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September 2011

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Released Neubot 0.4.2
by Simone Basso Sept. 19, 2011

Sept. 19, 2011

Released Neubot 0.4.2 http://www.neubot.org/neubot-0.4.2 Version 0.4.2 is the latest generally-available stable release of Neubot, distributed for Ubuntu >= 10.04, MacOSX >= 10.6 and Windows >= XP SP3. Of course, Neubot 0.4.2 is also available in source format (.tar.gz and .zip). This release contains 143 patches. The diffstat says: 87 files changed, with 3167 lines inserted and 1392 lines deleted. Here are the most relevant changes: o MacOS: automatic updates in the background. This implementation of the automatic updates is very generic, in the sense that is based on the standard UNIX API and does not leverage MacOS specific facilities, such as launchd(8). I have patches to do that but they are not ready for this release and they will go into the next one; o Win32: disable autostart at the end of the install. Because the installer runs with high privileges and so starts Neubot with high privileges too. (Of course Neubot will autostart each time you login on the system and the _only_ difference is that it is not started at the end of the installation.) I have scheduled some work on the Windows installer for the coming weeks. I hope I will be able to find a viable solution for this privileges issue too; o Ubuntu: new GUI, based on PyGtk+ and PyWebKit. The basic idea is to embed WebKit into a Gtk+ window and to point it to Neubot Web UI. So, now you use Neubot's own application instead of opening its Web User Interface into the browser. I think this is more usable and clear. http://www.neubot.org/improving-user-experience-under-ubuntu BTW I have plans to do something similar for MacOS and Windows too; o database: add OS name and Neubot version to results. I've added them because they help data analysis. The version is important because the behavior of the tests may change over time, because of changes in the code base. The operating system is important as well, because every OS implements TCP/IP in a peculiar way; o net: undo the 262144-receive buffer optimization. Using a fixed-size buffer penalizes Linux, which has very advanced buffer management strategies designed for high bandwidth-delay product networks. (Having the version number and the OS name in the database allows to track the effect of this change quite well); o www: if privacy settings are not set, the starting page is privacy.html not index.html. We are modifying our installers to show privacy policy and ask for permission to collect and share/publish. The installer will also refuse to install if you don't give the permission to collect the results. But the work is still in progress, and for now only the MacOS installer is ready. Meanwhile, it will not hurt to land users on privacy.html; o privacy: do not allow nonsense transitions once you have set the permissions. There are two different changes here. 1. Once you have said that your are informed you cannot step back and tell Neubot you're not informed. This is pure common sense. 2. Also, once you've given the permission to collect your results you cannot step back. This is to align with installers, that are being modified to allow installation only if you read the policy and give the permission to collect the results; o speedtest: use just one connection, like bittorrent does. This is the first step to make the two tests more comparable: of course comparing two connections with one _isn't_ fair, especially with high bandwidth-delay products or when there is more average congestion. More work is needed before we can say that the two tests stress the network in the same way. Namely, we need to change speedtest to work on a request-response basis, like bittorrent does. So, this is just the first step in the right direction. (And this is another case where saving the version number in the database would be very helpful to track the effects of the change.) o server: add support for a simple API to assess server state. This API is needed to implement a simple Nagios plugin, which can say whether the server state is OK or not; o nagios-plugin: finalize it. Now the plugin uses the abovementioned server API to assess server status and return something in the (OK, WARNING, ERROR) domain. o more code rationalizations, bug and reliability fixes, unit tests. The release candidates have been tested on Ubuntu 10.04, Windows XP SP3, Windows 7 and MacOSX 10.6. The main testing platform has been my laptop with MacOS 10.6.8. Packages and source archives available here: http://www.neubot.org/download ChangeLog here: https://raw.github.com/neubot/neubot/0.4.2/ChangeLog Commit history here: https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commits/0.4.2 SHA256sums here: https://raw.github.com/neubot/neubot-sha256s/master/0.4.2/SHA256 People that contributed to this release, with patches, testing and/or feedback: Simone Basso Marco Scopesi Alessio Palmero Aprosio Federico Morando Juan Carlos De Martin Matt Mathis Thank you for you attention, Simone <http://www.neubot.org/people#basso>

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34° Mercoledì di NEXA - 14 settembre 2011
by Giuseppe Futia Sept. 13, 2011

Sept. 13, 2011

* 34° Mercoledì di NEXA* *I prossimi passi del Centro NEXA * http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-34 *Mercoledì 14 settembre 2011 ore 18 -- 20* (2° mercoledì del mese) Via Boggio 65/a, Torino (primo piano) Ingresso libero Live streaming: http://nexa.polito.it/events Al termine della pausa estiva riprende l'appuntamento con i Mercoledì di NEXA, che avranno luogo come di consueto ogni secondo mercoledì del mese. Il prossimo incontro costituirà l'occasione per i co-direttori, lo staff e i fellows del Centro NEXA per discutere a proposito del lavoro da svolgere nei prossimi mesi, dando spazio a coloro che avessero idee da proporre o raccontare. Tra le attività in corso, vi ricordiamo che il Centro NEXA è al lavoro per partecipare alla consultazione pubblica <http://www.agcom.it/default.aspx?DocID=6693> aperta da Agcom sullo schema di regolamento in materia di tutela del diritto d'autore sulle reti di comunicazione elettronica. Tra le date da non perdere menzioniamo l'Open Government Data Camp 2011 <http://opengovernmentdata.org/camp2011/>, il più importante evento a livello internazionale relativo all'universo degli Open Data, che si svolgerà a *Varsavia il* *20 e il 21 ottobre* *2011*: il Centro NEXA e la rete tematica LAPSI <http://lapsi-project.eu/> saranno partner dell'evento. Vi ricordiamo inoltre che il *17 dicembre 2011* si terrà *la terza Conferenza annuale del Centro NEXA su Internet & Società*, che includerà anche la sessione *CCIT2011* nella quale si farà il punto della situazione di Creative Commons in Italia. Quest'anno il gruppo di lavoro di CC Italia ha rilasciato la versione 3.0 <http://nexa.polito.it/cc_3.0> delle licenze con importanti adattamenti al nostro sistema giuridico. Come sempre, all'incontro del prossimo *14 settembre* sono invitati tutti coloro i quali avranno piacere di intervenire nel dibattito. *Ufficio Stampa Centro NEXA:* Giuseppe Futia NEXA Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica Tel. +39 333 1103017

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