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Image credit: http://trisquel.info

Trisquel is a 100 per cent 'free as in free speech' GNU/Linux distribution started by Rubn Rodrguez Prez nine years ago.

"It started as a project at the university I was studying at. They just wanted a custom distro because... everybody was doing that at the time!" Prez says.

"Since I'm very stubborn, the project kept going," Prez adds.

The idea of software freedom the kind of freedoms Richard Stallman laid out in the GNU Manifesto in 1985 and the original GPL in 1989 are central to Trisquel. (In 2005, when Trisquel 1.0 was launched, GNU founder Stallman was part of the occasion.)

By software freedom "we mean the basic liberties the software user should have: those of using, studying, improving and sharing the software without limitations," Prez says.

"It is a very important issue, because we now use computers for everything: our work, our leisure, our studies; and we should do it under our control. If the government uses software to manage data about the citizens, they should have the code to know for sure how the data is being treated and to guarantee privacy.

"If a school uses a computer for the kids to learn, they should be allowed to study how the tool is made and never get their teacher to answer 'you cannot know that'."

The distro was originally based on Debian's testing repository, but over the course of several years, Trisquel shifted to using Ubuntu as a base.

"The reason was to get a more predictable schedule to work on, and also because we felt that with Ubuntu gaining users it would be good to have a free drop-in replacement to it," Prez says.

Link:
Trisquel GNU/Linux flies the flag for software freedom

When businesses buy software, they don't expect to take what's off the shelf. They get everything customized as they like, open to tweak and update, and with their own privacy and data kept under lock and key.

But in the consumer world of free software, browsers, and apps, you get what you pay for--terms of service are totally dictated by the company. The exception is in open-source alternatives, like WordPress for blogging and Firefox for browsing. There the communities of users and creators have the freedom to control their own domains, and collaborate to improve, customize, and update the product.

Aza Raskin, founding member of Mozilla Labs and creative lead of Firefox 4, is no longer officially part of Mozilla. But he urges the nonprofit to accelerate their strategy of "fast follow"--or cloning popular products, and making the clone open-source.

Take Instagram as an example. Now owned by Facebook, it's already weathered one terms-of-service backlash. Not only would a nonprofit Instagram be easier to trust, says Raskin, but it might be more fun to play with.

"We can make it open and add the ability to analogously view-source. Why not use Javascript to modify, create and share new filters? Or change the layout of your profile? Or clone and host your own version of Instagram that has video? In other words, let both users and developers remix Instagram," he writes.

In doing so Mozilla could become a powerful second-mover in the market. But why stop with Instagram? We should be prying open Mailbox, Gmail, AWS, and many others. By amplifying an existing product and injecting it with our DNA, Mozilla can defend the open web."

(If you like the idea of an open-source Instagram, here are several different versions) to try.)

Online education is one area where remixable, secure, private platforms are both important and are taking hold. As massively open online courses (also known as MOOCs) get more popular, they're starting to be hailed as the solution for cash-strapped public university systems. But there's a high likelihood that the free offerings of venture-funded startups Coursera and Udacity will be subsidized somehow with the use of student data. Luckily, EdX, a nonprofit funded by MIT and Harvard's endowments, offers a widely used MOOC platform that is open-source. They aim to become "the Linux of education."

Fast follow needs to be pretty fast. Once a closed-source platform, like Gmail or Twitter, gets established enough, there are too many costs to switching to even the best-intentioned open web solution. There's also a question of how all of this open stuff will be funded. About 99% of Mozilla's $163 million in revenue comes from search fees from Google, Bing, Amazon and others--in other words, the very for-profits to which they aim to provide an alternative.

But consumers could use more public benefit alternatives--for privacy, for freedom, and for innovation.

See original here:
Where's My Private, Free, Open-Source Personal Web?

Mumbai, April 25 -- The government is set to make erring charitable hospitals fall in line as far as offering free treatment to poor patients is concerned. It has begun installing software and appointing facilitators in charitable hospitals to check manipulations and implement the benefit scheme efficiently.

This action comes after the public health department served show cause notices to as many as 40 charitable hospitals for various violations. In raids conducted on 49 hospitals in January this year, 31 were found guilty of violating norms related to the reservation of beds for the poor. 10% of the beds in the hospitals should be reserved for the free treatment of patients below the poverty line while another 10% of the beds should be reserved for the treatment of poor patients (with the annual income below Rs. 1 lakh) at a concessional rate.

When the hospitals failed to respond satisfactorily, the government turned to technology to ensure transparency.

"The software not only keeps a record of the billing and the beds available but will also maintain treatment records along with the patient's personal details," said an official from the department, requesting anonymity.

"This would help curtail manipulation. Some hospitals were charging patients against the doctor's fee, without actually paying the doctors. Others treated its own staff under the scheme meant for the poor," the officer said.

While four hospitals have already installed the software, 24 more will do so shortly. 24 Arogya-Mitras (facilitators) were also appointed to help admit the poor. But eight hospitals have refused to install the mechanism and insisted on communication with the charity commissioner.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Hindustan Times.

Read the original post:
Software to make charitable hospitals more transparent

Free Software for Data Analysis and Organization with TD Loggers

Chesterland, OH CAS DataLoggers and bestselling manufacturer T&D announce the official release of the popular T&D Graph software for data management and analysis. Having passed beta testing, this graphing utility software is compatible with most T&D products and offers users new features including posting comments and memos on graphs and accessing logged data stored on T&D's WebStorage Service. Version 1.00.1 fixes a search result bug and also features updated Help file information. Download the latest update program at T&D's website: http://tandd.com/support/download/software/td_graph.html.

T&D Graph allows you to read larger numbers of recorded data files into the same graph, merge your data, and view & save data in several different ways. This accessibility makes it a useful tool for data management and analysis. The official version fixes a previous problem which occurred when using [Open with Search] to search for voltage recorder type files (.vt7) over a specific time period, where the search result was not within the specified time period.

T&D Graph is compatible with Microsoft Windows 8 and 7 (32-and 64-bit), Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit (SP1 or later), and XP 32-bit (SP3 or later). This user-friendly software brings users even more effective features for the management and analysis of data recorded by T&D dataloggers. Users can also directly read their recorded data stored in the T&D WebStorage Service.

Free Online Service Stores Your Critical Data

With T&D dataloggers, now you can share your recorded data over the Internet! You can access all the data sent to the T&D WebStorage Service using your web browser from anywhere at anytime. It's perfect for processing and managing data recorded in remote places or for allowing several people to view the same recorded data at their convenience.

Recorded data can be transmitted to the WebStorage Service from any of our compatible T&D data loggers including: TR-71Ui/72Ui, TR-73U, TR-74Ui, TR-76Ui, TR-77Ui, TR-5i Series, RTR-500 Series, RTR-7 Series, TR-700W Series, TR-7W Series, VR-71 (Excluding Event Data).

Example: Managing Product Temperature During Transit

Using the T&D RTR-500GSM wireless data logger as an example, the WebStorage Service enables Senders, Receivers, and Carriers to monitor the same current readings graph and verify the temperature condition of the products while in transit. This way, all parties are on the same page regarding proof of product quality and electronic documentation.

These popular products are commonly use in many different applications including transportation and warehousing, food processing and storage, industrial manufacturing and processing, agriculture, and more. As a distributor of T&D, CAS DataLoggers can help you find the ideal data logger for your own application and also provides free technical support and installation for our customers.

Originally posted here:
CAS DataLoggers Announces Official Release of T&D Graph Software

In cooperation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others, the free-software organization calls on the W3C to keep DRM out of Web standards.

An illustration used by opponents to digital rights management technology moving to Web standards

The Free Software Foundation, never a friend to digital rights management, has taken issue with its arrival in the Web standards world.

In a letter from the FSF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and other allied groups yesterday, the group called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to keep DRM out of the standards it defines.

"We write to implore the World Wide Web Consortium and its member organizations to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal," the groups said. "DRM restricts the public's freedom, even beyond what overzealous copyright law requires, to the perceived benefit of this privileged, powerful few."

It's not clear how much effect the letter and an accompanying anti-DRM petition will have, since the technology is already in use though not formally standardized. And even if the W3C balks at standardization -- after it opened up to entertainment-industry involvement in 2011 -- DRM would likely live on through other channels.

A key HTML standardization figure and outspoken DRM opponent, Ian Hickson, sees the DRM-blocking effort as unlikely to succeed in practice. In a Google+ comment, he said:

The reality is that whether the W3C publishes this or not will have no effect. If the W3C doesn't publish it, the browser vendors will just work on the spec elsewhere. Asking the W3C to do it or not is pointless. The W3C knows this, and as far as I can tell, they figure that if it's gonna happen anyway, they might as well be the venue where it happens, since that way they get to claim new members.

FSF founder Richard Stallman has long called DRM "digital restrictions management," because it limits what people can do with their computers and the data on them. Despite any number of successful circumventions of DRM, though, it remains popular in the entertainment industry as a way to try to keep people from copying TV shows, movies, books, and sometimes music.

Adobe Systems' Flash Player long has been used to encrypt streaming video, but with its fading into the sunset, allies including Microsoft, Google, and Neflix have been working on DRM-friendly Web standards.

See more here:
Free Software Foundation attacks DRM in HTML video