08.16.13
Links 16/8/2013: Tropico 5 for GNU/Linux, KDE 4.11 Released
Contents
GNU/Linux
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Raspberry Fly? Airware’s Linux and ARM developer platform for drones
Airware’s autopilot and control software opens the skies for drone developers.
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Raspberry IO open sourced
Back in March, at PyCon 2013, the PSF provided each attendee with a Raspberry Pi, a tiny credit-card sized computer meant to be paired with the Python programming language. The power and portability of the Raspberry Pi has stimulated an explosion of interest among hobbyists and educators. Their uses seem to be limited only by our collective imagination.
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Linux Format 175 On Sale Today – Next Generation Sysadmin
The world of the system administrator is changing. You can spin up new virtual machines and create RAID arrays with just a couple of commands, pull the strings of multiple server systems with Puppet, use NoSQL to boost your earnings potential and much, much more. And when you`ve done all that you can peek into the world of Arch Linux, find out what it takes to organise your own OSCON/OggCamp-like conference, and get the inside track on how open source is being put to good use at Jolla, the successor to the Meego mobile operating system. All this, plus reviews, tutorials, Answers, HotPicks and more await in your latest Linux Format!
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Hyperloop: The Promise is in the Project’s Approach
The approach sounds familiar. Twenty-two years ago this month Linux creator Linus Torvalds posted his “crazy” idea on the web:
“I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby won’t be big and professional like gnu)…I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome….”
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Server
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83 pc of enterprises currently run on Linux server environment
Recent study reveals 83 per cent of enterprises have Linux currently deployed on servers; top reasons for adoption include lower TCO, higher performance and avoidance of vendor lock-in
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Where Is Linux Used in the Enterprise?
New research from Linux vendor SUSE identifies the types of enterprise workloads where Linux is deployed and addresses the issue of vendor lock-in.
The open-source Linux operating system is widely deployed across modern enterprises, and a new study sponsored by enterprise vendor SUSE Linux aims to reveal precisely what workloads Linux is running. The SUSE study asked 167 IT professionals about their usage of Linux in general. Across the survey base, 83 percent indicated that they currently have some form of Linux deployment in their enterprises. -
IBM Wins Biggest U.S. Cloud-Computing Contract After CIA Loss
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) said today it won its biggest cloud-computing contract from the U.S. government, a 10-year agreement valued at as much as $1 billion.
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CIA’s criminal paramilitary actions grew after 9/11
Created in 1947 as a successor to the espionage agency born during World War II for use against the U.S.’s imperialist rivals, Japan and Germany, the Central Intelligence Agency rapidly developed into an international arm of repression for U.S. imperialism against the world’s working-class and liberation movements. It especially targeted the Soviet Union, People’s China and the socialist camp during the Cold War.
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Difference Engine
Over the last decade, a similar thing has happened to system administration. It’s still the same old technology: networks, storage, security etc. But the way those technologies are being used is changing. This is most obvious in what everyone, except Richard Stallman, calls ‘The Cloud’, old ideas woven into a new dimension. It’s pushing change through at an incredible pace, just like when home computing exploded in the 80s, and it’s exactly these developments that Ben tackles in this month’s cover feature. But the most amazing thing for me is that while all those incredible formative developments took place in expensive and exclusive computer laboratories, you can play with any of these latest developments on any modest Linux box. And that’s the real revolution.
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SUSE Study Shows Linux on the Rise in the Enteprise
Most people who keep up with Linux know that it has been a giant success at the server level, and powers much of the server infrastucture of the Internet. In fact, many Internet and enterprise users don’t even realize the extent to which they depend on Linux and related platform technology every day. In the enterprise itself, Linux is actually much more entrenched than some people would think. A new study on Linux in the enterprise from SUSE makes this abundantly clear, and shows that 83 percent of responding enterprises run Linux at the server level.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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New Linux Podcast Could be What You’re Looking For
Jupiter Broadcasting, the guys that bring you the Linux Action Show, now bring Linux enthusiasts a new Linux podcast: Linux Unplugged. The first show appeared a couple of days ago to address issues time inhibits on the Linux Action Show.
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Kernel Space
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Puppy Linux 5.6 Starts Playing With F2FS
Puppy Linux, the lightweight and speed-oriented Linux distribution based upon Slackware, has updated their “Slacko” release to version 5.6 and with Puppy Linux 5.6 comes full F2FS file-system support.
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Amiga Fast File System (AFFS)
In 1988, Amiga produced the Fast File System (FFS) for use on the AmigaOS version 1.3 in 1988. The FFS file system was an update to what was later termed “Old File System” (OFS), released in 1985. FFS was backward compatible with OFS. The file systems were both released for the Amiga systems which had hard disks or floppy disks. Originally, the AmigaOS was termed AmigaDOS or Workbench and FFS had a version number of v34.
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All About the Linux Kernel: Cgroup’s Redesign
Over the past few months, big changes have been underway on the cgroup Linux kernel subsystem and its related, but independent, system and service manager Systemd. Developers aren’t building shiny new features, though, as much as overhauling cgroups (control groups) to impose more structure in an area of the kernel that’s become problematic.
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ZRAM Might Finally Be Moved Out Of Linux Staging
The zRAM Linux kernel module that aims to increase Linux’s performance by avoiding paging to disk and optimizing to use a compressed block device in RAM, may finally leave the Linux kernel staging area and be promoted to main. This code that mostly benefits users with limited amounts of system RAM has become quite mature and is becoming widely adopted, which in part is why it’s trying to be promoted out of the staging area.
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Linux Kernel 3.10.7 Is Now Available for Download
A few minutes ago, August 15, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced that the seventh maintenance release for the 3.10 LTS branch of the Linux kernel is available for download.
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Meet The Man Who Minds The Linux Kernel
Linus Torvalds creates the Linux kernel, but Greg Kroah-Hartman maintains it. He speaks to Sean Michael Kerner
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Linux Kernel “Hobbyist” Wanted: Free Travel to Kernel Summit
As an experiment this year, the Linux Kernel Summit Program Committee would like to put out a call for hobbyists. This year, we have up to three places to give to people who do Linux Kernel development as a hobby rather than a profession (Our definition of “hobbyist” is anyone who doesn’t get paid to work on Linux). The Linux Kernel Summit will be held this year in Edinburgh from 23-25 October and, on the core day (the 24th of October), will primarily be concentrating on processes around kernel development. Since most top kernel developers are not hobbyists these days, this is your opportunity to make up for what we’re missing. As we recognize most hobbyists don’t have the resources to attend conferences, we’re offering (as part of the normal kernel summit travel fund processes) travel reimbursement as part of being selected to attend.
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Graphics Stack
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Hawaii Wayland/Weston Shell Gets New Release
Hawaii Shell, a Qt 5 based desktop interface that has a Weston plug-in for Wayland support, has experienced a new release. This Hawaii Shell release for Wayland has many new desktop-related features for those wishing for something a little more than a stock Weston desktop.
New features of the Hawaii Shell 0.1.92 release from Monday include improved multi-screen support, a theming QML API, modal dialogs, a lock screen, and logout/lock/restart/power-off/suspend actions, and lots of fixes.
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Valgrind Finds Thousands Of Potential Issues With Mesa
An open-source developer has spotted thousands of potential memory problems with Mesa when using Valgrind.
While not meaning to rant about Mesa or focus upon the project exclusively, a Fedora contributor, Casey Dahlin, has pointed out the shocking number of potential memory issues within Mesa as found by Valgrind, the important open-source programming tool for memory debugging, profiling, leak detection, and other memory-related matters.
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kwin and catalyst drivers
I have tried the opensource driver but my notebook’s bios does not provide the gpu profiles required to make the dynamic clock support in the opensource driver to work, so I am stuck with catalyst.
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Features Still Being Sought By Open-Source AMD Users
While the open-source AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver now has support for the latest graphics cards, there’s finally UVD video decoding, and the Linux 3.11 kernel brings dynamic power management, there’s still features being desired by those using this open-source Linux graphics driver on ATI/AMD GPUs.
In response to AMD’s Initial Radeon Driver Changes For Linux 3.12 article, Phoronix readers began talking about other changes and features they are still seeking. The discussion has taken place within this forum thread for those interested. Below is a synopsis of what’s going on.
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AMD’s Initial Radeon Driver Changes For Linux 3.12
The Linux 3.11 kernel is still weeks away from being released, but already AMD’s Alex Deucher has begun queuing up changes for their open-source Radeon driver for the Linux 3.12 kernel.
The Radeon changes that landed in Linux 3.11 were incredibly huge due to the long-awaited Radeon DPM support that means a ton of improvements. With the Radeon DRM update is also the Radeon HD 8000 “Sea Islands” graphics card support, among other changes.
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Audio Support Comes Closer For Newer Radeon GPUs
Aside from Radeon KMS HDMI audio not being enabled by default, HDMI audio support has entirely been missing for newer Radeon GPUs, like the HD 7000 “Southern Islands” hardware. Fortunately, it’s being worked on and will hopefully land with the Radeon changes for Linux 3.12.
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Hawaii On Wayland’s Weston Shows Low RAM Usage
At the beginning of the day I wrote about the Hawaii desktop environment having a new Weston Shell release. This Qt5-based desktop is not only nice for showing off the next-generation Linux display stack, but with it also comes a dramatic reduction in system memory usage.
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Help Name The New X.Org DRI3 “Present” Extension
With the ongoing X.Org work for DRI3, the latest revision to the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, there is a Present Extension, but it looks like a new name is needed.
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S3TC Is Still Problematic For Mesa Developers, Users
While there’s now ETC2 texture compression and ASTC texture compression that were announced last year, S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) continues to be widely used by OpenGL games and application. This patent-encumbered means of graphics texture compression continues to cause massive headaches for open-source developers and end-users and will be the case for years to come.
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Benchmarks
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Applications
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Inkscape Special Edition Volume 01
Here is a straight reprint of the Inkscape series, Parts 1-7 from issues #60 through #67, from self-confessed non-artist Mark Crutch – if he can do it, so can you!
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Cantor – dynamic keywords in python backend
In previous post, I mentioned about dynamic keywords in python backend. The idea is, after import a python module in Cantor workspace, functions, keywords, variables, and more from this module are load by Cantor and available to syntax highlighting and tab complete.
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New stable release Marble 1.6!
Together with the 4.11 Release of KDE Applications a new stable Marble version 1.6 has been released. It surely is the greatest Marble release to date. Arguably each new release of a software should be the greatest so far, yet Marble 1.6 introduces an extraordinary amount of awesomeness. Below is a teaser image highlighting some of the new features. Make sure to check out our visual changelog which mentions even more new stuff and embeds some nice videos. Enjoy
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Sidekiq
From my perspective, one of the best parts of being a Web developer is the instant gratification. You write some code, and within minutes, it can be used by people around the world, all accessing your server via a Web browser. The rapidity with which you can go from an idea to development to deployment to actual users benefiting from (and reacting to) your work is, in my experience, highly motivating.
Users also enjoy the speed with which new developments are deployed. In the world of Web applications, users no longer need to consider, download or install the “latest version” of a program; when they load a page into their browser, they automatically get the latest version. Indeed, users have come to expect that new features will be rolled out on a regular basis. A Web application that fails to change and improve over time quickly will lose ground in users’ eyes.
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Proprietary
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Is CrossOver 12.5 better than Wine for Windows apps in Linux?
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Where Is My Opera for Linux?
The Opera browser has quite a following on the Linux platform, but ever since the release of the new Opera Next, the Linux users have been left out.
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Instructionals/Technical
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How to conduct security vulnerability assessment of a remote server with OpenVAS
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clipf: Cryptic, but powerful
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Mir 0.0.9 Display Server Comes With Improvements | How To Install And Test Mir On Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander
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Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander Now Runs On Kernel 3.11 RC5
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The Linux Kernel: Configuring the Kernel Part 5
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How to scan network with Nmap GUI
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7 Linux hwclock Command Examples to Set Hardware Clock Date Time
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How to Produce Vector EPS with CMYK Color Using Free Software
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How To Install MATE or Cinnamon Desktop Environments On Fedora 19 And Fedora 18
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How To Install VueScan 9.2.23 On Linux Systems
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How To Install The NVIDIA 325.15 Linux Graphics Driver On Ubuntu 13.10, 13.04, 12.10, 12.04 And Linux Mint 15, 14, 13 Via PPA
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Linux Containers: Part 4, Getting to the Universe (Ping Google.com)
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Install OpenStack Grizzly on Fedora 19 with Quantum Networking
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Setting Up a Project on Launchpad and Using Bazaar
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Install openQRM 5.1 On Debian Wheezy
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Recover deleted LVM partitions in CentOS/RHEL/Fedora
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How to Install KDE SC 4.11 on Ubuntu 13.04 and 12.04 LTS
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Ubuntu: 1927-1: libimobiledevice vulnerability
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Install and debug AMD catalyst graphics driver in Elementary OS / Ubuntu 12.04
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Epoptes – Open source computer lab management and monitoring tool
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Searching JARs for String (Linux)
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Django Tidbit: Logging in After User Activation
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How to set up C/C++ development environment in Eclipse
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logtailer: Watching the logs in real time
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Vuze 5.1.0.0 Has Been Released | How To Install Vuze 5.1.0.0 On Linux Systems
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How To Install Kernel 3.10.7 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian And Derivates
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How To Install The Linux Kernel 3.4.58 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint And Debian
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How To Install The Linux Kernel 3.0.91 On Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian And Derivates
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How To Install Indicator Weather 13.06 On Ubuntu 13.10, 13.04, 12.10, 12.04 And Linux Mint 15, 14, 13
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How to conduct security vulnerability assessment of a remote server with OpenVAS
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Wine or Emulation
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Run Windows apps on both OS X & Linux with CrossOver 12.5
Don’t want to dual-boot your Mac or Linux PC to run one or two Windows apps? Don’t want to install a full virtual operating system for them? CodeWeaver’s latest version of CrossOver 12.5 may be just what you want.
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Games
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Football Manager 2014 will be on Linux as well
This year’s new Football Manager game will be on Linux for the very first time – goal! That’s as well as Windows and Mac, and all three versions are due out before Christmas.
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Europa Universalis IV is out worldwide, appropriately enough, on Windows, Mac and Linux
By all accounts – mostly Rob’s – Europa Universalis IV is every bit as deep as the maroons and mustards and navy blues of its campaign map, which make it look like a pub boardgame from the ‘50s. And it’s probably even deeper than Crusader Kings II, the game it follows out of the development stable at Paradox and acts as de facto sequel to.
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How Riot Games Used Open Source to Rework Its Software Infrastructure
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SDL2.0 Release Is Now Out For Developers
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System Shock 2 Cult Classic Sci-fi Horror FPS-RPG Looks Like It Is Heading To Linux
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Metro: Last Light is coming to Linux
The game has already received an award: “GameSpot Editor’s Choice Winner 2013″. Furthermore it was rated with 82/100 by Metacritic. Recently, some other games developed by Deep Silver were part of the Humble Bundle, but none of these games has been officially supported on Linux yet!
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The Humble Weekly Sale: Introversion
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Tropico 5 City Builder Will Come To Linux
Wow the awesome news doesn’t stop, Tropico 5 the island city builder will come to Linux as stated in their official announcement! Am I asleep?
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‘Tropico 5′ announced for Xbox 360, PC, Mac and Linux
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Tropico 5 annexing Xbox 360, PC, Mac, Linux in 2014
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Metro: Last Light spotted for Linux on Steam database
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Steam database listing hints at Linux version of Metro: Last Light
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Tropico 5 coming to Xbox 360, PC, Mac and Linux next year
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Gone Home Review (PC/Mac/Linux)
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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LXDE on Steroids
I like some things about all Linux Desktop Environments. But my favorite is LXDE. For me, it is about customization. I want my desktop my way. And I want it running on a stable distribution. So I was pleased to come across LXLE. You can check it out here for yourself ( More about that later).
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Qt 5.2 Planned For November Release, KF5 Features
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Blue Systems Seeks To Speed Up KF5 Development
For speeding up the development of KDE Frameworks 5, developers at Blue Systems are near exclusively focusing upon the development of these frameworks for the next three months.
Blue Systems, the German company that’s been sponsoring Kubuntu, Mint Linux KDE edition, the Netrunner KDE distribution backer, and is involved with other KDE projects, is looking to push KDE Frameworks 5 ahead.
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KDE 4.11 released
KDE has one of the most advanced desktop environments around which empowers a use to take control of her computing. The KDE community has just announced the release of KDE 4.11 software compilation which includes the desktop environment Plasma Workspaces, applications and the development platform.
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KDE 4.11 Released With Its Early KWin Wayland Code
KDE Software Compilation 4.11 has been released as its six-month update to the KDE desktop environment stack. With KDE 4.11 comes many exciting changes ahead of the KDE Frameworks 5 transition.
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KDE 4.11 available for Kubuntu via PPA
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Recent developments in LTMT
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Important note about Amarok and KDE 4.11
Hello everyone, welcome to my new blog. In case you don’t know me yet, I’m Mark Kretschmann, known in KDE mostly as the Amarok guy (I started it about 10 years ago). I used to contribute regularly to Planet KDE, back then on our Amarok server, but what happened then is Google Plus, and a server move. As I became more active again in Amarok development after a hiatus I figured I could start blogging again, now that the “huge” release 2.8 is approaching really fast. If you’d like to follow me on G+ where I’m very active, you can do it here.
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4.11 Release of Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform
The KDE Community is proud to announce the latest major updates to the Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform delivering new features and fixes while readying the platform for further evolution. The Plasma Workspaces 4.11 will receive long term support as the team focuses on the technical transition to Frameworks 5. This then presents the last combined release of the Workspaces, Applications and Platform under the same version number.
These releases are all translated in 54 languages; we expect more languages to be added in subsequent monthly minor bugfix releases by KDE. The Documentation Team updated 91 application handbooks for this release.
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KDE Plasma, Applications 4.11
Packages for the release of KDE SC 4.11 are available for Kubuntu 12.04LTS, 13.04 and our development release. You can get them from the Kubuntu Backports PPA.
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New KReversi design
Because current design has very bad level of abstraction: KReversiView controls part of game-flow, all code based on Computer-Player system with special code for computer and player moves, so to simply implement player-player mode we need to add many IF-statements to KReversiView, KReversiGame and mainwindow code.
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KDE 4.11 is out
KDE Software Compilation 4.11 has been released – the major components being Plasma Workspaces, KDE Applications, and the basis on which those are built, the KDE Platform. The new KDE SC 4.11 is more of an intermediate release cycle while the developers concentrate on the technical transition to “KDE Frameworks 5″ (the evolution of the current KDE Platform).
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In conversation with Elena
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KDE 4.11 Brings Better Performance & New Stuff
Jos Poortvliet today announced the release of KDE Plasma 4.11 on dot.kde.org. He wrote this release is dedicated to Atul ‘toolz’ Chitnis, KDE contributor who passed away June 3. The rest of the announcement outlined all the wonderful improvements this release.
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KWin enters the world of QtQuick 2
Since my last blog post there has been lots of progress on the KWin on 5 effort. First of all a big thank you to everybody who has picked up some of the tasks on the trello board. Thanks to that the compile output is starting to look better and better – the number of deprecated warnings is starting to go down and by that also some areas are closer to be working again.
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KDE’s KWin Ported To Qt Quick 2
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David Revoy releases 3rd version of his Brush Kit
Yesterday, David Revoy presented his new and 3rd brush kit for Krita. Thanks to him for his constant collaboration!
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Amarok trusts CDDB too much
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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GNOME Display Settings Now Working On Wayland
In addition to the Hawaii Weston Shell update and better touch input support on Weston, there’s some more good news for Wayland: the GNOME Display Settings is now working on Wayland via a new Dbus interface.
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Distributions
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Another Distribution Joins LinuxQuestions.org – Zorin OS
I’m happy to announce that another distribution has joined LinuxQuestions.org. Please welcome Zorin OS.
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Netrunner Sprints Ahead of the Linux Distro Pack
By integrating classic KDE desktop performance with Web-based applications and cloud services, Netrunner 5 “Enigma,” released last month, does what many distro retreads fail to do: It achieves a distinctive quality that makes it stand apart from other distros. A privacy-minded version, meanwhile, includes Firefox preconfigured with Tor, FoxyProxy, HTTPs Everywhere and NoScript.
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Parted Magic Is Still Free
Parted Magic, the popular lightweight live Linux environment for managing hard drive partitions through GParted and Parted, looks like it’s now behind a pay wall, but that’s not entirely the case.
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Precise Puppy 5.7.1 review – a small and swift linux distro
Puppy Linux – the Precise variant Precise Puppy is a puppy linux variant that is “based” on Ubuntu 12.04 precise. It is designed as a small and fast distro that can run on older hardware with low resources. It is intended to be run in live mode rather than installing on the hard drive. The iso file can be burnt to a disc or put on a flash drive and it would boot like any other linux distro.
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New Releases
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Screenshots
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Red Hat Family
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Red hatters plot a new future for Fedora
Members of the open-source Fedora Linux Project are plotting a different path for the operating system. The plan is for the distribution to evolve from a general-purpose open-source operating system to a new model with core functionality and then separate specific builds for different use cases.
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Back on Flock 2013
Since my last blog post about my arrival to Charleston (South Carolina), I have been participating to the Flock conference.
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Flock
At the end of FUDCon Lawrence, one thing was obvious to me: Bar Camp style conferences were not working for Fedora. Attendance was dropping, we were seeing the same talks over and over again, and we were spending a large chunk of time just shuffling these same talks into a schedule. It was a sort of echo chamber, where the same people presented the same ideas on the same topics, just in a different place and time. I talked this over with Ruth and Robyn and we all agreed that we wanted to try to restart the idea of what a Fedora conference means, and from that came Flock.
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Working with Red Hat’s Pulp team
This May I started my internship at Red Hat with the Pulp team. Since it was my first ever internship, I expected I would spend the summer working in a closet somewhere, on nothing of importance, and that what I worked on would be tossed out the second I left.
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Fedora
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Fedora Linux Plots Agile Core Future
Members plot a new path forward for the Fedora Linux Project in order to tailor it for more specific uses
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Fedora 20 will not install sendmail by default
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Debian Family
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Happy 20th Birthday, Debian
A quick reminder: Despite the fact that it’s still about eight hours to midnight where I am on August 15, in many parts of the world it’s already August 16, which is Debian’s birthday.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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How The Phased Update Process Works On Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail
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Ubuntu Edge passes $10M on Indiegogo
VANCOUVER–Ubuntu Edge, the innovative Linux-based smartphone-plus-PC, just passed $10 million on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. Too bad the team set their goal at $32 million — and has just six days to go.
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Ubuntu 13.10 Release Date, Features: Overshadowed by Ubuntu Edge?
Within the Ubuntu community, users know Canonical delivers its Linux distribution upgrades each April and October. So anticipation should be building — right now — for Ubuntu 13.10′s launch in October 2013. There’s only one problem: Most eyes are focused on the Ubuntu Edge smartphone initiative at the moment. Is that good for Canonical’s partners and customers?
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Mir Update and Testing Mir in Ubuntu 13.10
Some time ago we announced Mir; a thin, efficient, multi form-factor display server that will form the foundation of Ubuntu moving forward across desktops, phones, tablets, and TVs.
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Canonical Is Shutting Down Ubuntu Friendly
Canonical is going to finally shutdown Ubuntu Friendly, their community approach for users to share with other Ubuntu users how well their laptops/desktops work with the Linux distribution.
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Mir 0.0.9 Display Server Fixes Lag, VT Switching
For those following Mir Display Server development now that it’s living in Ubuntu 13.10, Mir 0.0.9 has been released.
Mir 0.0.8 came a couple weeks ago and since then there’s been numerous developments for this Linux display server that’s developed by Canonical for Ubuntu Linux on desktop and mobile devices. Mir 0.0.9 isn’t a breakthrough release for this Wayland competitor, but it does have a lot of fixes and improvements scattered throughout. The Mir 0.0.9 release happened on Sunday.
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Our Favourite Ubuntu 13.10 Wallpaper Entries
Did you have a snap you wanted to submit to the Ubuntu 13.10 Wallpaper Contest? You’ll need to get your skates on as the competition closes for submissions tomorrow.
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint 15 Olivia KDE – The eyes smile doth not
Well, time to review Linux Mint 15 Olivia KDE. Normally, I do not review Mint releases adorned with the KDE desktop, not because there’s something wrong with them, but simply because it has never been Mint’s forte. The last time I tried this combo was with Lisa, and the experience was somewhat lukewarm.
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Devices/Embedded
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Timesys and Critical Link Announce Linux Solution for OMAP-L138 DSP + ARM9™ processor-based System-on-Module
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Tiny ARM+DSP+FPGA COMs gain Linux support
Timesys announced embedded Linux support for a pair of computer-on-modules that combine CPU, DSP, and FPGA functions on tiny, SODIMM-style cards. Critical Link’s MityDSP-L138 series COMs are based on a Texas Instruments OMAP-L138 ARM9+DSP system-on-chip processor, along with an optional Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA.
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Mini-ITX SBC packs lots of I/O, runs Linux on Haswell
Win Enterprises announced a Mini-ITX single board computer based on Intel’s 4th Generation (Haswell) Core i7, i5, and i3 processors, paired with an Intel QM87 chipset. The compact MB-73320 SBC accommodates up to 16GB of DDR3 SDRAM, offers numerous storage, networking, video, audio, USB, and multi-protocol serial interfaces, and expands with both Mini-PCIe modules and standard PCI Express cards.
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Check PiCE, a rain resistant case for Raspberry Pi
What makes PiCE special is its solid design which can protect the tiny computer from many things, even the rain.
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SATA v3.2 heralds tiny but very speedy SSDs
The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has ratified the SATA 3.2 storage spec, adding support for a SATA Express spec that can piggyback on faster PCI Express lanes, and defining a new embedded single-chip microSSD. SATA 3.2 also embraces the tiny, SATA Express based M.2 form factor, which debuted in recent Intel and Samsung SSDs.
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Review: Free DD-WRT network router firmware
In most situations, a network router’s normal purpose is to facilitate in connecting computers together to form a network, either for internal use or for granting access to the World Wide Web. Admittedly, if you actually want to do anything interesting with the hardware, most routers have fairly basic firmware that limits the hardware’s full potential.
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Industry Organizations Launch To Provide Linux Support
The Yocto Project and the GENIVI Alliance deliver customized Linux platforms for embedded and automotive applications.
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Critical Link, Timesys, co-develop Linux solution
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Phones
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FLOSS Owns Smartphone Sales
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Ballnux
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Samsung announces the Hennessy dual screen Android flip phone
Most phones today are typical black slabs, but Samsung is showing they are not afraid to try something new (old) and have announced their new dual-screen Android flip phone.
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Android
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How Open Source Is Android, Really?
Google’s Android mobile operating system has emerged to become a dominant force in the smartphone landscape. Sitting at the core of Android is Linux as well as a long list of open-source technologies. Many people mistakenly think that Android itself is all open source, but the harsh reality is that from a usable handset perspective, it’s not always open source and an incident last week proved that fact beyond any shadow of a doubt.
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Is Android really better than iOS?
Today in Open Source: Is Android better than iOS? Plus: How to run Linux on your Windows computer, and a Pennsylvania school district embraces open source solutions
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Top Google Now Alternatives For Android Users
Google Now, which was launched as a competitor to Siri, has become one of Android’s most popular features. Not only does Google Now lets you search by voice, it also gives you detailed information about your next transit, the weather, your undelivered consignments, flight details and more. Google Now, by using all the information about yourself, serves as a useful assistant who helps you at the right moment and at the right time.
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Android 4.3 based CyanogenMod 10.2 nightlies arrive
The CyanogenMod team has announced the release of version 10.2 nightly builds, which are based on Google’s latest Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. The team announced the release through a Google+ post.
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How Android Grew To Be Massively More Popular Than The iPhone
Google’s smartphone operating system now powers a whopping 80% of devices worldwide. Apple’s iOS operating system for iPhones only powers 13% of smartphones. iOS controlled about 16% of the worldwide smartphone market a year ago, according to IDC.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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LG reportedly prepping 8.3-inch tablet
Dubbed the G Pad, the tablet would offer a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels and be powered by a quad-core processor, says blog site TechBlog.
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Lenovo’s smartphone and tablet sales top PCs for first time
Lenovo is seeing huge growth in smartphones and tablets as the PC market continues its decline.
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Unlock Your Inner Badge Appeal During the Tizen App Challenge
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Qt For Tizen Alpha 3 Brings New Features
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Alpha 3 Tightens Integration with Tizen
Aside of improved integration with Tizen operating system we’re also tracking development of Tizen 2.2. This resulted in new interesting features for anyone who loves to cook apps with Qt: new default black UI theme and support for hardware buttons.
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Free Software/Open Source
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Boxee: Streaming Media Goes Open Source
As the rest of the world is catching on to the wonder that is streaming media we’re seeing more options for the serious HTPC die-hards. Boxee is the latest, an open source platform, endlessly customizable but only for experienced Mac or Linux users. If you’re interested, it begins Alpha testing next week.
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Open source tools worth bookmarking
One of my favorite workshops to give is the one that introduces librarians and their staff to open source software. After defining open source to them and debunking all the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) out there, I focus my talk on a list of open source tools that can be useful to libraries.
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Survey Says: Use of Open-Source Will Increase in 2013
The open-source movement continues to gain traction in 2013 among core groups, according to a survey released by electronics distributor Newark element14. The results conclude that more professional engineers, hobbyists, and students will all use open-source software and hardware for one or more design projects this year.
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Open Source Web Design Utilities Listed and Live On SoftwareReviewBoffin.Com Now
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Basho integrates open-source cloud storage with OpenStack
Basho Technologies has integrated its cloud-storage software Riak CS with OpenStack, the popular open-source cloud architecture.
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Google Unveils Open-Source Gumbo HTML Parser Tool
Google is adding another open-source tool for developers with the release of its Gumbo HTML parser, which is a C implementation of the HTML5 parsing algorithm.
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Adobe Starts Brackets From Scratch As A Web Tool For GNU/Linux
Perhaps the ubiquity of GNU/Linux on web servers that convinced Adobe to go this way or perhaps it’s the rapid growth of GNU/Linux on the client side but it’s a better move late than never.
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Open-Source Adobe Brackets Web Development Comes to Linux
When it comes to Web development, Adobe’s Dreamweaver (originally from Macromedia) is a well-known and widely deployed tool. Like most of Adobe’s commercial tools, it doesn’t run on Linux. While historically Adobe’s tools haven’t been widely available for Linux users, a new era seems to be starting.
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Our Latest Collection of Worthwhile and Offbeat Open Source Applications
While there are lots of open source projects that are now household names, many truly good ones don’t get much attention. We’ve delved into little-known but very useful open source projects before here on OStatic. In this post, you’ll find an updated collection of interesting, free applications that you might not currently use.
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Hobbyist coder 2.0 spreads open source in 2013
There’s an old expression in marketing and public relations: when you’ve got no news at all and nothing product or customer related to say, try doing a survey.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Mozilla
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Developers: Give us sane and sensible default system and application settings
You know, why stuff that’s supposed to work out of the box, don’t and why some of the better features of the desktop environments and applications are buried or not enabled by default.
Sometimes I think it has to do with the adoption of a certain ideology by the developers. For example, the developers of Chakra Linux adopted the KISS (keep it simple, s..) principle, which roughly translates into, we give you a bare system, you customize it the way you want. Freedom, they
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Firefox To Remain Default…. Very Nice!
Jason Warner who leads the Ubuntu Desktop Team announced today that Firefox will continue to be the default browser for Ubuntu 13.10 although he suggested the proposal which was unpopular would be re-visited at the next vUDS when plans for Ubuntu 14.04 are discussed.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Where does OpenStack go from here?
Businesses love OpenStack. After only three years, OpenStack corporate backers and users now include Cisco, Red Hat, Rackspace, IBM, Intel, HP, etc., etc. You get the idea. That’s all very nice and well, but where does OpenStack go from here?
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Open Cloud Gains Big in Past Year, Still Gauged by AWS
There are few better occasions than a recurring yearly event to reflect and take stock of where things stand. In the personal sphere, birthdays and anniversaries are good examples of such events, of course, offering as they do a clear opportunity to assess the changes time has wrought since the last one. Here in the world of technology, annual conferences can serve a similar purpose. Case in point: CloudOpen.
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VMware: OpenStack an opportunity for us
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VMware Continues Campaign Against OpenStack and the Open Cloud
Sometimes when you hear questionable comments from corporate executives, it helps to take a historical look back and see if the comments are part of a structured and strategic PR campaign. The bread crumbs tell the story. As a case in point, first consider VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger’s cloud computing comments in a current Network World interview, where he says: “Where is OpenStack, we believe, going to be adopted? We don’t see it having great success coming into the enterprise because it’s a framework for constructing clouds.”
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10 NoSQL, Big Data Partner Questions: 10gen Channel Chief Matt Asay
As 10gen’s VP of business development and strategy, Matt Asay oversees the NoSQL and Big Data company’s partner initiatives. Translation: Asay, a veteran of Alfresco, Canonical, Novell and others — essentially is 10gen’s channel chief. So what are the partner opportunities for those that want to work with the MongoDB database provider? Here are 10 key questions for Asay.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Must-have software for college students
For college students, the old “reading, writing, and ’rithmetic” morphs into writing papers, doing basic stats, and creating presentations (and yes, still lots of reading). No matter what you’re studying or where, you’re going to have to perform these tasks from time to time. Even with student discounts, Microsoft Office Suite can cost anywhere between $80 and $140. But if you think there’s no alternative, you have a little research to do.
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Education
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Twitter Buys Open Source Training Company Marakana To Power New “Twitter University” For Engineers
Twitter today announced its latest acquisition, along with a move into offering richer resources to attract better engineering talent to the company. It has bought Marakana, an open-source technical training company; and in turn, Marakana will be the force behind a new effort called Twitter University. School mascot: a blue bird, not a whale.
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Twitter buys open source training outfit Marakana, launches ‘Twitter University’
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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GUPnP 0.20.4 Makes the User-Agent ASCII-Only
The developers behind the GUPnP project, an object-oriented and elegant open source framework for creating UPnP devices and control points, released version 0.20.4 with various improvements and fixes.
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Glibc 2.18 Supports New Optimizations, New Archs
The official glibc 2.18 announcement has yet to surface, but the 2.18 release has been tagged in Git (and glibc 2.19 development now open), and packages of it can be downloaded. Fortunately, in looking at the Git tree we can already talk about the goodies of glibc 2.18 without the official release announcement.
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Project Releases
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Flashrom 0.9.7 Refines Support For A Lot Of Chips
Flashrom is the leading way for flashing BIOS/firmware images on hundreds of flash chips, hundreds of motherboards, and dozens of PCI devices. Released today was Flashrom 0.9.7 as the first major update in one year’s time and with it comes almost 150 changes to the open-source BIOS/firmware flashing project.
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Epiphany 3.9.3 Has Been Released
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Programming
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Standards/Consortia
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Overcoming HTML5′s Limitations
HMTL5 is such a low-cost and portable alternative to native app development that it makes sense to explore solutions that address its limitations.
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Leftovers
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IBM wins largest federal cloud contract to date: U.S. Dept. of Interior
IBM has won its largest federal cloud contract to date. Big Blue has signed on to be the primary cloud vendor for the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI).
The 10-year contract is worth approximately $1 billion, consisting of IBM’s cloud computing technologies, services and hosting as the home of the National Park Service begins to deploy a new cloud infrastructure.
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Rackspace survey suggests the hybrid cloud model has won the game
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Why PRISM’s potential impact on cloud industry is under-valued and over-rated
Forrester estimates the US cloud computing industry could lose up to $180 billion by 2016 thanks to the NSA’s PRISM project – but only if you believe that concerns about government spying trump the business benefits of going cloud.
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Security
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New York Times Website goes down
Officially, according to the NYT twitter account, all the paper has to say is that “The New York Times Web site is experiencing technical difficulties. We expect to be back up shortly.” And, then a follow-up,a few minutes, later saying “There are technical difficulties at http://nyti.ms/w0c0wo that we hope to resolve soon. ”
It’s not just the NYT Web site. According to sources at the paper, the nytimes.com e-mail servers are also down.
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Remote File Inclusions Pose Threat to Web Server Security
New research rings the alarm bell on the risks of Remote File Inclusions, which could be a more pervasive threat to Web server security than even SQL injection.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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The Killing Machines
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U.S. harboring two CIA tortures who assassinated Cuban diplomats
TWO CIA agents who participated in Argentina in the torture of Cuban diplomats Jesús Cejas – whose remains were recently returned to Cuba – and Crescencio Galañena, have been living untroubled for a number of years in the United States, protected by the country’s authorities.
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Media on the frontlines
Caught in the crosshairs of conflict, what challenges do journalists working in the Middle East and North Africa face?
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Reagan, Terror, And Benghazi
For the right-wing noise machine, Benghazi trumps all. It stands as a singular failure in American foreign policy…
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CIA tells truth about Area 51
THE CIA is acknowledging the existence of Area 51 in newly declassified documents.
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Area 51 does exists, CIA documents show, but still no mention of UFOs
Documents obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive confirm the existence and location of Area 51, a former secret test site for U.S. 1.
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CIA acknowledges existence of Area 51
George Washington University’s National Security Archive obtained a CIA history of the U-2 spy plane program through a public records request and released it Thursday.
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CIA acknowledges Area 51 in declassified documents
George Washington University’s National Security Archive obtained a CIA history of the U-2 spy plane program through a public records request and released it Thursday.
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Transparency Reporting
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Julian Assange: ‘Bradley Manning’s Apology Was Extracted By Force’
The United States government should be apologizing to Pfc. Bradley Manning, rather than the other way around, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said in a statement Wednesday.
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Obama may have accidentally written Snowden’s defense
Whistle-blower protection experts say the President’s remarks last week might affect his prosecution and sentencing
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Yasuni: Ecuador abandons plan to stave off Amazon drilling
President says scheme to raise money from rich countries to compensate for oil moratorium has pulled in only $13m
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Finance
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Icahn says bigger buybacks can drive Apple shares to $700
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Investigation Of Banks’ Role In Price Rigging Escalates With New Subpoenas
Last week’s CFTC subpoena targeted one unnamed warehousing firm, and specifically focused on documents related to the London Metal Exchange (LME), which is the primary global platform for trading based on metals. The LME sets rules for how the metal industry operates, including limits on how much of a given metal may be moved out of a given warehouse on a given day – the rule which warehouse owners like Goldman Sachs are allegedly abusing for profit. The LME also takes a one percent commission off of the rent that warehouses charge to store metals. With the total global value of metals traded through the exchange measured in the trillions of dollars, changing the system that’s allowed financial firms to inflate prices would cost the LME vast sums.
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Fannie Mae Hires an Officer it Alleges Defrauded it – and Finance Cheers
Three Bloomberg reporters have done the Nation a service by ferreting out a scandal of moderate magnitude but emblematic importance. Dakin Campbell, Jody Shenn and Phil Mattingly broke the story on August 14, 2013 that Adam Glassner, recently described, but not named, in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) fraud suit against Bank of America (B of A), and named as a defendant by Fannie Mae’s in its fraud suit against B of A and several officers, was hired by two companies (Ally and Fannie) bailed out by Treasury.
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The Rule of Law in the Financial System
Felix Salmon has a depressing blog post about the Fab Tourre verdict and a criminal conviction in another Goldman Sachs-related case. Felix concludes, “I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that America’s system of jurisprudence simply isn’t up to the task of holding banks and bankers accountable for their actions.”
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Cisco Plans to Cut 4,000 Jobs, as It Posts Profit Gain
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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What’s the Message of Clinton’s Noncampaign for the Office She Might Run for in Three Years?
Hillary Clinton hasn’t announced that she’s running for president in 2016, and launched a campaign yet. But the Washington Post is already complaining that her nonexistent campaign for an office she may or may not seek lacks a clear message.
[...]
But thank you, Dan Balz and Richard Cohen, for this glimpse into the kind of campaign coverage we can look forward to for the next three years.
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Koch-Funded Franklin Center “Watchdogs” Infiltrate State Capitols
As newsrooms across the country have cut staff reporters — due in part to slipping ad revenue and corporate media conglomeration — the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity has rushed to fill the gap, as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has documented. The Franklin Center has 40 state news websites, with reporters in 34 states so far. Its reporters have received state house press credentials and its stories appear as news in mainstream print newspapers in each state without alerting readers to the heavy right-wing bias of the Franklin-related publications.
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More Corporations Drop Off ALEC’s Conference Brochure
An examination of the promotional brochure for the Chicago meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) reveals that the meeting — where corporate lobbyists secretly vote as equals with legislators on model bills at ALEC task force meetings — has fewer corporate sponsors willing to tell the public they bankroll ALEC’s operations. This news comes in the aftermath of 48 corporations and six non-profits leaving ALEC after the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) connected the dots between “Stand Your Ground” legislation and ALEC, and coalition of organizations pressed for corporations to stop funding ALEC.
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ALECexposed: List of Corporations and Special Interests that Underwrote ALEC’s 40th Anniversary Meeting
Based on the sponsorship rates ALEC promoted earlier this year, the organization took in approximately $910,000 from firms specifically designated as “President” to “Trustee” level sponsors for its 40th Anniversary meeting compared with estimated revenue of approximately $1.2 million for the same level of sponsorships at last year’s meeting in Salt Lake City.
These totals reflect the highest profile sponsorship levels promoted at the meeting, but ALEC obtained an additional amount of revenue from other event sponsorship opportunities for corporations and special interest groups, in addition to registration fees, booth fees for its convention, and other income sources. So its total revenue from this year’s meeting is certainly greater than $1 million, and it is not known if some corporations funded ALEC’s meeting at various sponsorship levels but chose not to have their names listed as sponsors in ALEC’s brochure, or not.
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Censorship
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To be, or not to be, blocked, that is the question
n the latest development of over-zealous internet filtering, the British Library has blocked access to Shakespeare’s Hamlet because of its “violent content”.
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Virgin and Sky blindly blocking innocent sites
As reported by PC Pro, the systems implemented by both Virgin and Sky to stop access to websites blocked by the courts appear to be blocking innocent third-party sites with apparently little or no human oversight. For example the website http://radiotimes.com was reported to have been blocked.
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Privacy
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Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board Cleaned Out Ahead of NSA Scandal
Except not so much. In the months leading up to the scandals, President Obama has slashed the panel’s membership to virtually nothing. Usually a panel of 14-16 people, and 14 even last year, the PIAB now stands at just four members.
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NSA leaks trigger steep rise in ad/third-party-cookie blocking
An Annalect study of the public’s attitudes towards surveillance found that Internet users are becoming more concerned about privacy in the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. They conclude that this will impact on online advertising, as more and more users adjust their browser settings to block third-party cookies and ads, and make use of privacy technologies in general. In support of the thesis, they cite strong growth in the percentage of users who have adjusted their browsers’ privacy settings. These users are still a minority, though the percentage has increased from 22 to 38 in less than a year.
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Washington Post Slaps Back White House Over NSA Privacy Quotes
The Post went to the NSA and the White House for comment before the article’s publication, as it does with almost any sensitive national security story. “The government was made aware of The Post’s intention to publish the documents that accompany this article online,” the article stated.
But, in a separate post, the paper revealed that, after the Post refused to let the White House edit quotes from an on-the-record conversation Gellman had conducted with John DeLong, the NSA’s director of compliance, the administration tried to substitute the quotes with a prepared statement.
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NSA repeatedly violated surveillance rules: report
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How the NSA Is Hurting the Tech Sector
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NSA broke privacy rules ‘thousands of times each year,’ report says
The NSA broke privacy rules “thousands of times each year” since 2008, The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing an internal audit and other documents.
Material was provided to the newspaper this summer by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
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The NSA’s Data Haul Is Bigger Than You Can Possibly Imagine
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Snowden handed NSA information in Dell’s employ: Reports
Reports have surfaced claiming that Edward Snowden began his intelligence collection in 2012.
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Edward Snowden documents show NSA broke privacy rules
The US National Security Agency (NSA) broke privacy rules and overstepped its legal authority thousands of times in the past two years, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
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NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year – report
The U.S. National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since 2008, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
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NSA spying ‘broke privacy rules’
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Meet The Man Behind Palantir, The CIA’s Shifty Data-Mining Contractor
Over at Forbes, Andy Greenberg has penned a fascinating profile of Alex Karp, the CEO of the CIA-funded data mining company Palantir. Palantir applies Silicon Valley data-gathering expertise to the tremendous amount of secret data that intelligence agencies and the military generate. Palantir then takes all the data and makes it useful, tagging the information and analyzing patterns to, for example, predict attacks in Iraq or track down cartel members. The company is moving into the private sector, away from just defense contracting, and bringing lessons from the battlefield to banks looking to stop identity theft and cyberattacks.
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How to Encrypt Your Email
First download Mozilla “thunderbird.” It’s a free email service that you can use with your current email address. Next download a free program called “GNU privacy guard.”
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Keeping Abreast of Privacy Issues
In this post-PRISM world, we need to take individual responsibility to protect our privacy and ensure we have free media. At least then we can freely read, write, speak, and meet with our fellow citizens. We need this privacy to be the new resistance to the creeping totalitarianism of the global elites.
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The NSA and the cloud – dispatches from the front line
The NSA PRISM scandal rumbles on with the prospect of damage to the US cloud industry still top of the agenda as the German government called this week for greater support to create favorable European alternatives to US providers.
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NSA establishes $60 million data analytics lab at N.C. State
N.C. State University will join with the National Security Agency to analyze massive amounts of data at a new lab to be created at Centennial Campus, the university announced Thursday.
The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences, funded with $60.75 million by the federal NSA, is the largest research grant in NCSU’s history, but details about the facility are top secret. Those who work in the lab will be required to have security clearance from the U.S. government.
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Q&A: Senator Ron Wyden on NSA Surveillance and Government Transparency
‘If we don’t recognize that this is a truly unique moment in America’s constitutional history, our generation’s going to regret it forever.’
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Let’s Give Every NSA Employee an Anonymous Whistleblowing Opportunity
A reform that would protect classified information even as it helped tip off Congress and the public to surveillance abuses
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Oracle’s Larry Ellison enthusiastically applauds NSA spying
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has given his enthusiastic support for the National Security Agency’s global surveillance of the internet and everyone on it.
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Decoding NSA doublespeak
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Trevor Timm has a handy guide to decoding NSA doublespeak. The spookocracy has a pathetically transparent way of lying their way out of direct questions, but the press (and, more importantly, Congress) seems incapable of detecting the low-grade BS emanating from the smoke-filled rooms. For example, when you ask the NSA if they can read Americans’ email without a warrant, they reply “we cannot target Americans’ email without a warrant.” The amazing thing about this stuff isn’t that the NSA tries it on, but that its nominal supervision doesn’t notice it. My five year old is better at this than they are.
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Ex-CIA whistleblower Snowden contacted by father against legal advice
The Russian lawyer for Edward Snowden revealed on Thursday that the father of the US intelligence leaker had contacted his son for the first time via the Internet in defiance of legal advice. Meanwhile a new poll shows most Russians think he is a hero for outing the secret services.
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Lavabit founder, under gag order, speaks out about shutdown decision
Ladar Levison took 10 years to build his company—and he’s 32, making that most of his adult life. So when he shut down his encrypted e-mail service, Lavabit, without warning last week, it was like “putting a beloved pet to sleep.”
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How To Encrypt Your Email And Keep Your Conversations Private
Between constant password breaches and government agencies trying to look in on everything you do, your privacy has probably been on your mind lately. If you’re looking for a little personal privacy in your communications with friends and loved ones, or you just want to trust that the documents you email to your accountant aren’t being intercepted and read, you’ll need to encrypt those messages. Thankfully, it’s easy to do. Here’s how.
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House Intelligence Committee chairman says growing criticism of NSA, CIA is ‘dangerous trend’
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday night that “there’s plenty of oversight” given American intelligence agencies like the NSA and CIA and that “we need them to be at the top of their game” in a dangerous world.
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Political Scene: Can the N.S.A. Be Reformed?
On this week’s Political Scene podcast, Hendrik Hertzberg and John Cassidy join host Amy Davidson to talk about President Obama’s proposals to make the National Security Administration’s surveillance programs more transparent and more sensitive to civil liberties. The President’s plan includes appointing an independent lawyer to argue against the government before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court and reforming the Patriot Act to strengthen safeguards against the government listening in to citizens’ phone calls. “The steps he outlined,” Hertzberg says, “were gestures in the right direction, but they were really kind of feeble.” What’s more, as Cassidy says, the politics of security and counterterrorism may stand in the way of any substantial policy changes. “The political incentive for Obama and everybody in the White House is to act as tough as possible on all this national-security stuff, including this N.S.A. thing,” he says. “Even though there’s going to be a big brouhaha over this, the policies are basically going to continue.” After all, as he notes, no President wants to risk opening the doors to another terrorist attack.
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Brazil rejects Kerry explanation on NSA surveillance
But this tension may become more intense in coming weeks and months. According to Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist involved in the publication of leaks provided by Mr. Snowden, more revelations would be made public soon. Testifying before the Brazilian Senate foreign relations committee last Tuesday, Mr. Greenwald said, “The stories we have published are a small portion. There will certainly be more revelations on the espionage activities of the U.S. government and allied governments…on how they have penetrated the communications systems of Brazil and Latin America.”
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The NSA Is, Like, Super Desperate: Using Twitter and Made Up Words to Hire People
So, the NSA has had a hard time of things recently. Since everyone kind of hates them now, it has made hiring anyone a little more difficult than anticipated, because in addition to being reprimanded by college students, they’ve started tweeting job listings that may or may not use accepted English words.
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German Backlash to NSA Spying Gets Stronger
The German government said Wednesday that it plans to build up the European IT sector to provide stronger alternatives to American companies that are subject to surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency.
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US and Germany enter no-spying agreement in wake of NSA leaks
The EU and the US should also accelerate data protection agreement talks, German Chancellor Merkel says
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White House Knew That Mike Rogers Withheld Details Of NSA Surveillance From Others In Congress
In the last week or so it’s come out that Rep. Mike Rogers, the head of the House Intelligence Committee has actively blocked requests from members of Congress to review details of the NSA’s surveillance program — showing that the claim that everyone in Congress was informed about these programs isn’t just a lie but a duplicitous one. And then it got worse. Rep. Justin Amash pointed out that Rogers’ committee actually withheld key information from all incoming Representatives in the class of 2010, who had to vote on the Patriot Act’s reauthorization, which renewed the program to collect data on all Americans in bulk.
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There Is No Such Thing As NSA-Proof Email
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Why can’t Face the Nation face dissent on NSA spying?
The CBS Sunday morning show Face the Nation featured a discussion of NSA surveillance with the former head of the agency and two politicians who vigorously defend the agency’s mass surveillance programs.
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Civil Rights
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CIA Admits Spying on Noam Chomsky
Though the file is from decades ago, the system of COINTELPRO and other intelligence activities were prologue to our current surveillance state. Only in those days they did not have the kinds of surveillance technologies that exist today.
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CIA ‘admits’ to having file on Chomsky, might have destroyed it
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CIA’s Chomsky file did exist
But FBI memo reveals records were destroyed
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CIA Cops To Spying On Noam Chomsky [Report]
The Central Intelligence Agency denied that it had a secret file on the MIT professor for years, but finally copped to keeping tabs on the famous dissident since the 1970′s, at the height of his anti-war activities.
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Renowned investigative journalist Michael Hastings was working on story about CIA Chief John Brennan at the time of his mysterious death
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Journalist Michael Hastings reportedly working on story about CIA chief before death
San Diego 6 News reports that Hastings had focused his latest project on Brennan, the former White House counterterrorism adviser and current CIA director.
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Michael Hastings was working on a story about the CIA when he died
Immediately after Michael Hastings died in a car crash in Los Angeles back in June, the conspiracy theories started flying. And this time it wasn’t all tin-foil hat nonsense—there was a lot to feel queasy about.
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CIA Compiled Information on Noam Chomsky during Vietnam War
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Barrett Brown Awaits Trial on Spurious Charges in Texas
An astute critic of institutions, Barrett began his career criticizing the church, moved on to the corporate media and political pundits, focused on various companies in the private intelligence contracting industry, and finally took aim at the FBI and the Justice Department. Holding fast to his principles and instincts, his exemplary work always advanced the public interest and the interests of the common people. On a mission to expose corruption and abuse, he acted in the best traditions of the Constitution and muckraking journalism. His writing bleeds with his knowledge of the libertarian and anarchist schools of thought and a revolutionary sentiment. It’s no surprise that he now finds himself the target of a political prosecution which has already stolen his freedom for nearly a year and threatens to put him away for life.
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America’s Descent Into Madness
America is descending into madness. The stories it now tells are filled with cruelty, deceit, lies, and legitimate all manner of corruption and mayhem. The mainstream media spins stories that are largely racist, violent, and irresponsible —stories that celebrate power and demonize victims, all the while camouflaging its pedagogical influence under the cheap veneer of entertainment. Unethical grammars of violence now offer the only currency with any enduring value for mediating relationships, addressing problems, and offering instant pleasure. A predatory culture celebrates a narcissistic hyper-individualism that radiates a near sociopathic lack of interest in or compassion and responsibility for others. Anti-public intellectuals dominate the screen and aural cultures urging us to shop more, indulge more, and make a virtue out of the pursuit of personal gain, all the while promoting a depoliticizing culture of consumerism. Undermining life-affirming social solidarities and any viable notion of the public good, right-wing politicians trade in forms of idiocy and superstition that mesmerize the illiterate and render the thoughtful cynical and disengaged. Military forces armed with the latest weapons from Afghanistan play out their hyper-militarized fantasies on the home front by forming robo SWAT teams who willfully beat youthful protesters and raid neighborhood poker games. Congressional lobbyists for the big corporations and defense contractors create conditions in which war zones abroad can be recreated at home in order to provide endless consumer products, such as high tech weapons and surveillance tools for gated communities and for prisons alike.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyright Lawyers vs Patent Lawyers Smackdown: And The Winner Is…
As we noted last year, in a surprising move, the USPTO had already thrown its weight behind the idea that copies of scientific articles submitted as part of the patent application were indeed fair use.
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Copyrights
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Court Forbids IsoHunt From Indexing Dead Torrent Sites
A California District Court has updated and clarified the permanent injunction the MPAA won against the BitTorrent search engine isoHunt. The torrent site has to keep filtering movie and TV show-related titles and terms on its site. The new order further prohibits isoHunt from indexing or linking to The Pirate Bay and the late BTJunkie and TorrentSpy. This is the first time that a U.S. court has forbidden a site from linking to other sites that have been dead for years.
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