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04.27.14

Links 27/4/2014: US Troops in Lithuania, Clinton Disses Snowden

Posted in News Roundup, Site News at 10:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 free open source and web alternatives to commercial software

    Adobe Photoshop is considered to be the ultimate photo editor. Certainly it’s great, but it can be replaced. We all heard about GIMP and if you wonder “Can it compete with Photoshop?”, the answer is “Yes.” It may require some adjustments, you’ll need a separate converter for RAWs and some time to get used to its shortcuts, but ultimately you can switch to GIMP. No subscription required – it’s free, powerful and cross-platform.

  • Events

    • LinuxFest Northwest 2014 Day 0

      The trip was rather uneventful… except Gary decided to bypass Seattle and take a much more scenic router that goes through a quaint town named Leavenworth, Washington. What’s quaint about it? Well, Leavenworth is styled after a Bavarian village. How can you tell that? Well the buildings on the road through town all look like they are in the Alps or something. The lettering used on all of the business signs is in some kind of weird font that is obviously somehow mandated by the place… since even the big box stores and fast food chains have altered signage that uses the city font. Really… even Napa and McDonald’s don’t look quite right. It was definitely a pretty route with quite a bit of snow in the mountains with occational streams flowing down… (the road followed) a winding river much of the way… and apple orchards. The spead limit was 60 MPH but there was very little traffic and we hit the Seattle area just North of Everett I believe… so even when we got on the 6 lane highway, it wasn’t that crowded. It difinitely made for a much more pleasant trip. Gary took the same route home last year but this is the first time we took it on the way up.

    • OSI Sponsors International Competition in Free and Open Source Software Multimedia

      The OSI is thrilled to announce the launch of the International Competition in Free and Open Source Software Multimedia (ICOM). Organized by the Sena Primary School (SK Sena), Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) along with the state government of Perlis, Malaysia and the Ministry of Education Malaysia the video competition is open to students from around the world: from primary school children to those attending institutions of higher learning. The main objectives of ICOM are as follows:

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Report: Public and PaaS Cloud Markets are Poised for Hypergrowth

      It’s no secret that cloud computing is one of the hottest trends in all of technology. Microsoft’s upbeat earnings report this week was partly driven by success in the cloud, and companies like Red Hat are organizing their whole business strategies around open source cloud computing platforms like OpenStack. Forrester Research is out with a new report that puts some numbers on the hypergrowth being seen in the cloud arena. Among other forecasts, the report predicts that the global public cloud market will hit $191 billion by 2020. To put that in perspective, Forrester reported that the public cloud market was at $58 billion as of the end of last year.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Healthcare

    • Health Works With FLOSS

      There are reasons FLOSS works in health. There’s no lower-cost, no more reliable and no more flexible model for software in IT.

  • Business

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source core of Warsaw hospital e-health system

      Open source delivers safe, efficient and modern e-health services to Warsaw’s university hospital. Its integrated medical system is based completely on open source and, according to project leader and medical specialist Radosław Rzepka, is shaping the future of Poland’s medical databases.

    • Spanish hospitals test open source data portal

      Spain’s largest hospital chain, Quirón, will be piloting a portal based on the Openstack open source cloud computing solution, to provide patients with access to their radiology data. The pilot is one part of a three-year research project called Coco Cloud, which in 2013 received a 2.8 million euro grant from the European Commission’s FP7 funding programme. Some of the requirements for the secure cloud-computing environment will be formulated by Italy’s governmental ICT resource centre, the Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale (AGID).

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Security

    • New Internet Explorer 0-day [Back door with no fix]

      Microsoft just published security advisory 2963983 which acknowleges limited exploits against a 0-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE). The vulnerability CVE-2014-1776 affects all versions of IE starting with version 6 and including version 11, but the currently active attacks are targeting IE9, IE10 and IE11. The attack vector is a malicious web page that the targeted user has to access with one of the affected browsers.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Four ways the Ukraine crisis could escalate out of control to use of nuclear weapons

      Improbable it may seem, but doctrine and capabilities exist on both sides that could lead to nuclear use in a confrontation over Ukraine.

    • Killed by mistake

      According to a report by veteran journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, the US Military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence powered by the National Security Agency (NSA) for electronic surveillance and assassination of suspected militants in Pakistan’s northern areas.

    • A legal way to kill?

      When President Obama decided sometime during his first term that he wanted to be able to use unmanned aerial drones in foreign lands to kill people — including Americans — he instructed Attorney General Eric H. Holder to find a way to make it legal, despite the absolute prohibition on governmental extrajudicial killing in federal and state laws and in the Constitution itself.

    • U.S. drones continue to kill civilians instead of al-Qaeda

      The identification of the dead revealed that non-Yemeni Arab fighters were also among those killed.
      The U.S. hasn’t commented on the strikes, but reports say that the U.S. carried out the drone offensive based on intelligence inputs from Saudi Arabia.

    • Panel on Drone Warfare Opens Discussion

      Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone noted in a 2012 article that there is a much larger concern: transparency.

    • Report claims Eric Holder approved drone strike against Bundy ranch

      On Friday, John Jacob Schmidt of Radio Free Redoubt said that according to Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, Attorney General Eric Holder has approved drone strikes against the Bundy ranch to take place some time in the next 48 hours. According to Schmidt, the information came from a source Oath Keepers has within the Department of Defense.

    • Congress should outlaw drone strikes

      Drones are like vigilantes or lynching parties — lawless and cowardly. They use brute power to kill the powerless. The powerful choose who is right and who is wrong; the powerless have no ability to defend themselves with arms or due process. Oh, sometimes the killers make mistakes, but their intentions are pure, aren’t they?

    • FOIA win against government on drones

      The enormous increase in public attention to the drone war in the past year arguably began with the leak of a Justice Department “white paper” laying out the legal rationale for killing a US citizen who’d joined Al Qaeda. A few months later, President Obama gave a major speech in which described the government’s criteria for going after suspected terrorists beyond the war in Afghanistan. The administration also released the names of four US citizens who had been killed in drone strikes. Among them was Anwar Al Awlaki, the New Mexico-born cleric who died in Yemen in September 2011. – See more at: http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/foia_win_against_government_on.php#sthash.3j2nJQXo.dpuf

    • New Hampshire Drone Bill Shot Down in Senate

      After two years of legislative work, a bill that would restrict the use of commercial drones was effectively killed by the Senate Thursday.

    • What Happened When The U.S. Dropped Drones On Al-Qaeda In Yemen This Weekend

      As with much of the past three days, it is unclear which U.S. agencies or departments took part in the raids.

    • The real terrorists

      I think this message should be sent to our commanders who allow drones to fly over villages, terrorizing the people there, who never know if or when the next bomb is falling on their house, whom it is killing next. People who come home to find pieces of their loved ones in the ruin of their house, killed by a drone; people whose crime is to be living in the wrong place, it seems.

    • Israel’s Remote Occupation: Women Drone Jockeys Kill Gazans Remotely
    • Human Rights Watch Calls on Israel to Stop Shooting at Gaza Civilians
    • Israel: Stop Shooting at Gaza Civilians
    • America’s “exceptional” reality

      “We own the finish line!” Our Vice President was saying that America owns the world. That “God” is on our side, marching in lockstep with our troops. That America is exceptional, and superior, and the envy of other nations. Like a “city set on a hill.” Biden embodies America’s delusionary—and destructive–“exceptional” reality.

    • Panetta: America’s greatest threat is from within

    • Ex-CIA boss: Biggest US dangers are within
    • MSNBC’s Chris Hayes calls Bundy ranch supporters ‘insurgents’

      The propaganda effort to demonize anyone to the right of Josef Stalin continues, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy “insurgents,” Paul Joseph Watson said at Infowars Tuesday. Hayes and his guests spent about 15 minutes in what was clearly a propaganda effort designed to marginalize Bundy supporters and certain alternate media outlets as fringe kooks.

    • Do you really want an increased presence of US troops, armaments?

      National democratic activists, the bloc usually lumped by mainstream press as ‘the Left,’ have declared the entire week that US President Barack Obama is in Asia as “National Sovereignty and Patrimony Week” in the Philippines (22-30 April). They propose to discuss and challenge what they call as “heightening US intervention, increasing presence of US and allied foreign troops, intensifying foreign economic plunder and worsening puppetry of the Aquino regime to the US government.”

    • Obama’s Syrian cyberwar conundrum

      But President Barack Obama appears to have taken the option of cyber attacks off the table. The reason: the United States is vulnerable to counterstrikes.

    • U.S. can’t have it both ways on drone killings

      Furthermore, the people of this country have the right to understand how the administration constitutionally justifies the killing of one of its citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki, in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen.

    • President Obama’s targeted kill list takes a hit

      In a victory for transparency, opponents of the President’s veil of secrecy over drone killings has been partially lifted by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeal’s opinion filed on Monday in New York Times v. Departments of Justice (DOJ), Defense (DoD), and the CIA (Case Nos. 13-422 and 13-445).

    • CIA ‘torture’ methods included these 21 songs, artists
    • CIA Arms and Trains Syria Rebels Through Secret Jordan Programme

      The United States is siphoning weapons and providing combat training to moderate Syria rebels via a secret Central Intelligence Agency programme in Jordan.

      Growing US involvement has been propelled by continued strikes on rebel strongholds by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

    • CIA “secretly” providing arms to Syrian rebels and terrorists

      Among the terrorists groups directly and indirectly affiliated with the Syrian rebels, and possibly benefiting from US support include the following:

      1) Al-Nusra Front (ANF), an Al-Qaeda associate operating in Syria.

      ANF – has been described as “the most aggressive and successful arm of the rebel force”. This group has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, the United States (see article: US blacklists Syrian rebel group al-Nusra http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/12/2012121117048117723.html) , Australia, and the United Kingdom.

      Abu Mohammad al-Golani, the current leader of ANF, has confirmed the ANF’s allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. By May 2013, a faction of ANF declared its loyalty to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

    • Senate Report Confirms Ethical Breaches of Health Professionals in CIA Torture Program

      Physicians for Human Rights Calls for Public Reckoning on U.S. Violations of the Convention Against Torture

    • New Report on CIA Torture Expected to Be Declassified
    • CIA Acts In Syria, Slipping Weapons To Rebels In Secret
    • CIA Is Quietly Ramping Up Aid To Syrian Rebels, Sources Say
    • Agents of Destabilization in Venezuela: The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy

      Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February – have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy “NED” and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns.

    • Op-Ed: New Wikileaks cable shows the immorality of the U.S. government

      Inspected by US and Iraqi forces since late 2005, Site 4 is a detention facility operated by the Iraqi National Police, which according to the cable is overcrowded, with little running water, and sewage spills. In one inspection of the facility, prisoners told the inspectors cases of abuse, rape, and molestation. The gravest of the crimes was children, held illegally in the jail, informing investigators they were anally raped, beaten, and forced to perform oral sex on interrogators.

    • US Troops Arrive In Lithuania Amid Ukraine Tensions

      The United States deployed 150 paratroopers to Lithuania today, part of efforts by Washington to reassure its eastern European allies, worried by events in Ukraine, that NATO would offer protection if they face Russian aggression.

      A total of 600 US troops are to be deployed to Poland and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for infantry exercises. They are expected to remain in the region on rotation until the end of the year.

    • US brings Europe to Brink of War over Ukraine – Intentionally

      The situation in Ukraine continues escalating. A military operation against pro-reform protesters in southeastern Ukraine, launched by Kiev, is tearing the country apart and forced Russia’s move to heighten security at its border. US Secretary of State, John Kerry, threatens that “the window to change course is closing” while additional troops are deployed to Lithuania. Using discredited “evidence” prompts some observers to doubt Kerry’s “wisdom”. Don’t, said a German analyst who reiterates that the US is systematically pushing Europe into a crisis for which the US has planned for decades.

    • Defending economic sovereignty

      The US pivot to Asia, which is the raison d’etre for the entire visit, is, after all, not just about shifting its military weight closer to China. It also involves repairing and reinforcing its economic and political alliances in the region and creating more favorable conditions for furthering the neoliberal agenda to arrest its own deep crisis and overall decline.

    • British helicopter crash: Five UK troops killed as Taliban claims responsibility for Afghanistan attack

      Ahmad Zia Durrani, a spokesman for the Kandahar police chief’s office, said the helicopter was on a “training flight” and that it was unclear why it crashed.

    • Ecuador expels US group at embassy

      Ecuador has ordered the U.S. Embassy’s military group, about 20 Defense Department employees, to leave the country by month’s end, in a further indication of strained relations.

      The group was ordered to halt operations in Ecuador in a letter dated April 7, the U.S. Embassy confirmed Friday.

    • Ecuador expels US officers, cancels military program

      Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has ordered all US military officers to leave the country by the end of month and canceled a security cooperation program with the Pentagon, US officials said on Friday.

    • Pentagon staff heeds Ecuador’s wish to leave

      Ecuador has ordered the U.S. Embassy’s military group, about 20 Defense Department employees, to leave the country by month’s end, in a further indication of strained relations.

    • Assange stakeout costs Londoners $9 mn
    • Scotland Yard runs up huge bill for keeping an eye on Assange

      Scotland Yard has run up a “ludicrous” bill of £6 million (Dh37 million) patrolling outside an embassy in London since Julian Assange sought refuge there two years ago.

      Police are stationed day and night outside the Ecuadorian Embassy, racking up £1million in overtime alone, as they wait to arrest the WikiLeaks founder, who claimed asylum as he faced extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.

    • Julian Assange Punches Out Priest On Easter Sunday

      The WikiLeaks founder met with boxing champion Solomon Egberime, then had a sparring match with Father David Smith (a.k.a. ‘Fighting’ Father Dave), his team tells The Huffington Post. Smith describes himself on Twitter as a professional boxer, 6th degree black belt and social activist (as well as an Anglican parish priest).

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Simon Ostrovsky

      But none of my interview was shown in the programme, nor was I mentioned. Instead a New Labour minister was interviewed and he was allowed to say, unchallenged, that the film was absolutely shocking and the British government had no prior idea this was happening; they would now look into it etc. Needless to say they still did nothing, nor has anything ever been done to have child slave cotton banned from the UK. Why do you think Primark is so cheap?

    • Big Tech Companies Agree To Pay Up Over Hiring Collusion

      Last month, we pointed out that Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel would almost certainly settle, rather than face an ongoing lawsuit concerning their collusive hiring practices, in which they promised not to poach employees from one another in an effort to keep employees longer and (more importantly for them) to keep salaries down. That has now come to pass, with the four companies agreeing to pay out $324 million to settle the charges. This is good. As we noted in our original story, the hiring collusion was shameful and, worse, antithetical to the kind of job shifting and idea sharing that helped make Silicon Valley into Silicon Valley.

    • From colonialism to new-colonialism

      The relationship between advanced economies and their developing counterparts is complex. Human rights and working conditions in emerging nations, where many products consumed in developed countries are made, have been debated for many years. The contours of the Rana Plaza accident that killed 1,100 people, which I discussed yesterday*, the first anniversary of the tragedy, captured the key issues of that debate. But none of it is new. Its origins lie in the colonial past.

    • ‘Happy Days’ no more: Middle-class families squeezed as expenses soar, wages stall

      On a routine drive to the beauty salon, Robin Johnson had one of those life-happens moments: Her 13-year-old Durango, with 200,000 miles on the odometer, overheated and started sputtering. Convinced that the car was on its last legs, Robin and Scott Johnson scrutinized their already-tight family budget, looking for a way to fit in car payments.

    • I’m a Whistleblower: Want Fries with That?

      At age 53, everything changed. Following my whistleblowing first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, I was run out of the good job I had held for more than 20 years with the U.S. Department of State. As one of its threats, State also took aim at the pension and benefits I’d earned, even as it forced me into retirement. Would my family and I lose everything I’d worked for as part of the retaliation campaign State was waging? I was worried. That pension was the thing I’d counted on to provide for us and it remained in jeopardy for many months. I was scared.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Remote storage disservice

      Microsoft’s remote storage disservice, OneDrive, has been caught inserting modifications into code in some of the files users store there.

      Although this has not been reported about any other remote storage disservice, any of them could start doing this, which means you would be a fool to trust them with anything other than checksummed files.

      All of these disservices spy on their users, and that is plenty of reason to reject them, for anything other than encrypted (and checksummed) files. In order for the encryption to be trustworthy, you need to do it on your own computer with free software.

      Services provided by network servers can raise several different ethical issues, including nonfree client-side JavaScript (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html), surveillance (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html), and SaaSS (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html). Whether any of these problems applies depends on the facts.

      The purpose of the marketing buzzword “cloud” is to encourage you to disregard the facts and not judge. Don’t let them “cloud” your mind: reject the term “cloud”.

    • The revolving door between Google and the Department of Defense
    • OwnCloud, an open source alternative to DropBox

      My previous two posts were about the angst of privileged middle classes. I wrote first about the middle class habit of moving into the catchment area for good schools. Then I excused our tendency to maintain a less-than ethical existence. Untrained eyes could be forgiven for mistaking my motives in writing these posts. Am I not simply trying to assuage my own guilt at doing precisely those things?

    • WATCH: Hillary Clinton Blasts Edward Snowden for Fleeing to Russia and Chin

      Hillary Clinton didn’t have to directly deal with Edward Snowden’s leaks when she was secretary of state. Clinton had already stepped down from her post by the time the Guardian published its first revelations on the expansive scope of spying by the National Security Agency. But at an event at the University of Connecticut on Wednesday night, Clinton made it clear that she’s no fan of the NSA leaker, insinuating that Snowden had cooperated with countries hostile to the United States and unintentionally aided terrorist organizations. “I don’t understand why he couldn’t have been part of the debate at home,” she said.

    • Verizon Challenged the NSA’s Phone Data Collection Program and Lost

      One of the phone companies participating in the US National Security Agency’s call data collection program challenged its legality before the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court early this year. But according to newly declassified court filings, that challenge was rejected.

    • Full Show: Disband The NSA

      Shahid Buttar, the Executive Director of The Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance sit down with host Dennis Trainor, Jr. in this episode of Acronym TV to discuss, among other things…

    • NSA internal documents lays down US surveillance practices

      The NSA document is very clear about data collection or surveillance of U.S. citizens living in foreign country.

    • NSA’s Utah Data Center using less water than thought — so far
    • The Canadian Government’s ‘Secure’ Phones Come Straight from the NSA

      “World leaders may be fretting over whether the NSA bugged their phones, but Canadian government officials aren’t particularly worried—they bought theirs directly from the agency. A survey of procurement records kept on public government websites reveals that Canada has spent over $50 million purchasing a bevy of secure communications equipment from the largest branch of the American intelligence community.”

    • Canada Bought NSA Telecom Equipment To The Tune Of $50 Million-Plus: Report
    • Campus Activism Against NSA Spying is Growing Fast

      EFF has been on the road, traveling to cities and towns across the country to bring our message of digital rights and reform to community and student groups.

      And while we had the tremendous opportunity to talk about our work and our two lawsuits against the NSA, the best part of the trip was learning about all of the inspiring and transformative activism happening everyday on the local level to combat government surveillance and defend our digital rights.

      We met students and professors in Eugene, Oregon who held a campus-wide digital rights event at the University of Oregon. There, students had the opportunity to unpack their campus privacy policy, download and learn freedom-enhancing software, and explore their library’s open access initiative.

    • The NSA Comes Home: Police Departments Conceal Phone Tracking Equipment From Courts

      The intricate surveillance equipment used by the federal government to track and store the cellphone data of millions of people and to monitor terrorism suspects is making its way to Main Street.

    • Hillary Clinton Mocks Snowden, Displays Her Ignorance When It Comes to Whistleblowers

      Both Obama and now Clinton want the public to overlook the administration’s history of support for spying, as presented by The New York Times, prior to the disclosures. Obama aides anonymously told the Times that the president had been “surprised to learn after the leaks…just how far the surveillance had gone.” The administration fought groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the courts as they tried to convince judges to release documents that would at minimum confirm the secret legal interpretations of surveillance authorities under the law. So, it is fraudulent for Obama, Clinton or any other politician to claim to Americans that the White House was about to bring transparency and promote debate on government surveillance.

    • More Internet than the Internet

      An experimental ‘mesh network’ in Tunisia aims to curtail government spying. The project has a surprising backer – the U.S. State Department

    • Putin calls internet a ‘CIA project’ renewing fears of web breakup

  • Civil Rights

    • Indiana adopts protections from warrantless searches

      Indiana state lawmakers have taken steps to improve privacy protections for people by restricting police collection of cellphone data.

      Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill into law prohibiting police from searching cellphones during routine traffic stops without a search warrant.

    • The Money Behind Fox’s Promotion Of Cliven Bundy’s Battle With The Feds

      Right-wing media have been rushing to distance themselves from the Nevada rancher they’ve spent weeks championing after Cliven Bundy revealed his racist worldview, but two of Bundy’s biggest cheerleaders — Sean Hannity and Fox News — have vested corporate, financial, and political interests in the promotion of Cliven Bundy’s anti-government land ownership agenda.

    • Former DHS Watchdog, A Tyrant, Failure And Alleged Felon, ‘Punished’ With Transfer To Another Government Agency

      Good news, Americans! The former “top watchdog” for the Department of Homeland Security, Charles K. Edwards, was an incredibly perverse blend of crooked and spineless and yet we still managed to avoid being terrorized to death during his run as Inspector General (2011-2013). That’s the resilience of the American public. Even while the agency was being bumblefucked into (even greater) uselessness, those who hate us for our way of life (which now includes drone strikes, neverending military ‘interventions’ and the constant watching of damn near everybody) were unable to find a way to maneuver around the “security” “provided” by the DHS.

    • New Lawsuit Claims FBI Used No Fly List To Pressure Muslims Into Becoming Informants
    • Switzerland-Cuba Association Decries Zunzuneo Subversive Project

      The Switzerland-Cuba association Geneva’s section condemned the secret program of the United States Agency for International Assistance (USAID), called Zunzuneo, which was targeted at boosting subversion and destabilization in the Caribbean country.

      It is evident that the US government does not give up its effort to destroy the Cuban Revolution, if necessary by the flagrant violation of the national legislation, and the international regulations, noted the organization in a communique released today.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Netflix accuses Comcast of charging twice for the same internet content

      When Netflix opposed Comcast’s looming merger with Time Warner Cable on Monday, the streaming video company did so by raising net neutrality concerns. It argued that Comcast could use its newfound power to charge a toll for content that might compete with its own video offerings — a toll like the one that Netflix already found itself paying to improve the quality of streaming for Comcast customers. Comcast wasn’t too happy about that, of course, firing back that it was Netflix’s decision to cut out the middleman and work directly with Comcast to speed things up, and that the fee is standard practice for companies that offer “transit service” to quickly move data between networks.

    • Creating a Two-Speed Internet

      Dividing traffic on the Internet into fast and slow lanes is exactly what the Federal Communications Commission would do with its proposed …

    • FCC Proposal Angers Net Neutrality Proponents

      FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says new proposed rules will protect competition, while consumer advocates call them an “insult” to the open Internet.

    • Is FCC the solution for net neutrality?

      The problem is that ISP’s are more than capable of increasing speeds in the U.S., but choose not to so they can gouge consumers for more money. For those who are in areas that offer Google Fiber, have you noticed how prices have mysteriously dropped and services have improved on the part of the competition?

    • The FCC’s “fast lane” rule is awful for the Internet—just ask the FCC

      The proposal would formalize pay-for-play arrangements in which streaming video companies and other types of Web services pay Internet service providers for a faster path to consumers over the “last mile” of the network.

    • Verizon Knows You’re A Sucker: Takes Taxpayer Subsidies For Broadband, Doesn’t Deliver, Lobbies To Drop Requirements

      Ten years ago (!?!) we wrote about how Verizon conned Pennsylvania taxpayers out of billions of dollars. Verizon predecessor Bell Atlantic had cut a deal with the state to wire up every home in the state with symmetrical fiber. That didn’t happen. And while Verizon’s former CEO Ivan Seidenberg did, in fact, make a big bet on fiber with FiOS, Wall Street hated it and kept punishing the company for daring to do something so stupid as investing in the future. This is a quarter-to-quarter world, and spending on capital improvements that would bulk up the entire economy over the long haul is not a bet that Wall Street folks want to make, since it doesn’t pay off in a few months. So, it was no surprise that once Seidenberg was out of the picture, it basically dropped all plans to expand FiOS — and then started looking to push its DSL users to cable providers, so it could focus on the wireless business instead.

    • The FCC Is About to Axe-Murder Net Neutrality — What You Should Know

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Stalemate: U.S. and Japan Fail to Advance Trade Talks

      President Obama recently wrapped up a meeting in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, where the leaders once again failed to make a breakthrough on their deadlock in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.

      Obama and Abe have been in negotiations over Japan’s treatment of sensitive agricultural products, including rice, beef, pork, wheat, and dairy products, and over trade in automobiles — but a breakthrough is still out of reach. This lack of progress is just one of several indicators that the TPP is faltering, if not failing.

    • Copyrights

      • Ex-Wife Allegedly Using Copyright To Take Down Husband’s Suicide Note

        Via Silverscarcat we learn of an absolutely bizarre situation in which it appears that the ex-wife of a man who committed suicide late last year, is claiming copyright on his lengthy suicide letter in an attempt to get it taken offline entirely. It should be noted that all of the public information at this point is coming from websites that advocate for men’s rights in family courts (i.e., not quite a neutral third party), but it is true that original version of the letter has been removed from Scribd, and the reason stated is a copyright claim. The site A Voice for Men has refused to take the letter down, but provides the following explanation:

      • Economist Explains How Copyright Just Isn’t Working

        Alex Tabarrock, one of the contributors to Marginal Revolution (and associate professor of Economics at George Mason University) has often dealt with the subject of intellectual property from an economist’s perspective. Recently, he changed things up and posted about his personal experiences with the frustrations inherent to intellectual property laws. Dealing with copyright in practice is much, much more aggravating and ridiculous than dealing with it in theory.

      • RIAA Claims That It Is ‘Standing Up For’ Older Musicians That It Actually Left To Rot

        The RIAA is not exactly known for its positive treatment of musicians. If you’re at all familiar with the art of RIAA accounting, you’d know about how they structure deals to totally screw over musicians, doing everything possible to make sure they never get paid a dime. Yes, many are given advances, but those advances are “loans” on terrible terms in which the labels add on every possible expense that needs to be “paid back” before you ever see another dime. Very few musicians ever “recoup” — even after the labels have made back many times what they actually gave the artists. For the most succinct example of how the labels make out like bandits, profiting mightily while still telling artists they haven’t recouped, here’s Tim Quirk, who a few years back explained how it worked with his band, Too Much Joy (TMJ):

      • Criminal Conviction In South Africa For Posting A Movie To The Pirate Bay

        A few years ago, we wrote about an insanely aggressive anti-piracy campaign in South Africa, in which the local version of the RIAA (RISA) suggested people “shoot the pirate.” That hyperbolic and ultra-aggressive campaign resulted in some actual violence, when RISA sent a group of artists (armed with that slogan) onto the streets to “confront” counterfeit CD sellers. So, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to find out that a man in South Africa has been criminally convicted for posting a torrent for a local movie to the Pirate Bay, and given a suspended prison sentence.

Microsoft Has Failed in the Area of Hardware

Posted in Hardware, Microsoft at 8:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Microsoft — unlike Nokia — cannot fall/revert back to the tyres business

Truck wheel

Summary: Xbox One is a failed product and “Surface” is losing hundreds of millions of dollars

THE LATEST episode of TechBytes covers the good news that “Microsoft May Halt Xbox One Production”; it’s news that reminds us of an important fact: “We know that the company has shipped 5 million consoles to retailers since launch, but Microsoft hasn’t been as forthcoming with actual end user sales data.”

When Microsoft does not divulge these figures it always means that Microsoft has something to hide. The same thing has historically been true when it comes to Windows (number of licences issued) and other Microsoft hardware. Microsoft is full of lies.

In other interesting news, Microsoft’s “Surface Loses” because it’s a losing product, by design. As Robert Pogson put it (citing a Microsoft booster, Gavin Clarke): “Do the maths: it cost M$ $2.1billion to sell $1.8billion worth of Surfaces… That’s a loss of $300 million. Eewww! Even without charging itself the tax, they can’t compete in the market.”

The headline at The Register (chosen by the editor) is Microsoft: The MORE Surfaces it sells, the MORE money it loses” (so it’s a bit like Xbox, which lost billions of dollars over the years).

Microsoft is really struggling to re-invent itself for the post-Windows world. So far it has failed and there is now some Microsoft advertising from Microsoft Peter who promotes subscription-based Windows — a horrible idea which is sure to bring rise to GNU/Linux-based operating systems ($0 purchase and subscription charges).

In this article we are citing no Microsoft-hostile sources; instead we link to props of Microsoft, rather than journalists. It helps show just how bad things have become for Microsoft. Microsoft Jack has been defecting away from Microsoft as of late (we wish him well for that), repeatedly promoting some of Microsoft’s competitors for the first time in many years, unlike some in the British press. Gavin Clarke may pretend to be covering GNU/Linux, but most of the time he is just the source/outlet of Microsoft agenda, including his new piece whitewashing Bill Hilf.

We are entering an interesting era where Microsoft is not only struggling (along with Apple) but is also fighting publicly and aggressively against GNU/Linux using attack ads (more so under the 'new' leadership) and racketeering. █

TechBytes Episode 88: Hardware, Games, and Emulation

Posted in TechBytes at 8:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

TechBytes 2014

Direct download as Ogg (1:35:15, 41.3 MB) | High-quality MP3 (44.8 MB) | Low-quality Ogg (24.8 MB)

Summary: An episode which focuses on the role of Free software when it comes to development of games and the role of GNU/Linux in gaming platforms

We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows.

As embedded (HTML5):

Read the rest of this entry »

04.25.14

Firm of Microsoft’s ‘Former’ Manager Explains Its Marketing of a Bug That Created Unreasonable Scare and FUD Against Free Software

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Security at 2:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: “We’ve obviously got a lot more name recognition than we did before,” explains the firm of Mr. Schmidt

BRITIAN’S The ‘Guardian’ has a new article which finally asks the right question: “why did a computer bug have a name and a logo?”

We already know, based on a post-mortem and a timeline, that the firm behind the branding had nothing to do with originally finding the bug. It just exploited and capitalised on it to spread FUD against Free software, never really noting the Microsoft connection and the mysterious timing. It was a huge marketing campaign of some kind. Months ago we wrote about some openssl flaws, but none made the press as much as this whole “Heartbleed” thing, which many journalists are finally saying was overblown. We are generally trying not to waste time by promoting distracting articles about this bug which had already been patched (by all major GNU/Linux distributors) before it was made public knowledge.

Watch what the opportunists at Codenomicon are saying (the CEO): “I really believe that the name and the logo and the website helped fuel the community interest in this” (and spread lots of security FUD against GNU/Linux on the very same date that Window XP support ended).

Down at the bottom the article states: “It’s not all altruism. Chartier foresees a boost in Codenomicon’s prospects in the future. “We’ve obviously got a lot more name recognition than we did before,” he says.”

So as we said before, this was self-promotion for a firm that works with Microsoft and has Microsoft connections. It is also timely FUD for Microsoft and its media moles to capitalise on, as they demonstrably did. █

Apple Gets Closer to Microsoft While Both Companies Are Rotting

Posted in Apple, Microsoft at 2:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Evil assimilated to evil

Summary: Dwindling sales and financial concerns (in addition to buybacks) lead Apple to pretty much the same horrible policies as Microsoft, including enormous aggression and back doors

“Cook [is] promoting Microsoft,” iophk wrote. “He did not need Microsoft before for Apple to grow to what it has become.”

Indeed, based on this article, Apple is following Microsoft’s financial ‘crookery’ [sic] by buying its own shares to create an illusion of stability. Microsoft seems to be relying on government help (being a surveillance mole) for its existence and Apple too joined PRISM right after Steve Jobs had died. Given the patent strategy, it has become hard to distinguish between Apple and Microsoft. Like Microsoft, Apple is now a giant in decline [1] and there is no sign of turnaround. Apple is now focused on just ‘innovating’ more “Rounded Corners” and “Curved Display”, based on a pro-Apple site [2] (Apple uses such patents in litigation against Android/Linux) and back doors are consciously left open in both iOS and OS X, confirming what we learned from last year’s NSA leaks (claiming that Apple was providing back doors and making its software easy to infiltrate). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Q1 Apple Results: iPhone market share down to 15% – plus some other bloodbath news
  2. New iPhone 6 Renderings Highlight Curved Display, Rounded Corners

    Following a report from Mac Otakara yesterday claiming the iPhone 6 will feature a curved glass display and an all-aluminum rear shell, French website Nowhereelse.fr [Google Translate] and designer Martin Hajek have partnered up to showcase renders visualizing such a device based off of the recent information.

  3. Apple Leaves Users Vulnerable By Not Fixing iOS and OS X Security Issues Simultaneously

    Notable computer security researcher Kristin Paget, who worked on Apple’s security team before leaving for Tesla in early 2014, has taken to her blog (via Ars Technica) to criticize Apple for fixing more than a dozen security flaws in iOS weeks after patching them in OS X.

FCC’s Tom Wheeler Attacks Net Neutrality, Showing His Previous Promises to be a Bunch of Worthless Garbage

Posted in Intellectual Monopoly at 2:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Welcome ‘soft’ censorship

Thomas Wheeler

Thomas Wheeler; photo by Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / December 12, 2013

Summary: The vision of ‘soft’ censorship, long sought after by corporate media, is finally here in the form of slow lanes for 99% of us

NOTHING surprises us when it comes to the FCC’s betrayal, at least not anymore. We wrote a great deal about Net Neutrality (dozens of times before) not because it relates to software but because as a site that drives around 100 GB of traffic per month we are very much affected by the issue and we should probably throw yet another opinion out there, despite the issue being covered very widely (which is good) to shed light on the seriousness of the matter.

One of our readers sent us this link which helps show the role of corporate lobbying in all this. As Mike Masnick put it: “We’ve talked plenty about the big revolving door between government and big business lately, but there are still some moments that are purely insane that show just how broken the system is. On Wednesday, news broke that former FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker has been named the new CEO of CTIA, the main lobbying organization for mobile phone operators. Baker is no stranger to questionable revolving door moves, seeing as just months after she voted to approve Comcast’s merger with NBC Universal, she took a top lobbying job with Comcast. Funny how that works.

“But, in this case, it’s even more ridiculous because, as Jon Brodkin points out, the current head of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, previously was CEO of CTIA as well. And prior to that he was CEO of NCTA (the cable industry’s main lobbying group). And, to top it off, the current head of CTIA is none other than former FCC chair Michael Powell.”

Here is more about it. It’s simply white collar corruption and we should treat it accordingly. Here is an oldish quote regarding Net Neutrality and beyond, from President Obama himself: “I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists — and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.”

Nonsense. False promises and no hope.

As one article put it, we now have “Net Discrimination” and it is being stamped into law. As another article put it, “FCC guts net neutrality to pave way to tiered internet” and there is similar analysis elsewhere. Well, as usual we have a deceiving headline from the Murdoch propaganda press (we highlighted this pattern before) and as one blog put it, “FCC Plots Murder of Blogs on Behalf of Billionaire Media Lords” (like Murdoch).

The cable and media giants are not really liking it when other points of view are being sent across, especially some in video and audio (which is where traffic gets very expensive). It is clear that for financial reasons some shows will have to shut down as a result of the FCC’s (lobbyists’) latest moves, which were driven in part (as precursor) by Comcast and Netflix. They are banning competition by passing new laws, or at least suppressing competition. There is now a White House petition for Net Neutrality, but these petitions usually prove to be a waste of time; they might generate some press, but the White House is not genuinely interested in serving people, only corporations. There are still some weeks left for things to change, just like in Europe (where Net Neutrality is being defended and finalisation of such a decision is imminent).

What big businesses and lobbyists seek here is protectionism. They are making sure that the Internet becomes useful only for surveillance and propaganda, as much of the rest is censored, made expensive, slowed down, and suppressed behind protocols that make the Web “Hollyweb”.

As we pointed out before, Tom Wheeler is more like a mole, never really committing to Net Neutrality. Some sites provided proof of it while continuing their coverage of the latest developments.

This is not about videos. Like many other policies, “congestion” is an excuse, like “terrorism” and “think of the children!”

They are starting with videos and later, once the presence is already there, expand to more areas and media types, driving small sites out of the Web. What we deal with here is erosion of Internet freedom and rights, promoting the big corporations and subverting equality of speech.

Net neutrality is not just some Utopia. Subscribers who pay for the Internet connection typically bear the costs and if there is a capacity issue, then expansion can be taken care of. People pay for it already. Watch the article many sites have been citing, spinning the news as a discussion about a “Fast Lane”. This is nonsense. As one person put it, “NYT framing is also slavish. It’s not a “fast lane” it’s the ability to throttle and extort everyone that is being allowed. Wheeler’s assertion that this kind of behavior won’t be tolerated ignores prior and ongoing throttling. Shame on Wheeler and the NYT.”

So the rich and powerful will have their traffic and packets treated specially, at the expense of others’. They are also putting DRM in HTML and incorporating other abuses against the Web, including DPI and other forms of surveillance. According to the NYT: “The Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules that allow Internet service providers to offer a faster lane through which to send video and other content to consumers, as long as a content company is willing to pay for it, according to people briefed on the proposals.”

That’s deceiving. They use the same propaganda language that the cable oligopoly has been using all along. It continues by saying: “The proposed rules are a complete turnaround for the F.C.C. on the subject of so-called net neutrality, the principle that Internet users should have equal ability to see any content they choose, and that no content providers should be discriminated against in providing their offerings to consumers.”

It’s not much of a turnaround for those who have watched the FCC being taken over by lobbyists (and revolving doors actions, including from Microsoft). The FCC should be disbanded and a new body put in charge of these issues. The FCC is no longer what it’s supposed to be; it has been hijacked.

It is a turning point in the fight against censorship and the fight for information on the Web. Costs are being used in this type of warfare; So shows like TechBytes will be disciminated against and sent more slowly (if at all) to listeners, unless the host pays additional, prohibitive costs.

Watch another example of corporate press spin: “Internet service providers could strike special deals with Internet companies like Netflix or Skype for preferential treatment, under proposals by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, violating the ideal of equal access for all consumers”

This is not about fast lanes for large corporations and mass media’s corporate masters; it is about SLOW lanes for those who are not in a list of “approved” media or whatever. It’s ‘soft’ censorship. █

Links 25/4/2014: Steam Desktop Client Updated, GNU/Linux in Swiss Schools

Posted in News Roundup at 1:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Intel NUC sports 5W Atom, offered as kit or SBC

      Intel announced a fanless mini-tower “NUC” mini-PC for thin clients, equipped with a 5-Watt Atom E3815 SoC and a new custom expansion interface.

      The Linux-compatible Intel NUC Kit DE3815TYKHE is Intel’s first fanless member of its NUC (Next Unit of Computing) family of mini-PCs. The computer is also available as a single board computer (SBC) called the NUC Board DE3815TYBE.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Netanyahu Continues Vicious

      But even with all that, the appalling smug reaction of Netanyahu is sickening. Israel at no stage had the slightest intention of entering any meaningful peace process, stopping settlement building, or reducing the dispossession and discrimination suffered by Arabs of all sorts within Israel itself. The World’s most vicious and unrelenting theological and racist state continues to be just that. The United States was not in any sense genuinely involved in abetting a peace process; it was managing the process of genocide of the Palestinians, drawn out over decades, just conducted with enough disguise to allow the mainstream media to pretend it is not happening.

    • Gerhard Schroeder Buys Holiday Home in Crimea

      Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has purchased a 1250 square meter holiday home in Crimea.

      According to a report in the Sepastabol Times, Schroeder bought the beachfront property in Crimea’s Yalta district last Tuesday for €1.2 million in an all-cash deal. The posh mansion reportedly has 7 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, and an indoor olympic-sized swimming pool

      Sources close to Schroeder say he intends to spend his summers in Yalta and is unconcerned about the international controversy surrounding Russia’s annexation of the territory from Ukraine last month.

    • Drones cannot replace politics

      The overriding fact, however, is that drone warfare by the U.S. is achieving the opposite of what it was meant to do. Under the 2001 Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), the U.S. government can engage in targeted killings, including attacks on U.S. citizens (three of whom have been killed by drones), without further warrant; even the targets, namely “associated forces” of al-Qaeda, are loosely defined.

    • An Artist’s Attempt to Plot Out All Drones Using Satellite Images

      Drones — known for their stealthiness and secret operations — are becoming exposed photo by photo by one artist.

      James Bridle, 33, is using open-source satellite imagery to show the location of drones around the world to increase overall visibility. He consults news articles, Wikipedia pages, Google Maps, Google Earth and other publicly available satellite maps to locate the drones and snap photos.

    • FOIA win against government on drones

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • The French Sensation: Income Inequality in 700 Pages and a Hundred Graphs

      The hottest book everybody is talking about, that no one has read and no can get their hands on, is a giant, data-packed tome on income inequality covering three hundred years of history by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Is there a reason he’s getting the rock star treatment? Is it the symptoms that resonate (our drift into oligarchy), or is it the cure (a progressive tax on wealth)?

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • New leak exposes how the FBI directed Anonymous’ hacks

      Dozens of pages of previously unreleased documents pertaining to the prosecution of hacktivist Jeremy Hammond have been released, further linking the United States government to a gamut of cyberattacks waged against foreign nations.

      Hammond, 29, made waves last November when he defied a US federal judge’s order and told a packed New York City courtroom on the day of his sentencing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had relied on an undercover informant to direct members of the amorphous hacking collective Anonymous to target the websites of adversarial nations.

      The latest releases now lend credence to Hammond’s claims that the FBI guided Anonymous into conducting cyberattacks at their behest, regardless of the sheer illegality involved. The documents — a previously unpublished statement purported to be authored by Hammond and never-before-seen court files —now corroborate the role of the feds in these proxy cyberwars of sorts.

      Using the internet alias “Sabu,” the turncoat — Hector Xavier Monsegur of New York — supplied Hammond with lists of vulnerable targets that were then compromised, Hammond said in his courtroom testimony on Nov. 15. Data and details were pillaged and exploited, Hammond said, and then shared with the informant and, ergo, the FBI.

    • Muslim Americans Who Claim FBI Used No-Fly List to Coerce Them Into Becoming Informants File Lawsuit

      Naveed Shinwari is one of four American Muslims who filed suit against the government this week for placing them on the U.S. “no-fly list” in order to coerce them into becoming FBI informants. The plaintiffs say the government refuses to explain why they were named on the no-fly list. They also believe that their names continue to be listed because they would not agree to become FBI informants and spy on their local communities. “It’s very frustrating, you feel helpless,” Shinwari says. “No one will tell you how you can get off of it, how you got on it. It has a profound impact on people’s lives.” We are also joined by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is seeking to remove the men from the no-fly list and establish a new legal mechanism to challenge placement on it.

    • Jackson: Gun owner unarmed, unwelcome in Maryland
    • Man Claims Police Searched Vehicle For Licensed Handgun Kept At Home

      A Florida man and his family were returning home from a wedding and Christmas celebrations in New Jersey when they were allegedly pulled over, forced out of their vehicle and searched by several Maryland police – all because John Filippidis is licensed to carry a firearm.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Our Internet Needs More Than “Internet Governance”

      Under the influence by governments and corporations, the final outcome document of the NETmundial forum became a weak, toothless and disappointing text. Despite the Brazilian president’s courageous speeches, NETmundial illustrates just how farcical and pointless efforts for a “global multistakeholder Internet Governance” are. If anything, the Net should be “governed” by citizens directly, independently of these circles and without waiting for the “global consensus”. Our shared communications infrastructure must be considered a common good, politically defined as such and defended.

    • IPv4 Space Almost Completely Allocated

      In February of 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated its final two /8 IPv4 address blocks of address space. That event marked the end of the so called “free pool” availability of IPv4 address space available to Regional Internet Registries (RIR), but it didn’t mean that IPv4 had become unavailable.

    • NETmundial puts us on the right track

  • Intellectual Monopolies

04.24.14

Links 24/4/2014: OpenPower Foundation, Core Infrastructure Initiative

Posted in News Roundup at 5:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • A Sovereign Server

    Alex Payne, formerly a developer at Twitter and Simple, has released an interesting set of scripts he’s calling “Sovereign” that help with building cloud services on your own server. I’ve been interested in running my own email, calendar, file sharing, and other services for a few years now, and since Alex did most of the heavy lifting already, I decided it was time to give it a shot. My experience so far has been good, but this is still rarefied air, and not for the inexperienced.

  • Events

    • LinuxCon Keynotes Display How Open Source Methods Are Spreading

      You’d expect LinuxCon content to be centered around Linux — and of course the ten tracks we have between LinuxCon and CloudOpen will feature the latest in developer and SysAdmin/DevOps technical topics such as Linux kernel development, virtualization, containers and open cloud technologies. (Plus a keynote speaker you may have heard of: Linus Torvalds.) But it’s been inspiring to see the principles of Linux and open source — open collaboration, meritocracy, crowdsourcing — spread to other areas of society, from education to 3D printing to medical devices and cars.

    • Linux Foundation Event to Highlight Docker, 3D Printing, MOOCs

      Docker container virtualization, massive open online courses, 3D printing and running open source software in your car are among the featured topics at the upcoming LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America event. Each of those subjects appears on the list of keynotes for the conference, which the Linux Foundation just announced.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • TryStack Lets You Tinker with an OpenStack Cluster–Before You Leap

      Late last year, survey results began to appear left and right confirming that IT departments around the world were either planning to deploy the OpenStack cloud computing platform or considering deploying it. An OpenStack Foundation survey found that cost savings and the flexibility of an open cloud platform were key drivers behind these trends.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • How to help your open source project be a success/Five common pitfalls to avoid in open source

      Open source software, hardware, and methods are gaining popularity and access to them couldn’t be more prolific. If you’re thinking about starting a new open source project, there are five common pitfalls you should be aware of before you begin.

      Don’t despair if you’ve already started your project and are just now reading this! These pointers can be helpful at any stage if things are still running smoothly.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • NGINX 1.6 Brings SPDY 3.1 & Other New Features

        NGINX 1.6 features improvements to its SSL support, SPDY 3.1 protocol support, cache revalidation with conditional requests, an auth request module, and many other changes and bug-fixes.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Xnee among hotpicks :)
    • GNU Cgicc 3.2.14
    • GNU Compiler Collection gains major new functionality

      The Free Software Foundation’s GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), featuring front ends for such languages as C, C++, Objective-C, and Java, has been upgraded with improvements for devirtualization and fixes to bottlenecks.

    • Photoshop without going broke

      GIMP: The cross-platform, open-source GNU image manipulation programme may not win any awards for design, but it is arguably the most complete Photoshop replacement that you don’t need money to buy. The interface is very different, so Photoshop users will have some learning curve to negotiate, but a variety of add-ons allow GIMP plenty of flexibility. Get it at Gimp.org for your PC, Mac or Linux computer.

    • Five Best Text Editors

      If you’ve used an operating system with a command line interface, you’ve had Emacs available to you. It’s been around for decades (since Richard Stallman and Guy Steele wrote it in 1976), and its the other major text editor to stand behind in the Holy Text Editor Grail Wars. It’s not the easiest tool, but it’s definitely one of the most powerful. It has a steep learning curve, but it’s always there, ready for use. It’s had a long and storied history, but the version that most people wind up using is GNU Emacs, linked above. It’s richly featured, too—Emacs can handle almost any type of text that you throw at it, handle simple documents or complex code, or be customized with startup scripts that add features or tweak the interface and shortcuts to match your project or preference. Similarly, Emacs supports macro recording, tons of shortcuts (that you’ll have to learn to get really familiar with it), and has a ton of modules created by third parties to leverage the app for completely non-programming purposes, like project planning, calendaring, news reading, and word processing. When we say it’s powerful, we’re not kidding. In large part, its power comes from the fact that anyone can play with it and mold it into something new and useful for everyone.

  • Public Services/Government

    • US government accelerating development and release of open source

      I had a chance to catch up with David A. Wheeler, a long-time leader in advising and working with the US government on issues related to open source software. As early as the late 1990s, David was demonstrating why open source software was integral to the US goverment IT architecture, and his personal webpage is a frequently cited source on open standards, open source software, and computer security.

    • Open source propels UK healthcare data portal

      Open source is propelling the United Kingdom’s PatientView, a web-based solution written in Java that displays laboratory results, medicine information, correspondence and explanations of test results, diagnoses and treatment. PatientView is already implemented by 60 of the UK’s 70 renal clinics and is used by more than 20,000 of their patients. The solution is increasingly used by other health care disciplines, says Jenny Ure, a researcher at the Centre for Inflammation Research at the University of Edinburgh.

      “PatientView is not only providing patients with access to their records”, Dr Ure says. “It is a very useful communication tool for multidisciplinary teams, working in different hospitals and health clinics”, she said at the Medetel conference, in Luxembourg on 10 April.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Hardware

    • ARM says 64-bit chips have begun shipping in high volume

      Although ARM reported a drop in royalty payments for its embedded chip designs, the company reported an increase in licensing revenues and a healthy boost in the chips it sells into smartphones, including the first 64-bit sales.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • WHO hits back at vaccine deniers

      The World Health Organization hit back on Wednesday against vaccine deniers who claim that immunisation is pointless, risky and that the body is better off fighting disease unaided.

      “The impact of vaccines on people’s lives is truly one of the best things that one could see out there,” said Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, head of the UN health agency’s immunisation and vaccines division.

    • McDonald’s to Add Lab-Grown ‘Chicken’ McNuggets to its Menu

      McDonald‘s just announced it will be the first fast food restaurant in the United States to add lab-grown meat to its menu. Following the success of Sergey Brin’s lab-grown burger experiment in London last year, McDonald’s says they will ‘grow’ their own chicken McNuggets in special laboratories across New Jersey.

    • A fatal wait: Veterans languish and die on a VA hospital’s secret list

      At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system, many of whom were placed on a secret waiting list.

      The secret list was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.

  • Security

    • Designing a Prize for Usable Cryptography

      To that end, EFF is evaluating the feasibility of offering a prize for the first usable, secure, and private end-to-end encrypted communication tool. We believe a prize based on objective usability metrics (such as the percentage of users who were able to install and start using the tool within a few minutes, and the percentage who survived simulated impersonation or man-in-the-middle attacks) might be an effective way to determine which project or projects are best delivering communication security to vulnerable user communities; to promote and energize those tools; and to encourage interaction between developers, interaction designers and academics interested in this space.

    • Security updates for Thursday
    • DSL router patch doesn’t get rid of the backdoor, only hides it

      At the beginning of this year, secret backdoor ‘TCP 32764’ was discovered in several routers including Linksys, Netgear, and Cisco. But even after releasing the new security patch, the backdoor binary continues to be present in the new firmware version, and the backdoor on port 32764 can be opened again by sending a specific network packet to the router.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • VICE PRESIDENT JOE PROMOTES U.S. AS FRACKING MISSIONARY FORCE ON UKRAINE TRIP
    • Brazil’s World Cup Will Kick the Environment in the Teeth

      As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, a topic that plagues the country is the impact hosting these games will have on the local environment and various ecosystems. Despite efforts by soccer’s ruling body, FIFA, to “greenwash” the games—by holding “green events” during the World Cup, putting out press releases about infrastructure construction with recycled materials and speaking rhapsodically about the ways in which the stadiums are designed to capture and recycle rainwater—the truth is not nearly so rank with patchouli oil.

    • Moth study suggests hidden climate change impacts

      A 32-year study of subarctic forest moths in Finnish Lapland suggests that scientists may be underestimating the impacts of climate change on animals and plants because much of the harm is hidden from view.

      The study analyzed populations of 80 moth species and found that 90 percent of them were either stable or increasing throughout the study period, from 1978 to 2009. During that time, average annual temperatures at the study site rose 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and winter precipitation increased as well.

  • Finance

    • Interview Highlights: Paul Krugman

      In this clip, Krugman tells Bill that America is on the road to becoming a society controlled not by self-made men or women, but by their offspring.

    • Economic Update: “Tax Injustices”

      Updates on how inequality persists across generations; the nonsense of “taxes are job killers”; governor uses tax revenues to prevent unionization in a private enterprise. Major discussion of state and local taxes in the US; the economics of paying executives very high incomes; and the privatization of public services. Response to listener’s question on recent Medicare report on oversize payouts to doctors.

  • Censorship

    • Duma passes bill criminalizing rehabilitation of Nazism

      The Russian Lower House has approved a bill that provides up to five years in prison for denying the facts set out in the Nuremberg Trial, rehabilitation of Nazism and distributing false information about the actions of Russia and its allies during WWII.

    • The Aaronovitch Scandal

      1) Do you agree it is a reasonable practice for authors to persuade friends and family to post favorable reviews on Amazon? Do you agree with Mr Aaronovitch’s implication that Amazon’s policy forces authors to do this?

      2) A wayback archive search shows that in fact a number of poor reviews of Voodoo Histories were deleted by Amazon. Did Mr Aaronovitch contact Amazon to initiate these deletions?

      3) In fact, the poor reviews deleted were not, with a single exception, posted any earlier than similar quantities of five star reviews. Why was it decided to delete several one star reviews and no five star reviews? Who took this decision? Was it in any way motivated by Amazon’s own political sympathies? Was it motivated by a desire to boost sales?

  • Privacy

    • Rhodri Marsden: Use email encryption services? The trouble is, we can’t be bothered

      For years, I felt the same way about email. When I send a message to a specific email address, I figure that it’ll be opened by the person who owns that email address, and even if anyone else did stumble across that message, it’s unlikely that they’d be interested in the contents. I knew about methods of email encryption such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard), because I occasionally saw the email signatures of people who cared deeply about such things; they’d include a public key that you could use to send them encrypted messages. But rather like the lemon juice, dealing with the various keys and additional processes all seemed too much like hard work. I reckoned that the people who emphasised its importance were at best excessively geeky and at worst ridiculously paranoid.

    • Google reportedly wants to make email encryption easier, but don’t hold your breath

      Still responding to the National Security Agency surveillance revelations, Google is reportedly preparing to help users beef up Gmail security with end-to-end encryption. The search giant is working on a way to make Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption easier to use for Gmail fans, according to a report by Venture Beat.

    • Google mulls PGP integration with Gmail
    • European Media Art Festival (EMAF), Osnabrueck

      The 27th European Media Art Fest­ival began this even­ing in Osnab­rueck, Ger­many. In the wake of all the global intel­li­gence whis­tleblow­ing that has gone on over the last few years, the theme for the artists of 2014 is “We, the Enemy”.

    • Microsoft OneDrive Secretly Modifies your BackUp Files

      Why Microsoft is altering files on OneDrive for Business, is not documented anywhere by the company, but the revelation has again raised doubts about the integrity with Microsoft.

    • Microsoft OneDrive alters user files, adds unique IDs
    • “Russian Facebook” founder flees country after being forced out as CEO

      Pavel Durov, the founder of Vkontakte (VK)—the largest social network in Russia—said on Tuesday that he fled the country one day after being forced out of the company, claiming that he felt threatened by Kremlin officials.

      In a post on his profile page on Monday, Durov explained that he was fired from his position as CEO of VK and that the so-called “Russian Facebook” is now “under the complete control” of two oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin.

    • Should Australians prepare for rubber-hose cryptanalysis?

      Law enforcement peak body wants to make it easier to decrypt communications

    • Data retention: Just like diamonds, metadata is forever

      Law enforcement agencies represented at today’s Senate committee hearing, including the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), South Australia Police, Queensland Police, the Australian Federal Police, the ATO and ASIC, all backed a data retention regime that would impose requirements on service providers in terms of the storage and release to law enforcement of metadata.

    • Putin: The Internet Is A ‘CIA Project,’ Russia Needs Greater Control

      President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called the Internet a CIA project and made comments about Russia’s biggest search engine Yandex, sending the company’s shares plummeting.

      The Kremlin has been anxious to exert greater control over the Internet, which opposition activists — barred from national television — have used to promote their ideas and organize protests.

      Russia’s parliament this week passed a law requiring social media websites to keep their servers in Russia and save all information about their users for at least half a year. Also, businessmen close to Putin now control Russia’s leading social media network, VKontakte.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Global governance for a global, common, public resource

      This blog post is my extended remarks to the opening session of Netmundial 2014. I can only say about 80% of it live because of time limits.

    • This project aims to make ’404 not found’ pages a thing of the past

      The “404-No-More” project is backed by a formidable coalition including members from organizations like the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Old Dominion University, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Part of the Knight News Challenge, which seeks to strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation through a variety of initiatives, 404-No-More recently reached the semifinal stage.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • 106,000 Signatures in Support of Pirate Bay Founder Delivered to Danish Govt.

        After amassing 106,000 signatures a petition aimed at improving the prison conditions of Gottfrid Svartholm has been delivered to the Danish government. In the hope that it may even prompt the total release of the Pirate Bay founder, yesterday the Danish Pirate Party handed the petition to Karen Hækkerup, Denmark’s Minister of Justice .

      • Help Put More Pirates In the European Parliament

        Defending free culture doesn’t come cheap. Nor does running elections. We don’t get the money we need to campaign from fat cats and big backers. We are funded by people like you, through your donations and your membership payments, we couldn’t do it without you.

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