news.debuntu.org

Google has announced
that it will be phasing out the file download feature for projects hosted
on Google Code. "Downloads were implemented by Project Hosting on
Google Code to enable open source projects to make their files available
for public download. Unfortunately, downloads have become a source of abuse
with a significant increase in incidents recently. Due to this increasing
misuse of the service and a desire to keep our community safe and secure,
we are deprecating downloads."

 OStatic: Maintaining a local mirror has several benefits, and is a recommended practice for maintaining even modest number of servers.

GigaOM asserts
that Google will be taking over the desktop (regardless of the underlying
operating system) with its Chrome browser. "For many Chrome is just
a browser. For others who use a Chromebox or Chromebook, like myself, it’s
my full-time operating system. The general consensus is that Chrome OS, the
platform used on these devices, can only browse the web and run either
extensions and web apps; something any browser can do.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a
release about how the US state of Vermont is going on the offensive
against patent trolls. "Not content to strike back against a single
troll, Vermont is also poised to pass a bill dealing with the problem as a
whole. The Vermont House and Senate recently passed a bill to combat 'bad
faith assertions of patent infringement'. And the latest word
is that Vermont's governor is about to sign it into law."

 DesktopLinuxReviews: CrunchBang 11 has been released so it's time for a review.

Designing an enumeration type (i.e. "enum") for a language may seem like a
straightforward exercise, but the recently "completed" discussions over
Python's PEP 435
show that it has a few wrinkles. The discussion spanned several long
threads in two mailing lists
(python-ideas, python-devel) going back to January in this particular
iteration, but the
idea is far older than that. Subscribers can click below for the full
article from this week's edition.

 Unixmen: Nowadays, our personal computer is not only a work tool, it is also our private space where we store our little secrets.

Functions In PHP
Functions
are considered to be a complicated topic in programming and many newbies
think it will cost them a hand and a leg to master them. But mark my
words and mark them well - functions are your friends and they are one
of the easiest and most effective things in programming to learn.

 HotHardware: We recently set out to design a mini desktop computer with the wildly popular Raspberry Pi single board computer.

CentOS has updated kernel (C5:
denial of service).

Fedora has updated gallery3 (F18; F17:
cross-site scripting) and openstack-keystone (F18: multiple
vulnerabilities).

Mandriva has updated krb5 (UDP
ping-pong flaw in kpasswd).

Red Hat has updated kernel (RHEL5:
denial of servi