A ring-tailed cat, a type of raccoon and inspiration for Ubuntu Raring Ringtail. Wikimedia Commons Ubuntu 13.04, scheduled for release on April 25, is now available for testing in its second and final beta release. Nicknamed “Raring Ringtail,” Ubuntu 13.04 is one of the final releases that’s just for desktops and servers. By this time next year, Canonical intends to release a single version of Ubuntu targeting all form factors, including smartphones and tablets. Ubuntu developers decided to disable a tool that allows easy installation of Ubuntu alongside an existing Windows instance. Wubi, short for Windows-based Ubuntu Installer, lets users install Ubuntu on the same disk partition as a Windows instance. “Due to various bugs in Wubi that have not been addressed in time for this Final Beta, the Ubuntu team will not be releasing the Wubi installer with 13.04,” a Raring Ringtail technical overview states . “Combined with the fact that Wubi has not been updated to work with Windows 8, and the focus on mobile client over desktop, the Foundations team does not expect Wubi to be in a releasable state for 13.04.” This doesn’t mean users can’t dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu. Without Wubi, dual-booting is slightly more complicated to set up and requires separate disk partitions. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Ubuntu “Raring Ringtail” hits beta, disables Windows dual-boot tool
Greg Costikyan sez, inBloom , a Gates-funded non-profit to harness data to improve grade school education, has partnered with New York and eight other states to encourage the development of apps to “further education” by using intimate data about students, without parental consent and with no ability for parents to opt out. Among the data shared are name, address, phone numbers, test scores, grades, economic status, test scores, disciplinary records, picture, email, race, developmental delay… just about everything conceivable , and all specific, none of it anonymized. inBloom has arrangements with nine states (New York, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Delaware and Kentucky) to do this. The XML schema used are downloadable here . Anyone can register as a developer and start using “sample” data, but “real” data is supposedly only available to developers with contracts with a school board. But this includes for-profit, third party developers, such as, say, Amplify, a News Corp subsidiary with a contract with New York. And it doesn’t appear there are any constraints on their use of this data. Who is Stockpiling and Sharing Private Information About New York Students? ( Thanks, Greg! ) 
bshell writes “According to the CBC, there was a massive leak of “files containing information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries. The leak amounts to 260 gigabytes of data, or 162 times larger than the U.S. State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010…In many cases, the leaked documents expose insider details of how agents would incorporate companies in Caribbean and South Pacific micro-states on behalf of wealthy clients, then assign front people called “nominees” to serve, on paper, as directors and shareholders for the corporations — disguising the companies’ true owners.” Makes a good read and there are some good interactive components. Perhaps Slashdot readers can figure out how the source of the leak, the D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got their hands on this data.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.