Links 28/1/2012: Acting on ACTA, PacApt
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2012-01-28 15:42:57 UTC
- Modified: 2012-01-28 15:42:57 UTC
Contents
-
Kernel Space
-
A lot of noise has been made about a security vulnerability affecting the Linux core. The fault has been corrected and Linux editors are updating all of their systems after exploits appeared on the web.
-
Applications
-
The Fedora developers are currently working on implementing the plan to move all files stored in the Linux distribution's /bin/, /sbin/, /lib/ and /lib64/ directories to equivalent sub-directories in /usr/. Symbolic links will ensure compatibility with scripts and software that may otherwise be caught out by the change. The restructuring was first mooted last autumn, before being earmarked for inclusion in Fedora 17. The development team has since discarded the idea of moving all files stored in /sbin/ and /usr/sbin/ into /usr/bin/ and deleting the sbin directories.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Desktop Environments
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
-
The first tablet computer that comes with Plasma Active pre-installed.
-
-
It’s no secret that we love Arch Linux and one of Arch’s best features is the simple, easy-to-use package manager, Pacman. Here’s how to get Pacman’s simple command structure in other Linux distributions.
-
Debian Family
-
People Behind Debian: Josselin Mouette, founder of the Debian GNOME team
Josselin Mouette is one the leaders of the pkg-gnome team, he takes sound technical decisions and doesn’t fear writing code to work-around upstream issues. He deserves kudos for the work he has put into packaging GNOME over the years. He can also be very sarcastic (sometimes he even enjoys participating to flamewars on debian lists), and there are quite a few topics where we have long agreed to disagree. But this kind of diversity is also what makes Debian a so interesting place…
-
Derivatives
-
Canonical/Ubuntu
-
Linux vendor could change the way users interact with enterprise applications with its Heads Up Display. The intelligent HUD interface will understand user needs and respond to them.
-
Following our previous articles, Ubuntu Flickr/Shotwell Photos Lens, Ubuntu Spotify Scope, Ubuntu DeviantArt Scope, Ubuntu SSH Lens, Ubuntu Binary Clock Lens, Ubuntu YouTube Lens and Scope, Ubuntu Calendar Lens, Ubuntu Web Sources Lens, Ubuntu Gwibber Lens, Ubuntu Books Lens, Ubuntu Cities Scope, Ubuntu Grooveshark Scope, Ubuntu Calculator Scope and Pirate Bay Torrents Lens for Unity, today we are introducing the Ubuntu Launchpad Lens for the Unity interface.
-
-
Open Source Linux based gaming handheld and mini-laptop Pandora has created lots of buzz when it was revealed 4 years back.
Since then the project has gone under numerous rough stages, production issues, tech spec changes and financial problems. A limited batch of 4000 units was available for pre-orders but not everyone has got the device on time.
-
Phones
-
In this era of technology and internet, social networking sites are getting more and more popularity. People are spending hours in front of them. For creating a social media website a platform is necessary, to make this easy came the social networking platforms. In the case of social media software, market the competition is very high. If you are looking to start a social media website then it is difficult to choose the platform. Before choosing social media software just get all available information about it and conclude weather, it will benefit you or not. Let us now take a look of the five most popular open source-networking platforms available in the market
-
Just 12 months ago, even the largest organisations lacked the infrastructure, tools and skills to turn large datasets into business insight. Today, though, the world has changed. A combination of low-cost, commodity hardware and great open-source software are lowering the Big Data bar for organisations of all types and sizes. Put simply, open-source solutions are allowing organisations to spin up hundreds of servers to support Big Data services in seconds, and pay only for the resources they use.
-
Web Browsers
Chrome
-
I bet that when you turn on your PC, one of the first programs that you start is your Browser .
Indeed, many say that the browser that we have installed in our computer show a part of us! There is, therefore, who prefer Opera: a browser elegant and very
particular, for those who prefer the aesthetics at the practicality, there are those who, following the mass chose the Firefox browser, which has won a great battle against IE in a recent past.
-
Project Releases
-
Openness/Sharing
-
The Open Source Centre is designed to collect foreign information made public by media reports, press releases and announcements by international organizations, said the official at the Unification Ministry.
-
Standards/Consortia
-
As Flash's ubiquity begins to erode, standards-based Web technologies are going to become the path forward for developers who want to offer a user experience that works across all screens. The HTML5 video element is already widely supported in modern Web browsers, but the capabilities and codecs that are available differ between implementations.
-
Security
-
However, at security to get into the Capitol, I was told I could not bring the canteen in, even though it was empty. I asked if there was any reason for this. I was told I just couldn't bring it in. I asked if there was any place I could "leave" it, and I was told to go outside and there were dumpsters to the right. I even asked if someone could hold it for me, since it would just be an hour or so. No luck. Dumpsters, outside to the right. The canteen isn't anything special, but I do like it. According to the price tag still on the bottom, it cost $11 when my wife bought it for me. I can buy another canteen, but really, there's a bit of a principle thing to all of this. If the canteen itself is dangerous, then, putting it in a dumpster outside isn't going to change that.
-
Civil Rights
-
Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
One of the more important points in understanding some of the fights over the ridiculousness of today's copyright and patent laws is to recognize how knowledge (information) is a natural resource. It is the input that makes other great things. Economist Paul Romer's famous research really showed how knowledge and information as a resource is what creates economic growth. Once you recognize that fact, you begin to run into problems when you think about locking up that natural resource. Think of other natural resources. Do we think the world is better off if there's a greater supply of each of those? An abundance? If we have an abundance of wheat, that's a good thing. If we have an abundance of energy, that's a good thing. There may be side effects of such abundances, but the overall abundance is something worth cherishing.
-
Copyrights
-
We've talked a lot in the past about the "idea/expression dichotomy." This is an important concept in copyright law that says you can only copyright the specific expression, and not the idea. This is supposed to protect people from getting accused of copyright infringement for basically making something similar to what someone else made. Unfortunately, as we've been noting with dismay over the past few years, the idea that there's some bright line between "idea" and "expression" has been slowly fading away, and courts are, increasingly, effectively wiping out the distinction. In the US, we've seen this with the ridiculous case between a photographer, David LaChapelle, and the singer Rihanna, because some of her videos were clear homages to his photographs. The expression was entirely different, but the judge didn't think so, and Rihanna ended up having to pay up.
-
Karaoke might be fun, but it's also proved legally dangerous over the years. One publisher of karaoke discs is taking a publisher co-owned by the Michael Jackson estate to court over alleged abuse.
-
ACTA
-
Earlier today, Loz Kaye, leader of the Pirate Party, published a statement highlighting a major threat to the Internet, to civil liberties, and our political and legal systems; ACTA. Following this, the Party has received many requests asking what we, ordinary citizens, can do about this and the best way to stop it.
-
The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. (excellent analysis from Benkler and Downes) and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia).
Recent Techrights' Posts
- An American War on GNU/Linux, Software Freedom, and British Investigative, Science-Based Reporting - Part I - A Matter of National Security
- Those people are Americans who try to advance the interests of American corporations by weaponising courts abroad
- The Register MS, Sponsored by Communist Party of China (CPC)
- What will happen when the bubble crashes the economy?
-
- Gemini Links 07/03/2026: Buying Woodland, Indra 1.3.0 Available, and LLM Exhaustion
- Links for the day
- The Harder They Attempt to Take Down This Site (and Take Away Liberties), the More People Will See This Site
- We'll carry on as usual, as from sunlight comes justice
- Why They Always Try to Shoot the Messenger (When the Message Harms Profits)
- A matter of economics
- Coinbase - Like Block - is in Huge Trouble, Its Debt Nearly Doubled in Half a Year
- The real reason Block is collapsing is its debt
- Starting Another New Series This Evening, It's About American Folly
- today commences a series long in the making (years)
- Nations Stand to Benefit From Gender Equality and Increased Participation by Women
- International Women's Rights Day starts in about 6 hours in the UK
- Microsoft is Losing It, Now It's Censoring Its Critics and Sceptics
- Whether the measurements made by statCounter are accurate or not, the trends (long-term) typically make sense
- WIRED (Conde Nast) Reviews Are Paid-for Marketing Spam, They Change Dates on Old 'Articles' to Make Them Look Relevant and New
- The Web is fast becoming a burial ground for ads, trash, spam, and slop
- Gemini Links 07/03/2026: Humour, Chilling, and Oversized 'Phones'
- Links for the day
- Cyber|Show by Andy and Helen Recommended by Techrights and Tux Machines
- If your time is limited and you look for informative essays and shows (audio)
- Links 07/03/2026: CJEU to Finally Examine Behaviour of the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Kangaroo Court, Creative Commons (CC) Hosts Open Heritage Statement Event in Amsterdam
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's Thailand Problem
- It's definitely not Windows
- New Lows for Microsoft in Micronesia
- GNU/Linux has shown some growth there too
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 5 Out of 200: Clearly Not a Security Professional/Expert, Only Ever Pretending to be One
- "The Claimant says he is “a computer security expert”, but his background and his track record in the education sense (genetics) does not support this assertion."
- Links 07/03/2026: Fuel Already Running Low and "Economic Crisis of the Iran War"
- Links for the day
- The Corporate Media Repeated the Lies Told by Jack Dorsey ("AI" Hype), Now It Does the Same for Larry Ellison
- Disregard the hundreds of headlines that say mass layoffs at Oracle are due to "AI" something
- The Free Software Community is Gaining Momentum as Its Importance is More Broadly Realised
- As long as "trendy" technology goes in a negative direction there will be a growing portion in society looking for alternatives
- Spooking or Chasing Away Women (From Computer Science)
- The status quo discourages women from even trying to study Computer Science and related disciplines
- "IBM Has Changed So Much in the Last Decade to the Point It's Completely Unrecognizable."
- IBM is a dying, rotting company with a morbid culture
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 06, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, March 06, 2026
- Gemini Links 07/03/2026: Coffee Problem, Marchintosh, Learning, and "Selectively Disabling HTTP"
- Links for the day
- Under IBM, Some Fedora Blog Posts Have Become LLM Slop! (Red Hat is Doomed by Slop Fanaticism)
- Who would even bother reading such trash?
- Lots of People Leaving IBM Today
- IBM cannot be trusted
- Dances With Wolves, Wakes Up With Fleas
- Small minds say "td;dr" whereas the rest say, "give me information, give me time to study it"...
- LLM Slop Rare and Scarce This Friday
- We still hope that by the end of this year slop will become nearly extinct
- Defending British Democracy From American Predators
- We stand united and strong in the face of predators
- Links 06/03/2026: LLM Prompt-injection Vulnerability in Microsoft's Proprietary GitHub, "260,000 Federal Jobs Lost"
- Links for the day
- It's Friday and Many People Publicly Announce Leaving IBM (Which is Engineering 'Willful' Departures to Mask RAs' Scale)
- We understand from whistleblowers that IBM already destroyed Red Hat's culture
- Dr. Richard Stallman (RMS), the Man Whose Mind Scares GAFAM et al, Began Speaking in Switzerland
- His ideas and ideals are not obscene
- Gemini Links 06/03/2026: "Setting up the Feed" and Using Molly Brown
- Links for the day
- Links 06/03/2026: Can't Copyright Slop in US, Microsoft Became Slop Provider for Militarism
- Links for the day
- Garrett Does Not Just Try to Cover Up for Himself, He's Clearly Covering Up for His Mates From Microsoft (and Admits Third Parties Fund His Litigation, With Their Legal Bills Estimates Already Approaching $1,000,000)
- They have already sent us about 75 KG of legal papers. How is any judge supposed to keep up?
- Richard Stallman in the United States - Part IV - Back to Switzerland
- The "cancel mob" tried to "finish off" RMS 5 years ago
- Dr. Richard Stallman in Ada Lovelace Lecture Series 20 Hours From Now in Lucerne School of Computer Science and Information Technology (Rotkreuz)
- Well-connected and affluent corporations want everything to be controlled by them, ranging from culture to words and news
- Threats Issued to Daniel Pocock Having Launched the JuristGate Web Site Which Covers Financial Fraud in "Legal Insurance" Clothing
- Is our world governed by laws or by rich corporations (or nations/superpowers) with well-connected lawyers/politicians?
- International Women's Day: At the EPO, for Women to Become Managers They Need to Sleep With Well-connected Men and Mingle With Corrupt Men
- Sunday is International Women's Day
- Dr. Richard Stallman Starts His Talks in Switzerland in 8 Hours
- They try to assess how many people plan to attend to ensure everyone gets a seat (without compromising the privacy/identity of those attending)
- IBM Red Hat Layoffs: It's Not About "AI"
- "Automation" is not "AI", it's just a generic term which can describe jobs left for machines to do, sometimes computers
- Microsoft Windows Used to be Identified on Over 99% of Web Requests From Benin. Now It's Around 50%.
- Or a lot less
- Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' Has Severe Financial Problems, Version Inflation ("GPT-5.4") is Mindless Hype and a Misleading Distraction
- In practice, both users and sponsors of ChaffGPT are fleeing
- The Techrights Static Site Generator (SSG) Turns 5 Next Year
- It's still under active development in our Git servers
- New XBox Boss (Sharma) Implicitly Confirmed XBox (the Console) is Now Dead
- Vista 11 is now also known as "XBox"
- Murder as a 'Joke' to GAFAM People (Sociopathy)
- When it comes to Microsoft and Salesforce, they profit from this mentality
- GNU/Linux Seen as Rising to 20% in Eritrea, But That's statCounter Identifying "Unknown" as GNU/Linux
- What if statCounter managed to figure out what all those "unknowns" are?
- Microsoft ‘Project Helix’ is Just a Tweet in MElon's "X"
- Some "tweet" is easy, as words are cheap
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 4 Out of 200: Rianne’s Version of Events and Narrative
- today we tell Rianne's experience
- EPO Staff to 'Meet' This Coming Tuesday to Plan Industrial Actions Including Upcoming Strikes
- using Microsoft spyware to organise this can be an own goal because Microsoft serves the dictators, not the union that tries to topple them
- Thousands of EPO Workers Rally Against EPO Management
- The staff is furious to see what became of the EPC and the EPO. This is not sustainable.
- In Argentina Firefox is Measured at Only 1%, Google Chrome (Proprietary) at About 90%
- And it has long been that way
- IBM's March 2026 Layoffs Already Happening (to Accelerate Soon in Europe and America)
- We're probably seeing some of the last years of IBM and it's anything but certain that IBM can survive the coming decade
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 05, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, March 05, 2026
- Gemini Links 05/03/2026: Industrial Panettone, Cancel, and LLMs
- Links for the day
- It's Not "AI", IBM is Collapsing Due to Financial Difficulties, "All Small Country Offices Will Close"
- IBM is in trouble. Insiders know it.
- "AI Companies" Running Out of Money, GAFAM Layoffs Are Signs of Weakness, Not "AI Efficiency" or Novelty
- In the past, this term ("AI") had another meaning and connotation
- Libel/Defamation Law Does Not Exist to Cover up Crimes
- The projection tactics are nothing new
- Myanmar/Burma: Growing Acceptance of GNU/Linux, Big Losses for Windows
- GNU/Linux has come close to 5% there
- Without IBM, Microsoft Would Not Have Taken Off. Both Companies Need to be 'Taken Down'.
- Maybe it's time to boycott IBM as well
- 'Former' Red Hat Staff Upset That Techrights Covers IBM Accounting Problems
- Are we touching a sensitive subject at IBM?
- Ubuntu is Controlled by a Youngster From the British Army (Background in Mass Surveillance), So One Can Expect Ubuntu to Not Respect Privacy
- "Canonical is aware of the legislation and is reviewing it internally with legal counsel"
- IBM Hates Computer Freedom. This Means Red Hat Too is an Enemy of Software Freedom.
- A summary of Fedora's position when it comes to "attestation"
- IBM Union Says Many IBM Layoffs in Europe, With Netherlands and Belgium Confirmed, Allegedly Italy Soon (200 Layoffs)
- IBM's demise will harm Red Hat and already harms Red Hat, according to whistleblowers
- Microsoft and Microsoft's 'Open' 'AI' Seeking Bailout From the Pentagon Means Brand Erosion
- Microsoft and its offshoots growing more and more dependent on military ("defence"; "Department of War") budget
- Another EPO Strike a Fortnight From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) Shares 127-Page Document Explaining How Policies Impact EPO Staff
- The Office is circling down the drain
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 3 Out of 200: A More In-Depth Breakdown
- presents the narrative in a less chronological and more logically coherent fashion
- 2026 Seems Like (Potentially) the Last Year of Slop Drowning News Sites
- Sites that do so perish [...] It's getting hard to find slop in news sites which cover "Linux" because many gave up
- Links 05/03/2026: New LexisNexis Data Breach Confirmed, "Goldman Sachs Head During Financial Crisis Says He “Smells” a Similar Crash Coming"
- Links for the day
- "Silent Layoffs" or "Forever Layoffs" at IBM and Red Hat (After Bluewashing)
- Like every day (all day long) we can see people who leave IBM and say something that's based on a 'script'
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Others Promoting String of RMS Talks, Starting Tomorrow in Lucerne School of Computer Science and Information Technology
- Well done, FSF!
- Links 05/03/2026: A Bet Against Substack, American Government Openly Hostile Towards Environment
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/03/2026: Greed and Sentiments Shifting Against Slop
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 04, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, March 04, 2026