Showing headlines posted by bob

The federal government’s march to the cloud has, at times, seemed more like a cautious ballet than anything else. While cloud-based projects are slowly rolling out, much of the agency emphasis is on private or community clouds as opposed to public providers. Security and data handling concerns play a role in this "tiptoeing," but another reason is far more insidious: the fear of lock-in. The Federal Shared Services Implementation Guide, the agency blueprint to the cloud, makes it very clear that government entities engaging in cloud computing need a clear “exit strategy” for anything as a service. It might seem ridiculous to consider how one should migrate from a technology before it is even implemented, but when it comes to the cloud, being able to get your data out is just as important as getting it in. It's about choice and control.

During the August Congressional recess, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released its long-awaited study on Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs), required under the America Invents Act (AIA). The report paints a rather grim picture of the current patent system. It reinforces the call by key leaders in Congress for legislative reforms that address abusive patent litigation as well as action by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the courts, and the US PTO.

While the Linux 3.12 kernel isn't even up to its first RC release and thus the merge window hasn't closed yet, Linux 3.12 has already collected a number of promising features for the open-source kernel...

While 4K resolution monitors are still extremely expensive, there's growing curiosity over support for 4K monitors by the open-source Linux graphics drivers...

The "Ilo" driver that began targeting Sandy/Ivy Bridge graphics support on the Gallium3D architecture in mainline Mesa now has initial support for Haswell graphics...

Samsung unveiled its first smartwatch at IFA in Berlin this week. Although the Galaxy Gear reportedly runs a customized Android OS, the device serves as a remote Bluetooth accessory to a paired Samsung smartphone or tablet, and cannot independently access Internet content or services. The Galaxy Gear runs a customized Android 4.3 OS on an […]

Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments ... The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry that U.S. government officials long courted as a potential partner in spying programs.

I'm currently working on what I believe are several significant new NSA stories, to be published imminently here, as well as one very consequential story about NSA spying in Brazil that will first be broadcast Sunday night on the Brazilian television program Fantastico (because the report has worldwide implications, far beyond Brazil, it will be translated into English and then quickly published on the internet).

Among the ARM changes for the mainline Linux 3.12 kernel is adding platform support for the Allwinner A20 and A31 SoCs along with continued work on NVIDIA's Tegra 4 support...

Megabuck giveaway for cloudy apps Google is preparing to dispense a couple of hundred thousand dollars in prizes for developers in emerging countries who are willing to take its cloudy platform for a spin.…

Linus Torvalds released 3.11. Prior to 3.11 release, Linus's 3.11-rc7 announcement was posted to his Google Plus page on Linux's 22nd birthday. Here is what he had to say in his nostalgic and reminiscent statement of the passing of time in which so much has been accomplished.

"Hello everybody out there using Linux -

Intelligence officials asked The Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read. The news organizations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the article because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful tools for protecting the privacy of Americans and others.

For celebrating the fifth birthday of Google's Chrome project, the search giant has today unveiled "For your desktop" Chrome Apps that work from the desktop. Initially this new generation of Chrome Apps is for Chromebooks and Windows, but Linux support is coming soon...

The NSA has huge capabilities – and if it wants in to your computer, it's in. With that in mind, here are five ways to stay safe.

The new Snowden revelations are explosive. Basically, the NSA is able to decrypt most of the Internet. They're doing it primarily by cheating, not by mathematics.

Orbiting inside Shuttleworth's latest break with convention Review Looks can be deceiving, as proved by the first beta of the latest Ubuntu – version 13.10, or Saucy Salamander – which is available today.…

Community is vital to an open source project. An active and supportive community is the heart of the project. However, having an open source licence is not enough to bring users and developers to your project and build a community. This document looks at what makes a successful open source community.

The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.

"the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards followed by hardware and software developers around the world."

Congatec announced two Linux-ready Type 6 COM Express computer-on-modules based on Intel’s 4th Generation Core (“Haswell”) processors. The more compact Conga-TC87 supports Intel’s higher-integration, lower-power embedded processors, while the larger Conga-TS87 offers more PCI Express lanes and USB 3.0 ports, and higher performance graphics including PEG compatibility. Congatec unveiled the larger “Basic” sized (3.75 x […]

Now that Google Reader is officially gone, most folks have settled on a replacement of some sort. In fact, a few months ago I even went through the process of installing Tiny Tiny RSS as a viable and powerful replacement. At the time, there was only one feature I sorely missed, the "next unread blog" link.