Monthly Archives: March 2014

Google embraces open source for 10th year of Summer of Code

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For many, open source is believed to be the future. If you aren't familiar, in basic terms, open source is software that is accompanied by free to distribute source code. By having the source code, users can see the guts of the program they are using. This is in contrast to closed source software, like most of Microsoft's, where the code is hidden to retain intellectual property and make a profit.

Neither school of thought is wrong -- you can't fault a company for trying to make money by going closed source. Bill Gates would not have become the richest man in the world if Microsoft's software portfolio was open. However, not everyone lives for money. Open source allows even the poorest people to potentially access quality software at no charge. Today, Google announces it is looking for college students to work on open source projects for its 10th year of Summer of Code.

What exactly is Summer of Code? Google gives the following description:

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers post-secondary student developers ages 18 and older stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together over 7,500 successful student participants and over 7,000 mentors from over 100 countries worldwide to produce over 50 million lines of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

"If you're a university student looking to earn real-world experience this summer, we hope youll consider coding for a cool open source project with Google Summer of Code. We're celebrating the 10th year of the program in 2014, and wed love to see more student applicants than ever before. In 2013 we accepted almost 1,200 students and were planning to accept 10 percent more this year", says Carol Smith, Google Open Source team.

Smith further says, "you can submit proposals on our website starting now through Friday, March 21 at 12:00pm PDT. Get started by reviewing the ideas pages of the 190 open source projects in this year's program, and decide which projects you're interested in. There are a limited number of spots, and writing a great project proposal is essential to being selected to the program -- so be sure to check out the Student Manual for advice".

Google has been using Linux in both Android and Chromebooks, so it is nice to see the search-giant giving back to the open source community. This gives college students an opportunity to make a name for themselves by creating or working on an epic piece of open source software. Even if the software doesn't light the world on fire, at least they tried and learned something.

Are you a college student? Will you sign up? Tell me in the comments.

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Google embraces open source for 10th year of Summer of Code

Forum created to push optical SDNs

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SDN start-up Vello Systems this week said it is forming an organization to promote open source and software-defined networking principles to optical enterprise networking.

Vello's Open Source Optical (OSO) Forum includes optical component and system vendors, software companies, channel partners and end users looking to spur the adoption of open source optical solutions in data center and enterprise networks, similar to the SDN and merchant silicon trend in Ethernet networking. The initial members of OSO include Vello, Accelink, CoAdna, CrossFiber, O-Net, PacketLight and Pacnet, with more organizations to be announced over the coming weeks, Vello says.

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The group is proposing OpenFlow-based software interoperability among multiple optical products designed for the enterprise and data center so customers avoid lock-in with a specific vendor. Some of the leading optical vendors are Ciena, Adva and Cisco and they are not currently involved in OSO, but Ciena speaks frequently at SDN conferences -- like last week's Open Networking Summit and last month's OpenDaylight Summit -- and all three are members of SDN standards consortia Open Networking Foundation and the OpenDaylight Project.

Of the OSO Forum initiators, only Vello is involved in either of those consortia, as a member of the Open Networking Foundation.

Nonetheless, OSO says it will provide and maintain community-supported open source software that will run on a variety of merchant-optical systems from current and future OSO members. This open source code will reside on the consortium's web site, and any software that supports OpenFlow 1.4 can also be used to run OSO-based optical solutions, Vello says.

The OSO software will include optical extensions that are part of OpenFlow 1.4, which were authored and contributed by Vello in the ONF. Vello said it will also make the optical extensions generally available for other OpenFlow network controller frameworks.

Sources say the OSO formed autonomously rather than within the ONF because of the large optical hardware vendor presence and influence within the ONF. Also, apart from Vello, none of the OSO vendors are ONF members.

Porting OSO software onto existing optical systems will make them compatible with OpenFlow controller and application frameworks, Vello says. But OSO Forum members may also choose to build native OpenFlow 10G/40G/100G 1RU "pizza box" optical systems or other appliances for data center interconnection and optimizing network paths based on application. Vello this week also unveiled software, called Precision Application Networking, specifically for these types of appliances, which it expects to debut in the second quarter for 10G and in the second half of the year for 100G.

OSO-based systems can be deployed and configured directly alongside OpenFlow-based Ethernet switches from a single screen, eliminating the requirement of dedicated optical system configuration management, Vello says.

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Forum created to push optical SDNs

Nerlens Noel Tweets Date for Potential NBA Debut

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David Liam Kyle/Getty Images

Nerlens Noel may have majored in cryptography while at Kentucky.

In a mysterious tweet, the Philadelphia 76ers rookie revealed apotential date for his NBA debut:

Friday, April 4, Noel's Sixers are traveling to face the Boston Celtics. Not so coincidentally, Noel hails from the Boston area. He was born in Malden,Massachusetts.

Using that logic, Noel's code isn't difficult to decipher.

Sixers coach Brett Brown previously indicated Noel wouldn't play this season, per FOX Sports' Sam Amico. But that was October. Things have changed. And I'm not just commenting on Philly's shallow, nigh-empty pool of NBA-caliber talent.

"There's a possibility," Noel told SiriusXM NBA Radio on playing this season in December, via ESPN.com.

More recently, Brown preached cautious optimism regarding his status moving forward.

"I dont want to paint the wrong picture, but he is going against bodies a little bit more," he explained, according to CSN Phlly's Dei Lynam. "He is moving in that direction."

If Noel is healthyenough to play, why not let him play?

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Nerlens Noel Tweets Date for Potential NBA Debut

Julian Assange: We’re Heading Towards A Dystopian Surveillance Society – Video

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Julian Assange: We #39;re Heading Towards A Dystopian Surveillance Society
Air Date: March 7th, 2014 This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a #39;fai...

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Julian Assange: We're Heading Towards A Dystopian Surveillance Society - Video

Julian Assange’s Virtual Address at South By Southwest

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In a wide-ranging talk Saturday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that despite the efforts of his organization and the revelations of Edward Snowden, "We are all actually living in a world we don't understand." Assange, who is still confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London because he faces arrest on espionage charges in the United States and Great Britain, addressed a crowd of about a thousand at the South By Southwest Interactive conference via a live-video Skype connection.

His and Snowden's revelations showed that "the true nature of human institutions" such as the national-security, defense, and diplomatic agencies of major governments and their contractors, "are all obscured by fog. Every now and then, there is a clearing of the fog, when there is one of these disclosures," he added. He identified his bete noir as a "fluid, postmodern amalgam of agencies and contractors," including the National Security Agency in the United States, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and Britain's GHCQ.

After asserting that the Western bloc led by the United States was responsible for 75 to 80 percent of the world's aggregate expenditures, Assange assailed what he said was a new kind of totalitarianism. "We're moving into a new totalitarian world," he said. "Not in the sense of Stalin or Pol Pot...but in the sense that anyone can be surveilled.

"The ability to surveil everyone on the planet is almost there," he claimed, "and arguably will be there in a few years. And to store all the information."

Because of the efforts of Wikileaks and a few individuals, he continued, public perception has grown that the Internet, "the greatest tool of human emancipation, had been coopted" by agencies using it to gather information surreptitiously to further their agendas. He referred to the use of the Internet by powerful government agencies as "a militarization of our civilian space. A military intrusion into our civilian space."

But he also saw a brighter side to the Internet's recent evolution. The Internet had been transformed over the last four years, he said, because of revelations such as his and Snowden's and also by events such as the "Arab Spring." The Internet "four years ago was a politically apathetic space," he said. But the conflicts involving him and Snowden against the United States and other powers have played out in public, "and everyone could see what was going on," he declared. "The Internet became a political space, and that is an important development."

He further noted that the conflict has made de facto refugees not only of himhe has been confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for 650 daysand Snowden, who is in Russia, but also of several others. He cited three journalists, including Glenn Greenwald, who brought the Snowden revelations to light for the British newspaper The Guardian, and is now living in Brazil. The others were American Laura Poitras, who reported on Snowden's revelations for the Washington Post and Der Spegel, and British citizen Sarah Harrison, who helped Snowden get from Hong Kong to Russia. Assange also mentioned the American Jacob Applebaum, who has been identified as a hacker and Wikileaks supporter. Poitras, Applebaum, and Harrison are all now living in Berlin.

"National security reporters are a new kind of refugee," Assange asserted. But at least they are "not in a situation where they have to be terrified all the time," he went on. "I see this as quite a positive phenomenon: Where, once, people would have been completely crushed, they can use these basic tenets and rights to confine nations, and in restraint of the powerful countries.

"We are all part of what we would traditionally call the State," Assange said. "So we have no choice but to attempt to manage the behavior of the State."

At one point, in defending Wikileaks, Assange seemed to compare himself to Robin Hood. Major government security agencies are "stealing information from all of us," he began. "Knowledge is power. Wikileaks specializes in going in the opposite direction. Reversing the process--taking knowledge about how this process works and putting it back in the public record. And that empowers us."

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Julian Assange's Virtual Address at South By Southwest

4 – Cryptocurrency Special: Legitimacy, the Developing World, and Capital Controls – Video

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4 - Cryptocurrency Special: Legitimacy, the Developing World, and Capital Controls
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4 - Cryptocurrency Special: Legitimacy, the Developing World, and Capital Controls - Video