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Murdock On The Birth Of Debian
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '16

06 Jan '16

Noted Free Culture rapporteur Glyn Moody recalls his 1999 interview with late Debian founder Ian Murdock about the genesis of the project: <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/01/the-birth-of-debian-i…>. As Murdock told me in 1999, the problems arose from the fact that "the fellow who was doing [SLS] was trying to do everything himself. And so I looked on that and I thought, well, you know, if Linux has taught us anything it's that that kind of model is sub-optimal. What we really ought to do is we ought try to take the model that Linux has pioneered, intentionally or not, and try to get the same benefits from that for building the system around it."

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Microsoft's Latest Patent Aggression Comes Under Fire From the EFF, Former GNU/Linux Company the Patent's Target
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jan '16

04 Jan '16

'MICROSOFT, which is connected to many patent trolls (includingIntellectual Ventures, the world’s biggest), is still busy suing companies. Microsoft has a long history of patent aggression, including patent litigation against Linux (not just threats thereof). As longtime readers of this site may know, this and only this was the raison d’être of this Web site. “…since winning a case for infringement of design patents can lead to a damage analysis based on “lost profits,” which can theoretically lead to a patent owner getting all of a defendant’s profits.” –Joe MullinAs we noted the other day, referring tothe original from the EFF, Microsoft is now attacking a company that once dominated word processing. Microsoft allegedly engaged in competition crimes against this company, leading to decades of expensive litigation. This company also pioneered some important GNU/Linux efforts until Microsoft shut these down with a mysterious deal (which we wrote about on several occasions around 2007). Well, Microsoft is now trying to drive this company into bankruptcy, using patents. What’s the name of this company? Corel. We have a whole category about Corel (with 51 articles, as well as leaked court documents). History is important here and it’s imperative that people properly study Corel to truly grasp how severe this situation really is.' -- source: http://techrights.org/2015/12/31/patent-aggression-against-corel/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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A Leap of Faith -- Replacing Ubuntu Server with openSUSE Leap
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jan '16

04 Jan '16

"I run a local file and media server, which is a very important part of my digital life -- it hosts all of my files. Everything. I have been using an Ubuntu 14.04 server running on a self-assembled PC. But, it’s a big, noisy system and generates too much heat. So, I planned to move to smaller form factor, such as System76's Meerkat." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/systems-management/874378 -- Meerkat link: https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat Cheers, Peer -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock
by Peter Reutemann 31 Dec '15

31 Dec '15

"With a heavy heart Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock, stalwart proponent of Free Open Source Software, Father, Son, and the 'ian' in Debian." source: https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz

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Inside Red Star OS
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Dec '15

30 Dec '15

North Korea has developed its own Linux distro, chock-full of features to allow every action of its users to be tracked. Some researchers have been taking it apart to see how these features work. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/29/north_korea_red_star_os/>

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The Guardian Project
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Dec '15

25 Dec '15

Just been watching the latest in the “Rebel Geeks” series on Al Jazeera. Today the episode was called “A Bigger Brother” <http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelgeeks/2015/12/bigger-brother-15121…>, centred around the use of an open-source Android app called CameraV. The aim of this app is to record video along with a whole heap of corroborating metadata (GPS coordinates, local wi-fi networks etc) to make the footage credible enough, in particular proof enough against accusations of tampering, to be used as evidence in court. This is particularly important where the video is documenting crimes committed by people in positions of power and trust, such as the police. They used a nice term for this: “sousveillance” (watching done by ordinary people from below), as compared to the more usual “surveillance” (watching by those in privileged positions from above). One interesting comment made in the program was that the phone needs to look like it is not capturing video while the app is running, because in a place like Rio De Janeiro, the cops will grab phones away from people who they think are filming them. I did some digging around on GitHub, and found that this app is part of the Guardian Project, and they have a whole bunch of other useful-looking tools related to encryption, privacy and so on <https://github.com/guardianproject> They also have a website <https://guardianproject.info/>.

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HTTP Error Code 451 Approved For Censored Web Pages
by Peter Reutemann 21 Dec '15

21 Dec '15

'The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) has finally approved the new 451 status code for HTTP error messages involving web pages which have been repressed or removed for legal or political reasons. The initiative was proposed in 2013, and gained interest from various groups, such as Lumen (formerly Chilling Effects), who see the potential of the Bradbury-inspired code to help develop comprehensive indexes of censorship on the internet. Mark Nottingham, chair the IETF HTTP Working Group, says, "It'll be an RFC after some work by the RFC Editor and a few more process bits, but effectively you can start using it now."' -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/12/21/1549258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Raspbian Levels the Field With Latest Update
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '15

18 Dec '15

"During all the Pi Zero hype and showcasing, most of us probably didn't realize that the Raspbian OS got a much needed update. While this update isn't a major release, it still contained some amazing features. If you are running Raspbian Jessie, then take a moment to read over this article so you won't be left out in the cold. I'll go over the best parts of the update and also provide install instructions on how to get all this on your current Raspbian install." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/raspbian-levels-the-field-with-lat… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Items From Blender Conference 2015
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

I saw from Peter’s posting that Blender got one of the “top 10 open source projects” awards on opensource.com this year. And they had their Blender Conference 2015 about a month ago. A couple of notable related articles I found on opensource.com are “Teaching Teens 3D Animation With Blender” <https://opensource.com/life/15/12/blender-interview-tom-haines-3dami> where this nonprofit called 3Dami offers a free, intensive 7-day course to selected students. Quote on the (much-maligned) Blender interface: Many do prefer to use Blender outside our events. Once you have got over the bump of its interface being different to other software, you soon learn just how insanely fast it is—its interface is different for a very good reason, and its hard to accept the slow down of using other software. Some students actually learn that lesson during our event: More than a few have turned up moaning that we aren't using a certain piece of software beginning with "M," but they usually get why we use Blender by the time they leave. I do know that one of our students is making money using Blender, and I expect others to join them given time. Another one, relevant to a University research setting, is “Visualize Astrophysics Data With Blender” <https://opensource.com/life/15/11/blender-conference-interview-jill-naiman-…>. Besides Blender, this also builds on a Python-based astrophysics simulation framework called “yt”. (Aside: the more we become accustomed to being able to use keyword searches to find everything online, the more annoyed some of us become with short names that are hard to search for. Is this good or bad? Discuss.) I suspect there are bits there that could be adapted to other kinds of physical simulation. More presentations to see here: <https://www.youtube.com/user/BlenderFoundation/videos>

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end of year: best of open source
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '15

16 Dec '15

Top 10 open source projects of 2015 https://opensource.com/business/15/12/top-10-open-source-projects-2015 Bossies 2015: The Best of Open Source Software Awards http://www.infoworld.com/article/2984437/open-source-tools/bossies-2015-the… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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AMD Goes Open Source, Announces GPUOpen Initiative, Linux Compiler, Drivers
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '15

15 Dec '15

'AMD announced today that the company is releasing a slew of open-source software and tools to give game developers, heterogeneous applications, and HPC applications deeper access to the GPU and GPU resources. AMD and their Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) are looking for ways to ease game development, so developers can more easily re-use code and port their games from consoles over to the PC. With GPUOpen, game developers will have direct access to GPU hardware, as well as access to a large collection of open source effects, tools, libraries and SDKs, which are being made available on GitHub under an MIT open-source license. As part of the effort, the company is also releasing a new HCC C++ compiler which will be a tool in enabling developers to more easily leverage the resources of discrete GPU hardware in heterogeneous systems. The HCC complier also allows developers to convert CUDA code to portable C++. According to AMD, internal testing shows that in many cases 90 percent or more of CUDA code can be automatically converted into C++ with the final 10 percent converted manually in the widely popular C++ language. An early access program for the "Boltzmann Initiative" tools is planned for Q1 2016.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/12/15/1429257 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Collabora and OwnCloud Announce LibreOffice Online
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '15

15 Dec '15

'Collabora Productivity, a UK-based consulting company, has collaborated with ownCloud Inc. to release a developer edition of online LibreOffice, which they call CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition). "The office suite implementation runs on ownCloud server. That's where all the processing and heavy lifting is done. The rendering happens at the client side. Currently there are three apps: writer (equivalent to MS Word), spreadsheet (Excel) and presentation (PowerPoint). At the moment users can create new documents and edit them. Other functionality, such as collaborative editing, is in the pipeline."' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/12/15/1849234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Finding Differences Between Binary Files
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

Hi folks. As mentioned in passing last night, diff(1) isn’t much help for tracking down differences between two non-text files: all it will say is the files differ. However, there is a way to get detail on the differences, and that is to use a hex dump command like xxd(1) to produce text output from those binary files, and diff that text output instead. Thus, instead of diff binfile1 binfile2 you do diff <(xxd binfile1) <(xxd binfile2) This will quickly narrow down runs of changed bytes, and possibly even small sections of inserted or deleted bytes as well.

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Raspberry π As A Thin Client?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

Citrix has posted a demo of a Raspberry π giving smooth performance running a thin client OS. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/14/vdi_comes_to_the_raspberry_pi/> A game-changer for VDI?

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MIT Creates Tor Alternative That Floods Networks With Fake Data
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '15

13 Dec '15

"An anonymous reader writes with word that MIT researchers "created an alternative to Tor, a network messaging system called Vuvuzela that pollutes the network with dummy data so the NSA won't know who's talking to who." Initial tests show the systems overhead adding a 44-second delay, but the network can work fine and preserve anonymity even it has more than 50% of servers compromised." -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/12/13/1522224 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Firefox OS smartphones are dead
by Peter Reutemann 12 Dec '15

12 Dec '15

The phone ecosystem just got smaller: "Mozilla is ending its plan to build an OS for smartphones. Today at Mozilla's "Mozlando" developer event, the company announced that it would stop developing and selling Firefox OS smartphones. " -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/firefox-os-smartphones-are-dead/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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How To Win Friends And Influence People
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Dec '15

12 Dec '15

And show your appreciation to open-source developers. <https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl/issues/398> Or not...

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Is Your Son A Computer Hacker?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Dec '15

10 Dec '15

A guide for the perplexed. As in, if you weren’t perplexed before reading this, you will be after <http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html>. Watch out for that nasty Lunix and that devil incarnate, Linyos Torovoltos! Seems like there are some other similar gems to be found on that site, all dating from the early ’00s. Nice that they keep it online.

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Let's Encrypt Is Now In Public Beta
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

"As of today, Let's Encrypt is in Public Beta. If you're comfortable running beta software that may have a few bugs and rough edges, you can use it to instantly obtain and install certificates for any HTTPS website or TLS service." -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/12/03/2016238 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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It’s Here: The Internet Of Wrongs
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

One of the presentations at the upcoming Kiwicon in Wellington is going to be about a device built out of a Raspberry π Zero using “nothing more than off-the-shelf components and "questionable life choices"”. It looks for attempts to connect to Instagram and other “social-media vanity” sites (including rugby), and blocks them by returning bogus responses. Quote: “It is exceptionally effective at selfie-drenched "music" festivals and coffee shops”. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/02/british_hacker_turns_raspberry_pi_z…>

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Why Algebraic Eraser may be the riskiest cryptosystem you’ve never heard of
by Peter Reutemann 30 Nov '15

30 Nov '15

"A potential standard for securing network-connected pacemakers, automobiles, and other lightweight devices has suffered a potentially game-over setback after researchers developed a practical attack that obtains its secret cryptographic key. Known as Algebraic Eraser, the scheme is a patented way to establish public encryption keys without overtaxing the limited amounts of memory and computational resources that often constrain so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Developed by scientists from Shelton, Connecticut-based SecureRF, it's similar to the Diffie-Hellman key exchange in that it allows two parties who have never met to securely establish a key over an insecure channel." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/why-algebraic-eraser-may-be-the-mos… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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When Is “Free Software” Not Free?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Nov '15

30 Nov '15

Linux kernel developer Matthew Garrett has posted some criticisms of projects like Mozilla, Red Hat and Ubuntu that develop or redistribute Free software, but tack on an “intellectual property rights policy”. Basically that means they claim ownership of certain logos and trademarks, so if you want to fully exercise your Four Freedoms, you have to strip those out before you are allowed to redistribute what you receive from them. <http://lwn.net/Articles/665175/> One particularly worrying thing is this comment from Garrett (mjg59) on the above article: Canonical refuse to tell you what changes you need to make to the packages in order to do so.

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Pi Zero: A full Raspberry Pi for just $5
by Peter Reutemann 28 Nov '15

28 Nov '15

"Have you ever wanted a Raspberry Pi but thought that £16/$25—roughly three packs of cigarettes—was a little exorbitant for a complete computer capable of running Linux? Well, I have good news: the Raspberry Pi Foundation has just released the Pi Zero, a single-board computer that costs just £4/$5." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/pi-zero-a-full-raspberry-pi-for-just… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Will Ship With Linux Kernel 4.4 LTS
by Peter Reutemann 27 Nov '15

27 Nov '15

"The current daily build of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) remains based on the Linux 4.2 kernel packages of the stable Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system, while the latest and most advanced Linux 4.3 kernel is tracked on the master-next branch of the upcoming operating system. In the meantime, the Ubuntu Kernel Team announced plans for moving to Linux kernel 4.4 for the final release of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/11/26/1920204 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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20 Years of GIMP
by Peter Reutemann 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

'Back in 1995, University of California students Peter Mattis and Kimball Spencer were members of the eXperimental Computing Facility, a Berkeley campus organization. In June of that year, the two hinted at their intentions to write a free graphical image manipulation program as a means of giving back to the free software community. On November 21st, 20 years ago today, Peter Mattis announced the availability of the "General Image Manipulation Program" on Usenet (later "GNU Image Manipulation Program"). Over the years, GIMP amassed a huge amount of new features designed for all kinds of users and practical applications: general image editing, retouching and color grading, digital painting, graphic design, science imaging, and so on. To celebrate the 20th anniversary, there is an update of the current stable branch of GIMP. The newly released version 2.8.16 features support for layer groups in OpenRaster files, fixes for layer groups support in PSD, various user interface improvements, OSX build system fixes, translation updates, and more.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/11/22/2019259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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