Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Ramdisks – Now We Are Talking Hyperspace!

  Ramdisks are usually spoken of in hushed tones when sysadmins get together. Some view them with awe because of their performance and some view them with skepticism and say they are only useful for creating benchmarks. Almost all of them agree that using them on a regular basis must be done with care because of the problem of losing power shuts immediately shuts down the ramdisk erasing the contents of the ramdisk. However, there are uses for ramdisks besides running benchmarks. More over there are storage devices that use RAM as the storage media that can reach rarefied levels of performance of millions of IOPS.

• Should You Care About Linux?

  Once you have loaded Linux onto your machine, what then? You need software and games. Corel reports more than a million downloads of its Word Perfect 8 for Linux. Loki Software has ported the game Civilization to Linux.

• Podcast Season 1 Episode 11

  In this episode: Android isn’t as good as Windows CE on smartbooks. Debian bundles Mono. Crossover 8 is released while Opera 10 and Firefox 3.5 are nearly here. Is sound a disaster on Linux? And should geeks boycott closed platforms like the XBox 360, Playstation 3 and iPhone?

• Anti-FUD

  • The UNIX versus NT Organization

    While going through some old notes, I was reminded that there once existed a website dedicated to explaining the differences between Unix and Windows NT. It began as a research project by one John Kirch. According to the site, after finding almost no information on the subject for his own purposes, Kirch decided to write a paper that compared the two systems critically. The paper covered various topics such as the costs and licensing, functionality, system reliability, management, performance and security issues, common misconceptions about both operating systems, and others. This paper was the beginning for the awareness site that also includes a lengthy article listing, links to FreeBSD and Linux resources, and a litany of companies and which web servers and operating systems host their sites.

    The site authors denounced the claim that the UNIX versus NT Organization was “an anti-Microsoft movement”, stating that “this would be a poor description of what we are about.” We share this sentiment — if Windows is the best option for you, then you have the freedom to choose to use it.

  • So what is stopping YOU from using Linux?

    When it comes down to the nitty gritties there are many reasons why you should use Linux and very few reasons why not. You can postulate all you like. You can um this and er that but when you look at actual fact and not FUD then Linux does look equal, nay better, positioned to be an alternative to other operating systems.

    [...]

    So tell me the reason why you think you can’t use Linux. Make sure it is a valid one and well thought out. If it is a legitimate reason then I will gladly agree. If it is an uninformed reason then I will inform you. If it is a stupid reason then I will not respond.

  • Windows is good enough? Well so is Linux!

    Linux is also “good enough” for the very same reasons that windows uses. In a lot of things Linux is better than windows, in others worse, in general good enough. Oh, its a different operating system and people are not used to it. Crapola! I have had people, who don’t even know what Linux is, come and use my computer to read their email off of the net, download and print them out. Without me opening my mouth. They used it just as competently as their own windows computer.

• Desktop

  • Berlin art colleges switch to Linux

    Berlin’s art colleges are completely switching over to Linux. Most of the productivity software on the workstations has already been swapped for free alternative products as part of a project that started over eighteen months ago. The IT team at ServiceCenter-IT, responsible for the migration at three colleges; the Hanns Eisler music college, the Ernst Busch drama college and the Berlin-Weissensee art college, is hoping for an easy migration, as users will be able to keep on working with their familiar applications. Starting in June, their workstation PCs will switch to Ubuntu Linux and their servers will use Debian.

  • System76 Bonobo Professional

    The System76 Bonobo Professional starts out at $1,769 USD and can go all the way up to $4,754 if factoring in the highest-end hardware available through System76 and backing it with a three-year warranty and three years worth of technical support.

  • David Versus Two Goliaths

    I have chosen Ubuntu almost 3 years ago and I will keep on using it. I use Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu netbook remix. I use Ubuntu more often but I seem to prefer the feel and look of Kubuntu. I prefer the professional look of KDE 4.2.4 over gnome 2.26, that is my opinion and we are all allowed to have opinions.

• Server

  • eBox Bundles Network Services in a Friendly Package

    The good news is that the eBox platform is completely open-source, licensed under the GPL and free to download, with an active community developing it and driving the project forward.

  • BMC Mainframe Push Helps Fuel Solid Growth

    Another is around the work BMC is doing with specialty engines, which are processors designed to run specific tasks—such as Java or Linux workloads. The specialty engines take those workloads off the general-purpose processor, which increases the performance of the processor. BMC is enabling mainframe users to run some BMC software on the specialty engines, freeing up the general-purpose processor to run other workloads.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 2.6.31-rc1

    We’ve had the regular two-week (and one day) merge window, and -rc1 is out, and the merge window is closed.

  • Enter ext4, the filesystem of the future

    iTWire: Fedora has started using ext4 as the default filesystem. What are some of the pros and cons of such a decision?

    Chris Samuel: ext4 is a much bigger change from ext3 than ext3 was in turn from ext2. Ext3 essentially just added journalling to ext2, whereas ext4 moves to an extent based filesystem with other features such as delayed allocations (like XFS) to allow the allocator to be more intelligent about how it lays things out on disk and much bigger filesystem sizes (though the programs to create ext4 filesystems can’t actually make them for you yet). Another nice feature is the fact that the journal data is checksummed so the filesystem can spot any corruption after a crash.

  • Achieving Robust Clustered Storage with Linux and GFS

    Load balancing is difficult. We often we need to share file systems via NFS or other mechanisms to provide a central location for the data. While you may be protected against a Web server node failure, you are still sharing fate with the central storage node.

  • Kernel Log: Main development phase of Linux 2.6.31 completed

    Just over two weeks after the release of Linux 2.6.30, Linus Torvalds has released 2.6.31-rc1, the first release candidate of Linux 2.6.31. As usual, “rc1″ completes the merge window during which the kernel hackers incorporate the majority of new features into the respective new version’s main development branch. In the eight to eleven weeks that follow, the programmers tend to integrate only smaller changes to fix bugs in the newly merged code without causing any further problems. If the kernel hackers stick to their usual pace despite the summer and holiday season in the northern hemisphere, Linux 2.6.31 will probably be released in late August or early September.

  • Should device manufacturers make their firmware open source?

    Independent film makers have developed a firmware update to Canon’s 5D Mark II digital SLR. What should Canon do about it?

• Applications

  • Meiga: One of The Best Linux File Sharing Programs

    Sharing files on a network generally requires some amount of configuration, know-how and time. Things get even geekier when you have different machines running different operating systems. Damien showed you how to use Giver back in March. There is however, a simpler solution if you don’t want to go through all the steps of setting up a share. Enter Meiga.

  • chromium-bsu: fast paced, arcade-style, scrolling space shooter

  • Amazon mp3 store: Linux kudos

    Heh, just bought an mp3 album from Amazon (having discovered Synaesthesia on last.fm), and expected the usual “Linux? Sorry, is that Windows or Mac?”

  • A Quick Look at Two Opensource File Encryption Software

    Upon my search, I found two different open source programs that hashes the key to 256 bits (2^256 different possibilities):

    * ccrypt
    * aescrypt

  • Top 10 Linux Backup and Recovery software

    After an extensive research, we explored the top 10 Linux backup and recovery software.

    * afbackup
    * Amanda
    * Aconis
    * Areca
    * Backup Pc
    * fwbackups
    * SBAdmin
    * Simple Backup
    * Bacula
    * BAR

• Desktop Environments

  • LXDE: Resource-Friendly Desktop Environment for X

    We’re all pretty much versed in the worlds of GNOME, KDE, and to a lesser degree, Xfce, and while there are lots of alternatives, none of the smaller ones really seem to gain much traction beyond their fans. An exception is LXDE, a small and resource efficient desktop environment.

    The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, or LXDE as it’s more commonly known, really takes its “lightweightness” seriously. They claim that LXDE’s minimum hardware specifications are only slightly higher than that of Windows 98, consuming only 45MB of memory after boot. Any Pentium II processor should be capable enough of running LXDE, and thanks to it being ported to ARM an

    [...]

    It seems like LXDE has the possibility of becoming the desktop environment of choice for resource-constrained machines. I have several Pentium II machines that would perform pretty good with LXDE as their desktops, and I must say, t has become a tempting idea.

  • KDE

    • KDE 4.3 RC + Lancelot themes… a bad combo

      Just as a note, since Air is now the default theme for Plasma (and what’s worse, it is even called “default” instead of “air”), you’ll see that the Lancelot themes in 4.3 RC are screwed up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fix this before 4.3 RC tagging today (I was too late to discover the issue in the first place).

    • KDE 4.3 branched, trunk is now 4.4

      The release team has just done something a bit different from past release cycles to test out some modifications to our usual work flow: with the release of the first release candidate, 4.3 has been immediately branched off of the mainline trunk, and trunk is now 4.4. In the past we’ve done this only when the new release is actually made, not during the release candidates.

    • On KDE4.3

      We are almost one month far away from the kde4.3 release. Yesterday the 4.3 rc1 was tagged and due to excellent work of our colleagues in OBS we have it already.

      Personally, I would have liked it to go a little bit further away in terms of usability, we will speak about that later. This release will mark the break with 3.5. I see no real reason for not using kde 4.3. All the functionality that people were crying after from 3.5 is finally up and running (a lot of time better) in KDE 4.3.

    • Amarok context view: Flickr applet and minor changes

• Distributions

  • The g:Mini 3.0 is Released

    The GoblinX Project is proud to announce the release of the new stable g:Mini distribution. The g:Mini 3.0 is released. The g:Mini formerly known as ‘GoblinX Mini Edition‘ is the son of GoblinX and contains only XFCE as the windows manager and GTK/GTK2 based applications. The edition is ideal for those users whose want to remaster the distribution.

  • Elive 1.9.31 Offers Support for Acer Aspire One

    The Elive team announced today yet another unstable release of their Elive Live CD Linux distribution, now at version 1.9.31. Being powered by Debian, Enlightenment E17 and Linux kernel 2.6.26.8, the new development version of Elive, brings many improvements and bug fixes in various areas. But, the good news is that, among other things, the team introduced full support for the Acer Aspire One netbook. Without further introduction, let’s take a closer look at the changes brought by Elive 1.9.31…

  • R.I.P. Linux 9.2 Has Linux Kernel 2.6.29.5

    Only twelve days after announcing version 9.1, Kent Robotti released yesterday a new stable version of his popular R.I.P. (Recovery Is Possible) Linux distribution. R.I.P. 9.2 uses the Linux kernel 2.6.29.5, updates the SVN for GRUB 2 1.96 and comes with a development version of QEmacs 0.4.0 and the recently released Mozilla Firefox 3.5 RC2 web browser.

  • ArtistX Linux 0.7 – An Ubuntu Alternative – Review & Screenshots

    ArtistX is still in the early stages and may not be your workhorse desktop distro just yet (they are still on v.0.70), but there’s a great potential here. If you are interested in using Linux as your multimedia workstation, then you’ll definitely want to give it a try. The only question that I have is, what can they add for the next release, since everything is already included!

  • Mandriva

    • Five Desktop Linuxes Systems

      Of course you can also use straight Mandriva Linux, and perhaps you should. At one time, Mandriva was a well-regarded and well-known Linux distribution but over the years it’s dropped out of sight. It’s time to check into it again.

    • What Took You So Long?

      In my last blog post an anonymous reader asked a friendly question in the comments area, “What took you so long? PCLinuxOS isn’t exactly a well kept secret…”

      How true! I’ve popped that Live CD of PCLinuxOS in and out of my computer for a few years now. I’ve known about it and I’ve played with it, but I’ve never really gone the final step of installing it…until now. This time around, I gave it a good close look. And I’m so happy I did!

    • Distro upgrading today

      I am really keen to see how far the Mandriva 2010.0 KDE 4.3 implementation has come along! Also, Mandriva has some of the best art work and default screen savers of any distribution – only Fedora gives it a run, but Mandriva beats it. Mandriva also runs circles around Fedora on the desktop, so playing with Mandriva Cooker as an experimental system is a no brainer – I do it at least monthly, but often more frequently than that.

    • PCLinuxOS! Wow!

      The extras bonus in all this was the PCLinuxOS forum and community. A really terrific, friendly bunch of folks who are welcoming and ready to help! I had no problems correcting minor issues because i had the help and support of the PCLinuxOS forum.

  • Red Hat

    • Linux distributor Red Hat reports 7 percent increase in profits

    • Red Hat Beats as Frugal Firms Embrace Linux

      “With overall IT spending down on a year-over-year basis, our largest customers continue to renew and spend more with Red Hat,” said Jim Whitehurst, the Red Hat CEO, during a conference call late Wednesday.

    • Fedora’s All Spins Zone

      To my knowledge, Fedora is the only project or distribution that offers the wide variety of live CDs profiling multiple applications and covering multiple versions.

      Grab yourself a Spin, take it for a spin and tell me what you think of it.

    • Open Source: The future of virtualisation

      RED HAT ELIMINATES VIRTUALISATION BARRIERS
      With Red Hat’s Enterprise Virtualisation, businesses can realise improved operational efficiency without changing the application environment. A server virtualised withRed Hat Linux 5 can run existing Windows or Red Hat operating systems as virtual guests, preserving existing hardware and software, while reducing downtime and deployment costs. For IT administrators, this also means tighter server consolidation, simplified system management and ultimately, enhanced performance.

    • Review: CentOS 5.3

      Overall I’m highly impressed with CentOS 5.3! I really feel it’s an improvement over 5.0 and does just enough to reach that tipping point where I feel it is both corporate IT ready, as well as newbie friendly. So pretty much anyone can use it if they want.

  • Ubuntu

    • Linux Mint 7

      Linux Mint has been one of my favorite distributions and it remains so. I happily recommend to anybody looking for a good desktop Linux distribution. It comes with a good bit of software by default, has an extremely attractive theme and makes multimedia related tasks quite simple for the user.

    • Ubuntu Netbook Remix – User Interface Pro/Am Opinions

      Finally, a couple of comments about UNR compared to Moblin. The basic desktop appearance is quite different – UNR has everything spread open, and text labels for each item. Moblin has everything on a panel across the top, with a symbol for each item. I have to say honestly that the relevance of the symbol to the item escapes me and pretty much everyone else I’ve asked about it. I find desktop management and window selection to be more natural on UNR, but I suppose that is because it is essentially the same as what I am used to.

    • New and Updated Distributions on Ant (the Dual Atom nettop)

    • First Look: Ultimate Edition 2.2

      Though only four months passed since the previous release, Ultimate Edition 2.2 was a highly anticipated upgrade by fans all over the world, especially for the fact that it would almost certainly use the Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) base.

      And so it is. TheeMahn announced the new version a few days ago and we couldn’t miss the chance to give you some feedback on how it looks, feels and performs. Ultimate Edition is available as a 2.0 GB DVD ISO and can be run on both 32- and 64-bit platforms.

    • Ultimate Edition 2.2

      Ultimate Edition is an ‘improved’ version of Ubuntu. Unlike Linux Mint, which contains modifications to the source code, Ultimate Edition is simply a lot more packages added to Ubuntu and then made into an ISO using reconstructor.

• Devices/Embedded

  • TI Debuts Multicore Femtocell DSPs, Partners with Continuous Computing, mimoOn

    Texas Instruments unveiled a new new family of multicore DSPs (digital signal processors) enabling residential and enterprise HSPA femtocells. The solutions include a portfolio of complementary analog solutions, support for Linux, and software solutions from third party developers (Continuous Computing and mimoOn).

  • HP’s Linux-based Printer connects to the web

    Instead, the applications, which are written in Java and run on an embedded Linux OS, are customized so that they only display what the user will specifically need.

  • ARM-based Linux PC in a plug comes to the UK

    Marvell has introduced an ARM-based Linux PC in a plug for £63. Called SheevaPlug, the device is a reference design, evaluation kit, and usable home server rolled into one, and is a shrunk version of the US-only SheevaPlug released earlier this year.

  • Phones

    • The Long March of Androids to the Enterprise

      Androids may not yet be breathing down RIM’s neck, but the prospect of more competition for a place in the enterprise is definitely growing — and BlackBerry addiction may be on the wane. T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G is just the first of an onslaught of Android-based phones expected in the second half of this year.

    • Hero: HTC names third Android smartphone

      Hero also has a 15° curve running through its body that HTC claimed makes the phone perfectly shaped for holding in your hand and against your face.

    • HTC Hero comes with Adobe Flash

      Adobe has confirmed that the latest Android handset from HTC, the Hero, will come with a proper Flash client: version 9 with support for ActionScript 2, with version 10 to follow some time next year.

    • Working with XML on Android

    • Method found for installing homemade apps on Pre

      Participants in the Palm Pre-oriented community PreCentral.net have discovered how to add unsigned applications to the smartphone, opening the way for users to experiment with homebrewed applications.

    • Ars reviews the Palm Pre, part 2: the webOS experience

      In this second installment of our Palm Pre review, we go in-depth on the software side of the device. Does Palm’s webOS really live up to its promise as a “cloud” messaging mobile? More on this topic, as well as the calendar, browser, contacts, alerts, dialer, and other features, inside.

  • Sub-notebooks

    • MilaX OS – Solaris for Netbooks

      MilaX 0.4 is released. MilaX is a Solaris based Operating System & is a small size Live CD distribution which runs completely off a CD or a USB pendrive.

    • OLPC software to power aging PCs

      It has been used by more than one million children on the XO laptop and has also been released as part of other operating systems. For example, it was bundled with releases of the Ubuntu and Fedora Linux systems.

      The latest release – Sugar on a Stick – allows anyone to run the software from a 1GB USB stick. It includes 40 programs, including a word processor, drawing application and games.

    • The little Linux school house

    • Sugar on a Stick 1.0 released

      Sugar Labs, the organisation behind the One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop software, have released the USB stick version of the Sugar Learning Platform version 1.0.

    • What’s next for Qualcomm?

      A netbook with a Snapdragon processor, it runs Linux and offers constant connection.

    • Always Innovating Touch Book hits production

      When it comes to specs, you can expect an 8.9-inch 1,024 x 600 touchscreen, a OMAP3530 processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 8GB of SD storage and 512MB of RAM and NAND memory. It uses Linux and has an accelerometer inside.

    • Hybrid Smartbook Touch Book Shipping Next Month

      The slate is Linux powered and has an 8 GB SSD and 512 MB of memory working with a TI OMAP3530 processor. This sounds anemic, but it should actually run decently and for a very long time on a battery charge. The Touch Book is only $299, while the optional keyboard is $99.

    • £149.99 Acer Aspire One A150-Aw Linux Netbook

      The Aspire one was designed to get you online in no time at all and thanks to the Linpus Linux Lite operating system, start up and shut down times are reduced to the minimum. With the Aspire one running on Linux environment, the simplicity continues with the intuitive and specifically optimized software interface.

    • Linux Netbooks: back to the facts

      This shift is helped by the fact that Microsoft is practically giving XP away for free. There are however a lot of opportunities in the near future for next generation Linux distributions on the netbooks, smartbooks and mini PCs. I’ll cover these in an article next week.

Free Software/Open Source

• Free Download: 100 Open Source Apps for Windows

  And if you’re a Linux or Mac user, you’ll be happy to know that many of these apps work on those operating systems as well.

• Second Life Gets New Open Source Viewer

  Second Life creators Linden Lab have launched a new Second Life-compatible viewer, which the company developed with the open source community. The company’s goal was to create a “widely-used, openly developed version of the Second Life client.”

  Snowglobe will contain new Second Life features before they become available in the official release. That said, not all features will make it there.

• REVIEW: Network Virtualization Stands Out in OpenSolaris 2009.06

  Sun Microsystems’ OpenSolaris 2009.06 offers a sneak peek at what’s coming down the pike in Solaris. One of the most compelling features in OpenSolaris 2009.06 is the Crossbow network virtualization system, which allows OpenSolaris administrators to provide individual network services or virtual machines with their own virtualized network adapter and stack.

• The dangers of taking credit for open-source software

  This is a cautionary tale. Clearly someone made a mistake, and Hughes’ reputation may end up bearing the brunt of the error. It’s important to remember that in the software business there are always two currencies at play: the typical financial currency that we usually think of (you know, money), and credit for the work that was done. Although there is a lot of open-source software that is licensed to be free to use, that fact amplifies the focus on correctly attributing credit for the work that went into the software.

• The Digital Open Calls on Kids to Enter FOSS Contest

  Non-profit research group Institute for the Future has partnered with Boing Boing and Sun Microsystems to create an online community of young inventors who want to work with open source technology. To sweeten the interest in becoming a part of The Digital Open, community organizers are holding a contest for kids 17 and under to submit their own open source projects for a chance to win a laptop, Flip camera, or one of several other prizes.

• Firefox

  • Firefox in Context

    Mozilla’s mission is to build choice, innovation, participation and opportunity into the ways people interact with the Internet. The centerpiece is Firefox, because the browser is the lens through which people see and touch the Internet. Over time, people are doing an ever broader set of activities with the Internet. What does this mean for how we think about Firefox? Here’s what I see.

  • Firefox 3.5 RC3 Coming Right Up

    The third Release Candidate build for Firefox 3.5 is on its way. Mozilla repeatedly stressed during the development process of the next iteration of its open source browser that it was aiming to produce a single RC for Firefox 3.5. And fact is that it came extremely close to doing so.

  • Everything you need to know about Firefox 3.5

    Mozilla recently released the second release candidate of Firefox 3.5 and is due to launch the final version before the end of the month. Here’s your one-stop guide to the key new features in the latest version.

• Business

  • Ingres: An Open Source Rival to Oracle

    I’ve been following the path of Ingres Corp. ever since Terry Garnett and David Helfrich of Garnett & Helfrich Capital bought it from CA a few years back and made it into an independent company once again. Ingres and MySQL are the main open-source alternatives to Oracle in the database software market. Now that Oracle is buying Sun Microsystems, which owns MySQL, you’ve got to figure that Oracle will starve MySQL once it owns it—eliminating what had until now been a potent rival in the Web site market. Ingres is emerging as the last bastion of opposition within the open source world.

  • Magento’s open-source e-commerce platform makes progress–Q&A

    Open source continues to move beyond its original confines of infrastructure software. Open-source application adoption is booming, while even the curmudgeonly router market is getting some open-source polish from Vyatta.

• Events

  • The Open Source Open Source Conference

    Open Source Bridge, a conference held in Portland, OR last week, answered the question, “can the attendees drive the direction of a conference in the same manner open source software is developed, and achieve better results?” By all accounts, the answer is a resounding, ‘yes.’

  • Win a Gratis OSCON Pass from LQ

• FSF/GNU

  • Changes in FSFE: Time to pass on the torch

    Karsten Gerloff, FSFE’s new President, spent the past years at the UNU-MERIT, working with people such as Rishab Ghosh to provide the scientific basis for the political change around Free Software. Before that he was an intern at FSFE, working with me at the United Nations, specifically the World Intellectual property Organisation (WIPO), he is familiar with FSFE’s policy work and I have no doubt that he will be able to represent Free Software effectively on all levels.

• Government

  • Vancouver councillor proposes open IT standards

    Vancouver’s city hall recently passed a motion encouraging the selection of open data, standards and source code in future information technology (IT) procurement.

• Licensing

  • Atari settle over ScummVM based Wii game GPL violations

    The ScummVM developers have agreed a settlement with Atari over GPL violations in three Nintendo Wii games developed by an Atari subcontractor. An official press release from the ScummVM developers “cyx” and “fingolfin” stated that a case over three games, “Freddie Fish: The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds”, “Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside” and “Spy Fox: Dry Cereal” which used the ScummVM engine to run classic point and click adventure games, had been settled in May, with Misitic Software paying all legal fees and making a donation to the Free Software Foundation.

• Programming

  • Eclipse Galileo: The release train leaves the station

    Milinkovich said “When it was just the IDE, things were simpler”. The first named release train of Eclipse, released in 2006, was Callisto which incorporated ten projects. The Galileo release train incorporates thirty three projects, with ten new projects added since last years Ganymede release, over 24 million lines of code in total.

  • Eclipse Galileo Releases 33 Open Source Projects

    The Eclipse Foundation is today making its biggest release of the year, highlighting open source projects created using the Eclipse development platform. Its new Galileo release — the latest in the group’s annual “release train” roundup — includes 33 open source projects that were built with contributions from 44 different organizations.

  • Ruby shines in North American developer survey

    Ruby use is up 40 per cent amongst North American software developers since 2008, according to a new study from Evans Data.

  • Zend Solution Included in IBM Smart Business

    Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP company, today announced that IBM will ship Zend’s solution for PHP in every IBM Smart Business system in order to provide their customers with reliability, performance, and security for PHP-based Web applications. Today’s announcement marks a significant expansion of the IBM and Zend partnership by now including PHP on Linux operating systems and x86 hardware in addition to IBM i OS and Power Systems hardware.

Leftovers

• Censorship/Web Abuse

  • The Guardian Embraces Crowdsourcing The News In Useful Ways

    Following the recent controversy over expense claims from UK elected officials, the paper put all the data online and let people dig through it to see what they could find — and they found a lot of interesting stuff that a group of reporters, by themselves almost certainly never would have had the time or skill to dig out (some of it included statistical analysis of the data).

  • Netherlands Considers Internet Tax To Fund Newspapers That Can’t Compete

    A bunch of folks have been sending in various versions of this translated article from Holland, noting a proposal that’s been brought forth to tax internet connections in order to give the money to industries that are having trouble competing, such as newspapers.

  • Anti-Piracy Lawyers Lose License To Chase Pirates

    Just days after Norway’s data protection department told ISPs they must delete all personal IP address-related data three weeks after collection, it’s now become safer than ever to be a file-sharer in Norway. The only law firm with a license to track pirates has just seen it expire and it won’t be renewed.

    Earlier this month we reported that since Norway’s Personal Data act prohibits the storage of unnecessary data, ISPs in the country must delete all IP address-related personal information they hold on their customers which is more than three weeks old. This makes it very hard in most cases to track down illicit file-sharers.

  • Kindle’s DRM Rears Its Ugly Head… And It IS Ugly

    I asked the customer representative where this information was available and he told me that it’s in the fine print of the legalese agreement documentation. “It’s not right that they are in bold print when you buy a book?” I asked. “No, I don’t believe so. You can have to look for it.”

    We’re not done- it gets even worse.

    “How do I find out how many times I can download any given book?” I asked. He replied, “I don’t think you can. That’s entirely up to the publisher and I don’t think we always know.”

    I pressed — “You mean when you go to buy the book it doesn’t say ‘this book can be downloaded this number of times’ even though that limitation is there?” To which he replied, “No, I’m very sorry it doesn’t.”

    Here is the major problem with this scenario.

  • Comcast And Time Warner Team Up To Control What TV You Watch Online

    So, it was no surprise back in February to hear of plans to make agreements between cable companies and content providers that would limit what kind of video you could watch online, requiring you to be a cable company subscriber and “authenticating” what you could watch. Thus, it should be no surprise that Comcast and Time Warner are now announcing exactly that.

  • Cyber Security Czar Front-Runner No Friend of Privacy

    Former Republican Congressman Tom Davis, reportedly President Barack Obama’s top candidate for cyber security czar, voted repeatedly to expand the government’s internet wiretapping powers, and helped author the now-troubled national identification law known as REAL ID.

• Copyrights

  • Norway Decides Privacy Is More Important Than Protecting The Entertainment Industry’s Business Model

    It appears that Norway has decided that it’s sick of passing laws designed to prop up obsolete industry business models at the expense of individual privacy. First, the country started telling ISPs to delete log files after just three weeks (making it pretty hard to identify individual filesharers), and now it’s refused to renew the license given to the one law firm allowed to sniff IP addresses in trying to seek out unauthorized file sharing.

  • Three Strikes Rejected In Spain

    It seems like the recording industry’s grand plan to get ISPs to be their copyright police isn’t getting very far. Consumer and legal backlash around the world seems to have stopped it cold. The latest is in Spain, where the entire concept of a three strikes regime has been taken off the table.

  • Kodak Kills Off Kodachrome; Entertainment Industry Take Note

    So it’s quite a milestone to hear that the company is finally killing off Kodachrome, the company’s iconic color stock film.

    The reports about it note how Kodak’s business is now 70% digital and the company has very much embraced the digital age.

  • Sarkozy Says He Will “Go All The Way” With 3 Strikes

    Yesterday from the Palace of Versailles, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first president to address Parliament in 150 years. He took the opportunity to show his determination over the proposed HADOPI legislation, promising that he will “go all the way” to enforce law on the Internet.

    Sarkozy’s address yesterday was made possible by the annulment of a law prohibiting a sitting president from addressing lawmakers. The last time an address of this type occurred was 1848, in Napoleon’s day.

  • Record biz tries suing Irish ISPs into submission

    The major labels want to see Irish ISPs adopt a “three strikes” policy toward repeat online copyright infringers, and they’ve decided that suing the ISPs is a good way to make it happen.

  • Richard Marx (!) attacks RIAA after $1.92M Thomas verdict

    Jammie Thomas-Rasset was held liable to sharing 24 songs, including one by pop crooner Richard Marx. But the lawsuit wasn’t done in Marx’s name—this week, he called out the recording industry’s “greedy actions.”

  • Swedish Appeals Court Denies Pirate Bay Retrial — Says No Bias By Judge

    The Swedish appeals court charged with looking into whether or not the judge in the original trial against The Pirate Bay was biased, has said they found no bias (for real, this time) with the judge, despite his belonging to two groups that have pushed for stronger copyright laws — and the fact that the prosecutors’ lawyers were involved in that organization as well. Apparently, the court says the judge should have brought this information to light sooner, but otherwise said it was no big deal.