What to do on a long weekend? Digikam, Ardour, Drupal, new computers….

Linux Gaming News: “Today Frictional Games, the makers of the Penumbra series, has released a demo for their upcoming first person survival horror Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Players with Windows, Mac or Linux all get a chance to experience a small slice of the dread and terror contained in the full game.”

Fedora has updated rekonq (F13, F12:
cross-site scripting), sssd (F13, F12: authentication bypass), wireshark
(F13, F12:
multiple vulnerabilities), and F12: kernel
(privilege escalation).

Gentoo has updated wxgtk (arbitrary
code execution).

Mandriva has updated wget (code
execution).

Pardus has updated openssl (denial
of service) and flashplugin (multiple
vulnerabilities).

Red Hat has updated kernel
(privilege escalation).

SUSE has updated kernel (multiple
vulnerabilities).

Entitled Don’t Be Evil? the avatar-style animation features Schmidt driving an ice-cream truck and secretly spying on children. Consumer Watchdog produced the animated short in hopes of enticing Congress to enact a national Do Not Track Me list.

“We’re satirizing Schmidt in the most highly trafficked public square in the nation to make the public aware of how out of touch Schmidt and Google are when it comes to our privacy rights,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “America needs a Do Not Track Me list, and Google is Exhibit A in the case for it.”

Do Not Track Me

As Consumer Watchdog sees it, Google’s recent actions reveal that the Internet giant, whose motto is “Don’t be evil,” has lost its way. The group argues that Google has collected massive amounts of personal data from Wi-Fi networks through its Street View cars, made private Gmail contacts publicly available on Buzz, and done a complete about-face on Net neutrality, joining with Verizon in calling for toll lanes on the Internet.

“We think there should be another way to protect the public’s online privacy: A Do Not Track Me list that prevents Google or any other Internet company from tracking your every move online,” said John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Inside Google Project.

Consumer Watchdog argues that a Do Not Track Me list would prevent online companies from gathering personal information, just as Congress had the Federal Trade Commission create a Do Not Call list to prevent intrusive telemarketers from invading consumers’ privacy.

Google Not the Worst

“This largely…

Ping was heralded as the future of social commerce by some analysts, but Apple will have a near-term challenge of battling identity thieves looking to steal the credit-card numbers of iTunes users. Some Ping posts are attempting to trick users into believing they will receive a free iPhone if they complete online surveys.

Sophos published research earlier this year demonstrating a 70 percent increase in the number of users reporting spam and malware being spread via social networks, a trend that continues to grow. It would appear that Apple missed that report.

Apple’s Wake-Up Call

Graham Cluley, a senior security consultant at Sophos, is not at all surprised that spammers and scammers have flooded the Ping platform. As he sees it, Apple doesn’t appear to have anticipated that spammers and scammers would find the opportunity too good to miss.

“If Apple had implemented some antispam technology, pre-filtering the messages for malicious or fraudulent links, then that might have prevented the problem becoming as big as it is as rapidly as it has,” Cluley said. “It also appears to be simple to create fake accounts on the system. For instance, there’s more than one ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ and even ‘The Beatles’ — who famously aren’t distributed via iTunes- — claiming to have an account on Ping.”

Cluley is used to survey scams like this being spread on sites like Facebook, but he sees the irony in Ping scams focusing on Apple’s iPhone. He hopes Apple’s security team can block scam messages and malicious links quickly.

Deterring Consumer Use

Cluley said there is…

The International Telecommunication Union agency’s Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said that all governments engaged in the fight against terrorism had the right to demand access to users’ information from the maker of the BlackBerry — Research in Motion Ltd.

“Those are genuine requests,” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “There is a need for cooperation between governments and the private sector on security issues.”

RIM has said it complies with all legal requests, but is unable to provide anyone with the text of e-mails sent using its corporate service, which is designed from the ground up for secure communications.

The International Telecommunication Union is responsible for coordinating the use of the global radio spectrum, promoting international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, and establishing standards for the telecommunications industry. The little-known body also serves as a global forum for discussion of cutting-edge communications issues.

The agency has no independent regulatory power, but Toure’s comments are a barometer of sentiment among the agency’s 192 member states, who are expected to re-elect him to a second term later this year.

At least five of those members — India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — are already considering banning some BlackBerry services over concerns that the devices’ powerful data encryption could be used as a cover for terrorist and criminal activity. Civil libertarians have argued that the controversy is in fact fueled by authoritarian governments’ inability to eavesdrop on BlackBerry-using citizens.

Governments in the U.S. and elsewhere have largely made their peace with encryption technology. E-mails can still be obtained through legal channels, for example by obtaining a…

“People who operate communication services in India should (install a) server in India as well as make available access to law enforcement agencies,” Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters. “That has been made clear to RIM of BlackBerry but also to other companies.”

On Monday, India withdrew a threat to ban BlackBerry service for at least two more months after RIM agreed to give security officials “lawful access” to encrypted data.

Indian officials have for some time also been concerned about Google and Skype, neither of which maintains servers in India. Google has an Indian unit, but Gmail is offered by Google Inc., a U.S. company subject to U.S. laws. Luxembourg-based Skype has no India operations.

India began a sweeping information security review after the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, which was coordinated with cell phones, satellite phones and Internet calls. Officials are also eager to avoid any trouble at the Commonwealth Games, a major sporting event to be held in New Delhi in October.

At the same time, India seems to be gaining confidence in its own attractiveness as a market, taking a tougher stance with international companies, not just in telecommunications — where it is the world’s fastest-growing major market — but also in mining and nuclear energy.

“Our stand is firm. We look forward to get access to data,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters. “There is no uncertainty over it.”

The U.N. technology chief expressed support for the Indian demand on Thursday. Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, told The Associated Press…

Reason being there is no real shortage. The bottleneck has always been in the “last mile,” the on-ramp of your cell phone or your PC, or the router connection your home network uses to reach the outside world.

This is an artificial shortage, the product of a proprietary mindset.

Phone and cable companies own these on-ramps, and the right to create new ones. They use this control to create the idea of a shortage everywhere, to keep prices high, and to threaten content owners with new charges for “premium access” to “their” customers.

In theory they are easy to bypass through the air. But because frequencies are “sold,” meaning rights to use them are offered at auction by the government, the same phone and cable companies wind up controlling the air as well.

We can, if we want, have a virtually unlimited number of on-ramps, wherever we need them, at minimal cost. Proof, again, is being delivered to the Burning Man festival in Nevada this week.

OpenBTS provides the answer. It’s a simple, open source framework that can create a GSM cellular network at one-tenth current costs. It’s licensed under the AGPL.

This year’s set-up uses a third less equipment and half the power of last year’s, but with twice the capacity. With a single LMR-900 tower and a weatherproof travel rack, Range Networks will be able to give all 50,000 participants free cellular calls during the festival, then take the whole thing down when the show is over.

OpenBTS is not the only solution to this problem. OpenBSC also offers a “GSM network in a box,” which can also deliver service on-demand.

With licensed frequencies, an entire urban network must be built-out at once and constantly maintained by one company, which is why cellular bandwidth costs so much. With open source, anyone can add capacity as needed.

If systems like OpenBTS didn’t have to say “mother may I” with licensed carriers in order to serve demand, then demand could be served, defined by hardware instead of property, and the bandwidth shortage would quickly disappear.

We know that’s true because WiFi, whose frequency allocation hasn’t increased in over a decade, can now deliver efficient 100 Mbps networks to hospitals and corporate campuses, which move critical imaging files without interference.

Carriers like AT&T encourage customers to use WiFi whenever possible, claiming they just don’t have the capacity to deliver, even though they own more frequency than WiFi occupies in most areas.

The problem is that we have a regulatory regime which assumes scarcity, which creates bottlenecks, and which rewards monopolists with money coerced through a political process rather than earned through the market.

What’s hilarious is how defenders of this system call it “free enterprise,” and call open source “socialism.”  Open source creates vast markets with lots of players. The current system is government-enforced monopoly.

An open source, and open frequency, mindset in Washington can change that. Something to think about this Labor Day weekend.

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