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11.24.12

Links 24/11/2012: DreamWorks Open Source Release, LibreOffice 4.0 Alpha

Posted in News Roundup at 12:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Big Swing in PC Shipments in Malaysia

    “Distracted”? Uh, no. Consumers have little need of a over-powered/huge/clumsy/expensive big box PC or a burdensome notebook either. They can do it all with a smart phone running */Linux. The fall of 29% includes the end of a government procurement (of notebooks running “7″). This is not just a shift to less Wintel but a shift to more GNU/Linux and more Android/Linux. It puts the lie to the saying that folks “choose” Wintel when that’s all that was on retail shelves. There’s more choice on retail shelves today and more real choices are being made. This is not a blip but the new way of IT. Get used to it.

  • LPI Recognizes Linux Essentials’ Volunteers

  • Desktop

    • The Linux Setup – Max Bernstein, Programmer
    • Ubuntu ‘Black Friday’ Bargains

      It’s so-called “Black Friday” today, an annual US event in which adults gather en-mass at retail stores to fight each other for discounted electric whisks, George Foreman grills, and plasma TVs.

    • What Linux Users Need To Know When Holiday Shopping For PC Hardware

      If you plan to upgrade your Linux desktop hardware in the near future or will be shopping for new PC hardware this holiday season, here’s a few words of advice on recommended components and manufacturers to go with for the best Linux hardware experience.

    • Running Linux on the Series 3 Chromebook

      Last month Google and Samsung released the first commercially available product using the ARM® Cortex™-A15 SoC design: the new Series 3 Chromebook. Not only does the Chromebook have the new Samsung Exynos 5250 providing the core compute power, but it also has the new ARM Mali™-T604 providing the power to move all those pixels around. As with previous Chromebooks, it uses a custom operating system known as ChromeOS (which is based loosely on Gentoo Linux). If you’ve ever used either the Chrome or Chromium browser from Google you’ll have no issues, as everything is orientated around the browser.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Systemd 196 Brings New Features

      A new version of systemd was released today by Lennart Poettering. The systemd 196 release brings many new features.

    • Kernel Log – Coming in 3.7 (Part 3): Infrastructure

      Linux 3.7 can use signatures to verify the integrity of kernel modules, while the new integrity appraisal extension helps to detect malicious software from a third party. The new kernel loads firmware files without udev and includes important container improvements.

    • Intel Driver Changes Building Up For Linux 3.8 Kernel

      The Intel DRM graphics driver in the Linux 3.8 kernel will feature a number of user-facing changes.

      We’re still a few days out from the Linux 3.7 kernel but already we know a lot of what to expect from the Linux 3.8 kernel, including the open-source GPU driver improvements for Linux 3.8.

      Among the Intel DRM driver work you will find merged during the Linux 3.8 merge window when it’s open around early December include:

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD’s New Catalyst Linux Driver Isn’t Too Good

        Last week marked the release of a new AMD Catalyst Linux driver beta that was intended to improve the AMD Radeon OpenGL performance. AMD said this updated closed-source Linux graphics driver would bring “significant performance improvements” for Valve’s recently ported Left 4 Dead 2 Linux game. Curious about AMD Linux OpenGL performance improvements elsewhere, I ran some benchmarks of this new driver on several different graphics cards. Unfortunately, the performance improvements aren’t too widespread and there’s other problems making this beta driver not appealing.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • New E17 Release: ALPHA4

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Calligra 2.5.4 Released
      • Google Trends prediction,No future for KDE

        While i was messing around with the tool i noticed two check boxes at the top right hand side. One is labelled “New Headlines” and other “Forecast”. The Headlines check box is turned ON by default and the tool seems to try and correlate news headlines with search trends. I at once thought that this feature has a lot of hidden potential. I noticed that when i turn ON the other check box the graph extrapolates into the future along x axis(years) probably based on past data of searches made in Google search engine. Future trends are plotted in dotted lines whereas past data is in the form of a contiguous line.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • A Screenshot Tour to Gnome Shell 3.7.2+Git

        I was very optimistic about the potential of Gnome3 since the beginning ..but I couldn’t never imagine all these things that are happening in 3.8. Gnome 3.8 is above any expectation and that has mostly to do with the refreshed Shell and Gnome Control Center we will get.

        If Gnome Shell 3.6 was a good release, Gnome Shell 3.8 will be more than amazing!

        There is a number of huge changes like the integrated search or the re-worked notification API (and maybe a Privacy Section – work in progress), but I’ ll just go with the visuals for the moment. And not all of them. This is just the second release of Gnome Shell (3.7.2) towards the stable 3.8 (next March), many many patches are under review and they’ll be pushed in master in next releases.

      • Gnome is the most active OS project inside 550k others!
      • Calling For A Fork Of GNOME 3′s Fallback/Panel Mode

        GNOME’s Vincent Untz has written about the recent decision to remove the GNOME3 fall-back mode with the forthcoming GNOME 3.8 release. He thinks the situation will improve but he basically calls for the community to fork and maintain the GNOME fall-back (gnome-panel, Metacity, etc) components assuming there is enough interest.

        GNOME developers decided to drop the fallback mode rather than maintain it since it was already a burden to take care of and not always well tested. For those without the GPU/driver support to handle GNOME Shell with Mutter, LLVMpipe will now be used instead for running the heavy GNOME desktop. However, LLVMpipe doesn’t work for everyone.

  • Distributions

    • Salix OS XFCE 14.0 RC3 Ditches GNU Privacy Assistant

      Salix, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware, that is simple, fast, easy to use, and relying on XFCE desktop environment, is now at version 14.0 RC3.

    • Cinnarch 2012.11.22 is Looking Sharp

      Cinnarch is a new project coupling Linux Mint’s Cinnamon desktop with the popular Arch Linux. Like Arch, it’s technically a rolling release distribution, but with periodic snapshot releases. A new update, considered “in beta stage” by founder Alex Filgueira, was just released and it sounded ripe for a test drive.

      Cinnarch is an installable live system for i686 or x86_64 and offers your choice of several languages upon boot. The first stop is a selection dialog asking if you’d like to run as a live system or install Cinnarch. The installer is a console menu-based installer, but developers are working on a graphical version.

    • Arch’s Dirty Little Not-So-Secret

      A reader of my blog recently made a comment about Arch’s lack of package signing, and this got me looking into the issue more carefully. What I found has left me deeply concerned with a number of aspects of Arch.

    • Cinnarch: Arch Linux with Mint’s Cinnamon desktop

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal review

            It’s not just Windows 8 that’s been criticised for expecting users to swallow an unpopular and ill-suited new interface. When Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, moved its default desktop OS interface to Unity in April 2012, it also alienated many loyal followers.

          • New community-announce mailing list!

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Seven fresh reasons to try Linux Mint 14 ‘Nadia’

              It seems like the shiny new Linux releases are coming fast and furious this fall, and this week has been no exception.

            • Linux Mint 14 Screenshots
            • Linux Mint 14 Out Now
            • Kubuntu 12.10 review – Improving somewhat

              Kubuntu is almost like Ubuntu, and then not at all. It is amazing how much difference there can be between two operating system releasing sharing so much DNA. As you probably recall, I was utterly disappointed with Quetzal, on two occasions. The first time, on a generic laptop with SSD and Intel graphics, where it blossomed with bugs and glitches. And then, the second time around, when it utterly failed me on my high-end laptop with its Nvidia card.

              For this very reason, I will be testing Kubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal on the said laptop first, to see whether the Nvidia issues are strictly related to Ubuntu and its unity desktop and who knows what else, or perhaps a much bigger, more serious phenomenon. So we will begin with a dandy setup, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GT 320M 1GB VRAM card, with two operating systems installed on the internal disk, and booting a handsome new bunch from an external USB disk. Sounds glorious, and as real as it gets.

            • Mint Linux gifts Unity haters with ‘Nadia’ … plus her Mate

              Ubuntu users with a hankering for Gnome can take comfort: the latest version of Linux distro Mint has been released.

              Mint 14, codenamed Nadia, is based on Ubuntu 12.10 comes with Mate 1.4, an updated version of the Mint user interface with greater stability and bug fixes.

            • Linux Mint 14 Unleashed
            • Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon Screenshots

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • GCHQ aims to tackle open source security clearance problem

    UK security services have begun bridging the gap that has stopped open source software getting security clearance for use in government systems.

    The initiative has come too late to stop the first big contract wins delivered under the government’s flagship G-Cloud procurement vehicle going to a supplier that shunned open source products because they did not have security accreditation.

  • DreamWorks Releases Software Used in ‘Guardians’
  • Dreamworks Animation releases OpenVDB 0.99

    Dreamworks Animation has released a new version of its OpenVDB library. The animation production company open sourced the project in August and has now released version 0.99.0. OpenVDB has been used for some time within Dreamworks for features such as Puss in Boots, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted and the just released Rise of the Guardians.

  • DreamWorks releases an open source software
  • DevOps must be Developer-first, not Operations

    The rise of social enterprise tools intended to facilitate workplace collaboration have naturally impacted the software application development function in terms of user interconnectivity and integration.

    Specifically here we see the popularised term “DevOps” coming to the fore. Used to express the orchestration of both the ‘developer’ and the ‘operations’ functions responsible for the building and subsequent deployment of software as it is.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 17 Wraps in Facebook Features And Better Extension Handling

        This week, Mozilla released version 17 of the Firefox browser, and if you’ve been increasingly married to Google Chrome or another browser, there are some new features in the latest Firefox to take note of. They include new integration with Facebook, and more protection from Firefox extensions that may cause performance problems. Here are the details.

        Firefox 17 is available for the Mac, Windows and Linux, and you can find system requirements for it here. There is also an updated post from Mozilla on extensions and their compatibility with the new version.

      • Mozilla to Drop 64-bit Firefox for Windows Nightly Builds

        Plans for 64-bit Firefox for Windows have been put on hold by Mozilla in a bid to concentrate more on the 32-bit versions it has been found.

      • Mozilla puts 64-bit Firefox for Windows on hold

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 4.0 Alpha1 Arrives For Testing

      Bjoern Michaelsen from Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu, who works on LibreOffice has announced the alpha1 of LibreOffice 4.0. Michaelsen writes on his blog, “Its a pre-release, an alpha — essentially just a named daily build — and will kill your dog and eat your children.”

  • BSD

    • Crowding out OpenBSD

      Unix as a whole predates Linux by many years, and even the rather younger BSD variant was well into its teens by the time Linus released his first kernel. BSD networking defined and enabled the Internet. This illustrious history notwithstanding, BSD has long since ceded the spotlight to Linux in most settings. As Linux has come to dominate the free software development world, the result has been some occasional pain for other operating system distributions. Now, as a recent discussion on an OpenBSD mailing list shows, BSD developers are feeling that pain in a heightened manner. This situation has some serious implications.

  • Public Services/Government

    • LiMux Project Has Saved Munich €10m So Far
    • A Tale of Two Cities

      So which is “dog bites man” and which is “man bites dog”? A look at the press coverage tells us:

      * Leipzig OpenOffice coverage == 2 hits
      * Freiburg OpenOffice coverage == 1150 hits

      The larger migration away from Microsoft Office in Leipzig was barely covered in the press. But the Freiburg story has had enormous press uptake. By this I take it that moving from Microsoft Office to open source alternatives like OpenOffice is normal, the expected, the non-newsworthy common occurrence. It is “dog bites man”. Moving in the opposite direction, from free software to proprietary is newsworthy because it is so rare. It is “man bites dog”.

    • Fallout From Migrations of Office Suite

      Isn’t it the truth? There was a wave of huge migrations to FLOSS in the period of 2003-2005 which made headlines but far larger migrations recently barely are noticed in the noise. We now have several governments of large nations moving to GNU/Linux and FLOSS, huge corporations like Google too and countless millions of individuals. It’s not news any longer but I still enjoy reading about it when it does break through.

      M$ has some tenets about mindshare for technology. One of them is that you only win when the status quo becomes thinking the competing technology works is a mental defect. Conversely, M$ must know it is losing because no one now believes using FLOSS (GNU/Linux, Android/Linux, FLOSS applications…) is irrational. FLOSS works for everyone who tries it. The few exceptions I have read are quite unusual, involving some constraint other than price/performance, like inability to run application X. When people consider “doing task X” instead of some lock-in they suddenly find themselves doing IT the right way, the way that works for them.

  • Licensing

    • Left Wondering Why VLC Relicensed to LGPL

      I first met the original group of VLC developers at the Solutions GNU/Linux conference in 2001. I had been an employee of FSF for about a year at the time, and I recall they were excited to tell the FSF about the project, and very proud that they’d used FSF’s premier and preferred license (at the time): GPLv2-or-later.

      What a difference a decade makes. I’m admittedly sad that VLC has (mostly) finished its process of relicensing under LGPLv2.1-or-later. While I have occasionally supported relicensing from GPL to LGPL, every situation is different and I think it should be analyzed carefully. In this case, I don’t support VLC’s decision to relicense.

      [...]

      So, I’m left baffled: do the VLC community actually believes the LGPL would solve that problem?

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • PyPy 2.0 Beta 1 supports ARM processors

      The first beta of version 2.0 of PyPy has been released with support for ARM CPUs and CFFI compatibility. PyPy is an alternative Python 2.x implementation with a just-in-time compiler, a stackless mode and a sandbox for untrusted code. It is described by its developers as faster and “almost a drop-in replacement for CPython 2.7.3″. The new version of the “very compliant” Python interpreter is the first version to officially support the ARM processor architecture. The software will work on soft-float ARM/Linux builds on ARMv7 or later CPUs that have a floating-point unit.

    • Rails::API strips the fat off Ruby on Rails

      A group of Ruby on Rails developers has announced Rails::API, a derivative of the original Rails project that provides a slimmed-down set of functions which are useful for developers using Rails to write applications that use a backend API-only server or servers. This new subset of the Ruby on Rails feature set has had ActionView and other rendering features removed; this makes it easier and quicker to use for developers who are not concerned with writing frontends of web services and also makes the platform more lightweight. Work on Rails::API has been ongoing for several months, but the developers have now decided to go public with the framework, which is currently at version 0.0.2.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Google Staredown With FTC May Result In FTC Blinking

    Back in October, we wrote about a report that the FTC was preparing to file antitrust charges against Google. In trying to find out more, the story kept shifting. First, we heard it was all about “search manipulation” in putting Google-related info on top of search results (i.e., search for a location and a Google Map shows at the top of the page). Then, there was some talk about how it was going to focus on how recently-purchased-by-Google Motorola Mobility was abusing standards-essential patents. If it was the latter, that seemed like a weird way to go, since it was so unrelated to Google’s main business. Similarly, the whole “search manipulation” claim seemed odd. What kind of “harm” is it when someone searching on Google for an address is shown a Google map. It seems like it actually benefits consumers.

  • The Yes Men Are Revolting
  • INTERVIEW: Noam Chomsky on Government, Silicon Valley and the Internet
  • Wrench Inventor Claims Sears Stole His Idea, Took It to China

    This time last year, Brown’s factory was buzzing, with his employees working overtime to fulfill holiday orders. With the help of Sears, Brown’s company sold more than 200,000 wrenches at Christmas alone.

  • SurfTheChannel Founder Gets Extra Jail Time For Revealing Documents That Raised Questions About His Conviction

    You may recall that, earlier this year, we wrote about a very troubling ruling in the UK against the founder of SurfTheChannel, Anton Vickerman. STC was a linking site, no different than others that had been found perfectly legal in the UK. After the conviction, which resulted in Vickerman being put in jail for four years, some additional info came out that was really horrifying. First, there was the fact that this criminal case, including the investigation, was driven entirely by a private anti-piracy organization, FACT, which is financed by the Hollywood studios. Yes, a criminal case that was run by private interests. Actual law enforcement had refused to proceed with the case, saying that there wasn’t evidence of direct infringement. Furthermore, some “anonymous” notes from the court room suggested a judge was on a mission to put Vickerman away.

  • One Step Closer To Real Medical Tech Breakthrough… If Immigration Law Doesn’t Get In The Way

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Your Smartphone’s Dirty, Radioactive Secret

      IT’S A SWELTERING LATE FEBRUARY afternoon when I pull into the Esso gas station in the tiny town of Bukit Merah, Malaysia. My guide, a local butcher named Hew Yun Tat, warns me that the owner is known for his stinginess. “He’s going to ask you to buy him tea,” Hew says. “Even though he owns many businesses around here, he still can’t resist pinching pennies.”

      An older man emerges from the station office. His face and hands are mottled with white patches, his English broken.

      “I’ll talk to you,” the man says, “but only if you buy me tea.” He grins.

      “You should be ashamed of yourself,” says Hew, laughing. “A rich man like you.”

    • Ireland opens new probe into death of woman denied abortion

      Ireland has opened a new investigation into the death of a woman denied an abortion of her dying fetus, as the government scrambled to stem criticism of its handling of an incident that polarized the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • Understanding The Importance of Privacy in The Networked World

      Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has famously stated that his vision is to make the world more open, and that’s precisely what is happening. Through platforms such as Facebook and Twitter people are opening up to each other and the world more than ever. Everybody has something about themselves to say, and they seem quite eager to put it out there.

      [...]

      This is also the reason why the value of privacy is relative. An individual should be free to reveal or conceal as much or as little about themselves as they wish. If more people voluntarily share more about themselves, this fact alone doesn’t then necessarily represent any kind of a social problem. Of course, it is still possible for people to make arguably bad choices, but those are still their choices to make.The important thing is to promote personal responsibility, without demanding that some be responsible for the choices of others.

  • Civil Rights

    • Judge in case of alleged hacker, Jeremy Hammond, is married to Stratfor

      STATEMENT FROM THE FREE JEREMY HAMMOND SUPPORT NETWORK (https://www.facebook.com/supporthammond) This is what we know for certain surrounding the unfortunate circumstances of Jeremy Hammond’s ongoing prosecution. A time line published only days after Jeremy’s arrest suggests that Operation AntiSec was orchestrated by the FBI through the agency of FBI informant Hector Monsegur; http://www.scribd.com/doc/85351496/Timeline-of-ANTISEC-as-Created-and-Operated-Under-FBI-Supervision. As if this were not unfortunate enough, new evidence suggests that Loretta A. Preska, the federal judge currently presiding over Jeremy’s case, has an undisclosed conflict which could potentially influence her decisions regarding Jeremy’s trial. Loretta A. Preska is the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and a former nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Preska is married to Thomas J. Kavaler, with whom she attended law school. Information leaked from the very hack Jeremy is being prosecuted for having committed show that Thomas J. Kavaler is affiliated with Stratfor; http://archive.org/details/Stratfor. Sensitive information belonging to Kavaler was leaked along with the sensitive information of more than eight hundred thousand other Stratfor users and millions of internal emails. We demand that Loretta A. Preska, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, excuse herself from Jeremy case immediately. We demand that all previous rulings made by Chief Judge Preska be dismissed. We demand an investigation into the tactics used by law enforcement officials to entrap hacktivists. We demand an investigation into the circumstances which allowed for Chief Judge Preska to preside over Jeremy’s case. We demand a fair trial for Jeremy Hammond! We will not be silent in the presence of such great injustices. If those prosecuting Jeremy deny him a voice, they will hear ours!

    • 5 Reasons I’m Opting Out Of The TSA’s Scanners (And You Should Too)

      And I’m not alone. A group of activists who are concerned about the so-called “advanced” imaging technology are also urging air travelers to just say “no” next week.

      Opting out means agents will either give you an “enhanced” pat-down or wave you through the screening area (and when there’s a long line, it’s a safe bet it’ll be the latter). But the peaceful protest will also slow screenings to the point where the agency will have to reconsider the way it checks air travelers, as it did during a successful opt-out action two years ago.

    • Geoffrey McGann, Man With Strange Watch, Arrested At Oakland Airport
    • South Korea Arrests Man For Re-Tweeting Oppressive North Korean Government; Wins Ultimate Irony Award

      I have to admit, there are times when I find South Korea immensely confusing when it comes to technology. They appear to embrace the hell out of the more modern view of the music business. They’re heavily invested in their population’s internet connectivity. Yet they can also get goofy when it comes to intellectual property, such as when they decided patenting their military uniforms was a surefire way of keeping the North Korean military from dressing alike. They’ve also put in place a mildly enforced version of 3 strikes legislation to appease American entertainment companies.

      Admitting all that, however, my surprise has boiled over upon learning that a South Korean man was found guilty of “praising, encouraging or propagandizing” North Korea under their “National Security Law” for tweets associated with his account. His crime? Well, mostly retweeting North Korea’s official Twitter account, tweeting out a couple of links to North Korean propaganda songs, and tweeting nonsensical nonsense (is there any other kind?) about their neighbors to the north. Oh, and he also mercilessly mocked the hell out of this country he’s accused of supporting as well.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Prosecution of Anonymous activists highlights war for Internet control
    • Euro MPs: Do not let the ITU take control of the internet

      Euro MPs have opposed the idea of a UN organisation taking control of the internet away from US bodies, saying it would hurt the free flow of information online.

    • You are committing a crime right now

      That’s because I did not explicitly authorize you to access this site…

    • Google Asks People To Speak Out Against ITU’s Attempt To Takeover Internet Governance

      We’ve been covering how the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has been moving forward with its plans next month to consider a number of proposals to takeover aspects of internet regulation and governance. There are, of course, a number of different proposals being submitted by different countries. The problem, of course, is that the setup of the ITU is not open to the public, and there are some special interests involved — mainly by countries with oppressive governments looking to use this as a way to gain control over the internet for the sake of censorship, as well as local (often state-run or state-associated) telcos using the process to see if they can divert money from successful internet companies to their own bank accounts. While the ITU likes to present itself as merely a neutral meeting place for all of these proposals, what’s been clear for a while is that the ITU leadership has taken an active role in encouraging, cultivating and supporting some of the more egregious proposals.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Supplying The Missing Ingredient In Evidence-Based Policymaking: Evidence

      It seems extraordinary that in the area of copyright it is only recently that people have started to consider the evidence before formulating policy. Even now, there is still resistance to this idea in some quarters. Elsewhere, though, there is a growing recognition that policy-makers must have access to the data they need when considering how to achieve given goals.

    • Copyrights

      • Sobering lessons for the government from the latest Ofcom research on copyright infringement

        Reacting to Ofcom’s new research into online copyright infringement, Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group said:

        “Only 16% of respondents said they would stop unlawful file sharing if sent a letter by their ISP…”

      • “Anonymous” File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal by German Court

        A court in Hamburg, Germany, has granted an injunction against a user of the anonymous and encrypted file-sharing network RetroShare . RetroShare users exchange data through encrypted transfers and the network setup ensures that the true sender of the file is always obfuscated. The court, however, has now ruled that RetroShare users who act as an exit node are liable for the encrypted traffic that’s sent by others.

      • Fixing Copyright: The Purpose Of Copyright

        Since the GOP decided to chicken out on holding the very necessary debate on copyright reform, let’s keep the debate going without them, and hope they join in. As we’ve discussed, the Republican Study Committee released a fantastic report from staffer Derek Khanna, and then retracted it under lobbyist pressure. The RSC wants to claim that the paper didn’t go through its full review process, but we’ve heard from multiple sources that this is simply not true, and that the RSC is pushing this story to appease angry lobbyists (apparently the US Chamber of Commerce has taken over as the leader of the cause on this one, following the initial complaints from the MPAA and RIAA). Either way, all this has done is draw much more attention to the report, which you can still read here.

      • Megaupload Helped DOJ In NinjaVideo Prosecution; And DOJ Uses That Against Megaupload

        On Friday, we wrote about the unsealed seizure warrants against Megaupload, and noted that they showed how Megaupload had assisted in a criminal investigation, in which they were told not to interfere with the files, but then those very files were used as evidence against Megaupload itself. It’s now come out that this was part of the case against NinjaVideo, which we wrote about a few times.

      • Le Petit Prince artist Troy Gua on the cease and desist from Prince

        Somewhere deep down, we’re sure Seattle-based conceptual artist and serious Prince obsessive Troy Gua expected he’d someday have to face saying goodbye to the much-lauded miniature doll that was at the center of his art series, Le Petit Prince. This was no small project — Gua literally recreated many famous Prince moments with the little guy and even included detailed props like the Purple Rain motorcycle. Ironically, we were recently emailing with Gua to do a piece about the new calendar he was putting out featuring some of these photographs, but this week Gua sadly informed us the dream is over. He received a cease and desist letter from the real Prince’s people on Monday.

      • Is Malibu Media About To Become The Righthaven Of Porn Trolls?

        Last month we wrote about an interesting case in which a judge effectively called the bluff of Malibu Media, a copyright trolling operation that has filed 365 lawsuits, targeting about 6,000 people. And, of course, it’s never taken a single one to an actual trial, because that does not appear to be the goal. Instead, it’s all about getting people to settle, and it sounds like Malibu has been successful on that front. In the case we mentioned last month, the judge made it clear that he wanted Malibu Media to actually go through a trial, and highlighted four defendants who had claimed innocence, and wanted to use those as a “bellwether” trial, to effectively test Malibu’s theories. The judge, Michael Baylson, was pretty clear that he would not be happy if Malibu Media tried to squeeze out of the case.

      • Why Was It Poland That Led The European Revolt Against ACTA?

        In retrospect, it is now clear that the pivotal moment in the campaign against ACTA was last January, when thousands of people took to the streets in Poland despite the sub-zero temperatures there. A few weeks later, similar protests took place across the continent, especially in Eastern Europe, which then influenced politicians at all levels, culminating in the rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament on July 4.

      • Newly Independent Band To Fans: Don’t Just Remix Our Music, Please Try To Make Money From It Too

11.23.12

Links 23/11/2012: Linux Mint 14 Released & Reviewed, Replicant 4.0

Posted in News Roundup at 10:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The history of Linux: how time has shaped the penguin
  • The Linux’s perception of my neighbours

    I’ve always presented myself as a Linux geek to my neighbours and it has been nice seeing how the Linux word evolved (with funny and surprising quotes) during the past ten years in their minds. A friend of mine (Aretha Battistutta) made a little comic strip out of the topic and the result is simply amazing.

  • Desktop

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Podcast Season 4 Episode 22

      In this episode: Linux Mint 14 has been released. Planet KDE does awesome work. There’s an OpenStreetMap map-a-thon. Australia’s government is TLD-shy. Red Hat invests in MongoDB, there may be life on Mars, Apple will have to reveal how much HTC is paying it, and the UEFI saga is turning nasty. Hear our non-audio related discoveries, and your own brains and opinions in the Open Ballot.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE 4.10 Beta 1 Released

        The KDE project has announced the release of first beta for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform 4.10.

        Post this release the team will now focus on bug fixing and further polishing new and old functionality as the API, dependency and feature freezes is already in place.

        So, what’s new in KDE SC 4.10?
        With this release KDE is introducing a brand new Screen Locker, a new screen locking mechanism, which is based on QtQuick brings and offers more flexibility and security to Plasma Desktop. It also introduces a new print manager which makes improves setting up of printers and monitoring jobs.

      • Archiving on Kmail
      • Let’s hear it for Konqueror

        My browser of choice on the desktop has been Firefox for many years. Firefox uses the Gecko rendering engine. As a backup Web browser I use Konqueror but configured to use WebKit, rather than KHTML, as the rendering engine. I’ve tried Chromium, Opera, Midori, rekonq, SeaMonkey and a bunch of others, but always found them lacking in some way in comparison to Firefox (I find Opera Mobile better than Firefox for Android on my mobile phone, though).

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME 3 Fallback Makes a Comeback, of Sorts

        It was recently announced that GNOME 3.8 would not be including the GNOME 2 fallback mode. This had a lot of folks a bit concerned. Apparently it was used more than GNOME developers figured. Not wanting to go backwards, Matthias Clasen has thought of a way that may pacify users of the departing fallback mode.

        Clasen posted to a GNOME mailing list today that he thinks using some community extensions to bring back GNOME 2-like features is the answer. He said exactly, “we have a pretty awesome extension mechanism in gnome-shell (extensions.gnome.org), and there are a ton of extensions out there which allow users to bring back many of the ‘classic’ UX elements.”

      • GNOME Shell to support a “classic” mode
      • GNOME Proves It Can Listen

        I’m referring, of course, to Matthias Clasen’s announcement that, having dropped fallback mode, GNOME will support a core of extensions that will recreate the GNOME 2 interface.

        This announcement marks a major reversal of GNOME’s policy. For the past two years, the project has officially defended the radical redesign introduced by GNOME 3, making few — if any — acknowledgments of users’ complaints.

        In fact, eighteen months ago, influential members of GNOME were arguing against encouraging extensions for GNOME Shell at all. For instance, Allan Day, one of the leading designers of the GNOME 3, wrote in a discussion on the gnome-shell list:

      • GNOME Forums are coming!

        I can’t say much more than whats in the title just yet, but I thought I’d give everyone a heads up – forums for GNOME users, developers, etc are in the works! Hopefully soon we’ll be building a community of users, contributors and other interested folks to make GNOME better than ever! Stay tuned!

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Jolla’s Sailfish Rises From MeeGo’s Ashes As Company Signs First Carrier Deal With DNA

        Jolla – the startup built by the team behind the smartphone OS that Nokia abandoned in favor of Windows Phone — revealed its first big smartphone customer deal today, the mobile operator DNA of Finland. Jolla also gave a first look at the UI of Sailfish, the mobile operating system they’ve created from the remnants of Nokia’s MeeGo project, and released an SDK.

      • Android

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Best 7-inch tablets for Black Friday buyers

        I prefer the smaller tablets because I find them to simply fit me better. For me, tablets are primarily for consuming data. I watch videos on them, I read books on them, I use them for Web-browsing, and I use them for e-mail. If you want to use a tablet for a work, you really want a full-sized tablet such as the iPad 4, Nexus 10, or a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Me? I’ll use a laptop. For sheer enjoyment though give me a mini-tablet any day of the week.

        Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. No one is really offering “deals” on any of the top 7″ tablets except for the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. For all the rest, expect to pay full price. That said, you should look for bargains on such accessories as the microSD cards for more storage and cases.

      • Nook HD and HD+ Now on Sale in the UK

        The Nook HD and the HD+ can now be brought in the UK with prices starting at 159 English pounds. People who have pre-ordered can expect theirs any day now through the post.

      • Kobo Joins In With Black Friday

Free Software/Open Source

  • Saying thanks to the open source community
  • Open source developers Catalyst and Egressive combine forces

    Catalyst IT has taken over fellow open source developer, Christchurch-based Egressive.

    Egressive will formally become Catalyst’s South Island branch from the end of this month (November).

    The takeover is friendly, says Egressive director Dave Lane. “In fact it would be fair to say we initiated the process.” The company had grown its business to the point where its small staff had as much work as they could handle, he says, and it was limited by its location.

  • DreamWorks makes ‘Rise of the Guardians’ special effects tool open source

    Yesterday DreamWorks released its latest animated feature with the holiday-themed Rise of the Guardians. But for animators who watch the film and wish they could do something similar, there’s good news — one of the tools used on the project is free and open source. Called OpenVDB, the tool is used to create volumetric 3D effects like smoke, and DreamWorks previously used it on both Puss in Boots and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. The studio’s hope is that by making OpenVDB free, it will eventually become an industry standard. “That ends up benefiting us,” DreamWorks’ David Prescott told the Wall Street Journal.

  • Dreamworks open sources animation software
  • Open Source Virtualization

  • Events

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • Teaching students to work on state of the art NoSQL databases

      In a recent post, I introduced an initiative, along with Dima Kassab, for teaching open source NoSQL databases. We collaborated to prepare course materials for three NoSQL databases to 22 students at the Informatics Department of SUNY Albany, and we made all those material available under a Creative Commons by Attribution License.

  • Funding

  • BSD

    • Upstream vendors can harm small projects: OpenBSD dev

      A senior OpenBSD developer has complained on a mailing list that upstream vendors of free and open source software are adding in changes without any thought of whether downstream users could adapt to the change.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Linux brings over €10 million savings for Munich

      Over €10 million (approximately £8 million or $12.8 million) has been saved by the city of Munich, thanks to its development and use of the city’s own Linux platform. The calculation of savings follows a question by the city council’s independent Free Voters (Freie Wähler) group, which led to Munich’s municipal LiMux project presenting a comparative budget calculation at the meeting of the city council’s IT committee on Wednesday. The calculation compares the current overall cost of the LiMux migration with that of two technologically equivalent Windows scenarios: Windows with Microsoft Office and Windows with OpenOffice. Reportedly, savings amount to over €10 million.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Make Magazine editors demonstrate 21st century collaboration

      Collaboration is changing. Gone are the days of excuses for not collaborating, like “we work better in person,” or “we’re in different time zones.” Technology makes it easy to work together. It’s simple and it’s free (assuming you have a computer, webcam, and internet connection).

      The editors of Make Magazine are a good example of 21st century collaboration. They recently held their first public “editor hangout” using Google Hangout. The Make editors are scattered across the country, yet this Google Hangout brings all of them together. Google Hangouts are really cool because you can see all of the members at the bottom, and the person speaking is automatically highlighted in a larger video screen.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Dr. Fields At The Huffington Post Is Wrong On Open Access

        Dr. Douglas Fields penned an article at Huffington Post on open access. There are so many factual errors, false analogies and misleading statements in this article, that I need to highlight just few of the ‘wrongest’ statements

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

    • Google announces open source contest for students

      Did you know how many times you use some open source software in a day? No clue? Each time you access a Web site, use an app (application) or play a game, you use one or more open source software.

      How about creating one? Google, the digital media and search engine company, has announced Google Code-in contest for students in the age group of 13 and 17 years.

      Beginning November 26, contests can work on 10 different open source organisations, taking part in certain online tasks to win prizes.

Leftovers

11.21.12

Links 22/11/2012: New KDE, GNOME 3.x Update

Posted in News Roundup at 8:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Using Linux to keep an old work PC alive

    A couple of years ago I helped a small business convert their old virus infected Windows XP computer into a Linux Mint 11 (Katya) Xfce. This was done after a long time of trying to help them keep that machine running at a half-decent speed – the virus being the last straw that finally had them make the switch to Linux. Amazingly, well maybe not to the Linux faithful but to most people, this transition not only went smoothly but was actually extremely well received. Outside of a question or two every couple of months I have heard of no issues whatsoever. Sadly Linux Mint 11 has recently reached its end of life stage and so the time has come to find a replacement.

  • Desktop

    • Chromebooks Get Extended Desktop Support

      Google has pushed an update for its dev channel brining it to version, 25.0.1324.1, (Platform versions 3196.1.0 for most platforms and 3196.2.0 for Samsung Chromeboxes) for all Chrome OS devices.

      This build brings numerous improved features to Chrombooks including support for extended desktop and mirrored displays.

  • Server

    • Evildoers can now turn all sites on a Linux server into silent hell-pits

      An advanced Linux malware strain can automatically hijack websites hosted on compromised servers to attack web surfers with drive-by-downloads.

      The software nasty targets machines running 64-bit GNU/Linux and a web server, and acts like a rootkit by hiding itself from administrators. A browser fetching a website served by the compromised system will be quietly directed via an HTML iframe to malicious sites loaded with malware to attack the web visitor’s machine.

  • Kernel Space

    • Filesystems Benchmarked

      Choosing the right filesystem for a particular job can be a difficult task. We tested seven candidates and found some interesting results to make an administrator’s choice easier.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Open-Source GPU Drivers Improved For Linux 3.8

        Various improvements to the major open-source Linux graphics drivers will be landing with the Linux 3.8 kernel in the months ahead.

        David Airlie updated his “drm-next” Git repository last night with all of the latest code bits ready to be merged for the Linux 3.8 kernel when its merge window opens in the next few weeks following the Linux 3.7 release. He also sent out an email confirmation.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Takes Next Steps In OpenStack Cloud Strategy

        Red Hat is moving ahead with its OpenStack-centric cloud computing plans. The company has been steadily working on an enterprise-class version of the OpenStack platform. It will arrive in a fully supported version early next year, but you can already get a preview edition, based on the “Essex” OpenStack release. And now, Red Hat has announced the availability of its new OpenStack Technical Preview based on “Folsom.”

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 14 Unleashed

              The Linux Mint team today announced the release of version 14, codenamed “Nadia.” Today’s release ships in MATE and Cinnamon desktop varieties for 32 and 64-bit architectures. “After 6 months of incremental development, Linux Mint 14 features an impressive list of improvements, increased stability and a refined desktop experience.”

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Jolla Unveils MeeGo-Based Sailfish OS

        Finnish startup reveals Sailfish OS UI for the first time and announces deal with ST-Ericsson

      • Jolla Phones Will Soon Be Available In Finland, Preview Of Phone Running Sailfish

        Jolla has signed a deal with Finland’s 3rd largest mobile operator DNA to market the MeeGo based smartphones in the Finnish market. According to Mobile Business Briefings, “The firm has struck a deal with Finland’s number-three mobile operator DNA, which has agreed to market Jolla smartphones based on its MeeGo-based ‘Sailfish’ platform in Finland “as soon as they enter the market.””

        Jolla has also partnered with ST-Ericsson for its chipsets. Sailfish OS already supports multiple chipset and further support is continuously being built for all the major chipsets. The company already has a deal with Chinese D.Phone to distribute Jolla powered devices in China.

      • Android

        • Google Nexus 10 32 GB Now In Stock, Nexus 4 May Be Coming

          The 32GB version of Google Nexus 10 is now in stock. I just ordered mine. The tablets (and Nexus 4) were sold out within a few minutes of going on sale. It did leave bruised experience for those who were waiting for these devices.

        • To patent or not to patent, that is the question
        • Google’s Android is eating Apple’s lunch

          Smartphones and tablets powered by Google’s Android software are devouring the mobile gadget market, eating into Apple’s turf by feeding appetites for innovation and low prices, analysts say.

          The Android operating system powered nearly three out of four smartphones shipped worldwide in the recently ended quarter as the mobile platform dominated the market, according to industry trackers at IDC.

        • Android Community Demands MIUI ROM Comply With FOSS Licenses

          A thorn in the side of many free software loving Android users, the Chinese MIUI ROM has long been accused of riding on the success of Android without fully complying with the free and open source licenses which it’s based on. MIUI’s developer, Xiaomi, has managed to cultivate a considerable fanbase for their ROM, adding insult to injury for many opponents. Xioami has even been so bold as to put their own phone into production, running (naturally) their license-violating software.

        • Motorola’s New Intel Atom Smartphone

          Motorola Mobility has announced a new Intel Atom smartphone for the Chinsese market, the MT788.

Free Software/Open Source

  • OSSEC 2.7 released

    OSSEC is Free Software, a GPL-licensed, host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) that operates on a client-server model. Its development is sponsored by Trend Micro, a software security outfit based in Tokyo, Japan.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Firefox 17.0 Stable out later today

        Mozilla is currently preparing the release of Firefox 17.0 stable which will be later out today if no last minute issues emerge that delay the roll out of the update to all users of the stable version of the browser. We look at what’s new in Firefox 17 back when the Aurora channel got updated to the version, and the majority of features mentioned in that initial article made their way into the stable version as well. Aurora releases are about 12 weeks ahead of stable releases so that some things can change along the way.

      • Mozilla Firefox 17 ARMs Up and Gets Social

        Mozilla is out today with the Firefox 17 open source browser release, providing new user-facing features as well as improved security.

        Among the key highlights of the release is the SocialAPI that Mozilla first began testing at the end of October. The SocialAPI provides a new type of integration capability for Firefox, enabling a very vibrant user experience for social networking services.

        The first social network that Firefox is integrating with is Facebook, with more to come in the future. The initial beta period for the SocialAPI was a critical part of the development process.

      • Firefox 17 Gets Friendly With Facebook, Wary of iFrames

  • CMS

    • Top Open Source Learning Management Systems

      Open source Learning Management Systems have become extremely popular in recent years, but what does open source mean? Open Source technology is technology where the source code is “open”, that is, the code is available to the public and free to be modified. Improvements can be made by developers and it can be spread or sold to the wider community. So, why should an organization choose an open source Learning Management System as opposed to a homegrown or proprietary Learning Management System?

  • Public Services/Government

    • Freiburg Throws Away €600K

      They’ve done it. Freiburg, Germany, has voted 25 to 20 with 2 abstentions to upgrade M$’s office suite rather than OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice. The twits were using M$ Office 2K and OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, both obsolete versions… The vote could have been closer because 2 of the “yes” votes were Greens. It could have been 24 to 23 against…

    • German city dumping OpenOffice for Microsoft
    • Majority in Freiburg city council for switch to proprietary software

      The German city of Freiburg will end its use of open source suite OpenOffice and is switching back to using a proprietary alternative The city also abandon’s its default use of the Open Document Format, confirms Green Party city council member Timothy Simms.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • The State Of 64-Bit ARM (AArch64) On LLVM/Clang

      ARM’s AArch64 back-end for LLVM to handle the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture is working, but there’s still more work ahead of the hardware’s general availability in about one year’s time.

      There’s AArch64 in GCC’s code-base with version 4.8 following months of development and its approval by the steering committee. Initial AArch64 architecture support was also merged into the Linux 3.7 kernel. However, on the LLVM/Clang side there hasn’t been much public-facing news.

    • Google Parsing Of LLVM’s Clang Compiler Errors

Leftovers

11.20.12

Links 21/11/2012: GNU/Linux Preinstalled on More Systems, Linux Rootkit Claimed

Posted in News Roundup at 9:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • LinuxQuestions – Still Making the World a Better Place After All These Years

    Years ago, when I was a GNU/Linux newbie, I found LinuxQuestions.org to be the site where I could find out just about anything about GNU/Linux in a rapidly growing on-line community. It’s still going strong so many years later.

  • Tranquilidade – Portuguese Insurance Company Switches to GNU/Linux and Saves

    Wouldn’t you like the cost of IT to drop 80%? You can have that with GNU/Linux. It is a cooperative project of the world to provide IT at minimal cost and it works for you and not for some supplier converting monopoly into a licence to print money. It’s not magic. If your software is designed to work for you instead of to generate licensing revenue, you have lower costs all around.

  • Ten things Linux and open source have to be thankful for

    It’s that time of year again — when all of the pundits, bloggers, and Max Headroom-like “voices of the future” spout off their thanks for all things tech and nerdy. Not one to jump on every bandwagon that comes along — I wanted to point out the things that the open source and Linux community have to be thankful for.

  • Has GNU/Linux Given Anything to You?

    It’s been about 3 years since I left Windows XP and became a full-time Linux user.

    In this time, I can proudly say that I’ve learned more than during my 15+ years of using Windows…all the way from 3.11 to XP.

  • The People Who Support Linux: Brazilian Developer Hacks Health Care with BeagleBoard and Android

    A few years ago, Brazilian developer Daniel Neis Araujo couldn’t imagine building open source health care equipment that could compete with traditional and respected proprietary solutions. But recent advances in Linux and the open hardware movement have allowed a faster development pace and a lower cost of entry for startups in the telemedicine field, in particular, he said.

  • Desktop

    • Haiti: Attempted assassination and death threats against Evel FANFAN
    • Drone Sub-Hunter To Patrol Seas
    • Documents reveal Italian National Police plans for October 15th 2011 demonstration

      The document sent on October 14th 2011 by the Italian National Police to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other national security forces, such as the Carabinieri, Polizia Stradale and Polizia Ferroviaria, reveals the organization of a task-force to control and inhibit the massive demonstration that was going to take place one day after in Rome.

    • Can Low-Cost Chromebooks Actually Replace MacBooks?

      Recently, we’ve been reporting on how Google is aggressively pushing Chrome OS, and the cloud-centric operating system is arriving on machines that are not only low priced, but Google is offering free incentives worth more than the computers running Chrome OS. We covered the arrival of Samsung’s new Chromebook portable computer running Google’s Chrome OS and selling for the strikingly low price of $249. And now, Acer is out with a new C7 Chromebook that sells for only $199 (seen here). Interestingly, noted open source advocate Simon Phipps, writing for InfoWorld, says he has ditched his MacBook for a Samsung Chromebook.

    • System76 unveils 17.3-inch Bonobo Extreme Ubuntu-powered laptop for gamers

      Ubuntu is known for many things: ease of use, regular updates, widespread community support, and more. One thing it is not known for is gaming. This is changing, however, with Steam heading to Linux in the near future. System76′s new Bonobo Extreme is Ubuntu-powered and aimed at gamers, boasting some impressive hardware and a hefty price tag.

    • System76 unveils an ‘extreme performance’ Ubuntu Linux laptop
    • OEMs Build All-in-One PCs for Linux Users

      Selling PCs with Linux preinstalled is hard enough. Doing it without paying attention to the latest hardware trends makes it nigh impossible. That’s probably why two major Linux OEMs, ZaReason and System76, have debuted “all-in-one” (AIO) desktop PCs powered by open source operating systems. Will their initiatives pay off?

      In a sense, AIO computers — the kind where the monitor and central hardware are integrated into a single case — go back quite a long time. Many of the old, old Macintoshes used this format, as did machines such as the Commodore PET 2001 (which, despite its name, first debuted in 1977). But the contemporary implementation of the all-in-one PC, exemplified by the modern iMac, is a newer idea.

    • System76 Launch 17″ Ubuntu Gaming Laptop, Dub it ‘Worlds Fastest’

      Ubuntu hardware re-sellers System76 have today unveiled their product: the Bonobo Extreme laptop.

    • Samsung’s A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

      Google recently launched the Samsung Chromebook that for $249 USD features an 11-inch display, a 16GB SSD, a promise of 6.5-hour battery life, and is backed by a Samsung Exynos 5 SoC. The Samsung Exynos 5 packs a 1.7GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor with ARM Mali-T604 graphics. With using this new ARM Cortex-A15 chip plus the Samsung Chromebook not being locked down so it can be loaded up with a Linux distribution like Ubuntu or openSUSE, it was a must-buy for carrying out some interesting Cortex-A15 Linux benchmarks. The Exynos 5 Dual in this affordable laptop packs an impressive performance punch.

    • 6 Preloaded Linux PCs For Your 2012 Holiday Wishlist

      It may still be a bit early for the ubiquitous end-of-year story looking back at 2012, but even now, it seems safe to say that the “Linux preloaded” trend will surely go down in history as a big part of what has characterized this year in desktop computing.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • A wealth of stable kernel updates
    • Systemd journal provides more informative messages

      A recently introduced systemd enhancement allows programs to add a unique identifier to log messages sent to systemd’s Journal, which lets it retrieve extra information about the logged event from a message catalogue. Developers could, for example, add some further details and internet links concerning an error message to the information in the catalogue; the information could also explain the log data in a user’s local language if a suitable translation exists.

    • The Legacy of Linus Torvalds: Linux, Git, and One Giant Flamethrower

      Linus Torvalds created Linux, which now runs vast swathes of the internet, including Google and Facebook. And he invented Git, software that’s now used by developers across the net to build new applications of all kinds. But that’s not all Torvalds has given the internet.

      He’s also started some serious flame wars.

      Over the past few years, Torvalds has emerged as one of the most articulate and engaging critics of the technology industry. His funny and plainspoken posts to Google+ routinely generate more comments and attention than most stories on The New York Times — or even Wired.

    • Linux 3.7 File-System Benchmarks: EXT4, Btrfs, XFS

      From an SSD-backed Lenovo ThinkPad W510 with an Intel Core i7 720QM CPU and a 160GB Intel SSD, the XFS, EXT4, and Btrfs file-systems were benchmarked. For reference, the Linux 3.5 kernel was also benchmarked on the same system with the three Linux file-systems. Unfortunately, the Linux 3.6.x kernels failed to properly boot on this particular system so there are only Linux 3.5 and 3.7 Git results.

    • Linus Torvalds Cracks His Whip – udev breakages

      Oh boy! It’s good to see someone with his eye on the road at the wheel sometimes… We all make the mistake of thinking too locally or not considering consequences of our actions but Linus whips such failings back into shape. Good for him.

    • Linux users targeted by mystery drive-by rootkit

      Security researchers have discovered what appears to be an experimental Linux rootkit designed to infect its highly select victims during a classic drive-by website attack.

      Posted anonymously to Full Disclosure on 13 November by an annoyed website owner, the rootkit has since been confirmed by CrowdStrike and Kaspersky Lab as being distributed to would-be victims via an unusual form of iFrame injection attack.

    • New Linux Rootkit Emerges

      A new Linux rootkit has emerged and researchers who have analyzed its code and operation say that the malware appears to be a custom-written tool designed to inject iframes into Web sites and drive traffic to malicious sites for drive-by download attacks. The rootkit is designed specifically for 64-bit Linux systems, and while it has some interesting features, it does not appear to be the work of high-level programmer or be meant for use in targeted attacks.

    • Linux Top 3: Gentoo Forks udev, Peppermint Respins and Linux 3.7 RC7
    • Gentoo developers start udev fork
    • Kernel Log – Coming in 3.7 (Part 2): Networking

      Linux now supports network address translation (NAT) for IPv6. Other new features include server-side support for Google’s TCP Fast Open (TFO) acceleration trick and a tethering driver for the iPhone 5.

    • Linux File Encryption Made Easy In BestCrypt By Jetico
    • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Glauber Costa
    • QEMU 1.3 Is Packing Interesting Features
    • Linux Kernel 3.7 Brings New Desktop, Server Features

      Another season, another Linux kernel. At least, that’s how it feels sometimes as kernel developers churn out new releases every two or three months. Within the next few weeks, Linux 3.7, the latest version of the code at the core of most mainstream open source operating systems — on Android phones as well as PCs and servers — will likely see its official release. And unlike some kernel updates, it will introduce a host of new features that end users may want to know about.

      We don’t cover Linux kernel development too frequently on The VAR Guy because it’s not something most end users are likely to care about or understand. Unless you’re deeply interested in how your computer works “under the hood” — and kudos to you if you are — chances are you don’t want to read about the latest innovations in Linux memory management or file systems.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Wayland 1.0.1 Has Been Released

        The first point release of Wayland 1.0 is now available for those interested in this next-generation display server environment.

        Kristian Høgsberg announced the Wayland 1.0.1 release on Monday. It’s been just shy of one month since the release of Wayland 1.0 while today’s update provides some fixes for the recent release that marked the point of API/protocol stability and a guarantee on backwards compatibility with future releases.

      • 1.0.1 Releases are out

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Greenpeace Activist Confronts Coal Lobbyist at Energy Event

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome Shell 3.7.2 release ..with support for Search Providers!
      • Controversial Nautilus 3.6 Lands Up In Raring Ringtail

        The much hyped Gnome’s file manager Nautilus 3.6 has made its way to the upcoming version of Ubuntu, Raring Ringtail. This version was earlier not adopted in Quantal due to many of its controversial changes. The whole desktop was upgraded to Gnome 3.6 while the file manager remained of 3.4 branch. Linux Mint developers on the other hand made their own fork of file manager called Nemo. This is similar to the earlier attitude taken by the developers, i.e. bring their own fork of Gnome as they did for Cinnamon.

      • Future Gnome Releases May Include Application Sandboxing

        With computers and applications becoming more and more smarter everyday, one is coming more close to security breeches and loopholes. Security issues today are more complex and harder to detect than they were five years ago. Developers are becoming more and more aware of this situation and they are finding out way to make computing more secure, fast and relaible.

      • Gnome Shell 3.7.2 Out, Supports Search Providers

        A new version of the Gnome Desktop, Gnone 3.7.2 is out. This version includes several stability and performance improvements along with bug fixes theta will make the Gnome desktop more stable, secure and reliable. Among the many changes in this release, the most important is the support for remote search providers. Now not only you will be able to search Wikipedia and Google from Gnome, but also will be able to search files, folders and documents from the single Gnome search bar.

  • Distributions

    • GALPon MiniNo 2.0 Screenshots

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Tresys Technology Announces Certifiable Linux Integration Platform (CLIP) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2

        Tresys Technology, a provider of technology and engineering services for customers with high-security requirements, today announced that the company has updated CLIP to support RHEL 6.2. The new release will be used by developers leveraging Linux to build appliances or systems with confidentiality, integrity, availability, and accountability requirements for U.S Intelligence and Department of Defense (DoD) agencies as well as for critical infrastructure and other communities that manage sensitive or classified information. The enhancements to the platform enrich integration features available in previous releases and include adding DCID (Director of Central Intelligence Directive) 6/3 Protection Level 4 (PL4) high-availability and high-integrity requirements support, a custom SELinux policy, and a new build system for generating installable media.

      • Red Hat Promotes Linux In Open Cloud Push

        Today, there’s a lot of cloud choices, and at their core, all major cloud platforms can provide the same kind of functionality with a vendor’s personal flavor. But when it comes down to mission-critical business applications that measure effectiveness down to the second, making a cloud choice may be a more difficult task when important variables are in play.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 18 and fedup

          Fedora 18 is still at least two months away from hitting a download mirror near you, but if you have read the articles on pre-stable versions that have been published on this website, you’d know that Anaconda, the Fedora system installer, will be a completely different beast on Fedora 18.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 13.04 Is About 13% Complete

            For those curious about the state of Ubuntu 13.04′s development, there is a convenient status page to reflect the overall condition of this forthcoming Ubuntu Linux that is codenamed the Raring Ringtail.

          • Ubuntu Raring Now 13% Complete, 10% Of Porting To Mobile Devices Complete

            The Ubuntu development team have published a nice status page where you can readily monitor the development of upcoming versions of Ubuntu. From that status page, we learned that around 13% of the proposed work for Raring Ringtail is complete. One of the chief aims of Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, i.e. porting it to embedded and mobile devices is complete. However, only 1% of work is complete for Kubuntu 13.04.

          • Status for all teams
          • Review: Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal a mix of promise, pain

            Write this down: Ubuntu 12.10, the late-year arrival from Canonical’s six-month standard release factory, marks the first new release within the company’s current long-term support cycle. Got it? Good, because it may be the best takeaway from the latest Ubuntu release, codenamed Quantal Quetzal. After that, it’s a bit of a rocky ride.

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 292
          • Ubuntu 12.10 Review

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Xubuntu 12.10 – Day 3 – 4 of the best music applications for Linux

              Welcome to the third part of my Xubuntu 12.10 review. The purpose of this set of articles is to take the base Xubuntu installation and show how easily it can be improved to make the best Linux operating system of them all.

              In the first part of the Xubuntu 12.10 review I reviewed the base install. In the second part of the Xubuntu 12.10 review I looked at how it is possible to customise all the aspects of the XFCE desktop to make it look the way you want it to look.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Mentor Graphics Corp : GENIVI 3.0-Compliant Infotainment Product Available from Mentor Embedded
    • GENIVI 3.0 specs-compliant Linux IVI from Mentor
    • Raspberry Pi reaches critical mass as XBMC hardware

      For years I’ve been dreaming of a streaming media device that could just be stuck to the back of a television. Since XBMC has been far and away my favorite set-top box software, I’ve closely monitored hardware developments that can run that package. Now I think it’s time to declare that the Raspberry Pi has achieved the base specifications to be branded the XBMC device that rules them all.

    • Phones

      • Digitimes Research: Global smartphone shipments to grow 30% in 2013

        Global smartphone shipments are expected to grow 30% to 865 million units in 2013, accounting for 43.9% of total handset shipments in the year, Digitimes Research has estimated.

      • Android 4.2 Source now Open

        Android 4.2 is now part of Google’s AOSP, making the source code available to everyone

      • Android

        • Sony coaxes indie Vita, Android developers with $99 SDK

          Sony has launched an indie-focused portal for developers that includes access to the now-out-of-beta PlayStation Mobile software development kit.

          The PlayStation Mobile SDK has been available in beta form for quite some time, but Sony has now officially given it the green light and slapped on a $99 (£62) annual usage fee.

        • Replicant 4.0 0001 images release

          After months of working hard to bring Replicant to the next upstream release, we are proud to announce the release of the Replicant 4.0 0001 images. This new release comes with support for both new devices, such as the Galaxy Nexus or the Galaxy S2 and devices that were already there in Replicant 2.3, like the Nexus S and the Galaxy S.

        • Nexus 4 Does Have An LTE Chip On Its Shoulder

          A teardown by iFixit reveals that Google’s flagship phone Nexus 4, manufactured by LG does have an LTE chip in it. It’s a Qualcomm 7-band LTE chip also found on LG’s Optimus phone, which is in some ways identical to this device.

          It’s unclear why the phone doesn’t support LTE service despite the presence of the hardware. There can be many wild guesses — one is that the chip is there only due to ease of assembly as it is the same board used in LG Optimus G and LG wants to cut down the cost by using the same assembly for this device.

        • Is enterprise Android a BYOD hell?

          Google’s release of Android Jelly Bean 4.2 has come at a time when somewhere around 50 manufacturers now support the open source mobile-focused operating system.

          Looking across the market there are now thought to be over 500 types of Android device and this of course now includes both tablets and smartphones.

        • Google is reportedly developing an open-source alternative to Apple’s AirPlay

          Google eventually plans to roll-out the service on a cross-platform basis with multiple hardware partners, according to reports.

          The search giant introduced the first phase of this new technology on YouTube last week, enabling users to Beam content from their Android smartphones to Google TV-connected HDTVs. But this is just the first step along the road to a bespoke open-source wireless streaming client.

        • Open source Java for Android? Don’t bet on it

          Google’s Android mobile software platform, as we know, has caused quite a conflict with Oracle, given Oracle’s failed lawsuit that claimed Java-like Android infringed on Java patents and copyrights. But now, might Oracle and Google, or even just one of them, decide to formally develop an open source implementation of Java especially for Android?

        • Elon Musk: With Jobs Gone, Google Will Win Mobile (And Look Out For The Hyperloop)

          It was appropriate then that several Valley players took part in Silicon Valley Comes To The UK events last week. But Musk was not there to sing their praises, but merely to expand on his general worldview. Interviewed by Number 10 special adviser Rohan Silva, Musk opened up on a number of issues, some he’s touched on in the past, and others he expanded upon more fully.

        • iPad mini and Nexus 7 go head-to-head

          The Nexus 7 from Google and the iPad mini from Apple are two of the hottest small tablets. Here are both of these capable tablets in a photo spread showing how they compare in size and with popular apps running.

        • Access Denied: why Android’s broken promise of unlocked bootloaders needs to be fixed

          Remember when mobile hardware manufacturers like HTC and Motorola promised to help customers unlock the bootloaders on their Android devices, paving the way to the promised land of rooting, mods, and custom firmware? Here’s a quick update: it’s not going so well.

          In the past year, we’ve seen HTC, Motorola, Sony, and others come out in support of unlocking, setting up special websites dedicated to safely open devices for custom ROMs and other “unofficial” uses. But those efforts have been sabotaged at nearly every turn as one flagship phone after another is sealed shut under the mandates of major carriers like Verizon and AT&T.

        • ZTE Grand X Pro and Avid 4G leak, show off newfound company sleekness
        • Say hello to Xperia™ Lounge

          Music, film, gaming or sports nut? Xperia Lounge has something for everyone, with exclusive content from Sony and our partners added every week – videos, imagery, competitions and VIP offers.

      • Ballnux

        • HTC’s Droid DNA going international

          As if it were any surprise, HTC looks to be readying an international version of the recently announced Droid DNA. A tweet from often-accurate @evleaks tells us the 5-inch smartphone will be released as a global edition and will be called the HTC Deluxe.

          If the Deluxe name sounds familiar it is because that was one of the code names tossed around in the months leading up to last week’s announcement. Some readers may recall recently hearing the phone tied to rumors of a HTC DLX moniker.

        • Samsung to announce Galaxy S II Plus in 2013?

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Here Comes PengPod Tablet Which Dual Boots Linux As Well As Android

        We have heard dual-booting in PCs, Macs and Laptops. The amazing technology allows one to oot into two OSes in a single computer. User has to specify different partitions for the OSes he wants to boot and is provides with options during booting. Dual booting was unknown in tablets and mobile phones until lately. Innovators have come out with PengPod, that will be able to boot Android as well as Linux in a single tablet.

      • Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Teardown: A Samsung Tablet By Another Name?

        With its little brother having already spilled its guts, it was always going to be interesting to see how the new 9-inch Fire compared. Turns out it owes an awful lot to Samsung.

        Powerbook Medic has torn the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 apart for the world to peer inside. It seems Samsung has done well out of the tablet, as it’s supplying—at the very least—the display, RAM, and flash memory. The processor is courtesy of Texas Instruments, though.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Words of Gratitude for the Bounty That Is FOSS

    It’s a general matter of course in any given year that as Thanksgiving draws ever closer here in the land of stars and stripes, more than a few Linux bloggers begin to wax sentimental about their favorite operating system, often recounting all the many reasons they’re thankful it exists.

    It is the start of the season of thankfulness, after all.

    Well, perhaps it’s the recent presidential elections or — even more so — perhaps it’s the fact that a sizable part of the country is preoccupied by a desire to divorce Uncle Sam. In any case, this year, the usual pattern doesn’t seem to have happened.

  • Open, Free and Commercial
  • Open source identity management: can 250,000 users be wrong?

    Identity management specialist ForgeRock has launched a 100% open source software stack intended to secure applications and services across enterprise, cloud, social and mobile environments.

    Boasting claims of more than 250,000 downloads in less than 24 months, the ForgeRock Open Identity Stack is positioned (in theory) as a community of global companies working to deploy identity management infrastructures more economically via the open model.

  • Whither OpenSolaris? Illumos Takes Up the Mantle

    After Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, its lack of interest in maintaining OpenSolaris as an open source operating system drove a group of dedicated developers to pick up where Sun left off. The Illumos Foundation has created a new distro that builds off of OpenSolaris, but calling it a form might not exactly be accurate.

  • RabbitMQ 3.0 plugs into STOMP and MQTT

    The latest release of the RabbitMQ messaging platform, RabbitMQ 3.0, includes plugins that support Web-STOMP, which allows the text-oriented STOMP protocol to run over WebSockets, and MQTT, the machine-to-machine/”Internet of Things” connection protocol.

  • Events

    • Open Forges Summit 2012: Presentations and Take-aways

      The Open World Forum is the best place to meet and talk about the present and the future of open source forges, as seen back in 2010 at the first Open Forges Summit, and again in 2011 to talk about interoperability among forges.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice vs. Microsoft Office in real life

      When people evaluate software for their own need and run X vs. Y checks, they always do it from their own perspective, placing their own needs at the forefront. They are of course doing the one sensible thing, but they are wrong. When you test software, you must ask yourselves how many people will be affected by that use?

      If the answer is one, then you can proceed with your own evaluation. If the answer is more than one, then the scale changes instantly and completely, and it’s no longer a question what everyone needs or things, it’s the simple of matter what the weakest link in your user pool needs. Let me elaborate.

  • CMS

  • Business

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • November 2012 GNU Toolchain Update

      One month on and the GCC sources are now in a lot better shape. The cause for most of the problems last month was that a new register allocator pass has been brought in to GCC. This pass – LRA or Local Register Allocator – is meant to be simpler, easier to debug, and provide a better job of register allocation. It is still rather new however, which is why there were so many problems last month. A lot of these have been sorted out now, which is good news as the 4.8 branch will be happening soon.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Study on free, open source software in governance

      A study is to be jointly conducted by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), Trivandrum, and the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore on the use of free and open source software in e-governance.

      The study, set to be completed in 18 months, will cover the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • California Über Uber: Why Ride-Sharing Ruckus Should Surprise No One
    • Cabbies sue to drive car service Uber out of San Francisco
    • Sweden’s Open Source Music Festival Lets Fans Vet Its Branding
    • Open source is not limited to software

      I am a technology practitioner and promoter of open source software (OSS). It ismy job to speak about the open source model in order to facilitate its adoption, to discuss its relevance and viability with regards to the strategic and economic needs of our time.

      When I began my career, I spent several years working with closed source and proprietary software. It was then that I was first introduced to open source software. At first, it seemed rebellious, but I soon realized it was just the tip of iceberg. I could sense this was a revolutionary idea capable of a paradigm shift, representing deep topics: sustainable innovation, broader collaboration, and sharing of intellectual outcomes.

    • Open source design in music and ecology

      The participatory ethic of open source software has become so widespread these days that it is migrating into some unexpected places… like musical instruments, tractors and ecological technology.

    • Open Data

      • Open data set provides objective doctor ranking

        Are you an academic, scientist, health policy junkie… or just a person who goes to see your doctor every now and then? Well, listen up: a new project by Fred Trotter and Not Only Development was recently granted protection under the Freedom of Information Act and met it’s crowdfunding effort on MedStartr to move ahead with plans to generate an open data set that promises to alter the healthcare landscape and have drastic implications on how we navigate it.

      • Wikidata – Wikipedia’s Game-changer

        Wikidata is one of the biggest technical overhauls of Wikipedia in its history and the ripples of change will reach far beyond its own shores. Dr Karl Beecher investigates…

  • Programming

    • New Book Teaches Kids Open Source Programming

      You know your programming language is a hit when it becomes the subject of a children’s book — or, at least, a book written for kids. Python, the popular open source programming platform, can now claim that title, with the recent release by No Starch Press of Python for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming. Will the book assure your kid’s success as the next prodigy of the computer world?

    • LLVM Developers Prefer Git Over SVN

      While the LLVM compiler infrastructure is primarily developed around Subversion, a poll was recently conducted that found LLVM developers overwhelmingly prefer Git over SVN for version control.

Leftovers

  • Lawyers say Clarke’s justice bill smacks of repressive and undemocratic regimes

    Secret trials and withholding evidence are reminiscent of “repressive regimes and undemocratic societies”, the legal profession warns in a letter opposing the government’s justice and security bill.

    Ken Clarke’s plans will erode core principles of justice and “fatally undermine the courtroom as an independent and objective forum”, according to the organisations representing solicitors and barristers. The UK’s international reputation for “fair justice” will be significantly damaged, they say.

  • The Lords must halt this draconian plan

    Nobody believes more fervently than the Mail in the importance of protecting members of the security services who risk their lives for our country.

    Nor is anyone more appalled to see terrorist suspects granted huge
    compensation payments, agreed out of court because the Government believes contesting their claims in public would put witnesses or their contacts in danger.

    But as this paper has passionately argued, security considerations can be no justification for the draconian clampdown on open court hearings proposed in a Bill now going through the Lords.

  • Why you should never, ever steal an image off the internet

    The folks at Denver’s ABC-affiliated 7News last night ran a story about the David Petraeus sex scandal, his “mistress,” Paula Broadwell, and her biography of Patraeus, All In.

    Except instead of pulling an actual copy of the book cover, somebody just ran a Google search and pulled in the first thing they found. Which, unfortunately for 7News, was an altered copy of the book cover.

  • Denver News Crew Accidentally Livens Up Broadcast With An Inappropriate Image ‘Borrowed’ From The Web

    It’s a well known fact that many people mistake Google’s image search for a license-free stock photo repository. Of course, many people are unaware (or simply uninterested) in the nuances of copyright law, making liberal borrowing of images the norm, rather than the exception.

    On the other hand, members of industries that rely on the protection of copyright laws shouldn’t have to be reminded that “running an image search” is not even in the same neighborhood as “properly sourcing a photo.” This distinction is even more important if you’re in a business that relies on integrity, along with various IP laws. Having a staffer just grab an image from “The Internet” for use during a news broadcast could, at the very least, put you in the situation of having to pay up and apologize publicly for using someone else’s photo without permission. At worst, you could find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit.

  • The incredible persistence of email
  • David Cameron axes equality assessments in war on ‘red tape’

    David Cameron has axed standard assessments used to gauge how policies affect different social groups as part of a drive to get rid of the “bureaucratic rubbish” that gets in the way of British business.

  • Hardware

    • Intel chief Otellini to retire in May
    • Intel CEO Paul Otellini Will Retire This May After 40 Year Tenure

      Intel CEO Paul Otellini Will Retire This May After 40 Year TenureAt this point, there aren’t that many people who’ve worked at Intel as long as CEO Paul Otellini has. But after 40 years at the 45-year old chip maker—the last eight of them as CEO—he’s hanging up his stirrups this May. His timing couldn’t be better.

    • While the Intel board was firing Paul Otellini they should have fired themselves, too

      Paul Otellini this week resigned his position as CEO of Intel as I’m sure you’ve already heard or read. Analysts and pundits are weighing-in on the matter, generally attributing Otellini’s failure to Intel’s late and flawed effort to gain traction in the mobile processor space. While I tend to agree with this assessment, it doesn’t go far enough to explain Otellini’s fall, which is not only his fault but also the fault of Intel’s board of directors. Yes, Otellini was forced out by the board, but the better action would have been for the board to have fired itself, too.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Bad air means bad news for seniors’ brainpower

      Living in areas of high air pollution can lead to decreased cognitive function in older adults, according to new research presented in San Diego at The Gerontological Society of America’s (GSA) 65th Annual Scientific Meeting.

      This finding is based on data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Health and Retirement Study. The analysis was conducted by Jennifer Ailshire, PhD, a National Institute on Aging postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Biodemography and Population Health and the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California.

    • The Red Cross: Missing in action

      THE RED Cross was nowhere to be found after Hurricane Sandy hit on October 29 and New Yorkers most needed the best-known private humanitarian and disaster relief organization.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Grantham To Climate Scientists: ‘Be Persuasive. Be Brave. Be Arrested (If Necessary)’

      I have yet to meet a climate scientist who does not believe that global warming is a worse problem than they thought a few years ago. The seriousness of this change is not appreciated by politicians and the public.

    • French President Rejects Fracking, Reduces Nuclear, Asks Greater EU Carbon Reduction 2030

      François Hollande has slammed the door on the exploitation of France’s big oil and shale gas deposits using “hydraulic fracking”, risking further tensions with business leaders anxious not to lose access to what they see as a potentially vital energy asset.

      Mr Hollande said he had ordered the rejection of seven applications to open up the country’s shale deposits, citing “the heavy risk to health and the environment” of fracking, which injects water, sand and chemicals under high pressure into rock to release oil and gas.

    • Frack Fight: A Secret War of Activists — With the World in the Balance

      There’s a war going on that you know nothing about between a coalition of great powers and a small insurgent movement. It’s a secret war being waged in the shadows while you go about your everyday life.

      In the end, this conflict may matter more than those in Iraq and Afghanistan ever did. And yet it’s taking place far from newspaper front pages and with hardly a notice on the nightly news. Nor is it being fought in Yemen or Pakistan or Somalia, but in small hamlets in upstate New York. There, a loose network of activists is waging a guerrilla campaign not with improvised explosive devices or rocket-propelled grenades, but with zoning ordinances and petitions.

  • Finance

    • Join the Rolling Jubilee: “You Are Not a Loan”

      Americans always feel charitable around the holiday season, giving some $300 billion to a diverse array of charities in 2011 alone. Now there is new way Americans can help their neighbors in need, by purchasing and forgiving their debt.

      This is the idea behind the “Rolling Jubilee” being organized by “Strike Debt”, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Since November 15, 2012, they have raised over $350,000, enough to abolish over $7 million in debt.

    • An MMT Fiscal Responsibility Narrative: Some Truths After A Second Crowd Sourcing Revision

      The only real crises is one of a failing economy and growing economic inequality in which only the needs of the few are served, and also one of lack of political desire or will to solve these real problems. MMT policies can help to bring an end to the first economic crisis; but not if progressives, and others continue to believe in false ideas about fiscal sustainability and responsibility, and the similarity of their Government to a household. To begin to solve our problems, we need to reject the neoliberal narrative and embrace the MMT narrative about the meaning of fiscal responsibility. That will lead us to the political action we need to solve the political crisis and eventually toward fiscal policies that achieve public purpose and away from policies that prolong economic stagnation and the ravages of austerity.

    • Next Act for Super PACs and Dark Money Nonprofits: Lobbying to Block Compromise on the “Fiscal Cliff”
    • Wall Street’s Great Scapegoat Hunt

      And yet, we are now supposed to believe that many things that went wrong leading up to the financial crisis were caused by a handful of junior bankers and traders supposedly acting on their own. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and the Securities and Exchange Commission continue to blame Fabrice Tourre, a former Goldman Sachs vice president, for the botched manufacturing and selling of the Abacus 2007-AC1 synthetic collateralized debt obligation.

    • Hostess Blames Union For Bankruptcy After Tripling CEO’s Pay

      oday, Hostess Brands inc. — the company famed for its sickly sweet dessert snacks like Twinkies and Sno Balls — announced they’d be shuttering after more than eighty years of production.

      But while headlines have been quick to blame unions for the downfall of the company there’s actually more to the story: While the company was filing for bankruptcy, for the second time, earlier this year, it actually tripled its CEO’s pay, and increased other executives’ compensation by as much as 80 percent.

    • Ten Numbers the Rich Would Like Fudged

      The numbers reveal the deadening effects of inequality in our country, and confirm that tax avoidance, rather than a lack of middle-class initiative, is the cause.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Responding to the Gates Foundation: How do we Consider Evidence of Learning in Teacher Evaluations?

      The Gates Foundation continues to fund Teach For America, Stand For Children, The Media Bullpen, the National Council for Teacher Quality, Teach Plus, The New Teacher Project, and literally scores of other groups which carry on campaigns to undermine due process for teachers, and actively lobby for coercive legislation that forces public schools to use faulty test scores for the purposes of teacher evaluation, against the best judgment of administrators and academic experts.

    • Does Africa need more investment in family planning?

      Contraception will not help reduce deaths in childbirth or infant mortality: it is just a population control tool.

    • Beat the FBI: How to Send Anonymous Email Without Getting Caught

      “Security is a function of the resources your adversary is willing to commit,” said Julian Sanchez, a policy expert with the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

      “If you’ve been flagged as a high-priority target by the NSA [National Security Agency] and are under active observation,” Sanchez said, “then no, you can probably never have ‘total confidence’ that your communications won’t be traced.”

      But for the rest of us, it’s definitely a possibility. With the right tools, some vigilance and a little bit of Web savvy, you, too, can best General Petraeus, Hamas, al-Qaida and the Taliban with communiqués so virtually untraceable that they would make James Bond blush.

    • Shareholder resolutions for political disclosure enjoy significant support

      Americans are still reeling from the cacophony of secret money and negative ads that was the 2012 election. Much of the money spent on the congressional and presidential campaigns came from undisclosed sources, underscoring the continued need to fight for reforms to promote transparency in elections.

  • Censorship

    • Government laughs uneasily as Lukashenko praises Hungary for rejecting democracy

      The Hungarian government was forced to awkwardly rebuff some rare international praise this weekend, following some approving comments about the country on Friday by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko. According to a report from Belarusian state news agency Belta entitled “Lukashenko: Western society changes views on democracy and market economy”, the Belarusian president – who has often been dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” – said the following during the appointment of new Belarusian envoys to Hungary and France:

      “Hungary used to be a socialist country. We used to be good friends with them. We used to have very close relations. After they became fed up with ‘democracy’ and market economy… they got sober.”

      Lukashenko then went on to say that Belarus needs to build relations with Hungary, as it “cannot lose this country.”

    • Russia Demands Internet Takeover By The UN… And Then Retracts It

      Quite a week for random governmental retractions. Back in February, when we first warned about the upcoming “World Conference on International Telecommunications” (WCIT) meeting of the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU), we noted that the thing to be most afraid of was countries like Russia and China using the process to take over control of aspects of the internet, in part to allow greater control for the sake of censorship, but also to set up questionable “tariffs” on internet traffic, designed to basically divert money to state owned or “closely associated” telcos. While much of the focus over the past few months was on the EU telcos proposal, you had to know that even worse was coming.

    • Yes, A Domain Name Can Be Protected By The First Amendment

      A year and a half ago, we wrote about a lawsuit from a lawyer in Texas, John Gibson, who is an expert in workers’ comp issues in the state. He — quite reasonably — set up a blog at the URL TexasWorkersCompLaw.com. Shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Wrong. It seems that Texas has a law that you can’t use the words “Texas” and “Workers’ Comp” together. Seriously. The law explicitly says that anyone advertising Texas Workers’ Comp law help “may not knowingly use or cause to be used… any term using both ‘Texas’ and ‘Workers’ Compensation’ or any term using both ‘Texas’ and ‘Workers’ Comp’;”

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Patrick Leahy Ready To Cave To Law Enforcement: Has ECPA Reform Amendment To Include Loopholes For Warrantless Spying

      Back in September, we wrote about how Senator Patrick Leahy had introduced a really good bill for ECPA reform. ECPA (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) is an incredibly outdated bill concerning (as it says) the privacy of electronic messages. It was written in a time (the mid-1980s) before everyone had email, let alone everyone used web-based, cloud-stored email. And thus, it has weird provisions, such as considering that messages stored on a server for more than 180 days are “abandonded” and thus subject to very little privacy protections. And that’s just one of many, many problems with ECPA, which treats all kinds of messages differently.

    • Senate bill rewrite lets feds read your e-mail without warrants
    • China activists dead in custody: rights groups

      At least two activists died in custody before or during China’s Communist Party congress and tens of thousands had their movements restricted, rights groups said Monday.

      The action was part of the government’s “maintenance stability” campaign aimed at preventing any sign of unrest during the party gathering in Beijing, which ended last week, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said.

      The congress ushered in a once-a-decade leadership change, with President Hu Jintao stepping down from his top party post to make way for Xi Jinping, who is due to be named state president in March.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • So Much For Competing In The Market: Grab Bag Of IP Weapons Used In Legal Fight Between Options Exchanges

      We’ve pointed out that while we’re told that intellectual property is supposed to be about the incentive to create, the reality is that it tends to be a protectionist tool to attack the competition. If you want to see an amazing example of this and how some companies will use any and all possible IP claims, look no further than the ongoing legal battle between the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the International Securities Exchange. Now, you might think that financial markets wouldn’t need “intellectual property protection” in order to incentivize their creation and continued innovation. And you’d be right. But, if you wanted to use those tools to annoy the hell out of competitors, well, you’ve stepped up to the right window.

    • Payright: A Copyright/Patent Reform Proposal To Make Piracy Obsolete

      Copyright and patent monopolies can be reformed to be less terrible, but in the long-term they need to be reformed into smithereens with a sledgehammer. Politically, this may be impossible. Practically, doing nothing to encourage creativity and innovation may not even be desirable. Erik Zoltan and I have a new alternative: the Payright System.

    • Copyrights

      • RIAA Hammers Google With DMCA Takedowns In Six Strikes Prelude

        Very soon the six strikes anti-piracy program will kick off in the United States but the RIAA isn’t just sitting back and presuming that it will be an anti-piracy cure-all. Since early November the recording industry group has massively upped the number of DMCA notices it issues to make content harder to find. From an average of between 200,000 and 240,000 URL requests sent every week to Google, the RIAA has just posted 463,000 and 666,000 in successive weeks.

      • Rep. Darrell Issa Wants To Make It Clear That You’re Allowed To Rip Your DVDs

        Back in October, we noted that in the latest triennial DMCA exemption review, the Copyright Office/Librarian of Congress refused to say it was legal for you to rip your own legally purchased DVDs so that you could watch them on a computer or tablet. That seems fairly ridiculous, especially given that similarly ripping your CDs is recognized as legal. Rep. Darrell Issa has apparently recognized how silly this and is planning a bill to fix the Copyright Office’s mistake.

      • App Developer Hijacks Customer Twitter Accounts In An Attempt To Shame Pirates

        I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for DRM in my heart, mostly because it makes me laugh. If you think about it, it’s generally rather funny in its uselessness. Pirates don’t care about it as they simply route around any DRM. Customers can certainly be annoyed, but they always end up with the same tools the pirates use to break the DRM on their purchased products. There’s a question of legality in doing so, obviously, but generally nobody really seems to care all that much and software developers just end up in a DRM arms race against nobody, which is inherently funny. All the while, we get wonderful gems like Ubisoft’s vuvuzela DRM, which was hysterical. Now, don’t get me wrong, DRM sucks, but upon reading stories about its effects my range of emotions tends to be anywhere between annoyance and raucous laughter.

      • Copyright Hardliners Adapt ‘Copyright Reform’ Language; They Just Mean In The Other Direction

        Neelie Kroes has emerged as perhaps the most Net-savvy politician in the European Commission, with her repeated calls for a new approach to copyright in Europe that takes cognizance of the shift to a digital world. That’s one measure of how mainstream the idea has become. Another is the fact that even copyright hardliners like Michel Barnier, the Commissioner responsible for the Internal Market in Europe, are starting to frame the discussion in a similar way.

      • Republicans Going Copyleft?!

        The Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives has issued an extremely interesting (though rather clumsily written and clumsily titled) Report on “Three Myths About Copyright Law, and Where to Start to Fix it.”

      • Rep. Lofgren Looks To Reddit To Help Crowdsource Anti-SOPA

        Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who has been one of the few leaders in Congress when it comes to pushing for real copyright reform and pushing back against the bad proposals of Hollywood, is apparently looking to use Reddit to crowdsource a new bill concerning internet freedom. Earlier this year, we noted that Lofgren had introduced two good bills — one on ECPA reform (pushing for more privacy for your communications) and one called the Global Internet Freedom Act to create a task force designed to ensure internet freedom. It will be interesting to see how well this works.

      • House Democrat enlists Reddit in pushback against website seizures

        Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) is taking to the social news website Reddit on Monday to crowd source ideas for legislation that would provide new protections for websites accused of copyright theft.

        Lofgren wants to craft a bill that would stop the government from shutting down a website accused of copyright violations until the owners are given notice and a chance to defend themselves.

      • Micro-Stock Photo Agency Prefers Converting Customers To Cracking Down On Infringers

        In this bold era of copyright trolling, calmly (ir)rational takedown bots, baseless legal threats and ridiculous statutory damages, it’s a true rarity to see a copyright holder deal with infringement, especially non-commercial infringement, with a reaction that’s actually in line with the “crime” committed.

      • AC/DC And Kid Rock Finally Realize That Selling Tracks Online Is Probably A Good Idea

        A few years ago, people always referred to the Beatles as the biggest holdouts in terms of releasing their music for sale as MP3s online (mainly iTunes). However, the Beatles finally came around in November of 2010. After that, people started putting together lists of who was left and AC/DC and Kid Rock seemed to top most of those lists.

      • Ever Wanted To Present At One Of The Music Industry’s Key Events?

        In 2009, I attended Midem for the first time. It’s an event that the music industry has put on for decades. Over the past few years, they’ve really embraced the idea that the music industry needs to adapt and modernize and have continuously brought in a stream of speakers and participants showing that there are ways for the industry to thrive. In 2009, they invited me to present a case study on Trent Reznor, which remains one of the most popular presentations I’ve ever given. Four years later I still get at least an email a week about it, and sometimes more.

      • Don’t Let Retraction Distract From The Simple Fact: GOP Copyright Policy Brief Was Brilliant

        While there’s been plenty of attention paid over the weekend to the fact that the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the conservative caucus of House Republicans, pulled its report on copyright reform after some entertainment industry lobbyists hit the phones/emails late Friday/early Saturday (and, no, it wasn’t directly to RSC, for the most part, but to “friendly” members asking them to express their “displeasure” with the report to the RSC leadership). But we shouldn’t let that distract from the simple fact that the report was brilliant — perhaps the most insightful and thoughtful piece of scholarship on copyright to come out of a government body in decades. You can still read the whole thing as uploaded to Archive.org.

      • Forthcoming book on conservative and libertarian skepticism about our copyright system

        As you likely know by now, the Republican Study Committee published a briefing paper critical of copyright, but then later pulled it down claiming the memo had not received adequate review. Some have suggested that IP-industry pressure may have led to the reversal. I hope we will find out in due time whether the paper was indeed reviewed and approved (as I suspect it was), and why it was removed. That said, I think what this take-down likely shows is a generational gap between the old, captured, and pro-business parts of the Republican Party and its pro-market and pro-dynamism future.

        I also hope that this dust-up sparks a debate within the “right” about our bloated copyright system, and so it’s propitious that in a couple of weeks the Mercatus Center will be publishing a new book I’ve edited making the case that libertarians and conservatives should be skeptical of our current copyright system. It’s called Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive to Excess, and it is not a moral case for or against copyright; it is a pragmatic look at the excesses of the present copyright regime and of proposals to further expand it. The book features:

      • Artifact: A musician’s struggle against a giant corporation

        Jared Leto is perhaps best known to the general public for his work as a film actor, most notably in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000). However, in recent years he has devoted his attention to the world of music, as the lead singer of Thirty Seconds to Mars.

        Artifact, directed by Leto himself, under the pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins (of Dr. Seuss fame), revolves around major record label EMI’s decision to sue the band for $30 million in August 2008. The film was screened November 8 as part of the New York City documentary festival DOC NYC and previously, in September, at the Toronto film festival.

11.19.12

Links 19/11/2012: Precise Puppy 5.4.1, Ubuntu/Canonical Loses Compiz Developer

Posted in News Roundup at 7:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Study on free, open source software in governance

    In a statement issued here Monday, ICFOSS said the study would bring out the extent to which free and open source software is used in government projects, and assess the economics of its use.

  • Business

    • Why businesses are adopting the open source community approach

      A few months ago, I joined Red Hat as a marketing apprentice (intern) in Paris, France—where I am also continuing my studies at France Business School—and it became clear to me that my vision of what open source is and what it means to be part of the community has changed. This evolution has significantly altered the way I am participating in projects and communiticating with peers.

  • BSD

    • What’s Exciting About FreeBSD 9.1: Intel KMS

      While FreeBSD 9.1 is running behind schedule, one of the exciting additions to this forthcoming BSD operating system is finally debuting Intel kernel mode-setting on FreeBSD support.

      The most exciting feature in this release is undoubtedly the availability of Kernel Modesetting and new drivers for intel chipsets. The drivers are not perfectly up-to-date (xf86-video-intel is at 2.17 and mesa is at 7.11) but it is a significant improvement over what was previously available (2.7 and 7.6, respectively).

    • FreeBSD project servers hacked

      The FreeBSD project has announced that an intrusion was detected on two of the machines within its project cluster on November 11.

  • Licensing

    • Relicensing VLC to the LGPL the hard way

      VideoLAN president Jean-Baptiste Kempf has completed relicensing most of the popular open source VLC media player from GPLv2 to LGPL. In a blog post, Kempf explains the reasoning for the relicensing: the project is trying to attract more developers, especially for app store versions of the application. VLC was removed from the iOS App Store back in January 2011 because it was licensed under the GPL. By the end of the year, the developers had already relicensed libVLC, the core library of the media player.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Should Hostess open source their recipes?

      In other words, should they release their recipes under a license like Creative Commons or the GPL that would allow people to use, modify, and enhance the recipes?

    • Ray Kurzweil on the future of work: Lifelong learning and an open source economy

      Singularity University, on the grounds of the NASA Research Center at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley, abounds in optimism, and, as Singularity’s vice president of innovation and research, I have understandably caught the bug. I have written about why I believe this will be the most innovative decade in human history, how we are headed for an era of abundant and affordable health care, and how robotics, artificial intelligence and 3D printing will lead to an era of local manufacturing in which the creative class flourishes.

      But deep down I also worry about the dark side of advancing technology; specifically, how we could create doomsday viruses, be in ethical gray zones, and impact employment with new technologies. So my exchanges with Singularity University founders Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis often turn into lengthy debates. While we agree on the positives, we never quite reach an agreement on the risks and downsides. I usually run out of arguments, and their optimism always wins me over — until it wears off.

    • Open Hardware

      • Chumby inventor, Huang. to keynote at LCA

        The inventor of the Chumby, Dr Andrew “bunnie” Huang, has been named as the first of four keynote speakers at the Australian national Linux conference next year.

Leftovers

  • If I Were Your Lawyer I’d Tell You Not to Brag About Your Crimes on the Air

    The Denver Post reports that a woman who faked mental illness to get out of jury duty, and then bragged about it on a talk-radio show, has pleaded guilty to perjury and “attempting to influence a public servant.” The “public servant” in question was the judge who had presided over jury selection, and who excused the woman after she claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress. But this potential juror went the extra mile: she “sold her act” by dressing crazy, with “heavy makeup smeared on her face while her hair hung askew in curlers, with shoes and reindeer socks mismatched.” She also spoke “disjointedly.”

  • Americans Voting Smarter About Crime, Justice At Polls

    A headline from the Denver Post this week read: “Colorado Drug Force Disbanding.” Another from the Seattle Times announced, “220 Marijuana Cases Dismissed In King, Pierce Counties.”

    Just 15 or 20 years ago, headlines like these were unimaginable. But marijuana legalization didn’t just win in Washington and Coloardo, it won big.

    In Colorado, it outpolled President Barack Obama. In Washington, Obama beat pot by less than half a percentage point. Medical marijuana also won in Massachusetts, and nearly won in Arkansas. (Legalization of pot lost in Oregon, but drug law reformers contend that was due to a poorly written ballot initiative that would basically have made the state a vendor.)

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • How Germany Is Getting to 100 Percent Renewable Energy

      There is no debate on climate change in Germany. The temperature for the past 10 months has been three degrees above average and we’re again on course for the warmest year on record. There’s no dispute among Germans as to whether this change is man-made, or that we contribute to it and need to stop accelerating the process.

  • Finance

    • Goldman Sachs and Litton Loan Servicing: A Very Uncomfortable Divorce

      rior to the 2008 when Wall Street was laying on big bets on the housing market, mortgage servicing was the equivalent of blackjack; the odds for a player who knew the rules were very good and having a company that collected monthly mortgage payments from homeowners provided a reliable revenue stream. Even better were the companies that operated in the sub-prime space — “default servicers” — because if you couldn’t shake the shekels out of the homeowners pocket, you could always seize the property in foreclosure and make back your nut and then some. In the colorful vernacular of the industry these mortgage loans are referred to as “S&D” (scratch and dent).

    • US Government Campaign Against Whistleblowers and Electronic Robin Hoods
    • Italian Catholic Church to pay property tax from next year
    • Freedom From Religion Foundation sues IRS for not enforcing electioneering restrictions on churches

      On the heels of a presidential election in which hundreds of preachers publicly promised to flout Internal Revenue Service rules by endorsing candidates from the pulpit, the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation filed suit against the IRS for failing to enforce electioneering restrictions against churches and religious organizations.

      Filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, the lawsuit charges that Douglas Shulman, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, “has violated, continues to violate and will continue to violate in the future, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States by failing to enforce the electioneering restrictions of 501(c)(3) of the Tax Code against churches and religious organizations.”

    • Sanders: Going Over ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Better than Bad Tax Deal

      Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Monday that if the lame-duck Congress can’t agree on a tax deal by the end of the year, briefly going over the “fiscal cliff” is preferable to accepting a bad deal.

  • Censorship

    • Julian Assange labels Obama ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’

      WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange has described re-elected President Barack Obama as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and says he expects the US government to keep attacking the anti-secrecy website.

    • Lurk no more

      ON NOVEMBER 11th Russian internet-users began to notice that Lurkmore, a sometimes funny, often vulgar website with a cult following, was no longer accessible. Lurkmore (pictured) is a user-generated encyclopedia, a Russian-language wiki Wikipedia focusing on obscure internet jokes and memes, or what its co-founder, Dmitry Homak, calls “the kind of stuff said by the characters on SouthPark”. Although no one had officially told Mr Homak anything, it soon became clear that the site had fallen into the Russian government’s “Single Register” of web content to be banned under a law passed by the Duma in June.

  • Privacy

    • The Hackers of Damascus

      It didn’t matter. His computer had already told all. “They knew everything about me,” he says. “The people I talked to, the plans, the dates, the stories of other people, every movement, every word I said through Skype. They even knew the password of my Skype account.” At one point during the interrogation, Karim was presented with a stack of more than 1,000 pages of printouts, data from his Skype chats and files his torturers had downloaded remotely using a malicious computer program to penetrate his hard drive. “My computer was arrested before me,” he says.

  • Civil Rights

    • Vendetta masks declared illegal in UAE
    • Court Orders Password Turnover and In Camera Review of Social Media Accounts – EEOC v. Original Honeybaked Ham Co.

      The court says that the fact this type of information “exists in cyberspace . . . is a logistical and, perhaps, financial problem, but not a circumstance that removes the information from accessibility by a party opponent in litigation.” Based on the evidence cited by the employer, the court says it’s satisfied that there’s no fishing expedition. Accordingly, it orders “each class member’s social media content . . . produced.” The court proposes to use a special master, and orders the parties to collaborate and work out the specific instructions to the special master. The special master will produce information which the court will then review for relevance, and then allow the EEOC (or plaintiffs) to designate privileged material. The remaining items will be turned over to the employer.

    • International Organization Finds U.S. Violating the Rights of Protestors

      The right to peacefully assemble, enshrined both in the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law, is an intrinsic element of the democratic fabric of the United States. Yet according to a report released Friday by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an international organization of which the U.S. is a member, America is failing to uphold this fundamental right. The report is the first comprehensive OSCE report on violation of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly that covers the U.S.

  • Copyrights

    • But Does It Copy Macrovision, I Mean, Run Linux?

      Two decades ago, old VCRs were in disproportionately high demand. Newer ones were unable to copy movies as they were distorted by a special signal. Hollywood is fighting for this war on equipment owners to carry over to general-purpose computers. Will they succeed?

11.18.12

Links 18/11/2012: Linux 3.7 RC6, FreeBSD.org Intrusion

Posted in News Roundup at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • LongTail Video Launches New Version Of Its Open Source Video Player, With Support For Apple HLS

  • Events

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD.org intrusion announced November 17th 2012

      On Sunday 11th of November, an intrusion was detected on two machines within the FreeBSD.org cluster. The affected machines were taken offline for analysis. Additionally, a large portion of the remaining infrastructure machines were also taken offline as a precaution.

    • DragonFlyBSD 3.2.1 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance

      At the beginning of this month there was the release of DragonFlyBSD 3.2.1 that claimed a battle for speed against Linux with major improvements for the multi-threaded application performance against Linux. PostgreSQL was the only benchmark cited by the DragonFly camp with the new performance results, so a couple Phoronix tests were carried out.

      Being interested in seeing what changes DragonFlyBSD 3.2.1 has for performance against the earlier DragonFlyBSD 3.0 release and Linux distributions, I ran a couple quick and informal benchmarks. For the available hardware, an Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition CPU was used, which has six physical cores plus Hyper Threading. Intel HT plus the individual cores can be easily toggled from the BIOS of the motherboard.

    • Hackers obtained access to FreeBSD servers

      The team behind the FreeBSD operating system reported that an intrusion into two of its servers was detected on 11 November. The security team says that the two affected servers were taken offline immediately and that investigations show that the first unauthorised access probably took place on 19 September. Apparently, the intruders didn’t exploit any security holes in FreeBSD; instead, they stole the SSH key of a developer with regular access privileges.

  • Project Releases

  • Programming

    • Clang Can Analyze Code Comments, Generate Docs

      Aside from why LLVM/Clang was ported to one of the fastest super computer’s in the world and using Clang to implement Microsoft’s C++ AMP, another interesting session at this month’s LLVM Developers’ Conference in San Jose was about using Clang to analyze code comments.

      By having Clang parse documentation comments, Clang could be enhanced to do additional semantic checking, ensure the code comments remain relevant to the actual code, and code completion APIs could take advantage of the documentation within the code. Ultimately, a Doxygen-like tool could be created based upon Clang for generating proper documentation out of the code itself and the associated comments. Further out, automatic comment re-factoring could be done to update names referenced within the inline code comments so that the resulting documentation is always up-to-date.

    • Pairing A C Compiler With QEMU’s Code Generator

      Earlier this week when writing about the state of the Tiny C Compiler, I learned more about QCC. QCC is a new initiative to pair a forked version of the Tiny C Compiler (TCC) with QEMU’s code generator.

      The QCC compiler is being worked on by Rob Landley, a developer with much compiler development experience that previously worked on early 64-bit TCC support. The QEMU CPU emulator has a code generator named TCG, which is short for Tiny Code Generator. The TCG generator translates code fragments from any target code supported by QEMU into a code representation that can be then executed on the host.

Leftovers

  • following in ethically-challenged footsteps of Scalia and Thomas

    Oops: They’re doing it again: Another Supreme Court Justice flouts ethical standards

  • Science

    • Why Cell Phones Went Dead After Hurricane Sandy

      After Hurricane Sandy, survivors needed, in addition to safety and power, the ability to communicate. Yet in parts of New York City, mobile communications services were knocked out for days.

      The problem? The companies that provide them had successfully resisted Federal Communications Commission calls to make emergency preparations, leaving New Yorkers to rely on the carriers’ voluntary efforts.

  • Security

    • What do we do about untrustworthy Certificate Authorities?

      OpenSSL maintainer and Google cryptographer Ben Laurie and I collaborated on an article for Nature magazine on technical systems for finding untrustworthy Certificate Authorities. We focused on Certificate Transparency, the solution that will shortly be integrated into Chrome, and also discuss Sovereign Keys, a related proposal from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Both make clever use of cryptographic hashes, arranged in Merkle trees, to produce “untrusted, provable logs.”

    • Anonymous attacks over 650 Israeli sites, wipes databases, leaks email addresses and passwords (updated)

      When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week began taking military action in the Gaza strip against Hamas (as the IDF announced on Twitter), Anonymous declared its own war as part of #OpIsrael. Among the casualties are thousands of email addresses and passwords, hundreds of Israeli Web sites, government-owned as well as privately owned pages, as well as databases belonging to Bank Jerusalem and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • True Amount of BP Settlement Will Depend on Hidden Tax Giveaways

      Today, BP agreed to a $4.5 billion settlement to resolve felony and misdemeanor charges related to the Gulf oil spill, but taxpayers may end up indirectly covering up to 35 percent of that amount if the company is allowed to take the settlement as a tax write-off.

      “The judge shouldn’t approve this settlement if BP could pass off much of this settlement cost onto taxpayers,” said Phineas Baxandall, the Senior Tax and Budget Policy Analyst at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). “Especially in the context of pressing budget shortfalls, every dollar BP writes off means an additional dollar Americans will pay in the form of higher taxes, budget cuts, or more national debt.”

    • Fukushima fish ‘may be inedible for a decade’

      Fish from the waters around the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan could be too radioactive to eat for a decade to come, as samples show that radioactivity levels remain elevated and show little sign of coming down, a marine scientist has warned.

    • How BP’s historic Deepwater Horizon fine will be paid by the US military

      An explosion Friday on a rig in the Gulf owned by Houston-based Black Elk Energy has reportedly injured several workers, with four missing, two possibly killed. This latest incident – just a day after the US department of justice’s historic settlement with BP over the Deepwater Horizon disaster – highlights the risks of offshore oil-drilling, and the need for tougher regulations on one of America’s most hazardous industries.

  • Finance

    • Economists: US Wages Stagnant for Over a Decade

      As wages remain stagnant since 2002, the past ten years have been effectively been a “lost decade for workers,” says writer Kevin G. Hall.

    • Slovenia Should Sell Assets to Lure Investors, Goldman Says

      Slovenia, the first post-communist nation to introduce the euro in 2007, is struggling to avoid the need for a bailout from international lenders as political gridlock grips the nation of 2 million people. The government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa is pushing ahead with an overhaul of the economy with some measures threatened by a possible referendum.

      Labor unions and opposition leaders have filed a motion for a people’s vote on government plans to recapitalize state-owned lenders like Nova Ljubljanska Banka d.d. and the creation of a wealth fund.

    • Occupy hatches plot to destroy payday loan industry

      In today’s ever-perplexing world of personal finance, there’s no question consumers could benefit from a little clarity.

      Just don’t expect to find any in the pages of Occupy Wall Street’s new manifesto on consumer debt.

  • Censorship

    • Yelp Takes Down Review That Sparked Legal Threat

      Yesterday we had the story of how an 18-month-old Yelp review for Casey Movers in Massachusetts spurred the company to send a legal threat to the author, Kristen Buckley, leading her husband, Phil Buckley to do some research and uncover questionable “positive” reviews of the company, and to call the company out for its legal threat. That story has been getting a lot of attention from a variety of sources, and some have noticed that the original review is gone. Yes, gone. If you go there, you can now see Kristen’s followup comment about the legal threat, and Casey Movers’ response to the original review — but not the original review itself.

    • Christian wins case against employers over gay marriage comments

      A Christian who was demoted for posting his opposition to gay marriage on Facebook has won a legal case against his employer.

      Adrian Smith lost his managerial position, had his salary cut by 40%, and was given a final written warning by Trafford Housing Trust (THT) after posting in February last year that gay weddings in churches were “an equality too far”.

    • Victory: government backs down from “default” filtering?

      According to reports this Saturday in the Daily Mail and Telegraph, David Cameron will be asking ISPs to ask customers if they have children, and if so, help them install filtering technology.

      While the Daily Mail cite this as a “victory” for their campaign to switch porn off in every household, and allow people to “opt in to porn”, in fact it would be a humiliating climb down.

    • Restrictions to Internet free speech: Assange and Manning

      The US quite regularly rebukes Russia for putting a leash on the freedom of speech. This May, the US State Department focused on the Russian media in its annual human rights report.

    • What you can and can’t say on social networking sites

      The situation raises an interesting debate about the right to free speech and protecting people from unjustified attacks.

  • Privacy

    • UK government threatens firms over hidden customer data

      The UK government has repeated its threat to legislate if businesses do not voluntarily release data gathered on customers who ask to see it.

    • German police stop man with mobile office in car

      Forget texting while driving. German police say they nabbed a driver who had wired his Ford station wagon with an entire mobile office.

      Saarland state police said Friday the 35-year-old man was pulled over for doing 130 kph (80 mph) in a 100 kph zone while passing a truck Monday.

  • Civil Rights

    • Taliban Oops Reveals Mailing List IDs

      Somewhere out there, Mullah Omar must be shaking his head.

      In a Dilbert-esque faux pax, a Taliban spokesperson sent out a routine email last week with one notable difference.He publicly CC’d the names of everyone on his mailing list.

      The names were disclosed in an email by Qari Yousuf Ahmedi, an official Taliban spokesperson, on Saturday. The email was a press release he received from the account of Zabihullah Mujahid, another Taliban spokesperson. Ahmedi then forwarded Mujahid’s email to the full Taliban mailing list, but rather than using the BCC function, or blind carbon copy which keeps email addresses private, Ahmedi made the addresses public.

    • Leaders should be sacked for incompetence, not cheating

      US generals Petraeus and Allen had to bow to what feels close to mob rule. Is this how we do accountability now?

    • Why smart people do dumb things online

      Petraeus is smart: He graduated in the top 5% of his class at West Point and went on to earn a Ph.D.

      Petraeus has self-control: His self-discipline was “legendary,” according to Time Magazine.

      And Petraeus knows what he’s doing: During his time as a four-star general and as director of the CIA, he acquired an intimate knowledge of how easily email can be hacked.

      And that’s why it’s so incredible that even Petraeus did the dumbest thing imaginable when it came to his email: He trusted it with his secrets.

      Allegedly.

    • Trying to Keep Your E-Mails Secret When the C.I.A. Chief Couldn’t

      In the past, a spymaster might have placed a flower pot with a red flag on his balcony or drawn a mark on page 20 of his mistress’s newspaper. Instead, Mr. Petraeus used Gmail. And he got caught.

      Granted, most people don’t have the Federal Bureau of Investigation sifting through their personal e-mails, but privacy experts say people grossly underestimate how transparent their digital communications have become.

      [...]

      Google reported that United States law enforcement agencies requested data for 16,281 accounts from January to June of this year, and it complied in 90 percent of cases.

    • Website Calls Out Authors of Racist Anti-Obama Posts
    • In UK, Twitter, Facebook rants land some in jail

      One teenager made offensive comments about a murdered child on Twitter. Another young man wrote on Facebook that British soldiers should “go to hell.” A third posted a picture of a burning paper poppy, symbol of remembrance of war dead.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Ofcom: mobile blocking Skype but we don’t care

      ISPreview UK: “Ofcom used this report to keep a close eye (sic) on the issue of Net Neutrality and Traffic Management, although they found that “there are currently no substantive concerns in relation to the traffic management practices used by fixed ISPs“. The regulator noted some “concern” with how some mobile operators block Skype (VoIP) but not enough to take any action against.” The traffic management section starts on p49 and includes this choice example of how ISPs are largely ignoring Ofcom’s evidence-gathering:

    • Russia demands broad UN role in Net governance, leak reveals

      Leaked document from upcoming treaty negotiations reveals Russia wants transfer of authority over Net to national governments. The U.N.’s increasingly shrill denials are ringing ever more hollow.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • DuPont-Dow Corn Defeated by Armyworms in Florida: Study

      Fall armyworms in southern Florida survived a pesticide engineered into corn by Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) and DuPont Co., the second insect to show signs of resistance to genetically modified crops in the U.S., according to a study.
      Fall armyworms ate the leaves of corn engineered to produce an insecticidal protein and lived, according to 2012 field trial data presented Nov. 13 at a conference in Knoxville, Tennessee. The protein is marketed by Dow and DuPont as Herculex.

    • MEPs demand better evaluation of GMOs

      The study by the biologist Gilles-Eric Seralini (University of Caen), conducted over two years on rats fed diets containing genetically modified maize (NK603 variety), with and without the Roundup herbicide, as well as with Roundup alone, the results of which were published on September 19 in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, has reignited the debate about the possible risks associated with the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the reliability of the 90-day toxicology studies previously used to justify their approval.

    • Copyrights

11.17.12

Links 17/11/2012: EXT4 File System Benchmarks, Linus Torvalds Interview

Posted in News Roundup at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux in Enterprises, market share and Business which use Linux

    Unquestionably Linux is still struggling to claim a respectable share in desktop market. The trend does not seem to vary drastically in enterprises too. However in contrast to Linux share in desktop operating system, Linux claims a considerably larger market share when it comes to operating system used by enterprises. The post presents some latest stats depicting where does a Linux stand as an operating system for business. The post also details some enterprises that rely on Linux for their everyday computation.

  • Kernel Space

    • EXT4 File-System Tuning Benchmarks

      Following last month’s Btrfs file-system tuning benchmarks, in this article are a similar set of tests when stressing the EXT4 file-system with its various performance-related mount options. Here are a number of EXT4 benchmarks from Ubuntu 12.10 with different mount option configurations.

      Aside from testing the EXT4 file-system at its defaults on the Linux 3.5 kernel with Ubuntu 12.10, the common Linux file-system was tested with nobarrier, data=journal, data=writeback, nodelalloc, and discard. Here’s the documentation on each mount option per the EXT4 documentation:

    • The Not-Ready Btrfs and ExFAT Linux Filesystems

      Two newer filesystems of importance to Linux are exFAT and Btrfs. exFAT is the controversial Microsoft filesystem for Flash memory devices, and Btrfs is for “big data”. Once upon a time there was much sound and fury around these, but lately it’s been quiet, so let’s see what’s been happening.

    • Why Linus Torvalds would rather code than make money

      The Linux kernel is what everything else runs on top of, so it’s the key to everything that a Linux device can do.

      It’s in your Android phone. It’s in the computers that run the servers at Google, Amazon and all the other web services that we take for granted.

      It powers the database that US immigration uses to decide if you are who you say you are, it’s deep under the Alps searching for new particles at CERN, and it’s even on unmanned drones searching for drugs traffickers in the Caribbean.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • The Problem of Menus

      Interfaces for traditional computers and mobile devices have become increasingly inventive in the last few years. So far, however, none have solved a basic design challenge: designing an efficient menu.

      The challenge rarely exists within applications. An application usually has half a dozen or more top level menus, each with less than a dozen items, so a drop-down system is usually good enough.

      But on the desktop environment, the norm has always been to have a single menu that lists all applications, and often shut-down commands, a list of favorites, and a few other items.

      To function well, each variation needs to make items quick to find and to distract minimally from whatever else the user is doing. Unfortunately, while a solution may do one of these things, none of the available alternatives manages to do both at the same time.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • FOSDEM’13 Excellent Opportunity for KDE

        FOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of Free Software contributors in the world and happens each February in Brussels (this year on the 2nd & 3rd of February). It’s one of the few community-centered conferences in Europe, and the largest volunteer-run Free Software event in Europe as well. Proposals are now invited for talks on KDE, KDE software and general desktop topics. KDE will be in the Cross Desktop Developer Room (devroom), along with Enlightenment, Gnome, Razor, Unity and XFCE. This is a unique opportunity to share KDE with a wide audience of developers.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Final GNOME 3.6 update improves stability

        GNOME logo The second update to the 3.6.x series of GNOME has been released by the project’s developers to further improve the stability of the popular open source Linux and Unix desktop environment. As expected at this stage, the maintenance update has only minor changes including bug fixes and module and translation updates.

  • Distributions

    • Buyer’s guide to Linux distros

      Fancy giving Linux a whirl? Here are all the factors that you should look for when choosing from the wide range of available Linux distributions.

    • Which is the best Linux distro?
    • Dream Studio 12.04.1 Screenshots

    • New Releases

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo Developers Unhappy, Fork udev

        The udev code-base has been forked by Gentoo Linux developers after they — and other parties — have been unhappy with the future direction of udev as set by systemd developers.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian review

        With several other distributions effectively based on the Debian system, it’s fair to say that it’s an important distro. In fact, as Linux distributions go, it’s positively stately; a grandaddy among open source upstarts.

        As you might expect from such an elderly, respected relative, it’s awash with hardware support – as well as the common Intel x86 processors, it will work with a number of other architectures, including PowerPC. Plus, there’s a huge 29,000 software packages included on the full DVD-based ISO, a download that runs to 4.4GB. In many respects, Debian’s tagline – “the universal OS” – is well earned.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Builder 2.3.1 Supports elementary OS Luna

            On November 15, Francesco Muriana has the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the Ubuntu Builder 2.3.1 open source application.

            Ubuntu Builder 2.3.1 is here to fix two annoying bugs in Ubuntu 12.10′s installer form, Ubiquity, that didn’t allow users to customize the slideshow.

          • Crowdsourcing in IT: A New FOSS Trend?

            Shuttleworth also pointed to what he called the “DevOps magic” that can arise when the community comes together. “You can have one group using Chef, and another group using Puppet, and with JuJu, they can easily connect and use each other’s knowledge, leveraging the unique skills that they both bring to table,” he explained. “It’s a complete buffet of all the goodness that open source offers.”

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • 3Scale Launches Open Source API Proxy Providing Enterprises On-premises and in the Cloud API Traffic Management

    3Scale3Scale, a leading Plug and Play SaaS API Management platform and services provider, has just announced the launch of a new Open Source API Proxy that provides Enterprises API traffic management on-premises and in the cloud.

  • i2b2 open source software boosts HIE, biomedical research

    The health informatics software i2b2 — Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside — was started in 2006, and has become something of a building block for several health information networks and research projects in genomics, pharmaceuticals and population health.

    Developed at the Partners HealthCare System as a federally-funded biomedical computing center, the open source software is letting biomedical researchers combine genomic and molecular research with data and observations from electronic health records, and its code set is also being used to link with claims databases and health information exchanges.

  • Sometimes the good guys win

    Leave it to him to prove me wrong, and I can tell you how he’ll respond: He’ll just chalk it up to my being a liberal. Honest. Then we’ll laugh about that — the tree-hugging Californian and the rock-ribbed conservative Texan — and we’ll move on to the next FOSS issue we’ll be addressing together.

    Thanks for getting the better of your disease, Ken. I know I speak for a multitude of folks who would echo that sentiment, and I know an army of folks who are glad you’re on our side in fighting proprietary software.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla’s Finances Are Sturdy As it Eyes the Mobile Future

        Mozilla has just released its annual report, with a PDF available at the bottom of this page, and perhaps the most interesting aspect of the report is that Mozilla’s search revenue climbed a very healthy 31 percent for the year. Many people don’t realize that Mozilla gets most of its revenues from Google, as we’ve reported before, but even more may not realize that Mozilla also has deals with Microsoft, Yahoo and other search players. Mozilla’s royalties, mostly from search deals, came to $161.9 million for 2011, up from the previous year’s $123.2 million.

      • With increased revenue, Mozilla sets its sights on mobile

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • How to become a contributor to LibreOffice: a digest with pointers

      Sophie Gautier, one of the founders of the Document Foundation and currently a member of our membership committee has recently published a series of articles on how to become a contributor to the LibreOffice projects. Her blog posts do not cover the development side of the story, but they discuss an often less understood and perhaps less documented aspect of our community and contribution process. As I find myself sending her articles by email several times a week, I thought it would be just easier to list them and link them here for more convenience.

    • Upgrading Away From Office Suites

  • Education

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Could open source software save New York City’s bike share program?

      A bike share program that was supposed to be launched last summer in New York City has come to a halt due to software related issues. I can’t help but think that if the software was open source, these problems would have been easily resolved, elimating worrisome delays.

      This past August, Mayor Bloomburg said “The software doesn’t work,” responding to questions about why the bike-share program is on hold. Now, according to a post in the New York Times, flooding and damage from Hurricane Sandy has caused further setbacks.

    • Google Books team open sources their book scanner

    • Open Data

      • OpenStreetMap launches “Operation Cowboy”

        The OpenStreetMap community has announced that it will host its second global “mapathon” during the weekend of 23–25 November; this time, the event is code-named “Operation Cowboy” and will focus on the US. Concentrating on “armchair mapping”, aerial images will be surveyed at local meetings, as well as from home. Based on these surveys, the project will then complement its map material for the US. The campaign has its own official Twitter account and hash tag: #OPC2012.

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

    • Development of PHP 5.5 begins

      The release of a first alpha of PHP 5.5 marks the official beginning of the 5.5.0 release cycle for the scripting language’s next major version. PHP 5.5 also marks the end of support for Windows XP and Windows 2003.

    • Why LLVM/Clang Was Ported To A Super Computer

      Most often whenever writing about LLVM and its Clang C/C++ compiler front-end on Phoronix, within the forums is a flurry of comments from those in support of and against this modular compiler infrastructure. Some are against LLVM/Clang simply because its BSD-licensed and sponsored by Apple rather than the GPLv3-licensed GCC backed by the FSF. Others, meanwhile, see LLVM as presenting unique advantages and benefits. What reasons would a leading US national laboratory have for deploying LLVM/Clang to their leading super-computer? Here’s an explanation from them.

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Drone activist makes rounds before prison

      An Iowa farmer headed to federal prison at the end of the month after protesting at a Missouri Air Force base warned William Woods University students yesterday that the military’s use of predator drones will bring combat into the United States.

    • TSA Vendor Denies Faking Test of Body-Imaging Software

      OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS)’s Rapiscan unit, one of two suppliers of body-scanning machines in U.S. airports, may have falsified tests of software intended to stop the machines from recording graphic images of travelers, a U.S. lawmaker said.

      The company “may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test,” Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, said in a letter to Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole Nov. 13. Rogers said his committee received a tip about the faked tests.

    • Naked Scanner Maker Accused Of Manipulating Tests To Make Scans Look Less Invasive
    • Doug Stanhope on Alcohol, Politics and Killing Comedy Bootleggers’ Families

      Stanhope’s coarse, unapologetic and shockingly candid brand of comedy has won him rabid fans, as well as a few foes. Ricky Gervais said Stanhope “might be the most important standup working today.” Jón Gnarr, the comedian-mayor of Reykjavik, recently welcomed Stanhope to Iceland so he could perform in the country’s only maximum-security prison. (For this, Stanhope invented the “Stanhope Defense,” the legal argument that you committed a crime just to see the show.)

      At the same time, Stanhope’s cracks about the attractiveness of Irish women and the redundancy of the royal family have incensed an impressively large fraction of the British Isles.

      Whether you love or hate him, there’s more to Stanhope than just his drunken, in-your-face comedy routines. That’s clear from his critically lauded portrayal of a suicidal comic in the hit show Louie, not to mention his media-savvy web ventures, including Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool. In the lead-up to Tuesday’s release of his new live CD/DVD, Before Turning the Gun on Himself, Wired caught up with Stanhope and tried to temper his raging comedy fury with cold, hard science. The results were far less messy than expected.

    • A drone policy in reverse

      Should Mexico have the ability to send drones over U.S. soil to follow the gunrunners and kill them?

    • Oliver Stone on the Untold US History From the Atomic Age to Vietnam to Obama’s Drone Wars
    • Death from above

      Britain announced a doubling of its drone fleet in Afghanistan while France said it is sending drones to Mali.

    • NICTA to help protect the US’ drone fleet

      Other members of the consortium include the Boeing Company, Galois and the University of Minnesota.

  • Finance

    • Plan

      The rot comes from predators posing as conservatives and mouthing the rhetoric of “free markets.” They are not actually interested in free markets. Their goal is to use the government to build monopolies, to control resources, to block regulation, to crush unions, to divert as much as possible from taxpayers into private pockets. They have a reckless attitude toward war-making and they put the financial system in peril by failing to enforce standards of ethics and transparency. As a result, they imperil the country’s credit in the world. True conservatives recognize this, which is why they defected from Bush and McCain long ago.

  • Censorship

    • Right to remain silent in school?

      Principals in Kentucky may soon have to worry about reading students their rights in addition to ensuring that the students know how to read and write.

    • Social Media, Internet Shutdowns are the Latest Weapons in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

      This exchange prompted Brian Fung at The Atlantic to wonder if the war of words between Israel and Hamas violated Twitter’s of terms of service, which prohibits “direct, specific threats of violence against others.” Fung eventually concluded that the exchange did not constitute a violation of Twitter’s TOS, but Matthew Ingram took the opportunity to point out the extraordinary amount of power social media companies have in scenarios such as this one. YouTube has refused to take down the assassination video, even though it appears to violate the site’s community guidelines, which state “if your video shows someone being physically hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it.” Wired goes on to quote an anonymous YouTube employee saying that the guidelines are just that—guidelines, and not hard-and-fast rules. YouTube’s decision to leave the assassination video up comes just weeks after the company decided to break from its long-standing policies and take down an anti-Muslim video “The Innocence of Muslims” in Egypt and Libya, even though they explicitly admitted that the video did not violate any aspect of their terms of service and they had not received a court order requiring them to do so.

    • Verizon called hypocritical for equating net neutrality to censorship

      Back in July, we covered Verizon’s argument that network neutrality regulations violated the firm’s First Amendment rights. In Verizon’s view, slowing or blocking packets on a broadband network is little different from a newspaper editor choosing which articles to publish, and should enjoy the same constitutional protection.

  • Privacy

    • What the Petraeus scandal says about digital spying and your e-mail

      E-mail — even anonymous e-mail — is not as secure as you think: E-mails don’t just carry a subject line and whatever you type into them. These digital missives also tote along with them packets of information called “metadata” or “headers,” which may contain information about where the message was sent from. That can help investigators corroborate who sent an e-mail, even if it comes from an anonymous account.

  • Civil Rights

    • Polish and German police against antifascists

      That day, German Nazis wanted to organize demonstration against Polish immigrants. The counter demonstration is supported both by workers, leftists and religious groups. Even the mayor of the town gave “support” to the demonstration. But the true about this “support” is a bit different.
      Near the German-Polish border there was an organized group which was going to join. Posters were put in the streets of the town of Kostrzyn. People also could join contacting the group via internet.

    • Ikea ‘deeply regrets’ use of forced labour

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Bad Reasoning: We Don’t Need More High Speed Internet Because People Don’t Use Fast Internet Now

      There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how far the US has fallen behind other countries when it comes to high speed broadband. And many are taking it for granted that high speed broadband is important to economic growth and viability. Yet Tim Worstall, over at Forbes, argues that “High Speed Broadband Doesn’t Matter A Darn” because a UK study showed that people don’t use super high speeds. He quotes a report (pdf) from Booz & Co.

    • Domain Shakedown: Companies Warned About The Dangers Of Unprotected .SX

      Ever since ICANN announced plans to allow tons of new top level domains to enter the market, many have recognized that this was nothing more than a money grab — as companies would feel compelled to buy up “their” names to keep them out of the hands of others. What’s amazing is that TLD operators are barely even hiding this in their marketing material. Lauren Weinstein recently received a “pitch” from the operators of the new .sx domain. .sx isn’t one of the new “generic” TLDs from ICANN, but rather is a newish TLD from Sint Maarten (an “autonomous country” from within the Netherlands) similar to various other “new” TLDs built off of lucky country codes (such as .tv, .ly and .co). However, the marketing message for .sx is really quite incredible. Basically, they’re saying .sx is quite similar to “sex” and, gee, you wouldn’t want your brand associated with sex, would you?

    • Google, Dish Held Talks to Launch Wireless Service
    • Show your support for European fast broadband!

      You’re probably aware of our targets on broadband. To get every European with basic broadband coverage by 2013; and, by 2020, fast coverage (30 Megabits+) for all, with 50% of households having subscriptions at 100 Megabits or more. Those targets are central to Europe’s digital agenda – and essential to ensuring new products and services can come online.

    • History of the Internet in Canada

      When discussing the history of the internet in Canada we must first look at the pre-internet era: A confusing time with many emerging technologies and incompatible network protocols.

      In the early 1980s we had BBSes or Bulletin Board Services where individuals could run BBS software such as C-net, Opus and PCBoard (or even their own custom software) on a home computer. The computers were connected via modems using regular telephone lines, and users could log in one at a time. Some of the bigger BBSes could handle more than one user at a time but were generally a paid service, not free like most of the hobbyist services.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

11.16.12

Links 16/11/2012: Fedora 19 is Schrödinger’s Cat, Android Grabs 90% Smartphones Share in China

Posted in News Roundup at 3:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Nvidia’s Ginormous Gift to Linux Gamers

    “This could sway game companies to make more games for Linux, meaning that gamers would have to boot into Windows less and less, eventually maybe not at all,” said blogger Linux Rants. “Where go the games go the users. Other applications follow. If played correctly on the market, this could be the first step for Linux to more global acceptance on the desktop.”

  • ZaReason’s Ubuntu All-in-One PC Might Look A Little Familiar…

    Linux hardware re-sellers ZaReason have debuted their ‘Zimo 930′ PC – an all-in-one desktop computer that has more than a whiff of familiarity about it.

  • Students learn Linux

    More than 200 students from schools and pre-university (PU) colleges in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, and Kasaragod participated in competitions based on open-source software in a city college on Thursday. The event titled “Byte-Struck ’12” was held at P.A. College of Engineering (PACE), to create awareness about free open-source software (FOSS) among high school and PU students.

  • Desktop

    • $199 Acer C7 adds to Google’s Chromebook Holiday Push

      A few weeks after Samsung found surprising success with its new $249, ARM-based Chromebook, Acer launched an x86-based Acer C7 Chromebook on Nov. 13 for just $199. The latest two laptops running Google’s open source Linux- and Chrome-based Chrome OS are considerably cheaper than the Windows-based competition, putting them in the same territory as low-cost Android tablets like the Kindle Fire HD.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Intel Introduces PowerClamp Driver For Linux

      Linux kernel developers have created an Intel PowerClamp driver, which is an experiment with idle injection for Intel hardware to take advantage of power-efficient package-level C-states for power capping and passive thermal control. Separately, Intel RAPL (Running Average Power Limit) support is now exposed through TurboStat.

    • AMD Is Still Contributing Code To Linux

      Many Linux users have been mad over AMD closing down its Operating System Research Center resulting in many AMD Linux open-source developers losing their jobs. Last week I wrote that ultimately it shouldn’t be too worrisome for Linux users wanting to use AMD processors and chipsets on Linux and this still looks to be the case.

    • Kernel Log – Coming in 3.7 (Part 1): Filesystems & storage

      Linux 3.7 introduces a range of Btrfs performance improvements. The kernel now supports the SMB data exchange protocol that recent Windows versions use, and it offers discard functionality for software RAIDs, which is important for SSDs.

    • Intel Makes Microsoft’s C++ AMP Cross-Platform

      Engineers at Intel ended up developing “Shevlin Park”, which is a prototype implementation of C++ AMP built using OpenCL with LLVM/Clang. The LLVM/Clang compiler stack was modified to handle C++ AMP programming constructions and the C++ AMP computations expressed within OpenCL compute kernels.

    • Distributed filesystem: XtreemFS 1.4 with Hadoop support

      At the SC12 conference that is currently taking place in Salt Lake City, the XtreemFS developers have released version 1.4 of their distributed filesystem. XtreemFS 1.4 supports asynchronous background writes, which significantly improves performance when storing data. The developers say that they have further improved stability – server and client operation is now said to be “rock solid”. The new Hadoop client allows the filesystem to be used as a substitute for HDFS in Hadoop clusters.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mesa: Thread Offloading, Asynchronous SwapBuffers

        Marek Olšák continues to work on Mesa/Gallium3D performance improvements. Marek’s latest work is on implementing a-synchronous SwapBuffers and to allow for thread offloading of SwapBuffers via a new DRI2 extension to the libGL-Mesa interface.

  • Applications

    • Top 5 Free Suites to Replace Microsoft Office
    • Resara Me This

      More than any other program, Samba allows Linux desktops to exist in the world of Windows. In fact, Samba historically has allowed Linux to live secretly in the server room as well. It’s possible to emulate a Primary Domain Controller from your Linux server, and Windows machines can’t tell the difference. The problem is that Microsoft no longer uses PDCs and has turned to Active Directory.

    • Taking a look at NixNote

      Sometimes, well more often than that, I get annoyed by the lack of attention and outright affection that Linux gets from some software developers. Specifically the developers of web applications that also offer desktop clients.

      Case in point: Evernote. I use Evernote, not to remember everything but to remember certain things I need to remember. And if you’re going to excoriate me for using a web-based application, I don’t want to hear it.

      Back to Evernote. Users of Mac OS and Windows can install a shiny desktop application. No such beastie exists for Linux. Well, not officially. While I’ve run the Windows Evernote client under WINE, it wasn’t the most satisfying experience. Which is why I turned to NixNote (formerly NeverNote).

    • Proprietary

      • ViewCast Introduces the Most Cost-Effective Digital Streaming Media System; Extends Support for Linux Community

        ViewCast Corporation (OTCBB: VCST), a developer of industry-leading solutions that help companies deliver video to broadband and mobile networks, announced today the availability of the newest addition to its line of industry-leading streaming media systems, the Niagara 9100-4D, a digital high-density encoder platform. The product will debut at Content & Communications World (CCW), the conference for innovative communication technologies in New York. Additionally, a new Linux driver for the Osprey 845e video capture card will be available soon.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Wine

    • Games

      • Valve’s Steam License Causes Linux Packaging Concerns

        Valve’s initial roll-out of their Steam client for Linux is all centered around Ubuntu. With Ubuntu having the largest market-share on the Linux desktop, Valve is focusing upon proper Ubuntu support as their first priority. In the days that the Ubuntu/Debian package has been available of the Steam Linux Beta, it’s already been reported to work on other Linux distributions. Some Linux distributions have also begun to package the Steam Linux binary for their own platforms, but now there’s some concerns about doing this, at least from the Arch Linux camp.

        With catering to Ubuntu Linux users as their first priority, Valve released the Linux beta as just a Debian package. Other Linux distribution packagers meanwhile want Steam on their own Linux distribution and to make it easy for their Linux gamers, so some have begun creating their own Steam binary packages. One of the first Linux distributions doing this was Arch Linux where they re-packaged Steam for Linux for their system. However, concerns have arose whether this is permitted or not.

      • Steam for Linux gets three new games

        Steam is a great source for any gamer. It is a place that will allow you to try out and enjoy many of the more popular video games that are available on the market today. Steam Greenlight will allow you to vote on games that you would like to see become available. It is a great system for gamers; they do not have to drop $50 to purchase every game off the shelf. They can simply join Steam and enjoy the most popular ones at a reduced price.

        Steam is not only a place to acquire games to play. It is also a place where you can talk with other gamers and possibly get information on cheat codes or creative ways to pass a particularly difficult level. It is convenient and rather popular.

      • Let’s Play: Steam Linux Beta Client

        Now follow my installation video if you want to know how to run the client if you’re not a beta tester.
        As i said before, there are many games which can be already played, but the first thing to do (if you have not done it before) is to redeem all your HIB Steam keys.
        This is a list of playable games:

        - Aquaria
        - Cogs
        - Cubemen
        - Darwinia
        - Dungeons of Dredmor
        - Frozen Synapse
        - Space Pirates and Zombies
        - Uplink
        - World of Goo

      • I Will Survive – On Kickstarter

        I Will Survive looks like an interesting platform game with dark homer, uncensored adult content, gore and zombies.

  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Empathy 3.6.2 Integrates Better with GNOME Online Account

        Empathy 3.6.2 instant messaging client for the GNOME desktop environment, but also used on the Ubuntu operating system, was announced last evening, November 13.

        It has been a while since our last announcement for a stable version of Empathy, so we will list here all the fixes and enhancements implemented in the app since version 3.6.0.1, which improved Live search.

      • GNOME 3.8 Will Have Support for ownCloud

        The upcoming GNOME 3.8 desktop environment will allow users to easily connect to their ownCloud and Flickr accounts, via the GNOME Online Accounts app.

      • The 2012 GNOME User Survey Begins, Take It Now

        It’s time for the annual GNOME User Survey to solicit feedback from Linux desktop users about their views on the GNOME desktop, preferences about Linux desktop features, and other topics. Please take a few minutes to complete this brief survey.

      • GNOME 3.6.2 Has Been Officially Released

  • Distributions

    • Elementary OS Luna preview

      The first beta edition of what will become Elementary OS Luna has been released. Luna is a bold attempt to revamp and completely retool Jupiter, the distribution’s first edition. I got a first look at what Luna will bring to the table with the latest stable edition of Pear Linux, whose shell, Pear Shell, is based on Pantheon, the desktop environment and shell of Elementary OS.

      From what I have so far observed about Elementary OS Luna, it is built atop Ubuntu Precise Pangolin, on Linux kernel 3.2. It uses a pre-Ubuntu 12.10 version of Ubiquity, Ubuntu’s graphical installation program, which means that it lacks support for LVM and full disk encryption.

    • elementary OS 0.2 Beta 1 Looks Really Beautiful

      After years of hard work, Cassidy James proudly announced a few minutes ago that the first Beta release of the upcoming elementary OS 0.2 Linux distribution is now available for download and testing.

      Personally, I’m so excited about this development release of the elementary OS 0.2 that I don’t even know where to start.

    • CAINE 3.0 Review – Linux Forensics

      CAINE is a well-known specialised Linux distribution focusing on penetration testing. With its latest 3.0 release, it updates itself to the Ubuntu 12.04 base and adds a host of new tools

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 3 Alpha 3 Is Powered by Linux Kernel 3.6.5

        Anne Nicolas announced a few last night, November 14, the immediate availability for download of the third Alpha release of the upcoming Mageia 3 operating system.

      • Mageia 3 is Shaping up with Alpha 3

        After a bit of a delay Mageia 3 Alpha 3 was released yesterday. This offering brings several improvements, new security checks, and upgrades, but unfortunately for the impatient, no new artwork. Mageia is asking for testers, particularly of the installer and upgrade process, and bug reports to help make Mageia 3 as rock solid as possible.

      • Mageia 3 receives third and final Alpha

        Mageia 3, the next version of the popular new distribution, is in its final Alpha stages, with updates to the installer and kernel

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Releases Upstart 1.6

            While most Linux distributions have moved on to using systemd as their init daemon replacement, Canonical is still investing in their Upstart init daemon for Ubuntu. Upstart 1.6 has now been released and it presents several new features.

          • Could Ubuntu Power Your Phone?

            Ubuntu on smartphones remains a totally theoretical proposition. But that hasn’t stopped Canonical from releasing a video showcasing all the cool things that Ubuntu could do if it did run on phones. Is the company getting ahead of itself, or is this a sign that Ubuntu might finally be poised to make the jump to the mobile world?

          • Ubuntu gaining ground in website deployments

            Although it has chiefly been known as a desktop Linux distribution, Ubuntu has been gaining ground in data centers as well, according to the latest statistics from web survey outfit W3Techs.

            In figures compiled on Thursday, 7 per cent of all the world’s web servers were found to be running Ubuntu, up from 5.5 per cent the previous year.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • The Perfect Desktop – Kubuntu 12.10

              This tutorial shows how you can set up a Kubuntu 12.10 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop environment.

              The software I propose as default is the one I found easiest to use and best in their functionality – this won’t necessarily be true for your needs, thus you are welcome to try out the applications listed as alternatives.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Vendor-supported open source software unpacked

    The value of vendor-supported open source software was the focus of the panel discussion at ITWeb and Linux Warehouse’s Virtual Data Centres Forum, held at Montecasino on Wednesday.

    The aim of the discussion was to unpack the vendor-supported open source software phenomenon and detail what opportunities this kind of software creates for virtual data centres.

  • Broadcom Releases Bluetooth Software Into Open Source
  • OmniOS Wants To Fill The OpenSolaris Void [link corrected]
  • Control vs. influence: Which way for open source?

    Apparently, all that’s stopping the music industry from returning to its former glory is its failure to punish people who download music without paying for it. But if that’s the case, why did music sales in Japan fall when downloaders of unlicensed content were slammed with draconian penalties?

    The same reverse effect applies to open source. Why do open source projects with a vendor tightly controlling the code usually fail to grow? Why do open source projects with relaxed licenses still get plenty of code contributions, though the license does not require them?

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • CMS

    • Rebuttal: Open Source DAM Solutions – Like Buying a Cake or Buying a Car?

      I often read Edward Smith’s contributions to CMSWire and he does a good job of presenting DAM concepts in a way that is straightforward for non-experts to understand. However, I disagree with a number of the points raised in his recent article, “Open Source DAM Solutions: More Control for Those Who Need It,” as I believe it misrepresents this category of software license.

  • Business

    • ForgeRock Launches Open Identity Stack To Protect Enterprise, Cloud, Social, And Mobile Applications

      ForgeRock Inc., the pioneer of open source Identity and Access Management (IAM), today announced availability of the first and only unified, 100% Open Source Stack to secure applications and services across enterprise, cloud, social and mobile environments. With over 250K downloads in less than 24 months, the ForgeRock Open Identity Stack is rapidly building a rich community of global companies working to deploy identity management infrastructure more easily and economically.

  • BSD

    • NetBSD 5.2 Release Is On Approach

      NetBSD 6.0 was released last month with better multi-core/SMP support, the experimental CHFS file-system for flash devices, and other worthwhile enhancements. However, for those not yet ready to jump from NetBSD 5.x to NetBSD 6.0, there is a NetBSD 5.2 release on approach.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Last day to submit Free Software Awards nominations!

      Here at the Free Software Foundation, we are grateful to the people who have devoted their lives to advancing free software. We’re thankful for the developers working hard to bring new free software tools into the world. We’re thankful for the legal eagles working to defend the GNU General Public License. We’re thankful for the organizers committed to introducing free software to new audiences. That’s why, each year, we give out the Award for the Advancement of Free Software to an individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and advancement of free software.

    • FSF to begin accepting scanned assignments from Germany

      The FSF is pleased to announce that we can begin accepting scanned assignments from contributors residing in Germany.

      Last year, the FSF was happy to announce a change to our copyright assignment policy. Based on the advice of our counsel we were able to begin accepting scanned copies of assignments from U.S. residents. We also updated our policy to enable sending digital documents worldwide, but we unfortunately could not begin accepting scanned documents in return from non-U.S. contributors.

    • Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

  • Project Releases

    • FreeIPMI 1.2.3 Released
    • Samba 4 now planned for release on Dec 11

      Samba 4 — the first open source Active Directory-compatible print and file server — will now ship on December 11, developers say.

      It’s a bit of a delay from the recent slated finish date of Nov 27th, now the targeted date for release candidate 5. Release candidate 4 of Samba was posted on Nov 13.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Harvard Research Scientist: Sharing Discoveries More Efficient, More Honorable Than Patenting Them

      More efficient. More honorable. It’s a small example of the potential destruction for both prongs of the pro-patent argument. If it makes science more efficient to not patent, there goes promoting the progress. If it’s more honorable, there goes the moral argument. And, unlike some pharma companies, I’m not even going to make patents the key point here: Bradner’s focus is on helping people. Do we get the same sense from the crowd patenting their drugs, their medical diagnostic techniques, and anything else they can get their hands on?

    • Open-Source Advocacy Proves Its Value in 2012 Elections

      Open source is a term first used to describe software, meaning both its free redistribution and the practice of making it easy for anyone to change a product’s design and use. Open-source organizing meant youth groups were able to do more with less.

    • African company constructs world’s first open-source metabolic chamber

      HealthQ Technologies, a high-tech startup facility based in Stellenbosch, South Africa, claims to have constructed the first open-source metabolic chamber in the world.

      The company says that the metabolic chamber will enable South African entrepreneurs and researchers to perform crucial experiments using facilities which were previously inaccessible. It is also intended to be used for developing new technologies and products in the wellness, weight-loss and fitness industries.

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Open standards unlock software potential

      Unpacking all things open source, Red Hat’s open source evangelist for EMEA, Jan Wildeboer, stressed that open source software means increased flexibility and freedom.

      During his keynote address at the Virtual Data Centres Forum, held at Montecasino this week, Wildeboer, sporting his trademark red hat, provided a brief history of the development of open source, open standards and open content.

Leftovers

  • “Involuntary porn” site tests the boundaries of legal extortion

    In the era of Polaroid cameras, you didn’t have to worry too much about a racy snapshot you took in the privacy of your bedroom becoming available to the general public. But thanks to the rise of digital cameras and the Internet, that’s now a real risk. Hackers, disgruntled exes, and other vindictive individuals who gain access to your compromising digital snapshots can share them with the world with a single click.

    Recently, a number of websites have sprung up to cash in on the public humiliation of others. One of the first such sites was IsAnyoneUp, which solicited nude pictures of ordinary Americans submitted by third parties. To maximize the humiliation, the photos were posted along with identifying details such as name and home town. The site’s owner, Hunter Moore, reportedly raked in thousands of dollars a month in advertising revenue, and he made the rounds on television talk shows defending his site.

  • Science

    • Robots in demand in China as labour costs climb

      In China, there’s no better time to be a robot. Pictures from last week’s International Industry Fair in Shanghai show them duelling with lightsabers, playing ping pong and dancing in lion costumes. One shows a female robot in a white wool coat shaking hands with a visitor.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Anti-GM protests throughout Latin America

      Fear of unforeseen health and environmental consequences resulting from genetically-modified crops has caused protests throughout Latin America in recent months, notably in Paraguay and Mexico. (item 2)

    • Hide the Kids, the Elderly, the Sick & the Poor! Paul Ryan is Headed for the Cliff

      After an electoral shellacking and exit polls that show the vast majority of Americans are on Barack Obama’s side when it comes to the major issues of the day, Paul Ryan is headed back to Congress convinced that he espouses “very popular ideas” and calling the 2012 results “a very close election.”

      With this mind-set Ryan is prepping to turn the “fiscal cliff” austerity debate to the advantage of the Social Security bashers and Medicare slashers.

    • Tamiflu scrutinised as BMJ calls on pharmaceutical giant to release data

      A leading British medical journal is asking the drug maker Roche to release all its data on Tamiflu, claiming there is no evidence the drug can actually stop the flu.

    • ‘Grand Bargain’ Charade a Scheme to Protect Corporate Welfare

      Congress is still talking about a “Grand Bargain” that “balances” far more spending cuts than tax increases. That is another way of saying that you – the consumer of Medicare and Medicaid services, the recipient of Social Security, and the average taxpayer will take the brunt of the spending cuts, while the wealthy get their income taxes restored, not raised, to their pre-Bush modest levels. Don’t buy it!

  • Security

    • CGit Maintainer Disappears, Security Hole Found

      The maintainer behind the open-source CGit project, the popular web front-end to viewing Git repositories, disappeared some months ago. Since then a new maintainer has taken over work on this widely-used software while also discovering a nasty security hole that allows arbitrary command execution. A new CGit release has now occurred under the new leadership to address this problem.

    • At SEC: Porn Surfing Down, Waste Up, Stunning Disregard For Basic Computer Security

      An internal investigative report of the SEC’s Trading and Markets division has been recently been reviewed by Reuters. After reading its rundown of the misdeeds and abuses uncovered, I’m left with the urge to laugh maniacally in the manner of someone having just cleared the tipping point and now sliding irretrievably into insanity. The sheer irresponsibility on display here springs from the sort of irredeemable carelessness that comes with spending other people’s money (taxes) and operating without any credible oversight or accountability (a large percentage of government entities).

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • A Presidential Candidate Who Will Talk About Drones
    • The Real Scandal: Crimes of War, Not Passion

      The media blitz is fully engaged around the latest Washington sex scandals, and with it come nascent cheers from some anti-war sectors over the public unraveling of the top brass who have helped to orchestrate the longest war in U.S. history. On email threads and in the blogosphere, one is likely to view celebratory remarks laced with words like “comeuppance,” “karma,” and “justice.” Yet while it may be true that there’s a certain element of ironic remuneration in all of this, it’s also the case that such episodes can serve to draw our focus toward the wrong issues and the wrong scandals.

    • Police ban Israeli activists from West Bank demonstrations

      Israeli police officers distributed closed military zone orders for four West Bank villages early Sunday morning to 13 prominent activists in groups such as Anarchists Against the Wall, Ta’ayush, and the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement. In most cases, the military orders were delivered personally, but for some activists who happened not to be home, they were left under their doors. In some cases, the officers came to look for the activists in their old addresses, disturbing family members and friends, entering homes without a court order, and videotaping those present against their will, even after they were requested not to do so.

    • Cybersecurity Bill Fails To Move Forward In The Senate (Again)

      As was widely expected, Harry Reid tried to bring the problematic Cybersecurity Act back from the dead today. He needed 60 votes for cloture, which would have then allowed the bill to actually be debated upon (with various amendments considered as well). However, after a few short grandstanding speeches, the attempt at cloture failed, 51 votes to 47, well short of the 60 votes needed. Harry Reid then got up and lashed out at his colleagues, basically saying that he and other Cybersecurity supporters have been spreading so much FUD about how we’re going to be attacked that he can’t believe Senators didn’t fall for it.

    • Dismissal of Whistleblower’s Lawsuit Against Rumsfeld Grants US Officials Greater Immunity for Torture

      A federal court dismissed a lawsuit last week against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The suit, brought by Donald Vance, a US Navy veteran and former defense contractor, and Nathan Ertel, also a former defense contractor, alleged he was responsible for torture they had experienced in an American-run prison in Iraq for nearly one hundred days. The dismissal effectively makes it even more impossible for US citizens to sue high-ranking officials, who are responsible for their torture.

    • Hillsborough investigation: police watchdog given list of 2,444 police officers

      Owers told the committee that the IPCC’s Hillsborough inquiry was into the aftermath of the tragedy – into whether there was a cover-up, why blood samples were taken, what information was released to the media.

    • A country at war rarely spares a thought for the children of the enemy
    • Kent police officers arrested over crime statistics ‘irregularities’

      Five detectives are being questioned in an anti-corruption probe into the alleged manipulation of crime statistics to meet detection targets.

      Kent police said on Thursday the officers – understood to be a detective inspector, detective sergeant and three detective constables – had been arrested “over allegations of administrative irregularities” relating to prisoners.

    • Burma frees more than 450 prisoners before Barack Obama’s visit

      Human rights campaigners say no dissidents are among prisoners to be released in ‘goodwill gesture’

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Madrid demonstration leads general strike as Spain comes to a standstill
    • Rebel mayors threaten banks that continue with eviction policy
    • The Growing Global Movement Against Austerity

      Amaia Engana didn’t wait to be evicted from her home. On Nov. 9, in the town of Barakaldo, a suburb of Bilbao in Spain’s Basque Country, officials from the local judiciary were on their way to serve her eviction papers. Amaia stood on a chair and threw herself out of her fifth-floor apartment window, dying instantly on impact on the sidewalk below. She was the second person in two weeks in Spain to commit suicide as a result of an impending foreclosure action. Her suicide has added gravity to this week’s general strike radiating from the streets of Madrid across all of Europe. As resistance to so-called austerity in Europe becomes increasingly transnational and coordinated, President Barack Obama and the House Republicans begin their debate to avert the “fiscal cliff.” The fight is over fair tax rates, budget priorities and whether we as a society will sustain the social safety net built during the past 80 years.

    • Soup Kitchens Overwhelmed in Crisis-Ridden Spain

      A huge pot of rice steams on the stove at the soup kitchen run by Emaús in the municipality of Torremolinos, on the outskirts of this southern Spanish city. This morning, like every other, Pepi, Adriana and Diego are cooking for over a hundred people who can no longer afford to feed themselves.

    • The American Anti-Corruption Act gets money out of politics, so the people can get back in.
    • Financiers Still Aren’t Rocket Scientists

      Over at Slate, John Dickerson has a piece expressing amazement that “numbers guy” Mitt Romney was so badly misinformed about the election. While I’ll admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude about the general bafflement of the Romney campaign and the Republicans generally, this particular slant (which Dickerson isn’t the only one to take, just the latest in a series) is more annoying than entertaining.

      You would think that the 2008 economic meltdown, in which the financial industry broke the entire world when they were blindsided by the fact that housing prices can go down as well as up, might have cut into the idea of Wall Street bankers as geniuses, but evidently not. The weird idea that the titans of investment banking are the smartest people on the planet continues to persist, even among people who ought to know better– another thing that bugged me about Chris Hayes’s Twilight of the Elites was the way he uncritically accepted the line that Wall Street was the very peak of the meritocracy. It’s not hard to see where it originates– Wall Street types can’t go twenty minutes without telling everybody how smart they are– but it’s hard to see why so many people accept such blatant propaganda without question.

      Look, Romney was an investment banker and corporate raider at Bain Capital. This is admittedly vastly more quantitative work than, say, being a journalist, but it doesn’t make him a “numbers guy.” The work that they do relies almost as much on luck and personal connections as it does on math– they’re closer to being professional gamblers than mathematical scientists. This is especially true of Bain and Romney, as was documented earlier this year– Bain made some bad bets before Romney got there, and was deep in the hole, and he got them out in large part by exploiting government connections and a sort of hostage-taking brinksmanship, creating a situation in which their well-deserved bankruptcy would’ve created a nightmare for the people they owed money, which bought them enough time for some other bets to pay off.

    • AT&T’s $14 Billion Dollar ‘Bribe’ to Get Rid of Telecom Regulations Is a Multi-Layered Hoax

      Kushnick’s Law states: “A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today.”

      On November 7th, 2012, AT&T’s press release announced that it would “invest $14 billion to significantly expand wireless and wireline broadband networks, support future IP data growth and new services.”

    • Bankers Beginning to Look a Smidge Desperate: Goldman Looking for Technology Magic Bullets to Fix its Cost Problem

      Now that Wall Street blew up the global economy in its search for fun and profit, it is finally having to eat its own cooking in the form of more modest profits. Of course, the slightly chastened Masters of the Universe seem constitutionally unable to recognize that their own actions might have something to do with the fix they are in. Yes, the immediate aftermath of the crisis looked just dandy, as super low interest rates and official confidence building led to some lovely trading opportunities, which in turn produced record bonuses in 2009 and 2010. But as the Fed flattened the yield curve and the economy has stayed stuck in low gear, investors aren’t keen on taking risk, even if negative real interest rates leave doing nothing as an unattractive option.

    • Alert! Rahm Takes First Step to Privatize Chicago Water – Under the Radar

      To Mayor Emanuel, some jobs are worth more than others–What’s really saved by privatizing a couple dozen positions at the water department?

    • Britain stands at equality crossroads, according to landmark report
    • Will EU nations turn over tax-and-spending sovereignty to Germany?
    • Greece’s creditors should take a haircut

      Caricatures normally paint the IMF as the hard guy, the one who insists that sour austerity medicine is taken on time and in full. By contrast, the EU and the ECB are the softies who roll over in the end and agree a compromise.

      If you ignore the detail of the current spat within the so-called troika, these pen portraits fit. Christine Lagarde and the IMF think the 2020 deadline for reducing Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio to 120% should be kept. The EU politicians think an extension to 2022 is in order on the grounds that Athens is doing a reasonable job in cutting spending and raising taxes.

    • Gas prices: FSA examines whistleblower’s claims of ‘Libor-like’ manipulation
    • A highly taxing session for the men from Amazon, Google and Starbucks

      This public accounts committee interrogation made other recent grillings look like a chat on the sofa with Richard and Judy

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • This Is What Plutocracy Looks Like: Romney Suggests Obama Bribed Voters
    • WI Legislators Receive $24K in Campaign Contributions After Pushing ALEC Predatory Lending Bill

      Wisconsin’s effort to open the state to predatory lenders using American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) legislation has paid dividends for the ALEC legislators behind it.

      In May of 2011, Rep. Robin Vos, the ALEC State Chair in Wisconsin and head of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, rolled a provision into the 2011-2012 budget bill resembling ALEC model legislation and that legalized auto title loans. Democrats voted against the provision, but it ultimately passed the Republican-led Finance Committee and state legislature.

    • Winners and Losers in the “Big Secret Bucks” Spending War

      The Sunlight Foundation has crunched the numbers and calculated the “return on investment” that big-spending Super PACs and “dark money” groups achieved in the 2012 cycle. It reflects how much of the money spent by each group went to support candidates who won (or to oppose candidates who lost) in the general election campaign.

    • After at Least $6 Billion Spent on 2012 Election, Reformers Look to Future

      Now that the most expensive election in history is over, an increasing number of Americans are demanding action to reduce the influence of money and corporations in our political system — and reformers are offering solutions.

      Polling shows nine in ten Americans agree there is too much corporate money in politics. The vast majority of Americans believe special interests and campaign donors have the most influence over our elected officials (59 percent believe “special interest groups and lobbyists” have the most influence and 46 percent believe it is campaign donors). Only 15 percent of Americans believe that ordinary people are calling the shots.

    • The Petraeus Legacy: A Paramilitary CIA?

      It was the CIA director’s relationship with JSOC—not Paula Broadwell—that should have raised concerns.

  • Censorship

    • Israel Throttles Palestinian Television
    • Senator Wyden Opposes Anti-Leaks Provisions, Puts Hold on Intelligence Authorization Bill

      Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has placed a public hold on the intelligence authorization bill to prevent anti-leaks provisions from passing without any meaningful debate or amendments because he believes they would “inhibit free speech and damage the news media’s ability to report on national security issues.”

      On the Senate floor, Wyden declared, “Congress should be extremely skeptical of any anti-leaks bills that threaten to encroach upon the freedom of the press, or that would reduce access to information that the public has a right to know.”

    • Senator Wyden Puts Hold On Intelligence Authorization Act Over Free Speech Concerns

      Once again, Senator Ron Wyden seems like one of a very small number of people in Congress actually willing to stand up against bad bills that are pushed forward with fear mongering. Earlier this year, we noted just how absolutely ridiculous it was that Senator Dianne Feinstein seemed a hell of a lot more concerned about punishing whoever blew the whistle on questionable US activities like Stuxnet, then about the questionable activities themselves. In response, she put forth some legislation that was designed to punish government whistleblowers, rather than understand why they were blowing the whistle. This bill got dumped into a key appropriations bill, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. In other words, Feinstein basically said that if we are to fund intelligence activities we have to crack down on whistleblowers. Shameful stuff.

    • “Involuntary porn” site tests the boundaries of legal extortion

      Freedom of expression has been at the top of the agenda this week in Baku at the internet governance forum (IGF), an annual United Nations “multi-stakeholder” meeting. The IGF has previously been held in less democratic states, such as pre-Arab-spring Egypt, and was set up by the UN world summit on the information society, held in Tunisia (and Geneva). But the Azerbaijan government has been particularly vicious in its attacks on journalists and bloggers.

    • Latest Company To Discover The Streisand Effect: Casey Movers

      Phil Buckley has a story of a Massachusetts-based moving company, called Casey Movers, which appears to have violated both of those rules, starting with a legal threat to Buckley’s wife concerning a negative review she had written about Casey Movers 18 months ago, after her parents had a very bad experience with the company. It first took the company over a year to even notice the review and then post a weak defense of its practices. It didn’t respond to any of the specific complaints about unprofessional behavior or broken promises. It only focused on the amount that the company had been willing to pay for damages, and gave a somewhat “technical” response about how this was what the “insurance option” she chose provided — and even could be read as scolding her for not choosing the more expensive insurance option.

    • There’s no way to stop children viewing porn in Starbucks

      Last week’s debate in the Lords on the proposal to stop opt-out pornography filters was a perfect parable about the dangers of putting technically unsophisticated legislators in charge of technology regulation.

  • Privacy

    • Now E-Textbooks Can Report Back on Students’ Reading Habits

      Data mining is creeping into every aspect of student life—classrooms, advising, socializing. Now it’s hitting textbooks, too.

      CourseSmart, which sells digital versions of textbooks by big publishers, announced on Wednesday a new tool to help professors and others measure students’ engagement with electronic course materials.

      When students use print textbooks, professors can’t track their reading. But as learning shifts online, everything students do in digital spaces can be monitored, including the intimate details of their reading habits.

    • When Will our Email Betray Us? An Email Privacy Primer in Light of the Petraeus Saga

      The unfolding scandal that led to the resignation of Gen. David Petraeus, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, started with some purportedly harassing emails sent from pseudonymous email accounts to Jill Kelley. After the FBI kicked its investigation into high gear, it identified the sender as Paula Broadwell and, ultimately, read massive amounts of private email messages that uncovered an affair between Broadwell and Petraeus (and now, the investigation has expanded to include Gen. John Allen’s emails with Kelley). We’ve received a lot of questions about how this works—what legal process the FBI needs to conduct its email investigation. The short answer? It’s complicated.

    • article image8 million UK children on secret database without parental consent
    • The alternatives to the draft Communications Data Bill

      Big Brother Watch has submitted supplementary evidence to the Joint Committee on the draft Communications Data Bill highlighting the alternatives and opportunities available. The draft Bill, which would require details of our every email, website visit and social media log to be recorded, is currently under review from a specially convened joint committee of MPs and Peers.

    • ORG applies to intervene in Golden Eye case – and we need your help

      We want to do more to promote digital rights like privacy through interventions in relevant court cases.

      As part of that ambition, we have applied for permission to intervene in the appeal of the Golden Eye International v Telefonica UK decision. And we need your help to take this important case.

    • How one law student is making Facebook get serious about privacy

      The world’s largest legal battle against Facebook began with a class assignment. Student Max Schrems still hasn’t turned in his university paper on the topic, due well over a year ago, but he has already accomplished something bigger: forcing Facebook to alter its approach to user privacy. Now, Schrems wants cash—hundreds of thousands of euros—to launch the next phase of his campaign, a multi-year legal battle that might significantly redefine how Facebook controls the personal data on over one billion people worldwide.

      “If we get €300,000 ($384,000), we ca

    • FBI’s abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation

      That the stars of America’s national security establishment are being devoured by out-of-control surveillance is a form of sweet justice

  • Civil Rights

    • If There Needs To Be An Investigation, It Should Be About Why The FBI Was Reading Certain Emails

      While some have noted the irony of General Petreaus being taken down due to online surveillance methods that he should have been aware of, the case is bringing growing attention to an issue many of us have been discussing for a while: how easy it is for law enforcement to snoop through your email. We raised the question already, but as more info comes out, the whole thing is looking that much more questionable.

    • Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel On City’s Illegal Recordings Of Conversations With Journalists: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’

      Chicago city hall officials are in a bit of trouble for recording phone conversations with Chicago Tribune reporters without their consent. A city attorney is downplaying the incidents, insisting that there’s no “widespread practice of such tapings” and promising that “steps are being taken” to prevent this from happening again.

    • It Isn’t a Crime When the Government Does It

      So remember when Chicago police were arresting people for recording them, and charging them with crimes punishable by 10 or more years in prison? Remember the woman who was arrested and charged because she attempted to record Chicago PD internal affairs police browbeating her when she tried to report a sexual assault by a Chicago cop? Remember all that stuff we heard from Chicago PD and Cook County DA Anita Alvarez’s office about protecting privacy?

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Democrats & Republicans Should Come Together To Support A Future Of Abundance

      As a therapist would tell a couple bickering over each others’ working and spending habits, Republicans and Democrats now quarreling over the federal budget should change the framing of topic. Instead of focusing only on how much the government should tax and spend in the economy we know, the leaders of the opposing parties should look at what the economy could quickly become if government passed laws encouraging productive private sector investment in growing technology-driven markets.

    • Thailand To Join TPP Negotiations; Access To Medicines Likely To Suffer As A Consequence

      If Thailand joins the TPP negotiations, it will undoubtedly be forced to rescind those compulsory licenses — one of the key features of TPP is its strengthening of protection for pharma patents. The inevitable consequence of that will be increased prices in Thailand for key medicines, and more people suffering and dying as a result. It would be interesting to know what pressure has been brought to bear on the Thai government to take what seems such a damaging step for its people, when other nations are moving in precisely the opposite direction.

    • Copyrights

      • When Agents Attack

        About a year ago, I noticed a shift in the general tone of writers’ conferences. For the ten years I’ve been attending them, there was a tendency for agents at these events to lord it over the room, being very strict about what they were looking for, how they like to be approached, how not to approach them, and how to talk to them. The power balance was one-sided, needlessly (and sometimes insultingly) so.

        Then agents started getting nervous. And defensive. Instead of, “This is how to get us,” the line became, “This is why you need us.” And things started to get a lot more interesting.

        A week and a half ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Novelists, Inc. 23rd Annual Conference. And on one of the panels I sat on, all the growing tension and dissatisfaction came to a head.

      • University Of Washington’s Defense Of Twitter Limits On Journalists More Ridiculous Than The Restrictions Themselves

        Except… that’s not true. The “live description of events” is not protectable by the University. It’s possible that someone could claim copyright over their own description of the events, but the University has no IP rights on the “live description of events.” Such a thing simply doesn’t exist and it would be a massive First Amendment issue if it did. That someone there thinks such a “right” exists is ridiculous.

      • Another Kirtsaeng Question: Why Have the Distribution Right?

        In the wake of the Kirtsaeng oral argument, I wanted to look at a strange thing about how the first sale doctrine works in our copyright laws. The first sale doctrine makes it legal for you to sell, lend, or give away copies of copyrighted works that you own. Without it, it would be copyright infringement for you to do any of those things with a book, a CD, or a DVD, even if you’d bought and paid for a legitimate copy of the thing.

        In much the same way that deeply-held values of free speech and expression are reconciled with copyright law through the doctrine of fair use, first sale allows copyright law to coexist with the older doctrines of property: the fact that I own this physical object means I get to decide how I want to dispose of it.

        Even though the law recognizes that owning your own copies of works is a fundamental right, it still gets to that right in a slightly roundabout way. If I were to walk through how copyright and first sale governed my sale of a paperback, I’d first look at section 106(3) and see that it gives a copyright holder the ability to prevent me from selling my copy of a book. But then, section 109(a) sweeps in to preserve my property rights within the sphere of copyright.

      • RIAA Prefers Customers Who Buy A Little To Pirates Who Buy A Lot

        To me, this was a fairly innocuous finding, well in line with other studies. For my money, the more important findings were that personal sharing ‘between friends’ is about as prevalent and as significant in music acquisition as ‘downloading for free’, and that together they are outweighed by legal acquisition.

      • Book Scanning As Fair Use: Google Makes Its Case As Authors Guild Appeals Hathitrust Fair Use Ruling

        Two new developments in the two big cases concerning book scanning and fair use: first up, we’ve got the somewhat unsurprising news that the Authors Guild is appealing its rather massive loss against Hathitrust, the organization that was set up to scan books from a bunch of university library collections. As you may recall, Judge Harold Baer’s ruling discussed how the book scanning in that case was obviously fair use. It was a near complete smackdown for the Authors Guild.

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