Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 6/9/2011: Android 3.2 Previews, wdiff 1.0.0 Released



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Understanding open source technologies, the ethical way
    The recent times have seen many big companies and even US government face brunt of invasions by hackers from other countries, creating a huge impact on world politics.

    With this trend several hackers offer help in repairing vulnerabilities in such systems. They in turn demand payments for the same, which is not ethical, because their work does not comply with pure assurance that an ethical hacker always guarantees.

    Thus for us ethical hackers, this unethical wayposes a threat to our image, which is yet to be repaired in the minds of governments and people in general.


  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS



  • Databases

    • NSA proposes Accumulo NoSQL database to Apache
      Built on top of Apache's Hadoop, Zookeeper and Thrift projects, Accumulo is a distributed key/value store based on the design of Google's BigTable. Developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA), the Accumulo project has now been proposed to the Apache Software Foundation for consideration and incubation as a new Apache project. Accumulo's big difference is that it has fine-grained label-based access control, which could allow different users to access a record but only see the fields they are allowed to see; the NSA developers believe such a database could work in "government, health care, and other industries where privacy is a concern".




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Another Crack in Oracle’s Case Against Google


    • Oracle v. Google - Google Knocks Another (Minor) Chip Out of Oracle
      Two weeks ago Google won the right to file a motion for summary judgment on Oracle's affirmative defense of assignor estoppel. As we explained at that time, Oracle was arguing that, since Google now employs some of the named inventors in the patents Oracle is asserting against Google, Google should be precluded from challenging the validity of those patents.

      Oracle has now decided to throw in the towel on that defense by agreeing to stipulate to its dismissal with prejudice, i.e., they cannot reassert this defense again in this case. 387 [PDF] This is not that big a deal. There was almost no chance that Oracle was going to be successful with the assignor estoppel defense (their attempt to apply it in this case went far beyond anything any court has allowed). Nevertheless, it knocks one more issue off the table. Note that the dismissal with prejudice on this defense is not final until the judge enters the order, but given the parties have agreed to the stipulation, that is a mere formality.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Project Releases

    • wdiff 1.0.0 released
      So what has changed? As user noticeable changes we have updated translations for Updated Dutch, French, Danish and Slovenian as well as a completely new translation file for Ukrainian thanks to Yuri Chornoivan. The code will now give more useful results in case the diff program either cannot be executed or fails for some reason.




  • Public Services/Government

    • Can Whitehall open up to open source?
      What's Whitehall's attitude to software procurement? A cynic might sum it up as "nobody ever got sacked for buying Microsoft".

      The current government has vowed to change the civil service mindset that has always preferred to spend money with the biggest firms and has been conservative about open source software.

      The Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude has vowed to create a level playing field for open source as part of a drive to cut costs.

      Now a BBC Freedom of Information (FOI) request has given us a glimpse of how big the challenge will be.


    • Government a closed shop for open source
      Amid promises from the current Government to give greater opportunities to open-source providers, the BBC made a flurry of Freedom of Information Act requests aimed at discovering the use of non-proprietary software in Whitehall.

      The figures from each department are hardly conclusive and vary in detail, but point to a situation in which conservatism rules the day, with civil-service buyers reluctant to look past low-risk, high-cost packages from big-name suppliers.


    • Indian Government Takes the Open Source Route
      The draft ‘Policy On Device Drivers For Procurement Of Hardware For e-Governance’ states that the, “Government of India (GOI) endeavours to provide e-governance services, which are technology-neutral, cost-effective, interoperable and vendor-neutral. The GOI Policy on open standards is a step towards meeting this objective in the development of e-governance applications.” The policy will be applicable in all new e-governance projects, as well as in existing ones.


    • Department for Transport Embraces Open Source Platform and Cloud-Based Hosting in Latest Kainos Project
      The Department for Transport (www.dft.gov.uk/) has become the latest central Government organisation to extend its relationship with Causeway, the application management services arm of Kainos, with a new contract to support the Department’s web activities and migration to a cloud-based open source platform.






Leftovers

  • Armageddon of IT
    The “innocent” third parties for this change could either ship their products in virtual machines paying the “tax” or they could port their software to GNU/Linux. Either way would cost ISVs some money but all the software makers owe the manufacturers of all that lovely hardware a lot, I figure. They should be glad to contribute to software freedom. End users might need some retraining but the OEMs could easily host training sites to prepare users. There could be lots of opportunity for smaller ISVs to compete against the big guys if they can get software working on GNU/Linux sooner than the big guys.


  • Health/Nutrition

    • Nurses to Obama: Heal America, Tax Wall Street!
      As President Obama gets ready for his big jobs speech Thursday, America’s nurses have a message for him. "Heal America, Tax Wall Street!" the signs read as nurses rallied in front of 61 Congressional offices this week. The nurses are proposing a bold alternative to the “cut, cut, cut” rhetoric emanating from Washington, D.C.




  • Cablegate





  • Finance

    • Pray for Goldman Sachs
      Because no amount of money ultimately protects you against the collapse of a nation, against raging compatriots in the streets too desperate to care anymore. Look at Rome, Greece, Rwanda, Russia (twice recently -- the Czars, then the Commies). Take a look at Gaddafi, Hussein and all the other leaders in the Middle East who have been feasting off their people.


    • WHo Do You THiNK BuiLT AMeRiCa?
      Watch the news this Labor Day. You will have the unique opportunity to hear and see politicians, robbers, thieves and human strip miners tell you about how they have the best interests of "working" American men and women at heart.




  • Civil Rights



    • Facebook Complains About German Sites Changing Functionality Of 'Like' Button To Comply With Law
      Who's more powerful when it comes to determining how social voting functionality works in Germany? The government or Facebook? You may recall a few weeks ago there were reports of a German official effectively banning the Facebook "like" button on third party sites as a privacy violation. While it doesn't say it's officially in response to this, the German news site Heise implemented a neat little workaround, in which you have to first click on the icon to "activate" it, and then you can click the "like" (Google translation of the original German). Under this system, the "like" button isn't loaded until a user clicks on it, thus there's no issue of Facebook automatically tracking folks via the button.






Recent Techrights' Posts

The EPO's Own 'Drug Bust': Berenguer is Gone, But Who Else?
EPO latest news
Improving Clarity When Presenting LLM Slop and Slop Images
There will likely be more changes (improvements) to improve the visibility of our labels
Articles About "Linux" That Are Actually Promotions of Microsoft Windows
The solution is to leave Windows, not get something "like Linux" or "similar to Linux"
Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Staff Representation Surprised at "Recent Changes in the Staffing of OHS Occupational Health Services (OHS)"
Once upon a time the Office offered to-notch services to all staff
IBM Exits Continue This Week
Some people talk about it anonymously, naming their role/position/unit, number of years (or band) etc.
 
The Second-Largest Institution in Europe (EPO) is Playing With Fire and Now It Puts the Largest One (EU) at Risk
The EPO will have some more shake-ups
Ethical Consumer Could Use a Mention of "Ethical Software"
Maybe the Free Software Foundation (FSF) can get in touch with them
Links 12/11/2025: A US President (Insurrectionist) Attacking British Media, Hyundai's Digital Restrictions (DRM)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/11/2025: Trains in Switzerland, Software Survival, and More
Links for the day
Trying to Cancel People and Projects That You Don't Like by Changing the Focus to Politics
Don't fall for it
What Kind of Bubble is AI? We'll Find Out Very Soon
In 2022 and 2023 Cory Doctorow was one among many who asserted "AI" was a bubble
Mandrake's Gaël Duval Debunks Clickbait Nonsense From ZDNet, a Non-Coder Pushing Bot-Made 'Code' (Plagiarism Done Poorly)
"Why AI won't "Kill Open Source”
Groklaw Won't be the Latest (Nor the Last) Major Site We Lose
Many other sites will go offline; the more popular among those will get hijacked by rogue actors
Slopwatch Turns 1 Next Month
2024-12-14 is when Slopwatch began
The Issue With Firefox is Not Its Brand
Mozilla seems to be the biggest enemy of Firefox at this point
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Gemini Links 11/11/2025: Kentucky, Bluesky, and Slop
Links for the day
The European Patent Office (EPO) is Still Hiding From Scandals
"No answers from VP1 to our letters to two Directors"
Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Donald Trump is Out of Time and Has Jurisdiction Issues in the UK
The court system or the courts of a nations are meant to serve the nation and its media, not media lawyers or litigation profiteers
Slopwatch: Many Fake Articles About "Linux" on Monday and Today
A lot of the Web is pure garbage. A lot of 'articles' are 100% fake.
Richard Stallman to be First Speaker at Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress 5 Days From Now, FSF Looking to Raise $400,000 by Year's End
the 40+ years-old FSF, which Dr. Stallman created to help promote Software Freedom and support GNU, is starting a new fund-raising campaign
Links 11/11/2025: Misinformation/Disinformation in Twitter/X and BBC in Trouble
Links for the day
Links 11/11/2025: Slop Ruins Music, Facebook "to Discontinue Like and Comment Buttons on Third-Party Websites"
Links for the day
Adrian & Diana von Bidder-Senn, Debian: detailed history of a death
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Voice of Microsoft
Marketing disguised as a science
"MIT Technology Review Insights" is the Selling of Ponzi Schemes for Sponsors (MIT Lacks Integrity)
Just like IBM, they're chaining buzzwords now
Rust Keeps Breaking Ubuntu in All Sorts of Extraordinary Ways (and All Distros Based on Ubuntu Will Break Also)
The FSF's stance on this is unclear
Boot-locking Laptops and Desktops After Falsely Marketing That As 'Security' and Not Obligatory
If anyone can confirm this to us
With Net Income of One Billion Dollars Tesla Claims It Can Pay a Fake Founder (Who Paid for This Lie) 1,000 Billions
What does this tell us about Wall Street?
GNU/Linux Cannot Buy Fake Journalism and It Won't Bribe Large Publishers
Free software developers don't purchase "sponsored" placements and that will never change
The 'Politics' of Operating Systems (or Exclusion for Inclusion's Sake)
This whole 'wrongthink' policing is getting out of hand
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Save You Lots of Money and Problems
We've basically reduced the environmental/carbon footprint of the site by a factor of ~100 (2 orders of magnitude)
IBM Does Not Care About Families, Communities, and Even Its Own Workers
Red Hat isn't a family and to believe that it is would be the makeup of cults
Too Much of Today's Web is Fake, Not Just Fake News
We'll continue to advocate for adoption of Gemini Protocol
Simulating a Downtime Tomorrow Night
It is expected that network redundancy will make this maintenance invisible to us, but IRC hangups or general slowness are still a possibility
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, November 10, 2025
Links 11/11/2025: Conflicts and Politics From National Broadcasters
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/11/2025: Poetry and Electronics Studies
Links for the day
Apple's Debt Grew by About 16 Billion Dollars This Past Year, "Disappointing iPhone Sales" Reported
People who buy Apple's goods based on some false notion that Apple is "cool" or ethical or "underdog" (late 90s) aren't just living in the past; they're fools
Turning Down Proprietary Software is About Making Society Better
We should not be tempted to shame people for merely trying to keep programmers honest and human rights-respecting
Debian GNU/Linux Became the Most Popular (Most Distros Are Based on It) Owing to Richard Stallman
New presentation
The Internet is Becoming Dead or a Zombie
The Internet is becoming like a giant botfarm
A Day for Poppies
This site will run as usual today. We continue our fight for Software Freedom.
"Modern" Doesn't Mean Better, It Typically Just Means Newer
RMS demonised as someone who rejects "modern society" ("rejecting modern society") by a site that uses slop extensively
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part IV: European Patent Office to Come Under Media and Political Scrutiny
We'll persist until we get some answers
Gemini Links 10/11/2025: Homelabs and KeePassRX Manual Now Available
Links for the day
63-Page Response to the EPO's Effort to Decrease the Salaries of Workers While EPO Management Snorts Cocaine for 20,000 Euros a Month
"Read more in these written comments we sent to the members of the GCC"
Response to Another New Hit Piece About Richard Stallman (RMS)
We see similar smears floating about and tackling them can help not only RMS but anyone who thinks similarly about computers
Shrinking and Cheapening the Workforce: the Future of Red Hat and IBM
Does Red Hat cheapen the workforce?
Links 10/11/2025: BBC Turmoil and Iranian Drought Crisis
Links for the day
The Register MS Still Occasionally Uses Slop
some articles don't use real images
Links 10/11/2025: "Scam Altman Gets Served Subpoena" and "China will Rule Renewable Energy"
Links for the day
ubuntupit.com Has Paused the LLM Slop (for Now)
No slopfarm ever offered any real value
More Media Coverage From Austria Regarding Cocaine Use by EPO Management
The ultimate goal is full accountability
Ponzi Economics and the Media's Role in Defending Ponzi Economics
We occasionally notice weak or almost-non-existent coverage regarding the economy
Links 10/11/2025: Very High Windows TCO and XBox Continues to Languish
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, November 09, 2025