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07.03.12

Links 3/7/2012: KDE on the Raspberry Pi, Linux 3.5 RC5

Posted in News Roundup at 6:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Twitter’s Load Generator, Iago, Now Open Sourced

    If you needed something to test your website for traffic load before you publish it to production environment, Iago is a perfect choice for you.

  • 6 Meritorious Free Linux Modelers
  • Website creation: Dreamweaver v open source

    Recent years have seen huge changes in internet use, and therefore in the challenges presented by modern website design. Software developers are consequently racing to catch up and provide website design, creation and management tools that address these changes.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Opens Voting For Best Splash Screen Contest

      The LibreOffice team is getting ready for the next release and things have been getting exciting. This week, LibreOffice Design team has opened a poll for best splash screen to be included in LibreOffice 3.6. Weeks ago, LibreOffice developers hadd started a contest and best splash splash sreen selected from them are open for public voting.

    • LibreOffice 3.5.5 RC2 Released

  • CMS

    • WordPress 3.4 Update

      With the latest version of WordPress just arriving, version 3.4, I’m sure people who are using the self-hosted version of WordPress are interested to know what is included with this update. Along with the usual bug fixes, included are many improvements and additions that will benefit both designers, developers and end users. Let’s take a look and see why.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF’s new operations assistant

      Hello, I’m Chrissie Himes, the new operations assistant, and I’m excited to officially be with the Free Software Foundation. I handle sales, donations, and general office operations.

    • Two job openings on the FSF campaigns team

      The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Massachusetts 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect freedoms critical to the computer-using public, seeks *two* motivated and organized tech-friendly Boston-based individuals to be its full-time campaigns managers.

    • GNU C Library 2.16 Brings Many Features (GLIBC)

      Version 2.16 of glibc, the GNU C Library, was released on Saturday afternoon. This update to the de facto C library for GNU/Linux systems brings many new features. There’s x32 and ISO C11 support along with performance optimizations.

    • Free Software Foundation: Ubuntu’s Secure Boot Plan Won’t Fly

      There’s still no end in sight to the ongoing Secure Boot saga arising from Microsoft’s Windows 8 plans, and just recently we’ve seen both Fedora Linux and Ubuntu Linux respond with two very different approaches to working around the problem.

    • ‘Secure’ boot: Ubuntu goes one worse than Red Hat

      After Red Hat revealed how it would kowtow to the overlords at Redmond, it was only a matter of time before Canonical would genuflect as well over the issue of secure boot.

      But Canonical, which is best known for its Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, has come up with a way of getting its distribution to boot on PCs certified for Windows 8 that is even worse than that devised by Red Hat.

  • Project Releases

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Who Killed the Open Set-Top-Box?

      A few years ago, I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With my trusty Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 I enjoyed the ability to watch and record Comcast TV on my desktop computer — and even to occasionally edit and re-upload it to YouTube along with fair use critical commentary. When I moved across the river to Boston, Comcast required me to pay for a set-top box that would tune channels on my television. However, when I plugged my PVR-150 into the cable connection, it got almost no channels at all. As it turns out, the Comcast system in Boston had been migrated to use mostly digital signals, but my tuner card worked only with analog cable signals. Fair enough, I thought, I’ll buy a digital cable tuner. As it turned out, that wouldn’t help much. The cable companies had implemented encryption to fight “service theft” of most channels that subscribers had not paid for. As a result, I lost the ability to view channels I had paid for on a device of my choosing.

  • Programming

    • Death to Javascript: CNN Edition

      Some weeks back I wrote “Death to Javascript”, in which I related the problem my wife has reported, of web pages that tie up her computer. She’s been seeing this more and more often lately. But today we got lucky: she was able to identify a specific page, on CNN.com, that causes this to happen.

    • jQuery 2.0 to drop support for older IE versions
    • Pymothoa: JIT’ing Python Over LLVM

      As explained on the project’s web-site, “Pymothoa extends the Python language by adding JIT compilation without any modification of the interpreter source code. Pymothoa lives at the application level. It uses the AST generated by Python. Therefore, users write in the original Python syntax but with a new contextual meaning in some cases using the new dialect provided by Pymothoa. User uses the decorators provided to mark Python functions for JIT compilation. Pymothoa uses LLVM for the JIT ability. Comparing to writing C-extension to speedup Python, Pymothoa is less cumbersome and easier to distribute as the user does not need to compile the C-extensions. Programming in the Pymothoa dialect is similar to writing in C. Variables must be declared and are statically typed. Despite a few extra constructs, the syntax is the same as raw Python code.”

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The FFmpeg/Libav situation

      One year and a half ago, an important part of FFmpeg developers decided to change the way the project was managed. This led to some kind of takeover, mainly to get rid of the old maintainer dictatorship, but also to change development methods, redefine objectives, etc. Then, for various reasons I will quickly explain, these people made a new project called Libav.

    • W3C forges ahead with Selectors API

      The Web Applications Working Group at the W3C has published a last call working draft of the Selectors API Level 1 specification. Widely used in CSS, selectors are patterns that match a set of elements in a structure tree. As accessing elements in HTML documents using DOM methods such as getElementById or getElementsByTagName can quite laborious, frameworks like jQuery have developed simple CSS selector methods. Many browsers offer querySelector and querySelectorAll functions that also use these selectors.

    • Google Web Toolkit now under a steering committee

      Google has released its grip on the development of the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and moved it under the control of a steering committee comprising developers from Google, Sencha, Red Hat, ArcBees, Vaadin, mgwt and other GWT advocates such as Thomas Broyer, Christian Goudreau and Daniel Kurka. First released as open source in 2006 and controlled by Google, GWT will now be under the control of a committee which will set out a direction for future GWT development, approve new committers, review code, administer releases, adjust the GWT development processes and work as master committers on the GWT project.

Leftovers

  • Gmail Becomes World’s Largest Email Service; Google Continues To Unseat Microsoft

    Gmail’s growth has skyrocketed since its public introduction in 2007, but this year in particular, Google has been successful in attracting millions of new users. In January, Google mentioned in its earnings call that it had about 350 million monthly active users on Gmail; six months later, about 75 million more users had flocked to Gmail, growing the total number to 425 million monthly active users. By this measure, Gmail has dethroned Hotmail.

  • ‘Leap Second’ Bug Wreaks Havoc Across Web

    Reddit, Mozilla, Gawker, and possibly many other web outfits experienced brief technical problems on Saturday evening, when software underpinning their online operations choked on the “leap second” that was added to the world’s atomic clocks.

  • Minitel service shuts down

    TOMORROW at midnight is the end of an era –Minitel is shutting down.

    After 20 years of service, owner France Télécom is pulling the plug by switching off the “X 25”, the network over which the service works.

    A precursor to the internet, Minitel gave a dial-up information service over phone lines via special terminals, consisting of a screen using text and basic graphics, with a keyboard and modem. Long before the World Wide Web, people could use it, for example, to reserve trains, search for phone numbers, buy online, pay bills, play games or chat.

  • U.S. Supreme Court Deals Blow to Unions, Shows Preference for Corporate “Rights”

    A little-noticed U.S. Supreme Court decision from June 21 has dealt a blow to public sector unions and demonstrated the conservative majority’s preferential treatment for corporate “rights.” The decision in Knox v. SEIU could have an impact on future election cycles.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Explaining the Legalese of the US Supreme Court’s Ruling on the Affordable Care Act ~ pj

      I was offline most of yesterday, and I returned to see long threads about health care and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling [PDF] on the Affordable Care Act [PDF]. That surprised me, because I didn’t think you would be greatly interested. That’s why I didn’t even put it in News Picks, let alone write about it. But now I see I was wrong, that many of you are interested, and I also see a lot of misunderstanding of what the ruling actually says, not only in your comments but in the media. I also see a lot of FUD in the air. So I thought I’d take the time to explain it. If nothing else, it fits our purpose for doing Groklaw, since antiFUD is very much what we set out to do, and we have covered Constitutional issues before, albeit in the First Amendment context usually.

    • Americans for Prosperity Rally Calls for “Nullifying” Health Care Law (with Help from ALEC)

      The evening after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Wisconsin chapter of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity held a “Hands Off My Health Care” rally to plan next steps in their effort to defeat “Obamacare.” The plan apparently involves American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation.

  • Finance

    • Completing The Circle: Meet The US Ambassador To Germany

      Everyone knows that Italy’s unelected PM, Mario Monti, is a former Goldman Sachs International ‘advisor.’ As such, it is only natural that being part of the banking cartel he would do everything in his power to promote an inflationary agenda, one that seeks ECB bond monetization intervention, (another central bank headed by a former Goldmanite of course, who just happens to be Germany’s most hated man), perpetuates the status quo, and one that naturally contravenes everything that German citizens have been pushing for in their desire to avoid the risk of another hyperinflationary episode. Especially if, as is well-known, resolving Europe’s problems, however briefly, facilitates an Obama re-election campaign because as conventional wisdom is also catching on, should Europe implode before November, Obama’s reelection chances plunge accordingly. And yet, even as Goldman’s tentacles had spread all over Europe (as seen here), conventional wisdom was that Goldman’s influence in Germany was relatively muted.

    • CFTC Skips `Intergalactic’ Power in Dodd-Frank Guidance

      JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and other banks won greater ability to fall under foreign regulations when they trade swaps overseas under guidance proposed for the Dodd-Frank Act’s international reach.

      Commodity Futures Trading Commission members, in a private vote, unanimously approved proposing interpretive guidance allowing for so-called substituted compliance for branches, subsidiaries and other overseas affiliates of U.S. banks when foreign jurisdictions have comparable rules. Banks have spent two years lobbying against efforts to automatically apply Dodd- Frank to their overseas operations, saying doing so would hurt their ability to compete.

    • Western banks ‘reaping billions from Colombian cocaine trade’

      While cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits, a study claims

  • Censorship

    • Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk, Part VIII: Charles Carreon Gets Sued, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen Joins The Fray

      Everyone knows what you do when someone like Charlie the Censor sues you. You lawyer up. If you’re very lucky, you have funds to hire a good lawyer, or you can get the backing of extraordinary advocates like those at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

      But what do you do if someone like Charlie the Censor just threatens to sue you at some unspecified future time or place, but doesn’t yet? Do you simply wait and see? Do you live your life under that cloud?

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Three NSA Whistleblowers Back EFF’s Lawsuit Over Government’s Massive Spying Program

      The three former NSA employees with declarations in EFF’s brief are William E. Binney, Thomas A. Drake, and J. Kirk Wiebe. All were targets of a federal investigation into leaks to the New York Times that sparked the initial news coverage about the warrantless wiretapping program. Binney and Wiebe were formally cleared of charges and Drake had those charges against him dropped.

    • Cops in USA to drive around in pornoscannerwagons, covertly irradiating people and looking through their cars and clothes

      American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering’s Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call “the amazing radioactive genital viewer,” now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).

    • Twitter Ordered to Turn Over Data on Occupy Protester

      Twitter has been ordered by a New York judge to hand over the account information and tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester…

    • Megauploads, WikiLeaks and Independence Day

      Wednesday is the Fourth of July, the day when we in the U.S. celebrate whatever we perceive to be the vision of our founding families. This would seem to be a good time to wonder what the framers of our constitution would think about the way we’ve been applying, or not applying, due process to the Internet.

      There are two cases in the news these days that are quite disturbing. For starters, there’s Megaupload.

      The only things that Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, appears to have done wrong was to start Megaupload, a hugely successful file hosting service. The feds see it differently. They’re convinced, mainly by circumstantial evidence, that’s his website has made him the biggest pirate of movies and music online, an allegation he denies.

      Federal authorities were evidently waiting for SOPA to pass before making their move against him and his site. On the same night that public opinion forced SOPA to fail, however, the feds decided to act anyway. They took down his website and had Dotcom taken into custody by the New Zealand authorities. They seized most of his assets, without proving anything in court, and are now attempting to have him extradited to the United States.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • A Politics for Open Networks

      The essence of a network is its connections and, indeed, the multiplicity of those connections. While there are many ways of networking (putting up a card in the newsagent’s window still works fine!) we can not avoid at this point of the 21st century that the network of networks is the Internet.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The USPTO: Where Up Is Down, Expensive Medicine Saves Lives, And Cheap Alternatives Violate International Law

      Well, this is unfortunate. We’ve written a few times about how various countries, under the TRIPS agreement are able to break patents on important medicines in the interest of public health. Most recently, we wrote about how India did this with a cancer drug made by Bayer called Nexavar. Despite the fact that Bayer has more than made back the money it spent bringing Nexavar to market, it’s been pricing the drug at an unaffordable $70,000/year. After India allowed a small bit of competition, the price has dropped. We’ve seen that the USPTO doesn’t like this at all and has tried to claim that high priced drugs are good for one’s health, but that’s beyond ridiculous to anyone who actually thinks.

    • Copyrights

      • ACTA

        • This Week We Kill ACTA – Or Get Locked Down In Monopolies For Decades

          This is it. This is the week when ACTA lives or dies, globally. We have seen it coming. Now is the time for the very final push in contacting the European Parliament. On Wednesday, in the session between 12 noon and 14:00, the European Parliament votes on ACTA. If the European Parliament kills it, it dies globally.

        • Down with ACTA! The EU must protect our commons

          Joint press release by 55 European and International organisations to invite Members of European Parliament to reject ACTA, and beyond, engage in a positive reform of copyright and patents.

          ACTA threatens fundamental freedoms online, Net neutrality, innovation, access to and sharing of free/libre/open technologies, education, culture, essential medicines and seeds.

        • We Want to Share Books, Music, Films With You!

          La Quadrature du Net felt the urge to share works with the Members of the European Parliament and their assistants ahead of the ACTA vote, and in order to shed light on the urgency of reforming copyright. Some of these works aim at enjoyment and others at extending knowledge or enriching the public debate. All of them innovate in content, ways of distribution, economic models and relationship between authors, contributors and users. All citizens can do the same, and share pieces of digital culture with their elected representatives!

06.28.12

Links 28/6/2012: Over a Million Android Activations Per Day, KDE 4.9 RC1 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 9:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Olympics Website Leans on Open Source, Akamai for Winning Results

    CIO – You may be aware that a little event is about to be unleashed on the world from London-the 2012 Olympics. My chance encounter was with Russ Ede, who is responsible for the London 2012 Olympics website. He shared some amazing information about what it takes to create a website that can stand up to the most widely watched sports event in the world.

  • Netflix open sources Asgard cloud deployment smarts

    Very few companies know how to scale and deploy cloud applications like Netflix, the ginormous movie streaming site. And now it’s making some of that cloud management expertise available to the masses via Github.

  • The Truth About Open Source In The Enterprise

    When I first got into IT back in the late 90′s as a teen, I was always baffled by the landscape in regards to infrastructure and software. And coming from a Linux background, who could blame me? When I went off to get my secondary education, I chose the vocational route and I chose to certify in Novell and Microsoft because they were the two major players at the time. And in my opinion, Novell was actually doing it right with the NDS operating system which seemed way ahead of windows NT at the time.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Doug Cutting: Hadoop dodged a Microsoft-Oracle stomping

      We’ve all heard plenty about open source changing the dynamics of the tech industry and upsetting the old order. Open source, we’re told, is manifest destiny. Companies that ignore it will be consigned to history and CIOs who assert there’s no freebie code behind their firewalls are out of touch with devs happily humming to Tomcat, Apache, Linux and PHP. At least that’s how the story goes.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • An open source city takes shape: Open, online tools and data

        Open government scored another victory when the City of Raleigh announced the Open Raleigh initiative—an online repository with open data, web and mobile applications, and links to participatory tools and organizations. It’s all part of Raleigh’s open source strategy focusing on transparency, collaboration, and improved access to information. It’s proof of the ongoing work of the public-facing, open source resolution Raleigh unanimously passed earlier this year.

        As part of the Open Raleigh announcement, the city included an online feedback system: My Raleigh Ideas! It’s a new service the city will use to collaborate with the public to solicit ideas on future projects and topics. Currently, the city is using it to prioritize the data citizens might want in the open data portal and to solicit input for the open data policy.

      • New Media Commons white paper examines future of transparency in peer review

    • Open Access/Content

  • Programming

    • Eclipse Juno Release Train Has Arrived

      As is the tradition for the end of June, the Eclipse community celebrates the release of the annual Eclipse release train, this year code-named Juno. This is the ninth year the community has shipped a release train, and each year the release gets bigger. Juno represents the work of 72 project teams by 445 open source committers on 55 million lines of code, and the participation of 40+ Eclipse member companies.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Adobe’s Open Source Code Editor For Web Developers

      There’s more surprise for Linux users from closed source software vendors. After Microsoft unexpectedly updated Skype recently, Adobe has announced details of its source code editor for web developers. Unlike other Adobe products, this will be open-source distributed under MIT license.

Leftovers

06.27.12

Links 27/6/2012: Google Tablet, CyanogenMod 7.2 & 9 RC1

Posted in News Roundup at 5:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Mule update is data friendly
  • Occupy Diaspora

    The first and last time I visited Diaspora was back in 2010, when the social destination was still in it’s Alpha release. Although it had a reputation, as alpha releases do, of being buggy, I was surprised at how well it worked. It was impressive, a lot like Facebook but also quite different in its design. The problem was, there was nobody there. It was like entering an eighteen story highrise apartment building in which all the tenents had been evicted, hollow and filled with virtual echoes. So I ran back to the noise of the crowd on the virtual party that is Facebook.

  • Scilab: An Interview with Sylvestre Ledru
  • Wikimedia presents new visual editor prototype

    The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the launch of a new prototype of its open source Visual editor. The non-profit organisation behind the Wikipedia online encyclopedia says that the new editing environment should make it easier for users to contribute to its projects.

  • Top Open Source Medical Billing and EMR Software

    As the open source community continues to grow and thrive through the popularity of such enterprise ready platforms as Red Hat, the number of open source medical applications also grows with it. The truth is, medical software is expensive. Most health care providers – doctors, hospitals, dentists, independent clinics – have been under a lot of pressure to maintain or reduce run costs while at the same time continuing to provide the quality patient care and customer service expected of the medical care industry. In an effort to control these costs, many health care organizations are looking toward open source software to help them manage their complex billing and electronic medical records. This is an especially hot topic with the United States government mandating that health care providers move from a paper based system to a primary electronic medical record system over the next two years, complete with short term financial incentives in the form of government refunds for early compliance and hefty fines for late adopters.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Joomla Is Looking For Your Help

      Joomla! is one of the world’s most widely used content management software (CMS) that powers millions of websites. A new version of Joomla! 3 is scheduled to get released next September and they are looking for your help in the launch.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Four Big Battles for EU Openness Happening Now

      Something seems to be going on in the European Union. Over the next few weeks a range of really important debates and votes are taking place, all connected with openness in some way. Quite why everything is happening at once is not entirely clear – unless politicians are trying to get everything out of the way before their summer hols, perhaps….

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Beats rock Brazil

      Last week, #RioPlusSocial was one of the top trending global topics on Twitter. Part of the United Nations conference on sustainable development (called Rio+20), Rio+Social welcomed throngs of activists, politicians, moguls, and artists to Brazil, to discuss solutions for a growing list of global problems. Sponsored by the United Nations Foundation and several partners, the conference featured lectures and roundtable discussions with icons such as Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the first woman President of Ireland Mary Robinson, billionaires Ted Turner and Richard Branson, and innovators such as Alnoor Ladha, a founding partner of Purpose, and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Adobe launches an open source and web standards portal

      Adobe has decided that it should do more to promote the range of web standards and open source projects that it is involved in and to that end it has now opened “Adobe & HTML” at html.adobe.com. The web site covers web standards, open source projects and the tools and services that Adobe offers in relation to those standards and projects.

    • Adobe details its open source code editor for web developers
    • Game developer: HTML5 not yet ready for mainstream use

      Social games provider Wooga has released its HTML5 game Magic Land Island as an open source project called Pocket Island. The company started developing the game in 2011, when the emerging standard was gaining more and more momentum; the project was intended to highlight the capabilities of HTML5 as an alternative to Flash-based applications. The game was released in October 2011, and now Wooga has drawn its first conclusions about the viability of HTML5 for game development.

Leftovers

  • The Top-10 tech demo flops

    It was indeed a special moment. Surface, Microsoft’s attempt to transform itself into a major hardware tablet vendor, in front of a hand-picked group of journalists and, eventually, millions of people around the world thanks to YouTube, and then… “Whoops!”

  • Microsoft: We tried to use Azure ourselves last year, and couldn’t

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Update for Windows Update has teething troubles

      Microsoft has released an unscheduled, non-patch day update for Windows to update the Windows Update function itself. However, according to reports from readers, the Windows Update Agent update does not always run smoothly; The H’s associates at heise Security also ran into problems on their test systems.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Former Federal Judge Calls US Prosecution Of Megaupload ‘Really Outrageous’

        To hear folks in Hollywood talk about it, the US’s indictment and prosecution of Megaupload are a done deal. Without any actual trial, people have decided that the company is clearly 100% evil and guilty. Yet, as we keep noting, the details of the indictment and prosecution keep turning up significant errors on the part of the US, as well as questions about the legality of what the US did. And plenty of people who really understand this stuff deeply are speaking out in agreement. The latest is a former federal judge, Abraham David Sofaer, who found the whole situation so troubling that he’s helping the EFF — for free — with its efforts to get Megaupload users’ data back.

      • ACTA

        • Winning BIG on ACTA and Beyond!

          This Wednesday July 4th, the European Parliament will have an opportunity to reject ACTA as a whole, in plenary, and destroy it forever. After four years of citizens’ hard work, such a rejection would create a tremendous political symbol of global scale. La Quadrature du Net calls on all citizens to contact Members of the EU Parliament to urge them to reject ACTA, and beyond, to start a process to positively reform copyright law. A strong victory would set the ground for future reforms.

06.26.12

Links 26/6/2012: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 9:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Virgin Atlantic IT director: airlines should work together on open source apps

    Virgin Atlantic’s IT director, David Bulman, has called upon the airline industry to work collaboratively on open source applications that create an emerging standard for re-use and allow passengers to avoid downloading multiple tools.

  • SourceForge submits Allura to Apache’s Incubator

    SourceForge has announced that Allura, the software that powers the popular project hosting service, has been submitted to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator for consideration, the first step in the process of becoming a top-level Apache project. With this move, the organisation says that it hopes “to draw an even wider community of developers who can advance the feature set and tailor the framework to their needs.”

  • SourceForge Sumits Allura To Apache Incubator
  • Giving the code away

    Why do corporations give away code under free and open source licences? What benefits do they derive and what are the pitfalls that can doom these code give-aways? And how do they make a real community grow around these projects? Richard Hillesley looks at the difficulties and rewards to giving away code.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 13 – a review of sorts

        By now, even your grandmother is using Firefox 13, so belated is my little review here. But it’s only been about two weeks since it was birthed, and I have let everyone else get the first-story first-click glory. Now, I will give you a very reasonable tour of the latest release.

        Is it important enough to merit a separate article, you may ask? Well, the significance and scope of change is definitely less than what it used to be in the era of longer-term major number editions, but the particular version comes with some useful tricks. Firefox 13 is a gradual upgrade, worth its own little space in the blogosphere. Follow me.

      • Mozilla Firefox 13 Is Drawing Some Criticism

        If you’ve been using Firefox 13, you may have noticed how a particular new feature can expose your private browsing history. Specifically, the browser presents a thumbnail tab view of recently visited sites generated by taking snapshots as you surf from site to site. These thumbnails are aggregated on a page that effectively calls out all the sites you’ve visited. This feature even applies to SSL-protected sites, according to some users, and should be addressed by Mozilla. There are signs that the uptake of Firefox 13 is also going slower than planned.

  • SaaS

    • Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos Evolves His Cloud Approach

      Eucalyptus continues to update its private cloud software — delivering version 3.1 today. And CEO Marten Mickos continues to refine his management style at the open source company. So how has Mickos adjusted his approach at Eucalyptus vs. his previous role as CEO of MySQL, the open source database now owned by Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL)? Here’s the update.

    • Eucalyptus moves back to full open source

      CEO of cloud software company Eucalyptus, Marten Mickos, has announced that the next release of Eucalyptus will exist only as one edition, ending the company’s open source/enterprise versions which gave it open core styled product differentiation. Eucalyptus 3.1 will bring the company’s full range of technologies into one version and the source code will be available through Github. All new development activity will occur on Github too, with defect and feature tracking made publicly available making it easier for any community member to follow the progress of an issue.

    • First commercial OpenStack VDI solution debuts
    • Great Open Source Cloud Debate Rages

      The role of open source firms has been to consolidate a set of rapidly occurring changes in a class of commercial software, frequently adding their own updates to the code and then commoditizing them in the marketplace. The Apache Web server did that. The JBoss Application Server under Marc Fleury’s team of developers did it.

  • Databases

    • MemSQL – 80,000 queries per second

      Two former Facebook developers have created a new database that they say is the world’s fastest and a video to demonstrate its superiority compared to MySQL.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • JavaFX 2.2 to allow native package creation

      Oracle says it intends to enable the next version of its JavaFX Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology to be natively packaged for various platforms. The process will be enabled by an application which can package exe and msi (for Windows), dmg (for Mac OS X) and rpm and zip (for Linux systems).

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 4.8 Compiler – Is It Faster Yet?

      GCC 4.7 was released a few months back, but have changes in the trunk code-base — for what will eventually become GCC 4.8 — resulted in any major performance changes yet?

      GCC 4.8 will likely not be released until early 2013, but it’s worth seeing if there’s any performance changes early on in case the change is a regression or other issue. Plus GCC 4.8 will be competing with what will likely be LLVM/Clang 3.2 or LLVM/Clang 3.3.

  • Project Releases

    • Wireshark 1.8.0 can capture from multiple interfaces at once

      Support for capturing from multiple interfaces at the same time is one of the most notable improvements in the major update to the Wireshark network protocol analyser. Version 1.8.0 of the open source, cross-platform tool – used for network troubleshooting, analysis, development and education – also includes support for GeoIP IPv6 databases, and now allows users to add, edit and save packet and capture file annotations.

  • Public Services/Government

    • French government awards two million support contract for open source

      A two million euro, three to four year framework contract for providing open source support was awarded to open source specialist Alter Way, system integrator Capgemini and Java specialist Zenika by Disic, the central IT department for the French government. The three will provide support for no less than 350 open source tools used by 15 of the 22 ministries in France.

  • Open Hardware

    • Machine Speak: Robot Baby Learns Words

      “It is unclear why iCub should do any better than a nonphysical counterpart — i.e., a software program designed to engage in conversation with a human trainer and learn from him to speak in a manner similar to language acquisition by infants,” noted Ai Research President Yaki Dunietz. “It will be interesting to see how a bot who also possesses a physical body learns to speak better than a bodiless one.”

      [...]

      DeeChee is designed on the open source iCub platform, which is available for anyone to create similar robots for a variety of types of research, including language acquisition.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Joomla 2.5.5 security updates arrives with added features – Update
    • Trojan.Milicenso: Another Reason to Avoid That Other OS
    • Trojan.Milicenso: A Paper Salesman’s Dream Come True

      Trojan.Milicenso may arrive on a compromised computer by various means, such as malicious email attachments or visiting websites hosting malicious scripts. The latter often unintentionally occurs when a user clicks a link in an unsolicited email. We have also encountered quite a large number of samples that appear to be packaged as a fake codec.

    • Sourcefire Pushes Open Source ClamAV Forward

      It’s been five years since IPS vendor Sourcefire acquired ClamAV’s intellectual property and personnel resources. Since then, the open source antivirus project has prospered under Sourcefire’s guidance and is now complemented by commercial antivirus tools for consumer and enterprise marketsbased that are based on ClamAV.

    • How useful is antivirus software?

      It goes without saying that antivirus software can’t catch everything. But, does it catch 10% or 90% of the malware targeted at Windows users?

      In a recent user group presentation, malware expert David Perry, of Comodo, said there are between 200,000 and 300,000 new viruses discovered every day (here “virus” is a generic term encompassing dozens of types of malware). They are built from kits and most circulate in the wild for a very short time, perhaps only a day. In other words, by the time they are detected, they’re often out of circulation.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • New GM industry push in the UK

      BBC Radio 4 reported in its headlines this morning that the Agriculture Biotechnology Council had published a new report “Going for Growth”, which calls for GM to be put at the heart of agricultural development in the UK. The BBC failed to point out that the misleadingly named ABC is actually a GM industry lobby group that represents BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont (Pioneer), Monsanto and Syngenta.

06.23.12

Links 23/6/2012: Wine 1.5.7 released, Apple Racism

Posted in News Roundup at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • OStatic’s Updated Collection of Free Books on Open Source Topics
  • The limits of openness

    The rise of open source is now being repeated by open endeavours in other fields, following a fairly constant pattern. First, somebody starts a small, personal project, often almost accidentally, and without any long-term plans. Crucially, they share that project online, and other people join in. Then, the project starts to grow and become quite useful. Later, it begins to rival commercial offerings, and companies start to attack it. Finally, it equals then surpasses those commercial offerings, and the companies find themselves in trouble.

  • The death of an HTML5 game breeds an open source project

    German social gaming company Wooga has thrown in the towel on its HTML5 project after seeing little return on the increasing amount of effort put into its “Magic Land Island” game.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla’s Collusion Privacy Protection Add-On is Gaining Fans

        All of us who spend a great deal of time with digital devices have concerns about being tracked online, and these concerns are often especially pronounced among members of the open source community. In response to these concerns about online tracking, Mozilla delivered a Firefox extension not long ago called Collusion. You can get the add-on and watch a demo of it here, and we previously covered it here. It’s designed to turn the tables on online spies, allowing you to see who is tracking you. In an address focused on privacy delivered at TED, Mozilla CEO Ted Kovacs sang the praises of Collusion, and it’s gaining more traction with other Mozilla leaders.

      • Mozilla Firefox 13.0.1 Arrives on Ubuntu OSes

        Canonical announced yesterday, June 20th, in a security notice, that an update for the default web browser in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 11.10, Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is now available.

      • Introducing Thimble: webmaking made easy

        Today we are proud to launch a new Mozilla Webmaker app to the world. Meet Thimble, the new tool that makes it incredibly simple for anyone to create and share their own web pages and other projects in minutes.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • After Oracle, OpenSolaris rises again

      While some of the open source projects that Sun Microsystems created — and which I used to work with — have maintained a high profile, the one most associated with Sun in the minds of system administrators has been strangely forgotten. Whatever happened to OpenSolaris?

    • Perspectives on Apache OpenOffice 3.4 download numbers

      You may have read, on the Apache OpenOffice blog, news that the project has had 5 million downloads in the first 6 weeks since the release of version 3.4. And as the above chart shows, the download rate has increased in the past two weeks, as we’ve started to roll out the upgrade notifications to OpenOffice.org 3.3 users.

  • Healthcare

  • Business

  • Funding

    • Open source Geiger counter successfully kickstarted

      The Safecast project, which was co-founded by BoingBoing contributor Sean Bonner in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, has recently completed a successful Kickstarter funding round to create an open source Geiger counter. Safecast aims to supply residents of Japan with reliable, crowd-sourced radiation measurements.

  • BSD

  • Project Releases

    • Nitro 1.4 Released With New Features

      If you are a busy guy with a lot of tasks to keep track of, Nitro is the one of the best task management tools available for you. A new version has been released with some exciting features that we are going to cover in this story.

  • Public Services/Government

    • FOI request: Public sector favours legacy over open-source storage

      Local and central government departments in the UK are favouring legacy storage systems from the likes of IBM and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) as opposed to open-source storage, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

      The request was made by open-source software provider Nexenta Systems, and the revelation comes despite the government’s efforts over the past few years to cut costs and create a level playing field between open source and proprietary software vendors.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Using open source & grassroots to map the world’s radiation data

        Mapping the world’s radiation and air pollution data, using one volunteer with one gadget at a time — that’s the goal of the Safecast project, which this week closed over $100,000 on Kickstarter to deliver a limited run of its open source geiger counters to interested buyers. “I don’t think it’s an unreasonable goal,” to create comprehensive maps of this data from all over the world, says Sean Bonner, co-founder of Safecast, in a phone interview shortly after his team’s project was funded.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Apple Bigots

    Apple was found to refuse to sell to people who speak Farsi, the language of Iran. They claim it’s to prevent export to Iran even though the person lives in Virginia, USA, and is a US citizen.

  • Apple blacklists customers on basis of race

    Jobs’ Mob has been branded a bunch of racists after one of its stores refused to sell shiny toys to some swarthy types who were not speaking English.

    WSB-TV interviewed two customers who were denied the right to buy an iPad or an iPhone after store personnel heard them speaking Farsi. Farsi is the language of Ancient Persia and once was the lingua franca between merchants.

    The Apple staff apparently decided to refuse the sale because, in the opinion of its genius managers, the two must be buying the gear to sell to their evil terrorist mates in Iran. Apparently they even quoted laws that prohibit the export of products to Iran.

    The only problem is that the law does not forbid you selling technology gear to people in your own country or US citizens. The US happens to have a fair number of US citizens who are Iranian and so the move seems to be to blacklist them from owning gear using the made-in-China Apple logo.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • STUDY: Right Wing Spins Media With “Job-Killer” Claims

      The media is indiscriminately using the term “job-killer” to describe government policies and programs, but without verifying or substantiating the claims, according to a new study. Use of the phrase by major media outlets has exploded since President Obama took office and rapidly circulates throughout the press with little or no fact checking of the “job killer” allegations.

  • Privacy

    • 4 Steps to immunity from UK snooping laws

      Last week’s draft Communications Bill outlines how civil servants are again intent on surveilling the internet communications of innocent British citizens. Fortunately, Free Software provides several ways with which you can protect your privacy online, regardless of the measures that the Coalition may impose upon you or your telecoms providers.

06.22.12

Links 22/6/2012: Fedora 18 Plans, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3

Posted in News Roundup at 1:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Censorship

    • India unblocks The Pirate Bay and other sharing sites
    • Defamation and the Internet – Contact your MP Now!

      After many years of campaigning, Parliament is finally debating a new Defamation Bill. Defamation (covering libel and slander) is about protecting a person’s reputation, and balancing that right against the general freedom of expression. Over the last few years English libel law has become infamous around the world for its chilling effect on free speech, ease of use to silence criticism (informal, political and academic) and its disproportionate costs.

      The new Bill attempts to tackle some of these issues. But while it is a step in the right direction, it mainly codifies the existing law rather than significantly improving it. There are still some major problems with the current text and while it is being debated in the House of Commons we have a chance to try to fix it before it becomes law. To do this, we need you to write to your MP, highlighting the major problems. If nothing else, please ask them to read through the memorandum the Party submitted to the Public Bill Committee, the key points of which are outlined below.

06.21.12

Links 22/6/2012: Red Hat Reports Results

Posted in News Roundup at 7:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • How to Land the Best Linux Job
  • GNU/Linux is a Winner

    Jack Wallen thinks the decision of the US Navy to switch their drones to GNU/Linux from that other OS because of a virus will play out like this:
    “

    * DOD begins Linux roll out
    * US Government begins wide-spread roll out
    * Civilian security companies world-wide begin roll out
    * Universities fall in line
    * Consumers begin clamoring for better security on their OS

    “

    I think the situation is a bit more complex than that. Clearly weapons/intelligence collection devices require top security but it is far from clear that consumers will ever think that way. They fall for the salesmen’s lies…

  • Desktop

    • Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: It’s 2016, and Chrome OS is ascendant

      Google thinks we’re ready to say goodbye to fat client systems and move to cloud-based operating systems, such as its own Chrome OS. Instead of PCs, it wants us to use Chromeboxes and Chromebooks. We’re resisting, but I think we’ll come around to Google’s point of view in a few short years.

      Not that the old mainframe/terminal model ever really went away. Some companies still issue thin clients that are basically input devices, with most of the actual computing happening on a distant server. Others use its descendant, client/server systems. More companies might have stuck with those models, but users made their preferences known. They liked the “personal” in “personal computer.” They wanted their computers to run just the way they wanted.

  • Kernel Space

    • Stable kernels 3.0.35 and 3.4.3
    • Linus to Nvidia: Yawn

    • Graphics Stack

      • Nvidia Responds to F-Bomb From Linus Torvalds

        Linux creator Linus Torvalds may call Nvidia “the single worst company” the Linux community has ever dealt with. But the chipmaker makes no apologies for its approach to the open source operating system.

        Late last week, during an event in his native Finland, Torvalds went so far as to hurl an expletive at the chipmaker and flip it the proverbial bird, and when we contacted the company about this on Monday, it could not be reached to comment. But the company has now responded with a brief statement that seeks to explain why it doesn’t work to include its Linux hardware drivers in the core open source code for the OS.

        Basically, the company prefers to offer its own proprietary drivers for running its graphics hardware with Linux, rather than rolling driver code into the Linux kernel. “While we understand that some people would prefer us to provide detailed documentation on all of our GPU internals, or be more active in Linux kernel community development discussions, we have made a decision to support Linux on our GPUs by leveraging Nvidia common code, rather than the Linux common infrastructure,” reads a canned statement from Nvidia. “While this may not please everyone, it does allow us to provide the most consistent GPU experience to our customers, regardless of platform or operating system.”

        Torvalds created Linux in 1991 as an open source alternative to Microsoft Windows, which was on its way to dominating the computer market. In the twenty years since, it has became so widely used — particular on servers — that even Microsoft has started to play nicely with Linux.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Linux Desktops and Linux Personalities: What’s Your Perfect Match?

      Back when I started work at a Linux company, I had trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that an operating system could have more than one desktop. Finally, I asked what the difference between GNOME and KDE was.

      “Oh, that’s easy,” another employee told me. “KDE is for people who are used to Windows, while GNOME is for those who like innovations.”

      Today, recommendations are much harder. For one thing, both GNOME and KDE have morphed out of all recognition, making that summary long obsolete. For another, at least half a dozen other desktops are clamoring for users’ attention.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Reach your matching limits, with Mahjongg!

        GNOME’s Mahjongg is an one player matching game that is based on the ancient Chinese 4-player game Mahjong. The Mahjong Solitare games family has been available on computers since 1981, and is to be found in every platform and device nowadays. So, what is so great about this game?

        The aim of the game is to remove all 144 given tiles as quickly as possible, while avoiding a stall. The tiles have a specific formation that is called “The Turtle”. To remove 2 tiles by matching them, they must be “free”, meaning that they have no other tile on their right or left of the same level. See the two images below to understand this better.

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi

      If you know one thing about the Raspberry Pi PC, it’s most likely the fact that it’s almost comically inexpensive. $35, to be exact. And what do you get for such a modest sum? In terms of in-the-box hardware, not much. Essentially a motherboard with a CPU soldered onto it, the Pi requires that you provide your own operating system, your own local storage media, even your own power supply.

      The point of such a product is primarily education. According to their Web site, the designers of the Raspberry Pi wanted to create an affordable computer that encourages students to break away from the technical hand-holding that comes with off-the-shelf PCs. Chances are you might learn something from building a system yourself. Given that it’s a Linux-based computer, you might even write your own software for it.

    • Measuring the Raspberry Pi’s Current …

    • Phones

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • The Monotonous Decline of That Other OS

    That’s an average decline of 0.57% per month.

  • Cablegate

    • Ecuador offers Wikileaks founder Assange residency

      Ecuador has offered Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, residency in the country.

      Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said his country’s government wanted to invite Mr Assange to Ecuador to give him the opportunity to speak publicly.

      He said Ecuador was concerned about some of the alleged American activities revealed by Wikileaks.

      Earlier this year Sweden refused an application from Mr Assange, who is Australian, for residency there.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • House to Vote on Effort to Preempt EPA Regulation of Coal Ash

      According to the EPA, the waste from coal burning plants contains concentrations of arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and other metals that has been known to seep into ground water supplies. Thursday marks the two year anniversary of when the EPA first proposed minimum safeguards for coal ash disposal.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Nuns on the Bus Go Up and Down

      After an hour and a half visit to Janesville, the “Nuns on the Bus” bus cruised on to Milwaukee for a visit to St. Benedict the Moor’s meal program and to a picket line by mostly immigrant workers at Palermo’s frozen pizza plant. During the next two weeks, the sisters will visit seven more states, including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland before a scheduled finish in Washington D.C. on July 2.

      Back on Janesville’s Main Street Tuesday afternoon, the crowd had evaporated, leaving a single peace sign between a Manpower office and a shuttered “Rock County Mortgage.” There were no manufacturing jobs at Manpower (GM’s last auto plant closed in 2009), just a poster seeking four telemarketers at $8.50 an hour. With so many Janesville families without work and grateful for what little government assistance there is in hard times, it is no surprise that the nuns received a warm welcome.

  • Censorship

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Monsanto May Be Forced To Repay Brazilian GM Soybean Royalties Worth Billions Of Dollars

      When the history of modern Brazil comes to be written, a special place will be reserved for the soybean, the powerful farmers that grow it — and the deforestation it is driving. And at the center of that tale will be Monsanto, with its patented “Roundup Ready” crop, so called because it has been genetically modified to withstand the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as Roundup.

    • Copyrights

      • Is Copyright Needed To Stop Plagiarism?

      • ACTA

        • Crucial ACTA Vote: Will INTA Committee Betray EU Citizens?

          This Thursday, June 21st, the “International Trade” (INTA) committee of the EU Parliament will adopt its draft report on ACTA. Under pressure from the EU Commission and industry lobbyists1, members of the committee could decide, potentially in a secret vote, to call for the adoption of ACTA or to postpone the final vote for years, which would help the pro-ACTA to save face. Citizens participation is absolutely crucial to ensure that the Parliament will stick to the general interest and face its political responsibility by voting a clear rejection of ACTA.

        • INTA Committee Must Reject ACTA

          ACTA threatens fundamental freedoms online, Net neutrality, innovation, access to free/libre technologies and to essential medicines. The European Parliament has all the evidence needed to reject it, and if it were to postpone the final vote on the agreement it would be seen as escaping its political responsibility.

        • Final Europarl Committee Rejects ACTA: Internet-Lobbyists, 5-0.

          Today, the final and ultimately responsible committee in the European Parliament gave its recommendation on ACTA. Its opinion was clear: Reject ACTA. This brings five recommendations to the European Parliament to reject and kill ACTA once and for all.

        • [Major Victory] Now Let’s Win ACTA’s Final Round!

          The European Parliament’s main committee in charge of ACTA just adopted its voting recommendation to the rest of the Members. Despite intense pressure, the Parliament is now officially advised to reject ACTA during the upcoming plenary vote, scheduled for July 4th1. We now have very high chances of finally defeating ACTA and opening the way for a positive reform of copyright! Let’s celebrate, while aiming for the final vote, and build a post-ACTA world!

06.19.12

Links 19/6/2012: Mandriva Linux 2012 Tech Preview, Linus’ Remarks, Dell Helps Ubuntu, Wine 1.4.1 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Weekend Project: Open Source Crowd Mapping with Ushahidi
  • Open Source Initiative Gets More Members

    The Open Source Initiative (OSI) Board has announced that five significant organizations have been granted Affiliate Membership of the organization, including the first User Group.

  • 5 new affiliates for the OSI

    The ranks of the Open Source Initiative’s affiliate scheme have expanded with five new “significant” organisations joining. The new members are AFUL (Association Francophone des Utilisateurs de Logiciels Libres), a user association for French speaking free software users; The Document Foundation, legal and logistical home of LibreOffice; The OuterCurve Foundation, the Microsoft and AOL sponsored enterprise open source group; OW2, the open source community for enterprise infrastructure software; and The Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation behind Wikipedia and many other collaboratively created reference projects.

  • OSI Welcomes New Affiliates, Opens For Affiliate Applications
  • SourceForge back-end code to be donated to Apache

  • Web Browsers

  • Education

    • Open source creates a more compassionate global education

      Rock legend Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame has asked many interesting questions (in song). This one (posted on his website) might be one you don’t expect: “Will the technologies of communication in our culture, serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?”

      Will educators, parents, and children view free and open source as a way to create a kinder, sharing, and cooperative relationships with one another in the United States and around the world?

    • A quest for change in education

      For the last few years, I have been increasingly interested in the area of Open Education Resources (OERs). MIT’s Open Course Ware was one of the pioneers of OER and the manner in which it was used across the world was truly fascinating. Khan Academy took the concept of OERs and made it wildly popular – the 3000 videos on its web site have been viewed more than 133 million times!

      Why this interests me is because I believe (as do many others) that education is one of the most critical inputs for India’s development. Well, more than an input, I’d say this is the critical factor that decides whether our country descends into chaos in the next few decades or emerges out of poverty and takes a place of pride on the world state as one of the developed nations. Think of it as that moment when an aeroplane gathers speed on the runway and generates enough thrust to break free from the gravitational pull of the earth and soar into the sky. If we educate our youth and make them skilled and able citizens of India, we will soar into the skies. If we don’t, we will land with a thud. As simple (and scary) as that.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Richard Stallman talking in the UK

      For those of you in the UK who wish to catch Richard Stallman – father of the Free Software movement and president and founder of the Free Software Foundation – he is giving three talks in Britain in the coming days.

  • Project Releases

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Open Source PHP and Ruby on Rails Updated for Security
    • “Zero-day” exploit sales should be key point in cybersecurity debate

      Last week, Forbes’ Andy Greenberg investigated a dangerous but largely underreported problem in Internet security: the sale of zero-day exploits to customers not intending to fix the flaws. Zero-day exploits are hacking techniques that take advantage of software vulnerabilities that haven’t been disclosed to the developer or the public. Some companies have built successful businesses by discovering security flaws in software such as operating systems and popular browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and then selling zero-day exploits to high-paying customers—which are often governments.

    • Protecting Yourself in a Cyberwar World

      Which leads me to the second response: users are going to have to take even more responsibility for their own security. It’s not just “install antivirus and update regularly” anymore. You need to avoid the products which are most vulnerable — whether because they’re buggy, or just because they’re widely used and therefore often attacked. And, as I will elaborate in future posts, you need layered security — secure OS, secure browser and email, intrusion detection, and safe working habits. (Stop using your PC as “administrator,” and stop clicking on links in email!) This is where the real safety lies, because right now the industry has little incentive to make you safer, and — as EFF noted — the government has an incentive to make you less safe.

      You have to protect yourself…because no one else will protect you.

    • Hacked companies fight back with controversial steps

      Frustrated by their inability to stop sophisticated hacking attacks or use the law to punish their assailants, an increasing number of U.S. companies are taking retaliatory action.

      Known in the cyber security industry as “active defense” or “strike-back” technology, the reprisals range from modest steps to distract and delay a hacker to more controversial measures. Security experts say they even know of some cases where companies have taken action that could violate laws in the United States or other countries, such as hiring contractors to hack the assailant’s own systems.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • World Solar Power Goes Parabolic

      From a very small base, and from a tiny position in world energy supply, the buildout of global solar power is starting to go parabolic. Last year, according to the just released BP Statistical Review (you must access the Excel workbook for solar data), global solar generation nearly doubled to reach 55.7 TWh (terrawatt hours). | see: Global Solar Consumption in TWh (terrawatt hours) 2001-2011.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • New Zealand’s High Court Steps Into Extradition Fight Over Kim Dotcom

        As the Justice Department continues to pretend there’s nothing strange at all about its highly questionable tactics in shutting down Megaupload and having its executives arrested, the courts are still struggling with the details. A few weeks back, we noted that a judge in New Zealand rejected the US’s demand that New Zealand merely rubberstamp an extradition order to the US, despite there being numerous questions over the case itself and whether or not extradition is appropriate. As part of that, the judge also ordered the US Attorneys to hand over the evidence they’re using to make the case against Dotcom and his colleagues, such that they can properly respond to the evidence. The US, as you might expect has gone absolutely ballistic about this, insisting that such an effort is impossible — and that “it would take at least two months” to get the evidence together.

      • Copyright must foster innovation, not just protect a right

        It has never been clear to me how the growing criticism of copyright and patent law is faring. Not well, I would judge by the lack of coverage in widely read journals. At the same time, we are seeing more like this enteraining op-ed piece, titled “Fair Use, Art, Swiss Cheese and Me” in such widely read journals as the New York Times.

      • Google Threatens To Sue Huge YouTube MP3 Conversion Site

        According to a letter seen by TorrentFreak, Google are threatening action against one of the web’s largest YouTube conversion sites. The site, which according to Google’s own stats is pulling in 1.3 million visitors every day, extracts MP3 audio from YouTube videos and makes it available for users to download. Google’s lawyers say this must stop, and have given the site seven days to comply.

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