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Submission + - Anti-Fracking activist in Texas disassembles Gas company propaganda (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Walkingshark
Walkingshark writes: Adam Briggle, a key leader in the Texas anti-fracking movement, has been one of the pivotal figures in the historic total fracking ban proposed in the city of Denton. With the help of the rest of the leadership of Frack-Free Denton, a medium sized city in Texas stands to be one of the key battlegrounds in efforts to rebalance the property rights of mineral owners and home owners. Now that the petition is going to the voters in the fall, the Gas industry is opening up their pockets to flood the city with propaganda designed to misinform voters so that the referendum to ban fracking will fail. Briggle, on his Denton Drilling blog, has published an incredibly well reasoned and articulate takedown of their usual propaganda, a piece of writing that could end up serving as the template for how to completely demolish the poorly worded half truths often deployed by industry. Read it here and have a chuckle, Depantsing the Perryman Report about Denton’s Fracking Ban.

Submission + - Android is rubbish says techno journalist ..

Submitted by lippydude
lippydude writes: BBC Business Matters July 17 2014

Audio from 17:43: "Apple is a lot simpler than Android and all of the Google platforms. There are so many — there are multiple types of devices using Android, where as there are only a handful that use Apple. So if you're in tech support and look after devices that are using your, that are in your office at any one time., it's a lot simpler to use Apple than to use a multiplicity of Android devices [..] right now my Nexus 7 isn't working , which is another reason why IBM did the right thing by going with Apple, as opposed to with Google, because a lot of the time their stuff just doesn't work, whereas Apple seems to work a lot better, so I may have to steal my wife's iPad the next time." Paddy Hirsch of Marketplace

Comment Voting machine study .. (Score 2) 112

Executive Summary

"There is insufficient evidence available to allow independent observers to state reliably whether the results declared in the May 2008 elections for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly are an accurate representation of voters’ intentions. Given these findings, the Open Rights Group (ORG) remains opposed to the introduction of e-counting in the United Kingdom, unless adopting ORG’s recommendations for increasing the transparency around e-counting can be proved cost effective."

Submission + - Manuel Noriega sues Activision over Call of Duty

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama, is suing Call of Duty's video games publisher.

The ex-military ruler is seeking lost profits and damages after a character based on him featured in Activision's 2012 title Black Ops II. The 80-year-old is currently serving a jail sentence in Panama for crimes committed during his time in power, including the murder of critics. One lawyer said this was the latest in a growing trend of such lawsuits. "In the US, individuals have what's called the right to publicity, which gives them control over how their person is depicted in commerce including video games," explained Jas Purewal, an interactive entertainment lawyer. "There's also been a very well-known action by a whole series of college athletes against Electronic Arts, and the American band No Doubt took action against Activision over this issue among other cases. "It all focuses upon the American legal ability for an individual to be only depicted with their permission, which in practice means payment of a fee. "But Noriega isn't a US citizen or even a resident. This means that his legal claim becomes questionable, because it's unclear on what legal basis he can actually bring a case against Activision."

Submission + - Linux-based, open source audio and lighting platform to hit market (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by dheera
dheera writes: Boston-based startup Belleds has launched a crowdfunding campaign to build a Linux/OpenWRT-based home audio and lighting solution.

Besides using this to make your next dance party more awesome, in a vast sea of closed-source home automation hardware with varying implementations and standards, it's great to finally see some open source hardware hitting the markets which will truly let us realize a more well-integrated smart home of the future.

Submission + - Dell's Chromebook sales go crazy, so company halts sales (pcworld.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Dell’s only Chromebook is at least temporarily unavailable for online purchase through the company’s website, only seven months after the model started shipping.

Facing rising commercial demand for the devices, Dell has not been able to keep up with orders.

The Chromebook 11, which shipped in December, is listed as unavailable on Dell’s Chromebook website, and the company is asking potential buyers to call in orders.

“Due to strong demand, the Dell Chromebook 11 is currently not available for order on Dell.com. It continues to be available for our education customers and can be ordered through their sales representative,” said Ellen Murphy, a Dell spokeswoman, in an email.

The laptop will eventually come online again, though the company did not provide a specific date.

With Dell keeping Chromebook purchases open mainly to commercial customers, individual buyers may have to turn to competitive products from Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard, which are available online starting at under $200.

Submission + - In the name of security, German NSA committee may turn to typewriters (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Patrick Sensburg, chairman of the German parliament's National Security Agency investigative committee, now says he’s considering expanding the use of manual typewriters to carry out his group's work.

In an appearance (German language) Monday morning on German public television, Sensburg said that the committee is taking its operational security very seriously. "In fact, we already have [a typewriter], and it’s even a non-electronic typewriter," he said.
If Sensburg’s suggestion takes flight, the country would be taking a page out of the Russian playbook. Last year, the agency in charge of securing communications from the Kremlin announced that it wanted to spend 486,000 rubles (about $14,800) to buy 20 electric typewriters as a way to avoid digital leaks.

Submission + - How the NSA is destroying open source

Submitted by petrus4
petrus4 writes: I've had a while to think about this, but my recent experiences over the last several hours with FreeBSD's disastrous new package management system, pkgng, has finally convinced me that I'm not just being paranoid.

At this point, I believe that a systematic campaign is being waged against FOSS UNIX by the trans-Atlantic intelligence community; and I have seen sufficient instances of it at this point, that I've been able to identify the strategy that is being used. The fact that FreeBSD has had some radical, systemic changes only a few years after the systemd debacle with Linux, is just a little too coincidental to my mind.

The plan goes like this:-

Phase 1. Get a corporate stool pigeon to write an extremely disruptive piece of software for the system that you are attempting to destroy. Said software needs to have a sufficient number of superficially cool/flashy features that it will seduce less intelligent/discerning users; but the main thing which said software needs to do, is radically disrupt and compromise the operating system's level of transparency, discoverability, and openness. In Linux's case this was systemd, and in FreeBSD's it has been pkgng. Both of these pieces of software share a few different characteristics.

a} They are opaque, undiscoverable, and almost completely impervious to user control. It's hard for the average user to figure out what said software is doing. With the earlier form of FreeBSD's package management, I could see the URL where the package was being downloaded from, and it was also entirely possible to change said URL in plain text. Now, pkgng uses bit torrent, and I can't see where the torrent file has originated from, or which process is being called as a bit torrent client. I can't choose which bit torrent program I want to use, either. What configuration there is, is also written in YAML, rather than plain text; which is another strike against it for me.

b} They incorporate a sufficient amount of automation, and apparent advancement, that it is possible to make a superficially plausible argument that anyone who objects to said software is simply a Luddite, who is supposedly opposed to technological progress in general. Of course, this is a disingenuous claim, because it is entirely possible to write advanced, well-automated software that is not opaque, and does not compromise the ability of a user to control it. The ability to make this argument, however, is of vital importance for Phase 2, which I will get to in a moment.

c} They are extremely tightly integrated and coupled into the rest of the system. Systemd is like an octopus, and pkgng isn't much better. I was horrified when I discovered that pkg has actually been added to the base system. Ports always used to be completely detachable from base; the choice of whether to install it at all was given to you at the end of sysinstall.

With these programs, you only get to make the choice once as to whether or not you use them, and if you decide to do so, then after that, you are owned. They can no longer be removed; you are stuck with them whether you like them or not. Fortunately, FreeBSD is still sufficiently modular that I was able to delete /usr/local and /var/db/pkg. I have since tried to install NetBSD's pkgsrc and have been unable to get it to function, so I have had to resort to manual compilation of source at the moment. For most things, I am prepared to tolerate that; although I haven't tried to install X yet. I am anticipating that that will be a nightmare of Biblical proportions.

Phase 2. Once you have your disruptive program written, you now have to make sure that acceptance of it is universal, and anyone who resists must be bludgeoned into compliance. This is effectively achieved by hiring lots of sock puppets and trolls, and sending them into distribution development/core team mailing lists.

If you think I'm just being paranoid about my description of this step, I would invite you to go and read Debian's mailing list archives, during the period when they were debating whether or not to add systemd. Anyone who attempted to resist or offer counter-arguments to the inclusion of systemd was shouted down and abused into silence; and I can still remember how savage a response I got in /r/FreeBSD when I expressed doubts about pkgng several months ago, as well.

In addition to this, I've also been reading about how broken GTK theming has become for GNOME/GTK 3.

I've never liked GNOME. I don't think it is well designed, and I also don't think the GNOME developers have ever done an adequate job of really listening to their users; but since the release of GNOME 3, that has become a lot worse. Breakage has been reported in bug trackers, only to receive snide responses from developers about how said features are being retired, because said developers feel that they would "dilute the GNOME brand," as if GNOME were some sort of corporate product. I can't think where I would have got that idea from.

I was honestly in something close to a state of shock in response to pkgng earlier, though. I've been using Linux (and to a slightly lesser extent, FreeBSD) for 20 years now; and I have never seen anything like pkgng and systemd, and both have originated within the last five years. UNIX is one of the few things that I have ever been truly passionate about, and to read the degree of open contempt that has been expressed towards it by Lennart Poettering, has been genuinely heartbreaking.

We need to start recognising what is being done to us; and quickly, before it gets worse. Given how undiscriminating Linux's userbase is, I wasn't really surprised that Poettering's software has become as popular as it has, but for something like pkgng to be accepted into FreeBSD is both inexplicable and downright terrifying. I can't believe that nobody in the core team knew better.

I am asking everyone who reads this, and who cares about the operating system that has given us a stable, open, discoverable, and empowering computing environment over the last 45 years, to join me in taking the following actions.

a} Boycott all use of systemd, pkgng, GNOME, KDE, and any other software which has known corporate influence or sponsorship, or which is also written with blatant disregard for UNIX development philosophy.

b} If a} is not possible while using Linux, to then join me in migrating to either Open or NetBSD, where we can use software that will not contribute to the strangulation of our operating systems, which the NSA and GCHQ are attempting to bring about through corporate proxies.

Above all, remember that you have a choice. You can keep choosing to use the supposedly new, shiny, but ultimately opaque, disempowering, and enslaving corporate sponsored desktop environments, or you can choose to defend and retain your autonomy and freedom. This is a choice which must be made with the utmost urgency, before they take our remaining autonomy away from us.

I am asking for nothing less than a full scale revolt against, and migration away from, Red Hat in particular; and I need your help. Ultimately this will be as much for your own benefit, as for mine.

Submission + - Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet (firstlook.org)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.

Submission + - Phillip K. Dick's "Radio Free Albemuth" movie is now available on Yekra.com (yekra.com) 1

Submitted by DarkStarZumaBeach
DarkStarZumaBeach writes: Another Phillip K. Dick science fiction novel is now a movie — "Radio Free Albemuth" is adapted by and directed by John Alan Simon and produced by Open Pictures.

It is appearing at select film festivals — but it is already available for Internet on-line streaming and DVD from Yekra.com

"Radio Free Albemuth" stars Jonathan Scarfe as "Nick Brady" — a music producer who discovers a whole new genre of music — coming from near-Earth orbit — from a voice claiming to be V.A.L.I.S. — Vast Active Living Intelligence System — purportedly floating in an alien satellite from the star system Albemuth.

The problem is that Nick and his wife Rachel (played by Kathryn Winnick) are living in a United States run by a paranoid President Ferris F. Fremont (played by Scott Wilson) who has established an oppressive FBI-enforced security regime authorized by staged attacks by a manufactured terrorist group named "ARAMCHEK."

What Nick and Rachel will discover is that there is no "Aramchek" — only a loosely knit resistance group of disorganized people — only linked by the intoxicating music of V.A.L.I.S. — especially when it is sung by the sensuous Sylvia, as played by the one and only Alanis Morissette in her first starring movie role.

And, when President Fremont discovers the music has subliminal messages recruiting more people to V.A.L.I.S., the iron glove of his political action committee, "The Friends of the American People", comes down on Nick, Rachel, and his new resistance friends.

Watch this science fiction thriller — and you will come to understand why the Hollywood studio system and the TV networks refused to distribute this film: They don't want to be another Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, while THEY do not want you to see it. EVER.

"Radio Free Albemuth" is the TRUE "Message of Hope — From the STARS ..."

Catch it while you still can ...

----
A special screening of Radio Free Albemuth in #Milwaukee will be on July 14, 2014, at 7 pm at the Landmark Downer with writer/director John Alan Simon and producer Elizabeth Karr.

For latest information on select screenings — see: Radio Free Albemuth on Facebook.
----
The Official Movie Web Site is here: Radio Free Albemuth

Submission + - In New Zealand The Right To Silence And Presumption Of Innocence Are In Danger (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The New Zealand Herald reports, "Fundamental pillars of the criminal justice system may be eroded whichever party wins the election this year, as both National's and Labour's proposals would look into changing the right to silence or the presumption of innocence in rape cases. Both major parties claim the current system is not upholding justice for victims, and are looking at changes that would effectively make it easier for prosecutors to obtain convictions. National wants to explore allowing a judge or jury to see an accused's refusal to give evidence in a negative light, while Labour wants to shift the burden of proof of consent from the alleged victim to the accused."

Submission + - White House responds to petition to allow Tesla Motors to sell directly to consu (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by devloop
devloop writes: White House posts an official response to this petition, already with nearly 140,000 votes in favor, to allow direct sales to consumers in all 50 states. "We believe in the goal of improving consumer choice for American families, including more vehicles that provide savings at the pump for consumers. However, we understand that pre-empting current state laws on direct-to-consumer auto sales would require an act of Congress."

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