06.16.10

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Links 16/6/2010: No Android for Nokia; Sidux 2010-01

Posted in News Roundup at 5:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Software for Social Networking

    Mοѕt οf thе open source software programs fοr social networking ѕο far аrе free. One thаt charges іѕ PHPizabi bυt despite thаt thеrе аrе still people willing tο υѕе іt. Sοmе οf іtѕ features include being аbƖе tο access іt through уουr desktop, communicating wіth friends іn thе chat room аnԁ maintaining a contact system.

  • Curtin Sarawak ECE Students Shine In Open Source Contest

    Students of Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak (Curtin Sarawak) have won two prizes in the Sarawak Open Source Competition organised by Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (SAINS).

  • Open Source EGL Means an RPG Generator Is Possible

    IBM wants to take Enterprise Generation Language open source. Last week at its Rational user conference in Florida, the vendor submitted a proposal to the Eclipse consortium that would place the bulk of EGL–a high-level language intended for Power Systems and mainframe shops that generates Java, JavaScript, and COBOL code–into the public realm.

  • Vuvuzela

  • Events

    • Linux 2010 trade show in Berlin

      As Michael Kleinhenz, member of the extended board of LinuxTag said, “in the long term open source has huge potential for saving costs. Thus it is all the more important to make funds available for research and investment, in order to get even more companies, public authorities and administrations to make use of open source. Open formats which everyone can use free of charge also increase transparency and improve security. More IT decision-makers should take this into account. LinuxTag contributes towards raising awareness of open source even more and thus propelling it even further.“

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox Losing Foothold on Linux Distros?

      When you install the Ubuntu Netbook Edition in October, don’t look for Firefox on the desktop — it won’t be there. Chromium, Chrome’s open source cousin, is going to be taking its place. After years of desktop dominance on Linux, is Firefox losing its foothold or is this an anomaly?

  • SaaS

    • New Open Source Cloud Data Integration Solution Runs on Amazon EC2

      Talend, another open source company, offers a data-integration-as-a-service solution, called Talend on Demand, which launched in 2007. I’d love to be able to tell you the difference between offering a cloud-based solution and a SaaS-based solution, but I’m still trying to figure that one out. Obviously, Jitterbit’s solution runs on Amazon EC2, whereas Talend is a subscription service that requires you to download a management product, but beyond that, I’m not sure. I’ll have to get back with you on that one.

  • Databases

    • Ingres Shows Faster Queries With VectorWise

      Open source company Ingres has released a vector version of its database, which it claims speeds up database operations enough to reduce the equipment required and greatly extend the use of realtime analytics.

  • CMS

  • Business

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Mendeley, the-Last.fm-of-research, rolls out premium packages to steady customer nerves

      Mendeley offers a secure online database for scientists, academics and researchers to store their research papers in the ‘cloud’, making it easier to share those documents with peers. The system also helps researchers find and connect to like-minded academics in similar fields by looking at and extracting relevant meta-data from the millions of research papers stored in its database.

    • Open Access/Content

      • The return on peer review

        A while ago I took a decision to only publish in open access journals. I recently received two requests to review articles for journals. Peer-review is one of the great unseen tasks performed by academics. Most of us do some, for no particular reward, but out of a sense of duty towards the overall quality of research. It is probably a community norm also, as you become enculturated in the community of your discipline, there are a number of tasks you perform to achieve, and to demonstrate, this, a number of which are allied to publishing: Writing conference papers, writing journal articles, reviewing.

      • What Do I Want from the Publisher of the Future?

        When I took on the role of Editor-in-Chief of this open-access journal, I began, for the first time, to think about scholarly communication beyond submitting my papers and getting them published.

Leftovers

  • High court quashes plan for fast food outlet near ‘healthy eating’ school
  • $11.7m judgment against Spamhaus slashed to $27,000
  • The Advertiser’s Doom

    Advertising (as is traditionally recognised) is inevitably in decline. This is because it resulted from an extreme asymmetry that developed between vendors and customers when vendors became mass producers, and could no longer meet their customers on a one-to-one basis. It was further exacerbated when vendors took advantage of mass communications technology (printing, broadcasting) to communicate UNIDIRECTIONALLY to their customers (current and potential). Very little communication has been possible in the other direction for decades if not a century or more, i.e. customers needing to communicate their wants and prices to potential vendors, especially mass producers.

  • Personnel Today goes online only

  • Science

    • Ancient Mars Had Vast Ocean, New Evidence Shows

      A vast ocean chock-full of microbes may have once covered more than a third of Mars’s surface, scientists say.

      The new evidence, from an analysis of dried-up Mars river deltas, adds to growing signs the red planet was once wet.

    • Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation

      Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, Nasa has warned.

    • New Worlds to Explore? Kepler Spacecraft Finds 750 Exoplanet Candidates

      The Kepler spacecraft has found over 750 candidates for extrasolar planets, and that is just from data collected in the first 43 days of the spacecraft’s observations. “This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s lead scientist. “The number of candidate planets is actually greater than all the planets that have been discovered in the last 15 years.”

  • Security/Aggression

  • Environment

  • Finance

    • The Coming Financial Meltdown

      The problem is getting worse. Notional amounts of derivatives held by federally insured banks have risen to more than $200 trillion.

    • Obama’s Treasury Dept Working To Defeat Derivatives Proposal ‘Of Utmost Importance’ To Reforming Wall Street

      A Senate proposal to force banks to shed their lucrative yet risk-laden derivatives units — which is vehemently opposed by Wall Street — is gaining steam, picking up the support of some regional Federal Reserve chiefs with more on the way.

      Yet President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, continues to oppose the measure, Senate aides say, who add that Treasury is supporting Wall Street over Main Street by opposing the measure considered of “utmost importance” to financial stability.

    • Battle Over Reform
    • Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives-spinoff plan gains support in Congress

      An effort to force some of the nation’s biggest banks to spin off their lucrative derivatives-dealing operations appears to be gaining traction, as members of a House-Senate conference begin finalizing details of far-reaching new financial regulations.

    • Blanche, back to business as usual

      This one’s pretty amazing. So as you know, Blanche Lincoln had this tough primary, which she ultimately won narrowly. Once the seriousness of the challenge became apparent to her, she sidled to the left and toughened up her derivatives language and set out to prove that she was in the pocket of no one except the good people of Arkansas.

    • Watching Obama, yearning for FDR

      President Barack Obama took office more than 75 years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated, but, to Obama, that chill March day in 1933 must seem like only yesterday, so often has his performance as president been contrasted with that of FDR’s in the halcyon days of the New Deal.

    • Presidents, the Tax Burden, and Economic Growth

      This post also appears at the Presimetrics Blog. It contains some information that has appeared in a few different Angry Bear posts, but I think I’m starting to manage to put it into a more coherent narrative. And as I’m able to do that, I’m able to move slowly to the next part of the story.

    • SEC is hiring more experts to assess complex financial systems

      Today, the Princeton-trained nuclear physicist is investigating for the SEC what was behind the massive flash crash that sent the stock market into a tailspin last month. A specialist at culling conclusions from masses of chaotic information, Berman is in part trying to ascertain whether wrongdoing played a role.

      Although lawyers fill most of the SEC’s ranks, the agency has been hiring experts with specialized quantitative skills and those who have worked on Wall Street who are hip to its tricks.

    • New book offers another view of Goldman Sachs’s destructive power

      There’s been no shortage of books that purport to dissect the financial crisis and all that ails Wall Street. Get ready for another entry: Chasing Goldman Sachs, by Suzanne McGee of Barron’s, the latest journalistic effort to get the real story behind the implosion that’s still rocking the economy.

    • Goldman Sachs’ Ethics Reflect Its Ethos

      Goldman culture rewards hard-nosed aggressiveness and doesn’t put the client’s interests before those of the firm.

    • The Amazing, Versatile and Unethical Goldman Sachs Code of Ethics

      Now it seems that we were lacking a crucial document: the firm’s internal Code of Ethics, which Goldman Sachs recently made public. Under the provisions of this remarkable Code, what Goldman Sachs did to its clients wasn’t unethical at all; deceptive, conflicted, and unfair, yes…but not unethical, in the sense that it didn’t violate the Ethics Code itself. “Impossible!” you say? Ah, you underestimate the firm’s cleverness.

    • One Crowd Is Still Loyal to Goldman Sachs

      Despite all the bad headlines — the accusations of fraud, the talk of a big settlement, the risk, however remote, of criminal charges — there’s an inconvenient truth that’s been largely ignored: Most of Goldman’s big customers are not bolting.

    • Goldman Sachs Envy Drove Big Boys to Blow Up Money Grid: Books

      McGee, a contributing editor at Barron’s, isn’t out to bury Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or Blankfein, its chief executive officer. Her goal is, rather, to show how Wall Street bankers became preoccupied with their own short-term interests and drifted away from their raison d’etre — to funnel capital from investors to companies that need it.

    • Latest Assault on Goldman Sachs: Bed Bugs?

      As if a nearly two-year siege of negative attention hasn’t been enough of a distraction for Goldman Sachs, now the controversial investment bank appears to be battling a potential bed bug problem.

    • What’s Reputation Worth? Just Ask Toyota, Goldman And BP

      If reputational risk wasn’t a top issue for CEOs and boards of directors prior to 2010, the watershed events of the first half of this year should make them reconsider their priorities. Of course there’s the wrath of the American consumer wrought by BP, thanks to the deadly accident on board the Deepwater Horizon rig and the subsequent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Before BP, however, two other companies sullied their sterling reputations and are still paying the price.

    • Mr. President, Here’s a Rear End You Can Kick: Goldman Sachs’

      Last week, President Barack Obama told us he is looking for someone’s “ass to kick.” He seems to be still looking for one, so perhaps he could use some suggestions.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • US record labels starts fake “citizen’s group” to support Canada’s DMCA

      A website in support of Canada’s proposed US-style copyright law looks to be a work of corporate astroturf, and signs point to the Canadian Record Industry Association (mostly composed of US record labels; many Canadian labels have left to form an independent lobby that opposes much of CRIA’s agenda) as the entity behind it. The group, Balanced Copyright for Canada, has bought headline placement on Bourque, and recently took down its member list after TVOntario reporter Jesse Brown announced that it appeared to consist of record execs from CRIA’s member-companies.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Deep packet inspection soon to be $1.5 billion business

      Deep packet inspection (DPI) hardware continues to sell, with ABI Research now estimating that vendors will move $1.3 billion of the stuff in 2015, up from $207 million in 2008. According to Infonetics Research, DPI will be a $1.5 billion business—by 2013.

      What will DPI devices be used for? According to ABI, “optimizing” mobile networks will be one of the chief uses—and by “optimizing” they mean limiting or prioritizing traffic from data-hungry mobile devices.

      “Brute force won’t solve this problem,” said ABI’s Aditya Kaul. “If you double the number of smartphone users, you can’t just spend $10 billion to double the capacity of your infrastructure.”

    • Armed police at Merseyside school after FBI warning

      The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation raised the alarm after picking up a threat posted on social networking site Facebook.

      A 19-year-old man was arrested and later released on bail.

      More than 1,000 students, some of them taking their GCSEs, were in the Birley Street school at the time of the alert.

      All entrances and exits were sealed while police investigated.

      ‘Leaving this world’

      The school said it was the FBI who raised the alarm after internet scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words.

    • Location Services Raise Privacy Concerns

      But the downside is that everyone who reads the posting will know the user isn’t home. On top of that, some services, such as Foursquare, can be linked to Twitter feeds.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Copyrights

    • Massive P2P Conglomerate Backs New TV-Series

      The largest P2P conglomerate ever assembled is supporting today’s launch of the first episode of ‘Pioneer One.’ The show, made for and made possible by the P2P community, is actively promoted by uTorrent, Limewire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and EZTV.

    • Geist: Opening up Canada’s digital economy strategy

      The federal government’s national consultation on a digital economy strategy is now past the half-way mark, having generated a somewhat tepid response so far.

      The consultation document itself may bear some of the blame for lack of buzz since the government asks many of the right questions, but lacks a clear vision of the principles that would define a Canadian digital strategy.

  • ACTA

    • WTO Report on TRIPS Council and ACTA

      The World Trade Organization has posted further information on last week’s Council meeting where India, China, and other developing countries raised concerns with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Clip of the Day

Introduction to the Semantic Web (2006)


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