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Shuttleworth said that many members of the free software community are anti-social that love to hate anything in the mainstream.

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, has had some strong words to share with some members of the free software community, having labelled some as muppets.

Shuttleworth, who made the comments on his own Google+ post, had originally started out with a thankful tone to say thank you, for all your spirit and intellect and energy in the Unity8 adventure, but after a number of comments about the Mir windowing system his tone changed.

The Ubuntu founder said: The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind its free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance.

We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their lifes work and make it freely available.

Shuttleworth continued by saying that he came to be disgusted with the hate on Mir, and that is changed his opinion on the free software community.

I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream. When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too.

The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence. F**k that s**t.

The comments are likely to provoke some heated debate on the subject of Mir, with some in the community responding to the comments by saying: was taken aback by your comments on Mir haters implying theyre not smart and just complaining only because Ubuntu is main stream, while that may have been the case for a number of them Im sure, its just as sad you resort to some of the same petty argumentative attitudes and snappy remarks that started the flame war that ensued :/

Shuttleworth has previously jumped to the defence of Mir and labelled the opponents to the technology as being members of the Open Source Tea Party. The Google+ post and Open Source Tea Party comments can be found here and here.

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Mark Shuttleworth labels some free software users as "anti-social ... - Computer Business Review

The most powerful PDF editors are generally paid for, but you can often get by with a free alternative. We show you how you can edit PDFs for free with these useful tools.

By Roland Waddilove | 05 Apr 17

PDFs should be one of the most straightforward document types in the world, but unfortunately they are not so simple when it comes to editing them. Paid-for PDF editors can do it all, but do you really want to pay for a tool to complete a quick and easy editing job? As we have learned from this round-up of free tools and services, you may not need to.

Adobe invented the PDF (Portable Document Format) to solve a problem that dogged people for years: how to view and print documents without requiring the original software that document was created in or the fonts it uses. It wasn't meant to be a replacement for a word processor -it was a layout format for precise alignment of text and images.

Many programs can save documents in PDF format, but few can edit them directly. But what if you receive a document in PDF form and need to change it? Or you might save a file as a PDF but lose the original (editable) document through a disk or human error? In all of these situations, you need a PDF editor.

However, here's the thing: free PDF editors generally do not allow you to edit text. What they offer is the ability to erase (or 'whiteout') text and replace it with new text. Matching the font, both size and colour, but it's all you'll be able to do if you can't get hold of the original file used to create the PDF.

Some free PDF editors let you annotate PDFs and add or remove pages. The original content cannot be changed, but you can insert notes and comments, use a highlighter pen, strikethrough text, delete pages, fill out forms and so on.

Here are some of your options:

AbleWord is the only free PDF editor we're aware of that can import a PDF and make it completely editable. It's best when importing PDF files that were created in Word, but will attempt to replicate all PDF files. The end result won't look identical to the original but will be close.

Foxit Reader is a lightweight alternative to Adobe Reader and many people prefer it. It's more than just a PDF reader though and it has a wide range of powerful tools. You cannot edit the contents, but text can be struck through with a line and replaced by a pop-up note.

PDF-XChange Viewer offers an almost identical set of features to Foxit Reader and it is useful for annotating in a similar manner.

As long as your editing demands aren't too heavy, PDF Candy may be the quickest solution. It can convert PDFs to other formats, rotate them, split them, protect them and add watermarks.

This new online service has but one limitation: any file you upload must be under 10MB. But that's it: there are no ads or any other restrictions.

LibreOffice, the free Office alternative, is worth considering if you want to edit the text in a PDF file. It loads PDFs and it can cope with very large documents with hundreds of pages. The only snag is that each line of text is text box, which makes it awkward to edit large amounts of text.

PDF Pro is an online tool that lets you upload three PDF files per month and edit them. The latest update includes a facility to convert PDF documents to Word (.doc) format, which not many free products can do.

FormSwift is another online PDF editor. You simply drag and drop files to upload them, and you can then edit them in your browser before downloading and printing or sharing.

You can edit text by deleting and replacing it, add images or signatures. It's relatively basic, but it's free and requires only an internet connection.

PDF to Word does exactly what the name says. You select a file on your PC, upload it to the site and it emails you the Word document a minute or two later. The advantage of this is that you can use Word or another word processor to edit the text and resave the document as a PDF.

See the article here:
How to edit a PDF for free - PC Advisor

The House and Senate are in a stand-off, for now, about a controversial bill dealing with stand your ground self-defense cases.

The two chambers have approved different versions of a proposal (SB 128) intended to shift a key burden of proof in stand your ground cases from defendants to prosecutors in pre-trial hearings.

As the bill returns to the Senate after the House approved its version this week, House and Senate leaders are maintaining support for their different positions.

The House wants to require prosecutors in stand your ground cases to overcome the asserted immunity sought by defendants through clear and convincing evidence. The Senate, which rejected the clear and convincing evidence language earlier this session, has set a higher standard known as beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ive said from the beginning, if the government wants to convict you of a serious crime and send you to prison, they should have the burden of proof at every stage of the proceeding beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt, Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, told reporters Thursday. Its the highest legal standard in the world. Its served us well. And in order for the government to prevail in the underlying criminal case theyre going to have to prove beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. So I prefer the Senates higher legal standard.

When asked if the House language could kill the bill, Negron, an attorney, said, Its only week five (of the legislative session). I assume theyll send the bill back to us, and it will be up to the senators on what they want to do. My preference would be that we stand on the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt criminal standard.

The 60-day regular session is scheduled to end May 5.

The overall proposal, backed by groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Florida Public Defender Association, stems from a Florida Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that said defendants have the burden of proof to show they should be shielded from prosecution under the stand your ground law.

House sponsor Bobby Payne, R-Palatka, told reporters Thursday the clear-and-convincing-evidence threshold was a reasonable and fair place to land after hearing from numerous groups regarding how the 2005 law should be interpreted.

We need to consider the opportunity for encouraging victims to come forward in those particular situations, Payne said when asked why he supported the clear and convincing language.

On Wednesday, before the House voted along party lines to support the bill, Rep. James Grant, a Tampa Republican who is an attorney, also defended the House clear-and-convincing-evidence approach.

If the government cannot beat the lesser, easier burden in an immunity trial, then they darned sure cant meet beyond and to the exclusion of each and every reasonable doubt when they ask for a conviction, Grant said.

The Senate voted 23-15 to approve its version of the bill on March 15.

The stand your ground law has long been controversial. It says people can use deadly force and do not have a duty to retreat if they think it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm.

In its 2015 ruling, the Supreme Court majority opinion written by Justice Barbara Pariente said immunity in the stand your ground law is not a blanket immunity, but rather, requires the establishment that the use of force was legally justified.

But a dissenting opinion, written by Justice Charles Canady and now highlighted by Republican lawmakers, countered that the majority ruling substantially curtails the benefit of the immunity from trial conferred by the Legislature under the Stand Your Ground law.

The factual question raised by the assertion of Stand Your Ground immunity in a pretrial evidentiary hearing is the same as the factual question raised by a Stand Your Ground defense presented at trial: whether the evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants conduct was not justified under the governing statutory standard, Canady wrote.

The proposed change has been opposed by Democratic lawmakers and groups such as the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association and the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, who have argued it would put an end to cases before all the facts are revealed. They also contend the stand your ground law has disproportionate effects on minorities, as it is used more successfully as a defense when white shooters kill African-Americans.

Read the rest here:
House, Senate At Odds Over 'Stand Your Ground' Change - WLRN

As Florida state Representative James W. Grant argued on Wednesday in favor of expanding Floridas already deadly Stand Your Ground law, he invoked Trayvon Martin and the name of my son, Jordan Davis. He used my sons name to claim that the system was workingthat the fact that my sons killer is now spending life in prison after claiming self-defense and citing the Stand Your Ground law means that Floridas Stand Your Ground law doesnt get in the way of justice being served.

Related: Guns in America: Law restricting doctors gun speech struck down

Heres my message for RepresentativeGrant: Dont you dare use my sons name to justify your support for this reckless bill. As RepresentativeGrant knows, I testified against the bill and expanding Stand Your Ground in Florida. I did so in hopes of protecting children like my son.

RepresentativeGrant said on the House floorthat the system worked for us. We went to trial twice to get a conviction for Jordans murder. The first time, the jury could not convict the man who shot my son nine times as he sat unarmed in the backseat of his friends car, in part because of the Stand Your Ground jury instructions. The second trial won us the verdict we wanted, but it didnt bring back my child.

Jordan Daviss mother, Lucy McBath, leaves the courtroom with her husband Curtis McBath as court recessed for the jury to reconsider the first charge against Michael Dunn in Jacksonville, Florida, on February 15, 2014. Dunn was accused of first degree murder in the death of Davis after an altercation over loud music at a Florida gas station in November 2012. Bob Mack/Florida Times-Union/Reuters

Jordan was 17 when he was shot and killed while sitting in a car at a Jacksonville gas station for the apparently threatening behavior of listening to loud music with his friends. Jordan was unarmed, but he was a young black man. Now my beloved only son is gone.

Jordan is a victim of this states shoot first, ask questions later culture that is largely a product of the Stand Your Ground law. Jordans killer felt within his rights to shoot at my child because of Stand Your Ground and the culture it creates.

Stand Your Ground laws make all of us more vulnerable to the threat of gun violence, but they also have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Shootings of black victims by white shooters are deemed justifiable11 times more frequentlythan when the shooter is black and the victim is white. When controlling for other factors, Florida Stand Your Ground cases with minority victims are half as likely to lead to conviction, compared to cases with white victims.

Whats more, a list of Stand Your Ground cases in Florida from 2005-2012,compiled by the Tampa Bay Times, found that at least 26 children and teens were killed in incidents related to the law. My son was one of them.

The Florida House on Wednesday passed S.B. 128, which is a bill that would expand Floridas already deadly Stand Your Ground law. Lawmakers ignored the concerns of their constituents, gun violence survivors and even prosecutors to strengthen a law that has traumatized so many families in the state.

Stand Your Ground laws embolden everyday citizens, like the man who shot and killed my son, to act like vigilantes, instead of seeking peaceful solutions to everyday disputes. Floridas Stand Your Ground law gives untrained civilians more leeway to shoot than the U.S. military gives its soldiers in war zones. Now, with S.B. 128, this already deadly law would become even more reckless by effectively requiring criminal defendants who raise a Stand Your Ground defense to be convicted twiceonce by a judge and once by a jury.

S.B. 128 would allow more gun criminals to escape justice by flipping the burden of proof in pre-trial immunity hearings from defendants to prosecutors, forcing the state to prove a shooter acted unlawfully before it brings a case to trial. Under this bill, prosecutors would struggle under an insurmountable number of cases, with no additional resources to alleviate their increased workload.

This is unacceptable.

While most parents my age are cheering on their childrens prospective career plans and asking about dates, I find myself burying my face in Jordans polo shirts trying to imagine the man my boy would be today. I miss my son.

Lawmakers like Representative Grant should understand that the proposals they boldly support today are a slap in the face to those of us who know all too well the grief that gun violence can cause.

My son is not a tactic to be used in political arenas for relevancy and points. Expanding Floridas deadly Stand Your Ground law is not about politics. This is about parents having to bury their children before college acceptance letters roll in. This is about black mothers worrying if playing loud music means that her child will be stalked and killed. This is about communities of color being forced to live with traumatic experiences. Its about whether we want to live in fear of our neighbors and community members.

Nearly 21 years ago, I made a promise to my newborn son that my life would be dedicated to honoring and protecting him to the best of my abilities. Jordan was taken from me. I will still fulfill my promise. I will still do my part to create a country that would have been safe for my son. And while Representative Grant may claim hes doing just that with his support of S.B. 128, my sons final resting place and the graves of so many other innocent Floridians says differently.

Lucy McBath is the faith and outreach leader for Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Lucys son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed in an argument over loud music at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida, on November 23, 2012. Lucy is also a member of the Mothers of the Movement.

See the article here:
Jordan Davis's Mother: Don't Use My Son's Death To Expand Stand ... - Newsweek

Europes refugee crisis is moving from newsprint to the pages of childrens books, as writers try to help parents help their kids understand an often disturbing drama shaping their world.

Distressing images of African migrants being plucked from heaving seas or the coffin-strewn aftermath of major sinkings have become a regular feature of television news bulletins since the crisis began spiralling out of control four years ago.

It is an unavoidable part of a new generations digital landscape and parents and teachers across Europe are having to find ways to enable youngsters to make sense of it.

Thats what writers and illustrators are for and the treatment of the issue was a prominent theme at this weeks Bologna Childrens Book Fair, the biggest of its kind in Europe.

Read more

Author Antonio Ferrara was promoting his new book, Casa Lampedusa, a tale set on the Italian island on the frontline of the crisis.

There is a word of eastern origin, abracadabra, that we think was invented for children playing at magic. In reality, it means, by speaking, I create, Ferrara told AFPTV.

For me as an author, that means that something that does not exist, like trust in others or the desire to welcome foreigners, can be created, if a story is well-told.

Ferraras book is told through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy who sees the islanders lives transformed by the waves of humanity being washed up, sometimes literally, on their shores.

Historical context

The book begins with something that Bono, the U2 singer, said he had heard a migrant say: Im not dangerous, I am in danger the author said.

The challenge is to touch childrens hearts before speaking to their minds and to get there you have to get away from what they see on the news and engage them in a fictional story that is founded in fact.

French publisher Actes Sud addresses the same subject with a new non-fiction book, Planete Migrants, by writer Sophie Lamoureux and illustrator Amelie Fontaine.

The book, which won an award in Bologna, seeks to place in a historical context the contemporary arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants in Europe from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

We show that it (mass migration) is not a new thing, and that people leaving their homes are doing so for political reasons, because of climate change or wars, said publisher Thierry Magnier.

What would I do?

Also being promoted in Bologna was the Italian translation of The Optician of Lampedusa, a haunting tale for all ages written by BBC journalist Emma-Jane Kirby.

The book, which she describes as a blur of fact and fiction, emerged from her award-winning reporting on how ordinary Italians were experiencing the migrant crisis.

It recounts the traumatic experience of Carmine Menna, an optician on the island who saved some of the survivors and witnessed many more perish in one of the deadliest sinkings, in October 2013, while out on a boat trip with his wife and friends.

Alerted by screams they first thought were seagulls, the couple and their crew hauled 47 people to safety. But 368 others perished, including a new mother with her baby still attached to her by its umbilical cord.

The book tells the story of the disaster through the eyes of the optician, describing how he is compelled to make life-or-death decisions about which desperately outstretched arm to clutch, then watch as others are engulfed by the waves.

It is definitely not a childrens book, but I have had many under-16s tell me it was so important to them, Kirby told AFP.

And the French edition seems to be being used by a lot of teachers in their classes, which is great.

The reporter was moved to write the book after finding herself, like her principal character, completely haunted by the story. I just could not get it out of my head.

Menna himself is not named: Kirby says the last thing he wanted was to be depicted as a hero.

And she thought the story worked best with a central character the reader knows little about beyond what he experienced as the optician who does not want to see and has his eyes forced open.

Kirby said: I really wanted people to identify with him so much, to put themselves on that boat and ask: what would I have done?

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Link:
Migrant crisis finds its way into children's books - Hindustan Times