Links: NASA and Free Software, Implantable Medical Devices Need Software Freedom
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-24 07:52:32 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-24 07:52:32 UTC
Summary: Free software news roundup
In order to save the data from distant spacecraft, satellites and other scientific endeavors, NASA is leveraging open source tech (including Ubuntu Linux) and regular enterprise networking components to meet their mission.
I had the privilege of speaking with NASA's CTO for IT Chris Kemp this week around the OpenStack project in which NASA is participating. Kemp told me that NASA's Nebula cloud IT environment was built for science and research and has been optimized for low cost and massive scalability.
The Linux and open source community provides countless user and server applications. They also provide solutions to help support these and other applications, even to support non-technical departments. You'll find many help desk or customer service trouble ticketing systems in the FOSS (free and open source software) world. Right now we'll review 5 different solutions.
It's starting off to be a good week for open source configuration management vendor Puppet Labs. The startup announced today that it has raised an additional $5 million in venture funding, bringing total funding to $7 million to date. Those new funds come on the same day that a major new release of the open source Puppet framework is being made generally available.
Why am I reinventing Disqus? That is the question I've been getting asked since I "announced" on Identi.ca that I'd be replacing Disqus with a free (AGPL) comment system that I was to write. Well, I am not the inventor of Disqus, so technically I can't reinvent something I didn't forehand invent. And because I'm not about to run a service for millions of people, my comment system won't have accounts (though it will have the possibility of setting a password so that only certain persons can post with their certain names.)
As the commenters on Slashdot note, one of the most robust open source speech recognition solutions comes from Carnegie Mellon University. It's called Sphinx, and we covered it here. You can use Sphinx for straight speech recognition, or integrate it with applications. To find out more about Sphinx, check out this post from Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
Nearly a year ago the FSF held a mini-summit for women in free software to investigate practical ways to increase the number of women involved in the free software community.
Those that attended the summit formed the Women's Caucus, and have been working to develop practical policy to recommend to the FSF and the wider free software community. Today, we are publishing the Caucus's initial findings and recommendations.
The 3rd meeting our Fellowship group was on the 4th of March and was mainly about organizing the DFD. You can read the full minutes (in Slovenian) on the wiki.
This paper demonstrates why increased transparency in the field of medical device software is in the public’s interest. It unifies various research into the privacy and security risks of medical device software and the benefits of published systems over closed, proprietary alternatives. Our intention is to demonstrate that auditable medical device software would mitigate the privacy and security risks in IMDs by reducing the occurrence of source code bugs and the potential for malicious device hacking in the long-term. Although there is no way to eliminate software vulnerabilities entirely, this paper demonstrates that free and open source medical device software would improve the safety of patients with IMDs, increase the accountability of device manufacturers, and address some of the legal and regulatory constraints of the current regime.
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Project Releases
CoffeeSaint is a fully customizable Nagios status viewer. It grabs the status from a Nagios server and displays it in a fullscreen GUI.
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Government
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Licensing
Open source is everywhere today and there is growing awareness that companies have to meet certain obligations when distributing open source software. Here are some useful resources to learn more about open source compliance.
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Open Data
The following recent story in the Times Higher Educational Supplement (the “mainstream” magazine for HE in the UK) shows why we desperately need a clear basis for discussing data. I’ll comment inline, but initially just to make it clear that the fuss and hyperbole is because there is no communal framework for understanding and addressing the problem. Also to remind readers of this blog that the UK has a Freedom Of Information Act (FoI) which allows any citizen to make a request to a public body (government, local government, universities, public research establishments) for information, It is the law, and a reply must be delivered within 20 working days and there are only a few grounds for refusal.
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Programming
Today's commercial-grade programming languages -- C++ and Java, in particular -- are way too complex and not adequately suited for today's computing environments, Google distinguished engineer Rob Pike argued in a talk Thursday at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference.
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Python4kids
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Standards/Consortia
Today the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I; http://www.ws-i.org) announced its decision to transition its assets, operations, and mission into a Member Section of OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards; http://www.oasis-open.org/). The transition is expected to take place over the next few months.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Brittany Day, Plagiarist in Chief (Chatbot Slinger)
- 3 articles in the front page of LXer.com right now are chatbot spew
- Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com) Has Resorted to Plagiarism by Chatbots, Flooding the World Wide Web With Fake 'Articles' Wrongly Attributed to Brittany Day
- busted
- Microsoft-Connected Sites Trying to Shift Attention Away From Microsoft's Megabreach Only Days Before Important If Not Unprecedented Grilling by the US Government?
- Why does the mainstream media not entertain the possibility a lot of these talking points are directed out of Redmond?
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- Breaking News: Assange Wins Right to Challenge Extradition to the US
- This is great news, but maybe the full legal text will reveal some caveat
- Gambia: Windows Down to 5% Overall, 50% on Desktops/Laptops
- Windows was measured at 94% in 2015
- Links 20/05/2024: Microsoft Layoffs and Shutdowns, RTO as Silent Layoffs
- Links for the day
- The Issue With Junk Traffic in Geminispace (Gemini Protocol)
- Some people have openly complained that their capsule was getting hammered by bot
- Peter Eckersley, Laura Smyth & the rushed closure of dial-up Internet in Australian universities
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- [Meme] Bullying the Victims
- IBM: crybully of the year 2024
- Ian.Community Should be Safer From Trademark Censorship
- We wish to discuss this matter very quickly
- Microsoft and Its Vicious Attack Dogs (Attacking Women or Wives in Particular)
- Sad, pathetic, destructive people
- Upcoming Series About the Campaign to 'Disappear' the Father of GNU/Linux
- Today we have Julian Assange's fate to focus on
- A Month From Now Gemini Protocol Turns 5
- June 20
- Colombia: From Less Than 0.5% to Nearly 4% for GNU/Linux
- it's not limited to this one country
- Rumour: Well Overdue Red Hat Layoffs to be Announced in About 3 Days
- we know they've planned the layoffs for a while
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 19, 2024
- IRC logs for Sunday, May 19, 2024
- Gemini Links 20/05/2024: Updated Noto Fontpacks and gemfeed2atom
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux in Georgia: Looking Good
- Windows down from 99% to less than 33%
- Tomorrow is a Historic Day for Press Freedom in the UK
- Take note of the Julian Assange case
- Hiding in a Forest Without a Phone and Hiding Behind the First Amendment in the United States (US)
- some serial defamer is trying to invert the narrative
- Links 19/05/2024: Iran's President Lost in Helicopter Crash, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Awaits Decisions in Less Than a Day
- Links for the day
- Links 19/05/2024: Microsoft Investigated in Europe
- Links for the day
- 4 Old Articles About Microsoft/IBM SystemD
- old but still relevant
- Firefox Has Fallen to 2% in New Zealand
- At around 2%, at least in the US (2% or below this threshold), there's no longer an obligation to test sites for any Gecko-based browser
- Winning Streak
- Free software prevalence
- Links 19/05/2024: Conflicts, The Press, and Spotify Lawsuit
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux+ChromeOS at Over 7% in New Zealand
- It's also the home of several prominent GNU/Linux advocates
- libera.chat (Libera Chat) Turns 3 Today
- Freenode in the meantime continues to disintegrate
- [Teaser] Freenode NDA Expires in a Few Weeks (What Really Happened 3 Years Ago)
- get ready
- GNU/Linux is Already Mainstream, But Microsoft is Still Trying to Sabotage That With Illegal Activities and Malicious Campaigns of Lies
- To help GNU/Linux grow we'll need to tackle tough issues and recognise Microsoft is a vicious obstacle
- Slovenia's Adoption of GNU/Linux in 2024
- Whatever the factor/s may be, if these figures are true, then it's something to keep an eye on in the future
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 18, 2024
- IRC logs for Saturday, May 18, 2024
- Links 19/05/2024: Profectus Beta 1.2
- Links for the day
- Site Archives (Not WordPress)
- We've finally finished the work
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- on New Ways of Working
- EPO Representatives Outline Latest Attacks on Staff
- Not much has happened recently in terms of industrial action
- Links 18/05/2024: Revisiting the Harms of Patent Trolls, Google Tries to Bypass (or Plagiarise) Sites Under the Guise of "AI"
- Links for the day
- Links 18/05/2024: BASIC Story, Site Feeds, and New in Geminispace
- Links for the day
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- the country is almost the size of the UK
- Justice for Victims of Online Abuse
- The claims asserted or pushed forth by the harasser are categorically denied
- [Meme] Senior Software Engineer for Windows
- This is becoming like another Novell
- Links 18/05/2024: Deterioration of the Net, North Korean IT Workers in the US
- Links for the day
- Windows in Lebanon: Down to 12%?
- latest from statCounter
- [Video] 'Late Stage Capitalism': Microsoft as an Elaborate Ponzi Scheme (Faking 'Demand' While Portraying the Fraud as an Act of Generosity and Demanding Bailouts)
- Being able to express or explain the facts isn't easy because of the buzzwords
- Links 18/05/2024: Caledonia Emergency Powers, "UK Prosecutor's Office Went Too Far in the Assange Case"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft ("a Dying Megacorporation that Does Not Create") and IBM: An Era of Dying Giants With Leadership Deficits and Corporate Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
- Microsoft seems to be resorting to lots of bribes and chasing of bailouts (i.e. money from taxpayers worldwide)
- US Patent and Trademark Office Sends Out a Warning to People Who Do Not Use Microsoft's Proprietary Formats
- They're punishing people who wish to use open formats
- Links 18/05/2024: Fury in Microsoft Over Studio Shutdowns, More Gaming Layoffs
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 17, 2024
- IRC logs for Friday, May 17, 2024
- Links 18/05/2024: KOReader, Benben v0.5.0 Progress Update, and More
- Links for the day