelis are dealing with as sirens warn of incoming rockets from Gaza. “Running in terror as sirens wail” is how ABC correspondent Alex Marquardt began the segment right after Sawyer’s introduction. He conveyed Israel’s view of the conflict before shifting to life in Gaza.

    • When Does the ‘Cycle of Violence’ Start?

      But determining when such a “cycle” begins is a political act. The current conflict is usually traced back to the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers on the West Bank (CNN, 7/7/14). When their bodies were found on June 30, Israel “retaliated” by attacking Gaza. The July 2 killing of Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khdeir, allegedly a revenge murder by Israeli extremists, was reported as further escalating the conflict.

    • Let’s Name the Victims on Both Sides of Israel-Palestine Clashes

      Over a three-week rescue mission to find the three Israeli teenagers, more than 700 Palestinians were arrested, with more than 400 still being held, according to Palestinian prisoner’s rights organization Addameer. Many are being held in administrative detention, an Israeli practice that holds prisoners without charge or trial set, but renewable amounts of time. At least 58 of the arrestees are former prisoners released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap; their re-arrest directly contradicting the terms of the agreement. One of these prisoners is Samer Issawi, who was released last year after engaging in a prolonged hunger strike protesting his first arbitrary re-arrest.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Just the beginning: 2 million come out fighting

      TWO MILLION people defied Tory strike ban threats yesterday to come out fighting against poverty pay — and PCS union leader Mark Serwotka warned the government it was “just the beginning.”

      Mr Serwotka rallied a sea of teachers, firefighters, council workers and civil servants in Trafalgar Square in his first major speech since recovering from heart surgery.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • NPR and the Eagerness of White Guy Sources

      NPR’s official response to the brouhaha was a memo, instructing staff to be more careful about sharing private thoughts on social media. Likewise missing the point that the problem lies in what the network does–and doesn’t do–in public.

    • ABC: Three Cheers for Walmart!

      The “economists” in question would appear to be the Boston Consulting Group, a consulting firm that advises major companies. It’s not a stretch to think that Walmart is one of them. So you might want to take those job creation numbers with a grain of salt.

      But ABC’s newscast looked less like journalism and more like PR–even including footage from a Walmart infomercial and a comment from the company’s CEO that this initiative “is not a PR thing.”

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • One Nation Under Surveillance
    • New German spy scandal — RT interview

      As a second Ger­man intel­li­gence officer was arres­ted for spy­ing for the Amer­ic­ans, here’s my recent RT inter­view on the sub­ject…

    • Germany Expels Top US Intelligence Official, Says It Will (Officially) Spy Back On US And UK

      Techdirt has been following the complicated German reaction to Edward Snowden’s revelations about US and UK surveillance of people in that country, whether or not in high places, for some while now. Although the German public has been deeply shocked by the leaks, the German government has been keen to preserve good relations with the US.

    • Opinion: Is online privacy lost? Forever?

      What is the way forward? – Is privacy already gone forever with the war being lost… or are there still some battles that may determine better outcomes for a subset of the human population? I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. In the mean time, I continue to fight off the little voice in my head that says I need a smart phone… and I try to learn more about and utilize some of the desktop tools that make me look suspicious.

    • Emergency laws to monitor phone and internet records ‘to stop terrorists’

      David Cameron says Iraq and Syria makes emergency data laws necessary, warning: ‘The consequences of not acting are grave’

    • Here’s a challenge: Can you shun Facebook for 99 days?

      What if you are asked to perform a different kind of fasting – to log out from Facebook for 99 days?

      Do not fret as this is a challenge set out by a Dutch creative agency Just.

      Called “99 Days of Freedom”, the non-profit initiative asks whether people would be happier without Facebook.

      It asks users to give up Facebook for a 99-day period, completing anonymous happiness surveys on days 33, 66 and 99.

    • Silent Circle guns for Skype with global expansion of encrypted calling service

      SECURE COMMUNICATIONS OUTFIT Silent Circle expanded its encrypted calling service globally on Thursday, allowing people worldwide to make secure phone calls without incurring roaming charges.

      Until now, Silent Circle’s apps – which enable users to make encrypted calls, send secure messages and transfer files – had to be used by both parties, but the firm announced on Thursday that it is expanding the service worldwide, allowing users to make private calls to non-Silent Circle subscribers across 79 countries.

    • Surveillance Stitch Up to be Rushed Through

      Pirate Party spokespeople are always ready to give a lively, informed, and often provocative view on the issues of the day. Whether it’s tech politics, civil liberties, the EU, local issues or anything else we’ll have something to say.

    • “Emergency” Data Retention: What I told my MP

      The European Court of Justice ruled in April that blanket data retention, which the government requires of ISPs, is illegal and ignores the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection. However, rather than take the time to debate and redraft the law, they are pushing through a new Bill in record time: released today and put before Parliament on Monday.

  • Civil Rights

    • Water Damage

      The FCO claim that records of extraordinary rendition flights to Diego Garcia were destroyed by water damage is an insult to all our intelligence. The FCO is refusing to say where the records were at the time, or what else was damaged in the (presumed) flood. This is of a piece with, but much more serious than, the “accidental” shredding of all Tony Blair’s parliamentary expenses claims. It is not that they expect us to believe them – they just don’t care. They have the power, and we don’t.

    • The Worst Butt Dialing Fiasco Ever

      His wife called 911. Thirty(!) SWAT team members, with machine guns, descended on the middle school at 5 p.m., and spent three hours searching it for the mysterious gunman. “At one point three news media choppers hovered overhead.”

    • The Absence of Liberalism

      The overruling of a European Court judgement to assert individual privacy, and the anti-democratic rushing of emergency legislation through parliament where no emergency exists, are the antithesis of liberalism. So of course is the jettisoning of all the Lib Dem manifesto pledges on civil liberties.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • FCC got over 647K comments on net neutrality, will it listen to ‘The People’?

      FCC chief, Tom Wheeler, today tweeted that they have received over 647k net-neutrality comments on the FCC website, as it reaches the July 15 deadline. Reply to these comments are due September 10th. There is an anger in the US against Wheeler’s proposed ‘fast lane plan’ which would destroy the net-neutrality as we know it.

  • DRM

  • Copyrights

    • UK Lawmakers Favor Legalization of MP3 and DVD Copying

      Earlier this year the UK Government promised to legalize the copying of MP3s, CDs and DVDs for personal use, but the changes have yet to pass. The entertainment industry and some lawmakers have voiced concerns over the plan, but the majority appears to be in favor of decriminalizing format shifting.

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