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11.28.12

Links 29/11/2012: Dell Sells GNU/Linux Gear at Lower Cost Than Windows, Fedora 18 Reaches Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 9:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Are Wii U demo stations running Ubuntu?
  • Windows 8 Review from a Linux User Part 1, Part 2
  • Linux Top 3: Linux Mint 14, Vyatta 6.5 and Cinnarch
  • Is Linux better than Windows 8 for gaming?

    If you’re a real gamer you know just how terrifying Windows 8 can be. With the changes they’ve made there just might not be any sort of viable way for real gamers to get the kind of experience they want.

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log – Coming in 3.7 (Part 4): Drivers

      Some major changes are supposed to make drivers for Intel and NVIDIA’s graphics processors more robust. Linux 3.7 also includes a number of new DVB drivers and makes better use of modern audio chips’ power-saving features.Kernel Log – Coming in 3.7 (Part 4): Drivers

    • Graphics Stack

      • NVIDIA joins in work on Tegra 2D graphics driver for Linux

        NVIDIA has added infrastructure to the Linux kernel graphics drivers for Tegra SoCs (system on a chip) which supports the use of hardware-accelerated 2D on Tegra20 and Tegra30 chips. NVIDIA staff are working on integrating the extension, which is released under an open source licence, into the Linux kernel. At present, it does not look like this will be completed in time for Linux 3.8.

      • 12-Way Radeon Gallium3D GPU Comparison
      • RadeonSI Gallium3D Driver Sees A Few Fixes

        For those that don’t closely follow the Mesa Git repository, there’s finally a few more “RadeonSI” Gallium3D driver fixes that arrived this morning for slowly but surely bringing up the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series 3D support.

      • NVIDIA joins in work on Tegra 2D graphics driver for Linux

        NVIDIA has added infrastructure to the Linux kernel graphics drivers for Tegra SoCs (system on a chip) which supports the use of hardware-accelerated 2D on Tegra20 and Tegra30 chips. NVIDIA staff are working on integrating the extension, which is released under an open source licence, into the Linux kernel. At present, it does not look like this will be completed in time for Linux 3.8.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • New E17 Release: ALPHA6

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • 15 years of KDE e.V. – The Early Years

        Today (November 27, 2012) is the 15th birthday of KDE e.V. (eingetragener Verein; registered association), the legal entity which represents the KDE Community in legal and financial matters. We interviewed two of the founding members (Matthias and Matthias) on the why, what and when of KDE e.V. in the beginning. Tomorrow, emeritus board member Mirko Böhm shares his thoughts. On Thursday there will be interviews with current e.V. Board members.

      • Kolab 3 Beta released – Debian packages ready
      • Why I Prefer KDE

        Fifteen years ago today, KDE began — and I, for one, am glad that it did. I run virtualized versions of all the major desktop environments, and have a few more on secondary machines. Sometimes, too, I’ll log into a desktop like Mate, Xfce, or LXDE just for a change of pace or to keep myself in touch. Yet, on my main workstation, I always return sooner or later to KDE. Of all my available choices, it’s the one whose design philosophy, communal attitudes, and vision come closest to my idea of what a desktop environment and its project should be.

        That wasn’t always the case. Although my first year of working in GNU/Linux was on KDE, I spent close to eight years as a die-hard GNOME user. Glances over the year suggested that KDE’s default theme looked as though it were based on plastic Fisher- Price toys, and that its organization was casual at best. The clean lines of GNOME seemed far less of a distraction from my work.

        But as my familiarity with GNU/Linux grew, GNOME’s minimalistic philosophy began to feel restrictive. Key GNOME applications such as the Evolution, which had seemed so radical a few years earlier, appeared stuck in maintenance mode.

      • Appmenu support in KDE 4.10

        Appmenu support for KDE is now available in master for testing.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Second beta of GNOME 3.8 brings global search configuration

        The developers of the GNOME desktop for Unix systems have released the second beta for the upcoming version 3.8 of the open source desktop. GNOME 3.7.2 drops the fallback mode as planned and the developers have completed porting all components of the desktop to GStreamer 1.0 as well.

      • yes, Gnome3 did a good deal with Touch Screens!

        Why Gnome3 does a touch screen interface when you can’t actually run Gnome in any tablet -at least today ..is a typical question. A typical answer would be, because all screens will be touch-screens by 2013-2014.

      • GNOME 3.7.2 Drops Fallback Mode, Relies Exclusively on GStreamer 1.0

        Javier Jardón has announced today, November 27, the second development release of the GNOME 3.8 desktop environment.

        The development of the GNOME 3.8 is well under way and the developers have announced a few major changes already.

  • Distributions

    • SolusOS and Me

      Many of us came to Linux via odd routes. Some of us decided that we were tired of our software and computing choices being made for us. Some of us are just adventurous or bored and want to see what other choices might be available to us.

    • OpenELEC 3.0 Linux distro launches in beta, rolls in XBMC 12
    • Sahalana 1 Screenshots

    • Gentoo Family

      • Spam texters and protecting our data

        The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has today served monetary penalties totaling £440,000 on two owners of a marketing company which has plagued the public with millions of unlawful spam texts over the past three years.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • The fairest mirror of them all?
      • Half of the package maintainers are not DDs or DMs
      • Upstart Now Available In Debian Unstable

        Steve Langasek of Canonical has pushed their latest Upstart init daemon into Debian unstable. Debian GNU/Linux can now handle either SysVinit, systemd, and Upstart to handle a head-to-head system booting battle.

      • Upstart in Debian

        Thanks to the ifupdown, sysvinit, and udev maintainers for their cooperation in getting upstart support in place; to the Debian release team for accomodating the late changes needed for upstart to be supported in wheezy; and to Scott for his past maintenance of upstart in Debian.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 293
          • Open source community up in arms over proprietary software for Ubuntu

            It was only a matter of time before the proprietary software started populating in the Ubuntu Software Center. This was something Mark Shuttleworth had been promising for quite some time. Not only proprietary software, but plenty of other purchasable items would arrive:

            * Movies
            * Music
            * Magazines

          • Why Cadence Is Canon at Canonical

            Canonical’s rigidly regular release schedule has been the subject of calls for change, but Mark Shuttleworth and plenty of others see no need. In fact, the regularity may be exactly what makes it work, satisfying the needs of both desktop and enterprise users, said Jay Lyman, senior analyst for enterprise software at The 451 Group.

          • 20 Ubuntu Apps For Daily Life

            Working from my Ubuntu desktop all day has given me an interesting perspective into what works and what doesn’t when it comes to applications. In this article, I will offer you a roundup of software titles that enable me to make my day a more productive one. These applications range from productivity tools down to the Web-based tools that I use on my desktop.

          • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to be Codenamed Brilliant Broccoli

            Benjamin Drung points out that Ubuntu will reach the letter Z with 17.04 and wondered in what direction would they go after. Would they just start at the beginning of the alphabet again and start with “A?” Turns out he overheard the response at the latest Ubuntu Developer Summit.

          • New Splashtop variant to let you access Ubuntu desktop from anywhere

            Users can install the free Ubuntu package on their home computers, and use Splashtop’s array of mobile apps to connect remotely via an Android or iOS device. (A monthly subscription fee of $1 or a yearly price of $10 must be paid in order to do anything but connect across a LAN, however, and some tablet variants of the mobile app also cost a few bucks.)

          • The Cost of Ubuntu

            Can Ubuntu Linux ever pay for itself? The conventional wisdom is that it can’t, because no distribution has done so in the past. However, that doesn’t stop Canonical, Ubuntu’s commercial arm, from trying hard. At the very least, Canonical is trying to defray as much of the cost as possible.

            Canonical is not a publicly traded company and does not release any financial figures. The company is quick to announce distribution deals, but the value of those deals are noticeably absent from many of its news releases. Ask its public relations directly for such information, and you are told that it is “confidential.” Nor is this lack of information surprising, since, from a traditional business perspective, Canonical has nothing to gain from transparency.

          • Dell Laptop is $70 Cheaper with Ubuntu Linux

            More than five years after it began selling PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled in the United States, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has compiled a lackluster record in the eyes of many Linux advocates when it comes to promoting open source alternatives to Windows. Yet as a Canonical employee recently pointed out, Dell is now offering a $70 markdown on one laptop model when customers purchase it with Ubuntu instead of a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) OS. Is this a mistake, or a sign of changes to come on Dell’s part?

            As the only big name OEM that provides Ubuntu preinstalled on certain PCs and laptops in developed markets, Dell can hardly be called anti-Linux. But since introducing Ubuntu computers in 2007, the company has taken flack for failing to market them aggressively, burying Ubuntu options on its website and charging the same prices whether users order machines with Ubuntu, which is free, or with Windows.

          • Dell Offers Low-Cost Ubuntu Notebook, But You Can Get Costs Lower

            As we’ve noted before, Canonical and giant PC maker Dell Computer have already found new horizons for Ubuntu in China in India. And, Dell deserves praise for being one of the few big hardware makers to offer Linux options on its computers over the years. Now, as Canonical employee Rick Spencer reports in a blog post, on Cyber Monday, Dell was listing the very same Vostro notebook for $369 with Windows 7 pre-loaded versus $299 for it with Ubuntu pre-loaded. The real news here is that you can actually get a solid portable computer with Ubuntu or any Linux distro pre-loaded for much less than $299.

          • We Interview Daniel Ryan, Director of Front-End Development for ‘Obama for America’

            With the Election in the rear-view mirror for Americans we are starting to learn about the tools, assets and people that helped President Barack Obama win re-election.

          • How Team Obama’s tech efficiency left Romney IT in dust

            Key in maximizing the value of the Obama campaign’s IT spending was its use of open source tools and open architectures. Linux—particularly Ubuntu—was used as the server operating system of choice. “We were technology agnostic, and used the right technology for the right purpose,” VanDenPlas said. “Someone counted nearly 10 distinct DBMS/NoSQL systems, and we wrote something like 200 apps in Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, and Node.js.”

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 14 Review – The Best Desktop Linux

              Linux Mint returns with updates all round, but has it addressed the minor issues we had with Mint 13 along the way?

            • Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon Review

              Hot off the press, we are welcomed with a new version of Linux Mint codenamed Nadia. This released is based on Ubuntu 12.10 and comes with Cinnamon 1.6 desktop environment and features significant upgrades in the GUI alone since version 13.

              As always Linux Mint is available in both 32 bit and 64 bit and comes in the form of a Live Media CD which can be installed if you enjoy Linux MintThis new fresh Linux Mint has quite a number of improvements under the hood and for those who used the previous version there’s no drastic changes where one would have to relearn things. With Cinnamon 1.6 comes a new file manager called Nemo which features shortcuts on the left hand side and displays the contents on the right. It is quite sleek and it is easy for a user to add a shortcut to one of their folders if need be.

            • Hacking-Lab 5.96 Screenshots

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Android Follows Linux into Wide World of Embedded

      Earlier this month, Texas Instruments (TI) announced it was cutting 1,700 jobs and dropping its consumer mobile processors to focus on the general embedded market. TI cited the reduced profitability of the consumer mobile business, which is marked by intense competition and short lifecycles.

      Others noted the growing competition from device vendors like Apple and Samsung, which now design their own ARM processors. In addition, pricing pressures have grown sharply, due in part to one of TI’s chief customers, Amazon. The online retail giant, which uses OMAP chips in its Kindle Fire tablets, considered buying the mobile, Android-focused portion of TI’s OMAP processor business before negotiations broke down.

    • Yes, the Raspberry Pi will run Minecraft
    • Advantech Co., Ltd. : Advantech SUSIAccess 2.0: Now Supports Linux OS Platforms

      Advantech (2395.TW), the leading embedded platform and integration services provider, announces the release of the Linux version of SUSIAccess 2.0, an innovative remote device management software preloaded in all Advantech embedded solutions, allowing efficient remote monitoring, quick recovery & backup, and real-time remote configuration. The launch of the Linux version of SUSIAccess 2.0 provides System Integrators more flexible options for creating a more intelligent and interconnected embedded computing solution.

    • 25 fun things to do with a Raspberry Pi

      Raspberry Pi, the bargain micro PC released earlier this year, has fertilised the imaginations of the public, bringing with it a boom in inventive approaches to computing not seen since the good old days of 8-bit.

    • Minecraft Raspberry Pi Edition To Help Kids Learn To Code While They Build

      The Raspberry Pi Foundation, maker of the $35 mini computer, is on a mission to get more kids to learn to code – and what better way to get children excited about the power of programming than by involving virtual block-builder game Minecraft? An official Mojang produced port of Minecraft: Pocket Edition was announced for Pi at the weekend – known as Minecraft: Pi Edition. Now the Foundation has put up a video showing how Minecraft gameplay on Pi can be combined with programming commands so kids can use text commands to control the world

    • Phones

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Tablet computer: Aakash upgrade in India ‘well received’

        Technology writer Prasanto K Roy tests the upgraded version of the world’s cheapest tablet computer Aakash 2 and discovers a significantly improved product.

      • Samsung’s Galaxy Note II Is a Phabulous Phablet
      • Nexus 4 Will Be Available On Google Play Today

        Google has started sending out notifications to potential customers that their flagship device Nexus 4 will be (re)available on Google Play Store today. These emails are being sent to those customers who signed up to be notified whenever the device is made available.

      • Favorite Android tablet apps

        This continually updated screenshot tour demonstrates more than 50 of DeviceGuru’s favorite Android tablet apps. They span device customization and management; text, voice, and video communications; productivity; news, weather, maps, and navigation; music, video, games, and e-books entertainment; and more.

      • Nexus 4 Google Play Store availability returns this afternoon
      • E FUN debuts $129 Nextbook Premium 7SE-GP with Google Play access

        For all the appeal that comes with a $100-$150 Android tablet, experienced users are often quick to point out the omissions and holes. One particular detail that often comes up is the lack of Google Play and the growing library of apps. E FUN is no stranger to this as they have announced a number of devices over time, all of which are inexpensive options that don’t have Google Play. That is not the case with the new 7-inch model, the Nextbook Premium 7SE-GP.

      • Apple Maintains Lead in Tablets but Market Share Down 14% in 3Q 2012

        Apple’s share of the tablet market continued to best all others with 55% unit shipment share in the period, reveals new data from market intelligence firm ABI Research. Despite maintaining its lead for 10 straight quarters, competition from tablets powered by Google’s Android OS continue to eat away at Apple’s success. Fifty-five percent is the lowest share Apple has ever had since launching the iPad in 2010.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Give back to open source on Giving Tuesday

    Black Friday first spread to Cyber Monday, then Grey Thursday. Now the week-long spending frenzy has turned charitable with Giving Tuesday.

    New York’s 92nd Street Y teamed up with the United Nations Foundation to gather a growing group of companies and non-profits “to create a national day of giving at the start of the annual holiday season [and to] celebrate and encourage charitable activities that support nonprofit organizations.”

  • 64 Open Source Tools for the Mobile Workforce

    Many within the open source community have recently bemoaned the lack of open source apps for mobile devices. However, their contention that open source has ignored the ongoing transition to a post-PC world isn’t entirely accurate.

    While it’s true that the number open source mobile apps haven’t kept pace with the exponential growth of mobile apps in general, open source developers are slowly but steadily adding to the library of open source apps for smartphones and tablets.

  • Netflix open sources Hystrix resilience library

    Netflix has moved on from just releasing the tools it uses to test the resilience of the cloud services that power the video streaming company, and has now open sourced a library that it uses to engineer in that resilience. Hystrix is an Apache 2 licensed library which Netflix engineers have been developing over the course of 2012 and which has been adopted by many teams within the company. It is designed to manage how distributed services interact and give more tolerance to latency within those connections and the inevitable failures that can occur.

  • Post-Thanksgiving Roundup: Counting Open Source Blessings

    Beyond the most radically geeky segments of society, few Americans are likely to have thought of software when they counted their blessings this Thanksgiving. For most people, computers are hardly in the same category as food, shelter and loving friends and family. That said, a recent blog post got me thinking about the software projects and people to whom I do owe personal gratitude. My list comes a bit belatedly, since Thanksgiving 2012 has come and gone, but here are the five items that top it.

  • Open vs. Closed Systems: What the Future Holds
  • NYSE Euronext : NYSE Technologies Open Platform Launches the OpenMAMA Enterprise Edition

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Joomla sails past 36m downloads, as it reports 27% year-on-year growth

      Open source content management system (CMS) Joomla has announced that it has surpassed 36 million downloads worldwide two months after the launch of Joomla 3.0.

      The company reports downloads grew an impressive 27% compared to November 2011, while more than 1,500 extensions for the CMS were introduced by its community in this period of time.

  • Business

  • Funding

    • Does Enterprise vs Consumer Matter?

      Fred Wilson is not alone in claiming that patterns of venture funding are shifting away from consumer startups towards enterprise oriented alternatives. Industry chatter has been concerned with this trend for some time, amplified in part by an industry analyst industry that has historically been over concerned with the enterprise at the expense of consumer technology trends.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open-source entrepreneurship

    • Open Hardware

      • Arduino Teaches Old Coder New Tricks

        I became aware of the Arduino Project from occasional media reports and a presentation at Atlanta LinuxFest 2009. I was impressed with what the Arduino community was doing, but at that time, I saw no personal use for it. It took a grandson who is heavily involved in a high-school competitive robotics program to change things for me. During a 2011 Thanksgiving family gathering, he asked me some questions about robotics-related electronics, and I told him to google Arduino. He did. Arduino ended up on his Christmas list, and Santa delivered.

      • Kickstarter, Trademarks and Lies

        Just a few clarifications: Arduino is not suing anybody. We never intended to do that in the slightest. We love Kickstarter and , as I said in the post, we think they are important to Makers. We are now in contact with Kickstarter to make sure that in the future the communication between us are more direct and clear. Our manufacturing partner in Italy has issues with some statements made in the Kickstarter campaign and they are getting in touch directly with the project creator to clear the situation.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Apple, Tesla Completely Embarrass Microsoft

    Microsoft is the next Research in Motion.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • 5 Charts About Climate Change That Should Have You Very, Very Worried

      Two major organizations released climate change reports this month warning of doom and gloom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. A World Bank report imagines a world 4 degrees warmer, the temperature predicted by century’s end barring changes, and says it aims to shock people into action by sharing devastating scenarios of flood, famine, drought and cyclones. Meanwhile, a report from the US National Research Council, commissioned by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies, says the consequences of climate change–rising sea levels, severe flooding, droughts, fires, and insect infestations–pose threats greater than those from terrorism ranging from massive food shortages to a rise in armed conflicts.

    • Time is running out: the Doha climate talks must put an end to excuses

      The evidence of climate change is clearer than ever. The poor countries have done everything asked of them. Now the rich nations must face their responsibilities

    • Environmental activists ‘being killed at rate of one a week’
    • ALEC and Heartland Aim to Crush Renewable Energy Standards in the States

      An effort to stomp out state renewable energy mandates across the country has roots in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). As reported by The Washington Post, the Heartland Institute wrote the bill, had it passed through ALEC, and is now targeting the 29 states and the District of Columbia, which have passed renewable energy requirements in some form.

    • ALEC’s Economic Policies Do More Harm Than Good, New Report Shows

      Corporate lobbyists and right-wing legislators of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) will be gathering in Washington, DC today for ALEC’s annual States and Nation Policy Summit. Today also marks the release of an in-depth report on the failure of ALEC’s economic recommendations for the states. The report claims that “states that were rated higher on ALEC’s Economic Outlook Ranking in 2007,” the first year the ranking was published, “have actually been doing worse economically in the years since, while the less a state conformed with ALEC policies the better off it was.”

    • Watchdogs Shed More Light on ALEC on Eve of Group’s DC Summit
    • Julian Assange warns of internet danger
    • For once, Julian Assange is right. Global digital surveillance is a reality – and it’s happening to you, not just people who post offensive tweets

      Assange and his “cypherpunk” compatriots believe the solution is for everyone to master encryption. That’s simply not going to happen. We are addicted to convenience and desperate to belong. This is a world where the head of the CIA was caught using Gmail to share illicit messages and professional politicians can’t resist sending naughty pictures via Twitter. Assange doesn’t have an answer to the human fear of missing out which drives so many to join social networks and remain there.

  • Finance

    • George Osborne’s hidden cuts will take away 30% of income for poorest families
    • It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World

      In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.

    • With Biggest Strike Against Biggest Employer, Walmart Workers Make History Again

      For about twenty-four hours, Walmart workers, union members and a slew of other activists pulled off the largest-ever US strike against the largest employer in the world. According to organizers, strikes hit a hundred US cities, with hundreds of retail workers walking off the job (last month‘s strikes drew 160). Organizers say they also hit their goal of a thousand total protests, with all but four states holding at least one. In the process, they notched a further escalation against the corporation that’s done more than any other to frustrate the ambitions and undermine the achievements of organized labor in the United States.

    • You Think You’re Getting Social Security But You’re Not, Says Multimillionaire Banker

      Huh. So Blankfein–who was paid $16 million last year, and owns $210 million worth of his company’s stock–thinks that people can retire on Social Security after working for 25 years? As Gene Lyons pointed out, that would mean that people are getting their first paychecks when they’re 42–or, assuming they’re willing to take the severe benefit cuts that come with early retirement, at 37. Or possibly he mistakenly believes Social Security allows you to retire at 41.

      He also thinks people typically live to be 92 or 97, depending. In real life, of course, most people start working as early as 16, so they reach retirement age after 51 years of labor, when they have a life expectancy of 17 years–or 14 years if they’re an African-American man.

    • How could Greece and Argentina – the new ‘debt colonies’ – be set free?

      Colonialism is back. Well, at least according to leading politicians of the two most famous debtor nations. Commenting on the EU’s inability to deliver its end of the bargain despite the savage spending cuts Greece had delivered, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the opposition Syriza party, said last week that his country was becoming a “debt colony”. A couple of days later, Hernán Lorenzino, Argentina’s economy minister, used the term “judicial colonialism” to denounce the US court ruling that his country has to pay in full a group of “vulture funds” that had held out from the debt restructuring that followed the country’s 2002 default.

    • Argentina fears default after American court ruling

      Argentinian politicians and global debt campaigners have responded with fury to a US court judgment that risks plunging the country back into default.

    • Median wealth of U.S. households lowest since 1969

      New research found that while median wealth plummeted, the top 1 percent increased wealth by 71 percent

    • UBS Offshore Shell Game Uncovered

      The Boston-bred Birkenfeld was a banker for UBS, a Swiss financial behemoth with major US operations. His specialty: devising tax shelters in the form of offshore shell companies and peddling them to the superrich. According to court documents, 85 to 90 bankers in UBS’s wealth-management divisions drummed up business at high-roller events like the America’s Cup yacht race and Miami’s prestigious Art Basel exhibition; Birkenfeld took pains to keep his customers happy, going so far for one client as to purchase diamonds overseas and smuggle them into the US in a toothpaste tube to avoid taxes and duties.

      It was one of Birkenfeld’s biggest clients who would prove his undoing—Igor Olenicoff, a Forbes 400 billionaire (forbes.com) and major developer in Florida, Illinois, Nevada, and the Southwest. Olenicoff’s fortunes took a dive in 1994, when the Internal Revenue Service, in the course of monitoring fund transfers, noticed large sums moving from Olenicoff’s accounts to countries with a reputation as tax havens. The suspicious IRS agents eventually called in the Justice Department; Olenicoff, they discovered, had stashed some $200 million in unreported assets in UBS accounts offshore. In 2007, Olenicoff agreed to pay $52 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties for tax evasion, and for lying about his accounts.

    • Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) Completes Economic Takeover of Europe

      Paul Joseph Watson: The “surprise” announcement that Canadian Mark Carney is to be appointed Governor of the Bank of England means that the 2012 Bilderberg attendee completes Goldman Sachs’ virtual domination over all the major economies of Europe. Carney’s appointment has come as a shock to many who expected current BoE deputy governor Paul Tucker to get the nod, but it’s not a surprise for us given that we forecast back in April Carney would be headhunted for the position.

    • Goldman Sachs Bailout King Blankfein to Powwow with House Republicans, While Obama Rules Out Social Security For Now

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Judge orders tobacco companies to say they lied

      Judge wants tobacco companies to say they deliberately deceived the American public about smoking’s dangerous effects

      [...]

      Each corrective ad is to be prefaced by a statement that a federal court has concluded that the defendant tobacco companies “deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking.” Among the required statements are that smoking kills more people than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, and that “secondhand smoke kills over 3,000 Americans a year.”

    • Corrections Corporation of America Used in Drug Sweeps of Public School Students

      An unsettling trend appears to be underway in Arizona: the use of private prison employees in law enforcement operations.

      The state has graced national headlines in recent years as the result of its cozy relationship with the for-profit prison industry. Such controversies have included the role of private prison corporations in SB 1070 and similar anti-immigrant legislation disseminated in other states; a 2010 private prison escape that resulted in two murders and a nationwide manhunt; and a failed bid to privatize nearly the entire Arizona prison system.

  • Censorship

    • Google loses Australian defamation case after court rules that it is accountable as a publisher

      Google has fought in courtrooms around the world in recent years, arguing that it is not responsible for the content in its search results, and this month it lost a battle in Australia. The Supreme Court of Victoria ruled on November 12th that Google is responsible for having published search results leading to a defamatory page which contained rumors that Michael Trkulja, a music promoter, was linked to murder and organized crime. Google argued, as it has in the past, that it’s not responsible for offensive material that other people host on the web — a defense that’s been met with mixed results internationally. In January, a French court fined Google and ordered it to change unfavorable search results that linked a French insurance company to the words “crook” and “con man” in autocomplete results.

    • Senate wants to keep threat of jail sentences hanging over reporters

      Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the Italian Senate’s approval of a contradictory amendment to a bill designed to decriminalize defamation. Under the Senate’s amendment, reporters would continue to be exposed to the possibility of imprisonment.

    • Got a Joke About Party in China? Jail Awaits.

      A 36-year-old financial worker who helps his daughter with her homework every night was taken away by Chinese security forces after he made a quip about the Communist Party’s recently concluded leadership conclave on Twitter.

      Four days before the Party’s 18th Congress, when a new set of Chinese leaders was sworn in to rule China, Zhai Xiaobing mocked the event by suggesting it was the latest installment in the Final Destination film franchise. The 2000 supernatural horror movie depicts a teenager whose plane explodes, killing all but a few survivors, who then begin mysteriously dying.

    • Court Ruling Ramps Up Pressure on Internet Providers to Block Content
    • Russian Supreme Court: ISPs Need To Proactively Block ‘Illegal Content’

  • Privacy

    • Privacy Watchdog Seeks ‘Urgent’ Details of Facebook Changes

      Irish regulators are seeking “urgent” clarifications from Facebook Inc. (FB) after the social media company informed users of changes to its privacy policy overnight.
      Facebook, which is overseen by Irish data protection regulators in the European Union, said that it recently proposed changes to its data-use policy and its statement of rights and responsibilities. The changes give users more detailed information about shared data including “reminders about what’s visible to other people on Facebook.”

    • Mark Zuckerberg, the new dictator of Facebookistan

      Facebook moved last week to eliminate the ability of users to vote on data use and privacy policy changes, according to posts in several languages on its site governance page on November 21. Both the timing (immediately before the Thanksgiving holiday in America) and the content changes have raised eyebrows with the entities who have worked to keep Facebook in check, but the company may have a point in eliminating its voting mechanisms. Does this simply give users the democracy they deserve—that is, none at all?

    • Man Who Sued Facebook and Zuckerberg Indicted for Fraud
    • US must hand over Internet control to the world

      The Internet has become one of the most important resources in the world in just a few decades, but the governance mechanism for such an important international resource is still dominated by a private sector organization and a single country.

      The U.S. government said in a statement on July 1, 2005 that its Commerce Department would continue to support the work of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and indefinitely retain oversight of the Internet’s 13 root servers.

    • China Hails ITU Internet Takeover By Blowing Its Favorite Trumpet: Distrusting The US

  • Civil Rights

    • Mozambique: Thousands unlawfully held in substandard prisons
    • New report documents counterterrorism and human rights abuses in Kenya and Uganda

      The report also details allegations that U.S. officials physically and mentally abused the suspects in Kampala, and that the United Kingdom also took part in their interrogations.

    • 4 Ugandan bombing suspects claim FBI abused them
    • If ECPA is tweaked to protect email privacy, will the NSA still spy on US Tor users?

      Even if ECPA is tweaked to protect email privacy, does that mean if you use Tor, with an IP that appears as if you are on foreign soil, that your real-time communications are being spied upon also by the NSA thanks to FISA?

    • Does Using Certain Privacy Tools Expose You to Warrantless NSA Surveillance? ACLU Files FOIA to Find Out

      Can using privacy-enhancing tools (such as Tor or a Virtual Private Network) actually expose you to warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency? This week, the ACLU sent off four FOIA requests to federal agencies in order to try and answer this question.

      To understand why we think that may be the case, we have to go back to the passage of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) in 2008. That act was not a high-point for civil liberties or the rule of law. It included a provision giving immunity to the telecom companies that violated the law by assisting the NSA with its warrantless wiretapping program. Although the get-out-of-jail-free card given to the phone companies is the most well-known aspect to the FAA, there is much more to the law, and many other things that give privacy advocates reason to worry.

      Under the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the government was required to provide specific, targeted requests aimed at foreign powers or their agents before lawful surveillance was permissible. But the FAA created an additional, broader surveillance system, enabling the government to conduct surveillance without particularized suspicion where a “significant purpose” is to obtain “foreign intelligence” and where the surveillance is targeted against persons “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.”

      Although the FAA defined several key terms, it did not provide a definition for a person “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.” In that ambiguity lies the source of our concern.

    • Susan Rice, CIA director meet with GOP critics on Libya

      Possible promotions for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and acting CIA Director Michael Morell remain in jeopardy after the two officials met Tuesday with three of their Republican critics regarding how the Obama administration responded to the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya.

    • CIA Headed In The Wrong General Direction

      More than 50 years ago, my resignation from the Central Intelligence Agency was effectuated. The Company, as it had always been known, had become a bit too militarized and was not what some of its founders such as Allan Dulles envisioned.

      Intelligence was collected but rarely analyzed coherently so as to contribute to enlightened policies. Much of what was collected by the Company lay unused, some of us feeling it is too expensive to collect this data, not to mention the risk involved.

    • Maryland Family Files Lawsuit Against Federal Government, Claims CIA was Responsible for the Death of Their Father and Lied About Its Involvement, Says Gilbert LLP
    • CIA Sued Over Alledged 1953 Murder of Military Scientist
    • Scientist Frank Olson was drugged with LSD and ‘murdered by CIA’

      A US government scientist was drugged by CIA agents and then thrown to his death from the 13th floor of a Manhattan hotel after he learned about secret torture sites in Europe, according to a lawsuit filed by his family.

    • Suit Planned Over Death of Man C.I.A. Drugged

      Nearly 60 years after the death of a government scientist who had been given LSD by the Central Intelligence Agency without his knowledge, his family says it plans to sue the government, alleging that he was murdered and did not commit suicide as the C.I.A. has long maintained.

    • US Family Suing CIA Over 1953 Death

      The family of a US government scientist who reportedly jumped to his death nearly 60 years ago now plans to sue the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that secretly gave him hallucinogenic drugs, claiming the man was murdered and that the CIA has long covered up the truth about his death, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

    • 4 Ugandan bombing suspects claim FBI abused them

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • European Parliament Passes Resolution Against ITU Asserting Control Over Internet

      Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly. This follows an attempt from the ITU to assert itself as the governing body and control the Internet. The Pirate Party was one of the parties drafting the resolution.

    • Dear ITU: A Complex Process Where Delegates Who Fly To Dubai Can ‘Lobby’ Is Not ‘Transparency’

      The EU Parliament recently joined the US government in speaking out against the ITU’s upcoming WCIT event, which we’ve been discussing. This is where the ITU — an ancient organization designed to deal with telegraphs, and whose relevance today has been widely questioned — is seeking to take over certain aspects of internet governance, well outside its mandate. Certain countries — Russia and China in particular — and certain large telcos (including many EU ones) are looking at this as a way to advance very specific interests, either for increased control and censorship over the internet, or in forcing successful internet companies to fork over money to telcos who have failed to innovate

    • Tech companies, advocacy groups prepare to take final stand against U.N.’s proposed internet control treaty

      The meeting is still a week away, yet the U.N.’s 11-day World Conference on International Communications in Dubai has been seeing opposition for months already. Among thousands of proposals on the table are those that tech companies, some governments and advocates for a free, open Internet think could lead to broad U.N. authority over Internet regulations.

    • Google Launches ‘Defend Your Net’ Campaign in Germany

      In its latest effort to bring attention to government action it considers threatening to the open web, Google is warning German citizens and lawmakers of the potential dangers posed by copyright changes being considered in Germany’s parliament.

      The campaign and petition is called Verteidige Dein Netz, German for “Defend Your Net.” Its target? A proposed law which would allow German publishers to charge Google for the short excerpts seen on sites such as Google News or remove content from the search engine entirely.

    • Integrity of Internet Is Crux of Global Conference

      A commercial and ideological clash is set for next week, when representatives of more than 190 governments, along with telecommunications companies and Internet groups, gather in Dubai for a once-in-a-generation meeting.

    • Apparently All That Stuff About Needing SOPA To Go After Foreign Sites Was Bogus

      Tim covered the story of ICE doing its annual censorship binge in seizing domain names without adversarial hearings (as we still believe is required under the law). However, there were a couple of additional points worthy of a followup. First off, if you remember, one of the key reasons why we were told SOPA was needed was that for all of ICE’s previous domain takedowns it was “impossible” for it to take down foreign domains. Except… as ICE’s own announcement here shows that was completely untrue. It seems to have had no difficulty finding willing law enforcement partners around the globe to seize websites without any due process:

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The CETA Leak: Major Outstanding Issues Remain in an Unbalanced Deal

      Given what is at stake, there needs to be an open debate and consultation before an agreement is reached (which is no longer a certainty) and Canada should be considering whether a scaled down version of CETA – one that focuses primarily on a reduction of tariffs for trade in goods – is a better model. A closer look at the some of the remaining issues is posted below.

    • Supreme Court to Big Pharma: ‘No Games’

      The House of Commons Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has spent the past few months hearing from a myriad of companies on the Canadian intellectual property system. With few public interest groups invited to appear, one of the primary themes has been the call for more extensive patent protections, as witnesses link the patent system to innovation and economic growth.

    • Getting rid of the supply-management system won’t be easy

      There has been much talk about the government’s apparent willingness to bring an end to supply management for dairy products as a (pre?) condition of negotiation of a trade agreement with the European Community or access to the trans-Pacific Partnership. If only it were so simple.

    • NZ sets TPP signing terms

      New Zealand will not sign a Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement unless it removes tariffs on dairy products and allows the state-owned drug-buying agency to stay, Prime Minister John Key said yesterday.

      “We are not prepared to see dairy excluded,” he said.

      “In the end, New Zealand can’t sign up to the TPP if it excludes our biggest export.”
      Mr Key said it was standard in free trade deals to have a phasing out of tariffs but he wouldn’t comment on the timeframe.

      He was commenting ahead of the 15th round of TPP negotiations, in Auckland next week, when hundreds of negotiators from 11 countries will continue talks.

    • Trademarks

      • North Face Continues To File Questionable Legal Claims Against Parodies

        Remember outdoor clothing company The North Face’s ridiculously counterproductive war against The South Butt parody line of clothes? That involved a bogus lawsuit with a variety of twists and turns, eventually leading to a settlement. There was an epilogue, however, as the guy who had started The South Butt reformed as Butt Face. And, of course, all this did was make The North Face look silly and unable to take a joke.

        It appears that the company has not developed a sense of humor yet. Jake Rome points us to a story of how The North Face has filed takedown notices to Flickr/Yahoo, because a guy had posted some photos of parody patches for “Hey Fuck Face.” You can see the main image here.

    • Copyrights

      • Canada Set For Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits, Anti-Piracy Company Warns

        Following an important court ruling last week, thousands of Canadians are now at risk of being exposed to mass BitTorrent lawsuits. That’s the message from the boss an anti-piracy outfit who says is company has been monitoring BitTorrent networks for infringements and has amassed data on millions of users. The court ruling involved just 50 Canadians but another case on the horizon involves thousands of alleged pirates.

      • As Feared, Brazil’s ‘Anti-ACTA’ Marco Civil Killed Off By Lobbyists
      • Brazil Squanders Chance At Geopolitical Influence; Kills Internet Rights Bill In Political Fiasco
      • Datalove USBs calling for Copyright Reform for each Member of the EU Parliament

        Brussels, 27 November – La Quadrature du Net is distributing to each Member of the European Parliament a “datalove USB drive”, loaded with music, movies and books urging them to adapt copyright to our cultural practices. After the historic victory against ACTA, it is now time to break away from the repressive logic that harms our freedoms and the way we build and share culture, and reform copyright.

      • Why Liability Is Limited: A Primer on New Copyright Damages as File Sharing Lawsuits Head To Canada

        Over the past couple of days, there have been multiple reports about the return of file sharing lawsuits to Canada, with fears that thousands of Canadians could be targeted. While it is possible that many will receive demand letters, it is important to note that recent changes to Canadian copyright law limit liability in non-commercial cases to a maximum of $5,000 for all infringement claims. In fact, it is likely that a court would award far less – perhaps as little as $100 – if the case went to court as even the government’s FAQ on the recent copyright reform bill provided assurances that Canadians “will not face disproportionate penalties for minor infringements of copyright by distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial infringement.”

      • Dear RIAA: Pirates Buy More. Full Stop. Deal With It.

        Just a few days after Joe Karaganis posted his response to the RIAA’s favorite researcher, Russ Crupnick of NPD Group, who suggested that Karaganis must be drunk and have little knowledge of statistics to publish a study showing that pirates tend to buy more — and then revealing his own numbers that showed the exact same thing — UK regulatory body Ofcom has come out with a study saying the same exact thing again (found via TorrentFreak).

      • Judge, Jury & Executioner – Copyright Law
      • Colbert Takes On First Sale Rights; Mocks Kirtsaeng Case

        Copyright issues don’t often become “mainstream” stories. SOPA was the exception, not the rule, and it only really went fully mainstream at the very end with the January 18th blackouts. But it’s always nice to see when big copyright issues get some mainstream love. Stephen Colbert actually has covered copyright (and other IP) issues a few times on his show (perhaps because his brother is an IP lawyer).

      • Porn Copyright Trolls Argue That Verizon Should Be Held In Contempt Of Court For Trying To Protect Its Users

        Three of the bigger porn copyright trolls out there, Patrick Collins, Malibu Media and Third Degree Films, have teamed up to make a court filing arguing that Verizon should be held in contempt of court for failing to cough up the names of account holders based on the trolls’ list of IP addresses. As you’re probably aware by now, hundreds of thousands of people have been “sued” by copyright trolls, but not actually taken to court. The strategy is just to file a lawsuit and force ISPs to identify account holders, then bombard those account holders with threatening letters (and calls and emails) saying that they will be sued if they don’t pay up (often a few thousand dollars). Verizon, like many other ISPs, has fought back against these demands for info on a variety of grounds — including improper joinder (i.e., that the cases improperly lump together multiple people who had nothing to do with one another in an attempt to keep costs to the trolls down). These claims of improper joinder have been somewhat effective in getting a lot of these cases thrown out — but usually those claims are raised by the account holders themselves, rather than the ISPs.

      • Google Asks Germans To Protest ‘Pay To Link’ Proposal As It Comes Close To Becoming Law

        For a few years now, we’ve been following attempts in Germany — mainly driven by newspaper publishers — to create a bizarre new copyright-like right (specifically a “neighbor right”) in “linking” such that a site like Google would have to pay sites that it links to. The bizarre and nonsensical argument is that because a site like Google makes some of its money by linking to sites, those sites “deserve” part of the money. This is problematic for a long list of reasons, not the least of which is it’s fundamentally backwards economically. If sites like Google are making money from directing people to other sites, they’re making money because they provide a valuable service in helping people find the content, not because of the content itself. It’s up to the sites themselves to figure out how to monetize the traffic — not to run to the government to force others to pay. And, if you think this is just a Google issue, you’re wrong. Among the proposals was one that would impact many others, including people posting links on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other sites.

      • ‘Piracy’ student Richard O’Dwyer avoids US extradition

        A student facing trial and possible imprisonment in the United States has struck a deal to avoid extradition, the High Court has been told.

      • “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.

11.27.12

Links 27/11/2012: GNOME Desktop in the Headlines

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

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Thin Clients Eating M$’s Lunch

    10% of desktop PCs being thin clients seems small but it is not. They last three times as long as thick PCs and they can run GNU/Linux instead of that other OS. That’s huge, a potential 30% loss of share for Wintel. That’s right; thin clients don’t need to be x86. They can be ARMed as well.

  • Upcoming Linux Benchmarks For The Holidays

    For those Linux users hoping to do PC upgrades this holiday season, a number of interesting Linux hardware benchmarks are imminent to help you with your buying decisions.

  • Cheap and silent desktop Linux box!

    In the tech news in the last couple of weeks, there was an announcement of an intel branded mini-pc. There have been many of these small desktop machines in the last few years. Very small footprints, low power consumption, most are silent due to a fanless design.

    The appeal of such small machines is obvious. Taking negligible desk space, they can sit out of the way, or even be hidden. They can be mounted to the back of a monitor for use as industrial signage, or a pseudo all-in-one design for the desktop. They are ideal for limited space installations like in mobile homes, or a small collage dorm room.

  • Why I Use Generic Computers and Open Source Software

    Do you depend on your computer for your living? If so, I’m sure you’ve thought long and hard about which hardware and software to use. I’d like to explain why I use generic “white boxes” running open source software. These give me a platform I rely on for 100% availability. They also provide a low-cost solution with excellent security and privacy.

  • Desktop

    • $1,499 Gaming Laptop is Ready for Steam on Linux

      Alternative, Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu haven’t historically carried much weight with PC gamers. Very few PC games have been made for Linux, over the years, ever since the company that was porting AAA gaming titles to Linux (Loki Games) went bankrupt in 2001. And while it’s possible to use a “compatibility layer” such as Wine to run Windows PC games in Linux, the results are mixed at best and require a lot of technical tweaking, sometimes even in between updates.

      Colorado-based indie PC hardware company System76, however, clearly expects that not only are there PC gamers on Linux out there, but that some of them are willing to pay $1,499 for a tricked-out gaming laptop — the 17.3-inch Bonobo Extreme. Like all of System76′s machines, it runs the Ubuntu flavor of Linux; and its actual price tag is $1,599, but it’s gotten a $100 discount for the holidays.

    • Why Google Shouldn’t Pursue a Touchscreen Chromebook

      Is Google preparing to release a Chromebook device with a touchscreen? That concept was reported in a Taiwanese newspaper and discussed by DigiTimes and CNet. The idea isn’t out of the realm of possibility. After all, Google has been exploring the touchscreen arena with its Nexus tablets, and Chrome OS includes a touchscreen keyboard. Furthermore, new, low-cost Chromebooks such as Acer’s $199 entry (seen here) are arriving at a fast clip. Touchscreen Chromebooks aren’t a great new opportunity for Google, though.

    • Google Reportedly Preparing To Sell Self-Branded Chromebooks

      Google is committed to the Chromebook and a report out of China indicates a Google-branded model is on its way. If true, this is a smart move and would help the fledgling desktop platform gain traction. The sellout success of recent Nexus products shows Google finally knows how to do hardware.

      China Times reports Google intends to launch Chrome OS netbooks equipped with touchscreens. Compal, a Taiwan-based ODM, is tasked with the manufacturing. Per this report, Google placed the order itself rather than relying on a 3rd party like Acer or Asus as with the Nexus products. Internal components will begin shipping to Compal this month, a sign that China Times takes to mean the product itself will ship yet in 2012.

  • Server

    • AWS Marketplace pages for Debian, CentOS and FreeBSD

      The AWS Marketplace, which is generally used by software companies to market their commercial appliances and software for use in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), now also lists free basic images of the Debian Linux 6.0.6, CentOS 6.3 and FreeBSD 9.0-Release operating systems.

  • Kernel Space

    • AMD Geode Open-Source Driver Updated For X 1.13

      While no future generation Geode processors are coming out of AMD, the open-source community still continues to maintain the Geode X.Org graphics driver. Released on Sunday was the xf86-video-geode 2.11.14 driver.

    • systemd 196 Drops Support for Various Legacy Concepts

      systemd, a system and service manager for Linux, compatible with SysV and LSB init scripts that provides aggressive parallelization capabilities and uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services, is now at version 196.

    • Linux 3.7-rc7
    • Intel Driver Update Improves Old Hardware Support

      The highlight of the latest xf86-video-intel 2.20.14 point release is improving the Intel “Gen4″ support, which spans Intel hardware from the i965G chipset through the GM45 chipset.

    • NVIDIA Publishes Open-Source 2D Driver Code

      NVIDIA has published initial patches for providing open-source 2D hardware acceleration support on their NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 SoCs. This work is based upon the experimental open-source Direct Rendering Manager driver to be merged into the Linux 3.8 kernel.

      Times are great with NVIDIA dabbling with more open-source code and Imagination looking at some level of open-source PowerVR support. This weekend I wrote about NVIDIA working on open-source support for their Tegra graphics while this morning new open-source patches arrived from the NVIDIA Finland office.

    • AMD Catalyst vs. Linux 3.7 + Mesa 9.1-devel Gallium3D Performance

      In this article is a large OpenGL performance comparison looking at the frame-rates in different Linux games for different AMD Radeon Linux graphics cards when running the stock Ubuntu 12.10 operating system (Mesa 9.0 + Linux 3.5), the Catalyst Linux driver (fglrx 9.0.2) as found in the Ubuntu Quantal archive, and then when running the very latest Radeon Git code: The Linux 3.7 kernel, Mesa 9.1-devel, and xf86-video-ati 7.0.99 Git.

    • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Jonathan Corbet

      Whether or not you know Jon a little or a lot, we hope you learn something new about him in this profile, from how he ended up in Boulder, Colorado to the ski run named after his father, to what he’s running on his desktop and how he suggests Linux newbies get involved in the community.

    • The Kernel Column with Jon Masters – Linux Kernel 3.7

      Jon Masters summarises the latest goings-on in the Linux kernel community, including a look at the features being merged for the upcoming 3.7 release

    • Graphics Stack

      • 1.0.1 Releases are out
      • NVIDIA Still Working On Open-Source For Tegra Driver

        With the Linux 3.8 kernel in early 2013 there is going to be an open-source NVIDIA Tegra 2 DRM driver. NVIDIA is currently working out initial patches for applying 2D acceleration atop this mainline Linux kernel driver.

      • Linux Users Might See A PowerVR Holiday Surprise

        It seems the binary curtain among ARM graphics vendors may finally be falling. Aside from NVIDIA contributing to the open-source Tegra DRM driver and other interesting actions recently in the ARM Linux space, Imagination Technologies may finally becoming more open. It’s looking like there may be a surprise open-source play out of Imagination for PowerVR graphics in the near future.

        In recent days I have heard from two independent sources about Imagination Technologies likely having a “modestly open” reference driver to deliver for PowerVR graphics processors in the near future. It seems thanks to greater competition in the ARM graphics space (e.g. ARM’s Mali), more openness among SoC vendors, Intel switching to in-house HD graphics on future Atom SoCs, the continued success of Linux/Android in the mobile space, and new requirements being presented on the Linux desktop (i.e. Wayland), we are finally on the verge of seeing a fundamental shift out of Imagination Technologies.

      • AMD R600 LLVM Back-End Still Being Tried For 3.2

        There’s just a few weeks to go until the release of LLVM 3.2, but AMD is still trying to get its “R600″ GPU back-end merged into this next compiler infrastructure release.

        Going back to March, AMD has been trying to merge its R600 GPU back-end that is optionally used by their open-source graphics driver stack and is a requirement for the Radeon OpenCL support with the open-source driver. The LLVM back-end can be used as part of the R600 Gallium3D shader compiler. (See benchmarks of the R600 LLVM compiler back-end from several months ago.)

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Kate/KDevelop October Sprint: What’s new in Kate

        After the successful developer sprint in Berlin in 2010, the Kate and KDevelop teams met for the second time from the 23rd to the 29th of October. This time, the developer sprint was held in the beautiful city of Vienna. In total, 13 contributors discussed and collaborated on the future of Kate and KDevelop for a whole week.

      • KDE Commit-Digest for 18th November 2012
      • Qt Developer Days 2012 Slides: KDE 5, Qt Quick, Ports

        The Qt Developer Days conference took place earlier this month in Berlin, Germany. For those not in attendance at this open-source development conference, the slides for many of the Qt talks have been uploaded with coverage on Qt Quick, KDE Frameworks 5, and other interesting areas surrounding this tool-kit soon to finally reach its major 5.0 milestone.

        Slides for the different 2012 Qt Developer Days talks can be found on this KDAB Qt Conference page. At the time of publishing there aren’t slides available for all of the talks, but a large number of them.

      • KDE 4.10 Brings Better, Smarter Dolphin

        If you are someone like me who missed the icon resize feature you can rejoice as the feature is “coming back” with Dolphin 2.2. Well, it’s not coming back in sense the way it was but the developers are adding an option to the context menu of Places Panel, similar to the one found in the context menu of tool bar where you can resize the icon. So, while icons in the side panel won’t resize automatically, you can use the context menu to manually resize them.

      • What’s new in Kate
      • Rapidly Build Distributed Applications with ITTIA DB and Qt

        The ITTIA DB SQL embedded database is now available as a plugin for the Qt application and UI development framework from Digia. The combination of ITTIA DB SQL and Qt enables rapid development of user-friendly data-driven applications with a level of performance that is only possible with native code.

        Qt is a cross-platform C++ application and UI framework that is widely used to develop software with a graphical user interface (GUI), as well as non-GUI programs. Non-GUI features include SQL database access, which can both execute arbitrary queries and map results to lists and fields in the user interface.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME: Can this Linux desktop be saved?

        Once upon a time, GNOME, along with KDE, ruled the Linux desktop. Then, in 2010, GNOME’s designers decided to ignore their users’ wishes and introduced a radically new desktop interface: GNOME 3.

        Many users hated it. Not even two years later, even GNOME’s programmers were wondering if their interface was “staring into the abyss?” Now, GNOME developers have woken up and are offering a way for GNOME users to go back to a GNOME 2.x style interface.

        But is it too little, too late? Will GNOME actually be offering a real, return-to-the-past desktop interface?

      • If GNOME 2.x Wasn’t Broken, Why Fix It?
      • A Crack In The Monolith

        Yet the good news is they finally responded on this one issue in some form, at least in theory. Perhaps.

      • The Next Step

        The GNOME Project has been working hard to evolve and improve GNOME 3 since it was initially released in April 2011. We’ve made substantial progress, introducing new features, like GNOME Online Accounts, the lock screen and integrated input sources. We’ve also adjusted and refined many parts of the core UX, including improvements to the Activities Overview, the new-look Message Tray and ongoing work on System Settings. This is important work, and there is more that still needs to be done.

      • An Alternative Windows Switcher might come in Gnome 3.8

        Switching between Applications is one of the core functionality for every Desktop. While Gnome3 does this perfectly with choosing Apps through Overview, some complains have raised against the (Alt+Tab/Key Above Tab) functionality.

      • GNOME 3.7.2 Kills The GNOME Fallback Mode

        The GNOME 3.7.2 development release was made available today. The two major changes with this latest GNOME 3.8 pre-release is the elimination of the GNOME Fallback (non-Shell) mode and now depending exclusively upon GStreamer 1.0.

      • GNOME Control Center 3.6 Available In The GNOME 3 PPA [Ubuntu 12.10]

  • Distributions

    • With ‘Cinnarch,’ Arch Linux gets a sprinkle of Cinnamon

      Hard on the heels of the news that the old GNOME 2 desktop is coming back by popular demand, the Cinnarch project late last week announced that its new Linux distribution combining Arch Linux with the alternative Cinnamon desktop environment has now reached beta.

    • “Which Linux Distro is Best?”
    • Reviews: A look at Superb Mini Server 2.0.1
    • [Chakra:] Toolchain, kernel, nvidia changes moved to stable
    • There’s a New Package Manager in Town

      Every now and again a project springs forth to tout the advantages of a generic or all-distribution package manager. A one-size-fits-all approach was the Holy Grail of Linux for a while and several ideas came and went silent. However, hope springs again and Guix is its name.

    • Guix: A New Package Manager & GNU Distribution

      GNU Guix is a new free software project that aspires to be a package manager and associated free software distribution for the GNU system.

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Accelerates Open Source Virtualization in RHEV 3.1 Release

        Red Hat is putting the final touches on the next major release of its Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.1 platform.

      • Why I work at Red Hat

        West Point’s motto is “Duty, Honor, Country.” I graduated in 1993. Why did a former Army Officer end up at Red Hat?

        Red Hat is an “Open Source Software Company”. In order to work here, you have to understand those four words.

        Software. The world is run on Software now. There are more computers in your life than you are aware of. You carry one in your pocket. One wakes you up in the morning. One runs your coffee maker, another your oven. Your car has multiple computers in them. But computers do nothing without software. Without software, a computer is a corpse. Software makes things happen, things that were not even dreamt of in our parents time. Software is the magic we dreamed of after seeing the Magicians Apprentice. Software is the Force we wanted to control after seeing Star Wars. It is that incantation that makes the world conform to better suit our mood.

      • Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project News – November 26th, 2012

        * Help your language reach 100% support in the Debian Installer
        * Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 released
        * Debian newcomer experience survey
        * Interviews
        * Other news
        * New Debian Contributors
        * Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
        * Important Debian Security Advisories
        * New and noteworthy packages
        * Work-needing packages
        * Want to continue reading DPN?

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Solving design problems
          • 10 reasons to choose Ubuntu 12.10 over Windows 8

            Microsoft’s Windows 8 dominated countless headlines in the weeks leading up to its launch late last month, but October saw the debut of another major operating system as well.

            Canonical’s Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” arrived a week ahead of its competitor, in fact, accompanied by a challenge: “Avoid the pain of Windows 8.” That slogan appeared on the Ubuntu home page for the first few hours after the OS’s official launch, and attracted considerable attention.

          • Rumour: Wii U Demo Booths Running Ubuntu

            The Nintendo Wii U in-store demo booths maybe running a modified version of the Ubuntu operating system instead of the Wii U itself.

            One user on Reddit obtained a snapshot of one of the systems that hadn’t booted correctly because it was missing a “USB key”. Instead of showing the games available to try out, in this case Rayman Legends, it displayed a screen for the Ubuntu OS.

          • The Ubuntu Heartbreak: Amazing Potential Stunted by Major Showstoppers

            Believe it or not, this isn’t meant to be inflamatory. This is an honest reminder of showstoppers that persistently prevent Ubuntu from becoming what I really do want it to become, and what I think it has a chance of achieving: a complete replacement of Windows or OSX.

            In fact, I will confess that I like the user interface on Ubuntu more than one on Windows, and find it almost on par with the one in OSX. You might even find me proclaiming Ubuntu as the OSX of the PC world. It at least could have the potential of becoming that.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi vs MK802

      There has been a ton on news in the open source world revolving around the Raspberry Pi. It was one of the first low cost, ARM computers to be targeted at the hobbyist and educational markets. I’ve owned a Raspberry Pi for many months now and while it does an alright job at playing media files and acting as a small server – for most computing tasks it simply didn’t have enough resources available to be useful.

    • Reclaiming the Buffalo router with free and open source LibreWRT distro

      I would like to take a few moments to introduce Buffalo, the access point and router which provides network connectivity to portable computers in the Free Software Foundation’s office. More specifically, we are using Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH, which features the free-software-supported Atheros AR9132 chipset with 32MB of flash memory and 64MB of RAM.

    • P-P-P-Pick up our PENGUIN-POWERED Pi PIPER of Python

      The Raspberry Pi, an ARM-powered £20 computer sold as the educationalists’ dream, is finding its place as a media player in many tech-aware homes, but installing media player XBMC and plugging in a TV is hardly the spirit in which the Pi was conceived, especially when one can get one’s hands good and dirty with the minimum of effort.

    • Camera for Raspberry Pi almost ready for production

      The camera for the Raspberry Pi that was announced back in May is now taking shape. A prototype of the Pi Cam was presented at Electronica 2012. It offers a 5 megapixel sensor and can record 1080p H.264 video at 30 frames per second. The camera connects to the Pi’s free CSI pins and is controlled via the I2C bus. Potential fields of application include low-cost surveillance camera systems and robotics. The camera is set to cost $25.

    • Tiny MAME cabinet built from Raspberry Pi
    • The $35 Raspberry Pi: The cheapest way to play Minecraft

      Over the last 18 months, the $35, Linux-powered, education-oriented Raspberry Pi credit-card-sized computer has experienced an almost-unabated success story. The 700MHz ARMv6-powered computer has sold tens of thousands of units to beardies and educational establishments alike, is still on back order, and has attracted hundreds of hackers who have contributed alternative operating systems, software packages, supplementary hardware daughterboards, and more. Today, we’re happy to announce that Raspberry Pi has made perhaps the biggest step towards mainstream adoption: Notch and his Mojangstas have unveiled Minecraft: Pi Edition.

    • 15 Weird/Surprising devices and Systems that run on Linux

      It’s incredible to see how Linux runs on devices of various sizes, power and built for diverse purposes. Linux is, like technology itself, deeply integrated in our daily lives and we don’t seem to even realize it! While looking into supercomputers I was pleasantly surprised to find different/weird devices that run on Linux: Weird, in a sense that they run on Linux and we never expected them to do so!

      We expect that you already know that Linux is running on 94% supercomputers and on various high-end computers and devices in science centers for research purposes. Also the popular Android operating system too is based on Linux kernel. This implies all the Android handsets (currently claiming major share in smartphone market) and tablets are in turn employing Linux at heart! Now let’s investigate some places you might not have expected to be running on Linux.

    • Phones

      • Announcing The New Tizen.org

        Just in case you missed it, the Tizen project just launched a brand new site at tizen.org. It’s been substantially redesigned and updated to make it easier to find project information, and reflects the new look and feel of Tizen.

      • Android

        • Facebook Asking its Employees to ‘Droidfood’ Android

          That’s what Facebook’s calling it, at least – a clever play on the word “dogfooding,” which is itself a term used to describe when a company tests or uses the very products it’s trying to push out into the consumer market. In other words, the notion that, “our product is so good, we’ll use it ourselves.”

          In Facebook’s case, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine has pulled up some pictures of just how dramatically the company is hoping to get its own employees on board with Facebook apps on the Android platform.

        • Samsung Galaxy Note II ‘Phablet’ Passes Five Million Channel Sales In ~Two Months

          At the start of this month Samsung announced that channel sales of its mini-tablet-sized smartphone, the Galaxy Note II, had passed three million unit sales in 37 days on sale. Now the Korean mobile maker has announced that cumulative global channel sales of the device have exceeded five million after around two months since launch.

          Samsung does not typically break out device sales to consumers but its channel sales measure provides an indication of how much end-user demand its sales channels are experiencing.

        • Install Android MTP Support In KDE
        • [Exclusive] How To: Unlock The Droid DNA’s Bootloader
        • Could Open Source Java Come to Android?

          The online newsgroup for OpenJDK, the official open source Java implementation, has been airing discussion of a Java version for Android. Such an option would allow Java developers to work directly within the most widespread mobile operating system.

        • 30 Must Have Android Games for 2012

          Android is surging, their remains no questions about it. Android is a proven platform now and that is particularly showing in the burgeoning apps market. Google Play Store is now home to nearly 900,000 applications and games. More than 25 billion apps and games have already been downloaded from Google Play Store. About an year ago, we did a brief round up detailing 10 must-have games for Android. But things have drastically improved over a one year period. Here’s our “take two”. 30 must have games for Android in 2012.

        • 2.5 year old Android bug finally being fixed

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Tablet PC Panels Shipment Exceeded Notebook PC Panel
      • Intel kills off the desktop, PCs go with it

        Intel is killing the desktop, but not quite as soon as people expect it to, there will be one last gasp, but that is irrelevant. Word is finally leaking there won’t be a desktop PC chip in a bit over a year.
        In a story that SemiAccurate has been following for several months, Broadwell will not come in an LGA package, so no removable CPU. The news was first publicly broken by the ever sharp PC Watch, english version here, but the news has been floating in the backchannel for a bit now. The problem? This information wasn’t floating around the OEMs or the majority of the PC ecosystem, they had no clue. What does all of this mean? Quite a bit.

Free Software/Open Source

  • My open source cure for brain cancer

    This was shocking news. Sitting across from a doctor holding a clinical folder with your name on it, and hearing him say the words “low-grade glioma,” “language and comprehension areas of your brain,” “surgery” and “chemotherapy” is a very weird experience.

    My first idea was to seek other opinions. Maybe this hospital is wrong. Maybe there are other places that wouldn’t need to do surgery. Maybe there is a laser, a chemical, an ancient tradition, a shaman, a scientist, a nanorobot.

    I felt incomplete about the way that the medical system was handling my situation.

  • Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy go open source

    DreamWorks has released its OpenVDB open source C++ library for general community consumption and adaption.

    The animation studio has used the technology itself on its “Rise of the Guardians” fantasy film that features a whole group of childhood legends including Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

    This in effect means that DreamWorks has spent millions of dollars developing specialised technology to make one of the most expensive animated movies ever produced only to now give it away free of charge on the openvdb.org/ website.

  • Open source deals on Cyber Monday

    We don’t condone shopping when you should be working, but everybody needs a break, right? When you’re out shopping for the online deals today, here are a few Cyber Monday specials we like:

  • More camera support and geotagging in darktable 1.1

    More camera support, similarity matching, geotagging, image grouping and a Facebook exporter are among the top new features in darktable 1.1, the latest release of the open source photography workflow application. The Canon EOS M is now supported and Samsung NX support is fixed in the new release. The ability to match images that look alike with similarity matching is now a standard feature.

  • Eucalyptus open source cloud aims at simpler management
  • First Release of New Forrester Data on Developer Open Source Use

    Over the past few years, enterprises, particularly in the financial services industry, have had to cut costs while simultaneously enhancing innovation. While this may sound contradictory, it has been possible with the strategic use of open source software (OSS).

  • Nashorn proposed as new JavaScript engine for OpenJDK

    After some time in preparation, Oracle has now proposed a new project for OpenJDK called Nashorn. The Nashorn project sets out to implement a lightweight high-performance JavaScript runtime in Java which runs on the JVM. Under the direction of Jim Laskey, Multi-language Lead at Oracle, and John Coomes, OpenJDK HotSpot Group Lead, the proposal is to create a JavaScript implementation that can run standalone JavaScript applications or be called via the JSR 223 APIs by Java applications. Nashorn, German for Rhino, will be designed to take advantage of newer JVM technologies such as MethodHandles and InvokeDynamic APIs, which were introduced to make dynamic languages operate faster on the JVM.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle Wants To Embed JavaScript In Java Code

      Oracle presented a new project in recent names that is named Nashorn. The Nashorn Project comes down to a high-performance JavaScript run-time for OpenJDK and can be used so developers can embed JavaScript within Java code.

  • Business

  • Funding

  • BSD

    • Security Incident on FreeBSD Infrastructure

      The FreeBSD Security Team has announced that on 11 November two servers as part of the FreeBSD.org hosting infrastructure have been compromised.

      The compromise is believed to have occurred due to the leak of an SSH key from a developer who legitimately had access to the machines in question, and was not due to any vulnerability or code exploit within FreeBSD.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • OpenELEC 3.0 Enters Beta With XBMC 12.0

      The OpenELEC Linux distribution that aspires to be a leading multimedia OS within an entertainment center is nearing its 3.0 release. The OpenELEC 3.0 Beta was released and now it’s based upon XBMC 12.0 Frodo.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Munich Shows How Open Source Saves Big Money

      That compares with just £218,000 that has been spent on the free software-based solution using the city’s own LiMux distro. As well as zero costs for software upgrades, the open source approach also saved money because it was not necessary to upgrade hardware, unlike for Windows – something that is worth remembering.

    • Check out how Obama saved $14.5 mn through open source

      Four more years. This happened because of you. Thank you,” Obama tweeted soon after he defeated his Republican rival Mitt Romney in a closely contested 2012 US presidential poll.

      Well, we are aware of the fact that the President of the United States of America and his tech team were all over the Internet embracing different kind of tools -may be from social media or from different online campaigns – to win the 2012 presidential elections, but many of us are not aware that open source software also played an important role during the US elections.

  • Licensing

    • Linux and the GPL: A Storm Erupts

      “This is a hard one,” Google+ blogger Gonzalo Velasco C. mused. “The development of FLOSS in such a capitalist and competitive world demands solidarity, talent, idealism and passion. So when it comes to discussing the inclusion (without malice) of not-FLOSS code inside Linux, things get very hot — that’s when the passion comes in.”

      [...]

      RTS OS is a unified storage operating system from RisingTide, which is a Red Hat competitor.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Top ten open source gifts for the holidays

      It’s the most wonderful time of the year: time to give open source presents. The opensource.com team gathered ten of our favorite gadgets to help you pick out that perfect present for that special (open source) someone.

    • 8 questions about open source cancer treatment

      Salvatore Iaconesi’s essay on his decision to post his medical records on the Internet in hopes of finding a crowd-sourced cure for his brain tumor has sparked a lively conversation on CNN.com.

    • Low-cost TB drugs to be reality soon

      The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) collaborative initiative to develop low-cost drugs for infectious diseases like tuberculosis (TB) is all set to become a success.

    • Open Hardware

      • Open source, sonar-controlled vibrator you play like a theremin, with your whole body

        Scanlime’s Beth modded a remote control vibrator, replacing the interface with an Arduino-based sonar controller that she can activate with any part of her body, playing it like a theremin. The result is pretty cool — it “closes the feedback loop” between the vibrator’s intensity and the user’s physical response. The post includes a detailed technical breakdown of the reverse-engineering steps that she used to work out how to hijack the control mechanism, and the steps that went into building the remote, including a 3D printed chassis. The plans are open source hardware (CC-BY-SA), and posted to Github.

      • Body Hacks: Building An Open-Source, Theremin-Like Vibrator

        For your postprandial pleasure I present the an open-source vibrator that you (or your partner) can play like a theremin. The story of how it came to be is pretty amazing and involves FCC chip lookups, bit-tracing, and lots of assembly code. In short, it’s an amazing effort in DIY hardware hacking that serves the dual purpose of education and giving pleasure.

  • Programming

    • LLVM 3.2 Improves PowerPC Compiler Support

      In addition to featuring an auto-vectorizer, Polly optimizations, and countless other improvements, the forthcoming release of LLVM 3.2 brings numerous improvements to its PowerPC back-end.

      The PowerPC back-end target with LLVM 3.2 and accompanying Clang 3.2 C/C++ compiler feature many improvements for this compiler infrastructure that’s due to be released in mid-December.

    • Google Code-In, Focused on Open Source, Begins Today

      In case you didn’t know it, Google is one of the largest contributors of open source projects in the world, and runs a number of programs focused on open source development. One of the more fun programs that the company runs each year is Google Code-In, through which pre-university students (13-17 years old) can create open source software for community use, and win prizes for their efforts. This year’s Code-In event starts today, and will run for 50 days.

    • Are you game for Google’s open source contest?

      Are you one among them, who wants to know what exactly is open source, who has thirst to learn new in open source technologies, a novice developer and doesn’t know anything about development and thinking to involve yourself in open source software development?

    • Git v1.8.0.1

  • Standards/Consortia

    • More Open-Source Projects Eyeing Up C++11

      KDE developers are currently contemplating the idea of allowing a subset of the C++11 language to be used within the KDevelop code-base. This C++11 change would happen for the KDevelop 4.6 integrated development environment release. Reasons are shared in this article for why one should consider using C++11 code.

      Milian Wolff, a developer on the KDevelop IDE, has proposed to their development community that a subset of the C++11 language be permitted following the KDevelop 4.5 branching in a few weeks.

Leftovers

11.24.12

Links 25/11/2012: Fedora Progress, GMO Misses

Posted in News Roundup at 10:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Boid Twitter client ends official development, goes open source

  • Web Browsers

  • Open Access/Content

    • Why all pharmaceutical research should be made open access

      I recently had lunch with as staunch an advocate for open access as you’ll ever meet (I won’t name him, because it would be rude to attribute casual remarks to him without permission). We were talking about plans to mandate free and open publication of publicly funded scientific research. In the USA, there’s the Federal Public Research Act, and in the UK, there’s the coalition government’s announcement that publicly funded research should be made available at no cost, under a Creative Commons licence that permits unlimited copying.

      We’d been talking about Ben Goldacre’s excellent new book, Bad Pharma, in which Goldacre documents the problem of “missing data” in pharmaceutical research (he says about half of the clinical trials undertaken by the pharmaceutical industry are never published). The unpublished trials are, of course, the trials that show the pharma companies’ new products in unflattering lights – trials that suggest that their drugs don’t

  • Programming

    • ARM Cortex-A15 Exynos5 Compiler Benchmarks

      The benchmarks in this article are of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS loaded up on the Samsung Chromebook with the Linux 3.4 kernel. The GCC 4.6.3 compiler was compared to GCC 4.7.2 with a number of C, C++, and Fortran benchmarks. The same compiler flags were maintained within the test profiles during the benchmarking process. In a future article will be LLVM/Clang compiler benchmarks as well as performance results from the Cortex-A15 compiler tuning.

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • European companies ‘using emissions trading to subsidise overseas rivals’
    • More than 1,000 new coal plants planned worldwide, figures show

      More than 1,000 coal-fired power plants are being planned worldwide, new research has revealed.

    • Should I Reuse or Recycle My Old Computer?

      The decision to reuse or recycle an old desktop computer takes some consideration, but letting an old PC turn to electronic waste should never be an alternative.

    • Are You 28 Yet? No? Then You Have Never Seen a Cooler-Than-Average Month

      Blogging about climate change, or anything, can get repetitive fast. The reports come out and the news is tweaked, maybe, but familiar—the Arctic is still melting, average global temperatures are still rising, the oceans are still acidifying. This was the warmest month record ever recorded. No, this one was. No this. This.

    • It’s Only a Mystery to Marco Rubio… The Sea Eats Miami

      After the 1992 super-hurricane Andrew, South Florida was in a state of shock, similar to coastal New Jersey and New York today. Andrew was a compact, category five hurricane. In South Dade where the impact was strongest, the morning after the storm, sun and blue skies prevailed. The strike zone looked like a bomb had gone off.

      Civic leaders quickly rallied under the proud banner, “We Will Rebuild”. How would South Florida rebuild? the blue ribbon panel asked. Twenty years later, the coastal areas of New Jersey and New York are facing a similar question after Superstorm Sandy. This time, the answers may be very different.

      Twenty years ago in Florida, talk of sea level rise and climate change was in the margins. The subject had a place in the corner, where Chicken Little’s nursed their wounds, far from sight and off the political radar.

  • Finance

    • The Giant Lie Trotted Out by Fiscal Conservatives Trying to Shred Social Security

      Trying to convince the public to cut America’s best-loved and most successful program requires a lot of creativity and persistence. Social Security is fiscally fit, prudently managed and does not add to the deficit because by law it must be completely detached from the federal operating budget. Obviously, it is needed more than ever in a time of increasing job insecurity and disappearing pensions. It helps our economy thrive and boosts the productivity of working Americans. And yet the sharks are in a frenzy to shred it in the upcoming “fiscal cliff” discussions.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • From Russia With PR

      Several opinion columns praising Russia and published in the last two years on CNBC’s web site and the Huffington Post were written by seemingly independent professionals but were placed on behalf of the Russian government by its public-relations firm, Ketchum.

      The columns, written by two businessmen, a lawyer, and an academic, heap praise on the Russian government for its “ambitious modernization strategy” and “enforcement of laws designed to better protect business and reduce corruption.” One of the CNBC opinion pieces, authored by an executive at a Moscow-based investment bank, concludes that “Russia may well be the most dynamic place on the continent.”

  • Censorship

    • Outrage at India arrests over Facebook post

      The arrest of two women on Monday over a comment on Facebook has sparked off widespread anger in India.

      One of the women had criticised the shutdown of Mumbai in her post, after the death of politician Bal Thackeray, while the other “liked” the comment.

      The women, accused of “promoting enmity between classes”, were released on bail after appearing in court.

  • Privacy

    • Student expelled for refusing to wear RFID tracking chip badge

      After a student protested a pilot RFID tracking system in San Antonio, lawyers are now moving to stop expulsion.

      John Jay High School sophomore Andrea Hernandez was expelled from her high school after protesting against a new pilot program which tracks the precise location of all attending 4,200 students at Anson Jones Middle School and John Jay High School, according to Infowars.

    • Training spies in the era of cybersecurity

      Students learn how to rifle through trash, sneak a tracking device on cars and plant false information on Facebook. They also are taught to write computer viruses, hack digital networks, crack passwords, plant listening devices and mine data from broken cellphones and flash drives.

  • GMO

    • Armyworms Develop Resistance to Genetically Modified Corn

      A second species of worm has evolved to withstand pesticides in genetically modified crops, the latest escalation of the natural arms race spurred on by GMOs. “Armyworms” — so called because their infestation of fields resembles a military onslaught — were able to eat DuPont-Dow corn containing a pesticide protein without adverse effects, according to a field trial conducted in Florida this year.

    • Corporate Giant Comes Out Against GMOs

      It has come to our attention that Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed healthcare organization in the United States, has advised its members against GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in food.

      In its Northwest Fall 2012 newsletter, Kaiser suggested membership limit exposure to genetically modified organisms.

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?

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