12.09.08

Links 09/12/2008: Why GNU/Linux Beats Mac OS X; The MAFIAA Attacks Ill People

Posted in News Roundup at 2:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• E-tax could include Apple, Linux users
• Unique Transparency Program Uncovers Problems with Voting Software
  

  The sorting software, called Ballot Browser (image above right shows the software’s user interface), is an open source program written in Python to run on a Windows or Linux platform. The Humboldt version is running on Debian Linux Etch and uses a Fujitsu high-speed scanner also using Debian Linux.

  [Roy: Brazil has already moved all its voting machines to GNU/Linux (hundreds of thousands of boxes).]

• 10 things Linux does better than OS X
  

  #1: Flexibility

  [...]

  #2: Open source

  [...]

  #3: Command line

  [...]

  #4: Hardware requirements

  [...]

  #5: Security

  [...]

  6. Portability

  [...]

  #7: Cost

  [...]

  #8: More available software

  [...]

  #9: Not so dumbed-down

  [...]

  #10: Keyboard efficiency

• Red Hat bucks the trend
  

  At a time when most companies are happy if the balance sheet does not show any red ink, Red Hat Linux has bucked the trend. Its stock price leapt 32 percent last week compared to that a year ago, during a week when technology stocks overall fell by 2.6 percent.

  According to information available at Channel Insider, the so-called mixed source company, Novell, saw its stock price fall by 11 percent, the biggest loser of the week.

• Software as a Subversive Activity, Part 4: One Geek’s Journey from Microsoft Slave to Linux Liberty
• Criticizing Vista Doesn’t Mean Promoting Ubuntu
• Alternative to Vista? Try the user friendly PCLINUXOS 2007!
• Installing Programmes in Linux vs. Windows: Which is Easier?
  

  Whenever someone tells me that something is easier in Windows, I am immediately suspicious. I wonder what compromises they have made in their own mind. This is telling. It says that Windows users are willing to put up with much in order to use Windows, before they begin to work. They either really don’t mind having to re-boot when they update and wait on endless updates after they boot up or they just see this as the cost of using Windows and it does not register.

• Desktop Environments

  • KDE at LinuxDay 2008 in Dornbirn, Austria
  • Gnome 3 mockup screenshots
  • Interview with Totem maintainer Bastien Nocera

• New Releases (also a BSD and Google Native Client)

  • Finnix 92.1 released
  • paldo 1.16 released
  • Webconverger 4 release notes
  • SystemRescueCd 1.1.3
  • [Puppy] LATEST VERSION: 4.1.2
  • Frenzy 1.1
  • BSDanywhere 4.4 released
  • Untangle 6.0.1
  • Clonezilla live 1.2.1-23 (stable) released
  • RIPLinuX 7.3
  • Native Client: A Technology for Running Native Code on the Web
    

    Modern PCs can execute billions of instructions per second, but today’s web applications can access only a small fraction of this computational power. If web developers could use all of this power, just imagine the rich, dynamic experiences they could create. At Google we’re always trying to make the web a better platform. That’s why we’re working on Native Client, a technology that aims to give web developers access to the full power of the client’s CPU while maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability and safety that people expect from web applications. Today, we’re sharing our technology with the research and security communities in the hopes that they will help us make this technology more useful and more secure.

• Devices

  • Smart mobile can turn on heating
    

    The smart box is based on an open Linux-based platform and includes a raft of wireless technologies which allow users to connect remotely via a PC or smartphone.

  • Linux Maemo to be used in high-end Nokia mobiles
    

    Despite snapping up Symbian only a matter of days ago, Nokia has revealed that in the future it plans to use a Linux-based operating system in its more expensive models.

  • Nokia to use Linux in More Mobile Phones
  • Tips: T-Mobile G1 – Getting the Most Out of the First ‘gPhone’

  • Sub-notebooks

    • Cheap PCs Weigh on Microsoft
    • Strong Netbook Shipments Buoy Notebook PC Market in Q3’08
    • When Linux fails
    • How SCOPE creates tomorrow’s Linux

F/OSS

• New: OOo-DEV 3.1 Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m37) available
• CM to open free software meet
• What’s Open About OpenSolaris?

• Firefox

  • Valley Girls: Mitchell Baker
  • Privacy, tabs and web content overhaul in Firefox 3.1 Beta 2
  • Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 now available for download
  • Browser Speed Test Revisited: Webkit Still The Best And Rips Opera 10 Alpha A New One

Standards

• 10 Standards Recommendations for the Obama Administration
• DCOS Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards emerges at 3rd IGF, Hyderabad
• Open Standards for the New Networked Vehicle Will Take Time

MAFIAA

• RIAA targets transplant patient Ciara Sauro
  

  Nineteen-year-old Ciara Sauro has pancreatitis and because she needs an islet cell transplant, she’s hospitalized every week, a situation resulting in a huge accumulation of medical bills.

  Now, “Because she didn’t defend herself against a copyright lawsuit, a federal judge in Pittsburgh ruled she’s a music pirate, and that could cost the Sauros almost $8,000 in fines,” says Pittsburg news channel WTAE.com.

  “I already have severe depression,” the story has her saying. “I mean, it’s so hard to sit there and think that I have to get in trouble for something that I didn’t do. It’s not fair.”

• Will EU repeat US copyright error?
  

  As I type this, members of the European Parliament are preparing to repeat one of the worst mistakes in copyright history — enacting a European version of America’s reviled Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.

  The EU version will tack 45 years onto the duration of copyright for existing and future sound recordings, making for a grand total of 95 years’ worth of monopoly control for companies that produce recordings.

  Five years after the US passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act, the US Supreme Court heard Eldred v Ashcroft, a case that challenged the constitutionality of extending the copyright of works that have already been created.

Leftovers

• Argentina-based OpeniMac Now Selling Mac Clones
• Can we get some better telecom shills please?
  

  I will let you decide which applies to the author of a “research study” of Google’s bandwidth use being pushed by the anti–net neutrality site NetCompetition.org. Using some rather dubious proxy measures—which would be worth further scrutiny as well, if the fundamental premise weren’t so manifestly bogus as to render such quibbling moot—telecom shill Scott Cleland estimates that Google and its subsidiaries “used” 16.5% of consumer broadband traffic in 2008, but only paid 0.8% of consumer broadband costs. This, the author brazenly claims, amounts to an implicit subsidy of some $6.9 billion to Google, and proves that Google “uses” 21 times as much bandwidth as it pays for.

  This is stupid on so many levels I’m almost too stunned to know where to begin. Why would you ever imagine that the per-byte cost of getting upstream traffic out on a few enormous pipes would be the same as the per-byte cost on the downstream side, where the same traffic is dispersed to a bazillion consumers, each with their own broadband connection? (Nestle pays a lot less per pound than you do for sugar; I await a “research study.”) What would possess anyone to posit that there’s some inherently “fair” division of the cost of connecting end users to popular (mostly free) services anyway? Google adds value to the product ISPs sell, presumably helping them to attract customers; should Eric Schmidt be demanding compensation for the “implicit subsidy”?

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Dolby Linux wizard John Gilbert gives us a look inside the movie industry 02 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Permalink  Send this to a friend