'The low-end laptop market in particular is so hard fought that manufacturers will grab for any dollars they can save,' explains Elmar Geese, chairman of the Linux association in Berlin. In place of Windows, the laptops come either without an operating system or use a pre-installed variant of the typically no-cost alternative operating system Linux.
For the user, that means a bit of extra work and acclimation. Simply installing Windows from the old computer is generally not an option. Most Windows installations are tied by license to the computer with which they were sold.
CES 2011 saw a veritable armoury of Ubuntu powered devices all ready to make a serious impact amongst competitors.
In the first Linux Outlaws for 2011: Our listeners make it possible for Dan to fly to FOSDEM, the PS3 is resoundingly cracked, Google open sources Eclipse tools, Paul Allen sues the world again and Vladimir Putin orders Russia to adopt free software.
Eariler today, January 5th, none other than Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, proudly announced the release of Linux kernel 2.6.37.
Among the new features includes in Linux kernel 2.6.37 we can mention support for PPP over the IPv4 protocol, lots of enhancements to various important file systems, such as EXT4, XFS and Btrfs, support for I/O throttling, Perf probe improvements, and a Ceph-based network block device.
Puddletag is a Linux audio tag editor similar to Mp3tag (a popular Windows audio tagging tool) that supports ID3v1, ID3v2 (mp3), MP4 (mp4, m4a, etc.), VorbisComments (ogg, flac), Musepack (mpc), Monkey's Audio (.ape) and WavPack (wv).
4Pane is a multi-pane, detailed-list file manager for Linux. It is designed to be fully-featured without bloat, and aims for speed rather than visual effects. In addition to standard file manager things, it offers multiple undo and redo of most operations (including deletions), archive management including ‘virtual browsing’ inside archives, multiple renaming/duplication of files, a terminal emulator and user-defined tools.
VortexBox 1.7 has been released. This release is based on Fedora 14 and comes with many new features and improvements. The big new feature for the latest release is the possibility of ripping DVDs along with audio CDs for streaming. This feature has been highly requested and is now included in VortexBox 1.7. The new version also brings an updated SqueezeBox server 7.4.2 along with the usual array of fixes and smaller updates.
Linux fans are second only to Appleheads for their undying, and often blind, support for their beloved operating system. So, how can these two warring factions peacefully coexist in the same support space? If you can turn your attention away from Angry Birds for a moment, you might learn that your iPad is more than an expensive slab of electronic crack and that it’s possible to work with and manage Linux systems by tapping and raking your digits on its fingerprint-prone surface. This article describes how to do just that using SSH and VNC.
A user of the limbo repository that is helping test limbo packages that is. Some big updates in limbo lately and we would like to hear from those that are using the limbo repository. Any issues, such as graphical, like the screen isn’t refreshing properly or as Joost says, painted artifacts or x freezing? If so, we would like to know what your hardware is. I’m not noticing any problems with my nvidia card yet on the gnome side. I just finished updating my KDE x86 install, 534 updates for that install. It doesn’t matter which kernel you are using. Joost noticed things with .36 and .37.
Or scp VS tar+ssh VS rsync+ssh VS tar+netcat
In a previous article in which i’ve show some uses of tar, I made an example of how to use it to move large amounts of data between two computers, but many people have said that it is better, or at least they prefer to use rsync, others prefer to use netcat. I remain convinced that a tar+ssh is faster than rsync+ssh is correct then do a test on the field and see some numbers.
We explain FTP - technology that makes it possible to send huge files between PCs, upload images to a website, and bypass your email client's file-size restrictions.
This week-end, after passing too much time to try to understand contact management in KMail (which was workign quite well in KDE 3.x but is completely flawed IMHO in KDE 4.x), I decided with my wife it was time after 8+ years to try another mail reader.
On the right, Tyrian, which is a top-down shooter in the vein of Spy Hunter or 1942 or Ikaruga or … there are too many to mention.
I’ve played both of them before, probably because BASS is in the repositories for Ubuntu, and because somewhere along the line I heard about the OpenTyrian project. And the game has been freeware since 2004, I believe.
The funny part is, since one runs via scummvm and the other via dosbox, “installing” the games through the gog.com installer means you can run them directly from within Linux, using those tools straightaway. Kind of wacky.
The Frictional Games Dev Blog mentions that Amnesia: The Dark Descent has now sold nearly 200,000 units, which gives them new confidence in the PC platform.
First of all, the GNOME Foundation board of directors would like to express a huge thank you to all you volunteers who help to make the GNOME community possible. To all those who use the GNOME desktop and understand the value of free software on the desktop, it is you that makes the GNOME community both rich and rewarding. Thank you to our advisory board members and sponsors for providing much valued direction for the community.
I have, on a number of occasions, stressed to new Linux users how crucial the right distribution is. Choosing the distribution that suits your needs is the single most important key to success when attempting to migrate from another operating system. But how do you know which one to choose out of the hundreds of variations? Believe it or not, there are some key questions to ask yourself when making this decision. It has been my goal for more than a decade to help prospective Linux users make the plunge with ease and success. Let’s see if I can do the same for you with these five tips.
Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. Before this wisdom dawned on the Linux community, Red Hat, Debian and Slackware had spawned several dozen distros. Some died a single-release death, but a lot survived and a vibrant community grew around them.
That, along with all the distros designed to meet specific needs, means there's a lot of variety in the Linux world. While community is key to a good desktop distro, it also needs thorough documentation on wikis and blogs, and ample support.
There are some things that you can expect with a new installation of a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu or Fedora that you would not get with an OS such as Windows 7 or OS /X.
I got a call from one of my amateur radio associates who wanted help reinstalling the OS on his old Compaq desktop. I offered to download a distro for him to try. I only installed the first: Linux Mint 9 LXDE. And therein lies a (short) tale.
Inspired by the round of interviews that Raphael Hertzog has started with people in the Debian project, I wanted to do the same with people in the Skolelinux project . The hope is that those who every day helps to promote free software in schools and develop a Linux distribution designed specifically for skolebruk may be better known and perhaps inspire many to contribute to the Skolelinux project.
First is the newly elected leader of the association FRISK that organizes the development of the Skolelinux distribution.
I've had ten days or so to look at Pinguy now, so I want to write a sort of "wrap-up" for my own purposes at this time. I will not be using it as the default or preferred distribution on any of my systems, because there are a few too many things about it that I don't care for. The biggest of those is the fact that it is heavily dependent on Mono, for the "docky" package and a few others. By the time I extract mono and the packages that depend on it, I'm left with something that is certainly no better than Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS or SimplyMEPIS. That is not to say that it isn't a very good and very interesting distribution, and those who do not have moral or philosophical objections to Mono could very well find it extremely attractive. However, another area where I think it falls short is netbook support, so that is what I will examine here.
Linux is commonly de-famed as an operating system for computer gurus and, in the Linux world, many people believe that the only user-friendly distribution that exists is named after African fauna. However, there is a very nice Linux distribution that, despite being relatively unknown (as it comes from Turkey), can spare users many a headache: Pardus 2011.
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the January 2011 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editors Andrew Strick and Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
Drupal 7 will be the most user-friendly version of Drupal yet as a result of tremendous amounts of work overhauling the user interface to create a far more intuitive user experience. Among the goals of this redesign was to minimize the notorious Drupal learning curve and make Drupal site building more accessible to a larger number of people.
This discussion started when someone related a story where a person approached the storyteller and mistook a Fedora button on a backpack for a Facebook button. I thought it was fairly innocuous at the time — yeah, they’re both F’s, but still, you have to be kind of — oh, I don’t know — lacking some basic observational skills to confuse the two.
The long anticipated and oft delayed Debian Squeeze just might be ready for release. Last year those in the know predicted that Squeeze could be ready by Christmas 2010. Well, that time period recently passed, but eagle eye Sid users have just seen another clue that Debian developers might be preparing for release.
Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) has finally got a 64-bit version. And it’s pretty good, actually. In fact, that’s the distro I am going to recommend to GNU/Linux newbies from now on. It has all the advantages of Linux Mint Ubuntu Edition (LMUE) such as being simple and GUI-oriented and having most things working out of the box, but less bloated and with Debian’s superior stability (yes, even if it is based on the testing branch) and performance.
The great part about this new feature is that if a bug like the one in "add-apt-repository" occurs (the bug adds a "n" on a line in the .list file), the line causing the error is disabled but the repository is not so everybody using Ubuntu Tweak should be "n" error free from now on.
If you're fed-up with first person shooters and mid-aged graphics games, then searching for a decent free game for your Ubuntu can be quite difficult. This compilation of five quality, free of charge, Ubuntu games may help you finding some. No detailed descriptions, just some screenshots to make your drool, along with installation details. Enjoy ;)
Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.10 is released, this is a bug fixed version of Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.x., 2 new features were added to this version of ubuntu tweak: The source validation feature and the option to make the Launcher hide automatically, this will give you a wider screen space.
When you first boot Bodhi, a configuration window will be displayed where you can select your language as well as the theme color and layout...
The real value of a mobile phone is not the shiny icons that comes with it, but it's ability to transform lives, add value to the lives of the less fortunate. The following videos show when real phones, not expensive iPhones or Androids, but very low cost phones, help transform lives.
The N900 has a Texas Instruments OMAP3 microprocessor with an ARM Cortex-A8 core. Unlike all of the Nokia models which preceded it - 770, N800 and N810 - the N900 has full phone functionality (quad-band GSM and 3G UMTS/HSDPA). It is quite interesting therefore to get Ubuntu running on it. Be aware though that Kubuntu Mobile is *not* yet ready to replace Maemo on an N900. Unless of course you really know what you are doing or even better you really know what you are doing and want to help out - either upstream or with the actual distro itself. Our current target is to have Kubuntu Mobile fully working on the N900 in time for the 11.04 Natty release.
So, looks like the Nexus S can run MeeGo too :o) have a custom kernel going and booted the OS from a rootfs image on the internal memory (didn't have to flash!), but as you can see the display output is fscked (maybe due to the AMOLED?) and the touchscreen isn't working either.
Motorola unveiled its new Android-based Atrix 4G smartphone at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Las Vegas. The device has extremely impressive hardware specifications and a strong feature set, but its most compelling characteristic is the ability to provide a desktop-like computing experience when it is docked in a unique netbook shell.
We always joke about how Android can and will be used for any and every thing – who doesn’t want to look forward to rooting toasters and microwaves for whatever reason? This year more than ever, we’re seeing more of these whacky combinations. This time, Nox Audio has introduced an Android-based set of headphones – dubbed the Admiral Touch.
Back a week or so ago when you saw us running through the leaked Honeycomb Music player, you may have noticed a couple of aquatic sea creatures popping up on a list of possible options for searching for a music track: Dolphin Browser HD and Dolphin Browser Mini. Both of these apps are super fantastic web browsers, and today the mini version comes out of Beta for a full release. This lovely little lady is officially titled Dolphin Browser Mini V1.0, it’s free, and it’s available in Android Marketplace now!
The combination of the Android platform and the gaming catalogue of Sony seems like a good idea, but then consider the titles already available on Android and ask, is the average Android Smartphone user wanting a pull out keypad?
Asus unveiled three Android based tablet devices running Android 3.0, due to ship this spring. The tablets include a Snapdragon-based, 7.1-inch "Eee Pad MeMo" tablet, and two 10.1-inch keyboard convertible tablets running on dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processors: the Eee Pad Slider, which offers a slide up design, and an Eee Pad Transformer with a fold-up, detachable design.
The Asus (Asustech) tablet announcements were tipped last week via a leaked Asus video and other reports, but with minimal details. Specs are still pretty basic, but one stands out loud and clear: Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).
Other than the fresh ARM CPU, the new model is identical to the previous versions -- it has an outdoor readable PixelQi display, Flash storage, a rubber keyboard, and runs Sugar OS.
A spokesperson for Marvell Technologies has confirmed that the OLPC tablet, which is known as the XO-3, will be available in the first half of 2012.
Speaking to ITProPortal.com, Reuben Caron said that the device would move away from the current VIA Nano processor architecture to adopt a Marvell system-on-chip, the Armada 610. Swapping the x86-based Nano to the Marvell ARM-based architecture, will cut power consumption to around 1W during use.
To be sure, we did see plenty of Android innovations in the smartphone and tablet realms, in particular--more, in fact, than I've been able to keep track of. But Android is only partly open, of course, and--as it was recently noted--most Android tablet devices fail miserably at complying with the GNU Public License.
Commercialisation in the open source space appears to be spreading downwards by virtue of the big vendors' OSS interests at the moment doesn't it? Yes Oracle is publicly pushing certain open initiatives (at the same time as it is severing others), yes Microsoft has been very vocal on open interoperability with the likes of Novell and others of late -- but the weight of the "paid for services and management" element of open source has become more visible than ever during this past year.
Envato is a startup based out of Australia with people around the world and sites serving pages every second. We started in a living room in 2006 and have been steadily working to build our company into a world-class contender. Our background is creative, we love open source, we believe that work is about way more than just making money, and we’re totally committed to making products that are awesome!
Our mission is to help people to earn and to learn, online. We operate marketplaces where hundreds of thousands of people buy and sell digital goods every day, and a network of educational blogs where millions learn creative skills.
10 - Gimp
Although it is obvious, no list of open source software would be complete without Gimp. The Gimp is an image editing tool that looks and works like Photoshop but doesn't cost a cent. If you're a professional graphic artist you probably already use Photoshop, but for the rest of us Gimp does more than enough to meet our daily image editing needs. Which is not to say it is underpowered. It's not. If you take the time to learn all of Gimp you could be producing professional-quality graphics in no time.
Firefox 4 beta rain continues full throttle. Only 1 week after 5th beta version Beta 6 released.
Beta 6 did not have any extra changes apart from getting rid of few bugs that the previous beta release embraced. One of the most important of these bugs was the problem of crashing that windows users encountered.
Majority of us thought that Mozilla would only bring out another beta release and then announce the final release. However now that Mozilla Firefox beta 8 is out that Firefox is going to guarantee its place at the high end of the browser league.
An impression that schools and even tertiary institutions are not producing the software developers New Zealand needs has led Wellington open-source specialist Catalyst IT to pilot an “Academy”.
This aims to give a limited number of school students a basic grounding in ICT and some experience of real program development.
The Academy's initial intake comprises 17 students from nine Wellington schools. They will spend the latter two weeks of January at Catalyst attending classroom-style workshops and applying what they have learnt to some real open-source projects.
“We do place an emphasis on encouraging young women into IT careers, and we're please to have eight female students participating,” says Catalyst director Mike O’Connor.
The students will learn some of the basics of IT, including how to set up a development machine and how to participate in an open-source project. They will be working on some of Catalyst’s own projects, using an environment including PHP and MySQL on Linux – which Catalyst describes as “the sort of software that got Facebook off the ground.”
While my web app was completely free, contained no adverts, existed solely as a public service to commuters and was written carefully to follow NRE’s instructions on querying their service, National Rail Enquiries assert I was using the data illegally.
A new study ranks Canada dead last in an international comparison of freedom-of-information laws — a hard fall after many years being judged a global model in openness.
The study by a pair of British academics looked at the effectiveness of freedom-of-information laws in five parliamentary democracies: Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Hence, the term ââ¬Å¾open access commons“ leads to confusion and misunderstandings, since it can easily be construed as an open-access common pool resource as described by Garrett Hardin who coined the famous metaphor of the Tragedy of the Commons (ââ¬Å¾Imagine a pasture open to all…“). This metaphor is deeeeeply rooted in (neo-)classical political economics and in people’s minds. Despite it’s numerous analytical errors.
The city of Amsterdam has been involved for several years in building Citynet, a partnership between the city and two private investors to wire 40,000 Amsterdam buildings with fiber. And it's not just fiber, it's open access fiber—any ISP can sign up to use the infrastructure and deliver ultra-fast Internet access.
My big accomplishment of 2010 was finishing the first edition of Dive Into HTML5 and working with O’Reilly to publish it on paper as HTML5: Up & Running (as well as several downloadable DRM-free formats). I also accomplished a few minor personal things, but in this post I’m going to focus on the book.
Ask a European if the E.U. government could ever consolidate power from the state governments and you would probably get a “nope (or nein, or non), we identity with our respective countries.” The problem is, such attachments can change. Europeans would do well to look at the first hundred or so years of the U.S. to get a sense of how the E.U., too, could change.
The inescapable fact of life is that we die. Yea, even Facebookers: one estimate puts the number of US Facebook users who die annually at around 375,000. What happens to all those photographs and wall-posts and status updates? Will their authors have given their password to someone close to them? Or taken out an account with Entrustet, which will enable them to specify which of their digital assets will be preserved and which destroyed?
Again, the answer is: probably not. Some people may not be all that bothered by the thought that no personal records of them will endure.
But many of us would regard it as intolerable. Think of the pleasure we get from old family photographs or the delight that comes from clearing out an attic and finding boxes of love letters, school reports, our first exercise books and old appointment diaries. The contemporary versions of these personal documents are mostly stored either on obsolescent PC hard drives or on the servers of internet companies, protected by a password.
Setting aside my views on a journalist putting her family through a temporary ban of the internet and writing a book, I think this highlights perfectly the commonly held view that in someway the Internet is bad. The Internet is not bad, it’s some services/products that make it so. There is no “Digital Detox” since the Internet can be an excellent learning tool and a great social experience, it’s called responsible parenting and instead of banning something, maybe a better approach to parenting is to encourage ones children into other interests (both on and off-line) rather than letting them getting totally engrossed in an online world then taking it away.
The conflicting reports upset many people, blaming Twitter/reporters/people sharing the news that they messed up. That, to me, wasn’t the case – news organizations were doing their best to get the story as straight as quickly as possible, and many on Twitter were also doing their best to constantly pass on the correct and most up-to-date information. In fact, if anything, it reminded me that news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination was handled in quite a similar fashion by Cronkite – trying to sort through all of the conflicting reports as an anxious world watched in the real-time of the day.
At the very same moment, Facebook's only real competitor --NewsCorps' waning social networking site, MySpace -- is shedding employees and expenses, most likely in hopes of a fire sale.
But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren't the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.
Indeed, 11 years ago this week, when AOL announced its $350 billion merger with Time Warner, I was asked to write an OpEd for the New York Times explaining what the deal between old and new media companies really meant. I said that AOL was cashing in its over-valued dotcom stock in order to purchase a stake in a "real" media company with movie studios, theme parks and even cable. In short, the deal meant AOL knew their reign was over.
The Times didn't run the piece. Of course, the merger turned out to be a disaster: AOL's revenue stream was reduced to a trickle as net users ventured out onto the Web directly.
Likewise, Rupert Murdoch's 2005 purchase of MySpace for $580 million coincided pretty much exactly with the website's peak of popularity. People blamed corporate ownership for the social network's demise, but the cycle had already begun.
However, after listening to my two illustrations, my friend shook his head and said that I was going about it the wrong way. Using my numbers of 15 minutes a day lost for 1.25 billion people currently using desktops, it means that for a world economy it is like 39,062,500 people had died due to software bugs and poor service. “This”, he said sadly, “is about half the number of people that died in World War II, but unlike the number of World War II dead, this number keeps growing.”
Brute bigness will be a defining feature of architecture in 2011. The way large buildings occupy space, and even the way architecture will become the threshold to outer space (thanks to Norman Foster and Richard Branson) has put supersizing firmly on the menu.
Last year, the hot news was that the vilified ex-banker Fred "the Shred" Goodwin was going to turn the Edinburgh-based practice RMJM into a Godzilla of world architecture. But now we learn that the equally hard to pronounce Aecom has acquired more than 30 practices and, with a jumbo-pack of 1,488 architects, has become the biggest practice in the world, after a mere 20 years in the business.
The shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has prompted an outpouring of sympathy from politicians, including Sarah Palin.
In the hours after the shooting Saturday, Palin issued a statement in which she expressed her "sincere condolences" to the family of Giffords and the other victims.
Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.
From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.
Today we found out that the Department of Justice is conducting a secret investigation (you can download the document in PDF format here). One of the targets of that investigation is a member of the Icelandic Parliament, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, and the only reason she is aware that Twitter was served the subpoena, is that Twitter actually had the guts to argue the subpoena in court, and get permission from the judge to tell her about it!
It’s been seven months since the surreal G20 weekend that saw nearly 1,000 citizens arrested, most of them unjustly, but answers and accountability seem to be nowhere in sight.
And some Torontonians are now demanding the city’s top cop, who was at the helm of the debacle, do the honourable thing and resign.
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, Bill Blair has got to go!” roared a throng of protesters in front of Toronto Police Headquarters Saturday afternoon.
A judge has ordered Toronto police and the special investigations unit to produce all records pertaining to two officers investigated in the alleged beating of G20 protester Adam Nobody.
On Friday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Clark ordered the two organizations to hand over by Jan. 31 all their material, “however recorded, arising indirectly from the complaint by Adam Nobody” in which either Det.-Consts. Luke Watson or Todd Storey are mentioned.
In this week's New Yorker, Peter Maass -- who was in Iraq covering the war at the time -- examines the iconic, manufactured toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, an event the American media relentlessly exploited in April, 2003, to propagandize citizens into believing that Iraqis were gleeful over the U.S. invasion and that the war was a smashing success. Acknowledging that the episode demonstrated that American troops had taken over the center of Baghdad, Maas nonetheless explains that "everything else the toppling was said to represent during repeated replays on television -- victory for America, the end of the war, joy throughout Iraq -- was a disservice to the truth."
Working jointly with ProPublica on this investigation, Maass describes the hidden, indispensable role the U.S. military played in that event -- which has long been known -- though he convincingly argues that the primary culprit in this propaganda effort was the Americans media. That is who did more than anyone to wildly distort this event. As usual, the Watchdog Press not only happily ingests and trumpets pro-government propaganda, but does so even more enthusiastically and uncritically than government spokespeople themselves.
Police have said they received new leads after questioning people at a number of locations around Bristol on Friday night, but have not yet indicated if they are considering a mass DNA screening.
Rebecca Mansour joins me for a 30-minute special podcast addressing the horror in Arizona today, and the obscene efforts by many of the left to politicize mass murder by a clearly deranged individual.
Jared Lee Loughner has now been formally charged for the Saturday afternoon shooting in Tucson, AZ. Many tips are showing this may have been a premeditated event with clues leading up to it.
In a series of disjointed thoughts, videos on a YouTube account registered to a Jared Lee Loughner of Tucson, AZ, take aim at the national government and refer to a "new currency."
Bulldozers have demolished a hotel in east Jerusalem to make way for a new Israeli settlement, the latest in a wave of new buildings globally seen as an obstacle to the now stalled peace process.
The Shepherd Hotel was razed by three Israeli bulldozers, early on Sunday, as part of a plan to build a new settlement of 20 units in the heart of the occupied city.
Icelandic politicians have blasted US demands for Twitter to hand over a member of parliament's account details. Birgitta Jonsdottir faces investigation as one of several people connected to the website WikiLeaks.
Politicians in Iceland have hit out at a US request for Twitter to hand over details of a member of the country's parliament because of her connections with WikiLeaks.
A subpoena for parliamentary representative Birgitta Jonsdottir's details was issued as part of an investigation involving several individuals associated with the whistle-blowing website.
4. Twitter. The bigger story here, IMHO, far more interesting than the government request for wikileaks related info, is the fact that Twitter has gone out of its way to fight for its users' privacy. The company went to court, and was successful in asking the judge to unseal the order (something it is not required to do), and then promptly notified its users, so that they could seek to quash the order. Twitter could have quite easily complied with the order, and would have had zero legal liability for doing so. In fact, many other Internet companies routinely hand over their users' data in response to government requests, and never take steps to either have the orders unsealed, or give their users notice and thus an opportunity to fight the order.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Member of Althingi for the Movement, says that the request for information about her from the web-service Twitter shows how desperate the American government has become by trying to dig up personal information on MPs in other countries. She says on pressan.is that she has received a thousand e-mails and dozens of phone calls.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is suspected of leaking the Army video to WikiLeaks earlier this year. In chats with former hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned him in to authorities, Manning indicated that he had first contacted WikiLeaks sometime in late November 2009. This corresponds with the time period mentioned in the government’s request for Jonsdottir’s tweet history.
Jonsdottir was instrumental in getting the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative passed in Iceland’s parliament that supports creating legislation to make Iceland a legal haven for journalists and media outlets.
Society finds itself at a crossroads. In our increasingly connected world, many seem to think that our constitutional rights are fit for reevaluation. As was demonstrated by Jessica Yellin's performance on CNN, even some journalists seem to think that is now a crime to publish confidential information, ignorant not only of the important role that documents such as the Pentagon Papers have had in shaping modern government, but also of the First Amendment.
The American ambassador to Reykjavik has been summoned to explain why U.S. investigators are trying to access the private details of an Icelandic lawmaker's online activity as they try to build a criminal case against WikiLeaks.
The order asks specifically for names of those attached to selected accounts, user and screen names, and any registered mailing or postal addresses. It also asks for email addresses, credit card details where possible, and even content relating to connected mobile phones.
WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter to secretly hand over details of accounts on the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange.
Who needs sound public policy, when we can depend on the generosity and largesse of the elite? Who needs a social welfare system, when we have charitable giving from the wealthy? This attitude permeates virtually all elements of the Fords' policy approach — whether then–mayoral candidate Ford’s offer to personally help buy street drugs for a sick constituent, his belief that an arts and culture plan can be replaced by selling tickets to galas, or the belief (articulated at a Latino-organized mayoral debate) that youth-oriented social programs could be replaced by football teams and cheerleading squads.
Royal Bank of Scotland should not be "leading the way" when it came to bankers' bonuses, the prime minister, David Cameron, said today.
However, Cameron warned against "banker-bashing", saying it was too easy to make banks the scapegoats for the recession.
His comments came after it was reported that the RBS chief executive, Stephen Hester, will take home an estimated €£6.8m in bonuses, salary and other payments this year.
Anonymous has joined with Tunisian activists to call for end to the government's stifling of online dissent.
Tunisian netizens are working around the clock to show the rest of the world the ongoing carnage in their country. What started as a protest against unemployment when a 26-year-old Tunisian man set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid last month has ignited the country, sparking a wave of protests across it.
Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love. The issue is fundamental. What a blessing that Watergate has been uncovered to teach us the primary lesson. The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication-fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, hiding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear, symptoms of the inability to love. Secrecy means that you think love is shameful and bad. Or that your nakedness is ugly. Or that you hide unloving, hostile feelings. Seeds of paranoia and distrust.
The US Commerce Department is reportedly preparing to assume authority over a nascent cybsecurity initiative that would create a unique Internet ID for American citizens and residents.
According to White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt, the department is "the absolute perfect spot in the US government" to build an online "identity ecosystem."
However, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke insisted that the initiative would not result in the mandatory assignment of a national ID card.
The CBC ran this report about increasing broadband costs. This is a sign that this issue is gaining traction.
Copyright law is subject to international variations. In Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan, the term of copyright runs for 50 years after the author's death; in the Yemen it's 30. In the UK, which has a fairly standard ruling (complicated occasionally by EU directives), copyright applies for 70 years from the death of the author. In America, the copyright term is also 70 years, but this only applies to works published since 1978.
Even so, in the age of "free content", not everyone accepts these norms. In California, there's a radical movement that regards copyright law (of all kinds) as a grotesque – even sinister – restriction on the unfettered traffic of knowledge. Led by James Boyle, author of Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society, the Free Culture Movement wants to toss copyright legislation into the dustbin of history.
CBC Explains Usage Based Billing