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Links 25/5/2012: Linux Mint 13, LLVM 3.1





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • 61% of the top 10k sites on the web are served by open source projects Apache and nginx
    Uptime monitoring service Pingdom analyzed the top 10,000 websites on the web and unsurprisingly found out that 74.6% of them are served on web servers run by open source software.


  • Simon Phipps is the new OSI President


  • Open Source: Why Are You Still Waiting?
    You see, since 2003 open source has been intertwined with Brazil's government, which claims to have realized hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings. Critics with something to lose--notably Microsoft--claim that government workers immediately load up their Linux workstations with Windows, making the open-source desktop an illusion. Besides, Microsoft says, its software offers "better value" when the benefits are weighed against the costs.



  • Hughski ColorHug field report, or “test”, or “review”
    When Richard Hughes, founder of Hughski Limited announced an “open source” colorimeter with full GPL source code and even Linux support late last year, he offered a developers’ discount for testers and early adopters. So I was quick to give him a nod on that one. A few weeks ago I was informed that now I could have one if I still wanted it, and I did. And two days ago my ColorHug arrived, and here it is:


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS



  • Databases

    • 451 Research delivers market sizing estimates for NoSQL, NewSQL and MySQL ecosystem
      NoSQL and NewSQL database technologies pose a long-term competitive threat to MySQL’s position as the default database for Web applications, according to a new report published by 451 Research.

      The report, MySQL vs. NoSQL and NewSQL: 2011-2015, examines the competitive dynamic between MySQL and the emerging NoSQL non-relational, and NewSQL relational database technologies.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Greek municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis migrating to LibreOffice
      The Greek municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis, just east of Thessaloniki, is migrating all of its PCs to the free and open source suite LibreOffice, with the help of the Greek Linux User Group. Greeklug explains in a statement published on 27 March that it has finished the migration from a proprietary office suite on 91 PCs. Still to be migrated are 45 PCs.


    • VirtualBox 4.1.16 Has Support for Linux Kernel 3.4
      Oracle announced a few minutes ago, May 22nd, the immediate availability for download of the popular VirtualBox 4.1.16 virtualization software.




  • Education

    • On the purpose of education
      This is something that has mattered to me for all my teaching career. When training, I took Terry McLoughlin’s optional philosophy of education module; this was the best bit of the course, certainly the one that had the most lasting effect on me as an educator. After three years of a maths degree to sit in seminars where students took responsibility for introducing each week’s topics seemed revolutionary then. We talked and thought about what education was for, something we find a little time for now in my own lectures at Roehampton. The idea that captivated me then, and remains the touchstone for me still, is that of rational autonomy.




  • Business



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Project Releases

    • Nmap now fully ready for IPv6
      Nearly three years after the last major release of Nmap, version 6.0 of the open source network scanner has been released. Nmap is a popular utility for scanning and mapping network ranges to extract information about the systems attached to the network and the network's topology. In version 6.0, the developers have added full IPv6 support while enhancing Nmap's scripting engine, web scanning, mapping GUI and scanning performance, while also introducing a new tool called Nping.


    • LLVM 3.1 Officially Released


    • LLVM 3.1 Compiler Infrastructure released




  • Public Services/Government

    • First Open Government Summit to debate Open Source in the Public Sector
      The first Open Government Summit will take place on May 30th in Central Hall Westminster, London and will examine how the open source model allows public sector organisations to be more efficient, save money, meet mission-critical IT demands and improve their services.

      Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “The advantages of open source for government IT are well documented and will lead to efficiencies and savings in the delivery of public services. How to implement open source solutions most effectively is an important matter, and I am pleased that the summit is devoting time to discussing it.”


    • Government reneges on open source promise for Cloudstore 2.0
      The UK government has finally unveiled the second iteration of its Cloudstore after a number of delays, and has reneged on its pledge to make version 2.0 open source.


    • Crisis does not foster Greek open source adoption
      Greek public administrations in practice use almost no open source, in spite of a law approved by the Greek parliament in 2011 that promotes the development of open source. European funded initiatives like Open-Source for European Public Administrations (Osepa) could change that, those involved say.




  • Openness/Sharing

    • ArduPilot Mega 2.0 Does Drone Autopilot on the Cheap
      This one is for all those autonomous vehicle makers out there who need a cheap autopilot system to make it go. Among the bits of awesome seen at the 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire, was the ArduPilot Mega 2.0 (APM2) from 3D Robotics, a complete open source autopilot system.


    • Open Data

      • What is open data?
        Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

        The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open content, and open access. The philosophy behind open data has been long established, but the term "open data" itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives such as Data.gov.




    • Open Access/Content

      • Protests demonstrate growing demand for open access to research
        Last week, Winston Hide committed what he called "a toxic career move." Hide, an associate professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at the Harvard School of Public Health, publicly resigned from the editorial board of Genomics, an influential journal in his field.

        "No longer can I work for a system that provides solid profits for the publisher while effectively denying colleagues in developing countries access to research findings," he wrote in a piece for the Guardian. "I cannot stand by any longer while access to scientific resources is restricted."




    • Open Hardware

      • Open source hardware: Fast and malleable
        SparkFun is not like BMW. We will never be the company to produce the luxury market version of breakout boards and development tools. I believe the only way SparkFun will survive this quickly changing world is to be malleable. We have to be ready to change.






  • Programming

    • Open Django Builds Open Source Web Democracy
      Developers "more interested" in framework's data models than operating system or GUI


    • Python modules you should know: PyGPGME


    • GCC Explorer - an interactive take on compilation
      One of the things I spend a fair amount of time doing at work is compiling my C/C++ code and looking at the disassembly output. Call me old-fashioned, but I think sometimes the only way to really grok your code is to see what the processor will actually execute. Particularly with some of the newer features of C++11 — lambdas, move constructors, threading primitives etc — it’s nice to be able to see how your elegant code becomes beautiful (and maybe even fairly optimal) machine code.




  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers



  • Hardware





  • Finance

    • Goldman blames hedge fund victim in Hudson CDO fraud case
      Remember the case over Goldman Sachs's Hudson CDOs, in which U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote a scalding opinion in March? Marrero refused to dismiss fraud claims against the bank, in a ruling that detailed Goldman Sachs's alleged scheme to shed exposure to subprime mortgages by dumping toxic collateralized debt obligations on an unsuspecting public. This week Goldman had a little something to say about the case, and -- surprise! -- it's not an apology.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The Internet Puts Up A Billboard In Front Of Lamar Smith's Office: Don't Mess With The Internet
      You may recall that, back in March, on a whim based on a discussion at SXSW, Alexis Ohanian and Erik Martin (from Reddit) teamed up with Holmes Wilson (from Fight for the Future) to crowdfund a billboard to go up in Lamar Smith's district in Austin. It turns out that you internet people don't mind paying after all, and helped fund two billboards which have now gone up in Smith's district, including one across the street from his office in San Antonio, and a second one on "Lamar Blvd" in Austin


    • FCC boss backs usage-based pricing for cable Internet access
      The head of the Federal Communications Commission said he supports cable companies' charging for Internet based on how much a subscriber uses the service, and also welcomed a cable industry initiative to share Wi-Fi hotspots around the country.




  • Intellectual Monopolies





Recent Techrights' Posts

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over 20% of staff will be let go, not counting staff that leaves voluntarily
Summer Plans in Techrights and Elsewhere
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EPO Presentation Bemoans Misuse of Slop in Decision-Making on Patents and in Classification (Which is Likely Illegal Too)
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Microsoft Isn't Laying Off Tens of Thousands to 'Invest' in Slop ('Hey Hi'), It's Laying Off Tens of Thousands Because It's Running Out of Money (and Willing Lenders)
the layoffs are a sign of the business failing, not "hey hi" (whatever that is) replacing staff
Intel Lays Off 20% of Its Workforce, Microsoft is Doing the Same This Year
Like a yoyo, whatever goes up will come back down
GNU/Linux Rises to New Highs in Angola, Africa in General is Abandoning Windows
Western media barely covers Microsoft layoffs in Africa, but in recent years Microsoft culled the workforce and even shut down entire operations
Destination Geminispace (in the Age of LLM Slop and Slop Images That Infest the Web and Social Control Media)
Geminispace isn't vast, but at least it is - on average - a lot "cleaner"
GNU/Linux Growing in Sierra Leone This Year
Based on what statCounter is seeing, this year there are more and more people there who adopt GNU/Linux
Serial Sloppers Gonna Slop
More sites out there ought to call out the cheaters
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It used to be OK. Then they fired the staff.
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Our Desktops Are Not Your Experiments, X is Not an Experiment
Breaking what already worked
Microsoft's Big Lies Regarding This Week's Mass Layoffs Have Already Begun (and They're Already Being Spread by Slopfarms)
Microsoft is the "market leader" in slop
Explaining the Full Story of SLAPPs From Microsoft Staff
For every action there is a reaction, for every attack there will be proportionate consequences
The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part III: IRS and Status of OSI
"They lied to the US IRS and there’s a paper trail"
IBM Red Hat's Dogmatic Fanaticism Under a Thin Veil of "Modernism"
IBM now has the audacity to paint people who don't agree as "nazis"
Microsoft's Share in Guatemala Fell From 97% to 14%
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They Made Technology Scary and Taught Us That It's Innocent, Friendly, Even "Social"
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The Media is Under Attacks Partly Because There's Little Other (Remaining) Press to Speak in Its Defence
The biggest danger here is that when there's very little press or no "opposition media" left it becomes even easier to crush critics because there aren't many people left to speak about the matter
If Your Web Site is Run by Bots, Eventually Nobody Will 'Read' It Except Bots (People Don't Want to Read Slop)
Eventually people learn from mistakes
Links 29/06/2025: Microsoft Releases False/Fake Benchmarks, "Google Wants You to Watch Ads or Take Surveys to Read Articles"
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Links 29/06/2025: Data Breaches and Online Censorship
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Gemini Links 29/06/2025: "The Price Of Eggs" and Gemini 3D Tic Tac Toe
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Pushing Wayland Using Straw Man Arguments
phoronix.com has long promoted the talking point of "Wayland people" (for at least a decade already)
Australia: Windows Fell to All-Time Low, Even Lower Than iOS
There's a good reason why next week there will be so many Microsoft layoffs
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, WebProNews, and Google News Boosting Slopfarms as 'News'
People who don't recognise the slopfarms and don't know which sites are fake would struggle to understand what's really going on
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Fedora 44
IBM now does to Fedora what it did to RHEL
Microsoft Already Shaved Off Costs Anywhere It Could. It Was Not Enough.
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Scheduled Maintenance Next Week
Our community is alive and well
BetaNews: We're Publishing LLM Slop About LLM Slop
Beta version of a slopfarm?
3-Month Updates on Our Complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
In short, the complaint remains open, updated, and is advancing
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The new replaces the old. That's how IBM frames it.
Start X
Just because something is old does not mean it is bad
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Today we take a quick look at 3 slopfarms
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