taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

• Tech Bubble 1.0 Stars: Where Are They Now? : wow, who the hell are these people? totally forgotten
  (tags: web1.0 interwebs via:nishad trivia history)

• YA Mac apps list : bookmarking for more crufting of the OSX laptop
  (tags: macos mac applications todo)

• Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services : a definition of a “Free Service”, an open-source form of SaaS. uses the Affero GPL
  (tags: saas cloud-computing software open-source gnu gpl affero web floss fsf freedom free-software)

• The Risk of ePassports and RFID - THC Blog : hacker group THC release an RFID-passport cloning/modification tool, noting that e-Passports are fundamentally insecure due to their trust of self-signed certificates. Also raises the Smart-IED attack danger: ‘A Smart-IED waits until a specific person passes by before detonating or let’s say until there are more than 10 americans in the room.’
  (tags: via:schneier security terrorism risks rfid e-passports certificates pki)

Tags: affero, applications, certificates, cloud-computing, e-passports, floss, free-software, freedom, fsf, gnu, gpl, history, interwebs, mac, macos, open-source, pki, rfid, risks, saas, security, software, terrorism, todo, trivia, via:nishad, via:schneier, web, web1.0

GNU: Hey, Dublin-based people! Richard Stallman will be giving a talk titled ‘The Dangers of Software Patents’ in Dublin on May 24, at 19:30. It’ll be in the TCD Hamilton building, right beside Pearse St. DART station. I’ve never seen him speak, but I hear it’s definitely worth attending, and his message needs to get out there, further into the Irish software industry and political circles.

Also on patents: good news via groklaw.net — Germany has stated they plan to vote against the Irish software patent legalisation plan, and some French ISVs are asking Chirac to do likewise.

Tags: building, dublin-based, gnu, hey, may, patents, pearse, right, software, talk, tcd

Software: sourcefrog: arch rocks: mirroring. This is incredibly cool:

Finally, GNU Arch lets you do this. Anyone can mirror a public archive. In fact, several sites such as sourcecontrol.net have set up to just mirror all the open source software they can find. Others mirror just intermittently, as a backup in case a primary archive is lost.

What’s more, because changesets are strongly GPG-signed, people using the archive can feel sure that they’re getting the changes as the original author wrote them, without any accidental or intentional modifications.

BTW, that ‘archive’ — in Arch-land, an archive is a source-code version control repository. In other words, if you want to track development work on a project, you take a private copy of the repository and sync up to every change as it is made remotely, in essence duplicating the central archive (although changes only go one way, obviously).

Then, if you have the privileges — you can merge any changes you make on that archive back up to the central one.

Very cool. I really need to take some time to get into Arch.

Tags: anyone, arch, archive, fact, gnu, mirroring, repository, software, source, sourcecontrol, sourcefrog

GNU: Let’s all be very nice and friendly for our latest convert to the GPL club, Microsoft. Hi, MS!

Tags: club, gnu, gpl, microsoft

20 years ago tomorrow, on 27th September 1983, the GNU project was announced:

Free Unix!

Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu’s Not Unix), and give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed. ……

So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.

Thanks to Ciaran O’Riordan for pointing this out!

Tags: free, gnu, project, september, software, system, thanksgiving, tomorrow, unix, unix-compatible

GNU Radio, which (as noted on Boing Boing) has just released screenshots of a successfully-decoded HDTV signal, is a totally new way to receive (and possibly, in the future, send) radio-frequency signals. The FCC ponder the implications:

The emergence of the low-cost, generally available SDR which can be configured with … open software will present a new issue for regulators. What will be placed in the hands of the public entrepreneurs, amateurs, and even those with malicious intent will be machines which in principal can emulate, send, and receive any radio signal on any band. …

Then, with the world-wide availability of software that can even be modified if needed, any radio transmitter or receiver can be emulated. Bans on receiver types will be circumventable with ease. Mandates such as the proposed ATSC broadcast flag will be hard to enforce (and may even fail in the presence of a single web-connected noncompliant receiver). And, although not generally an issue for the Commission, it will be possible to implement proprietary systems without the benefit of any license from the patent holder. Because the software is open, as a practical matter virtually all mandated restrictions will be at risk (except for total power output which remains a classical hardware issue). …

In the GNU SDR environment, we have the makings of a powerful new technology that has the potential of solving the spectrum management problem, but we may also have other people in the world writing and distributing software with their own agenda.

Wow. That’s a brave new world. I wish I knew enough about radio tech to really get a handle on this stuff…

Tags: boing, gnu, hdtv, issue, radio, receiver, sdr, signal, software, world

Slow Wave this week contains an unwitting GNU reference:

The GNU logo

The Slow Wave strip

That’s not a yak, it’s a gnu! ;)

Tags: gnu, logo, reference, slow, strip, wave, week, yak