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07.07.14

Links 7/7/2014: CentOS 7 Released, Linux 3.16 RC4

Posted in News Roundup at 4:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Lamassu Brings Rakía, a Brand-spanking-new Open Source Back-end System for their ATMs

    Lamassu which has revolutionized the in-person acquisition of Bitcoin via a streamlined thirty-second process earlier introduced a modular two-Bitcoin ATM system; has now brought in Rakía, a brand-spanking-new open source back-end system for its ATMs. The decision is aimed to continue providing A better experience for its clients.

  • Out in the Open: The Crusade To Bring More Women to Open Source

    Recent reports from Facebook and Google confirmed what we’ve known all along: the giants of tech have a diversity problem. But in the world of open source, the problem is even worse.

    According to a survey conducted last year, only about 11 percent of open source contributors are women. Meanwhile, women account for 23 percent of all computer programmers and 39.5 percent of web developers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  • Oculus Acquires RakNet Middleware & Open-Sources It
  • Announcing Oculus Connect, RakNet Open Source, and E3 2014 Awards

    We’re thrilled to announce Oculus Connect, a developer conference that brings together engineers, designers, and creatives from around the world to share and collaborate in the interest of creating the best virtual reality experiences possible.

  • Oculus VR acquires game-networking engine RakNet — and makes it open-source

    The company announced today that it is acquiring RakNet, which specializes in a software-development engine for connecting games across an online network. RakNet, which is also the name of the technology, enables studios to quickly add voice chat, network patching, and secure connections to their products. Oculus VR, which is building its Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, notes that thousands of indie developers and major companies like Everquest developer Sony Online Entertainment and Minecraft studio Mojang licensed the tech for their games. Oculus isn’t just purchasing RakNet, it is also making it open source, which means other developers can see the code, add to it, and use it for free.

  • Mellanox Contributes the World’s First Open Source Ethernet Switch MLAG Implementation

    Mellanox® Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, today announced that Ethernet Switch MLAG functionality is now available as open source as part of the community driven Open Ethernet program. MLAG provides the ability for a host to connect to two standalone switches with a pair of load balanced bonded interfaces. Now open and freely available, the MLAG functionality allows for faster failure recovery. The open source code is available at https://github.com/open-ethernet/mlag and can be installed and run on a Linux host.

  • Open Xchange: The internet wouldn’t have happened without Linux

    Open Xchange acts as an open-source rival to Microsoft’s Office 365. With more companies moving to open source, we ask Mr Laguna if he believes that Microsoft’s proprietary system is viable.

  • Open source tool could sniff out most heavily censored websites

    Georgia Tech researchers enlist owners of websites — and website users — via Encore project

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox’s Share Falls as Chrome’s Continues to Rise

        While Mozilla was mostly in the headlines during the early part of this year for news related to Brendan Eich and for the company’s newfound focus on smartphones and Firefox OS, another piece of meaningful news regarding the company is largely being ignored: In April, Google Chrome moved past Firefox to take second place in desktop browser market share, according to web traffic stats from Net Applications.

  • Funding

    • From zero to Spark Core in two years

      As for open source, I think that the electronics world has been proprietary for a very long time, but open source is taking its hold, and will eventually play a huge role, just like it does in software. The Internet is built on open source underpinnings like GNU/Linux, and I hope that soon the hardware world will be too.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 9.3-RC3 Now Available

      The third RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

      This is expected to be the final RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE cycle.

    • FreeBSD 9.3 RC3 Released
    • FreeBSD 9.3 RC3 Released with Several Bug Fixes

      Glen Barber has announced the immediate availability for download of the third and probably the last RC (Release Candidate) version of the upcoming FreeBSD 9.3 operating system.

    • The Linux Kernel Might Use FreeBSD’s Capsicum Security Framework

      A Linux kernel developer is working on porting FreeBSD’s CAPSICUM security framework over to the Linux kernel.

      In announcing his work at the end of June that’s now being discussed amongst kernel stakeholders, David Drysdale wrote, “The last couple of versions of FreeBSD (9.x/10.x) have included the Capsicum security framework, which allows security-aware applications to sandbox themselves in a very fine-grained way. For example, OpenSSH now uses Capsicum in its FreeBSD version to restrict sshd’s credentials checking process, to reduce the chances of credential leakage. It would be good to have equivalent functionality in Linux, so I’ve been working on getting the Capsicum framework running in the kernel, and I’d appreciate some feedback/opinions on the general design approach.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Unifont 7.0 Update Covers The Unicode 7.0 Basic Multilingual Plane

      Following last month’s release of Unicode 7.0, the GNU Unifont project is out with an open-source glyph for each printable code point in the Unicode 7.0 Plane 0 standard.

    • Unifont 7.0.03 Released
    • Wanted: A Purpose for Open Source

      Free and open source software is a way of life for thousands of people. Yet, as we trudge the endless treadmill of release upon release, there’s one question you don’t hear much any more: where is open source heading? Or, perhaps, should it have a purpose at all?

      Not too long ago, the answer to either question was obvious. The goal was to provide a free alternative to proprietary systems. But progress got stalled at a good-enough ninety percent or so, and looks likely to stay there for the foreseeable future.

  • Licensing

    • Open source’s identity crisis

      For Karen Sandler, software freedom isn’t simply a technical matter. Nor is it a purely ideological one.

      It’s a matter of life and death.

      Sandler, Executive Director of the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy, says software freedom became personal when she realized her pacemaker/defibrillator was running code she couldn’t analyze. For nearly a decade—first at the Software Feedom Law Center, then at the GNOME Foundation before Conservancy—she’s been an advocate for the right to examine the software on which our lives depend.

    • IRS: Yorba Open Source Software Project Must Pay Taxes

      Should open source software projects that give their products away freely have to pay taxes? Although the answer to that question traditionally has been “no,” the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may be changing its mind, if the case of the Yorba desktop Linux software project is an indication.

    • The IRS wages war on open source nonprofits

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Why OpenStack matters, celebrating four years, and more

      Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for what’s happening right now in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

    • Intel Wants Open-Source Analytics

      Intel wants to drive big-data analytics toward open-source software accelerated on its processors.

      In a first step in that direction, it is working on an upgrade of its version of Hadoop that blends in features from the distribution provided by Cloudera, a leading open-source supplier of the code. Meanwhile it has already started working with customers to determine what sort of analytics apps they want on top of Hadoop and how to accelerate them on x86 chips.

    • Secure Bitcoin Hardware Wallet With Open Source Smart Card: PRISMicide Crowdfunding Campaign

      PRISMicide, the first security solution based on open source smart cards, protects the privacy of its users… starting with their Bitcoin wallet.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • North Korean and North American tensions could create the Cold War II

      These statements are reminiscent of Cold War propaganda and show how North Korea is neutralized in American eyes: North American media interprets their responses as madness.

      Even if the republic’s response to this film is threatening, they haven’t threatened war, something which The Huffington Post and several other prominent media outlets reported. The Huffington Post even quotes The Christian Science Monitor, saying that Kim himself threatens “all-out war” upon release of the movie, though there aren’t any sources cited to prove this.

    • DHS’s Risky Airport Alerts

      When DHS releases details to the worried public, it also releases them to jihadists.

    • Blackwater’s Death Machine

      I’m sorry Moniem and fellow Iraqis participate in this farce. They are hoodwinked. There will be no justice, merely damage control. And what of countless other unjustified killings, which will not even see the semblance of prosecution? Blackwater on one hand, Obama, with his hit list and targeted assassination on the other, and in between, CIA-JSOC paramilitary operations geared to regime change, together constitute the package of Obama’s liberal humanitarianism, bringing democracy to the ignorant at gunpoint.

    • UK Trains Nigerian Security Forces on Crisis Response Strategies

      The United Kingdom Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) has trained the Nigerian security forces on crisis response strategies.

    • Editorial:New rules needed for use of drones

      Thirteen months ago, during a speech at the National Defense University, President Barack Obama promised greater transparency and new guidelines for drone use as part of his counterterrorism strategy.

      So much for promises.

      An authoritative, bipartisan report released recently by the Stimson Center charged that the U.S. use of drones threatens to destabilize legal and moral norms worldwide. It also chastised the Obama administration’s failure to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of drone use and questioned drones’ effectiveness.

    • Reining In the Drones

      Targeted killings by drones may be justified at times against terrorist threats to the United States, but the “blow back” from unintended civilian killings in places like Pakistan and Yemen is becoming “a potent recruiting tool for terrorist organizations,” the report noted. The panel, which had experienced specialists from the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations, concluded that there was no indication that drone attacks on suspected terrorists had advanced “long-term U.S. security interests.”

    • Israel Air Strikes Kill Seven Gaza Militants
    • Five Gaza militants killed by Israel drones: medics
    • Six Israelis held over ‘revenge’ killing of Palestinian teen

      Israel has arrested a group of Jewish extremists suspected of kidnapping and murdering a Palestinian teenager in a revenge killing, triggering violent clashes spreading from east Jerusalem throughout Israel.

      Tensions were already peaking early Monday in the south after two Israeli strikes on Gaza left five militants dead, following continuous mortar and rocket fire at southern Israel.

    • Two Palestinians killed by Israeli drone in Gaza
    • Another two Gazans killed by Israeli drone
    • Israel launches deadly airstrikes in Gaza
    • Nine Palestinian killed after Israeli deadly attacks
    • Israel’s Lieberman and Netanyahu to end political deal: Reports

      Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is gearing up to dissolve the Likud-Beitrinu ruling partnership in Israel, local media reported on Monday.

      Lieberman is scheduled to hold a press conference at 12pm local time (10am GMT) at which he is widely expected to officially terminate the political deal.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • WikiLeaks, Bringing The First Amendment To The World
    • Two Years Later, WikiLeaks’ Assange Still Pushing For Freedom, Transparency

      While Americans celebrated the adoption of the Declaration of Independence over the weekend, there were people around the globe, including in the United States, celebrating the birth of a man who is fighting for his freedom and the freedom of information: Julian Assange, who turned 43 years old on July 3.

      Widely known for his roles as co-founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Assange sought to create an organization that aligns with his belief that a transparent government reduces corruption and in turn creates a stronger democracy, which explains why WikiLeaks has released more classified intelligence documents than all other media organizations around the world combined.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • The Right to Be Forgotten

      The “right to be forgotten” in European law has now taken the place of what people in the past used to call “the forgiveness of sins”. Formerly it was believed that old offenses, especially when these did not result in prosecution or suit, were somehow effaced by the passage of time. “Long dormant claims have often more of cruelty than of justice in them”, says Halsbury’s Laws of England.

    • Google Restores Some Links To Articles Removed In ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Mess

      Last week, of course, there was a lot of attention around Google alerting publications that some of their stories had been removed from its index over “right to be forgotten” requests, following a dangerous European Court of Justice ruling. Various publications in the UK complained about some of the removals, and requested if there was any sort of appeals process. The BBC was initially told that there was no such process, though the Guardian claimed it was looking for ways to appeal.

    • Hollywood Studios Tried To Add File Sharing Sites To New Zealand’s Child Porn Blacklist

      We just wrote about the UK’s filtering systems blocking access to 20% of the world’s top 100,000 sites, even though only about 4% of those host the porn Prime Minister David Cameron seems so obsessed with blocking. Also noted in that story was the fact that many “pirate sites” are being blocked at ISP level via secret court orders.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Rulebook needed for U.S. drone strikes

      To understand why U.S. drone strikes outside traditional battlefields make so many people so uneasy, look to the past and look to the future.

      Start with the past. In 1976, exiled Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier was driving to work in Washington when a car bomb planted by Chilean agents ripped through his vehicle, killing Letelier and his young American assistant. From the viewpoint of Chile’s ruling military junta, the killing was justifiable: Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s regime considered itself at war with leftist insurgents and viewed Letelier as a security threat.

      U.S. authorities saw things differently, of course: They condemned the bombing as an assassination. The FBI opened a murder investigation, and a Senate committee launched an inquiry into illegal foreign intelligence activities on U.S. soil.

    • Sri Lanka: Hate verses in Islam’s religious text is the main cause of global Islamic issues

      Muslims the world over must introspect. There were no Americans, US State Department or CIA when the spread of Islam took place violently with the core mission to ‘kill infidels” or non-believers. Islam via sword cut across entire continents and destroyed entire civilizations. These natives did not even have time to defend against the attacks. Undeniably, the acts were not in self-defense and the use of sword were inspired by the Quran. It is these factors that raise the existential fears of non-Muslims once more. The fear of history repeating itself prevails when 95% of violent conflicts around the world involve Muslims even if these conflicts are mischievously ignited by Western Christian countries. These conflicts are drawn using Koranic verses by numerous Islamic groups. That Islamic groups/Islamic leaders uses verses from the Koran to instill mayhem and draw Muslims into their fold raises the question of how far Islam is being manipulated by Islamic leaders as well as how far the West is manipulating this weakness. That these groups have no shortage of followers and these groups are heavily funded and are able to easily manipulate moderate Muslims makes any to wonder how many Muslims are able to go against the tide without submitting themselves to their religion and those who are leading them. What needs to be said is that Muslims leaders and the West are manipulating Islam’s Koranic verses because there are verses that can be manipulated. Herein lies the core issue and root cause for the violence. With no central authority to control doctrine in Islam, a proliferation of bizarre religious edicts has resulted in chaos the world over.

    • UK airport terror measures: Passengers warned to keep mobile phones and laptops charged or lose them at security for US-bound flights

      Passengers hoping to fly to the US this summer will be turned away at airport security checkpoints if they have forgotten to put their mobile phone on to charge the night before.

    • TSA will not allow passengers with discharged cellphones onboard
    • Devices with flat batteries banned from transatlantic flights

      THE UNITED STATES Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has announced security measures that might cause serious problems for air travellers who forget their chargers.

    • Foreign airport scrutiny focuses on electronic devices

      Don’t bring dead phones or laptops to those overseas airports for flights heading to the USA.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Pew Report: 65 percent believe Internet will be more open in the future

      A research report published by the Pew Research Center revealed that among 1,400 experts, 65 percent believe that the Internet will be more open by the year 2025.

      The respondents hope that, more than 10 years from now, there will be no major changes that will negatively affect how people obtain and share content on the Internet.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Our single market is crying out for copyright reform

        Our duty as lawmakers is to find a balance between creators and the justified interests of society. Yet that balance is changing. Transforming technology is changing how people use and re-use information. And disrupting a longstanding legal framework.

      • Tough New Piracy Law Sees No Takers in More Than a Year

        For years Norway was pressured to do something drastic against pirates and 12 months ago this week the country introduced tough new legislation. But one year on and not a single file-sharer has been inquired about nor has a single site blocking request been filed. What’s going on in Scandinavia?

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