● 03.15.13

● Links 15/3/2013: Mir Still in Headlines, S4 Enters Headlines

Posted in News Roundup at 8:27 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Want to send messages to all the browsers connected to your site? The pub-sub paradigm, run through Web sockets, might be just the solution.

• Fragmentation is this month’s word of the day, whether it be related to Canonical’s plan to develop and launch its own Mir display server fragmenting a consensus around Wayland or to Miguel de Icaza’s tale of his journey away from a fragmented desktop Linux world. But if we step back and look at the bigger picture, fragmentation isn’t just a part of the Linux story, it is in many ways core to its power to bring free software to the world.

Server

• The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept where everything in the world is connected to everything else via an IP address. The IoT is no longer the dream of futurists, it’s soon to become a reality in the view of networking vendor Cisco Systems.

Audiocasts/Shows

• In this episode: OpenSUSE 12.3 is out, Red Hat takes ownership of Java 6, SecureBoot is coming to FreeBSD and Ubuntu ditches Wayland for Mir. We report back on our challenge from a couple of episodes ago, come up with a new challenge, and discuss IT education in our Open Ballot.

Kernel Space

• Kirill Shutemov of Intel has published his second version of the work that’s going on for Transparent Huge Page (THP) Cache support within the Linux kernel.

• Introduced to the world on Monday and already revised today is the Linux Kernel Wait-Free Concurrent Queue Implementation.

• Next month marks five years already since Intel released their Atom “Silverthorne” processors for netbooks and nettops in conjunction with the Intel “Poulsbo” SCH bearing PowerVR-derived GMA 500 graphics. To this day, aging Intel hardware with PowerVR-based graphics continue to be a big problem for the Linux desktop.

Graphics Stack

• For those using Wayland’s Weston compositor with the stock shell, a patch was proposed today for implementing “bubbles list” style notifications.

• This basic “wl_notification_daemon” interface also allows for user-configurable attributes of the anchor corner, margin, and order for these Weston desktop notifications.

• For starting off Friday’s benchmarking at Phoronix are some numbers when looking at the Nouveau driver with Ubuntu 13.04 against NVIDIA’s proprietary Linux graphics driver when both are controlling a Quadro GPU found on a ThinkPad laptop.

• In the lead-up to releasing Phoronix Test Suite 4.4.1-Forsand, a wide variety of hardware is always benchmarked to ensure there are no last minute bugs or other snafus concerning the Phoronix Test Suite client itself, the Phoronix Device Interface (Phodevi) library for hardware/software detection, or any other problems. One of the combinations tested was the NVIDIA and Nouveau drivers from a Quadro NVS 140M laptop since it hasn’t been tested in a while at Phoronix.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• A new game bundle called the Humble Bundle 5 was recently launched for Android users. At the time of its launch, the game offered six games and five soundtracks. And now the bundle has been upgraded with the addition of three new games: Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery EP, Splice and Crayon Physics Deluxe.

• Can’t wait to get back into some Day of Defeat: Source! I used to play a lot of this game , it’s easily now one of the more interesting FPS games on Linux!

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• You’re probably wondering what I was doing at 1am last night. I get asked that all the time. Well, mostly by people I live with, now that I think about it. “What were you doing on your computer at one in the morning?” they ask. The answer is usually quite exciting. Take last night, for instance: I was having a meeting with people to discuss display managers. Yes, the wonderful world of login screens.

• I realized I haven’t written a blog post to highlight the latest changes in KWin for quite some time. The reason for this is that we currently are mostly focused on getting KWin to work on Qt 5/KDE Frameworks 5. As I have mentioned already in the past KWin is a little bit special in the transition to Qt 5 as we used the low level native, non-portable functions provided by Qt (last week I found one usage of a native function which is not even documented). For us it mostly means that we transit from XLib to XCB and remove code which uses methods which got removed or replaced.

Distributions

• There have been several shifts and shakeups on the lists presented since then, of course, and -– as you’ll soon see – this year’s offering holds true to that pattern. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the past year has seen so much upheaval in the desktop world – particularly where desktop environments are concerned – that 2013′s list could come as a surprise to some.

New Releases

• I’d like to announce the next update of Slax Live Linux version 7.0.6. The main change is new Linux kernel 3.8.2 and updated KDE to 4.10.1. It was a bit harder than I expected, mostly due to some really odd changes made by KDE developers, which I had to work around to get the same functionality like we are used to.

Screenshots

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Mandriva was once one of the most popular GNU/Linux distribution. It has been around since 1998, but the company and the project went through hard times in the last two years. The company got forked then reached the brink of being sold. However, this resilient company faced hardship bravely and is now making a comeback with a concrete business plan. Could this be the ‘Red Hat’ move by Mandriva, turning the company into a ‘billion’ dollar revenue earning company?

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat has added JBoss Fuse and JBoss A-MQ to its enterprise middleware portfolio. The products are based on technologies acquired from FuseSource in September 2012. According to the company, these are designed to enhance Red Hat’s enterprise integration and messaging capabilities.

• Red Hat JBoss Fuse is a flexible open source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) based on popular Apache projects such as Camel, an enterprise integration pattern framework, which enable faster time-to-solution integration implementations.

• Shares of Red Hat Inc. fell Tuesday after a Citi analyst downgraded the software maker citing concerns about slowing growth.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• There’s code being committed to the new Mir Display Server every few hours. There’s also numerous Bazaar code branches appearing too that show early work on other functionality.

• With Canonical allocating its resources elsewhere, the Bazaar revision control system has fallen stagnant.

• While Bazaar was promising in its early days, the open-source distribution revision control system has seen better times. The original developer of Bazaar, Martin Pool, left Canonical last year and the company ended up shuffeling around the other developers formerly working on the project. Bazaar isn’t a money-maker for Canonical and the control system in its current form is good enough for the company while most other free software projects prefer Git or even SVN over Bzr.

• While Canonical no longer does a beta release of Ubuntu itself, many of the Ubuntu derivatives are doing their first 13.04 beta today.

• Unity 7, the latest release of Unity which is currently in development, should be available for user testing via a PPA in a few days. According to Michael Hall’s blog post, it will be available there for 2 weeks, before it lands.

• One of the most prominent changes in Unity 7 is the Smart Scopes service. Currently, Dash searches are processed on the local system by installed lenses. In future, Dash searches will be sent to the Canonical servers for processing by the Smart Scopes service. This service will determine which scopes are most relevant for the entered keywords, and return the search results from those scopes to the user’s system. In short terms this should mean more relevant search results and less system resources will be used.

• Today, on Linux blogs everywhere and on Google+, it’s open warfare between Ubuntu supporters and those who who believe it is committing free software heresy. Muktware’s own Swapnil Bhartiya suggested on this site that the company was morphing into a new Apple, with Shuttleworth in the roll of Steve Jobs.

• And there’s not much worse you could call an open source company than Apple.

• I get the criticism and the discomfort with many of Ubuntu’s decisions. I appreciate that the heads of various open source projects feel betrayed in many ways and that longtime users feel that they’ve been left out of the loop. Decisions are now made at the top not the bottom. The community opportunities at Ubuntu are no longer up to the standards of many free software advocates that once championed the distro.

• The Ubuntu developers have just passed the beta 1 milestone in development of Raring Ringtail, Ubuntu 13.04. Although the milestone does not see a release of the Ubuntu distribution, it does see a release of a beta 1 version of most of the various remixes, as previously disclosed by the project’s leadership. The announcement notes that 13.04 Beta 1 images are available for Edubuntu (download), Kubuntu (download), Lubuntu (download), UbuntuKylin (download), Ubuntu Server Cloud (images), Ubuntu Studio (notes, download) and Xubuntu (download).

• In what appears to be a growing penchant among open source developers for naming things after Soviet spacecraft, Canonical recently announced a new project called Mir. And while it doesn’t actually have much (or anything) to do with outer space, it could have major implications for open source user interfaces throughout the channel–not to mention for Canonical itself as it strives to “converge” its Ubuntu offerings across a range of hardware devices.

• Quite unlike the space station of the same name, the Mir project exists to create a new display server for Linux. It will replace the venerable X.org implementation of the X Window System, which comprises one of the core components of virtually every major Linux distribution out there today.

• Mir, according to Canonical, will offer a number of improvements over X that will prove particularly beneficial for tablets, phones and other touch-enabled mobile devices. But it is being designed to work across all hardware platforms, and–if it gains wide adoption by other Linux distributions besides Ubuntu–it could help to drive innovation in interface design across the open source channel.

• I have been a huge supporter of Canonical and Ubuntu from its early days and have done my share of spreading the word about Ubuntu and invested hours and hours in converting people and installing Ubuntu on their systems. Canonical spent a lot of money and resources in making Ubuntu popular. Ubuntu was one such distribution which was putting the users ahead of anything else. The company created an awesome community which was ‘driven’ by the code of conduct, which made a very welcoming community.

• Ubuntu has come under a decent amount of flack over the past few months, particularly over their decision to use the ‘Dash Search’ to return results from Amazon by default in their most recent release.

Flavours and Variants

• During my earlier years, I was in the US military as an enlisted soldier. Money was extremely tight for my wife and I, but I had a passion for computers.

• I couldn’t afford a new system, and certainly couldn’t afford to pay for Microsoft Windows. So, I purchased a used computer from a yard sale that had no operating system on it.

Devices/Embedded

• Sonos, a well-known maker of Linux-powered, WiFi-mesh networked, streaming audio systems, has added an HDTV soundbar to its line. The “Playbar” aims to bring “immersive HiFi sound” to home entertainment centers — not just from TV content, but streamed from Internet and local sources as well.

• The GCW-Zero is a portable gaming device designed for playing retro games — basically anything up until the era of the original PlayStation. It packs a 3.5 inch display, a 1 GHz MIPS processor, and and an open source Linux-based operating system called OpenDingux.

• Thanks to that operating system, you’ll be able to run a range of apps on the platform, including emulators for classic gaming consoles.

• Who wouldn’t want a Raspbery Pi-powered open source bartending that you control with your phone or tablet?

• For at least 353 people who have tossed $134,551 in tip money towards the project on Kickstarter, that question has an easy answer: everyone. And with a project goal of just a little more, $135,000, it seems certain that “Bartendro” will see the bright lights of night-time parties.

• Sean Liming, Owner of Annabooks, has been heavily involved with Windows embedded for years, dating all the way back to 1995. With the growth of Linux and open source, Sean decided that he’d like to beef up his Linux knowledge in-order to create a new book to help people transition from Windows to an open software solution. He decided to attend a Linux Foundation event in 2012 and has taken two Linux Foundation courses, which he says helped with the development of his new book: Open Software Stack for the Intel Atom Processor.

Phones

Ballnux

• LG has announced a ‘Value Pack’ update for the Optimus G Pro smartphone. Packing a feature called Smart Video, the update will be served up in Korea in April.

• According to the electronics giant, Smart Video takes viewing videos on mobile devices to a whole new level of convenience with eye recognition that eliminates the need to manually control playback during the viewing experience.

• The Galaxy S 4 was revealed by Samsung and it’s clear the company is distancing itself further from Android.

• Samsung has eventually launched its Galaxy S4 smartphone with features with would make the iPhone shy. Some of the new features of Galaxy S4 makes the latest iPhone look like the good old TV set of 80′s compared to today’s 3D 4K televisions. No, I am not exaggerating. iPhone’s innovation has stagnated and most of it’s energies are getting wasted on suing competitors instead of improving their own product.

Android

• After having its way with the smartphone market, Android is now poised for a repeat performance in the tablet market, according to market anlyst firm IDC.

• Videos from keynotes and presentation sessions at the Android Builders Summit 2013 held last month in San Francisco are now available for free viewing, courtesy of the Linux Foundation, which held the event. The videos cover a wide range of embedded Linux development, deployment, and marketing topics.

• We still don’t know where Google is going with Android and Chrome OS, but putting Chrome’s top executive in charge of Android is a big, honking hint.

• There are big moves going on at Google, with possible implications for the company’s operating systems Chrome OS and Android. Longtime Android chief Andy Rubin is stepping aside, although he is staying at Google. Meanwhile, Sundar Pichai, VP of Chrome and Apps, is a star on the rise. Pichai has been overseeing the delivery of Google’s well-recieved Chromebooks, and many of its very slick apps, in addition to steering Chrome OS forward.

• XOLO has officially launched the new X1000 smartphone, powered by an Intel CPU, in India. Featuring Android 4.0.4, the X1000 phone hits online stores for Rs 19,999 ($369).

• For many types of applications, in order to accurately understand what is going on within them, access to source code is typically required. When it comes to Android Apps, a new effort from startup Bluebox Security is set to make access and visibility into mobile code easier than ever before.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Last month I delivered extensive benchmarks of Ubuntu Linux on the Google Nexus 10 using the recently released Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview. In that article were benchmarks from the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual (Cortex-A15) tablet against a range of ARM Cortex and Intel/AMD x86 systems. This article builds upon those earlier Ubuntu Linux x86/ARM results by now adding in the results from Ubuntu on the Google Nexus 7 plus more comparison processors have been tossed into the mix as well. This article offers Ubuntu Linux performance results for a dozen different Intel, AMD, and ARM systems. The ARM SoCs represented are from Texas Instruments OMAP, NVIDIA Tegra, and ARM Exynos families.

• The team at Pwnie Express seems to have a lot of trouble standing still, as it doesn’t seem more than a few months go by before they are talking about yet another disruptive open source product that they are about to unleash on the security community.

Free Software/Open Source

• The non-profit pioneer in the phenomenon of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is releasing a core element of its platform for offering online courses as open-source software.

• Do you know how much oxygen you have in your blood? You may not be worried about knowing since you’re alive and thus can infer you have enough. But, visiting high altitudes can be made safer, and implementing a new workout regimen can be made more effective, with an oximeter.

• The amount of free content on the Internet is partially a result of horrid copyright infringement and partially a product of the open source movement, an umbrella term that applies to any kind of software that allows for its source code to be openly copied, edited, and distributed. Many of these programs are often quite amazing and frequently very cost-effective so, for your consideration, here are five really awesome products of the open source movement.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Three months ago, the folks at Mozilla rolled out the 1.0 version of the Firefox OS Simulator, which provided folks–especially developers–an opportunity to try out the company’s promising new mobile operating system. Mozilla has been making lots of noise about its entry into the mobile OS business, and early Firefox OS phones (a couple of them seen here) are arriving. Now, Mozilla has rolled out a preview version 3.0 of the simulator, which can provide a lot of the mobile operating system’s flavor.

• Mozilla has warned that the version 3.0 simulator is “a little rough around the edges,” but can still be experimented with. All three of the preview versions do reflect the fact that Mozilla means to develop this new mobile OS fully out in the open.

• Mozilla has announced the launch of Open Badges 1.0—a new way to recognise and verify learning. The free, open source software will allow users and institutions to digitally recognize and verify learning that happens anywhere, and use it to get a job, further education, or add to a growing skillset.

• In other words, a digital badge is an online representation of a skill you’ve earned. Open Badges takes that concept one step further, by creating an online ecosystem where users can verify, display, and combine badges.

SaaS/Big Data

• In Derrick Harris’ article on GigaOM entitled “EMC to Hadoop competition: See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.”, EMC unveiled their new Pivotal HD offering which effectively re-architects the Greenplum analytic database so it sits on top of the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). Scott Yara, Greenplum cofounder, is excited about the new product. Since a key focus for us at Hortonworks is to deeply integrate Hadoop with other data systems (a la our efforts with Teradata, Microsoft, MarkLogic, and others), I’m always excited to see data system providers like Greenplum decide to store their data natively in HDFS. And I can’t argue with Scott Yara’s sentiment that “I do think the center of gravity will move toward HDFS”.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle has acquired Nimbula, an IaaS software provider with ties to OpenStack, which could signal a move toward open source cloud. Oracle’s reputation, however, has industry watchers predicting otherwise.

Education

• Education technology consultant Karen Fasimpaur sounds like a revolutionary when she gets fired up talking about the potential of open educational resources (OER), the textbooks and other educational tools made available as free downloads or interactive Web experiences.

• “We have an opportunity to take back the curriculum!” she told educators at last week’s SXSWedu event. “What if we took the $5 billion annually spent on textbooks and invested that in teachers and their work?”

• That’s from a request for proposals developed jointly by Maine and other states. Another request for proposals by Los Angeles Unified School District explicity excludes “RT” and includes Linux in the acceptable list of OS. It also includes, “Proposer does not have a reputation for practices including, but not limited to, unethical business practices, discrimination, and unfair labor practices.”

Business

Funding

• Netflix wants its open source software to become the preferred platform for massive cloud-based applications, so it has launched a cash-conferring contest to generate developer enthusiasm for its technology.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• According to a public mailing list thread, Google is doing this on purpose, to handle a spam problem. We sympathize; we spend a disappointing amount of energy combating similar problems on the services we provide for the free software community. But the solution can’t be something that breaks legitimate communication channels, and especially not in a way that enhances Google’s disproportionate control of the network. While Google is offering to whitelist servers whose operators write to them, this just accentuates the inequality and doesn’t realistically solve the problem.

• We hope that Google will retract this change and find a solution that does not undermine the distributed nature of the Internet. We have already reached out to them toward this end.

Project Releases

• Today we released ownCloud 5, a very important milestone for the ownCloud community and perhaps the most important release so far. But before going into the details I want to take a step back and look at what the original idea of ownCloud was at the beginning.

• OwnCloud 5.0 was released this morning, the latest major update to the popular open-source cloud storage software suite.

• Version 1.4 of Sinatra, the domain specific language (DSL) for creating web applications in Ruby, is imminent, according to a blog post by its current maintainer, Konstantin Haase. The new version will be the first release with new features since October 2011′s 1.3.0 release. Those new features include support for new HTTP methods, updated templates, an improved classic mode, better parsing of routes, MIME-type parameters and more supported servers.

Public Services/Government

Licensing

Openness/Sharing

Open Access/Content

• Over the last few years, Techdirt has been reporting on a steady stream of victories for open access. Along the way publishers have tried various counter-attacks, which all proved dismal failures. But there are signs that they have changed tack, and come up with a more subtle — and increasingly successful — approach.

• Last week, we wrote about Aaron Swartz’s girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, releasing a statement accusing the DOJ of a variety of things that hadn’t really been covered before, including lying, seizing evidence without a warrant and withholding exculpatory evidence. That resulted in an interesting discussion in the comments, in which a few DOJ defenders suggested that since there were no details, we were probably making this up (as if we don’t have better things to do). Now, however, the details have come out. In a letter that was sent at the end of January (but just now leaked to the press), Swartz’s lawyers highlight how Assistant US Attorney Steve Heymann was responsible for the charges above.

• The key issue is the search of Aaron’s laptop. Cambridge police seized the laptop on January 6, 2011. The Secret Service did not obtain a warrant until February 9, 2011, even though it had clearly been involved since before the arrest and was leading the investigation. Swartz’s legal team, quite reasonably, argued that the evidence from the laptop should be suppressed due to the massive delay in obtaining the necessary warrant. Heymann hit back that it was the Cambridge Police who had the laptop, so the Secret Service had nothing to do with it until it got the warrant. There was a court hearing about all of this, and Heymann again insisted that the Secret Service had no responsibility until after the warrant.

Programming

Leftovers

• Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was chosen as the new pope this week. But coverage often glossed over the most intense political controversies about him.

• A scandal in a Massachusetts crime lab continues to reverberate throughout the state’s legal system. Several months ago, Annie Dookhan, a former chemist in a state crime lab, told police that she messed up big time. Dookhan now stands accused of falsifying test results in as many as 34,000 cases.

• It turns out that the cause of my problem was not technical, but disciplinary.

• Countless individuals accused of apostasy and blasphemy face threats, imprisonment, and execution. Blasphemy laws in over 30 countries and apostasy laws in over 20 aim primarily to restrict thought, expression and the rights of Muslims, ex-Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Science

• I was asked by Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education) and the Department for Education to look at how to improve the use of evidence in schools. I think there are huge, positive opportunities for teachers here, that go way beyond just doing a few more trials. Pasted below is the briefing note from DfE press office, and then the text of a paper I wrote for them, which came out this week. You can also download a PDF from the DfE website here.

Security

• Security experts in Poland have discovered a treacherous backdoor in various router models made by TP-Link. When a specially crafted URL is called, the router will respond by downloading and executing a file from the accessing computer, reports Michał Sajdak from Securitum.

• Security researcher Marc Heuse discovered that the firewall in Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 has a problem with certain IPv6 packets. The researcher said that he publicly disclosed the details of the problem because Kaspersky didn’t respond when he reported it. Shortly after his disclosure, Kaspersky did release a fix.

• Brian Krebs got a visit from a SWAT team today, after having his site DDOSed and served with a fake takedown notice, possibly in retaliation for this article.

• Two researchers from security firm Imperva have devised new techniques that could allow attackers to extract sensitive information from users’ encrypted Web traffic.

• The new methods build on those used in an attack called CRIME revealed last year that abuses the compression feature of SSL to achieve the same goal.

• CRIME decrypts authentication information stored in headers sent during HTTP requests, in particular the session cookies. It works by tricking the victims into loading a malicious piece of JavaScript that forces their browsers to make specifically crafted requests to SSL-enabled websites where they’re already logged in.

• The website Exposed.su posted the Social Security Numbers, home addresses and phone numbers to an array of influential Americans on Monday, including President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, actor Mel Gibson, US Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Robert Mueller and others. Additionally, the hackers have posted documents that they perpetrate to be legitimate credit reports for many of the victims, including singer Beyoncé, rap artist Jay-Z and Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, among others.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• The National Rifle Organization (NRA) on Thursday used armed security to force mothers of victims of gun violence to leave the organization’s headquarters.

• The groups MomsRising.org and the Reston-Herndon Alliance to End Gun Violence traveled to NRA headquarters in Virginia on Thursday to deliver a petition with over 150,000 signatures calling for universal background checks, a ban on high-capacity magazines, a ban on military-style assault rifles and new laws to crack down on gun trafficking.

• The House of Delegates voted 82-56 to repeal Maryland’s death penalty on Friday, making the state the sixth in as many years to abolish executions and delivering a major legislative victory to Gov. Martin O’Malley.

• The bill, which passed the Senate last week, now heads to the governor for his signature. O’Malley (D) has lobbied lawmakers for years to end capital punishment, and he put the full weight of his office behind it this session.

• Greece’s parliament has voted to allow the prosecution of a leading neo-Nazi politician for assaulting two female left-wing politicians on a live TV talkshow.

• CIA Director John Brennan’s credit records were allegedly published by hackers Friday on the website Exposed.Su, according to Russia Today.

• The Central Intelligence Agency must publicly declare whether or not it has documents on drone strikes carried out by the US government, and if so, must explain why it can keep those documents hidden from the public, according to a new ruling today by an appeals court in Washington, DC. The ruling, which was made in response to a three-year-old Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, doesn’t mean that the CIA will have to turn over any drone documents themselves, but it does force the agency to at least acknowledge that it has intelligence on US drone strikes, which it’s been reluctant to do so far in official court filings.

• In a rebuke of government secrecy, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the CIA must give a fuller response to a lawsuit seeking the spy agency’s records on drone attacks.

• Blum: I cannot prove it of course, but I believe he was. It would be totally in keeping with the entire history of the CIA and its attitude towards people like Hugo Chavez.

• The CIA has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and successfully at least half the time. And very few of them were as despised by the US government as Chavez was, I would say. So, there would be no reason at all to expect that the CIA would not at least plan on killing, and the nature of his ailment is very odd.

• US spy agencies still live under the shadow of disastrous intelligence failures that paved the way for the Iraq war, and now face a crucial test as they track Iran’s nuclear program.

• A UN special rapporteur investigating US drone strikes has concluded after a secret trip to Pakistan that the attacks by CIA-operated spy planes violate the country’s sovereignty.

• The United States drone strikes in Pakistan are a violation of that nation’s sovereignty, the head of a U.N. team investigating the legality of the U.S. drone program said, after he made a secret fact-finding trip to Pakistan and met with officials there. Back in January, Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, held a news conference in London to announce his inquiry into the impact on civilians of the targeted killing program, as well as the legal underpinnings. That investigation took him to Pakistan, where he said his findings were clear after meetings with officials.

• As Hugo Chavez is mourned and remembered by the people of Venezuela and the world, Henrique Capriles, the CIA and the IMF lie in wait, ready to snatch up Venezuela’s resources.

• Last week the CIA published a 1962 internal document that seems to show it was contemplating some very advanced data techniques half a century ago. Titled “some Far-Out Thoughts on Computers” the document was authored by one Orrin Clotworthy, an intelligence analyst and self described “computer hobbyist”. Apparently that’s what geeks called themselves back in the early sixties.

• But the most noteworthy thing about the largely failed prosecution wasn’t the outcome. It was the tens of thousands of pages of documents—some declassified—that the litigation left in its wake. These documents illuminate Blackwater’s defense strategy—and it’s a fascinating one: to defeat the charges it was facing, Blackwater built a case not only that it worked with the CIA—which was already widely known—but that it was in many ways an extension of the agency itself.

• Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater – now known as Academi – claims his firm “became a virtual extension of the CIA,” taking orders from the agency.

• Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed. The government’s 15-felony indictment–on such charges as conspiring to hide purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives–could have led to years of jail time for Blackwater personnel. In the end, however, the government got only misdemeanor guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years’ probation, and a fine of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three other executives named in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether.

• Carroll also wrote that Chavez, himself, believed that the cancers that befell former leftist leaders of Latin America, including Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, diagnosed with colon cancer and Brazilian President Ignacio Lula da Silva, treated for throat cancer, were part of a CIA plot directed against left-wing leaders. Curiously, Carroll suggests that Uruguay’s former leftist president, Tabare Vazquez, also recovered from cancer.

Cablegate

• On Friday, the Aftonbladet tabloid reported that Bildt, at the age of 27, reported to the United States about details of closed-door government coalition talks in 1976.

• That information was then sent on to the CIA, the paper claimed.

• “He was well informed. I reported on everything he told us,” US envoy Ronald E Woods told the paper.

• On 3 February, 2013, Balkanleaks released the “Buddha dossier,” a massive trove of secret documents from the national police archive.

• The cache was the Bulgaria-based transparency site’s most significant release so far this year. It underscored suspicions that the country’s prime minister, Boyko Borisov, had ties to organised crime.

• Wikileaks has a cable that the US Embassy-Vatican wrote about then-Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, among other possible papal candidates, in 2005, shortly before Ratzinger was chosen to be the new pope.

• «Manning’s trial is a public beating of all those who is trying to open people’s eyes. This is also proved by the degrading circumstances of keeping him under arrest. Not one single prisoner in the US has spent so much time in jail before the verdict», says Assange recalling that Manning was arrested back in 2010.

• Ecuador’s secretary of state for planning and development, Fander Falconi, met the former computer hacker during a brief visit to Britain.

• “He is in very good health and good spirits,” Falconi told reporters at the embassy.

• “He is very proud of Ecuador’s foreign policy and the very professional way the government of Ecuador is dealing with this issue.”

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• The Chinese government has reportedly spent 7.4 billion yen (about 77 million US dollars) in an effort to restore life to the lake shown here.

• Comments posted on the Internet in reference to the top photo include, “it looks like a piece by Van Gogh,” “it resembles a green tea latte,” and “it’s like a landscape painting.” We in Japan cannot be too smug, however, as our own country experienced a plethora of similar environmental issues during its rapid growth stage in the 60s and 70s. Hopefully those experiences can be leveraged to help improve the situation in China and we can work together in creating and sustaining a better global environment.

Finance

• During his nearly three years in the U.S. Senate, Scott Brown (R-MA) frequently came to the aid of the financial sector — watering down the Dodd-Frank bill and working to weaken it after its passage — and accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from the industry. Now, the man Forbes Magazine called one of “Wall Street’s Favorite Congressmen” will use those connections as counsel for Nixon Peabody, an international law and lobbying firm.

• The Boston Globe noted Monday that while Brown himself will not be a lobbyist — Senators may not lobby their former colleagues for the first two years after leaving office, under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 — “he will be leaning heavily on his Washington contacts to drum up business for the firm.” The position will also allow him “to begin cashing in on his contacts with the financial services industry, which he helped oversee in the Senate.”

• Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, the Wall Street giants that emerged from the financial crisis in a position of strength, are now facing questions about their ability to withstand future market shocks.

• If you read enough Paul Krugman columns, you know that there are politicians–in this country and elsewhere–who continue to assert that the best way to turn around slumping economies is to slash government spending. The problem, as Krugman has written countless times, is that there’s no evidence that this works in the real world–and plenty of evidence that it does not.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• In a shocking move, Google has recently deleted AdBlock Plus from the Android Play Store. This is hugely disappointing because it demonstrates that Google is willing to censor software and abandon its support for open platforms as soon as there’s an ad-related business reason for doing so.

• Until now, the Internet and software development communities have relied on Google to be safely on their side when it comes to building open platforms, encouraging innovation, and giving users maximum choice about how their computers will function. But with today’s news, that commitment to openness suddenly looks much, much weaker.

• Adblock Plus, the popular free ad blocking tool for PCs and smartphones, was removed by Google from its Google Play store for Android apps. Though the app will no longer be available through Google Play, Adblock Plus has made a downloadable version of the app available directly from its website. Of course, it’s still available for PC and Mac computer users, while it has never been an option for iPhone and iPad users.

• “If Wisconsin were not known as the Dairy State it could be known, and rightfully so, as the Sunshine State,” the Wisconsin Supreme Court observed in 2010. “All branches of Wisconsin government have, over many years, kept a strong commitment to transparent government.”

• But just in time for Sunshine Week 2013, GOP leaders in the state are showing how they are failing that proud tradition.

• A two-year campaign by a coalition of public interest groups has pushed the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to release hundreds of pieces of “model” state legislation secretly developed and pushed into law by corporate interests. The coalition includes the Center for Media and Democracy, ColorOfChange, Common Cause, Greenpeace, People For the American Way, Progress Now, Voters Legislative Transparency Project, and a variety of labor organizations.

Censorship

• In the wake of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s death last week, government authorities in Venezuela seem to have resumed taking action against freedom of expression online. On March 14, 2013, Lourdes Alicia Ortega Pérez was detained by the Scientific Penal and Criminal Investigation Corps (CICPC, by its Spanish acronym), for allegedly having “usurped the identity of an official of the Autonomous Service of Registries and Notaries” and having sent Tweets that authorities deemed “destabilizing [to] the country.”

Privacy

• A European super-spying agency is to be granted draconian powers to access a vast range of our personal information, including medical data, criminal records, emails and website visits.

• The controversial move, demanded by Brussels in an EU directive, will sweep aside British privacy laws that protect UK citizens from intrusion into their personal lives.

• Bored with classes? Carnegie Mellon University and one of the government’s top spy agencies want to interest high school students in a game of computer hacking.

Civil Rights

• A dispute over the fate of about three dozen militants held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan has disrupted negotiations over a long-term security agreement to leave U.S. troops in the country after 2014.

• The United States has refused to turn over the prisoners — deemed especially dangerous compared with more than 3,000 already transferred to Afghan control — unless President Hamid Karzai guarantees they will not be released. He has so far decline

• The people of the Chagos Islands, displaced from their homes by the British government several decades ago, have been fighting for their right to return to their homeland ever since.

• I can not find words to describe my feelings about everything you did for me. What you did saved me and changed my situation to better. Thank you all and big love!

• Lenawee County commissioners deadlocked 4-4 Wednesday on a motion to take sides on controversial citizen detention provisions of last year’s federal National Defense Authorization Act.

• Today I am writing this to wake up America. Obama and his cronies have passed a law called the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This sounds like a good thing, but in reality it is a law against patriotic American citizens. The NDAA authorizes indefinite detention of American citizens without charge. This law has provisions that effectively abolish the U.S. Bill of Rights. It grants dictatorial power to the president to order the military arrest of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and detain them for an indefinite period.

• Fresh off the heels of last week’s sure-to-be-historic filibuster, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) gave a rousing speech at Thursday’s Conservative Political Action Conference that once again ripped into US President Barack Obama.

• Speaking on day one of the annual CPAC conference near Washington, DC, the libertarian-leaning senator briefly rehashed his arguments from last week’s 13-hour filibuster on the Senate floor by once again voicing his concern with Pres. Obama’s interpretation with the US Constitution.

• A Republican lawmaker in New York who has a record of voting against medical marijuana legalization has been arrested and charged with possession of marijuana.

• State police said that a suspicious odor was noticed in Assemblyman Steve Katz’s vehicle when they pulled him over for driving around 80 mph in a 75 mph zone at around 10 a.m. Thursday morning.

• She wore jean shorts and a tight red shirt and had stood outdoors for half an hour. She’d had a conversation with a passing man. When Officer Hill searched her bag, he found a condom and $1.25. He arrested her for “loitering for the purpose of prostitution.” On the supporting deposition, he filled in the blanks for what she was wearing and how many condoms she had.

DRM

• Google updated the dev channel of Chrome OS to version 27.0.1438.8 for all Chrome OS devices. This build contains a number of stability fixes and feature enhancements. But the most important update is the arrival of ‘kind of’ HTML5 DRM to all Chrome OS devices (earlier HMTL5 was DRMed only on ARM based devices).

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• The Takeover Panel (which regulated mergers and takeovers inn the UK) has sent me an email telling me that reproducing the list of takeover offers (i.e. a list of company names and dates) would be a breach of copyright, and that they would be unlikely to allow commercial reproduction except though “official news channels”.

• We’ve written a few times about the sad case of Veoh. Veoh was a YouTube-like site, funded by Hollywood insiders like Michael Eisner, but who got sued by Universal Music Group, claiming copyright infringement (using more or less the same theories used by Viacom against YouTube). Technically, Veoh sued first (filing for declaratory judgment after receiving a threat letter from UMG, but UMG quickly followed with its own lawsuit). UMG played dirty, not just suing the company but directly suing its investors as well. This was a pure intimidation technique, designed to scare major investors into either pulling investment or ordering the company to change course, even if what they were doing was legal. While the court dismissed the charges against the investors (and scolded UMG in the process), the intimidation might have worked. In the middle of all of this, Veoh shut down, because it ran out of money, mainly due to the lawsuit. It sold off its assets to another party, and somehow scraped together a little money to keep the lawsuit, and just the lawsuit, going.

• For a long time now, the idea of an overhaul of copyright law in the US has mostly been seen as a pipedream. However, it appears that the Register of Copyright, Maria Pallante, may actually be angling for a major bit of copyright reform. Coming up next Wednesday, she’s going to be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on her supposed “Call for Updates to U.S. Copyright Law.” Apparently, on March 4th, she gave a talk at Columbia University which has remained amazingly under the radar until now, in which she proposed a long list of possible copyright reforms, which are likely to headline the hearings next week. It’s fairly impressive, given how much attention copyright law has been getting lately, that she could present a surprising call for massive changes to the law, and not have a single person report on it immediately after the event ended. However, that is the case.

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