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09.06.14

Links 6/9/2014: Core OS at DigitalOcean, Women in Xorg

Posted in News Roundup, Site News at 11:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open-source player-tracking project kicks off

    “Coming from a scientific background, where transparency is a key part of doing repeatable research, makes me very skeptical of anything proprietary,” he said. “How can you trust the analysis if you can’t see the raw data?”

  • Open Xchange Launches Simple Email Encryption

    German developer of open source productivity software, Open Xchange, has launched an email encryption product that can secure messages with a single click.

    Called OX Guard, the new tool is an integral part of the OX App Suite – a carrier-grade cloud platform that includes OX Text, OX Spreadsheet and OX Drive, as well as email server, calendar and social network feeds.

    Open Xchange CEO Rafael Laguna told TechWeek that one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of wider adoption of encryption is complexity, so OX Guard was designed to be as simple to use as possible – users just need to click the padlock icon, set the password and their messages will be protected by AES encryption.

  • Events

    • Call for organizers: 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

      Each year, the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board seeks an organizing committee for the annual Linux Plumbers Conference. That process has now begun for the 2015 event, which will be held during the week of August 17-21 in Seattle, Washington, alongside the LinuxCon North America event. This is your chance to put your stamp on one of our community’s most important gatherings.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • HP offers OpenStack services offerings

      So, you think OpenStack is perfect for your company’s cloud-needs, but you just discovered that finding OpenStack-savvy architects, designers, or even just administrators is like looking for the perfect New York style pizza… in San Diego.

  • CMS

    • What’s New in September for Open Source CMS

      There are plenty of free and open source content management systems (CMS). But no platform is as big or as common as WordPress. WordPress powers more than 12.7 million websites — an astounding 47.38 percent of the World Wide Web, according to BuiltWith, which monitors such things.

  • BSD

Leftovers

  • Suburban Express Wants Round 4: Re-Files Lawsuits It Had Previously Dropped

    Jeremy Leval, the Redditor who got this whole saga started after being sued and harrassed by Toeppen simply for sticking up for a foreign exchange student who a bus driver was mocking, is of course among those Toeppen is re-re-filing against. One begins to get the impression that Toeppen and Suburban Express are masochistic, getting some kind of perverse joy out of getting blasted in the media and online. I’m at a loss as to what other forces could be at work here. Though, judging by some of the other customers’ stories from those being attacked legally by Suburban Express, the simple answer may be that Toeppen is simply a jerk.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Three more to be charged for Victor Jara’s murder

      MARTYRED Chilean communist folk singer Victor Jara’s widow Joan Jara welcomed the announcement yesterday that three more people have been charged over his murder during the country’s 1973 CIA-backed military coup.

    • The Other 9/11

      Ten days after the Salvador Allende government was overthrown in a Sept. 11, 1973, coup in Chile, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jack Kubisch told the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs: “Gentlemen, I wish to state as flatly and as categorically as I possibly can that we did not have advance knowledge of the coup.”

      [...]

      “Make the economy scream…”

      When the 1970 Chilean presidential election rolled around, Salvador Allende was still a major player and, despite another wave of U.S.-funded propaganda, he was elected president of South America’s longest functioning democracy on Sept. 4, 1970.

      However, he had a new and powerful enemy: Dr. Henry Kissinger.

      The 40 Committee was formed with Kissinger as chair. The goal was not only to save Chile from its irresponsible populace but to yet again stave off the Red Tide™.

      “Chile is a fairly big place, with a lot of natural resources,” explains Noam Chomsky, “but the United States wasn’t going to collapse if Chile became independent. Why were we so concerned about it? According to Kissinger, Chile was a ‘virus’ that would ‘infect’ the region.”

      At a Sept. 15, 1970, meeting called to halt the spread of infection, Kissinger and President Nixon told CIA Director Richard Helms it would be necessary to “make the [Chilean] economy scream.” While allocating at least $10 million to assist in sabotaging Allende’s presidency, outright assassination was also considered a serious and welcome option.

      The respect held by the Chilean military for the democratic process led Kissinger to pick as his first assassination target not Allende himself, but General Rene Schneider, head of the Chilean Armed Forces. Schneider, it seems, had long believed that politics and the military should remain discrete. Despite warnings from Helms that a coup might not be possible in such a stable democracy, Kissinger urged the plan to proceed.

      When the killing of Schneider only served to solidify Allende’s support, a CIA-sponsored media blitz similar to that of 1964 commenced. Citizens were faced with daily “reports” of Marxist atrocities and Soviet bases supposedly being built in Chile. U.S. threats to sever economic and military aid were also used to help cultivate a “coup climate” among those in the military. These two approaches represented the hard and soft lines outlined by Nixon and Kissinger.

    • Ethan Hawke’s ‘Good Kill’: A Searing Indictment of America’s Drone Warfare Obsession

      In Andrew Niccol’s devastating character study, Hawke plays a drone pilot who’s ordered by the CIA to off terrorists—as well as civilians—in a series of targeted strikes.

    • Irresponsibly Blaming Russia for US-Led Western Crimes

      Washington is public enemy No. 1. It’s the real evil empire. It’s a longstanding serial aggressor. Rogue Western partners share blame.

      On September 2, Wall Street Journal editors echoed the same narrative. They headlined “Deterring a European War.”

      They called this week’s NATO summit meeting “one of the most important in its 65-year

      Southeastern Ukraine’s conflict is Obama’s war. Behind the scenes US manipulation controls things. Kiev is infested with CIA and FBI operatives. Blackwater USA (now Academi) type mercenaries operate in Southeastern Ukraine. Perhaps alongside covert US special forces.

      Since conflict erupted in April, Russia went all-out for diplomatic resolution. It has no ongoing military campaign.

      It didn’t invade Ukraine. It’s not shelling cross-border. Or from inside Ukrainian territory.

      Its troops aren’t involved in fighting. It’s not out to seize Ukrainian territory. Western sources lie claiming otherwise.

    • CIA-linked Libyan General Haftar’s helicopters bomb Benghazi

      Several mysterious night bombings attacks were launched on Islamist positions in Libya while they were in the process of defeating Haftar allies there and driving them out of the city.

      Haftar claimed these attacks were joint operations with the international community.

    • Fox Changes Meaning Of “Stand Down” Order To Keep The Benghazi Hoax Alive

      After multiple investigations concluded that no “stand down” order was given to security personnel responding to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Fox News alleged that the delay security personnel took to enlist support amounted to a “stand down” order.

      On the September 5 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier once again hyped the asked-and-answered question from his Fox News special, “13 Hours at Benghazi,” based on the accounts of three CIA security personnel who alleged they were delayed in responding to the diplomatic facility under attack in Benghazi, Libya. Baier criticized the “semantics” used by deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf, who during a press briefing explained that “there was no stand-down order” but there was a short delay “for very good security reasons to get additional backup and additional weapons” for the security personnel before responding to the attack.

    • Fox’s Latest Benghazi Hoax Used As Justification For Wasteful Select Committee
    • Selling Fear and Lies to Control the Public

      The media is selling fear of beheadings to the public.

    • The Imperial Rot of Armchair Warriors

      An occasional misconception of history is the contention that geo-political outcomes are the result of rational calculation. Or put differently, local rationalities don’t always, or even most of the time, aggregate to global rationalities. The Obama administration used the CIA to organize a neo-nazi putsch in Ukraine after NATO spent the last twenty years squeezing (heavily) nuclear-armed Russia and immediately involved the IMF and Western oil company executives in Ukrainian ‘government’ affairs? At about the same time part of the Syrian ‘opposition’ that the U.S. had armed and financed morphed into IS (Islamic State) and promptly marched into Iraq to confiscate and use the weapons the U.S. had supplied leading Mr. Obama to once again bomb the country while re-committing combat troops. Given that there is no conceivable ‘good’ outcome to any of this, just what local ‘rationalities’ could be driving the serial disasters of U.S. foreign policy?

    • ISIS Atrocities and US Imperialism

      The murder, following that of James Foley last month, is a further demonstration of both the reactionary character of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the terrible consequences of a half-century of intervention in the Middle East by US imperialism.

    • How to Decode the New York Times

      So what, then, is the “more nuanced picture”? Kershner writes that the legal documents “depict the plot as more of a family affair, a local initiative organized and carried out by members of a clan in Hebron.” That was what many analysts had been saying all along, offering a very different interpretation than the one being put forth by Israel–though it was the Israeli line, not the one offered by independent analysts, that made its way into US media (FAIR Blog, 7/2/14, 7/28/14). Kershner speaks to one Israeli source who, she reports, still thinks it “was fair to blame Hamas, as an organization, for the kidnappings.” The source added that “it is still possible that we will find evidence of a direct connection.”

    • When Fox News Didn’t Blame The (GOP) President For Beheadings

      After terrorists kidnapped and beheaded two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, while releasing gruesome videos of the act, Fox News focused much of its ire on President Obama, portraying him as a source of troubling weakness.

    • Have You Watched This Airstrike in Iraq?

      CENTCOM has been helpfully posting declassified footage to YouTube for the past three weeks.

    • NZ director’s attack of the drones at Venice

      Don’t be fooled. Unmanned aerial vehicles have changed the way wars are fought, turning some forms of combat into a computer game with flesh-and-blood victims.

    • Legal basis for Iraq troop deployment called into question as days wear on

      The legal basis for the recent introduction of more than 1,000 US ground troops in Iraq was called into question on Friday, after the White House confirmed that it does not consider itself bound by time limits that usually constrain such deployments.

    • First Controversial Drone Movie Strikes, Questions U.S. Policy

      The first movie examining the morality of drone warfare has arrived and it’s sure to add fuel to the debate over the growing use of the controversial technology by the Obama administration and the concern that too many innocent civilians are being killed.

      Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill, starring Ethan Hawke as a troubled U.S. Air Force pilot grappling with the ethical consequences of attacking from afar, makes its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival Sept. 5 before playing at the Toronto Film Festival Sept. 9.

    • Epiphanies From Teju Cole

      The Nigerian-American novelist discusses the pitfalls of hashtag activism, the destructiveness of U.S. foreign policy, and that time he dreamed about meeting Obama at a Brooklyn house party.

    • The warrior and moral injury

      -One effect of the rise of remote-controlled warfare will be that moral injury will assume an increased share of war’s psychological injuries. Remote-control warriors do not suffer life-threatening duress in combat, and they don’t vicariously experience extreme stress via the experiences of individuals they know and love (such as their witnessing a fellow platoon member being shot and killed). This means they’re immune from most forms of PTSD, as this condition is currently defined. They’re also immune from Traumatic Brain Injury (unless they spill their coffee and slip on it). They’re not immune, however, from moral injury. The potential for moral injury in combat veterans will only grow as sensors on “drones” and other remote-controlled machines improve. Soon, there will be little subjective difference between a WWI infantryman bayoneting an enemy soldier and what a drone pilot/sensor operator experiences when they kill someone.

    • The Fatal Flaw in American Foreign Policy

      The American definition of “murder” in the midst of war now seems to depend upon the technical methodology for the homicide, not the deliberate intentions of the killers. Beheading is barbaric. High-tech bombing picking off individual “bad guys” is okay. In fact, US leaders claim to be conscientiously selective, though the innocent bystanders killed by drones are dismissed as “collateral damage.”

    • All God’s Children Got Drones

      The Convention’s other goal is nonproliferation. The danger here is that a “Geneva Convention” for drones may turn drone proliferation into a distraction. Yes, drone proliferation is real. We’ve already remarked that some 80 countries now have drones. And according to Medea Benjamin of CODE PINK, 10 to 15 countries are working to produce drones that can kill. Naturally, we should be concerned about this. But shouldn’t our first concern be states which already possess killer drones? Medea Benjamin writes that there have been 350 lethal drone strikes on Pakistan since 2004 which have killed from 2,500 to 3,500 people. Those strikes weren’t launched by Burundi.

    • ‘Good Kill’ meant to start debate, director says

      Ethan Hawke stars as a drone pilot near Las Vegas who has a mental breakdown while killing targets 7,000 miles away (11,000 km) in “Good Kill,” a Venice Film Festival entry shown yesterday and meant to spark debate.

    • Open thread for night owls: Los Angeles Times reporter cleared stories about CIA with the CIA
    • Emails: L.A. Times Reporter Cleared Stories with CIA, Promised Positive Coverage
    • CIA Emails Expose Access Journalist at Work
    • LA Times reporter Ken Dilanian worked with CIA to cover up drone program casualties

      A prominent national security reporter for the Los Angeles Times routinely submitted drafts and detailed summaries of his stories to CIA press handlers prior to publication, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.

      The reporter, Ken Dilanian, appears to compromise any honest representation in the stories, even submitting revised drafts to appease the CIA.

    • Ken Dilanian sent CIA drafts of stories
    • National security reporter shared drafts with CIA press office, emails reveal
    • LA Times Says It’s ‘Disappointed’ In Former Reporter Who Shared Stories With CIA
    • L.A. Times Disowns Reporter Outed as a CIA Collaborator

      Recently released emails indicate that prominent national security reporter Ken Dilanian — formerly with the Los Angeles Times, currently with the Associated Press (and from 1997-2007 the Philadelphia Inquirer) — shared stories prior to publication with CIA press office seeking their approval, according to a story up on The Intercept. Now, it is not uncommon for national security reporters to vet facts with government functionaries, but the emails indicate Dilanian went much further than that, not only sharing stories prior to publication (a big no-no in almost every newsroom) but he also entered into discussions about how the CIA could bend public opinion of drone strikes their way.

    • Ex-Tribune reporter said to have ‘collaborative’ relationship with CIA

      A website cofounded by journalist Glenn Greenwald has published emails suggesting that a former Tribune Washington bureau national security reporter submitted some of his work to CIA officials prior to publication, a practice banned by many media outlets, including Tribune.

    • Former LA Times Reporter Submitted Drafts For Approval By CIA
    • NatSec Reporter Allegedly Had ‘Closely Collaborative Relationship’ with CIA
    • The CIA’s Mop-Up Man: L.A. Times Reporter Cleared Stories With Agency Before Publication

      Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.

    • Roboski Villagers Condemn US Hand, but Still Hold Turkey Responsible

      For the people of Roboski it does not matter that the deadly 2011 Turkish air attack may have been due to bad US intelligence. It still does not absolve the Turkish government, whose planes killed the 34 Kurdish villagers, they said.

      “The United States shares responsibility in the massacre, but we also hold Turkey responsible because in the end it was they who bombed us,” said Ferhat Encu, who lost his 15-year-old brother in the attack.

    • Rand Paul’s Strategic Slipperiness on Foreign Policy

      As Senior Editor Jacob Sullum notes below, there has been a lot of chatter this week about the apparent flip-floppery, or at least slipperiness, of Sen. Rand Paul’s ideas about what the United States should do to the Islamic State. (In addition to Sullum’s strong critique, see Leon H. Wolf, Steve Benen, and the indefatigable Jennifer Rubin, as well as the senator himself.)

    • Anti-Interventionism and Its Discontents

      Polls showing Rand Paul as the frontrunner in the GOP presidential sweepstakes have the neocons in a lather, with their online media phalanx frantically attacking him at every opportunity. It’s kind of funny to watch: the first fusillades were aimed at labeling him an “isolationist,” while more recently they’ve pointed out how he deviates from his father’s more angular policy positions. If you can’t smear and marginalize, then there’s always the strategy of cutting him off from his base.

    • Hamas Emerges Buoyant Despite Bloodshed and Devastation in Gaza

      Ismail Haniya, the top Hamas leader in Gaza, worked the crowd in what used to be the Boura neighborhood of this battered northern border town, kissing the cheeks of elders and the foreheads of masked fighters. He waved at the women standing in front of makeshift huts next to the homes flattened in Israeli attacks, as children watched from atop concrete piles where green Hamas flags were planted as though on conquered lands.

    • Ukraine Retracts Ceasefire Claim; U.N. Says Displaced Top 1 Million

      Ukraine has retracted an earlier claim to have reached a ceasefire with Russia. The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko initially said he agreed with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on steps toward a ceasefire with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. But the Kremlin then denied a ceasefire agreement, saying it is not in a position to make a deal because it’s not a party to the fighting. Ukraine has accused Russia of direct involvement in the violence amidst a recent escalation. The confusion comes as President Obama visits the former Soviet Republic of Estonia ahead of a major NATO summit in Wales. More than 2,600 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since April, the majority by Ukrainian forces. The United Nations says more than one million people have been displaced, over a quarter of them internally.

    • Inside Jobs and Israeli Stooges: Why Is the Muslim World in Thrall to Conspiracy Theories?

      Did you know that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was trained by Mossad and the CIA? Were you aware that his real name isn’t Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai but Simon Elliot? Or that he’s a Jewish actor who was recruited by the Israelis to play the part of the world’s most wanted terrorist?

      If the messages in my email in-box and my Twitter timeline and on my Facebook page are anything to go by, plenty of Muslims are not only willing to believe this nonsensical drivel but are super-keen to share it with their friends. The bizarre claim that NSA documents released by Edward Snowden “prove” the US and Israel are behind al-Baghdadi’s actions has gone viral.

      There’s only one problem. “It’s utter BS,” Glenn Greenwald, the investigative journalist who helped break the NSA story, told me. “Snowden never said anything like that and no [NSA] documents suggest it.” Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner, has called the story a hoax.

    • US Boots in Iraq and Baltics, Authorization to Attack Syria…and US Troops in Ukraine!

      The peace president is clearly on war footing. US bombs are also going off in Africa and Pakistan. No one at home is talking about NSA spying anymore. NATO has a new mission.

  • Finance

    • How to screw tech workers and get away with it

      It wasn’t only eBay that got off scandalously light for such anticompetitive collusion. In a separate class-action suit against Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel, the four companies agreed to a collective settlement of $324 million.

      That might sound like a reasonable numbers until you do a little math. The class-action suit represented 64,000 workers, which means each would receive the munificent sum of $5,062; subtracting lawyers’ fees shrinks that amount further. Plaintiffs had sought $3 billion in damages in lost wages, which under antitrust laws could have tripled to a $9 billion reward had they won in court — $140,625 each, or about $102,780 after the lawyers’ cut.

    • Koch Operative: Raise the Wage, Totalitarianism and Terrorism Follow?

      Leaked audio from the latest Koch summit shows Charles Koch’s “intellectual sounding board,” Richard Fink, drawing a direct line between increasing the minimum wage and the rise of fascism, totalitarianism, and terrorist suicide bombers.

    • One in Four Americans With College Degrees Shouldn’t Have Bothered

      Roughly 25% of those with bachelor’s degrees in the US derive no economic benefit from their diplomas.

    • Fast food workers stage national sit-ins and walk-outs

      Fast food workers across the U.S. went on strike Thursday, staging sit-ins and walk-outs to bring attention to a years-long campaign to raise industry wages to $15 an hour and allow workers to join unions. The demonstrations spurred several arrests and the disruption of business at fast food restaurants in many major cities. Ashley Westerman reports from Washington, D.C.

    • Over 400 Arrested in National Fast-Food Workers’ Strike for Living Wage, Unionization

      More than 400 fast-food workers and their supporters have been arrested in a national day of action for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Workers staged a one-day strike in 150 cities across the country Thursday, from Las Vegas to Chicago and Detroit, to Little Rock, Arkansas, and here in New York City.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Huffington Post And The View From Bogustan: Standing Behind Blatantly False Claims Isn’t Journalism

      Ayyadurai has waged an incredibly bizarre public relations campaign, and the more you look at it, the more bizarre it becomes. However, anyone who looks over any of the primary documentation (much of which we’ve linked to in our previous posts) can only conclude that while Ayyadurai may have independently come up with some ideas, he most certainly did not invent email. It was widely in use. The key arguments in his claim are obviously false, and prey on (1) a misunderstanding or misrepresetation of copyright law and (2) an almost fraudulent misquoting of Dave Crocker, a guy who really was heavily involved in early email efforts. Again, all of that is discussed in the earlier posts.

      What I still cannot fathom is how the Huffington Post can stand behind this “reporting.” I’ve now heard from three different HuffPost reporters on the news side who all say that they’re horrified that no one at the company has done anything about this. The only official response I got stood by the stories, but actual reporters at the company recognize that their own credibility has been absolutely destroyed by this. It’s been pointed out that the five part series is on HuffPo’s “blogging” side — which gives a platform to PR folks with no editorial oversight.

    • Huffington Post Finally Responds, Stands By Its Completely Bogus, Totally Debunked ‘History Of Email’ Series

  • Censorship

    • Harrop: Stopping the ‘spiral of silence’

      The “spiral of silence” is a theory that people hesitate to say things they believe others in their group won’t agree with. It predates the Internet age.

      Let me add that the “spiral of silence” disproportionately affects the shy, the thoughtful and the female.

      Social media were supposed to free these cooped-up opinions by offering new venues for speaking one’s piece. But this high-minded promise of a vast online town hall for pensive argument has fallen flat, according to a new report by Pew Research Center and Rutgers University.

    • Automattic Rejects Series Of Bogus Janet Jackson Takedown Attempts By Using Janet Jackson Song Titles

      As you can clearly see that’s using a photo of Jackson’s famous “wardrobe malfunction” from the Superbowl many years ago, and applying the Things Tim Howard Could Save meme to it. Marginally funny. But not copyright infringement. Not only does Jackson not hold the copyright on that image, it’s obvious fair use for whoever does hold the copyright.

    • UN holds Internet Governance Forum in a country known for digital censorship
    • ‘Hypocrite’ Turkey Holds Internet Governance Forum While Twitter Users Face Trial
    • Internet Governance Forum: A missed opportunity for human rights
    • Protecting the open internet: the Internet Governance Forum in Turkey

      Let me be clear, while Turkey has made good progress in some areas of digital development and education, and done more in recent years to integrate the Kurdish community and language into the Turkish nation, there are still too many worrying steps with regard to freedom of speech. That freedom must exist equally online and offline. Not only are around 51,000 websites blocked at the moment, but dozens of journalists are in jail or on trial: one female journalist I met, Fusun Erdogan, was sentenced to 789 years in jail!

    • Forbes Praises YouTube Censoring Steven Sotloff Beheading Video

      Following the horrific actions of ISIS/ISIL, in which the group beheaded American journalist James Foley and plastered the video in online forums like Twitter and YouTube, I argued that it is important that the American Public be given the chance to repudiate the aim of the video: paralyzing us with fear. Adding to that thought, Glenn Greenwald argued that the reason one must fight against censorship in the most egregious of speech cases is that such cases are often where the limitation of speech is legitimized. While this may not be a First Amendment consideration, since those sites are not affiliated with the government, it would be a mistake to suggest that free speech is limited as a concept to that narrow legal definition. Free and open speech is an ideal, one that is codified into law in some places, and one which enjoys a more relaxed but important status within societal norms.

    • Austrian ISPs Sued For Actually Wanting A Court Order Rather Than Just Blocking Websites Based On Entertainment Industry’s Requests

      Furthermore, the industry seems to believe that everyone else has a legal responsibility to carry out its wishes once it declares a site as bad. It thinks hosts should take down sites, search engines should stop linking to them, advertisers should block ads, registrars should pull domain names and ISPs should block access. You’d think that maybe actually adapting to new technologies and giving people more of what they want might be a more compelling strategy, but the legacy entertainment industry prefers demanding that everyone else go out of their way to protect the legacy industry’s obsolete business model, without the industry itself doing anything more than pointing at sites (often incorrectly).

    • Record Labels Issue Takedown To Take Kim Dotcom’s Album Down From His Own Site

      We’ve heard some folks claim that all these bogus takedown notices we write about are just “anomalies” rather than a pattern of abuse of the law for the purpose of censorship. And yet, there are more and more examples every day. The latest one is particularly bizarre. IFPI (the international version of the RIAA) has apparently been issuing a series of bogus takedown notices to get Kim Dotcom’s album “Good Times” taken down off of his own site, Mega. That’s… quite incredible. This does not appear to be a strange attempt to hide Dotcom’s music, but it looks to just be pure sloppiness on the part of the IFPI issuing misguided takedowns. That is, the IFPI takedown notice lists a totally different song (and it turns out this is the second time this has happened to Dotcom’s album in the past month). As short-sighted as the IFPI is, it would take an other wordly level of stupidity to directly target Dotcom’s music with a bogus takedown. Even the IFPI must know that that would backfire badly. The story that it’s an “accident” makes much more sense.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Ferguson Police Department tactics will be focus of federal investigation

      The U.S. Justice Department is getting ready to launch an investigation into the practices and training of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department, a Missouri official and a federal official told CNN.

    • Meeting at University of Michigan connects police violence to imperialist war

      Dozens of students, workers, and youth attended a meeting at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor Thursday night to discuss the significance of the August 9 police killing and subsequent repression of protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

      Titled “Military-police violence in Ferguson, Missouri: The war comes home” and hosted by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the meeting took up the interconnections between increasing police brutality and attacks on living conditions and democratic rights in the US and the escalating geopolitical tensions and military predations of American imperialism internationally.

    • The Miraculous Works Of The Criminal Justice System

      So, apparently White, with his hands cuffed behind him, shot himself in the chest.

    • Authorities claim handcuffed man shot himself in the chest, ruled ‘suicide’

      Authorities claim that a man committed suicide via gunshot while handcuffed and unattended in the back of a police cruiser. However, an autopsy report states that the man — who had his handcuffed behind his back, and was already searched for weapons — was shot in the chest.

    • Ferguson Police Chief Lied About Why He Released Alleged Michael Brown Robbery Tape: Report

      Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson lied when he said he had received “many” specific requests for the videotape that allegedly shows Michael Brown robbing a convenience store, according to a new report.

      “All I did — what I did was — was release the videotape to you, because I had to,” Jackson told reporters on Aug. 15 when asked why he released the robbery footage. “I’d been sitting on it, but I — too many people put in a [Freedom of Information Act] request for that thing, and I had to release that tape to you.”

      Writing for The Blot, Matthew Keys reports that the police department did not receive any specific requests for the videotape.

      “A review of open records requests sent to the Ferguson Police Department found that no news organization, reporter or individual specifically sought the release of the surveillance tape before police distributed it on Aug. 15,” Keys writes.

    • Guy Blouin ID’d as cyclist run over by Quebec City police car

      Witness says he saw cruiser run over man twice; bicycle and police car moved from scene by officers

    • This Week in Transparency: Shenanigans at the CIA, open-source FOIA reform, and more
    • CIA Redacted ‘Off The Record, No Comment’ From Released Documents

      Over at The Intercept, there’s an article claiming that the AP’s national security reporter Ken Dilanian had a too cozy relationship with the CIA while he was at the Tribune Company. It’s an interesting read, based on pages upon pages of emails between reporters and the CIA that were released under a FOIA request. However, what caught my attention, more than the full story, was something in all of those emails, spotted by Katherine Hawkins. And it’s that, on page 363, it seems clear that the CIA, when releasing these emails, redacted the line “Off the record, no comment.” It’s rather obvious, because Dilanian immediately repeats that line right back, somewhat angrily at the ridiculousness of it.

    • Militarization, Surveillance, and Profit: How Grassroots Groups are Fighting Urban Shield

      In the San Francisco Bay Area, the answer is yes. A coalition of community groups has come together to call attention to Urban Shield, a four-day long “preparedness” exercise for law enforcement and other agencies that will take place from September 4-8. They’ve organized a week of education, including a march and demonstration outside of the event on Friday, September 5. To these community groups, Urban Shield represents state violence and political repression, not public safety.

    • You Can’t Say Something Like That And Not Do Something About It

      Amnesty International also calls attention to how wrong Obama was to characterize torture as an understandable error of judgment in the immediate wake of 9/11, by people who meant well. (“He even called us patriots!” John Rizzo, former CIA acting general counsel, kvelled afterwards.)

      By contrast, the extensive paper trail that has emerged over the years is clear: The Bush/Cheney torture regime was “a chillingly detailed, planned and resourced operation incorporating systematic unlawful and criminal conduct stretching over years.”

      If Obama really wants to prevent this from happening again some other time, Amnesty says, he needs to start by releasing the full Senate intelligence committee report on torture — not just the executive summary, but the whole thing, and without the redactions the White House proposed in early August.

      As I wrote on Wednesday, Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein expects that she will be able to release the approximately 500-page executive summary of the 6,000-plus page report within two to four weeks — redacted, but not so redacted it isn’t “readable and understandable.”

    • New York’s Shield Law Protects Reporter From Subpoena

      Risen fought the subpoena all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices declined to review a lower court’s ruling affirming the subpoena’s legality. Having exhausted his options, Risen’s day of judgment may be coming soon, forcing him either to be jailed for his convictions or to tell the government what it wants to hear.

    • Holder: No Jail for NYT Reporter

      During a press conference to announce a broadened probe of the Ferguson, Mo. police department, Holder was asked whether he stood by statements he has reportedly made in private meetings insisting that Risen is not at risk of being jailed for contempt despite prosecutors’ success in defeating his legal effort to avoid testifying against his alleged source, Jeffrey Sterling.

    • Up to 2,100 Photos of US Soldiers Abusing Prisoners May Soon Be Released

      Would the release of 10-year-old detainee abuse photographs, such as one depicting US soldiers pointing a broom handle at a hooded detainee’s rectum, incite terrorist organizations and threaten national security?

      That’s a question government attorneys will have to answer next week when they explain to a federal court judge why as many as 2,100 unclassified photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqi and Afghan captives should continue to be concealed from the public.

    • UK records undermine Government’s claims over damaged CIA rendition documents

      Last month, FCO Minister Mark Simmonds told MPs that records of flights passing through Diego Garcia had suffered “water damage” as a result of “extremely heavy weather in June 2014.”

      However, weather records for Diego Garcia obtained from the FCO under Freedom of Information have cast doubt on this explanation: official logs for the island show that the total rainfall for June 2014 was just 3.25 inches (83mm). This is a low figure, considering the average annual rainfall is 102 inches (2591mm) – or 8.5 inches (216mm) per month.

      Ministers have previously admitted that Diego Garcia, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), was used by CIA planes carrying detainees as part of the ‘extraordinary rendition’ programme, which saw prisoners flown to countries where they could be subjected to torture. However, the UK Government has so far refused to make documents relating to such flights public.

    • Diego Garcia: Heavy Rain That ‘Destroyed’ Flight Logs in CIA Rendition Row Wasn’t So Heavy
    • Compare North Korea’s Judicial System to Gitmo

      The inmates at Guantanamo are treated no differently from the way suspects are treated in North Korea. As most everyone knows, some of the prisoners at Gitmo have been there for 12 years, without charges, trials, or even the semblance of due process of law. If they were ever to be given trials, the proceedings would be kangaroo in nature, in that the outcomes of the trials would be preordained by the president and Pentagon officials. Much of the trials would be in secret and evidence acquired by torture and hearsay evidence could be used to buttress the preordained verdict, just like in North Korea. Meanwhile, prisoners at Gitmo have been brutally tortured and have no hope of ever securing justice. It’s not surprising that many of them have gone on hunger strikes in the hopes of killing themselves.

    • What the CIA is attempting to keep under wraps

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • FCC’s Tom Wheeler Admits There Isn’t Really Broadband Competition

      The big broadband providers have all been spinning a yarn for a while now pretending that there’s widespread competition. A key partner in this has been the FCC, which for years has helped spread this myth by pushing out totally bogus broadband data. If you want a good laugh, go over to BroadbandMap.gov and type in your address — and discover a bunch of bogus claims about broadband which you really don’t have. The speeds are inflated. The services are inflated. It includes mobile data broadband, despite it being priced much, much higher and with very low caps and limits — and speeds that no one truly considers to be broadband but, that doesn’t stop the big broadband players from using that bogus data to claim there’s tons of competition.

    • The Neutered Net: Why the FCC Can’t Save the Internet

      There’s no question that Net Neutrality has been this year’s most hotly debated and passionately defended political issue regarding the internet. It has often been painted as the next no-brainer that every internet user should hop on the bandwagon in support of—the next SOPA, PIPA, or NSA scandal. Opposition to shocking revelations such to these controversies sent a shockwave through the status quo of corporate government power. It was a signpost that the millennial generation can and will rise up to resist the oppression of personal liberties—at least when the fabric of their daily lives are at risk.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Corporate Sovereignty Debate Heats Up In Australia

      As Techdirt has reported, so far corporate sovereignty has emerged as the most contentious issue in the TTIP/TAFTA negotiations. In response to the growing public concern in Europe, the European Commission held a consultation on Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), although that proved largely a sham, with the desired outcome clearly signalled by the choice of questions and how they were framed. Indeed, Karel De Gucht, the EU Commissioner with overall responsibility for TTIP, even went so far as to call the unprecedented 150,000 public responses an “outright attack” — which is an interesting way to characterize democracy in action.

    • Copyrights

      • How Canada Shaped the Copyright Rules in the EU Trade Deal

        In late December 2009, Wikileaks, the website that publishes secret government information, posted a copy of the draft intellectual property chapter of the Canada – European Trade Agreement (CETA). The CETA deal was still years from completion, but the leaked document revealed that the European Union envisioned using the agreement to mandate a massive overhaul of Canadian law.

      • Leak Of Complete CETA Text Shows Canada Fought Off EU Demands For More Extreme Copyright Rules

        As we wrote back in July, it seems that the trade agreement between Canada and the EU, generally known as CETA, is finally nearing completion, after premature claims to that effect. One reason why we might believe so is that thanks to some public-spirited whistleblower(s), we now have both CETA’s main text (pdf) and the annexes (zip). This has permitted Michael Geist to perform an analysis of how the copyright provisions in CETA have evolved since the first leak of the chapter covering intellectual monopolies, posted by Wikileaks back in 2009.

      • U.S. Government Wants Kim Dotcom’s Cash and Cars

        The U.S. Government is going after Kim Dotcom’s bank accounts, cars, art and other property. In a complaint filed at a Virginia federal court the Department of Justice argues that the property of the Megaupload and its founder should be forfeited as it was obtained through criminal means.

Software Patents ‘Quality’ Debated in Courts, Microsoft’s Biggest Patent Troll Still a Chronic Liar

Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 4:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft’s and Bill Gates’ largest patent proxy, continues to spread lies about its motivations, claiming that patent assessment is among the goals when in fact only the courts and patent offices do this

Law 360, a site for lawyers, says that the EFF now uses the SCOTUS ruling against many software patents. The article, which is behind paywall (common practice among lawyers and legal sites), says: “The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Alice Corp. decision means that thousands of software patents that claim abstract ideas must be found invalid, including an online advertising patent owned by Ultramercial Inc., the Electronic Frontier Foundation has told the Federal Circuit.”

As we recently showed, sites that are pro-software patents admit defeat in the sense that they acknowledge software patents are indeed affected. The remaining question is, his many of them are affected? Some patents are already being rejected based on the recent ruling.

“Some patents are already being rejected based on the recent ruling.”
The significance of all this is very high. It is a game changer. Things are changing for the better. Despite that, The National Law Journal, a site for lawyers, goes with the headline “No, ‘Alice’ Wasn’t a ‘Death Knell’ for Software Patents” and another lawyers’ site (links in page 6) to “Getting your software patents approved”, which is basically the voice of patent lawyers who can’t accept the new reality. Here we have a very vocal software patents booster speaking with Mark Lemley. His article starts as follows:

My immediate reaction was that this would be extremely bad for software patents. Many others thought I was engaging in extreme exaggeration. Since then, however, the Patent Office has started issuing Alice rejections where no previous 101 patent eligibility rejection stood, they have been withdrawing notices of allowance after the issue fee has been paid in order to issue Alice rejections, and the Federal Circuit is strictly applying the nebulous “Alice standard” to find software patent claims patent ineligible.

It is now clear that the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice fundamentally changed the law and future of software patents, at least those already issued and applications already filed, which cannot be changed without adding new matter. Those applications were filed at a different time and under a substantially different regime.

So let it be established that even many software patents boosters don’t fight the fact that new quality-related constraints are now in place.

The Bill Gates-connected Intellectual Ventures recently made headlines again due to massive layoffs and due to its blatant lies. The troll rewrites history now, pretending that its goal was to create products or to assess quality of patents. Everyone who knows even a little bit about this troll would have no doubt that it was all along about extortion. Watch this latest PR offensive:

Intellectual Ventures, the world’s largest patent troll and a general tax on innovation, diverting over $6 billion away from actual innovators, has always been really stunningly good at getting the tech press to repeat questionable claims about its “real intentions” and how it’s helping to “drive innovation.” Every time the negative press catches up to IV’s really nefarious practices, it comes up with a way to try to spin the story around again, like that time it tried to claim its real goal was to help everyone sort through good and bad patents.

Trolls do not create anything and they do not assess patents. They are predatory opportunists who try to maximise profit based on a business model of the Mafia. What’s amazing is that there are enough gullible (or corruptible) journalists out there who continue to pump out lies for the trolls, pretending that these trolls are somehow “misunderstood” (or something along these lines).

All in all, it seems like both patent trolls and patents on software are going down. It’s generally good news that would encourage real innovation. █

New Article Explains How Bill Gates Prevents Schools From Moving to GNU/Linux and Free Software

Posted in Bill Gates at 3:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A new article from Al Jazeera provides details about the role of so-called ‘charities’ of billionaires inside school systems

We recently wrote about the Gates Foundation‘s promotion of Common Core for profit, having previously covered InBloom and the Microsoft connection (surveillance on children for profit [1, 2]). It is all about control and monetary gain. Based on this new article from Al Jazeera, Los Angeles (LA) is leaving Apple and affluent opportunists are already hanging around because they to try to keep LA away from Free software, which should be default in education:

Foisting computers on schools has been a lucrative business, one easily disguised as charity. Among Pearson’s allies is the Gates Foundation, which works alongside Microsoft’s education arm to promote the Common Core in schools and support libraries, with Microsoft software in hand. Gates’ competitor for the richest-person-in-the-world slot, Mexican telecom monopolist Carlos Slim, has proposed to bypass schools altogether by bankrolling the online-only Khan Academy. Now Rupert Murdoch is trying to enter the education tech business with a tablet of his own.

[...]

One might, for instance, consider replacing the iPad with a little device called a Raspberry Pi. About the size of a credit card, it’s a fully featured computer, though a keyboard and screen need to be plugged in separately. It comes as a single circuit board with no casing, which reflects its philosophy; the basic parts of the machine are plain for a student to see — the video card, the CPU, the power system, the USB ports. The nonprofit Raspberry Pi Foundation sells it for as little as $25, compared with $299 to $929 for an iPad. One Laptop per Child (OLPC), another nonprofit project, produces low-cost laptops and tablets with education in mind.

Software can be even cheaper. The Raspberry Pi and OLPC run on Linux, a free, open-source operating system, which is constantly being improved and expanded by thousands of programmers around the world. An enormous variety of free, community-developed programs, including fully featured office suites, graphics tools and games — as well as popular commercial programs such as Skype and Dropbox — can be installed on the device. Apple and Microsoft often tell us that open-source software is unreliable and unfriendly to use, but that hasn’t stopped Linux from being the basis of Android phones, many everyday appliances and most of the Internet. The computer I used to write this article runs Linux.

This article reinforces a lot of of what we have shown over the years. It is really simple to see why education systems should teach methods rather than preach brands; they need to teach with transparency and participation, not restrictive licences, spying, and lock-in. On the other hand, it is simple to see why people like Gates wish to impose Windows on an obligatory and publicly-funded system.

LA’s policy for school procurement should be rather clear now, never mind how close it is (geographically) to Apple, the company that lets people’s private (sometimes nude) photographs leak out because its security mechanisms are technically a farce. Children would be an easy target here.

“…it is simple to see why people like Gates wish to impose Windows on an obligatory and publicly-funded system.”Speaking of privacy, the NSA-tied Microsoft now promotes “always-on” in phones and after Box’s CEO made some noise about privacy he shows his company to be just another NSA surveillance tool through Microsoft Office. No school should impose such nonsense on its students. Any school that still teaches Windows and Microsoft Office should seriously consider whether it is teaching or selling/marketing. █

Microsoft Sued for Large-scale Copyright Abuses

Posted in Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft at 3:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft reveals its disregard for copyright law which it loves so much to wield as a weapon against its competition and clients

Microsoft, which gives everyone’s personal and very private data to the NSA, likes talking about ‘IP’ and simultaneously claim to have a higher moral ground when it engages in bullying, extortion, and intimidation. Thanks to this pointer linking to ZDNet‘s Microsoft booster (former Microsoft staff), we now know that Microsoft is a copyright abuser. That’s what Getty alleges anyway:

A new Microsoft Corp product that allows website publishers to embed digital photographs on their sites is a “massive infringement” of copyrighted images, Getty Images Inc [GETTY.UL] claimed in a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York on Thursday.

The “Bing Image Widget,” released on Aug. 22, gives publishers the ability to create a panel on their websites that displays digital images supplied by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, according to the lawsuit.

Rather than draw from a pool of licensed images, the lawsuit claimed, the product grants access to the billions of images that can be found online, without regard to whether the photos are copyrighted.

Microsoft wants people to forget these situations where Microsoft shows sheer hypocrisy or double-standard. Microsoft does not care about so-called ‘IP’; if it did, it wouldn’t have shared billions (or trillions) of bits of data collected from individuals using Windows, SKype, and online Microsoft services such as Live/Bing search.

Microsoft is a lying scam. █

09.05.14

Links 5/9/2014: New WordPress, Systemd Debate Continues

Posted in News Roundup at 11:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Switch to Linux part 2 – install Linux

    Once you’ve got your Linux Mint image downloaded (or other distro if you fancy using a different one), you’ll need to burn it to a spare DVD or temporarily create a bootable USB stick with it. We recommend doing the latter by using the UNetbootin software and a spare USB stick that’s at least 2GB in size. Be sure to back up any files on the USB stick before using the software though, as it will delete them otherwise.

  • How a Linux system administrator evolves from beginner to advanced professional
  • Evolution of a SysAdmin

    There is an ever-growing demand for Linux professionals, and becoming a sysadmin can be a challenging, interesting and rewarding career path. We have curated a few resources that can help you take your Linux career to the next level – regardless of your current experience level.

  • Tux Machines Ten Months Later

    It wasn’t a big surprise when Linton announced her intention to sell the site. For a while it had been obvious she wasn’t putting the time into it she once had. Since the site had started in 2004, it had been constantly maintained, with links to other sites being posted daily, if not more often. Recently, it had lost that dependability. Days, sometimes weeks, would go by without the site being updated.

  • The Wrong Way To Install GNU/Linux

    Now, the newbie does not need to create a shopping list with thousands of entries. Many of the Debian packages are libraries shared by multiple applications so start with the major applications the newbie needs: a web browser or two, an office suite or two, some graphics applications for producing drawings or editing images, some multimedia software, various utilities like file-manager, search engine (yes you can have powerful tools on your desktop), database, etc. Make a short list of a few dozen or less packages that give the newbie what he/she wants. Then consider the desktop itself. The newbie can have none at all (strange but true), simple iconified desktops, brave new world shortcut-driven searchable-everything desktops and even some combinations like several different desktops running in virtual machines… Here the possibilities are numerous but there should be some combination that suites the user. If the user like most runs a few applications routinely and has a small total number of applications ever used, a rather finite desktop like XFCE should work. It’s a lot like XP with a task bar (or not), actual menus and such. If the user is some kind of genius with a huge number of applications, too many to hide behind icons, a search-engine base might be the way to go. You just start typing the name/description of an application and you find it just like URI’s autocompletion in your browser. Then choose KDE or GNOME.

  • Fedora in local medicine shop

    They are really happy with the OS as almost no downtime for them.

  • NBC, Today Show Use Ubuntu to Illustrate Celebrity Hacking Story

    Spotting Ubuntu in the wild should be promoted to a sport and records must be set for the most interesting places where the distro has been seen. It looks like NBC and the Today Show have used Ubuntu to illustrate the nefarious practices of the hacker that release some nude pictures of various celebrities.

  • Desktop

    • Chromebooks will make the year of Linux possible: Linus Torvalds

      Chromebooks are becoming quite popular among the techie as well as non-techie crowd. Even Microsoft has started to get worried about Chromebooks and is pushing hardware partners to do a Netbook 2.0 to combat Chromebooks.

      Linus likes Chromebooks quite a lot – this is one device which may realise the dream of ‘Linux on desktop’. When asked about what can be done to move closer toward the ‘year of desktop Linux’ at DebConf, he said, “Technical people don’t tend to use Chromebooks but I think Chromebooks are kind of things that will make the year of the desktop more possible.”

    • Toshiba introduces a Chromebook you would crave to buy

      Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said a few day ago that Chromebook may realise the ‘year of Linux desktop’ dream. There is no doubt that Chromebooks are fast becoming preferred choice of users; the are the best selling devices on Amazon.com.

      Now Toshiba has introduced two Chromebooks which not only look great, but also pack some good hardware. The company has announced two Chromebooks, where one is an entry-level $249 Chromebook with standard HD display the other one is kind of high end with Full HD (1920 x 1080) 13.3 incg display with IPS technology.

    • Can this free software company secure the future of Linux for the city of Munich?

      There are many solved problems in open source. Groupware is not one of them.

      How else would you explain the number of migrations that fail on average in groupware? The Swiss canton of Solothurn is just one example among many as a result of groupware vendors who have given up and transitioned to Outlook or the web to meet their needs. Kolab does things differently. For one, Outlook will never be the client for the Linux desktop. And, the web is a good answer for a lot of things, but not all.

      The city of Munich is another good case to look at; they successfully completed a Linux migration that has saved them millions of Euros. But now, the newly elected mayor and his deputy have made the news by publicly considering a migration back to Windows. To explore this further, let’s first ignore for a moment that the City Council would need to approve any change in strategy and has renewed its dedication to LiMux. Let’s also ignore the fact that the City employees do not consider it a good idea to go back to Windows.

      So, what was it that prompted LiMux to be put into question in the news?

      If you guessed that Office interoperatbility may have something to do with it, you would be right. As long as there are competing standards there will be incompatibility between the dominant vendor and the rest of the market. Document exchange remains a constant issue that is ultimately only solved at the political level. This particular problem is not technical and the UK has recently demonstrated that they will choose open documents as the standard format to deal with it.

    • Acer Chromebook 13 review

      The best Chromebooks all have one thing in common: they’re small. The most popular Chromebooks have small, low-resolution 11.6-inch displays. They may offer a low price, stellar battery life, and fast performance — but sometimes you just want a bigger computer.

  • Server

    • Cumulus Linux Partners for Open Source Networking OS

      Does the channel need an open source operating system designed to power the next-generation networking hardware that powers the cloud? The company behind Cumulus Linux thinks so, and so too, apparently, do Dell, VMware (VMW) and other partners who have endorsed Cumulus Linux through major reseller and distribution agreements recently.

    • Parallels wants to help automate, manage and secure Linux containers

      Virtualization firm Parallels Inc. is hoping to break into the world of containers with its automation, security and management software.

      Parallels told The Register that its automation and management software Virtuozzo could be useful in making containers better behave.

    • Total chooses Linux for its supercomputer

      French oil firm Total has revealed that its supercomputer is now running on a Linux Enterprise Server operating system.

      The oil giant chose the Linux Enterprise Server – provided by software company SUSE – as it was the best value for money, according to the Total’s high power computer (HPC) engineer, Diego Klahr.

      The IT deployment comes as Total looks to bolster its oil production process. In 2013, with oil and gas reserves diminishing, the Exploration and Production (Total E&P) department needed to improve how it located new oil and gas reserves.

    • Does Docker Need an Open Source Foundation?

      The open source Docker container virtualization project got started in March of 2013 and has since grown to become one of the most talked about virtualization technologies in the industry.

      Docker was started by Solomon Hykes, while Hykes was running a PaaS company known at the time as dotCloud. The dotCloud business has since been sold and Hykes is the CTO of Docker, Inc. which is the lead commercial sponsor behind Docker.

      In some cases with open source software, there is a push from the broader community for a vendor neutral foundation to help run the project. That’s not likely to be the case for Docker.

  • Kernel Space

    • Random Thoughts, Cheap Shots, Bon Mots…

      Of course, as you might expect, Linus left a wide range of debate and discussion in his verbal wake. Among the things that raised both cheers and jeers were items like packaging programs is difficult and time consuming, systemd, GPLv3, and a complaint about the way distros go about doing what they do. That and, of course, saying the Free Software Foundation is full of fanatics (of course, he backtracked and said that there are many good FSFers, but some were extreme).

    • Boycott Systemd, Messy Makulu, and Top Ten

      Systemd continues to grab headlines and today there are calls to boycott it. The Document Foundation are holding membership committee elections. Matthew Miller and Jim Whitehurst talk Fedora and Red Hat. New high-risk threats have been reported to infect Linux systems. Christine Hall says Distrowatch’s Top Ten actually contains only five distros and Softpedia.com says an old Ubuntu installer bug can still wipe your hard drive.

    • systemd, a brave new world

      After spending a while fighting with upstart, at work, I decided that systemd couldn’t be any worse and yesterday morning upgraded one of my servers to run it.

    • btrfs rebalancing

    • Graphics Stack

      • More Nouveau Re-Clocking Patches Published

        A few weeks back Roy posted improved re-clocking code for NVA3 GPUs. Today his latest set of patches work on memory re-clocking improvements for DDR2/DDR3 hardware. The patches also implement wait-for-vblank to remove flickering during memory re-clocking, improvements for reducing the downtime of PFIFO pauses, etc. These patches are prep work for the actual memory re-clocking code that he says will follow later.

      • X.Org Is Looking For Some Female Help

        The X.Org Foundation is looking for one female to fund in the months ahead to do some sort of work for the open-source project.

      • Wayland/Weston 1.6 Release Candidate 1 Is Out

        Wayland 1.6 is finally close to materializing and should be officially released later this month.

        Pekka Paalanen of Collabora has been handling Wayland 1.6 release management in the absence of Wayland founder Kristian Høgsberg. There was a Wayland 1.6 Alpha in late August while out today is Wayland 1.6 RC1 along with a release candidate to the Weston compositor.

      • Wayland and Weston 1.6 RC1 snapshot (1.5.92)

    • Benchmarks

      • More Linux Benchmarks Of The AMD FX-8370E / FX-8370 / FX-9590

        In adding some extra tests besides what was shared in our large Linux review of the new AMD FX CPUs from earlier in the week, that included a fairly big comparison of Intel and AMD CPUs, here’s some more Linux test results for just the FX-8370E, FX-8370, and FX-9590 processors.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Intermediate results of the icon tests: Elementary

      The introduction of the new Breeze icon set in KDE let us again wonder, what aspects of an icon set actually takes what impact on the usability of it. We investigated Oxygen and Tango Icons for the LibreOffice project before, but our focus then was on checking all icons of the standard tool bar. This time we focus on different icon sets and will use 13 common actions to compare them.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME 3.14 Beta 2 Has Been Released!

        Frederic Peters has announced the release of GNOME 3.13.91, the second beta release which is a new step towards 3.14.0, scheduled to be released September 24th. This beta release updates many core applications such as: adwaita-icon-theme, Baobab, Caribou, Clutter, Clutter-gtk, Epiphany, Evince, GNOME Display Manager, glibmm, Gnome Contacts, GNOME Control Center, GNOME Desktop, GNOME Screenshot, GNOME Shell, GNOME System Monitor, grilo, GTK+, LibGWeather, Mutter, Nautilus (Files), Pango, Totem (Videos), Vala, and more.

      • GNOME 3.14 Beta 2 Released

        The second beta release to the GNOME 3.14 desktop stack due out later this month is now available.

  • Distributions

    • Linux Desktop Fragmentation Is a Feature, Not a Bug

      One of the most common expressions that you will hear in the Linux community is platform fragmentation, and it’s also one of the contra arguments that people spout when citing reasons not to get a Linux OS. I’m here to tell you why platform fragmentation is actually a good thing.

    • Netrunner – The Best Distro You’ve Barely Heard Of

      My overall conclusion with Netrunner Rolling is that there is no better Arch platformed Linux distro with KDE as the default environment out there. It just works. It gets out of the way and it gives the end user a clean, crisp and efficient desktop right out of the gate. You don’t have to know binary to get it installed, updated, and running. You don’t have to sacrifice a goat to Cthulhu (I’ve heard that comes later?) to have a pleasing KDE experience for your desktop. I keep saying this, but it just works.

    • New Releases

      • Backtrack 5 R3 Hits One Million Downloads on Softpedia

        Backtrack was a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing and it’s no longer maintained. In fact, this OS was so successful that it’s still being downloaded and used even today, despite the fact that it’s no longer maintained.

        Backtrack was not the only security-oriented distribution, but the wealth of applicationS provided by the developers ensured its supremacy. It remained one of the most downloaded Linux distributions for a long time, even after it wasn’t maintained anymore.

    • Screenshots

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo Linux 20140826 Iron Penguin Edition — open source fans, download now!

        There are so many Linux distributions to choose from. Depending on your perspective, this can be a good or bad thing. You see, for many, using Linux is about choice — you get to choose the distro, packages and environment. There is truth to this; however, many others, including myself, often wonder if the community’s efforts are too fragmented. In other words, when talent is spread thin, progress may be slowed.

        One distro which should not be discussed in this debate is Gentoo; it has been around for 12 years and is not some recently launched project. Hell, Google chose this distro as the base for Chrome OS, so it must be good; seriously, the search-giant’s operating system is pretty darn stable. Gentoo Linux has reached version 20140826 and it looks like a winner.

      • New Gentoo, Just Peachy, and Tuxmachines Now

        gentooA new Gentoo liveDVD was released last week featuring Linux 3.15 and KDE 4.13. Jack Wallen follows Jack Germain in tests of a new “fresh and juicy” Linux. The Reg test drives Ubuntu 14.10. And finally today, Christine Hall takes a look at my old Website, Tuxmachines.org, under its new management.

      • Gentoo Linux releases the 20140826 LiveDVD – Iron Penguin Edition

    • Red Hat Family

      • Cisco, Red Hat broaden partnership, eye integrated OpenStack systems

        Cisco and Red Hat on Thursday announced integrated systems designed for OpenStack cloud deployments.

        The companies also said they would collaborate more on OpenStack as well as Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure and Intercloud efforts.

      • OpenStack 101: Getting started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform

        Cloud computing is enjoying a growing presence in businesses today, and according to forecasts from experts such as Gartner, uptake is only set to rise in the future.

        As organizations that haven’t already latched onto the trend look to do so, investing in the right infrastructure, technology and tools is essential. OpenStack, as a community project, is not yet ready for the enterprise ‘as-is’. However, like other popular open source community projects including Linux, there are companies, including Red Hat, that are making the community project into an enterprise Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering, enabling organizations to attain greater agility and scalability with the cloud, with the support lifecycle, vast partner ecosystem, and certified solutions portfolio that enterprise customers require.

      • Fedora

        • Matthew Miller: The Remaking of Fedora 1, 2, 3

          “If you look at Fedora over the past decade, you see sort of a decision to make it one-size-fits-all. But we are now looking at Fedora and asking, ‘what is Fedora?’ and ‘what can we make better?’ When you look at Fedora now, you can see that there was a decision to make it a desktop-only distro — so that was the focus for a while. … Over the last few years, the focus has changed.”

        • Fedora 21 Alpha to slip by one week
        • Fedora 21 Alpha Slips By Another Week

          Jaroslav Reznik of Red Hat announced today that Fedora 21 has slipped by yet another week.

          The Fedora 21 release was delayed by yet another week due to unresolved blocker bugs. In particular, there’s 8 blocker bugs right now ranging from Anaconda installer issues to theming issues. As a result, Fedora 21 Alpha will hopefully come around the 16th of September if no further delays take place. All further milestones are pushed back by an additional week.

    • Debian Family

      • The Linux Setup – Stefano Zacchiroli, Former Debian Project Leader

        Stefano is my great white whale. I’ve been trying to interview him for years, so I was very excited when he was able to make some time for this. He’s a Debian user, as you might expect from a former Debian Project Leader. Stefano also has a lot of nice things to say about GNOME Shell. And mutt users will want to check out his software list, as there’s a lot of nice Emacs integrations in there.

      • Debian PPA Utility

        Since its introduction, PPA’s are exclusively connected to Ubuntu and its derivatives (Mint, Elementary, etc …). But over time, a number of interesting projects appeared whose whole development is happening inside of PPA’s. To name few, I’m talking about TLP, Geary, Oracle Java Installer, Elementary OS and etc … Some of these projects are in WNPP without much happening for a long time, i.e: TLP

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • YES, I have ridden the UNICORN: The Ubuntu Utopic unicorn

            Ubuntu 14.10, nicknamed Utopic Unicorn, is coming in just a few months. Alpha releases have been available for some time but beta testing started last week, meaning code is generally stable enough for virtual machines and other testing scenarios.

            Ubuntu’s current release cycle means that the main Ubuntu line usually sits out the first beta and 14.10 is no exception. There is no beta 1 for Ubuntu 14.10; instead this beta consists of a number of participating “flavors,” whose betas are also now available.

          • Ubuntu Touch Can Now Be Used to Control AR Drones

            The Ubuntu Touch platform is getting closer to a release on the market and some very interesting applications are making their way into the Ubuntu Store, like this drone control app.

          • Canonical Releases Mir 0.7.0 Display Server
          • The DowNow 0.3 (Torrent Client) Is Now Available Via The Ubuntu Touch App Store

            For now, the app is still under massive development, the DowNow 0.3 click package being downloadable via either Launchpad or Ubuntu Software Center.

            There aren’t a lot of applications for Ubuntu Touch available yet,but Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth hopes that by the time the first Ubuntu Touch powered phones hit the market, the top 50 Android/iOS apps will be available for Ubuntu Touch.

          • Canonical Has Joined The Khronos Group To Contribute To The Creation Of Mir/Wayland Drivers

            For now, both Mir and Wayland are under massive development, none of them being used on desktop yet. While Mir is testable via the Ubuntu Touch Next Image, Wayland will be added to the default repositories of Fedora, but will not be used as default.

            At first, Canonical intended to use Red Hat’s Wayland on their Ubuntu Touch, but it was difficult for them to submit patches and customizations for the mobile device and so, they decided to do the work themselves and created Mir.

            Recently, Canonical has joined the Khronos Group to contribute to the creation of Mir/Wayland drivers.

          • Ubuntu Attracts Developers

            Have you ever wondered why you use the operating system you do to create programs, perhaps for other completely different operating systems? Canonical is making efforts to try to attract you to Ubuntu, even if you are targeting Android.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • 5 things you need to know about the Raspberry Pi’s Epiphany web browser
    • RasPi issue 2 out now!

      Build a Raspberry Pi robot and create a game in Scratch with the latest issue of the digital RasPi magazine

    • 5 things you need to know about the Raspberry Pi’s Epiphany web browser

      Epiphany is a new web browser for the Raspberry Pi. It’s been modified to be faster, smoother and more powerful than the previous web browser, Midori, meaning it possible to watch 720p YouTube videos and browse more Javascript-heavy websites like RaspberryPi.org and RasPi.Today.

    • Phones

      • Ballnux

        • Samsung’s Tizen-Based Gear S Throws a Curve at Smartwatch Market

          Prior to this week’s IFA show in Berlin, Samsung showed off its third Tizen Linux-based smartwatch. The Gear S offers several innovations compared to the Tizen-based Gear 2 and Gear Neo smartwatches, including autonomous operation and a curved screen. The Gear S will ship in Korea in October, followed by a global launch. According to this mostly favorable CNET Gear S hands-on, there are no current plans for a U.S. launch.

        • Samsung announces Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Edge – continues to innovate in hardware

          Samsung is all set to further eat into Apple market with the introduction of Galaxy Note 4, the evolution of its Galaxy Note phatblet. It’s an evolution in a true sense as it continues to chisel out rough edges of Galaxy Note 3 while retaining the form factor and everything that’s neat about it.

          Another major announcement by Samsung was Galaxy Note Edge, which kinds of takes smartphones and tablets to the next level – bringing in the much needed innovation that’s lacking in the otherwise somehow stagnated Apple hardware.

        • Several Thousand People Use The New Rolling-Release OpenSUSE

          OpenSUSE Factory only had around 2,000 users at the end of June but by the end of August was at nearly 6,000. Meanwhile, there’s also just under 6,000 users of openSUSE Tumbleweed. The openSUSE community appears happy with these numbers and they’re still working on making openSUSE Factory a better platform for users and developers.

        • Factory: Over 6000 installations and growing!

      • Android

        • Material design comes to Chrome for Android

          Google introduced a new visual language for its products which they called ‘Material Design‘. The upcoming release of Android – Android 5.x – will be using this new visual language. According to reports Chrome OS will also be moving to ‘Material Design’. If you are not willing to take a dive and try Android L, you can now enjoy the visual design on Android with Chrome.

        • Android Continues To Gain Market Share Over Apple’s iOS In Australia

          Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, one of the most authoritative data providers on global smartphone market share, has released its latest survey findings for the three months to July.

        • Android Wear and Tizen smartwatches light up IFA

          Asus, LG, and Sony unveiled Android Wear watches, but the star of the show may be Samsung’s Tizen-based Gear S, which has 3G, WiFi, and a curved screen.

          Google’s Android-based Android Wear platform was well represented at this week’s IFA show in Berlin. New entries include LG’s round-faced G Watch R, the stylish, curved Asus ZenWatch, and a Sony SmartWatch 3, notable for running on a quad-core processor. These models join an early wave of Android Wear smartwatches including Samsung’s Gear Live, LG’s original G Watch, and Motorola/Lenovo’s round-faced Moto 360. Alcatel, meanwhile, tipped an unnamed round-faced watch with an unstated OS that is not running Android Wear.

        • Citrix ShareConnect Puts Desktop Applications on Android Tablets

          “Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever and they face two major challenges; not all data is stored in the cloud and many desktop apps are not fully functional through mobile apps,” said Jesse Lipson, vice president, Citrix, in a statement. “With ShareConnect, users can access and edit files, use industry-specific desktop apps critical to getting their work done and even use their business networks – all through a simple interface, optimized pixel by pixel for tablets.”

        • Best Android tablets (September 2014 edition)

          All of the tablets features here are very capable, powerful workhorses, and are ideal not only for home users, but also for enterprise users or those looking for a BYOD tablet. Any one of these will give you an excellent Android experience, and when combined with the right apps, will allow you to get a lot of work done when you’re away from your desk.

        • Android-x86 4.4 review – technically a distro?

          We’ve been keeping an eye on the development of Android-x86 for a little while now, with the release of 4.4 seemingly imminent for some months now. In the past we’ve managed to use dodgy hacks of Android on proper computers or an emulated version via the ADK, but this promises to be one of the first complete ports of the mobile operating system to x86.

        • Firewall detects rogue cell towers that try to intercept your calls

          Most people know to turn off GPS on their mobiles if they are bothered about being tracked however fewer people know not to leave on Wi-Fi & call service as these also can be used to track you.

        • Android Candy: Quit Thumbing Your Passwords!
        • The new Moto X could be the best Android phone ever made

          Today, Motorola announced its second-generation Moto X, the successor to the company’s rebooted flagship smartphone that was unveiled just over a year ago. Yes, the phone will simply be called Moto X again — not X+1, as some rumors had suggested — and it’ll be available for the same $499 unlocked as the original when it launches later in September (that’s for 16GB; the 32GB version runs at a $50 premium). AT&T, among others, will be offering it starting at $99 on contract.

        • How to Make the Most Out Of Pushbullet For Android and Chrome

          Since its release, Pushbullet has quickly become a favorite amongst many Android users. This free application lets you “push” any link or image to your mobile phone right from your desktop or browser. This means that you don’t have to get up and type in a link that you see on your desktop on to your smartphone.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Microsoft’s cheap assault on Android tablets is about to begin

        Microsoft is copying competitor’s models so vigorously that they should move their head quarters to China. After pushing ‘cheap’ (in terms of price and performance) Netbooks to combat Chromebooks, Microsoft is now about to flood the market with ‘cheap’ Windows tablets.

        Toshiba is going to be the first company to launch cheap 7-inch Windows tablet. The tablet will be launched at IFA tradeshow in Berlin.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Earning a living from open source software

    Nitish began sharing his stories with us on open source in May this year. Then, he wrote another one in June and July. In his first article, he explained how to write secure code using Open Web Application Security Project guidelines. Next, Nitish compared three giants in open source content management—Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress—based on these criteria: installation time and complexity, plugin and theme availability, ease of use, and customization and upgrades. Lastly (for now), Nitish shares his thoughts on Andriod’s rise to popularity in the hearts of million through open source.

  • 10 Reasons To Use Open Source Software Defined Networking [Slideshare]

    Open source software (OSS) now has a permanent role in the enterprise IT world. Gartner forecasts that open-source technology will be included in 85% of all commercial software packages by 2015 and 95% of mainstream IT organizations will leverage some element of OSS. One of the fastest growing segments within open software is Software Defined Networking (SDN), which simplifies IT network configuration and management by decoupling control from the physical network infrastructure. The SDN market is projected to surge from $360M to $3.52B in 2018.

  • Open-Xchange launches open-source OX Guard encryption tool for its mail and storage apps

    Germany’s Open-Xchange, a provider of web apps for renaming by service providers and deployment in the enterprise, has released an encryption tool called OX Guard. As around 110 million people use Open-Xchange’s apps (though they probably don’t know it), this is a reasonably big deal.

    OX Guard is designed to provide a layer of security over Open-Xchange’s email and cloud storage products, whether they’re consumed through a service provider or installed on the customer’s own servers (the software is free for non-commercial use).

  • Consumer risks of having a reseller that doesn’t offer enterprise open source products

    This message is not intended to sell you anything but more to be an “exclamation mark” in the strategy decisions being made in the consumer’s IT environment. By Russell Gill, general manager at Linux Warehouse.

    If you speak to IT professionals, Gartner etc, the majority agree that open source products are playing a larger part in the consumer’s IT environment. But here’s the conundrum: it’s more profitable for the average reseller out there to sell the proprietary product than to have their customers subscribe to enterprise open source software. Coupled with this, the resellers have to ensure that their staff are up to date with ever-changing trends and that they are able to support the IT environment.

  • New open-source file browser promises to locate docs scattered across clouds

    The browser incorporates Apache Lucene and Elasticsearch to furnish the search goodies here, said Mark Geene, Cloud Elements CEO and co-founder.

  • Open Source Developer Enhances Blue Button Integration Technology

    Open source software developer Amida, based in Washington, D.C., has released the second version of its Data Reconciliation Engine (DRE), a Blue Button-branded software component that supports the aims of the Blue Button Initiative.

  • Coreboot Lands Support For AMD’s Olive Hill+ Board

    Just days after support for AMD’s Steppe Eagle SoC landed in Coreboot, the first motherboard for this embedded G-Series SoC is now supported by mainline Coreboot.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • One Year of Release Management

        This month marks my one year anniversary contributing to the Release Management Team as a Early Feedback Community Release Manager and I was not sure how the experience would turn out at first. I have really enjoyed the last 12 months working on our Firefox Nightly release.

        At our last work week in Portland, one of the things I asked for was more responsibility surrounding our release and going hands on with more tasks and this month I will start working on our Extended Support Release (ESR) with Lukas. Additionally, One of my Q3 goals is to firm up some documentation and ideas around pathways and on boarding new contributors.

      • Mozilla Firefox 32 Has Been Released!
      • Benjamin Kerensa on Firefox OS & Internet Freedom

        According to the Mozilla Developer Network, Firefox OS is an open source mobile operating system based on Linux, open web standards and Mozilla’s Gecko technology.

        But there’s more to it that that: Firefox OS is about reinventing what mobile platforms can be, about pushing the boundaries of what is possible with the Web on mobile and about enabling entirely new segments of users to come online with their smartphone at various levels of participation, from users to developers.

      • Firefox 32 And Thunderbird 31.1 Have Been Added To The Default Repositories Of Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivatives

        Among others, Firefox 32 comes with an improved generational garbage collection, HTTP caching v2 has been enabled by default, the login metadata viewable is now viewable in the password manager, public key pinning support has been added, the number of found items in the find toolbar is now displayed, just like in Chrome, Scratchpad has received code completion and inline documentation, support for connectiong to the HTTP proxy over HTTPS has been implemented and both the Password Manager and Add-on manager have received improvements and a big number of security and bug-fixes have been implemented.

      • Your Facebook page as a Firefox OS mobile app

        Whether you are a business or community page owner, what would be better than increasing your page reachability by offering your standalone mobile app?

        Apptuter is an open source framework to help you achieve that, with minimum coding knowledge and easy to follow steps you would be able to produce your own app. The framework currently supports Facebook pages as a content source and is capable of producing apps for Firefox OS, Android, and IOS platforms.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Tender For Base Framework For An Android Version Of LibreOffice With Basic Editing Capabilities

      TDF currently plans to invest into getting LibreOffice, its free office suite, to mobile Android devices like tablets and smartphones, extending the existing desktop version of the software.

    • Microsoft is part of the problem, not the solution for Munich

      The new mayor of Munich is a self-proclaimed Microsoft fan and he wants to waste all the money that was invested in moving away from Microsoft’s vendor lock and incompatible technologies. His deputy is also a Microsoft fans so it’s not surprising that the new office of the mayor wants to bring back Microsoft technologies.

      But that will be a very dangerous move for Munich.

      Josef Schmid, teh deputy, points out two issues with LiMux – one is incompatibility with Microsoft technologies and other was increased support calls.

      Incompatibility with Microsoft products is a huge problem and it’s a problem for everyone who is using Microsoft technologies. Linux or Open Source are not the cause of the problem as Schmid says, they are victims.

      Then what is the cause?

      In a recent interview one of the directors of The Document Foundation disclosed how Microsoft users various tricks to break compatibility and that leads to people like Schmid to blame open source technologies without fully understanding where the problem lies.

  • CMS

    • WordPress 4.0 released, time to upgrade is now

      Matt Mullenweg, the founder and creator of WordPress has announced the release of version 4.0, code-named Benny. Matt says, “While 4.0 is just another number for us after 3.9 and before 4.1, we feel we’ve put a little extra polish into it. This release brings you a smoother writing and management experience we think you’ll enjoy.”

    • WordPress 4.0 “Benny”

      Version 4.0 of WordPress, named “Benny” in honor of jazz clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. While 4.0 is just another number for us after 3.9 and before 4.1, we feel we’ve put a little extra polish into it. This release brings you a smoother writing and management experience we think you’ll enjoy.

    • Trying out WordPress 4.0 on OpenStack

      While a good portion of my focus on Opensource.com is on OpenStack and related cloud technologies, my most recent background prior to joining the team here was in doing web design and development work for small businesses, nonprofits, and others who needed sites created for them quickly and easily. So while I’m a Drupal fan for a lot of things I do, the ease and simplicity of WordPress led me to use it for a number of projects.

    • WordPress 4.0 for Debian

      Yesterday WordPress released version 4.0 or “Benny” of WordPress. I have now downloaded it and packed up for Debian users.

  • Business

    • Teradata throws itself further into Hadoop with Think Big buy

      Teradata, a company that sells data-warehousing hardware and software for storing and serving corporate information, has pulled out its wallet for another big data business. Instead of buying software, as it did last month, today Teradata reached for a big data consulting company called Think Big Analytics.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing

    • Open Source Software Licenses: Which Should You Use?

      Slowly but surely, open source software is taking over. If you don’t believe it, just look at some of the most popular tools that we all use: Firefox, WordPress, 7-Zip, MediaWiki, BitTorrent, Android, plus all of the free alternatives to paid software. But did you know that not all open source licenses are the same?

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Vote On The Open Source Local Motors Sports Car

      Last month, open source DIY automaker Local Motors launched its next big design contest, and this one has production ambitions. The goal? Create a high-performance, low-cost track racer for performance purists.

    • Three key takeaways from the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival

      I was lucky to be in Berlin Open Access Schism: Recapitulating Open So with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events.

      There’s really too much to distill into a short post—from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for “Embracing the open opportunity,” to Patrick Alley’s breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.

    • Linux certification, governments on open design principles, and more

    • Open Access/Content

      • The Open Access Schism: Recapitulating Open Source?

        As well as in free software itself, this column is interested in the ways that the ideas underlying open source are spreading far and wide. One of the earliest manifestations was in the field of academic publishing, where open access has been gaining ground steadily. It seems that the open access world has just entered the schism phase that mirrors the similar split between those espousing “free software”, and those who resolutely call it “open source.”

        This most recent development is captured in yet another brilliant contribution from the unofficial chronicler of the open access world, Richard Poynder. His blog, called “Open and Shut?”, is simply the best resource there is to find out about open access, its issues and key individuals. You could spend many days reading through the resources there, and it would be time well spent.

      • OPINION: Why Can’t OER Enjoy the Same Success as Open Source Software?

        Open Educational Resources (OER) have the capacity to extend this framework to education, provided that their proponents likewise view them as more than simply a means of lowering content costs. At the same time, one must also recognize the distinctions between the actors (hackers vs. instructors) and their products (software vs. educational materials). The achievable goal for OER by doing this is that it reshapes pedagogy as profoundly as OSS has reshaped software.

      • How being online changes how we think about the traditional research paper

        The academic paper is old—older than the steam engine, the pocket watch, the piano, and the light bulb. The first journal, Philosophical Transactions, was published on March 6, 1665. Now that doesn’t mean that the journal article format is obsolete—many inventions much older are still in wide use today. But after a third of a millennium, it’s only natural that the format needs some serious updating.

  • Programming

    • LLVM 3.5 Is Finally Available For Download

      LLVM 3.5 is now available for fans just not looking for a more liberally licensed compiler but for those dependent upon AMD’s GPU LLVM compiler back-end and the other innovative use-cases provided by the LLVM stack.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Community revolts against ISO software testing standards

      Known as ISO 29119, the standard aims to join (and in some cases replace) existing ISO software testing mandates for concepts and definitions, test processes, test documentation, test techniques and one for keyword driven testing.

      The elegantly named 29119 Software Testing standard has been created in association with the IEEE and the IEC — it is said to be an internationally agreed set of standards for software testing that can be used within any software development life cycle or organisation.

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ‘Debating’ War, Corporate Media Style

      As the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has expanded control over territory in Iraq and Syria, a growing chorus of politicians and pundits are demanding the Obama administration take more forceful military action. ISIS’s gruesome beheadings of two American journalists have only increased those calls, leading some to compare the media frenzy to the run-up to the Iraq War.

    • NATO – An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

      Whatever modern NATO has become, a defensive alliance it is not…

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Huffington Post Doubles Down, Has MIT Professor Spread Blatant Falsehoods About Creation Of Email

      We already covered the bizarre situation in which one of the biggest names in PR has “teamed up” with the Huffington Post to write an entirely bogus “series” of stories on the “history of email” that is nothing more than a PR campaign for a liar. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai claims to have invented email. He did not. We went into great detail on this on Tuesday, so you can check out the history there.

      Despite my requests to both Huffington Post and Larry Weber (the PR guy who kicked off the “series”), neither has responded and explained if any money is changing hands here. That means either it is, and Huffington Post is violating FTC rules concerning “paid” posts, or Huffington Post just made it clear that it is willing to post pure bullshit without the slightest bit of fact checking. I’m still not sure which is worse.

    • CNN Tech Analyst Thinks 4Chan Is A Person: ‘He May Have Been A Systems Administrator’
    • David Gregory–and Other Famous Left-Wingers

      As for Gregory–”famously left-leaning” to whom? The Post doesn’t offer any specifics on that score, but that’s typical right-wing media criticism: The corporate media are full of left-wingers because we’ve said so for a long time.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Tom Newton Dunn is one in half a million

      It was revealed this week that the Met police used a RIPA request to access the telephone records of The Sun’s Political Editor, Tom Newton Dunn.

    • Nude photos, phone records, NSA data offer essential lessons for admins

      As to that NSA data, a great deal of confusion about “surveillance” seems to be floating around. In the United Kingdom, questions are being asked about all the data-gathering by the British equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ. In response, Secretary of State Theresa May has responded that “there is no programme of mass surveillance and there is no surveillance state” and labels claims that GCHQ engages in unlawful hacking as “nonsense.” Yet clearly, a lot of data is being gathered.

      GCHQ, the NSA, and probably every other intelligence agency worth the name is actively gathering data from the Internet. Everything on the Internet is transient, with different decay periods, so gathering information is a constant process. They believe everything that can be gathered without illegal action is fair game, so they gather anything and everything they can, storing it just in case.

      They are without doubt capturing and recording all and any email, instant messages, Web pages, social media traffic, and so on. Recent disclosures reveal that the NSA collects “nearly everything a user does on the Internet,” then offers analysts tools to search that data. The NSA has a variety of explanations why it’s all legally gathered.

  • Civil Rights

    • UK Police Abused Anti-Terror Law To Snoop On Journalist’s Phone Records Concerning Minor Political Spat

      Plebgate is one of those silly minor political spats in the UK involving a top UK politician who apparently got angry that police wouldn’t let him ride his bike out of the main gate at 10 Downing Street. The details really don’t matter. It’s just one of those political type stories that the press loves. But, now it’s come out that in investigating this incident, the Metropolitan Police appear to have abused an anti-terror law to obtain the phone records of journalists who reported on the story.

    • Plebgate: Met obtained phone records of Sun political editor without consent

      Police investigating the Plebgate saga obtained the telephone records of the political editor of the Sun without his consent, despite laws which entitle journalists to keep their sources confidential.

    • “Plebgate” report shows why the UK’s data retention laws are such a terrible idea
    • Militarization, Surveillance, and Profit: How Grassroots Groups are Fighting Urban Shield

      While all eyes are on the disturbing evidence of police militarization in Ferguson, are you paying attention to what’s happening with law enforcement in your own back yard?

      In the San Francisco Bay Area, the answer is yes. A coalition of community groups has come together to call attention to Urban Shield, a four-day long “preparedness” exercise for law enforcement and other agencies that will take place from September 4-8. They’ve organized a week of education, including a march and demonstration outside of the event on Friday, September 5. To these community groups, Urban Shield represents state violence and political repression, not public safety.

    • Judge Says Los Angeles Law Enforcement Doesn’t Need To Turn Over License Plate Reader Data

      Los Angeles law enforcement has been battling privacy activists seeking access to license plate data for over a year now. The plate and location data scooped up by the city’s many automatic license plate readers is considered fair game by law enforcement because visible license plates obviously don’t carry any sort of expectation of privacy.

    • NYPD sends top cops to Twitter school

      NYPD precinct commanders are going back to school to study a subject that’s second nature to any teen — using social media.

    • NYPD Sending Their Best Cops To Twitter School To Learn All About Common Sense

      I’d say it’s been pretty well established at this point that the NYPD sucks at Twitter. Occasionally they get it right and engage with the public in a meaningful way, but too often NYPD officers put things on Twitter that can only serve to cause the public to question their judgement. Insensitivity, racism, and otherwise crass behavior doesn’t make the NYPD look all that good, of course, so the top brass has a solution. They’re going to review their hiring practices to make sure they’re hiring good, level-headed men and women to put on the uniform and protect the public. Hahahahaha, just kidding, they’ve decided to send some of their officers to “Twitter school” instead.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Disney tries to block Deadmau5 trademark

        The logo appears on Deadmau5′s record artwork and is the basis of the large helmet he wears during every performance. Disney began investigating the matter back in April, and it’s easy to see why — there is an obvious resemblance with the Mickey Mouse logo, and since the registration would cover classes of products from toys to BMX bikes, the entertainment giant no doubt feels the need to protect its trademark. Deadmau5 seems up for the fight, though, going by his Twitter feed.

      • Disney Officially Seeks To Block Deadmau5′s Trademark Claim

        Apparently it’s a big deadmau5 day on Techdirt. Not only do we have the story of Ferrari looking into blocking the sale of his Purrari, Disney is officially opposing his attempt to trademark his logo mousehead, which he famously wears in concert.

    • Copyrights

      • Australian Movie Studio Says Piracy Is Equivalent Of Pedophilia & Terrorism

        We’ve already mentioned how a number of comments have been submitted concerning Australian Attorney General George Brandis’ Hollywood wishlist proposal for copyright reform in Australia. There are a number of interesting comments worth reading. I was pleasantly surprised to see the normally copyright-maximalist BSA come out against the proposal, saying that it will create a real risk of “over-enforcement, punishment of lawful conduct and blocking of lawful content including critically important free speech rights.” Dr. Rebecca Giblin, who has studied these issues and other attempts to put in place similar filters (and how they’ve failed), has also put forth a very interesting comment.

      • 4chan adopts DMCA policy after nude celebrity photo postings

        In the wake of the release of stolen, intimate photos from a number of celebrities’ cell phones this past weekend on 4chan’s /b/ Web forum, the site has added something to its rules and policies—a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown policy. While 4chan previously relied on its rapid expiration of content to keep 4chan LLC and site founder Chris “moot” Poole out of trouble, the heavy scrutiny that came from the latest round of celebrity exposure has pushed the site to adopt more formal measures to avoid litigation. (Victims of photo theft could use copyright claims to seek damages from publications and websites that publish them.)

      • Record Labels Take Down Kim Dotcom’s Official Album… From Mega

        In what could be one of the most ironic anti-piracy mistakes this year, music industry group IFPI has asked Mega to take down Kim Dotcom’s very own music album Good Times. Mega was asked to remove its founder’s music twice, casting doubt over the accuracy of the record labels’ takedown efforts.

‘Embrace and Extend’ at Microsoft: The New Generation

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 6:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Man and woman

Summary: Some of the latest examples of Microsoft’s predatory acts against Free software and against competition in general, disguised as acts of friendliness

Microsoft has got a well-established track record of suffocating competition by pretending to embrace it. It is not a theory but a simple fact, and many dead companies exist (or existed) to remind us of this.

In recent years FOSS has been a target of Microsoft’s abusive EEE strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) and today we present some new examples.

Microsoft Mono is a ‘religious’ (metaphorically speaking) software piece developed by both Microsoft and its partners; it helps openwash proprietary .NET and put Microsoft patent risk, dependence on Microsoft APIs etc. deep inside the competition. It is a Trojan horse. It is more like a virus. Well, it is now in repos of many distros or available from Microsoft partners. Jo Shields, who recently joined a Microsoft partner, boasts about this, as he has been doing for years (pushing Mono into Debian and Ubuntu for the most part). Can someone stop this? Microsoft veterans recently subsidised such efforts. This ought to be rather telling. Mono is about openwashing Microsoft lock-in which is already making its way into competing software from Sony. As one site put it: “The editor purports to be compatible with any game engine via its API suite, and offers a WYSIWYG interface and tools written in a mixture of C# and C++. It’s designed to render in 3D using DirectX 11, and supports simultaneous use by multiple developers.”

So, an attack on GNU, Linux, cross-platform languages and OpenGL is now being called “open”.

“So, an attack on GNU, Linux, cross-platform languages and OpenGL is now being called “open”.”Here is Microsoft hoping to embrace and extend Android, based on rumours. Fracturing the competition in an embrace-and-extend fashion would be a familiar strategy; remember the ‘embrace’ of SUSE. Embrace and extend can also be seen involving Ubuntu; tie-up with proprietary and spyware (Windows/Azure) can now be seen here. It’s Ubuntu in bed with Microsoft again — an embrace-and-extend with NSA’s PRISM.

Watch how Microsoft does the same to Google right here. Bringing NSA to Ubuntu and standards? Google should sue Microsoft for extortion, not just for FUD. But it is not likely to happen because Google is not legally aggressive. Here is some of the latest FUD attack that reminds us how desperate (but malicious) Microsoft has become. To quote: “Microsoft is well known for spreading FUD to harm their competition. A business strategy that may work to some extent, but is also a sign that Microsoft lacks confidence in their own products.

“Microsoft recently published a Microsoft Educast on YouTube where they compared Chromebooks to Windows 8 laptops. The video has been set to private in the meantime, I suppose the feedback wasn’t very positive.

“Unsurprisingly, Microsoft can’t see many good things in Chromebooks, admitting they are super low-cost, but of course there are reasons for that. In the 9 minute video they manage to get several things wrong though. Maybe not as embarrassing as other MS FUD campaigns, but still worth a closer look.”

So much for Microsoft ‘embracing’ FOSS…

Earlier this week we wrote about the Microsoft-connected Black Duck with its latest FUD against FOSS. Well, the Wall Street Journal covered the subsidy and another article called this Microsoft partner “open source software provider”. Well, Black Duck is not an “OSS provider”, it’s a proprietary software company exploiting FOSS and disseminating FUD about it. See how FOSS gets diluted and distorted? Maybe this was the intention all along. This openwashing can be traced back to the deceiving, dishonest press release. Black Duck spent a lot of money planting the press release all over the Web [1, 2], falsely claiming that Black Duck “Advance Leadership In Open Source Software Logistics” (they advance leadership in Open Source Software FUD, that’s what they do). It is true that Black Duck has leadership in this area because other Microsoft-connected firms of its kind, such as OpenLogic, are not as big. Here is a new example of a journalist promoting the FOSS-hostile FUD from Protecode with a slideshow in a news site called “CIO Insight” (fear for CIOs). Protecode, unlike many in its area, does not seem to be Microsoft-connected, but its strategy is more or less the same. It only speaks about problems in FOSS, or perceived problems in FOSS, in order to sell proprietary software and services.

Microsoft’s tentacles reach further than a lot of people care to notice. Here we have AMD embraced and extended by Microsoft:

AMD and Microsoft jointly released C++ AMP version 1.2 compiler that supports Linux alongside Windows. Ubuntu is the officially supported distribution at this time.

Watch how Intel now ignores Linux, having been infiltrated and blackmailed by Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4].

Not just Microsoft is doing an EEE manoeuvre. Former Microsoft executives who now run VMware are also doing it. The following new article is titled “Is VMware OpenStack an embrace of open source — or an attempt to extinguish it?”

We wrote about this embrace and extend move last month and suspicion is now becoming the norm.

Another Microsoft partner, Centrify (spreading Microsoft AD), is now becoming more proprietary and expensive. This should serve to show why Microsoft APIs are harmful for one to depend on, irrespective of the platform.

These are all examples from the past week alone. They ought to show the impact of Microsoft entryism and involvement by proxy. Something that is a lot less problematic — generally speaking — is FOSS adapting to Windows [1], but whenever Microsoft tries to infiltrate FOSS it is very unlikely to be because Microsoft wants to help. Base it on Microsoft’s bad track record. The company is very much determined to destroy FOSS unless it helps sell proprietary software from Microsoft. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Univa Grid Engine Does Windows, Linux Containers

    Grid Engine, the popular workload management tool for distributed computing environments, now does Windows. And it is also doing Linux control groups, or cgroups, containers, a technology that was championed by Google many years back as the basis for its internal resource control on its massive clusters.

09.04.14

Bill Gates’ God Complex: Common Core a One-Man Campaign of Greed and Control

Posted in Bill Gates at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The push for Common Core is overwhelmingly dominated by Bill Gates, who intimidates and even resorts to retribution against critics while bribing those who help him accomplish the goal of privatised (for his private profit) indoctrination in US schools

In the previous post we covered the Gates Foundation‘s serious harms to society, of which there are many. We have given examples for almost a decade now.

“The crusade of Bill Gates against public education (for the public, from the public) is all about self interest and profit.”There is one area where Gates’ systematic interference gets him a lot of flak and leads to more backlash than in others. The backlash shouldn’t be exclusive to it for reasons that we highlighted before, but it’s a step in the right direction when even in one single area people defeat Gates, making him realise that he is not invincible and not everything he wants he will get. Gates bamboozles taxpayers and politicians in many areas (looting them by passing public funds to his pocket through corporations), but in one area the professionals, who are teachers and pedagogues, are not dumb enough to fool. Gates is losing a battle right now. The battle has many children at stake. It’s public education.

The crusade of Bill Gates against public education (for the public, from the public) is all about self interest and profit. By privatising this massive system (worth trillions) Gates hopes to enrich himself and enrich greedy Microsoft, in which he is an active executive and top investor.

Looking at the press, journalists are gradually waking up and covering this without approaching Gates-funded lobby and PR groups. We are going to give examples from new articles (collected over the past month). The Christian Post says: “Common Core’s way of trying to overcome inequality is by dumbing down all U.S. students and pretending, like the Lake Wobegon kids, that all children are above average.”

The article mentions that “Gates Foundation [is] the biggest money bag for Common Core” (bribe is a better word than money bag).

Here is an article that states: “Truth be told, Common Core wasn’t “state led,” it was “Gates led.””

Another new article states: “Because the state standards were developed by three private Washington, D.C.-based organizations — the National Governors Association, The Council of Chief State School Officers and Achieve Inc.— and all funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Stotsky said she finds herself “in the position of constantly contradicting one of the major talking points,” which are that the standards are state-led.”

We have already shown how this helps Microsoft’s corporate profit. Time is critical here.

As one site put it a month ago: “Armed with $10.3 million in fresh grant money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Common Core proponents now have plans for a PR blitz that supporters hope will promote similar “emotional” fervor for the standards initiative.”

Nice bribe he got there. Punishment and consequences for standing up to Bill Gates and his lobbying money? Of course. From the same publisher: “As Breitbart News reported August 18, a new non-profit organization, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and with connections to the Fordham Institute, is being launched with the task of reviewing textbooks and other instructional materials to ensure they are aligned with the Common Core standards.”

The headline of this article is “Obama Administration Punishes Oklahoma for Repealing Common Core Standards”

Another new article says: “Felton did not identify any of these nefarious groups. Strangely, he also did not mention the fact that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has used up over $200 million in an effort to push Common Core on America.”

Then there’s is this: “Collaborative for Student Success, which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other charities, published a memo Friday criticizing Jindal’s position on the education standards as motivated by a desire to win the Republican presidential nomination.”

Just discrediting one’s opposition by proxy. Sure, money talks. Watch the aggression from Gates’ minions and notice this part in particular: “The Common Core standards were developed through the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a joint initiative of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others.”

Here we have “non-profits” subsidised by Bill Gates to privatise a public system for Gates and Microsoft profit. So much for good doers…

“Behind the scenes,” says this report, “as state after state was considering Common Core, the Gates Foundation (funded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates) was spending well more than $200 million to promote the Common Core idea. Gates gave grants to liberal and conservative education groups, teachers unions, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Then the Obama administration tied the standards to massive federal aid. The result has been an overwhelming financial push for Common Core.

“The Gates money also gave Common Core a smooth sail through the checks and balances that usually apply to educational innovation. Sarah Reckhow, an education policy researcher at Michigan State, said, “Usually there’s a pilot test—something is tried on a small scale, outside researchers see if it works, and then it’s promoted on a broader scale. That didn’t happen with Common Core.””

For those who think that Gates has moved on from crimes at Microsoft to some kind of charity or good acts of philanthropy the above should be relevant. Not much has changed. It’s opportunism and greed. It’s systemic corruption. Gates is still a businessman who studied law and did not graduate; he was never a scientist and it shows. █

Bill Gates Investments Harm the World, Not Improve the World, Based on New Exclusive Piece of Investigative Journalism at The Nation

Posted in Bill Gates at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The Gates Foundation’s profiteering efforts and lack of ethics outlined in a new report that many sites around the Web find fascinating and mostly irrefutable

When Bill Gates does invest (for profit of course) in a company that enables tyrants to demolish homes and one that murders union organisers (these are some of his biggest investments which we covered before) he sure invests in even more evil companies, such as G4S. He hopes people won’t notice, but some do. A widely-cited (even in Gates fan press) report with an accompanying press release says a lot more and gives many examples. To quote the press release: “That report found that the foundation had vast holdings in big-pharma firms that priced AIDS drugs out of reach for desperate victims the foundation wanted to save. It benefitted greatly from predatory lenders whose practices sparked the Great Recession and chocolate makers said by the U.S. government to have supported child slavery.”

Here is the original article:

How the Gates Foundation’s Investments Are Undermining Its Own Good Works

Soon after Susan Desmond-Hellmann became chancellor of the University of California San Francisco medical center campus, she faced an acute personal embarrassment. Financial disclosures revealed that she and her husband, both physicians, owned a sizable chunk of stock in Altria Corporation, a top cigarette maker. The chancellor commendably divested those shares and donated the proceeds to tobacco-control research.

“Rockefeller … believed his money was given to him by God, which must have been nice for him.”
      –Arundhati RoyMeanwhile, the Bill Gates-bribed paper Seattle Times [1, 2] unintentionally shows another revolving doors incident (salary as reward, lobbying, etc.) that helps Gates profit from the education system. More on that in our next post…

Arundhati Roy has published an excellent article (part of her work as an author of books) [1] in which she explains how instruments such as the Gates Foundation really work. The excerpt below includes a bit about Gates. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Arundhati Roy: How Corporate Power Converted Wealth Into Philanthropy for Social Control

    What follows in this essay might appear to some to be a somewhat harsh critique. On the other hand, in the tradition of honoring one’s adversaries, it could be read as an acknowledgment of the vision, flexibility, sophistication, and unwavering determination of those who have dedicated their lives to keeping the world safe for capitalism.

    Their enthralling history, which has faded from contemporary memory, began in the United States in the early twentieth century when, kitted out legally in the form of endowed foundations, corporate philanthropy began to replace missionary activity as Capitalism’s (and Imperialism’s) road-opening and systems maintenance patrol.

    Among the first foundations to be set up in the United States were the Carnegie Corporation, endowed in 1911 by profits from Carnegie Steel Company, and the Rockefeller Foundation, endowed in 1914 by J. D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil Company. The Tatas and Ambanis of their time.

    Some of the institutions financed, given seed money, or supported by the Rockefeller Foundation are the United Nations, the CIA, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), New York’s most fabulous Museum of Modern Art, and, of course, the Rockefeller Center in New York (where Diego Riviera’s mural had to be blasted off the wall because it mischievously depicted reprobate capitalists and a valiant Lenin; Free Speech had taken the day off ).

    Rockefeller was America’s first billionaire and the world’s richest man. He was an abolitionist, a supporter of Abraham Lincoln, and a teetotaler. He believed his money was given to him by God, which must have been nice for him.

    [...]

    How else would Bill Gates, who admittedly knows a thing or two about computers, find himself designing education, health, and agriculture policies, not just for the US government but for governments all over the world?

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