Announcements

Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets (ars technica)

Ars technica summarizes the latest round of the three-year DMCA exemption process. "The new batch of exemptions illustrate the fundamentally arbitrary nature of the DMCA's exemption process. For the next three years, you'll be allowed to jailbreak smartphones but not tablet computers. You'll be able to unlock phones purchased before January 2013 but not phones purchased after that. It will be legal to rip DVDs to use an excerpt in a documentary, but not to play it on your iPad."

Comments (26 posted)

EFF: Privacy in Ubuntu 12.10: Amazon Ads and Data Leaks

The Electronic Frontier Foundation expresses privacy concerns with the new internet search added to Ubuntu 12.10. "It's a major privacy problem if you can't find things on your own computer without broadcasting what you're looking for to the world. You could be searching for the latest version of your résumé at work because you're considering leaving your job; you could be searching for a domestic abuse hotline PDF you downloaded, or legal documents about filing for divorce; maybe you're looking for documents with file names that will gave away trade secrets or activism plans; or you could be searching for a file in your own local porn collection. There are many reasons why you wouldn't want any of these search queries to leave your computer." The article also includes instructions to opt-out.

Comments (8 posted)

Rare photos: gnu crashes Windows 8 launch

FSF volunteer Tristan Chambers took pictures of a gnu at the Windows 8 launch in New York. "Reporters and security guards at the event weren't sure how to react when they were greeted by a real, live gnu. The gnu -- which, on closer inspection, was an activist in a gnu suit -- had come for some early trick-or-treating. But instead of candy, she had free software for the eager journalists. The gnu and the FSF campaigns team handed out dozens of copies of Trisquel, a fully free GNU/Linux distribution, along with press releases and stickers. Once they got over their confusion, the reporters were happy to see us and hear our message -- that Windows 8 is a downgrade, not an upgrade, because it steals users' freedom, security and privacy."

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The ThoughtWorks Anthology, Volume 2 -- Pragmatic Bookshelf

Pragmatic Bookshelf has released "The ThoughtWorks Anthology, Volume 2", essays on Software Technology and Innovation by various authors.

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Linux Plumbers Conference Call for Organisers

The Technical Advisory Board of the Linux Foundation has issued a call for anyone interested in running Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) 2013. "To make a successful application, you need at least a Chair (person in overall charge) a Treasurer and an Events co-ordinator." LPC 2013 is scheduled for September 18-20 in New Orleans, LA.

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Events: November 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012

The following event listing is taken from the LWN.net Calendar.

Date(s)	Event	Location
October 29 November 3	PyCon DE 2012	Leipzig, Germany
October 29 November 2	Linaro Connect	Copenhagen, Denmark
October 29 November 1	Ubuntu Developer Summit - R	Copenhagen, Denmark
November 3 November 4	OpenFest 2012	Sofia, Bulgaria
November 3 November 4	MeetBSD California 2012	Sunnyvale, California, USA
November 5 November 7	Embedded Linux Conference Europe	Barcelona, Spain
November 5 November 7	LinuxCon Europe	Barcelona, Spain
November 5 November 9	Apache OpenOffice Conference-Within-a-Conference	Sinsheim, Germany
November 5 November 8	ApacheCon Europe 2012	Sinsheim, Germany
November 7 November 9	KVM Forum and oVirt Workshop Europe 2012	Barcelona, Spain
November 7 November 8	LLVM Developers' Meeting	San Jose, CA, USA
November 8	NLUUG Fall Conference 2012	ReeHorst in Ede, Netherlands
November 9 November 11	Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit	Göteborg, Sweden
November 9 November 11	Mozilla Festival	London, England
November 9 November 11	Python Conference - Canada	Toronto, ON, Canada
November 10 November 16	SC12	Salt Lake City, UT, USA
November 12 November 16	19th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference	Chicago, IL, USA
November 12 November 17	PyCon Argentina 2012	Buenos Aires, Argentina
November 12 November 14	Qt Developers Days	Berlin, Germany
November 16 November 19	Linux Color Management Hackfest 2012	Brno, Czech Republic
November 16	PyHPC 2012	Salt Lake City, UT, USA
November 20 November 24	8th Brazilian Python Conference	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
November 24 November 25	Mini Debian Conference in Paris	Paris, France
November 24	London Perl Workshop 2012	London, UK
November 26 November 28	Computer Art Congress 3	Paris, France
November 29 December 1	FOSS.IN/2012	Bangalore, India
November 29 November 30	Lua Workshop 2012	Reston, VA, USA
November 30 December 2	Open Hard- and Software Workshop 2012	Garching bei München, Germany
November 30 December 2	CloudStack Collaboration Conference	Las Vegas, NV, USA
December 1 December 2	Konferensi BlankOn #4	Bogor, Indonesia
December 2	Foswiki Association General Assembly	online and Dublin, Ireland
December 5 December 7	Open Source Developers Conference Sydney 2012	Sydney, Australia
December 5 December 7	Qt Developers Days 2012 North America	Santa Clara, CA, USA
December 5	4th UK Manycore Computing Conference	Bristol, UK
December 7 December 9	CISSE 12	Everywhere, Internet
December 9 December 14	26th Large Installation System Administration Conference	San Diego, CA, USA
December 27 December 30	29th Chaos Communication Congress	Hamburg, Germany
December 27 December 29	SciPy India 2012	IIT Bombay, India
December 28 December 30	Exceptionally Hard & Soft Meeting 2012	Berlin, Germany

If your event does not appear here, please tell us about it.