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Links 20/5/2011: Linux Kernel 2.6.39, MeeGo 1.2 Released



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Screwing the end user and seeing how far you get
    Linux today is a far more appealing solution than Microsoft Windows [...]

    Apparently Microsoft was " protecting" me from having my movie watched on two screens at the same time, but frankly it should have allowed me to switch to the one large LCD. Instead, even running just the one large screen showed a black box where my movie should have been.

    I was later told this was part of the new protections enabled in the operating system to ensure DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was addressed.



  • Linux job portal launched: LinuxCareer.com
    As a demand for Linux-related jobs has jumped unexpectedly high in the last couple of years, LinuxCareer.com as a new Linux related job portal attempts to compensate for this sudden surge in demand for Linux skilled professionals and will surely accommodate both employers and job seekers. LinuxCareer.com is not affiliated with any local or international company, nor is it a recruitment or employment agency and it is specialising only in Linux based careers and closely related Information Technology fields.

    LinuxCareer.com offers tools such as application tracking, job alerts, login and syncing resumes with facebook.com and linkedin.com accounts as well as screening questionnaires for employers and resume uploads for job seekers.


  • Desktop

    • HP Pavillion dm1-3105ez
      The final problem, and in general the biggest problem, is the one I wrote about two weeks ago, when I was preparing this system for my class. This is the Windows 7 installation which insists on scribbling on the MBR when I have GRUB installed. I never did figure out how or why it is doing that, or how to stop it. In the end I had to take the advice offered by Moley and a couple of others, and set the system up to multi-boot with the Windows bootloader. Ugh. What a nasty, ugly bunch of garbage. Gosh, I know, this is only 2011 and it is asking a lot for Microsoft to have something that is a bit more appealing than what they developed over 15 years ago for Windows NT, but honestly... a text-only, white font on a black background... oh, please. Anyway, setting that up to multi-boot Win7 or openSuSE, and then using my normal Legacy GRUB configuration to further multi-boot the various other Linux distributions I have installed at least works, and it has stopped the system from self-corrupting. I can't even tell you how many times I reinstalled Windows and various Linux distributions while trying to get something else - anything else - to work. Bleah.




  • Server





  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Kernel 2.6.39 Officially Released
      We are proud to announce today, May 19th, the immediate release of the highly anticipated Linux kernel 2.6.39.

      Among the new features included in Linux kernel 2.6.39 we can mention new drivers for high-end AMD graphics cards, ipsets to simplify firewall maintenance and implementation, improved EXT4 file system, new drivers for better hardware support, and lots of bug fixes.

      "So it's delayed a few days, and I really was struggling with the decision of whether I wanted to cut a final release at all: it could easily have made more sense to just do an -rc8."


    • Linux 2.6.39 Debuts with Improved Performance
      The rapid release cycle of the Linux kernel shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

      Linux founder Linus Torvalds this week released the new Linux 2.6.39 kernel, barely three months after the 2.6.38 kernel came out. The 2.6.39 kernel is the third major kernel release so far in 2011.

      The 2.6.38 kernel release cycle included seven release candidates and Torvalds noted in a mailing list posting that he had debated whether or not to issue another candidate to provide more testing time.

      "I really was struggling with the decision of whether I wanted to cut a final release at all: it could easily have made more sense to just do an -rc8," Torvalds wrote.


    • Linux 2.6.39 assists firewalls, speeds up Ext4


    • Graphics Stack

      • Open-Source AMD Fusion Driver Stabilizes
        With the very latest open-source Linux driver code for the AMD Fusion E-350, the support is finally stable and comparable to that of other recent Radeon HD graphics processors with the open-source driver stack.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Plasma Components
        I'm here to talk about my GSoC project (\m/), the plasma components. As you may know, QML is a declarative language to build rich interfaces introduced in Qt 4.7 by providing simple primitives. As it is a powerful way to develop interfaces and it's the future of UI development for Qt was necessary to make the plasma support it.


      • KDE Commit Digest for 15 May 2011


      • How to Install Plasmoids In Kubuntu (KDE)
        I have just started using Kubuntu a week ago. Being a new user of the KDE desktop, I admit that I am have difficulty getting used to its terms. One of the thing I am always confuse is the difference between plasmoids and widgets. The two terms are used interchangeably and it took some googling to discover that plasmoids are actually widgets.




    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME change proposal: much smoke, no fire
        erhaps it's the fact that GNOME has undertaken meaningless change in the past, justifying it through the use of buzzwords, and ended up with a morass that really does not find favour with too many users.

        Perhaps it's the fact that the GNOME developers still have the attitude that they are building things for themselves and the rest of the world can use it as it is or else take a walk.

        Whatever it is, when there is talk of change in GNOME, people sit up and get agitated. But this time, someone has bitten off a lot more than they can chew, suffered from indigestion and then passed a lot of misinformation around.

        Let's get specific. The OMG!Ubuntu site, a site for Ubuntu fanbois, published a little article a few days ago, titled "GNOME to drop support for BSD, Solaris, Unix?"

        This was based on a post to Reddit. The OMG Ubuntu employee who wrote the post for the site, Joey Sneddon, did not bother to read the email that began the discussion that led to this amazing claim.


      • Unity 2D to enter GNOME:Ayatana soon…


        In the past days I’ve been packaging and fixing some issues on Unity 2D for inclusion on the GNOME:Ayatana repository in the openSUSE Build Service.

        This gave me an excellent opportunity to test a few components share by both, Unity and Unity 2D, which is the case of ‘unity-place-applications’ and ‘unity-place-files’, both using Zeitgeist which is already in Factory for the upcoming openSUSE 12.1. We thank the integration of this packages to Federico Quintero. Thanks Fred.






  • Distributions



    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat intros PaaS for open source developers
        RALEIGH, USA: Red Hat, Inc., open source solution provider has recently announced the availability of OpenShift, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for developers who build on open source.


      • The rise and fall of CentOS
        If it weren't for RedHat Linux, I might not have ever found PostgreSQL. In early 2001, I was running the tech side of a company with an ISP component to it. After starting with RedHat 4.2 in 1997, we'd standardized all the servers by then on RedHat 7.0, refusing to upgrade from its 2.2 kernel even when new versions with 2.4 appeared. (We needed VPN Masquerade and it didn't work on those crazy bleeding edge 2.4 kernels) Into the business came a new product that needed a database embedded into it. As a former Progress DBA of some reknown (seriously!), I got the job of figuring out which to use. After poking around at the open-source database options that were a simple rpm install away, I found PostgreSQL 7.0. It seemed completely sensible for a small but important database. BerkleyDB was too simple for the queries I wanted to write, MySQL 3.23 was frighteningly loose with its data to me, and I was still pissed at Oracle for killing off my previous database career--even if I had wanted to budget for it. I got a copy of Bruce's PostgreSQL book, hot off the presses, built an app with RedHat 7.0 plus PostgreSQL 7.0 plus Perl-DBI, and the database part of it worked great.

        [...]

        I'm writing this as my first Scientific Linux install executes, and I have my first SL6 work for a customer also fed up with waiting on CentOS6 to start on when it's finished. CentOS isn't the first group to run an open-source development project without what I'd consider a really open development community, they're just the latest to show how dangerous that is.


      • Put on your new Red Hat Linux
        RHEL 6.1 features optimized KVM virtualization, new hardware support, improved operational efficiency, and high availability (HA) improvements. It also includes improved development and monitoring tools such as an updated Eclipse development environment includes enhanced breakpoint and code generation for C/C++ and Java.


      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 Screenshots


      • Open Virtualization Alliance Aims to Spread the KVM Gospel
        BMC Software, Eucalyptus, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and SUSE have partnered to create the Open Virtualization Alliance to promote the adoption of open virtualization technologies such as KVM. What does it mean for you, the VAR? Simply put: exposure.

        VARs working with any of the open virtualization standards no doubt have run up against customers who are either wary about open source technology, or just simply don’t know about the potential. Promoting awareness about technology is a good way to spread it, and that’s what the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) plans on doing.


      • Open Virtualization Alliance launched


      • Fedora

        • Design team imageboard test server and WE NEED Fedora 16 theme artists!
          Yesterday with some help from smooge and nb, I set up a Danbooru-style image board to test out, and I am hoping that Fedora artists and designers might play with it and see if it’d be a useful resource. It’s an application called Shimmie.

          What is an imageboard? It’s a bulletin board or forum type of website that focuses much more heavily on images rather than text. You can read more about them in Wikipedia’s article. Traditionally they are used for ‘found’ images, and I don’t know if they are used much by folks who are generating original artwork, but it seems as if they would be a useful tool for collaborative image production, as they would keep discussion focused on visuals.

          [...]

          Some folks understandably believe art and design are stuffs enshrouded in a mysterious haze of incense smoke without much logic or reason involved. I get it. I’ve been there too, and I think it’s easy to feel that way – discussions about art works sometimes get a bad reputation for being anywhere from fussy, to bizarre, to completely pointless.


        • Fedora project switching to new contributor agreement
          Fedora is in the process of retiring our old "Individual Contributor License Agreement"...






    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives

        • Revisited: SimplyMEPIS 11.0
          After I installed SimplyMEPIS 11.0 and restarted the virtual machine, I was greeted by a session almost identical to the live session, which is only to be expected. The big thing that I wanted to make sure here was whether installing packages would work given that it didn't in the live session due to weird settings, and thankfully, it did work. And that's where my time with SimplyMEPIS 11.0 ended.

          [...]

          I don't think SimplyMEPIS is a good distribution for users who are new to Linux, though that is its target audience.


        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Looking at 11.04 Natty/Unity – Good or bad?
            This review has been written over the period of a few days and one of the successes of Unity for me was that my wife immediately felt comfortable with it. My initial reservations have melted away with the realization that a different way of working can, until accustomed to, be a frightening place. Now that I’ve settled with Unity over the last few days, I will be keeping 11.04 on my main rig, I had intended to return to Sabayon, but now that I’ve got accustomed to Unity, there really is no reason for me to switch back at the present time.

            [...]

            This review has been written over the period of a few days and one of the successes of Unity for me was that my wife immediately felt comfortable with it. My initial reservations have melted away with the realization that a different way of working can, until accustomed to, be a frightening place. Now that I’ve settled with Unity over the last few days, I will be keeping 11.04 on my main rig, I had intended to return to Sabayon, but now that I’ve got accustomed to Unity, there really is no reason for me to switch back at the present time.



          • Building The Kitchen Sink
            If you look at Unity, some of it’s customization potential is exposed in the Unity user interface itself, but much of it is hidden (so as to provide a sleek and uncluttered experience for end-users), but you can still access this functionality under the covers. Tools such as Simple CCSM, and more recently Gunity and Confity are providing tools to access these lower-level configuration options. Of course, this is exactly the kind of awesome that power users love! Trouble is…there is one problem…


          • Top 6 Ubuntu 11.04 Themes to Make Natty Narwhal Look a Lot More Attractive
            We have already featured a series of articles dealing with various aspects of the brand new Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal starting with the thorough review of Ubuntu 11.04. Now its time for some extensive customization of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal's look and feel through a bunch of cool looking themes. Following is a collection of some of my favorite GTK themes for Ubuntu 11.04/GNOME 2.0 based desktops. Take a look.


          • The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu Studio 11.04


          • Flavours and Variants











  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • OSI set to expand open source mission
    The Open Source Initiative (OSI), defender of the open-source faith, will soon expand its reach, embracing representatives from other open-source groups and the world of business.


  • ✈ Speaking at OSBC
    If you’re at the Open Source Business Conference, OSBC, in San Francisco today and tomorrow, you have three opportunities to hear me speak (or three sessions to scrupulously avoid, depending on your taste). They are:

    * Why You Need an Open Cloud Platform to Build a SaaS, Monday 11:40-12:30 On this large panel, I’ll be commenting on the fact that there’s no way you can guarantee that you’ll not be locked in with a cloud solution today. Just as with other software solutions where your software freedoms are threatened, that doesn’t mean avoid them blindly, but it’s important to look for suppliers who actively protect the four freedoms in addition to promoting data freedom. This is also a context where community sentinels may be useful.


  • Events

    • Things I wrote down during OSBC 2011


    • Third day at Solutions Linux 2011
      Solutions Linux 2011 is now over ! The last day was again full of various meetings, including a very interesting one with Charles Schulz (The Document Foundation) where I learnt a lot around LibreOffice future that I can not disclose ;-) or maybe later on. And I lead the System Administration track, which was extremely successfull this year with more than 130 people in the room !! I’m glad to see that the new model of free conferences is allowig the event to have more attendees.


    • Open Collaboration Services Next Sprint
      Over the weekend of May 14th and 15th, the Open Collaboration Services Next sprint took place at the Physics Institute of the Humboldt University in Berlin. Seven experienced developers participated in this event--some of them coming directly from Linux Tag--in order to meet face to face, create new bonds, and discuss current and future issues around Open Collaboration Services.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle make JRockit Java VM free of charge
      Following Oracle's announcement that it plans to unify the two Java Virtual Machines it owns, Hotspot and JRockit, into a single virtual machine, Oracle has now made the JRockit virtual machine available for no charge for "development and internal production use". The blog announcement by Henrik Ståhl, the JRockit product manager, notes that the developers are currently taking ideas and features from JRockit and porting them over to OpenJDK, but now Oracle wants to converge the licensing of the two virtual machines ahead of the actual converged virtual machine. While the current JRockit implementation will remain proprietary, the move is designed to to simplify the progress to a single JVM by getting more feedback on any regressions between the future converged JVM and the current JRockit.




  • Business

    • Openbravo Offers Point-of-Sale (POS) Module for Open Source ERP
      The new POS Retail Module extends Openbravo ERP by integrating POS and store management capabilities.

      Openbravo has announced a new commercial offering that extends its web-based open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. The new POS Retail Module, based on Openbravo's popular POS open source project, delivers integrated Point-of-Sale and store management capabilities to the Openbravo ERP solution.





  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • 2010 Free Software Awards announced


      This year, it was given to Rob Savoye. Savoye is a long-time free software hacker, who has worked on GNU and other free software for over 20 years. He has contributed to dozens of projects including GCC, GDB, DejaGnu, Newlib, Libgloss, Cygwin, eCos, Expect, multiple major GNU/Linux distributions, and One Laptop Per Child. Savoye has led the effort to produce a free software Flash player, Gnash. This work has enabled free software users to avoid dependency on a pervasive piece of proprietary software. Rob is also CTO and founder of Open Media Now, a nonprofit dedicated to producing a freely licensed media infrastructure.


    • Work on a free software GPRS/EDGE stack!
      GPRS is a technology used by mobile phones to transmit data. If you have internet access on your cellphone, it's likely that you are using GPRS.




  • Public Services/Government



  • Licensing

    • Clarification on Android, its (Lack of) Copyleft-ness, and GPL Enforcement


      I'm grateful to Brian Proffitt for clarifying some of these confusions about Android licensing. In particular, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has cleared up the confusions that Edward J. Naughton keeps spreading regarding the GPL.

      I noted that Naughton even commented on Proffitt's article; the comments spreads even more confusion about the GPL. In particular, Naughton claims that most BusyBox GPL violations are on unmodified versions of BusyBox. That's just absolutely false, if for no other reason that a binary is a modified version of the source code in the first place, and nearly all BusyBox GPL violations involve a binary-only version distributed without any source (nor an offer therefor).

      [...]

      Of course, Naughton hasn't contacted me because he isn't really interested in software freedom. He's interested in getting press for himself, and writing vague reports about Android copyrights and licensing is a way to get lots of press. I put out now a public call to anyone who believes they haven't received source code that they were required to get under GPL or LGPL to get in touch with me and I'll try to help, or at the very least put you in touch with a copyright holder who can help do some enforcement with you. I don't, however, expect to see a message in my inbox from Naughton any time soon, nor do I expect him to actually write about the wide-spread GPL violations related to Android/Linux that Matthew Garrett has been finding. Garrett's findings are the real story about Android/Linux compliance, but it's presumably not headline-getting enough for Naughton to even care.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Data

      • Socrata unveils the new data.gov, opening vault on government data
        At the Technology Alliance annual luncheon in Seattle earlier this month, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra explained how the open government movement was “collapsing a lot of the complexity” that had previously made federal, state and local collaboration difficult. In particular, Chopra called out the efforts of Seattle startup Socrata, which is helping bring transparency to government information through data.gov. And now Socrata has introduced a new data.gov Web site designed to help government agencies publish and distribute data in new ways, including interactive charts, maps and lists.

        Socrata wants to make access to government data as easy to filter, sort and analyze as a pair of loafers on Zappos.com.

        “It is now as easy to analyze data as it is to buy a pair of shoes or a TV online,” according to an introductory video describing the new data.gov service.






  • Programming





Leftovers



  • Alternative DNS services: pro and contra


  • Winklevoss twins taking Facebook case to Supreme Court
    Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, along with partner Divya Narendra, have one last card to play in their legal battle with Facebook.

    The twins' attorneys announced yesterday that they intend to file a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the high court to hear their case against Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

    The petition stems from a settlement the Winklevosses and Narendra signed with the world's largest social network in 2008 after claiming Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social-networking site they called ConnectU. At that time, they were awarded $65 million from Facebook and Zuckerberg in exchange for dropping all further litigation against the site.


  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Got Health Insurance? Pray You Won't Get Purged
      Along with "rescinding" (cancelling) the policies of individuals who become seriously ill, purging small businesses that employ workers who get sick is a tried-and-true way of meeting Wall Street's expectations. All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits ... purging of less-profitable accounts through intentionally unrealistic rate increases helps explain why the number of small businesses offering coverage to their employees has been declining for several years and why the number of Americans without coverage reached a record high of nearly 51 million last year.


    • Journalist arrested at IT security conference
      A FAIRFAX journalist was arrested by Queensland Police yesterday after an article he wrote about vulnerabilities in Facebook's privacy controls was published on smh.com.au.

      He was later released without charge but police retained custody of his iPad.

      Ben Grubb, the deputy technology editor of the Herald website, was attending an IT security conference at a resort on the Gold Coast where a security expert, Christian Heinrich, demonstrated how he had gained access to the privacy-protected Facebook photos of the wife of the HackLabs director, Chris Gatford.


    • New laws to widen ASIO spy powers
      ASIO will be able to engage in industrial and economic espionage as well as spy on groups such as WikiLeaks on behalf of Australia's two foreign spy outfits, under one of the most significant widening of its powers in a decade.

      According to the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, the changes are being made to allow ASIO to work better with Australia's two overseas spy agencies, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and the Defence Signals Directorate.

      But legal experts and the Greens have expressed concerns that the changes are not needed and fundamentally change the way Australia's main domestic spy outfit operates.




  • Cablegate



    • 2011-05-19 WikiLeaks: Bulgarian Nationalist under US Diplomatic Fire
      Diplomatic cables of the US embassy in Sofia have been revealed on WikiLeaks and provided to the project for investigative journalism www.bivol.bg, bringing out new details about the way Bulgaria's far-right, nationalist Ataka party and its leader, Volen Siderov, are viewed by American diplomats.

      The text in English has also been published at the Balkanleaks site, an analogue of the notorious whistle-blowing WikiLeaks.


    • Dawn Presents WikiLeaks' Pakistan Papers


    • Putting together The Pakistan Papers
      It was the beginning of the last week of April when I received a call from the Editor Dawn asking me to come in for a meeting. “There`s a project I think you might be interested in working on but we can`t discuss it over the phone.” Intrigued, I went in for the meeting the next day and learnt what I and the project team would willingly give up our waking hours and days off for the next month or so.


    • Russia sabotaged Iran nuclear programme: report
      Then Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered the sabotage of Iran's nuclear programme in 2006, according to WikiLeaks documents published by Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot on Thursday.

      The leaked documents, which were not immediately available on either the Yediot or Wikileaks websites, purportedly detail talks between the head of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission and then-US ambassador to Israel Richard Jones.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Poisoned in the Gulf
      The series looked at the reports of health problems among cleanup workers and coastal residents, and it examined how the current regulatory system failed to prevent harmful exposures. ... the energy industry's impact on community health in the Gulf, the political power wielded by oil companies and other industry interests to thwart regulatory reform, and how the emerging health crisis has turned ordinary citizens into grassroots activists.


    • President Obama used his weekly radio address this past Saturday to to promote a persistent myth about expanded offshore drilling: that it would bring down prices at the gas pump.


    • The US EPA has a disturbing tendency to raise exposure limits after disasters. They did this after Deepwater Horizon so they could declare the seafood safe to eat.


    • The facts of Big Oil's tax loopholes and windfall profits


    • Republicans want to move oil drilling lawsuits to a court full of judges with close ties to oil companies.
      When it is not busy ordering high school cheerleaders to pay $45,000 because they sued the school district that required them to cheer for their alleged rapist, the Fifth Circuit's judges have cozied up tightly with the oil industry.


    • Koch Industries' Toxic Gifts to Wisconsin
      [in three years], Koch Industries' facilities emitted over 5.4 million pounds of toxic discharges into Wisconsin's air and water. Of these discharges, nearly 100,000 pounds were of substances known or suspected to cause cancer. Michael Ash, an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and coauthor of the "Toxic 100 Air Polluters," says the numbers indicate that Koch Industries is a "major polluter" in Wisconsin.


    • Housing in North America: Peak Oil’s Primary Victim
      Of the many asset classes to be victimized by the end of cheap energy, residential real estate is perhaps the most vulnerable. A call option on future wage growth, and, leveraged to our liquid-fuel based transport system, housing in North America is currently making its way back to the stable, but barely appreciating asset it once was. However, having started this journey only recently there is still a long way to go. A long way in price that is, for housing to fall.

      The housing crash is currently in the midst of its next leg down. In similar fashion to those who missed the initial crash, the past year has seen a number of observers calling for a bottom. One of my favorite calls came last year from Karl Case in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. In A Dream House for All, Mr Case made the following argument: because house prices had fallen so much already, housing was now more affordable. But of course that wasn’t true at all. Not then, and not now.






  • Finance



    • To Eat and Survive in LA: On Track for a Million Food Stamp Users
      Los Angeles County food stamp users are now on track to reach the 1,000,000 mark by later this year. After the California housing market cracked in 2006, and leading into the financial crisis of 2007-2008, LA County food stamp recipients were registering at the 625,000 level in the Spring of 2008. March 2011 shows that 967,301 persons are now in the program in LA County.


    • Conflicts of Interest in LBOs -- a Case Study
      Adding to the intrigue, in an earlier round of bidding, Vestar Capital Partners, a PE firm with loads of experience in the canned food business, made the highest offer. In the second round, Barclays paired Vestar with KKR, in violation of the “no teaming” provisions of earlier agreements the firms had entered into with Del Monte, and had them submit a joint bid. Problem was, Barclays didn’t let the Del Monte board know it had taken this step, leading the board to believe that Vestar had dropped out. Vice Chancellor Laster found that this shady business alone “materially reduced the prospect of price competition for Del Monte”.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Google Looking for Dislike Button on Facebook
      Facebook's recent admission that it hired a public relations firm to spread the word about privacy issues at Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has left both companies looking foolish.

      A Facebook spokesman confirmed that Facebook hired public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller to “encourage” media outlets to write anti-Google stories, specifically urging them to look in to claims that Google is invading people's privacy.

      Facebook gave two reasons for why it decided to play the Richard Nixon role in this modern version of Watergate: The Musical. First, Facebook believes that Google is engaging in some social networking practices that are violating the privacy of its users. Second, Facebook dislikes (to say it mildly) that Google is trying to use Facebook's data in its own, competing social-networking service.




  • Censorship



  • Privacy

    • The Wall Street Journal notices that Facebook tracks you, like it or not.
      [the "Like" and "tweet" buttons notify] Facebook and Twitter that a person visited those sites even when users don't click on the buttons, according to a study done for The Wall Street Journal. - Wall St. Journal


    • Google takes on deep packet inspecting ISPs Perhaps they were alarmed when Mediacom inserted their own ads onto Google and others. This won't protect users from malicious features in Windows. Via Google
      With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience.


    • Facebook executive takes heat in hearing on privacy
      A leading senator, angry that Facebook Inc. failed to stop millions of preteens from using its social networking site, accused co-founder Mark Zuckerberg of lacking "social values" and being more concerned with building the company than with children's privacy.




  • Civil Rights

    • Simon Phipps open washes fog computing. He considers avoidance of non free software "extreme" but a single malicious feature on your computer is complete compromise of privacy and security. His outlook on fog computing has a similar mistake. The only way to be able to rehost your service with all changes is to host it yourself.
      Ultimately, your best protection is to be able to rehost your service elsewhere. This is where traditional views of software freedom become important. If the whole solution is open source, if there are no dependencies on meta-control points outside your control and if the existing data can be exported live and whole, you have the ultimate protection for your freedoms.


    • Bill Would Require Court Order For Cops To Read Emails
      There are some issues that advocacy groups and big companies have come to agree on, and one is the main federal wiretapping law is in serious need of an update. Now it looks like the update may actually be coming. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill today that would update the law known as the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, or ECPA.

      The main problem with the ECPA is that it’s been interpreted by courts to allow cops to snoop on email without a warrant. That development has been disturbing to public interest groups, but has also begun to bother large corporations that the government has begun to treat as an easy source for evidence, even without a court order.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • Publishers delude themselves and insult the public at World Copyright Conference.
        The organisers really seem to have included everyone, just as they say: "All stakeholders involved in creative industries - creation, licensing, usage, collective management, legislation and dissemination of intellectual property and creative content." Well, everyone except one: The Public....This huge and insulting asymmetry is perhaps the perfect symbol of all that is wrong with industries based around copyright today: they sincerely believe that the "respect" involved is all one-way... This conference, then, is the perfect expression of an industry talking to itself, reinforcing its own prejudices and delusions, and unwilling to accept that the world has changed utterly


      • RIAA wants to make it easier to harass competitors.
        the recording industry is pushing California's lawmakers to approve legislation that would allow warrantless searches of companies that press copies of compact discs and DVDs. The Recording Industry Assn. of America, in effect, wants to give law enforcement officials the power to enter manufacturing plants without notice or court orders to check that discs are legitimate and carry legally required identification marks.


      • Copyright troll, Righthaven, slapped with class action counter claim.


      • Yale opens up image library, starts with 250,000 free images
        Yale is making high-resolution images from its cultural collections available on a free, open access basis. They've started by uploading 250,000 images, with lots more to follow. The collection includes "a small limestone stela with hieroglyphic inscription from the Peabody Museum of Natural History, a Mozart sonata in the composer's own hand from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a 15th-century Javanese gold kris handle from the Indo-Pacific collection of Yale University Art Gallery and a watercolor by William Blake."


      • Digital Images of Yale’s Vast Cultural Collections Now Available for Free


      • Announcing the Public Knowledge "Copyright School" Video Challenge!
        In an attempt to educate its users about copyright law, YouTube has debuted "Copyright School," a video that explains why videos are removed from YouTube. While "Copyright School" does a great job of telling you what you can't do with copyrighted content, it does a very poor job of telling you what you can do with copyrighted content--namely, remix, reuse and repurpose it without permission from the rightsholder as allowed under the doctirine of fair use.


      • Righthaven hit with class-action counterclaim
        One of the website operators accused of copyright infringement by Righthaven LLC has retaliated, hitting the Las Vegas company with a class-action counterclaim seeking to represent defendants in all 57 Righthaven cases in Colorado.

        While the counterclaim mentions all 275 Righthaven lawsuits, it covers only those filed in Colorado.

        It charges defendants in all the Righthaven lawsuits "are victims of extortion litigation by Righthaven, which has made such extortion litigation a part of its, if not its entire, business model."










Clip of the Day



Amputee Patrick demonstrates his new worlds first bionic hand - BBC



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Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

Why We Support Richard Stallman and You Probably Should Too
It's not about being "Richard Stallman fan", it is about maintaining the right to hold positions (on technology) like his
Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
 
Slopwatch: Google News and Slopfarms That Relay Nonsense From LLMs
Google News, which once prioritised or used to care about provenance and quality, is feeding slopfarms
Links 23/10/2025: More Health Concerns Over Dumb Chatbots (LLMs) and "Talking Cars" as Latest Buzz
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Daylight Savings Time and Duration Shorthand
Links for the day
Links 23/10/2025: LLM 'Hallucinations' (Defects) in Practical Code 'Generation', China Becomes More Economically and Technologically Independent
Links for the day
Linux Foundation Uses LLM Slop to Promote Microsoft in Linux.com (Again), Rendering It a Linux-Hostile Slopfarm
Openwashing with slop by "Linux.com Editorial Staff", which basically seems to be a bot
Links 23/10/2025: Windows TCO Galore and "The Internet Is Going to Break Again"
Links for the day
Social engineering attack: Debian voted to trick you on binary blobs
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Techrights Will Always Stand for Women's Rights
We even invest money - personal savings that it - in our principles
Certified Lawyers Should Know Better (Than to Intimidate Us With Man Who Drives on Motorcycle Through a Really Bad Storm Between Distant Cities, Then Collects Photos of Our Home)
Mentioning someone was in prison for bad things isn't a crime, it's a public service
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble is Already Imploding
"ChatGPT Usage Has Peaked and Is Now Declining, New Data Finds"
The So-called "Sexy" Buckets (AI, Quantum) Cannot Save IBM From Reality, Shares Tank
"No matter how much financial hocus-pocus they use to reclassify revenues to land in the "sexy" buckets (AI, Quantum), it still smells old and musty - just like this company."
Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Scope of Mass Layoffs in the United States
A few years ago society was accelerating its journey towards feudalism, boosted by COVID-19
Links 23/10/2025: Proprietary Blunders and CISA's Latest Disclosure of Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Fast Past (F1), 99.9% Uptime
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Slopwatch: Google News is Promoting Fake 'Articles' About Fake Xubuntu, Fake Articles About Replacing Windows With GNU/Linux
The quality of the Web deteriorates and unless someone cleans up the mess, real sites will lose an incentive to produce anything
When "AI Layoffs" Mean Layoffs Due to the "AI" Bubble Popping
many people that are laid off by Microsoft claim to be specialists in "AI"
Mysterious grant forfeited, $100,000 from Software in the Public Interest accounts 2023
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: bullying, student union behaviour: Armijn Hemel's FSFE resignation
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: psychological abuse, stalking, Galia Mancheva, Susanne Eiswirt ignored by FSFE judgment for Matthias Kirschner
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Helping FSFE scam victims and conference organisers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Nigerian fraud in FSFE constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Worrying and Amusing Stories of "Clown Computing" Gone Awry
Many of these disasters could be avoided
Links 22/10/2025: Amazon Plans to Replace Workers With Robotics, AWS and Clown Computing in General Ridiculed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/10/2025: Niri Completely Changes Multitasking and Overview of Diff-ers
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2025: Study on Misinformation by Slop and Heavily Debt-Sabbled Microsoft OpenAI (ClosedSlop) Uses "Browser" as Gimmick/Distraction
Links for the day
They've Already Spent Close to a Million Dollars on Lawyers and Sent Us About 50 KG of Legal Papers (Sponsored by Mysterious Third Party) to Try to Censor Techrights, Without Success
They try to overcompensate with sheer volume for a lack of solid, clear arguments (we are the victims here)
12 Months Ago the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Officially Went 'Tag-Team'
We're actually sort of flattered or proud that such despicable people are so desperate to censor us
"Cloud Computing" Was Always a Joke, But This Week Was the Punchline
Maybe stop following tech trends and fashions
"Cloud Computing" Does Not Mean Safety
Fault tolerance is related to the notion of software freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Fall of Windows: From Something to Nothing
Of course Microsoft will pretend everything is fine and "just trust the hey hi" (AI)
Sounds Like Fedora is Ready to Become Less of a Slave of Microsoft (GitHub)
This seems like a belated move in a positive direction
XBox is a Dead Microsoft Product in a Dying Industry
It's probable that another wave of XBox layoffs is just over the horizon (maybe even before month's end)
Progress on Techrights Site Search
Fun times
IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Means the Layoffs Are Silent, Barely Reported
Don't wait to hear about "Red Hat layoffs"
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Happy Disconnection, AWS Falling Apart, Closing of Gemlog Blue
Links for the day
Full Audio of Today's Richard Stallman Talk in the Technical University of Munich
Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society
Microsoft XBox is Just Vapourware (Promises of Hardware That Doesn't Exist), Real Products Perish
just as developers lose interest in developing for XBox Microsoft is increasing the costs imposed upon them
Slopwatch: Fake Articles (Slop) in "Linux" Clothing in Google News (Noise)
all about what Google does
Links 21/10/2025: Even "Inventor of Vibe Coding" Rejects Vibe Coding, USPTO Experiments With Slop in Examination
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Talk Now Available for Viewing (Archived Copy, Not Live-streamed)
This recording is over 2 hours old
Links 21/10/2025: AWS-Induced Chaos and Social Control Media Curbs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Programming, StarGrid, Brand-New Palm OS Strategy Game in 2025, and Chatbot as Addiction Mechanisms
Links for the day
The African Lion and the American Cowards
Safaris exist for people to watch and enjoy animals
Amazon Web Shenanigans Perfectly Timed for Today's Talk by Richard Stallman
Maybe listen to him instead of looking for excuses to ridicule the messenger
Mission:Libre Has Taken Off (Project by Carmen Maris)
there will be a lot more to report on next month (after the event)
Techrights to Publish More EPO Leaks Next Week
We're meanwhile also doing lots of work on search, whose interface now looks better
Links 21/10/2025: 'The Lost Art' of Neon Signs and Twitter (X) to Enable Identity Theft (or Handle Theft) as a Service
Links for the day
Plagiarism With LLM Slop: Hindustan Times (HT Digital Streams Limited) Has Become a Slop Factory/Hub
What a disgrace
A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe, by Richard Stallman
"The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place"
Next Week We Launch Search at Techrights
We're planning to launch it some time next week. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Thursday.
Talk by Richard Stallman Will be Live-streamed in Less Than 10 Hours
Happy hacking
"No Kings" in the Software World (GAFAM Should Not Exist, Either)
"No Kings" is a good slogan. Let's start by ridding ourselves of masters, not only those who reside in DC or visit DC
Every Morning
Bugs/edge cases combined with automation can spell disaster
Insane, Deliberately Dishonest, or Just Another Bigot?
very intellectually-dishonest human being
A Lot of Techrights is Built on Perl
Perl also runs the sister site
The Register MS Selling Slop for Microsoft (Vapourware, Ponzi Scheme, False Claims)
What will be left of The Register MS if it keeps repeating falsehoods and looking to profit from Ponzi schemes?
analytics.usa.gov Says Less Than 14% of Web Requests (to Government Sites) Come From Vista 11
Vista 11 was released more than 4 years ago!
People Who Attempt to Take Down Correct Information Need a Doctor a Day
“Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” ― George Orwell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 20, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 20, 2025
Vista 11 is Sinking While Microsoft is PIPing (Mass Layoffs But Silent Layoffs)
We're witnessing a shift in platform dominance
Richard Stallman is Having a Good Week Already (Stallman Was Right About 'Clown Computing')
That alone is worth bringing up in his talk
An Update About Soylent News, With Jan Rinok "Back in the Saddle"
Burnout or "near burnout" a possibility when having to curate abuse
When Prominent GNU/Linux Distros Are Run by Spies
What has Microsoft Canonical become?
More Publishers and Companies Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux", Not "Linux"
It's not to see InstallAware saying GNU/Linux this week