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19 June 2013

Boycott Ubuntu!

We've been using Debian for our server operating system of choice for over ten years now, but I've recently decided to change from Ubuntu to Debian for our workstations as well now since Ubuntu is increasingly becoming the "microsoft of the free software world" with pay software and services at every corner and compulsory spyware riddled throughout system. I was very dissapointed with the change of the desktop environment to Unity as well which I really can't stand, but the spyware is a real show-stopper for me so it's time for a change. Some other choices I've looked into which look really good are Linux Mint which currently holds the number one position in popularity of Linux distributions, Mageia which is number two, and gNewSense which has the strongest libre-oriented focus. Ubuntu - our local Ubuntu page (now legacy!) Debian - our local Debian page Ubuntu spyware, what to do?

25 April 2013

Food forests going viral!

Geoff Lawton, one of the original figures in Permaculture wants to make the knowledge of how to grow self-sustaining food forests available to the world to transform the planet. These food forests are living systems which can thrive anywhere from areas of heavy snow to deserts to densely populated cities. He's put out three videos so far which are a must-watch for anyone sustainability minded - especially those who want to start growing their own food! Video 1: Surviving the coming crises Video 2: The Property Purchase Checklist Video 3: Five Acre Abundance on a Budget Greening The Desert Well it turns out the course is $1000 which although good value from the western middle-class perspective, is completely unthinkable for most of the planet's population where over half the people earn less than $2 per day and the vast majority are struggling merely to keep their family fed, clothed and housed. Hi Geoff, I really got the sense from your initial video introductions that you wanted to change the world by making this invaluable knowledge available to all who were receptive to it. You made it sound as though you'd got to a sustainable and abundant position in life and didn't need to make huge piles of cash from it. But instead it's just another capitalist marketing scheme which is completely inaccessible to 99% of the people on the planet. Bitterly disappointed, Aran

4 April 2013

Organic Design move from US to Germany completed successfully!

The Organic Design sites have now been moved from Codero in the US to webgo24.de in Germany. We now have a faster 3.3GHz quad-core Xeon E3-1265L CPU (with 8 threads and 8MB L3 cache). We've also gone up from 4GB to 16GB of ECC RAM and from 250GB disk up to 1.8TB with raid-1 for extra data integrity. Pretty much all the software is exactly the same on the new server as the last one apart form two things, first we changed from Ubuntu 10 to Debian 6, and secondly we've changed our database server from MySQL to MariaDB. MariaDB is a drop-in replacement so that no configuration needs to be changed to migrate to it, and it has several advantages including better performance and flexible back-end storage options such as distributed "NoSQL" storage protocols. But most importantly for us is that MariaDB is 100% open source whereas MySQL has been getting less and less open source since it was bought by Oracle a few years ago. MySQL co-creator Michael "Monty" Widenius forked MySQL to create MariaDB, which has picked up momentum, being included by default in Fedora, Open SUSE, Slackware and Wikipedia. “Many of the original MySQL core developers, including me, didn't believe that Oracle would be a good owner of MySQL and we wanted to ensure that the MySQL code base would be free forever” — Michael "Monty" Widenius

1 April 2013

Bitcoin hit $100 today!!!

This is a screenshot from the Bitcoinity chart site. The picture in the background is the Joker from the latest Batman movie and was changed from the default black background on the site for April fools day. When the price went over $100, money poured down the page and some people dressed as pink fluffy pigs danced at the top - sorry I missed that in my screenshot :-(

18 March 2013

The first haircut goes to Cyprus!

On Saturday, Cypriot deposit-holders got a nasty surprise when they learned that EU ministers and the IMF agreed to massive bailout plan for Cyprus, which includes a one-time tax of 9.9% on Cypriot bank deposits that exceed 100,000 euros, as well as a tax of 6.75% on smaller deposits. The unprecedented decision, which appears to punish ordinary citizens for failures in the financial system, has sparked panic and protests as people queued up at ATM machines to rescue their savings. Many cash machines ran out of banknotes because of the panic withdrawals. It would be hard to over-emphasize how significant the Cyprus situation is. The EU demonstrated under no uncertain circumstances that they will destroy the rule of law to maintain their own power. It was a recognition of tyranny that many of us have always assumed was the case but yesterday became reality. Bitcoin jumped up a few dollars going over USD $50 shortly after the Cyprus haircut occurred showing that a significant loss of faith in the fiat currencies has likely been caused by the haircut (edit: now two weeks after the haircut, Bitcoin is over $90!). Expect gold to go up shortly too and silver even more as it's unnaturally far below it's usual 1/16th of gold's value. Stop, thief! Run on ATMs in Cyprus as govt mulls savings tax It's not just Russian oligarchs that were hit! The End Of Systemic Trust: The Canary Just Died National planning Cyprus-style solution for New Zealand The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Cypriot government agencies should be held accountable for crisis The new collapse template for the Western banking system Cyprus President Calls For "Iceland" Solution Financial Cleansing - The Cyprus Bail-in Template

9 March 2013

Rest in peace Hugo Chávez

Leaders flocked to Caracas on Friday as Venezuelans paid an emotional farewell to their late President Hugo Chávez. His successor Nicolas Maduro has since been sworn in as acting president and called for snap elections. Chávez’s closest allies were present at the state funeral in a military academy where his body has been laid in state. Among the high-profile leaders were Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Cuban President Raul Castro, Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko and Spanish crown-prince Felipe de Borbon. Other regional allies such as Brazil’s Dilma Rouseff and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa were also present. Chávez died on Tuesday at the age of 58 following a two-year fight against cancer. His body will be embalmed and preserved just like Lenin, and laid out in the ‘Mountain Barracks’ where he devised a failed coup. The venue will be turned into a Museum of the Bolivarian Revolution. Venezuelans and world leaders bid farewell to Hugo Chávez President Hugo Chavez: A 21st Century Renaissance Man 50 Truths about Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution The Mass Media’s Defamation of Hugo Chávez The revolution will not be televised - excellent documentary about the 2002 coupa chavez.avi - a downloadable version of the film (use right-click, save as)

6 February 2013

Organic Design webmail updated

We've upgraded our version of Roundcube webmail from 0.71 to 0.85 which is a great improvement. It's more snappy and looks a lot slicker too :-) See our email configuration procedure for details about installation and upgrading of Roundcube, or Roundcube mail website for more information about the software.

2 October 2012

NIST Selects Winner of SHA-3 Competition!

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the winner of its five-year competition to select a new cryptographic hash algorithm, one of the fundamental tools of modern information security. The winning algorithm, Keccak (pronounced “catch-ack”), was created by Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen and Gilles Van Assche of STMicroelectronics and Michaël Peeters of NXP Semiconductors. The team’s entry beat out 63 other submissions that NIST received after its open call for candidate algorithms in 2007, when it was thought that SHA-2, the standard secure hash algorithm, might be threatened. Keccak will now become NIST’s SHA-3 hash algorithm. See also: The Keccak web site The Sponge Functions Corner Random numbers, Encryption and Hashing

27 September 2012

Site upgrade

The site has been upgraded today from MediaWiki version 1.16.5 to version 1.19.2. We haven't upgraded for a long time because there was a lot of functionality in the site that cannot work with recent versions of MediaWiki, but it's time to move on now and so a lot of these things which don't work are now marked as "Legacy".

22 July 2012

Syria needs you!

This is from Syria's "99%", they urge you to learn the truth of their situation from the real people on the ground, not from the mainstream media which is a total disinformation campaign. Please help them by listening to them and sharing the information on their Facebook page. See also: Occupy Syria's Facebook page syrianyouth.com “Libyan style” fake fall of Damascus Interview with Assad on July 4th part 1, part 2