SSH_VPN - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Very simple VPN with open ssh
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH_VPN

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS , Precise Pangolin , is here

Ubuntu just published it's 4th long term support (12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin)

Here is some MUST HAVE applications for your newly installed Ubuntu:

MyUnity

MyUnity is a must have configuration tool for Unity ( change themes, icons, transparency…) : install it

Medibuntu

The must have repositories. Medibuntu is a packaging project dedicated to distributing software that cannot be included in Ubuntu for various reasons, related to geographical variations in legislation regarding intellectual property, security and other issues. by adding Medibuntu repositories you will be able to install many softwares like Google-Earth , opera ,Win32codecs , divcss, Msfonts.

Just type

sudo -E wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update

In a teminal

Gnome 3 Not Unity!
I you do not like Unity you can go back to Gnome3 install gnome 3 for Ubuntu

VLC2 Media Streaming and player
VLC is the best media player for Linux it play almost everything , he has many features that you can not find in any other media player. install VLC

Jitsi (SIP Communicator) open source remplacement for skype

Jitsi (previously SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, AIM/ICQ, Windows Live, Yahoo! and many other useful features.
http://jitsi.org/

Voting Information Project Takes Aim at Open Data, Social Media

Government Technology
(04/23/12) Wayne Hanson
The Pew Center on the States and several technology companies recently launched the Voting Information Project (VIP), which enables Foursquare users to receive an "I Voted" badge when they visit their polling places. VIP also provides voters in 37 states with an easier way to find election information via social media and mobile devices. VIP takes state election information and translates it into an open programming format, organizing it into application programming interfaces (APIs). "Right now, we're getting that information from 37 states, and all that information is stored in these feeds--these APIs--so that developers and whoever wants to use that information can create a user-friendly tool out of it," says Pew associate Olivia Doherty. VIP will make election information available on search engines, media sites, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and political party Web sites. In several of the states, including California, Florida, Texas, and Illinois, the counties provide the political data. Doherty hopes that many more local governments will use the tool on their Web sites this year.
View Full Article
http://www.govtech.com/e-government/Voting-Information-Project-Takes-Aim-at-Open-Data-Social-Media.html

XtreemFS - a cloud file system

The open source cloud file system
http://www.xtreemfs.org/

Proof-of-Concept Android Trojan Uses Motion Sensor to Determine Tapped Keys

IDG News Service
(04/20/12) Lucian Constantin

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University and IBM have developed TapLogger, a proof-of-concept Android Trojan app that can steal passwords and other sensitive information by using the smartphone's motion sensors to determine what keys users tap on their touchscreens. The researchers developed TapLogger to demonstrate how data from a smartphone's accelerometer and orientation sensors can be abused by applications to compromise privacy. The researchers note that accelerometer and orientation sensor data are not protected under Android's security model, which exposes that data to any application regardless of its permissions on the system. TapLogger functions as an icon-matching game, but has several background components that capture and use data from the motion sensors to infer touchscreen-based user input. After the data is collected, the application builds tap event patterns and uses them to infer user input during targeted operations. "While the applications relying on mobile sensing are booming, the security and privacy issues related to such applications are not well understood yet," the researchers say.

View Full Article
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226421/Proof_of_concept_Android_Trojan_uses_motion_sensor_to_determine_tapped_keys

Secret Computer Code Threatens Science

From ACM TechNews:
Secret Computer Code Threatens Science
Scientific American
(04/13/12) Jeremy Hsu

Although modern science calls for researchers to share their work so that their peers can verify the success or failure of experiments, most researchers still do not share the source code for the software used in their projects. However, a group of researchers is pushing for new standards that require newly published studies to make their source code available. "As computing becomes an ever larger and more important part of research in every field of science, access to the source code used to generate scientific results is going to become more and more critical," says Harvard University researcher Andrew Morin. Of the 20 most-cited scientific journals in 2010, only three require that computer source code be made available upon publication. The researchers propose that public funding or policy-setting agencies should support the idea of openly sharing source code. In addition, research institutions and universities should use open source software licenses to allow for source-code sharing while protecting the commercial rights to possible innovation spinoffs from research. "The encouraging thing is that all of the proposals we have made have already been implemented by various journals, funding agencies, and research institutions in one form or another," Morin says.

View Full Article
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=secret-computer-code-threatens-science

Motorola Xoom
http://www.cofares.net

Open Source Hardware Movement Seeks Legitimacy

IDG News Service
(04/17/12) Agam Shah
A group of technologists recently established the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHA) to promote the creation and sharing of hardware or electronic designs. OSHA aims to foster growth in the open source hardware movement. Open source hardware is similar to open source software because designs can be applied to commercial applications from which companies can make money. "It has many similar principals of open source software, but differs because hardware is a different beast [with] different methods, formats, and issues than software," says OSHA founder Alicia Gibb. She says OSHA will host the annual Open Hardware Summit conference, which will act as a forum for technology professionals to discuss devices, manufacturing, design, business, and law. "We publish all the files needed to improve, make derivatives, or re-manufacture the things built," Gibb says. Many open source hardware projects are based on the Arduino microcontroller, which serves as a prime example of how open source hardware works. The open source hardware movement also has received support from organizations such as the European Organization for Nuclear Research. "Many open source hardware projects will not be the type of thing that are eligible for copyright protection," notes Public Knowledge attorney Michael Weinberg.
View Full Article
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/041712-open-source-hardware-movement-seeks-258372.html

NBAndroid: Installation

NBAndroid: Installation

Programming Project Comes to Primary Schools

From ACM TechNews:
Programming Project Comes to Primary Schools
BBC News
(04/17/12)

A volunteer project in the United Kingdom is writing session plans for teaching the basics of computer programming to children between the ages of 10 and 11. Called Code Clubs, the sessions will give schoolchildren an opportunity to engage in hands-on tasks such as making games and eventually controlling robots. "The idea is to build things that are really exciting," says Clare Sutcliffe, who developed the idea for Code Clubs along with Linda Sandvik. Several schools have volunteered to test the session plans. The club sessions will make use of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Scratch tool, which enables youngsters to engage in programming by dragging and dropping code elements instead of typing them. The first 12 sessions should be free for participating schools to run, and the only extra step would be to download and install Scratch on their computers. Volunteers would run the Code Clubs, rather than teachers. Sutcliffe and Sandvik hope to have Code Clubs in 25 percent of British primary schools by 2014. The Code Club would "slot neatly alongside" the changes to the national curriculum that will emphasize programming, Sutcliffe notes.

View Full Article
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17740143

Face Recognition Could Catch Bad Avatars

New Scientist
(04/11/12) Jacob Aron

University of Louisville researchers are developing the field of artificial biometrics, known as artimetrics, to serve as a way to authenticate and identify non-biological agents such as avatars, physical robots, and chatbots. The researchers, led by Roman Yampolskiy, have developed facial recognition techniques specifically designed for avatars. "Not all avatars are human looking, and even with those that are humanoid there is a huge diversity of color," Yampolskiy says. Therefore, the software uses a large variety of colors to improve the recognition of avatars. The researchers also are studying how to match a human face to an avatar generated from that face. Combining the color-based technique with existing facial recognition software led to the best results, suggesting that it could be possible to track users between the physical and virtual worlds. Yampolskiy also intends to create recognition algorithms for robots, forecasting that, in Japan at least, autonomous robots may become sufficiently ubiquitous to require their own identification. Meanwhile, Yampolskiy is working with his Louisville colleagues to develop methods for determining the legitimacy of chatbots. The researchers fed text written by chatbots into software originally designed to identify human authors and found that they were often able to determine the chatbot responsible.

View Full Article
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428596.100-face-recognition-could-catch-bad-avatars.html

Secrets of App Store Revealed by Artificial Life Forms

New Scientist (04/11/12) Paul Marks

University College London researchers Soo Ling Lim and Peter Bentley have developed a simulation of the Apple App Store to study how it works. The researchers note that Apple's online marketplace of more than 500,000 apps is a self-regulating ecosystem that does not tolerate copycats. The simulated App Store, known as AppEco, uses software that obeys unique behavioral rules to mimic apps, developers, and consumers. The simulation mimics four types of developers, which are known as innovators, optimizers, milkers, and copycats. The researchers ran a series of simulations, each time starting with all four categories of developers contributing an equal number of apps. If they forced the proportion of apps from each group to stay constant, the copycats quickly made the most money. But their advantage soon disappeared as the ecosystem suffered from a lack of novel products. In another simulation, consumers' choices dictated which apps thrived and which did not. Under those conditions, optimizers sold the most apps, followed by innovators, milkers, and copycats. "Surprisingly, it naturally suppresses the copycat 'bad guys' without even needing the App Store owners to start imposing rules," Bentley says.

View Full Article
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428605.300-secrets-of-app-store-revealed-by-artificial-life-forms.html

Memorandum for Transparency and Open Government

Transparency and Open Government

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent.  Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.  Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative.  Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.  Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

Do-Ocracy and libre software teams.

What is do-ocracy? Is libre and open source orgasnisation a do-ocracy?

Start the debate give your opinion...

Undergrad Computer Science Enrollments Rise for Fourth Straight Year

From ACM TechNews:
Undergrad Computer Science Enrollments Rise for Fourth Straight Year
Computing Research Association
(04/09/12) Peter Harsha

The number of undergraduate students enrolled in computer science programs rose 9.6 percent in the 2011-12 school year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, according to the Computing Research Association's (CRA's) Taulbee Survey. The data compares schools that responded to both the 2011 and 2010 Computing Degree and Enrollment Trends survey, which documents trends in student enrollment, degree production, employment of graduates, and faculty salaries in academic units in the United States and Canada that grant the Ph.D. in computer science, computer engineering, or information. The CRA Taulbee Survey also suggests that students’ interest in computer science may even be higher than indicated by the enrollment statistics, because some schools’ enrollments are constrained by enrollment caps in computer science departments. The total number of bachelors degrees in computer science awarded by U.S. schools increased by 10.5 percent in the 2010-11 school year, the survey found. In addition, total Ph.D. production in computing programs held steady in 2010-11, with 1,782 degrees granted.

View Full Article
http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer-science-enrollments-rise-for-fourth-straight-year-cra-taulbee-report/

What is "the shell"?

Simply put, the shell is a program that takes your commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. In the old days, it was the only user interface available on a Unix computer. Nowadays, we have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in addition to command line interfaces (CLIs) such as the shell.

On most Linux systems a program called bash (which stands for Bourne Again SHell, an enhanced version of the original Bourne shell program, sh, written by Steve Bourne) acts as the shell program. There are several additional shell programs available on a typical Linux system. These include: ksh, tcsh and zsh.

What is Agilefant?

Agilefant is a free, electronic web based backlog management tool. It aims to be as simple as possible but still scale from single team iteration management to large-scale multi-team development complete with long term product and portfolio management. Agilefant is conceptually the most advanced open source tool today, and serves both industry and research.

For more detail see our Vision and theFeatures section.

Download ZenTao project & scrum tool from SourceForge.net

Agile project management tool need apache photo mysql

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zentao/files/2.4/ZenTaoPMS.2.4.stable.zip/download

Computer Science Transitions From Elective to Requirement

From ACM TechNews:
Computer Science Transitions From Elective to Requirement
U.S. News & World Report
(04/03/12) Kelsey Sheehy
Although many universities offer computer science as an option to satisfy science or math requirements, some schools are now making it a required course in order to graduate. For example, each of the nearly 2,000 freshmen entering the Georgia Institute of Technology each year must take a computer science course regardless of their major, says college of computing associate dean Charles Isbell. In addition, every student at Montclair State University must complete a computer science course in order to graduate. Most Montclair students take "Introduction to Computer Applications: Being Fluent with Information Technology," which is designed to teach students majoring in nontechnical fields about network security, artificial intelligence, databases, and e-commerce, says computer science department chairman Michael Oudshoorn. "It's not aimed at making them experts; it's aimed at making them aware," Oudshoorn says. "They do live in a digital age ... they have an obligation to know something about the technology." University of California, Irvine professor Geoffrey Bowker says more schools should make computer science a requirement. "All aspects of our personal lives and our work lives are affected by computers," he says. "We need to know about the tools that we're working with."
View Full Article
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/04/03/computer-science-transitions-from-elective-to-requirement-computer-science-transitions-from-elective-to-requirement

GIT

Voici quelques référence pour GIT 'Miroirs documents GIT'

Livre communautaire GIT BOOK

Et le Pro Git Book (version français , version english, version عربي)

Hacking IT Systems to Become a Criminal Offense

From ACM TechNews:
Hacking IT Systems to Become a Criminal Offense
European Parliament News (Brussels)
(03/27/12)

A draft law supported by the Civil Liberties Committee would criminalize the hacking of information technology (IT) systems and carry a minimum prison sentence of two years throughout the European Union (EU). The proposal also would outlaw the possession or distribution of hacking software or tools, while companies would be liable for cyberattacks perpetrated for their advantage. The draft law would set up harmonized penal sanctions against people who hack information systems. At least two years' incarceration would be the maximum penalty imposed by EU member states for such crimes, while offenses aggravated by the use of tools specifically designed for large-scale attacks or attacks that cause considerable damage would carry a minimum penalty of five years' imprisonment. Exploiting another person's electronic identity to execute an attack, and causing prejudice to the rightful identity owner, would be an aggravating circumstance as well, for which member states must set a maximum penalty of at least three years' imprisonment. European Parliament members also suggest harsher penalties for attacks committed by a criminal organization and/or that target critical infrastructure, but minor cases such as attacks that cause negligible damage will not face criminal sanctions.

View Full Article
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/sl/pressroom/content/20120326IPR41843/html/Hacking-IT-systems-to-become-a-criminal-offence

The ALICE Computing Project

From ACM TechNews:
The ALICE Computing Project
CERN Courier
(03/27/12) Federico Carminati

The ALICE software environment (AliRoot) is a framework within which all ALICE data are processed and analyzed, and the next challenge will be to adapt the code to new parallel architectures to maximize the performance of modern hardware. The Grid implementation for ALICE required the development of a complete grid system using open source software. The AliRoot developers built a lightweight framework written in Perl, which linked together many individual open source components to create the Alice Environment (AliEn). From the beginning, the core of this system consists of a distributed file catalog and a workload-management system based on the pull mechanism, in which computer centers find appropriate workloads from a central database. AliEn was built as a metasystem aimed at presenting the user with a seamless interface while joining together the different grid systems that harness the various resources. One important step was achieved with the tight integration of AliEn with the MonALISA monitoring system, which enables large quantities of dynamic parameters related to the grid operation to be stored and processed. In the future, the ALICE grid must improve the optimization tools for workload scheduling and data access, which would increase the capabilities to exploit opportunistic computing resources.

View Full Article
http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/49059

Google Launches Go Programming Language 1.0

From ACM TechNews:
Google Launches Go Programming Language 1.0
eWeek
(03/28/12) Darryl K. Taft

Google has released version 1.0 of its Go programming language, which was initially introduced as an experimental language in 2009. Google has described Go as an attempt to combine the development speed of working in a dynamic language such as Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language such as C or C++. "We're announcing Go version 1, or Go 1 for short, which defines a language and a set of core libraries to provide a stable foundation for creating reliable products, projects, and publications," says Google's Andrew Gerrand. He notes that Go 1 is the first release of Go that is available in supported binary distribution, identifying Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows. Stability for users was the driving motivation for Go 1, and much of the work needed to bring programs up to the Go 1 standard can be automated with the go fix tool. A complete list of changes to the language and the standard library, documented in the Go 1 release notes, will be an essential reference for programmers who are migrating code from earlier versions of Go. There also is a new release of the Google App Engine SDK.

View Full Article
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Google-Launches-Go-Programming-Language-10-160585/

That not agile!

http://blog.smartbear.com/post/12-01-04/agile-teams-to-avoid-in-2012/

14 Ways to Contribute to Open Source without Being a Programming Genius or a Rock Star

http://www.softwarequalityconnection.com/2012/03/14-ways-to-contribute-to-open-source-without-being-a-programming-genius-or-a-rock-star/

Community | Lebanese Computer Science Community

Home community "a dsl with dynamic ip publishing "

http://ghadir.cofares.net/HomePage