Tyranny Will Gain a Foothold if People of Good Conscience Remain Silent

by Dietrich Schmitz A good Friend, +Yie-Ming Chen wrote in a Google Plus post of mine today: "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Edmund Burke  Tyranny is at our door knocking.  Today's news included a story in the Washington Post NSA Infiltrates links to Google, Yahoo, worldwide, Snowden documents say.  (Image credit: Washington Post) Another revelation has been made...

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RetroShare: For the Paranoid in You!

by Dietrich Schmitz (Originally published: 6/7/2013) [Edit: Some raised concern about sharing their F2F key via regular email.  To use a 'darknet' method, try either cryptocat.bin or cryptocat.org] It's all starting to make sense now.  We've heard rumors that this National Security Agency was snooping around in our private affairs. Turns out, it's been going on for longer than we think, like, since 1952?  That's the latest. So...

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Feeling Paranoid? Take Your Meds: RetroShare

by Dietrich Schmitz (Originally published: August 12, 2013) Feeling paranoid? Take your meds: RetroShare It's therapeudic! RetroShare is not circumventable by the NSA or any other agency. Enjoy fool-proof privacy-assured communication with your dear and closest Friends and Family, including chat, audio/video calls, spamless-email and file sharing. RetroShare is a peer-to-peer encrypted, decentralized (cannot be taken down like MegaUpload)...

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The Debian Init System Deba{te|cle}

by Dietrich Schmitz Debian Linux has had a long-standing reputation of being staid and pragmatic in their decision-making.  Even their software release management policy is on the long side when compared with other Distros.  A typical 2-year software cycle just doesn't cut it in today's Internet World operating at the 'speed of light'. So, it would appear, the time has come for Debian's maintainers to make a decision as to which init...

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SolusOS Sunsets as Ikey Doherty Rises

by Dietrich Schmitz +Ikey Doherty, founder of SolusOS (image: right), wrote on his website the other day: “It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of SolusOS. Simply put, there is no longer enough manpower to fulfill [sic] the vision. What began as a Debian derivative evolved into an independent distribution, without the large development team required to back such an effort.” However difficult that decision may have...

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Elitist Mark Shuttleworth Exhibits Temper Tantrum

by Dietrich Schmitz So, this past Thursday, October 17, 2013, Canonical Ltd. released Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander. A post from Canonical's "Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life", Mark Shuttleworth, appeared the next day. Honestly, I think what Canonical Ltd. have done insofar as supporting Wayland from its inception up to the point of general release, only to then spring an announcement for Mir, was blatantly transparent...

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Lubuntu 14.04 Goes LTS

by Dietrich Schmitz Finally, an agreement has been reached with Canonical to support Lubuntu for Long-Term Service (LTS) in the next release cycle (14.04). There is much work to be done and Lubuntu is looking for your help.  Pitch in whenever and wherever you can to make Lubuntu 14.04 LTS a success! (Image credit: Wikipedia.org) Here's a video explaining the process for moving to LTS: Best Wishes to the Lubuntu Developer Team for...

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Manjaro Linux: No Assembly Required

by Dietrich Schmitz So, okay, I've known about Manjaro for quite some time.  I put it on a pen drive and took a look at it and at the time last year it was using a Ncurses installer.  There were niggling issues with it so I aborted the installation. Yet, it still intrigued me mainly because it uses Arch and AUR and given all of the talk about how fast and light Arch Linux is, it was interesting to see someone attempting to take advantage...

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FOSS Doesn't Care if You are a Capitalist

by Dietrich Schmitz Venture Capitalists and Start-Ups We see new announcements on Indiegogo daily seeking funding to seed a new software widget, platform, or idea which has potential for development but lacks financial resources to undertake full-scale development.  Being in FOSS development isn't always what it is cracked up to be, especially if you expect to make a living at it. While Venture Capital (VC) is to be had, it comes at a...

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