Category: Free as in Freedom

Privacy

I’ve just finished watching a pretty scary documentary called Terms and Conditions May Apply.  It doesn’t necessary tell me something I didn’t already know or at the very least suspected but it still made me feel pretty sick.

I had already begun the process of deleting my data from my social networking accounts and closing them down.  After watching this documentary it’s made me more determined to head down this path.  The scary thing is my data probably won’t actually be deleted from these companies servers (who knows how long they will retain it for).

This is a must see – I definitely recommend this documentary to everyone.

ownCloud 7

I have an updated article regarding ownCloud – ownCloud 9

05/08/2014 – I’ve just upgraded to version 7.0.1

Access, sync and share your data on across all of your devices. This is a great piece of open source software. I’m currently running ownCloud 7 on my own server. I can upload documents, video, photos and music and then get access to it anywhere. I can also upload my contacts, website bookmarks, calendar appointments and task lists. Because it’s running on my own server and the software is free (as in freedom ) I don’t have any privacy concerns.

Official website –http://owncloud.org/

If you are installing on Ubuntu just follow these instructions:
http://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=isv:ownCloud:community&package=owncloud

Here is a list of the some useful Apps I’ve installed with ownCloud:

Tasks Enhanced
Music
News

If you don’t want to run your own server there are ownCloud providers.

http://owncloud.org/providers/

If you’re looking for an alternative to Dropbox, Flickr, Google etc. that is Open Source and totally free software give ownCloud a try.

My home server

Rather than throw out an old computer I’ve decided to put it to some good use.  I’ve turned it into a server.  I’m primarily using it to play around with ownCloud (http://owncloud.org).

The specs of the computer are as follows:

Compaq Presario SR1915AN
AMD Sempron Processor 3400+ 1.8GHZ
80GB 7200 RPM Hard Disk
1GB RAM

Other details regarding the server:

OS – Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Webserver – Apache 2.4.7
PHP version 5.5.9
MySQL 5.5.37
ownCloud 6

Home server back
View from the back
Side view - nice and open
Side view – nice and open
Top view
Top view
Server on floor
Server and Modem sitting on the floor
Server and Modem
Server and Modem

LibreOffice

Use a free (free as in freedom) office suite i.e. word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database etc.  Create documents using an open standard, the OpenDocument Format (ODF).  Works on multiple operating systems, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, MS Windows.

My entire family is using LibreOffice – no MS Office in this house.

LibreOffice website
Compare LibreOffice and Microsoft Office
 

OpenDocument Format

No longer is the Office suite the only product that can reliably show the content of your documents. Get rid of all the issues with vendor based formats like .doc, .xls, .wpd and .ppt – thanks to ODF it has never been more easy to write software to produce or consume documents.

OpenDocument Format website
OpenDocument Campaign

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) congratulates UK Government on choosing Open Document Format
If you live in the UK, you’ll soon be able to fill out government paperwork with your freedoms intact. The British government announced last week that Open Document Format (ODF), HTML, and PDF will be the official file formats used by all government agencies.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-congratulates-uk-government-on-choosing-open-document-format

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users.

Website: https://www.fsf.org/

Favourite links
Free GNU/Linux distributions
PRISM collection
We Can Put an End to Word Attachments

Tor Challenge

Join the Tor Challenge

I’m using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to run my Tor relay.  I’m using an Amazon EC2 instance.  The instance type is a t1.micro and the OS is Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty), amd64 version.

These are the instructions I followed.  SSH into your AWS EC2 instance.

Figure out the name of your distribution.

lb_release -c

add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org trusty main

Change trusty to the name of your distribution e.g. sid, saucy or whatever.

Then add the gpg key used to sign the packages by running the following commands at your command prompt.

gpg –keyserver keys.gnupg.net –recv 886DDD89

gpg –export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add –

Now refresh your sources, running the following command (as root) at your command prompt.

apt-get update

Help you keep our signing key current. It is recommended you use it. Install it using.

apt-get install deb.torproject.org-keyring

To finally install Tor just run.

apt-get install tor

Edit the file /etc/tor/torrc

ORPort80
Nickname barrycus
RelayBandwidthRate 200 KB
AccountingMax 3 GB
AccountingStart month 3 15:00
ContactInfo bscable@amnet.net.au
ExitPolicy reject *:*

Because I’m using port 80 I need to allow incoming traffic to my AWS EC2 instance on port 80 i.e. AWS Security Groups.

Restart the Tor service.

sudo service tor restart

Configuring a Tor relay on Debian/Ubuntu

My Tor Relay stats
Tor Network Status