06.04.15

Links 4/6/2015: Sourceforge Hijacks Nmap Account, IBM Acquires BlueBox

Posted in News Roundup at 5:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Black “mirror”: SourceForge has now taken over Nmap audit tool project [Updated]

    SoureForge has sworn off its ways of wrapping “unmaintained” code from open source projects in installers that offer bundled commercial products in the wake of objections raised by some open source communities. But one policy remains in effect—the takeover of project pages SourceForge’s staff decides are inactive, and assignment of ownership of those projects to staff accounts. One of the latest projects grabbed in this way is the Nmap security auditing tool.

  • Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

    Hi Folks! You may have already read the recent news about Sourceforge.net
    hijacking the GIMP project account to distribute adware/malware.
    Previously GIMP used this Sourceforge account to distribute their Windows
    installer, but they quit after Sourceforge started tricking users with fake
    download buttons which lead to malware rather than GIMP. Then Sourceforge
    took over GIMP’s account and began distributing a trojan installer which
    tries to trick users into installing various malware and adware before
    actually installing GIMP.

  • SourceForge under fire again for seizing Nmap account
  • Advantages entice enterprises to embrace open source

    The state of affairs of enterprise IT is changing quickly. Open source will become a much higher percentage of every IT organization’s environment, given its advantages in terms of cost, control, and innovation. Likewise, open source skills will soon become a critical requirement, both for using open source wisely, but also in attracting the kind of talent necessary to compete in a Third Platform world.

  • Survey: Despite Open Source Community Gripes About Apple, Most Still Use It [132 self-selected respondents who use a particular bit of software, not "Open Source Community"]
  • Mac Asay: Open source vs. Apple: The holy war that wasn’t

    Actually, the very term “open source” suggests a more relaxed view on software sharing, having displaced its GPL-wielding free software cousins years back. Whereas a free sourceror wouldn’t be caught dead using anything other than (GNU) Linux, open sourcerors are happy to use whatever works.

  • Events

    • Being SELF-ish: Linux Comes to the GNU South

      That said, the next stop on the Magical Linux-y Tour will be in North Carolina — you’ll see the link in the upper right of this page — the SouthEast LinuxFest, known more commonly by its acronym SELF (FOSS Force is a Supporting Sponsor), takes place next weekend in Charlotte. For three days, June 12-14 to be precise, Jeremy Sands and the rest of the crew at SELF bring Linux, BSD and FOSS to what has lately become my favorite geographical location, by name: the GNU/South.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Rust commits to 6-week release cycle

        The Rust programming language is an ambitious project in many ways. With the release of Rust 1.0 on May 15, one might ask, “What’s next?” Many words have been written about the technical aspects of how the Rust language achieves its goals of memory safety without garbage collection, but less has been discussed about the project itself and how it is structured. Open source projects are more than just code, and Rust is no exception.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Cisco acquires Piston Cloud Computing, will use to ramp up Intercloud offerings

      Piston gives Cisco more muscle around distributed systems and automated deployment, in addition to adding another level of infrastructure to the Cisco OpenStack private cloud.

    • Does Hadoop Need Governance? Datameer Says Yes

      Datameer, which is billed as a big data insights platform for rapid data discovery, has announced new data governance capabilities for its native Hadoop environment. We’ve been reporting on indications that many enterprises are finding Hadoop, well, very hard to deploy and manage. Datameer acknowledges that Hadoop is complex to deploy and use effectively, and notes that “analysts and administrators alike need an easier way to navigate data pipelines that have been developed by multiple departments and participants, and involve multiple data sources.”

    • IBM Acquires Managed OpenStack Vendor BlueBox

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • The LibreOffice Report: 40 Pages of Yippee!

      The Document Foundation today released their annual report outlining their work for the year 2014. It was another banner year for the free office suite from donations to bugs fixed to community outreach. Every year TDF and LibreOffice continue to break previous records. TDF thanked everyone who contributed to their success including those with financial support.

    • LibreOffice/Document Foundation Bonanza

      Next to Linux or Android, LibreOffice is one of the most active FLOSS projects in the world. Arguably, it is one of the keys to liberating the desktop from Wintel as the office suite is one of Wintel’s key lock-ins for business. With moves to create a web-based version and one for Android/Linux, the future is bright however IT diversifies. Anyone considering the cost of IT should look at the office suite. Almost everyone uses one.

  • CMS

    • What’s New for You This June in Open Source CMS

      You can’t talk about open source content management systems without talking about WordPress, the most popular CMS on the planet.

      WordPress powers some of the largest websites in the world including CNN, Time magazine and Ted. According to W3tech, WordPress powers 23 percent of the top 10 million websites in the world.

  • Business

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Nordic countries to cooperate on open government

      Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have decided to cooperate on their open government strategies and implementations. To begin with, they will share their national OGP work and jointly promote open data.

    • Rewind on Aryeom and Jehan’s Open videos

      The concept was an interactive video included in an HTML canvas. People could upload a photograph and an address (using OpenStreetMap assets), to show their support to Mozilla, and their image would show embedded during video viewing on the right coordinates in the drawn world map. The actual page which won is still up, with the interactive video version.

      [...]

      This all coupled with more GIMP, Blender, Ardour, Synfig, etc. improvements, we should soon be able to have a very powerful ecosystem on GNU/Linux for any kind of movie making and animation.

    • Open Data

      • New data science major aligns with growing corporate needs

        The University established a new data science major, which will be subsumed under LSA’s Statistics Department and the College of Engineering’s Division of Computer Science and Engineering. The new major will be available in Fall 2015 to both LSA and Engineering students.

    • Open Access/Content

    • Open Hardware

      • Why my doctor prescribed me open hardware

        I recall a senior medical doctor once saying that being a practitioner nowadays is much more difficult than ever before, because when people get diagnosed, they go home to search the web, and often come back with tough questions. Open hardware for physiological computing isn’t making it any easier, but it seems like that’s not a bad thing.

Leftovers

  • Toyota weighs Ford’s open-source CarPlay rival

    It’s not the first time the two companies have collaborated on infotainment. Back in 2011, Ford and Toyota inked a deal that saw them work together on next-gen standards for dashboard tech, including making it not only smarter but safer to use on the move.

  • Ford details SYNC 3’s ambitious roll-out

    Announced back in December, SYNC 3 sees Ford step away from the Microsoft system of older SYNC versions and instead use a QNX-based platform.

  • Hardware

  • Security

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Finance

    • Poor People Can’t Afford Homes–so NYT Calls for Making Them More Expensive

      There are two problems with this complaint. First, it is factually wrong, or at least misleading. The weak price performance of lower-cost homes depends very much on the time window being considered. If homeowners bought near the peak of the bubble, which disproportionately affected lower-income neighborhoods, then their prices would still be depressed; however, if they bought before the bubble, they would be doing quite well.

    • PayPal draws consumer ire over robo-texting rights

      When eBay cuts PayPal loose this summer, users of the new digital money giant will find they’ve agreed to new terms of service that take effect July 1. Those terms include PayPal giving itself the right to robocall or robo-text members at any phone number the firm can find, for just about any reason — from debt collecting to advertisements to opinion polling.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Scott Walker: The First ALEC President?

      Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will address the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in San Diego this July.

    • Friedman Turns Baltimore Uprising Into Commercial for Wife’s Charter School

      Today putative liberal and mustachioed wonker Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 6/3/15) did what he does best: take something vaguely topical and use it as a hook to promote whatever topic he and his billionaire friends want to propagandize that week.

      Whether it’s advocating collective punishment of Ukrainians to push his CEO friend’s “Green Energy” IPO during its quiet period, or unironically floating the idea of arming ISIS to demagogue Iran, it’s a tried and true formula for America’s most tedious Important Person.

  • Censorship

    • Google Takes MPAA to Court Over Secret Censorship Plans

      Hoping to find out more about the secret Internet censorship plans Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood was pushing, Google is now taking the MPAA to court. After several subpoenas remained largely unanswered, the search giant is now asking a New York federal court to ensure that the MPAA other parties hand over the requested information.

  • Privacy

    • Freedom Act: US law limits snooping, just as UK gears up to make its spies far more powerful

      The US has dramatically limited the powers of its spy agencies, just as the UK gears up to hugely increase what its own can do.

      The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act last night, placing new restrictions and oversight on the way that the country’s National Security Agency can spy on citizens, in what was hailed as a victory for privacy campaigners and a direct result of the Snowden leaks.

      But in the UK, lawmakers are getting ready to pass into law the “Snoopers’ Charter” — which among other things imposes that internet service providers must store information on their users so that intelligence agencies can access them. After the majority Conservative government was elected, the Draft Communications Bill could include even more powers, with David Cameron having threatened to ban or reduce the encryption that is used to keep data secure.

    • USA Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go From Here

      The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversight on the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by NSA defender Senate Majority Mitch McConnell were defeated, and we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law. Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the FISA court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act.

    • Don’t Celebrate USA Freedom Act Passage

      Mozilla recently announced it’s support for the USA Freedom Act alongside allies like the EFF, but the EFF also ended up withdrawing its support because of deficiencies in the legislation and a recent opinion from an appeals court.

      I think Mozilla should have withdrawn its support on this still flawed bill because while it did push forward some important reforms it still extended flawed sections of the law that infringe on individual’s civil liberties such as Section 206 “Roving Wiretap” authority program. This program essentially allows the FBI access to any phone line, mobile communications or even internet connections a suspect may be using without ever having to provide a name to anyone. This is clearly not good legislation because it allows overreach and lacks a requirement that communications or accounts being tapped are tied to the subject. While this is just one example there are many other provisions that allow intelligence and law enforcement agencies to continue their spying, just not as broadly as before.

  • Civil Rights

    • Coulson Lying is OK by Judge – to Maintain Sheridan Conviction

      Coulson lied about phone hacking in the Sheridan trial. Coulson has form. “Lord” David Burn also has form. He was part of the Megrahi “defence” team of advocates who failed to ask a score of glaringly obvious questions about the holes in the prosecution case and payment of witnesses in the fit-up of the century. The Scottish legal establishment is a sewer.

    • Obama confident in the TSA despite failure to detect explosives

      President Obama has confidence in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) despite the ease with which undercover agents were able to smuggle explosives into airports, the White House said Tuesday.

      “The president does continue to have confidence that the officers of the TSA do very important work that continues to protect the American people,” press secretary Josh Earnest said.

    • Obama’s trust-me approach falls flat with Democrats

      President Obama’s argument that Democrats should trust his vision on trade is falling flat on Capitol Hill.

      Democrats — even some of Obama’s closest allies — say it’s not enough for the president to pronounce his trade agenda the most progressive in history.

      The lawmakers want assurances that the agreements under negotiation, particularly a huge deal being finalized with Pacific Rim nations, will protect U.S. jobs — assurances many say they simply haven’t gotten.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Net Neutrality: EU Member States Refuse to Hear the Voice of Citizens

      The Council of the European Union has been blocking for weeks the principle of Net Neutrality and its entrenching in the legislation. As the European Parliament refuses for now to give in to pressure from Member States and the powerful telecom lobbies, the negotiations held last night, which brought together delegations from the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission, were therefore unsuccessful. The EU Parliament must keep on refusing any agreement that would undermine a thorough protection of the Net neutrality principle.

  • DRM

    • The quest to save today’s gaming history from being lost forever

      Jason Scott knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the preservation of digital software. At the Internet Archive, he’s collected thousands of classic games, pieces of software, and bits of digital ephemera. His sole goal is making those things widely available through the magic of browser-based emulation.

      Compared to other types of archaeology, this kind of preservation is still relatively easy for now. While the magnetic and optical disks and ROM cartridges that hold classic games and software will eventually be rendered unusable by time, it’s currently pretty simple to copy their digital bits to a form that can be preserved and emulated well into the future.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom Thwarts Huge U.S. Government Asset Grab

        Kim Dotcom has booked a significant victory in his battle against U.S. efforts to seize assets worth millions of dollars. In a decision handed down this morning, Justice Ellis granted Dotcom interim relief from having a $67m forfeiture ordered recognized in New Zealand. Dotcom informs TF that the victory gives his legal team new momentum.

      • Russia Orders ISPs to Block The Pirate Bay

        Following a European trend, the Russian telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor has ordered local ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. Without a separate court order, two domain names of the popular torrent site have been added to the national blocklist.

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