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● 02.19.11

● Links 19/2/2011: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS is Out, Android/Linux is Beating Apple

Posted in News Roundup at 6:50 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Is the Shade Coming Down on the Windows Era?

• “HP announced that it is going to ship WebOS not only in phones, tablets and printers, but in PCs as well,” Zemlin wrote. “In doing so, the world’s largest PC supplier is indicating that they are going to ship PCs without Windows.

• “For Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) — who was nowhere at this event — that has got to hurt,” Zemlin added. “Perhaps this really IS the year of the Linux desktop.”

• Now, Linux Girl is in no hurry to get into another “year of” debate — her bruises are still healing from the last one. But the idea of the Windows era coming to a close was an irresistibly intriguing one. She strapped on her snowshoes and headed down to the blogosphere’s Broken Windows Lounge to learn more.

Desktop

=> ↺ Legislators in Kerala, India work better with Ubuntu laptops

• The Government of Kerala wanted to provide 141 members of its legislative assembly with new laptop computers to help increase productivity and collaboration.

Server

=> ↺ Farewell MS Exchange, Hello Linux Open-Xchange

• It is the cherished dream of many a server admin to be liberated from babysitting Microsoft Exchange. One attractive option is a nice stout Linux server running the open-source Open-Xchange– but what if your users revolt?

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ FLOSS Weekly 153: TonidoPlug

• Hosts: Dan Lynch and Aaron Newcomb

• TonidoPlug is a tiny, low-power, low-cost personal home server and NAS device.

=> ↺ The Linux Link Tech Show 390

=> ↺ # Going Linux #129

• Topic: “Getting ready for Linux with cross-platform, open source applications” (On-line apps don’t count!) We talk about applications that run on Windows, Mac and Linux, and using them to ease the transition to Linux. We explore LibreOffice a bit, and answer listener feedback.

=> ↺ Notes on Linux: Tech Blog Episode #10

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Happy Birthday Ksplice Uptrack!

• One year ago, we announced the general availability of Ksplice Uptrack, a subscription service for rebootless kernel updates on Linux. Since then, a lot has happened!

=> ↺ Stable kernels 2.6.32.29, 2.6.36.4, and 2.6.37.1 released

=> ↺ Linux Kernel will soon provide better Samsung Laptop support

• And not to mention the potential of causing many unhappy Samsung users, claiming Linux killed their laptop.

=> ↺ Stable kernels 2.6.32.29, 2.6.36.4, and 2.6.37.1 released

=> ↺ Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.38 (Part 2) – File systems

• Linux 2.6.38 contains patches to improve the scalability of VFS that have been the topic of much discussion for the past six months and that Torvalds himself was waiting for. Ext3 and XFS now support batched discard, which is interesting for SSDs, while Btrfs and SquashFS support additional compression technologies.

Applications

=> ↺ Easily distracted? You need ‘Self Control’ for Ubuntu [App]

• Whether your vice is being glued to your e-mail inbox, YouTube or something worse – such as holding the crown for Frantic Facebook Refresher of the year’ – there is a neat nuclear option available to obliterate your addiction to internet loitering.

=> ↺ Tom’s Definitive Linux Software Roundup: Audio Apps

• Part 1: Ubuntu Linux Installation Guide Part 2: Run Windows XP In Ubuntu Setup Guide Part 3: Internet Application Roundup Part 4: Communications Application Roundup Part 5: Office Application Roundup Part 6: Image Application Roundup

=> ↺ Electric CAD program on Linux

• If you are an electrical engineer, or someone who likes to dabble in designing electrical circuit boards (or anything with regards to electricity) and you’re looking for a FOSS (Free, Open Source Software) CAD program to aid you in the process, then Electric might be the solution. Although it doesn’t have the most modern looking GUI – what electrical engineer really cares about how “modern looking” a GUI is? – Electric offers a lot of features and will serve you well in your designs.

=> ↺ Oh great, another addiction (that I could swear I have seen before)

=> ↺ Ardesia 0.7 Released, Brings Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) File Format Support

• A new version of Ardesia (0.7) has been released that brings Interactive Whiteboard Common File Format support, truly respecting open standards.

=> ↺ Why GIMP 2.8 is not released yet

• The way I see it, there are three main reasons we have not been able to release GIMP 2.8 yet. I want to stress that I don’t mean to put blame on anyone, I am just making observations. The reasons are:

• 1. Less time for GIMP development for key resources 2. Features are being developed on the main branch 3. A tendency among developers to repeatedly start working on new things

Proprietary

=> ↺ A first glimpse at Opera 11.10 “Barracuda”

• In this build, Core has been upgraded from version 2.7.62 to 2.8.99, which is a pretty big step forward. With this Core upgrade comes the implementation of the Web Open Font Format (WOFF).

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to make the Unity 2D launcher transparent in Ubuntu 10.10

=> ↺ How to Allow a single YouTube video through a bluecoat ProxySG

=> ↺ How to share public files between windows and linux using samba and no password

=> ↺ How to get / gain root shell without root password

=> ↺ How to replace gnome-screensaver with xscreensaver in ubuntu

=> ↺ How to Remove old and un-used Kernel from System and Grub Menu – Ubuntu Linux

=> ↺ How to use the Pacemaker editor with Ubuntu via wine

=> ↺ Exercise #5: Managing the Structure of the awk file

=> ↺ How to change the Grub 2 settings without using the command line In Ubuntu 10.10 with Grub Customizer 2.0

=> ↺ Debian 6 installation and disk partitioning guide

=> ↺ Easy Convert Multimedia for various devices in Ubuntu Gnome via Arista Transcoder

=> ↺ Geotag Photos with Open GPS Tracker and digiKam

=> ↺ How to Make the Gnome Panels in Ubuntu Totally Transparent

=> ↺ Installing And Using OpenVZ On Debian Squeeze (AMD64)

=> ↺ Using cut on linux terminal

=> ↺ 5 Linux Tutorials For Beginners

=> ↺ A-DESK Put your favorite video as animated desktop in Ubuntu

=> ↺ Scan Network for Computers

=> ↺ Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX

=> ↺ Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX

=> ↺ Get Lucky with luckyBackup

=> ↺ How To – Set the default content of a new user’s home directory using /etc/skel

=> ↺ How to dual-boot Debian 6 and Windows 7

=> ↺ Exercise #6: Set Variables in Scripts

=> ↺ Improving performance by using tmpfs

=> ↺ Upgrade to Asterisk 1.8 using YUM

• If you are more familiar in installing Asterisk (RPM packages) with YUM than compiling it from sources, you should try this process to upgrade to Asterisk 1.8 from your existing Asterisk 1.6 or even 1.4 installation.

=> ↺ Download “An Introduction to Debian Packaging” PDF Guide

• An Introduction to Debian Packaging is a PDF created by Lucas Nussbaum, designed to tell you what you really need to know about Debian packaging, keeping a resonable size. The guide doesn’t attempt to be complete but it’s great if you want to start making your own .deb files or simply understand how the Debian packaging works.

=> ↺ Rescue Lost Partitions Data With GParted 0.8

• The latest GParted 0.8, released a couple of days ago, adds an option to rescue data from lost partitions: “This new feature uses the gpart command to guess the partition table. Discovered file systems can be mounted read-only so that you can copy data to other media”. Bugs fixed in the new version include: fix paste destination partition smaller than source, prevent visual disk display area from disappearing and fix minor cylinder alignment rounding error.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

=> ↺ Why GMail looks bad with Oxygen?

• I’m working on WebKit and more exactly on QtWebKit. While running rekonq to test the status of QtWebKit (eating my own dog food). GMail looked really really bad. All the check-boxes are ugly and clipped.

=> ↺ KDE Commit-Digest for 23rd January 2011

• In this week’s KDE Commit-Digest:

• • Minor features are added to Digikam and the “Public Transport” Plasma applet * Importing MySQL database tables is now supported by Kexi * Calligra Plan’s scheduling speed is significantly improved * The KOffice “change tracking” feature sees more improvements * Much work is done on Calligra’s Colour Management System (CMS), Pigment * Bug fixes to KDE’s basic software (such as Dolphin and Solid), the KDE libraries, Nepomuk, KDE-PIM, Skrooge, Calligra and Amarok * BlueDevil’s user interface for sending files is simplified so that it fits in one page * Improvements to tagging functionality in Amarok * A lot of work is done on ownCloud * Knights can now support a match between two chess engines * KTorrent’s performance is improved in situations with many torrents open

=> ↺ The Kolab Story

• I’ve been woefully aware that while I did write about having chosen Kolab as my next challenge, I have consequently failed to communicate the most exciting part of why this became my challenge. So let me try to tell you the Kolab Story.

GNOME Desktop

=> ↺ 3 Packs Of Gnome Panel Theme Backgrounds

• I usually don’t change my gnome panel background theme, and i just use the default background for gtk themes or i just make it highly transparent to see the rest of the desktop background beneath the gnome panel. I found a really cool collections for gnome panel backgrounds on deviantart designed by half-left looks really good in case you get bored with the default backgrounds and you want to change it.

=> ↺ GNOME 3 Live image – version 0.0.4

• Another week, another release of GNOME 3 live image.

• Sorry for the delay but the release of GTK 3.0 and glib 2.28 last week pushed back my planned release since I needed to rebuild the entire stack with it.

Distributions

=> ↺ Parted Magic 5.10 cuts the Chromium, brings back Firefox

• Roughly a month after the release of version 5.9, the Parted Magic developers have released version 5.10 of the LiveCD, Linux-based PC rescue toolkit. The most significant change is the return of Firefox as the default browser; since version 4.7, Chrome or Chromium has been the default browser.

• In forum comments, developer Patrick Verner said “I can’t even tell what is what with Chromium anymore”. He then was moved to commit a “a complete chromiumectomy” which took “a whopping 7MB off the squashfs with lzma compression”. The other differences in 5.10 from 5.9 are that the Linux kernel has been updated to version 2.6.37 and GParted updated to version 0.8.0.

=> ↺ Adventures in Linux: an Update

• What that means for Adventures in Linux is that I have finally found a distro that I can happily recommend for Linux noobs. So I’ll be adding tutorials on installing and configuring Chakra to the website. Even if I don’t continue to use it (although I think I probably will), it satisfies my admittedly rather extreme requirements for a good distro for newcomers.

=> ↺ Review: CrunchBang Linux

• It’s probably better for people that like to tinker with their operating system’s look and feel and get things Just Right, rather than someone looking for an out-of-the-box desktop system bedecked with widgets and fancy graphics from the get-go.

New Releases

=> ↺ RIPLinuX 11.4

=> ↺ Clonezilla 1.2.8-3

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ RHEL6.1 and Red Hat is changing its subscription methods

• I just got an email with the subject “Opportunity for Red Hat Certified Professionals to test new Red Hat software”.

=> ↺ Value of the Red Hat Subscription Delivered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.9 Availability

• With the availability of 4.9, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 platform, first released in 2005, now transitions into its third lifecycle phase – Production 3. During the Production 3 phase, systems continue to receive security and bug fixes, but the introduction of new features and hardware support, which is provided in earlier phases, ceases. Customers wishing to continue using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 beyond Production 3 and its end-of-life date of February 29, 2012 should review Red Hat’s Extended Lifecycle Support options. And, of course, subscription customers may upgrade their systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or 6 at any time for no additional fee.

=> ↺ Red Hat considers move to downtown Raleigh

• Last month, Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst, at lectern, announced that the software designer would stay in Wake County, delighting Gov. Bev Perdue and Secretary of Commerce Keith Crisco.

=> ↺ You may be entitled to an award for creative use of Red Hat or JBoss

• If your implementation of Red Hat or JBoss was simply brilliant, you may be entitled to official recognition (and other goodies) from Red Hat for it. The company is seeking submissions for its 2011 Red Hat Summit & JBoss Innovation Awards.

=> ↺ YUM is getting a DBus API

• Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: YUM is getting a DBus API.

Fedora

=> ↺ A very early look at Fedora 15 through the 2/17/11 nightly build: It’s surprisingly stable

• So here is another distribution, not even in alpha yet, and everything works.

• If Debian and Fedora can produce alpha builds that can actually be used, what is accomplished by calling me “pathetic” for calling out Ubuntu because it cannot do the same?

=> ↺ Let’s stop fighting, fedora community.

• It takes a lot to gain trust. So, people who are unknown to the community, are not trusted. If people feel that the decisions are coming from people whom they don’t know, there would be grudges, even if they are people form another FOSS community. Run every decision through the community. Not that I love long threads, I hate them, but that is the only way to keep community informed in such a huge, global and diverse community. If you can not convince majority of the community, it is not good for the project, no matter how brilliant the idea is.

=> ↺ Some Vulcan Logic

• Whether the originator chooses words such as “having a voice” or “censored” or “justfedora” is utterly m00t, as the choice of words illustrates a point, but do not by themselves make a point.

• For example, I see what Seth and Andrea intended with Planet “Just Fedora” Edited, and I applaud the initiative as well as the fact that somebody with a FAS account not even a month old today is enabled to make this big a dent.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze

• So in conclusion:

• • The upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze (i386) worked well.

=> ↺ People behind Debian: Maximilian Attems, member of the kernel team

• Maximilian, along with the other members of the Debian kernel team, has the overwhelming job of maintaining the Linux kernel in Debian. It’s one of the largest package and certainly one where dealing with bug reports is really difficult as most of them are hardware-specific, and thus difficult to reproduce.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Customise Ubuntu with Ubuntu Tweak

• Customisation is an inherent part of Linux, but if you’re not comfortable working without your mouse, tweaking aspects of your desktop can be tricky. That’s where Ubuntu Tweak comes in.

=> ↺ Bleeding Edge: Universal Software Installer for Ubuntu

• Bleeding Edge is a Linux script designed for the popular Ubuntu operating system, for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. It installs players, codecs, media players, fonts, drivers, etc. It also cleans up the system.

• [...]

• We’ve tested Bleeding Edge on the latest version of Ubuntu, 10.10…

=> ↺ Unity: The Systray Is Back, Themable Top Panel, Hide Animations, More [Ubuntu 11.04 Updates]

• A new Unity version was released a few minutes ago with some exciting new features. New for Ubuntu 11.04 I mean, because they are something that’s always been around in Gnome but not available or removed in Ubuntu 11.04 / Unity.

=> ↺ Answers to Outstanding Questions from my Q+A session (Feb. 11)

• Jono passed along a few more questions that were in the queue, that we couldn’t get to due to time constraints.

=> ↺ “Failed to fetch” errors for PPAs …

=> ↺ Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS released

• The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS, the second maintenance update to Ubuntu’s 10.04 LTS release. This release includes updated server, desktop, alternate installation CDs and DVDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures.

=> ↺ Introducing LibreOffice integration with Unity’s Application Menubar

• Canonical has kindly sponsored some of my time at Codethink to bring one of the major missing pieces of the Unity user experience in Ubuntu. As you may know the Unity features a global menubar for applications. Integration with standard Gtk+ applications and Firefox/Thunderbird is already in place.

=> ↺ Work on Libre Office application menu support progressing

• Alberto Ruiz from Codethink has posted a status update on the work he’s been doing on an extension to bring global application menu support to Libre Office.

• With Firefox and Thunderbird work already well underway this is one of the final large pieces of global application menu support left to do.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ PinguyOS Review

• PinguyOS is certainly anything but standard. It incorporates many original concepts, tons of applications and customizations that make it an interesting distro. The customization is so extreme, though, that I feel PinguyOS will probably generate love/hate reactions, but not a lot in between. Personally, I enjoy some of the things that PinguyOS brings forward, so I decided to keep it, even if I had to do quite a lot of changes to make it fit my needs/preferences.

• Is PinguyOS for you? If you are an experienced user, chances are you will probably like something more basic and balanced, but if you are new to Linux, PinguyOS will welcome you with everything there is and then some.

• My opinion? I recommend trying it, regardless of your profile. Even if you decide to ditch it eventually, PinguyOS certainly is worth the try.

=> ↺ UbuntuStudio Artwork Leader Needed

• My good friend ScottL, the leader of the UbuntuStudio project, is asking for new artists and especially people who can theme and pick the best icons to ship with the the UbuntuStudio release. If you are interested, you might qualify for the leadership position and be able to make calls about how the distro should look to all who install it.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Seagate GoFlex Is Really a Pogoplug in Disguise

• The GoFlex Portable drives have also been upgraded from the FreeAgent Go series to add USB 3.0 connectivity. What’s really cool about these drives is the removable USB 3.0 adapter revealing the SATA drive connectors…

Phones

Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

=> ↺ Nokia got it wrong Intel CEO says, spills beans on Elop

• Nokia told The INQUIRER that Elop had already dealt with this accusation but media reports have only refered to the embattled CEO’s denunciations of the claim that he is a Trojan horse for Microsoft, and that it will eventually take control of the Finnish, or maybe finished, company.

=> ↺ Buckets of (cold) Water

• Almost 11 years ago I got a call from some Matthias guy in Oslo, asking me if I’d still be interested to start an internship as the Support Technician at Troll Tech. A bit more than one week ago, after Stephen Elop’s presentation of the new Nokia strategy, I thought for a very brief moment – and for the very first time in those 11 years – that the ride with Qt was finally over.

=> ↺ Intel ‘will find’ other vendors to support MeeGo

=> ↺ Nokia’s Flirtations Put the Fear of Google Into Microsoft

• Microsoft Corp. knew it had far more at stake than Google Inc. as the two rivals competed to secure a tie-up with Nokia Corp. Losing the deal to Google could have landed a fatal blow to Microsoft’s chances in the mobile market.

Android

=> ↺ Why Android Honeycomb should have Apple scared

• Depending on who you asked at yesterday’s Android Honeycomb launch event in Mountain View, California, the latest upgrade to Google’s (GOOG) mobile OS was either a revelation or another iterative upgrade.

=> ↺ Google Elbows Apple, Woos Publishers

• Google Inc. fired another salvo in its broadening competition with Apple Inc., opening a payment system for digital content that will let publishers keep a bigger share of revenues than a service launched by Apple this week.

=> ↺ Read ODF Documents on Android with OpenOffice Document Reader

=> ↺ The power of open source i can build my own android-x86

• I have a spare partition so i will build from source and install android-x86 on it just to test it how it works on a real desktop

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ IBM’s Watson Should Rejuvenate Open Source AI

• Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past week, you had to have caught the remarkable performance of IBM’s Watson intelligent computer, which has beaten the two best players in the history of the show Jeapordy, and caused people to herald “our new computer overlords.”

=> ↺ Fans

• What bothers me most is not that such attacks are personal so much as the lack of tolerance behind them. To my way of thinking, the refusal to tolerate criticism is crippling in any discussion. The right to question is basic, not just to civilized discourse, but to any improvement — as well, as Robin Miller impressed on me, to journalism, which can be an essential part of that process of improvement if it tries to describe fairly and raises inconvenient truths.

• In fact, you could say that questioning is central to FOSS. After all, what is the patch system of software development, except a series of criticisms and counter-criticisms? Sometimes, the criticism are wrong, or create more problems than they solve, but FOSS could not evolve without a constant critique of what is. In other words, I would argue that, by finding enemies in anyone who doesn’t show unwavering support, FOSS fans are acting against the basic tenets of the cause they claim to support.

=> ↺ Terracotta adds search to cached databases

• The latest company to merge analytics and transactions into a single operation, Terracotta has added search functionality into the latest version of its Ehcache Java cache software.

• The search feature, available in the newly released version 2.4 of the software, will allow organizations to perform analysis directly against their online data stores, which could simplify their architecture and cut the time it takes for analyzing data, when compared to performing analysis against disk-based databases or data warehouses, the company claims.

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Qualys Releases Report on Faulty Browser Plugins

• Qualys’s BrowserCheck tool, released last summer, reports on any security problems with your browser. A new report, released Wednesday, shows the most vulnerable plugins.

• BrowserCheck focuses on plugins that are out of date and hence vulnerable to attack. You can click a button for more details about each found problem; in most cases clicking another button will launch the needed update. The tool works with Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, and Chrome running under Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

Chrome

=> ↺ Faster than a speeding rabbit: speed, sync, and settings

• In the spirit of the lunar new year, we’re excited to kick off the Year of the Rabbit with a slew of enhancements in the Chrome beta channel. Today’s new beta includes a dramatic improvement in JavaScript speed, new password sync features, and entirely revamped browser settings.

=> ↺ Find out who has the most Klout on Twitter with this Chrome extension

• Klout (beta) is a Chrome Extension that was born in a recent Hackathon between bit.ly and Klout. It’s a Twitter rating system that once installed tells you what Klout scores Twitters users have in your Twitter stream. The higher their Klout score the greater their power influence in the Twitterverse.

=> ↺ Tech Support Folks Rejoice: All Chrome Settings Now Have a URL

• Google released the latest beta version of its browser, Google Chrome, today and at least one of the changes is likely to make a lot of phone tech support folks very happy.

• In addition to the standard fare updates of making things generally faster and better, the browser now opens all of its settings in a new browser tab, making them entirely searchable and reachable by URL.

=> ↺ Native Client: Getting Ready for Takeoff

• Over the last few months we have been hard at work getting Native Client ready to support the new Pepper plug-in interface. Native Client is an open source technology that allows you to build web applications that seamlessly and safely execute native compiled code inside the browser. Today, we’ve reached an important milestone in our efforts to make Native Client modules as portable and secure as JavaScript, by making available a first release of the revamped Native Client SDK.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Moving forward with F1

• We’re releasing a new update to F1 with support for more services, more service specific features, and a brand new UI. Here’s a run down of what’s new.

=> ↺ Firefox 4 RC coming next Friday

• One year on since the first Alpha of Firefox 4 was made available for testing the worlds second most popular browser may finally have the finish line in sight.

=> ↺ Sandboxed add-ons to be disabled next week

• The new Developer Tools and review process were implemented on AMO and announced a little over a month ago. I also expanded the explanation about the new review process, so you should have a look if you haven’t already.

=> ↺ Announcing Search in Thunderbird

SaaS

=> ↺ Yahoo to open-source cloud-serving engine

• Yahoo is developing an internal cloud-serving engine to boost its own productivity, and intends to release the code as an open source this year.

• “We’re committed to open-sourcing all of our cloud infrastructure, for the simple reason that we don’t believe the cloud infrastructure is a competitive differentiator for us,” says Todd Papaioannou, Yahoo’s vice president of cloud architecture. “I have this question pop up from time to time, ‘Is Yahoo ever going to move into the cloud?’ And the answer is, ‘No. We are the cloud.’”

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ LibreOffice Community starts 50,000 Euro challenge for setting-up its foundation

=> ↺ LibreOffice Raises 10000 Euros for Foundation in One Day

• The Document Foundation announced their intention of becoming a legal non-profit foundation to allow it to accept donations and financial assistance as well as pay employees and rent without having to suffer the tax liabilities levied upon businesses. Since startup capital is required, they began asking for donations to reach their goal. And so far, so good.

• The plan to form a legal foundation was mentioned a while back but not widely announced until February 16. By that time a donation mechanism was instituted and outlined on The Document Foundation Blog. Florian Effenberger, founding member of The Document Foundation, said they’ve decide to apply in Germany where €50,000 in startup funds are considered necessary. That’s where the community comes in. They need help raising that sum.

Funding

=> ↺ Slashdot owner reports loss again

• Geeknet, the owner of the American technology news accumulation site, Slashdot, has reported a net loss of $US4.4 million for the year 2010.

• In 2009, the company recorded a net loss of $US14 million.

Project Releases

=> ↺ Python for Qt version 1.0.0 release candidate 1 “The name doesn’t matter” released

• The PySide team is proud to announce the first release candidate of PySide: Python for Qt version 1.0.0. We consider PySide quality already high enough for the 1.0 release, and to ensure a high-quality 1.0 release, we are providing a release candidate to catch any last-minute regressions. Please pound this release hard to help us verify there are no serious outstanding issues!

=> ↺ Muon Suite 1.1.1 Released

• This is a few days late in coming (I have been busy with school), but I am glad to announce the release of the first bugfix update for Muon Suite 1.1. This release fixes several bugs that the public has found with the newer tools in the suite such as the Muon Software Center, Muon Update Manager, and Muon Update Notifier. All known bugs are now fixed with this release, and the Muon/QApt buglist is sitting right at zero, and it is recommended that anybody using Muon Suite 1.1.0 upgrade to Muon 1.1.1. Thanks to all the testers who filed bug reports, and thanks to Colin Watson for providing several bugfix patches. In addition, one month’s worth of translation updates from the rocking KDE l10n team are included.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ Creative Commons 2010 Figures

• Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization and we happily provide all of our tools for free. As a result, we rely on our international community of users and advocates to give back to this vital public resource and support our work. With so many worthy causes in the world vying for peoples’, foundations’, and companies’ support, we are grateful so many have given whatever they are able to help keep CC afloat and going strong for the past 8 years. In the spirit of transparency and openness, below are some numbers to give you an idea of where our money comes from (You can also see real-time figures as they come in). We’d like to see these numbers continue to grow, just as CC license adoption and use of our tools has grown so steadily since 2002. Please donate today and join our international ranks of supporters to make 2011 our best year yet.

Open Data

=> ↺ The open-data battle continues with OC Transpo

• When OC Transpo started giving out live GPS data on its buses to app-developers who wanted to let people know when their next buses were likely to make it to particular stops, it was a breath of fresh air — very un-OC Transpo-like, to just give out info like that.

• So much so that when the transit company yanked the data, saying it was necessarily current or accurate enough to be used for REAL real-time predictions of bus arrivals, it seemed plausible. These people really wanted to get the thing right, it seemed. They did mention putting out an official OC Transpo-branded app with the data later, but that’s as far as they went.

=> ↺ City mulls making money off bus-tracking data

• The City of Ottawa’s decision to pull access to global positioning system data for OC Transpo buses appears to have been in part to capitalize on potential advertising revenue.

• OC Transpo had made the GPS data available as part of a pilot project, but suspended the project in January shortly after a developer had created a mobile application which gave real-time updates for people waiting at bus stops.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Open Standards What A Corrupted Term

• When Steve Jobs stands up and says h264 is an Open Standard are we bucking up against sociological, political and generational corruption of what he truly means? Is he saying that and Open Standard refers to the availability of the standard itself and has nothing to do with the implementation, restrictions or privileges defined by the standard and licenses applied to the standard? Is there a purposeful play on words here to describe a technology like h264 as an Open Standard thus playing to the popular “buzzword” term of the day ascribing Open Standard to be akin to Peren’s definition when in truth it is merely the publication of the h264 standard itself and nothing more?

=> ↺ W3C Confirms May 2011 for HTML5 Last Call, Targets 2014 for HTML5 Standard

• Today there are more than 50 organizations participating in the HTML Working Group, all committed to Royalty-Free licensing under the W3C Patent Policy. There are more than 400 individuals from all over the world in the group, including designers, content authors, accessibility experts, and representatives from browser vendors, authoring tool vendors, telecoms, equipment manufacturers, and other IT companies.

=> ↺ 15-day Public Review for OpenDocument Version 1.2

Leftovers

=> ↺ GM to offer Pandora Internet radio on Chevy cars

• General Motors Co will launch a new system to stream online radio from Pandora in upcoming Chevrolets starting with the Volt and Equinox.

=> ↺ Jon Stewart gawks at Silvio Berlusconi’s nerve

• Silvio Berlusconi will face a judge for allegedly paying for sex with a teenager. For a leader who has long avoided legal consequences of his sometimes salacious activities, this could go very poorly.

=> ↺ Review: Recompute Cardboard PC

• Shawn shows us the Recompute PC from Sustainable Computers. It’s a full blown workstation that you could use to start a camp fire. We don’t recommend the camp fire part though.

=> ↺ 2011: Year of the SSD?

• Disk manufacturers are putting a new spin on an old product: Solid State Drives. New technology, increased power costs, space limitation, and new business requirements are driving advances in storage. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are part of that new technological push toward more efficiency, increased agility, and higher demand.

=> ↺ Berlusconi has made Italy a laughingstock

• L’Espresso start publishing the secret Wikileaks cables

=> ↺ Twenty questions I ask myself every day

=> ↺ ‘Some EU governments’ consent helps rise of Islamophobia’

• Council of Europe (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg has said that as some EU governments take a tolerant stance regarding the arguments of the extremist right in Europe, xenophobia and Islamophobia gain strength, resulting in more border controls and restrictions on immigration.

=> ↺ 10 Historical ‘Facts’ Only a Right-Winger Could Believe

• 10. The Robber Barons weren’t robbers — they were capitalist heroes.

=> ↺ Ask Ars: How should my organization approach the IPv6 transition?

• Whenever Ars runs an article about the increasing global scarcity of IPv4 addresses or an IPv6-related topic, we inevitably hear from some readers that they would like to see Ars available over IPv6. We thought we’d explain why we haven’t made that move yet.

Science

=> ↺ A Sequence of Lines Traced by Five Hundred Individuals

Hardware

=> ↺ Meet the Cardboard computer: sustainability with style

• The Recompute was designed to be a ‘Full life cycle’ PC; eco-friendly in materials, manufacture processes and subsequent disposal.

=> ↺ LLVM 2.9 Clang Performance On Intel’s Sandy Bridge

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Doctors Embrace Facebook, Twitter

• Hospitals and healthcare facilities all over the U.S. are integrating Facebook, Twitter and even mobile apps into their work, in an effort to improve patient-doctor communication.

Security

=> ↺ Security advisories for Friday

=> ↺ Pirates are not hackers and software piracy is also the Government’s fault

• In January 2011 Italian newspaper Repubblica published an article that is a nice example of how much confusion there still is, in mainstream press, about the nature of software and copyright, their relevance for all citizens and the responsibilities of Public Administrations in these fields. That article may have been written everywhere, there’s nothing specifically Italian in it, so I translated my objections to it because they too may be useful outside Italy (to stimulate discussion if nothing else).

=> ↺ Government and Security

• There’s a story running on CBC that several Canadian Government departments were penetrated from China over the network. It seems the intruders got control of some executive PCs and sent memos to underlings to reveal passwords etc… I guess it helped that the PCs were running that other OS but once the keys to the kingdom are turned over it matters little what OS was running where.

=> ↺ Why the Cabinet Office’s £27bn cyber crime cost estimate is meaningless

• Today the UK Cabinet Office released a report written by Detica. The report concluded that the annual cost of cyber crime in UK is £27bn. That’s less than $1 trillion, as AT&T’s Ed Amoroso testified before the US Congress in 2009. But it’s still a very large number, approximately 2% of UK GDP. If the total is accurate, then cyber crime is a very serious problem of utmost national importance.

• Unfortunately, much of the total cost is based on questionable calculations that are impossible for outsiders to verify. 60% of the total cost is ascribed to intellectual property theft (i.e., business secrets not copied music and films) and espionage. The report does describe a methodology for how it arrived at the figures. However, several key details are lacking. To calculate the IP and espionage losses, the authors first calculated measures of each sector’s value to the economy. Then they qualitatively assessed how lucrative and feasible these attacks would be in each sector.

=> ↺ NSA reveals its secret: No backdoor in encryption standard

• The National Security Agency made changes in the proposed design of the Data Encryption Standard before its adoption in 1976, but it did not add any backdoors or other surprises that have been speculated about for 35 years, the technical director of NSA’s information assurance directorate said Wednesday.

• “We’re actually pretty good guys,” said Dickie George. “We wanted to make sure we were as squeaky clean as possible.”

=> ↺ Black ops: how HBGary wrote backdoors for the government

• The attached document, which is in English, begins: “LESSON SIXTEEN: ASSASSINATIONS USING POISONS AND COLD STEEL (UK/BM-154 TRANSLATION).”

• It purports to be an Al-Qaeda document on dispatching one’s enemies with knives (try “the area directly above the genitals”), with ropes (“Choking… there is no other area besides the neck”), with blunt objects (“Top of the stomach, with the end of the stick.”), and with hands (“Poking the fingers into one or both eyes and gouging them.”).

Defence/Police/Aggression

=> ↺ Feb18 Bahrain Army Attack on peaceful protests

=> ↺ The Tweet and Revolution

• President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton rushed to contrast the repressive brutality of the Iranian authorities with what they now seek to present as the bloodless, US-managed triumph of pro-democracy forces in Egypt.

• By any measure this was brazen impudence, starting with the fact that across the past few weeks the 300 dead, slaughtered by security forces and government-hired thugs fell in Tahrir Square and the streets of Cairo, not in Teheran, with more dead piling up in Bahrein, home of the US Fifth Fleet.

• Good or bad, everything has to be made in America. The 9/11 conspiracists decry the notion that “men in caves” –could plan the destruction of the Twin Towers. They say it had to be non-cavemen Bush and Cheney, plus the commanders of NORAD and several thousand red-blooded American accomplices.

• Today, there’s a flourishing little internet industry claiming that the overthrow of Mubarak came courtesy of US Twitter-Facebook Command, overseen by Head of the Joint Chiefs of Twitter, in the unappetizing, self-promoting form of Jared Cohen, with flanking support by the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House.

=> ↺ Bahrain’s army deliberately kills peaceful protesters with live rounds ( automatic weapon )

=> ↺ Bahrain: anti-government protests continue despite brutal crackdown (big photo gallery)

=> ↺ Bahrain royal family orders army to turn on the people

• As protesters attempted to converge on Pearl Roundabout, a landmark in the capital Manama that has become the principal rallying point of the uprising, soldiers stationed in a nearby skyscraper opened fire.

• Since they took to the streets, Bahrain’s protesters have come to expect violence and even death at the hands of the kingdom’s security forces. At least five people were killed before yesterday’s protests.

=> ↺ Libyan protesters assert control

• Libyan officials said that the security forces had been withdrawn from al-Bayda city centre to avoid further loss of life, but were now laying siege to the town as an uprising turned into outright conflict.

• Demonstrators in contact through social media with Libyan exiles claimed they also controlled parts of Libya’s second city, Benghazi, and, in one unconfirmed report, had managed to prevent government planes bringing reinforcements landing at the airport.

• Other social media from the country, which is largely closed to western journalists, showed bodies lying in hospitals as security forces fought back.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks: US wanted ‘derogatory’ information on Bahrain king’s sons

• The office of Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, wanted to know if Prince Nasir bin Hamad al Khalifa or Prince Khalid bin Hamad al Khalifa took drugs, drank alcohol or “caused problems” within the monarchy.

• Embassy staff in the Bahraini capital of Manama were also asked whether the princes had any friends among the country’s Shia Muslim majority, which is behind this week’s protests against the minority rule of the Sunni regime.

• Prince Nasir, 23, who is serving in the Bahrain Defence Force, and Prince Khalid, 21, are King Hamad’s sons by his second wife and there have been fears in the region that hardliners from neighbouring countries might try to influence them.

=> ↺ 08MANAMA194, NEW HEAD OF BAHRAIN NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

• 1.(SBU) King Hamad on March 23 appointed Khalifa bin Abdullah bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa as the new Head of the Bahrain National Security Agency, replacing Khalifa bin Ali Al-Khalifa. Khalifa bin Abdullah is currently Bahrain’s ambassador in London, and has been there only about a year. Prior to that, he served in a variety of positions at the Ministry of Information: Acting Director of Press and Foreign Media Relations (1997-1998), Director of Press and Foreign Media Relations (1998-2002), Assistant Undersecretary (2002-2007), and Acting CEO of Bahrain Television (BTV) and Radio Corporation (2006-2007).

• 2.(C) During his time at the Ministry of Information, Khalifa bin Abdullah was a valued contact of the Embassy’s Public Affairs section. He worked closely with the PAS on a judicial forum in 2004 and the Forum for the Future in 2005. During his stint as acting CEO of BTV, he presided over a successful collaboration with the State Department’s Office of Broadcast Services in producing a documentary program about the U.S.-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement.

=> ↺ 05PRAGUE337, C) RUSSIAN MISSILES FOR US NAVY COMING FROM

• 1. (C) THIS IS AN ACTION REQUEST. SEE PARAGRAPH 4. The US Navy has for some time been planning an open commercial purchase of 23 KH-31 (or MA-31) Russian sea-skimming missiles from a Czech arms dealer. It has come to our attention that the missiles are coming from Belarus, via a series of complicated transactions. This arrangement is reportedly necessary because the Russians themselves refused to sell the missiles to the Czech arms dealer.

=> ↺ 04HELSINKI1603, FINNS FIND PUTIN “FRUSTRATED, ANXIOUS”

• 1. (C) Finnish President Tarja Halonen’s most recent meeting with Vladimir Putin left the Finns with the clear impression that the Russian president is feeling frustrated and anxious. He complained at length to Halonen that Russia has been misunderstood and mistreated by the West, with an implicit accusation that the U.S. is fostering regime change in the near abroad with political cover from the EU. Former PM Paavo Lipponen, after discussing the meeting with Halonen, described to the Ambassador his own sense that the Russians feel under pressure on their perimeter, at least in the Baltic and Caucasus; Lipponen advises that the U.S. and EU stand firm on principle, as always, but “bear in mind that Putin feels very uncomfortable right now.”

=> ↺ Bahrain’s death toll grows and its Internet slows

• Bahrain’s dictatorship looked at what has happened in Tunis and Egypt and decided that bullets would serve its cause better than relenting to its people’s call for ballots and reform. This morning, mercenaries of Bahrain, a small Persian Gulf country, overran a camp of sleeping protesters killing at least four of them. At the same time, it appears that Bahrain has started strangling the country’s Internet connection to keep news from coming in or out of the country.

• Sources at Arbor Networks, a network security company, told me that “Bahrain has significantly increased its filtering of Internet traffic in response to growing political unrest.” While the Bahrain Internet has remained up, unlike Egypt’s Internet, it’s averaging a pronounced 10-20% reduction in traffic volumes.

=> ↺ Algeria Tries To Placate Unrest By Ending 19 Years Of Emergency Law

• Algeria is making a dangerous gambit in attempts to placate thousands of protesters.

• The petro-state will lift emergency laws that have been in place since 1992, according to Al Jazeera.

=> ↺ Algerian minister: Protests just a minority stunt

=> ↺ Adding insult to Lara Logan’s injury

• …used the attack to reinforce their anti-Muslim, anti-revolution arguments.

=> ↺ Egypt’s military rejects swift transfer of power and suspends constitution

• The Egyptian military has rejected the demands of pro-democracy protesters for a swift transfer of power to a civilian administration, saying it intends to rule by martial law until elections are held.

• The army’s announcement, which included the suspending of the constitution, was a further rebuff to some pro-democracy activists after troops were sent to clear demonstrators from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the centre of the protests that brought down Hosni Mubarak. “We do not want any protesters to sit in the square after today,” said the head of the military police, Mohamed Ibrahim Moustafa Ali. Many agreed to leave but a hardcore refused, saying they would remain until the army took a series of steps toward democratic reform including installing a civilian-led government and abolishing the repressive state of emergency.

=> ↺ Albanians hold new anti-government protest

• Tens of thousands of Albanian opposition supporters marched peacefully through the capital Friday to demand that the government resigns over corruption allegations, almost a month after four people died when a similar demonstration turned violent.

• Hundreds of police guarded the main government building in Tirana, where dozens of protesters and police were injured in the Jan 21 riot. But the protest ended peacefully.

• The opposition Socialists are demanding that conservative Prime Minister Sali Berisha hold early elections over allegations of corruption and vote rigging in the 2009 general election.

=> ↺ Egypt: prison guards killed scores in run-up to fall of Hosni Mubarak

• The full extent of the carnage at Al-Qata Prison outside Cairo as guards fought back is only now becoming clear.

• One prisoner, speaking from inside his cell, told The Daily Telegraph that inmates had drawn up a list of 153 men killed during a siege lasting a full two weeks. He described how as the men celebrated the fall of Mr Mubarak, a man standing next to him was hit by gunfire, an explosive bullet ripping into his head through the cell window.

• “We started to cheer and shout,” said the prisoner, whose name The Telegraph is witholding for his protection. “This man was standing here and was just shot through the eye. He died immediately.

=> ↺ U.S. veto thwarts UN resolution condemning settlements

• The other 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the draft resolution. But the U.S., as one of five permanent council members with the power to block any action by the Security Council, struck it down.

=> ↺ In dramatic turnaround, US to censure Israel in Security Council

• In a dramatic departure from longstanding policy, the United States intends to support a United Nations Security Council resolutions censuring Israel for building settlements in Palestinian territory.

• The Obama administration told Arab governments Tuesday it will back a draft resolution saying the Security Council “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.

=> ↺ Is the Apocalypse upon us? In dramatic turnaround, US to censure Israel in Security Council

• In a dramatic departure from longstanding policy, the United States intends to support a United Nations Security Council resolutions censuring Israel for building settlements in Palestinian territory.

• The Obama administration told Arab governments Tuesday it will back a draft resolution saying[1] the Security Council “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” according to Foreign Policy[2] magazine.

=> ↺ Adventure playground

• What happier roost could there be for Mark and his mother? Margaret Thatcher found that permitting British companies to break the sanctions against the apartheid regime turned South Africa’s problems into our opportunities. When Mark was asked what he thought of his mother’s position, he replied: “My sympathy is with the struggling white community.”

=> ↺ Cop apologizes for ‘sluts’ remark at law school

• A police officer who suggested women can avoid sexual assault by not dressing like “sluts” has apologized, saying he is “embarrassed” by the remark and that assaulted women are “not victims by choice.”

• “I made a comment which was poorly thought out and did not reflect the commitment of the Toronto Police Service to the victims of sexual assaults,” Const. Michael Sanguinetti wrote on Thursday to Osgoode Hall Law School where he made the comment.

=> ↺ Don’t dress like a slut: Toronto cop

• Students and staff at Osgoode Hall Law School are demanding an apology and explanation from the Toronto Police Service after one of their officers suggested women can avoid sexual assault by not dressing like a “slut.”

• On Jan. 24, a campus safety information session was held at Osgoode Hall, where members from York security and two male officers from Toronto police 31 Division handed out safety tips to community members.

=> ↺ Wisconsin Dem Senator Posts ‘brb’ Message On Facebook

• The Democratic walkout was designed to deny Republicans the necessary number of lawmakers needed for a vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial proposals that would strip most state government workers of their collective bargaining rights.

=> ↺ Wisconsin Democrats could stay away for weeks

• Democrats on the run in Wisconsin avoided state troopers Friday and threatened to stay in hiding for weeks, potentially paralyzing the state government in a standoff with majority Republicans over union rights for public employees.

• The dramatic flight from the state stalled a proposal that seeks to ease Wisconsin’s budget woes by cutting the pay, benefits and collective bargaining rights of many government workers. Democrats who stayed in Madison scored their own victory, forcing the state Assembly to adjourn until at least Tuesday without taking a vote.

=> ↺ Texas man wrongly put away for 18 years denied compensation after legal glitch

• A courtroom technicality has cost a wrongly convicted Texas man the compensation that would otherwise be due him for the 18 years he’d served in Texas prison–14 of which he spent on Death Row.

• Anthony Graves would have received $1.4 million in compensation if only the words “actual innocence” had been included in the judge’s order that secured Graves’s release from prison. The Comptroller’s office decided the omission means Graves gets zero dollars, writes Harvey Rice at the Houston Chronicle, even though the prosecutor, judge, and defense all agreed at trial he is innocent.

=> ↺ Fear of Teratocracy

• I’ve been thinking about the nature of democracy over the past few weeks, for both obvious (Egypt) and less-obvious (potential for social change under conditions of disruption) reasons. The definition of democracy that most people are familiar is something along the lines of “rule by the people through voting, where the recipient of a majority of the vote wins.” That’s a decent description of the mechanism of democracy, I suppose, but I don’t think it captures the important part.

• Democracy is defined by how you lose, not (just) how you win.

• The real test of whether a society that uses a plebiscite to determine leadership is really a democracy is whether the losing party accepts the loss and the legitimacy of their opponent’s victory. This is especially true for when the losing party previously held power. Do they give up power willingly, confident that they’ll have a chance to regain power again in the next election? Or do they take up arms against the winners, refuse to relinquish power, and/or do everything they can to undermine the legitimacy of the opposition’s rule?

=> ↺ Flamboyant Gaddafi feels ripples of change

• For most that time he also held a prominent position in the West’s international rogues’ gallery.

• He has maintained tight control by clamping down on dissidents but his oil-producing nation is now beginning to feel the wind of change that is blowing across the Arab world.

• Anti-Gaddafi protesters clashed with police and government supporters in the eastern city of Benghazi, and Human Rights Watch reported that at least 24 people had died in two days of unrest this week.

=> ↺ Gaddafi’s forces accused of using gunships against citizens

• Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime turned its helicopter gunships and snipers on protesters as rare anti-government protests were reported to have reached Tripoli, the capital.

• The dictator was the focus of a ”day of rage” in at least five cities, an unprecedented challenge to his ”Green Revolution”.

• Human Rights Solidarity, a campaign group, said snipers on the rooftops in al-Baida had killed 13 protesters and wounded dozens of others after police stations were set on fire and posters of Colonel Gaddafi burnt.

=> ↺ US targets Afghan laundering network

• The US government on Friday slapped sanctions on a high-profile Afghan money exchange house and its executives, accusing them of laundering cash for drug traffickers.

• The Kabul-based New Ansari Money Exchange as well as 15 related people and firms were accused of hiding “illicit narcotics proceeds” in billions of dollars they transferred in and out of Afghanistan between 2007 and 2010.

• The New Ansari Exchange was thought to be the biggest of Afghanistan’s “hawala” money-transfer firms, which play an even larger role in the war-torn nation’s economy than commercial banks.

=> ↺ The Arab Revolution Saudi Update

• Remember, in a former post, when I said that Saudis were captivated and shocked by what happened in Tunis and Egypt but hadn’t collectively made up their mind about it? Well it appears that they have. Everywhere I go and everything I read points to a revolution in our own country in the foreseeable future. However we are still on the ledge and haven’t jumped yet.

• I know that some analysts are worried particularly of Saudi Arabia being taken over by Al Qaeda or a Sunni version of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Calm down. Besides my gut feeling (which is rarely wrong), the overwhelming majority of people speaking out and calling out for a revolution are people who want democracy and civil rights and not more of our current Arab tradition based adaptation of Sharia. My theory of why that is, is that Al Qaeda has already exhausted its human resources here. The available muttawas, are career muttawas (fatwa sheikhs) and minor muttawas (PVPV) of convenience both paid by the government and do not want the current win-win deal between them and the government to sour. So it’s unlikely that they would actively seek change. Actually quite the opposite, they will resist and delay as much as they can. Fortunately the winds of change can’t be deterred by a PVPV cruiser.

=> ↺ protest in #Djibouti

• Dijibouti had protested earlier, on January 28, leading Ismaël Guedi Hared, President of Djibouti’s UAD opposition alliance, to call for a massive protest today. “According to UDDESC activists, this evening even international calls have been blocked in Djibouti in an attempt to restrict reporting from the events.”

=> ↺ Wisconsin Is a Battleground Against the Billionaire Kochs’ Plan to Break Labor’s Back

• As some 30,000 protesters overwhelmed the state capitol building in Wisconsin today, Democratic state senators hit the road, reportedly with State Police officers in pursuit. The Dems left the state in order to deprive Republicans the necessary quorum for taking a vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s bill to strip benefits and collective bargaining rights from state workers. Newsradio 620 WTMJ reported that the Democratic senators were holed up in a Rockford, Illinois, hotel, out of reach of Wisconsin state troopers. Now, it seems, Republican lawmakers are beginning to waver on their support for the union-busting bill.

=> ↺ Revealed: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people

• These days, with Facebook and Twitter and social media galore, it can be increasingly hard to tell who your “friends” are.

• But after this, Internet users would be well advised to ask another question entirely: Are my “friends” even real people?

• In the continuing saga of data security firm HBGary, a new caveat has come to light: not only did they plot to help destroy secrets outlet WikiLeaks and discredit progressive bloggers, they also crafted detailed proposals for software that manages online “personas,” allowing a single human to assume the identities of as many fake people as they’d like.

Cablegate

=> ↺ What caught the attention of US diplomats?

=> ↺ ‘So This is America’: Veteran Ray McGovern Bloodied and Arrested At Clinton Speech

• As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.

=> ↺ [Old] Interview with 27-Year CIA Veteran Ray McGovern

=> ↺ WikiLeaks Precedes Ugandan Election to Reveal Meteroic Rise of Homophobia

• Wiki Leaks reveals U.S. embassy cable reports on ’s meteoric rise of homophobia in Uganda, reflecting on a UN-backed human rights meeting attended by now murdered Ugandan Gay activist David Kato, and author of the “Kill the Gays” Bill, David Bahati. The International community could not have better real time reports and so action and outcry must occur in as rampant a fashion.

=> ↺ Gay hate exposed in Uganda poll countdown

• The murdered gay rights activist David Kato had been mocked at a United Nations-backed debate on proposed Ugandan legislation on homosexuality, a US diplomat in Kampala said.

• The diplomat said in a leaked embassy cable that in the debate Mr Kato, who was bludgeoned to death near his home in the capital last month, had delivered a well-written speech against a bill that would impose the death penalty for the offence of ”aggravated homosexuality” and life imprisonment for consenting adults who have gay sex.

=> ↺ Five Reasons Why Georgia Lost The August War

• But a recently-released cables via Wikileaks has brought the issue back into focus again. The cables in question cite sources that cast serious doubt on the ability of the sprawling, but famously creaky, Russian conventional military as being of little threat to NATO.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks brings to light suspected baby trafficking from Egypt to Canada

• The RCMP and Canadian consular officials in Cairo have been investigating up to a dozen cases where couples are suspected of having trafficked babies from Egypt into Canada, according to leaked diplomatic cables.

=> ↺ US extradition claims revealed by Wikileaks site

• THE extradition of a former university academic accused of plotting to smuggle military equipment to Iran was delayed for political reasons, a leaked secret cable claims.

• A US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks suggests the UK Government put the extradition of Nosratollah Tajik on hold to protect sensitive nuclear talks with Iran.

• The claim appears at odds with ministerial statements given to the House of Commons four months after the cable was sent, saying the extradition was a judicial process and that the sole issue to be considered was whether it would breach Mr Tajik’s human rights.

=> ↺ A Wikileaks Primer on the Cozy US-Bahrain Relationship

• In December 2009, the then-US Ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, cabled to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton his great regard for the rulers of that country. The US-Bahrain relationship as seen through Wikileaks cables is quite cozy, and focused quite a bit on areas of mutual security.

• King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Ereli wrote, “is personable and engaging” and “rules as something of a ‘corporate king,’ giving direction and letting his top people manage the government.”

• King Hamad was given high marks for ushering in governmental reforms. Ereli sad King Hamad had “overseen the development of strong institutions with the restoration of parliament, the formation of a legal political opposition, and a dynamic press.” King Hamad, Ereli said, “is committed to fighting corruption and prefers doing business with American firms because they are transparent.” Ereli noted that King Hamad had awarded U.S. companies major contracts, including Gulf Air buying 24 Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks panellists censure ‘virus’ of government secrecy

• GOVERNMENTS have become too secretive and politicians should be disqualified from Parliament if they lie, says Julian Burnside, QC.

• Advertisement: Story continues below

• Mr Burnside, who spoke in a panel discussion about WikiLeaks at the Capitol Theatre last night, said the number of classified documents in the US had grown by almost 10 times between 1996 and 2010. Secrecy hid incompetence and corruption and was only warranted when lives were at risk, he said. ”Of course governments have got to have secrets. But they have too many at the moment.”

=> ↺ Senate Bill Would Make Leaks a Felony

• Legislation introduced in the Senate this week would broadly criminalize leaks of classified information. The bill (S. 355) sponsored by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) would make it a felony for a government employee or contractor who has authorized access to classified information to disclose such information to an unauthorized person in violation of his or her nondisclosure agreement.

• Under existing law, criminal penalties apply only to the unauthorized disclosure of a handful of specified categories of classified information (in non-espionage cases). These categories include codes, cryptography, communications intelligence, identities of covert agents, and nuclear weapons design information. The new bill would amend the espionage statutes to extend such penalties to the unauthorized disclosure of any classified information.

=> ↺ What WikiLeaks has told us

• Since 2006, the whistleblowers’ website WikiLeaks has published a mass of information we would otherwise not have known. The leaks have exposed dubious procedures at Guantanamo Bay and detailed meticulously the Iraq War’s unprecedented civilian death-toll. They have highlighted the dumping of toxic waste in Africa as well as revealed America’s clandestine military actions in Yemen and Pakistan.

• The sheer scope and significance of the revelations is shocking. Among them are great abuses of power, corruption, lies and war crimes. Yet there are still some who insist WikiLeaks has “told us nothing new”. This collection, sourced from a range of publications across the web, illustrates nothing could be further from the truth. Here, if there is still a grain of doubt in your mind, is just some of what WikiLeaks has told us:

=> ↺ Wikileaks Scandal Hits paraguayan president Fernando Lugo

• Paraguay president Fernando Lugo, a center-left politician who was elected to office in April 2008, was seen as a potential ally to the U.S. by the U.S. embassy in Asuncion, so long as he had “more than just a little help from ’upstairs’ to govern as president” which Lugo was apparently willing to accept.

=> ↺ A Librarian reacts to “A Librarian Reacts to WikiLeaks”

• Thanks to Bill Sleeman for his Jan. 24 article on WikiLeaks. His parsing is thought-provoking, but incomplete.

• I’d like to add some context to Sleeman’s op-ed because I think he conflates and ignores several issues surrounding Wikileaks the organization and the leaked US State Department cables themselves.

• Sleeman ignores the information and focuses instead on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and the actions of members of the American Library Association — Al Kagan’s American Libraries Magazine article as well as Larry Roman’s comment/response offer a good review of the ALA Midwinter conference WikiLeaks dustup. Sleeman repeatedly suggests that we have only one choice: “embrace” WikiLeaks or reject it. This is a false choice and misdirection. In doing this, Sleeman has adopted the strategy being used by those who wish to suppress the information by distracting us from it and focusing instead on the messenger.

=> ↺ Swedish justice questioned as Julian Assange awaits extradition ruling

• The Australian ambassador to Sweden has written to the country’s justice minister seeking assurances that Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, would be treated justly under Swedish and international law, should he be extradited there.

• Assange, an Australian citizen, is currently fighting extradition from Britain to Sweden over allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual molestation made by two women in August last year, which he denies. He will learn within days whether his attempt to resist the European arrest warrant has been successful.

=> ↺ 06YEREVAN1019, A PROSTITUTE’S STORY: SEX AND TRAFFICKING IN

• Poverty and desperation are the largest factors contributing to trafficking in persons in Armenia, according to prostitutes, police and NGOs in Vanadzor, Armenia’s third-largest city. We met them during a July 14 trip to the city, where prostitutes gather after dusk in the traffic circle outside a central church to begin the day’s work. To each we posed the question, “What can be done to eradicate trafficking in persons in Armenia?” No one had an answer, but all agreed that lack of jobs drove women to sell themselves both in Armenia and overseas, where the money was better, but where they often didn’t actually get paid. They told us that girls as young as 11 and 12 have started walking the streets. A police officer told us that parents send their daughters to Turkey fully understanding the cost at which remittances will be sent home. We visited a decrepit shanty town, where prostitutes work for bread and rice, to see first-hand the conditions in which many of them live. We left Vanadzor convinced that, while stricter laws and harsher sentencing are needed in Armenia, prostitutes work in large part because they have to put food on the table, and they go to Turkey and the UAE because they believe the money is better there.

=> ↺ 08MOSCOW1124, MOSCOW TABLOID SHUT DOWN BY OWNER AFTER BREAKING

• The Moscow-based tabloid Moskovskiy Korrespondent suspended its operations on April 18 at the request of its owner after being the first Russian newspaper to report the rumor on April 11 that Putin had divorced in February and planned to marry 24-year old rhythmic gymnast and Duma member Alina Kabayeva. Korrespondent owner, Aleksandr Lebedev, told the Ambassador that no one had called him and he had not been forced to suspend the publication, as reported in the media. Korrespondent had ceased publication because kiosk owners had refused to carry it in the wake of the scandal. Putin denied there was any truth to the rumors during an April 18 joint press conference in Sardinia with Silvio Berlusconi, and the reporting which followed in the mainstream Russian press focused exclusively on his denial, pointedly failing to address the veracity of the rumors. Media sources we have spoken with indicate that it is not worth the risk of attracting Kremlin scorn to print any stories having a First Family angle.

=> ↺ Viewing cable 08MANAMA89, BAHRAIN’S CROWN PRINCE CONSOLIDATING HIS AUTHORITY

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Melting Arctic soil spewing carbon: study

=> ↺ GOP Lawmaker Mike Beard Claims God Will Provide Unlimited Natural Resources

• Mike Beard, a Republican state representative from Minnesota, recently argued that coal mining should resume in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, in part because he believes God has created an earth that will provide unlimited natural resources.

• “God is not capricious. He’s given us a creation that is dynamically stable,” Beard told MinnPost. “We are not going to run out of anything.”

=> ↺ Why Chevron’s lawyers must be among the busiest in the world

• Oil is the dirtiest industry in the world and Chevron, one the world’s largest companies, must be the oiliest. That’s saying something when you consider it has rivals including BP, Shell, Exxon and Oxy. Never mind the gross violations of the Ecuadoran environment for which it was punished this week with a $8bn (£5bn) fine. When it comes to aggressive legal tactics, vindictiveness, threats, pollution, intimidation, tax evasion and links with venal and repressive regimes, it is in a league of its own as its corporate lawyers bludgeon, bully and try to beat with the law any opposition it meets around the world.

Finance

=> ↺ Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission – Closed Session – Ben Bernanke

=> ↺ How Goldman Killed A.I.G.

• The conventional wisdom has it that the final report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was a low-budget flop, hopelessly riven by internal political disputes and dissension among the commission’s 10 members. As usual, the conventional wisdom is completely wrong. Actually, the report — and the online archive of testimony, interviews and documents that are now available — is a treasure trove of invaluable information about the causes and consequences of the Great Recession.

=> ↺ Did Goldman Sachs Kill AIG ?

• The “dispute” between GS and AIG was over the timing and amount of the collateral call. I must emphasize that this was part of the contract between two very sophisticated financial firms — AIG was the world’s biggest insurer, and GS was one of the world’s biggest bankers.

• As Cohan states “On July 27, 2007, Goldman sent a $1.81 billion collateral call to A.I.G. Financial Products.” But Cohan’s mention that: “Goldman — pretty much alone at that point — thought represented the decline in the value of the securities.”

• But so what? That AIG gave GS the ability to demand increased collateral based on their own valuations is pretty astonishing — and dumb as hell. AIG ultimately negotiated down the $1.8B collateral call to “only” $450m; eventually, they ponied up an additional $1.55 billion in collateral. AIG also had to pay collateral to Merrill and Soc Gen.

=> ↺ A Few Words From Bernie

• No senator in Washington talks straighter about the truth than Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). He is a staunch defender of ordinary Americans, and strongly opposes the Republican effort to balance the budget on the backs of these people while giving huge tax breaks to the rich. The following statements from Senator Sanders are from an interview with Judy Woodruff, where he discusses the budget plans of President Obama and the Republican Party. As usual, he’s right on target.

=> ↺ 05MINSK851, THE BANKING SECTOR, BELARUSIAN STYLE

• 1. Summary: The banking system in Belarus is characterized by its underdevelopment, lack of foreign competition, and constant government interference. The Belarusian economy still relies primarily on cash as a settlement instrument. Cash outside the banking sector is the preferred method of payment because, what the GOB doesn’t see, it can’t confiscate or control. GOB intervention in the operational activities of both private enterprises and government- controlled banks is the cause of most of the problems in the banking sector. However, despite these systemic problems, public trust in the banking sector is growing.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ Sign the petition: Bev Oda must resign

• Falsifying documents? Misleading Parliament? Enough is enough.

=> ↺ Koch Industries Slashed WI Jobs, Helped Elect Scott Walker, Now Orchestrating Pro-Walker Protest

• Wisconsin’s newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker is facing a growing backlash over his attempt to cut pay and eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in his state. Although Walker is claiming his power grab is an attempt to close a budget gap, the budget “crisis” was engineered by Walker as soon as he got into office. As Brian Beutler reported, half of the budget shortfall comes from Walker’s own tax cuts for businesses and other business giveaways enacted in January.

=> ↺ Sarah Palin Answers Questions From Business Group In Front Of Mainstream Media

=> ↺ Targets of Chamber of Commerce fight back

• Three attorneys at Hunton & Williams, the international law firm that is implicated in a scheme to attack WikiLeaks and critics of the Chamber of Commerce, will be hit with bar complaints next week by anti-Chamber activists who were targeted in the scheme.

• “It’s a powerhouse law firm and if they’re allowed to deal in this kind of illegal activity, what do ethics in the law mean?” asks Kevin Zeese, attorney for the group StopTheChamber.com. “These guys are openly talking about potentially criminal activities — invading privacy, moving toward libel and slander and defamation of character — by creating forged documents, tricking us to putting them out, and accusing us of putting out disinformation.”

=> ↺ Why Ballmer wasn’t at the Obama tech dinner

Censorship

=> ↺ Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your Internet

Civil Rights

=> ↺ TSA screeners stole over $200K from fliers’ baggage

• Two TSA screeners from New York’s Kennedy airport were busted for stealing over $200,000 in cash from fliers. They targetted people they thought were drug dealers, since they didn’t think their victims would complain.

=> ↺ Comment: Civil liberties campaigners dig their own grave

• The reason leftists always sense a rightward drift in British politics is simply because the pressure is there. The tabloid press seize on any instance of crime being dealt with leniently, or an MP who proposes liberalising drugs laws, or a theatre production in a prison. People are on their toes about getting done from the right, so they cater to its concerns. The most you get from the left is a concerned column in the Independent. There’s just not enough pressure.

• Which is why civil liberties activists’ current strategy – namely complacency – is so ruinous to the cause.

• It was evident when the coalition took power that civil liberties was a crucial middle ground for the two parties. The Tories were always dodgy on civil liberties but it fitted a freedom agenda which could be combined with their deregulation plans to imitate an ideologically coherent policy portfolio.

=> ↺ Defend Free Speech on the Internet

• Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation that would give phone and cable companies absolute power over the Internet.

=> ↺ FBI pushes for surveillance backdoors in Web 2.0 tools

• The FBI pushed Thursday for more built-in backdoors for online communication, but beat a hasty retreat from its earlier proposal to require providers of encrypted communications services to include a backdoor for law enforcement wiretaps.

• FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told Congress that new ways of communicating online could cause problems for law enforcement officials, but categorically stated that the bureau is no longer pushing to force companies like RIM, which offers encrypted e-mail for business and government customers, to engineer holes in their systems so the FBI can see the plaintext of a communication upon court order.

=> ↺ Data retention should last one year: AG

• The talks, set for July this year, will lay the foundations to unify current data retention plans between the US, Europe and Australia.

• Governments have proposed that internet providers retain information on customers including websites visited, online searches and key data required to tie verified account identities to IP addresses. The ideas are being pushed as a means to assist law enforcement within and across national borders.

=> ↺ The Fourth Amendment is Going Dark

• In 1994 the FBI decided it needed a surveillance system built into the telephone network to enable it to listen to any conversation with the flip of a switch. Congress obliged by passing the Communication Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), forcing the telecoms to rebuild their networks to be “wiretap ready.” Seventeen years later, law enforcement is asking to expand CALEA to include the Internet, claiming that its investigative abilities are “going dark” because people are increasingly communicating online.

Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB

=> ↺ EU to consider new plans to reduce roaming phone charges

• The European Commission will have to consider radical new measures to reduce the cost of mobile roaming charges after almost all respondents to its consultation said prices were unfair.

=> ↺ Rogers Responds To CRTC Net Neutrality Concerns: No Need for Disclosure Changes

=> ↺ Regulations committee drops advice to CRTC on false and misleading news

• Facing mounting public pressure, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, a committee of the House and Senate, agreed Thursday to withdraw advice to the CRTC to water down a regulation prohibiting the broadcast of false and misleading news.

• Some observers now expect the CRTC, which is against the proposal, to withdraw or abandon the regulatory change it put forward in a consultation on Jan. 10.

=> ↺ Who owns the tangible Internet?

• What is the Internet? It is not analogous to a house. But you folks want tangibles, so lets talk tangibles.

• A house occupies a finite amount of space. A house anywhere in our world is most likely to fall under the specific jurisdiction and laws of the nation in which it stands. Under the laws of the land, it is usually straightforward to determine who holds title to the house. In most cases only the owner has the rights to alter or amend the structure of the house.

• The Internet, on the other hand, spans the globe. This means that there are bits of infrastructure residing in many nations and under many different legal systems. And if Fred in Topeka sends an email to Mary in London, the email it is broken down into multiple packets which are sent independently — part of Fred’s email might go in a relatively straight line from sender to destination but part of it may be rerouted via Sri Lanka and another through Iceland.

DRM

=> ↺ Copyright Lobby Group Makes the Case for Flexible Digital Lock Rules

• This report is what Canadian officials have in mind when they talk about it being driven entirely by U.S. industry. There are many aspects worth noting in this year’s report – the criticism of countries like Vietnam and the Philippines for encouraging the use of open source software (the Vietnamese program was established to help reduce software piracy), the criticism of Bill C-32′s digital lock provision that allows cabinet to establish new exceptions (the IIPA would like any new exceptions to be both limited and for a limited time), and the near universal demand that countries spend millions of public dollars on increased policing, IP courts, and public education campaigns.

• Of particular note, however, is the fact that the IIPA report provides a fairly convincing case that there is considerable flexibility in implementing the WIPO Internet treaty anti-circumvention rules.

• The IIPA hopes to make the opposite case by claiming that country-after-country should amend their digital lock rules to make them more like the U.S. DMCA. Yet the picture that emerges is that dozens of countries around the world have rejected that DMCA approach in their effort to comply with digital lock requirements found in the WIPO Internet treaties.

=> ↺ Stipulation: Hotz to Turn Over Computers to Neutral Third Party – Updated

• This will make a lot of you feel better. The parties have come up with a stipulation in Sony Computer Entertainment American v. Hotz regarding what Hotz must do about handing over his computers. The new Preliminary Injunction [PDF] now says that he is to turn his materials over to a “neutral” third party, not to SCEA’s lawyers, and after the neutral party combs through them, it all is returned to Hotz. All but whatever they “segregate” out of them. He won’t get that back until the end of the litigation, should he prevail, which this court at least currently thinks is less likely than that Sony will. There will be a hearing on Hotz’s motion to dismiss on April 8, 2011.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Did Watson Succeed On Jeopardy By Infringing Copyrights?

• This is a really good point and (once again) highlights the ridiculousness of copyright in certain circumstances. Of course, your viewpoint on this may depend heavily on whether or not you believe Google’s book scanning infringed on copyright (I don’t). But, for those who do, do you believe that IBM’s scanning of books does infringe? Technically, it’s the same basic process. In fact, you could argue that with Watson it’s much more involved, because Watson then actually made use of the actual data to a much greater extent than Google did with Google books.

=> ↺ Photographer Who Took Family Portrait Of Girl Shot In Tucson Suing Media For Using The Photo

• What you might not know is that the professional photographer, who took this photo, apparently seems to think this is an “opportunity.” After Christina’s unfortunate murder, photographer Jon Wolf of Tucson decided to register the photo at the Copyright Office and then threaten and/or sue a bunch of media properties for showing the photo without licensing it (thanks to Eric Goldman for sending this over). It’s hard not to be sickened by someone who would so brazenly try to capitalize on such a tragedy.

Trademarks

=> ↺ Google Pushes To Keep Reams Of Documents Secret In Major Trademark Case

• Rosetta Stone v. Google, one of the most important trademark cases of the digital age, is pending in a Virginia federal appeals court, and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is fighting a remarkable battle to keep thousands of pages of documents secret. The documents could contain information that’s potentially damaging to Google about how frequently customers are confused by trademarked searches, which is a central question in the case.

• The company is trying to block an effort by the non-profit Public Citizen to unseal heaps of documents in the case. The battle over these sealed documents won’t affect what Rosetta Stone has access to, so it shouldn’t really affect the outcome of the case. But Google is fighting to keep sealed at least 800 pages of documents that could damage it from a PR perspective.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Creating creativity

• To give creative endeavor more shelter I proposed making fair dealing illustrative. But if we must remain locked into enumerated categories of fair dealing Professor Graham Reynolds convincingly argues that a further category be added: a protection for those who engage in transformative work. In his chapter, “Towards a Right to Engage in the Fair Transformative Use of Copyright-Protected Expression,” in From “Radical Extremism” to “Balanced Copyright…” (free download available here) he indicates that Canada would not be the first country to take such a step, and, he stresses the importance of ensuring that the anti-circumvention provisions of Bill C-32 do not render such a right null and void.

=> ↺ Leaving Millions on the Table: Pandora and Canadian Music

• Pandora, the popular U.S. online music service filed for an initial public offering last week, provided new insight into hugely popular company that spends millions of dollars in copyright royalties. Pandora users listened to a billion hours of music in the last three months of 2010. Given U.S. laws, the Pandora prospectus notes that it paid for the privilege of having its users do so, with the company spending just over half of its revenue on copyright fees – $45 million in the first nine months of 2010.

=> ↺ RIAA Labels Spain and Canada As Piracy Havens

• Together with their partners at the International Intellectual Property Alliance, the RIAA has submitted their ‘piracy watchlist’ recommendations to the Office of the US Trade Representative. Canada and Spain are listed as two piracy havens that require urgent attention from the US Government, even though the latter just adopted a US inspired anti-piracy law.

=> ↺ The RIAA attacks Canada

• The IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance) is touting another of its spurious ‘reports’ and, says the RIAA, quoting from the document, “the Canadian Government has inexplicably consumed yet another year without modernizing its copyright regime, leaving a legal structure in place that is not adequate to respond to present challenges.”

• Posted Michael Geist, “This [IIPA] report is what Canadian officials have in mind when they talk about it being driven entirely by U.S. industry.

• “There are many aspects worth noting in this year’s report — the criticism of countries like Vietnam and the Philippines for encouraging the use of open source software (the Vietnamese program was established to help reduce software piracy), the criticism of Bill C-32’s digital lock provision that allows cabinet to establish new exceptions (the IIPA would like any new exceptions to be both limited and for a limited time), and the near universal demand that countries spend millions of public dollars on increased policing, IP courts, and public education campaigns.”

=> ↺ Nothing New Under The Copyright-Eclipsed Sun

• The copyright industry has tried the same tricks and rhetoric for well over 500 years, and they are also keen on trying to rewrite history. But the tale of the history books differs sharply from what the copyright industry is trying to paint.

• When the printing press arrived in 1453, scribe-craft was a profession in high demand. The Black Death had taken a large toll from the monasteries, who were not yet repopulated, so copying books was expensive.

=> ↺ President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil

• This is an open letter to President Dilma Rousseff signed by international organizations, academics and activists in support of the work of the Brazilian society and government for the cultural commons

=> ↺ Optical illusion inventor goes on to invent copyright threats against 3D printing company

• Yesterday, I blogged about Artur Tchoukanov, who figured out how to make a 3D printed “impossible” Penrose triangle. Turned out I didn’t have the details quite right. The guy who came up with the 3D design in Thingiverse had made it after seeing someone else’s model for the same thing on Shapeways, and he’d made the triangle design to show that he’d figured out how the trick was done.

ACTA

=> ↺ Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement: European Commission welcomes release of negotiation documents

• The negotiation parties of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) today published the documents of the 8th round of negotiations held in Wellington on 12-16 April. The European Commission welcomes the decision to make the draft available to the public. This text shows that the overall objective of ACTA is to address large-scale infringements of intellectual property rights which have a significant economic impact. ACTA will by no means lead to a limitation of civil liberties or to “harassment” of consumers.

=> ↺ Comments to USTR Submitted for ACTA: Thirty Professors Say It Requires Congressional Approval

• We write to call on the Obama administration to comply with the Constitution by submitting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to Congress for approval.

• The executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter international agreements on intellectual property without congressional consent. The regulation of intellectual property and of foreign commerce, which are at the heart of ACTA’s terms, are Article I Section 8 powers of Congress; the President lacks constitutional authority to enter international agreements in this area as sole executive agreements lacking congressional authorization or approval.

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