• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Mean Time To Repair

The article admitted that the #2 and #3 “application programs” (“Adobe” and “Microsoft”) reported were “closed source” and that “open source” programs tend to show all the blemishes, not just the ones reported by their customers, and reflected back through visible reports by the companies. To be even fairer, I would point out that comparing “Firefox” with all of the applications that Adobe has and all of the applications Microsoft has is a bit like apples and oranges….but that is not the main concept I will try to get across in this blog entry.

A New HDR Benchmark Is Coming To Linux

This new benchmark, which can be found in the Phoronix Test Suite once its released, will focus on SDR/HDR performance. This should end up being a rather nice test profile as right now it’s completely slaughtering the ASUS Eee PC 1201N and other systems being tested remotely through Phoromatic.

Psystar Giving Up Mac in Favor of Linux

Mac clone maker Psystar is retrenching after succumbing to a barrage of copyright litigation brought by Apple, abandoning its Mac offerings in favor of a move toward Linux systems.

Server

• SGI inks deal for Tasmanian cluster

  Supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics has inked a deal to build the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing – which has the rap name TPAC – at the University of Tasmania on the eponymous Australian island state. The gig: creating a new x64-Linux cluster for climate research.

Applications

• Review: Gwibber – Get Social in Linux

  Today i will discuss Gwibber which is a good social networking client for Linux. It works on Ubuntu and a few other distributions and is available in your local repositories so go ahead and grab it.

• Financial

  • Your Financial Buddi

    If you’re just beginning to learn to record your personal finances, there are reviews that point out that Buddi is one of the tools to check out. Why? A lot of them say that it is quite easy for beginners to use and understand compared to other software like GNUCash. That’s why I ended up checking Buddi. Also, Buddi has installer files on its project site and you could verify if the distro you’re using is supported. In any case, there’s always the generic Unix and Linux which is basically a script that you could run.

  • First KMyMoney Beta Version Available for KDE 4 Platform

    The KMyMoney team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.95. After 8 months of hard work, this release is the first version developed upon the KDE 4 Platform. We are confident that it is stable enough for use by early adopters. We would like to get much needed feedback from the community in order to make the new KMyMoney as rock-solid as previous releases.

• Graphics

  • Inkscape – A noteworthy open source vector graphics software

    The latest release of Inkscape namely version 0.47 adds many new features to an already powerful toolset. Some of them being numerous enhancements to the existing tools – pen and pencil tool, eraser tool, tweak tool, text tool, and so on. Inkscape -.47 has gained new extensions, and new filters that add special effects to your images, SVG improvements, and interface enhancements.

  • NEWS: GIMP 2.7 has a single windowed mode

    If you are using Ubuntu like me, you have add the PPA to your Ubuntu software sources. The PPA is located here.

    Unfortunately GIMP 2.7 beta is not available for Mac, so Mac users have to wait until the final release comes out.

  • Best way to keep up with GIMP from git

• Instructionals

  • howto Qemu

  • How to build .deb package from tar.gz

  • How to get colors in man command page

  • Picard Tagger – Automatically tag your mp3 music files

  • How to get popup window before empty gnome trash in Ubuntu

  • How To install µTorrent Portable in Ubuntu [How to control your Torrents with uTorrent's WebUI]

  • Getting Acquainted with the Openbox Config

  • How to use ZTE MF627 USB modem on linux

  • Pfstools is a set of command line programs for reading, writing and manipulating high-dynamic range images and video frames

  • A dpkg trick for fresh installations

  • How to setup Boot password protection for Grub2 Entries

  • Howto: rsync a system between drives

  • Improving MetaData Performance of the Ext4 Journaling Device

  • Linux: how do I find the devce name of my USB drive?

  • Keeping Time In Debian With Virtualbox

• Games

  • Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?

    Some are probably asking at this point, what is Wine? The Wine project was started in 1993 to allow Windows applications to be run under Linux. Wine takes the Windows API (Application Programming Interface) and implements it in the Linux user space. Since Wine is running in user space and is not a part of the Linux Kernel, it relies on the wineserver daemon to provide your basic Windows kernel functionality as well as other various tasks of X integration.

    As a quick recap, there are two basic goals we want to complete in this article. First we want to compare performance and functionality of games between Linux and Windows. Second, we will look at the performance and functionality differences of Wine/Cedega/Crossover Games.

  • HOWTO: Devil’s Tuning Fork under Wine

    I’ve been in a gaming mood of the late and I much prefer to be able to run my games under Linux as opposed to having to reboot into Windows. That being said a game I’ve really enjoyed playing is Devil’s Tuning Fork. It is a very unique first person indie game in which your character “sees” with their ears. It is being developed by a team of students at DePaul University in Chicago and it is a free download from the game’s homepage.

  • Alien Arena 7.33

    Version 7.33 of Alien Arena has been released. The new edition of the open source first-person shooter has been updated with following new features:

    * In-game IRC client
    * Player rankings in server browser
    * Skill level matchmaker on server info
    * Vastly improved anti-lag code

  • Alien Arena 7.33 Brings Headshots & More

  • Gifts for Gamers: Some End-of-Year Recommendations, Part 1

    Christmas is a time for rest and contemplation. To intersperse the period with some distraction on long winter evenings, a number of Linux games can prove some diversion, as this article will show.

    The sports event of the weekend will be going into winter break, and to while away the time, we assembled a short list of interesting but little known games that have been brought to our attention over the last few months. The recommendations cover lots of different game genres, so there should be something for everyone.

  • Primal Carnage – Humans VS Dinosaurs

    Primal Carnage is planned to be released for GNU/Linux as well as other platforms.

  • Heroes of Newerth v0.1.61 Beta Client for Linux

    Here’s the Linux beta game client for Heroes of Newerth, S2 Games’ upcoming multiplayer fantasy game based on Defense of the Ancients (DotA).

Distributions

• Entropy in 2010: here we are (almost)!

  So, we’re close to 2010 and Entropy is about to celebrate its third birthday. It’s been a very long road, full of obstacles but hey, we’re getting closer to 1.0! 2010 will be the year of Entropy 1.0 bringing a basic set of features and ideas tossed into the wild software jungle.

• Linux Wizard – Mandriva: Nine Priorities for Mandriva Incoming CEO

  As everybody^wnobody know, Hervé YAHI is no longer the CEO of Mandriva. So I decide to rip off an article from The VAR Guy to issue an open letter to the Mandriva direction. So here are 9 priorities for the new Mandriva staff

• Sabayon 5.1 Gamers Linux Screenshots

  The games you see in the screenshot above are all included by default on Sabayon 5,1 Gamers live DVD. Some popular titles include Battle of Wesnoth, Foobillard, Freeciv, Frozen Bubble, GNOME Games, NeverBall, Nexuiz, OpenArena, Pingus, Pychess, Scorched 3D, Spring, Stepmania, Torcs, Tremulous, Warsow, Warzone 2100, and Wormux.

  Here’s some screenshots from Sabayon 5.1 Gamers

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat To ‘Rev’ Up Partner Network

    Red Hat is hoping to boost its partner engagement with its recently launched hypervisor, Rev, based on the Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology.

    “Initially, we are looking at 25 VARs for Rev. But, eventually we will expand that number,” said Jaideep Kumar, Head, Channels and Distribution, Red Hat India.

    According to Kumar, Rev has been very well received by partners. At Red Hat’s recently held Asia-Pacific partner summit at Singapore, the hypervisor generated a huge interest.

  • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) EVP, CFO Charles E Jr Peters sells 50,000 Shares

  • Notable Insider Trades 12/28: (NUTR, BCSI, ORCL, RHT, NFLX, more…)

    Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) CFO Charles Peters sold 50,000 shares on 12/23 at $31.64 after exercising options that were set to expire in 2014.

• Debian Family

  • 2010: The year of Ubuntu Inclusiveness

    If I was forced to provide some quantitative milestones for Ubuntu Women, I would probably offer, along with a grain of salt:

    * Break 5% of Ubuntu Membership held by women (currently 4-point-something)
    * Increase Women ~ubuntu-dev membership by 50% (from 4 to 6)
    * Increase Women ~ubuntu-core-dev membership by 100% (from 1 to 2, because dealing in fractions of people is illegal in most places)
    * Increase active mentors by 100%

    Since these are supposed to be figures for the inaugural term of 6 months, the success of these figures relies fairly heavily upon women who are already involved. This is a critical caveat. Incentives to take the first step to participation, counsel and mentoring will be the most important activities Ubuntu Women undertakes, and will set up the opportunity to aim for better milestones beyond the inaugural 6 month term.

  • Retrospect on Ubuntu in 2009

    All in all, 2009 was not a revolutionary year for the Ubuntu community. There was no LTS release, as there was in 2008 and will be in 2010, and the focus was on incremental development.

    Nonetheless, it’s clear that Ubuntu gained some useful new features, and the community received interesting news, in 2009. Let’s hope the improvements we’ve seen in the last year solidify and expand going into 2010 and the Lucid release next April.

  • Ubuntu as an Internet Client

    Ubuntu actually does all right by these criteria, so perhaps to some degree the conflation of “Internet” and “Web” is driven by the complexities of installing third party apps on Windows, and all of the problems this can cause one’s computer as different versions of shared libraries and such are copied in.

    [...]

    Ultimately, I suppose that I would love it if LifeArea had the Gwibber-like ability to post. There are still other posting tools to try in any case, so I may find one yet. I’m installing Drivel atm.

  • Ubuntu, which direction are you heading?

    But you can’t beat Windows by offering a Windows-looking clone. Because people will still want their Office and their whatever. You may claim that people will have a free Windows alternative available and will flock to it. Well, they already have a free Windows alternative. It’s called pirated Windows and it’s rampant.

  • Ubuntu and Mozilla: The inevitable alliance.

    Speculation is a part of technical news as prophecy is to religion. Its only important, valid or genius if it turns out to be true. However, we dare not have technical news without any speculation at all since this will surely hinder the creativeness of individuals and corporations to explore avenues influenced by ideas expressed in speculation. If any of that made sense to you, good. Because this was the reasoning I used in order to explore and develop the idea to create this article. In other words I have no factual evidence that anything of the sort would occur.

    [...]

    If Mozilla and Ubuntu/Canonical pulled together they should have enough combined resources to really compete in the market place with Google or anyone else. However they can not sit still and do nothing because other larger companies will push them out of the market they helped create. Now is not the time to “See what happens”. Its time to prepare for the future and make essential friends.

  • Where The Heck are all the Ubuntu Games?

    There you have it, you now know the secret of where all the Ubuntu games are. It’s just a matter of searching before you find a game you want.

Devices/Embedded

• Not all ereaders are the same

  As we count down to end of 2009, the emerging star of this year’s holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the electronic book reader (or e-reader). From Amazon’s Kindle to Barnes and Noble’s forthcoming Nook, e-readers are starting to transform how we buy and read books in the same way mp3s changed how we buy and listen to music.

• Openmoko’s WikiReader

  Openmoko, the company that first gained attention for its Linux-based phone platform, launched a new pocket-sized open source product in time for this holiday season, the WikiReader. The WikiReader is an inexpensive ($99), low-power, 4-inch square touchscreen LCD display device pre-loaded with the text of three million Wikipedia pages on a microSD card. In the smartphone era, skeptics might dismiss the device as woefully underpowered, but to the open source community the more pertinent question is what else can it do?

  [...]

  For today, however, the product makes for a fun stocking stuffer for the family hacker. Openmoko is positioning the device in its advertising as a way to get content into the hands of the “75% of the world [that] is offline” — including people in airplanes or on beaches, and “most everywhere.” The WikiReader certainly does that; several online reviews have praised its value in museums and tourist locations, where data plan charges would make a connected device prohibitively expensive to operate.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Ready or not, 2010 could be the year of the smartbooks

    For the past 12 months or so, we’ve heard a lot of talk about mini-laptops running ARM-based processors. These so-called “smartbooks” feature low power ARM processors which means that while they can’t run Windows XP or 7, they can run Linux, last for a very long time on a charge, and some feature integrated 3G connectivity and HD video acceleration features. You also get the ability to receive emails, instant messages, and other data even while the computer is in sleep mode. In other words, they’re like a cross between a smartphone and a netbook, which explains the whole “smartbook” name.

  • New Asus ‘Pinetrail’ netbooks top 10 hour battery life

    Asus’ upgraded Eee PC netbooks sport Intel’s new Atom N450 processor for over ten hours battery life, plus the quick loading ‘Splashtop’ pre-boot Linux OS.

  • Denial

    All over the web are warnings that netbooks are doomed.

    [...]

    No. This is about wishful thinking by the monopolists who need high retail prices to hide the price of their part of the PC, CPUs and licences for software. If prices for netbooks rise, fewer will be sold. Fortunately entrepreneurs all over the world continue to make less expensive netbooks. ARM will dominate netbooks in 2010. You can trade a lot of day-long battery-life for some hair-drying CPUs anytime.

  • White-Box Foxconn Netbooks Surface at FCC

    The rather interesting element is the fact that these are white-box models. This means that the devices will bear the brands of other companies, which implies that Foxconn may have already completed its marketing plans concerning the PCs. If the company has already decided on which companies will sell its product, the actual availability may ramp up over the next couple of months or so.

  • NorhTec Gecko Edubook first look: Netbook that runs on AA batteries

    I mean sure, it has an 8.9 inch 1024 x 600 pixel display and can run Windows or Linux.

  • Google

    • Speculative Googlenetbook specs surface

      Rumors of a Googlebook mirror the speculation that preceded the emergence earlier this month of Mountain View’s HTC-manufactured, Android-powered Nexus One smartphone.

    • Google Chrome Netbook Specifications?

      An Nvidia Tegra chipset (given the late 2010 rumoured release one guesses Tegra 2.0) powered by an ARM CPU and replete with 64GB SSD and 2GB RAM will drive a 10.1 inch HD-ready, 1,280 x 720 resolution touchscreen screened device. The usual array of extras such as WiFi and 3G, Bluetooth and Ethernet are also on the reported tech spec list.

    • Google Chrome OS-based netbook tech specs are out

      Believe it or not – the tech specs of the rumoured Google Chrome OS-based netbook are already out and by the sound of it, the netbook looks to me like a high performance machine.

    • Google’s Chrome-based Netbook Will Be Loaded with Features

      This netbook will reportedly have a 64 GB solid-state hard drive and 2 GB of RAM.

    • Rumors about the ‘leaked’ specs of Google Chrome OS netbook

      Furthermore, the netbook will also probably be powered by an ARM CPU, and will feature Nvidia’s Tegra system-on-a-chip for notably enhancing the audio and video capabilities of the device. However, it is not certain whether all the upcoming Chrome OS-based netbooks will strictly adhere to the rumored specs.

Predictions for 2010

Open source is already solidly main stream – 2010 will see that become more obvious to more people.

5 Open Source companies that will rule the post-ERP world

Proprietary ERP companies make connecting to ERP complex. Like Edison and Tesla, they don’t work well with competing systems. Conversely, open source is about unifying things.

Etherpad source includes JSMin, which Google Code doesn’t allow

Last week, Google banned my PHP port of JSMin from Google Code due to a quibble over a line in the license stating that “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil”, which they believe makes the license non-free. When I asked Google’s Chris DiBona whether all Google Code projects including JSMin would be subject to bans due to this clause in the license, he replied, “Sadly, yes”.

JSMin isn’t welcome on Google Code

Google’s Chris DiBona emailed me this morning to tell me that unless I removed a specific line from the license of my jsmin-php project (a PHP port of Douglas Crockford’s JSMin), Google Code would no longer host the project.

Databases

• Allow remote connections to your MySQL server

• Complete database administration package MySQL Workbench

• How to import and export a database in MySQL

CMS

• Grammys using Drupal

  After the Emmys, the Grammys are onto it as well. That is, the new Grammy.com is using Drupal — and Pressflow to be specific. The Grammy Awards, or Grammys, are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievements in the music industry. Cool!

Openness

• Crowdsourcing: Is There Wisdom In A Mob?

  Most of the offers can be broadly categorized into collective intelligence, crowd-creation, voting/opinion and research. Procter & Gamble’s NPD program Connect + Develop, My Starbucks Idea and AT&T’s “Mark the spot” are all great examples of collective intelligence and, of course, everyone knows about Linux. They harness the power of interested parties to provide ideas and thoughts as they happen, like a permanent, active, feedback loop.

Applications

• The Maker Web Project Helper

  The Maker 1.0 is ready for download from the project page in versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Python source code for Linux. The license is GPLv3.

• Icinga Core 1.0 Stable & Icinga Web 0.9.1 alpha released!

  Today the Icinga Team releases the Icinga Core 1.0. This is a milestone for both the team and the project as a whole. After many months of hard work we are proud to bring you a stable, alternative monitoring solution. This release includes many changes as suggested by the community and in particular the inclusion of Oracle in IDOUtils.

The Top 10 Science Stories of 2009 [Slide Show]

The H1N1 pandemic, the Copenhagen climate talks, the restart of the world’s biggest experimental device—2009 sped by many scientifically relevant mile markers. The year also celebrated several important past events: It saw the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species; the 40th anniversary of the first humans on another world; and the 400th of Galileo’s report that proved not all heavenly bodies circle the Earth. The year also marked the first occasion in which the science Nobel Prize committee honored more than one woman—four, in fact.

Security

• Secret mobile phone codes cracked

  A German computer scientist has published details of the secret code used to protect the conversations of more than 4bn mobile phone users.

  Karsten Nohl, working with other experts, has spent the past five months cracking the algorithm used to encrypt calls using GSM technology.

Finance

• Gripping Reality: Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail

  Through the detailed and vivid conversations, you get the keen sense of overwhelming desperation and preservation that overtakes the executives of the sinking financial system. Some of the chief participants failed, some were triumphant, and some were pathetically bailed out. History will ultimately be the true arbiter of whether government and Wall Street averted, mitigated, postponed, or contributed to the financial collapse. Regardless, Sorkin brilliantly encapsulates this emotional panicked period in our history that will never be erased.

• Shenzhen Nanshan Refuses Goldman Demand for Payment (Update2)

  Shenzhen Nanshan is among 68 Chinese state-controlled companies including China Eastern Air Holding Co. and China National Aviation Holding Co. that lost money on derivative products sold by banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Citigroup Inc., according to the State- owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

• Goldman Sachs and Others Investigated for Betting Against Securities They Created

  Betting against their own securities has prompted numerous investigations of Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street institutions. Prior to the financial collapse, Goldman and others figured out a way to package risky securities, such as subprime mortgages, and sell them to investors who were told they were buying sound investments. Little did the investors know that the firms selling the synthetic collateralized debt obligations (or CDOs) turned around and bet that the CDOs would fail—costing pension funds and insurance companies billions of dollars.

• Goldman Sachs and Others Investigated for Betting Against Securities They Created

• Goldman Sachs and Others Investigated for Betting Against Securities They Created

• Goldman Sachs Mortgage Bets Said to Draw Probe by Regulators

  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and brokerage regulators are examining how Wall Street firms bet against mortgage-linked securities to profit as their clients took losses, people familiar with the matter said.

  The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which polices broker-dealers, is looking into whether firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. broke rules when selling products known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, one of the people said. The people declined to be identified because the inquiry is confidential.

• In the FT’s parallel universe, Goldman Sachs boss is the hero of 2009

  How charitable. This is the bank that intends to distribute about $22bn in remuneration to its employees this year – more than $700,000 each – at the height of the worst recession since the war. Money, of course, partly earned through government support of the US banking sector paid for with taxpayers’ funds.

• New York Needs Wall Street

  But Obama, unlike Paterson, is being disingenuous; aside from a few snotty remarks, the president hasn’t done much to get the banks lending right now. In fact, his policies have fostered an environment that allows Wall Street to make money — bundles of it as demonstrated by Goldman Sachs’ $20 billion bonus pool — at the expense of helping Main Street. Obama has supported Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s near-zero interest rate policy; he’s basically declared every big bank Too Big To Fail, meaning the federal government will save the likes of Goldman Sachs if it should somehow bet wrong in the trading markets, as it did last year.

• Saving Goldman Sachs: The Lender as Sucker in High Finance

  Fast forward 20 years and switch from Salomon Brothers to Goldman Sachs. At this time, Goldman sellers were offering their customers a new product, “synthetic collateralized debt obligations.” Synthetic CDOs allowed the buyers to bet heavily on the continued health of the housing market. In a synthetic CDO, however, Goldman was fundamentally making the opposite bet. The buyers were in essence an insurance company. They received regular payments from Goldman as long as the housing market improved. These payments were analogous to the premiums paid on an insurance policy. Like an insurance company, however, the investors were also on the hook for a big payout if the housing market collapsed. Which it did. (For more details, see “Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won.”)

• Being Goldman Sachs XII

  This choice says a lot about the malaise in global finance. It also seems to say a lot about the “collusion” of media and big business and their desire to pull the wool over the eyes of sane people everywhere–sort of like Blankfein’s words that the investment bank was “doing God’s work.”

• Reuters Blogger Questions Reuters Editorial Actions: Transparency In Action

  Well, here’s an interesting one. There were reports last week claiming that Reuters had spiked a story about hedge fund big shot Steven Cohen after Cohen complained to Reuters management. While Reuters has since strongly denied the charge, it is interesting to note (as sent in by reader JJ) that at least one Reuters blogger complained quite vocally about this decision.

• Reuters kills hedge fund story after pressure

  Reuters editors last week killed a story by investigative reporter Matthew Goldstein about hedge fund trader Steven Cohen after Cohen complained to top Thomson Reuters executives that he was being persecuted by the news agency’s reporting, sources at Reuters said.

  Goldstein’s story was an “incremental” advance in the reports swirling around Cohen that he engaged in insider trading during the 1980s, Reuters sources said. There have been reports that Cohen is next in the sights of the SEC following the Galleon case, which featured SEC wiretapping the conversations of hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.

• The Past and Future Decade in Business at a Glance

  What else will shape the housing market in the next decade? One of the biggest questions is how the government will extricate itself from control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies, which were on the brink of failure in the fall of 2008 and seized by the government, own or guarantee about half of all home mortgages.

• Stimulus timing

  Finally, you can ask, how much of the stimulus money has been spent? For that you want to look at “Cumulative”, and compare it with the final total for that column.

  [...]

  And when the spending begins to tail off, the effect on growth turns negative.

• Brace for a “Jobless Decade”

  By any measure, the last decade was a rotten one. It started with a stolen election and the worst terrorist attack in American history. It is ending this week with the United States mired in two wars and deep into a catastrophic recession.

  It’s hard to imagine that the next decade could be worse, but could it?

  There are worrisome signs. An increasing number of economists are saying that without major government intervention, the next ten years could be a “jobless decade.” “It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries,” predicts economic historian John Steel Gordon.

  [...]

  While the stimulus package passed by Congress was big and slowed the pace of job loss, the problem was even bigger. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the Obama stimulus bill has created or saved between 170,000 and 235,000 jobs per month starting in the second quarter of 2009. Yet, Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that the country would have to produce an additional 300,000 jobs per month for five years to achieve full employment.

PR/AstroTurf

• Senate Health Reform Bill Benefits Big Pharma While Forsaking Cheaper Generic Drugs

  Despite proclaiming a need to cut medical costs, the Senate health care reform bill contains a provision that will benefit large drug companies while hurting manufacturers of generic drugs. As it is now written, the bill will keep less-expensive generic drugs from entering the market for fully 12 years, far longer than the five to seven years President Barack Obama had advocated.

• Generics chafe under big pharma’s reform shadow

  The massive U.S. Senate healthcare reform measure passed on Thursday with support from the multibillion drug industry, but makers of cheaper generic rivals are feeling left out in the cold.

Censorship/Civil Rights

• Demi Moore’s lawyers threaten Boing Boing over photo analysis blog post

  And here is Boing Boing’s response to Ms. Moore’s attorneys (PDF), prepared by Marc Mayer of the law firm MS&K. The letter is a thing of beauty, and I encourage you to read it in full.

  The letter from Moore’s attorney, Martin D. (“Marty”) Singer, claims that we set out to slander Moore (Boing Boing did not, nor did Mr. Citrano). The letter also includes denials from people involved in the production of the W Magazine cover who insist that the image was not manipulated at all.

  Since receiving this letter, we have discovered that an alternate, and seemingly more anatomically correct version of the W magazine cover (with more hip-flesh) was published in W’s South Korean edition. We have also been informed that Ms. Moore’s attorneys have sent similar letters to other blogs that discussed the possible digital alteration of the US cover image. The story is now being covered by a number of other news organizations and blogs.

Internet/Web Abuse/DRM

• ISPs Won’t Give You Broadband, Won’t let Anyone Else, Either

  Many ISPs fail to expand broadband to all of their potential customers, which is sometimes understandable given the expense. However, we’ve documented countless times how those same ISPs often then lobby to have laws passed or engage in sleazy activities to prevent those towns and cities — or anyone else — from wiring those un-served regions. ISPs get their cake and eat it too — saving money on expansion, while avoiding a future competitor should the local incumbent someday change their mind and decide to service that market. It shouldn’t work that way — but it does, and all too often.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• Nine Inch Nails Fans Create Incredible Live DVD From Footage: Encourage Everyone To Share Widely

  But Bittorrent can’t be used for any legitimate purpose, right? And musicians can’t possibly embrace what the technology allows? Once again, we’re seeing why those who embrace what technology allows will do just fine moving forward. It’s only those who think that the answer is to bring out the lawyers and try to hold back progress who will find themselves struggling to create business models that work.

• 5 Legal Cases That Defined Music in 2009

  Almost a decade after the major labels launched their legal assault on Napster, courts are still writing the rules of the road for the music business’s digital future.

• Barry the Inaccurate

  Barry Sookman’s most recent post titled Toying with funny math to downplay Canada’s role as a piracy haven is, at best, inaccurate. Since I’m suffering from a nasty head cold I’m only going to cover the most noticeable errors – and then go back to suffering.

  In paragraph three, Barry claims that Mininova is down. A quick visit to the site shows that he is in error, that Mininova is still in operation. He also claims that the court ordered it shut down. This is incorrect. The court ordered that certain torrents be removed. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  In paragraph four, Barry claims that a court ordered that the The Pirate Bay be shut down. He does not mention that an appeal has been filed. In a later paragraph he claims that The Pirate Bay will be shut down shortly, however the shut down order is on hold until the appeal is complete. To the best of my knowledge a court date has not been picked as yet, and since the shut down cannot take effect until after the appeal, his claim that it will be shut down shortly is specious at best.

• Where Do My Music Rights Start and Stop?

  In an effort to be subversive, I forwarded the email to Fred with a note that said “Wild how the music licensing stuff is stupid.” He responded immediately with “Yup. Rights holders fuck everything up.” I wonder what the machines think of that?

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Auld Lang Syne on the Linux Blogs

“My New Year’s resolution is to retire gracefully, but I keep getting job offers,” blogger Robert Pogson told LinuxInsider. “Perhaps I will find some career change with which an old man can live.

“Perhaps I will do part-time work or write full-time instead of teaching,” he added.

Brian Caulfield On Start-ups

First there was the cheap revolution. That was all about using commodity parts, such as Intel’s ( INTC – news – people ) processors, to knock down the price of computing power. Then came the free revolution. That was all about free software, such as Linux. Now there’s “less than free.”
Article Controls

The best example: Google’s ( GOOG – news – people ) strategy of sharing ad revenues with hardware partners that are building devices around the Internet giant’s Android smart phone operating system. That’s helped Google grab a respectable chunk of the smart phone software market in a hurry. Now Google could do the same with its Chrome OS software for netbooks, making already-cheap devices cheaper.

Desktop

• Psystar halts sales of Mac cloning tool, will peddle Linux PCs

  Mac clone maker Psystar last week indefinitely suspended sales of its only product, a $50 utility that lets customers install Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system on generic Intel-based computers.

  The company also said it would resume selling systems “in the coming days.” Those machines will run Linux rather than Mac OS X.

• Chinese pirates clone XP

  We suspect that Redmond is having a few words with Chinese authorities about the cloning.

  We feel sorry for all the Ubuntu developers out there who must be looking at their Open Source child twisted and corrupted until it looks so much like the proprietary enemy.

Server

• The Evolution of Collaborative Innovation

  In those pre-Web 2.0 days, the community concept behind Linux and open source in general was mystifying to many. They were surprised that IBM had so strongly embraced Linux and were wondering what its relevance would be to the world of business. We spent a lot of time explaining that we were supporting Linux because it was an excellent operating system that ran on every single hardware platforms regardless of vendor or architecture, and would thus facilitate the integration of systems, applications and information over the Internet.

  A number of companies were also concerned about using software developed by an open, distributed community, as opposed to a single vendor, as was typically the case. So, we further explained that the open community developing Linux included some of the top programmers and computer scientists around the world. A number of IBM employees were already involved with this community, and several more would now be joining it as part of our new IBM Linux Technology Center. In any event, IBM and its partners would provide support for the Linux-based offerings we sold regardless of how they were developed.

Kernel Space

• Happy Birthday, Linus

  Today is the birthday of Linus. Although that’s essentially a private event for him, there’s an interesting historical link to the creation of the Linux kernel, too.

• Graphics Stack

  • ATI Linux 2009 Year In Review

    Compared to past years when recapping the AMD/ATI Linux advancements over the past calendar year, 2009 was not quite as exciting, which can be viewed as both good and bad for their Catalyst Linux driver. There were many advancements this year on AMD’s open-source side, but in 2009 there wasn’t as many milestones for their Catalyst driver like in the past with the introduction of CrossFire, OverDrive, same-day Linux support, the AMD Catalyst Control Center, and other new features. Here is our 2009 year in review look at AMD’s advancements to their proprietary Catalyst Linux driver along with our annual benchmarks.

Applications

• No, terminal apps are not dying

  But I do know, and believe in, this: Open source software has many beautiful and amazing advantages over the closed-source model. And only one of those benefits is the idea — no, the proven principle that, 10 or 20 or even 50 years down the road, someone might pick up some crusty old tarball off a backup server somewhere in a forgotten university somewhere on the planet, take a look at the source code and add a new spark of life to an otherwise lusterless, forgotten application.

  Old programs don’t die, they just patiently await reincarnation.

• An analog clock for the console

• 6 Really Cool Linux Stocking Stuffers

  Being from the United Kingdom, the week between Christmas and the New Year is usually a work-free zone for me. So here’s a few Linux command-line Easter Christmas Eggs for you to while away a little time if you are unfortunate enough to be back at your desk already.

• Themes

  • 2 Gorgeous New Docky Skins

    Amongst them are the utterly gorgeous looking ‘Plastic Glass’ theme designed for use in Docky’s 3D mode and an “inlaid” theme that perfectly suits Docky’s Panel Mode. The themes also come with replacement tooltips – a great addition that really makes these themes complete.

    DeviantArt-ist kshegzyaj has created some stunning new themes for use with premier Dock application Docky.

  • 12 Awesome KDM Themes For Your Linux

    KDM (KDE Display Manager) is the K Desktop Environment replacement for XDM, the X Display Manager. KDM allows users to pick their session type on a per-login basis using different themes and user photos.

  • How to customize your KDE desktop with KDE-Look.org

    KDE-Look.org is part of a family of desktop websites, all under the umbrella of OpenDesktop.org. With each release, KDE is moving closer to complete integration with OpenDesktop.org, where the installation of new themes and visual improvements are seamless.

    There are already several visual components of the K desktop environment that are already integrated. Among them are: desktop wallpaper, Plasma themes, KDM themes, KSplash, color schemes, icon themes, emoticons, and widgets (plasmoid scripts). What this means is that a user can open the dialog to change one of these elements, download new themes, and apply them without ever having to leave the window.

  • digiKam 1.1 Splash-screens: call to photographers !

    Just in time for Christmas 2009, digiKam 1.0 have been released. But the future is already there. Next digiKam 1.1 is planed for end of January 2010, as a bugfixes release, to consolidate code with users feedback after production using…

• Instructionals

  • Virsh building Fedora 12 PV Guest at xVM 3.4.2 (b130)

  • Opening an xlr file in Linux

• Games

  • Syntensity

    When first looking at Syntensity, one might infer that it is an FPS game. Nothing could be further than the truth. Syntensity’s main achievement is the Intensity Engine, which is a significantly modified version of the Sauerbraten/Cube2 Engine with a focus on online content. One could even draw parallels to proprietary gaming and say that this might be a FOSS answer to Valve’s Steam service and their Source engine.

  • AssaultCube – An awesome FPS game for Linux.

    AssaultCube retains a movement bug from the original Cube engine that allows players to utilize straferunning to move at a faster speed. This was left intentionally unfixed by the developers because it was considered an enjoyable feature of Cube, similar to bunny hopping in Quake.

  • 3 Wonderful Open-Source Games to Install After Installing Ubuntu

    When it comes to Linux shooter games, there isn’t only one choice. Games like Nexuiz, OpenArena or Sauerbraten were a good fit here too, but I decided upon World of Padman.

    Based on the Quake 3 engine, World of Padman is a fun, cartoon-style first-person shooter with maps, weapons and characters inspired from the Padman series. It features nice, colourful graphics, popular modes like FFA, TDM or CTF, and weapons which will definitely make you laugh the first time you’ll see them.

  • Running World of Warcraft in Ubuntu Linux

  • Gifts for Gamers: Some End-of-Year Recommendations, Part 1

    Christmas is a time for rest and contemplation. To intersperse the period with some distraction on long winter evenings, a number of Linux games can prove some diversion, as this article will show.

    The sports event of the weekend will be going into winter break, and to while away the time, we assembled a short list of interesting but little known games that have been brought to our attention over the last few months. The recommendations cover lots of different game genres, so there should be something for everyone.

Distributions

• Linux Wizard – The point on some Mandriva community projects

  There are many communities based Mandriva derivatives, but few of them are known. So here is a ( not comprehensive ) list of some Mandriva based derivatives or projects :

  * One 64 community : 64bits edition of the Mandriva One LiveCD. A KDE edition and GNOME one are available for download.

• Red Hat Family

  • Savvytek lands the first Red-Hat Linux virtualization implementation project at MEPS

    In partnership with Red Hat and Oracle; and in their endeavor to lead the market towards a more proficient, secure and better performing infrastructure solutions; Savvytek was chosen by Middle East Payment Services (MEPS) to implement their new core application, RS2, based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle technologies

  • Linux software is rebounding: CEO

    Red Hat Inc., the Linux software maker whose sales and profit in the latest quarter exceeded analysts’ estimates, said demand for its products is reviving, especially in North America.

  • 3 Stocks That Blew the Market Away

    We can start with Red Hat (NYSE: RHT). The Linux-based provider of enterprise solutions delivered a profit of $0.17 a share, ahead of the $0.16 a share that Mr. Market was banking on.

    Red Hat’s success was the result of a 21% surge in its bread-and-butter subscription revenue.

  • Red Hat promotes virtualisation adoption in Middle East through partnership with WorldNet

    Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that WorldNet has become the first Red Hat Virtualisation Specialist Partner in the Middle East.

    [...]

    “Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation aims to enable our customers to easily move applications and hardware platforms to virtualised computing and cloud computing. We believe that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, especially the management components, will allow customers to use virtualisation pervasively. We hope that our Virtualisation Specialist partnership with WorldNet will be the first of many in the region,” said Anuj Kumar, General Manager, Middle East and North Africa at Red Hat.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical shines its Ubuntu light on consumers

    No one cares that their TiVo devices runs Linux. It just does. No one cares that the Kindle runs Linux, either. They care about the functionality these devices deliver. That’s the way it should be.

    Canonical’s opportunity is to make Linux so easy that it becomes completely invisible to the end user. And Canonical may well be the best positioned to do this, among its open-source peers.

Devices/Embedded

• Kindle/Swindle

  • Kindle is most gifted Amazon item, ever

    Amazon.com on Saturday released its annual post-Christmas statement on holiday sales and made one thing clear: the Kindle was king, perhaps fueled by continued shifts in plans for shipments of Barnes & Noble’s competing Nook e-reader.

    “We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history,” said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

  • Amazon Announces It Sold More Kindle Books Than Physical Books On Christmas… But Doesn’t It Mean Rented?

    But, again, since this is the Kindle we’re talking about, shouldn’t Amazon make the distinction between purchased and rented?

• Nokia

  • Nokia N900 Already Available at Carphone Warehouse

    Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia launched during the ongoing year its first handset running under the Maemo 5 operating system, the Nokia N900, a phone that is expected to arrive on the UK market as soon as January 14 is here. However, enthusiasts in the UK won’t have to wait until then to grab one of these beauties, as the handset has been already put on sale via Carphone Warehouse, though a contract agreement with Vodafone is still required.

  • Snowtter – Snowflakes + Twitter on Nokia N900

    Got a Nokia N900 Maemo device ? You can watch the updates in your Twitter timeline drop onto your screen as snow flakes.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Technology changes ‘outstrip’ netbooks

    Battery life on Linux is in excess of 10 hours, for Windows rarely more than three.

    Machines sporting Arm chips are also likely to be thinner as they will not need the heat sinks demanded by processors used in desktops.

  • So far the netbook as been a resounding success.

    No Windows!

    There was just no way I was going to get my step daughter a Windows netbook for Christmas. No way, no how. I couldn’t find a good way to articulate why, and so for a couple weeks I was just responding, “No Windows!” to my wife’s questions. I hadn’t expected it to be controversial but I did eventually have to explain myself.

    [...]

    So far the netbook as been a resounding success.

  • Can Jolicloud Win In A Chrome OS Netbook World?

    Jolicloud soldiered on, raising a high profile $4.2 million venture round and finally, earlier this month, releasing a public beta of the product at Le Web in Paris.

  • Google Chrome netbook specs leaked?

    There’s a rumor going around that Google isn’t just developing an operating system for netbooks (which we already know is true), but that company is also in the process of developing an actual netbook. While Google isn’t exactly known as a hardware maker, this rumor falls into the plausible category, since Google is also widely reported to be developing a cellphone running Android OS. And as Apple has demonstrated time and again, if you want your operating system to run smoothly on hardware, your best option is to design the hardware.

VideoLAN Movie Creator

I’m excited about the upcoming VideoLAN Movie Creator! I’m also excited about making bulleted lists lately!

1. Pedigree

The related-project VLC Media Player is a well-known cross-platform project that inspires confidence in the VLMC. I’m not sure exactly how to quantify “name-brand” power as a factor of success (or even if such a thing can be quantified), but this is a good thing.

Making Money by Giving Stuff Away

First, free software appeared among the hacker community, where price was irrelevant, since the culture was largely one of sharing. From there, it seeped into companies, usually unbeknownst to management, which only found out about the fact later. By that time, the open source applications – notably GNU/Linux, Samba and Apache – had not only proved their technical quality, they had shown that something that cost nothing could, indeed, be worth much more than its nominal price tag.

A little know but very powerful tool for homeschooling: Free Software

Stop: How did you discover Free Software?

Dean: I stumbled across Free Software programs for typing, geography, hangman (spelling) and crossword and soon realized that I could actually make educating my son fun using Free Software that was primarily Linux driven.

Stop:Did you have to learn programming to use this software?

Dean: No, I am not a software developer. I am a “post-frustrated Microsoft user” that did the math and figured the amount of time I spent trying to fix things that could not be fixed in Windows would have been spent wiser learning a better operating system (Linux Ubuntu in my case, but there is also a version, Edubuntu,, already preconfigured for school usage). I am happy enough that I want to try to convince other homeschoolers in my area to follow my path.

Google

• 35 Google open-source projects that you probably don’t know

  Google is one of the biggest companies supporting OpenSource movement, they released more than 500 open source projects(most of them are samples showing how to use their API). In this article I will try to write about most interesting and free releases from Google, some of them might be abandoned.

• Open source rocked 09, thanks to Google

  Bangalore: Since almost 10 years, companies have known the benefits of adopting open source for business. Few have followed but the rest have stayed away from it. With the global economic slowdown forcing companies to rethink strategies, there has been one thing which has motivated companies the most, that is, Google extensively using open source.

CMS

• Drupal thrives in Taiwan

  After a while I discovered that there was even a Drupal Taiwan website. So I got in touch with the site admin and head organizer, Charles Chuang, and he let me know there would be a meetup in late December. The gathering would be at a local cafe in central Taipei and the topic would be new features, discuss strategy, and socialize to make new friends with like-minded souls.

FSF/FSFE/GNU

• GNU Emacs is on Bazaar now.

  In case you missed it: GNU Emacs is on Bazaar now. Please see http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BzrForEmacsDevs for how to (re)obtain your development sources from Bazaar.

Government

• Everything in health care depends on execution

  These administrative shifts, from proprietary to open source systems, toward routine transfers of medical data, could have happened anyway. They have accelerated thanks to Administration statements endorsing open source systems like VistA. The environment has shifted.

Democracy

• Government Report Absolves ACORN of Voter Fraud

  A newly-issued Congressional Research Service (CRS) study (pdf) on the activities of the community group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) found no evidence the group has engaged in fraudulent voting or violations of federal financing rules over the last five years. Two members of the U.S.

• 20,000 State Snoopers Who Can Walk Into Your Homes

  LABOUR has allowed the creation of a massive army of state snoopers who can enter anyone’s home at a moment’s notice, it was revealed yesterday.

Environment

• 125 whales dead in New Zealand strandings

  More than 125 whales have died in two separate strandings in New Zealand, conservation officials said Monday.

• Open Energy Info

  Open Energy Info is a platform to connect the world’s energy data. It is a linked open data platform bringing together energy information to provide improved analyses, unique visualizations, and real-time access to data.

• Titnore Woods Need You

  With the threat of development on Titnore Woods fast approaching now is the time to rise up and resist the destruction of our natural environment by corporate greed.

• VerdantMountains Cannot Stop Water Flowing; Eastward the River Keeps on Going

  In his important speech at the high-level segment of the conference, Premier Wen reiterated the consistent position of the Chinese government. He called on all sides to build consensus and strengthen cooperation to advance the historical process of combating climate change. Confronted by the complicated situation in and outside the Bella Center, Premier Wen was undeterred. With the strongest political will and patience, he shuttled between participating leaders and engaged them in dialogue and consultations. At the critical moment when the negotiations faced the risk of a breakdown, he personally talked to various parties and helped the conference reach the final accord with his painstaking and thoughtful efforts.

  History will remember the important contribution of the Chinese government to the success of the Copenhagen conference.

Finance

• Wall Street: provably culpable or just untrustworthy?

  GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY add more detail to the story of the collapse of our financial system and how it was brought down by the gang of financial innovators at such respectable financiers at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, as well as smaller firms like Tricadia Inc. link here

  The article strongly suggests that the bankers knew what they were doing. They created bundles of mortgages and sold them off to credulous investors. Then they cranked up mortgage creators to market still more toxic mortgages on which to sell more credit default swaps (CDSs).

  When that didn’t satisfy the demand from investors, they came up with synthetic swaps. They knew the many of the mortgages were toxic and after selling them, bought swaps against their failing. When the demand for these grew too large, they created synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and bet against them as well.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• uTorrent Users Double to 52 Million in a Year

  uTorrent – the preferred Bittorrent client for many BitTorrent users – has been doing really well in 2009. Contrary to reports claiming that BitTorrent and P2P usage has been declining, in the last year uTorrent nearly doubled its userbase to 52 million unique users a month.

• UK Lawyers Drop “Non-Viable” File-Sharing Cases

  Lawyers who told thousands of individuals that they held proof of their illicit file-sharing, have made a surprise announcement. ACS:Law, who help companies generate revenue from porn movie copyrights, say they are dropping many cases because litigation is neither viable nor beneficial to their clients.

• Broadband consumers to foot £500m bill to tackle online piracy

  Proposals to suspend the internet connections of those who repeatedly share music and films online will leave consumers with a bill for £500 million, ministers have admitted.

• Pirate Party: one to watch in 2010

  Threatening to cut off people’s net access is therefore seen as a vastly disproportionate punishment, almost akin to cutting someone’s tongue off. While young female voters also tend to vote Pirate Party, compared to older voters, they do so less than male voters. The Pirate movement’s task, therefore is twofold: to get women to vote for us in the same numbers that men do (which should be doable, since women use the internet as much as men), and to make sure that each years’ intake of new 18 year old voters supports us, while existing supporters continue to support us. If we do that across Europe, we’ll win.

• My artist’s manifesto

  This is the reason why I don’t create single copies of my photographs or limited editions. I want people to enjoy my photography not because it’s scarce, but because they like it. I do sell signed and numbered copies (limitless editions only), but only for the people who voluntarily want to financially support my art. Don’t buy it as an investment – buy it because you enjoy it and want to see more of it! Everyone else is welcome to just download and use (non-commercially) my photographs any way they like it – on your computer desktop, on your blog, by printing and hanging it on your walls!

• ACTA as the (Fool’s) “Gold Standard”

  I’ve noted before that at the heart of the ACTA negotiations there is a con-trick being played upon the world: insofar as the mighty ones deign to pass down any crumbs of information to us little people, it is framed in terms of the dangers of counterfeit medicines and the like, and how we are being “protected”. But, then, strangely, those counterfeit medicines morph into digital copies of songs – where there is obviously no danger whatsoever – but the same extreme measures are called for.