TechrightsSearch results for 'snubs' (page 1 of 4) http://techrights.org Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Fri, 06 Jan 2017 12:27:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.14 Crisis at the EPO Deepens as Dutch Parliament Dives in, European Parliament Snubbed by EPO Management, and Battistelli Relies on ‘High Corruption’ States http://techrights.org/2016/11/22/dutch-parliament-on-epo/ http://techrights.org/2016/11/22/dutch-parliament-on-epo/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2016 16:01:10 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=96926 This great search was powered by Search Unleashed.
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… based on our fast assessment, in page 22 and thereabouts the EPO makes it abundantly clear that it snubs the EU Parliament on the subject of software patents, which are supposed to be banned in Europe.

Earlier today the EPO promoted its pro-software patents event in another country where software patents are not even legal. How crooked does the EPO hope to appear worldwide ? Also today the EPO pushed out there what it called “facts”. These are not “facts” but disgusting …

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/11/22/dutch-parliament-on-epo/feed/ 0 US Lobbyist for Software Patents, David Kappos, Uses EPO’s Snubbing of the EPC to Spread Misinformation and Patent Monopolies on Software/Algorithms http://techrights.org/2016/04/14/kappos-uses-epo-for-swpats/ http://techrights.org/2016/04/14/kappos-uses-epo-for-swpats/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2016 16:15:33 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=91743 David Kappos
Source: David Kappos 2013 interview

Summary: How the lawlessness at the European Patent Office (EPO) has a sort of knock-on effect on the US patent system, where powerful lobbies want to cement patentability of software

THE EPO‘s patent scope is a joke. Things got a lot worse in recent years and EPO staff marched the streets to protest against it. There are now patents on plants, sometimes patents on software in spite of a ban, and many patents (more and more of them) get invalidated by courts, which is indicative of declining examination quality, probably caused by pressure from the top.

Last night we spotted (from two places) this new article titled “Mobilisation for start of mass opposition against patent on tomatoes”. It recalls the cause for woes, amid Battistelli’s own reign (not predecessors): “In 2015, the European Patent Office (EPO) granted patent EP 1515600 to Syngenta, which claims tomatoes with a high content of so-called flavonols. These compounds are supposedly beneficial to health. The patent covers the plants, the seeds and the fruits. This so-called “invention”, however, is simply a product of crossing tomatoes from the countries of origin (Latin America) with varieties currently grown in the industrialised countries. Furthermore European Patent Law prohibits patents on plant varieties and on conventional breeding. All in all, around 1400 patent application on conventional breeding were filed at the EPO so far and around 180 patents are granted already.”

“We recently saw David Kappos doing a lot of lobbying for software patents, having been paid by large US corporations that always lobby for software patents.”This is absolutely horrible and several people we hear from are mortified by this trend, including patent lawyers and examiners. Is the EPO turning into another USPTO, where quality control is virtually non-existent any longer (because any such lenience helps profit and passes the toll/bill to the public)? Where are we going with this? As we shall show in this article, this actually helps companies from the US, or globalists whose interests are orthogonal to those of Europe (“sharply divergent”).

We recently saw David Kappos doing a lot of lobbying for software patents, having been paid by large US corporations that always lobby for software patents. Our writings about Kappos are thus reactionary and we hope he will get a life outside of the lobbying sphere, where he merely discredits the US patent system as a whole (the perception that it’s shaped, controlled and paid for by large corporations). The issues are magnified and the controversy deepens now that Kappos contributes to contamination of Europe with software patents. Kappos uses EPC snubs or the EPO’s perturbations of law (under Battistelli’s reign) to lobby for his clients in favour of software patents. To quote Benjamin Henrion from FFII, “Kappos has begun telling clients that patent protection for software is more robust in other countries like CN [China] or EU,” and to quote Kappos: “Courts in other countries like Germany have been moving in the opposite direction” or “It’s time to abolish Section 101, and the reason I say that is that Europe doesn’t have 101″ (it has the EPC actually).

“Kappos and Battistelli have much in common now. They pretend to be ignorant of the law in order to break the law and they’re both actively lobbying politicians. To whose advantage is this patent maximalism working? Kappos even mocks/disregards the highest US court, SCOTUS, just like Battistelli in the host nation, Holland.”It should not be so hard to see that Kappos now uses the out-of-control EPO as a pretext for software patents in the US, where these types of patents diminish (unlike in Europe, which goes the other way under Battistelli’s reign). Kappos isn’t a USTPO official but a lobbyist now (dangerous man, greedy man, whose clients are reckless and aggressive) and various sites that address patent lawyers carry his message (which is probably exactly what he wants and needs). Henrion asked the publisher, “could you make the whole article public?” It is a stubborn paywall, effectively ensuring that only patent lawyers with a subscription to Law 360 can see what their lobbyist, Kappos, is saying (“I found out that you can get the whole article by using their ow.ly link,” Henrion later added, so workarounds exist for those who know them). Mark Cuban “liked” our previous article about Kappos, so it’s important to elaborate on the subject and research it further. Cuban invests a lot of his own money in patent reform in the US, so given suitable information he can hopefully work towards crushing software patents, not just “bad” patents or “trolls” (that’s what his lawyers at the EFF are doing nowadays).

“In the law360 article,” Henrion explained, “Kappos says Europe does not have section 101, and what about art52 EPC? All the exceptions are about abstract matters” (exactly what most/all software patents count as, as per the SCOTUS ruling on Alice).

Kappos and Battistelli have much in common now. They pretend to be ignorant of the law in order to break the law and they’re both actively lobbying politicians. To whose advantage is this patent maximalism working? Kappos even mocks/disregards the highest US court, SCOTUS, just like Battistelli in the host nation, Holland. This is perhaps the first time that dots are connected between Kappos (former USPTO Director), the EPO, and Battistelli. Kappos has essentially declared himself enemy of software developers (not just FOSS developers), with money that comes from proprietary software monopolists. Then there’s the special treatment the EPO offers to Microsoft, so here again there are potentially interesting parallels. Last night I asked IBM’s and Microsoft’s patent chiefs, “how much did you guys at IBM/MS pay to help the attack on software developers using software patents?” Remember that both are paying Kappos for his lobbying work (the latter recently left or got sacked). █

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/04/14/kappos-uses-epo-for-swpats/feed/ 0 Links 22/3/2016: New Eminent Wine Staging, Red Hat Results Imminent http://techrights.org/2016/03/22/red-hat-results-imminent/ http://techrights.org/2016/03/22/red-hat-results-imminent/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2016 15:52:54 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=90836

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • What is Maintainership?

    Why do we have maintainers in free software projects? There are various different explanations you can use, and they affect how you do the job of maintainer, how you treat maintainers, how and whether you recruit and mentor them, and so on.

    So here are three — they aren’t the only ways people think about maintainership, but these are three I have noticed, and I have given them alliterative names to make it easier to think about and remember them.

  • imagemagick as a resource for the budget-constrained researcher

    In this installment, I’ll cover concatenating multiple image files into a multi-page pdf–a very handy trick the imagemagick utility convert makes possible. But first, a bit of grousing on the subject of academia, budget-constrained researching, and academic publishing.

    Pricing for on-line academic resources tends, not surprisingly, to be linked to budgetary allowances of large academic institutions: what institutions can afford to pay for electronic access to some journal or other, for example, will influence the fee that will be charged to anyone wishing to gain such access. If one is affiliated with such an institution–whether in an ongoing way such as by being a student, staff, or faculty member, or in a more ephemeral way, such as by physically paying a visit to one’s local academic library–one typically need pay nothing at all for such access: the institution pays some annual fee that enables these users to utilize the electronic resource.

  • Kill extra brand names to make your open source project more powerful

    Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared some thoughts about several of the most common branding issues we see in our work with open source companies at New Kind. I’ve covered how to vet the name you are considering for an open source project and outlined the pros and cons of some of the most popular company, product, and project brand architecture scenarios we see in the open source world.

    Today I want to share one of the most common brand strategy mistakes I see open source project leaders make: the deep (possibly inherently human) need to name everything.

  • Can we talk about ageism?

    The free and open source community has been having a lot of conversations about diversity, especially gender diversity, over the last few years. Although there is still plenty to do, we’ve made some real strides. After all, the first step is admitting there is a problem.

    Another type of diversity that has gotten much less attention, but that is integral to building sustainable communities is age diversity. If we want free and open source software to truly take over the world, then we want to welcome contributors of all ages. A few months ago, I interviewed some women approaching or over fifty about their experiences in open source, and in this article, I’ll share their perspectives.

  • Events

    • FOSSASIA 2016: Singapore

      FOSSASIA is an annual Free and Opensource conference that focuses on showcasing these FOSS technologies and software in Asia. It has talks and workshops that covers a wide range of topics – from hardware hacks, to design, graphics and software.

      This year, the conference is held in my home country, Singapore, at the Science Center. The Science Center is a place where people can see Science happen and learn how it works. It’s a pretty nice place to hold this conference and it is quite relevant as well, because technology is related to Computing Sciences and theories.

      My talk was approved and I was scheduled to talk on the Day 2 of the event. My talk is about Opening Up Yourself. Basically, it’s about Opensource VS Proprietary software and contributing to Opensource. I am also manning the Fedora booth for this year!

    • OSCON moves to Austin: Will the 18th OSCON be the best one yet?

      Did you know that O’Reilly’s annual Open Source Convention, OSCON, is moving from their regular location of Portland, Oregon, to Austin, Texas (May 16-19)? As an Austin local, I’m ecstatic to have my favorite conference in my favorite city. I’ve always said (and read) that Austin and Portland are similar cities. Both are a little weird, both have that small town charm, and both have an amazing foodie scene. (And now they both have Voodoo Doughnuts!)

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Rust…

        Over the last holidays I plunged and started learning Rust in a practical way. Coming from a C++ background, and having a strong dislike of the whole concept of checking the correctness at runtime, like in, say, JavaScript, Rust is really promising.

  • CMS

    • Joomla 3.5 Open-Source CMS Released with PHP 7 Support, Is Now Twice as Fast

      The Joomla project has released version 3.5.0 of their open-source PHP-based CMS, the last version in the 3.x branch, but one of crucial importance, adding many much-needed features, and of course, the obligatory bug fixes.

      First and foremost, Joomla 3.5 is the first Joomla version to fully support PHP 7, the latest major version of the PHP engine.

    • Joomla 3.5 Released, Promises Faster Websites

      Joomla released a new version of its open source web content management system today that company officials claim will improve user experience for both developers and administrators.

      Joomla version 3.5 contains nearly three dozen new features, they explained.

      Joomla is built on PHP and MySQL. The update will make website’s faster because it offers PHP 7 support, said Joe Sonne, former Open Source Matters, Inc. board member and current member of the capital committee. Open Source Matters is the nonprofit organization that supports the Joomla Project.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 10.3-RC3 Now Available

      Marius Strobl has announced the availability of the third release candidate for FreeBSD 10.3: “The second release candidate build of the 10.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Noteworthy changes since 10.3-RC2: the requirement that for a root-on-ZFS setup, ZFS needs to account for at least 50 percent of the resulting partition table was removed from zfsboot; build configurations of csh(1) and tcsh(1) were changed to activate the SAVESIGVEC option, i. e. saving and restoring of signal handlers before/after executing an external command; FreeBSD SA-16:15 and CVE-2016-1885 have been resolved; the netwait rc(8) script has been changed to require firewall setup to be completed, otherwise a ping(8) to the IP address specified via the netwait_ip option may not succeed; in order to be able to work on upcoming Intel Purley platform system, including Skylake Xeon servers, the x86 kernels now align the XSAVE area to a multiple of 64 bytes

  • Programming

    • Why Jenkins is becoming the engine of devops

      Trends like agile development, devops, and continuous integration speak to the modern enterprise’s need to build software hyper-efficiently — and, if necessary, to turn on a dime.

      That latter maneuver is how CloudBees became the company it is today. Once an independent, public cloud PaaS provider for Java coders (rated highly by InfoWorld’s Andrew Oliver in “Which freaking PaaS should I use?”), CloudBees pivoted sharply 18 months ago to relaunch as the leading provider of Jenkins, a highly popular open source tool for managing the software development process.

    • Apple’s Programming Language Swift 2.2 Released With Linux Support
    • Apple Releases Swift 2.2 Programming Language with Ubuntu Linux Support

      After announcing the availability of the iOS 9.3, Mac OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan, watchOS 2.2, and tvOS 9.2 operating systems, as well as the Xcode 7.3 IDE, Apple now released version 2.2 of its Swift programming language for OS X and Linux.

Leftovers

  • Microsoft will rest its jackboot on Windows 7, 8.1′s throat on new Intel CPUs in 2018 – not 2017

    Stand well back: Microsoft has had a bright idea. Rather than royally screwing over people running Windows 7 and 8.1 on new Intel hardware, it’s just going to give them a rough ride instead.

    In January, Microsoft said it would only offer software updates for “security, reliability, and compatibility” fixes for Windows 7 and 8.1 on Intel Skylake processors until July 2017. After that cutoff point, only critical security fixes would be made available – and only if they weren’t a chore for Microsoft to develop and release.

  • It Is Not Twitter’s Birthday

    Today is just the anniversary of the first tweet, which Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent out on March 21, 2006. But Twitter itself was not released to the public until July 15, 2006. That is its birthday. That is how birthdays work.

  • Hardware

    • Andy Grove – 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016

      Andrew Stephen “Andy” Grove was a Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author. He was a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry.

      Andy was the visionary who changed the face of semiconductor maker Intel. Affectionately called the ‘mastermind’ he left a huge mark on the technology industry. Time Magazine named him man of the year in 1997.

    • [Old] The True Story of Intel Pioneer Andrew Grove, TIME’s 1997 Man of the Year

      Andrew Grove, the longtime chairperson and chief executive of Intel Corp., died at the age of 79. He is remembered as a pioneer of the digital age, a savior of Intel and a champion of the semiconductor revolution. But before he became a business luminary, Grove survived some of the 20th century’s darkest horrors.

    • [Old] ANDREW GROVE: A SURVIVOR’S TALE

  • Health/Nutrition

    • General Mills Will Label GMOs on Products Nationwide

      The company will follow the standards set by Vermont’s labeling law until a national standard is set.

      Vermont started a revolution, and its effects will soon spread across the country. No, we aren’t talking about Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign to be the Democratic presidential nominee but the 2014 law passed by state legislators mandating the voluntary labeling of foods made with genetically engineered ingredients. The new regulations are set to go into effect on July 1, and with a federal political solution proving elusive, one of the biggest food companies in the game now says it will label all its products, nationwide, in accordance with tiny Vermont’s law.

      “We can’t label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers, and we simply won’t do that,” Jeff Harmening, head of U.S. retail operations at General Mills, wrote on the company’s website Friday. “The result: Consumers all over the country will soon begin seeing words legislated by the state of Vermont on the labels of many of their favorite General Mills food products.”

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Cryptostalker, a Tool to Detect Crypto-Ransomware on Linux

      A while back, we stumbled upon an interesting GitHub repo dubbed randumb, which included an example called Cryptostalker, advertised as a tool to detect crypto-ransomware on Linux.

      Cryptostalker and the original project randumb are the work of Sean Williams, a developer from San Francisco. Mr. Williams wanted to create a tool that monitored the filesystem for newly written files, and if the files contained random data, the sign of encrypted content, and they were written at high speed, it would alert the system’s owner.

    • Google slings critical patch at exploited Linux kernel root hole

      Google has shipped an out-of-band patch for Android shuttering a bug that is under active exploitation to root devices.

      The vulnerability (CVE-2015-1805) affects all Android devices running Linux kernel versions below 3.18.

    • Everything is fine, nothing to see here!

      Today everyone who is REALLY, I mean REALLY REALLY good at security got there through blood sweat and tears. Nobody taught them what they know, they learned it on their own. Many of us didn’t have training when we were learning these things. Regardless of this though, if training is fantastic, why does it seem there is a constant march toward things getting worse instead of better? That tells me we’re not teaching the right skills to the right people. The skills of yesterday don’t help you today, and especially don’t help tomorrow. By its very definition, training can only cover the topics of yesterday.

    • Inside the Starburst-sized box that could save the Internet

      Cybercrime is costing us millions. Hacks drain the average American firm of $15.4 million per year, and, in the resulting panic, companies often spend more than $1.9 million to resolve a single attack. It’s time to face facts: Our defenses aren’t strong enough to keep the hackers out.

    • Utah’s Online Caucus Gives Security Experts Heart Attacks

      On Tuesday, registered Republicans in Utah who want to participate in their state’s caucus will have the option to either head to a polling station and cast a vote in person or log onto a new website and choose their candidate online. To make this happen, the Utah GOP paid more than $80,000 to the London-based company Smartmatic, which manages electronic voting systems and internet voting systems in 25 countries and will run the Utah GOP caucus system.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Reporting (or Not) the Ties Between US-Armed Syrian Rebels and Al Qaeda’s Affiliate

      A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the Al Qaeda franchise Al Nusra Front (and its close ally Ahrar al Sham), on the other. But it is a politically sensitive issue for US policy, which seeks to overthrow Syria’s government without seeming to make common cause with the movement responsible for 9/11, and the system of news production has worked effectively to prevent the news media from reporting it fully and accurately.

      The Obama administration has long portrayed the opposition groups it has been arming with anti-tank weapons as independent of Nusra Front. In reality, the administration has been relying on the close cooperation of these “moderate” groups with Nusra Front to put pressure on the Syrian government. The United States and its allies–especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey–want the civil war to end with the dissolution of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by US rivals like Russia and Iran.

    • Saudi Arabia Continues Hiring Spree of Lobbyists, Retains Former Washington Post Reporter

      The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is adding more American lobbyists to its payroll by hiring BGR Government Affairs, a company founded by former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour, according to filings disclosed last week.

      The contract provides BGR with $500,000 annually to assist with U.S. media outreach for the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, a government entity. The retainer includes the services of Jeffrey Birnbaum, a former Washington Post reporter who once covered the lobbying industry and now works as a lobbyist, as well as Ed Rogers, a former Reagan administration official who now lobbies and writes a column for the Post called PostPartisan.

    • Misunderstanding the Terror Threat

      By jumping into wars wherever some group calls itself “Islamic State,” the U.S. government misunderstands the threat and feeds the danger of endless warfare, explains ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • Henry Giroux And “America’s Addiction To Violence”
    • Our unfounded obsession with safety is costing us our freedom

      As you inch your way through security at the airport, you’ll be relieved of your penknife and terrifying tube of Pepsodent. Your unopened can of Coke will, of course, be thrown in the trash, along with any snow globes, and off go your shoes.

      When at last you’re reshod and passing the duty-free shop, you can buy a well-deserved bottle of Scotch . . . which you can then bring on board, crack against the cabin wall and use as you would a machete.

      So why all the security kabuki from the TSA?

    • Ronald Suny to lecture on Armenian genocide of 1915

      “What I’m trying to do is explain the emotional environment in Turkey at the time,” says Suny, professor of history and political science in LSA. “What would lead a government to kill hundreds of thousands of their own subjects, who, in their own view, were perfectly loyal?”

      This year, in recognition of his scholarship at Michigan, Suny was named the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History. The Distinguished University Professorship is the highest professorial title granted at U-M.

      Suny will present his lecture, “They Can Live in the Desert, but Nowhere Else: Explaining the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Later,” at 4 p.m. Tuesday at Rackham Amphitheatre. The lecture will tell the story of why, when and how the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire happened.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Climate change, the elephant in the Gulf

      Soaring temperatures threaten to make Gulf States uninhabitable.

    • The breathtaking human toll of environmental pollution

      Just how bad was laid out by the World Health Organization this week in a bleak new report on environmentally related deaths.

      New analysis of data from 2012 found that a staggering 12.6 million people died that year from living and working in toxic environments.

      That’s almost equivalent to the combined populations of New York City and Los Angeles, and represents nearly a quarter of the 55.6 million deaths recorded that year.

      That’s scary, but it gets worse.

    • What we’re doing to the Earth has no parallel in 66 million years, scientists say

      If you dig deep enough into the Earth’s climate change archives, you hear about the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. And then you get scared.

      This is a time period, about 56 million years ago, when something mysterious happened — there are many ideas as to what — that suddenly caused concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to spike, far higher than they are right now. The planet proceeded to warm rapidly, at least in geologic terms, and major die-offs of some marine organisms followed due to strong acidification of the oceans.

    • Helping Indonesia Fight Catastrophic Forest Fires

      Peatlands are created by eons of decomposing vegetation accumulating in wet areas. They store vast quantities of carbon and can be many feet deep. Under natural conditions, peatlands absorb water in the wet season and slowly discharge water in the dry season. Large areas of tropical rainforest grow on these peatlands. This means that they regulate flooding, provide clean water, store carbon and provide habitat for endangered orangutans and other critical wildlife.

      But over the last several decades, millions of acres of peatland have been drained to make them suitable for agricultural use—primarily to grow palm oil, timber, rice and other commodity crops. The draining causes the peat to dry out and decompose, which emits carbon into the atmosphere. More significantly, the drier peat is much more susceptible to fire, and large amounts of greenhouse gases are released when both the peat, and the forests growing on the peat, are burned.

  • Finance

    • European Commission Continues to Ignore Parliament on TTIP

      Today, the Commission released two new texts relating to the controversial Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (“Regulatory Cooperation” and “Good Regulatory Practices”), which continue to ignore requests by the European Parliament.

    • NYT Promotes Study by Private Pension Company That Says Not to Trust Public Pensions

      Reputable newspapers try to avoid the self-serving studies that industry groups put out to try to gain public support for their favored policies. But apparently the New York Times (3/17/16) does not feel bound by such standards. It ran a major news story on a study by Citigroup that was designed to scare people about the state of public pensions and encourage them to trust more of their retirement savings to the financial industry.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Censorship

    • Free speech group says theatremakers are censoring plays to avoid Islamic backlash

      Theatres and playwrights are censoring their plays for fear of offending Muslims, a leading free speech campaign group has claimed.

      Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, claimed theatre heads are worried that certain plays would cause “violent protests” and elect not to stage them to avoid the risk.

      She pointed to last year’s cancelled National Youth Theatre production, Homegrown, which was set to examine radicalisation in schools but was pulled two weeks before its premiere.

    • Museums seek help as spectre of censorship looms over Turkey

      As incidents of censorship are on the rise in Turkey, museums and art centres must find increasingly nimble ways to negotiate the changing cultural landscape. A new guide for Turkish cultural venues and artists implicated in censorship cases is due to be published later this year by the research platform Siyah Bant.

      “I can recite a hundred horrific incidents from last year alone. It would be a pity to think of them as arbitrary or unrelated. This zeitgeist makes the culture wars of the 1980s feel look like toddler’s play,” says Vasif Kortun, the director of Salt, one of Istanbul’s leading contemporary art spaces.

    • Grassroots Journalists Talk Lebanese Media Censorship

      Kareem Chehayeb and Sarah Shmaitilly, the founders of Beirut Syndrome, a grassroots journalism site based in Beirut, Lebanon, discussed the tendency of the Lebanese media to censor their reporting in an effort to maintain the country’s reputation at a panel discussion in Reiss Hall on Wednesday.

      Chehayeb and Shmaitilly said the idea behind their site is to report on Lebanese issues from an alternative perspective, seeking to counteract Lebanese censorship on their website with clear, unbiased content.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • How Anonymous Hackers Just Fooled Donald Trump And The FBI Big Time

      Remember the recent leak by Anonymous that revealed the personal information of Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump? What’s more, this leak has fooled Donald Trump, the FBI, and the Secret Service as everything ‘leaked’ was already available online. In a new video, Anonymous has outlined this point and thanked everybody for being a part of this experiment.

    • Social Justice Week

      Contrary to the stereotype of apolitical Millenials, students at Sonoma State University in Northern California have organized a Social Justice Week, addressing issues from US foreign policy to local police-brutality cases. Today’s guests are student organizers or guests taking part in Social Justice Week. Also included is a preview of next week’s program, when the guest will be Medea Benjamin of Code Pink.

    • Many Accused No Longer Provided Public Defenders in Louisiana

      Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country in general as well as an extraordinary incarceration rate for African Americans, no longer provides public defenders to all its people accused of crimes; within months over half its public defender offices are expected to become insolvent due to lack of state-provided funding.

      This is a conscious decision to not provide Constitutionally-required legal services to the poor.

    • Bernie Sanders Walks a Tightrope in First Middle East Speech
    • More US Muslims favor Bernie Sanders than do US Jews

      The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) published a new opinion poll on America’s Muslims and other religious groups this week, which contains some surprises. One important finding is that mosque attendance is associated with strong identification as an American and strong civic participation as well as with opposition to violence toward civilians, whether committed by the state or by non-state actors. That is, people like Donald Trump who equate mosques with radicalism and just plan wrong.

    • Amy Goodman Tells CNN the Media is “Manufacturing Consent” for Trump While Silencing Sanders

      “Let’s look at Super Tuesday 3, you had major coverage here at CNN, at MSNBC, at Fox — all the networks across all through the night as the polls are closing,” Goodman said. “You see the concession speeches and the great victory speeches, you see Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Kasich, you see Donald Trump. You’re waiting here at CNN, at MSNBC. They said he’s going to hold a news conference… and that’s it. Where was Bernie Sanders? Well, in fact, Bernie Sanders was in Phoenix, Arizona before thousands of people and as the networks were waiting for Donald Trump and waiting and all the pundits are weighing in, they don’t even say that Bernie Sanders is about to speak.”

    • Meet The Jews Who Protested Trump’s AIPAC Speech

      Markiz explained that the low-key protest was meant to counter Trump’s statements maligning immigrants and his proposal to ban all Muslims form entering the country, saying they intended their actions to model the “opposite to the rhetoric and vitriol that’s happening this year, in particular the language that’s coming out to hate towards Muslims, and Mexicans.” But he insisted that he move wasn’t a rejection of AIPAC itself, but of the rhetoric Trump has introduced into American political discourse.

    • Women Hate Donald Trump Even More Than Men Hate Hillary Clinton

      If Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the 2016 presidential candidates, gender will be part of the campaign in an unprecedented way. It goes beyond the fact that Clinton would be the first woman nominated by one of the two major parties as its presidential candidate: Polls consistently show that women really, really don’t like Trump, and men — to a lesser but still significant degree — really don’t like Clinton.

    • A Fearful Ascendency: the Rise of Trump

      Why do the Republicans fear Trump so much? Romney evoked the racism and misogyny of the Trump campaign. Romney even said the word “misogyny”, something of historical proportions for a party that has systematically gone after women’s reproductive health and women’s rights. The “gender gap” in the 2012 presidential election was the largest in U.S. history, with the Democrats winning the women vote by 20 points.

    • The Texas Border Surge Is Backfiring

      The increase in law enforcement officers in the Rio Grande Valley makes residents feel less safe.

      Last year, the Texas Legislature passed an $800 million omnibus bill that, among other things, flooded the Rio Grande Valley with law enforcement officers. And this week, a Texas Senate subcommittee on border security will hold hearings to determine the necessity of increased collaboration between local law enforcement, state troopers, and federal immigration agents.

    • Candidates, Is America Exceptional, or Only Great?

      Five Questions That Weren’t Asked During the 2012 Presidential Debates and Are Unlikely to Be Asked in 2016

    • Castro Demands Obama Drop Blockade, Return ‘Illegally Occupied’ Guantánamo

      During the first family’s historic visit to Cuba on Monday, the Cuban president confronted President Barack Obama about the crippling trade embargo and called on him to “return the territory illegally occupied by Guantánamo Base.”

      At an afternoon press conference in Havana, the two leaders touted the “concrete” achievements made since the countries resumed diplomatic relations in December 2014.

    • Video Shows Exactly How Donald Trump Incited Assault on Protester

      What those brief glimpses of the latest outburst of violence at a Trump rally failed to show, however, is the role the candidate himself played in the moments before the attack, when he stoked anger at the two protesters as they were marched through the crowd of his supporters.

      Fortunately, that context is available in the form of unedited video of the first 19 minutes of the rally, which was streamed live on Facebook by the local ABC affiliate, KGUN. The video makes it possible to see exactly how Trump reacted to the ejection of three sets of protesters within the first nine minutes of his speech.

    • Bill Clinton Says Very Bill Clinton Things on Campaign Trail for Hillary

      Where to start? Saying that Hillary is good on getting people to “buy in” to the political process shows either a stunning lack of self-awareness or a stunning lack of caring. The Clinton Foundation looks a lot like a slush fund that facilitated dirty deals with foreign governments while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state in the Obama administration.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Despite A Decade Of Trying To Kill It, Verizon Insists It Loves Net Neutrality

      You’d be hard pressed to find a company that’s been more involved in trying to kill net neutrality than Verizon. The company successfully sued to overturn the FCC’s original, flimsy 2010 neutrality rules, which most ISPs actually liked because they contained enough loopholes to drive several vehicle convoys through. Responding to Verizon’s legal assault, the FCC responded last year by taking things further, passing new, (supposedly) more legally sound neutrality rules and reclassifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. Verizon sued again, though this time as part of a multi-pronged coalition of ISP lobbying groups claiming the rules violated their free speech rights.

  • DRM

    • Scenes From Anti-DRM Protest Outside W3C

      A crowd upset about the possibility of DRM in Web standards gathered to protest outside the World Wide Web Consortium’s Advisory Committee meeting in Cambridge, MA last night. EFF is participating in these W3C meetings as a member, encouraging the group to adopt a non-aggression covenant to protect security researchers, standards implementors and others from the effects of including DRM-related technology in open standards.

      Last night’s protests, shown below, were organized by the Free Software Foundation and included comments from EFF’s International Director Danny O’Brien.

    • Amazon warns Kindle users: Update by March 22 or else

      Do you own an old Kindle that’s been gathering dust? Get it updated before March 22 or you won’t be able to get online and download your books any more.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Special Report: India Rocked By Report Of Secret Assurance To US Industry On IP [Ed: See the impact]

      That the Indian government has been under pressure from the United States to change its patent regime is no secret among those who follow the public discourse on intellectual property rights. Now, a new controversy about India’s alleged private assurance to the US-India Business Council (USIBC) and other lobby groups that it would not invoke compulsory licensing for commercial purposes seeks to add fuel to fiery speculation about a shift in India’s policy on IPR.

      The controversy pivots on a 5 February 2016 submission by the USIBC to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) annual Special 301 report. The Special 301 Report is prepared every year by the USTR under Section 301 as amended of the (US) Trade Act of 1974. The report aims to identify trade barriers to US companies due to intellectual property laws in other countries

    • Copyrights

      • Judges: Geolocation Not Good Enough to Pinpoint Pirates

        Two Californian judges have thrown up a roadblock for Malibu Media, the adult media publisher that files thousands of copyright lawsuits each year. Both judges have refused to grant a subpoena to expose the personal details of alleged pirates, arguing that the geolocation tools that linked the wrongdoers to their district are not sufficient in these cases.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/03/22/red-hat-results-imminent/feed/ 0 Links 1/1/2016: WebGL2 in Firefox Nightly, Gentoo on PS4 http://techrights.org/2016/01/01/gentoo-on-ps4/ http://techrights.org/2016/01/01/gentoo-on-ps4/#comments Fri, 01 Jan 2016 12:10:36 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=87896

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • MuseScore 2.0.2 Brings A Bunch Of New Features

    As you may know, MuseScore is an open-source music composition and notation software, allowing the users tp create, edit and print music in an WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) environment.

  • How software developers helped end the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone

    A team of open source software developers solved the problem that most urgently needed solving: distributing wages to healthcare workers

  • 2015 at a glance: Open Source Yearbook

    For our first Open Source Yearbook, we reached out to dozens of open source organizations and community members and asked them to contribute articles that help provide a feel for 2015. What were a few of the LibreOffice extensions that stood out in 2015? Which Drupal modules were notable? Which books would publishers highlight if they could only pick a handful from the past year? What did open source wearables and 3D printing look like in 2015? And how in the world could we pick one best couple for our yearbook without offending all the other fabulous open source couples in the world? The 2015 Open Source Yearbook answers all these questions, and many more.

  • Open source means choice

    In the late 90s I was ensconced in the Microsoft ecosystem. With the introduction of Windows, personal computer users were being pushed away from the command line. But I stubbornly kept an MS-DOS terminal close by. For reasons now lost to the receding tide of memory, one day I found myself installing Cygwin, a suite of commonly used software and command-line tools that ran within a terminal or X-Window. My introduction to a unix-like environment impressed me. The day I typed “startx” and my screen exploded with tiny x’s sealed the deal. At that time (around 1998), anyone familiar with unix had become aware of the upstart unix-like operating system, Linux, developed around Linus Torvalds’ college software project. When Red Hat Linux 5.2 became available I rushed to my local computer store, intrigued by the new operating system that cost half the price of Windows.

  • Events

    • Closing the Book on Linux and FOSS for 2015

      Sarah Sharp Joins SCALE Keynote Roster: While the SCALE Team is still busy with preparations for SCALE 14X, the first-of-the-year FOSS event worldwide in Pasadena in three weeks, one specific development is that Sarah Sharp joins the list of keynoters. Sharp will speak on “Improving Diversity with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” on Sunday morning, Feb. 24. She joins Cory Doctorow, who is the Friday keynoter at SCALE 14X, with the Saturday keynote yet to be determined. Watch this space.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • WebGL2 enabled in Firefox Nightly
      • Firefox Turns On Its WebGL 2 Support

        For users of Firefox Nightly builds, WebGL 2 support is now enabled.

        Jeff Muizelaar mentioned that WebGL 2 is now enabled within Firefox nightly builds. The WebGL 2 implementation isn’t yet fully complete, but is at least to a point that it’s working well enough for most modern content written against the provisional specification. Jeff mentioned it in this blog post.

  • Education

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • BSD: A Brief Look Back at 2015

      This is the time of year when we look back and go, “Wow. How did this all ever happen?” Or something to that effect. And after about a month of PC-BSD daily use, the verdict so far (subject to appeal) is overwhelmingly positive with a couple of bumps (e.g., someday I will turn off tap-to-click on my touchpad).

      Of course when I look back on the year, I can only look back as far as the time I have been using BSD. It wouldn’t be fair to go all the way back — one time back in the aughts, by some miracle, I got NetBSD to run on a PowerBook G3 until I updated the system and then poof — so this retrospective goes as far back as the month I’ve been using PC-BSD.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • November/December 2015 – Gent and Mexico

      RMS gave his speech “Copyright vs Community” at the Quetelet auditorium, Sint Pietersplein, in Gent, Belgium, on November 17th, to a diverse student audience.

    • Happy GNU Year! Last chance to give in 2015

      Thanks to the free software community’s giving, we have already raised more than $250,000 toward our goal of $450,000 by January 31st, 2016. As we look to the new year, we at the Free Software Foundation are feeling optimistic about our plans for 2016.d

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Glass Half – Brilliant and Hilarious short from the Blender Institute.

      Directed by Beorn Leonard and produced by Ton Roosendaal, Blender’s original founder and chairman of the Blender Foundation, the film is reminiscent in tone of Pixar’s shorts, with the key difference that all assets, including tutorials for some of the techniques used in the film, are free and can be downloaded from Blender’s Cloud storage service.

    • France’s first Digital Law co-created with citizens

      The French draft law Loi Numérique will be presented to the French Parliament on 19 January, after being co-created with citizens through an online public consultation. This is the first law in France resulting from a co-design process.

    • Open Data

      • Northern Ireland launches its open data portal

        Northern Ireland has officially launched its open data portal, OpenDataNI, the goal of which is to provide a global platform where public services and all governmental agencies can publish data.

        This CKan-based portal is now accessible through NIDirect, the official governmental portal for Northern Ireland citizens, which states that it provides ‘a single point of access to public sector information and services’.

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Cloudy With a Chance of Lock-In

    Software as a service to many people is the way to convert what used to be licensed software into a repeat revenue stream and in principle there is nothing wrong with that if done properly (Adobe almost gets it right). But if the internet connection is down and your software no longer works, if the data you painstakingly built up over years goes missing because a service dies or because your account gets terminated for no apparent reason and without any recourse you might come to the same conclusion that I came to: if it requires an online service and is not actually an online product I can do just fine without it.

  • Hysteria on social media as BBC websites go offline

    The BBC experienced a major technical issue on Thursday morning, with all of its websites and several of its digital services offline.

    “We’re aware of a technical issue affecting the BBC website and are working to fix this now. We’ll update you as soon as we can,” the BBC press office said on Twitter.

    The internet did not cope well with this news.

  • A knighthood for Lynton Crosby: government under fire for political honours

    The government has been accused of turning the honours system into an “old boy’s club” after Lynton Crosby, the political strategist who ran the Conservatives’ 2015 election campaign, was awarded a knighthood.

  • Creationism Evangelist: God Put Contradictions in the Bible to ‘Weed Out’ the Atheists

    Young Earth creationism evangelist Kent Hovind asserted this week that God had purposefully put contradictions in the Bible to “weed out” non-believers.

  • Science

    • Heartfelt rationality

      The various branches of the alternative industry make a lot of claims, and a lot of money off these claims. We looked into homeopathy, healing, detox, acupuncture and strange panacea machines supposedly utilizing bio-resonance or quantum mechanics. (Astrologists, psychics and mediums got a showing too, but let’s leave them alone to lick their wounds for now.)

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Dad Arrested, His 2-yo Daughter Taken, for Successfully Treating Her Cancer with Cannabis Oil

      As cannabis is taken more seriously as a medicine and a treatment, more people are taking a chance and using it as a treatment for terminal illnesses. This treatment has had overwhelmingly positive results for countless people who had no other hope of recovery. Every day more stories and scientific studies are appearing from all over the world where people of all ages, even young children, are cured of life-threatening illnesses with cannabis oil.

    • Australia’s big win in Philip Morris plain packaging arbitration

      Plain packaging has been a hot topic on the Kat this year, most recently with Guest Kat Niko’s post on the topic here. But if you thought that would be the last on the matter in 2015, think again. From the AmeriKat’s colleague, Jin Ooi (Allen & Overy), comes news of the latest development concerning Australia’s tobacco plain packaging legislation. The latest news saw a “win” for the Australian government against Philip Morris Asia Limited (“PM Asia”) in which the arbitral tribunal seated in Singapore issued a unanimous decision that it has no jurisdiction to hear Philip Morris’ claim.

  • Security

    • Don’t believe the hype: That GRUB backspace bug wasn’t a big deal

      You can hack any Linux system just by pressing the backspace key 28 times! That’s what some sites would have you believe after an unfortunate GRUB bug was recently made public. But this won’t actually allow you to easily own any Linux system.

    • Researcher criticises ‘weak’ crypto in Internet of Things alarm system

      Security shortcomings in an internet-connected burglar alarm system from UK firm Texecom leave it open to hack attacks, an engineer turned security researcher warns.

      Luca Lo Castro said he had come across shortcomings in the encryption of communication after buying Texecom’s Premier Elite Control Panel and ComIP module and assembling it.

      To be able to remote control the alarm system remotely, you open a firewall port in the router and do a port forwarding to the internet. But this allows the mobile app to directly connect to the ComIP module over an unencrypted connection, Lo Castro discovered.

      Using WireShark, he said he had discovered that data traffic between the mobile app and the control panel is done in clear text or encoded to BASE64. That means potentially confidential information like the alarm control panel (UDL) password, device name and location are exposed, as a blog post by Lo Castro explains.

    • New Year’s Eve security updates
    • The current state of boot security

      I gave a presentation at 32C3 this week. One of the things I said was “If any of you are doing seriously confidential work on Apple laptops, stop. For the love of god, please stop.” I didn’t really have time to go into the details of that at the time, but right now I’m sitting on a plane with a ridiculous sinus headache and the pseudoephedrine hasn’t kicked in yet so here we go.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Sorry Bro, Maybe Next Week: Keep Calm and Troll ISIS

      Reminding us the Revolution may well be tweeted if not televised, ISIS again used its much-vaunted social media savvy this weekend to broadcast the first new online rallying cry since May. In the 24-minute address delivered through ISIS-aligned media accounts, leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told his audience, “Be confident that God will grant victory to those who worship him, and hear the good news that our state is doing well. We urgently call upon every Muslim to join the fight, especially those in the land of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia).” The message was re-tweeted in English by Iyad El-Baghdadi, a prominent human rights activist and ISIS foe initially confused by many online with al-Baghdadi himself. Soon after posting the ISIS message, he started getting mock replies from folks who preferred to join a growing, deft flurry of online anti-ISIS activity aimed at proving that “making fun of the enemy is the best way of defeating them.”

    • Erdogan’s Family Caught in New Scandal

      The clan relations principle has been a prime factor in business affairs for centuries in numerous Islamic and Middle Eastern countries. Unfortunately, in recent months we’ve often witnessed evidence that in Turkey the family of Tayyip Erdogan has been transformed in some sort of carnivorous octopus that has not simply entangled the Turkish economy and politics, but has also extended its tentacles far beyond the state.

      It is hardly necessary to remind anyone of all the scandals in which the members of this family have been engaged. Here are just some examples of its connections with the Islamic State (ISIL) and other terrorist groups:

      Erdogan’s daughter – Sümeyye Erdogan – has been running a covert military hospital, which is treating Islamic State militants.

    • Syria Rebel Leader’s Assassination a Major Blow to US Agenda

      News of the death of prominent anti-Assad commander (or ‘terrorist,’ ‘rebel,’ ‘opposition commander,’ etc.) Zahran Alloush has the potential to radically alter the nature of the war in Syria.

    • Prior to San Bernardino Attack, Many Were Trained to Spot Terrorists; None Did

      These behavioral indicators have become central to the U.S. counterterrorism prevention strategy, yet critics say they don’t work. “Quite simply, they rely on generalized correlations found in selectively chosen terrorists without using control groups to see how often the correlated behaviors identified occur in the non-terrorist population,” Michael German, a former FBI agent who is currently a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, told The Intercept.

      The trainings are based on flawed theories that just don’t stand up to empirical scrutiny, according to German. “The FBI, [National Counter-Terrorism Center], and [Department of Homeland Security] promote these theories despite the fact they have been refuted in numerous academic studies over the past 20 years,” he said.

    • Fire engulfs Dubai hotel ahead of New Year celebrations

      A huge fire has engulfed a 63-storey hotel in central Dubai ahead of a New Year’s Eve firework display.

      Despite the blaze at the Address hotel, the display at the nearby Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, started as planned at midnight.

    • New Year’s Eve Pyrotechnics Go On Despite Raging Hotel Fire in Dubai

      A massive fire was blazing at a 63-story hotel in downtown Dubai on Thursday night, near where tens of thousands of people had gathered for the world’s largest New Year’s Eve fireworks display.

      According to the Associated Press, “It was not immediately clear what caused the fire, which ran up at least 20 stories of the building, which would likely have been packed with people because of its clear view of the 828-meter (905-yard) tall Burj Khalifa.”

    • Iraq’s ‘Liberated’ Ramadi: 80% Destroyed, 30% Still ISIS-Held

      The vital capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province, once a city of half a million people, Ramadi has in the past seven months fell to ISIS, was surrounded and bombarded, and now (mostly) recovered by Iraq. As Iraqi officials tout their victory, however, it seems what they really won is a big repair bill.

    • Over 51,000 Killed in Iraq during 2015

      Antiwar.com has found that at least 51,738 people were killed across Iraq during 2015, while at least 19,651 were wounded. The number of fatalities reported was slightly higher than in 2014, but the number of wounded was substantially lower. These figures should be taken as very rough estimates and probably low estimates at that.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Ten Weather Extremes That Defined Hottest Year Ever Recorded

      From droughts to floods to mega-storms, extreme weather over the past 365 days raises disturbing questions about future of climate chaos

    • Erin Brockovich: California Methane Gas Leak Is Worst U.S. Environmental Disaster Since BP Oil Spill

      Runaway natural gas leak above Los Angeles has emitted more than 150 million pounds of methane since late October.

    • Sick of El Niño? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, Warns NASA

      The El Niño currently wreaking havoc around the world is forecast to only worsen in 2016 — and NASA experts fear it could get as bad as the most destructive El Niño ever.

      A new satellite image of the weather system “bears a striking resemblance to one from December 1997″ — the worst El Niño on record — which was blamed for extreme weather, including record rainfall in California and Peru, heat waves across Australia, and fires in Indonesia. The severe conditions resulted in an estimated 23,000 deaths in 1997 and 1998.

    • BP partially evacuates North Sea Valhall oil field

      BP is partially evacuating an oilfield in the North Sea because a barge has broken loose and is drifting out of control in rough weather.

      BP says it employs 235 people in the Valhall oilfield but it cannot confirm the number of people who were being evacuated Thursday.

    • One dead and two injured after huge wave hits North Sea oil platform

      One worker has died and two others have been injured after huge waves hit a North sea platform. Statoil today confirmed the news after initially reporting three workers had been injured.

    • North Sea workers airlifted as barge drifts near Valhall field

      The barge was 110m in length and 30m wide and there were fears that it could ram one of the rigs.

    • BP Evacuates Employees From Oilfield in North Sea as Barge Detaches

      Oil and gas giant British Petroleum (BP) is partially evacuating its Valhall oilfield in the North Sea as one of its barges is drifting in the sea uncontrolled, local media reported Thursday.

    • Forests of southwest US face mass die-off by 2100

      California’s drought has already imperilled many of its trees, and within 80 years climate change could destroy the evergreen forests of the entire US southwest.

    • Freak storm pushes North Pole 50 degrees above normal to melting point

      This story has been updated to include buoy measurements that confirm the North Pole temperature climbed above 32 degrees on Wednesday.

    • The 5 Worst Fracking Moments of 2015

      Once again, in 2015 the oil and gas industry showed us the ludicrous lengths they will go to in order to frack more communities. In the process, they created ample fodder for Comedy Central, and the likes of John Oliver, John Stewart, Trevor Noah and Larry Wilmore. Here are a few of the worst head-shaking stunts that made the news in 2015:

    • El Niño and war drive aid agencies to the brink

      Governments must act immediately to end conflicts and counter the impact of climate disruption so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe affecting millions.

    • The Paris Climate Agreement: Hope or Hype?

      Perhaps the most realistic assessment was posted by Guardian columnist George Monbiot on the day of the final deal. “By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle,” he wrote. “By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.” It is clear that those who are praising the agreement and those who emphasize its shortcomings live in almost entirely different worlds.

      [...]

      Still, the means for limiting average warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees are largely aspirational, and this is reflected in the agreement’s language throughout. Words like “clarity,” “transparency,” “integrity,” “consistency,” and “ambition” appear throughout the text, but there’s very little to assure that these aspirations can be realized. UN staff are to create all manner of global forums, working groups and expert panels to move the discussions forward but, as was clear prior to Paris, the main focus is to instill a kind of moral obligation to drive diplomats and their governments to take further steps. Article 15 of the agreement proposes a “mechanism to facilitate implementation and promote compliance,” but this takes the form of an internationally representative “expert-based” committee that is to be “transparent, non-adversarial and non-punitive.” This compliance “mechanism” is described in three short sentences in the main Agreement and another couple of paragraphs in the Adoption document; as predicted, there’s nothing to legally pressure intransigent countries or corporations to do much of anything.

    • 5 New Year’s Resolutions For Reporting On Climate Change

      Whether they were covering extreme weather events or presidential campaign events, media outlets often came up short in their reporting on climate change this year. But 2016 will be a fresh opportunity for improved climate coverage. With that in mind, here are five resolutions for reporters looking to provide better coverage of climate change in the new year.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Donald Trump Thanks Conspiracy Site For ‘Amazing Honor’ Of Being Its Man Of The Year

      WorldNetDaily’s founder and editor Joseph Farah is one of the nation’s leading purveyors of “birther” conspiracy theories — the repeatedly debunked notion that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya — publishing more than 600 posts on the topic. Even after Obama released his long-form birth certificate indicating his birth in Hawaii, Farah claimed that this proved nothing. Trump has frequently repeated these claims and Politico reported in 2011 that Farah frequently advised the billionaire investor and former reality show host.

    • Putin’s Magnificent Messaging Machine

      This is the new reality that I helped research while working with Columbia Journalism School’s “ RT Watch” project. For the better part of 2015, the project compiled RT’s output, attempting to examine how, or whether, RT deserves its reputation as a bulwark for Kremlin-friendly programming. Alongside a group of other Columbia graduate students, we watched, read, and consumed RT for hours a day, months on end. We piled our findings—the deceits, the distractions, the direction RT takes—over at the RT Watch blog, along with assorted social media accounts. As one observer said, we watched RT so you didn’t have to. After subsuming ourselves in the entire RT gestalt, I’d like to share some of the things I found.

  • Censorship

    • No, ISIS Isn’t Worth Sacrificing the First Amendment Over

      But America’s principles should be why we hold the nation to such a high standard, not give it a pass for good intentions and high-minded ideals. We say we’re for free speech, so we should mean it. Unfortunately, as we bomb and invade, so we sometimes violate free speech. For most of our history, we’ve managed to at least be better than the rest of the world when it comes to allowing free expression.

    • Twitter tightens rules on trolling and terror talk

      TWITTER IS CLOSING OFF 2015 with updated guidance on what it will and will not stand for on its microchatting pages.

      The Twitter rules have been updated and blogged about. The message is that change is necessary if the firm is to manage free speech and keep people happy.

      “We believe that protection from abuse and harassment is a vital part of empowering people to freely express themselves on Twitter,” said Megan Cristina, who is dubbed a Twitter director for Trust + Safety.

    • Twitter clarifies rules on banned content, abusive behavior

      Twitter Inc has clarified its definition of abusive behavior that will prompt it to delete accounts, banning “hateful conduct” that promotes violence against specific groups.

    • Google Asked to Remove 558 Million “Pirate” Links in 2015

      Copyright holders asked Google to remove more than 560,000,000 allegedly infringing links from its search engine in 2015. The staggering number is an increase of 60% compared to the year before. According to Google the continued surge is a testament that the DMCA takedown process is working, but some copyright holders disagree.

    • Ursula Gauthier: foreign media must fight China censorship, says expelled journalist

      French magazine journalist – ousted by Beijing after writing about repression of the Uighur minority – says reporters must find a way around barriers

    • Expelled French journalist ‘surreal’ ahead of China departure

      A French reporter forced to leave China by authorities after she criticised government policy in violence-wracked, mainly Muslim Xinjiang, said she had been left with a feeling of “surreality” Thursday ahead of her departure.

    • Expelled French journalist prepares to leave China

      A French reporter forced to leave China after she was accused of supporting terrorism for criticising government policy in violence-wracked, mainly Muslim Xinjiang, was preparing to leave on Thursday.

    • French journalist expelled from China for ‘supporting terrorism’ prepares to leave

      A French reporter forced to leave China after she was accused of supporting terrorism for criticising government policy in violence-wracked Xinjiang was preparing to leave on Thursday.

      Ursula Gauthier wrote an article in the magazine L’Obs questioning official comparisons between global terrorism and the unrest in Xinjiang.

    • China passes controversial counter-terrorism law

      China’s parliament passed a controversial new anti-terrorism law on Sunday that requires technology firms to hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government and allows the military to venture overseas on counter-terror operations.

      Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists, especially in its unruly Western region of Xinjiang, where hundreds have died in violence in the past few years.

  • Privacy

    • BREAKING: The United States Spies on Israel

      So that’s that. The NSA spied on Netanyahu. That’s a nothingburger. Of course they spied on Netanyahu. And the NSA says that they properly minimized the congressional end of any conversations between Netanyahu and a member of Congress. Since conservatives insist that we should take their word for this in general, why shouldn’t we take their word for it now? Wake me up if it turns out there’s anything more to this story.

    • EXCLUSIVE: Rubio Defends NSA Spying on Netanyahu In Private, Condemns It In Public

      Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) privately defended the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he publicly condemned the practice.

    • Ben Carson: NSA Spying on Israel ‘Is Truly Disgraceful’
    • Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

      The latest chapter of Lawrence Lessig’s career ended in November, when the Harvard Law School professor concluded his bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. That effort centered on his campaign to reform Congressional politics. Prior to that, Prof. Lessig’s scholarship, teaching and activism focused on technology policy and the Internet. He has argued for greater sharing of creative content, the easing of restrictions in areas such as copyright, and the concept of Net Neutrality. Prof. Lessig, who founded the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, is the author of numerous books on technology, including “Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace,” and “The Future of Ideas: the Fate of the Commons in a Connected World.”

    • Tor project opens up bug bounty program

      DARK WEB GATEKEEPER AND PRIVACY ENABLER the Tor Project is taking a leaf out of the rest of the industry and is offering security researchers prizes for bringing its weaknesses to its attention.

      All eyes are on Tor already. The privacy-aware browser is already a hot topic at the National Security Agency (NSA), and has a price on its head in Russia. With such attention, it makes sense that the outfit behind it would seek to get ahead of the game.

    • How 2016’s war on encryption will change your way of life

      But encryption is now in the spotlight. Should the maths that underpins it be banned in the name of foiling terrorist plans, or should we accept that there is some information our governments will never know?

    • Dems brush off latest spying report

      Top Democrats in Congress are brushing off a report that U.S. intelligence intercepted communications between Israeli government officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

      Rep. Eliot Engel (N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it is no secret that the U.S. and Israel spy on each other, even though they are allies.

      “I’m not surprised,” he told The Hill. “I kind of think the report is much to do about nothing.”

      Engel, a staunch supporter of Israel, said he met twice behind closed doors with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer during the heated debate over the nuclear agreement with Iran. He said Dermer presented the Israeli government’s case against the deal.

    • U.S. House panel seeks information on NSA spying report

      A U.S. House of Representatives committee asked the National Security Agency on Wednesday for information about a media report that the agency, while spying on Israeli officials, also intercepted communications between the Israelis and members of Congress.

      In a letter to NSA Director Michael Rogers, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and subcommittee Chairman Ron DeSantis said the story in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal raised “questions concerning the processes NSA employees follow in determining whether intercepted communications involved Members of Congress.”

    • Rubio Outraged by Spying on Israel’s Government, OK with Mass Surveillance of Americans

      This news sparked a denunciation by Florida Senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio. “Obviously people read this report, they have a right to be concerned this morning about it,” said Rubio on Fox News Wednesday morning. “They have a right to be concerned about the fact that while some leaders around the world are no longer being targeted, one of our strongest allies in the Middle East – Israel – is. I actually think it might be worse than what some people might think, but this is an issue that we’ll keep a close eye on, and the role that I have in the intelligence committee.”

    • Encryption in the Balance: 2015 in Review

      If you’ve spent any time reading about encryption this year, you know we’re in the midst of a “debate.” You may have also noted that it’s a strange debate, one that largely replays the same arguments made nearly 20 years ago, when the government abandoned its attempts to mandate weakened encryption and backdoors. Now some parts of the government have been trying to revisit that decision in the name of achieving “balance” between user security and public safety. The FBI, for example, acknowledges that widespread adoption of encryption has benefits for users, but it also claims its investigations of terrorists, criminals, and other wrongdoers will “go dark” unless it has a legal authority and the technical capability to read encrypted data. But because the principles of what makes encryption secure haven’t changed, the only “balance” that can satisfy the government’s goals is no balance at all—it would require dramatically rolling back the spread of strong encryption.

    • Americans Evaluate the Balance between Security and Civil Liberties

      In the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 54 percent of Americans say it can be necessary for the government to sacrifice freedoms to fight terrorism; 45 percent disagree. About half of Americans think it is acceptable to allow warrantless government analysis of internet activities and communications—even of American citizens—in order to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. About 3 in 10 are against this type of government investigation.

    • NSA Critics Gleefully Accuse Surveillance Hawks of Hypocrisy

      Privacy advocates are accusing politicians generally deferential to the government’s mass surveillance programs of hypocrisy after leading hawks expressed concern about the possible collection of their own communications.

      Collection on members of Congress, revealed this week by The Wall Street Journal, was performed by the National Security Agency with a wink-and-nod from the White House, which was intent on countering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to derail the Iran nuclear deal.

    • The Dark Web — interview on TRT World
    • Victories in California and Virginia Alongside a Setback in Florida: 2015 in Review

      Congress took action in 2015 to address privacy and transparency, but state legislatures emerged as the nation’s leaders for policy innovation. From Virginia to California, states adopted new policies to reclaim digital privacy, advance government transparency, and protect free expression. These new laws both protect residents of these states, and also provide models for other jurisdictions to emulate.

    • Chaffetz, Stewart want answers about NSA spying on Congress, world leaders
    • Republicans fast to object to NSA spying when it involves Israel

      A recent report has revealed that the National Security Agency intercepted communications involving Israeli officials and members of Congress. Republicans are now requesting that the NSA provide them with the details.

    • Congress to Investigate Report That US Spied on Lawmakers

      The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has opened an investigation into U.S. surveillance practices following a report in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week that the National Security Agency (NSA), an intelligence agency in the executive branch, may have intentionally swept up communications between U.S. lawmakers and Israeli officials.

    • U.S. Rep. Peter King calls for NSA to brief Congress

      U.S. Rep. Peter King said reports that the National Security Agency dropped in on private conversations of congressmen while spying on Israel raise questions about whether the lawmakers were the real target — and the legality of the whole operation.

    • NSA spying on US and Israeli politicians stirs Congress from Christmas slumbers

      After two years of doing little about the mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden, the US Congress has sprung into action in less than two days – with investigations into the NSA spying on some the legislature’s members.

    • U.S. lawmakers communiques snared in NSA surveillance of Netanyahu

  • Civil Rights

    • 2015: The Year in Gun Politics

      The politics of guns in 2015 was largely shaped by a series of newsmaking horrible multiple-casualty murders in public places. Each one inspired Democratic Party politicians, including President Obama and frontrunning 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to call for a similar set of what they now call “common sense gun safety” laws (“gun control” has lost its luster since Al Gore’s 2000 presidential loss).

    • New Study Confirms Insidious GOP Racism in 2008 Presidential Race

      A new study clears up any lingering doubt that the Republican Party engaged in the tactic of dogwhistle politics in the 2008 presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. The study, which was published online this month in Public Opinion Quarterly, shows that the McCain campaign’s negative ads about Obama overwhelmingly featured him with a darker skin tone in a subtle attempt to appeal to voters’ racial prejudices.

    • Powerful New York Daily News Cover Actually Understates The Case Against Bill Cosby

      But the cover actually understates the weight of the evidence against Cosby. It’s not just the detailed allegations of more than 50 women that implicates Cosby. He is also implicated by his own description of his conduct.

      Kevin Steele, the Pennsylvania prosecutor who charged Cosby today, relied on Cosby’s own statements to support a charge of Aggravated Indecent Assault. The criminal complain filed by Steele revealed that Cosby told police investigators that he gave Amanda Comstand “one whole pill and one half pill” of “over-the-counter Benadryl” even though he knew the pills would “make him go to sleep right away.” He then acknowledged having sexual contact with her when he knew she would not be fully conscious.

    • This Was the Year Tech Became the Bad Guy

      In the first season of Veep, the brilliant political comedy from HBO, Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gets, um, wind that in the coming year, a hurricane will share her name. “Shit!” she says. “What if it hits and we get headlines saying, ‘Selina causing large-scale devastation?’” Needless to say, her staff eventually gets the name of the storm changed.

      It’s hilarious, and it’s consistent with the show’s portrayal of much of Washington as an endless cycle of image control and crisis management. How much should we trust it?

    • South Korea’s Betrayal of the “Comfort Women”

      On December 28th, 2015, the foreign ministers of Japan and Korea, suddenly and hastily announced a “resolution” to the “comfort women” issue, women trafficked and exploited as sexual slaves by the Japanese Army during WWII. This involved an apology by the Japanese prime minister, and the creation of fund for reparations.

      “The issue of ‘comfort women’ was a matter which, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, severely injured the honor and dignity of many women,” said the Japanese Foreign Minister. 1 billion yen ($8.3M) was also promised to the fund to assist the 46 surviving comfort women.

    • Give a Drunk (or Anyone) a Free Ride Home on New Year’s Eve, Accept a Tip, Face $500 Fine

      It’s always amusing, if only bitterly, when government shows its true colors of obdurate opposition to human safety and happiness in the name of its bogus authority.

    • A History Defined by the Trade in Human Beings

      The history of the US is soaked in blood.

      [...]

      As Ned and Constance Sublette make clear in their comprehensive and exhaustive history, The American Slave Coast, that profit was not only determined by the labor of the enslaved but also in the slaves’ bodies themselves, including the potential production of more slaves. The authors call this latter status the “capitalized womb.” In a manner similar to the projection of an animal’s potential reproduction capabilities through several generations, the potential offspring of enslaved girls and women was considered when they were sold and when their owners applied for credit. As an example, supposedly when one kills a hen with their vehicle in some countries, the driver of the vehicle pays the farmer who owned the hen for the hen, but also for all the chickens the hen might have produced and another generation that those chickens would have produced. There is a certain formula used by the legal system in these situations to determine the sum total owed by the offending driver. Slaveowners and traders also agreed upon such a formula in the antebellum United States.

    • Corbyn’s Enemies Within: Working Class Heroes or Right Wing Populists?

      Although extreme, Danczuk, unfortunately, is far from anomalous within the Labour Party at present, both in parliament and in local councils. Following the expulsion of socialists in the 1980s and 1990s and, later, the creation of Tony Blair’s nefarious “New Labour”, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) has been dominated by neoliberal apologists and class collaborationists. What differentiates Danczuk from this clique, however, is his constant and calculated appeals to a speciously defined working class culture in order to justify his divisive views.

    • A Most Unhappy New Year at Guantanamo

      Reuters reporters Charles Levinson and David Rohde (the former New York Times reporter who was held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan for seven months, until he escaped) cite Ba Odah’s case in their latest article, writing, “Pentagon officials have been throwing up bureaucratic obstacles to thwart the president’s plan to close Guantanamo.”

    • Horrifying Video Shows Cops Sic K-9 on Infant Daughter of a Man they Mistook for a Suspect

      Before Arenas-Alvarez could communicate to the officers that his infant daughter was in the car, the “two minutes” had passed and Sgt. Mitchell arrived with his Belgian Malinois. Almost as soon as he exited the vehicle, Mithcell released the K-9 into the SUV of an entirely innocent man and his daughter.
      Photo Credit: c/o The Free Thought Project

      Henderson, NV — On January 30, 2015, a health food store in Henderson called the police after a disgruntled customer, attempting to return some protein powder, allegedly threatened to rob them. The store described the suspect to police as a black male wearing a black and tan t-shirt who left in an SUV.
      Shop ▾

      As police responded to the call, they quickly stopped the first person they saw, who happened to be Arturo Arenas-Alvarez. Arenas-Alvarez had just pulled up in the shopping center to do some shopping when police drew their weapons and demanded he put his hands in the air and step toward them.

      Arenas-Alvarez did not appear to understand why multiple armed men were pointing their guns at him, so one officer asked him in Spanish to approach the vehicle.

      Before Arenas-Alvarez makes it all the way to the vehicle, officers realized they had the wrong guy.

      [...]

      Below is the horrifying video of the incident which illustrates the sheer violent and unaccountable nature of police in the US.

    • 2015: The Year in Fear

      Criminals, terrorists, and madmen with guns—how fears of violence reshaped American politics

    • The GOP Has Become the Party From George Orwell’s Nightmares

      When an entire field of candidates tend to thrive on bullshit (especially the current front-runners), it is not at all surprising that they have certain reliable terms that vilify critics of their bullshit and shut down debate. The truth is, Republicans have long utilized a manipulative phraseology, full of euphemisms and doublespeak, used either to shut down criticism and debate, as shown above, or to acerbate the listener’s emotional state — think “baby parts” and “death panels” — or provide a positive light on something that is generally frowned upon. (Ergo: Tax-avoiding billionaires become “job-creators.”) The GOP has become truly masterful at distorting political discussion through language, and at each Republican debate, just about every candidate showcases this manipulation. In George Orwell’s classic essay on this subject, “Politics and the English Language,” he seems to describe modern Republicans to a tee, repeating the same tired, yet convenient phrases (the phrases have changed, of course).

    • Texas Legislator Claimed Rape Doesn’t Exist In Marriage

      Texas State Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R) apologized Wednesday after the Texas Observer published a 2008 quote from an online post in which the lawmaker joked that nothing a husband does to his wife could possibly be rape.

      The rape “joke,” accompanied by a yellow smiley emoticon giving a thumbs-up sign, was : “Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!”

      Stickland told the publication that he ““severely regrets” the comments now. “I do not feel that way today. I can only repent and ask for forgiveness from the people it offended and hurt. Rape is serious and should never be joked about the way that I did regardless of my age,” he explained. Stickland’s official biography indicates that he is now 32 years old.

    • Citizenship-stripping on the Rise Worldwide

      The debate may prove to be academic—a new opinion poll shows 86 percent of French people saying oui to the idea. If approved, the amendment might still be challenged at the European Court of Human Rights, but don’t hold your breath: Citizenship-stripping in the name of fighting terrorism is on the rise worldwide, including in Europe.

    • What About the Police Crime Rate?

      The failure to indict a police officer for yet another killing of a young, Black person – this time a child, 12-year-old Tamir Rice – should outrage us and cause us to look more deeply at the structures that make both Rice’s shooting and the non-indictment mutually reinforcing acts. Similarly, the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the brilliant organizing within it compels us to look at the relationship between crime and policing in a new way: it forces our society to confront how it allows the police to get away with committing crimes against Black and brown communities.

      When it comes to policing, civil and human rights lawyers are myth busters. We work with organizers, activists and journalists, to bust storied myths, passed down through generations, that attempt to normalize unaccountable police power and the abuses that inevitably flow from it. We also bust the myths about Black and brown criminality that many people believe are true, but simply aren’t.

    • Law, Order, and Social Suicide

      Want a ringside seat for the war on crime? Go to killedbypolice.net. A few hours ago (as I write this), the site had listed 1,191 police killings in the U.S. this year. I just looked again.

      The total is up one.

    • The most important movies of 2015 were not in any theater

      Every December, I make a list of what I think are the best movies released that year. It has never seemed so beside the point as it does this time, looking back at 12 months in which the moving images that actually mattered — the ones that needed to change the national conversation and maybe even started to — weren’t on multiplex screens or dialed up through our cable guide but came crashing through our browsers, our cellphones, and on the nightly news.

      To me, the most important movie of 2015 was the police car dash-cam video of the July arrest of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, in Prairie View, Texas. Not just the three minutes or so of the altercation with a white police officer that resulted in Bland’s being taken to the local jail, where she allegedly hung herself three days later, but the entire 52-minute expanse of the tape, for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment.

    • Christmas with Assange

      Confined in Ecuador’s embassy in London, Assange shows a patent physical and psychological deterioration. But with his intellectual voracity and capacity of attention intact, he seeks international and Argentinean support.

    • Jeb Bush Says No Need For Federal Investigation In Tamir Rice Case

      Former Florida governor and current Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told reporters that a grand jury’s decision not to indict police officers in the shooting of 12-year old Tamir Rice shows that “the process worked.”

      “If there is a grand jury that looks at all the facts and doesn’t indict maybe there’s reasons for that,” Bush said Wednesday night in Lexington, South Carolina. “I don’t believe that every grand jury is racist.”

    • Los Angeles Saw a Huge Crime Increase in 2015. Or Did It?

      It’s also sort of stunning that apparently violent crime was basically flat in the second half of the year. That means violent crime was up about 40 percent from January-June, and then dropped to 0 percent in July-December. This is…a little hard to believe. And no, the deployment of 200 more Metro cops can’t even remotely account for that.

      Anyway, I’ll be curious to see what happens next year. Maybe this whole thing is just an artifact of better crime statistics. Hard to say. In any case, the mayor says LA is safer than at any time since the 1950s. I’m not sure how he figures that, but apparently that means there’s nothing to worry about. Go about your business, citizens.

    • Christian Religious Liberty Is More Popular Than Religious Liberty For Everyone Else

      Most Americans believe Muslims deserve religious freedom, according to a poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 61 percent said religious liberty was important for people of Muslim faith, though the number is dwarfed by the 82 percent who believe Christians’ religious liberty is important.

      The figure wasn’t drastically different along political lines either, as 60 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats supported religious protections for Muslims. Those numbers for Christians were 88 and 83 percent, respectively.

      “These numbers seem to be part of a growing climate of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States,” Madihha Ahussain, an attorney for Muslim Advocates, a California-based civil rights group, told AP. “This climate of hatred has contributed to dozens of incidents of anti-Muslim violence in recent weeks.”

    • Neighbors and Family Recount Chilling Details in Chicago Police Shooting

      Eyewitness accounts from neighbors appear to confirm a Chicago police officer began shooting into the home of Quintonio Legrier and Bettie Jones from several feet away while standing on the sidewalk. That contradicts the police department’s early account, which suggests one of the officers opened fire in the entryway after Legrier confronted him.

      Legrier, a 19-year-old engineering student, and Jones, a 55-year-old mother of five and workers’ rights activist, were shot on Saturday when officers responded to a domestic disturbance call at their home around 4:30 a.m. Jones opened the door when police responded to a call from Legrier’s father.

    • Male Legislator Mocks His Colleague’s Nipples In Push To Ban Public Exposure

      Members of New Hampshire’s Republican-controlled state legislature are pushing for a bill that would make it illegal for a woman to show her nipples in public. And while the bill contains an exemption for breast-feeding, that didn’t stop representatives from sharing their opinions on the matter of public breast-feeding on social media Tuesday night.

    • Florida 911 Dispatcher Accidentally Shoots and Kills Daughter

      The Orlando Sentinel reports Sherry Campbell, who works as a 911 dispatcher, told investigators she was awakened by what she thought was a stranger breaking into her home. That noise was actually the sound of her daughter, Ashley Doby, moving about the house. Campbell fired a single shot that fatally struck Doby in the chest.

    • Obama Reportedly Will Move To Expand Gun Background Checks By Executive Order

      In 2015, 457 people died from 353 mass shootings (as of December 17). After Congress blocked legislative efforts, the president will now take executive action to attempt to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals.

    • Police Union Boss on Tamir Rice: ‘Act Like a Thug and You’ll Be Treated Like One’

      His comment calls to mind those made by current and former heads of the Cleveland union, which represents the officers responsible for Rice’s death. Former boss Jeffrey Follmer previously said on MSNBC that Rice was an imminent lethal threat who might have survived had he listened to police commands—even though the 12-year-old boy was given less than one second to react to purely hypothetical orders before he was fired upon. Current boss Steve Loomis had even worse things to say: he called Rice “menacing.”

    • People Are Fed Up: Protests of 2015

      This year saw a flood of passionate, creative, often furious protests, with many in this country focused on racist police and economic inequality. Revisit some of those most powerfully suggesting that, with concerted collective action, change is possible. Take heart. And a peaceful new year.

    • Cops Not Punished After Beating Innocent Child So Bad with Flashlight He’s Permanently Disabled

      Grand Rapids, MI — Suffering permanent physical and mental damage after a Michigan police officer savagely beat his head bloody with a flashlight, an unarmed teen recently filed a federal lawsuit against the cops for violating his Fourth Amendment rights. Although the teen was cleared of the charges against him, none of the officers involved in the beating received any disciplinary action.

    • Reasons to Celebrate: Key Progressive Gains in 2015

      Among the progressive issues that won on local ballots this fall, November 4th, voters approved every initiative to raise the minimum wage in the five states where they appeared.

      The year also saw decisions to have phased-in minimum wage hikes in Los Angeles, Seattle, Oakland, and San Francisco.

      And the Huffington Post points to a recent analysis showing that workers in 14 states will see the minimum wage go up.

      Contributor Erik Sherman wrote previously at Forbes: “With 28 states now supporting minimum wages higher than the federal level, pressure on Congress will increase, while states with lower figures could find themselves economically uncompetitive for workers and, therefore, businesses.”

    • 5 Cities Where Police Reform Efforts Will Play Out in 2016

      In the summer of 2014, a series of incidents of police brutality brought the issue of excessive force into the mainstream national debate. Since then, progress on the reform front has been slow, but still moving. Police shootings in 2015, from that of Walter Scott in South Carolina to Jamar Clark in Minneapolis, have received more attention, from the media, the public, and authorities, than similar cases in previous years. That’s led to a tripling in prosecutions of police officers on murder and manslaughter charges in 2015—there were a total of 18 cops charged this year. This year also saw the White House launch a panel on police reform, which called for more guidelines, training, and spending, but offered little in the way of introspection on how our culture of more laws contributes to endemic police violence.

    • 2015: The Year in Gun Politics

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • #SaveTheInternet – did you e-mail TRAI yet?

      So, you must’ve heard about Facebook’s plan to “bring the Internet to the poor in India” that they’ve named Internet.org/Free Basics. If you’ve read the plan in detail, you’ll see that it isn’t really bringing the Internet to anyone for free. Well, technically it is, but let’s look at the complete picture before we begin celebrating, shall we?

      Fact: “Free basics” is not providing free access to the whole of the Internet.

    • Your New Years Resolution: Tell The EU Not To Undermine The Foundations Of The Internet

      For a few weeks now, we’ve been telling you about a worrisome EU consultation on regulating the internet. That consultation was supposed to end today — but it’s been extended a week. As we noted recently, the survey technology built by the EU Commission had a major bug in it, meaning that many people had their submissions rejected. Based on this, we requested that they extend the survey. We got back two separate responses, the first telling us that they were very sorry, but it would be “impossible” to extend the survey. The second response was that they had agreed to extend the survey one week… but only for people who had run into problems. Given the two conflicting responses, I asked for more information on this (including how they would keep it open only for those people). I also asked if they were planning to announce this anywhere. I was told that it would likely be impossible to make an announcement, and I never heard anything else, as I believe many left for the holidays.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Patent amendments not allowed during court proceedngs, rules Malaysia’s highest court

      It is so easy to get wrapped up in one’s own orbit. What impacts you right here and right now, be it your local weather, your commuter train delays or the decision of your local patents judge, is often as far as your daily horizon ventures. However, it is becoming increasingly important that IP practitioners look further afield as to what is happening in IP law and practice in other jurisdictions. Much like a lion, the IPKat prides itself in bringing news of important decisions from other jurisdictions.

    • The Return of the Patent Troll: 2015 in Review

      The lack of action in Congress was 2015’s biggest disappointment. House and Senate committees both managed to pass reasonable bills aimed at reducing litigation abuse by patent trolls. Meanwhile, opponents of reform tried to muddy the waters by introducing a terrible bill that would make it even harder to challenge bad patents at the Patent Office. In the end, legislative reform efforts stalled over the summer and Congress did nothing. Lawmakers might return to the issue before the next election. With trolls running rampant, we need legislative reform now more than ever.

      While we did not see blockbuster Supreme Court patent decisions like last year, there was some progress in the courts. Most importantly, the lower courts have applied the 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank (which held that abstract ideas do not become patentable simply because they are implemented on generic computers) to invalidate a significant number of abstract software patents. The outlier, of course, is the Eastern District of Texas which is granting motions based on Alice at much lower rates than other courts. This has created an even greater incentive for trolls to flock to that district.

    • Price Controls Will Slow Drug Innovation

      Last session, legislators introduced AB 463, which would have required drug companies to detail the profits and expenses on the development of all treatments that cost more than $10,000. It failed, but it was part of this same anti-gouging approach epitomized in the drug-price ballot initiative.

    • Wikipedia, Again

      I loved the idea of Wikipedia in the early years. I used to read encyclopaediae, the dead-tree-kind, as a boy. My father bought them from door-to-door salesmen. I kept them with me for years. With the Internet and search engines the dead-tree-kinds are pretty well obsolete. When Wikipedia came along, I made a local copy for use in the North. The Internet connection could drop and we were still on the air thanks to a LAMP stack. Kids loved it. I worked at it. It took weeks of sifting through articles and hundreds of thousands of images to remove age-inappropriate content. I did that.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/01/01/gentoo-on-ps4/feed/ 0 Links 9/8/2015: GNOME Search for Executive Director, Many Distro Screenshots, Linux 4.2 RC 6 http://techrights.org/2015/08/09/gnome-search-for-executive-director/ http://techrights.org/2015/08/09/gnome-search-for-executive-director/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2015 00:25:54 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=84457

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • A Look At Daala’s Git Repository, The Lead Developers & Code Count

    While the Daala video coding format backed primarily by Xiph.Org and Mozilla isn’t ready for mainstream use yet, looking at its Git repository does at least reveal some environmental data to discuss.

    While poking around the Daala Git repository this week in looking at the state of affairs, I decided to run GitStats on the code-base for seeing the pace of code entering the mainline code repository, etc. This was mainly done out of pure curiosity and figured the stats would be of interest to other Phoronix readers too. The Daala repository has 277 files made up of 124k lines of code that as of today was done via 1,432 commits and has seen contributions by 47 authors.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice, and the ODF legacy

      Common wisdom has it that sleeping dogs are better kept snoring and I tend to agree. I’m going to do what may seem to be understood as the contrary. I believe it is not the case, as prejudice is something that is hard to fight and tends to stick around dark corners and circles of people with little knowledge of the matter.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • LibreOffice 5, Creative Commons writes the White House, and more news

      In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at the release of LibreOffice 5, a personal food computer, Creative Common’s open letter the President Obama, and more.

    • Open Data

      • Open data initiative to give true picture of election process

        The National Democratic Institute is has announced the launch of the Open Election Data Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to ensure that citizen groups have access to election data that can give a true picture of an election process, including how candidates are certified, how and which voters are registered, what happens on election day, whether results are accurate, and how complaints are resolved.

    • Open Access/Content

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Watch John Oliver Explain Why Washington, DC, Should Be the 51st State

    On Sunday, Last Week Tonight took on the issue of restricted voting rights for Washington D.C. residents, despite the fact they pay federal taxes and have a larger population than some entire states such as Vermont and Wyoming. Even the Dalai Lama once called the situation “quite strange.”

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Researchers Hack into a Linux-Powered Self-Aiming Sniper Rifle

      Two researchers, Michael Auger and Runa Sandvik, will present today, at the Black Hack conference in Las Vegas, their recent findings into the world of computerized weapons security.

    • OPM Wins Pwnie for Most Epic Fail at Black Hat Awards Show
    • DefCon ProxyHam Talk Disappears but Technology is No Secret

      Part of the drama at any Black Hat or DefCon security conference in any given year usually revolves around a talk that is cancelled for some mysterious reason, typically over fears that it could reveal something truly disruptive. Such is the case in 2015 at DefCon with a talk called ProxyHam, which was supposed to reveal technology that could enable an attacker to wireless proxy traffic over long distances, hiding their true location.

    • A chat with Black Hat’s unconventional keynote speaker

      In 2010, Black Hat had its first female keynote, Jane Holl Lute, who served at the time as the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Lute’s first comment about the nature of cyberspace set the tone for her keynote, which was, in characteristic DHS cybersecurity style, tone-deaf to attendee levels of expertise.

    • Uneasy detente between Def Con hackers and ‘feds’

      That led founder Jeff Moss to call for a “cooling off period” during which “feds” avoided coming near the annual conference in Las Vegas.

    • Design flaw in Intel processors opens door to rootkits, researcher says

      A design flaw in the x86 processor architecture dating back almost two decades could allow attackers to install a rootkit in the low-level firmware of computers, a security researcher said Thursday. Such malware could be undetectable by security products.

    • Why Your Mac Is More Vulnerable to Malware Than You Think

      The attack would enable a hacker to remotely target computers with malware that would both go undetected by security scanners and would afford the attacker a persistent hold on a system, even when it undergoes firmware and operating system updates. Because firmware updates require the assistance of the existing firmware to install, any malware in the firmware could block updates from being installed or write itself to a new update. Zetter reports that the only way to eliminate malware that’s embedded in a computer’s main firmware would be to re-flash the chip that contains the firmware.

    • ‘Zero-day’ stockpiling puts us all at risk

      The recent dump of emails from Hacking Team sheds new light on the extent of government involvement in the international market for zero-days. Rather than disclosing these vulnerabilities to software makers, so that they can be fixed, government agencies buy and then stockpile zero-days.

    • What’s wrong with the web? — authentication

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Outsourcing the Kill Chain: Eleven Drone Contractors Revealed

      Bureau reporters Crofton Black and Abigail Fielding-Smith name eleven companies that have won hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to plug a shortage in personnel needed to analyze the thousands of hours of streaming video gathered daily from the remotely piloted aircraft that hover over war zones around the world: Advanced Concepts Enterprises, BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, Intrepid Solutions, L-3 Communications, MacAulay-Brown, SAIC, Transvoyant, Worldwide Language Resources and Zel Technologies. (see details below)

    • US Drone Strikes Kill Seven in North Waziristan

      According to officials familiar with the situation, US drones fired a pair of missiles against a house in Datta Khel today, destroying the building and killing at least seven people. Two others were wounded.

    • Brian Terrell: US Drone Campaign Needs To Be Acknowledged A Failure – Interview

      The assassination drone campaign on the tribal areas of Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan has been one of the controversial plans of the US government in the recent years.

      The White House, State Department and Pentagon officials maintain that the drone attacks are aimed at targeting the Al-Qaeda terrorists in these countries and crushing their strongholds; however, figures indicate that the majority of the victims of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles dispatched to the region are civilians. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has recently revealed that between 2004 and 2015, there have been 418 drone strikes against Pakistan alone, resulting in the killing of 2,460 to 3,967 people, including at least 423 civilians. That’s while some sources put the number of civilian casualties in Pakistan during the 11-year period at 962.

    • US often does not know who drone attacks kill

      “Signature strikes” are drone attacks based solely on a target’s behaviour with the identity of the target not known. Sometimes such an attack may hit a high value target but at other times they may kill innocent civilians.

    • July Drone Report: Casualties Spike in Afghanistan, Strikes Increase in Somalia

      American drone strikes killed hundreds of people in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia in July, according to a report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a London-based nonprofit. The TBIJ produces monthly reports about highly secretive U.S. drone operations around the globe as part of its goal to provide the public “with the knowledge and facts about the way in which important institutions in our society operate, so that they can be fully informed citizens.”

    • US-Backed Corporations Make Huge Profits From Drones Killing Innocents

      Unmanned, remotely-operated drones supplied by private corporations are hugely profitable and attractive to those without conscience in the US government, activist Melinda Pillsbury-Foster told Sputnik.

    • One year on, drone attacks against ISIS increasing

      Drones appear to have an expanding role in the fight against Islamic State, although it’s unclear what impact they are having on the war itself.

      One year after President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes against ISIS targets, those airstrikes by the U.S. and its coalition partners, including Canada, have killed 15,000 ISIS supporters, the coalition claims.

    • UK hopes drones buzz will prompt lift-off

      Arpas says it has about 200 members, mostly small businesses and individuals, who form the country’s enthusiastic cottage industry. However, Britain’s two big aerospace groups, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, are also developing drones for commercial purposes.

    • US military launches first Syria drone strike from base in Turkey
    • US drone bombs IS target after taking off from Turkey: Turkish official

      The U.S. military launched its first strike against Islamic State from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, the Pentagon said, reflecting a deepening security relationship between Washington and Ankara in the region.

    • U.S. drone strikes from Turkey
    • Hawke hones his craft as drone launcher in ‘Good Kill’

      Bold, honest and disturbing, “Good Kill,” in its own modest fashion, is one of the most memorable American films I’ve seen thus far in 2015.

    • Defence Minister Simon Coveney accused of involving Ireland in the international arms trade

      Mr Coveney has revealed plans to open the country up as a “testing zone” for “advanced military and weapons guidance systems, including drones, submarine drones and other such high-tech hardware”

    • ‘Iraq airstrikes won’t defeat ISIS, only kill civilians’ – anti-war group

      Peace activists have condemned the British government’s campaign of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq, insisting continued bombing of the region will fail to defeat the terror group and lead to further civilian fatalities.

    • Air Force Moves Aggressively On Lasers

      All branches of the military really want laser weapons. But they don’t all want them for the same missions. What struck me after a recent conference here was how differently the US Air Force is approaching lasers.

    • Obama: Choice over Iran Nuclear Deal is Between Diplomacy and War
    • To press for Iran nuclear deal, Obama invokes Iraq war

      President Obama lashed out at critics of the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday, saying many of those who backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq now want to reject the Iran accord and put the Middle East on the path toward another war.

      Obama also said that if Congress rejects the deal, it will undermine America’s standing in global diplomacy, leaving the United States isolated and putting Israel in even greater peril.

      While calling the nuclear accord with Iran “the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated,” Obama also seemed to turn the vote on the deal into a referendum on the U.S. invasion of Iraq a dozen years ago, a decision he portrayed as the product of a “mind-set characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy.”

    • Address legitimate injustice first, then see if the ideologues need to be bombed

      The unprecedented power of the internet is staggering. Asked by Nick Dry, prosecuting, why he needed so many rounds of ammunition, Lyburd replied glibly: “I was watching videos on YouTube and the Americans, they have thousands. You can shoot 100 rounds in a few seconds.” Lyburd is aged just nineteen, as young as some of the recruits attracted to Daesh.

      America legislators have for decades allowed so many high school shootings to occur that a teenager on the other side of the Atlantic felt inspired to play copy-cat. Has America just exported its first terrorist ideology?

      The use of social media in the case of Daesh and Lyburd is telling. America’s pervasive gun lobby is led by establishment organisations like the National Rifle Association and enhanced by grass-roots nationalist militia groups. Together, these quasi-political gun ownership clans have populated entire YouTube channels with educational videos; filled Twitter and Instagram feeds with gun pornography; exploited Reddit pages; and even launched online and printed magazines. The US government is involved in spreading gun culture, with the Pentagon gifting hundreds of millions of dollars each year to Hollywood, an asset that Obama has said he believes is part of American foreign policy.

    • Indian forces kill 2 Pakistanis, injure 5 in unprovoked firing
    • Do not kill terrorists, take them alive

      Who were the militants who attacked the Dinanagar police station in Gurdaspur district? What were their aims and ideology? How many of their comrades are waiting for another chance to attack? How much help are they getting from the Pakistani authorities, and what other sources of support and finance do they enjoy?

    • Kenya: Obama in Kenya

      Yet although he bears “our skin”, Obama represents the power of those who seek to dominate us by destroying our self-confidence. Therefore his speeches reinforce a pattern of contempt that his predecessors have purveyed for decades. Thus, although his speech in Nairobi (compared to Accra in 2009) was less of headmaster lecturing his pupils and recognised the transformative changes taking place on our continent due to our initiatives, he still castigated us. His comments on political violence and corruption in Kenya continued the tradition of lecturing to us. Why does America feel obliged to comment on how African nations govern themselves, something he does not do in Western Europe? Who gives Obama and the US the moral right to lecture to Kenyans about their governance?

    • Barack Obama’s hypocrisy in Africa

      On January 20, 2017, Barack Obama will leave the presidency. Black people capable of critical thought will have many reasons to breathe sighs of relief. They will no longer have to submit to condescending lectures directed exclusively at them.

      From the moment he ran for president, Obama has harangued Black people on a wide variety of issues. It doesn’t matter if his audience is made up of church congregants, graduating students, or Kenyan dignitaries. Every Black person unlucky enough to be in his vicinity risks being treated like a deadbeat dad, career criminal or Cousin Pookie, Obama’s own imaginary Willie Horton.

      During his trip to East Africa the president chastened Kenyans about gay rights, domestic violence, genital cutting, forced marriage and equal rights for women. He went on and on with no mention of how well his country lives up to any accepted standards of human rights

    • On the Passing of Abdullah Abdullatif Alkadi and a Postscript on Charlie Hebdo

      An intriguing aspect of Muslim culture is that murders are rarely committed over wealth. While there may be theft in Muslim countries, theft that involves murder is almost unheard of. The idea of killing someone over something as ephemeral as a car or money or a cell phone is a rarity (except perhaps in war-torn countries where all civil society has broken down). Murder in Muslim societies tends to be motivated by political issues but more often by a misguided sense of honor. This was the case earlier this month in France, where clearly deluded and uneducated men from the ghettos of Paris, after rediscovering their faith, felt compelled to take their misperception of Islamic law into their own hands in order to “uphold the honor” of their prophet who, they believed, was being denigrated by the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. Without a doubt, such murders are criminal and wrong, but they can be rationally understood within the context of a society that holds the sanctity of prophets, those men of God, above all else.

    • Death of Taliban’s Mullah Omar could boost support for Islamic State
    • Taliban confirms Mullah Omar’s death, succession

      China has expressed its backing for Pakistan and other parties to “push for peace and reconciliation” in the war-torn Afghanistan, days after the second round of peace talks were put off following news of Taliban chief Mullah Omar’s death.

    • Yemen government-in-exile says base once used for U.S. drones retaken

      Clashes persisted around Yemen’s largest air base Tuesday, a day after its declared capture by forces loyal to the country’s exiled President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, military officials said.

    • In victory for activists, drone manufacturers linked to Gaza war cross-examined in Scottish courts

      After a gruelling fourteen day trial, a group of activists known as the Thales Ten,* received their verdict in Glasgow Sheriff Court last week. Five were convicted, and five acquitted, of the crime of breach of the peace.

      The group scaled onto the roof and blockaded entrances to the Thales UK factory on 23rd September, 2014 in response to the war in Gaza. They hung a fifty foot Palestine flag and several banners. One read: ‘Another Scotland is Possible: Stop Arming Israel’. Another made the connection between the French arms company Thales, Israel’s Elbit Systems, and the UK Ministry of Defence.

    • U.S.-led strikes kill 459 civilians in past year in Iraq, Syria, report finds

      U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria have likely killed at least 459 civilians over the past year, a report by an independent monitoring group said Monday.

      The report by Airwars, a project aimed at tracking international airstrikes targeting the terrorists, said it believed 57 specific strikes killed civilians and caused 48 suspected “friendly fire” deaths. It said the strikes have killed more than 15,000 Islamic State terrorists.

    • US led air strikes on Isis ‘likely to have killed hundreds of civilians’ says independent monitoring group

      An independent monitoring group says some bombings carried out by the US-led coalition targeting Isis are likely to have killed hundreds of civilians.

      The report by Airwars, a project aimed at tracking the international airstrikes targeting the Islamic State group, says it counted at least 459 suspected civilian fatalities from airstrikes it believes the coalition carried out in Iraq and Syria over the last year. It says the same strikes also caused at least 48 suspected “friendly fire” deaths.

    • MH370 probe: Wing fragment did come from missing jet, say French experts

      An aircraft wing fragment washed ashore on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion came from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared more than a year ago with 239 people aboard, experts say.

    • U.S. As Corrupt As Russia, Says Former NSA Exec

      Americans believe that Russia is a corrupt country where everyone from the president to regional governors to government officials are flourishing on bribes. Russia has developed corruption into a “fine art,” says a book titled “Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?” written by the University of Miami professor Karen Dawisha.

    • NSA-Japan Spy Scandal, the Passport Revocation Act, ‘Russian Body Bags’

      Finally, we wrap it all up by commenting on the US ‘Institute for Peace’ chairman who said that the Pentagon should arm Kiev in order to create more – quote – “body bags of Russian soldiers”.

    • NSA Pays Utah $1M to Secure Roads to Enormous Super-Secret Data Center

      The National Security Agency paid the state of Utah more than $1 million over 14 months for state troopers to guard the entrance to the agency’s data center near Salt Lake City, according to Utah Highway Patrol records.

    • Records: NSA paid Utah over $1M to police data center roads
    • Officials blame Russia for Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff email hack

      US officials have laid the blame for an attack against the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff unclassified email system firmly on Russia’s doorstep.

      Explaining how the second attack against the Pentagon this year had led to severe restrictions being placed on the network, officials said the work of around 4,000 military and civilian personnel had been disrupted (interestingly, The Register reports that staff were told the service disruption was an expected side effect of a planned system upgrade).

      The latest attack, believed to have occurred on or around 25 July, had originally passed without any fingers being pointed, as evidenced by Pentagon spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Henderson’s statement to Reuters…

    • Army Entertainment Liaison Office: Watch More TV! The Freedom Of Our Nation Depends On Your Contribution!

      Generally speaking, the US Army Entertainment Liaison office believes most of what crosses its desk furthers the Army’s interests. There are lots and lots of supportive assessments contained in the document, with the most common being “Supports Building Resilience” — a phrase that covers everything from military-friendly documentaries to American Idol. Another popular assessment is “Supports Modernizing the Force,” something the Liaison Office has applied to blockbuster franchises like The Avengers.

    • Fight the hysteria about the hack of OPM’s files. It’s probably not a big threat.

      We’re told the OPM hack will have horrific consequences for America. Just as we have been told so many times since WWII, almost always falsely. I expect this too will prove to be a wet firecracker. Here are the reasons why, obvious things few journalists have told you. {1st of 2 posts today.}

    • Former top CIA official arrested at BWI for allegedly trying to bring gun through security
    • Ex-CIA official arrested for allegedly trying to bring gun through BWI security

      A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, a former top CIA official and longtime Baltimore business leader, was arrested at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport on Thursday for allegedly attempting to bring a loaded handgun onto an airplane.

    • Ex-CIA official arrested at airport for allegedly trying to bring gun through security
    • Buzzy Krongard Arrested, Attempted To Bring Loaded Gun Through BWI Security
    • 2 arrested at Maryland airports for gun possession
    • CIA Executive Director: CIA Committed Torture [same person as above]

      Former CIA Executive Director Buzzy Krongard told BBC on Monday that the CIA did engage in torture…

    • Ex-CIA boss admits to BBC Panorama that it tortured

      The CIA tortured terror suspects in its programme of “enhanced interrogation”, the agency’s former executive director, Buzzy Krongard, has admitted to the BBC’s Panorama programme.

    • Former senior CIA official says waterboarding was ‘torture’

      A former top CIA official has reportedly become the most senior agency figure to say he is “comfortable” with using the word “torture” to describe so-called enhanced interrogation techniques deployed against al-Qaeda suspects in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

    • Exclusive: “CIA death squads” – the one thing that could stop Jeremy Corbyn, according to Ken Livingstone

      Outside Camden Town Hall last night, a queue stretched round three sides of the building and along Euston Road. As people began to slowly file into the vast hall, it soon became clear that there was not enough space for the crowd to all fit inside. Teenagers actually began to scale the walls and huddle around windows to look inside.

      The spectacle? The 66-year-old Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn.

      As the crowd swelled at the door, former mayor of London and speaker at the rally, Ken Livingstone arrived.

      On his way into the venue, LondonLovesBusiness caught a few words with Livingstone about Corbyn’s campaign, and discovered that even with the tantalising prospect of a left-wing leader taking power, Livingstone’s sense of humour remains intact.

    • Edward Snowden: U.S. Government Snubs Pardon Plea for CIA Whistleblower Edward Snowden

      Lisa Monaco, the President’s Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said that Snowden’s move to disclose confidential data has had a grave impact on the security of the state.

    • John Kiriakou: Read this First! Before You Blow the Whistle, Here’s What No One Ever Tells You

      At sentencing, my judge gave me 30 months in prison and three years of probation, and she took away my federal pension. I left for prison believing that was the totality of my punishment. I was wrong.

      One of the first things that happened upon my conviction was that the company with which I had my homeowner’s and auto insurance canceled my policies. They don’t do business with felons, they said. That same week, my credit card company canceled my card and demanded the immediate payment of the balance.

      Then, shortly before my departure for prison, the agency that my wife and I used to hire child care providers also jumped on the bandwagon. They dropped us as clients and left us without anybody to help her care for our three young children while I was away.

    • Obama’s Syria policy is a mess

      Last year, President Obama asked for $500 million to arm and train the Syrian rebels. This year alone, the effort is supposed to train 3,000 soldiers to fight ISIS.

    • Obama’s failed plan to train the Syrian rebels, in one brutal timeline

      President Obama’s big plan to train friendly Syrian rebels has had a really rough few days. The first 60 American-trained Syrian rebels, part of a group called Division 30, finally went onto the battlefield and almost immediately got attacked by al-Qaeda and suffered a humiliating defeat. According to the Guardian, al-Qaeda fighters killed five US-trained rebels, wounded 18, and kidnapped seven, including the unit’s commander. Half of the American-trained fighters were put out of commission within weeks of hitting the ground.

    • United States to Scale Confrontation with Syria

      The US government threatens to further escalation against the government of Syria, according to The Wall Street Journal.

      The newspaper says that, although military officials minimize the chances of direct confrontation with the forces of the Syrian Arab Army, the fact that President Barack Obama authorized the use of the Air Force to defend US-trained groups, leaves open that possibility.

    • Washington Stunned by Attack on US Mercenaries in Syria

      The attack came early Friday against a Syrian militia known as Division 30, which has been the central focus of a $500 million program initiated by the Obama administration and administered by the Pentagon to arm and train a US-controlled proxy force, ostensibly for fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) inside Syria.

      Launching the attack was the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda and the most powerful of the Islamist militias that have been fielded in the Western, Saudi, Turkish and Qatari-backed war for regime change to oust the government of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

    • SAS dress as ISIS fighters in undercover war on jihadis

      The unorthodox tactic, which is seeing SAS units dressed in black and flying ISIS flags, has been likened to the methods used by the Long Range Desert Group against Rommel’s forces during the Second World War.

      More than 120 members belonging to the elite regiment are currently in the war-torn country on operation Shader, tasked with destroying IS equipment and munitions which insurgents constantly move to avoid Coalition air strikes.

    • How US Allies Aid Al Qaeda in Syria

      The dirty secret about the Obama administration’s “regime change” strategy in Syria is that it amounts to a de facto alliance with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front which is driving toward a possible victory with direct and indirect aid from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel, as Daniel Lazare explains.

    • U.S. caution or incoherence in Syria?

      The U.S. military is training locals to fight IS but not Assad, while the CIA is training Syrian rebels to fight Assad.

    • Book review: Kill Chain by Andrew Cockburn

      AT a CIA awards dinner in Washington in 2011 Robert M Gates, a former director of the agency whose term as US Secretary of Defence straddled the Bush and Obama administrations, spoke on the future of the war on terror. Factories were working day and night, he told the audience, to turn out the newest, most vital front line weapons. “So from now on,” he said, “the watchword is: drones, baby, drones!”

    • We’re a year into the unofficial war against Isis with nothing to show for it

      This Saturday marks one full year since the US military began its still-undeclared war against Islamic State that the government officials openly acknowledge will last indefinitely. What do we have to show for it? So far, billions of dollars have been spent, thousands of bombs have been dropped, hundreds of civilians have been killed and Isis is no weaker than it was last August, when the airstrikes began.

    • Pentagon Doesn’t Know Who It Kills with ‘Signature’ Drone Strikes

      In June, when a CIA drone strike killed an al-Qaeda leader who the agency did not know was among a group of militants, the United States showed that it continues to fire drone missiles at targets whose identities are a mystery.

    • Exiled Chagossians could be allowed to return home under limited resettlement

      The Chagos Islands, one of the UK’s most remote overseas territories, could be opened up to tourism under plans allowing exiled islanders to return home, according to a Foreign Office report.

      The consultation process on resettlement of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), launched this week, proposes allowing 1,500 Chagossians to live on the archipelago.

      Britain forced the inhabitants off the islands in the early 1970s to make room for a US airbase that was built on the largest island, Diego Garcia. In exchange for the clearance, London received £5m off the cost of developing a joint US/UK missile programme.

    • Valerie Plame: The Spy Who Came in to the Code

      Since her cover was famously blown, former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame is more openly protecting the country’s digital assets. In May, the author and anti-nuclear activist joined the advisory board of Global Data Sentinel, developer of a cybersecurity platform designed to encrypt and protect across domains, networks, and devices.

    • Valerie Plame attacks Donald Trump on Iran nuke deal
    • Plame Wilson: Trump campaign sought support so she could get back at Rove
    • ‘You can’t make this stuff up’: Plame Wilson says Trump wanted her support

      Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the Donald Trump campaign reached out to her for support.

    • Missing In Action

      Over the past decade, a string of war movies emerged in the wake of 9/11: The Hurt Locker, Syriana, The Messenger, Green Zone, Lone Survivor, and American Sniper, to name just a few. Some have performed better than others at the box office, and many have received critical acclaim. Almost none has included portrayals of women in combat.

    • Are counterterrorism bills really working in the Western world?

      Last week we looked at the British counter-extremism bill, backed by Home Secretary Theresa May. The heated debate about this bill centers on whether it will curtail rights such as freedom of speech and whether it will target Muslims, creating an environment in which mistrust can only grow.

    • Letter: ‘Historic diplomatic achievement’

      The Iran deal reached in Vienna is truly a historic diplomatic achievement.

    • There’s good reason they should hate us

      Much adieu lately about how we can trust the Iranian nuclear agreement when they hate Americans.

      Do the Iranians hate us? If they don’t they should.

      Much of Iranian hatred is based on our CIA involvement in deposing their democratically elected prime minister in 1953 and supporting the brutal dictator (“the Shah”) who gave the U.S. and Britain unlimited access to oil.

      In the year 2000 the New York Times obtained a copy of the CIA’s secret history of the Iranian coup, revealing the inner workings of a plot that set the stage for the Islamic revolution in 1979, and for a generation of anti-American hatred in one of the Middle East’s most powerful countries.

    • US Special Forces Would Benefit From Recruiting More Arab Americans

      US Special Forces would gain an advantage and broaden its skill base by enlisting more Arab Americans, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Larry Johnson told Sputnik on Friday.

    • A forgotten conflict that is very much alive

      The murder of the Pakistani human rights activist Sabeen Mehmud in central Karachi earlier this year triggered a huge media echo. Mehmud was famous the world over for her work, primarily in the fields of women’s rights and Internet activism. Despite the intense media coverage, not much attention was paid to the fact that during the final months of her life, the activist had focused specifically on the conflict in the south-western Pakistani province of Balochistan. Just a few hours before her murder, Mahmud and her organisation “The Second Floor” had arranged a debate on the human rights situation in Balochistan.

      [...]

      Balochistan has been the scene of several major rebellions in recent decades, all of which were brutally put down by the government in Islamabad. Although the region has a wealth of natural resources, the people are among the poorest in Pakistan. They barely have access to stable infrastructure, power or clean drinking water. Some 88 per cent of Balochs live below the poverty line. Although natural resources are being exploited, the authorities are failing to make adequate investments in other sectors. Only the security sector is flourishing.

    • Report: Hundreds of Civilians Killed by U.S.-Led Bombing of ISIS in Iraq and Syria

      A new report from a group of journalists and researchers says that hundreds of civilians have died during airstrikes by the U.S. and other nations fighting the Islamic State, a marked contrast to the Pentagon’s official admission of just two civilian deaths.

    • Book review: The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong is gripping

      His account of the Tibetan struggle is a welcome contribution to the growing body of Tibetan resistance literature and on the CIA’s involvement.

      Some of the background to the events he recounts has never been told before. The only other Tibetan to tell the whole story is the late Lhamo Tsering in his exhaustive work, Resistance, and his son Tenzing Sonam in his compelling documentary, The Shadow Circus: the CIA in Tibet. Apart from these, this aspect of Tibet’s struggle for survival has been mainly hogged by CIA operatives or by American writers drawn to the subject. Gyalo Thondup’s perspective on the cloak-and-dagger game Tibet briefly played with the CIA will remain the authoritative Tibetan account of this episode of the Tibetan struggle.

    • Arguing Against Evil

      For liberal hawks and neoconservatives, the idea of the Congress for Cultural Freedom is an appealing fantasy. It evokes the time at the beginning of the Cold War when intellectuals played a serious role in politics because the world seemed not just caught up in a battle of armies but in a battle of ideas. Beginning in 1950, it brought together a diverse array of thinkers who, under the rubric of anti-totalitarianism, agreed that the freedom to think and write was inviolable. Its raison d’etre was anti-Communism; it sought to reduce the influence of Communist and fellow-traveling intellectuals, first concentrating on Western Europe but later expanding all around the world. In the words of one of its historians, “It was America’s principal attempt to win over the world’s intellectuals to the liberal democratic cause.” In seeking to influence left-wing intellectuals, it steered away from conservative thinkers. In Europe and elsewhere it featured social democrats, Christian Democrats, and even dissident Marxists. In the United States, its most active boosters were liberals, like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Daniel Bell, and former Marxists moving in neoconservative directions, such as Sidney Hook. The CCF defended pluralism, democracy, and even socialism, so long as it was anti-Communist. (Even late in life, both Bell and Hook still thought of themselves as socialists, at least on economic questions.) It had a sophisticated publishing operation, amplifying voices critical of Communism. It arranged, for example, for the publication of the Yugoslavian ex-Communist Milovan Djilas’s The New Class, which argued that the Soviet Union was not in fact a classless society but one in which class privilege accrued based on proximity to the state bureaucracy. The CCF also operated a stable of high-quality literary and political magazines, among them Encounter in London, Der Monat in Germany, Jiyu in Japan, and Mundo Nuevo in Latin America.

    • Still Uninvestigated After 50 Years: Did the U.S. Help Incite the 1965 Indonesia Massacre?

      It is now fifty years since the so-called “G30S” or “Gestapu” (Gerakan September Tigahpuluh) event of September 30, 1965 in Indonesia, when six members of the Indonesian army general staff were brutally murdered.

    • Indonesian Genocide

      In light of these findings, it seems hypocritical for the US to constantly wag its finger at other nations for their human rights shortcomings when past US government have engaged in such horrific mass killings.

    • Iran’s Longstanding US-Inflicted Nightmare

      It began in August 1953 – replacing democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq (Iran’s most popular politician at the time) with a generation of brutal US-installed Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi dictatorship.

      A 2013 declassified CIA document (marking the coup’s 60th anniversary) publicly acknowledged the agency’s involvement (Operation TPAJAX) – what’s been well-known for decades.

    • The crazy story of how Russia snuck a vast nuclear arsenal onto America’s doorstep

      Most stories about the Cuban Missile Crisis start with Oct. 16, 1962, when the president and his advisors were briefed on the missile sites on the island. A few start with Oct. 13, when the U-2 flight that photographed the sites took off. U-2 overflights would collect more information during the crisis along with other reconnaissance plans. After collecting all the information, U.S. intelligence agencies believed the Russians had smuggled nearly 10,000 troops onto the island.

    • Lessons from Tonkin and Libya: We Need a President Who Won’t Trick Us Into War

      Fifty-one years ago, an American president deceived the public about the true purpose of a U.S. military mission, ushering in a decade of foreign policy disasters. Unfortunately, this method of abusing democracy has continued, on a bipartisan basis, to the present day, when it is casting a shadow over U.S. policy in Syria.

      In August 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers deliberately misled Congress and the American people about the mission of two U.S. destroyers that were allegedly attacked off the coast of communist North Vietnam and their connection to U.S.-directed raids on nearby offshore islands. Their lie paved the way for U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and congressional passage of the administration’s Tonkin Gulf Resolution: a broadly worded measure that would soon facilitate Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War. A policy that began with an act of deceit about a U.S. military mission had awful and ill-considered consequences for Americans, Vietnamese and other southeast Asians, U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and China, and America’s global reputation. Many historians are convinced that a diplomatic settlement could have avoided most of this damage.

    • August 4, 1964: The Gulf of Tonkin ‘Incident’ Sparks American Escalation in Vietnam

      Fifty-one years ago today, the United States Navy reported that its ships had been attacked some miles off the shore of North Vietnam. Provocatively, the US ships were patrolling in areas where South Vietnam was conducting active operations against the North, prompting the latter, quite understandably, to perceive the Americans as participants in the hostilities. Torpedo boats approached within a few nautical miles of the USS Maddox, which responded with warning shots. The subsequent firefight killed four North Vietnamese sailors, destroyed several of their boats, and lightly wounded an American ship and a plane. Two days later, American ships again reported that they were under attack and for hours fiercely maneuvered and fired at North Vietnamese boats, two of which they claimed to have sunk. As it turned out, the American ships had only been picking up radar signals from their own equipment, chasing phantoms as Don Quixote had combated windmills. Regardless, President Lyndon Johnson seized on the incident as a pretext for bombing North Vietnam and drastically escalating American involvement in the war. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing such action passed on August 7, 1964, with only two senators objecting: Wayne Morse of Oregon, a frequent Nation contributor, and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, managing editor of this publication in the early 1920s. In an editorial appearing in the first issue after the incident and the resolution, The Nation’s editors wrote, “The excessive retaliatory action the President saw fit to order brings us closer to the brink of World War III.” In the same issue, a former State Department official named John Gange wrote an essay titled “Misadventure in Vietnam: The Mix of Fact and Myth.”

    • Anti-Russian propaganda destroys Western journalism [says Kremlin propaganda]
    • Russia, Italy Can Restore Pre-Sanction Level of Relations – Farmers Union

      Dino Scanavino, the head of the Italian Confederation of Farmers (CIA), said that existing business relations between Italy and Russia are generally favorable, as Russian entrepreneurs are actively assisting their Italian colleagues in recovering losses.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Snowden 2.0: Japanese Journalist Has Been Living in Moscow Airport for Two Months

      Japanese journalist Tetsuya Abo is pulling a Snowden – he’s been living in the transit section of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for over two months now. The 36-year-old said in an interview that his stay is politically motivated – he does not want to go back home, and is requesting Russian citizenship instead.

    • Ling Jihua’s brother could become China’s Snowden: Duowei
    • China demands US repatriate businessman Ling Wangcheng
    • Former military contractor sentenced for stealing classified files [for doing what Petraeus did]

      A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida [official website] on Monday sentenced Christopher R. Glenn 120 months in jail and three years of supervised release for willful retention of classified national defense information [DOJ press release] under the Espionage Act [text].

    • FBI may pillory Hillary with email spillery grillery

      The FBI is investigating presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email account while presiding over the State Department.

      The Washington Post has reported that the FBI is digging into Clinton’s operation of a personal email server as part of her work as the US Secretary of State between 2009 and 2012.

    • To intelligence community, Clinton’s private email scheme is inconceivable

      Sounds like free association triggered by some of the stories making the rounds on the 24/7 news networks.

      There was the announcement that Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard will be paroled after serving the 30 years mandated by his “life” sentence in 1985. This is the same Jonathan Pollard who caused George Tenet to threaten to resign as CIA director when the idea of a pardon or commutation was suggested during the Clinton administration.

    • Keeping top secrets

      Here’s why Hillary Clinton may have broken the law

    • What everyone with a Top Secret security clearance knows – or should know

      The key issue in play with Clinton is that it is a violation of national security to maintain classified information on an unclassified system.

      Classified, secure, computer systems use a variety of electronic (often generically called TEMPESTed) measures coupled with physical security (special locks, shielded conduits for cabling, armed guards) that differentiate them from an unclassified system. Some of the protections are themselves classified, and unavailable in the private sector. Such standards of protection are highly unlikely to be fulfilled outside a specially designed government facility.

    • DOJ Inaction Against Hillary Proves of Selective Prosecution in the United States

      In April of this year, former CIA Director David Petraeus, one of the most accomplished military generals in our nation’s history, was prosecuted and sentenced to two years of probation plus a $100,000 fine for giving his biographer classified material while they were working on the book. What was lost in the shuffle is that his biographer was a Reserve Army Intelligence Officer, who herself possessed a Top Secret clearance, and that no classified materials were ever published or provided to anyone who didn’t have clearance.

      Mr. Petraeus’ plea agreement carried a possible sentence of up to a year in prison, and in court papers, prosecutors recommended two years of probation and a $40,000 fine.

      U.S. District Judge David Kessler, however, increased the fine, in his words to, “reflect the seriousness of the offense.”

    • Army, CIA Satisfied Nazi Spy Information Request

      The Army and CIA satisfied their obligations under the FOIA by releasing thousands of pages about a Nazi general turned U.S. spy, the D.C. Circuit ruled.

    • Is the Intelligence Community Inspector General Trying To Give Contractors Whistleblower Protections?

      Last week, McClatchy’s Marisa Taylor reported on two cases showing the new appeals process for whistleblower retaliation claims ordered by President Obama is now operational; in the cases of Army whistleblower Michael Helms and CIA whistleblower John Reidy, the Intelligence Community Inspector General, Charles McCullough, has bounced the appeals back to the agencies in question for re-review.

      That McCullough has chosen to bounce these two appeals back to the agencies is notable enough, because his commitment to whistleblower issues has never been apparent. Instead, McCullough has spent his time as IG conducting leak investigations. And last year, a complaint email sent to Daniel Meyer, who oversees whistleblower issues for the intelligence community, somehow got shared with the subject of the complaint. So McCullough’s record on these issues is less than stellar.

      But McCullough’s move is particularly interesting when you consider the details of the appeal of the second complainant, John Reidy.

    • German government fires prosecutor over treason charge against Internet blog
    • German justice minister fires chief prosecutor in treason row
    • Top German prosecutor fired after treason probe involvement

      Harald Range, Germany’s top prosecutor, was dismissed from his duties on Tuesday by Justice Minister Heiko Maas [official website] after Range accused the German government of obstructing his investigation against two German journalists. Range was interested in an investigation against the two journalists from the website Netzpolitik.org, which had reported on the expansion of surveillance of online communication within Germany’s domestic spy agency. Range received information from an independent expert explaining that the information the journalists received from an unknown source was legitimate and also a “state secret.” In an effort to prevent anymore embarrassment to the German government, Range, who is 67, was dismissed [Deutsche Welle report], despite his intentions to retire next year and be succeeded by Munich federal prosecutor Peter Frank. The treason probe became public news last week following a criminal complaint filed by the spy agency which also targeted the unknown source who dispersed the leaked documents.

    • Germany scores against the surveillance state

      It all went very fast. On Tuesday morning August 4, Germany’s chief federal prosecutor, Harald Range, was ordered by Justice Minister Heiko Maas to withdraw an independent expert from the investigation of two journalists from Netzpolitik. The investigator had concluded that leaked documents quoted by the news website amounted to a disclosure of a state secret, one of the required criteria to pursue a treason case. The prosecutor protested: “To meddle with an internal review on the basis that the results might be inopportune is an intolerable interference with the independence of the judiciary .” A few hours later on Tuesday evening Maas asked for the prosecutor to be granted early retirement. In plain words, Harald Range was sacked.

    • Lawmakers and bloggers named in German treason case

      Germany’s domestic spy agency named not just bloggers but also lawmakers in a criminal complaint that sparked a controversial treason probe, news weekly Der Spiegel said Friday.

    • How a treason case in Germany set off a political firestorm

      German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s well-deserved holiday from the euro-zone crisis was disturbed this week by a domestic scandal involving a debate over freedom of the press vs. the protection of classified information, as German Justice Minister Heiko Maas requested the dismissal of federal prosecutor Harald Range for his investigation of two journalists for treason. Maas said Merkel agreed with his decision.

    • Pressure Mounts for German Intel Agency Chief to Resign Over Treason Probe

      There are growing calls for the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, to resign over the Netzpolitik affair, which has already claimed the scalp of the Federal Prosecutor Harald Range.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Idaho Huntress Defends Posting Photos with Giraffe (and Other Animals) She Killed on African Safari

      Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer went into hiding after he became the subject of international scorn for killing Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe. But another American is proudly advertising the game she has shot while on African safari – and thumbing her nose at her critics.

      “To me it’s not just killing an animal, it’s the hunt,” Sabrina Corgatelli, of Idaho, told the Today show on Monday.

      Corgatelli has been sharing photos on her Facebook page of her recent legal hunt in South Africa. On July 31 she reposted a picture of a massive giraffe she had killed.

    • In Zimbabwe, Cecil tells only part of the story

      When news of Cecil’s death first came out, many in Zimbabwe had never heard of the lion, said Fungai Machirori, a Zimbabwe-based journalist and social commentator.

    • Professional hunters in Zimbabwe court over killing of lions

      Two professional hunters have appeared in a Zimbabwean court, each accused in separate cases of helping Americans kill lions.

  • Finance

    • Contingent Faculty: Where Money Might Go in Higher Education

      Fifty years ago, more than 75% of college faculty members were full-time and had tenure or were on track to get it. Today, only a third are part of that elite group. Many of those doing the teaching at American universities are poorly paid, have no job security and limited benefits. Some have PhD’s but still qualify for government assistance to buy food.

    • Higher Education Debt Should Be Deductible, Rand Paul Says

      “You can’t just offer free education, but I think tying it to work and making it deductible is a good idea,” Sen. Rand Paul says at Republican presidential forum at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.

    • Pornhub taught us to expect free porn — now, can it make us pay?

      Imagine, if you will, that there’s a restaurant that offers diners a free, unlimited buffet. For years they’ve encouraged their patrons to come in and gorge themselves at will, subtly implying that anyone who pays for food is an idiot. There’ve been rumors that this restaurant’s been able to keep the buffet going by stealing food from competing restaurants, but most patrons don’t care — and as the restaurant drives out its competition, or buys them out, eventually the objections die down.

    • George Osborne will miss £1tn export target warns British Chambers of Commerce

      The UK is the 11th largest exporter in the world, behind the likes of the US, China and Germany, according to the CIA World Factbook. And, according to the BBC, the country is also the second biggest exporter of services behind the US. But the business body has urged Cameron and Osborne to “open up markets” for firms and encouraged British businesses to up the skills of their workforce.

    • Donald Trump: “I pay as little as possible” in taxes
    • Explaining Donald Trump’s Rise With Economic Misinformation

      Everyone has heard about Donald Trump’s soaring poll numbers as the current leader in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Many have also heard the explanation that he appeals to those who feel left behind by the economy. Unfortunately, the way the media often tell this story has little to do with reality.

      [...]

      Both parts of this are seriously misleading. First, it is not just non-college grads who have struggled since the turn of the century. Most college grads have seen little or no wage gains since then. The second part is wrong also, since wages for non-college grads had also been stagnant since 1980, so for them the experience of the last 15 years has not been “a marked departure from prior decades.”

    • Funny Money: CIA Counterfeiting in Poland

      Communism was relegated to the dustbin of history for many reasons, foremost among them were its warped economic policies. In places like Poland during the 1960s, foreigners with access to hard currency could easily game the system and do pretty well. David Fischer recounts how Polish-American retirees lived like kings in Krakow, the way the embassy had to pay “bail” for one American with what turned out to be counterfeit zlotys made by the CIA, and how Western diplomats were able to travel abroad very cheaply.

    • Neocolonialism: How it is conquering our country today.

      It is important to note that forces of neo-colonialism are ably conquering our country today.

    • Nazi-Fighter Grynberg Girds for Swiss Last Stand Against Big Oil

      U.S. courts have been good to Jack Grynberg, netting him hundreds of millions of dollars in disputes with some of the world’s largest oil and gas producers since 1984.

      Despite that fortune, the 83-year-old oilman says he’s fed up with America’s legal system and has taken his biggest suit yet — a battle over profits from Kazakhstan’s most valuable oil fields — to Switzerland.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Video Games, Predictive Programming, and the 21st Century Skinner Box

      The game focuses upon two branching military campaigns: One by the Marine Corps in an unnamed Middle Eastern country (situated on the in-game map directly atop modern Syria) run by a cartoonish dictator generically referred to as none other than “Al-Asad,” the other by a British SAS team combating “ultranationalist Russians” who are supporting this thinly veiled tin-pot Arabic dictator. After a patriotic romp through Central Asia, “Al-Asad” predictably (predicatively?) uses “Weapons of Mass Destruction” on his own people, leading to a climactic final battle at a Russian nuclear site in a bid to avoid World War III.

    • AUDIO: ‘Left, Right & Center’: Republican Media Stunts, NSA Data Dump and Cecil the Lion
    • Chris Christie’s Revealing, Easy to Spot Lie About His 9/11 Credentials

      A majority of Americans in opinion surveys say they disapprove of the NSA’s collection programs. A Pew Research poll this May found a full 74 percent of respondents did not believe privacy should be sacrificed for safety. But Paul is one of only a few Republican candidates (Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is another) who has fought against the NSA program, and hawkish Republican candidates like Christie see attacking Paul on that as an effective way to build support among the Republican base, illustrating how out of touch that base can be on some of the important issues of the day.

    • Chris Christie So Obsessed With Increasing Surveillance He Pretends He Was A Fed On 9/11 Even Though He Wasn’t
    • Christie Lied about 9/11 to Try to Shut Down Paul’s Opposition to Dragnet Spying

      Never mind that most US Attorneys don’t, themselves, go before the FISC to present cases (usually it is people from the National Security Division, though it was OIPR when Christie was US Attorney), never mind that the name of the court is the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

      The real doozie here is Chris Christie’s claim that he “was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bush on September 10th, 2001.”

      [...]

      Update: In an absolutely hysterical attempt to rebut the clear fact that he was not nominated when he said he was, Christie’s people said he was informed he would be on September 10 at 4:30 (as I suggested was likely). But the rest of the explanation makes it clear they hadn’t even done a background check yet!

    • The GOP Debates Showed How Fox News Enforces Republican Orthodoxy

      At Thursday night’s GOP debates in Cleveland, moderators Bret Baier, Bill Hemmer, Megyn Kelly, Martha MacCallum and Chris Wallace peppered the party’s 17 presidential candidates with tough questions. But several of those questions had one key thing in common: They hit candidates for deviating from Republican orthodoxy.

    • Jeb Bush launches online store with hipster

      The “My Dad” tee, offered for $25, is emblazoned with the quote, “My dad is the greatest man I’ve ever known, and if you don’t think so, we can step outside,” obviously referring to Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush. Bush referenced the shirt in one of the more colorful moments coming from a New Hampshire forum earlier this week.

    • Sen. Graham moved up in Air Force Reserve ranks despite light duties

      Of all the candidates vying to become the nation’s next commander in chief, none has spent as much time in the military as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham. The South Carolina Republican retired from the Air Force this summer after a 33-year career, including two decades as a reservist while serving in Congress.

    • Politically Unapologetic: What about Bernie Sanders?

      Before his rally on May 26th, his overall poll rating average in the Democratic race was at 10.6%. It now hovers around 20-25%, which is causing concern for the Clinton camp since her unfavorable rating is rising. The coming weeks will really tell if Sanders can catch Clinton, given that Joe Biden doesn’t jump into the race last minute.

  • Censorship

    • Singapore teen blogger launches another attack

      A teenage Singaporean blogger recently jailed after publishing an online video that criticised the late Lee Kuan Yew and was deemed to have been obscene and insulting to religious feelings, has launched another tirade, condemning the lack of freedom of speech in the city-state.

    • Amos Yee, Singapore’s Teen Dissident, Is Back With a Crude, Hilarious Video

      The moptopped Singaporean blogger Amos Yee is out of prison after having served 53 days in jail for posting a video criticizing the late Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew. And if Singaporean authorities thought a prison term might quiet the precocious teen, they were sorely mistaken: Yee is out with a new, obscene, and often hilarious video answering his critics and attacking Singapore’s lack of civil liberties.

    • Are Americans falling in love with censorship?

      Classifying books according to their suitability for different age ranges would be “ill-advised”, “unworkable” and would “raise serious concerns about censorship”, American free-speech campaigners have said, in the wake of a poll claiming that more than seven in 10 US adults believe a rating system similar to that used for films should be applied to books.

    • The little-known history of secrecy and censorship in wake of atomic bombings

      The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago, is one of the most studied events in modern history. And yet significant aspects of that bombing are still not well known.

    • The Fallout Over University Of Illinois Censorship Of War On Gaza Continues

      The chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), who was involved in firing Professor Steven Salaita over tweets he sent about Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, has announced her resignation yesterday. The announcement comes as a federal judge refused to dismiss Salaita’s lawsuit against the university for violating his free speech.

    • That’s Not Funny!

      Three comics sat around a café table in the chilly atrium of the Minneapolis Convention Center, talking about how to create the cleanest possible set. “Don’t do what’s in your gut,” Zoltan Kaszas said. “Better safe than sorry,” Chinedu Unaka offered. Feraz Ozel mused about the first time he’d ever done stand-up: three minutes on giving his girlfriend herpes and banging his grandma. That was out.

    • Truth hurts: censorship in the media

      In September 1945, less than a month after Japan’s surrender ending World War II and ushering in the U.S.-led Occupation, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander for the Allied powers, began cracking down on alleged Japanese war criminals. Over the next three months, hundreds of politicians, military men, bureaucrats and industrialists would be issued arrest warrants for their role in leading Japan to, and through, the war.

      Among those who found themselves under suspicion as Class-A, -B, or -C war criminals were senior members of the press. One of the most notorious was Matsutaro Shoriki, owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

      “He was one of the most important journalists who actively propagated the Axis cause before the war and energetically supported it through the war,” read a secret report on Shoriki compiled by Occupation officials when he was arrested on Dec. 12,, 1945.

    • Bangladesh must act against impunity

      Index on Censorship deplores the killing of blogger Niloy Chakrabarti in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and calls on the authorities to investigate the murder and ensure that those responsible are found and brought to justice.

      “We strongly condemn Niloy Chakrabarti’s brutal murder,” said Index’s senior advocacy officer Melody Patry. “We fear the death toll will increase if the authorities fail to take action to find and punish those responsible. Freedom of expression is in danger and Bangladesh must do more to protect writers online and offline.”

      Chakrabarti, who wrote under the pen name Niloy Neel, is the fourth secular blogger to be murdered since the start of the year. A member of Bangladesh’s Science and Rationalist Association, he was attacked in his home in Dhaka.

    • Memoir focuses on late librarian’s work on censorship in occupied Japan

      Subjected to censorship by the Allied Forces for four years starting in the fall of 1945, the materials bear censorship markings ranging from check-in and examination dates to deletions, suppression and other changes.

    • Govt blocks 857 porn websites, sparks debate on Internet censorship
    • India’s Porn Ban Reversal Is Essentially Bullshit
    • India orders clampdown on internet porn, sparks censorship debate
    • Isis play Homegrown sparks censorship debate after NYT cancels it for ‘quality reasons’
    • NYT radicalisation play axed amid cries of censorship
    • Man sentenced to 30 years of jail for insulting the Thai monarchy on Facebook
    • On your mind: Realpolitik defines US/Thai relationship

      Webster’s dictionary defines realpolitik as a system of politics based on a country’s situation and its needs, rather than on ideas about what is morally right and wrong. No doubt, US government officials would deny that realpolitik defines American policies, but it is hard to see any clear moral imperative with regard to that country’s relationship with Thailand.

      The moral face the US shines on Thailand, urging for example, that the Thais take steps to end human trafficking and restore democratic rule, is two-faced.

    • Google challenges France over ‘right to be forgotten’
    • Cameron’s censorship silences debate

      British Prime Minister David Cameron is a calculated hypocrite on the question of Muslim radicalisation. In July, in the wake of the attack on British and other tourists in Tunisia, he announced a counterstrategy to stop the spread of extremist movements such as the Islamic State.

      His four-pronged strategy includes delegitimising the ideology that underpinned these movements – especially those that argue for an Islamic caliphate – and emboldening the Muslim community to counter extremism from within. For Cameron: “The adherents of this ideology are overpowering other voices within Muslim debate, especially those who are trying to challenge it.”

      Yet, in a self-defeating move, his government has prevented one of the most prominent voices countering radicalisation of the Islamic State variety from entering Britain: Na’eem Jeenah, a South African.

    • Why the Rise of Decentralized Media is the End of Censorship

      In the buzzing world of altcoins, blockchains, and crypto-startups, if you aren’t decentralized these days, you’re probably still considered a bit of a dinosaur. But in the world of electronic publishing, legacy opinion remains, that media should be submitted to a central authority, subjected to editorial policies and stored on servers in ever larger data-centres.

    • How users of ‘Chinese Twitter’ Sina Weibo are beating state censorship

      If you were scrolling through Twitter and saw a post saying “someone is playing hide-and-seek again. These people can grass-mud horse,” you might be more than a little mystified.

      But if, say, you were Chinese, didn’t think much of your government, and knew something about fooling its stringent online censors, you may well understand the coded message.

    • Now playing in Israel: film censorship

      Right-wing politicians from the culture minister down are getting screenings canceled. The fear is that filmmakers will start censoring themselves.

    • A Quiz for the West’s Great Free Speech Advocates and Supporters of Anjem Choudary’s Arrest

      As we all know ever since the inspiring parade in Paris following the Charlie Hebdo attack, “free speech” is a cherished and sacred right in the West even for the most provocative and controversial views (of course, if “free speech” does not allow expression of the most provocative and controversial views, then, by definition, it does not exist). But yesterday in the U.K., the British-born Muslim extremist Anjem Choudary, who has a long history of spouting noxious views, was arrested on charges of “inviting support” for ISIS based on statements he made in “individual lectures which were subsequently published online.”

  • Privacy

    • Appeals court rules warrant required for cellphone tracking

      A federal appeals court in Virginia has ruled that police must obtain a search warrant to obtain records about cellphone locations in criminal investigations.

      The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday’s decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals conflicts with two other federal appeals court rulings and increases the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue.

    • When Your Records Are Not Yours

      This dubious “third-party doctrine,” enunciated before the Internet existed and mobile phones became ubiquitous, was crucial to the outcome of a case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in May. The court said an armed robber named Quartavius Davis had no constitutional grounds to object when the FBI linked him to crime scenes with cellphone location data that it obtained without a warrant.

    • Commentary: Christie wasn’t ‘Born to Run’

      Going back to Christie’s big moment during the debate, it’s completely predictable he’d be in favor of continuing the government’s bulk collection of phone data. After all, he’s a former prosecutor and professed 9/11 hugger (which garnered an amusing eye roll from Paul). I find myself more on Paul’s side of the argument, but the public surprisingly backs renewal of the government’s program of data mining. Plus, I wanted to draw a cartoon about Christie, not the NSA, which I’ve offered my opinion on many, many times.

    • Rand Paul And Chris Christie Spar Over NSA Surveillance

      Last night, Fox News hosted one of the most ridiculous, deeply entertaining GOP Presidential debates I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing a drinking game to. In the midst of the Moscow Mules, Lagunitas and amazing Trump-isms came a pretty heated (and unexpected) shouting match between former Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul regarding the spying capabilities of the NSA.

    • WATCH: Chris Christie vs. Rand Paul on NSA Surveillance

      New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor, and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a Libertarian who has fought against widespread government surveillance of American citizens, sparred over how to best protect the United States from terrorists.

    • This Group May Stop the NSA From Tapping the Internet’s Backbone

      It’s taken seven years of legal wrangling, but one group of pro-privacy activists are hoping an appeals court will finally declare a critical part of the National Security Agency’s spying apparatus unconstitutional.

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been challenging the NSA’s bulk data collection program in court since 2008, largely running on whisteblower testimony from Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who alleges the NSA inserted technology into the internet company’s infrastructure that allowed it to collect and analyze the data.

    • EFF Finally Gets To Ask Appeals Court To Look At 4th Amendment Question Over NSA’s Backbone Sniffing

      It’s taken many years, but one of the EFF’s longstanding cases against the NSA has finally reached an important milestone: exploring the 4th Amendment question raised by the NSA tapping the internet backbone. This is part of the Jewel v. NSA case that has been going on for years. Back in February (after a lot of procedural back and forth on other issues), the district court rejected the 4th Amendment argument, basically toeing the government’s “but… but… national security!” line. Not surprisingly, the EFF disagreed with the court and appealed to the 9th Circuit appeals court.

    • A New Milestone: Appeals Court to Consider NSA’s Mass Seizures and Searches on the Internet Backbone

      One of the most outrageous ways that the government has violated our Fourth Amendment rights against general seizures and searches has been through its system of tapping into the fiber optic cables of America’s telecommunications companies. The result is a digital dragnet—a technological mass surveillance system that subjects millions of ordinary Americans to the seizure and searching of their online correspondence, conversations, web searches, reading and other activities as they travel across the Internet. This tapping isn’t just about metadata—it includes full content searches of Americans’ communications, at the very least any international communications involving a website or a person who is abroad.

    • How communication surveillance eats away fundamental human rights

      There are several intelligence agencies around the world, many of them headquartered in the US, which make use of the vastly developed technology of the digital age to spy on millions of people, who are not even considered terrorism suspects. The most (in)famous agency as such would be the NSA (National Security Agency), which uses a pretty smart foundation of ‘legal’ activities to justify its actions.

      The issue is that NSA activities are anything but legal. They manage to claim that they operate within the frame of law because of the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Security Court), which interprets the actual law into what would be considered legal for NSA’s actions. In other words, when the NSA goes searching for information about whomever it wants, there is usually no warrant, as the person is usually not even a suspect.

    • The NSA Playset: 5 Better Tools To Defend Systems

      The NSA ANT Catalog is a 50-page classified document listing technology available to the NSA Tailored Access Operations by the ANT division to aid in cyber surveillance. Most documents are described as already operational and available to U.S. nationals and members of the Five Eyes Alliance – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The document was first revealed in an article by security researchers in the German newspaper Der Spiegel, which released the catalog to the public on December 30, 2013.

    • NSA-grade encryption for mobile over untrusted networks

      The only term being thrown around government more than “2016 elections” these days is “cybersecurity,” particularly following a rash of damaging and high-profile data breaches. With that focus on protecting information top of mind in agencies, USMobile officials hope to find a ready market for their commercial app, which lets government workers use their personal smartphones for top-secret communications.

    • Security Sense: Encryption is a necessity that cannot feasibly be compromised

      It’s always fascinating to watch how security concepts are communicated to the general public and by “fascinating”, I mean it’s sometimes horrifying. There is no more poignant an example than that of encryption and I found the piece from CNN a few days ago on how encryption is a growing threat to security to be the absolute epitome of disinformation. It would be understandable if the general public walked away from reading and watching this piece with the distinct impression that encryption was the root of all evil. Why? Apparently “because terrorism”.

    • NSA’S EPIC Fail: Spy Agency Pays Lawyers That Sue It

      The NSA and FBI are major contributors to EPIC — the Electronic Privacy Information Center. But their “donations” aren’t exactly voluntary.

      A hefty chunk of EPIC’s legal budget is taken from the pockets of the very agencies it sues, each time a federal judge agrees that the government was wrong to keep the information secret.

    • Chris Christie actually wants to expand the NSA’s spying powers

      Sen. Rand Paul and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie traded barbs Thursday night over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records. In the heat of the Republican presidential debate, Christie got the last word in — but who actually came out of the exchange on top?

    • NSA and GCHQ have been spying on you for 50 years

      Starting in 1966, the project leapt into life when the NSA fronted the money for the GCHQ to build a station in Bude, Cornwall, capable of intercepting satellite communications from Intelsat, the first commercial communications satellite network.

    • Snowden leaks confirm existence of ECHELON

      NSA documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden confirm the existence of ECHELON, a secret surveillance network spying on satellite communications. Set up by the US and the UK in the 1960s, ECHELON was the precursor of today’s global dragnet.

    • Uncovering ECHELON: The Top-Secret NSA/GCHQ Program That Has Been Watching You Your Entire Life

      If history is written by the victors, government surveillance agencies will have an awfully long list of sources to cite.

      Domestic digital surveillance has often seemed to be a threat endured mostly by the social media generation, but details have continued to emerge that remind us of decades of sophisticated, automated spying from the NSA and others.

      Before the government was peering through our webcams, tracking our steps through GPS, feeling every keystroke we typed and listening and watching as we built up complex datasets of our entire personhood online, there was still rudimentary data to be collected. Over the last fifty years, Project ECHELON has given the UK and United States (as well as other members of the Five Eyes) the capacity to track enemies and allies alike within and outside their states. The scope has evolved in that time period from keyword lifts in intercepted faxes to its current all-encompassing data harvesting.

    • Investigative journalism is vital for democracy as state surveillance increases

      For those inclined to think that the series of surveillance scandals and leaks over the past two years are unlikely to have much of an impact, it is worth recalling that, up until a little over 30 years ago, the British government denied the very existence of a spying organisation called GCHQ. As investigative journalist Duncan Campbell described in the Intercept yesterday, in a compelling account of a life spent chasing Britain’s spies out of the shadows, in the 70s and 80s even talking about GCHQ, let alone investigating and reporting on it, could get you followed, arrested and jailed.

    • How UK journalist revealed mass GCHQ snooping decades before Snowden

      It took more than 25 years for Duncan Campbell to finally publish confirmation of the Echelon project, completing a story he began breaking in 1988.

      The scoop, released on The Register and The Intercept this week, capped off some 40 years of investigative journalism on British and American spy agencies, Campbell having begun his career by revealing the existence of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

    • Global spy system ECHELON confirmed at last – by leaked Snowden files
    • USA Monitors 90 Percent of Global Communications

      The National Security Agency (NSA) espionage program Echelon remains active, which controls 90 percent of global communications, revealed today the intercept digital site.
      In an article in the Internet portal, the British journalist Duncan Campbell made the history of this monitoring system, also known as Project P415, and sets filtered by former contractor NSA Edward Snowden, now a refugee in Russia elements.

      The materials confirm that the mechanism was created in 1966, shortly after the first communication satellites began operating in earth orbit.

      Overall network received the codename Frosting and consisted of two subprograms: Transient directed against communications satellite of the Soviet Union, and Echelon, which focused on electronic signals Western powers.

    • Global Five Eyes Spy System ‘Bigger Than Ever’

      In an exclusive interview with Sputnik, the respected UK investigative reporter Duncan Campbell has said a western-led mass surveillance system developed in the 1960s is “bigger than ever, much more powerful and a critical component” of mass surveillance.

    • UK ECHELON journalist: “Snowden proved spies need accountability”

      Legendary investigative journalist Duncan Campbell describes his life of being kidnapped by the London Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, being surveiled and harassed by UK spies and ministers, and reveals the identity of the whistleblower who leaked the details of ECHELON to him.

      Campbell’s article is accompanied by never-released Snowden docs that demonstrate the full scope of ECHELON surveillance, and traces the lineage of journalists and whistleblowers who took huge personal risks to reveal corruption, criminal wrongdoing, and secrecy among spies and their masters in government.

    • Biden calls Abe to apologize after WikiLeaks details alleged NSA spying on Tokyo

      U.S. Vice President Joe Biden apologized to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday for “causing trouble,” after documents released last week detailed alleged spying by the U.S. National Security Agency on the government in Tokyo, a top Japanese official said.

      Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the phone conversation between Biden and Abe came about at Washington’s request.

      Suga declined to comment on whether Biden admitted the U.S. had spied on Japanese officials and companies over a period that started in 2006, as alleged in documents released last week by anti-secrecy group WiliLeaks.

    • NSA Spying on Japan: The Fallout

      Last Friday, the WikiLeaks website unveiled evidence that the U.S. National Security Agency is conducting espionage operations in Japan. On July 31, WikiLeaks published “Target Tokyo,” a list of 35 Top Secret NSA targets in Japan and five NSA reports on intercepts relating to U.S.-Japan relations, trade negotiations, and sensitive climate strategy.

    • Stealing valuables and saying sorry

      WikiLeaks also released a statement issued by Julian Assange, where he said that the documents showed clearly the vulnerability of the Japanese government as officials had been worrying in private about how much or how little inside information they would let Washington know.

    • Tokyo Expects US Explanations on NSA Spying on Japanese Government

      Tokyo is waiting for the United States to clarify situation with the revelations concerning the US National Security Agency (NSA) spying on the Japanese government and businesses, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told journalists.

    • Backgrounder: Japan’s deafening silence over NSA spying

      The Japanese government has remained relatively silent since the WikiLeaks website published documents Friday showing the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has spied on the Japanese government and Japanese companies.

      The documents, dated from 2007 to 2009, include five NSA reports — four of which are marked top-secret — that provide intelligence on Japanese positions on international trade and climate change.

      WikiLeaks also posted an NSA list of 35 Japanese targets for telephone intercepts including the Japanese Cabinet Office, the Bank of Japan, the country’s finance and trade ministries, and major Japanese trading companies.

    • Japan’s Prime Minister Demands US Vice President Investigate NSA Spying

      Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asked US Vice President Joe Biden to investigate allegations that the United States spied on top Japanese government and corporate officials, a Japanese government spokesman said on Wednesday.

    • Japan NSA Backlash to Raise Asian Demands on Pacific Trade Pact

      The latest WikiLeaks revelations documenting close National Security Agency (NSA) spying on Japan will provoke countries the United States is courting for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement to increase their demands, experts told Sputnik.

    • NSA conducted commercial espionage against Japanese government and businesses

      New leaked documents published by Wikileaks show that the US spy agency conducted surveillance operations against Japan’s top government officials, prioritizing finance and trade ministers, as well as the Japanese central bank and two private-sector energy companies.

      There’s no conceivable connection between this long-term surveillance — which included wiretaps — and national security.

    • Japan PM calls for probe into WikiLeaks claims of US spying

      Japanese leader Shinzo Abe told US Vice President Joe Biden he would have “serious concerns” if WikiLeaks claims Washington spied on Japanese politicians were true, and called for an investigation, a top official said Wednesday.

      Tokyo’s Cabinet spokesperson Yoshihide Suga said Biden had apologised to the Japanese prime minister in a telephone call for “causing troubles”, without confirming the spying claims.

    • Japan’s Shinzo Abe warns Joe Biden over WikiLeaks spy claims

      Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has told US Vice-President Joe Biden he will have “serious concerns” if WikiLeaks claims that Washington spied on Japanese politicians are true, calling for an investigation.

    • US Spying Scandal Might Seriously Undermine Trust In Abe’s Government

      Commenting on the recent WikiLeaks revelations concerning US National Security Agency spying on the Japanese government, a Japanese politician told Sputnik that it might seriously undermine trust in the current government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and damage Japanese-American relations; however, another political analyst has a different opinion.

    • Japan PM wants probe into WikiLeaks claims

      Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has told US Vice President Joe Biden he will have ‘serious concerns’ if WikiLeaks claims Washington spied on Japanese politicians are true, calling for an investigation.

      Tokyo’s Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Biden had apologised to the Japanese leader in a telephone call for ‘causing troubles’, without confirming the spying claims.

      WikiLeaks said on Friday it had intercepts revealing years-long spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on Japanese officials and major companies.

    • U.S. VP speaks with Japanese PM after website exposed spying

      The Wikileaks website on Friday posted U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) reports and a list of 35 Japanese targets for telephone intercepts, including the Japanese Cabinet Office, the Bank of Japan, the country’s finance and trade ministries, and major Japanese trading companies.

      According to the website, the eavesdropping dated back to 2007, a year after Abe’s first term began, and one report from telephone intercepts of senior Japanese officials could have been shared with Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand — the U.S. intelligence partners.

    • NSA spying allegations should not shake trust in Japan-U.S. alliance
    • Japan Premier Urges Biden To Probe Reported US Spying

      Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on US Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday to investigate allegations by WikiLeaks that Washington spied on the Japanese government and companies, Tokyo said.

    • Germany Could Create NSA-Like Mass Surveillance Program

      According to a legal fellow at Electronic Frontier Foundation, the German authorities seem to have plans for a mass surveillance program that parallels the NSA program.

    • NSA Announces New GC, Cites Big Law Experience

      On Monday, the National Security Agency tapped retired Milbank partner Glenn Gerstell as its new General Counsel.

    • Glenn Gerstell Named NSA General Counsel; Michael Rogers Comments
    • NSA lawyer with cyber cred, former FBI CIO moves and more

      Zalmai Azmi has taken the reins as president and chief operating officer of the IT consulting firm IMTAS, the firm announced Aug. 1.

      A native of Afghanistan who served as the FBI’s CIO from 2004 to 2008 and led the bureau through an IT transformation, Azmi said he is “pleased and excited” to be taking the new role at IMTAS. Azmi has previously served as CEO of Nexus Solutions, a senior vice president at CACI and CIO for the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.

    • NSA Ordered to Look Harder for Records

      A federal judge dismissed most, but not all, of the National Security Agency’s requests to dismiss a reporter’s FOIA request on federal surveillance of judges.

      Jason Leopold, formerly with Al-Jazeera America and now with Vice News, filed two FOIA requests for NSA and FBI “surveillance of federal and state judges.”

      The NSA and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel responded that they had no such records.

      They sought summary judgment and dismissal. Leopold claims they failed to conduct adequate searches.

    • Watchdog Demands Rules on FBI Media Spying

      The Department of Justice refuses to reveal its unpublished rules for spying on journalists, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation demands a look at them, in Federal Court.

    • Web’s random numbers are too weak, researchers warn

      The process of generating a good random number begins with the server translating mouse movements, keyboard presses and other things a machine does into a data stream of ones and zeros. This data is gathered in a “pool” that is regularly called on for many security functions.

    • South Korea pushes policy for public sector to use local servers and storage

      South Korea is moving to implement a policy that will have the public sector give preferential treament to local storage and server vendors over foreign counterparts starting next year to boost the market.

    • A License to Kill Innovation: Why A.B. 1326—California’s Bitcoin License—is Bad for Business, Innovation, and Privacy

      A.B. 1326 (Dababneh) is a bill that would require “virtual currency businesses” to apply for and obtain a license in order to offer services in California, and it includes significant fees and administrative hurdles. Unfortunately, the bill’s language is so vague that it’s unclear what companies are, in fact, “virtual currency businesses.” So in spite of carve-outs for smaller companies and for software developers who don’t exercise control over the currency, the proposal threatens the future of virtual currency experimentation and innovation in the state.

    • Privacy Badger graduates to v1.0, protects users from spying ads

      Have you ever faced the following dilemma? Your favourite website is equipped to detect whether you’re using an ad blocker, obviously you have one installed, and then you get a pop up or toolbar appear asking “Would you please add us to your ad blocker’s whitelist? Ads help keep this site running.”, obviously at this point you feel a bit bad and go ahead to disable the ads on that site. The issue you have now is that you just let an ad provider plant a cookie on your computer that will track you around the internet reporting what you’re interests are.

    • EFF Releases Privacy Badger To Try To Stop Online Tracking
    • US Government OPM Cyber Breach Much Worse Than Reported

      When the OPM breach was first discovered, the number of people said to be affected was four million. This figure quickly rose to 22 million, though the Solutionary report states this is probably a very misleading figure. The issue is that the records accessed were not only those of government employees, but also included personal data about family members and even friends, and so the number of people affected is likely to be closer to 132 million, and even this could be conservative. However the authors of the report state it will probably never be known just how big the breach was, but it is likely to have been “the biggest loss of private information ever.”

    • Office of Personnel Management and CFPB violating American’s privacy
    • Fourth Circuit adopts mosaic theory, holds that obtaining “extended” cell-site records requires a warrant

      The new case creates multiple circuit splits, which may lead to Supreme Court review. Specifically, the decision creates a clear circuit split with the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits on whether acquiring cell-site records is a search. It also creates an additional clear circuit split with the Eleventh Circuit on whether, if cell-site records are protected, a warrant is required. Finally, it also appears to deepen an existing split between the Fifth and Third Circuits on whether the Stored Communications Act allows the government to choose whether to obtain an intermediate court order or a warrant for cell-site records.

    • Is the Google Balloon experiment to spy on Sri Lanka & violate our personal freedoms?

      It was recently announced that Sri Lanka had been chosen to launch the Google balloon-based internet services under a project titled ‘Google Loon Project’. Anything being rolled out for the first time and free should raise concern. Why ‘experiment’ on Sri Lanka moreover why Sri Lanka or does it align to Kerry’s success in regime change in Sri Lanka and pax Americana goal? It is not so much as the idea to provide internet coverage to the whole of Sri Lanka (though users will still have to pay to their local service provider) but the ability that the owners of the balloon have over a sovereign country and whether local laws or even international can cover the range of spying/surveillance that can be done! Associated with the project and representing the US intelligence community is Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham Executive Director of Cyber Security Research and Education Institute which is sponsored by George Soros’s Raytheon. The most important unanswered question is why was such a project kept secret from the Sri Lankan public, why were associated stakeholders not involved to report on the pros & cons and moreover why was the fundamental rights of privacy of the people violated. None of us wish to have the entire country under a blanket of US surveillance and it is wrong to have enforced such a project overlooking the national security concerns and the privacy of the people of Sri Lanka. Even the business community will undoubtedly have reservations. Will the world’s 1.8billion internet users like to have their privacy invaded too?

    • North Korea: I was ‘monitored’ while I studied there

      Alessandro Ford picked a gap year involving the world’s most secretive and repressed country.

    • Manuel Contreras, head of Chile’s spy agency under Pinochet, dies aged 86

      Contreras, who headed agency that kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands, died while serving 500 year sentence for crimes against humanity

    • Hated and feared former Pinochet-era Chilean spy chief dies at age 86
    • Gen. Manuel Contreras, leader of Chile’s feared spy agency, dies at 86
    • Manuel Contreras, Chilean Spy Chief, Dies at 86

      Gen. Manuel Contreras, Chile’s intelligence chief during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, died on Friday in the military hospital in Santiago while serving 526 years of multiple prison terms for human rights violations. He was 86.

    • Augsto Pinochet dies at the age of 86
    • Manuel Contreras, Chile’s feared ex-spy chief, dies at 86
    • Chile’s feared secret police chief dies at age 86
    • Tor users: Do not expect anonymity and end-to-end security

      The Tor network is similar to a door lock: It works well, until a determined individual wants to get in. Get details on what Tor is and what it is not.

    • The judge committed fouls, too

      All espionages are a fact of life in today’s world, but none is morally acceptable, much less superior, to others.

    • Seeing a history of all your movements is now easier for you, but harder for the feds

      When you meet a new someone who makes your heart flutter and the feeling is mutual, and the two of you have spent significant parts of your life in the same city at the same time, there is usually a conversation within the first few weeks of the relationship trying to figure out why you didn’t meet sooner. You talk about the places you hung out and usually realize that you frequented the same coffee shop or bar or music venue, and you wonder if you were ever there at the same time. Were your phones to offer up their full history of where they’ve been, you could line up your personal tracking maps and find out the exact moment you might have encountered one another earlier in life.

    • Quoted: Carly Fiorina wants Apple, Google to ‘tear down cyberwalls’
    • Carly Fiorina calls on Apple, Google to provide greater access for FBI
    • Jonathan Pollard & Edward Snowden: How the US Hates Tattletales

      It seems clear that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange can look forward to extended vacations once their feet touch US soil. Like Pollard, Snowden’s charges fall under the US Espionage Act where defendants are not allowed to raise a defense. But unlike Mr. Pollard, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange has the internet and social media at their disposal to gain US and possibly worldwide sympathy. US Administration officials would probably not risk a drop in approval ratings and throw Snowden and Assange in Pollard’s vacated cell, or would they?

    • US Government Spies on EU Companies to Control European Industries

      Data collection is only a small part of the NSA’s intelligence tasks. The main goal of the US’ intelligence agencies is to control politicians and managers in Europe, former head of the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Gerd Polli, said in an interview with DWN.

    • Next-gen secure email using internet’s own DNS – your help needed

      A group of researchers from the US government and dot-com operator VeriSign are working on a new system for secure email: using domain names.

      Highlighting the problems and security holes associated with current mail systems, the team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a subset of the US Department of Commerce, argues that by using a new set of security protocols built around the domain name system, it is possible to provide a much higher level of security in electronic messages.

    • Chicago and Los Angeles have used ‘dirt box’ surveillance for a decade

      The Los Angeles and Chicago police departments have acquired “dirt boxes” – military surveillance technology that can intercept data, calls and text messages from hundreds of cellphones simultaneously, as well as jam transmissions from a device, according to documents obtained by Reveal.

    • BlackLivesMatter Activists: Targets of US Surveilence

      The Obama administration’s spy agencies have been keeping track of the movements, communications and activities of the new crop of Black activists. Although not surprising, the recent reports should give rise to “new strategies and tactics to exchange information among groups, and new modalities to circumvent infiltration and, ultimately, government sting operations.”

    • Edward Snowden: White House Rejects Pardon Plea
    • Views of the News: NSA seeks vast cyber deterrent

      U.S security officials recently stressed a need for a massive cyberweapon to provide a deterrent against ongoing and future cyber attacks by foreign powers.

      Admiral Michael Rogers—National Security Agency (NSA) director and head of U.S. Cyber Command—said it will require such a counterstrike capability to deter enemy hackers trying to penetrate our security data systems.

      Rogers cited the nuclear deterrence strategy of the Cold War missile race as relevant for defense against recent attacks on U.S. government and business databases.

    • China’s Cyberspying Is ‘on a Scale No One Imagined’–if You Pretend NSA Doesn’t Exist

      But how can that be? China is accused of obtaining personal information about 20 million Americans, federal employees and contractors, and that’s a big deal. But the US’s NSA, according to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, processes 20 billion phone calls and internet messages every day. The NSA’s unofficial motto for years has been “Collect It All.”

      The article notes that the US has its own “intelligence operations inside China”—but pretends these are purely defensive, referring to “the placement of thousands of implants in Chinese computer networks to warn of impending attacks.”

  • Civil Rights

    • Major psychological association bans cooperation with CIA following torture scandal

      The American Psychological Association made a nearly unanimous decision today to bar psychologists from participating in national security interrogations, The New York Times reports. The decision was a response to an independent report that came out last month, detailing how top APA officials and psychiatrists participated in the CIA’s torture program during the Bush administration.

    • Everyone Agrees the Senate’s Cyber Bill is Terrible. So Why Is It Moving?

      What do numerous privacy groups, civil liberties organizations, open government advocates, free market proponents, technologists, and the Department of Homeland Security have in common? Deep concern about the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or “CISA,” a bill expected to come to a vote this week in the Senate.

    • No Immunity For Cops Who Sent A SWAT Team To A 68-Year-Old Woman’s House For Threats Delivered Over Open WiFi Connection

      Earlier this year, we covered the story of Louise Milan, a 68-year-old grandmother whose house was raided by a SWAT team (accompanied by a news crew) searching for someone who had made alleged threats against police officers over the internet. Part of the probable cause submitted for the warrant was Milan’s IP address. But the police made no attempt to verify whether any resident of Milan’s house made the threats and ignored the fact that the IP address was linked to an open WiFi connection.

    • Despite Recent Court Rulings, Getting Behind The Wheel Is Pretty Much Kissing Your 4th Amendment Protections Goodbye

      There’s been more good news than bad concerning the Fourth Amendment recently. In addition to the Supreme Court’s ruling that searches of cellphones incident to arrest now require a warrant, various circuit court decisions on cell site location info and the surreptitious use of GPS tracking devices may see the nation’s top court addressing these contentious issues in the near future. (The latter still needs to be addressed more fully than the Supreme Court’s 2012 punt on the issue.)

    • Spy Software Gets a Second Life on Wall Street

      A wave of companies with ties to the intelligence community is winning over the world of finance, with banks and hedge funds putting the firms’ terrorist-tracking tools to work rooting out employee misconduct before it leads to fines or worse.

    • Here’s the CIA’s Letter to Congress Saying the Agency Was Quitting the Torture Business

      Three months after President Barack Obama was sworn into office, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta sent a letter to congressional oversight committees informing them that the agency was changing its torture policies.

      But the CIA would still play a significant role in the interrogation of terrorism suspects, according to a top-secret letter Panetta wrote [pdf below] that was recently declassified by the CIA and obtained exclusively by VICE News in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

      Panetta’s letter was sent to lawmakers just days after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to begin an investigation into the efficacy of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. It also followed an executive order Obama signed as one of his first acts as president outlawing the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” and shuttering the CIA’s network of black site prisons where detainees were held.

    • Eight top ex-CIA officials rebut ‘torture report’ with their own book

      In a bid to bring the “rest of the story” to the nation about the CIA’s detention and interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists, eight former top CIA officials, including three directors, are publishing a rebuttal to the sensational Senate Democratic “torture report.”

    • Eight top ex-CIA officials launch bid to rebut ‘torture report’
    • Former CIA Officials Launch Smear Campaign Against Senate Torture Report

      In an attempt to unveil what was really behind the scenes of the Al Qaeda terrorist interrogations conducted by the CIA, eight former high-ranking CIA officials, including three former directors, are ready to publish a response to last year’s incendiary US Senate “torture report”, according to the Washington Examiner.

    • CIA Torture Practices ‘Nothing New’ – Former Official

      Former US State Department official William Blum does not consider the recent statements about torture used by CIA under a program of “enhanced interrogation” as “sensational.”

    • New Effort to Rebut Torture Report Undermined as Former Official Admits the Obvious

      Former top CIA officials planning a major public-relations campaign to rebut the Senate torture report’s damning revelations have found themselves undermined by one of their own.

      Eight former top officials wrangled by Bill Harlow — the former CIA flak who brought us the CIASavedLives.com website after the Senate report was issued last December — are publishing a book in the coming weeks titled Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program.

    • Former CIA Official Admits Use of Torture during Bush Era

      A former top CIA official acknowledged that the US intelligence agency tortured terror suspects after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks under a program called “enhanced interrogation.”

    • Intelligence professionals continue rebutting torture allegations

      The book by the former CIA officers likely will be met with denunciations from Feinstein and others who accuse the U.S. of torturing Islamic terrorists. When former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell published, “The Great War of Our Time,” earlier in 2015, Feinstein responded to his defense of CIA treatment of terrorists by issuing both a press release and a 54-page “fact check” sheet through her official senatorial website. Feinstein condemned the book through both statements and reiterated her accusation that Americans were guilty of torture.

    • Gitmo is a “Rights-Free Zone”: Dissident Psychologists Speak Out on APA Role in CIA-Pentagon Torture

      We broadcast from Toronto, Canada, site of the annual convention of the largest group of psychologists in the world, the American Psychological Association. Ahead of a vote on a resolution to bar psychologists from participating in national security interrogations, the Psychologists for Social Responsibility hosted a town hall meeting. We feature highlights.

    • APA bans member psychologists from taking part in ‘national security interrogations’
    • US Psychologists’ Association Bans Members from Colluding in US Torture

      In what may seem like a no brainer, the American Psychological Association has voted to ban any member from participating in government torture programs. The decision follows a report which details the organization’s role in justifying “enhanced interrogation.”

    • Psychology Association Votes to Bar Members From Participating in Interrogations

      The American Psychological Association (APA) voted nearly unanimously on Friday in favor of a resolution prohibiting its members from participating in national security interrogations. Retired Col. Larry James, the former top Army intelligence psychologist at Guantanamo, had the only dissenting vote, Democracy Now reports.

    • Psychologists vote not to participate in US torture

      The American Psychological Association (APA) voted overwhelmingly on Friday to prohibit members from participating in interrogations conducted by United States intelligence agencies at locations deemed illegal under international law.

    • American Psychological Association Bans Members From Participating In Interrogations

      Following revelations earlier this year that American Psychological Association (APA) officials actively colluded with the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, the group voted nearly unanimously Friday to prohibit psychologists from participating in future national security interrogations.

    • Psychologists Approve Ban on Role in National Security Interrogations
    • Psychologists ban interrogation role [same piece]
    • James Risen: In Sharp Break from Past, APA Set to Vote on Barring Psychologists from Interrogations
    • Psychology group votes to ban members from taking part in interrogations
    • First Step for Reform: APA Votes to Bar Psychologists From Colluding in Torture
    • How the American Psychological Association lost its way
    • The Brutal Toll of Psychologists’ Role in Torture
    • When Psychology Is Used For Torture
    • Send in the psychologists to study the psychologists: Salutin

      The American Psychological Association is holding its annual convention this weekend in Toronto. It’s a huge organization, about 100,000 members — academics, researchers, practitioners. This is the seventh time in 37 years that they’re meeting here, a frequency or repetition compulsion that may be worthy of research and, possibly, therapy. Canadians belong to it, the way the Blue Jays belong to the American League. We’re in it but not always of it.

    • Breaking: APA Votes to Bar Psychologists from Nat’l Security Interrogations After Torture Scandal

      By a nearly unanimous vote, the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives voted today in Toronto to adopt a new policy barring psychologists from participating in national security interrogations. Retired Col. Larry James, the former top Army intelligence psychologist at Guantánamo, cast the sole dissenting vote.

    • The American Psychological Association Comes Out Belatedly Against ‘Enhanced Interrogation’

      Torture is just torture when you get rid of the pseudo-science.

    • American psychologists promise not to collude in torture

      In 2005 the top brass in the American Psychological Association changed its code of ethics.

    • CIA Torture Prisons Were Probably Worse Than You Can Imagine

      The Romanian prison was code named “Bright Light” and was part of a secret network of prisons operated by the U.S.

    • Tyler S. Drumheller | CIA officer, 63

      But he was best known publicly for his role in exposing the extent to which a key part of the administration’s case for war with Iraq had been built on the claims of an Iraqi defector and serial fabricator with the code name Curveball.

    • Tyler Drumheller, 63, CIA career of 26 years

      But he was best known publicly for his role in exposing the extent to which a key part of the administration’s case for war with Iraq had been built on the claims of an Iraqi defector and serial fabricator with the fitting code name “Curveball.”

      In contrast to Hollywood’s depiction of spies as impossibly elegant and acrobatic, Drumheller was a bulky, rumpled figure who often seemed oblivious to the tufts of dog hair on his clothes.

    • CIA Figure in Hillary Clinton Email Scandal Dies at 63
    • Author of Benghazi memos sent to Clinton dies after cancer battle

      Specifically, he vocally criticized the agency’s trust in an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, who gave faulty intelligence that Saddam Hussein had developed laboratories for biological weapons. The assertions played a major role in the George W. Bush administration’s public case for invading Iraq in 2003.

      Drumheller also criticized the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium from Niger, which it used as evidence to support the claim that Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

    • CIA interrogation tactics can be used at home [not about torture]
    • Obama: The Courage to Say ‘We Were Wrong’

      Most of Obama’s letter contained information we already know. One of his first acts in office was to sign an Executive Order ending the CIA’s illegal detention and interrogation program. He is working to close Guantanamo, an unenviable task that raises as many questions as it solves but still must be done.

    • As the child of Latvian immigrants, I know that torture is un-American and should be banned: Ivars Balkits (Opinion)

      Nothing is more un-American than the support of torture by our government. That is the axiom I grew up with as a first-generation American born to Latvian emigres. In the final days of World War II, my parents, now deceased, fled the totalitarian Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic because they feared they would be tortured or murdered by the NKVD, as the Soviet internal police were known, if not summarily deported to Gulag labor camps.

    • CIA: OK, So Maybe We Work With Bad Guys

      The CIA is willing to overlook some of its shadier partners’ human rights records if they can still get the goods, according to agency Director John Brennan.

      In a letter sent to a trio of lawmakers and provided to The Huffington Post, Brennan expanded on the agency’s controversial relationships with less-than-desirable characters, offering an unusually candid glimpse into the spies’ liaison partnerships.

      The letter, a response to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), sought to clarify public remarks made by Brennan earlier this year. The unclassified response was dated Thursday.

    • White House criticized for not filling watchdog post at CIA

      More than six months after the CIA inspector general resigned, President Obama has yet to nominate a replacement, prompting mounting concerns on Capitol Hill that the delay may be affecting sensitive internal investigations — including a probe into an errant drone strike in Pakistan that killed American hostage Warren Weinstein, sources told Yahoo News.

    • Sept. 11 Defendants in Limbo Thwart Obama’s Guantanamo Ambitions
    • The true story of an ex-cop’s war on lie detectors

      Doug Williams used to give polygraph exams. Now he’s going to prison for teaching people how to beat them

      There was something odd, Doug Williams recalls, about the clean-cut young man who came to see him on Feb. 21, 2013. When Brian Luley had called two weeks earlier, he’d introduced himself as a deputy sheriff in Virginia applying for a job with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. To get the job, Luley needed to pass a polygraph test, and there were “a couple of reasons” he thought that might be a problem.

    • OPINION: What justice for the people of Chad?

      On 20 July 2015, the trial of former Chadian President Hissène Habré began in Senegal. The trial reflects many of the tensions afflicting international justice. Habré, who is charged with crimes against humanity, torture, and war crimes, relating to the death of an alleged 40,000 people between 1982 and 1990, denounced the court as a colonial project before being forcibly removed from the courtroom. The trial was subsequently postponed until 7 September, for Habré’s defence counsel to review court files.

    • Donald Trump: “Waterboarding doesn’t sound very severe”

      Donald Trump opened the door to torturing terrorism suspects if he’s elected president, telling ABC News Sunday that waterboarding “doesn’t sound very severe” given the barbarism of ISIS.

    • More than 80% of the thousands held at the Chicago police’s ‘black site’ were black

      About 8.5% of those held at the site were white. According to the 2010 census, Chicago’s population is 32% non-Hispanic white, 33% black, and 29% Hispanic (of which 13.5% identify as racially white) .

    • A Letter From Africa to #BlackLivesMatter

      When you say Black Lives Matter do you mean just Black American lives? What about the tens of thousands of black lives in Cuba that have been lost due to the covert war and the economic embargo still being waged against Cuba by the US government?

      Or what about the black lives that were lost when the UN over saw the starvation deaths of 250,000 “black” Somalis during the worst drought and famine in 60 years from 2010-2012, deaths that were predicted when UNICEF, headed by former senior foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama, Anthony Lake, budgeted less than 10 cents a day to feed the Somali refugees under their care?

      Do Black Lives Matter when the CIA and their capos in the human trafficking mafia in East Africa sends hundreds of Eritrean migrants to their deaths in rickety boats on the Mediterranean Sea (the Eritrean government continues to demand that the UN convene hearings so the reams of evidence they have on the CIA’s role in these crimes can be exposed to international scrutiny)?

      Do these Black lives matter just as much as Black American lives?

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Names

      • Anti-Piracy Group Hits Indie Creators For Using the Word ‘Pixels’

        An anti-piracy firm working for Columbia Pictures has hit Vimeo with a wave of bogus copyright takedowns just because people used the word ‘Pixels’ in their video titles. Several indie productions are affected, including an art-focused NGO, an award-winning short movie and a royalty free stock footage company.

      • No Air for Jordan: Michael Jordan Loses Fight over Marks in China

        The dispute began in 2012 when Michael Jordan took the sports brand Qiaodan Sports to court, alleging the misuse of his name and several other marks, such as the number 23 (used by him during his tenure in the NBA) and the Jumpman logo (derived from a photoshoot with Nike, incorporating Mr Jordan’s often unique and flamboyant dunk poses) that is associated with his own Air Jordan brand. At first instance his claim was denied, and Mr Jordan subsequently appealed that decision to the High People’s Court.

    • Copyrights

      • BitTorrent to RIAA: You’re ‘barking up the wrong tree’

        The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sent a letter to BitTorrent last week asking the company to help stop copyrighted infringement of its members’ content. Brad Buckles, RIAA’s executive vice president of anti-piracy, asked BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker to “live up to” comments made by former chief content officer Matt Mason.

]]> http://techrights.org/2015/08/09/gnome-search-for-executive-director/feed/ 0 Microsoft Windows Unsafe at Any Speed, by Design http://techrights.org/2015/07/04/speed-limit-for-windows/ http://techrights.org/2015/07/04/speed-limit-for-windows/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2015 16:04:42 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=83884 “Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

Speed limit

Summary: More timely reminders that Windows is simply not designed to be secure, irrespective of version, status of patching, etc.

GIVEN the exceptionally strong ties between Microsoft and the NSA we shouldn’t be so shocked that Microsoft constantly lets the NSA know how to break into computers with Windows installed on them. That’s a fact.

Samsung, perhaps realising that ‘updating’ Windows (or even ‘upgrading’ it) won’t make it more secure decided to altogether abandon Windows Update. As IDG put it:

This week, it’s Samsung, which has been outed as intentionally disabling Windows Update. According to independent researcher Patrick Barker, he was trying to help a customer figure out why a PC kept randomly disabling Windows Update, which caused the system to be dangerously and continuously vulnerable to open security flaws.

Remember that Windows Update can also be used (or misused) to install new back doors at any time. Richard Stallman has repeatedly warned about the danger of any such mechanism. It’s basically a remote control for one’s PC, where the controller is not the user but the software vendor and potentially crackers (like NSA and the GCHQ, as well as non-government entities). When the article above says “vulnerable to open security flaws” it probably means security flaws that are provably known to cyber criminals not affiliated with governments.

“Remember that Windows Update can also be used (or misused) to install new back doors at any time.”According to Microsoft Peter (Peter Bright), writing about how much of a farce Windows ‘security’ really is might be something that a research student cannot do. To quote the booster:

Willcox’s research investigates ways in which Microsoft’s EMET software can be bypassed. EMET is a security tool that includes a variety of mitigation techniques designed to make exploiting common memory corruption flaws harder. In the continuing game of software exploit cat and mouse, EMET raises the bar, making software bugs harder to take advantage of, but does not outright eliminate the problems. Willcox’s paper explored the limitations of the EMET mitigations and looked at ways that malware could bypass them to enable successful exploitation. He also applied these bypass techniques to a number of real exploits.

The laws here have become so ridiculous that merely pointing out that some piece of software is ‘Swiss cheese’ and ‘easy pickings’ would potentially constitute a violation of the law. Microsoft Peter, writing another article about the failing Xbox business (billions in losses), shows how Microsoft secretly tried to deal with manufacturing flaws that may have led to loss of lives (there is a famous case involving a baby who died after an Xbox-induced house fire).

It often seems like Microsoft can get away with just about anything (surveillance by the back door, house fires etc.) as long as it colludes with the state against citizens. Anyone who still believe that Windows can be made secure (intrusions-resistant) clearly is deluded, or at least misinformed. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2015/07/04/speed-limit-for-windows/feed/ 0 Links 15/6/2015: Linux Final RC, Kodi Beta 2 http://techrights.org/2015/06/15/kodi-beta-2/ http://techrights.org/2015/06/15/kodi-beta-2/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2015 16:08:06 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=83441

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

]]> http://techrights.org/2015/06/15/kodi-beta-2/feed/ 0 Microsoft, the Back Doors Company, is Gradually Dying and Trying to Embrace the Competition http://techrights.org/2015/01/18/embracing-the-competition/ http://techrights.org/2015/01/18/embracing-the-competition/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2015 22:15:54 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=81185 Microsoft bug report

From documents just released by Der Spiegel, via Edward Snowden (click to zoom)

Summary: The world is leaving Microsoft’s common carrier (Windows) behind, so Microsoft, which is shrinking, tries to conquer Free software and GNU/Linux

Microsoft Windows has been facilitating/enabling GCHQ (like ‘NSA UK’) and NSA with back doors, including — perhaps passively — so-called ‘crash reports’, as revealed by new documents (published over the weekend). Microsoft bug reports are now being used against their reporters, selecting “targets” using this ‘volunteering’ effort. How nice is that? No wonder China is banning Microsoft software while Russia heads down a similar path (abolishing x86 in government).

Recently in the news there was some noise from Microsoft boosters and sympathisers who spoke about giving Microsoft control over GNU/Linux servers. It is a dangerous and dumb idea as it’s more or less like a Linux-to-Windows migration, merely self-serving (to Microsoft) and dangerous to one’s freedom. We already responded to this noise last week, but it carried on until the end of the week. It is clear why Microsoft is so eager to take control over GNU/Linux and Apache. Despite the fact that Netcraft is being gamed by Microsoft, Netcraft still shows that Microsoft continues with its losses on the Web (see January 2015 Web Server Survey) [via], declining to almost single-digit market share. It is also evident that Microsoft as a company is shrinking (people inside Microsoft tell us that) and Gates-funded papers like this one from Seattle help spin staff backlash:

A group of workers employed by a Microsoft contractor successfully organized a union — a rare feat in the tech industry — and is now bargaining with its company over a contract.

A reader told us that Microsoft is basically “still doing the permatemp thing” that helps hide layoffs. The above article from the Microsoft-friendly press does not tell the full story. Microsoft has basically outsourced a lot of its labour and put it on contract, so there is no termination, no layoffs. There is no long-term obligation to such staff.

“Microsoft has basically outsourced a lot of its labour and put it on contract, so there is no termination, no layoffs.”Finally, speaking of Microsoft spin, Adrian Bridgwater calls “Community Service” Microsoft indoctrination of students. We don’t know if he is being deliberately thick or just trying to entertain readers. This relates to what we wrote some days ago about Microsoft preying on children. Microsoft is trying to fill GitHub with .NET projects, even at the expense of CodePlex. There is a charm offensive over this and Microsoft's booster Mr. Anderson wrote that “Program Manager Kasey Uhlenhuth explains that the Roslyn team is not only moving the repository, but also switching to git internally.”

Just wait until propagandistic firms like the Microsoft-connected Black Duck claim that .NET and Microsoft-centric licences are on the rise, based on some figures from GitHub. That’s just a case of Microsoft infiltrating its competition. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2015/01/18/embracing-the-competition/feed/ 0 Links 1/7/2014: CoreOS and Blackphone in Headlines http://techrights.org/2014/07/01/coreos-and-blackphone/ http://techrights.org/2014/07/01/coreos-and-blackphone/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2014 17:12:38 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=78309

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source support gives older software a fighting chance

    It would be difficult to find someone who could provide more insight into what is happening in the world of the Eclipse IDE than Wayne Beaton, the director of open source projects at The Eclipse Foundation. So what is new with Eclipse, beyond the obvious excitement surrounding the latest Eclipse Kepler release and the recently announced support for Java 8?

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • ownCloud Client 1.6.1

      The recommendation is to update your installation to this version. The previous version 1.6.0 had great new features, first and foremost the parallel up- and download of files and a way more performant handling of the local sync journal. That required a lot of code changes. Unfortunately that also brought in some bugs which are now fixed with the 1.6.1 release.

    • A path to OpenStack contributions, bug reporting, and more

      Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for what’s happening right now in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

  • Databases

    • MongoDB: A showcase for the power of open source in the enterprise

      Big trends in the No Design Database era and other takeaways from MongoDB’s first user conference.

    • The day I finally drank the open source Kool-Aid

      The combination of the Internet, Moores Law and hyper fast commoditization changed that, but not as quickly as you might imagine. At least not until the most recent times (perhaps the last five years) when vendors emerged who upended the old models and presented us with a fresh way to look at everything compute related. Infrastructure, Database, Software, Platform…Pretty Much Everything is rapidly being converted to a Service. Witness Citi recently talking MongoDB as a Service.

  • CMS

    • 3 open source content management systems compared

      Whether you need to set up a blog, a portal for some specific usage, or any other website, which content management system is right for you? is a question you are going to ask yourself early on. The most well-known and widely used open source content management system (CMS) platforms are: Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal. They are all based on PHP and MySQL and offer a wide range of options to users and developers alike.

  • Healthcare

  • Business

  • Funding

    • Quality Software Costs Money – Heartbleed Was Free

      About the only thing GNU Project founder Richard Stallman and I can agree on when it comes to software freedom is that it’s “Free as in free speech, not free beer.”

      I really hope the Heartbleed vulnerability helps bring home the message to other communities that FOSS does not materialize out of empty space; it is written by people. We love what we do, which is why I’m sitting here, way past midnight on a Saturday evening, writing about it; but we are also real people with kids, cars, mortgages, leaky roofs, sick pets, infirm parents, and all kinds of other perfectly normal worries.

      The only way to improve the quality of FOSS is to make it possible for these perfectly normal people to spend time on it. They need time to review patch submissions carefully, to write and run test cases, to respond to and fix bug reports, to code, and most of all, time just to think about the code and what should happen to it.

    • base Raises $60 Million to Fuel NoSQL Database Effor

      It takes a lot of money to build a database company in an industry dominated by a giant like Oracle. It’s a lesson that open-source NoSQL database startup Couchbase know well as it continues to raise funding to build its business.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Introducing Alex Patel, our summer Campaigns intern

      My name is Alex Patel, and I’ll be working as an intern with the campaigns team at the Free Software Foundation this summer. This fall, I will be a sophomore at Harvard College in Cambridge, MA, at which I’m pursuing a joint degree in computer science and philosophy.

    • Learn How to Protect Your Email Communication in Less Than 30 Minutes

      Email Self-Defense, a beginner’s guide and infographic to email encryption by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), was released in six new languages [fr, de, jp, ru, pt, tr] on June 30, 2014. More languages are underway.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Governance for the GitHub generation

      In software, this is epitomized by the GitHub generation, but I believe it’s a characteristic of any aspect of culture touched by the Internet. For those still trapped in the worldview of the Industrial Age, a hierarchy of mediators collects dues in return for providing permission to pass. But the Internet connects everyone to everyone else, peer to peer without discrimination…

    • The D Language LLVM Compiler Updated With Numerous Changes

      LDC that’s the LLVM-based D language code compiler has been updated. LDC 0.13.0 was released last week with new features.

Leftovers

]]> http://techrights.org/2014/07/01/coreos-and-blackphone/feed/ 0 Mobile GNU and Linux: Not Just Android http://techrights.org/2013/11/01/not-just-android/ http://techrights.org/2013/11/01/not-just-android/#comments Fri, 01 Nov 2013 12:19:16 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=72941 Firefox OS

Summary: Addressing the misconception that only Android counts when it comes to Linux-based operating systems in mobile devices

WHILE it is true that Android is conquering the market of mobile devices (including tablets, which outsell laptops [1]) and that it dominates among the Linux-powered platforms, Android is far from the only game in town. To give just a few new examples, Firefox OS shows real momentum on the low end, with some hardware backers and even support from Google [2], the maker of Android which snubs Windows Phone (for the same type of app). Putting aside some other players like Jolla, Ubuntu Mobile and a few others, it turns out that out of the ashes of MeeGo (destroyed in covert means by Microsoft moles in Nokia) comes a Tizen-based tablet. Systena is making/distributing/selling it [3].

What a great time to be promoting GNU and Linux. They’re becoming standard and they are being preloaded on many devices; Windows is not even an option. Microsoft in general is becoming just a criminal patent leech, trying to feed its employees using fraud and racketeering. More on that in our next post… █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. 85M More Tablet PCs Will Ship In 2013 Than Notebooks
  2. Google releases YouTube app for Firefox OS

    Microsoft’s Windows phone may be struggling to get Google‘s official YouTube app, the Android maker has made its official YouTube app available for the free and open source mobiles operating system Firefox OS.

  3. First Tizen tablet ships to developers

    Systena began shipping what appears to be the first new mobile device to run the Linux-based Tizen OS. Aimed at developers in Japan, the Systena tablet runs Tizen 2.1 on a quad-core, 1.4GHz Cortex-A9 system-on-chip, features a 10.1-inch (1920 x 1200) display, and offers 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

]]> http://techrights.org/2013/11/01/not-just-android/feed/ 0 Microsoft Bans and Censors Free Software, Snubs Linux-based Platforms With Majority Market Share http://techrights.org/2013/08/15/microsoft-censors-openoffice/ http://techrights.org/2013/08/15/microsoft-censors-openoffice/#comments Thu, 15 Aug 2013 20:34:24 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=71357 Censorship

Summary: Microsoft’s hostility towards FOSS and Linux persists, based on the company’s actions

A few years ago Microsoft was building attack groups to halt migrations to OpenOffice.org. That was before Oracle messed things up. It is now being demonstrated that Microsoft is censoring results:

In its efforts to take down as much infringing content as it can, Microsoft has started to censor legitimate links to competing software. Hoping to remove pirated versions of Microsoft Office from the Internet, the software company has sent several DMCA takedowns to Google, listing copies of its open source competitor Open Office as copyright infringements. An honest mistake perhaps, but also a terrible one.

And Microsoft trying to accuse Google of doing this. Look who’s talking.

Incidentally, Microsoft hates Google so much that it is leaving out the market leader, Android, which is Linux-based. According to this report about the Microsoft-acquired Yammer:

Android, for now, remains on the outside of the Yammer love circle.

Also see this:

Yammer is opening up its social features to third-party enterprise apps built for iOS phones and tablets and Windows Phone 8 devices — but for Android for now.

And later they tell us that they’re warming up to Linux and playing nice, They just simply rely on moles like Walli to infiltrate FOSS sites and pretend there’s a pro-FOSS angle at Microsoft. Deeds don’t stack up to match the PR.

]]> http://techrights.org/2013/08/15/microsoft-censors-openoffice/feed/ 0 Links 9/8/2013: Linux/Android Share in Tablets Soars http://techrights.org/2013/08/09/android-share-in-tablets/ http://techrights.org/2013/08/09/android-share-in-tablets/#comments Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:22:39 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=71204

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Konnect: control your KDE devices from your phone

        Today we are surrounded by ‘smart’ devices all around us – smartphones, tablets, TVs, PCs and many more. These devices naturally don’t interact with each other. There are some device specific apps developed by some companies but those work within the device spectrum of that company, for example Samsung All Share comes only for Samsung Android devices and work only with Samsung smart TVs.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Maintenance Release: PCLinuxOS-KDE-FullMonty 2013.08

        PCLinuxOS KDE FullMonty 2013.08 (32/64 bit) is now available for download.

      • Porteus 2.1 final and Porteus Kiosk Edition 2.1 are out!

        The Porteus Community is pleased to announce the distribution release of Porteus 2.1 (Standard Desktop Edition), as well as Porteus Kiosk Edition 2.1! Major additions since our 2.0 release include restructuring our layout to have standalone iso’s for five desktop environments (KDE4, RazorQT, Mate, Xfce and LXDE) and adding optional prepackaged modules for Google-Chrome, Opera, Libreoffice, Abiword, print/scan support and development software, all available through a new download interface that allows users to build and download customized ISO’s at http://build.porteus.org.

    • Debian Family

      • 20 Years of Debian GNU/Linux

        Debian GNU/Linux celebrates its 20th birthday anniversary this month. I have been using Debian GNU/Linux only a few years and I regret not having known Debian earlier. The growth, vitality, and quality of the project has been amazing. With Debian GNU/Linux I have been able to do a lot with a tiny investment in IT. It is a force-multiplier for good Free Software.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Edge Passes $9 Million, Smashes Crowd-Funding Record

            Over $9 million has now been pledged to the Ubuntu Edge campaign on IndieGoGo, helping it smash yet another crowd-funding record.

            This figure, whilst $23 million short of the required $32 million goal, makes Ubuntu Edge the second largest crowd-funding campaign in history. It shunts the Ouya games console, which raised $8.5 million over a 30 day period, into 3rd place.

          • Canonical Pushes Linux to the Edge With Bloomberg Backing

            The goal is to raise $32 million in 30 days to build 40,000 Ubuntu Edge next-generation smartphones.

          • Canonical lowers Edge pricing, launches app contest

            Canonical dropped the Indiegogo price for its Ubuntu Edge phone from $775 to $695. Meanwhile, the Ubuntu project launched an Ubuntu App Showdown contest for the best Ubuntu for Phones app that can be developed between now and Sept. 15.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Mysterious countdown appears on elementary OS website

              It would appear that either yesterday, or the day before yesterday, a mysterious countdown was added to the elementary OS website. Or rather, the whole website was replaced by a countdown. So far, I haven’t found any definite indications of what exactly we’re counting down to.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Some Xerox Scanners Can Alter Documents by Accident

    On the scale of things too horrible to contemplate, “document-altering scanner” is right up there with “flesh-eating bacteria.” This week Xerox (XRX) acknowledged that some of its scanners can, with certain settings, change the numbers in scanned documents. On Wednesday it announced a fix for the problem, which a spokesman called “really an anomaly.”

    The problem came to light when David Kriesel, a German computer scientist, scanned a construction plan on a Xerox machine and noticed that the document that came out wasn’t identical to the one that went in: Numbers for some room measurements had changed. Kriesel alerted Xerox, wrote about the problem on his blog and began to investigate how widespread the problem is.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Drone Warfare Makes Killing a Spectator Sport

      Oh, the serious news! I read it with ever-fresh incredulity. It’s written for gamers. It reduces us to gamers as it updates us on the latest bends and twists in the geopolitical scene. We’re still playing War on Terror, the aim of which is to kill as many insurgents as possible; when they’re all dead, we win (apparently). The trick is to avoid inflaming the locals, who then transition out of passive irrelevance and join the insurgency. They get inflamed when we kill civilians, such as their children.

    • Redefining Security and Intelligence in an independent Scotland

      Military and intelligence stories have been all over the news recently. Be it indiscriminate eavesdropping programs, WMD infrastructure, or our impending doom at the hands of terrorists if we vote “yes”, there is a common denominator in the statements of the high heid yins: these are issue for the big boys, the role set out for the rest of us is to cower in fear and not to hurt our wee brains trying to understand. In the independence debate, we are warned that an independent Scotland is going to be overrun by terrorists, disastrously cyber-attacked, or run out of money trying to prevent these disasters from happening. The catalyst of the recent wave of scare stories is a report by a bunch of military and intelligence insiders, the crowd treated in the mainstream media as holding an exclusive grasp of the serious issue of our national security. But this deference is exactly the type of elitist approach that led us into the intelligence SNAFU we are in at the moment – with the agencies at odds with the democratic process and public control. The independence debate is a chance for us to crack open the debate on intelligence and the military, and imagine what a security apparatus actually subservient to democracy might look like.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Finance

    • ‘We Won’t Pay’: Greek activists reconnect power to poverty-stricken homes

      With a Eurozone record of 27 percent of Greeks unemployed, people are taking a pro-active approach to the crisis. Activists from the ‘We Won’t Pay’ movement, which boasts 10,000 members, are illegally reconnecting power to hundreds of homes.

      Tough austerity measures have left many people in Greece unable to pay their electricity bills. The ‘We Don’t Pay’ movement which has over 10,000 members helps many of those by illegally reconnecting power to their homes, despite legal action against them.

    • Greece becoming new Kosovo as youth jobless hits 65pc

      Greek youth unemployment has soared to a record 64.9pc as the country’s downward spiral continues almost unchecked.

    • Watch as plutocrats mold us into a New America, a nation more pleasing to their sight

      Increasing wealth creates positive feedback, much like a hurricane moving over warm water. A more powerful 1% allows them to command the political and economic high ground of America, so that they can gain further wealth — and shape a New America more to their liking. This process has run for several generations; now the results are plain to see — for all that wish to look. Today we have first of three tales of New America.

    • Greg Palast: Why Are the Greek People Agreeing to Their Own Destruction?

      In his career as an investigative journalist, economist, and bestselling author – Vultures’ Picnic, Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy – Greg Palast has not been afraid to tackle some of the most powerful names in politics and finance. From uncovering Katherine Harris’ purge of African-American voters from Florida’s voter rolls in the year 2000 to revealing the truth behind the “assistance” provided by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to ailing economies, Palast has not held back in revealing the corruption and criminal actions of the wealthy and powerful. In a recent interview on Dialogos Radio, Palast turned his attention to Greece and to the austerity policies that have been imposed on the country by the IMF, the European Union, and the European Central Bank.

  • Censorship

    • Microsoft’s Bing Removes Several Hundred Thousand “Pirate” Search Results

      Over the past month copyright holders and Google have clashed over infringing search results and how they should be dealt with. Due to its smaller market share Microsoft’s Bing has rarely been mentioned, but the company informs TorrentFreak that they also remove hundreds of thousands of infringing URLs each month. Interestingly enough, Microsoft itself is one of the most active senders of DMCA notices to Bing.

    • Pirate Party Reports IT Minister to the Police for Copyright Infringement

      As the crackdown on copyright infringement in Sweden continues, the local Pirate Party has today held up a mirror to the politicians who support the tough enforcement regime. Marking the ten-year anniversary of The Pirate Bay, the Pirate Party have reported Sweden’s IT Minister to the police after she was spotted infringing copyright online on a number of occasions.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Feds Instruct Law Enforcement to Cover Up Investigations of Americans

      Agencies of the federal government are sharing the massive database of personal information being obtained by surveillance, and police are being taught how to hide the details from judges and lawyers, a Reuters report reveals.

    • Sen. Feinstein During ‘Shield’ Law Debate: ‘Real’ Journalists Draw Salaries

      I can see this stipulation working against whoever the government feels is worthy of the title “journalist.” News develops. It seldom has a distinct starting point. Of course, if someone is a journalist, it stands to reason that they’re always “planning” to publish their findings. But that might be a lot harder to prove when the government starts slinging subpoenas.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Cable and TV Networks Fee Fight Fallout— Who Pays? The Public

        Public Knowledge has a couple of pieces up on the fight between CBS and Time Warner Cable over TWC’s payment for the right to rebroadcast broadcasts and then charge the public link here and link here. CBS has already been amply rewarded through advertising on its over the air broadcasts free use of the public airwaves. But in the current fight, it wants still more money. Congress set this up in 1992 legislation which allowed the networks to charge for retransmission permission of its broadcasts.

]]> http://techrights.org/2013/08/09/android-share-in-tablets/feed/ 0 Links 22/5/2013: Debian GNU/Hurd, New Go Language Release http://techrights.org/2013/05/22/debian-gnu-hurd/ http://techrights.org/2013/05/22/debian-gnu-hurd/#comments Wed, 22 May 2013 16:23:26 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=68772

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Devon Ceptor: $99 Linux-based HDMI stick for enterprise

    Devon IT plans to launch a tiny device called the Ceptor in July which you can plug into any TV or monitor to turn it into a thin client machine. Basically the Ceptor is a $99 device that’s small enough to fit in your pocket. It has an ARM-based processor and runs a Linux-based operating system, but it’s really designed to let you login to remote server running virtual desktop software.

  • Steven Ovadia: I wiped Windows and never looked back

    I run My Linux Rig

  • Linux is an Art – Driving Force Behind Linux

    We comes across Linux (Foss) in our day-to-day life. In fact we are surrounded by Foss technologies. The first thing that might come to the mind of ours is that why is Linux appraised so much even in Windows and Mac user Community.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Is the Instrument Panel the Next Target for Open Source Software in Cars?

      The In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) System has received much of the focus from open source software initiatives in the automotive industry so far with the Automotive Grade Linux working group and the GENIVI alliance. But the instrument panel, which shares many technologies with IVI, is also ripe for development with Linux.

      The instrument cluster will probably be the next focus of open source software development in the automotive industry, said Rudolf Streif, Director of Embedded Solutions at the Linux Foundation. Traditionally the instrument panel was a set of mechanical guages that monitored speed, engine temperature, fuel levels and more. Most dashboards are electronic now and will eventually be replaced by another screen and integrated with the IVI system, he said.

    • Linux Kernel 3.9.3 Is Now Available for Download

      A few minutes ago, Greg Kroah-Hartman proudly announced that the third maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.9 kernel series is now available for download.

    • Linux 3.10-rc2 Kernel Takes In A Few Extra Pulls

      The second release candidate for the LinuThe second release candidate for the Linux 3.10 kernel is now out there. Torvalds released 3.10-rc2 on Monday with a few extra pulls that he wouldn’t have accepted later on in the release cycle. x 3.10 kernel is now out there. Torvalds released 3.10-rc2 on Monday with a few extra pulls that he wouldn’t have accepted later on in the release cycle.

    • Hot Relocation HDD To SSD Support For Btrfs

      In working to enhance the performance of the Btrfs file-system in cases where certain data/files are frequently used, a set of patches for providing hot relocation support has been posted.

      The Btrfs hot relocation support comes down to when storing data on a traditional (rotating) hard disk drive, when data gets “hot” (a.k.a. being frequently used), these patches would allow the data to be automatically migrated to a non-rotating disk (i.e. solid-state drive). By moving the frequently used data over to an SSD, the performance would obviously be much more optimal than keeping it on an SSD but making it so not all of your data would need to be stored on a costly SSD.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KTp 0.6.2 Released

        We have just released version 0.6.2 of KDE Telepathy, KDE’s instant messaging client.

      • rekonq, working on extension support
      • Calligra Author Gets a Distraction Free Mode

        wanted to throw a little light on a feature that just landed in the Calligra repositories: A distraction-free writing mode for Calligra Author and Calligra Words.

        The distraction-free mode means that we disable most UI elements and lets the user focus totally on the contents. This was one of the most asked-for features when I did a little survey half a year ago and asked which features that our potential users wanted. I say ‘potential’ because this was before the first release of Calligra Author and we didn’t have any users at all by then.

      • Okular welcomes configurable review tools

        This way you can decide that by default you want your highlighter to be green instead of yellow. Or even have two highlighters in the review bar.

      • Qt For Tizen Launches, Based On Qt 5.1

        Just two weeks after talking about a Qt 5 tool-kit port for the Tizen platform being worked on, the first release is now available.

      • Grid + Assistant = Awesome Perspective Assistant

        Been quiet some time since my last blog about Krita, well, I had been a bit busy with college work. Nonetheless, with whatever time I had, and all the help from Boud, I have been able to import a particular feature from the Perspective Grid to the Perspective Assistant.

  • Distributions

    • Emmabuntus 2 – The French Revolution

      One of my favourite things about writing about Linux is when I decide to review one of the smaller distributions.

    • New Releases

      • Neptune 3.1 is ready

        We worked hard and spend a lot of effort in creating this service release for Neptune 3.0. So if you like it please consider donating to us a small amount of money so we can further develop and strenghtens our efforts.

      • Puppy 5.6 (Precise)

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia Linux 3 brings a raft of key updates

        Mageia has long been what you might call a “best-kept secret” of the Linux world, consistently residing among the top five distributions in DistroWatch’s page-hit rankings despite minimal marketing and hoopla.

        The distro has only been around since it was forked from Mandriva Linux back in 2010, of course, but after several weeks’ delay the Mageia project on Sunday finally launched the third major version of the free and open source operating system.

      • Mageia 3, the WONT FIX scim bug, and iBus
      • OpenMandriva Picks Name, Releases Alpha

        While the rest of Linuxdom was reading of the Debian 7.0 and Mageia 3 releases, the OpenMandriva gang have been hard at it trying to get their new distribution some attention. The OpenMandriva name was made official and an alpha was released into the wild.

      • More good news: We have an iso that installs
      • Mageia 3 KDE Review: Simple, refined, elegant and fantastic!

        To be honest, I have used quite a few KDE distros in last couple of years but never saw a resource efficient distro like Mageia 2. Under similar conditions, Mageia performed better than almost all the KDE distros I have used. Plus, with Mandriva Linux going commercial and PCLinuxOS becoming independent of Mandriva, Mageia and ROSA are perhaps the limited ways to know what’s brewing in the Mandriva camp. Incidentally both the Mandriva derivatives present really beautiful KDE distros!

      • Mageia 3 out, no more delays

    • Debian Family

      • 2013-05-debian gnu hurd 2013

        It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian “sid” at the time of the Debian “wheezy” release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

      • News about Debian GNU/Hurd
      • Removing unwanted applications in Debian

        One of the biggest pitfalls for a new Debian (or Linux) user is attempting to remove an unwanted application than came installed with the Desktop installed. This can result in the Debian package manager informing the user that there are various packages which can be autoremoved. Allowing the package manager to autoremove these packages then removes packages essential to the Desktop environment, destroying the installation. Why?

      • Derivatives

        • Tails 0.18 Screenshots
        • Tails 0.18 can install packages on the fly

          Version 0.18 of Tails, The Amnesiac Incognito Live System designed for users who need to protect their privacy and be as anonymous as possible, has been released with a preview of a new feature which allows a custom list of packages to be installed and automatically updated each time a network connection is made. The new feature makes use of the persistent volume support in the distribution but users should be aware of the ramifications of using the persistence when attempting to leave no traces.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu: Restoring the Community Link

            The story of Ubuntu and the Missing Community Link has progressed in the last week. A conflict that initially seemed symbolic of the division between Canonical employees and Ubuntu volunteers has since transformed into an illustration of Ubuntu’s skill at handling community conflict.

            For now, at least, the issue appears to have been resolved, although concerns linger about how to avoid similar divisions in the future.

            The conflict arose when Canonical’s design team removed the link to the community site from the main menu on the Ubuntu home page to a sub-menu at the bottom of the page. The change resulted in one-third fewer click-throughs to the community site, but more importantly, the change seemed to confirm fears of a continuing de-emphasis of the Ubuntu community.

            As a result, Benjamin Kerensa and Mark Terranova, two prominent Ubuntu members, began a campaign to restore the position of the link. Much of the campaign was kept within conventional channels, but events reached a low point when Kerensa’s private video that compared Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to Adolf Hitler was briefly made public by Mark Terranova.

          • May 2013 Ubuntu Developer Summit Summary
          • Respect in Community Discussion and Debate

            Recently there was yet another storm in a teacup that distracted us from creating and sharing Ubuntu and our flavors with others. I am not going to dive into the details of this particular incident…it has been exhaustively documented elsewhere…but at the heart of this case was a concern around the conduct in which some folks engaged around something they disagreed with. This is not the first time we have seen disappointing conduct in a debate, and I wanted to share some thoughts on this too.

          • The key to the success of Ubuntu

            To finish this aloud thinking, I really think that Ubuntu is doing something right. And that is, taking the important decisions fast, and sticking to a plan. I do not know if the path they are following will give them the final success, but I am sure that if the start listening everyone who disagree with that said path, they are never going to succeed.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Kubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail review – Cushty

              It is time to test the third sibling in the Ubuntu family, the one named Kubuntu. So far, we’ve had Ubuntu, which was somewhat bland. Then we also had Xubuntu, which worked like a charm, except for a kernel oops thingie affecting the entire range, a silly thing to coincide with the official release. The KDE version is next.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster built by US PhD candidate

      Joshua Kiepert, a PhD candidate from Boise University, has built an awesome 32-way cluster from Raspberry Pis. Although clusters from Pi’s have been made before, and even much larger, this is still a seriously cool project.

    • Raspberry Pis Chained Together Provide Massive Computing Muscle

      As we’ve covered before, when it comes to the top open source stories of the last 12 months, it’s clear that one of the biggest is the proliferation of tiny, inexpensive Linux-based computers at some of the smallest form factors ever seen. The Linux-based Raspberry Pi, priced at $25 and $35, leads the pack among these devices.

      But in a new twist on what Raspberry Pi devices are capable of, they’re being chained together to form supercomputers and powerful clusters. If it sounds like a joke, you may be surprised at the enormous computing power these lash-ups are capable of. They may even have the power to democratize supercomputing-level data crunching at very low price points.

    • HOT Raspberry Pi DIY Mini Desktop PC Build

      We recently set out to design a mini desktop computer with the wildly popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. The Raspberry Pi is a Linux-driven, ARM processor-based micro computer that is known for its low cost and small size. People use the device for a variety of projects, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, our goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. One of the high level goals of this project was also to learn about programming with Linux and get a good feel for it with the Debian distribution.

    • TI OMAP5432 dev kit boasts Linux and Android support

      Texas Instruments (TI) introduced a development kit for designs based on the TI OMAP5432 SOC (system-on-chip), which integrates dual 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore CPUs. The OMAP5432 EVM (evaluation module) targets high performance, graphically oriented, low power embedded applications such as human-machine interfaces, portable data terminals, digital signage, and medical monitoring devices.

    • Arduino launches Wi-Fi board and ready-to-roll robotics platform

      Arduino has launched a new family of development boards and its first full robotics platform at Maker Faire Bay Area over the weekend. The Arduino Yún is the first release in a new line of Wi-Fi enabled boards and is based on the Arduino Leonardo coupled with an embedded Wi-Fi board running a MIPS variant of Linux. The Arduino Robot is the company’s first robotics platform that is fully functional out of the box and consists of two boards connected by a ribbon cable which are equipped with motors, wheels and sensors in a circular design that is reminiscent of the Roomba. The design also features a color LCD screen, microSD card slot, a compass, LEDs and control elements.

    • BeagleBone Camera Cape gains Android 4.1.2 support

      QuickLogic has released Android 4.1.2 support for its custom Parallel Camera Interface (CAM I/F) chip for TI’s Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 SOC (system-on-chip). The new support, which comes in addition to earlier Linux support, adds Android compatibility to the BeagleBone’s 3.1-megapixel Camera Cape.

    • Accessing the Raspberry Pi’s 1MHz timer

      A fixed-rate timer is not part of the ARM specification, but most ARM-based SoC’s have such a timer. The Raspberry Pi is no exception. However, reading its timer in Linux takes a Unix hacker’s understanding.

    • Phones

      • Jolla Smartphone Announced

        At an online presentation today, Jolla Ltd. released further details around the Jolla phone and its Sailfish operating system, an open source OS based on the Linux Meego project. The world’s first Jolla device was shown to an enthusiasic group of developers.

        [...]

        With Jolla, your other half, you have the ultimate freedom to let loose, innovate and individualize your own mobile world.

      • Jolla seeks Sailfish smartphone pre-orders

        Jolla Ltd. opened pre-order voucher sales for the first smartphone to run its Sailfish OS, an open source distribution based on the Linux MeeGo project. The dual-core, 4.5-inch Jolla phone features a gesture UI, Android app compatibility, and interchangeable “Other Half” back covers that switch user profiles.

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Sony releases its Android drivers for AOSP

          As part of its AOSP for Xperia project, Sony has released proprietary Wi-Fi drivers and OpenGL graphics libraries of its Xperia S smartphone, Xperia Z smartphone and Xperia Tablet Z. The company has opened GitHub repositories for all three devices that include Android source code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), the proprietary drivers and instructions to build AOSP images with the drivers and libraries and then install them on the company’s devices.

        • Google I/O: How to build battery-efficient apps
        • Tough Cat B15 Android Phone Marks U.S. Debut

          The makers of tractors and other construction equipment are trying to drum up partners to sell its rough ‘n’ tumble Android smartphone.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why we do this crazy thing we do

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • HeidiSQL 8.0 arrives with polished user interface

      Ansgar Becker has announced the release of HeidiSQL 8.0, the latest version of the open source SQL client for Windows. The new version brings a query history function, supports search and replace in results and introduces folders for tables, views, routines and sessions that allow users to better organise the user interface. HeidiSQL supports MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server and Microsoft SQL databases and enables database administrators to browse and edit data as well as import and export data from SQL files.

    • SQLite Now Faster With Memory Mapped I/O

      SQLite 3.7.17 was released yesterday. What makes this new release of the popular lightweight SQL database software noteworthy is that it introduces support for memory-mapped I/O.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Seven great features of OpenOffice and Libre Office that you probably ignore

      For many people Apache OpenOffice and Libre Office, which I’ll call collectively FOs (Free Offices suites) for short, are nothing but “free, as in free beer” substitutes of Microsoft Office for basic to intermediate needs. Many users in this category may run the FOs for years without ever discovering some of their features, that is, without realizing the full power and flexibility of these tools.

  • CMS

    • Pantheon’s Drupal Open Source CMS Partner Program

      The demand for expertise in open-source programming has come up fairly frequenly in recent months (here’s an example). And the channel seems to be taking notice, as an announcement Tuesday by Pantheon of a partner program for connecting developers with expertise in Drupal, the open-source content management system (CMS), with organizations building enterprise-quality websites.

      Drupal, which is now more than a decade old, is a key open-source technology behind the modern Web. Alongside alternative open-source CMS engines, like WordPress, Drupal makes it easier to build complex websites. It’s the system behind some of the most popular sites out there, from McDonald’s to the Linux Foundation to — last but not least — Britney Spears’s homepage.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • ktap 0.1 released

      I’m pleased to announce that ktap release v0.1, this is the first official
      release of ktap project, it is expected that this release is not fully
      functional or very stable and we welcome bug reports and fixes for the issues.

    • [ANNOUNCE] ktap 0.1 released
    • KTAP Released For Linux Kernel Dynamic Tracing
    • Jira 6 adds mobile interface, revamps web interface

      Jira, Atlassian’s issue tracker and management software, has received a user interface revamp and got a new mobile interface. Jira began life as a software development tool, but according to Atlassian, a recent survey found two thirds of the user base also used it for tasks other than software development. With this in mind, Atlassian set out to make Jira more modern and quicker to use.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Top 5 misconceptions about open source in government programs

      On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the “leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community” published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates ‘preference’ for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK’s new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK’s government for public consumption.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Rapid development of citizen cyberscience projects on Crowdcrafting.org

      At a workshop on Citizen Cyberscience held this week at University of Geneva, a novel open source software platform called Crowdcrafting was officially launched. This platform, which already has attracted thousands of participants during several months of testing, enables the rapid development of online citizen science applications, by both amateur and professional scientists.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Review of the new Digital Public Library of America

        (The official launch had been planned to occur at the Boston Public Library but the temporary closing of the library due to the Boston Marathon tragedy prompted that event to be postponed until the fall.)

  • Programming

    • Google Updates Go Open-Source Language
    • Zend Framework 2.2 focuses on consistency

      Most of these services now include “abstract factories” that are either registered by default or can be added to an application’s configuration. The service manager uses abstract factories to handle multiple services that follow the same instantiation pattern, but which have different names. The developers have also implemented new plugin manager instances, Zend\Stdlib\Hydrator\HydratorPluginManager and Zend\InputFilter\InputFilterPluginManager. The first can be used for retrieving hydrator instances and, for example, allows custom hydrators to be used across all form instances, while the second makes it possible to retrieve input filters. This allows input filters to be reused and ensures that all input instances are provided with custom validators and/or filters. The developers have also added the new translators and sessions factories.

Leftovers

  • Does a ‘fiscal cliff’ await software vendors switching to cloud?

    The move to cloud is seen as the ultimate form of product cannibalization for software vendors, since customers will be switching from high-end purchases to relatively low monthly payments.

  • Hardware

  • Finance

    • The Search for Change

      Of course UKIP are not a real alternative. I said “do not despise UKIP supporters”, not “do not despise UKIP”. UKIP are a false “alternative” dangled by the mainstream media and the bankers. But the support for them is evidence that the public do very much want some alternative. I shall append this to the article as it must be more ambiguous than I thought.

    • Sen. Warren Asks AG Holder Why No Wall Street Prosecutions
    • Sen. Warren demands to know why criminal bankers aren’t being locked up

      There’s been a rash of mega-settlements between the government and the nation’s largest banks in recent years over allegations of foreclosing on people without just cause, knowingly making bad loans and reselling the debt, making false statements to rob from retired pensioners, laundering money for drug cartels, repressive regimes and terrorists, and agreeing to settlements and then ignoring them, to name a few.

    • “True the Vote,” the Victim? Voter Vigilante Group Says IRS Targeted Its “Verify the Recall” Effort in Wisconsin

      The Texas-based Tea Party group True the Vote is claiming they were one of the groups inappropriately “targeted” by the IRS since their application for charitable status has been delayed for years. Although many Tea Party groups were singled-out by the IRS for improper reasons, there may be good reasons for the agency to take a close look at True the Vote’s application for charitable status, particularly given the group’s involvement with the Wisconsin “Verify the Recall” effort.

    • How the Government Targeted Occupy

      Freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human freedoms. This freedom is not merely about one’s ability to choose to believe or not believe in religion or a particular philosophy. In a democracy, freedom of conscience is about the ability to be critical of government and corporations, and to be free from the chilling fear that being critical will subject you to government surveillance.

      Freedom of conscience is not fully realized in isolation. Without the ability to share one’s thoughts, to speak out about injustice, or to join with others in peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances, this core freedom is not truly free. Americans should be able to exercise these most sacred rights in free society without worry of being monitored by the government.

    • Rise Up or Die

      Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information.

    • Yahoo: $1.1 Billion Tumblr Buyout Blunder?

      So Yahoo is buying its way into a crowded market to acquire a business that has no profits. Sounds like a disaster.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • A Quick Look at some Mobile Providers’ Customer Data Policies

      There’s been concern recently about what mobile providers are doing with customers’ data after a Sunday Times article on EE selling information about them. We’ve had a brief look at some of their customer data policies to try to work out what’s going on.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • 3D Printing

      If you read this blog you must have an internet connection, so presumably have heard of 3D printing. It is a very disruptive technology with potential to change manufacturing in a variety of ways – and indeed even things such as medicine. I recently had some correspondence with Joshua Pearce whose engineering group is working on materials for use in 3D printing. He is concerned about a patent arms race in this area being drag on innovation. He is looking at creative ways to preempt some of the patent nonsense.

    • Trademarks

      • A monopoly over numbers?

        Are you familiar with the ISBN? A unique identifier issued by the U.S. Government to identify books? Did you know that the U.S. Government has granted a private company Bowker a monopoly over issuing them? They are very proud of it…as if it is a good thing!

    • Copyrights

      • Do we need a law?

        In the dimension of copyright, the issue of plagiarism often comes up. There is a common misunderstanding that there is a connection between copyright or plagiarism. Plagiarism is not generally a violation of copyright law – although in some cases where extensive copying takes place it may be. Rather it is a failure of attribution. Basically plagiarism is not illegal – but it is heavily punished through contract law. It is a good example of “why we don’t need a law for that” contrary the oft expressed opinion if something is bad we need a law against it.

]]> http://techrights.org/2013/05/22/debian-gnu-hurd/feed/ 0 Links 31/12/2012: openmandriva.org Emerges, Many New Android Devices http://techrights.org/2012/12/31/many-new-android-devices/ http://techrights.org/2012/12/31/many-new-android-devices/#comments Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:36:26 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=65403

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/12/31/many-new-android-devices/feed/ 0 Links 12/12/2012: Linux 3.7 is Out, OpenMandriva http://techrights.org/2012/12/12/openmandriva/ http://techrights.org/2012/12/12/openmandriva/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:55:47 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=65117

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • For Shaadi.com, Ubuntu Scores Over Windows

    For all CTOs and IT managers, bringing costs down and deploying easy-to-use technology is the biggest challenge. Shaadi.com has addressed this issue by relying on the open source model. Over a year, more than 50 per cent of the users in the company have migrated to Ubuntu from proprietary software.

  • Consequences of Dell Embracing Ubuntu

    Desktop Linux for brand new computers has come a long way. Not too many years ago, consumers had fairly limited options in this space, but today we have more options than I could have ever imagined.

    One company offering desktop Linux on new systems is Dell. After seeing mixed success with its first line of Ubuntu PCs, Dell dumped Ubuntu almost entirely. But now Ubuntu is back with Dell’s new ultrabook offering.

  • New PlayStation PSN Web Store blocks Linux computers

    Sony again snubs Linux users with a PS3 by refusing access to the new SEN Web Store, with a generic error message giving no rhyme or reason

  • Top 5 Linux Predictions for 2013

    Linux has grown its dominance on the list of the world’s fastest and most powerful supercomputers, now owning the top 10 positions and 93.8 percent of the OS share among the Top500 systems. That’s up from 91 percent two years ago. Based on the technology behind these top systems, there does not seem to be any slowing for Linux, certainly not in 2013.

  • GNU/Linux Desktop Predictions for 2013
  • Top Linux Trends 2012-2013
  • A Linux USB Loader with EFI Support [Mac Only]

    SevenBits has written a new Mac Linux USB Loader tool that allows you to take an ISO of a Linux distribution and make it boot using EFI on Mac.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.7
    • Linux 3.7 arrives
    • Linux Works Towards True CPU Hotplug Support
    • An Overview Of The Linux 3.7 Kernel

      With the release of the Linux 3.7 kernel being imminent (it might even be out today), here’s an overview of the features and highlights of this 2012 holiday release of the Linux kernel.

    • What’s new in Linux 3.7

      Linux 3.7 has more robust Intel and NVIDIA graphics drivers, support for ARM64, can handle NAT for IPv6 and has better Btrfs performance. These are just some of the enhancements in the latest version of the Linux kernel.

    • Linux 3.7 arrives, ARM developers rejoice

      Only months after the arrival of Linux 3.6, Linus Torvalds has released the next major Linux kernel update: 3.7. The time between releases wasn’t long, but this new version includes major improvements for ARM developers and network administrators. The 3.7 source code is now available for downloading.

      Programmers for ARM, the popular smartphone and tablet chip family, will be especially pleased with this release. ARM had been a problem child architecture for Linux. As Torvalds said in 2011, “Gaah. Guys, this whole ARM thing is a f**king pain in the ass.” Torvalds continued, “You need to stop stepping on each others toes. There is no way that your changes to those crazy clock-data files should constantly result in those annoying conflicts, just because different people in different ARM trees do some masturbatory renaming of some random device. Seriously.”

    • Linux Kernel 3.6.10 Is Available for Download
    • Freescale and others join Linux Foundation

      The Linux Foundation has announced five new members today including embedded processor maker Freescale. Freescale say that the Linux Foundation hosts important embedded work such as the Yocto Project and collaboration with OpenEmbedded, so its membership and an increase in contributions to the ecosystem is a natural move. Consultancy Amarula Solutions has also joined, bringing its “extensive experience in mainlining patches, drivers and machine-layer code in the Linux kernel” to the group, and is looking to collaborate more widely.

    • New Linux Foundation Members involved with Telecoms

      The Linux Foundation has announced that new members have joined the foundation, which include Telecom and Web Storage firms

    • New Members Join Linux Foundation, Prioritize Linux Investments for 2013

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Amarula Solutions, Freescale, SIM Technology Group, Superb Internet and Symphony Teleca are joining the organization.

      Linux has emerged as the dominant operating system in a variety of markets over the last decade. It has seen major advancements this year in its role for embedded development and cloud computing. An accelerated pace of development to support these areas is expected for 2013. The Linux Foundation’s newest members are joining the organization now to maximize their investments in Linux for these areas as they prepare for the New Year.

    • There’s Another Linux Kernel Power Problem

      After last year discovering a major Linux kernel power regression that was widely debated until the Phoronix test automation software bisected the problem to get to the bottom of the situation, there’s more active power regressions today on the Linux desktop. As I’ve mentioned on Twitter and in other articles in weeks prior there’s a few regressions, but one of them for at least some notebooks is causing a very significant increase in power consumption. This situation that remains unresolved as of the Linux 3.7 kernel can cause the system to be going through about 20% more power.

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD Releases New Radeon Code: A-Sync DMA Engines

        A second update to the Radeon DRM driver has been released that will be pulled into the Linux 3.8 kernel. This second Direct Render Manager update for the Radeon kernel driver provides new code from AMD that was kept internally for months but is now permitted for open-sourcing.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

  • Distributions

    • Manjaro Linux Review – Linux Distro Reviews
    • Bridge Linux 2012.12 Review: Arch Linux a bit simplified

      I haven’t tried out Arch Linux yet but I plan to do so next year. Mostly my experience is concentrated on Ubuntu, Fedora and their derivatives. Now with every passing release all these distributions are getting heavier and resource consuming. Puppy is a definite saving grace, no doubt. But, as an user I want to create my own lightweight all purpose operating system using Arch. Further, the rolling release of Arch is a definite advantage, once you set your system, you don’t need to re-install every alternate year.

    • ZevenOS 5.0 Review: Is it better than Xubuntu 12.10?

      With Ubuntu 12.10 out, Ubuntu derivatives are releasing their final version as well. ZevenOS and OS4 are couple of such distros, both provide a cocktailed version of Xubuntu with some added benefits, of course. In this review I’ll provide insights of ZevenOS and in my next review will take on OS4. They offer more or less similar proposition and could have reviewed them together as well.

    • OS4 OpenDesktop 13.1 Review: What’s the difference with ZevenOS?

      It is kind of a peculiar feeling to use Linux distros who look and feel very similar. I am talking of ZevenOS 5.0 and OS4 OpenDesktop 13.1. Both got released in 5 days apart and have striking similarities, at least at a high level. Same Xubuntu fork with a BeOS theme, it is difficult to distinguish them from each other.

    • New Design for Slax.org, Preparing Final Release

      Just in time for the expected final release of Slax 7.0 on Monday after all this time the web site has had a makeover as well to serve as a visual reminder that a new age for Slax has truly arrived. This is the first release using KDE 4, and possibly Blackbox as low resource alternative, and also the first one since a sponsor was secured. Slax 7.0 will be available to order on 16 GB USB flash drive for $25.-, and there are now localized versions in the download section. There’s a new page with all relevant documentation to get you up and running, and the developer has moved his personal blog over.

    • ROSA Desktop 2012 preview

      The first and last Release Candidate of ROSA Desktop 2012 was announced last week. This means, of course, that the stable edition will be hitting a download mirror near you very soon, likely before Xmas. ROSA Desktop, an end-user edition, is published by ROSA Laboratory, a Linux solutions provider based in Moscow, Russia, which also publishes ROSA Desktop Enterprise.

      In real terms, the difference between ROSA Desktop and ROSA Desktop Enterprise is that the former will ship and always have the latest and greatest editions of the Linux kernel and software, bleeding edge, if you like, while the later will ship with Debian-style stable versions of applications and the Linux kernel.

    • DragonFlyBSD, CentOS, Ubuntu, Solaris Benchmarks

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • OpenMandriva: It’s Almost a Done Deal

        Today Charles-H. Schulz blogged to share that “the statutes of the “OpenMandriva Association” have been sent to the French authorities and the incorporation process has thus started.” Schulz admits originally being skeptical that Mandriva would ever be truly open, that was until he spoke personally with Mandriva SA CEO Jean-Manuel Croset.

        Schulz continued by saying that the transition to the new community directed project and migrating all the infrastructure is “somewhere around 80%” complete and that none of it would have been possible without the commitment from Jean-Manuel Croset. He said, “It is not everyday you see an example of a community who gains its independence with the blessing and dedication of its former steward.”

      • OpenMandriva becoming fully independent
      • The December 2012 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst Opens Up

        Jim Whitehurst, the President and CEO of Red Hat has had an interesting career to date. He was a consultant for a number of years, joined Delta Air Lines right around September 11, 2001, and played a big role in securing the future of that company as its Chief Operating Officer, and now is the President and CEO of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s first billion dollar open source company. Whitehurst and I recently spoke as part of my Forum on World Class IT podcast series, and hearing him compare his time at Delta to his current role at Red Hat struck me as an interesting case example in how older generation businesses and newer technology firms differ in terms of culture, hierarchy, collaboration, and the like.

      • Red Hat’s New OpenShift Enterprise looks to make PaaS an On-Premise Solution

        Red Hat, world leaders in open source solutions to provide high-performing cloud, virtualisation, storage, Linux® and middleware technologies, have launched OpenShift Enterprise, their new product designed specifically for installation as an on-premise solution within private, public and hybrid cloud data centre.

      • Red Hat Speeds Up Open Source Virtualization Race

      • Fedora

        • Bye bye, Miracle Beefy, Welcome Spherical Cow

          Every new Fedora release, is a good time to test and see new features, normally I start testing on Alfa, but now after installing it on a test machine did not have to much time to play with it.

          Another thing that change on my test is was I installed instead of using preupgrade, the main reason, Fedora 18 has a new installer so I wanted to see how good it was.

        • The Future Of Fedora Gets Debated, Again

          Being hotly discussed this weekend within the Fedora development camp is in regards to the future direction of the Linux distribution.

          Tomas Radej, a developer at Red Hat issuing a statement from the position of a Fedora contributor/community member rather than his employer, volleyed a long message on the Fedora devel list about “where are we going?”

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi for Schools – The Free Software Column with Richard Hillesley

      The Raspberry Pi can be the affordable route to teaching schoolchildren the lost idea that computer programming can be fun

    • 4 things I have learned since I was given a Raspberry PI

    • Phones

      • Can HP’s webOS Rise from the Ashes?

        Forget Android and iOS—a team of enthusiasts plans to bring HP’s much-admired webOS back from the scrap heap.

      • Android

        • Android Candy: Never Plug In Your Phone Again!

          Last month, I showed you an awesome audiobook player app for Android, but I didn’t share my frustration in getting the audio files on to my phone. When I plugged my phone in to the computer, I couldn’t get the SD card to mount, no matter what settings I changed. It was very frustrating and forced me to come up with a better way. Enter: FolderSync.

        • LG Working On Optimus G2 with 5.5″ Full HD Display?

          The year 2012 has not been a good year for android manufacturers, with an exception of Samsung which hit success with high volume sales. While Samsung captued the largest smartphone market share, other manufactures failed to report profits.

          Surprisingly LG is on the path of turning things around. Everything changed for the South Korean company after the significant success of LG Optimus G and then the runaway hit of LG manufactured Google Flagship device Nexus 4, which still has a huge backorder.

        • Samsung Galaxy Camera gets an open-source bootloader

          There is certainly no shortage of dedicated devs and modders working on hacking Android-powered devices to make them more useful and customizable.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Allwinner introduces dual and quad-core tablets

        The Allwinner A10 single-core chip has been a relatively popular chip with Chinese device makers due to its low price and decent performance.

        That’s the processor that powers the original MK802 Android 4.0 Mini PC and a number of other mini PCs. It’s proven popular with tinkerers, because Android isn’t the only supported operating system. Users have been installing Ubuntu and other Linux-based software on Allwinner A10 devices for months, and the PengPod line of tablets are expected to ship soon with a desktop Linux operating system preloaded.

      • 9 Android Tablet for Kids these Holidays

        That’s not to say LeapPad or similar tablets are any lesser in quality but Android tablets you get more flexibility and choice. Additionally, if you are doubtful if your toddler is big enough to handle a tablet or benefit from it completely you can get a cheap one and try it! Now let’s move on to the top nine Android based children tablet.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source into 2013; 10 Predictions
  • Revamping the first open source groupware solution

    Many heroes will remain unsung because there is no-one to tell their story. I first came across this story over eight years ago, and three years ago it became connected with my own. The hero in our story is an unlikely candidate for heroism: a public sector body in Germany, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

  • Samba Team Releases Samba 4.0 – 1st Free Software Active Directory Compatible Server

    Do you remember when the Samba team won against Microsoft before the EU Commission, and they won the right to buy the documentation and use it like this? This result is part of that story, as the work was created using the official protocol documentation published by Microsoft. But times have changed, and Microsoft helped make this happen. That means it’s legal. So go ahead and use it. They even got a nice quotation from Microsoft for the press release.

    Samba is one of 11 open source projects that leading software integrity vendor Coverity has certified as “secure” and has reached Coverity “Integrity Rung 2″ certification. What I like the best about the Samba team is that it’s proven to be a no-sellout zone. “If you want to become a member of the team then the first thing you should do is join the samba-technical mailing list and start contributing to the development of Samba,” it says on the site.

    This is FOSS history, so it belongs right here in our archives. I lived that whole Samba-Microsoft saga, and it feels so right to see it bear such fruit. It’s what courts are for, and it’s why I am very grateful to the EU Commission, the Samba guys for not wimping out when everyone else did, and to the lawyers, especially Carlo Piana, for making it happen.

  • DSD releases resilient open source forensics tool

    Security boffins within the Defence Signals Directorate have released an open source forensics tool that improves the process of “carving out” target data stored within other file formats.

  • Defence researchers create open source forensics tool
  • Open Source Software Used by Majority of Developers, Survey Reveals

    The term “open source” was tossed around like any other tech buzzword some time ago. Many predicted the philosophy’s eventual demise or, at best, relegation to hobbyists. Few expected open source software to take hold in the enterprise, citing security concerns and lack of technical support beyond the community of developers itself. Now, however, open source has graduated from idealist’s dream to a ubiquitous presence in the toolkit of most software developers.

  • Ten to the dozen: number of developers using open source
  • The secret ingredient in open source
  • GraphBuilder is open sourced

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Accidentally Transmits Self-Destruct Code to Army of Chrome Browsers

        The problems were short-lived, but widespread. Over at Hacker News — a news discussion site that tends to attract Silicon Valley’s most knowledgeable software developers — a long thread quickly filled up with dozens of crash reports. “My Chrome has been crashing every ten minutes for the last half hour,” wrote one poster.

        This may be a first. Bad webpage coding can often cause a browser to crash, but yesterday’s crash looks like something different: widespread crashing kicked off by a web service designed to help drive your browser.

        Think of it as the flip side of cloud computing. Google’s pitch has always been that its servers are easier to use and less error-prone than buggy desktop software. But the Sync problem shows that when Google goes down, it can not only keep you from getting your e-mail — it can knock desktop software such as a browser offline too.

      • Google Chrome May Be Set for Next-Gen Features in Working with Displays, TVs

        Next-generation browsers may be built to connect with external displays and devices in brand new ways, and there are signs that the Google Chrome team may lead some of these efforts. According to a new set of posts, Chrome may take on new protocols and an API for communicating with “first screen devices,” and more. Here are the details.

  • SaaS

    • This CEO Is Creating The Next Billion Dollar Open Source Company

      As part, of UC Santa Barbara’s Distinguished Lecture Series, Eucalyptus Systems’ CEO, Marten Mickos shared his advice regarding what it takes to be a serially successful entrepreneur.

    • In-Q-Tel an Investor in Big Data Open Source Provider Cloudera

      In-Q-Tel is investing in big data firm Cloudera as part of that company’s newest venture capital round, All Things D reports.

      Cloudera raised $65 million in its latest round from IQT, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners and Meritech Capital Partners.

    • Is Cloud Computing Killing Open Source Software

      The best thing about open source software systems has always been the fact that it is freely available and any programmer or company can use it to develop its own version of that software. For the longest time they have been the best solution for people willing to go outside the box in order to get the best results in their respective IT departments. Of course these systems have never been without profit and it came from two sources that are now getting to be absolute because of the emergence of cloud computing and the level of affordability most of its components come from.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Help improve LibreOffice 4.0 in a ‘test marathon’ this month

      If you’ve ever used free and open source software for any length of time, you’re probably already aware that much of the work done to develop, test, and maintain that software is accomplished by what’s typically a global community of developers and volunteers.

  • CMS

    • Acquia flies flag for Drupal downunder

      Acquia has set its sights on accelerating adoption of the open source Drupal content management system by large organisations. The company, which was founded by the CMS’s creator, Dries Buytaert, opened a Sydney office last month and plans on expanding its sales and business development operations in Australia.

      Australia is already home to elements of Acquia’s tri-continental 24/7 support setup, and the company’s Asia Pacific regional director, Chris Harrop, said he plans to boost the company’s local headcount to about 15 over the next 12 months, bringing on board field sales and business development staff in Sydney.

    • Senator Lundy to be DrupalCon Sydney headliner
    • WordPress Reaches 3.5, Rides The Coltrane

  • Healthcare

    • Why You Need Open Source for Health Exchange Success

      With the national election over there’s an expectation for greater bipartisanship between Republicans and Democrats, but in terms of programs with potential for cooperation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is one of the least likely. The ACA has been a significant point of contention between the parties, and despite the President’s reelection and therefore, the mandate to pursue ACA, it seems the conflict may continue, particularly around implementing a Health Insurance Exchange (HIX) website portal in each state. Luckily, open source may be the answer to overcoming some of the conflict.

  • BSD

    • The Grinch That Delayed FreeBSD 9.1

      Originally the plan for FreeBSD 9.1 was to release it in mid-September, but the first release candidate was one month late along with the RC2 and RC3 releases. The plan was then updated to release FreeBSD 9.1 at the end of October, but that too passed. The latest schedule set the RELEASE announcement as going out on 12 November, but that clearly didn’t work either.

      It’s been more than one month since the last test release (FreeBSD 9.1-RC3) and there’s still no sign of an imminent release. Asked on the mailing list this weekend was Will we get a RELEASE-9.1 for Christmas? There’s FreeBSD stakeholders delaying new server rollouts until the FreeBSD 9.1 availability, but there’s been no clear communication from FreeBSD developers when the release will happen.

    • FreeBSD veteran confident of reaching fund-raising goal

      Veteran BSD hacker Marshall Kirk McKusick has played down fears that the FreeBSD project will fall short of its target of raising $US500,000 through donations for this year.

    • FreeBSD end-of-year fund raiser on target

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Free Software Leader Richard Stallman: Amazon Search Integration In Ubuntu Amounts To Spyware

      Free software leader Richard Stallman claims Ubuntu amounts to spyware with Amazon search integrated into the “dash” of its Unity interface. He is calling for developers to shun the open-source operating system.

    • Ubuntu Community Manager apologises to Stallman

      Canonical has yet to make an official statement…

    • Sorry RMS Says Jono Bacon

      On the issue that Stallamn raised Jono Bacon still maintains a view “that referring to the Ubuntu dash as malicious software that collects information about users without their knowledge (spyware) and as a result that Ubuntu should be shunned for “spying”, somewhat over-sensationalizes the issue”.

      It is good in part of Jono Bacon to come up with a apology but the post does not deal with concers that Stallman initially raised regarding user privacy. This post could mean that those question could remain unanswered.

    • Linux Top 3:Ubuntu Roaring, RMS Not Impressed
    • Ubuntu Community Manager apologises to Stallman

      Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon has apologised to Richard Stallman for calling Stallman’s position on Ubuntu “childish”. Last week, Richard Stallman wrote an article describing Ubuntu 12.10′s Amazon Shopping Lens as spyware. In “Ubuntu Spyware: What to do”, Stallman said that the sending of search terms being entered into the desktop by users on to Canonical’s servers, where they are then searched for on Amazon, is simple surveillance and without the users’ consent. Even though the Amazon searching can be turned off, “the existence of that switch does not make the surveillance feature ok” because its default state is on, he says. Stallman called on the free software community to “remove Ubuntu from the distros you recommend” and said that “it behooves us to give Canonical whatever rebuff is needed to make it stop this”.

    • [Mono booster/GNU hater:] Morals? Forbidding stuff?

      It isn’t freedom to have to choose for Richard Stallman’s world view. It isn’t ‘freedom’ to be called immoral just because you choose another ethic. It isn’t freedom when a single person or group with a single view on morality tries to forbid you something based on just their point of view.

      For example, Stallman has repeatedly said about Trusted Computing (which he in a childish way apparently calls Treacherous Computing) that it ‘should be illegal’ (that’s a quote from official FSF and GNU pages). I also recall Stallman trying to forbid blog posts about proprietary software (it was about VMWare) on planet-gnome (original thread here).

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • White House Steps Up Open Source Activities

      Web developers in the White House also collaborate with the open source community on Github, offering White House mobile apps. The White House website offers a page for developers interested in using their open source tools at whitehouse.gov/developers. Developers can also track the White House’s open source activity through the White House’s Github profile.

    • Swiss City Mandates Use Of Open Source, Banishes Microsoft Officially

      In an overwhelming majority vote, the city council in Bern, Switzerland has moved to implement all future infrastructure with open source technologies. The “Party Motion”, as it is called in Switzerland, was submitted over a year ago, and has finally been realized. Plans to move forward with open source design, strategy and implementation should begin immediately.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • RuuviTracker: Open Source GPS tracking system

        The new project aims to develop a new GSM/GPS-enabled tracking system for a wide variety of uses. On the hardware side, the project aims to develop an affordable, water-proof, robust, high-quality and state-of-the-art device, capable of operating in temperatures as low as -40C.

      • Arduino launches Esplora open source controller

        Tinkerers take note, because Arduino has launched its new Esplora controller, which just so happens to be customizable and open source. The Esplora is derived from the Arduino Leonardo, but unlike its predecessors, it comes equipped with a number of sensors and buttons out of the box. That means it should be at least relatively easy to just jump in once your Esplora arrives.

      • Burrito Bomber: open source hardware-based drone autonomously delivers Mexican food
      • Making it real with 3D printing

        With a 3D printer that costs less than $3,000, you can start your own mini manufacturing operation — and use open source software to create surprisingly complex designs

  • Programming

    • Python creator Guido van Rossum joins Dropbox

      Dropbox has announced that Python creator Guido van Rossum will be joining the company. According to a tweet by van Rossum, he has already quit his job at Google and will be starting at the company behind the popular synchronisation software in January. Van Rossum says he is “leaving Google as the best of friends” in a later tweet, where he shared a link to his redecorated office.

Leftovers

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/12/12/openmandriva/feed/ 0 Microsoft Does Not Obey the Law http://techrights.org/2012/07/18/obeying-eu/ http://techrights.org/2012/07/18/obeying-eu/#comments Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:46:17 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=61729 Obey

Summary: Microsoft snubs authorities, breaking the law after it was penalised for breaking the law

A lot of publications have already covered the news about Microsoft not obeying orders, essentially by not making it possible to install alternative browsers as easily as mandated after Microsoft broke the law. To quote one report:

Brussels’ competition commissioner has opened a fresh investigation into Microsoft’s practice of using its Windows operating system to push people into using its Internet Explorer browser, following allegations of non-compliance with an EC settlement deal the software giant agreed to in late 2009.

Microsoft, under the legally-binding agreement, was supposed to display a choice screen to its European Windows customers allowing them to pick between IE, Firefox, Chrome and other browsers on the market until 2014.

“On Tuesday, the commission accused Microsoft of omitting a screen that gives users easier access to rivals’ Web browsers,” claimed IDG. This shows the sheer arrogance of Microsoft. It leads to another probe, which is unlikely to achieve much as Microsoft cannot understand any language other than force.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) risks European Union penalties for failing to comply with a settlement to give users a choice of web browsers, more than two years after it tried to end a decade-long clash with antitrust regulators.
EU Competition Commission Joaquin Almunia said Microsoft may have misled regulators by failing to display a browser choice screen to users of the Windows operating system since February 2011. The world’s largest software company blamed a technical error for not showing the screen to some users and offered to extend its commitment until March 2016.

Jan Wildeboer says that:

[T]he EU case v Microsoft should also ring the alarm bells in Cupertino AFAICS. The main claim seems to be that there is no browser choice on Windows 8 on the ARM platform (where one can only have IE, just as iOS onyl allows it’s own engine)

That’s not the point though. It was not Apple that used illegal tactics to get a browser monopoly.

Here is another report about this antitrust failure:

The European Commission and Microsoft have been tangled in a long and drawn out legal battle that has now spanned almost 20 years. The EC reacted to accusations that the software giant was using its position as market leader to stifle competition by leveraging a $1.1 billion fine on the company. In a related case it also ruled that Microsoft should include a “browser ballot” with its operating systems. Now, a new dispute appears to be brewing, once again hinging on browser choice in Microsoft’s OSes. The Redmond-based company failed to include the required ballot screen with its Windows 7 Service Pack 1 update, and has also drawn criticism for preventing browser choice with its upcoming ARM-based operating system, Windows RT.

Our contributor iophk says that “‘browser choice’ was an ineffectual remedy anyway. It’s rather telling about the corporate culture there that Microsoft got caught trying to dodge out of even such a weak punishment. After all, it does zero to address the original problem of illegally tying/bundling MSIE with all Windows systems sold.”

We covered the subject in posts such as:

  1. Cablegate: European Commission Worried About Microsoft’s Browser Ballot Screen Being Inappropriate
  2. Microsoft’s Browser Ballot is Broken Again and Internet Explorer 8 is Critically Flawed
  3. Microsoft’s Ballot Screen is a Farce, Decoy
  4. A Ballot Screen is Not Justice, Internet Explorer Still Compromises Users’ PCs
  5. Microsoft Not Only Broke the Law in Europe, So Browser Ballot Should Become International
  6. Browser Ballot Critique
  7. Microsoft’s Fake “Choice” Campaign is Back
  8. Microsoft Claimed to be Cheating in Web Browsers Ballot
  9. Microsoft Loses Impact in the Web Despite Unfair Ballot Placements
  10. Given Choice, Customers Reject Microsoft
  11. Microsoft is Still Cheating in Browser Ballot — Claim

We have covered most points before, so there is no point doing that again.

The corporate press gave this issue a lot of coverage, but iophk notes that “[f]ines have no effect. Other remedies are necessary.” iophk recommends a “2-year ban on sales of Microsoft products in the EU,” insisting that it “would be a start.”

Remember that the only language Microsoft understands is force. We saw Microsoft refusing to obey orders many times before. █

“Microsoft and its employees now think it is indeed the Master of the Universe.”

–Stewart Alsop, Fortune

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/07/18/obeying-eu/feed/ 0 Apple Suffers Boycotts From Own Followers Due to Patent Aggression http://techrights.org/2012/07/10/cant-embargo-the-competition/ http://techrights.org/2012/07/10/cant-embargo-the-competition/#comments Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:17:45 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=61491 Apple aspires to be the next Microsoft (in the bad sense)

Apples

Summary: The apples are rotting after largely failed attempts by Apple to embargo the competition

WE OUGHTN’T lose sight of Apple’s attacks on Linux, however indirect or subtle they may be. Some reports say that even Apple followers are fed up with it. To quote: “A new movement has started on the social “networking sites it’s called BoycottApple. We noticed that even the hardcore Apple users have come out in protest of what Apple is doing against its competitors.”

“A new movement has started on the social “networking sites it’s called BoycottApple. We noticed that even the hardcore Apple users have come out in protest of what Apple is doing against its competitors.”
      –MuktwareSJVN, who is not usually against Apple (his wife uses a Mac), writes about the Koh decision, calling Apple’s patent lawsuits “lousy”. He wrote: “U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, has granted Apple’s request to halt the sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which runs Google’s Android operating system. The Galaxy Tab’s crime? It looks writes a tablet.

“No. I’m not making that up. Judge Koh claims that “Samsung appears to have created a design that is likely to deceive an ordinary observer.” True, from a distance of ten feet, it’s not easy to tell them apart. It’s not easy to tell any tablet apart from any other tablet at that range. Most people I know prefer to use tablets at arm’s reach, but that’s just me.

“Apple’s legal case rests on a single design patent, USD504889. In it, Apple claims “the ornamental design for an electronic device, substantially as shown and described.” You can see Apple’s patented design for yourself in this story. Looks pretty much like a tablet doesn’t it? Do you see anything about it what-so-ever that looks unique?”

The Nexus ban is temporarily lifted, so Apple’s strategy is hardly working at all. It’s just alienating journalists and/or clients. Oracle’s (or Ellison’s) attacks on Android failed to impress the now-dead Steve Jobs, who is Ellison’s best friend. Oracle lost all cases and Google is now demanding millions from Oracle. To quote Pamela Jones, “Google has filed its Bill of Costs [PDF] in the Oracle v. Google case — $4,030,669 is the whopping total it would like Oracle to have to pay.” This is also covered here.

Apple also failed in the UK, where “Colin Birss (sitting as a Judge of the High Court, UK) said that Galaxy Tab does not infringe upon the design of Apple’s iPad. The judge said that Galaxy Tab is not identical to the iPad even if there are some similarities but that doesn’t account to design infringement. The judge actually criticized Samsung’s design by stating that they “do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design.””

“The company is being sued by patent trolls for the most part; contrariwise, Apple sues non-troll (i.e. producing) companies.”Apple continues to collect multitouch patents in vain. In fact, Apple itself is being sued for patent violations such as this. Back in June Apple got sued for other alleged violations, but do not cry for Apple. The company is being sued by patent trolls for the most part; contrariwise, Apple sues non-troll (i.e. producing) companies. As one writer put it, “When patents protect Apple, are they okay?”

Of course not.

Apple cannot sue troll, so when it sues it will usually be an aggressive display of power. The WSJ published an article titled “‘Silly’ Apple and Google”. To quote: “There were great expectations when technology giants Apple and Google squared off in court, each accusing the other of violating its patents in competing mobile phones. No one expected this case would end in a whimper, with one of the country’s most influential judges dismissing the claims as “silly.””

Yes, Apple is a silly company capitalising on some “silly” people who overpay for products that Apple merely brands. Android sites are growing angry at Apple, with headlines like “Judge Who Threw Out Motorola V. Apple Thinks We Don’t Even Need Software Patents”. To quote: “One of the best things about this ongoing patent war between every mobile phone company in the business, is that it’s finally starting to attract attention to how crazy it is all getting. Judge Richard Posner recently threw a case out of his court that involved Motorola and Apple and did so with a little bit of a flair. Luckily for us, Posner is one of the most respected Judges in the States right now, and he has started to put his mind behind this whole patent system.

“Posner recently sat down for an interview after being thrust into the spotlight after his decision on Moto v. Apple. Posner has been seen by many in his field as a visionary rather than following the rules as they state. This outlook is what causes him to think critically about cases and come up with thoughts like “most industries don’t need patents.” Posner said that in the smartphone industry, patents are “a problem. You just have this proliferation of patents.””

Similiar article with slant against software patents appeared in major news sites [1, 2, 3] and Motorola receives some good publicity. Here is a summary of “The Mobile Tech Patent War: A History Of Nokia vs. Apple vs. Android vs. Microsoft”

“The monopolist continues to amass patents, but it’s not just about Microsoft anymore. We must also track Apple.”To quote the part about Microsoft: “Microsoft Corp filed an International Trade Commission complaint against Motorola in October 2010 for infringing nine patents. Motorola responded the next month with its own ITC complaint against Microsoft for infringing 16 patents.

“In May, the U.S. trade panel ordered an import ban on 18 infringing Motorola devices, which has not yet taken effect.”

In May we saw Microsoft’s aggression paying off, leading to blockades like Apple’s. This went to trial and the ITC collaborated with Microsoft. In order to drive away Microsoft with its embargo-happy aggression Motorola did offer to settle, but Microsoft did not take it. Some corruptible members of congress took the side of the abusive aggressive monopolist in front of the ITC, showing just how deep Microsoft’s influence in the US government is running. It was about the fires-causing gaming box that the Microsoft-funded Obama infamously likes to name a lot (free advertising). The monopolist continues to amass patents, but it’s not just about Microsoft anymore. We must also track Apple. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/07/10/cant-embargo-the-competition/feed/ 11 Microsoft Bugs Kill Nokia http://techrights.org/2012/04/13/nokia-collapse/ http://techrights.org/2012/04/13/nokia-collapse/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:38:12 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=59714 Beetle

Summary: Another nail is squeezed into Nokia’s coffin, again by Microsoft’s sheer incompetence

Ryan (DaemonFC) from our IRC channels made us aware that “Apple is thrashing around having its lawyers clean up the effects of their poorly designed software” and he gave this link to support his claim. We mentioned this briefly the last time we wrote about Apple's defects that help Linux. But watch what Nokia/Microsoft are facing.

Nokia collapses as Microsoft bugs take their toll:

Nokia has found a software bug in its Lumia 900 smartphone, its answer to Apple’s iPhone, and is effectively giving the model away until it is fixed, blunting its bid to turn around its fortunes in the United States.

Nokia’s first 4G phone, which it markets with the strapline “an amazingly fast way to connect”, can occasionally lose its data connection as a result of the bug, Nokia said.

Though still the world’s biggest volume maker of cellphones, Nokia lost the top spot in the lucrative smartphone market last year to Apple and Google, in part due to its weak performance in the United States, where its smartphones have slipped to less than a 1 percent market share.

This is so bad that “Nokia drops Lumia 900 price to $0 in response to bug outrage” (still too expensive). Nokia’s shares fall further.

Nokia used to have a strong market share in China, but right now Android dominates there. Why did the Microsoft mole not go with Android? It’s obvious why. A former Microsoft employee emits the article “Windows Phone’s many problems: Should Microsoft give up?”

Well, duh. As my co-host put it:

Microsoft’s WP7 can be summarized by giving the example of a star collapsing in on itself – its dragging everything near it, in with it. Nokia who to be fair have been suffering of late seem now to be in the death throes since their “arrangement” with Microsoft.

Microsoft entryism is expensive. Parts of Nokia are now fleeing back to Linux, but is it too late? █

]]> http://techrights.org/2012/04/13/nokia-collapse/feed/ 1 Microsoft’s Three Musketeers (Gates, Allen, Myhrvold) Still Assault the Market With Patents http://techrights.org/2011/05/05/attacking-the-market-with-swpats/ http://techrights.org/2011/05/05/attacking-the-market-with-swpats/#comments Thu, 05 May 2011 16:05:05 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=48053 “Intellectual property is the next software.”

–Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft patent troll

Nathan Myhrvold

Summary: An overview of patent activity against Linux with particular focus on Microsoft-derived shells and lobbying

Gates and his buddies are lobbying for worse patent laws, but they are not alone (no wonder the USPTO gets stuffed with the wrong people). They are also cooking lawsuits — a subject we currently research via E-mail (more on that later this month).

Since Microsoft is a rogue company increasingly unable to compete, core people from this company created profitable entities outside of Microsoft and their impact on the world is immensely damaging for reasons we explained before. They want more and more patent monopolies in every walk of life — from the environment to agriculture and even software, obviously. It is about restoring scarcity in the age of Internet-enabled abundance and equality.

According to this new article which was cited by Groklaw:

“Everyone is worried about the Windows numbers,” said Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS AG in San Francisco. “That’s the cash cow and everyone is worried the cow is running out of milk.”

Groklaw then cites this one which says “Microsoft confirmed Thursday its Windows cash machine is under threat.” (warning: behind paywall)

Reading further down the article, Groklaw remarks: “Let’s define our terms. What does it mean that “Microsoft can limit the speed of such incursions”? How exactly? What does the Wall Street Journal mean by that? Using litigation? What?”

That’s rhetorical. And as we have shown before, Gates, Allen, and Myhrvold are all extorting and suing Linux, amongst other entities or efforts. That’s their next big plan for making money. They can disguise it all they want using expensive PR campaigns, but people are not dumb enough to fall for it. An increasing number of bloggers and publications speak openly about the truth, which places Gates, Allen, Myhrvold down at the bottom alongside villains like Edison and Rockefeller (he too has been trying the whole PR spiel).

“What does it mean that “Microsoft can limit the speed of such incursions”? How exactly? What does the Wall Street Journal mean by that? Using litigation?”
      –Pamela Jones, GroklawOver at Groklaw, Pamela Jones links to some whitewashing of Microsoft and notes that her friend “Todd Bishop wonders why so little attention is being paid [to Microsoft antitrust/oversight expiry]. I think it’s because the compliance required is to the Final Judgment, not to any other issues since. If you look at page 11 of the PDF, the status report, you’ll see that. It says, “As of April 18, 2011, Microsoft had received 32 complaints or inquiries since the March 2011 Joint Status Report. None of these complaints is related to any of Microsoft’s compliance obligations under the Final Judgments.” So this is old stuff. The court isn’t about anything that wasn’t ordered by the Final Judgment. The world has moved on. And the second reason no one cares is we’ve seen this court at work, and our expectations are low for anything meaningful.”

Todd Bishop is still promoting Microsoft in his new site, GeekWire. At his previous employer, the Microsoft-paid TechFlash, there is some more Microsoft PR, this time in HTC flavour. Jones quotes the following from an HTC interview:

So are patents good or bad for the industry? It’s a difficult balance, I think, between protecting the hard work that people have done to design innovative products and, of course, offering the best products and experience to customers. I think there probably does need to be some reform in the way patents are granted, the way the patent office works, but I’m not a lawyer.

According to one source that we found at the time, Microsoft was about to sue HTC for using Android, but HTC decided to avoid the lawsuit and instead it made it look like it had signed an amicable patent deal with Microsoft, agreeing to pay Steve Ballmer and fellow thugs for Linux. Later on HTC also agreed to pay Myhrvold. The threat of the burden of litigation was a weapon. It’s called racketeering, blackmail, or extortion when this type of thing is done. That’s the ‘New Microsoft’. It’s worse than ever and regulators ought to step in.

Microsoft’s co-founder Traul Allen has become a patent troll. Woz (of Apple fame) defended him at one stage, but he apparently regrets the stance, based on this highly-cited Rik Myslewski report which says:

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak has no love for the US patent system, and prefers split-pea soup to “that patent-troll thing” as practiced by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen in his current patent-infringment lawsuit against Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and others.

“A lot of patents are pretty much not worth that much,” Wozniak told his keynote audience at the Embedded System Conference Silicon Valley (ESC) taking place this week in San José, California.

“In other words, any fifth-grader could come up with the same approach.”

When asked about patent-trolling, Wozniak had two personal stories to tell: one about Allen, and one about an early experience that soured him on patents held and enforced by deep-pockets companies.

Dr. Glyn Moody added: “confused? he was, you will be”

Jones wrote about the same article: “I recall Justice Stevens in the i4i v. Microsoft oral argument asking if it was a really big problem or a little one. What someone should probably do is make a list of really stupid patents that have already issued. You’d need to explain how and why it’s silly, of course.”

Microsoft is not against software patents. It opposes only software patents which can be used against Microsoft. Meanwhile it is bragging about taking payments from Volkswagen and guess what for:

Microsoft licensing patent over “Quick Filename Lookup Using Name Hash” to VW

Sounds familiar? It ought to. Microsoft uses filename lookup to extort the most popular kernel, Linux. Yes, Microsoft is completely distorting the market with its lawsuits, patent trolls, and lobbyists. To quote a well-known critic of zealous intellectual monopolist: “CNET News reported that Google was asked to pay $5 million for the infringement, a relatively small amount for the internet search and video giant. But a Google spokesperson remarked that the company would “continue to defend against attacks like this one on the open-source community,” and that “the recent explosion in patent litigation is turning the world’s information highway into a toll road, forcing companies to spend millions and millions of dollars defending old, questionable patent claims, and wasting resources that would be much better spent investing in new technologies for users and creating jobs.”

“Google profits from making things abundant and available to everyone; Microsoft is the exact opposite and only one can be described as a democratising force.”That’s what makes Microsoft so unique and by no means a scapegoat; what a disgusting company it must be in comparison to Google, for example. Google profits from making things abundant and available to everyone; Microsoft is the exact opposite and only one can be described as a democratising force.

Watch what “Microsoft IP&L” (The official Twitter account for Microsoft’s Intellectual Property and Licensing at Redmond, WA) is doing in Twitter right now. This is what these people publish: “Tips for prosecuting a successful IP Portfolio: set goals for creating patent hits; invest more $ in High level patents & watch your plan”

Microsoft is “creating patent hits”. Impressive, eh? Who would defend such abusive attitudes and litigious minds?

Well, Microsoft Florian is promoting Windows phones and bashing Google this week (linking to Microsoft TEs like the slimy Michael Gartenberg [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] for the purpose), then promoting puff pieces about Intellectual Ventures, the world’s largest patent troll, by linking to promotional nonsense and troll PR. It ought to be added that this Microsoft troll even bought some of Linus Torvalds’ patents from Transmeta (these are hardware patents, for microprocessors developed at Transmeta). Mike Milinkovich of Eclipse fame has also just denounced Intellectual Ventures, and quite rightly so. He wrote:

There is something seriously wrong with any business model that requires 12% of its market to go to litigation

Microsoft now relies on attacks from proxies, which is why it passes Linux-hostile patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

Peer To Patent, just like OIN, is trying to address the problem one patent at the time and abolitionists like the FFII’s president are sceptical, as usual.

Be the first to share your knowledge on this application! #patent #priorart http://fb.me/YRNnRiS8

In order to stop Microsoft’s attacks on Linux (in addition to the attacks it has other companies launch against Linux) we must get rid of software patents altogether, as a whole. Tacking patents one by one is not the best approach to deal with the issue. It’s mostly ineffective in fact, just like a nuclear ‘defense system’ which is easily defeated by increasing the number of simultaneous targets. █

“Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.”

–Richard Stallman

]]> http://techrights.org/2011/05/05/attacking-the-market-with-swpats/feed/ 0 Links 2/5/2011: New Tablets Running Linux, More ACTA Backlash http://techrights.org/2011/05/02/more-acta-backlash/ http://techrights.org/2011/05/02/more-acta-backlash/#comments Mon, 02 May 2011 15:58:47 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=47910

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • A Fishy Tale

    Linux is like an ocean. Water keeps coming from the rivers, and there are a lot of rivers around. There is much to see if you want to, while doing all your regular swimming activities. You can travel the ocean far and wide and be wiser, or you can stick to your school and enjoy your locale. You take the call. You can migrate to a different part of the ocean in search of peace/adventure. You take the call. Typical of an ocean, you find big fish, small fish, medium fish, etc. You can be lost and ask for directions or befriend them and swim more of the ocean. You take the call. This is freedom. With so much freedom, comes so much power. With that much power, comes that much responsibility. You can use it according to the book and be safe, or take a few wrong steps and learn lessons the harder way. Of course, nowadays there are nicely laid out paths in the ocean for new fish to start out, cutting the intimidation. So, you can learn a few things about the ocean and, if you want a little more, the adventure is limited only by your imagination.

  • Desktop

    • Desirable OS

      It has been a long time if ever that Linux has been described as a desirable OS but it is happening now. A survey of smartphone-lovers finds that more intend to buy Android/Linux next rather than iOS or worst, Phoney 7. Underneath it is the same stuff that consumers have not been choosing for a decade but the change is understandable. While the forces of evil denigrated GNU/Linux as “communism” and “cancer” and their multitudes of “partners” repeated the chants until the media believed them and common wisdom in the retail trade was than no one would buy GNU/Linux, the makers of smart phones have been uncontaminated. You can see ads on television for smart phones with Android/Linux from the manufacturers, ISPs, banks, etc. and many millions of people are showing them to their friends. The “partners” have been bypassed. The monopoly is now irrelevant.

    • Building a PC
    • HeliOS Buillds Its Future

      With six guys, plus Skip and me, we got the sheet rock to the new HeliOS building and got it unloaded. We will probably start hanging it this evening or tomorrow, then the fun part starts…we get to find someone who knows how to tape, mud and float.

    • Exclusive Interview With System 76 CEO Carl Richell

      Muktware: What is System 76? Can you tell us something about how and when you conceptualized the company and what was the driving force behind it?
      Carl Richell: We started discussing System76 back in 2003 but not seriously until 2005. We felt that GNU/Linux had come a long way and deserved an OEM building high quality pc’s backed by dedicated support.

      There was also this newfangled distro called Ubuntu. It clearly had traction. There was already a great community and a unique and attractive business model behind it. Shortly thereafter, we shipped our first laptops and desktop with Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • New look for KDE Edu

        The KDE Edu Team is proud to present its new website at http://edu.kde.org as the central place to start to discover KDE Edu.

        With this new website, we are also officially presenting the new KDE Edu logo as the stamp for KDE in Education. The logo emphasizes the opportunity for people to grow their knowledge freely in various fields with KDE Edu programs. The concept was started in May 2010 by Alexandre Freitas and finalized by Asunción Sánchez Iglesias.

      • Put the World in Your Pocket with Marble

        Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have the whole world at your fingertips? How about cradling it in a single hand, putting it in your pocket and taking it with you wherever you go? With KDE’s Marble Virtual Globe on your mobile phone, you can do just that.

      • KDEnlive 0.8 Released – Best non-linear video editor for Linux

        For a long time I’ve been a big fan of kdenlive. I’ve written a two articles about it. One is a general overview of video editing on Linux and the other is more specific to kdenlive. For a number of years, video editing on linux – at least at a consumer level – has been patchy at best. This is somewhat ironic given the heavy use of linux in major Hollywood block film production. However, with the advent of kdenlive, things are looking pretty good and with the release of version 0.8, there have been some great features added for the more advanced users, while still retaining a simple and easy to use UI.

      • Things I want to see in KWin

        Now with the GSoC application timeline ended, I feel like blogging about some more ideas what I want to see in KWin in our next releases, but are not enough for a GSoC. Nevertheless most of it is in the scope that it can also be handled by new developers. But some parts have to be done by KWin/Plasma developers.

      • Show your Yahoo calendars in KOrganizer ? so easy…

        A few days ago, Jeremy explained how to add your Google calendars to Kontact, how about doing the same with your Yahoo calendars ?

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • A tale of two distros: Slackware 13.37 and Ubuntu 11.04 released

      After months of development, one of the most important Linux distributions was released today. Of course I’m talking about Slackware 13.37. Oh, and the Ubuntu Project released 11.04 today too — though by reading the press release you’d never know Ubuntu was actually a Linux distribution.

    • Supporting Slackware Linux Project

    • Reviews

      • Chakra GNU/Linux review

        Chakra is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It evolved from a hobby project to what is now, from my initial assessment, a very solid desktop distribution with features not yet available on established Linux distributions. The developers warn that, “This is alpha software, it could eat your hamsters.” It did not eat my hamster, but the time I spent installing and reinstalling it on multiple machines and in a virtual environment was very eventful.

        For this review, the first for Chakra on this website, I will let the screenshots do most of the “talking.” I like this approach better because, as they say, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. A screenshot with one or two paragraphs conveys more than a dozen paragraphs of colorful descriptions.

        The version of Chakra that is the subject of this review is Chakra GNU/Linux 2011.04, code-named Aida. It was released on April 27, 2011.

    • New Releases

      • RIPLinuX 12.1
      • [Ubuntu Rescue Remix] Version 11.04

        Version 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) of the very best Free-Libre Open-Source data recovery software toolkit based on Ubuntu is out.

        This version features and up-to-date infrastructure and several new packages including Dump, a backup and restore solution as well as Clamav, the best in free-libre Antivirus software.

        Ubuntu-Rescue-Remix features a full command-line environment with the newsest versions of the most powerful free/libre open-source data recovery software including GNU ddrescue, Photorec, The Sleuth Kit and Gnu-fdisk.

      • Ubuntu Rescue Remix 11.04 Is Available for Download

        Right after the announcement for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Andrew Zajac proudly announced the immediate availability for download of the Ubuntu Rescue Remix 11.04 operating system.

        Ubuntu Rescue Remix 11.04, the rescue and computer forensics Linux distro, is based on the most recent Ubuntu 11.04 release. It comes with lots of updated packages and an up-to-date infrastructure.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • A newcomer in Mageia: Maven

        The Java packaging in Mandriva 2010.1 (from which Mageia was forked) was just unusable. Many of the packages were obsolete and not really maintained. The task of updating packages had become very difficult as Maven, a now very common Java project build tool, was not properly integrated in the distribution. Many Java libraries installed using the old packages would not be usable by Maven. Moreover the version of Maven was obsolete and would not allow building recent software. This was a serious problem for maintaining the Java stack.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Fedora15 steps out

          Latest beta release from Red Hat-backed project makes the switch to Gnome3

          The big issues in the world of Linux right now are the Gnome3 desktop interface and Ubuntu’s pending Natty release which will use the Unity desktop interface by default. The tried and tested Gnome2 desktop is finally making way for a new generation of desktop effects and most users will find the change jarringly different.

        • Fedora 15 with GNOME 3 & some cool upgrades!

          The next version of Fedora, Version 15 is available for download as a beta version. The beta version was released and a reworked boot loading system will be featured by this OS. The major changes for the Linux distribution are hopefully taken care of and the complete release is scheduled for May 2011; it is to be noted that this period of release is approximately a month after the release of Ubuntu 11.04. New releases of Fedora can usually be expected about once every six months.

    • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • 17 Top Rated Applications in Ubuntu Software Center You Should Have in Natty Narwhal

          Ubuntu Software Center in 11.04 has got a really nice ratings and reviews system in place that allows us to review our favorite applications and install top rated applications in one click. So here is a list of 17 highly rated applications not installed by default in Ubuntu 11.04.

        • Ubuntu One Music app adds support for playlists, OGG Vorbis, iTunes

          Canonical released Ubuntu 11.04 this week, giving the operating system a dramatically new user interface as well as some new features and performance tweaks. The company also recently launched an updated version of the Ubuntu One music app for Android.

          Ubuntu One allows Ubuntu Linux users to store music online and access it from a computer or mobile device. The service is free to use for 30 days, but you’ll have to sign up for a subscription after that.

        • My Dream Ubuntu One Feature
        • Ubuntu Linux 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) is out
        • Ubuntu 11.04 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
        • Is Ubuntu 11.04 Beating Apple’s Mac OS X in User Experience?

          Canonical yesterday released the final version of Ubuntu Linux 11.04. For quite some time Ubuntu will get a new release twice per year – one in April and one in October. As usual with updated distributions, the release comes with updated software. In this case however, the software responsible for the appearance of the desktop was changed. While previous Ubuntu releases relied on Gnome as a desktop manager, with 11.04 Ubuntu makes the switch to the Unity desktop environment.

        • Thoughts On Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” After Using It For A Day

          As you should know, Ubuntu 11.04 was released yesterday. I have used the development builds of Ubuntu 11.04 on and off during the development cycle. However, it is not a very good idea to do to do a review during the development phase. So, as soon as the final release of Ubuntu 11.04 was available, I downloaded it and installed it on my laptop. (I actually used zsync to update the image of Ubuntu 11.04 beta that I had.) So, after using it for one whole day, here are my thoughts on Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”.

        • Unity Shadow Tweak
        • Unity Compiz Tweaks
        • Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal): How to remove chat and mail icons (indicators) from system tray
        • My first look at Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal
        • Ubuntu 11.04 Carrot Dangled in Front of Windows and Mac OS X Users

          Despite its runaway popularity when compared to other Linux distributions, Ubuntu still struggles to capture the attention of the general computing public. With recent releases, Canonical has clearly been looking at ways to make Ubuntu more appealing to the average Joe — and Natty Narwhal offers plenty of features that could make it an appealing alternative to Windows and Mac OS X.

        • Ubuntu 11.04 – Excellent, but still rough around the edges
        • On Ubuntu 11.04

          I did an in-place upgrade of the Ubuntu 10.10 running on my mother’s netbook to Ubuntu 11.04. I had it run overnight, and by morning, voila!, I had Natty Narwhal on the computer. The upgrade went by without a hitch; real sweet, considering this was a Wubi installation.

          I can’t say I’m too fond of the new Unity interface yet, though. I like the simplicity, but I’ve just gotten far too used to the old way of working. Unity just hides several icons so it was at first confusing to look up applications. That said, I’ll keep this on for a month or so and see how this works out for me.

        • Ubuntu 11.04 Unity – A Big Leap Forward For Linux

          It’s here. The newest version of Ubuntu sports an entirely new user interface: Unity. It also includes a much-improved Software Center, alongside the usual updates for the thousands of free programs Ubuntu offers. Download it now at Ubuntu.com.

        • Turning Wireless on Causes Laptop to Freeze on Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal? My Work Around
        • Install Google Earth and Fix ugly fonts problem in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty
        • How to get back launch bar and top bar after ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) upgrade
        • Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal): Use ‘normal’ GNOME instead of Unity
        • Ubuntu’s app management better than Apple’s
        • Ubuntu Can Innovate Faster Than Windows, MacOS

          Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, is a known frequent blogger. If Steve Jobs personally replies to the emails of users, which the company later denies as Jobs’ comments. Shuttleworth, the guy who has been to the space, shares his views in public and allows comments. Of course his blogs are not proprietary.

        • Ubuntu Books | The Top reference books for using Ubuntu
        • Installing Ubuntu 11.04

          Ubuntu 11.04, also known as the Natty Narwhal, arrived on April 28th, 2011 and is the 14th release of the Ubuntu operating system.

          Even if the Ubuntu 11.04 operating system includes a smarter installer, we’ve created the following tutorial to teach both Linux newcomers and existing Ubuntu users how to install the Ubuntu 11.04 operating system on their personal computer.

        • Linux Mint > Ubuntu 11.04

          I’ve been playing around with Ubuntu 11.04 on a couple of machines for almost a week now. Ubuntu 11.04 has an entirely new user interface to it making doing even the simple things very difficult. Even opening a shell is a major task. You have to click on an apps icon. Then carefully maneuver the mouse to a little triangle that will display all the apps and wait 5 seconds for the interface to respond. Then you must slowly and carefully scroll down. If your mouse deviates outside the area you must restart from scratch because the window will close. In another 5 seconds you’ll find the terminal app. Now if you want a second terminal, shell that is, you can’t get it. The menu only lets you open a single shell. The final kick in the nuts is the color scheme the shell uses. It’s very hard to read.

        • Steel Storm Episode II : Burning Retribution is Coming Soon to Ubuntu Software Center

          Fast paced, 3D top down shooter, Steel Storm : Burning Retribution a.k.a. Episode II will soon land into Ubuntu Software Center where users can easily buy this game in one click.

          Kot-in-Action, the game development studio behind Steel Storm has already successfully delivered Episode I which is featured in Top 100 indie games for the year 2010 by IndieDB. They are now coming up with Episode II which packs in more features, more action and more adrenaline rush. With 25 full missions and a multiplier mode that allows upto 16 players to play together, this is surely an action you would like to watch for this year.

        • Shuttleworth on Ubuntu 11.04 Linux & Unity

          Shuttleworth opened by saying that the main point of Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity was “to bring the joys and freedoms and innovation and performance and security that have always been part of the Linux platform, to a consumer audience.”

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Review: Edubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”

            Before I get on with the rest of this post, I need to apologize for not having posted anything this week. It turned out to be a good deal busier than I anticipated, and even otherwise, there wasn’t a whole lot to write about, at least at the beginning of the week. I did say in the latest “Featured Comments” article that I would review the latest release of Ubuntu — version 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”. That is still happening, but for reasons that will become clearer, I will not write reviews of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu just yet, but will wait a day or maybe a little more.

          • Lubuntu 11.04 Released

            Right after the announcement for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Mario Behling proudly announced last night (April 28th) that Julien Lavergne has released the lightweight Lubuntu 11.04 operating system.

          • Kubuntu Returns to Glory with 11.04

            After years of giving Kubuntu releases unfavorable reviews, that time has finally come to an end. I’m proud to say that Kubuntu is back, and us KDE fans have a distribution to root for now. I hope that going forward, Kubuntu continues with this level of quality. I’m not sure if Kubuntu will remain my main distribution forever, because I prefer the rolling release style of Arch, but that’s just a personal preference. But I can say this, I know first hand how hard it is to get Linux to work with this laptop considering the current state of Intel’s drivers, so I applaud whatever the developers did to make the latest Kubuntu work so well. The distribution as a whole is amazing. Give it a try when it’s released on April 28th, you’ll be glad you did!

          • Xubuntu 11.04 Released With Xfce 4.8, Gmusicbrowser Default, New Artwork [Screenshots]

            Along with Ubuntu 11.04, Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Lubuntu were also release. In this post I’ll try to cover the changes in Xubuntu 11.04 – a very interesting Ubuntu flavor based on Xfce.

          • Peppermint One review

            Peppermint is another Ubuntu derivative distribution, in a similar vein to the likes of early CrunchBang and Mint.

            It has two unique selling points. The first is speed without feature compromise, as the entire system has been tuned for lightening-fast operation.

          • Linux Mint: Two Years, Going Steady

            Two years ago to the day was the first time I installed Linux on my computer. Sure, I had seen other people use it and had used it on other people’s computers (though not so frequently), but I had never before put an OS other than Microsoft Windows on my own computer until that day. I had talked to a friend of mine about it before because I was planning to do it for a while; I thought of installing Ubuntu, but he suggested Linux Mint, as it would be easier for me to get used to and work with. I took that advice, and on 2009 May 1, as I took a break from studying for AP exams and felt quite fed up with Microsoft Windows XP, I downloaded the Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” GNOME ISO file, got InfraRecorder for Microsoft Windows XP, burned the live CD, and went on my way.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Rugged, Atom-powered handheld runs Linux
    • Review of OpenPandora Handheld Gaming Device

      The buyer (me) acts as the investor for this project since their pre-order money will be used to fund the project. It was originally pre-ordered for $330, but after over a year of waiting for the production to take place I canceled it. Now in addition to pre-ordering, the Pandora can be bought and shipped in a week for a premium price of $500 which I took the opportunity, but is it worth the cost? Let’s find out..

    • Phones

    • Tablets

      • HP Flexes WebOS Muscles, Snubs Microsoft On Windows Tablets

        In one of his boldest pronouncements since joining HP last November, CEO Leo Apotheker told Fortune this week that HP doesn’t intend to release new Windows 7 tablets anytime soon. “HP smartphones and tablets will be running WebOS, only WebOS, at least that’s for the near future, that’s the plan,” Apotheker in an interview published Monday.

        While it’s premature to interpret HP’s decision to focus exclusively on WebOS tablets as a sign of strain in its Microsoft partnership, there’s no denying that mobile industry competition is a notoriously savage beast. At the very least, we could be witnessing a shift in how HP and Microsoft compete in the mobile space.

      • Nook Color 1.2 Review: Near-Perfect, but a Gap Remains

        The Nook Color is simultaneously disappointing and pleasing. Why? At $249, the Nook Color does a lot of things pretty well. Well enough, in fact, that you think “the Nook Color would be perfect if only…” — if only it had Bluetooth and supported an external keyboard, or if only it supported a wider range of apps, or if only Barnes & Noble were willing to let customers install any app, like the Amazon Kindle app.

        But for the price, the Nook does quite a bit. I would recommend it without hesitation to anyone that wants a eBook reader with a little bit extra. If you’re on a limited budget, the Nook Color is also a really good choice. For heavy readers who also want a tablet and a decent app selection, the Nook is not a good choice.

      • Toshiba’s Honeycomb Tablet Hits the FCC With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

        Toshiba may finally be set to bring their tablet out as the FCC has given them the green light to sell it. This one only has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth inside of it, but we expected as much.

Free Software/Open Source

  • OpenGamma financial analytics platform now open sourced

    UK-based OpenGamma has been developing a unified platform for financial analytics which will allow financial services firms to combine their data management, calculation engines and analysis into a single framework. The platform, which is still in development, has now been released as a open source developer preview, dual-licensed under an Apache 2.0 licence or a commercial licence. The preview is described as a “beta-quality release” that has been through OpenGamma’s testing and QA processes.

  • Comparison of Open Source Application Servers

    The role of application servers has grown significantly in IT architecture over the past few years as the cloud becomes the new frontier for application development–a frontier that offers more opportunity and challenges than the Web ever did.

    That’s not to say that the Web space is over and done. We have come a long way from simple CGI requests, and Java-based application servers dominate the application server space on the Web, handling everything from interfaces and data access to availability and scale.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla patches Firefox and Thunderbird
      • Mozilla: Firefox 5 slated for a June 21 release

        According to an update at the Mozilla releases page, Firefox 5 looks like it’s headed for a release on June 21, less than two months away. We haven’t heard anything about what new features the next version of Firefox will have, but when Mozilla said that Firefox 4 would be the last time they waited months between major releases, they meant it.

      • Mozilla engineers visit Indonesia to ‘better cater to user needs

        Six engineers from San-Francisco-based tech group Mozilla, the developers of the Firefox browser, will meet Indonesian users at the Firefox 4 Launch Party, which will be held in six cities from April 29 to May 7.

        Viking Karwur, the manager of Mozilla Indonesia Community, said this delegation was twice as large as the delegation to the previous launch party.

      • Firefox 4 about:memory

        You blame Firefox 4 to be a memory hog? Check it out first by typing about:memory in the address bar. You’ll get a nice detailed report of your browsers memory usage. While it’s not guaranteed you’ll understand every statistic available in the report, you can at least peek at the overall memory use, and see how much it’s fragmented by comparing “memory mapped” and “memory in use” numbers.

      • A few more Firefox 4 tips

        Several weeks ago, we had an article that taught us how to restore sane browsing configurations in Firefox 4 after switching over from Firefox 3.6, including look and feel and addons compatibility. Now, we will talk about several more tricks and changes that should make your Firefox 4 experience even more pleasant.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle wins round one in bare-knuckle Android patent sui

      Oracle has won an early round in what is sure to be an epic battle against Google over Android’s use of Java.

      This week, Judge William Alsup issued a “claims construction” order in which he sided with Oracle on the definition of four out of five patent terms that will help determine outcome of the company’s lawsuit against Google and Android. On the fifth term, he sided with neither company, choosing to lay down his own definition. Oracle and Google have until May 6 to respond to the order.

    • Java SE 6 update 25 brings faster server startup

      Oracle has released Java SE 6 Update 25 (6u25); this update contains no security updates to the Java runtime, but does include wider platform support with Windows 7 and SP1, Windows 2008 R2 with SP1, Oracle Linux 6 and Oracle Solaris 11 Express 2010.11 added to the supported list. Also supported by the update are Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 4, Google Chrome 10 and VirtualBox 4.

    • Oracle and Google Try to Reduce Their Claims & Judge Issues Tentative Claims Construction Order

      The parties in Oracle v. Google have been asked by the judge to reduce the number of claims, so the case can actually be reasonably tried. So they have each filed their suggested cuts. Also the judge has issued a *tentative* claims construction order, asking for reaction from the parties and saying he may well make changes on his own initiative as more evidence is on the table.

  • CMS

    • An In-Depth Interview With Dries

      When we began this interview, Dries was on a Drupal tour in Australia, calling from a hotel room in Sidney. For Dries, trips like this are becoming more and more common, allowing him to meet an increasing number of the people all over the globe using and developing Drupal. He listens to success stories and challenges faced in adopting or migrating to Drupal. “It helps me as the project lead to talk to as many Drupal people as I can”, he explained. Later this year he’s planning an around-the-world tour, literally flying around the world visiting as many countries as he can to talk about Drupal.

  • Education

    • ‘Open source on the rise in UK schools’

      The United Kingdom’s institutions for higher and further education are increasing their use of free and open source software, concludes OSS Watch, a public service organisation, following a survey. Most needed are tools to accurately determine the total cost of ownership (TCO) for software, both proprietary and open source.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU gv 3.7.2 released

      I am pleased to announce that GNU gv 3.7.2 has just been released. It is available for download in the GNU ftp, ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gv

    • Help Keep the Pressure on Sony- FSF

      We asked you to email Sony CEO Howard Stringer during our last call to action
      and Sony responded by shutting off his email address. Many of you then sent
      emails to the next email address we posted, Nicole Seligman, Sony Executive VP and General Counsel. Your action was effective — it was an important part of the overall public pressure put on Sony to back off.

      And back off they did. Sony ended up settling its lawsuit against George Hotz (aka geohot). Hotz has agreed to not use Sony devices in an ambiguous “unauthorized” fashion — in fact, he’s boycotting Sony anyway — and the accusations brought up in the case by Sony remain unproven.

  • Government

    • FR: Research institute donates hardware to free software developers

      Free software developers in France can soon write and compile their solutions using computer hardware donated by a French national computer science research institution. The institute, which preferred not to be named, is donating a hundred computers to the French chapter of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

  • Programming

    • 5 Reasons Java Developers Should Learn and Use AspectJ

      Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm which focuses on modularizing system-level concerns (like logging, transaction management, security, performance monitoring, etc.) in the applications. In AOP language, these system-level concerns are called “crosscutting concerns” because they crosscut all the layers of the application.

      AspectJ, a compatible extension to the Java programming language, is one implementation of AOP. AspectJ is very widely used in a lot of Java frameworks (like Spring), but still most developers do not know AspectJ. Developers often think that AspectJ is difficult to learn or it makes your code complex, and they decide not to learn this very powerful and useful technology. In this article, I will write down five reasons why I think Java developer should learn and use AspectJ.

    • Case Statement

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Simple Java API for ODF Release Notes

      We released the Simple Java API for ODF version 0.5.5 today. In this version, we provide high level methods for image and text span. Now you can add images to text, spreadsheet and presentation documents. The position of the image can be specified by a rectangle, a paragraph or a cell. With text span, you can set a different style to a small unit of the text content. An interesting demo has been upload to website to demonstrate how to add a 2D barcode image to a presentation slide.

    • Links for the end of April

      # Events-wise the month of May will be busy. I will attend the OASIS Board of Directors’ meetingin Berlin and meet with the Bitkom. The week after that Ars Aperta will join a session on the political and legal issues pertaining to Free Software development during the Linux Solutions 2011 event in Paris. I will also give another talk during the same event as part of the Document Foundation and our experience with forks. Spoons shall come next year.

Leftovers

  • Say What? Top Five IT Quotes of the Week

    Amazon’s cloud failure, Oracle’s open source success and Instapaper decides that free doesn’t pay the bills.

  • European and national multi-modal journey planners
  • Yahoo Finds Delicious Buyer

    Yahoo is selling off its delicious social bookmarking site, after nearly five years of ownership.

    Technology startup AVOS, founded by YouTube founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, is acquiring delicious for an undisclosed sum from Yahoo. Hurley and Chen sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion in October of 2006.

  • Finance

    • Europe Probes Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Investment Banks Over Default Swaps

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and 14 other investment banks face the first-ever European Union antitrust probes into the swaps market, following investigations by U.S. regulators.

      The EU is examining whether 16 banks, including Citigroup Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, colluded by giving market information to Markit Group Ltd., a data provider majority-owned by Wall Street’s largest banks. It will also check if nine of the firms struck unfair deals with Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s European derivatives clearinghouse, shutting out rivals.

    • Did Lloyd Blankfein Misunderstand Goldman’s Mortgage Bets?

      Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and other top executives at the firm may not have understood the positions they were taking in the mortgage market, according to a report released today by the Senate Investigations subcommittee.

      The report—which runs to 635 pages—details how Goldman built up a massive short position in mortgage-related assets following the collapse of two subprime Bear Stearns hedge funds. This was referred to as “the big short” within Goldman.

    • Look For Shares Of Goldman Sachs Group To Potentially Rebound After Yesterday’S 1.48% Sell Off (GS)
    • Hazing at Goldman Sachs

      There is perhaps no more telling detail about what kind of person works at Goldman Sachs than the story of the Memorial Day weekend meeting William Cohan relates in his book “Money and Power.”

    • “Goldman Sachs Is Out-Of-Control Genius”

      “How did Goldman Sachs take over the world?” Jon Stewart asked William Cohan, the author who is spilling all of Goldman Sachs’s secrets in a new book.

      “Spoiler alert,” Stewart said last night, “Goldman did it by going short on the world. They bet against the world and they won.”

      “No matter what firm I worked for, they always wanted to be Goldman Sachs.”

    • How Goldman Sachs Beat the Bubble

      Contrary to the silly subtitle his publisher no doubt foisted on him, William D. Cohan does not argue that Goldman Sachs rules the world. A judicious author, Cohan avoids hyperbole in “Money and Power,” a definitive account of the most profitable and influential investment bank of the modern era.

    • How Goldman Sachs created the food crisis

      Frederick Kaufman’s piece for Foreign Policy examines how the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) is responsible for the increase in food prices.

    • EU investigates activities of 16 investment banks

      Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and 14 other investment banks face a European Union antitrust probe into credit-default swaps for companies and sovereign debt, regulators said Friday.

      The European Commission said it opened two antitrust probes. It will check whether 16 bank dealers colluded by giving market information to Markit, a financial information provider.

    • Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Among Banks Probed by EU Over CDS
    • Big payday for Goldman Sachs team

      Six New Zealand-based Goldman Sachs partners are expected to cash in when Goldman Sachs US takes full ownership of its Australian and New Zealand operations, with senior partners expected to clear up to $40 million.

      According to the Australian Financial Review, local partners include Byron Pepper in the investment banking division, Duncan Rutherford in the securities division and Rebecca Cottrell in federation legal division.

      Local managing director Andrew Barclay is also a partner, and the Star-Times understands other local partners include executive director David Goatley and Bernard Doyle, a New Zealand-based strategist.

      Barclay, Cottrell and Rutherford are also listed as directors of the New Zealand business.

      The exact shareholdings of each partner is not known and Goldman Sachs was not prepared to comment.

    • The Volcker Rule and Goldman Sachs

      In my paper, Conflicted Gatekeepers: The Volcker Rule and Goldman Sachs, I consider the conflict of interest restrictions in the Volcker Rule provisions. These provisions, namely Sections 619 and 621 of the Dodd-Frank Act, purport to impose fiduciary-like standards on banks in their arm’s length relationships with sophisticated counterparties. Section 619 generally prohibits banks from engaging in proprietary trading and affiliating with certain private funds; it permits some activities as exceptions to this general prohibition, but subjects such activities to the requirement that they not give rise to material conflicts of interest, including conflicts between banks and their “counterparties.” Section 621 purports to ban material conflicts of interest between banks (in their capacity as underwriters) and investors in offerings of asset-backed securities.

    • [KR139] Keiser Report – Murderers & Martyrs!

  • Privacy

    • Leaked Emails From Google Show How Important Location Data Is To Android

      The San Jose Mercury News landed some leaked emails from Google CEO Larry Page, as well as other top Google executives, which show how important gathering location data is for its mobile plans.

      Last year, Motorola, one of Google’s biggest mobile partners, was planning on using Skyhook Wireless’s location data for its handsets over Google’s location data.

  • Civil Rights

    • Supreme Court denies right of farm workers to unionize

      The Supreme Court of Canada has abandoned Ontario’s farm workers and the charter of rights has failed them, UFCW Canada national president Wayne Hanley said Friday after the union lost a 16-year court battle to allow agricultural workers to unionize.

  • DRM

    • Did Richard Stallman Invent the eBook?

      One thing that hasn’t changed — things that I’ve always read on my computer — are GNU manuals. GNU manuals are written in an ingenious format called TeXinfo which enables the author to produce appropriate output for several different ways of reading: PDF, HTML and the online info format, most easily read in Emacs. If you’re running GNU/Linux, you will find tons of manuals in this format by typing “info” into a terminal. Within Emacs, type “F1 h” (that’s press and release F1, then press and release ‘h’). Either way you should get a menu of topics, each covered by its own info manual.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Wikileaks on New Zealand Copyright: US Funds IP Enforcement, Offers to Draft Legislation

        This week I published multiple posts Wikileaks cables revelations on the U.S. lobbying pressure on Canadian copyright including attempts to embarrass Canada, joint efforts with lobby groups such as CRIA, and secret information disclosures from PCO to U.S. embassy personnel (posts here, here, here, here, here, and here). Wikileaks has also just posted hundreds of cables from U.S. personnel in New Zealand that reveal much the same story including regular government lobbying, offers to draft New Zealand three-strikes and you’re out legislation, and a recommendation to spend over NZ$500,000 to fund a recording industry-backed IP enforcement initiative. Interestingly, the cables regularly recommend against including New Zealand on the Special 301 list, despite the similarities to Canadian copyright law that always garner vocal criticism.

      • Wikileaks: America will foot the bill for record company enforcement in NZ if NZ will let America write its laws

        Michael Geist sez, “Wikileaks has just posted hundreds of cables from U.S. personnel in New Zealand that reveal regular government lobbying on copyright, offers to draft New Zealand three-strikes and you’re out legislation, and a recommendation to spend over NZ$500,000 to fund a recording industry-backed IP enforcement initiative. For example, an April 2005 cable reveals the U.S. willingness to pay over NZ$500,000 (US$386,000) to fund a recording industry enforcement initiative. The project was backed by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS). Performance metrics include:”

      • ACTA

        • There is indeed no EU acquis on criminal measures
        • The EU Commission lacks basic reading skills

          In January 2011, prominent European academics issued an “Opinion of European Academics on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” (ACTA). The academics invite the European institutions, in particular the European Parliament, and the national legislators and governments to withhold consent of ACTA, “…as long as significant deviations from the EU acquis or serious concerns on fundamental rights, data protection, and a fair balance of interests are not properly addressed”.

          In April 2011, the European Commission’s services put on-line comments to the European Academics’ Opinion on ACTA. The Commission denies ACTA is incompatible with EU law.

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