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A moving memorial to Internet whiz kid Aaron Swartz, "The Internet's Own Boy" may be the most emotionally devastating movie ever made about hacking and freedom of information. Documentarian Brian Knappenberger creates a spellbinding portrait of Swartz's life and political convictions — the promise of which was cut short by his suicide in early 2013 at the age of 26 — while posing powerful intellectual arguments about failures in the U.S. justice system, especially when it comes to the World Wide Web. Since Swartz has already been canonized online, there's likely a substantial audience ready and waiting for a well-crafted tribute documentary. The more salient question in the age of Internet piracy may be whether they're willing to pay to watch it.

Canonical has worked hard to integrate Ubuntu Linux with IBM's POWER8 servers to strengthen its OpenStack cloud and Big Data position. If Ubuntu Linux is to prove truly competitive in the OpenStack cloud and Big Data worlds, it needs to run on more than x86 hardware. And that's what Canonical achieved this month, with the announcement of full support for IBM POWER8 machines on Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu Server.

This week, we look at Werner Vogels from AWS talking cloud security, the CIA info chief explaining why they're going cloud and could Linux container technology be a greener way of cloud computing.

In a large open source project made up of lots of interacting pieces developed by different teams, how do you decide what officially becomes a part of the core release and what stays outside? In OpenStack, a formal process of incubation helps prepare fledgling projects for integration into the main code body as they develop and mature. read more

The future of gaming is tied to the future of Linux

Want a small office/home office cloud to call your own? OwnCloud may be all the cloud you need.

I wrote about the mission of GNU Solidario, the non-profit behind GNU Health, last year and interviewed the head of the project, Luis Falcon, about their plans and progress. They got their start in 2006, and it sure is great to see their success continuing today. read more

A new Ubuntu with MATE as the default desktop environment has been in the making for a few weeks and it looks like the developers are making good progress.

Developer explains how Perl and Excel code earned him the US Army Commendation Medal Software engineer and Arizon Army National Guard member Vivin Paliath has explained how writing some Perl and Excel macros saw him decorated with the Army Commendation Medal, a decoration awarded “to any member of the Armed Forces who distinguishes himself or herself by heroism, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service.”…

Why would anyone want to search things on the Internet via a terminal? I don't know. There are probably a lot of reasons. But since an answer that no one asked for is always less frustrating than a question that no one can answer, here is a list of popular search engines with the command-line […]Continue reading...

The mission: use GNOME Shell as the primary desktop for an entire week. Do I choose to accept it? Yes. It's easy enough to try something for a short time and discard it in a negative manner, which has been the case for me with GNOME Shell in the past, but perhaps it can be fun to challenge yourself to try something properly and for a longer time. Or perhaps you're a masochist! Either way, feel free to join me...

Parker Higgins has a troubling story over at Medium about how he received a bogus copyright takedown on a recording of the famous "Houston, we have a problem" audio snippet from the Apollo 13 mission, which Higgins had uploaded to his Soundcloud page. As Higgins notes, the audio is clearly, without any doubt, in the public domain and free from any and all copyright restrictions -- yet it was still taken down. This is particularly stupid on a variety of levels...

Perhaps more annoying, as Higgins notes, is that the reasons that Soundcloud gives for disputing the takedown... don't apply in this situation, because they all assume copyright... As Higgins notes this shows the rather nasty assumptions of "permission" culture that everything must have a copyright and everything must be licensed:

Linux Mint 17 Xfce was released today. Let's look at what it offer to the user. This is not going to be a full-blown review, rather a quick screenshot tour.

I received a bogus copyright takedown notice for using public domain audio on SoundCloud yesterday. The sound in question—the famous “Houston, we have a problem” snippet of the Apollo 13 mission—is incontrovertibly available to all, for any use, without copyright restrictions. The fact that it’s been yanked from my SoundCloud page, though, is a sad demonstration of how completely many online services have swallowed the fallacy that “unauthorized” means “unacceptable”...

... So I was disheartened when I got the takedown, and even more so when I looked through the guidelines for disputing an automatic match and found that I faced a presumption of guilt. There’s no option for “The work in question is not restricted by copyright,” or even “I am making a fair use.” Instead, the “valid reasons” offered are variations on the theme that I actually have permission—not that I never needed it in the first place.

Motorola Solutions unveiled a rugged, enterprise handheld that runs Android 4.1, 1D or 2D scanning, and offers a choice of brick, gun, or turret styles. When Motorola split into Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions back in 2011, Motorola Mobility was supposed to be the Android company and Motorola Solutions the Windows company. Yet, the latter, […]

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Xfce.

Linux Mint 17 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

Two factor authentication with OTP using privacyIDEA and FreeRADIUS on CentOS In this howto we will show, how you can set up a the two factor authentication and management system privacyIDEA on Cent OS 6.5. privacyIDEA is a system that can manage authentication devices - especially OTP tokens of any kind. We will set up the system to be served via Apache2, store the token information in a MySQL database and provide authentication via FreeRADIUS server, thus being able to add two factor authentication to all services accessible via RADIUS like SSL VPNs and pam_radius.

Amptek is prepping a uClinux- and Cortex-M3 based “iCon” SBC for IoT, equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, USB, and CAN, and running on under half a Watt. uClinux on a microcontroller represents the simplest expression of the Linux operating system, sort of the flipside to Android or Ubuntu on the high end. Despite this platform’s limitations, however, it draws only a smidgin of electricity, and provides a capable wireless platform while also supplying numerous industrial interfaces. All these attributes are showcased by the iCon single board computer (SBC), which probably deserves more than being stuck in the doldrums on Kickstarter, with nine days left to go.

While not yet officially announced Mount & Blade: Warbound is out for Linux, downloadable and might even be playable for you.

If you saw last issue you might remember the DoodleBorg, a massive remote-controlled tank of a vehicle designed and built by PiBorg, makers of add-ons for the Raspberry Pi. This month we’re looking at their XLoBorg, a board designed to help you measure movement and determine direction, among other things. At under £10/$16, it’s a bargain too, because as well as featuring a three- axis accelerometer, it’s also kitted out with a three-axis magnetometer (digital compass). In this tutorial we’ll be using the accelerometer to turn our Pi into a tilt controller and mock up a simple demo to show how you could integrate it into your Pygame-powered games…