Monthly Archives: September 2014

Snowden awarded Swedish alternative Nobel

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Edward Snowden has been declared one of the winners of a Swedish human rights award for his disclosures of top secret government surveillance programmes, Al Jazeera reports.

The former National Security Agency contractor on Wednesday split the honorary portion of the 2014 Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the alternative Nobel with Alan Rusbridger, editor of British newspaper The Guardian, which has published a series of articles based on documents leaked by Snowden.

The 1.5m kronor ($210,000) cash award was also shared by Pakistani human rights activist Asma Jahangir, Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission and US environmentalist Bill McKibben.

Created in 1980, the annual Right Livelihood Award honours efforts that prize founder Jacob von Uexkull felt were being ignored by the Nobel Prizes.

Foundation director Ole von Uexkull the award creators nephew said all winners have been invited to the December 1 award ceremony in Stockholm, though he added its unclear whether Snowden can attend.

We will start discussions with the Swedish government and his lawyers in due course to discuss the potential arrangements for his participation, von Uexkull told the AP news agency.

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Snowden awarded Swedish alternative Nobel

Snowden honored with ‘alternative Nobel’ – NBC40.net

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By KARL RITTER Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) - Edward Snowden was among the winners Wednesday of a Swedish human rights award, sometimes referred to as the "alternative Nobel," for his disclosures of top secret surveillance programs.

The decision to honor the former National Security Agency contractor with the Right Livelihood Award appeared to cause a diplomatic headache for Sweden's Foreign Ministry, which withdrew the prize jury's permission to use its media room for the announcement.

Snowden split the honorary portion of the award with Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, which has published a series of articles on government surveillance based on documents leaked by Snowden.

The 1.5 million kronor ($210,000) cash portion of the award was shared by Pakistani human rights activist Asma Jahangir, Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission and U.S. environmentalist Bill McKibben.

Created in 1980, the annual Right Livelihood Award honors efforts that founder Jacob von Uexkull felt were being ignored by the Nobel Prizes.

Foundation director Ole von Uexkull - the award creator's nephew - said all winners have been invited to the Dec. 1 award ceremony in Stockholm, though he added it's unclear whether Snowden can attend.

"We will start discussions with the Swedish government and his lawyers in due course to discuss the potential arrangements for his participation," von Uexkull told The Associated Press.

Snowden, who has reportedly also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, remains exiled in Russia since leaking top secret NSA documents to journalists last year. He has been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act and could face up to 30 years in prison.

Though the honorary award doesn't include any money, the foundation would offer to help pay Snowden's legal costs, von Uexkull said.

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Snowden honored with 'alternative Nobel' - NBC40.net

Flyme OS Ported to the Google Nexus 5, Android L Will Have Default Data Encryption – Video

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Flyme OS Ported to the Google Nexus 5, Android L Will Have Default Data Encryption
Flyme OS has been ported to the Google Nexus 5! That and much more news is covered by Jordan when he reviews all the important stories from this weekend. Included in this weekend #39;s news is...

By: xdadevelopers

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Flyme OS Ported to the Google Nexus 5, Android L Will Have Default Data Encryption - Video

Dan Allen and Sarah White: Documentation Dearth Dooms Open Source Projects

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By Jack M. Germain 09/24/14 6:04 PM PT

One of the essential draws to open source software should be superior product documentation. Well-written user guidelines are a key strategy that software developers should use to increase an open source project's growth and user adoption.

All too often, programmers finish their last line of code and shove the open source software out the door -- or, more realistically, post it on their website waiting for users to flock to its greatness. Documentation is often an afterthought -- or the software developer does not think about it at all.

A pair of open source entrepreneurs are determined to help software developers solve the problem of poorly done or missing documentation. Dan Allen and Sarah White are coleads of the Asciidoctor Project and cofounders of OpenDevise. Allen is a software developer and community catalyst; White works on the documentation for the Asciidoctor project.

Dan Allen

Asciidoctor is a fast text processor and publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc content to HTML5, DocBook 5 (or 4.5) and other formats. Asciidoctor reads and parses text written in the AsciiDoc syntax. It feeds the parse tree into a set of built-in templates to display the content. Asciidoctor is hosted on GitHub and is released under the MIT license.

OpenDevise is focused on providing developers with a strategy and development plan for open source projects. The idea is to help developers and users communicate with each other. The Asciidoctor Project is an effort to bring a comprehensive and accessible publishing tool chain, centered around the Asciidoc syntax, to a growing range of ecosystems, including Ruby, JavaScript and the JVM.

White spoke this summer at the Open Source Conference (OSCON) about the integration of Asciidoctor and OpenDevise and techniques for writing documentation that satisfies users. Her strategies help software developers plan and write documentation without feeling overwhelmed.

Sarah White

In this exclusive interview, LinuxInsider discusses with Allen and White the role these two open source projects play in writing documentation that takes into consideration users needs, backgrounds and environments.

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Dan Allen and Sarah White: Documentation Dearth Dooms Open Source Projects

Google’s Eric Schmidt Says Tim Cook Is Wrong, Julian Assange Is ‘Paranoid’

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More ABC news videos | Latest world newsCopy

Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, spent more than a decade as the Google's CEO, taking the company from a startup to a global tech giant. He spoke with ABC News' Real Biz about disagreements with Apple CEO Tim Cook, this whole privacy thing and why he thinks WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is "paranoid."

Schmidt teamed up with former product chief Jonathan Rosenberg to pen a book called "How Google Works," released today by Grand Central Publishing. Rosenberg joined Google in 2002 and managed search, ads, Gmail, Android, apps, and Chrome and today is an adviser to Google's co-founder Larry Page.

Google has won the top spot in Fortune's list of "Best Companies" five times, and is one of the stalwarts of Silicon Valley innovation, with Google Glass, driverless cars and, of course, those money-making ads.

Schmidt and Rosenberg's book focuses on the management of Google, revealing Schmidt's leadership secrets of how to get everyone on your management team to agree on a big decision.

In an interview with ABC News chief business correspondent Rebecca Jarvis, Schmidt said: "You need buy-in and you need ownership for whatever the corporation is going to do," to avoid the "bobble head" effect in which "everybody goes yes and then the moment they leave the table, they go and they fight against you."

"Start your staff meeting by asking everyone their opinion and making sure everyone speaks," he suggested.

Instead of beginning the meeting with the most senior head honcho in the room dominating the conversation, he said it's important to get a discussion going from all of the people involved in the meeting to make sure the best idea comes out as fast as it can and then "set a deadline."

The Mountain View, California-based company is not only famous for its decision making, it's also known for its sneaker-wearing culture of co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and their motto, "Don't be evil." But Schmidt's book reminds readers that Google is indeed a mammoth, global corporation.

The C-Suite Insider: Google's Eric Schmidt Wakes Up at 8 AM

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Google's Eric Schmidt Says Tim Cook Is Wrong, Julian Assange Is 'Paranoid'

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange extradition to US ‘far-fetched’: Swedish prosecutors

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STOCKHOLM: Swedish prosecutors said today it is "far-fetched" to think that fugitive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States if he returned to Sweden.

It was the first time that Swedish prosecutors, who want to question the 43-year-old Australian on allegations of rape and sexual molestation, commented on the likelihood that he could be sent to the United States.

Assange refuses to return to Sweden and has been holed up since 2012 in London in the embassy of Ecuador, which granted him political asylum the same year.

The United States has not yet requested extradition of Assange since Sweden issued a European arrest warrant in November 2010, rendering the whole question hypothetical, the prosecutors said.

"It would seem to be a far-fetched idea that the United States would have waited since 2010 to initiate extradition proceedings with the intention of sending their request to Sweden rather than to Britain," they said.

"Even considering that this would be permitted under Swedish law, a decision to extradite him to the United States from Sweden would also require the agreement of Britain."

They made the statement in a written reply to arguments made by Assange's lawyers, who have appealed a decision by a Swedish court in July this year to uphold the arrest warrant against him.

The Court of Appeal in Stockholm is expected to announce its decision within the next week. If it scraps the European arrest warrant against Assange, it could mean that he would be able to leave the Ecuadoran embassy.

The arrest warrant was issued to enable Swedish prosecutors to question Assange about charges brought against him by two women in their 30s. Assange denies the accusations.

Assange has called on the prosecutors to travel to London to question him or, alternatively, to do so by video link, but they rejected both ideas again today.

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange extradition to US 'far-fetched': Swedish prosecutors

Chelsea Manning Breaks Silence, Speaks Out On ISIS| Gay …

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Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, the U.S. intelligence analyst who made headlines in 2013 after leaking thousands of classified documents depicting abuse and torture being carried out by U.S. soldiers to WikiLeaks, recently took to The Guardian to share her thoughts on how the American military could best deal with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, colloquially known as ISIL or ISIS. They key to dismantling the jihadist group, Manning says, is to let its leaders prove how unsustainable its hypothetical caliphate would be in reality.

Let Isis succeed in setting up a failed state in a contained area and over a long enough period of time to prove itself unpopular and unable to govern, she reasons. This might begin to discredit the leadership and ideology of Isis for good.

Manning also points out that the U.S. isnt doing enough to combat ISISs well documented and effective use of social media to spread its propagandistic messages. In addition to a physical presence within Iraq and Syria, she says the U.S. needs to counter [ISISs] narrative that the organization uses to recruit youth fighters into its ranks.

Reactions to Mannings piece have been mixed, but generally positive. Ben Kesling, a marine Corps veteran and Wall Street Journal reporter, took issue with Mannings logic considering her rank at the time of her dishonorable discharge.

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Chelsea Manning Breaks Silence, Speaks Out On ISIS| Gay ...