Wikileaks Mirror

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

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Wikileaks Mirror

According to WikiLeaks, US government and George … – rt.com

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Washington is behind the recently released offshore revelations known as the Panama Papers, WikiLeaks has claimed, saying that the attack was produced to target Russia and President Putin.

On Wednesday, the international whistleblowing organization said on Twitter that the Panama Papers data leak was produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), "which targets Russia and [the] former USSR." The "Putin attack" was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and American hedge fund billionaire George Soros, WikiLeaks added, saying that the US government's funding of such an attack is a serious blow to its integrity.

Organizations belonging to Soros have been proclaimed to be "undesirable" in Russia. Last year, the Russian Prosecutor Generals Office recognized Soross Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation as undesirable groups, banning Russian citizens and organizations from participation in any of their projects.

Prosecutors then said the activities of the institute and its assistance foundation were a threat to the basis of Russias constitutional order and national security. Earlier this year, the billionaire US investoralleged that Putin is "no ally" to US and EU leaders, and that he aims "to gain considerable economic benefits from dividing Europe."

The American government is pursuing a policy of destabilization all over the world, and this [leak] also serves this purpose of destabilization. They are causing a lot of people all over the world and also a lot of money to find its way into the [new] tax havens in America. The US is preparing for a super big financial crisis, and they want all that money in their own vaults and not in the vaults of other countries, German journalist and author Ernst Wolff told RT.

Earlier this week, the head of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which worked on the Panama Papers, said that Putin is not the target of the leak, but rather that the revelations aimed to shed light on murky offshore practices internationally. "It wasnt a story about Russia. It was a story about the offshore world," ICIJ head Gerard Ryle told TASS.

His statement came in stark contrast to international media coverage of the "largest leak in offshore history." Although neither Vladimir Putin nor any members of his family are directly mentioned in the papers, many mainstream media outlets chose the Russian presidents photo when breaking the story.

READ MORE: Panama leak reveals more about Western journalism than Vladimir Putin

We have innuendo, we have a complete lack of standards on the part of the western media, and the major mistake made by the leaker was to give these documents to the corporate media, former CIA officer Ray McGovern told RT. This would be humorous if it werent so serious, he added.

"The degree of Putinophobia has reached a point where to speak well about Russia, or about some of its actions and successes, is impossible. One needs to speak [about Russia] in negative terms, the more the better, and when there's nothing to say, you need to make things up," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, commenting on anti-Russian sentiment triggered by the publications.

WikiLeaks spokesman and Icelandic investigative journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson has called for the leaked data to be put online so that everybody could search through the papers. He said withholding of the documents could hardly be viewed as "responsible journalism."

"When they are saying that this is responsible journalism, I totally disagree with the overall tone of that," the co-founder of the Icelandic Center for Investigative Journalism told RT's Afshin Rattansi in Going Underground, when asked about his reaction to the ICIJ head saying that the consortium is not WikiLeaks, and is trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly by not releasing the papers in full.

"They should be available to the general public in such a manner so everybody, not just the group of journalists working directly on the data, can search it," Hrafnsson said.

READ MORE: Russian investigators to launch criminal probe after Panama data leak

The WikiLeaks spokesman also told RT he's not surprised that there have been no big American names in the leaked 11.5 million documents of the Panamanian law company.

"It seems to be skewed at least a way from American interest. There's always a possibility that it's not a journalistic bias but simply a bias in the documents themselves," Hrafnsson said, adding that Mossack Fonseca "is simply one law firm in Panama servicing and providing tax haven companies mostly out of the BVI [British Virgin Islands]."

"It doesn't even give the entire picture," he concluded.

Excerpt from:
According to WikiLeaks, US government and George ... - rt.com

Support Julian Assange in his quest for Freedom

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Oppressive states such as Ecuador crush the webs power Nick Cohen Knowledge alone is next to useless in countries whose rulers enforce self-censorship

Ecuadors bombastic president Rafael Correa. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersSunday 6 September 2015 00.05 BSTLast modified on Sunday 6 September 201500.06 BST

Julian Assanges captivity in the Ecuadorian embassy is full of ironies none of them funny which tell us much about the state of freedom of speech, little of it good.

Older readers will remember that the stardust of celebrity fell on Assange in the last decade when his WikiLeaks site published thousands of secret US government cables. He rapidly became infamous, to everyone except his groupies, when one Swedish woman alleged that Assange had raped her and another that he had sexually assaulted her. Assange did not have the courage to face his accusers. He insisted that the Swedish authorities were plotting to deport him to America. Lawyers gently pointed out that America could easily have extradited Assange from Britain, if it had wanted him.

Assange didnt listen to doubters. In June 2012, he sought asylum at 3B Hans Crescent, London SW1, and there he has remained, a prisoner of his own conspiracy theories. The embassy may have a grand address just round the corner from Harrods, but like so many London properties its a pokey flat. If you or I were trapped inside for years with the Metropolitan polices finest waiting to arrest us the moment we stepped outdoors, wed probably go mad.

According to confidential documents leaked by Ecuadorian journalist Fernando Villavicencio to BuzzFeed last week, Assange appears to be doing just that. He has fought with a security guard. He drinks too much and needs psychological support. His evident anger and feelings of superiority could cause stress to those around him, especially the personnel who work in the embassy, mainly women.

For the first time in my life, I feel sorry for Assange. But if you look beyond his degeneration and forget about the allegedly abused Swedish women many of his charming supporters have vilified, this bleak story carries a cheering moral.

WikiLeaks revealed American secrets and there was nothing Americans could do about it. Leftwing Ecuador defended a champion of freedom of information and gave him asylum. But in the age of transparency, its diplomatic cables are as open to inspection as Americas and it too has found its secrets online. However messy the web is, however many criminals and crackpots flourish online, our wired, anarchic world is surely more democratic than what came before. Old sources of power in states, churches and corporations can no longer control what we read and that is progress worth having.

Little about this comforting picture is true. If I can keep you in the cramped quarters of the Ecuadorian embassy for a moment longer, I will attempt to explain why. WikiLeaks did not just shed sunlight on dark corners of US foreign policy. Most of its journalists walked out when they learned that Assange was willing to abase himself before dictators, most notably the president of Belarus, who wanted access to US confidential information about dissident movements that threatened his rule.

Ecuadors rulers are not offering asylum to Assange because they believe in the right to hold power to account, but because Assange is as anti-American as they are. When its own citizens try to tell truth to power, Ecuadors love of liberty vanishes.

It is a petro-socialist authoritarian state. Not a dictatorship, I should add: there are still elections. But the regime hounds those who tell its citizens news it does not want them to hear. So relentless is its determination to control information it has even silenced the scientists at Ecuadors Geophysics Institute, for fear that their warnings of possible eruptions from the Cotopaxi volcano will cause panic . Legal penalties for insulting, or as we might call it criticising, the rulers enforce self-censorship. Traditional and new media do not want to go against Ecuadors bombastic president, Rafael Correa. The case of the embassy leaker, Fernando Villavicencio, makes my point. He complained about police brutality. His punishment was a libel action from the president, a prison sentence and a court order to apologise to the affronted leader.

I am not attempting an ideological assault on Latin American socialism, although I will note in passing that Venezuelas Chavista state is just as bad as Ecuadors failing state. The conservative governments of Orbns Hungary, Putins Russia and Erdogans Turkey all have democratic elements, but they all use the same straitjackets as Ecuador to confine democratic argument.

While a catatonic world was finally waking up to the Syrian refugee crisis, I was speaking to the great Turkish dissident Yavuz Baydar. A columnist on the Turkish daily Hrriyet had used the death of Aylan Kurdi to damn Erdogans treatment of the Turkish and Syrian Kurds, he told me. The state prosecutor immediately announced he would investigate the scandalous remarks and gross insults targeting Erdogan. Every other writer on new and old media got the message.

You will not understand how the hopes for the web have failed so miserably unless you grasp how Francis Bacon was wrong. Knowledge isnt power. Power comes from the freedom to use knowledge. Even if citizens in Ecuador or Turkeycan find information online the state does not want them to see, what good is it if they cannot use it in political campaigns without being arrested? They live in a state of informed impotence, in which they cannot pass on what they know. Without rights protected by an independent judiciary, their knowledge is close to useless.

Anyone who has worked in a hierarchical workplace, the closest thing to an authoritarian society most westerners experience, should understand their predicament. You know your manager is a disaster, a sex pest or a bully, but there is nothing you and your colleagues can do with that information if you fear that speaking out will wreck your careers.

What applies in the workplace applies with a vengeance in public life. Modern communications technologies create a comforting illusion. Because there are hundreds of billions of posts and tweets every year, you can gain the impression that stopping the torrent of information reaching an audience is as impossible as stopping the waves reaching the shore. But someone still needs to do the hard work. Someone still needs to be brave enough to break the story or blow the whistle before the tweeting and the posting can begin. Regimes from Belarus to Ecuador, from Venezuela to Turkey, know that, if they can frighten that someone, and deter others from thinking they should imitate that someone, the torrent will vanish like water down a sinkhole.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/06/internet-gift-world-oppressed-informed-impotence

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Support Julian Assange in his quest for Freedom

30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Recently, I received a fresh new laptop from Dell. Upon receiving it, I did the traditional installation of Windows from scratch on it to remove a lot of the garbage that is preinstalled on Dells. Then I got really busy installing tons of great software that takes care of pretty much every software need I have. Not only was all of the software free, every piece of it was open source, which means that the code is peer-reviewed; no spyware here!

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

Now, if only there were an open version of The Sims 2, I might go the whole way and switch to Linux

Replaces Internet Explorer If you havent switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one things for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox.

Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: its free, its full featured, its lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If youre not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

Replaces Microsoft Outlooks calendaring functions Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundations calendaring program. Its extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if youre using a laptop, and this is no different.

Replaces Microsoft Word Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is my favorite replacement for Word. Its lightweight (meaning it runs quickly) and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too.

Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements). In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and PowerPoint replacements to the real thing.

Replaces Norton AntiVirus or McAfee ClamWin is a slick anti-virus software thats quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. Thats pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for McAfee to keep bugging me all the time?

Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc. This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.

Original but essential From their website, BitTorrent is a peer-assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high-quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple: to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world. In other words, BitTorrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download em.

Replaces Adobe Photoshop This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop a regular user of Photoshop (like me) can adapt to it quite quickly. Its very richly featured and runs quite well in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free.

Replaces LimeWire, BearShare, etc. Sure, LimeWire and BearShare are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware? Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer.

Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc. If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type youll run across without breaking a sweat.

Unique but essential Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with PodNova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using iTunes itself.

Unique but essential (for some) If youre interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. Im not much for podcasting (lets just say I dont have a radio voice), but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes.

Unique but essential RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs; if you read a lot of blogs, its the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, its preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if youre on a desktop, a web-based feed manager might be better.

Replaces WinFTP Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers; if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly.

Unique but essential Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. Its not good at quality word processing, but thats not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility.

Replaces iTunes If youre not already committed to downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, then MusikCube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists.

Unique but essential Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I dont have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road.

Replaces mIRC X-Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, its a place for technical people (and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds) to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues.

Unique but essential KeePass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place; KeePass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe.

Unique but essential TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about. I use it to keep some of my most personal data off of my laptop and strongly secured, just in case.

Replaces Adobe Acrobat PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. After installing PDFCreator, all you have to do is print like normal and out comes a PDF!

Unique but Essential Freemind is a mind mapping software program. In essence, it enables you to brainstorm and link together ideas quickly, creating maps of concepts similar to what you might do on a whiteboard. I find it incredibly useful when putting together ideas for new posts or planning small projects or assembling the backbone of a writing project.

Replaces Google Earth WorldWind is very similar to Google Earth in that it allows you to browse the globe. While it isnt strong for creating maps (but why not just use Google Maps for that?), it is utterly incredible for viewing three-dimensional landscapes of any place on earth.

Replaces Notepad Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad that just adds a few sweet little features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; and some highlighting of tags. In fact, Im using Notepad2 as I draft this post (after using Freemind to organize it).

Unique but useful HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

Unique but useful Sometimes late into a writing session, my wrists get sore from too much repetitive movement. Workrave basically jumps in before this happens and locks down the computer for a while, preventing me from working too much and causing repetitive stress injury. Since Ive started using it, it hasnt significantly hurt my productivity at all and my wrists are thanking me!

Replaces Microsoft Project If you do any project management (or have a need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, youll likely have no reason to use Project.

Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the features I want for managing my money. The interfaces are incredibly simple it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer but theres a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

Replaces Quake IV, Halo, etc. After all this downloading, youre going to need to blow off a little steam, and Ive yet to find a more enjoyable free game than this one. Its basically a third person combat game, but the graphics are spectacular and the game is quite engrossing.

If youve downloaded and installed all of these, youve got access to all the productivity software youll likely need, clean and open and best of all free.

A brand-new computer comes with a host of pre-installed software, some of which are only accessible as limited free trials. Fortunately, many of the best open source software are not only able to completely replace their paid counterparts but they also (arguably) perform better since they are peer-reviewed. If youre on the hunt for the best free software, start with our open source software list below:

Replaces Microsoft Office Apache OpenOffice provides word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, a formula editor, and database management applications, all of which generally offer the same functionalities and features as MS Office.

Replaces Internet Explorer A popular alternative to Chrome, more than 30% of web users use Firefox as their browser. Firefox stops annoying popups and has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web more personalized and efficient.

Replaces Internet Explorer Google Chrome isnt an open source software but its a viable alternative to Firefox (if that isnt your thing). Its free, fast, and efficient and comes with an abundance of add-ons so you can customize it to your liking. Theres even an option to open an incognito window, which doesnt save your cache or browser history if prefer to keep things more private at home or in the office.

Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: its free, its full-featured, its lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If youre not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

Replaces Microsoft Calendar Meant to be used with Thunderbird, Lightning enables you to organize your schedule and important events in a calendar thats fully integrated with your email. You can manage and share multiple calendars, create recurring events, add to-do lists, invite friends to events, and subscribe to public calendars, including holidays.

Replaces Adobe Acrobat PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF readable on any computer with Acrobat Reader installed. It supports many Adobe PDF options, including password protection and 128-bit encryption. All you need to do is print and it creates a PDF!

Useful If you have multiple instant-messaging accounts, use Pidgin to use them all at once. It supports AIM, ICQ, Google Hangouts, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, MXit, Novell, and more.

Replaces Microsoft Project If you do any project management (or need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, youll likely have no reason to use Project.

Useful Mind mapping is a key process in many businesses, and this mind mapper does a great job providing an easy-to-use hierarchical editor and other tools to help organize your ideas into one coherent overview.

Unique but essential (for some) VirtualBox is a desktop virtualization software, which functions to separate your physical desktop from your desktop space and applications so you can access it from anywhere. It also makes recovery of lost files much easier since all the components are saved in a data center. VirtualBox comes with impressive processing power so your desktop isnt slowed down.

Replaces Microsoft Windows Notepad Notepad++s minimalist, user-friendly style is pleasant to use and comes with features such as multi-view, multiple tabs for separate documents, word auto completion, zoom functions, and bookmarking. On top of that, their systems minimize carbon dioxide emissions by using less CPU power!

Useful With Greenshot, you can take full or partial screenshots and add text and shapes to it so your colleagues quickly understand what youre visually describing. Greenshot supports several image formats.

Replaces WinFTP Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers. FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly, especially with their simple drag-and-drop functionality. FileZilla is especially efficient for batch transfers.

Replaces Quicken TurboCASH 5 is a small-business accounting package that includes such functions as invoicing, debtors, creditors, VAT accounting, balance sheet and income statements, and reporting. Its accessible to multiple users and companies.

Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the essential features for managing money. The interfaces are incredibly simple it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer but theres a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

Replaces BitTorrent Ares Galaxy is a BitTorrent and chat software program with an easily accessible interface and a built-in audio/video viewer. You can share any types of digital file and publish your them through their own peer-to-peer network.

Replaces BitTorrent eMule is a peer-to-peer file-sharing client that includes robust search features, checks for file corruptions during downloads, and previews of downloads.

Replaces BitTorrent Tribler enables its users to discover and share video, audio, photos, and other files.

Replaces Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most popular free alternative to Photoshop. It is known for its versatility, as you can use it as a simple Paint program or for more sophisticated capabilities, such as photo retouching, layering image rendering, and format conversion.

Replaces Maya, 3DSMax Blender is a 3D graphics-creation program that enables you to perform animation, modeling, rendering, post-production, real-time interactive 3D, and much more.

Replaces Microsoft Visio Very similar to Visio, you can use Dia to create a wide variety of diagrams, such as flowcharts and relationship charts. You can save your pieces to an XML format and export them to EPS or SVG formats.

Replaces Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw Inkscape is a vector graphics editor that includes features such as shapes, paths, markers, clones, text, gradients, and patterns while supporting functionalities such as layers, node editing, bitmap tracing, and more. You can import JPEG, TIFF, and PNG files and export as PNG or other vector-based formats.

Replaces PageMaker, InDesign, QuarkXPress Scribus, a desktop publishing application, supports many major graphic formats as well as SVG import and export.

Useful VLC is a fast and powerful multimedia player that supports various audio and video formats, including but not limited to MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, and MP3, as well as DVDs and VCDs. It plays almost any file, CD, DVD, webcams, and other devices.

Useful SMPlayer is a free media player with the added ability to play and download YouTube videos. On top of that, if youre the type not to sit and commit to an entire movie, SMPlayer will simply replay where you left off, which is perfect for busy folks.

Unique but essential Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. This is awesome for travel since you can store all your movies in your laptop instead of carrying around DVDs.

Unique but essential (for some) If youre interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. Audacity is also very useful for other voice recording purposes.

Useful Media Player Classic plays a wide swath of audio and video formats, including MPEG/MPEG-2/MPEG-4, DivX, Xvid, and CD/VCD/DVD media.

Essential KeePass is a lightweight and intuitive password manager for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and mobile devices. Your passwords are kept safe in an encrypted database, which you can quickly access with a master password.

Replaces BitLocker TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about.

Replaces Norton Antivirus You can hardly tell Bitdefender is running, as it works quietly but efficiently. Its excellent at blocking and removing malware as well as protecting your computer from phishing.

Useful HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

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30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows ...

30 Cool Open Source Software I Discovered in 2013 – nixCraft

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

These are full-featured open source software products, free as in beer and speech that I started to use recently. Vivek Gite picks his best open source software of 2013.

Replicant is entirely free and open source distributions of Android on several devices including both phones and tablets. I have installed it on an older Nexus S. You can install apps from F-Droid store a GPLv2 client app that comes configured with a repository hosting only free as in freedom applications.

This is an open source, cross-platform application to convert videos from and to various formats, including formats suitable for devices such as Android/iOS phones. It is simple and easy to use software to convert almost any video to MP4, WebM (vp8), Ogg Theora format. Miro Video Converter is based on FFMPEG and act as a front end to FFMPEG command line tools.

I was looking for an alternative to Dropbox to run cloud on my own server at home and office. This software is open source software, and it is self hosted. I dont have to trust third party with my data. I found this software easy to install and quite useful. I started to use it for syncing files and other data. I have been using for couple of months and it has been proven reliable alternative to Dropbox. There are clients available for MS-Windows, OS X, Linux, and mobile apps for iOS and Android devices (or simply access data using the ownCloud web frontend).

The FreeBSD jail provides an operating system-level virtualization partition a FreeBSD-based serve into several independent mini-systems. You can do the same with Linux using OpenVZ. Linux Containers (LXC) is a virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems. Docker extends LXC. It uses LXC, cgroups, Linux kernel and other parts to automate the deployment of applications inside software containers. It comes with API to runs processes in isolation. With docker I can pack WordPress (or any other app written in Python/Ruby/Php & friends) and its dependencies in a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container. I can deploy and test such container on any Linux based server.

Adminer is a full-featured database management tool written in PHP. Conversely to phpMyAdmin, it consists of a single file ready to deploy to the target server. Adminer is available for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL and Oracle. I usually install this for clients who are new to PostgreSQL/MySQL. The software acts as a drop-in-replacement for phpMyAdmin with a better user interface, better support for MySQL features, higher performance and more security.

MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL server. MariaDB is going to be default in many popular Linux distro and open source project. Red Hat will switch the default database in its enterprise distribution, RHEL (including its clones such as CentOS), from MySQL to MariaDB, when version 7 is released in 2014. I started testing MariaDB and found no problems at all. The speed is same or better in some cases.

I wish I discovered RackTables earlier. It is is a datacenter asset management system. With this software one can document hardware assets (such as server, workstations, routers, switches and more), network addresses, space in racks, networks configuration and more:

Apache Cordova is a free and open source framework that allows you to create mobile apps using standardized web APIs. You can create apps that work on iOS, Andriod, BlackBerry, Windows, Ubuntu and other phone based operating systems. You write code once and run on selected mobile platforms with little or no change at all. PhoneGap uses Apache Cordova.

Nmap is an open source security tool for network exploration, security scanning and auditing. ipscan (Angry IP Scanner) is an alternative to nmap command. It is also an open-source and cross-platform network scanner designed to be fast and simple to use. It scans IP addresses and ports as well as has many other features.

Drupal, Typo3, WordPress and many other content management system (CMS)/blogging software dynamically create feature rich content. However, you may not need all the all features and complexity offered by modern CMS based systems. For example, a WordPress based blog like nixCraft requires multiple VMs, CDN for static assets, caching engine such as memcached, PHP, mysql database, comment moderation, and on going updates. A growing trend is to keep your blog simple by avoiding CMS and use static HTML generators that offers the following benefits:

You can setup a open source software such as WordPress, Drupal, ZenCart, and over 100+ other software easily with TurnKey Linux. It is a virtual appliance library that integrates and polishes the very best open source software into ready to use solutions. Each virtual appliance is optimized for ease of use and can be deployed in just a few minutes on bare metal, a virtual machine and in the cloud/in physical server. TurnKey Linux is based on Debian 7.2 with automatic security updates for all packages. It also includes a web management interface, web shell, and simple configuration console. I often use this to deploy development server in the cloud.

DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile open source wiki software that doesnt require a database. Easy to install on Linux or Unix-like operating systems with the following features:

I use this on my laptop to keep notes about various projects.

GNU MediaGoblin is free software, decentralized media publishing platform. You can host and share videos, music, and images using MediaGoblin. It is an alternative to major media-publishing services such as Flickr, deviantArt, YouTube, Soundcloud, etc. It is written in Python and SQL.

Scrollout F1 is easy to use and setup email firewall gateway system. It includes anti-spam and anti-virus protection for Microsoft Exchange, Postfix, Exim, Sendmail, Qmail and others. It runs on Debian and Ubuntu Linux operating systems. This is perfect software for filtering incoming messages and other features are as follows:

Observium is free and open source software written in PHP/MySQL. It collects data from devices using SNMP and presents it via a web interface. It includes support for a wide range of network hardware and operating systems including Cisco, Windows, Linux, HP, Dell, FreeBSD, Juniper, Brocade, Netscaler, NetApp and many more. I use this software along with Nagios to get better understanding of certain devices and technologies. It provides historical and current performance statistics, configuration visualization and syslog capture.

It is a web based invoicing system. It helps me to create quick and nice looking invoices without having to set up too much services on server. All you have to do is install the SimpleInvoices software, enter a biller, a customer details and go creating invoices. You can easily track your finances; send invoices as PDFs and more. It is the best invoicing set up for my independent IT consultancy business.

I sometime use and recommend the following software for MS-Windows/Linux users due to simplicity and ease of use features. Here is the list of the other best and FOSS apps of 2013:

This is a perfect open-source FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. It has the following features that new users might find useful:

It is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Its main function is the secure file transfer between local and server under your control. Most new MS-Windows user find WinSCP an easier to use as compare to putty and friends.

I give this software to many developers. They can easily setup Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl to deploy and write an application on their own desktop. No need to install virtual machine and Linux server. Just focus on development and skip real server management job to pros.

Many users only use 2% of the features of a program like Microsoft Word. No need to spend money or time on Microsoft Word. I personally use Abiword due to:

LESS extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. LESS can run on the client-side and server-side or can be compiled into plain CSS.

Cinnamon is a GTK+ based desktop environment and a fork of the GNOME Shell. It was initially developed by Linux Mint. It offers a user interface with the following features that I needed most:

Tmux is terminal multiplexers for Unix-like platforms. tmux offers several advantages over GNU/screen:

It is a simple and straightforward software that offers the following features:

Zentyal is a full-featured Linux server for small and medium businesses that you can set up in less than 30 minutes. It is a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. It is easy to use software. Zentyal is based on Ubuntu and it can be installed either from Ubuntu repositories or from Zentyals own installer.

ack-grep is a grep like tool, optimized for programmers. This tool isnt aimed to search all text files. It is specifically created to search source code trees, not trees of text files. It searches entire trees by default while ignoring Subversion, Git and other VCS directories and other files that arent your source code.

ditaa is a small command-line utility, that can convert diagrams drawn using ascii art, into proper bitmap graphics. I use this tool all the time to draw diagrams and forwarding them via email or chat session.

GNU parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. If you like xargs command, try GNU/parallel utility. It can run command/script/job on all available CPUs or on multiple computers.

luckyBackup is an application for data back-up and synchronization powered by the rsync tool. It is simple to use, fast, safe, reliable and fully customizable backup software. I often set and recommend this too for new Ubuntu/Fedora desktop users to backup their own files.

OpenShot Video Editor is a free and open-source non-linear video editing software package for Linux. I use this tool to create videos for my youtube channel. It is a stable, free, and friendly to use video editor on Linux.

This is my personal FOSS software list and it is not absolutely definitive, so if youve got your own software, share in the comments below. Also dont forget to check out our previous years 15 greatest open source terminal applications of 2012.

[ Happy New Year to all nixCraft visitors. I hope that 2014 proves to be just as awesome for Linux & FOSS enthusiast everywhere. ]

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30 Cool Open Source Software I Discovered in 2013 - nixCraft

Netflix Open Source Software Center

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Providing Actionable Insight at Massive Scale

Telemetry and metrics play a critical role in the operations of any company, and at more than a billion metrics per minute flowing into Atlas, our time-series telemetry platform, they play a critical role at Netflix. However, Operational Insight is considered a higher-order family of products at Netflix, including the ability to understand the current components of our cloud ecosystem via Edda, and the easy integration of Java application code with Atlas via the Spectator library.

Effective performance instrumentation allows engineers to drill quickly on a massive volume of metrics, making critical decisions quickly and efficiently. Vector exposes high-resolution host-level metrics with minimal overhead.

Outside of the operational domain, cost management and visibility into where our resources are used in the cloud is a multi-million question to be answered; we've built Ice as a way to expose ongoing cost and and cloud utilization trends to engineers so they can have a better understanding of the footprint of their applications in our environment.

Finally to validate reliability, we have the Simian Army which tests our instances for random failures.

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What Is Open Source – O’Reilly Media – ONLamp.com

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Answering the question What is open source? used to be a lot simpler than it is today.

Open source began as, and for the most part still is, software created by a community of people who are dedicated to working together in a highly collaborative and evolutionary way.

The most important difference between software created by the open source communities and commercial software sold by vendors is that open source software is published under licenses that ensure that the source code is available to everyone to inspect, change, download, and explore as they wish. This is the essential meaning of open source: the source code--the language in which the software is written and the key to understanding how the software works--can be obtained and improved by anyone with the right skills.

More precise definitions extend this basic concept by adding provisions concerning derivative works, the rights to use the software for any purpose, the rights of the original author, and prohibitions against discrimination.

For those new to the idea of open source or unfamiliar with the way software gets developed, here's how it works most of the time:

One or more developers--meaning people who have the skills to create software--get an idea about creating software to solve a problem.

The developers start writing code to create a solution. This is frequently called "scratching an itch."

The developers put this code where other developers can find out about it, download it, and play with it. There are many locations, such as SourceForge.com, where people post their projects.

Usually the source code is published under one of several popular open source licenses that ensure that the source code and any derivative works remain open source.

Through an informal process of sharing ideas, fiddling with each others' code, and trial and error, the software gets better and better, sometimes changing direction to solve new problems as new people discover the software.

At some point, the software gets finished or doesn't. It becomes popular, stays obscure, or fades away. Programs like Linux and Apache have had thousands of contributors. Other projects have been created by one or two people.

As time goes on, developers come and go, and projects become active or dormant.

A huge amount of amazing software has been created through this loose process. While much of open source development has focused on creating tools for software developers, an increasing amount of effort is being put into creating programs to solve less technical problems like publishing blogs or keeping track of skydiving activity.

While this explanation is sufficient for most purposes, such a simple answer is really no longer accurate. The right answer today depends on your perspective. To really understand the question What is open source? in a complete and useful way, we must know who is asking the question. For example, if we asked Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, or Bill Gates, we might get very different answers. Here's what open source means to a variety of different groups.

For users of software who have the skills to download and install software, open source means choice and freedom.

The choice comes from the huge amount of programs available. Some programs like Firefox (the smoking-hot browser from Mozilla.org) or OpenOffice.org (a suite of word processing, spreadsheet, and related programs) can be downloaded and used by just about anybody. Other open source projects such as Babeldoc or Axkit are mostly useful for software developers.

None of this open source software costs money. Some programs charge subscriptions for support, updates, documentation, or premium versions, but most of those are usable without paying a fee.

The freedom comes from the fact that the source code is available. If you want to change something, then you can, if you have the right skills. Only a handful of the people who download and use open source ever actually change it. Most use it as intended, but they have the freedom to modify it if they want.

For developers and engineers, open source has many additional meanings. To those who found a successful project, open source can mean fame, recognition, and sometimes even money from consulting or other sources.

Other developers see in open source a masterful software development methodology founded on the virtues of collaboration, incremental evolution, and working code.

For most developers, open source is a both a source of tools to help solve problems and a constant source of exciting new things to learn.

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Intel Security-McAfeeAntivirus, Encryption, Firewall …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Backed by an award-winning research team, security technologies from Intel Security use a unique, predictive capability that is powered by McAfee Global Threat Intelligenceenabling home users and businesses to stay one step ahead of online threats.

Intel Security enables users to safely connect to the Internet, and securely surf and shop the web. With McAfee All Access, McAfee Total Protection, McAfee Internet Security, and McAfee AntiVirus Plus, consumers get complete antimalware and antispyware protection, along with an integrated firewall to ensure their computer systems remain virus-free. Additionally, McAfees virus removal service helps you easily clean viruses and spyware from your PCall from the comfort of your home. Try out McAfee software by downloading our free antivirus trials.

McAfee Mobile Security provides comprehensive mobile device protection with antivirus, anti-theft, and web and app protection for smartphones and Android tablets.

Intel Security solutions deliver the highest levels of threat visibility and antimalware protection, including comprehensive system and endpoint protection, network security, cloud security, database security, endpoint detection and response, and data protection. Our complete security solutions extend beyond virus software and antimalware protection to server security, SIEM, and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). Backed by McAfee Global Threat Intelligence, our solutions help companies enhance visibility into their security postures, allowing business to embrace virtualization, cloud services, and mobile devices, while protecting critical assets and sensitive data, and improving incident response.

Our industry-leading security offerings include:

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WhatsApp Rolls Out End-To-End Encryption to its Over One …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

End-to-end encryption has just gone massively mainstream. In an update on March 31st, the Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp quietly pushed an update adding end-to-end encryption enabled by default to its chat and call functionality. They announced the change publicly on Tuesday, allowing the app's over 1 billion monthly active users to message each other with the guarantee of strong encryptionwhether they're exchanging messages, sending files, participating in group chats, or calling each other directly. Let us be clear: this means that WhatsApp has in one fell swoop moved the user base of end-to-end encryption from those protecting trade secrets, enthused crypto-hobbyists, and whistleblowers to an actually significant portion of the world population. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this move for the security and privacy of ordinary users. As of this week, there are hundreds of millions of users communicating with each other using end-to-end encryption for the very first time.

Not only are the app's users protected by encryption, but it's strong encryption. In a technical white paper released on April 4, WhatsApp describes in detail the underlying cryptographic exchange that occurs when users message each other. It's based on The Signal Protocol (ne Axolotl) developed at Open Whisper Systems, and utilizes double ratcheting to provide forward secrecy even if session keys are compromised. This means that if an adversary is able to uncover the cryptographic keys being used by the app, this will not compromise communications made with contacts in the pastthese will still be protected. The Signal Protocol uses strong and well-vetted cryptographic building blocks (or 'primitives') to construct and transmit messages, including ECDH using Curve25519. In addition to the service's strong end-to-end offerings, all communications between the client app and the WhatsApp server are encrypted using Noise Pipes from the Noise Protocol Framework.

Those familiar with using Signal will find the encryption workflow on WhatsApp similar. Both apps aim for ease of use, hiding the underlying cryptographic functionality away from the end user and integrating it as seamlessly as possible into the normal, intuitive app user interface. There are a few differences, though. The main differences have to do with how authenticity is established.

Traditionally, end-to-end applications have relied on manually verifying fingerprints. If Alice wants to verify Bob's identity, Alice would have Bob read off (or display the QR code for) his 'fingerprint'the digest form of his public encryption key. If Alice has the same fingerprint for Bob, she can be assured that when she retrieved Bob's key from the Internet it wasn't tampered with or replaced by the key of someone else, perhaps someone with malicious intent. Bob would then have Alice read her key as well.

WhatsApp has made the interesting decision not to repeat this workflow in its app. Instead, it presents a distinct QR code per interaction that is shared so that both Alice and Bob will be scanning the same QR code on each other's devices. Presumably, their reasoning is that it is more intuitive for both parties to be verifying the same exact image (which actually just consists of both Alice and Bob's fingerprints concatenated together.) What's interesting about this decision is that it indicates some consideration was given to introducing the concept of key verification to millions of people. In contrast, Apple's iMessage platform, which gained notoriety last year for its own use of end-to-end encryption, does not allow users to verify each others keys at all. WhatsApp is showing the world that you don't need to sacrifice usability in order to provide meaningful features such as ways to verify contact authenticity.

In order to verify the identity of a contact, first you'll want to ensure that your contact is using the latest update of WhatsApp that actually supports the new security features. You can do this on Android by viewing the contact's details:

You'll see a green lock to indicate your communications are encrypted. Then, you can tap the lock to verify a security code as described above:

From this screen, you can have your contact scan your code, and you can scan your contact's code.

One of the settings the security-conscious should be sure to change is enabling security notifications. This ensures that if the encryption key for your contact changes, you will be notified of this change so that you'll know you have to verify security codes again. With Signal these notifications are always shown, but with WhatsApp they are optional and are switched off by default. To change this in Android, go into Settings Account Security, and slide 'Show security notifications' to the right:

We've updated our Secure Messaging Scorecard to give WhatsApp 6 out of 7 stars. Unfortunately, WhatsApp remains closed source, which means that an independent reviewer can not review the code and its security. For this reason, if you're using Signal to communicate with contacts already, keep it. It's better to use a fully free and open source product. But because of the wide adoption of WhatsApp, you may have contacts you would have never expected using end-to-end encryption already. For the sake of their and your privacy and security, install WhatsApp and use it when communicating with them. You'll be glad you did.

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Whistleblower Edward Snowden and artist Jean-Michel Jarre …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

The GuardianEdward Snowden talking to Jean-Michel Jarre via video link.

In 2016, he's releasing a dance track.

The 32-year-old whistleblower is teaming up with legendary electronic artist Jean-Michel Jarre to produce a "techno" song for the musician's upcoming album, after newspaper The Guardian put them in touch at Jarre's request.

The song, called "Exit," will appear on "Electronica Volume II: The Heart of Noise," due out on May 6.

I've always appreciated electronic music," Snowden, who currently lives at an undisclosed location in Russia, says in a video produced by The Guardian. "The melodies I remember with the most fondness are from video games where they generate 8-bit music, and those kind of chip tunes have really made a resurgence in modern musical culture today, and I thinkpeople like Jean-Michel are the ones that really popularised that, made it possible for us to appreciate it as more than just background but as actual culture."

Jarre is a pioneering French electronic music producer. 67 years old, he has released more than two dozen album and racked up more than 80 million album sales. He says he is inspired by Snowden's decision to speak out against US government surveillance, and is dedicating the new entire album to him. "The first time I heart about Edward Snowden, I thought about my Mum," the artist says. "She was a great figure about the French Resistance and she went into the Resistance [at] more or less the same age."

The song itself which you can listen to a preview of in the video below is a "speedy techno track evoking the constant and hectic production of data, this obsessive quest for more information on everything and everybody," Jarre says.

It also includes vocal samples of Snowden talking about rights and privacy.

Snowden signs off the Guardian's video with an ode to the power of music. "Music works across language, Music works across borders. Music works across culture. Music, as with all arts, is one of the only ways that we can create bonds and bridges between human hearts that are beyond semantic understanding and that is reason more than anything else why we need music."

Rave on, Ed.

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Whistleblower Edward Snowden and artist Jean-Michel Jarre ...