01.15.10

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Week of Monsanto: Video

GNU/Linux

• On Pi, Paper Penguins and FOSS’ Regal Potential

  “M$ is already beginning to compete on price with the netbooks and XP,” he told LinuxInsider. “In another year or two they will be competing on price for any PC, and their prices and share of units sold will be drastically reduced.”

  The share of GNU/Linux reached the tipping point in 2009, Pogson asserted.

  “The avalanche has started to move slowly down the mountain, and it will pick up speed by the end of 2010 with thin clients and netbooks/smartbooks taking over the landscape,” he predicted. “M$ has made a billion dollars a quarter less than is their ‘natural right of a monopolist’ in the client lately. Let us watch that continue as GNU/Linux grows share.”

• World’s Smallest Linux Computer and Linux Networking Server (pics)

  Do u know which is the worlds smallest Linux computer? Its the picotux 100 !! As of yet,the picotux 100 is the world’s smallest Linux computer, only slightly larger (35mm×19mm×19mm) than an RJ45 connector.

• Ubuntu Surprises at Lotusphere 2010?

  The major Linux distribution providers — Red Hat, Novell and Canonical — are preparing to attend IBM’s Lotusphere 2010 conference (Orlando, January 17-21).

• Canonical, IBM: Ubuntu Will Counter Windows 7 At Lotusphere

  Once again, The VAR Guy’s sources were right. Canonical, as our resident blogger expected, is set to announce some Ubuntu news at IBM’s Lotusphere conference in Orlando the week of January 18. The effort — which includes channel partners — will involve Canonical countering Microsoft’s Windows 7 push.

• Server

  • Google Switching To EXT4 Filesystem

    An anonymous reader writes “Google is in the process of upgrading their existing EXT2 filesystem to the new and improved EXT4 filesystem. Google has benchmarked three different filesystems — XFS, EXT4 and JFS. In their benchmarking, EXT4 and XFS performed equally well. However, in view of the easier upgrade path from EXT2 to EXT4, Google has decided to go ahead with EXT4.”

  • Sleepless Nights on Wall Street, Nightmares on Main Street

    In a day’s worth of testimony, no one took issue with this happy scenario presented by the grateful bankers until Julia Gordon, a housing expert from the Center for Responsive Lending, took the stand and dove straight in.

    “The bankers touched upon their sleepless nights at the height of the crisis. Today, 6.5 million American are suffering sleepless nights, every night, wondering if they will have a home tomorrow.” And it is not over: “our data shows that by the end of 2014, 13 million Americans will lose their homes,” she said. Gordon testified that the banks were failing to modify loans at any meaningful rate and that they pursued modification procedures in parallel with foreclosure procedures. The result is that hopeful homeowners are often surprised at the door by sheriff’s deputies ready to kick them to the curb.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux Kernel 2.6.32.3 Stable Release

    The 3rd upgrade of Linux kernel version 2.6.32 has been released.

• Applications

  • Three calculators for the Linux desktop

    To many, geek = math && nerd = math. To others school = math && math = calculator. During my stint as a computer science major, the very idea of differential had me running scared back to my calculator. It was a must, and for many a symbol of intellect and power.

  • Instructionals

    • Banish mouse pointer on emacs

      In ratpoison and stumpwm, there’s a ‘banish’ command that exiles the mouse pointer to a corner of the screen. It’s quite useful when you don’t want the mouse to distract you or clobber the text you are writing.

    • Install GNOME-Shell on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

    • Print Beautiful Custom Calendars in Linux With Photo Calendar

  • Games

    • SuperGamer, 8GB of Linux-Only Gameplay

      Thankfully, I’m not the guy in charge of things worldwide, because the folks over at www.supergamer.org have created a bootable, dual-layer DVD full of native-running Linux games. Yes, I said native. Check out the impressive list of preinstalled games you’ll get when you download the ISO:

      * Quake Wars
      * Doom 3
      * Prey
      * Unreal Tournament
      * Quake 4

      [...]

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Elive 1.9.56 development released

      The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the development version 1.9.56

      * 3G Phones: More than 300 new operators added
      * Internet Module: If you connect with a 3G phone, the configuration will be saved and you can set it to automatically connect at the boot
      * Icedove: When installing icedove, it contains by default a very nice elive-style looking template
      * Flash updated to 10.0.42.34

    • Clonezilla Live 1.2.3-24

    • Scientific Linux Fermi 4.8 is released

      Scientific Linux 4.8 has been released for both i386 and x86_64 architecture.

    • Webconverger 6.0

    • Frenzy 1.2 reincarnation (community release)

    • PelicanHPC GNU Linux 2.0

      * PelicanHPC v2.0 is available. Features:

      o based on Debian testing (squeeze) instead of stable (lenny). This means that most packages have newer versions. In particular, the kernel is at 2.6.30 and Open MPI is at 1.3.3.
      o has new MPI bindings for GNU Octave, developed mostly by R. Corradini, building off MPITB. The new MPI bindings allow use of Octave 3.2.x instead of 3.0.x, which gives some important performance gains. The new bindings are less complete than MPITB, but they provide all MPI calls used in the examples for GNU Octave. The Monte Carlo and kernel examples have been adapted to use these new bindings, the other examples of MPI usage within Octave still need to be updated.
      o Open MPI is now the only MPI implementation installed.
      o the Ganglia monitoring system is installed and pre-configured for up to 4 hosts. It is easy to add entries for larger clusters. Visit http://localhost/ganglia after having set up the cluster (pelican_setup). The ksysguard monitor is still available, too.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat, Inc.: Warming Up or Cooling Off?

    • Djigzo, an Open Source Email Encryption Provider, Today Announced That the Company’s Encryption Gateway Now Supports Red Hat Linux

      Djigzo, an open source email encryption provider, today announced that the company’s email encryption gateway now supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

    • This Stock Loves the Recession

      Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) has never looked like a no-brainer winner among tech stocks, but its business story is getting better by the day.

      The latest? The CIO of the state of California, Teri Takai, last week said in a policy letter that using open-source software has been sanctioned as “acceptable practice.” Shocking, right? Open-source is typically cheaper than licensed software, and the Golden State faces a multibillion-dollar fiscal crisis. I’ll be surprised if more states don’t follow California’s lead.

• Devices/Embedded

  • ZTE accelerates Android handset release plan

    ZTE, a Chinese handset manufacturer with global ambitions, has brought forward the release of its first Android smartphone.

Free Software/Open Source

• Office Suites

  • New: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 2 (build OOO320_m9) available

    OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available on the download website.

  • A Pivotal Moment for Microsoft Office

    It’s one thing to try software for free, it’s another to shell out the dough and buy it. New pricing reported in the InfoWorld article suggests they have come down quite a bit from previous years, but why pay anything if you can get the functionality you need for free or a very reasonable fee?

  • User Experience Face2Face in Hamburg

    Last week Christoph Noack from the User Experience (UX) community took time out of his busy schedule to visit Hamburg and the Sun office for face to face (f2f) discussions on UX topics. Be sure to see his blog post on “day one” to hear what went on. Be watching for “day two” as well.

• Databases

  • Big Blue rides Schooner to MySQL boost

    As countless crafty upstarts have learned time and again in the IT racket, it’s tough to get a server vendor who makes a living peddling boxes to get excited about server appliances that get rid of banks of servers. But IBM has inked a deal with upstart Schooner Information Technology to resell its web-caching and MySQL-boosting appliances starting in early March.

• GNU

  • International Workshop on e-Health in Emerging Economies

    The workshop promotes Free Software as one of the main pillars for a sustainable framework for providing e-health and education for the developing and least developed countries.

    There will not be parallel conferences. All delegates will be able to assist and participate in the workshops that they find of interest. Communication among delegates is key.

    IWEEE is a non-profit event organized by the GNU SOLIDARIO association

• Openness

  • CES 2010: Open Source 3-D Printer Turns Designs Into Objects

    Wired.com checks out MakerBot’s Cupcake CNC 3-D Printer. Using PLA, ABS, or HDPE plastic, this open source, $950 kit allows the user to fabricate small objects of virtually any shape.

  • Strengthen the Commons

    … The… current, interrelated crises in finance, the economy, nutrition, energy, and in the fundamental ecological systems of life … are sharpening our awareness of the existence and importance of the commons. Natural commons are necessary for our survival, social commons ensure social cohesion, and cultural commons enable us to evolve as individuals. It is imperative that we focus our personal creativity, talents and enthusiasm to protect and increase our social wealth and natural commons. This will required an eye on the goal to change some basic structures of politics, economics, and society.

• Programming

  • Popular Languages of 2009

    The TIOBE index for 2009 says that Google’s new Go programming language experienced more growth in popularity than any other language in 2009. The growth is quite remarkable given that the language became available late in the year. Is it all just hype? The Google brand certainly carries a lot of power and marketing capability with it. Based on TIOBE’s system, Go and Objective-C had the biggest gains in 2009 with Java taking a slight hit, but remaining at the top. TIOBE calculates its index based on search engine hits.

    Go – Because of it’s remarkable growth, Go was named “TIOBE’s Programming Language of the Year.” Go has been compared syntactically to Pascal, Python, and C. Although Go is a new language with its own share of critics, many people are interested in its concurrency capabilities and fast compilation. Erlang is another concurrent programming language that grew this year from 29 to 24. One thing’s for sure, Google’s Go is getting a lot of attention.

Leftovers

• Rob Glaser: Pioneer Of Badware Leaves Real Networks

  I was glad to see Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York university publish on Twitter: “Rob Glaser steps down as head of Real Networks, and story after story fails to note he ran one of the most invasive malware companies ever.”

• Supreme Court Blocks Video Streaming of Prop 8 Trial

  This afternoon, the Supreme Court put the final kibosh on video streaming of the Prop 8 trial to five federal courthouses around the nation. The Court stayed U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s order permitting the broadcast. The stay will remain in force for the foreseeable future, putting an end to the controversy for practical purposes. The Court did not address the recording and dissemination of the trial on YouTube, viewing it unnecessary because Judge Alex Kozinski, the Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit, had not approved Judge Walker’s decision to allow Internet dissemination when the petitioners sought a stay.

• Britain lures talent: sci-tech entrepreneurs move in

  It took only a few weeks of research for Romanian entrepreneur Emi Gal to decide where to base his digital media firm, and his choice confounds a fairly enduring set of stereotypes about Britain’s global appeal.

• Security

  • Security fears threaten smart meter plan

    The £8.1 billion rollout of smart meters in Britain could be knocked off course unless the Government and Ofgem, the energy regulator, act urgently to convince the public that the information provided by the meters will be held securely.

  • POLICE TO EMPLOY ‘WEB-COP’

    The officer, to be employed in the West Midlands, will also search for criticism of the police and use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Bebo to promote the force.

  • Orson Welles on police brutality

    With recent trends in police abuses being a topic of no small concern at BoingBoing as of late, I thought perhaps his little known broadcast should be remembered and shared, as it strikes a chord of similarity which is at once chilling and inspiring. Welles gives us a glimpse into a time and a setting in which a mere radio broadcaster spoke out in a fervor of disgust and revulsion against a terrible injustice, and was instrumental in bringing those responsible to bear for their crimes. If nothing else, it serves to remind us of what has come before, and what we can once more do and be again.

    With recent trends in police abuses being a topic of no small concern at BoingBoing as of late, I thought perhaps his little known broadcast should be remembered and shared, as it strikes a chord of similarity which is at once chilling and inspiring. Welles gives us a glimpse into a time and a setting in which a mere radio broadcaster spoke out in a fervor of disgust and revulsion against a terrible injustice, and was instrumental in bringing those responsible to bear for their crimes. If nothing else, it serves to remind us of what has come before, and what we can once more do and be again.

  • Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

    The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.

• Finance

  • Obama Joins the “Repo the Dough” Coalition

    Here at BanksterUSA we are thrilled that the Obama team has joined our “Repo the Dough” campaign and urge it to apply a financial transaction tax to destructive stock market speculation.

  • Murder on the Orient Express?

    The independent Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission got underway this morning in Washington. The commission was authorized by Congress to get to the bottom of the causes of the financial crisis and produce an independent report, much like the 9-11 commission.

    The commission sent a strong message by first putting under oath the titans of Wall Street. They didn’t pick the subprime mortgage lenders or Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. They didn’t pick the credit rating agencies. They didn’t even pick the big housing or investment firms that failed. Instead, they chose the largest firms that survived the crisis and now are profiting off of it due to the extraordinary interventions of the U.S. government.

• PR/AstroTurf

  • Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups

    Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures,” in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine” those groups.

  • Where’s the Outrage Over Obama’s Health Care Propagandist, Jonathan Gruber?

    What a difference partisanship makes now that Obama is president. In the Gruber scandal prominent liberals including New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have attacked the messenger, Marcy Wheeler and Firedoglake, rather than criticizing the lack of disclosure and the money changing hands, and digging further into the relationship between Obama and his paid health care advocate Jonathan Gruber. Who else is receiving convenient Administration funding while flacking ‘independently’ for Obama policies? In a democracy, we need to know and we have a right to know, no matter which party controls the White House.

• Censorship/Civil Rights

  • Will Google stand up to France and Italy, too?

    Google’s stand against Chinese censorship and surveillance – triggered by suspicions that China had been trying to hack activists’ ­accounts – will be rightly lauded by defenders of human rights. But when it comes to upholding Google’s vow not to “do evil” by its ­users, China is by no means the company’s only headache. Before those of us in western democracies get too high on our horses about Google and China, we should remember that the Chinese are not the only ones putting pressure on Google in ways that are arguably harmful to freedom of expression, even when intentions are honorable. A growing number of governments – many democratically elected – share an attitude that internet companies should be expected to act as “net nannies” for their citizens.

  • Google ‘scam’ suggestion condemned by high court

    A Paris court of appeal has ruled against Google in a defamation case lodged by the Centre National Privé de Formation a Distance (CNFDI) in a suit which claimed the search engine’s ‘Suggest’ feature linked the organisation to the word ‘scam’.

• Internet/Web Abuse/DRM

  • Tell the FCC: don’t put a copyright loophole into net neutrality

    Tim from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, “Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission proposed rules for “Net Neutrality” — a set of regulations intended to help innovation and free speech continue to thrive on the Internet. But is the FCC’s version of Net Neutrality the real deal? Or is it a fake? Buried in the FCC’s rules is a deeply problematic loophole. Open Internet principles, the FCC writes, ‘do not… apply to activities such as the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works.’ For years, the entertainment industry has used that innocent-sounding phrase – ‘unlawful distribution of copyrighted works’ — to pressure Internet service providers around the world to act as copyright cops — to surveil the Internet for supposed copyright violations, and then censor or punish the accused users. Please visit RealNetNeutrality.org to learn more and sign EFF’s open letter asking the FCC to remove the copyright loophole.”

• Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

  • 2nd Circuit Reinstates Antitrust Claim Against Online Music Providers

    An antitrust suit alleging price fixing by Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other producers, licensors and distributors of music on the Internet has been reinstated by a federal appeals court.

    The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday said the pleadings of music purchasers were sufficient for plaintiffs to pursue their Sherman Act claim against companies who control more than 80 percent of music sold as digital files.

  • OiNK Admin Explains Why He Thought The System Was Legal

    Now that the trial is ongoing, Ellis is explaining that he didn’t believe that what he did in running OiNK directly was copyright infringement, even if users of OiNK may have infringed on copyright (he does admit to downloading works via OiNK, however — but that’s separate from his admin role, and he claims that he only used it to sample new musicians, and bought the albums of those he liked).

  • This Is Why We Worry About Net Neutrality Regs: Loopholes For RIAA/MPAA

    This is what we worry about. It’s great that the EFF is catching this particular loophole, but as more lobbyists get their hands on net neutrality regulations, they’re going to slip in more and more loopholes like this that will turn what may have great intentions into something else entirely.

  • Trademark infringement claim: “100 BOOK CHALLENGE”

    My initial feeling is that they actually have a case. They have a product (see http://www.americanreading.com/products/…) called “100 Book Challenge” and they sell it. They have a registered trademark for it. Groups on LibraryThing with the same name, and somewhat similar conceptual domains, could be a potential problem.