Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

06.14.14

The Register Spreads Microsoft’s IIS Propaganda Using Gamed Figures

Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Servers at 4:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Pinocchio

Summary: The Register misleads readers into thinking that Microsoft is gaining market share on the Web

Simon Sharwood from The Register released a propaganda piece we are unable to ignore. It’s a familiar talking point. We covered this numerous times before. Sharwood’s propaganda is titled “Microsoft poised to take Web server crown from Apache” (implying growth) although the very opposite is true.

Microsoft is actually losing share (as it has been losing for years) and in servers that really count it has less than ten percent market share.

Fortunately, some readers of The Register are not dumb enough. They reply in the comments section. One insightful comment says: “Apparently MS has been throwing money or other arm-twisting tricks to persuade large hosters of parked pages to switch to IIS. AFAICS the only benefit of this is incomplete articles in the press about how IIS is set to become (/will become) the most popular web server, which is a useless metric. As mentioned, the picture for Active sites is very different, and the Top Million even more so .. which somehow does not get mentioned in the news reports.”

Sadly, very few people read comments, so the vast majority will be left with the impression that Microsoft is doing well on the Web. That’s some very powerful propaganda. All Microsoft had to do was bribe some people to game numbers, then find gullible or corruptible journalists (“useful idiots” or liars) to drop out there some misleading claims at Microsoft’s behest.

Ever since Microsoft paid The Register the publication has not been the same. Microsoft likes not only to bribe hosts (selectively) but also governments and media companies. It helps distort public perceptions. The Register is definitely part of the problem now. This example of one of many. █

Small Bugfixes Become Big News in the Age When Fear (of FOSS) Sells

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, Security at 3:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Attempts to belittle the “eyeballs on the code” motto

Eye

Summary: Another week brings another set of bugfixes, which some choose to characterise as a very big deal despite evidence to the contrary

WHEN one has an agenda one can accentuate a particular side by covering it excessively. To be frank, not only FOSS-hostile circles are to be blamed for security hype; even some FOSS-friendly sites are releasing articles like “Linux Malware And Antivirus” or cover every security fix as though it’s major news. Consider just the past few days in Softpedia: A Steam OS bugfix is news and the same goes for Ubuntu because these projects make attractive headlines, especially after the whole “Heartbleed” hype [1, 2, 3]. Guess who was behind it: the firm of Microsoft’s ‘Former’ Security Chief. GnuTLS was subjected to the same treatment by the same Microsoft-connected firm because like any project it has bugfixes [1, 2], never mind the real security issues (back doors in proprietary software like Windows).

Amid some of the latest reports from Microsoft-friendly sources and FOSS-friendly sources like SJVN (we cited two of these articles before) we should keep in mind that not all bugs are created equal and if we let every bugfix in a project like Linux or OpenSSL become major news, then we will lose sight of the real issue, which is proprietary software having bugs by design, to facilitate intrusion.

Kevin Poulsen, who did some Wikileaks-hostile coverage back in the days, correctly points out that “After Heartbleed, We’re Overreacting to Bugs That Aren’t a Big Deal”. Here is how his article begins:

Here’s something else to blame on last April’s Heartbleed security bug: It smeared the line between security holes that users can do something about, and those we can’t. Getting that distinction right is going to be crucial as we weather a storm of vulnerabilities and hacks that shows no sign of abating.

Last week the OpenSSL Foundation announced it was patching six newly discovered vulnerabilities in the same software that Heartbleed lived in. The first reaction from many of us was a groan–here we go again. Heartbleed triggered what was probably the single largest mass-password change in history: In response to the bug, some 86 million internet users in the U.S. alone changed at least one password or deleted an internet account. The thought of a repeat was (and is) shudder-inducing.

Be aware that there’s a disturbing trend right now, where so-called ‘security’ firms (opportunists/attention whores) or media companies try to exploit general security paranoia (or privacy concerns) to ‘sell’ us stories about ‘gaping holes’; the reality is usually just some routine bugfixes, wrapped up by those who have agenda. Dan Goodin and the Microsoft-connected firm (which even branded a bug) are some of the worst in this regard. █

06.13.14

Links 13/6/2014: Docker Hype, Manjaro 0.8.10

Posted in News Roundup at 5:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Extremadura health care has switched to open source

      The desktop computer systems of government healthcare organisations in the Spanish region of Extremadura all rely on free and open source software solutions. Over the past year, close to 10,000 computer workstations in public health care organisations have migrated to a customised version of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.

  • Licensing

    • Zimbra moves to OSI-approved licensing for Zimbra Collaboration Open Source Edition

      Unified collaboration software vendor Zimbra announced the release of a beta version of Zimbra Collaboration 8.5 to the open source community under the GNU Public License V2 license. Calling it a “commitment to community-powered open source innovation,” company officials say the move is part of an overall plan to distribute future versions of the Zimbra Collaboration Open Source Edition under Open Source Initiative-approved licenses.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Stop the EMA Backsliding on Open Clinical Data [Updated]

      Back in April, I noted that we had potentially a big win in the form of the opening up of drug safety data in the light of recent scandals that have seen big pharma companies hiding adverse effects of their products, often with fatal results. As I warned, we weren’t there yet, since the drug companies really don’t want their dirty washing for all to see, and they have been lobbying extremely hard to water down the provisions.

    • The FLOK Society Project: Making The Good Life Possible Through Good Knowledge

      One of the most striking and important developments in the world of technology over the last two decades or so has been the rise of an alternative mode of production that is open, collaborative and global. This began in the world of software, with Richard Stallman’s GNU project, but has now been extended to the realms of text, data, science and hardware, among others. The free sharing of information to form a kind of digital commons, which lies at the heart of these projects, has also been applied to business, albeit in the modified form of collaborative consumption — things like Airbnb. These different manifestations of fundamentally similar ideas have sprung up in a largely uncoordinated way, but an interesting question is whether they could be drawn together into a unified approach, applied to a whole country, say. That’s what Ecuador’s FLOK Society (original in Spanish) has been exploring. “FLOK” is derived from “free”, “libre” and “open knowledge”; here’s how David Bollier, an expert on the commons, describes the project:

      The FLOK Society bills its mission as “designing a world for the commons.” The research project will focus on many interrelated themes, including open education; open innovation and science; “arts and meaning-making activities”; open design commons; distributed manufacturing; and sustainable agriculture; and open machining. The research will also explore enabling legal and institutional frameworks to support open productive capacities; new sorts of open technical infrastructures and systems for privacy, security, data ownership and digital rights; and ways to mutualize the physical infrastructures of collective life and promote collaborative consumption.

Leftovers

  • Trojan horse: never mind schools, what about the parents?

    Bad things have been happening in some Birmingham schools: children have been taught things that are hard to reconcile with the broader culture and values of the country in which they live and which provides them with that education. That’s the consensus at Westminster, and Politicians will spend the day arguing about who is to blame, how this happened and how it can be stopped from happening again. Was it Michael Gove? Or Ofsted? Or Birmingham council? Or the governors? Or a whole political class that tacitly endorses a doctrine of multiculturalism, while turning a blind eye to its more troubling consequences? Everyone will have their preferred mixture of answers, so I don’t intend to offer you mine here. Instead, there’s one group that’s curiously absent from the conversation here: parents.

  • Best Reporters On The Supreme Court Forced To Grovel Before Competitors To Prove They’re Worthy Of A Press Pass

    Back in April, we wrote about the travesty of the very best reporters on everything Supreme Court related, SCOTUSblog, still not having a press pass to the Supreme Court. The issue is somewhat complicated, in part because of the seriously arcane credentialing process involved. Basically, the Supreme Court looks kindly on reporters who already are credentialed by the Senate. But the Senate credentialing process involves the “Standing Committee of Correspondents” who get to decide who else to let in. The committee, basically, are journalists who have already been let into the club deciding who else can join them. When you set up a guild that lets you exclude innovative and disruptive players, guess what happens?

  • App Store and iTunes Store Currently Down for Some Users

    Issues seem to have begun this morning, as several users noted an inability to download the Skype app following its release. Some users attempting to download the app received a message indicating the app was no longer available for download.

  • Science

    • No, A ‘Supercomputer’ Did NOT Pass The Turing Test For The First Time And Everyone Should Know Better

      So, this weekend’s news in the tech world was flooded with a “story” about how a “chatbot” passed the Turing Test for “the first time,” with lots of publications buying every point in the story and talking about what a big deal it was. Except, almost everything about the story is bogus and a bunch of gullible reporters ran with it, because that’s what they do. First, here’s the press release from the University of Reading,

  • Health/Nutrition

    • The DEA: Four Decades of Impeding And Rejecting Science

      This report, co-published by DPA and MAPS, illustrates a decades-long pattern of behavior that demonstrates the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) inability to exercise its responsibilities in a fair and impartial manner or to act in accord with the scientific evidence. The report’s case studies reveal a number of DEA practices that maintain the existing, scientifically unsupported drug scheduling system and obstruct research that might alter current drug schedules. In addition to marijuana, the report also examines the DEA’s speed in moving to ban MDMA, synthetic cannabinoids, and synthetic stimulants. In contrast to the DEA’s failure to act in a timely fashion when confronted with evidence for scheduling certain drugs less severely, the agency has shown repeatedly that it can move quickly when it wants to prohibit a substance. The report recommends that responsibility for determining drug classifications and other health determinations should be completely removed from the DEA and transferred to another agency, perhaps even a non-governmental entity such as the National Academy of Sciences. The report also recommends the DEA should be ordered to end the federal government’s unjustifiable monopoly on the supply of research-grade marijuana available for federally approved research. No other drug is available from only a single governmental source for research purposes.

    • Pesticide and GMO Companies Spend Big in Hawai’i

      Hawai’i has become “ground zero” in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides. With the seed crop industry (including conventional as well as GMO crops) reaping $146.3 million a year in sales resulting from its activities in Hawai’i, the out-of-state pesticide and GMO firms Syngenta, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow Chemical, BASF, and Bayer CropScience have brought substantial sums of corporate cash into the state’s relatively small political arena.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Exclusive: How FBI Informant Sabu Helped Anonymous Hack Brazil

      In early 2012, members of the hacking collective Anonymous carried out a series of cyber attacks on government and corporate websites in Brazil. They did so under the direction of a hacker who, unbeknownst to them, was wearing another hat: helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation carry out one of its biggest cybercrime investigations to date.

    • How an FBI informant orchestrated the Stratfor hack

      Sitting inside a medium-security federal prison in Kentucky, Jeremy Hammond looks defiant and frustrated.

    • The Blair Legacy

      It is now extremely difficult for the media to pretend that everything is OK in Iraq, bar the odd car bomb. The AL-Maliki regime has been in the remarkable position of being both pro-Iranian and supported by the West with masses of military hardware – substantial quantities of which is now in the hands of ISIS. I don’t expect Al-Maliki to fall soon, but his area of control is decreasing by the hour. Whether the Al-Maliki regime has been any less vicious than that of Saddam Hussein is arguable. Certainly there has been a great deal less social freedom in Iraq.

    • Iraq Is a Place Where Americans Suffered

      Raddatz went on to talk about ab out how more than 200 Americans had “given their lives to secure this city,” and that Mosul “is just the latest city to spiral out of control after the US pulled out”–which might suggest that Iraqi cities were in fine shape when they were occupied by US troops.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • BP Rejected by Supreme Court on Gulf Payments Reprieve

      BP Plc (BP/) must pay potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in claims after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt disputed payments stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

      In a one-sentence order issued today, the justices said they wouldn’t put a hold on lower court rulings that require the oil company to begin making the payments, part of a $9.2 billion accord.

    • A Federal Response to Navy SEAL’s ‘Threat Assessment’ of Keystone XL

      Last week we reported on a former Navy SEAL chief named David Cooper who was hired by the nonprofit group NextGen Climate to determine how vulnerable the controversial final leg of the Keystone pipeline network might be to terrorism. In a 14-page report, Cooper determined that it would be “easy to execute a catastrophic attack” on the fourth segment of the pipeline system, based on a mock attack he carried out on the completed Keystone I, or Gulf Coast Pipeline, which came online in January. He went on to describe multiple scenarios for spills ranging from 1.02 to 7.24 million gallons of diluted bitumen, the viscous, toxic, low quality oil derived from Alberta’s tar sands.

  • Finance

    • Higher Coffee Prices Kick in at the Supermarket

      The moment to hoard cheap coffee beans has passed. The price of coffee futures peaked in April, and those higher commodity costs are now trickling down to grocery stores. J.M. Smucker (SJM) on Tuesday announced that it has increased the price of its packaged coffee, including the country’s best-selling brand, Folgers, as well as packaged Dunkin’ Donuts beans, by an average 9 percent.

    • GoDaddy files for $100m IPO

      According to its filing with the SEC, the web-hosting company had revenues of more than $1.1bn in 2013

    • Joe Klein on the Itchy Grievances of Minority Groups

      Or consult the 2012 State of Working America report from the Economic Policy Institute, which features a number of distressing statistics on black unemployment (consistently about twice as high for blacks as for whites, though it would be hard to say that there are “plenty” of jobs for anyone, with overall unemployment at 6.9 percent) and racial disparities in median family income.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Eastenders Threat to Scots

      The Guardian has just published its eighth article in three days pushing Gordon Brown’s views on independence. This one warns Scots they would not be able to watch the BBC after independence.

    • Was John Doe Raid Led by Republicans?

      The description of alleged “raids” of private homes in Wisconsin’s John Doe criminal dark money investigation has captured the imagination of Republicans across the country as supposed evidence of the investigation’s political motivations.

  • Privacy

    • Court: Warrantless Cell Location Tracking Is Unconstitutional

      A federal appeals court has for the first time said law enforcement can’t snoop on phone location records without a warrant

    • RT Interview — the anniversary of Edward Snowden

      Here is an inter­view I did on 5th June, the anniversary of the start of Edward Snowden’s dis­clos­ures about the global sur­veil­lance infra­struc­ture that is being built.

    • The Government Can No Longer Track Your Cell Phone Without a Warrant

      The government and police regularly use location data pulled off of cell phone towers to put criminals at the scenes of crimes—often without a warrant. Well, an appeals court ruled today that the practice is unconstitutional, in one of the strongest judicial defenses of technology privacy rights we’ve seen in a while.

    • US pushing local cops to stay mum on surveillance

      US pushing local police departments to keep quiet on cell-phone surveillance technology

    • 12 Hidden Tricks Advertisers Use to Sell You Stuff

      Marc Andrews wrote Hidden Persuasion to highlight the various methods advertisers use to lure us in. Here the World Wildlife Fund uses anthropomorphism to establish an emotional connection with users. The lion is experiencing secondary emotions (shame, disbelief), which are thought to be distinctly human. This make us feel closer to the animal, thus more likely to donate.

    • James Clapper Admits What Everyone’s Been Saying For Months: Snowden Didn’t Take 1.7 Million Documents

      You know, you’d think that the “intelligence community” would be a bit more intelligent. As we’ve discussed many, many times, nearly all of the estimates of “harm” concerning Ed Snowden’s actions were based on the faulty assumption that he “took” (and revealed) every document he ever “touched” while at NSA — somewhere around 1.7 million (sometimes referred to as 1.5 million, but then upped to 1.7 million). Except that two of the reporters who got the documents, Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill, have both said from the very beginning that it was about 60,000.

    • The Top 5 Claims That Defenders of the NSA Have to Stop Making to Remain Credible
    • Facebook to add advertising to Instagram in Canada

      Facebook Inc.’s photo-sharing application Instagram will add advertising in Canada, the U.K. and Australia later this year.

    • Dropping Docs On Darknets: How People Got Caught

      Most of you have probably used Tor before, but I2P may be unfamiliar. Both are anonymization networks that allow people to obfuscate where their traffic is coming from, and also host services (web sites for example) without it being tied back to them. This talk will give an overview of both, but will focus on real world stories of how people were deanonymized. Example cases like Eldo Kim & the Harvard Bomb Threat, Hector Xavier Monsegur (Sabu)/Jeremy Hammond (sup_g) & LulzSec, Freedom Hosting & Eric Eoin Marques and finally Ross William Ulbricht/“Dread Pirate Roberts” of the SilkRoad, will be used to explain how people have been caught and how it could have been avoided.

    • Ars tests Internet surveillance—by spying on an NPR reporter

      On a bright April morning in Menlo Park, California, I became an Internet spy.

      This was easier than it sounds because I had a willing target. I had partnered with National Public Radio (NPR) tech correspondent Steve Henn for an experiment in Internet surveillance. For one week, while Henn researched a story, he allowed himself to be watched—acting as a stand-in, in effect, for everyone who uses Internet-connected devices. How much of our lives do we really reveal simply by going online?

      [...]

      The experiment unfolded in two phases. In the first, we simply observed Henn’s normal Internet traffic. In the second, Henn, Porcello, and I stopped the broad surveillance of Henn and turned our tools on specific traffic created by leading Web applications and services. Here’s what we found.

  • Civil Rights

    • US bars British environmentalist on allegations it admits are unfounded

      The Telegraph has obtained documents that raise questions on US treatment of John Stewart, a key campaigner against Heathrow’s third runway, who the US said had threatened Barak Obama

    • UK Plans To Bring In Life Sentences For ‘Serious Cyberattacks’

      Much of this is the kind of activity carried out in the form of attacks sponsored by governments outside the UK — or, as in the case of the NSA, directly by those governments. Despite the recent grandstanding by the US when it filed criminal charges against members of the Chinese military whom it accuses of espionage, there is little hope of ever persuading the main players to hand over their citizens for trial, so the new UK law will be largely ineffectual against the most serious threats.

    • Boris Johnson to buy three water cannon for Metropolitan police

      London mayor justifies the speed of the £218,000 purchase by saying the machines are needed in case of disorder this summer

    • News from Caroline Pidgeon: “Mayor’s obsession with changing the culture of British policing beggars belief”
    • Taxi drivers to bring London to a standstill over Uber app

      Up to 12,000 black-cab drivers expected to block traffic in central London with cabbies in Europe staging similar protests

      [...]

      The streets of half a dozen European capitals will be jammed by strikes on Wednesday, as licensed cabbies in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Milan and Lisbon join their London colleagues in demonstrating against a technology that threatens their livelihood.

      Uber is one of a wave of new apps, which also include Hailo and Kabbee, that allows users to see the nearest registered cars and hail them from their smartphone. The services are particularly popular with private-hire drivers, who now have an advantage over licensed drivers.

    • My view on today’s taxi protests and what it means for the sharing economy
    • Israeli Abuse of Palestinian Children

      This is a heartrending documentary from Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC. The terrible fate of the Palestinians at the hands of a world which has accepted the ludicrous claim to a religious Israeli right to their land is incomprehensible in a rational world. The brutality of Israeli soldiers, motivated by views of racial and religious superiority, towards children is sickening.

    • Crossfire Clueless on Israeli Occupation

      There is just one problem with demanding an apology over this: The West Bank is currently under Israeli occupation. This was true whenever Clinton made her first visit. So the CNN host is demanding to know whether Clinton will apologize for saying something perfectly accurate.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Netflix refuses to comply with Verizon’s “cease and desist” demands

      Netflix will keep telling customers that ISPs are to blame for bad video.

    • Cable companies duped community groups into fighting net neutrality

      Last week, it transpired that the big cable companies were bankrolling fake consumer groups like Broadband for America and The American Consumer Institute. These “independent consumer advocacy groups” are, in truth, nothing of the sort, and instead represent the interests of its benefactors, in the fight against net neutrality. If that wasn’t bad enough, VICE is now reporting that several of the real community groups (oh, and an Ohio bed-and-breakfast) that were signed up as supporters of Broadband for America were either duped into joining, or were signed up to the cause without their consent or knowledge.

    • Comcast is turning your Xfinity router into a public Wi-Fi hotspot [Updated]

      Some time on Tuesday afternoon, about 50,000 Comcast Internet customers in Houston will become part of a massive public Wi-Fi hotspot network, a number that will swell to 150,000 by the end of June.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • RIAA Revenue Drops to Record Low

        The RIAA’s latest tax filings reveal that the anti-piracy group’s revenue has hit a record low as membership dues from record labels continue to decline. But despite the downward trend RIAA CEO Cary Sherman received nearly $500,000 in bonuses in addition to his million dollar salary.

      • Megaupload Cases Put on Hold, But Asset Freezing Still an Option

        A United States District Court Judge has just granted Kim Dotcom’s request to put the MPAA and RIAA civil actions against him on hold . The reprieve, which will last seven weeks, expressly allows the entertainment companies the freedom to freeze Dotcom’s assets anywhere in the world if that is deemed necessary.

      • Why the Mana-Internet alliance is a potential game breaker

        His real “crime” as far as the Hollywood moguls are concerned is for doing something he hasn’t yet been convicted of any crime for – establishing Megaupload Ltd. Wikipedia describes it as follows: “Megaupload was a file hosting and sharing online service in which users could share links to files for viewing or editing….. The company was successful. However, millions of people from across the globe used Megaupload to store and access copies of TV shows, feature films, songs, porn, and software. Eventually it had over 150 employees, US$175 million revenues, and 50 million daily visitors. At its peak Megaupload was estimated to be the 13th most popular site on the internet and responsible for 4% of all internet traffic.”

      • Another Fair Use Victory for Book Scanning in HathiTrust

        Fair use enjoyed a major victory in court today. In Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that strongly underscores a fair use justification for a major book scanning program. For those counting along at home, today’s decision marks another in a serious streak of judicial findings of fair use for mass book digitization, including Authors Guild v. Google, Cambridge University Press v. Becker, and the district court opinion in the HathiTrust case itself.

      • Rise Up Against Govt Anti-Piracy Plans, ISP Urges

        An ISP that won a prolonged legal battle against a Hollywood-affiliated anti-piracy group has rejected plans to introduce three strikes and site blocking. Today, ISP iiNet is also urging citizens to pressure the government and fight back against the “foreign interests” attempting to dictate Australian policy.

      • “You could be liable for $150k in penalties—settle instead for $20 per song”

        Growing copyright cop Rightscorp hopes to be a profitable alternative to “six strikes.”

      • Google Joins New Coalition to Stop Ad Revenue to Pirate Sites

        An announcement later this week will confirm Google as a member of a new coalition to cut off “pirate” sites from their ad revenue. Following similar initiatives in the U.S. and UK, a Memorandum of Understanding between the online advertising industry and the music and movie industries in Italy will signal a creation of a central body to tackle the piracy issue.

      • MPAA: Consumer Right to Resell Online Videos Would Kill Innovation

        The MPAA is concerned that innovation in the film industry will be ruined if consumers get the right to resell movies and other media purchased online. Responding to discussions in a congressional hearing this week, the MPAA warns that this move would limit consumer choices and kill innovation.

06.12.14

Links 12/6/2014: Linux 3.15, New RHEL

Posted in News Roundup, Site News at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux hiring frenzy: Why open source devs are being bombarded with offers to jump ship

    Nine out of ten (87 percent) of hiring managers in Europe have “hiring Linux talent” on their list of priorities and almost half (48 percent) say they are looking to hire people with Linux skills within the next six months.

    But while they either need or want to hire more people with Linux skills, the data from the Linux Foundation suggests that this is easier said than done. Almost all — 93 percent — of the managers surveyed said they were having difficulty finding IT professionals with the Linux skills required and a quarter (25 percent) said they have “delayed projects as a result”.

  • Shortage of Linux professionals causes European skills crisis

  • Desktop

    • Chrome OS Features to Look for in Current Chromebook Crop

      With Father’s Day right around the corner, some dads out there might be requesting a new Chromebook. Chromebooks, which run Google’s Chrome OS, have quietly become quite popular among notebook buyers. As of this writing, Chromebooks are among the top 20 most popular computers available on Amazon, and sales continue to grow steadily. Although the devices got off to a slow start, Google has found a way to attract customers. With that in mind it might be a good time to revisit Chromebooks’ operating system, Chrome OS, and talk about key features that make the Chromebook so attractive. While users were uncertain at first about the concept of using a Web-based operating system, Chrome OS morphed into something far more usable and appealing to the average computer user since it was first released in 2009. Not only are computer users more comfortable with accessing cloud applications and storing their data in the cloud, but Google has added a number of features that make it convenient to use Chrome OS productively. This eWEEK slide show will cover the factors that made this platform appealing to notebook PC users.

  • Server

    • How does the cloud affect the everyday linux user?

      Cloud computing has really become the buzz term for any online service. Your web browser is a client connecting to a server or clusters of servers hosted anywhere in the world. The point is that you don’t care. You don’t need to know.

      Generally speaking I have barely touched the surface. We all use the cloud everyday and most of us don’t even think about it.

      How does the cloud affect the everyday linux user? It turns out quite a bit.

      Is the cloud a good or bad thing? Neither. Each service has to be judged on it’s own merits.

      The term “The Cloud” is just something marketing people and the technical press get excited about. Anyone remember when they kept using the term “Web 2.0″?

    • Mesosphere Raises $10.5 Million to Create Massive Linux Clusters

      Thanks to the advent of multicore processors, the average data center these days has access to a massive amount of compute capacity. Tapping into it efficiently, though, is another thing altogether.

    • Mesosphere Closes $10.5M Series A Financing

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.15 Kernel Released

      The official release announcement from Linus Torvalds has yet to come down the pipe, but today’s 3.15 final release was expected. For those not up to date on our Linux 3.15 kernel coverage, there’s been dozens of articles in recent weeks about this latest major kernel update. A summary of this new kernel’s top features can be found via the aptly named The Top Features Of The Linux 3.15 Kernel article. There’s a lot of great stuff in this new kernel release for everyone!

    • Linux 3.15 .. and continuation of merge window
    • Linus Torvalds Releases Linux Kernel 3.15 Stable
    • The 3.15 kernel is out
    • Linux Kernel 3.14.6 Is Now the Most Advanced Version

      Linux kernel 3.14.6 is now the most advanced version of the kernel, at least for a few hours before the final version of the 3.15 branch is out (unless something weird happens and the launch is postponed).

      The kernel developers have made quite an effort and this latest updates is one of the biggest so far. It’s still a young kernel and it’s not sure that it will reach the LTS status. There are already a number of long term support in existence already, but you can never know.

    • Linux 3.15 Speeds Up Suspend/Resume Performance

      The suspend and resume code impacts users who run Linux on laptop computers where there is a need to suspend disk and operating system operations when a device is closed and then start up again when the device is opened. Williams noted that his code contribution was inspired by an analysis and proposal from Intel developer Todd Brandt. Brandt’s proposal specifically dealt with a suspend/resume speed improvement, enabling a rapid wakeup from a device’s suspend state

    • MIPS For Linux 3.16 Gets Big Changes

      The MIPS architecture pull for the Linux 3.16 merge window pull is full of prominent changes for this next kernel version.

      First up, with the MIPS changes comes initial support for the Octeon 3. The Octeon 3 is Cavium’s new multi-core processor line-up announced at the end of 2013. The OCTEON III is MIPS64-based and optimized for Wind River Linux and VxWorks. The Octeon III claims up to 120GHz of 64-bit processing and is aimed for high-performance computing environments.

    • Stable kernels 3.14.6, 3.10.42, and 3.4.92

      Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the latest batch of stable kernels: 3.14.6, 3.10.42, and 3.4.92. As usual, each contains fixes all over the tree and users of those kernel series should upgrade.

    • F2FS Gets Enhanced For The Linux 3.16 Kernel

      Samsung has sent in their F2FS pull request for the Linux 3.16 to provide a number of enhancements for the Flash Friendly File-System.

      Improvements for the F2FS file-system with the Linux 3.16 kernel include enhanced wait_on_page_writeback, support for SEEK_DATA and SEEK_HOLE, readahead flow enhancements, enhanced I/O flushes, support for fiemap, support for trace-maps, support for large volumes over two Terabytes, and a number of bug-fixes and clean-ups.

    • Torvalds hits ‘Go’ button for Linux 3.15
    • The Companies That Support Linux: Rackspace

      Rackspace has lately been in the news for its stock market gains and a potential acquisition. But over the past 16 years the company has become well known, first as a web hosting provider built on Linux and open source, and later as a pioneer of the open source cloud and founder of the OpenStack cloud platform.

      In May, Rackspace became a Xen Project member and was one of three companies to join the Linux Foundation as a corporate member, along with CoreOS and Cumulus Networks.

      “Many of the applications and infrastructure that we need to run for internal use or for customers run best on Linux,” said Paul Voccio, Senior Director of Software Development at Rackspace, via email. “This includes all the popular language frameworks and open virtualization platforms such as Xen, LXC, KVM, Docker, etc.”

      In this Q&A, Voccio discusses the role of Rackspace in the cloud, how the company uses Linux, why they joined the Linux Foundation, as well as current trends and future technologies in the data center.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

    • Docker libcontainer unities Linux container powers

      What makes this important, even vital, news to the larger world of system administrators, datacenter managers, and cloud architects, is that Google, Red Hat, and Parallels are now helping build the program. Indeed, they will work with Docker as core maintainers of the code. Canonical’s Ubuntu container engineers will also be working on it.

    • IT’S HERE: DOCKER 1.0
    • Docker 1.0 Officially Released
    • Docker 1.0 brings container technology to the enterprise

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • The Witcher 3 Announced for SteamOS, Studio Takes It Back

        The CD Projekt Red studio has announced that the upcoming The Witcher 3 action RPG is also arriving on SteamOS, which means that it will feature Linux support.

        The interesting fact about this announcement is that the studio has yet to make a formal statement, and they chose a more indirect way to tell Linux users that they will be able to play the game. If you happened to open Steam today, you might have noticed that The Witcher 3 game also said that is coming to SteamOS.

      • Steam for Linux Officially Gets Virtual Reality Support

        The Steam developers usually release quite few intermediary Steam versions, between major stable updates. This is one of the most interesting Beta updates so far in this cycle and the VR support that was just introduced will certainly make it into the next version.

        It looks like virtual reality is the next-gen feature that will be pursued by all the major gaming companies. Oculus is already having an impact on the industry, Sony is working on their own version, and Valve will most likely present their own solution soon enough. With all these advancements made with VR, it’s good to see that Linux is on the forefront.

      • Superb Interstellar Marines Tactical FPS Arrives on Steam for Linu

        Interstellar Marines, a tactical FPS developed and published by Zero Point Software, has just received Linux support with the latest patch.

        Interstellar Marines is a very promising first-person shooter and its developers said that they took inspiration from Half-Life, System Shock 2, and Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. The game has been built mainly as a multiplayer experience, but a limited single-player is also available.

        The latest update for the Interstellar Marines also brought support for the Linux platform and it looks like this title aims to be one of the best-looking on the open source platform…

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Frameworks 5 Beta 3 Released

        The third beta is out today ahead of the final release expected in July. This third beta brings many bug-fixes and other minor enhancements to ease in porting of software to this next-generation KDE stack.

      • KDE 4.13.2 Desktop Update Released

        The latest monthly point release update to KDE 4.13 is now available.

        KDE 4.13.2 is shipping today with more than 40 known bug-fixes with many of the fixes involving the Kontact, Umbrello, Konqueror, and Dolphin applications. There’s also important fixes for Kopete.

      • PLASMA ACTIVE ON QT5/KF5: WALLPAPERS AND ACTIVITIES CONFIGURATION

        Hello, This is my second report for my GSoC. This week i was working on the Wallpapers and the Activities Configuration. While there was the support for changing the wallpapers the UI was more focused on a desktop rather than a touch device, which wasn’t exactly what we needed for Plasma Active. So the new UI looks like the old one (Plasma Active 1), and the only small change is that we don’t show the wallpaper name.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME MUSIC 3.13.2 RELEASED!

        The player bar now uses all horizontal space available, which I based on new mockups for playback buffer by Jakub Steiner (except that it still has the repeat/shuffle menu). With this, the song title and album song has more space, and it will no longer just show an ellipsis when the window is small.

        Updating of views is further refined, so it will not interfere when in selection mode. Tooltips were added to the buttons. Right-clicking songs inside albums in Albums view now starts selection mode. Albums list in Artists view are now insensitive when in selection mode.

      • Trevilla Theme Is One of the Best Flat Themes for Ubuntu and Linux Mint

        The Trevilla theme pack is made for people who like to have a flat desktop and it comes with clean headers and buttons that are very good for a minimalistic experience.

        The Trevilla designers are not the only ones using this flat look for themes. In fact, more and more distros come with flat desktops and it looks like these types of decorations are not going anywhere…

      • GNOME Board of Directors Elections 2014 – Preliminary Results

        The GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee is happy to announce the preliminary results for this year’s Board of Directors elections:

        Sriram Ramkrishna
        Ekaterina Gerasimova
        Karen Sandler
        Tobias Mueller
        Andrea Veri
        Marina Zhurakhinskaya
        Jeff Fortin

      • Quick Look: Ubuntu GNOME 14.04

        Ubuntu GNOME is a popular spin of Ubuntu that uses the GNOME desktop instead of Unity. Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 has been updated to include GNOME 3.10, and GNOME Classic. This release also includes some gorgeous new backgrounds that will spruce up you Ubuntu GNOME desktop. And since it’s a long term support release you will be able to run it for the next few years with the maximum amount of stability and polish.

  • Distributions

    • GParted Live 0.19.0 Beta 1-3 Reverts a Couple of Packages to Older Versions

      The GParted Life project undergoes dormant periods and hardly are any updates released, but now it looks like two versions have arrived inside a week.

      “The underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded. This release is based on the Debian Sid repository (as of 2014/Jun/09),” reads the official announcement.

    • New Releases

      • OpenELEC 4.0.4 Now Out, Is Based on XBMC 13.1 “Gotham”

        The OpenELEC makers are following the XBMC development cycle very closely and they have released a new version of their distribution, 4.0.4. It comes packed with all the goodies from XBMC 13.1 “Gotham” and the devs have made some changes of their own.

        “This release includes some bugfixes, security fixes and improvements since OpenELEC-4.0.3. Besides the usual bugfixes and package updates we updated XBMC with the last fixes to XBMC 13.1 (final) which contains a lot of fixes for issues found after the XBMC-13.0 release (some of them we already shipped with OpenELEC-4.0.0).

      • Liberada version final de wifislax-4.9
      • Tango Studio 2.2 Is a Distro for Musicians and Professional Studios

        The Linux platform is home to quite a few operating systems dedicated to sound, video, and graphics editing. Some are better than others, but they all try to do the same thing and get some free tools in the hand of the people who need them the most.

        The advantage of Tango Studio is that you don’t need to configure almost anything in the operating system and most of the tools just work, without any extra input from the user. It’s a very helpful OS, especially for the people who just want to work and not tinker with a Linux distribution…

    • Screenshots

    • Arch Family

      • Manjaro 0.8.9 Receives Fresh Update Pack with New AMD Driver and More

        “We prepared mhwd to support newer proprietary drivers. MHWD 0.3.901 reflect these changes. Blueman got updatedto support the latest bluez 5.19. We kept Wayland 1.4.0, as any higher version breaks bluetooth support. We have to deal with that later. Beside some libreoffice language acks,python updates, a newer Cinnamon we pushed also regular upstream updates to this update-pack,” said the developers in the official announcement.

    • Red Hat Family

      • New RHEL 7 Linux Stresses Apps, Scaling
      • Red Hat’s CEO Sees Open Source Cloud Domination

        Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst sees the business opportunity of a generation in what he calls a computing paradigm shift from client server to cloud architectures. “In those paradigm shifts, generally new winners emerge,” says Whitehurst and he intends to make sure Red Hat is one of those winners. His logic is sound and simple: disruptive technologies like the cloud that arise every couple decades level the playing field between large, established firms and smaller, innovative challengers since everyone, from corporate behemoth to a couple guys in a garage, starts from the same spot and must play by the same unfamiliar and changeable rules. With the cloud “there’s less of an installed based and an opportunity for new winners to be chosen,” Whitehurst adds. His mission is “to see that open source is the default choice for next generation architecture” and that Red Hat is the preferred choice, particularly for enterprise IT, of open source providers.

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Announcement Likely Tomorrow

        Red Hat was just sending out press invites this afternoon for a virtual event tomorrow regarding “an exciting product” that will be announced.

        Registration for the online event happening tomorrow (10 June) at 11AM EST can be found at RedHat.com. The site says it’s about, “redefining the enterprise OS.”

      • Fedora

        • Tools for Diagramming in Fedora

          If you’re a big-time open source fanatic like me, you probably get questions about open source alternatives to proprietary tools rather frequently. From the ‘Alternatives to Microsoft® Visio®’ department, here are three tips that should help designers who use Visio in an open source environment. If you need an open source option for opening Visio files, a revived open source application for creating diagrams, or a lesser-known open source tool for converting Visio® stencils, these tips are for you…

    • Debian Family

      • Elive 2.2.6 Beta Is an Interesting Blend of Debian and Enlightenment

        Elive, a complete operating system for your computer, built on top of Debian GNU/Linux and customized to meet the needs of any user while still offering the eye-candy with minimal hardware requirements, has advanced to version 2.2.6 Beta and is available for download.

      • Fast-boot, open spec COM includes FPGA

        Technologic is sampling a fast-booting “TS-4740″ COM that runs Debian on a 1GHz, ARM9 PXA168 SoC and offers a 25K-LUTs Spartan-5 FPGA and gigabit Ethernet.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Unity 8 Desktop Preview Image Available For Ubuntu 14.10

            A session happened this morning about the Unity8 Desktop Preview Image as a way for early adopters and developers to try out the Unity 8 and Mir stack ported to the desktop on the Ubuntu 14.10 base, while the official Ubuntu 14.10 release image will still be using Unity 7 with the X.Org Server. Those interested in learning more about this image and the plans can find the details via summit.ubuntu.com with the Google Hangout Video plus notes.

          • Intel Core i7 4790K: Devil’s Canyon Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux

            The Core i7 4790K has an 88 Watt TDP over 84 Watts on the Core i7 4770K but aside from the higher clock frequencies and thermal/power improvements, the i7-4790K shares much in common with the i7-4770K when it comes to being a quad-core CPU with Hyper Threading, 22nm manufacturing, DDR3-1600MHz memory support, and sports HD Graphics 4600. Like the i7-4770K, the HD Graphics 4600 top out at 1.25GHz. Pricing on the Intel Core i7 4790K is currently about $340 USD from major Internet retailers.

          • 14 Apps To Boost Ubuntu

            Making the switch to Ubuntu – or any popular Linux distribution – is more than the mere act of changing operating systems. You must also have apps that allow you to get work done.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 Release Candidate 1

              At Bodhi we work firmly on a “its ready when its ready schedule” as opposed to sticking to our set release goals and churning out something we are not happy with. Better late than never as the saying goes! Just ten days after the targeted release date I am happy to share our first Release Candidate for Bodhi Linux’s third major release…

            • Review: Pinguy OS 14.04 LTS “Papercut”

              This was originally supposed to be a comparison test against Antergos, which is another distribution that ships GNOME 3/Shell and aims for new users to Linux. Unfortunately, Antergos refused to boot. Therefore, what is left is a typical review of Pinguy OS, albeit with some more critical remarks than usual about how well it really caters to newbies (left over from when this article was a comparison test). Follow the jump to see what it is like…

            • Linux Mint 17 KDE RC “Qiana” Available for Download, Is Based on KDE 4.13.0

              This current version of Linux Mint 17 KDE “Qiana” comes with KDE 4.13.0, which is the latest version available right now. The rest of the packages are in place and, if you ever opened a KDE-powered distro, then you won’t be surprised by anything.

              Just like the other flavors that have been released so far, this one is also based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and will benefit from an extended support period, after it becomes stable, of course. The Linux mint developers announced a while ago that they intended to only base their distros on LTS versions of Ubuntu…

            • Meet Linux Mint 17 ‘Qiana’

              If the end of XP demonstrated anything, it’s that disruption ensues when an OS reaches end of life. Linux users have long had LTS releases to stave off some of that, but the new Linux Mint 17 offers even more stability. Not only will it be supported until 2019, but it’s also built on a base that was made to last.

            • Linux Mint 17 OEM images released to manufacturers

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Tiny open-source module aims to make IoT apps easy

      WeIO is sampling a tiny open source board, running OpenWRT Linux on an Atheros/MIPS module, that enables IoT applications controlled entirely via HTML5 code.

      Billed as “The Web of Things for Creators,” the fully open source, GPL3-licensed WeIO module is notable for its HTML5 programming interface and Python-based Tornado web server. Together, these let you connect and control objects from any device using only a web browser, says Paris-based WeIO. Designed for low-power Internet of Things (IoT) devices, WeIO lets developers easily connect objects so they communicate with each other, or hook up to Internet services like social networks, says the company.

    • Wireless speakers run Linux, control IoT stuff

      Musaic is prepping an OpenWRT Linux and AllJoyn AllPlay-enabled wireless speaker and Internet radio that doubles as a home automation hub.

      U.K.-based Musaic ended its Kickstarter round in April, surpassing its goal of raising 60,000 U.K. Pounds, and promising products by September starting at 160 Pounds (about $269). Recently, the Musaic system was selected along with four other finalists by the John Lewis JLAB technology incubator program, which starts today. Commercial sales will open in the fall.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • OnePlus One Review: The CyanogenMod Powered Smartphone That Outclasses The Android Competition

          OnePlus has managed to create a bit of a buzz around their latest smartphone. Called ‘One’ (but I’ll go with the OnePlus One for most of this review to avoid the confusion with HTC) this is a handset that goes out of its way to be attractive. The styling is simple but functional, the specs are close to the top of the range in the world of Android, and the price is stunning. It’s not a typo, it actually starts at £229 in the UK ($299 in the US) for the 16 GB model.

        • Galaxy S5 vs. Nexus 5 vs. iPhone 5s

          When a buyer goes to purchase a new smartphone, he or she is often confronted with a tough choice. With so many flagship smartphones in the market today, which ones to choose from? There’s the Galaxy S5, which is a widely popular phone from Samsung and then there’s the iPhone 5s, which comes from the world’s most valuable tech company. And, as if that wasn’t confusing enough, Google offers its own flagship device known as Nexus 5.

          While the three smartphones mentioned above are wildly popular, users have a tough time investing their hard-earned cash into. That’s why, we’ve written this article to help you buy the best phone amongst the big 3. So, without further ado, here’s a quick comparison between the Galaxy S5, Nexus 5 and iPhone 5s.

        • Turning a smartphone into a PC in a pocket: Q&A with Analogix

          Q: Where and why is SlimPort being implemented?

          A: SlimPort was first implemented in the Google Nexus 4 back in 2012 and has continued to be used in a number of high-end tablets and smartphones from Fujitsu, Asustek, LG, and ZTE, as well as finding its way into Chromebooks from brands like Hewlett-Packard (HP), among others. The key is that the technology enables more features and can reduce costs. For example, users want to have the ability to take mobile audio and video and get it up on a big screen. Previously, the ability to get the video off of a tablet/smartphone was typically done by running it through a micro-HDMI port. Using SlimPort allowed the OEMs to drop the micro-HDMI port and simply run everything through the five-pin micro-USB port that is needed for charging. SlimPort simply takes control of the connector when a SlimPort dongle is plugged in, and while the devices are connected, SlimPort enables the display to also charge the mobile device. In 2013, support for Full HD was added but we really expect the technology to take off this year with SlimPort Pro.

        • CyanogenMod 11.0 M7 Released

          Release day is here again, with CM 11.0 M7 hitting the download servers. Last week’s post included the highlights from the changelog, but we’ll it again for those of you who prefer tl;dr.

Free Software/Open Source

  • VLC reveals it is working on Chromecast support for iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac

    Most everyone, at least the tech-savvy who read this, are familiar with VLC Player — the Video LAN Client. It’s a jack-of-all trades media player, that is capable of handling pretty much any format you can throw at it, no matter how obscure it may be.

  • VLC announces iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac support for Google Chromecast
  • OPENDAYLIGHT DEVELOPER SPOTLIGHT: LUIS GOMEZ

    Luis Gomez is Principal Software Test Engineer at Brocade and currently coordinates the Integration Group at OpenDaylight. Prior to this, Luis worked many years at Ericsson in end-to-end solution integration and verification for radio, fixed, core and transport functions…

  • Open Source Persistence: Resistance Is Futile

    One problem is that the GitHub generation does not seem to care as much about code vetting as did coders in earlier years. In the time span from 2007 to 2010, open source became very popular. Enterprises tried to manage it, according to MongoDB’s Assay.

    “My sense is that developers do not really look at licenses any more. They are not even looking at which license is applied and does it comply. I think these are issues that attorneys look at, though. I do not think the developers are thinking a lot about the licenses anymore,” he said.

  • DARPA gamifies open-source software testing

    Secret-squirrel military tech bureau DARPA has designed a series of computer games which can help to verify open source software.

    It is working on the games under the auspices of its Crowd Sourced Formal Verification programme.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Reports Cites Google Surpassing Microsoft in Browser Market Share

        ADI technology analyst Tyler White speculated that two underlying market forces are boosting Google’s numbers. “First, device defaults matter,” White said. “Internet Explorer leverages its Windows OS dominance to gain share as the default Web browser for the majority of people online. Today mobile OS is more important, giving Google and Apple a leg up with default status on Android and iOS.”

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Firefox 30 Binaries Now Available

        The Firefox 30 release announcement is imminent with the source and binaries for the upcoming browser update now being available.

        For those interested, Mozilla Firefox 30.0 can be obtained from the Mozilla FTP server while we’re still waiting for the official release announcement, which is likely coming in the day ahead.

  • Education

    • 16 FOSSisms all educators should know

      Ellis, who co-coordinated POSSE with Drexel professor Greg Hislop, told a crowd of nearly 20 faculty members from colleges and universities across the country that embedding their computer science students in open source communities could facilitate a kind of engagement traditional classroom experiences just can’t offer. But, she said, students and professors alike should be prepared for a bit of culture shock if they aren’t prepared to embrace the open source way.

      So Ellis derived 16 maxims from free and open source culture—what she calls “FOSSisms”—to explain how open source values might transform computer science education.

  • BSD

    • DragonFly 3.8 Finally Brings USB 3.0 Support

      DragonFly, a distribution that belongs to the same class of operating systems as other BSD-derived systems and UNIX, has reached version 3.8.

      DragonFly 3.8 is not as big as the previous release, but there are some very important features that have been added by the developers and it really warrants an update if you have an older version of this distro.

      “DragonFly binaries in /bin and /sbin are now dynamic, which makes it possible to use current identification and authentication technologies such as PAM and NSS to manage user accounts. Some libraries have been moved to /lib to support this.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Voice of the Masses: Free Software vs open source – what do you use?

      RMS argues that “open source” misses the point, but a counter argument is that the name “Free Software” can sound like “free as in beer” – like malware-ridden Windows freeware. So we want to hear from you: which term do you use? Is it really important to you? Do you think RMS should have chosen a better word than “Free” originally, such as “Libre”?

    • ble http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2014-06/msg00006.html

      As anticipated, 3.15 was released upstream earlier today, and the scripts I updated yesterday have now done their job: 3.15-gnu sources are now available at http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/ and shortly on mirrors too.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Australian government will go Drupal

      Tender documents issued this morning have confirmed that the Australian government will push ahead with seeking to build a whole-of-government content management system based on the open source Drupal platform.

      The Department of Finance has made an approach to market seeking request for proposals for ‘GovCMS’, which the RFP states will be based on Drupal and delivered via a public cloud service.

    • Here’s What’s Missing from the ‘Technology Manifesto’

      Although it’s good to see open standards in there, it’s disappointing that the Policy Exchange did not go further and call for open source, which is the most effective way of implementing those open standards. Simply mandating open standards allows lock-in through inertia – the argument being that the re-training costs etc. etc. make moving to new implementations of open standards too expensive. That’s a ridiculous way of looking at things, because it pretty much ensures that the status quo is maintained. What the Manifesto should have called for was a default use of open source software throughout government, unless there are compelling and clearly-articulable reasons not to take that route.

  • Licensing

    • Why Your Project Doesn’t Need a Contributor Licensing Agreement

      For nearly a decade, a battle has raged between two distinct camps regarding something called Contributor Licensing Agreements (CLAs). In my personal capacity, I’ve written extensively on the issue. This article below is a summary on the basics of why CLA’s aren’t necessary, and on Conservancy’s typical recommendations to its projects regarding the issue.

      In the most general sense, a CLA is a formal legal contract between a contributor to a FLOSS project and the “project” itself0. Ostensibly, this agreement seeks to assure the project, and/or its governing legal entity, has the appropriate permissions to incorporate contributed patches, changes, and/or improvements to the software and then distribute the resulting larger work.

Leftovers

Patent Trolls Still Wrongly Portrayed as the Main Problem With the Patent System and Legislation Follows Suit

Posted in Law, Patents at 7:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Statue of wisdom

Summary: Efforts to improve the patent system focus not on the real issue/s with patents but instead on phantom issues that help protect the interests of large corporations

According to some new statistics, the sordid mess of patent lawsuits is getting more serious, still. “That’s not a surprise,” insists the article. “Statistics from Lex Machina show that 2013 set a new record for new patent lawsuits. All those legal threats are giving new urgency to the patent reform debate.”

As usual, the straw man which is “patent trolls” takes all the blame, even through some entities — including universities — are selling patents to trolls. Watch the boosters of software patents using the straw man (Boston University is not directly a troll for example, so we know that not trolls are the sole issue). Blaming “trolls” is still the large corporations’ approach for diverting all attention to small offenders, using them as scapegoats while large corporations misuse patents themselves. The issue is the offence itself, not the scale of the offender.

When patents are granted on computer programs and video games (which are abstract) it should be clear that patent scope is the main problem. When new programs are introduced by the USPTO to increase the number of patents it should be clear what the source of trouble really is. Patent lawyers take sides and encourage software patents because there is money to be made from it.

Some large companies act no different from so-called trolls and the use of the term “troll” just mostly refers to scale these days. Trend Micro acted like a troll some years ago and now it receives a taste of its own poison. Consider this new article that says a “Delaware federal judge on Tuesday refused a request by Symantec Corp. and Trend Micro Inc. to partially delay two trials over a nonpracticing entity’s claims they flouted four anti-virus software patents, saying the requests came too late since trial dates had already been set.” (source)

According to Red Hat’s staff, new legislation only tackles trolls. To quote: “Patent reform may have stalled this year at the federal level, but patent trolls may soon find their actions curtailed by a number of patent abuse litigation laws that have been passed or are pending in over twenty U.S. states.

“Last year, the state of Vermont passed a law aimed at preventing “bad faith assertions of patent infringement.” The law targets the practice of sending demand letters with very little, if any information regarding the patent supposedly infringed and would require the asserting entity to provide the patent number, name and address of the company alleging infringement, and other details regarding the nature of the complaint. It is a common tactic for patent trolls, sometimes called “patent assertion entities” or “non-practicing entities” to send letters with very vague information alleging patent infringement to other businesses, both large and small, in the hopes of extorting a settlement from them to avoid a nuisance lawsuit.”

Not only trolls are doing this. Much bigger entities are doing the same thing, so this strategy would not bear fruit. Here is an example of this strategy in action: “When Santa Barbara startup FindTheBest (FTB) was sued by a patent troll called Lumen View last year, it vowed to fight back rather than pay up the $50,000 licensing fee Lumen was asking for. Company CEO Kevin O’Connor made it personal, pledging $1 million of his own money to fight the legal battle.”

The entity might be forced to pay the legal fees, but it does not address the issue of litigation by non-trolls. Here is another example. The reason we stopped focusing on patent issues some months ago is that the press gave up focusing on the real issue, focusing instead on the whole “trolls” distraction. Even Red Hat has become part of this problem.

Everyone recognises that there is a problem with the patent system, but the only voice which counts (corporations) as far as corporate press goes steers everyone away from the real solution. █

CAFC Shown to be Incapable of Ruling on Garbage/Disgraced Monopolies Time After Time, So Perhaps It Should be Barred From Ruling on Patent Issues

Posted in Patents at 6:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Thumbs down

Summary: Now that the US Supreme Court smacks down some more flawed rulings from CAFC (regarding patents) it is time not only to limit patent scope but also prevent CAFC (the court behind software patents) from ruling on patent scope ever again

There is a reason for cautious optimism when it comes to the US patent system. The bar is being raised by the highest court, dealing for the most part with business method patents. Here is a good article highlighting some background information:

If you want to blame someone for the explosion of patent litigation in recent years, a good candidate is the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That’s the appeals court responsible for handling appeals in all patent cases. Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has slapped down its rulings, which the high court has seen as too friendly to patent holders and patent applicants.

Here again we have ramifications for software patent — a subject that SCOTUS never directly addressed (not even in the Bilski Case). SCOTUS refuses to deal with many very important issues these days even with assassination (without trial) of US citizens by CIA drones and the protection of CIA sources by a journalist (Risen). There is actually a pair of decisions here, as noted earlier this month. To quote: “The US Supreme Court issued rulings this morning in two of the five patent cases it heard this term. In both cases, the high court unanimously struck down rules created by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the nation’s top patent court.

“The two rulings continue a pattern that has developed over the past several years, in which the Supreme Court has overturned key Federal Circuit rulings, finding them too favorable to patent-holders and too harsh on parties accused of infringement.”

Here is another report which says “The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to make it easier to hold companies liable for encouraging others to commit patent infringement.”

Not everyone is happy about it. Quite expectedly, Fortune, a pro-plutocrats paper, promotes software patents because there is impact on them. To quote this one article: “For a method patent to be infringed, says the high court, the infringing party must deliberately perform all the steps.”

There are several other articles which allude to the effect on software patents.

While plutocrats’ papers continue to associate patents with achievement, it is rather clear that for patents to be effective a tool they should be scarce and hard to attain.

The CAFC clearly serves the interests of patent lawyers by always expanding the scope of patents and even copyrights. SCOTUS almost always vetoes it. The CAFC is the biggest booster ever of software patents and other such monopolies on software (API copyrights for example) because it is inherently incompetent or simply corrupt. To quote just one pundit: “What do you know? The Supreme Court has completely shot down two more decisions from the “patent appeals court,” which is supposed to be an expert in patent law. The court of appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which was set up explicitly to cover “complicated” patent cases, has been getting shot down by the Supreme Court left and right over the past few years, often unanimously. It happened a month ago on fee shifting and it happened twice more today on key patent cases: Limelight v. Akamai and Nautilus v. Biosig.”

Let this remind us that CAFC issues decisions that are almost always the opposite of what’s just, especially when it comes to patents.

It should not be surprising to see overzealous patents boosters who are also patent lawyers (like Gene Quinn) scrambling to defend the CAFC, which is not a court but more seemingly a front for patent lawyers.

CAFC is apparently no longer a court but rather an occupier working at the behest of patent lawyers (just look what judges were added to CAFC, it’s more like entryism). It should be de-funded, re-booted, or altogether shut down. █

Apple Hopes to Enjoy Inherent Corruption in the Patent System and the Legal System

Posted in Apple, Patents, Samsung at 6:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Apple

Summary: Apple is reportedly trying to start a new wave of patent attacks on Android/Linux — a plan which failed after misconduct at the legal system had been made publicly known

The USPTO not only lost the ability to protect its reputation; this long-lost reputation or credibility loss is bound to get worse because scope is expanding and the number of approved patents is rising, to the point where almost every application is successful at one point or another (e.g. after resubmission). Recent numbers showed just how bad it was getting all around.

Here is a good new example of patent scope gone awry, even expanding to software (IBM to blame here). Here is another new example from
Apple, which enjoys support from the USPTO (it grants Apple patent monopolies on almost everything Apple wishes).

Apple continues using patents as a weapon against Android/Linux, seeking to tax and eliminate features. Apple pretty much lost the case, with just under a dollar charged per phone from Samsung, so any additional patent the USPTO grants Apple will almost certainly pose a threat to Free software. Apple wants billions from Samsung’s sales of Android devices, and that’s just from Samsung alone. Apple is pursuing patents on all sorts of exotic ideas that Samsung is not pursuing for aggressive purposes like Apple does. In pro-Apple sites one can find the expected bias (portraying Samsung as some kind of thief) as a new trial is expected, this time perhaps without a foreman conflict of interest (only corrupt trials have worked in Apple’s favour).

There is a good new article where a conflict of interest has led to a judge stepping down, proving perhaps that in the area of patents we rely on people in gown ideologically deciding on stuff with their dogma and vested interests.

The USPTO’s conflicts of interest (e.g. profit from patents) and conflicts of interest in the courtroom (e.g. Jury moles) may be beneficial to Apple at one stage or another, but if justice prevails one way or another (eventually), then Apple’s war on Android will always fail miserably at the end. █

06.08.14

Links 8/6/2014: Valve Funds Mesa Development, SQLite 3.8.5 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 3:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Diving into FOSS

        Before sometime I got in touch with KDE community and was overwhelmed by it. Then I became a member of this community and started exploring about open source environment. The most fascinating thing about KDE community members is how committed they are to open source technology. Through IRC I would be able to contact with genius coders all over the globe. It’s been quite a time that I am using open source software. It is very much important to aware people about open source. We can have access to all robust and efficient soft wares for free. After being a part of KDE it interested me to use open source systems and I am really enjoying this.

      • Plasma Active on Qt5/KF5: Wallpapers and Activities Configuration
      • The future of activity switching

        The new pretty thing that is taking away my time is the activity switcher which got a rather big revamp for the next release of Plasma.

      • Plasma mediacenter 1.3 beta on Arch User Repository

        As you already know, Plasma mediacenter 1.3 beta is released on 3rd June.

        Many distros like Fedora, openSUSE, KUbuntu have already packaged this beta in their repositories

        So to make life of Archers easier, I have uploaded PKGBUILD for Plasma mediacenter 1.3 beta on AUR.

      • GSoC 2014: KDE Games

        I am Anuj Pahuja(alasin), a Computer Science undergraduate from BITS Pilani, India. It is my first GSoC and I can’t thank KDE Community enough for accepting me as a student.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Get Your Ubuntu to Look like Mac OS X with a Simple Theme

        Most of the themes that can pull this Mac OS X transformation work on desktop environments like GNOME, MATE, Xfce, and so on, but not all of them work in Unity. The designer of this particular version made it compatible with GTK 3.10 and it works in Ubuntu as well.

        “The goal is to keep it as close as possible to ambiance on the code base with the same look as the original cupertino. If that isn’t possible for an element I will prefer the look of cupertino,” said the designer on gnome-look.org.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Release Announcement: LinuxBBQ “Cream”
      • GParted Live 0.19.0 Beta 1 Gets New Debian Base Update

        GParted Live 0.19.0 Beta 1, a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86-based computers that can be used for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions with the help of tools that allow managing filesystems, has been released and is now available for download.

      • Robolinux 7.5.3 OS Wants to Keep You Safe from NSA

        Robolinux 7.5.3 is a fast and easy to use Linux distribution based on Debian, and its developer thinks that it can be the solution for people who look to protect their privacy.

        If you remember from previous releases of Robolinux, the developer of this particular distribution came up with a working idea on how to move people from the Windows platform to Linux without them having to give up their favorite applications.

      • SparkyLinux 3.4 LXDE, e17, and Razor-Qt Distros Are Based on Debian Jessie

        SparkyLinux 3.4, a lightweight, fast, and simple Linux distribution designed for both old and new computers featuring customized LXDE, e17, and Razor-Qt desktops is now available for download.

        The SparkyLinux 3.34 “Annagerman” system is built on Debian GNU/Linux “Jessie” and is not all that different from the previous versions in the series, at least not in this particular aspect.

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • OpenMandriva Lx 2014 review

        OpenMandriva Lx 2014 is the latest edition of OpenMandriva, a desktop Linux distribution derived from Mandriva Linux. It is one of the distributions that rose out of the ashes of Mandriva Linux; the other being Mageia, and, to some extent, ROSA Desktop.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Apple Copies Ubuntu, Pimping Scientific, and 500 Steam Games
      • The ultimate Scientific Linux pimping guide

        Several weeks back, we reviewed Scientific Linux 6.5, a rather spartan incarnation of the legendary RHEL 6, which might be considered too boring and outdated for modern home use. Well, not so. Once long ago, I showed you how to transform CentOS into a home use beast.

        Today, we will do it again, with the most comprehensive guide on Scientific Linux pimping ever made on Planet Earth. Here, you get a bit of everything, and then so. Best of all? This guide is also relevant for CentOS and even Fedora, so make sure you keep it close to your heart. Let’s go.

      • Fedora

        • Public Fedora Board Meeting — Monday June 9th 2014

          Matthew Miller just announced that fortnightly public Fedora Board meetings are starting up again. The first meeting will be on Monday the 9th of June at 17:00 UTC time. (Matthew notes in the email to fedora-announce that the command date -d ’2014-06-09 17:00 UTC’ is an easy way to convert this into the timezone on your Fedora machine.)

        • More fedora.next branding ideas

          We previously posted about some of the logo design ideas that Máirín Duffy was working on for the 3 products of fedora.next (Cloud, Server, and Workstation). Since that post, Máirín has also posted a bunch of other iterations, and I also entered the fray with a few ideas of my own. Now, Máirín has done another round of design ideas. Check them out, and join the discussion over on her blog.

    • Debian Family

      • Elive 2.2.6 beta released

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Apple introduces Unity Scopes-like search and no one cries foul

            This week, Apple announced the new OS X Yosemite, and Linux users across the Linux-verse stood up and proclaimed “Oooo, I’d like to lay my hands on the lily-livered swab is writ that forgery!” Why so up in arms? Because Apple has done what Apple does — riff on features from other platforms and claim they’ve recreated a wheel that will make your life far easier. What did they do this time? Let’s chat.

            One of the big features of OS X Yosemite is included in the Spotlight tool. For those who don’t know, Spotlight is the OS X search tool that, up until Yosemite, searched the local drive. As of Yosemite, anyone who has touched the Ubuntu Unity Dash will notice something very similar to Scopes.

            [...]

            When Ubuntu released Unity Scopes, a very large and very vocal group from the Linux community cried foul, that Scopes was an invasion of privacy, was insecure, and would probably steal their identity…

            …maybe not that last bit. But there was plenty of backlash from the community (many of whom didn’t even use Ubuntu).

            How will the Apple community react when they start using the Scopes-like feature in Yosemite? They’ll love it. They’ll realize how convenient it is to be able to, from one location, search their local drive, Wikipedia, Amazon.com, and countless other sources.

          • Ubuntu 14.04 – There has never been a better time to switch to Linux

            You would think that writing about the latest version of Ubuntu 14.04 would be easy but it is hard to write about one of the biggest Linux distributions without repeating everyone else’s sentiments or covering the same ground that was covered with Ubuntu 13.10.

            With that in mind please don’t be disappointed that much of what I will be writing here has been written before.

            There is nothing revolutionary about Ubuntu 14.04, especially if you have already tried Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10 and Ubuntu 12.04. The improvements to Ubuntu have been slow and steady.

          • Meizu Will Present A Meizu MX3 Phone Running Ubuntu Touch, At The Mobile Asia Expo 2014

            Earlier this year, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2014) in Barcelona, Canonical has announced the first two phone manufacturers that will create Ubuntu Touch-based smartphones: Meizu and Bq.

          • More OpenSSL Vulnerabilities Found, Ubuntu OSes Get Patched

          • Flavours and Variants

            • An Ubuntu MATE Desktop Spin Might Still Materialize

              There’s been much talk in the past about creating a spin/derivative of Ubuntu Linux using the MATE Desktop Environment fork of GNOME2. While no spin materialized for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, talk of developing a new spin is again happening.

            • Ubuntu Might Get An Official Ubuntu MATE Flavor Soon
            • Linux Mint 17 Qiana MATE : Video Review and Screenshot Tour

              Linux Mint 17 Qiana is the latest version of linux mint that based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, it was released and announced by Linux Mint Developer a few days ago. Linux Mint 17 is a long-term support release which will be supported until 2019. In addition, The Linux Mint developers plan to use this package base until 2016.

              Linux Mint usually comes with four desktop editions: Cinnamon Desktop Environment, MATE Desktop Environment, KDE and XFCE, although currently, only Cinnamon and MATE editions are available, XFCE and KDE edition should arrive shortly.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Your Android phone, now with NSA-grade security

        NSA-grade security is now coming to an Android device near you.

      • Tizen-powered Samsung Z smartphone with open source mobile OS

        The Samsung Z looks and feels very much like Samsung’s Android smartphones. There’s the tiles section at the top of the home screen, with some app icons at the botton, and there’s the pull-down notifications and settings tray at the very top. You also get the hardware Back and Menu buttons, in addition to the main Home button. The Settings app looks almost identical to Samsung’s Android version.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Solutions

    LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an application protocol for accessing directory services. It runs on a layer above the TCP/IP stack incorporating simplified encoding methods, and offers a convenient way to connect to, search, and modify Internet directories, specifically X.500-based directory services. It is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol. LDAP utilizes a client-server model.

  • Nine Advantages of Open Source Software

    While it initially seemed revolutionary, open source software is actually rooted in traditional IT processes. Technology, after all, has always been about collaboration and continuous improvement. (In the early days of the ARPANET, for example, researchers established a “request for comments” procedure to improve the project.) Of course, there have been trepidations raised about open source. But the always-active open source communities are more than happy to address any concerns. As a result, more than one-half of the software acquired over the next several years will be open source, according to industry research.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • SQLite 3.8.5 Arrives with New Features

      SQLite 3.8.5, an in-process library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine, has been released with an impressive list of changes and improvements.

      Most of the SQLite releases are maintenance ones, but from time to time the developers make some important changes. The current update features a few new options, so an update is recommended.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 9.3 Beta 2 Is Now Available

      One week after FreeBSD 9.3 went into beta, the second beta update is now available.

      FreeBSD 9.3 is the next major FreeBSD 9 update due out that brings down some features from FreeBSD 10.0 like the Radeon KMS/DRM driver support, Xen HVM support, Apple MacBook trackpad support, disables hardware random number generators by default, and has a ton of other changes.

      FreeBSD enthusiasts can find out more about the forthcoming 9.3 update via the tentative release notes. FreeBSD 9.3 is expected to be officially released in mid-July.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNUstep’s position on Swift

      I wanted to make this post to make it clear to the community regarding GNUstep’s position on the new Swift language. If the language is released as open source then GNUstep will fully support it. If it is, however, not released as open source then we will either take steps to create an implementation ourselves or provide any assistance needed to a group of people other than ourselves who are willing to take that on.

    • We’re glad you liked Email Self-Defense. Let’s take it even farther.

      Yesterday was a big day for defending our freedom and privacy on the Internet. The FSF and its supporters joined the ranks of thousands for Reset the Net, the biggest-ever day of action against bulk surveillance.

    • Theming and Style in GNUstep

      Not only the pixmaps and colours can be changed, also the style of the interface. This include the menu style (vertical, in-window or Mac OS style), the scrollbar position (right or left), the behaviour of contextual menus, popup list and pulldown list (so these can have similar behaviour of the gtk components). The Silver theme include an style that let users run GNUstep’s apps on, for example, Gnome without problems.

    • GNU remotecontrol: Newsletter – June 2014

      GNU remotecontrol relies on OS file access restrictions, Apache authentication, MySQL authentication, and SSL encryption to secure your data. Talk to us you want to find out how you can further strengthen the security of your system, or you have suggestions for improving the security of our current system architecture.

    • GNU Nettle 3.0 Cryptographics Library Released

      The developers behind the Nettle project are out with a new major update to their dual-licensed GPLv2 and LGPLv3+ cryptographics library.

Leftovers

« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »

Further Recent Posts

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts