@ostatic: Getting Started With #Opensource Web Design Tools http://t.co/WHiZH0Fa8o
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
You're Invited: GNU 30th anniversary celebration and hackathon
Dear Pascal,
Are GNU ready to party?
It's been 30 years since the GNU manifesto was penned. What began as frustration over a printer driver has grown into a massive social movement. The GNU system itself has exploded; not only is it a fully free operating system, but it has expanded to include an entire universe of software. Now, GNU is on the threshold of another amazing leap, and we want you to be a part of it.
You're Invited: GNU 30th anniversary celebration and hackathon
Featuring Richard Stallman
When: Saturday and Sunday, September 28 - 29, from 10am until midnight. Special fundraising dinner to be held on Friday, September 27th.
Where: MIT, Cambridge, MA
RSVP: Registration is now open!
GNU's 30th will be an opportunity for free software legends and enthusiastic newcomers to tackle important challenges together, while toasting to the GNU system's success. That's why this 30th anniversary event is more than just a celebration, it's also a hackathon. This event isn't just for programmers either; there will also be opportunities to contribute in many other ways besides writing code, such as a Free Software Directory sprint, crypto workshops, and much more. Come join us in developing and documenting free software for our Web-based world, with a focus on federated publishing and communication services, as well as tools to protect privacy and anonymity. Plus, it has cake and coding; what could be better?
And of course, you'll want to be in the room when Richard Stallman makes a highly anticipated announcement about the future direction of GNU.
Register now!
The anniversary celebration is a chance to come together with other free software supporters to launch GNU on the path to another successful decade. In addition to contributing code and documentation, consider joining us for a special fundraising dinner on Friday, September 27th. Give back to GNU while enjoying a delicious meal with Richard Stallman, Bradley Kuhn, and John Sullivan. More details about the fundraising dinner will be available soon, and a limited number of tickets will be available. To reserve advance tickets, please email campaigns@fsf.org.
See you in Boston,
Libby Reinish
Free Software Foundation, on behalf of GNU
P.S. Can't make it to Boston? 30th anniversary satellite celebrations will be held around the world. If you'd like to be notified if a satellite event is planned in our area, sign up for our GNU 30th satellite event notifications list.
Are GNU ready to party?
It's been 30 years since the GNU manifesto was penned. What began as frustration over a printer driver has grown into a massive social movement. The GNU system itself has exploded; not only is it a fully free operating system, but it has expanded to include an entire universe of software. Now, GNU is on the threshold of another amazing leap, and we want you to be a part of it.
You're Invited: GNU 30th anniversary celebration and hackathon
Featuring Richard Stallman
When: Saturday and Sunday, September 28 - 29, from 10am until midnight. Special fundraising dinner to be held on Friday, September 27th.
Where: MIT, Cambridge, MA
RSVP: Registration is now open!
GNU's 30th will be an opportunity for free software legends and enthusiastic newcomers to tackle important challenges together, while toasting to the GNU system's success. That's why this 30th anniversary event is more than just a celebration, it's also a hackathon. This event isn't just for programmers either; there will also be opportunities to contribute in many other ways besides writing code, such as a Free Software Directory sprint, crypto workshops, and much more. Come join us in developing and documenting free software for our Web-based world, with a focus on federated publishing and communication services, as well as tools to protect privacy and anonymity. Plus, it has cake and coding; what could be better?
And of course, you'll want to be in the room when Richard Stallman makes a highly anticipated announcement about the future direction of GNU.
Register now!
The anniversary celebration is a chance to come together with other free software supporters to launch GNU on the path to another successful decade. In addition to contributing code and documentation, consider joining us for a special fundraising dinner on Friday, September 27th. Give back to GNU while enjoying a delicious meal with Richard Stallman, Bradley Kuhn, and John Sullivan. More details about the fundraising dinner will be available soon, and a limited number of tickets will be available. To reserve advance tickets, please email campaigns@fsf.org.
See you in Boston,
Libby Reinish
Free Software Foundation, on behalf of GNU
P.S. Can't make it to Boston? 30th anniversary satellite celebrations will be held around the world. If you'd like to be notified if a satellite event is planned in our area, sign up for our GNU 30th satellite event notifications list.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Libreoffice
The administration of the Spanish autonomous region of Valencia has completed its switch to LibreOffice, a free and open source suite of office productivity applications. Last week Friday the region's ICT department announced that the office suite is installed on all of the 120,000 desktop PCs of the administration, including schools and courts. The migration will save the government some 1.5 million euro per year on proprietary software licences.
"Apart from economic benefits, the commitment to free and open source software brings other advantages, including having the solutions available in the Valencian language as well as in Spanish, and IT vendor independence, which encourages competition", the ICT department's Director General, Sofia Bellés, said in a statement. "We also have the freedom to modify and adapt the software to our every need."
http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/734733-valencia-region-government-completes-switch-to-libreoffice/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Computer Science Education Revisited
Communications of the ACM, August 2013
Vinton G. Cerf, ACM President, weighs in on why computer science should be considered a core discipline, just like physics or biology. Cerf starts off by noting that ACM members have a wide range of academic and professional paths that have led them to become computer science practitioners. As a result, at this stage of computer science's evolution, it seems appropriate to reflect on what we should learn about computing and how we can or should learn it. The key, says Cerf, is to make computer science a core science along the lines of other STEM disciplines so that even people who have no intention of entering the field have some idea of programming, operating systems and networks.
Among the initiatives that ACM has been pursuing is to make computer science accepted as a core science along with mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry. This is especially critical in secondary schools where, with few exceptions, computing classes tend to be optional. In many advanced programs, it is a requirement to have a certain number of credits in science, for example. It is ACM's position that computer science should have equal standing. Moreover, the curriculum should include some serious exposure to programming, systems, languages, and computer architecture. The idea is not necessarily to turn students into professional computer engineers and scientists, but to expose them to the richness of computer science and to help them appreciate the potential nascent in computers and programmable systems. In many advanced programs, it is a requirement to have a certain number of credits in science. It is ACM's position that computer science should have equal standing.
Reforming K-12 education to incorporate serious computer science seems vital to producing an informed public that has a deeper appreciation for the power of computing than video games and social networking. There are, no doubt, countless opportunities for computing professionals to engage in this effort, by lending their support and time to the effort to reform K-12 curricula and to make visible to young people the excitement of discovering what computing can accomplish. The discipline of writing and debugging software, of creating simulations or interactive applications has the potential to draw many into the profession, and to provide others with a sense of the core role computing will play in the decades ahead.
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Monday, August 19, 2013
NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year, Audit Finds
The Washington Post (08/15/13) Barton Gellman
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has violated privacy rules or overreached its authority thousands of times annually since 2008, primarily through unauthorized surveillance of American and foreign intelligence targets in the U.S., according to an internal audit and other documents. The infractions include major violations of law as well as typographical errors that led to misdirected interception of U.S. emails and telephone calls. One of the documents, provided to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this summer, instructs NSA workers to eliminate details in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The May 2012 internal audit found 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to, or distribution of legally protected communications. "We're a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line," says a senior NSA official. "You can look at it as a percentage of our total activity that occurs each day. You look at a number in absolute terms that looks big, and when you look at it in relative terms, it looks a little different."
View Full Article
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has violated privacy rules or overreached its authority thousands of times annually since 2008, primarily through unauthorized surveillance of American and foreign intelligence targets in the U.S., according to an internal audit and other documents. The infractions include major violations of law as well as typographical errors that led to misdirected interception of U.S. emails and telephone calls. One of the documents, provided to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this summer, instructs NSA workers to eliminate details in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The May 2012 internal audit found 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to, or distribution of legally protected communications. "We're a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line," says a senior NSA official. "You can look at it as a percentage of our total activity that occurs each day. You look at a number in absolute terms that looks big, and when you look at it in relative terms, it looks a little different."
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